Antifa Demands Philosophy Professor Be Fired

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Another Justin Trudeau Apology, More Justin Trudeau Weeping

Pull yourself together, man, for the lova God.

   Ya country done fucked up. I feel ya. People are dumb. It was a mistake. I do think that the progressive obsession with apologizing is maybe a bit too theatrical or something...but...I'm not saying it's clearly wrong. But, seriously, enough with the waterworks.

   Also, than string of letters ain't gettin' any shorter, is it?

Self-Censorship: The Modern Scourge

Self-censorship is best censorship!
It's inefficient if the state has to make you do it.
Much better to shame you into doing it yourself.
It's a plague at universities, which my my most admirable old prof noted, years ago, are now the places where discussion is least-free. You'll note that they're supposed to be just the opposite.

The Macmillan Blog On 'Political Correctness': An Illustration Of The Problem

Wow.
This and this at the Macmillan Dictionary Blog are just awful...and they illustrate the way in which political correctness has infiltrated so much of the cultural superstructure, especially the academic and quasi-academic sectors. Political correctness is portrayed as a virtually unmitigated good--

   As the definition in the Macmillan Dictionary suggests, political correctness was originally a strategy for combating discrimination, and its focus was language. The rationale is that language and social attitudes are closely linked – and there is plenty of sociolinguistic evidence to support this idea. The unthinking use of negative terms when talking about people who belong to any kind of minority is bound to affect the way such people are viewed. But, the argument goes, if these negative terms become socially unacceptable and are replaced by more ‘inclusive’ language, then attitudes will change too. The goal, in other words, is not simply to avoid offending people (on the basis of their race, gender, sexuality or disability) but to change perceptions in society as a whole.
   It is hard to see how any reasonable person could object to this, and it’s no surprise that the British National Corpus, most of whose texts come from the 1980s, includes sentences like [basically: women like Bill Clinton because he's politically correct.]

   First, no, there is not "plenty of sociolinguistic evidence to support this idea." Second, no, PC was not originally a strategy for combating discrimination. The term originated among Marxists to make fun of the craziest of their comrades who were willing to at least semi-believe...or pretend to believe...it's often hard to tell the difference...even the most obviously false bits of dogma. It was originally a term for mindlessly subordinating truth to political orthodoxy...and that meaning has never gone away. The paleo-PCs embraced the term IMO because they were to some extent ignorant of its origins...but also because they accept the view that truth and evidence should be subordinated to leftist orthodoxy.  I mean--it was/is their view. It was and is obvious in their actions, and stated explicitly in the works of their intellectual heroes.

   I wonder whether the Macmillan blog has complained about the fact that they swapped out 'political correctness' for 'social justice', an illegitimately positively-valenced term?

   But I knew what I was going to see in that blog before I read it. I knew there was no doubt that such a source would be supportive of PC. Seriously...imagine coming across something like, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica taking a primarily negative stance toward PC or SJ. It simply isn't going to happen. That's part of the nature of the problem. 

"Your DNA Is An Abomination": Op-Ed In TXST Student Paper Cheers "White Death"

This kind of BS doesn't offend me or anything, and I have no interest in preventing people from discussing ideas, of course. The ideas seem paradigmatically racist, but that doesn't mean they aren't true--so discuss away, if you like. Of course they aren't true, for reasons I've discussed many times...but that's a different point. This sort of batty far-left pseudo-scholarship or pseudo-social-science is only worth discussing because it's so widespread and influential. As far as intellectual merit goes, it gets a very low 'F.' Serious scholars wouldn't touch such nonsense with a ten-foot pole.
   I'll just mention once again that it's worth reflecting on the radical double standard with respect to this stuff at American universities. If you're white, male, whatever, the constraints on what you are permitted to say are extremely strict. Even something true and innocent can ruin your career / life...even if it is obviously being intentionally misconstrued. On the other hand, if you're in a group at the top of the progressive stack, you can say just about anything you want about whites, no matter how overtly, undeniably, intentionally racist (and even borderline-murderous) and get published. In fact, in some of the weaker reaches of the humanities, social sciences and victim-studies disciplines, you can build a whole career on it.
   So far as I can tell, this double standard is indefensible.

[Really, seriously...you ought to read this just because it's so hilariously loony, and so overtly, undeniably racist.]

The "Ice Apocalypse" Also Seems To Have Been Over-Hyped

You're automatically put into the kook category if you wonder out loud whether global warming might possibly not be killing us all next week...but...here this is, just the same.

Is Trump Trying To Lie Us Into A War With Iran?

Maybe

GAMERGATE GAVE US TRUMP

[facepalm]
Gamergate--you know, the evil Satanic misogynistic...uh...I dunno...rape culture or something...movement? Well...IT GAVE US TRUMP!!!
My absolute favorite part about anti-Gamergate propaganda is the part where they just keep saying that Zoe Quinn's boyfriend started it all off by viciously attacking her online. Zoe Quinn is a a scumbag. She cheated on her boyfriend left and right. He posted a few agonized posts about it. Women do this sort of thing online all the time, and are turned into heroes for it (see, e.g., Joss Whedon's wife...) Quinn continues to be a scumbag...and continues to be heroified by the PC press. It's interesting that one of Quinn's bf's complaints about her was that she used a bunch of PC/social justice mumbo-jumbo as a smokescreen for her scumbaggery. Thomas Pogge's accuser made the exact same argument against him...though instead of posting her essay on an obscure discussion board, she published the essay in a semi-hemi-demi-respectable venue. Published it. She's a hero, and Pogge is in the doghouse. (Perhaps justifiably.) But in the other case, Quinn is the hero, and her bf is in the doghouse. Women who reveal their bf's infidelities online are heroes; men who do so are villains. If it weren't for double standards, the PC left would have no standards at all. 
   None of this is to deny that there were some assholes who harass people--often women--online. Nor that there were some assholes who harassed people--often women--during Gamergate. But Gamergate simply wasn't some kind of organized campaign of misogyny. It was primarily an upheaval against politically correct douchebaggery in games journalism. But you know what happens when you criticize the PCs--you're a racist. Or a misogynist. Or a "homophobe". Or some other canned SJW ad hominem. Must be convenient to have a canned defense against any attack on your intellectually and morally bankrupt douchebaggery...

Budweiser Wants To Brew Beer On Mars

You know, ah...I hate to just make the obvious point, but...they might ought to start by trying to brew some beer on Earth...

Trump Insults Navajo Code-Talkers [Oops...I Guess Not...]

This is infuriating.
What, maybe insult the Tuskegee Airmen for an encore?
I've defended Trump's use of the 'Pocahantas' insult before. It's not racist; he's making fun of Warren for, apparently, fudging the facts when it came to her alleged Indian ancestry. Now, hers may have been an honest mistake--which, as somebody around here once pointed out, isn't that far-fetched. And I agree. We all want Indian ancestry...everybody's 1/16th Cherokee...vague family stories and beliefs about native ancestors are a dime a dozen. But it's plausible to think that Warren lied. And, if so, that's much closer to being racist than it is to make fun of her for doing it by calling her 'Pocahantas.' That's not an insult to American Indians...it's not even an insult to Pocahantas. It's only an insult to Warren. If someone falsely claimed to be from the great state of Missouri, and got busted on the lie, and I thereafter referred to him as "Harry Truman," that's not some kind of slur against Missourians, nor against Truman.
HOWEVER...YOU DON'T DO THAT AT A WHITE HOUSE EVENT HONORING THE FOR-THE-LOVA-GOD CODE-TALKERS.
   I don't even know why it's insulting--but it sure as hell is.
   Jesus Christ. I mean...seriously. That guy is a dim-witted boor. I really just can't stand him.

[Whelp...shows what I know, I reckon:
Code-Talker Tomas Begay Not Offended by Trump's 'Pocahantas' Comment]

[Others--families of code-talkers--disagree]

Carolina 45 - MSU 63

Well, that was basically the worst game I've ever seen us play--and the worst shooting performance in school history (24.6%, if you can believe that). We missed something like 15 layups, hit 1 of 16 3s, and hit under 50% at the line.
   Wow. That was awful.

Is It Racist To Be Skeptical About The Possibility Of Friendship Between Blacks And Whites?

This is the piece a lot of people are calling racist.
   I don't see it.
   I mean, racism could motivate such a view, but I don't see any convincing evidence that it does so in this case. Also, the author's wife is apparently half white, for one thing. So...anti-white racism (which I take it is the charge): way, way, way unlikely.
   I mean, I think the essay is kinda crap, but that's a different matter. For one thing, Yankah reports that his wife is his best friend--which, though perhaps not technically inconsistent with his thesis, probably ought to be counted as disconfirming evidence for it. Also, he gets fairly close to no-true-Scotsmaning--blacks and whites can be friends...but not true friends...
   It kinda seemed to me to be a bit of TDS with a racial spin on it.

Spiked: Twitter Has Turned Its Back On Free Speech

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It's also apparently started to de-"verify" and/or kick people off if it disagrees with their beliefs or actions off of Twitter. That is: you might get kicked off for publishing an op-ed that's "not in keeping with the company's values." (Note: not sure that phrase is Twitter's: it's Spiked's.)
   This is part of a general purging of right-of-center opinion from "social media."
   Nobody on the left seems to care about this, do they?
   Here's an honest question: is it entirely accidental that the stupidest "social media" platform--the one that encourages emotional outbursts and virtue signalling and makes intelligent discussion and the development of even moderately complex reasoning almost impossible--has also aligned itself with the PC/progressive left? Eh...it's an attractive hypothesis to me, but Google and Facebook have basically gone over the Dark Side as well...so the answer's probably yes, it's an accident.

Experiments That Show How To Turn Conservatives Into Liberals?

This study has unreplicable written all over it.
Not only is it of the Ha ha look at this completely implausible way in which humans are irrational variety, but it's also of the ha ha look how pathetically irrational conservatives are type. The replicability crisis has not been kind to such studies.

The Freddie Gray Case Is Closed

We still don't know what happened.

Washington Post: "Elitists, Crybabies, And Junky Degrees"

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Seems to me that the title's a pretty fair summary of some of the most pressing problems with universities. It doesn't describe the average; but it also doesn't describe merely a few exceptional cases, either. There are forces in the academy that are generating elitists, crybabies and junk degrees. These forces are more powerful in some universities and some disciplines, and more effective on some professors and students. Only far toward one end do you get Berkeley and Oberlin...and, on the very fringe, Evergreen. But those forces are operant in much of academia. I'd be a bit surprised if they're entirely absent anywhere.

New Species Can Arise In Three Generations

Holy crap

Jordan Peterson Suggests Website Identifying College Courses That Are Left-Biased

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Why are leftist academicians so panicky about people finding out what's in their courses? (Remember how upset people got when anti-Trump tirades in classes were caught on tape?) I've never heard ordinary academicians express concerns about their course content being made public. I'm not averse in any way to people knowing what's in my courses. And, of course, if the PC left doesn't like something, they simply assert that it makes them "unsafe" or itself constitutes "violence" against them. The fact that they get away with such nonsense shows how biased toward the left academia is. That bullshit should be mercilessly ridiculed. Instead, such obviously false ploys are automatically treated as if they were true..
   At any rate, I'm about the most ardent defender of academic freedom there is. But I just don't see the problem with general facts about the content of courses being made public. The freedom to teach what you want does not depend on your course content being secret. And, of course, it's fairly clear that a lot of courses in the social science and humanities would turn out to be a series of political indoctrination sessions. So I understand why the professors who teach them are against this fact being made public. But the very fact that they'd use the bogus excuse that they fear for their safety is, IMO, a reason for making the information public. Look, students have a legitimate interest in knowing which professors teach politically biased courses. But the idea that bias is bad is, of course, a liberal view. The PC left thinks that leftist bias is good. Their principles entail that they should trick students into taking their courses if possible. Of course if right-wing bias were widespread in the academy, the left would be singing a very different tune on this.

Carolina 87 - Arkansas 68

Arkansas played really well, I thought (as did Portland), but the Heels continue to hit on (almost) all cylinders offensively. Usually we're bumbling around frustratingly at this point in the season, trying to get in sync. Last year's team got itself in the flow much earlier than usual, and this year's is looking good right out of the blocks. The freshman bigs have even been surprisingly good...though expectations were pretty low for them, so they still have a long way to go. But even without Cameron Johnson, we've been deadly from 3. Kenny Williams is healthy, and Luke Maye is like a completely different player. Right now, the Heels are really fun to watch.

Has The Movement Against Sexual Assault Itself Become A Problem?

Here's a great piece by Masha Gessen, "When Does A Watershed Become A Sex Panic?" In it she mentions something that I've been talking about for years now, but I've never seen anyone else acknowledge:

On college campuses, sex is also policed outside the normal mechanisms of law enforcement. Under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department directed campuses to adjudicate cases of sexual assault under the provisions of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination. In cases of sexual assaults, victims—both women and men—are often either reluctant or downright frightened to go to the police, and the courts are terrible at prosecuting sexual assault. Not only is the experience painful for the victim but the standard of proof for intimate violence tends to be de-facto higher than for other kinds of violence. On campus, the Justice Department ordered that a different standard be used: a preponderance of the evidence, rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Long before these guidelines arrived, campuses had begun instituting rules of “affirmative consent.” Halperin reminds his readers that when Antioch College introduced this standard—which requires explicit verbal affirmation of the desire to take every sexual step—it was “widely ridiculed.” That was in 1991. Now, the principle of affirmative consent has not only been adopted by countless colleges but has become the law for colleges in New York and California.

   It was one of the straws that broke the back of paleo-PC. It was even ridiculed on Saturday Night Live. 

Read more »

Piegate!

If I had to bet, I'd bet Sanders is telling the truth about this--not that I think we should be discussing it. Crumbs on the table and a shadow in the pic..I sorta doubt that it's a stock photo. It's DDS--desert derangement syndrome, I tell ya.

Josh Park: The Myth Of Institutional Racism

Not an iron-clad argument by any means, but an important one that's almost always ignored on the left:

   Although there is a major inequality of wealth between the average white and black families, those who say that institutional racism is the problem behind this discrepancy may want to examine the effects of making responsible decisions. According to the Brookings Institute, in order for someone to avoid permanent poverty in the United States, there are three simple rules to follow: graduate high school, get any full-time job, and don’t have kids out of wedlock. Regardless of race, only 2% of people who follow these three rules are in poverty, while 75% have joined the middle class. Although it is definitely true that black children are more likely to be born into poorer families, the study shows that the path to the middle class is relatively wide today. Graduating high school is a very reasonable goal and is almost entirely up to the individual, and it is still very reasonable to argue that any person is capable of finding ANY full-time job, barring any disabilities or mental illnesses (I personally do believe that a social safety net should exist for those who physically cannot produce).  [My emphasis]
   Even if a well-paying full-time job seems difficult to attain, it is still very possible to avoid permanent poverty. The biggest indicator of poverty is neither the quality of one’s job nor one’s educational attainment; the biggest indicator is single motherhood (or, to a lesser extent, single fatherhood). This is true not only because of the direct effects of single motherhood itself (such as a much lower average income), but because of the countless effects that stem from single motherhood. According to the U.S Census Bureau, married couples in the United States earned an average household income of around $107,000 in 2015, whereas single mothers had an average household income of around $47,000. Single fathers had an average income of around $67,000 (Table F-10, “All Races,” Historical Income Tables). It is simply common sense that not having two spouses will most likely lead to a lower household income, which can present more financial hardships for the family. According to the Business Insider, the family’s income levels can have a significant effect on the children’s “ likelihood of going to college,” and, for female children, “becoming a teenage mom.” When parent-income levels increase, “college attendance rates rise and teen birth rates fall.” This shows that single parenthood not only leads to a much lower average income, but also hurts the children’s likelihood to become more educated and increases their likelihood to have children out of wedlock (perpetuating the family’s struggle to find financial stability).
   It is, therefore, unsurprising that the poverty rate is significantly higher for single-parent households than two-parent households. Interestingly, single-parenthood is extraordinarily high in the black community, as 64% of all black families live in single-parent households, compared to 40% of Hispanics, 30% of whites, and 17% of Asians. Even more surprising is how the poverty rate for two-parent black households is only7.5%, which is under the American average of 10.6%. Furthermore, two-parent black households have a significantly lower poverty rate than white single-mother households, which sits at 25.4%. What happened to white privilege?

The Complete List Of Accusations Of Sexual Misconduct Against Trump

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   I'm on record as being anti-TDS, for whatever that's worth. A large percentage of these accusations sound very plausible to me. Especially in conjunction with the Access Hollywood tape.

Rape Crisis Hysteria Goes After Grandma: GSUSA Decrees That Kids Must Not Be Compelled to Give Grandma A Hug

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   But to fully appreciate this, you've got to take a look at the original, the title of which is--and I'm not making this up: "She Doesn't  Owe Anyone A Hug, Not Even On The Holidays."  Note the picture: a little girl dressed in a kind of college-y...or twenty-something-y...way, staring pensively.
   This is one of those bits of crazy that really does capture something about the crazy, crazy essence of political correctness / social "justice:"

   Girl Scouts of the USA issued a warning to parents this holiday season, asking them to think twice before forcing their daughters to hug relatives at gatherings.
   “Think of it this way, telling your child that she owes someone a hug either just because she hasn’t seen this person in a while or because they gave her a gift can set the stage for her questioning whether she ‘owes’ another person any type of physical affection when they have bought her dinner or done something else seemingly nice for her later in life,” reads the post on the Girl Scouts’ website.

   That's right! Some semi-employed 24-year-old women's studies major working part-time as the Minster of Gender Correctness for the girl scouts has, in classic liberal/progressive fashion, decided that she knows better than all the parents in the world stretching back forever...because she thought of a completely unverified story about how hugging grandma might cause rape. Read more »

False Dilemma Watch: "Political Correctness Isn't The Problem: The 'Real' Bigotry Is Not Suppression Of Speech, But White Nationalism"

Ew.
   I mean...that's a steaming pile of crap, so far as I can tell. But it was so bad that I just ended up skimming most of it. So...maybe there's something in there. But I wouldn't count on it.
   Oh and: yeah, there are scare quotes around 'real' in the title.

Partial Transcript Of Lindsay Shepherd's PC Inquisition by Wilfrid Laurier U. Professors and Administrator

Jesus, this isn't any less Orwellian when you read it.
  Note also that it's two profs and an administrator: the WLU "manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support." I am not making that up.
   It's like a loony little cherry on top that her professor manages to work in both 'problematic' and 'toxic'...
   This is not a minor incident. This is not a close call. This is outright, Orwellian insanity. If you're not alarmed by this, as they say, you're not paying attention.
   [Oh, and don't miss the part where her lunatic professor says something like "it would be like playing something for your class from Hitler...or Gamergate...]

Bird Flu Is Spreading In Asia Experts (Quietly) Warn

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Newsweek: "How Murderer Charles Manson And Donald Trump Used Language To Gain Followers"

Used language you say?! Why...come to think of it...Trump and Hitler both used language, too! And Trump and Stalin both used microphones! And Trump and Genghis Khan both breathed air...so...a pattern emerges...
   But at least:

Smaller is clear that he does not believe President Donald Trump is similar to the convicted killer, or that their followers have any shared beliefs or characteristics, but he did say we can look to the current president to see how language is used to form a bond with followers.

But the idea in the article seems to be that both sets of followers are psychologically defective, and Trump and Manson are both good manipulators. This effort to take it back once it's been said doesn't impress me.

   Then there's basically my favorite part:

Smaller doesn’t have specifics on what Manson may have told followers, but said cult leaders may say things like...

[facepalm]

   Some this crap is the fault of sensationalistic headline-writers. But not all of it.

   TBF there's a point or two in the article that isn't entirely lame...but they seem pretty stock to me.

[Also: not enough to just compare Trump to Charles Manson...but to murderer Charles Manson. Because of all the Charles Mansons out there I guess.]

ESO Observations Show First Pictures Of An Interstellar Asteroid

Behold, Oumuamua

The PC/SJ Appeal To Unsafety

One of the main weapons in the neo-PC arsenal is the assertion that any expression contrary to PC orthodoxy makes members of PC-favored groups "unsafe." This bit of obvious bullshit shows up in nearly all of their arguments. This nonsense needs to be addressed and slapped down in a general way, and bullshit must be called on it whenever it rears its ugly head. In its most absurd form, politically incorrect expression is itself said to constitute violence against PC-favored groups. So, for example, if I say [a] "men cannot become women," or [b] "races are natural kinds," or [c] "contemporary feminism is usually wrong," I thereby commit acts of violence against various groups high up in the progressive stack. This sort of argument is patent nonsense and, as such, is less dangerous than the other, significantly less (but still extremely) absurd versions. Though, honestly, it doesn't get shot down half as much as it ought to.
   A less-absurd version of the argument seems to go like this: saying things like [a]-[c] endangers members of PC-favored groups because...for some unspecified reason...this makes people (presumably evil white alt-right dudebros with their collars popped) more likely to physically attack members of PC-favored groups. Utterly absurd...but infinitely less absurd than the disagreement  constitutes violence version of the argument. Rather than being incoherent, this version is merely dumb. Its conclusion is entirely unsupported. It's false is what I'm getting at. Basically everyone the PC left fears already knows [a]-[c]. There's no reason to think that saying them is going to provoke evilwhitemen to attack. There's certainly no empirical evidence for the claim.
   Another merely-stupid-but-not-incoherent version of the argument seems to go like this: hearing things like [a]-[c] makes members of  PC-favored groups feel unsafe. (so that's a big shift; it's not actually a version of the argument above.) Now, to some extent pretending to feel unsafe is obviously a put-on. It's a tactic. It's bullshit. However, I myself don't doubt that more ardent social justice warriors have basically learned to be fairly adept at conjuring up something akin to actual fear. They're already hysterical and irrational, and particularly susceptible to groupthink and delusions. They're typically fairly entitled, so they may have no actual experience of fear with which to compare their manufactured quasi-fear. So, though mostly it's a pose, I think there's a bit of truth in it. Of course that kind of fear shouldn't concern us. I can't argue that you don't get to say anything merely because I have a weird ability to conjure fear in myself. Some kind of reasonable person standard has to be operant.
   Anyway, I've got the flu or the plague or something, so I'm not going to go back and fix all that up. But the main point is important: the neo-PCs lean so heavily on some version of this bogus appeal to unsafety that the argument needs to be addressed more directly and more often.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown: Ben Shapiro Should Be Punched For Not Believing That "Transwomen" Are Women

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I like Elizabeth Nolan Brown (not that I know her personally), and everybody makes mistakes. But this nonsense really has to stop. "Transwomen" aren't women; they're men who represent themselves as women. It's an open-and-shut case. Some argue that we should humor them--that we should go along with the charade. I disagree--but the arguments there are at least worth discussing.
   But this isn't really a disagreement about whether or not they're actually women; I doubt that anyone outside the most groupthinky women's studies department honestly believes that they are. These disagreements (as somebody...Jonathan Haidt maybe?) says: these issues become symbolic. Affirming that "transwomen" are women is almost always, I'd guess, a bit of virtue signaling. And/or a  way of proclaiming allegiance to a certain tribe. Only the most pomo-addled Butlerian feminist really thinks that men can become women by putting on dresses and whatnot. To confuse so-called transwomen with actual women is to confuse womanhood with femininity. "Transwomen" would less-confusingly be called "transmen." But getting people to say "transwomen" is a beachhead. It's a station on the way to getting them to say 'women.' (Though, of course, convincing people to change the meaning of 'woman' won't make men into women either, any more than getting them to use 'dog' to mean cat will turn dogs into cats.)
   Standard disclaimer: people should be able to look and dress how they want. But it's downright creepy. as. hell. that so many people have allowed themselves to be badgered into insisting that night is day basically because they don't want people to say that they're mean. Or, worse: conservative. And, of course, if you don't go along, you're harassed by the shrieking PC mob. And now even ENB thinks you should be punched.
   But freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.

McMaster: Trump Is Dumb

Well, I can't even feign objective detachment on this one. It's not exactly a state secret or anything.
(I didn't realize that McMaster was a Tar Heel with a Ph.D. in history.)

Vice Re: Lindsay Shepherd "Transgender Pronoun" Inquisition: "Jordan Peterson Is Causing Problems At Another University Now"

Click judiciously: Vice is such a sack of shit site that they've had to block archiving...somehow. Can't be that hard to get around, but I haven't looked into it yet.
   The lame-ass author, one Drew "Lame-Ass" Brown, does come down on the right side of the Shepherd/free speech issue (on principle? Or because she's a woman?), but he manages to blame the totalitarian actions of WLU on Peterson (who teaches elsewhere). He (Brown) also writes the following crap: 

For the record: Jordan Peterson is a transphobic YouTube crank with basically nothing interesting to say about free speech or gender expression, and who very obviously has no idea what any part of the phrase “post-modern neo-Marxist” means. He is a bad political and social thinker, and many of his ideas about gender roles are genuinely dangerous. (Tabatha Southey has already written his intellectual obituary by clocking him as “the stupid person’s idea of a smart person,” which is immediately obvious to anyone who listens to his awful honking voice for more than thirty seconds.)
...
It’s worth telling Shepherd to consider maybe issuing a content warning prior to making students listen to a sad-sack middle-aged man get upset that the public existence of non-binary people is an unreasonable infringement of his right to be an arch asshole.

Jesus Christ, where does Vice find these idiots? I mean, really? The centerpiece of his "intellectual obituary" is a rehashing of that stupid person / smart person line? That's just embarrassing. Oh, also: Peterson is "transphobic"! Boo, amirite? I mean, what kind of prejudiced asshole refuses to do as he's told? And the stuff in the second paragraph is just a lie. Peterson--like me--thinks such folk should be able to do as they please. He only--rightly--points out that others can't be forced to participate in their fantasy.

IMPORTANT: Excerpts From Secretly-Recorded Proceedings Against Canadian Graduate Student For Discussing Jordan Peterson's Transgender Pronoun Arguments In Class

I really think everyone should listen to this. (It's under ten minutes long.)
I think this is extremely important. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I worry that the fate of the Western intellectual tradition may hang in the balance.
(Via the indispensable Ph*l*s*phy M*t*f*r*m)

Welcome to reeducation 101:

   An Oxford college has become the first to introduce compulsory classes on “cultural appropriation” for students.
   Magdalen College will run the mandatory workshops for freshers starting from next year, where they will be taught about racism, institutional racism, cultural appropriation and implicit bias.

   It never occurs to these people that they might be pushing a bunch of theories. Nor that they might be wrong. It's God's mouth to their ear. And the PC left is never satisfied until indoctrination is mandatory. It's particularly funny/tragic that the implicit bias nonsense seems unlikely to survive the replicability crisis. But the progressive left is undeterred...

It's International Men's Day!

So...is this a thing or whatever?
   I mean, aside from finding everything like this silly...do we really need a day? Nobody's more willing to bash feminism and the PC left for bashing us than I am. But c'mon. We kinda basically run all the governments and businesses and stuff. I think that means we don't need a day.
   Also, I just don't feel any solidarity or whatever with other guys qua guys. I dunno. I don't and never have. Like...Go Team Penis! Or what? I just don't get it. In the battle of the sexes, I prefer to sneak off and try to score with the other team. Y'all are on you're own.

Jim Bakker: Buy My Emergency Cheesy Broccoli Or The Antichrist Will Eat Your Babies

Holy. Jesus.

When did this lunatic reappear?

'member all that stuff I've been saying about the left being crazier than the right? Yeah...about that...

Trump's Judicial Appointee Had A Ghostbusting Hobby; The Washington Post And Its Commenters Freak Out

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  So...there are legitimate grounds for criticizing this appointment--obviously. For example, Talley has never tried a case. To the layperson, this seems...y'know...really bad... And the ABA rated him unqualified.  (Conservatives respond that the ABA has a liberal bias; which wouldn't surprise me in the least...but I don't know anything about it.)

   But hyperventilating about his ghost-hunting hobby seems like BS to me.
   First, ghostbusting sounds like a blast. I'd totally do it. In fact, a bunch of us back in high school decided we were totally going to do it. (Though, as I recall, it didn't really progress much past a bit of lame chop socky training in the back yard...y'know...in case we encountered "cultists"...)
   Second, nine in ten Americans believe in God and souls and whatnot. Last I looked, there were exactly no openly atheistic senators or congressmen. How is it that Talley's views are supposed to be wildly less rational / less scientific / more outre than those? Because he's agnostic as to whether those souls or spirits or whatever show up in the world occasionally? Which, incidentally, about half of Americans believe. And how many people in the federal judiciary are similarly agnostic on this burning metaphysical issue of crucial political importance?
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David Kopel at VC: Most Mass Shootings In Gun-Free Nations

Not exactly sure what to make of this argument off the top of my head...but you know how I like arguments that confirm my prejudices...

Person Who Coined Phrase "White Fragility" Is Risible, Racist Idiot

I'm shocked...shocked to find racism going on here

Will A New New Age Attend Postpostmodernism?

Last time the irrationalist Continental mish-mash (postmodernism, poststructuralism, critical theory, feminism, etc.) and its associated illiberal politics (called 'political correctness' at the time) was on the rampage, so was supernaturalism (crystal, chakras, etc...called "new age" stuff at the time).
   So: I wonder whether that'll happen again this time. Will a new new age attend postpostmodernism?

Broadcaster Accuses Al Franken of Sexually Assaulting Her

If she's lying, she's a virtuoso.

The Developing Sexual Harassment Apocalypse

Look: some sexual harassment accusations are false. Of this there can be no doubt. In fact, I suspect that a pretty hefty percentage of them are false. It's a fairly low-cost, more-or-less sure-fire, way to destroy someone's career / life.
   But there doesn't seem to be any way around the conclusion that this shit happens a lot. And a little is way too damn much.
   Nobody that I'm at all close to gives any sign that they do this sort of thing. In fact, they give every sign of not being the sort of person who'd tolerate it for a second. If that's the kind of guy they are, they do a damn fine job of hiding it. And also of not revealing any sign of such assholery in the rest of their personality, either. But obviously my friends aren't going to be a representative sample of dudes. But there are all sorts of guys I've known-but-not-liked that I'd not put it past.
   At any rate, this is all complicated by lots of things. First, that most guys don't do this. So a relatively few guys are victimizing a lot of women. And those guys are often pretty good at evading detection. So most guys don't see this stuff, and can't help but be somewhat skeptical. Also, I think that, since most guys don't do it, when they hear stories of accusations, they can't help but think about themselves being accused--and so the prospect of a false accusation is close to the forefront of their mind. And, again: there probably are fair number of false accusations. And add to that that the radical, vocal vanguard of contemporary feminism is pushing a theory according to which false accusations are good--first they enthusiastically push overly-broad conceptions of sexual harassment and rape, thus intentionally classifying non-harassers as harassers and non-rapists as rapists; second, they deny that false accusations are real and insist that they don't matter.
   But, be all that as it may, there still seems to be an enormous amount of this stuff going on. I really just can't believe it. Where the hell are these guys coming from? Did they not have parents? My folks weren't what you'd call feminists, but they'd have never stopped beating my ass if I'd've ever done something of the kind. And I mean: basically regardless of how old I was. And it never had to be said explicitly, any more than I had to be told explicitly not to commit arson or something. Jesus Christ. This all really is mind-boggling to me.

RIP Academic Freedom: Swedish "National Secretariat For Gender Research" Mandates "Intersectional" and "Norm-Critical" Course Content; Also Judith Butler

This is the single creepiest thing I've ever read about leftist totalitarianism in the Academy.
   On top of everything else, Judith Butler is absolute crap. Well...so is most of the rest of the stuff about "gender" (which term means almost nothing anymore). Honestly, Butler's stuff in particular is basically jibberish. There really are courses of study that make people dumber. And I'm not talking about just teaching them falsehoods. I mean: altering the way they think for the worse. And the sort of highly-politicized ridiculousness that has taken over in many American humanities and social sciences--i.e. the sort of thing the Swedes are making mandatory--is that sort of thing. It teaches students to engage in a kind of improvisational free-form interpretation which aims to minimize clarity and logical rigor, aiming always at pre-determined leftist conclusions. Oh: and you gotta drop the right names along the way (Butler, Foucault, and the rest of the usual suspects...).
   Neo-Lysenkoism is a genuine threat to our intellectual future. It's pretty likely that people indoctrinated with such postpostmodern gender nonsense gave us rape crisis hysteria, the inaccurately-named "'yes'-means-yes" policies, the "Dear Colleague" letter and Title IX totalitarianism...and, well, the rest of campus PC-left insanity.

Sexual Harassment And Collective Guilt: NYT Edition

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Sanity's anathema to contemporary public deliberation and discussion. Sexual harassment's a problem. It'd be really good if we could have less of it. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's not an easy problem to fix. We've already got some terrible solutions in place--e.g. policies that make a "hostile environment" completely subjective, purely in the eye of the beholder, entirely a matter of ungrounded feelings, unconstrained by reasonable person standards. That's just about the worst imaginable response. 

   And now we've got: collective guilt for all men because of the actions of some. Sometimes that's said explicitly; other times it's just suggested. The latter is actually worse. 

   Oh, and don't forget:  no woman has an obligation to speak up, as she may face retaliation for doing so. All men, however, have an absolute obligation to speak up...and must be made to fear the repercussions of not doing so. Without double standards, these people would have no standards at all.

   Thing is, you could say something reasonable about all this; you don't absolutely have to be crazy. Though at this point, I think we have to admit that going to crazy extremes is like crack to the progressive left. They almost can't even be blamed for it. They just can't help themselves.

   It's more than understandable that women don't immediately and always go public with such accusations. These guys are sneaky shits; they know what they're doing. They survive on plausible deniability and the threat of retaliation. And I think that men do have a special obligation to intervene--preferably by knocking a m*ther f*cker on his ass--if they see this sort of thing. But I think this, in part, for decidedly un-PC reasons: men, in general, do have something of a special obligation to defend women. Feminism invokes this intuition when convenient, eschewing its other implications. But I think we all know it's true. 

   But even aside from that: third-party interventions are good for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it's no longer he-said/she-said--now it's two to one. For another, third parties are often more objective, hence their word matters more, evidentially speaking, than that of either of the interested parties. So, yeah, people should intervene. Especially male people. (That is: the people formerly known as men...)

   However, we need to put our collective foot down about this we-want-men-to-be-afraid psychopathy. It's typical PC/progressive insanity, and it has to be slapped down with extreme prejudice. If liberal feminism existed it'd come down on such a line like the very fist of God. But these are the progressive left's true colors: it just doesn't have it in it to simply want the good. It can't manage to try to help women without using the opportunity to harm men. It really does have to be opposed by every reasonable means. 

   I refuse to believe that the only two options are tolerate harassment of women and use this as an opportunity to harm men. Again: this is about reasonable people of both sexes fighting against two insane extremes. It's not a complicated point.

Shep Smith Debunks The Uranium One Story; Fox Viewers Pissed

I haven't had time to do more than skim the news since the beginning of this semester...but this sure does sound like an open-and-shut case.
   Of course, if BenghaziBenghaziBenghazi has taught us anything, "open and shut" means: we might get away with a mere year of investigations.

We're All Rape Culture Or Something; Something Something Patriarchy, Something Something All Men

Well this is idiotic.
   The progressive left really has gone off the rails. In terms of sheer delusional dumbness, it may very well be worse than the right at this point:

   The scope and the pervasiveness of this culture of abuse and our roles in perpetuating it—and not “our” as in men collectively but ourselvesspecifically—has resulted recently in a reflexive and unwieldy and messy and self-conscious excavation of memories, relationships and interactions: a digging that has intersecting intents. It’s reconciling with what you might have done—and might currently be doing—to prevent from doing it in the future. And well, it’s asking yourself, “How fucked up am I?” Which, expressed another way, is “Wait ... should I be worried about this avalanche too?”
   The answer, of course, is hell fucking yes. We are all complicit. We are all agents of patriarchy, and we’ve all benefitted from it. We are all active contributors to rape culture. All of us. No one is exempt. We all have investments in and take deposits out of the same bank. And we all need to accept and reconcile ourselves with the fact that, generally speaking, we are trash.

There's no reason to refute something this stupid in detail. It's just the same old PC bullshit slightly recycled and pointed at a slightly new topic. There's no "rape culture," there's not "patriarchy," we're not all guilty. You asshats might be guilty of doing or promoting or protecting this bullshit, but I'm not. And if you are, then yeah, you're trash. But the vast majority of us aren't. You may benefit from it, but most of us don't. Jesus. You have to be flat-out ******* stupid to believe this nonsense. Honestly. When you hit this kind of stratospheric level of shitheadness, I'm not going to even dignify it with a response. It basically refutes itself. Anybody who's not deluded by the cult of PC can see that this isn't even vaguely true. Not that this sector of the left cares about that anymore.

   Think about what drives the left's compulsion to selectively employ collective guilt...their eagerness to / obsession with assigning collective guilt to men (and "the whites," of course...) It really has become the flip side of the worst part of the right.

   And you know what? The progressive left deserves Trump. Hell, if I had to choose between them and him...I'd probably choose him. He's considerably less stupid, less delusional, and less morally rotten. Think about how scary that is.

Does India Want Out Of The Pak FA Program?

Kinda looks that way.

Drum: Sessions Is Right About Violent Crime Spike

Some on the left (e.g. the Brennan Center) have been denying this--e.g. arguing that it's isolated a few big cities. E.g. Moskos has been all over that, though. 

   The obvious hypothesis is: the Ferguson effect. Is that it? Maybe. Maybe not. This is a question we should be able to answer...but IMO political bias is typically more powerful than scientific methods. We could, theoretically, figure it out...but we probably won't. Because figuring it out would require political objectivity and intellectual honesty.

The Crazy Vanguard Of Contemporary Feminism: Hatin' On Taylor Swift Edition

There's nothing in any way surprising about feminist attacks on Taylor Swift...who, I must admit, I don't really know from Adam. I don't think I could name a single one of her songs. So anyway, I'm not exactly a fan or anything; I've got no bias in favor of defending her.
   I'm in the majority in the U.S. in that I am an egalitarian about the sexes, but I don't categorize myself as a feminist. Last I checked, even the majority of female college students don't think of themselves as feminists. The vocal vanguard of feminism has gone off the rails--it's not liberal, but PC / illiberal progressive. As such, it viciously enforces its orthodoxy--i.e. viciously punishes apostates.[More to the point: it viciously punishes even tiny and/or imaginary deviations from its ever-changing, highly impressionistic doctrinal fashions.]
   I know many people have warm, fuzzy feelings for the old feminism, and for the term 'feminism.' [I do too, incidentally.] And many don't want to surrender the term. I get that, and I'm not saying that my way of going is better. And under certain conditions, depending on what's meant in a given conversation, I'm willing to back them up and defend the view that today's unhinged, anti-liberal, irrationalist "feminism" isn't real feminism. But to the extent that's just a semantic dispute, it's not so much worth having. One of my main reasons for choosing the other route is that calling oneself a feminist is de rigueur in academia and polite middlebrow society. (So, of course, the ambiguity becomes very important.) At any rate, part of my refusal to say I'm a feminist is a result of its being declared mandatory.
tl;dr: don't tell me what to do. First-world anarchism FTW, baby.

Virginia And New Jersey Elect Governors Totally Lacking Reality-Show Experience

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The Mary-Was-A-Teenager Defense Of Roy Moore

Holy. Crap.

Feminists Encourage False Accusations of Sexual Harassment: Jessica Valenti Edition

The feminist fringe argues--on flimsy evidence--that there are few false accusations of sexual harassment. However, they're now starting to argue that there ought to be more. Why? Because they're a weapon against men (aka TEH PATRIARCHY). In case you doubt that the feminist fringe sees this as a zero-sum game that's boys v. girls, I give you the habitually nutty Jessica Valenti. The hard left tends to see everything through the lens of power, not principle. That's the mindset that gives us identity politics generally. They think that the patriarchy is a coalition of all men against all women--so of course they think it's ok to falsely accuse men of sexual harassment. It's not a matter of individual guilt--it's war. Taking out one soldier is as good as taking out another.
   And no, I don't think they believe that 100% and all the time. But I think they don't 100% not believe it, and never.
   It's sane men and women against the assholes/psychos and the unhinged feminists. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it always will be. Best not to forget it.

Thou Shalt Not Have Sex With 14-Year-Olds: The End Of Roy Moore?

Unproven accusations...though corroborated by at least some evidence. Moore apparently has a history of pursuing young girls. Apparently the age of consent is 16 in Alabama, however, and apparently all the other informants were above that age.
   Anyway...stay tuned. I'm concerned about the nation slipping into a "listen and believe" mentality...but I don't know what else to say about that.

Trump's Voter Fraud Commission Sued By One Of It's Own Members, Alleging Lack Of Transparency

This is just not good.
I seem to be pretty much alone among quasi-liberals (or whatever I am) in that I'm not in-principle opposed to this commission. I'd like to get the question put to rest, and I think it'd be worth a fair amount of money to do so. But this news bodes ill.

Lefties Shriek At Sky On Anniversary Of Trump Election

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   Now you're not even trying to not be weird and gross.
   You should sit at home and get drunk while forlornly thumbing through your pocket Constitution like normal people.

Northam Defeats Gillespie

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Man Stops Charging 400 lb Grizzly with Stock 10mm

Whelp...I guess this answers that question

TX Man Who Stopped Church Shooter Also Armed With AR-15

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Cyclist Lost Her Job After Flipping Off Trump's Motorcade

What kind of world do we live in where flipping off the POTUS loses you your job?
Seriously, though this is fucked up.

TX Church Shooting: 26 Dead

Jesus Christ.
This is insanity.
Shooter used an AR-15. Was apparently stopped by an armed private citizen.
Madness.

Trump And Clinton Would Be In A Dead Heat If The Election Were Held Today

I do not know what to say about this.

It's Not Okay To Be White In Saskatoon

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As foretold by the hacker known as 4chan, the prophecy is fulfilled:

   Earlier this week, an identical poster was taped to the University of Alberta’s Native Studies building, and in Boston, Cleveland, and Maryland in the U.S.
   Kaye took a photograph of the Saskatoon poster, then took it down and threw it into a nearby trash bin. He called his wife, who said it was terrible. Someone later asked him for the photo of the sign and shared it online.
   He considers the posters a kind of trickery, Kaye said in an interview.
   “The slogan’s appearance is part of a current, coordinated attempt by white supremacists to hijack Canada’s foundational, liberal democratic belief in equality, human rights, and multiculturalism to gain support from the majority population of Canadian life who doesn’t see how structural inequalities or basic Imperial history has shaped the western world, even into our little corner in supposedly peaceful and polite Canada,” he wrote in a Facebook comment.
   “Racism is a slow-moving beast,” Kaye said, adding that in today’s world, these sorts of things tend to happen on the Internet, but it was disturbing to see it brought to the real world.
   If putting it up was an act of propaganda, then “taking it down is an equal step,” he said. “I guess I can only hope to keep doing the right thing.”

Trump's Popularity: The Long, Slow Train Wreck

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I see this as a race at this point. Not a normal kind of race. But: who will become more repulsive by 2020? The GOP or the Dems? The GOP has its star player...the LeBron James...no...the Michael Jordan of Presidential crapitude. The Dems have insanity by committee, and are frantically trying to bring up more and more crazy from their far-left activist farm team. Amidst all the calls to Go left, young person of unspecific gender, I hope someone will suggest running some of those giant puppets from anti-World-Bank protests as candidates for Congress. Come to think of it...they probably wouldn't be the worst Democratic Congresspuppets out  there...
   I reckon the Pubs will get slaughtered in the midterms, as the incumbent party always does. But, after that, who knows? I still kinda think basically what I've always kinda thought: Trump is so repulsive and incompetent that he'll bring in his wake a tsunamic backlash of left-wing insanity. Apres lui, le deluge. DeVos has been a godsend...but she's an outlier. And thus far all she's really had to do to be a hero is rescind some utterly loony actions by the previous bunch. Not being utterly insane is not normally seen as a major qualification for a cabinet post. But in the valley of the blind, the one-eyed etc. is etc.
   But, then, I predicted that Trump would be impeached by October...so...shows what I know. In retrospect, that wasn't just wrong, it was stupid. (I also made another prediction somewhere: two years. That's also stupid, as should be obvious by now.)
   On the bright side, we're 1/4 of the way through this. My hope now is that this makes everybody realize that the power of the Presidency has to be radically reigned in. Though I doubt that's a rational hope.

The F-15 Active!

Wave Of Virulent Racist Vandalism

"It's ok to be white" flyers appear in about, oh, five or six places. Literally Hitler? Or literally THE MOST HITLER EVER???
   /pol/ plays these people like a violin not so much because /pol/ is so smart, but because progressivism is so very, very dumb. It's so bloody crazy that it is actually willing to say that "it's ok to be white" is racist...and so heinously racist that a handful of such flyers warrant articles in the Washington. damn. Post.
   Progressivism is deranged. If you had any doubts about that before...well...you need to not have them anymore.

Neo-Medieval Scrappin'

This looks like fun:

Dubya: "I'm Worried I Will Be The Last Republican President"

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Thing is, though...thus far, Trump is on a trajectory to be a much, much better President than Dubya. He didn't try to steal the election (though he might have if given the chance), and he hasn't ignored warnings of disastrous terrorist attack (which then came to pass). If everything else basically stays the same, he'll be a less-terrible President than Bush...and that's not even to mention Bush's creation of a completely unforced foreign policy catastrophe.
   Trump's personally odious...but he could easily turn out to be a better President in real terms than Bush '43, it seems to me.

When People Are Murdered With Guns, The Left Argues For Gun Bans--But When People Are Murdered With Cars, It Doesn't...Uh...

...never mind...
Lefties! Always one step ahead of us...

Davie Poplar Set On Fire By Explosive Device

WTF?
And why is everybody just standing around watching it burn?

The On-Going Trumpocalypse: Death And Gitmo Edition

You-know-who continues to be a national embarrassment of world-historical proportions.

Maybe if he manages to blow the case against a high-profile ISIS-affiliated terrorist, his supporters will reconsider.

Northam Lead Over Gillespie Narrows

It's what you'd think: people trust Northam more with respect to health care and race relations, Gillespie more with respect to taxes, illegal immigration, and crime. Those seem like the rational priors for any Dem-Pub race, and apparently these guys haven't moved things much...though Northam's advantages are a lot bigger.
   It's somewhat likely that it's Hyra for me...but my policy is not to vote if I haven't been following things fairly closely...and my semester's been such a catastrophe that I've barely paid any attention to this race. Sounds like Gillespie's taken a turn for the Trump...which is, needless to say, really too bad. I'd kind of hoped he'd be above that. A Northam win might also strike a blow for more centrist Dems... I can't recall ever not voting for the Democrat in a race of this general kind...but I'm so concerned about them now that they no longer get presumption. That's a big shift for me. But unless I suddenly find a bunch of free time to focus on this one more I'm likely to sit it out.

Yulia Tymoshenko Warned Us About Paul Manafort Years Ago

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