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?

Jim Acosta Is An Embarrassment

You've gotta work at it to get this bad.

Trump Can't Win / Trump Doesn't Want To Win

eyeroll

How is it that after 3.5 years of obsessing over the guy, Democrats are so utterly clueless about Trump?

Scarborough's an idiot, but Carville is sharp--especially about electoral politics and campaigns. That means the latter has no excuse if he really believes this BS he's spouting. 

Probably this is the old say it's true to make it true ploy. He is, in fact, trying to get the Trump can't win message into people's heads. 

It's always better to be up than down in the polls. But it just doesn't mean that much. Especially now, after a string of disasters that the media has spun in a maximally anti-Trump direction. And: before Biden has picked a Veep. And before he's had to campaign--currently, he's just an anti-Trump placeholder, really. And before the Durham indictments come raining down like a cleansing shower... 

[And maybe the anti-Trump angle will convince them: He's not trying to lose. He's just this bad at it. 

That's my view, incidentally.]

HMD: The Cost Of America's Cultural Revolution: Social Justice Crusaders Are Stripping The Future Of Everything That Gives Human Life Meaning

At City Journal.

   Social-justice ideology is turning higher education into an engine of progressive political advocacy, according to a new report by the National Association of Scholars. Left-wing activists, masquerading as professors, are infiltrating traditional academic departments or creating new ones—departments such as “Solidarity and Social Justice”—to advance their cause. They are entering the highest rung of college administration, from which perch they require students to take social-justice courses, such as “Native Sexualities and Queer Discourse” or “Hip-hop Workshop,” and attend social-justice events—such as a Reparations, Repatriation, and Redress Symposium or a Power and Privilege Symposium—in order to graduate.
   But social-justice education is merely a symptom of an even deeper perversion of academic values: the cult of race and gender victimology, otherwise known as “diversity.” The diversity cult is destroying the very foundations of our civilization. It is worth first exploring, however, why social-justice education is an oxymoron.
   Why shouldn’t an academic aspire to correcting perceived social ills? The nineteenth-century American land-grant universities and the European research universities were founded, after all, on the premise that knowledge helps society progress. But social justice is a different beast entirely. When a university pursues social justice, it puts aside its traditional claim to authority: the disinterested search for knowledge. We accord universities enormous privileges. Their denizens are sheltered from the hurly-burly of the marketplace on the assumption that they will pursue truth wherever it will take them, unaffected by political or economic pressures. The definition of social justice, however, is deeply political, entailing a large number of contestable claims about the causes of socioeconomic inequality. Social-justice proponents believe that those claims are settled, and woe to anyone who challenges them on a college campus. There are, however, alternative explanations—besides oppression and illegitimate power—for ongoing inequalities, taboo though they may be in academia.
   A social-justice agenda, therefore, is a political commitment, and politics is not disinterested. Indeed, it is often tribal. Such tribalism caricatures political opponents and whitewashes political leaders, ignoring facts along the way, as shown both by the frenzied hostility to Donald Trump on the left and by his elevation to status of wise statesman and paragon of truth-telling by his most enthusiastic supporters, including in the conservative intelligentsia.
   In his 1918 lecture, “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber criticized the conflation of intellectual work with political action: “Whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases.” The primary task of a teacher, Weber said, is to help his students recognize what Weber called “inconvenient” facts—inconvenient, that is, to the students’ party opinions. And for every party opinion, Weber observed, some facts are extremely inconvenient. Our political understanding of the world is partial; we will emphasize certain aspects of reality that buttress our values and deemphasize other aspects that contradict those values. According to Weber, when an academic pronounces on how one should act, he becomes a prophet or demagogue, neither of whom belong on the academic platform.
   Weber adduced another reason for abjuring politics in the classroom. Amusingly—an adverb that does not usually modify the great sociologist—it has been rendered completely irrelevant by twentieth-century education trends. A professor should not inflict his politics on his students, Weber said, because those students may not challenge his authority: “It is somewhat too convenient to demonstrate one’s courage in taking a stand where the audience and possible opponents are condemned to silence.” To which one can only respond: if only! Leave aside such student abuse of the adults in charge as the scourging of Nicholas Christakis at Yale, of Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College, and of Allison Stanger at Middlebury College, among others. The goal of the ordinary classroom today is to get ignorant students babbling about whatever idle thoughts pass through their heads without showing any intellectual deference to their professor. The number of professors who deserve such deference, however, is by now depressingly low, thanks to the triumph of social-justice ideology.

Arendt: The Ideal Subject Of Totalitarian Rule Is He For Whom The Distinction Between True And False No Longer Exists

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Progressitarianism In Yet Another Nutshell: In Praise Of Virtue-Signalling

Jeez these people.

Matthew Spalding: Don't Underestimate The Seriousness Of The Flynn Case

Russiagategate is much, much more serious than Russiagate.

And yet the latter was the object of a fetishistic obsession in the MSM for two years...

...but they've frantically suppressed any discussion of the former. 

World Socialist Web Site: The 1619 Project And The Falsification Of History

The 1619 Project and the falsification of history: An analysis of the New York Times’ reply to five historians

I'm not finished reading it yet, but I post it because it's really good. One of the best refutations of the 1619 nonsense I've seen. 

The PC / Identity-politics left are such an important and destructive factor in contemporary politics that blots out the rest of the lefter-than-liberal left. So I tend to forget that the economic / socialist left still exists. Well, there's Bernie... But he's capitulated. 

   Anyway, North and London just slap the shit out of that idiotic "project." Just one small bit:

   The Times justifies its racial approach by claiming that slavery and the experience of African Americans are subjects long neglected by historians. In fact, the slave system—its origins, changing economic role in pre- and post-revolutionary North America, and its social, political and cultural significance over a period spanning several centuries—has been the subject of voluminous research. The essays that introduce the 1619 Project evince no familiarity with the massive body of work produced by generations of historians. The 1619 Project essays are not footnoted, nor are the readers provided with a bibliography.
   Ignoring the historiography of the Revolution and Civil War, the 1619 Project presents issues that have been subject to decades of intense and rigorous scholarly debate as settled. There is a substantial body of literature on the points the project addresses: in particular, the interaction between the revolution and slavery, the influence of slaveowners on the drafting of the Constitution, and, in the Civil War era, Lincoln’s changing attitudes on race and abolition.
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the US
   Had the Times’ editors approached the 1619 Project as serious journalists, they would have had a particular obligation, at the very least, to take notice of and reference the disputes of the recent past—disputes that were open and ongoing even as Hannah-Jones and her co-authors were preparing their essays for publication. Many of these disputes were covered in the Times before the newspaper committed itself in recent years to racial politics.

Kung Flu Surge In FL, AZ, TX Not The Same As In NY

It's frustrating to read about stupid kids running right out and packing into bars as soon as they can. And a bit alarming to hear that TX may be in danger of overwhelming hospital capacity. But, overall, things seem to be between the ditches. 

Since it seems that we can't bet on a vaccine by Fall, building toward herd immunity among the less-vulnerable seems like the thing to do...though decent analyses don't really trickle down to my level.

This is interesting: one hypothesis is that the bat flu is surging in TX because the weather is so hot that people are staying inside. But that's apparently merely a hypothesis.

Biden Would Mandate Wearing Masks

Because "the one thing we do know, these masks make a gigantic difference." 

As I understand it, we don't know that at all.

I'm willing to wear them just in case--though I haven't been...

Or, rather: I would be willing if they hadn't become politicized, and this weren't so obviously just another dishonest ploy by the control-left to force their preferences on the rest of us. See: the idiotic insistence that everyone must share their aversion to "Kung flu." 

They make this stuff up as they go along, consistently mistaking their preferences and interpretive hunches for proven facts. And they looove telling people what to do...and they do not like to be disobeyed...

I'm sure Biden's base will cheer his announcement. There's nothing they like more than another excuse to for controlling the behavior of their political opponents.

The NYT Tries Out Another Alt-History Of Slavery, This Time By Jamelle Bouie

Eh...that guy isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. 

According to his fictional history, the slaves freed themselves, and Lincoln and the Union Army were kind of a sideshow.

Contemporary progressivism is a massive web of lies and fantastical fictions maintained by the subordination of evidence to dogma, effected mainly by silencing politically incorrect opinion.

The Cult Of White Wokeness

Unfortunately, the pod people get to vote.

Did The BLM Riots Contribute To A Bat Flu Spike?

Maybe.

But you know as well as I do that the progressive-expert complex will deny it no matter what.

Wow, This WaPo "Fact" Check Really Showed Trump

You really just can't make this stuff up.

House Passes DC Statehood

Yeah, wouldn't that be great.

Governor Coonman Tries To Turn The OD Into A Society Of Snitches

via Insty.

He especially targets churches and--unsurprisingly--gun ranges.

The Democratic Party Has Declared War On America And Its Institutions

Correct.

You have to really, really not be paying attention to not get that.

Another Instance Of The "Antifa Doesn't Exist" Ploy; "Who You Gonna Believe, Me Or Yo' Lyin' Eyes?

The left loves to REEEEE about gaslighting...but they're the ones who generally employ that strategy.

The riots are protests! And "largely" peaceful! Ignore that burning building! And despite the plain evidence of your eyes, they're led by white supremacists! Out of state ones! And there's no Antifa! And...uh...actually no riots even!

None of what you are seeing is real...

Stand Your Ground, And Yeet Not Unless Yoten Upon

Small grammatical error re: the past-tense of 'yeet'...but it's the sentiment that counts.

Some Reminders From Your Progressitarian Friends

Hey, kids, don't forget!:

• There is no such thing as political correctness.
• There is no such thing as Antifa.
• There is TOTALLY such a thing as the alt-right.
• None of Sarah Jeong's hateful tweets (e.g.: "Oh man. It’s sick how much joy I get from being cruel to old white men," "#CancelWhitePeople") were in any way racist.
• "Wuhan virus" and "Kung flu," however, are SUPER racist.
• "Black lives matter": something you HAVE to say
• "All lives matter": something you CAN'T say
• The totally peaceful social justice riots for peace and justice--and the associated looting and murder--were "largely" peaceful--and that's more than good enough.
• The police, however--though much-more-"largely" non-racist than the TPSJRPJ are "largely" peaceful--are, like, SUPER racist.
• Tearing down statues, murder, arson and looting are free speech and totally NOT violence and are "how America gets better" if the left does them.
• Calmly expressing non-left-approved opinions, in accordance with the First Amendment, is violence.

We hope you find these reminders helpful, bigot!

Charles Hurt: "The Democrats' Bonfire Of Inanities"

Somewhat intemperate, but exactly right.

In my opinion, FWIW.

Justin Dean Lee: Review Of Lilla, The Once And Future Liberal

I found this pretty interesting.

Mark Lilla: "The End Of Identity Liberalism"

This [small PDF to avoid NYT paywall] is, IMO, extremely reasonable and important. Maybe I read it when it was big...don't remember.

It seems a bit too mild and conciliatory to me...which means it's probably about right.

Of course I don't think identity politics is best characterized as a version of liberalism--but obviously it can be. And, as I've said, my terminological preference has more than a whiff of no-true-Scotsmanning about it. 

It's worth reflecting on the unsurprising fact that Lilla was vilified for this piece. As they say, if you're taking flak, you're over the target...

1619 Alt-History Project's Founder's Antiwhite Racist Screeds

Looks like they're all from the past. 

Pretty standard stuff, actually, on the contemporary progressive left--so not some big surprise.

The idea that whites are inherently evil is extremely influential on the cutting edge of the left--see e.g. the Sarah Jeong incident--white people are "groveling goblins." And spinning out hilariously implausible defenses of those on the cutting edge is the business of progressive "moderates" (who are actually only slightly less radical). 

You may think this is all just dandy--but you should at least be honest with yourself about what's going on. Because, again: the left always moves left. It's moving toward a more and more enthusiastically open and consequential version of the "groveling goblins" view. Because the logic of the left is: always leftward. The cutting edge cuts a path forward, into more and more openly antiwhite, antiAmerican, anti-Western, antiliberal, antirational territory...and the trailing edge of the cutting edge tells us why it's racist and disgusting and stupid and retrograde to think that the cutting edge is racist, illiberal, anti-American, etc.

Be honest. You're not still falling for this ludicrous bullshit, this catastrophic bullshit...are you?

Sidebar: 

Note that I don't fly into hysterics like they do and demand that NHJ's life be destroyed. I just want people to know what she thinks--or thought--and be honest about it. I'm tired of the voxish trailing edge of radical stupid obscuring the lunacy of the leading edge and pretending that it's not radical and racist. I want the truth about where progressivism is taking us to be on the table, in the open.

CA Dems Bringing Racial Preferences Back...Though They've Never Really Gone Anywhere

"Diversity" babble has always been a way for universities et al. to tell democracy to go f*ck itself. In CA in particular, when prop 209 passed, universities basically said "Oh yeah...well we don't have racial preferences. This is diversity. LALALALALA we can't hear any objections to this transparent, bullshit ploy..."

   I'm actually not even sure what repealing prop 209 will do that the diversity delusion (to use Mac Donald's phrase) hasn't already accomplished.

   I'm actually torn about affirmative action and some kind of racial preferences. It's a tough question that I don't see clearly. I do think that the state has an interest in taking the roughest edges off of racial differences in outcomes. 

   One thing I have no doubt of: "diversity" has corrupted the mind and soul of universities. They're like cults, with allegedly intelligent and independent-minded professors (lol...what  a myth...) speaking of "diversity" in hushed, reverential tones, doublethinking themselves into the pretense that the racial preferences that infect everything, even the content of the courses, aren't racial at all...  It's creepy as hell to see a bunch of professors sit around, passionately and almost religiously talking about how night is day. And they have nothing but contempt for the evil, racist conservatives who refuse to acknowledge the plain fact that night is day...

   Honestly, I absolutely prefer quotas to this cultish self-brainwashing of the academy. Quotas are honest. The "diversity" delusion rots the university from within.

If The Dems Take The Senate, The Fillibuster Is Gone...And Then There's No Stopping Them

link

Hope you're ready for the progressive utopia, bigot!

Tyler O'Neil: As For Trump v. BLM, It's No Contest

Blogger formatting is still screwed up. Sorry.

Also: a quick-and-dirty post. Sorry.

link:

  Article III of the U.S. Constitution defines “treason” as “levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Advocating the wholesale arson of the American system, especially at a time when looting, vandalism, and arson have ravaged American cities, is arguably incitement toward a kind of civil war.
   Trump often resorts to hyperbole in condemning his opponents, and it may be hyperbolic to interpret Newsome’s comments as “treason,” but even if this threat of violence falls short of treason, it is still a serious matter.
   “You… have said that violence is sometimes necessary in these situations,” MacCallum said in the interview with Newsome. “What exactly is it that you hope to achieve through violence?”
   “Wow, it’s interesting that you would pose that question like that, because this country is built upon violence. What was the American Revolution, what’s our diplomacy across the globe?” Newsome asked. 
   “We go in and we blow up countries and we replace their leaders with leaders who we like. So for any American to accuse us of being violent is extremely hypocritical,” the Black Lives Matter leader insisted.  [note: textbook tu quoque]
   Naturally, there is a tremendous difference between the violence in the American Revolution — when citizens revolted against taxation without representation, a key component of English liberty — and the violence in the George Floyd riots, which involves citizens who have representation and the right to vote looting innocent businesses, burning down buildings, and forcibly occupying police stations.
   “I said, if this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking … figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation,” Newsome said.
   Given recent events, Newsome’s rhetoric may constitute incitement to violence.

Not a lawyer...but I'm more than a little skeptical about this argument in support of the accusation of treason. And I don't know whether this incitement to violence is direct enough to be illegal.

   I want to highlight the following, but trying to format it correctly as a quote keeps narrowing all the margins, and can't be undone. Hence the screwy formatting. Sorry:

“I said, if this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking … figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation,” Newsome said.

This coy bullshit is doubly angrifying. It's clearly a threat, but he doesn't have the guts to come right out and threaten--I dunno...am I threatening you? That's for you to decide...maybe I am...maybe I'm not...I'm not sayin'... Asshole. 

   

   The fact that we have a radical political faction employing violence and threatening to employ more of it, in order to frighten people into acquiescing to (radical, psycho) political change should result in banner headlines across the MSM...but...nada.

Nooners: The Week It Went South For Trump

Well, Nooners is Nooners...I've been surprised she's made as much sense as she has for the last year or so.

I didn't even finish this, as it kind of spins out of control. I stopped with "he doesn't even understand his base," which seems ridiculous to me.

But this bit probably captures some that's right, and what many are thinking:

   Something shifted this month. Donald Trump’s hold on history loosened, and may be breaking. In some new way his limitations are being seen and acknowledged, and at a moment when people are worried about the continuance of their country and their own ability to continue within it. He hasn’t been equal to the multiple crises. Good news or bad, he rarely makes any situation better. And everyone kind of knows.
[bad polls roundup] 
   The latest White House memoir paints the president as ignorant, selfish and unworthy of high office. Two GOP House primary candidates the president supported lost their primaries resoundingly. Internet betting sites that long saw Mr. Trump as the front-runner now favor Mr. Biden. The president’s vaunted Tulsa, Okla., rally was a dud with low turnout. Senior officials continue to depart the administration—another economic adviser this week, the director of legislative affairs and the head of the domestic policy council before him. Why are they fleeing the ship in a crisis, in an election year?
   Judgments on the president’s pandemic leadership have settled in. It was inadequate and did harm. He experienced Covid-19 not as a once-in-a-lifetime medical threat but merely a threat to his re-election argument, a gangbusters economy. He denied the scope and scale of the crisis, sent economic adviser Larry Kudlow out to say we have it “contained” and don’t forget to buy the dip. Mr. Trump essentially admitted he didn’t want more testing because it would result in more positives.
   And the virus rages on, having hit blue states first and now tearing through red states in the South and West—Arizona, Florida, the Carolinas, Texas.

A lot of that's wrong--but, again, it could be the storyline that's firming up. Nooners is still treating th' COVID as if it were Captain Trips, she's ignoring the fact that the Tulsa rally was sabotaged...and, in fact, that Trump's entire presidency has been sabotaged...but, of course, now it seems that Russiagate never happened...and Russiagategate is a "conspiracy theory" that the progressive MSM is assiduously discrediting and covering up... He who controls the extremely-recent past controls the present...

   And, of course, that the blue team has completely freakin' lost its mind, and is now the anti-Bill-of-Rights faction. Nooners really ought to mention that.

   But none of that makes Trump any less loony, nor any less fit for office. He doesn't even seem to be trying to pretend that he's making an effort to knock the rough edges off his weird, gratuitously abrasive personality. 

Read more »

Another Accusation Of Treason From The Orange Man

Jesus this guy.

Insta-wise, It's The Annals Of Leftist Autophagy: This Poor Woman Knows Her Life Is About To Be Ruined--That's How The Left Operates

I can semi-guarantee you she didn't drop an N-bomb on him--he only mentions it once. If it were true, that would be the focus of his complaint.

Needless to say, it's good that the lefties are at each others' throats...but it's still gross.

Voices of Americans, Formerly Slaves

Interviews--and the voices of--actual American slaves.

Not all that easy to listen to.

Everybody Knows That The Only Legitimate Alternative To "The Star-Spangled Banner" Is "Louie, Louie"

Do you want the boog?

Because this shit is how you get the boog.

Lefties REEEEEE When Subjected To Their Own Stupid Rules, Or: REPUBLICANS POUNCE!!!!

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh your ass off at this.

Also: note that it's only "weaponized" when it's turned back on the totalitarian asshats who use the tactic regularly. 

Note to kids in the audience: Newsweek used to be a reputable news magazine. True fact!

Oregon County Imposes Mask Requirement On Whites, But Not Non-Whites

This: totally NOT RACIST...

...Whereas using the term 'Kung Flu'...totally RACIST.

Any questions?

TWO VA HOSPITALS MADE "KUNG FLU FIGHTING" VIDEOS...DURING OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!!!!!!!111

OBVS OBAMA IS RAZIZT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111

This is the stupidest timeline.

Business Insider Escalates 'Kung Flu' To Racial Slur Status!!!1111

Or I should, I suppose, say "the KF-word"...

More Kung Flu Fighting

Still no argument whatsoever in support of the claim that THATZ RAZIZT!!!!!!11111

Some Of America's Schools Are Named After Horrible People

Nathan Bedford Forrest?

Seriously?

He's said to have seen the light toward the end of his life, but that's all I know about it. 

It'd have to have been some conversion to put his name in the running for a school.

I'm ok with some Confederate monuments and names on buildings here and there...but NBF is over the line by quite a long shot.

Silent Sam, for example, was fine. Sam's a monument to ordinary students who went to fight for their state. Of course the mob tore him down a year or so ago because Carolina's administration is a bunch of cowardly shitheads who thought that was the easy way out.

Red Pills Falling Like Rain?

Let's hope so.

If they aren't, we're too stupid to survive.

Recent Failures Of Science and Experts And Mathemtatical Models Have Done Nothing To Diminish Humanists' Faith That They Are Experts On Just About Everything

A lot of us are complaining about failures of science and models and experts/expertise with respect to the Wuhan virus. I haven't been mad that science and scientists got things so wrong...if they even did... I'm more angry about the way they and the press misrepresented their degree of uncertainty, emphasized worst cases ergo fanning the flames of hysteria, and misused their positions to make highly politicized, bullshit claims (most famously, about protests--endorsing leftist protests and condemning conservative ones).

   Anyway: look: these are largely actual scientists, and they were addressing an empirical question, and they still got things way, way wrong.*

   You'd think there might be a cautionary tale in there for people who are (a) not scientists, and (b) are addressing a much messier set of questions, and (c) are making pronouncements outside their areas of expertise...wouldn'tcha? 

But noooo…. Almost all the humanists at my institution signed open letters about the recent racial turbulence...almost all of them revealing utter ignorance of the easily-available evidence, and compete obliviousness to the unlikely nature of the progressive view of the matter. It was basically progressive dogma right down the line--no effort to maintain institutional neutrality, nor to keep their claims modest, nor to even stick to the subject at hand. They just let loose with both left barrels, proclaiming extreme versions of the leftist view to be, basically, beyond any doubt.

Some People Can't Call Up Mental Images

I've actually been suggesting something like this for a long time. I actually think that quite a few disagreements in the philosophy of mind likely arise from the fact that people have different mental capacities.

"Trump's Unhinged 'Treason' Accusation Against Obama"

Jesus Christ that guy is a ****ing lunatic.

He's just not fit to be anywhere near the Oval Office.

It's infuriating in general that people throw around the term 'treason' without having any idea what it means--or what the penalty is. But how low do we have to fall for the President to use it in this way? And against his predecessor??? WTF is wrong with this guy? What is his major malfunction? Sometimes he just seems really kinda nuts. Or really mean and ignorant. Or incapable of exercising any self-control when it comes to speaking of his opponents.

   This is a hell of a lot worse than "Kung flu." 

   And, incidentally, though I hate such arguments: what Obama may (or may not) have done is mind-bogglingly awful. Criminal, too, for all I know. Basically the only way to make it seem non-awful is make a screwy, hyperbolic, psycho accusation. Bad as it may have been, it wasn't treason. 

   Man, I hate everything right now.

New Ebola Cases Found In Congo

Shit.

Assholish Ad From The Trump Side

This is just gross.

I have my concerns about the issue.

But leaping on it so viciously and enthusiastically is disgusting.

Rahm Emanuel: "The Democrats' New Loyalists? Suburban Women."

Since this is Rahm Emanuel, and since it's a political hack writing this kind of article (or, rather: some sub-hack writing it and the super-hack affixing his name to it), and since it's in Blue Pravda, I conclude that this is more "aspirational" than factual. That is: it's not so much a report on a fact--that suburban women are firmly Democrat--but an attempt  to make something a fact: an attempt to convince suburban women to be Democrat(ic). More precisely: an attempt to convince them that they already are...in order to convince them to be.

   Trump is virtually engineered to turn off suburban women--or so I'm led to believe by what I'm led to believe about that group. But I'm also led to believe that they value security. So I'm led to expect that it's going to be a battle between Trump's crass, repellant asshattery and the threat to security posed by the blue team's totally peaceful social justice riots for peace and justice...and the argument that the rioting, looting, arson, violence and murder associated with them show that we need fewer cops.

   Unfortunately, college-educated suburban women have been through four years of elite reeducation, and, so, are particularly susceptible to the white guilt strategy, the quasi-religious kneel-o-ramas, and so forth. Or, again, so I'm led to believe. And that religion is, as we know, a super-powerful force.

BLM Is "You're A Racist" Writ Large

As everyone knows (and as pointed out forcefully, but almost in passing, here):

The PC / Identity-politics is a movement built on a strategy of shutting down debate rather than winning it.

And at the heart of that strategy is a more specific strategy:

Their main sub-strategy is character assassination.

And they have a specific, characteristic tactic:

Their most characteristic tactic is: accusing their opponents of prejudice: typically racism (but, less frequently, some rough racism equivalent--misogyny, homophobia, etc.)

   They have another tactic, though, that runs a close second:

Their second-favorite tactic is to claim that voicing opposing views puts them in physical danger.

 But I only just realized:

BLM is the accusation of racism writ large.

   BLM is basically an accusation of racism plus an assertion that black Americans are in physical danger. It is, in large part, a massive push to shut down debate via a mass act of character-assassination: it's an accusation that all American whites are racist. 

   This is already a component of contemporary progressivism--it manifests itself in the bullshit bit of pseudo-conceptual analysis according to which "whiteness" has nothing to do with skin-color. It is, rather, asserted to be a social position: that of oppressor. But that's really stupid and only marginally relevant here.

   Now, basically every part of all of these strategies and tactics are the utterest bullshit...but I just aim to lay them out--quickly--here, not to criticize them.

   BLM is rampaging across the public mind because we have allowed progressives to create a set of conventions such that accusations of racism are trump cards in every discussion. The progressive left doesn't merely overplay the race card--rather, playing the race card is almost all it does. It's interrupted its scheduled programming a couple of times, e.g. to try to construct similar kinds of trumps: e.g. the transgender card. But mostly it simply pushes forward throwing down race cards in every direction. What used to be limited to people like Al Sharpton is now the basis of an entire political movement--a movement that's already taken over all our important institutions in the U.S., and that's likely to win the White House in November.

   The ideal progressive discussion basically goes like this:

Progressives: We want policy P

Non-progressives: We oppose that.

Progressives: That's racist.

NPs acquiesce to P

Progressives: Now we want policy Q.

Non-progressives: We oppose that.

Progressives: That's racist.

Non-progressives acquiesce to Q

etc.

Read more »

Is Trump A Racist?

The correct answer.

Involuntary "Euthanasia" In The Netherlands

So much of what seemed so obvious to me in my youth is taking more-or-less exactly the sinister turn that conservatives warned me about...

Of course I laughed at them for being so stupid, because I knew everything.

The Strategic Situation Left And Right

The left can do whatever it wants.

It can be and is always on the attack.

Because it never pays any price for defeat.

It always either wins territory, or pays no price. 

No matter how insanely wrong it is, it's acts are always represented as efforts to promote the good...to advance the cause of "justice." 

Progressives never even consider the possibility that the left might be fundamentally mistaken about anything. They never doubt the rightness of their ends. Leftists' only criticisms of their movements take the well-known form: I agree with your goals, but I worry that your means are not optimal... 

Perhaps some methods are too radical...but only because they put people off or otherwise fail. There are no other ways for them to be wrong, and no way for the ends to be wrong.

If any of this is ever in danger of falling into doubt, the media is there to make sure it doesn't.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are always on the defensive.

They never win.

There is no such thing as winning for them.

All they can do in any given battle is: not lose today.

They are always assumed to be--and always represented as--backward and bigoted and greedy. Always moved only by ignorance and habit and self-love.

There's an assumption deep within the minds of almost everyone I know--including myself until about two years ago: the left is fundamentally good and right, the right is fundamentally bad and wrong.

I'm the kind of person who one would think would have rooted that assumption out years or decades ago--but I found it still in there.

Not to blow my own horn, but: what hope do other people have of rooting it out?

At any rate:

Given the strategic situation, you can see:

It's only a matter of time...

When Righties Wanted ID Taught As A Small, Alternative Unit, Academia Reacted With Fury; The Left Now Controls Much Of What Can Be Taught, What Can Be Said, Who Can Be Fired

I fought in the creationism wars in a somewhat public way, on the side of evolution. I'll admit, I ridiculed creationism and ID mercilessly. I was young and stupid. If I had it to do again, I'd represent ID as a rather distant possibility with very serious problems...but I'd note that attenuated versions of the view might have something to offer.

   But my point is: creationists had what was by contemporary standards, a rather modest request: teach our view, too, as an alternative to the orthodoxy. Now, that's still quite an "ask" as all the kids are annoyingly saying these days...but compare it to the power of the left:

In the humanities and social sciences, the left can more-or-less dictate what's taught. It doesn't merely pressure people to teach a small unit in which a preferred view is taught as an alternative to the orthodoxy--it has the power to determine (largely at least) what the orthodoxy is, and whether it's permissible to teach any alternatives at all. 

   I guarantee you that the gospel of BLM and progressive "antiracism," and gender and transgender ideology are being taught in thousands of classrooms across the nation. But teach about a sane alternative, even in an objective, neutral way, and you're in for a world of hurt, bigot...

Do New FBI Notes Confirm That Obama Directed Anti-Flynn Operation?

Looks that way.

Damn.

Easy Prediction: Activation Of The Crazy Right

Incidentally, a long-standing prediction of mine that's so easy that it doesn't even count: the left will keep getting crazier, and at some point one of the right's signature lone mass-murdering gunmen will snap...which will then empower the crazy left even further.

Rinse and repeat.

Conservatives: Right Yet Again: Appeals Court Orders Judge To Dismiss Case Against Michael Flynn

Sorry for the formatting disaster...Blogger seems to have gone insane today:

Conservatives are basically turning out to be right almost every time there's some testable, major politics-relevant or culture-war-relevant claim the sides disagree on. 

(Though I guess you could count the two recent SCOTUS decisions as counter-evidence here.)

Why?

Because they're not caught in a web of crazy theories of their own making--their worldview is not distorted to the point of absurdity.

It's apparently a scathing decision. A quote culled by an Instapundit commenter:

"[T]he court has appointed one private citizen to argue that another citizen should be deprived of his liberty regardless of whether the Executive Branch is willing to pursue the charges."

The ACLU Clearly States The Open Season Myth

It's good that this gets stated clearly sometimes. 

It's easier to refute it that way.

SCHLAPP: Joe Biden Is Either Incapable, Or Unwilling, To Stand Up To The Radical Leftist Mob

Correct.

Some thoughts:

[1] This is why I think a Biden presidency will undoubtedly be bad, and is likely to be a catastrophe. A strong centrist Dem who would stand up to the unhinged leftist fringe that's currently at the helm of progressivism would be just about ideal right now, I think. That's why I supported Hillary in '16--rightly or wrongly. It's much, much more important now than it was then. But that is not what Biden is. He's already capitulating to the mob as fast as he is still capable of doing so. And he's going to choose a veep that's much more leftist than he is. And that person is likely to end up as president. I've long had a soft spot for Biden. But there's just not enough of him left to do what needs to be done.

[2] The fact that Biden doesn't/can't stand up to the Khmer Blues is no surprise whatsoever. Virtually nobody--other than Trump--is standing up to them. They're unhinged, and they're dedicated to destroying anyone who does stand up to them. Biden is not, in this respect, a special case.

Charles Lipson: Defund The Thought-Police

Actually, defunding the humanities and qualitative social sciences is an idea worth considering. 

Their output is not generally very good, it's of little practical benefit, and they've basically adopted the goal of brainwashing students (and the wider public) to accept tyrannical, anti-rational, quasi-religious dogmas. There are books and websites and videos that can teach anyone who's genuinely interested just about anything they want about such topics. There's a decent chance that funding such disciplines is a losing proposition. 

"Kung Flu" Is In No Way Racist

Utterly absurd.

   How on Earth is 'kung flu' supposed to be racist? It's a joke about the origin of the virus in China. 'Kung fu' is, indeed, a Chinese term and kung fu is a Chinese martial art. See, the joke is that you take 'kung fu' and add an 'L', and get a jokey way of saying that the virus came from China--like knug fu! Which, apparently, it did. It's in no way even insulting, much less racist. Is Wu-Tang Clan racist? It is not. Despite the fact that it's supposed to sound Chinesey. It's not even insulting, much less racist. 

   One of the many ways in which progressivism is nuts is that it spews unjustified and irresponsible accusations of racism at every person and view it disagrees with. 'Kung flu' might be annoying to some, or even angrifying, I suppose. Probably people are now so cowed that they're afraid to say anything jokey that sounds like it has even the loosest connection to anything that could possibly be construed as racial. Anything that has anything whatsoever to do with anything with a link to race and sounds even the slightest bit flippant is likely to attract such stupid accusations. But, then, of course everything is....

   Was it racist to refer to derogatorily Ronald Reagan (or anybody else) as a "cowboy"? It was not. Clinton came from the South...was it racist or any such thing to call him "Bubba"? Of course not. 

   McEnany is right to note that the media and other progressives have simply declared every name for the virus that they don't like to be racist--as they do in every other case. It's nothing but an arbitrary, completely fabricated, entirely groundless assertion pulled out of thin air. It's equal parts (a) the left's insane tick of spewing accusations of racism every which way and (b) yet another anti-Trump ploy. Even calling it "the China virus"--which is equivalent to simply asserting that it's from China--was declared TEH RAZIZT!!!!

   This is a minor bit of insanity in the cosmic scheme of things. But, in a way, that's the problem Insanities big and small permeate the contemporary left. They aim not only to re-engineer society at the largest scale, they want to reach down into every human interaction, no matter how trivial, in order to force us to accord with their desires, no matter how loony and poorly-supported. Since their main tool is the accusation of racism (and other alleged -isms and -phobias), and they've managed to shift the burden of proof, anything that you might say that has anything to do with any of their myriad obsessions, and for which you can't immediately produce an ironclad defense, is subject to their whimsical, tyrannical control.

   In a way, I almost find these small madnesses and acts of tyranny to be more telling.

The Pandemic Was Good Because, Like, F*ck People

Behold: some musings based in the dominant ideology of our time.

Dark Days

As the madness of the antiliberal, quasi-religious, proto-totalitarian left sweeps across the nation, its doddering frontman surges to an alarming lead:

It's still early, but these numbers are, well, bad. After a wave of race riots, mob violence, and a group of anarcho-communist Blackshirts toppling statues and setting up a zone of control in the middle of a major U.S. city, you'd think that even someone as off-putting as Trump could build a lead... But guess what?

   I suppose the good news is: Trump sucks too... So his losing to the proto-totalitarian faction is...possibly less bad, comparatively speaking, than it has any right to be. Maybe? Maybe you can call that comforting.

   We just had some hysteria at my institution over a few bits of the place with naughty, unPC monikers. Every department issued its own anguished, fantastical, falsehood-laden profession of faith in the BLM gospel of race. Apparently in a university filled with Ph.D.s, nobody bothered to take thirty seconds to check the numbers at the BJS... I've yet to find a single person who had any idea what those numbers actually look like. 

   Eventually, people in my own department issued their own statement (sans the names of a handful of departmental Neanderthals such as yours truly), to at least some extent so that they wouldn't be seen as not being onboard with "antiracism." Like all the others, it was about how the U.S. is saturated in "systemic racism," and we're all guilty, and we've made no progress on race...it didn't quite say that the entire university had to be given over to "social justice" bullshit...but it didn't quite not say that, either. 

   Before the ink was dry, we got an email on a massive white guilt workshop to which all faculty are "invited"--for now these things are at least nominally voluntary. Right up front we are informed that documents will be available that can be handed over to ones department chair in order to certify participation so that this can count towards one's annual evaluation... 

   It's very difficult to watch the voluntary destruction-from-within of the only human institution allegedly given over entirely to the life of the mind and the pursuit of truth. But here we are. The social justice cult and the power of white guilt has--at least it now seems--turned out to be too strong. 

   Well, scratch that. It's impermissible to fall into despair. Resist the black pill! Despair virtually guarantees failure. A new dark age does threaten...but, on some ways of dividing things up, it's the dark ages that produced universities in the first place... Things have been worse. Just keep fighting. There's no alternative.

You're Probably Showering Too Much

Not, y'know, you you...but the generic you.

Bubba Wallace "Hate Crime": Fake Noose

I stole that joke from Fuzzy Slippers at Legal Insurrection. Wish I'd thoughtta that...

I didn't call this one, sadly.

SlateStarCodex, Approximately The Greatest Blog In Internet History, Self-Deletes Because The Shit NYT Threatens To Dox The Author

Honestly, could the New York Times get any shitter?

   It's a complete joke as it is, and now it's so desperate for clicks that it's going around shittifying the internet in order to run a story on a blog.

   Not that the NYT is going to have any interest in me, but there are people who would love nothing more than to link me to this one... If SlateStarCodex can go, this rant platform can, too.

   Fuck the left and fuck its shit media.

The Facts On Race, Crime, And Policing In America

Posting this again.

VDH: The Looming 1984 Election

link:

  The new progressive party is Jacobin. It sees politics in all-inclusive French revolutionary terms—encompassing every aspect of American life from entertainment, sports, academia, religion, and family matters to politics, foreign policy, and individual rights.
   In his own way, Trump also fights back in 360-degree fashion, from the existential to the trivial, railing against Colin Kaepernick, tit for tatting Hollywood stars, weighing in on radical abortion, open borders, power outages, the homeless and subway jumping. The result is not just that there looms a choice between two different agendas, but two quite different American lifestyles and experiences—and histories.
   Like it or not, 2020 is going to be a plebiscite on an American version of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. One side advocates a complete transformation not just of the American present but of the past as well. The Left is quite eager to change our very vocabulary and monitor our private behavior to ensure we are not just guilty of incorrect behavior but thought as well.
   The other side believes America is far better than the alternative, that it never had to be perfect to be good, and that, all and all, its flawed past is a story of a moral nation’s constant struggle for moral improvement.
   One side will say, “Just give us more power and we will create heaven on earth.” The other says “Why would anyone wish to take their road to an Orwellian nightmare?” The 2020 election is that simple.

It really is just about that simple. 

CNN "Fact Check" Of Trump Retweeted Meme

These guys are immensely stupid.

Helen Joyce: She Who Must Not Be Named

A review of some of the crackpot definitions of 'woman' accepted now, including by allegedly scientific organizations. Including e.g. this straightforwardly circular one by the Australian Academy of Sciences:

Anyone who identifies as a woman

We live in stupid times.

Anthony Hennen: Activist Academics Threaten The Integrity Of Higher Ed

Truer words were never written...but it's a tough problem because the left exploits academia's liberal (intellectually liberal) principles against it. Academia says: let a hundred flowers bloom. Leftists come in and say: great! Let's use it as a platform for indoctrination and activism! Academia can say: Well, look, we didn't mean that...we mean that everyone should be free to explore scholarly positions... The left says: Well, our scholarly position is that activism and indoctrination are legitimate scholarly activities...and also that you are wrong about what kinds of things should happen in academia and also Racism! And you know what you are if you don't uncritically accept the Racism! argument whenever it is deployed... Liberals, being liberals (even intellectual ones), are powerless in the face of such arguments. 

   This is, IMO, no better than a religion coming along and saying: It's our scholarly position that Religious indoctrination and proselytizing are legitimate scholarly activities. Nor some dude in the B school arguing: It's my scholarly view that promoting my private business is a legitimate scholarly activity...

   The left aims, in effect, to destroy the institution of the university and replace it with an institution that subordinates the search for truth to the demands of so-called "social justice."

RCP Roundup

Chicago toddler Gunned Down: another soon-to-be-forgotten tragedy in city where violence gets ignored

Walter Shapiro: TEH DRUMPFFF IS TERRORIZING AMERIKKKA!!!!!1111

Once again we are reminded: RIP TNR:

For all his lapdog loyalty and religiously inspired right-wing beliefs, Mike Pence was the speaker who took the higher road at the campaign launch on Saturday night. Pence, in a warm-up speech that even Fox News didn’t carry, at least said to the almost totally white Oklahoma audience, “There is no excuse for what happened to George Floyd.” Pence promptly added, “But there is also no excuse for the rioting, looting, and destruction of property that followed.”

ZOMG CAN YOU BELIEVE HE ADDED "THERE IS ALSO NO EXCUSE FOR THE RIOTING"???

 
Roger Simon: Black Lives Don't Matter To Black Lives Matter

Trump's 2020 Path Gets Steeper

Steve Hilton: Why A Second Trump Term Is So Important

I basically agree with this--currently, anyway. Strange days indeed:

   We have to show that Trump's election was not a short-term aberration, but the start of a long-term change to right the wrongs of the establishment's 50 years of failure. Their ideology of open borders, globalism and endless war devastated working people and the American dream.
   We can't go back to the Democrats or the establishment GOP. We must show that this is a new, enduring conservative populism -- pro-business on tax and regulation, and pro-worker on trade and immigration, pro-America on defense and pro-family on paid leave and tax credits. Conservative judges and criminal justice reform -- law and order and justice.

Paul Sperry: No Evidence Needed For Collusion Probe, Just A Pretext Devised By This Man

Just appalling. 

The MSM is still suppressing the story.

Don't Forget--The Totally Peaceful Social Justice Riots For Peace and Justice Were Boog / White-Supremacist False Flags!!!!!11111

Whatever happened to that one?

Did they drop it?

For awhile they tried "Antifa did it"...which meant that they had to admit that Antifa exists...which conflicts with one of their newest gambits: Antifa doesn't exist! Sometimes supplemented by: Trump made them up! But, for awhile, they were trying it out anyway...because giving up Antifa was better than admitting that...well, of course black people were not responsible for the riots! Only a racist would believe that! 

   In fact...it was the opposite of black people! It was white supremacists!!!!11111 And "boogaloos"...which...isn't actually grammatical...but let's not try to force them to be grammatical, too...

   I think what actually happened is that they settled on a very different set of lies: (a) there really weren't that many riots! The protests were mostly peaceful! also (b) the riots were justified.

   These lies have many advantages over the previous lies they tried out...but I'm too tired to go into them right now...

Andy Ngo Reports From The Pantyfa No-Cop Zone

link

Kimball: Joe Biden And Frederich Nietzsche

I've often said that, were Nietzsche still around, he'd flay the progressive left.

But apparently he already did.

PC Halloween BS

A low point even by the current denigrated standards of the Washington ComPost.

Seatle Crazies On Cop Cam

These are basically the kinds of youthful, useful idiots who carried out the massacre of the kulaks. 

Individually, they are weak, like a single twig...but together...

They're ridiculous...but basically every group comes to power at some point or other... And you don't want to be there when things get bad enough for these loons to do so. We already know what happened the last time they did.

Twitts Sabotage Trump Rally

I was surprised to hear that the arena was under capacity, so then not so surprised to hear that some Twitter twitts had bought up tickets in an attempt to sabotage the thing. As political dirty tricks go, that one's pretty harmless, and initially I thought it was kinda funny. Wish I hadn't read some of the nauseating gloating by the saboteurs...because that kinda ruined it for me. 

   I was just all pissed off at Trump about something or other this morning that I can't even remember now...which is telling...when I read some of the stuff. The lefties always somehow manage to win by a nose when it comes to pissing me off...

   I was also surprised that there was no appreciable violence--remember, I predicted unequivocally that there would be. So I was wrong. Though, in my defense, I didn't realize that the National Guard was going to be there.

   I haven't watched the rally. That's how I manage to maintain my view that voting for Trump is permissible--I basically don't look at the guy's tweets nor listen to him. Since I know that I can't vote for the Dems this time around, I have to keep hope alive. And I do that by not listening to Trump.

David Thompson: "Thinking Like Children"

On target.

The left's "safety" tropes are just. so. nauseating.

Christopher F. Rufo:: Counsel Of The Woke: Public-Health Experts Have Subordinated Science To Progressive Politics

This basically couldn't be righter. Absolutely, positively worth reading. (Short, too! I don't read a lot of things that make me think Wow, I wish this were longer...)

   Rufo is on about some stuff relevant to stuff I've been raging about ever since grad school. One thing is: the catastrophically bad relativistic philosophy (or pseudo-philosophy) that is central to the worldview of the intellectual left. Another thing (well, this is a more recent realization): the frequency with which they appeal to this philosophy/pseudo-philosophy to justify their lower-order conclusions / beliefs / preferences. Say what you will about the right, they don't deny the objectivity of truth every time they start losing an argument. The religious right may lean too heavily on word-of-God arguments. Well...they do. No may about it. But at least that's fairly isolated to one sector of the right. Relativism, non-realism, nihilism, social constructivism, subjectivism, and the rest of that radioactive stew of bullshit on the intellectual left more-or-less infects the whole left-of-liberal shebang. Oh, don't forget Marxism and related brands of meataxe naturalistic efficient-causalism… 

   Anyway, Rufo:

   Bergstrom’s subsequent conversion to “woke science,” however, was swift and absolute. On May 27, before the death of George Floyd dominated the news, the professor insisted he would wear a mask while walking alone in a public park, even if there is “only a 1-in-100,000 chance [to] save a life.” Three days later, after the outbreak of protests in Minneapolis and other cities, he tweeted that he was “heartbroken by the endemic state violence against people of color in America” and was reading Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist. A few days later, Bergstrom conceded that “science is an inherently political activity” and endorsed the protests, making the dubious claim that millions of protesters rallying, chanting, and gathering in close quarters wouldn’t necessarily spread Covid-19—and even if they did, he “wholeheartedly support[ed] the protests nonetheless.”
   Here’s the problem: Bergstrom and other public-health experts persuaded Americans that their advice on the pandemic response was driven exclusively by science and underwritten by cold fact. They argued that politics should be subordinated to scientific knowledge—but when the political grounds shifted, they immediately reversed that formulation. Bergson’s case is especially damning. In less than a week, he made the moral leap from recommending behavioral modification for a “1-in-100,000 chance” of death to supporting protests that, according to his colleague Trevor Bedford, could cause up to 4,000 Covid-19 deaths.

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