Z0MG WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE!!!!!111111??????????2222222

I couldn't get very far in this. 

It makes no sense whatsoever.

Martin Gurri: "The Establishment Strikes Back--For Now"

On one read, I think this is right on target up to the final section ("Faced with such a potent agenda..."). As for that section...well, I'm not so optimistic. We're not facing an ordinary threat from the progressive, anti-liberal left, IMO. This is a Great Leap Forward in the Long March Through The Institutions... The identity politics has a natural grip on the young and otherwise over-emotional--and they've already had Lenin's "four years to teach the children..." And this left is adept at intimidation and brainwashing--and has hit on a fiendishly effective brainwashing strategy: introduce a flood of goofy terminology that presupposes your crazy theory, then insist that everyone else use that terminology because the older, more accurate terminology is "racist" (etc.). 

   I simply don't think that this wave of insane radicalism is going to subside even if sanity returns. We don't face a tide. We face a hostile force that has taken territory. Even if we manage to stop their advance, winning our land back will be much harder.

   But anyway--I really agree very much with the earlier parts of the essay.

Paul Joseph Watson: Letter To Slate Advice Columnist: Woman's Husband Refuses To Take Mask Off Even During Sex

Though the woman reports that she's "now" going to start going outside without a mask "per CDC guidelines"...  So...sounds like she's only marginally less nutty than her man:

"The Great Outdoors Was Made For White People"

LOOOOOOOOOOL @ The Nation. The thing about explanatory hypotheses is that they're cheap. That's to say: it's so easy to make up dipshit explanatory hypotheses that almost anybody can explain almost any x with almost any y you suggest to them. This is something anybody who thinks about Peirce's view of abduction knows. It's also something cognitive psychologists have studied. It's why we have to test abductions with inductions--because we can spew out abductions all day long. and the great majority of them are false. Of course the lefties, being basically nuts, think they've really hit on something because they can always make up some bullshit explanation in terms of racism. But, of course, they almost never test those hypotheses. Ergo: they're bullshit. Group differences are the rule, no the exception. It's really not surprising to find that some races like hiking more than some other races. Also: how about Asians? Jews? They didn't have any land stolen from them by evil whites. Do they go to national parks more or less than whites? I'd bet a lot of money: not at exactly the same rate. 

My God the progressive left is full of shit.

Do I Repeat Myself? Very Well Then I Repeat Myself, ...

(I am small, I contain like three ideas. Four tops.).

[With apologies to you-know-who.]

One of the most important facts about the contemporary progressive left is its dogmatism / stifling of disagreement and contrary evidence. 

That's why it has such a powerful tendency to employ indoctrination / brainwashing. It doesn't think that there IS another side of the argument--or, if there is, it's evil. 

Liberalism (in the broad sense that includes most conservatism; i.e. prope-liberalism) emphasizes reason, process, and intellectual autonomy. It uses consensus (including tradition) as touchstones that must be respected for formal / process-y reasons: status quo and consensus tend to get presumption--despite the fact that prope-liberalism is explicitly and enthusiastically committed to the proposition that both are often wrong. Prope-liberalism is committed--in principle, though it often errs in practice--to fully airing opposing arguments. Consensus is a subsidiary goal, in part because agreement among different people/perspectives is taken as one of our better practical signs of justification, ergo of truth. 

The progressive left says fuck all that. Its specific, material goals are its only aims: it seeks the adoption of certain actions, policies and laws--and, of course, beliefs and sentiments. That is: it rejects prop-liberalism's principle of the priority of the right over the good. 

So: giving only one side of the story, stifling disagreement, destroying the lives of opponents, and indoctrination/brainwashing are all fine according to the progressive left. In fact, they're obligatory.

This is the link between the illiberal left and dogmatism/PC. By undervaluing--and even criminalizing--disagreement, progressive leftists become more and more locked into PC orthodoxy. 

XKCD Blows It On Free Speech

facepalm

XKCD dude really blows it on this one. Probably should have, y'know, read something about the subject before shooting off his comic about it.

Transanity: Matt Walsh On HBO's "Transhood"

As many others have noted: Munchausen's by proxy:

 Never forget this. Never let the left forget this. Never let the world forget this. This is what happens when the left takes over the culture--in fact, this is what happens less than a decade after they begin to take power. Abject insanity is being institutionalized--and this even before the left as really taken complete control. Imagine what the country will look like if we stay on this trajectory for another ten years... 

It's baffling to me that people can't look at these clips and see exactly what Walsh is describing--basically Munchausen's by proxy. (I'm not saying it's technically that--I'm not a psychologist; I'm saying that it fits the popular conception to a 'T'.) There are at least a dozen other insane aspects of this madness--but ignore them for a second just to focus on this one. Look--these are HBO's flagship cases! There's no doubt that they chose these specifically because they fit the guiding mythology of progressivism. And even these cases wear their insanity on their sleeves. 

Progressivism is a philosophical and political disorder analogous to a mental disorder. It's philosophical and political insanity. 

If sanity ever returns, the left will try to weasel out of this. Since they apparently think 1984 is an instruction manual, they'll likely just deny that it ever happened. Do. Not. Let. Them. Forget.

Stanford Medicine Goes Full-On Mao

facepalm

It's a cult.

Election Shenanigans: From Super-Threat To Conspiracy Theory In Two Years

These crazy conspiracy theorists don't know none of this is possible because courts have found no widespread election irregularities. https://t.co/GxdaCcewFa

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 28, 2021

1/3 Of Voters Unwilling To Spend Even $1/Month To Fight Climate Change

In ten years, $1/month is going to seem more reasonable than $600k/household. I guess the former is pretty light, but the latter is completely unreasonable given what we seem to know now.

Senate Pubs Kill 1/6/21 Commission

link

I want to know exactly what happened.

But I don't trust the Dems to be objective. 

I don't trust the Pubs, either.

But I really don't trust the Dems.

Of the two parties, I'd say that the Dems have clearly been worse. There's AOC running around in hysterics claiming that being in a nearby building was like being in 'Nam. There's the Dems' insistence that it was an "insurrection." There's the radically unfair treatment of the rioters--imprisoned without bail, often in solitary. (Compare that to the revolving door for Antifa and BLM rioters.) 

Anyway: actually, I haven't followed this enough to rise above these kinds of generic considerations.

Anyway. Much as I'd like to have the report of an objective commission, I don't think that's what we'd get.

We might well end up with another abomination like the SSCI report on Russiagate.

Obviously I could be wrong.

Political Correctness Watch: NYT COVID Reporter: The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Is Racist (Even If True?)

How is it that so many people continue to take progressives seriously when their only argument, applicably automatically to every view they don't like, is that's racist?

link

other link

What do they think? Truth doesn't matter? There is no such thing as truth? Truth magically conforms itself to leftist political mythology??? Or what?

As with most relativists and quasi-relativists, it's hard to tell what they think--if, indeed, there's any coherent thought in there at all. Actually, that latter is probably closest to the mark: there may well be no fact of the matter what they think, because it's not a coherent thought.

This bullshit is the leftist equivalent of saying that the theory of evolution is sinful. True and sinful? False and sinful? Or maybe they're just "playing a different game" entirely--to their minds, truth and falsehood just don't apply?

It's hard to distinguish this from a kind of insanity--and a willfully-adopted kind at that.

Donna Brazil: A Pandemic Of Antisemitism?

In at least some of these cases, the attackers are declaring their antisemitism during the attack. (How many? I don't know.)

   Do we know of any cases in which people attacking Asians have declared that they hate Asians, or that they consider them to be responsible for or carriers of COVID-19? (I have a dim recollection of maybe one such case?)

   I tend to consider violent attacks to be violent attacks, regardless of whether they're motivated by racism or some other variety of psychopathic assholery. I say put all such assailants in the slammer and throw away the key. But I do see the arguments on the other side, and I'm certainly not sure that "hate crimes" shouldn't be a special category.

Do Half of Americans Have Natural Immunity To The Wuhan Virus?

link    Seems like it might help explain the weird transmission patterns. But what do I know? (Answer: not much.)

"Republicans Are Passing Laws To Suppress The Truth About Slavery's Enduring Legacy"

link

Why...Critical Race Theory isn't even that radical! All it basically says is that there's some racism in the U.S.! 

Behold, the motte-and-bailey...

   CRT is an extremely radical descendant of Marxism that is very closely associated with--one might even say it presupposes--a radical epistemology (standpoint theory, which itself includes the rejection of objectivity) and a radical (and false) metaphysics of race (social constructionism). 

   No one who understands even the basics of CRT can deny that it's radical. It explicitly characterizes itself as radical--and anti-liberal. It's also closely associated--again, arguably to the point of presupposing) anti-white racist views (whites are as a matter of conceptual necessity, oppressors + "whiteness" must be eliminated/destroyed). 

   What conservatives are trying to do is to prevent students from being indoctrinated with this view. It's not optimal for legislators to tell teachers what they must teach--but it's better than permitting widespread, crackpot indoctrination. (And, at least here, the government already tells schools what they have to do; the only difference in this case is that the instructions are anti-leftist rather than pro-leftist.)

   This isn't even a view that ought to be taught in K-12, IMO. Most K-12 teachers aren't equipped to discuss the view objectively and critically. (In fact, most college professors aren't, TBH.) Views of this kind aren't typically discussed before college; even introducing it into a K-12 class makes it seem as if it's more important and reasonable than it is. Unless a class is already discussing outre philosophical and political theories, and CRT is just one such view among many, there is absolutely no justification for discussing it.

   Despite its pretensions, CRT isn't scientific, and isn't even on the side of knowledge. It's on the side of interpretation / speculation. The only reason to introduce it in K-12 is, let's be honest, progressive-left indoctrination: progressive teachers want to get students to believe it. They're not interested in it as a scholarly or intellectual matter. It's about brainwashing student with the content of the theory.

   This can't come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. Progressive teachers and administrators have already introduced transgender ideology specifically in order to indoctrinate students with it. The progressive-left doesn't really argue nor reason; it decrees and indoctrinates. Its goal is not to win debates, but to suppress them--it introduces its crackpot theories and then suppresses disagreement via ad hominem attacks and character assassination. Given CRT's Marxist roots, this shouldn't be surprising.

   Again: this can come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the view. It is just one prominent aspect of a version of leftism that is bound up tightly with philosophical views that reject reason, objectivity, and truth. Indoctrination isn't a bug--it's a feature. Denials of indoctrination are especially incredible when they come from those who advocate a philosophy that entails that leftist indoctrination is not only permissible, but obligatory. Of course your average K-12 teacher has probably read approximately no philosophy, and a fortiori no critical theory outside of critical race theory. They picked up some CRT in ed school as undergrads--horrifyingly, CRT flourishes there. Teachers are clearly promoting their personal political views, which accord with the rabid leftist fad sweeping through our institutions. 

   It's as if they think that 1984 is an instruction manual--and that Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" isn't.

Nooses Wild

 Here's another CT Amazon construction-site "noose"...or loop as such things are more commonly known:

Obviously all construction must be halted forever because of such things. Better that mankind return to the paleolithic than that even one person should tie one loop in one piece of rope and one other person should think it's a noose...

More Amazon Nooses In CT Z0MG!!! NOW WITH MORE PIX!!!!1

So allegedly the "noose" was in a piece of "rope," not in the end of the wire. 

   What actually happened: electricians were fishing wire through a wall or between stories. It probably isn't rope, either. It's probably more like string or twine. 

   Objection: wouldn't the perps have come forward to explain what's going on by now?

   Response: (a) you're f*cking kidding, right? What good does it do to confess to the cult or its corporate minions? All that will probably accomplish is your own firing--with a side of character assassination. (b) Could have been contractors who have already moved on by now.

   Conclusion: this will end up being yet another "noose" quasi-hoax, like the exercise-equipment-in-the-park incident and the NASCAR garage-door-puller incident. Quasi-hoax, obviously, because these are on the side of honest mistakes, not actual hoaxes. If there's any blameworthy epistemic error involved, it's more like: a tendency to interpret ambiguous evidence in a politically satisfying/expedient way.

LOOOOOOOL--just found this picture of one of the "nooses."

Honestly, this is a great little slice of the insanity that's gripped the left. These cases are the lefty version of seeing Jesus in tortillas.

8TH NOOSE FOUND AT CT AMAZON SITE DESPITE ADDITIONAL SECURITY!!!

Will a report about a noose finally turn out to be for real? Well, eight of 'em... That's something. OTOH, finding one "under some electrical materials"... Doesn't seem like ideal placement, hate-crime-wise...

   I can't think of any recent reports of nooses that have turned out to be non-bullshit. But this could be the outlier. Probably there's just a lot of loops tied in long things at construction sites, though. If you'd have gone to our farm when I was a kid and looked around for loops tied in rope, string, bailing twine, wire, cable, and whatnot, you'd probably have found hundreds. I mean, sure, it was a Klan farm, but...

Seriously: where people are doing actual work, they tie a lot of knots in things--often producing loops. This may seem mysterious to people who only work ("  ") with books and word processors...but it's a fact.

   Come to think of it, I think electricians DO commonly put loops at the end of big wire like 12-2... 

   Anyway.

   Probably BS.

   But maybe not.

   Oh and: do "we have a serious problem [with racism? with nooses?] in America"? I'm honestly not sure. I'm a white academician. The only racism I see is antiwhite racism coming from the leftist intelligentsia--and that shit is more stupid and annoying than anything else. I hear nonstop shrieking about racism from the academy, including my own university. But I never see any of it. I'm assured it's there--apparently my university is made entirely of it! Who knew? But--aside from the antiwhite academic racism aforementioned...which is not merely tolerated by lauded in academia--I just don't see it.

   And one person running around a jobsite tying wee nooses in wire...well...again: once we get down to worrying about shit like this, it's hard to believe that racism is a major problem.

Biden And The Left vs. The USA

By far the most catastrophic first four months of a presidential administration in my lifetime.

Does Ivermectin Cure COVID-19?

Maybe

PC Newspeak: Now 'Male' Is Off-Limits For Describing "Transgendered" Athletes

link

First they decreed that some women were now male--and that these people were called "transwomen." This was alleged to be a fact that had always been thus. If you thought this was just a politically-motivated effort to change the meaning of words, then you were a bigot. Transwomen are women, bigot! Use the words as we tell you to! Bigot! Girls sports is still for girls! As it has always been! It's just that there have always been these different kind of girls! Who are exactly the same as other girls! No difference at all! Except they're male! Which girls can totally be and have always been able to be! Bigot!

   They decree that it either makes no sense or is "hate-speech" or both to say 'girls shouldn't have to compete athletically against boys.' We allow ourselves to be pushed into saying 'female students shouldn't have to compete athletically against male students.' So now they decree that this, too, is either incoherent or "hate-speech" or both.

   The ultimate aim of Newspeak, of course, is to make thoughtcrime impossible--to make criminal thoughts literally unthinkable. And make no mistake about it--this isn't about language, it's about thoughts and facts. If it were merely about words, then changing the words--changing the way the thoughts are expressed--would appease them. But it doesn't. Because it isn't. They'll keep objecting to whatever way the ideas are phrased until all the ways have been exhausted. And the more difficult it is to communicate a thought, the less it will be communicated. People will, of course, still notice that there's something strange about "Caitlyn"...or Bruce... But significant barriers will have been raised against articulating just what that thing is...

   Leftist thoughts are mandatory, bigot. Thoughts inconsistent with leftist thoughts are prohibited--and they will be suppressed by any means necessary.

Lockheed Gone Woke: Sends White Male Execs To Race-Reeducation Camp

Your blue future--anyone can now be forced, as a condition of their employment, to be subjected to insane, racist, quasi-religious indoctrination. 

Facebook Un-Declares The Lab-Leak Hypothesis To Be Thoughtcrime

Will they eventually declared that they never declared it to be in the first place?  

link

Defund The Federal Air Marshall Service!

Wait, it sounds like the woman who attacked the flight attendant is Hispanic...doesn't that mean there's an unjust disparate impact of law-enforcement on this Southwest Airlines flight? But the guy who intervened seems to be black...so...hmm...this is going to take an expert in Diversiology to figure out...

Biden Influence-Peddling Confirmed

Of course we knew this before the election. The Ministry of Truthiness can't always completely memory-hole information--but, then, it doesn't have to. It's usually enough to simply cast doubt, drag feet, and obscure. The "dezinformatsiya" lie about the laptop just had to last until the election was over. There's no second Biden term at issue--unless, of course, Trump screws us again like the did with the GA senate races. Of course the massive edifice of leftist insanity might be on the verge of collapsing under its own weight... This overt corruption might function as a kind of last straw...who knows? 

   Anyway: nice to see the truth peek out from under the propaganda now and again.

WSJ: The Virus Lab Theory's New Credibility

Not new, actually. But whatever.  link

Meet The "Ultra-Maskers"

Seems like every novel event brings out a little bit of crazy you didn't know was there before.

James Carville: Democrats Are The Anti-Crime Party

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

B-because...wait for it....Trump

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

I'll kinda give it to Carville... at least he's an old-school political hack who just straight up lies whatever lie the Dems need him to lie. In an age when the Dems have become frothing-at-the-mouth true-believer cultists, that old-school shit seems almost refreshing by comparison.

Cities De-De-Fund The Police Amid Rising Crime

But I don't see how this sure-fire progressive idea could possibly have failed...  I'm going to guess structural white micro-privilege or something.

Navy UFO Videos: Mick West Explains It All For You

I am in awe; I bow to West's superior inquisitorial powers. I am not being snarky for once:

Joe Rogan Speaks More Important Truths About Our Current Situation Than Academia Does

Insty's Latest Lab-Leak Roundup

Lysenkoism.

Gunshots Interrupt Live Broadcast From "George Floyd Square" In Minneapolis

   The only strange thing about this is the sound.

   It's actually kinda hard to tell the difference between gunshots and fireworks sometimes. One clue, unsurprisingly, is cadence. But in the middle of the alleged shooting, the cadence sounds like fireworks. If 30 shots were actually fired (I didn't count, but that's what they're saying), then that's either a rifle with a big mag, or a pistol with a really big--really unusually big--mag, or it's gunshots mixed with fireworks...or, I guess most likely, there were two shooters (with handguns). (Of course there are other possibilities--like one guy dual-wielding--that I'm ignoring.) 

   If the utter madness consequent on the Floyd incident is going to end, I'll likely be because of the catastrophic consequences of de-policing.

Majority Of Pubs Think Trump Is The "True President"

Not defending them or him--nobody, IMO, should believe that Trump won. But one probably ought to wonder...  And, y'know, this looniness was amplified by the left's general craziness and refusal to recognize that there were (and are) legitimate concerns about the election. There were clear and undeniable shenanigans--judges rewriting election laws, states spewing absentee ballots in every direction, etc. Then clear election-day shenanigans--Democrats refusing to let Republican poll-watchers into polling-places. Not to mention statistical weirdness. And the contemporary left has made it clear that they will lie and cheat to achieve their ends. So, when, on top of that, they laid on their standard dogmatic denials that any reasonable person could question their decrees...IT WAS THE MOST SECURE AND ACCURATE ELECTION IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY, BIGOT!!!!!111. And they've fought audits and recounts tooth and nail. Doesn't look too good, really. In fact, my doubts about the election have actually grown since November. I'd still bet substantial money that Biden did actually win. But--gotta say--I don't in any way consider it impossible that he didn't. If, say, massive evidence of massive fraud turns up tomorrow, it'll surprise me a bit--but it's not going to shake my worldview to the very foundations or anything.

Andrew McCarthy: A Closer Look At The Legacy Of George Floyd's Death

I agree with all of this but the more legal parts--which seem eminently reasonable, but I should withhold judgment, what with me being NAL and all. 

So If The Left's Rabid Extremism Isn't Rabid Enough For You...

There's this guy...at, well, the Guardian, so, y'know...

I think he's saying that he can't really even tell anything is happening... Which is basically to say that it would need to get a whole lot crazier to even move the needle--much less to be sufficiently rabid...

"Privilege" + "Equity": A Dangerous Combination?

So I've complained a lot about the progressive conception of "privilege" a lot. It's not that I think it doesn't make sense, it's rather that it (like other progressive concepts) isn't very good, and it's used in an overly-expansive way. It's certainly not the best concept in the vicinity. Better are discrimination (in the negative sense (not the neutral sense) and (dis)advantage. Progressives do continue to use the concept injustice--though that's a whole big thing in itself. 

   One big problem with emphasizing "privilege" is actually that it makes certain problems seem less serious than they are. Cops hassling people on account of their race is more discrimination and injustice than lack of "privilege." Another major problem is that a "privilege" differential can be fixed by taking away the "privilege." But cops unreasonably hassling more whites doesn't solve any problem. 

   But now consider "equity"--i.e. equality of outcomes. Also consider the many moves we see to promote "equity" by making things worse for "privileged" groups--e.g. eliminating advanced placement classes...

   Well, you see where I'm going with this. The emphasis on "privilege" + the emphasis on "equity" can be seen as the source / justification of the view that we can make things better by making things worse--i.e. by eliminating good things that generate or participate in "disparate impact." E.g. AP classes. 

   This is a stupid and dangerous development, rationalized by stupid and dangerous ideas.

   Well, disparate impact also ended up in there. That's a stupid and dangerous idea in itself. 

   One of the worst developments on the left has been the elevation of unequal outcomes from cause for concern to proof positive of unjust discrimination. In fact, an unequal outcome is usually nothing more than the basis for an abductive guess that there might be unjust discrimination. But when you add in the idea that there are no innate group differences among races and the sexes...well, then you get to this crazy place pretty quickly.

   None of this is that hard to figure out. Hence one of my main meta-complaints: that we're running headlong into a dark and crazy place because the left has so successfully shut down criticism in polite society. Conservatives are screaming bloody murder--in their own venues. And polite society ignores those venues. But the left has taken over mainstream discussions almost completely. And it's implemented the rule that all criticism of progressivism is racist. Thus even the most obvious objections are shouted down--or never voiced at all. 

   And, again: that's really the centerpiece of our illiberal left: political correctness--the subordination of evidence / reason / truth / fact (you can put the point several different ways) to leftist political dogma. Without political correctness--and its adjunct, "cancel culture"--none of this madness ever breaks out of the extreme, lunatic left. It's no coincidence that an utterly daft, obviously insane political totalitarianism has political correctness and punishment of dissent at its core.

   Of course most people I know don't believe all this stuff is that dangerous / don't believe it will last. But I think that's in part because they underestimate the power of moralizing epistemology. Not: in the ordinary way of seeing epistemology as normative and whatnot. Rather: by turning rational questioning into a sin. My own view is that that's largely how Christianity became wildly successful. If you can make people shut down their critical faculties (such as they are) because they think criticism is a sin...well.. I'll end with: seems like it's been a pretty effective tactic so far... It's kinda like an immune system for a a system of beliefs.

EPA Admits To Altering Science Under Trump, Pledges New Course

I'd take this with a grain of salt, but it's not that hard to believe. Lysenkoism--though of a rather moderate and ordinary kind--if true. It's virtually nothing compared to vast, Earth-shaking Lysenkoism coming from the other side. Still bad--if true--though.

Psaki: Biden So Fit He's Hard To Keep Up With

😐

linky

Linda Ronstadt: Love Is A Rose

Wow. She is super hot even in 8-bit. And this really is one of the great songs of all time:

Vox's Ministry Of Truth Stealth-Edits 3/4/20 Post "Debunking" The Lab-Leak Hypothesis

The left's attitude to truth and evidence on display.

They're never tentative, never uncertain, and never wrong--they're utterly dogmatic...until, in rare cases, they are absolutely forced to recognize that they might be vulnerable to criticism...then they do what they need to do to defend against that. It's not the falsehood that bothers them, nor their own stupidity nor dogmatism. It's getting busted--losing debating points. They don't want to get owned by the Cons. That's what it comes down to.

CNN: "It's Undeniable Now: The Republicans Are The Problem"

facepalm

To laugh? 

To cry?

One hardly knows which to do.

Are Mann and Ornstein still flogging that embarrassingly ridiculous bullshit about the Republicans being the source of polarization? I mean...ten years ago that still seemed plausible. I think it was still plausible maybe up to...well...I guess I'd say 2012. It seemed obviously true back during the Gingrich and neo-con eras... I'd certainly have bet money on it back then.

   Now it's...just flat-out stupid.

   It's almost worth watching the little CNN video...at least partway through. I had to stop. Just too much cringe. Here are some of the things that the little CNN guy lists as Things The Prove The Undeniability Of GOP Wrongness:

They're anti-immigration.

Climate-change!!!1111

Russiagate. 

The Access Hollywood tape / Trump sexual harassment.   

Of course none of these is even vaguely right.

How many times do these things have to be said?

Being opposed to massive waves of illegal immigration =/= anti-immigration.

It is the left, not the GOP, that lives in a fantasy world about climate change.

Rooskies!!! Under my bed!!! But...but...THE SSCI report!!!! 

   All of this nonsense has been as thoroughly refuted as anything in this area can be.

   As for the Access Hollywood tape...since they're still talking about that thing: Trump isn't describing sexual harassment. He's saying that a fair number of women are receptive to high degrees of sexual assertiveness if you're a billionaire. Gasp! If this revelation rocks your world...I dunno what to tell you, my friend. All sorts of people are receptive to high degrees of sexual assertiveness whether you're a billionaire or not. We've got to hear a non-stop flood of lefties talking about their strange sexual predilections...but this well-established fact about human sexuality...somehow this strikes progressives as so unthinkable that it must be rape... 

   But progressivism isn't content being wrong about every single thing on its list of why the GOP is the problem...every single one... It actually goes meta and uses this list of shit its wrong about as premises in an argument for the conclusion that THE GOP IS THE PROBLEM...

   I've got news for you assholes: the GOP is not the problem.

   Oh...it's a problem. 

   But it's nowhere close to being the problem. 

   Q is a fringe nonsense. Climate apocalypticism is remaking the nation and much of the world. The January 6th Capitol riot was a repulsive insult to the nation. But it wasn't an "insurrection." It's being distorted by the Dems for political gain. That cynical horseshit is itself an insult to the country...but it's the GOP that's the problem! They refuse to admit that a handful of Q-tards high on paint-chips was not a serious effort at armed rebellion. 

   Of course Trump himself...he counts heavily against the Pubs. But so much of that is mitigated by the fact that the left has lost its mind, and the Pubs tend to just go along with it...and only Trump was standing athwart history yelling MAGA...

   When you're the problem...and, in addition to being the problem, you're shrieking to the world that they other guys are the problem...dude... You are in a bad way. You've gone over the edge. It's not hopeless for you, I guess...but you should have turned your ass around years ago. At this point, I'm afraid that ain't going to be easy to do.

NYT: Trump Was Right About The Wuhan Lab-Leak Hypothesis...But He Is Still Wrong And Made Us Wrong Because...Uh...Something

Trump politicized the LLH?

Trump did?

Because he and Pompeo said they'd seen evidence, but didn't produce it? Nonsense.

   One of the first moves in politicizing all this was the media's unhinged, groundless shrieking about THE WORDZ THE WORDZ THE WORDZ. When we still thought this might be the big one, the WH press corpse started shrieking that the already-accepted-as-standard term 'Wuhan virus' was TEH RAZZIZZT!!!!111 'Wuhan virus' is actually the correct term for relatively informal discussions of the virus. 'China virus' or 'Chinese virus' are also fine. These terms aren't in any way racist. This shouldn't have to be said at this point, but: progressives simply call whatever they don't like "racist." How can that possibly still need to be pointed out? And they did and do anything they can think of to attack Trump. They were willing to waste time and energy and the attention of the nation on yet another groundless, bullshit, purely impressionistic accusation of racism--even when it was still possible that this damn thing was going to kill us all. Their obsession with mere words can't even be dampened by their own hysteria.

   Their attempts to obscure the Chinese origin of the virus also fit--not coincidentally--with their new love affair with China. Which has somehow become the flip side of their paranoid obsession with Russia. They were willing to denigrate the perfectly reasonable and extremely important lab-leak hypothesis purely in order to pursue their crackpot racialist religion. Well...also to count coup against Trump. And to strike a small blow for their new totalitarian BFFs. So...for several crazy reasons, actually.

   But, as has been true pretty much all along: the lab-leak hypothesis is a serious one. I'd say it's been--given the information as it trickles down to me/us--the most plausible hypothesis most of the time. 

   Some good could come out of this if it led progressives and the media and public-facing parts of science (but I repeat myself) to admit they were goddamned wrong about this because they have lost their damn minds. They politicize everything now--see everything through the warped lens of their warped, cultish politics. 

   Of course Trump doesn't help things. He should have stuck with 'Wuhan virus,' said in normal tones. Instead he had to go for CHY-NA virus, said with great emphasis. But he was right. The media was wrong. The fact that Trump didn't act perfectly isn't important. He was right to stick with useful and established terminology, and right to push back against the left's deranged linguistic totalitarianism--it's important to refuse to comply with their idiotic, politically-non-neutral linguistic dictates. And, of course: it was all a not-so-subtle way of directing critical attention away from their BFFs the CCP...

Sorry. Repetitive. 

More repetition: if we survive this, we can never, ever, EVER allow the left to forget how wildly, abjectly, thoroughly insane they have been. These aren't normal political disagreements. This is a kind of sub-cultural insanity.

NYC Prep School Students And Parents Angered By Unannounced Class On "Porn Literacy"

WTF are these people up to?

Probability that this is an honest mistake: 0.

There's absolutely no way in hell that the school just didn't understand that this was crossing the line. The left believes "transgression" to be good. This was intentional.

I don't really care about what happens at some richy-rich prep school (honestly, I don't even know exactly what a "prep school" is...) in New York. But this isn't an isolated incident. Schools all across the country seem to have lost their fucking minds. They're indoctrinating kids with radical political, philosophical, cultural and sexual ideas. Part of this is, I guess, the Marxist/radical-feminist project of wresting control of kids away from parents. Part of it's obviously just about leftist indoctrination--we should be almost used to that by now. Part of it's advancing a the cultural left's anti-heterosexual agenda, as the pseudoscientific slide about orgasm frequency makes clear...though honestly I don't understand what, specifically, it's trying to say... None of the slides really make much sense, largely because they've just shoehorned in lefty buzzwords. What do search terms have to do with "identity"? (Answer: nothing.) Part of it could be that the woman running the workshop just gets off on talking about porn to kids. In fact...gotta say...I'd bet money that that's in the mix somewhere... Wouldn't be a surprise. Much of the nonsense that comes from the left about sex actually has to do with individual lefties pursuing their own individual sexual interests.

   Look...do you know how dissolute you've got to be to make me sound like some kind of prude? 

   One thing's for sure: it's becoming clearer and clearer that a whole lot of teachers have no business being anywhere near anybody who's in any way impressionable.

Do Masks Work Against The Wuhan Virus?

Maybe.

Biden Admin Has Militarized D.C. And Is Scouring The Country For "White Supremacists"...But "White Supremacism" Is Progressive Jargon For...You.

Progressivism asserts that all white people are racist...so they need a new way to distinguish the left from the right. So, whereas they used to be pure and we used to be "racists"...now we're all racists--including them. But non-progressives--you and me, that is--we're now "white supremacists." 

   So make sure you understand: when the Biden admin says that they're hunting down "the greatest 'terror' threat to the nation"...and that's "white supremacists" (or some cognate term)...they mean, basically, that they're looking for us--non-progressive liberals, centrists, conservatives, libertarians...oh, and, heck, sure, the occasional actual white supremacist, if they happen to stumble across one...

   Huh. Remember how Trump was going to use the military to hunt down his political enemies? Funny how that not only never happened, but the Biden administration's efforts to do just that kicked into high gear even before his inauguration...

VDH: Our Most Important Institutions Are Losing The Respect Of Middle America

And rightly so.

   We've seen how vulnerable they are to a combination of stupidity, cowardice and groupthink. They've all proven willing to accept laughable, insane bullshit at the drop of a hat. This is also why "conservatives"--i.e., basically anyone who doesn't immediately drop to one (or both) knee(s) to worship the gods of Woketarianism--have lost faith in experts. Experts--many of them, at any rate--don't deserve to be listened to anymore. They've ceded their epistemic authority by accepting idiotic, cultish dogma...and, worse, pretending that their unrelated expertise makes them qualified to decree that we all must accept it too. Surely this can't be as widespread as it seems to be--but it's widespread among "public experts." There's no doubting that. And regular experts, who are doing their jobs instead of seeking the limelight and preaching their private political preferences from the pulpit provided by their expertise in unrelated fields--are letting it happen. They're not directly responsible, obviously. But they are--apparently--sitting by and watching it happen. If anything should outrage them and move them to quasi-public action, you'd think it would be the misuse of their discipline's epistemic authority. Maybe they're acting behind the scenes. I'm sure some are. Others are supporting the cultists. Even informing the public that there is disagreement in the discipline would be much better than nothing. At any rate, when we see 1,200 doctors saying the most absurdly idiotic nonsense about BLM protests being exempt from lockdowns because [insert idiotic progressive bullshit here]. and there's no visible pushback...well...what sort of idiot would continue to accord the medical profession exactly the same amount of respect they accorded it before it went batshit crazy? (Or at least: revealed itself to be so.)

   Sane, normal, reasonable people are watching our institutions and experts lose their minds. And sane, normal, reasonable people are being sane, normal and reasonable: they're updating their beliefs in accordance with this new evidence.

CRT "Teacher Talk" Podcast: "Our Constitution Should Be Burned"

Actually, ed schools should be burned.

   Teaching is a great thing to do if done right. Too often, however, it's done by mediocre (at best) intellects who want a platform from which to preach their brainless, totalitarian politics. And summers off. They're given no particular education--they don't really learn math nor history nor biology or literature in any depth. The only philosophy they're likely to have encountered is trickle-down recent Continental bullshit--e.g. Foucault. Or, rather: Foucault's epigones. Or Judith Butler. Some bullshit. Or CRT--which we, sadly, can't blame on the French. That bullshit is a product of the USA. This is like indoctrinating highly religious, not-particularly-bright high school kids with pop evangelical theology--and nothing else--and then releasing them on grade school kids--pretending that they're going to teach them reading, writing, and, well, you know. It's hard to think of anything that would be better for this country than nuking ed schools. We'd be a lot better off recruiting teachers from the ranks of history and math majors without a single education class. 

   Incidentally: teachers should be fired for engaging in political or religious indoctrination.

   

Actual Justice Warrior: The Cult Of Social Justice

I found this guy--Actual Justice Warrior--about a week ago. He's great:

Postpostmodern Bullshit, Pop Culture, And You're Sexist For Not Watching The WNBA

facepalm

   You're reason--you're "real" reason--for not watching the WNBA has nothing to do with the reason you think you don't watch it...which--the one you think is your reason, that is--happens to be a very obvious and perfectly sound reason that just happens to be everybody else's reason, too... Except, of course, it doesn't just happen to be, any more than people just happen to watch MLB, the NBA, the NFL, and so on. Anyway, as it turns out, your "real" reason has nothing to do with the skill and talent of the players. It's all about...uh...well...you're gonna have to read the thing for yourself to figure that out...because I couldn't quite do it in the five minutes I could stand to spend skimming this piece of utter shit... But it has something to do with "narrative"...an all-purpose bullshit vague gesture of an explanation inflicted on us by trickle-down postmodernism a quarter-century ago.

   This embarrassingly ridiculous article put me in mind of the embarrassingly ridiculous dust-up consequent on John McEnero inadvertently speaking the truth about women's tennis a coupla years back. The pop-culture left was livid that he said that Serena Williams was "the greatest female tennis-player of all time." WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY THAT SHE'S THE GREATEST TENNIS PLAYER OF ALL TIME FULL STOP YOU SEXIST SNOT-PIG????? they REEEEEEed.

   Of course the answer is: because she isn't. Great talent though she may be, she apparently can't reliably beat any of the top-100 men in the world. And it might be worse than that--I can't remember where the cut-off is, actually.

   Look, man. I got nothing against the WNBA, nor against female athletes in general. I used to sometimes find myself in pick-up games in Chapel Hill with players from the women's hoops team. I liked 'em, and they were better than me--as so many people were. It was just people out there playin' hoops and havin' fun. I tried to watch some WNBA games back when it was new-ish. I don't watch it basically for the same reason people don't watch me play hoops--it's just not that interesting basically because the players aren't that good. Basically because they aren't that athletic. 

  And that's my real reason. And it's yours, too. The shit about story lines does play a role. I watch Carolina hoops even when they aren't that good. But if nobody in the whole league can dunk, there's just not the baseline athleticism there that's going to make me interested in the storylines. The less athletic and talented players are, the harder it's going to be to get people interested in storylines. Basketball isn't pro wrestling. Hell...actually those guys are pretty great athletes. I guess a sufficiently interesting storyline could make even games between mediocre teams interesting. But the more mediocre the athletes, the more interesting the storylines would have to be. You'd have to find something on the order of Lord of the Rings to make games interesting if they feature athletes of my skill and ability level. So, like, if I'm taking a last-second shot against the Nazgul to decide the fate of Middle Earth...well...people'd watch that. But, realistically, no storyline is interesting enough to make people interested in watching me, with my now-pathetic vertical leap, missing layups, sucking wind and clanking shit off the back iron.

Progressives Live In A Fantasy World Of Their Own Making: Still Pretending That Christine Blasey Ford's Accusations Against Kavanaugh Are Credible

I mean...this is at The Nation...so...it's a large, slow target...  (Though let's not forget: The Nation did publish a lot of Aaron Mate's stuff debunking Russiagate...)

   Blasey Ford is a liar. This is well-established. Even her erstwhile BFF Leland Keyser doesn't believe her anymore. Her own father doesn't believe her. Nothing about her accusation was confirmable, and much was disconfirmed. She's even been shown to be a big fat liar with respect to tangentially-related matters, down to why she put an extra door on her house... 

   She's a liar.

   Not to mention even the fact that the Nation's tu quoque is laughable. That's a different matter entirely.

   Anyway: we should consider her accusation against Kavanaugh to be basically nonexistent...better: we should consider CBF to have basically said "I am a liar" repeatedly for three days or however long it was.

Politi"fact" Retracts Wuhan Virus "Fact"-Check That Ruled The Lab-Lead Hypothesis: "Pants On Fire"

link   The MSM has become a progressive propaganda organ, and its "fact-"checks are just another branch of that media. What's the difference supposed to be, anyway, between fact-checks and regular stories? Why not just write another story? Aren't news stories basically supposed to be fact-checks themselves? Fact is, the MSM now routinely just adopts whatever view is popular on the left, and cobbles together stories that cherry-pick and spin and nip and tuck until progressive propaganda comes out the other end. Of course politics is notorious for making people lose their objectivity. But what's happening on the contemporary progressive left is unprecedented in my lifetime. The left so controls all our institutions that its dogma rarely generates significant public pushback. Its worldview has become extremely radical--and the more extreme someone gets, the less objective they become. And the postmodern progressive left is built on political correctness--a view that specifically subordinates evidence and reason to political dogma. Ordinary extremists are epistemically wrecked by their extremism--but few specifically accept rejection of truth and objectivity as a principle. 

Nicole Hannah-Jones Was Not "Denied Tenure" By UNC

facepalm

I mean, the usual low-grade lefty outlets like HuffPo, Vox and whatnot...it's understandable that they don't know the first thing about academia. But you'd think that places like NYT could scrape up somebody who knew what they were talking about.

   To be denied tenure is to: be hired into a tenure-track job, do your damn job for about five years (or however long you negotiate the tenure clock down to), then be turned down (usually: for promotion to associate professor). Then you have to go find another job.

   Hannah-Jones, recipient of all sorts of unwarranted accolades and prizes--e.g. a McArthur "genius grant" and a Pulitzer for her fraudulent "1619 Project"...was not on the tenure track at Carolina. She was simply offered--unwarrantedly--a prestigious endowed chair. Yes, that chair--obviously--normally comes with tenure. The Board of Trustees--God bless 'em--withheld tenure from the deal. They'd have been warranted in blocking the offer entirely, IMO. Imagine the REEEEEEEEEing that would have ensued...

   Hannah-Jones doesn't deserve the position. The Board is being accused of letting politics intrude on academia....LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. Imagine saying that with a straight face. Academia is almost nothing BUT politics now. And the left is unused to encountering any barriers to its march toward complete subordination of academia to their dogmas. She's only being given the chair because of politics. The Board is merely saying, roughly: Hey...we're going to put some restrictions on your purely political decision...

   Apparently Hannah-Jones can go up for tenure more-or-less normally. A bit embarrassing for someone occupying an endowed chair...but nobody in the world would turn down such a deal...

Diversity Is Magic

Soon you'll be able to become a full professor never having done anything but "diversity" bullshit. That stuff already counts as service work anyway--if it amounts to anything at all. So this is just one more radical transformation of the university, one more leg in the long march through the institution. The search for truth is now almost an afterthought. The new, real telos of universities is the promotion of leftist mythology and activism. 

   So, anyway, "diversity" or "DEI" (DIE...IED...) "work" counts as...everything! It's magic!:  It's research! It's teaching! It's service! (Well, it probably is service...)

   My own institution is on a trajectory that is leading us toward teaching nothing but online "diversity" courses. We ought to hit that goal by 2030, I reckon.

Adam Serwer Z0MG CONSERVATIVES WANT TO CANCEL THE HOLY 1619 PROJEKTZEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!

Serwer is an idiot, of course.

   Conservatives don't want to "cancel" that bullshit--or, rather: some might. Most don't. 

   What they want is for the indoctrination to end--especially the indoctrination of kids. If you want to discuss the 1619 bullshit, that's fine: so long as you discuss it along with different views, and you discuss it objectively. Not as if it were fact. Not as the only view in town. Not as if it were the most important theory with others nipping at its heels. Not even as first among equals. 

   What this means is: do you want to adopt a unit on American history in...whatever it is you're doing? Well, ok. If you have someone competent and objective to teach American history...sure. Why you'd want your plumbing business or the CIA or your math class or the city council meeting to include a 3-semester-hour course on American history I do not know... But if you have a historian on hand who can do the job, well, knock yourself out...

   Just dont't fucking do a special indoctrination session on this one, shitty, ridiculous, sub-par, leftist theory of American history. 

   In fact, actually, I'd suggest sticking to, y'know, actual history in your history course. Written by actual, trained, competent historians. I'd suggest not including history written by shitty journalists. Or even competent journalists...if such exist anymore. Just like I'd suggest avoiding physics written by journalists. Or philosophy written by journalists. Or Chemistry or econ or anthropology written by journalists. Journalism written by mathematicians would probably be pretty good. Mathematics done by journalists...shudder... Hell...contemporary journalists can't even do journalism correctly, in case that fact has somehow escaped you.

   In fact, how about this: no indoctrination at all. 

   How's about that?

   Remember when we all used to be against indoctrination? Even the lefties? 

   Good times.

Joy Reid: Lunatic

Even by the standards of MSNBC:

Reid said, “We begin tonight with a party that stands for nothing. At one point, Republicans believed in helping the rich, tax cuts in regulation, and they believed in endless wars and family values. But now, in a Trump-dominated world, it’s not clear what they stand for or what they are offering the American people, and exchange, for one thing, they clearly want. power, power for themselves.”
She continued, “The thirst for power is so intoxicating it has infected the Republican Party from the top down.”

They used to stand for insane fascism, you see...but now they believe in nothing at all and just want power...

   This is what happens when you join the cult...

Journalists Coach Sexual-Harassment Accusers During Taping Of Interviews

This really comes as no surprise.

   You've just got to get it through your head: the media now represents the truth only if they can't think of any way to distort the story into "social justice" propaganda. They can still be trusted, it seems, with respect to stuff like weather, sports scores, and traffic reports...though...come to think of it, they lie about climate...if they could think of a way to lie about the weather in service of those lies, then I'm sure they'd do so...

   Anyway: DO NOT TRUST THE MEDIA--not, at least, in any case in which the story impinges in any way on leftist cultural and political interests. The MSM and the more overtly leftist media now tell the truth only if they don't care about the story (or, of course, in those few cases in which the truth happens to be as they want it to be.)

"We Are Descending Rapidly Into Cultural Madness"

Oh, I hadn't noticed.

Two Weeks To Flatten The Curve: Week 60-Or-So

You know what I miss? The disappearing American tendency to tell people to get bent when they try to tell you what to do.

One Of The Most Troubling Things About Woketarianism Is That Ed Schools Are One Of Its Main Centers Of Power

No offense to K-12 teachers. They did much for me, and are indispensable, and once upon a time I wanted to be one. But people in Ed schools simply don't have the philosophical tools required to properly assess philosophical theories like postmodernism, C(R)T and the rest. It's no coincidence that the craziest theories flourish in the academically weakest and least-analytically-astute sectors of academia.

FL Does Not Have A "Ban On Transgender Students In Sports"

The cult hasn't merely taken over the MSM...rather, the MSM is a central part of the cult, and has help effect its takeover. "Transgender" students are free to participate in boy's sports if they're boys, and in girls' sports if they're girls. This is not complicated.

   Also: separating boys' and girls' sports isn't "discrimination." In fact, it's required by Title IX. But the NCAA has been taken over by the cult as well.

   It's like a plague of insanity is sweeping the land.

Stephen King vs. J. K. Rowling: Political Correctness Is Dogmatic Insanity

This stuff is almost impossible for me to believe.

   The participants in the disagreement don't really matter. The disagreement is repeated all around us. Rowling is merely stating the plainest facts--facts only the craziest and most radical niche lefties denied less than ten years ago. King's no dummy. He's no rocket surgeon, but he's no dummy. Yet here he is, confidently and piously repeating a mantra of the cult--which might as well be p and not-p...p and not-p... Who would have predicted that the nation's most powerful cultural/political faction would adopt as a central dogma that some adult human females are not female? There's no real making sense of what they think, but it's probably mostly a political decision to use the words 'women' and 'girl' in nonstandard ways. That's what some feminist philosophers have finally settled on as an explanation of their position. It's a "social justice" decision to use words differently. Which is, of course, completely different than believing that "trans" "women" are actually, really, in fact women. It would all be less insane if they all recognized and admitted that they're merely using words in a nonstandard way. That's sophistry, but at least it's not incoherent. Thing is, though some in the intellectual vanguard of the left may be forced by cognitive dissonance to admit what's actually afoot, the lefty hoi polloi seem to have actually come to believe--or quasi-believe--that the dogma is actually in some sense true. Not to say that everyone in the vanguard admits the truth, nor that none among the lefty hoi polloi don't, of course. Orwell really nailed it when he described doublethink... Though I think that it's more accurate to say: a superposition of doxastic states. It's not really that they both believe and don't believe--it's rather that they sort of do and sort of don't.

   But anyway: aside from all the particulars: keep it firmly in mind that we're dealing with a political cult that's willing to both (a) sincerely affirm that falsehoods are true, despite knowing better, and (b) actually, eagerly believe what they can clearly see are falsehoods, and (c) do both (a) and (b) out of some combination of political fervor and fear of ostracism from the tribe. Any one of those three things would make a faction extremely dangerous. All three together.*.. Very, very, very dangerous indeed.

* Yes, I understand that some are inseparable from others. 

SCHEV: Venn Diagrams, How Do They Work?

SCHEV is the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia...in case you don't know them on account of not being under their thumb:

"Life Experience"

As opposed to what other kind of experience, exactly?

CDC Director Admits The Wuhan Virus May Have Come From A Lab!!!!!

B...b...but...The Science(tm)!!!

Yet Another "Hate-Crime" Hoax--This One Intended To Falsely Paint Conservative Student As The Perpetrator

I'm shocked...shoc...meh...can't...even...pretend...any...more...

U.S. To Begin Retiring F-22 In 2030???

 

UFOs In Restricted Airspace!!!!

I see people writing this as if it were additional reason to fear/believe the objects in question are extraterrestrial. Weird. If the restricted airspace in questions is over a military base/facility (say, Area 51) (rather than e.g. over a football stadium)...well...uh...you see where I'm goin' with this...   It's all gonna turn out to be weather balloons, birds and Skunk Works black projects anyway. So don't get your hopes up.

Your Blue Future: Caravan Of Palestine-Supporters In LA Attacks Jewish Diners

BLM apparently made this a thing.

Guess it's more white supremacy an' stuff.

Hardknox: Fire Like This

 

WSJ: Biden's Plans Already Hurting The Recovery

This is something about which I have no expertise nor strong feelings. But it seems like any ordinary person can see that a (largely unwarranted) tsunami of spending is likely to cause inflation.

Organization Strikes Back Against Woketarian Corporate Politics

I've seen one of the ads. Seemed ok. I'm not much of a judge of such things. I hate those snarly-voice political ads--though I've seen much worse on that score. I'm basically down with whatever works at this point.

Sergeant Major Says To Hydrate

The Railroading Of Mark Crispin Miller

Sounds like a bit of a kook--but so what? 

   Also sounds like his main crimes are (a) questioning transgender ideology and (b) questioning mask mandates.

   Though he sounds (from this one account) like a kook about the pandemic, you don't have to think that the pandemic was engineered in order to consolidate government and corporate power. Certainly I don't think that. But we know that they never let a good crisis go to waste... The left has used it to consolidate power. 

Konstantin Kilimnic / Aaron Mate: Contra The Russiagate Hoax

I'm posting this, but I've barely begun to read it. 

At this point, trying to even semi-understand what the hell is going on is a full-time job. Just sorting through what seems to be the outright bullshit/propaganda of the postmodern/progressive left is a freakin' full-time job. God knows that else is going on...hell, the right might be just as bad for all I know. I mean...I doubt that because they haven't collectively gone insane... Unless, y'know, you count that little election thing... Which, actually, I'm not sure I do... After Russiagate--as I've said--I wouldn't put anything past them. Their hysterical opposition to audits--and even sustained questioning--of the results is a big, fat, 100-decibel red flag*. I still don't think the election was stolen...but I still think there are reasons to doubt that. I'm inclined to say that it's reasonable to say that the election was nominally democratic at best. The nonstop MSM propaganda, plus pre-election tampering by blue-state courts probably swung it to the blue team, IMO. But that doesn't count as stealing it--it's just ordinary electoral cheating.

* Humor.

David Cole Contra The Lab-Leak Hypothesis

Warning: Takimag is thoughtcrime. If you go here, you might want to take the precautions. (Also: Takimag is one of my favorite sites. That should tell you something.)

His main arguments are strong: (a) the original outbreak was near the Wuhan wet market, (b) it was also found there in animal detritus. I'd heard these things, but forgotten them. If true, (b) would seem to weaken a strong argument for LLH: the lack of animal intermediaries. 

California Leftists Try To Cancel Math Class

You probably already know about this insanity.

Remember this. 

Remember everything like this.

Supposing that the USA isn't doomed, eventually people will push this insanity back. 

But they probably won't stamp it out. Much of it will survive. And the craziest crazies will retreat to places like women's studies...and ed schools--sad as that latter is. And it will fester and mutate and continue to wreck academia and K-12 and the nation--just more covertly. And then it will explode out again in ten or fifteen or twenty years, and we'll face another wave of leftist insanity. It will have maintained and consolidated many of the gains it made ca. '90 and today. And the next time they'll be even more radical, and they'll gain more territory...

Of course if they win this round, it's all over. So we won't have to worry about any of that stuff...

Progressives/Democrats Now Openly Use The Justice System Against Their Enemies

I'm beginning to wonder whether it's possible to live with these people anymore.

We've Ceded An Unbeatable Advantage To The Illiberal/Irrationalist Left Because We Refuse To State The Most Important Fact In The "Diversity" Debate

There are group IQ differences.

Has The NYT Begun To Admit Its Coverage Of The Steele Dossier Was Fake News?

Too little, too late.

Video Shows Capitol Protesters Calling For Peaceful Assembly, Capitol Police Granting Them Permission To Enter

link    Dude explicitly calling for peaceful protest has been in jail since January.

Leftists violently riot and burn down American cities: Mostly peaceful protest! Immediately released on bail. No charges. Conservatives call for peaceful protest at Capitol: VIOLENT INSURRECTION! IMMEDIATELY INCARCERATED WITHOUT BAIL. KEPT IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. EFFORTS TO RAISE MONEY FOR LEGAL DEFENSE THWARTED BY SHRIEKING LEFTIST E-MOB.

   We now--again--have a two-tiered justice system. This time it's one for leftists and another for conservatives.

   The capitol riot was an affront to the nation. But it wasn't a violent insurrection aimed at overthrowing the government. 

   Progressivism is a massive web of lies and delusions.

Bill Mahr Still Believes Russiagate Was Real

The best he can do is "some of it was reported erroneously" LOL.

He's still fixated on Trump's "Russia, if you're listening" gag. 

Bill Mahr. We're not talking Rachel Maddow here. Who, incidentally...has she ever acknowledged that Russiagate was fake news from top to bottom? Not to mention: a Democrat - intelligence-community hoax? I reckon not. There is a general tendency of progressives to just go on believing the lie...because facts don't real.

Winsome Sears Might Well Be The Next Lt. Governor Of The O.D.

I certainly like what I've heard from her so far.

Lee Siegel, "The Paranoid Style In Progressive Politics"

Thank the gods for City Journal.

I say Siegel's right on target with this.

If I added something, it would be a few lines on each of the following:  (a) the medicalization of everything, and (b) the hermeneutics of suspicion. (re: the latter: Nietzsche's typically thrown in as one of the suspicionists. But, as I write all the time: imagine the huge, smoking crater that would remain of the progressive left were he around today...)

Indoctrination vs. Viewpoint Diversity: "They Learn To Parrot What They're Supposed To Say"

Erin McLaughlin contra pomo-progressive / "diversity"-industrial complex indoctrination of kids. And good on Friedersdorf for continuing to fight the good fight against the evil empire. Props also the The Atlantic for continuing to, at least from time to time, continuing to publish heterodox work. 

   I'm not wild about the term "viewpoint diversity," for reasons I'll regale you with soon. Heterodox Academy also leans heavily on that terminology. But I don't want to make a federal case out of a largely terminological point.

Hatefacts: Twitter Suspends Spanish Politician For Tweeting "A Man Cannot Get Pregnant"

Again, via Insty.

SCOTUS Rules Warrentless Home Firearm Confiscation Unconstitutional In 9-0 Vote

Via Insty.

Implications for "red flag" laws, obviously.

The Supremes are on of the few institutions standing between us and the crazies.

NYT Defends People Who Plan To Keep Wearing Masks...Some For Another Five Years...Or Forever...

E.g. pretending that they are being hassled by conservatives.

   It doesn't matter that they--and it--are crazy. WHO ARE THEY HURTING, BIGOT???

   Honestly. The American progressive left has become unhinged.

   Don't even look at the comments unless you want to lose all faith in humanity. Or, well, NYT readers anyway. Whatever they are.

   

   Progressivism is a massive web of lies and delusions.

18-Year-Old White Criminal In Ankle Monitor Randomly Kidnaps Sleeping Black Child, Stabs Him To Death, Leaves His Body In The Street

Actually the races were reversed.

As you should have guessed

Since, if the races had been as they are in my title, there would be nonstop coverage in the American press for the rest of the year. Instead, so far as I can tell: crickets.

Dubyanell No More

W&L has cancelled Lee.

But fear not!

Such radicalism always moderates of its own accord and never whips itself to even greater heights depths of radicalism by dint of its own dogmatic, fanatical obsession with ideological purity...

So Washington is not next on the cancellation chopping block...

Don't be ridiculous!

Lefties Still Emotionally Committed To Masks

Had to get some half and half this morning, so I went to the closest place--the lefty faux-Wholefoods co-op about 3 blocks from our house. Governor C**nman lifted the mask mandate on Friday. But I knew the co-op would be holding on the masks until the bitter end... Ten years from now, aging hippies will still be there, putting out plastic containers of couscous in masks. Usually there's a kid sitting outside checking for masks...because I guess lefty food co-ops are so profitable that they can afford that. I mean, with what they charge for e.g. local green beans, it doesn't really surprise me. Anyway. I go in. Few people there. All with masks--of course. I grab my $7 half and half, and hit the checkout. I'm the only one there. Girl is in a mask. She says: "We require masks." I say "Nah, I'm done with that." Scanning my milk she says "Well, we do require them." I say "Y'know, I think I'm not going to purchase that. But thanks anyway." Walked out and went to Food Lion, where at least half the shoppers were maskless.

   They've got to turn everything into a culture-war thing. And they really, really like micromanaging other people's actions. Place is right by my house. I know the manager. It's convenient. And I won't be going back until they stop this bullshit--and then some.

University Investigates Student For Saying 'Women Have Vaginas'

At this rate, in a year or so you'll be automatically expelled for saying '2+2=4'

Trump Fake News About Maricopa County Voter Registration Database (?)

This is the kind of stuff that gets Trump to believe and say crazy shit: wishful thinking.

Loury and McWhorter On The Trayvon Hoax

Loury and McWhorter both say that they were going to do this show before they did, but didn't want to have to say what they're saying: that the Gilbert book/documentary raises real doubts about the Martin-Zimmerman case. One of them analogizes it to thinking you've seen a UFO--you really don't want to admit that, because you're a kook forever after. But also, you really believe it's true... My redpilling came earlier than theirs, I think. So by the time the Gilbert investigation rolled into my sphere of awareness, I'd already reconciled myself to the fact that there were all kinds of unsayable truths. The progressive left has gone so crazy that there are lots of true or at least reasonable things that you're not permitted to say. That is: you'll get excommunicated and hounded and categorized as a racist.

Universities Now Mainly "Diversity" Organizations; Occasionally Do Some Research And Teaching

This is insane, and it's the doing of the progressive left.

Scientists Demand Answers On COVID Origins

Wait, I thought The Expertstm already told us that the lab-leak hypothesis was a Conspiracy Theorytm...and we must always believe The Expertstm just like we must always follow The Sciencetm???

   Again I say: the nonsense about conservatives rejecting expertise is, well, nonsense. What they reject is pseudoexpertise and Lysenkoism. There is no doubt that progressive control the public face of many sciences and quasi-sciences. The left dresses politics up as science, and when conservatives finally say We're not falling for that again they're declared to be anti-science. Total bullshit. 

  Also: coopting science for political purposes is about an order of magnitude worse than simply rejecting scientific conclusions.

  Also: postmodernism is far more anti-science than anything on the right other than the extreme religious right. They're in principle anti-science.

  Also: critical theory, especially including critical race theory, is more pseudoscientific than anti-scientific.

Susan Hennessey: DoJ's Resident Conspiracist

You've got to be kidding me.

A Lawfare hack.

In the Justice Department.

And not just any old Lawfare hack...the alpha Lawfare hack.

Contrary to the propaganda, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and just general cultish lunacy are currently much more central to the Dems than the Pubs. It's not just loons on the periphery. Consider, just to take one single example: QAnon vs. climate apocalypticism. The former is the fringiest of the fringe. The latter is official doctrine. As for Russiagate: it was an actual conspiracy perpetrated by Dems, their MSM propaganda apparatus, and intelligence agencies. If the Pubs had done something analogous, it would be headline news for ten years. They'd already have erected a monument and a holiday and probably a new branch of the Smithsonian or something.

Also: Hennssey's got the crazy eyes.

Biden Short-Tempered, Indecisive?

Weird that the NYT would say it.  I guess they're paving the way for a Harris/Abrams presidency.

Virologists' Letter To *Science* Calls For Further Investigation Into Origin of The Batflu

Wait...I could have sworn that the natural-origin hypothesis was basically proven and the only possibility and questioning it in anyway was a "conspiracy theory" contrary to The Sciencetm and only deplorable redneck racist idiots thought otherwise...  Just a couple of weeks ago I saw four virologists on a podcast say it was "tinfoil hat' territory.

Antifa Blackshirt: "I Can't Wait Until Black People Lynch White People"

Gosh, this comes as a complete surprise. 

London Train Conductor In Hot Water For Saying "Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys And Girls"

Because he failed to pretend the things that two of his passengers wanted him to pretend.

At least one "passenger" (actually: another employee of the railway--undoubtedly with a plan already in place to REEEEEEE out on the conductor) claims that none of those terms "apply" to him. When, in fact, one of them clearly must. Unless, of course, he's one of the very small number of intersex(ed) people. He says none apply to him, but it apparently isn't true.

Huge chunks of the West have lost it--and those who haven't are coerced to play along.

"The Big Lie"(tm)

I kept seeing this phrase being used in this nonstandard way, but didn't know what it was about. Dems are trying to, yet again, redefine terms for sophistical purposes. Apparently they now use 'The Big Lie' to mean: the view that there were significant irregularities in the 2020 election. The Big Lietm is the failure to accept that--though the 2016 election was TOTALLY HACKED AND STOLEN by the Rooskies, and though there were no major, relevant technological changes between 2016 and 2020, THE 2020 ELECTION WAS THE MOST SECURE ELECTION OF ALL TIME AND IF YOU DOUBT THAT YOU ARE HITLER, BIGOT.

Brian Williams (not a quote): I'm guilty of using the phrase 'the big lie' at least twice this hour...is this reasonable? 

Or does this presuppose the truth of the Democratic version of events in a way that's unbecoming to a journalist?

J/K, bigot!

Brian Williams (not a quote): I'm guilty of using the phrase 'the big lie' at least twice this hour...is this reasonable? 

Or should I be calling it something like THE VIOLENT, REBELLIOUS, TRUMPIST / EXTREME-RIGHT / WHITE SUPREMACIST ASSAULT ON THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF OUR DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN GOODNESS ITSELF AND EVERYTHING THAT'S HOLY?

The 1/6 riot and Trumps actions surrounding it are inexcusable. They were so far over the line that there's no even seeing the line from there. But it does matter that the left has gone much, much further over the line in many different ways in the last five years and especially the last one. They've gotten away with it all--unless you count Mueller calling bullshit on Russiagate--and they're still getting away with it. The BLM/Antifa left now routinely uses terrorism to get what it wants, and Dems are happy to defend their doing so. The progressive left and its propaganda wing the MSM relentlessly defend the violent, murderous, anarchic riots of their allies, and they've radically exaggerated the significance of the 1/6 Capitol riot. Which, again: was disgusting in the extreme and impossible to justify. 

   To take just one point of contrast: the death of George Floyd--a violent criminal, now sainted--caused a national spasm of violence and destruction. The killing of Ashley Babbitt, a veteran, has received virtually no attention from the PMSM. Chauvin is going to jail for much of the remainder of his life. He is routinely vilified. He is represented as evil incarnate. We still don't even know who Babbitt's killer was. We know he was black, and she was white... Interesting...

   These are not normal times. These are not normal disputes. None of this is even vaguely normal, nor vaguely reasonable, nor vaguely acceptable.

   Many claims made about election fraud by Trump and many conservatives are nuts. But many of them are true. I don't see any very strong reason to think that the election was stolen. But the more hysterically the left denies that it was stolen, and the more it tries to block audits, the more I'm inclined to think that it might have been and we need them.

"White Supremacists" Are Not The "Biggest Threat" To "Our Democracy"

The biggest threat to the nation is almost certainly the progressive/PC left and the Democratic party. I've certainly never seen such a threat--not since the Cold War, anyway. The blue team now--in an important sense--is a bigger threat than either radical Islamism or the CCP. It's most dangerous, of course, because this threat is internal--and because it's not some group of peripheral dissenters. These people now largely control most or all of the levers of power at most or all of our major institutions.

   Oh: among the many things I used to be wrong about: Merrick Garland. Once again we see that Mitch McConnell is often the only thing standing between us and disaster. 

   I just flat-out assert that the claim in the title is false. In fact, it could be true. But: (a) we've been given no reason to believe that it is; (b) the progressive-left has a long track record of lying about such things; (c) it's extremely difficult to believe that any domestic group could rival the carnage being perpetrated against the republic by the left; (d) "white supremacist" is not just another leftist neologism with no determinate meaning.

   As for (d): "white supremacist" is another linguistic fad on the left--just not just that. It has purposes. It seemed to begin as yet another terminological escalation--it just meant "white racist"...but sounded satisfyingly (to the blues) worse. Also, they probably don't just want to say 'racist' because not everyone has been taught Crazy Left Dogma 4.5.5.7: All and only whites are racist. So if they just say 'racist', somebody might get the wrong idea and not realize that they're talking about all and only whites. OTOH, if they say 'white racist,' that overtly suggests that there are nonwhite racists. Mainly, though: this jargon lets them suggest that we're all basically Klansmen. It also--a standard leftist strategy--make tactical equivocation possible. It kinda means, y'know, actual white supremacists--Klansmen and the like--but kinda also just means Trump supporters. So they can say things like "White supremacists attacked the Capitol". Like so: They were Trump supporters, ergo they were white supremacists ergo they were Klansmen and the like. 

   Anyway: also the Proud Boys are not white supremacists. They're not even merely racists. I don' think the Oath Keepers are, either...but I don't know much about them. 

   The real point of this is:

All Trump supporters are "white supremacists"

"White supremacists" pose the biggest terrorism threat to the USA

Therefore:

Trump supporters post the biggest terrorism threat to the USA.

Invalid...but Westernstraightwhitemale hegemonic racist shit like logic doesn't matter to our new transrational overlords. 

   The point is advancing the Gleichschaltung. 

   The FBI et al. undoubtedly have evidence we don't have. But they're known to have been converged. We have no reason to believe that they're telling the truth, and plenty of reason to believe that this is part of the Democrats' push to (disastrously) re-engineer the nation. It's part of the barbed-wire-and-National-Guard crisis theater that the Dems have staged in D.C. It's yet another way to control the citizenry via fear--by fabricating/exaggerating some horrific threat. The right did it with WMDs, the left is doing it with...well. all sorts of things: climate apocalypticism, genocidal cops, race hysteria generally.

   The claim in the title is a lie.

   I could be wrong, but I'm not.

If 'Equity' Is Equality Of Outcome, And Every Institution Is Now Committed To It...

...then why are they beating around the bush? Universities should just mandate the everybody gets the same grade. Or, at least: scores are adjusted so that races (and sexes) get equal GPAs. I mean, CRT is notorious for rejecting the idea of colorblindness and neutral legal principles. Equal outcomes are important; those other things aren't. Assuming CRT really means what it says, and that all our institutions now accept CRT...it's obvious what they need to do. They also reject the idea of meritocratic institutions... So what's the problem?

   Well, of course, one of the problems is that nobody's insane enough to genuinely accept CRT and all its consequences, nor to completely reject the (much superior and more reasonable) ideas that we've traditionally accepted. Part of what's going on is just talk, virtue signaling, and religious fervor. Partially, it's all a tactic to rig the system against straightwhitemales as quickly as possible, before people start calling bullshit on it all. They seek to gain tactical advantage while they can, recognizing that it'll be harder to undo the changes once they're in place. 

(Actual) Women Always Come In Last In Progressivism's Oppression Olympics

Say, whatever happened to #REEEEE#TOOOO### and "rape culture" and whatnot?

I mean, it definitely got shoved to the back when transanity briefly took the lead as the left's favorite lunacy... And now that it's all racism all the time, feminism basically seems to have just disappeared. 

As I've suggested before: lefty women might want to ask why it is that they always end up with the bronze medal (at best) in the oppression Olympics... There's a long history of race activists demeaning and mistreating women. Now even men pretending to be women rank above--waaaay above--women. White women are the most hated group on the left...after evil straightwhitemen, of course...but we're so far out in the lead that it's not even a competition. 

Biden To Nominate Catherine Lhamon For Ed.'s OCR

Lhamon is horrible.

   She's the one most responsible for the Obama administration's Dear Colleague letter lowering the burden of proof in college sexual assault cases and stripping away other protections like the right to face your accuser. These hearings aren't actual trials, of course. But the relevant protections are grounded in principles that antecede the actual legal protections.

   I keep telling myself that the Biden administration isn't trying to wreck the country... But, honestly, if they were, what exactly would they do differently? Just about the only good things they've done are extensions of Trump policies--distributing the fruits of Operation Warp Speed, resuming some construction on border fencing, keeping lower refugee numbers in order to block those gaming the system...and, of course, Biden gave up on that latter one after progressive pressure...

Should CRT Be Banned From K-12?

Well...as a last resort...probably.

It's bad for the government to interfere in that way...but the government...and leftists...and ed schools...and teachers' unions...are already interfering in that way. The few red state governors who are doing anything are just trying to stop the insanity.

   If CRT were being taught as one view among others, and it was being taught in the ordinary way in which reasons for and against are considered, then it wouldn't be so bad. But, of course, that's not what's happening. What's happening is politico-philosophical indoctrination. There's absolutely no excuse for the kind of wacko leftist brainwashing about race and sex (and "gender") that's going on in K-12..and college. If we started teaching kids some philosophy and "critical thinking" in junior high or whatever...well...CRT might be discussed as a part of that. Though, in the vast sweep of Western philosophy, CRT wouldn't even warrant a whole hour of class. Without teaching philosophy generally, along with some reasoning skills, CRT gets an illegitimate advantage. If that's the only view you talk about, you inevitably give students the idea that it's a prominent theory, and, in fact, the main or only theory on the table. In fact, it's a minor, extremely idiosyncratic view. It's a minor, quasi-philosophical offshoot of one, controversial school of very recent Continental philosophy. It's like teaching kids only about Scientology or Zoroastrianism...that's gonna absolutely give them the wrong impression of the importance of such views. Oh and: teaching it to them as if it were known to be true. Oh and: telling them they're racists if they don't believe it. Oh and: leaving out all the (copious) problems with the view.

   Again I say: remember this. Even if we win, the leftist establishment has proven itself, once and for all, to be totalitarian whack jobs.