WSJ: Barr, Garland and Lafayette Park

More on this.

   Just after the incident, one of my colleagues--who I respect--sent around an article he'd published about it. In it, he argued for the standard progressive line: the Trumpians tear-gassed the protesters so that Trump could have a photo-op. I'm basically the only member of the department who pushes back against such things and articulated the non-progressive sides of arguments, and around that time I'd felt compelled to do so more than I'd have liked to. He sent the article to me personally, and expressed skepticism to him personally, but I didn't do so publicly, to the whole department. And now here we are. I don't want to raise the issue again--I don't want to raise any political issue I don't have to raise. As in this case: I don't even respond every time someone else makes an insufficiently-well-justified point. 

   Anyway, this is just a little slice of life in academia: everything is slanted far to the progressive left. The leftist view is taken for granted and/or stated explicitly at virtually every turn. The other side of the issues are never articulated--unless I or one of the few other deplorables in my cohort do so. You can say the most insane things and, so long as they're progressive, you won't be challenged. In fact, you'll be praised. In fact, what you say will likely be endorsed by the institution in some official way. It'll all be business as usual, and there'll be pats on the back and basking in moral virtue all around... Raise even fairly mild non-progressive--even merely centrist--objections, and it's a Big Ass Deal. God knows what would happen if you raised non-progressive arguments unprovoked. That would be a real scandal.

   And, of course, progressives--like other fanatics--are wrong way more than the high average background rate at which most of us are wrong. But that's never acknowledged. As with the media, they articulate the progressive storyline even when it's clearly unproven...then when it is unproven, as it usually is, there's no correction nor reflection. If you are so imprudent as to point out the error, you'll have to spend a lot of political capital, you'll inch closer to being put in the racist bin (or just be plopped down in it), and you'll face a battery of excuses and deflections...well, at the time...it's actually not clear...why are you digging up the past?...why are you so interested in this?...

   That latter is an underappreciated arrow in the progressive quiver: the suggestion that you must have nefarious motives for being so interested in the truth. They're not interested in the truth...and it's hard for them to believe anyone else could be; their reasoning is politically motivated...yours must be, too...so what is that motive?

   Even the reasonable population among faculty--such as it is--is largely composed of people locked into the lefty perspective. I certainly was for a long time. And if you are, then no matter how objective and independent-minded you try to be, you're constantly under the gravity-like influence of that perspective. In my experience, faculty is composed mostly (waaay mostly) of two kinds of people: (a) activists who are devoted, personally and professionally, to advancing leftist mythology, and (b) people who are strongly under the influence of that mythology, but don't realize it. If universities were really devoted to "diversity" of thought--which is the only kind of "diversity" they're supposed to be pursuing--they'd be preferentially hiring people to the left of progressivism. In fact, the opposite is happening. My own university is now hiring whole "cohorts" of faculty, and hiring them specifically because they specialize in "social justice." So: the university wants to hire non-white-males. They aren't permitted to hire people on the basis of race and sex. So they invoke a progressive premise to the effect that "social justice" advances "diversity." Then they hire people of their preferred sex and races--who also do "social justice"--and thereby simultaneously get the sex and races they want and move the university further left...for the next half-century...