George Case: "Politics and the English Language 2023"

link        Despite my Orwell fanboydom, I've never been as bit a fan of "Politics and the English Language" as most people are. Probably should go back and read it again.

If You Love COVID Lunacy But Think it *Could* Be Loonier...And Could Use A Little Less Actual Science And A Little More Activism...

...then "the People's CDC" could be for you!

Masks for everyone! For everything! Forever!

This article goes in one of the same categories as the Amanda Marcotte article from a day or so ago--and that category is: even the left is starting to admit that the left is crazy. (Dunno about the political views of the author--but I mean: it appeared in the New Yorker.)

Carolina 74 - Pitt 76

When they're on, they're a total freakin' blast to watch...but they've been off an awful lot...

The Origins of "Social Justice": USSR and UN

"Social justice" is, of course, a phrase used approvingly almost exclusively by the progressive left. I think it's a near-word-for-word transmogrification of 'politically correct.' It basically means social justice according to the progressive IdP left. As with so many terms of the left, it sounds as if it means something unobjectionable--but in fact it means something specifically favorable to the left.

   At any rate: it's not my imagination: it's a specifically leftist concept, engineered by the USSR and adopted by the UN. It's a bit surprising to me that Wikipedia hasn't suppressed this bit of their entry on it:

United Nations

The United Nations calls social justice "an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations.

The United Nations' 2006 document Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations, states that "Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth ..."

The term "social justice" was seen by the U.N. "as a substitute for the protection of human rights [and] first appeared in United Nations texts during the second half of the 1960s. At the initiative of the Soviet Union, and with the support of developing countries, the term was used in the Declaration on Social Progress and Development, adopted in 1969."

The same document reports, "From the comprehensive global perspective shaped by the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, neglect of the pursuit of social justice in all its dimensions translates into de facto acceptance of a future marred by violence, repression and chaos." The report concludes, "Social justice is not possible without strong and coherent redistributive policies conceived and implemented by public agencies."

The same UN document offers a concise history: "[T]he notion of social justice is relatively new. None of history’s great philosophers—not Plato or Aristotle, or Confucius or Averroes, or even Rousseau or Kant—saw the need to consider justice or the redress of injustices from a social perspective. The concept first surfaced in Western thought and political language in the wake of the industrial revolution and the parallel development of the socialist doctrine. It emerged as an expression of protest against what was perceived as the capitalist exploitation of labor and as a focal point for the development of measures to improve the human condition. It was born as a revolutionary slogan embodying the ideals of progress and fraternity. Following the revolutions that shook Europe in the mid-1800s, social justice became a rallying cry for progressive thinkers and political activists.... By the mid-twentieth century, the concept of social justice had become central to the ideologies and programs of virtually all the leftist and centrist political parties around the world ..."

Another key area of human rights and social justice is the United Nations's defense of children's rights worldwide. In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted and available for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25. According to OHCHR, this convention entered into force on 2 September 1990. This convention upholds that all states have the obligation to "protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse."

Jacobin(?!): The Twitter Files Are, In Fact, A Big Deal

Jeez, I don't see a lot of reasonable stuff in Jacobin, but this is good.

Incidentally: I don't have a settled opinion about the Twitter Files yet--but they seem like a pretty big deal to me. And this essay makes a pretty good case that that's right. 

Of course Jacobin got to Jacobin, and there's some dumb aside about how Bari Weiss and/or the Libs of Tik-Tok woman is/are horrible people. And the essay ends with the argument that leftists should be concerned because these methods might be used against them--which is maybe the only way to get them to care I guess...though they ought to be concerned about the principle... 

Bit also there's an exhortation to focus on the policies, not the people reporting...which shows that Jacobin is still largely old-school economic left...and not sufficiently woked... [1]

But anyway. 

I'm ready to be outraged by the Twitter Files...which is why I have been suspending judgment. That and: I haven't even had time to read all the TFs, much less much commentary.

But, yeah: it kinda seems like a big deal to me that the gub'mint seems to have been colluding with big tech to suppress speech....

[1] Incidentally, here's a currently front-page piece over there:  "We Don't Want A Post-Pandemic "Return to Normal," We Want The End of Capitalism"...

ALIEN BEINGS IN COVID VACCINE!!!!111

Oh, man, I came across a couple of things at some fairly big righty site--Free Republic, I think--that claimed that, if you let the COVID vax sit unrefrigerated, it would turn into small alien creatures kinda like the xenomorph from Alien or the bugs from Starship Troopers... So these little aliens would be trapped, scrabbling around in the vial. Can't find it again, and it was, of course, ridiculed...but not as robustly and uniformly as one might hope...

   Surely there's plenty of room between Quintuple vax my baby!!!! and the alien thing.

   Well, in fact, there is. 

   I'm getting old enough to seriously consider the vax again--I had the failed J&J one pretty early on, but nothing since. I'm freaked out by the hysterical push for vaxxing healthy young people...but I'm not exactly 100% in the category healthy young people anymore. JQ and I both had a fairly ass-kicking case of what was allegedly COVID early this year--massive pain in the ass--then another alleged case equivalent to a barely-detectable cold in September-or-so. 

   Oh, also on righty sites you'll find plenty of the following:

• People are dropping like flies from the vax!!!
• Funeral homes are overwhelmed by vax deads!!!
• Look at these giant strings of goo doctors are pulling out of people's veins!!! From the vax!!!

And, of course:

• It's all a plot by Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates to depopulate the Earth!!!

Now, Klaus Schwab freaks me TF out, NGL...but you gotta draw the line somewhere...

Contemporary Democrats in a Nutshell: We Are Not Finishing the Racist Wall, We Are Just...Building At It. Racist.

First let me say that I have a soft spot for press secretaries who are bad at their job--or, at least, the ones who are bad at their job because they are averse to lying. Scott McClellan is my paradigm example of that. I miss Scotty...    Jen Psaki was about as good as anyone could be at BSing her way through--but it was, in large part, because she was willing to just shamelessly BS and dissemble. A few are just good at it and manage to be good because of something other than a willingness to lie. E.g. Kayleigh McEnany. She was a downright force of nature. I'd say she was the best WHPS I've ever seen.

But anyway: I'm ok with bad press secretaries, actually. 

Though....their badness is not always on account of their honesty... Consider e.g., the sad case of KJP...  This clip is just SO fucking contemporary Democrats. Such utter bullshit, bald-faced lies, patent inconsistency, TDS...it's all there. Are you building any fencing? No, we are not finishing the fence. Are you building any fencing? No, we are not finishing the fence...TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!!!...   All that's missing is some Rooskies... So you're, what? Building at it? Or what? This is a paradigm of real-world incoherence and irrationality:

The cherry on top, of course, is the utter lack of anything like consistency when it comes to the accusation of racism... Though it's such an all-purpose tic on the left at this point it's just become part of the background noise...

Even Amanda Marcotte Is Fed Up With Woketarianism

Marcotte is a certifiable idiot, and a far-left loon. And, of course, she moves straight from I finally realized Woketarianism is nuts to Yeah, well, opposing Woketarianism is bad too...

  And don't forget that we're talking about someone who still refuses (last time I checked) to admit that the Duke lacrosse rape hoax was a hoax... And, as I recall, finally, years late, only begrudgingly admitted that maybe the UVA/Rolling-Stone rape hoax wasn't as undeniably true as she might have originally thought...

   And, of course, one of the main rules of the left is: Thou shalt not criticize the left...  And you're only permitted to violate that rule if you go on to say that the right is worse. So she remains true to form on those scores.

   But the important point, IMO, is that even somebody like Marcotte has had it with the shrieking reavers of the progressive left. Of course she focuses on the reavers themselves, with no mention of their lunatic ideas--those remain more-or-less sacrosanct--e.g. anyone who dares to question gender mythology is "transphobic." But that's not the real point here, I'd say. The mere fact that somebody like Marcotte is willing to write what she did is significant. It's evidence that the reavers have gone too far even by the lights of some of their most loyal and groupthinky comrades.

No Proof "Diversity" "Training" Works

1. Of course it doesn't work.

2. It's better that it not work, since it's leftist political indoctrination; the real danger is that it probably does work a little bit--and perhaps a lot on some people.

3. There's actually evidence that it's counterproductive--attempted indoctrination with incoherent neo-racist gobbledygook seems to turn many people off...if you can imagine that...

4. Of course if effectiveness becomes an issue, we'll suddenly see an outpouring of research "proving" its effectiveness. That's how progressive Lysenkoism works...

These "trainings"--a misnomer of massive proportions--are mostly an opportunity for progressives to force others to sit there and listen to them pronounce the truth of progressivism as if ex cathedra, with no acknowledgement that it's all opinion, and no opportunity to respond.

If sanity ever returns, progressivism must be held to account for this spasm of totalitarian madness. People who did this neem to be named. Not to "shame" them, not to harass them, but merely for the sake of truth and accountability.

Boghossian: NPR Simps for Pantyfa

Like the rest of the progressive MSM.

Rod Liddle: The Feminist Roots of Woke: How the West Went Mad

Right on target.

I'd just make the following clear: feminism is only one root of Woketarianism. I think Liddle recognizes that, so I'm just putting too fine a point on it because that's the kind of guy I am. 

Perhaps Liddle's most important point--something I've occasionally discussed here: feminism is the root of transanity. Well...the taproot, anyway. The other aspects of the postpostmodern mishmash contribute, too, I guess. Queer theory is prominent...though that also (I think) has its roots in feminism. 

Well anyway:

Review: Against Bryan Caplan's "Denialist Foray Into Feminism"

Haven't read the book, but the criticism/review isn't very good. It fits a standard template: feminism is pure good, because it is merely the idea that men and women should be politically equal. In fact, feminism went radical/anti-liberal thirty years ago. It also went postpostmodern, rejecting, for instance the very idea of a definition / essence of feminism. It's extremely common for feminists to claim that there is no such thing as feminism--"only feminismS." Popomos looove gratuitous pluralization... I don't consider myself a feminist because the feminism of the academy is a radical, antiliberal irrationalism. You might even say that liberal feminism is a victim of its own success--the egalitarian thesis was so obviously right that almost every reasonable person adopted it. Nobody even considers that feminism anymore. Feminism now isn't the Mills--it's Judith Butler. It's no longer the claim that gender is different than sex--that men needn't be masculine and women needn't be feminine. Now it's gender ideology, the central claim of which is that men are by definition masculine and women by definition feminine. More masculine girls are no longer fine just as they are--they're "transgender" boys...and probably ought to be shot full of hormones and have their breasts chopped off asap... Radical feminists almost always pretend feminism is liberal and egalitarian when called on their radicalism--and that's exactly what the author of the Caplan review does. 

   Now, whether he makes the other errors she accuses him of--I have no idea. But she's running a well-known motte-and-bailey about this point. Don't fall for it.

Robert Steinbuch: Live Free or DEI Even Harder

He's right, though we basically know all this already: increasingly, you have to attest in writing that you are committed to "diversity, equity and inclusion" in order to apply for faculty positions. Also increasingly: you also have to recount what you've actually done to promote "DEI."

   Furthermore: "DEI," though it sounds like it might be politically neutral, is actually a thin layer of camouflage for extremist left-wing political ideas. The terms 'diversity,' 'equity' and 'inclusion' are strategically equivocal: 'diversity' could mean something good...it just doesn't. What it means is: preferences for left-favored demographic groups and leftist ideas and policies. All those terms sounds like they could mean, basically: fairness. "Social justice" is similarly equivocal. It sounds like it could just mean justice. Or: just arrangements of society--whatever those might be. In fact, 'social justice' is almost exclusively a term of the left. And in its actual application, it almost always means: justice as conceived of by the left... Similarly "DEI." In its actual applications, it almost always entails leftist preferences: demographic preferences, rejection of the very idea of merit, constraints on free inquiry and speech, indoctrination with leftist identity politics ideas, re-engineering of universities to be even farther to the left than they already are. "DEI" in the broad sense might include color-blind policies as an important component. In actual implementation--as always--the extreme leftist IdP view is accepted: the very idea of color-blindness is itself racist. Write a DEI attestation saying that you accept the ideal of color-blind policies...see whether you get an interview. Actually, let me remove all unclarity: you are extremely unlikely to get an interview. (Less likely, that is, than if you sing the praises of Woketarianism...)

   Blah blah blah.

The Ideological Capture of Wikipedia: Gender Ideology / "The Anti-Gender Movement"

Search for 'gender ideology' on Wikipedia and you're taken to an entry titled "The Anti-Gender Movement."

Of course Wikipedia was ideologically captured by the left long ago--I'm not at all sure how long ago, nor even when I first noticed it. But it's been at least ten years.

This is one small way in which that ideological capture manifests itself. Instead of having an entry on gender ideology--under the title 'gender ideology', which is the non-leftist term for the phenomenon--it has, instead, an entire entry on the leftist/gender-ideological response to the non-leftist movement against gender ideology. This is roughly as if, instead of an entry on "Identity Politics," they only had an entry on, say, "Race Marxism" or "Neo-Racism." 

  If the social (")sciences(") were even vaguely objective, someone would be doing a study of the delusional groupthink of the Vanguard of the Wikipedians--a hard-core pomo-prog faction that keeps everything slanted as far to the left as they think they can get away with. 

   Though, I must say, there does seem to have been some pushback/progress in some of the entries--in some cases it's been significant. For years earlier in the Woketarian Jihad, the first sentence of the Race entry was something like "The socially constructed blah blah blah..."...thus building crazy left metaphysics into the very first sentence of the entry. Now the first sentence is the much-improved:

A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society

Not quite right, but better.* So perhaps there are limits to how outrageously stupid such entries can be--limits to the ability of the VW to spin and tweak and suppress and amplify...

Read more »

Peter Laffin: The Media's Startling Incuriosity About COVID-19's Origin

Yeah, gosh, what a mystery...

That goes for both the origin of the COVID and the media's incuriosity...we know what the origin of both those things are...

I mean...there's some kind of pattern here...but what?...what?...

Russiagate: two years of nonstop breathless bullshit: dropped the instant Mueller announced (what had been obvious the whole time) that there was no there there. (Now survives as conventional progressive wisdom that Hey, he wasn't exonerated...)

Democrat/FBI/MSM collusion in the creation of Russiagate: proven but crickets.

TRUMP SAID 'CHINA VIRUS': TOTAL MEDIA HYSTERIA

WAS THE COVID CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING?: TOTAL MEDIA HYSTERIA

Obviously a lab leak: crickets.

Hunter Biden laptop: DEZINFORMATSIYA BIGOT!!!

No it wasn't: crickets.

If the Rooskies had done the COVID, it'd be nonstop media pandemonium...but the CCP is a darling of the left. So crickets. 

Also, progressives are committed to a view according to which anything that could be caused by racism is caused by racism, and is therefore racist. Since someone could believe the lab-leak hypothesis because racism, that is why anyone who believes it believes it. So it's racist, racist.

They won't be able to kill the story forever--but they don't have to. All they have to do is muffle it until people care less. Then they can let it seep out. What would have been a bombshell if admitted suddenly in early 2020 will be something else entirely if it just slowly and eventually becomes part of the recognized background. 

If anyone then complains about the bureaucracy and media's handing of the question, a handful of not-entirely skeptical stories will be produced to show that, hey, everyone always knew it and it's no big deal and why are you making a federal case out of this? 

Blah blah blah

A Study: More Exercise, Less Severe COVID

Meh. Probably true. But 1 study = 0 studies.

   Of course this is why it was important to close not only gyms but parks and beaches...  It's been a long time since I've been in as crap shape as I was during much of the batflu hysteria--and I go trail-running a lot! But I supplement it with trips to the gym. You can't really go trail-running all the time. Or I can't--my legs are usually trashed for a couple of days after a run. It rains. It gets cold. All that. The only real MMA gym in town close permanently as soon as it was forced to close temporarily--the owners just announced that they couldn't stay open without any income. My university's gym was, of course, mask-hysterical like the rest of the campus. I got into it with them about wearing a mask while working on the heavy bag. I stormed out and didn't go back until they dropped the mask bullshit...which was...like a year I think. Joined up down t' the Planet Fitness which, say what you will about it, was not mask crazy...

   Anyway. Of course the Official Story is basically that you must get ten vaxes and wear ten masks and "SHELTER IN PLACE, BIGOT!!!111ONEone...and nothing else will do anything... I don't think I ever heard any official--or even media--source say Get in shape; dump ten pounds; get that cardio up. Inter alia, that'll reduce your odds of getting diabetes, a notable batflu comorbidity...which also probably has a better chance of killing you than the batflu does...

Cunk on Britain

Raptor say: eminently worth a watch:

Shoulder-Narrowing Surgery: The Latest "Trans" Body-Mutilation Fad

Sad.

via Insty.

Carolina 80 - Michigan 76

Heels looking great.

This is a really, really fun team to watch.

Dershowitz: The January 6th Committee's Referral is Unconstitutional

link

Turley: January 6th Commission Falls Short of a Prosecutable Criminal Case

This general sort of thing is how Trump ended up being the least-bad option for 2 election cycles. 

As Turley--and everyone else--agrees, the Capitol riot was a godawful national humiliation. 

   And I'd add, as I have before: Trump laid the groundwork for it with his irresponsible, irrational rhetoric spanning pretty much the entire time from the election to the riot. His actions on January 6th have always clearly been non-criminal. But that's not the point. The point is: he's always been personally unfit for the office...and since his electoral loss, he's ostentatiously failed to get anywhere near the minimum relevant standards.

   But the leftist/Democrat tendency to institutionalize their political opinions is, IMO, a much bigger threat than anything Trump did. Now we've had two absurd/failed impeachments and a three-ring, post-Presidential Congressional investigation. Disagreeing isn't enough for them. Demonization isn't enough. They now seek--everywhere--to seize institutional power, claim the mantle of authority, and use it to fervidly track down and destroy their enemies opponents enemies under color of institutional officialdom.

   I know perfectly reasonable people who are so possessed by TDS that they simply can't view Trump as anything other than, basically, demonic. Given that all GOP Presidents and Presidential candidates are Hitler, there's really nowhere to go with Trump except Satan... It's not enough that he's a stupid jackass / loudmouth / loose cannon / narcissist / con man / loon. Until he is officially deemed a criminal by the state, the blue team will not rest. Even that may not be enough--they might not actually rest until he's in prison--which will not happen, of course.  

   And the whole time, the left is destroying the country with its various cultish, crackpot hallucinations--climate apocalypticism, gender delusionalism including the brainwashing and sexual mutilation of children, neo-racism and the fomenting of racial strife and the moral panic of "institutional racism," depolicing/decarceration/Mad-Maxification of cities, destruction of schools and universities, Pravdafication of the media, and the DeepStatification of government. Utter madness against which backdrop Trumpian tragedy pales. Trump's crackpot bullshit posted less of a threat to our electoral system than the Dems' various schemes to brainwash the electorate and re-engineer elections--not to even so much as mention any of the other, much more dangerous and destructive schemes and delusions listed above.

   Trump is awful. The Democrats are much worse and much more dangerous.

1/6/21 Never Forget

The Jan6th Committee reminds America that we can never again allow a small band of unarmed protesters to conquer the largest military power in the history of human civilization by sauntering through the Capitol rotunda and taking selfies.

We were so close to losing everything.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 19, 2022

Biden's Border Catastrophe About to Get Worse?

Certainly sounds that way.

Carolina 89 - OSU 84 in OT

Whew.

Pete Nance saves the day at the end of regulation.

The Left's Whimsical and Capricious Takes on Language: 'Woman' in 2014

These are absolutely terrible and, in fact, downright stupid reasons...but the kind of interesting one--in the age of 'birthing people' and 'uterus-havers'--is the second one. (YOU WON'T BELIEVE NUMBER TWO!!!1111) 

   The progressive left has its roots in literature, not science. And it's largely driven by an impressionistic, interpretive method. You can almost ALWAYS make up some vaguely plausible-sounding arguments like these. That's why vaguely plausible-sounding arguments are basically worthless. These all really come down to "Use the words we tell you to use the way we tell you to use them. Bigot." Or "We decree 'woman' to be PC and 'female' to be un-PC."  Of course now they have tried to redefine 'woman' to mean 'feminine'...and replaced it with terms that genuinely are repulsively biological and reproductive (see above). 

   At any rate. None of the six arguments are sound. It's false that no one refers to men as 'males'. Yes, women and females are different groups--but they overlap. And one might want to talk about, y'know, females, not women. Thus you'd be referring to women--and other females--via the term 'female(s). Also, the human condition might be clearly implicit; as when we refer to men as males. We often restrict the universe of discourse when quantifying. And no, the term isn't used to express inferiority. That's just stupid. If someone thinks that women are inferior, that person will have and express that idea whether they say 'women' or 'females.' 

   But, yeah, #6 is mostly right: if you want to talk about women there is, indeed, a word for that: 'women.' But that doesn't mean that it's not permissible to say 'females.' 

   Of course the left has decided to go with basically the opposite whimsical decree these days. Currently, to use the word 'woman' to refer to women is doubleplus-un-PC. Now you are to use the term only to refer to the collection of actual women + men pretending to be women. Contrary to the 2014 diktat, 'woman' must never be used to refer to women. Using 'woman' to refer to women is some totally "transphobic" shit, bigot. Currently, you are absolutely prohibited from using that word to mean what it means...

Acid Attack in NYC

Likely a consequence, at least in part, of progressives' fostering of an atmosphere of lawlessness. It's your blue future, bigot. It's equity! Get used to the progressive

dystopian utopia...:

HMD: NYT's Shameless COVID Contortions

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIIIIIIIIIE!!!!!!!!!!!111111

"Green" Germany: 1.5 Euros / DAY to Keep the Lights On

A predictable and predicted consequence of climate apocalypticism.

New MSM Talking Points Dropped: ELON MUSK LIED ON CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION??????

The NPCs are tweeting in chorus yet again.

If this pans out--which it won't--there's be a mass change of opinion on the blue team re: deportation of illegals.

Intersectionalitymania! Climate! COVID! Race! "Equity!" !!!!

LOL I may have posted this before, but I can't risk not having done so...

The Grand Unified Theory of progressivism

"Economic equity"...you know what that means, bigot...

How the Left Was Lost in the 1990s--But Found Its Way Again

Apparently it kinda moderated for awhile, but the author is thankful that it's loony again and has identified capitalism as the root of all evil.

Quillette: A Rush To Judgment In Psychological Science

It's not so much about rushing.

It's about automatically giving credence to every boilerplate leftist accusation about racism etc.

For awhile there the progressive left was open about its view that even the victims of false accusations should not dispute them. This was said explicitly about accusations of sexual assault and of racism. Disputing false accusations, we were told, would make real victims less likely to come forward. It was never suggested that perhaps people should stop making false accusations... 

   To some extent, however, the real reason--I guess--is that the left simply doesn't much believe in truth and falsehood anymore--and doesn't think they're that important. It's a power game, and a matter of self-expression. Truth and falsehood simply fall out of the picture, and the game of expressive accusations putters along just the same...

   Well, that's pretty impressionistic/speculative...but maybe worth a thought. Such blather is usually wrong, but sometimes gets at something.

   All progressive-left discourse is made up of such bad-poetic verbal riffing. Mine's way better than most of theirs. But it's better because it takes a real whack at trying to touch on truths.

   Well, it's too early in the morning to try to untangle this. Make of it what you will.

   But the part about automatically giving credence--that part's right.

Twitter's Secret Shadowbans are Why the Public Has Turned Against "Experts"

It's a synecdoche, anyway.

   Our "experts" and institutions have been ideologically captured by the left. The contemporary progressive left is a mix of bad philosophy and crazy politics. And this particular brand of bullshit leans strong in the direction of totalitarianism--hence its capture of the institutions. 

   Our "experts" and institutions are now so biased toward the progressive left that we always know, in general, what they're going to say about any given controversial political/cultural disagreement. Has the left become psychotically enamored of transgenderism? Then it's only a matter of time before revisions to the DSM and pro-"trans" proclamations from medical associations.The pattern is boring, if infuriating, by now. 

   This is (prope-)Lysenkoism: the subordination of science, scholarship and expertise to politics.

   The progressive left does not even accept objectivity and institutional neutrality in principle anymore. If it did, it might at least be "shamed" by its inconsistency. Instead it's more common for "elites" to laugh at concerns about objectivity the same way they laugh at concerns about truth: only the hoi polloi believe in such antiquated Western superstitions anymore...

   Actually, there's a two-aspect strategy in play. When the preponderance of scientific evidence is on their side, they piously proclaim that they are The Science--skeptics are "Deniers." (See: Holocaust denial...) When the preponderance of scientific evidence is not on their side, objectivity, rationality, truth and dispassionate inquiry are merely whitemale "narratives" used to silence the....etc. etc. Appeal, say, to crime and policing data that refuse the thesis that racist cops are mass-murdering American blacks and you will be met with a wall of gibberish about "lived experience." "Storytelling" is what it's called in CRT. Note: that's not supposed to be a negative term. CRT explicitly aims to replace inconvenient empirical evidence with "storytelling."

   The obvious prejudices, lies and obscurantist bullshit that reign among our experts and institutions force any reasonably objective and intelligent person to be skeptical of them. When obvious hacks issue dogmatic, condescending, supercilious decrees, informing us that we must accept the patentest bullshit or else...well...that shit gets old fast. 

   Then there's the expansion of the notion of expertise to include obvious nonsense. We now have "equity experts" and suchlike, who are really just poorly-educated humanists with no actual reasoning skills who just know how to talk the formulaic talk. Their job is to inject leftism into every aspect of their institutions. They are not experts in anything. They are political activists. Proclaim such hacks "experts," then, again, it is only rational for we plebes to say: Well, if those are experts, expertise cannot be trusted.

   Of course we can say--as is true: Those are not experts. How do those conversations go? You can trace this out yourself--I don't have to tell you.

   One bumper-sticker take: our experts can't even be trusted to determine who's an expert anymore.

   Of course one oughtn't to throw out babies with bathwater. But it's inevitable under the prevailing conditions. The remaining actual experts, competent scientists, non-activist scholars who don't want their own conclusions ignored alongside the bullshit their colleagues are putting out need to clearly reject Lysenkoism and proclaim themselves separate and opposed to it. Many of those who do so will be punished by the leftist powers that be. I'm sorry you have to make that choice. But that's the world we now live in...

   At any rate. 

   The point:

   Skepticism about expertise is perfectly rational at this point in our history.

Josh Hawley on the Working Man and the Rail Strike

Word

Jacob Shell: How Critical Theory Learned to Trust the Science

Latour's stuff is pretty awful in the main. 

It's just about perfect that he would give up his social constructionist / Lysenkoist metaphysics and epistemology in order to avoid the possibility of impeding global warming apocalypticism...

The New "New Age"?: "Manifesting"

It's a small step from social constructionism and the subjectivism of e.g. "gender identity" to quasi-magic.

And outright "magic."

Tom Cotton to Kroger et al: If You Help the Left, Don't Ask Us for Help When They Turn on You

Beautiful

Trump Was Right: Roundup Addition

His recent anti-Constitutional ravings are some bullshit alright. They'd rule him out of rational consideration if he weren't already so ruled. 

   OTOH: the deranged rump of the Democrat party is also ruled out. 

   So waddayagonnado?

   Also, of course, we might point out: Trump's lunacy mostly comes out as words, whereas his policies were good. The blue team's lunacy comes out in both forms. Trump's anti-Constitutionalism is typical dumbass Trumpian blather. The blues actually want to wreck the Constitution. Among other things, they want to: get rid of the filibuster, eviscerate the First and Second Amendments, and rewire the election of Senators...

   None of which excuses Trump's dumbassery...

   But anyway, back to the real topic, quoting VDH:

...almost all of Trump's prior complaints, predictions, and assertions that the media dismissed as conspiratorial, or crackpot have proven eerily prescient.

Hunter Biden's laptop was all too authentic.

The FBI was compromised and acted as an agent of the Democratic Party. Anthony Fauci proved a partisan.

Russian collusion was an utter hoax. It was engineered by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and the FBI.

The Wuhan lab did likely birth the engineered COVID virus. That possibility was covered up by the media and public health establishments

Trump did not take "nuclear codes" to Mar-a-Lago. He did not plan on hawking his presidential papers for profit.

Germany did weaken NATO. Berlin was foolish to mortgage its future with energy dependency on a hostile Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Biden family was utterly corrupt. It was deeply involved in lucrative quid pro quo machinations abroad with China and a crooked Ukrainian government-related company.

John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Anthony Fauci, and Robert Mueller all either did mislead, feign amnesia, or lie either to Congress or while under oath.

Twitter was corrupt in asymmetrically banning the free expression of conservatives. Silicon Valley elites did conspire to sandbag Trump.

The media was a fake news corrupt enterprise, as we see from the new Twitter trove, and the mass firings at CNN.

Hanson's overall point, though, is that, by acting so crazy, Trump may be--finally--taking himself out of contention. 

Dems Can't be Election-Deniers

Like blacks can't be racist etc.

This article is really unbelievable.

Or, I mean: it would be if we weren't used to the left simply redefining words and phrases at will...

Pearl Harbor Day

81 years.

Jesus Christ.

Warnock on Track to Defeat Walker for 51-49 Senate

Thanks, Orange Man.

Carolina: Fastest Fall From #1 to Unranked

Woooo!

Another Tar Heel record!

North Carolina: We Set The Standard.

John Lott: The "Crazy Right-Wing Shooter" Myth

At least prima facie reason for skepticism about the MSM's favored tale.

What am I saying? There's always prima facie reason for skepticism whenever the MSM is bashing the right.

Yet Another Report Concludes That COVID Came From the Wuhan Institute of Virology

Again I say: 

With the exception of a few brief periods of time when some new evidence and analysis emerged that seemed like it might tip the balance of plausibility back toward the zoonotic hypothesis, the lab-leak hypothesis has almost always been the more plausible one.

   That is: from the perspective of a lay observer, given the information available to people like me.

   The public-facing medical-scientific establishment reacted as such groups typically now react: by dogmatically claiming not only that the LLH was false but obviously so. I saw one panel of virologists--and this was a webcast of a Zoom call...so the MSM can't be blamed for cherry-picking it to highlight--say that the LLH was "tin-foil hat territory." 

   Of course this leads us to the big conversation about progressive vs. populist views of expertise. But, when so many experts and organizations of experts have been ideologically captured by the same extremist ideology, it's hard to deny that the populists seem much less wrong than the other guys.

Trump: Suspend the Constitution

Fucking idiot.

Carolina Drops 4th in a Row in Blacksburg

Presumably they'll drop out of the top 25--is this the most precipitous fall of any #1 team?

No Bacot--so that's a partial explanation.

Whelp, congratulations to the Hokies.

Also: this sucks.

Turley: Censorship by Surrogate: Musk's Document Dump Could be a Game-Changer

Dems seems to have used Twitter as a surrogate to, basically, launder their endeavors to violate the First Amendment.

John Ellis: The Decline of Higher Education

On target:

This is therefore the core of the problem we face: universities overrun by the wrong kind of people—political zealots who don’t understand academia, have no aptitude for it, and use it to achieve ends incompatible with it. While that condition remains, no real improvement is possible. Reform means in one way or another replacing the wrong kind of people in higher education with the right kind, and nothing short of that will have much effect.
   In the last few years, critical race theory has overrun our public schools and the medical profession has begun to go woke, as has the military, the law, journalism, and even museums. Left radicalism has been making enormous progress through its dominance of the campuses.
   This is exactly what the radicals promised us back in the sixties with their Port Huron statement. They admitted then that in America they could never succeed at the ballot box, and so they intended to seize control of the universities and use them to promote their ideology. They easily conquered the humanities and social sciences, and now that STEM fields have been brought to heel by means of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, their control of the campuses is virtually complete, and they have begun to use them just as they said they would.
   What can we do? First, it’s well to remember that the left/right ratio of campus faculty is still rising fast, which means that however bad things are now, they will be worse next year, and still worse the year after that. If you find that hard to imagine, just think about what has happened in these last two years. One whole generation of college students has already been indoctrinated; about half of young people now favor socialism. But where will we be after two generations of the same treatment? And this would also mean two generations knowing nothing about the Constitution—a frightening thought.
   Some well-meaning colleagues think that we should keep trying to persuade the campuses to be more academically-minded. But you can’t persuade people whose values have nothing in common with yours, and in any case this suggestion has a fatal flaw: it leaves the wrong people in place.
   This corrupted version of higher education is doing immense damage to our society. Our children are not getting a college education, the colleges are spreading a destructive ideology, and the professions are being corrupted one after another. The public pays for this through taxation, tuition payments, and donations. While the flow of that money continues, nothing will change. It now supports people who are officially hired to do one job but who actually do a completely different one of their own choosing. Reform will come only when public attitudes catch up with the reality of what’s going on—and that’s where the efforts of reformers ought to be directed. Most parents still think they are sending their children to college, not to bootcamp for radical activists. They will stop doing this only when they come to understand the difference.
   If and when the flow of public money dwindles, these irretrievably corrupted institutions would begin to fail for want of enrollment. At that point some empty campus buildings would become available for building serious universities from scratch—places like the new University of Austin. Competition from new institutions of higher learning might begin to put some radicalized campuses out of business.
   The good news is that the public is already beginning to vote with its feet. For every five undergraduates who enrolled in the fall of 2011, there were only four enrolled ten years later in 2021. That’s a drop of 3.6 million, out of some 20 million. Adjusting those numbers either for an aging population or for Covid makes little difference. These numbers mean that millions of parents and students have already figured out that college is no longer worth the cost in lost years and money. Let’s hope that more do so soon.

New Progressive Talking-Points Dropped: Taibbi / "PR For World's Richest Man" Edition

Leftists and especially "journalists" are bots or scripts with pre-prepared talking points like "PR" and "richest man." See for yourself. This is how the Regime works. It's a big performance to get people to follow their script. It's reflexive hyperreality. pic.twitter.com/PHnI74PuX1

— James Lindsay, defeating the groomers (@ConceptualJames) December 3, 2022

Journalists and Online Hate: a 2-Minute Look Inside a Woketarian Cult Ritual

Here's my 2-minute summary of last night's ridiculous woke seminar, "Journalists and Online Hate". 🤡

How can normies, like us, deal with this Woke Ideology Cult?

Laugh at them ...Mercilessly. 😂 pic.twitter.com/UFFQnwOBnd

— Adam Beis (@adambeis) December 2, 2022

One wonders whether there's any way to reason with people once they've become so deeply immersed in cultic ideology. 

Former VP of ACLU: ACLU Has Been Captured by the Lunatic Left

Not news, of course.

Teacher of the Year Advocates Turning Students Into "Social Justice" Activists

 Sydney Chaffee: How teachers can help kids find their political voices | TED Talk

DEI/EDI Insanity at Canadian Universities

We are bequeathing to the next generation Lysenkoist universities and professionals like engineers and doctors who have been accepted almost entirely because of their sex, race, and sexual preferences. 

Oh and: their woke credentials.

If you live another 10-or-so years, you'll face the leading edge of this disaster. 

Some of us will die because as a result.

The harm to the nation and the Western world will be incalculable.

Taibbi: The Twitter Files: How Twitter Suppressed Information and Tried to Influence the Election

link

B-21 Rollout

I love me some military aircraft...but this ceremony is a bit much for me. A little creepy, actually. The operatic music..jeez...you know what this thing is for, right?

Baal Distances Self from Balenciaga

savage

Kanye Releases New Album: "My Struggle"

daaaaamnnn

Kanye Self-Destructs

Holy freakin' shit.

Tarheels 65 - Hoosiers 77

LOL so much for number 1...

Three Ls in a row...and didn't look particularly good doing it. 

Almost no assists. That's a bad sign.

More Woke D&D: The Reaver Horde Descends on a Psychologist Who Argues that Orcs Aren't Racist

I mean, his arguments are just so-so...but the Reaver Horde (to mix fictional universes) have no arguments at all. It's all shrieky ad hominems. 

On the basis of nothing, they accuse him of advocating slavery and--get this--spanking.

Dungeons & Dragons Confirms “Sensitivity Readers” and Announces They Will Change The Nature Of In-Game Races

If you have any doubts that the Woketarians are a cult, just read through this.

VDH: If the Progressive Left Wanted to Destroy the Country, What, Exactly, Would It Do Different?

A question I've asked myself many times.

GOP Preparing to Learn Nothing Again With Midterms Review

MSDNC, but maybe worth a read anyway.

   Both parties have the same tendency: to blame "messaging." It's never their unpopular or bad polices...it's never a bad or unpopular "message"...always just a failure of messaging"...

   I doubt (contra MSNBC) that the Pubs' immigration stance is the culprit--but, then, I would... My guess is Trump. And abortion. But JMO.