North Korean Defector After Attending Columbia: "Even North Korea Was Not This Nuts"

Holy crap. This is one of the most interesting interviews I've ever heard about this stuff--and I've heard a lot of them.

But the thing that got me most was out of the blue. At the end, she casually references "the future of our country"...and that really got me--instantaneously--right in the feels. Especially when contrasted with the video of the little teen lefties burning flags. Here's this woman who crossed the Gobi desert at the age of seven to escape North Korea, and who ultimately ends up here, and who, without reservation or hesitation, now speaks of the USA as our country.

   Hey! I'm not crying--you're crying.

Bad Ideas Fester and Spread In The Weaker Regions Of Academia

The humanities and qualitative social sciences are like the wet markets of academia. 

Though it may turn out that ed. schools are the Wuhan Institute of Virologies of it...

(Actually CRT was engineered in law schools. But I already thought of those analogies and they're stuck in my head.)

It's OK...

Video Game Designer REFUSES TO APOLOGIZE FOR VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!!!!!!!!

 Whaaaat????

CAN HE EVEN DO THAT??? 

HE HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY COMMANDED TO APOLOGIZE AND STILL HASN'T DONE SO!!! 

What is the next step? I don't even know! THIS IS AN INSURRECTION!!! You can't just be told to apologize for your BAD WHITE MAN-PENIS SUPREMACY THINGS and then NOT DO SO!!! Who does he think he even is???

IT'S LIKE HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW THAT ORANGE MAN BAD!!!

I CAN'T EVEN!!!!!!111111 REEEEEEEE REEEEEE  REEEEEEEE

Robert Reich: Tiny Little Pants On Fire

Possibly the strawiest man I've ever heard:

The so-called "party of free speech" is now trying to ban educators from teaching about the anguished role racism has played in the shaping of America. We can’t stand for it. pic.twitter.com/TbsOsxMzyp

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 11, 2021

Peter Berkowitz: Civic Action, Civil Discourse, And The Dogma Of Systemic Racism

This is right.

   The problem is two-to-three-fold: (a) CRT is mostly crazy; (b) students are being indoctrinated with it. Also: (c) it's a partisan political theory.

   All of these are problems. Any one of them is a problem even without the other two.

   But progressivism brooks no disagreement. It insists that all of its myriad insane theories be accepted without question and implemented immediately. 

   If schools were merely teaching about CRT as one (radical, unproven) view among others, that would be one thing. But that's not what's happening. That's not how the progressive left operates. It represents the speculative bullshit of kooky, extremist leftist intellectuals as fact--in fact, as knowledge. And not even as mere knowledge, but as unquestionable knowledge. And not even as "mere" unquestionable knowledge, but as knowledge the dissent from which is a moral failing--it makes one a racist. (Doubly so, I guess, since it already teaches that we're all already racists.)

   Actually, here's another problem: CRT isn't exactly the problem. It's just one (significant) part of the problem--it's one component of a vast, insane, politically-non-neutral worldview that the left is pushing on all of society. 

Greenwald: The Pulse Nightclub Massacre Was An Act Of Islamic Terrorism, Not An Anti-LGB Act

I remember them pushing the anti-LGB angle hard, of course, and remember being suspicious at the time, but didn't really follow it much. This is one of the ways that the media gets its preferences established. It pumps out the propaganda, and unless you're enough of a freak to pursue the truth basically to the point of pathology, their story just ends up ensconced in your head.

Even NBC News has acknowledged that the PULSE massacre was not motivated by anti-LGBT sentiment. Their article is definitive as it should be. The evidence leaves no doubt. There's no excuse for Senators and LGBT groups perpetuating this lie:https://t.co/V36i1ZHfS8

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 12, 2021

To What Extent Is Anarchy An Actual Goal Of The Progressive Left?

At some point it starts looking like a feature, not a bug.

The Best Reason To Suspect Election Shenanigans Is The Left's Dedication To Shutting Down Questioning And Investigation

"Nobody hires 100 lawyers to hide an election victory."

   I still don't think that the election was stolen--though there were appalling shenanigans that the left would be shrieking about nonstop were the tables turned.

   I still want investigations. They're not free, but I think we should be willing to spend the money to be sure. 

   As I've often said: after Russiagate, there's almost nothing I would put past the progressive establishment. 

   And: the more frantically they resist investigation, the more suspicious I get.

   I don't believe that the Dems have the sophistication to pull off such massive fraud. But neither am I confident that they wouldn't be willing to if they thought they could get away with it.

Statement From Trump: I Was Right All Along

(via Insty)

link

   The Hydroxychloroquine thing was largely luck--and may still turn out not to be true. But it wasn't entirely luck.

   Even ignoring that, we still face a kind of puzzle: if Trump's such an unhinged idiot, why is he right so often?

   My long-standing answer: Trump's biggest epistemic advantages are really just a lack of disadvantages: he's right so much more than the left because the left is wrong so often. It has become an unhinged cult driven largely by political correctness: it subordinates reason to its political dogmas. It has disabled the main mechanism by which humans make epistemic progress: it refuses to acknowledge its errors. It ignores factual disconfirmation, and discredits criticism by categorizing all who disagree with it as racists (and the like). It lives in a fantasy world of its own making. 

   Trump's main advantage is that he is kind of an asshole. He refuses to be cowed into saying--and believing--that night is day. He doesn't burst into tears when the left calls him a racist. He's the one-eye man in the valley of the blind.

Why Is Austin Media Refusing To Release A Description Of The At-Large Mass Shooter?

Just kidding--you know why.

I'm sure that, had he been a white male in a MAGA hat, they'd have been just as circumspect.

Did Derek Chauvin Get Screwed?

This makes a strong case for an affirmative answer.

The more I reflect on what I know about the case, the more implausible the verdict seems to me.

But I didn't follow it closely enough to deserve much certainty.

Outright Pseudoscience: The Next Frontier For the Pomo/CRT/Progressive Synthesis

Science is a "white way of knowing." CRT says that "lived experience" and nonwhite "ways of knowing" are just as good as science and scientific medicine. And, while the words and actions of many scientists during the batflu pandemic would seem to make this a rather low bar to clear...well...this stuff is still bullshit.

   Notice the tortured headline that...well...does it or doesn't it really say that this voodoo stuff works against the COVID? 

   If you've followed this blog, you know that something has annoyed me for awhile. Last time leftist pomo bullshit metastasized wildly--during the paleo-PC crisis of the late '80s - early '90s--pseudoscientific and outright magical "new age" mumbo jumbo was simultaneously the rage in pop culture. I predicted that, after crazy leftist pomo stuff erupted again that pseudoscience / magic / woo-woo stuff would also show up. CRT is actually outright pseudoscientific itself...but I don't count that. Astrology was recently in vogue a bit--and maybe still is. There's still time for me to be right! But the woo is really not showing up to the degree I thought it would. But maybe this ancient Chinese medicine stuff will get it going.

UK Gov't Advisor: Mask Use Should Continue "Forever"

Surprise! She's also a communist.

Did Derek Chauvin Kill George Floyd With Knee Restraint?

Kinda looks like no.

Proven Right: Trump Savors Post-Presidency Vindication Streak

link

The lies lasted through the election.

That's all they ever really had to do.

Will The Durham Investigation Produce Some Serious Charges?

Maybe

Obama Quote That's Right On Target

Truer words were never spoken:

“We have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago”

That just couldn't be righter.

But he's talking about the Republicans, not the Democrats.

That's right...the party that thinks that women are adult female humans and that the Bill of Rights should be protected is dangerously radical and deviating from the status quo of five years ago... The party that thinks that you can change your sex-or-gender by chanting clothes, that want to undermine the first two Amendments at least, that insists that all whites are racist in virtue of simply being white, that males should be able to participate in girls' and women's sports, that mothers should be called "birthing people" because reasons, and that wants to implement socialism in order to avoid a made-up climate crisis...the, like, 20th-or-so made-up climate crisis since about 1970...that part is perfectly normal...
   I deserve a good kick in the ass for supporting that guy.

Obama Pretends That It's Conservatives Who Have Spun Out Of Orbit

I just don't know what to make of this.

I mean...much of the election stuff is nutty--though thus far unrefuted. But, nutty as it is, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the insanity that's gripped the left. He's too smart to believe that the Pubs are the main problem. 

One of the most depressing possibilities is that he really is sympathetic to CRT and associated progressive madness. He did apparently work with Derrick Bell at Harvard...

I fear it may be true. If so, I'm an idiot for all the volunteering I did for that guy and all the money I gave him.

Robin DiAngelo Is Full Of Shit

I've only read excerpts from the book, but you can barely exist in 2021 without being exposed to her bullshit ideas. 

She's just another race grifter.

Idiot.

The Grand Unified Theory Of Progressivism: Racism Causes Climate Change

Finally! The conceptual holy grail of progressivism!

But how to work in transgenderism....?

The Greatest Threats

It's th' Rooskies!

It's "white supremacy"!

HOW DARE YOU IT'S TH' GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!*

Funny how it's always something the left has its panties in a wad about...

* Note that Trump POUNCED "lashed out" called bullshit on this.

USA's Cultural Revolution Proceedeth Apace: JAMA Editor-In-Chief "Resigns" For un-PC Tweet

Hey, this stuff is confined to campuses and it's phase II of the civil rights movement and the only people who oppose it just want to be able to use racial slurs without consequences and political correctness and cancel culture don't exist. Also, why are you so interested in this stuff, anyway? It's pretty suspicious that you'd be so interested...

   Also, so far as I cant tell, Bauchner's tweet* was supporting the (largely bullshit, of course) idea of "structural racism," not questioning it. The first sentence of the tweet was intended to be in the "voice" (as they like to say) of a naive, unenlightened/unwoke person who needs to be "educated"...by people spewing leftist talking points and using their medical credentials to lend bogus epistemic authority to trendy, illiberal nonsense. The second sentence was more like Bauchner's own words--it's basically an assertion that there is "structural racism"--read: magical, empirically undetectable, racist ectoplasm--in medicine. And an assertion that all will be explained in the podcast. 

   So Bauchner seems to have been advertising for a podcast containing Woketarians testifying about their acceptance of Diversity Jesus into their hearts...but part of his tweet could be interpreted to mean basically the opposite of what it says. By, y'know, the sufficiently stupid and/or malicious and/or woke. But I repeat myself. Because postmodernism. That is: the death of the author, intentions don't matter, every interpretation is exactly as good as every other interpretation bullshit bullshit bullshit.

   Of course he issued the de rigueur groveling apology.

   If you're still cowering and hoping that the cult will leave you alone if you just mouth their words and go along with it all...well...you see how well that works.

* Nope...was not even his tweet. He didn't write it. He didn't even see it before it was published. So my final sentence should probably be in bold.

Addendum:  JQ said, upon hearing about this:  he should have masturbated on a Zoom meeting before resigning. Then he might have been able to get his job back.

They Got Boris

facepalm

   At one time in my life, I was somewhat sympathetic to this general kind of bullshit.

   I thought we were at a point analogous to the fall of France. Now I'm worried that we're seeing the progressive analog of Operation Sealion succeeding. 

A [Social] Scientist Who Said No To COVID Groupthink

No mention of the fact that this sort of thing always involves pushing the line preferred by the progressive left.

The Kamala Harris Saga Gets Weirder And Weirder

I have no idea what the hell's going on with her.

As I've already said, it's become downright bizarre. By refusing to go to the border, she's creating a massive problem for herself. Basically all she had to do was, y'know, her job. As Veep. Which means: go walk around and shake some hands and mouth some platitudes. But, y'know, in this case: do it at the border. 

  Sure, it's a Democrat-created clusterfuck down there. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen an administration commit such a massive unforced error before. Except, of course: progressives don't think this was an error, so

  But it's not going to change because Kamala doesn't go do her Veep thing there. Suck it up. Go down there and pat some kids on the head. Be back in Swampland by dinnertime. What. The. Hell. Is. The. Problem????

   Whatever she's up to, it's apparently important enough to be worth shooting herself in the foot in this way.

Stephen Miller: Biden's Immigration Plan Would "Erase America's Nationhood"

It seems to me that Miller is right. 

   I think he's definitely right that the progressive's damn-near-de-facto-open-borders position would do extraordinary damage to the nation, and at least take a giant stride to "erasing it...as a nation."

   This is one of progressivisms utterly insane positions. This isn't something about which there can be a reasonable disagreement. This isn't some fine-tuning question, nor something that falls in a gray area. This is utter madness. This isn't the sort of thing that should be a matter of serious public discussion.

   Biden has already done more harm to the USA than Trump did in four years. In fact, Trump made the country stronger. Biden is trying to destroy it. Not, of course, intentionally. But, rather, because he's accepted the Woketarian madness that's infected the extremist left.

UFOs; Or: I'm An Idiot, Part MCLXVIII

I said this before, but it bears repeating: I'm just as much of an idiot for mindlessly asserting that them oofohs were Skunk Works black projects as the LGM brigade is for mindlessly asserting that they're flying saucers. Or, well...at least knee-jerk naturalistic...or terrestrialistic...claims like mine have the virtue of conservatism. But: still (apparently) wrong, still mindless, still knee-jerk. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Also: the Skunk Works hypothesis is weirder / more ostentatious than the hypotheses West argues for. No crazy new gizmos needed. Just balloons and F-18s and geese and shit.

Delicious Apple Pie Is TOTALLY RACIST BIGOT!!!!11111

...but, er, it's still delicious, so

This nonsense is, of course, nonsense. There'd be no sense in paying any attention to these monomaniacal idiots if they hadn't somehow taken control of he country...

Basically, the cult thinks that x is racist if it causes any racism...or is in any way a partial consequence of any racism...or stands in any identifiable relation at all to anything that's in any way racist...which mean....everything is racist...including, of course, "anti-racism". Especially since "anti-racism" is not only a consequence of racism, but, in its contemporary fanatical, irrationalist form, it's causing racism--both by openly advocating for anti-white racism, and by increasing the likelihood of repelling people who are ordinarily themselves against racism.

  But also and anyway. Everything stands in some relation or other to apples...and APPLES ARE OPPRESSION, JACK. Ergo etc. etc.

More Mick West On UFOs

He's responding to an attempted debunking of one of his earlier videos by a former F-16 pilot. The latter dude is kind of a jackass about it all, but West maintains a polite, neutral, reasonable tone throughout:

Russiagate, Lab-Leak-gate, Lafayette-Square-gate...Not To Mention Covington-Kids-gate...And On And On...

How many of these things can pile up before Progressitarianism/Woketarianism starts losing adherents? 

The cult's propaganda wing insisted that Xenu or whatever and his fleet of UFOs were gonna land LIKE TOTALLY NEXT WEEK several times now...and...no dice. And we're just talking about the conclusively-disproven stuff--not all the other patent falsehoods they're pushing like climate apocalypticism, BLM's open season claim, transgender mythology etc. etc. etc. 

   The UFOs did not land, my dudes. 

   When prophecy fails...again and again...the cognitive dissonance...eventually...becomes too much for even cultists to tolerate.

   And note: contrary to what a lot of conservatives are claiming: I don't think it's exactly right to blame the media. The media is part of progressivism--but it's like a semi-autonomous propaganda office. Sometimes the progressive MSM acts fairly autonomously, but that's usually because it knows the general ideas and talking points that the Democrats and leftist "scholar-activists" are already pushing. For example, it doesn't have to stop and ask what it should say about Kavanaugh/CBF, nor about clearing Lafayette Square. It both reports on the dogma of the left and helps shape it. With respect to Lafayette Square, I'd bet that it is mainly the PMSM's fault. With respect to LabLeakGate, it was progressive virologists who took the lead in making the LLH unPC. Or so it seems to me, anyway.

[Title weirdness: I'm not claiming that the lab-leak hypothesis is proven; but I do (seem to?) mean that something's been proven...er...I guess I meant: it's proven that the classification of the LLH as bunk was bullshit; it's never been bunk. Whatevs.]

Thomas J. Philipson: College Subsidies Are A Feedback Loop For Big Governement

It's amazing how much becomes clear when you break out of liberal groupthink. Conservatives have been trying to tell me this stuff for decades, but it just couldn't get through my thick, blue skull. 

   And lemme tell ya--a whole lotta students have no business in college. And note that I mean: they don't like it, they aren't good at it so they drag the institution down, and they don't get anything from it. If they were on the good side of any one of those divides, I'd be happy to have them in my classes. Even untalented students who are interested are fine by me. But honestly, there are just too many students in my intro classes who shouldn't be there. (Of course upper-division classes have mostly philosophy students in them, so they've basically been selected for interest.) 

   My university--and I'm sure it's not unusual in this respect--treats itself like a business. It panics if enrolments (customers!) fall, and prefers unqualified, paying students (customers!) to fewer students. One reason is: it doesn't want to risk finding itself in a position in which it might have to cut faculty positions...or, God forbid, administrative positions! But, honestly, a whole lotta faculty don't actually have a lot of business at universities, either. And don't get me started on administrators and quasi-administrators. We could easily do with half as many...

Anyway.

WSJ: A Made-In-Washington Inflation Spike

link   The Trump economy was great; the Biden economy is shit, and getting shittier.

But, hey, no mean tweets so

Kamala Harris, No-Show Border Czar

Holy shit, this is just bizarre at this point.

As if refusing to go to the border for months after being named border czar weren't freakishly weird enough, she's now getting testy at journalists for asking her about it. Seriously, how much longer can this go on? There's something weird going on. She'd never make so much trouble for herself unless there were. There's some reason she doesn't want to go. Obviously she doesn't want to have to deal with the disaster...but that's a given. I wonder whether there might be some friction about this between her and Biden. I could easily see her and/or her people being really pissed about being handed the biggest self-created disaster thus far in a self-created-disaster-packed administration. I'd be all like You go be border czar, Joe; you f*cked it up; you go fix it. Maybe that's what Harris is all like, too.

Progressivism Contra The Family--Shrier: "When The State Comes For Your Kids"

link

The neo/quasi-Marxist left has long made it clear that it aims to erode or destroy the nuclear family. This isn't some conservative crackpottery: as is so often the case, the leftist intelligentsia and activist vanguard has long come right out and said as much. They do refrain from saying it so openly that their less-radical trailing edge would be unable to ignore it. You wouldn't think that'd work, but somehow it does. It's a standard kind of motte-and-bailey strategy. It works just well enough that non-wackos who want to believe can continue doing so. It's rather like their position on anti-white racism, open borders, etc.--there's an exoteric doctrine and an esoteric one. The latter is for the elect--among themselves, and in their quasi-scholarly conferences and publications, they can admit their racism, admit that their ultimate goal is open borders--and admit that they seek the destruction of the family. The exoteric doctrine leaves all those ultimate aims unstated. If you follow out their lines of argument, you can see where the lines converge...but people don't follow out lines of argument. Not most of them, anyway. And certainly not true believers.

   So now the incoherent doctrine of transgenderism is being used to more-or-less just take children away from their parents. K-12 schools are brainwashing children with radical leftist dogma, including CRT. Holy and unquestionable BLM has openly said that they are Marxist, and aim to "disrupt" the nuclear family...but, hey, they took that off their website when people started noticing. And, again: that thin, ridiculous, half-hearted effort at concealment is enough for the true believers.

   Ten years ago, if I'd heard someone say the things I now routinely say, I'd have classified that person as a right-wing kook. Make of that what you will.

The Biggest Problem With The Progressive/Pomo Synthesis

The biggest problem--or plausibly so, I say--isn't that progressivism is a radical, illiberal, irrationalist view, nor that the post-post-modern philosophical mishmash of CRT, postmodernism and the other post-s (poststructuralism, postcolonialism) are also radical and irrationalist. The biggest problem isn't even that this synthesis (or jumble) is poorly-justified and almost certainly false. The biggest problem is that it's being imposed on the nation--and without anything like due deliberation. Anybody who wants to honestly discuss or even believe this vast, sweeping, weird, implausible view should, of course be able to do so. And if--terrible as that would be--we decide as a nation to adopt the view, that would be one thing. But that's not what's happening. What's happening is that it's being imposed on us against our will by a rabid, quasi-religious cult. Children are being brainwashed, adults are being indoctrinated by their employers--and,worse, the state. Discussion and disagreement are squelched. Laws are being differentially enforced. Mobs--both electronic and physical--are intimidating people into silence, and even deploying violence to achieve their ends. This is totalitarianism and terrorism.

Greenwald On Clearly Lafayette Square: Yet Another Media Tale Collapses

link

The media lies and lies, always always to promote the view of the left.

...Except, of course, when war's afoot. What accounts for their having been all-in on WMD madness? 

I mean...that was twenty years ago, and the entire left, including the media, has converted to Woketarianism... So maybe that's the difference.  I just don't know.

Maybe they always just choose the stupidest, most emotional position on everything. Eh. Just can't be. 

Amazon: No Confederate Flags, But Plenty Of Communist Flags

Pages of 'em, actually. 

WTH Is The Problem With The Kamala Cookies??

Um...I don't get it.

   The cookies are kinda creepy-looking...but I just don't get why they're supposed to be some big, bad deal. 

   After the last five years, I'm kinda ok with the strategy of hammering the Dems on every single thing we might be able to score points with. So maybe that's what's up. But really, this cookie thing is nuts.

The Deadly Results Of Defunding The Police

link

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. 

Read more »

"The Whole World Is Crossing The Rio Grande"

Biden is a disaster.

DOI Inspector General Clears Trump Re: Clearing Lafayette Park

Of course the left's story about the event is already in place, and this won't get 1/10th as much coverage as the initial, histrionic accusations.

Daunte Wright Was A Violent Carjacker

What a surprise.

NPR: Leftist Scholar "Uncovers The Racist Roots Of The Second Amendment"; Harsanyi: Uh, No

NPR (As is so often the case, the title is the locus of the most concentrated bullshit.)

Harsanyi: basically: If by 'uncovers' you mean 'makes up'...then sure.

Her argument seems to be a big, fat cheat--i.e. lie. And NPR uses a success term in the title. "Claims to uncover" would be one thing. But instead NPR opts for a lie of its own. Which, of course, shouldn't surprise anyone.

VT Soccer Player Suing Coach Who Benched Her After She Refused To Bend The Knee To BLM

link   I hope she absolutely sacks Tech and that coach.

NYT Idiot: Oh, Boo Hoo Pickup Trucks With American Flags Mean "This Is My Country"!!!

..."it's not yours" Boo hoo hoo.

And they didn't vote Biden but they still get to live in this country can anybody explain that to me boo hoo hoo...

Mara Gay: idiot.

WaPo Reporter Troubled By "Racist Legacy" Of Some Birds

facepalm

VDH: The Lethal Wages Of Trump Derangement Madness

Would it have saved lives if the lab-leak hypothesis not been suppressed by the left on account of political incorrectness? I don't really see how. That seems to be the central case of the essay. But the other cases make the point better. And I think the points about Russia and Hydroxychloroquine are right. TDS harmed the nation. It's really just one manifestation of political correctness: the left is always right, any view or person that opposes their preferences is horrible and vilified. 

   Trump, of course, did his part by being incapable of moderating his tone so much as an iota. He certainly made matters worse. Thing is, I agree with him in principle--you see that I refuse to moderate my tone. Why? Because that's one of the ways the crazy left wins: it can say whatever it wants in whatever tone it wants, while demanding that we not respond at all--or, if the can't prevent response, they demand a self-abasing, hyperbolically deferential tone. But they're the crazy ones, not us. And we have no obligation to be delicate about that. We should call a spade a spade clearly, directly, and energetically... But the President is in a different position. You can be direct without going out of your way to provoke. Trump was mostly an effect, not a cause. It's the left that lost its shit; that's why Trump was elected. But then Trump helped fan the flames. Not impermissible. But also not prudent. Obviously. 

RIP ACLU

Nothing major in here is really news. But it's still depressing as hell.