HAPPY DIVERSITY THURSDAY. “The amount of wasted time, wasted resources, and empty hours listening to tenured radicals tell service members – most born in the 21st Century, that they should first and foremost see each other by the most artificial characteristics and then use that difference to position for advantage, conflict, and disorder firmly stuck in aspic from the perspective of the early 1970s.”
Archive for 2023
February 2, 2023
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A NATION BECOMES SICK: And no, not with a physical ailment like the Coronavirus, but rather a sickness in the body politic. Georgetown University Professor of Political Theory Joshua Mitchell says “we are losing the mediating institutions about which DeTocqueville wrote in Democracy in America.” He has much more to say, much of which is based on the ancient classics, and it will leave you astounded that he retains his chair at Georgetown. Maybe I should’t be calling attention to this?
DEAL OF THE DAY: iHealth COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test. #CommissionEarned
KRUISER: A Tale of Two Parties: Ronna McDaniel’s RNC and Regular Republican Voters. “The Republican Party is now faced with heading into the most important presidential election since perhaps the American Civil War as a dysfunctional family. The Republican voters in real America are estranged from the string-pullers in Washington, specifically the RNC. McDaniel’s mere presence will guarantee that remains the case throughout the next two years.”
I WANT ONE FOR MY CAMPUS: Too cool for school: How’s ’bout a small nuclear reactor to power campus?
KEITH WHITTINGTON ON WHY DESANTIS NEEDN’T FEAR A HIGHER-EDUCATION TIT FOR TAT:
Imagine a left-wing DeSantis comes to power and is quite willing to meddle in universities to advance their own ideological vision using the kinds of tools DeSantis is now using and might use in the future. Should conservatives fear that possibility and so restrain themselves now? Not really and here’s why. The status quo in universities ALREADY looks like that is the case. They are already ideologically captured. What would a left-wing DeSantis do to get universities to behave more in accordance with his preferences? Probably nothing. Mission already accomplished.
From a conservative perspective, there is little to fear from breaking down the norm that keeps politics out of universities. From their perspective that norm is already gone. Politics is already in the universities, but it came from the inside. The calls are coming from inside the house!
Indeed. The left should have worried about tit for tat when it shattered norms, but it didn’t.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Comedian Anthony Jeselnik: ‘I Don’t Have Sympathy’ for Canceled Chappelle. “Anthony Jeselnik, on paper, should live in mortal fear of Cancel Culture. The comic traffics in material so extreme, so morally warped, that it’s shocking someone hasn’t raised a ruckus over it yet. He likely stays ahead of the mob by embracing his over-the-top brand. No one actually believes he believes what he says on stage.”
AS I SUGGESTED EARLIER, AI WILL HIT THE “CREATIVE CLASS” HARDER THAN THE WORKING CLASS: “Our exaggerated reverence for the creative impulse derives from the romantics of the early 19th century… and filtered through from intellectual bohemia to the upper middle classes…. Now, quite banal instances of human creativity are preposterously overvalued. Witness the often conceited superiority of those in only tangentially creative professions. Why should a newspaper columnist or an advertising copywriter feel himself to be more interesting than a banker or a cleaner? I have lawyer friends who complain of the rictus countenances and slipping eye-contact they get from artistic types at parties. But I know those parties. And I know my lawyers are the most interesting people in the room…. AI should disillusion us of the spurious glamour of creativity. It will be good for those who have suffered the social condescension of ‘creatives.'”
Not least because the creative work of recent decades is mostly rather bad — and in the case of expensive public art, often spectacularly bad.
REACHING ACROSS THE AISLE: Black Florida Democrat Sides With Ron DeSantis on AP African American Studies Course: ‘I Think It’s Trash.’
WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF SEXIST BIGOTRY? Office for Civil Rights probes complaints Stanford discriminates against men.
UKRAINE WAR [VIP]: Here Comes the Russian Wave. “It likely comes down to a numbers game as Russia continues cranking up its first major offensive since stalling out last summer. This is where Western weapons and training come in, or at least they should.”
Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
ADAM COLEMAN: Be inspired this Black History Month — and take it back from agenda-driven progressives.
Progressives are seducing Americans to constantly stare at past oppression of black Americans to slowly impair their vision of the present and beyond. They’re the merchants of a singular narrative about how we’re the descendants of the downtrodden who stood idly by until graciously receiving white people’s benevolence.
If you’re white, you’re supposed to grovel for forgiveness for what you haven’t personally done and simultaneously elevate yourself to become black America’s savior to allegedly prevent it from happening again. If you’re black, you’re supposed to accept your position in society as the permanently disadvantaged who resents needing assistance.
Black history is too often articulated only from the perspective of what was done to us and rarely displayed as what we were capable of overcoming — and it’s been exploited by progressives for social manipulation.
Read the whole thing.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: DeSantis Keeps Staring Down His Haters and Winning. “Democrats, their flying monkeys in the mainstream media, and now hardcore Trump faithful, would prefer that DeSantis trip up and give them a reason to force him off of the stage, but he’s not the stumbling type so far.”
VIDEO: The Flying Yeet of Death. “This is a great application of one of Murphy’s Military Laws: ‘If it’s stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid.’ For the Russians, it must be quit embarrassing to get yeeted into the afterlife by Doogie Howser’s science fair project.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The photo appears implausible to me — at least, those don’t look quite like RPG rounds attached to the drones, and they look too heavy for them though it’s hard to establish scale in this picture. I welcome input from people who know more.
More: The narrator doesn’t actually say the photo illustrates the drone used in the video, only that it’s “something like” that.
NOBODY KNOWS, NOBODY CARES: White House asks of Kamala Harris, ‘What’s she doing? Where is she?’
INCOMING! Ever hear of the Congressional Integrity Project (CIP)? Probably not, since it’s a dark money hit group funded in part by the ever-mysterious Arabella Advisors, via its Sixteen Thirty Fund.
The purpose of CIP, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross, is to dig up/create/invent anything and everything Democrats think might be needed to discredit leaders of the congressional Republican investigations into the Biden Crime Family, Biden administration disasters like the Border Crisis and the classified documents controversy.
So expect lots of mudslinging to commence soon against House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Speaker Rebellion Leader Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and many more.
But don’t expect to hear anything in the Mainstream Media about who funds CIP because it’s a Democratic opposition research operation, and why would you question anything about it, so nothing to see here, just move along.
MORE ON CHATGPT’S BUILT-IN BIAS AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS. “The potential for systems such as ChatGPT to skew the political debate..and the entire worldview of the population…seems likely to exceed the already-considerable influence of traditional and social media.”
Well, that’s one reason why they’re being pushed, of course.
BIOMEDICAL SECURITY STATE: British Edition.
LINCOLN BROWN: Former ABC Reporter Arrested on Charges That Should Concern Any Parent. “If you have kids, once you have vented, go find your child’s phone, tablet, laptop — whatever they use. Go through that thing file by file and application by application.”