ENDING THE CULTURE OF LEFTIST IMPUNITY: After Trump’s Executive Order, Four Men Face Federal Charges for Andrew Jackson Statue Incident.
Archive for 2020
June 28, 2020
WHY DOES THE WASHINGTON POST HATE WHITE WOMEN? This now-deleted tweet may explain why:
Boy the NYT and WaPo certainly are filling their ranks with hate-filled editors.
I’D LIKE TO BUY THIS WOMAN’S NO DOUBT LONG-SUFFERING HUSBAND A DRINK OR THREE:
And send her off to read Matt Taibbi.
GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Jordan Peterson: The activists are now stalking the hard scientists. The solution to this is to put some steel — or at least some countervailing fears — into the spine of university administrators
OPEN THREAD: It’s going to be a fine night tonight, it’s going to be a fine day tomorrow.
WHEN YOU’VE LOST A ROLLING STONE EDITOR… Matt Taibbi: On “White Fragility.”
A core principle of the academic movement that shot through elite schools in America since the early nineties was the view that individual rights, humanism, and the democratic process are all just stalking-horses for white supremacy. The concept, as articulated in books like former corporate consultant Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (Amazon’s #1 seller!) reduces everything, even the smallest and most innocent human interactions, to racial power contests.
It’s been mind-boggling to watch White Fragility celebrated in recent weeks. When it surged past a Hunger Games book on bestseller lists, USA Today cheered, “American readers are more interested in combatting racism than in literary escapism.” When DiAngelo appeared on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon gushed, “I know… everyone wants to talk to you right now!” White Fragility has been pitched as an uncontroversial road-map for fighting racism, at a time when after the murder of George Floyd Americans are suddenly (and appropriately) interested in doing just that. Except this isn’t a straightforward book about examining one’s own prejudices. Have the people hyping this impressively crazy book actually read it?
DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.
Read the whole thing. It’s as if the left has congealed into a fascistic liberalism, or a liberalistic fascism, or something.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Amazon to Rename Seattle’s KeyArena ‘Climate Pledge Arena.’
MAYBE THE LESS-DEADLY PART MAKES THE CONTACT-TRACING PART NOT WORTH DOING: CDC Antibody Studies Confirm Huge Gap Between COVID-19 Infections and Known Cases: The difference implies that the virus is much less deadly than it looks, but it also makes contact tracing a daunting challenge.
FLASHBACK: The Destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. “In 2001, the world reacted in horror as, part of a campaign to rid Afghanistan of idolatry, the Taliban destroyed the World Heritage Site Buddhas of Bamiyan.”
ROGER KIMBALL: The Purity Spiral Turns, as Courage Goes Missing.
The journalist Gavin Haynes has a great phrase for a familiar and disturbing phenomenon: the purity spiral.
“A purity spiral occurs,” he writes, “when a community becomes fixated on implementing a single value that has no upper limit, and no single agreed interpretation. The result is a moral feeding frenzy.”
Students of history will know all about this species of perverted gustatory over-indulgence. The French Revolution is one locus classicus.
In that macabre carnival, the more extreme Montagnards consumed the (somewhat) moderate Girondists before turning to consume themselves. No citoyen, not even Robespierre himself, could be sufficiently virtuous to satisfy the inexorable demands of revolutionary zeal.
Mao’s cultural revolution provides another classic example. In the late 1960s, the Red Guards took to the street to identify and destroy anyone and anything involved with traditional Chinese culture. The result was an orgy of destruction and murder on an industrial scale.
Read the whole thing.
THE CDC AND THE FDA HAVE BEEN UTTERLY SHAMBOLIC IN THEIR PANDEMIC RESPONSE. THIS IS JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Federal officials allowed distribution of COVID-19 antibody tests after they knew many were flawed. “It took almost three months before the FDA started pulling tests off the market, but by then, many American municipalities had already used the tests to determine whether they could send essential workers like EMTs, policemen and firemen back to work.”
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Protesters request police presence for ‘defund the police’ rally, citing their safety (video).
GEORGE KORDA: Protests amid the pandemic: What about distancing and masking?
People need clarity and consistency from leaders, particularly in times of emergency.
If public safety isn’t truly at risk, then say so. However, if it is, then it’s worth risking someone’s ire by mentioning safety precautions when congratulating gatherings of large groups. Don’t leave unanswered an obvious question: in the face of the pandemic, were such gatherings allowed, or not?
People know when leaders are avoiding an obvious question.
Related: All that bar-hopping and spring-breaking: Press ignores protests as source of new wave of COVID-19.
Think of the press as a psychological warfare effort aimed at normal Americans and you won’t go far wrong.
THE INEVITABLE COUNTERPROTESTS BEGIN: Protesters rally to save Museum of Natural History’s Teddy Roosevelt statue.
NONSENSE. ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TELL ME THAT ELECTION FRAUD IS A MYTH: Two Paterson NJ Politicians Charged With Massive Mail-In Ballot Voter Fraud.
IT WOULD BE A DISASTER OF THE FIRST ORDER. THEY NEED TO GET BEHIND TRUMP AND THE GOP CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGNS: Wall Street Quietly Begins Warning About A Biden Presidency.
HAVING TROUBLE PERSUADING YOUR FRIENDS? Professor Barry Brownstein explains why facts don’t matter to most people.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Riots and Protests Will Make Gun Ownership More Popular.