Elsewhere (226)
Social psychologist Clay Routledge on the tragedy and farce of identity politics:
Identity politics, especially what is going on within the academic left, is strange because it is at odds with much of what we know about inter-group relations. Decades ago, psychological scientists established that dividing people into groups and highlighting group differences leads to in-group bias. It also leads to hostility if the groups perceive themselves as fighting over scarce resources… Experimental research also shows that making people feel like victims, which is common in identity politics and on college campuses, increases feelings of entitlement and reduces pro-social behaviour… The postmodern fields that promote identity politics ignore decades of good research on both what creates conflict and the best ways to reduce it.
Why, it’s almost as if the point of the exercise were to cultivate lots of pretentious guilt and exploitable animosity.
Jack F Mourouzis interviews Christina Hoff Sommers:
For activists committed to the doctrine of intersectionality, universities have to be seen as racist, sexist, violent institutions. The theory demands it. In fact, our institutions of higher learning are among the least bigoted or violent places on Earth. To maintain the theory, activists stretch the meanings of words beyond comprehension. When I politely challenged fainting-couch feminism at Oberlin and Georgetown, protestors accused me of “violence.” According to diversity officials at Berkeley and UCLA, anyone who suggests that “men and women have equal opportunities for achievement” or refers to the US as “a land of opportunity” is creating a “hostile” environment and “targeting” marginalised people.
And Roger Kimball on news, fake news and very fake news:
The motor of fake news is not inaccuracy. It’s malice. I had an insight into this important truth a couple weeks back when I was at a swank New York club for an evening event. The establishment in question is overwhelmingly conventional, i.e., leftish, in that smug sort of way that publications like the New Yorker and the New York Times, along with CNN and MSNBC, exude. I ran into an acquaintance, a female journalist I hadn’t seen in years. I knew that her politics were conventional in the above sense, but I had also found her an amusing and lively person. We were chatting when someone she knew from the Times joined in. I then overheard him explain to her that she had to be careful about what she posted on Facebook, Twitter, etc., because anything too explicitly anti-Trump could be used against her when that glorious day came and “they” – the conventional fraternity of groupthink scribblers – finally took down that horrible, despicable man. “We’ve got dozens of people working on it all the time,” he explained, adding that it was only a matter of time before they got the goods on Trump and destroyed him.
At which point, inexplicably, this sprang to mind.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
“You are creating a kind of liberalism that the minute it crosses the street into the real world, is not just useless, but obnoxious and dangerous.”
http://heatst.com/world/cnns-van-jones-attacks-useless-obnoxious-campus-liberalism/
increases feelings of entitlement and reduces pro-social behaviour
Sounds like most of the lefties I’ve ever met.
increases feelings of entitlement and reduces pro-social behaviour
increases feelings of entitlement and reduces pro-social behaviour
That’s something of an understatement. We’ve seen, many times, the kinds of behaviour being excused and even championed in the name of some imagined victimhood. It’s become a license, a fig leaf, for almost any obnoxious urge.
The purpose of identity politics, at least in the U.S., is to destroy the idea and ideal of America. That is, a nation whose existence is not predicated upon tribal affiliation, but upon adherence to a set of principles applicable to all of us equally, merely by virtue of being human. Those principles stand in the way of the the unprincipled who seek power. It’s easier to appeal to primitive, tribal anxieties in order to exert control than to argue in the realm of abstract ideas like “unalienable rights” for all humans.
increases feelings of entitlement and reduces pro-social behaviour
“Anti-pipeline activists who left 2,500 garbage trucks of waste also left helpless animals”
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/dakota-access-protestors-leave-abandoned-frost-bitten-dogs/
As out host would say, because they care so very much.
Anti-pipeline activists who left 2,500 garbage trucks of waste also left helpless animals
It’s almost as though chronically self-involved and self-flattering people don’t actually care about whatever they pretend to care about, or much at all, besides themselves and their in-group signalling. Imagine my surprise.
New robo-sexual outrage discovered.
This:
The motor of fake news is not inaccuracy. It’s malice.
Also that (Ye Gods!):
Most informed people understand that this is a remarkably stupid time to be alive.
And if this doesn’t qualify as the other, Lord alone knows what will … paranoid delusion definitely has its place alongside malice and stupid.
New robo-sexual outrage discovered.
I see, another problem created out of nothing so someone can be offended for no particular reason. IOW SJW SSDD.
I see, another problem created out of nothing so someone can be offended for no particular reason.
Offhand, I can’t think of a better example of walking miles out of your way, crossing several rivers, and then bashing yourself with rocks, until you can find a tiny, rather implausible, reason to complain. Also, does anyone actually feel comfortable talking to their phones and other such devices, especially in public? I mean, isn’t it almost impossible to avoid feeling… well, stupid?
IOW SJW SSDD.
At first, I read SSDD as “single-sided, double density” … which works, actually.
Anti-pipeline activists who left 2,500 garbage trucks of waste . . .
I’ve told you a hundred million times never to exaggerate.
—Thank yew, thank yew, yer a wunnerful audience . . . .
And there does seem to be some matter of uncertainty as to what a truck actually may be.
From the link itself; Anti-pipeline activists who left 2,500 garbage trucks of waste also left helpless animals . . . and where the exact same article also then contradicts itself by stating that Authorities estimated that protesters left enough garbage and human waste to fill 2,500 pickup trucks.
From elsewhere: Federal and local officials estimate there’s enough trash and human waste to fill 2,500 pick-up trucks, according to ABC News.
And also: It’s estimated it will take 250 trucks filled with litter to clear the camp.
Dumpsters, even . . . “About 240 rollout dumpsters have been hauled out, . . .
Pickups again, that ABC article: Local and federal officials estimate there’s enough trash and debris in the camp to fill about 2,500 pickup trucks.
Also, does anyone actually feel comfortable talking to their phones and other such devices, especially in public? I mean, isn’t it almost impossible to avoid feeling… well, stupid?
The only time I want to talk to a computer is when I’ve been made captain of the Enterprise.
The only time I want to talk to a computer is when I’ve been made captain of the Enterprise.
Or when you’re trying to disassemble the brain of a homicidal HAL 9000, obviously. But interplanetary crises aside, it just seems a bit ostentatious.
Essential for developing transparent aluminum, however. Mouse being so quaint by comparison.
Thompson’s Theory of Internet Star Trek Gravity is borne out once again.
I mean, isn’t it almost impossible to avoid feeling… well, stupid?
Yes … for those who already know what it’s like not to feel stupid.
No, feeling stupid is when you find yourself chastising your children for trolling the stupid Siri voice by asking it dumb questions just to get into a snarky give and take with it (young people are, frighteningly imho, comfortable with talking to their phones).
Rational logic says “it’s just a generated voice”; life experience and upbringing shout “speaking impolitely is a social faux pas”.
My kids have taken to doing it in front of me to get the reaction — so now they troll me.
I tell them they’ll be sorry when the Cylons come back.
Decades ago, psychological scientists established that dividing people into groups and highlighting group differences leads to in-group bias.
They probably spent months or years plus tens of thousands of dollars/pounds when they could have just spent a Saturday afternoon at City vs. United.
Ladies? ahem.
You’re welcome.
Hal.
Those “trucks” are a bogus measure of volume, no matter how you figure them.
Speaking as a computer engineer of, shall we say, un certain age, the canonical unit of volume-in-transport is the “station wagon”, as in “never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magtapes rolling down the highway” (courtesy Andrew Tannenbaum).
You’re welcome.
I see those knickers are being steamed, then.
Though I still think this is my favourite ladies’ lingerie advert.
Oh come on. They’re testing bras in a wind tunnel.
And in other news, now Dave Rubin is deemed too controversial to speak on campus.
Why, it’s almost as if the point of the exercise were to cultivate lots of pretentious guilt and exploitable animosity.
The ‘pretentious guilt’ link is a bit disturbing. Now you have to confess your guilt before you can speak? Why is no one laughing at this shit?
@Jacob: “Now you have to confess your guilt before you can speak?”
And before you have lunch, too…
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/cambridge-college-to-rethink-menu-after-jamaican-stew-racism-claim-a3476621.html
The ‘pretentious guilt’ link is a bit disturbing. Now you have to confess your guilt before you can speak?
Apparently, it’s the height of “woke” fashion – confessing one’s default white male wrongness, and confessing that one can never know the deep, deep suffering of Designated Victim Groups and should therefore always defer to them. It’s positively Maoist. As the students dutifully apologise for their whiteness, maleness and “privilege,” they seem utterly unaware of the historical precedents for such displays.
The Fiamengo video is, of course, worth watching in full.
What’s dismaying, as you watch, isn’t just the absurd pretence of victimhood, or the hallucinatory guilt, or the gleeful harassment of random people. It’s also the fact that these supposed intellectuals seem so extraordinarily dense. When Fiamengo invites a class to consider reversing the genders in a familiar scenario, thereby challenging a feminist trope, basic logic confounds them, and when confounded they get angry. These are people who’ve been led to believe they’re the thinkers of tomorrow, destined to lead the rest of us; yet they don’t seem at all equipped for having their conceits tested. They don’t even seem temperamentally suited for a place at university.
Why is no one laughing at this shit?
Why indeed. Maybe that’s what’s makes it creepy.
It’s also the fact that these supposed intellectuals seem so extraordinarily dense.
Exactly.
The vast majority of the lefties known to me tend to see the world in the same way- a simplistic, Manichaean, zero-sum view; that, or a they have a sort of fundamental inability to make conceptual connections. They are also often quite spectacularly wrong when it comes to history, even if relatively recent events are in issue (for the British left, this means anything that ever happened during the Thatcher era).
Exactly.
I suppose you have to take a few shortcuts in the rush to be righteous.
(for the British left, this means anything that ever happened during the Thatcher era).
On this side of the pond, anything that ever happened during the Reagan Administration (mostly, the same time period).
I’ll bet you didn’t know that was an “economic depression”, did you?
I’ll bet you didn’t know that was an “economic depression”, did you?
You just got me harking back to Simply Red and “Money’s Too Tight To Mention”.
Thanks a lot…
The people who sneer at talking to computers must have exceptionally thin fingers. I find it hard, at age 60, to type on a tiny phone keyboard, so I use Google’s dictation service instead. It’s remarkably accurate after the first few weeks, and much faster.
The people who sneer at talking to computers must have exceptionally thin fingers.
I was once told I had fingers like a pianist.
At least, I think it was pianist.
increases feelings of entitlement and reduces pro-social behaviour…
What feelings of entitlement?
https://reason.com/blog/2017/03/01/watch-a-liberal-bro-student-calmly-destr
“I was raised by a feminist mother,”
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/the-trans-women-who-become-lesbians-after-years-as-gay-men
What feelings of entitlement?
Note the casual, practised arrogance, the contempt. “How dare you film us as we smash your property? You have no right.”
What feelings of entitlement?
When they see the video of themselves, which now seems likely, I wonder what it is they’ll see? And will they ever see anything different?
I find it hard, at age 60, to type on a tiny phone keyboard, so I use Google’s dictation service instead.
I miss my olden-days blackberry for just that reason.
‘Today, Alison is primarily attracted to cisgender women, but she can also be into trans women. In a way, sex with trans women is easier for her. “I’ve noticed that my sexuality is more into ass stuff and dick than most cis dykes are usually into, which can be a bit of a pain,” Alison explained, “so being into trans girls makes that work for me.”
Trans: I may be profoundly messed-up, but I still prefer to go to bed with people equipped with penises.
Trans: I may be profoundly messed-up…
I think there is some quantum level beyond messed up, correct me if I am wrong, but the way I read it is Alison is a guy who thinks he is a gal.
He is attracted to cisgender women, though, which means he is a really straight dude who dresses funny. However, though he is a straight dude who dresses funny, he prefers sex with other guys who think they are women, which makes him just plain gay. In all the smoke and dust, however, he is surprised that women who think they are women but are lesbians are not into having sex with a dude (mirabile dictu), even though he dresses like a woman. Because of that, he thinks that because he has sex with other dudes who dress funny, that makes him a lesbian (translesbian) ?
Do I have that straight (pardon the pun) ?
Do I have that straight (pardon the pun) ?
It reads like a flame war / troll fight on 4Chan’s anarchic /b/ board.
“However, though he is a straight dude who dresses funny, he prefers …”
I LOLed.
The ‘pretentious guilt’ link is a bit disturbing. Now you have to confess your guilt before you can speak?
Apparently, it’s the height of “woke” fashion . . .
Do note that for those so inclined, an event called Lent has just begun . . .
Do I have that straight (pardon the pun) ?
I’m disappointed nobody picked up on my “trans” pun.
“‘We shall creep out quietly into the butler’s pantry—’ cried the Mole.
‘—with our pistols and swords and sticks—’ shouted the Rat.
‘—and rush in upon them,’ said the Badger.
‘—and whack ’em, and whack ’em, and whack ’em!’ cried the Toad in ecstasy, running round and round the room, and jumping over the chairs.”
Unfortunately, one must be civilized. *sigh*