Elsewhere (279)
Michael Jones on the Clown Quarter’s approximation of scholarship:
In her paper, How to Write as Felt: Touching Transmaterialities and More-Than-Human Intimacies, University of Toronto scholar Stephanie Springgay suggests that felt, a “dense material of permanently interlocking fibres,” can be linked to racism and capitalism.
It’s those “cis-heteronormative White supremacist settler colonial logics,” you see. And the “queer self-touching,” obviously.
Charles Cooke on the latest young titan of US socialism:
Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defence spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park.
Charlotte Allen on “healthy masculinity,” as defined by campus woke-lings:
In May, the University of Texas-Austin hastily pulled back a programme on “healthy masculinity” that its counselling staff had devised – amid a flood of ridicule over such aspects of the programme as posters depicting young men wearing pencilled-in dresses (complete with bust-lines) and encouraging UT’s male students to try nail polish and makeup. The programme, titled “MasculinUT” and devised in 2015, had been originally marketed as a means of reducing campus sexual assault and domestic violence. Instead, as even UT administrators ultimately conceded, it mainly consisted of promoting “gender fluidity” and the treatment of traditional masculine roles and goals — such as focusing on career “success,” becoming the family “breadwinner,” and being told to “act like a man” — as inherently pathological.
And Jonah Goldberg on Sarah Jeong and racism as a credential at the New York Times:
You can run similar thought experiments about virtually any group. If all you need to know about Oscar Wilde is that he was a gay dude, just like Richard Simmons or Milo what’s-his-name, you’re a bigot. If Meyer Lansky and Albert Einstein are merely two Jews to you, you’re an anti-Semite. If Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, and Lizzie Borden are just three chicks, you’re a sexist. But for some bizarre reason, for many people, this idea evaporates like water off a hot skillet when you replace any of these categories with “white” or, very often, “male.”
Suddenly fancy words and phrases fly like sawdust from a wood chipper: “structures of oppression!” “decontextualized!” “ahistoricized!” etc. It’s all so clever and complicated. The same people who take to the streets at the slightest suggestion that Muslims can be judged by the evil deeds of other Muslims will lecture and harangue you for hours, mob you on Twitter, or condescendingly dismiss you for not understanding that all white people have it coming.
If the cleverness and complication mentioned above seems incoherent – and if the selectivity with which the New Rules Of Victimhood are applied suggests bad faith on the part of those mouthing them – it may help to bear in mind the kinds of evasion, projection and preening spite that intersectional voodoo makes possible. And hence the kinds of personalities most strongly drawn to it. For instance, the aforementioned cleverness has enabled Ms Rani Molla, a graduate of Oberlin and Columbia, to know which members of the lower classes she can sneer at with impunity while expecting applause and in-group kudos. Because, thanks to intersectional calculus, they, not she, “have every advantage.” Which is why they’re working in a chicken rendering plant and being sneered at as “privileged,” and therefore inherently contemptible, by an Ivy League graduate who writes for the Wall Street Journal.
Such is wokeness.
For some background on Ms Jeong and her history of dementedly racist outpourings, see this thread here.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
a Guardian contributor engages excuse-making mode:
Not to be outdone, a “feminist author and journalist” weighs in with Deep Thoughts™…
I am embarrassed I hadn’t seen that, it is as clear as a mud lake.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, love her or hate her, Ann Coulter has a point about Miss Jeong’s view of male wypipo.
Over in Greater Germania, following the lead of kids in the US&A and their deep insights into issues about shooting irons, the kids have found the solution for anti-“migrant” sentiment.
Everything is organized, implicitly organized, around how men see the world… and not just men, but white men … see the world. And this is a problem. This is why so many things suck.
Well, we tried organizing the world around women for a good, long time. But the Old Stone Age *really* sucked, so we tried Rule by Fathers instead, and that’s worked out pretty well. Pity we seem to be giving up on it:-/.
Everything is organized, implicitly organized, around how men see the world… and not just men, but white men … see the world. And this is a problem. This is why so many things suck.
So a patently false and childish statement, with several begged questions packed in there, followed by a series of unearned conclusions.
She’s an intellectual, you know.
“Also, this.”
Oh, definitely that.
“Not to be outdone, a “feminist author and journalist” weighs in with Deep Thoughts™…”
As I wrote in a comment elsewhere, on another subject, the other day:
Little did I know I’d actually hear it from the horse’s mouth within the week. It’s the “logic” of the Saturday morning cartoon: they can’t do anything bad because they’re the goodies.
It’s the “logic” of the Saturday morning cartoon
As noted before, their pronouncements often sound like esoteric incantations. “Radical intersectional social justice.” “Cis-heteronormative White supremacist settler colonial logics,” and so forth. By mouthing the arcane words, they somehow become virtuous, unlike thee and me.
…if you repeatedly indulge an assumption of impunity, of unearned exemptions and non-reciprocal standards, what follows is rarely edifying. And yet here we are.
Learning is fundamental, goes the adage. But drilling down hasn’t proved to be remedial.
Also, this.
In which Lehmann writes,
The defence of Jeong is interesting because for once the social justice left actually have to defend their bailey position (racism=power+prejudice) rather than simply retreating to their motte position (dictionary definition of racism)
The social justice left’s entire modus operandi is to implement extreme positions using the language of moderate positions. But when this facade drops, it’s game over.
Not exactly game over. As the term implies, progressive leftism is an overt action against tradition … in which traditional moralities are de facto outmoded. This is the standard observation, much like Peterson on education (@ PragerU). These are observations on the action of progressive leftism.
But what is progressivism philosophically if not the instinctive intolerance of that tradition and its moralities and the force of power, law, society, or culture against them. The implication? There is no intellectual engine there. There ends justify means.
It’s at this point we realize what’s happening. The progressive left doesn’t fear the irrationality incumbent in its positions. It doesn’t care that it’s exposed or that it can’t name a principle, position, or destination. Progressivism is a malignant instinct. It does not care. It cannot even reconcile itself.
The right engages this psychosis endlessly, as if reasoning with it on its terms, without identifying it. It’s a psychosis. And if it is aggressive, malignant, pointless, and overt, what has ever even once reasoned it out of even one component of something it was never reasoned into?
… to a black woman.
…to a black woman.
It’s worth considering the possibility that, for the Mao-lings in the video, any politics they profess is merely a contrivance, an excuse for what they actually want – i.e., to gang up on people and then harass them, even assault them. Which may explain the disregard for incoherence and the bizarre optics – screaming “Fuck white supremacy!” in the face of a black woman, for instance. If what you really enjoy is gratuitously imposing yourself on others, alarming them and trying to make them afraid, while feeling powerful yourself, then the pretext is beside the point. Almost anything will do.
an excuse for what they actually want
“Pay attention to me daddy!”
had been originally marketed as a means of reducing campus sexual assault and domestic violence.
well, actual reputable research shows that being diagnosed with a personality disorder is the most reliable predictor of committing interpersonal violence.
if UT-Austin has found a way to treat Anti-Social Personality Disorder with dress-up games they should be applauded. but I have my doubts.
see D. Dutton, Patriarchy and Wife Assault: The Ecological Fallacy. Violence and Victims, 1994, 9, 2, pp. 125 – 140
“Pay attention to me daddy!”
From wiki: “The 2018 film A Futile and Stupid Gesture, a biography of co-founder Douglas Kenney”…. this was pretty much my impression
Their pronouncements often sound like esoteric incantations. “Radical intersectional social justice.” “Cis-heteronormative White supremacist settler colonial logics,” and so forth. By mouthing the arcane words, they somehow become virtuous, unlike thee and me.
postmodernist gibberish on the far-left, sovereign citizen gibberish on the far right. both use baffling language to distinguish themselves from outsiders and communicate with the in-group.
Harrison, I can’t make sense of your comments, I am too drunk. FIGHT ME IRL
Oh, the good news on Sarah Jeong just keeps coming in.
Harrison,
A quibble – the sovereign citizen nonsense is majority an effort to excuse engaging in criminal acts, really the “True Believers” are tiny to non-existent.
The far-left is populated by True Believers. They are a ton more problematic.
see D. Dutton, Patriarchy and Wife Assault: The Ecological Fallacy. Violence and Victims, 1994, 9, 2, pp. 125 – 140
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7696196
From the abstract:
I think that pretty much sums up much of this site, too. Pithily!
Oh, the good news on Sarah Jeong just keeps coming in.
I’m trying to imagine what it’s like when the theatre of woke righteousness, loudly professed, can’t quite hide the fact that you’re actually an appalling person. You have to wonder what Ms Jeong’s parents make of her recent fame. Are they proud that she’s been mentioned so widely, and of the reasons for it?
I think that pretty much sums up much of this site, too. Pithily!
As I hope I’ve illustrated over the last decade or so, leftism, especially the far left, attracts a high concentration of narcissists and borderline personalities – more than chance alone would seem to allow. And if leftist politics is often pretentious and incoherent, that may not matter too much to those who participate, provided said politics enables the acting out of certain urges. Whether that’s social preening or a spot of sociopathy.
It’s not unlike the number of far-left feminists who, taken at their own words, seem to inhabit a world in which male partners are frequently dysfunctional, often cruel and abusive, and who then extrapolate from their own, rather terrible, taste in men. As Tim Newman and others have noted, given how rarely the world they depict corresponds with ours, perhaps the problem is that far-left feminists tend to interact intimately with far-left men.
As I hope I’ve illustrated over the last decade or so, leftism, especially the far left, attracts a high concentration of narcissists and borderline personalities – more than chance alone would seem to allow. And if leftist politics is often pretentious and incoherent, that may not matter too much to those who participate, provided said politics enables the acting out of certain urges.
Very true.
If we adopt the view that The Lie and its attendant disguises – what Peck observed was cloaking everything in deceptive appearances – describe clinical disorder, then progressivism, along with its puritanical churchiness, collective thefts, and generally intolerant force, is simply dysfunctional.
There’s no prohibition either about disorder infecting hordes or hordes organizing in order to deploy disorder.
Moving to our current random obsession with Jeong, in They Hate You the Zman observes:
Another aspect of this is that it undercuts the argument made by conventional conservatives about their vaunted principles. The other side has no rules and they have no intention of limiting themselves with rules. All the breast-beating about racism was a lie and it always was a lie. Since the Left controls the moral framework, they have just taken the first step toward normalizing tribalism.
Whites have a habit of internalizing each Progressive outrage. It’s important to remind the normie white person in your life that the other side never quits, They can never be shamed into giving up on their goals. “>https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=14666
Now that the right has proved the adage about becoming the left in 20 years by adopting the left’s racialist ruse and actually becoming the party of tolerance, equality, outrage, moral posturing, psychological projection, moral splitting, public shaming, mob action, and the rest, it’d be wise for it to remember what’s really going on.
What’s really going on is the lie and deception. The normie, boomer right has been completely juked. Did it somehow expect less?
The progressive left is collective, public disorder. It never cared about its many purported principles. Why must the right care about its many purported principles – except to actually claim them itself – unless if to prove it has none worth enumerating anymore either.
From Ten’s link:
I would only point out this isn’t about just ‘white’ people — the Left has deemed any dissent from their ideology as “white supremacy” — IOW some pale SJW feels no irony in screaming “white supremacist!” into the face of a black woman.
Or Jeong, as I linked above, literally putting the life of a Chinese woman in danger.
Don’t get with the program? We will destroy you.
Don’t get with the program? We will destroy you.
Hell, in Wu’s case, they hung her out to dry for no reason apart from getting a few extra clicks. If that’s the treatment they give to innocent bystanders, just imagine what they’ll do if you stand between them and the power they desire.
Helicopters. I keep telling you people.
And my tongue is only partway in cheek here. More and more people keep talking about the impending civil war, but no one seems to quite get that that means Pinochet’s methods or losing.
Helicopters. I keep telling you people.
Yeah….that’s a lotta fuel and maintenance costs. How about we just stop paying/”loaning” the money for their “education”? And no more alumni support either.
More and more people keep talking about the impending civil war, but no one seems to quite get that that means Pinochet’s methods or losing.
I would only point out this isn’t about just ‘white’ people — the Left has deemed any dissent from their ideology as “white supremacy” — IOW some pale SJW feels no irony in screaming “white supremacist!” into the face of a black woman.
I perhaps should reverse the order of the above quotes, but both observations are pertinent to our present times. “White Supremacy” is simply the buzz word du jour. Tomorrow, there will be something else. As others have noted, we kid ourselves attempting to tease some philosophical consistency from the barbarians’ madness, and it’s a fool’s errand trying to use logic and reason to reach some sort of accommodation with the other side or synthesis of the opposing positions. The end game is the destruction of our civilization, and there will be no end in the Left’s mind, until that is accomplished. (And BTW, this is not a struggle between “Left” and “Right,” whatever those words mean. It’s a struggle between the individual with his liberty/personal autonomy and the collective. And the collective will enforce its will “by any means necessary” as history has so vividly demonstrated.)
St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, said, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” (Romans 12:18, KJV) It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that my desire to live peaceably with all men may be in vain, simply because it no longer lies with me.
Helicopters. I keep telling you people.
Waste of fuel. Trebuchets. Much simpler and just as effective. Plus you can sell tickets, provide skeet-shooting oppoortunities, and teach ballistics to the kiddies!
Hahahaha… White Thoughts are a disease! I mean, those are some golden comedy moments there!
As I hope I’ve illustrated over the last decade or so, leftism, especially the far left, attracts a high concentration of narcissists and borderline personalities – more than chance alone would seem to allow.
It was the first thing I spotted when I first happened on this site and it’s why I stay. You’re not the only island of sanity around, but there really are too damn few.
Trebuchets.
Can we make “Backyard Trebuchets” the next big social media trend, like the Tide Pods and Ice Bucket Challenges of yore? If enough people decide to launch themselves across their neighbo(u)rhoods, our problems with know-nothing youth might solve themselves. At the very least, we could manage the size of the herds a bit.
More white male privilege is revealed.
“St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, said, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” (Romans 12:18, KJV) It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that my desire to live peaceably with all men may be in vain, simply because it no longer lies with me.”
As Jefferson put it a few centuries later, “Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. But the temper and folly of our enemies may not leave this in our choice”.
In the good old days our feminist prof could have simply ordered her carriage driver to run right over those icky homeless men.
More white male privilege is revealed.
Even setting aside the issue of informed consent, I’m not sure there’s any way to regard that dynamic in a positive light. And whatever Professor Dej’s claims about the “hypermasculinity” of homeless men – whose homelessness is supposedly to the detriment of women, and especially feminists – she does tell us quite a bit about the vanities and neuroticism of academic feminism.
Ilya Feoktistov on educational probity and its enemies
Our woke history teacher objected to the appeal not to use the classroom as a personal pulpit, and not to “present facts or logic that support only one side of a current controversial issue.” Another history teacher, David Bedar, who also took umbrage at notions of objectivity and impartiality, insisted that instead he had “an obligation… to teach kids… social justice.”
From the linked article: “to think there are universal truths perpetuates a particular kind of able bodied white cisgender male logic.”
The Gods of the Copybook Headings cannot return soon enough.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings cannot return soon enough.
The fire and slaughter tend to be a little too indiscriminate for my tastes:-(.
I’m still holding out for giant space habitats (~100km diameter). Every identity group gets its own world and can interact, or not, with others however it wishes. Won’t happen until we have sufficiently cheap access to orbit, and rockets aren’t going to cut the mustard on that one. Mass drivers are probably the best bet in the medium term.
I’m pretty sure that these mass drivers would be the more likely investment.
“St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, said, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” (Romans 12:18, KJV) It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that my desire to live peaceably with all men may be in vain, simply because it no longer lies with me.”
As Jefferson put it a few centuries later, “Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. But the temper and folly of our enemies may not leave this in our choice”.
“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” ~ Col. James Mattis, USMC
How about we just stop paying/”loaning” the money for their “education”? And no more alumni support either.
It’s far too late for that. The Gramscian Long March is complete; it is pointless to shut the barn door now that the horses have infested every educational and government institution. Here in the Deranged Dominion we’ve passed the point of no return; slightly more than 50% of the population is employed by the government or receives significant financial largesse from it. The takers outnumber the makers and we’re headed for the down side of the Tytler Curve.
I joke about Pinochet but absent a coup by an ideological strongman enjoying the confidence of the military, nothing is going to solve this. It’s Venezuela or Chile.
Heather Mac Donald takes a hairbrush to the buttocks of Sarah Jeong:
Needless to say, there’s more.
“we learned that due process is what we get in lieu of justice. And what’s due process besides a series of rules that are meant to keep things as predictable as [f***ing] possible?”
I am going to go out an a limb here and speculate that this strange outlook on things is the reason why Miss Sarah is working as an SJW editor, and not as a lawyer.
Well, that and because being a lawyer generally requires real work.
I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that this strange outlook on things is the reason why Miss Sarah is working as an SJW editor, and not as a lawyer.
And her hiring, and continued employment, tells us quite a lot about the kinds of attitudes that much of our expensively educated elite – say, professors at Berkeley and Harvard, and the editorial board at the New York Times – find congenial, or titillating.
…the editorial board at the New York Times – find congenial, or titillating.
Never use or when and will do.
Heather Mac Donald takes a hairbrush to the buttocks of Sarah Jeong:
Is it wrong that I, just for a moment, assumed this was some sort of assistance with her personal grooming before a day at the beach? I mean, a lot of people might go for a depilatory under the circumstances, but I’m way beyond trying to keep up with current fashions, so what would I know?
Is it wrong that I, just for a moment…?
Yes. Almost anything that could follow those words is damning evidence of deviance. So keep those hands where we can see them – and well away from your pockets.
“I was just counting my change.”
“I was just checking the integrity of the lining.”
“I’m sure my inhaler’s in here somewhere.”
The excuses, I’ve heard them all.
a series of rules that are meant to keep things as predictable as [f***ing] possible?
Those mean, bad ‘ol rules…
Like the ones about how the bank accepts the paycheck from her employer.
…the ones about how drivers go through intersections (ooh. There’s that magic word. Do I win a prize?)
…the ones about how sterility is maintained in a surgical operating room
…TCP/IP, so she can buy stuff from Amazon
…the ones about how Air Traffic Control works
…the ones about…
Her entire life is only possible because of rules and predictability.
Water. Don’t bother asking a fish to explain it to you.
“Heather Mac Donald takes a hairbrush to the buttocks of Sarah Jeong:”
They call themselves “progressive”. But they’re the opposite. They stand, often explicitly now, against rational inquiry in favour of mysticism. Of course they claim, in an act of herculean doublethink, not to – oh, how they Love Science!™ – but no rational being could countenance the slogan “Believe unconditionally” for a moment. That is the credo of the High Priest that kept humanity in chains for millennia before reason and individualism freed us.
That headache-inducing How to Write as Felt: Touching Transmaterialities and More-Than-Human Intimacies keeps assaulting my brain cells every time I come to this site. Somewhere, either in our host’s commentary, or in the article about that thing, mention was made of quantum physics being tossed into that word salad, for legitimacy I guess. I find this irksome in the extreme.
Can I get the author on cultural appropriation? I mean – quantum physics clearly belongs in STEM culture, not in some blather about queerly feeling up felt.
Quantum physics is gobbledygook which nobody can understand, and physicists are well respected professionals. Therefore, if we write gobbledygook which nobody can understand, we shall also be well respected professionals.
Q.E.D.
“Math(s) is hard” – Barbie
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/08/02/maths-textbooks-should-banned-intimidate-pupils-headteacher/
The exhibitionist Dr Victoria Bateman is at it again. Her academic career is basically soft porn with a PhD
https://twitter.com/vnbateman/status/1027496310944006144?s=21