Clowns Ousted, Conspiracies Invoked
The progressive San Francisco school-board president recalled by voters earlier this week claimed her ousting was a “consequence” of fighting for racial justice, and represents a victory for “white supremacists.”
Yes, those “white supremacists” for which San Francisco is famed – i.e., local parents, including hundreds of “non-citizen immigrants,” who happen to have skin of many different colours.
More than 70 percent of voters elected to recall [board president, Gabriela] López and two other progressive board members, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.
The trio’s history of mismanagement and self-indulgence is pretty much what you’d expect of leftist monomaniacs given power and a seemingly endless supply of other people’s money, with a budget deficit of $125 million, and two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee.
One of the ousted ladies, Ms Alison Collins, has of course been mentioned here before, when disdaining pupils of Chinese or Korean ancestry as “white” or white-adjacent, and therefore suspect, and when insisting that a parental preference for academic rigour is “racist,” and that the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon expectations of competence.
An educator, you see.
“It’s a kind of moral squeamishness. In the real world, you can’t rely on some convenience that spares you the responsibility of doing what needs to be done.”
I recall encountering scenes in some of Terry Pratchett’s novels which illustrated that failing. (Examples may come to mind later, although I don’t want to distract the thread from the examples currently being discussed.)
In ST:TNG, there was a bloody kindergarten on the ship.
I know that powder monkeys were rather young, but you’d have to be big enough to carry a bag of gunpowder. I thought that version of Star Trek was a larger pile of shit than the original (which I enjoyed at the time, given that I was between 6 and 10 years old when it was broadcast)
The character Guinan was as stupid as her actor. The Enterprise carried enough firepower to annihilate planetary cities.
And one can see that squeamishness in real life when “progressive minded” people react in horror and outrage when a thug is killed by his victim–and with even greater outrage when anyone who points out the justice of that killing.
For instance.
If Mr Ford, star of the link above, doesn’t seem sufficiently juvenile, unrealistic, and emotionally arrested, see also this.
The Enterprise carried enough firepower to annihilate planetary cities.
Purely for defensive purposes I assure you. In case of unprovoked attack by some rogue “planetary city”. Whatever that is.
The character Guinan was as stupid as her actor.
A very bold claim! Though it is odd how invested we have become in the intellectual capacity what are essentially talking clothes-horses. I blame the telly.
see also this.
Heh. Forgot about the exchange in the comments there with one Zenith Carb. Heated discussion until he just went away. Hope it was something I said.
Purely for defensive purposes I assure you.
Many of the
assumptionspretenses upon which the series was based were, to put it kindly, silly.“It’s a kind of moral squeamishness. In the real world, you can’t rely on some convenience that spares you the responsibility of doing what needs to be done.”
Liberalism is childishness masquerading as wisdom.
A society without any form of money but a militaristic space organisation dedicated to peaceful exploration aboard ships with planet-busting weaponry, trans-light-speed engines, instantaneous matter transportation, unlimited energy sources, machines that could fabricate any physical artifact, medical processes that don’t even break the skin…
Many of the pretenses upon which the series was based were, to put it kindly, silly.
Sir, I just don’t know what you mean!
Sir, I just don’t know what you mean!
?
“‘Support of Equitable Representation and Services for Two-Spirit Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) Parents and Families”
Well, it appears to be a variety of English. It’s undecipherable, tho…
Many of the pretenses upon which the series was based were, to put it kindly, silly.
Well, TOS was sold as “Wagon Train to the stars” … and I’m old enough to remember watching that western as a kid … the show may have been uneven, but it wasn’t as infected with the utopianism of TNG (which I quit watching early on).
Westerns did show the good guys killing the bad guys.
It’s a kind of moral squeamishness. In the real world, you can’t rely on some convenience that spares you the responsibility of doing what needs to be done.
I recall encountering scenes in some of Terry Pratchett’s novels which illustrated that failing.”
Susan Sto-Helit and The Poker come to mind as a good way of teaching chidren reality.
All the startrek shows were benevolent dictatorships. Everyone followed orders (except the captain, sometimes). Crew died and no one mourned. No money, no jobs ever shown outside of the military life. Replicators took care of drudgery. They never even showed a crew member cleaning the ship. The progressive’s dream it appears.
Personally much of TNG’s appeal was escaping the classic Westerns’ banality of goodness. A fantasy techno-utopia allowed for more thoughtful solutions to society’s problems than having Kirk punch out the evil lizard-man of the week, before bedding his surprisingly alluring lizard-woman.
Of course, maybe it was just such moral fuzziness which let in the wokesters and the consequent downfall of Western Civilization? Perhaps if my generation had been forced to endure more white-hats murdering black-hats in cold, but ethically justified, blood we would now be more firmly resisting demands to “punch a TERF”.
Can’t say that argument sounds persuasive.
Star dreck on a Monday AM?
*sigh*
Oh look, Spaceballs!
I am imagining the New York Times without its leftist staff.
Bit late to this party, but if no-one else has posted it, there’s fun to be had from Titania McGrath‘s take.
As a role model to impressionable girls across the globe, Rowling is doing untold damage to the feminist cause. So if she really wants to set an example to these young women, to promote the cause of female liberation and autonomy, she needs to start shutting up and doing what she’s told.
classic Westerns’ banality of goodness
I politely disagree … oh, I know that westerns have been sneered as “white hat/black hat” cartoons, but many of the actual classic Westerns were a bit more nuanced? The Searchers comes to mind. And I had an occasion a couple of years ago to listen to many of the radio-edition episodes of Gunsmoke (with William Conrad as Marshal Dillion) and it was definitely NOT a banal-kid-friendly show.
classic Westerns were a bit more nuanced
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance anyone? Anyone?
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance anyone?
I saw it as a kid and it left a big impression on me, especially “print the legend.”
Wonder why I went into journalism anyway.
The complexity of TNG’s satisfying morality plays mostly came from consideration of system-level interactions, rather than individual ones. They considered what was superior in a society’s moral framework (the Federation was always better) and what made it so, rather than how particular characters were more righteous (Kirk was always the best).
It’s rare to find that depth of meta-analysis in classic Westerns, though you it does sometimes happen when Red Indians are involved.
“print the legend.”
First time I saw that decades ago I was sure that I knew what it meant. Since the advent, exposure really, of Fake News, I’m not so sure. It has taken on a few meanings that I cycle through every time I watch it.
O/T, but are you aware that Miss Penny has gotten married. I don’t recommend reading the article below.
https://www.wired.com/story/my-highly-unexpected-heterosexual-pandemic-zoom-wedding/
are you aware that Miss Penny has gotten married?
And yet Laurie has spent so many years telling us, quite emphatically, that marriage is obsolete, a sham, a vile tool of the patriarchy, and that “romantic love is a systemic lie designed to manipulate women into lifelong emotional labour.” And that, “I happen to believe in dismantling the social and economic institutions of marriage and family.”
Maybe she meant your marriage, and your family, not hers.
Maybe she meant your marriage, and your family, not hers.
When a socialist says “all property is theft” he implicitly excludes his own.
TOS was sold as “Wagon Train to the stars”
Oh, not this again. Roddenberry did not mean Star Trek was intended to be a Western. He meant that the production structure of the show was intended to mimic Wagon Train – the main cast as a framing device for what was essentially a series of guest stars headlining their own plots, in a milieu where there needn’t be any continuity of place or plot from one episode to the next.
The obvious exception being DS9’s In the Pale Moonlight
It’s not at all coincidental that In the Pale Moonlight and similar elements like Section 31 could only be added to the canon after the notoriously vindictive Roddenberry was safely dead.
Who the bleep would think it would be a good idea to have children on a warship?
Marketing droids who’d figured out that TNG’s actual audience was a great deal more middle-aged and female than they’d originally assumed. This reaches its pinnacle with the “Flotter” episodes of Voyager.
Wesley Crusher existed merely because the series creators wanted a character that the kids could “identify with”
Wesley is Roddenberry’s Mary Sue. Wheaton has said that he struggled with the character until he realized that, and began playing Crusher as Eugene Wesley Roddenberry’s mini-me. Also, the “Luke” in “Luke Skywalker” is short for “Lucas”.
The complexity of TNG’s satisfying morality plays
It took me a moment to realize you weren’t being sarcastic.
The reason the first season of TNG was so appallingly awful is that Roddenberry insisted upon his neo-utopian vision of the UFP (“There is no hunger, there is no greed, and all the children know how to read” ~ per Jonathan Frakes). Many of the original TOS writers were brought back to work on TNG and almost immediately left because they could not get Roddenberry to understand that if there was no conflict then there was no drama, and since he’d removed any possibility of internal conflict they were left with ray guns and bug-eyed monsters and papier-mache rocks.
Still, to describe TNG’s morality plays as “complex” when they are, by design, simplified and pared-down versions of pre-existing works is a bit curious, to say the least.
It’s rare to find that depth of meta-analysis in classic Westerns
The very first episode of Colt .45 contains a scene where the protagonist, a traveling salesman for the Colt firearms company, explains to two young women that faster, better, more powerful guns are just tools in the hands of men, and that it is up to men to find better ways to make peace than with guns (the gun he is currently advertising is the Colt Peacemaker, hence the reference).
They considered what was superior in a society’s moral framework (the Federation was always better) and what made it so, rather than how particular characters were more righteous (Kirk was always the best)
Are you sure we’re watching the same Star Trek? I know there’s a lot of fan films out there.
Wesley is Roddenberry’s Mary Sue…
I never heard that. Interesting.
The reason the first season of TNG was so appallingly awful is that Roddenberry insisted upon his neo-utopian vision of the UFP (“There is no hunger, there is no greed, and all the children know how to read” ~ per Jonathan Frakes).
As I recall, Harlan Ellison’s original script for “The City on the Edge of Forever” involved Enterprise crew members dealing in illegal drugs. Roddenberry nixed that as inappropriate for his utopian vision. I’m not sure what I would have thought of Harlan’s script, he being the dystopian scold that he was, but Roddenberry was indeed in many ways a boring and silly utopian.
… that the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon expectations of competence.
Yeah try that in an Asian cultural majority region and see how well it goes down. Which they did, and found out it was “not very well”. Of course these clowns think racism is at the bottom of everything, as they can’t see beyond the epidermal melanin content. But culturally, Asians tend to have 2-parent families, and place high value on hard work to achieve competence and success. Has little or nothing to do with skin color but a lot more to do with cultural values.
I can see a lot of Tiger Mom types getting pretty pissed off to think that some kids would get admitted to Lowell without demonstrating basic competence in much of anything when they’ve pushed their own to excel to get into a high quality school. Good on them for pushing back on this racist dumbing down of everything.
…the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon expectations of competence.
That was an consequence of the failure of the left’s social engineering programs: They started out, generations ago, demanding that all educational opportunities be opened up to blacks. But after so many years of failure they now demand that standards be lowered so as to redefine success so as to include black failures. And what’s more, everyone’s educational opportunities must be sabotaged so that blacks do not look bad.
You can make a case that the repeated failure of the left’s dreams has driven the left insane.
OK, I’m confused.
If Parliament is going to vote about the emergency powers, that means they are a part of the government, so the statement makes no sense, or is Brandeaux pulling a “l’état, c’est moi”?
When a tweet starts out, “As a women studies major….” you know it is going to be comedy gold, albeit dark comedy.
OK, I’m confused.
If I understand correctly, your confusion comes from the expectation that a Member of Parliament is a part of the Government. That is true in the sense that Government in Canada is bicameral with an elected Parliament and an appointed Senate under the Queen’s representative (Governor General) as the Head of State.
But Government, in this case, has a more specific meaning. The party which holds a majority of seats in Parliament or can convince enough members of other parties to support their agenda to effect a majority on house votes forms “The Government”. The other Members of Parliament are considered opposition party members and as such are not part of the “The Government”.
I may have misunderstood what you’re asking though. In any case, Turdeaux is pulling a “l’état, c’est moi”.
“I guess in a kind of new Iron Curtain of Chinada you’re not allowed to voice your dissatisfaction.”
When a tweet starts out, “As a women studies major….”
From a reply to that tweet, “Folks should hold the fathers to a higher standards”
Yes, women should hold the potential fathers to higher standards before having their children.
It’s not at all coincidental that In the Pale Moonlight and similar elements like Section 31 could only be added to the canon after the notoriously vindictive Roddenberry was safely dead.
For those unfamiliar, Section 31 is a secret organisation within Starfleet that does their clandestine dirty work – spying or the occasional assassination, etc – and is generally despised by our main heroic characters. And yet, in DS9, during the Dominion war, and faced with a totalitarian, genocidal enemy, Section 31 in large part saved the Federation, the entire quadrant, by infecting the Founders, via Odo, with a terminal pathogen. Without the infection – which left our heroes aghast and spluttering with moral indignation – the war would have been unlikely to end, at least not without further massive losses. The enemy’s surrender was, if memory serves, only extracted with the offer of a cure.
Yes, women should hold the potential fathers to higher standards before having their children.
And, indeed, be more selective as to the partners they choose to breed from.
Colt Peacemaker
Speaking of Peacemakers…
.
The other Members of Parliament are considered opposition party members and as such are not part of the “The Government”.
Got it now, I had been thinking in terms of our sausage factory down here where the minority party still has means to sidetrack stupidity – not that it is foolproof, or that the current majority party doesn’t think the same.
Spasiba.
As a kid, reading about parliamentary systems in other countries, I found the term “bring down the government” or “new government” exceptionally misleading and overdramatized once I understood what people meant by it. It’s not like the entire system and constitution were changing. It’s not a revolution. The government isn’t being “brought down”. The politicians in it yes. But it’s a terribly stupid and almost Orwellian terminology. Though I’m sure it serves some propaganda type purposes to say that the politicians ARE the government.
Meant to add…So in such a linguistic context is Trudy really wrong if he/they believes “l’état, c’est moi”?
Liberalism is childishness masquerading as wisdom.
Just ran across these P.J. O’Rourke quotes:
“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
“The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things…. It’s a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.”
My God, has it really been 30 years? I feel old.
“as a women studies major” OFFS. It takes 2 parents and grandparents nearby to properly raise children (ie without neglecting them). Fathers are incredibly important. Boys without fathers get in trouble and don’t finish school at a much higher rate. The Left has been making fun of chastity and chaperones and parental involvement for decades. It really is up to the women: don’t have sex without marriage and for gods sake don’t have kids with a bunch of different men. It is bad for you and bad for the kids. Matriarchy can only exist due to welfare–it isn’t a real system.
Fathers are incredibly important.
I recall 70’s feminists saying that fathers were useless, just as men were useless. And I think I read some utopian science fiction stories in which men were entirely absent–to the benefit of everyone.
you’re not allowed to voice your dissatisfaction.
Artur Pawlowski isn’t the most likeable guy in the world, but what the cops, courts and government are doing to him can only be described as persecution.
So in such a linguistic context is Trudy really wrong if he/they believes “l’état, c’est moi”?
I’ve had this discussion/debate with several people. In my mind, the State is really the People or the entire body politic. The Government is the means by which the State is managed. So representatives are elected to fulfill the will of the People and manage the State’s affairs. There are laws, institutiions and accepted practices in place to ensure that those representatives don’t overstep their bounds which, of course, leads to tyranny. The problems we’re currently encountering in Canada have resulted from the failure of the Government to act within the law and Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Convoy people are basically saying to the Government, get back in your lane.
More directly, however, Turdeaux is a Member of Parliament and Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s Government. His role is to fulfill the executive function of government. He is NOT the Head of State. That role falls to the Governor General who is the Queen’s representative. Practically, though, the GG is appointed by the Prime Minister and fulfills a mostly ceremonial role. So you could argue the Prime Minister is both executive head of Government and Chief of State, though technically that’s not the case.
For Turdeaux to continue as Prime Minister he needs to maintain the confidence of his Party (for they are the only ones who select him as leader) and the Confidence of the House of Commons. When his party has a majority this is easily done, when he has a minority, as is the current case, he needs the support of other Members of the House or other parties of the House to get his agenda enacted. There is strong party discipline in the Canadian system and it is very, very rare that an MP would vote against his party. It is also uncommon, once an informal coalition has been formed, in the case of minority government, for the House to defeat a Government action. First, the Government is unlikely to introduce anything it cannot win and second, nobody wants an election.
Sorry for the long winded response, but Turdeaux is not the State, but our system is easily corruptible so that he can act like he is the State. The current problem, as some Canadians see it, is how to bring the Government back in line without having to wait until the next election.
I’d go further; the Government is only the front bench. Backbenchers, even of the governing party, are legislators not governors.
I’d go further; the Government is only the front bench.
Good point. In practice, once an election is over, Government backbenchers may as well stay at home. They’re only needed for votes, which in Covid times, can be done electronically.
30 years nothing. Tom Lehrer nailed the attitude in ’65.
30 years nothing. Tom Lehrer nailed the attitude in ’65.
And South Park updated it in 2005. “Oh man, I can’t wait to see the look on those little Eichmann’s faces when they hear this crunchy groove.”