Perhaps It Was Revealed To Him In A Dream
Further to recent rumblings on assumptions of racism, this caught my eye:
Who needs evidence when you have faith? https://t.co/G8zdjcT5yP
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) July 31, 2023
Today’s word is mindset.
Mr Dettlaff – sorry, Professor Dettlaff – has a PhD in social work and “formerly served as Dean of the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work.” He uses the term “white supremacist” quite freely, and entirely without irony.
Apparently, the professor was removed from his position as Dean for demanding the “abolition” of policing and incarceration, and demanding a “new, liberated society… free from violence and oppression.” And in which habitual criminals and assorted sociopaths roam freely and unimpeded.
In Professor Dettlaff’s imaginings, a world without physical consequences for robbery and predation would mean “individuals have everything they need to thrive.” Except, of course, any third-party protection from the aforementioned habitual criminals and assorted sociopaths. This “new, liberated society,” in which policing has been “firmly disavowed,” will, he insists, “truly keep us safe.”
It seems that Professor Dettlaff was deemed too ideologically deranged even for a modern university. Which is quite the feat.
He’s a “thought leader,” you know.
Also, this:
💜 I prepared a curricular unit for a state initiative on childhood adversity with a slide that stated that colonization, white supremacy, racism, and oppression were the root causes of trauma and was asked to provide references for the slide. 😳
— Leigh Kimberg (@LeighKimberg) July 29, 2023
Ms Kimberg, above, is all about “compassion, healing, justice and equity.” She likes to announce her pronouns to random passers-by.
Update, via the comments, which you’re reading, of course:
Regarding Ms Kimberg, pst314 notes,
Pretty much. It has, in fact, been referred to as a laundering operation. But it seems that even this minimal requirement is far too strenuous and distracting when there’s a “new society” to invent. One in which everyone has everything they need, in which the concept of law-enforcement is a distant memory, and in which carjackers gambol about like newborn lambs.
And it’s quite something to have a supposed educator demanding that the editors of supposedly academic journals stop even the most basic attempts to ensure that key assertions in their publications are not just made-up or wildly delusional. But this, it seems, is where we are.
Update 2:
Somewhat related, on prison and recidivism.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
See also sports channels and live broadcasts of games. In fact, there are only a handful of cable TV channels that have anything I want to watch.
While I have no argument with this, I think deliberate attempts to mislead, obfuscate, and deceive shouldn’t be forgotten – especially when perpetrated by journalists.
For example, Emma A. Jane, a journalist and Associate Professor in Australia, included in her Misogyny Online: A short and (brutish) history:
To the unwary, the citation form gives the distinct impression that Blunden is a reliable source such as a criminologist or perhaps a government review.
But no.
In fact Blunden (2015) turns out to be a rather short Evening Standard article (Caroline Criado-Perez: How I won my banknote battle … and defied rape threat trolls), one very friendly to its subject.
The article includes the same claim about the 300 A4 pages.
But without any attribution.
As it seems fair to assume that had a representative of the Metropolitan Police stated this claim about the 300 A4 pages then this would have been made clear (e.g. “… confirmed Detective Smith …”), but it isn’t.
So where did it come from?
The only source I can find is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Criado-Perez herself:
I don’t actually doubt for a moment she really did receive online abuse – I’m almost certain she did – and probably even quite a lot of it.
But as a Devon Tracey (a YouTuber) once pointed out, people who post videos of kittens playing with balls of wool also receive the most stomach-churning abuse in their comments, too.
So it’s not always clear what receiving abuse might actually be a sign of and I suspect an orchestrated campaign of misogyny to come quite far down on the list and for alcoholism, unemployment, depression, poverty, loneliness, poor impulse control, and a number of other things to come much higher (Isabella Sorley and John Nimmo, the only two people I know of to actually be arrested and charged for sending online abuse to Criado-Perez turn out both to have been unemployed alcoholics living hundreds of miles outside London in small, run-down provincial towns).
So here’s a situation in which one London-based activist and journalist makes an extraordinary claim (300 A4 pages) for which as far as I can tell there appears to be no other corroborating source.
The claim is not only recycled in a sympathetic interview with a London-based newspaper (one with, I believe, a significant readership of young, professional women), but the attribution is removed so that it’s no longer a claim by the victim, but a fact that’s just out there.
That “fact that’s just out there” is then picked up by yet another journalist who repeats it verbatim in a book from a publishing house, SAGE, whose output is “Academic books, journals, reference and library products” in the “Social science, science, medicine, humanities, technology”.
Incidentally, I would not have known about Misogyny Online: A short and (brutish) history had it not been for a glowing endorsement from a Professor at the University of Oxford (the same university of which, possibly coincidentally, Criado-Perez is a graduate).
All of this is reminiscent of Christina Hoff Sommers complaint about the use of “the rule of thumb“.
…who has, by the way, done serious work investigating and debunking claims of anti-black racism in American police forces.
And speaking of that, see this new report from the state of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension which debunks those racism complaints, showing that blacks commit serious crimes at ten times the rate that whites do.
That.
I thought of BLM and the like. In connection with a potentially great convenience offered by such actions of such movements, supported and probably built on the theoretical basis of those similar to Professor Dettlaff. So, if you plan to build a super-observable and super-controlling society (more than now), such glaring and absurd examples, noisly brought into public view, could serve as very good occasion and basis.
Well, of course, that’s a bit extreme, and besides, it’s possible that “conspiracy theories” have come to me in more.:)
It’s an interesting thread, worth a peek.
Among the replies are some weird, but fashionable, suppositions. Say, that habitual violent criminals – say, the kinds of creatures who gleefully sucker-punch elderly women because they happen to be of East Asian descent – will somehow be morally redeemed by “affordable housing” and “access to healthcare.”
I don’t think the 85 IQ is all that relevant. People with much, much higher IQ’s also have impulse control issues as has been most broadly and clearly demonstrated since 2020. With very similar imperviousness to reason. Hence the calls by these very same smart…smaaaaart people to shut down free speech.
I think we’ll give that one a post of its own. Comments that-a-way.
On the general theme of ‘share ye links’, I keep coming back to this disingenuous review of three books critical of what passes for trans theory:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/gender-criticism-versus-gender-abolition-on-three-recent-books-about-gender/
At one point the author – a Grace Lavery, who I think may have been mentioned here before – actually derides Kathleen Stock for not being able to cite any philosophical justification for what he calls ‘gender theory’ (ie, a philosophical justification for transsexuality), and… well, that’s kind of a problem for your camp, Grace, isn’t it?
Majikthise and Vroomfondel, white courtesy phone, please.
And we’re getting comment spam. 🙁