Not That Kind, You Peasants
“But why do you think this is happening?”
Turning off replies may not be the best look for a programme called Feedback https://t.co/pUKQIalSYA
— Simon Edge (@simonjedge) August 20, 2023
Update, via the comments:
Before replies were disabled, “loathing your own audience” was a suggestion offered repeatedly and with varying degrees of liveliness, along with “woke nonsense” and variations thereof. The word bubble was used more than once.
However, a handful of outliers – often academics employed as consultants and talking heads by the BBC – complained that the broadcaster is “a vehicle for Tory propaganda.” A claim that perhaps reveals more than intended.
Of course, it’s not just the BBC. It could be Channel 4. Or The Economist. Or Scientific American. Or Nature. Or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Or… well, we’ll be here all day.
The sense of there being a gulf – in assumptions and ideology – between what could broadly be called the media class and much of its supposed audience is hardly a rare experience. The impression that said gulf is growing and seemingly irretrievable is also far from uncommon.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Somewhat symbolic, I think.
LOL. Wasn’t it going the way they expected?
Well, before replies were disabled, “loathing your own audience” was a suggestion offered repeatedly and with varying degrees of liveliness, along with “woke nonsense” and variations thereof. The word bubble was used more than once.
Though a handful of outliers, often academics employed as talking heads by the BBC, complained that the broadcaster is “a vehicle for Tory propaganda.”
Previously, and somewhat related.
Also related, this, on media luminaries and their bewilderment:
Oh, there’s more.
From the comments:
That sounds like satire but one can no longer be sure.
Believe me it isn’t.
We have an ongoing misapprehension about the BBC’s funding.
Many people campaign for, usually conservative, governments to abolish the mandatory tv license fee or telly tax not realising that should this happen whoever is in power will simply replace it with an annual £4-5bn grant as part of government spending.
This would suit everyone except the general public. No problems with collection and no more bad publicity when hundreds if not thousands appear in court for non payment. Just this once it’s actually true to say women most affected. That’s why it’s going to happen.
We then won’t even have the satisfaction of not paying the license fee for a service we never use, instead we will all be paying for it via our taxes.
This goes a long way towards explaining the complete indifference of the bbc to public opinion. They know their little echo chamber (which naturally includes the majority of politicians) will continue to be lavishly funded one way or another without ever having to suffer the indignity of seeking advertising revenue.
In my personal experience, far-left loons really do think that anyone to their right is a “right-wing fascist”, not to mention a “racist” and “Christofascist”.
I am surprised at how quickly the BBC shut down their comments. I had expected it to run to the thousands of responses, but I got to the bottom in just a couple minutes of reading.
Which leads me to think they expected reinforcements, people clapping them on the back and saying the population is just too stupid to understand their high-minded wit and wisdom.
As an American conservative, I have been conditioned to expect negative portrayals of my viewpoint in almost every public venue. It must be nice to float through life in a pink cloud of clapping seals.
And yet conservatives…or whatever that word means over yonder…just Tories now? Were they ever really conservatives?…continue to support them. This is what democracy looks like when your typical citizen is an idiot.
I enjoy QI, in the way we colonials have, who think all British accents are posh. I watch clips with mingled awe and amusement at the quick-witted erudition That makes me wish I had had a better education.
It is strange that Steven Fry and his panelists did not think through the implications of what they are saying. Prison systems were designed to avoid vigilante justice, and harsher penalties like public executions or hand choppings.
In the States we have embraced de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, and now decarceration of the habitually criminal. With those two protections for the criminals removed, it is not the population who should be worried, but the criminals themselves.
There are more of us than there are of them. That becomes ever-more evident every time we see a mini-dustup like this. Or, check out the reaction to Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” song. The discontent bubbles up continually from below and our betters attempt to deal with it by labeling all of it “hate” and sneering. That approach is getting less and less effective with time – but it’s all they got.
“Culture is everything.”
I have read personal accounts from lifelong New Yorkers comparing the orderly, crime-free citizen responses to early power outages to the later outages with big crime waves.
This is like this.
Yeah. No. The criminals are now protected by the police/justice system. Vigilante justice? Hell, they’ve outlawed simple self defense. It’s quite obvious. The videos are everywhere. Defense of others is even outlawed. See Daniel Penney. The ‘population’ consists mostly of cowards who won’t even speak up, let alone stand up to being physically abused, bullied, and even killed. It is quite clear that the criminal scum can kill and kill and kill again. Should the average citizen who is willing to fight push back on the abuse, let alone kill anyone even by accident, and that’s the last criminal that they will stop. They’re done for either via incarceration or intimidation.
It is, as they say, all so tiresome.
Added (because edit gave me a warning about posting too fast): And the vast majority of the rest of the citizenry is fine with that. They have been thoroughly brainwashed to accept it.
So she thinks Radio 4 is ‘a vehicle for Tory propaganda’ *and* ‘right-wingers won’t listen’ to it?
Heh. Pretty much.
Mind-numbingly disingenuous statements which serve as justification for “We’re getting criticism from both sides so on balance you’d have to accept that we’re getting it just about right”.
Should the average citizen who is willing to fight push back on the abuse, let alone kill anyone even by accident, and that’s the last criminal that they will stop. They’re done for either via incarceration or intimidation.
Totally dependent on locale and how much public sentiment for the citizen. Remember the miscreant who tried armed robbery in Norco CA and got shot? The videos of his screaming “My arm’s shot off” and he flees the store & into the car with the rest of his armed thugs went viral, the 80 y/o store owned got nothing but kudos. And the Sikh with a stick administering the beatdown? No charges for him.
Penny may be charged (it *is* NY), but has a defense fund of millions because a lot of good citizens are outraged at the charges.
The Ruling class hasn’t gotten rid of 2A or the right of self-defense … yet … so it’s gonna take a while to stamp out our inner Rooftop Korean.
I fear that it was only public outcry that influenced the DA to not file charges.
Re the stick-wielding Sikh I’d be extremely surprised if some dime-store Benjamin Crump type doesn’t get involved with civil actions against the perpetrator, his employer, the police, the city, the state, Donald Trump and everyone short of God Almighty for letting it happen.
His life is effectively ruined, at the very least for the next several years. George Zimmerman is still treated with contempt in nominally conservative…”conservative” central FL. I got curious, had to dig around in the incarceration databases as I did not see one news story, but the man who tried to kill him by shooting at him while driving down a very busy, main street in a very safe area was given another trial, found guilty even in that one, but re-sentenced to time served and let free after only 5 years of an originally 20 year sentence. The system is a bloody clown show. There’s no real justice. There are no clear standards, even in “good” locales. So called.
The key word in your statement is, now. I think it was Instapundit who popularized the phrase, that cannot last forever, won’t.
It’s impossible that this state of affairs can go on indefinitely. This regime of anarcho-terrorism must lead to a reaction.
Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is a strongman coming in and imposing tyrannical order. But occasionally I permit myself a glimmer of hope that we can govern ourselves through representatives who are not hell-bent on the destruction of our civilization.
This is like this.
That first “This” – that the boomerang was the precursor to modern flight? Only if the Wright brothers, or Da Vinci, or anyone else trying to build a flying machine actually saw one of those things, noticed the aerodynamic properties and modeled their craft’s wings on the boomerang shape. I don’t think they did. I could be wrong, but I think birds’ wings were the European inspiration, probably the same for the Australian aboriginals. Independent observations leading to creation of tools to do the thing desired – fly. The aboriginals stopped at knocking dinner out of the air. Other groups went much further with the same ideas.
It’s also rather ironic that they explain the boomerang in those evil western colonial racist math terms in their cringey attempt at … what? Showing that we owe everything to a Stone Age society? One who most of the western inventors didn’t even know about?
I fear that it was only public outcry that influenced the DA to not file charges.
I don’t doubt that it did play a part. And THAT is what needs to happen. IMHO we’ve all gotten too complacent in monitoring the system that we take for granted “protects” us.
It will take people to push back and demand change or else.
Yeah. No. Insty’s lawyer country, at least as posts go. Glenn is. And thus high on the copeium of believing that words on paper are somehow magical. There exist plenty of examples of societies descending into anarchy and not coming back up, depending on how far off the norm of Western Civ or modernity or whatever you want to look. Or how long “never” is. I count “never” as in being in my lifetime. You do you, your children, or whenever. Beirut was once called the Paris of the Middle East. Heh. Now Paris is becoming the Beirut of France.
This. Magic spells on paper written centuries ago will not do the trick. It’s not going to change organically, nor is the change inevitable.
No, I believe Instapundit’s comment is not based on belief on magical power of words on paper. Rather, he is making an observation about societies: An increasing number of people (people who do not read blogs and political magazines) will become increasingly fed up with the dysfunction and with the people who enable that dysfunction.
Did Australia’s boomerangs pave the way for flight?
No, that is why the Wright Flyer of 1903 didn’t go in circles.
Oh, FFS. Meanwhile, back around 1950…
Journalists, is there anything they
don’tknow?I’m sure you are correct: Various early flight theorists and experimenters, going at last as far back as DaVinci, were inspired by the flight of birds (and sometimes bats.)
I’m also certain that all or virtually all of the19th Century aviation pioneers were not even aware of boomerangs, and if any were aware they were not inspired thusly in their design of gliders and airplanes.
Journalists, is there anything they
don’tknowwon’t pull out of their ass?Sir George Caley made this counter-rotating helicopter toy in 1796 (well before Nikoli Ilych Kamov thought it was a swell idea) based on a slightly earlier French (spit) design. There are even earlier European paintings showing kids playing with toys like this spinning thing.
Seeing as how Australia hadn’t had much truck with Yte European Supremacist Devils until 1770, it is indeed a pretty good bet Caley didn’t come up with his thing even in the extremely unlikely event he say a boomerang.
And so we see that despite their quick wit and elite educations, these are indeed second rate thinkers. If they were first rate they would think through the implications of their ideas and deep-six the foolish ones. Nor would they ignore evidence which undermines those ideas. But, like so many second-rate intellectuals, they value cleverness and conformity to fashionable opinion over wisdom and truth. “Dedicated Followers of Fashion”.
In a recent podcast interview, Jordan Peterson remarked that many people do not actually think: An idea pops into their heads and they embrace it, thinking that they have Had a Thought. But they do not critically examine that idea: They do not bother to look for evidence that might undermine it. They do not explore its implications and what that says about the truth or wisdom of the idea.
It is fashionable among intellectuals to think that only the hoi polloi are guilty of not thinking, but it is very frequently true of the intellectual classes as well. (And as has been remarked more than once, scientists rarely think scientifically outside their narrow fields.)
Thus the uselessness of logic and reason. The ideas that pop into their heads are generally a function of their own emotions and ideas that they have heard most often, most forcefully from others. So the influence of logic and reason on culture and public opinion…?
No. It’s not that logic and reason are useless. It’s that emotional appeals are also useful. And those who want to win should embrace both. Thus it is good for a movement to have logical people who present facts and logic, and other people who present emotional arguments.
No. In the context of broad appeal, to the masses, logic and reason are only useful when in service to persuade via emotions and group think. By themselves, they are useless. No great scientific discovery was ever accepted by the general public, even by most scientists outside the relevant domain/context..and even many inside that domain, based solely on logic and reason. The emotional element and especially peer pressure are what sells the idea. I don’t like it, but that’s just reality. I’m guilty of it myself even though I’ve been well aware of this reality most of my life.
“I have 200,000 followers, doesn’t he understand who I am!”
A hilarious encounter with some psychopathic narcissists.
There’s more than a bit of a “you peasants” attitude displayed here.
But then, I assume that nearly all “influencers” are narcissists and/or grifters.
If you wish to create an enduring structure in society, you should use logic and reason to create such a structure and then create an emotional appeal to sell that structure to those who feel more than think.
I believe that @WTP believes that has already happened with specifically different views of society than the society the US founders created. If that’s the case, I actually agree with @WTP’s view on the matter.
If only I could edit my slightly earlier comment.
I agree with the above quote. I also don’t know how to adjust the trajectory of my country.
We’d need to find some first.
RS Archer may have been correct in the link, but I think he’s otherwise not a nice person. (Nor am I, to be frank.)
And I have seen a claim that this, and other items on his Twitter account, are parodies/hoaxes/whatever you want to call them.
Today I learned that drug dealing is “black culture”.
Today I learned that drug dealing is “black culture”.
The rest of the story, but why isn’t a black person drinking boba tea cultural appropriation, and why aren’t a bunch of Taiwanese up in arms over some upstart Indonesians appropriating their culture, and why the hell would anyone drink that crap to begin with?
Australia: after 60,000 years residing there, the aboriginies did not have agriculture, domesticated animals (besides the dog), writing, actual houses, or anything. Sure, hold them up as an example for us.
Logic: The idea of the minimum wage appeals to “fairness” and in the face of this powerful emotion, the logic (and fact) that raising the min wage prices young and low-skill people out of a job does not stand a chance. That is the power of emotion. Same with “hands up don’t shoot”–it appeals to a narrative.
It is indeed possible for a civilization to fall into anarchy. Venezuela is a fine example. Unfortunately, brutal dictatorships can be very stable and persistent–Cuba for example.
It’s also rather ironic that they explain the boomerang in those evil western colonial racist math terms in their cringey attempt at … what?
Wakandaism, or in this case Abo-Wakandaism. They were doing science and technology better than the stalepales, who bricked up the starship base at Ayres Rock and stole the Abo knowledge for Isaac Newton and James Watt to take credit for. Or they were just about to have their technological breakout when they were thwarted by the stalepales.
Boomerangs – beautiful design, and what else could it come from but the proto-STEM world of country boy empiricists and tinkerers who are close observers of nature and have a lot of time to whittle their throwing stick until it’s better than their friend’s throwing stick.
By the time the evil James Cook turned up, the country boy tinkerers in the UK (and in Germany, and in China, and in Persia) weren’t all that advanced in throwing sticks but they did have centuries of experience with sailboats, windmills, water wheels, where they’re harnessing the forces of a designed shape moving through a fluid. Is that maybe worth bringing up in the history of why the Wright brothers and not the Unga-Bunga brothers developed powered flight?
I think boomerangs and windmills and airplanes are all great, but the average BBC correspondent thinks that Aboriginal country boy empiricists have something spiritual and ecological about them, while white country boy empiricists are backward racists whose barnyard wisdom, like that animals and people tend to be like their ancestors, has to be vilified and suppressed.
And are we sure we are not already in one? Under true anarchy we could at least defend ourselves. I really think people, conservative…”conservative” people looking for copes like “what cannot go on will not go on” or “cannot last forever” are in denial as to the kind of strongman/authoritarian phase that comes next. There’s no guarantee, in fact it is extremely unlike, that the expected strongman will come from the (so-called) right. That’s the Hitler/Mussolini Narrative of keeping the trains running on time BS. More likely we get a Stalin/Pol Pot/Mao/Castro/WTF authority.
Should paleontologists be up in arms over all those Tea Rex bubble tea shops?
And the didjeridoo, for which we should be thankful; forerunner of the orchestral wind section. In 60,000 years no Abo musician thought to put a few holes along the prototype or whittle improvements to the ‘mouthpiece’ so as to alter the notes and pitch. Even without a string section it would have been an improvement.
How many times do we have to talk about helicopters around here for you to get the point? Yeah, throwing leftists out of helicopters tends to make the world better, but what style of government would be able to do such a thing?
BTW, National Socialist <> Fascist. I wouldn’t want to live under either, although I’m living under that administrative state that Mussolini admired (which FDR’s administration thought was the way to go). You may or may not find https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-original-fascist/ interesting or believable.
Honestly, if I cannot edit a post that I just made, then the edit function should not even exist.
The US Supreme Court can, has, and will make monumentally shit decisions. Wickard v. Filburn (which still “good law”) is one such decision made back in 1942 under FDR’s reign of error. That decision stated that you growing tomatoes (for example) in your back yard could interfere with the interstate commerce of tomatoes into your state (since you aren’t buying some other state’s tomatoes any more) that such growing of tomatoes in your back yard are obviously controllable by federal laws.
I had to take 4 credit hours of law as a cadet, read this back in 1978 and thought “What the flying fuck?”. The water’s been coming to a boil for a while.
Again missing the point. How many helicopters do you have? How many pilots? What style of government doesn’t GAF who they toss out? You want to have a life? They don’t care. Nobody cares.
Again, logic and reason. This was clearly a BS decision long before it was “explained” to me as a teenager. I take it that at approximately the same time you were objecting to your AP history teacher regarding this as was I? No one cared that it was BS. All that mattered was that the teacher said it was logical and reasonable. Any objections were tolerated but not listened to. The only net effect was a waste of the class’s time. And as a lesson to not ask questions no matter how unreasonable. It makes people uncomfortable and thus it’s not cool. Even amongst the uncool smart kids, so where does that leave you? Just accept what you are told is the right answer, come back tomorrow and write it down on the test or no ‘A’ for you.
Of course, it’s not just the BBC. It could be Channel 4. Or The Economist. Or Scientific American. Or Nature. Or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Or… well, we’ll be here all day.
The sense of there being a gulf – in assumptions and ideology – between what could broadly be called the media class and much of its supposed audience is hardly a rare experience. The impression that said gulf is growing and seemingly irretrievable is also far from uncommon.
Oh, and we mustn’t forget The Atlantic and Vanity Fair.
Still a classic.
As I said in the original thread, I can’t offhand think of another interview in which the interviewee has to correct the interviewer so many times, after almost every question. It’s one of those moments in media that revealed the aforementioned gulf to a great many people, and did so quite vividly.
Though I think the item on Scientific American – and its editor’s response to criticism – shows just how thoroughly a once-reputable institution can be captured and compromised.
This is a test to see if the comment edit option is still up-buggered.
Yes, it appears to be up-buggered.
[ Makes offering to gods at wpDiscuz. ]
It wasn’t until I got to university that I was even aware of the existence of BBC Radio 4 and its flagship Today programme (I may have heard the phrase Desert Island Discs, but had certainly never listened to it or knew where it came from).
At the time, it was a complete revelation and I became an avid listener.
What surprised me was that unlike the television news, the Prime Minister would appear live, and in person, in the radio car (a kind of mobile recording booth if I remember correctly). (Note that is not something that has happened in a long, long time now).
From there I discovered In Our Time, which I would still argue is a worthwhile digest, the News Quiz (a hit-and-miss satirical news review), and other radio comedies such as Knowing me, Knowing you with Alan Partridge, Old Harry’s Game, Cabin Pressure, The League of Gentleman and others.
I’m mentioning this because I was a regular Radio 4 listener, especially to the Today programme, for at least 20 years or more.
While quite obviously I am older now, it’s not due to my advancing years that I have come to notice the very obvious changes in tone.
Following the row over Carrie Gracie’s claims of gender pay gap discrimination, a journalist I doubt 1 in 1000 licence fee payers had heard of before 2018, the Today programme shifted its feminist editorial line into high gear. No matter how tenuous the link might be, a feminist angle on a story would be found (or simply crow-barred in) and pushed hard.
And while not especially religious myself, I was actually disgusted when Thought for the Day, a short daily slot in which a faith leader would give a brief sermon, was opened up to atheists (which in practice just meant opening up this slot to the kind of Islington dinner party chattering class that already had multiple media platforms from which to spout their waffle).
None of this was new as Rod Liddle, a former editor of Today, has been saying for years.
But the tone that at one time could only be heard coming from the Left wing comedians on the News Quiz (e.g. Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel, Jo Brand) now pervades everything with an intensity that means you can’t fail to notice it.
For a long time, Radio 4 seemed to be the only thing which, for me, made the licence fee worth paying.
Yet I doubt I’ve listened to it more than about four times in as many years and most of those by accident.
Well, it’s strange for an in-group whose status depends on publicly disdaining the values of their imagined inferiors – and on making those imagined inferiors feel unwelcome, not part of their intended audience – to then ask how it can be that their audience continues to shrink.
See also the last few paragraphs of this:
For instance.
Just noticed I mixed up this part while making my previous comment…
The 1978 thing, yes. Class was at time, same exact year as me but you were taking a law class, not history. Curious if you raised any WTF objection or would that have even more problematic as a cadet? Forgetting your specifics but was this West Point?
Testing, testing.
I grew up on Public Radio and Public Television. When I was a very young child, there were such treasures as Leonard Bernstein’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, science programs which talked about science without injecting politics, and so on. But slowly the left took over and now they are largely unwatchable and unlistenable. I still get occasional letters begging for money.
Also, under the topic of policing language…
So in order to keep spaces safe for all…
Don’t say ‘bigger’, say ‘larger’.
Don’t say ‘chigger’, say ‘mite’.
Don’t say ‘digger’, say ‘excavator’.
Well, you get the idea.
The science is in. Global warming does cause earthquakes.
The earth in CA moved, as Hurricane Hillary swept by.
Culture: the basic premise of the Left/Woke is that all cultures are equal, that we may not make any value judgements. Interestingly, none of these wokies volunteers to live in the Austin neighborhood (or other hellholes) of Chicago. The other basic premise is that if POC fail at something it is ipso facto due to racism and only racism and that thing (grammar, music notation, math) must be abolished. At what cost? Well. In Cali, every time they get extreme winds, power lines down is the number one cause of fire. This can be fixed. Do they fix it? No. They spend money on renewables and other green crap. This is incompetence writ huge. Same identical thing in Hawaii–they had big fires in 2019 and simply failed to have a plan for either notification or evacuation. The guy in charge of water dallied 5 hrs to release water to aid firefighters until the fire preventing the release. They could have shut down the grid but did not. Grand sweeping incompetence. Lots died. Entire towns burned to the ground. You cannot run an advanced economy with dolts and twits in charge.
Link needs fixing.
But the Claremont Review of Books is a great publication.
A shrubbery?
Grand sweeping incompetence.
To take it a step further even though they know it is perpetually dry on the leeward side and water comes from wells and aquifers, it rains somewhere on that island damn near if not every day, up to a couple three hundred inches/year on the windward side, unlike Oahu, there is not a single reservoir.
I suppose building one would upset Lono or the menehune. If only there was a water source they could maybe desalinate or something. Crazy talk.
So… Apropos of nothing in particular, the top advert at Insty this morning was a charter service.
For “Heavy Lift Helicopters”.
For “Heavy Lift Helicopters”.
Mi-26, for the really big jobs.
https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1693202194340696313?s=20
O/T Nasty racists given platform on UK TV.
The guy in charge of water dallied 5 hrs to release water to aid firefighters until the fire preventing the release.
Via Ace, more on this guy. He didn’t even live on Maui, among other things.
Rather like how, in the name of “green” ideology, California stopped building reservoirs and other infrastructure, abandoning the plans which were first drawn up in the 1940’s and 50’s.
From the comments:
Racism has made that black opinionizer as dumb as a bag of hammers.
Rather like how, in the name of “green” ideology, California stopped building reservoirs and other infrastructure…
Indeed, and like Hawaii, California also lacks a handy 850 mile source of water that could be desalinated.
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail
If I’m an ethnic advocate trying to consolidate the foothold of my people in China for example, and there just happens to be a moral consensus that gatherings of Chinese are morally suspect and as boring as white rice, that they need to include my people for moral legitimacy and zest, that’s more than a hammer, it’s an ethnic advocacy superweapon that’s fallen into my lap.
I don’t have to be bright enough to have persuaded the Chinese to adopt a suicidal moral consensus, just aware enough to recognize that it’s the right tool for the job, and to hammer it in at every opportunity.
What possible reason would I have for not using it? Because it’s ludicrously self-flattering and transparently self-serving? Because it seeks tangible advantages for the people I represent instead of the fulfillment of abstract principles? Because it puts the Chinese at a disadvantage where they have to prove their legitimacy to us? Those are all reasons for using the hammer again and again.
Ideally, because it would make you very unwelcome. A sensible society does not tolerate such people. If only our society were more sensible.
I’m currently watching the world athletics championships. Let’s just say the old racist probably wouldn’t have any problems with the British track team.
But that’s different.
Testy
The body positivity bozos were unavailable for comment. Lizzo hardest hit.
Gone?
On PBS, you may be thinking of his Harvard series of 6 lectures, “The Unanswered Question”, which were on PBS in 1976. They were fascinating.
On CBS in 1958-1972 (thx to wikipedia for the dates) he presented the “Young People’s Concerts”, which I remember happily.
And on Omnibus, the 1950s Sunday morning arts and humanities program hosted by Alistair Cooke on CBS, Bernstein did several programs explaining music.
Most of these have been issued on DVD and may be available through your local library. A lot of them can be found on Youtube and other sites.
It is strange that Steven Fry and his panelists did not think through the implications
The late Canadian pundit Kathy Shaidle once referred to Steven Fry as “a stupid person’s idea of a clever person”.
And the vast majority of the rest of the citizenry is fine with that. They have been thoroughly brainwashed to accept it.
Bezmenov tried to warn us.
the most likely outcome is a strongman coming in and imposing tyrannical order
Bezmenov tried to warn us.
Carleton University’s journalism programme
Carleton’s a joke. It’s the Canadian equivalent of a junior state community college.
Still a classic.
And I just sat and watched the whole thing again. Just amazing.
I was a Junior (or Cow as we called it for reasons I won’t expand unless specifically asked) at West Point taking my mandatory 4 credit hours of Law. ALL of us had to take 4 credit hours of Law as well as various other courses around the “whole man” concept (despite my being in the first class with females). That was ~45 years ago (1978/1979); the slight bit of monitoring around what USMA has been up to since then that I’ve paid attention to has not filled me with pride about that place’s recent output. From I can tell, it’s now the “woke vermin” concept; I could be wrong.
I believe that I brought up the “growing tomatoes in your back yard” analogy at the time with the additional “well, then, EVERYTHING falls under the Commerce Clause according to this decision!” My instructor was a Captain (O3) and so had as much ability to change Supreme Court decisions as I did as a cadet. If memory serves me correctly after so long, I believe that he agreed with my statement. At least he didn’t tell me to shut the fuck up; I’d remember that.
Still, the takeaway is that Supreme Court has feet of clay. Wickard v. Filburn was decided when FDR was attempting to expand the court so that the new added judges would decide things in his favor; that shitty decision was a bone thrown to him to keep the SC at the current size.
And, as it so happens, damn near any economic activity you can make appears to controlled by the Commerce Clause due to that decision.
Interestingly, it worked for me when I clicked on it.
If this is true of editors at BBC Radio 4, it goes tenfold for Labour.
Despite Keir Starmer’s best efforts to make Labour presentable for the forthcoming General Election, the breathtaking hubris that was on display in the run up to their spectacular undoing in 2019 is still very much alive and well.
I’d suggest that this is precisely what makes her unfit to be a school administrator.
To boast of abandoning reality at the drop of a hat – and by extension, coercing others to be unrealistic too – and to boast of creating a pathological environment, in which manipulative pretension and mental illness thrive – is an odd moral flex.
I think we’ll give that one a post of its own. Comments that-a-way.
Jordan Peterson has a segment (that I can’t seem to find) like this:
“How did we get here?
I moved forward a little bit and you didn’t object.
Then I waited.
Then I moved forward a little bit more and you didn’t object.
Then I waited…”
Yes. Do not want to leave the impression I, nor we as I was not the most outspoken about it (though probably the most annoyed), were told to STFU but our teacher. However she was clearly supportive of it regardless how much she tried to treat it like settled law and thus the way things should be. I saw her again at a reunion a few years back. Upon brief discussions with her at the reunion many, many things, many things not even discussed, became clear to me…or maybe clearer…regarding education.
“by out teacher” not “but our teacher”.
Whaaaat dooooes a….yel-low light mean?
A great show.