Not Entirely Similar
For those with an interest in recent history, and indeed surrealism, a catalogue of progressive cancel culture.
Among the sins punished with both swiftness and eyebrow-raising severity – questioning the benefits of rioting; questioning overt racial favouritism at the University of California, Los Angeles; saying that George Floyd wasn’t actually a moral exemplar; liking tweets in support of Donald Trump; questioning the methods of Black Lives Matter; showing the 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s Othello to students at the University of Michigan; and teaching students of Chinese how to pronounce Chinese words.
And regarding the above, this:
And also, from recent comments, this by Mr Wanye Burkett:
Maybe the principle here is that this is so unbecoming of a public school teacher [to publicly exult in the murder of someone with different political views] that not only should they lose this specific job, but maybe they shouldn’t work in another public school ever again. Maybe they’re just not suited for that kind of work.
That’s not punitive. That’s much more logical, instrumental. The idea in this latter case is that people have revealed themselves to be unsuited for a particular kind of employment.
Readers may wish to ponder whether the sins mentioned above – expressing doubts about rioting, or teaching Chinese pronunciation to students of Chinese – exist on the same level of inaptness as, say, a public-school teacher showing ten-year-olds shockingly graphic video of a man being shot in the neck, and killed, in front of his family, and showing that footage repeatedly, “numerous times,” while hectoring those same ten-year-olds on the merits of so-called “anti-fascism.”
Answers on a postcard, please.
Update, via the comments:
Regarding the example immediately above, John D adds,
It does, I think, invite questions as to the vetting of public school educators and the kinds of personalities the job seems to attract in high concentrations. It also invites questions as to what kind of environment, what kind of workplace assumptions, might make a teacher of ten-year-olds think that such behaviour would be considered acceptable.
I mean, if nothing else, and even absent any conventional moral inhibition, you’d think that one of the obvious considerations for a teacher of ten-year-olds might at least be the assumption that parents will find out. In this case, when their children arrive home bewildered and distressed. And to therefore behave accordingly. And yet.
Update 2:
Regarding this,
Liz adds,
Or sufficiently sympathetic, politically, to not mind too much, or maybe just accustomed to politicised overreach and inapt behaviour in general. Those would seem to be among the more obvious inferences. And as so often, it appears that shocked parents, rather than colleagues, were the ones to object.
On the subject of parents being shocked to discover, belatedly, what their children are actually being taught, these three incidents came to mind. Among many others. Note, in the third link, the casual invention of a fake curriculum – yes, a fake curriculum – so as to deceive any curious parents.
And all while insisting, “This is not being deceitful.”
In light of which, the “anti-fascist” snuff-video session mentioned above doesn’t exactly scream anomaly or aberration, or some unfortunate misreading of the room, so much as a ratcheting upwards.
With a hat-tip to Darleen.
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Request For Opinion: This transcript allegedly shows text comms between Tyler Robinson and his “roommate.”
Some commenters on twiXer said it didn’t sound like how a couple of dudes would speak to each other in chat. It sounds too contrived. Too formal. Sentences well-formed and formal. So they say it’s a fabrication by the FBI.
They’re right that it sounds contrived. OTOH, wouldn’t the FBI have the perspicacity to fabricate something that looks more “chatty”? Robinson was a high-IQ kid, living the quirk life, so maybe his communication style was overly formal.
Please advise.
I suppose I should be surprised, but experience has taught me otherwise.
I have on occasion been asked why I seem to take a dim view of teachers in general, and leftist teachers in particular, which increasingly amounts to much the same thing. The post above, and the links within it, may help on that front.
Setting aside the eye-widening particulars on display – the sheer fucking hubris, to borrow a phrase – I’ve often been struck by the presumption of the type, the casual, practised overreach. Even in secondary school, the discernibly left-leaning teachers seemed to regard their job – their real job – as one of social engineering, of making children comply with their own, rather weird worldview.
As if conveying the particulars of their supposed field were insufficiently statusful, or a side-gig, or a pretext for some ham-fisted political project, for which they showed much greater enthusiasm, and in which they were stars of the drama.
Being at the time a sweaty teen, I didn’t have a clear idea of what exactly was so obnoxious about it, or what the motives might be. But the air of vanity and overreach, of pushing against propriety, of entitlement, was hard to miss.
I should add that, as a sweaty teen, what struck me first was the personality type, the psychology in play. The politics became apparent later. Which I suppose might be a data point for the idea that politics is to a very large degree a function of personality.
Re 505 Karen Drive:
No mention if she had any patients. Real curious if there might possibly be other sources of funding as a consultant.
I took one, don’t recall which, about a dozen years ago after years of becoming more and more frustrated with the insanity, and at times outright stupidity that I was seeing people, even “conservative” people who theoretically should have know better, just accepting things. I reached a point where I figured everybody else must be on them in order for things to be getting crazier and crazier and yet accepted. I was finding it harder and harder to focus on tasks in front of me when I could see root problems that no one wanted to address. This was very, very clear to me on the project that I was working. Things were so insanely stupid. Project deadlines came and went with no consequences except everyone being expected to work even more overtime. After discussing with my doctor I just decided, fuck it. Give me some of whatever it is those people are having.
As the drugs started to take effect I noticed that I didn’t really feel much better except that I developed a very cavalier attitude. Making jokes on conference calls that I never would have dared to make before. I was surprised that I wasn’t corrected by anyone. If anything, it seemed like people were appreciating my entertainment factor. I then made one terribly bad personal financial decision. I miscalculated a decision by $100,000 in parallel with deciding to quit my job. Putting that together with my suspicions regarding my new attitude at work, I quit the drugs cold turkey. Then I crashed. Hit a deep depression, edge of suicide stuff. My boss had suggested that I take a leave of absence rather than just quit, so fortunately I was able to return to my job. Mostly because the system was so effing incompetent anyway.
My point in relating all that was to give context to what may be part of the problem with SSRI’s, etc. After I got myself back on track I did a little research and found a couple of people, men specifically, with similar experiences. One had pretty much financially ruined his family. I forget what the other guy’s issue was but what seemed in common to me with the three of us was a suppression of the Freudian super-ego. Not a big fan of Freud but what I experienced and what these other guys apparently experienced really fit that model. Now imagine what might happen if you remove the superego conscientiousness factors, what little there may be there, from people who are genuinely messed up.
Consider especially Kirk’s killer. Now this is pure speculation. I do not know if he was on them but it would fit in with a kid growing up in a conservative, thus stricter than the ambient society sense. His texts with his lover, presuming they are as presented, didn’t show much in the way of a conscience. In those texts he seemed more concerned about the story he was going to have to tell his father regarding losing his grandfather’s rifle than he was about the moral consequences of having murdered another human being.
Exactly.
These are the same girls that got older women and a few men executed in Salem.
Hmmm . . . a revival of The Crucible with the young ladies played by transwomen. Starring Dylan Mulvaney. Question is, would it be received at criticism of the QTIA+ activism or would those unfamiliar with its background and McCarthyism see it as a brave and stunning stance against the transgender genocide that plagues our society?
Speaking of the transgender genocide, as I have said before, I am still looking for the bodies strewn in the streets.
[ Compiles Friday’s Ephemera, weighs merits of spicy meatballs for tea. ]
We have established the quirks of English cuisine, but of all the types of “tea” that don’t involve actual tea, using meatballs is the oddest.
David, are you the one who first introduced us all to Simon Webb’s videos?
Thank you very much. I have been enjoying them a great deal on my morning walks.
I was at least 30 years old when I first encountered the expression “beef tea” as an alternative way of saying “bouillon”.
As in evening meal.
I’ve been watching them for years, but I can’t recall who first shared them here. Maybe Aelfheld?
[ Takes meatballs out of freezer, checks date on rigatoni. ]
Whoever it was, thank you very much.
Beef tea ca be made with Marmite.
As we’ve noted before, Mr Webb has been called the usual names by the usual kinds of people – “racist,” “white supremacist,” “hateful,” etc – yet, so far as I can see, he’s none of those things. I’ve yet to spot any shockingly outrageous views or anything that would credibly qualify as hatred or bigotry.
He does, however, pose questions of a kind one isn’t supposed to ask – and with reference to realities that are often widely known, indeed hard to miss, but regarding which we’re supposed to pretend something else entirely.
And that not pretending really chafes the cheeks of a certain kind of person.
Ah, dinner or supper, as opposed to high tea or tiffins or elevenses, according to my English-English dictionary.
However, given the fondness for boiled beef in your neck of the woods, it is reasonable to think, as odd as it might be, one might also be boiling meatballs then drinking the mess as sort of a home made Bovril™, speaking of man made horrors.
Yup.
Accurate.
I’m sure I’ve previously mentioned a visit to Beloved Sister-In-Law #3’s, during which her teenage daughter enquired, with an entirely innocent loudness, about the forthcoming meal: “Mom, are we having that chewy meat again?”
What tickled me at the time was the blissful innocence of the enquiry. It was entirely free of malice. More a sort of humanitarian concern.
It happened more than a decade ago. I’m still not sure said sister-in-law has seen the funny side of it.
My mother was a good cook, but a terrible baker. When I was about four years old she decided to bake a pie for desert when we had company coming – my aunt, uncle, and cousins. I gained not entirely favourable notoriety when, struggling with the pie, I asked “Mum – do I have to eat the plaster, too?”
Out of the mouths of babes, and all.
The same FBI that accepted & promoted the Steele Dossier? Even after their previous director had to admit it was codswallop³?
Pointing out the obvious.
Morning Brief.
Credit where due, y’all do pomp and ceremony right.
Aksuhully…a bit of a stretch to call it the same FBI. Yes, there’s likely a lot to be purged there but on such a high profile case as this, I would think/hope that more trustworthy personnel are at least overseeing the case. I doubt they would be able to fabricate this on the fly. Most of the complaints I see regarding this text message release seem very thin. Doesn’t seem all that unusual for a relatively well educated kid. If he came from f’d up Democrat background, perhaps. But most of his life, when he gained his fundamentals of communication, it seems like he was living in a responsible environment that saw to it that he was properly educated.
Since we’re discussing the FBI…something else that I find interesting about this case is his conservative family background. Maybe there is more to be uncovered here, maybe Mom and Dad are more cra-cra than what is being told (at least by the somewhat trustworthy media). But I have seen this sort of problem in families. Even “conservative” families. Most specifically/egregiously when I was working on an FBI/CJIS contract. I would overhear people talking to their kids, or about their kids, or people would be late for work and let slip that there was a domestic issue with their child*. Always with the teenagers. These people were working 50-60 hour weeks. Many had been doing so for several years and seemed rather proud of how much time they spent at work. I was late joining this project. It had been going on for I think at least six years and was actually a carry-over/augmentation of a previous project. I saw it from the perspective of fresh eyes. Most of the people working it either had a zombie-like dedication or, the brighter ones and relatively younger ones, deep morale issues.
* Another odd thing about this project. I cannot think of another project that I worked in my entire career where I had so many incidents of hearing about other people’s children. These were not people that I was especially close to, work-wise. They weren’t people, with maybe one exception being someone I had previously worked with, who I saw outside of work or “morale building” happy hours. I’m generally not one to ask people, even my friends, how their kids are doing so for me it was a bit weird to hear so much. Especially from people that I kinda didn’t like all that much.
[ Straightens tie, adjusts cufflinks. ]
Random Top Gear moment.
Yeah, I guess mere harassment was getting the results they wanted, to murder? Perfectly acceptable.
Regarding which:
T’aint politics. It’s pathology.
I once worked for a manager who was self-admittedly on anti-anxiety medications. They work by suppressing amygdala activation and the fight-or-flight reflex.
The problem is that this also wipes out the low-level amygdala activation related to risk evaluation, with the result that he had absolutely no ability to judge project risk.
The end result is was a project that missed its deadline by six months, cost the company $60,000 in a lump sum penalty payment, and the laying off of him and everyone underneath him.
There’s a fairly big difference between an office executive missing a leg and an office executive missing a large chunk of basic judgement. I’m increasingly of the opinion that being on any form of psychiatric medication ought to disqualify one from any management position.
An example of why the 17th Amendment was a bad idea.
Sooner or later, everyone comes around to the idea of patriarchy.
The pretence part is, I think, quite important. People who pretend things that are untrue, and who count on others pretending the same things, can be quite prickly – to a degree that’s noteworthy. This prickliness is often expressed in name-calling and pre-emptive attempts to shut down discussion.
Realistic discussion is risky for pretenders of things, in that the pretence may be revealed, and being revealed as a pretender – a liar – can be much more catastrophic for one’s worldview – and ego – than merely being wrong about some factual detail. Good-faith screw-ups may be annoying or mildly embarrassing, but that will soon pass.
Pretending – and being seen to be pretending – is something else.
You may be thinking of the 19th Amendment. The 17th was the direct election of senators, something I view as much more destructive to the republic than either the 16th or 19th.
[ Directs stern glare of disapproval. ]
A definite possibility would be quirky or formal language due to oddball personality.
Take it for what it’s worth: An uninformed opinion based solely on a few people I’ve known in years past, whose choice of terminology and phrasing was at times archaic and at other times just odd. I haven’t even read the transcripts.
Wife pointed this out to me…
There’s one in the community just across the state line from us in NC. Haven’t seen of it in our town…yet. Of course saying anything about it is considered part of the problem. Which is just…f***** stupid itself. Comments on posts about it draw a number of LOL’s and “Karen” calls. Here in rural Appalachia. Bible Belt. Because this is just how thick the sickness is in our society.
The Pennywises of the left are having a rough year.
I blame the ‘big-tent Republicans’.
The “moderate left” are following the same character as the “moderate Muslim”: unlike their hardcore brethren they don’t want to decapitate you themselves, but they do enjoy watching. — Mark Steyn
Here’s one theory:
The episode is cued up to where the discussion of the mother’s possible problems is discussed. The earlier part of the show contains uncensored footage of the assassination, fairly close up. Not something you want to see twice.
There is exactly one news story (that I can find) that alleges that Robinson’s phone contained sick photos of child parn.
Cannot confirm.
Tasteless humor.
Might some fava beans and a nice Chianti improve it?
This is what the shrieking left-feminists completely miss when observant (and traditional) Christians talk about a wife submitting to her husband. I won’t go through the litany of charges they make but they miss (deliberately) two important things, one the Bible verse for husbands is “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;”.
Two, that while most healthy couple dos share decisions, there still is a usual default to the male when it comes to larger decisions on how the family is going to thrive (e.g. whose career comes first, where they will live) even as the female has primary decisions on the family details (running the household — married women make most of the financial decisions).
This kind of complimentary arrangement (rather than the 50/50 split of everything that left-feminists insist upon) is a mystery to the Left even as their template is destructive to families. Bug or feature?
Or maybe the “contrivance” is Robinson setting things up in advance to keep his lover out of trouble.
“…you’d think that one of the obvious considerations for a teacher of ten-year-olds might be the assumption that parents will find out. “
That’s because you and I believe that parents should be the arbiter of what their children learn at school, while teacher training colleges and the atmosphere in the staffroom with their fellows teachers has inculcated into them a belief that they are the sole arbiter, and not only should parents be forced to agree, but that the children aren’t there fot any other reason but experimentation. They aren’t in fact, children at all. They are lab rats.
Crime, it turns out, does not pay.