Further to the recent, eye-widening exchange between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing: 

In the interview, Newman relies on this technique [of perverse rephrasing] to a remarkable extent, making it a useful illustration of a much broader pernicious trend. Peterson was not evasive or unwilling to be clear about his meaning. And Newman’s exaggerated restatements of his views mostly led viewers astray, not closer to the truth… One of the most important things this interview illustrates — one reason it is worth noting at length — is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”

Fabian Tassano on “critical thinking”: 

It is interesting that the scholars feel able to announce in advance, on behalf of their own students, and the students of other history tutors at Oxford, a decision on whether students will engage with the [Ethics and Empire] project. One might think that the ability to “think critically” would include openness to ideas from heterodox perspectives, as well as the capacity to decide for oneself, independently of one’s tutors, whether a source of information is worthy of consideration. One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.

Via Claire Lehmann, Kerryn Pholi on Aboriginal taboos: 

Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption – along with frontier warfare and disease – rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture… The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.

And Joe Katzman on leftism as a never-ending status game: 

Do you have any doubt about the left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status? Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted. Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signalling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class. Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment, where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status. These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.

Very much related, the second item here. 

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Roger Kimball on “shitholes” and theatrical indignation: 

And here we come to a second curiosity in the preening and ecstatic outrage over the president’s comment. Everyone, near enough, knows that he was telling a home truth. It was outrageous not because he said something crude that was untrue. Quite the contrary: it was outrageous precisely because it was true but intolerable to progressive sensitivities. In other words, the potency of taboo is still strong in our superficially rational culture. There are some things — quite a few, actually, and the list keeps growing — about which one cannot speak the truth or, in many cases, even raise as a subject for discussion without violating the unspoken pact of liberal sanctimoniousness. Donald Trump, of course, does this regularly, delightedly.

Tim Newman on the same: 

Trump’s comments are pretty innocuous to anyone who is not a deranged anti-Trumper or a fully paid-up member of the media or political establishments. He’s asked the question millions of people across America and Europe have been asking for years, waiting in vain for their leaders to do so. And now he has, and the reason his opponents have gone apoplectic is because they know how much this will resonate with ordinary people they wish didn’t exist. That, and they wish to virtue-signal in order to keep their places in what they think is polite society.

And Mitchell Gunter on the posturing of Antifa – and sociopathy as a lifestyle choice: 

Tim Newman on the bigotry of low expectations: 

When I was in Melbourne, some government body or other put on a display of “Aboriginal culture” in Federation Square and advertised it all over town. I guessed in advance that it would consist of a bunch of primitives sat around bashing drums while metropolitan white folk looked on as if they were visiting a zoo. Child-like art would be on display wrapped in copious quantities of mumbo-jumbo. I passed by one Saturday afternoon and sure enough, that’s exactly what it was.

And somewhat related, William Buckner on the ‘noble savage’ fantasy, and the rather less charming realities: 

Comparatively little attention has been given to the risk of ‘traveller’s diarrhoea’ common among hunter-gatherers. For mobile groups, infants, the elderly, and other vulnerable individuals have little opportunity to develop resistance to local pathogens. This may help explain why infant and child mortality among hunter-gatherers tends to be so high. Across hunter-gatherer societies, only about 57% of children born survive to the age of 15. Sedentary populations of forager-horticulturalists, and acculturated hunter-gatherers, have a greater number of children surviving into adulthood, with 64% and 67%, respectively, surviving to the age of 15.

Ah, but we must politely overlook the tedium and illiteracy, the malnutrition and dehydration, the alarming levels of child mortality, murder and infanticide, the sharply truncated lifespans, the child rape, and the delights of stone-age dentistry. We must see only how egalitarian and vibrant these exotic creatures are, if you squint and tilt your head, and then carefully turn away while the other stuff takes place.

And if you think such fantasies are confined to the distant past, consider the Utopian ruminations of Guardian columnist George Monbiot, whose urge to romanticise The Other – especially if The Other is brown and poor, and unable to challenge his bizarre worldview – is a thing to behold:

It is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier than we are. In southern Ethiopia, for example, the poorest half of the poorest nation on earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls.

That’s right. Forget about sanitation and drudgery, and the limited options in life. Think instead of how happy these Ethiopian peasants are, these beings we should emulate, with their quaint little shelters made of leaves and packing cases. It’s just so adorable. And not a single remote control to harsh the egalitarian buzz. Like his Guardian colleague Oliver James – another anhedonic hypocrite stressed by the contradictions of being a well-heeled middle-class lefty – Mr Monbiot wants us to believe that “wealth causes misery.” Yes, wealth is bad for “us” – by which of course he means bad for you.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Lifted from the comments because… well, see for yourself:

モッツァレラ の 歌  Via Elephants Gerald.