Meme - Hot Takes Nobody Asked For: "wil wheaton was wearing this *punch* shirt at a supermarket. he once had an emotional breakdown after watching larry david pretend to be mean to elmo as a joke."
"Never Stop Punching Nazis"
Disagreeing on same-sex marriage doesn’t make you evil, says Rowan Williams - "he warns that moral debates "have become weaponised in the current culture wars", meaning that nuance is lost. He will also caution that cancel culture means that people of opposing views on contentious issues - such as same-sex marriage, abortion and assisted dying - are seen as “automatically monstrous and oppressive"... “It won’t do to demonise those with inconvenient consciences as automatically monstrous and oppressive. “You can’t simply ascribe deliberately evil intention to someone who disagrees on principle with the principles you think self-evident. Think, for example, of the debates over abortion or physician-assisted dying.”... Christians now account for less than half of England and Wales's population for the first time in census history."
From 2022. He missed the memo that if you disagree on gay marriage, you're a homophobic bigot and not a decent human being. Since he does not brand them monsters, he must be a terrible and awful person himself
Thread by @fentasyl on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It's ridiculously profitable to be classified as a "non-profit" by the IRS
1998: $1.0T revenue, $2.3T assets
2016: $2.6T revenue, $6.0T assets
In 1991, there were 516,000 501(c)3 organizations according to the IRS. By 2021, there were 1,431,000. Over 10% of the US workforce is in the NGO industry, doling out $670B in wages 6 years ago... We've maybe reached "peak per capita NGO" in the 2010s, but the 1990s-2000s were a feeding frenzy Reagan-era Tax changes hugely incentivized NGOs Used to great effect as tax shelters for the ultra-rich & as taxpayer subsidized political activist orgs disguised as "civil rights". In 2012, NGOs made up a huge amount of the Northeast workforce (surely even more now):
- 27% of DC
- 18% of NY, MA, ME, VT, RI
- 16% of PA
And... whaddya know? The industry is recession-proof. Underappreciated is that NGOs aren't only for money laundering and political activism. You are also personally subsidizing all the activities of:
- Every College/University (yes, even "Private" ones)
- Every pediatric transgender clinic
- Every COVID mass death nursing home
Since 1990, the ultra-rich have funneled some $8+T to their NGOs, all of it deducted away from their fair share of taxes That is, we pay the wealthy to do this And once the cash is sheltered in the NGO, it can be spent largely tax free (compared to a "for profit" corporation)... Heck of a racket to produce highly indoctrinated indentured servants, all paid for by the average schmuck USA Taxpayer
What can be done? From easiest to hardest:
- End PSLF
- End the "charitable" tax deduction
- Force schools to underwrite their own students' loans
- Abolish the entire concept of "non-profit organization" and tax them the same as "for-profits""
This won't stop left wingers from insisting that churches be taxes and that since they don't pay taxes they shouldn't "interfere with politics"
I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 on X - "NEW: The NYC Council began its meeting today by praising Allah as the supreme lord of the world, expressing their reverence in both Arabic and English."
Presumably the new left wing logic is separation of church and state only applies to Christianity because the mosque is not a church
RadioGenoa on X - "Bisexual girl says she would rather live in an Islamic caliphate than a Spain ruled by Vox. What don't these young people understand?"
What Is Systemic Racism? - "The invocation of “systemic racism” in political arguments is both a bluff and a bludgeon. When a person says, for example, “over-representation of black Americans in prison in the United States is due to systemic racism,” he is daring the listener to say: “No. It’s really because there are so many blacks who are breaking the laws.” And who would risk responding that way these days? The phrase effectively bullies the listener into silence. Users of the phrase seldom offer any evidence beyond citing a fact about racial disparity while asserting shadowy structural causes that are never fully specified. We are all simply supposed to know how “systemic racism,” abetted by “white privilege” and furthered by “white supremacy,” conspire to leave blacks lagging behind. American history is rather more subtle and more interesting. Such disparities have multiple, interacting causes, ranging from culture to politics to economics and, yes, to nefarious doings of institutions and individuals who may well have been racist. But acknowledging this complexity is too much nuance for those alleging “systemic racism.” They ignore the following truth: that America has basically achieved equal opportunity in terms of race. We have chased away the Jim Crow bugaboo, not just with laws but also by widespread social customs, practices, and norms. When Democrats call a Georgia voter integrity law a resurgence of Jim Crow, it is nothing more than a lie. Everybody knows there is no real Jim Crow to be found anywhere in America... Our lives are being remade every decade by technology, globalization, communication, and innovation, and yet all we seem to hear about is race. My deep suspicion is that these charges of “systemic racism” have proliferated and grown so hysterical because black people — with full citizenship and equal opportunity in the most dynamic country on Earth — are failing to measure up. Violent crime is one dimension of this. The disorder and chaos in our family lives is another. Denouncing “systemic racism” and invoking “white supremacy,” and shouting “black lives matter,” while 8,000 black homicides a year go unmentioned — these are maneuvers of avoidance and blame-shifting. The irony is that so many of us decry “systemic racism,” even as we simultaneously demand that this very same “system” deliver us."
"Systemic racism requires institutional collusion. Systemic racism is being carried out today in America’s elite university system against Asian-Americans"
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Although the percentages aren't very high, white liberals are roughly five times more likely than white moderates, and twice as likely as white conservatives, to admit to often secretly wishing for bad things to happen to people who politically disagree with them.
How often do you secretly wish for bad things to happen to those who disagree with you politically?
Source: ANES 2020 Pilot Survey (April 10-18)"
This tracks with left wing violence (though it's usually confined to fantasies and threats). But of course elites just obsess over the "far right"
20% of white liberals wishing it happened often or all the time is pretty high to me
Thread by @FistedFoucault on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - ""Young European men. We need you to urgently volunteer for military service in your respective countries in order to fend off Putler's coming invasion. You will fight for human rights, tolerance, and mass migration, while Google changes all of your history."
"You will fight for our right to call you misogynists, homophobes, racists, and transphobes. You will fight to ensure that young men from all over Asia and Africa can freely move into your lands and displace you socially, culturally, and economically."
"You will fight to ensure that political parties that best represent your interests will never, ever be allowed to come into power. You will fight to protect our right to curtail your ability to speak your minds, as doling so would threaten our democracy."
"You will fight to reduce our carbon footprint, even at the cost of complete de-industrialization, because we need to save Planet Earth from Climate Change. You will fight disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, the three-headed beast of anti-democracy." "
Jay Van Bavel, PhD on X - "College admission essay content has a stronger correlation with household income (R2 = 16%) than SAT scores. This explains how removing standardized tests can increase inequality. Based on 240,000 admission essays to the University of California."
Essay content and style are strongly related to household income and SAT scores: Evidence from 60,000 undergraduate applications
DEI benefits rich "minorities"
Visegrád 24 on X - "BREAKING: Another massacre against Christian Nigerians perpetrated by Islamist Fulani militias in Plateau State At least 11 were murdered in Bokkos during a night attack. Dozens wounded Homes & churches burned. Children killed Any protest march planned in London? Why not? 🇳🇬"
Gad Saad on X - "Is there a way that we can blame this on the Zionist regime? Clearly, Islam does not permit violence so this must be a false flag perpetrated by the Yahood."
PM - on X - "All religions are cults, money making organizations that kill for it."
Gad Saad on X - "Oh yes but especially the Jains. They are such bloodthirsty killers that they use a broom to sweep in front of them while walking in order to not inadvertently kill any insects. All religions are equal; all cultures are equal; criminals are equal but more so than their victims; men are women; borders are racist. Suicidal empathy = death of the West. Next book coming."
Meme - Karl Reid @educator2us: "Just boarded an early morning flight wearing my @MIT gear. A seat mate looked at me and asked, "Basketball?" I said, "No. Engineering!" What about me prompted him to think I was playing or coaching basketball?"
The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial: "It's not that deep. You're dressed like a coach, not a nerd."
Sebastian Stern @sternseb: "What is this obsession in western society with projecting victimhood and demanding attention? I really can't wrap my mind around it. It's so sad. It's damaging to the individual, it's damaging to society. We used to champion strength and perseverance. What happened?"
Valspar11 @Valspar111: "POLITICAL POWER. And all that comes with it- the ability to: 1) Steal in the name of the 'oppressed' richest 'poor' on the planet. 2) Lie about any topic and be supported by the leftist media - get away with it over and over again. 3) Hold very well paying 'employment' poisoning the minds of the ignorant, polluting the public square with alien concepts based on envy jealousy and marx. For starters."
Cernovich @Cernovich: "If we are being technical, according to MIT, you work in "outreach" and now DEI"
Keep Social-Justice Indoctrination Out of the Therapist’s Office - "Alexander Adams, a pseudonymous recent graduate of an American Master’s program in counseling, recently wrote an essay for Critical Therapy Antidote entitled, My Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology Taught me a lot about ‘Social Justice’ But Very Little about Counseling or Psychology. He describes two and a half years of “incompetence and mediocrity”—at a cost of $70,000 in (borrowed) money—during which teachers felt free to lecture students about their political beliefs, and trainees were instructed on “the dynamics and dilemmas of microaggressions,” and “developing a nonracist and antiracist white identity.” On the same site, a Master’s degree candidate in counseling (identified pseudonymously as “Student J”) asked what this pedagogy would mean for white patients: “When you seek counseling, how [would] you feel knowing that the person supposedly providing you with empathy and care sees you as an oppressor? … How is this healthy and productive for anyone?” A white woman who recently obtained her doctoral degree in counseling psychology, whom I’ll call “N,” was struck by the overt bias among instructors. They routinely derided conservatives as “ignorant and uneducated,” she told me. Like Adams and “Student J,” “N” noted that antagonism was directed at trainees who questioned the relevance of social justice dogma to their clinical cases. “If we were not combating oppression, we were contributing to it,” “N” said. A therapist is free to personally believe that Black Lives Matter and Ibram X. Kendi should (or should not) serve as guiding lights in the creation of a new kind of social contract. But in regard to clinical practice, Critical Social Justice Therapy violates core tenets of sound psychotherapy. Instead of addressing the individual person in need, it applies a pre-programmed ideological agenda that classifies individuals as oppressor or oppressed based on identity group. The task of the therapist, said Anthony Storr, the late British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is “to get the patient to talk as freely as possible whilst he himself stays in the background.” But talking freely is possible only if a therapist assumes a posture of caring neutrality, openness, and curiosity. And learning to maintain compassionate detachment lies at the heart of practitioner training. The mature therapist keeps her private passions from distorting the work. She is attuned to the development of what Freud called “countertransference,” wherein her own emotional reaction to a patient clouds her clinical judgment. Even seasoned therapists engage trusted supervisors to help them understand and manage such complexities as they emerge in therapeutic relationships. The “therapeutic alliance” between therapist and patient depends on their agreement in regards to the methods employed and the goals pursued. And research has shown that the quality of this alliance can help predict whether the therapy will be successful... When a therapist comes to the first session armed with an ideological program that dictates what the patient should become, such an alliance is doomed. Even insofar as a patient may agree to this program before treatment begins, what they will be receiving isn’t psychotherapy so much as anti-racism cant delivered under the pretext of therapeutic treatment. Where the patient should be inculcated in the habit of self-observation, he will instead be taught to search outside himself for sources of all duress; instead of traveling a path to greater autonomy, he will be instead rewarded for adopting the victim role... Olden, like most people who pursue psychotherapy, wanted to find clarity, relief from suffering, and freedom from the habits that had imprisoned her for years. Instead, she was told that we were “victims of vague societal forces outside of our control.”... researchers purporting to show the value of “multicultural counseling” typically have failed to even define this therapeutic subcategory with any precision. As well, many of their studies neglected to randomize subjects to control groups; instead, the researchers simply relied on self-reporting by selected clients and therapists. In all, one is hard-pressed to find any systematic evidence that the latest wave of CSJT techniques offer any real benefit... I’ve heard reports of patients being scolded by therapists for voting the “wrong” way. And I’ve exchanged emails with a former academic who has an informal side gig referring conservative (and ideologically non-compliant liberals) to “non-woke,” neutral therapists"
The warmongers have gone woke - "The recruitment video went viral. It outraged the right for portraying America as weak to its adversaries. And it outraged the left, who accused the CIA of dishonestly ‘co-opting’ progressive politics. In truth, the CIA has been woke for some time – and no one should be surprised by its drift in this direction. The ‘Humans of CIA’ campaign, which highlights the diversity of the agency’s staff, has actually been running since 2019. A year before, Gina Haspel, despite her alleged involvement in ‘extraordinary rendition’, became the first female CIA chief – a move the Trump administration tried to spin as a victory for ‘women’s empowerment’. It’s not just the CIA, either. The broader defence establishment is now bound up with woke politics. A watershed moment arrived in 2019 when MSNBC could proudly proclaim that the ‘military-industrial complex is now run by women’. As well as Haspel at the CIA, Andrea Thompson at the Pentagon was America’s lead weapons negotiator and in charge of the nuclear stockpile. The five largest arms contractors – Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the defence arm of Boeing – were also run by women. In the same year, Raytheon, the world’s largest manufacturer of guided missiles, began its partnership with the Girl Scouts, apparently to ‘close the gender gap in STEM’. Of course, for US militarism to be truly ‘intersectional’ it has to encompass race and sexuality as well as gender. At the weekend, the US Navy celebrated its first ever all-gay helicopter crew. Dow Chemical, which produced skin-burning napalm for the Vietnam war, has drawn media praise for its gay CEO. ‘How Dow Chemical Got Woke’, was how Bloomberg reported it. Earlier this year, ex-CIA chief John Brennan made headlines when he declared that he was ‘increasingly embarrassed’ to be a white man – perhaps not everyone can be ‘unapologetically themselves’ at Langley, after all. Why do they bother? Why have the warmongers gone woke? Partly it is a question of image. Of course, just as big companies like to align their corporate missions to Black Lives Matter because it is too gauche to say they are out to make a profit, the CIA and the defence establishment cannot simply say that they are out to dominate other countries or defend US commercial interests. But it is more than just PR. There are a number of aspects inherent to wokeness that make it so appealing to powerful institutions and elites. First, identity politics allows for ‘divide and rule’... an institution like the CIA could never draw moral legitimacy from more democratic ideals like national or popular sovereignty, as it overrides these every day. Secondly, wokeness allows the powerful to pose as being on the side of the weak. If you question these institutions which claim to be fighting racism, sexism and other -isms, it is because you are racist, sexist or some other ‘-ist’. Then there is the therapeutic aspect of wokeness. On the one hand, this allows the powerful to present themselves as vulnerable... you don’t need a decent wage, or the CIA to stop droning your village — you just need to see a therapist. Finally, there is the vast scope for obfuscation provided by political correctness. Wokeness normalises euphemistic language – ideal for the practitioners of ‘enhanced interrogation’ and the like. The CIA’s embrace of ‘intersectional’ imperialism should make it clear beyond doubt that wokeness is the ideal ideology of the powerful."
Did Slavery Create American Prosperity? - "Recently there seem to be an increasing number of claims that American prosperity resulted from slavery. This is presented as justification for the renewed calls for reparations for slavery, which Democrats are using in an attempt to gain support as we approach the next presidential election. But did slavery actually create the wealth of the U.S.? Does this claim have any historical basis in fact, or is this a distortion of history to influence the views of voters?... If we consider the historical experience of other nations involved in the slave trade, it could help our understanding of the issue. The transatlantic slave trade that took place from the 16th to the 19th centuries was a system in which Africans sold members of other tribes, often prisoners, as slaves to Europeans, who then shipped them to the Americas. During this time period only 5% of the total number of slaves sent across the Atlantic went to the U.S., with the other 95% going mostly to South America and the Caribbean. If American prosperity is based on slavery, then we would expect other nations that participated in the transatlantic slave trade to also be prosperous. If we take Brazil, for example, that nation took about 20 times more slaves than the U.S. So, if slavery leads to great prosperity one would expect Brazil to be much more prosperous than the U.S., since they took many more slaves. However, the U.S.’s GDP per capita is about four times greater than Brazil’s. Although the standard of living in Brazil is significantly lower than that of the U.S., other nations in South America are even worse off and among the poorest in the world, despite their historical experience with slavery. Now if we consider a sample of other prosperous nations that have a standard of living comparable to that of the U.S., would we find that their prosperity resulted from slavery? In Europe let’s take Switzerland, Germany, and Norway; in Asia, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea; and let’s also consider some other former British colonies, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. None of these prosperous nations participated in the transatlantic slave trade. If American prosperity were based on slavery, then we would expect to learn that in the 1800s the Southern States were wealthier than the Northern States, where slavery was illegal. However, this was simply not the case. The Industrial Revolution, which included new mechanized manufacturing techniques along with innovations in transportation and communication, such as the railroads, steamboats, and the telegraph, dramatically increased production. This was the driving force of the North’s economy, and in 1860, 90% of the nation’s manufacturing output came from the North... 80% of the U.S.’s wheat was produced in the North. Southern plantation owners had less motivation to invest in modern farm machinery since they owned slaves, so Southern agriculture remained more dependent on labor, which hindered progress and economic growth as the North became more mechanized and productive. In 1860 per capita income in the South was only 72% of the U.S. average, so there is no evidence that slavery made the South wealthy, let alone the entire U.S... It is also worth noting that in the years after the war cotton production increased dramatically without the use of slave labor... By any objective measure, American prosperity is not based on slavery. The industrial revolution set the stage for people such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and companies such as Boeing and Apple. It set the stage for all the American entrepreneurs, small businesses, and workers that contributed to American economic growth and prosperity. This along with a developed legal system, property rights, a high literacy rate, and a market economy is what led to a prosperous nation. To deny this and distort history to further a political agenda only creates more conflict and division at a time that has already become one of the most divisive in the U.S. since the Civil War."
Rutgers Prof: ‘Officially, I Now Hate White People’ - "James Livingston, the Rutgers University history professor who made the remarks, proceeded to detail “little Caucasian a**holes” that annoyed him at a restaurant. “OK, officially, I now hate white people,” Livingston said. “I am a white people [sic], for God’s sake, but can we keep them — us — us out of my neighborhood? I just went to Harlem Shake on 124 and Lenox for a Classic burger to go, that would [be] my dinner, and the place is overrun with little Caucasian a**holes who know their parents will approve of anything they do.” “Slide around the floor, you little s**thead, sing loudly, you moron,” he continued. “Do what you want, nobody here is gonna restrict your right to be white.” “F**k these people,” finished the professor, noting that he “resign[ed]” from his race."... “I just don’t want little Caucasians overrunning my life, as they did last night,” Livingston explained later Friday morning on Facebook. “Please God, remand them to the suburbs, where they and their parents can colonize every restaurant, all the while pretending that the idiotic indulgence of their privilege signifies cosmopolitan — you know, as in sophisticated ‘European’ — commitments.”"
"I Hope We Have No Crackers Here": EBF Staff Sanction Racial Slur - "A week ago, residents of Enchanted Broccoli Forest discovered the words “No crackers!” scrawled in paint across their bus... You would think that residents of a supposedly progressive and racially conscious house would jump to remove a racial epithet from house property. Not so. When a resident posted a picture in the EBF GroupMe last Thursday, peers brushed aside the incident with off-color jokes. Disappointing, but, unfortunately, the story gets far worse. After a week, another resident, Ian Knight — a first-generation, low-income, white Southerner who felt understandably uncomfortable with the slur — raised the issue in the house GroupMe and was immediately dismissed as an apologist for “reverse racism.” When other residents had worried that the “problematic” fake tepee on the porch of their retreat AirBnB represented cultural appropriation, staff members immediately responded: the tepee would be removed by the first car to the house. But when Ian pointed out that something should be done about the blatantly racist graffiti on the bus, his concerns were brushed aside. One resident simply responded “No,” receiving fourteen likes from house members. Other residents accused Ian of piggybacking on the complaints of people of color to raise his less-important “white” concerns, while others shamefully tried to excuse the slur for being “deserved.” The graffiti didn’t matter because white people are, by nature, oppressive and racist, they said — all while enjoying the best university in the world, while rural whites suffer grinding poverty. If anything, a blatantly racist act of vandalism is far more clear-cut than the murky concept of “cultural appropriation.” Residents repeatedly brushed aside Ian’s discomfort with the racist graffiti. Finally, a staff member explicitly endorsed the message on the bus, telling him (erroneously) that since “the word cracker, has been historically defined to mean ‘racist white person,’” that she agreed with the graffiti. Apparently too enlightened to take ten seconds to read the definition of “cracker” as a term “for white people, used especially against poor rural whites in the Southern United States” (never including the idea of racism), she told her first-generation white Southern resident: “I hope we have no crackers here.” If such ignorant and bigoted remarks are not grounds for immediate dismissal from a staff position, we are not sure what are. EBF can pretend to be socially progressive all it wants, but this incident reveals alarming hypocrisy: the right kind of racism is just fine. While the staff reaction alone is shocking, other EBF residents did not only ignore or play down the slur, but also supported its appalling sentiment. To a mind-boggling sixteen likes from the group, one resident even stated that he was “strongly against removing the ‘no crackers’ spray paint”! He claimed, absurdly, that addressing racism against white people should be delayed until every other possible form of oppression is eradicated. One could only imagine the outcry that would have ensued had this comment been directed at anyone except whites."
ACLU withdraws subpoena for gender clinic whistleblower's messages with journalists after callout - "The American Civil Liberties Union is known for its historic defense of freedom of the press — unless it's prying open the press. The 104-year-old organization, which championed a House-passed bill in January to prevent "government from compelling journalists to reveal their sources and work product," is seeking a wide range of communications from a conservative journalist, some but not all related to its First Amendment lawsuit against Florida's Stop WOKE Act. The ACLU's Missouri affiliate and Lambda Legal quickly dropped requests for communications with journalists related to their lawsuit against the Show-Me State's law against medicalized gender transitions for minors after a liberal journalist posted the subpoena... Chris Rufo, who wears hats as a journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and New College of Florida trustee, disclosed Wednesday on X that the ACLU subpoenaed him for "all of my sources and journalistic materials related to critical race theory" as part of a "heavily financed propaganda campaign against my work." His lawyers told the ACLU to "pound sand," but the group has threatened to depose him for more than a year, according to Rufo. "Depose me anytime. But I won't let you hide behind a Zoom screen and the pronouns in your email signatures. You will have to face me in person – and I will wreck you," he wrote. Rufo gave more details in his newsletter Thursday, saying the ACLU sent "an agent to my home while I was eating dinner with my wife and children" to serve the 18-page subpoena in 2022. It would expose his confidential sources on CRT, Black Lives Matter and "racial justice protests." He's spilling the beans because of "another misleading attack on my character" by the ACLU, apparently referring to a Feb. 14 broadside targeting Rufo as a "far-right" enemy of "racial equity and free speech" for his activism against diversity, equity and inclusion programs... Rufo told Rogan the investigation is an "intimidation mechanism" that could involve depositions and subpoenas. It suggests the U.S. is "not far from" a "Soviet Union-style gulag situation in 2029."... The ACLU didn't respond to queries for its explanation of how subpoenaing Rufo doesn't set a precedent that conservatives can use against similarly activist journalists on the left, such as Nikole Hannah-Jones, in challenges to blue states' laws, and whether Granick's complaint prompted the federal investigation."
