Sunday, May 05, 2024

Links - 5th May 2024 (1 - General Wokeness)

Meme - TV with panicked reporter: "INCELS: SOCIETY'S MOST DANGEROUS MEN?"
*dark hand covers TV screen*
*dark man steals TV with gun* "WELCOME TO DETROIT"

The Post Millennial on X - "BREAKING: Michigan parents of school shooter Ethan Crumbley sentenced to 10-15 years for son’s crime"
The Honorable Matt Walsh on X - "Absolutely insane that they're throwing these two in prison essentially for the crime of being bad parents meanwhile there are literally thousands of violent criminals with even worse parents who will never be held to this legal standard. Total miscarriage of justice."

Peter Boghossian on X - "This is absolutely mind boggling. It is why we need to burn our institutions to the ground: “A Witch Hunt Is Targeting Black Harvard Faculty” IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOUR SKIN COLOR IS. IF YOU OBTAINED YOUR CREDENTIALS FRAUDULENTLY YOU SHOULD BE FIRED"

Meme - lotus @ewuraakuz: "why do white people walk so fast? why the rush?"
Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano: "Fast walkers have higher IQ and larger brains than slow walkers."
When your racism backfires.

Maybe your political opponent is a dog-whistling hate-monger—or maybe you're just losing the battle of ideas - "it’s a convenient way to call someone a liar or to completely discount what they tell you if you don’t like what the other person is saying to you. Simply dismissing their words by calling them a “dog whistle” and attaching a list of motives, without even having an obviously offensive or libelous word to point to, now suffices. That way, you never have to believe anything you hear from someone you don’t like.   The irony is not lost on me. “Dog whistle” is itself coded language to accuse someone else of using coded language. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious... Poilievre posted a tweet expressing condolences for the families and colleagues of two police officers who were killed in the line of duty in Edmonton in March 2023. It was accompanied by an image of the Edmonton police crest, with a thin blue line across it, meant to symbolize police solidarity and honour fallen officers. It is a symbol of the line officers walk between life and death while serving, and can be traced back to the 1920s.  The symbol had apparently been largely abandoned over the past few years following the Black Lives Matter protests when the thin blue line came to be viewed by some as racist, with some purporting it actually represented the division between Black people and white (presumably) police officers. The symbol was subsequently co-opted by some extremist groups, meaning that for some, this irredeemably morphed any representation of the thin blue line into a symbol of white supremacy, pushing some police forces to ban its wearing on uniforms. Therefore, according to this winding narrative, Poilievre’s condolences to two dead police officers were a dog whistle, secretly sending a racist statement to his followers.  Really? It appears that no one questions the logic of these statements, never mind their absurdity. It is stated, therefore it is true.  Another example: two slogans Poilievre has used in the past—“Reclaim what has always been yours” and “Take back control”—have been cited as dog-whistling, anti-immigrant messages. However, his track record would suggest the more likely explanation is he is simply promoting less government interference in Canadian lives...   He has also been accused of dog whistling to white supremacists for saying, “I’m a believer in using simple Anglo-Saxon words that strike right at the meaning that I’m trying to convey.” Again, just because some ideologues have co-opted something for their fringe ideology does not mean the phrase or concept should be considered always and irredeemably offensive. Preferring clear, common speech—as any politician should!—does not an automatic white supremacist make.  Many ostensibly sensible people believe otherwise, including former prime minister Kim Campbell, who recently called the Conservative leader a “hate monger.” Wherever did she get her outlandish opinion? It certainly did not come from his record.  After an extensive online and Hansard search,  I have yet to find any of the extreme views Poilievre is said to have, or anything in his background that would indicate that he might hold hateful views.   I have used Poilievre to illustrate this dog whistle phenomenon, but the real issue is the manipulation of public and private opinion using such a cheap and shoddy device. How can so many fall for it, irony and all?   That Poilievre holds views opposed to those of the woke Left is undeniable. But given that he apparently now shares those views with a very large and growing number of Canadians, his political opponents would be wise to find a new tactic with which to take him down. Sure, he would be easier to drive from the public arena if he really was a racist hate-monger, but the actual evidence for that case is non-existent. My suggestion? Try grappling with his actual words, his plain-stated policies and positions, if you wish to have any hope of defeating him."
Accusing someone of dog whistling is a way to smear someone by pretending that he is saying something he has never said

C.S. Lewis Sounded the Alarm on the Dangers of Progressivism - "Lewis’s resistance to European progressivism was, first and foremost, a reflection on the reality of man’s nature, and the failings of progressivism to account accurately for man’s fallen state. He rejected progressivism’s assumption of man’s inherent goodness, of the state as an idol. Lewis succinctly described progressivism as “state worship,” predicated on the assumption of man’s inevitable rise to god-hood...   Lewis skillfully captures the propaganda-like orientation of European progressivism: “It does make a difference how things are put,” argues Lord Feverstone. “For instance, if it were even whispered that the NICE wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you’d have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to an end.”... Throughout the novel, Lewis clearly illustrates progressivism’s dependence on and worship of technology and knowledge, predicated on the assumption of man’s constant positive trend toward progress and enlightenment. Quite noticeably, NICE pursues change at all costs while credulously assuming that any departure from the past is a worthwhile endeavor... Described by Lewis as “scientism,” NICE’s worship of technology and expertise manifests itself in the society’s obsession with scientific experimentation and the recruitment of suitable “experts.”... Lewis astutely coins a term to critique what he saw as progressivism’s “chronological snobbery.” This term described the “uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.” Rather than evaluating value on the basis of truth or reliability, the chronological snob evaluates value on the basis of age, a practice common to both NICE and Western progressives of Lewis’ day...   In his 1958 essay, “Is Progress Possible: Willing Slaves of the Welfare State,” Lewis prophetically warned of the tendency of progressives to arrest human liberties in the name of progress. He said that when “our whole lives” become the “business” of the state, we become slaves to the state and can no longer question the ideology of the state. Such were the hazards of “an increasingly planned society” and a “mother knows best” government. A primary solution to this danger, Lewis proposed, is “an education not controlled by government.”   C.S. Lewis mounted an impressive condemnation of the progressive state and its radical spread in Europe during the twentieth century. While brutal leaders like Lenin and Stalin, and eventually tamer socialist leaders like the U.K.’s Clement Attlee, all pursued human perfection through state control, Lewis sounded the siren against progressivism’s clear dangers: not only to the political rights and liberties of man, but also to our very perception of the reality of mankind."

IGN France Scrambles To Backpedal After Writing Off 'Stellar Blade' Protagonist Eve As "A Doll Sexualized By Someone Who Has Never Seen A Woman" - "In the latest example of the Western video game press having a chip on their shoulder when it comes to media created not just by Japan, but apparently an East Asian nation, IGN France has found themselves scrambling to defend themselves after writing off Stellar Blade‘s lead protagonist Eve, despite being based entirely on the real-world appearance of an actual female model, of being nothing more than the “sexualized” fantasy of “someone who has never seen a woman”... Eve’s designer, game director and the CEO of its publishing company Shift Up Hyung-Tae Kim, has definitely seen a woman before, as evidenced by the fact that he is currently married to Shift Up concept artist Jiyun Chae. Further, while Eve herself may be a fictional character, her appearance is not, instead being based on a full, 1:1 body scan of real-world South Korean model Shin Jae-eun... In light of both their ignoring of these facts and their blatant attempt to insult Kim, both Osolla and IGN France soon found themselves facing a massive wave of backlash from the general public regarding their lack of journalistic integrity.  However, rather than respond to this outrage by admitting to having completely missed the mark with their accusations, the writer and outlet instead moved to try and cover up their shoddy work by blaming the public for having ‘misread’ their original statement.   Changing their insulting description of Eve from “A doll sexualized by someone who has never seen a woman” to “A doll sexualized by someone you would think has never seen a woman,” Osolla then added the pompous disclaimer, in English, that “This last sentence has been slightly edited for French speaking people pretending not to understand what we meant, and the English speaking mob who Google Translated the initial text.” However, since then, IGN France has amended the disclaimer to instead claim that the article was edited “following death threats”.  Notably, neither Osolla nor IGN France have provided any proof of having received any such threats."

Meme - Grummz @Grummz: "So @IGN  calls Stellar Blade protagonist a sexualized “doll” and says the creator “has never seen a living woman.”  The not real “doll”:  The creator’s wife and team artist:"
Meme -"georgie @BeefyGorilla: "Imagine how proud the husband is knowing people think his wife is too sexy to be real""

Perma Banned on X - "-be @IGN France
-tries to trash Stellar Blade and say ShiftUp’s CEO “has never seen a woman”
-Meanwhile ShiftUp’s CEO’s actually married over 10 years and his wife is a prolific artist
Game journos not only can’t help but talk trash, they can’t help being factually wrong too."

ABC chair Kim Williams tells staff to be impartial or leave. | The Australian - "ABC chair Kim Williams has warned journalists that activism is not welcome at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster and if reporters fail to observe impartiality guidelines they should leave the organisation.  Mr Williams, who commenced as ABC chair two weeks ago after the conclusion of Ita Buttrose’s term, said he had little tolerance for reporters who failed to be objective and stressed the importance of staff always aspiring to be “fair-minded”...   “This is a publicly funded organisation, it is a publicly accountable organisation, it is a respondent to legislation to the national parliament and it must always aspire to be as fair-minded in its work as it possibly can be.”  In the 2022-23 financial year the ABC received $1.07bn in annual funding.   Under its editorial policies it has a statutory duty to ensure the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial and it reflects the standards required for objective journalism... Mr Williams raised his concerns about the use of social media by ABC staff, which has at times been problematic for the organisation.  The ABC suffered damaging fallout in 2021 from a defamation action by former Liberal MP Andrew Laming against Four Corners journalist Louise Milligan, who falsely accused him on X, formerly Twitter, of upskirting a woman. That matter cost taxpayers more than $200,000, including $79,000 in damages...  “I have grave difficulty with journalists being a respondent to what the public wants to hear.”  Attard also said another “issue causing extreme discontent within the organisation” concerned reports members of the ABC board had been lobbied by the Jewish community to remove controversial fill-in Sydney mornings radio host Antoinette Lattouf because of her conduct online...   Mr Williams also criticised the ABC for being too focused on itself instead of serving the Australian community."
Damn far right conspiracy theorist! Doesn't he know that reality has a liberal bias? Clearly the Labor Party is Conservative and needs to be replaced by a true Left Wing party!

Aaron Sibarium on X - "Listen to a guest speaker at UCLA medical school force students to get on their knees and pray for the “black,” “brown,” and “houseless” people killed by the “crapitalist lie” of “private property.” This was for a mandatory class."
Wesley Yang on X - "Don't worry guys, wokeness peaked a couple years ago, it would be cringe to keep worrying about it"
Those who talk about Marxism infiltrating universities will still be told that they're far right conspiracy theorists who have fallen to misinformation

🚨 Katherine Brodsky on X - "If you see yourself as a victim, you'll be convinced that the world views you that way too.  The Dartmouth Scar Experiment reveals that.  Participants thought they'd be interviewed for jobs with a fake scar on their face, which they saw being applied by a makeup artist. However, during the touch up phase, unbeknownst to them the scar was removed.  Those participants who believed that they still had a visible scar, reported a massively increased level of discrimination. They also "displayed heightened feelings of powerlessness, self-pity, and an increased tendency to blame others for their failures." (source: Medium).   They believed that they were discriminated against and thus internalized it in a negative way.  The study essentially revealed that regardless of whether there's actual discrimination or not, when one believes themselves to be a victim it results in negative consequences."
Self-fulfilling prophecies!
Clearly lived experience is sacrosanct and if you question minorities' claims of oppression, discrimination and stigma, you are a bad person

Meme Eomer: 'Orcs are roaming freely across our lands. Unchecked, unchallenged, killing at will'
Possessed Theoden: 'The only threat to The Westfold is Orcphobia'

How Canada’s secular religion of cultural self-hate took hold - "Modern Western civilization grew out of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ascendancy of reason in human affairs produced the scientific method and later the Industrial Revolution. Add in the rule of law, individual liberty, private property and capitalism, and you have the basic recipe that has raised much of humanity out of poverty and oppression over two centuries. Four academic doctrines — critical theory, postmodernism, social justice and critical race theory — are moving the world, or at least the West, from this triumph to decline. These doctrines reject Enlightenment values such as open inquiry, individual autonomy, free speech, scientific skepticism and even reason itself. They claim to champion equality, peace and social cooperation, but instead promote identity politics, elitism and centralized control. They are the four doctrines of the apocalypse. Unlike traditional academic inquiry, these “neo-Marxist” doctrines are less theories than programs. They are activist and political. “The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways,” Marx famously wrote. “The point, however, is to change it.” Critical theory is not to be confused with critical thinking, for to think critically is to reason, explain, critique and challenge. Instead, the purpose of these doctrines is to condemn. They largely consist of ideological assertions not based on data or deduction. They lead with their conclusions. Critical theory and its related fields do not constitute a singular school of thought but a scholarly umbrella that consists of multiple related approaches and variations that defy easy encapsulation. Its history is messy and convoluted. Its scholarship can be verbose, incoherent and sometimes impenetrable, while much of its original intellectual project has been overtaken by its modern activist incarnation. Critical theory is attractive to cultural revolutionaries in part because it is difficult to pin down, like trying to staple jelly to a wall.  Yet these doctrines have become the intellectual foundation for the ascendant ideology of our time, woke progressivism, which is severe, uncompromising and vengeful. Their commandments have become Canada’s secular religion, whose apostles sneer at the foundations of their own society. Cultural contrition has become ubiquitous: Canada is systemically racist. White people are privileged. The nuclear family is misogynist. Capitalism is oppressive. Private property rights cause environmental destruction. Prosperity produces climate change. The premises of these four doctrines define the ethos now dominant in major public institutions: government, legacy media, universities, big corporations, public schools, public health authorities, law enforcement, professional regulators and, increasingly, courts...  Between the two world wars, scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt began to investigate why Marxism was failing to catch on in the West. They broadened Marx’s tight focus on economic oppression of the working class and developed the doctrine known as critical theory, which is premised on the ideas that power and oppression define relationships throughout society, that knowledge is socially contingent and that unjust Western institutions should be collapsed and reconstituted. In the decades following its birth at the Frankfurt School, critical theory and its variations made an inexorable march through universities, influencing such disparate disciplines as sociology, literary criticism and linguistics, infiltrating professional schools like teachers’ colleges and law schools and dominating “grievance studies” programs such as women’s studies, gender studies and media studies. Today its reach extends to virtually every field in the arts and social sciences, and its final conquest is now underway inside science, technology, engineering and medical faculties... As political tools, critical theory and its variations are brilliant. Any challenge to their legitimacy can be interpreted as a demonstration of their thesis: the assertion of reason, logic and evidence is a manifestation of privilege and power. Thus, any challenger risks the stigma of a bigoted oppressor. James Lindsay, an independent American critic of critical theory and social justice, calls critical theory a “kafkatrap.” “Notice race? Because you’re racist. Don’t? Because you’re privileged, thus racist.” If you deny that you are a witch, then you are a witch. And if you do not deny it, then you are a witch for sure. Pointing out that critical theory makes no sense misses the point: making sense is Western and privileged. Double standards on speech and conduct are baked into our current political order. Burning churches and blocking railways are blows in support of social justice, but peacefully protesting vaccine mandates constitutes a public order emergency. Defying pandemic lockdown rules is a threat to public safety when parishioners gather for church services in parking lots, but not when thousands gather for Black Lives Matter marches. The federal government vilifies law abiding gun owners while it eliminates minimum sentences for gun crimes. The hypocrisy of our authorities is no accident. Their choices are deliberate and calculated.  This uneven treatment, according to James Lindsay, is rooted in a single 1965 essay by critical theory philosopher Herbert Marcuse called ”Repressive Tolerance,” whose theme Lindsay encapsulates in one sentence: “movements from the left must be extended tolerance, even when they are violent, while movements from the right must not be tolerated, including suppressing them by violence.”... Once upon a time, when they were cultural mavericks, liberals championed free speech. Establishment conservatives were the censors, urging limits on obscenity, blasphemy and communist propaganda. In a free society, went the liberal argument, all must be able to express ideas and opinions no matter who has the reins of power. Freedom of expression protected the dissenter, the rebel and the heretic from the orthodoxy of the prevailing view. Now the shoe is on the other foot. With the help of critical theory and its related doctrines, liberalism has morphed into the dominant ideology of woke progressivism and free speech is no longer needed to protect the left, whose sensibilities now prevail. It turns out that progressives were less interested in the principle of free speech than in promoting their own values."

The ugly truth about the Guardian - "Guardian editor Katharine Viner celebrates the bicentennial of her paper today with claims that it is the newspaper of Britain’s liberal conscience. Nothing could be further from the truth.  The origin myth circulated from its King’s Place headquarters is that the Guardian began as a part of the democratic resurgence following the slaughter of suffrage protesters at St Peter’s Fields, in Manchester, in 1819. The Manchester Guardian did begin to take advantage of the changes wrought by what came to be known as the Peterloo Massacre, but not in the way that the current editor claims.  The founder and first editor of the Manchester Guardian, John Taylor, made his own view of the suffrage campaigners very clear when he wrote that they were exploiting foolish workers for their own selfish ends... Thanks to its anti-democratic campaigning, the working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser dubbed the Manchester Guardian ‘the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners’. The Manchester Guardian’s fear of popular democracy was kept up through the Chartist agitation of the 1840s. Like much of the middle classes, the Manchester Guardian relished Britain’s moral superiority over the slave-trading nation of the USA in the years between British abolition in 1833 and American emancipation in 1863 to 1865. But when the American Civil War arrived, between the anti-slavery Union forces of President Lincoln and the slavery-defending southern secessionists of Jefferson Davis, the Manchester Guardian switched sides and rallied to the Confederacy. Of Abraham Lincoln, the Manchester Guardian wrote in 1862 that it was ‘an evil day both for America and the world when he was chosen President of the United States’. When Lincoln was assassinated, in 1865, the Manchester Guardian wrote ‘of his rule, we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty’. What the Manchester Guardian found most abhorrent was the emancipation of the slaves...   The Manchester Guardian’s hostility to popular democratic pressure was such that, even by the early 20th century, editor CP Scott denounced the Suffragette protesters... When it came to the paper’s international coverage, while it was in favour of liberal reform, it was still a pointed supporter of the British Empire...   Democracy campaigners in Northern Ireland might have hoped that the Guardian would be sympathetic to their cause. But when the British Army opened fire on civil-rights protesters on Bloody Sunday in Derry, in 1972, the Guardian blamed the protest leaders... When Britain and America pushed for a second invasion of Iraq to get rid of Saddam’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMDs), a Guardian leader scoffed at Baghdad’s objections: ‘It is not credible to argue, as Iraq did in its initial reaction to Mr Powell [at the Security Council], that it is simply all lies… Iraq must disarm.’ As it turned out, Iraq had disarmed. After the conflict, no WMDs were found. It had been a pretext for war manufactured by the British secret services, with the help of the Guardian.  In recent times, the Guardian has been resolute in its view that democracy in Britain offers too great a risk of ‘populist’ capture and has consistently supported reforms intended to curtail it, whether demanding its subordination in the European Union or for greater oversight at the hands of the UK Supreme Court and other ‘non-majoritarian institutions’. That is wholly in keeping with its hostility to democratisation over its two centuries. The paper remains consistent, too, in its support for liberal imperialism – most recently supporting Western intervention in Libya and Syria."

Meme - thatstarwarsgirl @thatstarwarsgrl: "Dude you're fucking insane. Holy shit"
BigB Guse @brennanguse: "l'll be honest I find the One on the left much more attractive then unnatural Incel Fantasy on the Right"
*Ugly woman, attractive woman*

Meme - "Someone cut the Hair of the xbox "Female" fable characters and this is what happens"
*Ugly woman* *Ugly man*

Meme - *pixelated sprite* "MAN! I CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT-GEN GRAPHICS!"
"Yeah!"
*Early Lara Croft era technology, with woman with pointy breasts* "MAN! I CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT-GEN GRAPHICS!"
"Yeah!"
*Beautiful woman onscreen* "MAN! I CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT-GEN GRAPHICS!"
"Yeah!"
*Ugly, fat female character*

Meme - *Black man plunges knife into Asian woman's head*
Asian woman to white man: "STOP IT"

New York man arrested after punching Asian woman 125 times, police say - "A man in Yonkers, New York was arrested for attempted murder after he punched an Asian woman 125 times and called her a racial slur, police said. The 67-year-old victim was entering her apartment building on Friday evening when the perpetrator, whom police identified as 42-year-old Tammel Esco, saw her and called her an “Asian bitch”... Esco has 14 previous arrests, half on felony charges. In February 2021, he pushed a woman through a plate glass window and was given conditional discharge with no jail time. In 2011, he was convicted of assault and sentenced to three years in prison. He was released on parole after two and a half years."

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a closet right-winger - "As political pet peeves go, this one is pretty high on my list. There’s a habit among a certain type of left-leaning political commentator to brand you as a right-wing conservative if you’re even one step to their right. They’ll sometimes characterize you that way even if you’re not discussing your political views at all, but instead engaged in reporting or analysis that implies bad news for their side... what I find remarkable is that is that Molloy can’t even seem to imagine someone doing journalism for reasons other than trying to advance a political narrative for partisan reasons. Everything — including a column pointing out something as basic as that Biden being 86 years old by the end of a potential second term is a big fucking deal — is assumed to be some coded, stealth bit of political advocacy... I have also become more estranged from what you might call the progressive political class over the past several years. One reason is that this class has rapidly become more left and less liberal — compare the Democratic presidential platforms of 2020, which began with a land acknowledgment, with Obama’s in 2012, which began by talking about the American Dream. I also strongly disagree with the left’s elevation of “misinformation” as a category of concern over free speech"
So many people do not understand that to explain is not to justify (or cheer, or support)

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