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Saturday, June 08, 2024

Links - 8th June 2024 (2 - General Wokeness)

Meme - Jonathan Kay @jonkay: "This woman is a perfect symbol of everything voters hate about elite Cdn hypocrisy. Makes half a million dollars a year to run a network no one watches, whose content hectors everyone about the same white privilege she radiates like a neon sign"
"FIRST READING: In tense appearance, CBC president once again asserts bonuses don't exist"

Meme - THOMAS @TommyinPA: "Actual group photo of DSA St. Louis. What's missing in this picture?"
i/o @eyeslasho: "Given that the city is 45% black, the answer to the question is: Black people.  Another possible answer: Physically-fit attractive people"

Meme - Richard Hanania @RichardHanania: "Leftists getting confused because they're supposed to love Arabs now but they notice many look white which is automatically bad."
Real Jory Micah @jorymicah: "I'm supposed to believe this man's ancestors are from the Middle East?" *Adam Sandler*

Meme - Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: "In mainstream, up-middle class life, we have gotten so used to ritualistically criticizing "forward castes" that many citizens legitimately do not know how much they contribute to society. On a recent general knowledge test, 99% of my student-aged respondents knew who Malcolm X was, but only 18% could identify the Wright Brothers (the figure for Calvin Coolidge was 6%). One hears questions like: "Pop culture is Black culture. What have white MEN ever really done?"   Just to clarify: limiting this only the the very modern era, about 79% of all major U.S. inventions have only a male inventor, while 12-13% have a female inventor. 71% of inventors are "white alone," even with Asians and West Africans in the mix, and looking only at today.   Actual "ism" abuse is bad. Women gave birth to all of the inventors. I'm more than glad to see humans of all the various different varieties as rough equals. Blah blah blah. But, it just really isn't true that bisexual Black and Native women "built this society," and the current leadership clade somehow unfairly stole it from them."
"Inventor Gender - Total All Time
U: 8.40% F: 12.80% M: 78.80%"
Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: ""All time" in the graphic is like 1980 to 2023, btw - it's the era when PatentsView has been up and running."
The cope is that all this was stolen from women, because left wingers can come up with a few examples of past "stolen" inventions with their very generous "reading" of history

US lawsuit challenges Southwest Air's free ticket program for Hispanic students - "The lawsuit alleged that the program violated Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a Civil War-era law that bars racial bias in contracting. It also claimed the program violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination in federally funded programs or activities. Federal funding Southwest received during the COVID-19 pandemic means the airline can be sued under that statute, according to the complaint."
Since left wingers claim that receiving even $1 of government money means schools must follow laws binding public education...

Congratulations, academia, you've gone and radicalized the students - "It’s no small task to hijack a whole system of education to achieve a political end, but Canadian academics — “critical race scholars,” “decolonial theorists” and the like — seem to have accomplished it. Congratulations are in order. Once believed to be underdogs doomed to a life of underemployment and student debt, these scholarly activists have created a red guard of radicalized students willing to march in the street calling for intefadeh. Ideological entrepreneurs in progressive academia (most of academia) embraced the theories of Kimberlé Crenshaw, a Columbia University professor of critical legal studies who came up with the idea that identity is the root cause of disadvantage. They then applied the work of academics like Ibram X. Kendi, who discovered the solution to oppression: “anti-racism,” or the levelling of the social justice scales by discriminating against the privileged. The takeaway: those who are considered to be privileged colonizers deserve whatever anti-oppressive resistance comes their way. Emerging from this nebula of social justice was a groundbreaking line of work: diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Activist-scholars shepherded in their own research institutes and grants, anointing their work with the oil of legitimacy. Some places, like Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson) transformed their curriculums to spread the good word of decolonization to more willing students. Others dug deeper into the theology: the University of Alberta’s Canada Research Chair in Feminism and Intersectionality, for example, came up with an “anti-racism lab,” a pillar of ideological reinforcement. One publication by a lab member, “Whiteness and damage in the education classroom,” explained how white people needed to take extra care to prevent their racial energies from contaminating the learning environment. Liberal arts, indeed. Houses of ideological expertise don’t just provide jobs to the activist-scholar class — they’re also a source of moral guidance. In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, for example, the gender studies department of Queen’s University made sure to issue a statement of solidarity for “Palestine” condemning “the erasure of trans and queer Palestinians” and acknowledging how the “settler colonial structure of Turtle Island perpetuates Islamophobia and antisemitism.” Elsewhere, academics have organized “teach-ins,” in which credentialed people in just about any field find ways to put forth their expert opinions on the Israel-Hamas war. The University of Winnipeg’s English department, disinterested in actual literature, has organized a panel on “imperialism, settler-colonialism and decolonization,” which will include the attendance of radical scholars like Ghada Sasa, who played down the role of Hamas in the Oct. 7 massacre and attributed killings of Israeli citizens to the Israeli military. Similarly, an advisory panel to the president of Brock University, along with the school’s social justice research institute, will soon host a panel discussion on “Palestine” and “decolonization.” The work of DEI can net quite a bit of money and status. Take Western University, which is currently looking to hire an assistant dean in DEI and decolonization for its law program. But for those who don’t fit the qualifications, there is plenty more missionary work to be done: campus workshops on microaggressions and anti-oppression toolboxes won’t run themselves, and these new DEI administrators need people to dig up the anti-oppression pedagogy du jour. But just as most peewee hockey kids don’t end up in the National Hockey League, most social-justice-crusading students won’t end up becoming chief diversity officer of Corposoft. They sure as hell will try, though, and will happily play foot soldier to the cause if it means a chance at status. It’s now plain as day that activist-scholars have succeeded in assembling a high-volume social justice warrior pipeline. The bulk of the politically-active student body broadly supports ideas like “anti-colonial resistance” and “decolonization,” which means they’re happy to throw their support behind the anti-Israel, pro-Palestine movement — even in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack by a group of mass rapists who support the latter... Students, dutifully applying the lessons from their teachers, have taken up the cause of anti-colonial resistance. Their moral compasses are calibrated to side with whichever side of a conflict can be said to be suffering from oppression. It doesn’t matter that Hamas raped and murdered children on Oct. 7, brutally ending what had been a ceasefire; what matters is that Hamas is on the side of the Palestinians, and the Palestinians are greater victims of oppression. It’s all good fun to create a generation of zealous students enamored with the idea of progress, but the professors who led the change should be mindful that radical student movements tend to end poorly for educators — the Chinese Red Guards of 1966 and the Hitler Youth of the 1930s being prime examples. If far-left educators maintain control of their student-to-social-justice-warrior pipeline, they could be in for a nasty surprise. Lucky for them, western education has a habit of curbing revolutionary movements before they get out of hand. Let’s hope this history repeats itself."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "At the peak of America's moral panic about racism and "white supremacy," racial discrimination complaints were at a  30-year low."
"Annual EEOC Charges (Race Discrimination)"

Meme - NPC: "The Industrial Revolution only happened in America and Britain because of slavery."
Normal person: "Then why didn't it happen in Spain? They had more slaves, a larger empire, and a head start in the New World. Also. Brazil, which imported more slaves and kept the institution for several decades longer. And why did far more industrialization happen in the US northern states while the south stagnated? How come Canada, Australia, and New Zealand industrialized without slavery? Come to think of it, why didn't the Roman Empire industrialize thousands of years ago?"
NPC: *upset*

Meme - Mike Pesca @pescami: "CAP the Center for American Progress could have titled this chart many things. They went with "drastically wide racial disparities for past 2 decades".  It's part of a story titled "New Poverty and Food Insecurity Data Illustrate Persistent Racial Inequities".  But a better, more relevant- to-today title would be "Hispanic poverty halved, Black Poverty decreased by over 40%, since early 1990s. " (White poverty barely budged)"
"The official poverty rate shows drastically wide racial disparities for the past two decades"
Left wingers would rather everyone stays poor if there're no racial disparities

Meme - Carl @HistoryBoomer: "As @JoyceCarolOates  says (more politely), what the hell does this have to do with science?!?  @sciam  has fallen prey to becoming a progressive Twitter mouthpiece. You know what position they'll take before they take it, and you know I'll have nothing to do with actual science. 🤯"
Joyce Carol Oates: "Scientific American, once subscribed-to by high school students, of which I was one, seems to have deteriorated into something other than a journal about science & new discoveries; covering issues of the sort written about constantly, nonstop, opinionated commentary on trending subjects."
Scientific American @sciam: "Media coverage of university students speaking up against the war in Gaza, just like coverage of other protest movements, has fallen prey to some serious weaknesses"

Meme - El Magnifico @ @MagnificoIX: "This is what they sent me last year when my subscription lapsed."
"Dear Reader,
Thanks so much for supporting our work and sticking with us and other sources of reliable information during the COVID pandemic. Your subscription promotes trustworthy, deeply researched, expert-driven reporting about many other fast-moving and fascinating fields of study: space, quantum physics, the immune system, misinformation, social justice, cancer, the brain, evolution and endless other subjects. I hope that you still value and enjoy our work. To show our appreciation we want to offer you a 20% discount to resubscribe to Scientific American.
Best wishes,
Laura Helmuth
Editor-in-Chief
Scientific American"
Robbo @meinungschef1: "Social justice and Quantum Physics.   Hmmmmmmmmmmm  They better be some massive Torah Scholars if they’re gonna push that flex out. And even then…"

'Out-of-control woke leftism and cancel culture' in US is a threat to FRANCE, French politicians say - "They are arguing that American ideas on race, gender, post-colonialism – especially those coming from U.S. universities – are undermining French society and are an attack on French heritage... The debate came to a head this week after the new director of the Paris Opera, Alexander Neef, released a 66-page report on diversity at the company in which he vowed to diversify staff and to ban blackface.  It came after five black members of the ballet company circulated an open letter among the Paris Opera's 1,800 employees last summer, calling for greater diversity.  Neef was targeted for the decision by far-right leader Marine le Pen and by French newspaper Le Monde which said he 'soaked up American culture for 10 years' while he worked in Toronto. This month also saw the publication of a book by social scientists Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Noiriel in which they claimed that race is a 'bulldozer' that destroys other subjects. They added to the New York Times that they did not believe race should not be studied as an academic subject in France, as the secular government does not recognize it... Some French intellects have also argued that American universities are to blame for giving justification to acts of terrorism carried out by Muslims.  After three Islamist terror attacks last fall, Education minister Blanquer accused the universities of being complicit.  He was supported in an open letter from 100 prominent scholars that blasted social theories 'transferred from North American campuses'.  One of the signatories, Gilles Kepel, argued that American influence led to 'a sort of prohibition in universities to think about the phenomenon of political Islam in the name of a leftist ideology that considers it the religion of the underprivileged.'  Historian Pierre-André Taguieff argued in the same way that the 'American-style black question' was a 'totally artificial importation' to France.  He said that it was all driven by 'hatred of the West, as a white civilization'.  'The common agenda of these enemies of European civilization can be summed up in three words: decolonize, demasculate, de-Europeanize,' Taguieff said.  'Straight white male — that's the culprit to condemn and the enemy to eliminate.'... Macron's intervention was welcomed by academics including sociologist Nathalie Heinich.  'I was pleasantly astonished,' she told the Times.  Last month she established an organization that fights against 'decolonialism and identity politics'.  The group has written warnings against 'American-inspired social theories' in many major French publications and has spoken out against 'cancel culture' at French universities.  'It was a series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all fell under what is called cancel culture,' Heinich said."

Supreme Court Justice Alito’s Beach House Displayed ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Flag - The New York Times
Bonchie on X - "The same people who tell you chants of "globalize the intifada" and "from the river to the sea" are fine want you to believe a pine tree flag is a deeply disturbing and disqualifying insurrectionist symbol."
We are still told that left wingers don't hate their countries

Greg Price on X - "You know that extremely controversial Appeal to Heaven flag that’s been the subject of media smears against Justice Alito? It also flew outside of San Francisco’s Civic Center for decades. Until last weekend when it was mysteriously removed."
San Francisco Chronicle on X - "San Francisco removed the controversial “Appeal to Heaven” flag from Civic Center Plaza after it had flown there since 1964. City parks officials quietly took down the Civic Center flag over the weekend"

Thread by @wokal_distance on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Dictionaries/wikipedia altering definitions and articles so leftists can win arguments A Thread🧵 In 7 days since the Alito flag story broke the wikipedia entry for the Pine Tree flag was edited 206 times (pic 1) In the 8 months prior the article was edited 22 times (pic 2) @Cernovich gives us another fine example here. Wikipedia redefining "recession" to help Democrats out, and then locking the page to make it more difficult to fix👇 When Republicans nominated Amy Coney-Barret for the Supreme court the left changed the meaning of "court-packing" and dictionary .com went along with it. in order to try to make republicans look bad Speaking of Amy Coney-Barret... When Amy Coney-Barret used the term "preference" while discussing sexual orientation the left pretended that "preference" was offensive, and Merriam-Webster changed the definition in order to make that lie stick👇 The transgender activists got merriam-webster the change the definition of the word "female" to include "gender identity" (pic 1) when that was nowhere to found as recently as 2019 (pic 2) Of course changing the meaning of the word "female" in order to help trans activists also means changing the meaning of the word "girl" to help trans activists (H/T@libsoftiktok) And of course changing the meaning of the word "girl" to try to make the left look correct...means changing the meaning of the word "boy" to try to make the left look correct👇 We also find "vox" celebrating the fact Merriam-Webster changed the definition of racism to include purely "systemic oppression." The left wanted to redefine the word "racism" according to woke ideology so they did, got the dictionary to play along, and the media celebrated it A long time ago @chadfelixg pointed out that google changed the definition of the word bigot in order to go along with leftist ideology: The left did not like us pointing out their use of "cultural marxism" (a term found in academic literature to refer to marxist cultural analysis) so they changed the meaning of that word to be an anti-semitic conspiracy theory... and wikipedia went along with it.👇 The left did not like non-white voting for Trump...so they changed the definition of "whiteness" to include black, brown, and hispanic people. The dictionary didn't go along with this...but the washington post sure did. What you are seeing in all these cases is an example of narrative warfare. Specifically, it is a form of discursive/dialectical warfare that seeks to try to win a social and political conflict by altering, changing, and shaping the meaning of the terms and concepts in play... Dialectical leftists, including woke activists, postmodernists, post-structuralists, Social Justice Warriors, etc, attempt to ratchet the discourse to the left by reinterpreting and redefining all the terms and concepts in play. They do this by changing the definitions of terms, altering the meaning of symbols, challenging the rules of debate and trying to control the terms of engagement. What I have shown in this thread is various attempts at altering the meaning of the words and concepts. Te way this works is that by endlessly changing, theorizing, and engineering discourse, they can endlessly reinterpret and redefine all of the ideas and concepts in play. And if you can control the meaning of all the terms and concepts in play, you can control the debate. The dialectical leftist does no try to discover the truth, the dialectical leftist seeks to make the conversation proceed according to the terms of debate and rules of engagement that accept the fundamental assumptions and priors of the dialectical left. Woke activists are attempting to use their control over the institutions that make a record of the meaning of terms and concepts in play, (that is the dictionaries and public encyclopedias) in order to be able to define all the terms according to woke ideology. Words matter because the meaning of the terms in play determine how issues are framed and the conceptual ground on which the debate is going to be had. If the left can arbitrarily redefine the terms in play, they control the conceptual ground that battle is fought on. Very few people on the conservative side understand the degree to which the language matters. @ChoooCole understands, and that is why she reframed the detransition debate so that she is a *Girl* (harmed by gender ideology) and not a "detransitioner". Because@ChoooCole understands how the language and the discourse function, she was able to spot the fact woke activists were trying to hijack, reframe and redefine the term "detransitioner." So Chloe was able to cut them off by reframing the debate... To focus on the fact she's a *girl* who was *harmed * by *gender ideology* In doing this she makes sure woke activists can't normalize what happened to her by making "detransition" an new identity on a "gender journey" that includes "gender affirming care" See how it works? The battle over meaning and language is no small matter. If one group can unilaterally and arbitrarily define the meaning of the words and the terms of the debate, then that group can control the entire narrative for all of society and get whatever they want. What you see in the examples in this thread is woke activists using their control over institutions that officially record the meaning of terms and concepts to try and validate and legitimize their attempts to change the meaning of the words, concepts and symbols in play. You have to understand the game that is being played here in order to stop it. The woke redefinitions and reframes only work if they can get everyone to accept the legitimacy of their redefinitions and reframes, so you can't let them go unchallenged when they redefine terms. If you can mount a strong enough challenge to what they are doing and help people to see the game the woke activists are playing with words, people will reject the woke definitions and will default back to the normal, everyday, original, meaning of words. This is the game. You can't let woke activists control the discourse, you have to fight back and contest the meaning of the terms in play and rules of debate. If woke activists will beat you at the language game, they can linguistically rig the debate so that they win. Don't let them."

Meme - ᐱ ᑎ ᑐ ᒋ ᕮ ᒍ @Andr3jH: "neoliberalism has gone so far that we have outsourced white supremacy to people called "abhishek bhardwaj""
Abhishek Bhardwaj: "Moscow looks worthy of Travel too, they don't have immigrant problems like in Europe."

Should Art Be a Battleground for Social Justice? - The New York Times - "My questioning Rae’s believability appalled one of my tablemates enough to rise in angry defense of the show. “This is about her life,” he said of Rae. “She worked hard to get this show made, and it’s her story. So you can’t just say you don’t believe it.” Here we were, two black men having it out about how to critique a black woman’s art. On one hand, he was right. Rae had labored to get a serious company to whisk her comedy — and her black face and body — from the internet to television. She succeeded, and people rejoiced. I was eating corn soup next to one of those people.  Implicit in his rebuttal was pride in the righting of a wrong. Even in this so-called golden age of TV, with its proliferations of nonwhite people, queer folks and women, some of whom are running productions, a comedy by and built around black women remains anomalous. So “Insecure” might be too rare to dislike.   On the other hand, where does that leave someone who dislikes it? My tablemate insisted that who and what the show represents are more important than whether the show works for me. We couldn’t have that argument because that argument was a luxury. My wish for entertainment was an affront to the show’s right to exist; its being morally good superseded any imperative for it to be creatively better... We have language that helps do the sorting. A person who insults, harasses or much, much worse is “problematic,” and certain “problematic” people, and their work, gets “canceled.”... People you love but who’ve misstepped are “problematic faves”... The people who know who’s who, what’s what and when’s when are “woke.” They tend not to be black, because black people are born woke; the trick for them is to stay that way.  The nomenclature is supposed to make the moral sorting expedient. The “hot or not” lists of yore have, more direly, become “O.K./Not O.K.”... That leads to something farcical like the Grammys’ rumored prophylactic shunning of the popular white musician Ed Sheeran from the three biggest award categories, lest he triumph over Kendrick Lamar or Childish Gambino and cause a firestorm of upset. It leads to the Oscars now being more a moral purity contest in addition to an artistic sporting event. At awards shows, the nominated works have become referendums on the moral state of the business; their quality has become secondary. Maybe the ratings are down because no one’s seen the movies and the broadcasts are too political. But maybe it’s because no one wants to watch an industry prosecute itself.   No event captures this anxious confusion of activism and criticism better than the time a group of artists descended upon the Whitney Museum during last year’s biennial and demanded, in a protest letter, for the destruction of a painting that morally offended them. Their issue wasn’t only with the painting but with the painter. Dana Schutz’s “Open Casket” depicted Emmett Till in a whirring rictus of earth tones. It’s a vague, unsure, respectfully deferential work, different from Schutz’s bigger, more dazzlingly audacious stuff. One problem, according to the protesters, was that Schutz, as a white woman, had no business painting this young black martyr. This was not, the letter argued, her story.   The writer Zadie Smith spent the latter part of a rich, enfolding critical essay saying she failed to see what the protesters saw. She, too, found the inciting work underwhelming. But some readers got fixated first on Smith’s being biracial, which, they argued, would make it implausible for her to relate to their protest, then on her use of the word “quadroons” in a hypothetical description of her children. Certain corners of Twitter erupted, both to shake their heads at Smith and to tsk her defenders. At least on the topic of “Open Casket,” Zadie Smith — and her text — had been canceled. As far as her critics were concerned, she’d made a moral typo. But shouldn’t her puzzlement stand? A disagreement over one piece of culture points to where our discourse has arrived when it comes to talking about all culture — at a roiling impasse. The conversations are exasperated, the verdicts swift, conclusive and seemingly absolute. The goal is to protect and condemn work, not for its quality, per se, but for its values. Is this art or artist, this character, this joke bad for women, gays, trans people, nonwhites? Are the casts diverse enough? Is this museum show inclusive of enough different kinds of artists? Does the race of the curators correspond with the subject of the show or collection? Increasingly, these questions stand in for a discussion of the art itself... The past two years are a disorienting inversion of the previous 30. The culture wars, as they came to be known in the 1980s and 1990s, were less existential and more ideological. The moralizers tended to be white people from politics and the church...   The animating crisis of that era was sex — from the paranoia, shame and judgment during the AIDS epidemic to the national cataclysm of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The animating crisis of this era is power... So we wind up with safer art and discourse that provokes and disturbs and shocks less. It gives us culture whose artistic value has been replaced by moral judgment and leaves us with monocriticism. This might indeed be a kind of social justice. But it also robs us of what is messy and tense and chaotic and extrajudicial about art. It validates life while making work and conversations about that work kind of dull.
From 2018. If you don't unconditionally praise something made by a "minority", you're a bad person

Opinion | Is a Helen Keller Obsession Holding Disabled People Back? - The New York Times - "The extremes of disabled representation that we usually find in mainstream media — superhuman disabled people on the one hand, pitiful creatures in need of a cure on the other — are created, almost exclusively, by nondisabled people for nondisabled people. This perhaps explains why they are so redundant and out of touch with our experience. It would be laughable if those images did not translate directly into discrimination in the workplace, in the medical establishment, in our creative institutions. I and other blind writers experience this in both obvious and subtle ways. For instance, we often hear from editors and other decision makers, “Oh, we like this work, but we just published a blind author.” Culturally speaking, it reinforces the idea that we can have only one blind person at a time in the room."
When you have identity politics, you don't have space for too many people from each group, because tons of groups demand "representation" and will destroy you if they don't get it

For Better, for Worse, for Free Branding Work? - The New York Times - "I am a Gen X A.P.I. woman who has a reasonably successful career in an industry dominated by white men and, more specifically, white male archetypes of leadership. I now manage — and, happily, mentor — a wonderful 20-something A.P.I. woman, who is as thoughtful as she is ambitious. I give her a healthy amount of supportive feedback on the substance of her work. However, I would like to give her some feedback on style issues — upspeak, business writing tone, etc. — that I think will help her advance in this industry. Frankly, these are all issues that I’ve navigated myself. However, I recognize that giving her such advice will only reinforce the kind of patriarchal nonsense that I hope her generation will face less. Should I just focus my feedback on substance?"
"I’ve worked at a nonprofit for almost a decade. Nearly a third of the work force identifies as gay or lesbian, including its leadership and my boss. I’m a cis, bisexual woman in a non-monogamous relationship with a straight man who is my primary partner. For a variety of reasons, I’ve been assumed to be straight at work. The longer this has gone on, the more conflicted I’ve felt about coming out at work. I’ve had negative experiences where revealing my bisexuality and non-monogamy made me feel like my personal life was up for grabs as entertainment. As a straight-passing person, I haven’t dealt with the same challenges as some of my colleagues, most of whom are a generation or two older than I am. Have I waited too long? Do I have to also reveal that we have an open relationship that allows me to date women in order to be perceived as “legitimately” queer?"

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