There’s a significant part of me that thinks I said everything that needed to be said about the notion of “white privilege” with this bit here.
But just in case there’s some rubble left unbounced out there:
Mayor Frey is apparently a White Supremacist:
I mean, we’re just going by the standards they impose on others…
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Article in the new Bench and Bar magazine written by Justice Paul Thissen of the Minnesota Supreme Court, entitled “When Rules Get in the Way of Reason: One Judge’s View of Legislative Interpretation.”
No need to read the article, the title says it all. Isn’t this pretty much the definition of judicial activism?
By giving it prominent play in the Bar Association magazine, aren’t they normalizing radical behavior?
Or is radical the new normal, so this view is not controversial, it’s mainstream?
Joe doakes
Pretty simple, really.
Radical is radical on the right. On the left, it’s progress because shut up.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing the two winners of the “Speaking Proudly” speech contest on my show.
Much as I razz the kids, they were both pretty impressive. It kind of made me feel a little more sanguine about the near future.
And I needed that little dose of sanguinity, when I read this report from the academic front lines.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Articles like these are the reason women in the sciences are not taken seriously.
Carmen and Leonie have PhDs in computer science. Divya is a student of geology on other planets. They’re probably brilliant people in their fields but when they write stuff like this, they remind everyone of the shirt incident, which reinforces the reason nobody wants women in the sciences.
There is a silver lining. I can’t wait for President Trump to issue an Executive Order directing all federal agencies to stop using the Supremacy Clause as Constitutional justification for federal laws over-riding state laws. Power to the People, baby!
Joe Doakes
From the article:
We take issue with the use of ‘supremacy’ when referring to quantum computers that can out-calculate even the fastest supercomputers (F. Arute et al. Nature 574, 505–510; 2019). We consider it irresponsible to override the historical context of this descriptor, which risks sustaining divisions in race, gender and class. We call for the community to use ‘quantum advantage’ instead.
The community claims that quantum supremacy is a technical term with a specified meaning. However, any technical justification for this descriptor could get swamped as it enters the public arena after the intense media coverage of the past few months.
Read: A tsunami of stupid, driven by an ignorant, incurious media, might cause idiots – invariably idiots on the left – to think “quantum supremacy” is a racist dog whistle.
In our view, ‘supremacy’ has overtones of violence, neocolonialism and racism through its association with ‘white supremacy’. Inherently violent language has crept into other branches of science as well — in human and robotic spaceflight, for example, terms such as ‘conquest’, ‘colonization’ and ‘settlement’ evoke the terra nullius arguments of settler colonialism and must be contextualized against ongoing issues of neocolonialism.
Let’s be honest – it’s not just women who publish this twaddle. Bowderiing science like this, if it jumps the banks of Moron Creek, will harm everyone, matter their pigment or genitalia.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
There used to be more holidays. Nowadays, we’re down to a few Sales Events. I miss holidays.
George Washington had his own birthday holiday. We gave Valentines to classmates, planted a tree in the yard on Arbor Day, and hung construction paper cones on doorknobs on May Basket Day.
The high school band marched in the Memorial Day parade. The school bell rang at 11:00 on Armistice Day as we sat silent for one minute. We knew who Squanto was and why he got invited to dinner by Pilgrims, the man carrying a musket while wearing a tall black hat with a shiny buckle on the front; the woman in a bonnet near a big, fat turkey. We put out our shoes for Saint Nicholas and sang familiar songs in the Christmas concert.
The musket violates the zero tolerance policy for guns. It’s unfair to celebrate one President’s birthday but not the others. Valentine was a Catholic saint, apartment dwellers have no yards to plant trees; parading on Main Street disrupts traffic and singing about a long-ago silent night converts schools into cathedrals.
We have cut ourselves off from our cultural traditions and wonder why our children have no sense of history, of belonging to a great nation, of pride in our culture. And I fear what happens to a people who have no sense of history, of belonging to a great nation, no culture.
Joe Doakes
The only mistake is to assume that this isn’t all according to plan.
Racist pig and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib blames “white supremacy”…
…for an attack carried out by black “Jews”.
Brazilian “comedy” features a gay Jesus:
The Brazilian comedy group Porta dos Fundos (which literally translates to “back door”) appears to have a real hang-up about our Lord and Christianity in general. Last December the group released The Last Hangover on Netflix, a movie that blends Christ’s Last Supper with his disciples and The Hangover into a night of drunken debauchery where Jesus disappears.
This year, in this new Christmas special, Jesus turns 30 and brings his gay boyfriend home to meet Mary and Joseph.
Pretty daring.
Not as daring as a gay Mohammed would be.
Wonder why nobody’s green-lit that?
Oh, yeah. Christians won’t blow you up.
Not to Hollywood; wanna be really “transgressive”? Portray Christ as the focal point of a western civilization that made your life, and the intellectual (and “intellectual”) freedom to make your lives possible.
You’d never do lunch on Rodeo Drive again, of course, but you’d sure be transgressive!
If gender is just a construct…
…then “mens'” opinions about abortion are of absolutely equal weight with “womens'”.
You’re welcome.
Tyrants, like abusive spouses and sociopathic gaslighters of all kinds, are fond of making their victims believe that their travails are their fault.
Westerners – those who still bother to criticize Red China, anyway – learn with some muted horror that when the Chinese government executes a convict via their preferred method, a bullet to the back of the head, the officials follow up by sending a bill for the bullet to the family of the deceased.
Seems barbaric?
Compare it with the behavior of the authorities in Berkeley – not just students, but the authorities themselves – after protests and violence broke out at an Ann Coulter appearance last week.
However, [UC Berkeley Police Chief Margo] Bennett said she was “sympathetic” to students concerned about the heavy presence of police in riot gear around Wheeler.
“I totally understand that,” she said. “We did messaging to impacted groups that felt the presence of police caused them anxiety.” [UC Berkeley spokesman Dan] Mogulof echoed Bennett. The concerns were “understandable on a lot of different levels,” he said. “We have work to do to continue to find ways we can accommodate profound differences of opinion. We believe we have met our obligations to both free speech and the rule of law, and to provide for the safety and well-being of students and campus guests,” he said. “Having said that, I understand that students are deeply disturbed and unsettled by someone whose views they deeply disagree with.” He said counseling and other services are always available to students.
Unbelievable. The authorities here — the police chief and the university spokesman — sympathize with the mobbed-up students whose fanaticism and violence required police presence so that a conservative speaker could address those who wanted to hear her. No wonder the First Amendment is losing. The authorities pity the tyrannical mob.
It’s not the Coulter spectators, who needed to be escorted into the venue past a mob of slobbering droogs, to whom the administration is apologizing.
No.
It’s the droogs. For being “triggered” by the presence of the police. Who needed to be there because of them.
But it’s not just Berkeley. It’s right here.
Mayor Jacob “McDreamy” Frey, after all but literally inviting thugs to attack attendees at last month’s Trump rally in Minneapolis, and allegedly ordering the police to not intervene as the droogs and their boyfriends chased down old men and sucker-punched 5’2 women, is blaming…
One noxious facet of Urban Progressive Prvilege is that its beneficiaries never have to feel guilty for even their most depraved acts, because “progressive” ends justify all means.
If, as the ACLU says…:
…then I guess men’s opinions about abortion really do matter, then.
The City of Minneapolis is likely going to vote to bar “conversion therapy” for people under 18.
I’m going to add a bit of emphasis:
The controversial practice aims to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight. It has drawn the ire of many in the LGBT community and others, who say it doesn’t work, has no scientific basis, and amounts to psychological torture.
Of course, the “scientific proof” one way or the other is all “social science”, which isn’t “science” at all.
And if it’s “science” we’re concerned with, it’s worth noting that the idea that “homosexuality is genetic” is a political, not scientific, conclusion.
But with that out of the way – I don’t disagree. Society has known for decades that forcing someone to act like someone they’re intrinsically not is a terrible thing that causes horrendous psychiatric damage when forced upon the subject. This was generally well-known – if frequently contested or ignored – even when I was in high school.
As, indeed, the MPR story on the subject notes:
Roger Sanchez of Minneapolis said he wishes such a ban would have been in place when he was a teenager. Sanchez, who is gay, said his father and a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints both urged him to get psychotherapy to change his sexual orientation.
It did not involve shock treatments or anything physically invasive, but Sanchez said what he went through was damaging because it made him believe he was somehow disordered.
Bully for Minneapolis.
Now – if “therapy” to “convert” gays to straight-dom is bad, because (social) science…
…then why is forcing boys to act like girls – verbal, cooperative, social, rather than physical, competitive and restless – any better in any way?
Because science, and a look at the state of boys and young men today, certainly shows the social catastrophe that a generation of changing and medicating that natural male energy, rather than teaching boys to channel it and use it productively, has had on society.
When does that come up on the agenda?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Wait until gang members learned that the first aid kits stock Israeli bandages. What a dilemma for a dutiful Muslim: bleed out or owe your life to a Jew?
Joe Doakes
Progressives, likely, even moreso.
Disney also slammed baby boomers’ attitudes toward millennials, who are less financially stable than previous generations and are dealing with the ever-growing threat of climate change.
“And the more often you object to Millenials’ understandable resentment toward a generation that has selfishly poisoned their water, blown past every climate warning so they could drive their stupid hummers, and looked away or worse for sexual, racial and economic injustice, the more you prove their point that you just don’t understand anything of value to them,” she wrote. “Look, these kids are facing down a rising tide (literally) of changes that threatens everything you and I taught them to hold dear.”
“How about you guys sit the f— down and let the kids drive,” she added.
She concluded: “Get over the idea that all things pass, you are old and you need to let history do what history does: move on.”
“Nice try, Ms Disney, but I honestly don’t think millennials are more virtuous than the Boomer generation before them who thought we were all going to die. In fact, these millenials are still driving, still moving to the suburbs to raise kids, still choosing a lifestyle they can’t afford- all while telling someone else that they can’t. Why, it’s as if the two generations are the same. No wonder they are fighting. The more helpful approach might be to actually understand we can’t move on from history, we can just hope not to repeat the worst parts of the world’s history- something both liberal boomers and millennials seem hell-bent on doing.”
I’m spooling up for a stemwinder on the whole idea of turning generations into identity groups.
In the old Soviet Union, people used to joke that they could tell when there was a shortage of butter, winter boots or heating oil was on the horizon, when Pravda would start running stories about how bad butter was for your health, how good it was to get your feel wet, and the benefits of a cooler house.
Completely unrelated: I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that about the time Big Media and Big Left (PTR) start telling us that “maybe freedom of speech is too complicated for peasants today“…
…that we start getting “news” like this?
I really, really do.
What conservative, when seeing the precious, twee pretense of “arty” progressives’ political statements, hasn’t been tempted to cut loose with a can of spray paint, a sawzall or an air horn, just as a statement of artistic criticism?
The grotesque caricature masquerading as commentary?
The sanctimonious preening masquerading as high-concept art?
Or anything Ken Weiner ever drew?
The struggle is real.
Which is why I’m of two, or actually three, minds about this story – the (cue cliche alarm) Florida man who slashed the “Trump Baby” balloon.
“I don’t know how many of ya’ll Republicans out there got any balls about yourself, but they got that Baby Trump balloon down here on campus right now and I’m going down here to make a scene, so ya’ll watch the news. If you got any balls, come join me,” Hutchinson [said in a Facebook video]. “This is pathetic. I’m fixing to get rowdy, so ya’ll pay attention. I’m shaking, I’m so mad right now, but I’m fixing to go, I’m fixing to pop this balloon, without a doubt. Stay tuned. Should be interesting.”
“Baby Trump” has been seen around the world where Trump has been, such as London, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. Over $6,500 was raised through a GoFundMe to bring it to Tuscaloosa.…First-degree criminal mischief is a Class C felony in Alabama that is punishable between 1 to 10 years in prison and up to $15,000 in fines.
There’s a legal defense fund for the guy, and it’s racked up a ton of money. He’ll need it.
On the one hand – it’s fun to think about confronting those precious fops physically.
On the other hand? A conservative should be showing some respect for others’ freedom of speech, not to mention their property rights. A person’s right to swing their fist ends where the other person’s nose begins. Fun as it is to think of the snowflakes who haul that excrescence around wetting their pants at the thought of someone disagreeing with them, meeting them with violence makes you no better than “Anti”-Fa. One meets bad, stupid speech with more, better speech – so if someone wants to build a “Baby Snowflake” balloon, I’m all on board.
On the third hand? Hey, look – it’s a red state, and the authorities are arresting and prosecuting someone whose politics they most likely agree with, but who is breaking the law and inflicting violence on other. Someone tell Jacob Frey that that’s how it’s done.
Although telling Jacob Frey how it’s done will probably get prosecuted as a hate crime.
This is from a few years ago – but the sentiment is growing, at least among our self-appointed idiot elite. It’s from Roxane Gay, a feminist professor who, for some reason, got a writeup in the NYTimes:
Men can start putting in some of the work women have long done in offering testimony. They can come forward and say “me too” while sharing how they have hurt women in ways great and small.
OK, here goes.
My Testimony: I have hurt women in one small – almost infinitesimal – way; I mock and taunt the likes of Roxane Gay for being the Robespierrian ninnies they truly are. I do the mocking and taunting because bellowing “you people are nothing but pseudointellectual brownshirts, peddling a form of groupthink that can only lead inexorably to totalitarianism” gets tiring.
I mock and taunt them because the world they want – where the “wrong” people are guilty until proven innocent, and innocence can never be proven because guilt is a matter of identity more than action – is worth fighting against. And fighting with mocking and taunting is better than doing it with guns and bombs and tanks, although I doubt the likes of Professor Gay’s followers know how or why.
This mocking and taunting no doubt infuriates Professor Gay – and I no doubt hurt her and her like among the weaker sex (“progressive” “feminist” “woke” “men” and their various female accomplices) in saying so. But much as they all may wish to bully me into acquiescence, I just won’t do it.
Which, no doubt, hurts them even more.
I’m sorry I’m not sorry.
Ilhan Omar votes “present” on a resolution recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians.
And in her statement about that decision, she appears to have learned her rhetorical skills from leaving comments in the Star-Tribune comment section:
Put another way – “the resolution’s silence about other genocides – mostly the ones involving the US, the country that welcomed me to it – speaks volumes“.
And if accounting for genocide is “Paramount”, then what’s “academic consensus” got to do with it?
And we did “acknowledge” the slave trade, Rep. Omar: with the bloodiest war in our country’s history.
Note to Tom Emmer: Write a resolution condemning the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide. See what she does.
…if “educators” – secondary and university-level – in the “humanities” know anything about the history of the “humanities”.
Teachers are worried about teaching the otherwise (ostensibly) brilliant work of artists whose personal lives are, well, problematic, in the #MeToo era:
For Martina Myers, a high school English teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Sherman Alexie’s novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” seemed too good to be true: funny, well-crafted and focused on Native American youth.
Her students at Piñon High School, many of whom struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, took to it immediately. They wrote poems in response, on native pride, addiction, self-acceptance and suicide attempts.
So when Ms. Myers learned last year of the allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Alexie, who issued a statement admitting he had “harmed other people,” she felt two waves of betrayal — first for her students and then for herself, a survivor of abuse.
“When the #MeToo movement happened I told my story,” Ms. Myers said. She knew some of her students, too, had experienced sexual assault.
Where do these hamsters come from?
The history of arts and humanities is clogged with deeply dysfunctional people. The drive to be an artist seems, in fact, to be closely linked with personal and emotional instability.
And the “artists” that fit neatly into the bounds of what’s considered socially acceptable today largely aren’t that interesting.
Why, it’s almost as if someone is trying to dumb society down, or something…
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Imagine the Mayor of some Southern city announces Kamala Harris is not welcome in his town but since she’s coming, he extends an open invitation for all KKK to protest her visit in the spirit of “free speech.”
The city demands she post $1 million security bond “in case there’s trouble.” The police chief assigns dozens of cops to line the route Harris’ supporters must walk, wearing riot helmets, slapping nightsticks into their palms, holding the leashes of snarling police dogs, “to maintain public order.”
The Health Department temporarily closes all food vendors within several blocks and disables all restrooms in the rally building, for fear of a “potential cholera outbreak.”
Every one of these actions has some non-discriminatory reason. Would Harris have a valid complaint for voter intimidation? Would those actions be a violation of voters’ civil rights?
Joe Doakes
C-130s full of ACLU and Justice Department lawyers would be winging their way southward before the last porta-potty got chained up.
Safe space abolished, snowflake:
He deserves a medal.
New York assemblywoman argues that housing is a right:
“Unexpectedly”, she also is a plaintiff suing against affordable housing…in her district:
In a Wednesday piece for the New York Daily News, [Assemblymember Yuh-Line] Niou and activist Feliz Guzman argue that the Saturday murder of four homeless people in New York City could have been prevented by more government spending on housing and social services.
“If they had been housed, four of our neighbors would very likely still be with us today,” they write. “We must choose to guarantee every New Yorker the right to a safe and affordable home to prevent a tragedy like this one from ever happening again.” Niou and Guzman call out both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio for falling short of their own promises to build affordable housing:
Awkwardly, Niou is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against an affordable housing project being built by a coalition of developers, including Habitat for Humanity, in Little Italy. The project, named Haven Green, would add 123 units of affordable senior housing to Niou’s district, including 37 units for the formerly homeless…So why is she suing to stop it? It’s all about the open space.
The Haven Green project will replace the privately managed Elizabeth Street Garden that currently occupies the city-owned site. In March, the garden, and a separate non-profit that advocates for its preservation, filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing that it erred in approving the project without conducting an adequate environmental study.
“While Lower Manhattan is desperately in need of affordable housing, we cannot pit the need for housing against the need for green space, especially when so many good alternatives are available,” Niou said in a statement.
So her constituents’ desire for open space trumps the “right” to housing…
…in Niou’s district?
Gary Gross, proprietor of Saint Cloud’s Let Freedom Ring blog, noticed something fishy in the Saint Cloud Times‘ coverage of the postponement of a “Dismantling Hate Crimes” meeting being held in Saint Cloud.
The Times carried a statement from MInnesota Department of Human Rights commissioner Rebecca Lucero about the postponement. I’ll add some emphasis:
“Hate is not a value in St. Cloud or in any part of our state. Our community deserves better,” said Minnesota Department of Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero. “I am heartbroken by the attempts to silence discussion on hate crimes. The goal of the forum was to discuss the community we want to create. One that is full of dignity and joy.”
The “attempt to silence” the discussion was a protest against the event, and ostensible threats.
But Gary did something that the Times apparently doesn’t, anymore; checked the facts.
Found in their own coverage:
If they had done that, they would have read the quote from Assistant Police Chief Jeff Oxton, who said that the SCPD hadn’t received any threats regarding the event.
And the timeline (again adding emphasis):
…the event was cancelled at 1:16 p.m. That’s the timestamp on the Facebook post from the St. Cloud Regional Human Rights Commission announcing the cancellation of the event. That’s important because the “protesters” didn’t arrive until 2 p.m.
Isn’t it interesting that the event got cancelled before the protesters showed up? Why would the Minnesota Department of Human Resources and the St. Cloud Regional Human Rights Commission cancel an event that didn’t get threatened?
Because communicating with “progressive” audiences is never about facts. It’s about getting the desired emotional reaction.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I have a subscription to Sirius XM radio in my car, but I’m going to cancel it. This morning, I heard a song that triggered me so bad, I can’t even.
I was listening to the 70 station and some guy came on making fun of homosexuals, using stereotype words like Sugar Plum Fairy and encouraging me to take a Walk on the Wild Side. And then he started using racial epithets, claiming the colored girls go doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo, doo-doo, doo, doo-doo, doo-doo….
Sure, I could have changed the station, but why should I have to? Why are they allowed to put hate speech on the radio? The radio I’m paying for! That’s it, I’m done, I’m canceling my subscription and starting a Twitter boycott.
Joe Doakes
Lou Reed, being a New York “artist”, was given a pass on all that.
Simple messages printed on white paper start appearing in Massachusetts.
Moral quandary ensues (don’t watch the video if the moral myopia of your fellow citizen is already depressing you):
“Tolerance” for all aspects of (non-white male) cultures slams headlong into feminism.
And people have no idea what to do with that dissonance.
Western society has managed to convince itself (at least in public) that any statement criticising any aspect of Islam is, by definition, bigotry. As a result, Western societies have effectively decided to enforce Islamic restrictions on blasphemy, and called it ‘tolerance’.
The strain of conforming to this lie is evident in the fumbling attempts by the interviewees to explain their objections. Do they believe that Islam is right about women? If so, why the objection? Do they believe that Islam is wrong about women? If so, in what sense is the statement an attack on Islam or Muslims? Do they believe that the author of the poster is saying that ‘Islam is right about women’, but doing so ironically? In which case, the objection can only be that the author is guilty of a thoughtcrime by stating that ‘two and two make five’ with insufficient sincerity. Or do they worry that they are guilty of thoughtcrime for noticing the irony?
Of course, it’s all fun until an entire free society is destroyed:
Such abdication grinds down the ideologically obedient citizen, because it reduces life to a purely material existence, in which moral integrity and human dignity must be sacrificed in order to keep the state off one’s back and oneself in a job. This is a fate which Havel suggested might one day befall the West if it were ever to succumb to the ‘profane trivialisation of humanity’ required to live within a lie rather than challenge it. With police now calling on citizens to ‘check their thinking’, and people regularly losing jobs over social-media posts, who can say that we have not reached it?
Of course, Al-Ameri – a UK-based writer – is writing about the UK.
For now.
Largely.