American universities have problems, but the solutions they choose do not seem to be addressing those problems (screencapped, in case the tweet doesn’t load correctly):
June 3, 2019
The state of US academia in juxtaposed tweets
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May 30, 2019
Moving the Overton window, illustrated
The Wikipedia entry for Overton window reads:
The Overton window is a term for the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse, also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians’ individual preferences. According to Overton, the window contains the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office in the current climate of public opinion.
Overton described a spectrum from “more free” to “less free” with regard to government intervention, oriented vertically on an axis, to avoid comparison with the left-right political spectrum. As the spectrum moves or expands, an idea at a given location may become more or less politically acceptable. Political commentator Joshua Treviño postulated that the degrees of acceptance of public ideas are roughly:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Popular
- Policy
The Overton window is an approach to identifying which ideas define the domain of acceptability within a democracy’s possible governmental policies. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to convince or persuade the public in order to move and/or expand the window. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones, within the window seek to convince people that policies outside it should be deemed unacceptable.
There’s also a helpful illustration of the concept:
Diagram of the “Overton Window”, based on a concept promoted by Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), former director of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The term “Overton Window” was coined by colleagues of Joe Overton after his death. In the political theory of the Overton Window, new ideas fall into a range of acceptability to the public, at the edges of which an elected official risks being voted out of office.
Illustration by Hydrargyrum via Wikimedia Commons
To move the Overton window is to shift how the public considers certain ideas, making once unthinkable things merely radical, then acceptable, and so on. Shifting the window is usually something that takes time and media preparation, as a series of tweets from Zach Goldberg handily illustrates:
1/n Spent some time on LexisNexis over the weekend. Depending on your political orientation, what follows will either disturb or encourage you. But regardless of political orientation, I'm sure we can all say 'holy fucking shit'
— Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) May 28, 2019
2/n Here's 'holy fucking shit' #1 pic.twitter.com/KRVBl6ucIo
— Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) May 28, 2019
— Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) May 28, 2019
— Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) May 28, 2019
The full thread can be viewed at this Thread Reader link.
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May 27, 2019
A genuine, bona fide electrified, six-car Fisking!
Once upon a time, in the primordial early days of blogging, an artform was evolved that perfectly suited the ecological niche occupied by bloggers: the Fisking. Thanks to his great respect for the ways of the past, David Thompson is a highly skilled modern practitioner of that ancient artform:
Here’s an idea! Change your parents’ bad voting habits by refusing to breed.
In the pages of Slate, Christina Cauterucci, whose enthusiasms include “gender and feminism,” wishes to share her wisdom:
The prospect of harnessing one’s sexual and reproductive powers for social good is a tempting one. So, I’d like to present what I humbly consider a much better proposal: Instead of a sex strike, let’s try a grandkid strike.
It’s a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism,” says Ms Cauterucci, and “exactly the kind of radical response today’s radical threats to equity, justice, and humanity demand.” Specifically,
It’s time to demand that baby boomers and Gen Xers decide which they’d rather have: their vague attachments to policies that have poisoned the earth and will soon make it difficult for anyone but the obscenely wealthy to live healthy, happy lives, or a pack of adorable munchkins in itty-bitty suspenders ready for unlimited tickle fights and cookie-baking sessions.
This is followed almost immediately by,
I’ve already decided that I’m not having kids,
Which, for the purposes of Ms Cauterucci’s article, is somewhat convenient. This reproductive decision was, we’re told, arrived at because,
Child care is extravagantly expensive, and paid family leave is a rare luxury. Bringing a new set of chubby cheeks and wonderfully incomprehensible babblings into the world is the most destructive thing one couple can do to the planet. It seems certain that today’s babies will be tomorrow’s survivors of famine, water shortages, unprecedented natural disasters, and refugee crises.
And furthermore,
It’s unethical, what with climate change and all. And it’s too dangerous — you’ve seen the news reports on school shootings and know how easy it is for violent men to get their hands on guns.
Um, okay then. Apparently, the thought of becoming a parent immediately conjures mental images of famine, earthquakes, shootings and death. Proof, if more were needed, that the exquisitely woke are just like thee and me. Not unhinged in any way.
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QotD: The Green death cult
In keeping with all millenarian movements, the extinction-obsessed green cult reserves its priestly fury for ordinary people. Even when it is putting pressure on the government, it is really asking it to punish us. It wants tighter controls on car-driving, restrictions on flying, green taxes on meat. That these things would severely hit the pockets of ordinary people – but not the deep pockets of Emma Thompson and the double-barrelled eco-snobs who run Extinction Rebellion – is immaterial to the angry bourgeoisie. So convinced are they of their own goodness, and of our wickedness, that they think it is utterly acceptable for officialdom to make our lives harder in order to strongarm us into being more “green”. People complaining about Extinction Rebellion disrupting people’s lives in London over the past few days are missing the point – the entire point of the green movement is to disrupt ordinary people’s lives, and even to immiserate them. All in the jumped-up name of “saving the planet”.
And now the green cult has pushed Ms [Greta] Thunberg into the position of its global leader, its child-like saviour, the messiah of their miserabilist political creed. What they have done to Ms Thunberg is unforgivable. They have pumped her – and millions of other children – with the politics of fear. They have convinced the next generation that the planet is on the cusp of doom. They have injected dread into the youth. “I want you to panic”, said Ms Thunberg at Davos, and the billionaires and celebs and marauding NGOs that were in attendance all lapped it up. Because adult society loves nothing more than having its own fear and confusions obediently parroted back to it by teenagers. They celebrate Thunberg because she tells them how horrible they are: it is an entirely S&M relationship, speaking to the deep self-loathing of the 21st-century elites.
Brendan O’Neill, “The cult of Greta Thunberg: This young woman sounds increasingly like a millenarian weirdo”, Spiked, 2019-04-22.
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May 15, 2019
May 14, 2019
Is Canada ready for a New Green Democratic Party?
Ali Taghva explores the notion of the federal NDP and Green parties joining together:
With fundraising and polling numbers in sharp decline at the same time that experienced MPs and staff leave the party, it is evident, even the base of the NDP is beginning to lose faith in the current direction led by Jagmeet Singh.
Worryingly for every single NDP member in the country, this is occurring even when Justin Trudeau’s post-election honeymoon has long ended.
As a result, it appears that the Green Party has become the progressive vehicle gaining the most federal momentum. Their fundraising numbers are on the upswing, and if the trend in the latest by-election in B.C. holds up, they may be the preferred refuge for disenfranchised Liberal voters.
While the Green Party does have momentum, it will not be able to push forward as Canada’s progressive alternative, at least not alone.
The party is still astronomically behind the Conservatives and Liberals when it comes to fundraising, quality of candidates, and polling support.
Even in comparison to the NDP, the Greens are still behind in fundraising and polling, although the distance between the two parties is far more negligible.
With both parties too far back to do anything other than reducing the Liberal vote, ensuring a Conservative majority, it may be time for Canadian progressives to seriously consider a merger between the Green party and the New Democrats.
Okay, but why now? What would be the big draw … oh:
Perhaps most interestingly though, a united alternative progressive party could easily bring on-board the two highest-profile individuals who still have no declared party for the federal election, Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould.
With most Canadians believing Jody Wilson-Raybould’s account over that of the Prime Minister’s, her entrance into the race along with Jane Philpott’s could be the final piece which catapults the party into contention for the role of governing party.
Of course, of course … the old celebrity candidates trick. That always works. Well, in urban downtown ridings, anyway.
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May 7, 2019
QotD: Competitive Wokeness
I love competitive #Wokeness.
No, seriously — it’s high time you people out in the real world got to experience one of the defining joys of life in the ivory tower. In the ivy-covered halls of academe, the Marxist Postcolonialist Feminsts have longstanding beef with the Postcolonialist Feminist Marxists. They’d each happily feed the other into a wood chipper, even though to outsiders it would look like the pot executing the kettle for counterrevolutionary crimes. If you’re the sort who takes schadenfreudy delight in very obvious folly, university life is hilarious.
It’s even funnier if you take these buffoons at their word. Compared to the pronouncements of your average Angry Studies professor, Pol Pot was a sane and balanced man. In reality, of course, university people are so soft and coddled, they make the Eloi look like the Sons of Anarchy. Spending so much time around college folk is one of the main reasons for my mantra: “Today’s SJW is tomorrow’s obergruppenfuhrer.” They talk a fearsome game, these campus Ches, but they cry if the cafeteria is out of free trade sustainably sourced indigenous grown gluten free soy milk. When the zeitgeist shifts, they’ll be the first to knuckle under.
Severian, “The Reluctant Revolutionary”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-04-05.
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April 25, 2019
QotD: “Science”
Ah, science. If you’re even loosely engaged in the wild and dark art that is politics these days, you know by now that “science,” as a word, has taken on an almost mystical meaning. “Science,” in many of its modern incantations, now serves as a form of code, as vague and fuzzy as a Wiccan chant. For a growing number of political activists, the meaning is simple: Science, you see, is a lively mix of standard progressive hobbyhorses, tossed wild-eyed and cranky into one cantankerous bag.
Heather Wilhelm, “The Left’s New Cure-All: ‘Science’”, National Review, 2017-04-12.
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April 14, 2019
April 3, 2019
A review of Woke by Titania McGrath
The poetic titan of Twitter, ultra-woke voice of her generation Titania McGrath (recently revealed to be the creation of comedian Andrew Doyle), is now a published author:
… Titania McGrath, the radical intersectional feminist poet who verbally bombards the “white supremacist patriarchy.” A malcontent who is fed up with us ignoramuses, McGrath has published her first book. Simply titled Woke: A Guide to Social Justice, it’s a manifesto written in prose possessing a revolutionary zeal so potent Che Guevara would lecherously swoon and request that she provide him with remedial education in social revolution.
McGrath addresses the vast intricacies of wokeness and responds to the counterarguments that the agents of the patriarchy often make. She also outlines how this puritanical movement can attract converts. Her insight is sought after since, after all, “our society is a slumbering beast that has been trapped in its coma for far too long.”
Proving to be Winston Churchill’s 21st-century equivalent, McGrath teabags “the foes of justice with a gender-neutral scrotum.” And challenges the “illusion of freedom” to extirpate Nazis and destroy any other obstacles to the “Intersectional Socialist Utopia.”
We all live in a “heteronormative patriarchy” that’s a “Tyranny of Facts” erected by the “Scourge of Whiteness.” Knowledge is a “patriarchal construct” that is only convenient for those who want to strengthen the white male authoritarians’ grip on power. So what must we do to rectify this?
According to McGrath, our society is almost irreparably “unwoke,” and we might have to implement drastic purgatory measures. We shall be heedful of the wisdom of brave reformists like Hannah Gadsby and eradicate anything offensive. Reforming things like comedy and any other art form perceived to be toxically masculine should be our first priority. Scientists will also tremble at the feet of these woke revolutionaries. As McGrath avers: “The idea that knowledge is more important than feelings is everything that is wrong with the field of modern science.”
With a knack for conflict analysis that would rival Churchill’s, McGrath identifies our real enemies with panache. “Every sperm is an invader” if you didn’t know, and those who commit cultural genocide by doing yoga are civilization’s true adversaries. As are compilers of the English dictionary who give credence to antediluvian definitions of racism that enable us to think a person of colour can also be racist.
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March 22, 2019
The rise of the neo-barbarians and modern tribalism
Sarah Hoyt isn’t a fan of civilization being replaced by the prehistoric landscape of tribe versus tribe, forever:
Tribalism seems to be the default setting of the human race.
Maybe it’s because we’re built on the frame of Great (or at least pretty good) Apes. Band seems to be the default unit of a Great Ape.
The people who do those cute and vapid studies on how your toddler is racist — by which they mean he prefers people who look like mommy and daddy, or their surrogates in his life — don’t seem to understand that. They don’t seem to understand that for most of human existence, (prehistory is much longer than history) for a toddler to stray outside his tribe meant at best he was raised as a slave, and at worst he became lunch.
I wonder if it’s this uncritical, sort of history-and-genetics free view of the world that causes the left to think that tribes are awesome.
Might just be their usual — and honestly, isn’t it tiresome by now? — view of the world which thinks everything “natural” by which they mean pre-civilized is better. This leads to nostalgie de la boue and therefore elevates primitive/non civilized cultures over western culture.
Or perhaps it is simply the fact that Marxism was “rescued” by Gramsci. Marxism was bad enough in its inability to see individuals, and ascribing everyone to economic tribes.
[…]
Anyway, back to our point: one of the great advances of humanity, possibly as momentous as the discovery of fire, was the overcoming of tribalism.
Forging tribe-like bonds based on “we share this land” and in fact, being able to tell ourselves stories about how “everyone in this land is one people” gave rise to the city state, the country, and eventually the “community of civilized men.”
Of course, yes, Christianity had a lot to do with this, but there was some of that going on already in the Roman Empire, where Persian and Greek could both declare (after the appropriate formalities and acculturation) “Civis Romanum sum.”
As bad as the super-states of the twentieth century got — because there’s nothing as a large nation with a good dose of crazy-making philosophical theory — it allowed commerce and industry, which are miles and miles better at creating and keeping wealth than hunting-gathering.
The problem is that the left, led by Gramsci, has re-invented tribalism. And no, I don’t just mean tribalism of place of origin or color — though they include that — I mean tribalism of EVERYTHING.
Being unable to see individuals (has anyone done studies of their brain? Maybe there’s something missing) they instead keep sorting people into increasingly smaller groups based on things that have bloody nothing to do with what the person IS capable of, or thinks or believes: Color, who people sleep with, what people have between their legs, who people like to sleep with, what people call their deity, etc. etc. ad very definitely nauseum.
[…]
The other side effect of this is that everyone who isn’t a member of the tribe is potentially the enemy. This is what leads to the internecine fights within the left, and why if they should win (forbid) we’ll be stuck in civil war after civil war forever. Adapting the Arab proverb: Me and my Marxist classmates against the world; Me and my black Marxist classmates against our white Marxist classmates; Me and my black Marxist female classmates against our black Marxist male classmates; Me and my black lesbian Marxist female classmates against our black straight Marxist female classmates… and so on ad infinitum, until the tribe of one is at war with everyone else, and worse stuck in a pit of anger and resentment because he/she isn’t given all the recognition and compensation he/she should have from the rest of the world at large.
At the same time anyone outside it is viewed as less than human. This is why they think they can tell everyone to shut up because “white privilege” or “male privilege” or whatever, and they honestly think there will be no resistance and no backlash.
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March 20, 2019
QotD: The Progressive view of American history
The debunking mind is typical of the American Left, which feels itself compelled to rewrite every episode in history in such a way as to put black hats on the heads of any and all American heroes: Jefferson? Slave-owning rapist. Lincoln? Not really all that enlightened on race. Saving the world from the Nazis? Sure, but what about the internment of the Japanese? Etc. […]
In high school, I had a very left-wing American history teacher who was a teachers’-union activist (a very lonely position in Lubbock, Texas, where the existence of such unions was hardly acknowledged) for whom the entirety of the great American story was slavery, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the Great Depression, and the momentary heroism of the New Deal (we were not far from New Deal, Texas), with the great arc of American history concluding on the steps of Central High School in Little Rock on September 23, 1957. It was, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, very important to her — plainly urgent to her — that the American story be one of disappointment, betrayal, and falling short of our founding ideals.
Kevin D. Williamson, “Bitter Laughter: Humor and the politics of hate”, National Review, 2016-08-11.
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March 16, 2019
MMT – Magic Money Theory
Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan explain just why so many progressives are so excited about MMT:
Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, is all the rage in the halls of Congress lately.
To hear the Progressive left tell it, MMT is not unlike a goose that keeps laying golden eggs. All we have to do is pick up all the free money. This is music to politicians’ ears, but Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is singing a decidedly different tune. Said Powell recently on MMT, “The idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currency … is just wrong.”
MMT advocates see this as outdated thinking. We can, they claim, spend as much as we want on whatever we want, unencumbered by trivialities like how much we have. But MMT is a bait-and-switch wrapped in a sleight-of-hand. It focuses on debt and dollars rather than resources and products. Debt and dollars are merely tools we use to transfer ownership of resources and products. It’s the resources and products that matter. Shuffling debt and dollars merely changes the ownership of resources and products. It doesn’t create more.
[…]
So here’s the sleight of hand. MMT advocates say that we won’t experience inflation because the U.S. dollar is a reserve currency — foreigners hold lots of U.S. dollars. First, increasing the money supply, other things constant, does create inflation. But when a reserve currency inflates, the pain gets spread around the world instead of being concentrated within one country. In short, MMT advocates believe our government should print money and let foreigners bear some of the inflation pain. Second, there’s no law that says that the U.S. dollar must be a reserve currency. The British Pound was one, but as its value declined, foreigners stopped holding it. Foreigners will stop holding U.S. dollars too as their value declines.
And here’s the bait-and-switch. MMTers say that if inflation does become a problem, the government can simply raise tax rates to soak up excess dollars. In short, the government would print money with one hand, buying whatever it wants and causing inflation. It would then tax with the other, thereby removing dollars from the economy and counteracting the inflation. In the end, all that’s happened is that the government has replaced goods and services that people want with goods and services politicians want.
After a bout of MMT, we might have the same GDP and zero inflation, but what constitutes that GDP would have changed dramatically. Instead of having more cars and houses, we might have more tanks and border walls.
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March 14, 2019
Life in the modern academic paradise
At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian recounts his time in the idyllic Ivory Tower of modern academia:
Imagine you’re some kind of Gulliver-type explorer, and you reach an island of perfect bliss. Clear air, gentle breezes, balmy temperatures, and all the delicious food you can eat. And the natives! They live to serve you, completely unconstrained by anything so antiquated as Western sexual morality. Limitless 5G internet. Anything you want to eat, drink, watch, read, do, say, insert, or have inserted, it’s all yours at the snap of your fingers. Got it?
Now imagine that the rulers of this little slice of paradise do nothing but sit on the side of the road all day, smashing their own toes with ball-peen hammers.
That’s life in a college town. The Left run everything. They set the admissions requirements. They have unlimited budgets, and since they do, the entire commercial ecosystem exists only for them. All cuisine is “fusion,” you have to drive to the next burg over to find milk that comes from cows, and every single item of public culture — from sidewalk graffiti to public radio to experimental theater troupe — does nothing but flatter them. There is no fetish so outre, no practice so bizarre, that you can’t find at least one other enthusiastic participant. It’s intersectional genderfluid heaven….
…. and every single person in it is miserable. I’m serious — if it’s not too far out of your way, drive down to your nearest college town, and just watch the faces. You might glimpse a grinning undergrad or two — they’re too young and dumb to know better; they’ll be fully reeducated by junior year — but you can spot the tenured faculty solely by their scowls. The only thing that temporarily alleviates the existential horror of their lives is getting outraged by something, which — since, again, they control everything — means tilting at windmills is their only sport; they play it with a cutthroat intensity the football coach can only dream of.
How can you not be fascinated by that? To utterly refute the view of man as homo economicus, all you have to do is watch the facial expressions of people who are “the 1%” by any measure that makes sense. It’s one hell of a show…
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March 8, 2019
Wokescolds, rejoice! Titania McGrath has been unmasked!
After the woke wolfpack finally dragged down and destroyed the great Twitter troll Godfrey Elfwick (RIP), the satirical void was eventually filled by the ultra-woke poet Titania McGrath. All good things must come to an end, apparently, because we recently discovered that noble Titania is actually — gasp! — just another Twitter troll:
When a former Oxford University postgraduate student set up a satirical Twitter account in April 2018 under the name of Titania McGrath, he had no idea of the social media storm that was to follow.
Aiming to poke fun at the “identitarian left” who use “vicious tactics to push identity politics above all else”, the parody account quickly amassed over 180,000 social media followers.
After months of speculation, the individual behind it can finally be revealed – as a 40-year-old former private school teacher with a doctorate in Early Renaissance Poetry from Wadham College, Oxford.
Dr Andrew Doyle created the account to mock today’s “woke culture” that is obsessed with gender fluidity, identity politics and hates freedom of speech.
Describing Titania McGrath as “a militant vegan who thinks she is a better poet than William Shakespeare”, Mr Doyle told The Telegraph: “Woke is the concept that everything must be inclusive, inoffensive, that you always use the correct language and that you must be hyper aware of other people’s sensitivities.
“This social justice movement is full of people who are arrogant, narcissistic and very certain in themselves. The very idea that they could be wrong doesn’t even cross their mind. That to me is incredibly funny. I thought Titania could embody all of that.
“The majority of people are desperate for this culture to be mocked. The account has become so popular because people are sick of feeling that they can’t say what they want. It used to be the case that if someone spoke out of turn, you would say that’s a bit much, apologise and everyone would move on. Now you post a screenshot on Twitter and try to get someone fired.
“Titania is staying the stuff that most people want to say.”
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