Liberalism is so unlikely and fantastic, John Milbank observes, because it proceeds by inventing a wholly artificial human being that has never actually existed, conceived in abstraction from his gender, birth, associations, beliefs, and equally indifferent as to whether he is a creature of God, a rational animal, an accident of evolution, or a puddle of genes. And then it imagines that we are all instances of such species.
Progressive students have absorbed the idea it’s good to be militant in your views, it shows you’re authentic. No, it shows you got the talking points.
Sensing the vibes weren’t right, Columbia postponed its annual Giving Day, which usually raises tens of millions for the school. It’s really hard to shake down Jewish alumni when your faculty and students are also trying to do a pogrom. The list of donors who are pulling their gifts keeps growing: the latest is billionaire Leon Cooperman, who declared on television: “I think these kids at the colleges have shit for brains.”
…
State suicide is now a top cause of death in Canada: New statistics have come out that show a shocking 4 percent of all deaths in Canada are now thanks to the country’s assisted suicide scheme, the fifth leading cause of death.
So a couple of things: we have not seen any credible threats. I know there’s been all these questions about credible threats, and so I want to be sure that that’s out there. But look, Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, pooh-poohing rising antisemitism, via Nellie Bowles.
According to FBI data, Muslims make up about 1 percent of the population and are the target of 9.6 percent of hate crimes. Jews make up about 2 percent of the population and are the target of 51.4 percent of hate crimes.
In [disgraced attorney Jenna] Ellis’s case, she complained that Trump wasn’t doing much to help her raise funds for her legal defense, even though she was being targeted for working on his behalf. “I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said on her podcast last month. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
Elsewhere, Nick Cattogio muses about Forgiving Jenna Ellis and concludes that he’s not ready yet — partly because her remorse follows a lot of high dudgeon after and about her indictment, and partly because he can’t believe that Trump’s toxic narcissism only now registered with her.
He has a point, doesn’t he?
Education in Oregon
Students don’t need to learn things: You don’t need another rant about the logic behind letting teachers stop measuring whether their teaching is working. So I’ll just leave this here, from the Oregon-based Observer:
Oregon high school students won’t have to prove basic mastery of reading, writing, or math to graduate from high school until at least 2029, the state Board of Education decided unanimously on Thursday, Oct. 19, extending the pause on the controversial graduation requirement that began in 2020.
Pair that with this chart of American ACT scores:
At this point I’m convinced American public school teachers have been captured as foreign agents bent on weakening the population. There is no other explanation. Moon landing was fake and teachers are all CCP assets.
Conquest’s Third Law: “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”
Via Rod Dreher
A swarm of MAGA lawyers
There is no question that a swarm of MAGA lawyers surrounded Trump at each step of the process, much like a cloud of dirt surrounds the character Pigpen in the “Peanuts” cartoons, but if the lawyers themselves have admitted to engaging in criminal conduct, then that weakens his legal defense. This was no normal legal team, and their conduct was far outside the bounds of normal legal representation.
A fundamental reality of human existence is that vice often leaves virtue with few good options. Evil men can attach catastrophic risks to virtually any course of action, however admirable.
You can read most of my more impromptu stuff here (cathartic venting) and here (the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real). Both should work in your RSS aggregator, like Feedly or Reeder, should you want to make a habit of it.
I’ve been watching “alternate” and “independent” news sites, left and right, for a week or two. From a “right-wing” site (that seems to have gotten what I consider an unduly bad rap) comes the term Picohontas, with a reminder that “pico” is a prefix denoting 10-12, or one-trillionth.
Let him who has lungs to giggle, giggle.
And be assured that I’m taking these “alternate” and “independent” news sites with a whole shaker of salt. So far, they seem disappointingly tendentious. For instance, in this story (about a 70-year-old weed enthusiast who just got what amounts to a life sentence) the line that “unfortunately, he couldn’t find a lawyer that wasn’t intimidated by Bass’s trumped up charges and that was willing to fight for him” is almost certainly sewage, and a spoonful of sewage in a barrel of wine creates a barrel of sewage.
Maybe he was too poor — court-appointed public defenders often are overworked and under-funded relative to prosecutors, and might reasonably be thought too passive.
Or maybe he was too cheap to hire a lawyer and thought someone should represent him for free.
One thing I know: criminal defense attorneys are not “intimidated by … trumped up charges.” Their mouths water at such things. But they do need to make a living.
And if that site compares one more long sentence to notorious perv Anthony Weiner’s relatively short sentence, I’m deleting them from my RSS feed tracker.
2
The Atlantic notes, in an item that seems not quite up to Atlantic standards, that Paul Allen “signed the Giving Pledge in 2010, becoming one of 40 people to agree to give at least half their fortune to philanthropy,” did in fact give away hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but died 8 years later, worth 50% more than when he made the pledge. This, to the Atlantic, is “a sign of just how broken the American system of wealth is.”
In my opinion, all the author proved is that it’s deucedly hard to give away hundreds of millions of dollars without doing much collateral harm, or even more harm than good. Let interventionist government take note.
(Meanwhile, I have little doubt that prosperity gospel preachers are going to turn Paul Allen’s last eight years into a parable, the better to fleece their flocks.)
3
Both “political correctness” and “civility” have become inflammatory notions in the post-2016 world. But what are they? Essentially, they’re both modes of speech and public conduct that aim to address the largest possible number of listeners without offense. In a liberal democracy, where citizens deliberate in public about political choices, it’s critical to have a widely inclusive, intelligible manner of speaking. The great liberal theorist John Rawls called this maximally inclusive way of communicating about politics “public reason,” and he considered it essential to maintaining a functional liberal democracy.
Bruenig broached this topic differently differently a few weeks ago. I find this version better, but I’m still bothered if people really consider it “lying” to use (what Rawls calls) “public reason.”
My brain must work, my convictions form, very idiosyncratically.
4
One final thought.
I didn’t get on my bicycle much this summer, partly due to injuries sustained other than by biking. But I love riding “rails-to-trails” and other paved trails, where one can bike with minimal worries about traffic (i.e., only when you cross a road or perhaps a farm lane crosses the trail). Biking on the road is relatively worrisome, and it’s where I’ve had all my biking mishaps.
But I have stopped supporting the rails-to-trails advocacy groups because I’ve become aware that they’re carrying water mostly for wealthy, white, leisured people like me, and presumably someone else is paying the price. I am giving to support maintenance and extension of my favorite trails up in Michigan, but I’d feel really debased were I to respond to letters about some abandoned rail corridor somewhere in Indiana that isn’t paved yet, with some sentiment to put it to some other use.
5
Assorted thoughts on Picohontas — a topic in which I’m mildly embarrassed at indulging. In my defense, I skipped a lot of them. Those DNA hijinks seemed to be real pundit bait.
Since I collected ’em already, I might as well share:
According to my 23 And Me profile, I am as black as Elizabeth Warren is Native American, and as Native American as Elizabeth Warren is Native American. To put it another way, the 0.6 percent of my genes that derive from West Africa entered into my genetic line five or more generations ago; the 0.1 percent of Native American ancestry in my genetic line entered six or more generations ago.
I am 99.3 percent European, according to the same test. And of that number, all but 0.4 percent is northwestern European.
I’m fine with having non-European blood in my lineage, but guess what? I’m not Sitting Bull. I’m not Kunta Kinte. Genetics says nothing about the content of my character or yours. Elizabeth Warren is a moron to have brought this up again, and deserves the mockery she’s getting. So does the Left in general, given its obsession with racial identity.
I also have a family legend that there is Native American ancestry way back. That doesn’t mean that I publicly list my ancestry as Native American so that my employer can promote me as a diversity hire. I also don’t plagiarize French recipes and submit them to Pow Wow Chow with the claim that I am Cherokee.
Warren should not have taken the test; having taken it, she should not have publicized it; having publicized it, she should quietly fire anyone who urged this gambit and move on. And liberals generally should regard this whole thing as a cautionary tale. There is an obvious appetite on the activist left for a candidate or candidates willing to take on Trump on his own brawler’s terms. But if you come at him that way, you best not miss — as Michael Avenatti, the would-be Trump of the Resistance, has been missing repeatedly of late, with a Kavanaugh intervention that helped get the judge confirmed and a libel lawsuit that just got his own client ordered to pay Trump’s legal fees.
Follow me on Micro.blog, too, where I blog tweet-like shorter items and … well, it’s evolving. Or, if you prefer, those micro.blog items also appear now at microblog.intellectualoid.com.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 