Category: ideological culture

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture

Violence on the Rise

political violence

In a fascinating if vexing article courtesy of Reuters, we learn that political violence has risen in recent years. 

Not shocking news, to those paying attention, but still worth thinking about.

The article focuses on a few stories of politically motivated violence by individuals against individuals since the fateful day of January 6, 2021. This conveniently stacks the deck of partisanship, ruling out of consideration 2020’s mass violence and multiple deaths during the riots following George Floyd’s death. With this limitation, the majority of violence is from “the right” against “the left.”

But the article’s most interesting passage regards a recent poll about the acceptability of violence. There the breakdown evens out: “In a Reuters/​Ipsos poll of nearly 4,500 registered voters in May, roughly 20% of both Democratic and Republican respondents called violence ‘acceptable’ if committed ‘to achieve my idea of a better society.’” 

A similar poll last year shows that these acceptability-​of-​violence levels are on the rise.

Why?

One thing is perception of news media and thrust of the media. 

On the right, folks have noticed that the news regularly lies and spins in favor of the center-​left establishment — demonstrated repeatedly in the article with what Reuters considers accepted facts. On the left, folks who trust their news sources and party follow the repeated narratives painting Trump and his supporters as wholly evil.

Of course you can fight evil with violence! — so a logic runs.

Also, the suppression of online social media stories and accounts that are perceived as “anti-​left” has bred much distrust and disgust. Democracy only works in a context of free speech and open debate. 

Dysfunctional democracy makes violence more likely. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture international affairs

Accounting for Taste

China, polls, polling, genocide

“In an open-​ended question allowing Americans to name which country they see as the greatest threat to the U.S., 50% name China, almost three times the share who name Russia (17%),” Pew Research reported last week.

Of course, some argue, as does Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, that this “overwrought fear of China and Russia is sold to a Western public through manipulation of the facts.”

Has our government and media somehow hoodwinked us into not liking Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party? I sorta think we finally convinced them to start paying attention to the Chinazi threat — but whatever.

In perusing the polling at Pew’s website, I came across a recent survey of Asian Americans entitled, “Most Asian Americans View Their Ancestral Homelands Favorably, Except Chinese Americans.”

Strange that China would be the only unpopular outlier … unless you know modern Chinese history.

Still, these Asian Americans who responded to the poll might also have fallen victim to “Western propaganda.” What do people outside of the U.S. think?

“The nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that a median of 67% of those surveyed [in 24 countries] have an unfavorable opinion of China, while only 28% have a favorable view of the country. At least 50% of respondents in 17 countries gave China negative marks,” U.S. News & World Report detailed about the international poll, “with shares eclipsing 80% in Australia, Japan, Sweden and the United States. Majorities in only three countries — Kenya, Mexico and Nigeria — gave the country positive ratings.”

Apparently, genocidal totalitarianism isn’t very popular on this planet. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture too much government

The Way We Censor Now

Joe Biden, social media, China, censorship

In China, the government now sells software to social media companies so they have the best real-​time idea of what the government currently does not want people to say. 

The companies then perform such obliging actions as removing posts and banning users.

The software serves as a self-​defense system — of the social media companies. You see, if the companies fail to sufficiently prevent government-​outlawed speech on their websites, they will be punished. Maybe ruinously. By the Chinese government.

So who is doing the censoring here? 

Obviously, the government.

In the U.S., the intimidatory relationship between government and social media firms is not quite so advanced or nearly so clear. But as we keep learning from documents extracted by litigation and subpoenas, for years now our federal government has been telling firms to censor things, and the firms have complied.

The latest example is that Facebook, which has always said that its content-​moderation policies are “independent,” obeyed White House demands to censor posts about the likelihood that the COVID-​19 virus originated in a Chinese lab, not in nature.

In a July 2021 email, Nick Clegg, a Facebook executive, asked whether anyone could “remind me why we were removing — rather than demoting/​labeling — claims that Covid is man-made.”

To which a VP in charge of content policy replied: “We were under pressure from the [Biden] administration and others to do more. We shouldn’t have done it.”

No matter how White House press secretaries or others try to dress it up, “private” censorship conducted in obedience to governmental requests is governmental censorship.

And is eerily close to the Chinese practice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people

“You in Your Whiteness”

struggle session, communism, race, racism

The “antiracist” training now often inflicted in the west resembles the efforts to shame and remake people during Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today’s western cultural revolutionaries are not (yet) going nearly as far as China’s, when people were routinely humiliated, beaten to a pulp, imprisoned, and murdered for “wrong” ideas or background.

In the west of 2023, people with “wrong” politics and background (i.e., white) are merely humiliated, censored, perhaps forced out of a job. But we can now add another similarity to Mao’s era: the possibility that hounded victims will commit suicide, as Richard Bilkszto recently did.

Yes, Mr. Bilkszto killed himself.

In 2021, Kike Ojo-​Thompson — hired to conduct “antiracist” struggle sessions that Bilkszto, a fill-​in principal in Toronto, was required to attend — blasted him for disagreeing with her officially-​approved contention that Canada is “more racist” than the United States.

While the issue could be subject to much debate, most of it would likely be pointless. Neither side stands on firm ground.

According to Bilkszto’s eventual lawsuit against the school district, Ojo-​Thompson berated, “We are here to talk about anti-​Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people.” She also accused Bilkszto of being a white supremacist.

Repeatedly.

A workplace agency found that Ojo-​Thompson had indeed engaged in “harassment and bullying.” And, perhaps because of his complaint with the agency, the school district declined to renew Bilkszto’s contract. His lawsuit contends that his reputation was “systematically demolished.”

Now that he’s safely dead, do those who punished Bilkszto for uttering the “wrong” view of racial claims now regret their conduct? 

No more, I bet, than they regard themselves as the bullies they are.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

BBC Apologizes, Bankers Squirm

Nigel Farage, gangsters, banksters, censorship

Banksters. It rhymes with “gangsters.”

The pejorative for bankers came to mind as I was reading about the British Broadcasting System’s public correction of a story it had published. In covering Coutts bank’s closure of Nigel Farage’s account, back on July 4, the BBC had said that it was not political.

But Mr. Farage, the former leader of the United Kingdom’s Independence Party, “later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered.”

Like we all guessed. 

The lengthy document seen by Farage and then the BBC “included minutes from a meeting in November last year reviewing his account” in which he was called “xenophobic and racist” and characterized as not the kind of customer compatible with Coutts’ “position as an inclusive organisation.”

Britain, like the United States, is in the throes of a very political “culture war.” Farage was the main proponent for Brexit in 2016. The unexpected success of Britain’s plebiscite to secede from the European Union became part of the global populist rebellion that led to the election of Donald Trump here. 

And, like here, in Britain it has gotten nasty.

Farage’s beef with the BBC was easily resolved, as Farage accepted the BBC’s apology and its reporter’s excuse that a “trusted and senior” confidential source within Coutts had fed the news organization misinformation.

The bank in question considers itself very upright and moral, apparently. Hardly a “gangster” — that’s not in its mission statement! But by taking sides in politics (apparently solidly in the Remainer rather than Brexiteer camp), the bank is following a trend we’ve seen here, where big business balks at doing business with people it doesn’t like — ideologically.

This is a recipe for the breakdown of open markets … and civil strife far beyond what we’ve seen so far.

That’s not good for business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Counterintuitive?

education, equality, egalitarianism

In this increasingly complex technological world, what can our school systems do to help students excel in advanced math?

Well, here’s a novel approach: “Cambridge Public Schools no longer offers advanced math in middle school,” The Boston Globe reports.

Hmmm. Rather counterintuitive: Take access away from students.

Silly me, helping students master advanced mathematics isn’t even on the list of concerns for this Massachusetts city’s “education” officialdom. “The district’s aim,” explains The Globe, “was to reduce disparities between low-​income children of color, who weren’t often represented in such courses, and their more affluent peers.” 

By reducing the learning opportunities for all. 

“School districts throughout the country are moving to axe certain academic standards such as advanced courses, grades and homework in the name of equity,” The Daily Caller informs, “in California, a high school recently stopped offering honors courses because the courses were failing to enroll enough black and Latino students.”

The impetus behind these moves is racist and wrong. Moreover, the results are both predictable and pernicious: “limiting advanced math to students whose parents can afford to pay for private lessons.”

“They’re shortchanging a significant number of students,” one parent complains, “overwhelmingly students from less-​resourced backgrounds, which is deeply inequitable.” This is the case because many of the more affluent parents can afford to bypass the antagonistic public schools and get their kids the education they need to succeed. 

Public schools are increasingly throwing in the towel on teaching low-​income and many black and brown kids, deciding that racial “equity” can most easily be achieved by taking away educational opportunities from white and Asian students.

Is this where the logic of public education leads — race as an excuse to play Procrustes, sawing off the tops of our heads to make us “equal”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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