Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture

Hairdo, Don’t

BLM, Black Lives Matter, Trader Joes, protest, riots,

The name was dropped again the other day, Karen.

Not a proper name, though — it is a put-down, idiomatic and not inoffensive.  

Over at PJMedia, Bryan Preston used the term “Karen” good-naturedly (and with an *) in reporting on the “trained Marxists” at Black Lives Matter taking over a Trader Joe’s grocery store in Seattle to protest the, ahem, “lack of access to grocery stores” . . . because “capitalism exploits the working class.” 

Somehow I got stuck on Karen. 

“Karen is a pejorative term used in the United States and other English-speaking countries for a woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary,” Wikipedia informs. “A common stereotype is that of a white woman who uses her privilege to demand her own way at the expense of others. Depictions also include demanding to ‘speak to the manager,’ anti-vaccination beliefs, being racist, or sporting a particular bob cut hairstyle.”**

Is it just me, or does “being racist” seem a lot worse than sporting an uncool haircut? When racism’s at issue, why not use the label “racist,” instead?

And isn’t there already another five-letter word for a female exhibiting the less extreme negative features?  

“Karens are most definitely white,” Helen Lewis assures in The Atlantic. “Let that ease your conscience if you were beginning to wonder whether the meme was, perhaps, a little bit sexist in identifying various universal negative behaviors and attributing them exclusively to women.”

Apparently it is not okay to mock women . . . but thank goodness we can still mock women who have white skin! 

And a specific hairdo!

Land of the Free, Home of the Trash-Talkers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Preston’s footnote read: “with all due respect to the Karens I’ve known, all of whom are nothing like the stereotype of Karens as busybodies who leap to complain and always end up running authoritarian regimes such as HOAs.” 

** The Urban Dictionary also does not fail to mention that “crown bowl haircut.”

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Down Among the Non Sequiturs

BLM, Black Lives Matter, protests, riots, property, Antifa

There is a rule in respectable writing, particularly academic: don’t quote “down.”

This means that academics don’t cite newsletter writers as authorities, scientists don’t consult table-rappers as purveyors of relevant data, politicians don’t quote tweets.

But of course that’s all changed now, thanks to Trump.

Which perhaps excuses me to deal with a simple Facebook “meme” that I’ve seen shared around among progressives. It’s a deceptively simple question; the point in criticizing it is not to castigate the person who first posed it.

Here it is: “Why is murder an appropriate response to property damage, but property damage isn’t an appropriate response to murder?”

I confess: this really startled me. Not because it is hard to answer, but because what it says about discourse in our time.  

Note what is obviously wrong with it:

1. Murder is not an apt response to anything, for murder is unlawful and/or immoral killing. The premise is absurd.

2. Some people do indeed kill rioters and others who are attacking them or their property. This can be justified because self-defense is the basis of all our rights, and a violent attack doesn’t just fit into neat little “I’m only destroying your property” box. 

3. The proper response to murder, after the fact of some violent moment, is lawful arrest and trial, not killing. Self-defense is for moments of conflict. Some time after an illegal act? Then we proceed by the rule of law.

Of course, this little thought experiment was designed to justify riots.

It does not.

It justifies, really, only this episode of

Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Disney’s Mickey Mouse Boycott Policies

Disney, China, Mulan, Uyghur Muslims

The state of Georgia and the country of China differ. The policies of one are much worse than those of the other.

Thus, the Walt Disney Company seriously mulled refusing to do business in Georgia but was eager to film in China, near internment camps used to imprison Uyghur Muslims.

Last year, Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger threatened to suspend Disney’s film work in Georgia if the state’s new restriction on abortion went into effect. The law would have prohibited abortion when a heartbeat could be detected in the fetus. Before the law was struck down, Iger said that Disney would likely leave Georgia if it survived challenge, because “many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes….”

Journalists and others have been excluded from the Xinjiang region. But satellite images and the accounts of victims and witnesses provide evidence that perhaps two million Uyghurs and others have been imprisoned in the camps there, where many have died. Others have been forcibly sterilized.

In addition to getting permission to film in Xinjiang for its new movie “Mulan,” a few years back Disney got the go-ahead to open a Disneyland in Shanghai.

In the film, Disney expressly thanks a propaganda arm of the CCP, the “publicity department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy Region Committee.” 

Disney’s conduct seems reprehensible. 

But let’s remember: the government of China is not exactly the government of Georgia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. In previous episodes of Common Sense with Paul Jacob, the people here identified as “Uyghur” — following the spelling used by Disney — were spelled as “Uighur.”

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ideological culture partisanship

Ssshhh, Not Now

DC FACES, racism, monuments

“Democrats need to keep their eye on the ball,” a Democratic Party strategist confided to The Washington Post on deep, dark background, “and not say things that are, on balance, a loser when everything is on the line.”

To what “loser” is this anonymous capital insider referring?

“D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser gave [President Trump] ammunition,” informed The Post this week, by “publishing a sweeping list of historical figures whose names should be removed from public property or ‘contextualized.’”

Developed by a task force Mayor Bowser appointed this summer called DCFACES (District of Columbia Facilities and Commemorative Expressions), the report calls for “renaming 21 public schools, 12 recreational facilities, six public housing complexes and other sites.”

The Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial are both fingered, though they are on federal property, not city land. Still, plenty of statues, schools and other public buildings controlled by the city bear the names of such historically tainted folks as Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell and Presidents James Monroe, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson.

“The mayor, her top advisers and the authors of the list,” The Post noted a day after the public release, “would not discuss it.”

What caught my attention, however, was the issue of timing. 

“The mayor usually has very good political instincts,” offered former D.C. Chamber of Commerce CEO Barbara Lang. “I was just surprised that this came out now, quite frankly.”

As The Post explained, Lang “believes Bowser should have waited to publish the report until after the presidential election.”

Why after? Because the issue is a “loser.” And the Dems do not want the public to know their lofty and ludicrous (and loser) goals and aspirations until after all votes are cast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Discussion versus Intimidation

newspaper, New York Times, dogma, propaganda

“My boss got fired for running an op-ed by a sitting U.S. senator,” says Bari Weiss, former opinion editor for The New York Times, in a recent TV interview.

Cotton argued for sending troops to quell rioters who “have plunged many American cities into anarchy.” Unnerved by furious criticism not only of the op-ed but of the paper’s temerity in publishing it, The Times now prefaces Cotton’s piece with an abject and silly apology.

In her public letter of resignation, Weiss reports being hired in 2016 “with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives. . . .”

By the time she quit, “intellectual curiosity — let alone risk-taking” had become “a liability at The Times. . . . If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. . . . Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril.”

Weiss says the country is becoming “retribalized,” with politics amounting to undebatable religious dogma, revelation rather than ratiocination. The sort of government that becomes possible when politics is a religion is total government. Totalitarianism.

Old-timers like me can recall a Times editorial page that featured plenty of horrific opinions (not very diligently vetted, one suspects) but that also had room for the William Safires of the day.

Does the current dread of reasoned debate at The New York Times represents a mere temporary spasm of appeasement?

The signs (of the Times) aren’t good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Authority Derangement Syndrome

Atlantic Magazine, propaganda, media, journalism

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has taken a huge toll on America. One doesn’t need to be a Trump supporter to see it. 

One only needs to read The Atlantic.

There are days when nearly every article ballyhooed in the rag’s promotional email is about how awful the president is.

There is a lot of awful in Washington, though, not just Trump. Where’s the rest of the news? 

Of course, this isn’t just about Trump. The Atlantic was once a liberal journal. No more. Now it is relentlessly progressive.

Take a recent article on Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

“The governor has demonstrated a willingness to defer to the president instead of his own constituents,” writes Amanda Mull, in “America’s Authoritarian Governor,” begging the question of which constituents.

They are, last I checked, not in total agreement. 

Ms. Mull contends that Kemp’s deference to Trump (TDS Alert) sacrifices — yes, she uses the word “sacrifice” — “Georgians’ safety to snipe at his political foes, and shore up his own power at the expense of democracy. In short, Kemp is a wannabe authoritarian, and millions of Georgians have suffered as a result, with no end in sight.”

No end — er, except the 2022 election. 

And how is Kemp an “authoritarian”? Mull objects to the governor not shutting down commerce quickly enough, hard enough, thoroughly enough, according to the scientists she selects.

Though epidemiologists are not of one mind on how to deal with the current contagion, somehow politicians who reject the advice of her “authorities” — well, they are “the authoritarians.”

The fact that shutting down commerce is itself something we expect from the most authoritarian of regimes . . . did it not cross the reporter’s mind?

Worse than mere TDS.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture responsibility

Racism as Health Crisis?

George Floyd, race, racism, Covid, Coronavirus

How can you tell when people really care? 

It is not when they mouth the right platitudes.

Or advance a carefully crafted political agenda.

What counts more? Something practical.

Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer cracked down further with COVID-related health care mitigation efforts this week. One stands out: on Wednesday she “declared racism a public health crisis, ordered implicit bias training for all state employees, and,” reports Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press, “created a state advisory council to focus on issues affecting Black people in Michigan.”

“We have a lot of work to do to eliminate the systemic racism that Black Americans have experienced for generations,” the governor said.

Whitmer noted that black Michiganders are four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white Michiganders — because, well, you probably do not need to read deeply into her communiqués or watch USA Today’s helpful video. The arguments are familiar.

And not completely without merit.

But notice what she did not say.

She did not advise darker-skinned people to take Vitamin D supplements and go outside and soak in more rays than they might, otherwise.

Vitamin D deficiency has been repeatedly linked as a co-factor for the development of severe COVID-19.

Race, not racism, may be what’s most relevant. Or, as the president might say, “it is what it is”: white skin more efficiently absorbs solar radiation to produce Vitamin D than higher-melaninned skin, an adaptation for northern climes where solar radiation is less intense than in the tropics.*

While this is certainly not the only factor in susceptibility to the virus’s worst effects, and it is still unproven — a word to the wise.

From the caring.

Not the politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “According to a CDC study published in 2006,” offered the Arizona Republic, “21% of non-Hispanic white people are at risk of having inadequate levels of vitamin D, versus 73% of Black people and 42% of Hispanic people.”

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crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Violence Against Objective Reporting

violence, journalism, reporting, news, facts

Facts matter. As do their honest expression. But given the “reporting” in recent months about “mostly peaceful protests,” you may wonder whether reporters agree.

Some do. Here’s the Charleston Post and Courier: “Brooms and dustpans replaced rocks and spray paint Sunday as an army of volunteers descended on Charleston to clean up the demoralizing mess left by an angry mob that smashed, burned and pillaged much of the city’s central business district.”

“Hundreds of New York City Businesses Were Damaged, Looted in Recent Unrest,” according to a Wall Street Journal headline. An article in the Minneapolis StarTribune tells us: “Buildings damaged in Minneapolis, St. Paul after riots.” Riots. There’s a word.

Reporters have reported (i.e., done their jobs) on rioters destroying small businesses around the country, and even killing people.

But too many supposed news-hounds shy away from honest reporting. Recently, U.S. Attorney Bill Williams of Oregon chastised a TV reporter for refusing to name openly criminal behavior . . . in this case, that of Portland rioters trying to destroy a courthouse.

The newsperson sought to blandify the thuggery as “late-night demonstrations” or “late-night activity.” Williams stressed the difference between “lawful, constitutionally protected protest” and criminal conduct. “This is just mindless violence, and anyone who defends the violence is enabling this to continue.”

The reporter wasn’t swayed. “I’m not a police officer, I don’t get to distinguish that. . . .”

The assumption being that such determinations are up to . . . police and courts? 

But legal culpability is not at issue. 

What is? Facts: a window was broken; a fire started; property vandalized; person assaulted.

If you feel disallowed from imparting evident facts to the public, a profession requiring you to do so all the time isn’t for you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture

Theft by Spray Paint

graffiti, New York, property, vandalism

Graffiti is theft.

That is how Heather Mac Donald puts it. “To a conservative,” she writes at City Journal, “graffiti is self-evidently abhorrent, a spirit-crushing blight on the public realm, and a theft of property by feckless individuals who avenge their mediocrity by destroying what others have built.”

But that is not how “liberals” or “progressives” see it, she goes on to explain, for they regard marking up buildings and subways and streets and sidewalks as a “political statement,” referencing the New York Times recent characterization of spray-painting on property you don’t own as “a courageous strike against stultifying bourgeois values” representing “urban grit and resistance to corporate hegemony.” 

With each graffito, Ms. Mac Donald insists, progressives see an icon of “the city’s vibrant, anti-capitalist soul.”

An interesting political divide. But this rumination  on the “taggers’” art is not random. Mac Donald is aghast that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has cancelled a graffiti-eradication program.

This, she insists, will lead to more crime, worse crime than mere trespass paintings. It’s the Broken Windows idea, and she’s probably right. Allowing small crimes to go unchecked demonstrates a lack of respect for persons and property, and that trains a city’s population to go on to do worse things.

But the program was cut for a reason. You see, de Blasio’s disastrous coronavirus response has put New York into the red. The city has to cut somewhere.

Mac Donald, however, calls the $3 million saved a “rounding error” on the city’s $88 billion budget. She imputes to de Blasio and others a preference for crime rather than fighting crime.

Maybe. And maybe we add law and order to health and commerce as casualties of the pandemic panic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people U.S. Constitution

The Mobs Attacked and Defended

Portland, riots, protests, Ted Wheeler

It’s “mobocracy” — the riots in major cities around the nation, but especially in Portland, Oregon, where the president sent federal agents. Local police had stood back for weeks as Democratic politicians — such as Joe Biden — referred to the rioters as “peaceful protesters.” Even as the mobs lit fires in the streets, defaced property, and attempted to break into government buildings.

Buck Sexton, writing at The Hill, makes the obvious linkage between the “anarchists” and the “Democratic” Party. 

But Sexton doesn’t really answer the key questions: “Why are anarchists terrorizing Portland? What was the real purpose of the Seattle ‘Capital Hill Autonomous Zone’? Why were ‘Occupy City Hall’ protesters allowed to fight with police in lower Manhattan for a month, until officers cleared out their encampment on Wednesday?” Sexton rejects the official reasons give by the movements’ apparent leaders, but doesn’t go very far beyond Democratic Party attempts to leverage the riots.

Which may at least offer amusement. “The reason I am here tonight is to stand with you,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler assured the mob as he put on goggles. “So if they’re launching the tear gas against you, they’re launching the tear gas against me.” But that same night, his security detail “scuffled” with “protesters” and his own police department threatened to use tear gas and impact weapons on the incendiary horde.

Is this really about legitimate protest, as Biden insists?

Fighting federal fascism, as Democrats and many others insist?

Americans are all-in for criminal justice reform and the right to protest. Many, me included, have peacefully taken to the streets in recent weeks.

But there is nothing peaceful about assault, arson, property destruction.

And Democrats who aim to use the fracas to beat Trump in November may find that ‘playing with fire’ . . . burns. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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