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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