Category: ideological culture

Toxic Smile?

Smirking is a subset of smiling. But what is a grimace?

Nick Sandman, the offending Covington, Kentucky, Catholic high school student who triggered so much outrage last weekend, smiled. The effrontery!

Seeing a snippet of video, a social media mob formed, leaping to the conclusion that young Mr. Sandman was being disrespectful of an older Native American man who — chanting and drumming right up in his face — should have been “shown respect.”

And not smiled? Instead, what: frowned? Cried? Bowed?

Smirks are irksome. Sure. But the young man’s facial expression seemed to me an attempt, only half-successful, to smile — a covered-over grimace.

Understandable. The Covington youngsters — waiting to be picked up — had been targeted earlier by a group of nutty “Black Hebrew Israelites” who taunted at them for being . . . white. And the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, had singled Mr. Sandman out, violating his personal space. A grimace could be accounted for as putting “a brave smile on the situation,” as we used to say.

But that was not how the Twitter mobs interpreted it. And of course the young Catholic students were wearing “MAGA hats” (pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” baseball caps) which were later said to be racist. And the pro-life rally he and his friends attended was said to be sexist.

Can we all calm down? If we disagree on so much that even smiling is scandalous, maybe take a breath.

In the midst of it all, economist Bob Murphy reminded us of the previous culture-war fracas, the Gillette “toxic masculinity” ad, tweeting “if you see a mob picking on a boy, Gillette wants you to intervene.”

Masculinity wasn’t to blame for the mobbing.

Toxic political correctness was.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Covington, MAGA, MAGA hat, PC, political correctness, smile, smirk

folly ideological culture media and media people Popular

Inclusivity Not Included

women, woman, march, inclusion, in group, out group

The 3rd annual Woman’s March strolled by over the weekend — a tiny fraction of its former self.

Two years ago, close to a million protesters converged on Washington, D.C., while this year’s event “appeared to attract only thousands,” The Washington Post reported, “mirroring lower turnout at marches . . . across the country.”

“[A] movement that once bragged about its inclusivity,” explained a separate news analysis, “has been roiled by reports of battles over diversity, hate speech and branding.”

In addition to squabbles over corporate ownership of the very name of the “Women’s March,” the leaders of the main organization have been accused of anti-Semitism. “Board members Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez and Women’s March, Inc., co-president Tamika Mallory, have publicly affiliated with and praised anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan,” notes the Capital Research Center’s Influence Watch website.

March founder Teresa Shook called on them to resign, charging “they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform . . .” The Democratic National Committee and a number of progressive groups have withdrawn their support.

But the “inclusivity” was always fake. As a “women’s” march, it started out excluding half the population. Nothing wrong with women having events or organizations that focus on issues of particular interest to females; it’s just not inclusive.

And let’s not ignore that pro-life women were specifically booted from participating in the original 2017 event.

“Is the Women’s March more inclusive this year?” a USA Today article asked before last year’s pink-hatted festivities.

Apparently not. This year, everyone was excluded fromthe Eureka Women’s March — cancelled because those hoping to participate were “overwhelmingly white.”

With all this inclusion, no wonder we are so divided.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags in group, inclusion, march, woman, women

folly ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

Skepticism in Order

denier, climate change, globlal warming, skepticism, science

It is not a question of “belief,” says Anastasios Tsonis.

In “The overblown and misleading issue of global warming,” this emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee explains that in a “scientific problem ‘believing’ has no place,” going on to clarify:

“In science, we either prove or disprove.”

And regarding climate there is no “settled science.” Lacking unquestionable experimental context — “we have only one realization of climate evolution” — no matter how strong our opinions, skepticism is always in order.

But let us admit the obvious, the “global warming”/“climate change” debate has been frustrating for just about everybody. And much of this is the result of dogmatism.

“The fact that scientists who show results not aligned with the mainstream are labeled deniers is the backward mentality,” Tsonis insists. “We don’t live in the medieval times, when Galileo had to admit to something that he knew was wrong to save his life.”

He argues that our lack of knowledge means that we should be circumspect about whether humans have caused the bulk of recent climate change. “Climate is too complicated to attribute its variability to one cause. We first need to understand the natural climate variability” — which, he says, “we clearly don’t.”

Tsonis concludes talking about problems more urgent than climate change. We can (and should) quibble with his list, but we should be open about our reasoning.

One reason for concentrating on these other issues is that we might be more likely to gain clarity on them.

And thus might be able to do something not foolish.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags climate change, denier, globlal warming, skepticism

folly ideological culture

War Lust Flags

soldiers, foreign policy, war, peace, Syria, Afghanistan

A new poll shows that a narrow majority of Americans would support the President were he to pull troops out of Afghanistan. Less than a quarter of those polled said they would oppose it.

“The survey also indicates Americans remain unconvinced that the United States has a clear purpose in Afghanistan,” explains the January 10 press release of the Charles Koch Institute, which commissioned the poll. “Almost half of respondents, 45 percent, said the United States has no strategic objective, while only 21 percent said it does. About one-third (34 percent) said they did not know.”

However you slice the public opinion data, the wars in the Mid-East are not gaining in popularity. A plurality of Americans polled want out of Syria, too — no matter “whether the conflict was framed around the Syrian civil war or to counter-ISIS.”

Lucy Steigerwald, writing at Reason, highlights the incoherence in the White House and Pentagon: “no one seems to know what the hell is going on.” Which just shows how far we have come, after all these years. “The long life of the Afghan war makes it hard to remember how popular it was when it began.”

But back then it all seemed so clear: get Osama bin Laden, destroy his training camps, and punish the Taliban for harboring him.

All that was accomplished long ago. Now our leaders fear pulling out because . . . we haven’t established a western democracy there?

That was never going to happen.

It is foolish — even immoral — to keep a war going with impossible and incoherent goals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags foreign policy, peace, soldiers, Syria, war

ideological culture too much government

Worse Than Her Faux Pas

“If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress,” stumbled U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.), “uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House. . . .”

The Daily Wire, where I encountered this particular snippet of inanity, could be caught gloating between her lines. And it is funny (amidst the fear) when politicians prove themselves ignorant, clueless, unprepared. Politicians rarely come across as masters of their subject.

But we who are subjected to their lack of mastery should worry about their substantive flubs more than their trivial technical errors.

As the newly elected solon herself had the wit to notice.

“Maybe instead of Republicans drooling over every minute of footage of me in slow-mo, waiting to chop up word slips that I correct in real-tomd [sic],” she went on, “they actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make: that they don’t believe people deserve a right to healthcare.”

I am not a Republican, but I’m here to help. The only rights we “deserve” are those we can have without enslaving and exploiting others. My right to freedom requires only your duty to leave me alone, not systematically taking from others or running their lives. But a right to “healthcare”? The corresponding duties are vague and ominous, potentially limitless.

And thus oppressive.

A government big enough to give Ocasio-Cortez everything she wants is too big to leave any freedom for the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congress, Democrat, socialism

education and schooling ideological culture

Administrators Strike Back

Peter Boghossian, Portland, postmodernism, academic research, education

The academic world is filled with “scholars” who write papers that are almost never cited, and which are so filled with gobbledygook and periphrasis that they are almost impossible to read.

Without cracking up, anyway.

A year and a half ago I wrote about one team who authored fake papers to show up postmodernist academics for the phonies they are. But the sad truth is that even serious papers prove to be nothing more than “cryptic, pretentious, prolix nonsense.”

Since then, the team that wrote the infamous “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” went on to successfully place some incredibly goofy papers into prestigious journals — and even garner earnest praise from peer reviewers.

Now, the humiliated academic world is striking back. One of the japers, Professor Peter Boghossian of Portland State University, is facing academic censure and misconduct charges.

“This strikes me (and every colleague I’ve spoken with) as an attempt to weaponize an important [principle] of academic ethics in order to punish a scholar for expressing an unpopular opinion,” wrote Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, entreating PSU not to persecute their philosopher. Biologist Richard Dawkins and psychologist Jordan Peterson joined Pinker in support of the rogue-but-reasonable academic.

PSU administrators say that Boghossian, by trying to trick academic journals into publishing fake studies, has violated Institutional Review Board protocols. You see, he did not seek approval to carry out experiments on human subjects!

The thing is, the whole post-structuralist, post-modernist, “‘Studies’ studies” mob has been experimenting on their alleged clients, the students, for decades. And the results have been . . . enlightening if not praiseworthy.

It is hard to see Boghossian’s antics as anything but heroic.

And hysterical.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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