Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture media and media people too much government

Musk’s Alternative for Germany

Germany, Democracy, far right, extremist, Elon Musk

“Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk caused uproar after backing Germany’s far-right party in a major newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country,” ABC News tells us, “leading to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor in protest.”

Germany’s three-party coalition government, led by “center-left” Chancellor Olof Scholz, fell apart when he fired the “pro-business” party’s biggest name in the government, Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

Musk wrote a piece for Welt am Sonntag in which he expressed his support for Alternative für Deutschland, which is considered “far-right” for opposing Die Grünen, the (“pro-business”) Freie Demokratische Partei, and Scholz’s own Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” asserted Musk*.  

“The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote,” explains ABC, “that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition.”

Musk must mean “a right” as in manners, not in law. In a free country, anyone has a legal right to speak up and comment on government.

But what is the significance of the editor who quit? She has every right to work only with news outfits that marginalize the AfD as promoters of “anti-democratic” ideas. Hers is a matter of strategy: shunning, marginalization — no-debate/no-cooperate — are what she thinks journalists must marshal against the “far right.” 

This journalist’s political tactic mirrors Germany’s practiced politics. ABC News explains that the AfD’s polling strength doesn’t much help its candidate, Alice Weidel, to “becom[e] chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.”

The non-cooperation strategy goes full anti-democratic when election results are suppressed. In Romania, for example, elections have basically been overturned because of how “far-right” they are.

All very anti-democratic, these “democrats.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* To be clear, his piece was published in German, of course, and above I’m quoting the English translation.

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DEI Realities Unreported

DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion

The high tide of DEI policies — which reward racial affiliation, gender affiliation or gender wishing, group-think, and group-wackiness at the expense of sanity and individual merit — seems to be starting to recede. 

But we’re not on safe ground yet. One example of rearguard action by the proponents of these lunacies is the willingness of major publications to hide evidence of harm caused by DEI.

Colin Wright reports that both The New York Times and Bloomberg have “shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study that raises serious concerns about the psychological impacts of diversity, equity, and inclusion pedagogy.”

The Network Contagion Research Institute finds that DEI ideology incites hostility (between members of favored and disfavored groups, you see) and authoritarianism (by bullies eager for new weapons to intimidate and control others).

When presented with various scenarios, participants in the study who had first been exposed to DEI propaganda were much more likely than participants who hadn’t been thus exposed to impute racism to agents in the scenario — even when no evidence to justify the accusation was also presented in the scenario.

Wright suggests that at both the Times and Bloomberg, reports-in-progress about the research were killed outright by editors whose decisions to spike the story “align conspicuously with the ideological leanings” of those editors.

NCRI’s work confirms what we know about the dishonesty, injustice, and destructiveness of the DEI enterprise. 

As does the conduct of certain gatekeepers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people partisanship

Not Now

Legacy Media, democracy, Trump

“Reconsider Any Belief In Innate American Goodness,” Ken White advises at the Popehat Report. “A country that votes for Trump is broken in very complicated and daunting ways,” informs the attorney and podcaster.

“Fuck Civility,” he declares, and for good measure, “Stay Tuned For Violence.”

They do sorta go together, eh?

“Debate is preferable,” he notes for the record, “[b]ut most Americans would agree with what Thomas Jefferson said about the blood of patriots and tyrants. At some point violence is morally justified and even necessary. Americans will disagree on when.”

Though, let’s all agree, not now.

My thinking the day after takes a different route. 

First, the lawfare unleashed on Mr. Trump helped him more than it hurt. A majority of the public did not suddenly become enamored with the idea of 34 felony convictions but stuck by the former president, now president-elect, because of their contempt for the New York Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice, seen as rogue players in partisan politics. 

America had come to look like Egypt.

Second, the establishment media’s years-long campaign against Trump, hyperbolic and often dishonest (see Charlottesville narrative) failed miserably. Arguably, like lawfare, it was counterproductive.

“Americans don’t trust the news media,” asserted Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, explaining his paper’s 2024 A.D. non-endorsement for president. 

In the aftermath of Mr. Trump being declared the winner, Matt Walsh offered on X: “Legacy media is officially dead.”

Not dead. Just in need of rebirth. Like Democratic Party leaders, news media professionals face a choice, either (a) blame the public for not being more appreciative or (b) reflect upon its own principles and performance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Voting

Don’t Kill Yourself

democracy, peace, freedom, elections, voting, propaganda, hysteria

As Donald Trump appeared to be winning last night, the number of Twitterers who proclaimed a hankering or a design to kill themselves rose dramatically. Michael Malice and others found humor in it, but it’s a super-saddening development, if you ask me.

These Kamala Harris voters are not really going to kill themselves. It is just something to say on Twitter.

I really hope I’m not wrong about this.

I’ll leave to others the counsel of life. That is the job of friends and family and emergency hotline dispatchers. My counsel is different: talking about suicide because your candidate lost is undemocratic. If the authoritarian pronouncements of both major candidates alarmed you about the danger of anti-democratic trend, this fad should raise the alarm several decibels.

The whole point of democracy is to allow a transition of power sans bloodshed. And that requires both contenders and supporters not to shed each other’s blood . . . or their own. When they fail.

It’s a requirement. Not to over-react.

The losers have to accept the loss, and the winners have to refrain from using the state to punish the losers further. 

It’s sort of that simple.

Resignation is key, as scientist Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) indicated: “Going to bed, reasonably resigned to Trump win at this point as it seemed to me from a distance for some time. He may be a nut, a liar, and a crook, but the bright side is a likely boost free speech and due process at unis and bump in tech sector, if we survive the rest.”

We will survive. If Trump wins the Electoral Vote (I’m going to bed, too, before a final determination), or if Harris does.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Nondiscrimination as Discriminatory 

DEI, diversity, quotas, race, racism, regulations, education

Two parts gall, three parts random irrationality; eye of newt, toe of frog. 

That’s how you cook up the latest leftist madness.

According to the wizards running Columbia University, deliberately race-neutral policies are discriminatory if they have a “disproportionate impact.”

Columbia has updated its antidiscrimination policy about bad things you can do on campus that might get you investigated and sanctioned. The revised policy declares that one bad thing is “having a neutral policy or practice that has a disproportionate and unjustified adverse impact on actual and/or perceived members or associates of one Protected Class more than others.” 

This, the policy asserts, “constitutes Discrimination” — with a capital D.

Those “protected classes” make up a formidable list. If the idea is that treating another person abusively subjects one to penalties, why not just say this? Then no groups need be listed.

But Columbia University seems to find focusing on discriminatory nondiscrimination a more productive way to spend its time than coping with unambiguous racial and ethnic hatred on campus.

Columbia is among the schools that has responded to vicious harassment of Jewish students with little more than pro forma protest. Even as a Columbia representative tells USA Today that “calls for violence have no place at Columbia,” anti-Israel and anti-Jewish students keep calling for violence. Will they be kicked out?

Eliana Goldin, a Jewish student at the school, says that the administration is well aware of “the credible threat to Jewish students, and they’re still playing both-sideism.”

Which strikes me as Discrimination with a Capital D.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Voting

Democrats and Noncitizen Voting

Do Democrats support noncitizen voting? 

It depends. 

Which Democrats do you mean?

A clear majority of voters who identify as supporters of the Democratic Party oppose giving the vote to noncitizens. Specifically, they support the Citizen Only Voting Amendments (COVA) on the ballot this election in eight states — Idaho. Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.* 

For instance, polling shows Democratic voters in North Carolina favor the only citizen voting measure by an eight to one margin. Among Republicans the margin is a whopping 22 to one. Most Democratic legislators joined every Republican in voting to place the amendment on the ballot, but less enthusiastically: 42 yes votes, 16 no votes and ten abstentions.

In Georgia, 70 percent of Democrats supported passing a Citizen Only Voting Amendment. Republican support was 93 percent with 76 percent of independents in favor. But while every Republican in the Peach State’s House of Representatives voted in the affirmative on HR780, not one single Democrat did so. 

Though not as lopsided as Republicans or independents, 83 percent of whom favor citizen only voting, 59 percent of Kentucky Democrats are supportive, a four to one margin. Yet, while every Republican legislator voted yes, less than one in five Democratic legislators were supportive. 

In Wisconsin, 76 percent of voters like the Citizen Only Voting Amendment, including 57 percent of Democrats residing outside the legislature. Inside the legislature, every single Democrat opposed the amendment. 

In this two-year legislative cycle, votes were cast in 21 chambers in eleven states. The partisan difference between elected Republicans and Democrats was stark. Not a single Republican voted against the COVA, compiling over a thousand yes votes. Conversely, more Democratic legislators voted against COVA than for it.

Do Democrats support noncitizen voting? Most elected Democrats, yes. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Additionally, all 19 of the cities where noncitizens are now legally voting, including noncitizens in the country illegally, are very progressive. All are sanctuary cities and governed (nearly) exclusively by Democrats.

* Voters have previously passed COVAs in six other states going back to 2018: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Ohio.

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Hurricane Algebra

hurricane, climate change, global warming, weather, panic, big government, regulations

Helene is x times worse than Katrina, but receives y less coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.

When we finally plug in the numbers, we will likely discover that the coverage difference is best explained by two factors: there are fewer reporters yet more “journalists” than ever before, and (you guessed it) politics.

You see, Katrina coverage helped besmirch George W. Bush and the Republicans.

Covering Helene in the same way, or to similar extent, could hurt the incumbents (FEMA has been especially lame), and the presidential race is too close for the Democrats’ lackeys in the media to do that.

So let’s blame Helene on Trump.

Or, the low coverage on Trump. Trump’s the why of the y!

It’s just as sensible as blaming Helene on man-made climate change. Nearly every newsperson intones the plausible-sounding theory that the warmer the climate the more damaging the storms. It’s a great hypothesis. But pre-Helene studies have shown scant evidence for it.

Further, the oft-repeated line that “never before” has a hurricane reached so far inland is also untrue. Asheville, North Carolina, was destroyed by a similarly horrific hurricane in July 1916.

These are rare events. Or, perhaps, cyclical, on repeat by century. 

The pity with all this theory and conjecture and political nonsense is: less coverage means less knowledge outside the hurricane zone of how horrible Helene is, and thus less sympathy elicited from the general population of generous Americans. Thus, less aid.

Making major media complicit — with the U.S. Government (FEMA, etc.) — in not helping relieve the suffering. 

So maybe we should thank the climate change agenda. Without that devil to fight, we might get no coverage of Helene at all. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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DEI Box Office Drubbing

Matt Walsh, racism, DEI

It “came out of nowhere,” declared The Hollywood Reporter, and as “one major Hollywood studio exec” put it off the record: “The picture has clearly hit a nerve.”

This is the second hit by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and director-producer Justin Folk: they made the movie What Is a Woman? in 2022, and now Am I Racist? is at No. 4 on the movie charts having “gross[ed] $4.5 million in its nationwide box office debut,” THR reports, “a huge sum for a nonfiction feature.”

In the film, Matt Walsh sits down with “some of the biggest people in the anti-racism movement,” including Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, founders of Race2Dinner, and Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

For $5,000, Rao and Jackson will come over for dinner to make as many as eight white women confront their inherent racism. Who would know better? Rao and Jackson actually wrote the book, White Women.

“This country is not worth saving,” Rao declares at one dinner. “This country’s a piece of sh*t.”

It cost $15,000 to get the meeting to film DiAngelo for the documentary. Well, only $14,970 if you consider the $30 in reparations that DiAngelo was shamed into giving a black member of Walsh’s documentary crew.

“The mind-blowing part,” explains Savannah Edwards of Savvy Film Reviews “is that he was able to get them to say what they said on camera.” She adds, “The fact of the matter is all Matt Walsh does in this movie is let these people talk.”

Go see the movie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Value of Principles

The late Bernie Baltic used to ask politicians, who invariably wanted him to write them a check, “What are your principles?”

They would then recite their key issues or the issues they thought were key to getting Bernie to write that check. He would stop them, saying, “Not your issues — issue positions can change — your principles.”

Values are like sorta like principles. In politician speak.

“My values haven’t changed,” Vice-President Kamala Harris assured us, after being quizzed about her flip-flopping on issues including fracking (hello Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes), defunding the police and building a border wall.

CNN host Erin Burnett recently took the Democratic nominee to task, citing an investigation that counted more than 50 instances of Harris “slamming Trump’s border wall,” even while her “campaign ads actually showcase that wall.”

Hard to believe but true: Kamala’s TV spot touts Trump’s wall — his “big distraction,” as she dubbed it — as a symbol of her tough border stance. 

You can’t make this stuff up.

In her 2019 book, The Truths We Hold, Kamala Harris identified “a bigger reason to oppose a border wall,” decrying such a structure as “a monument standing in opposition to not just everything I value but to the fundamental values upon which this country was built.”

Therefore . . . it would seem obvious that her values have indeed changed. Or perhaps the problem is that she doesn’t have any values that cannot be trumped (go ahead, pun intended) by the all-powerful need to secure her personal political advance.

That’s her paramount principle. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Sobering Up After DEI

DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, regulations

Some universities and companies have been retreating from their obnoxious DEI policies. We can now add Jack Daniel’s to the list.

One of the lamentable ideological fads of recent years, DEI (“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”) programs are a vicious form of race-based and sex-based affirmative action.

All such policies subordinate merit to irrelevant but politically preferred physical characteristics.

So far as I know, old-style affirmative action at least was not normally accompanied by mandatory indoctrination and mandatory testimony by applicants about how they would cherish and uphold the ideology of compensatory racial and sexual discrimination. But such indoctrination and litmus tests are standard features of many contemporary DEI regimes.

Which are now minus one, thankfully, as Jack Daniel’s announces that it will be ending DEI initiatives, such as a social credit system and “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions.”

The Dallas Express says that the whiskey distiller is decoupling from DEI because it is “facing backlash.” Specifically, thanks to the impending attention of Robby Starbuck, “an activist known for successfully putting a spotlight on companies like Harley-Davidson and John Deere” for their DEI policies.

Starbuck said on Twitter that he had been “set to expose” Jack Daniel’s, which perhaps was tipped off by his visiting of employee LinkedIn pages. “We are winning and one by one we will bring sanity back to corporate America.”

He adds that if you want your own workplace’s DEI policies exposed, you can email “tips and evidence” to him at EliminateDEI@protonmail.com.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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