I just finished Rufo's book, "America's Cultural Revolution." For decades I had wondered just how all these attacks on the West - all the puzzle pieces - fit together, and now I understand. Thanks, old man. That is one fine piece of work, right down to the flawless editing.
My approach to DEI now consists of two parts: first, oppose this Marxist, destroy-the-West agenda in every way possible. Write, comment, donate if possible, read and educate yourself - TFP my go-to place for information.
Second, don't argue with Wokesters, DEI (DIE) acolytes, or Social Justice warriors. It's a waste of time and annoys the pig. When they begin, I just put my hand up in front of their face and say, "Don't start that shit with me," turn and walk away, leaving them standing there. Life is short.
Douglas Murray’s War on the West had the same result for me, documenting just how pervasive and thorough the attacks are - though I’ll still check our Rufo’s new book. Thanks for the recommendation Jim!
I work for one of the hated three letter agencies (there are lots of good people here, true American patriots, I promise) and I wish I could show you just one day of the DEI onslaught I face. I get more emails about it than about the mission, it’s fully engrained in all our performance reviews and internal job applications and every time a “leader” messages the workforce. The scary thing is the leadership all seem to be true believers with no signs of the scales slipping off their eyes. During June pride month extravaganza (and that’s what it was) we had emails about how the cafeteria was featuring only recipes from LGBTQ chefs. Like what?! Look, I don’t give a shit who you boink, how does that have any impact on your ability to make chicken?
Most days I’m just annoyed but more often it truly scares me because guess who is not worrying about gay chicken and who attended the most recent “neurodiversity” virtue signaling circle jerk? Everyone on that growing list of American and freedom haters.
Any thoughts about the idea that's been floated lately? When Trump takes office, he demands the resignation of the top three levels in all of the agencies.
And he should fire the first couple layers if possible.
I don’t have great confidence that the maniacs in DC won’t find some way to derail the Trump train again anyway. Even if he won he’d be inheriting a hornets nest and most likely wouldn’t have congressional support. Hell even when he does have it it’s near impossible to get anything done.
But this all digresses from this fine TFP piece anyway. The truth is that you can’t fix stupid. Our society has become collectively dumber and I think AI is going to amplify this trend.
To hell with Spanish (which most of us know at least a little) better learn Chinese y’all.
Google Javier Milei the new president of Argentina and read about the shock program he is proposing there. Admittedly the situation there is worse, but could we not do something along those lines?
Dear Mr. Schwarz please read about Leopoldo Galtieri and his infamous 601 Special Battalion. Nothing Milei proposes will be shocking to the born dizzy Argentines.
An interesting anecdote is some enterprising Brit managed to purchase some Argentines for their actually value and then they sold themselves to the French for what they thought they were worth. That became the House of Windsor.
I caught his speech at Davos. I think he has an uphill battle implementing the ecomomic reforms necessary to get the Argentine economy under control. They were running 200% inflation and I don't believe it has abated.
Yeah? Let's see the political will to implement it. Do you think JFK may have been about to rock the boat in 1964? How about DJT? Both are cautionary tales.
The child mutilation enthusiast Assistant HHS Secretary Admiral Levine (first female!) certainly needs to go. It would be worth having Trump as president just for that.
Please do! I came across it somewhere and I think it is descriptive. The mutilators use misleading phrases like "transition care for minors" or "gender affirmative care". It is truly insane.
"Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine made United States history Tuesday as the first openly transgender four-star officer in any of the nation's eight uniformed services, the Department of Health and Human Services announced. The former pediatrician's appointment also made her the first female four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps' history. "
I would not care what he did as a private citizen but as a powerful official he pushes for the drugging and mutilation of children over this cult of gender identity. He ought to have his medical license revoked as there is no good long term study to support this junk medicine and Europe has moved away from it. It is Religion/Ideology. Dr. Jason Rafferty is just as bad. He and the AAP are being sued: https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/10/Ayala-v-AAP-Complaint_stamped.pdf
When the Admiral was in charge of things in PA during Covid he moved his own mother out of a nursing home.
Anyway, I would not care if he wanted to revel in a psychological disorder of his own if he were not in a position of great power - destroying the futures of many children. He needs to be removed from his position.
Trump can't fire career civil servants. You have to reorganize and abolish their jobs. Then you can create a new job with a different title but doing the same function, and hire a new person for that job.
On the back roads of Texas there are little towns that are just one person more than a ghost town. Send them to these towns and use an abandoned feed store as their HQ.
One of my med school classmates opened a practice in Oklahoma and ended up buying the whole town of Hoot Owl. I think it consisted of two longhorns and a windmill.
I've been reading about the Travelgate scandal during the Clinton Administration, and it appears the GAO at least concluded all Federal employees were technically At Will employees, who could be let go for any or even no reason.
"In July 1993, Congress requested the non-partisan General Accounting Office investigate the firings; on May 2, 1994, the GAO concluded that the White House did have legal authority to terminate the Travel Office employees without cause, because they served at the pleasure of the president."
Government agencies have long had a workaround: nobody gets fired, their position just gets eliminated in a reorganization. One idea that has also been floated is to designate more of the senior federal positions as appointees who are not civil service per se. I’ve heard that there are candidates with working groups figuring out how to implement federal employment reforms that won’t require the do-nothing Congress to get off their lazy butts.
For the love of God why can’t we just get congressional term limits?? Only a mere 80+% of the country supports this but hey, only they can implement it so we need some thinkers on this.
The basis for the”Peter Principle” was that due to the tangled web of govt regulations, it’s easier to promote incompetent people than fire them in the behemoth our federal government had become. That term was coined in like the 70’s.
I'm liking him better all the time. People keep bringing up his past ties to ... fill in the blank ... but what keeps coming up in my mind is, "Who will follow Trump?" He's certainly got the knowledge and skin tone. Now all he needs to do is change his name to Sue.
God, I could never run for anything. Too many people know too much about my past. But it's worth it; I've had a ball.
So true- middle white America secretly or openly struggle with a Vivek Ramaswamey unfortunately. We've become so dumbed down as to pick a candidate asked on a name, an ethnic background, do they have Charisma?, how likable are they,, are they entertaining- ugh guess intelligence, common sense, success, leadershi skills are just an afterthought and it comes round to bite us in the *ss! Just got done listening to this pod- great debate- wrote Bari and suggested the very simple solution is to just ADD Political Affiliation & IDEOLOGY to the list of things we cannot Discriminate against , along w sex, religion, race, etc....
Dear M? Lomesome, What? That's crazy talk right there. Why you'll have all the chronically oxygen deprived leftist spewing racism sexism homophobia collusion Russiaisms at the top of their barely functioning lungs.
I don’t think they have much impact on this other than just blathering as the mouthpieces for the regime. Some of them are true believers but most of them are just paying the piper until they can take their sweet, sweet private sector board job and are too sackless to speak truth to power. My husband has been part of a Tier One unit for two decades and it’s the same drivel over there (it’s showing in recruitment).
On the civilian sector side, they aren’t having trouble recruiting, it’s WHO they are recruiting that’s the big problem. The younger work force demands this crap and there is no way to use reason or common sense with them since they’re brainwashed, pronoun-pronouncing automatons. As Rufo, Murray, other commenters here and especially James Lindsey document, the ideological rot is nearly a century in the making through the colleges. There’s also that recent poll going around about elites ($150k income, advanced degree and living in urban areas) and the batshit crazy beliefs they hold (restricting meat and air travel, blah blah blah). Lots of those folks in our line of work too.
I hate to say it but it’ll take more shock events like the unleashing of public antisemitism after 7 October to wake up people to the how incredibly awful DEI is. Especially in the federal government where change happens as quickly as it takes President Roomba to remember where he is.
Good points all and yeah, shock is a wake up call and given the harmful effects of DEI/CRT we can expect full blown lunacy to tear it’s ugly head in the same crazy way.
Dear Mr. Wills, No one will make a difference immediately. The problem has it's genesis going back nine lifetimes. Progressivism's roots are nine generations deep. Some progress will be made by torching what we now own. Look atthe schisms in any religion to understand the logical progression. The immediate path is autocracy. Who wants that? No matter. It's coming.
I will die defending an American Republic. The caveat is it needs to be limited to approximately twelve moderately sane states in the south. I feel absolutely no affinity with those poor misguided people in the oxygen deprived blue. The United States is as illogical as was the partitioning of Europe after the 1918 inbred family's squabble that killed so many. The subsequent partitioning of the Middle-East and Africa.
The United States is a series of regions forced together by progressives who could not then nor can they now restrain themselves from meddling willy nilly in other's lives. Progressives are a fatal disease.
Sounds like what you are defending is your impression of/assumptions about twelve states, also known as an American Republic as conceived by a single person who likes to type.
Ppl I know who’ve been in advanced military training are beginning to think there is an actual battle coming. I think though that any civil war would be along ideological lines more than any other division.
Not trying to promote such a situation mind you but exercise your 2A rights now. Any kind of conflict is a horrible idea. A fight here would destabilize the planet.
Thanks Nicole...Always helpful to hear reports from the inside. Your independent thinking gives us hope that not everyone is corrupted yet. Stay strong and brave as you navigate these challenging policies. You will persevere with your soul intact.
But you need to appreciate how even gay people can make tasty chicken. Maybe they do it while boinking. Maybe while hanging their new pride flag. I say send all those leaders to Iran to write a few of those memos so they can understand what is really at stake here and get back to doing the job they are supposedly there to do.
The impugning had to do with the notion that we need to pay attention to the abilities of people because of things unassociated with those abilities - what does being gay have to do with being a good chef? That is the point I am referring to.
Did you even read my comment before commenting?! Gay chicken, you dumbass. Inclusion in our promotions and job applications. I gave you one, plus two more. It only gets more inane from there.
Ha! As soon as I replied, I regretted it precisely for that reason Kathy! I have been a subscriber since the very beginning but I’m a JV commentator but still should have known better!
Right....now....did these LGBTQ chefs come in for the day to your agency and prepare this "Gay chicken?" Or was the "Gay chicken" prepared offsite, then brought in, during which time you were notified that "Gay chicken" was available in the cafeteria?
Right....so in regards to "inclusion" - you're claiming that people are being unfairly hired/promoted because of their race or other factors? Could you share an example?
I'm just curious as to how this daily onslaught is perhaps harming the mental health of the employees.
Well it’s still good to hear there is at least a remnant of sane civil servants. Thank you for choosing to be that BTW.
It’s kinda shocking how so many otherwise intelligent ppl just buy into the insanity of DEI, CRT, and it’s associated total BS. It’s like they only watch/hear MSNBC or CNN or listen to NPR. Sometimes I even wonder if I’m not the crazy one and I remember about fifteen or years ago when the question of same sex marriage was a ballot question in most states. Even where it got voted down, activist judges overruled the will of the general public. I strongly disagreed with it then (and still think it’s not really right) and had people tell me that it’s inevitable so why fight it.
I don’t care if who ppl want to sleep with, but marriage is first and foremost a sacrament. It supposedly is bringing God into your relationship. God is very clear about His intentions for righteousness in intimacy. I’ve heard the arguments regarding the meaning of Sodom and Gomorrah however there are so many other passages in scripture that address this issue it cannot be explained away as a misunderstanding. If at the time of judgement God sees fit to overlook anything it certainly would be His place to do so. I cannot honestly excuse any action specifically designated as sinful yet sins of the flesh are not as weighted as sins of conscious like purposefully giving false testimony. Trying to rewrite or misrepresent scripture to ease the conscious of others is giving false testimony. This has become the new normal in many Christian denominations lest anyone be offended. For that matter at least half the congregants of any given community are adulterers and this is also egregious to God. I’ve also gotten into many an argument that there could be some nationally recognized “civil-union” that does not attempt to be some faux sacrament. There are ways to make these things work in a legal fashion without incorporating a morally questionable ceremony.
I apologize. I’m getting preachy here and, well, I’m no moral authority. Anyway, we seem determined to destroy ourselves.
We embrace violence, encourage the worst kind of behavior and now cannot even be civil. I remember hearing idiots claim that civility itself was another form of white supremacy back in 2016. They (the leftist crazies) were pulling out all the stops to construe conservatives as basically evil.
I kinda dread the upcoming mud slinging. If there can’t be any measure of rational discourse now I don’t think it’s gonna get better. Too many ppl in congress act like ignorant screeches now without the drama of an election.
Ah well, what’s supposed to be progress doesn’t feel or look like it.
I've spent many years thinking about all this, and I think it is important to look at root causes. When it comes to "philosophy"--and what Marx provided was a philosophy, one of bitterness, meanness, vindictiveness and deceit--it is always important to look at the people who created them. You have to ask "what question is this person trying to answer".
The root, obvious question is: what is the nature of our lives, and what is the best use of the finite time we have? Why are we here, and what should we do to feel good on some level, either the high level of sacrifice that feels meaningful, or lower levels such as simply feeling satiated in every sensory way?
Everywhere I look, I see people failing to come up with good answers. Leading obvious contenders are career success, "being nice", pop spirituality in yoga pants, traditional Christianity or other religion, and of course the many slow suicides of alcoholism, drug abuse, and other addictions.
In a world where all of us see many Amazon delivery trucks every day, people want something simple, prepackaged, largely effortless, and that is delivered once and then done. DEI fits that bill. It is simple, there is a program, the participants get the feels, and in some quarters companies that do this stupid shit make more money.
Conservatives say no, no, no, but even though there are many, many good articulations of our ideas--that would include most of Western Philosophy, which as examples came up with the ideas of formalized Democracy, Republics, Constitutions, universal human rights, and the formal use of reason to resolve political issues via free public dialogue and debate--by and large the EMOTIONAL benefits and simple answers provided by the Left have overwhelmed them, made them invisible, and filled the entire world with an invisible fog.
After many years of considering all this, I have come to the decision that the SIMPLEST simplifying heuristic is rooted in psychology, and that the simplest useful idea is that the purpose of life is growth and individuation. Maturing. Differentiation, as Murry Bowen--who stirred most of these ideas within me--would put it.
So at root the conflict is between people who want to formalize infantile, immature forms of society that in aggregate can and should be called Collectivism--of which Marxism, Fascism and their various bastard children (including "God", aka DEI) are all examples; the alternative is Individualism. One person, one voice, one truth, but one in connection with all others.
The core proposition of science, of course, is that Reality is what it is, regardless of our opinions about it. This may or may not be true. That is a debateable question. But that each of us comes into every situation and question with a unique set of experiences, physiology, ideas and education, and visceral and delayed reactions, is obvious. That's how it works.
And over time, and over broad populations, societies work better, if all voices CAN be heard, even if we don't agree with them. But listening to someone speak that we don't agree with is something only mature, individuated people can do. By definition, then, Collectivists can't. They don't give a shit what BS they are shoveled, as long as they are told what to do and say and can reliably expect everyone else around them to say and do the same things. Those who don't threaten them, because their whole sense of self is fragile, because entirely dependent on their social context.
So in my view, the heuristic sane people should always ask of any idea: does this work to help people differentiate themselves, to grow up, to find their own identities and selves, or is it predicated on reducing people to the accidents of their births, and to their conformity to or rejection of bad ideas imposed through violence and coercion? Is the Big Idea that a small number of relatively sick and undifferentiated people should make decisions for all of us, or that the intelligence of our civilization is shown by the fact that all of us together tend to be smarter than any of us alone, at least over time and in aggregate?
My vision is that our society can and should develop to such a level that any person, picked up off of any street, should be capable of running our government competently. Put another way, rather than be ruled by elites, I think the goal is that we should all become elite, compared to what we are today.
All of this is possible. It is obviously possible. It is sick, anti-human people who throw up emotionally rooted objections to all this. Much of this is clinically psychotic, perhaps more codependent. All of it is infantile.
I am going to append this quote, from Max Planck, one of the pioneers of Quantum Physics, and a genius in every respect:
“Religion represents a bond of man to God. It consists in reverent awe before a supernatural Might [Macht], to which human life is subordinated and which has in its power our welfare and misery. To remain in permanent contact with this Might and keep it all the time inclined to oneself, is the unending effort and the highest goal of the believing man. Because only in such a way can one feel himself safe before expected and unexpected dangers, which threaten one in his life, and can take part in the highest happiness – inner psychical peace – which can be attained only by means of strong bond to God and unconditional trust to His omnipotence and willingness to help.”
For myself, I tend to try and keep issues of metaphysics out of arguments addressed to a larger audience, among whom are reliably those who have been indoctrinated in a scientifically outmoded Materialism. To my mind, progress is done step by step, and if I can show a step that does not require any more assumptions than those obvious to all, then that is good. But in my own view, in the Big Picture of the problems of our own civilization, a core element is clearly the loss of God, and sense that we live meaningless lives of very short duration in an infinite universe. That makes all social problems harder to solve. Why not be selfish, when nothing matters, and there is no reckoning?
But science is not atheistic. This is a misunderstanding. Science can be and should be a partner to religion. Planck again: “It is the steady, ongoing, never-slackening fight against scepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition, which religion and science wage together. The directing watchword in this struggle runs from the remotest past to the distant future: ‘On to God!’
I found an very interesting podcast called Physics to God. 2 orthodox Jewish rabbis , one a physicist one a mathematician. If someone decides to try it on YouTube make sure to start with the introduction and go in order.
Two fundamental foundations of Quantum Theory are that 1) matter does not exist but Consciousness does (at least as implied by the Copenhagen Interpretation and the work of among others John von Neuman); and 2) and that we live within a nearly infinite field of energy that, as Richard Feynman put it, contains enough latent energy in one square meter of "empty" space to boil every ocean on Earth.
And an interesting third is Non-Locality, which has been proven mathematically and demonstrated experimentally, in which there are no limits place by time or space on communication. All of us were taught that light is the fastest thing in the universe. Yet, orthodox, daily Quantum Physics has shown that in principle a particle a billion light years in one direction can communicate INSTANLY with a particle a billion light years in the opposite direction. This fact is the basis, in my understanding, of quantum computing, or at least one of them.
These are all extraordinary SCIENTIFIC claims. They do not imply one should start going to church, but rather that we should start allocating resources to understanding what all this implies for human life, and what lies above, beyond, and around it.
You bet. I’m pretty sure that we were designed to think; critically especially. Asking God to help in the pursuit of increased understanding of any of the sciences might yield more fruit than not. There is no opposition between faith and intellect.
You really don’t need to check your brains at the door.
Scientific enquiry and advances can and should be tempered with sound moral judgement. Just because we can do a thing doesn’t mean we should or that it’s a good idea.
I find it fascinating that nearly every ancient people believed in the concept of an afterlife and most of them believed in some form of reckoning. But in our more modern world we assume that there is no basis for this notion and dismiss it as foolishness.
I will add, that one book I have often recommended is Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality. He does nothing more or less than try and tease out the metaphysical implications of Quantum Theory in an honest way, as done by a professor of physics.
It is my personal sense--and this is nothing more than a feeling, albeit one buttressed by a lot of reading--that most of what has been going on in Theoretical Physics for the past 50 years has been a ridiculous and unsuccessive effort to take God back out of their equations. They want to feel superior to a dead universe, but they face the insurmountable obstacle that all the evidence indicates the universe is alive.
That's a scientific question. Until we figure it out, any God that unifies your life, gives you hope, and doesn't impel you to do destructive hateful things.
That’s the rub. I came to the conclusion that if there is a God, one not of my own making, then I needed to know that God. If we can simply choose what/who God is then go to any restroom and take a good look in the mirror because that is the face of your God.
I know ppl who have different faiths but not of their own design. They are decent ppl with strong faith in their scriptures. I cannot agree that their vision of God is correct as I firmly believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph. If it were true that there are other Gods then my God is a charlatan and liar.
If God gives ppl the choice to believe in Him or not then who am I to force anyone to believe otherwise. Just being a good person is nice but in the end if you deny God then you are nothing more than a people pleaser and yeah, those people will mourn you but they aren’t the judge of your soul. Being kind and your brothers keeper is a part of Gods plan but for those who believe it is in the service of God, not man.
This is such well thought out comment and I absolutely agree with you on the simplicity angle -- DEI is a tribe for these people, a talisman to ward off the “raaaaacists” and to prove their moral superiority. And it takes such little effort. Slap that rainbow ally sticker on your door and boom, you’re one of the good guys.
Gotta tell you, Nicole, your thoughtful and witty comments are very enlightening. Plus, they give me hope that not everyone in your line of work has been brainwashed.
Listening to (or reading about) silly indoctrination rituals at our federal agencies makes me despair for my children’s futures.
Ha thanks! You have to keep your sense of humor about it and so far it hasn’t prevented us from doing to the work we need to do. But that could change if the ship doesn’t turn around soon and/or as those of who acutely remember 9/11 (and changed our career direction because of it) age out. I have three littles too and that’s what continues to motivate me. America is still the greatest country, blessed by God but He’s humbling us. Question is, will we stop yelling at each other long enough to listen?
Many in that community are patriots. Many love the ideals that gave us the concept of America. I hope that the erosion of those values now driven by the complete control the left has on all institutions doesn't extend to noble individual who is personally motivated to serve his or her people.
But communism helps us all to be respected as equals.
At least it says it does.
North Korea? Not real communism.
USSR? Not real communism.
Cambodia? Not real Communism.
Venezuela, Cuba, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia..... ? not real communism.
Maoist China? Not real communism.
Special Economic Zone China? Truly not real communism (authoritarianism with some free markets).
But if I claim to be a Marxist, people think I am compassionate and care about poor people, and I feel virtuous. Don’t complicate our feelings with your silly facts!
The U.S.? Not real capitalism! Getting more and more socialist all the time where the rich get richer, the politicians create more benefits for the poor, and the middle class pays taxes on the money they make as well as everything they buy.
To my eye, communism can only overtake a free republic during times of chaos. They tried that "proletariat revolution" stuff in the past, but in places like the U.S. (historically, at least) people were fairly happy - and more importantly, looking forward to even better times. That's what the Soros gang, the WEF, the climate nuts, wannabe dictators like Gigolo Kerry, Hillary Ramrod Clinton, Hussein Obama, et al, have run into, so they sew chaos when there is even the tiniest thing to complain about. Saint George Floyd, for example.
We're all "racists," you see. Those of us, including a white boy from the Head of the Holler in BFE, West Virginia (Bumfuck Egypt, for those not versed in mountain talk), are all "privileged" and according to Ramrod, must be "reeducated."
Uh-huh. Try that; see how it goes....this ain't Canada - at least not yet.
The one thing they just can't deal with is that when Americans get tired of it all, they have the means to stop it - something possessed by nobody else anywhere on the globe. (HT to Thomas, George, Benjamin, John, and all the others) They just can't deal with that, are afraid of us, and By God they should be. This has to stop. This WILL stop.
because like everywhere those who initiate and support the idea think they will be the only ones who benefit as there are always ome "at the top" who pay attention to the rules they make for others..
Donate to The Manhattan Institute--Rufo, Glenn Lowry, Heather MacDonald are there. Donate to Prager U and Hillsdale. Voices of sanity in a world gone mad.
Dear Maureen, For us Hillsdale. As a bonus for your donation you'll receive, monthly, Impremis, their newsletter well worth the price of admission. I will look into those others and possibly chuck a few shekels there.
Yup. Supporting speaking truth to power is righteous and powerful. I think most normal people know the truth when they hear it. But if it collides with your personal pursuits then people get angry. “Don’t tell me I’m doing something wrong.” Like petulant children they have temper tantrums and then it’s your fault you said something they don’t like or want to hear.
What they don’t understand is that the truth will set you free.
They'll come around M? Former Rad. Mine have. Once they start families I went back to being a font of wisdom after two decades of yeah? I got a coolest grandpa ever ball cap from my most stridently confused daughter. I gather from your nom de plume you were a problem child to your parents.
Jim, I have read the book too, as I did Rufo's and Yascha's. They all provided me with clarity and insight. But I had the opposite conclusion. We absolutely have to engage with those that find "Woke" and "DEI" appealing.
We have to understand their deeper motivation and acknolege the remaining injustices that fuel the broad adoption. And then engage into a conversation that shows that the Western, universalist, liberal approach is the best and most proven concept to make progress to address these remaining unjustices.
The Perfect has always been the enemy of progress. We should not resort to the "tribal" impulses but rather strive to make the "ingroup" as large as we can possible make it.
Sometimes I think that, too. Then I think of time-invested vs. results-obtained and I go back to the Roosevelt (Teddy, not Franklin) approach: when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
ok dont argue with them but we definitely need to talk with them. This flame of irrationality will burn itself out. The narrative is changing and we can welcome the majority back to a more sensible way.
Dear Patrick, Sometimes conversing with these kids born in the 1990s and not exposed to challenges to their ideas causes them visible anxiety when questions are asked even politely. When our kids within the extended family brought dates to holiday gatherings I was astounded by how easily they become overwhelmed by differing opinion to their narrative.
Very true on how easily they become overwhelmed. However, I find many to be very smart, and driven. They have been exposed to a very illiberal philosophy( There is nothing liberal about DEI) Demonstrating that DEI wont produce the results they want is a step in the right direction.
The answer cant be a pivot towards rightwing victimhood ideology. That would be a different side of the same coin. It wont advance the country. America has so much going for itself. If we can kill DEI, which I am positive we have seen the worst of it and are restoring some sanity. The solution is in our hands.
Your approach could be called “Pearls before swine” (ie don’t waste your time casting your pearls of reasoned argument, to the swine of Lefty feelings-based beliefs.
"Pearls before swine" is well-known as a Bible quote: Matthew 7:6 - Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.
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Of course you're familiar with the Dorothy Parker story ....
She and socialite Clare Boothe Luce were approaching a doorway simultaneously, and Luce stepped back, inviting Parker to go through first, saying, "Age before beauty," - at which point Parker sweeps through the port and with a little flair, says, "Pearls before swine." Maybe apocryphal, but probably the classic comeback of all time.
Sometime I'll regale you with the ex-wife/vacuum cleaner story - that's my best comeback so far.
Yes!! But the ones who will converse politely using their own brain power and their own convictions instead of vomiting out what has been poured into them…I will listen. I want to, because although life is short, in walking away from all of these clowns, I would be walking away from many many family members…
This is an interesting debate as both have valid points. What neither has is a counterargument. Too often, the right in this country is reactionary to what the cultural Marxists have to say rather than having something to counter it with. The best in the Primary season was the DeSantis line that DEI stood for Discrimination, Exclusion, and Indoctrination. Haley tried with her line that the US was never racist, but that shows she never read a history book or understood the times people lived in. And Trump is too busy lining up people to kiss his ring than to have a persuasive argument.
In the end, the DEI crowd has to get defeated by ideas leading to their ideals to get chucked into the dustbin of history. They are on the ropes now, as people see them for who they are and are disgusted by them. But the knockout punch has to come from a celebration of the individual and a celebration of ethnic heritage. It's a leftist worldview to talk about people in broad census categories rather than ethnicity. We all come from a country and tribe. Now. Most of us are a mix of so many groups. That is why we love to get our genealogy done. I am part of this or that, and I appreciate the customs of those groups. All that leads to the person's ability to live and think freely. Be the best version of you.
These leftist idiots have nothing for the individual except to be sheep in their flock. They are unthinking people who do what they are told. When given that choice of freedom, opportunity, and competence, the buffoons on the left can get crushed. We all need something to dream about, and that is mine. I hope there's some on here as well.
Ask yourself why the Left desperately spent four years twisting itself in a knot to destroy Trump - and continued after they stole the 2020 election - and you will understand why many of us support his re-election in a clear eyed way.
You are free to have a hero in Trump. He did many good things. My vote for him is my best as the three judges he appointed saved the country. You are free to support him but he was also a terrible manager, huge spender and thin skinned jackass. I just want something better than him.
See, Albert, that's where you get it all wrong. Trump isn't a "hero" to most of us. He's a flawed guy, as are we all. But he's one of the few pols (to the extent he's become one) with the courage and self-confidence to say what most of us think on issues that really shouldn't be a matter of dispute or disagreement. Such as the madness of open borders, China trade, free speech, economic freedom and the folly of nation building.
I give you all of those points but he is such a childish, repellent, megomaniac that his being so prevents a large portion of the population from hearing his message. He gets in his own way. And you can say he cheated, but he also repelled so many people that voted against him. He is his own worst enemy and gives his opponents a cudgel to beat him with through his actions.
Not necessarily wrong. But sometimes you have to ride the horse you're given. And right now, Trump is the only horse in the race that will stand against the madness of the American hating leftist Democrats. Whom I find repellent in every way imaginable.
We are on the same page. My anger at Trump is that his personality feeds the attacks against him. This election should be on Biden's ineptitude, government incompetence, and the evil of what the modern left is. A skilled person hitting them at every stop, but that would mean that the election isn't about Trump, and I don't think his ego will permit that. I just want to beat the left, and Trump's inability to keep the spotlight on Biden is the only way he wins.
Yes, Trump is an ass. All those who oppose him cannot control their emotions, which prevents them from hearing his message. Don’t blame their immature reaction and inability to settle themselves on Trump, it’s their own damn fault. Trump’s policies are what his supporters can see through all of the noise. Simple ideas to help America on trade, security, foreign policy. This isn’t rocket science. Biden is going out of his way to destroy the American experiment.
DearMr. Katz president biden doesn't decide anything. He reads a script and he fails miserably with the delivery. One must look through the fog the illegitimate regime generates.
Agreed but they vote and there is a lot of them. Democracy is messy and the goal is to win 270 electoral votes. You have to convince them and being a jackass as Trump is prevents you from winning. I want to win not make excuses.
Your position is understandable on an emotional level. But many others feel that nobody is perfect, that perfection is the enemy of good, and that in a binary choice, you suck it up and oppose what you do not believe is appropriate.
I really don’t care about Trump’s personality. Did the Democrats care at all about Bill Clinton getting a blow job from a young intern in the oval office?
Some did that led to GW Bush beating Gore in 2000. In a tight election you need every vote and though you might not, others do. And I would like to win in a blow out. I appreciate your points.
How do you think Obama would have responded if he got the insults Trump gets everyday. If he even got a question from a Republican journalist the whole group of lefties yelled and screamed.
Dear Ms. Linda, I suppose that soon enough the opinions typed herein will warrant a visit from body armored agents working at the rogue enforcement arm of the DNC.
He’s the only candidate that has come out against Digital currency. That is the ultimate control over you. CBDC, Mandatory central kill switches in vehicles, electric vehicles, electric stoves and smart thermostats - every one of these can be turned off with a keystroke or a social credit score.
Those things don’t really matter when all “they“ have to do is pull a Justin Trudeau and freeze your assets. BOA voluntarily turned over customer data post January 6 so that scenario is not at all out of the realm of possibility IMO.
Why is it then that Mitch McConnell says that Trump made Johnson bail on the border bill? Trump is not doing anything for the good of the country, he is running to save himself from jail. Ends never justify the means. Choose a person who would not act as a king or dictator, and we will all vote for him.
This "king or dictator" rhetoric is getting tiresome. Trump was president for four years. He never ruled as a king or dictator, even respecting the ruling of pathetic federal district court judges on a power trip. Then came Biden who rules by executive fiat and has his Stasi arrest moms at school board meetings and religious leaders who resist his edicts. Mitch is way past his expiration date. He short circuits more often than not. Quoting him hardly advances your cause.
Trump is despicable, but the dictator meme is indeed risible rubbish. Trump’s toddler-age maturity notwithstanding, he’s light years better than the corrupt feckless numbskull currently in office.
Mitch McConnell flat out said that funding Ukraine was much more important than border security. That’s where he is coming from. Give credits to anything this warmonger says? His border security bill will allow 5000 migrants per day into this country. That is border security?
Trump would not be facing jail if he were not running for president. I expect he could quickly get all the charges dropped if he withdrew from the race..
and those ridiculous amount of $$ for E Jean.. who cannot remember what day she was "attacked" nor the actual circumstances. do you wonder how she lives now?? who pays those lawyers
Saul Alinsky, in his book Rules for Radicals, has a chapter titled Of Means & Ends. In that chapter he discusses at length the balance between means and ends and its impact on integrity and common decency. My conclusion from the past 5 years is that the Democrats have adopted the motto: any means to an end. As demonstrated by all of the various attacks on Trump over this time period. Russia Gate is one. Georgia collusion with the White House on the insurrection charges is another. Taibbi wrote an essay outlining all of this just the other day. It’s quite impressive.
The tragedy of this times is that both sides are less and less concerned with the means - it is a proverbial horseshoe principle, as both parties shift to the extremes. I would have voted for Haley but Republicans want Trump, so Biden is as close to the center as i can get on the ballot in this cold civil war.
The mess on the border is a result of the legislative stalemate. The law must change, but Republicans like using it as leverage, Democrats naively think it gets them more votes.
As a fluent Russian speaker with very deep knowledge of Russian affairs, I can assure you that the reasons for war in Ukraine had nothing to do with who is in the White House. I do believe that Trump would have ended the war in Ukraine in 24 hours by not answering Zelensky's plea for help and letting Putin swallow Ukraine. In short term it would be great for the US, like in 1939 Chamberlain got peace for the UK. You know what happened after.
That border bill is awful. It is just money we do not have to speed up processing. It expands presidential authority to "close the border" if a certain number of crossings occur daily. Which does not mean this one would. And the cartels control completely the daily crossings anyway. So I'd the magic numbers is 5000, 4999 will pass. That's why when the pols visit crossings dry up. And it does not address those not at border crossings at all. I pray it does not pass and that the border impaired wise up.
You really can’t trust Mitch McConnell. If his bill was so good and would have solved the problem, all he had to do was make it public. The public could have seen how great it was and then put pressure on to pass it.
Ok Mr Loveland, I waded through every word of this sub-thread and I'm still waiting all agog for the name of the Paragon that would be acceptable to you. And could possibly win the job.
Sadly DeSantis was not ready for prime time. Haley is better than Trump but she has no shot. I will hold my nose and vote for Trump or a third party canidate if viable.
DeSantis would be excellent. Unfortunately, the electorate wants a tall person with lots of charisma. This is where DeSantis failed. He is an excellent executive, very capable, very smart and very humble.
Me too. He’s an obnoxious braggart and petulant child at times but can be surprisingly deft at times, even eloquent. His basic ideology aligns with my own and he tried very hard to fulfill his promises. Not being a big supporter of the military industrial complex scared the left who have fully infiltrated this sector. They hate that he exposes them for what they are.
God Bless you Bruce. Your post has been the best, to the point and shortest, so far on TFP today. We need to focus on the 10 months ahead and vote the right man to power. We have a real challenge ahead of us we must stay the course. Thank you!!!
I think you are right that eventually DEI will be defeated by better ideas. But the immediate battle is to allow those ideas to be expressed and heard. That means breaking the stranglehold DEI has on free speech, who can speak on campuses, what can be posted on social media, what gets through mass media filters, etc. There will be no competition of ideas as long as expressing one set of ideas will get you fired or worse.
If you seek an idea to defeat DEI, what about the status quo ? Why do we have to change something that works to eliminate DEI ? Our society is on the right path, it has created more wealth and given more opportunities than in the history of man. It is not inherently racist as the DEI supporters argue. DEI is Marxist. It must be eliminated. There is no need to replace it with anything or ideas other than what was there before.
Marxism applied to any issue virtually always devolves into totalitarianism enforced by a burgeoning, self-important bureaucracy that lives to punish wrongthink, as defined by themselves (and boy, are they bossy.)
The founding principles of this country are personal responsibility and freedom of speech, which usually bring out the good in citizens, who are free to ostracize those whose behavior is offensive. Most learn these principles at home, at church, at school and from the examples set by honorable adults -- not by being told what and how to think. We have a justice system to deal with the few who resist growing up.
But in my view, DEI as adopted en masse by academia, government, and corporations withers on the vine the minute people walk onto the street, squint into the sunlight and meet eye to eye other people in real life situations where no theoretical preposition holds water. Aggressor? Colonialist? Black? Trans? Victim?
I do not want to be crass - but out there where all Americans live in the real world hustling for a pay check, worrying about their kids, running down into the subway, bumping into you on the sidewalk and cursing you, on an assembly line or checkout counter, at a gas station on the Interstate - they don't give a shit what the hell DEI is and they don't care about the person who cares to espouse upon what is owed them due to the latest grievance orthodoxy. And that twenty two year old millennial will learn very soon to keep her or his mouth shut when out being microaggressed by every day face to face encounters, where insults reign, attitudes are coarse, and where there are no safe rooms. Where you have to earn a smile tossed your way.
There's no room for what they believe in out there.
You left out Ramaswamy. Woke Incorporated was the opening round of countering DEI and SDG in the corporate sector. I look forward to seeing him in the coming administration.
Dude. The Marxists ARE the reactionaries. Those who oppose them are the defenders. What you are asking for is to react to the reaction. To do so abandons the original POV. To not understand that is to play by their rules. Does that ring any bells? So if you need to say something start with "No. I do not accept your premise/argument." then let them natter on. This is not as condescending as it sounds. It gets them to state a position rather than a slogan. It will require engaging their thought processes. Maybe even jumpstart some critical analysis.
My comment is in the battle of ideas who dont see this. A wide swath of the country is not read in on this battle and need to be won. You first have to open ones mind to convince them. ITs all about pursuasion and winning the argument in their minds, not yours.
I understand their minds need to be opened. I just see no validity to the proposition that new ideas have to be generated. These people have not evolved beyond the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law that flows therefrom. Argue those ideas.
My point is that you have to convince people where they with messages that resonate with them. You are correct but you only speak to a small sliver of the population. And yes the MSM media is a problem only so much as the GOP plays the game and doesn't fight back with anything. Finally, most are illeducated when it comes to history so your messages won't resonate as they don't know what you are talking about.
Many conservative commentators, in my view, make the mistake of trying to blame the whole Wokeness madness off on just a small so-called ruling 'elite' rather than face up to the harder fact that it has now become the mentality of tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of the middle class in all Western countries. It's not a conspiracy.... more kind of a mass psychosis. Wokeness in general terms – race-grifting, transgender/ 'nonbinary' blah blah etc -these things emerged from the petri-dishes of spoilt pseudo-intellectuals that Western society has fecklessly allowed to become 'professors' in universities. It has then leaked out across the culture because most people - however 'educated' they are - are intellectual sheep (genuine independent-mindedness is a rarity). It's a shame that it's NOT a conspiracy because that would be easier to undo. But the truth is much worse than that; it is a (probably terminal) civilisational decadence that nobody is in control of so nobody can correct. Apart from a war or natural catastrophe maybe.
Dr. Malone identified it as a mass formation psychosis. Not unlike the madness that gripped the entire German society. Most men (at least those not completely feminized) know it's complete nonsense. But white women are particularly vulnerable to this insanity, as confirmed by their fealty to the irrefutably abominable Democrat Party
"Most men"? I thought you weren't a fan of identity politics, but it sounds like you woke up on the woke side of the bed today. I'm related to these people and I observe that there's little daylight between the women and the men when it comes to Democrat Party dementia.
I used to blame it all on the media, but we do have the ability to think critically, so I had to stop giving them a pass. After all, I managed to escape.
There's an internal process at work: they derive their self-esteem from believing that they're superior to conservatives: more loving, tolerant, worldly, knowledgeable, smarter. Moral hubris underlies progressivism, but paradoxically, it would collapse under its own weight without a pathological level of fear of the "other." The only people they have no tolerance for are those who disagree with them. Funny, that.
Very apt. I would add, however, that the cult of identity politics is also about “belonging”, which is a key psychological need, and which has been in short supply as our civilization has become more atomized. It’s a heady cocktail of status, belonging, hubris, narcissism, power, and hate. What can overthrow that? Damned if I know...
Many years ago, in a psychological experiment, the researchers looked at what people thought was most important: being free or being loved. Everyone SAID they would choose freedom, but when push came to shove, they ACTUALLY chose love. That says a lot about these movements we’re seeing in the age of social media.
That’s a very astute comment. Still, where does all the irrational fear come from? Their level of fear is so over the top, they make themselves ill with anxiety. I spent an evening with a group of them recently and every few minutes there was a sarcastic joke either about Florida, land of banned books and fascists, or where we were going to live if Trump got reelected. And then there’s the permanent mask wearing. These are grown-up people. I’m confounded.
The most disheartening thing is to see them abandon basic American principles they once held dear, like free speech. When we were young hippies, government censorship and state interference in our personal lives was intolerable. Now they approve speech codes and cancellations so we can all “stay safe.”
Regarding your love hypothesis, one thing that makes me different from them is that I’m a lesbian, an old one at that, so I’ve lived most of my life as an outsider of sorts. Maybe that’s why I care not at all whether people accept or reject me for my views.
I think the fear is related to the tribalism (an extreme form of belonging). They fear anything that might threaten their tribe (you having a different opinion, for example) and I think it’s also related to the hubris (if someone has a different opinion, that could mean I’m wrong, which should never, ever happen).
The anxiety is also being foisted on them by the elites/government/MSM (people wracked by fear are more easily led)— and (maybe more importantly) by the Internet itself. As Marshall McLuhan said, back in the 70s, the medium is the message. As a hunting/gathering species, we are not made to process information at the levels of the electronic age. I think it’s really doing a number on peoples brains and emotions.
I believe the last sentence in your post is correct. The most recent 3 generations have seen or experienced no real adversity or, as they like to describe all their perceived grievances, existential threats. They live their lives enjoying the fruits of Western freedom and capitalism, not understanding or comprehending any other way of living. Adversity in all of its forms is seen as oppression. They are empty souls searching for purpose in their lives. Easy fodder for those that seek power by way of the neo-Marxist/woke/DEI cultural revolution they are pushing.
That's why the study of history is so important, and why it's especially pernicious when academics present historical tragedies as caused by racial characteristics rather than the flawed nature of the human condition (looking at you 1619).
As Juvenal stated toward the end of the Roman Empire: Now we suffer the wages of a long peace; luxuary more cruel than war broods over us and avenges a conquered world.
I like to think it's not most people, but perhaps 30% of people that fall in line. I also don't give them the benefit of the doubt that this is mass psychosis, but instead was always there waiting for an opportunity to rule over and bring down their fellow humans. It crosses race and sex boundaries and it is absolutely Marxist. "Apart from a war." That is very possibly coming.
Perhaps these differences of perception come down to our different experiences of social worlds. I am retired now but throughout my working life (in the Education and Architectural professions) I was 100% surrounded by Lefties. They were mostly decent people and none of them wanted to 'rule over' their fellow humans....they were simply intellectual sheep. Going with the flow is just human nature....the idea of a 'democracy' of free-thinking, fiercely independent-minded individuals was always largely a fairytale.
I'm also retired and spent most of my career in the US military. Political views of military members vary more than most realize. I was also exposed at a young age to pictures from the Mengele and Gestapo archives while living with my father in Holland for a year in the early 70's. I've spent much time thinking about how this happens, and I believe the majority of people wanted to just go with the flow and/or were terrified. But I also believe there's a fairly sizeable part of the population that would love the opportunity to rule over their fellow humans, but our guardrails, our government structure, Constitution and traditions keep them in check. Those guardrails are crumbling. Maybe it's because I've been an independent minded, precocious feminist since a very young age, and I have experienced a huge number of women and men over my lifetime try to pressure me to get back in the lines they've prescribed.
They're not just trying to rule over our lives; it's here and happening now.
It began with ObamaCare. Never before In America have we been forced to but anything. Now seniors have to buy maternity care.
Try building a house. See how many choices you get to make....lightbulbs, shower fixtures, & assorted materials. Before long you won't be ale to buy dishwashers, gas stoves, or ceiling fans.
EV's....We'll be soon forced to buy a car we don't want to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
They're even controlling how & when we vote to rig elections to their favor.
Try starting a business. Unless it is a food truck or other low level service provider forget it. And if you form one of those through a formal business entity you are required to register with the feds and provide your identifying information and keep it updated. But don't worry - that info is only available to law enforcement and the IRS.
Yes different life experiences. I think we are basically on the same page here but from my experience (and I'm thinking of a lot of professional colleagues) it has been my perception that the attractions to them of holding politically correct opinions is that it enables them to tell themselves a pretty story about themselves - how 'nice' they are and how 'sophisticated'....and this nice bit of personal vanity costs them nothing plus has the benefit of making them fit in well. And I believe all this psychological faffery is entirely sub-conscious.
I'm afraid I have to side w/ you on this Beadle. I am in the arts. I experience getting politically corrected ALL the time! Even if it's just that someone wants to be a scold and correct your "wrong-speak" because it makes them feel "holier-than-thou! There is no question in my mind that at least a few people would be more than happy to assist in someone losing their job if they had an inkling that they voted for Trump (or some other crime or misdemeanor!)
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.” John Stuart Mill.
They are not "decent people." They would have stood transfixed; drooling and cheering with delight at the Nuremberg Rallies
Agreed. The exposure I mentioned above to Graham changed me forever and I exude non-compliance. I believe it made me a walking trigger for those sorts. Friends have noticed I will walk into a room, and people I've never seen in my life will be triggered and become aggressive.
Which is why the Western liberal democracies have been SO SO foolish in allowing their universities to become Leftist sheep-dips - for the rising professional, managerial and administrative classes - for so many decades without most conservative politicians doing anything about it - or even noticing - until recently.
Well that is part of the problem. Those conservative politicians, many of them much lauded had no regard for the people they were supposed to serve, much less interest in protecting their values.
I would not elevate this issue to philosophical debates on Marxism. DEI came from Human Anger and Resentment of not getting enough of the Capitalist pie. And feelings of victimization. Some of which are accurate depending upon who you are.
And who best identifies with a victim is the 18-30 crowd. And the workforce needs them.
What is different now is the amount of Hate these supposedly Do Gooders are spreading. Unlike the 60’s The message is zero tolerance for anyone who doesn’t think like me. And the University climate is the same as the 1920’s pre Nazi Germany. So all the displaced anger is focused once again on the Jews.
I am puzzled by this reply. All my comments on this thread have been precisely the OPPOSITE of elevating this to debate on Marxism....quite the reverse in fact!
Surely your comment should have been a reply to someone else.
Most are decent people who think they just want good things, and don’t at all see themselves as wanting to control anyone. I had an ongoing discussion with one of these types, over the course of a couple of years. I finally got her to agree that her vision of a perfect society would need a person or group to control the distribution of “correct outcomes”, that her ideas could not happen without some level of coercion. Her justification? “We’ll, how else can you get people to do what they should do?”
I discontinued our discussions after that. There was nowhere else to go.
A little sign of hope - I live in Cambridge, MA, a city fully infected by the woke mind virus. This stuff is going away slowly but surely. I work for a high profile woke tech company with a coo, white Ivy League millionaire natch, who declared white men need to be uncomfortable in 2019. Most of the diversity and equity stuff has been purged bc it’s costing money. The trans stuff is disappearing, and a lot of Ukrainian flags have been taken down.
I think it is both. I think the fall in line folks are easily exploited by those with ill intent. And it appears to be much higher than 30%. Just think of the occasional drop in who lose their shite over comments here. I think this site is pretty tame.
Agreed - the activists are well organized and zealous while the rest of us just want to be left alone to do our jobs. I too work in Cambridge and the DEI stuff is baked into our policies. As you can imagine given the demographics, we are a very international and evenly gender split company. Interestingly, our very white CEO just announced that we need to form a BIPOC group. The DEI policies, women’s advocacy group and LGBTQ advocacy groups aren’t enough?
I also work in Cambridge. We have some affinity groups, but my company is private. And you have to take a test to get an interview. It's been around for 45 years and is a billion dollar company. Philosphy is our customer success is our success. It's worked so far.
It is an urban phenomena because hive mentality only works there. But hives are inherently flawed. They are weak because they relinquish autonomy to a central command. Eventually that command will make a fatal mistake.
I have come to believe what you are saying is true because those people cannot take care of themselves and are totally dependent on others. That is at least part of it. People in more rural areas can afford to disagree because their lives are much less dependent on others.
America is a big country with sharp divisions between the coastal and the 'flyover' states. But my life has been in the UK and this contagion has been building and building for over 60 years. If Western civilisation is ever going to confront it, it is vital to understand that it is NOT a sudden 'contagion'. And whilst I am no fan of Obama, to blame it all on him is to not really GET the depth of the contagion at all!.
I realize that the genesis goes way back. I didn’t blame it entirely on BO. I pointed out that he “accelerated” it. The divisions in America are deeper than geographical coasts vs flyover states. Presently, it’s reached communities, next door neighbors and families. The Obama administration did little to promote unity while encouraging folks to call out as racists, those who disagreed with his policies. Even if that meant labeling your family members as bigots. There are broken relationships everywhere on every level and in every institution in our country. Had he been a uniter and promoter of good will for everyone, perhaps we would not have fallen this far. In my opinion, he certainly did throw gasoline on the fire. Currently, he’s living large while we try and salvage what unity we can find.
Rufo doesn't take the origins back far enough. Behind all the theories (critical race, critical legal, gender, etc.) is the same postmodern concept: "There are no facts, just perspectives and Power."
That goes back to the early 1900's and the rise of a postmodern approach to understanding life. Nietzsche is often cited as a big influence. This postmodern "There is not Truth, only perspectives and Power" becomes cutting-edge/cool in universities in the 1920's, just as veterans in their 20's survive WWI. These grad students in their 20's in the 1920's take over university leadership in their 50's and 60's--in the 1950's and 60's. Their grad students take over 30 years later in the 1990's and the third wave takes over in the 2010's.
Traditional universities hire professors of different perspectives so that we can compare ideas and judge which are closer to the Truth. Good faith debate is critical in the search for Truth.
But postmodern university leadership doesn't believe in Truth; they are utterly focused on power. They don't hire diverse viewpoints--no point to it. They hire postmodern professors just like themselves as an intentional way to gain power. After three waves of this, not only are alternative viewpoints eliminated from universities, the postmodern philosophy is pushed deep into secondary and elementary education, and law.
For these postmodern professors/leadership, it is all about power. Oppressors and oppressed. Words mean anything you want them to. Utter subjectivity. Everything is in the eye of the beholder. They told us 80 years ago they were going to take power by taking over education. We didn't listen.
How deep does this postmodern thinking penetrate? How often do you hear the word "empower"?
These people are postmodern, not Marxist. Nevertheless, to overthrow oppressive power, they adopt the tactics Marxists used to advance the people's revolution. (Check out the rate of bombings in the early 70's)
The unrest in the 2010's was entirely predictable--and was anticipated and muted in some areas of society.
Truth or Power--totally opposed, irreconcilable viewpoints in conflict. Which do you choose?
I choose the 5.56. The .223 produces only 55,000 psi, vs 58,000 for the 5.56. Also the 5.56 may jam in a weapon chambered for the slightly shorter .223. I guess it's time to choose power to backstop truth.
Go back even further! It’s the story as old as time! This is why true Christians are vehemently opposed to Marxism. This is why communists are atheist!
”Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.“
You doubtless are on to something; I always had a more simplistic scenario for the loss of Academia: That twice in two generations, the best and brightest went off to their WWn and the Bozos came in and occupied the empty Chairs.
I choose air conditioning, cell phones, comfortable chairs along with clean food and water and clothing and shelter. As an engineer, I help make these things possible. They are true regardless of perspective and power. They put the lie to post modernism. What does a post modernist do with a need to shelter from the cold this winter? Complain that he doesn't have political power? Or he doesn't have heat! Fine, I want my insulated parka back.
I think that that’s a broader point.. why do people who shuffle ideas as opposed to people who know how to build things and make things work effectively run the country? We get what we pay for.. lots of competing ideas and not much in the way of pragmatic solutions.
I hear ya but when you're up against a herd that thinks -- is absolutely certain! -- that food comes from grocery stores and electricity from holes in the wall is becoming capable of taking over and killing off those of us who know otherwise. Your insulated parka was liberated for a more worthy, Dave, and the factory that made it was burned down last week.
No. The postmodernist will put you in chains to meet his needs. Maybe not literal chains of old but chains. Chains of currency control, chains of social credit, chains of inability to move freely. Chains of your making.
A great discussion although it seems that the goal was to find the right words and labels to describe what, by any objective measure, is the decline of America. The core of the discussion, imho, is about collectivism vs. individualism. By design and intent, collectivism subsumes individuals into categories where they have neither individual rights, responsibilities, nor personal agency. Individuals become cattle, herded by self-appointed “experts.” America was founded, and flourished, under individualism. Collectivism, as demonstrated first by Russia and later China (and now taught and celebrated in our education system for three generations) caused the death of tens of millions of its own citizens in order to reach their “worker’s paradise.” The real question is what kind of country do we want to live in.
The astute founders of our Republic enshrined individual rights in our constitution. This was genius. DEI ideology is collective in nature, is antithetical to this doctrine and should be rejected. I think both Rufo and Mounk agree on the root cause, but their approaches to promoting and supporting the idea individualism and individual agency differ. My opinion is that Rufo’s mechanism is more forceful than Mounk’s. I think there is room for both strategies.
I agree with your point, but think the main distinction is between coercion vs. free association. A collective of people can be good for individuals, and we can’t survive long without cooperation and exchange. The harm comes from governments or other groups who coerce our actions using force or hyperintense social conformity.
Forming voluntary groups, though is immensely helpful. One example I really like is the idea of employee owned companies. They solve the problem of exploitation that fuels Marxists and gives the employee-owners a very tangible stake in free markets. When employees own shares of their organizations and have some say in it’s management, they have a vested interest in its success and share in their value added as profits. And I’ve been a customer of employee owned companies and find that the products are of consistently higher quality than most companies.
Having only briefly skimmed the excerpts of Rufo and Mounck’s comments, it is evident that Rufo has a much more rigorous and incisive mind on these topics. He understands power, fundamentally. And he correctly interprets its relationship to culture and institutions. Mounck, while smart and credentialed, doesn’t have the same lucidity about how politics works. Agree or disagree with him, Rufo’s ability to accurately describe and analyze the “woke” phenomenon is unmatched among public intellectuals today.
More simply put: it looks to me like Rufo wiped the floor in this discussion.
Agree. Mounk thinks if we all just talk nicely with the DEI crowd, we can persuade them to their errors. It’s just academic. Rufo sees DEI as the means to gain power, and once people attain it, they don’t give it up easily. It needs to be ripped from them.
His self-described goal is “counter-revolution”, and he cites Gramsci as his biggest intellectual influence. So, he plays on the same field as a Marxist (societal and institutional power struggle) but with different tools and objectives.
How many countries in the world actively teach their children to have disdain for thie own country? How many countries would tolerate their athletes competing in multi national events and turning their backs or kneeling when their national anthems are played? How long can America thrive as a free country when half of the population makes clear its hatred for the other half on the basis of their voting or in some cases religious beliefs?
So true-- I had to overcome the pressure to hate this country- (grew up during Vietnam not-war), and I see most people of my generation, and those younger, have never gotten over it!!
Mounk stumbles on the real raison d'etre of leftist ideology when he points to the stupidly evil Derrick Bell's claim that "universalist values and neutral rules, like those enshrined in the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are just meant to... perpetuate forms of racist and sexist discrimination." The explicit purpose of Leftist ideology is to undermine and destroy the United States of America - which the Left hates because we are and remain (tenuously) a bulwark of freedom, liberty and opportunity against the nihilistic, bleak and repressive force of one-world Marxist tyranny. Leftism has always been antithetical to freedom. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a communist or socialist society that enjoys freedom. One would have thought that would have become patently clear after almost 200 years of failure of that demented ideology spawned by Marx . But Leftists are anything but smart. It isn't a coincidence that the incubator of this madness is our universities.
Always the racism, always the discrimination. My view is that America is the best place for anyone to achieve. But not everyone is capable of a level of achievement they think they ought to attain. So instead of looking in the mirror, they accuse the system.
Here’s the perfect example--- an orchestra conducts auditions with the performers behind a curtain so judges choose purely on talent. The outcome? Too many whites and white adjacents chosen. So call the process racist and discriminatory, remove the curtain and choose the “appropriate” number of BIPOCs and call it equitable. Of course the orchestra is now mediocre, but the elites will refuse to acknowledge that. And when ticket sales fall? Oh well, the elites meant well.
My mom was a very wise woman. One of her admonitions to us was "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Our liberal "friends" have built a superhighway of "good intentions." Straight to hell.
Did you know that one of the results of blind auditions was that more women were hired than before? When the judges did not know who was behind the curtain, it turned out that more women had merit than their previous numbers showed. Now they’re going back to non-anonymous auditions (so they can see the BIPOCs and be sure to hire them), so it’s likely that more meritorious women will pay the price for this (as they do in the gender war).
This is a British musician I watch occasionally as he's a great pianist and fun. He's been playing in this London mall for years, putting smiles on faces and showcasing other musicians. Check out the Chinese Red Guard harassment and the actions of the moronic constable. I believe the RG purposely created this scene to see what would happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65iwnI2hjAA
Note how the demented rhetoric and shill cries of victimization infected that Chinese commie apparatchik. And how quickly the British cop took their side to enforce communist orthodoxy upon a free British citizen. I've said this before - cops better figure out quickly who has their back and supported them throughout the entire BLM madness. Because if they become stooges for the Left, they will quickly feel the righteous wrath of an enraged citizenry.
Yeah I particularly noted how the CCP agent started screaming "don't touch her" incessantly - you see the police get involved and immediately assume victim/victimizer in the exact way the CCP agent planned it with fake accusations of assault. Their lies are so obvious, but the psychological warfare is effective regardless.
I do not get it. The constabulary is also giving preference to the pro people we now refer to as Palestinian protesters too. Houston the UK has a problem.
YM asked a very important question “why it is that Fortune 500 companies have proven so willing to adopt them (DEI)? I would add to CR’s answers that the presence of external force, i.e., government has to be considered. We have seen from history how a communist and fascist or current globalist ones can cause submission to tyrannical governments.
I would add that large companies are not necessarily capitalists or champions of a free market, but are rather corporatists that pursue their own interests. Many companies have taken measures to suppress competition and will readily lobby governments to protect their positions in a marketplace.
Also, as companies grow bigger they often become more bureaucratic, i.e. they add departments that have influence on the operations within a company without adding much to the production itself.
HR is notorious for championing causes that no one truly supports but will be implemented anyway.
Few people ever sat through a training from legal or HR and walked out of it thinking “this really helps me be better at my job”.
Good points, Daniel. Corporatists will and do pursue their own interests. Especially the larger ones, who use their powers of government influence, etc. And, as you say, their growth in beuraucracy do not add to production. Rather, it is a reflexive action due to outside trends (and pressure).
That said, I believe they have adopted DEI influence out of fear ... some of the same fears as felt on campus ... the fear of reprisal, rejection, etc. In other words, "cancellation."
But we've seen public rejection, have we not? We saw what happened to Bud Light, to Target, to Victoria's Secret.
I agree Jim, fear (including FOMO) and external pressure guide many decisions in the corporate world.
Facebook is a great example of all of this. They bought competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp as they feared the competition and realized it was easier to just buy them than to outperform them, even though they already had the infrastructure to compete.
Facebook also tried to remain a free speech platform at first and spoke out against censorship, but then they came under pressure from regulators and they decided it was not worth the fight.
Now they have fact checkers and work closely with government agencies and NGOs to suppress views that don’t align with those of our regimes.
In my experience companies adopt DEI for one of two reasons. Either a) management believes it or b) they are trying to protect themselves from bad PR and employee revolt. On the latter it’s the equivalent of paying protection money to the mob, except instead of money it’s virtue signaling to either/both gov’t/professional activists that they got their thinking right and so please leave us alone. Kind of a Cool Hand Luke scenario. My guess is that it’s usually “b” if company executives are being truthful.
What on earth is the problem of pursuing your own interest? Whose interest would you pursue if not your own? My job if starting a business is not to enhance my employees wealth, it's to become wealthy myself, and I operate under the protection of capitalism and free markets, which I indeed champion.
They have to navigate through DEI out of fear, in order not to be cancelled, boycotted, or sued. We already have anti-discrimination laws on the books. DEI is unnecessary. It is a blackmark and stain on the free markets and another example of government overreach.
There is no problem with pursuing your own interest, of course companies and individuals should do that. The point I was trying to make is that a corporation will not necessarily look at a DEI initiative and identify it as a bad policy for a free market, free society, or even their own company. Furthermore, in large companies there are certain departments (which pursue self-interest) like HR that will have to justify their existence within the company, so they are more than happy to adopt a DEI policy that they can oversee.
Imagine HR approaching corporate leadership and telling them that sales will decrease if the sales team is not cautious about pronouns. Corporate does not spend too much time thinking about it and tells HR to get on top of it. HR creates a sensitivity training and the sales team has to sit through it. The whole exercise was a waste of energy and HR took a part in shaping how the company operates but likely did not do much to increase sales.
Most corporate "leaders" today are organizational cogs who were advanced up the corporate ladder and are expert more at playing the corporate game than at any actual skill. You can see it in their rapacious pursuit of corporate spoils rather than in any ability to grow their company and inculcate loyalty and productivity among their employees.
I am far too removed from Corporate America to comment on this topic. Five years retired. And I was a public school teacher for 14 years before retirement. So I only know what I read.
In my 14 years of teaching, I only had to sit in on one in-service presentation to our faculty where the hints of DEI were forthcoming in public education. Without going into detail, most of us dismissed the ideas brought forth in that presentation as frivolous and counterproductive. This was two years before retirement, and I did not feel pressure to implement them in my classroom.
Now I write on Substack about a variety of topics, and DEI occassionally appears in my commentaries. But I always keep an open ear to those who know more about the topic than I. So thank you, Bruce.
Not all corporations are that way, Bruce. To suggest corporations play a game and lack skill is a bit of a platitude and an empty cliche. Reading every comment I can from you, out of respect and your comprehension, I'm surprised at this banality.
In a globally competitive world you had better remain the brightest of the bright, never lose your edge, and never rest on your laurels (or be government subsidized.)
I spent my career at a company that put our customer's interest above all else. Believe me, it was a thrill to wake up every morning going to work, 50-60 hours every week; and surrounding yourself with thousands of like-minded people.
"(R)apacious pursuit of corporate spoils" sorta started with the realization that financial manipulation paid better than actually Doing anything. Once that happened, the Doing became less important than that which supported growing the cash pile directly. "Hedge funds," et al, are the ultimate manifestation; they don't even pretend to Do anything. If an entity begged to be taxed at 100%, that would be it. Those who haven't managed to strip out that pesky Doing have incentives identified around here by the actual Smart People to fly rainbow flags and pump DIE and other stupid stuff.
No problem in concept; people are free to buy lottery tickets too. I find it problematic when such as Black Rock become big enough to be untouchable and venture into, frankly, governance. ((Also) frankly, at least borderline treasonous -- the DIE isn't even the worst of what's alleged.)
Having been an HR exec in my career I walked away from many of those “trainings” knowing 1) most did not listen, 2) those that did not listen will be at my door complaining about benefits or some egregious act the company or co-worker committed, 3) the EE’s have no understanding of required meetings for legal purposes and 4) HR does not like doing the meetings either. HR in my experience does not champion ideas just to do it. As I matured in my career I learned that HR, among other responsibilities, is there to minimize legal risk to the company.
As Our Hero asked (sorta): Is there not one God Person in Sodom or Gomorrah? In like manner: Show me one person who can honestly answer "yes" to that last question; otherwise, fire the lot and bulldoze the space they occupied.
I am so glad I left the US 10 yrs. ago and don't have to deal with all this nonsense. Dividing up the country racially is insane. All the talk about whether or not it's Marxism is covering up the point that the DEI people want to remake society in their own image and they know better than everyone else what everyone else needs. I just love it when the rich and the intellectuals tell me how I should live my life, as if they had any idea of how most people live. How can people go for that shit?
I guess I retired just in time; what was being foisted on us at work in terms of DEI meetings was unbearable. In that way, tending my roses in my own backyard, so to speak, I might as well be in a different country.
But that's not true either. Two days ago spouse and I visited the American Museum of Natural History, my eyes were moist with the beauty of the blue whales movie, and then we wandered through the Native Indian halls and I remembered my awe seeing them as a toddler trailing after my father, 65 years ago -- and now I discover that those halls are closing! Native Indian tribes object! No matter that half the people claiming to be Native Indians have little DNA to prove it.
Yet another teaching tool removed. Yet another capitulation to the clamoring voices shouting against Western civilization.
Because that, and not sensitivity to culture, is what's behind the closing of these halls. It's also what's behind the asinine new descriptions beneath paintings at the Metropolitan Museum: Our best institutions are surrendering.
If you don't like the West, throw away your cellphone, don't ride a bicycle, don't get a flu shot, don't walk through Beaux Arts halls or use elevators, and don't turn on your lamp. Nothing of the things of modern life that you take for granted was made by Africans or Native Indians or Middle Eastern sheiks.
The Egypt of the pharaohs with its monumental architecture was a very long time ago. The Arab mathematicians who imported "Arabic" numerals from India lived in the 12th century. What comes out of the Middle East nowadays? What's happening in African countries? Anything innovative, of universal worth?
There are good, intelligent people everywhere: Africa, Central America, and beyond. They want the West to be the West, a bulwark against the worst tendencies of their own countries (if you can hear them above the vile yippings of their U.N. delegates).
Just as I expect America's two parties and their voters to come together to be a bulwark against left vs. right extremism and their own worst natures.
Like the sackers of Rome, these haters of the West will live on the spoils until they run out. Lacking what it takes to rebuild, they will descend into a Dark Age.
The "snti-colonialist" haters of the West inevitably end up embracing the propaganda coming out of Russia, China and Iran. Russia and China themselves being brutal colonizers, skilled at exploitation of anti-Western fervor, Iran being a sponsor of Islamist terrorism throughout the world. No surprise that Jill Stein, the Green Party ideologue was palling around with Putin, while anti-colonialist leaders in Africa and Latin America are bought wholesale by Russian and Chinese bribes. Russian mercenary group Wagner is kicking French out of Mali and Niger, China is taking over the rest, under disguise of being good anti-capitalists.
I’m now waaay out of the NYC loop and I need to ask: what ansinine new descriptions are they putting underneath the paintings at the Met now? I almost don’t want to know, but I must.
There was a lovely -- if I can use that word -- exchange among several of us a few weeks ago. One commenter recalled an Italian exhibit discussed on the Met app by a Renaissance scholar, but paired with a young person who contributed, something like, Yeah, these portraits are a lot like hip hop. In hip hop, they also do poses.
According to another commenter, at the Edward Hopper exhibit, descriptions beneath the paintings noted that while there were no black people shown, in fact they are everywhere. I think I remember that too.
The great medieval sculpture hall, where the Christmas tree used to be during the season, for a while became completely multicultural, with statuary from everywhere.
The Met's facade now features plastic-looking sculptures, kinda like great amoebas, while the Great Hall is festooned with giant cartoons. And so on.
The Brooklyn Museum became a lost cause years ago. Even "the rooms" are not unscathed. In the antebellum dining room from a plantation house in Edenton, North Carolina, a modern artist with a message created a paper-mache raptor hovering over the table and depositing papier-mache guano onto it and the chairs and the lowboy with its cabriole legs. One of the Rockefeller rooms, courtesy of another ideological guest artist, for a while sported glass dildoes in a glass bowl. Or at least that's what they looked like.
Increasingly, there's less to tempt us even at the Morgan, although next month a Beatrix Potter exhibit is in the offing.
It's still the greatest city on earth with the most beautiful museums, although the Louvre and the British give us a good run for the money. But then, I might be prejudiced.
There's still much to see at the AMNH, but the removal of the Roosevelt statue and now the Native Indian halls is a blow. Unfortunately, we can get used to anything.
In 2016, I attended an exhibition called A Third Gender at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Woodcuts and drawings depicted the Edo period in Japan (400 years ago) when adolescent boys were considered suitable objects of erotic desire for both women and men. A boy between the ages of 7 and 17 had his head partially shaven, at which point he was considered to have exited early childhood and could begin his apprenticeship, basically as a sex slave. Fine. I'm happy to be offended by what I see. That's what happens when one exits one's home. The most offensive part, however, came at the end of the show when we were provided with a colored piece of paper of our choice indicating which of 'three' genders we considered ourselves to be -- rather than being offered an opportunity to comment (albeit from today's western point of view) on the ethics of indoctrinating children and adolescents in the sex trade.
"Fine. I'm happy to be offended by what I see. That's what happens when one exits one's home."
Well put, Birdie. True, it's the other stuff, those kindergarten exercises (!) that we're supposed to go along with, that are tiresome.
And yes, Japan is interesting. The Tale of Genji, too, shows off some interesting cultural stuff. I liked it; read the Edward Seidensticker translation many years ago.
Thailand. Of course Thailand has it's own bs, but the only thing that affects me is whenever immigration changes it's rules and that doesn't happen often. Regular Thai society is quite pleasant. People are polite, caring, and families are still the most important thing. Dealing with problems in a foreign country is never easy, fortunately, my wife is Thai and she deals with them. I just pay the bills. 😁
Depends on which provence/city/town/village you live in and you're style of living. Numbeo has a pretty good break down on the cost of living in several cities. We rent a 2 bd., 2 bath, fully furnished, down to the bed linens and dishes, in a complex with a community pool and excercise room, in the hills, about a 10 min. drive from the beach and 15 from shopping and pay $500 a month. Food costs about $400-500 a month for 2, Petrol about $4 a gallon. We're about a 3 hr. drive South of Bangkok. A visit to the dr. is $10-$20, Dentist, $40. Going to the Govt. hospital is about 1/2 the price of a private hospital. Ex.: cataract op: $2300 vs. $1200. Same dr. Thai restauants are about 1/2 the price of foreign food restauants, which can be quite pricey. For $2 you can get a bowl of noodles with pork and veges in a soup.
Mounk’s proposed solution at the end of the discussion is tepid. He wants a knife at a gun fight. He fails to see that academia has morphed into social and political activism. Students don’t graduate having been exposed to an array of political ideas; they are indoctrinated into one ideology and taught how to agitate for it. Does he actually think that just talking nicely to the college indoctrinators is going to change their views? Very naive. Rufo comes with a gun to the gun fight. He takes away the taxpayer funded infrastructure first, and exposes the intellectual rot and nihilsm underpinning the DEI ideology. If universities want total intellectual freedom they need to forego taxpayer money. Then their professors can teach whatever they want for $40,000 a year. But I am not going to pay taxes so professors can teach kids to hate me, with no alternative opportunity to learn that I am my kind don’t deserve that hatred.
I agree with your analogy, but I also think their strategies are complementary - long game vs short game. I’m just glad they are both working to change the status quo.
The Indiana state legislature is debating a bill, HB1017, that would:
"Sec. 5. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), a school, an employee or staff member of a school, or a third party vendor used by a school to provide instruction may not provide instruction to a student in kindergarten through grade 12 concerning:
(1) Christopher Columbus; or
(2) a President of the United States who owned an enslaved person."
There should be a follow-up bill that would require, if HB1017 fails to pass, the sponsors of HB1017 to be forced to run a gauntlet of irate residents, outfitted with sticks and switches, into the nearest river and told to never, EVER return to Indiana. I'm really beginning to think this is the only way to stop the Woke/DEI insanity.
This conversation is a state of the art example of realist common sens pitted against idealist utopia.
Y. Mounk's loggorrheic defense of motherhood and apple pie in Laland rests on the need to demonize Rufo's actual accomplishments. Wokism is a thorn in the back of leftists and wishi-washism is their only escape. They must continue to lecture us, heathens, to keep the moral high ground they have monopolized for half a century. Yet, they lack the courage to actually join in the fight against an obvious threat to democratic values. Mounk must therefore duck the straightforward question "what did YOU do to take down DEI? ". His answer is the same as the infamous former president of Harvard : "it depends on the context"...followed by a unsubstantiated reading of Rufo's "Marxist" lens. The monopoly of leftist ideology over higher education is a major factor in its current demise, but the origin of this tragedy is not in the 70's. Since the mid-twenties, Progressive Education apostles had plowed the field for the French deconstructionists gurus, lobotomizing American schoolchildren. Once they reached university level, they were fully receptive. Foucault and his pals knew it when they came to the US, for a conference at Johns Hopkins... They proudly paraphrased Freud, who said at his arrival in NY in 1909, at the invitation of Stanley Halls : "They don't know it but we're bringing them the plague".
To Yascha Mounk’s question about why Fortune 500 companies genuflected so reflexively to these obviously destructive ideas, I’d say, “profit.” Don’t get me wrong. Adam Smith is my hero. Remember, though, before Wealth of Nations (1776) came The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1756). Capitalism has a moral and ethical foundation long ago abandoned by Corporate America. Is there any B-school anywhere that requires students to read Smith anymore? The men and women running our companies today were nursed by the executives who willingly gave away all their intellectual property for a tiny but lucrative slice of the Chinese market. DIE, ESG, stakeholderism. They’re all corporate strategies to goose the bottom line.
Bud Light is the poster child for how NOT to navigate through this messy maize of DEI wokeness.
Clearly a mistake was made at the top, a modern day Edsel hole they've dug for themselves. I believe many companies have learned from that blunder and will for eons.
Somewhere someone someday will crack open a can and toast them for saving Capitalism!
Bud Light simply became too big and lacked oversight on its brand. There are a lot of American workers hurt by this. Bud Light owner, AB InBev (owned primarily by Belgian & Brazilian billionaires) are doing just fine though, given that they control so much of the global beer sales (around 400 brands). Personally, I don’t drink any of the brands listed here:
I just finished Rufo's book, "America's Cultural Revolution." For decades I had wondered just how all these attacks on the West - all the puzzle pieces - fit together, and now I understand. Thanks, old man. That is one fine piece of work, right down to the flawless editing.
My approach to DEI now consists of two parts: first, oppose this Marxist, destroy-the-West agenda in every way possible. Write, comment, donate if possible, read and educate yourself - TFP my go-to place for information.
Second, don't argue with Wokesters, DEI (DIE) acolytes, or Social Justice warriors. It's a waste of time and annoys the pig. When they begin, I just put my hand up in front of their face and say, "Don't start that shit with me," turn and walk away, leaving them standing there. Life is short.
Douglas Murray’s War on the West had the same result for me, documenting just how pervasive and thorough the attacks are - though I’ll still check our Rufo’s new book. Thanks for the recommendation Jim!
I work for one of the hated three letter agencies (there are lots of good people here, true American patriots, I promise) and I wish I could show you just one day of the DEI onslaught I face. I get more emails about it than about the mission, it’s fully engrained in all our performance reviews and internal job applications and every time a “leader” messages the workforce. The scary thing is the leadership all seem to be true believers with no signs of the scales slipping off their eyes. During June pride month extravaganza (and that’s what it was) we had emails about how the cafeteria was featuring only recipes from LGBTQ chefs. Like what?! Look, I don’t give a shit who you boink, how does that have any impact on your ability to make chicken?
Most days I’m just annoyed but more often it truly scares me because guess who is not worrying about gay chicken and who attended the most recent “neurodiversity” virtue signaling circle jerk? Everyone on that growing list of American and freedom haters.
Sigh.
Any thoughts about the idea that's been floated lately? When Trump takes office, he demands the resignation of the top three levels in all of the agencies.
Why only top three? I think a measure of success would be how many agencies we abolish.
#1: The Department of Education
HUD
Yup. And HHS, Homeland Security and the clearly useless NSA(unless you think spying on American citizens to be a security imperative)
And he should fire the first couple layers if possible.
I don’t have great confidence that the maniacs in DC won’t find some way to derail the Trump train again anyway. Even if he won he’d be inheriting a hornets nest and most likely wouldn’t have congressional support. Hell even when he does have it it’s near impossible to get anything done.
But this all digresses from this fine TFP piece anyway. The truth is that you can’t fix stupid. Our society has become collectively dumber and I think AI is going to amplify this trend.
To hell with Spanish (which most of us know at least a little) better learn Chinese y’all.
Not going to need to know Chinese in about ten years. Their past one child policy is about to take them down the drain.
Dear Mr. Schwarz I agree. How is this feat to be accomplished?
Google Javier Milei the new president of Argentina and read about the shock program he is proposing there. Admittedly the situation there is worse, but could we not do something along those lines?
Dear Mr. Schwarz please read about Leopoldo Galtieri and his infamous 601 Special Battalion. Nothing Milei proposes will be shocking to the born dizzy Argentines.
An interesting anecdote is some enterprising Brit managed to purchase some Argentines for their actually value and then they sold themselves to the French for what they thought they were worth. That became the House of Windsor.
I caught his speech at Davos. I think he has an uphill battle implementing the ecomomic reforms necessary to get the Argentine economy under control. They were running 200% inflation and I don't believe it has abated.
The top three levels a SES appointment and serve at the pleasure of the president.
Yeah? Let's see the political will to implement it. Do you think JFK may have been about to rock the boat in 1964? How about DJT? Both are cautionary tales.
Actually. Replace ALL appointees.
Huh I'd thought SESes were never political appointees (the ones I've worked with weren't) but now I see some of them are.
Don't fund them. Sequester their funding.
The child mutilation enthusiast Assistant HHS Secretary Admiral Levine (first female!) certainly needs to go. It would be worth having Trump as president just for that.
"Child mutilation enthusiasts."
I'm stealing that one.
Please do! I came across it somewhere and I think it is descriptive. The mutilators use misleading phrases like "transition care for minors" or "gender affirmative care". It is truly insane.
Leftist lunacy openly displayed as if it were a virtue.
Rachel Levine is not female - she is a male individual whose gender identity ( not sex) is woman.
Hi Gayle, No kidding that Richard/Rachael Levine is a man, divorced father of 2. I refer to how he was celebrated when he became "Admiral".
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rachel-levine-transgender-four-star-admiral/
"Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine made United States history Tuesday as the first openly transgender four-star officer in any of the nation's eight uniformed services, the Department of Health and Human Services announced. The former pediatrician's appointment also made her the first female four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps' history. "
I would not care what he did as a private citizen but as a powerful official he pushes for the drugging and mutilation of children over this cult of gender identity. He ought to have his medical license revoked as there is no good long term study to support this junk medicine and Europe has moved away from it. It is Religion/Ideology. Dr. Jason Rafferty is just as bad. He and the AAP are being sued: https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/10/Ayala-v-AAP-Complaint_stamped.pdf
When the Admiral was in charge of things in PA during Covid he moved his own mother out of a nursing home.
Anyway, I would not care if he wanted to revel in a psychological disorder of his own if he were not in a position of great power - destroying the futures of many children. He needs to be removed from his position.
Totally agree. What a foolish spectacle this whole admin has been.
Our enemies have seen this and the result has been aggression everywhere despite the warnings we will criticize them strongly.
Right. Biden looks like a fool regarding our own border. How could our enemies respect us?
Trump can't fire career civil servants. You have to reorganize and abolish their jobs. Then you can create a new job with a different title but doing the same function, and hire a new person for that job.
No but you can send them to Tonapah, Sioux City, Huntsville, Shreveport, ...
Trump could headquarter the Bureau of Land Management in CO again. Maybe if we have a two term R president after him it could stay there.
Great idea. My goal is 4 Trump years to set the ship straight and 8 of a genuinely fiscally conservative successor.
Send them to Oakland and let nature run its course.
Why would you want to trash those nice towns?
I do not. I just know there are enough decent Americans there to provide proper supervision.
Yes exactly Lynne!
On the back roads of Texas there are little towns that are just one person more than a ghost town. Send them to these towns and use an abandoned feed store as their HQ.
One of my med school classmates opened a practice in Oklahoma and ended up buying the whole town of Hoot Owl. I think it consisted of two longhorns and a windmill.
😂
Portland, Seattle, San Fransicko ..
No. Proper supervision is required.
The arctic circle? Naked?
simply close departments en masse.
the gdp situation is catastrophic
I've been reading about the Travelgate scandal during the Clinton Administration, and it appears the GAO at least concluded all Federal employees were technically At Will employees, who could be let go for any or even no reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_travel_office_controversy#GAO_report
"In July 1993, Congress requested the non-partisan General Accounting Office investigate the firings; on May 2, 1994, the GAO concluded that the White House did have legal authority to terminate the Travel Office employees without cause, because they served at the pleasure of the president."
Dr. M? Txfrog, Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Government agencies have long had a workaround: nobody gets fired, their position just gets eliminated in a reorganization. One idea that has also been floated is to designate more of the senior federal positions as appointees who are not civil service per se. I’ve heard that there are candidates with working groups figuring out how to implement federal employment reforms that won’t require the do-nothing Congress to get off their lazy butts.
For the love of God why can’t we just get congressional term limits?? Only a mere 80+% of the country supports this but hey, only they can implement it so we need some thinkers on this.
The basis for the”Peter Principle” was that due to the tangled web of govt regulations, it’s easier to promote incompetent people than fire them in the behemoth our federal government had become. That term was coined in like the 70’s.
It’s still true.
This is why he should pick Vivek and Vivek should Accept(VEEP) He KNOWS the Constitution as well as what you CAN & CANNOT do! This would really work
I'm liking him better all the time. People keep bringing up his past ties to ... fill in the blank ... but what keeps coming up in my mind is, "Who will follow Trump?" He's certainly got the knowledge and skin tone. Now all he needs to do is change his name to Sue.
God, I could never run for anything. Too many people know too much about my past. But it's worth it; I've had a ball.
So true- middle white America secretly or openly struggle with a Vivek Ramaswamey unfortunately. We've become so dumbed down as to pick a candidate asked on a name, an ethnic background, do they have Charisma?, how likable are they,, are they entertaining- ugh guess intelligence, common sense, success, leadershi skills are just an afterthought and it comes round to bite us in the *ss! Just got done listening to this pod- great debate- wrote Bari and suggested the very simple solution is to just ADD Political Affiliation & IDEOLOGY to the list of things we cannot Discriminate against , along w sex, religion, race, etc....
I like it!
You can if they are SES (Senior Executive Service).
He can fire SES ( Senior Executive Service ) grade office holder and the top three are SES office holders.
I would like it better if he demanded a fiscal conservative policy.
Last year tax revenue was 4.71 trillion. How about spending 3 trillion and using the rest, 1.71 trillion, to pay down the debt?
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20government%27s%20total%20revenue%20is%20estimated,to%20be%20%244.71%20trillion%20for%20FY%202023.
Dear M? Lomesome, What? That's crazy talk right there. Why you'll have all the chronically oxygen deprived leftist spewing racism sexism homophobia collusion Russiaisms at the top of their barely functioning lungs.
Good. They do like to spew...
👍👍👍
I don’t think they have much impact on this other than just blathering as the mouthpieces for the regime. Some of them are true believers but most of them are just paying the piper until they can take their sweet, sweet private sector board job and are too sackless to speak truth to power. My husband has been part of a Tier One unit for two decades and it’s the same drivel over there (it’s showing in recruitment).
On the civilian sector side, they aren’t having trouble recruiting, it’s WHO they are recruiting that’s the big problem. The younger work force demands this crap and there is no way to use reason or common sense with them since they’re brainwashed, pronoun-pronouncing automatons. As Rufo, Murray, other commenters here and especially James Lindsey document, the ideological rot is nearly a century in the making through the colleges. There’s also that recent poll going around about elites ($150k income, advanced degree and living in urban areas) and the batshit crazy beliefs they hold (restricting meat and air travel, blah blah blah). Lots of those folks in our line of work too.
I hate to say it but it’ll take more shock events like the unleashing of public antisemitism after 7 October to wake up people to the how incredibly awful DEI is. Especially in the federal government where change happens as quickly as it takes President Roomba to remember where he is.
I agree, Nicole. More shock events will be (sadly) needed.
Good points all and yeah, shock is a wake up call and given the harmful effects of DEI/CRT we can expect full blown lunacy to tear it’s ugly head in the same crazy way.
It’s sad but necessary.
Dear Mr. Wills, No one will make a difference immediately. The problem has it's genesis going back nine lifetimes. Progressivism's roots are nine generations deep. Some progress will be made by torching what we now own. Look atthe schisms in any religion to understand the logical progression. The immediate path is autocracy. Who wants that? No matter. It's coming.
I will die defending an American Republic. The caveat is it needs to be limited to approximately twelve moderately sane states in the south. I feel absolutely no affinity with those poor misguided people in the oxygen deprived blue. The United States is as illogical as was the partitioning of Europe after the 1918 inbred family's squabble that killed so many. The subsequent partitioning of the Middle-East and Africa.
The United States is a series of regions forced together by progressives who could not then nor can they now restrain themselves from meddling willy nilly in other's lives. Progressives are a fatal disease.
Like the EU!
Sounds like what you are defending is your impression of/assumptions about twelve states, also known as an American Republic as conceived by a single person who likes to type.
Ppl I know who’ve been in advanced military training are beginning to think there is an actual battle coming. I think though that any civil war would be along ideological lines more than any other division.
Not trying to promote such a situation mind you but exercise your 2A rights now. Any kind of conflict is a horrible idea. A fight here would destabilize the planet.
That won't be nearly enough. Have to down down several levels. Some departments, like Education, need to be completely eliminated.
With a few obvious agencies that just plain need to go, every executive branch institution needs to be and can safely be cut by half.
I think you guys have something called the senior public service. There are 20,000 of them and they are succession planned.
Clean house, man!
I like that idea. A new broom sweeps clean.
Thanks Nicole...Always helpful to hear reports from the inside. Your independent thinking gives us hope that not everyone is corrupted yet. Stay strong and brave as you navigate these challenging policies. You will persevere with your soul intact.
Same here with the DEI email bullshit. Thankfully, Outlook has a very effective 'Rules' function which sends them all directly to the Trash.
Ha! They are sneaky and weave it into everything. Actually, let me correct myself, they aren’t sneaky. They just blatantly force feed it to us.
" Look, I don’t give a shit who you boink, how does that have any impact on your ability to make chicken?"
In a sentence you've put the point clearly.
How terrifying for America. It’s hard to stomach let alone read.
But you need to appreciate how even gay people can make tasty chicken. Maybe they do it while boinking. Maybe while hanging their new pride flag. I say send all those leaders to Iran to write a few of those memos so they can understand what is really at stake here and get back to doing the job they are supposedly there to do.
Only if boinking, live-steam, from a Senate hearing room.
This wasn’t necessary. Nicole wasn’t impugning gay people, just pointing out how ridiculous the premise was.
The impugning had to do with the notion that we need to pay attention to the abilities of people because of things unassociated with those abilities - what does being gay have to do with being a good chef? That is the point I am referring to.
I got your sarcasm ;)
Perhaps you can provide one examples of the daily onslaught?
Did you even read my comment before commenting?! Gay chicken, you dumbass. Inclusion in our promotions and job applications. I gave you one, plus two more. It only gets more inane from there.
Nicole, how many times have we told you: Comprof is a stray cat. If you feed it, it will never leave.
Ha! As soon as I replied, I regretted it precisely for that reason Kathy! I have been a subscriber since the very beginning but I’m a JV commentator but still should have known better!
Nicole....
I asked you some straightforward questions.
Your story is not adding up.
What 3 letter agency do you work for?
I'm sorry, Kathy. Your friend Nicole's story is simply not adding up.
Ouch....touchy....
Oh, no....I read it.
Right....now....did these LGBTQ chefs come in for the day to your agency and prepare this "Gay chicken?" Or was the "Gay chicken" prepared offsite, then brought in, during which time you were notified that "Gay chicken" was available in the cafeteria?
Right....so in regards to "inclusion" - you're claiming that people are being unfairly hired/promoted because of their race or other factors? Could you share an example?
I'm just curious as to how this daily onslaught is perhaps harming the mental health of the employees.
Well it’s still good to hear there is at least a remnant of sane civil servants. Thank you for choosing to be that BTW.
It’s kinda shocking how so many otherwise intelligent ppl just buy into the insanity of DEI, CRT, and it’s associated total BS. It’s like they only watch/hear MSNBC or CNN or listen to NPR. Sometimes I even wonder if I’m not the crazy one and I remember about fifteen or years ago when the question of same sex marriage was a ballot question in most states. Even where it got voted down, activist judges overruled the will of the general public. I strongly disagreed with it then (and still think it’s not really right) and had people tell me that it’s inevitable so why fight it.
I don’t care if who ppl want to sleep with, but marriage is first and foremost a sacrament. It supposedly is bringing God into your relationship. God is very clear about His intentions for righteousness in intimacy. I’ve heard the arguments regarding the meaning of Sodom and Gomorrah however there are so many other passages in scripture that address this issue it cannot be explained away as a misunderstanding. If at the time of judgement God sees fit to overlook anything it certainly would be His place to do so. I cannot honestly excuse any action specifically designated as sinful yet sins of the flesh are not as weighted as sins of conscious like purposefully giving false testimony. Trying to rewrite or misrepresent scripture to ease the conscious of others is giving false testimony. This has become the new normal in many Christian denominations lest anyone be offended. For that matter at least half the congregants of any given community are adulterers and this is also egregious to God. I’ve also gotten into many an argument that there could be some nationally recognized “civil-union” that does not attempt to be some faux sacrament. There are ways to make these things work in a legal fashion without incorporating a morally questionable ceremony.
I apologize. I’m getting preachy here and, well, I’m no moral authority. Anyway, we seem determined to destroy ourselves.
We embrace violence, encourage the worst kind of behavior and now cannot even be civil. I remember hearing idiots claim that civility itself was another form of white supremacy back in 2016. They (the leftist crazies) were pulling out all the stops to construe conservatives as basically evil.
I kinda dread the upcoming mud slinging. If there can’t be any measure of rational discourse now I don’t think it’s gonna get better. Too many ppl in congress act like ignorant screeches now without the drama of an election.
Ah well, what’s supposed to be progress doesn’t feel or look like it.
Maybe it’s just my own inability to see it.
I've spent many years thinking about all this, and I think it is important to look at root causes. When it comes to "philosophy"--and what Marx provided was a philosophy, one of bitterness, meanness, vindictiveness and deceit--it is always important to look at the people who created them. You have to ask "what question is this person trying to answer".
The root, obvious question is: what is the nature of our lives, and what is the best use of the finite time we have? Why are we here, and what should we do to feel good on some level, either the high level of sacrifice that feels meaningful, or lower levels such as simply feeling satiated in every sensory way?
Everywhere I look, I see people failing to come up with good answers. Leading obvious contenders are career success, "being nice", pop spirituality in yoga pants, traditional Christianity or other religion, and of course the many slow suicides of alcoholism, drug abuse, and other addictions.
In a world where all of us see many Amazon delivery trucks every day, people want something simple, prepackaged, largely effortless, and that is delivered once and then done. DEI fits that bill. It is simple, there is a program, the participants get the feels, and in some quarters companies that do this stupid shit make more money.
Conservatives say no, no, no, but even though there are many, many good articulations of our ideas--that would include most of Western Philosophy, which as examples came up with the ideas of formalized Democracy, Republics, Constitutions, universal human rights, and the formal use of reason to resolve political issues via free public dialogue and debate--by and large the EMOTIONAL benefits and simple answers provided by the Left have overwhelmed them, made them invisible, and filled the entire world with an invisible fog.
After many years of considering all this, I have come to the decision that the SIMPLEST simplifying heuristic is rooted in psychology, and that the simplest useful idea is that the purpose of life is growth and individuation. Maturing. Differentiation, as Murry Bowen--who stirred most of these ideas within me--would put it.
So at root the conflict is between people who want to formalize infantile, immature forms of society that in aggregate can and should be called Collectivism--of which Marxism, Fascism and their various bastard children (including "God", aka DEI) are all examples; the alternative is Individualism. One person, one voice, one truth, but one in connection with all others.
The core proposition of science, of course, is that Reality is what it is, regardless of our opinions about it. This may or may not be true. That is a debateable question. But that each of us comes into every situation and question with a unique set of experiences, physiology, ideas and education, and visceral and delayed reactions, is obvious. That's how it works.
And over time, and over broad populations, societies work better, if all voices CAN be heard, even if we don't agree with them. But listening to someone speak that we don't agree with is something only mature, individuated people can do. By definition, then, Collectivists can't. They don't give a shit what BS they are shoveled, as long as they are told what to do and say and can reliably expect everyone else around them to say and do the same things. Those who don't threaten them, because their whole sense of self is fragile, because entirely dependent on their social context.
So in my view, the heuristic sane people should always ask of any idea: does this work to help people differentiate themselves, to grow up, to find their own identities and selves, or is it predicated on reducing people to the accidents of their births, and to their conformity to or rejection of bad ideas imposed through violence and coercion? Is the Big Idea that a small number of relatively sick and undifferentiated people should make decisions for all of us, or that the intelligence of our civilization is shown by the fact that all of us together tend to be smarter than any of us alone, at least over time and in aggregate?
My vision is that our society can and should develop to such a level that any person, picked up off of any street, should be capable of running our government competently. Put another way, rather than be ruled by elites, I think the goal is that we should all become elite, compared to what we are today.
All of this is possible. It is obviously possible. It is sick, anti-human people who throw up emotionally rooted objections to all this. Much of this is clinically psychotic, perhaps more codependent. All of it is infantile.
I am going to append this quote, from Max Planck, one of the pioneers of Quantum Physics, and a genius in every respect:
“Religion represents a bond of man to God. It consists in reverent awe before a supernatural Might [Macht], to which human life is subordinated and which has in its power our welfare and misery. To remain in permanent contact with this Might and keep it all the time inclined to oneself, is the unending effort and the highest goal of the believing man. Because only in such a way can one feel himself safe before expected and unexpected dangers, which threaten one in his life, and can take part in the highest happiness – inner psychical peace – which can be attained only by means of strong bond to God and unconditional trust to His omnipotence and willingness to help.”
For myself, I tend to try and keep issues of metaphysics out of arguments addressed to a larger audience, among whom are reliably those who have been indoctrinated in a scientifically outmoded Materialism. To my mind, progress is done step by step, and if I can show a step that does not require any more assumptions than those obvious to all, then that is good. But in my own view, in the Big Picture of the problems of our own civilization, a core element is clearly the loss of God, and sense that we live meaningless lives of very short duration in an infinite universe. That makes all social problems harder to solve. Why not be selfish, when nothing matters, and there is no reckoning?
But science is not atheistic. This is a misunderstanding. Science can be and should be a partner to religion. Planck again: “It is the steady, ongoing, never-slackening fight against scepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition, which religion and science wage together. The directing watchword in this struggle runs from the remotest past to the distant future: ‘On to God!’
I found an very interesting podcast called Physics to God. 2 orthodox Jewish rabbis , one a physicist one a mathematician. If someone decides to try it on YouTube make sure to start with the introduction and go in order.
Two fundamental foundations of Quantum Theory are that 1) matter does not exist but Consciousness does (at least as implied by the Copenhagen Interpretation and the work of among others John von Neuman); and 2) and that we live within a nearly infinite field of energy that, as Richard Feynman put it, contains enough latent energy in one square meter of "empty" space to boil every ocean on Earth.
And an interesting third is Non-Locality, which has been proven mathematically and demonstrated experimentally, in which there are no limits place by time or space on communication. All of us were taught that light is the fastest thing in the universe. Yet, orthodox, daily Quantum Physics has shown that in principle a particle a billion light years in one direction can communicate INSTANLY with a particle a billion light years in the opposite direction. This fact is the basis, in my understanding, of quantum computing, or at least one of them.
These are all extraordinary SCIENTIFIC claims. They do not imply one should start going to church, but rather that we should start allocating resources to understanding what all this implies for human life, and what lies above, beyond, and around it.
Yes, but going to church is still a good idea. 😊
I don't disagree, but it's not for everyone. I was personally raised as a Southern Baptist, and would never go back.
Still, it seems to be an empirical fact that people who go to church live longer. And by quite a bit.
Here is one study that shows a 55% reduced risk of death: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/crmh/worship.php
In years, it is something like 5 years. If it were a medicine, all doctors would be recommending it.
You bet. I’m pretty sure that we were designed to think; critically especially. Asking God to help in the pursuit of increased understanding of any of the sciences might yield more fruit than not. There is no opposition between faith and intellect.
You really don’t need to check your brains at the door.
Scientific enquiry and advances can and should be tempered with sound moral judgement. Just because we can do a thing doesn’t mean we should or that it’s a good idea.
I find it fascinating that nearly every ancient people believed in the concept of an afterlife and most of them believed in some form of reckoning. But in our more modern world we assume that there is no basis for this notion and dismiss it as foolishness.
I guess in time we’ll all discover the truth.
I will add, that one book I have often recommended is Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality. He does nothing more or less than try and tease out the metaphysical implications of Quantum Theory in an honest way, as done by a professor of physics.
It is my personal sense--and this is nothing more than a feeling, albeit one buttressed by a lot of reading--that most of what has been going on in Theoretical Physics for the past 50 years has been a ridiculous and unsuccessive effort to take God back out of their equations. They want to feel superior to a dead universe, but they face the insurmountable obstacle that all the evidence indicates the universe is alive.
I always thought that is what Stephen Hawking was trying to do, prove there didn't have to be a God.
And, near the end of his life he said, "It wouldn't be much of a universe without the people you love."
As you say, "they face the insurmountable obstacle."
If you do start watching Physics to God , I would so appreciate your thoughts.
I will listen! Thanks Disa!
Which God?
That's a scientific question. Until we figure it out, any God that unifies your life, gives you hope, and doesn't impel you to do destructive hateful things.
That’s the rub. I came to the conclusion that if there is a God, one not of my own making, then I needed to know that God. If we can simply choose what/who God is then go to any restroom and take a good look in the mirror because that is the face of your God.
I know ppl who have different faiths but not of their own design. They are decent ppl with strong faith in their scriptures. I cannot agree that their vision of God is correct as I firmly believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph. If it were true that there are other Gods then my God is a charlatan and liar.
If God gives ppl the choice to believe in Him or not then who am I to force anyone to believe otherwise. Just being a good person is nice but in the end if you deny God then you are nothing more than a people pleaser and yeah, those people will mourn you but they aren’t the judge of your soul. Being kind and your brothers keeper is a part of Gods plan but for those who believe it is in the service of God, not man.
This is such well thought out comment and I absolutely agree with you on the simplicity angle -- DEI is a tribe for these people, a talisman to ward off the “raaaaacists” and to prove their moral superiority. And it takes such little effort. Slap that rainbow ally sticker on your door and boom, you’re one of the good guys.
Gotta tell you, Nicole, your thoughtful and witty comments are very enlightening. Plus, they give me hope that not everyone in your line of work has been brainwashed.
Listening to (or reading about) silly indoctrination rituals at our federal agencies makes me despair for my children’s futures.
Ha thanks! You have to keep your sense of humor about it and so far it hasn’t prevented us from doing to the work we need to do. But that could change if the ship doesn’t turn around soon and/or as those of who acutely remember 9/11 (and changed our career direction because of it) age out. I have three littles too and that’s what continues to motivate me. America is still the greatest country, blessed by God but He’s humbling us. Question is, will we stop yelling at each other long enough to listen?
Many in that community are patriots. Many love the ideals that gave us the concept of America. I hope that the erosion of those values now driven by the complete control the left has on all institutions doesn't extend to noble individual who is personally motivated to serve his or her people.
Its tribal and its holy.
Spot on.
I cannot for the life of me see how anybody would want to be a communist. Every commie government past and present rules by murder and terror.
To me it seems that only psychopaths, the mentally unbalanced, want to be communists.
But communism helps us all to be respected as equals.
At least it says it does.
North Korea? Not real communism.
USSR? Not real communism.
Cambodia? Not real Communism.
Venezuela, Cuba, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia..... ? not real communism.
Maoist China? Not real communism.
Special Economic Zone China? Truly not real communism (authoritarianism with some free markets).
But if I claim to be a Marxist, people think I am compassionate and care about poor people, and I feel virtuous. Don’t complicate our feelings with your silly facts!
The U.S.? Not real capitalism! Getting more and more socialist all the time where the rich get richer, the politicians create more benefits for the poor, and the middle class pays taxes on the money they make as well as everything they buy.
To my eye, communism can only overtake a free republic during times of chaos. They tried that "proletariat revolution" stuff in the past, but in places like the U.S. (historically, at least) people were fairly happy - and more importantly, looking forward to even better times. That's what the Soros gang, the WEF, the climate nuts, wannabe dictators like Gigolo Kerry, Hillary Ramrod Clinton, Hussein Obama, et al, have run into, so they sew chaos when there is even the tiniest thing to complain about. Saint George Floyd, for example.
We're all "racists," you see. Those of us, including a white boy from the Head of the Holler in BFE, West Virginia (Bumfuck Egypt, for those not versed in mountain talk), are all "privileged" and according to Ramrod, must be "reeducated."
Uh-huh. Try that; see how it goes....this ain't Canada - at least not yet.
The one thing they just can't deal with is that when Americans get tired of it all, they have the means to stop it - something possessed by nobody else anywhere on the globe. (HT to Thomas, George, Benjamin, John, and all the others) They just can't deal with that, are afraid of us, and By God they should be. This has to stop. This WILL stop.
because like everywhere those who initiate and support the idea think they will be the only ones who benefit as there are always ome "at the top" who pay attention to the rules they make for others..
This. Absolutely.
"It will be different this time"
History says it won't.
Agree 100%
Donate to The Manhattan Institute--Rufo, Glenn Lowry, Heather MacDonald are there. Donate to Prager U and Hillsdale. Voices of sanity in a world gone mad.
Dear Maureen, For us Hillsdale. As a bonus for your donation you'll receive, monthly, Impremis, their newsletter well worth the price of admission. I will look into those others and possibly chuck a few shekels there.
Yup. Supporting speaking truth to power is righteous and powerful. I think most normal people know the truth when they hear it. But if it collides with your personal pursuits then people get angry. “Don’t tell me I’m doing something wrong.” Like petulant children they have temper tantrums and then it’s your fault you said something they don’t like or want to hear.
What they don’t understand is that the truth will set you free.
Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
― Mark Twain
Awesome, Jim.
My brother reports that it is useless to argue with a pig - you both get covered in shite and the pig loves it!
I'm gonna practice your response!
Even at 70, I can get away with it; I'm 6'1" and 230#, have a thick Hillbilly accent, and don't generally look that friendly. LOL.
Dear Mr. Wills, nearly as tall, ten pounds lighter and a tropical accent. No one ever approaches me asking for directions.
Dear Mr. Hall, As Twain said "Don't try to teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you and annoys the pig."
Good point about not arguing. I have learned to avoid all DEI discussion with one of my children.
Guessing it’s a girl child.
Actually it is my son. But he is younger than my daughter with whom I can converse.
Experience will help him see the truth. As will your example. Lucky kids to have a dad who wants to converse with them!
They'll come around M? Former Rad. Mine have. Once they start families I went back to being a font of wisdom after two decades of yeah? I got a coolest grandpa ever ball cap from my most stridently confused daughter. I gather from your nom de plume you were a problem child to your parents.
Ha! I was actually the good child.
Jim, I have read the book too, as I did Rufo's and Yascha's. They all provided me with clarity and insight. But I had the opposite conclusion. We absolutely have to engage with those that find "Woke" and "DEI" appealing.
We have to understand their deeper motivation and acknolege the remaining injustices that fuel the broad adoption. And then engage into a conversation that shows that the Western, universalist, liberal approach is the best and most proven concept to make progress to address these remaining unjustices.
The Perfect has always been the enemy of progress. We should not resort to the "tribal" impulses but rather strive to make the "ingroup" as large as we can possible make it.
Sometimes I think that, too. Then I think of time-invested vs. results-obtained and I go back to the Roosevelt (Teddy, not Franklin) approach: when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
I had no idea Rufo's intellect was so strong. Yascha is a smart cookie and I like him a lot, but I thought Rufo clearly got the best of him.
ok dont argue with them but we definitely need to talk with them. This flame of irrationality will burn itself out. The narrative is changing and we can welcome the majority back to a more sensible way.
Dear Patrick, Sometimes conversing with these kids born in the 1990s and not exposed to challenges to their ideas causes them visible anxiety when questions are asked even politely. When our kids within the extended family brought dates to holiday gatherings I was astounded by how easily they become overwhelmed by differing opinion to their narrative.
Very true on how easily they become overwhelmed. However, I find many to be very smart, and driven. They have been exposed to a very illiberal philosophy( There is nothing liberal about DEI) Demonstrating that DEI wont produce the results they want is a step in the right direction.
The answer cant be a pivot towards rightwing victimhood ideology. That would be a different side of the same coin. It wont advance the country. America has so much going for itself. If we can kill DEI, which I am positive we have seen the worst of it and are restoring some sanity. The solution is in our hands.
Dear Mr. Patrick from your mind to the creator's. Hope Springs eternal.
Your approach could be called “Pearls before swine” (ie don’t waste your time casting your pearls of reasoned argument, to the swine of Lefty feelings-based beliefs.
"Pearls before swine" is well-known as a Bible quote: Matthew 7:6 - Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.
*******************
Of course you're familiar with the Dorothy Parker story ....
She and socialite Clare Boothe Luce were approaching a doorway simultaneously, and Luce stepped back, inviting Parker to go through first, saying, "Age before beauty," - at which point Parker sweeps through the port and with a little flair, says, "Pearls before swine." Maybe apocryphal, but probably the classic comeback of all time.
Sometime I'll regale you with the ex-wife/vacuum cleaner story - that's my best comeback so far.
Yes!! But the ones who will converse politely using their own brain power and their own convictions instead of vomiting out what has been poured into them…I will listen. I want to, because although life is short, in walking away from all of these clowns, I would be walking away from many many family members…
Good on ya, don’t give away your peace.
This is an interesting debate as both have valid points. What neither has is a counterargument. Too often, the right in this country is reactionary to what the cultural Marxists have to say rather than having something to counter it with. The best in the Primary season was the DeSantis line that DEI stood for Discrimination, Exclusion, and Indoctrination. Haley tried with her line that the US was never racist, but that shows she never read a history book or understood the times people lived in. And Trump is too busy lining up people to kiss his ring than to have a persuasive argument.
In the end, the DEI crowd has to get defeated by ideas leading to their ideals to get chucked into the dustbin of history. They are on the ropes now, as people see them for who they are and are disgusted by them. But the knockout punch has to come from a celebration of the individual and a celebration of ethnic heritage. It's a leftist worldview to talk about people in broad census categories rather than ethnicity. We all come from a country and tribe. Now. Most of us are a mix of so many groups. That is why we love to get our genealogy done. I am part of this or that, and I appreciate the customs of those groups. All that leads to the person's ability to live and think freely. Be the best version of you.
These leftist idiots have nothing for the individual except to be sheep in their flock. They are unthinking people who do what they are told. When given that choice of freedom, opportunity, and competence, the buffoons on the left can get crushed. We all need something to dream about, and that is mine. I hope there's some on here as well.
Ask yourself why the Left desperately spent four years twisting itself in a knot to destroy Trump - and continued after they stole the 2020 election - and you will understand why many of us support his re-election in a clear eyed way.
You are free to have a hero in Trump. He did many good things. My vote for him is my best as the three judges he appointed saved the country. You are free to support him but he was also a terrible manager, huge spender and thin skinned jackass. I just want something better than him.
See, Albert, that's where you get it all wrong. Trump isn't a "hero" to most of us. He's a flawed guy, as are we all. But he's one of the few pols (to the extent he's become one) with the courage and self-confidence to say what most of us think on issues that really shouldn't be a matter of dispute or disagreement. Such as the madness of open borders, China trade, free speech, economic freedom and the folly of nation building.
I give you all of those points but he is such a childish, repellent, megomaniac that his being so prevents a large portion of the population from hearing his message. He gets in his own way. And you can say he cheated, but he also repelled so many people that voted against him. He is his own worst enemy and gives his opponents a cudgel to beat him with through his actions.
Not necessarily wrong. But sometimes you have to ride the horse you're given. And right now, Trump is the only horse in the race that will stand against the madness of the American hating leftist Democrats. Whom I find repellent in every way imaginable.
We are on the same page. My anger at Trump is that his personality feeds the attacks against him. This election should be on Biden's ineptitude, government incompetence, and the evil of what the modern left is. A skilled person hitting them at every stop, but that would mean that the election isn't about Trump, and I don't think his ego will permit that. I just want to beat the left, and Trump's inability to keep the spotlight on Biden is the only way he wins.
"We have to destroy the country to save it."
Yes, Trump is an ass. All those who oppose him cannot control their emotions, which prevents them from hearing his message. Don’t blame their immature reaction and inability to settle themselves on Trump, it’s their own damn fault. Trump’s policies are what his supporters can see through all of the noise. Simple ideas to help America on trade, security, foreign policy. This isn’t rocket science. Biden is going out of his way to destroy the American experiment.
DearMr. Katz president biden doesn't decide anything. He reads a script and he fails miserably with the delivery. One must look through the fog the illegitimate regime generates.
Agreed but they vote and there is a lot of them. Democracy is messy and the goal is to win 270 electoral votes. You have to convince them and being a jackass as Trump is prevents you from winning. I want to win not make excuses.
Your position is understandable on an emotional level. But many others feel that nobody is perfect, that perfection is the enemy of good, and that in a binary choice, you suck it up and oppose what you do not believe is appropriate.
I really don’t care about Trump’s personality. Did the Democrats care at all about Bill Clinton getting a blow job from a young intern in the oval office?
Some did that led to GW Bush beating Gore in 2000. In a tight election you need every vote and though you might not, others do. And I would like to win in a blow out. I appreciate your points.
and many more from many others..
How do you think Obama would have responded if he got the insults Trump gets everyday. If he even got a question from a Republican journalist the whole group of lefties yelled and screamed.
Obama was insulted every day. Every President gets insulted every day. What is your point?
Dear Ms. Linda, I suppose that soon enough the opinions typed herein will warrant a visit from body armored agents working at the rogue enforcement arm of the DNC.
He’s the only candidate that has come out against Digital currency. That is the ultimate control over you. CBDC, Mandatory central kill switches in vehicles, electric vehicles, electric stoves and smart thermostats - every one of these can be turned off with a keystroke or a social credit score.
Excellent point.
see these are the things no one imagines could happen. and yet .. if the vote goes the wrong way.. they will happen. why cant people see that
Those things don’t really matter when all “they“ have to do is pull a Justin Trudeau and freeze your assets. BOA voluntarily turned over customer data post January 6 so that scenario is not at all out of the realm of possibility IMO.
Why is it then that Mitch McConnell says that Trump made Johnson bail on the border bill? Trump is not doing anything for the good of the country, he is running to save himself from jail. Ends never justify the means. Choose a person who would not act as a king or dictator, and we will all vote for him.
This "king or dictator" rhetoric is getting tiresome. Trump was president for four years. He never ruled as a king or dictator, even respecting the ruling of pathetic federal district court judges on a power trip. Then came Biden who rules by executive fiat and has his Stasi arrest moms at school board meetings and religious leaders who resist his edicts. Mitch is way past his expiration date. He short circuits more often than not. Quoting him hardly advances your cause.
Trump is despicable, but the dictator meme is indeed risible rubbish. Trump’s toddler-age maturity notwithstanding, he’s light years better than the corrupt feckless numbskull currently in office.
Mitch McConnell flat out said that funding Ukraine was much more important than border security. That’s where he is coming from. Give credits to anything this warmonger says? His border security bill will allow 5000 migrants per day into this country. That is border security?
Compared to right now it would be an improvement. Isn't that sad?
Trump would not be facing jail if he were not running for president. I expect he could quickly get all the charges dropped if he withdrew from the race..
and those ridiculous amount of $$ for E Jean.. who cannot remember what day she was "attacked" nor the actual circumstances. do you wonder how she lives now?? who pays those lawyers
Saul Alinsky, in his book Rules for Radicals, has a chapter titled Of Means & Ends. In that chapter he discusses at length the balance between means and ends and its impact on integrity and common decency. My conclusion from the past 5 years is that the Democrats have adopted the motto: any means to an end. As demonstrated by all of the various attacks on Trump over this time period. Russia Gate is one. Georgia collusion with the White House on the insurrection charges is another. Taibbi wrote an essay outlining all of this just the other day. It’s quite impressive.
The tragedy of this times is that both sides are less and less concerned with the means - it is a proverbial horseshoe principle, as both parties shift to the extremes. I would have voted for Haley but Republicans want Trump, so Biden is as close to the center as i can get on the ballot in this cold civil war.
The mess on the border is a result of the legislative stalemate. The law must change, but Republicans like using it as leverage, Democrats naively think it gets them more votes.
As a fluent Russian speaker with very deep knowledge of Russian affairs, I can assure you that the reasons for war in Ukraine had nothing to do with who is in the White House. I do believe that Trump would have ended the war in Ukraine in 24 hours by not answering Zelensky's plea for help and letting Putin swallow Ukraine. In short term it would be great for the US, like in 1939 Chamberlain got peace for the UK. You know what happened after.
They adopted that decades ago. It has not been just 5 years.
That border bill is awful. It is just money we do not have to speed up processing. It expands presidential authority to "close the border" if a certain number of crossings occur daily. Which does not mean this one would. And the cartels control completely the daily crossings anyway. So I'd the magic numbers is 5000, 4999 will pass. That's why when the pols visit crossings dry up. And it does not address those not at border crossings at all. I pray it does not pass and that the border impaired wise up.
You really can’t trust Mitch McConnell. If his bill was so good and would have solved the problem, all he had to do was make it public. The public could have seen how great it was and then put pressure on to pass it.
garland openly said they were pursuing trump in the courts because he is running for president.
there's no possibility that any thinking person could vote for an administration that does such a thing.
dictator? if he was a dictator why is he a full blown advocate of 2a?
Reference to the date, time and location when he said that, please!
Mitch McConnell will blame anyone but himself for his failures. He needs to leave. You are not supposed to stay in Congress until you die.
LOL. did he act as a king when he was President. no he didnt. what makes you think he would act that way or that he actually could
Agree and I continue to wonder why with all the talent and knowledge in the USA we cannot identify better candidates.
The political theatre is what keeps good candidates out.
Why would any self respecting person want to be subject to such insanity ?
Ok Mr Loveland, I waded through every word of this sub-thread and I'm still waiting all agog for the name of the Paragon that would be acceptable to you. And could possibly win the job.
…. don’t you know that notion, just crossed my mind …..
Sadly DeSantis was not ready for prime time. Haley is better than Trump but she has no shot. I will hold my nose and vote for Trump or a third party canidate if viable.
DeSantis would be excellent. Unfortunately, the electorate wants a tall person with lots of charisma. This is where DeSantis failed. He is an excellent executive, very capable, very smart and very humble.
Me too. He’s an obnoxious braggart and petulant child at times but can be surprisingly deft at times, even eloquent. His basic ideology aligns with my own and he tried very hard to fulfill his promises. Not being a big supporter of the military industrial complex scared the left who have fully infiltrated this sector. They hate that he exposes them for what they are.
Taibbi had two excellent articles related to this just this week. Pretty stunning in-depth stuff.
God Bless you Bruce. Your post has been the best, to the point and shortest, so far on TFP today. We need to focus on the 10 months ahead and vote the right man to power. We have a real challenge ahead of us we must stay the course. Thank you!!!
I think you are right that eventually DEI will be defeated by better ideas. But the immediate battle is to allow those ideas to be expressed and heard. That means breaking the stranglehold DEI has on free speech, who can speak on campuses, what can be posted on social media, what gets through mass media filters, etc. There will be no competition of ideas as long as expressing one set of ideas will get you fired or worse.
Excellent point. Stifling intellect to dogma is certainly not progressive or democratic.
If you seek an idea to defeat DEI, what about the status quo ? Why do we have to change something that works to eliminate DEI ? Our society is on the right path, it has created more wealth and given more opportunities than in the history of man. It is not inherently racist as the DEI supporters argue. DEI is Marxist. It must be eliminated. There is no need to replace it with anything or ideas other than what was there before.
Marxism applied to any issue virtually always devolves into totalitarianism enforced by a burgeoning, self-important bureaucracy that lives to punish wrongthink, as defined by themselves (and boy, are they bossy.)
The founding principles of this country are personal responsibility and freedom of speech, which usually bring out the good in citizens, who are free to ostracize those whose behavior is offensive. Most learn these principles at home, at church, at school and from the examples set by honorable adults -- not by being told what and how to think. We have a justice system to deal with the few who resist growing up.
I hear you Albert.
But in my view, DEI as adopted en masse by academia, government, and corporations withers on the vine the minute people walk onto the street, squint into the sunlight and meet eye to eye other people in real life situations where no theoretical preposition holds water. Aggressor? Colonialist? Black? Trans? Victim?
I do not want to be crass - but out there where all Americans live in the real world hustling for a pay check, worrying about their kids, running down into the subway, bumping into you on the sidewalk and cursing you, on an assembly line or checkout counter, at a gas station on the Interstate - they don't give a shit what the hell DEI is and they don't care about the person who cares to espouse upon what is owed them due to the latest grievance orthodoxy. And that twenty two year old millennial will learn very soon to keep her or his mouth shut when out being microaggressed by every day face to face encounters, where insults reign, attitudes are coarse, and where there are no safe rooms. Where you have to earn a smile tossed your way.
There's no room for what they believe in out there.
So we’ll said. I tip my hat sir.
One can hope.
Great comment!
So well said. Thank you.
Mounk comes across as quite the constructor of strawmen, and kind of a bully.
You left out Ramaswamy. Woke Incorporated was the opening round of countering DEI and SDG in the corporate sector. I look forward to seeing him in the coming administration.
Dude. The Marxists ARE the reactionaries. Those who oppose them are the defenders. What you are asking for is to react to the reaction. To do so abandons the original POV. To not understand that is to play by their rules. Does that ring any bells? So if you need to say something start with "No. I do not accept your premise/argument." then let them natter on. This is not as condescending as it sounds. It gets them to state a position rather than a slogan. It will require engaging their thought processes. Maybe even jumpstart some critical analysis.
My comment is in the battle of ideas who dont see this. A wide swath of the country is not read in on this battle and need to be won. You first have to open ones mind to convince them. ITs all about pursuasion and winning the argument in their minds, not yours.
I understand their minds need to be opened. I just see no validity to the proposition that new ideas have to be generated. These people have not evolved beyond the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law that flows therefrom. Argue those ideas.
New times always require new ideas , thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I would say new times might call for an evolution of ideas. I also think the Constitution was explicitly designed in recognition thereof.
My point is that you have to convince people where they with messages that resonate with them. You are correct but you only speak to a small sliver of the population. And yes the MSM media is a problem only so much as the GOP plays the game and doesn't fight back with anything. Finally, most are illeducated when it comes to history so your messages won't resonate as they don't know what you are talking about.
what "new times". post covid? arent all times new times?
Many conservative commentators, in my view, make the mistake of trying to blame the whole Wokeness madness off on just a small so-called ruling 'elite' rather than face up to the harder fact that it has now become the mentality of tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of the middle class in all Western countries. It's not a conspiracy.... more kind of a mass psychosis. Wokeness in general terms – race-grifting, transgender/ 'nonbinary' blah blah etc -these things emerged from the petri-dishes of spoilt pseudo-intellectuals that Western society has fecklessly allowed to become 'professors' in universities. It has then leaked out across the culture because most people - however 'educated' they are - are intellectual sheep (genuine independent-mindedness is a rarity). It's a shame that it's NOT a conspiracy because that would be easier to undo. But the truth is much worse than that; it is a (probably terminal) civilisational decadence that nobody is in control of so nobody can correct. Apart from a war or natural catastrophe maybe.
Dr. Malone identified it as a mass formation psychosis. Not unlike the madness that gripped the entire German society. Most men (at least those not completely feminized) know it's complete nonsense. But white women are particularly vulnerable to this insanity, as confirmed by their fealty to the irrefutably abominable Democrat Party
"Most men"? I thought you weren't a fan of identity politics, but it sounds like you woke up on the woke side of the bed today. I'm related to these people and I observe that there's little daylight between the women and the men when it comes to Democrat Party dementia.
I used to blame it all on the media, but we do have the ability to think critically, so I had to stop giving them a pass. After all, I managed to escape.
There's an internal process at work: they derive their self-esteem from believing that they're superior to conservatives: more loving, tolerant, worldly, knowledgeable, smarter. Moral hubris underlies progressivism, but paradoxically, it would collapse under its own weight without a pathological level of fear of the "other." The only people they have no tolerance for are those who disagree with them. Funny, that.
Very apt. I would add, however, that the cult of identity politics is also about “belonging”, which is a key psychological need, and which has been in short supply as our civilization has become more atomized. It’s a heady cocktail of status, belonging, hubris, narcissism, power, and hate. What can overthrow that? Damned if I know...
Many years ago, in a psychological experiment, the researchers looked at what people thought was most important: being free or being loved. Everyone SAID they would choose freedom, but when push came to shove, they ACTUALLY chose love. That says a lot about these movements we’re seeing in the age of social media.
That’s a very astute comment. Still, where does all the irrational fear come from? Their level of fear is so over the top, they make themselves ill with anxiety. I spent an evening with a group of them recently and every few minutes there was a sarcastic joke either about Florida, land of banned books and fascists, or where we were going to live if Trump got reelected. And then there’s the permanent mask wearing. These are grown-up people. I’m confounded.
The most disheartening thing is to see them abandon basic American principles they once held dear, like free speech. When we were young hippies, government censorship and state interference in our personal lives was intolerable. Now they approve speech codes and cancellations so we can all “stay safe.”
Regarding your love hypothesis, one thing that makes me different from them is that I’m a lesbian, an old one at that, so I’ve lived most of my life as an outsider of sorts. Maybe that’s why I care not at all whether people accept or reject me for my views.
I think the fear is related to the tribalism (an extreme form of belonging). They fear anything that might threaten their tribe (you having a different opinion, for example) and I think it’s also related to the hubris (if someone has a different opinion, that could mean I’m wrong, which should never, ever happen).
The anxiety is also being foisted on them by the elites/government/MSM (people wracked by fear are more easily led)— and (maybe more importantly) by the Internet itself. As Marshall McLuhan said, back in the 70s, the medium is the message. As a hunting/gathering species, we are not made to process information at the levels of the electronic age. I think it’s really doing a number on peoples brains and emotions.
Best comment I read.
Not this one.
nor this one
I 💯 agree, and I am a woman.
Toxic femininity/toxic compassion
Faux femininity?
This comment explains a lot.
I believe the last sentence in your post is correct. The most recent 3 generations have seen or experienced no real adversity or, as they like to describe all their perceived grievances, existential threats. They live their lives enjoying the fruits of Western freedom and capitalism, not understanding or comprehending any other way of living. Adversity in all of its forms is seen as oppression. They are empty souls searching for purpose in their lives. Easy fodder for those that seek power by way of the neo-Marxist/woke/DEI cultural revolution they are pushing.
That's why the study of history is so important, and why it's especially pernicious when academics present historical tragedies as caused by racial characteristics rather than the flawed nature of the human condition (looking at you 1619).
As Juvenal stated toward the end of the Roman Empire: Now we suffer the wages of a long peace; luxuary more cruel than war broods over us and avenges a conquered world.
hard times make tough men... you know the rest
I like to think it's not most people, but perhaps 30% of people that fall in line. I also don't give them the benefit of the doubt that this is mass psychosis, but instead was always there waiting for an opportunity to rule over and bring down their fellow humans. It crosses race and sex boundaries and it is absolutely Marxist. "Apart from a war." That is very possibly coming.
Perhaps these differences of perception come down to our different experiences of social worlds. I am retired now but throughout my working life (in the Education and Architectural professions) I was 100% surrounded by Lefties. They were mostly decent people and none of them wanted to 'rule over' their fellow humans....they were simply intellectual sheep. Going with the flow is just human nature....the idea of a 'democracy' of free-thinking, fiercely independent-minded individuals was always largely a fairytale.
I'm also retired and spent most of my career in the US military. Political views of military members vary more than most realize. I was also exposed at a young age to pictures from the Mengele and Gestapo archives while living with my father in Holland for a year in the early 70's. I've spent much time thinking about how this happens, and I believe the majority of people wanted to just go with the flow and/or were terrified. But I also believe there's a fairly sizeable part of the population that would love the opportunity to rule over their fellow humans, but our guardrails, our government structure, Constitution and traditions keep them in check. Those guardrails are crumbling. Maybe it's because I've been an independent minded, precocious feminist since a very young age, and I have experienced a huge number of women and men over my lifetime try to pressure me to get back in the lines they've prescribed.
They're not just trying to rule over our lives; it's here and happening now.
It began with ObamaCare. Never before In America have we been forced to but anything. Now seniors have to buy maternity care.
Try building a house. See how many choices you get to make....lightbulbs, shower fixtures, & assorted materials. Before long you won't be ale to buy dishwashers, gas stoves, or ceiling fans.
EV's....We'll be soon forced to buy a car we don't want to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
They're even controlling how & when we vote to rig elections to their favor.
And on and on and on......
Try starting a business. Unless it is a food truck or other low level service provider forget it. And if you form one of those through a formal business entity you are required to register with the feds and provide your identifying information and keep it updated. But don't worry - that info is only available to law enforcement and the IRS.
Yes different life experiences. I think we are basically on the same page here but from my experience (and I'm thinking of a lot of professional colleagues) it has been my perception that the attractions to them of holding politically correct opinions is that it enables them to tell themselves a pretty story about themselves - how 'nice' they are and how 'sophisticated'....and this nice bit of personal vanity costs them nothing plus has the benefit of making them fit in well. And I believe all this psychological faffery is entirely sub-conscious.
I'm afraid I have to side w/ you on this Beadle. I am in the arts. I experience getting politically corrected ALL the time! Even if it's just that someone wants to be a scold and correct your "wrong-speak" because it makes them feel "holier-than-thou! There is no question in my mind that at least a few people would be more than happy to assist in someone losing their job if they had an inkling that they voted for Trump (or some other crime or misdemeanor!)
I love my fellow contrarians. From a distance of course.
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.” John Stuart Mill.
They are not "decent people." They would have stood transfixed; drooling and cheering with delight at the Nuremberg Rallies
Agreed. The exposure I mentioned above to Graham changed me forever and I exude non-compliance. I believe it made me a walking trigger for those sorts. Friends have noticed I will walk into a room, and people I've never seen in my life will be triggered and become aggressive.
Drooling and cheering as they have over the Hamas atrocities against Israel, human beings are a strange lot
Which is why the Western liberal democracies have been SO SO foolish in allowing their universities to become Leftist sheep-dips - for the rising professional, managerial and administrative classes - for so many decades without most conservative politicians doing anything about it - or even noticing - until recently.
Well that is part of the problem. Those conservative politicians, many of them much lauded had no regard for the people they were supposed to serve, much less interest in protecting their values.
I would not elevate this issue to philosophical debates on Marxism. DEI came from Human Anger and Resentment of not getting enough of the Capitalist pie. And feelings of victimization. Some of which are accurate depending upon who you are.
And who best identifies with a victim is the 18-30 crowd. And the workforce needs them.
What is different now is the amount of Hate these supposedly Do Gooders are spreading. Unlike the 60’s The message is zero tolerance for anyone who doesn’t think like me. And the University climate is the same as the 1920’s pre Nazi Germany. So all the displaced anger is focused once again on the Jews.
I am puzzled by this reply. All my comments on this thread have been precisely the OPPOSITE of elevating this to debate on Marxism....quite the reverse in fact!
Surely your comment should have been a reply to someone else.
Most are decent people who think they just want good things, and don’t at all see themselves as wanting to control anyone. I had an ongoing discussion with one of these types, over the course of a couple of years. I finally got her to agree that her vision of a perfect society would need a person or group to control the distribution of “correct outcomes”, that her ideas could not happen without some level of coercion. Her justification? “We’ll, how else can you get people to do what they should do?”
I discontinued our discussions after that. There was nowhere else to go.
A little sign of hope - I live in Cambridge, MA, a city fully infected by the woke mind virus. This stuff is going away slowly but surely. I work for a high profile woke tech company with a coo, white Ivy League millionaire natch, who declared white men need to be uncomfortable in 2019. Most of the diversity and equity stuff has been purged bc it’s costing money. The trans stuff is disappearing, and a lot of Ukrainian flags have been taken down.
I am so glad you posted. I needed a little shot of hope today.
I think it is both. I think the fall in line folks are easily exploited by those with ill intent. And it appears to be much higher than 30%. Just think of the occasional drop in who lose their shite over comments here. I think this site is pretty tame.
I think back to middle and high school, and how the institutional setting sets up a great training environment for use by the 30%.
You mean mean girls rule?
Mean girls and manipulative guys.
Yeah but in my experience the mean girls can easily manipulate the manipulative guys. Maybe that is why the Barbie movie struck such a nerve.
Agreed - the activists are well organized and zealous while the rest of us just want to be left alone to do our jobs. I too work in Cambridge and the DEI stuff is baked into our policies. As you can imagine given the demographics, we are a very international and evenly gender split company. Interestingly, our very white CEO just announced that we need to form a BIPOC group. The DEI policies, women’s advocacy group and LGBTQ advocacy groups aren’t enough?
White Guilt makes people do stupid things to appear virtuous
I also work in Cambridge. We have some affinity groups, but my company is private. And you have to take a test to get an interview. It's been around for 45 years and is a billion dollar company. Philosphy is our customer success is our success. It's worked so far.
Yes. It's been decades in the making seeped into people's minds since they were kids.
It is an urban phenomena because hive mentality only works there. But hives are inherently flawed. They are weak because they relinquish autonomy to a central command. Eventually that command will make a fatal mistake.
I have come to believe what you are saying is true because those people cannot take care of themselves and are totally dependent on others. That is at least part of it. People in more rural areas can afford to disagree because their lives are much less dependent on others.
Yes that's true. I discuss all this in this post: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
Part of the reason for the sudden rise in this social contagion was when Barack Obama gave them a great big shout out and tax free microphone.
America is a big country with sharp divisions between the coastal and the 'flyover' states. But my life has been in the UK and this contagion has been building and building for over 60 years. If Western civilisation is ever going to confront it, it is vital to understand that it is NOT a sudden 'contagion'. And whilst I am no fan of Obama, to blame it all on him is to not really GET the depth of the contagion at all!.
I agree. But at least in the US it was as if he approved it (his wife was finally proud to be an American) and thus it was emboldened.
I realize that the genesis goes way back. I didn’t blame it entirely on BO. I pointed out that he “accelerated” it. The divisions in America are deeper than geographical coasts vs flyover states. Presently, it’s reached communities, next door neighbors and families. The Obama administration did little to promote unity while encouraging folks to call out as racists, those who disagreed with his policies. Even if that meant labeling your family members as bigots. There are broken relationships everywhere on every level and in every institution in our country. Had he been a uniter and promoter of good will for everyone, perhaps we would not have fallen this far. In my opinion, he certainly did throw gasoline on the fire. Currently, he’s living large while we try and salvage what unity we can find.
Rufo doesn't take the origins back far enough. Behind all the theories (critical race, critical legal, gender, etc.) is the same postmodern concept: "There are no facts, just perspectives and Power."
That goes back to the early 1900's and the rise of a postmodern approach to understanding life. Nietzsche is often cited as a big influence. This postmodern "There is not Truth, only perspectives and Power" becomes cutting-edge/cool in universities in the 1920's, just as veterans in their 20's survive WWI. These grad students in their 20's in the 1920's take over university leadership in their 50's and 60's--in the 1950's and 60's. Their grad students take over 30 years later in the 1990's and the third wave takes over in the 2010's.
Traditional universities hire professors of different perspectives so that we can compare ideas and judge which are closer to the Truth. Good faith debate is critical in the search for Truth.
But postmodern university leadership doesn't believe in Truth; they are utterly focused on power. They don't hire diverse viewpoints--no point to it. They hire postmodern professors just like themselves as an intentional way to gain power. After three waves of this, not only are alternative viewpoints eliminated from universities, the postmodern philosophy is pushed deep into secondary and elementary education, and law.
For these postmodern professors/leadership, it is all about power. Oppressors and oppressed. Words mean anything you want them to. Utter subjectivity. Everything is in the eye of the beholder. They told us 80 years ago they were going to take power by taking over education. We didn't listen.
How deep does this postmodern thinking penetrate? How often do you hear the word "empower"?
These people are postmodern, not Marxist. Nevertheless, to overthrow oppressive power, they adopt the tactics Marxists used to advance the people's revolution. (Check out the rate of bombings in the early 70's)
The unrest in the 2010's was entirely predictable--and was anticipated and muted in some areas of society.
Truth or Power--totally opposed, irreconcilable viewpoints in conflict. Which do you choose?
I choose the 5.56. The .223 produces only 55,000 psi, vs 58,000 for the 5.56. Also the 5.56 may jam in a weapon chambered for the slightly shorter .223. I guess it's time to choose power to backstop truth.
I also choose a (water) well and some livestock for a minimal food supply, along with the power to protect the above.
Go back even further! It’s the story as old as time! This is why true Christians are vehemently opposed to Marxism. This is why communists are atheist!
”Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.“
John 14:6 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/jhn.14.6.ESV
You doubtless are on to something; I always had a more simplistic scenario for the loss of Academia: That twice in two generations, the best and brightest went off to their WWn and the Bozos came in and occupied the empty Chairs.
Precisely. This guy really knows the history.
I choose air conditioning, cell phones, comfortable chairs along with clean food and water and clothing and shelter. As an engineer, I help make these things possible. They are true regardless of perspective and power. They put the lie to post modernism. What does a post modernist do with a need to shelter from the cold this winter? Complain that he doesn't have political power? Or he doesn't have heat! Fine, I want my insulated parka back.
I think that that’s a broader point.. why do people who shuffle ideas as opposed to people who know how to build things and make things work effectively run the country? We get what we pay for.. lots of competing ideas and not much in the way of pragmatic solutions.
Where is Eric Hoffer when you need him? https://www.hoover.org/research/eric-hoffer-genius-and-enigma
I think he might be cancelled in this culture.
Because we are ruled by a bureaucratic state that micromanages every aspect of our lives.
I hear ya but when you're up against a herd that thinks -- is absolutely certain! -- that food comes from grocery stores and electricity from holes in the wall is becoming capable of taking over and killing off those of us who know otherwise. Your insulated parka was liberated for a more worthy, Dave, and the factory that made it was burned down last week.
No. The postmodernist will put you in chains to meet his needs. Maybe not literal chains of old but chains. Chains of currency control, chains of social credit, chains of inability to move freely. Chains of your making.
Excellent post. I think truth is power.
A great discussion although it seems that the goal was to find the right words and labels to describe what, by any objective measure, is the decline of America. The core of the discussion, imho, is about collectivism vs. individualism. By design and intent, collectivism subsumes individuals into categories where they have neither individual rights, responsibilities, nor personal agency. Individuals become cattle, herded by self-appointed “experts.” America was founded, and flourished, under individualism. Collectivism, as demonstrated first by Russia and later China (and now taught and celebrated in our education system for three generations) caused the death of tens of millions of its own citizens in order to reach their “worker’s paradise.” The real question is what kind of country do we want to live in.
The astute founders of our Republic enshrined individual rights in our constitution. This was genius. DEI ideology is collective in nature, is antithetical to this doctrine and should be rejected. I think both Rufo and Mounk agree on the root cause, but their approaches to promoting and supporting the idea individualism and individual agency differ. My opinion is that Rufo’s mechanism is more forceful than Mounk’s. I think there is room for both strategies.
I agree with your point, but think the main distinction is between coercion vs. free association. A collective of people can be good for individuals, and we can’t survive long without cooperation and exchange. The harm comes from governments or other groups who coerce our actions using force or hyperintense social conformity.
Forming voluntary groups, though is immensely helpful. One example I really like is the idea of employee owned companies. They solve the problem of exploitation that fuels Marxists and gives the employee-owners a very tangible stake in free markets. When employees own shares of their organizations and have some say in it’s management, they have a vested interest in its success and share in their value added as profits. And I’ve been a customer of employee owned companies and find that the products are of consistently higher quality than most companies.
Having only briefly skimmed the excerpts of Rufo and Mounck’s comments, it is evident that Rufo has a much more rigorous and incisive mind on these topics. He understands power, fundamentally. And he correctly interprets its relationship to culture and institutions. Mounck, while smart and credentialed, doesn’t have the same lucidity about how politics works. Agree or disagree with him, Rufo’s ability to accurately describe and analyze the “woke” phenomenon is unmatched among public intellectuals today.
More simply put: it looks to me like Rufo wiped the floor in this discussion.
Agree. Mounk thinks if we all just talk nicely with the DEI crowd, we can persuade them to their errors. It’s just academic. Rufo sees DEI as the means to gain power, and once people attain it, they don’t give it up easily. It needs to be ripped from them.
I want Mounk to be right, that we can fix all this nonsense via reasoned debate, but when DIE is entrenched it makes debate into a hate crime.
Rufo sees Marxism (organizing people power to overthrow a ruling elite) as the way to defeat Marxism.
His self-described goal is “counter-revolution”, and he cites Gramsci as his biggest intellectual influence. So, he plays on the same field as a Marxist (societal and institutional power struggle) but with different tools and objectives.
How many countries in the world actively teach their children to have disdain for thie own country? How many countries would tolerate their athletes competing in multi national events and turning their backs or kneeling when their national anthems are played? How long can America thrive as a free country when half of the population makes clear its hatred for the other half on the basis of their voting or in some cases religious beliefs?
So true-- I had to overcome the pressure to hate this country- (grew up during Vietnam not-war), and I see most people of my generation, and those younger, have never gotten over it!!
Mounk stumbles on the real raison d'etre of leftist ideology when he points to the stupidly evil Derrick Bell's claim that "universalist values and neutral rules, like those enshrined in the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are just meant to... perpetuate forms of racist and sexist discrimination." The explicit purpose of Leftist ideology is to undermine and destroy the United States of America - which the Left hates because we are and remain (tenuously) a bulwark of freedom, liberty and opportunity against the nihilistic, bleak and repressive force of one-world Marxist tyranny. Leftism has always been antithetical to freedom. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a communist or socialist society that enjoys freedom. One would have thought that would have become patently clear after almost 200 years of failure of that demented ideology spawned by Marx . But Leftists are anything but smart. It isn't a coincidence that the incubator of this madness is our universities.
Always the racism, always the discrimination. My view is that America is the best place for anyone to achieve. But not everyone is capable of a level of achievement they think they ought to attain. So instead of looking in the mirror, they accuse the system.
Here’s the perfect example--- an orchestra conducts auditions with the performers behind a curtain so judges choose purely on talent. The outcome? Too many whites and white adjacents chosen. So call the process racist and discriminatory, remove the curtain and choose the “appropriate” number of BIPOCs and call it equitable. Of course the orchestra is now mediocre, but the elites will refuse to acknowledge that. And when ticket sales fall? Oh well, the elites meant well.
My mom was a very wise woman. One of her admonitions to us was "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Our liberal "friends" have built a superhighway of "good intentions." Straight to hell.
Did you know that one of the results of blind auditions was that more women were hired than before? When the judges did not know who was behind the curtain, it turned out that more women had merit than their previous numbers showed. Now they’re going back to non-anonymous auditions (so they can see the BIPOCs and be sure to hire them), so it’s likely that more meritorious women will pay the price for this (as they do in the gender war).
This is a British musician I watch occasionally as he's a great pianist and fun. He's been playing in this London mall for years, putting smiles on faces and showcasing other musicians. Check out the Chinese Red Guard harassment and the actions of the moronic constable. I believe the RG purposely created this scene to see what would happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65iwnI2hjAA
Note how the demented rhetoric and shill cries of victimization infected that Chinese commie apparatchik. And how quickly the British cop took their side to enforce communist orthodoxy upon a free British citizen. I've said this before - cops better figure out quickly who has their back and supported them throughout the entire BLM madness. Because if they become stooges for the Left, they will quickly feel the righteous wrath of an enraged citizenry.
Yeah I particularly noted how the CCP agent started screaming "don't touch her" incessantly - you see the police get involved and immediately assume victim/victimizer in the exact way the CCP agent planned it with fake accusations of assault. Their lies are so obvious, but the psychological warfare is effective regardless.
I saw that. That Dragon Lady in the hat is quite imperial. They have rights!!!!
The full video shows the idiot female constable getting right in the Red line and telling Brendan to curtail his speech.
I do not get it. The constabulary is also giving preference to the pro people we now refer to as Palestinian protesters too. Houston the UK has a problem.
Yes, the UK has a problem and it's a Big problem. This elderly man was arrested for posting his disapproval of Palestinian flags on UK businesses. https://yournews.com/2023/11/01/2679075/watch-man-arrested-in-london-for-speaking-out-on-palestinian/#:~:text=A%20man%20in%20London%20was%20taken%20into%20custody,storefronts%20in%20the%20Bethnal%20Green%20area%20of%20London.
Ironic no that people like Bell only exist because of the values enshrined in the Constitution? Now he wants to slam that door for others.
YM asked a very important question “why it is that Fortune 500 companies have proven so willing to adopt them (DEI)? I would add to CR’s answers that the presence of external force, i.e., government has to be considered. We have seen from history how a communist and fascist or current globalist ones can cause submission to tyrannical governments.
I would add that large companies are not necessarily capitalists or champions of a free market, but are rather corporatists that pursue their own interests. Many companies have taken measures to suppress competition and will readily lobby governments to protect their positions in a marketplace.
Also, as companies grow bigger they often become more bureaucratic, i.e. they add departments that have influence on the operations within a company without adding much to the production itself.
HR is notorious for championing causes that no one truly supports but will be implemented anyway.
Few people ever sat through a training from legal or HR and walked out of it thinking “this really helps me be better at my job”.
Good points, Daniel. Corporatists will and do pursue their own interests. Especially the larger ones, who use their powers of government influence, etc. And, as you say, their growth in beuraucracy do not add to production. Rather, it is a reflexive action due to outside trends (and pressure).
That said, I believe they have adopted DEI influence out of fear ... some of the same fears as felt on campus ... the fear of reprisal, rejection, etc. In other words, "cancellation."
But we've seen public rejection, have we not? We saw what happened to Bud Light, to Target, to Victoria's Secret.
I agree Jim, fear (including FOMO) and external pressure guide many decisions in the corporate world.
Facebook is a great example of all of this. They bought competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp as they feared the competition and realized it was easier to just buy them than to outperform them, even though they already had the infrastructure to compete.
Facebook also tried to remain a free speech platform at first and spoke out against censorship, but then they came under pressure from regulators and they decided it was not worth the fight.
Now they have fact checkers and work closely with government agencies and NGOs to suppress views that don’t align with those of our regimes.
Sports Illustrated. lol
Bar Rafaeli or Dylan Mulvaney? Morons.
I think they just see a different market as wealth is redestributed.
In my experience companies adopt DEI for one of two reasons. Either a) management believes it or b) they are trying to protect themselves from bad PR and employee revolt. On the latter it’s the equivalent of paying protection money to the mob, except instead of money it’s virtue signaling to either/both gov’t/professional activists that they got their thinking right and so please leave us alone. Kind of a Cool Hand Luke scenario. My guess is that it’s usually “b” if company executives are being truthful.
What on earth is the problem of pursuing your own interest? Whose interest would you pursue if not your own? My job if starting a business is not to enhance my employees wealth, it's to become wealthy myself, and I operate under the protection of capitalism and free markets, which I indeed champion.
They have to navigate through DEI out of fear, in order not to be cancelled, boycotted, or sued. We already have anti-discrimination laws on the books. DEI is unnecessary. It is a blackmark and stain on the free markets and another example of government overreach.
There is no problem with pursuing your own interest, of course companies and individuals should do that. The point I was trying to make is that a corporation will not necessarily look at a DEI initiative and identify it as a bad policy for a free market, free society, or even their own company. Furthermore, in large companies there are certain departments (which pursue self-interest) like HR that will have to justify their existence within the company, so they are more than happy to adopt a DEI policy that they can oversee.
Imagine HR approaching corporate leadership and telling them that sales will decrease if the sales team is not cautious about pronouns. Corporate does not spend too much time thinking about it and tells HR to get on top of it. HR creates a sensitivity training and the sales team has to sit through it. The whole exercise was a waste of energy and HR took a part in shaping how the company operates but likely did not do much to increase sales.
Most corporate "leaders" today are organizational cogs who were advanced up the corporate ladder and are expert more at playing the corporate game than at any actual skill. You can see it in their rapacious pursuit of corporate spoils rather than in any ability to grow their company and inculcate loyalty and productivity among their employees.
I am far too removed from Corporate America to comment on this topic. Five years retired. And I was a public school teacher for 14 years before retirement. So I only know what I read.
In my 14 years of teaching, I only had to sit in on one in-service presentation to our faculty where the hints of DEI were forthcoming in public education. Without going into detail, most of us dismissed the ideas brought forth in that presentation as frivolous and counterproductive. This was two years before retirement, and I did not feel pressure to implement them in my classroom.
Now I write on Substack about a variety of topics, and DEI occassionally appears in my commentaries. But I always keep an open ear to those who know more about the topic than I. So thank you, Bruce.
Not all corporations are that way, Bruce. To suggest corporations play a game and lack skill is a bit of a platitude and an empty cliche. Reading every comment I can from you, out of respect and your comprehension, I'm surprised at this banality.
In a globally competitive world you had better remain the brightest of the bright, never lose your edge, and never rest on your laurels (or be government subsidized.)
I spent my career at a company that put our customer's interest above all else. Believe me, it was a thrill to wake up every morning going to work, 50-60 hours every week; and surrounding yourself with thousands of like-minded people.
"(R)apacious pursuit of corporate spoils" sorta started with the realization that financial manipulation paid better than actually Doing anything. Once that happened, the Doing became less important than that which supported growing the cash pile directly. "Hedge funds," et al, are the ultimate manifestation; they don't even pretend to Do anything. If an entity begged to be taxed at 100%, that would be it. Those who haven't managed to strip out that pesky Doing have incentives identified around here by the actual Smart People to fly rainbow flags and pump DIE and other stupid stuff.
Don't know what you have against hedge funds. In any money management endeavor, there are good, average, below average, and exceptional.
No one forces you to hire them, but you'd better do your homework beforehand or suffer the consequences.
No problem in concept; people are free to buy lottery tickets too. I find it problematic when such as Black Rock become big enough to be untouchable and venture into, frankly, governance. ((Also) frankly, at least borderline treasonous -- the DIE isn't even the worst of what's alleged.)
The thinking is much clearer in this one.
Having been an HR exec in my career I walked away from many of those “trainings” knowing 1) most did not listen, 2) those that did not listen will be at my door complaining about benefits or some egregious act the company or co-worker committed, 3) the EE’s have no understanding of required meetings for legal purposes and 4) HR does not like doing the meetings either. HR in my experience does not champion ideas just to do it. As I matured in my career I learned that HR, among other responsibilities, is there to minimize legal risk to the company.
As Our Hero asked (sorta): Is there not one God Person in Sodom or Gomorrah? In like manner: Show me one person who can honestly answer "yes" to that last question; otherwise, fire the lot and bulldoze the space they occupied.
Yes at least part of it is government. Some of the big state pension funds insist on it, and they have a lot of other people's money to throw around: https://www.morganstanley.com/articles/pension-fund-investment-prioritize-diversity
I am so glad I left the US 10 yrs. ago and don't have to deal with all this nonsense. Dividing up the country racially is insane. All the talk about whether or not it's Marxism is covering up the point that the DEI people want to remake society in their own image and they know better than everyone else what everyone else needs. I just love it when the rich and the intellectuals tell me how I should live my life, as if they had any idea of how most people live. How can people go for that shit?
I guess I retired just in time; what was being foisted on us at work in terms of DEI meetings was unbearable. In that way, tending my roses in my own backyard, so to speak, I might as well be in a different country.
But that's not true either. Two days ago spouse and I visited the American Museum of Natural History, my eyes were moist with the beauty of the blue whales movie, and then we wandered through the Native Indian halls and I remembered my awe seeing them as a toddler trailing after my father, 65 years ago -- and now I discover that those halls are closing! Native Indian tribes object! No matter that half the people claiming to be Native Indians have little DNA to prove it.
Yet another teaching tool removed. Yet another capitulation to the clamoring voices shouting against Western civilization.
Because that, and not sensitivity to culture, is what's behind the closing of these halls. It's also what's behind the asinine new descriptions beneath paintings at the Metropolitan Museum: Our best institutions are surrendering.
If you don't like the West, throw away your cellphone, don't ride a bicycle, don't get a flu shot, don't walk through Beaux Arts halls or use elevators, and don't turn on your lamp. Nothing of the things of modern life that you take for granted was made by Africans or Native Indians or Middle Eastern sheiks.
The Egypt of the pharaohs with its monumental architecture was a very long time ago. The Arab mathematicians who imported "Arabic" numerals from India lived in the 12th century. What comes out of the Middle East nowadays? What's happening in African countries? Anything innovative, of universal worth?
There are good, intelligent people everywhere: Africa, Central America, and beyond. They want the West to be the West, a bulwark against the worst tendencies of their own countries (if you can hear them above the vile yippings of their U.N. delegates).
Just as I expect America's two parties and their voters to come together to be a bulwark against left vs. right extremism and their own worst natures.
Without rancor. Which seems impossible today.
Like the sackers of Rome, these haters of the West will live on the spoils until they run out. Lacking what it takes to rebuild, they will descend into a Dark Age.
Not to mention the removal of the TR statue from out front of the Museum of Natural History! Heartbreaking!!!
The "snti-colonialist" haters of the West inevitably end up embracing the propaganda coming out of Russia, China and Iran. Russia and China themselves being brutal colonizers, skilled at exploitation of anti-Western fervor, Iran being a sponsor of Islamist terrorism throughout the world. No surprise that Jill Stein, the Green Party ideologue was palling around with Putin, while anti-colonialist leaders in Africa and Latin America are bought wholesale by Russian and Chinese bribes. Russian mercenary group Wagner is kicking French out of Mali and Niger, China is taking over the rest, under disguise of being good anti-capitalists.
B. - thank you.
I’m now waaay out of the NYC loop and I need to ask: what ansinine new descriptions are they putting underneath the paintings at the Met now? I almost don’t want to know, but I must.
There was a lovely -- if I can use that word -- exchange among several of us a few weeks ago. One commenter recalled an Italian exhibit discussed on the Met app by a Renaissance scholar, but paired with a young person who contributed, something like, Yeah, these portraits are a lot like hip hop. In hip hop, they also do poses.
According to another commenter, at the Edward Hopper exhibit, descriptions beneath the paintings noted that while there were no black people shown, in fact they are everywhere. I think I remember that too.
The great medieval sculpture hall, where the Christmas tree used to be during the season, for a while became completely multicultural, with statuary from everywhere.
The Met's facade now features plastic-looking sculptures, kinda like great amoebas, while the Great Hall is festooned with giant cartoons. And so on.
The Brooklyn Museum became a lost cause years ago. Even "the rooms" are not unscathed. In the antebellum dining room from a plantation house in Edenton, North Carolina, a modern artist with a message created a paper-mache raptor hovering over the table and depositing papier-mache guano onto it and the chairs and the lowboy with its cabriole legs. One of the Rockefeller rooms, courtesy of another ideological guest artist, for a while sported glass dildoes in a glass bowl. Or at least that's what they looked like.
Increasingly, there's less to tempt us even at the Morgan, although next month a Beatrix Potter exhibit is in the offing.
It's still the greatest city on earth with the most beautiful museums, although the Louvre and the British give us a good run for the money. But then, I might be prejudiced.
There's still much to see at the AMNH, but the removal of the Roosevelt statue and now the Native Indian halls is a blow. Unfortunately, we can get used to anything.
In 2016, I attended an exhibition called A Third Gender at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Woodcuts and drawings depicted the Edo period in Japan (400 years ago) when adolescent boys were considered suitable objects of erotic desire for both women and men. A boy between the ages of 7 and 17 had his head partially shaven, at which point he was considered to have exited early childhood and could begin his apprenticeship, basically as a sex slave. Fine. I'm happy to be offended by what I see. That's what happens when one exits one's home. The most offensive part, however, came at the end of the show when we were provided with a colored piece of paper of our choice indicating which of 'three' genders we considered ourselves to be -- rather than being offered an opportunity to comment (albeit from today's western point of view) on the ethics of indoctrinating children and adolescents in the sex trade.
"Fine. I'm happy to be offended by what I see. That's what happens when one exits one's home."
Well put, Birdie. True, it's the other stuff, those kindergarten exercises (!) that we're supposed to go along with, that are tiresome.
And yes, Japan is interesting. The Tale of Genji, too, shows off some interesting cultural stuff. I liked it; read the Edward Seidensticker translation many years ago.
Vat? You don't like to eat ze buks?
Ochi.
Where in the world did you find that doesn't have this nonsense?
Did you find a home in the world in a country that is not surrounded by this bs?
Thailand. Of course Thailand has it's own bs, but the only thing that affects me is whenever immigration changes it's rules and that doesn't happen often. Regular Thai society is quite pleasant. People are polite, caring, and families are still the most important thing. Dealing with problems in a foreign country is never easy, fortunately, my wife is Thai and she deals with them. I just pay the bills. 😁
Just curious, what’s the cost of living and housing like there?
Depends on which provence/city/town/village you live in and you're style of living. Numbeo has a pretty good break down on the cost of living in several cities. We rent a 2 bd., 2 bath, fully furnished, down to the bed linens and dishes, in a complex with a community pool and excercise room, in the hills, about a 10 min. drive from the beach and 15 from shopping and pay $500 a month. Food costs about $400-500 a month for 2, Petrol about $4 a gallon. We're about a 3 hr. drive South of Bangkok. A visit to the dr. is $10-$20, Dentist, $40. Going to the Govt. hospital is about 1/2 the price of a private hospital. Ex.: cataract op: $2300 vs. $1200. Same dr. Thai restauants are about 1/2 the price of foreign food restauants, which can be quite pricey. For $2 you can get a bowl of noodles with pork and veges in a soup.
The "Herr" might give it away.
Mounk’s proposed solution at the end of the discussion is tepid. He wants a knife at a gun fight. He fails to see that academia has morphed into social and political activism. Students don’t graduate having been exposed to an array of political ideas; they are indoctrinated into one ideology and taught how to agitate for it. Does he actually think that just talking nicely to the college indoctrinators is going to change their views? Very naive. Rufo comes with a gun to the gun fight. He takes away the taxpayer funded infrastructure first, and exposes the intellectual rot and nihilsm underpinning the DEI ideology. If universities want total intellectual freedom they need to forego taxpayer money. Then their professors can teach whatever they want for $40,000 a year. But I am not going to pay taxes so professors can teach kids to hate me, with no alternative opportunity to learn that I am my kind don’t deserve that hatred.
I agree with your analogy, but I also think their strategies are complementary - long game vs short game. I’m just glad they are both working to change the status quo.
Mounk is an Ivory Tower academic. We simply can't trust them, en masse, to regain sanity and self correct.
The Indiana state legislature is debating a bill, HB1017, that would:
"Sec. 5. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), a school, an employee or staff member of a school, or a third party vendor used by a school to provide instruction may not provide instruction to a student in kindergarten through grade 12 concerning:
(1) Christopher Columbus; or
(2) a President of the United States who owned an enslaved person."
There should be a follow-up bill that would require, if HB1017 fails to pass, the sponsors of HB1017 to be forced to run a gauntlet of irate residents, outfitted with sticks and switches, into the nearest river and told to never, EVER return to Indiana. I'm really beginning to think this is the only way to stop the Woke/DEI insanity.
Why not baptize them while they're down by the river? (And I mean full immersion!)
Baptized and banished!
What is in subsection (b)?
We need more of these debates. Keep them coming Bari.
"were the founders of Black Lives Matter. They said themselves, “we are trained Marxists.”
Tells you everything
BLM stood for the Marxist Black Liberation Movement before it stood for Black Lives Matter
This conversation is a state of the art example of realist common sens pitted against idealist utopia.
Y. Mounk's loggorrheic defense of motherhood and apple pie in Laland rests on the need to demonize Rufo's actual accomplishments. Wokism is a thorn in the back of leftists and wishi-washism is their only escape. They must continue to lecture us, heathens, to keep the moral high ground they have monopolized for half a century. Yet, they lack the courage to actually join in the fight against an obvious threat to democratic values. Mounk must therefore duck the straightforward question "what did YOU do to take down DEI? ". His answer is the same as the infamous former president of Harvard : "it depends on the context"...followed by a unsubstantiated reading of Rufo's "Marxist" lens. The monopoly of leftist ideology over higher education is a major factor in its current demise, but the origin of this tragedy is not in the 70's. Since the mid-twenties, Progressive Education apostles had plowed the field for the French deconstructionists gurus, lobotomizing American schoolchildren. Once they reached university level, they were fully receptive. Foucault and his pals knew it when they came to the US, for a conference at Johns Hopkins... They proudly paraphrased Freud, who said at his arrival in NY in 1909, at the invitation of Stanley Halls : "They don't know it but we're bringing them the plague".
🎯 100%.
I am always fascinated and frghtened by how the ideas of a few people can upend the world. As I sit here I am wondering, who and what is next.
Spot on comment. Thanks for sharing.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Well said. Especially loved describing Mounk's "logorrheic defense".
love this analysis! Thanks Daniele. I never heard that Freud quote!
To Yascha Mounk’s question about why Fortune 500 companies genuflected so reflexively to these obviously destructive ideas, I’d say, “profit.” Don’t get me wrong. Adam Smith is my hero. Remember, though, before Wealth of Nations (1776) came The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1756). Capitalism has a moral and ethical foundation long ago abandoned by Corporate America. Is there any B-school anywhere that requires students to read Smith anymore? The men and women running our companies today were nursed by the executives who willingly gave away all their intellectual property for a tiny but lucrative slice of the Chinese market. DIE, ESG, stakeholderism. They’re all corporate strategies to goose the bottom line.
Profit? How well did that work out for Bud Light?
Bud Light is the poster child for how NOT to navigate through this messy maize of DEI wokeness.
Clearly a mistake was made at the top, a modern day Edsel hole they've dug for themselves. I believe many companies have learned from that blunder and will for eons.
Somewhere someone someday will crack open a can and toast them for saving Capitalism!
Bud Light simply became too big and lacked oversight on its brand. There are a lot of American workers hurt by this. Bud Light owner, AB InBev (owned primarily by Belgian & Brazilian billionaires) are doing just fine though, given that they control so much of the global beer sales (around 400 brands). Personally, I don’t drink any of the brands listed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AB_InBev_brands
No doubt profit is a consideration. But I suspect getting invited to the right cocktail parties also plays a role.