USA Politics (redux)

[milk]

JAMES LINDSAY:

Critical Race Theory...
believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere
relies upon "interest convergence" (white people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests) and therefore doesn't trust any attempt to make racism better
is against free societies and wants to dismantle them and replace them with something its advocates control
only treats race issues as "socially constructed groups," so there are no individuals in Critical Race Theory
believes science, reason, and evidence are a "white" way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience are a "black" alternative, which hurts everyone, especially black people
rejects all potential alternatives, like colorblindness, as forms of racism, making itself the only allowable game in town (which is totalitarian)
acts like anyone who disagrees with it must do so for racist and white supremacist reasons, even if those people are black (which is also totalitarian)
cannot be satisfied, so it becomes a kind of activist black hole that threatens to destroy everything it is introduced into

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/reasons-critical-race-theory-terrible-dealing-racism/

John McWhorter

THE ELECT: THE THREAT TO A PROGRESSIVE AMERICA FROM ANTI-BLACK ANTIRACISTS
My main aims will be:
1. to argue that this new ideology is actually a religion in all but name;
2. to argue that to understand it as a religion is to see coherence in what may seem like a welter of "crazy" or overblown behaviors;
3. to explore why this religion is so attractive to so many people;
4. to show that this religion is actively harmful to black people despite being intended as unprecedentedly "antiracist";
5. to show that a pragmatic, effective, liberal and even Democratic-friendly agenda for rescuing black America need not be founded on the tenets of this new religion;
6. to suggest ways to lessen the grip of this new religion on our public culture.

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-posing-as-antiracists

[Fëanor]

...
John McWhorter

THE ELECT: THE THREAT TO A PROGRESSIVE AMERICA FROM ANTI-BLACK ANTIRACISTS
My main aims will be:
1. to argue that this new ideology is actually a religion in all but name;
2. to argue that to understand it as a religion is to see coherence in what may seem like a welter of "crazy" or overblown behaviors;
3. to explore why this religion is so attractive to so many people;
4. to show that this religion is actively harmful to black people despite being intended as unprecedentedly "antiracist";
5. to show that a pragmatic, effective, liberal and even Democratic-friendly agenda for rescuing black America need not be founded on the tenets of this new religion;
6. to suggest ways to lessen the grip of this new religion on our public culture.

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-neoracists-posing-as-antiracists

Yeah well racism is a natural tendency of humans since the Paleolithic to fear the other.  In the Paleolithic it was an aid to survival;  in today's world it's the opposite.  People need to evolve.

A thing that is exacerbating racism in America, (some other countries too), is that fact that median incomes have be stagnating for 35+ years.  When you're not getting ahead and fear your kids will be worse off than you, you feel dispossessed and thrash around for somebody to blame.

Unfortunately the American (White) lower-middle and working classes are irrationally blaming Blacks, Hispanics, et al. and the Democratic Party for "favoring"  minorities over white people.  For a start it would be great if Democrats and US politicians would start favoring the lower-middle and working classes -- regardless of color -- over the Rich.

[drogulus]

     The Chinese government is inclined to hide any bad news. The lower layers behave the same. Even in the absence of the impulse to lie to the outside world, the tendency to lie and conceal means it's likely that China is engaged in covering up something it doesn't completely understand.

     To me, it looks like Orange Former Guy told lies the Chinese suspected had truth in them. On this view, they wouldn't know. By now they may be covering up because that's the default mode. They aren't going to start behaving transparently just because for once the truth is on their side.

     

[milk]

Yeah well racism is a natural tendency of humans since the Paleolithic to fear the other.  In the Paleolithic it was an aid to survival;  in today's world it's the opposite.  People need to evolve.

A thing that is exacerbating racism in America, (some other countries too), is that fact that median incomes have be stagnating for 35+ years.  When you're not getting ahead and fear your kids will be worse off than you, you feel dispossessed and thrash around for somebody to blame.

Unfortunately the American (White) lower-middle and working classes are irrationally blaming Blacks, Hispanics, et al. and the Democratic Party for "favoring"  minorities over white people.  For a start it would be great if Democrats and US politicians would start favoring the lower-middle and working classes -- regardless of color -- over the Rich.

I'm with you!
People are so screwed-over and they're handed a world and told it can't be otherwise. It's pretty bleak.

[drogulus]

     As a tool to deny racial justice on a liberal humanist basis, Critical Race Theory might be of value, though the use of it would have ironic implications. Illiberal anti-racists and illiberal anti-anti-racists would together be launching an assault on liberalism just like fascists and communists have done in the past.

     McWhorter is standing up for an old fashioned brand of liberal reformism. He is astute:

Something must be understood: I do not mean that these people's ideology is "like" a religion. I seek no rhetorical snap in the comparison. I mean that it actually is a religion. A naïve anthropologist would see no difference in type between Mormonism and this new form of antiracism. Language is always imprecise, and thus we have traditionally restricted the word religion to certain ideologies founded in creation myths, guided by ancient texts, and requiring that one subscribe to certain beliefs beyond the reach of empirical experience. This, however, is an accident, just as it is that we call tomatoes vegetables rather than fruits. If we rolled the tape again, the word religion could easily apply as well to more secular and recently emerged ways of thinking. One of them is this extremist version of antiracism today.

     The closer forms of thought get to religion the worse they are. All you have to say about an idea is that "it's like a religion" and everyone knows exactly what you mean. It's never, never a compliment, even coming from a "true beliefer".

     What are you going to do with a guy like this?

     While we're at it, QAnon has become one of the largest religions in the country. This causes me to reflect on a common mistruth. It often said that people who believe nothing will believe anything. It turns out that the people who believe anything (and QAnon is as anything as you can get) are already primed to believe. Many are simultaneously evangelical Christians. If there are any former Eliminative Materialists among them, they're keeping their heads down.

     

[Fëanor]

     As a tool to deny racial justice on a liberal humanist basis, Critical Race Theory might be of value, though the use of it would have ironic implications. Illiberal anti-racists and illiberal anti-anti-racists would together be launching an assault on liberalism just like fascists and communists have done in the past.

     McWhorter is standing up for an old fashioned brand of liberal reformism. He is astute:

Something must be understood: I do not mean that these people's ideology is "like" a religion. I seek no rhetorical snap in the comparison. I mean that it actually is a religion. A naïve anthropologist would see no difference in type between Mormonism and this new form of antiracism. Language is always imprecise, and thus we have traditionally restricted the word religion to certain ideologies founded in creation myths, guided by ancient texts, and requiring that one subscribe to certain beliefs beyond the reach of empirical experience. This, however, is an accident, just as it is that we call tomatoes vegetables rather than fruits. If we rolled the tape again, the word religion could easily apply as well to more secular and recently emerged ways of thinking. One of them is this extremist version of antiracism today.

     The closer forms of thought get to religion the worse they are. All you have to say about an idea is that "it's like a religion" and everyone knows exactly what you mean. It's never, never a compliment, even coming from a "true beliefer".

     What are you going to do with a guy like this?

     While we're at it, QAnon has become one of the largest religions in the country. This causes me to reflect on a common mistruth. It often said that people who believe nothing will believe anything. It turns out that the people who believe anything (and QAnon is as anything as you can get) are already primed to believe. Many are simultaneously evangelical Christians. If there are any former Eliminative Materialists among them, they're keeping their heads down.

I've viewed several McWhorter linguistics courses on the Great Courses.  They were most enjoyable, informative and greatly enhanced by McWhorter's droll humor.

The world needs fewer believers, whether religionists, ideologists, or whatever;  it needs more skeptics and questioners, and more simply interested in the truth.

[drogulus]

The world needs fewer believers, whether religionists, ideologists, or whatever;  it needs more skeptics and questioners, and more simply interested in the truth.

     Many people are operationally unbelievers without adhering to an expressed set of convictions on the subject. Pilots don't go beliefy at 30,000 feet, so planes can safely land, yet back on the ground they will rarely offer up anything like a philosophical basis for their behavior. People don't have to formalize their operational practice at the level of concepts. I do, as a kind of hobby.

[drogulus]

     Biden Banks on $3.6 Trillion Tax Hike on the Rich and Corporations

     I don't think he's banking on a big tax increase. He wants what he can get in the way of tax relief on live money by way of taxing dead money harder. The tax cuts by way of credits are more important. The important thing is that the aggregate tax burden is shifted up however it's done. Increasing IRS efficiency at collecting taxes owed should relieve pressure to set rates higher. In any case, spending should proceed to the basis of real economy goals. If you spend more, more tax comes back. It's not all rates, rates, rates, golf, golf, golf......

[Karl Henning]

I don't think he's banking on a big tax increase. He wants what he can get in the way of tax relief on live money by way of taxing dead money harder.

Bingo.

[greg]

"That one video". Okay.

There were a lot of clues in that video pointing to it the lab being the source, and it was the first video I'm aware of that revealed this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

From April 1, 2020...

this comment sums it up:

1 year after this hypothesis was labeled "conspiracy theory" by the media, only now it is becoming mainstream...

A complete failure on the part of the MSM when one guy can get to the party a year earlier than everyone else.

Unfailingly trusting corporate media over individuals who sometimes don't have fancy titles or might have unorthodox careers or life experiences (but might have insider knowledge, and in this case, is an excellent bridge between the worlds of Chinese and English speakers) will sometimes get you this type of result.

At times you are unwittingly amusing, you know.

Huh.

[SimonNZ]

Speaking both English and Mandarin isn't the rarity you seem to think it is. And all the worthy major news organizations will naturally employ people on the ground with this ability to research and report on a story like this. Obviously. And if you actually watched the reporting rather than dismissing it all sweepingly as "MSM" you'd now this. And you'd be seeing interviewees being given voice-over translations by the production (with their voice still able to be heard, lest anyone wants to try to claim they were mistranslated). Al Jazeera I think may be alone in giving non-English interviewees subtitles when they have time permitting to do so.

And this is to say nothing of the number of Chinese professionals who have learned English as a matter of course. All of which means no one needs some random Youtuber to be "the bridge".

[Karl Henning]

Speaking both English and Mandarin isn't the rarity you seem to think it is.

In so many respects, he suffers from tunnel-vision.

[SimonNZ]

Just heard on Jon Lovitt's podcast: "Joe Manchin is like a guy standing in front of a burning house with a fire hose asking permission of the arsonist to use the water."

and a nice turn of phrase I heard from Molly Jong-Fast's podcast yesterday: "Democrats keep bringing a stuffed animal to a knife fight."

[drogulus]

     

A complete failure on the part of the MSM when one guy can get to the party a year earlier than everyone else.

     It was Trump who congratulated the Chicoms for how they handled the virus, not the MSM. It was not a revelation to me or many other MSM addicts that China was not like Western country. In addition, YT guy got the sequence wrong about how the truth was hidden, lost and suppressed. It was the local Wuhan authorities that started to suppress info from their own national government. Only after that did the national government add its own suppression as they predictably covered up and deflected. Then Chairman Trump did the same thing.

[Florestan]

People who distrust on principle the Chinese government yet trust on principle the Chinese scientists are hopelessly naive. What they forget --- if they ever knew it, that is --- is that the Chinese scientists work in a heavily politicized environment, where the smallest step outside the party line might prove at best detrimental to their career and at worst life-threatening. Moreover, both heads of labs / departments and spokepersons are always selected among those professing (or feigning) the utmost loyalty to the party.

Taking the Wuhan lab scientists on their word that there was no leak is exactly like taking Stark & Lennard on their word that Einstein was wrong --- and actually, the comparison is wrong, as Stark & Lennard spoke with the full credit and prestige of Nobel Prize winners...

[drogulus]

People who distrust on principle the Chinese government yet trust on principle the Chinese scientists are hopelessly naive. What they forget --- if they ever knew it, that is --- is that the Chinese scientists work in a heavily politicized environment, where the smallest step outside the party line might prove at best detrimental to their career and at worst life-threatening. Moreover, both heads of labs / departments and spokepersons are always selected among those professing (or feigning) the utmost loyalty to the party.

Taking the Wuhan lab scientists on their word that there was no leak is exactly like taking Stark & Lennard on their word that Einstein was wrong --- and actually, the comparison is wrong, as Stark & Lennard spoke with the full credit and prestige of Nobel Prize winners...

     It has nothing to do with taking people at their word. Science doesn't work like that, not for Einstein or anyone else. It is not theology.

     The argument now is the same as it was a year ago, not over whose word to accept, but what the evidence shows.

     A case can be made that some observers, even among scientists, were influenced by Trumpist well poisoning to quickly dismiss a plausible theory that the lab in Wuhan may have been involved. This could have happened if lab workers became infected outside the lab, or if the lab had actually obtained the virus and the first transmission to humans originated there. But in no case are serious minded people accepting the word of scientists because they are scientists, or because they are anti-Trumpists, or Chicoms.

     Perhaps it's naive of me to wonder how it came to be, if it did, that the Wuhan lab was studying this particular virus if it hadn't infected humans. How did a previously unknown virus come to their attention?

[Florestan]

     It has nothing to do with taking people at their word.

Really?

If I quoted you along exactly this line, namely that Chinese scientists should always be taken on their word because they have nothing to hide and they always tell the truth, because, you know, they are scientists --- would you plead guilty of hopeless naivete?

Of course you wouldn't, because you can't even remember there was a time when you claimed that Chinese scientists should always be taken on their word because they have nothing to hide and they always tell the truth, because, you know, they are scientists.

[Karl Henning]

A complete failure on the part of the MSM when one guy can get to the party a year earlier than everyone else.

A complete failure of your critical faculties.

[drogulus]

Really?

If I quoted you along exactly this line, namely that Chinese scientists should always be taken on their word because they have nothing to hide and they always tell the truth, because, you know, they are scientists --- would you plead guilty of hopeless naivete?

Of course you wouldn't, because you can't even remember there was a time when you claimed that Chinese scientists should always be taken on their word because they have nothing to hide and they always tell the truth, because, you know, they are scientists.

     Scientists should not "always be taken at their word" no matter where they are located. There is no scientific infallibility principle, no one whose word must be taken.

[Florestan]

A complete failure of your critical faculties.

|I was born and raised in a Communist dictatorship, so I'd rather err on the side of disbelieving / doubting each and every sentence uttered by a Communist government (such as China), be it weather forecast...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Cover-up_of_the_famine