More Twitter Threads

On censorship in schools:

For all those who need to hear this: a commitment to anti-censorship can co-exist quite comfortably with a belief that certain books shouldn't be in school libraries and/or selected for study in English class.

— The Right Geek: Domestic Terrorist 🤡 (@TheRightGeek) October 31, 2021

On the wonderfully egalitarian doctrine on original sin:

The people screaming at @Miss_Snuffy for having common sense in re: children and original sin are exposing the very heart of the conflict between traditionalists and progressives in education.

Thread.

— The Right Geek: Domestic Terrorist 🤡 (@TheRightGeek) October 29, 2021

Public School Officials Are the Aggressors -- Not Parents

This is going to be a rant. There will be swearing. I apologize for that in advance.

The Biden administration, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, the National School Board Association, the major teachers unions, and their blue check lickspittles have inspired, for me, a rage so towering and incandescent that it rivals the sun. The ongoing displays of arrogance truly disgust me, especially given how categorically wrong - and dishonest - all these people are.

Critical race theory is not being taught in primary and secondary schools? Bullshit, Terry. Great heaping loads of foul, stinking bullshit. It doesn't fucking matter that it's not the original papers that were first taught in our law schools. What we're seeing in K-12 is, in fact, an application of those supposedly abstruse academic ideas to schooling as described in texts like this or this. Schools are still demanding that kids classify themselves by race and then recognize either their "privilege" or their "disadvantage" according to that classification. Schools are still teaching kids that they should feel guilty for history they personally took no part in -- or that they should feel aggrieved and hopeless because of that same history. Instead of teaching all the facts without accompanying editorials, schools are imposing one interpretive schema on many children that erases the complicated truth (like, for example, that slavery was a human norm in the 1600's, that some freed Africans even owned slaves of their own, or that most whites didn't) -- a schema whose particulars have been disputed by many celebrated (and not necessarily right-leaning) historians whose careers span decades.

Whatever all this should be properly called, it's indoctrination, and it's wrong, full stop. The public school teacher's job is not to become a creepy social engineer; it's to deliver the democratically-established curriculum to the children of tax-paying parents who don't have the time to do so themselves. You, teachers, do not have the remit, the intelligence, or the professional qualifications to psychologically assess your students for the purpose of unearthing their (or their parents') crimethink -- or to guide them through contentious conversations without parental input. 

Hell, many of you don't even have the qualifications to adequately cover the state-mandated subjects your were originally hired to teach! Are you fucking kidding me? Math teachers don't learn real math, ELA teachers don't learn real English language and literature, history teachers don't learn real history -- and no teachers learn the actual science of learning and cognition. Education schools, for some ungodly reason, have been segregated from the rest of the university -- and have been captured for decades by Weather Underground types who'd rather feed young teacher candidates Freire-inspired garbage than consult with the neuroscientists across campus about the limits of working memory. 

You, teachers, can barely spell or read a simple pie chart. (Trust me, I know; I've seen your so-called "educational" materials and even tutored some of you on the Praxis.) So when I see shit like the tweet below...

Same energy pic.twitter.com/G0X1UulW7k

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) October 6, 2021

... you'll have to forgive me if I immediately make a sound like I'm barfing up three feet of intestine. Parents - many of whom are professionals themselves with far more legitimate, more rigorous credentials - are infinitely more qualified than you are because they haven't been poisoned by literal anti-teaching propaganda (like, for example, the notion that kids can "construct" mathematical knowledge by floundering around, with minimal guidance, in endless discussions with their classmates) and radical political nonsense. Indeed, only journalists outpace you when it comes to the extent of your deliberately cultivated ignorance. Is it any wonder, then, that very few of our students exit school proficient in English and math?

And yet, despite your manifest incompetence and piss-poor training, you, public school "educators" and school board members, have still far exceeded your designated bounds out of an unsupportable belief that you should be treated as unquestioned "experts". Not only have you approved the peddling of false history (as described above), you have further abused your authority by 1.) encouraging, through curricula or library book selections, age-inappropriate discussions of sex, gender, and sexuality that confuse young children; 2.) tyrannically imposing restrictive health measures on our students that are not based on real-world data and effectively treat kids like plague vectors instead of like little people who are entitled to dignity (not to mention developmentally crucial playtime and normal interactions with their peers and supervising adults); 3.) hiring data miners to spy on students and their families under the guise of "social-emotional learning"; 4.) conspiring against parents who demand transparency and/or their rightful say when it comes to curricula and school procedures -- and even subjecting such parents to legal harassment; and finally, 5.) shutting down nonviolent democratic debate because you wish to duck the inevitable heat your have brought upon yourselves through the other actions previously described.

The parents whose trust you've broken aren't the aggressors here. You are. Parents are simply defending themselves and their children. And I hope they ultimately triumph.

Yes, You CAN Support Abortion Bans & Oppose Vaccine Mandates

BLUF: Yes, an abortion ban is different from a vaccine mandate. You don't contradict yourself when you back one and oppose the other.

With an abortion ban, you are preventing the CERTAIN, unambiguous death of another human being. The justification for a vaccine mandate, on the other hand, is based on a fuzzy hypothetical that an unvaccinated individual may - MAY - spread COVID to someone vulnerable and consequently kill him. These are not equivalent. The probability that a human being dies in an abortion = 1. The probability that someone dies in the hypothetical COVID scenario = P(vulnerable & unjabbed) × P(encounters someone sick with COVID because unjabbed) × P(dies because vulnerable) -- which is not zero but certainly FAR less than 1.

We generally allow adults enormous latitude to make their own decisions despite the non-zero risk in some cases that somebody else might die because we rightfully realize that toggling maximum acceptable risk to zero is unsustainable. Where should the slider be set instead? That's up for legitimate debate. But RATIONAL people understand that zero risk is utopian and 100% risk is out of the question. Hence: opposition to abortion CAN coexist quite comfortably and non-hypocritically with opposition to vax mandates because our ethical choice is NOT between 100% bodily freedom and 100% harm reduction. There are other considerations at play.

Chief among these considerations?  The necessity - or the lack thereof - of the thing you wish to impose by force (vaccines) or restrict by force (in the case of abortion).

The evidence suggests that COVID vaccines work to prevent serious disease and death (though not, it appears, all infections). (Yes, some in my audience are going to dispute what I just said, but that's my impression of the data -- and that's why I got the jab.) One thing we should ask ourselves, however, is whether vaccines are the ONLY way to do this. Frankly, I have no reason to believe this is so. I have no reason to believe vaccines are the SOLE solution because our so-called "expert class" has deliberately suppressed the exploration of other options. If we can't even DISCUSS Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine without some social media busybody flagging such posts, then how can we possibly say that either has been thoroughly investigated? If anything, this aggressive, one-way, and OPEN massaging of information quite rightfully raises suspicions that our "experts" are hiding something for their own personal gain.

To be sure, I don't know if Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine are efficacious alternatives to vaccination because the evidence for either is limited and mixed (as far as I can tell). But I can't wholly trust these findings because I KNOW the environment in which they've been generated is hostile to open inquiry, structurally resistant to the publication of less-preferred results, and therefore likely to be wildly mistaken. (See also: the broader scale replication crisis in the sciences.)

And please further note: there is also evidence that if you've had COVID already, you have a natural immunity that is robust in comparison with that induced by vaccines. But this too has been suppressed in the push to promote vaccines above everything else.

What I'm trying to get at here: the case for the necessity of COVID vaccines is not a strong one. It doesn't meet the requirements for a restriction on adult freedom in the same way that, say, a law against murder might.

Now let's turn to abortion. Are there alternatives? Yes, absolutely. As a Catholic, I'm no supporter of birth control, but in all honesty, I would rather people break God's law by using condoms or taking the pill than by outright killing their children. Even better? You can simply abstain from sex. Trust me: no one is going to explode if she puts off intercourse. Indeed, even liberal women can't help but reveal this is the case each time they threaten sex strikes in the wake of stiffer abortion restrictions. If you can keep your knees together to accomplish some political goal, you can certainly do so to safeguard your oh-so-valuable career. And even if you fail to delay gratification or your birth control method fails, you still don't necessarily have to embrace motherhood if it interferes with your plans. There are many infertile couples out there who would jump at the chance to adopt your "oopsie."

In short, abortion is NOT essential. Except in a very few edge situations (for which the pro-life movement is generally willing to permit legalization), abortion is an elective procedure that women are using to avoid the consequences of their piss-poor choices. Women have ample opportunity in the current age to avoid conception. That is where the "choice" should be made. Once another life is involved - a life YOU created - "choice" is basically a euphemism for "unwanted, vulnerable people should die for my convenience."

BLATE: The support of abortion restrictions does not contradict the opposition to vaccine mandates because the former involves the inevitable death of another human being while the latter does not. Moreover, there is no good argument for the necessity of abortion and a weak one for COVID vaccines. Thus, restricting freedom in the former case to prevent the loss of innocent life is ethically correct -- while restricting freedom in the latter case is not currently supportable by the facts.

(I will grant this, though: if you oppose both abortion restrictions AND vax mandates, you are on firmer ethical ground than our leftist friends who think we should be absolutely free to procure abortions but should be punished for resisting an injection we don't want.)

Twitter Rants

This makes me incandescently angry. She's throwing basically every slur she can think of at parents who don't want their kids to be judged on race -- and it makes ZERO sense at all. Madam, NORMAL people don't work like you do. (cont. below) https://t.co/gxvROgEruW

— The Right Geek (@TheRightGeek) July 16, 2021

In the above thread, I respond to a local story featuring an insane ideologue.

Let me bump this and add some further commentary: I'm getting sick and tired of people freaking the eff out like COVID is Ebola. It's NOT. If you're healthy and young, your chances of dying - or even being hospitalized - are extraordinarily slim. >> https://t.co/a9F5Nh3zzR

— The Right Geek (@TheRightGeek) August 2, 2021

And in this second thread, I've finally lost my patience with the fascistic Covidiots.

Enjoy!

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I'm sure someone with more letters after their name than I has already said this, but in re: the Rockies controversy...

... you can't trust what you hear when the audio is corrupted/ambiguous. Perceptual priming is a thing that exists. >>

— The Right Geek (@TheRightGeek) August 12, 2021

Edited on 8/12 to add: the above thread, which whacks people over the head with the science of perception, covering the reason why we can't always trust what we see/hear.

Buckle up for another thread!

I don't trust teachers -- even though I are one. Let me tell you why. >>

— The Right Geek (@TheRightGeek) August 13, 2021

And here's a message of support to all parents rebelling against their local school boards.

**Announcement of Partial Hiatus**

Posts will still appear on this blog from time to time, but for the next few months, I plan on devoting most of my energy to developing my Iron Man fan comic and working on a possible book idea. See you on the flip side! 

Video: The Woke Manipulation of Democracy

Over the past few weeks, I've been occupied with other projects -- so in lieu of another one of my long essays, please consider watching the above stream, in which James Lindsay explains what leftists actually mean when they claim they're fighting for "democracy." Spoiler: they don't mean democracy in the common understanding. They basically mean its opposite. Shock of shocks!

How to Boot Stomp the Poors

Hot take: The left is right about “privilege.” It does have a tendency to protect itself. Leftists just don’t understand - or they refuse to acknowledge - that they (and their self-identified “conservative” apologists) represent the voice of the powerful. They speak for the elite — not us “MAGA-tards.” And it is their ideologies that maintain the various phenomena they insist are the features of “systemic oppression” for which we - not they - must atone. 

In The Vision of the Anointed, one of his seminal books, Thomas Sowell persuasively argues that to use income brackets to carve up American society into the “rich” and the “poor” is, in fact, to embrace a fiction. The 21-year-old scion of two urban professionals who’s currently making minimum wage at his local Starbucks might be cash poor for the moment — but to say that he belongs to some rigid, identifiable underclass is to ignore both his formative experiences and the likely impermanence of his present position (assuming, of course, that he makes smart choices from here on out). Indeed, the chances that this kid will find himself in a more comfortable circumstance - or even in the top 1% - in a decade or two are still remarkably high. 

Despite the fluidity of the membership for each income decile, however, I do believe there is such a thing as class. I simply believe it is better defined by sets of common experiences than by money in the bank. True: monetary wealth and life experiences aren’t independent variables. And true: even life experiences won’t give us clear boundaries between the classes. Nevertheless, I think Charles Murray had the right idea when, in creating his “How Thick Is Your Bubble?” quiz for Coming Apart, he included questions about the reader’s beer-drinking and vacationing habits.

By my personal definition, I’m a member of the coastal elite. Though I’m currently cash poor (just like that young, bourgie barista), I grew up in a comfortable middle class home in the suburbs in which education and cultural enrichment (via museum visits, trips to the theater, etc.) were stressed. I was trained (by my late father of blessed memory) in the art of gentlemanly debate and consequently developed a discomfort with ruder, more frank ways of speaking (something I’ve obviously been working to overcome for the sake of the truth as I understand it). I also graduated summa cum laude with highest honors from a top tier university and work in a job in which academic knowledge (of some sort) and verbal virtuosity are prized. I am, as Chris Arnade might put it, a quintessential “front row kid.”  If not for the grace of God, I would be David French. Admittedly, up until the winter of 2017, I basically was.

So when I rail against the elites on this blog, I’m railing against folks with whom I’m intimately familiar. As for what it was that made it possible for me to become a front row dissident — to, essentially, betray my own “breeding”? One reason may be that my family was military, which was a subculture of its own during the late Cold War era in which I knew it (i.e. well before the officer corps’ recent convergence by the woke). (Sigh. I’m pretty sure Dad’s spinning in his grave right now. If he were alive, he’d be hollering like crazy over this “whiteness” poison and how it will destroy unit cohesion.) Another may be that Mom and Dad both grew up working class and I have close relatives who still are. And the last may be my inborn personality. On the Big Five, I’m extremely low on extroversion and relatively low on agreeableness; in layman's terms, that means I’m a cranky, uncompromising bitch who doesn’t care very much what other people think. 

However the above-mentioned individual factors rank in importance, the result is that I have consciously cast my lot with the Other, “Deplorable” Half. And I will be eternally happy I did that because the people like me who do attempt to keep up with the hottest intellectual trends sweeping our class turn out to be awful, awful people. As I’ve said in previous posts, they’re God-damned peacocks who perform compassion instead of actively embodying it. And what’s worse, they look down on their fellow Americans with exactly the same kind of unearned, overweening pride that moved WASP’s in earlier ages to whisper that so-and-so was “simply not our kind, dear.” The one difference? Wokeness has finally given them a guilt-free means to be snobs — to fully indulge in their thinly-veiled antipathy for the hoi polloi in full confidence that they won’t be called out by their ideologically (but not practically) egalitarian peers for putting on airs.

And yet — there are definite costs to all this auto-flattery that don’t just fall on the targets of Elect opprobrium. In fact, when I hear someone like Don Lemon complain that white Americans don’t “see him as a human being,” I react with both contempt and pity. Naturally, the contempt comes in because Lemon, whose partner is white, clearly doesn’t mean all of white America when he spews crap like this. No: clearly, he means those white Americans over there who - ew - might drive pick-up trucks or - ugh - may not have gone to college. In other words, he’s absolutely using this rhetoric to announce his superior social status. Moreover, like many “POC” in the front row class, he’s openly rent-seeking. He’s learned that play-acting his “victimhood” moves his white peers to fall at his feet and give him anything he demands — and rather than react to that with self-respecting disgust, he’s chosen to take the path of least resistance because there lies tangible bennies.

But then — this is where the pity comes in. Because I think Lemon, somewhere deep down, knows how demeaning and toxic his woke milieu really is. If I were surrounded by unctuous white “allies” desperately trying to curry my favor to assuage their own guilt, I think I might feel I’d been robbed of my dignity too. Of course, that doesn’t excuse Lemon’s embrace of those who - either consciously or unconsciously - despise anyone who’s not them. Nor does it excuse his acting out his learned distaste - again, either consciously or unconsciously - by promulgating ideas that will pull up the ladder of success for all those who are Out. But there’s still a nut of something psychologically genuine in his pose of offense. Lemon, to put it bluntly, hangs out with the wrong crowd; that’s why he feels put-upon and bereft.

Authenticity does not exist among Lemon’s “friends” — and neither does deep knowledge of human nature or the roots of established social orders. That’s why the policies favored by our “betters” could very easily be collated under the following banner:

How to Boot Stomp the Poors in X Easy Steps

What are some of those steps, you may ask? Well, off the top of my head, here are two from the field of education (with which I have the most extensive contact):  

1. Get rid of standardized tests.

2. Discontinue advanced placement, accelerated study, and gifted programs in tax-funded schools.

In both cases, the stated motive for the proposed change is “equity.” Because certain subpopulations are proportionally under-represented among those students who earn high test scores and/or admission to advanced programs, the claim is that these markers of excellence are racist and should be scrapped. But as I have remarked many times before, different outcomes are not sufficient evidence that an injustice has been done. Such a conclusion can only be drawn after the (probably multifaceted) causes of these discrepancies have been thoroughly, thoughtfully, and honestly examined. Bias there may be — but it is also a fact that not every subculture values and pursues an education with equal fervor, and until we can face that forthrightly, radical attempts to “balance the scales” are certain to do tremendous harm.

If we completely abandon standardized tests, for instance, we will lose a great equalizer. Yes, that’s exactly what I said: an equalizer. The first tests of this type were conceived in China as a way to identify meritorious candidates for the civil service, and they enabled Chinese from lower social classes to advance to important government positions from which they would’ve been barred if those tests did not exist. And in the American context, meanwhile, the existence of the SAT has made bias against disfavored minority groups (like Jews and Asians) both visible and incredibly difficult to justify. To abolish standardized testing, then, is to rob us of the one means of objective measurement that has a proven historical record as both an engine of upward mobility and a bigotry detector. 

Yes: there is a slight association between a student’s SAT score and his SES. But the association between that same SAT score and actual undergraduate performance is stronger, indicating that, contrary to popular belief, the SAT is measuring something more than a student’s family circumstances — something that turns out to be quite relevant to predicting academic success (that thing being g, which is simultaneously the most supported thing in social science and the most often avoided). And unlike portfolios, resumes, essays, interviews, and/or student transcripts, the SAT is incredibly difficult to game (yes, even when you hire expensive tutors; take it from someone who does that for a living), which makes it a fantastic cross-check for students who don’t come from tony schools and therefore may not sparkle on those aforementioned - and comparatively easier-to-burnish - alternative assessments. Not every kid has the resources to wow an admissions committee with an account of his internship with a Washington D.C. think-tank — but every kid can log onto a computer at the public library and study for the SAT with Khan Academy without paying a cent (which is why I have a regular donation set up to support Sal Khan’s mission).

And if we destroy advanced placement programs? Again, more well-to-do kids won’t feel that lack; they will simply move to private institutions that offer what the public schools won’t. Meanwhile, the students on free and reduced lunch who are left behind by this flight will be stuck with the thin gruel that passes for a curriculum at their local politically-correct madrasa. You think the achievement gaps are bad now? Just wait until you have to pay tuition to take a calculus class in high school! Oh, I imagine that some of the most enterprising low-SES parents will still somehow find a path around that barrier — but if you want to talk about systemic obstacles to achievement, this would certainly qualify.

On just about every conceivable policy issue, these blue check bozos demonstrate an inability - or an unwillingness - to comprehend how their preferred solutions will affect flesh-and-blood people in the real world. Instead of working with human beings as they are, they continually seek some mystical “perfect” that can never be realized. And when their policies fail - which they almost always do given their manifest lack of contact with reality - those most afflicted are the supposed “beneficiaries” of their “aid.” Thus:

 

• The elites can always hide behind their hired bodyguards and community gates — but scuttling traditional law enforcement leaves regular folks defenseless against the ensuing disorder.

• The elites, protected by their affluence, can usually get away with encouraging non-traditional lifestyles — but poo-pooing marriage has saddled working class kids of every color with most of the consequences of rampant family dysfunction. 

• The elites benefit from the steady stream of cheap domestic labor made available by a porous border. But destitute migrants are left at the mercy of human traffickers — and less-advantaged border communities are forced to contend with depressed wages and persistent crime (including theft, vandalism, drug trafficking, and gang violence). 

• The elites came through the COVID lockdowns unscathed, ensconced in their cushy homes, their jobs preserved because they could be done with a lap-top and an internet connection. The yeomanry, on the other hand, were utterly crushed by our aristoi’s quixotic pursuit of absolute physical safety.

And on and on I could go down the list.

If I were a foil-hat type, the breathtaking consistency of the direction of these negative impacts would lead me to suspect a deliberate conspiracy on the part of our “privileged” to keep various outgroups down. But I’m hoping the truth is much simpler: that they just don’t know any better. Their “privilege” has effectively shielded them from the inherent tragedy and resource scarcity that defines our fallen world, so they assume that the system can be made flawless — and that we opponents must be evil, stupid, or lying when we point out the damage done by these “anointed” and their utopian schemes.

At any rate, the impact is the same: the elites maintain their advantage while the poors suffer.

Grumpy Thoughts, 9th Edition

“Grumpy Thoughts” is a series in which I share quicker takes on recent news. To see the previous eight editions, click here.

As for today’s post, let’s begin with a short open letter.

Dear Ms. Smith (pro-abortion valedictorian):

I work with other studious young people your age, so I recognize in you a common desire to fight for justice and change the world. I take no issue with your spirit and believe you have a right to use any platform you’re given to express your political views regardless of what school authorities might think on the matter. 

However, I strongly encourage you to examine the abortion issue more deeply and not simply accept the lies you’ve been told about the prerequisites for female accomplishment — for it is not the case that your future depends on an invented right to destroy human life. If you should find yourself facing an unwanted pregnancy, bearing the child and then, perhaps, giving it up for adoption will not utterly scuttle your chances — even in the worst circumstances you mention. There are other options besides murder. 

But let’s suppose an unwanted pregnancy does irreparably damage your carefully laid plans. You and I - and every other human being on this planet - have a moral responsibility to look beyond the ends of our own noses and factor in the rights of others — especially those who are disadvantaged and defenseless. To put it another way, life is not all about you and your desire for career advancement. The fact that you would embrace terminating the life of your hypothetical child - who has committed no crime and cannot speak in his own defense - for the sake of your otherwise commendable ambition reveals a fundamental selfishness on your part that you should seek to root out rather than indulge.

You want to rebel? Why not fight the conventional wisdom that demands we women lay siege to the very thing that makes us women* in order to succeed. This, in my view, is the so-called “patriarchy” we need to dismantle.

Sincerely,

RG

*Yes, I am implying here that it is the womb that makes a woman. Howl all you want, but as a more masculine member of the distaff sex, I actually find that definition liberating.

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“Life is not all about you.” I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot and in posts covering many different subjects. But I think that strikes right at the heart of one of my biggest problems with leftists: their eagerness to stomp on the rights of others for the sake of their own supposed “comfort”/”safety”/etc.

Leftists never take personal responsibility for their own happiness. Instead, they always ask us to bear that burden. If they’re upset about something, then it’s entirely our fault — even though, in reality, the leftist’s own cognition has a lot to do with her emotional state. (If you believe, for example, that honest, peaceful discourse is an unmitigated threat to your “existence,” you’re wrong, and you have a duty to seek help and change — not us.)  If a thoroughly reasonable standard - or ordinary people leading ordinary lives, even - somehow gets in the way of a leftist’s absolute liberty to do whatever the hell she wants whenever the hell she wants without even the mildest of injured feelings or inconveniences, then she concludes that “the system must be dismantled” regardless of the chaos and despair such a revolution would wreak. A leftist demands that the entire world change to suit her needs — and said demands are never open to negotiation because that same leftist believes she is more important than anyone else on Earth.

In my political writing, I believe I have always tried to find the rare kernels of wheat amongst all this leftwing chaff. And I’m probably going to continue to make that effort; after all, I have a commitment to the truth as I understand it regardless of its source. But I’m also looking at what time it is right now — and thinking I need to be even harsher when it comes to calling out everything that is evil and base in the whole leftist worldview. Because it is evil to intimidate and shame people into doing your bidding, it is evil to condone eliminationist and hateful rhetoric against people you perceive to be “privileged”, it is evil to promote violence and rioting as a tool for “change”, it is evil to use your victimhood (real or imaginary) to sponge off others, and it is evil to assault excellence because you’re incompetent and marinating in your own ressentiment.

Quite frankly, I’m not going to sit here and kowtow to these lazy, aggressively stupid, and floridly diabolical activists. Call me an istophobe if you want. I no longer care. I’m going to say exactly what I think now with zero effs given. See above and below.

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A few posts ago, I suggested that the teaching profession has been colonized by not-super-intelligent women who leap at every chance to avoid real work. I made this observation out of frustration with the utter failure of many public school systems to provide the services to which students and parents are entitled because “muh COVID.” But I still stand by it because it explains other aspects of the K-12 implosion as well.

For example, it certainly accounts for the eagerness with which school districts in my area have embraced critical race theory. In one county to my north, theory-addled officials have eliminated the standardized test that used to be required for admission to their nationally-respected STEM magnet because they’ve swallowed the lie that race-blind standards — aren’t. And in another, officials have even threatened to cancel parents who’ve dared to challenge them on a so-called “anti-racist” curriculum that actually explicitly promulgates anti-white bigotry. Why? I’ll tell you: CRT gives them an easy out. It allows them to deflect the blame for observed achievement gaps onto a nebulous “system” that must be razed instead of squarely confronting their own monumental failure to educate less-advantaged students.

Why do certain subgroups of students fall behind? The root causes for this are complex and multitudinous, but one reason is certainly the public school system’s addiction to stupid fads like “whole language” and “reform math” that appeal to “educators” who are thoroughly untutored on how the human brain actually works. More affluent students can get around these idiot curricula by seeking out someone like me (i.e., a traditionalist who has a degree in brain science); poorer students, however, are stuck with programs that fail to teach them to read, write and cipher. Unhappy with the outcomes generated by this state of affairs? You should be — and you should seek to rectify them by returning to what works: explicit, teacher-led instruction in the three R’s.

Of course, that seems yucky and hard to our aforementioned public school officials. Establishing need-based, drill-focused remediation camps to fix what “reformers” have broken? Ugh. That’s too much. Better to spread the idea that literacy and numeracy are “the white man’s standard.” That way, you don’t have to do anything at all.

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And while we’re on the subject, the Very Smart People claiming that our complaints in re: the propaganda leftists are trying to force upon our children are alarmist/reactionary/a white-washing of history/etc. need to shut the eff up right now because you’re either actively lying or you just don’t know what the eff you’re talking about. 

Oh, I know you think you’re oh-so-clever pulling your faux-mystified “critical race theory is something discussed in law schools” schtick, but your dishonest obfuscation of the point doesn’t erase the direct intellectual through-line connecting those academic discussions and the applications of neo-racist thinking that we’re now seeing with our own damned eyes in our local schools. Whether these curricula are technically employing CRT as its academic originators understood it or not is a side question that doesn’t change the fact that they are morally wrong and incredibly damaging if you care about fostering genuine justice and solidarity. 

And that false dichotomy you’re setting up between the 1619 Project and “not teaching black history at all”? It’s absolute BS and everyone knows it. I’m almost 42 years old, yet I learned about slavery and segregation and was exposed to the thought of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and others. (I also learned about the Trail of Tears and our interventions in Latin America, just FYI.) True: my high school course didn’t cover the black American experience with the exhaustive depth activists evidently prefer. But that same high school course also boiled down the presidency of John Adams to the X-Y-Z Affair and the Alien and Sedition Acts (which, as a fan of Adams, I take personally), so — I’m thinking maybe it’s hard to fully explore the details of anything in a survey course intended to instill elementary factual knowledge about the history of our own country (which everyone needs first before we start diving into the nitty-gritty). 

BLATE: There’s a vast field between “anti-racist” indoctrination and covering up the negatives in our national story, and every. single prominent anti-CRT activist lives in that space. If you are asserting otherwise? Again, sit the eff down so adults who aren’t functionally retarded can hash this out.

Yep, this is precisely what these radicals are trying to pull. And we see right through it.

          

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Some psychopathic speaker who was given a platform at Yale (and is therefore unbelievably privileged despite her caterwauling to the contrary) reportedly dreams of murdering white people because she believes we’re all predators illegitimately seeking congratulations for what we’ve done for her. Well, allow me to correct the record: I don’t want to be praised, cupcake. I want to be left the hell alone. I’m sick of being held responsible for crimes other people committed before I was born. I’m happy to help anyone who’s genuinely struggling*, but when push comes to shove, I don’t owe anyone anything just because of my skin color. Collective guilt is a bullshit concept that leads to mass graves wherever it’s taken seriously.

*And let’s define “genuinely struggling,” shall we? If you’re low income and/or a victim of family dysfunction and/or community disorder and decay, you probably do need a hand up. Weirdly, though, those folks generally aren’t the ones clamoring for special consideration. Weirdly, the loudest voices demanding I abase myself before their righteous “suffering” are thoroughly bourgie mediocrities living quite comfortable lives who’ve discovered that appealing to grievance gives them power akin to wielding the One Ring. To them, the only thing I’m willing to offer is my two middle fingers.

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To the whiny brat complaining about the prevalence of American flags from her rarefied perch at the New York Times: if you don’t like the United States, you’re free to leave. I’ll help you pack your bags. Hell, I’ll even set up a damned GoFundMe to buy your ticket if you don’t have the resources to emigrate. Why? Because I don’t want to share this country with contemptuous people like you. People like you want me and mine dead — or at least oppressed and immiserated. And as it is obvious there’s no room for reconciliation or negotiation here, I’m more than happy to consider divorce. Eff right off — and don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

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James Lindsay is the unquestioned master at translating “woke” terminology into sane people English and you should absolutely peruse his stuff over at New Discourses. But here, I’m going to indulge in some translating of my own — after which I will propose a more helpful, less Marxian way to discuss the very real phenomenon at issue.

When I hear the phrase “systemic racism,” I hear: “I’ve noticed a disparity in outcome between whites and blacks in the US, and I’ve decided to blame all white people. It means nothing to me that in eras much more rife with legally sanctioned racial oppression, blacks were becoming professionals and raising well-adjusted kids. It means nothing to me that Asian immigrants on free lunch are cleaning white kids’ clocks on standardized tests. And I’m unwilling to consider the possibility that decades of condescending government handouts and affirmative action (i.e., stealth racial quotas) may have actually disincentivized educational attainment and healthy family formation in the black community and therefore done more harm than good. If I’m black, I enjoy humiliating guilty liberal white people, and I want historical mistreatment to be an excuse for all time because I just can’t be bothered to do anything for myself. If I’m white, I’m a peacock seeking carte blanche to lord my superior social status over other whites who don’t have my credentials or my position of power.”

What should be used instead: lingering disadvantage. It is true that black development was actively suppressed in the US by slavery, segregation, and misguided “urban development” for a few centuries, and it is true that black people today are now behind on several metrics (like, for example, accumulated wealth) in part because of that history. But these after-effects cannot properly be called “racism” without stretching the definition of “racism” beyond all meaningful bounds. The term “racism” should be preserved for concrete, clearly documented differences in treatment in present-day organizations for which bias seems to be the prevailing cause. For everything else, “lingering disadvantage” is a more accurate term that avoids abusive finger-pointing - because, of course, white people living today didn’t commit yesterday’s sins - and enables multivariate analyses of our current problems.

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And with that — I think I’m done for this week. Let me know in the comments what I should cover next!

BFTP: Modern-Day Pharisees

Every few years, I pull this essay out from my archives -- because it is evergreen.

Modern-Day Pharisees

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector…” – Luke 18: 9-11

Last week, CNN anchor T.J. Holmes caught the attention of the blogosphere when, in honor of Earth Day, he publicly confessed that he drives a gas-guzzling Chevy Tahoe just because he can, drinks bottled water without recycling the bottles, and uses old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!” he cried, beating his penitent chest. Okay, no — that last part didn’t actually happen. But the quasi-religious nature of Holmes’ statements prompted Ed Morrissey to snark:

Er … say five Rachel Carsons and sing three Bob Dylan songs, my fellow planetary traveler, and go thee out and sin no more.

Meanwhile, Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, is once again begging for higher taxes. He and his (also wealthy) allies, who call themselves the “Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength,” have even written up a petition asking the government to repeal the Bush tax cuts. How special.

What do these two gestures have in common? They are both textbook examples of the political theater put on by our modern-day Pharisees.

As noted in the verses from Luke that I quoted above (and as noted elsewhere in the New Testament), the Pharisees in Jesus’ day were the ultimate attention-whores. They ostentatiously displayed their righteousness by praying where everyone could see them, “sounding their trumpets” whenever they gave alms, and “disfiguring their faces” whenever they were fasting. On the other hand, Jesus counseled his followers to pray, give alms, and fast in secret so as to draw the attention of the Heavenly Father only:

“But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” – Matthew 6: 3-4

These days, I have noticed a consistent pattern among leftists: They love to talk the talk, but they frequently behave as if mere talking gives them carte blanche to be assholes. One example: A few years ago, Amy Alkon, an advice columnist who describes herself as fiscally conservative and socially libertarian, made the mistake of noting the blindingly obvious fact that single-parenthood is destroying the black community. For her Thoughtcrime, representatives of the “tolerant” and progessive left filled her blog with trollish comments claiming that Alkon was secretly a transexual.

A second example: While I was away this past week, a leftist at Wonkette decided it would be HIGH-larious to make fun of little Trig Palin on his birthday. Fortunately, enough people found this attack on a disabled toddler so disgusting that Wonkette eventually lost the backing of several of its advertisers. Score!

A third example (this time from my personal experience): Back in 2009, a meme in which the participants admitted their unconscious racism and their “privilege” spread like wildfire throughout Live Journal. Over and over again, I saw leftist individuals publicly flagellate themselves for the sin of being white. Why did this suddenly become all the rage? Simple: These Live Journalers needed a license to bully. You may think that’s harsh, but consider what happened when science fiction author and avowed Democrat Elizabeth Moon put down her customary carafe of liberal Kool-Aid and challenged the hard-left orthodoxy on immigration and Islam. Instantly, Moon – who frequently irritates me with her uncritical regurgitation of the usual left-wing talking points on a host of other issues – was mauled by the anti-ist hounds. She was disinvited from a feminist science fiction convention, and many threatened to boycott her books.

It’s not for nothing that Thomas Sowell once declared leftist politics the “politics of self-congratulation.” **As many other bloggers have pointed out, Warren Buffett is certainly free to write out a check to the U.S. Treasury. Nobody’s stopping him. But Buffett is a modern-day Pharisee. He knows that making a quiet donation to the government is not going to bring him half as much attention as a dewy-eyed declaration – in front of the news cameras, of course – that he wishes to be taxed more. Leftism, you see, is all about kicking up a lot of sound and fury to demonstrate to the watching world how oh-so-compassionate you are — sound and fury that ultimately signifies nothing.

**5/22/21 Foot Note: Just this week, I re-read Sowell's 25-year-old classic The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, and yes, its general thesis is still correct. Even if the examples therein are now a bit dated, go pick it up. You will instantly recognize the general thought patterns and debate avoidance strategies of a 2021 anti-racist -- or a Branch Covidian. 

Boring Rhetorical Tics the Left Needs to Retire, Part IV

You can find the previous posts in this series here.

It's been a while since I last did one of these. And yes: in the intervening time, quite a bit of leftist stupidity has accreted on our discourse like rust on an abandoned and exposed bicycle. So let's break out some CLR, shall we?

10. Follow the science.

In the era of COVID-19, nothing has been abused more, I think, than the respect the average American has for scientific experts.

Last spring, I thought it reasonable to be a little more vigilant -- especially since MamaGeek and I both fell into high risk categories due to age and/or our comorbidities. But as of now, I no longer have patience for the fear-mongering that the left calls "the science." Why? Because the data are in: unless you are very old, obese, vitamin D-deficient and/or suffering from a preexisting medical condition, the chances that you will die from a COVID-19 infection are extraordinarily remote -- and the chances that you will need to be hospitalized are only slightly higher. This is not the Black Death; this is, at worst, a bad flu. It is of course tragic that hundreds of thousands of people have died; COVID-19 is not nothing. But hundreds of thousands of people also died of heart disease over the past year, and no one is suggesting we completely restructure our society on those patients' accounts.

"The science" has failed to provide proof that schools are significant sources of COVID-19 infection, yet it still demands we keep said schools closed to "safeguard" teachers and students. ("The science," in this case, is how the left chooses to cloak its obeisance to a bunch of lazy, not-very-smart women who've decided working from home in their jammies is a great way to escape the challenges of classroom management.) (Oh, is that insulting? Well, I'm not sorry. I know intimately the type of people the teaching profession attracts. Teachers are not all selfless public servants.) "The science" somehow justified closing parks and beaches even though, once again, it cannot articulate any likely mechanism by which COVID-19 can be spread in such outdoor settings. And "the science" has illogically declared that certain mass protests are perfectly fine while others are irredeemably evil. "The science," in short, is not science at all; it is an illegitimate appeal to authority.

Science - real, open science that actively seeks disconfirmation - is one of the best methods of knowledge generation we have. There's no question that it has dramatically improved both our standard of living and our understanding of the natural world. But that doesn't make it some idol we should worship and obey -- especially not when it is corrupted by extra-scientific concerns (as "the science" around COVID-19 certainly is). Furthermore, while science can tell us many useful facts about how things work, it can't tell us what we should do with that new information. Last century, for example, science figured out how to split the atom. But how, exactly, are we to "follow" that science? By building nuclear weaponry? Or by building clean power plants? On this question, science is mute.

Science is a tool meant to exist in a larger moral matrix. It should not - and cannot - be our sole source of guidance.

11. We need to have a national conversation about X.

This one wouldn't bother me nearly as much if leftists were being sincere each time they said it. But they're not. What leftists mean by a "national conversation" is a monologue. They get to yell at us about how horrible we all are -- and we're not at liberty to respond. If we do, we're being "fragile." Or we're "derailing." Or we're spreading "disinformation" and istophobia and need to be shut down. 

Leftists accept nothing but 100% submission. See also: this post, in which I respond to a New York Times columnist who decided it was pointless to talk to Trump supporters essentially because they refused to admit they were wrong and agree with him. But as I said then, it's not a genuine conversation if you've already decided ahead of time that the other person has nothing worthwhile to contribute to the discussion -- that you yourself are in sole possession of the truth.

12. You're denying my right to exist.

Radical trans activists in particular are guilty of screaming this one -- usually at people who are raising thoroughly mild objections to their Cartesian dualism. But what, exactly, does it mean to "exist"? Does it mean to live in a world in which your every desire is satisfied? Does it mean to live free of upset, disappointment, inconvenience, or interpersonal friction? No.

As a borderline autist, I have trouble with sensory processing. I get distracted/irritated by noises (like chewing or the clacking of computer keys) that other people easily ignore. But imagine if, while out in public, I demanded that perfect strangers shut their laptops or spit out their gum because "I have a right to exist." Wouldn't I be seen as the biggest asshole on planet Earth? After all, those other folks also have rights -- including a right not to be accosted by a crazy lady for doing something perfectly ordinary.

No one is denying the reality of gender dysphoria. No one is denying that it causes real distress. But rights are multi-directional and must be carefully negotiated -- and sometimes that means you don't get everything you want. Sometimes that means you have to respect, say, the needs of biologically female athletes -- or the concerns of gender-critical parents.

The world doesn't revolve around you.

Okay, readers: what else should I add to this ever-growing list? Please comment below!