It was a big mistake of the Republicans to nominate Trump in 2020. ANY other Republican candidate would have won easily. Visiting Moscow on a regular basis since 1987. Why? If he is nominated in 2024 - Republicans will lose again. The least of two evils. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
What happened to MIT really saddens me. I was there a very long time ago, and it was way before Reif. Things took a sharp turn for the worse when Reif became the president. The MIT TechReview is now full of woke talking points, and their headlines read like NYT. I think the person who actually needs to be cancelled are weaklings like President Reif.
Sad story. Even sadder because you hold no one responsible. Just unnamed administrators, department chairs, ideologues etc. there will be no change until names are named and individuals are called to account.
The Left intellectual class are some of the most rigid people on earth. I have been canceled by most of the folks I knew in grad school because I dared to disagree with their views on Trump, covid, BLM and so on and so on. The individuals who do still communicate with me are quick to make sure I understand the conditions; under no circumstances am I allowed to speak about politics if and when I ever sit at a dinner table with them again - and these are political science professors, for god's sake!
Interesting, M. Epps. Hard to tell EXACTLY what Your perspective is. But, yah, it COULD. But my suspicion is that if this happened, those in power would survive just fine and just rebuild in their own image. If that were the case, it would be worth a lot LESS than what troubles we currently deal with.
Affirmative action is to blame. When you are given something you have not earned (with most but not al hires ) there is a load a shame that the person deals with when they realize they were not qualified but fake it.. Shame leads to anger and victimhood. I quit university teaching in the 90's when this was just heating up.
Dunno how many here subscribe to Andrew Sullivan. He tells what Reality is all about in his latest about so-called-but-not "transphobic" Dave Chappelle. He also points back to M. Weiss's previous article about the two transgenders and their views (surgeon and psychologist, I think it was). Some might think this one article of M. Sullivan is WORTH a subscription, but I wouldn't.
Dunno if anyone is following the comments for this article anymore, but thought I’d post this anyway.
I didn’t get any takers on trying to actually DO something in an organized Way, with the StopTheWoke.org domain name. But there were a number of “heart-likes,” so I’ll take this one step further.
IF enough people are SERIOUS, then I’ll set up what’s-called a “Slack” site. Some may know of it. It’s like a comment section on steroids. Probably best feature is that You can file messages in FOLDERS (or what Slack calls “channels”).
If interested, email me at GranPa-Festus@twc (long story). I won’t deal with anyone unless they put their FULL NAME on the email. REAL name. No anonymous folks. (Not me either, of course.)
One thing: email is only gonna be active for a week or so, as I finally move to fiber-optic Internet. And if little interest, nothing lost. 😊
Bari - why no interest in calling out the Biden administration and his justice dept for going after parents who try to tell school boards what they think? You need to be honest about where this is all coming from. Otherwise all this talk is a waste of my time
I'm greatly concerned about the developments in DEI that this article highlights, as well as other articles on Bari's substack. And I feel strongly it's correct to be raising these warnings and flags.
However, I still come back to the "kernel of truth" argument that has also been inserted into discussions here, and that was brought up in the excellent podcast discussion that was recently done with Glenn Loury.
Because I do feel strongly that the movements feeding into DEI are recognizing more than a kernel of truth that certain minority groups do experience unfair treatment, and have for a very long time. When we talk about the real concerns that DEI is stifling speech, degrading merit, etc... we still need to keep in mind that that is precisely what Black America has been sharing with us for that same long time has been very much the experience Dr. Abbot is relating in terms of feeling that talents weren't given full opportunity, that speech about what they were experiencing was restricted, etc....
I'm glad that this discussion is happening. As I said to start, I do think these excesses need to be curbed as soon as possible. I still think there are harder questions to wrestle with in terms of how to correct historical injustices and make sure every American has a life of opportunity Dr. Loury talked a lot about "social capital": How it is not a tradeable commodity, but that it's at the same time extremely valuable and relevant to the outcome of peoples' lives. When we're keeping the focus on merit, we need to remember it is often an outgrowth of the "social capital" someone had access to growing up, in addition to the real capital of inherited wealth that is also not exactly fairly distributed in this country.
I'd love to hear more ideas about how we increase "social capital", how we increase opportunities for people that don't have the same access to it, etc... Because it's also patently obvious that an unadulterated focus on merit, alone, still leaves us with the same problem we started with.
A student who studies hard, spends hours in the library, reeds tons of books and gets excellent grades and test results - must be admitted to the best college. Whatever is his color. A student who only plays basketball all day and does drugs does not deserve it. Whatever his color is. SIMPLE
And as to advice - Patriots - this will never stop until the Leftist blackshirts begin to feel real fear. Fear that if they disrupt the lives of normal people their safety will be in danger. Their jobs will be in danger. Their freedom will be in danger. If the illegal lunatic harassing Sen. Sinema in the bathroom had been arrested and deported immediately would this sort of thing continue? If a bunch of people harassing an innocent family or couple having dinner was roughed up, would they think twice? Yes they would. Stop taking this crap lying down.
The group that will defeat the Progressives, what M. Wesley Yang calls "the Successor Regime," the Elites who run the world? The Center MAJORITY. I don't think the Center-Left plus the Center-Right have the numbers at the ballot box. ICBW. And the Successor Regime isn't just the woke anymore. No. They include the Progessive "charitable" funds. The tech (and non-tech) BILLIONAIRES that everyone ADMIRES. A lotta 'em are in the bureaucracy, if that's how You spell it.
Democracy is no friend to these people, right? What to do? M. Alejandra's recent post. Mixed in with all the partisanship here are probably a lotta good ideas. But partisanship will prevent any progress being made against the extremes on both sides, right?
I apologize about a previous ungenerous post about social media and "stuff." Looking at it now I see it's stupid and unkind. Would say I didn't intend it and I have a pretty good excuse. Just excuses.
I wouldn't say that I was offended, although I may respectfully disagree about using social media automatically making someone "stupid". Understand, too, that I say this as someone without a Facebook account, and who uses next to nothing in the social media space.
I do think there are risks to social media that most people are unfamiliar with. If you really read through the terms of service for many tech and social media companies, they are very intrusive in terms of information they can collect about you. Something as simple as doing a Google search, for example, often results in Google knowing:
- What IP address you use
- Your location
- Times of day you are at that location
- A compiled history of everything you search for, and what that might reveal about you
- That they have the right to sell this information
I'm also critical of these aspects of social media, and consider it unwise to use without there being a lot more legal protections for users of their services. On this score, I tend to view social media users as "ignorant", not of everything in life, but simply of the power they are handing over to those companies for using the service, and what the companies do with it.
The blame for that, though, is something I place more on the social media companies. It should be a fair assumption from most consumers that they can search for information, make friends with people online, share chats and pictures with those people, etc.... without handing over the keys to their kingdom. And how many people are really going to read through the 20+ page user agreements for many of these services? Not many, and that's more by design of the companies to allow them to do all the other stuff that's become problematic.
I'd much rather we keep the focus on the companies and their behavior. And what I affectionately call their "tech waste". A lot of the problems with how social media is affecting society is because those companies are not bound by realistic regulation to keep false, misleading, or inciteful content off of their platforms. The fact that they don't need to incur the expense of doing this is a huge part of why they are so profitable, not unlike the factory that dumped its waste in the nearby river to save money. The waste from tech firms, though, shows up all around us. And it doesn't look like the Cuyahoga River starting on fire due to waste that was dumped in it. It looks like January 6th and the genocide in Myanmar, among other things.
I agree, M. Silent Bob. Except I was saying that people who used social media WERE stupid, not that it made them stupid. ICBW. Here's something I wrote a week ago on Persuasion Substack:
-------------------------
jtWrites inciteful Experiences ·Oct 1
Good question, M. Barrie.
I wasn't using a computer when social media took off. I'm fairly certain I'm better off for not getting involved until this year with Medium. (High-brow social media.) Was no trouble giving it up.
Thing is, it's DESIGNED to be ADDICTIVE. If You asked just about anybody if they'd turn the greatest asset (their brain) over to a DRUG PUSHER, I believe most would say, "No WAY, Jose." Yet they do.
Besides destroying their attention span, and if they're multi-tasking actually changing their brain circuitry... Besides elevating the most SHALLOW ideas to the top... THe price they pay is the cost of all the shiny baubles social media is selling. That EVERYone just HAS to have, right.
I forgot to mention that Gen-Alpha are getting more comfortable so-called dealing with people over social-media, rather than actual-dealing with people face-to-face. And these kids severely crippled in some cases over-stressing about maintaining their position in their in-group?
And people wonder why depression and suicides are up? Granted, I'm not a psychologist but I just don't believe those are coincidences, do You?
Dorian,
You are a terrible person. Asking people to be judged on merit. Atrocious.
Wait, didn't Martin Luther King say the same thing?
Maybe you are OK after all.
Do not give up the fight.
Stay here in the USA and raise your child to adhere to your principles.
A culture, any culture, that is not transmitted from one generation to the next will quickly disappear. That's what we are up against here.
It was a big mistake of the Republicans to nominate Trump in 2020. ANY other Republican candidate would have won easily. Visiting Moscow on a regular basis since 1987. Why? If he is nominated in 2024 - Republicans will lose again. The least of two evils. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Looking forward to tuning in to your lecture on Thursday- thank you for standing firm!
What happened to MIT really saddens me. I was there a very long time ago, and it was way before Reif. Things took a sharp turn for the worse when Reif became the president. The MIT TechReview is now full of woke talking points, and their headlines read like NYT. I think the person who actually needs to be cancelled are weaklings like President Reif.
Sad story. Even sadder because you hold no one responsible. Just unnamed administrators, department chairs, ideologues etc. there will be no change until names are named and individuals are called to account.
Great idea. Done.
The Left intellectual class are some of the most rigid people on earth. I have been canceled by most of the folks I knew in grad school because I dared to disagree with their views on Trump, covid, BLM and so on and so on. The individuals who do still communicate with me are quick to make sure I understand the conditions; under no circumstances am I allowed to speak about politics if and when I ever sit at a dinner table with them again - and these are political science professors, for god's sake!
It’s too late. Everything is imploding. Look around. It’s undeniable. Let it crash. Then rebuild.
Interesting, M. Epps. Hard to tell EXACTLY what Your perspective is. But, yah, it COULD. But my suspicion is that if this happened, those in power would survive just fine and just rebuild in their own image. If that were the case, it would be worth a lot LESS than what troubles we currently deal with.
IMHO. ICBW.
Affirmative action is to blame. When you are given something you have not earned (with most but not al hires ) there is a load a shame that the person deals with when they realize they were not qualified but fake it.. Shame leads to anger and victimhood. I quit university teaching in the 90's when this was just heating up.
Dunno how many here subscribe to Andrew Sullivan. He tells what Reality is all about in his latest about so-called-but-not "transphobic" Dave Chappelle. He also points back to M. Weiss's previous article about the two transgenders and their views (surgeon and psychologist, I think it was). Some might think this one article of M. Sullivan is WORTH a subscription, but I wouldn't.
Dunno if anyone is following the comments for this article anymore, but thought I’d post this anyway.
I didn’t get any takers on trying to actually DO something in an organized Way, with the StopTheWoke.org domain name. But there were a number of “heart-likes,” so I’ll take this one step further.
IF enough people are SERIOUS, then I’ll set up what’s-called a “Slack” site. Some may know of it. It’s like a comment section on steroids. Probably best feature is that You can file messages in FOLDERS (or what Slack calls “channels”).
If interested, email me at GranPa-Festus@twc (long story). I won’t deal with anyone unless they put their FULL NAME on the email. REAL name. No anonymous folks. (Not me either, of course.)
One thing: email is only gonna be active for a week or so, as I finally move to fiber-optic Internet. And if little interest, nothing lost. 😊
Bari - why no interest in calling out the Biden administration and his justice dept for going after parents who try to tell school boards what they think? You need to be honest about where this is all coming from. Otherwise all this talk is a waste of my time
Yah, I agree: https://reason.com/2021/10/06/ag-merrick-garland-fbi-critical-race-theory-parents-schools-domestic-terrorists/
Well, not the part about waste of time, but, yah.
I'm greatly concerned about the developments in DEI that this article highlights, as well as other articles on Bari's substack. And I feel strongly it's correct to be raising these warnings and flags.
However, I still come back to the "kernel of truth" argument that has also been inserted into discussions here, and that was brought up in the excellent podcast discussion that was recently done with Glenn Loury.
Because I do feel strongly that the movements feeding into DEI are recognizing more than a kernel of truth that certain minority groups do experience unfair treatment, and have for a very long time. When we talk about the real concerns that DEI is stifling speech, degrading merit, etc... we still need to keep in mind that that is precisely what Black America has been sharing with us for that same long time has been very much the experience Dr. Abbot is relating in terms of feeling that talents weren't given full opportunity, that speech about what they were experiencing was restricted, etc....
I'm glad that this discussion is happening. As I said to start, I do think these excesses need to be curbed as soon as possible. I still think there are harder questions to wrestle with in terms of how to correct historical injustices and make sure every American has a life of opportunity Dr. Loury talked a lot about "social capital": How it is not a tradeable commodity, but that it's at the same time extremely valuable and relevant to the outcome of peoples' lives. When we're keeping the focus on merit, we need to remember it is often an outgrowth of the "social capital" someone had access to growing up, in addition to the real capital of inherited wealth that is also not exactly fairly distributed in this country.
I'd love to hear more ideas about how we increase "social capital", how we increase opportunities for people that don't have the same access to it, etc... Because it's also patently obvious that an unadulterated focus on merit, alone, still leaves us with the same problem we started with.
A student who studies hard, spends hours in the library, reeds tons of books and gets excellent grades and test results - must be admitted to the best college. Whatever is his color. A student who only plays basketball all day and does drugs does not deserve it. Whatever his color is. SIMPLE
And as to advice - Patriots - this will never stop until the Leftist blackshirts begin to feel real fear. Fear that if they disrupt the lives of normal people their safety will be in danger. Their jobs will be in danger. Their freedom will be in danger. If the illegal lunatic harassing Sen. Sinema in the bathroom had been arrested and deported immediately would this sort of thing continue? If a bunch of people harassing an innocent family or couple having dinner was roughed up, would they think twice? Yes they would. Stop taking this crap lying down.
Here's the thing, M. Bruce: Do You want to "win?" At what cost?
Or do You wanna foment CHANGE? Then You need to distinguish between "Leftists" and "Progressives."
I"m sure I posted that Biden has gone "Progressive." So, no.
T.Rump? Even more no, in my book: https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-cites-details-trump-pressure-120632391.html
The group that will defeat the Progressives, what M. Wesley Yang calls "the Successor Regime," the Elites who run the world? The Center MAJORITY. I don't think the Center-Left plus the Center-Right have the numbers at the ballot box. ICBW. And the Successor Regime isn't just the woke anymore. No. They include the Progessive "charitable" funds. The tech (and non-tech) BILLIONAIRES that everyone ADMIRES. A lotta 'em are in the bureaucracy, if that's how You spell it.
Democracy is no friend to these people, right? What to do? M. Alejandra's recent post. Mixed in with all the partisanship here are probably a lotta good ideas. But partisanship will prevent any progress being made against the extremes on both sides, right?
I apologize about a previous ungenerous post about social media and "stuff." Looking at it now I see it's stupid and unkind. Would say I didn't intend it and I have a pretty good excuse. Just excuses.
Assuming I offended, will just say I'm sorry.
I wouldn't say that I was offended, although I may respectfully disagree about using social media automatically making someone "stupid". Understand, too, that I say this as someone without a Facebook account, and who uses next to nothing in the social media space.
I do think there are risks to social media that most people are unfamiliar with. If you really read through the terms of service for many tech and social media companies, they are very intrusive in terms of information they can collect about you. Something as simple as doing a Google search, for example, often results in Google knowing:
- What IP address you use
- Your location
- Times of day you are at that location
- A compiled history of everything you search for, and what that might reveal about you
- That they have the right to sell this information
I'm also critical of these aspects of social media, and consider it unwise to use without there being a lot more legal protections for users of their services. On this score, I tend to view social media users as "ignorant", not of everything in life, but simply of the power they are handing over to those companies for using the service, and what the companies do with it.
The blame for that, though, is something I place more on the social media companies. It should be a fair assumption from most consumers that they can search for information, make friends with people online, share chats and pictures with those people, etc.... without handing over the keys to their kingdom. And how many people are really going to read through the 20+ page user agreements for many of these services? Not many, and that's more by design of the companies to allow them to do all the other stuff that's become problematic.
I'd much rather we keep the focus on the companies and their behavior. And what I affectionately call their "tech waste". A lot of the problems with how social media is affecting society is because those companies are not bound by realistic regulation to keep false, misleading, or inciteful content off of their platforms. The fact that they don't need to incur the expense of doing this is a huge part of why they are so profitable, not unlike the factory that dumped its waste in the nearby river to save money. The waste from tech firms, though, shows up all around us. And it doesn't look like the Cuyahoga River starting on fire due to waste that was dumped in it. It looks like January 6th and the genocide in Myanmar, among other things.
I agree, M. Silent Bob. Except I was saying that people who used social media WERE stupid, not that it made them stupid. ICBW. Here's something I wrote a week ago on Persuasion Substack:
-------------------------
jtWrites inciteful Experiences ·Oct 1
Good question, M. Barrie.
I wasn't using a computer when social media took off. I'm fairly certain I'm better off for not getting involved until this year with Medium. (High-brow social media.) Was no trouble giving it up.
Thing is, it's DESIGNED to be ADDICTIVE. If You asked just about anybody if they'd turn the greatest asset (their brain) over to a DRUG PUSHER, I believe most would say, "No WAY, Jose." Yet they do.
Besides destroying their attention span, and if they're multi-tasking actually changing their brain circuitry... Besides elevating the most SHALLOW ideas to the top... THe price they pay is the cost of all the shiny baubles social media is selling. That EVERYone just HAS to have, right.
I forgot to mention that Gen-Alpha are getting more comfortable so-called dealing with people over social-media, rather than actual-dealing with people face-to-face. And these kids severely crippled in some cases over-stressing about maintaining their position in their in-group?
And people wonder why depression and suicides are up? Granted, I'm not a psychologist but I just don't believe those are coincidences, do You?
-------------------------------
Would add a couple other points: https://quillette.com/2021/10/04/instagram-and-the-teen-girl-mental-health/
And from Jonathan Haidt, whose book "The Righteous Mind" I'm into right now: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/
Nah, no offense at all.