For people who pride themselves as the party of intellectualism — you sure don’t think things through. In The Unconscious is Not What You Think It Is TEDx Talk, Dr. Joel Weinberger proudly proclaimed the following on being right about Trump’s 2016 win:
How did we get it right and everyone else get it wrong?
By miserably failing to ask the right questions years before — you unwittingly created the conditions to “get it right.” Now look where you are — outraged over Roe v. Wade and Trump on the rise once again (oblivious to how you brought it all on yourselves). And NOW look where you are (AGAIN). I told you and told you for 10 years — and still, you never listen and never learn.
And now, even now . . . The cat . . . TOTALLY out of the BAG! You’re still standing here . . . debating! What the hell else do you need?
But you know best . . .
The March of Folly of Mentality Always Does
Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible. Character is fate, as the Greeks believed. Germans were schooled in winning objectives sby force, unschooled in adjustment. They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement even at the risk of defeat.
— Barbara Tuchman
”Enslaved People”
It’s not the change in terms that bothers me so much: It’s the complete absence of intellectually honest discussion by people preoccupied with victories in vocabulary.
When I am making my edits, “John’s slave” becomes “a person enslaved by John.” “John owned Sally” becomes “John enslaved Sally.” . . .
Good grief!
Even if there is a distinction deserving of discussion: What you fail to understand is that the net effect of your efforts is what counts (not your well-meaning intent). If you do far more harm than good — what’s the point?
Consider this sentence: “George Washington owned slaves at Mount Vernon.” It doesn’t agitate our sense of morality as much as the sentence “George Washington enslaved people at Mount Vernon,” does it? To most people, it seems much worse to say, read, or hear that someone “enslaved” other people than that they “owned” other people.
That’s partially because ownership is one of the primary rights and most cherished ideas in the American system — and most Western systems — of government.
I’m not among “most” . . .
And on what basis is she making the claim that “most people” see it that way? “Owned” has an ugliness that “enslaved” does not — precisely because we know it’s not a “primary right” to own people. Such efforts are really reaching to re-engineer what cannot be undone.
All this over-the-top engineering of sensitivity has gotten totally out of hand.
Excessive sensitivity breeds hypersensitivity. When you water things down to be politically correct, our nation’s ability to discern decreases right along with it: Creating a culture that’s increasingly more easily offended and radically irrational — across-the-board.
Jesus — it just never ends
Tough love used to be timeless:
Now everything’s an assault on increasingly fragile egos: In some cases literally (and I mean the old-fashioned “literal” — where it actually means what it used to). It was a time when a lot of things that once meant something, now mean nothing. An assault is how this site got started — the story of which can be found in America’s Comfort-Craving Culture I Can’t Stand. As I told the apartment complex:
I told you where this is going, and this is only the beginning: wokerunamok.com/
I changed my mind about putting her name on the sign though. This isn’t about her and it never was. What she did — was done under the influence of painfully misguided management who created the conditions for it to happen: Which started the day your staff showed up with shallow smiles soon followed by shoddiness. I’m not excusing her, but in the atmosphere of America (which caters to turbocharged hypersensitivity) — she is but a molecule of concern in a culture gone mad.
She’s got a lot to learn about people (as do you – right along with the rest of the world). Perhaps she’ll learn that there are still some hangin’ onto what little is left of humanity — who’ll show you some grace even when you’ve given them none.
The ability to take criticism (harsh or otherwise) — is at the core of what this nation so desperately needs: While you’re killing us by being needy. And don’t even get me started on how homelessness is a problem perpetuated by those most sensitive in their approach to solving it.
If you wanna start solving problems instead of perpetuating them — it’s gotta get ugly (or as ol’ Bill perfectly put it):
And on that note:
Cruel to Be Kind: Perpetuating Homelessness With Excessive Sensitivity That Shelters Them in Squalor
But why rely on time-honored truths that work when when it’s so much easier to feel comforted by newfangled ways that won’t? Never mind the cosmic damage they leave in their wake:
In our culture of instant offense, we ban before we think. However, banning isn’t a sign of strength or resolve, but an admission of defeat, of showing how little we have engaged with whatever the bigger issue that belies the ban.
Instead of asking or addressing the roots of violent racism in the South in 2015 — far too difficult, far too intimidating — we focus on symbols. If we take a flag down, if we remove a TV show from the schedules, it shows we are doing something.
It shows our hearts are in the right places.
Renaming teams and pancake products, kneeling, knocking down monuments, wiping Indians off boxes of butter, banning Dukes of Hazzard, and Microsoft’s Inclusiveness Checker to program you proper: Enough already!
These are not serious-minded measures for problem solving.
Elaine’s exasperation x 10 =
How impossibly stupid it is that they banned The Dukes of Hazzard . . .
But the high five is just so stupid!
Not to mention — this . . .
And then there this Grade-A Horseshit
From as far back as I can remember, I loved the Land O’Lakes Indian. And then they butchered the spirit of it for the sake of sensitivity. If such measures had any chance of actually making an impact that matters:
I’d gladly sacrifice my precious brand of beauty.
For those who would try to educate me by saying I don’t understand the feelings involved in empty overtures that accomplish absolutely nothing:
No, you don’t understand . . .
On that note — and one for the ages . . .
Marching to Black Lives Matter with the first black president sitting in the White House — was that a smart move? The answer should be abundantly clear and yet the question is not even considered. I’ve been blocked on X for just politely suggesting that BLM is a counterproductive cause.
Instead of considering how you could fight for justice more intelligently — you act like I’m saying you shouldn’t fight for it at all.
“Was that a smart move?”
Instantly firing back with boilerplate beliefs is not an indicator of understanding the premise of that question (or even caring to). Such inquiry requires reflection and the willingness to examine the efficacy of your efforts:
And what role you play in harming your own interests by the manner in which you pursue them.
What’s more, you make it nearly impossible to explain it to you — as detail has a way of complicating the narrative. Even if drawing attention to a problem produces some positive activity, the concept of unintended consequences entirely escapes those consumed by what they see only in the moment. Not to mention this . . .
And on that note:
The people who consider themselves to be the saviors of black people — are hurting black people, because what they’re committed to is more virtue signaling than actually doing something in the world.
— John McWhorter
No rational person would deny that, but I assure you — the likes of Loury & McWhorter will turn on a dime to deny the undeniable to protect their own (just like those they’re trying to change). Hypocrisy does not lend itself to compelling argument (as it poisons everything in its path). Believe it or not, the best way to serve your interests is to first and foremost — hold your own accountable. If you wanna make the opposition look bad, try looking good.
If you wanna have the moral high ground, try earning it:
The moral high ground, in ethical or political parlance, refers to the status of being respected for remaining moral, and adhering to and upholding a universally recognized standard of justice or goodness.
That is not this . . .
We should be above whatever the fad or the fashion is of any given day. We should be looking at the deep questions. We should be analytical. We should be emphasizing reason.
— Glenn Loury, Tucker Carlson Today
Only for problems that are popular and easy to perceive? Whatever’s in your wheelhouse? Is that as deep as your questions go, Glenn? The likes of Loury & McWhorter (and all of America) — want to have conversations that work for them (as if issues exist in a vacuum). The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace: Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on.
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
That the reaction is not to think it through, not to question, not to assemble facts, not to make arguments — but instead to wave banners and spout slogans such that you could hardly distinguish what they were doing from a manifesto that would come out of [does it matter?]
— Glenn Loury, Tucker Carlson Today
When the context suits you, such words are solid gold. What you do when it doesn’t — determines the worth of your word.
Lara walked along the tracks following a path worn by pilgrims and then turned into the fields. Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, took a deep breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life.
She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place.
― Doctor Zhivago (referenced in Into the Wild)
In the spirit of discovery that clarity, curiosity, and courage can inspire:
As in what it takes to understand every single story, slide, image, title, caption, quote, and how it’s all connected in the video below (which captures the essence of what I’m out to say and do):
Sounds of Silence: The Deafening Noise of a Nation Decades in Decline
