Bari Weiss Enumerates the Core Beliefs of Wokeness – Critical Race Theory – Social Justice

I've been posting ad nauseam about Wokeness over the past 18 months because it starkly contradicts many of my core beliefs. And it starkly contradicts basic principles deeply cherished by what I believe to be the great majority of Americans. I have categorized dozens of my articles with the label Wokeness. You can read them all by clicking on this link. I have carefully documented not only theories about why this movement has gained traction. I have also carefully collected many instances in which people have hurt, belittled, fired, tormented and rattled each other by embracing Woke Ideology while throwing long-established beliefs (including basic Enlightenment Principles and Martin Luther King's "content of character" aspirations into the trash.

Bari Weiss has be speaking loud lately, rallying the great majority of people--they tend to be afraid to speak up--to say what they believe and to not feel compelled to say things that they don't believe. It all sounds so simple, but the Twitter mobs are loud and vocal and they have thoroughly intimidated those who are in charge of our meaning-making institutions (e.g., schools, media, government, social media). Weiss argues that if we all just start speaking up, this insanity will diminish greatly because it will encourage others to speak up too. Here is an excerpt from Bari Weiss' article at Commentary. It is titled "We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage: Say no to the Woke Revolution." Here is Wokeness in a nutshell from her article:

It begins by stipulating that the forces of justice and progress are in a war against backwardness and tyranny. And in a war, the normal rules of the game must be suspended. Indeed, this ideology would argue that those rules are not just obstacles to justice, but tools of oppression. They are the master’s tools. And the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

So the tools themselves are not just replaced but repudiated. And in so doing, persuasion—the purpose of argument—is replaced with public shaming. Moral complexity is replaced with moral certainty. Facts are replaced with feelings.

Ideas are replaced with identity. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Debate is replaced with de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion, with exclusion.

In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully.

In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan, your whole life can be ruined. . . . In this ideology, the past cannot be understood on its own terms, but must be judged through the morals and mores of the present. In this ideology, intentions don’t matter... In this ideology, the equality of opportunity is replaced with equality of outcome as a measure of fairness. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, the course must have been defective.... In this ideology, you are guilty for the sins of your fathers. In other words: You are not you. You are only a mere avatar of your race or your religion or your class....In this system, we are all placed neatly on a spectrum of “privileged” to “oppressed.” We are ranked somewhere on this spectrum in different categories: race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Then we are given an overall score, based on the sum of these rankings. Having privilege means that your character and your ideas are tainted.... Racism has been redefined. It is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someone’s skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups....skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests.

How in hell's name could anyone be drawn to such stupidity? Weiss points to several causes that have made fertile ground for this dysfunction:

All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life—the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning. A pandemic of distrust. It has taken place against the backdrop of the American dream’s decline into what feels like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others.

Continue ReadingBari Weiss Enumerates the Core Beliefs of Wokeness – Critical Race Theory – Social Justice

The Relationship Between Truth and Courage

Nietzsche recognized that without courage we cannot have truth:

How much truth can a spirit stand, how much truth does it dare? For me that became more and more the real measure of value. Error (belief in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice.

Every achievement, every step forward in knowledge, comes from courage, from harshness towards yourself, from cleanliness with respect to yourself. ..

Bari Weiss' newest article discusses the relationship between courage and truth. The title: "Some Thoughts About Courage We are living through an epidemic of cowardice. The antidote is courage."

Courage means, first off, the unqualified rejection of lies. Do not speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob. And do not genially accept the lies told to you. If possible, be vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false. Courage can be contagious, and your example may serve as a means of transmission.

When you’re told that traits such as industriousness and punctuality are the legacy of white supremacy, don’t hesitate to reject it. When you’re told that statues of figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are offensive, explain that they are national heroes. When you’re told that “nothing has changed” in this country for minorities, don’t dishonor the memory of civil-rights pioneers by agreeing. And when you’re told that America was founded in order to perpetuate slavery, don’t take part in rewriting the country’s history

. . . .

As Douglas Murray has put it: “The problem is not that the sacrificial victim is selected. The problem is that the people who destroy his reputation are permitted to do so by the complicity, silence and slinking away of everybody else.”

What caused our leaders to buckle under? To say things they don't believe and to refuse to say things that they know are true? Weiss blames the lack of courage:
There are a lot of factors that are relevant to the answer: institutional decay; the tech revolution and the monopolies it created; the arrogance of our elites; poverty; the death of trust. And all of these must be examined, because without them we would have neither the far right nor the cultural revolutionaries now clamoring at America’s gates.

But there is one word we should linger on, because every moment of radical victory turned on it. The word is cowardice.

The revolution has been met with almost no resistance by those who have the title CEO or leader or president or principal in front of their names. The refusal of the adults in the room to speak the truth, their refusal to say no to efforts to undermine the mission of their institutions, their fear of being called a bad name and that fear trumping their responsibility — that is how we got here.

I'll conclude with this excerpt from a conversation between Bari Weiss and Brian Stelter:

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Matt Stoller Discusses the Overconcentration of Economic and Political Power in Many American Industries

I've followed Matt Stoller for months and I now support his Substack newsletter. He discusses the over-concentrations of power in many places. This is incredibly important to having a meaningful understanding about what is going on in Washington DC. Mere Supply and Demand does NOT explain what is going on, contrary to many economists.

Krystal and Saagar talk at length with policy expert Matt Stoller about the monopolization of the American economy, supply chain shocks, corruption in government, consumer culture, meat packing consolidation, the anti-trust movement and more.

From Stoller's first Substack newsletter:

You see, I was taught basic economics by Martin Feldstein at Harvard, and he told us that banks and corporations were neutral technocratic institutions. And I believed him, because I was an arrogant Harvard student who trusted economists. Witnessing the policy choice to concentrate wealth and power during the Wall Street bailouts, and talking to lots of people in foreclosure who didn’t get a bailout, broke me of that illusion.

After you learn about Too Big to Fail banks, it’s hard not to look around and begin seeing that Too Big to Fail is everywhere. Eventually I came to read Cornered by Barry Lynn, and that book helped connect the dots and set me on the path to researching my own book, Goliath. (Later I found out Feldstein was on the board of AIG, which was one of the central villains of the financial crisis.)

What’s your story? And what monopolies are you noticing these days?

Continue ReadingMatt Stoller Discusses the Overconcentration of Economic and Political Power in Many American Industries

About Compounding

Shane Parrish of Farnham Street pointed out that “Compounding,” is a really useful concept, especially when applied to things outside of finance, where the term refers to earning interest on interest.

Then along comes an article by Daniel F. Chambliss, "The Mundanity of Excellence," reminding us that great talent can happen only when we stand on the shoulders of numerous sub-talents:

Excellence is mundane. Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all to- gether, produce excellence. When a swimmer learns a proper flip turn in the freestyle races, she will swim the race a bit faster; then a streamlined push off from the wall, with the arms squeezed together over the head, and a little faster; then how to place the hands in the water so no air is cupped in them; then how to lift them over the water; then how to lift weights to properly build strength, and how to eat the right foods, and to wear the best suits for racing, and on and on. Each of those tasks seems small in itself, but each allows the athlete to swim a bit faster. And having learned and consistently practiced all of them to- gether, and many more besides, the swimmer may compete in the Olympic Games. The win- ning of a gold medal is nothing more than the synthesis of a countless number of such little things—even if some of them are done unwit- tingly or by others, and thus called “luck.”.

One final thought: It has increasingly appeared to me that anything good that has happened (and many bad things) are the result of work I’ve done (or failed to do) over many years or decades. Compounding is behind my biggest successes and failures. One of the biggest ways this show up in in your reputation. As the saying goes, a good reputation is hard to earn and easy to lose. When you've spent your entire life trying to be trustworthy, truthful and kind, that opens doors for you, over and over. But you might forget that this superpower was something you assembled over decades.

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Michael Shellenberger Discusses The Origins of San Francisco’s Homeless Problem with Joe Rogan

This is an excerpt from a much longer discussion. Michael Shellenberger is discussing San Francisco's homeless problem with Joe Rogan. One of his conclusions is the well-intentioned attitude by many liberals that all homeless people are purely victims and that they cannot be blamed for any of their behaviors, including their uses of dangerous drugs.

Continue ReadingMichael Shellenberger Discusses The Origins of San Francisco’s Homeless Problem with Joe Rogan