Then again, this solution of the HxA way assumes that both parties are interested in having a conversation, which is not the case with many of today's tribally charged performative chants that only pretend to be conversations.
Conversations and performative chants look similar in that they both involve two people talking in the presence of each other. The way I distinguish the two is that to be a conversation, one or both parties is/are at least potentially open to changing the way they understand some aspect of the world. This is often extremely difficult to tell. And the likelihood that we are witnessing a meaningful conversation diminishes greatly as 1) more and more people actively participate as speakers, 2) one or more of the parties fail to accurately restate the other side's position, 3) one of the sides refuses to give up the floor, or 4) voices get louder or more impassioned. In other words, one's best shot at having a real conversation involves one-on-one conversation where people listen closely to each other's words, restate those thoughts accurately and want their thoughts and world-view challenged--they both seek a new version of truth and neither seeks to "win" the interaction. The opposite of a conversation can be found in a religious sermon.
I'll close with this quote by Nietzsche:
"Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule."
Yeah, I’m picky. I'd like to see modern news outlets carefully determine that they have evidence upon which to base their splashy headlines. I also expect that when they get the facts wrong on an important national issue, that they will clearly and loudly apologize. That's what I want, but that's not what we are getting.
Remember how Officer Brian Sicknick died during the Capitol riot after someone savagely bashed his skull with a fire hydrant? See the video. The problem is that there was never any evidence for this claim. Further, it has now been proven completely untrue based on a recently released autopsy report. Why does this matter that there was never any evidence to support this widely promulgated claim? Glenn Greenwald points out that without an intentional bludgeoning of Sicknick, the DNC-aligned media (as opposed to FOX, which is the GOP-aligned media) had no claim that the Trump mob killed anyone, which they sorely craved. Take a look at the "news":
[T]he new “norms” in the business have disincentivized traditional outlets to care about accuracy, leading to huge quantities of mistakes. When news agencies see their jobs as being primarily about politics, they become more concerned with being directionally right than technically accurate, knowing among other things that their audiences will forgive them for being wrong, so long as they’re wrong about the “right” targets.
Many of our biggest media outlets have signed up to be cheerleaders for their favorite political team. They have assumed the role of nannies to serve the cravings of their followers. They choose narratives that their respective teams will approve, then they concoct stories based news sources like these: “some believe,” or “sources say” and other creative dissemblings. By using vapor-sources like these, lies can be quickly converted into "news" stories that will sell ads and make their team's readers happy. Many of our biggest media outlets are co-dependent and co-captured in this way, as repeatedly documented by Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Walter Cronkite must be crying in his grave that our major media outlets are fully invested in what Taibbi terms bombholing:
This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing — needed a polarized audience to work. As surveys by organizations like the Pew Center showed, the different target demographics in Trump’s America increasingly did not communicate with one another. Democrats by 2020 were 91 percent of the New York Times audience and 95 percent of MSNBC’s, while Republicans were 93 percent of Fox viewers. When outlets overreached factually, it was possible, if not likely, that the original target audience would never learn the difference.
This reduced the incentive to be careful. Audiences devoured bombshells even when aware on a subconscious level that they might not hold up to scrutiny. If a story turned out to be incorrect, that was okay. News was now more about underlying narratives audiences felt were true and important. For conservatives, Trump was saving America from a conspiracy of elites. For “liberal” audiences, Trump was trying to assume dictatorial power, and the defenders of democracy were trying to stop him.
If you still have a smidgeon of trust in our major media outlets, watch this video by Matt Taibbi to the end, where you will experience more bombholing per second than you ever before thought imaginable:
Where am I going with this post? I'm frustrated, actually disgusted, with what used to be a proud industry, the only industry mentioned in the U.S. Constitution: the press. As discussed by Felix Salmon, here's what Americans now think about the traditional news media.
When we catch our big modern monied “news” outlets running such garbage, it impeaches their character. It tells us that that we should not trust them in the future. It should also concern us about what they are suppressing. What they are hiding from us from our own good? What, in addition to the (true) story that the laptop did belong to Hunter Biden (a story that says more about the partisanship of U.S. spy agencies and news media than anything else? What else is being suppressed? How about the nationwide problem that school and university professors are being forced to either proclaim allegiance to neo-racist Woke ideology or to completely shut up at Evergreen College, Smith College, University of Vermont, USC, UCSD and (most recently) Grace Church School in Manhattan. This same Woke ideology also spills into numerous corporations and cultural institutions. There are many other examples. I have spoken to many of these teachers and attorneys who verify these stories, yet these stories are intentionally uncovered by the DNC-aligned media, with the rarest of exceptions.
Second take. What are my expectations regarding the modern media? News outlets should be at least as principled as high school newspapers, given that we rely upon them for information we use to decide who to run the country. I expect that editors will reject stories for which there is no evidence.
I lean strongly to the left on most political issues, but there are a lot of self-proclaimed progressives who despise people like me who question the “progressive” canon. Their solution for people like me: they try to hurt my feelings by calling me a “conservative.” I've seen it over and over. It is laughable. These are the many people for whom thinking has become a team sport, who are afraid to allow facts to fall where they will and only THEN concoct opinions. These are the victims we were warned about by the excellent documentary, "The Social Dilemma." They have lost their ability to think critically, both by silo-inducing social media and also by politically corrupted legacy media.
I obtained the factual bits of this story by reading Glenn Greenwald, who self-publishes at Substack in order to escape the reach of editors and co-workers who think their jobs are to swear allegiance to a particular political party. He points out in his piece the hatred toward him by many of those in the legacy media for his crime of pointing out these problems.
Because of its centrality to the media narrative and agenda, anyone who tried to point out the serious factual deficiencies in this story — in other words, people trying to be journalists — were smeared by Democratic Party loyalists who pretend to be journalists as "Sicknick Truthers,” white nationalist sympathizers, and supporters of insurrection.
I need to mention, Greenwald takes massive abuse for reporting for the sake of getting the facts right, and the social venom to which he is subjected seems to make dig in even harder to set the record straight.
I will end with one more excerpt from Greenwald's article to demonstrate the extreme levels of hypocrisy the Sicknick story illustrates. The title of Greenwald’s article: “The Media Lied Repeatedly About Officer Brian Sicknick's Death. And They Just Got Caught. Just as with the Russia Bounty debacle, they will never acknowledge what they did. Their audience wants to be lied to for partisan gain and emotional pleasure.”
Truth matters. Noble lies are never justified no matter the cause, especially in journalism. But these employees of corporate media outlets have been taught the exact opposite model: that their primary obligation is to please and flatter the partisan agenda and political sensibilities of their audience even if it means lying or recklessly spreading unproven theories to do it. That is their profit model. And they have trained their audiences to want and expect this and that is why they never feel compelled to engage in any self-critique or accountability when they get caught doing this: their audiences want to be lied to — they are grateful for it — and would prefer that they not admit they did it so that their partisan interests will not be undermined.
What is most depressing about this entire spectacle is that, this time, they exploited the tragic death of a young man to achieve their tawdry goals. They never cared in the slightest about Officer Brian Sicknick. They had just spent months glorifying a protest movement whose core view is that police officers are inherently racist and abusive. He had just become their toy, to be played with and exploited in order to depict the January 6 protest as a murderous orgy carried out by savages so primitive and inhuman that they were willing to fatally bash in the skull of a helpless person or spray them with deadly gases until they choked to death on their own lung fluids. None of it was true, but that did not matter — and it still does not to them — because truth, as always, has nothing to do with their actual function. If anything, truth is an impediment to it.
For many people it is an interesting fact that the co-founder of organization Black Lives Matters has gone on a expensive home buying spree. Hasn't this story been told hundreds of times over the years when famous people do some expensive signaling? It sometimes raises interesting questions about where these people got all of that money. In this case, it was determined by the New York Post that Patrisse Khan-Cullors bought four houses worth $3.2M. In a country that values free speech, information should flow and people can make of these stories what they want. For some people it won't be a big deal. For others, these purchases are controversial, because it suggests that money that should be going to a non-profit cause is being siphoned off into luxury.
Facebook has barred users from sharing a New York Post report from last week about the controversial property acquisitions by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors.
Users of the social media giant noticed on Thursday they could not share the link to a story that shed light on Cullors' multi-million-dollar splurge on homes. Fox News can confirm that an error message appears whenever users try sharing the article on their personal Facebook page or through the Messenger app.
When users attempt to send the link, an error message alleges that the article "goes against our Community Standards."
The New York Post published this follow-up story today, where Khan-Cullors claimed in a strangely narrowly-tailored defense: "“I have never taken a salary from the Black Lives Matters Global Networks Foundation,” she also said Thursday."
Again, this real estate buying spree could be an interesting story for many people, especially for those who wonder whether their donations to BLM (and its many affiliates) are really helping struggling black people. The NYP adds: "But in insisting she did not take a salary from the organization’s non-profit foundation, Khan-Cullors left unsaid whether she was paid through BLM’s network of similarly named for-profit entities." Shouldn't people be able to freely share this information and make up their own minds about whether it is interesting?
Numerous Facebook users, however, were blocked from sending the NYP story. One of those people, Abigail Shrier, was blocked from sending it as a private message on FB Messenger. Outraged, she wrote: "Facebook will not allow you to post this NY Post story or even to message it to another person. (I just tested it). So Facebook is now effectively opening your mail and reading the contents for ideologically objectionable material."
[Update: I have attached key legal filings from this lawsuit, because the details demonstrate that the thought process of the Administrators is pathological - - thoroughly Woke infested. Do this university really think that the students they admit to their medical school are this fragile? I want to believe that people generally act in good faith, but the University's positions in these pleadings are not credible. The faculty and administrators of UVA have completely fallen off the rails regarding the educational mission.
But first, what is the purpose of a college? I fully embrace the definition offered by Heterodox Academy: "We aspire to create college classrooms and campuses that welcome diverse people with diverse viewpoints and that equip learners with the habits of heart and mind to engage that diversity in open inquiry and constructive disagreement. We see an academy eager to welcome professors, students, and speakers who approach problems and questions from different points of view, explicitly valuing the role such diversity plays in advancing the pursuit of knowledge, discovery, growth, innovation, and the exposure of falsehoods."
Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand. Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya's question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus.
Why are schools firing professors and kicking out students who question Woke orthodoxy? It's simple. They don't have good answers for the questions being asked by the professors and students. Many schools are now acting like churches, excommunicating rather than intellectually engaging. For more, see John McWhorter's new book, The Elect, in which he explains how Wokeness is not like a religion. Rather, it is a religion. Instead of engaging with good faith intellectual inquiry, the Woke tell people to "Shut up!" They do this through ostracization, expulsion and infinite varieties of ad hominem attacks.
Notice the irony: The crime was "microaggressions," whereas the remedy is physical expulsion, a classic macro aggression.
--
A few links regarding "microagressions":
The theory behind microaggressions—unintentional insults based on race, sex, or another protected status—is woefully inadequate and lacks scientific rigor. Scott Lilienfeld, a clinical psychologist at Emory University, took a close look at the core assumptions that undergird the academic understanding of microaggressions and concluded that there should be a "moratorium on microaggression training."
"There is insufficient justification for concluding that the potential benefits of microaggression training programs outweigh their potential risks, including a substantial increase in the number of false-positive identifications of statements as microaggressions," he wrote.
[According to the Woke] there is no way to mistakenly identify a microaggression, as the victim’s perception is considered absolutely authoritative (see also, lived experience). Because of the reliance upon the perception of the recipient of alleged microaggressions, there is reason to be concerned that critical theories of identity can teach people to become more sensitive to and aware of slights that might even be being read into the situation, with no way to make a determination on the matter (see also, critical consciousness and woke). This problem has been noted by lawyer Greg Lukianoff and psychologist Jonathan Haidt in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, as a kind of “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy” where people are taught to become more and more sensitive to (and less resilient against) slights and minor insults (see also, victimhood culture).
A number of scholars and social commentators have criticised the microaggression concept for its lack of scientific basis, over-reliance on subjective evidence, and promotion of psychological fragility. Critics argue that avoiding behaviours that one interprets as microaggressions restricts one's own freedom and causes emotional self-harm, and that employing authority figures to address microaggressions (i.e call-out culture) can lead to an atrophy of those skills needed to mediate one's own disputes.[7] Some argue that, because the term "microaggression" uses language connoting violence to describe verbal conduct, it can be (and is) abused to exaggerate harm, resulting in retribution and the elevation of victimhood.[8]
In an April 5, 2021 article at Reason, Jesse Singal reports on an incident at Lake Washington Institute of Technology, a Washington State public institution with 6,000 students. Newly tenured professor Elisa Parrett was labeled insolent, insubordinate and disruptive for having the gall to stand up at a compelled and segregated "anti-racism" college assembly based on the preachings of Robin DiAngelo and stating the following:
"Over the past couple of weeks, a lot has happened," Parrett began. "Protests have occurred, riots have broken out, people have been killed. And across the United States, companies, organizations, and schools have proclaimed their support of a movement called 'Anti-racism'"—here Parrett was referring to the capital-A variety. Parrett went on to complain about the segregated setting of the training and what she saw as the generally closed-minded nature of the nation's post-Floyd discourse. "Democracy thrives on conversations, but what we are seeing happening right now in the United States is not a conversation," she read. "It is a coup. Everyday Americans of all colors, creeds, backgrounds, and beliefs are being held hostage. Zealots are telling us, 'You're either with us or against us, and if you're against us, you're an evil bigot.' They are telling us, 'You're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem.' They are telling us that all people may be classified into two sides: us or them, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, people of color or white, righteous or bigoted, oppressed or privileged. I don't accept such false dichotomies, and I don't accept the ad hominem implications that come with it. Too often, words like 'privileged,' 'defensive,' and 'fragile' are just ways to dismiss what another person has to say. Too often, words like 'racist' are just a way to intimidate someone into silence." Parrett argued that people should work together to solve "real problems like wealth disparity, poverty, job insecurity, unemployment, the high cost of living, or the fracturing of the nuclear family, whatever form that family takes," but are waylaid by those who claim the "real problems" are "racism, sexism, transphobia…[and] hateful words."
"Thank you, Elisa," said the facilitator, cutting Parrett off about three minutes into her remarks. "No, you don't get to cut me off—I'm going to finish what I have to say," she responded. "I'm going to ask that you share the platform with the rest of the 200 nearly people who are here today," replied the facilitator. But Parrett continued for about another minute, telling the all-white attendees of the mandatory, segregated conversation that universities should be places where "ideas could be discussed, explored, debated, and assessed"—and that "this is not that."
Prior to the session, Parrett was bothered by the fact that the college had segregated the attendees of this session, separating the "whites" from the others. The college referred to this technique as "race based caucusing." Singal quotes another professor who spoke out in an email to senior administrators: a "conference based on segregation by skin color does nothing to build a community of belonging."
The favorite technique by people captured by Woke ideology is the ad hominem attack and Washington Institute of Technology did not disappoint. Following the struggle session, a college administrator wrote to Parrett, indicating that her: "egregious behavior which has led to substantial harm to hundreds of colleagues on campus." The charge was that Parrett's behavior was "downright scary, startling, and bewildering as she yelled a diatribe." The college told Parrett that she had used her "new positional power [as a tenured professor] in a very corrupt, insolent and insubordinate manner." She was placed on leave and denied access to her college email account. The President of the college sent an email blast to every member of the college community indicating that she was "disappointed, angry, and shocked" by Parrett's dissent during the training.
Jesse Singal spoke to one of the administrators who criticized Parrett. She said,
a large cohort of professors and academic administrators were so emotionally devastated by hearing someone raise concerns about White Fragility–style diversity trainings that they could no longer do their jobs.
What happened next? A college "investigation" that has so far officially cost $80,000. Unofficially, it's closer to $250,000.
LWTech went to war against a tenured faculty member, launching a cartoonishly over-the-top disciplinary process that included the hiring of a private investigator, dozens of interviews, and claims of widespread trauma.
As you'll see if you read Singal's entire detailed article, the college's arguments comedically and instantly disintegrated when they encounted Singal's mild cross-examination of the administrators, especially after his revelation that he had a copy of a secretly recorded audio file of Parrett's statement at the session.
Parrett kept her job because her behavior was not fire-able, not even close. On March 26, 2021, the college issued a vague reprimand. One might be tempted to say that this reprimand was intentionally vague in order to stifle Parrett (and, as an example, others) from speaking up when a college next employs shrill racism as a "remedy" for racism. Singal comments: "It wouldn't be surprising if this were one of the more expensive written reprimands in community-college history."
The bottom half of Singal's article reviews some of history of similar incidents (with links), mentioning violations by both the political left and right, but expressing concern that the far left is careening into a tailspin. Much of this is due to the far left's expanding concept creep regarding the definition of "harm." Singal explains:
In this worldview, everything is a harm. There is no such thing as legitimate political disagreement, because we (the progressive in-group) already know the correct answer to every question (even if the answer can sometimes change overnight), and anyone who disagrees clearly—clearly—does so not because of some well-founded political or philosophical difference but because that person wants to harm the innocent people we are righteously hellbent on protecting.
In my writings, I've often asked, and I again ask: Where do you draw your line? At what point will you say a firm "No" to Woke ideology? At what point will you take a deep breath and say what you are thinking, that's it's not OK that everything is turning into Evergreen College. Longstanding social psychological research highlights how important it is for you to be the one to speak up. You are not alone. Far from it. Be brave.
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