Krystal Ball's commentary is spot. The Left constantly ignores Joe Rogan's many left-leaning positions and it's to their own detriment. One problem is that Joe is too damned independent and doesn't pass the left's political purity tests. Krystal also suggests a time-of-genesis and a motive for this dysfunction: Joe's words in support of Bernie Sanders during the primary.
The false story about the motives of the Pulse Nightclub murderer is alive and well, despite indisputable evidence that he was attempting to kill people, not LGBT people. Legacy media and politicians cling to the false narrative and we simply must assume (at this point) that they know that their story is false. However, their false story is powerful. It serves as effective cheap signaling and it moves people to anger, including people who should know better. The Pulse story is merely one example of a common phenomenon today. The story itself serves as the foundation for a "truth," upon which cherry-picked factoids, most of them easily disproved, make everyone in one's tribe feel the righteous anger. Again, Pulse is one example of many. We could substitute dozens of commonly exchanged "truths" for Pulse. That is what much too often serves as "news" in the year 2021. Glenn Greenwald elaborates.
Whatever Mateen's motives were, the horror and tragedy of the extinguishing of forty-nine innocent lives at PULSE on June 12, 2016, remains the same. But this enduring falsehood — which continues to deceive many well-meaning people through this very day, long past the point that it has been definitively debunked — is damaging for so many reasons.
Lying about what happened dishonors Mateen's victims. It harms the cause of LGBT equality, which does not need lies and fabrications to be a just movement. It obscures how often U.S. violence in the Muslim world causes "blowback” — to use the CIA's term — by motivating others to bring violence to the U.S. as retaliation and deterrence for violence against innocent Muslims. And a major reason for the completely unjust prosecution of Noor Salman was to appease understandable demands within the Orlando LGBT community for someone to be punished, but mob justice rarely produces anything benevolent.
No matter how noble the intent, journalism — and activism — becomes corrupted if it knowingly supports falsehoods. That the PULSE massacre was an act of anti-LGBT hatred is a fiction. Unless you are a neocon, there is no such thing as a "noble lie.” It is way past time for politicians and activist groups to stop disseminating this one.
Seeing that this completely false story still has legs (referring to the murderer's motives, not the murders themselves which certainly happened), I am reminded of Daniel Kahneman's discussion of the power of narratives in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman indicates that we crave consistency in our explanations, not completeness, and this craving leads to overconfidence. We are profligate generators of flimsy explanations and we are "rarely stumped." As a result, poor evidence can make a great story (p. 209). Also, we often believe primarily because our friends believe. Our confidence in our beliefs are preposterous but necessary given our limited cognitive horsepower. That said, once we have our story down pat, it becomes easy to repeat and our confidence in telling that story grows, even if untrue. Confidence results from cognitive ease and coherence, but confidence does not equal truth (p. 238).
Steven Pinker coined the term Progressophobia as "hostility to the idea of progress and a fondness for narratives of decline, decadence, degeneration, and doom. As I say in the chapter, “Intellectuals hate progress. Intellectuals who call themselves progressive really hate progress." Bill Maher delivers the evidence.
Christopher Rufo has been working overtime to expose critical race theory to the sunlight (and see here). CRT is being taught in many schools, including posh private K-12 schools, and it is a very good thing that Rufo has provoked conversations on the content of CRT curricula and training (in schools, government offices and businesses). I agree with many of Rufo's concerns and I appreciate the hard work he has done to make CRT concepts understandable to the many people who are intimidated by CRT rhetoric. As I have discussed many times at this website, CRT is divisive, causing people to lose trust in each other, causing unnecessary suspicions, and failing to promote human flourishing in any meaningful way. I've argued that the end game for CRT is the massively dysfunctional social atmosphere at Evergreen State College. Though I applaud the publication of the Briefing Book, I disagree with Rufo on his enthusiasm for legislative solutions he promotes.
Rufo has recently published a "Critical Race Theory Briefing Book" to help people understand what is currently being peddled under the tents of "antiracism" and "critical race theory." People are starting to speak up about their concerns with CRT (e.g., this recent statement by a public school teacher), but we need to help more people to understand the racecraft being peddled by CRT, and Rufo's Briefing Book will be helpful in that regard. He obtains much of his material from original sources--the Briefing Book is filled with quotes from critical race writers. He has also boiled down these principles into readable nuggets. In doing this, Rufo will be helping many parents, students and employees to understand CRT, which is permeated with vague concepts and familiar-looking words that CRT uses to mean the opposite of their common meanings.
Here is Rufo's definition of "Critical Race Theory, which appears at the beginning of his Briefing Book:
Critical race theory is an academic discipline that holds that the United States is a nation founded on white supremacy and oppression, and that these forces are still at the root of our society. Critical race theorists believe that American institutions, such as the Constitution and legal system, preach freedom and equality, but are mere “camouflages” for naked racial domination. They believe that racism is a constant, universal condition: it simply becomes more subtle, sophisticated, and insidious over the course of history. In simple terms, critical race theory reformulates the old Marxist dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of White and Black. But the basic conclusion is the same: in order to liberate man, society must be fundamentally transformed through moral, economic, and political revolution.Another key concept of CRT is "Whiteness." Here is how critical race advocates commonly explain "whiteness," (this is another excerpt from the Briefing Book:
Race essentialism: Critical race theory reduces individuals to the quasi-metaphysical categories of “Blackness” and “Whiteness,” then loads those categories with value connotations—positive traits are attributed to “Blackness” and negative traits are attributed to “Whiteness.” Although some critical race theorists formally reject race essentialism, functionally, they often use these categories as malicious labels that erase individual identities.Are these the types of things you want your schools to teach your children? Are you willing to draw a thick line to tell the Woke movement no? In my view, the excerpts above are racist and destructive ideas that are incompatible with the teachings of Martin Luther King. That is why you will not see CRT advocates discussing MLK, by the way. This is Rufo's opinion too. Where I disagree with Rufo is on how to best oppose the rapid spread of CRT.
“Whiteness is dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and on myriad levels. These processes and practices include basic rights, values, beliefs, perspectives and experiences purported to be commonly shared by all but which are actually only consistently afforded to white people.” Robin DiAngelo, “White Fragility.”
“Whiteness is an invisible veil that cloaks its racist deleterious effects through individuals, organizations, and society. The result is that White people are allowed to enjoy the benefits that accrue to them by virtue of their skin color. Thus, Whiteness, White supremacy, and White privilege are three interlocking forces that disguise racism so it may allow White people to oppress and harm persons of color while maintaining their individual and collective advantage and innocence.” Derald Sue, “The Invisible Whiteness of Being.”
“Whiteness by its very definition and operation as a key element of white supremacy kills; it is mental and physical terrorism. To end the white terrorism that is directed at racially oppressed people here and in other nations, it is essential that self-identified whites and their whiteness collaborators among the racially oppressed confront their white problem head-on, unencumbered by racial comfort.” Johnny Williams in the Hartford Courant.
All whites are racist: Critical race theorists argue explicitly that “all white people are racist” and perpetuate systems of white supremacy and systemic racism. This concept is deeply related to race essentialism—whites, including small children, cannot escape from being racist.
“All white people are racist or complicit by virtue of benefiting from privileges that are not something they can voluntarily renounce.” Barbara Applebaum, Being White, Being Good.
“White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.” Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility.
“According to studies, babies at two to three years old, start internalizing racist ideas, start discerning and making decisions based on racist ideas … We’re allowing our society to raise them to be racist.” Ibram Kendi on KING5 News.
You can read the entire Briefing Book here.
Andrew Sullivan describes the situation and the pathetic spineless nebulous apology by the Editor of journal of the American Medical Association. I invite you to visit (and support) Sullivan's excellent substack website, "The Weekly Dish," for the full article and a steady stream of excellent writing by Andrew Sullivan. Here's an excerpt regarding the AMA Editor. This is who we are becoming:
I was just reading about the panic that occurred in the American Medical Association, when their journal’s deputy editor argued on a podcast that socio-economic factors were more significant in poor outcomes for non-whites than “structural racism.” As you might imagine, any kind of questioning of this orthodoxy required the defenestration of the deputy editor and the resignation of the editor-in-chief. The episode was withdrawn from public viewing, and the top editor replaced it with a Maoist apology/confession before he accepted his own fate.But I was most struck by the statement put out in response by a group called “The Institute for Antiracism in Medicine.” Here it is:
The podcast and associated promotional message are extremely problematic for minoritized members of our medical community. Racism was created with intention and must therefore be undone with intention. Structural racism has deeply permeated the field of medicine and must be actively dissolved through proper antiracist education and purposeful equitable policy creation. The delivery of messages suggesting that racism is non-existent and therefore non-problematic within the medical field is harmful to both our underrepresented minoritized physicians and the marginalized communities served in this country.Consider the language for a moment. I don’t want to single out this group — they are merely representative of countless others, all engaged in the recitation of certain doctrines, and I just want an example. But I do want to say that this paragraph is effectively dead, drained of almost any meaning, nailed to the perch of pious pabulum. It is prose, in Orwell’s words, that “consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” It is chock-full of long, compounded nouns and adjectives, riddled with the passive voice, lurching and leaning, like a passenger walking the aisle on a moving train, on pre-packaged phrases to keep itself going.
Notice the unnecessary longevity: a tweet becomes an “associated promotional message.” Notice the deadness of the neologisms: “minoritized”, “marginalized”, “non-problematic”. As Orwell noted: “the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning.” Go back and see if you can put the words “minoritized” or “non-problematic” into everyday English.
Part of the goal of this is political, of course. The more you repeat words like “proper antiracist education” or “systemic racism” or “racial inequity” or “lived experience” or “heteronormativity,” the more they become part of the landscape of words, designed to dull one’s curiosity about what on earth any of them can possible mean. A mass of ideological abstractions, in Orwell’s words, “falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.”
In modern America, this is how easy it is to get intelligent people in high places to stop saying what they are thinking. You have probably wondered, like I have, why the German people didn't rise up to overthrow Hitler. Now think about what is happening today in the United States. People are not being sought out and killed. Their relatives are not being threatened with death. They are not being thrown into education camps. They are merely being threatened with social disapproval and economic loss. But they are so terrified, their assholes so incredibly puckered, that they are refusing to ask obvious questions and to say obvious things. Highly trained medical professionals are afraid to stand up and acknowledge the obvious need to conduct multivariate analyses to understand complex situations. They are willing to look in their mirrors in the morning knowing that they are living and speaking lies. That's how powerful and perverted the Woke Movement is. That is why I have a difficult time walking away from this topic.
Wokeness (including the modern version of CRT) is clearly a religion (as John McWhorter argues). I've been through this kind of thing all my life, given that I am both an agnostic and an atheist. I've seen the Overton window closing on me. I've seen the disappointment in others as I ask obvious questions and acknowledge obvious things around me. This is giving me something like PTSD, bringing me back to the days when my well-meaning father worked overtime to jam overly-pious Catholicism down my throat. I've been there, seen this, and don't know what to do about it, given that those who are captive have done the equivalent of constructing "electric fences" around numerous critically important topics in their minds, thereby nullifying the possibility that we can move forward by using Enlightenment Principles. Too many of us can't (or won't) talk anymore, even about the Emperor's state of undress.