Dave Smith argues that the culture wars were not organic. They were engineered by elites as distractions to keep Americans arguing against each other instead of uniting on key economic issues against the elites.
Eli Steele, writing at the Daily Mail:
When I learned that Boston's mayor Michelle Wu hosted a racially segregated holiday party for the city council's 'Electeds of Color,' I wondered: would I have been invited? After all, my father is black, but my skin looks white. The 'no whites' gathering was exposed this week after a city employee accidentally emailed invitations to Caucasian council members before hurriedly rescinding the offers....
[Above: Instagram photo published by the Office of Boston Mayor Wu]
It is incredible that nearly 60 years after the Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in America — the country is once again grappling with this vile practice.
Today, in the name of social justice, K-12 educators divide students by race. Whites are told they are the oppressors while students of color are the oppressed. Teachers and administrative staff are separated into racial 'affinity groups'.
Our universities are no better — everything from freshmen orientation to housing decisions are determined according to immutable characteristics.Some colleges, including Harvard, hold 'special' celebrations during graduation week — whites and Jews excluded.
We've got an enormous problem with DEI. It goes completely against what all of us seek when we need the best surgeon to operate on us, the best engineer to design a new bridge or the best pilot to safely fly us home. Even though we all know this, many of us have been afraid to say this lately. It is entirely rational and humane to seek out the best qualified people to fill jobs. Full stop. Although it is often a challenge to decide who is the best qualified person for the job, there is no close competitor to basing our decisions on merit.
Andrew Sullivan succinctly articulated the way forward:
End DEI in its entirety. Fire all the administrators whose only job is to enforce its toxic orthodoxy. Admit students on academic merit alone. Save standardized testing — which in fact helps minorities, and it’s “the best way to distinguish smart poor kids from stupid rich kids,” as Steven Pinker said this week. Restore grading so that it actually means something again. Expel students who shut or shout down speech or deplatform speakers. Pay no attention to the race or sex or orientation or gender identity of your students, and see them as free human beings with open minds. Treat them equally as individuals seeking to learn, if you can remember such a concept.
I've promoted this idea throughout the Great Awokening, hearing mostly crickets or criticism from intelligent people. Countless people I know have been sitting on their hands--refusing to say what they really think. They worry, often justifiably, that saying out loud what they really think will cost them their jobs and/or their reputations.
Speaking out in favor of merit as the only basis for hiring isn't just a platitude or an emotion. Consider, finally, this excellent article setting for the many reasons for hiring solely on the basis of merit: "In Defense of Merit in Science." Here is the abstract:
Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective in generating scientific and technological advances, reducing suffering, narrowing social gaps, and improving the quality of life globally. This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology and to replace merit with nonscientific, politically motivated criteria. We explain the philosophical origins of this conflict, document the intrusion of ideology into our scientific institutions, discuss the perils of abandoning merit, and offer an alternative, humancentered approach to address existing social inequalities.
Helen Pluckrose offers an excellent wokeness primer to John Cleese:
The Nashville mass killings were a big national story covered by all major news outlets. A vicious person gunned down three children and three adults at a school in Nashville. Immediately after the shootings, all of us wanted to know why the shooter fired 152 rounds, murdering six people. Back on April 3, CNN reported that the police "have yet to determine a motive."
But then, oops, we learned that the shooter was a trans person, meaning that lots of special rules kick in. The main rule: Even though the shooter wrote a long manifesto, it's important that we keep the manifesto secret. Government officials and corporate media outlets have marched in lockstep ever since.
Thus, at at NPR or MSNBC, you won't learn anything about the fact that three pages of the shooter's manifesto have been leaked. Back near the time of the killings, however, on March 28, 2023, MSNBC wrote:
A day after Monday’s shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, we know much more about the shooter and the dead. But one question remains: “Why?” Why this school, why these victims, why was the shooter motivated to take these lives? The search for a motive is a logical one. There’s a deep desire to understand what pushed a person to carry out such a heinous crime, especially when three children are dead.
Now that three pages of the manifesto have been leaked, MSNBC no longer has any interest in sharing with us what the murderer wrote on those pages.
NYT, CNN and WaPo published stories reporting that several pages were leaked and that they are authentic, but none of these three outlets offer any specifics about what the three pages reveal. No quotes and no images of those pages. The NYT focuses on how upset government officials are that three pages were leaked (without describing the content of the leaks). CNN focuses on the alleged fears of some parents that release of the manifesto will harm people, including by "copycat attacks." CNN sanitizes the leaked pages, saying only:
The released pages use hate-filled language directed toward the school and children and include what appears to be a timeline of events seemingly leading up to the shooting.
And here's Google/YouTube, once again keeping us safe from knowing important things, such as the motives of mass killings, as Seth Dillon attempted to report:
What do we know from those three pages? To actually know the words the killer wrote, we need to turn to X (formerly Twitter): Steven Crowder writes:
BREAKING: Nashville School Covenant Shooter Audrey Hale’s “DEATH DAY” Manifesto Targeted “Cr*ckers” with “white privlages”
“wanna kill all you little cr*ckers”
“I hope I have a high death count”
"I'm ready...I hope my victims aren't."
"Ready to die."
