I follow Wilfred Reilly on Twitter (among many other people). Today, he posted this 2016 video by Ami Horowitz. I understand that the video was created with a viewpoint in mind. We don't know Horowitz chose the people he features or what interviews might have been cut from the final product. That said, This video attacks a deep, unfortunate and insulting assumption that underlies many Woke positions: That Black people are all the same, that society should treat them as a group instead of as individuals and that Blacks are in many ways incompetent. This Woke assumption should be repeatedly yanked out into the daylight and ridiculed, as Shelby Steele has forcefully done throughout his 2020 documentary, "What Killed Michael Brown?"
For more commentary on the documentary I mentioned above, "What Killed Michael Brown," in invite you to listen to "The Glenn Show," featuring Glenn Loury and (every few episodes) John McWhorter. This is a 180 degree commentary compared to much of the prevailing racial zeitgeist:
I am saddened and angered, but not surprised, by this systematic censorship of Abigail Shrier's well-researched book. Many of the most dangerous things being done by our news media Nannies consist of things you cannot see: important issues they completely refuse to discuss. You can read my original post on this topic here.
I've pasted in evidence of Abigail Shrier's claim below. The people driving the censorship know that if this issue is carefully and dispassionately discussed (as Shrier has done in her book), the jig is up. Untold damage is being done to teenage girls. We need to stop and ask ourselves (as Shrier book does) "What the hell are we doing?"
At Quillette, Vincent Harinam and David Kopel explain availability cascades. These can be harmful "to the survival of a society because they choke off accurate information and thoughtful discussion." I find this topic compelling in light of my recent essay regarding the resignation of Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept, of which he was co-founder. Here are some excerpts from Harinam and Kopel's much longer article:
When all available information seems to indicate that everyone is falling in line with a certain belief, we may be under the influence of an “availability cascade.” . . .
Two components make up an availability cascade: an informational cascade and a reputational cascade. An informational cascade creates genuine changes in people’s beliefs by providing plentiful but misleading information. A reputational cascade is a vicious cycle in which individuals feign expressions of conviction to retain social approval.
. . .
Availability cascades can only occur when an influence network exhibits a “critical mass” of early adopters. For an availability cascade to occur, a minimum number of individuals must first adopt it. Once this threshold is reached, the cascade becomes self-sustaining with more and more adopting it. Persons A and B declare support for a particular position. Person C disagrees but is worried about retaliation if he dissents; so, he pretends to agree with the position. Person D sees that C is going along, so D goes along too. As social media drives information flows and connects swaths of people, critical mass can be achieved much faster. Social media is a cascade builder.
According to a Cato Institute poll, 62 percent of Americans say that the current political climate prevents them from expressing their views. Majorities of Democrats (52 percent), independents (59 percent) and Republicans (77 percent) now self-censor. The only group where the majority did not feel pressured into silence were leftist Democrats. Another study found that the higher the level of education, the greater the self-censorship.
Moderates may be the worst off. Whereas the right wing and left wing can retreat to zones where their views are reinforced rather than vilified, moderates cannot. The moderate who rejects the dominant views of the Left and the Right is shouted down by both sides. For moderates, there exists no safe haven from the culture wars.
I have been in the process of writing an article that I will title, "Everything Is Becoming Religion." This morning, while writing, I noticed that Glenn Greenwald has resigned from The Intercept, a news organization he co-founded. Here is an except from Greenwald's announcement:
The pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks involved — simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.
Greenwald's resignation comes on the heels of his riveting three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan earlier this week. During that discussion, Greenwald (and Rogan) aimed Greenwald's criticisms at our most prominent legacy media outlets across the entire political spectrum. And now our social media overlords are actively getting into the game. Three hours is a lot of time, but I would urge you to watch every minute of this. It would be a small investment, given that this discussion offers an accurate diagnosis of America's Dys-information Pandemic and some moral clarity about what needs to happen going forward.
Our prominent legacy news outlets have become sad jokes with regard to many critical national issues. Our "news" is now pre-filtered to protect us from basic facts and it treats thinking as though it is a team sport, much like the dogma people are offered in churches. It treats us like we are babies, as though we aren't able to think for ourselves. Our prominent legacy media outlets have so thoroughly choked off meaningful non-partisan information and discussion that this has ripped open up a dangerous information chasm---many of us now inhabit only one of two mostly non-overlapping factual worlds. This has, in turn, led to two exceedingly disappointing choices for President of this Duopoly. If I needed to hire an employee for any type of job in any business, I would never hire either of these candidates and neither would you. But this is where we are, unable to talk with one another about this sad situation with nuance. In fact, too many of us have been convinced that we should hate each other for having differing opinions, even when we are mostly "on the same side of the aisle."
Somehow, there are many Americans who are still convinced that they can uncritically sit back and "turn on the news." What they will actually be exposed to, for the most part, is reporters who are afraid to ask the same basic questions on the job that they actually and instinctively do ask each other in private. Instead of informing us with a wide range of facts and opinions, they are driven to please their bosses and audience. This is not news. This is Not-News. This parallels the deep dysfunction driven by social media, an issue address in the excellent new documentary, "The Social Dilemma."
We now have a News-Industrial Complex that is driven by money and ideology instead of integrity and courage to engage with inconvenient facts. This system is designed to please you, to give you more of what your intuitive side, your System 1, craves. Once you have this epiphany about what is really going on, you will no longer be able to stop seeing it. If you continue watching the "news," you will increasingly think, "Garbage in, Garbage out." It will increasingly realize that prominent legacy news outlets are fucking with our brains to make money and steer elections. Once you have this epiphany, you will experience a greatly heightened annoyance at what passes for "news" Once a critical mass of people have this epiphany, this will be our first step in a long slow recovery.
From Areo, a collection of 14 short articles (authors include Steven Pinker, Thomas Chatterton-Williams, Helen Pluckrose, Irshad Manji Alan Sokal and others) aimed at those who are convinced (as I am) that Woke-ism is horribly misguided, in fact dangerous, and who fear that under a Biden administration this misguided movement might find room to expand further into America's sense-making institutions. The reason for this article is that many people who lean generally to the political left are so repulsed by Woke ideology that they are considering a vote for Trump. The bottom line for each of these authors: a vote for Trump is not a good option, even though Trump has taken a strong stand against CSJ ideology. Caveat for those of you who get your news only from news media that leans to the political left: These issues have been lighting up Twitter and non-legacy media for months. These are serious issues to many people who are about to vote.
There are few people who have done more than me to try to persuade people to regard Critical Social Justice ideas rooted in postmodern ideas about knowledge, power and language as a serious threat to secular liberal democracies. I truly believe that these ideas already have far too much unwarranted cultural prestige and are causing significant damage to the humanities and the political left as well as infiltrating mainstream media, art, culture, history, schools and the corporate world.
However, one of the greatest dangers of Critical Social Justice is that its authoritarian lunacy drives left-leaning centrists to the right—and not towards a sober and ethical conservatism. People who value evidence-based epistemology and consistently liberal ethics can be found on the left, right and centre: these are the people we need to represent us right now. Instead, too many people who claim to prize liberal values are planning to vote for a populist, anti-intellectual president whose rejection of science, reason, truth and liberalism has been amply demonstrated over the last four years.
We cannot push back against irrationalism and illiberalism on the left by embracing irrationalism and illiberalism on the right. We cannot beat the postmodern Social Justice and alternative ways of knowing of the left with the postmodern post-truth and of the right. Trump is not the solution for anyone who values science and reason and wants to protect a liberal society that defends freedom of belief and speech and viewpoint diversity as well as rigorous scholarship and consistently ethical activism for genuine racial, gender and LGBT equality. I urge American citizens to vote for the moderate Democrat, Joe Biden, and hold him to his promise to be the president for all Americans.
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