Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Violence Continues

Violence on the street every night in Portland, Oregon, despite the departure of federal law enforcement two weeks ago. The senseless destruction and violence is described in detail by the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt:

The weeks of destruction and intense clashes with police following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May have spurred angry backlash from Portland officials and some residents. Tensions have risen in recent weeks following a period of relative calm after federal law enforcement left Portland last month. . . . Tuesday night’s fire damaged important county resources that have nothing to do with policing, officials said, including the county’s Office of Community Involvement, which aims to engage historically marginalized communities in local political decisions about social services and the distribution of public resources.

“The lobby where the first same-sex marriage in Oregon took place, and where millions of pieces of personal protective equipment are being distributed to help our community battle covid-19, was damaged,” Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said in a statement.

Total silence from the New York Times for two weeks. Nothing from NPR for the past 10 days. It's like Portland doesn't exist . . . or perhaps these stories don't fit the official narrative.

Continue ReadingMeanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Violence Continues

Concern with Obesity, Fat-Shaming and Racism

People who don't know me well sometimes assume that it's easy for me to keep my weight down.  This is completely untrue.  I constantly watch what I eat. I constantly force myself to exercise and I make myself get on the scale several times each week.  If I don't do these things I will gain 2 or 3 pounds per month.  I've repeatedly and unwittingly run the experiment of not paying attention to my weight during my life. Each time I fall off the rails, I have had to call a stop to the nonsense and declare war on my fat. Over the past 30 years, this has led me to begin ever new rounds of weight loss boot camp (on my own, at home) where I've worked hard to lose 35, 20, and 20 pounds, as well as various smaller amounts of weight. I'm currently in yet another (minor) boot camp that will end when I lose 5 more pounds. This is my plight, my burden and my opportunity if I am going to maintain a body that  feels good and fits my clothes. I also want to avoid risks of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, strokes and other illnesses associated with excess weight.

Whenever I find out that friends are trying to reduce their size, I encourage them and celebrate their successes with them. I silently applaud when I see obese people I don't know exercising at the park  Good for them! I hope they reach their goals!

Increasingly, however, the excesses of the "body positivity" movement invade my thought process, occasionally making me do mental double-takes. Body positivity is a double-edged sword:

On the one hand, body positivity—the attitude associated with the movement—aims to try to help overweight and obese people (especially women—see also, fat feminism—and sometimes, when intersectionally analyzed, specifically black women) accept themselves and their overweight status as they are so that negative emotions are not tied up with it. This, of course, has the direct benefit of helping people not feel bad about themselves for a state of facts about the world (weight, BMI, body fat percentage, etc.), which can be demotivating and hinder weight loss attempts (or, which can just be mean and bullying—see also, fat shaming).

On the other hand, body positivity tends to rather aggressively deny any connection between weight status, including obesity, and health (see also, healthism). It rejects such connections as a “medicalized narrative” (see also, regulatory fiction). This rejects mountains of medical evidence suggesting otherwise, that being overweight and especially obese correlates strongly with and causes a number of serious health issues. This view relies upon seeing body weight status and obesity ultimately as a social construction that is used to create an unjust power dynamic that discriminates against and oppresses fat people. Activism in the body-positive movement often encourages overweight people not to want to lose weight (sometimes as a means of identity politics—see also, identity-first), which is irresponsible, at best (e.g., a book in the movement is titled You Have the Right to Remain Fat).

I agree with the benefits of body positivity described above.  Overweight people should not be shamed.  They should not be shunned.  Doing these things is cruel and destructive.  We should recognize every other person to be a precious human being. It all starts with I and Thou, Martin Buber's version of the golden rule.

That said, how can it possibly be bigoted when I work hard to be healthy and look better by losing weight. How can I possibly be acting out of bigotry to the extent that I encourage others to reach their weight loss goals?  It's not.  For background, see this article on Woke attitudes toward obesity at New Discourses. This is shut-up ("Woke") culture doing what it does best: halting important and necessary conversations under the guise of combating alleged discrimination. Today's excess is an article by CBS featuring a sociology professor who claims that concern with obesity is veiled racism.

Continue ReadingConcern with Obesity, Fat-Shaming and Racism

Judge Gives Green Light for Transwomen Athletes to Compete in Women’s Sports

The ACLU is doing a victory lap on a case that risks demoralizing many woman athletes and dissuades them from competing at all. Here's the ACLU Tweet:

We now have a competing-frames argument like we do in the abortion debate (my body vs. don't kill babies). In transgender sports, the competing frames are A) It is insulting and unfair to exclude trans people from women's sports, versus B) Trans women are so much stronger, faster and larger than bio women (because they went through puberty as men) that they are dominating the competition. This competing Frame flips between two principles and also flips between the perspectives of the two parties to this dispute.

In reaction to the ACLU Tweet many people are applauding this court decision as kind and decent, the correct thing to do for trans women. Laudable first principles are important, but so are the overall consequences for women's sports. What if this court case destroys the careers of aspiring women athletes in order to invite athletes who went through puberty as men to compete as women? I believe that this decision will demoralize many women athletes and convince them give up careers as women athletes. Regardless of how well-intentioned it is to be "inclusive," this decision is likely to hurt attendance and destroy the carefully constructed spaces that most women athletes want and need in order to fairly compete. My concerns are echoed by the concerns of many women who have responded to the ACLU Tweet. Here are some excerpts from numerous comment Tweets to the above Tweet, all of them by women:

This is definitely not a victory for girls and women. It is a victory for trans identified males.

How is this a victory? This is a kick in the teeth for women in sports

Girls are going to drop out of sports if they know that they don't have a fair competition.

All these transwomen are way taller than the average woman/girl yet even seeing this obvious physical difference they deny the Male body that these transwomen inhabit. Why don't female hormones shorten these transwomen to a normal woman's height? A: Because Trans science is false

If women and girls to walk off the field, who will biological men race /play against then ?

Seriously, this left has lost its mind. I’m tired of wondering where sanity went and expecting it to come back.

The fact that every left wing person in this country isn’t screaming about the damage this will do to our girls tells me the left I knew no longer exists.

Let this sink in. A rights organisation is fighting not to keep boys out of girls sports but to PUT THEM IN.

This is so worrisome. A female cannot compete with a transwoman, especially if they transitioned after male puberty. Most bone and muscle mass for a transwoman will have already been built as a male. For a biological woman to compete, she would have to take testosterone.

A tragedy for women/girls! The ACLU actively works against women/girls to steal their existing rights! The ACLU attempts to steal opportunities of girls to compete, steal their scholarships.

What’s the point? Sport is competitive. Looking at World Rugby’s analysis, allowing TW to play against women is not remotely competitive. It is dangerous. Who wants to compete in, or watch that?

It will kill women’s sport taking the little revenue it had with it.

Continue ReadingJudge Gives Green Light for Transwomen Athletes to Compete in Women’s Sports

“Race” is Like Astrology

The concept of using "race"--physical appearance--as a proxy for character is as absurd as astrology. I'm well aware that people look different from each other, but the concept of "race" is scientifically baseless. The concept of "race" embraces the logic of astrology: shoving individual people (each of whom is complex) into a handful of simplistic superficial categories and then drawing conclusions that are evidence-free (or often, contrary to evidence) based upon these unwarranted simplistic cartoon-like categorizations. The concept of "race" should be constantly ridiculed the same way that intelligent people ridicule astrology. Any attempt to classify another human being by "race" or birthdate is a lazy ham-handed anti-scientific and pernicious claim that one knows what it is impossible to know--the complexity of that human being--without investing time and effort to get to known them. That is the point of Morgan Freeman:

This enormous flaw with the modern use of the concept of "race" is a conceptual hole so vast that one could easily drive a truck through it. Yet the concept of "race" is rarely attacked at the root.  The first racist act is categorizing people by dividing them into simplistic categories such as white or Black. Without this first move, racism would be impossible.  What is especially distressing is that this widespread exuberant willingness to mis-categorize people into simplistic categories is embraced by both White Supremacists and those who claim to be seeking social justice by embracing critical race theory. These two groups are now in complete agreement that we can somehow know people merely by looking at their physical appearance.

There is only one way to get to know a person, and that is to take the time to learn about them, one by one, by talking with them, getting to know what they've done with their lives, reading about them or watching them interact with others. Complicating things, people change over time, so getting to know who they are requires non-stop effort.  Getting to know someone else requires careful consideration of real world facts and this takes considerable and concerted effort. Taking the time to get to really know other people before casting judgment on who they are is incompatible with making snap judgments but, as we are increasingly being tuned by social media, we are increasingly people who insist on making snap judgments.

Every day, "race" arguments wildly launch off into a thousand directions like fireworks. The basic premise of most of these arguments is the incoherent concept of "race," a concept so completely and irrevocably broken that most of these discussions are a waste of time before the discussion even begins. Imagine the time we could save--time we could redirect to working on solving the immense social problems that are very real indeed (many of them correlated to the physical appearance of groups of people)--if only we cut off most discussions of "race" at the root by calling out the invalidity of the concept of "race."

I will be writing more on this emotionally-charged topic in coming months. At this point I should make two things clear.

A) As I hope I've made clear, "race" is a irretrievably flawed pernicious concept. I believe that the concept of "race" should be thrown in the dustbin of history and we should all enter a new post-racial era. Unfortunately, other people continue to believe in the reality of "race." This idiotic willingness to divide complex people into simple colors makes racism possible. For this reason, I fully acknowledge the existence and destructiveness of racism. Many people mistreat others based upon physical appearance. To do this is unfair. It hurts people, sometimes badly, sometimes leading to deaths. Racism oppresses entire groups of people and has done so systematically over long stretches of time, through the entire history of the United States and many other places. Wherever we encounter racism, we should attack it vigorously in two ways: socially (by calling it out publicly and condemning those who mistreat other people in this way) and through the use of the legal system (e.g., through civil rights laws).

B) The concept of "race" itself is bad science, and this problem needs to be pointed out whenever discussing racism. Every single time.  Even young children know that "race" makes no sense but we socialize them to think otherwise. To fail to point out the absurdity of the concept of "race" whenever discussing racism will lead to more of the same. We will never be able to solve the "race" problem as long as we assume that there is such a thing as "race." One way to do this is to consistently put the word "race" in scare quotes, which is now my habit.  Every time we discuss "race," we need to call out that the the casual, unthinking idea that there is such a thing as "race" is reckless and dangerous. We need to constantly call out that it is impossible and destructive to judge other people by the use of immutable physical appearance. It is, indeed, as insane as believing in astrology, phrenology or palm reading. The unthinking use of the word "race" is utterly unscientific and destructive, even when used by well-intentioned people. The concept of "race" is a mental virus that hurts people and most of those who are infected are unable to see that they are infected. To use "race" uncritically (or "critically," as is de rigeour among the Woke) is to succumb to the banality of evil--unthinking destructive acquiescence to bad ideas.

In sum, racism exists because millions of misguided people believe in the incoherent and unsubstantiated notion of "race."  It will take great effort to break this bad habit because many well-meaning people who are (oftentimes heroically) fighting racism refuse to jettison the concept of "race."  Until large vocal swaths of society simultaneously and consciously embrace both A and B (above), racism will tear us apart.  I'm not optimistic.

Continue Reading“Race” is Like Astrology

Greg Palast Discusses the Many Big Problems with Mail Voting

Greg Palast is keeping me up at night. Here's an excerpt from his discussion with Mike Papantonio:

Papantonio: Let’s start with the elephant in the room, the vote by mail. A lot of developments there in the past few days. Tell us what this administration's done and give us the whole Greg Palast vote by mail 10,000 foot, so we can move on to the next question. What's your take?

Palast: Wow. Okay. Here's the problem. 22% of all mail in ballots don't get counted. That's an MIT study. That's not Greg Palast. A one in five ballots is junked. Now, how does that happen? One in 10 people never get their ballot who've asked for them. By the way, that’s why we had those long lines in Georgia, those are African Americans in Atlanta who never got their mail in ballots, but it requested them. Including, by the way, the husband of the head of the ACLU in Georgia. So people don't get their ballot, that's number one. And number two, once you send them in, one in 10 is junked for any type of reason. Anyone can challenge your ballot in America. They don't like your signature, you didn't put your middle initial when you signed and you registered with the middle initial. Postage due cost a hundred thousand votes in 2016. 3.3 million ballots in 2016 that were mailed in were never counted…

Papantonio: What we have here is an election that's tightening up. The Democrats thought they had the leisure of Biden's double digit lead. It's shrinking as we speak. It’s shrinking in states that really matter, swing States. But the Democrats, I literally heard James Carville say, well, Biden can just stay down in the cellar and he's going to win this election. Doesn't that sound a lot like what they were talking about with Hillary Clinton? So I wonder, the vote by mail could be important. How safe is vote by mail? How safe is it?

Palast: Not in the least and this is the big problem. Because you can have all these jerks in Hawaiian shirts, the Boogaloo Boys, the Proud Boys, they're going to go in… Trump’s calling for 50,000 volunteers. It's not an intimidation army. People have that wrong. The real danger’s that are going to go in and say, I don't like that signature on that ballot. That ballot was taped shut instead of a sealed shut by licking the envelope. I'm not kidding. And if you think it's just Republicans who do that, in New York this past last week the Democratic Party challenged the counting of 28,000 mail-in ballots, — the Democratic Party. Once they established that precedent, how many ballots do you think Trump's people will challenge? How many millions I should say. So it's not safe to mail in your ballot.

Continue ReadingGreg Palast Discusses the Many Big Problems with Mail Voting