davidthompson

Elsewhere (235)

Theodore Dalrymple on the British general election: 

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the election was the recrudescence of the politics of envy and resentment… The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn radiated dislike of the prosperous, even the modestly prosperous. Corbyn and his party’s solutions to the country’s problems were supposedly to be paid for by higher taxes on the richest 5 percent of the population. This proposal overlooked the fact that the top 1 percent of earners already pay almost three times as much in income tax as the bottom 50 percent combined, and also the fact that wealth is dynamic rather than static, resembling more closely the bloom of a grape than a cake to be sliced. Taxes on capital (in other words, state expropriation) were Corbyn’s obvious next step, with capital flight the equally obvious consequence. None of this worried the young, who had as yet no stake in property, only what are sometimes called ideals. The Labour Party offered them and others the beguiling vision of living perpetually at the expense of others.

Related, a few of the beguiled. 

Ben Shapiro on a “toxic masculinity” that feminists rarely mention: 

The left routinely speaks about a world run by women and why such a world would create better men. But the most male-free environment in America exists in black communities, where well over half of black children grow up without fathers. This hasn’t made black boys less violent; it’s made them far more prone to criminality than their non-black peers.

Greg Piper on when “affirmative action” means acting out a racial caricature:

Not only did [Princeton] admissions officers refer to Asian-American applicants as all looking the same on paper and having no distinguishing activities, but they seemingly penalised students of other ethnic backgrounds for not acting ethnic enough… “Were there a touch more cultural flavour, I’d be more enthusiastic,” one officer wrote.  

Emily Zanotti pokes through Evergreen State College’s course catalogue:

This coming fall, for example, you can take a number of classes that count as biology, but actually aren’t biology at all. They include Reproduction: Gender, Race and Power, but also Dancing Molecules, Dancing Bodies, where you’ll use the art of dance to communicate with your body and understand the chemical processes within.

And via dicentra, when selfishness and dishonesty are hailed as virtues:

No, I don’t have to tell you I’m trans before dating you.

Interesting theory. What could possibly go wrong? As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

I’m taking a few days off in search of mojo. By all means amuse yourselves in the comments, or poke through the reheated series for things you may have missed. And don’t touch the liquor cabinet. I’ve rigged it to blow. 

Respect Me, You Motherfucker

More from Evergreen State College, where Professor Naima Lowe, an instructor of “video and performance art” who claims expertise in “emphatically poetic gestures,” demonstrates her gift for professional conduct: 

YOU are the motherfuckers that we’re pushing against! You can’t see your way outta your own ass!

Context and background here and here.

Via Darleen.

Update:

Apparently, the situation at Evergreen has not improved. 

Armed with baseball bats, students are channelling the radical ethos of Eighties pop combo Haysi Fantayzee. 

Update 2:

And here’s a first-hand account of the Evergreen Gender Studies Massive in action: 

Last Thursday, Nolan and his friends were accosted again by “the mob.” He was on his way to the bus to get dinner, and a group of about 20 people, one of them holding a bat, began following them. Many of the same characters from the first encounter were present at the second one. Nolan said it appeared like the group was waiting for him outside his dorm room, like they knew where he lived. “They were all a bunch of walking stereotypes,” he said. “It’s like Tumblr was attacking me.”

They’re all about the caring, you see.

Friday Ephemera

Intrigue of the day. (h/t, Obo) // Interspecies smackdown. // Yes, but it all seems a bit unnecessary. // Domino physics. // Fly guy. // Infinite string quartet. Drag, drop and listen. // Dronestagram. // Among giants. // No Stick Shooter is a game. Things may get a little fraught. // A museum of vintage hi-fi. // If they learn to make fire, we’re totally screwed. // Assorted French textile samples, 1863. // At last, LED eyelashes for maximum fabulousness. // Meanwhile, in Japan. (h/t, Damian) // 5000-piece, 5000-colour jigsaw of note. // Passing Jupiter. // Just “a leg or two.” // Learning curve. (h/t, Old Holborn) // A 12-year-old ventriloquist. // Always respect the media. // And finally, exhaustingly, “When I’m relaxed and chillin’ I can go up to ten, twenty minutes without ticcing.”

It Does Indeed

It bears repeating: actual justice holds you responsible for the actions you take. “Social justice” holds you responsible for actions taken, without your knowledge or consent, by people you do not know and have never met. It’s guilt by association, and a perversion of true justice.

Sam Duncan, commenting here. 

Elsewhere (234)

Further to this sorry episode, Seth Barron on the rise of the Mao-lings (and their enablers-turned-victims): 

Videos from Evergreen State College show mobs of students —mostly but not only black— haranguing their professors and accusing them of racist abuse. The college president, George Bridges, is heckled, insulted, mocked, and ordered to stand with his arms firmly at his sides because his gestures are considered threatening to the students, who have invaded his office and refused to leave. Bridges complies meekly with all demands, including buying gumbo for his captors.

It’s tempting… to view the outrage at Evergreen (and Middlebury, and Berkeley, and Claremont McKenna, ad nauseam) as an American recurrence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when students were encouraged by the ruling class to torment any teachers suspected of reactionary deviance. But the modern college campus is staffed and led by progressives, who have created the conditions for, and invited, students’ PC tantrums. In Marx’s classic formulation, history is repeating itself, but as farce…

In the Evergreen videos, we see Bridges [an advocate of “critical race theory,”] struggling to be as passive and compliant as possible with the crowd of angry students occupying his office. When he is yelled at for saying “Please,” he apologises. When he admits to having a claustrophobia-induced panic attack, he is derided and told to “get to work” transcribing the mob’s demands. Bridges could have called the campus police at any time to end the illegal occupation of his office and his imprisonment, but he ordered them to stand down — presumably because, according to his own academic doctrine, police intervention is necessarily fascist and racist.

See also this display of prostration. Because the intimidation of staff and the screeching of racist epithets must be rewarded, at least in academia, as “exemplary leadership in enhancing race relations.”