Thank you, Washington Post
Now somebody tell Black Lives Matter, all of the copycat activist groups, and all the progressive, pandering politicians, like Bernie Sanders, currently giving deference and respect to such groups that still tacitly use Dorian Johnson’s Big Lie in their literature and demonstrations. Somebody tell the Democratic National Committee, which endorses Black Lives Matters, shameless race-baiters that they are. Is the antecedent ambiguous? Never mind: race-baiters applies to both.
Most of all, somebody tell America’s African Americans, most of whom have been conditioned to believe the lie, and thus to believe that young Mike Brown was executed on the streets of Ferguson because he was black. They have been thus taught so they distrust whites, law enforcement and their nation, and so they will vote Democratic.
Here was the original debunking of the lie, in March. I’ve been tracking the lie since before then: it was evoked in Farrakhan’s march on Washington and in August’s Ferguson demonstration. In both cases, the news media soft-peddled the implicit endorsement of a vile falsehood for its value in spreading distrust, fear and hate.
I don’t understand Kessler’s other choices in many cases. He seems to be obsessed with Donald Trump (Join the club!), while ignoring the obvious primacy of Hillary Clinton in the lies competition. She says she gets Wall Street money because she helped New York City after 9-11. She issues lie after lie in denial of wrongdoing regarding her duplicitous e-mails system. Isn’t it obvious that her e-mail cover-up is more consequential than Donald Trump’s fantasies about seeing throngs of Muslims cheer the 9-11 carnage on live TV? Kessler does include one of Hillary’s whoppers: the claim that Bill signed DOMA to stop a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage, not because he opposed gay marriages himself. Bill didn’t even back her up on that one.
None of the other lies, however, come within miles of “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!” for dishonesty and damage. This one got people killed. I think it’s still getting people killed, because it caused the main crack in the relationship between black communities and law enforcement. The lie has killed citizens not protected by proactive policing, because police fear confrontations with black perps that might end with a dead perp and Al Sharpton demanding a murder trial. The lie has killed police executed by black Americans who now believe that they have to kill cops before the cops kill them.
“Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!” is the Lie of the Year, maybe the Lie of the Century so far, at least until a Hillary Clinton presidency. Any news organization that doesn’t choose it for the honor is quivering in fear of retribution from Black Lives Matter, which sprung from Hands Up! like Athena sprung from the forehead of Zeus.
Congratulations to Kessler, and the Post, for their courage and integrity.
Ethics Alarms 
That sounds like a unity and mutual support line, but the harmony line of ‘All lives matter’ has been lost. That the activists attack anyone saying that all lives matter shows their exclusion. I’m glad Mr Kessler has said it, and hope this helps break the dam..
Tex has written:
“After the generation that experienced this dies…it’s the history books that will matter.”
_________________
Oh now that is a delicious question. There is a very interesting little book I read by Frank Kermode called ‘The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative’. He is a literary critic overall, but this book – so interestingly – opens into the question of Metaphysics. The interpretations we make (for example those that you and I make right now) all depend on metaphysical predicates.
(Too complex, Beth? Too far-flung? No, I really don’t think so).
Is it not true that we all make – and that you-all make – all sorts of interpretations of, say, the postwar era in a general sense, and all these interpretations (are they merely spurious? or are they bona fide *truths*?) inform a view of the present? Obviously. We are compelled if not impelled to do so.
But are these ‘objective truths’? There the polemic begins.
How do ‘the history books’ handle the American Civil War? (Historical interpretations which shift, evolve, morph, get infused with ‘moods’ of the present, get revised!) and then any contentious and difficult historical period? It is all ‘interpretation’.
I suppose this is one reason why I have decided to toy and fiddle with views far to the right of Right: If we are all going to lie about ‘reality’, ourselves, each other, and what surrounds us, I see no reason why not to choose an Heroic revisionism!
More importantly…how will history books handle this episode in the latest chapter of American History?
After the generation that experienced this dies…it’s the history books that will matter.
If past history is any guide, it will be on a timeline toward the end of what America once was and one of a flood of rapidly growing moments in the destruction of America’s peace and security and ultimately of America itself. Future generations will look back and say how could so many people believe such stupid lies.
Also, based on history, if any part of what remains can rebuild into a great nation it will depend on people and their desire for the same things that drove the first American revolution. Probably safe to say the “Black Lives Matter” crowd and the university micro aggression whiners won’t be a part of building anything worthwhile.
Wow, I need to quit reading the news if I want to get in the mood for Christmas.
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2015/12/12/christmas-light-in-darkness/ Great post once again Jack.Needs to be covered more widely. texaggo4 your post reminds me of this piece I read last Saturday.
“The defiance of despair in the face of cruel fate, which manifests in this poem, is one of the most beautiful qualities of the human spirit, and in my humble opinion is proof there is something good in mankind, despite our amazing capacity to make misery when we could make peace.”
Yep. Maintaining one’s Faith and Hope despite nature compelling you to repudiate both has produced excellent poems/songs.
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,a
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
That is exactly the form and texture of the peace that can come. Thanks. One of the things that I love most about being a Christian is the constant reassurance, in spite of the events in the world, that all will be well. My natural pessimism is continuously replaced with hope.
[Sorry, I posed this in the wrong place a second ago].
Tex has written:
“After the generation that experienced this dies…it’s the history books that will matter.”
_________________
Oh now that is a delicious question. There is a very interesting little book I read by Frank Kermode called ‘The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative’. He is a literary critic overall, but this book – so interestingly – opens into the question of Metaphysics. The interpretations we make (for example those that you and I make right now) all depend on metaphysical predicates.
(Too complex, Beth? Too far-flung? No, I really don’t think so).
Is it not true that we all make – and that you-all make – all sorts of interpretations of, say, the postwar era in a general sense, and all these interpretations (are they merely spurious? or are they bona fide *truths*?) inform a view of the present? Obviously. We are compelled if not impelled to do so.
But are these ‘objective truths’? There the polemic begins.
How do ‘the history books’ handle the American Civil War? (Historical interpretations which shift, evolve, morph, get infused with ‘moods’ of the present, get revised!) and then any contentious and difficult historical period? It is all ‘interpretation’.
I suppose this is one reason why I have decided to toy and fiddle with views far to the right of Right: If we are all going to lie about ‘reality’, ourselves, each other, and what surrounds us, I see no reason why not to choose an Heroic revisionism!
Is that your sentiment?
“Let the water and the blood
From thy riven side which flowed
Be of sin the double cure.”
I suppose quoting a hymn referring to the propitative act allowing for double imputation is relevant. Somehow. Maybe you are slyly implying that Christianity is all just made up on a legend we want to believe. That’s your right… Congrats… I think scholarly skeptics figured out that charge centuries ago.
You sort of get it but you mostly don’t.
My view, which I have expressed in a number of postings in this thread, is that we are all deeply informed by fictions. (But note that a ‘fiction’ does not mean a non-truth, not necessarily). It doesn’t really always matter if there is a ‘real’ event there (say the piercing of Jesus’ side and the out-flow of redemptive blood and water), what matters much more is how one relates to it, how one takes it in, and how the symbolic content (for it is symbolic conceptual content whether it *really happened* or if it did not) is understood and interpreted. *Meaning* tends to function like this, and how *meaning* enters our world is not such a simple thing.
Our various faiths – whether religious, or political, or even personal – tie in to metaphysics. Metaphysics is a most interesting concept and I do not intended to obfuscate through the use of tterm, though I notice that some folks, hearing this and other ‘philosophical’ terms, interpret them as gibber-jabber. (Wyoming said ‘theory’ which normally means ‘critical theory’ which is Satan’s dialectics as far as I am concerned) (a bit of a joke there). And I say this is totally false. But I say more too. If we cannot understand our own fictional content and the degree that we construct a world on these metaphysics, we are disempowered actors in our world. Perhaps you don’t like the way that sounds? Perhaps it threatens to undermine things you hold to be thoroughly sturdy? Who knows … I say that knowledge has a great deal of power and is also quite dangerous. I like danger.
That is one of my main points, and it is an idea that interests me tremendously, and one I intend to pursue. I tend to see *people generally* (in the grotesque vox populi sense) as having become unmoored from a sustaining and also a maintaining and containing metaphysics. I am speaking of America when I speak as I am not qualified to speak of other cultures. There used to be a sort of ‘bedrock’ that could be counted on, that was enough of a structure to hold and contain the lives people lived. I am speaking about ‘belief systems’ in vague terms. The connection to this bedrock, if you accept that term, has been shattered in many ways and for many reasons. Now, in general, people have no common bedrock, and many different ersatz narratives rush into that void. This figures a critical state of affairs. I think this can be spoken about. And is not a waste of time, and is TOTALLY relevant to ethics.
Whether you care to notice it or not, whether you care to investigate it or not, the BLM movement is one that rises out of certain narratives. (If the term ‘narrative’ bothers you please suggest another. I can’t think of another one that would not appear unnecessarily complex). I said that I felt that this narrative, as it related to, say, ML King’s overtly religious tropes, from which most all of the present movement stems, is essentially a religious one, and because it is a religious one, and because religious tropes of this sort do not really deal with ‘facts’ as we now understand facts, but with extremely complex metaphysical assumptions that are terribly difficult to see and understand, since they are ‘assumed’, that it does not really matter if the specific *facts* happened in ‘reality’, or if they did not.
These tropes, these narratives, are picked up and employed. They are tools. These sorts of tropes are immensely powerful, and in this sense they could be said to be ‘more powerful than reality’, and by reality I mean ‘truth’ and ‘fact’. What does that ‘trope’ say, and what does it intend? (I mean the driving tropes of the BLM)(which acronym also can be taken to mean Black Liberation Movement). I suggest – tentatively as any suggestion of mine is tentative because, in fact, I don’t understand either reality or ‘reality’ enough) – that the motive power there is non-rational. It is not a thought-out stance, but rather one that comes out of the blood. And this blood is angry and retribution blood.
This is only an outline, written rather quickly, of ideas which I find very compelling.
Now, it gets even more interesting, in my view, when we also apply this analysis to OUR OWN metaphysics, our own assumptions about ‘reality’.
America is a strange fantasy-land of giant metaphysical stories (consider Harold Bloom’s work in ‘The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation’, and note that we might have elected a Mormon president but instead elected an exponent of Black Liberation theology.
You don’t see any of this as having relevance to ‘our present’?
(Try not to say a bunch of stupid s**t in response if you can possibly avoid it. But I WILL accept more Star Voyage vids as that one was, after all, pretty funny! Who is the apeman?) (Sadly, I grew up without TV).
No one could say you are stupid, Tex. But you are going to have to do some of the work here.
Hahahahahahahaha
This coming after a vague reference to a profoundly written hymn.
You do have a sense of humor after all.
Among the most frustrating things about this entire debacle, is that, once confronted with reality, the Left immediately spun a new yarn that though “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” may not have been exactly what happened, the phrase is still valuable for its sentiment and the movement it represents.
Nothing should make an intelligent person slap their forehead if THAT doesn’t make them do so.
Sadly, some even tried that here. Drove me crazy.
Tex wrote:
“Among the most frustrating things about this entire debacle, is that, once confronted with reality, the Left immediately spun a new yarn that though “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” may not have been exactly what happened, the phrase is still valuable for its sentiment and the movement it represents.”
_________________
But wait! But wait! One has to linger over this a bit. Nabokov said that ‘reality’ is the one word that has to appear surrounded by quotes. I don’t want to get too arcane, but does not everyone select out of non-fiction the group of tropes that comprise their fictional narratives?
Isn’t our nation in this sense such a living fiction? An invention in many senses? And those who confront the invention, do so by suggesting, or juxtaposing, or imposing another ‘narrative’? And isn’t this a supreme problem of modernity? And how we order perception?
I don’t think I have to put quotation marks around the word “reality” when I say – in reality, Michael Brown was NOT surrendering, he was NOT throwing up his hands in submission, and he was NOT saying “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”
Agree. Reality is pretty easy to distinguish before the philosophizers start messing with it. But, the “studies” students need something to do.
Actually, reality is NOT easy to distinguish, and distinguishing it depends on structures of perception. I don’t think there is an easier way to say it, though I admit that I incline toward a teensy-tinesy bit of pretension.
How we view the world is an enormously complex affair. The very ideas ‘truth’, ‘reality’ and ‘explanation’ are intensely complex terms, and the terms themselves flow from moulded and remoulded viewpoints. Pilate asked ‘What is Truth?’ but a better question is what do we FEEL to be true. That will lead us into a territory of ‘metaphysical assumptions’. These are more often than not received and not conceived.
T.E. Hulme explained that it is almost insuperably difficult to become critically conscious of one’s own habitual assumptions; ‘doctrines felt as facts’ can only be seen as doctrines, and not facts, after great efforts of thought, and usually only with the aid of a first-rate metaphysician.
Our ‘explanations’ are usually, if not always, restatements of something – event, theory, doctrine, etc. – in terms of current interests and assumptions. And clarity of an explanation seems to depend, often, on the degree of SATISFACTION it affords.
I swear upon a stack of hieroglyphic tomes that when it comes to understanding, say, the ideological platform of the NYTimes, or the social justice warriorship of some ultra-liberal wing-nut, and any other political position and stance, including certainly a true-blue conservative, that it extends from and joins back to one’s ‘metaphysical dream of the world’. (Richard Weaver).
I would further suggest that what weakens critical dialectics of a Texan and Wyoming variety is the mistaken assumption that one does not have to perform some pretty hardcore thinking. Its a nearly a fatal American error to imagine that one can develop a sturdy critical position non-intellectually.
You cannot disassociate ethics from metaphysics. Of this I am totally certain.
The BLM position is ensconced within a very specific narrative the roots of which can be discerned, separated and described. And if you want to take it apart – to render it ineffective – it has to be taken apart at that level.
But good luck with that: That is why you will not be able to succeed: the narrative is so much more powerful than you are aware, and it connects with metaphysical assumptions.
In reality, Michael Brown was NOT surrendering, he was NOT throwing up his hands in submission, and he was NOT saying “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”
Exactly.
Alizia, I agree we often create our own “reality” (in quotation marks), yet, as Tex implies, there remains a true reality (never needing quotation marks). Regardless of what we think, regardless of our perceptions, some things have, and some things have not occurred. Our perceptions affect how we interact, but cannot change what has actually, in reality occurred. In other words, we cannot change the past. Our perceptions do not change the reality of our present or past situations; our perceptions only affect how we interact with that reality. This is why truth is crucial.
If we fail to seek and disseminate truth, if we engage in deception in any way, we damage ability (our own and that of others) to perceive reality accurately, which diminishes our ability to form valid beliefs. When we believe that which is not real, we cannot make accurate predictions, and will therefore more often misjudge the consequences of our behavior. Persons that believe Michael Brown was gunned down while surrendering, or persons that believe every slight or discomfort is a micro-aggression (I have difficulty tolerating that squiggly red line), react to reality (the real reality) inappropriately, and very often unethically.
Otto wrote:
“If we fail to seek and disseminate truth, if we engage in deception in any way, we damage ability (our own and that of others) to perceive reality accurately, which diminishes our ability to form valid beliefs. When we believe that which is not real, we cannot make accurate predictions, and will therefore more often misjudge the consequences of our behavior. Persons that believe Michael Brown was gunned down while surrendering, or persons that believe every slight or discomfort is a micro-aggression (I have difficulty tolerating that squiggly red line), react to reality (the real reality) inappropriately, and very often unethically.”
___________________
Thanks for your comment, Otto. I am not sure that I make myself understood. The reason is because when I say things people here hear it differently than what I mean. Someone said that they thought I was being taken as a ‘Marxist progressive’ whereas, in fact, I am attempting to articulate a very very different viewpoint.
I do not in any sense disagree with Texas and Wyoming: Michael Brown was shot but not while ‘surrendering’ but while aggressing (from all I have seen). But what gives life to the narratives that will assert a different truth is what, I feel, needs to be considered. I said the topic should be ‘lingered over’ if only because all of us, even if we do not understand it or believe it, have been informed not by ‘truth’ or even by ‘fact’ but by interpretations of these.
To say ‘I perceive reality accurately’ is a bold statement. Can you make it? Are you sure? Because I will wager that when you begin to ‘describe the world’, and even ‘historical fact’, you will involve yourself in an interpretive project. These projects are ideological and metaphysical.
But this does not mean I am attempting to revise reality or defending the BLM thrust.
I do not in fact desire to unnecessarily complicate these questions, nor the specific question, but I think these are very important issues. They are philosophical, yes, but also religious and existential.
Revising the claim a bit, I agree it would be excessively bold for anyone to say, “I perceive all reality with perfect accuracy.” I concede that we cannot be absolutely certain of anything. We should always reserve some smidgeon of room for doubt, if for no other reason than to guard against our own dogmatism. Nonetheless, we must act as if we can perceive reality, and do so with sufficient accuracy. (If we cannot, there is no reason to do anything at all.) Further, we can be more certain of some things than we can of others; we can reasonably have more confidence in the accuracy of some perceptions compared to others. Given all available evidence, we can be relatively certain that “Michael Brown was shot while attacking a police officer” is a more accurate perception and depiction of reality than “Michael Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was shot”. I don’t see that ideology and metaphysics have anything to do with it.
And with that I have no disagreement.
What I am attempting to point to is something larger: The organization and function of narratives. How they get flung into motion. I was not unclear in what I wrote when I said: “Because I will wager that when you begin to ‘describe the world’, and even ‘historical fact’, you will involve yourself in an interpretive project. These projects are ideological and metaphysical.”
This to me is incontestable, and it is also very important when we attempt to understand the world, and of course ourselves. I can give one utterly concrete example since here, on this blog, there are some believing Christians: To believe in the Christian doctrine, and promise, has very very little to do with fact as we understand it. It has to do with metaphysical assumptions that have been expressed through symbolic forms. I do not bring this up to discuss it. I bring it up as a useful, and poignant, example.
Thus, many of us here can be said to be involved in what can only be called (in the sense that I use the term) fictions. I can take an event, or facts, and weave them together in such a way that I have a powerful narrative and one that functions with power.
In my personal, but also limited view (I am young enough that I can know of these things only by reading and watching film and video), that the Civil Rights narrative, in the US, is a religious narrative in many respects. It ties into what are religious narratives that inform the US at foundational levels. That is not all that informs it, but this aspect is a real one. I base this on ideas of Robert Bellah (http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm)
Now, these are not exactly ‘facts’ (these informing narrative elements), they are something quite distinct. They can, and they should, be looked into. And I suggest that this is introspection and also an investigation of metaphysics. Personal metaphysics, informing metaphysics. What I am speaking about, therefor, is something much larger than a close event in current affairs (say, a car accident, or Mike Brown’s shooting). Though it is very true that without a film recording, and even with it, people remember things VERY differently (why is this?), it becomes all the more difficult to visualise the past with ‘accuracy’. We cannot, really, do it. We perform a semblance of it, but our activity is interpretive.
I suggest that the BLM movement – though I do not fully understand it, nor do I want to – is one infused with and motivated by ‘narratives’ which are non-rational, just as the Christian narrative is non-rational (belief I do not define as ‘rational’ activity, and I am a believer in certain senses). I would suggest that these are narratives connected intimately to certain interpretations of the world, as well as to resentment, to certain sentiments and emotions which weave in and out of modern narratives.
I would further suggest that we are all floating on top of similar narratives. We all have them, and we all use them. To see them requires very difficult feats of thinking and self-analysis.
This is gibberish, Alizia. If a movement is predicated on something happening that did not happen, it is based on a lie, and can be justly discredited because of a lie. If it honestly designates such a lie as a metaphor from the start, designed to inspire and explicate rather than mislead, that is something else entirely.
This dovetails nicely into the Christmas thread.
It can’t be gibberish because you are not contradicting me, nor I you:
“I do not in any sense disagree with Texas and Wyoming: Michael Brown was shot but not while ‘surrendering’ but while aggressing (from all I have seen). But what gives life to the narratives that will assert a different truth is what, I feel, needs to be considered. I said the topic should be ‘lingered over’ if only because all of us, even if we do not understand it or believe it, have been informed not by ‘truth’ or even by ‘fact’ but by interpretations of these.”
I said ‘needs to be considered’. I did not say it needs to be considered as a truth.
I said the narrations of the to the to the to be ‘surrendered not but not by interpretatives topic should believen by ‘fact’ but will assert a disagree will assert a different truth’ or be cons of the to these.” “I do not interpretationsidering’ but not by ‘truth is what while aggree with Texas shot what while all of that will of the topic shot by ‘fact’ but not in any seen). But with Texas any sense disagressing’ but with Texas and it, have been if we disagressing (from all I said that, have it or.)
And remember: it’s not gibberish if we don’t disagree.
Damn you! I had one doozy of a spoof prepared. Now I’ll just be a copy cat.
Huar huar huar.
Parody is funny, if done well. The way you-all handle ridicule – as I have seen it played here – is stupid.
We are justly chastised. We-all will strive to increase our funniness for your sake. We dread the day you go without laughter.
Tex, this is only more stupidity.
The day I prefer that you dread is the day when you-all refuse to deal in ideas and turn it into silly game playing. It is like acid to good and productive conversation.
Haven’t had your laugh today yet, have you?
A wasted group of posts, Tex, and we come full circle: you start as a troncho and you end as one.
Did no one else read the articles fully explaining what was finally determined to have happened by more than a “street witness” – those who more loudly and belligerantly claim to Know it All, and hold The Truth in their trumphets ?? Those not-all-Black [un -PC term too now ? but White is still “in”] ‘activists’ obviously want still now to create chaos.
Reports in both the New Yorker and Atlantic last month gave brief and clearer dis-covered ‘facts’ – different than the darker louder yells that dominate the media .
If those legit reputable magazines confirm more & reliable events
[ and there must be more than those 2, also but someone interested needs to do more researching or get subscriptions to locate the ‘more’ revelations ]
then the loud,angrier street creed is probably using more deliberate actions – to both create Attention – to give Importance of Black People vs. others – and to retaliate and revenge authorities, and also put law enforcement ‘officials’ on beware-notice now.
Then there is more : the benefits of all the fake, exaggerated stories and further arousal of Blacks vs. Whites – including all those in any badge-authorized uniforms, is that some of the mis-behaviors of those [police and others too] with zealous power=image needs have also become exposed. The uniformed power players have been pubicly called out. For their often & general mis-behaviors too.
Many police and others have assumed undue immunity and become militarized in atitude, as well as their accoutrements, intimidating unnecessarily with any/ all peoples [ color or culture is not relevant, tho wealth appears to still have some deferences]. So,The American People are treated with less respect or fairness, as too many authorities treat their ‘public’ with arrogance and haughtiness.
Some of us have actually noticed how much more carefully local LAPD are acting carefully now, more neutrally and less obviously Lording it Over others – because of more public scrutiny now.
This is an unintended consequences, to also be noted. And Not to prove any 1 “victim’s” story & useful image, as that is easily stolen by those who finally try to grab some Power too, and to shame or blame anyy-all “others” too.. Some Whiter lighter toned folks have felt hated, blamed, intimidated, and falsely tinged as ‘racist’ – it has become the convenient Blame the Worst word recently.
“the benefits of all the fake, exaggerated stories and further arousal of Blacks vs. Whites – including all those in any badge-authorized uniforms, is that some of the mis-behaviors of those [police and others too] with zealous power=image needs have also become exposed. The uniformed power players have been pubicly called out. For their often & general mis-behaviors too.”
No, this is not the benefit because it’s based on a provable lie.
I don’t doubt that many bad things happen, but if they are to be used as templates for change they have to be provably true.
Looking at the lead photograph, I can’t help but wonder how many of those characters need to be accosted out of their dens with their hands up… and then shot anyway!