It seems wrong, I’ll agree, to concentrate on hate on a day we put aside to commemorate the civil rights leader who managed to accomplish so much by explicitly rejecting hate, despite how much of it was aimed at him and his cause. I think it’s hypocritical for American society in its current state to pretend to celebrate the life of Dr. King, when they are in the process of rejecting–enthusiastically rejecting–so many of his ideals. It was hypocritical for our society to pretend to celebrate Christmas, too, now that I think about it.
1 You want to see hate? THIS is hate. Blogger James Bovard collected photos from the Women’s March. The civil rights marchers had a lot more to be angry about, but somehow, thanks to Dr. King’s leadership, they managed to avoid displays like these..
But my favorite, I think, is this one…
Nobody makes anyone behave like this. It’s their choice, and their ethical failing.
2. Quiz: What’s wrong with this book review? Nowadays the New York Times Review of Books seldom misses one of the seemingly endless screeds by progressive, anti-Trump pundits, journalists, historians and scholars, all with interchangeable titles and all boiling down to fearful forecasts that the election of a President they disapprove of portends the end of democracy as we know it. The reviews of these books are usually incritical, and handed to a reliable leftist who could have dictated the any of them. “Democracy and the Decline of Reason” by William Davies, and “The Free Society in Crisis” by David Selbourne were this week’s examples from the genre, and anyone familiar with the Times’ chosen reviewer, long-time Ralph Nader sidekick, former president of AL Gore.s failed attempt at a progressive talk show network, Air America Radio , to counter Rush Limbaugh, and creator of the anti-Trump Twitter collective, @ShadowingTrump Mark Green, knows exactly what his assessments will be. However, Green’s brief review of the Davies book is especially revealing for diagnostic purposes. He writes:
In this interdisciplinary masterpiece (available next month), Davies, a political economist, seeks to solve a major mystery in electoral history: How did a sleazy Croesus sway enough blue-collar workers to be chosen president of the world’s greatest democracy? This political dyslexia was at first simply attributed to racial animus and/or economic anxiety. But the recent rise of elected authoritarians around the world has inspired several authors to dig deeper into what motivates such voters and whether democracy itself is “dying.”
One pioneering effort into illogical thinking was Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind.” Now comes “Nervous States” to seamlessly blend psychology, biology, economics, philosophy, advertising and religion — from Hobbes to Freud — to illuminate how centuries of unreason have spawned our current president.
Davies thinks that right-wing populism is (mis)leading millions to substitute emotions for evidence because of impulses “deep in our psyches and bodies beyond matters of fact: physical pain, fear of the future, a sense of our own mortality.” Demagogues, blaming various villains (Jewish bankers, immigrants), can then convert distress and disempowerment into hatred and a “rejection of progress.” This emphasis of fear over facts creates crowds for whom “it really doesn’t matter … what is said, but merely how it makes them feel.”
The stakes in 2020 appear as high as in any election since 1860: Will emotional appeals built on nationalism and disinformation — with social media as an accelerant — threaten our 230-year experiment in self-government? Or could a failed Trumpism spur a progressive backlash that restores our original Enlightenment values of science, facts and law?
Davies urges rational leaders to better deploy “imagery, sound and speech” to elevate reason over emotion, democracy over reaction. Imagine the epic irony if President Trump paves the way for a Democratic president who then becomes a 21st-century version of Franklin Roosevelt cleaning up after Herbert Hoover’s elephantine mess.
Whatever one may think of his politics, Green is undeniably a smart man. Is it possible that he doesn’t see the absurd hypocrisy here? Is he deluded or lying? Who’s doing the appealing to emotion? Who’s fearmongering (Green is fearmongering in this very review!)? Demagogues? You mean like Howard Dean, Tom Perez, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, and Alexandra Occasio-Cortez? The leftist Women’s March just split up over anti-Semitism in the ranks: who’s blaming “Jewish bankers”? Feelings over facts? Who was it who just said “I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right”? Was that a Republican? Where is so much of that “disinformation” coming from? Isn’t it emanating from the very publication Green is writing for?
How can any honest, rational person take seriously a commentator who ignores such obvious facts undermining his thesis while agreeing that “right-wing populism is (mis)leading millions to substitute emotions for evidence”?
3. Misogyny bad, misandry good! Apparently a new sequel to the original “Ghostbuster” is in the works, in part because the2016 feminist, “woke” reboot with an all-female cast was something of a bust. (Since the first sequel in 1989 was also pretty bad, another “Ghosybusters” no matter who or what it’s cast with doesn’t seem like a very good idea). Anyway, Leslie Jones, a castmember from the feamle version, is offended.
On Twitter she posted, “So insulting. Like fuck us. We dint count. It’s like something trump would do. (Trump voice) ”Gonna redo ghostbusteeeeers, better with men, will be huge. Those women ain’t ghostbusteeeeers” ugh so annoying. Such a dick move. And I don’t give fuck I’m saying something!!”
Yes, you are saying something revealing, hateful and stupid. Funny, the “Ocean’s Eleven” cast didn’t take offense at the contrived all-female version of that film And is there anything Hollywood won’t use as an excuse to attack the President? Even their own movies?
So far, at least, “Ghostbusters” has been a lot better with men.
Ethics Alarms 
Re 3: At least the all-female Ocean’s was an entertaining popcorn movie. I ended up starting the new Ghostbusters and have no idea what it was about as we ended ignoring what was on the tv after like 15 minutes.
Same here. It was pretty much unwatchable, and not because of the actresses, but because of the lousy script and poor direction.
#2 the illogical and arrogant leading the #1 emotional and ignorant.
Point 2
This and most of the claims of hate, bullying, group identity politics is nothing but projection of progressive’s actual behavior.
1. The hate is what the left uses, and they project that upon the right. There are haters on both sides, sure. But one side is reveling in it, and being encouraged by their leadership to do so.
2. Again, the left projects upon the right things they are already doing. After all, if their voters (who ARE the smartest people in ANY room) are acting this way, surly the deplorables are much worse. [insert standard ‘Why would anyone read the Times? comment here]
3. Why can’t Hollywood find a new script? Why keep rehashing old favorites? When you rehash a favorite and change it for political correctness, it just might flop… like this movie did.
I am not sure I ever watched the new Ghostbusters movie. I refused to see it in the theaters. If I watched it, it made that little impression on me.
PS: Leslie Jones can take her offense, fold it into sharp pointy corners, and insert it where the sun does not shine. Movies flop: don’t take it personally. You can improve your odds by not working on a feminist remake that expected to ride the coattails of the original…
4. There is no number 4. There used to be a number 4, so a search of the Obituary pages found the following:
“Number 4 passed away today, surrounded by family and well wishers. ‘We are not sure how to play bridge now’ lamented 3, ‘as 4 was always there for us. 5 is impossible to figure out, and higher numbers are even worse!’
4 is survived by a godparent (2), several cousins (8, 12, 16) and many grandchildren (44, 444, and so on)”
I think points 1 and 2 are the reason for the meeeetoooo movement. Look at the people justifiably exposed. They were the biggest ‘male feminists’ around. They were projecting their own misbehavior on their political opponents because they know if they themselves are this bad, the people they dislike must be REALLLLY BAAAAD. The left is filled with horrible, hate-filled people trying to get themselves and others to believe they are virtuous.
The anti-semitism on the left is really almost comical. Louis Farrakhan, the BDS movement, Linda Sarsour, and innumerable others make it very clear the left is very anti-semitic. These same people who feel Louis Farrakhan is a role model then yell anti-semite at a man who hires a large number of Jewish advisors, whose family is half Jewish, and whose grandchildren are all Jewish. Now, some people come to their senses (or realize the possibility of a backlash) when such things are exposed. Lots of groups have been quietly leaving the Women’s March group after they could no longer deny their anti-semitism. On the flip side is Psychologists for Social Responsibility, who weren’t partners with the Women’s March until the charges of anti-semitism were no longer deniable, then joined!
If a day is put aside, it is a day put aside to celebrate a man who was said to have Communist affiliations. Similar to Nelson Mandela. And he was a fake, a false academic and a plagiarizer. His greatest speech was robbed.
These are the currents he was involved in and connected to: deception, mis-representation and the disguises for seeking raw power. And his religiosity was an emphatic vehicle to rouse up the masses. Therefor, it is possible to reexamine Dr King and to interpret what he did, said, and brought onto the scene with a more critical eye.
I think this is where ‘narrative structure’ and ‘the power of an established narrative’ show their devilish strength. Because NOW, TODAY, we are seeing and living in the outcome of what people like MLK set in motion.
And around this concocted project, and one that the Media Systems have embraced with all their propagandistic power and their seductive use of psychology, a mythology has been set in motion that has you-plural captured. You cannot break out of it. It has become melded to your flesh, part of yourself, part of the way you *see the world*.
Here is an example where *Bayesian Thinking* can be applied! To examine specific and determining ‘primes’. A whole structure needs to be carefully examined, that is what I have come to.
The people that are out in the streets now; the people that will ban you from FB and are getting many of us deplatformed, demonetized and banned in hundreds of instances; and the people who will eventually round you-plural up, are those who ‘respond to the message of MLK’. It becomes an emotional will that tears at hierarchy. What is amazing to me is that you do not make this connection.
MLK — like Nelson Mandela — would have ‘rejected his ideals’, just as South Africa is now outrightly rejecting Mandela’s ideals, when power was achieved. And that seems to be one major element here: power. Then, they are seen for what they are.
1. I bet every person in those photos has at least an undergraduate degree. Depressing.
Regarding climate change, did you know some people were actually predicting human extinction?
https://www.quora.com/It-s-30-years-in-the-future-and-climate-change-has-become-undeniable-should-man-made-climate-deniers-have-to-pay-more-to-fix-the-problem/answer/Daniel-Kinch-2
Funny, there is more ice now than 10 years ago:
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/03/rapid-growth-of-arctic-sea-ice-continues/
Wait. Since it is climate change, we are still responsible and the arctic methane will somehow still get out…
What is it with these crackpots?
If the lynch mobs show up at my house, there will be a precipitous rise in heavy metal poisoning problems highly localized to my front lawn.
I assume you mean the high velocity heavy metal poisoning variety?
Looking at the photos in this post, I was thinking about some child in the future showing it to their parents “Look Dad, I found a picture of Grandma!”.
Etc., etc.
You sound like a Robert Heinlien story.
…I like it!
Yeah, finish the story an post it somewhere.
It’s a page out of Goebbels’ playbook – Accuse the opposition of what you yourself are guilty of.
By some of the left’s logic, we should change today to Victims of Adultery Day. Then again, one of the few decent people to come out of the black community (although Colin Powell was another) presumably trumps the second most influential man in history. Of course these other idiots are spewing hate now. The left thrives on stirring up hate and calling it righteous indignation, and it thrives on keeping anger and rage high, so that there isn’t too much room to think. Making America Hate Again is at least building on Trump’s own slogan, and turnabout is fair play. The rest of those signs just represent attempts to be as outrageous and disgusting as possible. It’s too bad people think that way, but there isn’t much you can do to fix stupid, hateful, or transgressive.
I don’t know anything about Mark Green except this review (and the name is too common for when I Google it), so I have no evidence he is smart. Paul Krugman is also supposed to be smart, but I have read a lot of his editorials and have no evidence to support that opinion. Is this the ‘Celebrity Jeopardy’ effect? They look smart because the people around them are very stupid, but once you judge them on an absolute scale…not so much.
#2 That review by Mark Green is another progressive psychological projection delivered straight up without a twist. Green is a liar that delivers progressive propaganda, I don’t believe a word he writes.
#1 Blatant hate from progressives, social justice warriors, antifa, and the like is totally acceptable and expected, they have a very specific V.I.E.W. (Virtuous In Every Way) of themselves.
What’s painfully obvious to the rest of us is that they’re a bunch of egotistical imbeciles.
#3 I don’t give a damn what Leslie Jones says about anything, as best I can tell, she’s a racist twit.
Z.
Which one was Leslie Jones?
The author of the tweet Jack discussed in 3. above? One of the female Ghostbusters in the distaff sequel?
3: Ah, the irony, but Leslie Jones is unlikely to ever see it. The marketing for her reboot paid little respect for the original characters. The original’s concept of franchises would have opened up any city for a branch without the need to retcon and make a contrived female version of the same characters. I considered offices in New Orleans and Charleston for fanfic, Honolulu and Egypt could be fun too. For a supposedly progressive update it was not very bold, (why no Asians, immigrants Aztec proestesses, handicapped, or elderly?) The leads and plot was 75% rehash like TFA. People may have looked down on GB2, but Vigo wasn’t as much a rehash. I don’t blame actors for defending their art, but that does not excuse attacking someone else’s, especially the one that started it and that made your part possible.
Rumor has it in fandom, that new chars will be mixed gender young people and an actual sequel of GB2 thirty years later. (wonder if they will have a very bright great dane?
It would be like if producers decided to make a remake of Rocky, instead of continuing the franchise with Creed.
Early reports of 3 indicate a real sequel, like Trek Generations(’94) instead of the ’09 reboot/remaking Rocky. The original cast, like Hudsen would be of today and veterans of almost 40 years ago. It would have been more exciting to change more than gender. Females in the sciences is not that new an idea to someone who was in the academic and commercial end over twenty years.
It could have been set in a different city, like Los Angeles (with either Hudson or Murray reprising their role.)
‘It could have been set’ Does that mean the 2016? If so, other cities would not have had the experiences from 1 & 2 to play off of. I sure would treat the supposed events of 1&2 as mass hysteria and I’m only one state away. You could have new casts and disbelief and play off the culture of that city,
If you mean 3, I can’t see everything moved kit and kaboodle to a new city, Having it feel like a specific city is good. (2016 felt more like backlot, esp the ‘subway’ scene.)
Alright, is it just me, or is Trump a surprisingly good President, especially when you ignore what he says, and focus entirely on what he’s done?
(Also, I am Jeff, who previously posted under valentine0486 or Jmv0405; I started a new blog at thisgratitudegame.com and don’t fully understand all of the intricacies of WordPress signatures and names yet.)
Gee, I liked “valentine.”
It’s not just you.
valentine is my last name, so I appreciate it, but hopefully the work I’m doing on the new blog will actually lead to something meaningful.
Thanks, Jack.