I wish I could promise that this will be the last Ethics Alarms post about Democrats and the Axis being in denial over the reasons for President Trump’s victory last November. I hope it will. The capacity for self-delusion in this pathetic bunch, however, knows no bounds.
At the University of Virginia, a panel of scholars discussing “Race, Gender and the American Electorate” and moderated by Prof. Kevin Gaines, a professor of “civil rights and social justice,” blamed Kamala Harris’s loss in the Presidential election on racism and sexism.
Gaines said, “Viewed through the lens of the history of African American women in the United States, the defeat of the first black woman nominee [of] a major party for the presidency by an openly racist and misogynistic candidate seemed to recall the voicelessness and vulnerability of black women during the eras of slavery and segregation, particularly in the Jim Crow south.” He went on to compare Harris’s defeat to how “enslaved black women endured the violence of chattel slavery and the exploitation of their labor and reproductive sexuality.” “Even in freedom, black women historically have been overlooked and marginalized, not only by white male oppressors, but also — and often — by their extensible allies: black men and white women,” he concluded.
And this guy is a tenured professor.
Wow.
The panel was held last month at UVA’s Miller Center, supposedly a nonpartisan affiliate. Yeah, that panel sure sounds “non-partisan.” Although the center describes itself as striving “to illuminate Presidential and political history accurately and fairly,” there were no dissenting voices on its panel to point out that, just for starters, its moderator was spouting indefensible nonsense. All of the panelists without exception attacked Trump and those who voted for him in an event billed as a post-election analysis delving into “the complex interplay of race, gender, and age demographics as they affected the outcome.”
Gee, how about a discussion of why having a panel of three black anti-Trump Democrats doing the delving biases the analysis? (The whole program can be viewed here)
Gaines, who really is a piece of work, also said at one point that “it’s quite likely that this election was determined by voters who did not have… as comprehensive a view of politics and the issues as… a fair amount of Harris supporters.” Just…wow. Voting for an incoherent fraud who could never articulate a clear policy position on anything is evidence of “a comprehensive view of politics and the issues.”
At another point in the discussion, the panelists expressed surprise that the abortion issue didn’t carry the day with women voters. Somebody should have pointed out to these boobs that there is literally nothing the President can do to make abortion legal or illegal. The panel did mention the overwhelming majority of black females who voted for Harris…because she is a black female. Who are the racists and sexists again?
Further observations:
1. Joel Gardner, president of the Jefferson Council which is a nonprofit alumni association formed to preserve Thomas Jefferson’s legacy of freedom and excellence at the University of Virginia, reacted to this debacle by saying, “Professors have the right to freedom of speech pursuant to the University’s statement on freedom of expression. However, it becomes an issue and a problem when the administration adopts viewpoints as an official position or supports certain viewpoints to the exclusion of others.”
Going way out on a limb there, are you Joel? What a weenie.
2. The one-sided discussion in that panel displayed more than just indefensible partisan bias. It also reveals faculty members incapable of critical thinking and independent thought. Respectable institutions shouldn’t employ alleged academics so intellectually disabled, and should not charge small fortunes in tuition for students to be taught by such fools.
3. If UVA’s professors can’t do better than that, then the entire school is suspect—suspect in its recruitment, suspect in its integrity, suspect in its ability to teach.
4. If that panel was representative of its black faculty members, an investigation is warranted. It does not suggest high standards for minority faculty hiring.
5. Yes, bias makes one stupid, but one has to already be stupid to publicly take the position these three academic frauds did in that discussion. Did they ever listen to Harris (try to) speak? Did they hear her say that she would change nothing that the Biden Administration had done, even as Biden’s Presidency was near historic lows in public opinion? Did they fail to notice that the Vice-President she selected as a running mate was an anti-free speech bozo? Does the little matter of the candidate they deemed so superior also being the product of a completely undemocratic, tradition- and norm-defying nominating process penetrate their thought processes at all?
6. The DNC crowd that elected a white male chairman also unanimously attributed Harris’s defeat to racism and sexism rather than to the American public’s traditional aversion to fakes, frauds, incompetents and babbling morons in high positions. Is it possible that, like these three disgraceful UVA profs, those Democrats also believe this fiction, or is it just a politically correct thing to say so they won’t be tarred as sexist and racist?
7. Saying that Harris lost because she is a woman and “of color” makes as much sense as saying that Michael Dukakis lost to Bush I because Americans are biased against Greeks and short people. No, “Duke” lost because he was a stereotypical out-there Massachusetts liberal (John Kerry, Elizabeth Warren, etc., etc.) whose “criminal justice reforms” included letting dangerous sociopaths out of prison on furlough and one of them, convicted murderer Willie Horton, committed assault, armed robbery, and rape in Maryland while he was enjoying the Mass. governor’s brilliant solution to “over-incarceration.” He lost because when asked in a televised debate how he would react if his beloved wife were raped and killed, Dukakis answered with the passion and sense of emotion one typically gets from a plumber when one asks about the best-flushing toilets. He lost because he let himself be photographed looking like Snoopy while riding in a tank…and yet even his disastrous campaign was better than the one that lost the election for Kamala Harris.
Ethics Alarms 
They’ve got nothing else but the truth and, since they won’t admit that, they’ve painted themselves into a corner. Doubling down on the perfectly-run Harris campaign is all that’s left. This is what we would have dealt with had she been elected. Every criticism, regardless of how valid it might have been, would have been painted as sexist and racist.
A clue to one of the reasons why Trump was re-elected can be found in this passage.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/wokeness-is-not-to-blame-for-trump.html
In 2020, millions protested racist police violence, sparking a reckoning in which people lost jobs for racist infractions from their past and present.
The “reckoning” was destructive and not justified.
People who know history know that a reckoning was not needed then, let alone now.
If the Democrats do not radically change their woke message, tone, and approach to politics and the Trump administration is reasonably successful with no major blunders, then my prediction is that the Democrats will get their asses handed back to them in the mid-term election. The latest Quinnipiac poll has only a 21% approval rating for Congressional Democrats.
My impression is that culture is downstream from politics. The legacy media is losing in respect, viewership and ratings. Margaret Brennan et all have become a joke and a meme. People nowadays are getting their information via the uncensored Internet and social media. The culture is shifting, because it has become clear that the woke emperor has no clothes on, and it is now become safe to point it out and laugh at it.
Given this, I wonder how much headspace we need to reserve for actually rebutting the positions of the woke left. Is perhaps the approach of the Babylon Bee and Libs of TikTok not better than the too rational approach I often see at Ethics Alarms? Maybe we should take a page out of Voltaire, who despite being an apostle of reason often made fun of his opponents (e.g. the Church). As the political tide has been turning since the election, I think the opponents of woke at this blog should change the dour expressions on their faces into an irreverent smirk, and make fun of woke.
If there weren’t so many people that have fallen for the hysteria of the left, I would agree with you. Reddit (yeah, I know) is full of posts about people in Canada genuinely frightened that we are going to invade them (Sure, Trump is going to add 40 million Democrats to our population!), people convinced that ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people are going to end up in concentration camps and that Trump literally just declared himself a king on social media.
This kind of derangement does not give quarter to unsophisticated Trump-style trolling much less more sophisticated Voltaire-style satire.
“This kind of derangement does not give quarter to unsophisticated Trump-style trolling much less more sophisticated Voltaire-style satire.”
Voltaire did not convince the bishops either. But that was not what he was after.
Most people are not convinced by sophisticated reason on political and ethical matters. Instead they reach their positions instinctively, based on their emotions. The rationalization of these positions is reached post hoc. This is why a nerd who solely relies on facts and reason may loose a political debate as his opponent is better able to connect with the public emotionally. Think about the debate between JFK and Nixon. People who listened to the radio thought Nixon had won the debate. People who watched the debate on television concluded that JFK had won, because he radiated youthful energy and was better groomed. This is also why debates can be won using logical fallacies, if these fallacies coincide with what the public wants to hear.
Looking at the woke left and the Democrat party, their sad state is due to multiple factors including their inability to make a positive emotional connection. Their joyless and scolding demeanor alienates people. Young men are being repulsed by all the preaching against toxic masculinity and male privilege. The left is associated with COVID restrictions that killed social life, and created social isolation and loneliness. At television you see ugly old people fight for ugly causes (saving an unaccountable federal bureaucracy from audits) in ugly ways (including poor singing); it is so pathetically sad that it makes your dog hide under the bed. In other words, the left has become as cool as Dean Wormer in Animal House.
The GOP under Trump are now the cool party. They are having a lot of fun right now. The important trolls of Trump worked brilliantly (garbage truck, MacDonalds). And they have initiative and momentum too, which is appreciated by the general public given recent polls.
I would like to point out a couple of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, to be applied to the woke left:
Cees, I agree. We’ve been sitting on a historic information revolution. Information is no longer controlled by an elite group. Bill Paley is gone, replaced by Margaret Brennan frantically pulling levers behind the curtain. The internet has democratized information and policy discussions. I’d say it’s as big a revolution as the sexual revolution of the ’60s and ’70s brought on by the introduction of reliable pharmacological birth control. Maybe bigger.
I still remember what margartet Brennan said.
Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct genocide
Nobody seem to ask these people if they would have trusted the Jim Crow era state governments to prevent the weaponization of free speech.
“Even in freedom, black women historically have been overlooked and marginalized, not only by white male oppressors, but also — and often — by their ostensible allies: black men and white women,” he concluded.
So, is this guy saying the quiet part out loud? Is he saying black men are not that wild about black women? Is that allowed?
Yes, if you subscribe to the woke notion that black people can be racist against black people because of white influence over them. Or something.
in my experience observing the Black community it is the black man who is the one marginalized. The Black family is often matriarchal, young black males are uncultured to revere and be subservient to black women. Black males are taught that they are to service their female betters as well as being treated as an afterthought leaving them to fend for themselves until the day their son is bleeding in the street. That is the rare time you see momma take an interest.
I am digging way back in the memory vault, but I recall Dennis Miller (?) saying Dukakis’ vanity license plate was a series of random numbers and letters, looking just like a regular MA format.