On being told what to think
Whatever happened to “show, don’t tell”? Now social media, Wiki, and Google searches not only purport to give us information but deign to tell us what to think about it.
Social media blocks stories it doesn’t like or warns us about them. Wiki starts out quite a few articles (as described here) by calling something a right-wing conspiracy (“without evidence” is their next-favorite phrase, but it doesn’t mean what they think it means – or what they want you to think it means). Google often thwarts searchers if they have the temerity to search for something anti-left or pro-right, and often tries to correct the searchers’ error by first giving them articles that say the opposite before finally getting down to brass tacks.
They feel this is successful in shaping people’s opinions, and I assume it is or they wouldn’t do it. Much of the time, the goal is to cause people to not even read a story. The Hunter Biden laptop story – which quite a few poll respondents who voted for Biden said would have changed their vote had they known about it – is an excellent example. With the internet and TV news united in this propaganda effort to tell you what to think about a story that hurts the left and to block information about it to make it harder for you to form your own opinion, what’s the right to do?
The right still has talk shows, but the giant of the genre Rush Limbaugh is apparently on his way out because of a terminal cancer diagnosis, and radio seems a small force anyway these days compared to all the groups now arrayed against it.
And yet I wonder whether people like being force-fed this way. Americans have changed a lot since I was young, but isn’t there still a kind of rebellious spirit, especially among the youth? It may be difficult to voice it these days because the consequences can be serious, but as leftism becomes the new prescribed orthodoxy, wouldn’t young people start resenting it? I’ve heard that something of the sort may be happening among Generation Z, although I know nothing about that group.
Have Americans really become such obedient little sheep? I do see a lot of groupthink among my friends, and not all that much intellectual curiosity about the other side even though they know a person willing to talk about it: me. But I wonder in particular about kids growing up today. Are they really like Strasbourg geese, to be successfully force-fed to make a pâté that in this case is poisonous?
And yet I wonder whether people like being force-fed this way. Americans have changed a lot since I was young, but isn’t there still a kind of rebellious spirit, especially among the youth? It may be difficult to voice it these days because the consequences can be serious, but as leftism becomes the new prescribed orthodoxy, wouldn’t young people start resenting it? I’ve heard that something of the sort may be happening among Generation Z, although I know nothing about that group.
neo: I’ve thought that for years, but haven’t seen much among the Gen Zs to back it up. The UNM kids I’ve talked to are all liberal and dislike Trump, though occasionally will drop a sotto voce hint that the cancel culture is a bit much.
My niece, though from Boston, is conservative and 21. She does rebel against all the SJW nutso, but her background is unusual and I wouldn’t care to extrapolate much beyond her.
Her visit last week was the first chance I’ve had to interact much with her. Part of that was trading YouTubes. She showed me a metal group she likes and we were both surprised to discover the group is deeply pro-veteran and political:
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To add to the contributions made by the band through their numerous military concerts, the ensemble wanted to create a music video in order to assist vagrant veterans of the armed forces by publicly portraying the consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder on wounded warriors…
–Five Finger Death Punch, “Wrong Side Of Heaven”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrong_Side_of_Heaven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_l4Ab5FRwM
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The video is probably too much (I said it was metal) for this audience, but it is interesting for its no punches pulled support for the armed forces and those who have suffered for their service.
One of the main differences between conservative and progressive news and commentary sites is that the progressives and their Big Tech hand maidens only present one side of any issue, noting that any other view is wrong, a conspiracy theory, is without evidence, etc., but without actually showing the articles and stories they are denying. As Neo notes, Google searches clearly now illustrate this to any thinking adult. Conservative sources, on the other hand consistently provide detailed and exact quotes from progressive sources, and then explain, usually quite sensibly, why they are in fact nonsense. As a result, there is no longer any reason for conservatives to read mainstream progressive media, and progressives abhor and avoid conservative sites, so the gulf between the two solitudes continues to widen.
Discussed at my post Is Free Speech Too Exhausting? I think changes in family structure are one major factor.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64391.html
My daughter, in her mid -20s, tells me ALL her friends believe everything they read on social media; they do not question one damn thing.
As you can imagine, they are all in for Bidet and for the Trump is Hitler belief system.
Yep, propaganda works very, very well.
It really is frightening how easily folks can be led around by the nose and have them believe anything at all.
Hard to pshrink folks, even for professionals. That caveat out of the way, I think I see a kind of pride or gladness in being misinformed. Not merely that contrary information is threatening but that being the kind of person they want to be requires unquestioning belief.
Still, the more important thing is to be the RIght Sort of Person and that requires believing as the Right Sort of People are told to believe.
Hard to tease the two apart, but I think they are distinct.
I used Google all the way back when it was in open beta. Back then search engines read keywords from the sites to create search results. The result was any thing you searched on returned about a gazillion porn sites.
Google’s advantage, and why it grew, was it returned relevant sites to searches. I’ve often thought that, sooner or later, their noodling with search results compared to other search engines will come back to bite them. A cascade to another search engine could happen quicker then you might think (ahem… think MySpace’s fate).
I’m in a position where I manage a bunch of people we hire right out of college, right off the bat, probably 100% of them try to treat work as an extension of school. What’s my next assignment, what answer are you looking for here, that’s checked off, what is next. After a year or so of corrections and explanations that that is not how business works, probably 40% get it. The other 60% would love to be micromanaged and want to know exactly what 4 or 5 tasks they need to do to get promoted. I’ve actually debated changing my management style to deal with it, maybe create a giant task list, but don’t have enough time.
JKCA: So I take it you are looking for people who can manage themselves on behalf of the organization like Drucker’s “The Effective Executive”?
Back when I was climbing the corporate ladder I read books like that. Say what you like about boomers, a lot of us got serious after we went to work.
There was a fun scene for me in Whit Stillman’s “Barcelona” (1994) — a quietly subversive film — where the characters discuss how great Peter Drucker is.
The traditional advice is: multiple, independent sources (i.e. signal diversity). So, Google, and Bing, and Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo! Each social platform will steer the results. But, yeah, Google et al under the umbrella corporation Alphabet, are particularly, but not uniquely, anti-social services known to spread misinfromation.
Democrats ( read as Socialists) take over it will get worse, much worse before it gets better.
“Have Americans really become such obedient little sheep?”
Yes, to some extent. But skepticism is a prime survival trait. So expect people to wake up as time passes.
JKCA: As part of my former work I used to manage both interns and new hires coming into the team, and I can relate to what you say. Many of them treated work as a kind of Reality Show. They imitated the interactions they saw on TV and fretted about how long it would be before they were manager, with no earthly idea of what range of experiences and skills were required to support that placement. For us Old School guys, in our experience it would be 20 years before you were trusted to work in an international role, at least 25 before you made Manager – that’s in one Major International O&G company. But you know – quite a few of these young people were quite impressive. I was happy to have them on the team, even if they were still learning. It’s brings a good energy.
I raised my own kids to be ever-curious and to challenge what they didn’t understand, ask questions until they did. It made for some challenging parenting, I can tell you – but on the other hand, I think my kids have turned out pretty well; they are no fools, anyway – and they certainly have asked all the hard questions about liberalism/progressive-ism and come to the only conclusion that really makes sense when you apply intellect.
Those who accept & abide by the Left’s programming and propaganda without asking themselves the hard questions: Those are the ones who follow the other lemmings to their fate. My kids, on the other hand, have a better grasp of what goes on. I like their chances of success better.
David Foster’s post at ChicagoBoyz has some good stuff in it:
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What are the causes for the apparently-growing hostility toward free speech in the US? Part of it, perhaps, is a hankering for security. David Brooks suggests that:
The values of the Millennial and Gen Z generations that will dominate in the years ahead are the opposite of Boomer values: not liberation, but security; not freedom, but equality; not individualism, but the safety of the collective; not sink-or-swim meritocracy, but promotion on the basis of social justice…Distrustful people try to make themselves invulnerable, armor themselves up in a sour attempt to feel safe… start to see threats that aren’t there.
–David Foster, “Is Free Speech Too Exhausting?”
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64391.html
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Neither Foster nor I care much for Brooks’ insights in general, but I think Brooks has provided a valuable set of contrasts between Boomers and Millennial/Gen Zs There is a fairly straight liberal line from Boomers to M/GZs, but how did these values get flipped?
Foster offers the single-parent/daycare experience of many more M/GZs than Boomers as explanation.
I’d add the way traditional two-parent families have became much more restrictive and fearful than their Boomer counterparts. Most Boomer kids had far more freedom to live, explore and play without constant adult supervision. Questioning authority and rebelling came naturally to us.
I met a young woman today who was a student in college. She was in a sane program (to become an med. tech.) She grew up in Oregon. She was with her parents. (Her parents are on the front line watching Oregon’s destruction. They were native Oregonians, and despaired at what had happened there.)
And she gave me hope. She was smart enough to see that what’s going on is crazy: the Antifa/BLM insanity. And she seemed to genuinely believe that Trump was one of our best bulwarks against descent to chaos.
The fact that a young 20-something beloved this was what have me some hope.
Huxley, my children love that song. We had to listen to it every day while we drove to and from their activities until I finally told them it needed a rest.
neo wonders, “Have Americans really become such obedient little sheep?”
75-80 million Americans voted for Trump. Proof positive that most Americans are not sheep. As for the ones who are sheep… only as long as they’re getting their bread and circuses. Once the price comes due then they’ll sing a different tune. And the activist left with its 600+ riots in 2020 has just begun to extract its price for enabling its insanity. In every major democrat run city, violent crime is way up and while the national media ignores it, local media is filled every night with reports of the crime.
France is another good example of it, the multiculturalist meme has demanded obediance to the insanity of importing millions of people not just opposed to assimilation but antithetical to their host country’s culture. Count on it, many of the French who welcomed Muslim immigrants with open arms are getting very nervous about it. They tell themselves that it’s “just radical Muslims” but France’s ” no go zones” put the lie to that delusion. By now every French non-muslim knows that going into those zones is a very bad idea.
From what I can tell, almost half of us Boomers voted for Biden. See, e.g.,
https://www.brookings.edu/research/2020-exit-polls-show-a-scrambling-of-democrats-and-republicans-traditional-bases/
Seems positive!
I think this is good news on PA, that the certification injunction, NOT the certification itself, got a judicial boost.
—
BREAKING REPORT: Judge Patricia A. McCullough rules that PA preliminary ELECTION CERTIFICATION injunction was PROPERLY ISSUED and should be upheld..
“Additionally, Petitioners appear to have established a
likelihood to succeed.”
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) November 28, 2020
https://www.scribd.com/document/486132522/Memorandum-Opinion-Filed-in-Pennsylvania-by-Judge-McCullough-Election-Likely-Unconstitutional#from_embed
huxley, good video. Thanks.
I think this one fits here, too. The Newsboys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_OTz-lpDjw
Old sort-of proverb:
“Hard times make hard men;
Hard men make good times;
Good times make soft men;
Soft men make hard times.”
I suspect we’re in for a “generational cycle” of softness. Whether we have enough left to recover at the end of that cycle, I don’t know. We always have, throughout history, but there comes a point where the damage is sufficiently severe that recovery is impossible.
See: Rome, 476 A.D. The land was still there, the buildings were still there, many of the people were still there, most of the knowledge was still there, but it sure as Hell wasn’t “Rome” anymore and never was again. 476 wasn’t a unique and discrete point, it was the terminus of a long progression.
That we seem to be entirely ignorant of such progressions, or worse, believe that we’ve invented better progressions, is what’s so disturbing.
You could say I’m less optimistic than some of the commenters here. I don’t think the kids- the younger generations- know anything else but to be submissive and to strive to align with the groupthink. It is what they are taught. Books that show the spirit of individualism and how one individual can stand up to the Leviathan are no longer taught. Discussions of individual rights, liberty are looked down upon as something discussed on the fringes of the right and to be dismissed. Classrooms are not the place for robust debate. I cannot even imagine what actual debate classes and/or debate teams discuss these days.
Multiple generations have been taught that Collectivism is the only way. They may call it other things, but it’s the same old collectivism that led to massive genocides and destruction of entire cultures throughout history. It’s as if we learn nothing from our own histories. And it’s made worse because you have the entirety of academia, preening around as experts and knowledge-filled authorities, spouting and directing all of this.
It not just that the young go along with collectivism and groupthink. They embrace it. It’s safe for them. It’s a comfortable place. And it will remain as such as long as they have their newest iPhones, multiple social media platforms to place their ‘likes’, and gourmet food shipped to their door so that they can put together a faddish meal for their friends who, by the way, all think just like they do.
Thanks Neo!
Excellent post. And insightful comments. This is a good example of why I visit Neo every day.
Felt compelled to share. My wife teaches Gen Z and our experience mirrors many here. Somehow, many are even more fragile and compliant than many millennials were/are. They are also less competent at regular activities such as catching a ball or using a stapler. Naturally, none of that is strictly universal, but it is very, very common. They will not inherit society well, I’m afraid.
All those virtuous lawn signs with identical slogans are making me feel mental claustrophobia— if that’s a thing.
“Mental claustrophobia” is a nice way to put it. (I think) I know how you feel.
But I don’t think most people are really sheep at their core. The left’s fatal flaw has always been its inability to grasp basic human nature. People don’t like being told what to do, and they especially don’t like being told what to do when it’s patently illogical. Through COVID-19, the racism hysteria, and the election, 2020 has shown us how much the left underestimates the impulse within a lot of people to resist authority and conformity, especially when they don’t believe the dictates are coming from a legitimate source.
Shadow: ” especially when they don’t believe the dictates are coming from a legitimate source.”
Yes, as we recognize here, that is the crux of why we ended up with populism and Trump. The cadre of doctors and lawyers and politicians, and even sales clerks, that we rely on for valid information are coming under increasing resistance as to their competency. “Too many elites” have been indoctrinated without skills in critical analysis and skepticism, yet they pontificate as though they really are knowledgeable and wise. I do hear/see promising things about the skepticism of the (78 million!?) Millennials, but it may be 10 years before they rise to levels of authority and impact where their outlook could influence things, at least outside of the economic forces they might provide in the marketplace. And where enough of them have been schooled by reality and other hard knocks.
Great post and great comments!
Some points not mentioned:
1. While there is active demagoguery, much of the media control is now passive “shadow censorship” undetectable to the casual news consumer.
2. People are more alienated than before from family and community. More of our lives, relationships, and our definition of normalcy and morality comes from mediated, edited sources. My guess is that this is a major difference between the 2 camps. A stable family and strong religious community are both sources of identity, self worth, and morality beyond the reaches of the hive mind – which is why the Left always targets them for ridicule and attack.
3. Young people’s rebellious tendencies have been cleverly channeled in directions that serve the Left – mostly radical feminism and racist theories guaranteed to stunt relationships, and sexual debasement that feeds on and deepens self-loathing.
Newmanian,
Re: “as long as they have their newest iPhones, multiple social media platforms to place their ‘likes’, and gourmet food shipped to their door”
Reparations, the Green New Deal and other ‘solutions’ will end that. Then when the cost is personal, they’ll start to sing a different tune. By then of course it will be too late, as their usefulness will have expired.
“UCLA school of law professor Laura Gomez advocates for reparations for Latinos”
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/ucla-professor-laura-gomez-advocates-for-reparations-for-latinos/
Besides blacks, can calls for ‘reparations’ from Asians and native Americans be far behind?
“Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced today that he has teamed up with Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to create the “Justice for Black Farmers Act”.”
https://mediarightnews.com/cory-booker-touts-controversial-justice-for-black-farmers-act-in-which-the-usda-buys-farms-and-gives-them-to-african-americans/
The miseducation of the younger generations is well displayed by AOC. I have never seen someone who is so sure of her “facts,” which are really opinions. Too many yung’uns seem unable to distinguish facts from opinions. Economic theory is a good example. They state theory as established fact. And much of the theory they accept as fact is nothing more than Marxism, a theory whose tenets have been tried and found wanting. They seem completely unaware of that. Climate change is another. The theory that CO2 is responsible for climate warming is accepted as proven fact. Ask then to show you the proof and they will resort to the argument from authority – X number of scientists agree. Yet they have never learned that there are XX scientists that don’t agree. Ask them to name an electrical engineer who has shown how intermittent solar and wind power ca replace fossil fuel generation plants and they will avoid the question by just claiming it’s possible. Without, of course, showing any proof. Ask them why the power blackouts in California are happening and they will dredge up some spurious idea about climate change. Totally unaware that the imposition of forced quotas of solar and wind power has weakened the California power grid to the point of near failure.
Additionally, it is maddening to see the use of disclaimers by Twtter and other social media sites. The notice that there is no evidence of election fraud appended to Tweets about election fraud is gas lighting at its maximum. The person tweeting about election fraud has formed an opinion based on what he/she knows about what happened on election day. The evidence has not yet been tested in a court of law, but the person has a right to express their opinion and why they hold it. This censoring of opinions because the gatekeepers don’t agree with the opinion is now SOP. And it is a major threat to freedom of speech.
The same technique is used against POTUS, DJT. He offers an idea or opinion. The MSM or political foes disagree with the idea or opinion. They don’t tell you that they disagree and why they disagree. They simply proclaim that Trump is lying. They are right and anything they disagree with is a lie. PERIOD! Unfortunately, it works. The remedy? More speech, not less, coupled with reasoned debate and room to agree to disagree.
Geoffrey Britain:
There is a fine example of farmland redistribution now afoot in South Africa. Its constitution has been amended by the Bantus to allow expropriation of white-owned farms WITHOUT ANY COMPENSATION in order to redistribute those lands to the Bantu.
Reminds me of the former Rhodesia, now “Zimbabwe”, which was a major grain-exporting nation until the black Africans seized the farmlands and turned them into 40 acres and a mule, so to speak, to black Africans, who do not and cannot farm without following orders. Now Zimbabwe imports hundreds of thousands of tons of corn yearly, except for the year of drought with its crop failures. The dictator, Mugabe, then refused the gift of much corn from the US on grounds it might not be GMO-free, so Africans starved.
We should have picked our own cotton, and left them in darkest Africa.
Hi Neo. You have been endlessly questioned about your friends, notably by me. But I have a couple more questions, if you will.
1. Are you still in touch with any of your college days friends who back then presented as left libertarian; i.e., non-Maoist but rather as socially concerned and politically idealistic? [ it might have been a pose of course or have evaporated with the draft, but …] If you did know such people both then, and now, has their comittment to “impartial justice” remained as ardent? Looked at another way, is their then ostensible committment to honest government without fear or favor, as much in evidence now, as it was back then?
2. Could you ask your left leaning friends now, whoever they are, if it would even matter to them in terms of end-results, if voter or electoral fraud threw the election in some states to Biden? You know, something along the lines of: ” I know you are dead certain Joe Biden won fair and square in every instance and locale; but, hypothetically, would you repudiate the result as fraudulent and invalid if he did not?”
3. Also, if they don`t brush your question off, a follow-up.: If it turns out that Biden is inaugurated as a result of planned and sytematic ballot fraud, perpetrated by mainstream Democrat operatives and interests, and endorsed at the highest party levels, would you guess that that would be enough to be a justifiable “social contract” deal breaker as far as that part of the populace who voted Republican is concerned?
I’m trying to get a sense here as to at what point if any, your friends could imagine it to be a tripping point in American social relations: wherein both sides look at the other, gloves off, as truly and irredemiably alien.
Now, of course, we have effectively been there for a decade and considerably more without [ the Antifa murders aside] widespread interpersonally directed social violence breaking out.
But I’m just wondering if even the most politically aware of them are at all sensitive to such a possibility; and how they might imagine themselves and their families faring in such a scenario.
You may recall the remarks of lower level Obama era Demo operatives and polemicists referring to deploying nukes – i,e., prox. they forget who has control of the nuclear arsenal, on recalcitrant deplorables during a civil insurrection.
Again, just wondering where your friends stand in relation to this set of assumptions, since you mention the friends.
Question 3 was for your friends if the context is not clear.
“Have Americans really become such obedient little sheep?”
All you have to do is look at the numbers of people wearing worthless face diapers to answer that question, regrettably.
“(“without evidence” is their next-favorite phrase, but it doesn’t mean what they think it means – or what they want you to think it means)” – Neo
They always use it about Trump, but as the commenters have shown, it mostly applies to the left, who always just assert their conclusion without producing any evidence.
Ira linked a post from Brookings that exemplifies the narrative-brokering of the Democrats, which is evident just in their headline:
“Exit polls show both familiar and new voting blocs sealed Biden’s win”
By continually speaking as if Biden has won an election which, technically speaking, hasn’t even been held yet, they push the narrative that any upset of the media’s declaration, should Trump’s team win in court, will be illegitimate, and thus they deliberately reverse the roles of thief and victim.
The maxim “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” seems to apply even to our supposedly enlightened times and educated populace, when everyone should know enough of the historical “signs” to tell we are blundering through dangerous territory.
But when you misread who the signs are pointing to (such as believing that Antifa and BLM are protecting America against the vast right-wing conspiracy), then the maxim is useless anyway.
Given the subject of the post, I would add that “those who deliberately suppress and distort history are dooming us to repeat it.”
Case in point: Obama’s lies and misconceptions about Israel.
https://www.jns.org/opinion/obamas-revisionist-promised-land/
I think he believes most of what he says, because that’s the environment that he’s lived in; however, he has made no effort to ascertain the truth, and some of his assertions he certainly knows to be untrue.
From Geoffrey’s Land Czar post:
Last question first: depends on how badly they want to BE farmers.
In this day, even long-time farming families have had to sell to agricultural conglomerates because none of the kids wants the headaches and hard work (I know some of them).
Where are these Land Czars going to find the people to give the land to, who aren’t already farming their own spreads?
Bolded question: the answer is NO.
Same as with any other reparations to supposed descendants for prior injuries to alleged ancestors.
Same as for welfare for able-bodied, non-elderly people getting paid just because of their group identity.
Same as with reducing the rules for lending on mortgages so that people who had no hope of paying them could become home owners (which is a cargo cult POV and had the expected consequences, which successive administrations refused to confront before okaying the change in regulations).
Same as for any tax-grifting ear-mark scheme that the Congress is so glad-handed about.
Speaking of those who repeat history because they forgot it, or never learned it, or refuse to acknowledge it: this “free land” scheme has already been tried, in a different form, just a few years ago.
It’s called the Pigford settlement scandal.
Jack Cashill already made the connection.
(A lengthy excerpt, because it touches on several relevant political points in our current Year of the Crazy Times.)
First, a recognition that there really were harms that needed to be addressed, and wrongs that needed to be set right, before showing that the efforts to do so were hi-jacked and directed to people other than the rightful claimants.
https://talkpoverty.org/2019/05/01/case-reparations-black-farmers/
The settlement may have failed at its declared purpose, but it succeeded wildly at its new goal after being revived by Obama.
https://www.wnd.com/2020/09/reparations-imagine-obamas-4-billion-pigford-scam-steroids/
[Note: claims “without evidence” became the hallmark of the later filings; proving you had actually been discriminated against in a prior loan application was made tantamount to having to produce identification to vote.]
Note that the MSM is still following the same playbook: ignore a scandal while it is operating if it benefits the left and the Democrats; when it can no longer be ignored because of alternative media, and can no longer harm the favored parties, then print a story to prove you are unbiased!
Here’s a list of hits from DuckDuckGo for “Pigford reparations,” which probably includes some of the stories I vaguely recall reading at the time, including the ones I quoted above, and two Breitbart posts (I’m sure there were many more):
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pigford+reparations&t=brave&ia=web
And here’s the list on the first page at Google for the same search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=pigford+reparations&oq=pigford+reparations&aqs=chrome..69i57.3648j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
All of Google’s hits (which included the “talkpoverty.org” post above) discuss the positive aspects of the settlement, not the scam that it led to, except one, which was also found by DDG, so I will excerpt from it (cfif is Center for Individual Freedom).
Frankly, I was surprised Google let it through, although it was at the bottom of the page.
Looks like a timely anniversary for reposting it.
https://cfif.org/v/index.php/commentary/54-state-of-affairs/835-pigford-settlement-fraud-opening-floodgates-for-other-groups-reparations-claims-
Obama got credit with the black voters for extending the deadline and then continued to leave the cash spigot open as President, as Cashill describes.
Leftism works only as long as you can loot other people’s money to buy votes.
The story of the Pigford settlements illustrates amply the well-founded concerns on the Right that any “reparations” scheme will suffer from the same type of fraud; and that no “reparations” scheme will satisfy the people who demand them.
In other words, we can never get a “quit claim” on slavery in the past.
Even those people supporting “reparations,” to assuage their “white privilege guilt” by appeasing alleged “victims” now or in the future, will not get a final absolution.
That was clear a decade ago.
“Those who forget history…”
The first two links are from the DDG search, the others from Google.
The NYT story Cashill quoted is Old News and doesn’t show up on the first page of either search engine.
http://theothermccain.com/2010/12/01/rep-king-on-pigford-reparations-vote-that-debt-was-paid-for-in-blood/
And like most class lawsuits, it’s mostly a sinecure for the lawyers.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2013/03/25/trouble-in-pigford-reparations-paradise/
In fairness, again, the original suits and settlements were directed to living people who suffered direct harm due to government bias and fraud.
That is what reparations are supposed to do, and it is not the same as paying out for tenuous connections to long-past actions where the original perpetrators and victims are all dead.
https://thecounter.org/usda-black-farmers-discrimination-tom-vilsack-reparations-civil-rights/
How USDA distorted data to conceal decades of discrimination against black farmers
by Nathan Rosenberg + Bryce Wilson Stucki 06.26.2019
https://civileats.com/2019/05/23/what-reparations-could-mean-for-black-farmers/
Anecdotes about present-day black “farmers” (sorry, 5 acres is just a garden), tied to the Booker bill. As with all of the articles I’ve read giving stats about the number of white and black farmers, none of the authors point out that the number of all farmers is miniscule compared to generations ago, and “white farmers” is never broken down into the number of individuals or families, as with “black farmers” – it almost certainly includes the ag-con megafarms by default.
The author regrets that most of the compensation was not used to buy new farmland, but does not report that much of the compensation went to fraudulent claimants.
Also note the dates: the discrimination (if it really existed; the original suit might have been like the EPA’s “sue and settle” scams; I haven’t researched that possibility) was bipartisan under Reagan 1981-1989 (so probably continuing policies under Carter); GHW Bush; and Bill Clinton’s first term (I suspect the good faith of any suit brought in his tenure).
These two posts are reasonably straightforward news stories, with the expected settlement-positive slant, but I believe they predate the acceleration of the Obama gravy train, although the hitching of the engine to the cars was part of the process.
https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/28/us/black-farmers/index.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-farmers-pigford/black-farmers-win-1-25-billion-in-discrimination-suit-idUSTRE61H5XD20100218
BTW, I doubt that Cory Booker (or at least the aides and lobbyists writing his legislation) is ignorant of the Pigford settlements.
He hopes you are, however, and you would be if you didn’t read alternative media and Neo’s blog.
Research is so easy on the Internet, although one can never be sure what gems of knowledge lurk on the back pages of the search engines.
This one raises good points about the legitimacy of the suits and the rationale for the extension, and does reference the NYT post about Obama’s high-jacking the payouts for partisan gain.
It also shows that lawsuits take a LOOOOOONG time (15 years in this case).
https://investigatemidwest.org/2014/02/18/settlement-payments-for-black-farmers-in-years-old-lawsuit-now-released/
I certainly can believe that the DOA (love the acronym; it’s also one Kendi wants for Department of Anti-racism) destroyed some documents, although they may just not have seen any reason to keep the rejection files after a certain length of time, which is normal business procedure.
However, deep-sixing incriminating evidence seems to be the norm these days.
That doesn’t excuse the adjudicators from requiring that the claimants themselves submit their copies of the documentation, and skeptics pointed out that some claimants didn’t even try to prove they were actually denied loans.
This is an interesting scholarly look at the settlements, and actually gives away the game in attempting to justify it.
It does include a useful review of the immediate post-Civil-War reparations and their subversion in the South; the way that the post-New Deal USDA perpetrated bias against black farmers (however, it also cites the decline in black farm ownership without noting the overall decline in individual farm ownership over the years); explains why past reparations arguments were denied by the courts; and notes (cursorily) what precipitated the Pigford litigation under Clinton.
If you are a legal eagle, there is plenty of detail here that I just skimmed.
It appears in a 2013 volume of the Penn State Law Review.
He does eventually explain the application of the metaphor of the Osiris myth.
The weird formatting is an artifact of the cut-and-paste from a pdf file.
http://www.pennstatelawreview.org/118/2/3%20-%20Sanders%20(final).pdf
[under Reagan; no reason given in the text for this change, or to show what prompted the later action under Clinton.]
[Now we come to the core of the article. This is what Booker et al. are looking at.]
[I doubt that was the prevailing motive for those common-sense rules, although it might be one of the impacts. I also think he loads a LOT of assumptions into the “define” assertion.]
[That is what I meant by hitching the engine to the cars of the Obama gravy train.]
I was unaware until now that Law Review articles were supposed to include advocacy sections in addition to the case commentary and analysis.
Well.
That was fun.
Back to the original article Geoffrey linked:
Blacks in America aren’t exactly non-Westerners, and I would argue that this is a catch-all stereotyping of the sort we should resist.
Some black people farm, and do well at it. So do some white people. So do some Asian people. So do some Latino (or Tejano) people.
And some of each identity group (we are only allowed to use “race” with approval from the Designated Cultural Control Czars) don’t farm well at all.
I am reminded, however, of a (dead-tree) magazine article I read in the early 80s which implies that not all ethnic group stereotyping is negative.
A group of financial experts were asked what they would do if someone gave them $100,000 to invest (that was 40 years ago, remember). There were lots of good tips about markets and careers and businesses.
The answer which I remember agreeing with most was the response: “I would give it to a recent immigrant from Southeast Asia and tell him to do whatever he wanted with it.”