Let’s get some perspective here:
Biden threatens to beat up Corn Pop and nuke American gun-owning insurrectionists
Biden loves to threaten people and then to brag about threatening people. For example, the tale of Corn Pop:
Biden has publicly repeated several stories of him rebuking racial division and has relayed one specific incident detailed in his autobiography of how he supposedly faced down an African-American gang leader for breaking the rules at what he described as an all-black pool. ..
Ultimately, in the story, Biden gets “Corn Pop” to put down his straight razor and become friends after threatening to beat him with the “six-foot metal chain around his arm.”
Or there was the time Biden said he would have “beat the hell” out of Trump had they been in high school together.
Or this threat to a gun owner:
That brings us to today, when Biden said this:
The Babylon Bee was quick to respond with “Huge Spike In Americans Buying F-15s After Biden Suggests You’ll Need Them To Overthrow Government.”
And Kurt Schlicter has a number of questions for Biden that the press, unfortunately, will never ask, including this:
Can you explain how you would employ bombers to hold territory, like a city? What means would you use to identify targets to bomb within the United States? What would the rules of engagement be when using bombers against American citizens?…
Have you considered that the military forces of the National Guard in red states, which include aircraft, artillery and infantry, may refuse or even oppose your campaign against American citizens? Would you attack those forces?
I realize that Biden is now commander-in-chief, at least nominally. And I don’t think he or the left would hesitate to use whatever force they thought necessary to put down any actual armed insurrection – as opposed to the supposed insurrection of January 6th. But Biden has long reminded me of this character:
Note also the strawman nature of Biden’s argument. I don’t think anyone is saying there should be absolutely no limits on Americans’ rights to own any weapon under the sun. But Biden is speaking as though that’s what gun rights advocates are saying. Also, he doesn’t seem conversant anymore – if in fact he ever was – with the quote from Jefferson he’s trying to paraphrase. It goes like this:
We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
[ADDENDUM: On the issue of whether Biden was actually issuing a threat, and what that threat might be –
I think it’s not the least bit unreasonable to think he is doing some threatening, saying the equivalent of, “Don’t even try it, because we can outgun you with our weaponry, up to and including our very biggest guns if need be. Your puny little firearms are no match for our fighter planes and our nuclear bombs.”
The fact that the goal of his threat is to deter insurrectionists is irrelevant to the discussion of what he is actually saying he would do if push came to shove. MAD, the Cold War philosophy of nuclear weapons that involved nations armed with such weapons, involved the deterrence function of a threat to use them. The idea was that the threat would keep war from happening because the destruction would be so great. And what Biden is saying here, it seems to me – addressing a non-nuclear power that lacks fighter planes as well – is that the superior weaponry of the government, which includes fighter jets and nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them, should deter the insurrectionists from ever using their own weaponry (guns, bombs I suppose) to fight the government. The deterrence doesn’t work if the government isn’t willing to use those fighter jets and those nukes.
As far as I know, there is no precedent whatsoever for an American president saying anything even remotely like this to the political opposition, left or right.]
[ADDENDUM II: Biden the whisperer.]
The re-education of the January 6th prisoners
Well, they’re political prisoners, after all, so they need re-education [emphasis mine]:
[Court-appointed defense attorney] Shaner’s legal captives are learning the hard way what the government will do when one resists their commands to comply. Not only have their personal lives been shattered, finances depleted, and reputations destroyed by an abusive Justice Department investigation, Shaner’s clients must be indoctrinated with leftist propaganda about America’s alleged systemic racism.
The purge of the populist mindset is underway, courtesy of the fetid Beltway judicial system and the Joe Biden regime. Judges routinely lecture January 6 defendants about the wrongthink of a “stolen election” while prosecutors openly mock their political beliefs, including home schooling and gun ownership.
“I have had many political and ethical discussions with Anna Lloyd,” Shaner wrote in her motion agreeing to the plea and probation for Lloyd. “I tendered a booklist to her. She has read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Just Mercy, and Schindler’s List to educate herself about ‘government policy’ toward Native Americans, African Americans and European Jews. We have discussed the books and also about the responsibility of an individual when confronting ‘wrong.’”
On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with watching or reading any of Shaner’s “booklist.” What is very wrong is a taxpayer-paid attorney—one who is supposed to fight the government’s charges related to January 6, not play along with its phony depiction that “white supremacists” attacked the Capitol—using her authority to reprogram the political views of people she is supposed to be defending. The presumption of racist beliefs is automatic.
But it all worked. Lloyd changed her opinion on the death penalty; in her review of Schindler’s List that was submitted to the court, she lamented that “my Son-In-Law doesn’t believe the Holocaust happened as it did.” She admitted that she’s “lived a sheltered life and truly haven’t experienced life the way many have.”
Her attorney and the government seem pleased with Lloyd’s reformation. “Though she supported the past president in January, she totally accepts President Biden as the leader of our country,” Shaner wrote to the court. “She has worked hard to come to terms with what she believed before January 6th, 2021 and what she has learned since then.”
I wouldn’t be so quick to blame attorney Shaner, who may just be doing what she knows the courts want. And it’s unclear what Lloyd really thinks now versus what she’s saying she thinks in order to ingratiate herself with the court. But this whole episode makes me think of this (minus Room 101, hopefully):
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
CRT in schools: it may hurt, but it’s a good hurt
My mother told me about a news segment she watched this morning on CRT. Someone defended it against accusations that it was making kids feel bad, saying that you need to feel hurt sometimes in order to learn. First of all, if that’s their answer, that’s pretty damning. They can’t even pretend to say “no, we’re not teaching anything that hurts kids!” – they jump straight to saying “it’s okay because kids need to be hurt sometimes.” And second, while ADULTS can certainly learn from being hurt and sometimes need to feel a sense of shame in order to have insight into their actions and improve their behavior, that method of teaching is not appropriate for elementary-school-aged children.
Of course you don’t need to feel hurt in order to learn. We learn plenty of things without being hurt at all. However, in the course of learning, sometimes children do feel hurt. You might call it a sort of collateral damage.
One small example is grades. If a child gets poor grades, that child often might feel hurt. That hurt can take one or more of several forms: embarrasment, guilt, feelings of failure, or fear of parental anger, for example. But the inflicting of hurt is not the intention of grading systems, which are there to measure students’ learning and performance, and also to let the student and parents know whether the student is absorbing and understanding the material. After all, the point of school is to learn, and grades supposedly measure the extent of learning, although they are an imperfect instrument. No overt shaming goes along with the process; in other words, teachers don’t say, “If you get poor grades you are a bad person.” At least, they’re not told or taught to say that – not anymore, anyway.
Some students don’t feel hurt when they get bad grades because they don’t care what grades they get, and their parents sometimes don’t care either. In fact, poor grades can be something to brag about. When I was growing up, I actually felt some hurt as a result of good grades – for example, I was sometimes teased or even shunned by some kids because of them. But that certainly wasn’t the intent of giving good grades.
The hurt many students getting bad grades feel can act on them in different ways depending on the student. For some it’s a goad to do better. For others the pain makes them give up and just feel bad about themselves. But the infliction of pain is always a side issue nowadays, and not an overt part of the lesson (although in the past it sometimes included a public tongue-lashing).
Another thing that modern parents are told to do is to avoid shaming a child for what or who that child is. In other words:
Only the behavior is treated as unacceptable, never the child…
Limit criticism to a specific event—don’t say “never”, “always”, as in: “You never listen,” “You always manage to spill things”, etc.
In other words, don’t say to a misbehaving child: “You’re a bad girl” or “You’re a bad boy.” Say “What you did there was bad.” It may seem like a little thing, but it’s actually very helpful because children are very aware of labels and they will often decide that, if their essence is to be bad, then there’s no hope of change so why bother? Some children may even come to embrace it: “If I’m bad, I’m going to be the baddest m-f-er I can be. That’ll show you all for hurting me.”
So to purposely make a child feel bad in that very basic way – about who or what that child may be – is, among other things, often counter-productive. And to do it intentionally hasn’t been taught to teachers for over fifty years.
Till now, that is. Now it’s okay and even desirable to tell white children that their essence is bad. In addition, children are being told that race is the most essential part of them, rather than what they do.
That just may be the most pernicious thing about CRT for children.
It’s also ironic that such a pedagogical device, when used in CRT, is being defended by educators who otherwise have tried to protect children very thoroughly not only from those who would purposely make them feel bad but also from any collateral bad feelings that might come as a natural consequence from other teaching practices such as grades. That protection has been so extreme that many children are crippled by it and have no tolerance for anything other than praise in school, no matter what they do wrong.
However, with CRT, the rules are reversed – for white children, who are purposely made to feel bad about who they are and who their parents are, through no fault or action of their own.
12-story condo building in Miami collapses
What on earth caused a catastrophic failure of this nature?:
Miami-Dade Police have confirmed that one person has died as a result of a building collapse in Surfside, Florida.
Further fatalities are feared but not yet confirmed, as more people are thought to be trapped under the rubble of Champlain Tower South, near 88 Street & Collins Avenue.
Miami-Dade officials said at a press conference that the number of missing people is yet to be established and that investigations into the incident could take up to a week. Initial indications from officials suggest 51 are unaccounted for.
The building was built in 1981. That’s forty years ago, but it’s not hundreds of years ago, and one doesn’t expect a building of that vintage and type to just suddenly collapse. But I haven’t yet seen any indication of what might have caused it.
Open thread 6/24/21
It’s hard to know what to say about this one:
Parents versus school boards
For a long time, CRT in the schools seemed to be flying under the radar.
Parents are beginning to understand what is going on. Everything taught in that [CRT] class is intended to stir up visceral, violent hatred against Whites and Republicans. Black parents of goodwill understand that what’s happening is every bit as dehumanizing as the old Jim Crow system. Moreover, as Lincoln said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand” — and they would prefer not to live in an imploding nation.
CRT is the sort of thing that most people will be against if they know what it is. Its proponents have relied on a combination of factors to push it through: obfuscating language that makes it sound far more benign than it is (and anti-racist rather than pro), leftist school boards and teacher associations, and lethargic and/or distracted parents in the middle and right. However, now that more information is out there about what’s actually being taught under the label of CRT, the news seems to be spreading and more and more people are incensed about it. And incensed parents can be hard to ignore or fend off.
HR1 going nowhere for now, and all the Republicans in the Senate voted to block it
HR1 has been the central pillar of the Democrats’ legislative plans. It was going to “reform” voting laws on a federal level and supersede many of the voting integrity safeguards that red states and even some purple states have trying to put in place after the debacle that was the 2020 election.
The bill had already passed in the Democrat-controlled House. But it failed to advance in the Senate, not because the Democrats there were against it – they weren’t, at least not publicly – but because two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, refused to nuke the filibuster in order to pass it. And blocking the anti-filibuster effort was only possible because of the razor-thin margin by which the Democrats control the Senate: 50/50 with VP Harris able to break a tie.
HR1 and the filibuster are linked, and not just in the obvious manner, which is that the filibuster would have to have been ended if HR1 was to pass in the current Congress. They are also linked becaue the Democrats realize that nuking the filibuster is dangerous unless they can guarantee that they’ll always be in charge. If Republicans ever managed to take the helm again, the filibuster would be Democrats’ friend. So they must assure that the GOP can never win again.
I think the Republicans – even the RINOs among them – are quite aware of this. You might even say that HR1 is an existential bill for them. I believe that is why all fifty Senate Republicans voted not to advance the bill for debate, which effectively killed it. Republicans in the House had previously voted against it, as well. That represents an unusually united front by the GOP.
I know that many people on the right who are fed up with McConnell and the GOP in general thought there would be some defections, but there were none. McConnell has long been relentless in his criticism of HR1 – see this, for example, with links to what McConnell was saying back in early 2019, when the Democrats of the House were passing an earlier version of the bill.
I’ve also seen some speculation that the Democrats didn’t really want to nuke the filibuster or pass this law, and that all the talk about it and the vote on it is just to placate their base. I strongly disagree. I think that if they could pass it they would dearly love to do so, because they believe (perhaps correctly) that it would set up perpetual victory for them. They are setting their sights on 2022 in hopes that they gain greater control of the Senate and can finally do what they wish. Whether that’s possible is an open question, and much can happen before then. But I’m convinced that is their plan.
This bill was not a reaction to the 2020 election; there was an earlier version of HR1 that had been the first major order of legislative business after the Democrats got control of the House in the 2018 election. It died in the Senate and of course Trump would have vetoed it anyway had it passed both houses of Congress. The 2020 election was actually the Democrats’ fairly successful attempt to implement many aspects of this bill at the state-by-state level through state executive action and lawfare, with COVID as the excuse. COVID was the way the camel got its nose in the tent, as it were.
So this will come up again and again, particular with Biden as president. He’d sign whatever they pass, however they pass it. The fight will go on.
[NOTE: Biden may even try to sneak in some of its provisions through an executive order that may or may not hold up in court. He’s already issued an executive order regarding voting that seems relatively mild, but that avenue remains open.]
Open thread 6/23/21
“Too Much Heaven” is almost too much for this guy, who is apparently a vocal coach:
NOTE: I discussed the original Bee Gees “Too Much Heaven” video and reaction videos to it in this earlier post.
More about that new book on Sowell
Here’s a review and summary. I intend to read the book – and I wish I could give a copy to everyone I know.
Here’s the Amazon link to the book itself.
Pursuing vengeance: on prosecuting Trump
I have been disturbed for quite some time by the attempts by Trump’s enemies to get him convicted of something. Almost anything will do.
First it was the effort to impeach him, which took many forms but never resulted in conviction. Concurrent with that were various attempts to get him on sexual grounds – Avenatti and Stormy Daniels, for example. Now that Trump’s out of office, there has been a predictable focus on a conviction for some crime or other. This centers on New York state, controlled by Democrats and a place in which Trump once lived and did a lot of business.
In case you’re wondering why Trump didn’t issue himself a pardon while in office that would cover future prosecutions, I’ll add that a president can only issue pardons for federal crimes and this is a state crime that New York is intent on pursuing.
Here’s an editorial by Missouri’s AG on the subject of the legal pursuit of Trump:
Now…New York Attorney General Letitia James is pursuing a contemptible criminal probe of President Donald J. Trump. Without any knowledge or facts, James campaigned for attorney general in 2018 on a promise to target President Trump, his family and his businesses. In her campaign, James claimed, without evidence, that the president conspired with foreign governments, obstructed justice, and committed money laundering. Promising to criminally prosecute political opponents with no evidence of wrongdoing is about as dangerous to the Republic and rule of law as you can find in the United States.
As recently highlighted by Donald Trump Jr. on Tucker Carlson’s show, AG James is now making good on her campaign promise to not only prosecute President Trump but also members of his family. This is an affront to justice. As the state’s chief law enforcement official, she is keeping her promise in an unprecedented political prosecution in search of a crime, with taxpayers footing the bill even as New York deals with a violent crime crisis…
…Trump Derangement Syndrome does not provide legal cover. The public rightfully expects prosecutors to carry out our responsibilities without political prejudice. Threatening political enemies with indictments, criminal investigations and incarceration to settle political scores shows a deep contempt for the rule of law.
I wish that most Democrats saw it that way. I haven’t discussed this issue with any of my Democratic friends, but I believe I’m on safe ground in assuming that the majority of them would have no problem with it. After all, they already know that Trump is guilty, so why not serve “justice” and prove it?
You can do some things legally that you shouldn’t do. Many tyrannies use the letter of the law to wreak tyranny. But people often wish vengeance on those they perceive as their enemies, and can justify things they would be against if the tables were turned.
Five tenets of CRT and what they mean
One of the problems with discussing and debating CRT is that it’s a complicated set of teachings and beliefs about which people know very little, and which probably vary at least somewhat according to who is doing the trainings. The most pernicious aspects of CRT are often in the details of how the trainings and/or classes go.
Here’s a set of five supposedly basic tenets of CRT, as follows:
(1) Centrality of Race and Racism in Society: CRT asserts that racism is a central component of American life.
(2) Challenge to Dominant Ideology: CRT challenges the claims of neutrality, objectivity, colorblindness, and meritocracy in society.
(3) Centrality of Experiential Knowledge: CRT asserts that the experiential knowledge of people of color is appropriate, legitimate, and an integral part to analyzing and understanding racial inequality.
(4) Interdisciplinary Perspective: CRT challenges ahistoricism and the unidisciplinary focuses of most analyses and insists that race and racism be placed in both a contemporary and historical context using interdisciplinary methods.
(5) Commitment to Social Justice: CRT is a framework that is committed to a social justice agenda to eliminate all forms of subordination of people.
As with so much jargon, one can use these principles in a benign way or a destructive one. From what I know about CRT in actual practice, they tend to be used destructively and somewhat differently than the words in those five principles would indicate.
For example, let’s take principle #1: “CRT asserts that racism is a central component of American life.” Actually, CRT asserts that racism is the central component of American life and pervades every aspect of it.
Or #2: “CRT challenges the claims of neutrality, objectivity, colorblindness, and meritocracy in society.” Actually, CRT challenges not just the claims of those things, but also challenges the idea that they are worthwhile goals. CRT considers meritocracy, for example, to be utterly bogus and inherently racist and would like to eliminate it as a goal or standard. CRT would like to substitute color awareness and eliminate colorblindness. Same for objectivity and neutrality, which are defined as white values and inherently racist.
Or #3: “CRT asserts that the experiential knowledge of people of color is appropriate, legitimate, and an integral part to analyzing and understanding racial inequality.” Is there anyone who disagrees with that? I think you’d find very few people who don’t think that the experiences of black people and other minorities are worthwhile to hear. However, CRT actually asserts that this “experiential knowledge” is far more important than statistics in the aggregate – in other words, that anecdotal evidence (which, among other things, can be a misperception even if a sincere one) is of far more importance than anything else, and it’s only the anecdotal evidence of “people of color” that matters.
Here’s #4: “CRT challenges ahistoricism and the unidisciplinary focuses of most analyses and insists that race and racism be placed in both a contemporary and historical context using interdisciplinary methods.” That’s so jargon-packed that I can’t quite figure out what it refers to (“interdisciplinary methods”?). But my sense is that it tries to change history by bringing in a perspective that makes history into whatever the CRT people want it to show – a la the 1619 Project, for example.
On #5: “CRT is a framework that is committed to a social justice agenda to eliminate all forms of subordination of people.” More jargon that obscures what’s happening. “Social justice agenda” is an example of what Thomas Sowell referred to in his book The Quest For Cosmic Justice (highly recommended by me) as an endeavor that is doomed to create more problems than it solves. As Sowell writes:
In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called “social justice” might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society.
The costs of achieving justice matter. Another way of saying the same thing is that “justice at all costs” is not justice. What, after all, is an injustice but the arbitrary imposition of a cost—whether economic, psychic, or other—on an innocent person? And if correcting this injustice imposes another arbitrary cost on another innocent person, is that not also an injustice?
Those who are promoting CRT leave out all the costs, and are mum about the anti-white racism inherent in those costs. However, word has been getting out lately, and more people (not enough, but more) are starting to understand what CRT is actually about in practice.