unherd |The extraordinary spread in recent
months of what has become known, in the writer Wesley Yang’s phrase, as
“the successor ideology” has encouraged all manner of analysis
attempting to delineate its essential features. Is it a religion, with
its own litany of sin and redemption, its own repertoire of fervent
rituals and iconography? Is this Marxism, ask American conservatives,
still fighting yesterday’s ideological war?
What does this all do to speed along
policing reform, ask bewildered African-Americans, as they observe
global corporations and white celebrities compete to beat their chests
in ever-more elaborate and meaningless gestures of atonement? What kind
of meaningful anti-systemic revolution can provoke such immediate and
fulsome support from the Hollywood entertainment complex, from the
richest oligarchs and plutocrats on earth, and from the media organs of
the liberal state?
If we are to understand the successor ideology as an ideology, it may be useful here, counterintuitively, to return to the great but increasingly overlooked 1970 essay on the “Ideological State Apparatuses,”
or ISAs, by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Once
influential on the Western left, Althusser’s reputation has suffered
somewhat since he killed his wife in a fit of madness 40 years ago. Of
Alsatian Catholic origin, and a lifelong sufferer from mental illness,
Althusser wrote his seminal essay in a manic period following the évènements of 1968, for whose duration he was committed to hospital.
Composed with a feverish,
hallucinatory clarity, Althusser’s essay aimed to elucidate the manner
in which ideology functions as a means to prop up the political order,
observing that “no class can hold state power over a long period without
at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the Ideological
State Apparatuses”.
What are these ISAs? Contrasted with
the Repressive State Apparatuses — the police, the army, and so on — the
ISAs are the means by which the system reproduces itself through
ideology: Althusser lists the church, the media and the education system
along with the family, and the legal and political system and the
culture industry as the means through which the ideology of the
governing system is enforced. Althusser here develops Gramsci’s thesis
that the cultural sphere is the most productive arena of political
struggle, and inverts it: instead of being the site of revolutionary
victory, it is where the system reasserts itself, neutering the
possibility of political change through its wielding of the most
powerful weapon, ideology.
It is through ideology, Althusser
asserts, that the ruling system maintains itself in power: “the ideology
of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology by the grace of
God, nor even by virtue of the seizure of state power alone,” he
states, “it is by the installation of the ISAs in which this ideology is
realised and realises itself that it becomes the ruling ideology.”
nakedcapitalism | Yves here. I’m running this post with its original headline, although
the article doesn’t make terribly clear what “Christian nationalism”
is. The author defines is at extreme evangelism but I’m at a loss to
understand what makes that “nationalism”. The reason I am running this
article is that it discusses an specific issue that IM Doc mentioned
back in early February.
And even though we are discussing different subcultures in America,
we might as well be talking about different countries. One of the
lessons I learned by virtue of deciding to see the world on the McKinsey
plan, was that virtually without exception, US companies entering a
foreign market would royally screw things up. Even if they’d managed to
hire good managers from the new market, the top brass would reject
recommended changes to the product or branding to cater to local tastes:
“They can’t possibly want that! Of course they’ll prefer our superior
dog food!” They almost always had to fail before they’d listen to how
the locals thought about things and understand why they wanted what they
wanted.
I had sent a link from the Ghion Journal, which was and is pretty up in arms about the Covid vaccines, as an example of vaccine alarmism in the black community.
IM Doc said then that he was hearing a lot of reports from doctors in
his network in big cities of vaccine hesitancy among blacks and if
anything more so among Latinos at that point. But he was the first to
alert me to opposition among conservative Christians, beyond those based
on the mistaken belief that fetal cells had somehow been used in
vaccine development (true in a very strained sense with the J&J
vaccine). From his e-mail:
We are seeing all this rage and rush to get vaccinated
right now. It is easy to assume there is widespread demand. That is not
true…. And then the fun will begin. If you think the anti-mask,
anti-lockdown people have been ridiculed and shamed – you have not seen
anything yet. I know my Big Pharma and it is obvious they have a
stranglehold on our agencies and politicians. They have gotten so used
to complete acquiescence that they are becoming supremely
over-confident. Trust me, if they think they will get away with forced
vaccination of kids for school, they have no idea what they are stepping
in. Also, I can think of no quicker way to bankruptcy for airlines and
cruise companies then to demand a vaccine passport. They will instantly
cut their customer base by 30-40%.
It is not just blacks and Latinos. Our medical and public health
elites have their head so far up their ass that they are missing
critical cultural and religious issues going on all over this country
with regard to the vaccine. For example, my oh so Protestant family
members and all their friends back home have zero intention of taking
this vaccine. All the talk of vaccine passports and vaccine cards to get
in and out of stores and restaurants and events have convinced them
that this is the first manifestation of the long anticipated Mark of the
Beast. To take the Mark of the Beast is a certain trip to Hell for
Eternity….And because of our elites’ complete bungling insensitivity,
they have already completely and permanently alienated these people.
Again, this is being preached from their pulpits, and no amount of
coercion or threats is going to work. I grew up in that environment. I
know what I am talking about. They will starve to death before they take
The Mark of the Beast.
I have no idea how large this population is. IM Doc gave an estimate
for rural America and the South that struck me as high, having lived in
the rural upper Midwest, Oregon, and spent a lot of time in Maine. But
the point is this is a cohort that is not trivial in size, and its
existence has finally gotten the attention of some in the officialdom,
too late in the game for them to change course. You’ll see the
out-of-touch recommendation in the piece:
…faith leaders can guide their followers and use their
pulpits to encourage parishioners that the vaccine is safe and in line
with religious doctrines.
That could work with concerns that are based on misinformation, but
not ones based on views that see social control/surveillance as evil.
There’s no way of prettying up the more heavy-handed schemes to get
citizens to take the shot.
And IM Doc, then as now, argued that the bureaucrats have done a
terrible job with general practitioners by failing to give the
information needed to give honest answers and “best available data”
assessments of outcomes and risks:
And again, I will remind you – as a primary care
physician I have been tasked with educating patients about these
vaccines. I have little if any information about safety. I have zero
information on how these vaccines will help death or hospitalizations. I
have zero information on how long the immunity will last. I have zero
credible and often wildly disparate information about whether it will
work on these variants, which are now this month’s panic porn topic on
the news. I have very educated patients who come to ask questions all
day every day. I will not lie to them, nor will I smile and pass out
happy horse shit like so many of my colleagues seem to be doing. The
medical elites have put the normal PCPs of this country in a very
difficult if not impossible situation.
I hope and pray that all goes well. I, like everyone else, want this
to be over. However, if something goes majorly wrong with this gamble,
God help us.
There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There
are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is
only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven,
interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.
Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles,
pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which
determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural
order of things today.” Arthur Jensen
nautil | The hero of Atlas Shrugged is John Galt, a supremely
self-confident inventor. He has figured out a way to turn static
electricity into an inexhaustible source of clean energy. But Galt and
his kind are living in an America veering toward the kind of ham-fisted
socialism that Rand escaped when she immigrated from the Soviet Union in
1926. Galt brings about a rebellion of the “producers” of the world,
like the mythical Atlas shrugging the earth from his shoulders, so that
the “looters” and “moochers” can be brought to their senses. The
centerpiece of the novel is a speech that Galt delivers to the world by
taking over the airwaves with his technical prowess.
Whether
conveyed through philosophy or fiction, Rand’s worldview couldn’t
function as a moral system if the pursuit of self-interest didn’t end up
benefiting the common good. That’s where the invisible hand of the
market comes in, a metaphor that was used only three times by Adam Smith
in his voluminous writing, but was elevated to the status of a
fundamental theorem by economists such as Milton Friedman and put into
practice by Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan, who served as Chair of the
United States Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006.
Here’s how
it’s supposed to work: Everything of value can be represented as a
dollar value and therefore can be compared to anything else of value by
their relative prices. Making money is the surest way to provide value
to people because the best way to make money is to provide what people
are most willing to pay for. The system works so well that no other form
of care toward others is required. No empathy. No loyalty. No
forgiveness. Thanks to the market, the old-fashioned virtues have been
rendered obsolete. That’s why Milton Friedman could make his famous
claim in 1970 that the only social responsibility of a business is to
maximize profits for its shareholders. In Ayn Rand’s fictional
rendering, the word “give” is banned from the vocabulary of the Utopian
community founded by John Galt, whose members must recite the oath: “I
swear by my life and love of it that I will never live for the sake of
another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.”
My sequel to Atlas Shrugged is titled Atlas Hugged
and its protagonist is John Galt’s grandson. Ayn Rand was not a
character in her novel, but since anything goes in fiction, I could
transport her into mine as Ayn Rant, John I’s lover and John III’s
grandmother. Rant’s son, John II, parlays her Objectivist philosophy
into a world-destroying libertarian media empire. John III rebels
against the evil empire by challenging his father to a duel of speeches.
In the process, he brings about a worldwide transformation based on
giving. Atlas Hugged is so anti-Rand that it isn’t even being
sold. Instead, it is gifted for whatever the reader wishes to give in
return. Eat your heart out, Amazon!
nbcnews | While authorities said Atlanta-area spa shooting suspect
Robert Aaron Long, 21, told investigators he was motivated by "sexual
addiction" and claimed he had no racial motivation, health specialists
say the explanation falls short.
Capt. Jay Baker, a spokesman for the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, said Long — who is accused of killing eight people,
six of them Asian women — indicated that the spas were "a temptation
for him that he wanted to eliminate." However, experts say such
rationale has been used before in attempts to exonerate white men. The
explanation also discounts racial dynamics and can “cause harm” in the
way the public understands these issues.
White
men have traditionally been given a pass when they say it — and have
the privilege of overlooking how race is a factor, experts say.
“Historically, the term ‘sex addiction’ has been used by
white males to absolve themselves from personal and legal responsibility
for their behaviors,” Apryl Alexander, associate professor in the
Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver,
told NBC Asian America. “It is often used as an excuse to pathologize
misogyny.”
The defense of sex addiction itself, Alexander
said, is a highly controversial one as those in the fields of
psychology, psychiatry and sex research continue to debate whether to
formally recognize it. Currently, the idea that sex addiction is a
disorder is not supported by research, nor is it accepted as a clinical
diagnosis, she said.
“A lot of individuals who are doing
this kind of self-reports of sexual addiction are having normative
sexual behaviors and urges, but they might be excessive. Or for a lot of
people, it's rooted in shame that ‘I'm having these attractions and
emotional desires that are normal, but I don't recognize them as
normal,’” Alexander said.
Though the American Psychiatric
Association added the concept of sexual addiction to its Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1987, it later retracted the
term and has since rejected the addition of the idea to its later
editions including the DSM–5, which is widely seen as the definitive
resource on mental disorders, on the basis of a lack of supporting
evidence.
Alexander said this sexual behavior doesn’t
affect the brain in the same ways other addictions, including substance
use and gambling behavior, do, either, calling the characterization of
Long’s behavior “concerning.”
The self-identification of
sex addiction, she said, is often seen in individuals who are raised in
conservative and religious environments, “where there's a high level of
moral disapproval of their natural kind of sexual urges and desires.” Many of these populations are overwhelmingly white.
twitter | I
keep seeing "sex addiction" used as a term of agreed-on meaning,
whether the speaker believes it explains the murders or not. But nearly
all of what the conservative evangelicalism of the murderer describes as
"sex addiction" is what the rest of the world calls sexuality...
aier | The Overestimated Dangers of Covid and Underestimated Dangers of Lockdowns
Covid-19 is disproportionately lethal to the very old and ill, and heavily so. In the United States as of February 17th, 2021, nearly a third (31.8%) of “All Deaths Involving Covid-19” – as defined and reported by the CDC
– were of persons 85 years old and older. Nearly 60 percent (59.6%) of
these deaths were of persons 75 years of age and older. More than 81
percent (81.3%) were of people 65 years of age and older. Despite
media-trumpeted exceptions, serious suffering from Covid-19 is largely
an experience for very old people.
Covid’s overall lethality compared to that of the seasonal flu is no more than 10 times greater. (Some estimates have Covid’s lethality, compared to that of the flu, to be as low as 3.5 times greater.)
Of course, because Covid’s lethality undeniably rises significantly
with age, for the elderly Covid is far more than 10 times as deadly than
is the flu, and for young people Covid is much less than ten times as
deadly. (Keep in mind that the numbers in this and the previous two
paragraphs come chiefly from before any vaccines were administered.)
Lockdowns
themselves have negative health consequences. How could they not, even
if the only such effect arises because of people’s increased difficulty
of visiting physicians for non-Covid-related illnesses and injuries? But there is evidence that negative health consequences of lockdowns extend beyond those that arise from delayed or foregone medical treatments.
Lockdowns
have negative personal and social consequences. Avoiding contact with
family and friends, even during holidays. Inability to fraternize at
your favorite gym, coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Restrictions on
travel. Even if you believe that these costs are worth paying, you
cannot deny that these costs are serious.
Lockdowns have a
severe negative impact on economic activity. How could they not, given
that people are prevented from going to work and from engaging in much
ordinary commercial activity? There’s debate about how much of the
decline in economic activity is caused by voluntary action and how much
is caused by the forcible lockdowns. Even in light of the likelihood
that people’s fear of Covid is further stoked by the very fact that
governments’ resort to the dramatic action of locking us down, evidence exists that a great deal of economic damage was caused by the lockdowns themselves.
ineteconomics | In 2002, under Governor Rick Perry, Texas deregulated its electricity
system. After a few years, the electrical free market, managed by a
non-profit called ERCOT, was fully-established. Some seventy or so
providers eventually sprung up. While a few cities – including Austin –
kept their public power, they were nevertheless tied to the state
system.
The market system could, and did, work out most of the time. Prices
rose and fell, and customers who didn’t sign long-term contracts faced
some risk. One provider, called Griddy, had a special model: for $9.99 a
month you could get your power at whatever the wholesale price was on any given day. That was cheap! Most of the time.
The problem with “most of the time” is that people need electric power all of the time. And Texas’s leadersknew
as of 2011, at least, when the state went through a short, severe
freeze, that the system was radically unstable in extreme weather.
But they did nothing. To do something, they would have had to regulate
the system. And they didn’t want to regulate the system, because the
providers, a rich source of campaign funding, didn’t want to be
regulated and to have to spend on weatherization that was not needed –
most of the time. In 2020, even voluntary inspections were suspended,
due to Covid-19.
Enter the deep freeze of 2021. Demand went up. Supply went down.
Natural gas froze up at the wells, in the pipes, and at the generating
plants. Unweatherized windmills also went off-line, a small part of the story.
Since Texas is disconnected from the rest of the country, no reserves
could be imported, and given the cold everywhere, there would have been
none available anyway. There came a point, on Sunday, February 14 or the
next day, when demand so outstripped supply that the entire Texas grid came within minutes of a collapse that, we are told, would have taken months to repair.
As this happened, the price mechanism failed completely. Wholesale prices rose a hundred-fold
– but retail prices, under contract, did not, except for the unlucky
customers of Griddy, who got socked with bills for thousands of dollars
each day. ERCOT was therefore forced to cut power, which might have been
tolerable, had it happened on a rolling basis across neighborhoods
throughout the state. But this was impossible: you can’t cut power to
hospitals, fire stations, and other critical facilities, or for that
matter to high-rise downtown apartments reliant on elevators. So lights
stayed on in some areas, and they stayed off – for days on end – in
others. Selective socialism, one might call it.
When the lights go off and the heat goes down, water freezes and that
was the next phase of the calamity. For when water freezes, pipes
burst, and when pipes burst the water supply cannot keep up with the
demand. So across Texas, water pressure is falling, as I type these
words. Hospitals without water cannot generate steam, and therefore
heat; and some of them are being evacuated right now. Meanwhile, ice is bearing down on the power lines.
newrepublic | These Christians apparently believe that they
had no choice but to try to overthrow the Congress. For months, various
evangelicals have claimed in sermons, on social media, and during
protests that malicious forces stole the election, conspired to quash
Christian liberties, and aimed to clamp down on their freedom to worship
and spread the Christian gospel. They felt sure that the final days of
history were at hand and that the Capitol was the site of an epochal
battle. As one evangelical from Texas toldThe New York Times, “We are fighting good versus evil, dark versus light.”
Much
has been made about the evangelical community’s relationship to Donald
Trump. And typically, observers tend to view this alliance as purely
transactional, with nose-holding evangelicals pledging their support to
this least Christian of men in order to get something in return—most
notably, a trio of religiously conservative Supreme Court justices. This
dominant interpretation also treats Trump as the apotheosis of a
shape-shifting brand of grievance politics that unites and permeates all
factions of the right, very much including the evangelical movement.
But what is less understood—and what the Capitol riot revealed in all
its gruesome detail—is the extent to which Trump channels the
apocalyptic fervor that has long animated many white evangelical
Christians in this country.
For the last 150 years, white evangelicals
have peddled end-times conspiracies. Most of the time their messages
have been relatively innocuous, part of the broader millenarian outlook
shared among most major religious traditions. But these conspiracies can
have dangerous consequences—and sometimes they lead to violence. Every
evangelical generation throughout American history has seen some of its
believers driven to extreme conspiracies that blend with other strains
of militant political faith. This has meant that in the Trump era, with
the destabilizing impact of a global pandemic and a cratered economy,
white evangelical Christianity has become enmeshed with, and perhaps
inextricable from, a broader revolution against the government.
And
so an insurrection in the name of Jesus Christ broke out in tandem with
the Trump voter fraud putsch. The action is also, in all likelihood, a
prophetic foretaste of where this group might go once Trump is finally
out of office.
Evangelical
apocalypticism is grounded in a complicated and convoluted reading of
the biblical books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, some of the most
violent books in the Bible. When read in conjunction with one another,
and overlaid with some of Jesus’s and Paul’s New Testament statements,
they reveal a hidden “plan of the ages.” The word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokalypsis—an unveiling or uncovering of truths that others cannot see.
Gebru Called Into Question Google's Reputation Based on the leaked email, Gebru's research says that machine learning at Google (the core of Google's products) creates more harm than good. Somebody finally figured out there that if she is effective in her role, she would be calling into question the ethical standing of Google's core products. If a corporation does ethics
research but is unwilling to publicize anything that could be considered
critical, then it's not ethics research, it's just peer-reviewed
public relations.
Google miscalculated with Gebru. They thought her comfy paycheck would buy her reputational complicity. Like a typical diversity hire at Corporation X, Gebru was supposed to function as a token figleaf and glad hander among snowflakes who might otherwise ask hard questions. Now Google couldn't just tell her that she was hired to be the good AI house negroe, could they?
Google wants the good narrative of "internal ethics research being done" They want to shape that narrative and message about all of "the improvements we can make" whatever it takes so that questions about their products don't effect their bottom line. With internal ethics research you have access to exponentially more data (directly and indirectly, the latter because
you know who to talk to and can do so) than any poor academic researcher.
The
field has AI Ethics research teams working on important problems (to
the community as a whole). These teams are well funded, sometimes with
huge resources. Now to get the best out of this system, the researchers just need
to avoid conflicts with the company core business. In the case of Gebru's paper, it could have been reframed in a way that would please Google, without sacrificing its
scientific merit. Shaping the narrative is extremely important in politics, business, and ethics.
And Openly Flouted Managerial Authoriteh Some are critical if machine learning SVP Jeff Dean for rejecting her submission because of bad "literature review", saying that internal review is supposed to check for "disclosure of sensitive material" only.
Not only are they wrong about the ultimate purpose of internal review processes, they also missed the point of the rejection. It was never about "literature review", but instead about Google's reputation. Take another look at Dean's response email.
It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. Google is the inventor of the current market dominating language models. Who does more neural network training using larger data sets than Google?
This is how and why Gebru's paper argues that Google creates more harm than good. Would you approve such a paper, as is? This is being kept to the paper and the email to the internal snowflake list - we don't need to examine her intention to sue Google last year, or calling on colleagues to enlist third-party organizations to put more pressure on Google.
Put yourself in Google's cloven-hooved shoes.
Gebru: Here's my paper in which I call out the environmental impact of large models and raise concerns about bias in the language data sets. Tomorrow is the deadline, please review and approve it.
Google: Hold on, this makes us look very bad! You have to revise the paper. We know that large models are not good for the environment, but we have also been doing research to achieve much greater efficiencies. We are also aware of bias in the language models that we are using in production, but we are also proposing solutions to that. You should include those works as well.
Gebru: Give me the names of every single person who reviewed my paper otherwise I'll resign. Throw on top of this the fact that she told hundreds of people in the org to cease important work because she had some disagreements with leadership.
Google: You're Fired!!! Get Out - We'll Pack Your Shit And Mail It To You!!!!
Scientific American
featured an article by LANL physicist and neuroscientist Garrett
Kenyon, who wrote that one of the
“distinguishing features of machines is that they don’t need to sleep,
unlike humans and any other creature with a central nervous system,” but
someday “your toaster might need a nap from time to time, as may your
car, fridge and anything else that is revolutionized
with the advent of practical artificial intelligence technologies.”
NOPE!
What Machine Learning (So-Called AI) Really Is
The vast majority of advances in the field of "machine learning"
(so-called AI) stem from a single technique (neural networks with back
propagation) combined with dramatic leaps in processing power.
Back-propagation is the essence of neural net "training". It is the
method of fine-tuning the weights of a neural net based on the error
rate obtained in the previous iteration. Proper tuning of the weights
allows you to reduce error rates and to make
the model reliable by increasing its generalization.
The learning mechanism is very generic, which makes it broadly
applicable to almost everything, but also makes it ‘dumb’ in the sense
that it doesn’t understand anything about context or have the ability to
abstract notable features and form models.
Humans do this non-dumb "abstraction from feature and form context"
stuff - all the time. It’s what enables us to do higher reasoning
without a whole data center worth of processing power.
Google and other big-tech/big-data companies are interested in
neural networks with back propagation from a short term business
perspective. There's still a lot to be gained from taking the existing
technique and wringing every drop of commercial potential
out of it.
Google is engineering first and researching second, if at all. That
means that any advances they come up with tend to skew towards
heuristics and implementation, rather than untangling the theory.
I’ve been struck by how many so-called ‘research’ papers in AI boil
down to “you should do this because it seems to work better than the
alternatives” with no real attempt to explain why.
aeon |Tolkien articulated his anxieties
about the cultural changes sweeping across Britain in terms of ‘American
sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass-production’, calling ‘this
Americo-cosmopolitanism very terrifying’ and suggesting in a 1943 letter
to his son Christopher that, if this was to be the outcome of an Allied
Second World War win, he wasn’t sure that victory would be better for
the ‘mind and spirit’ – and for England – than a loss to Nazi forces.
Lewis shared this abhorrence for ‘modern’ technologisation,
secularisation and the swiftly dismantling hierarchies of race, gender
and class. He and Tolkien saw such broader shifts reflected in changing
(and in their estimation dangerously faddish) literary norms. Writing in
the 1930s, Tolkien skewered ‘the critics’ for disregarding the
fantastical dragon and ogres in Beowulf as ‘unfashionable creatures’ in a widely read essay about that Old English poem. Lewis disparaged modernist literati in his Experiment in Criticism (1961), mocking devotees of contemporary darlings such as T S Eliot
and claiming that ‘while this goes on downstairs, the only real
literary experience in such a family may be occurring in a back bedroom
where a small boy is reading Treasure Island under the
bed-clothes by the light of an electric torch.’ If the new literary
culture was accelerating the slide to moral decay, Tolkien and Lewis
identified salvation in the authentic, childlike enjoyment of adventure
and fairy stories, especially ones set in medieval lands. And so, armed
with the unlikely weapons of medievalism and childhood, they waged a
campaign that hinged on spreading the fantastic in both popular and
scholarly spheres. Improbably, they were extraordinarily successful in
leaving far-reaching marks on the global imagination by launching an
alternative strand of writing that first circulated amongst child
readers.
These readers devoured The Hobbit and, later, The Lord of the Rings, as well as The Chronicles of Narnia
series. But they also read fantasy by later authors who began to write
in this vein – including several major British children’s writers who
studied the English curriculum that Tolkien and Lewis established at
Oxford as undergraduates. This curriculum flew in the face of the
directions that other universities were taking in the early years of the
field. As modernism became canon and critical theory was on the rise,
Oxford instead required undergraduates to read and comment on
fantastical early English works such as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Le Morte d’Arthur and John Mandeville’s Travels in their original medieval languages.
Oxford for nearly 40 years officially sanctioned magic-filled medieval works as exemplars of English literature
Students had to analyse these texts as literature rather
than only as linguistic extracts, a notable difference from the more
common approach to medieval literature at the time. Tolkien and Lewis
identified concrete moral lessons and ‘patriotic’ insights into the
national character in these magical tales of long ago. The past they
depicted was not, of course, England as it actually was in the Middle
Ages, but England as poets had imagined it to be: the enchanted realm of
heroism, righteousness and romance where 19th-century nationalists had
identified the moral and racial heart of the nation. (The Oxford
curriculum was, in this sense, a throwback to English studies’ roots in
colonial education, which – as the literary scholar Gauri Viswanathan
has shown in Masks of Conquest (2014) – often looked to prove English right to rule through the glory of its national literature.
The unique educational programme that dominated English at Oxford for
nearly 40 years officially sanctioned magic-filled medieval works as
exemplars of English literature for generations of students that passed
through the university’s power-filled halls. And a number of these
students went on to write their own popular children’s fantasy, some to
great acclaim. Diana Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper, Kevin Crossley-Holland
and Philip Pullman in particular, who each received their English
degrees between 1956 and 1968, draw on medieval and early modern
literary sources, many directly taken from the Oxford syllabus, to
create new, self-reflectively serious fantasy for young readers.
Together with Tolkien and Lewis, this group forms the Oxford School of
children’s fantasy literature. Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising quintet (1965-77) and Crossley-Holland’s Arthur
trilogy (2000-03) give King Arthur’s story fresh context and resonance
for understanding contemporary Britain in their times; meanwhile, the
works of Jones and Pullman delight in subverting fantasy expectations
while introducing early English literature to new generations of
readers. They all celebrate the purported wisdom of old stories, and
follow the central tenet that Tolkien set out for fairy-stories: ‘one
thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in the story
be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.’
The Oxford School’s reimagining of medieval tales for modern
audiences injected these fantastical narratives into the public
consciousness, largely eluding elite and scholarly notice because their
works were branded as children’s literature. At the same time, taking
ancient, canonical texts as the foundations for new stories helped to
give their fantasy the historical depth and cultural weight to resist
derisive laughter and make claims about the present. For instance, the
dragon episode at the end of The Hobbit is full of parallels to the one in Beowulf, from the cup-theft that wakes the worm to its destructive expressions of rage. But The Hobbit
uses this narrative to pit a traditionalist and noble-born hero (Bard,
whose name means ‘poet’, ‘storyteller’) against an untrustworthy elected
official, hammering home the significance of conservative traditions
over the whims of easily swayed masses. Tolkien’s novel ends with the
protagonist Bilbo’s delighted discovery of this barely veiled moral:
‘the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a
fashion!’
tomluongo | And with COVID-19 we’ve reached the height of this practice of
imbuing scientists with a god-like knowledge of what we should do given
any thorny political problem.
That’s why pseudo-intellectuals and midwits in white suburbia bought
into the lies of Anthony Fauci, while ignoring the flip-flopping of him,
the CDC, the WHO, and every other ‘expert.’
This science worship neatly bypasses politicians you don’t like to
support whatever argument you want to believe. It doesn’t matter that
it’s now just as much a religion as Christianity or Islam.
If the high priest of ‘science’ says masks are necessary on Tuesdays
but not Thursdays then they simply go along with it because the
alternative is admitting that your priests are just hucksters with fancy
government titles.
It also absolves people of the responsibility of making the hard decisions. The experts have all that worked out.
Which brings me to what actually started this blog post.
One of these true high priests of ‘scientism,’ the straight-out-of-central-casting Neil Degrasse Tyson opined recently on RT about how disappointed he was with humanity over not coming together over COVID-19.
“I thought that when the
coronavirus landed that we would’ve all banded together and say: ‘We’re
all human and that’s a common enemy, like an alien invasion. We’ve all
seen it in the movies. We got to be together on this one.’ But it didn’t
happen to my great disappointment in our species.”
At this late date for a guy like Mr. Tyson to go on thinking COVID-19
was such an existential threat to humanity as an alien invasion is
really stunning.
I thought this guy was supposed to be smart? Like really smart?
He goes on further:
“I don’t mind political
fights. Political fights are fine when you’re talking about policy and
legislation. But you should never have a political fight about…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals,” Tyson said, adding that doing so is a “recipe for disaster.”
Now this I agree somewhat with, which is why I consider this more
like Coronapocalypse: The Movie and not a true existential threat to
humanity which required any kind of policy decision which sparked this
political fight he’s crying crocodile tears over.
Because, and I’m sure Mr. Tyson would agree with this if he were a scientist, there is little “…scientific research that has been objectively shown to be true in peer-reviewed journals…” about COVID-19 which has been properly discussed in the public sphere.
And yet very polarizing policies are in place depriving people of not
only their rights, which he seems cavalier to, but also their future
prosperity.
Since the ‘science’ has been used by governments assume a level of
control over our movements and activities far beyond the scope of what
the ‘science’ has shown. And since when the science isn’t settled
shouldn’t we settle back on first principles to minimize human suffering
along all vectors, not just the one variable, virus transmission, we
think we’re controlling, especially for most people the survival rate is
greater than 99.9%?
And even this position undermines the basic framework of human rights
by placing some cost/benefit analytic overlay on society giving the
social engineers more credit than they deserve.
BBC |French
President Emmanuel Macron has asked Muslim leaders to agree a "charter
of republican values" as part of a broad clampdown on radical Islam.
On Wednesday he gave the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) 15 days to work with the interior ministry.
The
CFCM has agreed to create a National Council of Imams, which will
reportedly issue imams with official accreditation which could be
withdrawn.
It follows three suspected Islamist attacks in little more than a month.
The
charter will state that Islam is a religion and not a political
movement, while also prohibiting "foreign interference" in Muslim
groups.
Mr
Macron has strongly defended French secularism in the wake of the
attacks, which included the beheading of a teacher who showed cartoons
of the Prophet Muhammad during a class discussion last month.
Late on Wednesday, the president and his interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, met eight CFCM leaders at the Élysée palace.
"Two
principles will be inscribed in black and white [in the charter]: the
rejection of political Islam and any foreign interference," one source
told the Le Parisien newspaper after the meeting.
The formation of the National Council of Imams was also agreed upon.
thefederalist | Lockdowns were once called an “unproven”
hypothesis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its
models of efficacy being unvalidated by “empirical data.” The World
Health Organization called forced isolation and quarantine “ineffective and impractical.”
Yet despite the devastating effects of banning “nonessential”
businesses and social activities, countries around the world locked
down.
Groupthink on non-pharmaceutical interventions spurred an
uncontrolled drift away from scientific justifications toward hasty
generalized rules predicated on an “abundance of caution” and
straight-up fear. Fear quickly turned into a tool for maintaining
political power and an opportunity for self-righteous snitches to
exercise control over their fellow countrymen. Snitch-level devotion to
harsh government mandates devolved into a religion in its own right, and
now we must suffer oppression not just from authorities, but from
private companies and our fellow citizens.
One can draw numerous examples of Covidian jihad from any given week
of these hellish past six months, but the progression is obvious. In
April, a father was arrested for playing softball with his family in an open field in compliance with state orders. In July, a woman was berated by a fanatical old lady at the superstore for not masking her children, who are a risk approaching zero for spreading the virus.
Now heading into fall, some people are being asked to wear masks
alone in their own homes, out in open parks, and while exercising.
They’re supposed to strap them onto infants and toddlers, who are
essentially at zero risk for spreading the Wuhan virus, and they aren’t ever supposed to complain about dental problems, headaches, or dizziness while mask-wearing — because every good COVID fanatic knows masks are harmless.
This is our world in 2020. Ironically, not even the experts can keep
pro-lockdown, pro-mask fanatics from harassing and endangering others.
If you want to prevent this reality from becoming permanent, stand up to
the bullies and stand firm on the science — including voting out
politicians who’ve abandoned science and recalling those who aren’t up
for re-election in November.
tremr | Tada is correct
in his insistence on the need to approach politics from a partially
personological (rather than a purely systemic) approach. In order to
understand the roots of Oluo's deeply deficient and distorted
perspective, it is very important to understand that studies indicate major differences in narcissistic personality traits among individuals from different racial groups.
In
general, African Americans tend to exhibit the highest rates of
narcissistic personality traits, with East Asians (perhaps with the
exception of Tada) possessing the lowest levels of groups measured.
While some have suggested that the alleged "black self-esteem advantage"
that is well-known among social scientists, may explain these
heightened levels of narcissism, as a kind of compensatory attempt at
preserving self-esteem in the face of marginalization, other
marginalized groups, such as Hispanics, do not exhibit this heightened
self-esteem, throwing this hypothesis into question.
Such
a self-esteem advantage is likewise absent among East Asians, and East
Asians have lower levels of self-esteem than whites. Of course, since
East Asians, on average, have higher levels of income than Caucasians in
the U.S., we may rightly question whether it is proper to consider them
"marginalized" in any meaningful sense of the word. Virgil Zeigler-Hill
and Marion T. Wallace stated their "Overview and Predictions" in their
three studies as follows:
"Our
goal for the present studies was to examine whether racial differences
emerged for narcissism in a manner that was similar to the Black
self-esteem advantage. This was accomplished by conducting three studies
that compared the narcissism levels of Black and White individuals. The
present research extends the findings of Foster et al. (2003) by using
various measures of narcissism rather than relying solely on the NPI.
Also, the present studies accounted for factors related to narcissism
such as self-esteem level and socially desirable response tendencies in
order to clarify the nature of any racial differences in narcissism that
emerged. Given previous research concerning racial/ethnic differences
in narcissism as well as the fragile nature of the high levels of
self-esteem reported by Black individuals, we expected Black individuals
to report higher levels of narcissism than White individuals. Finally,
Study 3 included indicators of psychological adjustment so that we could
examine whether race moderated the association between narcissism and
psychological adjustment."
In
their second study, they found that "Black individuals possess higher
levels of narcissism than White individuals. The magnitude of the
differences varied across the facets of narcissism such that the largest
differences were found for those facets that captured grandiosity and
self-absorption...". Consistently across these studies, they found that
black individuals exhibit higher levels of narcissism than white
individuals. This is exactly what one would expect in a cultural context
in which activists in the Black Lives Matter movement insist that
blacks cannot be racist. Their claim is that the definition of "racism"
was changed a few decades ago, so that it can only be used to speak of
those whose systemic power allows them to express their prejudices
institutionally. Of course, the only reason they insist on this
definition is because of the tremendously negative emotional payload the
word "racism" has.
The
obvious underlying psychological motive in insisting that the
definition of "racism" can only refer to discrimination by those with
the institutional power to enforce their prejudices is that blacks
cannot be held accountable for their actions in spite of the fact that,
on an individual basis, they tend to engage in much higher rates of
race-based crime, and they likewise feel comfortable accusing whites of
being racist merely for being white, despite the fact that whites are
far less likely than blacks or Hispanics to engage in interracial crime
on an individual level. While systemic racism exists, we must emphasize
that in this post, we are merely following Tada's approach in looking at
racism from a purely personological perspective.
technologyreview | The first family to quit Pastor Clark Frailey’s church during the
pandemic did it by text message. It felt to Frailey like a heartbreaking
and incomplete way to end a years-long relationship. When a second
young couple said they were doubting his leadership a week later,
Frailey decided to risk seeing them in person, despite the threat of
covid-19.
It was late May, and things were starting to reopen
in Oklahoma, so Frailey and the couple met in a near-empty fast food
restaurant to talk it over.
The congregants were worried about
Frailey’s intentions. At Coffee Creek, his evangelical church outside
Oklahoma City, he had preached on racial justice for the past three
weeks. He says the couple didn’t appreciate his most recent sermon,
which urged Christians to call out and challenge racism anywhere they
saw it, including in their own church. Though Frailey tries to keep
Coffee Creek from feeling too traditional—he wears jeans, and the church
has a modern band and uses chairs instead of pews—he considers himself a
theologically conservative Southern Baptist pastor. But at one point,
the couple Frailey spoke to said they believed that he was becoming a
“social justice warrior.”
Pastors and congregants disagree all
the time, and Frailey doesn’t want to be the sort of Christian leader
whom people feel afraid to challenge. But in that restaurant, it felt to
him as if he and they had read two different sacred texts. It was as if
the couple were “believing internet memes over someone they’d had a
relationship with for over five years,” Frailey says.
At one
point he brought up QAnon, the conspiracy theory holding that Donald
Trump is fighting a secret Satanic pedophile ring run by liberal elites.
When he asked what they thought about it, the response was worryingly
ambiguous. “It wasn’t like, ‘I fully believe this,’” he says. “It was
like, ‘I find it interesting.’ These people are dear to me and I love
them. It’s just—it felt like there was someone else in the conversation
that I didn’t know who they were.”
Frailey told me about another young person who used to regularly
attend his church. She was sharing conspiracy-laden misinformation on
Facebook “like it’s the gospel truth,” he said, including a quote
falsely attributed to Senator Kamala Harris. He saw another post from
this woman promoting the wild claim that Tom Hanks and other Hollywood
celebrities are eating babies.
Before the pandemic, Frailey
knew a little bit about QAnon, but he hadn’t given such an easily
debunked fringe theory much of his time. The posts he started seeing
felt familiar, though: they reminded him of the “Satanic panic” of the
1980s and 1990s, when rumors of secret occult rituals tormenting
children in day-care centers spread quickly among conservative religious
believers who were already anxious about changes in family structures. “The pedophile stuff, the Satanic stuff, the eating babies—that’s all from the 1980s,” he says.
That conspiracy-fueled frenzy was propelled in part by credulous mainstream news coverage, and by false accusations and even convictions
of day-care owners. But evangelicals, in particular, embraced the
claims, tuning in to a wave of televangelists who promised to help
viewers spot secret satanic symbols and rituals in the secular world.
If
the panic was back with fresh branding as QAnon, it had a new ally in
Facebook. And Frailey wasn’t sure where to turn for help. He posted in a
private Facebook group for Oklahoma Baptist pastors, asking if anyone
else was seeing what he was. The answer, repeatedly, was yes.
The pastors traded links. Frailey read everything he could about QAnon. He listened to every episode of the New York Times podcast series Rabbit Hole, on “what happens when our lives move online,” and devoured a story in the Atlantic that framed QAnon as a new religion infused with the language of Christianity. To Frailey, it felt more like a cult.
He
began to look further back into the Facebook history of the young
former member who had posted the fake Harris quote. In the past, he
remembered, she had posted about her kids every day. In June and July,
he saw, that had shifted. Instead of talking about her family, she was
now promoting QAnon—and one member of the couple that had met with him
in May was there in the comments, posting in solidarity.
Suddenly
he understood that his efforts to protect his congregation from
covid-19 had contributed to a different sort of infection. Like
thousands of other church leaders across the United States, Frailey had
shut down in-person services in March to help prevent the spread of the
virus. Without these gatherings, some of his churchgoers had turned
instead to Facebook, podcasts, and viral memes for guidance. And QAnon, a
movement with its own equivalents of scripture, prophecies, and clergy,
was there waiting for them.
pulpitandpen | The gist is this: Prior to the return of Christ, his followers are
going to become increasingly unpopular and the world will grow
increasingly wicked. It will be characterized by unruly children,
self-centered vanity (food selfie, much?), homosexuality, and general
ungodliness. Although all ages have had these sins to varying degrees,
the generation before Christ returns will actually take pride in them.
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 2 Timothy 3:1-7
This will be accomplished by incredible technology that allows the
comings-and-goings of people to be micromanaged and they will be
excluded from buying or selling things in the marketplace. This is to
accomplish a “soft extermination,” basically starving out believers or
forcing them to assimilate.
16 And he causeth all,
both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in
their right hand, or in their foreheads:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Revelation 13:16-17
After it’s clear from muscling non-conformists into a corner by
restricting their access to the market, a global, powerful government
will then begin a “hard extermination,” rounding up believers and
murdering them like dogs in a persecution worse than anything the world
has ever seen (including the Holocaust).
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake…21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.Matthew 24:9,21
This will, in part, be possible by some kind of contraption – whether
natural or supernatural – that will detect believing non-conformists
who have refused to identify with the global grand poobah (known as the
anti-christ) and it will sound an alarm, alerting people that an
‘unauthorized person’ is nearby.
15 And he had power to
give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast
should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image
of the beast should be killed. Revelation 13:15
You can figure out how that will be done, because it doesn’t leave
much to the imagination in a period in which we’re talking about “health passports” scanning temperatures of passing crowds of people, putting everyone into a facial recognition database (even liberals in America’s cities are scared over this one and have started to ban the tech),
and are micro-chipping Lassie. I’m not a prophet or the son of one, but
I surmise it will be one of these things, a combination thereof, or
something eerily similar. In one way or another, those little images are
going to scream out and snitch, something that John was seeing in his
revelation and trying to convey to us with his 1st Century vocabulary.
And when all this fails to round up believers for the gas chamber,
people will snitch on each other. Even family members will turn one
another in for not conforming to the government regulations.
nonsite | Black Lives Matter sentiment is essentially a militant expression of
racial liberalism. Such expressions are not a threat but rather a
bulwark to the neoliberal project that has obliterated the social wage,
gutted public sector employment and worker pensions, undermined
collective bargaining and union power, and rolled out an expansive
carceral apparatus, all developments that have adversely affected black
workers and communities. Sure, some activists are calling for defunding
police departments and de-carceration, but as a popular slogan, Black
Lives Matter is a cry for full recognition within the established terms
of liberal democratic capitalism. And the ruling class agrees.
During the so-called Black Out Tuesday social media event, corporate
giants like Walmart and Amazon widely condemned the killing of George
Floyd and other policing excesses. Gestural anti-racism was already
evident at Amazon, which flew the red, black and green black liberation
flag over its Seattle headquarters this past February. The world’s
wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos even took the time to respond personally to
customer upset that Amazon expressed sympathy with the George Floyd
protestors. “‘Black lives matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t
matter,” the Amazon CEO wrote, “I have a 20-year-old son, and I simply
don’t worry that he might be choked to death while being detained one
day. It’s not something I worry about. Black parents can’t say the
same.” Bezos also pledged $10 million in support of “social justice
organizations,” i.e., the ACLU Foundation, the Brennan Center for
Justice, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law, the NAACP, the National Bar Association, the National
Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Urban
League, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the United Negro College
Fund, and Year Up. The leadership of Warner, Sony Music and Walmart each
committed $100 million to similar organizations. The protests have
provided a public relations windfall for Bezos and his ilk. Only weeks
before George Floyd’s killing, Amazon, Instacart, GrubHub and other
delivery-based firms, which became crucial for commodity circulation
during the national shelter-in-place, faced mounting pressure from labor
activists over their inadequate protections, low wages, lack of health
benefits and other working conditions. Corporate anti-racism is the
perfect egress from these labor conflicts. Black lives matter to the
front office, as long as they don’t demand a living wage, personal
protective equipment and quality health care.
Perhaps the most important point in Reed’s 2016 essay is his
insistence that Black Lives Matter, and cognate notions like the New Jim
Crow are empirically and analytically wrong and advance an equally
wrong-headed set of solutions. He does not deny the fact of racial
disparity in criminal justice but points us towards a deeper causation
and the need for more fulsome political interventions.
Racism alone
cannot fully explain the expansive carceral power in our midst, which,
as Reed notes, is “the product of an approach to policing that emerges
from an imperative to contain and suppress the pockets of economically
marginal and sub-employed working-class populations produced by
revanchist capitalism.” Most Americans have now rejected the worst
instances of police abuse, but not the institution of policing, nor the
consumer society it services. As we should know too well by now, white
guilt and black outrage have limited political currency, and neither has
ever been a sustainable basis for building the kind of popular and
legislative majorities needed to actually contest entrenched power in
any meaningful way.
theamericanconservative | Lincoln’s legacy as the Great Emancipator has survived the century and a
half since then largely intact. But there have been cracks in this
image, mostly caused by questioning academics who decried him as an
overt white supremacist. This view eventually entered the mainstream
when Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote misleadingly in her lead essay to the “1619 Project” that Lincoln “opposed black equality.”
Today, we find Lincoln statues desecrated. Neither has the memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry,
one of the first all-black units in the Civil War, survived the recent
protests unscathed. To many on the left, history seems like the
succession of one cruelty by the next. And so, justice may only be
served if we scrap the past and start from a blank slate. As a result,
Lincoln’s appeal that we stand upright and enjoy our liberty gets lost
to time.
Ironically, this will only help the cause of
Robert E. Lee—and the modern corporations who rely on cheap, inhumane
labor to keep themselves going.
***
The
main idea driving the “1619 Project” and so much of recent scholarship
is that the United States of America originated in slavery and white
supremacy. These were its true founding ideals. Racism, Hannah-Jones
writes, is in our DNA.
Such arguments don’t make any sense, as the historian Barbara Fields clairvoyantly argued in a groundbreaking essay
from 1990. Why would Virginia planters in the 17th century import black
people purely out of hate? No, Fields countered, the planters were
driven by a real need for dependable workers who would toil on their
cotton, rice, and tobacco fields for little to no pay.
Before black
slaves did this work, white indentured servants had. (An indentured
servant is bound for a number of years to his master, i.e. he can’t pack
up and leave to find a new opportunity elsewhere.)
After
1776 everything changed. Suddenly the new republic claimed that “all
men are created equal”—and yet there were millions of slaves who still
couldn’t enjoy this equality. Racism helped to square our founding
ideals with the brute reality of continued chattel slavery: Black people
simply weren’t men.
But
in the eyes of the Southern slavocracy, the white laboring poor of the
North also weren’t truly human. Such unholy antebellum figures as the
social theorist George Fitzhugh or South Carolina Senator James Henry
Hammond urged
that the condition of slavery be expanded to include poor whites, too.
Their hunger for a cheap, subservient labor source did not stop at black
people, after all.
Always remember Barbara Fields’s
formula: The need for cheap labor comes first; ideologies like white
supremacy only give this bleak reality a spiritual gloss.
The true cause of the Civil War—and it bears constant repeating for all the doubters—was whether slavery would expand its reach or whether “free labor”
would reign supreme. The latter was the dominant ideology of the North:
Free laborers are independent, self-reliant, and eventually achieve
economic security and independence by the sweat of their brow. It’s the
American Dream.
But if that is so, then the Civil War ended in a tie—and its underlying conflict was never really settled.
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