The theory has long been in vogue within academics. Trump now seeks
to root it out within the administrative state. Among the ideas
underpinning CRT, now formally condemned by the White House, is that the
law and all accompanying legal institutions are inherently racist, and
that race itself has no biological grounds. The concept of ethnicity is,
instead, the product of a white society that uses systems and
institutions to advance its own interests at the expense of minorities.
Why does this academic thesis matter? Because it drives government
action. And because, during this summer of unrest following George
Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, the
president has been asked numerous times if he believes that systemic
racism is a problem in America. His answer has been no, and a clearer
picture of his thinking comes in the form of a memo authored by OMB
Director Russ Vought.
“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch
agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’
government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,”
Vought writes in the memo, obtained first by RCP.
“For example, according to press reports, employees across the
Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are
told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where
they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism,’” he continued.
As the country grapples with questions of race and equality in
policing, Trump has ordered that any programing relating to “white
privilege” end immediately. According to the White House, such ideas are
“divisive, anti-American propaganda.”
vanityfair | This is a brotherhood. It abides no law but its own. It scorns the
personhood of all but its own brethren. It derides all creatures outside
its own clan. And for that reason, the brotherhood is not only a hurdle
impeding reform. It is the architecture of an alternate reality, one
that seethes and bubbles just beneath the surface of our own. And it’s a
reality in which none of us are human.
In May, the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police elected John Catanzara as president. According to a 2017 report
by the United States Department of Justice, the police department in
Chicago “engages in a pattern or practice of using force that is in
violation of the Constitution,” where “officers’ force practices
unnecessarily endanger themselves,” “a pattern...[which] results from
systemic deficiencies in training and accountability.”
And yet,
even given the city’s abysmal standard of police conduct, in his 25
years on the force Catanzara has managed to distinguish himself from his
peers by being especially awful. According to the Citizens Police Data Project (a database of police misconduct records made public after a lawsuit and Freedom of Information Act requests), Catanzara has been the subject of 50 complaints,
putting him in the 96th percentile for allegations. At the time he was
elected to lead the FOP, Catanzara was assigned to administrative duty;
according to the Chicago Sun-Times, he is the first president to take on the role while stripped of his official police powers.
In June, when asked about the killing of George Floyd, Catanzara
referred to Officer Derek Chauvin’s actions as an “improper police
tactic.” “Explain to me how race had anything to do with it,” he went
on. “There’s no proof or evidence that race had anything to do with it.”
Catanzara has said that any lodge members showing support for
protesters could face disciplinary action from the FOP, and perhaps
expulsion.
Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police is a local chapter
of the larger national organization of the same name. The national FOP
boasts more than 2,100 such lodges, representing more than 330,000
members, which makes it, according to its website, “the world’s largest
organization of sworn law enforcement officers.”
When Chicago police officer Robert Rialmo killed Quintonio LeGrier
and Bettie Jones—a young man having a mental health episode and his
neighbor, who answered the door—Rialmo was fired. The vice president of
the Chicago FOP called the Civilian Office of Police Accountability,
which recommended the firing, “a political witch hunt on police
officers. The investigations are unfair and politically motivated.”
When
Jason Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder for the death of
Laquan McDonald, the FOP defended him. When four of the officers accused
of aiding in the cover-up were fired, a different FOP vice
president used the decision as an occasion to impress upon police board
members that they should not “fall to the pressure of the media or the
radical police haters.”
These
men were sworn officers of the law. But they did not look at Van Dyke
as a convicted murderer who had broken that law. They did not look at
him and see police—a social category, a profession, a uniform
one puts on and can take off. They looked at him and saw their brother.
They saw a different type of being, bound by an oath that transcends
civilian understanding. And by virtue of Van Dyke’s being, in their eyes, he could do no wrong.
The
same logic underlies the phrase “blue lives matter,” which semantically
equates the color of a uniform with the nonnegotiable, unshakable fact
of Blackness. It’s a phenomenon not unlike the transfiguration that took
place behind the eyes of Darren Wilson. “It looks like a demon,” he
told the grand jury in describing Michael Brown. Michael Brown: not man,
but beast. Jason Van Dyke: not man, but kin. A brother in the pantheon.
A demigod among demigods, his actions deemed necessary and virtuous
because they were wrought by his hand, and his hand was necessary and
virtuous.
Of course, as Catanzara’s comment about support for
protesters demonstrates, it’s not that it’s impossible to be cast out
from the brotherhood. The unforgivable sin within the brotherhood is to
cast aspersions against the only people whom the brotherhood recognizes
as human—its own kind. Shoot a boy in the back, and you can still be in
the brotherhood. Side with the people who are asking questions, or raise
a fist with them, or kneel before them, or talk to them, and you are
out.
Maya Angelou had a thing she used to say—When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
Perhaps it’s time for America to heed Angelou’s advice. The Fraternal
Order of Police has told us candidly what they are—that they are not a
union, but a fraternity. A brotherhood. We ought to believe them.
NYTimes | Here is the basic argument of mainstream
political opinion, especially among Democrats, that dominated in the
decades leading up to Mr. Trump and the populist revolt he came to
represent: A global economy that outsources jobs to low-wage countries
has somehow come upon us and is here to stay. The central political
question is not to how to change it but how to adapt to it, to alleviate
its devastating effect on the wages and job prospects of workers
outside the charmed circle of elite professionals.
The
answer: Improve the educational credentials of workers so that they,
too, can “compete and win in the global economy.” Thus, the way to
contend with inequality is to encourage upward mobility through higher
education.
The rhetoric of rising through educational achievement has echoed across
the political spectrum — from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack
Obama to Hillary Clinton. But the politicians espousing it have missed
the insult implicit in the meritocratic society they are offering: If
you did not go to college, and if you are not flourishing in the new
economy, your failure must be your own fault.
It is important
to remember that most Americans — nearly two-thirds — do not have a
four-year college degree. By telling workers that their inadequate
education is the reason for their troubles, meritocrats moralize success
and failure and unwittingly promote credentialism — an insidious
prejudice against those who do not have college degrees.
The
credentialist prejudice is a symptom of meritocratic hubris. By 2016,
many working people chafed at the sense that well-schooled elites looked
down on them with condescension. This complaint was not without
warrant. Survey research bears out what many working-class voters
intuit: At a time when racism and sexism are out of favor (discredited
though not eliminated), credentialism is the last acceptable prejudice.
In
the United States and Europe, disdain for the less educated is more
pronounced, or at least more readily acknowledged, than prejudice
against other disfavored groups. In a series of surveys conducted in the
United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, a team of social
psychologists led by Toon Kuppens found that college-educated
respondents had more bias against less-educated people than they did
against other disfavored groups. The researchers surveyed attitudes
toward a range of people who are typically victims of discrimination. In
Europe, this list included Muslims and people who are poor, obese,
blind and less educated; in the United States, the list also included
African-Americans and the working class. Of all these groups, the poorly
educated were disliked most of all.
Beyond
revealing the disparaging views that college-educated elites have of
less-educated people, the study also found that elites are unembarrassed
by this prejudice. They may denounce racism and sexism, but they are
unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.
By
the 2000s, citizens without a college degree were not only looked down
upon; in the United States and Western Europe, they were also virtually
absent from elective office. In the U.S. Congress, 95 percent of House
members and 100 percent of senators are college graduates. The
credentialed few govern the uncredentialed many.
It
has not always been this way. Although the well-educated have always
been disproportionately represented in Congress, as recently as the
early 1960s, about one-fourth of our elected representatives lacked a
college degree. Over the past half-decade, Congress has become more
diverse with regard to race, ethnicity and gender, but less diverse with
regard to educational credentials and class.
One
consequence of the diploma divide is that very few members of the
working class ever make it to elective office. In the United States,
about half of the labor force is employed in working-class jobs, defined
as manual labor, service industry and clerical jobs. But fewer than 2
percent of members of Congress worked in such jobs before their
election.
dailybeast | “For decades, America’s Muslim community has endured blanket
portrayals that focus on one thing, not their families or individual
achievements or even anything about Islam,” she said Wednesday. “Nope,
just one thing: terrorism. Particularly after 9/11, profiling became a
near American obsession for anybody Brown—god forbid with a beard or
headscarf, whether they were Muslim or not, traveling through an airport
could be hell. Physical attacks on not just Muslims, but Sikhs, who are
not Muslim, increased.”
After noting how prevalent anti-Muslim
stereotypes have been in media and entertainment, Reid then wondered
aloud why there was a double standard when it came to describing
extremism among white right-wingers compared to Muslim terrorism, taking
aim at how the president has radicalized his base.
“It’s the
misportrayal that is the problem,” she stated. “We’re all too quick to
call out those who radicalize young men who are vulnerable. There have
been treatments of this all over cable news for years. But when white
Christians are radicalized, we don’t react the same way. When was the
last time Donald Trump or anyone in his campaign was asked if they are
willing to condemn the Boogaloo Boys by name?”
Touching on her own
remarks, Reid was largely unapologetic, insisting that her comments
were taken in bad faith and misconstrued.
“I asked that question
on Monday, and there was a lot of conversation, particularly online
after the segment aired, some of which was frankly not in good faith,”
the ReidOut host declared. “But some of the conversation
reflected the genuine feelings of people who have been subjected to the
kind of stereotyping that I just described.”
“And who take matters
like this to heart because of it,” she continued. “And we should all be
sensitive to that, and I certainly should have been sensitive to that.”
She then turned to Newsweek
editor-at-large Naveed Jamali, who was her guest during the Monday
discussion, and said it was “not exactly the most artful way of asking
that question, obviously, based on the reaction.”
“The way that I framed it obviously didn’t work,” she added.
Besides
Jamali, Reid also brought on Dalia Mogahed, the director of research
for The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, to discuss
whether Reid made a “fair analogy."
Mogahed, for her part, said
that Reid has “always given Muslim voices a fair shake” before noting
that while the MSNBC host “intended” to ask a fair question, the way “it
landed” was “unintentionally saying that Muslims were inherently
violent.”
timesofisrael | According to her bio
on the George Washington University website, among Krug’s areas of
expertise are Africa, Latin America and African American History. She
has written two books, including “Fugitive Modernities.”
“My ancestors, unknown, unnamed, who
bled life into a future they had no reason to believe could or should
exist. My brother, the fastest, the smartest, the most charming of us
all. Those whose names I cannot say for their own safety, whether in my
barrio, in Angola, or in Brazil,” she wrote in the introduction.
Krug also reportedly used the name Jess La Bombalera in activist circles.
A student who took a class with Krug in 2019 said she was “shocked” the professor lied.
“It was the last thing on my mind to think she was lying. I would think I had the details confused,” Anmol Goraya told CNN.
George Washington University said it was aware of Krug’s post but wouldn’t further comment.
Krug’s admission was similar to that of Rachel Dolezal, who in 2015
stepped down as the head of a local NAACP chapter after her parents said
she had been posing as Black for years but was actually white.
epsilontheory | I was 14 years old when I read Lucifer’s Hammer, the
post-apocalyptic novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle about a comet
hitting the Earth. It’s pretty standard end-of-the-world fare, with
mile-high tsunamis and volcanos emerging from earthquakes and billions
dead and an intrepid community of surviving scientists/libertarians
defeating the cannibal, faux-religious, statist army-remaindered horde
that attacks without warning or honor.
But most of all, I remember the voice of Ego whispering this in my ear:
“You know, this whole post-apocalyptic thing doesn’t sound half bad!”
Sure,
I’d have to survive that initial strike. And sure, it’s all quite sad
that people I love (i.e., my parents) would have to die. But tbh, they
had a good run, and I’m sure it would be a painless death. And this
post-apocalyptic society … why, it’s a meritocracy, where my hidden genius and quiet courage and (very) untapped virility would finally be appreciated!
Those whispers of Ego, those post-apocalyptic fantasies of a 14-year-old boy, have never left me.
I’m
56 years old, and I still fantasize about how I could take out a
motorcycle gang assaulting the farm. I’ve figured out where to set up
the enfilade line of fire, where to plant the IED and how big it would
need to be to take out a half-track armored vehicle. I’ve spent many a
pleasant hour figuring out how to construct a laser-guided RPG for when,
you know, the cannibal, faux-religious, statist army-remaindered horde
sends their helicopter out in support of the (now dead) motorcycle
advance troops and half-track APC.
If I were a betting man – and I
am – I would place a large wager that every first-world post-pubescent
reader of this note similarly burdened with a y-chromosome harbors
similar fantasies. Not just Harry Potter/Disney/comic book
oh-I’m-a-special-orphan-destined-to-lead-a-grand-struggle fantasies, but
“real” post-apocalyptic how-do-I-kill-the-motorcycle-gang fantasies.
NARRATOR:
The
world after the comet hits is not a meritocracy, but a brutal
dictatorship without end, where boys like you are used as fodder and
feed. And girls like your daughters are used as worse.
Death is pain incarnate, always and without exception. And yet there are worse pains that await you after the comet hits.
This is not a fucking game.
It has taken me a lifetime to hear the Narrator more loudly than the Ego.
Unfortunately, we believers have a problem. That problem is that no one gives a damn about burning down the systems of control and nudge when their actual house and their actual car are actually burning.
But that’s the comet that’s speeding our way, a comet of endemic urban violence.
And for so many people – especially young men with the voice of Ego now shouting in their heads as the whispers are turned up to 11 by the amps of party and media – they think that sounds just dandy.
This has all happened before.
Back
in the day, when I was a young pup of a poli sci professor at NYU,
actual Marxists roamed the Earth. In my experience, Marxists are
infallibly delightful conversationalists, and at an academic dinner I
got to talking with two of these ancient dinosaurs (one of whom remains
an avowed Marxist to this day and the other who had forsworn his faith)
about the 1968 riots in Paris. They had both been there, manning the
barricades! The Mother of All Protests! A national uprising against the
police powers of a far rightwing President hellbent on reshaping the
French republic!
I asked them to describe their experience. What was it like to be a part of May 1968,
a student-led protest that mobilized the working class and shut down
the entire country of France? That forced de Gaulle to (briefly) flee
the country?
The old Marxist looked at his friend, the now disavowed Marxist.
“Well, I remember I got laid a lot.”
“Yes,” said his friend with a wink, “it was quite a lot of fun.”
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the dirty little secret
of every riot and protest and looting that ever existed in the history
of mankind … IT’S FUN.
And not to be
outdone, here’s the dirty little secret of every counterprotest and
posse and vigilante group and “militia” that ever existed in the history
of mankind … IT’S FUN.
epsilontheory| Blake: Put.
That coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only. You think I’m f**king
with you? I am not f**king with you. I’m here from downtown. I’m here
from Mitch and Murray. And I’m here on a mission of mercy. Your name’s
Levine? You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?
Moss: I don’t gotta sit here and listen to this s**t.
Blake: You
certainly don’t, pal, ’cause the good news is — you’re fired. The bad
news is — you’ve got, all of you’ve got just one week to regain your
jobs starting with tonight. Starting with tonight’s sit. Oh? Have I got
your attention now? Good. ‘Cause we’re adding a little something to this
month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac
Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak
knives. Third prize is you’re fired. Get the picture? You laughing now?
You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money for their names. You
can’t close the leads you’re given, you can’t close s**t. You ARE s**t!
Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it ’cause you are going OUT!
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
The
truth is that unless you are really rich, you work for Mitch &
Murray. Yes, that includes you, Vox writer changing the world one
smarter-than-thou opinion at a time. Yes, that includes you, tech
start-up developer kicking back in your flair-bedecked WeWork cubicle.
We
don’t feel the crushing power of the Mitch & Murray pecking order
as palpably as the salesmen berated by Alec Baldwin feel it, because the
language of David Mamet has been replaced by the language of Dick
Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The modern Mitch & Murrays don’t browbeat us. They nudge us.
They convince us that a set of steak knives is a darn good outcome,
that it’s a promise kept rather than a threat delivered. Coffee’s not
just for closers. No, no … coffee is for EVERYONE. In fact, let’s put
some caffeine into everything you drink. Something nice and caffeinated
to wash down that big slice of office birthday cake.
Most importantly, today’s Mitch & Murray writ large — the system
of Mitch & Murrays — provides credit to the non-rich, essentially
limitless credit for anything that’s intangible or depreciates quickly,
anything that lets the non-rich FEEL rich. How about a nice dinner out?
New smartphone? You deserve it! How about a couple of years of graduate
school? More than a couple of years, shooting for a tenure track
position? [Heh, heh] I mean … why certainly, even better!
Go on, try the eggs. They’re delicious.
The pecking order is real. It is beautifully masked in modern human
society, but no less brutal and no less cruel than in the chicken coop.
How
do you escape the pecking order? How do you quit Mitch & Murray?
Well, you can make a lot of money. That’s the tried and true method.
Enough money to build a walled garden around you and yours, expanding it
as you can to take in others. F-you money. Somewhere between merely
rich and really rich should do the trick, depending on how many
generations you want to protect within those walls. Unfortunately,
that’s a big gulf these days, that distance between merely rich and
really rich, and it’s getting wider every day.
But there’s another way.
No
matter how much money we have or don’t have, we can reject the idea
that we can be Someone Who Matters to the World and instead embrace the
idea that we must be Someone Who Matters to the Pack. Now maybe your
pack IS the world. Probably not, but maybe. If it is, then be bold and
matter to the world. But more likely it’s your family. More likely it’s
your friends. More likely it’s your partners and employees. More likely
it’s your church. More likely it’s your school. More likely it’s your
country. It’s damn sure not your political party. It’s damn sure not an
oligarch.
Why should we reject this notion of being Someone Who
Matters to the World? Because that’s the shiny lure that the Nudging
State and the Nudging Oligarchy dangle in front of bright young things.
And bright not-so-young people, too. The shiny lure of mattering
is how they set the hook — which is debt — and that’s how they reel you
in. Because once you’ve got that hook in your mouth … once you’re up to
your eyeballs in debt … it’s soooo hard to ever get free. I know of
which I speak. So do a lot of people reading this note, I bet.
The
simple truth is that we can’t escape the pecking order. We can’t escape
economic inequality and the hard-wired impulses to brutality and
cruelty used to support inequality. Not for long, anyway. Walled gardens
never last.
“American Airlines Group
Inc. said it would shed 19,000 workers by Oct. 1 as the carrier
prepares to downsize to cope with the coronavirus pandemic’s blow to
travel demand, which isn’t expected to rebound for years. The
reductions include 17,500 furloughs of pilots, flight attendants,
mechanics and others, as well as 1,500 cuts from management and
administrative ranks. Airlines received $25 billion in federal aid to pay workers through the end of September to avoid mass layoffs. Unions and airline officials have advocated for another round of funds to keep employees on the job through March 2021.“
Doug
Parker, American Airlines CEO and Chairman of the Board, wrote a letter
to his employees today that pretty much defines high-functioning
sociopathy.
I’m going to reprint excerpts from that letter
– which is couched in the saccharine vocabulary of modern team-speak,
but is in truth a shakedown letter to employees and a ransom note to the
US government – and then I’m going to tell you a few things about Doug.
Dear fellow team members,
We respect and greatly appreciate the sacrifice these team members have made, and continue to make, for American and their fellow team members.
Even with those sacrifices, approximately 19,000 of our team members will be involuntarily furloughed or separated from the company on Oct. 1.
The one possibility of avoiding these involuntary reductions on Oct. 1 is a clean extension of the PSP.
If
you haven’t already done so, you can let your elected officials know
just how important a PSP extension is to you, your families and our
economic recovery.
The American Airlines team is no stranger to adversity, and in adversity, we always come through.
We will come out on the other side of this crisis. Until then, take heart that we will get through this together.
The professionalism and care this team has shown over the past six months has been nothing short of extraordinary. We are all American
Airlines, and we will survive, and one day, thrive again. Thank you for
all you are doing now, and tomorrow, to carry us through.
Know who’s not sweating the October 1 firing line? Know who’s surviving and thriving just fine, thank you very much?
Doug Parker, that’s who.
Here
are some fun facts about Doug Parker and his “leadership” of American
Airlines since he became Chairman and CEO of the company in 2013, after
its merger with US Airways. All of this (and more) can be found in a
long note I wrote on the airline bailout back in March.
opendemocracy | When some of the recent Black Lives Matter protests against the
murder of George Floyd ended in riots, the pushback was immediate and
predictable: different visions of Martin Luther King’s legacy were
fought over, rival interpretations of the Civil Rights Movement were
deployed, and contrasting lessons were identified.
There can be no
single interpretation of the turbulent 1960s, but there is much we can
learn from historical work on this period. In particular, Omar Wasow’ s recent analysis of the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement
makes a provocative argument that “nonviolent” protest helped to shape a
national conversation which raised the profile of the civil rights
agenda and led to electoral gains for the Democrats in the early 1960s.
By
contrast, he argues, rioting in US cities after the assassination of
Martin Luther King pushed white Americans towards the rhetoric of ‘law
and order,’ causing large shifts among white voters towards the
Republican Party and helping Richard Nixon to win the 1968 presidential
election shortly thereafter.
This is a controversial argument, even costing political analyst David Shor his job
when he recently tweeted about Wasow’s thesis and received an angry
response from those who saw it as a “tone-deaf” attack on legitimate
protest. At the root of this controversy are important questions about
whether framing riots as a ‘tactical choice’ is appropriate, who that
framing makes responsible for ongoing racial injustice, and what the
fact that we’re having this debate says about people’s views of politics and priorities. As King warned in 1968:
“A
riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed
to hear?...it has failed to hear that large segments of white society
are more concerned about tranquillity and the status quo than about
justice and humanity.”
But social movements can’t afford to
ignore these arguments completely. The idea that violent protests might
be risky is not surprising, since in societies that pride themselves on
being ‘peaceful,’ riots violate many taken-for-granted liberal values.
Wasow’s rigorous, quantitative analysis gives this argument a
historical foundation but it also has obvious resonances for today, at a
time when President Trump is running for re-election on a ‘law and
order’ platform against the background of street protests in cities like
Portland and Kenosha.
However, the implications of Wasow’s
arguments are not as straightforward as they might appear. One immediate
issue concerns his methodology and the size of the effects he
estimates. The models reported in Wasow’s paper don’t include any
controls for time, which are normally included in statistical analyses
to control for general trends affecting society as a whole, trends we
assume would have happened anyway.
nakedcapitalism |This is the fourth installment of a six-part interview. For the previous parts, see Part
1, Part 2, and Part
3. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.”
ANDREW: The GLOs in your future libertarian society
will be continuations of GLOs that exist now – basically large
corporations and high net worth individuals. And the modern GLOs are
continuations of GLOs that existed in the past.
On The Question Of Property Rights
ANDREW: Can you give me some real historical examples of how GLOs have justly appropriated rights?
CNC: [T]he English settlers [in] North
America… demonstrated how… private property originated naturally through
a person’s original appropriation… of previously unused land
(wilderness). [267]
ANDREW: North America was uninhabited when the English settlers got there?
CNC: Opponents of libertarianism love saying
“What about the Indians?” They get excited at the thought that
libertarians will be forced to defend the property rights of
dispossessed native peoples, which a lot of libertarians would
rather not do. What they don’t realize is that John Locke solved this
problem three hundred years ago. Locke explained that …the Benefit Mankind receives from [an acre of land
in England], is worth 5 [pounds], [whereas the benefit from an acre of
land in America] possibly not worth a Penny, if all the Profit an Indian
received from it were to be valued, and
sold here; at least, I may truly say, not 1/1000. ‘Tis Labour then
which puts the greatest part of Value upon Land, without which it would
scarcely be worth any thing…
ANDREW: Wait. Did Locke just start to
suggest that since the Indians did not do efficient agriculture, they
did not really own the land?
CNC: Exactly. To properly claim land, you
have to do real economic work on the land, and the Indians did not do
that because they were too primitive. So Locke proved that that the
Indians did not own the land. That meant the settlers
could treat the land as if it was unclaimed.
ANDREW: Are you sure that’s what Locke meant? Locke is famous for defending liberty and natural rights.
CNC: Why are you surprised? In this example,
Locke defended the liberty of settlers to claim unused land, and their
natural right to keep that land once they had claimed it. And yes, I’m
sure that’s what Locke meant – go read his
second Treatise on Government.
ANDREW: Were the original territory GLOs in Europe also security GLOs?
technologyreview | The
founder of macroeconomics predicted that capitalism would last for
approximately 450 years. That’s the length of time between 1580, when
Queen Elizabeth invested Spanish gold stolen by Francis Drake, and 2030,
the year by which John Maynard Keynes assumed humanity would have
solved the problem of our needs and moved on to higher concerns.
It’s
true that today the system seems on the edge of transformation, but not
in the way Keynes hoped. Gen Z’s fate was supposed to be to relax into a
life of leisure and creativity. Instead it is bracing for stagnant
wages and ecological crisis.
In a famous essay from the early 1930s called “Economic
Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” Keynes imagined the world 100
years in the future. He spotted phenomena like job automation (which he
called “technological unemployment”) coming, but those changes, he
believed, augured progress: progress toward a better society, progress
toward collective liberation from work. He was worried that the
transition to this world without toil might be psychologically
difficult, and so he suggested that three-hour workdays could serve as a
transitional program, allowing us to put off the profound question of
what to do when there’s nothing left to do.
Well, we
know the grandchildren in the title of Keynes’s essay: they’re the kids
and younger adults of today. The prime-age workforce of 2030 was born
between 1976 and 2005. And though the precise predictions he made about
the rate of economic growth and accumulation were strikingly accurate,
what they mean for this generation is very different from what he
imagined.
Instead of progress toward a labor-free
utopia, America has experienced disappearing jobs as a kind of economic
climate change. Apocalyptic forecasts loom while poor and working-class
communities take the brunt of the early impacts: wage stagnation,
deregulated and unsafe workplaces, an epidemic of opioid addiction. The
increasingly profligate wealth on the other end of society is no less
disturbing.
What the hell happened? To figure out why
Generation Z isn’t going to be Generation EZ, we have to ask some
fundamental questions about economics, technology, and progress. After
we assumed for a century that a better world would appear on top of our
accumulated stuff, the assumptions appear unfounded. Things are getting
worse.
theamericanconservative | Teenager Kyle Rittenhouse’s shooting of three men in Kenosha,
Wisconsin, has sharpened the debate between left and right over whether
rioting can be justly met with violence. Opinions about Rittenhouse’s
attempt to interpose himself and his AR-15 between rioters and buildings
in Kenosha have become entangled with beliefs about the relative value
of property versus people, a juxtaposition dishonestly advanced by the
left.
Writing in The Nation, R.H. Lossin captured the
Left’s point of view artfully, proclaiming: “Plateglass [sic] windows
don’t bleed. They don’t die and leave loved ones grieving. They don’t
contribute to the collective trauma and terror experienced by their
communities. They just break, and then, at some point, they are replaced
by identical sheets of glass.”
Leaving aside her comical lack of curiosity about where, exactly,
sheets of glass come from, Lossin expresses a widespread sentiment, and
it has a certain indisputable logic: things are not, after all, people.
The response of too many on the right, unfortunately, has been to take the bait. They’re ably represented by National Review
editor Rich Lowry, who argued that the person-property distinction
neglects how people depend on their property for shelter and sustenance.
Destroy or steal it, and you inflict physical harm.
This
argument, while true, is the ante in a utilitarian shell game, wherein
we must weigh the value of property against the cost of harming someone
who wants to take it. Whether a store owner can resist people trying to
burn down his business suddenly turns on whether he has insurance. Or
his track record in the community, as when the author of the newly
released book, In Defense of Looting (on sale in soon-to-be
looted stores near you!) told NPR that small, locally owned businesses
don’t do enough for workers, and are therefore no more deserving of
protection than large chain stores. This property versus people framing
pushes conservatives into a losing corner: if you’re really pro-life,
how can you justify firing a shotgun at someone who just wants to smash a
window and take some of your stuff?
As with so many other
debates, conservatives lose the moment they adopt the left’s
materialism. What’s at stake in these riots is not property, but the
civic order. The most honest, ardent leftists admit as much. Looting is
imperative, writes R.H. Lossin, “not because property destruction has
any moral or political value in itself, but because it is coercive. It
is an actual threat to order and a very real threat to capital.”
Describing looting advocate Vicky Osterweil’s point of view, her fawning
NPR interviewer exclaims that rioters “are engaging in a powerful
tactic that questions the justice of ‘law and order,’ and the
distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society.”
While we quibble with a leftist intellectual vanguard about the
relative value of plate glass windows versus human life, mob rule is
being solidified as the new norm in our cities. The question is not
whether this should be met with force because of the inherent damage it
inflicts on property. The question is whether civil society is worth
preserving with violence.
This
question answers itself. When civil society disappears, individualized
violence is the only means of resolving disputes. In the state of
nature, red in tooth and claw, might makes right. Withdraw the police
long enough, and you get Kyle Rittenhouse. The shame of it is that so
many able-bodied men in Kenosha relied on a boy from Illinois to defend
their streets. The danger is that masses of them will begin to feel
similarly responsible for confronting hoodlums—as witnessed recently in
the streets of Portland.
kiro7 | Kenosha
County Sheriff David Beth in 2018 told reporters that five Black
shoplifters who stole about $5,000 worth of clothing before crashing
into a teenage driver while fleeing police should be “warehoused” and
not allowed to father children.
Beth, who is already under fire following the Aug. 23 shooting of Jacob
Blake by Kenosha city police officers, as well as the killings of two
men subsequently protesting Blake’s shooting, is now facing calls for
his immediate resignation. Those calls stem from, in part, Beth’s
comments regarding a group of Black shoplifters arrested in January
2018.
“I have no issue with these five people completely disappearing,” Beth said during the controversial news conference. “At (this) point, these people are no longer an asset to our community, and they just need to disappear.”
The Washington Post reported
that Beth made his incendiary comments in January 2018 after three men
and two women from Milwaukee shoplifted clothing from a Tommy Hilfiger
outlet store in Kenosha.
Before he even began speaking, Beth admitted that what was to come
would be “un-politically correct.” Four days later, he was forced to
issue a public apology amid backlash from the community and faith
leaders in Kenosha County.
Beth apologized to anyone he offended but refused to retract the comments he’d made.
One of the reasons: The Aug. 23 shooting of Blake, a Black man shot at
least seven times in the back by a Kenosha police officer as he tried to
get into his vehicle, where his three children sat waiting for him.
According to Blake’s family, he was partially paralyzed by the shooting.
opendemocracy | In each ‘Queer Eye’ episode, the ‘Fab Five’ co-hosts give a
struggling hero – usually a depressed man – a lifestyle refresh:
teaching him to cook something scrumptious, buying him stylish clothes,
grooming him, doing up his house and supporting him to confront troubles
in their life.
What this means for each character varies. But the
underlying message of every cry-athon episode is the same. Toxic
masculinity and competitive ultra-capitalism have taught men life
lessons which make us miserable. To find joy, we need to unlearn.
While
reality TV is notoriously cruel, the ‘Queer Eye’ cast specialise in
kindness. Each of them opens up about their own struggles: grooming
expert Jonathan Van Ness is an HIV+ non-binary former sex worker and
ex-meth addict. Interior designer Bobby Berk is estranged from his
Bible-belt family, and was a homeless teenager.
Culture expert
Karamo Brown is of Jamaican-Mexican heritage, grew up “very poor” and
became a father at 17. Fashion aficionado Tan France comes from a “very strict”
Muslim household in Doncaster, and is one of the first openly gay
people of South Asian descent on a major show. Chef Antoni Porowski, the
son of Polish migrants to Canada, is estranged from his mother.
Each
episode, I would sob to a stream of touching moments and familiar
feelings, and an unbearable pressure would slip from my chest.
Far Right masculinity
As
I gossiped around that Veronese conference hall, I realised I had
rarely met people who so desperately needed to learn from the Fab Five.
The
event was a sort of rally for far Right forces hoping to storm the
European elections. But the combination of speakers seemed a bit
incongruous: Catholic bishops and alt-Right YouTube stars; Italian far
Right politicians and American evangelical pastors. While most started
their speeches by announcing the enormous number of children they had
fathered – as though success comes with the capacity to ejaculate – they
were otherwise an odd mix.
When you met their audience, it all
made sense. This was a world which gave struggling men meaning. Rather
than helping us confront our demons, it suggested we worship them,
weaving myths about masculine superiority, encouraging a world in which
husbands and fathers are mini-dictators. A world where “the strong and
the weak will know their place”, as Franco’s great grandson, the
self-proclaimed heir to the French throne, declared from the main stage.
The key preacher in this world wasn’t any priest. He wasn’t even there: it was Jordan Peterson.
oregonlive | A
48-year-old man who was accused of carrying a loaded gun at an earlier
downtown Portland protest is under investigation in the fatal shooting
Saturday night of a right-wing demonstrator after a pro-Trump rally.
Michael
Forest Reinoehl calls himself an anti-fascist and has posted videos and
photos of demonstrations he attended since late June, accompanied by
the hashtags #blacklivesmatter, #anewnation and #breonnataylor.
Reinoehl
was raised in Sandy and has had recent addresses in Northeast Portland,
Gresham and Clackamas. He described himself on social media and in a
video interview with Bloomberg QuickTake News as a professional
snowboarder and contractor who has former military experience but
“hated” his time in the army.
Sources
familiar with the case but not authorized to speak said police are
investigating Reinoehl. A family member also identified him as a man
captured in photos and video seen leaving the shooting scene shortly
before 9 p.m. Saturday.
Aaron
Danielson, a supporter of the conservative group Patriot Prayer, was
shot in the chest and died in the street. It was soon after most cars in
a caravan of supporters of President Donald Trump had left the city’s
downtown streets.
Reinoehl’s
posts indicate he attended many protests in Portland that began three
months ago after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis under the knee
of a police officer.
On
July 5 at one of the demonstrations, Reinoehl was cited at 2:10 a.m. in
the 700 block of Southwest Main Street on allegations of possessing a
loaded gun in a public place, resisting arrest and interfering with
police
He
was given a date to appear in court later that month, but the
allegations were dropped on July 30 with a “no complaint,” according to
court records. The documents don’t indicate why prosecutors decided not
to pursue the accusations. Reinoehl spent no time behind bars.
Brent
Weisberg, a spokesman for Multnomah County District Attorney Mike
Schmidt, said the office is still reviewing that July case involving
Reinoehl.
thesource | Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old thug suspected of shooting three
people and killing two during protests in Kenosha over the police
shooting of Jacob Blake was recently caught on camera assaulting a
woman. Camera footage shows the troubled teen jumping in a fight amongst
two women and punching a girl from behind.
Rittenhouse, who lives in Antioch, Illinois—which is about an hour north
of Chicago and about 30 minutes west of Kenosha and another teenage
male can be seen getting in a girl’s face and shouting at her.
He is also wearing the same red, white and blue Crocs shown in the viral
photo of him holding an assault rifle. After about 30 seconds, a fight
breaks out, and Kyle can then clearly be seen punching one of the girls.
Soon after a group o black men filming the incident jump Kyle for
assaulting the woman. Rittenhouse was charged Thursday by Wisconsin
prosecutors with six criminal counts—including two counts first-degree
intentional homicide and one count of attempted homicide. He also faces
charges of recklessly endangering the safety of two other victims and
possessing a weapon while under the age of 18. If convicted of the two
first-degree intentional homicide charges, he could face life in prison.
notesfromdisgraceland | In the next
few years, social disorder in developed countries could take new
dimension as demographic imbalances continue to weaken state structures
further. This could be expressed through two different modes. 1) The
discontent of ethnically excluded (e.g. Western Europe’s post-colonial
minority populations) spreads to absorb and articulate the sentiments of
other exclusions. 2) The discontent of the permanently excluded, like
African Americans, provokes a reaction of the redundant natives, the
white underclass, and triggers their uprising and backlash. Civil warfare, initially misdiagnosed as increase in crime, would escalate.
The scramble
for protection (which has already begun) assumes new forms, as the
states cannot provide it due to lack of funding and legitimation. The
state’s monopoly on violence is breached and reorganized through the
expansion of private protection armies, right-wing militias, and
different privatized police structures. This process had already been
accomplished in the post-socialist countries about 25 years ago and is
likely to serve as a blueprint for a similar transformation in the
western world.
Western
democratic states where these transformations take place will gradually
converge towards failed states. Contours of this program are already
inscribed in the appointments for high public offices by the current
administration. Combined with the other side-effects of globalization
and the underlying social fragmentation, these developments will lead to
further criminalization of societies and polarization of distribution
with escalation of corruption and dismantling of the institutions of the
democratic state as a natural consequence, implying further
instabilities. Organized crime will blossom and reinforce its
legitimacy, while developed countries will converge closer towards
criminal oligarchies or other authoritarian structures.
theamericanconservative | Since at least the inauguration, a
central question of this presidency has been whether Trump could cease
campaigning and learn to govern. Now, with less than 70 days until the
general election, a contrary question is equally pressing: will Trump
stop governing like a Republican and start campaigning again as a
populist?
Gone from Trump
2020 are the effective—if crass—messages to truckers, miners, and bikers
that carried Trump 2016 to victory. The overt appeals now go to“beautiful boaters” and “suburban housewives.”
The emphasis on protecting entitlements and building infrastructure has
given way to a payroll tax deferral and a capital gains tax cut.
The recent foray into housing policy
induces particular whiplash. Republicans have long criticized President
Obama’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) policy, under
which the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could
require local governments receiving federal funding to analyze the
demographic makeup of their communities and pursue policies to redress
racial segregation. However laudable the goal, the policy was overly
ponderous and essentially toothless,
conditioning HUD funding to state and local governments on drafting
lengthy reports, not reforming actual policy. Trump and his HUD
Secretary, Ben Carson, had attempted to improve upon AFFH policy by tying federal funds to local policies that would reduce regulatory barriers and increase housing supply.
Deregulation on behalf of families seeking affordable housing would
seem to lie at the intersection of conservative and populist priorities.
But last week they executed a campaign-season reversal.
In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Trump and Carson essentially renounced their own AFFH policy and instead pledged to “protect America’s suburbs,” advancing a new policy that allows states and localities to fulfill fair housing requirements by doing anything that “rationally relates”
to AFFH objectives. Whereas just months ago the federal government
sought affirmatively to expand housing supply, now Trump and Carson
claim such efforts offer a “path to tyranny” and a “dystopian vision of
building low-income housing units next to your suburban house.” Federal
incentives themselves represent a “radical social-engineering project”
and an attempt “to put the federal government in charge of local
decisions.”
the-sun |WENDY
Rittenhouse is a nurse’s assistant and the mom of Kyle Rittenhouse, the
alleged suspect of the two murders in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Wendy and Kyle Rittenhouse lived in an apartment south of the Wisconsin border in Antioch, Illinois. It is unclear if she drove him to the protest.
Wendy Rittenhouse is a single mom to Kyle, the alleged suspect
responsible for the murders during the Jacob Blake protests in Kenosha,
according to cops.
She works as a nurse’s assistant and lived with Kyle in a small apartment in Antioch, which is south of the Wisconsin border.
A third night of protests was underway when an “unidentified young
white man” was caught on video spraying rounds of bullets in point-blank
range at protesters in the middle of the street.
Twitter users began pointing fingers at Rittenhouse, who they claimed
was part of a “police explorer” program with Kenosha cops.
Photos of Rittenhouse holding an AR-15 gun surfaced on Twitter, and many believe the weapon was used to harm the demonstrators.
A picture surfacing the internet shows Wendy and Kyle with the caption "We Back the Blue," allegedly supporting the Blue Lives Matter movement.
americanthinker |Two
weeks ago, we learned that Sandia National Laboratories, one of only
three National Nuclear Security Administration research and development
laboratories in the United States, was mandating that its white, male
executives attend anti-white training sessions. Since then, a
whistleblower has emerged, describing in detail the anti-white “critical
race theory” that Sandia's management is foisting on employees at all
levels, even though this racial attacks in the material manifestly
violate federal law.
In mid-August, Christopher Rufo published a Twitter thread about a blatantly anti-white seminar at Sandia. To understand how wrong that seminar was, you need to know that Sandia, as a taxpayer-funded contractor
for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security
Administration, must comply with federal anti-discrimination
regulations. Thus, Executive Order 11246 Subpart B, sec. 202 states in relevant part:
The
contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for
employment because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation,
gender identity, or national origin. The contractor will take
affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that
employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race,
color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national
origin.
Last I looked, white employees ticked off two boxes in the protected classes above: race and color.
Casey
Peterson, an electrical engineer, has been unhappy about the direction
that Sandia is taking. The seminar described in Rufo’s Twitter thread –
as well as the fact that it was required only for white men – struck him
as discriminatory. Moreover, Peterson believes that critical race
theory is a dangerous form of anti-white discrimination premised up
false facts and crackpot theories.
Peterson
did something audacious in today’s environment: He pushed back hard,
creating a lengthy, detailed, factually-supported video challenging the
critical race theory that forms the basis of Sandia’s undoubtedly
illegally and contractually-violative race-based discrimination.
Christopher Rufo picks up the story:
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