Forward Theater Company has a knack for choosing plays that are accidentally a bit on the nose. Last year they planned on producing The Amateurs the story of a troupe of 14th century actors during the Black Plague which was canceled due to the outbreak of COVID-19. This season they chose The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess a play about people so entrenched in their opposing views that they cannot hear each others arguments across the enormous ideological crevasse that separates them. That describes this political moment in the U.S. to a tee.

Unfortunately this piece, available for streaming through Feb. 7, barely scratches the surface of the current, essential conversations that need to happen about race in this country. The weak script, uneven performances, and poor production values undercut the exchanges it would like to provoke.

The Niceties is a period drama set in 2016 on an elite college campus in Connecticut. It was originally inspired by the controversy surrounding a memo to Yale students from the administration that urged them not to don racially offensive costumes for Halloween. In response, one of the professors suggested that college kids wear what they want and talk to each other about crossing boundaries. This led to a much larger protest about institutional insensitivity to Yales BIPOC students and the playwrights observation that little actual communication resulted from the subsequent outrage.

Though it was only five years ago, it feels like decades have passed since then. Compared to the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in response to the murder of George Floyd last summer, two hours of vitriol over issues of political correctness on a college campus seems positively quaint. And while The Niceties documents that moment, it doesnt add to the current conversation.

The biggest problem with The Niceties is that the characters are written as types who simply personify diametrically opposing views. Janice (played by Sarah Day) is a highly esteemed, white college professor at an Ivy League school, a 60-something Baby Boomer who has been insulated from reality by her position in the ivory tower. Cynical, condescending, and occasionally oblivious, she has a very practical view of how to couch unpleasant messages to those in power and affect change in a white, patriarchal society. On the other end of the spectrum is Zoe (played by an impressive Samantha Newcomb), a bright, passionate, Black 20-year-old college junior, majoring in political science. She feels it is her duty to protest injustice, foment change, and awaken the establishment to racism wherever she sees it from colonial syllabi and whitewashed history courses to micro-aggressions of mispronouncing students names. A Millennial and an idealist, she demands attention, validation, and immediate action.

To minimally complicate the characters, Zoe is from a well-heeled East Coast family and Janice is from working-class, immigrant stock. The professor is also a lesbian who has had her own struggles with lack of representation, prejudice, and legal inequality. They take turns being right, being sanctimonious, and wielding the power in the room.

Although the authors notes urge us to see the characters as equally flawed, three-dimensional people, its hard not to loathe Janice from the start, as she tosses off tone-deaf, white-privileged statements and mounts simplistic straw-man arguments. Her suspicion of any information found on the internet and instruction to Zoe that she should just go find primary sources from 18th century enslaved people to bolster her papers thesis sound ludicrous in 2016. Her bristling at using correct pronouns for her students and hurling you people at a student during office hours are equally ridiculous.

Not to be outdone, Zoes demands for change strain credulity because they are positioned as all or nothing ultimatums. At one point she tells Janice to quit her job and get out of the way so a person of color can have her post. And although she consistently accuses her professor of not listening to her, she is just as unwilling to hear things that dont square with her experience. Her own emotional truth trumps any opposing view.

In the end, both women seize opportunities for revenge instead of reconciliation, shifting our sympathies back and forth in a way that feels manipulative. Instead of developed character arcs, the play gives us two people who suffer for their actions but dont learn from them. Their very long argument ends with a final, ominous threat instead of any kind of growth or self-awareness on either side. Even as a cautionary tale, this is unsatisfying.

Under normal conditions this would be a difficult play to stage because its very talky and static except for a scuffle over a cell phone, there is no physical action prescribed in the text. In the current virtual world of playmaking, its even more problematic and proves the point that people who know how to make amazing plays dont necessarily know how to translate them to film.

The two actresses were recorded in front of green screens in their homes and directed remotely by Jen Uphoff Gray and DiMonte Henning. But the literal distance between them deflates the tension the actors are able to muster in each scene, just like it did in FTCs previous virtual play, The Lifespan of a Fact. Instead of floating heads in boxes that were used to seeing in online readings, the actors are superimposed onto an office backdrop, but its far from seamless. The performers gazes dont always match up, so at times they are not looking at each other while speaking. Theres a green fuzzy halo around the edges of bodies and props. A physical altercation between the two of them is unconvincing. Objects appear to float in space or are disproportionate to one another. And in its best moments, the actors simply sit still on two sides of a table and argue.

Further undermining the plays performance is the fact that one actress is off-book and the other one is quite obviously reading her script on the table in front of her. This prevents the scenes from flowing naturally and breaks thoughts up in artificial places. Its also not what audiences expect from a full, professional production, even in challenging times.

There are scheduled talkbacks after four more performances, and perhaps thats where audience members can have some meaningful conversations about race. But if they do, those conversations will probably be much more informed by the Black Lives Matter movement than by the presentation of this play.

Originally posted here:

Scratching the surface - Isthmus

Four schools in the Shawnee Mission School District will have new mascots by the end of the school year after the districts board of education voted unanimously last night in favor of a policy that bans what it calls derogatory or offensive mascots.

The change will affect Belinder Elementary, Rushton Elementary, and Shawanoe Elementary Schools, and Shawnee Mission North High School in Overland Park.

This is not a recent desire for change following a Black Lives Matter summer of activism, nor is it about political correctness, Shawnee Mission North graduate Alisha Vincent told school board members. "There have been people in this community working toward more inclusive indigenous recognition for decades.

Vincents daughter Halley, a sixth grader whose future school would be Shawnee Mission North, has taken a leading role in the push for change.

For months, she collected letters of support from community groups including staff members at Haskell Indian Nations University, Navajo Nation member and Kansas Rep. Christina Haswood and the Kansas City Indian Center, and presented them to the school board.

Under the new policy, mascots must now:

It will be up to the individual school principals to bring together students, staff, parents and others to decide on a new mascot.

District Superintendent Mike Fulton said, while the selection of the mascot needs to happen by the end of the school year, the change wont be immediate.

The actual implementation of the new mascot may vary by school, he said. It depends on the nature of how big that change is, and the amount of time it will take to accomplish completing that change.

In a written statement with Board of Education President Heather Ousley, Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma called the move a first step.

The time has come to better align our language and our symbols to the values we represent, he wrote. Together, we will continue to work toward practices and procedures that treat all peoples with dignity and respect.

The move was not without opponents. An online petition to keep the Indians as Shawnee Mission Norths mascot, which it has used for 98 years, has nearly 3,000 signatures.

Emmitt Monslow, another Shawnee Mission North alumnus, asked school board members to delay the decision until later.

My biggest question I have when people are trying to remove names and images of Indians is what do we really get, as Indians, from these changes? he said. I know what we lose if we remove the names and images a seat at the table. Because after everyone has forgotten Shawnee Mission North Indians, what is the need to educate on who Indians are?

In November, Neiman Elementary School in Shawnee independently changed its mascot from the Indians to the Foxes. That change was led by the schools student council and approved by the principal and district assistant superintendent of elementary schools.

Gaylene Crouser, executive director of the Kansas City Indian Center, said the districts change is a result of a new push from students coupled with a decades-long effort from Native American organizations in the region.

Weve been asking them for years, weve been telling them for years, she said, and people are finally starting to listen.

The rest is here:

Four Shawnee Mission Schools Will Have New Mascots, After Years Of Using Native American Imagery - KMUW

It is fast becoming orthodoxy among both lefty contrarians and conservative apologists that, from the online cult of QAnon to the men and women who stormed the US Capitol in real life, the problem of the far-right stems mainly from disenfranchisement from bottled up resentment, provided no outlet by the effete snobs in publishing, exploding with righteous albeit delusional fury.

"These people know they are scorned and looked down upon," one right-wing blogger recently told a left-wing podcaster, "and the more you humiliate and make them feel powerless, the more you take away their ability to organize and express that rage, it's gonna find an outlet in more destructive ways."

Megyn Kelly, a former on-air personality at Fox News and NBC News, likewise blamed the media "the enemy of the people," in a former president's phrasing for spurring domestic right-wing terrorism. "Part of the reason we saw what happened at the Capitol here two weeks ago is because there has been a complete lack of trust, a destruction of trust in the media, and people don't know where to turn for true information," she maintained.

The problem is that this has not been the problem at all.

Civil unrest can often be viewed as the language of the unheard, per Martin Luther King, Jr.

This riot was egged on by the then-most powerful man in the world to amplify his grievance: his inability to accept he lost an election. This was a riot made up in part of small business owners, off-duty cops, military veterans, and the otherwise better off some whom even took a private jet to DC for the riot. It was largely an insurrection comprised by those to whom power has traditionally catered a white population who fears an ebbing of their privileged status, and others entering the democratic chat incited by the ultra-rich former president.

After an insurrection, an overdue national conversation about preserving democracy was drowned out, with the help of big media, by a reactionary conflation of "free speech" with the right to spread disinformation in private media. Political correctness, so-called, became "cancel culture": the red herring that, more so than overthrowing the republic, became the hot new threat to freedom and mom's apple pie.

But it has been remarkably ineffective, this recent spate of canceling. Big Tech is happy to shovel inflammatory content into the gaping mouths of consumers, blaming the algorithms they designed for the fact that anger, above all, means engagement (while the performance of wet-blanket fact check is abysmal). It has not been censorious liberalism that has ruled the online world, but capitalism. Dollars and cents. Clicks and views.

And so it is that the angriest, with the most outrageous opinions about politics and society, have not been silenced but amplified each irrational fear reported by media outlets eager to fight a no-win battle against the perception of a liberal bias.

Amid cries of censorship, reactionary content overperforms on Facebook, a site where the reactionary tabloid Breitbart, formerly run by Steve Bannon, was formally considered a "trustworthy" news entity in 2019 by the social media giant, part of an explicit appeal to the far right of the political spectrum. One cable news network has been devoted solely to airing their grievances, and at least two others have sprung up to air them even harder. There was a presidency and, for a time, two echo-chambers of Congress dedicated to "triggering the libs" on behalf of this constituency.

Right-wing extremism did not fester in dark corners. It all happened out in the open with followers led down a rabbit hole by the world's most powerful man the TV billionaire who started out promoting conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's place of birth and a cast of faux-populist millionaires willing to entertain falsehoods, on television, about everything from COVID-19 to the 2020 election.

Sedition was plotted and streamed on Facebook and Parler. While the events of January 6 were shocking, there really wasn't an element of surprise.

The belated removal of Donald Trump from platforms like Twitter is not the apotheosis of "safe space" culture, nor does it mean liberals and leftists have to put their faith in the Big Tech giants. It is, in fact, the least that could be done: holding the powerful to the same terms of service applied to shock-jock internet comedians and two-bit online harassers.

For years, the far-right used mainstream platforms to organize, these social networks indeed serving as a melting pot for locked-down conspiracy theorists to vigilante killers; half-measures to thwart this, taken after several terrorist attacks and a violent coup attempt incited by a head of state, are an embarrassed acknowledgment of this.

There are pitfalls to not allowing everything that could be said to be said, and no one trusts tech to reliably pursue the public- over self-interest. But the status quo was neither benign nor neutral. The worst rose to the top, with a lift from foreign states andAmerican politicians not the powerless who used formerly inane technology to inflame the masses. In Myanmar, that meant sparking a genocide against the Rohingya, Facebook fees serving as the 21st century Radio Rwanda. In the United States, that's a third of the Republican Party believing in QAnon, a digital rehash of a 19th-century anti-Semitic hoax.

The issue is decidedly not that the far-right among us have been denied a platform, but rather that they have been handed megaphones by corporations and politicians, Americans' worst natures exacerbated and monetized. Legitimizing a victimhood mentality that's been used to justify an increasingly violent and unhinged resentment only compounds the error.

Read more:

The US Capitol riot was not the language of the unheard - Business Insider - Business Insider

An Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind. Variations of this speech have been delivered to various AIA conferences including the 2000 Conservative University at American University

If you enjoy this speech, keep up with political correctness and how it continues to emerge on college campuses by following our Faculty Lounge blog.

Where does all this stuff that youve heard about this morning the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.

We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where this has been the case. And we have always regarded them with a mixture of pity, and to be truthful, some amusement, because it has struck us as so strange that people would allow a situation to develop where they would be afraid of what words they used. But we now have this situation in this country. We have it primarily on college campuses, but it is spreading throughout the whole society. Were does it come from? What is it?

We call it Political Correctness. The name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, its deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.

If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.

First of all, both are totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted victims groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the college, they face formal charges some star-chamber proceeding and punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.

Indeed, all ideologies are totalitarian because the essence of an ideology (I would note that conservatism correctly understood is not an ideology) is to take some philosophy and say on the basis of this philosophy certain things must be true such as the whole of the history of our culture is the history of the oppression of women. Since reality contradicts that, reality must be forbidden. It must become forbidden to acknowledge the reality of our history. People must be forced to live a lie, and since people are naturally reluctant to live a lie, they naturally use their ears and eyes to look out and say, Wait a minute. This isnt true. I can see it isnt true, the power of the state must be put behind the demand to live a lie. That is why ideology invariably creates a totalitarian state.

Second, the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past is about that one thing.

Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be victims, and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.

Fourth, both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation. When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions. When a white student with superior qualifications is denied admittance to a college in favor of a black or Hispanic who isnt as well qualified, the white student is expropriated. And indeed, affirmative action, in our whole society today, is a system of expropriation. White owned companies dont get a contract because the contract is reserved for a company owned by, say, Hispanics or women. So expropriation is a principle tool for both forms of Marxism.

And finally, both have a method of analysis that automatically gives the answers they want. For the classical Marxist, its Marxist economics. For the cultural Marxist, its deconstruction. Deconstruction essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts any meaning desired. So we find, for example, that all of Shakespeare is about the suppression of women, or the Bible is really about race and gender. All of these texts simply become grist for the mill, which proves that all history is about which groups have power over which other groups. So the parallels are very evident between the classical Marxism that were familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness.

But the parallels are not accidents. The parallels did not come from nothing. The fact of the matter is that Political Correctness has a history, a history that is much longer than many people are aware of outside a small group of academics who have studied this. And the history goes back, as I said, to World War I, as do so many of the pathologies that are today bringing our society, and indeed our culture, down.

Marxist theory said that when the general European war came (as it did come in Europe in 1914), the working class throughout Europe would rise up and overthrow their governments the bourgeois governments because the workers had more in common with each other across the national boundaries than they had in common with the bourgeoisie and the ruling class in their own country. Well, 1914 came and it didnt happen. Throughout Europe, workers rallied to their flag and happily marched off to fight each other. The Kaiser shook hands with the leaders of the Marxist Social Democratic Party in Germany and said there are no parties now, there are only Germans. And this happened in every country in Europe. So something was wrong.

Marxists knew by definition it couldnt be the theory. In 1917, they finally got a Marxist coup in Russia and it looked like the theory was working, but it stalled again. It didnt spread and when attempts were made to spread immediately after the war, with the Spartacist uprising in Berlin, with the Bela Kun government in Hungary, with the Munich Soviet, the workers didnt support them.

So the Marxists had a problem. And two Marxist theorists went to work on it: Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary. Gramsci said the workers will never see their true class interests, as defined by Marxism, until they are freed from Western culture, and particularly from the Christian religion that they are blinded by culture and religion to their true class interests. Lukacs, who was considered the most brilliant Marxist theorist since Marx himself, said in 1919, Who will save us from Western Civilization? He also theorized that the great obstacle to the creation of a Marxist paradise was the culture: Western civilization itself.

Lukacs gets a chance to put his ideas into practice, because when the home grown Bolshevik Bela Kun government is established in Hungary in 1919, he becomes deputy commissar for culture, and the first thing he did was introduce sex education into the Hungarian schools. This ensured that the workers would not support the Bela Kun government, because the Hungarian people looked at this aghast, workers as well as everyone else. But he had already made the connection that today many of us are still surprised by, that we would consider the latest thing.

In 1923 in Germany, a think-tank is established that takes on the role of translating Marxism from economic into cultural terms, that creates Political Correctness as we know it today, and essentially it has created the basis for it by the end of the 1930s. This comes about because the very wealthy young son of a millionaire German trader by the name of Felix Weil has become a Marxist and has lots of money to spend. He is disturbed by the divisions among the Marxists, so he sponsors something called the First Marxist Work Week, where he brings Lukacs and many of the key German thinkers together for a week, working on the differences of Marxism.

And he says, What we need is a think-tank. Washington is full of think tanks and we think of them as very modern. In fact they go back quite a ways. He endows an institute, associated with Frankfurt University, established in 1923, that was originally supposed to be known as the Institute for Marxism. But the people behind it decided at the beginning that it was not to their advantage to be openly identified as Marxist. The last thing Political Correctness wants is for people to figure out its a form of Marxism. So instead they decide to name it the Institute for Social Research.

Weil is very clear about his goals. In 1917, he wrote to Martin Jay the author of a principle book on the Frankfurt School, as the Institute for Social Research soon becomes known informally, and he said, I wanted the institute to become known, perhaps famous, due to its contributions to Marxism. Well, he was successful. The first director of the Institute, Carl Grunberg, an Austrian economist, concluded his opening address, according to Martin Jay, by clearly stating his personal allegiance to Marxism as a scientific methodology. Marxism, he said, would be the ruling principle at the Institute, and that never changed.The initial work at the Institute was rather conventional, but in 1930 it acquired a new director named Max Horkheimer, and Horkheimers views were very different. He was very much a Marxist renegade. The people who create and form the Frankfurt School are renegade Marxists. Theyre still very much Marxist in their thinking, but theyre effectively run out of the party. Moscow looks at what they are doing and says, Hey, this isnt us, and were not going to bless this.

Horkheimers initial heresy is that he is very interested in Freud, and the key to making the translation of Marxism from economic into cultural terms is essentially that he combined it with Freudism. Again, Martin Jay writes, If it can be said that in the early years of its history, the Institute concerned itself primarily with an analysis of bourgeois societys socio-economic sub-structure, and I point out that Jay is very sympathetic to the Frankfurt School, Im not reading from a critic here in the years after 1930 its primary interests lay in its cultural superstructure. Indeed the traditional Marxist formula regarding the relationship between the two was brought into question by Critical Theory.

The stuff weve been hearing about this morning the radical feminism, the womens studies departments, the gay studies departments, the black studies departments all these things are branches of Critical Theory. What the Frankfurt School essentially does is draw on both Marx and Freud in the 1930s to create this theory called Critical Theory. The term is ingenious because youre tempted to ask, What is the theory? The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative. They explicitly refuse to do that. They say it cant be done, that we cant imagine what a free society would look like (their definition of a free society). As long as were living under repression the repression of a capitalistic economic order which creates (in their theory) the Freudian condition, the conditions that Freud describes in individuals of repression we cant even imagine it. What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down. And, of course, when we hear from the feminists that the whole of society is just out to get women and so on, that kind of criticism is a derivative of Critical Theory. It is all coming from the 1930s, not the 1960s.

Other key members who join up around this time are Theodore Adorno, and, most importantly, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. Fromm and Marcuse introduce an element which is central to Political Correctness, and thats the sexual element. And particularly Marcuse, who in his own writings calls for a society of polymorphous perversity, that is his definition of the future of the world that they want to create. Marcuse in particular by the 1930s is writing some very extreme stuff on the need for sexual liberation, but this runs through the whole Institute. So do most of the themes we see in Political Correctness, again in the early 30s. In Fromms view, masculinity and femininity were not reflections of essential sexual differences, as the Romantics had thought. They were derived instead from differences in life functions, which were in part socially determined. Sex is a construct; sexual differences are a construct.

Another example is the emphasis we now see on environmentalism. Materialism as far back as Hobbes had led to a manipulative dominating attitude toward nature. That was Horkhemier writing in 1933 in Materialismus und Moral. The theme of mans domination of nature, according to Jay, was to become a central concern of the Frankfurt School in subsequent years. Horkheimers antagonism to the fetishization of labor, (heres were theyre obviously departing from Marxist orthodoxy) expressed another dimension of his materialism, the demand for human, sensual happiness. In one of his most trenchant essays, Egoism and the Movement for Emancipation, written in 1936, Horkeimer discussed the hostility to personal gratification inherent in bourgeois culture. And he specifically referred to the Marquis de Sade, favorably, for his protestagainst asceticism in the name of a higher morality.

How does all of this stuff flood in here? How does it flood into our universities, and indeed into our lives today? The members of the Frankfurt School are Marxist, they are also, to a man, Jewish. In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany, and not surprisingly they shut down the Institute for Social Research. And its members fled. They fled to New York City, and the Institute was reestablished there in 1933 with help from Columbia University. And the members of the Institute, gradually through the 1930s, though many of them remained writing in German, shift their focus from Critical Theory about German society, destructive criticism about every aspect of that society, to Critical Theory directed toward American society. There is another very important transition when the war comes. Some of them go to work for the government, including Herbert Marcuse, who became a key figure in the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA), and some, including Horkheimer and Adorno, move to Hollywood.

These origins of Political Correctness would probably not mean too much to us today except for two subsequent events. The first was the student rebellion in the mid-1960s, which was driven largely by resistance to the draft and the Vietnam War. But the student rebels needed theory of some sort. They couldnt just get out there and say, Hell no we wont go, they had to have some theoretical explanation behind it. Very few of them were interested in wading through Das Kapital. Classical, economic Marxism is not light, and most of the radicals of the 60s were not deep. Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for our country today, and not just in the university, Herbert Marcuse remained in America when the Frankfurt School relocated back to Frankfurt after the war. And whereas Mr. Adorno in Germany is appalled by the student rebellion when it breaks out there when the student rebels come into Adornos classroom, he calls the police and has them arrested Herbert Marcuse, who remained here, saw the 60s student rebellion as the great chance. He saw the opportunity to take the work of the Frankfurt School and make it the theory of the New Left in the United States.

One of Marcuses books was the key book. It virtually became the bible of the SDS and the student rebels of the 60s. That book was Eros and Civilization. Marcuse argues that under a capitalistic order (he downplays the Marxism very strongly here, it is subtitled, A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, but the framework is Marxist), repression is the essence of that order and that gives us the person Freud describes the person with all the hang-ups, the neuroses, because his sexual instincts are repressed. We can envision a future, if we can only destroy this existing oppressive order, in which we liberate eros, we liberate libido, in which we have a world of polymorphous perversity, in which you can do you own thing. And by the way, in that world there will no longer be work, only play. What a wonderful message for the radicals of the mid-60s! Theyre students, theyre baby-boomers, and theyve grown up never having to worry about anything except eventually having to get a job. And here is a guy writing in a way they can easily follow. He doesnt require them to read a lot of heavy Marxism and tells them everything they want to hear which is essentially, Do your own thing, If it feels good do it, and You never have to go to work. By the way, Marcuse is also the man who creates the phrase, Make love, not war. Coming back to the situation people face on campus, Marcuse defines liberating tolerance as intolerance for anything coming from the Right and tolerance for anything coming from the Left. Marcuse joined the Frankfurt School, in 1932 (if I remember right). So, all of this goes back to the 1930s.

In conclusion, America today is in the throes of the greatest and direst transformation in its history. We are becoming an ideological state, a country with an official state ideology enforced by the power of the state. In hate crimes we now have people serving jail sentences for political thoughts. And the Congress is now moving to expand that category ever further. Affirmative action is part of it. The terror against anyone who dissents from Political Correctness on campus is part of it. Its exactly what we have seen happen in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in China, and now its coming here. And we dont recognize it because we call it Political Correctness and laugh it off. My message today is that its not funny, its here, its growing and it will eventually destroy, as it seeks to destroy, everything that we have ever defined as our freedom and our culture.

See the original post:

The Origins of Political Correctness - Accuracy In Academia

If you look at what Americans have to say on issues such as immigration, the extent of white privilege, and the prevalence of sexual harassment, the authors argue, seven distinct clusters emerge: progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, the politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives, and devoted conservatives.

According to the report, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who dont belong to either extreme constitute an exhausted majority. Their members share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.

Most members of the exhausted majority, and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that political correctness is a problem in our country. Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isnt a good proxy for support of political correctnessand it turns out race isnt, either.

Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness. As one 40-year-old American Indian in Oklahoma said in his focus group, according to the report:

It seems like everyday you wake up something has changed Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary.

The one part of the standard narrative that the data partially affirm is that African Americans are most likely to support political correctness. But the difference between them and other groups is much smaller than generally supposed: Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness. This means that they are only four percentage points less likely than whites, and only five percentage points less likely than the average, to believe that political correctness is a problem.

If age and race do not predict support for political correctness, what does? Income and education.

While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment.

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Large Majorities Dislike Political Correctness - The Atlantic

Political correctness, you all should know, is a term that seems tocome from students, not from faculty. I told my son about the newphrase I was hearing from my colleagues, and he said, "Oh, we usedto say that three or four years ago." Ultimately I supposepolitical correctness comes from the Communist Party, where onepresumes it was not used sarcastically.

Now political correctness is connected to politicization. Theuniversity is politicized, the politicizers say. But they do notrecoil, appalled at their conclusion that every scholar deep downis a politician. Nor do they try to minimize the fact which they'veuncovered. No, they embrace it. They furthermore say, "It'snecessary to replace the politics we've had up to now with ourpolitics, or, rather, my politics." This is a claim oftyranny, somewhat disguised by the demand in the speech ofthe politicizers to democratize everything.

Politicization, therefore, leads to political correctness, thenew orthodoxy to replace the old one. And those who speak of it arequite open about it: We must give scholarship, we must give theuniversity a progressive perspective, an ethnic one, a homophilicone, and so on. Scholarship must not only be inspired by, butinfused with, political correctness.

Now these two things - politicization and PC - are manifest inthree aspects of the universities: first, in the admission ofstudents and recruitment of faculty, and the related question ofaffirmative action; second, in campus life and the demand forsensitivity; and third, in the curriculum and the criticism of thetraditional canon.

Affirmative action I won't discuss, except to mention the twoparts of the questions that I think are raised by thepoliticization of campus life: first, justice; and second,pride.

As to the justice of affirmative action, I think that to mostpeople it's gradually sinking in that two wrongs don't make aright. And as to the matter of pride, affirmative action is theonly government program that's ashamed of itself and that cannotidentify its beneficiaries: "Here is the new affirmative actioncandidate we've just found." That cannot be said, of course,without hurting the candidate's pride.

Affirmative action is perhaps not yet on the run, but I thinkit's on the defensive. It's of course very strong in theuniversities, entrenched in bureaucracy. Everything else will beexcused there, even certain conservative views, if you acceptaffirmative action. But the new Harvard president, I was encouragedto see, has said that the problem of affirmative action is aproblem of supply, of finding sufficient and qualified minorities.The suggestion is, therefore, that it's not a question ofrecruitment. (Of course, the original premise of affirmative actionis that the problem is not supply, but rather in the racism -conscious or unconscious - of the recruiters.) So I think that's aconsiderable advance.

I turn now to the politicization of campus life. We've becomefamiliar with speech codes on the campus that require students andfaculty to avoid speech that may be offensive to certain groups.These have been set up in many universities, not yet at mine,Harvard, which does, however, have regulations on sexualharassment, requiring professors to teach classes "withoutunnecessarily drawing attention to the sexual difference."

What about the use of "he or she"? Would that kind of speech berequired to avoid sexually harassing your audience? That usage tome seems compulsive and ridiculous. Ridiculous because "he or she"is a formula intended to draw attention away from the sexualdifference, and instead it does the opposite. Indeed, this newusage seems to say that there is no impersonal pronoun, and it isbased on the premise of feminism, or at least of the originalfeminism. Everywhere there is a "he" you could put a "she," andeverywhere there's a "she" you could put a "he." In other words, itis based on the interchangeability of the sexes.

It's also compulsive. The most recent example of this I saw wasin a letter from our chairman, in which he spoke of "anyone worthhis or her salt."

"He or she" is, I think, a prime example of politicalcorrectness and the way it works, which is not confined touniversities, or even to ideologues. It's an attempt to create anatmosphere of self-censorship, also known euphemistically as"raising consciousness."

Self-expression at HarvardThere was a sensitivity incident - widely reported - at Harvardthis last spring. A young woman put out a Confederate flag from herdormitory window as an act of self-expression to display herpolitical views. She was attacked as insensitive to the opinions ofothers, and she was defended as giving us an instance of freespeech, which, of course, has been expanded, as we all know,to "free expression." Harvard did nothing to prevent this youngwoman from hanging out her flag. It accepted the reason why she didit. It spoke of the right of free expression, but deplored thisparticular use of it. This was very much, I think, in line with thepolicy of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Question: should conservatives - or, rephrase that: shouldreasonable or sensible people - adopt the ACLU view of this matter?A short-term alliance with them might be all right, but what abouttheir view? I think not. It's time to reconsider the identificationof free speech with free expression. Of course, I'm not the firstto suggest this; Justice Scalia has been making the point for sometime. This identification first began with the Flag Salute cases inthe early 1940s; so it has a history.

Free speech is something necessarily associated with reason;it's offering an opinion containing a reason. When you give areason, you give some common ground, offered to convince orpersuade someone else. It's not me imposing on you. Therefore freespeech implies a community, a common citizenship. The originalpurpose of free speech was to make possible democratic government:How can we get together to decide things if we don't have thecapacity to speak freely before and during our deliberations?

Free speech makes you think of someone else. Even if you have aselfish reason, you must claim that the other person would do thesame. A man comes to a fancy dinner party. A plate of asparagus ispassed around, and he cuts off all of the tips and sweeps them ontohis plate. The lady sitting next to him looks at him in horror andsays, "Why, sir, why ever did you do that?" "Because, madame,they're much the best part."

Now, "free expression," by contrast with this example of sweetreason, is self-centered: You express yourself, and you expressyourself as opposed to others. It's my identity, my roots, myvalues. The Harvard student was from Virginia, and she hung out theConfederate flag to celebrate George Washington's birthday. GeorgeWashington led a movement for secession from Britain, so he wouldhave therefore approved the movement of secession of the South in1860!

The Right to offendWith self-expression you have no duty to placate or appeaseother people. If you do that, you're not being honest to yourself.So self-expression culminates in the right to offend. It doesn'tmatter that this student had so much trouble in identifyingherself, in finding her ethnicity, that she had to go searching inthe Confederacy.

The student was offending black students at Harvard. She didn'tmean to, or so she said, but this wasn't believed. And the blackstudents had a right therefore to take offense at this. One of themput out a Nazi flag. Well, it's hard to see the meaning of that,but it's clear that this student wanted to do her worst. You takeoffense by giving offense.

This is not a recipe for a happy, or even for a stable, society,not to mention a university. Such a system can work only throughthe forbearance of certain groups who give up their right to giveand take offense. Some groups have a right to offend; others don't.And the point of the Confederate flag was to challenge thatarbitrary system.

The ACLU doctrine, the identification of free speech with freeexpression, leads to this result: Do your worst, because you're notfree unless you can carry freedom to an extreme; rather to anunhealthy extreme, indeed, to an admittedly unhealthyextreme.

Besides, the identification of free speech with free expressionis open to the possibility of reversal. Instead of considering theConfederate flag as symbolic speech that is, understandingexpression as speech - you might consider a tirade of racial slursas an expressive act - that is, understanding speech as a deed. Andthen, logically, you could prevent the speech, because it amountsto an offensive action. That's what Brown University did recentlyin expelling a student. Because almost all human actions arecapable of some meaning or some imputation of meaning, it's hard todraw a line between meaningful free speech and a meaningful act.Therefore, I think, it's foolish to throw away the distinctionbetween speech and expression. It's a difficult distinction intheory, but in practice it makes sense.

Academic FreedomAnd another distinction is needed, one between free speech andacademic freedom. The purpose of free speech is to make democraticgovernment possible. The purpose of academic freedom is to furtherinquiry. Inquiry means becoming more aware, not becoming moresensitive, and being "aware" means being open-minded to what isnew, and is reflected in a desire to learn.

Giving and taking offense is especially inappropriate to acampus. It's perhaps part of politics, but certainly not part ofinquiry. Unlimited free inquiry requires courtesy, academicetiquette. Miss Manners made this point recently, and I think verycorrectly. There should be, I think, no right to protest atuniversities. There should be, on the contrary, a duty tolisten. Universities should teach courtesy and require it oftheir students. But, of course, professors should feel free toembarrass the hell out of their students, to shame them for theirlack of knowledge. The end of education is greater awareness,greater openness, not greater sensitivity.

Education is a drawing-out, literally. It doesn't mean findingyour roots in the sense of creating your values. Those things arepre-rational. Too many students nowadays come to universities tofind out where they're coming from instead of where they're going.In education, your goal is more important than your roots.

Academic freedom is more wide-ranging than free speech; inprinciple it is unlimited. Academic freedom, for example, wouldtake up the question whether democracy is a good thing; whether allmen really have been created equal. Under a healthy regime of freespeech, these questions might be taken for granted in a liberaldemocracy.

But academic freedom also requires greater decorum than freespeech in society at large. The right to speak, therefore, must inuniversities be accompanied by the duty to listen.

Now to my third point, the curriculum and the canon. This arisesout of the question of academic freedom. The politicizers speak ofa traditional curriculum - the great books - as a "canon." Whenthey use this term they compare a university curriculum to thedecision of the Catholic Church as to what writings are theword of God. The implication is that the curriculum is anauthoritative decision in favor of certain books that uphold thepower of the decision makers. Living white males require thereading of books authored by dead white males. We should not acceptthis tendentious term, canon. It's an example of what it claims todeplore, an arbitrary and authoritative decision given withoutreason.

There's no need, I think, to defend the traditional curriculumor great books curriculum as untouchable or unchangeable. PaulCantor at the University of Virginia has recently made this point.There are perhaps great authors in our time, even in the ThirdWorld: Vargas Llosa, Salman Rushdie. William Faulkner, FlanneryO'Connor and

John Steinbeck are American classics, not so long in theirgraves. We should keep an open mind, examine candidates forinclusion, but on the basis of their quality, not of their PC.

There's another reason not to be so touchy about Westerncivilization: All civilization is more or less Western now. Westerncivilization is a relatively new expression, dating, I think, fromthe late 19th century, characteristic of an historical - or,rather, historicist - way of thinking. It makes it seem as if theessence of our civilization is merely its location on the globe,"west of east." The distinction between "west and east" gives ahint of the uniqueness of the West. But it's necessary, especiallynow, to be a little bit more explicit.

It's fashionable today to doubt the value of the great booksbecause they do not promote equal rights against discrimination bysex, lifestyle, and race. Another objection is that they areethnocentric, because they're Western. You can use the secondobjection against the first. In no Eastern classic will theprinciple of equal rights be found. That principle is best arguedin Western classics, authored, generally, by bourgeois whitemales.

Self-criticismLet us define "Western" as having access to the Greeks, whodiscovered philosophy and science. Philosophy and science permitall human beings who know them to be self-critical. Only in theWest does one find such a term as "ethnocentric," such a science asanthropology, or such a philosophy as relativism. Those who accusethe great books of being Western forget that their very accusationis Western. It's impossible for the great books really to reflectWestern values, because Western values are in tension. Westernphilosophy and science are opposed to Western divine revelation,custom, tradition, to whatever resists reason.

One cannot become aware of Western values without realizing thatthey present a problem, rather than furnish a solution. What booksare great is not decided by a local board of censors or by anygovernment, but by common consent of the educated over generationsand across national boundaries as to which books most memorablypose a human problem; for example, justice in Plato'sRepublic, love in Cervantes' Don Quixote.

So the authors of the great books are not agents of oppression.Authors who defend tyranny or lie for a cause soon lose theirfollowing when times change. Many of the great authors, it is true,were not revolutionaries. They were anxious to preserve thecritical stance in all circumstances, and so they did not givetheir hearts to a political ideal, but offered their criticism inthe soft voice of irony.

Indeed, the critics of the great books today are notrevolutionaries either; they merely repeat the dominant values ofour time, those of equal rights, which they often assert with thecomplacent outrage of a newspaper editorial. Such critics seem torisk nothing, neither life nor liberty nor career. In fact, ofcourse, they risk everything. When small critics try to demeanlarge ones, reason turns on itself and the principle of criticismis in danger. That principle is the only friend that equal rightshave ever had.

I recently saw Spike Lee's movie "Do the Right Thing." It's amovie that is full of thought, I was surprised to see. It ends, asyou know, with two quotations from dead black males; one fromMartin Luther King against violence, and one from Malcolm X infavor of violence. One character in the movie says, "You've alwaysgot to do the right thing." But what is the right thing? The movieends with a question mark. And that, I think, is Westerncivilization at its best. I perhaps don't share all of Spike Lee'sopinions, but he isn't politically correct, I'll hand him that.

PC at the universities is the suicide of the intellect. In theWest now we find many intellectuals who take part against theintellect. If you want an example, look at Richard Rorty in theJuly 1, 1991 New Republic. Consider his philosophy ofanti-foundationalism. There is no foundation to things discoverableby the intellect, and no foundation to the things that we believe,no reason to believe them; they're mere assertions. And being mereassertions, they're ultimately political assertions. Activatingyour intellect, using your bean, doesn't help. It doesn't changeanything. The rational merely endorses the non-rational, so theuniversity should merely endorse political views, the correctpolitical views.

The Ivory TowerSoon after I graduated from college, there was a commencementspeaker at Harvard, a famous art historian whose name was ErwinPanofsky, who gave a speech on the ivory tower. Since he was an arthistorian, he was interested in the image, and the history of theimage, of an ivory tower to represent a university. But he alsogave a defense of the ivory tower. It signifies a certain moralsuperiority based on intellectual superiority, and therefore notopen to the usual ills of moral superiority, namelyself-righteousness and intrusiveness. (It's not that professorscould do better at politics than politicians can; they can't. Butpoliticians are looking not for truth, but for power. Professorsare more naive than politicians, not out of ignorance, but becausethey're more knowing.) Now, however, the ivory tower no longerbelieves in the ivory tower, and you wouldn't hear that speech at acommencement these days. This development has a long history. It'sa phenomenon known as "post-modern."

Once upon a time, in the Renaissance, philosophers formed theidea that the intellect would reform and spread civilizationthrough an enlightenment of all mankind. The name for this came tobe "modernity." It was a great project for the relief of man'sestate, as one of the philosophers described it. Now Rousseau wasthe first modern philosopher to question that project, the firstpost-modem. Rousseau was represented in the figure of the noblesavage. The noble savage is not civilized, obviously, buthe's noble; or, rather, he's not civilized, andtherefore he's noble. Rousseau represents modern Westerncivilization in criticism of itself

Rousseau's noble savage could remind you of the multiculturalismtoday, which says that we in the West shouldn't be so proud of ourmechanical, material civilization. It destroys nature, neglectshuman creativity. But there's this difference between the noblesavage and multiculturalism: To be politically correct we dare notcall our noble savage noble, and we dare not call him a savage. Wecan't call him a savage because all civilizations are equal.There's really no such thing as civilization, no such thing asbeing civilized; there are only cultures, and being in a culture isnot the same thing as being cultivated. Cultures have replacedcivilization. You cannot call the Third World uncivilized, butalso, and for the same reason, you cannot call it noble. We wantsomething noble, but we're so far from it as to be unable topronounce the name.

But education is a noble thing. Every society has socialization,but only civilized society has education. Education is the intrepidquestioning and self-criticism of reason: only the West hasinstitutions of self-criticism. Those are our universities. Allother cultures have self-expression only. You don't need auniversity to express yourself; you can do that with an army.

So, self-criticism is our uniqueness and our special nobility.I've been trying to show that the problem of politicization and PCgoes very deep. It has to do with the rise and fall of modernity inWestern politics and Western philosophy.

Our test now is, in part, intellectual - to understand ourpredicament. But, of course, it's also practical; it's to rally indefense of our universities. The universities have to take theirhelp where they can get it, from Washington even, from theAmerican people, who have more and better appreciation of educationthan our educators. And above all, we in the universities must stirourselves; we must begin to oppose things we professors haveallowed to happen at our universities without protest. We mustn'tlet things get by that we know are wrong; we must start to raise alittle hell. We shouldn't despair, because the cause of theuniversity is the highest there is. It's up to us to give it morepower - the power to teach, the power to learn, and the power toquestion.

Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. is Frank G. Thomsonprofessor of government at Harvard University.

Dr. Mansfield's remarks were delivered to an audience of SalvatoriFellows at a colloquium sponsored by the Heritage Foundation onJune 26, 1991 al the University Club in Washington, D.C.

ISSN 0272-1155. 1991 by The HeritageFoundation.

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Political Correctness and the Suicide of the Intellect ...

PRITI Patel said children abused by grooming gangs were let down by the state in the name of political correctness as she vowed to tackle the problem.

There has been criticism that victims have been failed owing to fears of accusations of racism.

1

High-profile cases have involved men of mainly Pakistani ethnicity.

But the Home Secretary warned there was not enough data to draw conclusions about offenders as research focused on age and sex, rather than race.

The Sun understands the report will be used to draw up a strategy to get better evidence on how race, ethnicity and culture plays a role in abuse.

The research, commissioned by the Home Office, said most group child sex offenders were white, according to current statistics.

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Ms Patel said: Victims and survivors of group-based child sexual exploitation have told me how they were let down by the state in the name of political correctness.

"What happened to these children remains one of the biggest stains on our countrys conscience.

This paper demonstrates how difficult it has been to draw conclusions about the characteristics of offenders.

GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAILexclusive@the-sun.co.uk

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Priti Patel says children abused by grooming gangs were let down by the state in the name of political - The Sun

Issued on: 17/12/2020 - 20:53Modified: 17/12/2020 - 20:55

On December 12, two days before the Electoral Colleges formal vote confirming Joe Bidens presidential victory, thousands of protesters rallied in Washington DC in support of President Trumps attempts to invalidate his defeat. As night fell, violent clashes broke out on the streets between two sides known for their mutual animosity: the Proud Boys, a far-right Western chauvinist group, and Antifa, a far-left activist movement. Who are these groups, and what lies behind their repeated clashes?

The 2016 election and the controversial Trump presidency that followed sparked an increase in the visibility and popularity of fringe political groups, with two names emerging from the fray.

The Proud Boys describe themselves as a fraternal organisation promoting anti-political correctness and anti-White guilt and distance themselves from racist alt-right groups. The group was founded in 2016 following President Trumps election. Civil rights groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center have classified the Proud Boys as a hate group due to their anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric, their espousal of white nationalist ideas and their affiliations with known extremists.

Antifa, short for antifascist, is a politics or activity of radical left opposition to the far right, according to Mark Bray, historian and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Although Antifa isnt an organisation, but a politics that predates the Trump presidency, the emergence of alt-right groups like the Proud Boys sparked the formation of local Antifa groups to confront far-right activities through physical disruption, sometimes combining forces with activist groups like Black Lives Matter.

After clashes during high-profile events like the 2017 Charlottesville rally, the groups came to national prominence in the social movements of 2020, facing off at protests and rallies in cities like Portland and in Washington D.C. following the November election.

Brendan Gutenschwager, an independent reporter, was present at December 12s pro-Trump rally in Washington DC and recorded clashes between the groups. He tells us what he saw:

The Proud Boys had been in the city throughout the day, mostly hanging around the Freedom Plaza, the Supreme Court and the US Capitol. Their presence was meant to support the president and act as a sort of security against agitators or counter-protesters.

A Twitter video from the December 12 rally shows Proud Boys demonstrating in their signature black and yellow colours, chanting F**k Antifa and U.S.A.

As night fell, the Proud Boys stayed out in the streets, while a large group of Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters gathered a few blocks away. Both groups came prepared, some armed with weapons like mace/pepper spray and knives. The groups tried to confront each other, but police intervened, preventing a large-scale brawl.

However, some people managed to make their way over to the other side, and clashes occurred people pepper-spraying and macing each other, swinging sticks and other objects, a few stabbings at one point in one of the larger clashes.

This December 13 Twitter video shows the Proud Boys ganging up on and punching a black man, who stabbed four of his assailants in return. The Proud Boys can be heard yelling F**k Antifa; however, it is unclear if the man was a part of an Antifa group.

In their rampage through the city, the Proud Boys also tore down and set ablaze Black Lives Matter banners belonging to local churches, as seen in the video below. While the banner burned, group members laughed and chanted F**k Antifa.

Clashes aside, Dr. Bray explained that the strategies and confrontations between the groups go beyond the sensational images:

The Proud Boys, like many far-right groups, have tried to distance themselves from aspects of fascist politics that became taboo. They say theyre not racist, theyre Western chauvinists even though they dont disavow racists or white supremacists.

However, theyre still trying to harness discontent with aspects of the culture wars around feminism, queer and trans liberation movements, and what they perceive as the shaming of masculinity. They also try to present themselves as half serious, half a joke (the name Proud Boys was taken from a song in Disneys Aladdin stage musical adaptation). So the group becomes a fun space of sociability for alienated and discontented, predominantly young white men who argue that leftists cant take a joke.

A Twitter video of the December 12 pro-Trump rally shows Proud Boys members wearing yellow kilts flashing the crowd, with the message F**K ANTIFA written on their buttocks.

As for the Antifa movement, Dr. Bray said that antifascists organise to prevent the Proud Boys and other far-right groups from normalising their politics in local communities, whether it be through physical disruption or less showy tactics.

Antifascists may work to shut down events by far-right organisers by calling venue owners and encouraging them to cancel. Boycotts and physical occupation/confrontation have also been used. However, most of their work revolves around researching figures of the far right in order to organise doxxing: revealing their member identities, which increases the social cost of belonging to these groups.

Antifascists have a notion of preemptive self-defence. Even when they physically confront a far-right group, its a facet of a larger strategy to reduce the risk of attacks ever occurring.

A December 12 Twitter video shows frontline Antifa protesters, separated from pro-Trump protesters by a police line, chanting Go home Proud Boys and F**k the Proud Boys.

Confrontational tactics from both sides have caused mainstream politicians of both parties to condemn the groups. After being accused of emboldening the Proud Boys during the first presidential debate, President Trump went back on his word a few days later in a Fox News interview where he condemned the group as well as White supremacists.

Incoming President Joe Biden has condemned Antifa and the use of violence from protesters on the left and the right.

Dr. Bray says that although both sides espouse illiberal and confrontational politics, their vision of political violence differs.

The far right argues that because of the bureaucratic, liberal red tape around the state, state forces cant do their job, so they need to use militia and vigilantes to supplement this deficiency transcending law and order in order to restore it.

Antifa groups are also skeptical of the state as a vehicle for justice, so they delegitimise the police and the state and encourage self-defensive community mobilisation. Its about what kinds of violence people feel comfortable with inside or outside the state and whether they have faith in the sovereignty of the state to deal with problems or not.

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Proud Boys versus Antifa: Who are these extremist groups clashing in Washington DC? - The France 24 Observers

Dixie State should retain name

I read the article in The Daily Herald, "Utah college votes to nix Confederate-tied 'Dixie' from name" (Dec.14th issue). I personally believe the Trustees of Dixie State University made a grave mistake in voting to remove the name "Dixie" from this well-known landmark academic institution of higher learning.

I have been to St. George and it's a good 300 miles south of Salt Lake City. The name "Dixie" (at least to me) only reminded me of visions of "warm Southern-like weather," not the Confederacy of which Utah never joined. Brigham Young had his winter residence in St. George, the first completed LDS temple was completed in 1877 shortly before the death of Brigham Young.

I have prayed outside of that temple. It reminds me a lot of the Nauvoo temple. About 20 years ago, I drove to St. George and stayed at "The 7 Wives Inn," a bed and breakfast; but originally the home of a man who practiced plural-marriage. I saw the large rocks forming the word "DIXIE" as I entered the town. I was welcomed thoroughly, enjoyed my stay and although I have traveled in "The Deep South" of America, I saw no parallels between the former Confederacy and southern Utah, aside from perhaps, warm climate in winter.

To me, Dixie University should retain its name. "Dixie" is a feminine name with old English and French roots meaning "tenth." I don't think any lady named "Dixie" should change her name either, just for knee-jerk political-correctness.

-- James A. Marples, Provo

Excerpt from:

Letter: Dixie State should retain name | Letters to the Editor - Daily Herald

Natural Law is the moral underpinning of all man-made law. It is an unalterable, objective, universally binding and eternally valid set of rules that can never be abrogated.

The Founding Fathers embraced the Natural Law when they agreed to these words in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Founders went on to explain that governments were instituted to secure these rights, not to grant them. The liberties of the people are natural rights precisely because, as Thomas Jefferson put it, they are a gift of God.

Based on this belief, each American is part of a whole and is bound to our society for the sake of the common good.

When acting for the common good, the state does not ignore the welfare of any person.

However, in the past century, there have been ever-growing numbers in academic and political circles that reject the Natural Law and the common good. For them, transcendent values are to be replaced by fleeting tastes; the common good displaced by raw power.

To fully understand this illiberal phenomenon, I recommend to your reading Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identityand Why This Harms Everybody, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.

The authors, who embrace the tenets of liberalism, including limitations on the powers of government, development of universal human rights, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion, reveal the authoritarian tendencies of the cult of social justice and critique its ideological decrees.

These Social Justice warriors, the authors point out, loathe the foundations of Western Civilization. For them, Christianity, liberalism, science and reason, are forms of oppression. They are, in effect, Post-Modernists who reject objective truth as a fantasy dreamed up by nave and/or arrogantly bigoted Enlightenment thinkers. . . . They have replaced traditional religious faiths and secular ideologies with a new religion whose members worship at the altars of identity politics,political correctness,cultural relativism, and critical race theory.

For these radical sceptics, knowledge, truth or morality are culturally constructed and relative products of individual cultures, none of which possess the necessary tools or terms to evaluate the others. Hence, no Natural Law.

They also argue that it is impossible to know objective reality because truth is socially constructed through language and language games and is local to a particular culture, and knowledge functions to protect and advance the interests of the privileged.

To improve the lot of marginalized identities in the United States, the Social Justice movement is dedicated to deconstructing invisible systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, ableism, and fatphobia.

To achieve this end, they censor language and impose a radical relativism in the form of double standards, such as assertions that only men can be sexist and only white people can be racist, and in the wholesale rejection of consistent principles of nondiscrimination.

As for the sexes, they reject biology and objective truth about men and women and hold that gender and sexuality are constructed by an unjust society.

This Social Justice movement began on college campuses. Radical professors, believing teaching is a social act, have been imposing on students their views to facilitate revolutionary political changes.

Courses in Western philosophy and literature have been discouraged or eliminated because such scholarship is complicit with systemic bigotry.

Core curriculums include diversity requirements. There are courses and departments dedicated to post-Colonial Theory, Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory, Feminism and Gender Studies, and Disability and Fat Studies.

Fat Studies, for instance, attempts to portray negative perceptions of obesity as akin to racism, sexism and homophobia, and it explicitly rejects science.

Students are taught that healthism and nutritionism are forms of fat hatred driven by eugenicists. The evidence that obesity harms ones health is dismissed. Obesity is likened to homosexuality and reasons that just as homosexuality has now been recognized as a natural occurring phenomenon, that does not need a cure, so too must obesity be similarly recognized.

People with Social Justice degrees have been invading government and corporate workplaces. They have been hired as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officers empowered to change a given organizations culture. These officers are the architects and enforcers of soft revolutions, they are inquisitors, seeking incidents of bias and imbalance.

Cynical Theories paints a devastating picture of Social Justice advocates. And if these crypto authoritarians are not checked, they will attain the power to betray the idea of our Republic E Pluribus Unum and strip every American of their natural rights.

George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact, and Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy. He is chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA. Mr. Marlin also writes for TheCatholicThing.org and the Long Island Business News. Read George J. Marlins Reports More Here.

2020 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Social Justice Ideology vs. the American Credo of Natural Rights - KMJ Now

W.J. Butcher is a Coweta County resident and retired 26-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department. Send comments, kudos, and criticism to: theprecinctpress@gmail.com .

While at APD, I always thought it important to be constantly learning about my job.

It always disappoints me to encounter people that dont expand their knowledge or enthusiasm about their occupations or life in general.

I remember shopping around for some lime for my pasture and encountered the most country speaking fertilizer salesman I had encountered in a long time. He went on to tell me if he had a dollar to spend on fertilizer or lime, he would buy lime because lime has electrical properties that could actually change the polarity of the ions, activating the nitrogen lying dormant in the soil. Shocked and amazed at his product knowledge, I shouted, Sold, buying two tons on the spot.

I am sorely lacking knowledge on pop culture and todays music for that matter. Music artists, for instance, have lost their unique sound since the days of Molly Hatchet to Brooks & Dunn. But I want to stay up to date on words that fill our airwaves.

One of pop cultures newest is the word woke. When someone is accused of being woke in my conservative circles, it always comes off sounding negative, easily outraged. It is commonly identified with radical identity politics, race-baiting, political correctness, cancel culture and virtue signaling.

First used in the 1940s, the term resurfaced as a concept symbolizing perceived awareness of social issues, most notably the Michael Brown shooting. In years past, that shooting would have the headline, A man was shot by police today. A more woke announcement goes something like, A young unarmed black man holding his hands high in the air pleading, I give up before being gunned down by a white police officer. Maybe too long for a headline, but most certainly found in the first paragraph. Woke is the slang version of Ive been sleeping all my life; now I stay woke.

I find it true that people are far too hypersensitive about common day-to-day events. Words today will get you fired. We have gone to the extent of legislating hate crime laws that tack on an extra charge and jail time if you can get into the subconscious of the suspect as to his underlying motivation or prove their mind crime. Suspects actually have to be careful what they say while they are beating you up these days.

At the police academy, we all received specialized desensitivity training about the gay life style, race relations, foreign cultures and the mentally ill community, just to name a few. The bottom line in all that education is to see various groups as human beings first with perspectives that we dont necessarily share, understand or approve of. We were ingrained with the importance of a persons right to free speech and to actually protect their right to peaceably protest. The local courts unfortunately allowed people to cuss at us (police), with judges saying, Thats all a part of the job of a police officer. But the same words said to a private citizen would be considered fighting words and the speaker charged accordingly.

Look, I have to give you permission to offend me. Sticks and stones, my Mom used to say. We all grew up tough back in the day. Weirdos, idiots and punks run their mouths, and I consider them as much. When you go around looking to criticize, shame and label everyone that doesnt agree with you with some clever catch phrase or -ism because it makes you feel superior, maybe you better get less woke and start seeing the good in people.

Now, give me a big hug, you wokester.

W.J. Butcher is a Coweta County resident and retired 26-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department. Send comments, kudos, and criticism to: theprecinctpress@gmail.com .

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Wokes, pokes, and prods - Newnan Times-Herald

Weve lost an icon. And were getting a creep.

Fans of the TV show Jeopardy! are counting down the days until just after Christmas, when the quizzer airs the final pre-recorded episode hosted by the late, great Alex Trebek, whose death in November at age 80 from pancreatic cancer broke hearts all over America and augured the end of his incredible 36-year run at the helm of what is widely considered the greatest televised game show of all time.

But the new year also ushers in the arrival of Alexs troubling interim replacement, Ken Jennings, 46, whose reign as the shows winningest contestant is clouded by a level of flippant cruelty previously unseen on a smart program that, for decades, has delivered a necessary and calming distraction during times of war, recession, social unrest and pandemic.

Jennings weird sense of humor, if you can call it that, reveals more about the guys smarmy core than it does about the vast trove of trivia to which hes devoted his days.

Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair, Jennings wrote in a disturbing 2014 tweet. The uproar over the creepy missive of six years ago might have blown over were it not for Jennings clueless and defensive 2018 response to the backlash over his insensitivity.

I never did a public flogging for this but I did apologize personally to angry/hurt people who reached out personally, Jennings started. It was a joke so inept that it meant something very different in my head [and] I regret the ableist plain reading of it.

Ableist plain reading? (Is there an ableist complicated reading?) It seems that Jennings, a man adept with the English language, chose his words carefully. He presented himself not as genuinely sorry, but as a victim of political correctness. He was asking critics to quit nit-picking. He would have been better off saying nothing.

There was more.

In 2015, after Star Wars fan Daniel Fleetwood made it a point to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens before he died of cancer, Jennings sent out this tweet poking fun at the tragedy: It cant be a good sign that every fan who has seen the new Star Wars movie died shortly thereafter. Ouch.

Three years later, he wrote that an awful MAGA grandma mourning her deceased son was his favorite person on Twitter. It was unnecessary.

And hurtful.

In contrast, Trebeks long reign as king of the quiz show in which a correct answer must be delivered in the form of a question is marked by a dearth of scandal or offense. The Canadian transplant was sassy without being raunchy. Seemingly erudite without being a snob.

The secret sauce is that he always respected his audience, never taking himself too seriously as he gave lessons each weeknight on everything from literature and nuclear fission to the Kardashians.

Though he frequently made cameo appearances in TV shows and movies, Trebek never aspired to play beyond the program he elevated with his presence. He was proud to take a seat in Americas living rooms on weeknights, a treasured part of the family.

This past January, Jennings was crowned the Greatest of All Time player on Jeopardy! He won a $1 million prize in a tournament in which he defeated other top show winners, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer.

He may have been named the GOAT, but he is a pale imitation. Alex Trebek is the greatest human ever to orbit the Jeopardy! universe.

Too bad his successor is not someone who might live up to his legacy.

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Ken Jennings will never live up to Alex Trebek's 'Jeopardy!' legacy - New York Post

Despite a growing movement towards using person-first language when describing people involved with the justice system, even progressive newsrooms that are publicly grappling with their racist history continue to use dehumanizing language when reporting on crime and justice.

Person-first language is a linguistic prescription that puts a persons humanity above other identity labels, with the intent of avoiding marginalization or dehumanization. It first gained traction in the disability rights and medical spheres, where disabilities and diagnoses were often conflated with identities. Advocates began to shy away from labels such as diabetic in favor of person with diabetes.

Person-first language has subsequently been used in many areas of society, including justice reporting. Advocates and some publications have adopted terminology such as formerly incarcerated person and justice-involved youth to replace ex-con, felon, and juvenile delinquent.

From the adoption of person-first language to shifts away from bureaucratic euphemisms, what is considered acceptable language in justice reporting is rapidly evolving. Sometimes it takes a few more words to avoid dehumanizing labels, which can feel uncomfortable for journalists who are taught to eliminate unnecessary words and to simplify their reporting. But experts agree that words have real-world consequences for both public perceptions and peoples behavior.

Advocates arent the only ones saying so. Experts from corrections and academia are sounding the alarm that language can even influence public safety.

Researchers have established a clear link between popular media representation and the perceived threat of specific groups. The superpredator myth is a prominent example of this. Used primarily as a descriptor for young Black men, the term emerged from academic literature during a period when violent crimes committed by juveniles were at a peak in the 1980s and 1990s. The term was popularized by politicians and the press and stoked public fears about violent youth roaming the streets.

But the use of stereotypes and dehumanizing descriptions in the media not only impacts how the public views people involved in the justice system; it also impacts how incarcerated individuals see themselves. Negative stereotypes of people involved in the justice system can also reinforce barriers to employment and housing, which increases the likelihood theyll return to crime.

A large body of research on labeling theory has shown that people internalize negative descriptions, which in turn can shape their behavior. As one young man we interviewed said, If you call me an animal, I will act like an animal.

In August, a Los Angeles Times headline announced that California is releasing some murderers due to COVID-19. There was an outcry from reform advocates on social media and, shortly after, the wording was changed to Amid COVID-19, California releases some inmates doing time for murder.

This example from the Los Angeles Times speaks to how the words journalists use often reduce humans to the crimes they commit. While the publication did change the headline, justice advocates say the problem was that they published it in the first place.

They moved to person-first language, but its still a headline geared towards denigrating a certain group of individuals, said Dyjuan Tatro, government affairs officer at the Bard Prison Initiative, a college-in-prison program in New York state. Tatro is formerly incarcerated and was recently featured in the PBS documentary College Behind Bars.

Los Angeles Times investigative crime writer Richard Winton said there was no major newsroom discussion of the headline in question. The second headline is a better headline, from a professional point of view, said Winton, who shared a byline on the story. It was more clear.

Descriptors are often more clear than labels. Winton said the change was likely made at the copy desk. Its also worth noting that reporters dont always write their own headlines.

The movement toward person-first language in the justice space has been an attempt to address these issues. Despite evidence indicating the benefits, there is resistance. Some equate language change to superficial pandering designed only to appease readers, not motivate substantive change. Emphasizing language usage is seen by some as performative political correctness.

In 2016, the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy research center, became one of the first organizations focused on justice to use person-first language in their own research and policy briefs. They also pushed for a report from the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections which included leading academics, bureau of prison officials, judges, and prosecutors to avoid using terms such as offender and inmate. While it took some convincing, eventually all nine members of the federal task force agreed.

The pushback came from the editorial team. Our professional writers and copy editors were freaking out, said Nancy La Vigne, director of the Urban Institutes Justice Policy Center. Its going to be too long. Its going to sound redundant. Its not going to flow.

La Vigne said she also spoke with representatives of media outlets who were concerned that person-first language would take too many words and didnt really make a difference.

Keith Woods, chief diversity officer at NPR and former dean of faculty at Poynter, said journalists have historically parroted the language of law enforcement, prosecutors and prison officials and thrown it into their journalism. Similarly, WNYC called out the media for embracing euphemisms designed by government to change the subject. They specifically targeted the passive-voice officer-involved shooting, which has taken on new relevance this year with the murder of George Floyd. The phrase was never as precise as the active voice police shot but until a recent reckoning, it was standard practice for journalists to repeat whatever bureaucratic euphemism had been used in official statements.

This has created a pattern where journalists often repeat the dehumanizing language used by the justice system and, in turn, shape public perceptions of crime and criminals. In contrast, by using humanizing language, journalists have the opportunity to more accurately depict those involved in the justice system and to portray them as complex individuals whose identities cannot be reduced to one-word labels.

Last year, proposed legislation in New York sought to amend thousands of pages of state law to replace inmate with incarcerated individual. A few state departments of corrections have also tried to adopt more neutral terminology, such as Oregon referring to its prison population as adults in custody.

John Wetzel is a senior corrections official who has publicly spoken out about the importance of shifting language. After conversations with La Vigne and others, Wetzel, who is secretary of corrections for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, has replaced offender with reentrant. As he wrote in a 2016 Washington Post editorial, the change was more than performative political correctness. As he put it, Frankly, negative labels work against the expectation of success and are inconsistent with what were trying to achieve in our corrections policy: less crime and fewer victims.

Wetzel told Poynter that officials need to use every tool available to them including language to help improve outcomes as people return to their communities. Reentry is difficult enough without negative labels, he said. I dont think there is a context when you use a pejorative term for someone that it benefits them. And to reiterate Woods point, pejorative labels from the justice system work their way into headlines.

In contrast, federal governance under the Trump administration explicitly steered its agencies away from more humanizing language; language guidance published in 2017 advised staff to avoid system-involved or justice-involved youth, and instead instructed them to refer to youth in the system, offender or at-risk youth.

Language evolution that comes from within institutions is powerful, said Adnan Khan, the formerly incarcerated executive director of the nonprofit Re:Store Justice. He said that having a corrections official champion the use of person-first language sends a stronger message than if only advocates are pushing for it. Language changes are often harbingers of culture change, he said.

Person-first language represents a new approach to justice reporting rather than a simple find and replace word substitution. It requires a fundamental shift in how we describe the people on which we report one that emphasizes describing over labeling. I would push journalists to get away from labels of any sort as much as possible and become more insistent on describing, more fully, the people theyre talking about, Woods said.

But where is the line between meaningful change and performative political correctness in language use?

Morgan Godvin, one of the authors of this article, is formerly incarcerated. She used the word inmate as a descriptor of her status while in prison, never considering its dehumanizing intent or the fact that she had a choice. Other people incarcerated with her referred to themselves as felons, criminals and convicts; these labels were stated matter-of-factly. From being shouted and cursed at by correctional officers to being referred to as a number without a name, she was never able to critically analyze language and how it was or was not enabling other mechanisms of institutional dehumanization. Nor did she consider the fact she and those around her were internalizing the language used against them.

It is commonplace for her friends to refer to themselves as felons, especially when citing barriers that are preventing their advancement. Anecdotally, she sees how this process of label internalization causes a feeling of profound resignation and hopelessness, a real-life example of labeling theory. Now having attained an education, she encourages everyone to reject the term felon and all the negative connotations that go along with it. Circumstances especially the lack of higher education in prisons will invariably affect language perceptions and usage.

This tension between how people self-identify and what is widely regarded as the most acceptable term (read: the most politically correct or, in trendier terms, woke) is not confined to person-first language. Latinx has been criticized because though it may be an inclusive term, it is rarely how people self-identify. Unfortunately, emphasizing respectful language that is both inclusive and humanizing while still being accurate and precise is relatively new territory in mainstream journalism. Journalists also want to avoid just parroting advocates.

A 2016 Marshall Project editorial confronted this topic. As journalists we tend to resist the banishing of words, especially words that are accurate, precise, and well understood, wrote Bill Keller, Marshalls founding editor-in-chief. We cringe from euphemisms that amount to badges of political correctness.

He urged descriptors over labels whenever possible. What I tell my staff is to minimize the use of labels when referring to an individual; individuals have names, and nobody should be defined solely by the worst thing he or she has done.

Still, he acknowledged that sometimes and especially within the limited space of a headline it may not be feasible.

Even within labeling, there is a spectrum of harm. Labels that convey an active state while someone is incarcerated such as prisoner and inmate are more tolerated than labels that imply permanent identity status, such as felon or convict. Woods is especially critical of identity status labels because they imply humanity is secondary. The impetus to avoid such status labels is clear when reporting on marginalized people. The use of active-state labels remains murkier and will continue to be something that journalists and society grapple with as a whole. (On a practical level, sometimes its impossible to avoid using inmate when citing official documents.)

Khan sees the adoption of humanizing language, whether by corrections officials or by journalists, as a step in the right direction. But he implored journalists to think beyond language use and into bigger questions that could influence reporting. Has the culture of the newsroom changed? Is it diverse?

Justice reporting is inextricably linked to race and racism. National statistics indicate that a disproportionate number of incarcerated people are people of color, owing to extreme racial disparities within the legal system. Racialized language has a long history of permeating journalism, especially in shaping perceptions of crime. Tatro, Bard Prison Initiatives government affairs officer, reiterated that American racism has deep roots in linguistic tropes, a timely reminder that language has never been neutral.

At a time when newsrooms across the country are reckoning with their lack of diversity, racial disparities have become a part of the conversation within newsrooms.

I think writers, especially white writers, have to realize that they are not immune from stereotypes, Tatro said. Journalists writing about these issues have to be really aware of their positionality. The way we write about individuals comes out of the way that we think about and process the world.

Veteran journalists, people with lived experience, and advocates advised journalists covering justice to center peoples humanity, strive for accuracy and precision, and not reduce people to the worst thing theyve ever done. Person-first language is not mutually exclusive with our journalistic commitment to truth-telling and accuracy.

Journalism has never had the need or even the mandate to label people, Woods said. Our job is to report what happened.

Although the immediate effect of making the switch may not be tangible, researchers, advocates, and some corrections officials say the switch is not superficial. There is a fine line between precise reporting and performative wokeness, but above all, words still matter as a first step towards changing public perceptions. As Woods put it, We can motivate substantive societal change by advocating for humanizing language.

Editors note: Morgan Godvin is a contributor to The Marshall Project. Charlotte West was a 2019 John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Justice Reporting Fellow at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Center on Media, Crime and Justice.

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The words journalists use often reduce humans to the crimes they commit. But that's changing. - Poynter

Pass covid relief bill

As an Arkansan and an American, I am outraged that Washington politicians may return home for the holidays without passing any new covid relief. For millions of Americans, this holiday season is starting to look like a nightmare.

Millions of families are struggling more than ever to put food on their tables, and 12 million renters are under threat of eviction when the eviction moratorium ends on Dec. 31. According to Moody's Analytics, the average renter will be $5,850 behind in rent and utilities by January. Some lawmakers have created a bipartisan plan to provide food and rental assistance for the next few months, but Senate leaders are blocking it. They seem perfectly content to let countless Americans fall into financial ruin and potentially even homelessness in the middle of a global pandemic.

Congressman Womack and Senators Boozman and Cotton must not leave Washington without taking action. They must work to pass a new covid bill that includes food assistance, emergency rental assistance, and an extension of the eviction moratorium. I urge everyone who believes as I do to contact our congressional offices and implore them to do the right thing. We cannot in good conscience allow our lawmakers to leave millions of Americans without food or out in the cold over this holiday season.

GAGE REED

Fayetteville

No spine or integrity

Note to the four representatives touting duck hunting in the recent guest column: How about the four of you growing enough spine and faking enough integrity to write what you four and the rest of us know to be the truth about the skunk odor emanating from the White House? Not one Republican elected to national office from this state has shown enough common decency and enough integrity to call out Trump for his denigration of us veterans and other military after we did our jobs for our country and many of us were in hospitals as a result.

As "commander-in-chief," that was as low as any of us could imagine a president stooping, and every last one of you let him get by with it. How I regard you all won't be printed in this paper.

There is much needed to be written about these gutless wonders we have going about in a self-serving manner that is a big embarrassment to those of us who remember Republicans who were both Republicans and statesmen as well.

The problem is not what we're given to read. The problem is what we have no hope of ever being given to read.

KARL HANSEN

Hensley

Couldn't say it better

Rhonda Patton of Roland, your comment Monday in letters was perfect.

KEN WYZGOSKI

Conway

Showing ignorance

First, covid-19 is a terrible disease, killing more than 300,000 people in the U.S. However, the symptom the covid illness demonstrates is our ignorance. As a society we have evolved with science and medical leaders showing and telling us how to combat this illness and hopefully minimize our losses. Instead many listen to a portion of society that believes that masks are an infringement of their rights.

A true example of this was when my wife and I voted in the past election. My wife and I got in line behind a mom and her son (who happened to be wearing MAGA hats) into the church gym, both ending up maskless. We stayed socially distanced as we meandered through the line with voting booths on our right side when a masked elderly woman on oxygen and a walker exited from her voting booth. The look on her face as she looked up at those two will be with me for a while as we backed up to allow her some space to walk behind them. As the couple arrived at voter check-in, the poll worker told them to remove their hats; they immediately asked why. She replied that there was a law against electioneering, which prompted more questions. They finally did remove their hats; the son replaced his with a rebel flag bandana. The sad part of this example is that it probably happened across most if not all Arkansas polling places.

Our elected officials are propagating this in their own misbehavior and lack of action. If Asa really cared about saving lives, he ought to start Biden's 100 days of mask-wearing mandate here in Arkansas in all public places. My current favorite unknown quote: "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." Only this time, remaining "stupid" causes innocents to die. The societal illness is our ignorance; covid-19 is just one glaring symptom.

ANDY CONNAUGHTON

Vilonia

A new name for team

A suggested new name to consider for the Cleveland Indians that might better describe their bowing to political correctness: The Cleveland Capitulators. A rather long name, but it does seem to fit.

LYNDEL DEAN

Cabot

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OPINION | LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Pass covid relief bill | No spine or integrity | Couldn't say it better - Arkansas Online

Williamstown Theatre Festival's robust New Play and Musical Development Initiative provides support and professional opportunities to playwrights, composers, and other generative artists.

In this World Premiere of ANIMALS, a new play by Emmy Award nominee Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Lydia (Aja Naomi King) and Henry (Jason Butler Harner)'s dinner guests Coleen (Madeline Brewer) and Yaw / Jason (William Jackson Harper) are about to arrive when Henry's spontaneous marriage proposal threatens to burn the evening to a crisp. Wine bottles and years of unspoken tensions are uncorked, and, before the evening is through, Lydia must confront her long-held fears and feelings if she is going to commit to a future with Henry.Jason Butler Harner, Madeline BrewerAja Naomi King, William Jackson Harper

Directed by Obie Award Winner, Whitney White, the piece is billed as a comedy that "marches into the muddy intersection of romantic entanglement, identity, pride, and survival." For me the piece is something like the theatrical (verbal) equivalent of a mixed doubles tennis match. There are lots of volley's, some overhead smashes and an occasional Ace leaving the recipient unable to respond but stinging none the less. The four characters engage in relatively rapid-fire banter that includes a fair amount of intensity and emotion. The subject matter often deals with sensitive issues that include political correctness, cancel culture, race, roles, and even some romance. The dialogue is real, sometimes raw, rarely funny. The piece packs a lot of drama and emotion, but not much oomph, sizzle, or pizazz. ANIMALS presents something of a character study as it examines things done in the name of love. Those things, however, are not always pretty. As one character suggests: "you people are ANIMALS".

With a running time of 96 minutes, ANIMALS is now available to Audible listeners. Special access to all seven titles in the WTF Season on Audible will be made available to eligible donors. Visit http://www.wtfestival.org/support for more information.

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BWW Review: ANIMALS at Williamstown Theatre Festival On Audible Theater - Broadway World

Now that the covid 19 vaccine(s) are being approved by the FDA and distributed throughout the US, the question arises, what happens next time? And there will be a next time.

Since the Communist Chinese uploaded this virus into our country, the federal government including Lord Fauci and the National Institute of Health, the CDC and mainstream media have done nothing to educate nationally the population about the personal responsibility of citizens to help protect us from the next virus.

We have crossed the 300,000 death toll from this virus on our way to getting close to the 650,000 deaths from heart disease every year.

42% of the US population have a body mass index above 30 or classified as obese. Underlying conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and hypertension in the older more vulnerable population are five times more likely to have an unfavorable outcome from contracting Covid 19 according to the CDC.

So where is the federal education programs for a healthy lifestyle and improving the individual immune systems? We as a nation are setting ourselves up for a repeat performance and because of what, woke politics, political correctness?

By contrast, India with a population of 1.3 billion or roughly 4 times the population of the US, has a population with a body mass index of 6% 36% lower than ours. The death toll in India from Covid is 144,000.

By changing to a more healthy lifestyle, we as a nation can prepare ourselves through personal responsibility for the next time.

Craig Nichols,

Findlay

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Letter: Will we be ready the next time? - LimaOhio.com

Did you know that getting COVID-19 can make women infertile? That former U.S. president Barack Obama was arrested? Or perhaps you were too busy reading how Amazon now sells black toilet paper out of political correctness or Greeces red light districts will limit patrons to 15-minute visits each as a COVID-19 precautionary measure.

Had enough yet? How about this one? U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is Hunanese, his father was a renegade bandit and a landlord, and thats why he hates China.

Those are just some of the headlines and reports Ive seen over the past couple months, scrolling through my parents social media posts, chat groups of secondary school classmates, microblogging platform Weibo, and Jinri Toutiao Chinas most popular news portal. A few were brought to my attention by my 9-year-old daughter.

They have, without exception, garnered widespread readership, been shared across social media, and generated significant discussion.

And they are, without exception, fake.

There is a real demand in China for international news. If anything, the countrys growing international influence and engagement has made the subject more attractive, not less. But increasingly, this massive demand for news about the outside world exceeds what traditional channels alone can deliver, leaving the countrys media environment overrun with disinformation.

Fabricated or false new stories about international events rampage across the Chinese internet partly because of its hermetic environment, which limits readers ability to visit foreign websites and find out for themselves what is true or false. Language is another barrier. English may be a compulsory class in Chinese schools, but only a minority of people can fluently read foreign language news. Most simply read secondhand compilations and rundowns instead.

Then there is the countrys dearth of qualified foreign correspondents. Having failed to become true centers of knowledge production, staff at Chinas news agencies abroad struggle to bring their understanding of other countries back to China and enrich peoples worldviews.

In shattering the monopoly on information once held by these news agencies, the internet has democratized content creation and dissemination. But it didnt take long for some to realize that disinformation and conspiracy theories reeled in as much, if not more attention than more sober reporting and ad revenue to boot. And whereas coverage of domestic issues is tightly regulated in the interests of maintaining social stability, regulators and the public alike take a far more relaxed stance toward international issues, especially as the public opinion climate increasingly turns against the West and its white liberal compradors.

Above: The screenshot on the left shows a fake report about Obama being arrested; The screenshot on the right shows a similar fake news report about Gina Haspel. Below: A screenshot of the original video shows it was taken out of context. From the website of China Fact Check

The trend has only become more prevalent this year with the explosion of what the World Health Organization termed an infodemic of disinformation about the coronavirus. The combination of information bubbles, selective or distorted reporting, and manipulation has only reinforced our distrust of neutral outlets. Today, many readers prefer to judge media on their standpoint, not the quality of their reporting, and polarization overwhelms levelheaded discussion.

Disinformation and political polarization are hardly unique to China, but those working in the Chinese news industry need to shoulder more responsibility for our failure to give diverse, varied perspectives on stories. This will become more pressing as China grows more powerful, if only because the citizens of an emerging superpower should have an understanding of the world that befits their status. Having accurate information about other countries is essential to adopting a rational, open-minded, tolerant worldview. Otherwise the barrage of disinformation will gradually distort the Chinese peoples knowledge of the world and hinder constructive dialogue between China and other nations.

So what can we do? As a former editor in Chinese media myself, I know from experience that traditional fact-checking methods, which rely on teams of specialized workers painstakingly querying each claim made in an article, are wholly inadequate for the tidal wave of misinformation flooding our social media feeds. Instead, I decided to try something new. This year I launched China Fact Check, which takes a digital, new media approach to the issue. The idea is to create an online platform to foster collaborative relationships between three parties key to stopping fake news: universities, the media, and social media platforms.

My rationale for including the first party, universities, is simple: Fact-checking should start with young people. Theyre at a crucial stage in their intellectual development, and its important to encourage and support them in improving their media literacy and cultivate their ability to differentiate between the trustworthiness of different sources.

Theyre also extremely helpful volunteers. College students possess a natural familiarity with the internet, and many of them are also fluent in foreign languages, allowing them to check the sourcing on reports in the original.

Supplementing their youthful enthusiasm, I have been joined in my project by a group of veteran international news reporters and editors, who have volunteered to form and run a quality audit committee to ensure fact-checking standards and quality. Despite the stigmatization of the mainstream media both domestically and globally, professionally trained media professionals still have the responsibility to act against fake news and disinformation.

The third piece of the puzzle is the trickiest. A 2019 study of 10 Chinese cities found that 99.82% of respondents got news from their smartphones. Roughly 75% listed chat groups on messaging app WeChat as a news source; 20% listed Weibo. Television and print media accounted for only 6.5% and less than 1% of respondents news consumption, respectively.

In short, companies like ByteDance, Sina, and Tencent are not just tech firms; theyre major media outlets as well. But compared with their international counterparts like Facebook and Twitter, they have yet to come under intense public pressure over disinformation. Meanwhile, as algorithms mature and become more accurate, the mutual dependence between users, content creators, and those platforms has only deepened. Users get a rush from reading their tailored news feeds, while the latter two groups reap the profits.

Its not always that Chinese social media platforms fail to give due attention to disinformation; its just that they typically attempt to solve the problem the way they approach everything else: with messy, opaque regulations and conflicting standards. They remove some posts really quickly while leaving more radical content untouched. Tencent runs a database of rumors and fake news that will automatically alert readers if theyve read articles on WeChat later flagged as misinformation. Yet, because platforms opt first and foremost to work with government agencies and mainstream media outlets, its difficult for third-party fact-checking agencies to get their work noticed or included in these databases.

Still, its not completely hopeless. Disinformation is its own ecosystem, with mature mechanisms of production, sharing, and consumption. We have to acknowledge the collapse of our traditional media infrastructure and take an active role in building something new an ecosystem for truth. That will require active participation from society; more responsible, engaged media outlets; and platforms willing to sacrifice revenue to ensure that the most widely shared news is also the most accurate.

I dont want my child growing up on fake, skewed information that then shapes her outlook of the world. Who would?

Translator: Katherine Tse; editors: Cai Yineng and Kilian ODonnell; portrait artist: Wang Zhenhao.

(Header image: DigitalVision Vectors/People Visual)

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Mike Pompeo's Dad was a Hunanese Bandit and Other Real Fake News - Sixth Tone

University of Washington computer science professor emeritus Pedro Domingos. (UW Photo)

The University of Washington computer science department denounced comments made online by a retired professor over a debate about AI ethics, Timnit Gebrus controversial exit at Google, so-called cancel culture, and more.

A heated back-and-forth involving longtime AI researcher Pedro Domingos and the response from the UW demonstrates the complexity of public discourse on controversial topics. It also highlights unanswered questions related to the societal implications of artificial intelligence, and is the latest example of the backlash that can occur when politics collides with academia and the tech industry.

Domingos, who joined the UW faculty in 1999 and is the author of The Master Algorithm,sparked the initial discussion on Twitter after hequestioned why the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) conference was using ethics reviews for submitted papers.

Its alarming that NeurIPS papers are being rejected based on ethics reviews,' he tweeted last week. How do we guard against ideological biases in such reviews? Since when are scientific conferences in the business of policing the perceived ethics of technical papers?

His opinion drew a number of responses from other top data scientists and those involved with NeurIPS.

The problem here is that folks like him lack the humility to admit that they do not have skills in qualitative work and dismiss it all as a slippery slope,' tweeted Rumman Chowdhury, founder of Parity and former global lead for Responsible AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence. Qualitative methods have rigor. Ethical assessment can be generalizable and sustainable.

The discourse on Twitter then shifted to last years decision to rename NeurIPS. There were concerns over the previous name NIPS due to racial slurs and sexism.

That set off the beginning of a long exchange between Domingos and Anima Anandkumar, a professor at Caltech and director of machine learning research at NVIDIA who led a petition to change the name of the conference. Pornography came up in a discussion about web search results for the term nips, sparking a response from Katherine Heller, chair of diversity and inclusion for NeurIPS 2020, and Ken Anderson, chair at the University of Colorados computer science department.

As of Tuesday, Anandkumars Twitter was no longer active. She declined to comment for this story.Update:Anandkumar posted a public apology on her blog Wednesday. She also said she deactivated her Twitter account in the interest of my safety and to reduce anxiety for my loved ones.

NeurIPS posted a statement on ethics, fairness, inclusivity and code of conduct on its homepage. Weve reached out to the conference for comment.

Having observed recent discussions taking place across social media, we feel the need to reiterate that, as a community, we must be mindful of the impact that statements and actions have on our peers, and future generations of AI / ML students and researchers, it reads. It is incumbent upon NeurIPS and the AI / ML community as a whole to foster a collaborative, welcoming environment for all. Therefore, statements and actions contrary to the NeurIPS mission and its Code of Conduct cannot and will not be tolerated.

The Twitter chatter also delved into the recent departure of Gebru, a top AI ethics researcher at Google, and whether she was fired by the company or resigned following a controversy related to an AI ethics paper. Domingos tweeted that Gebru was creating a toxic environment within Google AI and said that she was not fired, despite Gebru stating otherwise.

Heller then tweeted at Domingos and said he was violating the NeurIPS code of conduct.

Later that evening, the UWs Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering issued a lengthy statement via Twitter. The schools leadership took issue with Domingos engaging in a Twitter flame war belittling individuals and downplaying valid concerns over ethics in AI, and for his use of the word deranged. Heres the statement in full:

#UWAllen leadership is aware of recent discussions involving Pedro Domingos, a professor emeritus (retired) in our school. We do not condone a member of our community engaging in a Twitter flame war belittling individuals and downplaying valid concerns over ethics in AI. We object to his dismissal of concerns over the use of technology to further marginalize groups ill-served by tech. While potential for harm does not necessarily negate the value of a given line of research, none of us should be absolved from considering that impact. And while we may disagree about approaches to countering such potential harm, we should be supportive of trying different methods to do so.

We also object in the strongest possible terms to the use of labels like deranged. Such language is unacceptable. We urge all members of our community to always express their points of views in the most respectful and collegial manner.

We do encourage our scholars to engage vigorously on matters of AI ethics, diversity in tech and industry-research relations. All are crucial to our field and our world. But we are all too familiar with counterproductive, inflammatory, and escalating social-media arguments.

We have asked Pedro to make clear he tweets as an individual, not representing the Allen School or the University of Washington. We would further argue that this whole mode of discourse is damaging and unbecoming.

The Allen School is committed to addressing AI ethics and equity in concrete ways. That work is ongoing, and many of our activities are listed on our website.

One key component is to expand the inclusion of ethics in our curriculum and prepare students to consider the very real impact that technology can have, especially on marginalized communities.

In recent years, we have added multiple classes on this topic at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and we plan to continue to work toward expanding that aspect of our curriculum.

As a school, we have stated our commitment to be more inclusive and to consider the impact of our work on people and communities. We will not be deterred, by naysayers inside or outside of our community, from putting in the hard work required to achieve those aims.

Signed,Members of the Allen School LeadershipMagdalena Balazinska, Prof. and DirectorDan Grossman, Prof. and Vice DirectorTadayoshi Kohno, Prof. and Associate Director for Diversity, Equity & InclusionEd Lazowska, Prof. and Associate Director for Development & Outreach

Domingos described the schools response as cowering before the Twitter mob.

We followed up with Magdalena Balazinska, a well-regarded researcher and educator who took over as the Allen School director last year. Heres what she had to say about the matter:

As leader of the Allen School, one of my highest priorities is to promote a culture and an environment that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. I also deeply care about an environment in which people discuss issues, even potentially controversial ones, openly, with empathy, and without bullying. Witnessing what happened on Twitter this past week was disheartening. We need to find ways to come together. The entire tech industry should work toward all these goals, and we have much work to do.

Ed Lazowska, a longtime leader at the Allen School, said the department is committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech.

We encourage good-faith dialogue, including on controversial issues, he said. But we expect members of our community to engage in that dialogue in a respectful, collegial, and constructive manner that is free from personal attacks and is not dismissive of peoples lived experiences. Pedro failed to live up to those standards and we felt compelled to make clear where we stand.

Lazowska added: Pedro is within his rights to tweet. We felt it was important to distance the school from his views.

In an email exchange with GeekWire, Domingos said the Allen School should have stood by my right to voice my opinions, and back me up in my efforts to free the machine learning community from the miasma descending on it.

Instead, they chose to pay their obeisance to the ultra-left crowd, as they have before, Domingos said, referencing Stuart Reges, another UW computer science professor who was criticized for his 2018 essay that claimed women are underrepresented in software engineering because of personal preference, not because institutional barriers deter them from pursuing careers in tech.

Reges told GeekWire he was disappointed that the Allen School has thrown Pedro under the bus.

He has raised significant questions about the activism surrounding Timnit Gebrus termination from Google and new efforts to inject ethics reviews into all aspects of AI research, said Reges. The greatest sin he has committed has been to refer to deranged activists. The unified mob reaction to try to cancel him proves that his opponents and the Allen School leadership are not willing to engage in meaningful dialog to explore the issues.

Domingos said the Twitter spat highlights how the machine learning community is being progressively strangled by political correctness and extreme left-wing politics.

The larger problem is that academia and the tech industry, not just machine learning, are being strangled by a crowd that refuses to allow the free exchange of ideas on which research depends, and is successfully imposing an increasingly far-left orthodoxy, he told GeekWire. People live in fear of their attacks.

Daniel Lowd, an associate professor at the University of Oregon who earned his PhD from the UW in 2010, tweeted that he would like to publicly disavow and distance myself from these comments by my PhD advisor and collaborator.

The reaction to Domingos original tweet about ethics reviews of AI papers also reflects the pressing dilemma of AI ethics as the technology increasingly infiltrates everyday life.

Considering the ethical impact of AI research is absolutely essential, said Oren Etzioni, a UW computer science professor emeritus (retired) who is now CEO of Seattles Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence.

That said, its hard to argue with Pedros observations about online attacks and the refusal to allow the free exchange of ideas, said Etzioni, who noted that he was speaking to GeekWire as an individual and not a representative of any institution.

Etzioni called out a platform his father launched called Civil Dialogues that encourages deliberation on pressing issues. He also noted his Hippocratic oath created in 2018 as a way to encourage AI software developers to remember their ethical burden.

Asked about Domingos comments on Twitter, Seattle University senior instructor and AI ethics expert Nathan Colaner said it seems that his underlying attitude is that ethical concerns in AI are overblown, and that ethicists are making too much of their concerns, specifically when it comes to algorithmic bias.

I think thats the wrong attitude to have, Colaner said. First of all, there is no legitimate debate to be had about whether algorithms are neutral. It is also now clear that AI is not going to remove human bias, as we sometimes used to hear. But what is still unclear is whether human bias is a worse or less bad problem than algorithmic bias.

Colaner said there are plenty of unanswered questions that need answers as AI innovation continues at a rapid pace. The AI ethics community is basically scrambling, he said, adding that he supports the Allen Schools statement. Colaner is managing director of the Initiative in Ethics and Transformative Technologies, an institute at Seattle U made possible through a donation from Microsoft.

Healthy debate sharpens everyones minds, Colaner said, but since we in the AI ethics community have serious, time-sensitive work to do, distraction is not useful, which is why Twitter made the unfollow button.

See the rest here:

Retired UW computer science professor embroiled in Twitter spat over AI ethics and cancel culture - GeekWire

The chairman of the white nationalistProud Boys group, a convicted felon,posted photos from inside the White House gates ahead of a violent pro-Trump rallyin Washington DC on Saturday, raising new questions about the president's apparent embrace of the right-wing agitators.

Enrique Tarriorevealed that he visited the executive mansionon Saturdayafterreceivinga "last-minute invite to an undisclosed location." The White House later said that Tarriohad not been invited, but had instead taken part ina holiday tour."He was on a public White House Christmas tour," White House spokespersonJudd Deere said over the weekend. "He did not have a meeting with the president, nor did the White House invite him."

White House public tours are self-guided, and anyone who wants one,including Christmas tours, must apply no fewer than 21 days ahead of their booking date because the application includesasecurity formand background check.Hopefuls with afelony are generally denied, a former Trump White House official told Salon, unless a senior member of the administration intervenes.

In 2013, Tarrio, also known asHenry TarrioJr, was convictedoftwo class C, one class D and one class E feloniesfor stealing and reselling $1.2 millionworth of diabetes test strips from Abbott Labs, and served16 months in federal prison. Court records show that hewasreleasedin December2014with two years probation, and ordered to pay restitution for the full$1.2 million.

On Saturday, Tarrio was accompanied to the executive mansionby other members ofLatinos for Trump, includingBianca Garcia, the president of the group, and her son,Armani Garcia,aformer intern for Rep.Jody Hice, R-Ga. It is unclear if or when Latinos for Trump applied for its White House tour, and unclear why Tarrio received a security pass.

In the past, people who have been invited to the WhiteHouse specifically because of their work on criminal justice reform have been denied entry. For instance, Vicki Lopez, a former county commissioner in Florida who had been previouslysentenced to 27 months in federal prison for mail fraud,was notallowed intothe Obama White House in 2009, despite receiving a commutation fromformer President Bill Clinton. People with prior convictions who are able to gain entry are generally given special badgesand personal escorts. It would be highly unusual for someone with Tarrio's criminal history to get inside the White House without someone high up in the administration personally pulling strings, according to the former White House official.

A White House spokesperson declined to reply when asked who had checked Tarrio in on Saturday: The East Wing, where visitors usually enter, or the Executive Office of the President.

During the firstpresidential debate in September, Trump had the opportunityto denouncewhite supremacistsand violent far-right groups specifically, Democratic opponent Joe Biden invited him to condemnThe Proud Boys. Trump did not denounce the group but told them "stand back and stand by,"a directive that the group took as an endorsement. The Proud Boys Telegram accountwrote,"standing down and standing by sir."Another known accountincorporated a version of thephrase "Stand back. Stand by" intoa new group logo.

"I think this 'stand back, stand by' thing will be another Proud Boy saying," TarriotoldThe Daily Beast.(The Beast pointed out that previous slogans were:"The West Is the Best," and the warning "F*ck Around and Find Out.")

Trump eventually condemned the group in a Fox Newsinterview two days later but he also claimed he knew "almost nothing" about them. "I condemn theProud Boys," Trump said. "I don't know much about theProud Boys, almost nothing, butI condemn that."

The Proud Boys self-identify as "Western chauvinists," butdeny being part oftheracist alt-right. Members claim theyare instead simply a men'sgroup that promotes an "anti-political correctness" and "anti-white guilt"ideology, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On his 2020 Ballotpedia candidatequestionnaire, Tarrio cited as his favorite book Pat Buchanan's 2001"The Death of the West:How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization."

"This book shows the growing problems and divide in our country," Tarrio wrote."It allows me to learn how to find solutions to conserve our nation and restore the love we have for it. We are not a perfect nation, but we must strive everyday to get as close to perfection as possible."

The group'sinitiation process demands aspirants to, among other things,denouncemasturbation andrecite five brands of breakfast cereal while fighting off an attack from other members. Thefinal requirement for membership involves "a major fight for the cause," founder Gavin McInnes told Metro.us in a 2017 interview.

"You get beat up, kick the crap out of an antifa" and possibly get arrested, McInnes explained.

"Their disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions," the SPLC says on its profile of the group. "Rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spoutwhite nationalistmemes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known foranti-Muslimand misogynistic rhetoric."

In 2017, Proud Boysmarchedatthe Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virg., but after a neo-Nazi terrorist attack on counter-protesters left one woman dead, the group's founder Gavin McInnesssought to create distancefrom the white supremacist movement.In recent months, members have shown upto counterBlack Lives Matter protests, and last month President Trump shared a video of a post-election Proud Boys brawl in D.C., selectively edited to make it appear that a member was a victim, not an instigator.

The grouphasheld rallieswhere hundreds of membersattended, many of them armed.However, its chairman, Tarrio, cannot legally own a gun, because he is a convicted felon. He oftenappearsin photographs wearinga tactical vest with afruit-flavored malted alcoholic beverage tucked into a front pocket.

The Proud Boys also haveties to longtime Trump associate and convicted felon Roger Stone, and they areopen about its support for the outgoing president.Anotherleader, Joe Biggs, boastedlast year that he was having dinner with Trump at the president's D.C. hotel, and shareda picture of himself seated beside Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.Trump'sofficial schedulethat evening included "remarks at a fundraising committee reception" at Trump International Hotel at 8:00PM.Tarrio'sSaturday visit coincided with a rally in the nation's capital where thousands of right-wing protesters,including several hundred Proud Boys,a number of themdressed in tactical vests and fatigues, took to the streets toprotestTrump's election defeat.

This January, Tarrio launched his ill-fated congressional campaignwithalaunch partyat Trump National Doral in Miami on Jan. 25. (Tarrio had toacceptRoger Stone's endorsement in absentia that evening, as the Trump confidant had been arrested that morning.) About 300 people attended the event, whichcaught the tail end of the Republican National Committee's winter meeting and ended with fireworks.

However, his campaign's finance records do not indicate any payments on the night other than a$900 expense onJan. 27 to Trump's BLT Prime restaurantin Washington, D.C. (There is a BLT Prime at Trump's Doral club as well.)Tarrio laterbraggedthat"We exceeded our expectation by three-fold with 250+ in the building."

A White House spokesperson referred Salon's questions about security checks to the U.S. Secret Service.The Secret Servicedid not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Excerpt from:

How did a Proud Boys leader with a felony record get into the White House? - Salon

Once again Dan Kershisnik has attacked my writing. This time I wrote about rafting, published here in the Rocket Miner on Nov. 21. His comment appeared on Nov. 28.

How will I ever be able to win? Why wont Kershisnik just invite me out for a beer at some fancy drinkery like Steves Wyoming Club? There he could advise me on the wisdom and moral superiority of Trump supporters like himself.

After reading my column and Kershisniks letter, a female confidant pointed out to me that when I wrote, they looked hot and fun in a hippy sort of way, it could indeed be construed that I was objectifying women. OK, I admit it, although this has never happened before, Kershisnik is right.

The same confidant, however, had a good laugh when she pointed out the irony of Kershisniks lecture to me, because, since when do Trump supporters worry about objectifying women? Remember the Access Hollywood tape? That alone should have made it impossible for him to become president, but some characteristics in Trumps presentation of himself have a super-glue hold on many people. These same characteristics repel me.

Whereas within Wyoming, in the presidential elections of both 2016 and 2020, I was in the minority, within the nation I have both times been within a large majority. The Electoral College was designed, in part, to keep clowns like Trump out of the White House, but it has failed. It didnt do so hot in 2000, either, but not nearly as badly in 2016.

In light of this, Kershisnik comes out sounding like a Hollywood liberal espousing political correctness. Next, hell be recommending that I take sensitivity training classes to heighten my awareness of the feelings of fascists and racists. Who knows, from there he might start telling me about whales and bison and reusable shopping bags, and the evils of fracking, but I bet he still wont be wearing a mask. Contradiction seems to be his way.

Perhaps my name touches off an attack-reflex in him against all things liberal. With pride, I consider myself a writer with liberal views on rural places. I respect conservatives when they are being conservative, which is a set of economic and social ideologies, but not when they are acting crazy and racist and ignorant, which in times past was not characteristic of conservatives. It used to be possible to have polite, logical discussions with them, but many of them have changed.

These past four years have witnessed the most mocking, insulting, and lying president we have ever had. Its with confusion and deep regret that so many Wyomingites have supported Trump these last few years. Will their flags and conspicuous signs and hateful slogans ever go away? To better understand these times, I have been reading up on Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, the suicide cult. Ive also reread some pages about the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Contrasting the above characters with liberal Barrack Obama, whos worse offense was trying to get everyone health insurance, its easy to see that a sickness has invaded rural America; it would take a pretty good neighbor, and with courage, to point this out. I would say to people who are still supporting Trump, Who and what you support say a lot about who and what you are. When Trump has been disgusting, his supporters, his excuse makers, are by association also disgusting.

Still, I thank Dan Kershisnik for pointing out to me something that I should have put more thought and sensitivity into. That beer, however, will have to wait a while, as Im currently camping, hiking and exploring, and enjoying the relative warmth, of The Big Bend area of Texas. This is, however, another story for another time.

Much of Texas, like Wyoming, is pretty trumpian, but I was encouraged the other day seeing a small Bidden/Harris sign in the garden of a cottage; there is hope.

Tom Gagnon, Rock Springs

Original post:

Letter to the editor: Kershisnik was right | Rocketminer - Wyoming Tribune