Saturday, November 28, 2015

Sleight of word from HLS

I see Prof. Pull up Your Pants is at it again, and I hope people who enjoy a good goalpost shifting caught this one, buried (and rightfully so) in paragraph nine of 13:

I have asked dissidents to tell me with as much particularity as possible the circumstances that led them to say that they feel burdened, alienated, disrespected, oppressed. They complain of a paucity of black professors, courses in which racial issues, though pertinent, are marginalized, teachers whose interactions with black students display far less engagement than interactions with nonblack students, white classmates who implicitly or even expressly question the intellectual capacity of black peers (“You know, don’t you, that they are here only because of affirmative action”)* and campus police officers who subject black students to a more intensive level of surveillance than white students.

[...]

While some of these complaints have a ring of validity, several are dubious. A decision by a professor to focus on a seemingly dry, technical issue rather than a more accessible, volatile subject involving race might well reflect a justifiable pedagogical strategy. Opposition to racial affirmative action can stem from a wide range of sources other than prejudice. Racism and its kindred pathologies are already big foes; there is no sustained payoff in exaggerating their presence, thus making them more formidable than they actually are.
To review: A person makes a racist statement, which in common with bigoted statements, can't be proven, to wit - every black student was admitted due to affirmative action.

This assertion Kennedy accepts without blinking, and for perfectly legitimate reasons that you must not question, quickly transubstantiates it into the airy realm of debate about policy.

What sort of reasonable person would object to a reasoned debate about policy? None. And since objections to policy are always reasonable and could have any number of reasons, persons seeking to assign a specific reason to the objection are behaving unreasonably.

No. Stop. I know what you're thinking, and it cannot be done. Goalposts only travel away from their original position. You cannot carry them back to the original statement and say "This is not an objection to policy, that's a racist insult."

Now please wait quietly until someone provides a list of objections to policy.

And pull your pants up.


*If one accepts Kennedy's quote as accurate [polite cough], I will concede that the Kids These Days are slightly less obnoxious. Way back in the days when I was in college people would use "You" rather than "They," and look surprised when the person they were addressing became irate.

Yay. Progress.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Public Service Announcement.

When presented with a link to something labeled "Ben Carson's rap ad," do not click on the link. It will make you depressed and angry.
I'm not going to link to it here. There will be a post about it on LGM at the bewitching hour, Because I like to ruin people's Fridays. Posting it on two blogs would be a crime against sentient life on Earth.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

What does "Make America great again" mean to Trump supporters?



The answer will shock you!
[Jane] Cimbal, a loyal Republican, wants people to think about how to curb illegal immigration and protect Second Amendment gun ownership rights, but she’s mainly drawn to Trump because she thinks his plain talk can get things done. Her goal is to restore a time “when there wasn’t as much animosity toward each other, when everything wasn’t about race and people just got along.”
Oh is that all? That's a relief. For a second I thought she might be one of those white people who still resent the fact that non-whites are allowed to do things like express opinions on any topic at all, including the way they've been treated by whites. And you know, exist. But she just wants us to get along. Phew! Who's next?
“Mitt Romney was more my kind of guy: practical, a nice guy."
Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Sorry, I didn't meant to interrupt you, sir. Please continue. [snerk]
"But you know, people don’t like a nice guy. They like this guy because he’s right about us losing our country. I really don’t think we should be letting kids go into whichever bathroom they want to in school. The Democrats are really reaching too far on the social issues. And there’s no retirement anymore, no pensions.”
Now I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. That was Joe McCoy who is the ripe old age of 31. McCoy also thinks the last time America was great was when Reagan was in office, because that's "when people played by the rules."

McCoy wants a president who will soothe his anxieties about (cover your dog's ears) "social issues" and quell the outbreak of unisex toilets in the workplace schools (which you don't know about because the LMSM hushes it up).

And while he is worried about the lack of retirement and pensions, he also likes Rmoney, which combined with his beliefs about the Reagan era, suggests a very poor eye for detail and crushing levels of ignorance.

Christ, these people. And finally:
[Georgetown University professor Robert] Lieber sees Trump’s slogan as a symbol of his ability to slice through standard political rhetoric: “His discourse is deliberately provocative, but he’s refreshing to a lot of people because he talks about reality with the bark off, and people are sick to death of the language of political correctness.”
Included because you were expecting someone to argle about political correctness, and I hate to disappoint.

In short, Trump supporters look to Trump to be mean to people they don't like. No surprises there,  that is what the Republican do. But why they picked him out of the legions of mother stabbing, father rapists who are also running for the Republican nomination seems to be based on their disappointment with the GOP and the fact that they view this millionaire T.V. personality with the yoooge ego, as the outsider.

That's bullshit. Again and again people refer to the way he talks. It's plain, it's not nice, it's deliberately provocative. What they want, is a man who will call a spade a spade, IYKWIM&ITYD.

They want someone who will make up for the trauma of eight years of Obama being uppity in the White House. And Trump is just the guy to go after those p.c. race obsessed unisex bathroom pushers and tell them just what they think of them.

Whatever. Over to you, Mr. Wilder.