The Harper letter is funny and so is NOS4A2's idea that the right is the victim of cancel culture.

I’ve never said such a thing. But I will say everyone is a victim of cancel culture. You will only deny it until it comes for you.

A couple years ago the city in which I live removed the statue of John MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister, due to his residential school policies. They did this due the politically correct pressure, behind closed doors and in the dead of night, without any consultation with the people who live here. There was a small protest with the typical fare: those who opposed it on grounds that it erased history, and those in favor because it was a symbol of racism. Now there is only one MacDonald statue in the entire country and is currently in petition for removal.

I am bothered by the removal of statues because I hate to see the destruction of art and history. I don’t want to see the removal of a statue for the same reason I don’t want to see the destruction of a totem pole (Slavery was rife in local tribes). Because where does it end? Might we deface the pyramids?

It seems to me a free society demands that we allow more room for history to be written. Instead of tearing down a statue, build a statue.

I wonder where those writers and academics were years, even decades ago, when the alarm bells were being rung. Better late than never, I suppose.

But special consideration needs to be given to Chomsky. He’s been a free speech warrior throughout his entire career, even defending the rights of Holocaust revisionists (his defence of Robert Faurisson was legendary) and war criminals.

I figure that since “true” and “false” are adjectives and descriptive terms, there is really no need to imagine them as nouns and go off in search of them. There is a curious process here: turn an adjective into a noun with some suffix or other, and in so doing alter a description of things into a thing. Modifying the pseudo-thing with more adjectives, it is no wonder that they and other “qualities” become exceedingly difficult to think about. I’m not sure what the linguistic purpose of such a process might be, but it is interesting.

Answeing the first question this way, the second question (am I original?) is already answered: I'm not original.

Unless you have existed at some other place and time, you are original and one of a kind. As a corollary, this is why you matter.

According to “multiple intelligence sources familiar with the briefing”, Schiff was briefed in February, but for some reason took no action.

Top committee staff for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, were briefed in February on intelligence about Russia offering the Taliban bounties in Afghanistan, but he took no action in response to the briefing, multiple intelligence sources familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. The intelligence was briefed to Schiff’s staff during a congressional delegation, or CODEL, trip to Afghanistan in February.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/02/schiff-learned-of-russian-bounty-intelligence-in-february-withheld-information-from-congress-and-took-no-action

So perhaps an investigation is indeed in order. I suppose we’ll see.

That was all faithful to your responses. That your argument lacks any degree of coherence, only you are to blame.

That’s nonsense, but it appears nonsense is the going rate here.

Okay, so just to be clear then. Your anti-black-lives-matter position is that you are troubled by the support networks you say they are not putting in place to disrupt a nuclear social requirement you say doesn't exist. :up:

Just to be clear, your only arguments are straw men. Is that because you think you’re clever, or because you have no other argument?

If I were a journalist and John Bolton contacted me to tell me about this intelligence and that Trump had been briefed, but asked to be kept anonymous, and if he'd shown himself to be a reliable source in the past, and if two or more other government officials had contacted me to say the same thing, then I'd run the story. Wouldn't you? That's how journalism and anonymous sources work. Just look at Deep Throat and the Watergate scandal. There's sense in this even if it isn't perfect or doesn't always pan out.

I’d be weary of it for ethical reasons. The public should have as much information as possible in order to judge the reliability and motivations of sources. What if these “officials” are Nancy Pelosi or Adam Schiff? Wouldn’t you want to know that? Don’t you think the public deserves to know that?

Can you explain how they can possibly implement the extended family model while obeying the nuclear family structure requirement? Again, you seem to be contradicting yourself, twice in this case.

There is nothing to obey. There is no requirement. They can live and gather as they wish in an open society. And they can do so without disrupting anything.

I think the role of the media should be to continue growing. Keep the means to reach an audience open to anyone. That’s why I would say censorship is the most pressing issue growing forward. Suppression is absolute, and we’re letting the means of mass communication be controlled and regulated by vast companies and governments. The gates of information have been opened but some still cling to their power.

At any rate, I suspect that we are dealing with this new world of accessible information in our own way.

As for the news, I think the turn from objectivity to advocacy journalism has had deleterious effects to the entire enterprise.

Great. So you support BLM's "supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another" at least in principle, even if you disagree that it exists in practise?

I think it’s a great idea to support others, especially those in need of family. What I don’t agree with is to do so to disrupt the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement”.

So you support a network of black people helping one another now?

I think everyone should help one another. It’s a brilliant idea.

Again, no one has a dim view of “helping one another”. That would be what is known as a lie where I’m from.

I just don’t find your opinions compelling or interesting.

I don’t need to misrepresent them. I can quote them directly from their website and interviews.

Why? It doesn't disrupt it for you: you seemed to agree that people having such networks doesn't hurt your right to be left alone and let everyone else gft. It disrupts it for people for whom it's a problem, or is insufficient.

Because I believe it is a bad idea. I’m not going to stop them or impede their choices, but I’m not going to support them either.

If your ideology casts helping one another as a sin rather than a virtue, you've got a pretty rotten ideology.

It’s a rotten lie that I cast “helping one another as a sin”.

The war is not for culture, though. It's for power. One side doesn't want it, they just want to stop the power grab. They're too concerned with culture, because "politics is downstream of culture." Well, that depends on the power structure.

So they did actually show up to the culture war, with their culture of conserving the system.

I think the current political hegemony in culture—academia, the press, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, corporate America—is quite a bit more powerful than the winning of elections. Even the most conservative of politicians is forced to play catch-up to it. Even to mention what the Chief Justice of the United States said 30 years ago would be to render oneself unfit for office in the public eye.

Well, no. I confess my first thought when I heard of George Floyd's murder was not: "This wouldn't be happening if black people cared less for one another."

But why does it make sense to you? Even if you believe that the individualistic nuclear support structure suits you, to the extent that you would not want any involvement in any kind of support network, why do you believe that it must be championed by everyone, including those in very different situations to you for whom a support network might be useful? What troubles you about the idea of people helping one another? Too commie? Black people might benefit from it? Not useful to you so shouldn't be allowed? Too reminiscent of the African village structures the idea is derived from? I'd list some positive possible motivations but I can't find any.

"The idea of people helping one another" doesn't trouble me, but the idea of disrupting "the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement" does. It troubles me for reasons I've already stated. And it true that it is a little too commie for my blood.

Okay so according to your information (whatever that is), the BLM virtual village isn't a thing. So why do you find it troubling if it isn't happening? This isn't amounting to a coherent position, even an ugly one.

I find it troubling that anyone would preach such piffle, when the opposite might be the better cause. Does that make sense to you?

oh, so they "disrupt families" and at the same time you don't think they "can operate as extended families"? Inconsistent much? You're such a shill for the Trump camp it's getting pathetic.

I guess it's a good thing I don't respect your opinion. Like I said, I think they're preaching dangerous nonsense. Rather I think they should be championing the family as the best support network for children.

Then in what sense do you find such support networks troubling?

I don’t think BLM can operate as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, namely because it isn’t an extended family or village that collectively cares for one another.

Seriously? You don't just have a problem with black lives mattering, you have a problem with an oppressed people having support networks?!? Or is this like a "gay marriage will ruin marriage" thing where you believe that black people having support networks will somehow make your white family (I'm confident that you're white) dissolve?

None of the above.

Is it scary?

No, it just hints at the ideological undertones of the organization.

I think you are overstating the dangers even if you believe it is nonesense.

Perhaps. But I believe family stability is important to the health, wealth, and well-being of individuals.

They couldn’t replace it if they tried. My contention is that they are preaching dangerous nonsense, none of which has to do with police violence or racism.

What is a trained Marxist?

God knows.

Nowhere do I see the word “replace”.

Then why would you say “replace”?

Where does Karl Marx have to do with an activist movement with no centralized local leader?

When the founder calls her and her co-founders “trained marxists”, I take them at their word.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

Anyone can go look at the quote, which doesn’t include anything about men in jail. That’s because you made it up.

I think we’re past the culture wars. One side didn’t show up. Thus most institutions lean in a certain direction. Nowadays it’s closer to a cultural revolution than war. Year-zero stuff—struggle sessions, class conflict, iconoclasm, and a taste for ideological purges. What isn’t certain is whether this consolidation of power will last or whether it is merely the death throes of a failing ideology.

Your really can't read can you? They stated "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement". And why would that be? Maybe because 1 in 3 of black men end up in jail at some point in time and the nuclear family is too often not the reality?

They even state in the paragraph before it "we make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children." They're not anti family and they're not trying to replace it but to support them through wider networks, such as, ironically, communities that you actually mention in the very next sentence.

The rest of that post is just silly. Nobody needs to support a well funded political party either. Oh wait.

They disrupt the western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement because 1 in 3 black men end up in jail? Can you quote them on that or are you just making that up? Don’t bother, I already know the answer.

And here I thought I was being reasonable, the only sane person in a madhouse.

Quite so. Indeed, much of what you have to say tells us about you rather than about how things are.

It ain't nice.

I’m sure your view of me is completely fair and just.

Which are also self-evidently good things no less than the proposition that black lives should matter.

But sure, something something Marxism bad mmkay?

Not to me. When self-avowed marxists start disrupting families through their make-believe “villages”, I see trouble. No activist network can substitute for family or community, and no one needs to support a well-funded protest organization to fight against racism. So use your hashtags and fist emojis to your heart’s content.

Yeah, how about doing that instead of equating their training to what BLM actually stands for. Not that there is anything wrong with Marxism to begin with but different discussion. And it's clear as day what the point of dredging up a video from 2015 has to do in this discussion. Distraction and poisoning the well.

What BLM pursues is a conservative goal. They demand black people should not have their constitutional right to freedom be violated through excessive force, racial profiling and over-policing of their communities by the police. Defund the police is the policy proposal they believe best reaches that goal. One wonders why people keep objecting to the goal and you'd expect conservatives and Republicans to support it as well. So there's a lot of resistance against a basically conservative demand to respect constitutional rights by Republicans. Is it coincidence Marxists founded BLM instead of Republicans? Or do Republicans perhaps not care about constitutional rights? Or, as I suspect, do they need their racist white base to win any election at all?

Justice sacrificed for power.

They also want to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”. They also want to “dismantle cisgender privilege”. I can support the premise that excessive force and racial-profiling are wrong without supporting some well-funded, far-left identitarian group who I believe care more about their activist bona fides than about “black lives”.

I appreciate the effort but I fear it was a waste. The nonsensical aspect of your interpretation of the statistics, in my opinion, is that these disparities are necessarily the result of racism and no other factor. Yes, the disparities can be frightening, but you nor anyone else have proven that racism compels and influences police brutality, or any other disparity. Your picture of systemic racism is missing the racism.

If you think one can reasonably prove that the US government has purposefully constructed the relevant laws in ways that they knew would disproportionately affect the races, then why don’t you do that? “The results speak for themselves” isn’t a good enough answer.

Certainly many laws and policies have been a failure—war on poverty, welfare, war on drugs—and if one wants to continue to view the world through the lense of race, some races are more affected than others. But to assume some concerted and pervasive racist motive in both the creation and application of these laws is a step too far, and worse, it leaves other potential factors (fatherless homes, education, criminality, culture, media) out of the equation.

The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is a self-evident truth. The group Black Lives Matter was founded by “trained Marxists”, so hopefully we can differentiate between the phrase and the “movement”.

I would consider that systemic or institutional racism, yes.



Yes, I do not know the answer to that question. Care to fill me in?

Right, according to “US officials with direct knowledge”, the sine qua non of anti-trump conspiracy theories.

The Department of Defense continues to evaluate intelligence that Russian GRU operatives were engaged in malign activity against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan. To date, DOD has no corroborating evidence to validate the recent allegations found in open-source reports. Regardless, we always take the safety and security of our forces in Afghanistan — and around the world — most seriously and therefore continuously adopt measures to prevent harm from potential threats."

https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2241964/statement-by-assistant-to-the-secretary-of-defense-for-public-affairs-on-intell/

The pentagon has found no corroborating evidence of recent allegations regarding Russian bounties. It’s starting to look like 2016 all over again.