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mightyflamethrower · 9 months ago

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At the nexus of most of America’s current crises, the diversity/equity/inclusion dogma can be found.

The southern border has been destroyed because the Democratic Party wanted the poor of the southern hemisphere to be counted in the census, to vote if possible in poorly audited mail-in elections, and to build upon constituencies that demand government help. Opposition to such cynicism and the de facto destruction of enforcement of U.S. immigration law is written off as “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.”

The military is short more than 40,000 soldiers. The Pentagon may fault youth gangs, drug use, or a tight labor market. But the real shortfall is mostly due inordinately to reluctant white males who have been smeared by some of the military elite as suspected “white supremacists,” despite dying at twice their demographics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are now passing on joining up despite their families’ often multigenerational combat service.

The nexus between critical race theory and critical legal theory has been, inter alia, defunding the police, Soros-funded district attorneys exempting criminals from punishment, the legitimization of mass looting, squatters’ rights, and general lawlessness across big-city America.

The recent epidemic of anti-Semitism was in part birthed by woke/DEI faculty and students on elite campuses, who declared Hamas a victim of “white settler” victimizing Israel and thus contextualized their Jewish hatred by claiming that as “victims,” they cannot be bigots.

There is a historic, malevolent role of states adjudicating political purity, substituting racial, sex, class, and tribal criteria for meritocracy. They define success or failure not based on actual outcomes but on the degree of orthodox zealotry. Once governments enter that realm of the surreal, the result is always an utter disaster.

After a series of disastrous military catastrophes in 1941 and 1942, Soviet strongman and arch-communist Joseph Stalin ended the Soviet commissar system in October 1942. He reversed course to give absolute tactical authority to his ground commanders rather than to the communist overseers, as was customary.

Stalin really had no choice since Marxist-Leninist ideology overriding military logic and efficacy had ensured that the Soviet Union was surprised by a massive Nazi invasion in June 1941. The Russians in the first 12 months of war subsequently lost nearly 5 million in vast encirclements—largely because foolhardy, ideologically driven directives curtailed the generals’ operational control of the army. After the commissars were disbanded and commanders given greater autonomy, the landmark victory at Stalingrad followed, and with it, the rebound of the Red Army.

One reason why the dictator Napoleon ran wild in Europe for nearly 18 years was that his marshals of France were neither selected only by the old Bourbon standards of aristocratic birth and wealth nor by new ideological revolutionary criteria, but by more meritocratic means than those of his rival nations.

Mao’s decade-long cultural revolution (1966–76) ruined China. It was predicated on Maoist revolutionary dogma overruling economic, social, cultural, and military realities. An entire meritocracy was deemed corrupted by the West and reactionary—and thus either liquidated or rendered inert.

In their place, incompetent zealots competed to destroy all prior standards as “bourgeois” and “counter-revolutionary.” It is no surprise that the current “people’s liberation army,” for all its talk of communist dogma, does not function entirely on Mao’s principles.

Muammar Gaddafi wrecked Libya by reordering an once oil-rich nation on Gaddafi’s crackpot rules of his “Green Book.” At times, the unhinged ideologue, in lunatic fashion, required all Libyans to raise chickens or to destroy all the violins in the nation. I once asked a Libyan why the oil-rich country appeared to me utterly wrecked, and he answered, “We first hire our first cousins—and usually the worst.”

There were many reasons why the King-Cotton, slave-owning Old South lagged far behind the North in population, productivity, and infrastructure. But the chief factor was the capital and effort invested in the amoral as well as uneconomic institution of slavery.

After the Civil War, persistent segregationist ideology demanded vast amounts of time, labor, and money in defining race down to the “one drop” rule—while establishing a labyrinth of segregation laws and refusing to draw on the talents of millions of black citizens.

Yet here we are in 2024, ignoring the baleful past as the woke diversity/equity/inclusion commissars war on merit. Institutions from United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to the Pentagon and elite universities have been reformulated in the post-George Floyd woke hysteria. And to the delight of competitors and enemies abroad, they are now using criteria other than merit to hire, promote, evaluate, and retain.

The greatest problem historically with hiring and promoting based on DEI-like dogma is that anti-meritocratic criteria mark the beginning, not the end, of eroding vital standards. If one does not qualify for a position or slot by accepted standards, then a series of further remedial interventions are needed to sustain the woke project, from providing exceptions and exemptions, changing rules and requirements, and misleading the nation that a more “diverse” math, or more “inclusive” engineering, or more “equity” in chemistry can supplant mastery of critical knowledge that transcends gender, race, or ideology.

But planes either fly or crash due to proper operation, not the appearance or politics of the operator. All soldiers either hit or miss targets, and engineers either make bridges that stand or collapse on the basis of mastering ancient scientific canons and acquired skills, training, and aptitude that have nothing to do with superficial appearance, or tribal affinities, or religion, or doctrine.

The common denominator of critical theories, from critical legal theory to critical social theory, is toxic nihilism, which claims there are no absolute standards, only arbitrary rules and regulations set up by a privileged, powerful class to exploit “the other.” Yet, not punishing looting has nothing to do with race or class, but everything with corroding timeless deterrence that always has and always will prevent the bullying strong from preying on the weak and vulnerable.

Defunding the police sent a message to any criminally minded that in a cost-to-benefit risk assessment, the odds were now on the side of the criminal not being caught for his crimes—and so crime soared and the vulnerable of the inner city became easy prey.

Another danger of DEI is the subordination of the individual to the collective. We are currently witnessing an epidemic of DEI racism in which commissars talk nonstop of white supremacy/rage/privilege without any notion of enormous differences among 230 million individual Polish-, Greek-, Dutch-, Basque-, or Armenian-Americans, or the class, political, and cultural abyss that separates those in Martha’s Vineyard from their antitheses in East Palestine, Ohio.

Moreover, what is “whiteness” in an increasingly intermarried and multiracial society? Oddly, something akin to the old one-drop rules of the South is now updated to determine victims and victimizers—to the point of absurdity. Who is white—someone one half-Irish, one half Mexican—who is black—someone one quarter Jamaican, three-quarters German? To find answers, DEI czars must look to paradigms of the racist past for answers.

Moreover, once any group is exempted and not held to collective standards by virtue of its superficial appearance, then the nation naturally witnesses an increase in racism and bigotry—on the theory that it is not racist to racially stigmatize a supposedly “racist” collective. And we are already seeing an uptake in racially motivated interracial violence as criminals interpret the trickle-down theory of reparatory justice as providing exemption for opportunistic violence.

Throughout history, it has always been the most mediocre and opportunistic would-be commissars that appear to come forth when meritocracy vanishes. If there was not a Harvard President and plagiarist like Claudine Gay to trumpet and leverage her DEI credentials, she would have to be invented. If there was not a brilliant, non-DEI economist like Roland Fryer to be hounded and punished by her, he would have to be invented.

The DEI conglomerate has little idea of the landmines it is planting daily by reducing differences in talent, character, and morality into a boring blueprint of racial stereotypes. Punctuality is now “white time” and supposedly pernicious. The SAT, designed to give the less privileged a meritocratic pathway to college admissions, is deemed racist and either discarded or warped.

In its absence, universities are quietly now “reimaging” their curriculum to make it more “relevant to today’s students” and, of course, “more inclusive and more diverse.” Translated from the language of Oceania, that means after admitting tens of thousands to the nation’s elite schools who did not meet the universities’ own prior standards that they themselves once established and apprehensive about terminating such students, higher education is now euphemistically lowering the work load in classes, introducing new less rigorous classes, and inflating grades. In their virtue-signaling, they have little clue that inevitably their once prized and supposedly prestigious degrees will be rendered less valued as employers discover a Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton BA or BS is not a guarantee of academic excellence or mastery of vital skill sets.

Toxic tribalism is also, unfortunately, like nuclear proliferation. Once one group goes full tribal, others may as well, if for no reason than their own self-survival in a balkanized, Hobbesian world of bellum omnium contra omnes. If our popular culture is to be defined by the racist hosts of The View, or the racist anchorwoman Joy Reid, or members of the Congressman “Squad,” or entire studies departments in our universities that constantly bleat out the racialist mantra, then logically one of two developments will follow.

One, so-called whites in minority-majority states like California will copy the tribal affinities of others that transcend their class and cultural differences, again in response to other blocs that do the same for careerist advantage and perceived survival. Or two, racism will be redefined empirically so that any careerist elites who espouse ad nauseam racial chauvinism—on the assurance they cannot be deemed racists—will be discredited and exposed for what they’ve become, and thus the content of our character will triumph over the color of our skin.

Finally, do we ever ask how a country of immigrants like the United States—vastly smaller than India and China, less materially rich than the vast expanse of Russia, without the strategic geography of the Middle East, or without the long investment and infrastructure of Europe—emerged out of nowhere to dominate the world economically, financially, militarily, and educationally for nearly two centuries?

The answer is easy: it was the most meritocratic land of opportunity in the world, where millions emigrated (legally) on the assurance that their class, politics, religion, ethnicity, and yes, race, would be far less a drawback than anywhere else in the world.

The degree to which the U.S. survives DEI depends on either how quickly it is discarded or whether America’s existential enemies in the Middle East, China, Russia, and Iran have even worse DEI-anti-meritocratic criteria of their own in hiring, promotion, and admissions—whether defined by institutionalized hatred of the West, or loyalty oaths to the communist party, or demonstrable obsequiousness to the Putin regime, or lethal religious intolerance.

Unfortunately, our illiberal enemies, China especially, at least in matters of money and arms, are now emulating the meritocracy of the old America. Meanwhile, we are hellbent on following their former destructive habits of using politics instead of merit to staff our universities, government, corporations, and military.

Our future hinges on how quickly we discard DEI orthodoxy and simply make empirical decisions to stop printing money, deter enemies abroad, enforce our laws, punish criminals, secure the border, reboot the military, regain energy independence, and judge citizens on their character and talent and not their appearance and politics—at least if it is not already too late.

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reasoningdaily · 1 year ago

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Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new.

There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.

The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest.

I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged.

Slave Patrols

There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.

Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.

The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.

Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.

The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.

The first police forces were overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime.

As Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Gary Potter explains, officers were expected to control a “dangerous underclass” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. Through the early 20th century, there were few standards for hiring or training officers.

Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.

Jim Crow Laws

Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.

For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live.

The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. But within two decades, Jim Crow laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.

For about 80 years, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spaces for blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality.

Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs.

Reverberating Today

For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.

The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American.

Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.

In addition, the police disproportionately target black drivers.

When a Stanford University research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic racial profiling, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver’s complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.

This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.

There is greater understanding within the police that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are becoming more diverse.

What’s more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take “diversity in criminal justice” courses. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.

In addition, law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to recognize and minimize their own biases in New York City and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.

But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.

#The Racist Roots of American Policing: From Slave Patrols to Traffic Stops #american policing #slave catchers #police #fuck the police #acab #racism with a badge and gun #white supremacy #systemic racism #racial profiling #racist roots #Black Codes

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canichangemyblogname · 1 year ago

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Heard a woman unironically say that she has turned to reading the National Review, a site called (I think) The Christian Monitor or something, and watching Fox News because, “No one else cares about antisemitism” in regards to the violence in Israel-Palestine.

And I was like… you did not turn to a Conservative Christian news site for a nuanced understanding of antisemitism. You turned to these outlets for confirmation of your Islamophobia. You could have easily turned to NPR, who just today interviewed two Rabbis to discuss how Jewish communities process and handle grief.

The National Review recently claimed that standing for Israel is standing for “western values.” I want to ask you: since when have the people who scream about the degradation of such things as “Judaeo-Christian values” or cry about attacks on “Western values” ever been *not* antisemitic and racist?

Fox News employs Greg Gutfeld, the man who said that Jewish people “had to be useful” to the Nazis to survive the Holocaust. The network frequently platforms men like Joe diGenova, who on Nov. 13, 2019 got onto the “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on the Fox Business Network, and maligned progressive activist George Soros, a Jewish man. DiGenova claimed that Soros controls the Foreign Service and State Department, and that he is a corrupting influence on the U.S. government. Col. Douglas MacGregor got onto the same show and claimed “Soros in particular has funded or helped fund these massive migrations out of Central America.” He described Soros as having tentacles. Plus, former host Tucker Carlson also frequently accused Soros of using his wealth to change American society and also lionized Henry Ford, the man who inspired Adolf Hitler and published the anti-Semitic screed, The International Jew.

Fox News is WELL KNOWN for being one of the many reasons for rises in antisemitism in the United States. They are a contributing factor. Why would you go to a well known antisemitic network for “unbiased” reporting on Israel? You’re only going to be exposed to vile antisemitic propaganda. Like, if this is where you’re going for non-antisemitic news, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The reason you’ve found yourself drawn to these media networks for their coverage of Israel is because they confirm for you that which you want to hear about Arab people and Palestinian Liberation as these same networks are also well known for their Islamophobia and for contributing to Islamophobic violence in the US, most recently with the stabbing of a 6 y/o boy in the Chicagoland.

Let’s be real here. No one legitimately turns to notorious antisemites for non-antisemitic news. You’re looking for the religious bigotry and racism they peddle.

#Fox News #antisemitism #islamophobia

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years ago

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Plutocratic Power and Its Perils :: April 17, 2023

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

The rich are different from you and me: They have immensely more power. But when they try to exercise that power they can trap themselves — supporting politicians who will, if they can, create a society the rich themselves wouldn’t want to live in.

This, I’d argue, is the common theme running through four major stories that have been playing out over the past few months. They are: the relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas and the billionaire Harlan Crow; the rise and seeming decline of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign; the trials (literally) of Fox News; and the Muskopalypse at Twitter.

First, some notes on the role of vast wealth in a democracy.

People on the right often insist that expressing any concern about highly concentrated wealth is “un-American.” The truth, however, is that worrying about the dangers great wealth poses for democracy is very much part of the American tradition. And our nation basically invented progressive taxation, which was traditionally seen not just as a source of revenue but also as a way to limit excessive wealth.

In fact, if you read what prominent figures said during the Progressive Era, many expressed views that would be hysterically denounced as class warfare today. Theodore Roosevelt warned against “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.” Woodrow Wilson declared, “If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

How does great wealth translate into great power? Campaign finance is dominated by a tiny number of extremely rich donors. But there are several other channels of influence.

Until recently I would have said that outright corruption — direct purchase of favors from policymakers — was rare. ProPublica’s revelation that Justice Thomas enjoyed many lavish, undisclosed vacations at Crow’s expense suggests that I may have been insufficiently cynical.

Beyond that, there’s the revolving door: Former politicians and officials who supported the interests of the wealthy find comfortable sinecures at billionaire-supported lobbying firms, think tanks and media organizations. These organizations also help shape what military analysts call the “information space,” defining public discourse in ways that favor the interests of the superrich.

Despite all that, however, there’s only so much you can achieve in America, imperfect and gerrymandered as our democracy may be, unless you can win over large numbers of voters who don’t support a pro-billionaire economic agenda.

It’s a simplification, but I think fundamentally true, to say that the U.S. right has won many elections, despite an inherently unpopular economic agenda, by appealing to intolerance — racism, homophobia and these days anti-“wokeness.” Yet there’s a risk in that strategy: Plutocrats who imagine that the forces of intolerance are working for them can wake up and discover that it’s the other way around..

For a while DeSantis seemed to be surging in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Much of his apparent rise reflected support from big G.O.P. donors, who saw him as a saner alternative to Donald Trump — someone who would serve their financial interests while attracting working-class support with his social conservatism and willingness to play footsie with conspiracy theories.

But some of those donors are now bailing, because it looks increasingly as if DeSantis’s intolerance and conspiracy theorizing weren’t a political show — they’re who he really is. And the big money was looking for a charlatan, not a genuine fanatic.

Among the forces pushing a DeSantis candidacy has been Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Fox was essentially founded to carry out the right-wing strategy of pushing plutocratic policy while winning over working-class whites with intolerance and conspiracy theories. But emails and texts uncovered by the defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems show that Fox has become a prisoner of the audience it created. It found itself endorsing claims about a stolen election, even though its own people knew they were false, because it feared losing market share among viewers who wanted to believe the Big Lie.

And does anyone doubt that if the Republican primary goes the way it seems to be heading, Fox will soon be back in Trump’s corner?

Rupert Murdoch’s organization, then, has effectively been taken hostage by the very forces he helped conjure up.

But Elon Musk’s story is, if anything, even sadder. As Kara Swisher recently noted for Time magazine, he’s become “the world’s richest online troll.” The crazy he helped foment hasn’t taken over his organization — it has taken over his mind.

I still believe that the concentration of wealth at the top is undermining democracy. But it isn’t a simple story of plutocratic rule. It is, instead, a story in which the attempts of the superrich to get what they want have unleashed forces that may destroy America as we know it. And it’s terrifying.

#NY Times #Paul Krugman #Plutocracy #money and politics #political

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jamesgierach · 1 year ago

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Good Morning America and Beyond!

Thank you for accepting my invitation. I sought to add you as a colleague and friend because you minister to congregations in neighborhoods that see too much gun violence.

I am a former Cook County prosecutor, defense attorney, municipal attorney and drug policy reform activist. I’m for legalized drug markets, labels, licensing, government inspection of drugs, etc. I’m against drug use and never used a controlled substance.

It’s a World War on Drugs. UN drug-prohibition treaties that the U.S. sponsored mandated drug-prohibition laws in 186 nations. And those laws, unintentionally, result in a world with more drugs, more crime and more corruption. It is the law that takes youngsters from their books, that arms kids with guns, that gets 4,000 Chicagoans shot yearly. It makes healthcare unaffordable and drug overdose a norm. It’s the basis and justification for abusive policing, the promoter of corruption, and the last best refuge for racism in America.

Rather than me rattling on here. I wrote a book that was released Tuesday, November 21, 2023, that discusses these matters. It’s called “The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to end the War on Drugs?” Counterintuitively, the answer is YES.

https://histriabooks.com/product/the-silver-bullet-is-it-time-to-end-the-world-war-on-drugs/

Over the years, I have received help with my message from the Hon. R. Eugene Pincham, Ald. Rev. Deville and other leaders in the Black community. But the job is yet to be accomplished. Black Chicagoans, like all Chicagoans, need to help change public opinion regarding drug policy to ameliorate a dozen crises including drugs, overdose, AIDS, gangs, guns, violence, immigration, racism, criminal justice and freedom.

Maybe take a look at my “radical” book and let me hear from you if you’d like to help. Or if I can help.

Kind regards,

Jim Gierach

1-708-951-1601

Palos Park, Illinois

#ministry #drug-policy #crime #drugs #gangs #violence #immigration

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frillability · 6 months ago

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I am Cuban American, the first generation of my family to be born in the US. My mother and her side of the family immigrated at great cost. We are so fortunate to be here. My family wasn't wealthy. Many Americans who travel to Cuba are only shown specific areas of Cuba; they are reserved for tourists and only tourists. My mother and I cannot go to Cuba right now because there is a chance she would not be admitted back into the US as her birth certificate is Cuban, (despite being a US citizen,) at the will of the Cuban government.

"Cuba does not recognize the U.S. citizenship of Cuban-born U.S. citizens who maintain residency status in Cuba. The Cuban government requires Cuban dual nationals to enter and depart Cuba using Cuban passports. Cuban-born U.S. citizens who maintain their residency status in Cuba will be treated as Cuban citizens and may be subject to Cuban restrictions and legal obligations. "

So, if the government wasn't feeling particularly honest and decided it could prove she had been maintaining residence in Cuba all this time, even though that is not true, it could be within its power to not recognise my mother's US citizenship.

Same sex marriage was not legalised until 2022. Fidel does not deserve any of the credit. This article from 2008 cites the beginning of the decline of his health. He wrote a letter 18 February 2008 stating his intentions to step down from leadership, his brother, Raúl, to officially take his place.

Lydia Smith of The Independent writes in 2018, "In a country which incarcerated LGBT people for most of Fidel Castro’s rule, the island’s capital now has gay clubs and bars and celebrates Pride every year."

"Cuba has changed drastically. In 1959, Castro came to power after leading a revolution that toppled the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista.

Soon afterwards, police began to round up gay men. In the 1960s and 1970s, many LGBT people were imprisoned or forced into 're-education camps'.

Homosexuality was viewed as going against the ideal of the hypermasculine revolutionary – and was therefore deemed incompatible with the regime.

'We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant,' Fidel Castro told an interviewer in 1965."

Many articles I skimmed through boasted Cuba's free trans surgical healthcare introduced in 2008. Mariela Castro, Raúl's daughter, was the director of The National Center for Sex Education and was the individual who advocated for it. If anyone, she should be credited, if my reading is correct. It only became possible after Raúl took office.

However, there is a very important note in a Wikipedia article that I would like to confirm. (If anyone has more information on it, please DM me, it has no citation, and I couldn't find further research.) In the article on LGBT rights in Cuba, contained the main table, and under the Gender identity heading reads:

"Gender change allowed since 2008; Surgery not required since 2013."

Surgery seems to have been required for gender change in Cuba until 2008. Being gay was a crime until 1979. He seems to blame his imprisonment of gay people on "Keeping one step ahead of the CIA."

Cuba also still deals with a significant amount of racism and classism. You don't hear about it because powers that be don't want you to. They want you to think that the revolution worked. They'll make you believe it when you visit. But unless you are Cuban and you weren't given an early pass out, you don't know our families' nightmares. Want to see the real Cuba? Ask a Cuban who wants to show you.

Imma get called a tankie for this even tho it's not really a tankie opinion but I always find the bizarre vitriol for Castro weird cuz yeah the dude had problems but he's also like the only politician to be like "Hey I fucked up homophobia fucking sucks I'm so sorry for that I'm going to fix that" and proceeded to make such great changes to lgbt rights in Cuba that they have some of the most progressive LGBT laws in the world and possible some of the best trans care in the world. Like, what USA politician has been like "yeah I fucked up that was wrong of me and I'm gonna change that" and tangibly changed shit for the better. You just don't get that here.

#cuba #cuban #cubane #cubana #cuban american #text post #frillability

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ismaelfarmer · 6 months ago

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The Dark Underbelly of America’s War on Drugs

The United States’ War on Drugs, a campaign initiated in the early 1970s, ostensibly aimed at eradicating illegal drug use and trade, has long been mired in controversy and criticism. Over the decades, it has become increasingly clear that this "war" is not only ineffective but also riddled with corruption, racial bias, and ulterior political motives. The complexities and failures of America's drug policies reveal a shadowy landscape where vested interests, systemic racism, and geopolitical strategies intersect.

Origins and Political Motives

The War on Drugs was officially declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971, labeling drug abuse as "public enemy number one." However, numerous reports suggest that the campaign was partly a political tool. Nixon’s domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman, later admitted that the real targets were anti-war protesters and African Americans, explaining that associating them with drugs allowed the administration to disrupt their communities and vilify them publicly .

Racial Disparities and Mass Incarceration

One of the most glaring issues with the War on Drugs is its racial bias. Despite similar rates of drug use across racial lines, people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are disproportionately targeted and incarcerated. According to the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at nearly six times the rate of white people . This disparity extends beyond arrests to sentencing, where mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine (more commonly used by black Americans) were much harsher than for powder cocaine (more commonly used by white Americans) until the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.

Corruption and Scandal

The enforcement of drug policies has also been marred by significant corruption and scandal. Perhaps one of the most notorious examples is the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration, where it was revealed that funds from illegal arms sales were used to support Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Reports suggested that the CIA turned a blind eye to Contra involvement in cocaine trafficking to the U.S. . Moreover, there have been numerous instances of law enforcement officers themselves being implicated in drug trafficking and other related criminal activities.

The Role of Big Pharma

While the government has aggressively pursued street-level drug dealers and users, it has often been lenient towards pharmaceutical companies whose practices contribute significantly to the drug problem. The opioid crisis, for instance, was fueled by the aggressive marketing of highly addictive prescription painkillers by companies like Purdue Pharma. Despite clear evidence of their role in fostering addiction, these companies have often escaped with fines rather than criminal charges .

Impact on Latin America

The War on Drugs has also had profound and often devastating impacts on Latin American countries. U.S. policies have encouraged militarized approaches to drug control, contributing to violence and instability in countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras. These efforts have often led to human rights abuses, with civilian populations caught in the crossfire. The focus on eradicating drug crops has also harmed local economies and contributed to environmental degradation.

The Cycle of Poverty and Addiction

In many American communities, particularly impoverished ones, the War on Drugs has perpetuated a vicious cycle of poverty and addiction. Harsh punitive measures have done little to reduce drug use but have instead led to overcrowded prisons and broken families. The criminalization of drug addiction prevents individuals from seeking help and exacerbates the socioeconomic conditions that foster drug dependency in the first place .

Moving Towards Reform

Despite its long and troubled history, there are signs of change in the approach to drug policy in the United States. There is growing recognition that addiction should be treated as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. States like Oregon have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of all drugs, focusing instead on treatment and harm reduction. Additionally, the legalization of marijuana in several states reflects a shift towards more progressive drug policies.

In conclusion, the War on Drugs in the United States is a multifaceted failure that has caused extensive harm domestically and internationally. It highlights deep-seated issues of racial injustice, political manipulation, and systemic corruption. As the nation moves towards drug policy reform, there is hope that future strategies will prioritize health and human rights over punitive measures and that the lessons learned from past failures will guide more equitable and effective solutions.

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auncerra · 7 months ago

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Is the algorithm becoming an active trigger warning, 6/17/2024

Streptococcal toxic shock syndrome in Japan (rates partially relative to the lifting of certain COVID regulations), U.S. military investment in the ongoing mass genocide in Palestine, the staggering rates of unemployment (often due to unrealistic employer standards, class division, and general competitive culture around hiring) and housing crisis, arguably 'constitutional' draft legislation in 2024 (expanding on trans-exclusionary ideologies, deferring to 'AMAB' despite the "progressive" incentives to allow for legal gender-identity-affirming changes) (was the polarizing Vietnam, and its compromising effects, not limited to decades of PTSD, not sample enough of the draft's ethical drawbacks/failure), bird flu discovered in the cattle industry in the U.S. (now attributable to dairy, cattle meat), major banks and their future questionable viability (particularly in regards to accessing checking accounts/account balances), the rise of arguably/allegedly unconstitutional, intellectual-property-exploitative AI-training initiatives via major players (Photoshop/Adobe, Instagram (Meta), potentially Google with new 'Gemini' updated browser, et cetera), California residents and the disproportionate/directional turn towards becoming unhoused when outside of a target income range, noted escalated climate change and broad fast-fashion implications, unrelieved and unaddressed student loan concerns... it draws on the question of where the climate of the United States is headed, beyond those issues being faced globally.

It's no revered secret the United States as a whole has seemed to turn on the ideology behind constitutional rights, behind a nation comprised of the voices of its citizens, behind understanding and reconciling the concern for certain liberties it was supposedly founded on, the growing unrest in the country, the vast political divides, the lack of understanding, tolerance, and ethical conduct (non-discriminatory) action of local, federal, and judicial entities, the uneven class system, historic and systemic racism, gender-based discrimination, transgender/LGBTQ++-centric discrimination, the list of out-of-touch and arguably endangering policies, and lack thereof, leans further into the core of this question: if it is not a nation inspired for the betterment, social, cultural, psychological, (often) medical, and material health of its citizens, is it any wonder generations today obligatorily turn to applications like TikTok as primary news sources, apps vulnerable to scrutiny, to a potential ban, because of their viability as a source of income and information where the government, where other corporations and apps have become demonstrably uncaring and not openly providing?

The general sense of acceptance around states of living that are unsustainable, the broad sense of distrust of those in positions of power to ensure communal safety from powers within and outside, the glacially-slow pace of important policies being acknowledged, integrated, where those critically lacking in moral/ethical foundation are passed blithely...

Yes, colonized land. Yes, class inequities. Yes, all aforementioned. Yes, for these reasons, a predictably intolerant military foundation (let's not even delve into the mental health ramifications of casually dismissing gender identity to supply archaic 'AMAB'/'AFAB' pretenses), (let's not even unravel the notion of incarceration as a penalty for morally or ethically objecting to engagement in a potential war, particularly one waged unethically and objectively opposed and the implications on an already strained workforce/employment opportunity of criminal records/felons), (let's not even dive into the already underfunded, corruption-susceptible, long-declining structure of the prison system)...

None of this is news, because the news stream is constant. The issues can sometimes feel verbatim, one after another, a teetering reality dependent partially on a restructuring that might only come with acknowledgment. Yes, maybe antibiotic treatment and bacterial-infection-protection measures can apply to a situation such as the one in Japan, but what about pre-exposure measures and incentives (in the general/broader future sense), equipping for potential disease/illness surges prior to their occurring; what about including legislation that might proactively help this country/the U.S. (not-disease-related), for example, policies around restrooms for non-binary/transgender-identifying citizens/individuals, policies around healthcare reforms, policies around landlords overcharging/elevating rents, policies around increased employment initiatives, policies around protecting independent artists/independently employed contractors and their creative licenses/labors/intellectual property with the invasive AI trend heightened investment, policies for domestic assault/abuse survivors, policies for marginalized communities, policies to analyze communal concern for funding-forward genocidal/heavily-unpopular initiatives outside of the U.S.'s borders, policies to protect against archaic, antiquated drafting measures that invite a host of theoretical/potential issues/disputes/complication.

Point being, news needs a facelift, policy a team of qualified surgeons, and certain politicians/agencies a mid-procedure wake-up crisis. Newsflash: listen to what funds. Listen to that population that comprises, regardless of 'class' 'stature'.

#thoughts on #usa #global #policy

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pleasantpedanticny · 8 months ago

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contradiction

I keep seeing people accusing hypocrasy or bad-intent to those of us who argue that active participation in U.S. politics can simultaneously include support for Palestine and Student protests... while simultaneously arguing for active need to vote Democrat.

I disagree. The aparent contradiction is usually based on one of three reasons. This makes sense to me only if you believe one of those things. I do not.

1) There is a contradiction if all political actions have to demonstrate your highest priority alone. So if saving lives immediatly is higher priority than future lives you must make all actions dedicated to saving current lives. I DO NOT AGREE. I think we must simultaneously work on today and tomorrow problems.

B) There is a contradiction if PURITY is demanded so that collaboration with the Democratic party is corrupting. I Do not agree. It just isn't realistic to my way of thinkng. Politics demands alliances, even distasteful ones. I would protest to try and have Biden arrested for abetting war crimes but I would do that after I work with him to prevent a republican President. And I will keep working to try yo produce alternatives to the party system. For example educating my students on local self-governance and the mechanisms if both civil disobedience and direct democracy.

3) finally there is a contradiction between working for biden's presidency as opposed to trump if you cannot see the difference. Which seems amazing to me... because I see so much difference. Yet...They are both war criminals and corporatist tools. But the differences are huge.

For example, they are both part of structual racism. But not in the same ways.

One works his racism via open and legitimate governance practices that allow at least some debate and have limits (Biden and the rise of the Police state). That basis within law and democracy makes the bad stuff easier but still hard to keep working to fix. We could retract laws and write new ones and that is more possible because governance exists.

You can't fix stuff like this as an individual. We need a working system... the one we have sucks. But unless you have an alternative it actually matters to the country and the world that the system holds.

The other one actively promotes racism counter to legal and democratic practice and works to degrade structure of law and democracy (Trump in many ways... including seeking Presidential immunity and undermining the federal court system). On doing so they consolidate power into counter-legal social systems and make it even harder for protest and reform or maintenance of legal protections and rights.

That work by both of these assholes has already damaged the ability for public debate and protest. That isn't good. But one burns the whole system. And unless you have something to replace it with I don't see them as the same.

Details matter.

Like i said -You can't fix stuff like this as an individual. You have yo solve big issues in big cooperative ways. Assholes like Biden and Trump can hold enough power to seem to act alone but they aren't they need a system giving them power. And the reality is- what they do is different.

We need a working system... the one we have sucks. But unless you have an alternative it actually matters to the country and the world that the system holds. If you read history the fact that the American experiment in democracy works as well as it does is sort of amazing. But you can care about Gaza. And Congo. And others. And work towards the ending of apartheid and genocide and capitalism... while also trying to prevent the guy from burning down democracy and ending the experiment. Even if that means voting for an asshole

Anyways. That's how I see it.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year ago

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By: Allan Stratton

Published: Jul 23, 2023

Toronto is one of the most tolerant, multicultural cities in the world. And yet, according to many of its progressive journalists, academics, and politicians, it’s actually a den of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Unless you’re a straight white man, daily life is supposedly an exhausting and dangerous struggle. If you live in the United States, the UK, Australia, or elsewhere in Canada, I’m guessing you’ve been told similar things about your own society.

I’m a gay man for whom these reports bear no relationship to the real world. Certainly, hate-crime statistics show a sharp increase in physical and verbal abuse against specific demographics, including my own. And there are even rare incidents of murder and arson. But to suggest that minorities live under constant threat from a bigoted majority is apocalyptic nonsense. This is especially true of Canada, an especially open, diverse, and welcoming country. Western nations, more generally, are incontrovertibly the most tolerant on the planet.

My heretical view (among fellow progressives, at least) may be due to my “positionality” (this being a faddishly woke jargon term that most English speakers would call “perspective”). The Holocaust and the internment of Japanese North Americans ended a mere six years before I was born. The pass system that turned Canadian Indigenous reservations into open-air prison camps was still in force. The United States was segregated by Jim Crow and redlining. Cross burnings and lynchings went unpunished. Marital rape was legal. Spousal abuse and unequal pay were commonplace. Gay sex and cross-dressing were criminalized, with outed individuals losing their jobs and children. “Fag bashing” was treated as public entertainment.

In the relatively few decades since, western governments have implemented universal civil and human rights protections for racial and sexual minorities. The speed and depth of this transformation has been so remarkable that it seems inconceivable that we ever lived as we once did. Has any other culture critiqued its failings and set about reforming itself so quickly?

This is not to suggest that everything is sunshine and lollipops. Human nature has not been repealed. Police departments without effective civilian oversight, for instance, continue to invite corruption and abuse. Nonetheless, we now have the tools to press for accountability, such as human rights tribunals and whistleblower protections.

It’s also important to acknowledge that while the relative increase in reported hate crimes may seem shocking, that rise is based on a remarkably low baseline. For instance, 2021 saw a 65 per cent increase in incidents (over 50 per cent of these comprising verbal slurs) targeting Canada’s LGB and T communities. But that still represents just 423 cases in a country of 40-million people. That’s hardly a “tsunami of hate.” The number is infinitesimal compared to the 114,132 domestic assaults and 34,242 sexual assaults recorded against women.

One often hears that a reversion to the backward ways of the past is just around the corner. And it is true that abortion rights now hang in the balance in many conservative U.S. states. But the idea that any Western country (especially Canada) is on the cusp of a wholesale rejection of liberal principles is absurd. Women will never again need their husband’s signature to open a bank account. Racial segregation is unthinkable (except, ironically, in certain progressive institutions). Marriage equality for same-sex couples is constitutionally protected in North America, and enjoys a historic 70 per cent level of support in the United States.

So, unlike those on the left who came of age in the 90s and the decades that followed, I don’t see an intolerant society destroying civil rights and minority safety. Rather, what I am now witnessing is a period of progressive overreach, led by ideologues with no (apparent) historical memory or understanding of how our liberal social contract evolved. They have turned language inside out so as to render words such as “woman,” “safety,” and “genocide” essentially meaningless; pursued policies that lock one-time progressive allies in a zero-sum culture-war conflict; recast free speech as hate speech; confused wishes (and, in some cases, fantasies) with rights; and punished dissenters from their Borg-think with social exclusion, “re-education,” and firing.

This radical attempt to unilaterally impose a new social order based on race and gender essentialism has ignited a widespread public backlash, which has been weaponized by the far right, destroyed public goodwill, and done more damage to the progressive cause than anything its reactionary enemies have done in recent years.

The civil-rights movements of the last century won victories by liberal means based on liberal values. This included an insistence on free speech and civil liberties; and an appeal to the universal values of dignity and equality, which in turn underpin the case for protecting individual human rights and freedoms.

In part, this was because we liberals understood math. We needed white, straight, male legislators to support our causes, a project that could only be engaged through free and open debate. Empathy-based co-operation enabled us to create bridges among our diverse groups: The Gay Liberation Front raised money for the Black Panthers. In turn, its leader, Huey Newton, supported the gay liberation and women’s liberation movements. Meanwhile, Jewish groups applied their historical understanding of discrimination to help lead the fights for women’s rights (Betty Friedan), gay rights (Larry Kramer), and black voting rights, with some even giving their lives as Freedom Riders

By contrast, today’s illiberal left explicitly rejects the principles of free speech and universality. It ignores the lessons of past civil-rights successes, often denying that such successes even took place. After all, how can one insist on the dismantling (or “decolonization”) of a system that has shown itself capable of self-correction and continuous improvement? The only framework that validates the progressive narrative of ongoing oppression and white supremacy is one that ahistorically presents mainstream liberal values as a failure.

The switch in social-justice circles from liberal to authoritarian ends and means has at least three major causes. The first is structural: As (originally) liberal rights groups such as the ACLU achieved their objectives, they were required to rewrite their mission statements and pretend away their past successes — this being the only way to justify their ongoing existence.

Far from seeking to “burn it all down,” most of us within the original LGB and T movements simply wanted equality within existing social structures. We used liberal “respectability politics” to make our case, and (for the most part) folded our tents when we achieved our goal. The unwitting effect of this was to leave our old organizations to the radicals, who had long condemned us as sellouts to the patriarchy. Their goal is nothing less than the remaking — or “queering” — of society, a vaguely defined project infused with a deep suspicion of, or even hostility to, capitalism and the nuclear family. The liberal LGB and T wish to live and let live is now the authoritarian “live as we live.”

The second factor is generational change. Just as children separate from their parents in their passage to adulthood, so does each generation define itself in contradistinction to its immediate predecessor. Without personal memory of past struggles, present conditions are taken for granted. And so the battle against current injustices (real or otherwise) is seen as humanity’s defining and timeless struggle.

My generation mocked our parents’ conformity and stoic, suck-it-up ethos, forgetting that these traits had been necessary social adaptations during the Great Depression and World War II. Similarly, activists of this generation attack our commitment to free speech and integration within society, forgetting that these strategies were necessary for us to be heard during the Cold War, when outsiders were suspected as potential fifth columnists.

But perhaps the most significant factor has been the academic trend toward postmodernism, which instructs adherents that neither objective reality nor human nature exist in any certain, provable way. Reason, logic, and objective facts are rejected — or at least put in scare quotes — as are appeals to history and science. These are all held to be mere artifacts of language, which is itself presented as a reflection of existing power structures. And since these structures are presumed to systematically oppress the powerless, they must be deconstructed, dismantled, and decolonized, root and branch.

This kind of thinking isn’t just claptrap that flies in the face of day-to-day human experience. It also encourages a kind of intellectual nihilism that precludes amelioration of the injustices and power imbalances that supposedly concern many postmodern thinkers: After all, what could possibly replace our current power-based intellectual constructs except new power-based intellectual constructs?

Nonetheless, postmodern habits of mind (often flying under the banner of “critical” studies of one kind or another) have infected academic humanities and social science departments all over the west, much like the fungal parasite on The Last of Us. Its professorial hosts now work to dismantle their own institutions, attacking the “colonial” concepts of science and empiricism in favour of undefined and unfalsifiable “ways of knowing.” Meanwhile, their students have incubated its spores and spread them into the wider society, including corporate human-rights offices.

Progressives (rightly) have denounced Donald Trump and his supporters for their paranoid belief that the 2020 U.S. election was “stolen.” But these right-wing conspiracy theorists are not so different from campus leftists when it comes to their à la carte approach to accepting or rejecting reality according to passing ideological convenience

In particular, the idea that pronouns serve as magic spells that can turn a man into a (literal) women is no less ridiculous than anything Trump has ever said. The same goes for the mantra that while girls who cut themselves need therapy, girls seeking a double mastectomy require “affirmation.” Likewise: Racial segregation is a bigoted practice … except when it represents the very acme of progressive enlightenment. “Defund the police” doesn’t mean abolish the police, except when it means exactly that.

And then there’s Schrödinger’s Antifa, which presents these street thugs either as a very real force that rose up as a morally laudable reaction to fascism … or as something that exists only in Tucker Carlson’s fever dreams, depending on context.

But postmodernism and critical theory have done more than just damage our societies’ intellectual cohesion. Their denial of universal human nature eliminates empathy as a tool to bridge differences among groups, which are instead presented as warring sects prosecuting unbridgeable race (or gender) feuds. Since power is presented as the singular currency of the realm, the ability to shut the other side up is valued more than the ability to persuade it.

Gay men such as Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Doyle have been among the most prominent dissenters against wokeism — in part because we instinctively recognize the destructive nature of this power-fixated mindset. Our experience suggests that empathy and reason are far more important than threats and cultural power plays.

Dave Chappelle has said that the LGBT movement won public support more quickly than its black counterpart because of racism. But I believe the truth is different: Unlike racial and ethnic minorities, we exist in every demographic, every family, every ethnic category. When we gay men came out en masse during the 1980s AIDS pandemic, all communities realized that we were among its children, parents, and siblings. People have a harder time discriminating against their own than against outsiders.

Traditionally, the left has appealed to a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. The resulting project of alliance-building has entailed negotiation among different groups, all of which may have different priorities and perspectives. But that alliance-building project becomes impossible when one sect or another demands that disagreement be treated as a form of thoughtcrime. Deplatforming doesn’t just hurt the target; it also hurts the movement, since the summary excommunication of dissidents means that adherents never need to acknowledge or address counterarguments, internal logical inconsistencies, or the off-putting nature of their message.

Indeed, ideologues such as Nikole Hannah-Jones claim that politics has a colour: Blacks who aren’t “politically black” are traitors who collaborate with “whiteness.” As seen through this lens, Asian-Americans who fight anti-Asian discrimination in the context of affirmative action are supposedly puppets of white supremacists, and the LGB Alliance, by standing up for same-sex attraction, is smeared as a transphobic hate group. (For asserting that biology is real, Stonewall UK even tried to destroy the career of one of the LGB Alliance’s founders, Allison Bailey, a lifelong social justice advocate who happens to be a black, working-class lesbian, and the child of immigrant parents. Thankfully, Stonewall did not prevail.)

Opponents of cancel culture often focus on its negative effects on conservatives. But it’s often woke organizations that end up imploding under its strains, typically due to internal battles over victimhood status and linguistic control. In recent years, many of these groups have been driven off the rails by single-issue gender activists who are willing to support misogyny and homophobia in the name of trans rights; or BLM activists willing to permit racism directed at “model minorities.” Even antisemites have been allowed to infiltrate left-wing political parties, the arts establishment, and anti-racist education initiatives. No wonder everyone involved with this movement is always complaining about how emotionally “exhausted” they are: They’re surrounded by toxic fellow travellers who gaslight them as right-stooges if they dare raise a complaint.

Another notable feature of militant social-justice movements is the sheer joylessness of their leaders and supporters, a condition that often seems to blur into a collectively embraced state of clinical depression and paranoia. This posture flows from their presupposition that they suffer endlessly due to the malignant primordial character of “whiteness” and heteronormativity (or, yet worse, cisheteronormativity). The language of individual agency and hope, which animates liberalism, is replaced with a soul-dead idiom by which the activist presents as a self-pitying victim of oppression, constantly at risk of suicidal ideation, erasure, and genocide.

Even privileged “allies” are encouraged to dwell on their whiteness, straightness, cisness, “settler” status, and other marks of intersectional Cain. By erasing the possibility of redemption, the movement alienates liberal allies who are seeking to build bridges with others en route to living successful and fulfilling lives in a way that escapes the politics of identity. The social-justice puritan, being primarily concerned with advancing his status within a cultish inward-seeking subculture that’s constantly inventing new grievances, on the other hand, finds such a goal unthinkable.

The use of words such as “harm” and “violence” to describe the microaggressions known to the rest of us as “daily life” is a particularly unattractive feature of social-justice culture. In the 1980s, gays and lesbians responded to daily discrimination with the chant, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” Today, the children and grandchildren of that generation, now enjoying full civil rights and perches within elites sectors of government, culture, and high society, instead tell us, “We’re here, we’re queer, and … we’re terrified to step outside.” As a gay man, it’s humiliating to hear this kind of maudlin rhetoric uttered in my name.

The broad public, long sympathetic and accommodating, has had it. People have no time for hysterical activists who whine, bully, and hector them about things they didn’t do and over which they have no control. This is particularly true when those same activists demand the elimination of women’s sex-based rights, the medical sterilization of children and teens, and the explicit exclusion of job applicants by race. The more that ordinary men and women came to learn about gay marriage, the more they accepted it. By contrast, the more that ordinary men and women come to learn about trans-activist demands and critical race theory, the more they’ve become repulsed.

Support for Black Lives Matter collapsed when the woke trivialized the arson and looting that accompanied the George Floyd protests. The public was completely onside with the left’s demand for police reform, but horrified by the extremist push to dismantle public security, and enraged that the left justified breaking pandemic restrictions for protests while insisting that grieving families be kept from their dying relatives in hospitals.

Likewise, Lia Thomas tanked support on gender radicalism. The public had long welcomed trans civil rights, sympathized with those suffering dysphoria, and accepted that even non-dysphoric trans-identified individuals should be able to live and present as they wished. But the sight of a strapping, butch male taking women’s prizes and opportunities was a breaststroke too far.

Facing resistance, the woke doubled down, insisting on automatic gender affirmation for everyone, including rapists and children. The result gifted social conservatives an issue of concern to majorities across the political spectrum. Now, progressives in the U.S. face a raft of bills that, among other things, resurrect false charges of Alphabet paedophilia. No wonder LGB groups are jettisoning the T: In the space of just a few years, trans activists have undone the good work that gay activists did over multiple generations.

The progressive movement must stand up to its extremists. We must restore the liberal social compact that won our civil and human rights. That means we should root our claims in areas of common ground, demanding fair treatment, but not the right to dictate what others think.

The most intense theatres of culture-war combat involve the education of children, an area in which liberal attitudes must be allowed to hold sway. Popular free speech principles should be applied to school libraries and curricula — which means opposing campaigns to root out books demonized by both the left and the right alike. In classrooms, an open exploration of history can provide a context for kids to discuss how injustices were overcome in the past and how they might be handled in the present. Students can be taught to brainstorm how to use their advantages to help the less fortunate, and how others in their situation have dealt with adversity. But they should never be taught that personal relationships and moral hierarchies are determined by the colour of one’s skin.

Likewise, boys and girls should be allowed to play and dress free of gender stereotypes, with a no-bullying policy strictly enforced. They should learn who they are by themselves, and be taught that they are more than the sum of their parts. They should not be labelled by ideological adults consumed by a mania for gender theory. In school, I skipped with the girls, had a lisp, and liked to play with china elves. That didn’t make me a girl, just as dressing butch and dreading the effects of a puberty doesn’t turn a lesbian into a boy. (I shudder to think what might have happened were I a child today.)

We should also return to the left’s traditional focus on class. Diversty, equity, and inclusion initiatives enrich the small group of well-educated profiteers who proselytize the DEI faith, but they’re actually worse than useless when it comes to workplaces, exacerbating intolerance among the hapless workers forced to submit to tedious seminars and questionnaires. Resources from the DEI industry’s rapidly metastasizing bureaucracies should be redirected to programs that materially help the poor: Unlike affirmative action programs, investments in deprived neighbourhoods disproportionately assist minorities without the creation of double-standards and racial left-behinds that serve to energize white nationalists. They also support social mobility and economic inclusion.

“I just want to say—you know—can we, can we all get along?” is how Rodney King put it in 1991. While many of us might read the underlying sentiment as self-evident, the militant social-justice left now treats it as a forbidden lie, since the entire movement is based on the conceit that peaceful and harmonious coexistence is impossible within a pluralistic liberal society that doesn’t forcibly “queer” itself, endlessly hector citizens about their bigotry, and segregate workers and students by skin colour.

I believe we can all get along. As a progressive, a gay man, a Canadian, and a liberal, I want no part of any movement — whatever it calls itself — that insists we can’t.

[ Mirror: https://archive.is/es3Q4 ]

To the extent that liberal principles are actually being rejected, it's coming from both the authoritarian reactionary right, and the authoritarian postmodern left.

#Allan Stratton #liberal ethics #liberal values #liberalism #illiberalism #antiliberalism #anti liberal #critical social justice #social justice #wokeism #cult of woke #wokeness as religion #woke #toxic wokeness #religion is a mental illness

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