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August 28, 2017
At the Yahara Café...
... you can talk about whatever you want.
(And do consider using The Althouse Amazon Portal. It's an easy way to contribute to the upkeep of this blog.)
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The individual addicted to an ideology needs a constant drip of confirmation that the ideological belief is both correct and ethically superior to competing belief systems. The ideology-addict gets a much-needed hit of confirmation by reading, watching or listening to other believers' justifications and defenses of the ideology.
From Ideology as an addiction.
Interesting way of looking at it. But I think there's lots of patterns of behavior that could fit those criteria and be classified as an addiction, in that they may have similar reward systems and are extremely difficult to deviate from.
Saturday afternoon I watched the 1961 film "Judgement at Nuremberg" again. It's a great film, with an all-star cast, that revolves around the trial of four German judges, three years after WWII had ended.
Burt Lancaster plays Ernst Janning, a proud and distinquished jurist and scholar, and one of the four on trial for sending people off to camps and complying with the Nazi ideology and edicts, even though he knew it was in violation of German law. In one of the trials over which he presided, an elderly Jew had been sentenced to death for having relations with a sixteen year old Aryan girl. It had never happened, and he knew it had never happened, but he ruled as the Nazis wanted him too, anyway.
As his trial progresses, and his defense attempts to justify his actions, he comes to his feet and demands to make a declaration; and he says, in part: "Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.' It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded... sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said 'go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland - remilitarize it - take all of Austria, take it! And then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtroom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease."
This struck me particularly timely and poignant.
Today, we see, here in the US, people who know better (and many who do not) lashing out and subverting reason for a utopia they imagine just over the next hill. Insert any group (white supremacists, blacks, Latinos, gays, straights, liberals, conservatives, capitalists, socialists, communists, Confederates...etc.) and some group, filled with rage and hatred, is telling us that if we just get rid of that group, beat them, marginalize them, drive them into silence and out, everything will be fine. It won't be. History is there to look at. Whether you put on the black mask of Antifa or a white hood, and seek to silence and marginalize those you disagree with; if you pretend that you are a victim and your fellow citizens are your problem? You are missing the lesson.
M Trumble, yes, people should know better, but what's missing is that so many people have no morals. Things can only get worse, and will.
I see a disturbing trend in GoT . In their lovemaking scene, Jon Snow was nuder than Daenyris. The PC cops were after all that female nudity in GoT so this is the way it's going. First they came for the statues. Then they came for the nudes. Not a lot of naked women this season. and the world is a poorer place.
a kewl little song inspired by Trump's remark that 'some very fine people' attended the KKK rally:
Peter Danzig - some very fine people
Kashmir Hill - Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won't Tell Me How:
Rebecca Porter and I were strangers, as far as I knew. Facebook, however, thought we might be connected. Her name popped up this summer on my list of “People You May Know,” the social network’s roster of potential new online friends for me.
The People You May Know feature is notorious for its uncanny ability to recognize who you associate with in real life. It has mystified and disconcerted Facebook users by showing them an old boss, a one-night-stand, or someone they just ran into on the street.
And then there was Rebecca Porter. She showed up on the list after about a month: an older woman, living in Ohio, with whom I had no Facebook friends in common. I did not recognize her, but her last name was familiar. My biological grandfather is a man I’ve never met, with the last name Porter, who abandoned my father when he was a baby. My father was adopted by a man whose last name was Hill, and he didn’t find out about his biological father until adulthood.
Gizmodo
I fancy myself a writer, but it's hard to find words to describe what's happening in Houston. It's beyond comprehension.
Last night a FOX reporter asked a young black woman (paraphrasing): "What does it feel like to see your car going under water?"
Then this morning reports of floating islands of fire ants looking for anything to grab on to.
And still more rain to come, like God is trying to drown the entire city.
I see a disturbing trend in GoT . In their lovemaking scene, Jon Snow was nuder than Daenyris
But the opposite was true for Misandry and Grey Worm.
Tillerson's an idiot. He's got to go.
what a wonderfully restful photo
Houston is a metaphor for the whole country.
The Republican Governor said they should evacuate two days before the hurricane came ashore because Houston has a history of flooding, especially low lying areas near the coast.
The black Democrat Mayor said no, and ignore those people telling you to evacuate.
I suspect Republicans evacuated.
Democrats, especially black, did not. Some were too poor but, of course, the busses the poor could have used were never used in NO.
The Hurricane Rita experience is an excuse but that was then and plans were not made at that time. Now, such things as lane control on freeways is better understood.
Darwin is remorseless.
My father had met her husband in person that one time, after my grandmother’s funeral. They exchanged emails, and my father had his number in his phone. But neither of them uses Facebook.
Depending on the app, the father's contact data may have been acquired from a data broker and the phone numbers were matched to other Facebook users.
sunsong said...
a kewl little song inspired by Trump's remark that 'some very fine people' attended the KKK rally:
Sunsong- The commenters here are too well informed. You would do better to peddle your lies elsewhere. Trump never once referred to 'some very fine people' attending any KKK rally. He referred to 'some very fine people' attending the Unite the Right rally. KKK ( and Nazi ) groups did attend that rally. That did not make it a KKK rally.
I do not know if Trump's claim is true. I know that yours is a blatant lie.
The Japanese fact checking organization, just getting started and run by journalists, uses as an example that 70% of the things Trump says fail fact checking, which accounts for Trump's unpopularity.
http://www.nhk.or.jp/rj/podcast/rss/english.xml
link good for today. Tomorrow you get tomorrow's news.
I had a hole in one at Yahara Hills West. #17, Par 3, was playing 201 yards.
Seven wood. Plunk.
Now THAT is awesome.
HBO used up their entire allotment of nude women on Ballers this year.
On the one side: An article by law profs Amy Wax and Larry Alexander: Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture. Key points: "Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime."
On the other side: 54 Penn Students and Alumni: Statement on Amy Wax and Charlottesville. Key points: "Penn Law School professor Amy Wax, co-wrote an op-ed piece with Larry Alexander, a law professor at the University of San Diego, claiming that not “all cultures are created equal” and extolling the virtues of white cultural practices of the ‘50s that, if understood within their sociocultural context, stem from the very same malignant logic of hetero-patriarchal, class-based, white supremacy that plagues our country today. These cultural values and logics are steeped in anti-blackness and white hetero-patriarchal respectability, i.e. two-hetero-parent homes, divorce is a vice and the denouncement of all groups perceived as not acting white enough i.e. black Americans, Latino communities and immigrants in particular."
Maybe I'm missing something but a rebuttal without substance:
1. Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Racist? How? All data shows that one-parent families are poorer and less educated. This applies to all races.
2. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Racist? Please explain.
3. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Racist? How?
4. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Racist? Explain.
5. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Racist? In what way?
6. Avoid coarse language in public. Racist? Is one race prone to coarse language? Please explain.
7. Be respectful of authority. Racist? Really? Are some races just disrespectful?
8. Eschew substance abuse and crime. Racist? How? Please explain.
Fifty-four Penn-educated people sign the article that does not specifically address any of these ideas, yet these supposedly educated people condemn and want to silence these law professors? What has become of Penn?
Maybe some of you out there can enlighten all of us on these ideas?
Great post brylun!
It's sort of like the nations that hate the USA. The Constitution isn't Top Secret. Any nation can sack up and do the same.
Fixed my water softener and leveled the walkway from the house to the driveways this weekend. The leveling made all the easier because some critter burrowed under one of the slabs.
My weekendThe end.
Shout out to the fine people of Texas battling Hurricane Harvey.
In NorCal, we don't have hurricanes -- but we have other natural disasters, such as earthquakes, Antifa, and Governor Jerry Brown.
Bezos quote should get him in trouble at Penn: "A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well."
BAG, God keeps trying to flood Sacramento last Winter, but it didn't take.
Everybody at Penn knows Bourgeoisie were not the revolutionaries in 1789, not the Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution.
Therefore, they must be liquidated.
Ask Bill Ayres.
Racist? How? Please explain.
It fails to include black culture, namely anger as the universal moral position.
The black culture being extolled to blacks byt he left is basically a culture of two-year-olds.
Black culture wasn't always a culture of two year olds. That started with the great society displacing black males from usefulness, angering black females and everybody involved with them.
"The ideology-addict gets a much-needed hit of confirmation by reading, watching or listening to other believers' justifications and defenses of the ideology."
this is entirely a need to maintain one's confirmation bias undisturbed and has nothing to do with having a clue about right or wrong with regard to ideas accepted.
brylun said...
On the other side: 54 Penn Students and Alumni: Statement on Amy Wax and Charlottesville.
That was one level above gibberish, but now we know that "white supremacy" now means "not completely SJW PC".
Many of the authorettes claim "anthropology"; don't be mislead.
No Science, Please. We're Anthropologists.
The 54 say:
"Wax’s and Alexander’s claims rely on a simplistic, bigoted and archaic notion of culture; a concept purported to be bounded and discrete, a postulate which anthropologists “dismantled” decades ago by showing how such formulations of culture are embedded in systems of political, economic and social oppression."
I'm glad anthropologists dismantled the postulate that the concept of culture is bounded and discrete because that means you suck and I don't.
"We call for the University of Pennsylvania administration — Penn President Gutmann and the deans of each school — as well as faculty to directly confront Wax and Alexander’s op-ed as racist and white supremacist discourse and to push for an investigation into Wax’s advocacy for white supremacy. [break added]
We believe that such statements should point directly to the historical and sociopolitical antecedents of Wax’s hate speech, and to disallow hate speech whether shrouded in respectability or not."
"Shut up!" the crazy people explained.
Isn't there anyone out there who supports Penn?
The Universities are following the path of the Monster-Movie Mad Scientist:
1. With Hubris and a sense of All-Knowing, Create The Monster.
2. Lose control of The Monster.
3. Time for the Pitchforks and Torches.
I am Laslo.
Why do the majority of TV news reporters say that folks were rescued "from their rooves" instead of "from their roofs"? Are they thinking of horses?
I read an article earlier about how former Sheriff Joe Arpaio is talking about possible running for office again, including possibly making a primary challenge to current Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. Arpaio is 85. Arizona already has one health-challenged octogenarian Senator. Arpaio was quoted by Talking Points Memo (not my usual reading material, but the article was linked on my news home page) that "I’m proud to be my age. I work 14 hours a day. If anyone thinks my age is going to hold me back, I’ve got news for them," he said. "The bottom line is there’s no way I’m going to go fishing. I have no hobbies."
It's not too late to acquire one or more, Joe. A man who would be 92 years old at the end of a theoretical Senate term has no business being elected to that office. Hang it up, Joe. Stop and smell the roses and enjoy the rest of the time you have left.
I am wracked with remorse. I wish I could get the number of everyone in authority at the telemarketing firm who keeps calling us with "spoofed" local caller id information (in our area, "we are the help" so you really need to answer the phone when someone local calls), so that I could apologize to them for telling the lady who called to "go to hell" before hanging up on her. Of course, I work odd hours, but in an instance like this, they couldn't possibly object to being called at odd hours of the day and the night, could they ... ?
I just KNOW I'll feel better once I'm able to attend to this matter...
I read an article earlier about how former Sheriff Joe Arpaio is talking about possible running for office again, including possibly making a primary challenge to current Arizona Senator Jeff Flake
I think he is just feeling his oats. I agree he should retire.
Somebody else suggested Trump might make him chief of the Border Patrol.
Flake is going to get a primary challenge but I suspect it will be Kelli Ward who ran against McCain.
It seems to me that Kelli Ward should be able to beat Flake, even if she couldn't take out McCain. What do you think Dr. K?
All cultures are equal?
The family of Zanele Hlatshwayo, 25, who has been missing since July, believe she was a victim of a cannibalism ring that has so far led to the arrest of five men.
Her decomposing body was found after a man who claimed to be a traditional healer handed himself over to police last week and confessed that he was tired of eating human flesh.
Police officers had initially dismissed his statement, according to reports.
It is only after he produced a bloodied hand and foot as proof that he was immediately arrested. He led them to his rented home, where police found eight human ears in a cooking pot.
It is believed they were to be served to his customers, who were told they had magic properties and would convey money, power and protection."
It seems to me that Kelli Ward should be able to beat Flake, even if she couldn't take out McCain. What do you think Dr. K?
I don't know much about her. She should have better name recognition now.
Tucson is a lefty college town (albeit with lots of retired military) and Phoenix is a typical big city. I think the GOP votes come for the smaller suburbs and I don't live in one.
I do live in the only precinct in Tucson that voted for Trump. Also the safest and probably the highest guns per capita.
"Police officers had initially dismissed his statement, according to reports."
Right. Because..so many false cannibalism admissions, so little time.
Doc, one of our posters here who is a AZ native, says Ward is no good. I agree I have much selling to be done to get me to support a NeverTrumper.
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