"In technofeudalism, you’re just a digital serf. Your value as a human being, as someone built and made in the image and likeness of God..."

"... and endowed with the life spirit of the Holy Spirit — they don’t consider that. Everything is digital to them. They are, at the end of the day, transhumanist. And what is transhumanist? Transhumanist is somebody who sees Homo sapien here and Homo sapien plus on the other side of what they call the singularity. And that’s why they’re all rushing — whether it’s artificial intelligence, regenerative robotics, quantum computing, advanced chip design, CRISPR, biotech, all of it — to come to this point of which the oligarchs are going to lead that revolution. And why are they going to do it? No. 1, when you get to know them and see where they’re spending the money, it’s because they want eternal life. You know why? Because they’re complete atheistic 11-year-old boys that are kind of science fiction 'Dungeons & Dragons' guys, and we’ve turned the nation over to that. And yes, I’m going to fight it every fucking step of the way. This is taking us back a millennium to feudalism.... They’re all superprogressive liberals, they’re all technofeudalists, they don’t give a flying fuck about the human being.... And they have to be stopped. If we don’t stop it, and we don’t stop it now, it’s going to destroy not just this country, it’s going to destroy the world...."

Said Steve Bannon, in "Steve Bannon on ‘Broligarchs’ vs. Populism/The fight for Donald Trump’s ear" (NYT)(listen and read the transcript without a pay wall here, at Podscribe).

"There is little or no liberal space in this revolutionary movement for genuine, respectful disagreement, regardless of one’s identity, or even open-minded exploration."

"In fact, there is an increasingly ferocious campaign to quell dissent, to chill debate, to purge those who ask questions, and to ruin people for their refusal to swallow this reductionist ideology whole. The orthodoxy goes further than suppressing contrary arguments and shaming any human being who makes them. It insists, in fact, that anything counter to this view is itself a form of violence against the oppressed. The reason some New York Times staffers defenestrated op-ed page editor James Bennet was that he was, they claimed, endangering the lives of black staffers by running a piece by Senator Tom Cotton, who called for federal troops to end looting, violence, and chaos, if the local authorities could not. This framing equated words on a page with a threat to physical life — the precise argument many students at elite colleges have been using to protect themselves from views that might upset them.... In this manic, Manichean world you’re not even given the space to say nothing. 'White Silence = Violence' is a slogan chanted and displayed in every one of these marches. It’s very reminiscent of totalitarian states where you have to compete to broadcast your fealty to the cause. In these past two weeks, if you didn’t put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect. The cultishness of this can be seen in the way people are actually cutting off contact with their own families if they don’t awaken and see the truth and repeat its formulae.... If you argue that you believe that much of this ideology is postmodern gobbledygook, you are guilty of 'white fragility.' If you say you are not fragile, and merely disagree, this is proof you are fragile. It is the same circular argument that was once used to burn witches. And it has the same religious undertones...."

From "Is There Still Room for Debate?" by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine).

"Each passing day sees more scenes that recall something closer to cult religion than politics."

"White protesters in Floyd’s Houston hometown kneeling and praying to black residents for 'forgiveness… for years and years of racism' are one thing, but what are we to make of white police in Cary, North Carolina, kneeling and washing the feet of Black pastors? What about Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneeling while dressed in 'African kente cloth scarves'? There is symbolism here that goes beyond frustration with police or even with racism: these are orgiastic, quasi-religious, and most of all, deeply weird scenes, and the press is too paralyzed to wonder at it. In a business where the first job requirement was once the willingness to ask tough questions, we’ve become afraid to ask obvious ones.... The media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias. We are told the Most Important Thing Ever is happening for days or weeks at a time, until subjects are abruptly dropped and forgotten, but the tone of warlike emergency remains: from James Comey’s firing, to the deification of Robert Mueller, to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, to the democracy-imperiling threat to intelligence 'whistleblowers,' all those interminable months of Ukrainegate hearings (while Covid-19 advanced), to fury at the death wish of lockdown violators, to the sudden reversal on that same issue, etc. It’s been learned in these episodes we may freely misreport reality, so long as the political goal is righteous."

From "The American Press Is Destroying Itself/A flurry of newsroom revolts has transformed the American press" by Matt Taibbi (at his own website). Much more at the link.

What did the Charlie Hebdo terrorists say to Sigolène Vinson, the woman whose life they spared?

Jim Treacher, at The Daily Caller, has a piece titled "New York Times Reports On Muslim Proselytizing During Charlie Hebdo Attack, Then Deletes It." He notes that earlier the Times had quoted Vinson saying she was told "I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself." And now the article only has her saying "Don’t be afraid, calm down, I won’t kill you... You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right."

I go over to the NYT site and search for the name Sigolène Vinson. It appears only in one article, apparently the same article that Treacher is talking about, "Recounting a Bustling Office at Charlie Hebdo, Then a ‘Vision of Horror.'" What it says now is:

Sigolène Vinson...  disputed a quotation attributed to her and carried on the website of the French radio service RFI stating that the gunman had told her she should convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover herself. Instead, she told The New York Times in an interview, the gunman told her: “Don’t be afraid, calm down, I won’t kill you.” He spoke in a steady voice, she said, with a calm look in his eyes, saying: “ ‘You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right.’ ” Then she said he turned to his partner, who was still shooting, and shouted: “We don’t shoot women! We don’t shoot women! We don’t shoot women!”

So is this a case of NYT censorship of something deemed unfit to print? In the current version, it certainly looks as though what happened was: 1. The NYT relied on the French radio report, 2. The NYT sought its own interview and deleted the disputed quote immediately while rewriting the paragraph, and 3. The NYT published an improved paragraph that included the French radio version, the fact that Vinson denies saying that, and the original reporting of a new attempt by Vinson to say what she was told.

Now, what do you do with that — criticize the NYT for suppressing the Islam-related material? I don't think that's the right focus, at least once the third version of the text has appeared. The proper focus is the mind of Sigolène Vinson, who went through an unfathomably traumatic experience, and who has been telling her story while the murderers she faced remain at large and while the terrorist mission — of unknown dimension and ferocity — rages on, without perceptible end. She must feel like a marked woman. I suspect — and the NYT gives me all the material I need to suspect — that the quote from the French radio was accurate, but that after seeing it made public, she got very scared and desperate to censor the part about religion. The new quote is stripped of references to Islam and to the subordination of women and refurbished into a quote stating the widely shared traditional value against killing women in a military operation.

Treacher's attack on the NYT is extremely harsh, by the way. He assumes he knows the motive of the editor who changed the text:

Because you’re one of America’s moral, ethical, and intellectual betters, and you don’t want it to be true. Your reporter hastily left that inconvenient truth in her story by accident, so you airbrushed it out, without any acknowledgment, to preserve the narrative. You turned it into, “Hey, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all. They didn’t kill the women, right? Let’s not be too hasty.”

Because that’s your job.

The New York Times is garbage. 

UPDATE: Jim Treacher responds in the comments to this post and has a new post at The Daily Caller acknowledging the new version of the story in the NYT. This is too complicated to respond to in an update to this post, so I'm working on a new post.

ADDED: Here's the new post: "The proper focus is the truth."

"I came back here after the slaughter and I feel that the Lord has anointed me and appointed me to be the leader."

"I don't claim to be a prophet. I'm a teacher of righteousness, that's the only thing I claim.... The United States has to fall in order for the One World Order to be set up... Especially if there's war in the Middle East, that's when they're going to see Branch Davidians start scrambling to find out what the truth is, and where they need to be."

NPR reports on the remnants of Branch Davidians this morning. Why them? Why now? There was just a big explosion in Waco, and perhaps that naturally makes us think back to the assault on the Branch Davidians 20 years ago. I hope it's just that and not some burning need to make listeners refocus on the dangerous white male Christians of America instead of the darker-skinned Muslim Chechans accused of the bombings in Boston.

The media see the Pope as "a Supreme Court justice that they can't turn."

"They see the pope as a Supreme Court justice they can't intimidate. The Supreme Court scares the heck out of the left because to them it's infallible. Now, they succeeded. Obama and the left somehow succeeded in turning John Roberts when it came to the constitutionality of Obamacare, but they can't turn the pope."

Said Rush Limbaugh, yesterday, after playing a hilarious audio montage of media characters — Chris Cuomo of CNN, Shannon Bream of Fox, Erin Burnett, Juan Carlos Lopez of CNN Español, Gwen Ifill, Allen Pizzey of CBS — reacting to the new Pope.

CUOMO: Where is Pope Francis on the issues that matter most, issues about contraception, women priests?

BREAM: Pope Francis is staunchly orthodox on the issues of abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage.

BURNETT: He opposed same-sex marriage in Argentina. He opposed free contraception.

LOPEZ: He follows a conservative line. He opposes, uh, same-sex marriages. He is conservative on birth control.

PIERS MORGAN: He is known to be, duh, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage.

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: He has been against contraception. He's been against marriage equality.

PIZZEY: ...a conservative and opposes abortion!

IFILL: So this is not a pope or a papacy we were gonna see any kind of change when it comes to things like abortion or gay marriage.

They don't seem like they are clowning, though Piers Morgan has the wit to say "duh."

"Feathered Dinosaurs Drive Creationists Crazy."

Says Slate, indicating that it's fun to taunt religionists.

"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth."

The true believer is Jill Abramson, the new executive editor of the New York Times, replacing Bill Keller (who replaced).

Let's analyze the analogy. A newspaper is like religion, believed in, and taken, unquestioningly, as true. Then what happens when you are in charge of it?

1. You have a deep moral obligation to insure that it is absolutely true, to respect the faith that others put in it and to preserve and grow the community of believers because of your dedication to truth, or...

2. You are embedded in the faith, carrying on the commitment to the idea that it is the truth and impressing that faith that it is the truth on readers, so that they keep looking to you as the mouthpiece of truth and don't go wandering off looking for some other viewpoints.

It could be #1 or #2 or both or neither.

O'Donnell and Coons on the separation of church and state.

Somehow, I can't escape the feeling of obligation to post about this. It's a bit annoying to me, because I cannot stand when people jump to the conclusion that someone they want to believe is stupid is being stupid when they say something that seems wrong. Think first. Is it wrong?

And I hate the converse — the assumption that the supposedly smart person has said something smart. Stop. Slow down. Read/listen closely. It's often the case that what we have is a banal political disagreement. And that's what I think this O'Donnell/Coons thing is.

I really wish I had the verbatim transcript of the colloquy, and that's the main reason I've been dragging my feet posting on this. The reporters aren't presenting the quotes in a reliable fashion. And we need to begin with stark clarity that the text of the Establishment Clause is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

So let's look at the reporting:

"Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked while Democrat Chris Coons, an attorney, sat a few feet away.

Plainly, the Constitution does not say "separation of church and state," so there's nothing stupid there. It's provocative, because many people like that gloss on the text.

Coons responded that O'Donnell's question "reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is. ... The First Amendment establishes a separation."

He's talking about interpretations of the text, and she was talking about the text. What we're hearing is 2 individuals talking past each other.

She interrupted to say, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?"

She's telling him to pay attention to her limited point about the text.

He noted again the First Amendment's ban on establishment of religion.

Ah, here's where I hate reporters. Give me the quote. I don't think Coons quite gets it. Ah. Here. He says: "Government shall make no establishment of religion."

O'Donnell reacts: "That's in the First Amendment?" And, in fact, it's not. The First Amendment doesn't say "government." It says "Congress." And since the discussion is about what local school boards can do, the difference is highly significant.

Also, it isn't "shall make no establishment of religion." It's "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." There's a lot one could say about the difference between those 2 phrases, and I won't belabor it here. Suffice it to say that it was not stupid for O'Donnell to say "That's in the First Amendment?" — because it's not. Coons was presenting a version of what's in the cases interpreting the text, not the text itself.

The 2 were talking past each other, trying to look good and make the other look bad. It is a disagreement about law between 2 individuals who are not running for judge. It's not detailed legal analysis. It's a political debate and this is a political disagreement. An important one, no doubt. But it can't be resolved by laughing at one person and calling her an idiot, something I find quite repellent.

I overblogged yesterday. 14 posts.

Surely, you haven't read them all. I'm not going to weigh them down just yet with a lot of new material on top. I'd rather call attention to the 2 posts about the small-time Florida pastor who captured the attention of the entire world — with the help of a lot of foolish journalists and the President of the United States.

So, if you're looking for something to read on the Althouse, let me suggest "What's so terrible about book burning?" and the post that concludes:

Obama propounds the stereotype of irrational Muslims who resort to acts of violence when they don't like what people are saying.

Ironically, Rev. Jones wanted to burn the Koran because it seemed to him that it "incites radical, violent behavior among Muslims." And Obama wanted Jones to refrain from burning the Koran because it would incite radical, violent behavior among Muslims.

And here's a picture in the NYT showing a bunch of men posing in the embarrassing stereotype that the President isn't ashamed to use.

"JOURNOLIST: A Vast White-Wing Conspiracy?"

Instapundit links to I Own The World's collection of the names and faces of Journolist. Glenn stresses whiteness, but I Own says "IT LOOKS MORE LIKE THE UPPER WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN" and the commenters eventually — scroll halfway down — pick up that cue.

Do we want a wall of separation between religion and news?

Amazing video of a little girl not getting hit by a car:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Via Boing Boing, where the commenters express revulsion at the newscaster's reference to a "guardian angel."

Do we want a wall of separation between religion and news?