I agree with this. But, I think other political types do this as well. The other night on Bill Maher, he raised the issue of the increase in criminal activity in some cities due to progressive DA's refusing to prosecute or outright decriminalizing certain types of crime (like theft under a certain dollar amount - see SF if interested) and the impact on the quality of life in those cities. Guest Congressman Ritchie Torres used this as an opening, not to discuss this issue, but to blame the uptick in crime on guns and then pitch gun control. Bill tried to get him back on track but he just continued to pitch gun control so Bill gave up and moved to a different topic.
I'm not trying to argue for or against either position. But, it was frustrating that the Congressman wouldn't engage Bill (in good faith) on the issue he was discussing and kept "picking at talking points" as you phrased it. I've seen many politicians do this, particularly in debates. Ignore the question and pick at talking points. It's definitely not very satisfying to watch. A sort of deflection if not outright obfuscation - so they don't have to reveal their stance maybe.
I do worry that our youth lack an independent spirit and/or vision. They seem to want someone to tell them the right answer; to tell them what to do; to earn that gold star. There's no coloring outside the lines excepting in the areas of hypersexualization or insisting on gender fluidity - creative, but pragmatically challenging (How does a doctor treat someone with female sex organs if they insist on being perceived as a man?).
Even in Silicon Valley with all of its purported "disruption", nothing is really new. It's just a digitization of what was already there. It makes things easier, certainly. But it doesn't really evolve society in what I would consider a meaningful way. IOW, we are still just as tribal but now that tribalism is amplified by technology which imho tends to degrade civility between both individuals and groups. I likened current civilization to the middle ages on another substack board, just with more technology and better hygiene.
It really bothers me that all of the advances in the 20th and now 21st centuries haven't lead to people being more decent to each other. IOW, there has been no "spiritual" maturation (or at least psychological if you don't believe in the metaphysical). We haven't grown up. Sophisticated technology in the hands of what are essentially adult children—what could go wrong?
I so agree. I think we are finally waking up to how the elites have been manipulating everyone all along. Think about policy over the past 30 - 40 years. Most of it has benefited the elites at the expense of the working class. Even Obama sold out to the banks (a fact for which I will NEVER forgive him having grown up in the rust belt). He was supposed to be a champion of the people but kissed corporate butt from day 1.
See, I used to be a "little guy" lefty. I thought the power of the state should be employed to balance outsized power. "Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices." - Granny Aching ― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
As I got older, I realized that power was still concentrated in the hands of a very few in spite of the rhetoric surrounding individualism in the US. Yes, we are freer than the serfs under feudalism but we can only push that freedom so far before someone with a boot comes and stomps us - sometimes the state itself. And woke is just another boot. That's why I'm now an independent. I don't believe in parties. Their planks are simply mechanisms to rally people to give them power. But, they don't really mean it. They just want to feed at the public trough.
Believe it or not, though, in spite of my cynicism and as a veteran, I still think the ideals of this country are worth fighting for. Which is why I read obsessively about woke and track its movement through the culture. And I do see a burgeoning push back with more people standing up and it does keep me going. Bill Maher, an old-school liberal if there ever was one, has finally joined the fray and he is taking massive flack for it. So, I support him even if I don't always agree with him on everything.
He stresses the theological nature of woke ideology (which is actually akin to a fire and brimstone Xtianity but without any redemption) and addresses several salient points in Freire's book whose ideas he taps as core primary source for this ideology. It's long but so worth it (and I say that as someone who does not typically enjoy podcasts - I prefer to read because I can do it faster and I am very time-challenged). I have read broadly on this issue because it scares the crap out of me (I am an iconoclast and artist who would be burned at the stake by these idiots if I revealed my inner thoughts re: identity, freedom, race, tribes, politics, etc. I am an unrepentant free-thinker.) and this podcast is the best synopsis of root cause (beyond postmodernism) that I have encountered.
I also prefer “social justice” politics, because I see them seeking “justice” in the same way that the criminal justice system does: They want punishment and revenge.
It’s not about making things equal and fair and nice for everyone. That would be “social equality politics” perhaps. Social justice means identifying bad people and making them pay.
I will mangle the verbiage, but there's an adage that says that the more words added preceding the word 'justice', the less it leads to actual justice. The optimal number of prefix words is zero.
Have you seen The Last Duel? Set in 14th century France. No spoilers, but one guy makes a statement about how pregnancy happens (waaaaaaaay off) and tacks on “it’s just science” at the end 😂
It also means that the higher paying jobs should go to people like them. I remember seeing something on LinkedIn to the effect of "Corporate diversity in post-Floyd Era." Uhh... dude was killed over like $10 of convenience store food. I don't think the reaction had much to do with elite diversity.
That's a good point. I was thinking the opposite at first: "social justice politics" sounds too nice, because who is against that? It's like being against cute kittens or pie-baking grannies. But I see what you mean! :)
Completely agree. It is SO helpful that you, Wesley Yang, Scott Alexander, and others have theorized and articulated what is going on. I cannot overstate how vital and necessary that was.
“Voldemorting” is a great addition to the lexicon.
I'm not crazy about "social justice politics" simply because there was such a thing long before wokery emerged.
If people will not allow an endonym, they will certainly get an exonym sooner or later.
I still prefer my term "Carthage" for the people who try to shut down conversation and are accused of "Critical Race Theory" (although CRT actually says that more communication is necessary). https://newslettr.yevaud.com/p/what-is-carthage
There is a slightly different issue with "trans issues" - there the biggest issue I have found are the people who cry "deadnaming and misgendering" any time there is an attempt to describe even a hypothetical situation.
I do understand the impulse for these people to duck this naming, since the right wing media apparatus immediately creates a monster under everyone's bed and gives it the name woke or sjw or whathaeyou.
Not wanting to be painted by the brush of your least charitable enemies seems pretty sound, anyway.
There's a reason why the GOP bristles when they're compared to white nationalists. If your enemy prefers to use a specific name for your movement, it's probably not the one you want to use.
They refuse any and all names, that's Freddie's point. That refusal is strategic. Conservatives don't mind being called conservatives, right-wing, any number of things.
My preferred solution would be that "progressive/progressivism" can be the neutral term for wokery, and "liberal/liberalism" can go back to meaning what it meant until 2010 or so. But that will never happen.
I'm not defending their refusal to name their politics.
I just think it makes sense to shy away from terms that have become poisonous to most of the electorate.
And, uh, most of these people seem to prefer to be called Leftists or Progressives, so it's not like they won't accept any terminology (though, for the record, I think these beliefs are not necessarily shared by all or even most Leftists, so there is a distinction between people who love D'Angelo's corporate consulting shtick and people who wish we were talking about Angela Davis instead).
The terms only become poisonous to most of the electorate because the ideas themselves are. "Critical Race Theory" became poisonous when the average Joe realized what it entailed, not so much because it was misrepresented. That is the fundamental problem they are dealing with. They were publishing editorials in the NY Times with the headline "We Literally Mean Abolish the Police" and then claiming that was all a misunderstanding when crime started going through the roof.
Well, in everyone's defense with regard to CRT, I don't think either its advocates or detractors actually bothered to learn anything about it before they decided which side of the line to stand on. But the state of politics means that everyone needs to not only pick a side but also defend even its most strange and radical interpretations.
Look, I'm not interested in defending these people here. All I'm saying is that it makes political sense to not want to wave a banner that names your movement something most people already don't like.
I'll say it again: I'm not interested in defending their ideas. Obviously it's bad political strategy to vocally embrace fringe ideas loved by almost no one.
The test is whether or not the label actually matches up to reality.
A while ago somebody leaked the list of donors to the Proud Boys. It turns out that something like 60-80% are Asian.
Trump picked up a significant number of minority/immigrant votes in 2020 and that trend looks like it's only becoming more pronounced in elections in VA, CA, etc.
Of course one side is going to try to slander the other. Skepticism and critical thinking demands that everyone in the middle be able to evaluate those attacks as substantive or fanciful.
Besides accepting no name, the woke like to pretend they speak for all black people or even all "people of color." So that their ideology is simply "POC Truth" and needs no name. They can't afford to have that disproven because the whole project is built on that racial essentialism.
I think it largely demonstrates how wokeness is not a political project. It's a barely functioning wing of the culture war that has an elite cultural cachet but almost no power outside of these very narrow spaces.
Good comment. I do not think social justice politics present the extinction-level threat that many make it out to be, but I won't die on a hill defending the excesses. However, I will beg and plead that people who are worried about it pay more attention to the culture war the right wants to wage.
I suppose I can keep saying it: I'm not interested in defending wokeness.
My only point is that it makes sense for its advocates to shy away from naming their movement something that already has strong negative connotations with most people.
Wokeness or Political Correctness are not political projects. They're culture war, and they're unpopular.
I'm interested in policy that addresses the material conditions of people. I really don't care whether the people doing the helping are Good or Bad, or if the people being helped are Bad or Good. I believe we should limit suffering of all people, even people I think are assholes.
I agree that some avoid critique by saying it's *all* just culture war. That's wrong, and it's on them! On the other hand, some critiques *are* generated in bad faith by the culture war. It can be confusing work distinguishing them, but I think we have to.
The best way to respond to the culture war is with actual policy. If you address the material needs of people, they stop caring real fast whether it's a socialist or antiracist project that got them there.
Huey Long and FDR at least understood this. When the Left is only interested in culture war, you end up with endless debates about wokeness. And wokeness just simply is not a political project, at least in how its largely manifested itself. Its advocates seem most interested in polite language over any concrete policy.
Definitely. FdB wrote this on some old pre-Substack post and I think it's still good:
"It’s not about red state vs. blue state or rural vs. urban. It’s about building a country where everyone has their basic necessities, where everyone is free from poverty and despair. Yes to affordable housing and health care, yes to public education, yes to food for the hungry and warmth for the cold. No to poverty, no to racism and sexism, no to exploitation and greed. They stand with the comfortable and the rich, we stand with those who suffer and need. Everywhere. Because we’re all in this together."
Now, I'd add something referencing the culture war to that first sentence.
In many ways, I think the focus on material needs can coexist with, and is supported by, a genuine version of social justice politics.
I would add that many times the most fervent social justice crusaders are liberals, because their position depends on the culture war, rather than a particular kind of leftist, who is more interested in material wellbeing.
I think meeting the material needs of people is a foundation of social justice politics. MLK Jr didn't say, "Hey, guys, can we be more polite about this whole race thing?"
He marched for economic transformation.
That many social justice people are only interested in using the correct pronouns or racial identifiers for people but not in making sure these people have healthcare and food and homes is just tragic.
That I agree with. The purpose of wokery is to let Joan Pierpont Morgan think of herself as Angela Davis without having to pay a penny more. They actively derail the actual policy with culture war. I don't think it is a coincidence all of this stuff really took off right after Occupy Wall Street, which really was the last pre-woke moment on the left.
This post reminds me of a rhetorical move that I see periodically. People will say something along the lines of, "Politics is debating whether we should raise or lower taxes, not whether this group should or shouldn't have rights." Not only is it an attempt to reduce politics to technocratic management, but it's a weird form of begging the question: you lose because I have defined the whole argument as out of bounds.
I think its practitioners think that actually engaging with the view they find abhorrent would weaken their position by making their foes' views more permissable in society, but in practice dodging the whole argument like this is what makes you look weak and hollow.
This has gone hand-in-hand with a massive inflation of what counts as a "right". I'm not sure many people would agree that, say, a free boob job for a transwomen counts as a "right"--hell, the idea that "healthcare is a right" is contentious, with people from diverse ideological viewpoints disagreeing. But if you assert it's "just about rights" and refuse to expand on what those "rights" actually are, you'll get a lot of people going along with it because people are generally in favor of everyone having equal rights--it's when you try to explain which specific "rights" you want that people start asking questions.
tbh the histrionics about how it's "discrimination" for transwomen not to get insurance-covered boob jobs has always pissed me off because women who've had cancer that required mastectomies are not always eligible for covered plastic surgery to correct the effects that fucking *cancer* had on them.
Like...congratulations, you're a "woman". Welcome to the land of shitty healthcare that comes with it.
Yeah my biggest beef with the whole situation is the denial of physical realities for genetic females. My mother in law had breast cancer—a variety only women get—twice and died from it. Her original reconstruction eventually began to dissolve and migrate, causing her pain and discomfort.
This is…insane. My kid takes swim lessons and one of the nights three teens from a swim team are practicing. The two girls swim beautifully, one especially gracefully and efficiently. The boy? Outstrips them both, easily and handily. Not because his technique is better or because they’re just bad. Because testosterone.
It only looks weak and hollow if they can't get away with it, otherwise they look powerful because they're able to enforce their terms.
I've seen that exact rhetorical move pulled myself; I once asked a devout SJW why we enshrine the rights of LGBTQ folks to be out and proud even if it bothers or offends some people, but we don't enshrine the rights of people to express the fact that they find LGBTQ folks bothersome or offensive. Their answer was "because being LGBTQ is a fundamental, immutable part of somebody's being, whereas somebody's political opinions are changeable". Well, that bit about whether being LGBTQ is an inherent, inborn part of somebody's identify is, in fact, one of the things the other group of people would like to debate. It *is* begging the question, exactly.
Agree completely. I can't say exactly when, but eventually there's going to be hell to pay for the excesses of the current round of social justice politics. I think the only thing keeping it afloat is that Trump era conservatives are so awful. I think this is why they are so hot to label everything fascist and love fear porn about the far right. It's like that Lacanian/Zizekian "quilting point" that lets them wallpaper over all there on internal contradictions and incoherence. They don't want to be defined because opposition to Trump and the alt-right is the only thing holding them together.
Someone is going to come in, mobilize the simmering sea of resentment literally anyone else had, and clean house. The woke crowd will find themselves with no friends left, no one with any interest in defending them. It'll probably take 10 years after that at least for the left to come back. I'll be getting old. I can see the chance for any meaningful political change receding past my time on this Earth.
When? Oh, midterms at the latest. The Dems are setting themselves up to be walloped with what Hunter Thompson called "the million-pound shithammer." And you know what their response will be.
Had never heard of "the million-pound shithammer", but that's fucking delightful.
I legit *don't* know what their response will be, though. Another round of thinking they just weren't woke *enough* and/or the voters are all irredeemables? Seems most likely. But there's a sincere chance that losing will cause sufficient anger among the affected (or near-missed) politicians that a tide starts to turn, politically if not yet culturally. I'll be eager to see which response we get.
Other than it’s very much about performative acts that don’t actually do anything.
It reminds me about the NYC debate over Uber. The city wanted to shut it down (or at least substantially restrict it) and the Black community was very much opposed as before Uber it was very difficult for Black people to get a cab.
And some very earnest white woman said something like, “That can’t be true as there are many Black cab drivers.” As if Black cab driver can’t be racist against Black people. And then she went on to say, with all the earnestness in the world, that in any case it wouldn’t be an issue as all cab drivers would have to attend diversity training.
I understand your frustration, and I'm totally on board with making fun of Brooklyn, but can we lay off the college-educated-white-ladies-are-the-root-of-all-evil stuff? We're getting bashed from all directions lately, and I don't see it as accomplishing anything useful.
I don’t want to reveal too much demographic information about myself but I’m sure a lot of people on here would think my sheer existence is EVIL. So like welcome to my world lol.
If such liberals are the reason we have politics with such bad results, it would be very useful to bash them with those bad results their politics cause. And keep bashing them until they support politics with better results - even if such politics have less virtue signaling "good intentions".
In crimes, intentions matter. In politics, results are most important.
The good purpose of bashing, shaming, is to change behavior.
The real problem with "woke" is that it's focused on some equal outcome, without being clear on what behaviors it wants.
"Justice", blindfolded, is based on defining the process, the means, the rules of the game, and accepting the outcomes based on those rules.
There's a separate but related phenomenon where news stories about people being punished for transgressing these norms absolutely refuse to publish any detail about what the person is accused of, as though merely mentioning them somehow means you approve of them. Everyone was always 'using a slur' or 'engaged in sexual misconduct' or 'spreading misinformation.' With a murder or theft you hear what happened, but here it's impossible to find out what the person actually did.
Conveniently, this means you can't form your own judgement about whether the person deserved it, you're just being informed that someone has been cast out. I'm not sure any of the Joe Rogan stories actually told me what was said on his podcast and who said it – was it an ivermectin thing? It's incredibly frustrating.
I literally got COVID the day after I got my booster shot. No joke: took my son to something that turned out to be a super-spreader event the day I got boosted, by the next day I was ill and thought it was a reaction to the booster - it wasn't. I was fine and recovered within 2 days, with a sort of lingering cough that hung around for another 2 days. Yeah anecdotes ain't data, but this "AIDS" guy seems full of shit as I took an absolute mega-dose (and so did my son - he's very young and was double-vaxx'd, and he still had some light symptoms and a decent fever), it was the absolute worst case for me as I was running off a 9 month old 2nd vaccine shot and a booster the prior day and was almost totally fine.
The booster doesn’t take full effect till 10 days later as I understand it.
But my wife caught Omicron too. Fully boosted way more than 10 days. Yet neither me nor my daughter caught it. Wife isolated but we live in a pretty small apartment with one bathroom. I’d say the vaccines kept us relatively safe.
I think we had a miscommunication. I was saying that I had just got boosted, so according to the "vaccine gives you AIDs" line of thinking, I had full-blown AIDs the day I got infected and my previous vaccination shot was 9 months old. I should have been in for a world of hurt, but I had about 12 hours of fever and a couple days of feeling like I had an annoying cold. And I'm not a particularly healthy person.
Yeah, this all sounds like so much krazy alt-side BS ... until you listen to JR interview Dr. Malone, who says an adverse side effect of the vaccination is to temporarily suppress T cells ... oh, that's like a bad thing.
One may dismiss any ol' crap one hears from any ol' crank ... but when you hear this from the guy who invented mRNA vaccines.
Well, Dr. Malone owns ten patents on mRNA vaccines, probably he didn't invent the entire thing by himself. Listen to the interview, its pretty interesting. Despite being three hours long—I hate listening to podcasts—it holds your attention.
I've only ever listened to one JR program, this one. None of what I heard was JR opinions, only a few times JR sums up Dr. Malone's opinions. The most controversial one is where Dr. Malone says healthy young people—especially children—probably shouldn't get vaccinated. But parents need to make that choice. JR sums this up, and people put these words into JR's mouth, when in fact they're a summation of Dr. Malone's words.
I’m not a virologist…but how exactly is this supposed to suppress T cells? I’ve seen the full list of ingredients and nothing seems untoward in the slightest.
Go listen to JR interview Dr. Malone. I was surprised when I heard this too. But when you hear this from someone whose entire career is mRNA vaccines ...
I would say do NOT go listen to JR interview Malone without reading up on Malone first. Malone is an awful quack and an untrustworthy whistleblower with competing financial and reputational conflicts of interest. Your statement "[b]ut when you hear this from someone whose entire career is mRNA vaccines..." is the best argument I've yet heard for deplatforming anyone in the last decade.
I heard Malone and another even worse guy, Kirsch, on Dark Horse Podcast this summer--the claims were completely outrageous, and were actually widely discussed, e.g. here:
JR's "just having a conversation" schtick is really not ok when there's so many red flags about the guest that one can easily find through Google. At least these red flags need to be brought up to Malone's face on the podcast before letting him rile up credulous listeners.
Its a good interview, despite being three hours long. I really don't like listening to podcasts. I've only ever listened to a handful, and the Dr. Malone interview is the only JR podcast I've ever listened to. I might go back and find the cardiologist interview too.
What he's saying about the T cells sounds scary but it's misleading. If what he's saying were true about "original antigenic sin" and the like, then everyone who gets a flu shot every year should be more susceptible to flu than people who just take their chances, and that's empirically untrue.
He's a guy who, for reasons unknown, uses a lot of emotionally manipulative language (unlike any reputable doctor I've ever known), and says things that are at times misleading and at times flat-out false. Based on some of the whoppers he's told, and the type of fear-inspiring language he uses, I disbelieve him by default, unless I thoroughly fact-check him with primary sources of information. And that's exhausting.
He had a small amount of involvement in the 1980s in some failed processes that didn't contribute to the current vaccines, except in the sense that "every failure helps science along." Those patents play no role in the current vaccines. He also has conflicts of interest a mile high (being a consultant / product promoter for the largest company in India which is creating their own vaccine).
I don't want him (or anyone) censored, and I appreciate how Rogan will have conversations with people with all sorts of viewpoints (and he asks decent questions; but he's just not able to fact-check complicated info on the fly). Malone is not someone to take seriously.
Again, Malone had a much larger role in creating the current mRNA vaccines than you give him credit for. Your bias against him for the things he says is clouding your judgment here.
It also looks like you don't understand what the original antigenic sin argument is. It doesn't mean that vaccines will do absolutely nothing.
It means that vaccinating children, for example, with our outdated Wuhan-strain vaccines instead of letting them catch delta or omicron and get first exposure that way will train their immune systems in such a way that they'll be less effective at fighting off strains that aren't the original Wuhan strain in the long term.
I know what he's saying. And I also know what original antigenic sin is, before he ever mentioned it. I'm saying he's describing it disingenuously, in such a way as to deter parents from choosing the vaccines, which, if you simply play the numbers, are a far better bet for your child than "no vaccine."
This is similar to: Getting a "close but no cigar" flu vaccine will offer some protection, versus no protection from no vaccine.
His point is ridiculous, and the way he presents it is disingenuous and incorrect.
There's no way to "simply play those numbers" because we have no clue what the denominator is when it comes to kids who have recovered from COVID. The cases are generally so mild that millions of them have gone completely unrecorded. This, of course, makes COVID in kids look worse than it is. Freddie wrote something about this a little while back, actually.
While it's dumb to call it AIDS, there is substantial evidence that the first, third, and any subsequent doses of the mRNA jabs do increase susceptibility to COVID for a couple weeks after administration.
You can see the data here from places like Israel and Gibraltar where it's particularly clear that infections followed booster administration to an extent that is very unnatural.
This study is the most damning IMO as it shows a roughly 100% *negative* vaccine efficacy in the two weeks following dose one. Behavioral changes are inadequate to explain this phenomenon:
The Danish study was done long before anyone even knew about omicron, and most likely before omicron even existed to begin with.
The increased susceptibility to COVID infection in the two weeks after shot #1 can be seen from the earliest clinical trials: the ones whose data was used in the decision to give the vaccines their emergency authorizations back when they were first created.
In those trials and in many other studies since then, scientists have played a sleight-of-hand game where they count everyone as unvaccinated until they are at least two weeks past their first shot, which puts the data showing increased susceptibility to infection in the unvaccinated pool instead of where it should be: the vaccinated pool. This little trick makes the unvaccinated look more at risk than they actually are, and also makes the vaccines look better and less risky than they truly are.
In summation: I agree with you. Even the earliest trials of the mRNA vaccines produced "shit, shit data." The problem is that people like you pretend that data isn't shit when you want it to support vaccination, and then pretend it is shit when that very same data shows potential flaws in the mRNA jabs. Pick one or the other. You can't have it both ways.
Again, it's stupid to say that the vaccine causes AIDS. It does cause increased vulnerability to COVID infection in the two weeks after the first, third, and subsequent jabs tho.
Look at page 5 of the study I linked. There's a table. It shows that the nursing home residents had a -40% vaccine efficacy in the 14 days after the first jab...and the healthcare workers had a stunning -104% VE in those same 14 days!
It is incredibly frustrating, and it’s a huge tell as to where the motivations of these media producers lie, and it’s immensely discrediting to them for anybody who seeks media sources that will help them become more informed. It’s in a very bad way right now.
I usually am pretty crotchety about pop culture analogies for discussing politics, especially Harry Potter ones, but I have to begrudgingly admit that this is pretty fuckin apt.
It's part of a larger issue, I think. It often seems to me (old fart that I am) that the cohort driving the political/cultural conversation now is frightened - even terrified - of WORDS, and when the people driving a conversation have that particular handicap (will someone take umbrage at that word, I wonder?) your conversation is in fact going to be an anti-conversation, a negation of the very idea of exchange, understanding, or persuasion.
I have no idea where this comes from, but it does seem to me to be real - and fairly new, at least at this scale.
This is one of those things where I think the problem is that they're *not postmodernist enough.* Narratives perpetuate marginalization, sure -- but then marginalization itself is a narrative concept, and identifying marginalization with violence is just as much of a contingent narrative social construction as anything else (not to mention a Foucauldian power play!).
I'm not sure I'm quite getting what you're trying to say, but my position is that postmodern criticism is incompatible with political radicalism. Radicals who employ postmodern theories of language end up trying to pull up out of the postmodern deconstruction dive at some arbitrary point, where they can say that the prevailing dominant narratives are non-objective and thus illegitimate, but still hold that their own alternative narratives are objectively legitimate.
I don't think that there can be a justification for political radicalism within a postmodern epistemology. You need some external, objective source of moral judgment, like for example a religious belief in a transcendental moral reality beyond human construction.
Of course, nothing prevents an unjustified, incoherent radical ideology from existing, and even sometimes winning. It's not as though Stalinism or Nazism triumphed through their superior rational rigor.
But if you'd like to fight for a particular radical political cause because you think that it's actually true and actually virtuous, postmodern deconstructive criticism is a weird place to look for inspiration. And it's more than a little odd that the American left has tried to do that.
Quite perceptive. Particularly: “where they can say that the prevailing dominant narratives are non-objective and thus illegitimate, but still hold that their own alternative narratives are objectively legitimate.” Nicely done.
The problem is that the guy on the street and even some of the learned don't/can't really delve into the epistemological nature of the narrative and so they just accept the superficial rhetoric and ignore any deeper inconsistencies if they do see them. The narrative feeds their prejudices and their need for things to be the way the narrative paints them regardless of the facts of the matter. So, they just glom on to it and don't ask questions. Sort of like religious adherents. Logic just doesn't factor into their faith and devotion.
I agree with this. But, I think other political types do this as well. The other night on Bill Maher, he raised the issue of the increase in criminal activity in some cities due to progressive DA's refusing to prosecute or outright decriminalizing certain types of crime (like theft under a certain dollar amount - see SF if interested) and the impact on the quality of life in those cities. Guest Congressman Ritchie Torres used this as an opening, not to discuss this issue, but to blame the uptick in crime on guns and then pitch gun control. Bill tried to get him back on track but he just continued to pitch gun control so Bill gave up and moved to a different topic.
I'm not trying to argue for or against either position. But, it was frustrating that the Congressman wouldn't engage Bill (in good faith) on the issue he was discussing and kept "picking at talking points" as you phrased it. I've seen many politicians do this, particularly in debates. Ignore the question and pick at talking points. It's definitely not very satisfying to watch. A sort of deflection if not outright obfuscation - so they don't have to reveal their stance maybe.
I do worry that our youth lack an independent spirit and/or vision. They seem to want someone to tell them the right answer; to tell them what to do; to earn that gold star. There's no coloring outside the lines excepting in the areas of hypersexualization or insisting on gender fluidity - creative, but pragmatically challenging (How does a doctor treat someone with female sex organs if they insist on being perceived as a man?).
Even in Silicon Valley with all of its purported "disruption", nothing is really new. It's just a digitization of what was already there. It makes things easier, certainly. But it doesn't really evolve society in what I would consider a meaningful way. IOW, we are still just as tribal but now that tribalism is amplified by technology which imho tends to degrade civility between both individuals and groups. I likened current civilization to the middle ages on another substack board, just with more technology and better hygiene.
It really bothers me that all of the advances in the 20th and now 21st centuries haven't lead to people being more decent to each other. IOW, there has been no "spiritual" maturation (or at least psychological if you don't believe in the metaphysical). We haven't grown up. Sophisticated technology in the hands of what are essentially adult children—what could go wrong?
I so agree. I think we are finally waking up to how the elites have been manipulating everyone all along. Think about policy over the past 30 - 40 years. Most of it has benefited the elites at the expense of the working class. Even Obama sold out to the banks (a fact for which I will NEVER forgive him having grown up in the rust belt). He was supposed to be a champion of the people but kissed corporate butt from day 1.
See, I used to be a "little guy" lefty. I thought the power of the state should be employed to balance outsized power. "Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices." - Granny Aching ― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
As I got older, I realized that power was still concentrated in the hands of a very few in spite of the rhetoric surrounding individualism in the US. Yes, we are freer than the serfs under feudalism but we can only push that freedom so far before someone with a boot comes and stomps us - sometimes the state itself. And woke is just another boot. That's why I'm now an independent. I don't believe in parties. Their planks are simply mechanisms to rally people to give them power. But, they don't really mean it. They just want to feed at the public trough.
Believe it or not, though, in spite of my cynicism and as a veteran, I still think the ideals of this country are worth fighting for. Which is why I read obsessively about woke and track its movement through the culture. And I do see a burgeoning push back with more people standing up and it does keep me going. Bill Maher, an old-school liberal if there ever was one, has finally joined the fray and he is taking massive flack for it. So, I support him even if I don't always agree with him on everything.
Anyway, enough digression.
You might be interested in a recent podcast by James Lindsay: https://newdiscourses.com/2022/02/paulo-freires-prophetic-vision-education/
He stresses the theological nature of woke ideology (which is actually akin to a fire and brimstone Xtianity but without any redemption) and addresses several salient points in Freire's book whose ideas he taps as core primary source for this ideology. It's long but so worth it (and I say that as someone who does not typically enjoy podcasts - I prefer to read because I can do it faster and I am very time-challenged). I have read broadly on this issue because it scares the crap out of me (I am an iconoclast and artist who would be burned at the stake by these idiots if I revealed my inner thoughts re: identity, freedom, race, tribes, politics, etc. I am an unrepentant free-thinker.) and this podcast is the best synopsis of root cause (beyond postmodernism) that I have encountered.
Love a concise Freddie post! This one cuts.
TAHELLANs
To A Hammer Everything Looks Like A Nail
I know I've committed an acronymic sin, but, still, I'm going to try it out.
I do not like sullying the word "justice" to describe the people you're trying to name.
Yup. They don’t really want “justice”. They want revenge.
Social Vengeance Warriors?
Nice!
I also prefer “social justice” politics, because I see them seeking “justice” in the same way that the criminal justice system does: They want punishment and revenge.
It’s not about making things equal and fair and nice for everyone. That would be “social equality politics” perhaps. Social justice means identifying bad people and making them pay.
I will mangle the verbiage, but there's an adage that says that the more words added preceding the word 'justice', the less it leads to actual justice. The optimal number of prefix words is zero.
take some environmental justice with that.
Every time somebody uses the term "environmental justice", the earth gets 0.003 degrees warmer. This is just basic science.
Have you seen The Last Duel? Set in 14th century France. No spoilers, but one guy makes a statement about how pregnancy happens (waaaaaaaay off) and tacks on “it’s just science” at the end 😂
It also means that the higher paying jobs should go to people like them. I remember seeing something on LinkedIn to the effect of "Corporate diversity in post-Floyd Era." Uhh... dude was killed over like $10 of convenience store food. I don't think the reaction had much to do with elite diversity.
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Printer must’ve run out of ink before they got to the last bit of the social justice Bible.
That's a good point. I was thinking the opposite at first: "social justice politics" sounds too nice, because who is against that? It's like being against cute kittens or pie-baking grannies. But I see what you mean! :)
Really excited about the "Social Justice Reform" movement.
Completely agree. It is SO helpful that you, Wesley Yang, Scott Alexander, and others have theorized and articulated what is going on. I cannot overstate how vital and necessary that was.
“Voldemorting” is a great addition to the lexicon.
I'm not crazy about "social justice politics" simply because there was such a thing long before wokery emerged.
If people will not allow an endonym, they will certainly get an exonym sooner or later.
I still prefer my term "Carthage" for the people who try to shut down conversation and are accused of "Critical Race Theory" (although CRT actually says that more communication is necessary). https://newslettr.yevaud.com/p/what-is-carthage
There is a slightly different issue with "trans issues" - there the biggest issue I have found are the people who cry "deadnaming and misgendering" any time there is an attempt to describe even a hypothetical situation.
I do understand the impulse for these people to duck this naming, since the right wing media apparatus immediately creates a monster under everyone's bed and gives it the name woke or sjw or whathaeyou.
Not wanting to be painted by the brush of your least charitable enemies seems pretty sound, anyway.
I don't need any prompting from the right wing media to regard monstrous things as monsters.
I think my point stands.
There's a reason why the GOP bristles when they're compared to white nationalists. If your enemy prefers to use a specific name for your movement, it's probably not the one you want to use.
They refuse any and all names, that's Freddie's point. That refusal is strategic. Conservatives don't mind being called conservatives, right-wing, any number of things.
My preferred solution would be that "progressive/progressivism" can be the neutral term for wokery, and "liberal/liberalism" can go back to meaning what it meant until 2010 or so. But that will never happen.
I'm not defending their refusal to name their politics.
I just think it makes sense to shy away from terms that have become poisonous to most of the electorate.
And, uh, most of these people seem to prefer to be called Leftists or Progressives, so it's not like they won't accept any terminology (though, for the record, I think these beliefs are not necessarily shared by all or even most Leftists, so there is a distinction between people who love D'Angelo's corporate consulting shtick and people who wish we were talking about Angela Davis instead).
The terms only become poisonous to most of the electorate because the ideas themselves are. "Critical Race Theory" became poisonous when the average Joe realized what it entailed, not so much because it was misrepresented. That is the fundamental problem they are dealing with. They were publishing editorials in the NY Times with the headline "We Literally Mean Abolish the Police" and then claiming that was all a misunderstanding when crime started going through the roof.
Well, in everyone's defense with regard to CRT, I don't think either its advocates or detractors actually bothered to learn anything about it before they decided which side of the line to stand on. But the state of politics means that everyone needs to not only pick a side but also defend even its most strange and radical interpretations.
Look, I'm not interested in defending these people here. All I'm saying is that it makes political sense to not want to wave a banner that names your movement something most people already don't like.
How about shying away from positions that are poisonous to most of the electorate? Nah - can't try that.
I'll say it again: I'm not interested in defending their ideas. Obviously it's bad political strategy to vocally embrace fringe ideas loved by almost no one.
The test is whether or not the label actually matches up to reality.
A while ago somebody leaked the list of donors to the Proud Boys. It turns out that something like 60-80% are Asian.
Trump picked up a significant number of minority/immigrant votes in 2020 and that trend looks like it's only becoming more pronounced in elections in VA, CA, etc.
Of course one side is going to try to slander the other. Skepticism and critical thinking demands that everyone in the middle be able to evaluate those attacks as substantive or fanciful.
Besides accepting no name, the woke like to pretend they speak for all black people or even all "people of color." So that their ideology is simply "POC Truth" and needs no name. They can't afford to have that disproven because the whole project is built on that racial essentialism.
Which makes the defection of racial minorities to the GOP, and Trump, all the more problematic.
I think it largely demonstrates how wokeness is not a political project. It's a barely functioning wing of the culture war that has an elite cultural cachet but almost no power outside of these very narrow spaces.
Most people of all races and classes reject it.
Good comment. I do not think social justice politics present the extinction-level threat that many make it out to be, but I won't die on a hill defending the excesses. However, I will beg and plead that people who are worried about it pay more attention to the culture war the right wants to wage.
I suppose I can keep saying it: I'm not interested in defending wokeness.
My only point is that it makes sense for its advocates to shy away from naming their movement something that already has strong negative connotations with most people.
Wokeness or Political Correctness are not political projects. They're culture war, and they're unpopular.
I'm interested in policy that addresses the material conditions of people. I really don't care whether the people doing the helping are Good or Bad, or if the people being helped are Bad or Good. I believe we should limit suffering of all people, even people I think are assholes.
I agree that some avoid critique by saying it's *all* just culture war. That's wrong, and it's on them! On the other hand, some critiques *are* generated in bad faith by the culture war. It can be confusing work distinguishing them, but I think we have to.
It should be understood that the two things exist in a symbiotic relationship.
The best way to respond to the culture war is with actual policy. If you address the material needs of people, they stop caring real fast whether it's a socialist or antiracist project that got them there.
Huey Long and FDR at least understood this. When the Left is only interested in culture war, you end up with endless debates about wokeness. And wokeness just simply is not a political project, at least in how its largely manifested itself. Its advocates seem most interested in polite language over any concrete policy.
Definitely. FdB wrote this on some old pre-Substack post and I think it's still good:
"It’s not about red state vs. blue state or rural vs. urban. It’s about building a country where everyone has their basic necessities, where everyone is free from poverty and despair. Yes to affordable housing and health care, yes to public education, yes to food for the hungry and warmth for the cold. No to poverty, no to racism and sexism, no to exploitation and greed. They stand with the comfortable and the rich, we stand with those who suffer and need. Everywhere. Because we’re all in this together."
Now, I'd add something referencing the culture war to that first sentence.
In many ways, I think the focus on material needs can coexist with, and is supported by, a genuine version of social justice politics.
I would add that many times the most fervent social justice crusaders are liberals, because their position depends on the culture war, rather than a particular kind of leftist, who is more interested in material wellbeing.
I think meeting the material needs of people is a foundation of social justice politics. MLK Jr didn't say, "Hey, guys, can we be more polite about this whole race thing?"
He marched for economic transformation.
That many social justice people are only interested in using the correct pronouns or racial identifiers for people but not in making sure these people have healthcare and food and homes is just tragic.
Jobs AND freedom, and all that jazz.
That I agree with. The purpose of wokery is to let Joan Pierpont Morgan think of herself as Angela Davis without having to pay a penny more. They actively derail the actual policy with culture war. I don't think it is a coincidence all of this stuff really took off right after Occupy Wall Street, which really was the last pre-woke moment on the left.
This post reminds me of a rhetorical move that I see periodically. People will say something along the lines of, "Politics is debating whether we should raise or lower taxes, not whether this group should or shouldn't have rights." Not only is it an attempt to reduce politics to technocratic management, but it's a weird form of begging the question: you lose because I have defined the whole argument as out of bounds.
I think its practitioners think that actually engaging with the view they find abhorrent would weaken their position by making their foes' views more permissable in society, but in practice dodging the whole argument like this is what makes you look weak and hollow.
This has gone hand-in-hand with a massive inflation of what counts as a "right". I'm not sure many people would agree that, say, a free boob job for a transwomen counts as a "right"--hell, the idea that "healthcare is a right" is contentious, with people from diverse ideological viewpoints disagreeing. But if you assert it's "just about rights" and refuse to expand on what those "rights" actually are, you'll get a lot of people going along with it because people are generally in favor of everyone having equal rights--it's when you try to explain which specific "rights" you want that people start asking questions.
How about free boob jobs for all the saggy moms out there? I swear to god, we haven’t mastered women’s rights yet.
I’m surprised Trump didn’t try rolling that out as a policy.
He’d probably have a clause about uggos being exempted because why put good boobs on a body with a bad face.
I've never noticed that people really into boobs are that concerned with the face above them ;p.
Touché, touché.
tbh the histrionics about how it's "discrimination" for transwomen not to get insurance-covered boob jobs has always pissed me off because women who've had cancer that required mastectomies are not always eligible for covered plastic surgery to correct the effects that fucking *cancer* had on them.
Like...congratulations, you're a "woman". Welcome to the land of shitty healthcare that comes with it.
Yeah my biggest beef with the whole situation is the denial of physical realities for genetic females. My mother in law had breast cancer—a variety only women get—twice and died from it. Her original reconstruction eventually began to dissolve and migrate, causing her pain and discomfort.
This is…insane. My kid takes swim lessons and one of the nights three teens from a swim team are practicing. The two girls swim beautifully, one especially gracefully and efficiently. The boy? Outstrips them both, easily and handily. Not because his technique is better or because they’re just bad. Because testosterone.
The best one was the young British woman who demanded a boob job to boost her income as a sex worker.
in the UK, they ration healthcare, someone missed a life-saving surgery so this woman could get a boob job.
It only looks weak and hollow if they can't get away with it, otherwise they look powerful because they're able to enforce their terms.
I've seen that exact rhetorical move pulled myself; I once asked a devout SJW why we enshrine the rights of LGBTQ folks to be out and proud even if it bothers or offends some people, but we don't enshrine the rights of people to express the fact that they find LGBTQ folks bothersome or offensive. Their answer was "because being LGBTQ is a fundamental, immutable part of somebody's being, whereas somebody's political opinions are changeable". Well, that bit about whether being LGBTQ is an inherent, inborn part of somebody's identify is, in fact, one of the things the other group of people would like to debate. It *is* begging the question, exactly.
Tonight on Twitter - "Eugenics-supporting blogger cites TERF to support racism"
En fuego!
"We always knew he was a BAD GUY!"
Agree completely. I can't say exactly when, but eventually there's going to be hell to pay for the excesses of the current round of social justice politics. I think the only thing keeping it afloat is that Trump era conservatives are so awful. I think this is why they are so hot to label everything fascist and love fear porn about the far right. It's like that Lacanian/Zizekian "quilting point" that lets them wallpaper over all there on internal contradictions and incoherence. They don't want to be defined because opposition to Trump and the alt-right is the only thing holding them together.
Someone is going to come in, mobilize the simmering sea of resentment literally anyone else had, and clean house. The woke crowd will find themselves with no friends left, no one with any interest in defending them. It'll probably take 10 years after that at least for the left to come back. I'll be getting old. I can see the chance for any meaningful political change receding past my time on this Earth.
When? Oh, midterms at the latest. The Dems are setting themselves up to be walloped with what Hunter Thompson called "the million-pound shithammer." And you know what their response will be.
Had never heard of "the million-pound shithammer", but that's fucking delightful.
I legit *don't* know what their response will be, though. Another round of thinking they just weren't woke *enough* and/or the voters are all irredeemables? Seems most likely. But there's a sincere chance that losing will cause sufficient anger among the affected (or near-missed) politicians that a tide starts to turn, politically if not yet culturally. I'll be eager to see which response we get.
“The only thing keeping it afloat is that Trump era conservatives are so awful.”
Bingo!
“But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be alright”
— The Beatles
I’ve never got a good definition of woke.
Other than it’s very much about performative acts that don’t actually do anything.
It reminds me about the NYC debate over Uber. The city wanted to shut it down (or at least substantially restrict it) and the Black community was very much opposed as before Uber it was very difficult for Black people to get a cab.
And some very earnest white woman said something like, “That can’t be true as there are many Black cab drivers.” As if Black cab driver can’t be racist against Black people. And then she went on to say, with all the earnestness in the world, that in any case it wouldn’t be an issue as all cab drivers would have to attend diversity training.
The worst people in the world IMO are progressive white women in Brooklyn with humanities degrees.
I understand your frustration, and I'm totally on board with making fun of Brooklyn, but can we lay off the college-educated-white-ladies-are-the-root-of-all-evil stuff? We're getting bashed from all directions lately, and I don't see it as accomplishing anything useful.
Well stop claiming to “speak for POC” and supporting every idiotic SJ idea that gets spit out of the media.
First they came to bash the white males. Because I'm not a white male, I said nothing ...
I don’t want to reveal too much demographic information about myself but I’m sure a lot of people on here would think my sheer existence is EVIL. So like welcome to my world lol.
If such liberals are the reason we have politics with such bad results, it would be very useful to bash them with those bad results their politics cause. And keep bashing them until they support politics with better results - even if such politics have less virtue signaling "good intentions".
In crimes, intentions matter. In politics, results are most important.
The good purpose of bashing, shaming, is to change behavior.
The real problem with "woke" is that it's focused on some equal outcome, without being clear on what behaviors it wants.
"Justice", blindfolded, is based on defining the process, the means, the rules of the game, and accepting the outcomes based on those rules.
There's a separate but related phenomenon where news stories about people being punished for transgressing these norms absolutely refuse to publish any detail about what the person is accused of, as though merely mentioning them somehow means you approve of them. Everyone was always 'using a slur' or 'engaged in sexual misconduct' or 'spreading misinformation.' With a murder or theft you hear what happened, but here it's impossible to find out what the person actually did.
Conveniently, this means you can't form your own judgement about whether the person deserved it, you're just being informed that someone has been cast out. I'm not sure any of the Joe Rogan stories actually told me what was said on his podcast and who said it – was it an ivermectin thing? It's incredibly frustrating.
I literally got COVID the day after I got my booster shot. No joke: took my son to something that turned out to be a super-spreader event the day I got boosted, by the next day I was ill and thought it was a reaction to the booster - it wasn't. I was fine and recovered within 2 days, with a sort of lingering cough that hung around for another 2 days. Yeah anecdotes ain't data, but this "AIDS" guy seems full of shit as I took an absolute mega-dose (and so did my son - he's very young and was double-vaxx'd, and he still had some light symptoms and a decent fever), it was the absolute worst case for me as I was running off a 9 month old 2nd vaccine shot and a booster the prior day and was almost totally fine.
The booster doesn’t take full effect till 10 days later as I understand it.
But my wife caught Omicron too. Fully boosted way more than 10 days. Yet neither me nor my daughter caught it. Wife isolated but we live in a pretty small apartment with one bathroom. I’d say the vaccines kept us relatively safe.
I think we had a miscommunication. I was saying that I had just got boosted, so according to the "vaccine gives you AIDs" line of thinking, I had full-blown AIDs the day I got infected and my previous vaccination shot was 9 months old. I should have been in for a world of hurt, but I had about 12 hours of fever and a couple days of feeling like I had an annoying cold. And I'm not a particularly healthy person.
Incidentally, neither here nor there, a phrase in your comment reminded me of this gem: https://youtu.be/huJ81Mq2y34
OMG I forgot how funny that was. Thanks. I needed a good laugh.
Seems right
Yeah, this all sounds like so much krazy alt-side BS ... until you listen to JR interview Dr. Malone, who says an adverse side effect of the vaccination is to temporarily suppress T cells ... oh, that's like a bad thing.
One may dismiss any ol' crap one hears from any ol' crank ... but when you hear this from the guy who invented mRNA vaccines.
I’m agains the whole cancel Rogan, boycott Spotify thing, but my understanding is that Malone did not in fact “invent the mRNA vaccines”.
Well, Dr. Malone owns ten patents on mRNA vaccines, probably he didn't invent the entire thing by himself. Listen to the interview, its pretty interesting. Despite being three hours long—I hate listening to podcasts—it holds your attention.
I've only ever listened to one JR program, this one. None of what I heard was JR opinions, only a few times JR sums up Dr. Malone's opinions. The most controversial one is where Dr. Malone says healthy young people—especially children—probably shouldn't get vaccinated. But parents need to make that choice. JR sums this up, and people put these words into JR's mouth, when in fact they're a summation of Dr. Malone's words.
And these were 8 or 10 failed patents from the 80s.
Yes, but every technology is like this, each builds upon the work of others.
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
--Isaac Newton 1676
https://bprice.substack.com/p/robert-malone-is-full-of-shit
I wasn't gonna say it, but thanks! ;)
I’m not a virologist…but how exactly is this supposed to suppress T cells? I’ve seen the full list of ingredients and nothing seems untoward in the slightest.
Go listen to JR interview Dr. Malone. I was surprised when I heard this too. But when you hear this from someone whose entire career is mRNA vaccines ...
I would say do NOT go listen to JR interview Malone without reading up on Malone first. Malone is an awful quack and an untrustworthy whistleblower with competing financial and reputational conflicts of interest. Your statement "[b]ut when you hear this from someone whose entire career is mRNA vaccines..." is the best argument I've yet heard for deplatforming anyone in the last decade.
I heard Malone and another even worse guy, Kirsch, on Dark Horse Podcast this summer--the claims were completely outrageous, and were actually widely discussed, e.g. here:
https://medium.com/rebel-wisdom/on-vaccine-safety-ivermectin-and-the-dark-horse-podcast-an-investigation-f32491d4c970
JR's "just having a conversation" schtick is really not ok when there's so many red flags about the guest that one can easily find through Google. At least these red flags need to be brought up to Malone's face on the podcast before letting him rile up credulous listeners.
Its a good interview, despite being three hours long. I really don't like listening to podcasts. I've only ever listened to a handful, and the Dr. Malone interview is the only JR podcast I've ever listened to. I might go back and find the cardiologist interview too.
What he's saying about the T cells sounds scary but it's misleading. If what he's saying were true about "original antigenic sin" and the like, then everyone who gets a flu shot every year should be more susceptible to flu than people who just take their chances, and that's empirically untrue.
He's a guy who, for reasons unknown, uses a lot of emotionally manipulative language (unlike any reputable doctor I've ever known), and says things that are at times misleading and at times flat-out false. Based on some of the whoppers he's told, and the type of fear-inspiring language he uses, I disbelieve him by default, unless I thoroughly fact-check him with primary sources of information. And that's exhausting.
He had a small amount of involvement in the 1980s in some failed processes that didn't contribute to the current vaccines, except in the sense that "every failure helps science along." Those patents play no role in the current vaccines. He also has conflicts of interest a mile high (being a consultant / product promoter for the largest company in India which is creating their own vaccine).
I don't want him (or anyone) censored, and I appreciate how Rogan will have conversations with people with all sorts of viewpoints (and he asks decent questions; but he's just not able to fact-check complicated info on the fly). Malone is not someone to take seriously.
Again, Malone had a much larger role in creating the current mRNA vaccines than you give him credit for. Your bias against him for the things he says is clouding your judgment here.
I refer you to his contribution, depicted here https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe36fb3cd-5abd-4086-a356-5092011be7ad_545x539.jpeg
That graphic is overly simplistic. There's no way each one of those papers had the exact same impact as each of the others.
It also looks like you don't understand what the original antigenic sin argument is. It doesn't mean that vaccines will do absolutely nothing.
It means that vaccinating children, for example, with our outdated Wuhan-strain vaccines instead of letting them catch delta or omicron and get first exposure that way will train their immune systems in such a way that they'll be less effective at fighting off strains that aren't the original Wuhan strain in the long term.
I know what he's saying. And I also know what original antigenic sin is, before he ever mentioned it. I'm saying he's describing it disingenuously, in such a way as to deter parents from choosing the vaccines, which, if you simply play the numbers, are a far better bet for your child than "no vaccine."
This is similar to: Getting a "close but no cigar" flu vaccine will offer some protection, versus no protection from no vaccine.
His point is ridiculous, and the way he presents it is disingenuous and incorrect.
There's no way to "simply play those numbers" because we have no clue what the denominator is when it comes to kids who have recovered from COVID. The cases are generally so mild that millions of them have gone completely unrecorded. This, of course, makes COVID in kids look worse than it is. Freddie wrote something about this a little while back, actually.
While it's dumb to call it AIDS, there is substantial evidence that the first, third, and any subsequent doses of the mRNA jabs do increase susceptibility to COVID for a couple weeks after administration.
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/booster-doses-are-extremely-dangerous
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-covid-boosters-accentuating-covid
You can see the data here from places like Israel and Gibraltar where it's particularly clear that infections followed booster administration to an extent that is very unnatural.
This study is the most damning IMO as it shows a roughly 100% *negative* vaccine efficacy in the two weeks following dose one. Behavioral changes are inadequate to explain this phenomenon:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.08.21252200v1
The Danish study was done long before anyone even knew about omicron, and most likely before omicron even existed to begin with.
The increased susceptibility to COVID infection in the two weeks after shot #1 can be seen from the earliest clinical trials: the ones whose data was used in the decision to give the vaccines their emergency authorizations back when they were first created.
In those trials and in many other studies since then, scientists have played a sleight-of-hand game where they count everyone as unvaccinated until they are at least two weeks past their first shot, which puts the data showing increased susceptibility to infection in the unvaccinated pool instead of where it should be: the vaccinated pool. This little trick makes the unvaccinated look more at risk than they actually are, and also makes the vaccines look better and less risky than they truly are.
In summation: I agree with you. Even the earliest trials of the mRNA vaccines produced "shit, shit data." The problem is that people like you pretend that data isn't shit when you want it to support vaccination, and then pretend it is shit when that very same data shows potential flaws in the mRNA jabs. Pick one or the other. You can't have it both ways.
Again, it's stupid to say that the vaccine causes AIDS. It does cause increased vulnerability to COVID infection in the two weeks after the first, third, and subsequent jabs tho.
Look at page 5 of the study I linked. There's a table. It shows that the nursing home residents had a -40% vaccine efficacy in the 14 days after the first jab...and the healthcare workers had a stunning -104% VE in those same 14 days!
It is incredibly frustrating, and it’s a huge tell as to where the motivations of these media producers lie, and it’s immensely discrediting to them for anybody who seeks media sources that will help them become more informed. It’s in a very bad way right now.
Yes!! No actual commentary dissecting the argument (here, Robert Malone’s). Precisely.
Or they say "made a racist remark." They'll just work out your right-think for you, thanks.
“My friends call me Ben,” he once said, “Strangers call me Mr. Siegel, and guys I don’t like call me Bugsy, but not to my face.”
I usually am pretty crotchety about pop culture analogies for discussing politics, especially Harry Potter ones, but I have to begrudgingly admit that this is pretty fuckin apt.
It's part of a larger issue, I think. It often seems to me (old fart that I am) that the cohort driving the political/cultural conversation now is frightened - even terrified - of WORDS, and when the people driving a conversation have that particular handicap (will someone take umbrage at that word, I wonder?) your conversation is in fact going to be an anti-conversation, a negation of the very idea of exchange, understanding, or persuasion.
I have no idea where this comes from, but it does seem to me to be real - and fairly new, at least at this scale.
This is one of those things where I think the problem is that they're *not postmodernist enough.* Narratives perpetuate marginalization, sure -- but then marginalization itself is a narrative concept, and identifying marginalization with violence is just as much of a contingent narrative social construction as anything else (not to mention a Foucauldian power play!).
I'm not sure I'm quite getting what you're trying to say, but my position is that postmodern criticism is incompatible with political radicalism. Radicals who employ postmodern theories of language end up trying to pull up out of the postmodern deconstruction dive at some arbitrary point, where they can say that the prevailing dominant narratives are non-objective and thus illegitimate, but still hold that their own alternative narratives are objectively legitimate.
I don't think that there can be a justification for political radicalism within a postmodern epistemology. You need some external, objective source of moral judgment, like for example a religious belief in a transcendental moral reality beyond human construction.
Of course, nothing prevents an unjustified, incoherent radical ideology from existing, and even sometimes winning. It's not as though Stalinism or Nazism triumphed through their superior rational rigor.
But if you'd like to fight for a particular radical political cause because you think that it's actually true and actually virtuous, postmodern deconstructive criticism is a weird place to look for inspiration. And it's more than a little odd that the American left has tried to do that.
Quite perceptive. Particularly: “where they can say that the prevailing dominant narratives are non-objective and thus illegitimate, but still hold that their own alternative narratives are objectively legitimate.” Nicely done.
The problem is that the guy on the street and even some of the learned don't/can't really delve into the epistemological nature of the narrative and so they just accept the superficial rhetoric and ignore any deeper inconsistencies if they do see them. The narrative feeds their prejudices and their need for things to be the way the narrative paints them regardless of the facts of the matter. So, they just glom on to it and don't ask questions. Sort of like religious adherents. Logic just doesn't factor into their faith and devotion.
I never heard about any of this at the malt shoppe in Riverdale!
You done good to keep your mind open, Pappy!
There is always one comment each day that makes me cackle. Yours won today! Thanks for the hearty laugh!! ;-)
The pronouns thing is part of the same phenomenon, in my opinion.
Yes. "Our existence isn't up for debate!"
They aren't terrified of words. They expertly and cleverly use language as a weapon.
Infallibility a certain sign of religious dogma.