Month: July 2020

This article by Patrick J. Buchanan was posted today on Lew Rockwell’s website. Mr. Buchanan is a Republican who once ran for President and is one of the few remaining clingers to so-called paleoconservatism. Some excerpts follow from the beginning and end of his commentary:

There is a real possibility that, this coming week, Joe Biden will be selecting the 47th president of the United States.

For the woman Biden picks — he has promised to exclude from consideration all men, black, brown, white or Asian — has a better chance of succeeding to the presidency than any vice presidential nominee in U.S. history, other than perhaps Harry Truman. […]

If Biden wins, he will be 78 when he takes the oath, older than our eldest president, Ronald Reagan, was when he left office after two terms. Biden would turn 80 even before he reached the midpoint of his first term. […]

Yet, with the pandemic crisis, the economic crisis and the racial crisis gripping the nation, what are the unique conditions Biden has set down for the person he would put a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Biden began his selection process by eliminating and discriminating against whole categories of people.

First, no white men need apply. Second, no man of any race, color or creed will be considered. Gender rules them out, though every vice president for 230 years has been a man.

Nevertheless, says Biden, this one has to be a woman.

“No men need apply!” automatically eliminated 17 of the 24 Democratic governors who are men, including Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California, and it eliminated 30 of the 47 Democratic members of the Senate who are men.

In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing and protests, pressure has grown on Biden not only to choose a woman but a woman of color, and preferably a Black woman. If that were a criterion, it would eliminate all but a tiny few of the party’s senators and governors.

What national interest impelled Biden to so restrict the pool of talent from which a possible presidential successor would be chosen?

Joe Biden would be the oldest man ever to serve as president. He would enter office with visibly diminished mental capacities. And he has decided to restrict his choice as to who should inherit our highest office by ruling out the vast majority of the most able and experienced leaders of his own Democratic Party.

Is this any way to select someone who could, in a heartbeat, take control of the destiny of the world’s most powerful nation?

Read more …

Mr. Buchanan’s judgment is clearly affected by his paleoconservatism. He fails to identify the two major existential crises now confronting the United States: white male supremacy and systemic racism. The selection of a woman of color for the vice-presidency (and anticipated eventual presidency) by Mr. Biden would go a long way to addressing both issues and meet the needs of the people for a more equitable society with gender and racial justice for all. Surely any woman (cis or trans) of color would be preferable to any white cisgender male, whatever his qualifications. As an aside, it is regrettable that a woman of color is not the presidential nominee, rather than Mr. Biden.

From Lefticon:

Paleoconservatism – the older, traditional version of conservatism which is now considered outdated and its followers reactionary.

Paleoconservatism is based on the concepts of free-market capitalism, liberty, private property and rights of inheritance, free speech, individual rights and responsibilities, limited government, separation of powers, spending restraints, the rule of law, the traditional family, American exceptionalism, and the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Paleoconservatives are Constitutional originalists. They are noninterventionists in foreign affairs but advocate a strong military as a deterrent to war.

Paleoconservatism is to neoconservatism what classical liberalism is to postmodern liberalism, progressivism, and neoliberalism. When paleoconservatism was conservatism without the prefix, and classical liberalism was liberalism without a qualifier, there was less fundamental difference between them, political discourse was more civil, and compromise was often possible.

As reported by Chrissy Clark on the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing website, on July 24, 2020.

The English department at a public university declared that proper English grammar is racist.

Rutgers University’s English department will change its standards of English instruction in an effort to “stand with and respond” to the Black Lives Matter movement. In an email written by department chairwoman Rebecca Walkowitz, the Graduate Writing Program will emphasize “social justice” and “critical grammar.”

Walkowitz said the department would respond to recent events with “workshops on social justice and writing,” “increasing focus on graduate student life,” and “incorporating ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy.” The “critical grammar” approach challenges the standard academic form of the English language in favor of a more inclusive writing experience. The curriculum puts an emphasis on the variability of the English language instead of accuracy.

“This approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage,” Walkowitz said. “Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them [with] regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”

Additionally, the department said it will provide more reading to upper-level writing classes on the subjects of racism, sexism, homophobia, and related forms of “systemic discrimination.”

Leonydus Johnson, a speech pathologist and libertarian activist, said the school’s change makes the racist assumption that minorities cannot comprehend traditional English. Johnson called the change “insulting, patronizing, and in itself, extremely racist.”

“The idea that expecting a student to write in grammatically correct sentences is indicative of racial bias is asinine,” Johnson told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s like these people believe that being non-white is an inherent handicap or learning disability…. That’s racism. It has become very clear to me that those who claim to be ‘anti-racist’ are often the most racist people in this country.”

Read more …

Professor Walkowitz is to be commended, not derided, for her heroic efforts on behalf of Black Lives Matter and the anti-racism movement. Her letter to her staff is available on the Rutgers website and, though long, should be read in its entirety. It can serve as a roadmap for every department in every university on the Long March to racial justice.

From Lefticon:

Low expectations – anticipation of a lower level of competence from a minority individual or group.

Low expectations are a symptom of implicit bias based on presumed racial or gender differences in intelligence, physical ability, or work-ethic. This is contrary to the conceptualization of racial and gender equality. In educational theory, the racial aspect is based on the effects of a cultural deficit of intact, traditional, two-parent families in the black community.

Note:  Affirmative action, quotas, and the lowering of admission standards for school or employment are examples of low expectations.

Cultural deficit theory – a theory in educational psychology that minority students are different not because of any genetic or biologic difference, but because their culture is deficient when compared with the dominant majority culture. Also called cultural disadvantage.

Minority academic underachievement relates to a dysfunctional family culture when compared to the white hegemonic majority culture. Those minority children with intact two-parent families do not experience this disadvantage.

As reported by Joseph Mercola today on LewRockwell.com:

The only consistent thing about COVID-19 testing and reporting so far is their inconsistency. Head-scratching “errors” have plagued us from the get-go, and it sure doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I guess it just goes to show that even with access to incredible data-crunching technology, human ineptitude will ensure no one becomes the wiser.

Faulty or contaminated tests have been used and reporting guidelines have been changed and updated multiple times, virtually eliminating any possibility of accurately tracking infected cases and deaths.

Most recently, a July 17, 2020, study^1,2 in the International Journal of Geriatrics and Rehabilitation concluded half of all nucleic acid coronavirus tests distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided inaccurate results — 30% being false positives and 20% false negatives.

Suspicions that many were dying with SARS-CoV-2 infection rather than from COVID-19 have circulated for many weeks, and now Florida has admitted a young man listed as a COVID-19 death actually died in a motorcycle accident.³ It just so happens he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Things like that surely do not inspire public trust.

Perhaps the most egregious misrepresentation of reality is the media’s conflating a positive test result with the actual disease, COVID-19. These tests only test for the virus directly (PCR tests) or antibodies to the virus. COVID-19 is NOT a positive test; it is a clinical diagnosis of someone infected with SARS-COV-2 exhibiting severe respiratory illness characterized by fever, coughing and shortness of breath.

The media is intentionally confusing a positive test result with COVID-19 to deliberately mislead the public into believing the disease is far more serious than it is. They know better but consciously choose this despicable practice. A recent example would be CNN’s article, “Florida Has More COVID-19 Than Most Countries in the World.”⁴

They refer to the positive test as a “case.” This is beyond stretching reality to suit their nefarious purposes. A case is NOT a positive test result but, rather, a person that has a positive test result and is seriously ill. But you would never know it by reading their article.

Further down in their fear-mongering article is a subhead, “Florida Has Surpassed Italy in COVID-19 Cases, Too.” But at the very end of the article they finally admit the truth: Even though Florida surpassed Italy in “cases,” they had nearly 90% FEWER deaths — the metric that really counts, unless your goal is to perpetuate needless fear into the population.

One of the latest scandals was highlighted in a July 11, 2020, Twitter post⁵ by a user named Rebel A. Cole. A suspiciously high number of laboratories in Florida are reporting^6,7 100% of tests as positive. Cole wonders whether this means many labs are now only submitting positive results, omitting negatives altogether.

Read more …

There must be a reason for using these obviously flawed tests from the very beginning. What can the reason(s) be?

• • • Medical? No.
    • Political? Yes.
    • Maintain the illusion of a pandemic? Yes.
    • Generate headlines for the media? Yes.
    • Divert attention from other crises? Yes.
    • Maintain dependency on government? Yes.
    • Increased reimbursement to hospitals for those patients testing positive? Yes.
    • Increased reimbursement to hospitals for doing the tests? Yes.
    • Bonanza to the testing companies? Yes.
    • Bonanza to the manufacturers of the tests? Yes.
    • Bonanza to the manufacturers of face masks? Yes.
    • Justify the need for an unneeded vaccine? Yes.
    • Future bonanza to vaccine manufacturers? Yes.

See how the reasons outnumber the non-reason 12:1, more than enough to continue the testing and the whole pandemic, at least until the November election.

With all the bad news assailing us these days, it is reassuring to know that the good folks at Davos are coming to our rescue. The Great Reset is great news! It’s about time world leaders took charge!

This from the WEF website:

The Covid-19 crisis, and the political, economic and social disruptions it has caused, is fundamentally changing the traditional context for decision-making. The inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems –from health and financial to energy and education – are more exposed than ever amidst a global context of concern for lives, livelihoods and the planet. Leaders find themselves at a historic crossroads, managing short-term pressures against medium- and long-term uncertainties.

As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum’s communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.

• • • • “The Great Reset” will be the theme of a unique twin summit in January 2021, convened by the World Economic Forum.
      • “The Great Reset” is a commitment to jointly and urgently build the foundations of our economic and social system for a more fair, sustainable and resilient future.
      • It requires a new social contract centred on human dignity, social justice and where societal progress does not fall behind economic development.
      • The global health crisis has laid bare longstanding ruptures in our economies and societies, and created a social crisis that urgently requires decent, meaningful jobs.
      • The twin summit will be both in-person and virtual, connecting key global governmental and business leaders in Davos with a global multistakeholder network in 400 cities around the world for a forward-oriented dialogue driven by the younger generation.

“We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind. We have to decarbonize the economy in the short window still remaining and bring our thinking and behaviour once more into harmony with nature,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

“In order to secure our future and to prosper, we need to evolve our economic model and put people and planet at the heart of global value creation. If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time,” said HRH The Prince of Wales.

“The Great Reset is a welcome recognition that this human tragedy must be a wake-up call. We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face,” said António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations, New York.

“A Great Reset is necessary to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being,” added Schwab “The global health crisis has laid bare the unsustainability of our old system in terms of social cohesion, the lack of equal opportunities and inclusiveness. Nor can we turn our backs on the evils of racism and discrimination. We need to build into this new social contract our intergenerational responsibility to ensure that we live up to the expectations of young people.”

“COVID-19 has accelerated our transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We have to make sure that the new technologies in the digital, biological and physical world remain human-centred and serve society as a whole, providing everyone with fair access,” he said.

Read more:

From Lefticon:

Davos – an annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an organization of international business and political elites, journalists, and celebrities, to discuss the global economy and geopolitics.

The WEF was founded by Klaus Schwab as an NGO in Switzerland in 1971. The core attendees of the annual meeting are a thousand CEOs of the world’s most powerful corporations and about seventy heads of state. An additional 1,500 invited guests are heads of charitable foundations and other NGOs, politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats, journalists, celebrities, and philanthropists. The elitist role models Henry Kissinger, George Soros, Bono, and Al Gore are regular attendees.

Typical agenda items at recent forums were regional conflicts, technological advances, climate change, and the progress of globalization. At their 50^th annual meeting in January, 2020, they announced their support of stakeholder capitalism. For their meeting in January, 2021, in the aftermath (or continuation) of the coronavirus pandemic, they are planning to reveal a “Great Reset” of the world’s economic and social systems, with more emphasis on stakeholder capitalism and a new forward-focused role for a younger leadership (in collaboration with Bill Gates).

As befitting a meeting of the ruling class, Davos is protested annually by diverse elements of both the left and right. Nationalists of the right protest them because they are globalists, while socialists of the left protest them because they are capitalists. Demonstrators are restrained by heavy security, both police and military.

Great Reset – an ambitious project of the World Economic Forum to rebuild the economic and social systems of the world in response to the crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic of 2019-20.

The Great Reset is scheduled for January 2021, at their annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and a network of virtual hubs in 400 cities around the world. This global network will allow a forward-oriented dialogue driven by leaders of the younger generation. Unlike previous annual meetings, this one will be open to everyone in the “Global Shapers Community,” via the hubs.

The rebuilt economic system will feature a return to stakeholder capitalism, rather than the current system of shareholder capitalism in which profits prevail. The integrated socio-economic system will be designed for fairness, sustainability, and resilience, and feature a new social contract based on human dignity and social justice.

This reset is fully compatible with previous initiatives of the United Nations, like Agendas 21 and 2030. It is a fitting complement to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Stakeholder capitalism – a form of capitalism in which corporations are devoted to serving the interests of all their stakeholders rather than just their shareholders.

Among the stakeholders in any corporation are customers, employees, accountants, attorneys, suppliers, marketers, consultants, lobbyists, regulators, politicians, union leaders, labor lawyers, community leaders, community organizers, Civil Rights advocates, minority leaders, women’s rights advocates, the LGBTQI community, bankers, financiers, pensioners, and shareholders.

Stakeholder capitalism is focused on long term value rather than short-term profits. It is obviously more socially woke than its antithesis, shareholder capitalism, in which the purpose of the corporation is solely to generate profits for its shareholder owners.

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 50th Annual Meeting in Davos in January 2020 championed a return to stakeholder capitalism. The meeting scheduled for 2o21 will expand on the same motif.

Note:  Given the number and diversity of stakeholders in any but the smallest corporations, stakeholder capitalism is a noble goal that is unrealistic and unattainable.

This letter, condemning the cancel culture which I discussed in my previous post, was published in Harper’s on July 7, 2020. It was signed by 150 writers and academics. They are obviously concerned that they too are vulnerable. What they describe (without naming it) is the cancel culture.

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

The cancel culture is a creation of the political left. Many of the signers of this letter were active participants in the very activity they now condemn and try to project onto President Trump and the political right. This was demonstrated by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté in an excellent video interview on the Grayzone, July 13, 2020. For an example of the cancel culture in action, see my earlier post today. It is entirely a monster of the left, and they will have to deal with it.

These thought-leaders are calling for tolerance of opposing views when the cancel culturists are only doing what they were taught to do as good little neo-Marxists when confronting repressive tolerance.

From Lefticon:

Repressive tolerance – tolerance of repression; specifically, the indiscriminate tolerance for the repressive policies of the dominant majority.

Intolerance of repressive tolerance was advocated by the noted Critical Theorist and neo-Marxist of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse. His mandate against repressive tolerance included all the movements and policies of liberals and the right.

In simple terms, if repression is morally wrong, the tolerance of repression is also morally wrong, and the tolerance of the tolerance of repression is likewise morally wrong and unacceptable. It follows that intolerance of the tolerance of repression, as well as intolerance of the tolerance of the tolerance of repression, are forms of intolerance that are not only acceptable but morally mandatory. By this line of reasoning, it followed (to Marcuse) that intolerance of all the movements and institutions of the repressive right and liberals is also mandatory.

Note:  The grammatical structure of the phrase repressive tolerance is rather misleading, implying a tolerance that is repressive, rather than a tolerance of repression. For Marcuse, English was a second language.

Marcuse equally opposed the policies of liberals and the right. When he wrote Repressive Tolerance in 1965, liberals were politically more centrist than leftist.

 

This was reported by Robby Soave in Reason on July 14, 2020:

Until last week, Gary Garrels was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster.

“Gary’s removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable,” read the petition. “Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?”

This accusation—that Garrels’ choices as an art curator are guided by white supremacist beliefs—is a very serious one. Unsurprisingly, it does not stand up to even minimal scrutiny.

The petitioners cite few examples of anything even approaching bad behavior from Garrels. Their sole complaint is that he allegedly concluded a presentation on how to diversify the museum’s holdings by saying, “don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists.”

You might think that one of the most prominent art curators in the country—with 20 years of experience at SFMOMA—would be able to weather such a pathetically weak accusation of racism. But in the current cultural moment, it appears not. Garrels promptly resigned.

In a statement announcing his decision to step down, Garrels apologized for the harm his words caused, only slightly disputing the absurd charge against him. ” I do not believe I have ever said that it is important to collect the art of white men,” he said, according to artnet.com. “I have said that it is important that we do not exclude consideration of the art of white men.”

Read more …

This is a perfect example of a typical “cancel culture” attack. As so often happens, the cultural warriors target their own, with regrettable consequences. Of course, there is also the possibility of motivations other than ideological purity. What if another employee wanted his job, or had a grievance with Mr. Garrels for some unrelated reason? In the early days of Soviet Communism, people were often executed by the Cheka or sent to the gulags based on false accusations. It seems that we are heading in that direction.

From Lefticon:

Cancel culture – a militant faction of the left which focuses on exposing (calling out) racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, and white supremacists in order to bring about their “cancellation” through public shaming, ostracization, and career or employment termination.

The cancel culture is consistent with Marcuse’s concept of intolerance of repressive tolerance. It began on college campuses with the cancellation of scheduled conservative speakers such as Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, and Ben Shapiro. During the #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, it expanded to include all social transgressors. It is now a powerful voice in Internet forums and the social media, with support from allies in the legacy media, major corporations, sports, entertainment, and Hollywood. Its targets can be individuals, groups, organizations, or even countries. In addition to the basic techniques of calling out, shaming, and cancellation, the cancel culture also uses character assassination, revenge porn, blacklisting, doxing, negative reviews, boycotts, divestment, protests, and demonstrations.

Cancel-culture activists are relentless, meticulous, and merciless in their pursuit of justice. For even one inadvertent microaggression in the distant past by an otherwise-exemplary offender, they will summon the support of thousands of social-media allies to join in their denunciation, which gives their demands the power of the collective. Executives and board members, who are usually self-serving, virtue-signaling elitists softened by a culture of compliance, will invariably capitulate, terminate the targeted employee or colleague, and go through the degrading ritual of otherization. The accused will almost never be allowed to defend himself or herself before being terminated. Due process is irrelevant. Apologies are ineffective.

Note:  The cancel culture is an adult version of adolescent bullying and Internet shaming. It is mainly the province of young adults who perfected their skills bullying other children on social media platforms when they were growing up.

On June 30, 2020, the New York Times sent a notice to its staff from Dean Baquet, its executive editor and Phil Corbett, its editor for standards:

At The Times and elsewhere, the nationwide protests over racism and police violence have prompted discussions about many aspects of our coverage. One element has been a renewed focus on a longstanding debate: whether to capitalize the term “Black.”

We have talked to more than 100 staff members to get their views, reviewed the arguments that have been made over many years, and consulted with colleagues at other news organizations. The feedback has been thoughtful and nuanced, with a wide range of opinions among colleagues of all backgrounds.

Based on those discussions, we’ve decided to adopt the change and start using uppercase “Black” to describe people and cultures of African origin, both in the United States and elsewhere. We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover.

The change will match what many readers are seeing elsewhere. The Associated Press and other major news organizations have recently adopted “Black,” which has long been favored by many African-American publications and other outlets. The new style is also consistent with our treatment of many other racial and ethnic terms: We recently decided to capitalize “Native” and “Indigenous,” while other ethnic terms like “Asian-American” and “Latino” have always been capitalized.

We will retain lowercase treatment for “white.” While there is an obvious question of parallelism, there has been no comparable movement toward widespread adoption of a new style for “white,” and there is less of a sense that “white” describes a shared culture and history. Moreover, hate groups and white supremacists have long favored the uppercase style, which in itself is reason to avoid it.

The term “brown” as a racial or ethnic description should also generally remain lowercase and should be used with care. “Brown” has been used to describe such a disparate range of people — Latin, Indigenous, Asian, Middle Eastern — that the meaning is often unclear to readers. A more specific description is generally best.

The change to “Black” is effective immediately; relevant stylebook entries will be revised in the coming days.

Read more …

This notice speaks for itself. It is interesting that no reasons are given except that other organizations like AP are already doing it. Much of the nuanced feedback that Dean Baquet praises is probably nuanced by his own blackness/Blackness. “Yes, Mr. Baquet … Of course, Mr. Baquet … A wonderful idea, Mr. Baquet.”

Reported by Alana Wise on NPR on July 9, 2020:

Twitter users are calling for a boycott of Goya Foods, a brand most known for its Hispanic-staple food offerings, after the CEO of the company lavished praise on President Trump during a Thursday visit to the White House.

Robert Unanue, chief executive of the family-owned operation since 2004, said the country was “blessed” to have Trump at the helm, during remarks following a roundtable with Hispanic business and political leaders from across the country.

“We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder,” Unanue said during the Rose Garden speech.

“We have an incredible builder. And we pray. We pray for our leadership, our president, and we pray for our country — that we will continue to prosper and to grow.”

Unanue also announced a plan, along with some partners, to donate 1 million cans of Goya chickpeas and 1 million pounds of food to food banks.

“Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo,’ ” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Thursday evening, referencing the popular seasoning.

Julián Castro, a fellow Democrat, also said Americans should “think twice” before buying Goya products.

By Thursday evening, “Goya,” #BoycottGoya and #Goyaway were trending topics on Twitter.

Read more …

There was a time when liberals and conservatives tolerated each other’s opinions and were able to engage in political discourse and remain civil despite their differences. This is no longer possible.

By praising President Trump, the CEO of Goya displayed an unacceptable form of tolerance known as repressive tolerance, described by Herbert Marcuse (A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Wolff, Moore, and Marcuse, 1965). He and the other cultural revolutionaries of that era had zero tolerance for repressive tolerance, as described in Lefticon. This was part of their legacy to the young radicals of today.

Repressive tolerance – tolerance of repression; specifically, the indiscriminate tolerance for the repressive policies of the dominant majority.

Intolerance of repressive tolerance was advocated by the noted Critical Theorist and neo-Marxist of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse. His mandate against repressive tolerance included all the movements and policies of liberals and the right.

In simple terms, if repression is morally wrong, the tolerance of repression is also morally wrong, and the tolerance of the tolerance of repression is likewise morally wrong and unacceptable. It follows that intolerance of the tolerance of repression, as well as intolerance of the tolerance of the tolerance of repression, are forms of intolerance that are not only acceptable but morally mandatory. By this line of reasoning, it followed (to Marcuse) that intolerance of all the movements and institutions of the repressive right and liberals is also mandatory.

Note:  The grammatical structure of the phrase repressive tolerance is rather misleading, implying a tolerance that is repressive, rather than a tolerance of repression. For Marcuse, English was a second language.

Marcuse equally opposed the policies of liberals and the right. When he wrote Repressive Tolerance in 1965, liberals were politically more centrist than leftist.

This was reported by Addison Smith on July 1, 2020 in Campus Reform:

University of Massachusetts-Lowell Dean of Nursing Leslie Neal-Boylan issued an email on June 2 to the Solomont School of Nursing in light of the recent anti-racism demonstrations across the country, sources told Campus Reform. In the message, Neal-Boylan told students that “everyone’s life matters.” Days later, Neal-Boylan was out of a job. 

The sources shared with Campus Reform the email over which Neal-Boylan was allegedly fired. 

“Dear SSON Community,” the email provided to Campus Reform begins. “I am writing to express my concern and condemnation of the recent (and past) acts of violence against people of color. Recent events recall a tragic history of racism and bias that continue to thrive in this country. I despair for our future as a nation if we do not stand up against violence against anyone. BLACK LIVES MATTER, but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS.” 

“No one should have to live in fear that they will be targeted for how they look or what they believe,” the provided email continues. 

This sparked controversy among many who received her email. The letter was posted to Twitter by a student who expressed disappointment in the Dean’s “everyone’s life matters” statement.  

“An upsetting statement made by the Dean of Nursing at UMass Lowell, including the statement ‘all lives matter’ was uncalled for and shows the narrow minded people in lead positions,” the tweet read.

This quickly caught the attention of the school, which replied from its official account thanking the student for “bringing this to our attention.’”

Sources familiar with the situation told Campus Reform that the dean’s employment had been terminated just days after her “everyone’s life matters” email. 

University spokesperson Christine Gillette told Campus Reform Wednesday that the University acted in students’ best interest.

“The university ended the employment of Dr. Neal-Boylan on June 19 after 10 months in her role as dean of the Solomont School of Nursing. As with all such decisions, it was made in the best interest of the university and its students,” Gillette said.

Read more …

This article also notes that former Dean Neal-Boylan was refused a hearing or other opportunity to defend herself before being summarily dismissed. The obvious and undeniable offence, documented in her email, was so egregious that it warranted zero tolerance and justified her removal from further contact with fragile, young nursing students who deserve better.

From Lefticon:

All lives matter – a response of white racists to the truism of the left that black lives matter.

The premise that that all lives matter, with its implication that white and black lives are of equal value, is unfounded. The far greater value of black lives was earned over centuries of oppression by whites. It is a fact that black lives are at or near the top of the victimology hierarchy and white lives are at the bottom.

Note:  Other unacceptable implications of “all lives matter” are that the aborted lives of unborn fetuses matter, and that the countless lives lost in the humanitarian wars for democracy and regime change also matter.

This article is from the NY Times, reported by Neil MacFarquhar and Robert Chiarito on July 5, 2020. Excerpts follow:

In all, nine children under 18 have been killed since June 20 as Chicago reels from another wave of gun violence. The last two were killed on Saturday evening. A 14-year-old boy was shot to death on Chicago’s South Side. A 7-year-old girl was struck in the forehead by a bullet when three gunmen opened fire on a July 4 street party on the city’s West Side, the police said.

At least 336 people have been murdered in Chicago through July 2 of this year, according to the Chicago Police Department, a homicide rate on track to hit the 2016 record of 778 deaths. (New York City, with almost three times the population, had 176 murders as of June 28.)

The violence comes amid a wrenching debate nationwide about policing in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of the police. Those who defend the police say that the violence shows they need more support, not less, and that it is people living in high-crime areas who most need effective policing. Critics say the violence shows how the police are failing the public, how deeply residents distrust officers and the need for reforms and the transfer of funds to address underlying problems, including unemployment, mental illness and drug use.

Ahead of the July 4 weekend, Mayor Lori Lightfoot made an appeal to young men, who she said were responsible for the bulk of the shootings. “Think about the number of children that have been killed just in the last two weeks,” she said at a news conference. “Families that will not recover from this hardship. Mothers’ hearts that are broken, fathers’ hearts that are destroyed, grandparents who are living in mourning.”

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The other article from the NY Times that I cited today analyzed the disparate impact of the coronavirus on Blacks and Latinos. In this article, the impact of gun violence on the people of Chicago is also analyzed, but without any reference to the racial composition of the victims or the perpetrators. For all we know, all the killings in Chicago could have been perpetrated by racist cops or white supremacist gangs shooting innocent, unarmed Blacks. In this time of awakening to the poignant truth that Black Lives Matter, the wanton killing of Blacks should not be swept under the carpet, even when done by other Blacks. The families of the victims of these killings deserve better from the NY Times.