From America's Ministry of Propaganda, formerly the national press. Yep. It's all about beautiful people who only want to do what is right and are being forced to resign because of violence and hate and protests against doing the right thing - those backlashes being organized by the VRC*. I mean, wow. That "article' is not even pretending to be objective.
But then, the prop ministry doesn't even try anymore. It's naked propaganda and we all know it. Those on the Left know it, but would be stupid to care. Those not on the Left know it, but have no avenue to voice their observations. After all, did any major news outlet actually examine the BLM movement and its claims? I only saw cheerleading and complete advocacy.
In this case, it wouldn't have been hard for NBC to find people on the other side of the issue who have also faced backlash, including being fired. We had a teacher in, of all places, a local Catholic school who was dismissed for questioning the idea of Systemic Racism. That's fired, not resign - as most in the story have done.
But again, propaganda. That's a kernel of truth heaped upon with mountains of lies or misinformation or strategically ignored facts. That's the thing we used to call the news media. Now something owned by vast global corporate interests with designs on eliminating that pesky Western Democracy rubbish that could stand in the way of unimaginable financial opportunities in parts of the world with nary a care about such deplorable ideas as liberty, equality, or the sanctity of life. Therefore don't expect truth from the press any more than you would expect truth from a telemarketer's appraisal of your home owner's warrantee.
* Vast Rightwing Conspiracy.
According to this article, opposition to Critical Race Theory only happened because of the January 6th Riot? I don't see the correlation. It's such a dumb statement, it's actually funny.
ReplyDeleteYes, you can just see the talking points behind the article's coverage.
DeleteAccording to Left-Leaning sites, the teachers Union denies teaching Critical Race Theory.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Right-Leaning sites, the teachers Union openly endorses Critical Race Theory.
For all I know, the teachers Union could have actually endorsed a Trump-Biden Hardwere Store Orgy and the Left and Right are just pretending to argue about CRT to cover it up.
I'm still not 100% certain what Critical Race Theory is, but even if it's not all bad, it still sounds redundant. Don't other more direct and logical methods exist for discussing racism and other related topics?
CRT is basically assuming the decidedly leftwing interpretation of the US as a nation primarily founded on the evils of racism and slavery and genocide. To that end, racism and bigotry are in itself bloodstream, and we can therefore make sweeping assumptions about people in our country based on a host of identifiers including, but not limited to, skin color. Many feel that is a massive step backwards in terms of racial equality and reconciliation. Not to mention it smacks of racial profiling by saying we can size people up based on skin color.
DeleteAs for what it is, the teachers union had come out in support of teaching it, at the same time others were insisting nobody is wanting to teach something called CRT. The union then dropped its initial support and went with 'who ever heard of CRT'. Why? No clue. But there was a period of clearly conflicting messaging.
Most tertiary institutions include a 'school of education' or 'department of education'. I think if you unpacked it, you'd discover that such faculties resemble Phil Spector's description of music albums: "two hits and ten tracks of junk". The one I knew best employed a historian (denied tenure) a pair of tests-and-measurements psychologists (one a veteran who retired, the other his successor who was denied tenure), and a half-dozen purveyors of rubbish. One of the two major purveyors of CRT include Robin diAngelo, who is on the education faculty at Westfield State college in Massachusetts and is notable for never having published even one article on teaching methods, educational testing, or public administration, nor did her dissertation concern such matters. She's in essence a professional leftist; the faculty at Westfield have no business making use of public money or tuition money to provide an income for political sectaries who have nothing of use to impart to their students, but they do it because they can. Another promoter is Ibram X Kendi. He is an extreme example of affirmative action - not someone mismatched with the institution which hired him, but someone who has no business in academe, period. He's published some unremarkable articles in a mid-card journal (New York History) and wrote a thesis on a topic indicative of self-absorption (about black college students) and for this he's sitting on an endowed chair at a research university. You have university administrators, who tend to be great examples of principal-agent problems, misappropriating considerable sums of money by devoting the to the speaking fees of these two characters. Kendi, is, by the way, the issue of some place's black studies program.
ReplyDeleteYour schoolteachers are the issue of these programs. People who've attended nonsense professional schools, IMO, have two reactions. One is to just to commit themselves to doing what they can do on the job and forgetting about the BS someone tried to feed them. The others get defensive, especially if they swallowed the rubbish hook, line, and sinker. The nonsense programs, of course, are the schools of education, social work, and library administration.
Schools do a notoriously bad job of imparting dry factual information. See those surveys you run into from time to time whose results indicate that most high school graduates cannot locate the half-century in which the American Civil War occurred. See the other data which indicate a huge bloc of students are lagging in reading or math skills. Instead of teaching them what they need to know, they go on exercises in racial arson to please administrators and other teachers.
Yes.
DeleteIt is worth pointing out that the "School of Education" is notorious for having, on average, the worst students (as students). There are certainly exceptions, like a mother I knew who had a special-needs son and wanted to make sure he got a good education. Most of the others are sweet young women who are looking for a decent job in which they can help people, but they are nothing like scholars.
"Those not on the Left know it, but have no avenue to voice their observations." Strange, I thought that was exactly what you were doing -- and on a free platform provided by a left-wing megacorp. Let's be realistic. (But back up your blog entries for when Google takes them down.)
ReplyDeleteOh, in the 'little guy yelling in the field' sort of way. But where is my perspective, or my concern, given any nationally acceptable platform? Those platforms that exist - even if I don't necessarily agree with them - are typically trashed and hashed by the media culture/academic/pop culture machines.
DeleteJust consider this. Why is the national press swinging into action with 'why do racists hate teachers who only want to be fair' stories? Because the 'other side' was beginning to get traction.
There is no "national press" anymore. Less than 5% of Americans watch the nightly news from ABC, NBC, or CBS. https://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/network-news/
DeleteYes, there's a national press. Networks, major publications. And yet though 5% watch the nightly network news, the press still wields enough power to convince enough Americans that accepting the stolen 2016 election is a moral affront, and questioning the 2020 election is a moral affront. Of course it's not just the press, but the alliance with our educational institutions, pop culture venues, corporate interests, and even religious institutions and leaders that buttresses the press's narratives. So again, we're now seeing multiple stories explaining why only good people want CRT, and why it's a VRC based on hate, lies and racism. It may not change many minds, but it will silence one side and embolden the other - the side that has all of these outlets working together for its purposes.
DeleteJust what exactly IS your gripe here?
Delete- that you and media outlets like EWTN and The Pillar are shut down and sent to the "camps in the woods" you like to talk about? Because that is obviously untrue.
- that other people think differently than you? That's definitely in the category of "old man yells at cloud".
- that you are not able to shut down sites like NBC news and send them to the camps in the woods? For all your bellyaching about censorship, this seems the most likely.
- that the New York Times is more popular than the National Catholic Register? Remember our discussion about popularity yesterday?
Our otiose anti-trust regulators permitted massive concentration in the tech-communications industry and the firms are colluding, as seen in their attempt (aided and abetted by an Obama judge) to shut down Parler. The conclusion in that case included threats directed at Parler's business partners. At the same time, Word Press (which is a subsidiary of Alphabet, I believe), notified The Conservative Treehouse that they had violate Word Press' 'terms of service', no explanation given, so they had to undertake a complicated effort to set up their own host to continue, something beyond the technical capacity of all but a few. Joining in this sort of collusion are payment processors and banks (under pressure from federal regulators during Democratic administrations).
DeleteAnd, no, we're not in camps yet. ICYMI, hundreds of people are being held in DC jails on penny ante charges in re they'd have been released on their own recongizance in any other circumstance.
Howard, my gripe is a national coalition to advance an agenda at any costs that is antithetical not only to my beliefs, but to basic common sense and common decency, no matter what the costs, with nothing to check it and the ability to shut down dissent.
DeleteSo for example, last year when thousands protested the lockdowns, across the national media experts were trotted out bemoaning such gatherings as a clear and naked threat to human life because of Covid. People began talking of arresting protesters on the grounds of being a public health threat.
Then, a week or so later, the BLM protests erupted, in which tens of thousands poured into the streets to protest BLM. Suddenly, the national press trotted out expert after expert in support of these protests, insisting they couldn't hurt anyone relative to Covid, and smacking down as racist anyone who disagreed. And that is exactly how the national reaction proceeded, embraced almost universally by every agency in our country including, but not limited to, our religious institutions.
If you don't see the problem in that sort of thing, you're trying to not to. And that's just one of multiple examples. Hence why if you're fired for suggesting boys and girls exist you're now on an upward slope fighting the national narrative. That's where such a coalition of propaganda in a nation will get you, when the institutions that should be checking McCarthy now have McCarthy's back.
Do I think we're being sent to the camps? Not yet. Am I foolish enough to think it could never happen? No. I'd be stupid to think that.
Add to what I said Art's point. With the national press in 100% lockstep, all dissenting outlets relegated to hyphenated status (conservative-; right wing-, etc.), what outlet do you have to dissent? Social Media? Facebook? Twitter? And now those are becoming more brazen about censoring anything they deem 'in violation'. Again, sometimes it take more credulity to disbelieve a conspiracy thoery than to believe in one.
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