Rod Dreher's Blog, page 139
June 10, 2020
Lawless In Seattle: All That CHAZ
A radical city council member unlocked City Hall and let the protesters in.
What’s happening in the CHAZ? Well:
The antifa #CapitalHillAutonomousZone in Seattle has a subreddit set up. They are posting about making homemade chemical weapons, maintaining supply lines, & how to use those armed with guns to push police back. #antifa @FBISeattle pic.twitter.com/gDub2G49KU
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 10, 2020
Meanwhile, in a development that nobody could ever have seen coming, CHAZ has its own warlord:
Policing in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone by @RazSimone. There appear to be no body cameras, reports, or oversight and accountability. This was an attempt at de-escalation for spraying paint onto a building which resulted in an alleged assault. #chaz #FreeCapitolHill pic.twitter.com/dI1J6QNcpn
— TheWholeStory (@TheWholeStory6) June 10, 2020
More on Raz Simone the Warlord from Reddit:
The Seattle Police — who, remember, ran away from the precinct — say that they are getting reports that armed people within CHAZ are extorting the people living there. While it is tempting to say these radical fools get what they deserve, the fact is that the authorities in Seattle, and in Washington State, have allowed Antifa to take over a portion of a major American city, and run it according to the law of the street. This is what happens when you let the mob rule.
Washington’s Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee will do nothing. Washington’s Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan will do nothing. If you won’t have President Trump, prepare to pay your respects to Raz Simone.
Just you wait, Blue America: once your local authorities dismantle the police force, it’s gonna be lit.
Downtown Seattle, May 30UPDATE: Christopher Rufo reporting from CHAZ for City Journal. Excerpts:
Nikkita Oliver, a radical activist and former mayoral candidate, emerged as a critical voice of the protest movement and assumed a leadership role in the newly declared autonomous zone. After night fell and a light rain began falling, she spoke to the crowd and outlined the ideological commitments behind the occupation. “[We need to] align ourselves with the global struggle that acknowledges [that] the United States plays a role in racialized capitalism,” she told protestors. “Racialized capitalism is built upon patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism.”
The following day, a coalition of black activists associated with the autonomous zone released a more specific list of demands, including the total abolition of the Seattle Police Department, the retrial of all racial minorities serving prison time for violent crimes, and the replacement of the police with autonomous “restorative/transformative accountability programs.” Activists pledged to maintain control of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone until their demands are met—setting the stage for a long-term occupation and the establishment of a parallel political authority.
More:
The city government has not developed a strategic response to the takeover of Capitol Hill. According to one Seattle police officer with knowledge of internal deliberations, the city’s “leadership is in chaos” and “the mayor has made the decision to let a mob of 1,000 people dictate public safety policy for a city of 750,000.” The officer said that Chief Best had dispatched high-ranking police officials to the autonomous zone to establish a line of communication, but the officials were immediately sent away by armed paramilitaries at the barricades. “The tide of public opinion is on the side of the activists and they’re pushing the envelope as far as they can,” said the officer. “It’s not hyperbolic to say the endgame is anarchy.”
Readers in Seattle: is it time to leave?
The post Lawless In Seattle: All That CHAZ appeared first on The American Conservative.
Scoundrel Time: The Purges Have Begun
The figurative black mariahs of the woke commissariat are pulling up outside faculty buildings, ready to haul off the victims of these neo-Stalinist purges. A professor friend at a major US university told me just now, “Anyone who does not join the mob will be targeted.” He’s battening down the hatches.
A reader who is an emigre scientist and an academic raised in a Soviet bloc country e-mails:
The communists permitted even the aberrant and nonconformists to study in the STEM fields. They felt (correctly) that building a bridge, a weapon system, etc. needed more than a quick course in Marxist dialectic. That’s how I secured access to higher education, btw. “Eggheads”, they reasoned, “what can they ever do to us?” They allowed rationality and logic to fester.
Fools. These guys, apparently, are not going to make the same fatal mistake.
Look at what’s happening to Harald Uhlig, a prominent University of Chicago economist, who posted:
Too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice : “We call for a national defunding of police.” Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984 of saying,
— Harald Uhlig (@haralduhlig) June 9, 2020
Uhlig now faces a social media campaign, led by a prominent University of Michigan economist, to get him booted as editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Here is another leader of the professional lynch mob:
I am calling for the resignation of Harald Uhlig (@haralduhlig) as the editor of the Journal of Political Economy. If you would like to add your name to this call, it is posted at https://t.co/FWnGgPvUiz. It will be delivered by end of day 6/10 (tomorrow).
— Max Auffhammer (@auffhammer) June 9, 2020
These are academics.
An older journalist at a major media outlet — broadcast or print, I won’t say — got in touch this morning to say that they want out, and hope to find an exist before the mob inside the building throws them out the window. Management is doing what the management at The New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer did last week: surrender professional journalism to the woke mob.
It’s really happening. Do not be so naive as to think they aren’t going to come for you. Here is what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn says you should do:
So in our timidity, let each of us make a choice: Whether consciously, to remain a servant of falsehood—of course, it is not out of inclination, but to feed one’s family, that one raises his children in the spirit of lies—or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect both by one’s children and contemporaries.
And from that day onward he:
Will not henceforth write, sign, or print in any way a single phrase which in his opinion distorts the truth.
Will utter such a phrase neither in private conversation not in the presence of many people, neither on his own behalf not at the prompting of someone else, either in the role of agitator, teacher, educator, not in a theatrical role.
Will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea which he can only see is false or a distortion of the truth whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science, or music.
Will not cite out of context, either orally or written, a single quotation so as to please someone, to feather his own nest, to achieve success in his work, if he does not share completely the idea which is quoted, or if it does not accurately reflect the matter at issue.
Will not allow himself to be compelled to attend demonstrations or meetings if they are contrary to his desire or will, will neither take into hand not raise into the air a poster or slogan which he does not completely accept.
Will not raise his hand to vote for a proposal with which he does not sincerely sympathize, will vote neither openly nor secretly for a person whom he considers unworthy or of doubtful abilities.
Will not allow himself to be dragged to a meeting where there can be expected a forced or distorted discussion of a question. Will immediately talk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or film showing if he hears a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological nonsense or shameless propaganda.
Will not subscribe to or buy a newspaper or magazine in which information is distorted and primary facts are concealed. Of course we have not listed all of the possible and necessary deviations from falsehood. But a person who purifies himself will easily distinguish other instances with his purified outlook.
No, it will not be the same for everybody at first. Some, at first, will lose their jobs. For young people who want to live with truth, this will, in the beginning, complicate their young lives very much, because the required recitations are stuffed with lies, and it is necessary to make a choice.
But there are no loopholes for anybody who wants to be honest. On any given day any one of us will be confronted with at least one of the above-mentioned choices even in the most secure of the technical sciences. Either truth or falsehood: Toward spiritual independence or toward spiritual servitude.
And he who is not sufficiently courageous even to defend his soul—don’t let him be proud of his “progressive” views, don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a merited figure, or a general—let him say to himself: I am in the herd, and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and warm.
Very few people will escape this. Do not allow yourself to be gaslit by those who say it won’t happen to you. It will. You had better know what you are going to say, and not going to say, when you are asked to declare. The stuff I wrote about in The Benedict Option — it’s happening now. I’ve had two requests already today from readers eager to get Live Not By Lies in their hands sooner than its September 29 scheduled publication date. That book contains more direct actions that we need to be taking right now to resist. I’ve passed the requests along to my publisher, but publishers can’t turn on a dime. Please be patient.
You don’t need a book from me or anybody else to tell you to do what Solzhenitsyn recommends. There it is, right there. But we do need to find each other, and figure out how we can stand with and help each other when our jobs and businesses are threatened by the present and future soft totalitarianism. Look at this:
Tucker Carlson and Fox News have blood on their hands. When this is all over I hope they face hearing and trials for their roles in deaths and violence through gaslighting, lies and propaganda. pic.twitter.com/rsHZ8iiIkT
— Amy Siskind
June 9, 2020
Wokeness & The Endarkenment
Science and math will always be safe from the ideologues. That’s what some people thought. They were fools. Look:
This Wednesday, June 10th we will join the call to #ShutDownSTEM! We urge all scientists and STEM workers to stop business as usual for a day to focus on actionable plans that work towards ending anti-Black racism.#Strike4BlackLives #BlackLivesMatter #ShutDownAcademia pic.twitter.com/FfmcYK2cho
— March for Science (@MarchForScience) June 8, 2020
A reader who is an academic and a scientist writes:
I wrote this message and debated whether to send it to you. Until I got the third message of the day from a university administrator calling for a general strike action.
I’m revolted at the murder of George Floyd and at police corruption. This does not distract from my alarm about the cult fire now burning hot through academia.
At my university, every administrator, program, sub-program from the chief executive to the department chair has sent one or more messages in the last week on the topic of racism. These explain that extensive anti-racism plans are forthcoming (always without detail but with an apology that the plans will be insufficient), and/or encourage us to protest, hold vigils etc.
All administrative meetings now begin with an acknowledgement of racism, a genuflection difficult to discern from an opening prayer.
Petitions are being circulated.
Some are empty performative chain letters on twitter:
I also pledge to oppose racism and hate through active allyship, continuous unlearning, learning and listening. And our team will always strive for diversity, inclusion, and respecting the contributions of all members. #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/Ga7emfnNsM
— Cristopher Bragg
British Courage
Hundreds of people took a knee on Oxford High St for 8 mins 46 secs.
Everyone except Peter Hitchens
The Coming Christian Reckoning
Others will stand with Trump because he is the only candidate who isn’t aligned with those who’d defund the police. They’ll stand with Trump because he has been arguably the most pro-life President. They’ll stand with Trump because his Administration declared a truce in the Obama Administration’s war against churches. Lest any of you forget, and if you are in the media and reading this you might not have ever noticed, President Obama’s administration actually argued there is not a freedom to exercise one’s religion. Instead, his administration argued there was only a freedom of worship. The Supreme Court rejected his position 9-0, but the administration’s antagonism toward faith-based voters continued. Obama’s Solicitor General argued faith-based institutions could see their tax-exempt status go away if they did not embrace gay marriage. Then they went after Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor to demand they fund murdering children.
You want to understand why so many evangelicals are loyal to President Trump? That is why. They expected Clinton would deliver even more and now presume Biden, as the Democrats go further left, will do the same with gusto.
But I have to say something to my evangelical friends — Donald Trump will not save you. He cannot save you. In the rhetoric, tone, tenor, and levels of support for President Trump, I am struck by how many people still view him as some defense against the left.
True, he is to an extent. But Christians are dealing with spiritual problems, not political problems. They are dealing with the things unseen, not the things seen. Donald Trump is, like the forces they are fighting, of the world. The world cannot protect you from the world.
If you are a Christian voting for Donald Trump because he is pro-life, not at war with Christians through public policy, has great judicial picks, and will defend the police, I’m with you.
But I continue to harbor a great belief that too many Christians are using Trump as a political savior for a spiritual problem both in their own lives and in the life of this country. Trump cannot stop the culture from turning against the faith and, if anything, more and more data shows Trump is a catalyst for the cultural turn. He is increasing the left’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as so many evangelical leaders constantly beclown themselves to hump his leg. He is also increasing the right’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as more political apparatchiks on the right do what is expedient for political victory, including tossing grace, truth, and love for neighbors to the wind.
In The Benedict Option, which was published a couple of months into Trump’s presidency, I wrote:
Besides, fair or not, conservative Christianity will be associated with Trump for the next few years, and no doubt beyond. If conservative church leaders aren’t extraordinarily careful in how they manage their public relationship to the Trump phenomenon, anti-Trump blowback will do severe damage to the church’s reputation. Trump’s election solves some problems for the church, but given the man’s character, it creates others. Political power is not a moral disinfectant.
And this brings us to the more subtle but potentially more devastating effects of this unexpected GOP election victory. There is first the temptation to worship power, and to compromise one’s soul to maintain access to it. There are many ways to burn a pinch of incense to Caesar, and some prominent pro-Trump Christians arguably crossed that line during the campaign season. Again, political victory does not vitiate the vice of hypocrisy.
There is also the danger of Christians falling back into complacency. No administration in Washington, no matter how ostensibly pro-Christian, is capable of stopping cultural trends toward desacralization and fragmentation that have been building for centuries. To expect any different is to make a false idol of politics.
What’s more, to believe that the threat to the church’s integrity and witness has passed because Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election is the height of folly.
One reason the contemporary church is in so much trouble is that religious conservatives of the last generation mistakenly believed they could focus on politics, and the culture would take care of itself. For the past thirty years or so, many of us believed that we could turn back the tide of aggressive 1960s liberalism by voting for conservative Republicans. White Evangelicals and Catholic “Reagan Democrats” came together to support GOP candidates who vowed to back socially conservative legislation and to nominate conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The results were decidedly mixed on the legislative and judicial fronts, but the verdict on the overall political strategy is clear: we failed. Fundamental abortion rights remain solidly in place, and Gallup poll numbers from the Roe v. Wade era until today have not meaningfully changed. The traditional marriage and family model has been protected in neither law nor custom, and because of that, courts are poised to impose dramatic rollbacks of religious liberty for the sake of antidiscrimination.
Again, the new Trump administration may be able to block or at least slow these moves with its judicial appointments, but this is small consolation. Will the law as written by a conservative legislature and interpreted by conservative judges overwrite the law of the human heart? No, it will not. Politics is no substitute for personal holiness. The best that orthodox Christians today can hope for from politics is that it can open a space for the church to do the work of charity, culture building, and conversion.
To be sure, Christians cannot afford to vacate the public square entirely. The church must not shrink from its responsibility to pray for political leaders and to speak prophetically to them. Christian concern does not end with fighting abortion and with protecting religious liberty and the traditional family. For example, the new populism on the right may give traditionalist Christians the opportunity to shape a new GOP that on economic issues is about solidarity more with Main Street than Wall Street. Conservative Christians can and should continue working with liberals to fight sex trafficking, poverty, AIDS, and the like.
The real question facing us is not whether to quit politics entirely, but how to exercise political power prudently, especially in an unstable political culture. When is it cowardly not to cooperate with secular politicians out of an exaggerated fear of impurity—and when is it corrupting to be complicit? Donald Trump tore up the political rule book in every way. Faithful conservative Christians cannot rely unreflectively on habits learned over the past thirty years of political engagement. The times require much more wisdom and subtlety for those believers entering the political fray.
Above all, though, they require attention to the local church and community, which doesn’t flourish or fail based primarily on what happens in Washington. And the times require an acute appreciation of the fragility of what can be accomplished through partisan politics. Republicans won’t always rule Washington, after all, and the Republicans who are ruling it now may be more adversarial to the work of the church than many gullible Christians think.
Read it all. I’m serious. There is nothing left for us but taking the Benedict Option, which is to say, turning inward to build (rebuild) our spiritual houses, and cultivate not passion for “issues,” but disciplines of prayer, catechesis, and cultivating a willingness to suffer for our faith. I expect that a number of congregations will be seized by a spirit of wokeness commensurate to how other congregations were seized by a spirit of #MAGA. It’s all a false idol. All of it. The path out of this dark wood leads through pain and suffering. There’s no doubt about it. The church is not the Republican Party (or the Democratic Party) at prayer — and to the extent that it is, it deserves to die.
If your faith is so weak that you would leave Christianity over your church’s submission to Trump (or to wokeness), then that’s on you, not the church. But it is also true that the church shouldn’t make it easy for those who are weak in the faith, or struggling with faith, to throw it all away in disgust. Trust me, I’ve been there, and there is nothing more useless, and even antagonizing, in the face of that kind of struggle than Christians who say, “Suck it up, buttercup.”
Even if Trump is re-elected, don’t be deceived: we are in the twilight of Trumpism. He is a spent force. There’s a report that White House advisers are considering having the president give a speech to the nation on racial unity. The only passions such a pre-discredited speech would inspire would be anger and mockery. Events of this spring and early summer have emasculated him — that, and the fact that he wasted his presidency tweeting, making a fool of himself, and demeaning the stature of his office. It’s over. Even if the Democrats somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and America gets four more years of Trump, it’s over. As Erick Erickson points out, not only has Trump done little to stop the forces tearing the church apart in post-Christian America, he has actually accelerated them. To be fair, no politician could have stopped those forces, because they are spiritual and cultural forces, not primarily political ones. Still, he really has hastened the reckoning for believers, in part by anesthetizing a lot of them about the nature and severity of the crisis.
Saw this the other day on Twitter, and said, yep, she’s right:
My greatest concern for the evangelical church right now is that we've wasted years chasing issues. Years we should have spent cultivating virtue.
We are radically unprepared for this moment.
— hannah anderson (@sometimesalight) June 7, 2020
It’s not just the Evangelical church. All the churches — and that also means conservative churches and liberal churches — who have substituted and continue to substitute chasing issues for cultivating holiness, and the practices of holiness, are going to fall. You cannot vote, or demonstrate, or emote your way out of this Reckoning.
Christians who haven’t been making plans for the aftermath had better get started.
The post The Coming Christian Reckoning appeared first on The American Conservative.
June 8, 2020
‘BLM = Defund The Police’
I recommend that you all watch this long monologue by Tucker Carlson. Note especially around the 20-minute mark, where he calls out the cowardice of Republican officials. I remind you that after Obergefell, the Republican Congressional leaders did not a single thing to protect religious liberty. They were too afraid of being called bigots by the press.
One point Tucker emphasizes is that Black Lives Matter, a slogan that’s on everybody’s lips, is calling for defunding the police. This is not an accusation against them — it’s what they demand. This, from Black Lives Matter’s DC chapter, rebukes Mayor Muriel Bowser for ordering the words BLACK LIVES MATTER painted on the street leading to the White House:
This is a performative distraction from real policy changes. Bowser has consistently been on the wrong side of BLMDC history. This is to appease white liberals while ignoring our demands. Black Lives Matter means defund the police. @emilymbadger say it with us https://t.co/w0ekwSG1ip
— BlackLivesMatter DC (@DMVBlackLives) June 5, 2020
Here is the head of the Minneapolis City Council, a veto-proof majority of whom have endorsed defunding the city’s police department, what she would say to people in her city who are worried what would happen if their house was broken into:
CAMEROTA: “What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into. Who do I call?”
BENDER: “Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.” pic.twitter.com/WhubQ9yJIf
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) June 8, 2020
Chicago last week gave us a glimpse of why the woke flower children are wrong about police. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
While Chicago was roiled by another day of protests and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, 18 people were killed Sunday, May 31, making it the single most violent day in Chicago in six decades, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The lab’s data doesn’t go back further than 1961.
From 7 p.m. Friday, May 29, through 11 p.m. Sunday, May 31, 25 people were killed in the city, with another 85 wounded by gunfire, according to data maintained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
In a city with an international reputation for crime — where 900 murders per year were common in the early 1990s — it was the most violent weekend in Chicago’s modern history, stretching police resources that were already thin because of protests and looting.
“We’ve never seen anything like it, at all,” said Max Kapustin, the senior research director at the crime lab. “ … I don’t even know how to put it into context. It’s beyond anything that we’ve ever seen before.”
The next highest murder total for a single day was on Aug. 4, 1991, when 13 people were killed in Chicago, according to the crime lab.
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a longtime crusader against gun violence who leads St. Sabina Church in Auburn Gresham, said it was “open season” last weekend in his neighborhood and others on the South and West sides.
“On Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, ‘Hey, there’s no police anywhere, police ain’t doing nothing,’” Pfleger said.
“I sat and watched a store looted for over an hour,” he added. “No police came. I got in my car and drove around to some other places getting looted [and] didn’t see police anywhere.”
I don’t know what the races were of the murder victims, but every photo of a man or woman killed on that day depicts a black person.
“Defund The Police.” As if the real cause of violence in America is the police. How out of your mind do you have to be to believe that? As Tucker points out in his monologue, according to polling, the wealthier you are, the more sympathetic you are to anti-police sentiments. Naturally — rich people live in neighborhoods that rarely need policing.
To their credit, Black Lives Matter leaders are not backing away one bit from their radical demand — and they don’t seem willing to allow Democratic politicians to pay lip service to it either. Joe Biden said today that he is against defunding the police. Of course he did, because whatever his faults, he is not a crazy person. We’ll see how long that lasts, though.
The post ‘BLM = Defund The Police’ appeared first on The American Conservative.
Trump ’16, SJWs ’20
At UCLA, the university has removed a lecturer who refused a student’s request to give black students preferential treatment in grading, because they’re black.The lecturer, a white man, responded to the student’s request by saying that would be unfair. For this, the university has suspended him.
We’re going to see a lot more of that. This moment is not about justice, social or otherwise. It is about seizing power.
This afternoon I had to check a quote from my Live Not By Lies manuscript with the 1996 memoir This Saved Us, the Catholic anticommunist dissident Silvester Krcmery’s account of torture and imprisonment by Czechoslovakia’s communist regime. While I was searching for the lines I used in my book, I ran across this passage in which Krcmery quotes a former high-ranking member of the secret police, who had been imprisoned with them:
“Some people think our repression is directed against our main enemies. This is certainly true, but most of all it is concerned with the seizure of absolute power.
“If we arrest and kill only those who work against us, who collect weapons and have radio transmitters, others would simply protect themselves and make sure they wouldn’t get caught. But this was not our main objective. We wanted to make everybody, even the innocent, shake with fear both day and night. No one was to feel secure even if they avoided all political resistance or power struggle. We wanted to be undisputed lords and masters.
“Supreme power recognizes no limits. To have the ultimate control over all requires keeping everyone trembling in anxiety and fear and seeking our approval. It means forcing those who want to save themselves to report any sign of disagreement or dissenting opinion to us. It involves terrifying people to the extent that no one feels safe and no one trusts anyone.
“To accomplish this, we necessarily have to arrest and destroy many innocent people, including our own. Everybody! Everybody has to live in terror. All must come to believe that it is better to hand over a father, a brother, or a husband, if that allows you to save yourself.”
This is the soft totalitarianism that we are welcoming into our lives, right now! As I wrote earlier today, at a Catholic university, a 19-year-old student’s life is being ruined by the resurfacing of bigoted tweets he put online when he was 15, and that were dug up and publicized by a black gay student who calls herself “L*sbian Satan.” You are not safe. Everybody has to live in fear of accusation and destruction, and distrust of all. This is necessary to establishing their power.
A reader forwarded to me something he sent to a conservative political discussion group of which he is a part. He gives me permission to post it here, without using his name. All of the boldface emphases are in the original. He also loaded it with links, especially in the section where he cites specific instances — but they didn’t copy over, and I don’t have time to track them all down:
I think the issues of discrimination and racism that are being discussed at length in this forum are serious and need to be addressed. Many of the solutions outlined by David French and several other members of this listserv are fantastic and would make a big impact.
But, I think we are missing the forest for the trees here. We are not discussing a serious threat that has been growing recently – an ideology that is using a legitimate issue to radicalize the population and gain significant influence.
Background: In 2016, I watched in confusion as Trump destroyed the GOP primary field. A friend of mine was ahead of the curve and explained what was going on. When Trump would make some “crazy” policy announcement about immigration, NATO, trade, etc., the rest of the GOP field would do what any American politician at the time would do: They would see that as a flawed policy proposal and try to take it down with a counter-policy.
But here’s the thing: Trump wasn’t talking about policy. He was talking about a wholesale dissatisfaction with the system. He was communicating that he was willing to kill sacred cows, think differently, “drain the swamp,” etc. Here’s what the other candidates missed when they tried to show how one of Trump’s policies was wrong: It didn’t matter. Trump was operating on a different plane of understanding, so he ran circles around the others while they talked about the “text,” not the more meaningful “subtext.”
I think we’re seeing a similar thing happening right now as it relates to SJW / Identity Politics and the past two weeks of unrest.
What I’m reading on this listserv and among the mainstream press is the equivalent of what Rubio, Cruz, Bush, etc. were doing on the debate stage in 2016. These protests and this unrest is nominally about racial justice and police brutality. There is rightful (in my mind) critique of how policing works in America and how black Americans are treated in general. So, like smart, helpful, patriotic Americans we are hearing that criticism, seeing its validity, and thinking about how to address those problems in concrete ways. Qualified immunity, police contracts, nonprofit support organizations, hiring practices, etc.
But like Rubio, Cruz, Bush, etc., we’re focused on the “text,” while a very significant “subtext” is at play. And like 2016, there could be very serious repercussions for that failure of understanding.
If you listen to the rhetoric related to the unrest of the past two weeks, you’ll see there’s a distinct ideology at play: that of Identity Politics / Social Justice Warriors. Let’s call it the Woke Ideology, embodied by the 1619 Project, Safe Spaces, etc. Among its fundamental tenets is that race/gender/sexuality is the bedrock of individual identity, and that the American system is flawed at a fundamental level.
Think of it this way: In the 1960s, the civil rights marchers pointed to our national ideals enshrined by our founding documents and rightly accused America of not living up to our self-professed ideals. They shared the values of those who opposed them, and a productive conversation and policy transformation occurred. David French, President Bush, and others who are speaking up are doing this as well.
Today, the Woke Ideology points to our national ideals and accuses the ideals themselves as being racist and corrupt. That is a huge, huge difference and we cannot ignore the importance of that difference. They are playing on a different plane — they are more invested in the “subtext” than they are in the “text.”
This listserv has been focused on reforming the police, for example. But if we eliminated qualified immunity, reformed police union contracts, and made many of the changes proposed on this forum, do you think the Woke Mobs would stop? Do you think they would accept victory and consider the fight won? Of course not. Because like Donald Trump talking about eliminating NATO and stopping immigration, this is not a policy debate. This is an ideological one. (Again, I think we should pursue these policy solutions.)
Right now, the Woke Ideology is leveraging the good faith support of racial justice to advance its illiberal cause. There is very little accepted room between being “part of the problem” and going full “1619.” Just ask the liberal Mayor of Minneapolis –watch in real time as he realizes that there isn’t interest in policy solutions among the mob, only ideological purity. If you don’t commit to defunding the police, you are the enemy in the eyes of these adherents. This is what they did to a man who “supported the cause” by vacating the police from their precinct to let it burn just a week prior.
I am a big fan of Rod Dreher. He has been writing consistently over the past year about “Soft Totalitarianism.” He has been warning his readers of this Woke Ideology being enforced comprehensively not via government (“hard” totalitarianism) but a combination of social media platforms, media pundits, and “woke capitalism.” He’s publishing a book about this in September.
Soft Totalitarianism in this context is:
– When journalists revolt against their paper for publishing an offensive OpEd, and the leadership of that paper completely cave, instituting new measures to limit the voices in their paper and forcing out the editor.
– When a well-known columnist isn’t allowed to publish his weekly column because he dared to write about rioting.
– When public health officials who have the power to lock us in our homes start to make exemptions for certain approved causes.
– When a small Italian grocer in Philly has to grovel and apologize to the public for giving free meals to police officers, even after one of their locations was looted.
– When corporate brands are required to take sides and publicly pronounce sanctioned political stances, or face backlash.
– When massive platforms of communication decide what is true, what is acceptable, and silence everything else.
– When your social media feeds are “blacked out” for a day, and both staying silent AND posting anything besides what has been sanctioned is considered an attack.
– When Amazon decides to remove a new book from its store because it disagrees with the topic.
– When a professional football player gets cancelled for not kneeling during the anthem because he’s trying to show support for the military.
If this ideology continues unchecked and we aren’t willing to push back hard against it, then we will be losing the war for freedom and American ideals while we fight the battle for racial equality. Conservatism cannot exist in a country that has ceded control to Woke Ideology.
Like I said, I think we should certainly pursue police reform and racial justice energetically, because it’s the right thing to do if we want to live up to our founding ideals. However, let’s not allow our good faith to blind us to a truly scary ideology that is gaining momentum daily and securing new levers of authority.
I wish I had a clearer call to action, but for now all I can think of is to fight hard to protect the separation of meaning between racial justice and Woke Ideology. Everything around us is conflating those two things, and if they become conflated in the mind of the public, it will be hard to undo.
I think there are powerful insights here. It’s not just that conservatism cannot exist in a country that has ceded control to Woke Ideology; neither can liberalism!
That is the true nature of the fight upon us. This is not really about George Floyd, and it’s not about Donald Trump. It’s not even about liberalism vs. conservatism. The image in this tweet, of a defiled memorial to the dead of World Wars I and II, tells you what is really at stake:
Defining image of western society pic.twitter.com/9zpOzZpuiy
— Orwell & Goode (@OrwellNGoode) June 8, 2020
I don’t know the right ways to combat this threat. I do believe that the reader’s analysis of how the woke left is playing on a different level, in the same way the Trump 2016 primary campaign was playing, is a valuable contribution to figuring out a strategy.
Let me repeat the words, via Krcmery, of the communist secret police official:
Supreme power recognizes no limits. To have the ultimate control over all requires keeping everyone trembling in anxiety and fear and seeking our approval. It means forcing those who want to save themselves to report any sign of disagreement or dissenting opinion to us. It involves terrifying people to the extent that no one feels safe and no one trusts anyone.
This is what the woke seek to impose on our country, to displace old liberal standards and mechanisms. They want us all to be afraid of each other, all the time. They want us to be snitches. This soft totalitarianism will destroy America.
The post Trump ’16, SJWs ’20 appeared first on The American Conservative.
The Accuser
At DeSales University, a black student who goes by the Twitter handle L*sbian Satan found some old Twitter posts from a white fellow student, whose name I will withhold here, that were foully racist. She doxxed him, meaning that she put his personal information online in an effort to destroy him. The kid — I’ll call him N. — posted the racist stuff to Twitter when he was in high school. Here is what the university’s president, Father Jim Greenfield, sent to the university community on Friday:
Dear University Community,
Early this week, I learned that [N.], a rising junior here at DeSales University, engaged in extremely hateful racist and homophobic speech as a sophomore in high school. His exchanges with another high school student at that time were posted to social media. During this current tide of racial turmoil in our nation, these vile remarks were resurrected and reposted this past weekend, not by [name]. He apologized four years ago and completed counseling. In light of his transgressions resurfacing, [name] has issued a recent apology to our DeSales community, included at the end of this communication.
A number of students brought [name]’s posts to my attention via email, and I acknowledged his remarks for their “meanness and hatred” and called his actions an “egregious wrongdoing.”
Yes, these racists and homophobic posts were immoral and evil. Impelled by the example and call of Jesus in the Gospel, the foundation of our University, I offered my forgiveness. As I referenced in my Tuesday reflection to the University, I am inspired by the writings of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu who believed there is no path to end racism without reconciliation. He understood that forgiveness was not automatic and required admission of racist acts; moreover, those offended needed to believe others could change.
In no way do I intend for my forgiveness of [name] to erase how mean, hate-filled, immoral, and evil his comments were and continue to be. In fact, my description of [name]’s comments was my affirmation that Black lives matter, but my forgiveness has suggested otherwise to some. I believe someone can grow into new understandings between sophomore year in high school and junior year of college. And, I also recognize that no one can be required to forgive, and no one will be disrespected for not forgiving.
[Name]’s misconduct was presented to the Office of Student Conduct in accordance with the Student Handbook. If he had committed these offenses while he was a member of the DeSales community, he would have been expelled. Since this is not an option available to us, we will apply appropriate consequences after consultation with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, which I have asked to convene as soon as possible.
In an effort to help us to heal of the pain and suffering caused by racism in our nation, I invite you to a virtual Town Hall meeting this Wednesday, June 10 at 7 PM. The Office of Mission will communicate details for this event.
Please join me in praying for peace and healing in our nation and University community.
Sincerely,
James J. Greenfield, OSFS, ‘84
President
The student’s public letter of apology:
To my DSU community,
I am writing to apologize in the deepest way that I can for the hurtful and demeaning words that have surfaced recently in light of all the unrest going on in this country. These hurtful words were resurrected from over four years ago from when I was a kid in high school. I know it may be hard for people to accept this apology, but I assure you that it is heartfelt, and I am not the immature 15-year-old person I was then. Although I am aware that my age at the time does not diminish the power or impact of these awful words, I really am sorry for the hurt they have caused. These statements have never been personally posted on any social media platform by me. I do not now believe these words, nor do I live by them. Those words do not represent the person I have come to be today. I have done a lot of deep reflection over this, and I am no longer the ignorant teenager I was then.
I could only hope that those who read this can forgive me and know that I have grown up in these past few years. I would like to continue to better myself through education which is imperative in understanding today’s society. I have apologized then, and I apologize now for the pain caused to so many, near and far. Even my family has suffered deeply as I hurt and endangered them, and I am sorry. I understand words have consequences and that they are not easily forgiven, but please accept my deepest apologies. I have had a wonderful two years at DeSales University and have learned greatly about friendships and cohesiveness, regardless of one’s race, gender, or sexual orientation. I promise to make extreme efforts to be understanding, respectful, and empathetic to my fellow student body and faculty. In my time reflecting and growing as a person, I do not support the racial injustices that continue to plague our society today, and I would like to help initiate change in our world by participating in corrective workshops and diversity classes.
I realize that there is a great deal that I have to learn about racial and sexual diversity, and I am committed to learning, listening, and being taught by those who have experiences that can teach me.
In closing, I repeat my apology: I am sorry.
This was not good enough for L*sbian Satan, who posted:
IF ANYONE WANTS AN UPDATE. THE PRESIDENT OF DESALES UNIVERSITY, A WHITE MAN, BELEIVES HE IS IN THE POSITION TO FORGIVE A WHITE STUDENT’S ANTI-BLACK BEHAVIOR. RIOT. pic.twitter.com/OPOEj5Chau
— L*sbian Satan (@noseniaa) June 1, 2020
Riot. This is a Christian university. L*sbian Satan does not wish to abide by Christian principles of repentance, mercy, and forgiveness, and instead is choosing to incite a mob to violence. She should be expelled, at once. Why would Father Jim tolerate her one more day on the campus of a Christian university? It is interesting to observe that Father Jim would have expelled this kid N. if he had made those racist social media posts as a DeSales student, presumably even if he publicly and privately confessed his sin and repented. But another student identifies herself as a lesbian Satan on social media, and she’s just fine at DeSales.
What an evil country we are becoming. I read the posts that N. put on social media when he was 15. They really were terrible. But he was a stupid teenager then, and has repented of his sins. But this student who identifies with Satan is merciless, and wants destruction of both the penitent young man, and the university. That young man will never be able to return to DeSales now. The mob is against him, and will make his life hell — which is what L*sbian Satan wants.
We are playing with nuclear fire here. Georgetown professor Joshua Mitchell reflects on the differences between this present moment of racial conflict in post-Christian America, and the Civil Rights Movement, which was led by Christian pastors. Excerpts:
Most of human history is pagan. The advent of Christianity is a relatively recent affair. Some say Christianity is now receding. Some say Christianity has not yet fully taken hold. Is secularism taking hold? Is paganism reemerging? Do we live in a strange time characterized by a return to paganism, though with Christian characteristics? Whichever account is correct has implications for America in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
The pagan world was the world of many gods, each associated with a people who made payments and sacrifices to their gods. Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract that when pagan nations battled other pagan nations, soldiers did not battle soldiers; rather, gods battled gods. Hence, the cathartic rage of pagan wars.
Christianity toppled the pagan world. The cathartic rage of war, Christians argued, in which one nation purged another, could not solve the problem of man’s stain, which was original, a term we no longer really understand. Original sin means that sin is always already there, prior to a person being born into membership of this nation or that nation. What this means is that blood rage cannot expiate stain; the sins of my people can no longer be purged by cathartic rage toward your people, and vice versa. That is why Rousseau concluded that Christianity had ruined politics, and had produced a civilization of pacifists, whose rage toward other nations could not be enkindled for the purpose of war. If you doubt this, ponder the fact that Christianity developed a “doctrine of just war,” according to which cathartic rage could not be reason enough to go to war.
Against the backdrop of pagan history, Christianity is revolutionary, not evolutionary. The evolution of paganism, had it occurred, would have brought about novel forms of cathartic rage toward other peoples. Christianity declared that no matter what evolutionary “advance” paganism might bring, it could never adequately address the problem of man’s stain. Christianity was revolutionary because it declared that we must look elsewhere than toward others, with cathartic rage, to expiate our stains. That “elsewhere” is divine, not mortal. Only through Christ, the divine scapegoat, who “takes upon himself the sins of the world” (John 1:29), can man be cleansed.
If Christianity is receding, then we will likely see the return to the pagan understanding that peoples are the proper objects of cathartic rage. That is a sobering truth, which defenders of secularism deny. The real alternatives might not be Christianity or secularism, but rather revelation or paganism. Should we return to paganism, one people will seek to cleanse themselves of stain by venting their cathartic rage on another people. The war between the gods of the nations would resume in full. The “blood and soil” nationalism that is straining to emerge on the Alt-Right is a witness to the reemergence of this pagan view, which is contemptuous of Christianity’s counter-claim, and always will be. What counts in the pagan world of blood is not me, the “person,” but the people of which I am but a representative. What counts in Christianity is the Adam, whose stain I present; and Christ’s sacrifice, through which I am represented to God as righteous. The distance between these two understandings is infinite and unbridgeable.
More:
George Floyd’s death and the violent aftermath has prompted questions about what sort of world we live in. If we live in a liberal world that Christianity makes possible, George Floyd’s death is a singular transgression, which law can and will punish. George Floyd was a person. So, too, was the policeman who killed him. Persons are protected by the law; and those persons granted policing authority by the liberal state have a somber responsibility to use their vested authority to protect persons rather than to harm them. That is why the death of a civilian by police hands will always attract attention. The same original sin that is the basis for establishing the category of persons is also the reason why a policing force must be vigilantly watched.
What if we do not live in a liberal world that Christianity makes possible? What if, under the pretext of liberalism and Christianity, America is still pagan? That is, what if America has always been a white nation, and still is? This is the position of many on the American left today. It is a position that holds that the black man, George Floyd, and the white police officer responsible for his death, are representatives of blood nations, not singular persons. The murder of one by the other is representative of the collective murder of one people by the other. American law cannot bring about justice, because each blood nation has its own justice, from which marginalized blood nations can never benefit. American law is white law. Street vengeance, therefore, is the only recourse—whether we call them protests or riots. White people must die, as a just exchange for the black people who have died.
And:
How, then, shall we proceed? Onward or backward. A return to paganism would spare us from the embarrassing Christian postulate that all the guilty-before-God descendants of Adam are persons, to be treated equally before the law. Pagan blood vengeance, we would contentedly conclude, is the primordial truth of man—therefore let us unleash the cathartic rage that dwells in every heart. If a man of one race is killed, blood payment is due; the score must be settled; persons must be sacrificed so that the idol of bloodline, of “identity,” can be appeased.
Alternatively, there is the Christian way forward, through which we will recognize the singular person of George Floyd, the transgression that ended his life, and the law through which man does what he can to bring about justice, in a broken world that God alone can heal.
Read it all.Mitchell says that America’s problem is that it is caught between a Christian understanding of justice, and a pagan one. Tocqueville saw the moral dilemma: a purportedly Christian nation also introduced slavery. We are still dealing with the consequences of that. Seriously, before you comment on anything Prof. Mitchell says here, read the whole thing to make sure you understand his argument.
According to Christian teaching, original sin, our ancestral curse, means that none of us — not one — is righteous. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The only way we can restore harmony between ourselves and God is through uniting ourselves to the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was God incarnate. That cannot be simply a mental assent to propositions. It requires recognizing our own sinfulness, asking God’s mercy, and making a firm resolution to repent … and to keep doing it.
As I wrote in my book about Dante, this was a very hard thing for me to do with regard to my relationship with my Dad. I only pushed through with it because my pastor said I had no choice, as a Christian. The same Jesus Christ to whom I appealed for mercy and forgiveness for my own sins said that we will only be forgiven insofar as we forgive others. There was no hope for healing within me for the wrongs my Dad had done to me if I was not willing to forgive him, even if he didn’t ask to be forgiven. This is not what I wanted to hear at the time, but it was what I needed to hear — and it turned out to be true. If I had not taken that hard road, I would not have been there to hear my father, near the end of his life, ask for forgiveness. I would not have been able to be with him in his last days, and to see him off holding his hand. Christianity, which teaches us that there is no human way to make full restitution for the evil that we do, makes it possible to re-integrate ourselves into society, and to reconcile. As Auden puts is, “You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart.”
The aptly self-described L*sbian Satan puts before the DeSales community — and all of us — a stark choice: accepting the Accuser’s claim that there can be no forgiveness and restoration for anybody who was ever guilty of the sin of racism, that there can only be what amounts to a symbolic sacrificial death (in this case, expulsion from the community); or that there is a better way, a Christian way, that allows for people to confess sin and vow repentance, confident that they will be shown mercy not only by God, but by the Christian people, who have been told by their Lord that they must forgive if they themselves want to be forgiven.
What a drama at DeSales University! Is it going to assert itself as a truly Christian institution, or will it surrender to the bloodguiltiness imputed to this penitent young man by the Accuser? Will it put this student on an inquisitorial show trial for sins he committed as a 15-year-old high school boy? The future of the university hangs in the balance. It will either be Catholic, or it will be pagan. The choice put to them by a student called L*sbian Satan makes the moral and spiritual stakes explicit.
And beyond DeSales, what about the rest of us? Do we want to live in a world in which some sins are unforgivable? Because that is the world we are rushing towards at breakneck speed. Riot indeed.
UPDATE: This is not meant ironically. They really do believe that the way to fight evil is by destroying the futures of young people:
When you expose a racist student, you stop them from attending a university that will allow them to become a racist healthcare worker, teacher, lawyer, real estate developer, politicians, etc.
— Black Lives Matter (@agavedelacalle) June 6, 2020
The post The Accuser appeared first on The American Conservative.
June 7, 2020
James Bennet: Sign Of The Times
The New York Times announced today that James Bennet, Editorial Page Editor since May, 2016, is resigning effective immediately. The Times also announced that the deputy editorial page editor Jim Dao is stepping off the masthead and being reassigned to the newsroom.
Bennet has said that he didn’t read the Cotton op-ed before he published it, which really is an unthinkable mistake. When I worked on the Dallas Morning News editorial page, our boss, the editorial page editor, read everything before signing off on it. Granted, the Times publishes a lot more online than in the paper, but when the column is written by a US Senator, surely attention must be paid by the section editor.
That said, had Bennet read it and approved it, he would still have been forced out — this, for publishing the opinion of a Republican US Senator, a view shared by over half of all Americans. It is hard to fathom this. It is hard to fathom that the staff of the most important newspaper in America, one based in the most cosmopolitan city in the world, cannot bear to see in print an opinion that offends them. But this is where we are. The New York Times is choosing to cut itself off even more from the nation. In so doing, it makes itself more parochial, more dogmatic, more ignorant of the world as it is. It would be funny if it weren’t truly a tragedy. Gone is the old-school liberalism, replaced by a left-wing fundamentalism that cannot bear too much reality.
Think about it: the section run by James Bennet has a trans columnist who made this lasting contribution to the American public conversation…
… but publishing an opinion by a Republican senator causes the newsroom to go into spasm, and forces the editorial page editor to resign.
This is a newspaper whose Book Review published a novelist’s fantasy about assassinating President Trump.
But the staff goes to pieces over a Republican senator’s op-ed, and the publisher defenestrates the editorial page editor.
Here is the lie publisher A.G. Sulzberger tells himself to justify having capitulated to the newsroom mob now running his newspaper — this, from a note to staff:
What total horses*it. The Times will now publish a much narrower range of opinion. It will do nothing to help its core readers wrestle with history. It is downright Orwellian to pretend that the Times will engage, fearlessly or otherwise, with ideas from across the political spectrum, particularly those we disagree with. Bennet made a dull and predictable op-ed section a bit less so, but now it will swing even more sharply to wokeness. Sulzberger is not a an idiot. He knows what he’s doing. He has to know that this is a capitulation to ideological madness.
This is quite a moment for American journalism. The top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer was just forced out over a three-word headline — “Buildings also matter” — that offended journalists of color and others. His twenty years of service to the paper did not save him. The publisher said in a note to the newsroom:
“We will use this moment to evaluate the organizational structure and processes of the newsroom, assess what we need, and look both internally and externally for a seasoned leader who embodies our values, embraces our shared strategy, and understands the diversity of the communities we serve.”
The paper has long been in a death spiral. Last year, its management said that it could be dead within five years. You think people will now want to subscribe to a newspaper run by the rigid progressivism of the newsroom? You think the paralyzing timidity that will now overtake that newsroom is going to help it do better journalism — the kind of journalism people will pay for?
As regular readers know, I have been concerned over the awokening at the Times for awhile. The Times has always been a liberal paper. Fine; conservative griping about the Times‘s liberalism has been a long-standing habit. But the paper has been quickly moving over the past few years to embrace illiberal leftism.
I’ve written here many times about the newsroom’s town hall meeting last year, in which an unnamed staffer voiced the opinion that because racism is in “everything,” it ought to be in all the paper’s coverage across disciplines. Executive editor Dean Baquet did not challenge that clear challenge to journalistic principle. If someone had said to him that they believe God is in “everything,” so God ought to be in the paper’s coverage across disciplines, or that “class conflict” is in everything, etc., it would have been perfectly clear how radical an ask this was — and how no newspaper could possibly agree to that. But then the paper turned around and published The 1619 Project, which openly and proudly claimed to racialize American history.
If, like me, you are a subscriber and a regular reader of the Times, the strong tack towards identity politics of the paper in both its news and opinion coverage has been clear. Last year, political scientist Zach Goldberg did a Lexis/Nexis search of the Times archives, to see how common the use of social justice concepts, including jargon, has become. Look what he found:
And:
It’s not your imagination. The awokening of the Times is real, and documentable. What has happened to Bennet is another sign of the Times‘ decline. I read a couple of days ago that something like 800 of the paper’s 1,200 employees signed a petition demanding, among other things, this:
A commitment to the thorough vetting, fact-checking, and real-time rebuttal of Opinion pieces, including seeking perspective and debate from across the desk’s diverse staff.
I realized that two-thirds of the newspaper’s employees are essentially asking for a progressive veto over opinion pieces — and seeing that as a normal part of publishing a newspaper. Since then, I have been reading the Times‘s stories (not opinion pieces, but news stories) not knowing what I can trust. That petition said that the Cotton op-ed “promotes hate” — which is what the wokesters say about any opinion with which they disagree! How can I be confident that the stories the Times reports in its news pages is fair and accurate?
All this put me in mind of a conversation I had maybe 15 years ago, when I was a columnist and editorial writer at The Dallas Morning News, with a Millennial writer there. He knew that I was a conservative, and I knew that he wasn’t, but none of that mattered. I mentioned to him one day that I thought the paper’s coverage of the gay marriage issue was one-sided, and had become a matter of pro-LGBT advocacy journalism. He agreed that it was one-sided, but told me that he didn’t think there was a legitimate other side. I pointed out that we lived in a rather conservative part of the country, and that most of our readers took the opposite position on gay marriage (this was around 2005, I think). Were they all bigots who didn’t deserve to be consulted in our reporting? Yes, he said. If the paper was reporting on the Civil Rights movement, he said, would we feel morally and professionally obligated to seek the views of local KKK leaders?
He really did see the issue that way: that to oppose gay marriage rights was to be the moral equivalent of a Klansman. I told him that was an outrageous position to take, but even if it were true, if half our readers held racially bigoted views, wouldn’t the newspaper have a professional obligation to be fair and accurate in our representation of our readership in our reporting. No, he said, we wouldn’t.
Last I heard, that former colleague left the paper years ago in one of the buyouts. But that conversation came to mind this weekend, thinking about the generational changes that have overtaken professional journalism over the past two decades. I was taught that journalism was about searching for the most complete available version of the truth at that moment, recognizing that we were only writing the first draft of history — that the story would change as more information became available. But over the years, it has seemed to me that a younger generation of journalists have come to see the craft as more about creating and managing a narrative.
I want to make sure that I’m not being misunderstood here. I don’t care that The New York Times is becoming even more militantly progressive on its op-ed pages. I appreciate it when a good piece appears there, but I don’t subscribe to the Times for its op-ed coverage. What I care about is that the politicization of the newsroom has become so extreme, and so accepted, that they don’t even try to hide it. And now Sulzberger has surrendered to the mob, breaking faith with readers. Or at least with this reader.
I can’t trust the paper anymore. Its authority is gone. Oh, not with institutional elites, who will still read it and hang on its words, and regard it as an imprimatur-granter. But anyone who pays money to stay informed about what’s really happening in the nation and the world will now never be sure if they are getting something close to the truth, or something that has part of the truth in it, except for the parts that trigger its woke staff.
I expect this will become general in what’s left of US journalism. Last fall, Gallup found that 41 percent of Americans trust mainstream journalism — a rebound from 32 percent in 2016, but still close to an historic low. The bottom is going to fall out before too long. Here’s a true story, though I’m concealing identifying details: within the past couple of decades, there was a meeting of editors at a major metropolitan daily. The newspaper’s publisher, alarmed by collapsing circulation numbers, had hired a consultant to poll its readership, as well as the demographics it sought to entice into subscribing, in an effort to see what might be done to turn things around. Among the findings: nearly 70 percent of the readers and potential readers said they had no trust — none — in that particular publication.
There was a gasp in the room. Then one of the top editors tsk-tsk’d, saying, “Isn’t it a shame that people will only believe what they want to believe?”
This really happened. The blindness inside the news business is deep. The Times has always been an industry leader. Its new militant wokeness will be the blind leading the blind off the cliff. The Times is going to do what it’s going to do, but I’m not going to participate in it. I’ve just cancelled my subscription — not out of anger, but over a total loss of trust.
Wokeness poisons everything.
How long Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Baquet will put up with public pressure from their staff is not clear. In an earlier moment of social turmoil, A.M. Rosenthal, who led the newsroom from 1969 to 1986, kept a watchful eye and heavy hand on reporters he perceived to lean too far left. The words, “He kept the paper straight,” are inscribed on his gravestone.
Minutes after Mr. Sulzberger told the staff in an email that Mr. Bennet had resigned, he told me not to interpret the move as a philosophical shift. Mr. Rosenthal, he noted, had presided over a much less diverse newsroom, and one that focused on covering New York for New Yorkers.
“In this case, we messed up and hiding behind, ‘We want to keep the paper straight,’ to not acknowledge that, would have left us more exposed,” Mr. Sulzberger said.
And he told me in a separate interview on Friday: “We’re not retreating from the principles of independence and objectivity. We don’t pretend to be objective about things like human rights and racism.”
But the shift in mainstream American media — driven by a journalism that is more personal, and reporters more willing to speak what they see as the truth without worrying about alienating conservatives — now feels irreversible. It is driven in equal parts by politics, the culture and journalism’s business model, relying increasingly on passionate readers willing to pay for content rather than skittish advertisers.
Ah, so they will start throwing aside objectivity for anything having to do with “human rights” or “racism.” That means they have handed the newsroom over to identity-politics crusaders. This is useful to have confirmed.
Smith talks about Wes Lowery, an aggressive young reporter who made his name at the Washington Post for his coverage of the Ferguson riots. He got in trouble with executive editor Marty Baron, though, for using his Twitter account to criticize people, including those he covers. Eventually he either quit or was fired. Smith writes:
He seemed to insiders and outsiders the prototype of the precocious, nakedly ambitious, somewhat arrogant and very talented (though usually white and male) reporter who has risen quickly at American newspapers.
But Mr. Baron has been more sensitive than other newsroom leaders to reporters who push the limits on Twitter and on television, as Max Tani reported in the Daily Beast earlier this year. (At The New York Times, social media policy is usually enforced by a passive-aggressive email from an editor and rare follow-up.) Mr. Lowery said that when he hit back at a Republican official who criticized his Ferguson coverage on Twitter, he drew a lecture from Mr. Baron.
By 2019, the executive editor had gathered examples of what he saw as misconduct, from Mr. Lowery’s tweet mocking attendees at a Washington book party as “decadent aristocrats” to one tweet criticizing a New York Times report on the Tea Party.
Baron told him to knock it off or hit the road. Six months later, Lowery hit the road. More:
“American view-from-nowhere, ‘objectivity’-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment,” [Lowery] tweeted of the Times [Bennet] debacle. “We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity.”
That argument is gathering momentum in key American newsrooms. At The Times, staff members are pressing for changes beyond the Opinion section. At The Post, a committee reporting to Mr. Ginsberg recently delivered a review of staff members’ attitudes toward social media policy. And at The Post’s own tense town hall on Friday, Mr. Baron apologized for failing in a recent email to address “the particular and severe burden felt by black employees, many of whom were also covering the story” of the protests, according to notes from a participant in the meeting. The Post’s union then sent an email to the staff criticizing Mr. Baron’s response. “Most striking of all was that the four voices the company chose to elevate in this moment belonged exclusively to white people. There could be no starker example of The Post’s lack of diversity in management.”
Read it all. They’re going to go after Marty Baron next. This is “moral clarity.” Again, useful to get that learned. It’s all out in the open now.
UPDATE.2: This really happened tonight. Jesse Singal is a New York journalist of the left, but he’s a man of courage and integrity:
Just to be clear where we’re at, the New York Times stealth-edited a graf in which it misrepresented a column that appeared in the New York Times, partially because for complicated internal reasons it’s important for the Times to portray the column as worse than it was.
June 6, 2020
A World Historical Tragedy
All through the day I have been following the news on social media and on websites, about the vast protests against racism. Look at this:
Thousands of people in Philadelphia continue to protest racism and police brutality following the death of George Floyd. Crowds in Center City stretched from the steps of the Art Museum and past the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. https://t.co/LlmPCHjz7Q pic.twitter.com/6YJT2DvCW7
— NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) June 6, 2020
This image has been repeated in capitals around the US, and in Europe.
What we are seeing today is a tragedy of mythical, world-historical dimensions. For the past several months, the world has faced down a deadly pandemic that is spread through personal contact. Governments have imposed strict public health measures to save lives, at the cost of wrecking economies. The hope was that we could limit the spread, prevent mass death, and give scientists more time to come up with a vaccine. By imposing a heavy cost now, public health officials hoped to spare us all an even heavier cost.
Did it go too far in some cases? Without question. But you have to remember that this pandemic is something that no one alive has had to deal with. On this blog, I have said for months now that the virus doesn’t care about your politics. I was speaking to my fellow conservatives, and my fellow conservative Christians, many of whom resisted, and even resented, lockdowns, masks, and other public health measures, in part because these policies interfered with what they preferred to believe.
We all saw people on the left lashing these conservatives as selfish fools who cared only about themselves, and not the common good. This was the common narrative in the media.
But now, with the Floyd killing, the left has cast all caution to the wind. Nicholas Christakis, one of the country’s top public health experts, made an obvious point here:
I want to go on record with obvious point: large gatherings of people facilitate spread of contagious disease. The *reason* for the gathering (whether street protests for a cause I support, or GOP convention, or a sporting event) is not material to the spread of the virus. 1/
— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) June 5, 2020
Remember what happened the last time Nicholas Christakis tried to reason with a woke mob? It did not end well for him.
For months, public health experts have urged Americans to take every precaution to stop the spread of Covid-19—stay at home, steer clear of friends and extended family, and absolutely avoid large gatherings.
Now some of those experts are broadcasting a new message: It’s time to get out of the house and join the mass protests against racism.
“We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted on Tuesday. “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”
“The injustice that’s evident to everyone right now needs to be addressed,” Abraar Karan, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital physician who’s exhorted coronavirus experts to amplify the protests’ anti-racist message, told me. “While I have voiced concerns that protests risk creating more outbreaks, the status quo wasn’t going to stop #covid19 either,” he wrote on Twitter this week.
It’s a message echoed by media outlets and some of the most prominent public health experts in America, like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests. Their claim: If we don’t address racial inequality, it’ll be that much harder to fight Covid-19. There’s also evidence that the virus doesn’t spread easily outdoors, especially if people wear masks.
This is insane. It represents the ideological corruption of science. Never again will people take public health experts seriously. They have destroyed their authority for the sake of left-wing politics.
The moral passions of the crowds have led them to abandon all reason. What we have seen today, and in this past week, is a mass of people coming together for a public ritual to cast out a demon (racism), and in so doing pass among themselves a virus that causes sickness and death. Christakis again:
We might get lucky. But if not, all the sacrifices that we collectively made this spring will have been for nothing — all because masses of people, seized by a kind of religious frenzy, decided that their moral convictions would defeat reality. As Ross Douthat writes:
The progression I’ve described, though, in which all sides have embraced delusions or found something to value more than public health, does signal that there will be no further comprehensive attempt to fight the virus. Trump and conservatism won’t support it, the public health bureaucracy won’t be able to defend it, and we didn’t use the time the lockdowns bought to build the infrastructure to sustain a campaign of actual suppression.
So in this sense we are back with Elkus’s original point. All the virus wants is targets, and if it doesn’t ultimately find another hundred thousand victims, or more than that in some autumn second wave, it will not be political decisions or public health exhortations that save us. On the left and right we’ve exhausted those possibilities, and like the earthlings unexpectedly preserved from alien domination at the end of “The War of the Worlds,” now only some inherent weakness in our enemy can save us from many, many deaths to come.
We are in another world now. The mass demonstrations will not have ended racism. But they will have ended the lives of vast numbers of people, and made it likely that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression will be prolonged — with all the destruction and strife that will bring. This is tragedy at the level of myth.
Here is another example of leftist fantasy today. Two videos of Jacob Frey, the woke Millennial mayor of Minneapolis, trying to appeal to a protest crowd today. They don’t want to hear it. They want to hear him say that he, the mayor of a big city, will cut all the funds to the police — leaving a major American city unpoliced. Watch what happens when he tells the crowd the truth. It’s devastating:
Minneapolis mayor’s attempt to show solidarity with protesters takes an unexpected turn here. pic.twitter.com/DLchX1e8si
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) June 7, 2020
Mayor Frey says he doesn’t want to abolish the police so the crowd runs him out. pic.twitter.com/CcUAohPdn1
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 6, 2020
Progressive crowds cannot handle too much reality. But reality does not care. Defund the police, and violent chaos will reign. But this is what progressive crowds prefer to believe:
So: one month from now, if we see an explosion of Covid-19 cases, overwhelming hospitals, the media propaganda machine will ramp up to blame racism, or to find some other scapegoat for a fate that was completely predictable. What’s more, the institutional authorities at hospitals, universities, in the media, and elsewhere, will be merciless in their attempts to suppress the truth about why the plague has returned to us with such vengeance. They meant well, so they will expect to be absolved. The tragic guilt of all those who took to the streets to protest the evil of racism will be intolerable to bear. So someone else is going to have to bear it.
The autopsy on George Floyd found that he had coronavirus.
History doesn’t get much bigger than this.
Here in south Louisiana tonight, it’s raining outside, and the wind has picked up. A hurricane is coming. Seems about right.
The post A World Historical Tragedy appeared first on The American Conservative.
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