Month: August 2020

Original Story From https://reason.com/2020/08/06/tulane-cancels-life-of-a-klansman-edward-ball-students-racist/

                You just can’t make this stuff up. We are simply going to have to stop calling colleges and universities institutions of “higher” learning, since that does not appear to be the case at all.  Witness the latest lunacy (and possible illiteracy).  Edward Ball is the great-grandson of a KKK member.  He apparently has spent his adult life promoting anti-racism and using his relatives and their actions as examples of what not to do or be.  This fellow was woke before any of these Tulane “higher” education students were even born, and way before “woke” was even a thing.  One would think lefties would applaud such wokeness decades ahead of its time and be eager to hear what he had to say.  But no….

                A few days ago he was scheduled to speak at Tulane University about his most recent book, Life of a Klansman: A Family History of White Supremacy.  His prior book, the National Book Award-winnning 1998 Slaves in the Family “‘traces the histories of people enslaved by Ball’s own ancestors. In Klansman, Ball tells the story of a racist great-grandfather who joined the Ku Klux Klan.'” 

                According to the article, no less a lefty authority than the New York Times “hailed it as ‘a haunting tapestry of interwoven stories that inform us not just about our past but about the resentment-bred demons that are all too present in our society today,’ and the anti-racism scholar Ibram X. Kendi participated in a virtual discussion about it with Ball.  Tulane University was slated to host another such event, featuring Ball and Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, an assistant professor of geography and African American studies.”  National Public Radio called the book “‘resonant and important.’ The New Republic . . . wrote that Ball ‘builds a psychological portrait of white supremacy, which then radiates outward and across time, to explain the motives and historical background behind racist violence.'”

                Despite knowing exactly what the discussion was supposed to be about through Tulane’s own publicity for the event – anti-racism, that is – “the university opted to postpone it following blinkered outrage from students who insisted that the event was ‘not only inappropriate but violent towards the experience of Black people in the Tulane community and our country.’ Other members of the Tulane community called it “harmful and offensive,” and demanded its cancellation. Still others said the university should apologize and take action against whoever approved the event. . . .  ‘The last thing we need to do is allow someone who is even reflecting on the hatred of their ancestors to speak about white supremacy, even if their efforts come from a place of accountability,’ one student wrote on Instagram.  ‘There is nothing that a book on white supremacy written by the descendant of a Klansman can do to promote or influence an anti-racism atmosphere,’ wrote another.”

                Lest you think these are just some odd comments from a few doltish students, “Tulane’s student government weighed in as well. In a letter to the administration ‘on behalf of the entire student body,’ Undergraduate Student Government Vice President Ingeborg Hyde and Liberal Arts Student Government President Amanda Krantz demanded the event’s cancellation. And they did not mince words.  ‘An apology is the first step in undoing the harm you have caused many members of the community, but is in no way the last,’ they wrote. ‘In the current political atmosphere, it is imperative that we are all actively anti-racist, and endorsing speakers like these is antithetical to the anti-racist work being done by students, faculty, and staff on our campus.'”

                Sometimes you just run out of things to say about nuts.  What is particularly interesting is that this anti-racism advocate received exactly the same reception from the same people he would have received had he been a white supremacy advocate! Go figure.

Of course, these are college kids for the most part, so one has to make some allowance for their immaturity and closed-mindedness since they already know everything already.  But institution of “ignorant” education for Tulane at least seems a better fit – whatever it is they’re learning, it certainly isn’t “higher”.  In any event, it certainly doesn’t seem worth the roughly $65,000/year in tuition and room-and-board their poor parents are paying. Someone should be looking for a refund.                      

Figures from https://studentaccounts.tulane.edu/sites/studentaccounts.tulane.edu/files/2020-2021_Full_Time_UG_costs_v2.pdf

                Yes, it sounds too loony to be true, but read the news story and actual quotes from a BLM Chicago Organizer for yourself at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/black-lives-matter-chicago-organizer-defends-looting-that-s-reparations/ar-BB17RrBq?ocid=msedgdhp.  This is an excerpt:

“Ariel Atkins [a BLMChicago organizer] spoke outside a police station in the South Loop on 18th and South State Street on Monday, where protesters had gathered to call for the release of those who were arrested.  ‘I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes, Atkins said, according to NBC Chicago.  ‘That’s reparations. That is reparations. Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance. They’re going to get their money back. My people aren’t getting anything.’  Atkins also hit back at Rev. Jesse Jackson, who tweeted earlier on Monday that the looting that had taken place in Chicago was ‘morally wrong.’  He wrote: ‘This act of pillaging, robbing & looting in Chicago was humiliating, embarrassing &morally wrong. It must not be associated with our quest for social justice and equality.’  But Atkins maintained that Jackson ‘has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter.’  She added: ‘Jesse Jackson was not there for the creation of Black Lives Matter. Jesse Jackson can keep his opinions to himself.'” (emphasis supplied)

                Yes, “unhinged” appears to be the correct word here, at first glance anyway.  But when you think about it, perhaps all we whities ought to agree.  We suggest that if we agree that looting by black people constitutes reparations, then over the last 55 years reparations have been fully repaid by rioting and looting in Chicago, Detroit, Watts, Harlem, Boston, Portland, etc., etc., etc.  That should also include all property theft by blacks over the years, all of which together certainly adds up to way more than reparations should be worth. So let’s not hear anymore about it.  The end.  Actually, we should send BLM a bill for the overage.

Definition of re-education in English, from https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/re-education:

            re-education:  NOUN.  Education or training to change someone’s beliefs or behavior.

            Anyone with even a nodding familiarity with Nazi, Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese (and others) “reeducation camps” has to feel a chill run up his or her spine when we read about the tidal wave of “diversity and inclusion training” and “anti-racism training” that employees. students, teachers, etc. are going to have to go through to satisfy the baying woke mob.  Do any of these clowns even know what a “gulag” is?  Likely not.  Or they do and they approve.  It’s one or the other.  It’s bad enough that new college students have for years had to undergo mandatory “sensitivity” or “diversity and inclusion” training, and that many employers torture their poor employees and at least go through the motions of mandating such training.  But really, those have all been surface-scratching etiquette programs that in the end are targeted towards trying to create a more civil workplace or schoolplace, not really any attempt to delve into the historical depths supposedly necessary eradicate this alleged systemic racism business.  But don’t worry, BLM is on the job and will set all this aright.

            So now the demands are ever more extreme and you don’t only have to be nice to blacks, but you have to study their history and be indoctrinated into believing the tale of collective racist evil practiced in the country over the past 400 years.  To listen to them you’d think that Americans invented slavery.  Well, slavery is as old as mankind, as the Jewish people among others would be only too glad to remind you.  Who do you think built the pyramids in Egypt or the viaducts in Rome or the various ancient temples in the Americas?  Who do you think rowed Cleopatra’s barge?  Do you think Spartacus was some Roman of noble birth?  Do you think African tribes who won in battle did not enslave the losers?  In fact, until recently enslavement was the typical fate of the losers.  (Except where the US is the winner, however, since this country paid for and rebuilt Japan and Germany after demolishing them.  But we all know no good deed goes unpunished.).

            As just one shining example of a classic “shakedown” or extortion in the name of racial purity/reeducation/reparations, consider the list of “demands” made by one BLM outfit in Louisville, Kentucky.  In Louisville, there is an area called the NuLu Market District, which apparently was created by what the BLM mafia calls “gentrification.”  The idea seems to be that to create and build this district, minorities were dislocated and have never reaped any of the benefits of this now-prosperous area.  Therefore, the “demands” state that:

1.         Businesses will adequately represent the black population of Louisville by having a minimum of 23% black staff (including management) in front of house positions, and maintain commitment and accountability to increasing that number (accountability roundtable information below).

2.         Retail locations will include a minimum of 23% inventory of black retailers OR make a recurring monthly donation of 1.5% of net sales to black local organizations.

3.         Business owners will require diversity, equity, & inclusion training for their staffs, to be conducted by any one of the black women leaders on the attached list. Training will be conducted thereafter on a bi-annual basis.

4.         Customize your own OR display one of the attached written statements in a viable location within your business to increase awareness and show support for the reparations movement.

5.         Non-profits in NuLu district will submit to a voluntary, external audit of their board of trustees and take necessary steps towards 23% representation on those boards.

6.         Business owners & non-profit leaders will participate in quarterly roundtable discussions to be held accountable for their communities to these demands, and work together towards increased equity.

7.         Maintain adequate black representation in any entertainment and performances booked at your business.

8.         Dress code policies inherently discriminate against black folks, women, and the transgender community. You must eliminate dress code policies that promote profiling towards patrons and employees, including their hair requirements or stipulations, which can disproportionately target black folks.

9.         23% black representation on the board of the NuLu Business Association.

A failure to comply with these “demands” will result in the following five “repercussions” – that is, you won’t be protected from BLM unless you satisfy their demands:

-Reduction in Racial Index Score/bias report to the Better Business Bureau.

-Social Media Blast: Notification, via all social media platforms, of non-compliance.

-Boycott: Public boycott, coordinated through social media and mail announcements, of your NuLu establishment AND any other business ventures owned by you.

-Protest: Visible, media-covered demonstration/sit-in outside your establishment.

-Invasive Reclamation: Placement of booths/tables outside your establishment where competing Black proprietors will offer items comparable to those offered by you.

            And on top of that, you have to sign a “contract.”  If you thought those demands were nutty, just read the following (sorry about the pagination here):

          

 

So, Comrades, leave the keys to your business on the counter and get ready to entrain for the reeducation camps – AFTER, of course, you’ve taken care of your reparations.

Nature has ways of trying to keep humans in check, and always has, but not always as successfully as she may wish.  What is always unaddressed in the so-called climate change debate is overpopulation.  It would certainly appear to any reasonable and sane alien observer that there just is a limit to the number of people this planet can comfortably support.  For historical perspective, when we were born in 1955 the world population was approximately 2,773,019,936 (figures from https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/).  Today, that number is almost 8 billion.  So in about 65 years, the world population has just about trebled (that is, increased by about 300%).  In stark contrast, in the year 1600 the world population was about 500,000,000, compared with the year 1700 (about 610,000,000), an increase of about 110 million over a full century, or about a 22% increase.  See the trend?  And according to the UN, the world population is projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100.  https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html.  Anyone who thinks this isn’t a fundamental problem is deluding themselves. 

Hence over the ages Nature has used various strategies for attempting to keep the population in check.  Wars, of course, and various genocides – something innate in humans makes us seem to covet what others have, and/or to impose one’s culture/religion on others, or to just destroy things and people.  The Black Death of the Middle (or “Dark”) Ages, to the flu pandemic of 1918, which reportedly killed roughly 50-100 million people worldwide, SARS, MERS, the annual flu panic, etc.  Not to mention the usual hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, that don’t so much affect the US, but devastate Asian countries in particular.  And of course, diseases such as cancer and various forms of distracted driving, two of the principal plagues of modern lifestyles.

And over the last few centuries since the Renaissance, humans have inventively fought back and developed their own strategies for combatting Nature, far too successfully as it turns out.  Vaccines, the constant “progress” of medicine and medical care (however much in resources they soak up), the fight against cancer, weather radar, early warning systems, hurricane-earthquake-tornado proof buildings, evacuations, and now mass quarantines and lock-downs and maskings of entire populations bringing economic ruin to millions due to the Covid19.  But humans have been pretty effective overall in combatting some natural phenomena, the health care system being a principal culprit.  But Nature continues to fight back.  As the Boston Globe Magazine noted last week, scientists are currently engaged in a mad race to combat so-called drug-resistent superbugs, germs that evolved to avoid the efficacy of antibiotics.  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/05/magazine/racing-clock-stop-drug-resistant-superbugs/.  Similarly, this Covid19 and other viruses appear to continually mutate, so even if one form is tamed others spring up.  We see it in the flu vaccine every year, which usually only protects against one strain and not dozens of others.

Now we have Covid19.  On top of the medical community becoming deranged and panicked, of course the politicians have to get into the act and pass ridiculous legislation sending everyone in the country a couple of checks to help with the disruption, which really is just a couple of costly sops to get the do-gooders off of their cases since they sure aren’t going to be paying for it themselves – their kids and their kids’ kids will.  And also they set up a situation where about 2/3ds of people collecting unemployment actually make more than they were making pre-unemployment – that’s just nutty, but it is an election year after all.

Moreover, for every nickel you get from the feds, your descendents (probably not you) will be paying it back with interest since it will just increase the national debt.  Apparently no one understands what the national debt is – it is widely ignored but is no different that you maxing out all your credit cards with no means to repay them and then continually seeking an increase in your credit limit and maxing it out again every year.  We old folks (Boomers, if you like) already have mortgaged our kids’ and grandkids’ futures quite enough as it is what with the national debt and social security going the wrong way and fossil fuels killing the planet.  We don’t need to be making it any worse for them.

And for what do we make these efforts?  Why should we be reacting like this and trying to prevent it?  “You’re against social justice,” some will cry.  Well, Darwin didn’t get the idea for natural selection out of the blue.  He observed Nature at work and observed that the strong survive and adapt and the weak and sickly perish – that is social justice in the real world at work.  Nature created that, and humans’ efforts to avoid it is just going to generate ever more vicious responses from Nature.

Thus, humanity’s efforts to thwart Nature’s efforts to align resources with population are what has brought us to the place where there is a great deal of panic about rising sea levels (never mind that sea levels have risen and fallen hundreds of times over the last couple of billion years), greenhouse gases choking us all to death, superstorms savaging the population.   And of course our favorite, “we only have 12 years left to fix this!” or the planet will – well, will what exactly?  Right.  But actually if you buy that theory, you should also be wholeheartedly in favor of decreasing the world population and thus support Nature’s efforts.  That means doing nothing during this “pandemic,” not more.  If people want to be personally dumb enough to go maskless,  or go to bars, the beach and parties, etc., and expose themselves to some death-dealing virus, then that should be considered to be all to the good – we don’t need those dopes sucking up resources. 

Now of course someone (probably lots of do-gooder someones) will say, well, life is precious and we need to preserve every one we can.  Well, if history has taught the human race anything, it’s how cheap and ephemeral life is, not how precious it is.  Sure, on an individual basis we want to protect our family and those we know and love.  But from a species and planet-preservation perspective, it makes far more sense to let Nature take its course and whoever dies, dies, and whoever lives, lives.  Of course, that’s not politically correct and is anti-progress and the social media “shaming” coming our way probably wouldn’t be pleasant if we cared enough to pay any attention to the rantings of short-sighted and ignorant morons. 

This Covid19 is not a crisis.  It is Nature doing its job.  That’s why we should be doing nothing, for the betterment of the species and the preservation of the planet.  We should be looking at the big picture, not the little picture.  Otherwise we are just setting the stage for another quasi-Hitlerian situation of the human race running out of room for its population and needing and seeking lebensraum, and we’ve seen how that turns out. Anyway, we’re getting on a Space X flight to Mars as soon as we can, so it won’t be our problem.

                Unsettled by the police response to proposed police reform legislation in Massachusetts (which, among other things, is that such legislation is a knee-jerk reaction to troubles elsewhere in the nation) the baying woke mob has had to reach back 9 years to resurrect what appears to be the only “recent” Massachusetts situation where a black person was killed by a police officer under possibly questionable circumstances so they can argue that all the cops in Massachusetts are racist murderers run amok like everywhere else in the country, so all Massachusetts cops and police departments must be disestablished or defunded and their lives and reputations in splinters. 

                As reported by The Boston Globe at https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/01/metro/eurie-stamps-died-2011-police-shooting-now-there-are-new-calls-justice-his-death/:

              “Eurie Stamps Sr., [was] a retired MBTA maintenance worker shot and killed in his home by Framingham police in 2011.  But as demonstrators recite the names of Black people who have died from police violence amid demands for justice, calls for public recognition of Stamps have grown louder as Massachusetts faces its own reckoning over systemic racism in policing.  In Cambridge Saturday, organizers of a march from City Hall to Hoyt Field in the name of Stamps, who grew up in that city, said they wanted to tell his story, honor his legacy, and demand accountability for his death, said Selvin L. Chambers III, one of the march’s organizers. . . .

                “Nearly a decade ago, on Jan. 5, 2011, the Framingham police SWAT team executed a search warrant on the Fountain Street apartment Stamps shared with his wife and then-20-year-old stepson.  Police were acting on a report that Stamps’s stepson and others were selling crack cocaine from the apartment. They did not suspect Stamps of any crime. Officers entered the apartment and ordered Stamps to lie on his stomach on the floor.  [One officer, Duncan,]. . . moved to handcuff and search Stamps. The officer pointed a rifle at Stamps, his finger on the trigger, according to documents filed in federal court as part of a later lawsuit by Stamps’s family.  Stamps, who had no history of violence, was shot in the face and later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

                “After investigation, ‘then-Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said Duncan lost his balance and fell, causing the officer to fire his weapon accidentally.  No charges were filed against Duncan following the investigation by Leone’s office and State Police.'”

                Now, nine years later, on the basis of no discernable evidence or even any alleged “new” evidence, “[o]rganizers of the Cambridge march Saturday alleged a cover-up in the case” and that this event is proof of the systemic racism in policing in the Commonwealth continuing today.

                Well, it’s a terrible thing for a baying woke mob when the facts don’t back up their theories and hopes, but that obviously has never stopped them from being creative and making wild claims.  In fact, they’re likely to go even further and just make up more facts – what a surprise that would be, NOT!  Some dolt(s) undoubtedly will even argue that the absence of such facts actually proves the existence of the cover-up, since their non-existence only proves that the alleged cover-up worked.  So if you assert a cover-up, and cannot find any facts supporting a cover-up, you were right!  Our college logic professor would have a field day with that one!

                However, it is a terrible thing for all of us when guesswork, conjecture, assumptions, allegations, whispers, rumors, graffiti and the like are substituted for actual evidence of some sort of wrongdoing.  That is exactly what happened in the 1950s when Senator McCarthy was cancelling out so many lives, and in Salem/Danvers during the witch trials and hangings in the 1600s.  Welcome to the new world, same as the old world.