Revolutionary Leftists are narcissists and psychopathic but not soft-hearted

My heading above is a plain language version of what two very careful Swiss researchers found in a study of American attitudes. Their study is notable for its high degree of methodological care and caution so withstands most criticisms that might be aimed at it. It is high quality research.

As I have long argued that Leftism is in general psychopathic, I have no quarrel with their conclusion there. Their finding about narcissism is also one I agree with. I have in the past put forward that claim on behavioural grounds but not as a result of attitude surveys.

It has long been my contention that excess ego is at the root of a lot of social problems: Crime generally, for instance. The criminal thinks that what he wants transcends the rights of others.

When (on October 30, 2008) Obama spoke of his intention to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography. He was talking about transforming what he thought American people can and must do. He thought he knew better: Clearly egotistical.

So what I was talking about there is undoubedy a facet of narcissism

The definition of narcissism is however a matter of contention. Our Swiss authors took a very broad view of it but I think the findings of Paul Wink give us a much sharper view of it

He combined three existing measures of narcissism, including the MMPI and CPI, and factor analysed the responses of a heterogeneous sample to them.

The sample responses showed no such thing as as unitary trait of narcissism. Varimax rotated eigenvectors revealed two distinct and uncorrelated traits underlying the "narcissism" questions: Vulnerabiliy and grandiosity.

Freud's seminal article on narcisissm claimed that those two traits covaried but on Wink's results Freud's picture of the narcissist is fiction. The traits he describes do exist but they do not form the coherent syndrome described by him. So much talk of narcissism seems over generalized and confused. I would have been happier if our Swiss authors had used a good measure of grandiosity rather than a more widely dispersed account of narcissism. It would have given clearer results.

My other grumble is with their use of the absurd SDO measure. Its correlates are built into it. More on that here

But despite the limitations I have mentioned it is still a first class study of attitudes with highly defensible conclusions. It does convincingly show some thoroughly discreditable attitudes among extreme American Leftists.

Abstract of the Swiss study below:

Understanding left-wing authoritarianism: Relations to the dark personality traits, altruism, and social justice commitment

Ann Krispenz & Alex Bertrams

Abstract

In two pre-registered studies, we investigated the relationship of left-wing authoritarianism with the ego-focused trait of narcissism. Based on existing research, we expected individuals with higher levels of left-wing authoritarianism to also report higher levels of narcissism. Further, as individuals with leftist political attitudes can be assumed to be striving for social equality, we expected left-wing authoritarianism to also be positively related to prosocial traits, but narcissism to remain a significant predictor of left-wing authoritarianism above and beyond those prosocial dispositions. We investigated our hypotheses in two studies using cross-sectional correlational designs. Two nearly representative US samples (Study 1: N = 391; Study 2: N = 377) completed online measures of left-wing authoritarianism, the Dark Triad personality traits, and two variables with a prosocial focus (i.e., altruism and social justice commitment). In addition, we assessed relevant covariates (i.e., age, gender, socially desirable responding, and virtue signaling). The results of multiple regression analyses showed that a strong ideological view, according to which a violent revolution against existing societal structures is legitimate (i.e., anti-hierarchical aggression), was associated with antagonistic narcissism (Study 1) and psychopathy (Study 2). However, neither dispositional altruism nor social justice commitment was related to left-wing anti-hierarchical aggression. Considering these results, we assume that some leftist political activists do not actually strive for social justice and equality but rather use political activism to endorse or exercise violence against others to satisfy their own ego-focused needs. We discuss these results in relation to the dark-ego-vehicle principle

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-023-04463-x

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Biden’s Double-Talk on Antisemitism

The refusal of the Biden administration to back what is emerging as the gold standard definition of antisemitism is a shocking default. It throws into the mix a competing definition that allows antipathy to Jews to masquerade as criticism of Israel. Why is President Biden backsliding on this, save to accommodate the growing anti-Jewish flank of his party? He throws into doubt America’s resolve in fighting the world’s oldest hate.

The administration feints at moral clarity, acknowledging that the “most prominent” definition of antisemitism is the one adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which the United States has “embraced.” The government of Germany, for crying out loud, has endorsed it. For America, though, it is a grudging first among equals. It’s given hardly a ringing, or any, endorsement. That’s a dodge. The issue, of course, is Israel.

The IHRA labels as antisemitic “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” by “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to the Jewish state by “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” It recognizes that antisemitism is an inherent feature, not a bug, of anti-Zionism. The Jewish state and the state of the Jews are intertwined.

Next, the backtrack: “The Administration welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.” Nexus, drafted at the University of Southern California, maintains that “paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of antisemitism” because “there are numerous reasons for devoting special attention to Israel and treating Israel differently.”

What malarky. For if Nexus is true on its face then the IHRA definition can’t be true — and vice versa. So by letting Nexus through the door, President Biden negates the first endorsement and makes kosher a range of the attacks on Israel from the left. This is evident in an accompanying “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education trumpeting an “Antisemitism Awareness Campaign” that fails to mention the words “Israel” or “Zionism.”

It does mention kosher food. How nice. A catering plan would have done little to deter an address like, say, that offered at CUNY’s Law School this week, in which the speaker called — to applause — for “fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world” and claimed, to a room full of graduates and family, that “Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshipers, murdering the old, the young.”

With friends of the Nexus approach numbering the Council on American-Islamic Relations — they are acknowledged by the administration in an accompanying “fact sheet” that lists those who contributed to its efforts — who needs enemies? In a statement, CAIR marks that the strategy “does not adopt the disputed IHRA definition” of antisemitism as “binding policy” and sees in it a green light to “engage in BDS.”

Ambassador Haley, running for president, offers a helpful dose of clarity. She tweets that antisemitism is “not hard to define if you’re serious about stopping it.” She would know, having spent time at the United Nations, where Zionism was once declared racism and where antipathy to Israel is the constant — and leading — drumbeat. She calls the strategy “shameful” and an act of “pandering to the radical Left and siding with Israel’s enemies.”

Our own view is that it was a mistake to try to codify antisemitism in American policy or law. A decade ago in Germany an attempt was made to defend an attack on a synagogue by suggesting that the attackers’ motive was not antisemitic but merely anti-Zionist. The IHRA definition of antisemitism would have blocked that defense. Nexus enshrines it. It would be better to avoid adopting any official statement than opening the door to such mockery.

One sage with whom we spoke, Ruth Wisse, makes the point that it’s not all that complicated. She calls the administration’s strategy an “attempt to misdirect antisemitism so that you are justified in not dealing with it” and an example of “fighting yesterday’s war” at a time when anti-Zionism is the “great unifier” among those hostile to Jews. “Iran intends to destroy the state of Israel,” she observes. “What are we talking about?”

https://www.nysun.com/article/bidens-double-talk-on-antisemitism

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Fat people now officially a protected group in NYC: Mayor Eric Adams signs discrimination law that puts obesity in same category as race and religion

Obese people are now officially a protected group in New York City after Mayor Eric Adams signed a controversial discrimination law.

A new bill signed last Friday makes it illegal for employers and landlords to discriminate against someone based on their weight or height when it comes to hiring them or securing housing.

The law - which comes into effect November 2 - means weight and height are now added to the list of protected categories that includes traits such as race, sex and religion.

Mr Adams said: 'We all deserve the same access to employment, housing and public accommodation, regardless of our appearance, and it shouldn’t matter how tall you are or how much you weigh.'

The law had already triggered outrage in some quarters, with Republican New York City council minority leader Joseph Borelli claiming it will empower people to 'sue anyone and everything'.

Mr Adams, who has published a book on how he reversed his diabetes with a plant-based diet, said the law would 'help level the playing field for all New Yorkers, create more inclusive workplaces and living environments, and protect against discrimination'.

Exceptions to the rule include cases where someone's height or weight might stop them from performing critical parts of the job.

But the legislation was met with fierce opposition.

Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said that 'the extent of the impact and cost of this legislation' had not been 'fully considered'.

The bill had the support of charities and activists like self-styled 'Fat Fab Feminist' Victoria Abraham who testified to the city council in support of the legislation earlier this year.

Councilman Shaun Abreu, one of the bill's main sponsors, said he realized weight discrimination was a 'silent burden' after being treated differently when he gained more than 40lbs during lockdown.

The bill had the support of charities and activists like self-styled 'Fat Fab Feminist' Victoria Abraham who testified to the city council in support of the legislation earlier this year.

It is set to include a defense for employers where consideration of height or weight was 'reasonably necessary' for the 'normal operations' of a job.

Councilman Abreu said: 'They're being discriminated against with no recourse and society saying that's perfectly fine.'

Miss Abraham, who campaigns for civil rights for overweight people, testified to the city council to help inform policymaking.

She told ABC7NY: 'In most places in the United States, you can get fired for being fat and have no protection at all, which is crazy because this is a very fat country.'

A QUARTER of active duty US soldiers are obese after 10,000 got too fat during the pandemic

Nearly a quarter of active duty US soldiers are obese, a shocking study has revealed.

Councilman Borelli told the New York Times: 'I'm overweight but I'm not a victim. No-one should feel bad for me except my struggling shirt buttons.'

Michigan outlawed workplace discrimination based on weight in 1976 and other cities including San Francisco and Washington DC have similar legislation.

Other state-level bills have now been introduced in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Jersey.

New Jersey and Massachusetts have also introduced legislation to stop weight and height discrimination.

Tigress Osborn, the chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, said New York City's weight discrimination ban should serve as a model for the nation and the world.

Ms Osborn said the city's adoption of the new ordinance 'will ripple across the globe' and show that 'discrimination against people based on their body size is wrong and is something that we can change'.

It comes as US health officials said rates have soared to 'epidemic' proportions, with the obesity rate rocketing to 42 percent nationally.

Experts say the shift has been driven by people starting to eat more ultra-processed foods, which are high in fats, sugars and salts but low in vital nutrients.

Americans have also started to have more sedentary lifestyles and office-based jobs, while many in rural communities are now living in food deserts.

Being overweight puts you at a higher risk of a host of health problems, including high blood pressure and cholesterol - risk factors for heart disease - type 2 diabetes, and breathing problems.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12136287/Fat-people-officially-protected-group-NYC-Eric-Adams-signs-discrimination-law.html

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This ‘Pride’ Stuff Isn’t Healthy

Dennis Prager

Every left-wing movement is totalitarian. Therefore, it is not enough for people to tolerate or even show respect to LGBTQ individuals. Instead, we must all celebrate them.

I’ve never understood ethnic, race, gender, or sex pride. Even as a kid. For my bar mitzvah, someone gave me a book titled “Great Jews in Sports” or something like it.

Aside from the usual jokes—it was not a long book; the print and the photos were very large—what I remember best was that I had little interest in the book. I loved sports. And I strongly identified as a Jew—I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and attended yeshivas until the age of 19. So, my disinterest in the book didn’t emanate from either disinterest in sports or disinterest in Jews. I was keenly interested in both.

But even at the age of 13, the idea of ethnic pride meant little to me.

As far as I could tell, my friends—and, of course, the relative who gave me the book—considered the book quite meaningful. They were proud of Detroit Tigers Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, of the great Cleveland Indians third baseman Al Rosen, of the lightweight boxing champ Benny Leonard, and of the other Jews who were featured.

I apparently marched to the beat of a quirky drummer. It turned out, however, that my attitude at 13 wasn’t a quirk. Though I didn’t realize it then, it was actually the dawning of a conviction—that maybe group pride wasn’t a great idea.

The next time that view hit me was when I was in college and the slogan “black is beautiful” was becoming popular. This time, I did more than not relate to group pride; I objected to it. How could a race be beautiful? Isn’t the idea of a beautiful race itself racist?

When I raised these questions in my college and graduate school years, I was given one of two answers: After being put down for so many years, blacks needed to bolster their self-image. And since blacks—especially black women—had suffered greatly because white beauty was the normative standard of physical beauty, “black is beautiful” was a much-needed corrective.

These were entirely understandable explanations. But I still recoiled. Perhaps being a Jew born only a few years after the Holocaust rendered race-based pride scary.

It turned out my instinct was right: It is scary. “Black is beautiful” soon morphed into “black power,” a phrase that, often accompanied with a raised clenched fist, was meant to be scary. And then, in an echo of Aryan racism, terms like “race traitor” were thrown around to describe any black who wasn’t into “black power” or “black solidarity.”

Soon, feminist women joined the group solidarity bandwagon with “girl power;” “I am woman, hear me roar;” “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle;” “Any job a man can do, a woman can do better,” and other puerile celebrations of “sisterhood,” a term that applied only to women who shared feminist views. Women who didn’t share those views were not just gender traitors; they weren’t even women. Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem famously called conservative Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison a “female impersonator.”

Group pride is a characteristic of all left-wing thought and activism.

The most recent incarnation of group pride is LGBTQ pride. Every company, every professional sports team, every Democratic politician, and even the armed forces and American embassies around the world are expected to celebrate Pride month, Pride night, and year-round LGBTQ Pride.

This is problematic for at least two reasons.

First, what exactly is one proud of? What accomplishment is involved in being gay, lesbian, or bisexual? Even “transgender” is allegedly built into one’s nature.

Isn’t the entire premise of the LGBTQ movement that one does not choose one’s sexual orientation or sexual identity? Wasn’t anyone who argued that homosexuality is a choice declared a hater and a science denier?

So, then, if no choice is involved, no effort on the part of the individual—let alone no moral accomplishment—what is there to be proud of? Maybe I couldn’t identify with Jewish pride over great Jewish athletes, but at least they all actually accomplished something.

The other problematic element has to do with why the LGBTQ movement does everything possible to bludgeon every institution into celebrating Pride nights, days, weeks, and months. The reason is the totalitarian nature of all left-wing movements.

Unlike liberal and conservative movements, every left-wing movement is totalitarian. Therefore, it is not enough for people to tolerate or even show respect to LGBTQ individuals. We must all celebrate lesbianism, male homosexuality, the transgendered, and queers. No left-wing movement is a movement for tolerance. They are movements that demand celebration.

For the first time in any of our lifetimes, the Left may have met an immovable obstacle. Americans are prepared to tolerate just about everything and everyone. But at least half of us will not celebrate girls who have their breasts removed—or the therapists and physicians who facilitate it. At least half of us will not celebrate men dressed as women, especially those who dance in front of 6-year-olds. And while some medical schools have been cowed into saying “birthing person” rather than “pregnant woman,” at least half of us will hold the cowards who run these medical schools in contempt.

I return to my opening point. I have devoted much of my life to helping my fellow Jews. It started when I was 21 years old and the Israeli foreign office sent me into the Soviet Union to smuggle in Jewish items and smuggle out names of Jews wanting to leave the Soviet Union. I have brought many disaffected Jews back to Judaism. And I have constantly fought for Israel’s security.

I am very happy to be a Jew. But I don’t quite relate to being proud of it—it was not my achievement; it was an accident of birth. That is equally true of your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and orientation. You don’t get credit for, shouldn’t be proud of, and have no right to demand others celebrate something you had nothing to do with.

Finally, if you’re honest, group pride must be accompanied by group shame. Yes, a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners were Jews. But a disproportionate number of Western spies for Stalin were also Jews. If you’re not prepared to be ashamed of your group, don’t take pride in it. That rule applies to blacks, gays, women, Christians, and every other group in the world.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/05/24/lefts-totalitarian-nature-is-why-cant-just-tolerate-lgbtq-pride-must-celebrate-it/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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I Dated an Andrew Tate Fan — and Loved Every Second of It

Derya Y.

There is a possibility that this is satire but it has the ring of truth. What it reports is consistent with Tate as a champion of traditional values. Certainly in his personal life he does appear to be respectful of women in at least some ways. He has women in his life who defend him. His public pronouncements may be little more than clickbait. So the story below may show that aggressively male attitudes may not be "toxic" at all

A small caution: "Derya" is a Turkish name and some of her attitudes seem to reflect that origin. What if Tate males and Westernized Turkish women are generally compatible? Tate is at present in Romania, which is quite close to Turkey. Although Turkey is a Muslim country, Kemalist traditions have made them quite Westernized in many ways




It’s no secret that Andrew Tate fans have a bad reputation. As one of the leading mascots of the manosphere — a curated corner of the internet dedicated to masculinity and, in most cases, misogyny — Andrew Tate popularized the “alpha male” phenomenon.

In short, alpha males focus on money, women, and muscles. For Testosterone Kings™, these are essential, encapsulating what manhood is all about. Anything beyond these (e.g., hobbies, relationships, a life) is a mere nice-to-have.

Needless to say, I’m not a fan.

At a party once, I’d overheard a known Tate fan (a proud student of Tate’s Hustlers University) criticize one of his friends for not “fuckin’ the bitch.”

Apparently, his friend had “wasted his fuckin’ time” by spending three hours conversing with a girl without sleeping with her. For a quick refresher, Tate views conversations with women as useless unless you sleep with them. Because, let’s be honest, what do women have to offer besides sex? Nothing, duh!

On top of that, this friend had made the grave mistake of heavily investing in this woman. He bought her a $10 drink! And he didn’t get sex in return! What a money-hungry gold digger!

As per Tate’s scripture, three hours of conversation and a $10 drink should grant men full access to a woman’s orifices. I say orifices because I’m not sure these men would know which hole to put it in if they, indeed, “fucked the bitch.”

After hearing that interaction, I sternly concluded all Tate fans to be depraved scoundrels that litter the world. And for the most part, I still believe that. Most self-proclaimed alpha males are the embodiment of pathetic. They may as well walk around with a neon “Do Not Engage” sign on their forehead.

One man, however, created a (previously unfathomable) grey area, proving that men can agree with some of Tate’s views while still being decent human beings — and spectacular dates, at that.

Let’s call him Jeff.

Jeff and I met on a dating app — yes, I know, the start of all great love stories.

He was extremely handsome in his pictures — so much so that I thought he was a catfish. But I didn’t overthink it. Worst case scenario, I could at least write an article about my catfishing experience.

One swipe and a couple of eloquent paragraph exchanges later, we decided to meet. Mind you, up until this point, neither his profile nor our conversation indicated any Tate-ist beliefs. So I took a leap of faith.

For our first date, he’d organized drinks and dinner at a restaurant on the nice side of town, sending an Uber to come and get me. A true gentleman, I thought.

Nudged by my little prayer beforehand, I got in the Uber and hoped for the best — just as most women do before meeting strangers off the internet.

When I got there, I saw him. He looked just like his picture: Attractive and built like Popeye after 12 spoonfuls of spinach.

He opened all my doors, took my coat off, and pulled my chair out for me — all unprompted!

With the increasingly anti-chivalrous dating sphere, this was a glimmer of hope. But I composed myself, silently noting the brownie points he had earned right off the bat.

Almost straight away, we started discussing male-female dynamics in relationships.

Him coming from Western Europe, and I from Eastern Europe, I was curious to see his thoughts on polarity in relationships. I prefer traditional relationship dynamics, so I needed to understand his thoughts beforehand, lest I’m bullied for my “backward thinking,” as an Englishman once called it.

As our conversation continued, we entered a flow state, continuously nodding in agreement with each other.

He believed in taking accountability as the man in the relationship, and I believed in reveling in the feminine.

As our trance of nods went on, and we discussed our mutual desire for a serious relationship, my ears perked up as I heard some manosphere jargon: “High-value woman,” “territorial,” “masculine energy,” and “protecting and providing.”

Was I…was I dating an Andrew Tate fan? Surely not. Surely I would’ve picked up on it earlier. Granted, his bald head and massive muscles were dead giveaways, but I chose to be oblivious. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps he picked up these beliefs during some spiritual retreat in Bali?

Maybe he was into Chinese philosophy — particularly the yin-yang model?

Or was this what he saw growing up, modeled by his parents?

As I picked these scenarios apart, trying to get him to disclose which one of these was the culprit, I eventually had to dismiss them all.

When he muttered the words “red pill,” I got my answer.

And there I was, having a wonderful, chemistry-fueled date with an Andrew Tate fan. Oh, God.

Did he expect sex on the first date? Following the other Tate fan’s rationale, not only did I have to sleep with Jeff right after, but I probably had to do three backflips, one somersault, and four cartwheels while I was at it. It was dinner and drinks, after all.

What had I gotten myself into? I had to shut down any expectations.

At the end of the date, I blurted out my truth bomb — a truth bomb I knew most men wouldn’t want to hear after a fantastic first date. Half expecting he’d never want to see me again after this, I told him I was celibate, abstaining until I met the one.

He looked at me. I looked at him. And he got upset — but not for the reasons I thought he would.

He was upset that I thought my celibacy would put him off.

He was disappointed I didn’t believe what he had said on our date: That he was dating intentionally and actually looking for ‘the one.’ And it was true — up until that point, I hadn’t. I thought they were sweet nothings, a pick-up artist method meant to lure me into bed.

But he was genuine — and completely supported my celibacy.

So I stood there like a fool; half in awe, half questioning whether I fell in love on a first date.

The next few months with Jeff were magical: I was treated like a princess from start to finish.

Not only did he plan the most thoughtful, swoon-worthy dates, but we had the same long-term goals, a compatible sense of humor, and fantastic chemistry. Our conversations were never-ending, exciting, and full of passion. I had fallen head over heels for him.

And despite some of his questionable beliefs, I never felt any “toxic masculinity” lingering in the air. He made me feel safe, protected, and cherished with his empathy, self-awareness, and devotion — three things I could never imagine in Andrew Tate.

Perhaps, it is possible to cherry-pick at Tate’s red-pill ideology, taking whatever serves relationship polarity while ditching (read: burning) the ‘loverboy’ methods he espouses.

Unfortunately, Jeff and I have since broken up; circumstances beyond our control took their toll on us. But I stand firm in my belief that if anything is meant to be, it will be. Even if that means ending up with a red-pilled Andrew Tate fan.

https://medium.com/illumination/i-dated-an-andrew-tate-fan-and-i-loved-every-second-of-it-9508d267fd42

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How Black Lives Matter Got Police Violence Wrong

In the early 2000s the United States enjoyed comparative racial optimism. Majorities of both black and white citizens felt race relations were improving. Even left-leaning NPR highlighted “colorblindness” as an ideal. A generation later, race relations have nosedived. We hear regularly about “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” Colorblindness now is considered racist. This whiplash may leave many people wondering what happened.

The collapse in race relations began in 2014. Exactly why this year was pivotal is unknown, though it coincides with the debunked "hands up, don't shoot" framing of the Michael Brown killing and a larger “great awokening” wherein extreme identitarian views became more influential on the political left. Since 2014, little data suggests race disparities have gotten worse. Racist attitudes in the United States are at historic lows. However, news media coverage worrying over racism soared.

I studied this issue empirically in 2021. I wanted to see whether actual police shootings of unarmed black men correlated with race relations or whether news media coverage highlighting police shootings of black men was a better predictor. It turns out race relations are unrelated to actual police shootings, but correlate with news media coverage, which tends to obsess over shootings of black Americans while ignoring shootings of other individuals.

The Moral Panic Over Race and Policing

After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, the United States experienced a “racial reckoning.” News media claimed police were systemically targeting black Americans for fatal violence. Defunding or even literally abolishing policing became serious policy proposals. The United States, we were told, was systemically racist.

Data on policing and race is complex and nuanced. Police killings of unarmed suspects are rare, according to the Washington Post, and they’ve been declining. Numbers peak at 95 for all races in 2015, declining to 32 for all races in 2021.

When it comes to police shootings of unarmed individuals, white suspects are shot more often than black suspects (by contrast, Asians are rarely shot by police compared to either group). Though more unarmed whites than blacks are killed by police, black suspects are indeed proportionally overrepresented. We can see the proportional differences in the following chart:

However, commission of violent crime is also ethnically disproportional. Black and Hispanic men commit violent crimes disproportionally more often than do white or Asian men. That police shootings and commission of violent crime so neatly track one another is not a coincidence.

One might conclude that, perhaps, over-representation of black Americans as perpetrators of violent crime might be due to overpolicing of black communities. However, when we look at victims of homicide, most of which are the same race as the killers, we see the same pattern of black victims being overrepresented. This means the overpolicing hypothesis does not fit the data.

It is also worth noting that most young men of any ethnicity do not commit violent crimes. Race itself is not a determinant of violent crime. In one recent study, although racial composition of neighborhoods predicted violent crime, race no longer predicted violent crime once other community factors such as insufficient food, housing issues, air pollution and proportion of single-parent homes are controlled..

Studies largely find the same thing when it comes to excessive use of police force. In another recent study, we found that class issues, particularly communities experiencing higher levels of mental health issues among residents -- not race -- predicted reports of excessive police force (except for Latinos, who reported less police force). To be fair, studies on this do vary in conclusion. However, in my view the weight of evidence suggests that class, not race, predicts excessive police force.

We found that higher levels of mental health problems among community residents predicted reports of excessive police force. This is probably because police are likely coming into contact with mentally ill residents who may escalate an encounter that began over something trivial. Other studies also suggest the chronically mentally ill more often experience physical force during police encounters. The mentally ill may struggle to respond to aggressive police commands. Thus, relatively minor encounters initially may intensify into dangerous situations. Better police training with mental illness may help.

Progressive “Fixes” Have Often Made Things Worse

Though often ostensibly speaking on behalf of minority groups, progressive theories on race have often made practical situations worse. The most obvious cost to low-income neighborhoods has been in delegitimizing or even defunding police and the predictable surge in crime that created. Evidence does suggests that the George Floyd protests and riots were associated with increased resignations of police officers as well as decreased policing in high-crime neighborhoods. These in turn, were associated with increased violent crime.

There are more subtle, harmful impacts as well. Informing people that they are at ever-present danger from police can be traumatizing. Research has long demonstrated that convincing people they are victims causes them to perceive injustice where it may not actually occur.

It doesn’t help the Black Lives Matter organization has undermined confidence in its mission through a lack of transparency on financial matters and spending millions on mansions for its leaders, with comparatively little to show for how they have helped ordinary Black poor or working-class people.

There is a wide space between thinking the United States is a racial utopia and that it’s an early 20th century apartheid state. But if we promote pessimistic narratives that are not well-grounded in data and focus on “solutions” that emphasize our differences and conflicts, we may actually risk the exact bad outcomes we hoped to alleviate.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/05/24/investigative_issues_how_black_lives_matter_got_police_violence_wrong_900833.html

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Why Do Leftists Get a Pass on Their Racism Toward Tim Scott, Other Black Republicans?

Whoever prevails, the 2024 Republican primary cycle is going to work out like all modern-day cycles. Inevitably, liberal Democrat reporters are going to end up loading buckets of slime and unloading them on every half-plausible candidate on the Republican side of the campaign.

Even then-Sen. John McCain learned the hard way that his media pals would turn on him when it counted.

On Tuesday, Sen. Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, announced he was running for president. The Left desperately wants to cartoon the Republican electorate as a pack of white supremacists, so Scott, of South Carolina, has to be mocked as the worst kind of African American.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, now the laziest host in cable news—she only works Mondays—mocked Scott’s vocal delivery. “That was a rough first three seconds of his presidential campaign,” said Maddow, laughing. “But who knows? Maybe it was just a rough first couple of seconds. Maybe in the end, he will do great. It worked out great for Peter Brady, in the end. He got through it. It was tough.”

Maddow compared a 57-year-old black man to a teenage white boy going through puberty. It’s not hard to guess how this would have been greeted if someone mocked the Almighty Barack Obama this way. It would be racist.

Then there are the pompous pundettes on ABC’s “The View,” lecturing Scott that he can’t possibly run for president based on optimism about America’s racial situation. Sunny Hostin waved him off: “I don’t know who his message is supposed to resonate with, actually. He’s talking about victimhood and personal responsibility as if people aren’t taking responsibility for their own actions.”

Whoopi Goldberg echoed, “He came out and did that dog whistle: victimhood.”

Hostin said being a successful black man is rare: “He is the exception, and not the rule. And until he is the rule, then he can stop talking about systemic racism.” You can either agree America’s a systemic racist cesspool, or you can shut up. Goldberg dropped the bomb: “He’s got Clarence Thomas Syndrome.”

Who is really demeaning black Americans in this debate? Apparently, racial pessimism is forever.

Journalists will also make routine fun of Scott’s Christianity. Washington Post political reporter Ben Terris tweeted on announcement day, “Tim Scott will be the first prez candidate I’ve ever asked about the status of his virginity.” A few years ago, lifelong bachelor Scott coyly answered Terris that the ship had sailed, but he insisted adultery was a sin. Why ask? Because Scott used to preach abstinence before marriage, which apparently opens the door to invasive personal questions.

So, if Vice President Kamala Harris is pro-abortion, has Terris asked her how many abortions she’s had? Or how many she’s funded, since she’s so pro-abortion?

So far, the GOP presidential field contains two black men and two Indian Americans, but Republicans are still hopelessly racist, because any Republican “of color” is cartooned as a self-loathing Clarence Thomas, a token desperate for white approval.

The Left thinks any pushback on their inaccurately described “diversity, equity, and inclusion” agenda is a politics of grievance. They’re never introspective enough to see their own sign as pushing division and racial hatred for political gain.

Scott’s optimistic and patriotic vision is a breath of fresh air—fresher than the “Joy [Behar], Whoopi, and Sunny” team will ever be.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/05/24/why-do-leftists-loathe-tim-scotts-racial-optimism

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Australia: Gender transition insurance cover cut for GPs

That would effectively bar them from assisting with gender transitions. They may be able to find another insurer but that may not continue.

One of the country’s biggest medical insurers will no longer cover private practitioners prescribing gender-affirming care to adolescents, in a move that could leave young people languishing on already-stretched public waiting lists.

MDA National, one of four major medical indemnity providers insuring GPs and other private practitioners against legal claims, updated its policy this month to exclude cover for claims “arising from aspects of gender transitioning treatment for under 18-year-old patients”.

Dr Michael Gannon, the organisation’s president, said young people experiencing gender dysphoria should be initially assessed by multidisciplinary teams in hospital – not by GPs.

“This is the same hospital system that is very, very comfortable placing greater demands on general practitioners,” he said. “It’s simply not fair to ask individual GPs in the suburbs or the bush to be making these complex decisions on their own.”

Gannon said the decision was made in response to legal cases overseas, including the high-profile inquiry into, and subsequent closure of, Britain’s only children’s gender clinic.

“We’re not taking a moral stance or an ethical stance – this is very much an insurance decision,” he said. “We don’t think we can accurately and fairly price the risk of regret.”

Dr Michelle Dutton, a GP in Fitzroy North in Melbourne, said she was leaving MDA National for a different provider before the change takes effect on July 1. “It’s disappointing ... I need to be covered for the work that I do as a GP, and if that work is no longer covered, I need to find a different provider,” she said. “I would have changed anyway because I fundamentally disagree with the decision.”

Dr Portia Predny, a GP at Sydney’s Rozelle Medical Centre and vice-president of the trans health advocacy body AusPATH, said she was concerned the change would further limit the options available to transgender adolescents by discouraging private practitioners from treating them.

“There are very few clinics who actually service this group of patients,” she said. “There’s already barriers to care for this age group – this is care that’s often life-saving, and that’s not an exaggeration.”

She said AusPATH had been reassured by two other major insurers, Avant and Medical Indemnity Protection Society (MIPs), that they would continue to cover GPs prescribing hormones to transgender patients under 18.

Predny said GPs were already working with other healthcare providers, such as psychiatrists and endocrinologists, to provide safe care to young patients.

“To state that the only way for people to access interdisciplinary care is through a multidisciplinary clinic [at a hospital] is misleading,” she said.

NSW has publicly funded gender clinics at Westmead Hospital and Maple Leaf House in Newcastle.

As of March 2023, there were 139 clients aged under 25 waiting for treatment at Maple Leaf House, though a spokesperson said not all those patients would be seeking medical-affirming care.

In Victoria, the Monash Health Gender Clinic is the only specialist public service available to transgender people between the ages of 16 and 18.

Associate Professor Ruth McNair, from the University of Melbourne’s department of general practice, said requiring every young person experiencing gender dysphoria to go through a public gender clinic first would place an even greater strain on waiting lists. “The system is overloaded,” she said. “Kids are left with nowhere to go.”

McNair said GPs who prescribe hormones to underage patients were already very cautious, and any patients with complex clinical histories, such as pre-existing mental health problems or past trauma, were urgently referred to public clinics for specialist treatment.

For young trans people, early support ‘could save a life’
“I consider the risk to be higher if I’m blocking a young person from care,” she said. “What’s the real risk? It’s to the health of the young person.

“It’s a bit short-sighted really. They’re trying to capture the [minority] of cases [where patients regret].”

MDA National will still cover GPs providing repeat prescriptions for gender-affirming hormones and general healthcare for patients with gender dysphoria.

The company said the decision would affect “well under a hundred” of its 40,000 members.

In 2021, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists released a position statement defining a “gender-affirmative approach” as one that accepts rather than questions a child’s statements about their gender identity.

In a rare local case, a Sydney woman is suing her psychiatrist for professional negligence relating to her gender transition, which she began at age 19.

However, the regret rate for people who medically transition in childhood or adolescence remains low.

Last year, a Dutch study published in The Lancet found 98 per cent of 720 transgender participants who started gender-affirming hormones in adolescence continued their treatment into adulthood.

A 2021 systematic review of 27 studies with a combined 7928 transgender patients found about 1 per cent expressed regret after undergoing gender-affirming surgeries.

Eloise Brook, the policy and communication manager at the Gender Centre in Annandale, said the decision jeopardised the “hard work” and investment that has been put into making gender-affirming care more accessible through family GPs.

“This is a moment where I’m fearful for families,” she said. “Insurance should not be the space in which medical decisions should be made.”

Dr Mitch Squire, a GP who provides gender-affirming care to adolescents at his clinic in Sydney’s inner west, said he would have no choice but to move providers if his insurer no longer covered him for the service.

“It would be a pretty straightforward decision for me,” he said. “There is a small but quantifiable regret rate, and given that changes can be permanent, that cover is absolutely essential.”

https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/what-s-the-real-risk-gender-transition-insurance-cover-cut-for-gps-20230523-p5damx.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Target Shares Fall Following ‘Pride’ Push

Shares of Target have recently declined after the company launched LGBTQ products, including items aimed at children, triggering a backlash from Americans against the retailer’s transgender push.

Target rolled out its Pride collection at the beginning of the month, offering over 2,000 products, including clothing, books, home furnishings, and calendars, among others. Some of the items were targeted at children. For example, books for kids aged 2–8 had titles like “Pride 1,2,3,” “Bye Bye, Binary,” and “I’m Not a Girl.” Target also suggested “The Pronoun Book” to kids aged 0–3. In home décor, Target offered mugs labeled “Gender Fluid.” It also offered transgender swimsuits for adults with a “tuck-friendly” feature.

The company’s actions attracted a lot of negative reactions online, with the hashtag “BoycottTarget” trending across social media.

Amid the backlash, Target’s shares have declined by 11 percent as of 11:00 a.m. EST on May 25. Between May 1 and May 24, the company’s market capitalization fell from $72.52 billion to $66.05 billion, a decline of $6.47 billion.

In a May 24 press release, the company announced removing some of the controversial items. “Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work.

“Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”

Liz Wheeler, who hosts “The Liz Wheeler Show” video podcast, called out Target for not apologizing for promoting “pride” agenda.

“Target executives are freaking out & moving ‘pride’ displays to the back of the store. But DO NOT CAVE. They’re not apologizing. They’re blaming YOU, claiming conservatives who oppose a Satanist designing queer merchandise for kids are a ‘threat,’” she said in a May 24 tweet.

Satanist Products

Some of the items in Target’s Pride collection were designed by UK-based designer Abprallen, who identifies as a transgender gay man and is a proclaimed Satanist.

There were two items from Abprallen in the Pride collection. However, the products are now not available in Target’s online store following the backlash, according to Breitbart.

An outspoken Satanist, Abprallen is known for pushing messages like “Satan respects pronouns” on apparel and “burn down the cis-tem.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) slammed Target for its ties with a Satanist. “Even by the standards of woke corporations, @Target’s partnership with a satanist to push the trans agenda on children is remarkable. The next time @Target comes begging for help, Republicans should respond, ‘best of luck,’” he said in a May 23 tweet.

Protecting Children

The Democrat governor of California, Gavin Newsom, hit out at Target for pulling out items from the Pride collection, calling the move “selling out the LGBTQ+ community to extremists.”

“This isn’t just a couple [of] stores in the South. There is a systematic attack on the gay community happening across the country. Wake up America. This doesn’t stop here. You’re black? You’re Asian? You’re Jewish? You’re a woman? You’re next,” he said in a May 24 tweet.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) countered Newsom by insisting that “no one is attacking the gay community.”

“They don’t want their children forcefully exposed to the radical side of pride with ‘tuck it’ and ‘binding’ children’s clothes and messaging while simply shopping at Target. We don’t support your California child genital mutilation industry. As a matter of fact, I want to end it,” she said in a tweet.

The backlash against Target is the latest in a series of customer reactions against companies pushing left-wing, progressive ideologies. Last month, Bud Light used transgender social media personality Dylan Mulvaney in a promotional campaign.

The decision triggered a massive boycott call of the beer brand. In less than two weeks after the promo campaign, Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, had lost at least $6.65 billion in market capitalization.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/target-shares-fall-following-pride-push_5291156.html

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160-Plus Retired Military Brass Urge Congress To Root Out DOD’s Poisonous ‘Diversity’ And ‘Equity’ Programs

More than 160 retired generals and admirals recently signed a letter calling on Congress to remove so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs from the Department of Defense and remove funding for such programs from the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

“As our Nation faces looming threats from ‘foreign’ adversaries/enemies, our military is under assault from a culture war stemming from ‘domestic’ ideologically inspired political policies and practices. … Our military must be laser focused on one mission — readiness, undiminished by the culture war engulfing our country,” Flag Officers 4 America wrote in the letter addressed to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Armed Services Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers, and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert.

The signatories — which included former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston, and former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Gerald Boykin — expressed concern about how divisive and discriminatory DEI policies affect national security. So-called “equity,” they wrote, “sounds benign, but in practice it lowers standards. While equality provides equal opportunities, equity’s goal is equal outcomes.”

The officers argued that equal opportunity and meritocracy provide the greatest foundation for both equality and national defense, while the cultural Marxism promoted by DEI policies is a domestic threat to our national security.

“To achieve equal outcomes using identity group characteristics, standards must be lowered to accommodate the desired equity outcomes. Lower standards reduce performance where even slight differences in capability impact readiness and can determine war fighting mission success or failure,” they wrote. Furthermore, obsession with identity causes “friction and distrust in the ranks, damaging unit cohesion, teamwork and unity of effort, further degrading readiness.”

Instead of DEI, the signatories advocated for a return to longstanding meritocratic military recruitment standards, pointing to a long history of true inclusivity and diversity that accompanied those standards.

“Service Members (SMs) were judged not by the color of their skin but by their character, duty performance, and potential,” the officers explained. “Meritocracy, coupled with equal opportunity, created conditions for all to advance and excel, which stimulates healthy competition, thereby raising standards.”

According to the retired officers, meritocracy is “essential for winning,” and at a time when America faces looming foreign threats, the last thing our military needs is to be distracted by domestic social engineering and “wokeism.”

We have fought for our Nation and are sounding the alarm that DEI poses a grave danger to our military warfighting ethos and is degrading warfighting readiness. … China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are not distracted by DEI programs; no doubt they are watching us. Equal opportunity and merit-based performance have been battle tested for generations and proven essential for success. DEI policies and practices must be eliminated from the DoD to protect our critical warfighting readiness.

Flag Officers 4 America DEI letter May 20, 2023 by The Federalist on Scribd

The letter comes after the House recently introduced the 2024 NDAA, which as of May 23 does not yet include provisions to remove funding from DEI programs. While the DOD reportedly disbanded its education wing’s DEI initiative in March, the poisonous agenda has subsequently burrowed deeper into the system.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/24/160-plus-retired-military-brass-urge-congress-to-root-out-dods-poisonous-diversity-and-equity-programs/

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The establishment's war on Trump

As one Twitter wag put it, virtually the only ones not involved in the Trump-Russia collusion scandal turned out to be Trump and Russia. The release of Special Prosecutor John Durham’s final report into the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation exposed Stasi-style plotting between the Clinton campaign, the FBI and the Obama regime to first prevent, then knobble, Donald Trump’s presidency. This amounted to an attempted palace coup.

Yet the fix is in. No one has been charged and the key players will be chuckling smugly into their whiskies as a wave of disgust passes over those privy to the report’s details, both conservatives largely aware of the truth years ago, and those newly awakened by the forensic detail of this damning, four-year, $6 million probe.

Include among the latter CNN’s Trump-despising anchor Jake Tapper, who said the report exonerated Trump and was devastating to the FBI; never-Trump conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, who wrote: ‘It was a nefarious plan, enacted at the highest levels of government, to corrupt an election and undermine a presidency’ and legal eminence Jonathan Turley, who lambasted ‘the alliance of political, government and media figures behind arguably the greatest hoax in US history’.

The rot goes right to the top, and those involved knew from the beginning the Russia-gate hoax was a Clinton dirty trick. Then-CIA director John Brennan writes in August 2016 of briefing Obama and others of the Clinton campaign’s plan ‘to vilify Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services’. After years of denials, it emerged that the Clinton campaign had paid for the fake, Trump-smearing Steele dossier, and then marketed it in the corridors of power. Then came the Mueller investigation, the Horowitz report, two Trump impeachments, a cascade of court cases, raids and process charges against Trump associates, forests of newsprint and years of smears. Where the FBI downplayed Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and shut down four other Clinton probes, they treated Trump differently, Durham says, eagerly going after him despite no verifiable evidence. And the penalty? Here Durham turns mild, urging greater fidelity to the law. The FBI agrees, yes, there were missteps but they’ve changed lots of rules. But if they didn’t follow the rules first time around, why would they next time?

Some examples. When Donald Trump won in 2016, he tweeted soon after that his wires were being tapped. Much mockery ensued. Of course, we weren’t spying on Trump Tower, laughed then-FBI boss James Comey. As years passed it turned out that yes, the FBI had indeed wiretapped the new president’s campaign in Trump Tower but that wasn’t spying! Good lord, no! Spying is unauthorised surveillance, said Comey. What he did was authorised surveillance, not spying. So that’s alright. Durham adds the cherry on top by revealing emails from Comey to his staff hassling them for court orders so spying – ‘surveillance’ – could begin. The shameless Comey went on to write a book on ethical leadership.

A second example: former House Intelligence Committee chairman, Adam Schiff, propelled the Russia hoax for years, maintaining he’d seen direct evidence of Trump collusion with Russia, he couldn’t reveal it yet, but it was there for sure, he’d seen it. That evidence never surfaced, and Durham finds there was none. A GOP congresswoman is now trying to get ‘Shifty Schiff’ tossed from Congress.

Alas, this dismal catalogue of evil-doers now feel they’ve got away with it. These are not people who ever wanted to do the right thing, they just wanted to stop Trump. Ex-FBI lynchpins such as Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok are now all over friendly media saying the lack of prosecutions means what they did was no big deal. These moral pygmies think that because they broke the law legally, so to speak, using lies of omission and commission, delaying tactics, process failures, semantics, loopholes and every other trick in the bureaucrats’ book, they have won. But these plotters have destroyed the legitimacy of the FBI, which now stands corrupted, trashed the US claim to lead the free world, and engendered profound distrust and polarisation across the nation. Worse, having been unchecked, the FBI continues to punch down, ignoring Hunter Biden’s laptop which they have possessed since 2019, and the many claims of bribery and pay-to-play around the Biden family, and instead targeting conservatives, with censorship campaigns on Twitter recently exposed, and the vicious persecution of January 6 protesters continuing, many of whom still rot in jail.

The FBI has not always been this bad. After the shock of 9/11, however, the Patriot Act vastly expanded US law enforcement’s tools and the agencies are now massive, drunk with power and politicised, dubbed by some a 35,000-strong Praetorian guard running protection for Democrats. The actions of this cabal provide a prism for understanding the continuing lawfare against Trump. If all the cases currently up against him fail, they will simply find new ones. The war goes on.

Where this becomes relevant for Australia is realising the conformist groupthink behind US policies. The Durham report shows a one-party state running the US, with divergent views expunged, not considered. Such closed-minded thinking is more typical of totalitarian states, where courts of yes-men deny reality until it overtakes them. Witness the recent unhappy catalogue of US foreign policy blunders – forever wars in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and now the proxy war in Ukraine, the all-but-admitted bombing of the Nordstream pipeline – and the flawed decision-making becomes more understandable.

The persecution rolls on. In heartbreaking testimony last week, three FBI whistleblowers told Congress how their lives had been crushed by the bureau in revenge for revelations such as deliberate inflation of domestic terrorism figures. GOP Rep. Harriet Hageman likened the FBI to the baleful Eye of Sauron, from Lord of the Rings, turned on the citizenry. Here’s my literary image. In The Old Man of the Sea, Sinbad the Sailor tells of being tricked into carrying an old man on his shoulders.

The monster clamps down hard in a deadly grip; unable to be dislodged, he rides Sinbad long and hard. The sailor gradually weakens, escaping only by getting the old man drunk. In the same way, parasitic elites are fixed fast atop the US power structure, sucking the lifeblood from the body politic, and no one has yet found a way to dislodge them.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/the-dirty-war-on-trump/

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Bravo! Australian PM knows what a woman is

British broadcaster Piers Morgan asked the Prime Minister the question on his new show 'Piers Morgan Uncensored' on Sky News in early May.

Mr Albanese gave a very simple answer to the question, defining a woman as 'an adult female'.

'How difficult was that to answer?,' Morgan then asked.

'Not too hard. I was asked during the campaign actually, but I think that we need to respect people for whoever they are,' Mr Albanese said.

The 'what is a woman' question has become controversial in recent months, with many politicians struggling to answer in fear of upsetting critics or supporters of trans rights.

However Mr Albanese's answer continues to anger many in the transgender community, with some calling him a 'transphobe' and claiming he is using talking points echoed by TERF (Trans-exclusionary radical feminist).

The CEO of Equality Australia, Anna Brown, suggested that the prime minister shouldn't answer a question designed to 'attack' transgender people.

'But when any leader is asked a question designed to attack trans women, they should first call it out for what it is,' she told media.

'They can instead speak to trans people in Australia and directly let them know that they will not be part of the punching down.'

Greens MP Stephen Bates said the prime minister needed to 'get a spine and stop mumbling platitudes in an attempt to placate the transphobes'.

'You don't get to march with us in Mardi Gras and then ignore us when things get tricky for you,' he wrote.

During the interview, Albanese was also grilled by Morgan on the issue of transgender athletes in women's sport.

'That's an example in that the sporting organisations are dealing with that issue,' Mr Albanese said. 'My view is the sporting organisations should deal with that issue.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12134437/Backlash-erupts-Anthony-Albaneses-answer-woman-question.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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When There’s No White Supremacy, Just Make It Up

A graduating class from Howard University gathered to hear a speech of hope and encouragement as they prepared to take their milestone steps from education to practical application in a chosen career.

Usually talks such as this include a reflection of the years students have spent working hard on their academics and recognizing the positive results that come from the goal-setting that has led them to earn a college degree. The ability to focus and overcome challenges are valuable qualities that will serve them as they work to reach their lifelong goals.

However, it seems as though this year’s commencement speaker, President Joe Biden, didn’t get the memo when it came to putting together remarks that would send the graduates off into the real world with memorable statements to carry with them from their final moments in college throughout their lives as working professionals.

What they got instead was a speech focused on racism. They were told by the president of the United States: “The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy. And I’m not saying this because I’m at a black HBCU. I say it wherever I go.”

Of course, we know that’s exactly why he said it: to influence an entire class of hardworking future leaders of America whose ancestors and allies already sacrificed and survived the Civil War; endured slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the KKK; and fought with the Civil Rights movement. He wants them to continue to be held back by the past instead of using everything they’ve just achieved to create a better future for themselves and their descendants.

Of course, Joe Biden isn’t the only one spreading this misinformation.

While discussing the threats to the United States during an MSNBC interview, Alejandro Mayorkas parroted a similar message: “In the terrorism context, domestic violent extremism is our greatest threat right now. … Regrettably, we have seen a rise in white supremacy.”

In discussing these issues with the United States secretary of homeland security, the correct follow-up to the assertion that white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat to America would have been to ask for examples of where these threats have been recorded and prosecuted. As the leader of the Department of Homeland Security, Mayorkas would personally oversee and be informed of all threats to our national leaders, our critical infrastructure, our ports, and our cybersecurity, just to name a few. If anyone would know about when and where these incidents of white supremacist terrorism are happening, it would be him.

However, the role of today’s journalists does not seem to be to gather evidence and provide a comprehensive view of an issue, but rather to create a narrative and then simply ask the person at the head of that narrative to agree.

And the role of the current administration is to create "evidence” to back up its claims when there is none.

This was demonstrated following the May 6 shooting at an outlet mall in Texas, where just hours after the horrific act had been carried out, the story was pushed that this had been done by a white supremacist who belonged to a gang with the beliefs of such and who displayed swastika tattoos on his body. However, it didn’t take long for the details to become public, and I’m sure we were all surprised (or not) to discover that the name and photo of the perpetrator was that of a man of Hispanic ethnicity.

Similarly, at around 10:00 p.m. this past Monday evening, someone was detained after crashing a U-Haul box truck into the security barriers on the north side of the White House. Once again, before any details of the individual could be released, the story pushed by the media was that this was yet another act of white supremacy. And again, when the identity of the driver came to light, the name and photo was that of an Indian man.

It looks as though it is possible to make the claim that white supremacy is the most dangerous terrorist threat our nation faces if the plan is to label everyone who commits a crime that fuels the narrative as “white” — even when it’s abundantly clear that they’re not.

As with almost everything promoted by the Left today, the procedure is to say the words and then create the evidence to back up what you’ve said.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/97527-when-theres-no-white-supremacy-just-make-it-up-2023-05-24

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The Left Has Pushed the Envelope

The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America. And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.

Special-counsel John Durham just issued his final report on wrongdoing within the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice.

The summary confirms that our premier investigatory and intelligence agencies interfered in the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.

Directors and high-ranking FBI officials lied under oath. They misled Congress. They altered court documents and deceived federal judges.

The FBI hired a foreign national to gather dirt on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign — while he was being paid by the rival Hillary Clinton campaign.

The FBI contracted Twitter to suppress news stories. It kept the Hunter Biden laptop under wraps, even as former intelligence officials flat out lied it was likely “Russian disinformation.” That was a blatant effort to aid the 2020 Biden campaign.

The IRS just conceded whistleblowers were correct and the agency fired its entire multi-year audit team responsible for investigating Hunter Biden’s purported tax irregularities.

The agency claimed it was ordered to do so by the Department of Justice, headed by Biden’s appointee Merrick Garland.

California is facing a crushing $32 billion deficit. Yet it flirts with an $800 billion-dollar “reparations” payout to the state’s Black residents.

No one has any idea where the money for that would come from. No one can define who would qualify. No one can explain why a state that never allowed slavery eight generations ago now owes selected Californians billions of dollars it does not have.

One of the reparations board leaders asserts Blacks might be willing to accept an “installment” plan of payments.

The NAACP just issued a “travel alert” advising Blacks not to visit Florida. The announcement was timed to draw negative attention to conservative Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ announcement of a presidential bid.

Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis — all outside Florida — have the highest Black murder rates in the nation.

Florida by contrast, with a Black population of 3.3 million, has the second largest number of Black businesses in the nation. The chairman of the NAACP’s board of directors is himself a Florida resident!

Black Lives Matter has just announced it lost millions of dollars in investments and ran up huge deficits. The culprit was its former corrupt leadership.

Its extravagant spending, plush homes, and family hangers-on have nearly bankrupted the advocacy group. It cannot account for the millions of dollars in corporate guilt and protection money it leveraged following the George Floyd riots in 2020.

In New York, a threatening subway career criminal with 42 prior arrests was subdued by a bystander and died during the confrontation. The criminal is now deified. The would-be Samaritan is charged with felony manslaughter.

The deceased’s uncle is vocal about his late nephew’s confrontation. But he himself was just arrested with stolen property and armed with a knife. He was mysteriously still roaming the streets despite 70 prior arrests and current active arrest warrants.

In almost every American city and town, biological males, with enormous advantages in size and musculoskeletal mass, routinely win women’s sporting competitions.

They are systematically destroying decades of progress that sought to ensure parity between men and women’s sports.

Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.

Under pressure from the LGBTQ activists, the Los Angeles Dodgers reinvited the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” to celebrate Pride night at Dodger Stadium.

Catholics and Christians had objected to the invitation because the group’s notoriety hinges on its sexualized and often pornographic mockery of Catholic ritual, the Holy Trinity, and Christian faith.

The supposedly courageous group would never dare extend its street-theater blasphemy to other religious groups such as Muslims or Hindus.

The Dodgers apparently do not care that Greater Los Angeles may be home to 6 million Mexican American citizens and resident Hispanic immigrants. Most are Catholic and many were avid Dodger fans.

Anheuser-Busch has nearly destroyed its best-selling Bud Light brand by hiring transgender performance-art activist Dylan Mulvaney to hawk the brand — and his own transitioning — to America’s working classes.

The Disney corporation, for decades, has enjoyed multibillion-dollar concessions and a veritable 40-square mile private fiefdom gifted from the taxpayers of Florida.

No matter. Disney has rebranded it films, amusement parks, and television offerings to reflect radical transgender, gay, and race advocacies.

The results so far are billion-dollar losses in Disney stock, subscribers, and viewers.

A woke CNN has all but destroyed its once-global audience. It now has fewer viewers than certain popular podcasts.

All these implosions are not just shocking but surreal. Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide — to the delight of our enemies like Communist China?

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/97583-the-left-has-pushed-the-envelope-2023-05-25 ?

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Will the Fathers Please Stand Up?

Women’s and girls’ sports are under attack from men who pretend to be women to hide their inadequacies in their own sports leagues. The most vulnerable population, however, are those girls who are playing sports in grade school.

It has become common to see story after story about boys in girl locker rooms and boys overpowering the girls in the sport they are competing in. Although these young girls express their discomfort with boys in their locker rooms or boys in their bathrooms, concerns are swept under the rug. Often, the schools girls attend have policies in place that allow children to use the facilities aligned with the gender they identify with. Many girls have also reported being singled out and offered counseling to cope with their discomfort and to learn to be inclusive. These responses from school personnel leave the girls feeling unheard and hopeless. This is when parents step in.

Moms across the country have been at the forefront of the parental rights battle. Mothers have been doxed, assaulted, called names, and deemed domestic terrorists for protecting their children from the K-12 cartel. Mothers have taken the arrows happily and continue to do so because they are advocating for their children. One must wonder: Where are the fathers?

It is important to note that there are fathers who are fiercely advocating for their children, but it may not be enough. Fathers are the protectors of their household and are responsible for the safety of their wives and children. Fathers must be at the forefront of protecting female-only spaces. Fathers must be at school board meetings advocating for the removal of harmful policies that jeopardize their daughters’ safety. Mothers can do this too, but we cannot deny that when a father stands up for his daughter, the room listens.

The way our current culture treats fathers must be acknowledged. From Hollywood to mom groups, fathers are depicted as helpless and useless without the mother’s help. Movies portray fathers as parents who cannot function, and wives in mom groups often bash their husbands publicly to gain sympathy from other moms. The feminist movement has demasculinized men and in the process also taken their role as the protectors of their home.

If any fathers are reading this, your daughter needs you. Daughters must know that their father is ready to protect them from anything and anyone. Advocating for your daughters does not have to resemble what social media shows you. Advocating for your daughter can be sending an email to the school principal asking for policies regarding girls’ sports and girl-only spaces. Advocating for your daughter can be setting up a meeting with the school district’s superintendent or school board to discuss concerns.

Daughters never forget when their father stands up for her. It is a memory that she will keep for the rest of her life. Current culture and feminism have not been kind to fathers. However, it is time for fathers to stand up.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/97554-will-the-fathers-please-stand-up-2023-05-25

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Big-City Mayors Blame Carmakers for Soaring Auto Thefts, Let Criminals Off the Hook

In some of America’s biggest cities, cars — Kias and Hyundais in particular — are being stolen by the thousands, yet rather than hold the thieves alone responsible for their actions, municipalities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Seattle are suing automakers, charging their vehicles are too easy to heist.

The lawsuits claim that automobiles have insufficient anti-theft countermeasures, as if citizens can’t resist the urge to take property that doesn’t belong to them and it’s the fault of victims for leading them into temptation.

Baltimore, which filed suit this week, has seen almost twice as many automobiles stolen this year as last. Four-in-ten are Kias and Hyundais, meaning other models account for the remainder, indicating a crime problem, not just a design flaw like the Ford Pinto’s predisposition to explode in rear-end collisions.

A TikTok trend has exacerbated the crime spree, with videos demonstrating the ease with which automobiles — without what Baltimore’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Scott, calls “industry-standard vehicle immobilization technology” — can be started without a key.

Cities seem to be arguing that automakers are creating something akin to an “attractive nuisance” for homeowners, dangerous features such as swimming pools that might attract children, requiring them to eliminate them or provide a warning.

Drivers — carelessness aside — can’t be said to invite another person to heist their rides in this way, and while they may have a reasonable expectation that the engineers who design a Kia or Hyundai consider avoiding theft, cars cannot yet drive themselves away in search of the open road.

Mr. Scott, however, lays all blame on manufacturers, accusing them of pinching pennies. “These cost-cutting measures employed by Hyundai and Kia at the expense of public safety are unacceptable,” he said in a statement. “They have left our residents vulnerable to crime and are significantly burdening our police resources.”

Baltimore’s police commissioner, Michael Harrison, also put the onus on carmakers. “We must demand more from these manufacturers in addressing this increase in vehicle thefts,” he said, “which put victims and residents in harm’s way.” Neither made mention of punishing thieves.

In a letter to WBAL-TV, Kia called the lawsuits “without merit,” pointing out that they’re offering a “free, enhanced security software upgrade to restrict the unauthorized operation of vehicle ignition systems and we are also providing steering wheel locks for impacted owners at no cost to them.”

Kia is also “supplying more than 44,000 free steering wheel locks to over 330 law enforcement agencies across the country for distribution to impacted Kia owners,” akin to a Philadelphia program — discontinued over concerns about legal liability — that provided steering wheel locks to a few hundred drivers.

The passive security measures are prudent, but address only the supply while ignoring the demand, which has increased as cities go idle on the active pursuit of criminals. Last week at Baltimore, seven Republicans from Maryland’s House of Delegates sent a letter to Mr. Scott laying out how car thieves are “nearly guaranteed” to get away with it.

Of 2,473 cars stolen in Baltimore in 2022, the delegates said, only 397 — six percent — resulted in arrests and only seven in convictions.

Since penalties aren’t as harsh for minors, they’re taking advantage of both the law and the ease of pulling off a joyride, with a car being stolen every hour on average in June of last year, according to statistics published by Wisconsin’s MacIver Institute.

In Milwaukee, children as young as 12 are stealing cars, highlighted by the upcoming “Kia Boyz Trial” of Markell Hughes, 17. That city saw 10,476 car thefts in 2021, with 66 percent of them Kias and Hyundais, after the ignition flaw was exposed in a YouTube video viewed over six million times.

It’s clear from the scope of the car-theft pandemic that software updates and security upgrades aren’t the vaccines America needs. To ensure the security of life and property, cities will have to get rolling on efforts to deter thieves with the force of law and prosecute offenders, who have gotten the message that you can do the crime and not do the time.

https://www.nysun.com/article/big-city-mayors-blame-carmakers-for-soaring-auto-thefts-let-criminals-off-the-hook

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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America's biggest children's hospital HALTS gender reassignment treatment for minors under new Texas law

It has been an energetic mutilator of children -- earning big bucks in the process

America's biggest children's hospital has announced plans to halt its gender reassignment treatment for children as the deadline to comply with a new Texas law looms and damaging claims from whistleblowers emerge.

Mark Wallace, CEO of Texas Children's Hospital (TCH), on Wednesday wrote in an internal hospital memo that it would stop prescribing hormones to minors and help them get gender-affirming care, as it is known, across state lines.

Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the Houston-based facility, saying puberty blockers and other trans 'medical experiments' violated state rules.

A whistleblower claims the hospital was rushing transgender kids onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health support. They also alleged that parents were 'scared' into allowing their children to have treatment.

The move to end the transgender treatment program follows Texas Republicans passing a law banning gender reassignment treatments for most minors, which is set to take effect in September.

'Over the next few months, Texas Children's will modify the gender-affirming care we offer to comply with the new law,' Wallace wrote in an email that was shared by the Manhattan Institute, a think tank.

'We will work with patients and their families to manage the discontinuation of hormone therapies or source appropriate care outside of Texas.'

Wallace said ending care for transgender youth was 'painful' and 'immensely heart-wrenching.' His staff would instead offer 'psychosocial support and any form of care we can within the bounds of the law.'

'I understand that there are many viewpoints and opinions related to this matter, but I want to remind everyone that our mission is to create a healthier future for all children,' he added.

The massive hospital received nearly 5 million patient visits in 2022, but staffers declined to answer questions about how many trans minors obtained drugs or surgical procedures through its clinics.

Texas senators last week voted for a bill to block transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies, and Gov Gregg Abbot, a Republican, says he plans to sign it into law.

Christopher Rufo, the right-wing intellectual who led the Manhattan Institute's research into TCH, has in recent days published damaging testimonies from two whistleblowers about alleged transgender procedures at the hospital.

The first insider provided medical records showing TCH staff had been providing sex-change treatments to kids in recent months, even after officials said they had stopped doing so in March 2022.

The second whistleblower, whose allegations were also published on Wednesday, said TCH doctors were rushing trans kids onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health support.

'In our hospitals, they have completely gone full-blown woke and changed people's sex to whatever they identify as instead of their biological sex,' the latest whistleblower said, according to a transcript published on Wednesday.

The unnamed medical professional painted a bleak picture of care at TCH, with ideologically-driven doctors rushing children onto cocktails of sex reassignment drugs while racking up bills of tens of thousands of dollars.

'Transgender medicine is hugely lucrative,' said the hospital insider. 'It's like $70,000 to $80,000 dollars per kid if they go through with the whole thing — all the pharmacology drugs, all these companies that are making millions of dollars.'

The way the whistleblower tells it, children with depression, autism, other mental health issues and histories of anguished suicide bids latch onto the idea that they've been 'born in the wrong body'.

They're exposed to transgender ideology on Reddit.com and other sites, where they're 'coached on exactly what to say' to meet the trans medical criteria and let doctors greenlight sex-reassignments, it is claimed.

'They're looking for affirmation,' the whistleblower said. 'They're seeking the validation and approval of the adults in their lives. They're insecure.'

TCH doctors were among the pro-trans 'activists' who nowadays dominate the medical field, and who readily affirm any child that fits the criteria without properly weighing any other mental health problems, the insider claimed.

'I think they believe that they're making their mark on history, and they're wanting to play God,' the whistleblower said. 'Everyone's on their side: the media is on their side, big tech is on their side. And everyone is applauding these providers who do this.'

The whistleblower gave examples of parents of being 'shut down' by doctors if they did not immediately affirm a child's new gender identity. Some were told their child was at risk of killing themselves, it was claimed.

'They're scared of being reported to Child Protective Services,' the whistleblower said. 'They're intimidated by these doctors that are on the side of their kid and have a lot of power.'

The whistleblower said sex-reassignments leave adolescent patients appearing 'externally happy,' but questioned if pediatric health bodies were right to push an affirmation-on-demand model of care.

'They're going to wake up in 10 years and discover that they're infertile, that they can't have children, that their sexuality is completely dysfunctional,' said the insider.

Advocates of gender-affirming care say it is necessary treatment for suicide-prone minors. Critics say kids are too young to opt for irreversible sex change treatments, and often just need mental health counselling instead.

A TCH spokeswoman told DailyMail.com that doctors had provided 'high-quality care for all patients … within the bounds of the law.' The hospital did not immediately provide any details about Wallace's statement.

TCH last March said it had stopped gender-affirming therapies after Gov. Gregg Abbott, a Republican, ordered the state's child welfare agency to probe reports of gender-confirming care for kids as 'child abuse'.

Rufo says TCH 'secretly restarted its child sex-change program three days later.'

He published documents from a first unnamed whistleblower showing TCH doctors provided gender procedures to kids within days of the hospital's decision, and continued to do so throughout 2022 and into 2023.

They appear to be photos of a hospital computer screen showing TCH medical records. The images have been redacted to remove the names of the young patients, as medical records are confidential.

Texas Attorney General Paxton, a Republican, last week launched a probe into what he called transgender 'science experiments' at TCH over its alleged 'mutilative and irreversible gender transitioning procedures.'

The TCH scandal underscores how sex-reassignment treatments for children have become a frontline in America's culture wars, and how hospitals providing such care in red states increasingly operate in a gray area.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12120177/Americas-biggest-childrens-hospital-stops-sex-reassignment-treatments-line-new-Texas-law.html

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Tough New Hate Crime Law Has Irish Fearful Their Luck's Running Out on Free Speech

Holy Ireland has gone to the Devil

Ireland is on the verge of passing the most aggressive hate crime law in the European Union, which includes the first legal protections in the EU for transgender individuals. Government officials say the bill offers necessary protections at a time when immigration is on the rise and traditional ideas about sex and gender are being challenged.

Critics counter that the bill’s vague language could be used to enforce the increasingly progressive Irish government’s increasingly woke agenda and forcibly muzzle critics of unpopular government policies.

The legislation, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Act, underscores a divide between Ireland’s leaders and many of its people. The bill is making its way through Parliament, winning approval last month in the Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s lower chamber, by a vote of 110-14.

But Irish citizens, in a 2019 consultation phase, overwhelmingly expressed a worry that the proposal was an unnecessary expansion of the country’s existing hate crimes law. Seventy-three percent of respondents took issue with the bill’s potential for encroachment on free speech and questioned what qualifies as “hate speech,” particularly asking who crafts that definition. Less than 25% of those polled approved of the legislation.

Underscoring this divide, critics of the bill note that fewer than 50 cases have been brought since the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act was signed into law in 1989. A supporter of the proposed law, former Justice Minister Helen McEntee, has cited that same statistic as evidence of the existing law’s “ineffective” nature.

The ongoing controversy opens a window into how quickly Ireland, which only legalized abortion in 2018, is moving from its long religious traditions at a time when leaders in other European countries and the United States are seeking to create laws that punish not just deeds but thoughts.

Over the past 30 years or so, the Irish nation has become increasingly progressive. In 2015, the Emerald Isle legalized gay marriage, just two years after the progressive vanguard of France did the same. That same year, Ireland was ranked among the top 10 most LGBT-friendly nations in the world, and the present taoiseach (Ireland’s word for prime minister) Leo Varadkar is openly gay. The proposed law would expand the 1989 law’s purview by adding gender, sex, descent and disability to the list of protected categories, which already includes race, color, nationality, religion (including “the absence of a religious conviction or belief”), national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, or disability.

The bill treats not just public presentation or dissemination of material deemed hateful, but also private preparation or even storing of material deemed hateful, such as memes on your phone or books on your shelf. Individuals convicted on such charges face fines of up to €5,000 (about $5,400) and anywhere from six months to two years in prison. Furthermore, as McEntee noted, a conviction “will allow for the ‘hate criminal’ label to follow an offender in court, in garda [police] vetting, and so on… ”

Paul Murphy, a member of the left-wing People Before Profit-Solidarity coalition, even warned the bill will legislate “the creation of a thought crime.” Conservative chairman of the Irish Freedom Party Michael Leahy told RealClearInvestigations that the bill “represents the most far-reaching and invasive attack against civil and religious liberty enacted in any Western democracy since the Second World War.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/05/24/tough_new_hate_crime_law_has_irish_fearful_of_luck_running_out_on_free_speech_901209.html?mc_cid=e65a8e98c0&mc_eid=012a6b3e32

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Uber's Diversity Chief Forced to Take Leave After Employee Outrage Over 'Don't Call Me Karen' Event

Must not defend any white woman

Because you can never be woke enough Bo Young Lee, Uber’s Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, has been temporarily put on leave by the tech behemoth from Silicon Valley after facing internal backlash over an event she presided over, entitled “Don’t Call Me Karen“.

This discussion centered on the negative implications of the commonly invoked white woman stereotype.

A number of employees were distressed, believing the event diminished minority experiences, leading to the company’s acknowledgment, “We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session.”

As reported by The New York Times, Bo Young Lee, an Asian woman leading diversity, equity, and inclusion at Uber, has been asked to step back temporarily due to staff complaints regarding an event she led, perceived as neglectful towards minority sentiments.

Lee is the most recent executive to feel the heat from the socially conscious wave she helped nurture.

Some employees voiced worries that emphasizing the ‘Karen’ stereotype’s pejorative connotations shifted focus from what they believe are more pressing issues – systemic racism.

The event was meant to provide a platform for discussions around white women’s experiences and the ‘Karen‘ stereotype.

Nikki Krishnamurthy, Uber’s Chief People Officer, addressed the issue in an email to the staff, stating, “We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session. While it was meant to be a dialogue, it’s obvious that those who attended did not feel heard.”

The ‘Don’t Call Me Karen’ event, according to the invitation, was intended to foster “an open and honest conversation about race.”

However, employee responses suggested that instead of a broader dialogue on race, they felt subjected to a sermon on white women’s tribulations.

In current social lexicon, ‘Karen’ has become shorthand for a privileged, often entitled white woman, infamous for unnecessary complaints and creating discord.

Employees contended that the event’s focus on this term trivialized the presence and impact of racism on minority groups.

One employee, preferring anonymity, commented, “I think when people are called Karens it’s implied that this is someone that has little empathy to others or is bothered by minorities that don’t look like them. Why can’t bad behavior be called out?”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who has been shifting the company’s previously aggressive ethos towards greater diversity and inclusivity, is experiencing firsthand the challenges posed by progressive consciousness in Silicon Valley companies.

In the wake of the uproar, Uber spokesperson Noah Edwardsen confirmed in a statement, “I can confirm that Bo is currently on a leave of absence,” without providing additional details about the length or implications of the leave.

The workforce hailed this decision as a sign of Uber management’s responsiveness to their concerns.

An employee, expressing relief, noted that the executives “have heard us, they know we are hurting, and they want to understand what all happened too.”

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/ubers-diversity-chief-forced-take-leave-employee-outrage-dont-call-karen-event

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The myth of New World genocide

Shortly before the coronation of Charles III, a group of indigenous leaders from around the commonwealth released a statement. They called on the King ‘to acknowledge the horrific impacts on and legacy of genocide and colonisation of the indigenous and enslaved peoples,’ including ‘the oppression of our peoples, plundering of our resources, (and) denigration of our culture.’ Charles was told to ‘redistribute the wealth that underpins the crown back to the peoples from whom it was stolen.’ Yet the argument that Britain should pony up for its historical sins is based on a number of rickety assumptions.

One of these is that a substantial portion of the wealth of the UK, or the British Crown, derives from slavery or colonial exploitation. Famously, empire often cost more than it brought in. And, like the rest of northwest Europe, the UK was already wealthy before colonialism or the slave trade. Western Europe would have remained rich even in the absence of overseas adventurism. Germany, for example, was one of the world’s richest areas, long before it gained any colonies. It’s true that overseas resources were exploited; but this was not the sole source of Europe’s wealth. Far from it.

Even more questionable than the call for reparations are the claims of ‘genocide’ in the context of New World colonialism. Until a few years ago, only a tiny fringe of historians believed that European colonialism in the New World was ‘genocidal’. In the six-volume, 3,000+ page Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (published 1996-2000) several dozen specialists saw fit to mention genocide precisely twice. In both of these instances, the scholars in question do so only to reiterate that it did not apply.

There are many reasons why historians long shied away from using the term ‘genocide’. There was a recognition that the word should be reserved only for extreme cases, such as the Nazis’ attempt to eliminate Europe’s Jews. Using the word to describe the activities of European colonisers and their respective governments surely falls short of this, because the elimination of native populations was seldom – if ever – a deliberate or sustained policy.

There are many reasons why historians long shied away from using the term ‘genocide’

The Spanish government, for example, went to great lengths to protect natives. In 1542, it passed the ‘New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians’. It also established self-governing Republicas de Indios, where Europeans were not allowed to own land. All of this was done with the purpose of increasing Indian population levels – and, by all accounts, it worked: native population levels began to recover soon after. Even when policies came closest to something we would recognise as ‘genocidal’, as during the American Trail of Tears debacle, context reveals a host of reasons why, even here, historians have been reluctant to use this term.

Native casualty rates across the New World were too low to justify calling what happened a ‘genocide.’ In the United States, where the native population might have approached 2,000,000 individuals prior to Christopher Columbus’ arrival, widely-accepted tallies show that the total number of natives massacred by whites prior to 1848 amounted to less than 8,000 individuals. Since populations renew themselves every generation, the total number of natives who were born, lived, and died in the territory of the United States between 1500 and 1900 was likely over 10,000,000.No matter how you do the maths, the number of natives who died by massacre was far less than one per cent of the population. Clearly any incidents like this were appalling, but such killings fall short of genocide.

In recent years, the study of history has become increasingly politicised. Claims of genocide across the New World have subsequently emerged – but these are riddled with demographic exaggerations. New Left darling Howard Zinn acknowledged that Hispaniola, the island where Columbus first landed in 1492, likely had about 250,000 people. However one academic dyad, named Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, infamously posited the absurd number of 8,000,000. This figure has since been taken up by those who wish to maximise the apparent damage done by Europeans to the New World. A historian named David Stannard, in his widely-cited book American Holocaust used this figure to suggest that what happened to the natives on Hispaniola was ‘the equivalent of fifty Hiroshimas’. Logic dictates, howvever, that the true population figure on Hispaniola in 1491 must have been far lower than one million, let alone seven or eight million. The island is only about 60 per cent the size of England and the population of England in 1491 was likely about two million. England in 1500 had one of the most advanced agricultural regimes on Earth. Hispaniola, by contrast, remained mostly forested; as a result, the land would have been able to sustain a much smaller number of people. Genetic studies have suggested that Hispaniola only had ‘a few tens of thousands’ of people in 1491. All evidence therefore suggests that Stannard’s ‘fifty Hiroshimas’ figure is a wild exaggeration.

Claims of ‘genocide’ are even harder to justify when you consider that the major population nuclei of Columbus’ day have survived and thrived into the present. In 1491, the New World held only about 10 per cent as many people as the Old World. Central Mexico and environs held roughly 50 per cent of the entire New World population, and greater Peru held another 25 per cent. By contrast, most of the future United States and Canada were thinly populated, and were home to only about 10 per cent of the New World population. In all of the modern-day countries corresponding to pre-Columbian population nuclei – including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc. – the population remains more than 80 per cent mixed-race or indigenous, and less than 20 per cent European.

Most of these people died hundreds of miles from any European

If Europeans set foot in the New World with the aim of replacing indigenous people with European stock via the doctrine of ‘settler colonialism,’ they appear to have failed rather miserably. Recent genetic studies have revealed Mexico to be one of the most genetically diverse countries in the world. The survival of over 60 indigenous languages in Mexico also makes it difficult to argue that Spanish attempts at cultural genocide were as devastating as some pundits suggest. In fact, historians recognise that much of the indigenous cultural suppression in Mexico occurred in the nineteenth century, after the country became independent.

It is universally acknowledged (even by Stannard) that the vast majority of natives who did die after contact died of disease, rather than massacre or abuse. Most of these people died hundreds of miles from any European, and so claims of smallpox-blanket-spreading have been circulated in a disingenuous effort to make Europeans look culpable for a natural biological process over which they had no control.

Such claims of biological warfare are widely believed but have almost no basis in fact. According to the historians Paul Kelton and Philip Ranlet, the single unambiguously recorded instance of an attempt to spread smallpox to Native Americans via contaminated blankets or clothing occurred in the vicinity of Fort Pitt in 1763. What’s more, the commanders in question (Jeffery Amherst and Henry Bouquet), are on record as saying that this might not be a great idea – not only because it was dishonourable, but because it might result in the spreading of smallpox to their own troops.

Rather than spreading smallpox on purpose, as soon as they did gain a modicum of control over this and other diseases, Europeans actually set about protecting native populations against them. The United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, and other New World governments spent the majority of the nineteenth century funding vaccination programmes – vaccination programmes which are seldom researched by modern historians, but which eventually reached hundreds of thousands of individuals. This saved far more native lives than Europeans are accused of massacring during the same century.

These programmes were inaugurated as soon as relevant medical advancements were made. Edward Jenner perfected a smallpox vaccine in 1796, improving on an earlier technique known as variolation. Jenner was personally moved by the plight of the indigenous Americans, and in 1807 corresponded with the Chief of the Five Nations in an effort to facilitate vaccination amongst his people. He received a letter of thanks from the chief for his assistance in ‘driving the fatal enemy of [our] tribes from the Earth.’

In the United States, Thomas Jefferson arranged to have the vaccine sent west with Louis and Clark, with the hope it could induce Indians to get themselves vaccinated in greater numbers in the future. Andrew Jackson, the same president accused of genocide for the Trail of Tears debacle, is also responsible for the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832. Not to be outdone, the Spanish government had, by 1803, sent Dr. D. Francisco Xavier de Balmis to oversee the vaccination of the native population of the Spanish New World. De Balmis later reported that he had vaccinated some 50,000 natives in Peru alone, and established vaccination programmes as far north as Sonora.

The myth of New World genocide is a novel take on European colonialism that almost no historian agreed with prior to 2010. Originally propagated by a handful of left-leaning academic radicals, it has recently moved into the mainstream, despite the fact that the evidence has barely changed. This crisis of historical understanding is, in turn, being taken advantage of by a handful of people, who stand to profit enormously from a sense of public shame based on these historical misconceptions.

In order to ground this debate in reality once more, we must stop imagining that ‘native leaders’ are somehow unimpeachable. We must further shed the illusion that native leaders all think the same thing, simply because they are ‘natives’. In reality, native leaders hold a wide spectrum of political beliefs, and they are just as fallible, and liable to political machinations, as anyone else. The group who signed the petition to Charles III represent a tiny minority of the most vocally antagonistic such leaders, yearning for a bit of publicity. It is a serious mistake to take theirs as a representative opinion.

Furthermore, those native leaders who insist on obviously political and potentially damaging courses of action – such as massive reparations payments, or the repatriation of artefacts that were only saved from oblivion by the stable institutions of certain Western countries – must expect to be held to account. Many of the artefacts held in British museums, for example, were sold by indigenous elites to British explorers. How, precisely, does this constitute ‘plunder’? In the present academic climate, genuine scrutiny is nearly impossible. Some are taking advantage of this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to draw untold riches from the public purse towards themselves and their allies, before the woke zeitgeist is finally put to rest.

Those who call for reparations often base their arguments on the writings of politically-motivated genocide scholars. These (mostly white, comfortably middle-class) individuals might imagine they are helping modern-day victims of ‘systemic racism’. But such stories of perpetual victimisation are likely to do more harm than good to modern native populations: they might well encourage native youth to drop out of mainstream society in despair, rather than participate in it with an aim to self-improvement. Generations of Native Americans, for example, have turned their peoples’ warrior traditions into a career in the US military – but will this proud tradition continue under the current social climate? As long as only one side is allowed to air their views of native history, then the real, potentially lifesaving data about the true causes of modern native social ills will be submerged – to the detriment of the very people those on the left claim to be defending.

Instead of helping the victims of past genocides, self-appointed genocide scholars are, in some cases, inadvertently facilitating real-world, real-time crackdowns. They do this, in part, by bolstering autocratic leaders’ confidence that the West’s moral posturing is hypocrisy of the highest order – which is music to their autocratic ears. Despots, in turn, broadcast the hyperbole churned out by genocide scholars because its veneer of academic rigour lends it credence as propaganda. This can be used to convince subject populations that democracy is a sham.

According to an article called ‘The American Genocide of the Indians – Historical Facts and Real Evidence,’ posted to the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China:

‘Peter Burnett, the first governor of California, proposed a war of extermination against Native Americans, triggering rising calls for the extermination of Indians in the state… From 1846 to 1873, the Indian population in California dropped to 30,000 from 150,000. Countless Indians died as a result of the atrocities.’

What happened to the California natives from the later 1840s was undoubtedly one of the most shameful incidents in US history. But the true death toll by massacre in California was less than a tenth of what is alleged here. One does not need to look far to deduce from whence the Chinese authorities plucked this idea: it is likely taken from Benjamin Madley’s 2016 book An American Genocide. This book makes unprecedented claims about genocide in California, but American award presenters have been falling over themselves to festoon it.

It is vital then that historians robustly challenge novel write-ups that claim ‘genocide’, where no historian saw them before. For this to happen, both the historical establishment at large, and the university administrators who appoint historians to their posts, must actively guarantee researchers full freedom to challenge these novel interpretations. One wonders how genocide scholars can feel proud of their accomplishments, when they know that no practising historian would dare to criticise their arguments in a robust manner. Without the possibility of valid criticism, science becomes impossible, and ‘proofs’ become nothing more than dogma dressed up in clever words.

If we manage to restore a modicum of balance to historical discussions of colonialism and European genocide, we will quickly realise that much of what is currently being claimed is exaggerated, and that the opinion of the majority of historians prior to 2010 or so is closer to the truth. Until then, we can expect to be bombarded with opportunist claims for artefact repatriation, reparations, and official apologies. And we can expect that many of our greatest institutions – institutions that have done an unprecedented amount of good for all of humanity, such as when the British monarchy repeatedly helped to end the scourge of global slavery – will continue to be pelted with rhetorical rubbish

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/the-myth-of-new-world-genocide/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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