The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In The Mailbox: 09.21.18

Posted on | September 22, 2018 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: #FreeJamesWoods – Twitter Goes On The Offensive
Twitchy: Ted Cruz Gets In A Zinger During The “Say Something Nice About Your Opponent” Phase Of Senate Debate
Louder With Crowder: These Womens’ Comments On Brett Kavanaugh Shock CNN
According To Hoyt: When Every Boy Is Guilty, Girls Become Monsters
Monster Hunter Nation: The WALL OF FLAME Challenge!!!
Vox Popoli: The Most Pyrrhic Victory In History

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling Of The American Mind, also, How The U.S. Senate Became A Campus Kangaroo Court
American Thinker: The Alinsky-ization Of Brett Kavanaugh
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Loony California Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 21
Da Tech Guy: Will The NHGOP Flip One House Seat Or Two? also, If You Want To Understand Why I Think The “Blue Wave” Is BS
Don Surber: Trump Brought Them Home, also, “Yeah, I Got A Magic Wand”
Dustbury: Whatever That Ocean’s Called
First Street Journal: Public School Teachers Aren’t Underpaid – They Make More Than The Taxpayers Supporting Them
The Geller Report: Newton Public School Teacher Vows To Increase Proselytizing For Islam, also, Italy’s Interior Minister Keeps Election Promise, Begins Deporting Migrants
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, Our Betters, and Bonus Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
JustOneMinute: Friday Afternoon
Legal Insurrection: NYT Claims Rosenstein Offered To Tape Trump, Discuss Invoking 25th Amendment With Cabinet, also, Report Says Mueller’s Team Has A Very Close Relationship With The Press
The PanAm Post: Better Binational War Than Multinational Intervention
Power Line: Grassley Responds To Ford’s Demands, also, Deep State Outed…By The NYT?
Shark Tank: Will Florida Become A Sanctuary State Under Gillum?
Shot In The Dark: Now This Is #Resistance
The Political Hat: Trump’s Greatest Asset, Redux
This Ain’t Hell: National POW/MIA Recognition Day, also, Marine Barracks Jarheads Saving The World
Victory Girls: It’s Not Fear But Opportunism That Drives Blasey Ford
Volokh Conspiracy: Criminal Libel Prosecution – Under A Statute Struck Down 30 Years Ago
Weasel Zippers: Actor Jack Black Pops Off About President Trump At Walk Of Fame Ceremony, also, Rite Aid Shooter Snochia Moseley Identified As Transgender
Mark Steyn: Deep & Deeper


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Category: Linkagery

What Does ‘Credible’ Mean in 2018?

Posted on | September 21, 2018 | No Comments

Ever since Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser told her tale to the Washington Post, I’ve repeatedly seen the word “credible” used to describe her accusation. “It would hurt the legitimacy of the Supreme Court,” said Sarah Quinlan of Red State, “to force a confirmation through when there appears to be a serious and credible accusation without an attempt to investigate the claims.” And even Reason magazine editor Nick Gillespie — scarcely the kind of guy I’d expect to join a “we must believe the women” stampede — joined in on the lynch-mob rhetoric: “Following a late-breaking, credible accusation of a sexual assault that allegedly occurred in the early 1980s, when future Judge Kavanaugh was in high school, the outcome of his confirmation proceedings is far from clear.” It behooves us to ask, by what standard is it “credible”?

Or is “credible” now a synonym for suspicious and possibly partisan?

Prior to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s decision to drop this stink-bomb into the Supreme Court confirmation process, there was not the slightest suggestion — not even by Judge Kavanaugh’s fiercest critics — that he was a man of lecherous reputation. While Democrats generally deplored Judge Kavanaugh’s conservative judicial philosophy, and made a lot of noise about the unavailability of his correspondence while he served as an aide to President George W. Bush, no one even hinted that there was any shadow over his personal life. So it would be contrary to his known character for the teenage Kavanaugh to have been “stumbling drunk” at a 1982 house party. as Christine Blasey Ford claims, and still more out of character for him to have sexually assaulted her.

Oh, but it’s a “credible accusation,” we’re told, although I can’t understand what aspect of it makes it “credible.” Was it widely known that Kavanaugh made a habit of heavy drinking while attending Georgetown Prep? Can someone point me to such a report, prior to Thursday, Sept. 13? Maybe I missed something, but I don’t remember reading any such story. Certainly, there was nothing — zero, zilch, nada — to suggest that Brett Kavanaugh has ever been regarded as a sexual predator, until Professor Ford made this accusation.

No, Brett Kavanaugh was a top student, ultimately a cum laude graduate of Yale University, and do we expect straight-A students to be “stumbling drunk” at parties, manhandling every girl within reach?

Meanwhile, the prep school young Miss Blasey attended was apparently a hotbed of drunkenness and degeneracy, and why are we supposed to believe she can perfectly remember everything that happened on a certain night in 1982, if she was boozing it up with the other girls from Holton-Arms School? But it’s a “credible accusation,” they say.

When the story broke last week, my initial reaction was to think, “Wow, Democrats are really desperate.” And then when Professor Ford told her story to the Post, my reaction was: “So what? Drunk teenage preppies gone wild.” Even if we stipulate, as a hypothetical, that some sort of encounter took place between a “stumbling drunk” 17-year-old Kavanaugh and a 15-year-old Miss Blasey, this was more than 35 years ago, and was probably not the sort of trauma-inducing incident it was portrayed as being. But that was a last-ditch defense — a fallback position — and the fighting on the front-line ramparts had barely just begun.

Judge Kavanaugh has flatly denied the accusation twice and, so far, we do not even have any evidence that young Kavanaugh and young Miss Blasey were ever simultaneously at any such party as she has described. Ed Whelan got himself into a mess this week with some very interesting speculation about how this could have been a case of mistaken identity. Yet while Whelan got spanked hard for that, the Wall Street Journal reported that Professor Ford “can’t recall in whose home the alleged assault took place, how she got there, or how she got home that evening.”

Why is everybody telling us that this is a “credible accusation”? Because, in the #MeToo age, it’s considered sexist to imply that a woman making such an accusation might not be credible. No matter how sketchy the story may be, or how obvious the possible motive to lie, you’re complicit in “rape culture” if you say, “Hey, this looks like a flimsy smear job.”

There’s a 10 p.m. ET deadline for Professor Ford to respond to the offer to testify next week, otherwise Mitch McConnell is prepared to bring the Kavanaugh nomination to a vote.

Mitch is all out of bubblegum, you see.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

Analysis: True

Posted on | September 21, 2018 | No Comments

 

President Donald Trump in Las Vegas:

“I’m angry at Democrats because of what they do to our country. Today’s Democratic Party is held hostage by left-wing haters, angry mobs, socialist fanatics, deep-state bureaucrats and their fake-news allies. Except for a lot of the fake news that you see from these people back here, this is an incredible time for our country. America is winning again. America is being respected again.”

This is exactly right. The Democrats are “held hostage” by these interest groups and, despite what anyone on CNN might tell you, this is “an incredible time for our country”:

The American economy added 201,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.9 percent.
Economists had forecast 191,100 new jobs and the unemployment rate falling to 3.8 percent.
Average hourly earnings increased 2.9 percent for the month on an annualized basis, according to a Department of Labor report released Friday. That also beat expectations for 2.7 percent wage growth. In dollar terms, average hourly earnings increased 10 cents from the previous month to $27.16.

The only thing that can stop this amazing economy expansion is if “socialist fanatics” take over Congress. You can prevent that.

November 6 is coming.



 

Category: Donald Trump, Economics, Election

In The Mailbox: 09.20.18

Posted on | September 20, 2018 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

President Trump is going to be at the Convention Center tonight. I think I’ll pass – got packing & cleaning to do.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Pervs, Not Aliens – Why The Feds Closed That NM Observatory
Twitchy: Lawyer For Kavanaugh’s Accuser Sets Conditions, Wants Kavanaugh To Testify First
Louder With Crowder: Unhinged Liberals Have Been Threatening Sen. Collins & Her Staff

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Thinker: Kavanaugh, Ellison, & The Presumption Of Innocence
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Staggering Lack Of Self-Awareness News
BattleSwarm: We Have A New Winner In “Most Ludicrous Sample Bias In A Texas Senate Race Poll”
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: Is The Constitution A Racist Document? Let’s Ask Frederick Douglass! also, Sesame Street Outs The Left’s Identity Crisis
Don Surber: The Media Saved Kavanaugh
Dustbury: The Gas Game (Back Again)
First Street Journal: Paul Krugman Throws Shade, But He’s Caught In The Shadow
The Geller Report: Marine Le Pen Ordered To Take Psychiatric Test For Posting Anti-ISIS Tweet, also, Senator Fartacus Admits To Molesting High School Friend In 1992
Hogewash: The Unredacted Letter, also, Those Missing Yearbooks
Legal Insurrection: Rep. Swalwell, Jennifer Rubin Mock Sen. Collins Over Violent Threats, also, Progressives Aim To Torpedo Joe Biden’s 2020 Run
The PanAm Post: Nestor Kirchner & Hugo Chavez Used Foreign Exchange Scam To Steal Millions
Power Line: Mistaken Identity? also, What Is Diane Feinstein Hiding?
Shark Tank: Scott Calls Nelson “An Empty Chair”
Shot In The Dark: The Road To Hell’s Kitchen Is Paved With Good Intentions
STUMP: Chicago Is A Big Ball Of Bad Ideas
The Jawa Report: Tiny Minority Of Islamic Jihadists Responsible for 23% Of Global Terrorism
The Political Hat: Capitalism – Extermination, Racism, Redistribution
This Ain’t Hell: Army Veteran Brainwashed Into Citizenship, also, “I Don’t Believe You, But Even If I Did It Wouldn’t Matter At This Point”
Victory Girls: Cameron Kasky Rethinks His Life
Volokh Conspiracy: Public Schools, Illegal Immigrants, And The Overlooked Import Of Plyler v. Doe
Weasel Zippers: Chevy Chase Rips Saturday Night Live As “The Worst F*cking Humor In The World”, also, Chicago Parish Defies Archdiocese, Burns Rainbow Flag
Megan McArdle: A Full Kavanaugh Investigation? Yes – It Won’t Take Long
Mark Steyn: The Doug & Christine Ford Show


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Category: Linkagery

Good-Bye, ‘Blue Wave’? Clintonista May Lose Key House Race in Florida

Posted on | September 20, 2018 | No Comments

Of all the many fossil remnants of the Clintonian epoch, few deserve more contempt than Donna Shalala. During her tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services, she turned the department into a federal advocacy program for the 1960s “Sexual Revolution” ethos. Promiscuity, abortion and homosexuality were actively promoted by HHS during Shalala’s tenure. After she left office, she spent the next 14 years as president of the University of Miami, and ruined it. In the 20 years prior to Shalala taking over at Miami, the Hurricanes had won five national football championships (1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 2001). After Shalala took over? Zip, zero, nada. How bad was it? From 2010-2016, Miami lost to archrival FSU seven consecutive times. Hurricanes fans have no reason to love Shalala, and it seems that local voters also have their doubts:

The congressional seat was supposed to be the easiest of Democratic pickups. Hillary Clinton carried the Miami-based 27th District by nearly 20 percentage points just two years ago. Donna Shalala, the Democratic nominee, was a well-known, former Cabinet secretary with a talent for raising money.
But now local Democrats are dismayed as Shalala is struggling to put away her Republican rival, a popular former Spanish-language television newswoman named Maria Elvira Salazar.
According to internal polls from both campaigns obtained by POLITICO, Salazar is either ahead — or just narrowly trailing — Shalala.
Salazar leads the former Clinton Foundation head by 7 percentage points in a poll conducted for the Republican’s campaign that was completed Thursday. In a poll from Shalala’s campaign, completed Sept. 1, the Democrat leads Salazar by 4 percentage points.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Guess what? Maria Elvira Salazar is a University of Miami alumna and my Spanish is a little rusty, but I believe muy caliente is appropriate the phrase.

MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR for CONGRESS

 

Click Here to Donate

 

Category: Congress, Election, Florida

Can the GOP Win the Kavanaugh Fight?

Posted on | September 20, 2018 | No Comments

 

 

Whatever Happens To Kavanaugh,
Feinstein Got Exactly What She Wanted
— David Marcus, The Federalist

The drive to sink Kavanaugh
is liberal totalitarianism
— Sohrab Amari, New York Post

Kavanaugh Accuser Classmate:
‘That It Happened Or Not, I Have No Idea’
— Domenico Montenaro, NPR

‘We’re very confident:’
Trump, GOP growing more bullish
about Kavanaugh’s survival
— Nancy Cook, Politico

Media, ABC, PBS use Facebook
to beg other Kavanaugh accusers
to talk, ‘Truth will emerge’
— Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner

Whatever happened in 1982 — on an unspecified night, in an unknown location — what is happening to Judge Brett Kavanaugh now is grossly unfair and, if the Republican Party plays its cards right, the manifest unfairness of how Democrats have handled this sordid affair will redound to the GOP’s benefit in November.

The way in which this story made it to the top of the headlines, with Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein sitting on this letter from Christine Blasey Ford for six weeks before leaking it to the media, strikes many people as suspicious. Judge Kavanaugh sat for four days of hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Feinstein had this letter in her possession since July, but she didn’t think to ask him a single question about it? Has anyone gotten an explanation from Feinstein for this otherwise mysterious situation? But now that this ugly smear has gone public, Democrats say it would be wrong to expect Professor Ford to testify to the committee on Monday. So the Democrats just want to hurl this accusation out there, without anyone having the opportunity to cross-examine the accuser? This is blatantly unfair to Judge Kavanaugh, a man of hitherto impeccable reputation, and if Republicans can drive home this point — that Democrats are engaged in cheap partisan political trickery, unfairly tainting the reputation of a good man — this whole thing could blow up in the faces of the Democrats.

The committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, is a mild-mannered Midwesterner, but you can tell from his remarks about this situation that he’s angry as hell about how Democrats have turned the confirmation process into a disgraceful circus. One wit on Twitter invoked a line from an old science fiction movie: “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” Senator Grassley is all out of bubblegum, and Democrats will get an ass-kicking.

Why did Democrats think they could pull this off? Have they made the same miscalculation they made in 2016, when they expected the Access Hollywood recordings to destroy Donald Trump? As the election results proved, Americans are sick and tired of this kind of media smear-job “gotcha” game, and there is no reason to believe that Democrats can win the midterm elections by repeating a tactic that produced defeat two years ago. And there is a larger point to be made about this:

If you’re raped, call that cops. This is what sensible people have been saying for years about the situation that has emerged on American college campuses, where claims of sexual assault have been removed from the criminal justice system and handed over to administrative panels. Universities conduct secretive hearings where students accused of sexual misconduct are systematically deprived of the due-process protections that would be their constitutional right, had their accusers simply called 911 to report these alleged crimes. Centuries of Anglo-American common-law precedent have been discarded in favor of star-chamber tribunals operating under the putative authority of federal Title IX legislation. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 09.19.18

Posted on | September 20, 2018 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #383
EBL: It Was National Cheeseburger Day Yesterday…
Twitchy:  Senator Gillibrand Claims Forcing Kavanaugh Accuser Into A “Sham” Hearing Is “Silencing” Her
Louder With Crowder: Trump Dresses Down Democrats Over Kavanaugh Circus
The Camp Of The Saints: Who Is Alekandr Solzhenitsyn And Why Does He Deserve The Medal Of Freedom

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #91 – The Good Times Bad Times Episode
American Power: Laura Ingraham – The Left’s Rush To Judgment Against Brett Kavanaugh
American Thinker: John Kerry, A Traitor For The Ages
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Democrats – Beta’s Tied! New Quinnipiac Poll – Not So Much
CDR Salamander: End The Syrian War Before Mistakes Are Made
Da Tech Guy: What A Difference Trump Makes In A Fight
Don Surber: Why Are Democrats So Crazy?
Dustbury: Fundamentally Unserious People
First Street Journal: They’e Too Stupid To Be Allowed Votes In The First Place
The Geller Report: Christian Hospital Manager In Lahore Murdered In Acid Attack By Muslim Co-Workers, also, Disgraced Former AG Holder Claims Declassifying FISA Documents “An Especially Dangerous Abuse Of Power”
Hogewash: Fort Trump, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
JustOneMinute: Breakthrough Stuff
Legal Insurrection: Sen. Grassley Threatens To Cancel Monday’s Hearings Unless Kavanaugh’s Accuser Shows, also, College Students Not Mailing Absentee Ballots Because They Don’t Know Where To Buy Stamps
The PanAm Post: Big Tech – We Won’t Show Alex Jones’ Content, But We’ll Work With The Chicoms
Power Line: The Dumbest Political Controversy Of My Lifetime (Updated), also, It’s Official, The World Has Gone Mad
Shark Tank: GOP Targets Vulgarian Democrat Anna Eskamani In New Mailer
Shot In The Dark: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, White Supremacist
The Jawa Report: Ministry Of Entertaining The Masses – You Underestimate My Powah Edition
The Political Hat: Freeing The Humanities From Academia
This Ain’t Hell: Ft. Trump, Home Of The Kielbasi Corps, also, Wednesday Feelgood Stories
Victory Girls: Democrats Don’t Want FISA Documents Made Public
Volokh Conspiracy: SCOTUS Strikes A Mighty Blow Against Student Rights
Weasel Zippers: Cajun Navy Helps Rescue 100 Cats & Dogs From Florence, also, Leftist LA Times – Congratulations, Senator Feinstein, On Making Our Politics Even Uglier
Megan McArdle: What Is Punishment For?
Mark Steyn: The Mysterious Ubiquity Of Afghans


Category: Linkagery

Riot Police Summoned as Campus Rape ‘Crisis’ Hysteria Reaches Australia

Posted on | September 19, 2018 | No Comments

“These kids are mimicking behaviour seen in the US, but at a far more provincial level. They are local wokels.”
— Tim Blair, Daily Telegraph

Let me begin by apologizing to Australians, on behalf of America, for causing this problem. You see, in the years leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Democrats knew that Hillary Clinton would be their nominee. Because feminism would be an obvious selling point for her campaign, the propaganda organs of the mainstream media and the energies of left-wing activists were devoted to promoting the Feminist™ brand, especially on college campuses. The idea was to mobilize young women to vote Democrat, thus to exploit the so-called “gender gap” on behalf of Mrs. Clinton. It was in this context that the “campus rape epidemic” was invented, with President Obama announcing a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault in January 2014, and publicizing the phony claim that 1-in-5 female college students were rape victims. This was cynical partisan politics, and anyone who took it seriously was in danger of losing touch with reality.

The United States is home to the world’s largest English-speaking population (325 million) and, the way the Internet operates, anything that makes big news in America will also likely catch attention in England (53 million), Canada (36 million), and Australia (24 million). This explains how the myth of widespread campus rape traveled to Australia, where activists embraced all the lunatic ideas that had been promoted by U.S. feminists, and where a popular sex columnist’s dissent from this hysteria caused a campus riot:

THE riot squad was called to the University of Sydney after commentator and sex therapist Bettina Arndt faced a storm of protesters.
Ms Arndt was invited to speak at the university on what she says is the myth of a rape crisis on campuses.
When police arrived, up to 40 students were blocking access to the event at about 6pm last night, The Daily Telegraph reported.
University security stood by while people attempting to pass through to watch the talk were pushed and shoved before police came to break it up.
During her talk, the controversial commentator said she believed universities were becoming unsafe places for both men and women.
“It is the most unromantic thing to ask ‘Can I kiss you? Can I touch you?’ Most women don’t want a man to behave that way,” she said.
She said young men should seek an “enthusiastic yes”, noting: “I think particularly in this current climate, you can’t afford to take that risk. You have to constantly make sure she is still on side.
“(Women have) been told on this campus that she can turn around later and say she changed her mind about consent, and that is absolutely appalling.” . . .
Ms Arndt told radio host Alan Jones she is still waiting to hear back from the University of Sydney on who’s paying the extra security bill.
“We’re trying to get an answer from Sydney University as to what we’re paying for with regard to this $500 security bill,” she said.
“Today’s conservatives aren’t interested in shutting down free speech, they’re trying to promote it.
“And the left, amazingly, is all in favour of silencing people expressing views they don’t like.” . . .
The protests were organised by the university’s Wom*n’s Collective as a way to “challenge her rhetoric”.
“Bettina’s ‘Fake Rape Tour’ across university campuses in Australia is a misinformed and harmful attempt to undo the work of generations of student activists and advocates in combating the issues of sexual violence on campus. We refuse to allow her rhetoric to go unchallenged,” two spokeswomen for the group told Honi Soit, the university’s student magazine.
In an opinion piece, the magazine said free speech was “not an absolute right”.
“By allowing Arndt to claim that rape on campus is not prolific enough to justify a vigorous social and institutional response, we are further disempowering victims,” the op-ed states.

Columnist Jack O’Brien explains:

To provide some background, the Club engaged in a tiresome back and forth with the administration regarding security costs, which the university ultimately refused to assist with. Why are security costs even a factor? Because the left will use whatever means necessary to shut down discussion, just as they do with every event where its content does not fit their strict narrative of how the world should operate. The fact that the administration cannot grasp this, and refused to cover costs to ensure student’s safety was bewildering and irresponsible.
The event went ahead as planned, but not without predicted, violent and intimidating opposition. Paid ticket holders were barred from entering the peaceful discussion by a mob of screaming protesters who flooded the hall leading to the room. Any individual that tried to make their way through was obstructed, pushed around and verbally bullied with the intention of shaming them for wanting to calmly engage with a simple debate.
Young men and women were trapped inside the room, with security having to form a physical, interlocked barricade to stop the violent mob from entering the venue. There were no other exits, and attendees – many of whom had no opinion on Bettina’s views and just wanted to hear what she had to say – were trapped behind a wall of hateful, screaming members of the “tolerant left” barking at them like rabid dogs. It was only when the Police Riot Squad arrived that the protesters were moved on, after many paid ticket holders were bullied out of attending the talk.
One of the protesters chants ran along the lines of “this is what democracy looks like.” If democracy looks like a forceful, intimidating and physically abusive horde screaming at peaceful event attendees wanting to engage in a debate and trying to shut down their right to speak, then we have a serious problem.

This riot in Australia was a “monkey see, monkey do” imitation of the tactics of the anti-Trump “resistance” mobs on U.S. campuses.

These people are emotionally disturbed. A handful of cynical operatives, on the payroll of tax-exempt non-profit organizations, can assemble a mob of vulnerable young women — most of whom are under treatment for depression, anxiety, eating disorders or other mental illnesses — seeking some cause to give meaning to their pathetic and lonely lives.

What we need, honestly, is a war for these kids to protest. I’m beginning to grow nostalgic for the glory years of the Bush administration. Remember when university campuses were swarming with hippie “peace” activists accusing the Bush administration of genocide in Iraq? There is a certain percentage of college kids who aren’t happy if they don’t have something to protest against, and in the absence of legitimate issues, they’ll invent something like a “campus rape epidemic” then organize rallies against this imaginary crisis. This is why “climate change” is the perfect cause for student activism — it’s the Snuffleupagus of issues, apparent only to the “enlightened.” Being ostentatiously concerned about global warming is a type of virtue signalling, a way to communicate your own moral and intellectual superiority, which is what most “progressive” activism is really about. Considering themselves too smart to believe in anything as ordinary as Christianity, atheistic youth who fancy themselves to be intellectuals become chumps, easily scammed by promoters of three-card Monte hustles like “climate change.”

You’ll find that the campus protest mobs tend to shop around for “issues” to get agitated about. They’re nothing if not trendy. For example, it would be interesting if someone showed up at a “campus rape crisis” event and asked for a show of hands: “How many of you are vegans? How many of you are into yoga and ‘mindfulness’? How many of you identify as bisexual, asexual, genderqueer and/or ‘nonbinary’?”

They remind me of what Orwell said about socialism in the 1930s:

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words “Socialism” and “Communism” draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, “Nature Cure” quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

What you will discover, if you examine the types of people attracted to the student “activism” scene, is that most of them are abnormal — and deliberately so. These activists disdain normality as boring. They crave the distinction of being seen as different from their peers, whom they contemptuously regard as a herd of mindless conformists. And so they go shopping around for identities and causes, donning them like costumes, in an effort to display their imagined uniqueness. This is how the suburban middle-class white kid ends up as a student radical, protesting for “divestment” from Israel or screaming “fascist” at any campus speaker who represents a discernibly conservative viewpoint.

All of these various “issues” that concern student radicals nowadays would be instantly forgotten if President Trump started a war. Maybe he could find an excuse to start bombing North Korea, or deploy a couple of divisions to occupy Syria. It doesn’t matter where the war is, or why it gets started, really. What matters is that it would immediately become an all-absorbing focus of the attention for campus activism. They need something to be angry about, and I say, let’s give it to ’em.



 

 

Category: Australia, Education, Sex Trouble
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