The Other McCain

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

Google: ‘To Control the Narrative, We Planted Stories with Journalists’

Posted on | January 11, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

One of the things I noticed during the August 2017 controversy about Google’s firing of James Damore was that the media were promoting “fake news” about the Harvard-educated scientist:

Repeatedly, headlines mischaracterize Damore’s views as “anti-diversity” (despite his clearly stated support for diversity) and news articles falsely assert that Damore argued women were “genetically unsuited” (Washington Post) or “biologically unfit” (CNN) to work in high tech.
Are these journalists simply illiterate? Do they lack the reading comprehension skills necessary to understand what James Damore wrote?

We now know the answer to that question, thanks to an anonymous Google employee who has told the truth about what happened:

I was involved in the internal decisions involving James Damore’s memo, and it’s terrible what we did to him. . . .
To quell dissent, we: told executives to write to their employees condemning the memo; manipulated our internal Memegen to bias the ratings towards anti-Damore posts (the head of Memegen is an “ally” to the diversity cause); and gave every manager talking points on what to tell their reports about the memo. In all our communications, we concentrated on how hurt employees purportedly were and diverted attention from Google’s discriminatory employment practices and political hegemony, never mind the science.
We needed to make an example of Damore. . . . When we did fire him, our reputation and integrity took a hit, but at least other employees were now afraid to speak up. . . .
To control the narrative, we planted stories with journalists and flexed Google’s muscles where necessary. In exchange for insider access and preferential treatment, all we ask for is their loyalty. For online media, Google’s ads pay their paycheck and our search brings their customers, so our influence shouldn’t be underestimated. . . .

Read the whole thing by Deb Heine at PJ Media (hat-tip: Instapundit).

What happened to Damore was eerily reminiscent of Stalin-era purges in the Soviet Union — the dezinformatsiya campaign spread through party-controlled channels, demonizing the targets as an “enemy of the people” (vrag naroda) to justify their destruction.

A successful campaign to “control the narrative” produces a strange reversal of reality: When all the “respectable” media are repeating the officially approved lie, those who tell the truth are made to seem like dangerous extremists, proponents of “racism,” etc. If you have read Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, you know the targets of Stalin’s purges — veteran Bolsheviks who had risked their lives for the Revolution — were smeared as spies, saboteurs, Trotskyists and so forth. And many in the Western media repeated these transparently false Stalinist propaganda smears as if they were actually true.

The quote emblazoned atop my blog — “One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up” — is from Arthur Koestler, a disillusioned ex-Communist whose famous novel Darkness at Noon dramatized the reality of Soviet life under Stalinism. The younger generation, who know nothing of the bloody 20th-century history of “social justice,” are being led toward their own destruction.



 

Category: Intellectuals, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 01.10.19

Posted on | January 11, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: 911 Response Times Will Never Be Zero
EBL: Homeless Man Brings Dead Raccoon To San Francisco McDonald’s
Twitchy: President Trump & Donald Trump Jr. Double-Team Jim Acosta After Wall Self-Own
Louder With Crowder: Jim Acosta Tries Proving The Wall is Unnecessary, Does The Complete Opposite

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: An Added Bonus Of The Government Shutdown
American Power: Albert Camus, The Rebel
American Thinker: Our New “Most Dangerous Of Morons”
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Gun Buy-Back Shenanigans News
BattleSwarm: El Chapo Ensnared By His Own Spyware
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: End The Fed Instead Of Just Firing The Chairman, also, The Unexpectedly Chronicles
Don Surber: NBC’s Myth Of Sawing Through The Wall
Dustbury: She Has A Roof Over Her Head
The Geller Report: Democrats Approve $500 Million For Border Wall…In The Middle East, also, Linda Sarsour Claims Mohammed Was A Human Rights Activist
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Are Psychologists Losing Their Minds?
Hollywood In Toto: Author Says Traditional Publishing Is “Too Slow, Incestuous”
Joe For America: Cher Sides With Trump, Tells Pelosi To Build The Wall
Legal Insurrection: Kamala Harris Expected To Announce Run For White House On MLK Day, also, Trump Arrives In Texas For Border Visit, Meeting With Border Patrol
The PanAm Post: Paraguay Condemns Maduro, Breaks Diplomatic Relations, also, OAS Declares Maduro An Illegitimate President
Power Line: Marijuana, Mental Illness, & Crime, also, The Great Issue Of Our Time
Shark Tank: Trump Holds The Line On The Border
Shot In The Dark: Nerd Rituals I’ve Never Participated In
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – BOLO Death
The Political Hat: Anti-White – Disallowing White People, Genociding White People, & Abolishing White People
This Ain’t Hell: Thoughts From Poetrooper, also, Navy Admits Railroading Marine Operator Falsely Accused Of War Crimes
Victory Girls: CNN Analyst Files Nails, Doesn’t Care About Border Security
Volokh Conspiracy: Textual Analysis Of HR8, Bill That Requires Background Check For Every Firearm Sale
Weasel Zippers: Democrats Don’t Want To Fund The Wall – What Do They Want Funded? also, Pelosi Dismisses Deaths Of Cpl. Singh, Migrant Children As “Plural Anecdotes”
Megan McArdle: No, Ocasio-Cortez, It’s Not Because You’re A Woman
Mark Steyn: Je Suis Charlie, Four Years On


Category: Linkagery

The Happiness Gap

Posted on | January 10, 2019 | Comments Off on The Happiness Gap

 

The secret to happiness is low expectations.

In an affluent modern society, most of our emotional problems can be described as disappointment, originating in the failure of life to match our fondest hopes and ambitions. It’s not that the life we actually have is necessarily bad, but that we can imagine so many ways it could be better. So instead of being happy with the adequacy of our lives, we make ourselves miserable by thinking of how far our lives are from an imagined ideal. By the standards of most human beings throughout the world, or of our own ancestors in previous ages, the middle-class American’s life is a paradise of ease and luxury. Why shouldn’t we be happy?

Despite this objective reality — Americans have got it good — we are living amid an epidemic of mental illness, a plague of anxiety and depression that especially affects young women. Many experts blame this problem on excessive exposure to social media:

Now, a new study from the University of Essex and University College London finds that teenagers who spend more hours a day on social media have a greater risk for depression, and the connection appears to be particularly pronounced for girls.
The team looked at data from over 10,000 14-year-olds taking part in the UK Millennial Cohort Study. Participants filled out questionnaires about their social media use, and about their mental health—for instance, depression symptoms were assessed by the Moods and Feelings Questionnaire (the teens rated how much they agreed or disagreed with statements like, “I felt miserable or unhappy,” “I didn’t enjoy anything at all,” “I felt so tired I just sat around and did nothing” over the past two weeks).
In general, girls used social media more than boys, with 40% of girls, and 20% of boys, using it for more than three hours per day. Only 4% of girls reported abstaining completely, compared to 10% of boys.
And the more a person used social media, the greater their likelihood for experiencing depression symptoms: 12% of light social media users and 38% of heavy social media users had depression symptoms.

The fact is that men and women use social media in different ways, for different purposes. To generalize quite broadly, women care more about friendship than men, and use social media as a way of monitoring and/or enhancing their popularity. Because popularity — social status — is a transient and unstable value, anyone who becomes excessively concerned with it is chasing the wind. As students of evolutionary psychology have argued, however, this female concern with social status is a sort of survival instinct and is thus hardwired into women’s nature, and it gives rise to the poisonous emotion of envy. Sigmund Freud once remarked: “It must be admitted that women have but little sense of justice, and this is no doubt connected with the preponderance of envy in their mental life.” This has been cited by feminists as evidence of Freud’s misogyny, but the phenomenon he described is quite real, and intelligent women are aware of this problem. In fact, feminists themselves have lamented how envy has been harmful to their movement.

In the early days of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, feminists identified this problem as “trashing.” As soon as any woman attained prominence as a leader of the movement, she would be attacked by other feminists envious of her success. This happened to Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone, among others, and was evident in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat, when a round of finger-pointing ensued with “white feminism” being blamed for her loss.

Feminists have complained about the “wage gap” between men and women, and critics have shown this to be a statistical mirage. What has received less attention is the happiness gap — the greater levels of discontent among women, a problem that the feminist movement will not address in any meaningful way, because it is the purpose of feminism to incite discontent as a force to be harnessed for political activism.

Of course, feminists insist that men are the problem:

For the first time in its history, the American Psychological Association (APA) released guidelines concerning men and boys, saying that so-called “traditional masculinity” not only is “harmful” but also could lead to homophobia and sexual harassment.
“The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful,” reads the news release by the famed association.
It notes that research shows “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.”
The 36-page document goes on to coin “masculinity ideology,” which stems from traditional masculinity, and claims that it harms boys and men.

What is particularly misguided here is the attack on stoicism. Why, we must ask, are boys taught to “suppress their emotions”?

Answer: Because these emotions cause conflict and violence.

The ability to endure hardship without complaint, and to stifle one’s resentment of minor insults, is necessary to male survival. Stoicism is conducive to male success, because cooperation is impossible if everyone’s sulking over their hurt feelings. There’s an old saying, “If you’re not the lead dog on the sled, the view never changes.” Effective teamwork requires us to accept organizational hierarchy as necessary to the joint effort. If you don’t like the coach’s rules, you can quit the team, but so long as you are a member of the team, you must uphold the coach’s authority. The childish attitude that manifests itself as whining self-pity must be prohibited in order for the team to maintain esprit de corps.

A stoic mindset — “mental toughness,” as I would call it — is conducive to success, and successful people are happier than failures, so why is the American Psychological Association targeting stoicism as a harmful aspect of “toxic masculinity”? Insofar as any man engages in toxic behavior, it’s certainly not because he’s been studying stoic philosophy (e.g., Marcus Aurelius). The mastery of one’s own emotions — the ability to remain calm amid adversity, to behave rationally in a crisis — is the proper lesson of stoicism. The true motive of the APA’s attack on “toxic masculinity” lies not in anything wrong with stoicism, but rather a problem in the field of psychology. About two-thirds of practicing psychologists (65% in 2016) are women, and among those 40 and younger, 80% of psychologists are female.

The declining number of males in the field of psychology can be explained by discrimination in academia. In recent decades, a concern for “diversity” among university administrators has made it nearly impossible for males (especially white males) to be hired as professors in the fields of sociology and psychology. As the faculty in these fields are now overwhelmingly female, the curriculum has become infused with anti-male bias. There is an overlap between the psychology faculty and university Gender Studies departments, so that the typical psychology professor is now a radical feminist ideologue, and it is therefore hardly surprising that very few male students major in psychology.

Feminists now control the American Psychological Association, and feminists are not interested in helping men be happy. The fundamental purpose of feminism is to deprive men of happiness — identify something that makes men happy, and then destroy it. This new APA report about “toxic masculinity” is nothing more than a typical feminist exercise in demonizing and scapegoating males, per se. Have I mentioned lately that Deborah Frisch was once a psychology professor?

 

Colorado Inmate 182605 has a Ph.D. in psychology and was a tenure-track faculty member at the University of Oregon before she went off the rails. Her descent into complete madness was apparent long before she was sentenced to the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. If an expertise in psychology leads to happiness, why is Dr. Frisch sitting in a Colorado prison? What happened to her may involve personal problems that are unrelated to her academic specialty, but certainly her advanced degrees in psychology did not inoculate her against insanity.

The epidemic of mental illness among young women cannot be explained by invoking a feminist theory of “toxic masculinity.” What the APA has done is to scapegoat males by demonizing traditional masculine values. If women are unhappy, men are to blame, but if men are unhappy, men are to blame for that, too! Feminist control of the psychology profession has produced “research” that claims to prove that (a) males are universally evil, and (b) women are never responsible for their own problems.

Well, I certainly can’t tell these “experts” what to do. They haven’t solicited my advice, and the APA is free to go to hell in the time and manner of their own choosing. All I can do is maintain my stoic resolve, to remain calm and cheerful as I bid them bon voyage.



 

Category: Intellectuals

In The Mailbox: 01.09.19

Posted on | January 10, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #495
EBL: Irony – Bill Kristol’s New Lefty-Funded Venture Name Is Synonymous With Wall
Twitchy: Sally Kohn, Marc Lamont Hill, & Electric Intifada Express Support For Vile Commie Angela Davis
Louder With Crowder: This Photo Of Schumer & Pelosi Watching Their Disastrous Response Is Everything

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Least Genetically Fit
American Power: Schumer & Pelosi Become Instant Memes With Their Response To Trump’s Border Speech, also, How The Pursuit Of Fame Is Warping American Society
American Thinker: Democrats Can Fund The World, But Not The Wall
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Daily Kos – Man, We Sure Love Us Some Old White Heterosexual Millionaires!
CDR Salamander: So, Let’s Talk About The 5″ General Purpose Gun
Da Tech Guy: The Holy Father, Captain Renault, & The Irony Of Truth, also, What We Need To Do Is Educate
Don Surber: CBS Caught Trump In A Lie. Hilarity Ensues
Dustbury: Make A Meal Of Deborah
The Geller Report: Sculpture Celebrating Saudi Arabia Erected At Ground Zero, also, Congressman Calls For Halt To Nation Of Islam Funding
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Fake Election Ads 2018
Hollywood In Toto: Dystopian Dogs Hits Too Close To Home
Joe For America: The Best Of The Pelosi/Schumer Memes
JustOneMinute: Top Tax Rates Outside The Bubble
Legal Insurrection: Mystery Solved – Laura Loomer Kicked Off Twitter Thanks To CAIR, also, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Calls Out Sen. Hirono For “Fomenting Religious Bigotry”
Michelle Malkin: Border Wall – A Monument For The People, Not The Pols
The PanAm Post: What Does The Ecuadorian Economy Need In 2019?
Power Line: Anti-Communism Is A Hate Crime? also, Going Broke In The Heart Of The Beast
Shark Tank: Gov. DeSantis’ Inauguration Speech Promises To Expand On Scott’s Successes
Shot In The Dark: Unexpectedly
STUMP: Mortality With Meep
The Political Hat: Broke – Big Brother; Woke – Big Sister
This Ain’t Hell: Army Deserter Found In Indiana After 20 Years, also, Navy Backlogged On Reserve Retirement Pay
Victory Girls: What Democrats Used To Say About The Border
Volokh Conspiracy: 9th Circuit Upholds Federal Ban On Gun Ownership By Illegal Aliens
Weasel Zippers: Occasional Cortex Slams Trump For Funding ICE – Five Days After She Voted To Fund Them, also,  The Democratic Operation To Suppress GOP Turnout In 2018
Mark Steyn: The Real Crisis


Category: Linkagery

Step Back From The Wall And Consider

Posted on | January 9, 2019 | Comments Off on Step Back From The Wall And Consider

by Smitty

Category: Uncategorized

Schumer and Pelosi Own the Shutdown Even as They Try to Blame Trump

Posted on | January 9, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have adopted an anti-American position by insisting that nothing be done to secure the southern border against the flood of illegal aliens. Because they represent constituencies that hate Americans and love foreigners, the Democrat leaders believe that they can “win” the confrontation with President Trump over the partial federal government shutdown. And because their allies in the media share the same attitude — they love big government, and hate the American people — Schumer and Pelosi live inside an echo chamber where everyone is telling them that they are doing the right thing: No wall, not today, not tomorrow, never.

President Trump believes he can win this fight, no matter how much the Democrats and the anti-American media attack him, and in his speech to the nation Tuesday night, he made his case:

Every day, Customs and Border Patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country. We are out of space to hold them, and we have no way to promptly return them back home to their country.
America proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation. But all Americans are hurt by uncontrolled, illegal migration. It strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages. Among those hardest hit are African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl. Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border. More Americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire Vietnam War.
In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings. Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now.
This is a humanitarian crisis — a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.
Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the United States — a dramatic increase. These children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs. One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico. Women and children are the biggest victims, by far, of our broken system.
This is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border. This is the cycle of human suffering that I am determined to end. . . .

You can read the whole thing. The anti-American media have responded by publishing “fact checks” full of Democrat talking points and polls claiming that the president’s position is unpopular. The real question is: Who will Americans believe?

President Trump is taking the side of ICE agents; Democrats are taking the side of the drug dealers and human traffickers. The president doesn’t have to get everyone to believe him in order to win this fight. He is aiming his argument directly at the voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio who elected him in 2016. They want him to stand strong against illegal immigration, and he understands this. Molly Hemingway notes that the response to Trump’s speech confirms that the media are “out of their minds with rage about Trump,” a rage that is the majority opinion in New York and California, the states represented by Schumer and Pelosi. However, the 2020 election will not be decided in New York and California. No matter how much anti-Trump rage the Democrats can gin up among the coastal elites, it is heartland voters who wield the decisive power in American politics, and they’re still on Trump’s side.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

Category: Chuck Schumer, Donald Trump, Immigration, Nancy Pelosi

In The Mailbox: 01.08.19

Posted on | January 9, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 01.08.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Faron Young, “Hello Walls”
Twitchy: Democrat Response To Trump’s Border Speech – Optics Fail
Louder With Crowder: British Satirist Jonathan Pie – Not Everyone Who Disagrees With You Is A Nazi

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: A Year Of Shunning And Lawsuits At A Canadian University, also, Yellow Vest Update
American Thinker: The Electoral College Must Remain
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Secession Round II News
BattleSwarm: 2019 Texas Legislative Session Starts Today
CDR Salamander: The New SASC
Da Tech Guy: Guns For Teachers, also, Why Big GOP Hates Donald Trump
Don Surber: Mueller Grasps At Another Straw
Dustbury: Go Thou And Do Likewise
The Geller Report: Muslim Leader Sharifa Alkhateeb Talks About Using Public Schools To Convert America To Islam, also, Gov. DeSantis Suspends Broward County Sheriff Over Parkland Shooting Nonresponse
Hogewash: A Year Of No Net Neutrality, also, Connections?
Hollywood In Toto: Eight Brave Comedians Who Shun Woke Rules
Joe For America: Second Dead Male Escort Found In Democrat Donor Ed Buck’s Apartment, LGBT Activists Demand Murder Charges
JustOneMinute: The Wall is Coming!
Legal Insurrection: Kellyanne Conway Tells CNN’s Acosta “You’re Such A Smartass…A Lot Of These People Don’t Like You”, also, CA Gov Newsom Proposes Free Healthcare For Illegals Under 26
The PanAm Post: U.S. Targets Maduro/Chavez Corruption & Embezzlement Ring
Power Line: Trump Kills It, also, DeBlasio Has A Plan
Shark Tank: Nunez, Casey DeSantis Champion Women In DeSantis Administration
Shot In The Dark: Legalizing Harassment
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Time To Make The Doughnuts
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – How Not To Defect To Cuba
The Political Hat: Transgender Propaganda & The Breaking Of The Sane
This Ain’t Hell: Tuesday Feel Good Stories, also, New Beginnings Or Status Quo?
Victory Girls: CA Gov Newsom To Provide Free Healthcare & Sanctuary For Illegals, No Questions Asked
Volokh Conspiracy: Harold Demsetz, RIP
Weasel Zippers: Students Hate Trump’s Immigration & Border Wall Quotes, Don’t Realize They’re From Dems, also, RNC Video Shows The Harmful Effects Of Immigration On Families
Megan McArdle: What if We Paid People To Donate Their Kidneys To Strangers?
Mark Steyn: Tippy-Topping Tripping


Category: Linkagery

Rule Five Tuesday

Posted on | January 8, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Running way behind and pressed for time, so no appetizer this week.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #489, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Socialist Sweden Friday and a rare Saturday Blondepocalypse.

EBL: Medici The Magnificent,  Why Are IQ Levels Dropping?, Captain & Tennille, Monica Bellucci & Spaghetti, Marie Kondo, National Whipped Cream Day, and Malin Akerman as the Silk Spectre.

A View From The Beach: My Spidey Sense Tingles for Emma Stone, The Straw That Broke the Bay’s Back?, Google Gets Down with Deuteronomy, Washington D.C Focuses on the Big Issues, And I’m Going to Eat Bacon Until We Get World Peace, RIP: Ray Sawyer, Aka Dr. Hook, “Bombastic”, Happy New Year!, All Kneel Before the Illuminati!, Honestly, How Much Worse Could it Be? and My Plan for Living Forever is Going Swimmingly.

Proof Positive: Megan Boone, Allison Hayes, and Sex in Advertising with Victoria’s Secret.

Dustbury: Yoon Se-ah and Carrie Ann Inaba

Thanks to everyone for the luscious linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5
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