Pit Tea Party

Protesting against CRITICAL RACE THEORY in Loudun County, VA. Via.

Hello from outside of JCPS central office!

This is the first in-person protest against critical race theory in Kentucky’s largest school district. About two dozen folks here. pic.twitter.com/3LlH4CeuvF

— Olivia Krauth (@oliviakrauth) June 22, 2021

Jefferson County Public Schools, meaning Louisville, where the county board of education was having a regularly scheduled meeting, in which CRITICAL RACE THEORY was not on the agenda, although somebody did mention that

racial equity is a pillar of the district's strategic plan — 57% of JCPS students identify as a racial minority

which is apparently part of the problem. Not that the demonstrators feel "equity" is a bad thing, but they think it's a kind of stalking horse;

Rice and Fall: Postscript

Guatemala, last year, photo by Moises Castillo/AP via Washington Post. You may have missed the story, as I did. Ivan Velásquez is a Colombian human rights and anti-corruption activist who has served since 2013 as head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, and this is a demonstrator protesting against it on behalf of President Jimmy Morales, who, like many presidents, dislikes being investigated, and announced in August that he was canceling the commission's mandate, while "surrounded by soldiers and police, a powerful image in a country that endured four decades of brutal military governments before transitioning to democracy in 1997. Meanwhile, a column of Jeeps — some with roof-mounted machine guns — rolled through the city, pausing at the CICIG and passing the U.S. Embassy and homes of human rights activists, according to news reports and videos". Supported by people like the demonstrator in the photo and celebratory firecrackers. The Trump administration responded by sending the Guatemalan defense ministry 38 more J-8 Jeeps, which disturbed Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), then ranking member and now chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee: "It is difficult to understand how such a transfer would be made without a resolution of the threatening action by the Guatemalan government against U.S. personnel on Aug. 31." While people who run away from Guatemala because President Morales refuses to protect them are treated as criminals by CBP at the Mexico-US border. And the president of the US who indulges Guatemalan corruption this way isn't so indulgent to the population and cuts off humanitarian aid because he's having a temper tantrum. 

A little more of that colloquy I posted earlier: what led up to the "white nationalist" debacle, on the issue of hate speech:

If you stereotype a group of people this way--they think there's nothing wrong with rape, murder, etc. as long as they're safe from it--I would think that's pretty dehumanizing. If I was a member of such a group I'd feel threatened.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) May 5, 2019

But I don't know if I'd report it unless it was clearly e.g. aimed at Jews or the like. If you mean Democrats, I'd probably just laugh at you and write a blogpost about it.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) May 5, 2019

He didn't mean Jews or Democrats. And he's consciously dehumanizing, like it's moral choice he's proud of, which shocks me a little, and I'm pushing back:

For the Record: The Rice and Fall

Updated

John Podesta's creamy risotto as reconstructed by Julian Assange and Food & Wine. No, Assange had nothing to do with the culinary part. To paraphrase Count Dracula, "I never cook... food." Photos by Tara Fisher and David Becker/Getty Images.

LEAKED: Wikileaks hack reveals John Podesta's secret to creamy Risotto pic.twitter.com/A5dW4mG9c6

— Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) October 11, 2016

Sour, sour day. I see Podesta doesn't know the difference between "its" and "it's", but I can assure you he's right about the risotto. I find it's also necessary to add grated cheese, even if it means contradicting the laws of Italian cooking by combining cheese with mushrooms or seafood, to endow the creaminess with body.

Democrat logic right now:

1) Hillary Clinton deletes thousands of emails from a private server.
- Dems: “Nothing to see here!”

2) AG Barr releases an entire 488-page Special Counsel report with only light redactions.
- Dems: “It’s a cover up!”

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 5, 2019

link for FBI judgment on email deletions: https://t.co/ocfK5penRs
link for FBI judgment on Trump obstruction: https://t.co/3sUTI2AmY8 pic.twitter.com/7QM9COhENn

— See Pinned Tweet (@Yastreblyansky) May 5, 2019

For the Record: The Race Card

Action figure by FCTRY of Brooklyn, via popsugar.com.

This Dinesh-inspired thread touched what I think is an important point:

If you wanted to know what Republicans mean by "playing the race card", Dinesh helpfully illustrates: responding to an article about his shameless grifting that never mentions his race https://t.co/8abXf5by6a

— ParticularVernacular (@Yastreblyansky) June 24, 2018

Sarah Jones's argument is about how the noise machine deals with discredited "intellectuals" like D'Souza, Charles Murray, Jordan Peterson, or Ann Coulter:

Nick gives himself a sad

H/t PJ for the idea.

Buster Keaton and Roscoe Arbuckle in Oh, Doctor! (1917), via SilentWeeks.

Shorter Nicholas Kristof, "A Confession of Liberal Intolerance", New York Times, May 7 2016:

Golly, folks, we progressives are supposed to be so open and accepting, so how come conservative intellectuals in our academic institutions are forced to use separate drinking fountains and bathrooms and summer camps? I've been thinking about this because I wrote about it on Facebook. 

That last bit is practically verbatim:

I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.

He tried saying something about it without thinking, and that didn't work out, so now he's looking at this alternative approach. What strikes me here is something I've never noticed about Kristof, which is that he's really not very good at thinking; his idea of thinking is to assert that something is bad, enumerate many examples of its badness, and declare that something needs to be done about it, for which he may or may not have some specific suggestions which may or may not be of some use; there's no dialectic between, for instance, different ways of approaching the problem.