(get it because nezuko's a demon now, but it's also dazai's ability) (okay iâm done now)
ao3: uttertrashdumpster
other blogs found here
muichirou deserved better and i will never stop talking about this
This is something that more people should be aware of, if only because (in many states, at least) defense attorneys are actually prohibited from mentioning it to jurors. The law allows a jury to return a ânot guiltyâ verdict contrary to the facts of the case, but not for the defense to inform them of that power or to argue for its application in the current trial.
This is SUPER IMPORTANT and also a good reason to show up for jury duty. You know all those laws you think are stupid? This is your chance to maybe do something about it.Â
Reasons may include beliefs that: the law itself is unjust,[5][6] the prosecutor has misapplied the law in the defendantâs case,[7] the punishment for breaking the law is too harsh, or general frustrations with the criminal justice system.
Around the world, doctors have noticed teenage patients reporting the sudden onset of tics. Is this the first illness spread by social media?
By: Helen Lewis
Published: Feb 27, 2022
Three years ago, the psychiatrist Kirsten MĂŒller-Vahl began to notice something unusual about the newest patients at her clinic in Hannover, Germany. A typical Touretteâs patient is a boy who develops slow, mild motor ticsâblinking or grimacingâat about age 5 to 7, followed later by simple vocalizations such as coughing. Only about one in 10 patients progress to the disorderâs most famous symptomâcoprolalia, which involves shouting obscene or socially unacceptable words. Even then, most patients utter only half a dozen swear words, on repeat.
But these new patients were different. They were older, for a startâteenagersâand about half of them were girls. Their tics had arrived suddenly, explosively, and were extreme; some were shouting more than 100 different obscenities. This last symptom in particular struck MĂŒller-Vahl as odd. âEven in extremely severely affected [Touretteâs] patients, they try to hide their coprolalia,â she told me. The teenagers she was now seeing did not. She had the impression, she said, that âthey want to demonstrate that they suffer from these symptoms.â Even more strangely, many of her new patients were prone to involuntary outbursts of exactly the same phrase: Du bist hĂ€sslich. âYou are ugly.â
MĂŒller-Vahl, a professor of psychiatry at Hannover Medical School and the chair of the European Society for the Study of Tourette Syndrome, was not the only one puzzled by this phenomenon. The global community of Touretteâs researchers is tight-knit, and as they talked it became clear that a shift in patients and symptoms was happening all over the world, at the same time. Before the pandemic, 2 to 3 percent of pediatric patients at the Johns Hopkins University Touretteâs Center, in Baltimore, had acute-onset tic-like behaviors, but that rose last year to 10 to 20 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Texas Childrenâs Hospital reported seeing approximately 60 teenagers with sudden tics between March 2020 and the autumn of 2021, compared with just one or two a year before that.
Four months before the clinic in Hannover saw its first new-style patient, a 20-year-old German man named Jan Zimmermann had launched a YouTube channel called Gewitter im Kopf, or âThunderstorm in the Head.â Thatâs how he describes living with his socially inappropriate, visually arresting symptoms: blurting out obscene words, throwing food, trying to nibble his friend Tim. In the past, he has set off fire alarms, pulled the emergency brake on the train, and once asked a cross-eyed HR manager, âIs the wall more interesting than me?â
Zimmermann now has 2 million YouTube followers and a bespoke app that allows users to download his âbest ticsâ as sound files. On his merchandise page, you can buy hoodies, mugs, and a 25-euro doormat emblazoned with one of his most common sayings: Du bist heute besonders hĂ€sslich, or âYou are particularly ugly todayâânearly the same phrase that kept coming out of MĂŒller-Vahlâs patients.
Zimmermann calls his symptoms âGiselaâ to suggest that they have a will of their own. Last May, he threatened legal action against an activist who called him a Nazi after he released a baking video in which he said, âIn the oven, give my regards to Anne Frank.â (In Germany, where Holocaust denial and Hitler salutes are illegal, this was a particularly shocking thing to broadcast on the internet.) His lawyers suggested that, because Zimmermann himself faced marginalization, calling him a Nazi was absurd. And he could not be held responsible for the offense caused: After all, Gisela made him do it.
Zimmermannâs behavior seems to have influenced his viewersâ own tics. In a forthcoming study of 32 of her new-style patients, MĂŒller-Vahl found that 63 percent threw food, and that the most common vocalizations were swear words such as arschloch (âassholeâ) and fick dich (âfuck youâ). Some parroted other phrases of Zimmermannâs, such as pommes (âfriesâ) or fliegende haie (âflying sharksâ). But when her team began to question the teenagers in front of their parents, many denied watching Zimmermannâs YouTube videos.
Tammy Hedderly, a neurologist at the Evelina London Childrenâs Hospital, sometimes calls her new-style tic patients âEvies.â These girls âpresent thumping their chest, shouting beans, and falling to their knees,â she told the virtual conference. The nickname comes from a 21-year-old British influencer named Evie Meg Field, also known as @thistrippyhippie, who has 14.2 million followers on TikTok and nearly 800,000 on Instagram. Field has published a book called My Nonidentical Twin: What Iâd Like You to Know About Living With Touretteâs.
Fieldâs signature ticâsaying beansâis what alerted the British researcher Tara Murphy that the Touretteâs patient she saw on remote St. Helena must have been influenced by the internet. At the October conference, Murphy described how âLM,â a 16-year-old born and raised on the island, had tics from an early age but suddenly developed much more florid symptoms in early 2021: clicking, whistling, and saying beans. In other words, LM was an âEvie.â
Field herself has acknowledged her strange power. On September 25, she posted a video of herself looking sheepish with the caption: âme watching 95% of ppl with tics/touretteâs say the âbeansâ tic knowing iâm the original source.â But Field and Zimmerman, who did not respond to requests for comment, are only two among dozens of âTouretteâs influencersâ with large fan bases online. According to TikTok, videos tagged #tourettes have been viewed more than 5 billion times.
The unexpectedly wide appeal of these videos is surely bound up with transgression and the old-fashioned desire to rubberneck, mixed up with a backlash against ânormiesââthe neurotypicalâand a proud assertion of the right to be different. The essence of coprolalia is violating social conventions, and watching those with Touretteâs shout and swear is just as compelling as watching an edgy comedian say the allegedly unsayable.
The teenagers who watch the #tourettes videos also find community, acceptance, sympathy, and validation. Less wholesomely, they find proof that the more eye-catching, disruptive, or rude the creatorâs tics are, the more viral they go.
Katie krautwurst was a high-school cheerleader in Le Roy, New York, when the twitching began. In October 2011, she woke up from a nap and started to spasm. A few weeks later, her friend Thera Sanchez, also a cheerleader, began to experience the same symptoms. More and more girls followed: shaking, stammering, fainting, unable to control their arms as they flailed around their bodies. Eventually, at least 18 people in LeRoyâincluding one boy and a 36-year-old womanâwere affected.
âParents wept as their daughters stuttered at the dinner table,â The New York Times Magazine recounted months later. âTeachers shut their classroom doors when they heard a din of outbursts, one cry triggering another, sending the increasingly familiar sounds ricocheting through the halls. Within a few months, as the camera crews continued to descend, the community barely seemed to recognize itself.â The health authorities in Le Roy looked for a physical explanation: Was the townâs water contaminated? Its soil? Erin Brockovichâyes, that Erin Brockovichâappeared in town, ready to bust open a scandalous cover-up of industrial pollution. The New York State Department of Health tried to reassure parents at a public meeting that no such cover-up existed. Katie, Thera, and their mothers appeared on NBCâs Today show, the girls shaking and spasming, which drew nationwide attention to their cause. The segment portrayed the tics as a sudden interruption in otherwise contented lives. âWhen these started,â Thera said, âI was fine. I was perfectly fine. I felt good about everything. I was on honor roll.â She just woke up one day, she said, and the symptoms began.
The next day, however, the fever began to break. David Lichter, a Buffalo doctor who had treated several of the Le Roy girls, went public and revealed his diagnosis: conversion disorder, a now-outdated Freudian term for when psychological stress manifests as physical symptoms. Global experts began taking an interest in the case. âThey were not all happy cheerleaders, living the American dream; they just werenât,â Simon Wessely, a psychiatry professor at Kingâs College London with a long-standing interest in contested illnesses, told me. Later coverage filled in some important history: The week before Katieâs tics started, her mother, Beth, had had brain surgery. Thera, it emerged, had a difficult relationship with some members of her family. Another girl reported that she had a violent father.
Wessely, who is also an epidemiologist, described what happened in Le Roy as âa fairly standard incident of contagious tics.â When the girls went on television, he said, many specialist doctors saw them and began voicing their skepticism on social media. âNeurologists,â Wessely added, âoften donât bother with euphemisms: âTheyâre hysterical. That is not any known movement disorder in science.ââ Eventually, the diagnosis of a mass psychogenic illness began to gain credence. Lichterâs main contribution to the debate, he told me by email recently, was to advise local news outletsâamid âa strong push from family members and other activists to find the âtrueâ cause of the problemââthat media attention was aggravating the outbreak.
So you know how vestiges and quirks getting imprinted in other quirks work? Yea.
So OFA was created by a transfer of quirks via AFO, which according to the beforementioned lore would actually mean OFA contains a vestige of AFO himself.
I've said before that he might be what's behind the door locked by Izuku's yet to be unlocked quirks, and that Izuku might accidentally give AFO the upper hand by freeing the vestige and reestablishing the connection between them.
But since OFA manifests all the other quirks of the vestiges inhabiting it, that would technically mean AFO is imprinted in OFA and Izuku could gain access to it.
This puts Izuku and everyone involved in a situation that's simultaneously the best and worst.
I can totally see him unlocking the 2nd's quirk, thinking he just turned the tide of the battle, only to accidentally unleash the AFO inside him and essentially be forced to deal with the same thing as Tomura, with AFO trying to turn him into another puppet and possibly attacking the vestiges, with Yoichi within his reach.
Then I guess he could fight back and eventually gain access to his copy of AFO and pull an ATLA on AFO and Tomura's AFOs (bonus points if Tomura helps him and makes the decision to let AFO be taken from him so he can be free again)
But I wouldn't be surprised if pulling this off also ended with him getting sick or dying of quirk overload afterwards because god damn that's 3 whole AFOs
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults, with Dr. Lyell Asher. Includes:
Introduction: Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 1) 1965-75: The Decisive Decade
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 2): College Administrators
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 3): Administrator Training
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 4): University of Delaware Re-Education
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 5): Mainstreaming Microaggressions
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 6): Yale's Halloween Hustle
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 7): Why Authoritarians Love "Intention vs. Impact"
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 8): Ed Schools: Weak Academics & Woke Politics
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 9): From Justice to Social Justice
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 10): Social Justice Illiteracy
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 11): The Knowledge Gap
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 12): The Reading Debacle
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 13): How Ed Schools Won
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 14): Things You Can Do: Higher Ed
Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 15): Things You Can Do: K-12 Schools
==
Introductory article: Dr. Lyell Asher: Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults
The series doesnât of course tell the whole story of higher educationâs descent into Woke orthodoxyâit couldnât. But it does connect a few of the most important phases in that descent to a 100-year history of so-called âprogressiveââbut in effect, regressiveâpedagogical theory in the nationâs k-12 teacher training schools. Despite the great work of writers and researchers like James Koerner, Diane Ravitch, Rita Kramer, John Taylor Gatto, and E.D. Hirsch, to name just a few, that history is largely unknownânot only to the public at large, but to college faculty as well.
At least where faculty are concerned, itâs unlikely that knowing that history and its disastrous consequences for minority and low-income students especially, would dampen their willingness to allow, and often encourage, the abandonment of the fundamental academic values on which their own disciplines have been built. However much the professoriate may identify with the principled freedom of Galileo and Darwin, it does so only in retrospect, after the dust has settled and the victors have been announced. In the moment, it always follows the example of the Church.
But thatâs an old story. As I believe Christopher Hitchens once said (Iâve been unable to verify my memory), âThere is no more cowardly creature on godâs green earth than a professor with tenure.â
==
This is a rather stunning expose of the current dysfunction in US higher education. It explains that the problem and corruption goes back longer than you think, and isn't with academics like you might suspect.
Dr. Lyell Asher traces the current assault on free speech and academic freedom and integrity back from its origins over 100 years ago, through K-12 education today, and its source in the low standards and ideological pseudoscience of the diploma mills known as America's Schools of Education.
A domain so corrupt that it refuses to even teach kids how to read correctly on purely ideological grounds. The same domain that insists that it alone holds the solutions to the gaps in educational equity... gaps that it created in the first place.
What becomes clear is that the US has everything it needs to fix its educational woes - the studies, the science, the statistics, the reports, the effective, tested pedagogies, everything.
It can fix its problems, but for quasi-theological reasons, it just won't.
All up, it's over an hour in length, but very compelling.
Funny how no believers actually do any better, have better survival rates, or are more successful than non-believers or believers of any other religion. Almost like it doesnât care to show its chosen and favorite people any more regard than anyone else. Are they not the Trueâą ChosenÂź ones? Or is it not there at all?
âI held Carlâs Hand as he died and I looked at him and he smiled and I said âGoodbye, Carl.â And he said 'Goodbye, Ann.â And he closed his eyes and he died. We knew as we said those words we were never going to see one another again, and it was okay. It was very sad. But it was okay.â
â Carl Saganâs wife, Ann Druyan
The myth of an afterlife makes death, and the prelude before it, trivial.
I heard Allahâs Messenger (ï·ș) saying; âAngels (of Mercy) do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or a picture of a living creature (a human being or an animal).
Once Gabriel promised the Prophet (that he would visit him, but Gabriel did not come) and later on he said, "We, angels, do not enter a house which contains a picture or a dog.â
Maimuna reported that one morning Allahâs Messenger (ï·ș) was silent with grief. Maimuna said:
Allahâs Messenger, I find a change in your mood today. Allahâs Messenger (ï·ș) said: Gabriel had promised me that he would meet me tonight, but he did not meet me. By Allah, he never broke his promises, and Allahâs Messenger (ï·ș) spent the day in this sad (mood). Then it occurred to him that there had been a puppy under their cot. He commanded and it was turned out. He then took some water in his hand and sprinkled it at that place. When it was evening Gabriel met him and he said to him: you promised me that you would meet me the previous night. He said: Yes, but we do not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture. Then on that very morning he commanded the killing of the dogs until he announced that the dog kept for the orchards should also be killed, but he spared the dog meant for the protection of extensive fields (or big gardens).
The things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me. They said, âPrayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman (if they pass in front of the praying people).â I said, âYou have made us (i.e. women) dogs. I saw the Prophet (ï·ș) praying while I used to lie in my bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I would slip away. for I disliked to face him.â
The things which annul prayer were mentioned before me (and those were): a dog, a donkey and a woman. I said, âYou have compared us (women) to donkeys and dogs. By Allah! I saw the Prophet (ï·ș) praying while I used to lie in (my) bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I disliked to sit and trouble the Prophet. So, I would slip away by the side of his feet.â
The Messenger of âAllah (ï·ș) said: When any one of you stands for prayer and there is a thing before him equal to the back of the saddle that covers him and in case there is not before him (a thing) equal to the back of the saddle, his prayer would be cut off by (passing of an) ass, woman, and black Dog. I said: O Abu Dharr, what feature is there in a black dog which distinguish it from the red dog and the yellow dog? He said: O, son of my brother, I asked the Messenger of Allah (ï·ș) as you are asking me, and he said: The black dog is a devil.
It was narrated from âAbdullah bin Samit from Abu Dharr, that the Prophet (ï·ș) said:
âThe prayer is severed by a woman, a donkey, and a black dog, if there is not something like the handle of a saddle in front of a man.â I (âAbdullah) said: âWhat is wrong with a black dog and not a red one?â He (Abu Dharr) said: âI asked the Messenger of Allah (ï·ș) the same question, and he said: âThe black dog is a Shaitan (satan).â
You need know nothing else about Islam in order to reject it.
A common strategy to combat the most extreme ideas of the progressive left has been to use argumentation, reason and evidence. But reasoning
"Reason doesnât work when arguing with ideologically unreasonable people."
By: Erec Smith
Published: Mar 15, 2022
After watching the Showtime documentary âEverythingâs Gonna Be All White,â I experienced an emotion I didnât expect. I expected anger at the ignorance I had already noticed in the showâs trailer. I expected sadness at how far backward we have moved regarding race relations in this country. I even expected confusion, since that is a typical response to the fallacious reasoning of contemporary social justice activism. But surprisingly, what I felt most saliently was embarrassmentâembarrassment for the speakers in this series who thought they were showing the world their strength when they really displayed their weakness, and thought they were expressing empowerment when they were inadvertently confessing severe insecurity. I felt embarrassed for Showtime for believing the opinions expressed in the show were âthe POC POV,â and not the immature ramblings of people with the mental and emotional intelligence of first-graders.
Missteps abound in this documentary. The first episode alone examines extremistsâthose who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, those still upset about the Civil War and those who call the cops on Black individuals for innocuous reasons such as having a cookoutâand presents them as an accurate representation of all white people. One commentator insists that the slur âKaren,â denoting an egregiously judgmental white woman who frequently targets Black people with her hypercritical vitriol, applies not just to some white women, but to all white women. The false idea that there is an epidemic of white-on-Black homicide courses through the show, most absurdly through musings that take place in lieu of the serious discussion the topic of racism demands.
To be fair, ridiculous ideas come from across the political spectrum. From QAnon to âJewish Space Lasers,â the right is not without its own absurdities. However, as a member of academia, I see ridiculousness of the woke progressive variety infiltrating liberal arts education in a variety of disciplines, including my field of rhetoric. Christian Smith, in an essay titled âHigher Ed is Drowning in BS,â states that ridiculousness correlates with the âcrisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanityâ in academia and, by extension, society at large. Smith continues to insist that âthe accumulated effects of all the academic BS are contributing to this countryâs disastrous political condition and, ultimately, putting at risk the very viability and character of decent civilization.â I couldnât agree more, hence my focus on this specific type of ridiculousness.
Regarding the ridiculousness cultivated and distributed by those whom John McWhorter calls âthird-wave anti-racistsâ (TWAs), my driving question is this: Why do we take such ridiculous ideas seriously? Even if the people harboring those ideas can persuade large numbers of people who do not know better, why are the people who do know better tolerating such ideas? Why are they suffering such fools as seriously as they do? Why donât they respond accordingly? Why donât they ridicule ridiculous ideas?
Why Ridicule Is a Useful Tool
The Cambridge online dictionary defines âridiculousâ as âstupid or unreasonable and deserving to be laughed at.â The first half of this definition, âstupid and unreasonable,â can be applied to much of the progressive left because they, themselves, dismiss reason as a sufficient way of knowing. According to Judith Katz, a scholar whose âAspects and Assumptions of White Cultureâ was featured temporarily on the National Museum of African American History and Cultureâs website and is embraced by the aforementioned TWAs, the following concepts are inherently white and, therefore, racist when expected from people of color: delayed gratification; planning for the future; objective, rational and linear thinking; the scientific method; the concept of cause and effect; decision-making, etc. All these concepts can be placed under the general category of reason, a fact that needs no explanation for reasonable readers.
This indictment of reason explains much unreason among TWAs, but the more important observation is this: Reasoning with ideologically unreasonable people may be a foolâs errand. Reason and rationality, or at least a shared respect for them, is key to effective and productive communication. However, if people refuse to abide by reason and rationalityâgoing so far as to call them tools of oppressionâtwo responses present themselves.
The first is to walk away from the situation. Why waste time getting nowhere? Instead, go find the people who respect and do their best to implement reason and rationality. Even if I lose an argument with a reasonable and rational person, I am better for it. In fact, if I am victorious in my debate I may benefit from acquiring a new affective strategy or strengthening my already strong understanding of the subject at hand. When someone refuses the mere courtesy of a short conversation or even a short answer to an innocuous questionâlike âThatâs an interesting point. Can you elaborate?ââcarrying on may be wasted effort.
Unfortunately, this evasive strategy may not work with many social justice activists. Walking away enables them to perpetuate their ideas unimpeded and would be playing right into their hands. Whatâs more, people donât get to see what dissent can look like in these situations; those who cannot speak up or are still unsure of their understanding of TWA logic may need clarification and validation they will not get if would-be dissenters walk away. But that may not be the only consequence of evasion. When you walk away from many TWAs, they follow, sometimes with insults, inane guilt trips and various kinds of threats. They may even figure out where you live, inform the most rabid among their ranks and observe the consequences. Clearly, it is not wise to turn your back on them. It would seem, then, that walking away isnât always an option.
The other option happens to be the second half of our operational definition of ridiculous: Laugh at ridiculousness as it deserves to be laughed at. The importance of laughing at the new wielders of cultural powerâTWAsâis described well by Simon Critchley in his book âOn Humourâ: âBy laughing at power, we expose its contingency, we realize that what appeared to be fixed and oppressive is in fact the emperorâs new clothes, and just the sort of thing that should be mocked and ridiculed.â By study and observation we can see that the TWAsâ emperor is clearly in the buff; mocking and ridiculing, as did the little boy who pointed out the emperorâs birthday suit, may be the truthful but humorous way to get the point across.
One may ask, âBut isnât ridicule hypocritical? Wouldnât a reliance on ridicule turn us into the very monsters we are trying to slay?â No, because the TWA counterpart to ridicule is not a different variation of ridicule; it is degradation.
Ridicule vs. Degradation
One may also think that ridiculing TWAs is a âfighting fire with fireâ strategy that can only make things worse. However, this isnât fighting fire with fire; itâs fighting degradation with ridicule. The best operational definition of degradation comes from the field of sociology. In the 1950s, Harold Garfinkel described âstatus degradationâ as â[a]ny communicative work between persons, whereby the public identity of an actor is transformed into something looked on as lower in the local scheme of social types.â This âcommunicative workâ is meant to cause the loss of dignity for the object of degradation and a mix of schadenfreude and fear among onlookers. The ultimate point of such degradation is to silence people; they can no longer claim status or respect.
Ridicule, by contrast, makes a strong case for the utter silliness of the other personâs beliefs and behaviors, but the personâs status as a whole is not eradicated. Ridicule is not degradation; it is an inducement of discomfiture, so the terms are not synonymous. In âHumiliation: Its Nature and Consequences,â psychologists Walter Torres and Raymond Bergner explain this difference. Using âhumiliationâ as a synonym of degradation, they write:
In embarrassment, a person discovers such things as that his zipper is open, that there has been spinach between his teeth during a just completed conversation, or that a gossipy comment has been overheard by its target. Such persons are caught out of face, in minor violations of social decorum or conduct. However, in these and other embarrassing situations, their status to make status bids or claims is not rejected. In humiliation, it is.
So, to ridicule is to weaken credibility and respectability in a particular context, not to completely destroy those things, along with a personâs status, in all contexts.
Lastly, unlike degradation, which has little concern for logic or truth, ridicule as I am defining it is backed by logic and truth. It is not enough to insult someone; one must insult someone while thoroughly explaining why the insult is warranted, and that explanation must be fortified by logic and facts. Although TWAs have little respect for logic and facts, ridicule coupled with explanation can go a long way for those listening in: the ones who do not yet know what to make of the absurdities they are hearing; those who notice and lament the absurdities but feel alone in their views; and, especially, those who may believe that they only find these ideas ridiculous because they are missing something and have yet to hear the right arguments or read the right books. This strategy is akin to the open letter in journalism; one seems to be talking to a particular person or group, but the true audience is much larger.
By extension, unlike those who degrade, those who ridicule welcome a response; they want a continuing dialogue and are happy to have their ideas scrutinized by a person who appreciates logic and empirical information. So, ridiculers welcome the ridicule of their own ideas as well, as long as they are given the opportunity to respond. Ultimately, the object of oneâs ridicule can still maintain his or her humanity. The purpose of degradation, however, is to eradicate that humanity.
The Roots of Degradation
The degradation strategy is clearer when we trace the illogic of third-wave anti-racism to its Marxist source. Marx and Lenin insisted that anyone with opposing thoughts to theirs simply could not be tolerated. Antonio Gramsci went so far as to turn the Marxist notion of class warfare into ideological warfare; i.e., your socioeconomic status matters less than your ideological status. To be bourgeois was to evade revolutionary mindsets, and such evaders had to be degraded at best, eliminated at worst.
The Frankfurt School, a group of Marxists responsible for creating the school of thought that would eventually give birth to critical race theory, similarly believed that those deemed bourgeois could not be tolerated. Frankfurt School member Herbert Marcuse, in an essay titled âRepressive Tolerance,â insists that the only way to bring about a revolution that would uplift the downtrodden is to have absolutely no tolerance for those who oppose the revolution. Although Marcuse referred to this anti-revolutionary group as conservative, that term now encompasses all those who do not think all-out revolution is the only way to peace and equality in the 21st century, regardless of political identification.
Critical race theory and, to a larger extent, critical social justice come out of this Marxist mindset of intolerance. If this intolerance is taken to its logical conclusion, one can understand why activists influenced by these theories either refuse to talk to dissenters or work to degrade them. In lieu of show trials and gulags, today we have degradation ceremonies and âcancellationsâ in the form of firings, Twitter mobbings and other kinds of exclusion. Critical race theoryâs origins in Marxist thought should not be dismissed as an interesting historical fact; it is a frightening present fact. Although what is going on in America today can be called a kind of âsoftâ Marxism, it shares the same âhardâ goal as Marxism proper: societal revolution through the collapse of American hegemony. If this revolution results in societal collapse, the TWAs will have achieved their goal.
This goalâcomplete revolutionâexplains much behavior among current social justice activists, especially the demonization of values such as reason, dialogue and free speech. If you want a revolution, the last thing you want to do is engage in logical and reasonable discussion with those with whom you disagree. In fact, being illogical and unreasonable is a much better way to bring about chaos. These activists want to negate common sense and ignore any empirical evidence that weakens their arguments.
Effective Ridicule
So what do we do about TWAs, especially since their apparent lack of reason is arguably not inadvertent, but a purposeful tactic of disruption? We have to show them that we know their illogic is purposeful, we do not fear them and their accusations will not land. We have to show them, in no uncertain terms, that we are not taking them seriously. Because walking away wonât always do the trick, we must ridicule. We must ridicule their ridiculousness, and we must do it consistently.
Fortunately, the efforts to ridicule such ridiculousness have already begun. Andrew Doyle, under the pseudonym Titania McGrath, wrote âWokeness: A Guide to Social Justice,â a parody of TWAsâ sentiments. Winthrop Rosenbergâs satirical book of speculative fiction, titled âAnti-Racist vs. Colorblind 2064: Woke Wars,â displays social justice activismâs illogical conclusions regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. âAnticlownist Baby: A Radical Activist Childrenâs Book for Anticlownism Education,â written by Doctor Zews (another pseudonym), is a direct dig at anti-racist leader Ibram X. Kendiâs childrenâs book, âAntiracist Baby.â For people whoâd rather watch TV than read, there is Bill Maherâs litany of satirical âwokeâ movie warnings.
The âgrievance studiesâ hoax may best illustrate the power of ridicule. Authors James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian decided to send purposefully absurd essays to scholarly journals to see if these journals would take them seriously enough to publish. Seven essays were accepted, including an âargument for men self-penetrating with dildos to reduce transphobia. An ethnography of men who attend âbreastaurantsâ like Hooters. Research on rape culture among the dogs at Portland dog parks.â This ridiculing of identity-based scholarship dealt a strong blow to a progressively left-wing academia and exposed third-wave anti-racism in academia for the danger it is. Ridicule works; it dismisses woke behavior and talking points without playing into TWAsâ hands. We simply cannot take such activists seriously, and it has to be blatantly clear that we will not take them seriously.
Lastly, as stated briefly above, we must open ourselves up to ridicule as well. No one is perfect, and when we wander into absurd thoughts, we should be thankful for those who point them out to us, lest we devolve into the very same ludicrous miasma weâre combatting. Socrates compared those who would challenge him as touchstones, referring to the material used to test the integrity of gold. In âGorgias,â Socrates says to his interlocutor, Callicles, âIf my soul, Callicles, were made of gold, should I not rejoice to discover one of those stones with which they test gold, and the very best possible one to which I might bring my soul; and if the stone and I agreed in approving of her training, then I should know that I was in a satisfactory state, and that no other test was needed by me.â
Therefore, Socrates implores Callicles to pull no punches: âDo not then desist from advising me, now that you have begun, until I have learned clearly what this is which I am to practice, and how I may acquire it. And if you find me assenting to your words, and hereafter not doing that to which I assented, call me âdolt,â and deem me unworthy of receiving further instructionâ (emphasis mine). Socrates insists that Callicles and others call him out as a âdoltâ when he seems to be acting like one. Socrates would rather be ridiculedâwhile afforded the opportunity to defend himself and converse furtherâthan to be ignored or silenced. Thus, we should not fear ridicule or refrain from the self-awareness that allows us to discover our own fallacious reasoning.
Ridicule Ridiculous Ideas
Although ridicule is not degradation, and although its effects pale in comparison to the effects cultural Marxism would have on society, some of you may be doubting the use of ridicule to cope with and battle third-wave activism. If you share this feeling, know that woke ideas and tactics are ridiculous whether we point it out or not:
Calling science, delayed gratification, hard work and punctuality inherently white concepts and, therefore, racist to expect from Black people is ridiculous.
Saying that Black and white kids do math differently and, therefore, should be taught differently is ridiculous.
Saying that someoneâs insistence that he is not racist is proof that he is racist is ridiculous.
Saying someone should be canceled for pointing out facts and empirical research that donât align with a preferred narrative is ridiculous.
Saying that lived experience always overpowers empirical evidence is ridiculous.
To quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Rod Dreher, âLive not by lies.â Saying that woke tactics arenât ridiculous is a lie, and not saying that they are ridiculous is a lie by omission. Explicitly exposing their ridiculousness is really just an expression of the obvious. Lastly, remember that ridicule and degradation are not the same, and while the latter is unacceptable, the former is fair game.
Of course, throughout all this we still need to be fair. Not all people we would label as social justice activists deserve ridicule. Some commentators in the aforementioned Showtime documentary are thoughtful and realistic and deserve to be taken seriously. Some activists and scholars are not only sincere in wanting to end racism and do right by the minorities damaged by it; they are also actually willing to talk to those who disagree on how best to accomplish that. However, for the cartoonishly intolerant, ridicule may be the most effective rule of engagement. The ridiculous ones are the unreachable ones, the ones who have jettisoned reason and see dialogue as an inherent evil. Since they have rejected reason, the only remaining tactic is ridicule.
==
Been saying this for years: the ridiculous deserves ridicule. By definition.
What Iâve learned over time from the tales of ex-Muslims is that in devout, strict Muslim homes, itâs extremely common that the mother is one of the worst of them all. Her husband might be head of the household, but itâs her duty to prepare and teach her daughter for what is to come, and she will use him as her blunt weapon.
The mother that she should be able to rely upon, who knows whatâs going on, knows whatâs being demanded, who should be coming to her defence, actively betrays and works against her daughter. The mother is the one putting hijab on her. The mother is the one dressing her for the marriage that has been arranged for her. The mother summons the father when the daughter is not sufficiently submissive, devout or pure. The mother hisses that she prays death for her daughter for leaving or removing hijab.
Everything that happens to the daughter isnât in spite of the mother, itâs because of the mother.
This meme is actually a Xian meme, where believing in yourself is a bad thing.
Of course, the problem is that a quick peruse of the Pinterest boards and Facebook pages of the people who post this, under such tags as âspiritualâ and âinspirationâ to signal their piety and humility, makes it clear that the bible they believe in is a bible of their own interpretation.
Which is still the same thing.
When you press them for how they can know their interpretation is correct, theyâll say something like how their god is good so it couldnât mean the bad thing.
Which is still the same thing.
Or that they have faith about what it means.
Which is still the same thing.
âNo man ever believers that the Bible means what it says:
He is always convinced that it says what he means.â
â George Bernard Shaw
Xian morality is as secular, evolved and subjective as anyone elseâs. The only difference is they sign their godâs name on their own work, call it âgodâs willâ and claim to be humble.
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