PG included this as part of a very long post earlier this month, but decided it deserved a repeat on its own for any who missed the first one or gave up partway through the earlier post.
From Harper’s Magazine:
Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.
The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.
This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.
Elliot Ackerman Saladin Ambar, Rutgers University Martin Amis Anne Applebaum Marie Arana, author Margaret Atwood John Banville Mia Bay, historian Louis Begley, writer Roger Berkowitz, Bard College Paul Berman, writer Sheri Berman, Barnard College Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet Neil Blair, agent David W. Blight, Yale University Jennifer Finney Boylan, author David Bromwich David Brooks, columnist Ian Buruma, Bard College Lea Carpenter Noam Chomsky, MIT (emeritus) Nicholas A. Christakis, Yale University Roger Cohen, writer Ambassador Frances D. Cook, ret. Drucilla Cornell, Founder, uBuntu Project Kamel Daoud Meghan Daum, writer Gerald Early, Washington University-St. Louis Jeffrey Eugenides, writer Dexter Filkins Federico Finchelstein, The New School Caitlin Flanagan Richard T. Ford, Stanford Law School Kmele Foster David Frum, journalist Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University Atul Gawande, Harvard University Todd Gitlin, Columbia University Kim Ghattas Malcolm Gladwell Michelle Goldberg, columnist Rebecca Goldstein, writer Anthony Grafton, Princeton University David Greenberg, Rutgers University Linda Greenhouse Rinne B. Groff, playwright Sarah Haider, activist Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern Roya Hakakian, writer Shadi Hamid, Brookings Institution Jeet Heer, The Nation Katie Herzog, podcast host Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College Adam Hochschild, author Arlie Russell Hochschild, author Eva Hoffman, writer Coleman Hughes, writer/Manhattan Institute Hussein Ibish, Arab Gulf States Institute Michael Ignatieff Zaid Jilani, journalist Bill T. Jones, New York Live Arts Wendy Kaminer, writer Matthew Karp, Princeton University Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative Daniel Kehlmann, writer Randall Kennedy Khaled Khalifa, writer Parag Khanna, author Laura Kipnis, Northwestern University Frances Kissling, Center for Health, Ethics, Social Policy Enrique Krauze, historian Anthony Kronman, Yale University Joy Ladin, Yeshiva University Nicholas Lemann, Columbia University Mark Lilla, Columbia University Susie Linfield, New York University Damon Linker, writer Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Steven Lukes, New York University John R. MacArthur, publisher, writer | Susan Madrak, writer Phoebe Maltz Bovy, writer Greil Marcus Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Kati Marton, author Debra Mashek, scholar Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago John McWhorter, Columbia University Uday Mehta, City University of New York Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University Yascha Mounk, Persuasion Samuel Moyn, Yale University Meera Nanda, writer and teacher Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine Mark Oppenheimer, Yale University Dael Orlandersmith, writer/performer George Packer Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University (emerita) Greg Pardlo, Rutgers University – Camden Orlando Patterson, Harvard University Steven Pinker, Harvard University Letty Cottin Pogrebin Katha Pollitt, writer Claire Bond Potter, The New School Taufiq Rahim Zia Haider Rahman, writer Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution/The Atlantic Neil Roberts, political theorist Melvin Rogers, Brown University Kat Rosenfield, writer Loretta J. Ross, Smith College J.K. Rowling Salman Rushdie, New York University Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University Diana Senechal, teacher and writer Jennifer Senior, columnist Judith Shulevitz, writer Jesse Singal, journalist Anne-Marie Slaughter Andrew Solomon, writer Deborah Solomon, critic and biographer Allison Stanger, Middlebury College Paul Starr, American Prospect/Princeton University Wendell Steavenson, writer Gloria Steinem, writer and activist Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Harvard Law School Kian Tajbakhsh, Columbia University Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University Cynthia Tucker, University of South Alabama Adaner Usmani, Harvard University Chloe Valdary Helen Vendler, Harvard University Judy B. Walzer Michael Walzer Eric K. Washington, historian Caroline Weber, historian Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers Bari Weiss Sean Wilentz, Princeton University Garry Wills Thomas Chatterton Williams, writer Robert F. Worth, journalist and author Molly Worthen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Matthew Yglesias Emily Yoffe, journalist Cathy Young, journalist Fareed Zakaria |
Link to the rest at Harper’s Magazine
DarkHorse 33rd, a story insight and a soup recipe.
Things are getting real for the DarkHorse channel. They are clearly frazzled. The concept they saw of all this being a Ponzi scheme is dead on.
Bret and Heather 33rd DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Ponzi Memes & Tyranny of the Minority
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pW8AFz-wf0
These are the two articles they mentioned.
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
To unite the country, we need honesty and courage
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/15/opinion/unite-country-we-need-honesty-courage/
This all ties in to my latest WIP. I’m writing about Neverwas, and how the Entity draws in the attention of people so that they can feed the Entity. Think Narnia, Neverland, Silent Hill, etc…. Entities like this feed on our “attention”, the more intense the better. The intent is to have the intensity rise until a singularity consumes the people. This is a classic theme that goes back centuries.
– The process that is going on in Portland, is the same process that is going on in my WIP, and is the same as when I cook soups.
I’m in the process of making the first of four batches of soup to freeze, so I just finished browning the meat in the big four quart slow cooker, added all the veggies and stuff. It will take about an hour for it to come to a simmer, then I will let it simmer an hour. Then take it off the heat, Let it cool, then put it in the refrigerator all night to chill down, then break it up into one cup containers to then keep in the freezer.
– Each soup is cooked with as little water as needed so I can freeze it. Think Campbells condensed soup. No point in freezing water when I can add more when I cook the meal.
– Each cup is a serving that I can either have as soup or build on to make pasta/potato/rice as needed. It is the flavor ingredient for the pasta/potato/rice dish.
Using a four quart slow cooker.
It is a rectangular covered pan, sitting on an electric cooking element like a griddle.
Recipe for 3-Bean soup:
1 pound ground hot Italian sausage
(Brown in the cooker, then crumble, before adding the other stuff.)
1 can(15 oz) three-bean salad, pickle juice and all
The pickle juice from a 16oz jar of pickled beets
(I love pickled beets, and I save the pickle juice for cooking. Do not discard the juice, it is great for cooking.)
1 can(10 oz) Ro-Tel
1 8oz container of sour cream
(I find that sour cream is an easy way to make a “cream” soup.)
1 bell pepper
salt, ground pepper, diced dried onion
(Use only enough water to rinse out the containers, maybe 10 oz.)
When the soup has chilled overnight, you will see that the fats from the meat have made a layer on top of the soup. Do not remove that fat! Yikes! That is where all the flavor is. Just break up the fat into chunks and mix it in. There should be chunks of fat in each container that you freeze.
This will make 8 to 10 one cup containers.
Don’t overfill the container or it may burst when it freezes.
Oh, I had a profound insight about this WOKE nonsense, and how to vaccinate yourself from falling into guilt when the WOKE try to shame you for being part of the White Power elite.
– The vast insight I had was the need to embrace “ethnic slurs” as a vaccine against “wokeness”.
List of ethnic slurs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
Think about it:
– Right-Wing nuts may not say the ethnic slurs out loud anymore in public, but they know all of them, and they are thus safe from this nonsense.
– Where the guilt ridden Liberals condemn themselves constantly if they even think an ethnic slur, thus they are prime candidates for being brainwashed and manipulated into spewing the WOKE nonsense.
– You don’t need to be a bigot or racist to know and understand the ethnic slurs.
– Being able to see that not everything breaks down into Black or White helps to disrupt the WOKE reprogramming nonsense.
About White Fragility:
Look at this video by Robin DiAngelo. She wrote the book White Fragility. She also makes a good living as a consultant who is paid to show up and insult people.
Coming Together Speaker Series: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVddM1hzmvI
– This was the lecture that she did at Evergreen College leading up to the melt down. This will give you an idea of the WOKE garbage that she spews.
She calls herself “White”. She is not. She’s of Italian descent, which makes her a Dago, a Greaser, a Guinea, a Wop. Which makes her a con artist when she self-identifies as “White”.
Robin DiAngelo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_DiAngelo
She is a “Troll”. She is paid to disrupt society, tear down society, simply to make money. The old term would be “Con-man”, “Flim Flam artist”. “Snake-oil salesman”. There is a long tradition in Western society of Trolls like her. I look at that as a self-destruct mechanism built into Western society.
– Just as a cancer cell fools the immune system to let itself grow uncontrollably.
Where “polite” society exist, you have Trolls like her manipulating that politeness to gain power and money.
This is “for” the issue of:
‘White Fragility’ Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/magazine/white-fragility-robin-diangelo.html
This is “against” the issue of:
On “White Fragility”
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility
How did I personally come to this insight?
– You see, I’m not White, I’m Welsh.
We are the native people of the English Isles, the aborigines, the indigenous people.
Twenty thousand years ago when the ice pulled back from the last ice age, my people were there. Soon after that the White Tribes started invading. The White Tribes that have bedeviled Blacks, etc…, over the past few hundred years, have bedeviled my people for twenty thousand years, so I am always confused when some obvious WOKE racists calls me “White”.
My grandfather came to America from Wales in 1888, when he was 12 years old. He was in his 40s when my dad was born. Dad was 35 when I was born, so our generations are spread out more than most.
When I fill out forms and they ask my “race” I always check “other” and put “Welsh” in the blank space. (That has created some interesting looks from the judge and lawyers when I show up for jury duty. HA!)
I have an old dictionary from a century ago. The word “Welshman” means, “The Stranger”.
Think about it:
– The White Tribes invaded “our” land, and called us, “The Stranger.”
The White Tribes use the ethnic slur of “taffy” for my people. There’s even a derogatory nursery rhyme about us.
Taffy was a Welshman
https://allnurseryrhymes.com/taffy-was-a-welshman/
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;
I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy wasn’t in;
I jumped upon his Sunday hat and poked it with a pin.
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a sham;
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of lamb;
I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was away,
I stuffed his socks with sawdust and filled his shoes with clay.
Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a cheat,
Taffy came to my house, and stole a piece of meat;
I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy was not there,
I hung his coat and trousers to roast before a fire.
– All I have to do is mention the word “taffy” and a White person will instantly say the entire nursery rhyme.
– If you know this nursery rhyme, then the odds are great that you are probably “White”.
What’s interesting is “taffy” is simply the way you say the name “Dafydd”(David), just as you call a Russian “Ivan” which is simply the name “John”.
Twenty thousand years is a long history of brutal oppression by the White Tribes toward my people. They started with us first and goose stepped their way across the planet ever since. The White Tribes have always used the tactic of “divide and conquer”. They do not want the various ethic groups to join together and push the White Tribes into the sea.
I have a dear friend who is White. I don’t hold it against him. But when he gets upitty, and starts trying to goose step, I slam him down and remind him that their day is done, and it is now our time to thrive.
This is an interesting hagiography about Wales.
The Story of Wales: The Makings of Wales (1 of 5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfKYqjempvc
Every tribe has it’s tales of woe.
Every tribe starts history when tbey were wronged and conveniently forget when they were the goose steppers.
Bin Ladin used to pine over the loss of Al Andaluz in the 15th century, carefully ignoring when his tribal hordes swept over the christian realms of the levant, North Africa, and especially the Goth kingdoms of Iberia. Of course, the Goths trekked from the Asian steppes, through the Roman Empire, and took over the Roman provinces that had been taken from tbe celt-iberians.
Tribe displaces tribe, as ever, since the cro-magnons displaced the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and the lost breed of homo so gone only echoes of their genome remain. Barbarians move in and subsume or erase what came before, rework their world to their comfort, until the next wave of barbarians pour in. An endless dance.
Only one tribe has grown to prominence by purposefully defining themselves by ideas rather than land or genes. By aspiring to be defined by more than dirt of blood. And now the barbarians of the new age bring back the old game.
They would be well advised to remember that the land of the free isn’t just about ideas and sensitivity but sacrosanct amendments, the first and second foremost.
Nothing good is coming; from Russian, China, or wokeness.
Are you familiar with this, dated but still relevant book?
https://www.amazon.com/Next-100-Years-Forecast-Century-ebook/dp/B001NLL946/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1P83N7VFR9C3L&dchild=1&keywords=the+next+100+years+george+friedman&qid=1595631535&sprefix=the+next+100+years%2Caps%2C245&sr=8-1
Never mind the predictions; the book isn’t about predictions but about a way to look at the world, about strategic imperatives and how they drive the tribes of humanity. The Woke have their strategic imperatives but so do the melanin-deprived.
And actions breed reactions.
Ponder that.
That’s in my to-be-read pile. It looks like I bought it in 2011. Yikes! I need to read that.
I’ve got a box of books that I’ve been building up to provide background for my stuff when I’m ready to do my The Passing Sequence. It’s astonishing how far back in time that the same series of conflicts that started in England continued on in America, and still drives the nonsense today.
– The same people are fighting the same wars over the millennia.
You kept mentioning the HonorVerse series and I remembered that I bought At All Costs in 2005 — in hardback with the CD containing all of his books — and didn’t read them because in 2005 there were no valid ereaders. Using Calibre I was able to make epub files for my iPad. I just read through the HonorVerse and now opened At All Costs, and they are astonishing. The way he shows each side of the conflict, without “judging”, letting the Reader see how each side genuinely “believes” what they believe. That opens up The Passing Sequence for me, because I could not see how to write the nonsense in a way that made sense.
– I now have solid examples of how the “villains” can be so brain dead, so wrong in what they think, without having it sound gratuitous or fake.
The monsters that I see finally make sense to me. Billions dead, and I understand why they think their acts were justified, in their own minds.
Now that I can “embrace nonsense” I actually see how to do the Sequence.
Thanks…
Life is complicated. It takes a really good writer to replicate that kind of complexity. Prime Weber can be very good (infodumps aside) and subtle. I’m still hoping on a story about Admiral Truman of the blond coterie. The hints are tantalizing.
What I most appreciate is he writes of conflicting agendas, not heroes or villains. How the characters respond to their situations is what sorts them out as either. In that, he and Friedman deal with similar themes; one in fiction, one with reality.
The other book I refer to from time to time, THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES looks at the big picture of nations and their evolution. And it too intersects with the HONORVERSE and its Epochal War.
Weber is a historian and it shows.
(Just be…careful… of his books outside BAEN. They’re readable but the pacing… Not his best.)
Have fun.
(And good luck with your Sequence. I’ll make a note to watch for it in a couple of…weeks? 😉 )
I miss Prime Weber. Lately he’s constantly slewing into the weeds and getting bogged down there. He’s one of the *only* SF/F writers who’s ever believably portrayed religion, but it’s getting harder to recommend his books because they’re turning into horribly paced quasi-wikipedia dumps with weird and abrupt/unsatisfying endings. -_-
He’s gotten “too big to edit”, alas.
(And somebody needs to sit him down and tell him to trust his readers. Not every single development in one book needs to be revisited in the next.)
Still, while the latest Honorverse books are mostly examples of trying to do too much at once, the SAFEHOLD books are just slogs. (I gave up on those even before the conspiracy led me to ignore everything from the BPHs.) Sometimes I think he’s forgotten why SAFEHOLD exists in the first place.
The Hoborverse, he really should’ve followed his original, generation saga blueprint. Even if it meant killing Honor instead of McKeon. Let others go on the death rides. Ignore the fans (expected) howling and stick to his guns.
He himself recognized he need to scale down when he started the SAGANAMI saga…and then those got sucked in to the monster of the bigger conspiracy. (sigh)
Hopefully now that he’s plateaued the Onion Saga he can get back to the smaller side stories in Silesia and the other fringe territories. And he’s primed so many different characters for leading roles that deserve better than the odd chapter here and there.
One can only hope.
What I most appreciate is he writes of conflicting agendas, not heroes or villains. How the characters respond to their situations is what sorts them out as either.
In most stories there would only be one “villain”. In Weber there are many different groups of “villains”, each one acting in what they believe reality to be. It took reading the first ten books before I started seeing the point you made:
– “conflicting agendas, not heroes or villains”
In the latest Predator movie, and in Marvel’s Venom, the motivating reason the “villain” had was that the Earth would be “uninhabitable in a generation.” That to me of course is “nonsense” so I simply glossed over what they were saying, because they were the “villain” of the piece.
– That was my mistake.
It’s like when people get all rhapsodic about the Mad Max movies, I would call the movies “Romantic Notions” to gently chide people away from believing that “nonsense”. I can take apart Mad Max so easily, because it’s filled with so much “nonsense”.
The point I was missing, until lately, was:
– That people actually believe that “nonsense” and are acting on what they believe.
It’s easy to write a simple story of Heroes and Villains, good guys and bad guys.
Weber has pushed the limit on how many incommensurable viewpoints that you can put into a novel without confusion.
These are the kind of problems(stories) that exist:
– Simple, complex, wicked, and super wicked
Wicked problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
“Intellectually” I could see other people’s viewpoint, no matter how much “nonsense” that it was. It’s only lately that I saw that my use of the word “nonsense” was crippling my ability to go that next step farther and do something like what Weber has. I need to “embrace nonsense” if I want to write wicked or even super wicked stories.
– Someone like Modesitt would break the problem up and keep each part “simple”, showing the viewpoint of one “Hero” and one “Villain”. He would do that across many books, so that the Reader would assemble the concepts across many books rather in the same book.
– John Barnes in his Daybreak Series was almost as complex as Weber. The story only fell apart when it turns out that a Berserker installation on the Moon was the one destabilizing society on Earth so that they would wipe themselves out.
– Suzanne Collins in the Hunger Games Trilogy told one story, now with the fourth book she is taking the Reader into how things started. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes the story where the Reader does not want to go. Humanizing Snow, and justifying the games.
This all comes back to what I saw the other day about “Plato’s Cave”. I realized that there are many “caves” and the conflict comes in when each of those incommensurable viewpoints goes to war with the other — each one sure that they are in the “right”.
For my The Passing Sequence, I will need to spill the story across many books, each showing one event as the world devours itself, and let the Reader put the whole story together.
(And somebody needs to sit him down and tell him to trust his readers. Not every single development in one book needs to be revisited in the next.)
I need to do what you mention above, instead of building a single Jenga tower that is always going to collapse, I need to lay the same pieces out horizontally in interesting patterns, thus making the whole story “super wicked” to the Reader.
– Same number of pieces, without the stress of avoiding the inevitable collapse.
Movies mentioned:
The Predator | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaG1KZqrLvM
VENOM – Official Trailer (HD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Mv98Gr5pY
Mad Max: Fury Road – Official Main Trailer [HD]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJnMQG9ev8
But when he gets upitty, and starts trying to goose step, I slam him down and remind him that their day is done, and it is now our time to thrive.
Make an appointment.
I’ve joined the Free Speech Union: https://freespeechunion.org/. I think there is talk of opening an American branch soon.
Such times, that it would be necessary in the land of the First Amendment.
And not because of the orange guy…
The WSJ Opinion pages has released their own response to Cancel Culture. It’s paywalled. You might still get through.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-note-to-readers-11595547898
In case not:
—–
A Note to Readers
These pages won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure.
We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages. But the support has often been mixed with concern that perhaps the letter will cause us to change our principles and content. On that point, reassurance is in order.
In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case. The signers report to the News editors or other parts of the business, and the News and Opinion departments operate with separate staffs and editors. Both report to Publisher Almar Latour. This separation allows us to pursue stories and inform readers with independent judgment.
It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times. Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media.
As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.
—-
The WSJ opinion pages may not be wilting but the rest of the staff apparently has.
The general criticism of Trump and the right was not matched by the long list of particulars from the left.