Perhaps the reason for our current plague of cognitive dissonance lies in all the “multiverse” movies and TV shows we’ve been watching. Ultimately it won’t matter. In this reality, where the speed of light in a vacuum is a generous 299,792,458 meters per second and Planck’s Constant is a steady 6.62607×10-34 Joule-seconds, the facts are not merely stubborn (John Adams) but lethally inescapable (Sir Harold Bowden). We will face them and act on their implications, or we will be destroyed by our own willfulness.
And one of the facts that will destroy us is this one:
Not if we’re too close to one another, at any rate.
Cognitive dissonance: The mental stress (discomfort) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values; when performing an action that contradicts one of those beliefs, ideas, or values; or when confronted with new information that contradicts one of the beliefs, ideas, and values. (Infogalactic)
Many Americans suffer from cognitive dissonance on certain subjects. They strain to harmonize their adherence to some prescriptive axiom (“We can all get along if only we try harder”) with the indisputable facts (the race warfare that’s been going on for some six decades). I once suffered from it myself. Then I resolved to hew strictly to the facts, as I personally witnessed them and as they’re reported by persons and institutions I know to be reliable.
That decision has cost me several friends. I refused to say or imply convictions I don’t hold in order to retain them. For commentators more prominent than I, the consequences have gone further than some social losses. It takes quite a lot of courage for someone whose livelihood depends upon retaining a publisher (or publishers) to stand to his tack under such pressures.
But there are organizations determined to maintain the fiction against the pressure of the dissonance. There’s money and power in it. And they press their agenda in every imaginable format.
Let’s start with this piece from a colleague:
In the West, we used to enjoy being able to speak our minds. Now we have cancel culture. Unless we share the pernicious and depraved ideology of the ruling class, we either keep our mouths shut or recite lies, lest our lives be destroyed by woke lynch mobs. This is for the best, according to academia:
“Cancel culture” has its benefits, according to an online anti-racism course being taught to over 100 British academics.
“Union Black,” a class being taught by The Open University, teaches professors that “In relation to racial/social justice, cancel culture has been shown to realize benefits.”
What else would you expect of the “Open” University in the land of George Orwell?
These benefits, according to class materials, include “holding people or entities accountable for immoral or unacceptable behavior” and “promoting collective action to achieve social justice and cultural change through social pressure.”
Read that last paragraph slowly and carefully. Its full impact takes two or three passes to grasp. The key lies in reifying the final phrase: “promoting collective action to achieve social justice and cultural change through social pressure.”
Here as in many other places, the riposte that wins the day is “Exactly what do you mean by that? Be clear and specific.”
The scamsters of “racial / social justice” never permit themselves to be clear or specific. It would make their aim too obvious: the reduction of whites to second-class citizens, racial dhimmis, to facilitate a massive transfer of wealth from whites to blacks. They’ve already made strides in this regard, as witness the many federal and state laws that privilege, de facto, blacks over whites in education, labor, and commerce. No “equal opportunity” commission has ever penalized a prevalently black organization or institution under the quota laws routinely wielded against prevalently white organizations and institutions.
As I commented at Dave Blount’s site, I’m minded to start a pro-racism course. I’d load it up with irrefutable, easily confirmed facts and exclude all statements of opinion or conclusion, whether or not I find them defensible. I think I’d get a good number of takers, if I could survive the announcement.
Next, there’s the Colonel’s most recent citation. It’s just below this one, so no need to over-exercise your mouse. The author of that piece, Anthony Bryan, first attacks one of the falsehoods I most despise: the one stated in the paragraph the Colonel quotes. He proceeds thence to note conservatives’ conventional refutation, which is premised on the noble sentiments of the Declaration of Independence. However, Bryan notes that this is a losing strategy:
The Republican appeal to color-blind civic nationalism is no match for the vengeful emotionalism of the 1619 Project. But this asymmetry is typical of racial discussions in America — blacks, with the backing of liberal whites, aggressively push whatever argument or policy benefits them, while the “MLK-Cons” respond with feeble appeals to the Constitution and universal principles.
Indeed, there is no effective counterstroke to the racialists’ furiously emotional pitch other than an equally furious, equally emotional pitch from the Right: a “brush-back fastball,” high and tight, that highlights the factual asymmetries between black and white:
- lower aggregate intelligence (roughly 15 points in IQ testing);
- higher aggregate aggression, especially among the young,
- higher aggregate participation in legal and social pathologies (e.g., 70% rate of illegitimacy);
- the enormous legal imbalance between blacks and whites built into our “civil rights” laws.
But conservative commentators willing to throw that pitch are few; conservative politicians willing to do so are unknown.
Finally for this tirade, a personal note. Among the reasons I canceled my television subscription two years ago was that I was sick of the left-liberal / progressive / SJW propaganda being larded over every item of “entertainment” available from the broadcast and cablecast stations. There were a couple of things whose loss I lamented, but I wasn’t willing to pay the enormous TV subscription fees just for “first run” access to them. However, I kept an eye peeled for the availability of the shows I liked on DVD. One of them, the CBS drama Evil, recently became available, so I purchased the first two seasons thereof.
I found the first season of Evil refreshing for its largely evenhanded attitude toward the Catholic Church and one of its more “controversial” doctrines and practices: the reality of demonic possession and the concomitant need for exorcism. The Church tends to be badly abused by the media. The clerical pedophilia scandals are just about the only thing the news media ever mention. Few drama series have treated the Church and its clerics with even mild approbation. Yet the dedication of its priests and its two-millennia fidelity to promulgating the Gospels of Jesus of Nazareth are unequaled by any institution of any sort anywhere or in any era. During its first season, Evil treated the Church with unusual respect, while nevertheless making room for critics and unbelievers to differ with its preachments and practices.
I was appalled to discover that the second season has departed from that practice. Instead, I was treated to diatribes about Church “racism,” founded on the relative paucity of black Catholics and black Catholic priests. We also get a repetition of a familiar canard against the United States: the notion that, as character David Acosta asserts in a homily in season 2, episode 5, “E is for Elevator,” “America’s tremendous wealth was built from the labors of black slaves.”
I suppressed the urge to use the DVD for target practice, but just barely.
Clearly, the racialists will allow no form of entertainment to go unpolluted by their vicious fantasies. Flight is useless, for the pursuit shall never tire.
There is no “Last Graf,” for there is no solution. Or perhaps there is one, but American whites from whose eyes the scales have not yet fallen remain vainly committed to the attempt to “get along.” In either case, the suffering will continue. For how long, I cannot say. Whatever the outcome and how long it takes to arrive, the realities will remain as they are. Therefore, let us at least spare ourselves any further cognitive dissonance about them.
And do have a nice day.
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Ironically, the most faithful Catholics are Asians and Africans – and the latter often have a lax application of the rules on marriage for clergy.
We do no favor, however, to allow clergy infected with Leftist principles to be sent to other countries; the form that conversion takes is too often entertwined with Leftism.
It ruined Hispanic Central and South America.
There is a pernicious development in these most modern of times for the government to refer to “our partners” and “stakeholders.” I don’t worship government but at least it makes vague gestures in the direction of fealty to established law and it is supposedly subject to control of the electorate. (Cue laff track.) Many problems here and it makes me apoplectic that there are private entities whom the government ostensibly recognizes as being on an equal footing with it.
How is the citizen to reliably identify those partners and stakeholders, let alone control them, limit their influence, or deny them influence? I haven’t verified this but others in my local community state that the school district has accepted Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation money for textbooks, I believe, but that money apparently comes with conditions. The “conditions,” if any there are, begin to look a lot like “regulations” introduced through the side door. Textbook affirmation of transgenderism? Of gay “pride”? Racial fairy tales? Multiculturalism? Globalism? The Great
WhiteFather in Washington?The more the “conditions” look like “regulations” the more you have private entities making regulations. Were this at the federal level there would be an obvious problem with noncompliance with the Administrative Procedures Act that requires notice and comment on all proposed rulemaking. With this side-door “conditional” grant that gets skipped and it’s immediately a stealth regulation. I dare say the conditions, if any, don’t see the light of day unless someone asks the school board some pointed questions.
Political sovereignty is being dilute at every turn. Klaus Schwab, he of the Star Wars sartorial edginess, has a “great reset” in mind for us and the question on every normal person’s lips is “Who the hell is he?” Ditto for vote fraud. Patent corruption of the electoral system is practiced and energetically dismissed by its perpetrators.
Enough of this private assault on the nation.
Thanks for the reference!
Francis, I think you and I have similar geeky backgrounds, so pardon a slight detour. A different perspective.
Problems like you describe are some combination of hardware (genetics) and software (culture, society, etc.). Like every other system we’ve ever worked on software affects or influences the hardware and some hardware just won’t run some software. It’s hard to blame complex behavior on the hardware.
What you describe now is not the way that group of people behaved when you and I were young men or teens (I’m 68 and think we’re within a few years of each other). For example, the illegitimacy rates were essentially the same between white and blacks. Some reports show them better. That implies the hardware isn’t the problem. There was a very deliberate, very determined effort to destroy the black culture and family, in order to make them subservient to the Democratic party and thoroughly dependent on big government. The donkey party created strong economic incentives to break down the family and those were incredibly successful.
One thing you didn’t mention in your “hit list” of big problems was the abortion rate in the black population today. In the few cases where statistics are known, the abortion rate is over 50%, despite the payments per child that also cause some (single) mothers to have more children to ensure more payments. As Candace Owens has said, the most dangerous place for a black child today is in a mother’s womb.
Whether the software is the problem or if the software wouldn’t work the same way with different hardware, I can’t say. I am, however, reluctant to throw everyone out because of these problems. I’ve had the chance to work with black engineers who fought off the stigma of being known as “diversity hires” and became exceptionally good engineers. Most also grew up in intact families with fathers present so their software was different. That’s difficult to resolve as purely software, purely hardware or the software running differently on different hardware (genotypes).
Despite that, I’m certain that if the software could be fixed, the resultant culture and segment of society would be orders of magnitude better. I know that I can’t do that, but there’s still hope. There are young, black women rising in the culture that could save it. Candace Owens and relative newcomer Amala Ekpunobi come to mind. I don’t want to get started because I’m sure I’ll miss many. The point is that there’s still hope. Yes it will take time, and I won’t live to see it complete. That just doesn’t mean much.
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I’ve heard all the arguments about why, Si. I’ve heard the qualifications, the analogies, the demurrers, and all the rest. I know them better than I know my own Social Security number. And to all of the explainers, exculpators, and remediators I must say this: You may be right, but in the end it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter for a single, simple reason: We’re teetering on the edge of the Abyss and the only guaranteed method for not toppling into it is the complete separation of the races.
I have a great deal of respect for you. Yes, we’re close to the same age, and no doubt we had comparable youths. And it is possible that had the errors of those early, excessively optimistic years, when social theorists thought good intentions plus enough cash could do anything, been avoided, we would not face our current crisis. But here we are.
I’ve picked out the parts of your comment that strike me as especially significant in this context:
And therefore…?
According to my statistics books that’s not the case, but even if it were, what relevance does it have to the behavior of the survivors?
Once again: And therefore…?
What makes you so certain? The words if and could practically leap off the page, yet you’re certain?
American Negroes are acting, with the help of many white assistants, to destroy this country. The time for if and could and all the other conditionals, not one of which has yielded the civilizing effect we need, is behind us. The entire society faces doom, and the only certain method of saving it is to remove the cancer. It doesn’t matter how things might have turned out had we avoided historical mistakes. It also doesn’t matter what some combination of as-yet-undiscovered remedies might correct the problems over time. Our time has run out.
If you haven’t yet seen this video, I commend it to your attention. While the subject under discussion is Muslims and the problems attendant to their pathologies, the thematic content is on point: the unruly minority is what matters, and the “peaceful majority” does little or nothing to restrain, discipline, or civilize them. Only one remedy is possible in the time remaining to us.
Francis, what SIG is reporting as the norm is influenced by his experiences. For example, my experiences as a teacher have led me to expect that my colleagues would be focused on improving educational outcomes for the individual students under my direction. That’s because, at the high school level, many people associate mostly within their own departments.
My department was science – that’s a select group that tends to be biased in favor of evidence of efficacy, data that can be analyzed, and carefully controlled frameworks. Many of us are hesitant to jump on the bandwagons of our associates in schools, who may emotionally bypass all of those practices.
Like our colleagues in the math department, we look askance at the sloppy stats, broad overgeneralizations in reports of educational research, and sweeping changes, based on specious studies.
But, generally, that’s not the case. And, the worst people to put in charge of change are the Leftist Social Studies, ELA (English Language Arts, which includes a heavy infusion of Can’t-Write-Or-Teach-English-Worth-a-Damn faculty), and the many, many Ed Hangers-On that populate modern schools.
But, that’s what they do. It’s putting PR people in charge of educational decisions – they will impose their solutions, and interpret any lack of effective results as EVIDENCE that their solution needs to be applied, harder and with much more funding.
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