Category: Uncategorized

How to Lose an Argument

By Ben Shapiro. Code Pink’s National Director shows how easy it is to rattle Ben Shapiro and completely shut him down. The rampant hypocrisy in his contradictory approach towards his nation-state and towards the USA leaves him with an easy weakness that anyone can easily exploit. It’s also clear that both the Left and the Right have increasingly had it with all the Israel First activists in the US media. There is a very hard line between supporting Israel and supporting Israel at the expense of America, and Ben Shapiro is one of many in the US media who is observably on the wrong side of it.

It’s also a good example of how rhetoric trumps dialectic. “Apartheid Israel” is a rhetorical kill shot. Sure, one can make a reasonable dialectical argument that Israel is not an apartheid state according to the technical definition of the series of laws that were collectively known as the historical South African policy of apartheid from 1948 to 1994. But the very effectiveness of the kill shot indicates that whether the charge is technically true or not, the rhetoric tends to point towards the truth of the situation, especially since Israel has the legal equivalent of South Africa’s Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, which was the first apartheid law, as well as a milder religious version of the Population Registration Act of 1950.

For example, the Code Pink woman could have easily pointed out that Israel observably practices religious apartheid, as the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that even Jews or the descendants of Jews that actively practice any religion other than Judaism are not entitled to immigrate to Israel. The point is that it is relatively easy to expose even the smoothest, most-practiced wormtongues with sufficient mastery of rhetoric and dialectic combined with an awareness of their customary deceits and inconsistencies.

Regulate Big Social

It’s clear that they cannot be trusted to behave themselves:

Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage, according to people briefed on the incident and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

As part of its response to the incident, the Alphabet Inc. GOOGL -1.02{1b4a17090ef37332a63a154d15b230452661fe8143e5800412403fcfe8797416} unit on Monday announced a sweeping set of data privacy measures that include permanently shutting down all consumer functionality of Google+. The move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook Inc. FB -0.05{1b4a17090ef37332a63a154d15b230452661fe8143e5800412403fcfe8797416} and is widely seen as one of Google’s biggest failures.

A software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue, according to the documents and people briefed on the incident. A memo reviewed by the Journal prepared by Google’s legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives warned that disclosing the incident would likely trigger “immediate regulatory interest” and invite comparisons to Facebook’s leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica.

And for all the libertarians this offends, remember, a corporation is a government entity. Trading elected government rule for unelected corporate rule is not an improvement.

Mailvox: rethinking Jordan Peterson

Sometimes it just takes people a little while to catch up.

Longtime reader, and the first time I had ever considered dropping off my visits to the blog were when you began going after Jordan Peterson. IIRC, you began with his denial of Jewish IQ numbers and denunciation of any discussion of it being Evil Alt-Right, and it made sense to push back against him for that. However, it began to seem like another Scalzi was emerging and I couldn’t accept him being put into that basket. I have derived plenty of value from his basic messages of taking care of oneself, and as a Canadian, his opposition to Bill C-16 was badly needed and with our insane speech regulations and Rights Commissions/Tribunals, he was brave to do it.

Then the meat and salt diet, extracts from Maps of Meaning and other stuff just couldn’t be justified. Now with the Kavanaugh tweet he has completed his self-immolation even for those like myself who are likely too generous and held his positive messages in such regard as to outweigh the insanity. Also, pairing up for his tour to “debate” with Sam Harris, one of those contemptible creatures in existence, was a massive signal and I came back to reading the blog daily when I saw it. Reflecting now, if I have the idea right about genetic fallacy, I am still happy for the bits I got out of him that I have benefited from, but he is on the whole indefensible at this point. I am writing so you know there are plenty like myself who couldn’t go along with you at first (same with other topics I suppose), and now have caught up and appreciate you going out on a limb to speak the truth.

You must get a lot of hate in the daily inbox, so I hope this one thank you serves some purpose to let you know your work is appreciated.

It’s always encouraging to see people breaking free of the hold that Jordanetics has on their minds. As for retaining the beneficial bits, well, if a cult leader didn’t have something genuine to offer people, no one would follow him. One can find aspects and elements of the truth even in the biggest, most shameless charlatans.

The fact that Jordan Peterson is a crazy intellectual con man pushing an evil globalist philosophy doesn’t mean that every thing he has ever said is wrong. I won’t pretend to understand why some people need to be told to take care of themselves, or why anyone would ever consider it to be a profound truth in the non-Darwinian sense, but if they do, so be it.

But they should keep in mind that you don’t go to your dentist for heart surgery or automotive repairs just because his advice about brushing your teeth every day worked out so well for you.

Darkstream: Why no one believed Blasey

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

One thing that I haven’t seen much discussion of despite all the jibber and jabber and rambling on about the various implications of the Kavanagh confirmation, and whether he was going to be confirmed or not, is the fact that nobody – and I mean nobody – believed Christine Blasey Ford. And so the interesting question is, why not? You know, people talk about these things, and the giveaway during the discussion of the allegations and so forth, the term that that people always used, was, “well she’s credible.” She’s credible. Now, think about it. When someone asks you if somebody else is telling the truth, and you say, “well, they’re credible,” what does that actually mean? All it means is that I don’t believe them but they’re not observably crazy, you know, their accusations are at least modestly plausible.

It was possible for Kavanagh to have misbehaved in the way that Blasey Ford was saying. It was not plausible to believe that he was involved as part of a regular gang rape machine that was taking place. So the thing is that when all these people were saying “she’s credible,” for example,  even Trump initially said that Blasey Ford was credible, yeah, we all knew he didn’t believe a word she was saying. Most of the people who were on her side, most of the people who voted against Kavanagh because she gave them an excuse to do so,  did not believe her either. Whenever you see people saying, “yeah, well, I believe victims” and that sort of thing, that means they don’t believe this particular alleged victim. You didn’t have people there saying “look what’s wrong with you people, she’s obviously telling the truth,” because she obviously wasn’t She was obviously lying,  but why was her lying so obvious? Why was it so readily apparent to so many people right away?

Duly noted

BobbyDazzler@RobertLinder1
I listened to the whole debate Ethan clearly and deliberately said he did not like voxday, that he viewed voxday as anti-comicsgate.

I didn’t listen to the 2VS-Deathray debate; it would be hard to imagine anything that would be of less interest to me given that I have little-to-no respect for either participant or the moderator. But assuming the tweet is accurate, this sort of statement is precisely why I labeled him 2VS. Had Ethan simply made that dislike clear from the start, instead of talking to me about working together and so forth, I would have cheerfully ignored him in exactly the same way I have ignored every other illustrator or colorist who makes a habit of spouting off on the Internet. Remember, by his own admission, Ethan was always the one watching me and Arkhaven, not the other way around. He’s not a genuine leader, he’s the sort of dishonest political animal who watches where the crowd is going, then jumps in front of it and declares himself to be leading the parade.

As the people at DC discovered, as a number of people in the comics industry have discovered, Ethan Van Sciver is shamelessly two-faced and self-interested. His fans in the ComicsGate movement will eventually discover this too, much to their future chagrin. Now, even many of my critics, even many of my self-professed enemies will concede that I do not lie in public. What is 2VS’s reputation for honesty and personal integrity? And what do you really think are the chances that, on this one occasion, I chose to sacrifice my reputation for ruthless honesty… and for what did I sacrifice it?

But here is the more important question: what is ComicsGate, that I should be against it?

Equality vs history

Ed Driscoll laments the future fate of him and every other racial equalitarian on Instapundit:

IT’S COME TO THIS: Astronaut Scott Kelly apologizes after quoting, praising Winston Churchill.

Kelly, a retired American astronaut with multiple space flights under his belt, apologized Sunday after quoting Winston Churchill and calling the 20th century British prime minister “one of the greatest leaders of modern times.”

“Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill. My apologies. I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support. My point was we need to come together as one nation. We are all Americans. That should transcend partisan politics,” Kelly wrote on Twitter in the evening.

The attempt of cucks and conservatives to split the difference between the consequences of the Left that they fear and the truths of the Right that they reject is utterly doomed to failure. The Left neither cares about nor shares their virtuous, much-signaled color-blindness, all the Left wants is for them to submit to its ever-shifting Narrative.

As for the Right, we have nothing but contempt for their cowardly and fearful denial of history, science, the Bible, and truth. Let me be clear: you cannot claim to believe in equality of any kind and still consider yourself to be a) of the Right or b) truthful.

We all know you don’t really believe in equality because we can see your actions and hear your words. None of your rationalizations and justifications and confabulations are fooling anyone, least of all yourself, and subjecting us to them is insulting our intelligence.

Equality is a lie, and submitting to the lie will not only lead you to deny America, nationalism, and Winston Churchill, it will eventually force you to publicly deny Jesus Christ himself.

Just shut up and come out already

Taylor Swift nukes her fan base:

Taylor Swift can’t stay silent about politics any longer. The 28-year-old superstar took to Instagram on Sunday night to weigh in on Tennessee’s closely contested U.S. Senate race, endorsing Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen as she offered a harsh rebuke of U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican nominee.

In her Instagram post, Swift said she has been “reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now.”

“I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,” she wrote. “I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”

Wait, a gay celebrity hates Republicans and parrots the SJW narrative? Surely this shocking news will convince all of her fans to change their views rather than simply reduce their support for her.

And isn’t it remarkable how Tennessee values are British values are German values are Texas values are California values are LGBTQP values these days?

Magic dirt, magic schools

Want to bet the vast majority of people using the term have no idea where it originated?

In a push to improve diversity at District 15 middle schools in Brooklyn, Mayor de Blasio last week approved a plan to remove admission standards at all of them.

In liberal Park Slope and the surrounding areas, the news was received with mixed reactions. Those against the plan were quoted anonymously in various news outlets, lest they somehow appear to oppose diversity. They had seen what happened to Upper West Side parents who were named and shamed in articles when they opposed proposals for their schools.

One Park Slope dad told me he sees the move as a “prelude to breaking up the specialized high schools.” He added that the plan would “put the academically struggling kids in schools where ‘magic dirt’ makes kids smarter.”

Keep this sort of thing in mind whenever people try to tell you that what you’re doing doesn’t matter. It’s the ideas that matter, whether or not The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and NPR ever deign to accord you the fame of a Malcolm Gladwell or a Francis Fukuyama.

Like the core pro-immigration argument, the core pro-integration argument is cargo cultism that is so obviously wrong it can be accurately dismissed with just two words: Magic Dirt.

No safe harbor

I have my doubts about this guy as a lawyer, but this particular observation is astute and potentially very significant.

WAIT JUST A DANG MINUTE…WHAT? Did Apple just say it is a curator of content and therefore NOT protected by Safe Harbor in copyright and CDA 230?

What he’s referring to is this interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook with Vice News Tonight:

In an interview with Vice News Tonight on HBO Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly explained some of the reasoning behind removing Alex Jones and InfoWars from the company’s podcast app and App Store. According to Cook, the move wasn’t politically motivated, or coordinated with any other tech companies, as he denied ever discussing the subject with them.

Instead, he said: “What users want from us and what we’ve always provided them is a curated platform. We think that what the user wants is someone that does review these apps, someone that does review the podcasts, someone that on like Apple news, where a human is selecting the top stories. And that’s what we do.”

What this means is that Apple has publicly established that it is legally liable for all the content on its platform.

A production error

No, Chuck Dixon has not begun experimenting in action comics sans dialogue. Unfortunately, we had a breakdown in our production process and sent out the first 193 print editions of Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #2: Rulebreaker without the dialogue layer. We have already revised the comic as well as our process and all subsequent editions will be correct.

We are working on a plan to get replacement issues out to those who received an incorrect edition and will run the plan by those customers once we are able to confirm it with our distribution partner. We apologize for the inconvenience and delay. The digital edition was not affected.