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Are We Winning the Debate? (Part 1)
(Sorry for the 20-minute run time but I want to offer a complete version. If you want a shorter version you can watch it here.)
For those of you who have no time for a video at the moment, a white guy was casually called a racist by a race-baiter and he absolutely refused to take it. He wasn’t obnoxious or vulgar but he was firm and resolute. I have a flutter of optimism that this is a new trend that will work against the idiocy of identity politics.
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Published in General
Moderator Note:
InappropriateWatched the shorter version. If I here he, I might have come out of my chair [redacted]
RAH, to Dr. Peterson: If I’d been taught by/encountered more like him, I might have continued with psychology as an adjunct to chaplaincy – but, I didn’t – so I didn’t.
It is precisely the lack of holding individuals accountable that lines me up against so many different self-determined groups. A group protecting its own can justify anything, and there was some accusation of that in a recent post about Diversity & Comics. The accusation was that some were defending a person based, essentially, on his politics, rather than acknowledging evidence about a questionable character.
Anyway, a group that feels aggrieved can use the offense to justify. Justify what? Anything. Particularly, I guess, hitting back at the perceived source of the offense. If it is not evident (indeed, historically so) how dangerous this mindset is, then there is nothing that will pull one out of it. I think I’ve flirted with it, but hopefully not too much.
Heaven help us all if it gets worse, but that’s not what I see. I see that the mindset has created fatigue more than anything, and its not limited to a particular position on the political spectrum. Good luck to us all.
“I have a flutter of optimism that this is a new trend that will work against the idiocy of identity politics.”
Most bullies do tend to slink away when stood up to. Amazing that it took Donald Trump, of all people, to demonstrate that to us. I doubt the shout of “racist” will ever again hold the trump card power it had somehow acquired.
I used to ‘aggressively’ argue politics all of the time with a black, extremely committed Prog Army Major and helo pilot. I supposed I was giving him more than he could handle one day and he played the ultimate race trump card by saying something like ” Yea but… my penis is bigger than yours.”
The fact that he was probably a good 4-6 inches shorter than me made we question out loud the veracity of his comment.
Hilarity ensued.
But that dude was a true believer. It was his religion, and his faith was solid as a rock. I shared a couple of our text ‘back and forths’ on some of my earliest OPs here. Believe that they are quite revealing (so to speak).
Still can’t understand how Progressive thought can hold up in the services; educate your honorary Jarine sis, please and thank you, Sñr. Caballero?
Perhaps the only thing that can shake it is when one is “woke” to the dangers it presents…the question is, what goes on in the mind of a true believer when faced with the current circumstances? To borrow from the language of the debate shared here, when the “hierarchical structure” you believe in looks more like tyranny than the one you’re told is worse for you, do you ignore or reset (however so slightly)?
Some will never acknowledge it, but for the others the best we can do is create those conditions. I think our answers to ‘how?’ are the right ones, but they are a much slower burn compared to what the other side offers (and never delivers).
Michael Eric Dyson is a hack. I remember seeing him and Tucker Carlson go at it over the concept of “white privilege”. Tucker wasn’t having it either with him.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/03/tucker-challenges-georgetown-prof-demanding-reparations-you-are-way-more-privileged-than-most-white-americans-video/
Guys like Michael Eric Dyson have become very wealthy and influential, by perpetuating this myth but I do think their argument is falling apart. People can’t deny the “lying eyes” forever.
What an ass Dyson is. Pretentious “blah, blah, blah, gobbledygook, thusly, blah blah…”
Yes, I think we’re looking better everyday by comparison. The Left has overstepped and, if Klavan is right, they’re starting to bleed millennials. Good. Faster, please. Can we get Alan Grayson to a camera and a mic?
The telling part was when Dyson talked about listening to native peoples, not knowing that Jordan Peterson not only is an honorary member of a First People Tribe, he decorated the second floor of his house as a NW peoples long house. Dr. Peterson has great respect for Native cultures and peoples, way more than a hack like Dyson does.
There have been some interesting Marines. Given the late Smedley Butler’s two Medals of Honor and retirement from the USMC as a Major General, this may give us pause:
I’m not sure what you are referring to or what this how to do with the main post.
As I understand, allowing for Standard Oil to sell their product in China probably prevented the deaths of many women and children. Fluctuations in oil causes accidents when women are cooking for their children. It’s still a big problem in third world places without access to first world conveniences.
As for sugar and fruit and what not, why weren’t the Latin American companies capable of utilizing their bountiful natural resources to create an excess of food and sell it foreign markets? I don’t much care for corporations pretending that their governments and telling people what to do but why shouldn’t the farmers of Latin America and the housewives of China be able to buy and sell what they like just as they should be free to pray how they like?
Cultural appropriation!
Gents, I was asking @simontemplar (probably not clearly enough) about how in creation military service and progressive thought could coincide in someone like the “Army Major/helo pilot” he referenced in comment 5, above…Perhaps a policy question, but I didn’t think so… :-)
I’ll go the more depressing route. A constituency will always be there, although I’ll grant you some at the margins may drop out. Those who see through Dyson likely have already done so, and those with similar agendas will stick around. There now, feel better?
That’s not depressing. No matter what happens, there will always be a constituency for everything! Let’s just see if it can shrink…or at least see its media influence lessen some.
My point was that being a veteran, even veteran who has seen combat is no guarantee of any particular set of views. It was in response to:
Henry,
Are we winning? Yes, we are winning but just on points. No knockouts. Peterson is one of the first real pros we’ve had. He can hold his own with anybody. He took the race-baiting bloviating and the personal attack and then hit him back. That was enough to stop the usual aggression. He won the day because his people were satisfied with the performance. Many who were on the other side realized the ugly worthless nature of the attack on him. They won’t say so but they’ll be forced to think.
This is where we are at. Don’t expect knockouts. Don’t expect overwhelming easy victories. The clash is going to be mostly brutal but that is what must happen. Finally, we are going to win enough ground that their whole position will collapse but we aren’t anywhere near that yet.
It was a good day. Not easy but a good day.
Regards,
Jim
Ah, Otlc…Thank you!
I have some fluttering optimism still. A constituency will always be there because there will always be socialists, oddballs and libertarians. But the culture can change the underlying assumptions of the argument. Dyson started with the assumptions that whites are totally privileged, that systemic racism in endemic and blah blah blah. Jordan Peterson disagreed and he disagreed strongly and politely. There will be people of all colors who watch this on youtube and start thinking. Some will continue the Dyson nonsense but not all.
I’m still fluttering.
The battle of ideas is long. It isn’t like the battle of Lepanto or the 1683 battle of Vienna where everything changes in one day. Things can change in years with ideas but more often it is fought in decades.
Waterloo and Eton?
Michael Eric Dyson is a two-bit shuck-and-jive artist, nothing more.
Dylan’s comment about it not being unreasonable to expect blacks to achieve equality because of 300 years of oppression, lack of skills, etc, is easy to respond to. We have had millions of people come to this country having left generations of severe oppression. Being a serf, isn’t much different than being a slave. They came without skills, and without the ability to speak the language, but still the prospered. Once freed, they did well. The history of oppression, and lack of skills was overcome, usually within one generation.
I can’t help but laugh out loud when I hear Dyson speak…
Because Damon Wayans completely nailed him 25 years ago with his Oswald Bates character on In Living Color.
(Heh-heh, Dyson is mentioned 26 times in the YouTube comments there.)
I don’t know how anybody can debate Dyson without dropping into that. “The racial diffusion of the audacious colostomy has permeated…”
The full version is over two hours long:
I never heard of Michael Dyson before. Ignorance is bliss. I leave his presentation less informed than before I arrived.
In my leftist days, I was always attracted to WFB’s prose and arguments, even if I despised (then) his conclusions. Even though he was clearly articulate if wordy. He talked “up” and it was on the reader to keep up. I was intellectually engaged and flattered that he thought that I’d catch up. I roughly have. I admired the man before I admired his ideology.
Michael Dyson is the inverse. His patronizing and unappealing tone is entirely off-putting. Ironically, he’s also demanding unearned privilege.
Speaking of ideology, Dyson said in the debate, about group culpability (I think);
Wait, “all of a sudden?” There is no measure by which the removal of slavery from our system was a simple and sudden flip of the switch. That is but one of many logical failings of his arguments. His quoting Beyonce, saying “Bra,” and implying that Peterson is racist when Peterson replied; “you would say that” wherein Dyson started moaning like a bovine in heat. It is all cringe-worthy.
One other thing. Looking for this video in another context, I came across a most astonishing article that is apparently gaining traction… somewhere, I’m assured by data aggregators.
I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous
The author was instrumental in on-boarding Peterson for his current faculty position. Now, <sigh> he’s so sorry for what he’s unleashed on the world. This grand virtue signal is his quest for atonement. A lot of what Schiff attributes to Peterson he himself is guilty of. Clearly Peterson’s apostasy isn’t that he plays “fast and loose” with the truth. That is just another day on any college campus. Nor is it that he is charismatic and quirky. It that Peterson is one of them, i.e., not one of us. Speaking of presenting conjecture as truth, which he accuses Peterson of, Schiff constructs a most amazing lattice of data to construct the monster Schiff says we must tear down.
It isn’t fact. It’s conjecture. Schiff builds a Franken-alt-right-stein before our very reading eyes. Schiff is fast and loose with character assassination. It’s repugnant. It’s also very in league with Dyson.
Sounds like cultural appropriation to me.
Sorry, Basil.
The more the merrier. The Woke shall inherit the Earth.