The Hard Orwellian Truth
In his dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote of how truth could be manipulated to control a population. He wrote his novel in the late 1940s, immediately after the horrors of World War II. American schoolchildren are often assigned this book to read, since it is such a literary masterpiece of speculative fiction. Or, at least, they used to regularly be assigned the book. Who knows how many will get to read it in the future?
There is one key passage from the book that seems especially relevant in today's America. This is a conversation between the main protagonist Winston Smith and a high Party official who is torturing him in order to "re-educate" him into proper Party thinking.
O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward but promising child.
"There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past," he said. "Repeat it, if you please."
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," repeated Winston obediently.
"Who controls the present controls the past," said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. "Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?"
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether "yes" or "no" was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.
O'Brien smiled faintly. "You are no metaphysician, Winston," he said. "Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?"
"No."
"Then where does the past exist, if at all?"
"In records. It is written down."
"In records. And -- ?"
"In the mind. In human memories."
"In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?"
Smith, of course, worked in the "Ministry of Truth," which was an immense government organization dedicated to "correcting" the past to fit in seamlessly with whatever Big Brother and the Party were currently saying. Records such as newspapers would be reprinted with the "corrected" version of what had happened, for instance.
Today we now have one of the two major American political parties increasingly dedicating itself to exactly the same concept. This is beyond dangerous.
Consider that Republicans in New Hampshire (and they're not alone, this is merely one state where such efforts are underway) are now preparing to legislate not just the curriculum that teachers are allowed to present, but ideological purity. Think that's overstating the case? I don't.
We're seeing dozens of GOP proposals to bar whole concepts from classrooms outright. The Republican governor of Virginia has debuted a mechanism for parents to rat out teachers. Bills threatening punishment of them are proliferating. Book-banning efforts are outpacing anything in recent memory.
Amid this onslaught, a proposed bill now advancing in the New Hampshire legislature deserves renewed scrutiny. It would ban the advocacy of any "doctrine" or "theory" promoting a "negative" account of U.S. history, including the notion that the United States was "founded on racism."
Additionally, the bill describes itself as designed to ensure teachers' "loyalty," while prohibiting advocacy of "subversive doctrines."
. . .
This proposal opens a window on much of what's wrong with the current wave of censoring panic. Many new proposals and laws are sloppily drafted, vaguely defining entire concepts off limits, such as "anti-American ideologies" or anything that deviates from undefined conceptions of the nation's "authentic founding."
The article goes on to note that such vagueness "seems like a feature, not a bug." To accurately control the past, it's always easier to be vague -- just in case the Dear Leader says something different tomorrow. That way, all you'll need to change is the history, and not the law itself which demands loyalty to the Party line.
It's hard to even discuss what Republicans are now attempting to do without using the word "Orwellian," in fact. They've chosen their Dear Leader and are quite prepared to alter any perception of past reality in order to conform with whatever he says at any particular time. Remember Sharpiegate? Thinking that a hurricane's probable path was just another political issue that could be redefined after the fact (because the Dear Leader had said something monumentally stupid)? That's a textbook definition of Orwellian, folks.
This goes far beyond the classroom, although the classroom is going to be the front line in the upcoming ideological battle over hard truth. Ever since their upset win in the Virginia governor's race, Republicans have latched onto attacking teachers (and administrators and school boards and school librarians) for their perceived ideological flaws on racism, mask-wearing, and any number of other subjects (this list will almost certainly expand over time, not shrink).
But while those political battles are raging, there's a bigger one being fought as well. The Dear Leader has proclaimed that the election he lost was "rigged" and "stolen" from him. This is not true. This is not factual. There is absolutely zero evidence of any fraud big enough to change the results in even a single state, but that doesn't keep the Dear Leader from insisting that it is there, if you only look hard enough for it. So Republicans continue to look. Even the ones that know full well it doesn't exist.
By successfully doing so, the Dear Leader has indeed controlled the present for an alarming number of American voters. Because they believe his Big Lie, they insist on changing election laws to counter a non-existent threat from a past that never existed either. When challenged, they point to the Big Lie as the necessary reason to change all the laws. And enough of the Republican base now believes the Big Lie to be true, so such laws are quite popular with GOP voters. And election law is only the tip of the iceberg, because of what the Dear Leader is saying now:
The former president also dangled pardons for Jan. 6 rioters and urged his throngs of supporters to descend on New York, Washington or Atlanta for street protests if he is convicted of crimes in ongoing investigations, intimations of support for violence that within hours prompted questions to other Republicans about where they stood. As he spoke approvingly of the violent effort to overthrow the 2020 election, Trump also spent most of his speech complaining, falsely, that the election was stolen from him, a line of argument that Republicans have publicly urged him to drop.
This isn't some ham-fisted attempt to change weather lines on a map. This is an effort to subvert the next vote. Who controls the past controls the future, in other words.
The last time their Dear Leader ran for president, the Party dutifully put out a platform document that, in essence, said the Party would be loyally for anything the Dear Leader said. They had to be vague -- the platform document is usually very long, with all sorts of very specific positions and agenda items listed. The new one consisted of a sparse few bullet points that all said the same thing: "Whatever the Dear Leader is for, we're for. Whatever he's against, we're against that too."
This should have frightened people who understood the Orwellian implications, but it was treated with a shrug by most, in an offhanded manner. Both the Dear Leader and the Party had done so much worse by then that it was barely even a blip in the news cycle.
So now we've got deeply Orwellian efforts underway to indoctrinate children to believe that the United States of America has never -- never, mind you -- done the slightest thing wrong. Ever. It's all been sweetness and light, all the way back to the Founding Fathers, who could all walk on water. The truly Orwellian thing is that the effort to legislate Party loyalty and indoctrinate children is being presented as an anti-indoctrination measure. According to Republicans, if children are taught the hard truths of history, that is indoctrination. But when they are taught the Bowdlerized version that the Party now ideologically prefers, that is right and proper.
Or, to put it as Orwell himself did in his novel: "Ignorance is strength."
Students who actually do learn the whole hard truth of American history know that this isn't the first time such a thing has happened. There have been periods of anti-immigrant scapegoating (the Chinese Exclusion Act, to cite just one of many examples), political purity (the Red Scare, McCarthyism), systemic legal racism (slavery, Jim Crow), as well as many others. In all these cases, political factions or parties have used purity tests and loyalty oaths to terrorize all those who didn't perfectly agree with their beliefs.
But only students who do learn the hard truth have any historical reference points to interpret what is going on right now in statehouses across the country. And their access to the hard truth of American history is precisely what is being fought about in those statehouses. If the Republicans get their way, fewer and fewer American schoolchildren will ever be taught about such periods in our history at all.
The bill in New Hampshire should frighten anyone who does know history. Read that passage again:
It would ban the advocacy of any "doctrine" or "theory" promoting a "negative" account of U.S. history, including the notion that the United States was "founded on racism."
Additionally, the bill describes itself as designed to ensure teachers' "loyalty," while prohibiting advocacy of "subversive doctrines."
That could preclude teaching about any of those examples I just gave. They're all fairly negative accounts from U.S. history. They could all be considered (by Republicans) as "subversive doctrines" or even "anti-American." We are fast approaching a time when children in red states just don't learn about any of them, because the teachers there are too terrified to teach them.
Again, there is only one possible word to describe this effort: Orwellian. And it should frighten anyone who has ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four. Which is why I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear Republicans launch another crusade to ban that book from any child's curriculum or school library, too. At some point, it seems like they're going to have to. It's pretty subversive, after all. If you're a totalitarian, that is.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Very nice, CW ... beautifully written and spot on.
Maybe if Republicans keep getting asked about why they are traveling down the path set out by the important and relevant book, Nineteen, Eighty-Four, then some of them might ... well, wake up!
But, probably not, I'm guessing ...
If Orwell were alive, he would update the book to include the slogan, "Rigged Elections Are Voter Integrity!"
Some old business..
Russ,
That’s simple. Only in your mind are your arguments successful and reasonable!
Ahhhh So, everyone else is delusional.. YOU are the one that is factually accurate in reality.. :D
Well, THAT notion has already been refuted.. :D
Pelosi called the DOD asking why the National Guard wasn’t providing assistance and was told that Trump had not been in contact with the DOD. So what prevented then-President Trump from activating the National Guard?
Yea, that's yer claim.. PROVE it..
I always have facts to support my claims.. Where are yours??
Where were Republicans with their anger at Trump for only considering female candidates to fill the seat that RBG’s passing had opened? Was Ronald Reagan wrong to pick Sandra Day O’Conner to serve as a Supreme Court Justice?
None of it ever happened..
As I proved before, Reagan simply said he WANTED a woman on the SCOTUS.. He considered MANY men before he selected O'Connor.
In President Trump's case, Coney-Barret was in the selection with Kavanaugh and others when Kavanaugh was selected..
Coney-Barret was simply the next one up when an opening occurred soon after Kavanaugh..
Once again.. FACTS... vs hysterical political hate and bigotry...
I'll ask the question again..
I LOVE asking the question I know ya'all can't answer.. :D Because, to answer would put ALL ya'all's arguments on the trash heap where they belong...
Ready??
In the society that Dr Martin Luther King envisioned, the society that Dr King fought and died for....
Is a race based nomination process a proper, ethical, moral and LEGAL process??
NO... It is not..
Change my mind...
Biden is spitting on the grave and the wisdom of Dr Martin Luther King...
Biden's racist nominee selection is the EXACT OPPOSITE of EVERYTHING that Dr Martin Luther King stood for..
Selecting a person SOLELY on the basis of the color of their skin and not the strength of their character...
It's ironic that we are now talking about President Trump trying to influence the NEXT VOTE in the context of Biden's racist nominee selection process..
Because influencing the 2020 vote is EXACTLY what Biden was doing when he made the pledge to ONLY consider a black woman if a SCOTUS opening became available..
It was completely pandering... A quid pro quo arrangement with Clyburn..
If Biden made the pledge to ONLY consider a black woman for the next SCOTUS seat (a COMPLETELY racist promise) then Clyburn would throw his support behind Biden..
Biden made his racist promise.. Clyburn put his support behind Biden. And Biden won South Carolina which was the turning point in Biden's campaign..
It was BLATANT pandering on Biden's part and ya'all applauded it..
Now President Trump is the one pandering and ya'all are hysterically up in arms about it.. As if it's some nefarious and evil agenda when it's nothing but run o the mill political maneuvering..
Thereby once again proving that Democrats are always doing what they accuse the GOP of doing..
Barring a debilitating illness or a successful assassination, President Trump is going to be in the Oval Office come 2025...
Ya'all better start getting used to that now.....
Maybe if Republicans keep getting asked about why they are traveling down the path set out by the important and relevant book, Nineteen, Eighty-Four, then some of them might ... well, wake up!
Considering that it's been DEMOCRATS who have heightened domestic surveillance to Orwellian heights, the simple fact is, it's the Democrat Party who has made Orwell's 1984 into reality...
This is well documented..
Note that it was the late CW's award of Odumbo THE BIGGEST LIE OF THE YEAR for Odumbo's claim that, "I welcome the debate on domestic surveillance"...
Interesting to note..
Back during the Bush administration, President Bush wanted to nominate Janice Rogers Brown, a black woman, to the appeals court as a prelude to putting her on the Supreme Court of the United States..
But Democrats filibustered her nomination and she was never ascended...
Democrats used today's much hated (by Democrats) filibuster to ultimately prevent a black woman from becoming a SCOTUS Justice..
Which proves beyond ANY doubt...
Democrats are simply interested in their political agenda.....
@andygaus
If Orwell were alive, he would update the book to include the slogan, "Rigged Elections Are Voter Integrity!"
The Democrat Party Slogan...
The End of America? It's Not That Hard to Imagine
The most plausible scenario I’ve seen for a legitimate “threat to the republic” is a bunch of Democrats plotting first how to steal the election and then blaming the victim who tried to sound the alarm. Remember, they used the same tactic in 2016 when they invented a Trump-Russia connection and then blamed Trump for covering up the fake conspiracy when he denied all the fabricated charges.
The underlying question I have is: Why are people so eager to believe the claim that our election procedures are inviolate and beyond reproach? Don’t they realize that by demonizing anyone who questions an election — calling it an attempted coup in Trump’s case — they are making it that much easier for bad guys to steal elections in the future? And isn’t that a much bigger threat to the republic than anything Trump ever did?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/01/31/the_end_of_america_its_not_that_hard_to_imagine_147118.html
As I proved above, it's your Democrats that have brought about 1984 with their ambitious and realized domestic surveillance programs of the Odumbo years...
Yunno what the BEST definition of a racist is??
A person whose very existence, entire being and everything about their life...??? Revolves around race...
As Exhibit A:
A Black woman on the Supreme Court can't fix Democrats' problems, but America needs her
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/a-black-woman-on-the-supreme-court-cant-fix-democrats-problems-but-america-needs-her/ar-AATkZSu
America needs a competent Justice on the Supreme Court Of The United States..
If that competent Justice is a black woman, so be it..
But to EXCLUDE 98% of ALL possible candidates is a virtual GUARANTEE of not getting the best qualified candidate on the bench of the SCOTUS...
Blatant racism... Unsurprisingly from the Racist Party...
New Poll: More Than Three-Quarters of Americans Disagree With Biden Pledge to Consider Only Black Women for Supreme Court
https://tinyurl.com/rpchjne3
What *IS* it about today's Democrats that they are CONSTANTLY going against the will of the people???
The vast majority of Americans DO NOT want a race-based or gender-based selection process.. Hell, even a majority of DEMOCRATS don't want a race-based or gender-based selection process!
Why is Biden going against the will of Americans in general and Democrats in particular???
Does anyone have an intelligent response to that question???
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Of course not...
Want to fix racist policing? Take away immunity. Give officers more ethics training instead.
When we grant police power over life and death, we should ensure their consciences are informed by the best of our religious and moral traditions.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/01/31/fix-police-racism-ethics-training-not-qualified-immunity/9243641002/
If you take away qualified immunity for LEOs then no sane person in their right mind would WANT to be an LEO..
Cops would leave the job by the tens of millions..
Which is EXACTLY what cop-hating Democrats want.. A country with no law enforcement..
Ironically enough, if that were to come about, it would be the black Americans, the hispanic Americans who would bear the brunt of such a moronic and boneheaded move by the Democrat Party..
We can discuss curtailing qualified immunity when cop-hating Democrats quit employing mob "justice" and convicting LEO's solely in the court of public opinion...
How Biden’s Vow to Name a Black Woman to the Supreme Court Backfired
A campaign promise has needlessly tokenized future nominees.
Americans seem to be turned off by Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nomination strategy.
In a new ABC News/Ipsos poll of U.S. adults, more than three-quarters of respondents said Biden should “consider all possible nominees” to replace retiring justice Stephen Breyer, rather than “consider only nominees who are Black women, as he has pledged to do.” Even 54 percent of Democrats said they’d prefer Biden take the wide-net approach.
This may come as an unwelcome surprise to the White House, but it makes perfect sense to those of us who’ve been following Biden’s blundering attempts to discuss race and gender in politics over the past two years.
Though public support for affirmative action programs is on the rise, with 62 percent of U.S. adults in favor, the way Biden has talked about the value of diversity in political institutions is remarkably crass. It’s no wonder that the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of his own party, are chafing at it.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/01/biden-scotus-black-woman-nominee.html
Note that the above doesn't come from some Right Wing anti-Biden news source..
The above comes from a dyed-in-the-wool Left Wing propaganda outlet..
You just HAVE to know that Biden is in trouble when his far Left propaganda rags are slamming him down for his racist selection process...
No matter HOW ya'all wanna spin it.. Biden has royally, and racist-ly, scroo'ed da pooch on this..
The White House’s current conundrum began during Biden’s 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, when he made two promises: If nominated, he would tap a woman as his running mate; and if elected, he’d pick a Black woman for the Supreme Court. These pledges were meant to alleviate the perceived reluctance of Democratic voters—a minority of whom are white men—to choose a white man as their nominee.
Invoking an imaginary Black woman as his desired SCOTUS pick may have helped Biden achieve his short-term goal (though I have trouble imagining the person whose objections to Biden as a candidate were easily assuaged by the race and gender of an imaginary Supreme Court nominee). At any rate, he won the Democratic nomination and, eventually, the White House. But those abstract promises needlessly tokenized the actual women who would step into those roles, dooming them to racist and sexist skepticism before they even got the nod.
As a campaign tactic, it was not only selfish, but short-sighted. It gave Biden what may have felt like a boost in the moment, while creating a wide opening for criticism and doubts about the women who’d contribute to his presidential legacy.
Let's play that once again for the cheap seats..
As a campaign tactic, it was not only selfish, but short-sighted.
Short-sighted...
A Democrat requirement. :eyeroll:
I have yet to hear ANYONE here in Weigantia™ successfully justify this blatantly racist and sexist selection process...
Why is that??? :D
Biden’s Supreme Court promise came during a Democratic debate in South Carolina at the urging of South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress. “I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court,” Biden said in the debate. Clyburn reportedly would not endorse Biden until he made that commitment. Clyburn has credited the line with Biden’s win in South Carolina primary, powered by Black voters, which gave him the momentum he needed to secure the Democratic nomination.
Blatant and definitive political pandering and quid pro quo...
Unequivocally...
Now, predictably, conservative commentators are using Biden’s pledge to insinuate that anyone he picks will be underqualified for the court, just because he’s choosing from a smaller pool of candidates populated entirely by Black women. The National Review went further and accused the president of discriminating on the basis of race and sex, “not a great start in selecting someone sworn to provide equal justice under the law.”
Insinuate?? Stone cold FACT.... Ignoring 98% of the selection pool in favor of a blatantly racist selection process...
Thereby PROVING once again, that the Democrat Party = the Racist Party...
These kinds of bad-faith, racist objections should not be taken seriously. Presidents of both parties have historically taken race and gender into consideration when choosing Supreme Court nominees—as they should.
Of course, the author provides NO facts to support this claim...
The ONLY factor in considering a SCOTUS Justice is the legal competency of the jurist...
PERIOD.. Only a racist would think that race should be a factor..
Biden’s overly-candid pledge was not bad because seeking a diverse Supreme Court is bad, but because it preemptively undersold his nominee. As my colleagues Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wrote last week, because conservatives will assume that anyone chosen in part for her gender and race will not be the best candidate on the merits, “even before she has a name, Biden’s nominee will be tarnished as ‘lesser’.”
Tarnished by Biden's OWN selection process...
Biden has NO ONE to blame but himself for his tarnished nominee...
As I have said (and no one has refuted) NO nominee with even a smidgen of self-respect or integrity would accept such an Affirmative Action token nomination...
Only Biden has seen any potential benefit from his showboating pledge. Any way you look at it, his nominee will pay the price.
Exactly....
Nobody understands this better than Kamala Harris. In the presidential debate after he promised to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, Biden said he would choose a woman as his running mate. When he eventually tapped Harris, that gimmicky pledge dulled the announcement’s shine. She wasn’t a historic choice with a unique set of accomplishments and skills—she was the fulfillment of a campaign promise. Ever since, Harris has struggled to overcome the notion that her primary utility to the White House lies in her “lived experience” as a woman of color.
Headboard Harris is proof positive that the eventual SCOTUS nominee will be useless as a REAL an ACTUAL SCOTUS Justice...
She will be nothing but a token.. An Affirmative Action hire with absolutely NO SKILLS to speak of..
Just like Headboard Harris...
But if Biden hadn’t prefaced his nomination of a Black woman with a disclaimer, it would be a lot easier for him to refute claims that other capable candidates were not given their due, or that the nominee’s identity was the most salient part of her résumé. It would be a lot easier for reasonable people—not the knee-jerk racists—to accept a stellar nominee as a stellar nominee without doubting her qualifications. And it’s likely that 76 percent of the ABC News/Ipsos poll respondents would not have expressed misgivings about the process before Biden had even made his choice.
If Biden had nominated a Black woman without his self-interested pledge, any presumption that she was chosen in large part for her gender and race could have been rightly written off as sexist and racist. Instead, such belittling presumptions are taking the spotlight because, according to the president himself, they are correct.
I'll start this where it began..
No matter HOW ya'all want to spin this, Biden scroo'ed da pooch..
That's NOT me saying it..
That's the far Left Wing rag, SLATE, saying it...
The fact that no one has refuted the fact with facts of their own??
Simply more proof that the claim is dead on ballz accurate...
Judging Merit by Identity
In making race and sex the paramount considerations for his Supreme Court nomination, President Biden will deal another blow to the quality of our most important institutions.
An estimated 2 percent of the nation’s lawyers are black females. The introduction of any extraneous criterion for a job search lowers the average caliber of the potential applicant pool, by putting top contenders who do not possess the irrelevant trait out of reach. Contrary to the nostrums of diversity advocates, the role of a judge is not to “look like” this or that identity-based group; it is to apply the law as accurately and transparently as possible.
https://www.city-journal.org/bidens-identity-driven-supreme-court-nomination
Biden has limited his search for a "qualified" SCOTUS Justice to just TWO PERCENT of the available pool of prospective Justices...
What kind of leader does that???
Answer: A bad leader...
Biden’s race and gender restrictions are even more draconian, rendering 98 percent of all possible candidates beyond consideration because they lack “qualifications” that have nothing to do with judging.
Maybe, nevertheless, by some statistical anomaly, Biden’s severely constricted pool of candidates contains a disproportionate share of competitively qualified potential Supreme Court justices. From everything we know about average legal skills, however, the odds are against it, individual exceptions notwithstanding.
After the first year of law school, 51 percent of black law students rank in the bottom tenth of their class, compared with 5 percent of white students, according to a study of hundreds of thousands of student records from 90 percent of all accredited law schools and comprising 80 percent of all law students. Two-thirds of black students score in the bottom fifth of their class.
The author of that study, UCLA law professor Richard Sander, attributes that unequal performance distribution to mismatch: every remotely selective law school admits black students with academic qualifications on average vastly below their white peers. Mean black and white scores on the 2013–2014 LSAT were separated by 1.06 standard deviations, the Brookings Institution has found. In 2004, only 29 blacks, or 0.3 percent of all LSAT test takers, scored 170 or above on the LSAT, the average score for the most competitive schools, reports The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Whites were more than ten times as likely as blacks to score 170 or above. Yet those schools all admitted what they deem a “critical mass” of black students by race-norming their admissions standards.
The possibility of Biden actually getting a competent SCOTUS candidate is virtually not possible..
That's not racism speaking.. That's statistical FACT...
Treanor has again found himself “appalled” at a breach of mismatch taboos. Cato Institute vice president Ilya Shapiro was to assume the directorship of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution on February 1. Last week, Shapiro tweeted out that Biden’s race and sex preconditions for the Supreme Court eliminated the “objectively best pick” for Breyer’s soon-to-be-vacated seat: Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Though Srinivasan would have been the first Asian-American on the court, he “doesn’t fit the last intersectionality hierarchy,” Shapiro wrote, “so we’ll get lesser black woman.” In a follow-up tweet, Shapiro noted that Biden’s nominee would be dogged by the suspicion that she was selected on diversity rather than on merit grounds—a suspicion that conforms to all known facts.
I honestly do not think it possible to over state the completely horrendous frak up that Biden has committed here...
As we get nearer and nearer to an actual nominee being selected, more and more facts will emerge to demonstrate how badly Biden has frak'ed up...
Assuming Biden stays the course and doesn't back out of his pledge, whoever the eventual nominee is, is going to have a HUGE stack of facts against her...
Our leading institutions—whether the bar, the American Medical Association, or universities—are fast becoming nonserious entities, frittering away our civilizational legacy in favor of the trivialities of identity. The State Bar of California is emblematic, as I discovered last week when renewing my bar membership. Lawyers licensed in the state must now take an “Attorney Census” before they can renew their license. Participation in the census is “vital in helping shape the state bar’s policies and programs for years to come,” the organization explains. Survey-takers can decline to answer the questions, but they must affirmatively opt out of each one.
So what information does the California bar seek in order to shape its legal policies: average wait time to get a court hearing? Length of trials? The rate of fee inflation and whether that inflation impedes clients’ access to due process?
No: the bar needs to know, as it puts it, which of the “following best fits with the gender identity you identify as [sic]: Female, male, gender variant/Non-conforming/Non-binary, Two Spirit, Not listed.” The bar also wants to know: “Which of the following best applies to you: Cisgender, Transgender, Intersex, not listed,” and: “How . . . you describe your sexual orientation or sexual identity: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Heterosexual, Pansexual, Asexual, not listed,” among other identity-based queries.
I knew California was completely frak'ed up..
I just didn't realize it was THIS frak'ed up!
It takes deep involvement in academic-inspired narcissism to imagine how bar policies could be affected by a survey showing that 0.5 percent, say, of attorneys in the state identify as “Two Spirit” or as “Pansexual.” What if the proportion were 2.5 percent—how would bar programs and policies change, compared with a merely 0.5 percent share? The State Bar deems such knowledge urgent, yet it denied access to its database of public records for a study of how racial preferences in California law schools affect student learning, something of much greater import to the future of law than the number of nonbinary lawyers.
The quality of our jurisprudence matters. The race, sex, and “gender identity” of judges do not. Private parties rely on an opinion’s clarity of reasoning to predict the outcomes of legal disputes. Some of the nation’s most complex moral and political questions have been addressed through the medium of legal decisions, especially from the Supreme Court. The quality of those decisions can strengthen or undermine the legitimacy of the law and of our constitutional order. Commercial matters can be nearly as complex, requiring the reconciling of competing statutes and regulations.
The complete and utter stoopidity is mind-boggling..
Orwell was English and under the UK parliamentary system with multiple parties...
Critical Race Theory Is Dividing Democrats—and Rallying Republicans
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/critical-race-theory-is-dividing-democrats-and-rallying-republicans-opinion/ar-AATkoT7
Leave it to Democrats to latch on to an ideology that weakens their own position while, at the same time, strengthening the position of the political enemies..
Are Democrats TRYING to be incompetent??
Or does it just come naturally?? :D
They've chosen their Dear Leader and are quite prepared to alter any perception of past reality in order to conform with whatever he says at any particular time. Remember Sharpiegate?
And to think that this was once the Party of Lincoln and Ike (the last good Republican President.)
THE ONLY consolation is that every red state has a significant minority of Democrats and that as cities in these red states grow the entire state will trend Liberal. After all, I don't recall anyone predicting that Joe would win Georgia and Arizona or that both Dems would win their GA Senate runoffs.
@cad
THE ONLY consolation is that every red state has a significant minority of Democrats and that as cities in these red states grow the entire state will trend Liberal
You keep thinkin' that. :D
Reminds me of the time ya'all were so giddy about Texas turning Blue...
And what happens? Texas goes MORE RED because hispanics are leaving Democrat by the tens of millions!!! :D
BBBWWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA
No wonder you "ignore" my comments cad.. :D You have NO FACTS to counter them... :D
After all, I don't recall anyone predicting that Joe would win Georgia and Arizona or that both Dems would win their GA Senate runoffs.
Dems only won those races due to the well-documented factual fraud committed before the elections..
Dems only won those races due to the well-documented factual fraud committed before the elections..
That no one can come up with any evidence about. That would be opposite of factual...
Manchin to reporters just now: “What Build Back Better bill?”
“It’s dead.”
Joe Manchin is STILL being asked about Democrat Wet Dream Bill AKA Build Back Broke..
Manchin's response??
"It's still dead!"
I just LOVE how Democrats like to bring up their failures over and over and over again!! :D
Bashi,
That no one can come up with any evidence about. That would be opposite of factual...
I have actually posted the facts about that fraud time and time again..
Of course you ignored it because you didn't have any rational or factual response...
"OH MY GOD, BASHI IS BODY-SLAMMED TO THE MAT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!!! OH MY GOD, IT'S HORRIBLE!!!!"
:D
I notice how you didn't accept the challenge to justify Biden's racist SCOTUS selection process... Glad ta see we agree on that.. :D
I have actually posted the facts about that fraud time and time again..
Did you link to reputable sources? You know, no newsmax or opinion pieces?
Plus with the gish gallop, if it's not in the post making the claim, it's unsupported.
I notice how you didn't accept the challenge to justify Biden's racist SCOTUS selection process... Glad ta see we agree on that.. :D
Why did you post something about it? Personally I scroll to the bottom of the page, and if there is anything worth commenting on in the last few posts, I do so. There rarely is. Everything above does not exist as far as I am concerned.
Did you link to reputable sources? You know, no newsmax or opinion pieces?
I linked the facts. Of course those aren't "reputable" sources in your book because they totally blow your arguments out of the water..
Why did you post something about it?
Why is that relevant??
You either agree with my assessment or you spit on the grave and the memory of Dr Martin Luther King and agree that a racist Justice nominee is perfectly acceptable..
Everything above does not exist as far as I am concerned.
So, your argument is that Biden is NOT selecting his SCOTUS nominee based SOLELY on race and gender.. Even though Biden has specifically stated such...
So, your argument is sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming, "Nyaaa Nyaaa Nyaaa I can't hear you..."
Yea, that's about par for the course with you.. :eyeroll:
"OH MY GOD!!! AGAIN BASHI IS BODY-SLAMMED TO THE MAT OVER AND OVER!!!! OH MY GOD, IT'S HORRIBLE!!!! IT'S BRUTAL!!! BASHI IS GETTING CREAMED OUT THERE!!!!"
Yawn. If you have to claim "victory" you have already lost...
Yawn. If you have to claim "victory" you have already lost...
Whatever you have to tell yourself to make it thru your day... :D
Everything above does not exist as far as I am concerned.
Yer the one claiming that Biden is NOT making his selection based on race and gender, even though Biden specifically stated that is exactly what he is doing....
Another sign of someone who has already lost, falsely attributing...
Another sign of someone who has already lost, falsely attributing...
I quoted you verbatim, Bashi...
You lost.. Accept it gracefully and move on like you always do.. :D
Still having trouble reading I see...
Another sign of someone who has already lost, falsely attributing...
But hay... I am a fair guy...
If I attributed your claim improperly, correct me..
State your position on the FACT that Biden is basing his SCOTUS nominee SOLELY on race and gender...
Go ahead.. I'll wait.. :D
Still having trouble reading I see...
Still having trouble being factually accurate I see..
Go ahead.. State your position.. If you have the ballz... :D
Incoming Georgetown Law director on leave after tweets about Biden's Supreme Court plan
(CNN)The incoming executive director for Georgetown University's Center for the Constitution has been placed on administrative leave after social media comments made last week questioning President Joe Biden's intentions for the US Supreme Court vacancy.
Biden last week confirmed that he would make good a campaign promise and nominate a Black woman to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement last week. There has never been a Black woman on the country's highest court.
Ilya Shapiro, who was to take up his position at Georgetown Law on February 1, tweeted on Wednesday: "(o)bjectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan," a judge on the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia Circuit. Shapiro also described Srinivasan as progressive and smart.
"Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American," Shapiro wrote. "But alas doesn't fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we'll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?"
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/us/georgetown-ilya-shapiro-on-leave-supreme-court-tweet/index.html
Democrats cancel'ing their own!!
I love it!!!
BBBBWWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Awwwww Bashi... Ya got not scrot!! :D
"OH MY GOD!!! AGAIN AND AGAIN BASHI IS BODY-SLAMMED TO THE MAT OVER AND OVER!!!! OH MY GOD, IT'S HORRIBLE!!!! IT'S BRUTAL!!! BASHI DOESN'T STAND A CHANCE OUT THERE!!!!"
Such an interesting post, Chris, reminding me of my lessons on Orwell's book in my own little classroom - one not supervised (yet) by history hating Trumpists.
Two excellent comments. And then the deluge of the usual (by now) ... 20 posts in a row, leading to, well, you know. See you all next month.
Two excellent comments. And then the deluge of the usual (by now) ... 20 posts in a row, leading to, well, you know. See you all next month.
Awwwwwww JMC.....
Don't go away mad... :D
Just run away... It's all Democrats can do these days, eh?? :D
Yer a prime example of exactly what is wrong with the Democrat Party today...
You do not have the strength of strong convictions..
Ya know yer wrong and yer embarrassed to even TRY to make an argument.. :D
I get it...
See you all next month.
Just a heads up, JMC...
Next month will be the same as this month.. :D
Except Democrats will be DEEPER in a hole... :D
"A person's dignity and worth simply do not, and should not, depend on race, gender or any other immutable characteristic. While it's important that a wide variety of perspectives and backgrounds be represented in the judiciary, so blatantly using identity politics in choosing Supreme Court justices is discrediting to a vital institution."
That's the problem with the Democrat Party..
They discredit every American value possible...
By the by...
I am done for the night..
@cad, Bashi et al... It's safe to come out of hiding.. :D
hehehehehehehehehhehehe
Don Harris
25
If Orwell were alive today he probably would admit that he originally had government controlled by a false choice between two parties but rejected that idea because it would not be believable that people could be that stupid to buy into the lie and that exposing the lie would never get published.
Write a post that proves you are dumber than a bag of hammers without using either of the words "bag" or "hammers."
"Orwell" was the "pen name" of Eric Arthur Blair who was British and therefore experienced things from an entirely different political lens than your narrow-minded two-party monotonous prattle, blather, drivel and spew.