Arrested for walking around in a bikini in The Maldives. She’s screaming she’s being “sexually assaulted” (I didn’t see that in the video, it just looked like getting arrested to me). Sweetie, they’re Islamist. To them your outfits invite sexual assault. I always wonder what these leftists think is going to happen to them if they successfully import sharia to the west. The Tolkien Trust Uses Lord of the Rings Income to Fund Muslim Migrants and Terrorists. None of their pet causes-not gays, not trans, not sexual freedom, not female equality, not abortion, none of them-will survive. If they think they’re living in The Handmaiden’s Tale because some Christian tells them, just tells them, mind you, doesn’t do anything to them, that they believe homosexuality is a sin or abortion is murder, what are they going to do when the real thing shows up on their doorstep? How fucking stupid are they? Pretty fucking stupid:
Titania McGrath is the name of a parody twitter account hosted by one Andrew Doyle, as discussed by me here at Quadrant Online: Titania McGrath, Meet George Orwell which is itself a discussion of an interview with Doyle. At one level, the account is just as it is described:
Titania, an imaginary amalgam of all the worst excesses in the modern social justice movement, fancies herself a voice for minorities of all kinds (whether they know they agree with her or not). What she lacks in self-awareness, she makes up for in conviction.
Doyle is therefore a man on the right making fun of people on the left. Well, not so fast. This, however, is how he describes himself.
I think if you were to write down all of my political views on various things I would come out more left-wing than right.
So he is then a man of the left who makes fun of people on the left who go too far. Maybe, but he also says this about himself as well.
I’d say I’m quite culturally conservative, however. I believe in high standards of education, because I think that adult autonomy depends on effective socialization in youth. So you need to have a rigorous school system, and children need to have an awareness of the classics and be taught the classics. I think art history, for instance, should be embedded at a primary-school level: not “let’s see what you can create with these paints”; I think you need to learn the classics. That’s a more traditionally right-wing viewpoint. I also believe in politeness, and decorum, and high standards and that kind of thing, which I think might be more associated with the Right.
There’s no “might be” about it. If that’s what you believe, then you are one of us and not one of them.
But then let me look at this, which is the example of a Titania tweet put up at QoL.
That is funny, but which side is Andrew Doyle actually on? It may well be that he believes that both are bad, that the point he is trying to make is that it is just as wrong for a baker not to bake the cake as it is to prevent children from learning about gay rights. The tweet may really be saying, a plague on both your houses.
But no matter how you slice it, Titania is a creation of genius. So perhaps we should just take his final advice:
I think the Left and Right should agree on the basic liberal principles of free expression, free discourse, and free thought. But also we need a shared social contract of how we address each other and how we tackle these issues. It doesn’t work if one side of the debate is just screaming and covering their ears. Nothing can be achieved that way.
I’m all in with that, but how realistic is it? In regard to the screaming and covering of ears, let me draw your attention to this post put up today: REBELLION IN THE KNITTING COMMUNITY. It’s about a woman who in the past had associated with Democrats only but went to a Trump rally the other day in New Hampshire. First there is what she was told by before she went:
In chatting with the folks at the [MSNBC] taping, I casually said that I was thinking about going over to the Trump rally. The first reaction they had was a genuine fear for my safety. I had never seen people I didn’t know so passionately urge me to avoid all those people. One woman told me that those people were the lowest of the low. Another man told me that he had gone to one of Trump’s rallies in the past and had been the target of harassment by large muscle-bound men. Another woman offered me her pepper spray. I assured them all that I thought I would be fine and that I would get the heck out of dodge if I got nervous.
A kind of over-the-top Titania-like reaction. But then she went along to the rally and found this:
As I waited, I chatted with the folks around me. And contrary to all the fears expressed, they were so nice. I was not harassed or intimidated, and I was never in fear of my safety even for a moment. These were average, everyday people. They were veterans, schoolteachers, and small business owners who had come from all over the place for the thrill of attending this rally. They were upbeat and excited. In chatting, I even let it slip that I was a Democrat. The reaction: “Good for you! Welcome!”
“The right” are just normal people. It is the left who are doing the screaming and covering their ears. Doyle knows that as well as anyone. Seriously, which side is he really on? Surely he is not really, as he describes himself, more left-wing than right.
I have an article up at Quadrant Online today: Titania McGrath, Meet George Orwell which is at one level about how the left seems to know nothing about the conservative right. It’s based on a quite fascinating interview with the creator of one of the great creations of the twitter universe: Titania McGrath. She is an invention of a comedian by name of Andrew Doyle. Andrew wants the left and the right to get on with each other. He therefore made up Titania as a super-woke rich female activist who goes around tweeting as a parody of the way certain SJWs behave. Here is the example put up at QoL.
That is funny, but which side is Andrew Doyle actually on. After reading the interview it may even be, to take the above example, that he believes that both are bad, that the point he is trying to make is that it is just as wrong for a baker not to bake the cake as it is to prevent children from learning about gay rights. He may not be siding with us at all. The tweet may really be saying, a plague on both your houses.
My central question after reading the interview was therefore this: does he know that just about everyone on the right has the same beliefs as he does, or does he think he is making fun of people on our side and is laughing at the right because we don’t get the joke. I found this a puzzling quote from the interview given what else he had said:
I think the Left and Right should agree on the basic liberal principles of free expression, free discourse, and free thought. But also we need a shared social contract of how we address each other and how we tackle these issues. It doesn’t work if one side of the debate is just screaming and covering their ears. Nothing can be achieved that way.
The puzzle I was left with at the end of reading the article was whether Andrew Doyle believes that it is the conservative side of politics that is guilty of preventing this dialogue from happening because of what he sees as our own obtuse beliefs. It is hard to tell, but it is possible that he believes that it is the left that represents “the basic liberal principles of free expression, free discourse, and free thought”. How else to mesh that with this:
“I think if you were to write down all of my political views on various things I would come out more left-wing than right.”
As for birthday cakes, the issue is not that no such cakes should be baked, but that no one should be forced to bake such a cake by government. Doyle is undoubtedly funny, but it is hard to say who he is laughing at. Given what he writes, I am not at all sure he is laughing at his comrades on the left.
I put up a post yesterday on where presidential politics in the United States is heading and today I find John Hinderaker at Powerline saying virtually the same right here. I refer to his post, not for confirmation, but for his insights into Amy Klobuchar who would be the least familiar of the frontrunners of the moment.
That leaves Amy Klobuchar, who disappointed in Iowa but came on strong in New Hampshire. It is always dangerous to predict based on a process of elimination, but I think the nomination is now Amy’s to lose. (Heh.) She is smart enough and far left enough, while at the same time preserving the aura of moderation that made her popular in Minnesota. She has some problems, of course. So far, she has demonstrated little ability to appeal to minority voters, and, never having been close to the front of the pack, she has not yet been subjected to much criticism. Suffice it to say that weaknesses will begin to emerge.
Still, I think Klobuchar is now the Democrats’ most likely presidential nominee. Some Democrats still hold out hope of a deus ex machina like Michelle Obama entering the race. It isn’t going to happen. The good news is that I don’t see any way Amy Klobuchar (or any other Democrat in the race) can beat President Trump.
THERE MAY BE EVEN LESS TO HER THAN YOU MIGHT EVER HAVE THOUGHT:
I put up a post yesterday on where presidential politics in the United States is heading and today I find John Hinderaker at Powerline saying virtually the same right here. I refer to his post, not for confirmation, but for his insights into Amy Klobuchar who would be the least familiar of the frontrunners of the moment.
That leaves Amy Klobuchar, who disappointed in Iowa but came on strong in New Hampshire. It is always dangerous to predict based on a process of elimination, but I think the nomination is now Amy’s to lose. (Heh.) She is smart enough and far left enough, while at the same time preserving the aura of moderation that made her popular in Minnesota. She has some problems, of course. So far, she has demonstrated little ability to appeal to minority voters, and, never having been close to the front of the pack, she has not yet been subjected to much criticism. Suffice it to say that weaknesses will begin to emerge.
Still, I think Klobuchar is now the Democrats’ most likely presidential nominee. Some Democrats still hold out hope of a deus ex machina like Michelle Obama entering the race. It isn’t going to happen. The good news is that I don’t see any way Amy Klobuchar (or any other Democrat in the race) can beat President Trump.
THERE MAY BE A LOT LESS TO HER THAN YOU MIGHT EVER HAVE THOUGHT: It’s wasn’t funny in the first place and was never worth repeating even once. This is someone you could get very tired of very fast. [With thanks to lotocoti in the comments.]
In April 2018, Oxford-educated comedian and journalist Andrew Doyle created a satirical Twitter persona, an “activist,” “healer,” and “radical intersectionalist poet” who self-identifies as “selfless and brave.” Titania, an imaginary amalgam of all the worst excesses in the modern social justice movement, fancies herself a voice for minorities of all kinds (whether they know they agree with her or not). What she lacks in self-awareness, she makes up for in conviction.
And this is who Andrew Doyle is, what he did and how he thinks:
Doyle is among a growing number of classical liberals who have simply had enough…. Comedy and culture have been so strangled by political correctness that he is “at that point where I feel that it would be morally wrong to be silent” about the crisis of free public discourse in the West.”
Doyle decided to create a fake character on Twitter—a satirical character who would mock the worst excesses of the social justice movement. So, to that end, “I thought one of her characteristics should be a devotion to fourth-wave intersectional feminism. In which case it made sense that she was female and white—because a lot of what passes for social justice activism is actually rich white people telling poor black people what they should be thinking. It’s a kind of soft racism, I think: a very patronizing view of minorities. So I thought she should come from privilege. And so she’s very rich, she comes from an independently wealthy family, but she’s determined to express how oppressed and persecuted she is at every opportunity, and also to attempt to censor anyone who disagrees with her on any point whatsoever. This is the kind of entitlement and narcissism that you see among social justice activists—it’s why they’re not prepared to debate. They can’t conceive that anyone who sees the world differently is anything other than evil, and they think the world has to change around them to suit their particular preferences.
And the only part of this that is actually remarkable is that Doyle believes he has stumbled upon something that was until then unknown. In actual fact, it is near enough what most of us think about people on the left. This is how he characterised himself:
In the question of where I stand on the political spectrum, I think there is an objective method of assessment which I can do nothing about: I think if you were to write down all of my political views on various things I would come out more left-wing than right. Certainly in terms of economic principles I’m more to the left, in terms of welfare, in terms of nationalism: I understand nationalist sympathies but I don’t feel them personally. That’s more an instinctive thing, but that definitely pushes me more to the Left as well.
He seems to think that the welfare state was not almost entirely the product of the right in politics. He is trapped in that absurd belief that the politics of the right are the ethics of Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve just before he went to bed. Quite vague on nationalism but given his value system, there is little doubt he could only ethically function in a nation state that has been built on the principles found only within the West. He then adds this:
I’d say I’m quite culturally conservative, however. I believe in high standards of education, because I think that adult autonomy depends on effective socialization in youth. So you need to have a rigorous school system, and children need to have an awareness of the classics and be taught the classics. I think art history, for instance, should be embedded at a primary-school level: not “let’s see what you can create with these paints”; I think you need to learn the classics. That’s a more traditionally right-wing viewpoint. I also believe in politeness, and decorum, and high standards and that kind of thing, which I think might be more associated with the Right.
That’s exactly why people such as myself enjoy what he writes because he looks at things the same way we do. George Orwell, for example, his essays especially, are read almost entirely by people such as myself.
You know, someone like George Orwell was a cultural conservative. His essay “The Lion and the Unicorn” is a robust defense of cultural conservatism, but at the same time he’s very much on the Left. He’s actually a sort of canonized figure of the Left, so there is room for cultural conservatism within traditionally leftist thought. I don’t think one excludes the other.
Orwell was on the left in the same way as Doyle, because his beliefs happened to coincide with the people he thinks he is distinct from in their views. Such as here:
I think the Left and Right should agree on the basic liberal principles of free expression, free discourse, and free thought. But also we need a shared social contract of how we address each other and how we tackle these issues. It doesn’t work if one side of the debate is just screaming and covering their ears. Nothing can be achieved that way.
Absolutely right again. He has just covered the views of John Stuart Mill. But who does he think are doing the screaming and are covering their ears? Which side of politics is that? Who is he describing here?
I think one of the first things you have to do is be discerning about who you talk to. You know, let’s have the debate with those who are willing and capable of debate, and let’s all agree that those who are incapable of debate should be ignored, because they won’t have anything to add. And then we raise the bar of political discourse. But we have major mainstream politicians saying these ridiculously woke things, and saying these incredibly intolerant things, and calling people Fascists and Nazis and things like that. When that’s happening, it’s like debating a child. It’s not going to achieve anything. So we basically just need adults back in the game. We need the adults to take control.
That is how I think of Antifa and the left in general, and he even uses the term “woke”. As I see it, he is describing the modern American left down to its bootstraps. If that is his intention, then he and I are on the same side of the fence absolutely and without question. Whether he likes it or not, he is a man of the right as these things are structured in the Year of the Lord 2020.
There are still many weeks to come before November. And there is still the House. And then there is still the Senate. And then there are the unknown unknowns.
Sanders cannot get much past 25%, and as the numbers thin out, he will drop back into the pack. Meanwhile, the winnowing process moves forward with “Pete” now about to get some serious momentum. And so will Amy Klobuchar. That they are completely unfit for a presidential role has nothing to do with anything; neither was Obama, an absolute non-entity, politically a cypher but a cypher who could be elected because he provided intersectionality. Biden was chosen because he was a known moron who wouldn’t upstage the candidate, although still smart enough to outclass Paul Ryan during the Vice-Presidents’ debate.
The father of Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg was a Marxist professor who spoke fondly of the Communist Manifesto and dedicated a significant portion of his academic career to the work of Italian Communist Party founder Antonio Gramsci, an associate of Vladimir Lenin….
He was an adviser to Rethinking Marxism, an academic journal that published articles “that seek to discuss, elaborate, and/or extend Marxian theory,” and a member of the editorial collective of Boundary 2, a journal of postmodern theory, literature, and culture. He spoke at many Rethinking Marxism conferences and other gatherings of prominent Marxists.
In a 2000 paper for Rethinking Marxism critical of the approach of Human Rights Watch, Buttigieg, along with two other authors, refers to “the Marxist project to which we subscribe.”
In 1998, he wrote in an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education about an event in New York City celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Manifesto. He also participated in the event.
“If The Communist Manifesto was meant to liberate the proletariat, the Manifesto itself in recent years needed liberating from Marxism’s narrow post-Cold War orthodoxies and exclusive cadres. It has been freed,” he wrote.
Does the apple ever fall far from the tree? Sometimes, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Nor would I rule out Mitt Romney finding his way onto the ticket either.
“I have tested Uri Geller in my laboratory at King’s College, London University, with specially-designed apparatus.
“The Geller effect – of metal bending – is clearly not brought about by fraud. It is so exceptional that it presents a crucial challenge to modern science, and could even destroy the latter if no explanation becomes available.”
The poem describes the recurrent natural cycle of droughts, floods and bushfires in rural Australia as seen by “Hanrahan”, a pessimistic man of Irish descent.
The question we were discussing was how to deal with people who actually believe global warming and climate change are genuine problems. He is looking for arguments to help others see the light. I, on the other hand, long ago reached the conclusion that there is absolutely no reason for the slightest concern, and have therefore stopped arguing with people, other than just for fun, partly because there is nothing for me to learn, other than to further confirm for myself that these people are unbelievable fools who may yet create havoc on a grand scale across the Western world. The main reason, however, is because these people are deaf to reason. I am always open to persuasion should some forecast actually turn out to be accurate and the seas really do start to rise, which to me is a .001% probability. In the meantime, I think anyone who treats global warming as a genuine problem has some emotional deficiency in their lives that need to be propped up by these fantastic beliefs. I do not doubt their sincerity.
There is, of course, an actual problem, which is that people really do believe that global warming is a genuine issue. This is in and of itself a major political problem since because of these beliefs, governments are putting in place all kinds of idiotic policies that will make us much worse off. As for the supposed problem that works them up so much, I think of these people as naive, scientific innocents, who have not done any genuine research and in any case do not know how to investigate such issues properly. I do not doubt there is more carbon in the atmosphere than there had been a few years ago, and that for a time there had been a gentle upturn in global temperatures which may even be continuing. But I do not believe they are related in any way that matters. More importantly, nothing that will ever happen to the weather will cause the seas to rise or in any way threaten any of us, other than in the ways weather has always affected us in the past – see Hanrahan.
My way of arguing with global swarmists is, in part, to remind them of Uri Geller and his supernatural ability to bend spoons, an ability that had been verified by scientists. And by chance, after we parted I came upon in a secondhand bookshop Uri Geller’s 1975 personal account of his life and abilities, My Story. And there, as the opening quote on the very first page, set off all on its own, is the quote you see above. Not only had his abilities been authenticated at the University of London, more famously he had had his abilities assessed and validated by scientists at Stanford University. As you read the passages below from Geller’s book, bear in mind the notoriously bogus “97% of scientists” statistic. By the way, anyone who quotes the 97% stat who has not examined its origins through the eyes of sceptics is asking to be fleeced. But back to Geller:
“I had been going through scientific tests in the United States at the Stanford Research Institute at Menlo Park, California. The first results had confirmed that something strange and new was happening, both with the metal objects involved and with telepathy experiments. The researchers there had indicated that, if the tests continued to check out as they had, they would have a serious effect on modern science.” (Geller 1975: 14)
That really was the case which I vividly recall. Geller had been examined by a bunch of scientists at the SRI and they were ready to write a new chapter in the history of physics. So how did the public react to all this? Geller describes a poll undertaken by the Daily Mail. You ready?
“The tabulation showed that 95.5 per cent of those voting believed I had genuine psychic powers, and only 4.5 per cent indicated they thought I was just using showman’s tricks. In announcing the results, the Daily Mail said: ‘Time and time again in the many letters sent to us, readers say that while they were skeptical at first, it was the Stanford Research Institute evidence which finally convinced them.'” (Geller 1975: 68-69)
He had a great magic act, fooled lots of people, has recently been inducted into the Magicians Hall of Fame, and has a net worth of $20 million. Not bad for a magician who has essentially only four tricks in his repertoire.
Meanwhile, the same gullible fools across every level of society – rich or poor, educated and dropout, politically left and right – buy this global warming idiocy, which is making many an entrepreneur far more than a measly $20m. It has become a way to academic fame and fortune. It will eventually disappear when nothing ever happens, and more important issues come along, such as the coronavirus, or perhaps something worse. I suspect that for a lot of people there is a level of embarrassment in discovering how gullible they have been. In the meantime, there is the real Geller-effect – being conned into believing absolutely anything on the authority of “science”, unlike the original Geller effect which is a zombie-like belief that if a scientist says something, or is reported to have said something, then it must be true.
Below are videos surrounding Geller’s appearance on the Johnny Carson show in the 1970s. Two things are particularly noteworthy. First is that when the props were set up by a professional magician – in this case Jame Randi – Geller’s abilities absolutely failed. Second, and this is for all you young folks out there, Johnny Carson was smoking during the show!
First, here is James Randi explaining how so many are tricked.
This is a straight up excerpt from the show.
And if you are interested in seeing the whole thing, here’s the full show.
I think of the belief in global warming as equivalent to believing that Uri Geller could bend spoons with the power of his mind. The science is never settled.
And for added interest in how acute scientists can be, here is the link to the recording of the experiments at Stanford in 1974.
I just wish to come back briefly to Bryan Noakes whose memorial I went along to last Friday. No one has done more for my own professional life than Bryan, if for no other reason than that he allowed me to run my own show in developing our economic perspective on behalf of Australian employers. This for me meant that I was allowed to present and defend a classical perspective on the operation of an economy across every facet of government policy, from the budget to industrial relations. So far as wage cases went, we ran an entirely supply-side perspective, where the very notion that raising wages to increase demand was ultimately seen as so ridiculous that the ACTU even stopped including the argument in their submissions. We were so successful on budget policy that Peter Costello – the bravest person I ever knew in public life – ventured into balanced budgets and zero debt, with only the Chamber of Commerce having provided public support. There’s much more, but for me the ability to experiment with arguments and to push the agenda and the debate in a more economically rational direction, I owe to Bryan. Had I been more brave at the memoriam, I would have mentioned all this, along with letting others knew that he had once been the editor of the University of Sydney’s student newspaper, the Honi Soit – something I imagine he never mentioned to anyone else – so that when he allowed me to found and run our employer newsletter I always knew it was being done not only with a very watchful eye from Bryan, but also by someone who knew a thing or two about putting arguments into print.
Let me finish with the words spoken last Friday by my Chamber colleague, Reg Hamilton, now a Deputy President on the Commission. As he notes in Number 5, everything revolved around policy, nothing was personal. It’s how politics should be, not only in public, but also amongst friends. To meet up with so many former colleagues and close associates at the memoriam reminded me once again that the only kinds of people who can survive in an industrial relations environment – on the employer side particularly – are people of good cheer who have the kind of disposition to get on with anyone without breaking a friendship. These were Reg’s words in saying his own farewell to Bryan.
1. Bryan Noakes was not a flashy man, but was, to use a flashy term, a man for all seasons. As the fallen angel said in the film Bedazzled, ‘I am not omnipotent, just highly manouverable’. Bryan had to be highly manouverable. Change, he said, was something that happens each time you get out of bed. During his long career he was at the centre of policy formation for business and industry on all manner of issues including labour legislation, tribunal test cases, economic developments, equal opportunity, occupational health and safety, and other issues such as immigration. Bryan like all of us was subject to the tyranny of facts and of practicality.
2. He personally wrote the background notes and draft resolutions of ACEF, CAI and ACCI resolutions on these issues for forty years. This is an immense contribution. It was perhaps particularly important in the days of the Accord, 1983 to 1996, when Government policy arose out of a written agreement between trade unions and the ALP.
3. He showed good judgement of proportionality, avoiding the obvious mistakes of appeasement or extremism. However, as James Hacker, the Prime Minister in Yes Minister said, ‘I am a leader, I have to follow the people’. He drafted policy for business and employers which they could accept, and usually did accept. He was then a public spokesman and representative of great influence with Government, trade unions, and others, using these representative policy positions.
4. To do his job he had intellectual depth. One of the last memories I had of him was discussing Thomas Picketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century on the alleged problem of inequality in the West, a book under challenge by others, yet a clearly interesting work about a clearly interesting problem. He was also consistent in his support for free markets within a modern mixed economy.
5. He was generous to others, when many were not. His disagreements were nearly always based on policy, not personal, and he persevered in often a very hostile climate. Governments were not always very receptive, yet he formulated positions and pressed them effectively. He spent a lot of time on the political work of keeping the organisation together, an immense contribution.
I will just add this, told to me by another former colleague, that even after Bryan had had his stoke, and was confined to a single room in an old peoples’ home, his interest in politics and public affairs never went away. Time runs on. It made me remember that there must always be time for old friends. As much as they are important in your life, you are also important in theirs.
POLL: 62% of NH Dems Prefer Dying in Meteor Shower than Trump Reelection. Shocking new poll taken from UMass showed 62% of Democrats would prefer a world ending meteor shower to President Trump getting reelected in 2020.
Conservatives will certainly point to this poll and argue it’s evidence that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has reached new levels of absurdity.
RawStory reports a new poll out of New Hampshire shows just how much Democrats in the state do not want President Donald Trump to win reelection in 2020.
Per NBC News’ Sahil Kapur, a new poll from UMass Lowell asked New Hampshire Democrats if they would rather see President Donald Trump get reelected in 2020 or a meteor storm that wiped out all life on Earth.
That came just after this:
Are you in a hetrosexual relationship? There is a group out there who wants to ban your relationship.
MONTREAL — The Quebec government says it will re-evaluate the $120,000 annual public funding it gives to the province’s biggest women’s federation after its president suggested that heterosexual relationships should be banned.
Gabrielle Bouchard, president of the Federation des femmes du Quebec, made the controversial comment Tuesday on Twitter, before issuing an apology on Facebook and during televised media interviews later in the day.
Bouchard says her original tweet was in reaction to news that a man out on parole after being convicted of killing his female partner had been arrested in the slaying last week of a 22-year-old woman in Quebec City.
There are still many weeks to come before November. And there is still the House. And then there is still the Senate. And then there are the unknown unknowns.
Law of Markets 