WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
On Stupidity.
byVanderleunonMay 11, 2022
Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity – TRANSCRIPT — ExcerptsIn his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears.” It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. [Full text at link: Bonhoeffer’s Theory ] VIDEO AT THE END OF THIS ITEM Illustrations From theThread by @realJPowell “A little refresher on how much stupidity you’ve been subjected to recently. Enjoy”
• 2+2=5 • Working out makes you a Nazi • “Unfettered” convos are violence • Obesity is healthy • 8 white identities • You can’t be “not racist” • Free speech is bad for you • P0rn for kids is “education” • If nobody sees my costume who am I? • Masks don’t make sense but do it anyway • The Great Reset is a conspiracy, but here’s their website • Gas prices explained by CNN • Critical thinking is bad for you • Hunter Biden coverup to save election • Being healthy is toxic masculinity • Kids aren’t “pure” they’re “kinky” • Being normal is transphobic • Trump turns black people white • Straight black men are toxically white • “Fiery but mostly peaceful” • School rock is racist • Playing God to fight global warming • Boys bathrooms need menstrual products • Knitting community is racist
ENDLESS STUPIDITY, ISN’T IT? IT’S LIKE THEY HAVE SOME KIND OF DEEP BITCOIN STUPIDITY MINING GOIN ON. AGAIN, NOT YOUR “OPPONENTS” BUT YOUR “ENEMIES.”
Reminded me of Carlo M Cipolla’s classic “Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”. There are five, plus a corollary.
1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Corollary: a stupid person is more dangerous than a pillager.
The majority of the stupid is invincible, and will be with us always.
– Albert Einstein
james wilsonMay 11, 2022, 12:55 PM
The stuipid are but a blank canvass for the smart and especially malicious.
KCKMay 11, 2022, 1:26 PM
I am so received to see your “stupid” post. This morning I thought that the mob had evicted this honored blog from the interwebs.
gwbnycMay 11, 2022, 2:38 PM
figure they got all our names&vitals and were gonna drop the hammer on that 3AM knock at the door, KCK?
>;)~
KCKMay 11, 2022, 11:04 PM
Claymores.
gwbnycMay 11, 2022, 2:34 PM
“don’t work out” and be the compliant eunuchorn they need.
maybe it’s me, but men below a particular age seem femmy to me- in looks, dress, and speech.
AnonymousMay 11, 2022, 2:38 PM
“ The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
-Marcus Aurelius
With each passing day I feel more and more alone.
ghostsniperMay 11, 2022, 2:49 PM
jeez, what a mess.
Can anyone vouch that all of that stuff is really happening?
I don’t get out much, nor see a need to.
gwbnycMay 11, 2022, 4:19 PM
long, don’t know if it will format-
Here Are the 90+ ‘Equity’ Plans Taxpayers Are Now Funding Across the Federal Government | RealClearInvestigations
Under the Biden administration, more than 90 federal agencies have pledged their commitment to equity by adopting action plans that put gender, race and other such factors at the center of their governmental missions.
The Equity Action Plans, which have received little notice since they were posted online last month following a document request from RealClearInvestigations, represent a “whole of government” fight against “entrenched disparities” and the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism.”
The equity blueprints show that:
* The U.S. State Department is keen on exporting American-style gender and race consciousness into foreign diplomacy and across the globe. Citing “identity” and “intersections of marginalization” as focal points, State Department officials acknowledge that promoting these Western concepts in foreign lands may clash with “societal norms” and elicit an “unwillingness to cede power by dominant groups.”
* The Environmental Protection Agency plans to tap into “community science” from tribal nations and other interest groups, in addition to relying on academic peer-reviewed research. As the agency shifts its enforcement focus from responding to complaints to proactively initiating its own investigations, the EPA plans to fund “community scientists” to supply evidence of what it calls environmental racism and other corporate practices to be targeted for federal investigation.
* The Smithsonian Institution is embedding diversity and equity in “everything we do” across the labs and collections that make up the world’s largest museum complex. The Smithsonian has, like other agencies, enthroned a Head Diversity Officer position to coordinate these efforts, and will refocus its energies to explore “how race has informed all our lives” and affirm “the centrality of race in America.”
The Equity Action Plans are a response to an executive order President Biden signed on his first day of office in January 2021, committing his administration to pursuing “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”
USDA debt relief excluding whites has been ruled “abhorrent to the concept of equal protection.”
USDA
The equity policies had been dribbling out piecemeal since last year, including the State Department’s announcement of an X gender marker in U.S. passports for gender-nonconforming citizens; the Department of Homeland Security’s guidelines, announced on the International Trans Day of Visibility, that border patrol agents will be required to use gender-neutral language and pronouns specified by foreign travelers and migrants entering the country; and the Department of Agriculture’s plan to provide debt relief to black and other “socially disadvantaged” farmers, but not to white farmers.
But a more comprehensive picture did not emerge until the release of the Equity Action Plans, which describe the incorporation of race and gender concepts that, until several years ago, largely lived in academic journals as esoteric and niche interests. The plans – ranging from 2 to 26 pages – contain marching orders for all Cabinet-level federal agencies as well as dozens of smaller, independent agencies; they are sprinkled throughout with trendy terms like BIPOC, LGBTQI+, queer, power structures, marginalization, intersectional, and gender binary.
The Equity Action Plans are only the first step in what the Biden administration calls a “generational commitment” to redressing historical disparities between political identity groups. But the full implications of the Biden strategy are obscured by the fact that the documents are short on specifics and larded with standard governmentese and boilerplate language about promoting best practices, collecting data, reducing barriers to government procurement, and contracting with disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.
In a typical bureaucratic passage, the Justice Department’s plan includes a commitment to “ask each of its major procuring bureaus to identify at least two contracting opportunities for HUBZone small businesses each fiscal year for 4 years, or until the statutory goal of 3% is met, and to compete those contracts exclusively among HUBZone firms.”
But the documents are also open-ended and can serve as a platform for significant change. In a sweeping, general statement, the Department of Agriculture vows to “continue to integrate civil rights and equity in the design of its policies and programs that span the entirety of its mandate, including areas such as food security, nutrition, natural resources and conservation, rural development, and more.”
Representatives of several groups that filed public comments described the comments as generic but promising an important first step toward empowering historically marginalized communities.
“For the most part they say the right things,” said James Goodwin, senior policy analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform, one of the nearly 500 groups that filed public comments to guide the creation of the Equity Action Plans.
“But you know words on paper are very different from action. What’s most important is that an agency’s culture changes to incorporate a lot of these things,” Goodwin said. “A lot of these things can be relegated to a check-the-box exercise which doesn’t make a major impact in the day-to-day actions of an agency, or it can be fully integrated into an agency’s DNA.”
After public pushback, the Education Department dropped references to this New York Times effort asserting America’s founding as a “slavocracy.”
The Biden administration is already facing pushback on the publicized details of the equity agenda, which is not popular with conservatives. Not only did a federal judge block the farming program last summer on the grounds that using racial categories to exclude white farmers is “abhorrent to the concept of equal protection,” but Republicans in Congress are challenging the Transportation Security Administration policy to reduce pat-downs of transgender travelers at airports.
And after receiving some 35,000 public comments on a Department of Education proposal to fund civics education programs that emphasize bias, discrimination, and oppression, the agency last year removed references to The New York Times 1619 Project and to best-selling self-styled “antiracist” author Ibram X. Kendi as exemplars of this approach to historical research.
The 1619 Project, which has been distributed free-of-charge to thousands of K-12 classrooms across the nation, is controversial because, among other things, it states as an incontrovertible fact that the United States was founded not as a democracy but as a “slavocracy” and that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” Kendi’s ideas include the assertion that antiracism necessitates discriminating against white people to balance the scales of racial justice, and that anyone who balks at implementing his agenda is beholden to racist ideas.
Passports to equity: One way to project woke values abroad.
U.S. Department of State
The Office of Management and Budget, which is shepherding the Equity Action Plans, said that the equity strategy is an ambitious goal that will require “long-term change management,” a term that suggests something like a total overhaul of organizational culture in response to an external threat to the organization’s survival. “Large scale change becomes most feasible when a sense of urgency prevails,” OMB said.
With federal agencies just getting started with the initial step of data collection, most of the equity changes to come over time haven’t been conceived yet, so the potential costs of funding, contracting, staffing and other program expenses may not be known for years. But costs almost certainly will increase. Progressive groups are urging the federal government to embed equity standards in government contracting and grant-making by abandoning the use of the classic cost-benefit analysis to assess the impact of federal regulations.
These groups contend that the cost-benefit analysis is inherently politically biased because it focuses on the economic costs to corporations without taking into account the social costs and benefits to race, gender, and other identity groups. “It is precisely this commitment to supposed ‘moral objectivity’ that has left the practice vulnerable to producing racially disparate results,” the Center for Progressive Reform wrote in its public comment.
In an interview, Goodwin described conventional cost-benefit analysis as a worldview and an ideology masquerading as a neutral, apolitical metric.
The Center for Progressive Reform also said in its public comment that federal agencies, when seeking input on proposed regulations, should consider accepting statements in the form of “hip hop music, graphic novels, collages or street art,” rather than limiting public comment to formal statements.
Even this federal agency has an equity plan — for human mammals.
Marine Mammal Commission
The Office of Management and Budget has issued a statement saying the Equity Action Plans “are part of a broader equity agenda, which also includes implementing the first-ever national strategy on gender equity and equality.”
Goodwin and Amit Narang, the regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, noted that a key prong in the Biden administration’s strategy is the Modernizing Regulatory Review memorandum, also from January 2021, which says federal policy should be assessed not just for corporate cost but also for equity and justice.
Guidelines from that memo, due later this year, are expected to provide further details on how the Biden administration hopes to redistribute the costs and benefits of federal policy. In interviews, social justice advocates offered the example of the wheelchair access ramp as a social benefit that carries a corporate cost but also provides incalculable social benefits that cannot be quantified in dollar terms. They say that racial and gender equity should be viewed in the same way as a wheelchair access ramp.
But social justice advocates also noted that the administration’s definition of “equity” in the original Executive Order and this year’s Equity Action Plans is disappointingly narrow compared with the more commonly accepted understanding of the term in the diversity and equity industry. The Executive Order defines “equity” as fair and impartial treatment of all people, including rural Americans, whereas the term has broadly come to mean preferential treatment for racial, sex, and gender identity groups deemed to have been historically marginalized and oppressed, in order to produce demographically representative outcomes.
“The definition they put forward is basically saying: Going forward from here things are going to be procedurally fair and they’re going to be free from bias in the implementation of our programs,” said Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“That’s an important step but removing bias is not enough to close these [racial] gaps that we’re seeing,” Moore said. “There needs to be a policy of redressing past harms. That may mean developing policies that disproportionally benefit groups that have been disadvantaged in the past, not simply providing relief for those groups, but a leg up.”
Good.
Once again, the gov’t throws good money after bad.
How many trillions has the gov’t “invested” in the negro since the 60’s only to see failure after failure? All of the above is more of the same. This sort of thing will push the viability of the gov’t further over the edge of demise, the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. In the absence of gov’t “investment”, the negro issue will solve itself in 1 generation or less. With gov’t “investment” it will get worse.
Investing in the negro is like investing in Africa. American blacks even complained about the US Apollo 11 mission, saying that it was a waste of money that should have been given to them. To the black man and his supporters—grifters all—whites can never give enough or abase themselves enough. No matter the policy adopted by any US government, blacks will continue to prey upon whites and the civilization whites created.
hooodathunkitMay 11, 2022, 8:59 PM
Some of it. The homosexual graphic novel (comic-book) has been found by alarmed parents in school libraries across the country, as recommended by the American Library Association. One of many; it’s a concerted effort on the librarians part.
Jim in OxfordMay 11, 2022, 4:00 PM
I have always shied away from the idea that we are inexorably headed towards some kind of apocalyptic end — perhaps being raised Episcopalian, I wasn’t exposed to much Old Testament. And the first six decades of my seventy years were spent attempting to avoid the darker aspects of my fellow humans. Things are different today, as the song goes: all of the examples that GV has listed of what goes on now (and it is just the tip of the iceberg) do make me wonder. In college, while stoned (of course), I use to marvel at Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Last Judgement”, and think, man he was onto some really bad shit to be able to paint ALL of it. But now I look at that painting and look at the creatures paraded before our sore eyes on a daily basis, and think perhaps he was just being prescient.
AnonymousMay 11, 2022, 4:27 PM
Related:
Generaloberst Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord on the classification of officers:
“I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. ***One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.***”
From my experience of 4 years in the army, I can’t disagree with that. I want my 4 years back. What a waste of time. Nothing worthwhile gained – except a better understanding of how the enemy works.
What is all this about “stupidity”? Can it be measured by any objective standard? How does it differ from mere ignorance? Is stupidity related to IQ? If so, how?
It seems that calling someone stupid is like calling someone racist. All it means it that one guy does not like another guy. Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates and Yuval Harari and George Soros are not stupid—I will give them that.
The only characteristic that matters is Evil. That is something that can indeed be objectively measured—and no, it matters not at all that the practitioners of Evil claim to be unaware that they are practicing Evil, for that is an impossible condition. Every man has imprinted upon his soul the Imago Dei, the very fingerprint of God, His Natural Law. No man can be so depraved—no matter the Calvinist claim—that he does not know Evil, for that would imply that Lucifer could conquer every inch of a man.
My enemies and the enemies of traditional America—those who call us “extremists” and “terrorists” and “insurrectionists”—can be stupid or ignorant or sub-IQ, and it does not matter. What does matter is that they hate my guts. What matters is that they want to impoverish me. What matters is that they want to starve me to death, inject me with poison, murder my children in their wombs, destroy my wealth and shut me up—permanently.
There is a word that defines these wretches: Evil. So be it. Know your enemy.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity – TRANSCRIPT — Excerpts In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears.” It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. [Full text at link: Bonhoeffer’s Theory ] VIDEO AT THE END OF THIS ITEM
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Man, that’s a whole lotta stupid.
Reminded me of Carlo M Cipolla’s classic “Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”. There are five, plus a corollary.
1. Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Corollary: a stupid person is more dangerous than a pillager.
Full explanation here: http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/
Kind regards,
CS
The majority of the stupid is invincible, and will be with us always.
– Albert Einstein
The stuipid are but a blank canvass for the smart and especially malicious.
I am so received to see your “stupid” post. This morning I thought that the mob had evicted this honored blog from the interwebs.
figure they got all our names&vitals and were gonna drop the hammer on that 3AM knock at the door, KCK?
>;)~
Claymores.
“don’t work out” and be the compliant eunuchorn they need.
maybe it’s me, but men below a particular age seem femmy to me- in looks, dress, and speech.
“ The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
-Marcus Aurelius
With each passing day I feel more and more alone.
jeez, what a mess.
Can anyone vouch that all of that stuff is really happening?
I don’t get out much, nor see a need to.
long, don’t know if it will format-
Here Are the 90+ ‘Equity’ Plans Taxpayers Are Now Funding Across the Federal Government | RealClearInvestigations
Under the Biden administration, more than 90 federal agencies have pledged their commitment to equity by adopting action plans that put gender, race and other such factors at the center of their governmental missions.
The Equity Action Plans, which have received little notice since they were posted online last month following a document request from RealClearInvestigations, represent a “whole of government” fight against “entrenched disparities” and the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism.”
The equity blueprints show that:
* The U.S. State Department is keen on exporting American-style gender and race consciousness into foreign diplomacy and across the globe. Citing “identity” and “intersections of marginalization” as focal points, State Department officials acknowledge that promoting these Western concepts in foreign lands may clash with “societal norms” and elicit an “unwillingness to cede power by dominant groups.”
* The Environmental Protection Agency plans to tap into “community science” from tribal nations and other interest groups, in addition to relying on academic peer-reviewed research. As the agency shifts its enforcement focus from responding to complaints to proactively initiating its own investigations, the EPA plans to fund “community scientists” to supply evidence of what it calls environmental racism and other corporate practices to be targeted for federal investigation.
* The Smithsonian Institution is embedding diversity and equity in “everything we do” across the labs and collections that make up the world’s largest museum complex. The Smithsonian has, like other agencies, enthroned a Head Diversity Officer position to coordinate these efforts, and will refocus its energies to explore “how race has informed all our lives” and affirm “the centrality of race in America.”
The Equity Action Plans are a response to an executive order President Biden signed on his first day of office in January 2021, committing his administration to pursuing “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”
USDA debt relief excluding whites has been ruled “abhorrent to the concept of equal protection.”
USDA
The equity policies had been dribbling out piecemeal since last year, including the State Department’s announcement of an X gender marker in U.S. passports for gender-nonconforming citizens; the Department of Homeland Security’s guidelines, announced on the International Trans Day of Visibility, that border patrol agents will be required to use gender-neutral language and pronouns specified by foreign travelers and migrants entering the country; and the Department of Agriculture’s plan to provide debt relief to black and other “socially disadvantaged” farmers, but not to white farmers.
But a more comprehensive picture did not emerge until the release of the Equity Action Plans, which describe the incorporation of race and gender concepts that, until several years ago, largely lived in academic journals as esoteric and niche interests. The plans – ranging from 2 to 26 pages – contain marching orders for all Cabinet-level federal agencies as well as dozens of smaller, independent agencies; they are sprinkled throughout with trendy terms like BIPOC, LGBTQI+, queer, power structures, marginalization, intersectional, and gender binary.
The Equity Action Plans are only the first step in what the Biden administration calls a “generational commitment” to redressing historical disparities between political identity groups. But the full implications of the Biden strategy are obscured by the fact that the documents are short on specifics and larded with standard governmentese and boilerplate language about promoting best practices, collecting data, reducing barriers to government procurement, and contracting with disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.
In a typical bureaucratic passage, the Justice Department’s plan includes a commitment to “ask each of its major procuring bureaus to identify at least two contracting opportunities for HUBZone small businesses each fiscal year for 4 years, or until the statutory goal of 3% is met, and to compete those contracts exclusively among HUBZone firms.”
But the documents are also open-ended and can serve as a platform for significant change. In a sweeping, general statement, the Department of Agriculture vows to “continue to integrate civil rights and equity in the design of its policies and programs that span the entirety of its mandate, including areas such as food security, nutrition, natural resources and conservation, rural development, and more.”
Representatives of several groups that filed public comments described the comments as generic but promising an important first step toward empowering historically marginalized communities.
“For the most part they say the right things,” said James Goodwin, senior policy analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform, one of the nearly 500 groups that filed public comments to guide the creation of the Equity Action Plans.
“But you know words on paper are very different from action. What’s most important is that an agency’s culture changes to incorporate a lot of these things,” Goodwin said. “A lot of these things can be relegated to a check-the-box exercise which doesn’t make a major impact in the day-to-day actions of an agency, or it can be fully integrated into an agency’s DNA.”
After public pushback, the Education Department dropped references to this New York Times effort asserting America’s founding as a “slavocracy.”
The Biden administration is already facing pushback on the publicized details of the equity agenda, which is not popular with conservatives. Not only did a federal judge block the farming program last summer on the grounds that using racial categories to exclude white farmers is “abhorrent to the concept of equal protection,” but Republicans in Congress are challenging the Transportation Security Administration policy to reduce pat-downs of transgender travelers at airports.
And after receiving some 35,000 public comments on a Department of Education proposal to fund civics education programs that emphasize bias, discrimination, and oppression, the agency last year removed references to The New York Times 1619 Project and to best-selling self-styled “antiracist” author Ibram X. Kendi as exemplars of this approach to historical research.
The 1619 Project, which has been distributed free-of-charge to thousands of K-12 classrooms across the nation, is controversial because, among other things, it states as an incontrovertible fact that the United States was founded not as a democracy but as a “slavocracy” and that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” Kendi’s ideas include the assertion that antiracism necessitates discriminating against white people to balance the scales of racial justice, and that anyone who balks at implementing his agenda is beholden to racist ideas.
Passports to equity: One way to project woke values abroad.
U.S. Department of State
The Office of Management and Budget, which is shepherding the Equity Action Plans, said that the equity strategy is an ambitious goal that will require “long-term change management,” a term that suggests something like a total overhaul of organizational culture in response to an external threat to the organization’s survival. “Large scale change becomes most feasible when a sense of urgency prevails,” OMB said.
With federal agencies just getting started with the initial step of data collection, most of the equity changes to come over time haven’t been conceived yet, so the potential costs of funding, contracting, staffing and other program expenses may not be known for years. But costs almost certainly will increase. Progressive groups are urging the federal government to embed equity standards in government contracting and grant-making by abandoning the use of the classic cost-benefit analysis to assess the impact of federal regulations.
These groups contend that the cost-benefit analysis is inherently politically biased because it focuses on the economic costs to corporations without taking into account the social costs and benefits to race, gender, and other identity groups. “It is precisely this commitment to supposed ‘moral objectivity’ that has left the practice vulnerable to producing racially disparate results,” the Center for Progressive Reform wrote in its public comment.
In an interview, Goodwin described conventional cost-benefit analysis as a worldview and an ideology masquerading as a neutral, apolitical metric.
The Center for Progressive Reform also said in its public comment that federal agencies, when seeking input on proposed regulations, should consider accepting statements in the form of “hip hop music, graphic novels, collages or street art,” rather than limiting public comment to formal statements.
Even this federal agency has an equity plan — for human mammals.
Marine Mammal Commission
The Office of Management and Budget has issued a statement saying the Equity Action Plans “are part of a broader equity agenda, which also includes implementing the first-ever national strategy on gender equity and equality.”
Goodwin and Amit Narang, the regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen, noted that a key prong in the Biden administration’s strategy is the Modernizing Regulatory Review memorandum, also from January 2021, which says federal policy should be assessed not just for corporate cost but also for equity and justice.
Guidelines from that memo, due later this year, are expected to provide further details on how the Biden administration hopes to redistribute the costs and benefits of federal policy. In interviews, social justice advocates offered the example of the wheelchair access ramp as a social benefit that carries a corporate cost but also provides incalculable social benefits that cannot be quantified in dollar terms. They say that racial and gender equity should be viewed in the same way as a wheelchair access ramp.
But social justice advocates also noted that the administration’s definition of “equity” in the original Executive Order and this year’s Equity Action Plans is disappointingly narrow compared with the more commonly accepted understanding of the term in the diversity and equity industry. The Executive Order defines “equity” as fair and impartial treatment of all people, including rural Americans, whereas the term has broadly come to mean preferential treatment for racial, sex, and gender identity groups deemed to have been historically marginalized and oppressed, in order to produce demographically representative outcomes.
“The definition they put forward is basically saying: Going forward from here things are going to be procedurally fair and they’re going to be free from bias in the implementation of our programs,” said Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“That’s an important step but removing bias is not enough to close these [racial] gaps that we’re seeing,” Moore said. “There needs to be a policy of redressing past harms. That may mean developing policies that disproportionally benefit groups that have been disadvantaged in the past, not simply providing relief for those groups, but a leg up.”
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/05/10/here_are_the_90_equity_plans_taxpayers_are_now_funding_across_the_federal_government_830643.html
email: jmurawski@realclearinvestigations.com Twitter: @johnmurawski
Good.
Once again, the gov’t throws good money after bad.
How many trillions has the gov’t “invested” in the negro since the 60’s only to see failure after failure? All of the above is more of the same. This sort of thing will push the viability of the gov’t further over the edge of demise, the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. In the absence of gov’t “investment”, the negro issue will solve itself in 1 generation or less. With gov’t “investment” it will get worse.
Investing in the negro is like investing in Africa. American blacks even complained about the US Apollo 11 mission, saying that it was a waste of money that should have been given to them. To the black man and his supporters—grifters all—whites can never give enough or abase themselves enough. No matter the policy adopted by any US government, blacks will continue to prey upon whites and the civilization whites created.
Some of it. The homosexual graphic novel (comic-book) has been found by alarmed parents in school libraries across the country, as recommended by the American Library Association. One of many; it’s a concerted effort on the librarians part.
I have always shied away from the idea that we are inexorably headed towards some kind of apocalyptic end — perhaps being raised Episcopalian, I wasn’t exposed to much Old Testament. And the first six decades of my seventy years were spent attempting to avoid the darker aspects of my fellow humans. Things are different today, as the song goes: all of the examples that GV has listed of what goes on now (and it is just the tip of the iceberg) do make me wonder. In college, while stoned (of course), I use to marvel at Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Last Judgement”, and think, man he was onto some really bad shit to be able to paint ALL of it. But now I look at that painting and look at the creatures paraded before our sore eyes on a daily basis, and think perhaps he was just being prescient.
Related:
Generaloberst Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord on the classification of officers:
“I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. ***One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.***”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Classification_of_officers
From my experience of 4 years in the army, I can’t disagree with that. I want my 4 years back. What a waste of time. Nothing worthwhile gained – except a better understanding of how the enemy works.
What is all this about “stupidity”? Can it be measured by any objective standard? How does it differ from mere ignorance? Is stupidity related to IQ? If so, how?
It seems that calling someone stupid is like calling someone racist. All it means it that one guy does not like another guy. Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates and Yuval Harari and George Soros are not stupid—I will give them that.
The only characteristic that matters is Evil. That is something that can indeed be objectively measured—and no, it matters not at all that the practitioners of Evil claim to be unaware that they are practicing Evil, for that is an impossible condition. Every man has imprinted upon his soul the Imago Dei, the very fingerprint of God, His Natural Law. No man can be so depraved—no matter the Calvinist claim—that he does not know Evil, for that would imply that Lucifer could conquer every inch of a man.
My enemies and the enemies of traditional America—those who call us “extremists” and “terrorists” and “insurrectionists”—can be stupid or ignorant or sub-IQ, and it does not matter. What does matter is that they hate my guts. What matters is that they want to impoverish me. What matters is that they want to starve me to death, inject me with poison, murder my children in their wombs, destroy my wealth and shut me up—permanently.
There is a word that defines these wretches: Evil. So be it. Know your enemy.
The ignorant can be educated.
Best we can do with the stupid is ignore them.
Granted. But if they do not ignore us? What then?
Depends on what “…if they do not ignore us” means.
If it means what I think it means then explosive over the top retaliative violence is the answer.