Damore vs. Google: the case for the plaintiff

I relish writing posts like this one because I have absolutely no patience for intellectual dishonesty, and the whole left-ish so-called social justice movement, and so-called diversity and inclusion (D&I), and so-called political correctness (a term that has become one of disapproval, although it didn't have to), as these things have actually been promoted and practiced by left-ish types, have institutionalized intellectual dishonesty to a very considerable extent.  [Follow-up posting on the dishonest dynamic of present-day leftists here.]

One of the basic de facto rules of this bastardized-by-leftish-types form of "social justice" is:

Go out of your way to misrepresent the ideas/arguments of those who challenge the "social justice" orthodoxy.

Another de facto rule:

Make sure, as much as you can get away with, to replace fair argument responsive to what the opponent actually says, with shaming tactics.

Damore says that Google has institutionalized to some extent a culture of shaming and misrepresentation, and based on what evidence I've seen, he's exactly fucking right, and it's the leftish ones who oughtta be ashamed of themselves.

Let's take one example of what the culture at Google instills in its toeing-the-orthodox-line employees:

Former 'Googler' Yonatan Zunger considered it appropriate to chastise Damore thusly:

I’m going to be even blunter than usual here, because I’m not subject to the usual maze of HR laws right now, and so I can say openly what I would normally only be allowed to say in very restricted fora. And this is addressed specifically to the author of this manifesto.

What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas. And worse than simply thinking these things or saying them in private, you’ve said them in a way that’s tried to legitimize this kind of thing across the company, causing other people to get up and say “wait, is that right?”

I need to be very clear here: not only was nearly everything you said in that document wrong, the fact that you did that has caused significant harm to people across this company, and to the company’s entire ability to function. And being aware of that kind of consequence is also part of your job, as in fact it would be at pretty much any other job. I am no longer even at the company and I’ve had to spend half of the past day talking to people and cleaning up the mess you’ve made. I can’t even imagine how much time and emotional energy has been sunk into this, not to mention reputational harm more broadly.

And as for its impact on you: Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them. You have just created a textbook hostile workplace environment.

If you hadn’t written this manifesto, then maybe we’d be having a conversation about the skills you need to learn to not be blocked in your career — which are precisely the ones you described as “female skills.” But we are having a totally different conversation now. It doesn’t matter how good you are at writing code; there are plenty of other people who can do that. The negative impact on your colleagues you have created by your actions outweighs that tremendously.

You talked about a need for discussion about ideas; you need to learn the difference between “I think we should adopt Go as our primary language” and “I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person’s satisfaction.” Not all ideas are the same, and not all conversations about ideas even have basic legitimacy.

If you feel isolated by this, that your views are basically unwelcome in tech and can’t be spoken about… well, that’s a fair point. These views are fundamentally corrosive to any organization they show up in, drive people out, and I can’t think of any organization not specifically dedicated to those views that they would be welcome in. I’m afraid that’s likely to remain a serious problem for you for a long time to come. But our company is committed to maintaining a good environment for all of its people, and if one person is determined to thwart that, the solution is pretty clear.²

I’m writing this here, in this message, because I’m no longer at the company and can say this sort of thing openly. But I want to make it very clear: if you were in my reporting chain, all of part (3) would have been replaced with a short “this is not acceptable” and maybe that last paragraph above. You would have heard part (3) in a much smaller meeting, including you, me, your manager, your HRBP, and someone from legal. And it would have ended with you being escorted from the building by security and told that your personal items will be mailed to you. And the fact that you think this was “all in the name of open discussion,” and don’t realize any of these deeper consequences, makes this worse, not better.

Now, does this sound like a response appropriate to what Damore's manifesto was actually saying, or does it sound more like a lack of willingness to properly engage with Damore's context and replace it instead with strident virtue-signaling?  It sounds a lot more like the latter to me.  What it tells me is that the mentality displayed here is cultivated at Google to such an extent that what really happened is that Google exercised no due diligence/effort to explain to Damore how/where his ideas went wrong, how they present a potential danger of contributing to a hostile work environment, and how he might have the opportunity to correct his errors before it's determined that he and Google aren't a good fit.  (It turns out they aren't a good fit, if the above response to a good-faith presentation of putative science and fact is more or less the "best" that Damore could expect from the company.)

In short: does it sound like this chastisement is written with the aim in mind of anticipating how Damore might respond, or is it basically a one-sided rant?

I recommend reading some of the comments that follow, particularly the quality and tone of those who applaud and pile on.  Do they demonstrate a willingness to actually understand Damore's views, or are they really quick to conclude that he must have been promoting the loathsome ideas they attribute to him?  Keep in mind, as you answer this, the general culture of the American left today when it comes to characterizing opposing views they don't like: are they more likely than not to misrepresent - sometimes blatantly and obviously - their opponents' positions?  Are they more likely than not to jump to the conclusion that a debatable point is instead racist, sexist, etc. and therefore beyond the pale of rational argument?

Because that's the pattern I've been observing on the left these past few years now, and it's fucking disgusting.

Now, contrast the righteous rant from Mr. Zunger above with this comment (by James Gillmore), and see whether you think one is making more of an effort at dialogue, understanding and actual empathy than the other:

After having of course read the manifesto and responded to various comments, here’s my response to one of the comments:

“And the answer to the million dollar question is this [i.e. what the young man should have been told, i.e. what would have been far more helpful]:

“Historically [and currently basically everywhere that doesn’t have these policies], it’s been the other way around, where male-dominated work culture has led to a lot of unfair circumstances for female employees. We’re slowly improving, but we aren’t there yet. In an ideal world, such policies wouldn’t need to exist. For now, we’ve deemed the best thing we can do is offset the imbalance of power as best we can and create a welcoming environment as equally as possible for all. Yes, the policies are an unnatural construct for a larger even more unnatural construct: mega corporations, which can no longer be truly accountable for the people they bring on board. The best answer is JUST TO BE NON-DISCRIMINATORY, but since we are so focused on the greed of our ambitions of growth, becoming small and guaranteeing that is not something we care about. The cost is it leaves males wondering if they are now the ones at a disadvantage, and females doubting whether they earned their position. It’s an imperfect system in an imperfect world, but regardless you are here, and you competed against hundreds of thousands of others, so rest assured you’re more than worthy of your position; and if you’re a male, you’re male after all, toughen up, be a gentlemen and look out for the women in your group! You’re a technologist after all, it’s easier than ever to carve up your own path; if you don’t like it you’re free to go.

*the second to last sentence is an imperfect addendum in an imperfect world that will always be loose around the edges; I don’t think it creates any value to pretend it’s something it’s not.”

And a related response to another thoughtful commenter is this:

“My overall response to what you’re saying — and it’s not something I disagree with — is that the degree of response to this young man also must be just. It’s not just “about degree” — DEGREE IS EVERYTHING. What he’s been grappling with isn’t abnormal — and if the only response is over-reactions like what he received from the now-ex-googler who felt it was his job to bring down the hammer, I don’t think we’re gonna make any progress evolving humanity.

“Here’s the thing: when wrongs or violence (real or imagined or virtual) are acted upon someone, you are more inclined to feel for a victim who is a friend. That’s how empathy is developed. But if everyone is enemies (like Zunger just declared), both sides won’t see each other as friends and will have no motivation to understand each other. That’s why this young man doesn’t understand the pain women have gone through in the workplace, and it’s why women and men like Zunger don’t understand his. Not the pain he’s been through likely as a social outcast, and not the obvious pain of being virtually executed as he has been today. It’s shocking that people can’t put themselves in the shoes of said young men, and instead rejoice in his summary execution — especially when that’s exactly what they are asking of said young man. 2 wrongs don’t make a right. In fact, if this was a relationship and real life (not just a blog article Zunger can distance himself from), it’s usually the person who overreacts that ends up being far more in the wrong and having to clean up the mess (if she/he is a brave well-intentioned individual). If you’ve been in any sort of fight with your significant other and overreacted, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

“With no room for dialog, there is no understanding, and no evolution of viewpoints. Things absolutely can’t be black and white. Similar to good music and art being all about nuance to create a mood, to have any sort of effect, nuance and degree are paramount.

“Some people say “well, the line has to be drawn somewhere.” Definitely, there are cases where fighting back to avoid extinction is the only option. This isn’t one of them. Not the way Zunger handled it. And such circumstances are truly rare at the end of the day.

“The young man wrote a manifesto after all — that means he was open to dialog. In the above link I propose what he should have been told. Catch-22 or not [i.e. the commenter I was responding to pointed out that the manifesto writer put Google in a position of a catch-22, for if they now fired him, that only proves his point that Google isn’t truly inclusive], he can be assertively told why things are the way they are — and actually, there is no catch-22. There’s a reason these policies exist. I agree that a giant cancerous mega corp needs them. So they should simply be able to explain it to said young man. If they can’t, or their unofficial representatives can’t, without overreacting, that’s a problem. If they don’t understand how young males may struggle getting it, that’s really on them and a problem that may in fact be bigger at this point in time.

“Overall I didn’t find Zunger’s response very well thought out, but just a way to jump in a pool of automatic validation and be the hero where one wasn’t really needed — since after all Google does have these policies in place and is willing to act on them; I’m sure said young man will be fired. And no, I don’t think that the young kid or man deserves this sorta smackdown. It’s not right. I’m sorry, it’s just not. No matter, if it’s some manipulative catch-22 ploy by said young man [because said young man is struggling in the workplace because of his actions toward the opposite sex and the negative response from his superiors, and was manipulating to flip the script in his favor, as the commenter I responded to was guessing].

“If Google can’t come up with something to do with him, they’re lacking in imagination and just proves my point that giant centralized corps are on the outs. The young man isn’t Geoffrey Dommer and instead requires guidance. That level of engagement unfortunately is something you rarely find in society. What you get primarily is asshole patriarchal figures like Zunger Games. Keep that in mind when you think of young men — it’s not like the world is brimming with guidance for how to be a “modern man,” while the world is still figuring it out. [in essence, empathy is required at all levels to live up to the pursuit of inclusivity]

“Just take a moment and imagine this was your son. All of 23 years old and possibly social awkward. Imagine him younger, say 10 — where do you draw the line? Now, imagine he’s on the spectrum — after all, we are all on some sort of spectrum as nobody is a master of every circumstance. Would a profile picture that shows he clearly is autistic or has aspergers change things?

“What would you allow to be said to your son in this situation? Imagine your son is 10 and comes to you and says: ‘Mommy/Daddy, why do the girls get to go to the free after school tutoring program, but I don’t and I’m the one who’s failing?” What would you tell him. And at what age does it become unacceptable for him to even ask? Too much power has been given to said young man. He’s likely an insecure young man who just arrived in a workplace with these policies (even if that was 5 years ago), and has known no other. To cast him out as a social reject is bad policy. He will act out like a child you don’t truly engage.

“He’s not alone in the question he had — even for man in their 20s or 30s. Lots of men are wondering this same thing, especially as the world does evolve to incorporate these policies. We aren’t talking Don Drapers coming from a place of status like Zunger. We aren’t talking the scary men in positions of power that women feel psychological acts of violence from. All of this must be considered to have the most effective biggest picture thinking, and grow young men of the future who truly and innately get it. Who don’t feel an entitlement to the workplace over women. Who view women as equals.

“We’re creating the world as we speak, and there are no hard and fast rules (at least not on a public stage). So it’s detrimental that we’re as inclusive and cooperative as possible in ALL circumstances, rather than assume our point of view is so right that it justifies enacting virtual/psychological acts of violence towards another. That’s precisely the pain women feel based on previous work conditions (and current). If nothing else, Zunger made it ok to treat people like that when you feel justified.

“People every day feel justified in actions, only to either realize they’re wrong, or for everyone else to realize it. That’s the “catch-22” of allowing for such harsh over-reactions — you’re not always going to be “right.” If there is a “rule,” it should be that you should always leave room for error and to be wrong. Degree is important, process (how you go about things) is important. I’m sorry, this isn’t the process. It’s just not.

“Let me know your thoughts on what I proposed the response should be. Perhaps we can craft that together.”

---

So that’s the latest. I urge everyone to think with as big of a picture as possible when discussing this. This isn’t somehow some easy obvious topic, like Zunger indicated, conveniently allowing him to skip over it. If it was, this wouldn’t be happening. Manifestos wouldn’t be going out, you wouldn’t be hearing about it all year in the tech press. The policies wouldn’t exist in the first place. This is an opportunity for the tech world to really champion some challenging issues while showing the world both sides can come to a collective solution.

Lambasting either side isn’t the way. It makes zero sense for said young man to write the most thoughtful assessment he could come up with, and to be shutdown so harshly with zero explanation, given what I’ve pinpointed out about growing understanding men of the future. He truly doesn’t get it. And the other side truly doesn’t get that he doesn’t get it. Nobody gets anything because there is no communication. Everybody is enemies. Nobody is friends. Nobody has any natural motivation to empathize with the other side and understand their pain.

That’s all it would take for said young man to get why the policies are in place, and not end up writing a manifesto that frames women as less fit than men in the workplace. And if not him, at least the next young man.

Doing what Zunger did, as heroic as it might seem, just perpetuates a world where nobody is motivated to understand each other. What he has done creates enemies. And yes, there’s a place to draw the line, but degree is absolutely everything. I suggest to people who side with the young manifesto writer to seek to understand the psychological violence women feel is and has been enacted upon them throughout history by men assuming they are unfit, and I suggest to the women and men who don’t seem to understand this young man to recognize he’s not coming from a place of power like a CEO, he’s likely insecure, young, introverted and the only work world he has ever known is where there are policies which seem to put him at a disadvantage. (And also think of him as if he was your struggling child and Zunger just did this to him). In other words, he doesn’t recognize his own power/value. Neither side does.

Just maybe this young man could be a convert if he was talked to another way.

Lastly, the problem of the people of planet earth is simply that they retaliate too easily. If we don’t evolve past that, we’ll destroy the planet. Especially given how fast technology has evolved in the recent stint of peace that we take for granted.

Now, this comment sounds like basic common sense, i.e.: what about Damore's context?  Should that be taken into account a lot more before firing him?  And is it Google & Zunger's assumption that Damore is not amenable to correction where that may be warranted?  And is such an assumption an honest one?

I think the linked medium thread captures in a nutshell, at the level of metadata as it were, the way the left-ish quasi-egalitarian SJ/PC/D&I [sic] crowd tends to conduct itself in (sorry excuses for) debates.  The pattern repeats itself all over the place in the news.  They smeared Prof. Wax as a racist for her "bourgeois values" argument.  They smear Trump and his supporters all the time as racists, sexist, etc., and most often where they have no clear warrant in doing so.  I think it's all quite fucking shameful and anti-philosophical.  Now, are they open to correction wherever that is much warranted?  Well, there's the free-will answer - they ultimately have it within them to stop being such epistemically-unjust pieces of shit - and then there's the "what is the prevailing culture of leftish doctrine and practice nowadays" answer - i.e., they seem pretty steadfastly committed to remaining epistemically unjust pieces of shit for the foreseeable future, alarm bells ringing and all.

I think that if indeed it's Mr. Zunger's post more than Mr. Gillmore's (the latter's) that represents the mentality in Google's HR, then Google deserves every PR hit from this that it gets.  Zunger's rant may have the surface appearance (to the less discerning) of being solution-oriented, but it's not.  Whatever benefit Damore might have gotten from it is drowned out by the negativity of it and the jumping to various conclusions about him that have the actual function of being mean-spirited and destructive rather than constructive.  Gillmore's post is quite clearly more solution-oriented.

So basically the gist of today's leftish so-called 'diversity and inclusion' movement amounts to this: if you don't toe the line and accept the orthodox assumptions, if you challenge those assumptions (pointedly or otherwise), if you speak your mind as classic rules of free and open dialogue would encourage while presenting what is not obviously bad evidence that runs counter to the orthodox narrative, if you are basically intellectually honest in the process . . . that's not going to help you.  You are likely to be misrepresented, shamed, canceled, unplatformed, smeared, piled on, and generally treated with epistemically-unjust disrespect.  If you're a white male, you're likely to be told that you're coming from a standpoint of privilege and that you fail to empathize with those less privileged, and those telling you that will see no irony in any of this.

One of the virtues that many people see in Trump is his willingness to treat this horseshit for what it is: to call out those who engage in it as the ones who should be shamed for their dishonesty.  When Trump says he has no time for political correctness (sic), what he's actually saying is that he has no time for a culture of systemic dishonesty masquerading as being politically correct.  Damore wasn't being dishonest or disrespectful.  I can't say the same for Google or Zunger.

And that's really what all this comes down to.  Is the predominant intellectual culture of today's left (especially the further left you go) honest and respectful?  No, it is not.  It encourages scumminess toward those who don't toe the line, whatever their reasons for not assenting.  The pattern repeats itself so much and so often as to be unmistakable.  To bring up yet another example on top of the gobs of them already linked in this blog's postings: David Horowitz, ex-New Leftist.  Did his leftist former friends and colleagues treat his 'apostasy' with honesty and respect, or with malice and logically-slipshod/lazy or outright groundless shaming?  The latter(, of course).

But let's not forget about the source of what Google HR, the Demo-rats, the mural-erasing San Francisco school board, the Rand-bashers, the Sowell-ignorers, the Title IX kangaroo court managers, the 'diversity and inclusion' hypocrites, the rent-controllers, the race-hustlers, the #MeToo abusers/Swetnick-believers, the biological-males-in-women's-sports activists, CNN/MSDNC/NYT, the illegal immigration incentivizers, the suspiciously eager gun-grabbers, and the rest of the sorry bunch & enablers have been up to: All of this is egged on and made possible by the fundamentally, systemically dishonest Academic Left who've squandered every benefit of the doubt by this point.  (Let's not forget the hubris that leads them to the notion that those who disagree with them are invariably intellectually and morally inferior - and to their tailoring their response to uncomfortable triggering arguments/ideas accordingly, typically by characterizing them as worse than they are or were ever intended to be.)  If you suspect that someone like Damore is much more a victim than an offender in this affair, you would possess way more common sense and decency than this bunch of loathsome losers.

[Addendum: Is there a case in all fairness to be made for the defendant?  Well, how about this for fairness: Google gets just as much of a fair hearing as they gave Damore - which is to say, jack shit.  Got a problem with that?  How about this to boot: its CEO is a doubletalking, chickenshit appeaser who damn well oughtta know better what is required of treating people with basic decency and respect, as opposed to giving into blatantly obvious illogic and smears.  Treating Zunger and Gillmore even so much as on par with one another = Asshole.  [Alternatively: the cases for the defendant and plaintiff were already pretty much made by Zunger and Gillmore, respectively.  In the linked thread Zunger was cheered on by lesser, sloppy minds even though it's clear to any careful and honest observer which of the two had the upper hand in justice.  Zunger's case is roughly about as "good" as we can expect from the Google side (and note how one-sided it is while purporting to be fair-minded), and under Gillmore-like scrutiny the Google/Zunger case is despicable - and deep down every person of justice knows it, which is why so many are alarmed and pissed about this.  The NLRB having made an Orwellian-style determination in Google's favor changes none of this; it is out of its depth on the fundamental matter of justice/fairness here and it's sad to see "social justice" illogic spread into taxpayer-supported agencies.]]

[Addendum #2: Heterodox Academy carries out an analysis of the data/studies about the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis that the powers that be at Google were too cowardly, dishonest, and PC-whipped to conduct.  And to further contextualize, this critique of Damore's argument tries to be fair/charitable, and for the most part it is, but I don't think entirely.  (It's definitely better than Zunger's anti-charity bullshit.)  But whether it's entirely fair is pretty much neither here nor there in this context.  What this critique represents is something that Google didn't seem to even attempt before firing Damore without further inquiry, i.e., actually present a substantive critique.  And while this critique isn't presented in a format that gives the critique-ee (Damore) a chance to respond, revise, reconsider, relent, etc., Google certainly had a moral obligation to give him that chance, in the spirit of fair and honest dialectic or exchange of ideas in the common pursuit of truth, but can one reasonably conclude that Google did so?  Or is the reasonable conclusion that it was being chickenshit, dishonest, etc.?  You have my verdict on that.]

Planned Parenthood and NARAL: "Believe Swetnick"

This is absolutely beyond the pale of honest discourse:

Planned Parenthood Action‏Verified account @PPact

We still believe Julie Swetnick. #BelieveSurvivors

1:14 PM - 25 Oct 2018

NARAL retweeted this.

All evidence points to Julie Swetnick being a fucking liar and her story on its face not being believable.  There were serial drugged gang rapes and she just got around to reporting them nearly 4 decades later?  And no one else managed to report it?  This is believable even after she fell apart in TV interviews (as any reasonable person should have suspected if not expected outright would happen)?  Even after Kavanaugh presented what is prima facie exculpatory evidence with his calendar?  Note that Oct 25, 2018, is nearly a month after the Ford & Kavanaugh testimonies, so there was time to mull it over responsibly.

How fucked-up does someone's belief-formation processes have to be in order to find Swetnick believable?  What's particularly dishonest about PP's tweet is that it's a statement with no support, just an assertion that we're also just supposed to have belief-formation processes fucked-up enough to believe as well, I guess.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

And if anyone believes Dr. Ford's accusation, even after Leland Keyser's refutation of it; even after Kavanaugh's calendar was presented; even after it was made evident that the two simply didn't travel in the same social circles - then such believers, too, have belief-formation processes that are FUBAR enough that they shouldn't be taken seriously when they assert their beliefs.  This includes the three leading '20 Demo-rat candidates (Biden, Sanders, Warren; presumably Buttigieg as well considering he called for Kavanaugh's impeachment last October along with Sanders, Warren, and other pusbags).  One of those candidates - Sen. Warren - claimed to find Swetnick believable as well.  (I've provided links to these candidates' beyond-the-pale assertions time and time again and I'm growing sick and tired of doing so; anyone can do their own fucking homework on this pretty easily.)

The Kavanaugh hearings were nothing more than politically-motivated #MeToo abuse by Demo-rats and their allies/enablers.

This is no brainer stuff.

So, again: what the fuck is wrong with these people?

And what the fuck is wrong with those who could call out these fucks for what they are and yet fail to do so?

Latest on the cancerous Academic Left run amok

Surprise, surprise - lots of obvious race and sex discrimination has resulted from the UC's "diversity statement" protocol.

Given the demographics involved - women and many of the favored minorities are more likely to be politically on the left - the so-called required diversity statements at Berkley/UC are veritably designed (in an evolutionary-mutation sort of way) to increase the presence of leftists on campus.  I mean, it was fucking obvious from the get-go what the agenda is here.  This is the Academic Left doing what it does - enforcing ideological conformity by whatever means it can get away with.  They're commies at heart, purging the impure elements to get down to a hard core of the ideologically inbred, research quality be damned.  (Their own versions of Lysenkoism couldn't be far behind - could it?)

And without legalities getting in the way - as is likely to occur under our Anglo-Saxon legal tradition (these pathetic fucks would call that a racist dog whistle, or something) - they would keep on doing it more and more until they've created a completely discredited intellectual trainwreck.  They just can't help themselves, can they.

If you don't see a connection between this trainwreck-in-the-making and the scummy history-rewriting (currently in the process of being discredited by appalled historians) going on at the NYT, then maybe you suck at pattern recognition.  This is the same shit being played out in (only slightly?) superficially different ways.

This is what happens when American leftists as we now know them have the run of the place.  Ultimately it'd be all AOCs all the time, a thorough brainwashing with all opposition dismissed as racist/fascist/sexist/capitalist/imperialist.

For fuck's sake, like there wasn't a nonstop avalanche of evidence of this meltdown already?  Just watch - if/when the UC ideological-conformity statements run into too many legal challenges, the ideological-conformity motherfuckers will do what they can to weasel around them with something even more outrageous, offensive, and twisted.  It's what they do.

This cancer has taken over and just about destroyed the Demo-rat Party and the moderates don't know what to do; they've all been schooled in America-is-racist and capitalism-is-evil memes by the Academic Left and that's what contextualizes their areas of disagreement.  Just how much wealth and privilege of white males needs to be expropriated, exactly?  Exactly how much do corporations exploit the non-CEO workers who create all the value?  Exactly how flimsy do sexual assault allegations against white males have to be before they can be disbelieved at long last?  That kind of shit, not the stuff that middle-Americans disagree about.

The Dems' least-unqualified candidate at this point, the least ridiculous-looking when put up against the Racist Power-Abusing Sitting President, is an old, white male.  The presumptive future of the party is AOC, an obvious trainwreck situation; I'm not sure even Mayor Pete can stem the far-left tide here.

The Blue States' public-union-controlled budgets and always-escalating minimum wages are being sustained by prolonged and solid economic growth; what's their backup plan for if/when the shit hits the fan there?  Blame capitalism/Republicans/white privilege yet some more and hope/pray swing-state voters and not just Academic Leftists will find them credible?

Lastly: Is there any prominent, outspoken figure on the Academic Left these days who isn't a piece of shit?  Because if he/she is not calling out the Academic Left for being the giant cancerous mound of shit that it clearly is, then he/she is part of the problem.

A bit of good news on the Electoral College front

Recent net migration numbers to/from U.S. states

Blue States like CA are driving enough people away with "their high cost of living" (read: Demo-rats sucking every little bit they can out of producers who otherwise prefer to live at or near the coast/nice weather, not unlike how vast petroleum reserves prop up retrograde theocratic regimes) that CA is on its way to losing a seat in the House of Representatives and a vote in the electoral college.  Red States are gaining in population.

The very premise of "the 1619 project"

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/scumbag-steve

I haven't delved all that much into the details of NYT's "1619 project" but - given what I do know about how intellectually deranged and perverse the American left has gotten (due to the activities of the cancerous Academic Left) - it appears to have the markings of just yet another deranged and perverted (and let's face it: outright dishonest) leftist America-hating meme-fest.

The very premise is that (a) America was founded on slavery first and foremost (not genocide?) and subsequently (a1) racism - more specifically, "white supremacism" - is in America's DNA, its very oingoing formative or organizing principles, to employ Aristotelian-like language.

This kind of shit can be bewildering to ordinary non-leftist Americans just trying to go about their mundane American-Dream-related pursuits.  (The American Dream is a myth, leftists are most eager to inform us.)  It's an intimidating-sounding claim; you risk being called a racist or enabler of racism if you dare challenge it.  The leading left-leaning daily publication of record is on board with it (to its motherfucking shame - but hey, don't take my word for it).  It supposedly has some massive amount of research backing it up, from supposedly smart experts at universities.  What is the ordinary, unfucked-by-leftism person to make of this?

Well, you need to pick apart the logic of it before you can even assess the quality and relevance of the historical research.  For instance: what in the fuck kind of research is it that would establish that racist white supremacism is in America's DNA?  Is the DNA defined by the Constitution?  Slavery was originally in the constitution, so does that mean that it's there for good?  Of course not.  There was a genetic modification, if you will, that occurred around 1865 that outlawed slavery across the land.  What's more, it was a modification arising from the original genetic program: "all men created equal, with inalienable rights...."

This basically reduces the whole "1619" case to a charge of hypocrisy and/or mythologizing of America's greatness.  It's not really the Declaration and the Constitution and everything that these things ultimately made possible that defines America or its founding.  Ta-Nahesi Coates will have none of that (and that's the standard involved, if only implictly).  It's all and only - or primarily or fundamentally - about the slave trade and supposedly everything that flows from that up to the present day.  (If one could sum up America's Racial Problem in one phrase, it might be: the socioeconomic achievement gap between whites and nonwhites (excluding Asians and whoever else doesn't fit neatly into the white-supremacist-achievement-gap narrative).  Yes, there is an achievement gap, and there are numerous contributing factors to that, and the Academic Left has deemed it off-limits to even broach the subject of any inherent genetic differences that might contribute to such a gap.  It's the declaring-off-limits part that speaks volumes about the (lack of) intellectual honesty among the Academic Left; if there is unpleasant truth then it cannot be studied.  And we also know how the Academic Left dishonestly treats those who point to cultural differences such as those manifested in what I'll term the intact-nuclear-family gap.  And we already know about Google's refutation-by-firing of James Damore when he dared challenge the Orthodoxy, proving his point for him and betraying its "do no evil" slogan.   (It's hard to believe that the rationales provided by Google execs were in good faith, given the legitimately controversial nature of Damore's statement and the (clearly?) logically shoddy protests about its being "harmful and discriminatory."  CEO Sundar Pichai's statement in particular looks like a chickenshit attempt to have it both ways without addressing the real issue.  If the concern was that Damore couldn't be argued out of his position with reasons and evidence, then there should be some shred or other of evidence pointing to that; rather, what it looks like is that his critics are the ones who have issues with facing up to controversial yet reasoned arguments.  How is all this not obvious ffs?)

Is the claim that America wouldn't have been founded as it had been were it not for slavery?  Does this mean that the natural-rights theory of John Locke and others was irrelevant?  What about the cultural atmosphere of the Enlightenment?  Many of the key Framers were slaveholders, but also inclined toward philosophy.  What's more or truly fundamental?

Does it mean that America as we know it wouldn't be around if not for slavery?  That's a trivial claim; of course it wouldn't be; things would be somewhat different.  But "1619" purports to go beyond triviality: the notion is that slavery was so deeply embedded in the fabric of America during its founding and early years that you just can't understand the history of this period without this crucial element.  But again, how does one avoid triviality here?

After all, slavery was such a big deal that there was a Civil War fought over it, over half a million men killed.  No one disputes this.

But what do you do with that, if reinforcing the "1619" narrative is your aim?  If slavery is fundamental to America's DNA, then a civil war that eliminates slavery should basically spell the end of America in recognizable form.  But that didn't happen; instead, America extended its basic principles to all of its inhabitants (along racial lines, that is; the women's vote would wait for another half century).  That it was a big enough deal that it sparked the Civil War shows . . . what?  In fairness it shows that: (a) America does have this historical stain that was/is hard to remove, and (b) the North, at least, found it to be a really big deal to see slavery ended.  (The South, to its motherfucking discredit, kept up the racist act as much as it could get away with, for another 100 or so years.  Maybe it's the South and not some undifferentiated America that has more to answer for here?)

Maybe I've missed something here.  As I said, I haven't looked into the details of the history that NYT/1619 are presenting; I'm examining the conceptual logic of the claims involved, as is standard for a philosopher to do. (It only stands to reason, after all, that slavery was a big enough deal that a Civil War was fought over it; historical detail would only show how this is so, not that it is so.  But the historical picture also includes the Enlightenment, Locke, the principles of the Declaration - things the cancerous left works vigorously to undermine.)  And I also don't trust leftists to cover the subjects of (e.g.) America and capitalism honestly; they've squandered that trust through countless distortions and droppings of context, and oftentimes outright smears (be it of Rand, or Trump, or Amy Wax, or industry/industrialists).  (Here's one 1619 project headline, according to wikipedia: "American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation", essay by Matthew Desmond .  How can capitalism as such be brutal?  What if the arguments about brutality center around man's inhumanity to man, not around the private ownership of capital?  Do leftists honestly entertain such a proposition?  If so, I must have missed them doing so.  Are markets inherently brutal?  If so, then what does that have to do with the plantation per se?)  They've taken to hurling the term "racism" around so much that commonsense Americans are now onto their ridiculous charade and are fucking fed up with it (hence part of why Trump got elected).  Perhaps most significantly, I don't trust the Academic Left to engage in a serious and responsible dialectic with their critics; it is chock-full of anticapitalist, America-hating scum whose agenda is to fundamentally transform America into . . . well, probably whatever shitshow the Deep Blue States appear to be headed toward unobstructed by those pesky (most likely "racist") Republicans.

That's the context within which one should consider any such thing as the "1619 project" and what its proponents aim to say about America and its economic system.  Whatever honest reckoning is to be done with America's spotty history, I don't expect leftists to be involved in that.

In other words, unless I've missed something significant, the 1619 project is contemporary American leftist practice in a nutshell - which is to say, one-sided/context-dropping, selectively attentive/outraged, ideologically inbred, deranged, dishonest, avoidant of serious dialogue/engagement with critics, and - last but not least - chock full of hubris about leftist intellectual and moral superiority.

Rather than dishonestly whining about "America's racism" or capitalism's brutality," and seemingly calling for every which new tax-and-spend program as a solution (to shore up the failures of the previous tax-and-spend programs, as if this was the sort of shit the Framers had in mind for this country), how about the Academic Left get productive for a change and promote philosophy for (all, including black) children?  Then again, I can't trust them not to fuck that up big-time, either; they'd actually need to internalize philosophic practice themselves, first, and thereby stop being such loathsome leftist losers in the process.  And since when would any academy or school be required to any great extent to instill in kids a love of wisdom or a dialectical mindset, or to provide the necessary research sources?  From what I hear, kids these days are on YouTube nonstop, and there's lots of leads there.  They sure as shit aren't going to better their lives spending their time delving into things like the 1619 project, are they?

And where does the NYT go from here?  Phrased differently: What new low will they think of to sink to next?  Will it ever get around to taking a hint from the superior WSJ model?  (As far as opinion page content goes, if you believe that the general quality of NYT's is on par with WSJ's, chances are you're a fucking idiot.)

What this is, once you cut through all the bullshit, is the NYT and fellow lefties renewing their attacks on Donald Trump and his supporters.  It's Donald Trump and their supporters who "perpetuate racism" which includes denying racism is the problem the left claims it to be, which includes denying that the 1619 project is up to snuff historically and conceptually.  That's all this is about, because that's how leftists/allies/enablers today operate.

I'll also add this point: I've been pointing out that the Dems/leftists/allies/enablers have been recklessly smearing Trump and his supporters as racist.  But there's another category of dishonesty in addition to recklessness that may very well apply in many cases: deliberately smearing them, i.e., lying outright.  That's what Nancy Peloser does when she says Trump's border wall is "about making America white again."  It's what CNN and their ilk do when they deliberately omit the context of Trump's "fine people on both sides" statement in the wake of Charlottesville.  (How could they not deliberately omit the context?  The omission is too fucking blatant, too fucking selective not to be deliberately calculated; they went too far, showed their hand, and got caught, is all.  Fucking liars, plain and simple.)  And when the likes of CNN don't get contrite and admit their deception, they continue the deception (including the deception that they are a reliable, credible source for political news going forward), and their deception continues to be deliberate, blatant, and calculated = still fucking liars.  And so what does it tell you when the NYT behaves as slimily as many rightly suspect them to be behaving in regard to its 1619 project - when it unaccountably disregards its critics and stands by its selected 'historians' and authors?  How much more blatant does it have to be, before we can say they are lying outright to the American public (about their publication standards, if nothing else)?

More from City Journal (Manhattan Institute) discrediting the NYT assholes, as well as the various Academic Leftist 'historians' who refuse to criticize the assholes, i.e., who enable the assholes, i.e., who are assholes.  (A Duke 'historian' and her past misdeeds re the Lacrosse Team rape hoax is mentioned.  It's as good a time as any to mention a proven asshole in the Duke history department, Scumbag Nancy MacLean, who lies about libertarians and calls it history [and who also blurbs Scumbag Lisa Duggan's pseudo/anti-scholarly smear job of Rand]).  It's assholes and scumbags, every which way you look on the Academic Left, it seems.  I might not ever have believed it was this bad, had there not been a nonstop avalanche of evidence of it.

[Addendum 1/27: This helps to contextualize things more and makes the NYT project appear less destructive than I have been led to believe.  (The main objections by Wilentz and others are to Nikole Hannah-Jones' lead essay/toxic thesis.)  In any case what I take exception to is the notion - the very premise of the Project, as I've said - that white-on-black racism is in the nation's "DNA," however huge a problem it still is (and it is...).  (And if slavery/racism is America's Original Sin, are we in the territory of religious belief here, articles of faith?  Compare with Christian 'Original Sin' dogma.)  As I've been suggesting throughout this blog's history is that this and other huge problems is at root intellectual/philosophical, and I find the state of the debate on these problems to be deplorable in some degree or other.  A go-through of the SEP article on socialism has confronted me with the reality that the state of the public debate on this subject is pretty deplorable and that there is plenty of blame to go around (including the authors of the article themselves who almost come across as oblivious to the myriad counterpoints raised many times by defenders of capitalism or critics of socialism, including the much-despised/smeared Rand and her profound take on the human mind/intellect as the most important/powerful/valuable means of production).  I plan to have more to say on this before long; for now I'll just say that I have tempered my more or less sweeping view of socialists as low-intellectual-character shitbags as distinct from not-unusually-flawed human beings with limitations in knowledge and problem-solving.  Still, how to explain the debacle of 20th-century attempts at (state-planning) socialism in the face of critiques by Mises, Hayek and others; that debacle stems in great part by the attempt to forcibly impose a 'solution' on so many recalcitrant minds, when human problem-solving capacity was not up to the task of embracing the 'solution.'  (Actually, I still see big-time vice here on display in the anti-dialogue AOC & ilk, but this is a politician rather than scholar, i.e., she's low hanging fruit.)]

Trump impeachment thoughts/questions

I wasn't around for the impeachment inquiry into President Nixon, but from all I've seen/heard about it, there was clear an overwhelming evidence that Nixon displayed what might be called a blatant disregard for the rule of law (and there were some 18 minutes of recordings which put him dead to rights on that), enough so that the effort to remove him from office was bipartisan and Nixon saw no alternative but to resign.  I'm not seeing that in President Trump's case.

A couple thoughts/questions re: "Treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors" and the specifics of Trump's case:

Assume you're not a partisan piece of shit; reverse the party affiliations if necessary and see if you come out with the same answer in either case:

Are treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors sufficient grounds for impeachment, or or only necessary or potential grounds?  Of course, the Framers sought to have some mechanism by which a sitting President could be removed.

In the case of President Clinton, he committed perjury in a deposition and perhaps before a grand jury as well.  He tried to influence the testimony of his assistant Betty Currie.  For such actions this national chief law-enforcement official was deemed by the Arkansas State Bar unfit to practice law.  Is this sufficient to warrant impeachment and/or removal?  Does it make a difference if these actions fall under the heading of "high crimes and misdemeanors"?  Was Clinton displaying a blatant disregard for the rule of law?  (Should blatant disregard for the rule of law suffice as an impeachable/removable offense?  I would think so; if that doesn't suffice, then what does?)

As for the specifics of Trump's case: Some reasoning I've heard for why his payoffs to Stormy Daniels weren't a violation of campaign finance laws is that he could have other, legitimate reasons for such a payoff (e.g., to avoid personal embarrassment).  So we might call this a dual-motivation excuse.  Does such a dual motivation exist in the case of Trump's pressuring Ukraine to announce  investigations of the Bidens?  Supposedly Ukraine announcing/initiating investigations would benefit Trump and hurt Biden politically, but Trump has said that his concern isn't political but is about corruption (particularly if there is probable cause to think corruption might have taken place).

Was there probable cause to suspect corruption by either of the Bidens?  Trump told Zelensky that Biden using monetary pressure against Ukraine to get a prosecutor not to investigate Burisma "sounds terrible to me [Trump]."  What now?

Supposedly, a foreign country (or whomever!...) announcing an investigation of X tends to be politically harmful to X, whether or not anything is ever actually dug up.  Well, gee.  What do you think the Demo-rats & allies/enablers were up to when it came to the Mueller investigation that had been hanging over the Trump presidency some two years?  What was their intent other than to go after something that "sounds terrible to [them]" when there was nothing there?  What the fuck else were the likes of Adam Schiff doing those two years other than casting baseless suspicions on the Trump presidency?

On a matter of broader political interest: how much cynicism does it take to assume - as apparently is assumed inside the Beltway - that so much as an announcement of an investigation of X tends to be politically harmful to X, whether or not anything is ever actually dug up?  Wherever did they get that idea?  How does the Demo-rat complaint about Trump pressuring someone to investigate his political opponent not amount to the ultimate in cynicsm if not blatant hypocrisy?  (Keep in mind that as far as I am concerned, the Demo-rats have squandered all credibility and grounds for good will; a number of their top "leaders" in Congress and on the '20 campaign trail have claimed that there are sufficient grounds to impeach Brett Kavanaugh, for example - not a position an honest and informed person would take.  They've recklessly smeared Trump and his supporters as racists, for another example.  If you're looking for honest and credible arguments for whether Trump should be impeached/removed, the Demo-rats cannot be considered a reliable source.  Any reasonable observer should also note the Demo-rats' years-long effort to run interference and make excuses for Obama/Comey's FISA-abusing FBI.)

As for Trump, if he really thinks he did noting wrong, then I don't see any excuse whatsoever for him to hide behind anyone or anything when it comes to his (presumed) Senate trial.  He should get his fat fucking ass up there to Capitol Hill to testify in person (under oath, etc.) and clear his name.  He should face the adversarial grilling of Senators.  Likewise, Joe Biden should also stop being an evader and explain just what the fuck his unqualified, black-sheep son was doing drawing some $50k a month from a company (for doing what?) that apparently plays a key role in the Ukraine narrative (enough so to draw his intervention as VP and Ukraine point-man...).

For reasons apparent to most any honest and attentive observer, this impeachment process has been and is expected to continue being a blatantly partisan event that probably serves to illustrate Beltway intellectual and moral bankruptcy and cynicism than anything else, with the impeaching party having squandered all credibility/trust on tons of matters.  Trump was elected for, among other things, being as credible a vehicle as anyone - as a take-no-prisoners outsider - to clean up the Beltway swamp.  (If he doesn't do it, who credibly could?  I already know what happened in the case of Obama.  Ironically, his original "clean up Washington" persona was starting to crack when as Senator he voted back in '08 for FISA powers, as the likes of Glenn Greenwald would surely not overlook...)

Well, that's why Trump should testify and clear up just why it was within his constitutional powers to pressure Ukraine as he did, and released the funds when he did (i.e., two days after word of the whistleblower got out).  And since the Demo-rats have no reputation left over to salvage, it's up to the GOP to honorably follow the evidence where it leads, and weigh the input of Dershowitz (e.g.) alongside that of the law professors who testified to the House Judiciary committee.  Such dialectically responsible behavior is a requirement of basic epistemic justice.

The American people (the ones with a clue, that is) are fucking sick and tired of being subjected to much less from their "leaders," and thereby having their intelligence and character routinely insulted.

Euthyphro dilemma: metaphysical or epistemological?

[Note: follow-up posting here.]

As I read about the topic of the meaning of life at the SEP entry (and in connection with thinking about Tolstoy/Schopenhauer on "the problem of boredom," which may be either the biggest roadblock to better living through philosophy or a book by that name, or the biggest launching-board to such...), the Euthyphro dilemma pops up again.  It's probably been hashed over plenty already, but here's how I conceive the issue:

(1) The 'metaphysical' problem: What grounds goodness (in the context of Divine Command theory)?

(2) The 'epistemological' problem: Assuming that divine command grounds goodness, how do we know what the good is?

The dilemma as typically posed seems to address the 'metaphysical' problem as stated above, but isn't it really addressing the 'epistemological' one?

To explain: The 'metaphysical' problem tends to be concerned with whether God's command alone suffices to ground goodness, or whether God bases commands on some independent standard of goodness, which presumably would itself suffice to ground goodness.  Assuming the latter, does God's explanatory role in this fall afoul of Ockham's Razor?  (I think it does.)  But a Divine Command theorist might still come back and say that God is a perfectly good being (which runs into another problem - I'll call it the Problem of Morally Pointless Suffering - e.g., animal suffering) who creates the world, its laws, and human nature, that last being crucial in grounding human goodness.  Without this Creator, there would be no goodness at all (or evil, or anything at all, for that matter).

What I don't see is how or where this metaphysical grounding of goodness, even if true, answers what I think is the real concern raised by the Euthyphro dilemma, which can be stated in perhaps multiple ways, but perhaps most importantly: How do we discover what it is that God commands, i.e., how do we discover goodness?  For the typical philosopher, simply pointing to some holy book where X is prescribed, or simply claiming as a matter of faith that God commands X, isn't going to cut it.  There's too much disagreement on the contents of these putative commands.

(Does God command that there be a welfare state, or laissez-faire?  And when there is a commandment, "thou shalt not kill," how does that get interpreted and applied?  If we specify that only innocents shall not be killed, then what about killing human shields in wartime, something that many a Southern evangelical finds acceptable while declaring with utmost confidence that even a "morning after pill" is murder?  One might consider how/why they've not had much luck persuading the skeptical of the latter claim.  [On a related, blatantly political note: I hear quite a bit from evangelical types about how Trump was sent by God to "save America."  So how did God allow America to be put in the position of requiring saving in the first place - I'll gladly liken the academic left and its spawn to a cancer that (supposedly?) God both inflicts and then sometimes cures people of - and why Trump of all people?  Lord working in mysterious ways, as usual?  And are the dialectical 'antipodes' of the academic left and the evangelical right in America's best interests?])

What we really want to know is, regardless of how goodness comes about in a metaphysical account, how we determine what's good or not.  In other words, we are tasked with the hard epistemic work of sorting through competing moral claims, something that divine command theorists qua such (i.e., in that capacity, where some theory is appealed to as an account of their ordinary folk-wisdom moral judgments, which are usually quite reliable across a great range of cases [excluding political questions...]) don't seem to be up to doing, which is an acute cause of philosophers' frustration when it comes to people not doing hard epistemic work to support their opinions.  Of course, the Euthyphro dilemma is one way for the philosophers' frustration to be sublimated and the ball put in the court of the epistemically lazy.

(It could also be that the hard epistemic work that philosophers seek to do is too overwhelming for so many "mere" possessors of folk-wisdom; that I can understand.  Perhaps "God commands X" is shorthand more or less for "There is moral truth and it comes from somewhere even if we don't know where, but if there is a God then the morally true is of course what such a being would command."  [The question of ultimate justice in an afterlife, or a setting-right beyond this world of animal suffering in this world, is a further question requiring hard epistemic work if we really want credible answers; all that I can see at this point is that such ultimate justice or setting-right makes a perfectly good-and-powerful God consistent with morally pointless animal suffering, but the morally pointless suffering seems to be consistent with there being no God, as well.])

Another consideration, related surely with the "meaning of life" issue althougly less clearly or directly so with Euthyphro problems: As far as we know, this world and this life is all there is.  The likes of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche seem quite ready to take the implications of this head-on, wherever the argument leads (even if it leads in a very dark or terrible direction, as clearly the case with Schopenhauer).  Do all that many theists have a back-up plan for what to do/think about this life just in case it turns out they don't have a good reason for belief in an afterlife?  (Also: does the question of meaning reduce to the question of reasons, i.e.: What is the reason for life/living; and how does the principle of sufficient reason enter into this?)  And aren't the standard practices of philosophy, as overwhelming as they might end up being to some or at some times, a gateway to better thinking about or formation of such a back-up plan?  Alternatively, if we do indeed have access to ethical and other knowledge independent of our (non-)beliefs about a Creator, does such (non-)belief make any actual difference to how folks tend to lead their lives?

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A couple newly discovered blogs that look interesting (what took so long?...):
https://reasonandmeaning.com/
https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/