The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

via a link from The Raggett Report:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123431/student-activism-serious-business

― scott seward, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 10:19 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

amusingly, that article /does/ use the "...run amok" phrasing... but puts it in other folks' mouths. ("Some have suggested that students are frivolous activists, that they no longer have senses of humor, and that liberalism has run amok on college campuses, ruining them in the process.")

which lends credence to my idea that almost nobody uses that phrase anymore /except/ to implicitly mock or discredit those who you are attributing it to.

...but maybe this is rhetorical analysis run amok.

dislikes the racial discrimination that has been linked to that system in the US

let's not pretend this is/was just restricted to the US cuz it is not

i watched A Day At The Races yesterday. tootsi frootsi ice cream run amok.

Love 'A Day at the Races'.

if you believe capitalism for all of its flaws has been an extraordinary generator of wealth throughout the world ... then marx bros have nothing of note to say to you.

it's true that "duh" is not of note

i mean marx acknowledges this at length and in detail. idk what "marx bros" do, besides fuck with dowagers.

they were emma goldman fans.

anyway i support mordy's dream of a racially disinterested capitalism where the underclass is selected by merit but looking at capitalism's history from the Company on it seems a taller order than full communism, whatever that is. i also support that dream.

idk about that - i don't have a dream of racially disinterested capitalism first of all, but speaking generally i think that capitalism can incorporate meaningful diversity much easier than the full implementation of communism, cf.

so someone who believes in the power of capitalism to generate wealth but dislikes the racial discrimination that has been linked to that system in the US might have reason to reject the racism but not reject the capitalism xp

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 10:20 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is such a bad post

idk about that - i don't have a dream of racially disinterested capitalism first of all, but speaking generally i think that capitalism can incorporate meaningful diversity much easier than the full implementation of communism, cf.

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 11:36 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

then why hasn't it done so? no matter—let's just pretend it has already or we're being unnecessarily divisive

like, how many hundreds of years of capitalism will there be before 'meaningful diversity' takes place?

as if there was a pure capitalism anyways rather than the corporate-state revolving door subsidized system we have now

i make fun of kids/youngs all the time because they bug me but they do honestly give me hope for the future. their attitudes seem - on the whole - to be much healthier as far as race goes. or at least that's how it anecdotally seems to me. talking to old people is depressing when it comes to that stuff. even smart old people who should know better by now. they make me cringe like nobody's business.

i mean there probably won't be a future cuzza the warming and all that, but still...

idg where mordy's goin with this - meaningfully diverse capitalism and fully implemented communism both being completely theoretical/hypothetical constructs

well blame me for the first hypothetical construct comparison.

Yeah if they go into activist work they can say oh you are the famous person who got wrote up in the Atlantic.
Not to mention the opportunity to see how their ideas are received by the community at large and the establishment in particular. Activists growing up in this turbulent period have a much broader scope and who knows maybe in the future all this awkward stuff will be finely tuned from decades of mass market research.

i honestly don't know which of this is sarcastic and which isn't, and i'm not sure who the sarcasm is directed at. :(

― wizzz! (amateurist), Wednesday, November 11, 2015 3:29 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was responding to "this will follow them around their whole lives" with a positive spin on it. If they are activists now then maybe they will take part in that work in the future. If so then having a newspaper article on your embryonic attempts at activism could be a plus in that field.

I'm not exactly commenting on a specific case or anything in that second statement. This is the first activist generation w instant global communication. Protests that would only reach a dozen or so people are now given global mainstream attention. If activists are paying any attention to the reception and criticisms they can take them to heart and in the future not make the same mistakes. I'm calling this "market research" but really all they have to do is google it and see what the entire spectrum of reactions are. Not just from fellow activists but from the extreme opposite of the spectrum as well.

Who knows maybe nobody will learn anything from it.

this is abut the university of missouri incident that is an ongoing discussion in this thread, but we should really move it to the race thread:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-would-university-of-missouri-students-protest-jewish-20151110-story.html

a cheap piece that pretends to not answer it's central "provocative" question

like instead of pointing out why Jews and blacks have historically been treated quite differently in the US (the reasons for which are rather glaringly obvious), it just makes some oblique assertions that maybe they have been

can't say easily dismissing his meandering thought is any better

every time you see "coddled" used in a headline, take one drink...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-is-not-for-coddling/2015/11/10/6def5706-87db-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html

the problem w/ the latimes piece is that he doesn't have any evidence, just some anecdotal assumptions. there is plenty of consternation in the jewish community about claims of antisemitism being minimized or dismissed as either unserious or just the fevered hysteria of jews. there's an entire mamet flick on this theme. iirc jews are the number target of hate crimes in america; that they aren't perceived that way is just one of the reasons why the latimes article is unserious about interrogating its central claim.

sorry, number one* target

(nb it might have been number one target of religious-based hate crimes i really don't remember the data exactly but it should be googleable)

i take mordy's silence in response as a concession

lol i could not even interpret what yr argument was and it certainly had nothing to do w/ what i was writing so i can't really respond. if u'd like to view that as a concession (to what? idk) then go right ahead

I would guess that a major element to that jews-are-most-targeted-religion statistic comes from jews / the ADL being very organized about these things and very likely to report each and every poop swastika.

To save characters can we just call it a "swasturdka?"

that might screw up the ADL's statistics

the problem w/ the latimes piece is that he doesn't have any evidence

...

iirc jews are the number target of hate crimes in america; that they aren't perceived that way is just one of the reasons why the latimes article is unserious about interrogating its central claim.

...

(nb it might have been number one target of religious-based hate crimes i really don't remember the data exactly but it should be googleable)

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 6:33 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wonder if the la times writer's assertions are googleable

do u know the difference between a specific claim and an general anecdotal assertion that is not backed by any actual facts?

here i googled it for u:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/victims/victims_final

Religious bias
Of the 1,223 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:

60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.
13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.
6.1 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias.
4.3 percent were victims of bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).
3.8 percent were victims of anti-Protestant bias.
0.6 percent were victims of anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
11.2 percent were victims of bias against other religions (anti-other religion). (Based on Table 1.)

do u know the difference between a specific claim and an general anecdotal assertion that is not backed by any actual facts?

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 6:56 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

do you know what the definition of "anecdotal" and "assertion" are?

here lemme google that for you:

anecdotal: (Of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/anecdotal

assertion: A confident and forceful statement of fact or belief

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/assertion

there seems something terribly at odds with the phrase "anecdotal assertion"

idk what value you think that piece has. it's whole point is there in the vapid headline and there's basically nothing else to it.

like is it supposed to all of a sudden make white people realize that black people are unfairly treated by American society *makes u think* etc

the assertion was that anti-jewish hate crimes are treated more seriously than anti-black hate crimes. i don't know if it's true or not but his evidence that it's true - 3 anecdotes - is not particularly impressive. i'm sorry that "anecdotal assertion" was confusing. i should have said "anecdotally supported assertion," which should be clear.

Mordy, for what it's worth, the source you link to records 3563 racially motivated hate crimes, of which 66.5%, about 2370, were directed at black people.
60.3% of the 1223 religiously motivated hate crimes, or about 740, were directed at Jews.

I mean I guess maybe you meant "number one" in terms of "hate crimes per Jew"? But not clear to me that's the right metric, plus, then I gotta go through the whole list and see who gets most hate-crimed per capita (I think gay men have a good case.)

But I gotta say, as a white Jewish guy, I am not walking around worrying about me or my kids getting beaten down on the street. For some people, who don't look like me, that's a live worry.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/11/identity-politics-and-the-erasure-of-class-from-american-political-discourse

I hate rich kids more than I hate white people tbf

it depends on where you live. there were 2 separate stabbing incidents in crown heights last week. if i still lived there i'd probably be more worried. xp

I think the response team that da jewz have set up is better equipped. when some swastika gets painted (w/ any material) it becomes news, there's a response, it's in the news etc.

'treated more seriously' is the wrong way to look at it because it's not just this natural thing that happens

er wrote 'in the news' twice

here i googled it for u:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/victims/victims_final

Religious bias
Of the 1,223 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:

60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.
13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.
6.1 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias.
4.3 percent were victims of bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).
3.8 percent were victims of anti-Protestant bias.
0.6 percent were victims of anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
11.2 percent were victims of bias against other religions (anti-other religion). (Based on Table 1.)

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 6:57 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks for the troll. get your facts straight.

eephus! otm obv

u kno what is particularly dumb about that article is that his claim in that piece essentially comes down to: when jews complained about swastikas at other schools no one wrote any paeans to free speech. but afaik no one wrote any paeans defending the swastika in this case either so the author is quite literally a moron.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

you had a whole shitload of people saying the poop swastika was made up

ie the enemies of free speech are lying

strawman?

Contrast that with what happened at UC Davis this year when a lone swastika was found painted on a Jewish fraternity house. UC Davis officials issued an immediate condemnation, the local Anti-Defamation League offered a $2,500 reward to find the perpetrator, and Davis police launched a hate crime investigation.

When vandals painted swastikas on the campus of Northwestern University in June, university President Morton Schapiro issued a campuswide email: “These acts are offensive to the entire Northwestern community and will not be tolerated.”

There was no backlash when Jewish groups asked Schapiro to do more to combat anti-Semitism on campus. No paeans to free speech appeared in the media in defense of the swastika, suggesting Jewish students needed to toughen up in the face of bigotry.

Were paeans to free speech written defending the use of racist language or the swastika at Mizzou?

no it was a matter of claiming that racist language and/or the swastika never happened there:

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/360013.php
https://twitter.com/SooperMexican/status/664194527083798529
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/10/was-the-poop-swastika-incident-at-mizzou-a-giant-hoax/