The Trump Presidency will be in the top 10 in our nation's history

[jamil]

I dismiss any actor, athlete or celebrity that is anti American,anti gun &c.

This could be taken as "I dismiss anyone I disagree with". However you meant it, thinking about it has kinda changed my opinion about the value of public figure's opinions. Does the fact that a person was an athlete, or actor, or whatever cause for fame a person has? Is there any greater value to his or her opinions about subjects other than their sport? I think that, while the value of the opinion mostly on the content itself, the opinion of a famous person has a little more value than just any old schmuck. The value is that with famous people, we know more about them, about their ethos.

So take this situation. Do I need Jack Nicklaus to tell me what I should think of DJT? No, DJT helps enough with that. But Nicklaus's opinion is a datapoint. He's a person with a public history and a public ethos. My first question when hearing someone's opinion is usually, is he full of ****? Today, we have a society that impugns the sanity of people based on whether they hate the people they're supposed to hate. Of course that's bull****. So Jack Nicklaus comes out and says he likes DJT based on his personal friendship with him over the years. Should we dismiss that as a datapoint just because he's a famous retired athlete? He's saying, "I know DJT, and he is a better person than his enemies claim." Is he insane? Is he morally corrupt himself? By claiming DJT a friend, is that in itself evidence of a bad ethos? Well, ideologues are full of circular reasoning so of course many will. Does the record of his publicly facing life imply anything that would impugn his ethos? Not that I'm aware. So it's a datapoint. And therein is the only value.

 

[jamil]

There was a time when the social sciences made an attempt to be, well...scientific.

Systemic (sometimes called systematic) racism is a concept with legitimate academic roots that has been badly coopted for the far-left's post-modernist ideology. The concept - as it was originally defined and argued - has merit within an academic sociological framework. The most accessible example that I can think of is redlining, the widely-documented set of practices used to keep blacks in economically distressed ghettos.

Systematic racism can also be used to describe the unintended consequences of otherwise well-intentioned programs. Section 8 housing is a good example of this...a policy initially meant to be a leg-up to poor working mothers ends up being a giant deterrent to marriage within those communities that embraced it...primarily urban ones.

In its original framework, systematic racism isn't a controversial idea, rather its a fairly banal term used to describe measurable and documented social practices.

When I was at university in the early 1990's the stage was already being set for the humanities to fall to the ideological left. Terms which used to be descriptors of academic concepts were being diluted along ideological lines. "Researchers" were becoming celebrities...when their publications comforted the positions of the coastal elites. I started to see "textbooks" pulled from NY times bestsellers list. Opposing voices quietly ignored, agreeable ones softly amplified...

...until we get to where we are now. No objectivity, only pure ideology. Every issue treated to reductio ad absurdum. Every argument straw-manned to death. Brinksmanship and incrementalism the most useful political tools.

People like Shapiro, with their bad-faith "debate" style only make this problem worse.

The highlighted is not really true. "systemic racism" is baked into the thinking behind CRT. No one really used that term until after the CRA of 1964 was already passed. You could say it came from "scholarship" but it's the scholarship of the ideologues behind the development of CRT. They took some true parts, like the idea that there were indeed racists creating racist systems that purposefully disadvantaged certain races, then baked into it some unfalsifiable claims that should not have the word "racism" in the name. It is the very far-left post-modernists who baked it.

Racism has a very specific meaning that requires intent. If it's racism, you should be able to point out the racists and identify the racist policies. If it's just the idea that some policies which form a system can have unintended consequences for race, THAT'S NOT RACISM! Jim Crow laws are an example of real ass "systemic racism", but no one was calling it that before the mid-late 1960's. Section 8 housing, though, is not actually any form of racism, unless you believe the conspiracy theories that Democrats are creating racist policies to keep black people dependent and voting for them perpetually.

If they recognized that there are two distinct things that need to be defined separately, I'd have no problem with the term "systemic racism". It means real ass racists trying to implement policies for the purpose of disadvantaging one race over another. But then they need to decide on another term that's actually descriptive of the other problem, where well meaning policies have the unintended effect of disadvantaging a race. But then the identitarians would run too short of real ass racism with which to justify making policies that either disadvantage everyone (Marxism) or flip the disadvantages.

 

[2A_Tom]

Anyone that is anti-American disagrees with me on one of the most elementary foundations of my ethos.

Anyone that that is pro-murder of unborn babies is another.

Actors that make a living portraying gun men and come out against my right to defend my family are another.

People that disagree with me in my firm belief in Jesus Christ as Saviour, I can live with. As long as theyhey are still drawing breath...

BTW, it is good to have pauls input in this thread. I only disagree with his final point. We need Shapiro and his like to shock some into reality.