National Public Lands Day, High Country News woke version

National Public Lands Day is a good day for celebrating our public lands, even though Ken Burns was wrong and they're NOT "America's greatest idea" or that close, and even though, as Olympic National Park shows, as I blogged earlier today, the Park Service looks good only when compared with the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service. I forgot that six years, ago, in the run-up to the NPS centennial, I had tackled various other shortcomings of the Park Service.

So, it's nice of High Country News to have staffers reminisce about access to public lands.

Or, when I clicked the link, I found out it was "nice."

Two problems with noting the American Indians who once had possession of the land.

First, as Al Runte noted years ago, and I blogged about, being American Indian is no guarantor of being a good environmentalist.

Second, the American Indians in possessions of the land at the time the U.S. government made treaties with them, then broke them, weren't always the possessors. In fact, in the case of Comb Ridge, it was NEVER part of any Navajo Reservation, not the main part and best known part in Utah, vs the southern tip in Aridzona. It's arguably got a better claim from Utes. And Sarah Tory should know that, and she specifically mentions the Utah portion.

Runte also tackled that, quoting T.H. Watkins:

In short, if compensation in 1974 was the proper policy, why limit it to people of European descent? For example, Watkins asked: “If the descendants of nineteenth-century white Americans have a moral obligation to the descendants of nineteenth-century Navajos, do not the Navajos have a similar obligation to the descendents of the Pueblo Indians, whom they forced from their lands in the thirteenth century? If white Americans have a moral obligation to the Chippewas (or Ojibways), do not the Chippewas have a moral obligation to the Lakota Sioux, whose lands they appropriated by warfare in the seventeenth century? If white Americans have a moral obligation to the Blackfeet, do not the Blackfeet have a moral obligation to the Shoshoni, who were driven out of their hunting territory by the Blackfeet in the seventeenth century? If white Americans have a moral obligation to the Cherokees, do not the Cherokees have a moral obligation to the Shawnees, whom they vanquished in the early nineteenth century in a war over which tribe would have a monopoly selling Indian slaves to the South?”

There you go.

I think this is about Reason No. 116 why I haven't, and won't, renew an HCN subscription that's been lapsed for years. (This also is not the first time it's gotten American Indian land issues wrong.)

Sidebar: I do NOT agree with everything Runte writes at National Parks Traveler and elsewhere about preservation in the modern U.S. in general and the modern NPS in particular. I do NOT want light rail, let alone light rail run by traditional rail companies, in the parks, contra his plea. Instead, I want more buses at sites that already have them, with smaller buses running more frequent routes, and buses at places that don't already have them, and I want these buses to be all-electric. No more propane buses. His critics are right that his idea almost certainly means "more development." They're also right about the worrisomeness of him first writing that piece for a "more development in the parks" site. Things like that undercut some of his other insights and make them look politically motivated.

Nope, trees still aren't intelligent let alone woke

Both High Country News and the New York Times have written recently about research on trees as "social creatures" and not just individuals, focusing on the work of Suzanne Simard, with HCN's piece being a review of her memoir.

It's true that it was a bad step for scientists not to see trees as part of social groups and rather, only as individuals, to the degree that was actually the case. Per Jane Goodall and others, we would never view chimpanzees or other primates that way. We would never view ourselves that way. We would never view, say, wolves that way. (That said, before Goodall, chimps weren't viewed the way they are today, so to claim that this is ages-old "plant discrimination" doesn't fly.)

And, surely, at least the possibility of some of this evidence being available for trees and other plants was available before Simard.

Unfortunately, both push the anthropomorphizing gas pedal a bit hard at times. 

Worse than "unfortunately," HCN even ventures toward woke / SJW angles by talking about Simard learning from indigenous wisdom.

Contra Robin Wall Kimmerer, trees don't have a common "language." Not as language is understood for us, and to the degree some primates have been able to learn it from us to a limited (yes) degree.

IMO, even Ferris Jabr at the NYT is overreading Simard's research. And so may be other scientists.

First, on things like carbon dioxide exchange, there is ZERO indication trees are "helping" each other.

Rather, it's mycorrhizal fungi that facilitate the flow of CO2 between tree species, and it's only natural that if two species have different flowering and sapping times, the flow goes one direction in spring and the other in fall.

And, missing from the HCN story, and partly from NYT? What benefit fungi get. And they do. Jabr does, eventually, get into that.

“Where some scientists see a big cooperative collective, I see reciprocal exploitation,” said Toby Kiers, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “Both parties may benefit, but they also constantly struggle to maximize their individual payoff.” Kiers is one of several scientists whose recent studies have found that plants and symbiotic fungi reward and punish each other with what are essentially trade deals and embargoes, and that mycorrhizal networks can increase conflict among plants. In some experiments, fungi have withheld nutrients from stingy plants and strategically diverted phosphorous to resource-poor areas where they can demand high fees from desperate plants.

Oops! Sadly, there's still a bit too much anthropomorphizing language in Jabr's explainer of Kiers et al after the direct quote, but this is better than nothing.

Here's a counterexample. Doctors et al already talk about the human microbiome in our colons, but nobody oohs and aahs over it. Jabr eventually gets to that, but only way at the end, in bad editing.

So, what we have is Simard, who rightly notes that science of her long-ago student ways was rejecting and blocking her to some degree, setting up a potential future where more and more woke forest biologists then reject more traditional evolutionary takes on the role of fungi.

And, this ties in with environmentalism in general.

The woke and New Age types can ooh and aah over big Douglas fir allegedly "talking" to one another, let alone helping one another.

A subterranean fungus that's like roots of grass? Different story.

In short, what we have is the environmental world, just shifting a focus from charismatic megafauna to charismatic megaflora.

To his credit, Jabr does do some degree of call-out of Simard for her use of New Agey language about trees. That said, he then uses words like "socialism," and on the SJW side, the idea that Native Americans were Rousselean noble savages with magical environmental wisdom. (Rousseau actually originally proffered this as a thought experiment which he then rejected and was then framed by his hater, Voltaire; the idea was revived under 19th century Anglo-Saxon racialism.) And, the idea that Indigenous peoples have magic environmental wisdom?

Taint so.

Stuff like this, in addition to things like the Georgia GP dust-up as well as party mismanagement, are why I am an independent leftist, not a Green.

As for High Country News? When writing four months ago about rejecting their dollar-a-month digital subscription offer, I said I had a love-frustration relationship with the magazine. The love continues to fade; the frustration continues to grow.

 

Update: Contra Nautilus, which is about to get deblogrolled, trees don't see, either.

Twitter getting woke over Charlie Hebdo

Here's the story, and really, you just need the image to know what's up; you can probably fill in the SJW blanks on reaction, re the "woke" in my header. I'm not a total fan of Charlie Hebdo, but this is what it does. It's not out of the norm for them.

The SJW world (not the monarchy defenders) went off.

Some claimed it was simply inappropriate to "appropriate" George Floyd, especially on the date his family settled a civil suit. I disagree. It's not "appropriation," but rather playing off the image. And, as far as the timing? Charlie Hebdo may be many things, but "mind readers" is of course not one of them.

(On the specifics of the image? One could argue that Prince Philip's visage would be better there, if what Markle said is about him. But, he's less recognizable, and he doesn't wear the pants on the British throne. Oops. Some SJW will probably attack me for that. No, really. It's happened before. On Twitter.)

Shock me.

Others claim that Charlie Hebdo is racist. Like this French guy:

And don't tell me it's got anything to do about some kind of satire only the French understand

I'm French and can see it as racist - if you can't it's not that you have some sophisticated sense of humour, it means you think racism and punching down is funny, full stop. 🤷‍♂️

— Aurelien Mondon (@aurelmondon) March 13, 2021

Bullshit.

As I said, I don't agree with everything about Charlie Hebdo, but I disagree that it's racist, and I've discussed before the specifics of its use of French language, and how either accidentally, or deliberately, not looking at that was the same thing SJWs did six years ago.

More SJW pandering: High Country News still doesn't want me back

I think it's been three full years now since I cancelled my digital-only subscription to a magazine I once loved but with which I now have a love-frustration relationship. (That applies, IMO, to some relationships you and I have with other people, too; love-frustration is much more the thing than stereotypical love-hate.)

Anyway, just after New Year's, HCN offered me a rock bottom buck an issue digital only subscription. I pondered a few days, then said "no" to myself. 

Thank doorknob.

The magazine that pandered to Melanin Base Camp a couple of years ago and let it run a passel of lies under guise of an opinion piece is back again.

This time, it's over a piece, one co-published elsewhere, I believe (like elements of Melanin Base Camp) that dives into social justice warrior pandering. It's about state CROWN acts that would let Black women wear their hair in "natural" ways and would also require more transparency on "natural" hair products for Black women over possible toxicity.

There's both hypocrisy and an elemental logical fallacy in the piece.

The hypocrisy? For Blacks, "straightened" hair is not natural, no more than Whites getting a curling iron and more for Afros. (Indeed, two of five pictures in a slide show at the piece show Black women with straightened hair.) And, many Black women's "natural" hair care products, especially many with the most toxicity? Straighteners.

The elementary logical fallacy is of course the naturalistic fallacy. As I tweeted back to HCN, and the author after tagging her in a follow-up tweet, angel-cap mushrooms and arsenic are both perfectly natural.

And, I said "no" to the same $12 subscription offer last summer for myriad other reasons. They include failure to distinguish between carbon cap-and-trade and carbon tax, failure to correct errors in a story about inland ports, and (additional hypocrisy and irony alerts) running a puff piece about "real Cherokees vs Elizabeth Warren" that .... ignored Black Cherokees! (I forgot to link, in that "myriad" piece, publishing Indian legend and noble savage myth as truth.)

Half of the good stuff, or at least interesting stuff, they do have anymore, comes either from The Climate Desk at The Guardian or from Hakai Magazine as co-published. There's also issues about claiming their website was/is clunky while already, years ago, it had Javascript warnings whenever you'd right-click a picture, warning you that copying was not allowed.

White fragility, SJW Manicheanism

That was the snappiest title I could think of for my review of Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility." I've not added much to the Goodreads review of this book, written in 2018 but newly trending after George Floyd's death.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A deeply problematic book, for both better and for worse, but primarily for worse.

First, let me “qualify” myself.

I am a White leftist. Not liberal. Leftist, at least for America. Related, while I don’t go as far as Doug Henwood and claim that issues of race almost always, and almost completely, reduce to issues of class, I believe they often do at least to some degree.

Second, while I don’t always use the phrase “social justice warrior” pejoratively, I do often have healthy skepticism about those who might be characterized as such.

Third, I reject the author’s definition of racism, period. Here’s why.

Individuals of any so-called race can be racist, first, and with racist, sexist, ageist, and “religionist” (more on that in a moment), the “-ist” is always the adjective to the “-ism.” Period. So, good linguistics and philosophy of language says reject her definition on that grounds alone.

Part two of that? Minorities can be and indeed are racist, not just to Whites, but to other minorities. I’ve seen and heard instances of this.

Part three? Contra her claim that only Whites have the power to induce what we might call “sociological racism,” since I need a qualifier to her definition of racism (pace Wittgenstein) to talk about it, this is not true. First, to go to “religionism,” the religious-based parallel to racism? The anti-goy stance of certain ultra-Orthodox Jews plays out sociologically, and to some degree legally, in a place like Kiryas Joel. Anti-White (or anti-Jewish) racism by Nation of Islam plays out within in neighborhoods within Black-majority areas where NOI “patrols” have degrees of control over the neighborhood.

So, no, racism is a mindset, a mentality, a psychology, not a structure. That said, a majority group with overall national power (but see point three above) has the greatest possibility of making sociological racism systemic. I don’t argue with DiAngelo on that at all. That said, with that said, “systematic racism,” not “racism,” is what she’s talking about. Eventually, it would become tiresome to repeat that over and over, but it should have been done at the start, and on occasions after.

Of course, I’m sure she’d reject my definition as much as I reject hers.

Near the end of Chapter 2, she does around the edges cherrypicking on some stats. She also either does cultural cherrypicking or shows cultural ignorance when lumping “Chinese food” with everything else. Most Chinese food in the US that is not historically in mainland China was invented by Chinese Americans not Whites. Crab Rangoon is the only notable exception. She also totally misframes Jackie Robinson, claiming that no whites have ever seen his becoming the first Black in baseball as she says it actually was.

Chapter 3? Most examples of what she cites as things that fall under so-called “new racism” aren’t new. Well, they may be new temporally, but the ideas aren’t new. Second, without stereotyping, yes, Blacks may apply for some jobs in fewer numbers. We know that Religious Right types don’t pursue jobs in secular academia, then have people like Jonathan Haidt claim this is an example of bias in academia. Next, more of her data points are snapshots, not synchronous views of changes, and possible improvements.

I skipped the next chapter because an N=1 anecdote from her personal life isn’t data.

Chapter 5? She talks about “good-bad binary” while ignoring the irony or more, as in hypocrisy, that her whole book is about making “White fragility” into one half of a binary, one end of a polarity. This includes a presumption that “color-blind” statements are always wrong and that only “color-celebrate” statements are allowed. At this point, per John McWhorter’s review (below) I had to wonder how much of this book was coming from a place of huge lake of self-awareness.

And for all her white liberal (not leftist) earnestness? A John McWhorter, no radical (actually, overall, a Black conservative, but not a Tim Scott wingnut) says she still comes off as talking down to Black people.

“I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract,” McWhorter says.

McWhorter totally agrees with me on Robinson and other things.

One biggie is calling her a “shape shifter,” noting how she can claim at one point that most Whites are unaware of their “privilege” but, just a few pages later, describing them in general as tribalist.

He makes a couple of other good points. One is that DiAngelo seemingly wants to have all White people wear hair shirts, saying that for her, it’s about the suffering, not the solutions.

The second, per my “introduction,” is that she writes class out of the issue entirely. McWhorter admits he has suffered “at the margins” from racism, but that in general, with the civil rights movement, he’s not done too badly.

A third point is one that, being White, I can’t speak to directly, but he says that she “infantilizes” black people.

Finally, per McWhorter’s observation that his book reads like a diversity seminar training manual, maybe that’s what it IS! There’s plenty of gold in them thar hills! From Melanin Base Camp making boatloads of false accusations in a High Country News piece to other things, can and do minorities (as well as “woke” librul Whites) with money to make off this issue lie? Well, is a bear a Presbyterian? Does the pope shit in the woods?

Speaking of, why is DiAngelo a former professor and current consultant? Did she screw the pooch at university and get her tenure bid rejected? Or, per grifting, is there more money in diversity training? That then gets back to race and class issues.

That said, while McWhorter is honest enough to admit that he has benefitted a fair amount from socioeconomic class, he fails to note the obvious corollary: Many non-White people, including Blacks, haven’t. The “why” of that is itself, per Idries Shah, an issue with MANY more than two sides.

THAT then said, this gets back to a big problem with the book: the issue IS, contra guilt-trips DiAngelo wants to put on fellow White librulz, more than two-sided.

This is one of those books that I eventually gave two stars not one, and in part for one big reason: its revelation of the author’s mindset. The other reason it gets two stars not one is that, even at 25 percent of face value, her anecdotes remind us there is still plenty of work to do in America on racial issues, even though she and people like her are NOT the ones, White or Black — or Hispanic, South Asian, East Asian or American Indian — that we need to be leading the effort.


View all my reviews

Jesse Singal hypocritically goes stanning for the Harper's letter

A lot of my closer regular readers are surely familiar with the letter that Harper's Magazine released earlier this week, decrying the so-called "cancel culture" without using that phrase explicitly.

Seeing nobody I recognize as an actual leftist among signatories was antennae-raiser No. 1.

No, Noam Chomsky, safely ensconced in the "duopoly-only" world on voting issues, and a co-signer of another letter this spring, one calling on Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins (just the leading candidate at the time) to run a "safe states only" strategy, is not a leftist. Howie politely, and I impolitely, told Chomsky to shut the fuck up. (Chomsky has LONG been a sheepdogger.) Chomsky discusses that letter, and claims it's not actually about "cancel culture" here. 

Cornel West claimed Dear Leader fooled him, when it was rather that he was self-delusional. Update; And, given all the peregrinations, ramblings and background of his 2024 presidential run, this is more reason not to vote for him.

Jeet Heer leads me to raise an eyebrow. He's not horrible, but, I still question him. Nadine Strossen, since she tried to censor the ACLU's board, not a surprise. Wendy Kaminer, one of the targets of her would-be censorship, IS.a surprise.

At Current Affairs, Nathan J. Robinson has a further takedown on some of the names involved. Beyond Chomsky, the more problematic are West, Heer, Zephyr Teachout, Randi Weingarten, Matthew Karp and Samuel Moyn.

Update, Dec. 12, 2023: In light of the Israel-Gaza war, and having originally noted Bari Weiss, below, I suspect Zionist-related reasons for other signatories, too. And, speaking of, has a SINGLE non-Zionist signatory of this letter protested against the silencing of Palestinian voices?

More serious issues arise after that. And yet more after Jesse Singal wrote a column at Reason magazine defending an attempt to cancel free speech. So much for First Amendment absolutism from libertarians, eh? I quote:

The people furious at this letter largely have genuine ideological problems with liberal norms and laws regarding free speech.

Jesse, here's the mirror. Take a look and see yourself.

So, I shot out a thread of Tweets to Jesse about some specific problems. I'm going to drop them in, with additional comments on each.

Let's start:

Reason magazine, in favor of free speech and thought ... except when it's not. The biggest fails by Jesse Singal? .@jessesingalhttps://t.co/yZKJVCM42n
1. Not ackowledging that many of his fellow signees themselves REGULARLY perform #CancelCulture on #BDS. 1/x

— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020

Seriously? When I saw Fucking Bari Weiss as a signer? Game over RIGHT THERE. And the thing is, Singal has, elsewhere, called out BDS opponents. She's not the only one, by any means. But, trying to get Palestinian profs fired at Columbia? That itself is "cancel culture." (And now, Bari Weiss has quit the NYT op-ed staff, boo-hooing that she's a cancel culture victim.) Much of the activities of the most ardent anti-BDSers are exactly that. And, beyond active opponents of BDS, you've got a bunch of neocons, and a bunch more bipartisan foreign policy establishmentarians, all of whom arguably perform "cancel culture" on free discussion of Palestinian issues in the US. (Jacobin, to which I shall not link, gets this wrong. Hypocrisy may not be a sufficient reason to reject this dreck, but it is one of a group of necessary reasons.)

Pinker, and I assume wife Rebecca Goldstein, are both vigorously anti-BDS. So is Jonathan Haidt, though the way he phrases his opposition, I'm sure he'd deny he's an opponent. Robinson notes Pinker's ties to the so-called Intellectual Dark Web, too.

Haidt, and others on that list, also have a consistent history of overstating illiberalism, or often more specifically, anti-conservativism, in academia. I've specifically called out Haidt before, for ignoring how in much of both the social sciences and the natural sciences, religious conservatives self-select out of academia because of anti-intellectual stances.

And, I'm not just being metaphorical when I accuse anti-BDSers of their own cancel culture. From intimidation of Palestinian student groups at universities, contra Haidt's narratives about academia, to the variety of bullshit that Weiss pulled at Columbia, and on through getting universities to cancel speakers and events, this is literally cancel culture.

Even IF the letter were totally right otherwise, how two-thirds of signatories could have put their names to the other one-third, I don't know. Were I famous enough in the media world (I wish) to be asked to sign such a letter, I would have refused, even if it were totally right.

Note those IFs and let's go on in the thread.

2. Not noting the "false equivalence" issue. Yes, there is some illiberalism in precincts of the left, but, equivalent to Trumpism? Not close. 2/x

— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020

That said, this is coming from someone who actually largely agrees with Jesse's take on the trans activists' portion of cancel culture.

Update: At Current Affairs, the spot-on Nathan Robinson agrees with me in general and specifically on this issue. He also calls out Harper's for its own in-house editorial hypocrisy. And, as usual, gotta love his writing style, such as when he talks about "a motley assortment of luminaries" who signed the letter. (Jacobin totally misses this angle, or rather, rejects it.)

BUT! While Jesse mentions trans activists' response to the letter in his column, that issue is nowhere mentioned in the letter itself.

That leads to:

3. Third? No explanation of why this suddenly had to be written now. When you have Black Lives Matter, a resurgence of #MeToo and other things, and the signees don't say WHY they had to write now and WHAT they see as so bad on the left? 3/x

— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020

Seriously. We're now, as I told an email list, into massive muddle-headedness. That, too, is not something I would have expected from Harper's, but, I guess this is the new normal. Without listing a specific "redress of grievances," to get back to my second tweet, one can't even make a reasonable assessment of how close to proportionality we are. Is the "cancel culture" left one-quarter as bad as Trumpism? One-tenth? One-fiftieth? For that matter, to go back to my first tweet, is the "cancel quarter" left one-quarter as bad as anti-Palestinian Zionists? One-tenth? One-fiftieth?

Onward to No. 4.

So, in summary, the signees of the Harper's letter offer a mix of some kind of privilege, muddle-headed thinking, and lack of clarity and explanation. SKEPTICAL LEFTISTS can and do call that out in the Harper's letter .@Harpers 4/x https://t.co/W5fS2HYQ15

— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020

And, yes, beyond other issues, I see a certain amount of privilege there. It's a word used a lot by SJWs, and often overused.

And, at Bloomberg, Pankaj Mishra nails it. These are people, who, whether through skill, luck, nepotism and cronyism, or whatever, (often luck plus connections) who have risen to positions of pre-eminience and don't like having their "right to blather" challenged. Mishra also points out foreign policy hypocrisy issues beyond what I have done, in several of the signees.

Per Idries Shah? This is another issue with more than two sides, though:

I think that privilege — of CLASS as well as race and sex (and religion versus secularism or atheism) — does exist, even if I agree that the idea is also abused and overused.

And, I see many of the signatories exemplifying that as well. So:

I personally could have accepted a more limited and MUCH more clear Harper's letter minus half the signatories. The actual letter? Not quite dreck, but it IS a badly fallen soufflé. 5/x

— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020

And, you chose to sign it, Jesse. You chose to defend it. And, by ignoring the hypocrites, you're choosing to defend it and their hypocrisy.

And, we haven't even tackled other illiberalisms and hypocrisies. Like this:

And, I haven't mentioned other illiberal signers of that Harper's letter, like Malcolm Gladwell and his history of shilling for #BigTobacco and other illiberal interests. 6/x https://t.co/4cshbKGe06

— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020

When I saw Gladwell's name, that Exiled Online piece at the Twitter link was the first thing I thought of.

Update: I've heard people claim that my "co-signing a letter with a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy" is wrong because even Trump has defended free speech.
1. I'm not familiar with any such recent speech
2. Comments of his in the past have been selective and hypocritical
3. I wouldn't make a pro-free speech defense along with Trump, either.

And, not part of the thread to Jesse, but worth including:

Given the previous dreck Matt Taibbi has written, AND, his being an uncritical Tulsi-stanner, I sure as hell ain't paying money to read him fellating the Harper's letter. https://t.co/XYaeM2AKdu

— Green Party convention & fireworks time! 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 11, 2020

This dreck about Lee Fang etc. is what I refer to. His Tulsi-stanning? Referenced here.

And, it's not just Merika. Mondoweiss notes that Israel lobby cancel culture is alive and well in Canada.

That's more than enough food for thought, and I'll post this live instead of going up in the morning so I can link it to my thread.

Update, July 20: Here's a mix of muddle-headedness and hypocrisy for you. The Intercept's Zaid Jilani, a signer, thought bossman Glenn Greenwald should have been invited to sign. In reality, he was cancel cultured by a vote, and organizer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who looks more and more like a general douche, laughed about it.

So Zaid, watch Glenn own the frauds. Does that include you?

1/ Regarding the apparent fact that the Letter’s organizer wanted to have me sign but the luminaries actually in control cancelled me (I was never asked), it’s been obvious from the start that the Letter was signed by frauds, eager to protect their own status, not the principles. https://t.co/HfeMi8Gtzd

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2020

Boom.

Worse? Williams, with Matt Taibbi and elsewhere, uses the attacks on the letter to play the martyr card. Fraud indeed.

Update, speaking of Taibbi?

Matt started blathering on Twitter with comments about the Harper's letter. Behind that blather is his latest Substack piece. It's about 20 percent real concerns about SJW issues, about 30 percent overblown concerns and about 50 percent total bullshit.

Related? Taibbi has also started stanning for Sully, including claiming he's not a racist. Pretty much no Overton Window that Matt won't go slouching toward now, eh? As I said on Twitter:

To riff on .@NathanJRobinson
A. Andrew Sullivan IS a racist. Period and end of story.

B. Matt Taibbi, the way you're going, in another five years, you'll be the new Andrew Sullivan.

C. Per his comment about the Harper's letter, per Glenn Greenwald, you may already be a fraud.

— Harper's Letter #CancelCulture for we not thee🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) July 21, 2020

The man is losing credibility by the column.

Emily Yoffe, another hardcore Zionist and anti-BDS signer of the letter, has now decided to Lean In further on the hypocrisy of reverse cancel culture. She even mentions actions on campus life while ignoring cosigner Bari Weiss. These people have no shame.

 

Update, Nov. 14: Letter signer and Ezra Klein flunky (flunky of a flunky) Yglesias has joined the piety brothers swill at Substack. And of course, it's Conor Friedersdorf taking this with utmost seriousness at Atlantic. (Yglesias is also an  overpaid classist if he's buying $1.2M DC condos.)

Those five black male youth? Almost certainly suicides, says this Occam's Razor wielding skeptical leftist

Any youth of either sex and any so-called race dying is tragic, whether it would be suicide, lynching or even natural causes.

But, in the post-George Floyd world, it's easy to think that nine young African-American men hanging from various objects in various parts of the U.S. are actually lynch victims. I saw this first from an African-American woman on Twitter a couple of days ago, then from alleged outside-the-box steno (and regular readers know what I think of them) Jordan Chariton.

Black teenager found hung outside elementary school in Harris County, Texas. This makes 5 black men hung across the country in two weeks—most declared suicides by police without providing evidence to support that. https://t.co/DmhT9M2gSO

— Jordan (@JordanChariton) June 19, 2020

The reality is that this is totally ordinary.

Yes, you heard me right.

Per the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, a simple and straightforward walk through suicide statistics (don't quote Mark Twain's "lies, damn lies and statistics" to me, per my own "simple and straightforward" comment) will refute the claim I first saw on Twitter (back one week, and no better a hellhole than before, mainly from the MAGAs, but an occasional SJWer and other things).

Per what I posted on social media, and expanding it, here's the reality.

Until investigative facts say otherwise, this leftist, who is a skeptic and some degree of a capital-S philosophical Skeptic, not (just a) Movement Skeptic, says there is NOT a rash of black young men being lynched rather than actually committing suicide.

Nationally, there's not quite 50,000 suicides a year. We'll do easy math, round that up to 52,000, which gives us 1,000 suicides per week.

Blacks are about 13 percent of population, but half the suicide rate of whites. So, that gives us about 65 black suicides a week.

About 15 percent of those are likely to be "youth," defining as 15-24 per some national stats.
So, that's 9-10 black youth suicide a week in an average week. Of those, 6-7 would be male.

Guns are the most common version, tis true. But, hangings and suffocation are the second most common version.

And, contra the implications of the Revolt Gnu Media piece that Chariton referenced, in the Spring, Texas, case? Sheriff's deputies talked to neighbors, looked at surveillance video they could find and more, the Chron reports. Indeed, his own family said he was suicidal. In addition, he was Hispanic, not black. The Chron also notes that the Puff Hoes reporter who first identified the person as black had the ethics to delete the original Tweet, and then to retweet Sheriff Art Acevado's official information.

Malcolm Harsch? Hearing that he'd been found near a homeless encampment (and was indeed homeless himself) made me think it was likely suicide, too. And, yesterday evening, authorities announced that video confirmed this, and his family accepted this.

Update, July 9: Robert Fuller's death also ruled a suicide. Investigation led in part by the state attorney general documented multiple previous suicide attempts. Look, as with the other cases, I can see the family thinking there was a possibility of lynching, given Palmdale's history as documented in the story. At the same time, they knew his mental illness history, and if they didn't immediately disclose that (which, duh, they didn't when they said they didn't trust the initial finding of suicide), they're part of the problem, not the solution.

Occam's razor, first, folks, before claiming there's an epidemic of lynching. And, if you're an SJW of any race, Occam's razor first, second and third.

I have directly tweeted Chariton asking him to update his Twitter feed, but I ain't holding my breath.

Howie Hawkins and the Lavender Caucus of the Green Party

At least Howie didn't call for the National GP to ignore decentralization and expel the Georgia Greens over their not kowtowing to trans activists, in answering the Lavender Caucus questionnaire.

The rest of his answers? Not so good.

And, the questions? Also not always so good.

Per the Lavender Caucus making a snide riff on the generally silly Trolley Problem (which I tweeted to Howie) this is who we deal with.

Question No. 4 is the worst of the lot.

It is like a false flag, because the quoted statement was about reassignment surgery for kids and the LC twisted it to be about such surgery period. Minors IN GENERAL do not have autonomous medical decision making rights.

Howie not only supports the Lavender Caucus' twisting of this, he doubles down on this by referencing his own support of reassignment surgery for minors back in February.

Question 3? I would not support adding more sex categories to the Census.

Question 16? How do you know this, Howie? Besides, what if you're wrong about trying to pack the party? (Of course, this has happened in other state Green Parties on other issues.)

The biggie, though, is Hawkins claiming his stance is science supported.

No, it's not.

Even were you limiting yourself to puberty blocking drugs, it wouldn't be science supported.

Let's start with the Mayo Clinic, which notes that puberty blocking medications should only be used for children who:

• Show a long-lasting and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria.
• Have gender dysphoria that began or worsened at the start of puberty.

Note that the first stipulation has an AND, not an OR. The dysphoria must be BOTH long-lasting and intense. Note also the second stipulation. Gender dysphoria that starts after puberty should NOT be treated with these medications. And these bullet points, plus two others, including one that says a child who is a candidate for such medications should at the same time be addressing any "psychological, medical or social problems" that could interfere with such treatment.

Second, these medications aren't as safe as trans activists claim. PBS's Frontline has more about possible long-term effects. Any major multiyear hormonal changes on a pre-adult, a child, are almost guaranteed to have some brain effects. Frontline also notes (as of the time of the piece) that use of puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric children is an off-label use.

More here.

“The bottom line is we don’t really know how sex hormones impact any adolescent’s brain development,” Dr. Lisa Simons, a pediatrician at Lurie Children’s, told FRONTLINE. “We know that there’s a lot of brain development between childhood and adulthood, but it’s not clear what’s behind that.” What’s lacking, she said, are specific studies that look at the neurocognitive effects of puberty blockers. The story also notes that there’s health risks behind transitioning hormones, and that these risks may vary based on the age at which they’re started.

Here's another piece about long-term effects for women who received Lupron for other reasons. (Leupron is the main trade name for leuproleptin, the only puberty blocker on the market.) Besides thinning bones, similar problems such as thinning tooth enamal and joint issues are listed.

Meanwhile, the BBC reported last fall that the newest British research study both found some possible mental health side effects and had ethical problems in the study itself. But, many Radically Active Transgenderism Supporters continue to claim that there's basically no problems.

Anyway, it’s a lie to claim there are no risks. 

Beyond that, it's really not necessary.

Without "prods" from reading too much social media or other things, 60-90 percent of gender dysphoric adolescents stay with their birth sex — and come out as gay or lesbian.

The author, Debra Soh says:

Previous research has shown that homosexuality is associated with gender-variant behaviour in childhood. All 11 studies following gender dysphoric children over time show the same finding – if they don't transition, 60 to 90 per cent desist upon reaching puberty and grow up to be gay.

There we go.

Now, is Howie doing this for political issues, since Dario Hunter was at the Georgia GP state meeting and, per the Georgia Green Party's response to Hunter's issuing a call for dialogue between the party and the caucus, it also notes that Hunter was at the Georgia GP state convention and sat silent while the amendment up top was adopted?

A Dialogue Not Expulsion Group has been founded in response to some of these issues. A member of the LC was invited to the Dialogue Not Expulsion Group. He left, and dropped this turd-bomb blog post, even AFTER the LC attacked DNC as a hate group, and didn't call it out for that. So long, Allan; with that, I don't think you'll be that missed by a significant chunk of DNE. 

As for the LC? The laughability quotient that "dark money" would be behind any resistance to it is high; so is the self-importance level.

More laughable? The GPUS has named Mike Gamms, who was essentially "unendorsed" by Erie County Greens and the NYGP, to its national Dispute Resolution Committee, representing the Lavender Caucus.

Unfortunately, the DNE itself shows splits on how it should react to this, to Allen, and to other things. 

That said, I think that's symptomatic of the GP as a whole. I will have more about these issues later.

Imagine no American Indians

Per a Quora question about the most important single issue in "American" history, the header says what this is about.

Imagine a "New World" that would indeed be new by, as well as for, Euro-Americans because nobody came here from Siberia 20,000 or more years ago.

Think of how different the New World is with no pre-European population. (I’m setting aside whether or not Polynesians sailed to South America; if they did, it seems unlikely they left permanent genetic descent, and besides possibly bringing the sweet potato [history still disputed], left little cultural descent.)

First, a bunch of charismatic megafauna would have stayed alive, such as larger-sized bison, Columbian mammoth, New World camels and maybe even saber-toothed cats, among others.

Now, humans.

Erik the Red left Greenland mainly because of the end of the Medieval Warm Period, but early Inuit helped speed him along. Would he have stayed otherwise? Maybe.

Leif was sped off by people who were likely Algonquin-speaking Indians as well as climate, just like Erik, plus being that much further from Europe and European supplies. (As far as we can tell, neither Norse settlement made their own iron.)

Probably climate would have driven both away.

So, Columbus would have come to an unpopulated world. Without the help of Caribbean natives, he would have found no gold.

Would he have made a second trip? Unlikely.

So, next? Pedro Cabral gets blown off course just as in reality. Do the Portuguese stay with no American Indians? If so, do the Spanish follow? Are the French and English then likely to follow?

With no easy New World gold or silver and nobody to tell them where to look, no natives to enslave, and less reason to enslave Africans, the New World is populated and developed but slowly.

And, without American Indian crops? No corn, tomatoes, chiles or potatoes, among other things, in the Old World. No Irish peasantry because of no potatoes. Etc. etc.

===

Contra Brains, and some people from the SJW world, there's no reason to be so PC as to cross out "American Indians and replace that with "Indigenous Americans."A plurality of the people prefer American Indian, including activists like Russell Means, a former leader of the ... American Indian Movement. Indigenous American is preferred by a few, though we'll see if that catches on. "Native American" has been seen as white-foisted by many American Indians, among other things.

That all said? With an individual, if one knows their tribal heritage, use that reference.

Thoughts on cultural appropriation for graduation, beyond

The Utah student rocking the qipao or cheongsam dress for a prom a couple of years ago still sticks in my mind, and other things have added to it since then, namely claims that certain foodstuffs are also cultural appropriation.

The claim is usually, though not always, raised by social justice warrior types. And it's usually an ahistorical claim that:

• First, believes that cultural appropriation is evil, rather than simply borrowing; that
• Second, from this, cultural appropriation (like racism) can only be done by a colonial / conquest culture; and
• Third, within this, that it's usually done by Euro-white culture, like racism — thereby ignoring a long history of East Asian racism, Indian caste-connected racism (the Aryan conquest was 3,500 years ago, and they themselves weren't "white" by skin color anyway), and more.

Let's start with the dress.

First, the fact it has two different names should tell the SJW types they are a bit off base. (But it won't.)

Second, the fact that it was originally Manchu, not Han Chinese, should say more.

Third, the fact that it further evolved in southern China in the first half of the 20th century after the fall of the Manchus — and said further evolution happened under Western fashion influence — should say yet more.

Fourth, per all of the above, the fact that modern Chinese (other than some Chinese American SJWs) were OK with it as a prom dress, or even saluted it, should say yet more.

That said, I haven't seen European Americans of the SJW persuasion giving up ice cream et al because Marco Polo expropriated them from the Chinese. Or spaghetti because tomatoes were expropriated.

Speaking of, let's go to food.

The so-called "Columbian Exchange" went both ways. Europe got tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes and maize, above all, from the Americas, and eventually, yams from sub-Saharan Africa.

BUT! The Americas got back meat livestock, wheat, dairy livestock and other things. And yams from Africa. And both Europe and the Americas got soybeans, sesame and more from East Asia.

This is cultural appropriation, SJW-ers.

So, are you going to give up that chimichanga or burrito because of the beef, or chicken, and the flour tortilla? Or if you're vegetarian, is tofu now verboten?

Do you admire Navajo rugs? Well, again, you're in trouble. While South American Indians had alpaca wool, and the Hohokam of the Gila River did have the forerunner of today's Pima cotton, the Navajos had nothing for weaving until Spanish sheep.

Or if you're Indian-American, are you going to give up any of your India-Indian foods with appropriated chiles in them? Ditto if you were a Chinese-American complaining about the qipao — have you given up your Szechuan food because of American Indian chiles?

What is mislabeled "cultural appropriation" is actually "cultural interaction."

As for the parallels with racism? As I said on a Patheos page of a secular humanist who may be a bit SJW — not all racism is "institutional," and non-institutional racism can be and has been practiced by member of any race against members of any other race. She admitted tribalism exists, but still seemed to want to hang on to the idea of almost all racism being institutional in nature. And, even if we allow for China, or Japan, being colonizers themselves, she was focused on white racism in Latin America.

Anybody who knows a lot about East Asia knows there's a shitload of racism there that originated almost entirely independently of white folks, too. (Well, other than, especially with China, some of it being directed AGAINST white folks.)

The SJWs will then say, "But Columbus passed on European diseases." That he did. Though not as a genocide. (However, wingnuts, Sir Jeffrey Amherst DID try germ warfare against Indians in 1763.) And the New World gave syphilis back.

David Frum offers his own thoughts.

High Country News goes from surrendering to movement rightists to kowtowing to SJW environmentalists

High Country News, which surrendered to the militia/3 percent/posse comitatus type western conservatives more than a year ago when it shut off all commenting on its stories, and has long decided not to seek out editorial contributions from more leftist environmentalists like Jeff St. Clair, has now also decided to kowtow to a SJW-driven group of minority outdoors lovers by letting their leader pen an op-ed screed claiming that people calling out the Instagrammers trampling on poppy blooms and other expressions of environmental concern are all racist.

No, seriously, though:

.@highcountrynews, my eyeballs rolled in my head so hard they got stuck when I read this Melanin Base Camp claim that opponents of Instagrammers sticking their feet into parks pix then geotagging them are worried about this because "white privilege." https://t.co/sdL8OOKW6w

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) May 4, 2019

And, yes, this may well be the most ridiculous piece I've ever seen in HCN in 15-plus years of semi-regular, semi-continuous subscriber readership.

(Note: A modified version of what I had originally created as this blog post was submitted to HCN as a letter to the editor. We'll see if it runs it as is, bounces it back to be shortened or politened, or refuses to run it and never contacts me about that. Given that it hasn't responded to most Tweets when I've been critical of articles before and listed specific reasons, I am not holding my breath.)

An anti-geotagging movement is supposedly racist, in part because it's an exercise in privilege.

The "Leave no Trace" campaign is hysteria. And it's supposedly about "policing black and brown bodies" in the outdoors. And, it's allegedly misguided because traces are already left. (No duh; any good environmentalist knows that.)

And the idea that "Leave no Trace" campaigners are "out there" and while "out there," engaged in "policing black and brown bodies" is ridiculous. And, based on a misinterpretation of what the Leave no Trace Center says on this Instagram. The LNTC account says X, Y, or Z MAY happen with regular feeding of a wild bird. AND, it does NOT mention "this MAY happen ONLY if the person feeding the bird is a minority."

This is one of those areas where the Center doesn’t have an official stance. Rather, we leave it up to personal choice (as with many things Leave No Trace) as to the best decision. Again, our focus is on non-motorized recreation and how to enjoy the outdoors in a responsible way.”

Is the misinterpretation accidental or willful? I can't prove it's willful, but given the tenor of the main HCN article, it sure comes off that way.

This excellent Jezebel piece about poppy tramplers and the person running the Public Lands Hates You account says NOTHING about "casual hikers quoting rap lyrics." In fact, it doesn't mention minorities at all.

And, if you go to the Instagram account, it calls out capitalism, then the hunt for the infamous 15 minutes of fame, not people of any race.

Speaking of, here's my second tweet in a thread about this utter dreck:

.@Melaninbasecamp I'm a community newspaper editor who likely makes less money than many of your members do. In turn, I'm offended by your presuppositions and presumptuousness. https://t.co/sdL8OOKW6w

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) May 4, 2019

The rest of the piece goes on with what seems to be continual evidence free (or even evidence refuted, as above) claims.

Is there still racism in environmentalism? Is there still racism in the Green Party as an environmental party? Yes and yes.

Does this piece and the Instragram hullabaloo document any of that related to the Instagram hullabaloo? No.

As for other things, like claims that some flower tramplers are drunken? Maybe they are/were, maybe not.

In either case, that's the only claim made. NO claim was made that they were "black drunks," or "Hispanic drunks," or anything like that.

Instead, the PLHY guy has been threatened with multiple lawsuits from Instagram influencers, as well-known environmental writer Christopher Ketchum describes, something the Melanin Base Camp folks conveniently omit.

The Ketchum piece is itself worth a thorough read, rather than MBC's attempt to trash it. In fact, I'm seeing this as being a "whose ox was gored" as much as anything.

It's no surprise that HCN, in what I see as a continuing incremental rightward drift, won't instead write more about the Instagrammer problem. And the capitalism behind it.

Meanwhile, MBC founder Danielle Williams next goes straight to Whataboutism in spades:

What they don’t say is striking. None of the articles place responsibility on Congress to increase appropriations for the Department of the Interior which faces a budget cut and a massive administrative overhaul. Nor do they ask Congress to stop weaponizing government shutdowns — which have devastated national parks like Joshua Tree in the past — to play to their political base. There is also little expectation that land management stakeholders respond to overcrowding with increased staffing, education, permit requirements, enforcement or outreach. No, the overwhelming emphasis is on keeping hikers they don’t want in, out.

Ketchum and others, PLENTY of other good environmentalists, have written about all of this, and the suggestions at the end of the HCN piece, plenty of times.

HCN printing such whataboutism is itself disgusting. 

Sorry, HCN, but that's how I feel. You've run a number of good stories about the lack of minorities in the outdoors, which have pointed out legitimate issues, and legitimate attempts to address them.

Then you run a piece that could be by, and certainly is in support of, a bunch of Instascammers (I went there) wrongly using racism accusations as an SJW tool.

And, while I know more and more than Twitter has a low call-to-response ratio, this isn't the first time that HCN has not responded to me when I've called out what I see as "framing" errors. That's another reason I'm definitely ready to let my subscription lapse and am close to asking to have it canceled now and refunded what remains.

Beyond that, the Instascammers — and arguably, HCN, per my previous call-out partially to it — don't take climate change's portion of environmentalism as seriously as it should maybe be taken. The Instascammers under cover of SJW eco-woke-ness (yes I said that) are clearly pro-capitalist. HCN has only occasionally written about the left not liberal early unionizing history of the west, and even that, mildly.

==

Update, May 13: A condensed version of this was submitted to HCN as a letter to the editor. Editor-in-Chief Brian Calvert has responded by saying he'll keep this in mind. Whether it runs as an actual letter or not? Stand by. With this issue being HCN's travel issue, I wasn't expecting it in there, but ... next issue?

And, answer is no.

If you don't run mine, you'd better run somebody's angry letter, and I assume you got them over that piece.

And, answer is that they ran nobody else's.

The answer now, May 27 is that this was an online-only piece, so no print letter to the editor. I've inquired about online letters to the editor; somehow I doubt HCN has even thought about that, and I also doubt that it will change its policy, or tweak its website, to make that happen.

In essence, you're saying that you'll publish whatever you want online without reader feedback. You've already turned off online commenting, and you don't have online letters to the editor.

NOT wunderbar.

==

And, call it an irony alert, or more likely, either unaware irony or something else. In its Heard Around the West from that issue, HCN notes a New York Times story calling out Instagrammers.

Slightly in the same vein as the Melanin folks' piece is this interview with a Berkeley prof who claims previous histories of the Transcontinental Railroad have ignored the sociological personal story of the Chinese who were part of the work. Actually, Empire Express, at least, does talk about that, as I note in my long-ago review. Although not specifically mentioned by me, Bain does talk about the Chinese strike, among other things. And, mentioning Philip Foner by name, when, although he wrote books about labor history in the era of railroad building, he did not write one specifically about the transcontinental railroad, seems a bit specious.

Anyway, on a lesser scale, like Melanin Base Camp, this seems another angle of using social justice warriordom in the service of capitalism.

==

Beyond THAT, said influencers are losing influence, the Wall Street Journal reports. THAT (per my suspicions) was probably behind the Melanin folks' bitching, and again, something HCN never considered.

Fakery begets fakery, SJW world, and a Daoist response

First, although you can't call Nikki Joly a Jussie Smollett copycat because this action came first, the transgender gay rights activist has been arrested for burning his own (rental) house down. More here.

Second, a (scientific) paper claiming that an atmosphere of hate around them could take as much as 12 years off gay peoples' lives has been retracted. The problem there was that it was originally just corrected; it should have been retracted when the error was first found. This was compounded by the professor finding the error being publicly anti-gay marriage, which may have caused the paper's authors to dig in their heels.

In the first case, we have enough real hate crimes for there to be no need for fakery. This just fuels opponents of equal rights, and, in the case of people like me, leads to further criticism of the SJW subdivision of various groupings of people while continuing to support larger rights. And, my initial guess is that Joly missed the fame from fighting for LGBTQ civic rights after Jackson approved its non-discrimination ordinance.

And, beyond Joly, it's not like we haven't had fake accusations before. Like Matttress Woman. University of Virginia. And others. I still think there was righteous wrongdoing by some of the Covington Catholic kids, but past falsehoods both recent and old on the SJW trail puts everything under a microscope.

The second case makes one question the academic credentials of the original researchers. A 2-3 year lifespan claim might have been plausible. 12 years? Now, all research this area will face both warranted and unwarranted new skepticism.

Back to Joly one more time.

This also shows the addictiveness of fame. And, the world of social media has only increased the addictiveness potential as well as the ways to feed it. That's even more true if you're like Nikki Joly and had a tragic childhood, followed by being beat down much of your adulthood.

Resist the temptation is all I can say. Part of the problem with the addiction to fame is that it drives individualism into overdrive. If you care about a movement first, you'll resist the temptation. All good lessons from Daoism. Or Stoicism. But more from Daoism. It teaches acceptance without detachment, unlike Stoicism or Buddhism. Accept the world as it is and find your own stream in it. Make changes within your direction within the stream while accepting not all will be easy. Daoism also, because it does not believe the Way is logical or rational, unlike Stoicism, also notes that life is not fair. And, it's not. Sadly.

Daoism, to me, also talks about authenticity, without necessarily following the Cynic path of trying to prove one's authenticity by rebelling against convention as well as against authority. Stoicism of course teaches no such thing; neither does any variety of Buddhism which says that belief in the existence of an individual self is itself wrong and wrong-headed, even evil.

Movement #skepticism fail - concern-trolling, #mansplaining, #strawmanning

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about the Arkema chemical plant in Houston, because it's the events behind it.

(Update, March 12, 2018: Liberty County is now suing Arkema. Alleged are Texas Clean Air Act violations, Texas Water Code violations, Texas Health and Safety Code violations, and common law nuisances as a catch-all. The first three, generally, have an "every single day" penalty on fines. That will surely be sought against Arkema, and part of the court fight will be when the tolling dates should end.

Update, May 28, 2018: The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reports Arkema knew well in advance of Hurricane Harvey about flood risks, according to Texas Vox.)

Jeff Wagg

It's partially my fault for jumping in a conversation on former Facebook friend Jeff Wagg's page. I violated a rule of mine to generally avoid making comments on pages of people who post to "public." But I did, and because I did, this isn't privileged information.

And, the long and short is, whether one says movement skepticism, scientific skepticism, or Skeptics™,  Wagg at least in the past was one. And whether he is still or not, he is other things.

Per the previous post, Wagg whipped out the word "chemophobia" about media coverage of the Arkema plant's initial explosions. It came off as knee-jerk and looking close to strawmanning, as though "the media" is made up all of Gwynneth Paltrow vagina-steamers, chemtrailers and similar.

I relatively courteously, IMO, in one comment, said, Jeff, I'm not saying you ARE strawmanning, but it looks like that. And, in hindsight, and his actions and those of a Facebook friend of his, both now blocked, I feel more comfortable in that assessment.

Jeff didn't want to read through the actual regulatory history vis-a-vis Arkema after the conversation continued. And, even after being told that I have friends who work at Houston media outlets, and him knowing that I'm in the biz myself, he chose to generally not moderate or nuance most of his follow-up comments.

I also noted that movement skepticism has had problems with libertarianism in the past, and I cited Penn and Teller on secondhand tobacco smoke.

Naomi Baker

Then, a Facebook friend of his, Naomi Baker, who used to work for the EPA, and is either clueless about Texas politics even if she is from or living now in Texas, or else is an in-the-tank winger or close to it, chimed in. 

Per more detailed conversation in that previous post, she said I didn't know what I was talking about.

Then, trying to have the last word herself and accusing me of plugging my ears, she eventually said I was "mansplaining."

That normally is an automatic block on my part and it was then.

And I said I was blocking her, on that thread. Then I wrote about it in my own FB feed.

Well, Wagg followed me. I normally post to "friends of friends," but he was then still a FB friend. I'm bending my FB rules a little bit, but I won't directly quote him. Using the word, he said she was right, so I blocked him, too.

Jeff, maybe you still have guilt — conscious or not — over sexual shenanigans at the James Randi Educational Foundation when you were there. Don't pass your shit on to me, if that's the case. Oh, and even if you're not now, you were a ...

Movement skeptic.

Based on that work history.

Per your own words, including mentioning "drama and scandals," you were active with the group, including regular work with organizing "The Amazing Meeting." Per JREF web archives, you wrote a lot.

This probably isn't your first pseudskepticism, though. You were probably among the last-ditch defenders of Brian Dunning. And you may have overlooked the truth about Jose Alvarez / Deyvi Peña long after an actual skeptic would have admitted reality. (The truth being that Randi knew about Peña traveling on a fraudulent passport long before this conviction, and may well have known the identity theft involved to get said passport, also before Peña's conviction.) 

(I've written some about Peña and a LOT about Dunning. I don't know what Wagg's stance was early in Dunning's criminal process, but I know a lot of movement skeptics rallied around Sharon Hill when she started cutting him blank checks. And, anybody who was a semi-insider at JREF for any time, unless they were sniffing the "founder's syndrome" glue, should have known more about Jose / Devyi / "Carlos.")

That said, in what Wagg either might have known or didn't want to admit, or else didn't want to look at very closely, he was far from alone within the Skeptics™ world. And, yes, the link is Daily Grail, and deliberately so. It's called "tribalism."

Anyway, even if you have no residual guilt about "scandals and drama," your "mansplaining" was intended as an insult. It of course is not; it's a laugh.

And, if you'd exercised more actual skepticism on some of these areas, maybe we wouldn't have gotten to this point — including me adding "concern-trolling" to the header as I finished this piece out.

And, Jeff, if you really ARE worried about "the media," you would, like me, start by worrying about all the "Putin did it" bullshit.

And, speaking of being skeptical, Jeff?

Here's the background on the person who first accused me of mansplaining:

Naomi Baker talked on Facebook about how she worked WITH the EPA. Very true. She worked WITH it, she didn't work FOR it. Her LinkedIn profile says she's worked TWENTY YEARS in the energy industry. And is in Houston right now for a natural-gas processing company, one that works with dirty sour gas as part of their work, apparently. Before that? Dirty oil pipeline company ENBRIDGE! (And, graduated from Odessa Permian High, right in the heart of Texas' oil-besotted Permian Basin to boot.)

She VERY carefully said on Facebook that she'd never worked in the "chemical industry" or, IIRC, a "refinery." Very nice. Or "nice." And said this throughout a LONG Facebook thread.

And, Saturday afternoon, the AP reported it had visited a bunch of Houston-area Superfund sites — on the ground or water by the ground, NOT just "visiting" by air — that the EPA claimed were inaccessible.

If only Ms. Baker, in her working "with" the EPA, could tell me what's hindering the EPA, I would be so enlightened! 


If only Mr. Wagg, in his oh-so-diligent concern-trolling the media, would make sure the AP wasn't committing chemophobia, we'd all be so blessed!

And, this also pertains to movement skepticism. She was a Randi Foundation volunteer and is listed as a co-founder of Greater Houston Skeptics.

Given that she has extensive volunteer time with JREF, I'm sure that Jeff knows her in meatspace, not just Facebook. He therefore knew just how carefully she was parsing her language on his Facebook post about Arkema.

Therefore, as I see it, and as I think any reasonable person approaching from the outside would, I think he's as guilty of intellectual dishonesty in general on this issue as she is.

And, per Ms. Baker, if somebody's going to report my post to Facebook where I posted her LinkedIn profile, well, I can report being accused of "mansplaining" as harassment.

(Slight sidebar to friend Brains: This is why, although I acknowledge that social justice is an issue, and needs a fight, that I am not as kindly disposed as you are toward stereotypical "social justice warriors." This is not the first time I've experienced in person the "mansplaining" epithet as an attempt to shut down my conversation.)

==

Basically, "mansplaining" has gone beyond been taken beyond being, at least in part, an accurate descriptive of behavior to being a deliberate pejorative and a conversation ender. And, from that, many of the other "-splaining" gerunds and "-splainer" nouns were started as that.

There are those of us who are left-liberal, even leftist, who are repelled by such tactics even in the abstract, let alone when they're applied to us personally.

==

Update, Sept. 14: More dead horse to flog! Valero now admits, even per the currently toothless EPA, that it "seriously underestimated" (i.e., apparently lied about) how much benzene, a known carcinogen, and other volatile compounds escaped from its Houston refinery.

Update, Nov. 17: Harris County is now suing Arkema.

Update, Aug. 3, 2018: The EPA is auditing state and federal folks over post-Harvey air quality monitoring and reporting transparency.

AND ... Arkema's CEO has been indicted.