Online and in testimony, enough people spoke out against legislation that would mandate the sexual grooming of school children that legislators clearly felt the heat. To my experience, they often sign onto these bills with next-to-no thought — like people signing a meaningless petition on their way into the local pharmacy. “What’s this do? OK, that sounds alright; I’ll sign.”
This comment from the primary sponsor, Democrat Rebecca Kislak (Providence), deserves note:
The primary sponsor of the bill, Rep. Rebecca Kislak, would not define what “pleasure” meant in the legislation during an interview.
“I think that one word in the legislation is not, should not be the focus here,” Rep. Kislak said.
If you suspect she’s giving away which one word is actually the heart of the legislation, you’re probably right. Otherwise, they’d just take it out. It’s a Marxist bomb, inserted into the law as if its definition doesn’t even matter, only to be an exploitable linchpin to the harm of our children and our community later.
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She slipped up and exposed the direction of the narrative before all of the necessary special interests were pinned down. Wokism, intersectionality, anti-racism, proclamations about “white supremacy”… in all of these variations on the theme, whiteness is bad, whiteness is everywhere, and racism only goes one way. People of European descent are white; Jews are white; even Orientals can be white in some circumstances.
So, we come to Whoopi Goldberg’s comment that “the Holocaust isn’t about race.” Did it target “Jews and Gypsies,” as another host of The View, Ana Navarro, said? Well, responded Goldberg, “these are two groups of white people.”
We’re living in confused times. Goldberg’s comment exposes the absurdity of an ideology that insists white people have no race and therefore can never be victims of racism, while non-white people can never be racist. We’ve heard this said a million times. Hereabouts, we can also explain the backlash: Universalizing the Holocaust as about “man’s inhumanity to man,” in Goldberg’s words, makes it impossible to follow important threads that have run through millennia of human history.
On the other hand, another thing that makes it impossible to follow the threads of history, up to and including current events, is making such topics impossible to talk about candidly. Collectively, we need people to feel free to test out ideas openly before they become settled internally or insinuate themselves throughout our institutions in coded or academic language.
This requires balance. On one hand, we should want people to speak openly; on the other hand, the adverse reaction must be observable. But correction doesn’t have to be done with outrage or punishment. Let Goldberg give voice to her thoughts. Let Navarro respond. Eventually, they’ll grope their way to the obvious logical next step, which is to say that old-blooded Germans are just more white than Jews and Gypsies on the intersectional scale. That step will bring us closer the inevitable end point at which society manufactures a minority to persecute (those of whom nobody is whiter than), but it also brings us closer to the logical contradictions.
The key in these matters is to get there quickly, before we’ve covered over too many layers of our common sense. Hoping that the Whoopis of our society will learn from this episode that nobody can win the cancellation war is an incredible risk; more likely, they’ll learn not to speak up too confidently about anything, which plays into the hands of the social deconstructionists.
Above all, we cannot erase the status of independent adults for a momentary advantage in the ideological tug-of-war. Watching the notion of punitive suspensions make the leap from the playground of social media to an institution like ABC is terrifying. If ABC no longer wishes to be associated with Whoopi Goldberg, that would be foolish, but it would be principled. If ABC upholds Goldberg’s right to err, then it should stand by her.
We suspend students because they’re young and not yet fully accountable; we suspend athletes as an extension of penalties in a game; we suspend professionals during the course of an investigation. A punitive suspension in this case is shocking in the degree to which it exposes our cultural blindness to what words and actions truly signify. In a sense, ABC is denying Goldberg’s adulthood and human agency in an act that is uncomfortably close to a statement of ownership.
Rather than a mutually assured destruction of cancellations wherein the only test is of raw power, let’s step back from the edge and encourage people to speak, and then to change their minds.
Featured image by Ian on Unsplash.
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The question of my subject line seems like clickbait-style exaggeration, but I can only wish it were.
Legislation up for a hearing today, as Nicole Solas warned yesterday, would require “health and family life courses” in Rhode Island schools to “affirmatively recognize pleasure based sexual relations.” As somebody who’s read scores of bills that set off all sorts of warning sirens, what I notice most of all is that this term is not defined.
Although it looks like a legal term or professional standard, it’s not defined in the law. We’re on dangerous ground when legislators start mandating that schools teach something without telling the schools what lawmakers think they’re actually requiring. A quick Internet search comes up surprisingly light in results, suggesting that the advocates pushing this particular content really don’t want the public to know what they intend to teach our children.
I emailed the primary sponsor, Democrat Rebecca Kislak (Providence), to see if she’d provide a resource that defines the term. She hasn’t answered. I also emailed the secondary sponsor, Democrat Susan Donovan (Bristol, Portsmouth). She also did not respond to the email. She did, however, leave this comment on a related Facebook post by Providence teacher Ramona Bessinger:
I signed on to updating our 6th-12th grade health curriculum to reflect the vocabulary our students are exposed to. It hasn’t been revised since 1999. Teachers need guidance. A lot has changed in 23 years-marriage equality, acceptance of sexual orientation, families with two moms or dads, the word transgender needs to be defined etc. Kids ask these questions and teachers need to be equipped with the appropriate answers. You object to the definition of “sex” as a pleasure-based activity. Please tell me if you think 6-12th graders don’t know this already?? They learn it on tv from the time they are old enough to watch. How would you define the sexual act? That it’s only for procreating?? How ridiculous. I’m suspicious of anyone who wants to ban books that have been in our schools for generations. These ideas are anti American. What’s next, asking our town library to ban the books also? What happened to free speech? Disclaimer-I taught health for 35 years. I experienced the kinds of information students seek and sought out from experts how to address those needs. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, to be sure, but I would take this post with a grain of salt.
Donovan’s comment is misleading in two ways. To start with, it’s not quite accurate to say that the legislation “updates our 6th-12th grade health curriculum.” Actually, it lowers the age at which sex education must be taught. A separate section of law addresses the “health curriculum” for grades one through twelve. Currently, the requirement for sex education is for “secondary school,” and although there may be some ambiguity, “secondary school” is typically considered synonymous with “high school,” and it is defined at least in some places as a school that concludes with a high school diploma. So, the first thing this bill does is to make sure that every school in the state must begin teaching children as young as eleven about sex.
Second, the bill doesn’t simply provide a “definition” of sex as a “pleasure-based activity,” as Donovan insists. Rather, the bill demands that schools “affirmatively recognize pleasure based sexual relations.” So, again, what does that mean? Well, simply parsing the words, it means that lessons must actively approve of relationships that are based purely on sexual pleasure. One might think that’s intended as a distinction from opposite-sex relationships, which can be procreative, so as to include same-sex relationships, but the bill separately requires affirmation of those relationships. So, what’s left for relationships that are only about providing sexual pleasure? I bet some creepy adults have an idea for an answer.
But let’s put the more inflammatory assumptions aside for a moment. Although the search results are sparse, it’s clear that “pleasure-based sex education” is a topic of discussion out there among activists. What does it mean?
An article on the website of Planned Parenthood — which is certainly part of the team when it comes to the education establishment and teachers unions — such sex ed “emphasizes that sexual activity should be pleasure-focused.” I italicized “should be” because it shows the underlying intent of the term. “It normalizes the idea of giving and receiving pleasure” as the central purpose of sex and, indeed “not just in sexual activity, but in relationships as a whole.”
If you’re not “on the team,” this content gets very disturbing very quickly. The article goes on to explain that “the best place to start talking about sex-positive sex education is to talk about what feels good.” For example:
For younger students, a good activity is having them list the things they do that feel good, like taking a bubble bath or playing in the park with their dog. By focusing the conversation on normal pleasure-seeking, you begin to normalize seeking pleasure in sexual relationships. We also get children and teens used to seeking people and activities that bring them joy and fulfillment!
Yes, that paragraph does do what you think it does. It encourages teachers to reference bubble baths and playing with pets as a precursor to sexual “pleasure-seeking” and “people and activities” that can give them pleasure. This is grooming.
The inflammatory assumptions can’t help but return to the conversation. Nothing in the language from Planned Parenthood or H7166 would rule out children having relationships with adults that bring each of them sexual pleasure. In this light, controversy over pedophiliac content in books like Lawn Boy and Fun Home takes on its full significance and amplifies the importance of defining the term in the bill.
As I wrote this, Representative Donovan responded to me on Bessinger’s Facebook page telling me that if I want a definition of the term, I should “email Senator Mack.” That would be Democrat State Senator Tiara Mack, who is “unapologetically… queer,” a term which should probably be defined more clearly, too, and who tweeted this morning that “Teaching comprehensive, queer inclusive, pleasure based sex ed was a highlight of my time teaching.” It appears that she’s referencing volunteer work teaching “comprehensive sex ed” as part of her Ivy League education at Brown, before becoming an activist for Planned Parenthood.
So, we come full circle. A sponsor of this legislation refers me to a state senator who is an activist for Planned Parenthood, which organization promotes lessons about playing with the family dog as a precursor to sexual pleasure… and which, let’s not forget, makes a fortune killing the unborn babies conceived through “pleasure based sexual relations.”
These legislators are either deeply, deeply sick, pathologically ideological, or criminally negligent in their duties as elected representatives. There really isn’t another possibility.
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Every week, Rhode Island journalists break news about mainstream candidates for high-profile public offices like governor and dig for clues about candidates who may not yet have announced. It seemed strange, therefore, that we know so little about independent candidate Paul Rianna.
No speculation is needed; he’s definitely running. He’s also proven a willingness and ability to be actively engaged and to motivate others. As a prominent organizer involved with protests against Democrat Governor Daniel McKee’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers — which Monique Chartier estimates drove 1,300 professionals out of their jobs during a shortage in their line of work — Rianna would be much more widely recognized were he advocating for progressive causes rather than freedom.
The governor illustrated this point when he asked Rianna about the job that he lost and had no response (probably because he wants to believe his opposition is merely astroturf, rather than grassroots).
In order to get to know Rianna a little better, Anchor Rising sent him some questions:
Anchor Rising: What did you do for work before Governor McKee’s vaccination mandate, and how long had you done it for?
Paul Rianna: I was a CNA for five years where I specialized in long-term Healthcare in Rhode Island nursing homes, and most recently I was a mental health worker at Fatima Hospital in North Providence.
AR: What are you doing now?
Rianna: I am currently unemployed due to the vaccine mandate, but keeping the Faith that one day as Rhode Island’s next Governor, I will be able to overturn the mandates and get everyone back to work.
AR: You’ve been involved with one of the larger long-term protests I’ve seen in Rhode Island. How did that come together?
Rianna: When McKee announced his heavy handed mandate against those in the Healthcare profession I decided to take action. I wanted to try to unite ALL Rhode Islanders, whether they be vaccinated or unvaccinated, under one common goal: FREEDOM.
AR: What made you decide to run for governor rather than, say, a seat in the General Assembly?
Rianna: I felt like for me to make the impact I was aiming for, I needed to aim for the top. I felt like by running for Governor, I would be able to help ALL Rhode Islanders, not just one side. I want to help return Rhode Island to what it once was, and make it as great as it can be. People need new leadership, and they need fresh ideas instead of just the same old politicians that keep following the same agenda.
AR: Do you hope to accomplish anything with your campaign other than winning the office?
Rianna: I hope to help wake people up to the fact that our state needs BIG changes. Our policies haven’t been working, we need to hold people accountable and demand them to do their jobs CORRECTLY, and most of all, we need our Government to start representing THE PEOPLE.
AR: What else in your background is relevant to the job of Governor?
I’ve done a lot of work in my community, as I am living proof as someone who was born and raised in South Providence that even through the darkest times you can still come out in the end as a winner, and accomplish anything you set your mind to.
I proved my leadership as a CNA during the height of the pandemic, I always advocated for my residents as well as my coworkers, and I spoke up against the Raimondo Administration for their mismanagement during the nursing home crisis.
I’d really like to be a voice for the voiceless, and make everyone feel like THEIR voices will be heard too…Nobody should ever feel silenced by their own Government.
Over the course of my life I’ve held many different types of jobs, which means I have REAL life experience unlike most of our elite politicians. I think Rhode Island needs someone they can relate to, someone who has experienced the struggle, and someone they will be able to rely on for transparency.
Featured image from Paul Rianna’s Facebook page.
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These events will surely be mentioned in history books, so it’s very strange that they aren’t a bigger part of the news:
The border crossing between Coutts, Alberta (CA) and Sweet Grass, Montana (USA) continues to be blocked as truckers allied against COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine passports are united. The Alberta protests are in support of the larger trucker protest taking place in Ottawa.
Tensions are increasing as the truckers are refusing to move, but the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)] has vowed to get rid of the blockade. Supporters for the truckers are working through freezing temperatures to keep them supplied with food and fuel to keep the blockade in place. Even farm tractors have joined the effort.
The existence of a crowdfunding campaign to pay resulting legal bills brings to mind the time, recently, when celebrities (including the current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris) campaigned for bail funds for violent left-wing protesters.
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Democrat Representative Michelle McGaw (House district 71) expressed a telling thought in response to her Republican colleague, Brian Newberry, when he noted that 400 people had signed up to testify on “the proposed extension of the Governor’s emergency powers”:
Have you determined how many of those have credentials in public health, infectious disease or epidemiology?
I’ve been around long enough to be highly cynical about the use of public testimony to the General Assembly. The whole system is designed to make you feel like you’ve got an opportunity to be heard while having nearly zero influence on the laws that actually govern you. McGaw is essentially saying the quiet part out loud.
You may have voted in the election that put her in office, but she doesn’t actually care what you think. Whatever perspective you bring to the table, you’re just a child to be managed by people she credits as experts.
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The world’s got trouble! With a capital T, and that rhymes with C, and that stands for “coal.”
My obvious reference to a once-famous song from The Music Man is tuned to have just about as much appeal to a young audience as a characteristically droning video clip from John Kerry about the need for — you guessed it! — renewable energy in response to the “trouble” of increases in coal. Of course, as I write for Accuracy in Media, there are some catches he slow-talks past.
First (of course) is the prominence of China in the coal calculation. Then, there’s this:
If the young viewers of NowThis videos were to follow their curiosity down that path, they would soon discover that Kerry’s boss and patron bears much of the blame. Within a week of taking office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to “pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters.” He also killed the Keystone XL Pipeline, restricting the ability of Canadian oil to keep energy prices down.
NowThis may append the word “news” to its name, but it’s not news; it’s propaganda. Watching the ancient-looking John Kerry “umm” his way through a barely coherent pitch clinches the argument that pushing the message is the point, not informing or entertaining the audience.
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Anchor Rising doesn’t often dabble in occult topics, but Max Borders brought the concept of Egregores to my attention, and it’s one of those ideas that is practical whether taken as a merely mythic representation or a factual supernatural force.
Let’s note, first, that Borders’s essay is timely and worth reading for a variety of other reasons. At this time of continuing irrational COVID restrictions, his reminder about the meaning of Irish Democracy is worth taking, and the related concept of conducting an “underthrow” is a helpful coinage.
The following, however, is where the ideas tap into deeper currents. Borders begins with the concept that Dr. Robert Malone introduced in a now-controversial interview on the Joe Rogan Experience of “mass formation psychosis” (MFP):
MFP under our construal is like an Egregore, an occult concept representing a non-physical entity that emerges from a collective. Such an entity exists because enough people believe something, creating mass psychology that seems to take on a life of its own. In this case, the Egregore forms because too many people now have a strange idea of science.
So, to draw the occult picture a little more explicitly, when a group of people believe something deeply, it summons or brings into being a demon force who then directs those people according to its will, as distinct from (and often at odds with) the original desires of the believers. Here’s where the mythic-factual line emerges.
As a practical matter, the metaphor is a useful way to warn against personifying a concept, as in “believe the Science.” Do that, and people will emerge claiming to speak for “the Science” and wielding whatever power the institution has aggregated unto itself. So, when Fauci equates himself with the embodiment of Science, we see the risk of handing over our own reverence for scientific practice to a particular person with his own motives and biases.
We should think a layer more deeply, though. In the video to which Borders links to provide an explanation of the term, “Egregore,” the interviewer asks his guest how one might test for the existence of such an entity. The guest (unpersuasively, to my mind) suggests that one can make a prediction based on the thesis as a means of proving its validity. I’d propose two more-immediate proofs from logic.
The first is that the Egregore, being an independent will, directs the movement toward beliefs that are logically at odds with the premises of the belief that brought it into being in the first place. This has clearly happened already. The process of science is founded on a notion of continual challenge of orthodoxies and the principle of changing one’s mind based on evidence. As Borders emphasizes, once we start talking about what “the settled Science” says, we’ve left this principle behind.
He only incidentally implies the second test, however, when he quotes from an essay by Matthew Crawford titled, “How science has been corrupted“:
Increasingly, science is pressed into duty as authority. It is invoked to legitimise the transfer of sovereignty from democratic to technocratic bodies, and as a device for insulating such moves from the realm of political contest.
This test brings us into the demonic. The first test suggests a mere phenomenon happening in the minds of believers, but the second test is suggestive of an entity striving to become embodied. Having captured a fictional shell imbued with human belief, the Egregore seeks to make itself into an independent thing with its own power distinct from the continued adherence of believers and insulated from human methods of reclaiming power ceded to a monster.
Whether that’s real or still just a personification for describing group psychology, it’s a scary development.
Featured image by Arno Senoner on Unsplash.
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Johns Hopkins is an early example:
A new working paper from Johns Hopkins University’s “Studies in Applied Economics” institute claims that COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by a variety of governments worldwide had “little to no effect” on COVID-19 mortality. The study, conducted by three professors from around the world, also found that lockdowns “imposed enormous economic and social costs” and are “ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
Interestingly, by the study’s definition — “the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention” — Rhode Island is still be considered in lockdown, because the definition includes mandatory polices such as face masks. That’s just crazy.
Another point worth emphasizing is the dividing line between the “experts” and what many of us have been suggesting all along. The study notes that the infamous Imperial College London models that kicked off the global panic “predicted that a suppression strategy based on a lockdown would reduce COVID-19 mortality by up to 98%.” What a joke. Yet, people still listen to Imperial College and, inexplicably, still have faith in expert predictions. They’re like primitive people still clinging to some talisman that has proven not to work, but which is the only comfort they have.
Here’s an important caveat: the definition of “lockdowns” does not include recommendations or guidance. That is the role that government should take, as well as provisions to make good decisions easier to make.
So, we return to the prescription that some of us made way back in early days. What we should have done — and what we can still do — is take measures to protect especially vulnerable populations, keep people well informed about the latest findings in a trustworthy, credible way so they can make good decisions, help to fill in resources gaps so people can make their good decisions free from practical fears, and then get back to normal life.
Will the virus still do harm? Yes. Will variants arise and change calculations? Probably. But the alternative is pretending to do something more effective while doing incredible economic harm to the global economy, ecological harm to the planet, psychological harm to people around the planet, and developmental harm to younger generations.
Featured image by Sebastiaan Stam on Unsplash.
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Don’t miss the fact that this was published in The Atlantic by a senior fellow at the progressive Brookings Institution, Shadi Hamid:
The racial disparities in COVID outcomes are a matter of record, but to suggest that race causes these negative outcomes is a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. This is how facts, despite being true, are misused and weaponized. Rather than race itself, variables that are correlated with race—such as socioeconomic status, health-care access, geography, and higher rates of obesity or diabetes—are what affect a patient’s health. Those who presumably know better, such as the Food and Drug Administration, have contributed to the confusion by highlighting that race—on its own—may place individuals at greater COVID-related risk. …
The rationing rules in New York and elsewhere are not the product of anything resembling conventional political persuasion. No party would support—certainly not openly—the essentialization and instrumentalization of race in medicine. Few are willing to defend policies such as these on the merits, because what exactly would they say? Tellingly, these controversies have received limited coverage from mainstream outlets. Recently, the Associated Press published an article portraying claims of race triage as right-wing propaganda. “Medical experts say the opposition is misleading,” the story declared.
That statement in the AP is a lie, and we all know it’s a lie. It’s another lie the government-and-information elite will tell us until they think they have the power to be honest and argue that white people should die to make up for the disadvantages that the currents of history have placed disproportionately among minorities. You can practically hear their inner dialogue: If white people, with all their advantages, continue to be at high risk, that must be their fault, anyway.
Healthcare is not the first area of public concern in which this mental illness among Western progressives is having real consequences, but it’s a very stark and unambiguous one. While the tendency of humanity to both surprise and disappoint dissuades me from the making of predictions, I think racist distribution of medical care will be the end of the line. The anger of those who think mask and vaccine mandates are impositions on their rights is nothing compared with the rage that will swell when it becomes clear that medical treatment is being systematically provided or withheld for racist reasons — in a systemic racism that is codified and clear rather than ephemeral and inferred.
Featured image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.
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