Step right up folks and take your political correctness quiz. For five points: who does a progressive person cheer for in a head-on clash between the NYT company and it’s unions?
With a midnight deadline approaching, Boston Globe management tonight issued an ultimatum to its four major unions: Agree to major financial and contract concessions, including the abolition of lifetime job guarantees for some workers, or the paper’s owner, The New York Times Co., would file a plant-closing notice with the state. …
The ultimatum … was issued after Globe management summoned union leaders to the offices of the Labor Guild of the Archdiocese of Boston, where negotiations had been underway with the paper’s largest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild.
AdvertisementThe Guild, in a statement, decried the management move: ‘‘This tactic, while expected, is representative of the bullying manner in which the Times Company has conducted itself during these negotiations. Despite the Company’s hostile tactics, we continue to negotiate in good faith and work diligently toward an acceptable outcome.’’
An official of one of the Globe unions summed up the situation bluntly: ‘‘Do or die.’’
For ten points, is the demand by protesters to fire Condoleeze Rice from Stanford for serving in the Bush administration racist? Or is it principled and progressive?
The Huffington Post notes that “About 150 protest veterans, who led the fight 40 years ago to dislodge Stanford University from the War in Vietnam, on Sunday called on Stanford to sever relations with former Provost Condoleezza Rice, arguing that she committed war crimes while on leave as Secretary of State. … As longtime campus peace activist Rachelle Marshall put it at a panel discussion on Saturday: ‘Stanford is harboring a war criminal.’”
How does one tell, in these confusing times, what is enlightened any more? The problem with political correctness is that it has no internal and logical self-consistency. You may at various times be called upon to rally for feminism and in the next hour for abortion rights; in one instant you should be prepared to chain yourself in protest against nuclear power; and in the next argue to your dying breath that Iran has the right to develop the bomb. It’s a process that Orwell called Doublethink, and it is impossible for the committed leftist to remain sane without it. He defined it as:
The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
Tip Jar
Moral integrity issues… how about this one?
Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.
“They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we’ve ever seen,” the leading Republican politician told The Jerusalem Post, referring to news reports about the administration’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“There’s almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world,” he said, speaking to the Post ahead of his
speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference.
He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement on Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”
Instead, he maintained, the US should be sending the message to Israel that “we are for the survival of Israel” and that “we are not going to tolerate Iran getting nuclear weapons.”
Cca 2000, John Titor (of the time traveler claim), predicted this turn of events to a t. I still maintain he was a fake, but he is getting his predictions uncomfortably confirmed one by one. His next one is that the actual shooting civil war starts when the results of the administration perfidy vis-a-vis Israel would become apparent, for all there to see. It would not be the only reason, more of a trigger, a confirmation that the administration is up to all ungood.
1) NYT/Globe vs. the unions: The right and proper progressive will side with the NYT/Globe. History verifies this, because it has happened several times over at the Washington Post. Unions in service of Corporate America are the virtuous ones, fighting the power. Unions in service of the progressive voice must be kept in line.
2) Condie Rice at Stanford: The right and proper progressive is filled with indignant rage over her presence anywhere near their holy grounds. Such is an untenable sacrilege and she must go.
Wretchard, isn’t it wonderful to move from a state of appreciating good literature to one of actually living it?
We are now living in Orwell’s version of interesting times. Doubleplusgood.
The New York Times is using a classic fallacy of the excluded middle; its tactic is essentially “my way or the highway”. It puzzles me how the New York Times should be unwilling to sell the Boston Globe to the Boston Globe’s employees. The Omaha World-Herald is America’s largest employee-owned newspaper. There is no good reason why the Boston Globe cannot follow suit.
It also puzzles me that President Obama hasn’t gotten involved. He has interfered in the financial sector. He has interfered in the automotive sector. He plans to interfere in health care. What is it about the newspaper that makes it so sacrosanct, so impervious to federal intervention? If the unions really believe the slogan “Yes We Can”, then they could petition President Obama to interpose himself much as President Roosevelt interposed himself in a major coal strike 107 years ago.
If President Obama fails to save the jobs of the employees of the Boston Globe, the blame will fall upon his shoulders whether he likes it or not. If he doesn’t take the side of organized labor against the New York Times, he will be remembered as a president who stood by and did nothing as a company closed down a major newspaper. If he does nothing, he will be known as a president who didn’t intervene to promote employee ownership, as a man who could have promoted employee empowerment but didn’t.
The clock is ticking.
It is a necessary characteristic of socialists and egalitarians that they believe contradictory things. Their cultural streams enable this. One of their features is the postmodernist idea that there is no objective reality, instead, that reality is created by language. This fantasy world is also enabled by the wealth they are trying to destroy. They are like the scorpion who is killing the very frog transporting it across the water. Like a Greek tragedy, it is fascinating to watch the plot unfold.
winslow/5
Yea, it sure is fascinating, but it is hard to take a position of unparticipating observer, the scorpion when trashing about is likely to sting the frogs that are in the close proximity.
I dunno, if my vote counted in the “Destinies Management” switchroom, I’d skip the Greek tragedy entirely.
1) I would like to see a costly protracted battle between the Unions and NYT lawyers (Management). The unions should destroy as much equipment and buildings as necessary. Pinch Sulzberger should protest by setting himself on fire.
2) Since the Huffpo seems to own Stanford it should have the right to fire Condi. But, Condi should have the right to sue the daylights out of both Stanford and the Huffpo.
ledger/7
The unions should destroy as much equipment and buildings as necessary.
And then those participating should be rewarded by adequate jail terms for destruction of private property.
See, I wanna have a cake and eat it too.
For ten points, is the demand by protesters to fire Condoleeze Rice from Stanford for serving in the Bush administration racist? Or is it principled and progressive?
Going for ten: “principled and progressive”. To wit:
1) founder of political progressivism, woodrow wilson, notoriously anti-colored people. cites, his published endorsement of the KKK via veiled commentary as “truth” of DW Griffith’s anti-black, pro-KKK “first american blockbuster” film Birth of a Nation, and his segregation of the long-integrated US Military (which lasted then until Truman re-integrated). there’s more but chew those two.
2) founder of social progressivism, Margaret Sanger, progenitor as the ‘wave of the future’ of “Eugenics”, a term advocating goal-oriented genetic control by government of the people’s reproductive results. Since she was caucasian, safe to say it wasn’t going to be caucasions that got culled –as indeed it wasn’t, when Hitler put her concepts to work. i could say something here about Planned Parenthood (Sanger’s legacy) today in the inner cities, but i won’t, for now; too incendiary.
So, the anti-Condi forces are sticking by their progressive principles.
So, do i get the ten points?
2×4/6
How do you change a cultural stream. Nine years ago, when I met my present wife, she was a believer in the Boston Globe. Each morning at the breakfast table I have been pointing out the contradictions and absurdities on the front page. After years of gradual change, now she will accept the occasional editorial from the WSJ.
I had been slow to recognize the nature of the Boston Globe indoctrination and have allowed my children to grow up under its influence. Now it is possible to alter their thinking only inch by inch, but my more casual friends are impervious and adamant, even the most intelligent, the most informed, the most thoughtful.
I have experienced the EST training and have recognized that it is capable of changing most anyone’s cultural streams, but usually for only a few days or weeks. Once the participants get back into their old cultural streams, their beliefs revert to their original form.
Perhaps it is too pessimistic to think that only another Great Depression will break the socialists cultural postmodernism. A more optimistic example might by the startup of Christiannity.
winslow, not in any quarrel with what you postulate. My post was a mere “sigh… it has to come to this” kind of thing.
I would prefer if it all could have been skipped because we all would be paying a price, and from the looks of it, it won’t be cheap.
Or another take… I did not escape from behind the Iron Curtain to encounter the same sh1t almost 3 decades later. I had already enough of it in the first 3 decades of my life.
I’ll get five.
Neither
When you’re a dinosar and conditions change, you’re dead. In this case, two sets of DNA meet extinction.
And in their eyes you see nothing, no sign of love behind the tears,
Cried for no one, a love that should have lasted years. (Beatles)
ADE
I predict a serious effort at Stanford in the next few years to shut down the Hoover Institution .
“The problem with political correctness is that it has no internal and logical self-consistency.”
Or as David Horowitz put it about an anti-war rally, “Islamic fundamentalists marched alongside radical lesbians, despite the fact the Islamics would have had the lesbians put to death if their cause triumphed.”
Indeed. You cannot run the equations of modern leftism to find an answer because there ain’t any. Indeed, even the concept of running the equations is frowned upon. “Western man is too obsessed with precision,” as one activist put it. It is not clear if this is a bug or a feature. Do they not have core beliefs because they would prove so clearly contradictory or does the very lack of core beliefs constitute their core beliefs?
I think the model for The Globe and the Unions is Chrysler, where the stakeholder — the UAW — drives the stake into the heart of the bondholders.
So if the NYT can go out and round up some bondholders, and then toss them into the Volcano, ah, things should be OK for a year.
The bondholders should be virgins, by the way.
And naive.
There is no contradiction in power. It’s self justifying and self rationalizing. To obtain, to exercise and to retain becomes its only goal. Everything else is subordinated to it.
That is why we must guard against and resisted in centralization of power. To protect against it one must accept that one will never obtain perfect and therefore there will be inefficiencies, injustices, and inequities. However distasteful such shortcomings maybe, the aggrandizement of power will in the end create even more injustice, inequities, and inefficiencies. Or so four thousand years of human history shows us.
Look, let’s face it. Condi pretty well blew it as SoS. What started out as promise ended up as crapola. Not that any one person could have cleaned up the entire “foggy” mess, but I sure expected more out of her than was delivered.
But to see wizened Rachelle Marshall around Palo Alto these days is to witness at first hand the paradox of Communism. If the form of governance she espouses would ever come to pass then as a non-productive octogenarian she would be one of its first victims, unless of course she were in charge. But to the HuffPo she does have her uses.
I think its ironic that progressives tend to hate and fear “Christian Fundamentalists” so much, since they resemble the caricature of such people so much. To the progressives, Western culture and capitalism are tainted with Original Sin. It is an article of faith. Those who are steeped in the sin must repent or be shown the error of their ways (by force if necessary).
Trying to convince them of the errors in their doctrines by reason and evidence is like trying to convince members of some far out religious sects that the earth is much older than 6000 years. No amount of evidence will suffice.
NYT/Globe vs UNION is simply Red on Red fratricide something blue should protect against but smile widly as it happens to Red.
>big smile 8^))<
I wish someone would try to start up the Non-Profit Workers of America union. Start organizing those ACORN workers. Why shouldn’t those community organizers have better wages, employer provided health care, and benefits?
If nothing else it would be funny to see the reactions of the people who run that organization.
“The problem with political correctness is that it has no internal and logical self-consistency.”
Way back in grad school I had an interesting discussion with a “canonically” politically correct female classmate of mine. We were both teaching assistants at the time and talking shop about teaching when she mentioned having difficulties dealing with men “from cultures where women aren’t respected”. I replied, “Given that all cultures are equal, Kim, I’m surprised to hear you come off so judgmental”. She paused for a second as “TILT” flickered on and off on her forehead, smiled and then gently threw her pen at me.
Tcobb/21
LOL! You are onto something here. We have to learn acceptable/legal methods of subversion.
ACORN does get sued by employees, on wage issues. ACORN itself sues states to get out from under the minimum wage laws. Search [ acorn sued by employees ]
What a sleazy crew. Full-ahead exploitation of everything in sight.
Tcobb,
Unions are notoriously bad employers
LotM, true, but that was not tcobb’s point.
My point was that the tools of progressivism can be used to cut both ways. Many of the “progressives” are like spoiled children; they expect to be able to hit the other kids whenever they feel like but are SHOCKED and OUTRAGED when one of the another children hit them back.
Just imagine what would happen if the employees of ACORN did attempt to “organize” themselves. The people who run the outfit would probably engage in illegal activities (illegal under current labor law) to stop such efforts. And just imagine the employees threatening to go on strike just shortly before an election. The nuts at the top of ACORN would have a fit.
Its just like the proposed card check law, where you don’t have to have an election to be certified as a union. It is my understanding that Nancy Pelosi owns a vineyard and the farm workers there are not unionized. What would happen if someone set up booths nearby and began handing out literature about unionizing to those workers? Would she still be so eager to push such a measure too?
All I’m saying is that protest against “progressive” policies is not enough. There’s some legal jujitsu tactics that can be used against them as well.
RWE:
Similarly, these ‘peace activists’ have no problem with ‘collateral damage’ from Obama’s predator drone attacks in Pakistan, a country with which we are not at war, ‘had nothing to do with 9/11′, blah, blah, blah.
Also similarly, they have no problem with Obama’s and Clinton’s use of rendition, the absence of due process/habeas at Bagram, or the ESCHELON surveillance program when Clinton was in power, etc., etc.
There are simply no contradictions here to them.
The left’s doublethink in action…
Fighting against the death penalty for vicious murderers, whilst fighting for the ability to murder innocent unborn…
Here’s my fifteen points.
1) NYT versus Boston Globe unions. — You support the New York Times. The “little guy”, which in the particular case are the union members, tools used to acquire power. Once you have that power, they’re expendable and can be discarded when they no longer serve your interests.
2) Condoleeze Rice — This is easy. Because Rice served in the Bush administration, she is no longer black or a woman. She is simply the enemy.
It goes beyond lack of consistency; the rules of political correctness are entirely arbitrary. And when political correctness is used as it’s intended, which is to silence the political opponents of the left, this isn’t a weakness but rather its greatest strength. When political correctness tuns on itself, it simply follows the current preferred groups… Women over unions, gays over women, blacks over gays and power over every group (the acquisition and holding of power is a trump card.)
Vinny #29:
Yes, indeed. And some time back we had a discussion here of how Obama’s “Raid Pakistan from Afghanistan” policy sounded awfully like Nixon’s policies of cross border intrusions into Laos and Cambodia – which caused college students to prance in the streets and hurl rocks in the early 70’s.
For that matter how many Vietnam War protestors got upset when we accidently blew up some friendly village in South Vietnam? But hit Haipong, the airport that Jane Fonda used to visit Hanoi, or NVA supply dumps in Laos and Cambodia, and they went intro frenzies of protest.
Ward Churchill took Colorado State to court over his firing–he said it was because of his unpopular political views–and won the suit. He received $1 in damages for his effort.
Anybody willing to start a betting pool on how much Dr Rice might receive for what would be an almost identical claim?
RWE:
Thanks for reminding me about the Soviet-funded ‘peace movement’ reaction to Nixon’s ‘secret war’.
So I guess there’ll be no William Shawcross or Seymour Hersh to rubbish our effort in Afghanistan as long as there is a ‘D’ after the president’s name.
Condi would get about what Oscar Wilde got…sixpence or something.
DoubleplusUNgood.
I have long considered the entire Left to be an outgrowth of it’s spiritual core, Marxism.
Marxism is a cult. A particulary nasty one at that. As usual there is a foundation myth; the inspired leader (Marx) has a vision (no burning bush here, just a bunch of poorly connected ideas mashed together while living off the proceeds of the oppressed mill-workers) some preaching and then a collection of apostles (Lenin, trotsky, Castro, etc) to spread the word to the unwashed masses.
Like most cults this one wants blood and destruction (religions, on the other hand normally want you to find peace and happiness) and demands that people behave in ways that are against their best interests. And, as is usual with most cults, the non-believers usually end up in a pool of their own blood at the foot of a pock-marked wall. Marxism tried that approach several times, hard and fast, but ultimately with little success.
We now face the Alinsky “soft appraoch” , like water eroding a hillside the slow endless carrying off of the soil causes rifts that cut deeply into the structure of society.
As a cult they are exempt from the requirements of rational thought. Any fantasical combinations of incompatible ideas can be brought into harmony by invoking the holy words; “progressive”, “equality”, or “justice” particulary if it serves the interests of the One in power. As the siritual descendant of the the Great Marx the One can decide which of the proles is more equal than the others.
Kool Aid for everyone!!!!
27 tCobb:It is my understanding that Nancy Pelosi owns a vineyard and the farm workers there are not unionized.
This may be true, but you can be certain that there will be some ‘exclusions’ from the card check legislation, after all, farmers need to grow crops for the common good, no? Her vineyards will remain exempt, I’d bet. Maybe a California ‘green’ initiative of some sort could be used as a ruse to justify farm exemptions.
Re: moral integrity
Similar to the Iran-Iraq war comment to the effect that “it is too bad they both can’t lose”. Wonder what happens when GM – 40 percent UAW owned ventures into contract talks with the UAW, or Ford with its competitors.
But in the end it doesn’t matter, as what is defined as PC can be exchanged on a whim for what is racist. See: Dissent is the purest form of patriotism. Until it isn’t. [see:flip-flop]
tom
tCobb:It is my understanding that Nancy Pelosi owns a vineyard and the farm workers there are not unionized.
This may be true, but you can be certain that there will be some ‘exclusions’ from the card check legislation, after all, farmers need to grow crops for the common good, no? Her vineyards will remain exempt, I’d bet. Maybe a California ‘green’ initiative of some sort could be used as a ruse to justify farm exemptions.
I am sorry for being unable to express my point clearly. What I have been trying to say is that there are things that can be done that may be helpful in exposing these people to be the hypocrites that they are, in which case getting them turned out of office and/or diminishing their power could be accelerated. Turn their own tactics against them.
I do not know whether it is true or not, but there is an old anecdote relating to LBJ’s early political career. His opponent at the time was a pig farmer. Supposedly he told an aide to start spreading a rumor that the opponent was in the habit of having carnal knowledge of his livestock. The aide replied that nobody would believe this, to which he replied, “I don’t expect anybody to believe it, I just want to get that SOB on record as DENYING it.”
Its a tactic that was used against Bush for years. It worked. It can work again.
great ‘real’ person of the left John Steinbeck wrote a pro-labor book name of Cannery Row. Interestingly, Pelosi owns an interest in a south Pacific cannery row that is reportedly treating workers pretty badly. In the Marianas, IIRC, tho I could be wrong.
oops –Marianas are ‘central’ i think.
Unions in service of the progressive voice must be kept in line.
Hey, this is ACORN policy. Even if their employees don’t have a union, they are stomped flat when they complain or request raises.
I suspect that the aporiae Wretchard sees in these cases dont’ exist. For them to exist, there would have to be a double-pull in two opposite directions funded by identically the same premise–which would end up being a violation of the logical principle of noncontradiction.
Let’s assume that what drives leftists is the need (1) to attack someone, and (2) to attack by way of finding a rhetorical ground for fingerpointing the perp for being in some way in violation of a leftist “moral” principle.
So what do we have here? NYT and Unions both represent excrescences of leftist thinking. Which to favor? Why the one that is least culpable and therefore least vulnerable to moral skewering. I vote for the Unions. The fundamental gripe for lefties is based on the principle of “relative deprivation.” I.e., whatever you have that I don’t has been taken away from me and is owed me: that’s the meaning of “social justice.” NYT is big boys, Unions are the little people. NYT is guilty.
(2) Rice is black; Rice is a former member of the administration which the lefties have decided stands very high in the scapegoat rankings. Attacking her as a political criminal outweighs the oppobrium which the morally sober and scrupulous lefty will suffer by attacking a black woman. I vote for Rice to be fired.
(There’s always the notion that she is a traitor to her blackness by being associated with GWB: so there it is–her race becomes not a contrary pull in Wretchard’s aporia, but rather conversely a positive asset. So she’s guilty not only of being a Bushie, but also being a Bushie “while being black”) Fire her!
Next lefty aporia, please.
It was “FLAVORADE” People!
NOT Kool-aid!
It’s a Leftie plot to discredit a fine and refreshing, thoroughly nutritious and healthful powdered drink mix!
i’ll be damned if i’m gonna drink any flavorade –THANKS, mad fiddler!
A good example of the Leftist Doublethink is the Leftist acceptance of the overwhelming evidence of evolution yet they also accept ideas like Tabula Rasa, Pacifism, and disarmament. They accept the objective scientific data for human evolution yet deny its implications in order to hold onto the comfortable mumbo-jumbo of Pacifism.
I accept the theory of human evolution and I know for certain that Pacifism is an evil superstition that is disproved by it.
Tcobb @ 21 and 27 suggests several ways the not-so-loyal opposition could launch efforts to cause trouble for Obamites such as Nancy Pelosi and the leaders of ACORN. The Democrats get so much money I can’t imagine some well-funded “foundation” doesn’t have it as its unstated but still well-known task. Now, while I would never give money to the RNC I would cheerfully give money to, say, the effort to unionize ACORN.
We can’t do it ourselves – being productive members of society, we don’t have the time – but we could finance the activities of creative, hard-working and funny people who legally, ethically and above all humorously demonstrate the hypocrisy of every Democrat and Democratic support group they can stick a pin into. If their efforts are funny enough, it couldn’t be kept quiet, especially if their efforts are also videotaped. Can’t keep it on YouTube? Start our own. Yeah, this will take money. Aren’t there any stinking rich people among the not-so-loyal opposition? They can’t have all of them!
(Mr. Bother suggested starting by contacting Iowahawk and Jonah Goldberg.)
I don’t think that there’s really much cognitive dissonance here at all for the committed leftist. The Left has ONLY one goal: destroy capitalism. Everything else – Unions, blacks, women, what have you (individuals! ha! individuals are the most worthless of the lot!) – can all be thrown under the bus if it furthers The Goal. The NYT, as reliable propoganda machine, better furthers the ideal of Collectivism than a mere Union, so the Union has to die. Condie Rice is a living symbol of talent & individual achievement in the service of freedom, democracy, and the free enterprise system, so she has to go. Everything The Left does is to further the death of capitalism. All the rest is dross.
This presumes that the “mind” in question still keeps a privileged place for reality. I fear that these people have grown up so accustomed to conning themselves that they no longer realize that there could be anything beyond the con. They are the narrative, and nothing else. The test of ‘truth’ is whether it is convenient, or comfortable, or what they decided yesterday to embrace. They no longer know truth from falsehood, and they can never be free.
How else to explain their adherence to movements and theories that have proven themselves, over one hundred years, to be as false and as deadly as any lie from the mouth of hell?
This then is what we must fight. We may be forced, sometimes, to use the same skills as they do. We must address them as lawyers addressing a jury that has been kept in ignorance of any facts and denied any chance to take notes, and we must weave a narrative as well as the enemy–but we must labor under the temporary burden that our narrative must be the true one. And we must begin, a step at a time, to hold the attention of this numbed, memory-deprived jury long enough to teach them how to test a theory against the memories that have atrophied for want of use.
It will not be easy. It’s not for nothing that Reagan was called “The Great Communicator.” We have squandered his legacy, and now we pay the price. Worse, posterity will pay the price if we don’t get our act together, and fast.
Ideologues are always confronting such contradictions (or “contradictions”): campaigning in one direction ends up having to shoot some of your own people coming at you from another. That’s the thing about ideology: at once constructive and destructive, i.e., the first by way of the second.