Rhetoric

Seth Barrett Tillman: The Casual Bigotry of Xeni Jardin and Jardin’s Many Followers

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Excerpt:

Sadly, Isis kills lots of people. Some Muslim, some non-Muslim. Did Jardin mean that if Isis murdered only atheists, Yazidi, Christians, etc, then all would be well, and that Isis would not be a group of “psychopaths”? Why did Jardin focus on Isis’ Muslim-on-Muslim killings, except to dehumanize the non-Muslim victims, and to teach that authentic Islam (as Jardin understands Islam) specifically prohibits Muslim-on-Muslim murder, rather than precluding murder generally?
 
Jardin is not teaching tolerance and respect. Jardin is teaching tribalism and the soft bigotry of low expectations. Her world view is a newly invented faux-orientalism: a Westerner’s politically correct view of non-Westerners.
 
Those who have given Jardin’s post a “like,” those who have become her Twitter “followers,” are not part of the solution—they are part of the problem. A big part.

Read the whole thing.

Seth Barrett Tillman: Alexander Hamilton on Brexit

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Who said this?

The battle over Britain’s national existence and parliamentary independence is a battle which will be fought through to the bitter end, however long it lasts. It is a battle in which no quarter will be asked and none will be given. It is a battle in the course of which all other political lines and links will continue to be overrun and broken, as it surges one way or the other. It is a battle in which the bitterest foes of the past will stand together and the closest of old alliances be destroyed. I say these things in no spirit of bravado. They are cold and sober deductions from fact, the fact that the fight is about the continued existence of the nation itself, an issue to which by definition all other political issues and causes whatsoever must be subordinated, as to the greater which subsumes the less.

See Seth’s post for the answer.

The ISIS Ramadan Massacre in Orlando

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It’s interesting watching the Main Stream and alternate media “world view bubbles” vie for the narrative following the ISIS Ramadan Massacre at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. The Drudge Report, likely due to Drudge’s ties with the LGBT community in Florida, the UK Media, and blogs like THE LAST REFUGE (AKA The Conservative Treehouse), GATEWAYPUNDIT, AND DAILYPUNDIT drove American television media coverage in a way that effectively removed two days of official denial of Muslim terrorism in the previous San Bernadino ISIS attack time line. During this “vying for narrative” the Institutional Media and Official Government mask slipped and showed that this election is no longer about merely who will be President, but whether American political freedom will survive.

These are the facts of the ISIS Ramadan Massacre in Orlando, as best I can gather.

THE FACTS OF THE ISIS RAMADAN MASSACRE
We know now from the 911 and a Bright House cable News 13 in Orlando call audio that some time before his 2:00 AM Sunday morning attack, OMAR MIR SEDDIQUE MATEEN announced he was pledging his allegiance to ISIS for the atrocity he was going to commit. Some time later (hours?!?) MATEEN began shooting his way past the police officer hired by Pulse Nightclub to guard the entrance to the club. This officer and two more who “rode to the sound of the gunfire” engaged MATEEN and were driven away by MATEEN’s superior weaponry, an AR-15 with “high capacity magazines” and apparently MATEEN’s superior marksmanship (more on this below).

You cannot tell with media and police sources this early, but this implies that MATEEN’s magazines were something more than the US Army standard 20 and 30-round box clips. Aftermarket AR-15 large capacity clips and drums can be had with up to 100 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition. MATEEN’s ability to drive away three trained police officers, two of which arrived in a squad car that very likely had an AR-15 in the trunk, per mass shooter protocols, argues MATEEN ran the three police first responders out of ammunition.

MATEEN then proceeded to kill 50 and wound 53 more people inside the crowded venue, and then, finally, to take hostages. It was unclear if the three police officers above engaged MATEEN inside PULSE or not. It is clear they were driven out of the Pulse, leaving those inside the venue to MATEEN’s mercy.

And MATEEN had none.

Read more

“Return of the Letter to a Young Social Justice Warrior”

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Tillman on Lamya H: “Your complaint is that your psychology professor was too—fat? I am so sorry. I can see that that would ruin your freshman experience. You were expecting? Luke Skywalker during his youth? Princess Leia Organa during her Jabba the Hutt years?”

From: Seth Barrett Tillman, Return of the Letter to a Young Social Justice Warrior—responding to Lamya H.’s: A personal history of Islamophobia in America, Vox (January 15, 2016), http://ssrn.com/abstract=2719141.

(Related post: “Dear Young Social Justice Warrior”.)

Open Letter

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Tony Parker, Treasurer–RNC

Reince Priebus, Chairman–RNC

Gentlemen,

I recently received a letter from Tony Parker which is excerpted below:

Chairman Priebus has written to you several times this year asking you to renew your Republican National Committee membership for 2012  As the Treasurer of the RNC, I’m concerned that we haven’t heard back from you…I know other things come up, and perhaps you’ve just been delayed in renewing your membership.  If that’s the case I understand….I hope you haven’t deserted our Party.

Oh, no, Tony, I haven’t forgotten.  I’ve made substantial political contributions in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.  But at present, I believe the highest leverage can be obtained by contributing directly to campaigns I like, rather than to the RNC or the various umbrella campaign organizations.

For one thing, I’m not very impressed with the way the Republican leadership has chosen to conduct itself, which seems more oriented toward ensuring long-term employment (followed by comfortable retirement) for members of the Republican side of the political class, than it does with pursuing the needed political change.  But in addition,  I am extremely unimpressed by your political marketing skills, particularly those having to do with the ever-more-critical Internet arena.

Please review my post at the Chicago Boyz blog, for some thoughts on this:

Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is…do you, Mr Priebus?

You are failing at social media, not using it effectively either offensively or defensively.  For example, this morning the following image was being circulated on Facebook:

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Note the assertion that the problems with medical services for veterans are to be laid at the door of the Republican Party.  A competent political marketing organization would monitor for things like this and make a hard-hitting response post available for sharing immediately.  You don’t seem to be able to do this, or even to see the need for it.

You’re not very good at traditional direct-mail marketing, either.  Most of the very high volume of mail I get from you is so bad it’s embarrassing.  Your DM people seem to think that we are living in the ’50s….not the real ’50s, but some highly stereotypical version thereof:

“Maw!  Maw!  We got us a letter from these political people up in Washington DC…and it must be REAL important!  It has this really long number on it, and it says we HAVE to answer it!”

Most people who have enough money to make significant political contributions have at least some degree of astuteness, and are not likely to respond well to this sort of thing.

The verbal communication of the senior Republican leadership is also generally pretty terrible.  There is too much talking like a Martian, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out:

When the government was shut down during the Clinton administration, Republican leaders who went on television to tell their side of the story talked about “OMB numbers” versus “CBO numbers” — as if most people beyond the Beltway knew what these abbreviations meant or why the statistics in question were relevant to the shutdown. Why talk to them in Beltway-speak? 

As Sowell also said:

You might think that the stakes are high enough for Republicans to put in some serious time trying to clarify their message. As the great economist Alfred Marshall once said, facts do not speak for themselves. If we are waiting for the Republicans to do the speaking, the country is in big trouble. 

Democrats, by contrast, are all talk. They could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.

You…the institutional Republican party…are doing a very poor job at selling and marketing.  The consequences for this country and the world of your failure are likely to be very severe.  I hope that you will solve the problem before it is too late, but history does not lead me to be very optimistic on this front.  Unless and until I see serious evidence of change and improvement, I will be directing my political contributions to individual candidates who appear to “get it,” rather than to the RNC or to the various Republican umbrella campaign organizations.

Regards

David Foster

via: paper mail and electronic mail; posted at the Chicago Boyz blog and the Ricochet blog