The left continues to eat itself

They have gone so far off the rails that the more they try to do as propaganda, the more they anger themselves and turn against themselves. We all knew this was unsustainable, now that they are starting to turn on themselves, maybe some of them will come over to the side of common sense. The dwarves are going after Snow White now; only in La-La-Left Land.

Bill Maher on woke Snow White

Bill Maher discusses woke Snow White. Via Dave Rubin:

The Democrats' intra-party civil war

Democrats were wrecked in the last election, even though many on the Left don't even recognize that fact yet. Then again, some have:

This is part of the root of why there's an intra-party civil war brewing within the Democratic Party. Self-awareness.

This version of the Democratic Party, which featured the progenitor of wokeism, Obama himself, as the leading presidential campaign trail surrogate for Harris, was thoroughly rejected in November by the American people. It turns out that voters didn't really know what they were signing up for when they embarked on an extended political journey of "hope" and "change." They weren't interested -- and aren't interested -- in legitimizing the juvenile genital mutilation and chemical castration that has been euphemistically sold as "gender-affirming care." They weren't interested -- and aren't interested -- in assenting to wide-scale importation and resettlement of foreigners whose cultures and customs are antithetical to our own.

Some leading Democrats do finally seem to get the memo. Former Clinton strategist James Carville, for instance, has called for Democrats to distance themselves from the excesses of woke civilizational arson. But many others disagree. There is no indication at all, for instance, that the ladies of "The View" have done any introspection: Shortly after November's electoral shellacking, cohost Sunny Hostin attributed Harris' loss to Donald Trump to "racism" and "misogyny." Surveying the left-of-center punditocracy scene, it often seems that there are far more Hostin-like voices of escalation than there are Carville-like voices of sobriety.

The battle for the heart of the Democrat party is not going to be a minor skirmish. a lot of the radicalism is now embedded in the party:

In order to recover their standing and regain lasting relevance as an electorally feasible national political party, Democrats are going to have to repudiate the entirety of their post-2008/post-Obama cultural legacy. That is the simple truth. The American people want a stable pocketbook, a stable border and a stable world stage. They're not interested in the Obama-Biden-Harris Democratic Party's idiosyncratic conception of waging a culture war.

Are Democrats up to such a challenge? The intraparty civil war is on -- but I certainly have my doubts. Unless and until they do repudiate their cultural militance, however, Democrats will continue to flounder about in irrelevance. Perhaps they'll need to get their clocks cleaned at the ballot box a few more times. That wouldn't be the worst thing.

While the civil war on the left is good news for conservatives, it does come with it's own set of risks. For example, Gavin Newsom has moved from a woke governor to suddenly rejecting wokeism in favor of a more centrist approach. Here's the problem, those who supposedly want to move back to the center were fully on board with the insanity just a few months ago. They are either being disingenuous now, or they were being disingenuous them then.  Either way they are merely opportunists and clearly not interested in, or respectful of, voters. These people are at this point, more dangerous than the woke  far left, who have no clue how out of touch they have become. They have destined themselves to a rump afterthought for at least a long time to come.

Woke is boring

It's hard to disagree with most of this assessment, your woke story is applicable pretty much just to you. Sorry, not sorry.

Be anti-woke

 A good argument to be anti-woke.

Watching someone waking up for real, is satisfying

Department of Defense might have PTSD after this

The DoD posted this for PTSD awareness month, they may end up with PTSD after their stupid mistake (more below).

The internet is FOREVER. pic.twitter.com/ZNGU8dMEpk

— Sandy 〽️ (@RightGlockMom) June 1, 2024

Those with PTSD who have served their country deserve more respect.  How does the DoD screw up so badly? It's a lack of focus, pure and simple. It's not only disrespectful, it's disgusting.  This is just one more reason why the country needs to get this 2024 election right.  Not only must Trump retake the White House, the country needs a Republican majority in Congress (both the house and senate).  Not just a slight majority, a significant and substantial majority is needed.  

It's the only way the country gets fixed.  The beaurocracy needs to be gutted of the rot and set anew with a focus on serving the people of the nation. Not the 1%, the 99%. That is only achievable with enough of a Republican majority that the RINOs no longer matter.

Woke Hollywood is dying

Nerdrotic nails this analysis, although I would add one additional point: inflation is killing consumers across the board and that hurts all industries, including Hollywood.

Kudos to Jerry Seinfeld for being one of those calling it out. I just watched his Netflix movie Unfrosted. It was not a must see movie, but it was entertaining and fun; exactly the sort of of thing Hollywood should be aiming to do.

This man must be Canada's next prime minister

He just keeps crushing it as they say, this time defining woke. Pierre Poilievre is what Canada needs.

  

Comedy Gold with Jordan Peterson

A few months ago I discovered the sharp and unique humor of Matt Rife.    He recently offended some woke people and his response to their cancel attempt was amazing. It was comedy gold to be honest.  He recently sat down with Jordan Peterson for an interview/chat that lasted well over an hour.  It's totally worth sharing here.

Rules for Radicals hitting Disney now

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

~Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

Disney is being cancelled by the right, using a tactic similar to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals rule about isolating a target. That's what happened to Bud Light.  That's what happened to Target.  Next in line, it appears is Disney, as they were one of many companies claiming they did not want to advertise on Twitter / X.  Elon Musk told them where to go with their advertising boycott.  But to be honest, the Disney debacle preceded the Twitter kerfuffle. 

This is what happens when the mainstream of America, not the mainstream media, actually don't put up with woke extremism. 

So...Ireland's a problem for the woke now

Ireland it seems has drifted more towards grassroots populism than in past.  Well, that is, except for its disgraceful politicians.

I'm not sad about this

The Hollywood writers strike continues.  I'm not sad.

The woke matrix deconstructed brilliantly: MUST SEE!

In one brilliant lecture by Michael Shellenberger, all the woke B.S. gets wrecked. It's brilliant:

Busy day for SCOTUS

The Supreme Court today sided with the first amendment over the woke agenda, in the second win in a row for common sense. 

It's all cyclical, even these levels of stupidity

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 3a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 7a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

I've always argued that everything is cyclical.  Weakness follows strength, strength follows weakness. Recession follows prosperity, and prosperity follows recession. Summer follows spring, which follows winter, which follows fall and in turn it follows summer.  Warming follows cooling and vice versa.

That thought is both disheartening and inspiring depending on where in the cycle you might be. After all, cycles often take longer than a lifetime to complete. But right now it is an encouraging thought.  We may be at the very early stages of the rebirth of rational thought, at the end of an extended era of wokeness and emotion trumping common sense. The issues with Target and Bud Light may mark the turning point.

Of course that could just be a false hope. It's possible that the radical left are just retrenching for another 'final' assault on liberty and sanity. Maybe the stupid cycle isn't over just yet. Yet even if that is the case, even if the United States were to eventually fail, the ideas, the ideals will not expire, nor can they be extinguished. Someday were the United States to fail, a rebirth would be inevitable.  That is a reason for hope.

Of course, we'd all like to see it in our lifetimes, but that is not for us to decide.  All we can do is our own little part, as best we can, to make the attempt to help along the entire Western world in the return to common sense.

The root cause of woke capitalism

Going back to the Bud Light issue I discussed earlier today, I want to make a point about the root cause of woke corporate culture.  Companies didn't decide all at once to abandon reason for becoming woke.  And it isn't simply a matter of responding to a Facebook/Twitter bubble culture (of years gone by in the case of Twitter, but on-going on other social media platforms).  Nor is it the bureaucratic growth of self-important HR (Human Resources) departments that spew this corporate social responsibility garbage, as some suggest.  HR departments are a symptom not a cause of the problem. What then is the root cause?

Let's work backwards through the chain.  Companies, as more conventional, conservative executives and management age out, need to replace their leadership with newer, younger talent.  That is done through a process of hiring in which Anheuser-Busch's recently taken leave VP of Marketing serves as a prime example.  Companies look to the educational system to find what they consider to be the elite of the educated wherever possible (i.e. if they can afford it).  What they consider elite are institutions are Ivy League schools typically.  But even beyond those Ivy League schools, colleges and universities in general were always left-leaning and the tilt has grown ever-sharper over the decades.  They are incubators of socialist NPCs/drones/non-thinkers.  They have, over many decades, rooted out critical thinking and replaced it with dogma.  

Because these institutions have always had a liberal bias they are predisposed towards furthering that bias. How they got that way to begin with is for another time, but the phrase "those who can do, those who can't teach" is not out of place in the discussion.  The disaffected and unsuccessful end up in education. While that is not to say they are the entire population of educators but rather those who can be successful in teaching but have proven unsuccessful elsewhere end up teaching their blame-others dislike for capitalism to students who have not yet (fully) developed the ability to do some critical thinking. Woke universities are incubators for a woke populous, including its leaders.  And of course it has trickled all the way down to grade school educators and school boards.

But even woke education is not the root cause.  Woke education is fuelled by money that allows it to continue to exist. The money comes from two sources; enrolment and donations from those who can afford it.  Donors are coming from an increasingly insular leftist-thought-bubble elite who have the money to influence thinking, and from government funding.

The root cause for woke capitalism to continue is of course, money.   It may have not been the initial seed, which was socialist and communist idealism among a few, but they were a few who understood how to make their ideas take root.  Once it has done so the growth of woke into corporate culture was, eventually, inevitable once the critical mass was attained.  There's a reason that the likes of Soros have moved on from funding ANTIFA and professional protesters to District Attorneys because they have consolidated their gains and are moving onto the next battlefield.  As conservatives we have been playing defense since the 1960s and have not moved beyond that mindset.

But while we will always have to play defense, we also now need to mount an aggressive offense.  We cannot change Harvard overnight but education is where we need to start and marshall our resources. And Harvard is not the place to do it, it's too far gone.  We need to work with the same organic growth strategy as the left has done.  The difference is we need to do it with parallel institutions.  Public education is bad. It's really bad.  We don't need to try to fix it, where that is not possible.  Instead we need to replace them with our own alternatives from pre-school right through higher education.  That is playing offence.  Boycotting Bud Light is playing defense, but any successful team HAS to do both effectively.

Woke Latino racists versus truth and logic

In this reaction video, HistoryLegends points out what we are dealing with intellectually when we are talking about woke racism. The reactor has a wonderful knowledge of history and his smart interpretive look at the potential reasons for some of the DNA infusion results, using logic and his knowledge of history (and DNA tests for that matter).

Is ChatGPT woke?

ChatGPT is a model-based chatbot cum search engine that does a remarkable job of mimicking human style communication in answering questions posed to it.  Here's the link if you haven't seen it yet. If fed properly posed questions it can provide remarkably well made answers.  Whether ChatGPT and AI (artificial intelligence) are a good idea for humanity is a broader debate, for another time.  There are some specific problems with how the model has been trained and I'll point out one example below regarding climate change.  It appears that the model (or engine or ChatGPT) is woke, at least on this subject.

This, by the way, is not ground-breaking.  Others like Ben Shapiro have already tested it's wokeness on issues and come away at least concerned about it. 

Of course the model is not the issue.  It learns it's responses from the data made available to it.  Garbage in - garbage out.  That's not to say everything it was fed was garbage, but enough of it, on certain subjects, clearly was garbage.  Observe my 'conversation':

Me

Write an article explaining why global warming is not a man-made phenomenon using specific scientific facts.

ChatGPT

 It is a widely accepted scientific fact that the Earth's climate is warming, and that human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is a major contributor to this warming. However, some argue that global warming is not a man-made phenomenon and that natural factors, such as solar radiation and volcanic activity, play a larger role in the Earth's climate.

One argument is that variations in solar radiation, such as changes in the sun's output of energy, have a greater impact on the Earth's climate than human activity. However, studies have shown that while the sun's radiation does play a role in the Earth's climate, the warming observed in recent decades cannot be explained solely by changes in solar radiation.

Another argument is that volcanic activity is a significant contributor to global warming. Volcanoes release large amounts of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere. However, the amount of greenhouse gases released by volcanoes is significantly less than the amount released by human activity. Additionally, volcanic activity has been shown to have a cooling effect on the Earth's climate in the short term, due to the release of aerosols that reflect sunlight back into space.

It is also true that the Earth's climate has undergone significant changes in the past, long before human activity became a significant factor. However, the rate of warming in recent decades is much faster than any observed in the past, and the overwhelming majority of scientists agree that human activity is the primary cause of this accelerated warming.

In conclusion, while natural factors such as solar radiation and volcanic activity do play a role in the Earth's climate, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is the primary cause of global warming. It is important to note that scientific facts are supported by scientific evidence and research, and that global warming is a complex issue with various factors influencing it.

Me

Make a counter-argument to your article.

ChatGPT

One counter-argument to the idea that human activity is the primary cause of global warming is that the Earth's climate is constantly changing and that the current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle. Proponents of this viewpoint argue that the Earth has gone through periods of warming and cooling in the past and that the current warming trend is not unusual or unprecedented. They may also point to the fact that the Earth's temperature has been relatively stable for the last 9000 years and that the current warming trend is not as severe as some of the warming trends that occurred in the past.

Another counter-argument is that the models used to predict future warming are not reliable and that the warming may not be as severe as projected. Some argue that the models used to predict future warming are based on a limited amount of data and are not accurate enough to make definitive predictions about the future climate. They may also argue that the models do not take into account all of the natural factors that influence the Earth's climate, such as changes in solar radiation and volcanic activity.

Additionally, some argue that even if human activity is contributing to global warming, the potential negative impacts of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as economic downturns, would outweigh the potential benefits. They may argue that alternative solutions, such as adaptation or geoengineering, should be pursued instead of reducing emissions.

It is important to note that while these counter-arguments do present valid points, the scientific consensus is that human activity is the primary cause of global warming and that immediate action is needed to reduce emissions and mitigate the potential negative impacts of climate change. It is also important to consider that scientific research and facts are constantly evolving and that there are different perspectives on the issue of global warming.

[Emphasis added]

Two tries and ChatGPT tried to steer me towards global warming being a real threat; despite my ask to counter-argue it.

This does not represent a robust line of questioning, and ChatGPT does make errors and recognizes them when you point it out to it's credit (I have witnessed it in an unrelated sports chat I had).  Here's the general issue I have with the woke climate change answers as a specific issue and as a broader generalization.  People will come to ChatGPT for answers, perhaps eventually in greater numbers than Google as a search engine. But they will be unaware of potential garbage-in garbage-out issues and take ChatGPT answers as gospel truth.  This will result in a reinforcing of woke culture, just as woke culture is being pushed back for the first time.

More broadly, existing biases and misinformation will become the new common sense or the "new normal" view with an over-reliance on the tool.  Think Wikipedia issues, but on a much bigger scale.

This is not to say that I am at odds with models and improving what AI can do. I believe that improving predictive modeling, even what has been done with ChatGPT can be very useful. However, it must be done extremely diligently with a lot of forethought.  I have built statistical models during my career. When done properly, it is extremely time consuming to ensure the right data is included to avoid biases, the right type of model is used, the model must be thoroughly tested etc.  There is a lot of work involved. Every model I built required a very large amount of documentation, so it could be reviewed the in future for accuracy and robustness.

ChatGPT is not woke.  It's a model built on web data up to 2021.  If 90% of the web says global warming is real, then ChatGPT will provide answers based on that set of inputs. It is not really artificial intelligence, and neither are any models. They are statistical predictive tools at this point, nothing more.  They will likely advance beyond that at some point, but we are nowhere near that point now.  The real danger is that people may believe we are, and accept erroneous or dubious outputs from the tool as gospel truth, and make decisions accordingly.

Starting 2023 with some highbrow conservatism

Starting 2023 with some wise words from a wise man, F. A. Hayek: