Robin DiAngelo's book would best be entitled, "How to Pander Your Way to Relevance."

Interesting thing about this concept of "white fragility." Whites, as far as I know, aren't demanding safe spaces just for them. There's no white student government and any attempts to make one immediately gets you branded as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Whites aren't complaining about non-whites who wear clothing or hairstyles that originated in Europe or the U.S., performing country music, using the internet, computers, cell phones, or other technology invented by whites.

Yet, somehow, it's white people who are the fragile ones.

By the way, you should check out the reviews of DiAngelo's book on Amazon. Any criticism by a white person is immediately deemed as an example of white fragility.

On the subject of "white fragility," here is black Conservative and Trump supporter Joel Patrick appearing on Akron University, with Kaitlin Bennett, a commentator on InfoWars, which was founded in 1999 by (trigger warning, Crid) Alex Jones. Kaitlin, of course, was immediately acquired by InfoWars after the intellectual rigour she demonstrated by striking a seductive pose with an assault rifle at Kent University, her alma mater.

What I find particularly interesting is that beginning at 6:30 in this video, a young black woman confronts Joel Patrick, claiming that she has been stopped with her mother in public by people who called her names. And for this, so she says, she's been completely demoralized unwilling to try to succeed because she feels "unwanted."

Of course, her supposed defeatism is somewhat undercut by the fact that she's presumably a student at Akron.

Yet, she claims wounded feelings and a sense of futility because a few intellectual bankrupts in her town called her names. But white people are the fragile ones.

Joel Patrick with Kaitlin Bennett.

I think that, for many of my fellow liberals — those on/near the far left — they get a bigger orgasm from calling someone a “Racist!” than they do from sex.

There are white people with a black spouse who, being republicans, are still called racist. It is totally forgotten that Republicans freed the slaves and dems instituted Jim Crow laws. Being labeled racist is a categorical claim that one gets simply for being white just like for Jews. A white person can never prove they are not racist and no amount of self-abnegation will ever be enough. Conversely, blacks hating on Korean grocers or on whites is never deemed racist.

JD, since most of them into the social justice movement in hopes of getting pity sex from feminist women, that's probably the only way they'll get orgasms.

...claiming that she has been stopped with her mother in public by people who called her names. And for this, so she says, she's been completely demoralized unwilling to try to succeed because she feels "unwanted."

Um. I'm gonna call shenanigans on that.

I think she was willing to try before that and being insulted is just an excuse. I was a short, skinny, socially-awkward kid with glasses in school. As such, I got called my fair share of names. Suck it up, buttercup.

A person unwilling to try can always find a reason not to. As Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts once put it:

I might sympathize if I had seen him turned away from school or turned down for a job because of his skin color. Truth is, getting an education and doing honest work never seem to occur to him.

Maybe you think that means the white man is keeping him down. Me, I think it means he has saved the white man the trouble.

Everybody should have a white man. Even white men should have a white man. Because when you have a white man, nothing is ever your fault. You’re never required to account for your own failings or take the reins of your own destiny. The boss says, “Why haven’t you finished those reports, Bob?" and you say, "Because of the white man, sir."

Conan, that reminds me of what I said in this 2010 thread on pot legalization.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/04/three-reasons-p.html

Excerpt:

I agree with those who say that even if it is made legal, it's still pretty bad for teens; old people, with their aches, pains, and sad memories are the ones who need it most.

But to those who say "my kid was a straight-A student before becoming addicted to pot" I'd say: Never underestimate the secret desire of a teen to escape responsibility or not to grow up in general. There are, after all, kids who ruin their grades and prospects with nothing more than too much skateboarding and screen time - because they WANT to. I.e., pot is the symptom more than the cause.

And, from Barbara Ehrenreich's "Drug Frenzy" essay from her collection of essays from the 1980s: "The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed":

"Alcohol is the drug that undid my parents. When my own children reached the age of exploration, I said all the usual things - like 'No.' I further told them that reality, if carefully attended to, is more exotic than its chemically induced variations. But I also said that, if they still felt they had to get involved with a drug, I'd rather it were pot than Bud."...

Personally, I believe in letting kids sip wine at dinner with their parents, if only so as to take away the "forbidden fruit" allure. (Not sure if letting kids have beer with their pizza with their parents would be OK too, for certain reasons.) However, I understand if Ehrenreich would feel uncomfortable with that.
___________________________________

I would also argue - and Ehrenreich just might agree - that the American addiction to hedonism and passive entertainment is just as much of a problem as any type of bad politics. We just don't take pride in prioritizing useful activities above useless activities any more - and parents, especially, aggravate the problem, since they're typically sheeple when it comes to kids who scream bloody murder whenever the screens are turned off.

(My best friend - a teacher, mind you! - doesn't seem to have any backbone to limit HER three sons' screen addiction. However, they do seem to have a fondness for reading, and she wrote to thank me profusely, sometime during this quarantine, to thank me for the 200 books or so that I've given them over the last 14 years.)

I'm worried about a big new wave of anti-semitism. Not just from the arabs in the Paris ghettos, either.

I don't know, maybe I am crazy. Maybe the Jewish posters on this board will think I am nuts.

But with all the anger at the rich and the historical blaming of the Jews for controlling everything, I see the potential for things to go very badly.

I've known a few addicts in my life and they all seem to have one quirk in common. Addiction allows addicts to build their own little world a live in it - a world in which they are the hero, the funny one, the misunderstood soul. All without any effort or self-discovery on their part.

An unfunny addict convinces himself that his humor is too sophisticated for most people to understand and that's why people find him obnoxious. An addicted artist convinces himself that he's pushing the bounds of art and presenting uncomfortable truths; and that's why his art isn't selling.

In a way, addiction = narcissism on steroids.

But with all the anger at the rich and the historical blaming of the Jews for controlling everything, I see the potential for things to go very badly. ~ NicoleK at June 14, 2020 9:58 AM

In Weimar Germany, the National Socialists started out blaming the capitalists for the "stab in the back" after World War I. Gradually, the capitalists became the Jews. Then came the Holocaust.

Likewise, "blame the rich" in the US and Europe is morphing into "blame the Jews."

So I'm not the only one.

Almost all my Jewish friends are supporting the looting and smashing, though, so I am wondering if I am missing something.

Conan: I was a short, skinny, socially-awkward kid with glasses in school. As such, I got called my fair share of names. Suck it up, buttercup.

I personally want to throw my head back and guffaw at those who feel they have a license to fail because they were called names. That's not directed at you, Conan, but at the female college student in the video, whom, I am almost certain, is hyperbolizing her experience.

When I was in school, I wish all they did was call me names. Not that sharing my experiences with these students would be availing. They would almost certainly insist that I was lying and dismiss me as "living in the past."

Then as now, I was an electrically attractive specimen. I was welcomed, admired and flattered by every new circle in childhood, adolescence, and then on into adulthood.

It's always a surprise to know that not everyone felt this blessing.

Almost all my Jewish friends are supporting the looting and smashing, though, so I am wondering if I am missing something.

That there are Jews who will sell out others? even their fellow Jews? yes, they've been around for a long time. Lenin and Stalin depended on them to inform upon their more religious brethren to the Cheka/NKVD to be rounded up.

They were the "useful idiots" since informing on others didn't protect them from being sent to the gulags, much to their dismay.

Almost all my Jewish friends are supporting the looting and smashing, though, so I am wondering if I am missing something.

NicoleK at June 14, 2020 10:17 AM

Some people are absolutely incapable of learning vicariously. Their naïveté is oozing out of every pore.

They want to see righteous anger, And directed mayhem.
What they will get, if they are unlucky enough to actually encounter it, is a trashed house, in a city where no one wants to live anymore.
The mob is never selective.

Also-- A couple of months ago, a passing topic here was illnesses suffered by Jews, and Rex Little suggested I was thinking of Tay-Sachs. I said that wasn't the one… But Rex probably thought I was being churlish and disagreeable.

Well, golly… As anyone who reads these comments must certainly know, that could never be the case!

Anyway, I found the passage again. Listen to this podcast beginning at 1:47:55 for ten minutes—

"There's like four Ashkenazi disease that can cause extra growth of dendrites or axons, and there aren't any others known!"

Also, the irony discussed by Nicole at 10:17 AM is discussed in that passage, and probably elsewhere. It's a good if long podcast. Cochran is a very bright guy.

Patty. Kitten. Honey. This is the autism thing again, okay?

> by (trigger warning, Crid) Alex Jones.

I'd never heard of this guy before you mentioned him, and still care not at all. That you remain so boner-horny, after many years, to affix some correlation in your mind between his life to mine is mental illness, not gossip.

Meanwhile....

Finally! Thank you, Crid. I was afraid you missed it, and that I would have get embarrassingly obvious about it and start creating separate posts for my barbs at you.

"Then as now, I was an electrically attractive specimen. I was welcomed, admired and flattered by every new circle in childhood, adolescence, and then on into adulthood.

It's always a surprise to know that not everyone felt this blessing.

Heh. That is SO much fun to, er, hear. I'm glad you let Peaksville join the rest of us at some time!

"I'm glad you let Peaksville join the rest of us at some time"

?

Twilight Zone, Raddy?