Spanish life is not always likeable but it is
compellingly loveable.
-
Christopher
Howse: A
Pilgrim in Spain.
Spain
- Is the end in sight for one of Oviedo's famous brass street statues?
Portugal
- Given that the Portuguese politely respect garage entrances, I wonder if they'd also allow me to complete a 3-point turn outside my house. Unlike most of my Spanish neighbours . . .
The USA/UK
- Modern statemanship??? Britain risks being sent to the back of the queue for a trade deal with the US, according to sources close to Donald Trump. These claim he is still furious with the way he has been treated by the British government. A source told The Sunday Times: “His position is that if Britain not interested in me, I am not interested in them.”
The World
- If you have shares, you might find this article more than a tad worrying. Likewise even if you're not a shareholder.
Nutters Corner
- Proving (yet again) that intelligence is no barrier to religious nuttiness, A Texas state judge has recused himself from a court case after he interfered with deliberations to give the jurors a message: God had told him that the defendant, a woman accused of trafficking her niece for sexual favors, was innocent.
Social Media
- Technology creates possibilities to connect with others but also highlights failure to do so. That may make things worse, not better. An empty inbox is somehow more daunting than an empty mailbox; a Facebook post with no “likes” seems to signpost isolated unlikeability. As the author Adam Alter pointed out last year in his gripping book 'Irresistible', "Social media is designed to drip-feed us hits of the potent brain chemical dopamine. We yearn for connection and approbation in electronic form. In its absence, we wither". In brief, an addiction to social media can make you feel even lonelier.
Galicia
- Yesterday's shock news was that Christopher Columbus (Crístobel Colón) might not have been born here in my barrio of Poio but in - of all places - neighbouring Portugal. A theory first advanced in 2012 has it that he was one Pedro Ataíde, who changed his name because his own was dangerous. All depends on whether the bones of Ataíde's cousin can provide sufficient DNA to allow it to be compared with that of Columbus's son. I will advise . . .
- DNA testing is imminent on a wider scale here in Pontevedra. The council is going to test canine doo-doo left in the streets and then charge their owners for the cost of it. On top of a huge fine, I suspect. Such opportunities are not to be lost.
Pontevedra
- I was taken back years yesterday, to the time I used to take my tiffin in a bar frequented by a group of elderly ladies who all talked at the same time. More often shouted. This time it wasl on the terrace of my current regular bar. As before, there was one matron who dominated the discourse, talking over her colleagues. I moved.
Finally
- Surely someone could have schooled Jonathan Dimbleby on how to correctly pronounce El Circulo de Bellas Artes at the start of the BBC program last night. Also Ciudadanos, from which he completely missed a syllable. But it was fun listening him trying – initially at least - to stem the normal Spanish practice of everyone speaking at the same time. Needless to say, the most impressive speaker was the only non-politician. As it says in the article: Ana Romero provided a voice of reason with the wish that politicians would “stop quoting election numbers at each other and just get on and find a solution.”
- Rather more importantly . . . The author of the provocative article below asks:- Do you believe in truth, facts, human nature, reason, logic, equality of opportunity, natural justice, tradition, custom, and liberty? Or are you an SJW? I didn't know but this turns out to mean a social justice warrior. Much as the former camp sounds rather more appealing, I've always seen myself as a little left-of-centre and so am now having to ponder my own point on Delingpole's spectrum. For now, though, I can admit I'm happy that both my daughters are older than 35 and, therefore, not part of the SJW generation. On the other hand, my ex-stepson very much is, and I've grown tired of (Delingpole again) the cant, self-righteousness, and stupidity of the regressive left which he regularly displays. The sort of thing addressed in the podcast I cited the other day on cultural marxism in US universities. To be frank, the worst aspect of it is the arrogance displayed towards anyone who disagrees with the SJW view, especially those of an older generation. Dialogue there ain't. Sometimes I find myself wondering if we need a war to change perspectives and priorities . . . And bring down ludicrous share prices.
Today's Cartoon
 |
| "It wasn't totally unconditional. Hitler paid for the sandwiches". |
THE ARTICLE
Note: This article was
cited to me by reader Perry, who (I suspect) would be only too
pleased to agree that he's a member of the Right. Though not
necessarily as far right as Bannon or Trump.
Jordan Peterson v Cathy
Newman – Best SJW Takedown Evah!: James Delingpole
If you haven’t
already, you absolutely must watch the encounter between SJW media maven Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News and free-speech-defendingCanadian academic Jordan Peterson.
“I don’t think I
have ever witnessed an interview that is more catastrophic for the
interviewer,” says Douglas Murray.
He’s right.
If you loathe the cant,
self-righteousness, and stupidity of the regressive left, then you’ll
love this train wreck of an interview. It’s the most satisfying
piece of poetic justice since the Comet came unstuck in that
tunnel in Atlas Shrugged.
Newman set out to
ensnare and destroy someone whose politics she found objectionable —
but ended up being hoist by her own petard.
But this interview, I
believe, is much more than just a conservative “lol and share”
moment. I think it marks a pivotal victory in the culture wars —
an incident in which the weaknesses of the regressive left have never
been more cruelly or damningly exposed. So I want to examine in
more detail why.
It matters not so much
because of who Cathy Newman is — after all, barely anyone watches
Channel 4 News — but what she represents.
Educated at one of
Britain’s leading private schools, with a first class degree in
English from Oxford University, Newman is the embodiment of the woke
millennial generation: white children of privilege on a mission to
remake the world anew according to the principles of the thing they
call “Social Justice.”
Newman was unlucky. Had
she been born a generation early, she might well have gone on to do
something useful with that fine mind, Oxbridge education, and
undoubted tenacity. Perhaps, as she’d originally planned, she might
have become a professional musician or a lawyer. Perhaps, she would
have become a fearless and compelling foreign correspondent, in the
manner of her role model, the BBC’s Kate Adie.
Instead, like so many
of the university-educated elite of her generation, she embraced the
fashionable politically correct, post-modernist view of the world.
This view would have us believe that there is no such thing as
objective truth — only a succession of competing “narratives,”
some more “privileged” than others.
Self-evidently this is
nonsense. Dozens of philosophers far cleverer than Newman and
her ilk have established through logic that beyond all doubt
that there is such a thing as truth.
But such post-modernist
thinking has, for decades now, been the dominant mode at our
university campuses — especially in courses like Gender Studies.
This is why so many of the idiocies that traditionalists find
so objectionable about the modern world — safe spaces, trigger
warnings, no-platforming, etc — tend to originate from colleges.
Often, the more intellectually rarified the colleges are — see the
Ivy League in the U.S.; Oxbridge in the UK — the
more virulent their brand of stupid.
This is the great
ideological divide of our times: not between left and right but
between those of us who believe in truth; and those who believe,
Oprah style, that we’re all entitled to our own truths and that
everyone’s is equally special.
Michael Aaron examines
this phenomenon in more detail in the essay he wrote after
the Evergreen State college incident last year when a
progressive biology professor named Bret
Weinstein attracted the ire of a student lynch mob for refusing
to leave campus due to being white.
Aaron’s paragraph
on the (#fakenews) concept of “mansplaining” captures the key
distinctions:-
Such contemporary
terminology as ‘mansplaining’, for example, which refers to when
a man overly assertively explains something to a woman, is a uniquely
postmodernist concept. In this dynamic, seen through a postmodernist
lens, the interaction between the man and woman represents a power
struggle between historically empowered and disempowered groups,
divided by gender. The man displays his privilege through his verbal
assertions. The validity or usefulness of his content is irrelevant;
this interaction calls for real-time equity that can only be
established by calling attention to the man’s utilization of
unearned privilege manifested through his forceful, perhaps even
“violent” rhetoric. A woman could not possibly be guilty of
something similar since she does not possess historical power. A
modernist, on the other hand, would likely see this interaction on a
case-by-case basis, preferring to see both individuals as possessing
self-agency rather than guided by unseen power dynamics, like puppets
pulled on invisible strings. If the man was indeed overly dominant in
his delivery, he would receive appropriate feedback and both people
would move on with their lives, rather than seeing this interaction
as a revolutionary feminist moment.
If you’re
not schooled in post-modern “thought” it all looks like
lunacy. (Which it is). But it is, unfortunately, how an awful lot of
our liberal elite — university professors, writers, politicians,
corporatists, lawyers, media figures, Hollywood stars etc —
think. You see a few good examples of this cropping up in Cathy
Newman’s interview with Jordan Peterson.
Newman is combative and
disapproving from the off. That’s because — and, for once, she’s
right — she understands that Peterson is “The Enemy.”
Though both of them would probably identify as being on the left or
“progressive” side of the political argument, their intellectual
positions could scarcely be more violently opposed.
In a nutshell, it’s
Truth v Narrative.
Nowhere is this better
exemplified than in their disagreement over the “Gender Pay Gap.”
Newman believes
passionately that it’s real — and outrageous!
Peterson believes that
it’s an artificial construct, based on a grotesque
oversimplification, which consequently is of little value to
real world policy-making.
Newman is clearly very
upset by this heresy. Well, she would be. Peterson has just gone and
rejected what she — as a fully woke, third-wave feminist —
considers to be just about the most important truth in the world:
that there is an oppressive male hegemony which is keeping women
down; that the “Gender Pay Gap” is the ultimate proof of this;
that this is an issue which must urgently be addressed.
So who is right?
Up to a point, both of
them.
Newman is certainly
correct that if you compare women’s average pay with men’s
average pay, then women get on average less. If you want to use that
as the basis for claiming that there is a “gender pay gap” then,
yes, you’re on pretty solid ground.
But Peterson is not
disputing this point. What he’s saying that when you factor in the
range of reasons as to why this “gender pay gap” exists —
everything from childbirth to feminine traits like “agreeableness”
— then it ceases to be a useful measure of gender-based
injustice.
For example, his
response to Newman’s outrage that there aren’t more female CEOs
is that maybe fewer women actually want to go through the
misery of competing with lots of aggressive alpha males for a job
which will require them to work long hours and have little time for
family activities or leisure. There is evidence to support this. Men
and women are different.
Newman has no time for
these nuances because her Narrative does not allow it. The Narrative
is: oppressive men are holding women back; it’s SO UNFAIR!
Time and again she
presses Peterson to agree with her toddler-level Narrative:
She asks: “Do you
agree that it’s unfair?”
Peterson replies: “Not
necessarily.”
And he’s not being
evasive or devious, merely behaving as a grown-up professor at a
grown-up university should: looking at the facts; exploring an
issue from all angles; drawing intelligent conclusions.
Perhaps the most
damning of all the many damning things that can be said about Cathy
Newman’s performance in this car crash interview is this: it’s
not intelligent.
No, worse than that:
it’s anti-intelligent.
And this isn’t an
accident. Newman’s anti-intelligence is not a bug but
a feature of the way post-modernists think. Their
ideology is an explicit rejection of the entire pre-20th
century canon of Western thinking — a rejection, indeed, of Western
Civilization itself. Never mind the wisdom of the ancients, the moral
precepts of Christianity, the skepticism and scientific inquiry of
the Enlightenment: all this outmoded thinking, mostly emanating from
Dead White Males, must be replaced by a new order based not on first
principles, or established tradition, or logic but on “Social
Justice.”
This is what was truly
so important about this interview. It exposed, more clearly I think
than in any adversarial TV encounter I have ever seen, the
intellectual emptiness at the heart of the SJWs’ thinking.
Usually, because
they’re so strident, aggressive, self-righteous and fluent — the
same fluency Marxists used to have when spouting their Dialectical
Materialism — high-level Social Justice Warriors like Cathy
Newman are able to bully their opponents into compliance and give
onlookers the impression of being cleverer and better informed
than they actually are.
But it just didn’t
work with Peterson: he knows his field (clinical psychology) too
well, and he has debated Social Justice Warriors too many times to
fall into any of their traps. Also, he’s very patient and polite
and coy — so despite the numerous points he scored off Newman, he
never looked like a bully.
Even though I write
quite a lot about the culture wars — like Andrew Breitbart, I think
they’re the defining conflict of our age — I’m always
conscious how hard it is to make people care because it’s so hard
to explain what they’re really about and why the matter.
This clash between the
two ideologies — Jordan Peterson v Cathy Newman — illustrated it
perfectly.
Do you believe in
truth, facts, human nature, reason, logic, equality of opportunity,
natural justice, tradition, custom, and liberty?
Or are you an SJW?
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