A commenter writes, It seemed obvious to me that one could apply the oppressor-oppressed axis by noting that Castro was the oppressor and the Cuban people were the oppressed. I need to clarify that the oppressor-oppressed axis is not about … Continue reading
Long time reader Roger Sweeny emails. I recently read Daniel M. Wegner’ and Kurt Gray’s The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters (Viking, 2016), a book that has nothing explicitly to do with politics or wokeness. … Continue reading
An interesting conversation with Coleman Hughes, Wesley Yang, and Ross Douthat, moderated by Reihan Salam. Note: after I wrote the annotations, a friend found a transcript. But below you will find a lot of my own thoughts as well as … Continue reading
A two-hour conversation with Bret Weinstein and Tom Bilyeu. When I listened, I sped it up 25 percent. Although they go on several tangents, the main theme is the high level of political tension that currently threatens the country and … Continue reading
Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes, Alexander, whose role has been to help explain Silicon Valley to itself, was taken up as a mascot and a martyr in a struggle against the Times, which, in the tweets of Srinivasan, Graham, and others, was … Continue reading
1. Terms that describe the current state –Negative polarization. Political energy comes from hatred of the other side. May not even like the leaders on your side. –Zero cognitive empathy. Unable to imagine that the other side is reasonable. Makes … Continue reading
Consider the phrase “De-fund the police” from a three-axes perspective. From the oppressor-oppressed perspective, it sounds like a call to take resources away from oppressors and give them to the oppressed. From a civilization-barbarism perspective, it sounds like a call … Continue reading
Matthew Gagnon writes, Kling talked about the question of police conduct in dealing with African Americans, which spawned the Black Lives Matter movement, and how each “tribe” thinks about the problem. “The progressive framing of the issue emphasizes racism, among … Continue reading
Joseph C. Sternberg writes, The oddity is that the left in most of the world has been so intensely critical of Sweden’s experiment. If this model works, it would hold out some hope that the coronavirus could be managed without … Continue reading
[Note: askblog had an existence prior to the virus crisis. I still schedule occasional posts like this one.] The Foundation for Economic Education has published a report on its “youth education and audience research” project. Part of that project tested … Continue reading