There is more context regarding the “black pilot” quote. I listened to him explaining his viewpoint regarding this. He said he was concerned that DEI would result in the lowering of basic standards for pilot applicants leading him to say “I don’t want to wonder if my black pilot is among the most qualified to fly this plane” no one wants to wonder. That is what he was getting at and he’s not wrong. It’s not fair to the passengers and it’s not fair to those perfectly qualified black pilots who have made the grade. Context is everything. I’ve listened to a lot of Charlie Kirk.
He was absolutely right on this - and he was likely responding to articles written about the hiring process for our national pilots + air traffic controllers.
There have been scandals around that where they were prioritizing people on very strange things (presumably to increase 'diversity') instead of just recruiting people on merit.
Pretty sure this was brought up in congress not long ago as well.
It's been a while since I dug into the specfics, but IIRC something like 90% of people failed the test (if you take it you'll see why), but then a very specific group of people were given the "correct" answers so they'd pass. (How there's a "correct" answer to "The high school subject in which I received my lowest grade" is another problem. It's science, btw.)
Ultimately, they blew up multiple classes of people who went to air traffic school because those people "failed" the biographical screening test. It didn't matter that their actual scores in actual air traffic control school were immaculate. (Think we could use more trained ATCs today or nah?)
Edit to add a link to a screenshot I made during my research. This is from an FAA manual published in 2000:
Exactly. I'm surprised Matt T doesn't know this. Yo Matt, love ya, but ya can't say stuff like that about Charlie K. Sorry, but it shows either you forget or didn't know the whole story!
Charlie was pointing to a truth many even Obiden's AG was worried about, passenger safety.
Many qualified applicants were turned away from federal jobs in agencies - including the FAA. It was because of Obama's DEI Executive Order in 2011. There was a big class action lawsuit over it in 2019, Brigida vs FAA. In 2024 the AG also connected it to affecting passenger safety. Obama was clear - his "new approach" was to remove skilled-base hiring to hiring based on race and sex.
Ya don't have to dig too deep. But here's another for you. The substack, at the top (click on the pic) on this reddit, and some of the comments below it, will help you connect the dots. It's actually very scary learning what they did to push this on us all!
I assume that by switching to discuss specific cases of DEI, you gave up the task to demonstrate that the stated intent of the law was to destroy competence-based hiring, which was the subject we were discussing. On the general subject, I can’t help pointing out that there is a large measure of obstinate blindness in pointing at DEI as the root of incompetence when cronyism, political affiliation elevated over competence and the revolving door create the disasters under everyone’s eyes. Are you claiming that the disasters at Boeing are a result of DEI? Or the county in Texas that decided not to pay for flood advisor systems? One can make thousands of example and will still hear the very personification of incompetence, our inept “secretary of war” still blame DEI
Thanks. That’s a long boring document in legalese. I went through it quickly and could not find any mention of the goal of eliminating skilled-based hiring. Maybe you can point the specific passage.
In general, it’s a basic concept in mathematics that the larger the set in which one searches for a solution, the higher the chance to find a better one. But I can see how many despise the policy, as expression of a nanny state forced to remind its citizen of basic logic. And we know how it’s in human nature to prefer being wrong than told what to do
Yes, and this is a concern. I wouldn't want white pilots to fill internal quotas either if it comes at the expense of hiring a better qualified Asian pilot.
Of course, I'm skeptical we ever lived in as much of a meritocracy as we think we do.
In many cases, it seems to be much more important to know someone...
We may not live up to meritocratic ideals as we’d like to believe but certainly less than we used to. That is a necessary and inextricable byproduct of race quotas like DEI and AA.
Not really. Excluding by default certain subsets of applicants is not guaranteed to lead to a better solution than being forced to pick some elements of that subset
Yes -- given how his administration was undermined from within in the first term, Trump clearly prioritized loyalty to his mission highly when staffing.
By near necessity, that involves prioritizing people he knew.
That said, in my lifetime, I haven't considered any president's cabinet appointments to be terribly meritocratic. The political nature makes these worse than the private sector as the profit motive has been removed, and loyalty to the executive is almost always a very important factor.
Every time someone has brought up the “mean thing” Charlie Kirk said, there’s a perfectly rational not mean argument to be made for why he said it. And then they look like fools. I was able to do that twice yesterday with a young colleague who thinks Kirk said “hateful and mean things” all the time. Take the emotion out of the argument and it all boils down to a strong conviction he has and it’s never a personal attack. The young ones believe that a different opinion or belief = personal attack and that is not what Charlie Kirk was doing.
Pointing-out factual inaccuracy isn't doing me much good. When I show a criticism of Kirk to be untrue or out of context, I get: "He spread hate and disinformation. He was a white supremacist. And he was a far-right Christian. I don't have to do research; I know what those people believe." Then for the finish, some unintentional Biblical irony: "He loved guns. Live by the sword, die by the sword. End of." Followed by whooping and high-fives. The dearth of nuance or logic is pitiable. And these kids have way more formal education than I do. One, who doesn't seem to know the definition of the term, even told me I lack, "Critical intelligence." Comedy gold.
Fortunately I was dealing with one who was not so far gone, also though I’m not sure I convinced her that Kirk didn’t say awful things. I did manage to get her to admit that he wasn’t personally attacking someone in his arguments as much as she doesn’t like his arguments/opinions. Small win, but I’ll take it if it helps her to not be so quick to judge and to have a bit more care when throwing out slurs against others.
In the same vein, look at this data for medical school acceptance rates by race. It's from 2017, so a little old, but it can't have gotten better post George Floyd. Now, they just don't make the data available. Bring it up, get in trouble.
I remember that. I went down the rabbit hole to see wtf was going on with DEI regarding pilots and air traffic controllers. I believe there are extra hurdles faced by minority groups trying to get ahead, but you can’t fix it at the endpoint (the point of licensure)
See Washington states recent proposal to get rid of the bar exam.
Ultimately, the government was terrified of being sued for hiring discrimination based on race, and so their big idea was to make the FAA workforce mirror the workforce at large.
This meant incorporating hiring discrimination based on race.
Definitely a high probability. Right now in my area it is difficult to get to see an M.D. level physician in a timely manner for ordinary clinical problems. The last time I went to an E.R. I wasn't even seen by a resident, I got a Physicians' Assistant. P.A.'s deliver a lot of the care in outpatient urgent care centers, and yes, they do already assist in surgeries. P.A.'s do not attend medical school and have something like a master's degree.
Sorry to delve off airline safety …but it seems Charlie wasn’t that interested in, or couldn’t recognize, the quality of the endpoint…Charlie was just as quick to misinterpret and twist the words of others to fit his agenda. What….are women supposed to think we could have voted without the law allowing it? That blacks could enter all white schools of the 50s and 60s, own property, run for congress, or even vote, with laws that specifically mandated the white ruling class make it so? The reason they couldn’t eat in white restaurants still exists. Did DEI go too far? Did some get jobs who weren’t qualified? Of course. But the nation was served well overall. Charlie, Trump, P2025 would turn us back to the 50s or worse. How stupid to use Obama, Jackson Brown, Reid as examples
Funny you should bring that up!! My fav doc is a now retired or near retirement. She went thru the wringer getting into med school and given her age, was very likely was DEI bean for the count. Half of the docs my husband and I now see, including specialists, are women. We are fortunate to live in an area where we have a decent choice of docs. We usually go by recommendations. Not gender. Our docs were accepted into med school, a couple into very prestigious schools. If not DEI candidates per se, I know damned well that that number of women were not in medicine decades ago. My selection of docs in the 60s and 70s was confined to almost all men. White men at that. My first simple gyn exam was a young male doctor who insisted “it couldn’t and therefore doesn’t hurt” as he jabbed my insides so hard I cried and it bled. Since the nineties I’ve had a great selection of women ObGyns…for me and my babies. BIG sigh of relief. You’re dreaming if you think DEI has t helped improve this country for the better in so many ways.
Multiple airlines (especially United Airlines), touted programs to get more black pilots and first officers piloting their airplanes that fly all of us around. In order to make this happen, they HAVE, in fact, lowered the standards to become a pilot. Fewer hours of in-cockpit training, fewer fours in simulators, lower standards all around. Was this a move to improve airline safety? No. It was to virtue signal to America and corporate shareholders that they want to appear “antiracist”. Charlie Kirk didn’t make this up, nor were his concerns about this unfounded. Nobody wants to have these kinds thoughts when they see a black pilot (and very, very few did, including me, prior to this insane initiatives and announcements) but anybody paying attention has to be having these thoughts. My god, how could you not have these thoughts? He was correct, very unfortunately, for everyone - including our black neighbors and friends and family. This is verifiable fact - it has happened. And it was not Charlie Kirk’s idea. Don’t kill the messenger.
I am a pilot (white)… I agree! Merit based assignments are without doubt preferable to DEI! Piloting an aircraft is demanding; appropriate training and application of that training is essential! Color of skin doesn’t matter; when it becomes an issue, the airspace becomes very dangerous! If a pilot earns his seat because of his skin, he is suspect! And the airspace becomes more vulnerable! Meritocracy takes precedence when people’s lives are at risk! Whether the pilot is white or black .. or Indian!!!
I happen to know an 85 year old retired commercial “pilot’s pilot”. Literally tens of thousands of flight hours. He has no racial prejudice that I’m aware of. He tells a story of a new black co-pilot that must have been one of the first DEI hires, before it was called that. By his account, the guy was terrible, but nobody would say anything. Finally, the copilot was reassigned to retraining and not seen again at his airline. The next guy, according to my friend, was great. Called himself “Dark Gable” and was known far and wide.
Although I cleared up a misunderstanding about Charlie and the black pilots quote, while talking to a friend to the left of me he suggested I look at some of Charlie’s views on the civil rights act. I found a video clip and I don’t like what I heard:
In the video Charlie said he thought the passing of the civil rights act was giant mistake. I was really disappointed. He was talking to 2 other white men and he was arrogant and subtly sneering. He acknowledged as an aside that the act prevented discrimination but lamented affirmative action. I support affirmative action and I think it is different than DEI. I feel that I saw the real Charlie in that clip. We need to keep talking to each other civilly so that we can exchange information and maybe humbly change our views.
Good for you and your integrity Andrea. As someone who had only vaguely heard of Charlie Kirk and find myself resisting going through his archive because I know I'll be doing it for a ghoulish reason, cheering for the hope he turns out to be perfect martyr material, this is appreciated
It's basic logic which everyone has somewhere in their mind anyway. "We need more Type XYZ pilots! We are prioritizing hiring and promoting more Type XYZ pilots." Then you see your pilot is a Type XYZ. Of course you're going to think "Hmmm..."
Alan Dershowitz makes the same point. When we see a person of color in a position of responsibility, SOME people worry that the person did not meet the rigorous standards expected for a person to be in that position.
Seeing a person of color in a position of responsibility does not bother me. Seeing a person with an Ivy League education in a position of responsibility DOES worry me. I remember interviewing for a senior staff attorney position in a major US corporation. While I was going through the interview process, I saw that there was a distinct difference between the staff attorneys who did the bulk of the work with local and federal regulatory agencies, and the executive level attorneys in the C suite area. The attorneys doing the bulk of the work came from local law schools. The attorneys at the executive level were generally younger and came from Ivy League schools. Many of the executive level attorneys had held similar jobs at other major corporations.
The caste system was fascinating. It made me wonder whether these people at the top level really understood the work that was going on. A few years later, I was doing a document review assignment where I was reading the emails and memos between the executive level attorneys and the other C suite people. It was not good. The lack of wisdom and knowledge resulted in this company committing ethical violations that became a major political scandal in my home state. Sad thing is that everything the company did COULD have been done legally, but the "brilliantly" educated Ivy League attorneys advising them f'ed up.
I look at all the well funded NGOs corrupting the legislative and political scene today and I marvel at how this major company screwed up so badly. They could have just emulated what other interests were doing.
"The line that struck me said Kirk believed “Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants,”"
Yeah, I would be genuinely shocked if Charlie Kirk said that. Don't believe it for a second.
Charlie actually took a ton of heat from people on the right for either avoiding the question of Israel or for being too deferential towards them.
For gods sake, the Times of Israel article on his death is headlined "Conservative influencer and Israel advocate Charlie Kirk shot dead at Utah event".
As for his Christianity as well - his type of Christianity (in my opinion) was 1000000 miles better/softer than the type of Christianity that we all remember was absolutely mainstream in politics back in the 90s. It's not even close.
He was accurate with scripture, but he wasn't some dogmatic fire and brimstone hateful kind of person. His was much more tame, gracious and charitable. And he actually was that kind of person, which I think is borne out by all the testimonies of the people who knew him.
Charlie Kirk was, by all accounts, a very good and decent human being.
So yeah. Shame on the people who are smearing him posthumously. It's gross.
Thank you for providing the link. Charlie was probably right in claiming that Jewish donors, who fund a lot of liberal organizations, end up supporting groups that seek to undermine traditional Western culture by opening the borders to people that hate the West, hate America, and -- it turns out, as Charlie said--that hate Jews and Israel, too. His remarks were not antisemitic -- they were more in the nature of a warning to secular Jews.
As a lifelong Democrat and New York Times subscriber, I became disillusioned with these institutions during Covid. I disengaged from the Democrats and, astonishing to me, cancelled my NYT subscription. Lately I have become even more appalled by the outright manipulation and seeming indifference to truth. Not to mention the disgusting celebrations of Kirk’s death. I want nothing to do with these people. They seem nasty, or crazy, or ethically compromised or all of the above.
It is not indifference to the truth. The defining characteristic of the contemporary Left is zealous commitment to demonstrable untruths, and vicious hatred towards all who present the evidence and arguments debunking their dogma. That’s why Charlie was killed and why a good chunk of the Left is dancing on his grave.
This is really nothing new in human history. The modern Left is just the latest version of a long line of deranged religious zealots looking for heretics to punish.
I try to avoid bring it up but when someone starts going off (ahem) on guns going off I’ll mention this. Though, not sure why. They don’t seem to get that pulling a trigger requires both a physical act and intent.
I knew Charlie, argued with him periodically about language and argued the need for precision. Despite all that, I had enormous admiration for his courage to discuss, to argue, to debate and really get into difficult topics. He was unfailingly courageous. The parsing by papers like the Times and others who can’t simply acknowledge his murder as a profound assault on THAT - the courage to speak your mind and debate - ought to scare the living sh*t out of journalists and editors but instead they seem incapable of altering their dug-in behavior.
This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out.
The idiots at The NY Times and Wash Post (not even to mention MSNBC) ought to report this: Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
Young people know a hero and they gravitate to them. Charlie was that guy in life and I guarantee he will be even larger in death. TPUSA will see a surge in its members and activism in ways these small minded journalists can’t even fathom.
They didn’t see the power of these young people before….but just wait and watch what happens now.
"This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out."
Unfortunately, it’s also exactly what got him assassinated. Engaging young people in reasoned political discourse is not allowed by people whose current position and power is threatened by rational, conversant young people.
>Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
You're way more optimistic than I am. I think his murder will harden existing tribal allegiances and lower the bar for future acts of political violence. We're in a tailspin and I don't see how to pull out of it.
People compare this to the political violence of the early 1970s, but in that case there was a singular animating principle, the Vietnam War, and the domestic violence petered out after it ended. The modern culture war is just about hating the other guys, plain and simple.
Matt, these psychopaths believe words are violence. They've been told that by a particular part of the political slider, but we can't say which. Because, you know, both sides need to cool it.
Because, you know, both sides and all.
It is weird how both sides don't burn down police stations, federal buildings or loot. That's just one side. It's so weird.
If you have a chance to watch Boghossian's street epistemology, you see this play out. The degree of mental illness amongst certain parts of academia is alarming, and I'm not even talking about their problems with academic cheating, AI or political extremism.... I'm just talking about the head cases running the social sciences.
I actually really like this idea but don't want to cash in on somebody else's quote if I DID read it somewhere. I'll do some more digging when I have free time tomorrow and let you know :)
Pretty sure they only mean other peoples’ words. Like the vicious attacks on religion that are just refuting their tenets or denying a prophet is the sole conduit for virtue and are responded to with physical violence.
That was exactly my thought in anger and despair yesterday. Has there ever been an act of violence in the decades of my adulthood anywhere near equivalent to a person of the left killing a person on the right!
The problem that (some on) the left is having right now is that they're basically saying "He deserved to die because of his political views" and half the country realizing they also hold those views.
For example, I spent days researching the FAA discrimination scandal and know the agency has been hiring based on race for 25 years. I know the air traffic controller test was changed to be almost random -- in the name of 'equity' -- and that some people were given the answers to the test. And while that lawsuit didn't concern pilots in particular, I think it would be logical to at least wonder if the reduction of standards also bled over into pilots.
I appreciate the Matt/Walter belief that truth/fact based American journalism can create a national conversation capable of replacing the (my view) "everything means everything so nothing means anything" amoral surveillance hysterics the MSM, and the people who pay them, are using to strip Americans of their connection to the moral lines of demarcation our Republics founding fathers worked hard to enshrine in our Constitution. The ideological extremes of both Marxism and Capitalism are totalitarian. I do believe that the malignant narcissism of the purely mercenary leadership exploiting the ideological utopians of both camps care for nothing but themselves. Whatever the word populist means, both the "left" and "right" see it as an enemy to be destroyed. This assassination and the violence now poisoning the American psyche across our Republic is the result of allowing the American national conversation to be captured and reduced to the vacuous amorality and psychopathy of the lie now covering for the grifting mal actors and perps feeding on the lives and labor of hard working Americans. Slice it any way one wishes but the greatest economy in the world was looted and left in civilizational and cultural ruin.
There is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is psyop. Depart the psyop and live.
Demand, participate in the creation of and support the solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation that will create the truth/fact based reality the citizens of the American Republic must have to survive.
I'd imagine that the reference is to the financialization of everything and the inevitability of the merger between corporate and governmental power. When CEOs cocktail with senators, policy and legislation happens for the benefit of the corporate sector. Those who can participate in the financial markets may have some collective financial benefit, but working class interests are essentially reduced for the most part to an accounting line item, and messy things like individual rights/responsibilities are also thusly reduced in the name of cost-management. Think of the centralized power of managed health and see a totalitarian system in action. Those vertically organized corporate enterprises squeeze profit out of managing the relationship between doctor and patient with an iron fist.
But that's not capitalism. That's corporatism, also known once as mercantilism, later state socialism or pejoratively these days as fascism. Capitalism is the FREE exchange of goods and services, managed not by force but by ordered liberty.
I agree - we don't live under a pure capitalist system. But given that there is the ideal, and then the real, it's unlikely that any human system can survive centralized power without becoming totalitarian. I described the process by which the illusion of capitalism devolved to the corporatism we slave for. I might say that the only chance for a better version of capitalism to happen would be if we can get the American experiment in constitutional republicanism back on track. Seems a big ask in these days of so many clamoring for positive "rights" rather than the negative right to be left to solve one's problems in one's own community, in one's way. Stripping "personhood" from corporations mug be a start. But whose 401k would survive that (says the citizen whose retirement plan is to work till I'm dead) ?
You win. I'm for ordered liberty and free trade. Call the rigged game looting and stripping the free peoples of the world of their civil liberties anything you like. (You might enjoy the Mike Benz take on USAID/Ukraine/Soros/NGO/spook land.)
I'd be equally against the FAA declaring the height of their workforce must match the height of the workforce at large, then discriminating based on height. Ditto religion or literally any other metric other than capability.
I wish the whole idea of race could be discarded. Back in the heyday of Carl Linnaeus (18th century), science was a new thing, and categorizing everything was a “thing.” So Cuvier and Buffon came up with “race” (root, ironically, means root), based on mostly superficial characteristics, like skin melanin content and epithelial eye folds. What a disservice! We need to retire this concept, forever.
At a fundamental level, I wonder how these things are even determined. We'll use the FAA example since we're already talking about it. The categories to be "balanced" with the civilian workforce were:
Black
Hispanic
Asian Pacific Islander
American Indian/Alaskan Native
White Non-Hispanic
The black, white and Hispanic categories make sense, but who decided that Asian Pacific Islander should get its own category, and further decided what that even entails?
(Ironically, at this specific snapshot in time, the American Indian/Alaskan Native category was pretty heavily over-represented....meaning these "diversity goals" may have actually hurt this group!)
And then you have black hispanic! Might not be on FAA’s list, but I’ve seen that one, too. Originally, intersectionality came about from a suit with GM, where the contention was that the plaintiffs were discriminated against on two counts, for being black AND being female. Probably was legitimate at the time, but that idea has been blown out of all proportion. It’s all absurd
The concept of race has become preposterous and increasingly meaningless in our mixed race country. I was talking with my teenage granddaughters (who are racially mixed--1 grandfather is African-American), and the oldest was recounting how mortified she was when she was recognized as having scored well on the PSAT for an African-American---she had just checked the racial boxes and didn't realize how the categories would be used. Her younger sister said, "you were the whitest person up there! I would never check those boxes! Plus I could never pass as black!" Ironically, the same thing happened to their mother 25 years ago.
This stuff is so aggravating. Instead of identifying as black, or white, or “mixed race” (whatever that is), why can’t we just identify as humans and let it go?
I'm not yet willing to discard ethnic gene pools as one of the factors in assessing intelligence, but I place a lot more importance on the culture in which people are raised. Everybody knows by now that a number of Asian cultures (and gene pools?) produce people with the highest IQ's in the U.S., and they also push scholarship, achievement and excellence. If I had to choose a surgeon from a group with diverse skin colors and I know nothing else about them, I would go for the East Asians and Indians.
The left labels anyone they disagree with "controversial." I'm sick of it. The assassin aimed for a media-created cartoon character named Charlie Kirk and the bullet killed a human being named Charlie Kirk who was a good man, a husband, a father and a patriot.
Fuck the media, fuck the SPLC, fuck the hate speech laws and fuck all the billionaires and NGOs funding this bull shit.
There's a sense among Democrats that they're being railroaded into saying nice things about someone whose views they regard as harmful just because he got shot, and they resent that, which I do think is understandable.
I don't care if they have to preface it with "he was bad" as long as they clearly condemn political violence, as most of the party leadership has done.
If they say political violence is bad but he essentially had it coming because of all the bad things he said, the second part negates the first. Condemning assassination doesn’t mean you have to also heap praise on the victim, you can even say you disagreed with him (I did) and he still shouldn’t have been killed over his beliefs. And it always takes zero effort to stay silent- if you’re not a prominent politician, you don’t have to publicly comment on everything.
I know emotions are high right now, but we really do have to distinguish between people who say "he had it coming", or use extremist rhetoric, versus people who just want to make it clear they strongly disagreed with him.
If Zohran Mamdani got shot, I imagine my own reaction would be something like: political violence is always wrong, but socialism is extremely destructive and NYC will be much better off without him as mayor. That isn't justifying violence. It's making it clear that violence doesn't canonize its victims.
Party leadership is Pelosi, Schumer and Jeffries. They are all on record inciting violence against Trump and MAGA and the USSC.
The previous president of the U.S. gave a speech with a blood red background and two marines in the dark flanking him, calling Trump and MAGA the greatest threat to American democracy. They have encouraged this hate for nearly ten years against the people of the United States. No modern president until Obama that I am aware of had ever attacked the voters, not the politicians, the voters, of the other party.
I could give a damn about a “sense among Democrats that they’re being railroaded blah blah blah…”.
First, where were they when their leadership was repeatedly demonizing the opposition and their voters? Second, my complaint isn’t with people who couch their hate or dislike with qualifiers that political violence is not OK. It is with the people who literally are celebrating the murder, mocking his wife and children, and saying he deserved to die and/or hope he is the first of many more.
Finally, the haters and mockers have a first amendment right to make total assholes of themselves, but that right ends the moment they incite violence. If they want to be dickheads and cunts, fine, but they should expect to be treated like the dickheads and cunts that they are and shamed by civil society and even fired. Who wants to associate with such scum?
Indeed. They have actually become quite good at it over recent years. There was a time several decades ago (I cancelled my subscription to NYT years ago) when they were a must-subscribe -to newspaper. What a sad waste of a news icon.
—“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
I think this famous gem best describes our postmodern academy, the sewage pit that poisons our civic discourse, much more than inscrutable quotes from Foucault and Derrida, those emperors of bullshit.
First it was there's no such thing as truth (which encouraged infinite lies), then it was there's no such thing as right or wrong or good or bad (those are terms the oppressor uses to further his power), no book or artwork is better than any other (great art makes mediocrities anxious and angry), any possible interpretation of a text is as worthy as the view of its author (the author was killed off and replaced by "theorists"), along with one culture is no better than any other culture (leading to the contextual defense of clitorectomies and other indigenous "ways of knowing"), which then became things like America fought its Revolution to preserve and protect slavery and the mammalian sex binary is actually an oppressive imposition of the patriarchy.
Which leads us to where we are today, the official slogan of the postmodern Left: “Your speech is violence; our violence is speech.”
When you quote Kirk as saying “I’m sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” to demonstrate one of his supposed “bad” statements, I think you are guilty of the same dishonest characterization you decry in the NY Times. He was talking about the pernicious effects of DEI which causes the credentials of all black people in positions of responsibility to be questioned. You make it sound like he simply viewed black people as inferior, which is not true. He had a long history of working with black groups. That’s an unfair quote out of context.
Would it even be possible to phrase concerns about DEI in such a way that could not be construed as racist? How would you word it if you were to interpret his words in the most charitable way?
Is it even possible to talk about such things without being called a racist? I’m not sure that it is.
So you think he is a racist? The examples you cited, both imo out of context, are squarely on that topic.
You kinda stepped in it. Provide the basis for thinking he just slipped and exposed himself as a racist. Otherwise, I’m with Wallace Barker.
But you did same with cherry picked snippet of the “better off” video.
Defend why you didn’t show the greater exchange where she agreed with his underlying premise.
I respect the shit out of you as a writer and even more as a thinker. This is why many of us expect more, or at least a much better explanation for you doing what your article complains (rightfully) of others of doing. The above, ~I stand by my inference which is not readily obvious from the transcript (pilot) or video (better off)~ comes across as complete horse shit.
You made the choice to call him a racist and offer a very slender reed in evidence to support the claim. Man up!
You don't know if it was an actual description of how he would really react in such a situation or a rhetorical example he was giving.
I have to admit, the thought would cross my mind also. I'm a white guy and I would have the least amount of concern about a male asian pilot. It shouldn't be this way.
Transcripts are available for the black pilot conversation. So is a video of him explaining it again after the fact. So is commentary by Jordan Peterson.
Matt’s reply is in essence, ~yes, his racism is not readily obvious nor inferable, and he explicitly denies that he believes such things. But I know he is racist anyway.~
Given a name… this feels very personal. Matt gives off the vibe that he has personal knowledge that Charlie is a covert racist but is too chicken shit to say that.
I’m so pissed. I borderline revere Taibbi. But this was “weak ass shit.” Matt being a baseball pro knows exactly what that means.
It needs to be in print. Either as a correction or even an explanation for why he refuses to explain the thinly veiled accusations of racism and continues to rely on an out of context quote taken from NPR of all places and a cherry picked :26 from a video that in context says the exact opposite of what he claims. If I submitted a paper in college, made similar claims and offered evidence equivalent to what Matt did I wouldn’t just get an F, I would get referred for academic discipline (I went to school when bs like that didn’t fly).
They have been doing the same thing to JK Rowling.
Ask any of the people who claim Charlie or JK are haters just exactly what they said that was so awful, and they cannot tell you. Or they take something out of context like you mention above.
Same playbook. They've used the damn thing for over a decade now and we need to get ahead of it and defang it permanently.
i think it’s the term “white nationalist” that was most dehumanizing for Kirk. the slur is used to denote someone who doesn’t embrace mass immigration, and you know who isn’t (or, wasn’t) too keen on mass immigration was Bernie Sanders.
I think this illustrates the problem in a nutshell - if a person favors their [whatever] others immediately say that person is against [whatever the different thing is]. But that is not true. It conglates bias with prejudice. You can be for your group without being against a different group. That is why we have Black Entertainment Television network and Black awards shows but cannot even say anything positive about whites.
There is more context regarding the “black pilot” quote. I listened to him explaining his viewpoint regarding this. He said he was concerned that DEI would result in the lowering of basic standards for pilot applicants leading him to say “I don’t want to wonder if my black pilot is among the most qualified to fly this plane” no one wants to wonder. That is what he was getting at and he’s not wrong. It’s not fair to the passengers and it’s not fair to those perfectly qualified black pilots who have made the grade. Context is everything. I’ve listened to a lot of Charlie Kirk.
He was absolutely right on this - and he was likely responding to articles written about the hiring process for our national pilots + air traffic controllers.
There have been scandals around that where they were prioritizing people on very strange things (presumably to increase 'diversity') instead of just recruiting people on merit.
Pretty sure this was brought up in congress not long ago as well.
You can literally take that ATC biographical test and see how completely bullshit it is:
https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
It's been a while since I dug into the specfics, but IIRC something like 90% of people failed the test (if you take it you'll see why), but then a very specific group of people were given the "correct" answers so they'd pass. (How there's a "correct" answer to "The high school subject in which I received my lowest grade" is another problem. It's science, btw.)
Ultimately, they blew up multiple classes of people who went to air traffic school because those people "failed" the biographical screening test. It didn't matter that their actual scores in actual air traffic control school were immaculate. (Think we could use more trained ATCs today or nah?)
Edit to add a link to a screenshot I made during my research. This is from an FAA manual published in 2000:
https://ibb.co/TMt6r1hc
Exactly. I'm surprised Matt T doesn't know this. Yo Matt, love ya, but ya can't say stuff like that about Charlie K. Sorry, but it shows either you forget or didn't know the whole story!
Charlie was pointing to a truth many even Obiden's AG was worried about, passenger safety.
Many qualified applicants were turned away from federal jobs in agencies - including the FAA. It was because of Obama's DEI Executive Order in 2011. There was a big class action lawsuit over it in 2019, Brigida vs FAA. In 2024 the AG also connected it to affecting passenger safety. Obama was clear - his "new approach" was to remove skilled-base hiring to hiring based on race and sex.
https://www.saveservices.org/2025/02/white-men-targeted-by-faas-discriminatory-dei-program/
Do you have any reference to explicit Obama's declarations of that goal?
Ya don't have to dig too deep. But here's another for you. The substack, at the top (click on the pic) on this reddit, and some of the comments below it, will help you connect the dots. It's actually very scary learning what they did to push this on us all!
https://www.reddit.com/r/centrist/comments/1ieagd2/the_faas_hiring_scandal_a_quick_overview_2024/
I assume that by switching to discuss specific cases of DEI, you gave up the task to demonstrate that the stated intent of the law was to destroy competence-based hiring, which was the subject we were discussing. On the general subject, I can’t help pointing out that there is a large measure of obstinate blindness in pointing at DEI as the root of incompetence when cronyism, political affiliation elevated over competence and the revolving door create the disasters under everyone’s eyes. Are you claiming that the disasters at Boeing are a result of DEI? Or the county in Texas that decided not to pay for flood advisor systems? One can make thousands of example and will still hear the very personification of incompetence, our inept “secretary of war” still blame DEI
Aug. 18, 2011, EO 13583, signed by Obama. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/08/18/executive-order-13583-establishing-coordinated-government-wide-initiativ
Thanks. That’s a long boring document in legalese. I went through it quickly and could not find any mention of the goal of eliminating skilled-based hiring. Maybe you can point the specific passage.
In general, it’s a basic concept in mathematics that the larger the set in which one searches for a solution, the higher the chance to find a better one. But I can see how many despise the policy, as expression of a nanny state forced to remind its citizen of basic logic. And we know how it’s in human nature to prefer being wrong than told what to do
Hope this helps you.
Link - The Biographical Assessment test. https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
Link - A summary substack, (quote is from the 1st paragraph). "The questionnaire awarded points for factors like "lowest grade in high school is science," something explicitly admitted by the FAA in a motion to deny class certification." https://www.reddit.com/r/centrist/comments/1ieagd2/the_faas_hiring_scandal_a_quick_overview_2024/
But the lefts take on it was “Charlie’s racist against black pilots” what a bunch of idiots.
Yes, and this is a concern. I wouldn't want white pilots to fill internal quotas either if it comes at the expense of hiring a better qualified Asian pilot.
Of course, I'm skeptical we ever lived in as much of a meritocracy as we think we do.
In many cases, it seems to be much more important to know someone...
We may not live up to meritocratic ideals as we’d like to believe but certainly less than we used to. That is a necessary and inextricable byproduct of race quotas like DEI and AA.
Yes, to be sure. In a sense, it made a bad situation even worse.
Not really. Excluding by default certain subsets of applicants is not guaranteed to lead to a better solution than being forced to pick some elements of that subset
Yes, I think Trumps cabinet is a great example.
Yes -- given how his administration was undermined from within in the first term, Trump clearly prioritized loyalty to his mission highly when staffing.
By near necessity, that involves prioritizing people he knew.
That said, in my lifetime, I haven't considered any president's cabinet appointments to be terribly meritocratic. The political nature makes these worse than the private sector as the profit motive has been removed, and loyalty to the executive is almost always a very important factor.
You mean SUCCESSFUL captains of industry?! Oh, no!- he hired winners!
Cute. Can you explain who is unqualified for the position they hold and why? I doubt it, but give it a whirl.
It's almost as if a professional demonizer ~ or a team of them ~ works on twisting messages 24/7.
DNC
Every time someone has brought up the “mean thing” Charlie Kirk said, there’s a perfectly rational not mean argument to be made for why he said it. And then they look like fools. I was able to do that twice yesterday with a young colleague who thinks Kirk said “hateful and mean things” all the time. Take the emotion out of the argument and it all boils down to a strong conviction he has and it’s never a personal attack. The young ones believe that a different opinion or belief = personal attack and that is not what Charlie Kirk was doing.
Pointing-out factual inaccuracy isn't doing me much good. When I show a criticism of Kirk to be untrue or out of context, I get: "He spread hate and disinformation. He was a white supremacist. And he was a far-right Christian. I don't have to do research; I know what those people believe." Then for the finish, some unintentional Biblical irony: "He loved guns. Live by the sword, die by the sword. End of." Followed by whooping and high-fives. The dearth of nuance or logic is pitiable. And these kids have way more formal education than I do. One, who doesn't seem to know the definition of the term, even told me I lack, "Critical intelligence." Comedy gold.
Fortunately I was dealing with one who was not so far gone, also though I’m not sure I convinced her that Kirk didn’t say awful things. I did manage to get her to admit that he wasn’t personally attacking someone in his arguments as much as she doesn’t like his arguments/opinions. Small win, but I’ll take it if it helps her to not be so quick to judge and to have a bit more care when throwing out slurs against others.
In the same vein, look at this data for medical school acceptance rates by race. It's from 2017, so a little old, but it can't have gotten better post George Floyd. Now, they just don't make the data available. Bring it up, get in trouble.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-graphically-racial-preferences-for-blacks-and-hispanics-being-admitted-to-us-medical-schools/
Search on [atlas air crash].
See also the commuter flight that broke the right wing off in Toronto six or so months ago.
I remember that. I went down the rabbit hole to see wtf was going on with DEI regarding pilots and air traffic controllers. I believe there are extra hurdles faced by minority groups trying to get ahead, but you can’t fix it at the endpoint (the point of licensure)
See Washington states recent proposal to get rid of the bar exam.
“ I believe there are extra hurdles faced by minority groups trying to get ahead, but you can’t fix it at the endpoint (the point of licensure) …”
Nailed it.
Ultimately, the government was terrified of being sued for hiring discrimination based on race, and so their big idea was to make the FAA workforce mirror the workforce at large.
This meant incorporating hiring discrimination based on race.
https://ibb.co/4gnQbrrt
Omgosh! What’s next? No medical degree to perform surgery??? 🤦♀️
Definitely a high probability. Right now in my area it is difficult to get to see an M.D. level physician in a timely manner for ordinary clinical problems. The last time I went to an E.R. I wasn't even seen by a resident, I got a Physicians' Assistant. P.A.'s deliver a lot of the care in outpatient urgent care centers, and yes, they do already assist in surgeries. P.A.'s do not attend medical school and have something like a master's degree.
They don’t go to medical schools??
Correct.
Sorry to delve off airline safety …but it seems Charlie wasn’t that interested in, or couldn’t recognize, the quality of the endpoint…Charlie was just as quick to misinterpret and twist the words of others to fit his agenda. What….are women supposed to think we could have voted without the law allowing it? That blacks could enter all white schools of the 50s and 60s, own property, run for congress, or even vote, with laws that specifically mandated the white ruling class make it so? The reason they couldn’t eat in white restaurants still exists. Did DEI go too far? Did some get jobs who weren’t qualified? Of course. But the nation was served well overall. Charlie, Trump, P2025 would turn us back to the 50s or worse. How stupid to use Obama, Jackson Brown, Reid as examples
https://x.com/alluring_nyc/status/1965931096539017536
Ok. When you kid needs surgery I’m sure you’ll be happy to take the DEI candidate. ❤️
Funny you should bring that up!! My fav doc is a now retired or near retirement. She went thru the wringer getting into med school and given her age, was very likely was DEI bean for the count. Half of the docs my husband and I now see, including specialists, are women. We are fortunate to live in an area where we have a decent choice of docs. We usually go by recommendations. Not gender. Our docs were accepted into med school, a couple into very prestigious schools. If not DEI candidates per se, I know damned well that that number of women were not in medicine decades ago. My selection of docs in the 60s and 70s was confined to almost all men. White men at that. My first simple gyn exam was a young male doctor who insisted “it couldn’t and therefore doesn’t hurt” as he jabbed my insides so hard I cried and it bled. Since the nineties I’ve had a great selection of women ObGyns…for me and my babies. BIG sigh of relief. You’re dreaming if you think DEI has t helped improve this country for the better in so many ways.
DEI didn't do that, market forces did. Women gynecologists are preferred by patients.
Some? Airline pilots and ATC? How about NONE but the most qualified. I don’t think you appreciate the implications
Sorry to delve off airline safety …but it seems Charlie wasn’t that interested in, or couldn’t recognize, the quality of the endpoint…
https://x.com/alluring_nyc/status/1965931096539017536
I thought that every reasonable person realized what Charlie meant by that statement. Because with DEI, most of us worry in the same way.
Multiple airlines (especially United Airlines), touted programs to get more black pilots and first officers piloting their airplanes that fly all of us around. In order to make this happen, they HAVE, in fact, lowered the standards to become a pilot. Fewer hours of in-cockpit training, fewer fours in simulators, lower standards all around. Was this a move to improve airline safety? No. It was to virtue signal to America and corporate shareholders that they want to appear “antiracist”. Charlie Kirk didn’t make this up, nor were his concerns about this unfounded. Nobody wants to have these kinds thoughts when they see a black pilot (and very, very few did, including me, prior to this insane initiatives and announcements) but anybody paying attention has to be having these thoughts. My god, how could you not have these thoughts? He was correct, very unfortunately, for everyone - including our black neighbors and friends and family. This is verifiable fact - it has happened. And it was not Charlie Kirk’s idea. Don’t kill the messenger.
I am a pilot (white)… I agree! Merit based assignments are without doubt preferable to DEI! Piloting an aircraft is demanding; appropriate training and application of that training is essential! Color of skin doesn’t matter; when it becomes an issue, the airspace becomes very dangerous! If a pilot earns his seat because of his skin, he is suspect! And the airspace becomes more vulnerable! Meritocracy takes precedence when people’s lives are at risk! Whether the pilot is white or black .. or Indian!!!
I happen to know an 85 year old retired commercial “pilot’s pilot”. Literally tens of thousands of flight hours. He has no racial prejudice that I’m aware of. He tells a story of a new black co-pilot that must have been one of the first DEI hires, before it was called that. By his account, the guy was terrible, but nobody would say anything. Finally, the copilot was reassigned to retraining and not seen again at his airline. The next guy, according to my friend, was great. Called himself “Dark Gable” and was known far and wide.
Although I cleared up a misunderstanding about Charlie and the black pilots quote, while talking to a friend to the left of me he suggested I look at some of Charlie’s views on the civil rights act. I found a video clip and I don’t like what I heard:
In the video Charlie said he thought the passing of the civil rights act was giant mistake. I was really disappointed. He was talking to 2 other white men and he was arrogant and subtly sneering. He acknowledged as an aside that the act prevented discrimination but lamented affirmative action. I support affirmative action and I think it is different than DEI. I feel that I saw the real Charlie in that clip. We need to keep talking to each other civilly so that we can exchange information and maybe humbly change our views.
Good for you and your integrity Andrea. As someone who had only vaguely heard of Charlie Kirk and find myself resisting going through his archive because I know I'll be doing it for a ghoulish reason, cheering for the hope he turns out to be perfect martyr material, this is appreciated
Thank you so much for adding this clarification, Andrea.
It's basic logic which everyone has somewhere in their mind anyway. "We need more Type XYZ pilots! We are prioritizing hiring and promoting more Type XYZ pilots." Then you see your pilot is a Type XYZ. Of course you're going to think "Hmmm..."
Alan Dershowitz makes the same point. When we see a person of color in a position of responsibility, SOME people worry that the person did not meet the rigorous standards expected for a person to be in that position.
Seeing a person of color in a position of responsibility does not bother me. Seeing a person with an Ivy League education in a position of responsibility DOES worry me. I remember interviewing for a senior staff attorney position in a major US corporation. While I was going through the interview process, I saw that there was a distinct difference between the staff attorneys who did the bulk of the work with local and federal regulatory agencies, and the executive level attorneys in the C suite area. The attorneys doing the bulk of the work came from local law schools. The attorneys at the executive level were generally younger and came from Ivy League schools. Many of the executive level attorneys had held similar jobs at other major corporations.
The caste system was fascinating. It made me wonder whether these people at the top level really understood the work that was going on. A few years later, I was doing a document review assignment where I was reading the emails and memos between the executive level attorneys and the other C suite people. It was not good. The lack of wisdom and knowledge resulted in this company committing ethical violations that became a major political scandal in my home state. Sad thing is that everything the company did COULD have been done legally, but the "brilliantly" educated Ivy League attorneys advising them f'ed up.
I look at all the well funded NGOs corrupting the legislative and political scene today and I marvel at how this major company screwed up so badly. They could have just emulated what other interests were doing.
"The line that struck me said Kirk believed “Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants,”"
Yeah, I would be genuinely shocked if Charlie Kirk said that. Don't believe it for a second.
Charlie actually took a ton of heat from people on the right for either avoiding the question of Israel or for being too deferential towards them.
For gods sake, the Times of Israel article on his death is headlined "Conservative influencer and Israel advocate Charlie Kirk shot dead at Utah event".
As for his Christianity as well - his type of Christianity (in my opinion) was 1000000 miles better/softer than the type of Christianity that we all remember was absolutely mainstream in politics back in the 90s. It's not even close.
He was accurate with scripture, but he wasn't some dogmatic fire and brimstone hateful kind of person. His was much more tame, gracious and charitable. And he actually was that kind of person, which I think is borne out by all the testimonies of the people who knew him.
Charlie Kirk was, by all accounts, a very good and decent human being.
So yeah. Shame on the people who are smearing him posthumously. It's gross.
thanks. this is a really good and thoughtful comment. really good.
💯!!!
Well said and he was only 31 years old. He had at least another 30 + natural years to develop further. What an absolute shame. Heartbreaking 💔.
Wasn’t Kirk a Jew?
Read the full quote, here, I believe: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/viral-claims-about-charlie-kirks-words/
The fact check doesn't provide dates, times, and other critical details, so...
Thank you for providing the link. Charlie was probably right in claiming that Jewish donors, who fund a lot of liberal organizations, end up supporting groups that seek to undermine traditional Western culture by opening the borders to people that hate the West, hate America, and -- it turns out, as Charlie said--that hate Jews and Israel, too. His remarks were not antisemitic -- they were more in the nature of a warning to secular Jews.
The full quote isn't in there. It's not mentioned anywhere.
Dont waste my time fact checking your sources for you, it's a rude thing to do.
I couldn't care less about this specific instance and stipulated clearly that the link had multiple flaws.
When I'm rude I write things such as "fuck off and learn to read."
As a lifelong Democrat and New York Times subscriber, I became disillusioned with these institutions during Covid. I disengaged from the Democrats and, astonishing to me, cancelled my NYT subscription. Lately I have become even more appalled by the outright manipulation and seeming indifference to truth. Not to mention the disgusting celebrations of Kirk’s death. I want nothing to do with these people. They seem nasty, or crazy, or ethically compromised or all of the above.
So many in this forum fit your profile. I 'me too' your comment.
second
It is not indifference to the truth. The defining characteristic of the contemporary Left is zealous commitment to demonstrable untruths, and vicious hatred towards all who present the evidence and arguments debunking their dogma. That’s why Charlie was killed and why a good chunk of the Left is dancing on his grave.
This is really nothing new in human history. The modern Left is just the latest version of a long line of deranged religious zealots looking for heretics to punish.
Good point.
It's all of the above.
Thank you. As a conservatarian, I root for there being more of you.
As am I
“Mistakes were made.” That’s all the press is capable of these days.
Reminds me of reading police reports of bad shoots.
"The gun discharged and the victim was struck."
An SUV jumped the curb and plowed into a crowed in.........
“The victim was struck.” Wonderful use of passive voice.
A law prof told me of one of his long term studies on firearms. He’s been doing it 50+ years. I’ve only been doing it for 25 since I learned of it.
But the premise is to safely store your guns and over time record every instance of them, “going off.”
It has been an uneventful study.
For the sake of science, I will now attempt to replicate your experiment. (I wasn't writing it down before, but now I will!)
Yeah, was tempted to back date it.
I try to avoid bring it up but when someone starts going off (ahem) on guns going off I’ll mention this. Though, not sure why. They don’t seem to get that pulling a trigger requires both a physical act and intent.
Or the classic line given by Mrs. Clinton after Benghazi:
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Note passive voice.
glad you caught that. After all, it is well settled that one should always avoid passive voice. :) :)
Unless you’re ducking blame 😉
That and a petty insult to the already wronged party.
The "revelation" (i.e. correction) is convenienlty only in the on-line edition for quick removal.
But were they really mistakes?
That’s a good point. Sometimes, no, they just have to make a correction because they got caught.
Yes, this type of comment is super weaselly
Yeah except they’re saying Charlie made the mistakes.
I knew Charlie, argued with him periodically about language and argued the need for precision. Despite all that, I had enormous admiration for his courage to discuss, to argue, to debate and really get into difficult topics. He was unfailingly courageous. The parsing by papers like the Times and others who can’t simply acknowledge his murder as a profound assault on THAT - the courage to speak your mind and debate - ought to scare the living sh*t out of journalists and editors but instead they seem incapable of altering their dug-in behavior.
This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out.
The idiots at The NY Times and Wash Post (not even to mention MSNBC) ought to report this: Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
Young people know a hero and they gravitate to them. Charlie was that guy in life and I guarantee he will be even larger in death. TPUSA will see a surge in its members and activism in ways these small minded journalists can’t even fathom.
They didn’t see the power of these young people before….but just wait and watch what happens now.
"This was a rare individual who gave it his all and probably induced more young people to engage in our political discourse than anyone (either party) in the last CENTURY. And the idea that THAT isn’t celebrated makes me want to pull my hair out."
This is exactly how I feel.
Unfortunately, it’s also exactly what got him assassinated. Engaging young people in reasoned political discourse is not allowed by people whose current position and power is threatened by rational, conversant young people.
From your lips to God's ears.
Hear hear!
>Charlie’s murder has likely spurred a multi-digit alteration in the political landscape of America.
You're way more optimistic than I am. I think his murder will harden existing tribal allegiances and lower the bar for future acts of political violence. We're in a tailspin and I don't see how to pull out of it.
People compare this to the political violence of the early 1970s, but in that case there was a singular animating principle, the Vietnam War, and the domestic violence petered out after it ended. The modern culture war is just about hating the other guys, plain and simple.
Matt, these psychopaths believe words are violence. They've been told that by a particular part of the political slider, but we can't say which. Because, you know, both sides need to cool it.
Because, you know, both sides and all.
It is weird how both sides don't burn down police stations, federal buildings or loot. That's just one side. It's so weird.
The only reason to claim words are violence is to justify violence to stop words.
If you have a chance to watch Boghossian's street epistemology, you see this play out. The degree of mental illness amongst certain parts of academia is alarming, and I'm not even talking about their problems with academic cheating, AI or political extremism.... I'm just talking about the head cases running the social sciences.
The demarcation between political ideology and mental illness is pretty fuzzy, I’m afraid.
Also, the people who claim "silence is violence" prove their pacifism by never shutting the hell up.
Can you put this on a t-shirt? If not, will you allow me to?
I actually really like this idea but don't want to cash in on somebody else's quote if I DID read it somewhere. I'll do some more digging when I have free time tomorrow and let you know :)
I want one too, if they can be made!!
The process is a little more involved than I thought and may take a day or two....
Great sentence. Truly superb.
Brilliant
It's so good I'm positive I read it somewhere else.
I'm pretty sure it was some libertarian who said it.
I actually googled it and searched it on X to give credit and didn't find any matches, to my surprise.
Pretty sure they only mean other peoples’ words. Like the vicious attacks on religion that are just refuting their tenets or denying a prophet is the sole conduit for virtue and are responded to with physical violence.
And the key point is that their own words never cause violence - just love, get it Hitler?
That was exactly my thought in anger and despair yesterday. Has there ever been an act of violence in the decades of my adulthood anywhere near equivalent to a person of the left killing a person on the right!
The problem that (some on) the left is having right now is that they're basically saying "He deserved to die because of his political views" and half the country realizing they also hold those views.
For example, I spent days researching the FAA discrimination scandal and know the agency has been hiring based on race for 25 years. I know the air traffic controller test was changed to be almost random -- in the name of 'equity' -- and that some people were given the answers to the test. And while that lawsuit didn't concern pilots in particular, I think it would be logical to at least wonder if the reduction of standards also bled over into pilots.
“ I think it would be logical to at least wonder if the reduction of standards also bled over into pilots.”
Retired airline pilot here. Your logic is sound.
I appreciate the Matt/Walter belief that truth/fact based American journalism can create a national conversation capable of replacing the (my view) "everything means everything so nothing means anything" amoral surveillance hysterics the MSM, and the people who pay them, are using to strip Americans of their connection to the moral lines of demarcation our Republics founding fathers worked hard to enshrine in our Constitution. The ideological extremes of both Marxism and Capitalism are totalitarian. I do believe that the malignant narcissism of the purely mercenary leadership exploiting the ideological utopians of both camps care for nothing but themselves. Whatever the word populist means, both the "left" and "right" see it as an enemy to be destroyed. This assassination and the violence now poisoning the American psyche across our Republic is the result of allowing the American national conversation to be captured and reduced to the vacuous amorality and psychopathy of the lie now covering for the grifting mal actors and perps feeding on the lives and labor of hard working Americans. Slice it any way one wishes but the greatest economy in the world was looted and left in civilizational and cultural ruin.
There is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is psyop. Depart the psyop and live.
Demand, participate in the creation of and support the solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation that will create the truth/fact based reality the citizens of the American Republic must have to survive.
Explain how any degree of capitalism is totalitarian.
I'd imagine that the reference is to the financialization of everything and the inevitability of the merger between corporate and governmental power. When CEOs cocktail with senators, policy and legislation happens for the benefit of the corporate sector. Those who can participate in the financial markets may have some collective financial benefit, but working class interests are essentially reduced for the most part to an accounting line item, and messy things like individual rights/responsibilities are also thusly reduced in the name of cost-management. Think of the centralized power of managed health and see a totalitarian system in action. Those vertically organized corporate enterprises squeeze profit out of managing the relationship between doctor and patient with an iron fist.
But that's not capitalism. That's corporatism, also known once as mercantilism, later state socialism or pejoratively these days as fascism. Capitalism is the FREE exchange of goods and services, managed not by force but by ordered liberty.
I agree - we don't live under a pure capitalist system. But given that there is the ideal, and then the real, it's unlikely that any human system can survive centralized power without becoming totalitarian. I described the process by which the illusion of capitalism devolved to the corporatism we slave for. I might say that the only chance for a better version of capitalism to happen would be if we can get the American experiment in constitutional republicanism back on track. Seems a big ask in these days of so many clamoring for positive "rights" rather than the negative right to be left to solve one's problems in one's own community, in one's way. Stripping "personhood" from corporations mug be a start. But whose 401k would survive that (says the citizen whose retirement plan is to work till I'm dead) ?
You win. I'm for ordered liberty and free trade. Call the rigged game looting and stripping the free peoples of the world of their civil liberties anything you like. (You might enjoy the Mike Benz take on USAID/Ukraine/Soros/NGO/spook land.)
And it really has nothing to do with race.
I'd be equally against the FAA declaring the height of their workforce must match the height of the workforce at large, then discriminating based on height. Ditto religion or literally any other metric other than capability.
I wish the whole idea of race could be discarded. Back in the heyday of Carl Linnaeus (18th century), science was a new thing, and categorizing everything was a “thing.” So Cuvier and Buffon came up with “race” (root, ironically, means root), based on mostly superficial characteristics, like skin melanin content and epithelial eye folds. What a disservice! We need to retire this concept, forever.
At a fundamental level, I wonder how these things are even determined. We'll use the FAA example since we're already talking about it. The categories to be "balanced" with the civilian workforce were:
Black
Hispanic
Asian Pacific Islander
American Indian/Alaskan Native
White Non-Hispanic
The black, white and Hispanic categories make sense, but who decided that Asian Pacific Islander should get its own category, and further decided what that even entails?
(Ironically, at this specific snapshot in time, the American Indian/Alaskan Native category was pretty heavily over-represented....meaning these "diversity goals" may have actually hurt this group!)
https://ibb.co/4gnQbrrt
And then you have black hispanic! Might not be on FAA’s list, but I’ve seen that one, too. Originally, intersectionality came about from a suit with GM, where the contention was that the plaintiffs were discriminated against on two counts, for being black AND being female. Probably was legitimate at the time, but that idea has been blown out of all proportion. It’s all absurd
The concept of race has become preposterous and increasingly meaningless in our mixed race country. I was talking with my teenage granddaughters (who are racially mixed--1 grandfather is African-American), and the oldest was recounting how mortified she was when she was recognized as having scored well on the PSAT for an African-American---she had just checked the racial boxes and didn't realize how the categories would be used. Her younger sister said, "you were the whitest person up there! I would never check those boxes! Plus I could never pass as black!" Ironically, the same thing happened to their mother 25 years ago.
This stuff is so aggravating. Instead of identifying as black, or white, or “mixed race” (whatever that is), why can’t we just identify as humans and let it go?
I'm not yet willing to discard ethnic gene pools as one of the factors in assessing intelligence, but I place a lot more importance on the culture in which people are raised. Everybody knows by now that a number of Asian cultures (and gene pools?) produce people with the highest IQ's in the U.S., and they also push scholarship, achievement and excellence. If I had to choose a surgeon from a group with diverse skin colors and I know nothing else about them, I would go for the East Asians and Indians.
The left labels anyone they disagree with "controversial." I'm sick of it. The assassin aimed for a media-created cartoon character named Charlie Kirk and the bullet killed a human being named Charlie Kirk who was a good man, a husband, a father and a patriot.
Fuck the media, fuck the SPLC, fuck the hate speech laws and fuck all the billionaires and NGOs funding this bull shit.
If you go out of your way to point out how “bad” somebody was on the occasion of their murder, what could be your purpose other than to justify it?
There's a sense among Democrats that they're being railroaded into saying nice things about someone whose views they regard as harmful just because he got shot, and they resent that, which I do think is understandable.
I don't care if they have to preface it with "he was bad" as long as they clearly condemn political violence, as most of the party leadership has done.
If they say political violence is bad but he essentially had it coming because of all the bad things he said, the second part negates the first. Condemning assassination doesn’t mean you have to also heap praise on the victim, you can even say you disagreed with him (I did) and he still shouldn’t have been killed over his beliefs. And it always takes zero effort to stay silent- if you’re not a prominent politician, you don’t have to publicly comment on everything.
I know emotions are high right now, but we really do have to distinguish between people who say "he had it coming", or use extremist rhetoric, versus people who just want to make it clear they strongly disagreed with him.
If Zohran Mamdani got shot, I imagine my own reaction would be something like: political violence is always wrong, but socialism is extremely destructive and NYC will be much better off without him as mayor. That isn't justifying violence. It's making it clear that violence doesn't canonize its victims.
Party leadership is Pelosi, Schumer and Jeffries. They are all on record inciting violence against Trump and MAGA and the USSC.
The previous president of the U.S. gave a speech with a blood red background and two marines in the dark flanking him, calling Trump and MAGA the greatest threat to American democracy. They have encouraged this hate for nearly ten years against the people of the United States. No modern president until Obama that I am aware of had ever attacked the voters, not the politicians, the voters, of the other party.
I could give a damn about a “sense among Democrats that they’re being railroaded blah blah blah…”.
First, where were they when their leadership was repeatedly demonizing the opposition and their voters? Second, my complaint isn’t with people who couch their hate or dislike with qualifiers that political violence is not OK. It is with the people who literally are celebrating the murder, mocking his wife and children, and saying he deserved to die and/or hope he is the first of many more.
Finally, the haters and mockers have a first amendment right to make total assholes of themselves, but that right ends the moment they incite violence. If they want to be dickheads and cunts, fine, but they should expect to be treated like the dickheads and cunts that they are and shamed by civil society and even fired. Who wants to associate with such scum?
Well said.
sounds like you Agree with JD.
Consequentialism - the ends justifies the means - is a nasty, nasty doctrine in the hands of people who believe that truth is subjective.
Such people have no principles but their self-interest.
I can’t stand your pessimism. Because I fear you are right. But I keep trying. Being catholic im not supposed to have that kind of hope. But I do
Totally 💯
Consequentialism isn’t quite that tidily “ends justifies the means.”
It decides the morality of an act by its outcome. It is retrospective.
So, good intentions acted upon that come to disaster through no fault of the good actor is an immoral act.
Yes, it certainly the system does condone bad acts that produce good results. And on that basis, yeah, 100% agree. It is a system we should reject.
Yes, it certainly is accepted by those who find truth relative to their interests. We’ve seen far too much of it.
Your comment summarizes how I’ve been feeling for a number of years so well, I actually took a screenshot of it.
NYT set out to defame Charlie Kirk in death and they had no problem lying to do so.
Indeed. They have actually become quite good at it over recent years. There was a time several decades ago (I cancelled my subscription to NYT years ago) when they were a must-subscribe -to newspaper. What a sad waste of a news icon.
—“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
I think this famous gem best describes our postmodern academy, the sewage pit that poisons our civic discourse, much more than inscrutable quotes from Foucault and Derrida, those emperors of bullshit.
First it was there's no such thing as truth (which encouraged infinite lies), then it was there's no such thing as right or wrong or good or bad (those are terms the oppressor uses to further his power), no book or artwork is better than any other (great art makes mediocrities anxious and angry), any possible interpretation of a text is as worthy as the view of its author (the author was killed off and replaced by "theorists"), along with one culture is no better than any other culture (leading to the contextual defense of clitorectomies and other indigenous "ways of knowing"), which then became things like America fought its Revolution to preserve and protect slavery and the mammalian sex binary is actually an oppressive imposition of the patriarchy.
Which leads us to where we are today, the official slogan of the postmodern Left: “Your speech is violence; our violence is speech.”
Hate has no home here! Love wins!
When you quote Kirk as saying “I’m sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” to demonstrate one of his supposed “bad” statements, I think you are guilty of the same dishonest characterization you decry in the NY Times. He was talking about the pernicious effects of DEI which causes the credentials of all black people in positions of responsibility to be questioned. You make it sound like he simply viewed black people as inferior, which is not true. He had a long history of working with black groups. That’s an unfair quote out of context.
As I said, I’m aware of the DEI context, and I still think that quote is unintentionally revealing.
But how, exactly?
Unintentionally revealing of what?
That he is a racist? That he thinks less of the ability of dark skinned people?
Would it even be possible to phrase concerns about DEI in such a way that could not be construed as racist? How would you word it if you were to interpret his words in the most charitable way?
Is it even possible to talk about such things without being called a racist? I’m not sure that it is.
So you think he is a racist? The examples you cited, both imo out of context, are squarely on that topic.
You kinda stepped in it. Provide the basis for thinking he just slipped and exposed himself as a racist. Otherwise, I’m with Wallace Barker.
But you did same with cherry picked snippet of the “better off” video.
Defend why you didn’t show the greater exchange where she agreed with his underlying premise.
I respect the shit out of you as a writer and even more as a thinker. This is why many of us expect more, or at least a much better explanation for you doing what your article complains (rightfully) of others of doing. The above, ~I stand by my inference which is not readily obvious from the transcript (pilot) or video (better off)~ comes across as complete horse shit.
You made the choice to call him a racist and offer a very slender reed in evidence to support the claim. Man up!
Exactly.
You don't know if it was an actual description of how he would really react in such a situation or a rhetorical example he was giving.
I have to admit, the thought would cross my mind also. I'm a white guy and I would have the least amount of concern about a male asian pilot. It shouldn't be this way.
Transcripts are available for the black pilot conversation. So is a video of him explaining it again after the fact. So is commentary by Jordan Peterson.
Matt’s reply is in essence, ~yes, his racism is not readily obvious nor inferable, and he explicitly denies that he believes such things. But I know he is racist anyway.~
Given a name… this feels very personal. Matt gives off the vibe that he has personal knowledge that Charlie is a covert racist but is too chicken shit to say that.
I’m so pissed. I borderline revere Taibbi. But this was “weak ass shit.” Matt being a baseball pro knows exactly what that means.
It needs to be in print. Either as a correction or even an explanation for why he refuses to explain the thinly veiled accusations of racism and continues to rely on an out of context quote taken from NPR of all places and a cherry picked :26 from a video that in context says the exact opposite of what he claims. If I submitted a paper in college, made similar claims and offered evidence equivalent to what Matt did I wouldn’t just get an F, I would get referred for academic discipline (I went to school when bs like that didn’t fly).
So disappointed.
I'mjust trying to understand your point.
They have been doing the same thing to JK Rowling.
Ask any of the people who claim Charlie or JK are haters just exactly what they said that was so awful, and they cannot tell you. Or they take something out of context like you mention above.
Same playbook. They've used the damn thing for over a decade now and we need to get ahead of it and defang it permanently.
Once an outlet marches down the road of character assassination, there’s no turning back, only a surly muttering, like Stephen King’s apology.
The King “apology” is puke worthy. He only texted what he did because he now knows CK “cherry-picked” from the Sacred Texts. What an ass hat.
He pops up on X when he’s taking a break from fantasizing that he’s Annie Wilkes and has Trump captive.
MSM is the enemy of the people. It's that simple. They are directly responsible for the division in this country
i think it’s the term “white nationalist” that was most dehumanizing for Kirk. the slur is used to denote someone who doesn’t embrace mass immigration, and you know who isn’t (or, wasn’t) too keen on mass immigration was Bernie Sanders.
bernie is pure payola
he got rich to roll over for that fat ghastly hag and they been paying him off ever since.
Bernie was given a pass for any of his sins when he rolled over and kissed HRC's posterior. That is how it works now in my former party.
I think this illustrates the problem in a nutshell - if a person favors their [whatever] others immediately say that person is against [whatever the different thing is]. But that is not true. It conglates bias with prejudice. You can be for your group without being against a different group. That is why we have Black Entertainment Television network and Black awards shows but cannot even say anything positive about whites.