Category Archives: morality

Facebook and Trust

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…seem, increasingly, a contradiction in terms.

See this image, from The Sun via Fox News, below.

The girl pictured has a laryngeal cleft, a hole between her larynx and her esophagus, which means she can’t eat normally; food or drink can pass into her airway.  The tube through her nose passes down her esophagus, bypassing that hole; it’s the only way she can take sustenance.

The girl’s mother tried to post the image on Facebook, not to garner sympathy, but to raise general awareness of the hassles and hazards of laryngeal clefts, and to raise money for her daughter’s necessary surgery.

Facebook barred the image, for the reasons listed in the text to the right of the image.  The text is hard to read; the money rationalization is this: the image

contains shocking, sensational or excessively violent content.  This type of material creates an unexpected experience for users, and goes against our core value of fostering a positive global community.

Because a smiling little girl, albeit with a tube in her nose, is shocking, sensational, or excessively violent.  Because Facebook has such contempt for its users that it considers them such snowflakes that unexpected experiences—surprises—would excessively disturb them.  Because Facebook’s view of positivity overtly excludes attempts to bring those apparent snowflakes’ attention to an uncommon medical condition so that that attention might foster increased medical research into ways of alleviating or correcting such a condition.

The mother successfully appealed the bar, but questions remain: with this sort of ban being Facebook’s kneejerk, initial action, how can Facebook be taken seriously?  How can Facebook’s management be trusted?

Sound Familiar?

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Sadanand Dhume led off his Wall Street Journal op-ed last week with this:

Seven decades after the country first embraced caste-based quotas in education and government jobs, they have become permanent entitlements that cement social divisions, encourage mediocrity and poison political discourse.

Segregationist identity politics. This is the preferred ideology of the Progressive-Democratic Party, also.  No less a light than Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) led off her campaign for President saying she would center her campaign on her potential to be our first black woman President, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) insists it’s time for a woman to be President (she’s a young mom, you see).  And San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro (D) wants to be our first Hispanic President.

Notice the pattern here: none of these Progressive-Democrats want to be President of the United States.  Every single one of them want to be the first [ethnic/race/gender-of-choice] President of an identity politics-divided United States.

The Indian example is what we can look forward to if the party of identity politics ideology gets a member elected.

DACA and Walls

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When President Donald Trump made his latest offer and attempt at negotiation last Saturday, it already had been rejected by the Progressive-Democrats—yes, even before Trump spoke.  In a Monday editorial, the Wall Street Journal was generous when it suggested the Dreamers (and TPS folks, I add) are pawns in the eyes of Progressive-Democrats. Reality isn’t that good.  Dreamers and TPS folks aren’t even human to Progressive-Democrats—they’re just votes and potential votes, just marked ballots.

This is shown by Pelosi’s stated utter refusal even to discuss DACA recipients anymore.

Here, though, the WSJ‘s editors are wrong:

Mr Trump is wrong that this will magically reduce drug traffic or illegal crossings. The solution to the flood of drugs is lower US demand [and, better] a legal system that gives migrants the chance to move back and forth….

For one thing, a wall will, indeed, contribute to a reduction of the flow of drugs and illegal crossings. Actual experts, including those who work the borders, say this unequivocally. No less a light than Progressive-Democrat and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer agrees they work in places.

The other thing is that “the solution to…” includes those additional steps. They and walls are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

The Teachers Union Strike in LA

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The subhead on Monday’s Wall Street Journal article on the United Teachers Los Angeles union strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District says it all.

Nearly one in five LA public school students attends charters unaffected by the strike; union wants a cap on them

Herein lies one more proof of the disingenuousness of the UTLA. While the UTLA is striking, demanding a cap on the number of charter schools (and money, money, money), all the while holding Los Angeles’ public school students hostage to their demand, the charters are open and actually educating their students.

With its strike demand, the UTLA is ignoring the enormous opportunity that should be available for the children of LA: the two systems of schools could complement each other.  Instead, the union has chosen to present the situation as a zero-sum game. The contrast couldn’t be sharper.

It’s no wonder the union wants to eliminate what it sees as its competition; it can’t stand the clarity the charters’ existence and performance provide in the union’s zero sum.

Cynically, the union’s demand for money, is nothing more than what unions do; although, here it’s also a smoke screen.

***

In the end, the LAUSD caved completely. In addition to a 6% pay raise and more than $400 million in additional money to be spent on the union, there’s this:

Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl said the agreement goes beyond contractual issues and addresses “having accountability and regulations on charter schools,” including how to give traditional schools a bigger say when charters are given space on their campuses.

Never mind that that space was available to the charters because the union’s schools weren’t using it. No, contract matters, as Caputo-Pearl just confessed, had little to do with the union’s strike. Now they have near-veto say on what their competition will be allowed to do. That’s to the great harm of the children this union has pretended to want to protect.

Pseudo-Conservatives also Lie

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Here’s Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, which pretends to advocate for young conservatives. The op-ed at the link is headlined

I judged the Covington kids too quickly—Here’s what I missed

It’s a missive in which he acknowledged he erred in jumping on the bandwagon and smearing those children as soon as he could, along with the rest of the Liberal class, on the basis of an initial, brief, carefully edited video (my characterization of the video; he thought differently about it). Here’s how Kirk described that careful edit.

It’s not that it had been taken out of context. It’s not that the situation was more complicated than we originally thought. It’s that there wasn’t anything there in the first place. There wasn’t now, and never had been, any evidence of the high school students doing anything untoward.

It’s not a matter of the video taken out of context; it’s that the video had undergone that careful editing to fit a preconceived narrative—that anyone wearing a Trump-supporting bit of clothing was evil, that anyone from the Left confronting such a person must be right, that blacks also involved must be innocent of any wrong-doing.

Aside from that little bit, here’s what Kirk missed.

This wasn’t a case of the press lying. Not this time. I made the same judgment that they did and I wasn’t lying. This wasn’t one of the media’s usual, deliberate distortions of facts or vitriolic attacks.

Yes, this was a case of the press lying.  This was a textbook, blatant case of the media’s deliberate distortion of the facts.  The lie—not a mistake in judgment—was made clear by the full 1¾ hour video that gave the full story, a video that was available very quickly after the event.  This was a video that would have been available if the press and the rest of the Left, and pseudo-conservatives, had been willing to tarry a bit and get actual facts instead of hastening to see who could be first with the smear.  And you lied, too, with your jumping onto the smear wagon.  The lie continues to be made clear by the press’ continued attacks on those children even now that the facts are out.

It absolutely was one of the press’ most vitriolic attacks—they called for the brutal (woodchippers) murders of these children.

Here’s the other thing Kirk missed.  Nowhere in his 500-word piece purporting to explain his error is there a single minim of an apology.  Kirk doesn’t even have the grace to apologize for his monstrous error.  Or he still doesn’t understand what he’s done.