What is The Birth of a Nation?

D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic 1915 film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and freed Black people.

Similar to Gone With the Wind but without spoken dialogue.

History is usually written by the winners. But that wasn’t the case when The Birth of a Nation was released on February 8, 1915. In just over three hours, D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and immoral freed Black people. The film was an instant blockbuster. And with innovative cinematography and a Confederate-skewed point of view, The Birth of a Nation also helped rekindle the KKK.

Until the movie’s debut, the Ku Klux Klan founded in 1865 by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, was a regional organization in the South that was all but obliterated due to government suppression. But The Birth of a Nation’s racially charged Jim Crow narrative, coupled with America’s heightened anti-immigrant climate, led the Klan to align itself with the movie’s success and use it as a recruiting tool.

A heightened anti-immigrant climate eh? That sounds oddly familiar.

Adapted from the book The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr., who was a classmate and friend of President Woodrow Wilson, The Birth of a Nation portrayed Reconstruction as catastrophic. It showed Radical Republicans encouraging equality for Black people, who in the film are represented as uncouth, intellectually inferior and predators of white women. And this racist narrative was widely accepted as historical fact.

That is, Black men are represented as predators of white women.

Anyway. That one movie has a lot to answer for.

Two more down.

A Confederate monument was taken down in Jacksonville, Fla., on Wednesday, after an order by the city’s mayor ended years of debate, as officials around the United States reckon with memorials on public property that commemorate the Confederacy.

Donna Deegan, the Democratic mayor of Jacksonville, ordered the removal of two statues that were part of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument in Springfield Park.

Does Jacksonville need large heavy three-dimensional tributes to the women of the slave-owning Confedracy?

Ms. Deegan said in a statement on Wednesday that the monument had been erected as part of a campaign to promote discriminatory Jim Crow laws and intimidate Black people.

A campaign that lasted a century and more.

The memorial was commissioned by the Florida division of the United Confederate Veterans, a national organization that promoted the “lost cause” myth that the Civil War was a noble fight for states’ rights.

The statues were erected in 1915, a year after the United Confederate Veterans held an annual reunion in Jacksonville that was attended by about 8,000 former soldiers. Five months after the reunion, the city renamed the park Confederate Park. It was renamed Springfield Park in 2020.

1915. Why 1915? The premiere of The Birth of a Nation was on February 8 that year. Coincidence? Probably not.

Since 2020, hundreds of Confederate memorials have been renamed or removed from federal, state and municipal land. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for the removal of a Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.

The removal of the Jacksonville memorial has attracted criticism from conservatives, including Dean Black, a Florida State representative, who filed legislation to block cities in the state from removing Confederate and other historical memorials.

I wonder why Germany isn’t full of memorials to the Third Reich. Italy has thousands of statues of Mussolini, right?

Don’t mention the slavery.

Nikki Haley, the Republican presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina who for years has wrestled with how to approach issues of race, slavery and the Confederacy, found herself again confronted with those subjects at a town hall event on Wednesday in New Hampshire, hundreds of miles north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Her answer to a simple yet loaded question by an audience member in the city of Berlin — “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” — showed just how much she continues to struggle with such topics.

“I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” she said eventually, arguing that government should not tell people how to live their lives or “what you can and can’t do.”

Interesting. So the government should not tell people they can’t murder everyone they dislike or steal cars or violently overturn an election.

Notably missing from her answer was slavery, which most mainstream historians agree was at the root of the United States’ bloodiest conflict — specifically the economics and political control behind slavery. Democrats were quick to jump on her answer, with President Biden’s re-election campaign team and others spreading video of the exchange on social media.

After a quick back and forth with the questioner, she said, “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.”

Hm. How about: that it made a difference?

Her latest remarks were in keeping with the way she and most of her Republican rivals have toed the line on race and racism on the 2024 presidential trail, downplaying the nation’s sordid racial history and portraying structural racism and prejudice as challenges of the past. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that simple?

I watched this scene again yesterday evening (not the whole movie; I came in late) and it struck me how like Trump Colonel Jessup is. Not as flabby and laughable, of course, but every bit as enraged and murderous.

Cheater wins.

The Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) has been forced to drop their new regulations on men who want to participate in women’s competitions after being sued by a trans-identified male player. The lawsuit was launched earlier this year by Natalie Ryan, who had been dominating women’s competitions prior to the PDGA attempting to rein in male competitors.

Natalie Ryan is of course a man.

Ryan first filed a suit against the PDGA in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California this past February. In his complaint, he argued that a recently-adopted PDGA policy prohibiting trans-identified males from competing with women if they had undergone a “male puberty” violated his civil rights and California laws against discrimination.

And he won so now he gets to violate the civil rights of all the women he competes against.

“The policy adopted by the PDGA and [Disc Golf Pro Tour] is arbitrary and capricious and in violation of Plaintiff’s right to be free from discrimination based on her gender,” the suit said, arguing that policies restricting widespread male participation in women’s sport “denied [Ryan] and other transgender women, who in the eyes of California law are women, full and equal access to the accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, and/or services of [PDGA] organizations.”

Well the eyes of California are closed or crossed or made of glass, because transgender women are by definition men, and men of course are not women.

Yesterday, a settlement between Ryan and PDGA was announced. While the full terms are not available for public consumption, part of the agreement included PDGA dropping the policy which banned males from competing with women unless they had begun transitioning prior to puberty. This change means that all males who had undergone at least two years of hormone therapy are able to compete with women once again.

Sucks to be wimz!

PDGA gave in because it doesn’t have the money to keep fighting.

Bullies win another round.

Geeta Pandey of BBC New Delhi reports:

It was sometime after 1am on 11 December when more than a dozen people barged into Sasikala’s [not her real name] house. The 42-year-old was dragged out, stripped and paraded naked around the village, tied to an electricity pole and beaten for hours.

A resident of Hosa Vantamuri village in Belagavi district in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, she was being punished because her 24-year-old son had eloped with his 18-year-old girlfriend.

The young woman had been betrothed by her family to another man and was to get married the next day. Her furious family wanted to know where the couple were.

So this isn’t about injustice to one woman, it’s about injustice to two women. The younger one was promised to a man by her family, clearly without her consent, let alone joy. The older woman was humiliated and beaten up because everything is women’s fault.

The police reached the village around 4am after they received a tip-off and rescued Sasikala and took her to hospital. She’s reported to be suffering from severe trauma. Her husband later told a visiting state minister that “my wife and I didn’t even know about the relationship”.

More than a dozen people have been arrested and a local police officer has been suspended for “dereliction of duty”. The incident made national headlines and authorities took notice. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called it an “inhuman act” and promised justice to her.

But no real justice is possible. There’s no way to undo the events of that night.

…the incident in Belagavi is not really rare and several similar incidents have made headlines in India in recent years.

One such story that sparked global outrage came from the north-eastern state of Manipur in July. A viral video showed two women being dragged and groped by a mob of men before one of them was allegedly gang-raped.

If something goes wrong, strip a woman naked and then beat her up. Makes everything better.

Tommy Dorfman, the lovely fella who tried to make an airline worker’s life worse, isn’t a narcissistic self-obsessed dweeb at all, no indeed. Here he is “coming out” in 2021. I had to hit stop at 54 seconds because enough already, so if you manage more and it turns out he’s really not a narcissistic self-obsessed dweeb, let us know.

Morgane Oger declares himself “thrilled” to ruin yet another women’s organization. Shutting down Vancouver Rape Relief wasn’t enough for him.

Oh joy an opportunity for self-promotion!

Fame at last – Newsweek!!

A video by transgender actress Tommy Dorfman, in which she accuses Delta Air Lines Employees of “intentionally” misgendering her, quickly went viral and sparked a fiery debate on social media.

He’s an obvious guy. People who work for airlines have to deal with a lot of people, most of them stressed, all day every day. They don’t have time or mental space to remember to use the wrong third-person pronouns for this one narcissistic guy who is holding up the line to pitch a fit at them.

Dorfman, who played Ryan Shaver in the Netflix drama series 13 Reasons Why, came out as a transgender woman in 2021. The 31-year-old actress shared a roughly 30-second clip to her TikTok over the weekend, showing part of the altercation. In the video, Dorfman said while ;he was] at LaGuardia Airport in New York City several Delta employees, including one she identified as “Tristan,” intentionally misgendered her “multiple” times.

Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. Shut up. Get on the plane, put your bag in the overhead compartment, sit down, and shut up.

I didn’t realize it was Adam Kinzinger who set off the “Trump smells” alarm. I take that to mean it’s actually true.

I’ll do better than wearing a mask; I’ll never go near him ever.

A point of no return passed?

The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return.

And no doubt other scientists worry that events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is slowly but not all that slowly approaching a point of no return. In short, droughts in the Amazon rainforest are a very bad sign as well as a very bad thing.

Bom Jesus de Igapo Grande is a community of 40 families in the middle of the forest and has been badly affected by the worst drought recorded in the region.

There was no water to shower. Bananas, cassava, chestnuts and acai crops spoiled because they can’t get to the city fast enough.

In the rain forest. Imagine what it’s like elsewhere.

As well as being home to a stunning array of biodiversity, the Amazon is estimated to store around 150bn tonnes of carbon. Many scientists fear the forest is racing towards a theoretical tipping point – a point where it dries, breaks apart and becomes a savannah.

As it stands, the Amazon creates a weather system of its own. In the vast rainforest, water evaporates from the trees to form rain clouds which travel over the tree canopy, recycling this moisture five or six times. This keeps the forest cool and hydrated, feeding it the water it needs to sustain life.

But if swathes of the forest die, that mechanism could be broken. And once this happens there may be no going back.

Aka a tipping point.

The BBC taking care to annoy gay men by using a familiar slur for “gay men.”

Replies are fierce.

You will repeat the lie or you will be punished.

Queen’s University orders every single person on campus to comply with transgender names and pronouns or face punishment

Queen’s University Belfast has toughened up its code of conduct so that refusing to recognise someone’s self-declared gender is now a “zero tolerance” disciplinary matter. Specifically, the university’s new code demands that both staff and students use whatever name and pronouns an individual demands. Failure to do so is now treated as bullying and / or harassment.

It also applies to anyone who makes “derogatory” jokes about transgenderism.

All jokes are derogatory. There shall be no joking.

This new code covers not just staff and students but anybody who sets foot on campus, including outside contractors like cleaners, caterers, and suppliers, and anyone hired by them. This means if a building firm was hired to do repairs at Queen’s, and then hired a subcontractor to supply scaffolding, that subcontractor would be bound by the code of conduct too.

If, for example, this hypothetical scaffolder were then to encounter a 7ft tall, balding, bearded student who demanded to be referred to as a female, they would be under an obligation to accept that person’s declared gender identity without question, despite not even having signed a contract with Queen’s.

Well, except what could Queen’s do to them? Surely nothing? It can do things to students and employees, but not to outsiders.

But who knows, maybe they’ll just start flogging people. It will be nostalgic.

What is a “life coach”?

I’ve suddenly noticed that there are people who go around calling themselves “life coaches,” which seems like quite a presumptuous thing to call oneself. So I consulted Google to confirm what I suspected: it’s a way to charge people for advice without having to get any professional qualifications. Anybody can put up a shingle saying “Life Coach” and charge whatever fees they like.

Some sources consider this an exciting advantage – for the life coaches, that is.

Modern lifestyles are fast paced, highly competitive and come with the added pressure of meeting (often unrealistic) expectations. Many people find it difficult to juggle personal & professional responsibilities and do justice to both. Against this backdrop, a lot of individuals are turning to professionals who can help them navigate life situations and meet their goals, making life coaching the second fastest growing industry, worldwide!  

But it is also one of the most unregulated sectors with no formal guidelines or requirements for specific qualifications, certification or licensing. As things stand, anyone who wants to become a life coach can become one!  

Wait wait wait back up a second. You said “professionals.” You said “Against this backdrop, a lot of individuals are turning to professionals” – but if there are no formal requirements for qualifications then how can the coaches be “professionals”? The reason the professions have high status and are paid well is because they require higher education. Life coaches aren’t professionals then, they’re just randos who call themselves life coaches.

Trump’s Xmas message:

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The course is taught from an Ethnic Studies perspective.

And why is “Identity” the first item in the list? Why is it on the list at all?

Once you rule out the trivial meanings of “identity” (i.e. x=x, people are whatever they happen to be etc.), what’s left is practically synonymous with “ingroup vs. outgroup” or “us vs. them” thinking, the very things the old “Left” was trying to get away from. I’m under no illusion that “who I am” has not to a significant degree been shaped by growing up Norwegian, white, male (in the biological sex sense, not the “gender identity” sense) etc. But that’s a stupid and evil bug of the human brain, not a feature to be embraced, let alone something to define myself by.

Despite attempts by people like Yascha Mounk to salvage some positive meaning of “groupishness” and even nationalism, I don’t think there’s any baby in that bathwater. It’s all cancer and no healthy tissue. Even Mounk admits that the tendency to favor the ingroup can, under the wrong circumstances, lead to extraordinary levels of cruelty and indifference towards to those deemed “other”. Unless one is prepared to argue that, say, the Germans of the Nazi era just happened to be born worse than others on average, it seems to follow that the only thing that prevents most People of Identity from going down the same genocidal route, is that those wrong circumstances simply haven’t arisen. Yet.

We’re all familiar with the “ticking time bomb” metaphor. A better metaphor in my opinion would be the landmine. A time bomb is set to go off at a pre-determined time regardless of the environment. A landmine, on the other hand, will only go off if exposed to certain external influences. Some may have the dumb luck to live out their whole lives without ever having their triggering mechanisms activated, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. The world is full of people prepared to attack and vilify others, go out of their way to destroy their lives, even resort to violence, for bad reasons. If the only reason it hasn’t happened to you yet is that the right (i.e. wrong) kind of bad reasons simply haven’t presented themselves yet, we’re always going to have a reason to worry about you. Group identity may not be the only such bad reason (E.g. I don’t think Donald Trump identifies with anyone other than Donald Trump), but it’s a major one.

We hear a lot about Gaza, not so much about Khartoum.

The conflict between the [Rapid Support Forces] and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has now raged for eight months with no end in sight, killing thousands of people and creating what the United Nations says is the world’s largest human displacement crisis.

Beyond trapping civilians and destroying infrastructure in a country that already struggles with high rates of poverty, international observers have accused both sides of committing war crimes.

That is, international observers have accused both sides of committing war crimes along with trapping civilians and destroying infrastructure.

Evidence is also emerging that the RSF and their allies have massacred members of an African ethnic group in west Darfur, potentially repeating the genocide that took place there two decades ago.

…

Sudan has dealt with civil wars practically since independence in 1956, which led to its southern half splitting off to form South Sudan. But this war is unique in that one of its main battlegrounds is Khartoum, the capital and heart of a state that is home to an estimated 9.4 million people. The months of fighting have left bodies strewn in its streets, destroyed densely populated neighborhoods, damaged a crucial bridge over the Nile River and gutted the skyline, including a prominent oil company headquarters and the justice ministry.

…

Both diaspora and international humanitarian groups acknowledge Sudan’s needs are competing with the crises in Gaza and Ukraine, where Russia’s invasion will soon enter its third year.

It seems like a humanity-wide impulse to commit suicide rather than bake to death.

Originally a comment by VanitysFiend on Brave New World had the “feelies.”

@Bjarte Foshaug

Of course the creators of The Matrix both identify as women and supposedly meant the whole movie as a parable for transition in the first place (in case you wonder: the people who think Eddie Izzard is a woman are the ones who have taken the red pill, had their eyes opened, and see the world as it really is. It’s the rest of us who are living a lie).

The character of Switch was originally intended to be one sex in the matrix and a different sex out of the matrix, the result of a coding error by the machines. That’s as good an explanation for transgenderism as any I guess. It’s a side element though that was dropped in the actual movie. It’s bizarre from my perspective because the whole message of the movie was about choosing reality over fiction, even if reality sucks. The traitor among the crew chooses the fiction over reality and it’s not treated as a heroic decision. I doubt the Wachowskis see the Cypher in themselves.

I think the way a lot of people in geek spaces conceive of the authentic self makes them vulnerable to the teachings of the trans movement. If you’re shy, or a bit of a misfit like a lot of geeks are then the “real you” is often the person you wish you were, more confident, more suave, rather than the person most people see you as. If you’re a Walter Mitty type who works a boring job but has an fantastical imaginary life then which you is the real you? To a lot of geeky people the “real you” is the imaginary you, after all it’s who you are on the inside that counts. So transgenderism makes sense on an intuitive level for a lot of geeks imo.

I think authenticity and honesty go hand in hand, but being honest with the world about ones opinions has no bearing on whether ones opinions are objectively true. A gay person who is open about their homosexuality is being honest with themselves and the world, but what about a trans person or an otherkin/therian? No amount of honesty can override raw biology.

Trump being all festive n shit.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

2024 WILL GO DOWN AS THE YEAR OF GREAT AND FULLY COORDINATED ILLEGAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE BY CROOKED JOE BIDEN, THE WORST AND MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, THE DOJ, FBI, A.G.’s, & D.A.’s THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY, BUT DESPITE IT ALL, IN THE END, THERE WILL BE A BIG AND GLORIOUS VICTORY FOR THOSE BRAVE AND VALIANT PATRIOTS WHO WANT TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!

Also, less than an hour later:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

It’s hard to have a truly great Christmas when you have a Crooked and Incompetent President who wants to put his Political Opponent in jail, and who has been working hard (for a change!), illegally using all of the levers of Law Enforcement, to do so. We are in the fight of our lives to save our Country from MADNESS & DOOM. MAGA 2024!!!

Too sophisticated for me.

And now a feel-good story in honor of the solstice.

If you were strolling by a lake in the dead of winter and saw a duck trapped under the ice, you might search for a stick to poke a hole, or maybe throw a heavy rock, to create a break in the surface.

That is one very trapped duck!

But a fella named Langøien Karl didn’t mess around with rocks, he threw himself in.

The 36-year-old Norwegian native was already dressed for swimming, as he takes part in a (somewhat insane) hobby of “ice bathing,” which involves going for winter dips. When he spotted the duck, he dropped his towel and wasted no time jumping to the rescue.

Karl went the extra distance on shore, performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the stunned duck, breathing life back into its feathered body.

Don’t try this at home.