Ugh! "But he was making those types of references is what I remember."

Oh, dear. This is so inconsequential and yet it seems a representation of the national dialogue. An inverse morality tale. In the sense that both parties appear kind of repugnant to ordinary people, and bad actors. I saw this story blossoming over the past couple of days and wanted to ignore it but there is something socially fundamental that seems to make it like cognitive corn stuck between the neural teeth.

Georgia State Rep. Erica Thomas, who represents District 39 in the Georgia House, and Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus, puts out a video with a series of racially charged claims about how she was treated in a local Publix by a white male in the store. Her claim was that this occurred in response to her taking a place in the ten-items or less express checkout even though she had more than ten items (fifteen according to her and twenty according to him.) It came down to a white man telling her to go back where she came from, clearly riffing off of last weeks controversy. After the confrontation, she immediately made an emotional and charged video relaying her representation of what had happened and posted it to Facebook.

State Rep. Erica Thomas, who represents District 39, recorded an emotional Facebook Live video detailing what she says happened at a Publix in Mableton on Friday.

Thomas said she was waiting in the express lane with her daughter when a man became angry over the number of items she had.

"This white man comes up to me and says, 'You lazy son of [expletive]. You need to go back where you came from,'" the lawmaker said in her Facebook video. "Sir, you don't even know me. I'm not lazy. I'm nine months pregnant."

Thomas did not record the incident on her phone, but Channel 2's Chris Jose was told there is surveillance video and police are investigating. Channel 2 Action News is working to get the surveillance video.

Of course, as intended, it went viral with virulent moral outrage.

But bearing out the constantly reinforced adage that you should wait 48 hours before being concerned about racial bigotry claims, this did not play according to the desired script.

The New York Times, bereft of editors or even of people with common sense, went immediately with ‘The Hate Is Real’: Black Georgia Lawmaker Says She Was Berated at Supermarket.

The local mainstream media, alert as ever to try and breath life into the fiction of a racially riven America, was on this like a duck on a June bug. Representative Thomas met with the media in front of the Publix where this racial outrage occurred.

And then, with the cameras rolling, things went sideways.

On Saturday afternoon, Channel 2's Christian Jennings went to interview Thomas about the incident. While she was there, the man Thomas accused of verbally attacking her, Eric Sparkes, also showed up outside the Publix.

Thomas and Sparkes got into a second heated conversation as news cameras rolled.

Sparkes claims he never said anything racist, although he did admit to cursing at Thomas for having too many items in the express checkout lane.

"I'm a liar about what?" Thomas asked Sparkes.

"Everything that happened," Sparkes said. "Me telling you to 'Go back where you came from. Did I say that? Is it on video?"

"Are you serious? What did you say to me then," Thomas asked.

"I called you a lazy (expletive)," Sparkes said to Thomas. "That's the worst thing I said."

"Yeah, that makes you look better to say that," Thomas said.

And then it went fifth-dimensionways.

Sparkes told Jennings he is a Democrat and of Cuban nationality and claimed Thomas was just accusing him to help her political career.

"This woman is playing the victim for political purposes because she is a state legislator," Sparkes said. "I'm a Democrat and will vote Democrat for the rest of my life, so call me whatever you want to believe. For her political purposes, make it black, white, brown, whatever. It is untrue."

And then into ever higher dimensions.

When Jennings talked to Thomas after the confrontation, she tried to clarify if Sparkes really told Thomas to "go back where you came from."

"I don't want to say he said, 'Go back to your country,' or 'Go back to where you came from,'" Thomas said. "But he was making those types of references is what I remember."

So she made it all up.

Sparkes has a long twitter history of his boisterous enthusiasm for the Democratic Party, which appears beyond question. Apparently as is his Cuban heritage.

It is a little hard to keep track of the many levels of intersectional outrage and victimhood going on here. And the rest of normal America are looking on and thinking "They deserve each other." If you do not subscribe to postmodernist intersectional social justice, this just looks like idiot children calling each other names.

On the Erica Thomas side you have the privilege of being a State Representative, African-American, Pregnant (though in fairness to Sparkes, hers is not a figure that makes it obvious she is pregnant), size (she is materially taller and larger than Sparkes), and perhaps motherhood.

For Eric Sparkes you have the privilege of Hispanic, steadfast party loyalty, emigre status, and the fact that Thomas clearly violated social norms by taking advantage of the express check-out when she did not qualify.

So who wins the victimhood sweepstakes? Who cares?

Erica Thomas seems clearly in the wrong. She appears to have made racial assumptions (assuming an Hispanic emigre was a white man) based solely on his skin color. She clearly was violating the social norm of sticking by the rules for checkout lanes. Worse, she appears to have attempted to fan racial division by blowing a minor public spat into something it was not. It is repellant that when she discovers there are store videos of the confrontation she starts walking back her version. She appears to have deliberately lied.

Nobody likes a rule-breaking, grifting, line-cutting, lying, cry-bully. They especially don't like it when it is a government official interacting with an ordinary citizen.

On the other hand, Sparkes. Most normal people roll their eyes at such norm breaking. Nobody likes it. Everyone complains about it, telling dramatized stories at home of the person who cut the line, cut you off in traffic, the bicyclist who blew through the red light, etc. Norm breakers are the free riders on everyone else, the lowest of the low without, usually, breaking the law. They take advantage of everyone else in order to make their own lives easier.

But to make a big scene out of a woman taking 20 items through the 10 item express line? You grin and bear it. Making a scene over it is also a violation of social norms.

It appears nobody did anything illegal here (unless Rep. Thomas's physical intimidation passed a minimum which it does not appear it did or whether her public conduct violated her role as a state representative.) Both parties behaved like middle school brats.

And all of us hard working, tax paying, family supporting, volunteering, church-going, community serving citizens look on in dismay. These are the people supposedly making legislative decisions and fueling political campaigns?

Ugh!

And the ironic cherry on this bitter dish? Erica Thomas is apparently a big fan of Jussie Smollett. Yet another Mandarin Class grifter who sought to fan racial divide through a hoax in order to serve his personal objectives.

And New York Times - quit falling for racial hoaxes.

UPDATE: This gets more and more twisted. From Witness in police report: State Rep. Erica Thomas told Eric Sparkes, ‘Go back where you came from’ in the AJC.

A witness to a heated grocery store encounter between state Rep. Erica Thomas and a man she accused of uttering racist comments told authorities she didn’t hear him make those remarks, according to a Cobb County police report.

A Publix employee told a Cobb County officer that she witnessed part of the conversation and heard Thomas “continuously tell Eric Sparkes to ‘Go back where you came from!’” but did not hear Sparkes utter those words to Thomas.

[snip]

A Publix surveillance video of the incident released Wednesday showed a confrontation that lasted roughly 45 seconds. It did not include audio, so it provided no conclusive evidence of what was said, but it showed Sparkes walk up to Thomas as she was checking out in the express lane and apparently point to the sign. He quickly retreated as Thomas responded and took a step in his direction. She then followed him a few more steps as he walked away, pointing a finger at him.

The officer who reviewed the tape wrote that Sparkes “did not appear to be irate” or to have approached her with “clenched fists,” as Thomas asserted to the officer. He also wrote that Thomas’ 9-year-old daughter was seen “smiling shortly after.”

So nothing in her account appears to have been true.

Initially this looked like perhaps Thomas was simply trying to get some limelight with yet another race-hoax.

I wonder now whether she quickly realized her behavior had been damagingly inappropriate and her own facebook post was an attempt to get in front of a bad story. A bad decision, incompetently executed but perhaps the most rational explanation for an otherwise inexplicable course of action. Or, as always, a noxious stew of privilege, incompetence, and ignorance.

And as Matt Whitlock points out in this thread, there is the peculiar irony of Thomas wearing a garish neon pink Planned Parenthood t-shirt while nine months pregnant. This multi-dimensional oddity of bad behaviors is making my brain hurt.

Now an eyewitness says Erica Thomas was the one who said "go back where you came from" after going viral saying a man had said that to her.

You can't make this stuff up.

Curious how the Dem Presidential candidates will respond to this twist.https://t.co/Jm1QU0dncu pic.twitter.com/77Z0MrAiyM

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) July 24, 2019

Click for thread.

Best of the Bee

Nation Relieved As Politicians Too Busy Bickering To Push Their Terrible Ideas On The Countryhttps://t.co/DZemMfPPnN

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 12, 2019

A drawback of industrial progress, these dangerous ‘pea soupers’ were disorienting and depressing

From Murder in the First-Class Carriage: The First Victorian Railway Killing by Kate Colquhoun. Page 256.

Excellent description of the pea soupers of London. When I lived there in the 1960's there was still talk of such pea soupers occurring as recently as the mid-1950s. Clean natural gas discovered in the North Sea quickly replaced residential coal use (and in industry), dramatically improving air quality.

After the freezing temperatures of the previous fortnight it was turning milder. The weather had broken and frost was replaced by an intermittent rain pattering through the bare trees. Fogs rose from the river, mingled with the soot from house and factory and cloaked the city in a yellowing, soapy atmosphere. It was as if, as Miller wrote in his Picturesque Sketches of London, all the smoke from hundreds of chimneys ascended, rotted and then descended all at once – choking [and] foul tasting. With visibility limited to a yard ahead, pedestrians groped their way gingerly along the greasy pavements, feeling their way along walls in an attempt to avoid being knocked down. Street vehicles and riverboats collided. A drawback of industrial progress, these dangerous ‘pea soupers’ were disorienting and depressing.

Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn R

Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry
by Stephen Dunn

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's the sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poems wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now where's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

Knowing recent history about your own academic field seems not a requirement to opine in the Guardian

From Think Republicans are disconnected from reality? It's even worse among liberals by Arlie Hochschild.
Hoschild is responding to new survey information and survey information should always be treated with skepticism.

In a surprising new national survey, members of each major American political party were asked what they imagined to be the beliefs held by members of the other. The survey asked Democrats: “How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today?” Democrats guessed 50%. It’s actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe “most police are bad people”. Republicans estimated half; it’s really 15%.

The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the study’s findings: the wilder a person’s guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.

This much we might guess. But what’s startling is the further finding that higher education does not improve a person’s perceptions – and sometimes even hurts it. In their survey answers, highly-educated Republicans were no more accurate in their ideas about Democratic opinion than poorly educated Republicans. For Democrats, the education effect was even worse: the more educated a Democrat is, according to the study, the less he or she understands the Republican worldview.

“This effect,” the report says, “is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.” And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.

This is the Grauniad, so expectations are low, but it is striking that Hochschild is so surprised and startled. This pattern of epistemic closure has been known for some time (and can be grossly overstated.) Certainly since The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt in which the phenomenon is discussed in some detail. Published seven years ago.

Poor old Hochschild is trying to figure out why the reviled Republicans seem more aware of the diverse spectrum of political thought than are educated Democrats. Haidt identified the sources. From recollection it was primarily two-fold. Epistemic closure, i.e. living in bubbles was perhaps the biggest factor. Entertainment media, mainstream media, academia are all firmly of the left. If you are a Classical Liberal, Libertarian or Conservative, you are surrounded by the world-view of the hard left all the time. You can't help but be aware of the nuances of their positions. Not so for those of the hard left who are epistemically reinforced every day.

But it is more than that. I don't recall if Haidt has this point or not. If you are Classical Liberal, Libertarian or Conservative, even on the right, the tent is huge with economic conservatives, fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives, Burkean conservatives, Hayekian conservatives, etc. You live in a world of ideological diversity and pluralism already and are challenged to refine your perspectives constantly. In addition, every major social platform or mainstream media platform are all of the simplistic left. You are simply exposed to a deeper awareness of ideological diversity, not just of the left but of the right as well, and therefore are more accustomed to dealing with the likely implications of subtle differences.

Hochschild is inclined to attribute the absence of situational awareness on the part of engaged Democrats to grief. Perhaps. Here and there occasionally perhaps, but as a broad explanation? I doubt it.

She finishes her essay with some of the typical anthropological field visit "I spoke with an oil field worker in Louisiana", sort of thing but puts a seal on the conclusion that she is unaware of the American mainstream and fails to recognize that it is a foreign land inimical to her statist dream.

An evil chorus singing pleas of deference and obfuscation

Kind of striking to come across three articles (two seen, one brought to mind) in one day dealing with broadly the same meta-issue. The behavior of the Mandarin Class who demand deference but whose behavior shocks the conscience.

The first instance was from Ann Althouse, using her language skills to disembowel an opinion writer who barely ranks as a Mandarin Class wannabe. From "Those on the left have been going over how we’re supposed to feel about him for decades, but in the arguing about it, we have been asked to focus again and again on Clinton and his dick and what he did or didn’t do with it." by Ann Althouse.

"The questions we’ve asked ourselves and one another have become defining. Are we morally compromised in our defense of him or sexually uptight in our condemnation? Are we shills for having not believed he should have resigned, or doing the bidding of a vindictive right wing if we say that, in retrospect, he probably should have?"

Writes Rebecca Traister, in "Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling? A close study of his circle — social, professional, transactional — reveals a damning portrait of elite New York" (a long compendium by the editors of New York Magazine). Traister continues:

Meanwhile, how much energy and time have been spent circling round this man and how we’ve felt about him, when in fact his behaviors were symptomatic of far broader and more damaging assumptions about men, power, and access to — as Trump has so memorably voiced it — pussies?

Professor Althouse is, I think appropriately, having none of it.

You wouldn't have spent all that time if you'd been consistent in the first place. Anyone who cared at all about feminism back then already knew the "far broader" picture! That is feminism. If you'd put feminism over party politics at the time, you'd have easily processed the Clinton story long ago.

I agree. One of the epistemic weaknesses of the radical, postmodernist, social justice theory left is that they are so overwhelmingly manichean and deterministic. There is no room in their epistemic world for nuance, gradations or emergent order where outcomes arise from human action but not human intent.

In their world, every outcome is an intended outcome and all things must be logically and inherently consistent. If not, then you are ebad and evil.

A Christian Classical Liberal has no issue with processing Bill Clinton. Probably the most gifted retail politicians of his generation. Exceptionally bright. Committed to achieving desirable outcomes even when that meant compromise with his opponents. But also chaotic, undisciplined, voracious in his appetites, certainly a serial philanderer, quite possibly a serial rapist. He was, in a Christian Classical Liberal world construct, a man. Imperfect, inconsistent, varied, sinful and capable of so much.

For the modern Postmodernist progressive movement, he was the case study which shone a bright light on the absence of their own moral consistency. He was useful to their side therefore his sins must be ignored, and if not ignored, denied or contextualized, or excuses made. Utility superseded morality.

OK, that's a longstanding conundrum not yet resolved on the left but Althouse states the case clearly in her rebuke of the essayist.

The linking element between this and the next articles is that, while not born to it as so many are, Bill Clinton was a linchpin of the Washington D.C. Mandarin Class and when he transgressed, the Mandarin Class drew a protective cloak around him. He never answered for his crimes.

Similarly from Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling? A close study of his circle — social, professional, transactional — reveals a damning portrait of elite New York by the Editors of New York Magazine. Now that he is charged again for yet further crimes involving child pornography and possibly sex with underage minors, Jeffrey Epstein is once again in the news. While editors want to tar some non-left figures such as Steven Pinker and Allen Dershowitz (both Classical Liberals, not conservatives), and especially Donald Trump, the great bulk of the names are leading lights of the New York leftist Mandarin Class. Even Pinker, Dershowitz and Trump appear to be being tarred by long ago association rather than any actual affiliation with Epstein. Indeed, while they emphasize that three or four decades ago, Trump occasionally shared the New York scene with Epstein, they do not mention what also appears to be true - that he severed ties with Epstein one or two decades ago based on reports of inappropriate Epstein behavior at Trump properties such as Mar-a-lago.

Right now, few of the names on the list of names associated with Epstein are charged with crimes, but New York Magazine's larger point is that the New York Mandarin Class enable Epstein's behavior by not ever making it unacceptable.

Which of course brings to mind the whole Roman Polanski ongoing saga, where some of the leading lights of Hollywood have not just demurred on Polanski's statutory rape crimes, but have actively defended him. And it is largely the same social cohort who likewise spent decades turning a blind eye to Harvey Weinstein's sexual lay-to-play schemes, sexual harassment and sexual assaults, as long as it was beneficial to their careers.

The corrupted Mandarin chorus always seeks to defend their own from actual crimes committed, while preaching a whole other song of accountability for everyone else. Ordinary citizens should suffer for their sins and faults, but not the much more egregious Mandarin Class. A chorus sung in New York for Epstein, in Washington for Bill Clinton, and in LA for Weinstein and Polansky. The Mandarin Class are reprehensible.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Click to enlarge.

The NYTs - Shilling for the Soviets since the 1920s

It must be something in their cognitive DNA. The New York Times has been shilling for the Soviets since the 1920s with their shameful Moscow Bureau Chief Walter Duranty writing reports about the wonderful progress the Soviet system represented to humanity. His defense of Stalin and his deceit over the reality of and causes for the Great Famine of the early 1930s constituted what even the Times itself later acknowledged as "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."

A couple of years, still suffering from early onset TDS, the Times proffered the fatuous claim Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism by Kristen R. Ghodsee.

Pathetic for the balm of sweet social justice to cool their continuing TDS fever, they now offer.

America may have put the first man on the moon, but the Soviet Union sent the first woman, the first Asian man, and the first black man into orbit — all years before the U.S. would follow suit https://t.co/DrTZYxvbD7

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 18, 2019

Oh, dear. While the dream of Marxism warms the cockles of NYT reporters's hearts, fortunately there are realists out there to correct the record.

USSR and post-Soviet Russia combined? 4 women astronauts since 1963. The USA? Almost 50, including all these firsts: mother, Chinese-born woman, payload specialist, married couple, black woman, hispanic woman, shuttle pilot and commander, ISS commander, and teacher. Also oldest. https://t.co/SFQLyjw9Gm

— Holly (Maths Geek) (@hollymathnerd) July 18, 2019

I'll see your 4 Social Justice Points and raise you 50.

We are at Stage 3 TDS heading into Stage 4

A couple of years ago, Scott Adams laid out a three part forecast as to how his opponents would characterize Trump. I thought it a prescient forecast and likely to be correct. Over the past year I have on many occasions thought - "more evidence we are at stage three." The problem was, I could not recall the exact formulation. If you don't record it when you see it, it disappears. Nothing I searched on turned it up.

Until today when someone referred to it in sufficient detail that allowed me to locate it.

From The Turn to “Effective, but we don’t like it.” a forecast by Scott Adams made on July 30, 2017.

Prior to President Trump’s inauguration, I predicted a coming story arc in three acts. Act one involved mass protests in the streets because Hillary Clinton’s campaign had successfully branded Trump as the next Hitler. Sure enough, we saw mass protests by anti-Trumpers who legitimately and honestly believed the country had just elected the next Hitler. I predicted that the Hitler phase would evaporate by summer for lack of supporting evidence. That happened.

I also predicted the anti-Trumpers would modify their attack from “Hitler” to “incompetent,” and that phase would last the summer. That happened too. The president’s critics called him incompetent and said the White House was in “chaos.” There were plenty of leaks, fake news, and even true stories to support that narrative, as I expected. Every anti-Trump news outlet, and even some that supported him started using “chaos” to describe the situation.

Now comes the fun part.

I predicted that the end of this three-part story would involve President Trump’s critics complaining that indeed he was “effective, but we don’t like it.” Or words to that effect. I based that prediction on the assumption he would get some big wins by the end of the year and it would no longer make sense to question his effectiveness, only his policy choices.

How does the anti-Trump media gracefully pivot from “chaos and incompetence” to a story of “effective, but we don’t like it”?

The three stages:

Stage 1 - Trump is Hitler

Stage 2 - Trump is incompetent

Stage 3 - Trump is competent and we don't like it

We are at Stage 3 TDS.

Perhaps there is a fourth stage. Trumps accomplishments are demonstratively good for many of the core constituents of the Democratic party. Record levels of employment for African-Americans and Hispanics, rising salaries, revitalization of the blue collar sector, particularly manufacturing, improving trade deals, declining military engagements abroad, historically low crime, declining opioid deaths after a decade of rises, etc. We are approaching the point where it is not only churlish to criticize that effectiveness but also counter-productive. How does the base respond when you reject that which is making their lives better?

So perhaps

Stage 4 - Trump is competent and achieving good things but he is crass.

I have been seeing foreshadowing of Stage 4.

Best of the Bee

Shocking New Study Suggests Disagreeing With Gay, Trans People Not Same As Hating Themhttps://t.co/N86vlpYgZD

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 13, 2019