Substack Notes, Vol. 5.2
Jan. 11th - Jan 16th, 2024
James Mills - Note
Things we need:
1.) A treaty arrangement between the Pacific-Atlantic democracies (Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan) establishing a common front against China in legal/financial/cultural policy areas.
Western citizens should be robustly protected and defended, Western corporations should be publicly held to account, Western societies should (collectively) fight back against infiltration and influence-buying. Human rights shouldn’t be resting on the narrow shoulders of Jimmy Lai.
2.) A new union of college professors against administrators in order to protect free speech, academic liberty, and research quality imperatives.
3.) A WORKABLE THIRD PARTY IN THE UNITED STATES. I’m beginning to think this is the surest and quickest way to rejuvenate our ailing democracy!
James Mills - Note
(From THE FREE PRESS)
“The border crisis—yes, the Texas–U.S. border—has become hard to ignore: border patrol agents took over cbsnews.com/news/migrant-crossings-u-s-… into custody in the first 27 days of December. Americans are frustrated, with 63 percent now saying Biden should be tougher on the border, according to a cbsnews.com/news/migrant-crossings-u-s-…. Only 7 percent of Americans say the border is “not much of a problem.”
And now it’s the dead of winter, and America’s sanctuary cities are having to provide some of that sanctuary. So New York City cbsnews.com/news/migrant-crossings-u-s-… a large public high school into a migrant shelter. To do this, they closed it to students and pivoted the kids to “remote” learning, which is fake, and they should stop pretending.
Is this a fancy high school where kids from middle class or rich families go? Of course not. New York City shut down a school where cbsnews.com/news/migrant-crossings-u-s-… of the kids are on free lunch and turned it into a shelter. Dalton is safe, don’t worry!”
James Mills - Article Reply
This is an excellent and accessible breakdown of sex differences and how they appear in and affect society. I've spoken to at least a dozen young women who firmly believe that the lack of female STEM majors is some artifact of sexism... yet none of them was a STEM major and they all COULD have been (in that they all had an open pathway to that choice).
We should focus on instances where bigotry or hard institutional barriers or measurable differences in resources are leading to a waste of our collective human capital. There are plenty of such cases extent now and we should care about them more than we should about our irritation that 'x' group is not 'represented' in 'y' field at 'z' level. Open the gates of competition, by all means. But if you're a female sociology major and you think that a paucity of female STEM majors is a real social problem there is one thing you can today today to begin addressing it... and it's not writing editorials or complaining. Switch majors.
If you can't name the rule or policy or norm standing in the way of progress it might be time to admit that there's no social problem here at all-just mean differences in preference and priority.
Social Justice as a Gnostic Cult (?)
Exploring social justice ideology as a modern permutation of a very ancient and secretive religious tradition I've recently gone head-first down a rabbit hole of philosophy, reading Marx and Rubin and some of the early critical theorists and listening to James Lindsay's New Discourses series, in which he lays out a well developed and fascinating hypothesis: Hegel's dialectic, Marxism, Critical Theory, and the modern offshoots of social justice are all associated worldviews which follow the tradition of a very old religious impulse. They are modern incarnations of Gnosticism.
James Mills - Article Reply
independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/c…
“At the other end from Epstein’s manor is a squat, boxy blue and white striped structure often referred to as a “temple”, surrounded by a terrace with a red labyrinth motif. It previously had a golden dome and two gold statues on its roof, which were reportedly torn off in Hurricane Maria.
The building differs greatly from Epstein’s original planning permit for an octagonal music pavilion and has become a lightning rod for fevered speculation. Theorists have variously described it as the entrance to an underground lair, an altar to an Egyptian deity, a burial ground for his parents, or a site of ritual sexual abuse, but insider.com/inside-jeffrey-epstein-priv… concluded that it was most likely a private study and music room for Epstein.” (The Independent)
There we have it. A huge structure at the opposite end of the island from the residence, clearly ignoring all the submitted permitting plans, was a study and “music room” (whatever that is). Thank God our nimble and tenacious media organizations have solved at least one of the mysteries surrounding this case!
James Mills - Article Reply
I objected when a friend posted a meme which could be read to suggest that all of those who wanted to maintain sex-specific bathrooms was transphobic but it was less about the content than it was about the certainty and negativity of the message.
Adolescents tend to feel inordinately sure of their positions, and they tend to moralize everything and see the world in ‘black and white’ terms already. They tend to catastrophize. In short, they need adults to teach them subtlety and nuance and perspective, not to teach them what to think about specific issues or events. Almost ANY moral absolutes can be dangerous in the hands of young people. Certainly every example of ‘othering’ or belittling or insulting those who disagree can be dangerous.
There is far too little instruction about the complexity and the layered nature of social reality to kids… because there are far too many teachers who see the world from a simple, privileged, moralistic perspective.
Thanks for the mention :) We should do a letter exchange sometime.