Social Issues – Page 2 – OfficiallyScrewed.com

GroupThink – We Are Borg, Resistance Is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated

February 4, 2007Mulder

What happens when someone who is considered a leader switches sides? Should his followers shun him or follow him?

This question is being asked again by many on the left after Nick Cohen, infamous leftist protester and activist has come out with his new book What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way.

I was pointed to an interview Nick Cohen gave and he has clearly not left his roots, but he is questioning the current state of affairs among what he calls “Guardianistas”.

“Serious people on the left I have no trouble with. They may not agree with me but they know something is going wrong. An Oxford don has told me, ‘I’m against the war but I hate going on a demo with anti-semites and Trotskyites’. It’s the soft left liberal intelligentsia, those bloody comedians we get these days — they want to feel righteous, they dislike all ambiguity. They want to think they are good. They swear at me.”

Auntie gets it on the chin too. “I support the BBC but I think our problem is the concentration of media in London. When there is an absolute liberal consensus, everyone they meet, eat or sleep with thinks the same damn thing.” So in Iraq’s case this groupthink didn’t come in the hard questions they asked the other side, but the soft questions they asked their own side. “For years,” he writes, “the BBC’s attack dog presenters couldn’t manage to give one opponent of the war a tough interview. Not even George Galloway.”

Auntie got her “impartial, balanced” revenge; on Radio 4’s Start the Week last Monday Cohen was politely monstered by every other left-liberal guest. The Guardian also came up with a novel way of pigeonholing Cohen’s politics as unworthy of serious discussion. “The Guardian online talkboards carried a discussion with me and another supporter of the war from the left with a Jewish name, which was entitled: ‘David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen Are Enough to Make a Good Man Anti-Semitic’.” Not funny, not clever. He has also been pilloried on the paper’s op-ed pages by an apologist for the communist dictatorship in Cuba.

In that quote we see the term “groupthink”. I recently came across this word in Paul Wells’ new book which I am reading now, but Paul elabourates on not only the meaning but some scientific study into “groupthink”. I will refrain from quoting Mr. Wells directly, but I will say that group think polarizes people according to the studies Mr. Wells quotes. It takes a bell curve where their are few at the extreme and shifts the mass of the bell towards that edge. This is clearly something our society is dealing with now on many issues. Americans and Brits in Iraq … polarized. Canadians in Afghanistan … polarized. Climate Change being unnatural … polarized, etc. etc. etc.

Cohen appears to be standing off from the polarized left on a few issues and as the quote says, he is being “pilloried … by an apologist for the communist dictatorship in Cuba.”?

Wow, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

The left and, in particular, Guardianistas, have made their bed by defending the rights of the minorities in their own nations. Yet only those hard core leftists, leave their own country to protest. The majority of that shifted Bell Curve crowd run and hide when push comes to shove and getting up off their ass is required. You never see the throngs protesting women’s rights in Kabul or Riyadh. You never see the throngs protesting the opening of a Chinese coal fired power plant in Shenzhen. Those not willing to go to the extreme are the ones that are polarized by GroupThink and not the idealogy itself. They just keep jumping on the bandwagon of the issue of the day and pick the left leaning side and champion it, keeping this GroupThink polarization mentality. After all, who wants to be pilloried by your “friends” over a Latte or a Chi at Starbucks?

According to Paul Wells, the Paul Martin government fell in large part due to GroupThink polarizing Liberals towards the idea of change and the extreme was too much change for Canadians. If we are lucky the leftist movement supporting Kyoto will fall because they are all pulling the rope in the same direction and it happens to be one heading towards a cliff that Liberal Environment critic David McGuinty said will cost us as much as $40 Billion a year. That’s a pretty steep cliff that even extreme left leaning Canadians may not want to get close to for fear of falling over.

If we can take anything positive from Nick Cohen’s defection, it is that resistance is NOT futile. We will NOT be assimilated. (If there is anything leftists can take from this, it is that polarization and groupthink will destroy them…but I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell them that before they make like lemmings.)

H/T to my friend Sandy for the Nick Cohen link.

Go Figure – Suzuki Bus Tour Will Burn A Ton Of Gas

January 29, 2007Mulder

The night was February 8th, 1989. David Suzuki’s hair had more black than grey in it. The location was Alumni Hall at the University of Western Ontario. The debate was about race and a University of Western Ontario professor, Philip Rushton was preaching that intelligence was related to your race and penis size.

The controversy was immense. The outrage was real. Me and my fellow students were all up in arms over this outrageous claim made by an unknown professor.

So a debate was scheduled and the famous scientist David Suzuki was to be our saviour. We knew that a lowly professor could not possibly stand up to the onslaught that a worldly man like Suzuki would bring.

But it never happened. If there was someone scoring the debate, Rushton would have kicked Suzuki’s ass. All Suzuki could go on about was how a University of 50 or 60 thousand students couldn’t find anyone to debate this monster. How our world class school had to go outside its’ walls to find someone to denounce this professor. I was never so disappointed in David Suzuki as I was that day. But heck, when a major controversy was happening, Suzuki was there … at least in name.

And now he is at it again. The economy is flush with money and David Suzuki is aiming to make his mark on the subject of climate change and global warming. He is launching what CTV calls an “election-style environment tour“. Note it was not called an “Election-style Attack Tour”.

The first question that crossed my mind was “how much emissions is this tour putting into our atmospphere” as Suzuki is using a bus for the tour. The response is given:

The David Suzuki Foundation says in a news release that the carbon emissions associated with the tour are offset through its investments in sustainable energy projects, such as wind farms, solar installations, or energy efficiency projects.

Buying carbon credits with investments in green programs is good for his foundation but it is not acceptable for our government to invest money in Made in Canada green programs. For Suzuki to be happy, we need to give our tax dollars to Russia and Saudi Arabia via Kyoto.
David Suzuki has now disappointed me twice.

30 Minutes Can Save Your Life …

January 22, 2007Mulder

… If you tossed it away on being an environmentalista.

For those who don’t know, I went to dozens of Grateful Dead concerts in my youth. I used to have long hair, go unshaven for weeks, I wore tie-dye and Guatamalan pants and cruised around the American north east whenever the Dead were coming around. Heck, I was even at a concert in Rich Stadium in Buffalo the night before my Transform Analysis Final exam.

And one thing that I can tell you is that at a Grateful Dead concert there is lots of dancing and lots of drumming. This is not limited to the actual concert mind you, but what takes place the whole day of in the parking lot and for hours after the show. Past live concerts can be heard playing all over and if you walk around enough you find this circle of drummers. Anyone is welcome to sit in with their bongos or whatever they want to beat on. It’s actually quite surreal.

When Jerry Garcia died, I always wondered what would become of the Deadheads. What would this pro peace, anti war, anti capitalistic society do? What would the innovative ones among them do to survive? I am talking about the ones selling home made crafts and tie dyes and veggie burritos.

Now I know where they are all dancing and drumming.

(note: the video below contains some swearing, but is WELL worth the 30 minutes)

I can safely say that after watching this video, I have realized that over half the people show up at these things for the party and not the cause. I am not sure if I find that to be a good thing or a bad thing.

H/T to 905Tory

A commenter at 905Tory pointed out a link to Penn’s radio show where he interviews Patrick Moore. It is also quite enlightening. Patrick Moore WAS the International Director for Greenpeace until 1986 and grew the organization from the original fledgling it was to an entity pulling in $100 Million USD before resigning. Find out why.