Quotes and Links
A week in review
Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of various notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”
“I think the administration has been making choices for months to go along with the demands of the MAGA Republicans and the Right to ruin our universities, to turn our universities into a police state, and to repress our students’ speech.” — Debbie Becher, a professor of sociology from Columbia University, in an interview with NBC News.
“Only 35.7 percent of Americans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, as of 2022, and only about 13 percent of Americans have student-loan debt.” — National Review’s Jim Geraghty; on Wednesday, the Biden administration cancelled $6.1 billion in debt for 317,000 borrowers who attended the “Art Institutes.”
“I have obtained exclusive analysis from inside Stanford outlining the incredible size and scope of the university’s DEI bureaucracy. According to this analysis, Stanford employs at least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats, spread throughout the university’s various divisions and departments.” — Christopher Rufo
“Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even if they disagree with you? If the answer is no, then you should allow basic—I mean, it’s crazy to say because we’re on an Ivy League campus, but this is like basic humanitarian aid we’re asking for.’’ — Johannah King-Slutzky, one of the protest leaders at Columbia, who told the media that the university was obligated to feed her comrades occupying Hamilton Hall. King-Slutzky is a PhD candidate whose dissertation is on “fantasies of limitless energy in the transatlantic Romantic imagination from 1760-1860.” She is “particularly interested in theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens.”
“Returning the frat bros to campus like re-introducing wolves to Yellowstone to restore the natural balance of the ecosystem.” — Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec; “frat bros” at various colleges have been standing up to protestors this week.
“I visited over 20 colleges as part of my kid’s application process. With very few exceptions, they market themselves as summer camp with some classes thrown in. I also received a lot of advertising from colleges to the effect of, ‘you already know what you stand for, at our school we will teach you how to be an effective activist.’ If you combine the summer camp vibe with the conceit that the students aren’t there to learn but to act on whatever they think they know when they are 17, this is the natural result.” — George Mason University professor David Bernstein
“How do the Democrats — how do all of us on that side — say January 6th was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on on college campuses?” — MSNBC’s Al Sharpton
“Genocide, by the way, is when you want to wipe out an entire people. That’s the stated goal of Hamas. That’s what ‘From the River to the Sea’ means. Hamas would do that to Israel but can’t; Israel could do that to them but doesn’t.” — Bill Maher; I had a paying subscriber cancel his subscription today because I documented the idiocy playing out across college campuses, which he equates with “supporting genocide.” The verbal inflation that has eroded the significance and meaning of terms like “racism” and “white supremacy” is having the same degrading effect on “genocide.”
“Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants.” — Joe Biden, during remarks made at a campaign fundraising event on Wednesday.
“There are some who call you enemy of the people. That’s wrong and dangerous. You literally risk your lives to do the job you do.” — Also Joe Biden, addressing the media at the White House Correspondents dinner.
“If you can meme into existence new categories of the oppressed out of what were once correctly understood to be psychological disorders, making 99.5 percent of the population into ‘oppressors’ who must defer and pay obeisance to demands to give male fetishists access to vulnerable women in the spaces designed for their protection or sterilize children caught up in a social contagion you incited, you’ve broken free from the last remaining constraints that keep the disciplinary machinery tethered to reality.” — Wesley Yang
“I’m officially a Woman International Master! Despite its anti-trans regulations, FIDE had to recognize me as a WIM! I’m happy to have shown that it was possible, to have paved the way for my sisters. Girls, I don’t wish you to do as well, but to do even better.” — French chess player Yosha Iglesias, who is transgender. As a biological male, he has a massive advantage over the women’s field. The top-rated “active” female player, China’s Hou Yifan, boasts a 2632 rating—which is lower than that of every single player who appears on the top-100 list of male players. To understand why men are so much better at chess than women, I recommend this Quillette piece.
“We’re proud to say we saved the world.” — Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
“Just a heads up that if you’ve been feeling disoriented and shaken up lately, it’s because you’ve been experiencing a half-speed Chinese-style cultural revolution.” — Rob Henderson
“The reason propagandists are upset with NPR is because it’s an outlet that has the audacity to thoughtfully consider the merit of their arguments and ask necessary and inconvenient questions. NPR is being attacked for doing what journalists should be doing: centering facts and questioning dubiousness.” — Trans activist Charlotte Clymer
“The people baffled as to why police never seem to be around when a well-funded group of neo-nazis in freshly pressed uniforms march through a random town are like the people in comic books who never ask where Clark Kent goes when Superman shows up.” — Reduxx writer Anna Slatz, on the Patriot Front Group that practically screams “Feds!”
“The NFL draft is a lot like a slave auction, except the slaves aren’t working for free.” — Author and black activist Boyce Watkins
“The axiomatic error undermining much of Western Civilization is ‘weak makes right’. If someone accepts, explicitly or implicitly, that the oppressed are always the good guys, then the natural conclusion is that the strong are the bad guys.” — Elon Musk
“Biden’s folks don’t want him to debate, they don’t want to give Trump that platform and risk exposing Biden like that on national TV.” — Politico’s Jonathan Martin, during a segment on CNN.
“Taking joy in antagonizing overly-sensitive people is not an admirable quality in an adult - I know, I know - but in an age of weaponized hypersensitivity, antagonizing those people is often indistinguishable from standing up to bullies.” — Darryl Cooper, host of the Martyr Made podcast.
“He is a stone in a lake, gently and slowly floating.” — Actual line from a Washington Post piece written by Ruby Cramer.
“It’s like when the allies and central powers paused fighting in WW1 to recognize Christmas. Except here, it’s a sacred respect for the universal truth that Joe Biden is worthless.” — National Review’s Becket Adams, on Trump supporters and pro-Palestine protesters chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” together at the University of Alabama.
New York Magazine: “Richard Walter was hailed as a genius criminal profiler. How did he get away with his fraud for so long?”
A Wall Street Journal piece on how “Young Americans Are Getting Left Behind by Rising Home Prices, Higher Stocks.”
“The Dystopian Underworld of South Africa’s Illegal Gold Mines,” from The New Yorker.
The Verge: “He was a self-made tech millionaire looking for a good time. But a Tinder date turned out to be a brazen car theft scam. And things only got worse when he tried to get his prized Jaguar back.”
A Wired story about an Iraqi translator for the US military who emigrated to Texas to start a new life and ended up becoming one of the biggest drug dealers on the dark web.
“The college wrestlers who took on a grizzly bear,” from ESPN.
The Atlantic: “Are White Women Better Now?”
“The axiomatic error undermining much of Western Civilization is ‘weak makes right’. If someone accepts, explicitly or implicitly, that the oppressed are always the good guys, then the natural conclusion is that the strong are the bad guys.” — Elon Musk”
Yes, the collective rooting for the underdog and opposition toward power seems a primitive tribal control for preventing tyranny. However, when the human status hierarchy pursuit supplants true productive merit with crap like Slutsky demonstrates, Huston, we have a big damn problem.
“Taking joy in antagonizing overly-sensitive people is not an admirable quality in an adult - I know, I know - but in an age of weaponized hypersensitivity, antagonizing those people is often indistinguishable from standing up to bullies.” — Darryl Cooper, host of the Martyr Made podcast.”
Oh yes. Saying this and doing this for years. Someone called them “crybullies”. Rob Henderson explains the dark triad personality disorder and ‘vulnerable narcissism’. Treating their sickness and absurdities with anything other than direct honesty just reinforces their sickness - only to keep the peace. That is what we have largely done in consideration of being civil, kind and also supportive of a 1A rights perspective… and look what it has brought us. Just know that they are not used to being treated like they deserve and will be nastier than you could ever imagine.
“Returning the frat bros to campus like re-introducing wolves to Yellowstone to restore the natural balance of the ecosystem. Kind of "environmentally friendly" in a way isn't it.