36 years and 10 Months

Roy in action at commencement.  His photos made us all look good.

Prepping for a medical procedure (What is it about getting older?), Rebel Girl missed Monday's SOCCCD board meeting but was happy enough to watch highlights on Thursday afternoon from the comfort of her rambling air-conditioned canyon home after spending three hours chatting with her fellow blogger, recently retired bon vivant Roy Bauer at his nearby canyon digs.

It's beautiful out there in Trabuco Canyon.  Teddy purred around. Under the big oak that shades Roy's house, reclining in Adironadack chairs, they talked about, as people say, everything under the sun and more.

There's so much to say, but this brief post is about what was said at Monday night's board meeting. 

Neither Rebel Girl nor Roy was in the audience, virtual or otherwise, as they had been for, uh, decades.  Roy especially so, entertaining and informing many and aggravating others with his live blogging. (See e.g., SOCCCD: vaccine mandate adopted at tonight's board meeting! (But Whitt loses her freakin' marbles)

As it happens, Roy was on the agenda Monday night, under Item 11.2, Exhibit A: Resignation, Retirement, Conclusion of Employment.

Others in attendance brought Roy's attention to the words said and here they are, for your reading pleasure, transcribed by Rebel Girl (all mistakes hers).  

Cue up the video linked below at the 47 minute, 40 second mark to watch. 

July 2023 SOCCCD Board meeting

Trustee Marcia Michiker:

“Roy Bauer, the philosophy instructor, is retiring after 36 years and ten months. And I recall fighting the Nazis with him when many of the Nazis were coming to our board meetings. This is really true and our pictures were in both the Nazi propaganda and in books. It was a pretty scary time but we were fighting together, so we’ll miss him.  Thank you.”

President Tim Jemal:

“Well, I couldn’t agree more.  I wasn’t planning on saying anything... I think Roy Bauer’s place in this district is iconic. I think each one of us has probably been a target at one time or another.  But I think that the blog that he developed was something that made the district better. I think it opened up debate and it challenged us and I know that I have been challenged by it and I think that’s wonderful. To have that kind of free speech, free discussion, stream of consciousness...I am sorry to see [him go,] but I am happy for him. I think Roy will be missed.”

The moral of this story?  

It reminds Rebel Girl of that moment at the Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday concert in 2009 when Bruce Springsteen exclaimed, “You outlasted the bastards.”  Yeah.

We outlasted the bastards.

We did indeed “fight Nazis.” 

Check out this "pretty scary" letter that Roy received from one of them!

 It was, indeed, “a pretty scary time.” 

So much scary shit was going down.

This blog did indeed make “the district better.”

Iconic Roy Bauer.

It did!  

(Don't miss Roy's good health news update below!)

PS: Trustee Jay said some nice words early on in the evening about Roy toward the end of her board report (14 minute mark) and Marcia heaped deserving praise on Virginia Shank and Rosie Aguilar in her remarks as well. 

Teddy!

My Lymphoma adventures: it's the bubble life for me

I did my pivotal PETscan yesterday (routinely done midway through the long chemo regimen). 

Feeling pretty light-headed and run down, I went into the cancer center this morning to get results from Dr. N. Before that, I had my blood drawn and the results were very poor. 

I began to think the end is near. I imagined N explaining, "Sorry, but nobody survives with these numbers!"

Then N blew in saying the scan results are "very good" and maybe even "exciting." All indicators are positive: no signs of lymphoma anywhere. 

What about the dreadful blood test? —Red and white blood cell counts really low; my platelets are down to 39 (normal starts at 150)!

Well, as it turns out, you should expect low blood numbers right after chemo, and I'm a week out from my last infusion, and so that's what that's about. N was not concerned. 

He did say: don't get sick; live in a bubble. Don't be takin' up skateboarding.

They gave me a red blood cell booster shot and then they spun me out the door. 

Batten down the bubble hatch! Full steam ahead! --Roy

Matt Taibbi SLAMS Dems For Abandoning Free Speech

 

From Wikipedia: 

Since the mid-2010s, [Matt] Taibbi's reporting has increasingly focused on culture war topics and cancel culture. He has also criticized mainstream media and their coverage of Donald Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. His writing has since polarized readers and fellow journalists. Ross Barkan wrote, "Taibbi's critics view him as a reporter turned red-pilled culture warrior chasing subscriptions — or worse, a middle-aged male no longer at the vanguard, aggrieved that younger journalists are now leading the fight for justice." Barkan continued, "The liberal-left especially loathes the way Taibbi equates the right- and left-wing media." On the other hand, "Taibbi's defenders say he hasn't changed. Rather, it’s the world that has grown more illiberal and hysterical." However, Barkan concluded that many critics of Taibbi were more concerned with Taibbi's priorities and "how one of the most talented reporters of his generation should wield his formidable powers in this uncertain age." Taibbi rejected criticisms that he has changed, arguing that Donald Trump "fundamentally changed the business".

Listen! (What's really needed)

Excerpts from “Seymour Hersh [interviewing Thomas Frank]: Ordinary People by the Millions”  

A conversation on current US politics with [highly-respected political writer] Thomas Frank. 

Scheerpost 

In 2016, the sweet-faced [Thomas] Frank put a shiv into the heart of the Democratic establishment in Listen, Liberal, a devastating account of the failures of the party. In 2020 he broadened his canvas to tell the story of populism in the US and its failure to take hold of the nation’s institutions, framed as a critique of its enemies, in The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism. 

His message is more relevant than ever, as we and the world face a most uncertain immediate future. We got into it over lunch a few weeks ago and he agreed to answer my questions in an edited version presented here. 

SEYMOUR HERSH: How did we get to the political fault line that gave us a Donald Trump? When did it all start? 

THOMAS FRANK: I sometimes feel like it’s the story of my life, because it all began shortly after I was born in 1965, during the Vietnam era. Within a few years came the beginning of the culture wars and the eclipsing of the old liberal consensus. It’s important to remember two facts about it all: First, that every single battle in the culture wars has been presented to us over the years as a kind of substitute class war, as an uprising of ordinary people with their humble values, against the highbrow elite. 

The other fact is that, at the same time the Republicans were perfecting the culture-war formula, the Democrats were announcing that they no longer wanted to be the party of blue-collar workers. They said this more or less openly in the early 1970s. They envisioned a more idealistic, more noble constituency out there in the form of the young people then coming off the college campuses plus the enlightened white-collar elite. In other words, the Democrats were abandoning the old working-class agenda at the same moment that the Nixon Republicans were figuring out how to reach out to those voters. 

Put both of those strategies in effect for fifty years with slight evolutionary changes (The New Democrats! The War on Christmas!), drag the nation through various disasters for working people and endless triumphs for the white-collar elite, and you get the politics we have today. 

. . . 

But the larger question—why do the upside-down politics of the last 50 years keep going?—is fairly easy to answer. It keeps going because it works for both sides. The Democrats now inhabit a world where they are moral superstars, people of incredibly exalted goodness. The media is aligned with them like we’ve never seen before, so are the most powerful knowledge industries, so is academia, so is the national security establishment. And so are, increasingly, the affluent and highly educated neighborhoods of this country. The Democrats are now frequently competitive with the Republicans in terms of fundraising, sometimes outraising and outspending the GOP, which is new and intoxicating for them. 

. . . 

And beneath it all, the economy keeps going in the same directions it has since the late 1970s. More and more inequality, heaven on earth for the rich and the highly educated, plus the destruction of basically every locale that’s not a creative-class redoubt, and now American life expectancy itself is going in reverse. This is a formula for social breakdown, not healthy politics. 

SEYMOUR HERSH: Was a Trump or someone like him inevitable? Other candidates seem to be replicating his style to various degrees in the 2024 campaign. 

THOMAS FRANK: First of all, consider what makes Trumpism different from the culture-war game the Republicans have been playing for decades. Part of it is his enhanced vulgarity, his outrageous bigotry, his flaming contempt for insiders, his absurd hyper-masculinity, but these were always present before in some lesser form. What really distinguishes Trumpism is that he swiped certain traditional liberal positions—on trade and war, for example—to make his appeal to white working-class voters much, much more convincing. 

Trump’s success was made possible by Democratic betrayal of those same voters. Every time some Democrat went before an audience of industrial workers and told them they had to get a college degree or learn to code, they brought this shit on. And while Biden has worked hard to reposition the Democrats with his middle-class-Joe persona, I doubt it will be enough. So, yes, Trumpism will continue. You will see more and more of it in the years to come. The old Republican Party is not coming back.

. . .

THOMAS FRANK: I think Bill Clinton was the pivotal figure of our times. Before he came along, the market-based reforms of Reaganism were controversial; after Clinton, they were accepted consensus wisdom. Clinton was the leader of the group that promised to end the Democrats’ old-style Rooseveltian politics, that hoped to make the Democrats into a party of white-collar winners, and he actually pulled that revolution off. He completed the Reagan agenda in a way the Republicans could not have dreamed of doing—signing trade agreements, deregulating Wall Street, getting the balanced budget, the ’94 crime bill, welfare reform. He almost got Social Security partially privatized, too. A near miss on that one. 

. . . 

THOMAS FRANK: Look, I’ve been writing about these things since the early 2000s, with little effect. This is not because I’ve got the story wrong or something—everybody knows that the Republicans use workerist rhetoric and that the Democrats identify with the professional white-collar elite. These things may be unpleasant to consider, but they are undeniably true. The evidence for them is abundant and overwhelming. 

. . . 

[Third parties?] 

...[T]here hasn’t been a really competitive national third party since the Populists of the 1890s. The Populists, who were a left-wing farmer-labor party, frightened the establishment of their day, and in the aftermath all sorts of measures were taken to ensure something like that never happened again. So there are now all sorts of structural barriers to a third party, like laws against fusion voting. Yes, we have seen third parties at the state level and also individuals who run for president like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. But building a real third party is effectively impossible today. And I say this as a guy who is extremely sentimental about the 1890s Populists. (Building a social movement is different. That is eminently possible.) 

. . . 

What I mean is this: All our great historical moments of progressive reform have been due to huge social movements, movements that enlisted ordinary people by the millions, not just the professionals in DC. I’m thinking of the farmers’ movement in the 1890s, the labor movement in the 1930s, and the civil rights movement and then the antiwar movement in the 1960s. Social movements succeed. They build and they change the intellectual climate and then, when the crisis comes, they make possible things like agrarian reform or the New Deal or the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s. 

We need that kind of mass mobilization today. And we have had inklings of such a thing. Black Lives Matter seemed at first like it might become such a movement. And look at the union organizing and the strikes that are going on today. It is totally possible to imagine a kind of mass social movement that brings ordinary people together behind some larger vision of economic reform. 

. . . 

SEYMOUR HERSH: Is the media, and its lack of investigative reporting, also at fault? 

THOMAS FRANK: Yes, but that’s a huge subject on its own. The only thing I’ll say on that now is that, as newspapers shrivel and die all over America, the handful of surviving news organizations have become increasingly similar to one another, staffed with the same kind of well-graduated people who see everything the same way. Naturally enough, they read like propaganda. The whole professional-class revolution in the Democratic Party, for example, is something they see as obviously correct and wholesome. Instead of examining how that might have been a mistake, they enthusiastically police incorrect opinion about national events. This, even as vast parts of America now have almost no news coverage at all. It’s a strange feeling to be in a place like Kansas City, where you can look at Twitter and read all about whatever is riling the media set in DC, watch them try to get one another in trouble for saying the wrong thing, but at the same time encounter huge difficulties when you try to find out what is actually going on in the city around you. What I am describing is a recipe for disaffection and mistrust and breakdown....

More from the vapid & conventional men in suits: Keeping the world safe for Entrepreneurs — and other clueless Roquemorisms

OC Leader Board: Can For-Profit Universities Be Started Nowadays?  [because, hey, some of us business professionals are still into besuited upward mobility, and that's what it's all about]

BY GLENN ROQUEMORE 

July 22 - ORANGE COUNTY BUSINESS JOURNAL 

Editor’s Note: Glenn Roquemore, who was president of Irvine Valley College for 18 years before serving as chancellor and president at Costa Mesa-based California Southern University for two years, wrote this article for the Business Journal. 

Some for-profit universities have experienced significant ethical and financial issues that led to their disbanding or buyout by other institutions in recent years. ... Past scandals and the reputation of being nothing more than low-quality “degree mills” have placed a jaundiced eye on for-profit schools. These bad actors were relatively few but damaged the overall reputation of the industry. 

The current [Biden] administration is methodically proposing more restrictions on for-profit universities and rolling back some of the policies put in place by the prior administration, such as restricting access to federal financial aid, including the famous Pell Grants. ... It is challenging to get beyond the cloud of partisan public versus private education arm wrestling to see which side of the aisle makes the best points to consider. 

. . . 

No ethical lapses here!

Within the current reality, would starting a private for-profit university have a chance of success today? I would say yes. ... I base my opinion on serving as president and chancellor of California Southern University, a private for-profit university. Before taking this appointment, I served for 30 years in a public higher education system, including 18 years as president of Irvine Valley College. 

What was mostly a curiosity for me, moving to the private sector, was wrought with unknowns and some concerns. What I experienced starkly contrasted with the somewhat negative reputation. 

. . . 

 "Our long institutional nightmare is over."

Perhaps the biggest key is providing the most current and in-demand programs. A for-profit school can pivot much more quickly to a hot area such as ChatGPT than a public university that has a tenured faculty to protect its interests. ... Other keys to success are accreditation, flexibility and access. 

Fortunately, the National Accreditation Commission has recognized the need to include for-profit institutions in their accreditation process. Such accreditation allows for access to federal financial aid and the transfer of courses to other institutions. 

Employers and students considering for-profit degrees or certificates should ensure that the institution is nationally and programmatically accredited. 

. . . 

The Advantages 

I was so afraid his head would pop

Private universities have advantages that can greatly benefit students, especially adults working in a specific career field that wish to seek a higher degree ... A police officer with a bachelor’s degree generally makes between $62,000 and $64,000 annually. According to the University of San Diego, a police officer in 20 months can earn a master’s degree in criminal justice, costing about $21,000 in tuition. ... The annual salary with a master’s degree ranges between $78,000 and $103,000 depending on the position. The time to pay off the tuition could be less than 18 months. 

A nurse may want to earn a Bachelor’s in Science (BSN) or a Master’s in Science (MSN) to become a nurse practitioner. 

For-profit universities offer flexible schedules by starting courses regularly, not on a semester or quarter schedule as most universities do. 

This schedule allows the working adult to fit their coursework into their professional work schedule. In addition, registration and admittance occur regularly as well. There is no need to wait for a traditional application calendar that public institutions have. 

Online Schools .In addition to the private for-profit schools, other online schools such as Udemy, Kajabi … or Coursera offer courses for free without a certificate or paid courses that can lead to earning a certificate.

. . . 

Today, especially after the COVID-19 years, students from community college to the university level desire flexibility and ease of access. 

Some colleges are finding it challenging to get students back to campus after experiencing the online learning modality and the room it provided in their lives to learn and take care of family or personal obligations. ... For profit universities can provide the business professional with a pathway to upward mobility that allows for full-time work and other life commitments. 

Several high-quality for-profit universities are available today. Given the proper accreditation, for-profit universities have a position in the lineup of education. 

Entrepreneurs who have ideas on how to improve education do have a path open to them.

[RB: special thanks to BT for keeping tabs on this one Man in Grey.]

Roquemore hung out with corrupt politicians, officials. Raghu showed 'im.

Roquemore's initial "pathway to upward mobility"?: hooking up
with the odious Raghu P. Mathur, 1997

My continuing lymphoma adventures: "We've chosen the rock"

My continuing lymphomatoid adventures

     As most of you know (though I've never mentioned it here), I’ve been ill with diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for some time now. 

     On April 19, after many months of increasingly poor health—bouts of extreme anemia (sending me twice to the ER) continual shortness of breath, extreme weariness—I became so weary (zero energy; tendency to just sleep; continual imbalance) and underfed (no appetite; extreme weight loss) that my bro, Ron, felt the need to take me to the Hoag emergency room; that became a five-day stay at the hospital in Newport Beach. (Suddenly, I was compelled to abandon all notions of privacy and what people used to call "modesty." Non-sickies, you have no idea. A shout-out to the fine nurses at Hoag/NB!) There, tests confirmed what we suspected: I have lymphoma. (In January, my oncologist had initially guessed that I have myelodysplastic syndrome - MDS, a blood cancer.) 

     I’ve been staying with my brother’s family here in Irvine ever since, and I’ve been doing better and better. A shout out to my bro and his entire family, including Karl, the wonder-dog. (Colleague and friend Brittany visited a couple of times here at chez Ron's; she was so impressed by Karl—his striking beauty and friendliness—that she went out and adopted a GS mix, a puppy! I met this pup: very sweet and beautiful.)

     My chemo regimen (R-CHOP*), which commenced at the hospital (April 20), comprises six cycles, separated by 3 weeks. So the whole process should take only about 18 weeks. —Unless there are complications.

     After my 2nd infusion (chemo cycle 2), in May, I did very well, though my hair fell out, which was cool. (I've taken to wearing baseball caps, less cool.)

     That's when things started going south. Not the hair, the blood. I was found to have an extremely low platelet count. Platelets are among the three kinds of blood cell produced by the bone marrow (RBC and WBC are the others); they are necessary for clotting; without enough platelets, if you bleed significantly (e.g., internally), you bleed out. So giving chemo, a strong poison, to a patient with very low platelets is risky, especially when the patient is injured in some way.

     Hence, through June and much of July, we’ve been forced to take various stop-gap measures, such as white blood cell boosters, blood transfusions (to combat anemia), etc. 

     Chemo was on pause. Not good. (At one point, I asked Dr. N whether this pause diminished the effectiveness of the chemo regimen. In characteristic N fashion, he just said "Yes." I asked for no details. As a cancer patient, there's such a thing as having too much info, I find.)

     After my second bone marrow biopsy a couple of weeks ago, a challenging procedure that nevertheless provides good info, my doctor strongly hypothesized that, as earlier suspected, I also have MDS, a blood cancer, and that—and not the lymphoma or chemo—caused my low platelet production. An examination of my blood history seemed to confirm this: I've always had low platelets. (I figure it's like unknowingly always going around with just a half-tank of blood. Pretty dicey. I suspect that most of us are in such an oblivion somehow.) So, last Friday, as my platelets seemed to be heading upwards, it was decided that I should continue the chemo regimen at the 1st opportunity. I was all in favor of that.

     That brings us to today, infusion day, the long awaited chemo cycle 3 that should have occurred a month and a half ago!

     This morning, just after 8:00 a.m., I had my usual pre-infusion blood test, and it revealed that my platelets numbers had plummeted yet again. Good grief! The nurse sought the advice of my oncologist via phone. I was not hopeful. She just came back with that. 

     So there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that, worrisomely, my platelets count has taken another dive (down to 52 from 72; normal is between 150-400), and thus continuing the chemo will be risky. The good news is that, nonetheless, we'll proceed with the chemo today. Why? I think it's because of the higher risk of pausing cancer treatment for so long (just a guess, though a plausible one; I've not spoken with anyone except the excellent infusion nurse; one learns not to insist on an immediate confab with the Doc every time something happens; it's unnecessary and it just pisses them off; I'm speaking as one who has had lots of experience with doctors in the last year or so).

     And so I'll be here at the USC/Norris Cancer Center in Newport Beach until 5:00 p.m. or so. Some R-CHOP infusions—e.g., the first one—are an all-day affair. Lots of interruptions: supplementary substances beyond the chemo are put in the IV, and one is informed of each supplement. Unless they say something like, "be advised that this could kill you," I don't pay attention, I say "sounds good," and then I just go back to sleep. (One of the first IV additives is a sleepy-time pill.)

     My doctor (and me!) are, of course, between a rock and a hard place. We've chosen the rock. I like the rock. Being back on chemo, despite the side-effects and risks, is a good thing.  

     Still, I suspect that, before I leave today, I'll get a lecture about how now is not a good time for me to take up wrestling or even mumblety-peg. 

     Teddy and Karl say “hey!”

*According to Google, "R-CHOP is a combination of five drugs that work together to target and kill cancer cells. It's a first-line treatment for aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a group of blood cancers. Most often, R-CHOP is used to treat the most common form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (​DLBCL)."

[R-CHOP is] A regimen consisting of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, prednisone, rituximab and vincristine that may be used for the treatment of AIDS-related B-cell lymphomas, Castleman disease, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), follicular lymphoma, gastric ...

Be of good cheer!

P.S. (July 22): upon completion of yesterday's infusion, which ended at about 4:00 p.m., what the nurse actually advised was, "Don't be partying; stay home and rest." 

     And what about the MDS diagnosis, which, as far as I know, still stands? A: I don't know. I've had no conversation with Dr. N, my oncologist, since this latest development. But we did discuss my prospects were I to have MDS—the initially favored hypothesis/diagnosis way back at the beginning of my relationship with the fellow in January. I seem to recall he gave me a vague picture of "lots of things could happen" plus he exhibited no great concern, always a good sign, I figure. But who knows. I'll likely talk with N within the week. I still hope for what counts as a "full recovery," which is possible with my kind of lymphoma, though it might not be for MDS, if indeed I have it. 

     Things sure do get complicated.

     It feels inappropriate talking about myself so much. Such yammering eventually makes me shudder and hide. So I'll shut up and go back to monitoring politics. Very interesting; very distressing. Sheesh! Anything could happen! A political era sui generis.

Voting for a decent candidate

Chris Hedges: Cornel West and the Campaign to End Political Apartheid 

[Click HERE to read the entire article on Scheerpost]  

July 16, 2023 

The two ruling parties have destroyed our democracy. Voting for one or the other will not bring it back.

     Those that attempt to challenge the stranglehold of the Republican and Democratic party duopoly are attacked as spoilers, as being naive or egomaniacs. These attacks have already begun against Cornel West, who is running for The Green Party nomination. The underlying assumption behind these attacks is that we have no right to support a candidate who champions our values and concerns. 

     “In 2016, the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump,” wrote David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, “Now, with Cornel West as their likely nominee, they could easily do it again. Risky business.” 

     This is the same message that was repeatedly delivered by Democratic Party officials, the media and celebrities to discredit Ralph Nader, who received more than 2.8 million votes in the 2000 election, when he was a candidate. 

. . . 

     Third party candidates and independents are nevertheless dangerous to corporate-indentured Republicans and Democrats because they expose the duopoly’s political bankruptcy, dishonesty and corruption. This exposure, if allowed to persist, will potentially fuel a wider movement to bring down the two party tyranny. The Republican and Democrat parties, for this reason, mount sustained campaigns, amplified by the media, to discredit its third party and independent rivals. 

     The government directed censorship imposed on social media, as Matt Taibbi exposed, is aimed at shutting down critics from the left and the right who attack the ruling power elite. 

     You will hear far more truth, for example, about the apartheid state of Israel and the suffering of Palestinians from Cornel than from any Republican or Democratic candidate, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who supports the Israeli government. 

     There are numerous problems with our electoral system: voter suppression, difficulties in registering to vote, the cumbersome process of often casting a ballot, the flawed mechanisms used to count votes, the 30 or 40 incumbents who run in each election cycle for Congress unopposed, redistricting, denying residents of Washington, D.C. voting representation in Congress, denying the right to cast a ballot for president or a voting member of Congress to the peoples of U.S. “territories”— such as Guam and Puerto Rico, the disenfranchisement of over three million ex-felons and the purging of millions of non-felons from the voter rolls, and the absurdity of the Electoral College, which sees candidates such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump lose the popular vote and win the presidency. 

     But these problems do not compare to the obstacles placed in front of third parties and independents which mount and run campaigns. 

. . .

     Voters do not vote for who they want. They vote against those they have been conditioned to hate. The oligarchy, meanwhile, is assured its interests are protected. 

. . .

     Monolithic power always confuses privilege with moral and intellectual superiority. It silences critics and reformers. It champions bankrupt ideologies, such as neoliberalism, to justify its omnipotence. It fosters intolerance and a craving for autocracy. These closed systems throughout history, whether monarchical or totalitarian, ossify into bastions of greed, plunder, mediocrity and repression. They lead inevitably to tyranny or revolution. There are no other options. Voting for Biden and the Democrats will accelerate the process. Voting for Cornel will defy it.

Our new era of censorship (where have my comrades gone?)

Where Have All the Liberals Gone?  

July 12, 2023 

Opening comments to the general public to ask a question, in sincerity: what changed the minds of society's former First Amendment advocates? 

By Matt Taibbi / Racket News 

Yesterday a House Committee — Republican-led, but still — released a series of documents showing without a doubt that the FBI has been forwarding thousands of content moderation “requests” to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube on behalf of the SBU, Ukraine’s Security Agency. 

The documents not only contain incontrovertible evidence that our own FBI pressures tech companies to censor material, but that the Bureau is outsourcing such work to a foreign government, in this case Ukraine. This passage below for instance reads “The SBU requested for your review and if appropriate deletion/suspension of these accounts.” 

There can’t possibly be controversy at this point as to whether or not this censorship program is going on. Whether it’s the FBI forwarding the SBU asking for the removal of Aaron Maté, or the Global Engagement Center recommending action on the Canadian site GlobalResearch.Ca, or the White House demanding the takedown of figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the same types of behavior have now been captured over and over. 

In light of this, I have to ask: where are the rest of the “card-carrying” liberals from the seventies, eighties, and nineties — people like me, who always reflexively opposed restrictions on speech? 

Is your argument that private companies can do what they want? Then why did you think otherwise in 1985, when Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center suggested record companies “voluntarily” label as dirty songs like “Darling Nikki,” and call them McCarthyites when they compiled a list of the “Filthy Fifteen” albums? Does that not sound suspiciously like the “Disinformation Dozen”? Why were you on Frank Zappa’s side then, but with blacklisters now?.... (continued) 

1985: Among the "Filthy Fifteen"

Pronouncing the word "vegan" (when the wrong pronunciation is right)

My sister, Annie, lived in the Bay Area for many years but returned to Southern Cal about 10 or 15 years ago, upon which time she often hung out with my gang of friends, who, for various reasons, each had an interest in vegetarianism. (I and several of my close friends have been animal rightists for many decades.) In conversation, the concept of veganism often arose, and, for a time, Annie, a long-time vegetarian, insisted on pronouncing "vegan" as vaygun or vaygn, despite the relative commonness of veegun/veegn (again, with a hard g). 

"That's how all my friends in the Bay Area pronounce it," she complained. 

We just looked at her and said "it's veegun."

I did some research. In England in 1944, an animal rightist and vegetarian purist, Donald Watson, fundamentally an opponent of cruelty to animals, created a society dedicated to a strict vegetarianism. He then coined (or helped coin) the term "vegan" by taking the first 3 and the last 2 letters of "vegetarian." 

Naturally, this new term was pronounced vedge in or vedge an.

Who knew?

The evidence I have found indicates that, despite these origins, by the 1970s, vaygun (with the hard "g"), rather than Watson's vedge in, was the common pronunciation (among American vegans), but, thereafter, as the notion of strict vegetarianism gradually achieved a broad interest, the vaygun pronunciation gave way to the veegun pronunciation, something well-established by the late 90s. 

We have here multiple examples of a very common linguistic phenomenon in which the "right" pronunciation is replaced by the much more common "wrong" pronunciation. That commonness makes the "wrong" one right, of course, since words are about communication and thus rely on agreement in usage. 

I did some websurfing, and I found a letter from a guy who reported: 

I've been vegan for over 30 years, with many Peers, and from the 70's through the early 90's, I never heard anyone pronounce it any way other than Vay gn. 

That's my two carrot's worth. 

Here's my two carrots worth: sometimes you need to throw in the towel on insisting that everyone use the "correct" pronunciation—namely, when the new and incorrect pronunciation crosses the line into extreme (nearly universal) commonness. The same point applies to the meaning of words, as in "begging the question." At this point, only a prig would "correct" someone for using the phrase "beg the question" to refer to "raising" an issue instead of, well, you know, arguing for some proposition in a manner that presupposes the truth of that proposition (circular reasoning). (This latter is the original meaning that still held sway when I was an undergraduate in the early 70s.)

I believe there are exceptions to such accommodation. I recall a lecture by visiting philosophy professor Frederick Will (this would have been about 1977), an elderly fellow (and father of George Will), explaining that philosopher/logician Charles Sanders Peirce's surname "should be correctly pronounced as 'Purse.'" 

Yep. Here, the commonness of the error does not remove its erroneousness. 

* * *

See Merriam-Webster

See also "The curious case of 'begging the question.'"

Re Frederick Will:

Professor Will became known in the 1950s as one of the leaders among philosophers working in the analytic mode in the theory of knowledge. He concluded in 1964 that his philosophical approach was flawed. This decision led him to abandon a completed manuscript of a book embodying the results of twenty years of work and to turn away from the received view of epistemology and its problems. In 1974 he published Induction and Justification, a book in which he criticized his earlier ideas and argued for a radical alternative. (See)

 

Meanwhile, in Britain, it was pronounced "VEEgn" already by the 70s

...Just in case you're into the "logic" thing