Insanity & Doom Update VII

Item It’s time to take the ‘great’ white men of science off their pedestals

As this latest controversy shows, science also has its monuments to white supremacy. Like Confederate monuments, these statues should be removed. They are daggers to the open wounds of communities that have long known that white supremacy reaches far beyond the sphere of conventional politics into medicine and science. But removing these monuments won’t be sufficient on its own. The row about Sims reminds us how hard the scientific establishment works to present an image of science as “apolitical”. What is needed is an honest re-examination of science’s history and politics — an examination of the kind that scientists have often tried to silence…

While some alternative marches for science have since embraced science alongside social justice, the official March for Science group didn’t.

Amidst the cries of (can you guess?) “racism” and “sexism”, and dividing through for scientism, the glory days of science are over. Politics has discovered it.

Item The Neoconservatives Have Declared War On The Realists

Last week, Commentary magazine, a long-established mouthpiece for hard-line interventionist and neoconservative views issued a denunciation of these realists in a piece titled “Saving Realism from the So-Called Realists.”…

For interventionists, “retrenchment” is just another word for “isolationism,” which of course is the great bogeyman of interventionist foreign policy. Realists have lost their way, we’re told, because they no longer support “forging a stable international order” by which the interventionists mean “non-stop intervention in every region on earth.”…

Today, it may be that modern realists have learned from the mistakes of their grandparents. Contrary to claims that communists would happily throw their lives away in service to the party, it appears communists of old behaved like most everyone else. Many of them were too busy taking bribes and running black markets to busy themselves with taking over the world. It’s now clear that authoritarian regimes — especially hard-core socialist ones — tend to undermine their own power with their backward economic systems. Experience suggests that nuclear deterrence has worked even with history’s most deranged dictators. It’s now clear that wars such as those in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan have done nothing to enhance the safety of Americans.

So, it’s hard to fault the realists for learning something from history.

The neocons still have the ear of the President, however. Why must we inflict democracy on others by force, or support those regimes who call themselves democracies? The joys of shared misery?

Item ‘Transparent’ Shows TV’s First Transgender Full-Frontal Nude Scene

Before Season 4 of Transparent started production, transgender actress Alexandra Billings, who plays Maura’s friend and mentor Davina on the series, walked into the writer’s room to pitch. She said she wanted to be naked….

The milestone for Billings is about far more than nudity. It’s another step in a career spent working to normalize and expand opportunity for transgender actors.

This man Alexandra and the writer are right. This will further “normalize” gender dysphoria.

Item Löfven: All priests must devote married couples

“No priest in the church of Sweden can refuse to wed married couples,” says Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (S) in an interview with the Church newspaper.

He compares a priest who refuses vigorous couples with a midwife who refuses to perform abortions.

In this slightly older item, the joke writes itself: Hey, if we’re allowed to do one immoral Hell-worthy thing, we must do another.

The Church of Sweden is Lutheran, but no longer as officially connected with the government. Still, the wise money is on betting they will fold.

Item Bishop’s blast at ‘satanic’ London Fashion Week show that turned a church into a catwalk

A bitter row has erupted after a fashion show featuring satanic designs was held at a historic church.

Leading clerics branded the event ‘blasphemous’ after models dressed as devils and vampires sashayed in front of the altar…

Ms Findikoglu, who has been described as an ‘up-and-coming rebel of the fashion world’, told Vogue magazine earlier this month of her fascination with the occult and magic.

This was Church of England and not a Catholic church as some earlier reports had it. But nobody would have been surprised had it been the latter.

Item Update National Review: “The Conservative Case for Sodomy”.

…It’s the simple, sweet romance Call Me by Your Name.

The irresistible element of the film, which hits theaters November 24, is that it’s a gay love story…At a screening last week for the film’s debut at the New York Film Festival, I walked out at the end only to discover that virtually everyone else in the theater was absolutely bolted to their seats, transfixed, probably weeping.

The title of the Item is a joke, but only in the barest sense. Readers will recall I also predicted the Oscar for Name. Don’t miss reading about the infamous “peach scene.”