A taste of Prager U

[_Some Schmo]

Ceeboo will have to answer for himself.

Well, he'd have to answer to himself, first. That might take some time.

[_Maksutov]

There are real idiots on the left in America and certainly on some campuses. It's to be expected. In the bell curve of humanity, they have their place. Right and left have their dogmas and their narratives and symbols, their epic conflicts and sacred places and events and beings. As religion fades the other cultural tribalisms will fill the void, sometimes having a religious shape themselves. Our social evolution continues.

[_huckelberry]

Hey Huck!

Horowitz interview with student, People can have difficulty knowing how to process knowledge about the the ugly parts of American history and actions in the world. There is a bit of actual brain maturity that develops in peoples twenties that better handles contradictory aspects of human societies.

I don't think that processing knowledge and/or brain maturity and development can explain what in seen in this video - but I do appreciate you adding your thoughts/opinions.

Ceeboo, thanks for reply. I thought perhaps I was too brief to be clear about the student describing the American flag as a threat due to the dark dimensions of American past and influence.

Perhaps an important difference between liberal and conservative views these days is how people process the information they may learn about the ugly parts of the American experience. The ugly is so out of place with the normal picture of what we think America is that people really do have emotional difficulty processing it. People on the left can be pushed by the shocks into thinking that America really is Amerika. I believe people of college student age are more susceptible to this because they have not learned as well how to think in terms of complicated and contradictory reality. The positive realities of America cannot coexist with the ugly so the student in the video downplays them in his mind. There can be only on truth of America for that student so he chooses to condemn.

There is another weak strategy to deal with the uglies and that is to simply down play them. People can see them as past and no longer our business. Sure white peoples ancestors came to America as illegal aliens who established themselves not by sneaking but by murdering the legal inhabitants(Indians). But that can be seen as not us and having nothing to do with today.

I do not think either of these two extremes are good ways to go forward. We all need to take individual responsibility for our lives. White privilege or past crimes do not change that basic. At the same time our need to take care of our responsibilities individually should not eliminate the call to improve fairness of opportunity and treatment for all.

[_EAllusion]

Intersectionality refers to understanding that multiple categories of social oppression /stratification interact with one another to affect people's experiences in different ways. It grew out of feminism and was a reaction to feminist thinkers overvaluing gender as a determinant factor in social oppression. It's hard to see how the idea or its academic study is "extremist." It's true that there are people who focus their concerns and rhetoric a lot on intersectionality that are looney tunes, but that's also true of "logic" and I don't see anyone going out claiming that this whole logic business is extremist as a result. Intersectional thinking has a lot of defensible, even obvious material.

[_huckelberry]

Intersectionality refers to understanding that multiple categories of social oppression /stratificatoin interact with one another to affect people's experiences in different ways. It grew out of feminism and was a reaction to feminist thinkers overvaluing gender as a determinant factor in social oppression. It's hard to see how the idea or its academic study is "extremist." It's true that there are people who focus their concerns and rhetoric a lot on intersectionality that are looney tunes, but that's also true of "logic" and I don't see anyone going out claiming that this whole logic business is extremist as a result. Intersectional thinking has a lot of defensible, even obvious material.

EAllusion, the basic idea of Intersectionality does not strike me as extreme. Its use as described in Ben's presentation is extreme to my view. I realize he specializes in making images of the left as extreme so I am left with some doubts about how often the idea of intersectionality is used in the manner he described. I am enough decades out of university that I do not trust my own sense of how extreme some universities are. I assume pictures from the right are exaggurated but there are examples of extreme talk from the left.

[_EAllusion]

Yet, somehow, you get this video.

It’s all about intensifying the tribalism. No surprise there.

I get that. My "somehow" was more a comment on the whole phenomenon being a exercise in projection. A version of this has been in the conservative bloodline for a while. It's part of a broader project of painting Democrats as elitist and out of touch with the common man. There's a famous, albeit egregiously false, anecdote of Pauline Kael being flabbergasted by Nixon winning because everyone she knew voted against him that used to be an archetypal example of this. I still see it from time to time.

But if you give it just an ounce of thought, you should be able to see conservatives are significantly more culturally homogeneous and sealed off from opposing points of view than the reverse. There are more formal approaches that confirm this in different ways, but I'm not sure you need that to intuitively grasp it.

Praeger U, not being a university so much as a propaganda mill, just runs with this by doing man-on-the-street "gotcha" interviews to confirm that impression. Zero effort is put into systematically studying insularity, which is just as well, because you can almost guarantee if they did, it would be a hatchet job conclusion in search of a justification. They don't even bother to go to a town with a population of 800 people and interview a few people saying the reverse. Nope. It's all anecdotes meant to reinforce a tribalist attack on them damn liberals.

This is a shame, as they have people like Ceeboo who intuitively trust them. They could point out how geographic and online media self-sorting is creating increasingly insular ideological communities on both sides of the political spectrum, though with the problem being more pronounced on the right at the moment. But that'd require not being a bunch of partisan hacks.

[_EAllusion]

EAllusion, the basic idea of Intersectionality does not strike me as extreme. Its use as described in Ben's presentation is extreme to my view. I realize he specializes in making images of the left as extreme so I am left with some doubts about how often the idea of intersectionality is used in the manner he described. I am enough decades out of university that I do not trust my own sense of how extreme some universities are. I assume pictures from the right are exaggurated but there are examples of extreme talk from the left.

I'm not sure why you'd trust Ben Shapiro to describe anything honestly.

[_Ceeboo]

Praeger U, not being a university so much as a propaganda mill

It's all anecdotes meant to reinforce a tribalist attack on them damn liberals.

A lifelong liberal and Harvard Law Professor

https://youtu.be/Gc86fPirz3A

A liberal (at least for now)

https://youtu.be/hiVQ8vrGA_8

Another one on Prager U - On tolerance by a liberal

https://youtu.be/35AxkSgQUTI

[_Ceeboo]

Of all the videos I have seen so far, this one in probably my favorite.

It's called "The Strange Death Of Comedy" done by Owen Benjamin (Comedian/Actor)

https://youtu.be/JFIBNwrEl_0

[_EAllusion]

Praeger U, not being a university so much as a propaganda mill

It's all anecdotes meant to reinforce a tribalist attack on them damn liberals.

A lifelong liberal and Harvard Law Professor

https://youtu.be/Gc86fPirz3A

A liberal (at least for now)

https://youtu.be/hiVQ8vrGA_8

Another one on Prager U - On tolerance by a liberal

https://youtu.be/35AxkSgQUTI

Would you care to explain how Alan Dershowitz appearing in a Praeger U video contradicts what I said?

P.S. Kudos on calling Dave Rubin a liberal.