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There is no easy solution for Baltimore

The recent unrest in Baltimore is yet another sign of our trying times. More out-of-control than the chaos that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer, the looting and destruction in the city was another reminder that America is an increasingly divided country. And by divided, I mean split in more pieces than two.

As the media picks sides in the debate over keeping order and grievances about police abuse, I have a novel question: what, if anything, can be done about police brutality and inexcusable violence and looting? Is reconciliation possible, or is America fated to live with irrational destruction driven by corrupt policing?

I have my doubts. Complex issues – and the situation in Baltimore is anything but simple – are tough to weed through. They require looking at things through a kind of prism. All sides should be considered, as much as humanly possible. Of course, bias and predilection will always distort pure, objective reasoning. But we can make a good-faith effort to try and understand what is at the core of problem before formulating a solution.

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Of course Buzzfeed is pro-shaming culture, they make piles of money from it

I haven’t read Jon Ronson’s new book about shaming culture. But I suspect this Buzzfeed reviewer is giving it short shrift, since she thinks political correctness is such a risible concept that it belongs in scare quotes. Here’s the crux of Jacqui Shine’s review:

What makes this book an uncomfortable, if distant, cousin of GamerGate and men’s rights activist logic is that it, too, relies on a series of false equivalencies and muddy distinctions in order to elevate being shamed on social media to epic proportions. These sorts of distortions are dangerous because they minimize — and even threaten to erase — far more systematic and serious problems that have taken years to even reach the public consciousness. Based on the premise that everyone shares Ronson’s worst nightmare — an undeserved public flogging on Twitter — So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed shows a total disinterest, even disdain, for social and interpersonal power dynamics. Ronson seems to see every kind of public shaming as equivalent, no matter the audience (a handful or hundreds of thousands), platform (a courtroom, Twitter, a prison, a hotel conference room, newspapers and media websites), the identity of the shamer (a judge, a freelance journalist, an entire publication, a bunch of strangers), or even the cause (racist jokes, off-color photos, plagiarism, kinky sex, abuse of political office, sundry felonies).

She criticizes him for comparing the cases of Justine Sacco and Adria Richards, the donglegate shamer, for showing too much equanimity and failing to say, unequivocally, that one is bad and the other is good. That equanimity is, of course, “a major strategy of aggrieved white dudes, like men’s rights activists.” The last line is similar:

In a world where people who have historically been powerless have a new means with which to fight back — or at least make their voices heard — it’s important to notice when this empowerment is made out to be dangerous.

Perhaps shaming culture would be worth defending if it really was the social media equivalent of shooting kulaks. That seems to be what she’s saying. But when that sentiment is expressed on a site that makes piles of money by stoking these online mobs, it seems rather self-serving and unreflective.

When not teaching its readers how to perform anilingus via cartoon, a major source of content on the serious news outlet known as Buzzfeed is offensive stuff people are saying on social media. It’s one of those standbys that can be adapted for any media event people are tweeting racist stuff about. The reviewer says Ronson’s book “shows a total disinterest, even disdain, for social and interpersonal power dynamics.” Is a company seeking to profit from these shame-mobs part of those power dynamics?

For the sake of argument, I’ll grant that some people have it coming. Perhaps we could even come up with a set of agreed-upon rules, a celestial privilege abacus, by which we could decide the amount of shaming a person deserves given their social position. That’s not realistic, though, and in practice it falls to people like Shine to improvise them. When those people are writing for websites that make lots of money from the encouragement of public shaming, do you think we can expect them to do that in a fair way?

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Feast of the English Martyrs

Collect from the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham:

O Merciful God, who, when thy Church on earth was torn apart by the ravages of sin, didst raise up men and women who witnessed to their faith with courage and constancy: give unto thy Church that peace which is thy will, and grant that those who have been divided on earth may be reconciled in heaven and may be partakers together in the vision of thy glory; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Holy Martyrs, pray for us.

Litany for the English Martyrs:

 Lord have mercy on us.
Christ have mercy on us.

Lord have mercy on us.
Christ hear us. Christ graciously hear us.

God the Father of Heaven,
have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the World,
have mercy on us.

God the Holy Ghost,
have mercy on us.

Our Lady of the Precious Blood,
pray for us.

Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs,
pray for us.

Saint John Haughton,
intercede for us.

Saint Robert Lawrence,
intercede for us.

Saint Augustine Webster,
intercede for us.

Saint Richard Reynolds,
intercede for us.

Saint John Stone,
intercede for us.

Saint Cuthbert Mayne,
intercede for us.

Saint Edmund Campion,
intercede for us.

Saint Ralph Sherwin,
intercede for us.

Saint Alexander Briant,
intercede for us.

Saint John Payne,
intercede for us.

Saint Luke Kirby,
intercede for us.

Saint Richard Gwyn,
intercede for us.

Saint Margaret Clitherow,
intercede for us.

Saint Margaret Ward,
intercede for us.

Saint Edmund Gennings,
intercede for us.

Saint Swithun Wells,
intercede for us.

Saint Eustace White,
intercede for us.

Saint Polydore Plasden,
intercede for us.

Saint John Boste,
intercede for us.

Saint Robert Southwell,
intercede for us.

Saint Henry Walpole,
intercede for us.

Saint Philip Howard,
intercede for us.

Saint John Jones,
intercede for us.

Saint John Rigby,
intercede for us.

Saint Anne Line,
intercede for us.

Saint Nicholas Owen,
intercede for us.

Saint Thomas Garnet,
intercede for us.

Saint John Roberts,
intercede for us.

Saint John Almond,
intercede for us.

Saint Edmund Arrowsmith,
intercede for us.

Saint Ambrose Bartlow,
intercede for us.

Saint Alban Roe,
intercede for us.

Saint Henry Morse,
intercede for us.

Saint John Southworth,
intercede for us.

Saint John Plessington,
intercede for us.

Saint Philip Evans,
intercede for us.

Saint John Lloyd,
intercede for us.

Saint John Wall,
intercede for us.

Saint John Kemble,
intercede for us.

Saint David Lewis,
intercede for us.

V. I shall go unto the altar of God.
R. Unto God. Who giveth joy to my youth.

Let us Pray.

O God, in Whom there is no change or shadow of alteration,
Thou didst give courage to Thy holy Martyrs
through the unfathomable graces of the immemorial Mass.
Grant unto us. we beg Thee,
through their intercession,
the wider restoration of this sacred rite of Mass,
that we may rejoice in the consolation of its graces
and be strengthened to serve Thee
in imitation of the courage
and fidelity of these holy Martyrs.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, Who being God,
liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost,
for ever and ever.

Amen.

Also, the St. Thomas More Society of America is having a gala dinner in a couple of weeks at the Army Navy Club in DC, check it out here.

Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew

Video of Jack Ross’s book release at the National Press Club

Here’s the whole event, videotaped for your convenience by the Freda Utley Foundation:

Here’s a link to the text for my bit. I’ll collect other transcripts here if they are posted online. Go like the book on Facebook too, and if you’re in the Midwest, check out his speaking dates out your way in the next week.

The only attacks worth listening to are the ones nobody hears

Last night I was checking out a #gamergate meetup where Milo Yiannopoulos and Christina Hoff Sommers were appearing at, taking place at a bar called Local 16. I walk up the stairs and see the crowd, and suddenly memories of Magic: the Gathering tournaments come rushing back to me. I leave early, only to find out that at 12:15 people are evacuated for a “fire drill” which turns out to be a bomb threat. The threat was made by a throwaway Twitter account and not by phone call.

A lot of people implicated Arthur Chu, who was making cryptic tweets beforehand:

He also sent a weird email to Local 16, trying to shame them for hosting what he calls “a right wing hate group.”

These are definitely the kinds of bizarre communications you’d expect from an ideological fanatic, but overheated rhetoric claiming that Arthur Chu made the bomb threat is ridiculous and everyone should know better. Almost as ridiculous is claiming that anyone would give their ideological opposition the much-coveted victim card to wear as a badge of martyrdom.

Someone who hates #gamergate making this bomb threat doesn’t make sense. Without specific knowledge, we can only deal with general knowledge of who has what kinds of incentives. I can see two possibilities. It was either a third-party prankster trying to stir up drama or a pro-gamergate figure trying to get a slice of his the victim pie for his comrades.

In either case, there is going to be a rude awakening. It’s going to be interesting to observe the complete asymmetry in mainstream coverage of this bomb threat. Even the least credible threats to anti-gamergate personalities get massive mainstream coverage. That just isn’t going to happen this time or any time that the ideologically misaligned are on the receiving end of such things. Bias isn’t always a conscious thing. It’s often expressed by what the editorial board isn’t thinking about. No amount of social media flailing is going to change that.

While everyone else on social media seem to take the most unfounded threats with the grace of a diving soccer player, what’s actually interesting are the quiet attacks. The website that I edit for, TechRaptor, has been DDoS’d four times. Nobody announced it. The only reason I know this is because the owner of the site told me privately. The perpetrators didn’t announce their evil intentions on social media. We also gets threats in the comments which are quickly and quietly removed. TechRaptor doesn’t malinger about it. That’s what it looks like when angry fanatics are genuinely trying to silence you. It looks like nothing.