[LATimes] Where does the LA Times get these people? They wanted to write for the New York Times but the spouse was from Laficornia...
For the last few years, reasonable people of various ideological leanings have been lamenting the scourge that is the word “problematic.” Cropping up particularly in online discussions about social justice and unacknowledged privilege, “problematic” is sort of like “utilize” for the Smuggy McSanctipants set. It’s an unnecessary expansion on a better, simpler word, a piece of linguistic overreach favored by those who are trying to sound smarter and more sure of themselves than they are. For instance, the augmented-reality game “Pokemon Go” has been attacked for a lot of sins, such as excluding people with limited mobility and inserting itself into inappropriate locations. For those who can’t come up with such specifics but still think the game portends the end of the world, “problematic” covers a lot of bases. It does? Problematic is a word similar to conundrum. It's just another way of expressing the word problem as an adjective.
And the sentence looks the same whether the noun or the adjective is used.
Or even if it's utilized.
Urban Dictionary, that indispensable compendium of vernacular terms and usages, defines “problematic” as “a corporate-academic weasel word used mainly by people who sense that something may be oppressive, but don’t want to do any actual thinking about what the problem is or why it exists.” Waitaminnit! Describing something an individual calls a problem as problematic is not thinking? In my estimation if you write something -- anything -- you are thinking, and it does not matter what words you use. Writing is always thinking.
Ah, Urban Dictionary - where I always go to improve my erudition.
That may be a little harsh, because these days a great number of people are doing a great deal of useful thinking about all manner of oppression. But it’s hard not to agree with the definition's essence: “Problematic" is a weasel word. "Allow me to erudit!"
What’s more, as I’ve observed it, “problematic” tends to get used in inverse proportion to the seriousness of the offense. Problem is a base word. When studying Slavic languages you get used to the notion of base words. All of their differing versions mean nothing except a means of properly expressing a thought through using the correct syntax and spelling. So it is with the word problematic. It is the adjectival (See what I did there?) version of the base word problem. It means nothing more nor less than the base word, but for its length and spelling. Feel free to ponder the differences between Slavic language versions of "problematic." What would be the fine difference between "otproblematic" and "izproblematic?" "Pereproblematic" would span whole regions of problematism. "Pereproblematiruyushchi" would perhaps be a continuing problematic span? Maybe if it's been rendered problematic it would be "problematirovanni." If it happened suddenly it could be "zaproblematirovanni." Chekhov and Tolstoi really missed out when problematic wasn't a part of the Russian language.
We don’t hear “problematic” applied to police shootings of unarmed black men or to legislation preventing transgender people from using certain bathrooms. (The operative description of those issues would be, respectively, “actual problem” and “stupid.”) We certainly don’t hear it when the topic is international finance or the NFL because most people who use “problematic” can’t be bothered to follow such things. In the last few months the word has been applied, with some fanfare, to Calvin Trillin, who published a poem about Chinese food in the New Yorker that was deemed racist, and to Taylor Swift’s new boyfriend, whom fans are unhappy about because ... I have no idea. Important to note here, since she brought up the subject: Meghan is white. I didn't even have to Google a mug shot because I knew she was white based on her name and the subject matter. Meghan is one of those female small tyrants who hate her own racial class so much that if she saw jihadis bearing down on her armed with AKs and bomb belts, she would break out the old pompoms and pleated skirt to act as cheerleader, right up until the moment the first round struck her in the chest. As she lay bleeding out, she would never blame the f*ckers who shot her. It will always be her political opponents who will be blamed for her personal demise. That is what she wants for her readers. She is a petty, fascist-worshiping, left-leaning tyrant who has had a hand in opening the gates to let the barbarians in. And that, my friends, is problematic. Calvin Trillin? He's still alive? He's so old, he was God's grandmother's prom date. And he wrote a poem about chop suey or chow mein or General Tso's chicken that was published in The New Yorker? They still publish The New Yorker? And people look at it, even without Charles Addams cartoons? Wow. I'm snowed.
“Problematic” as the rallying cry of sanctimonious posturing is nothing new. In 2013, Gawker named it one of the worst words of the year. If you can't agree with Gawker's opinion who can you agree with?
The satirical Tumblr site, everythingsaproblem, hilariously sends up “call out culture” with pitch-perfect deconstructions of identity politics that require “problematic.” Example: According to everythingsaproblem, the type of cuddling known as spooning, which one culture critic called a “fundamentally sexist arrangement,” represents the “deeply problematic way that power structures propagate themselves.” Those attempting to control words and thought are the sanctimonious ones. Power structures utilize the spoon position to propagate? I thought they used the missionary position?
Until recently, my problem with “problematic” mostly had to do with the moralizing, condescending and reliably humorless people using it. I actually never keyed in on it before. I occasionally got wrought up about people who utilized constructs like "myself and..." someone else in the nominative case, or people who use "in order to" instead of just "to." Now that I'm alerted, though, I'll keep a lookout for moralizing, condescending and reliably humorless people writing about it.
But when I thought more about it (and, yes, I recognize that sitting around thinking about “problematic” might itself be called problematic), I realized what we really need to do is look at so-called problematic things through a different lens: not as something we've labeled and figured out but as the exact opposite. That would mean unlabeled and unconsidered? Having considered once, can one unconsider? I suppose it's possible, though men couldn't do it. I think it remains a woman's prerogative to unconsider.
Think about it: I just did.
Much of what is deemed problematic is really just complicated, it's interesting. I totally disagree. Have you ever actually read anything Calvin Trillin's written? I thought not. There's a reason God's grandmother left the prom with that other guy. Of course, that was several Big Bangs ago, and nobody talks about it...
In a less fragile and reactionary culture we might call these things “worthy of discussion.” In a slightly more Bolshevist culture they'd just shoot you.
But discussion — you know, where people take turns talking and listening — has gone out of style. When one side wants to use the media, the courts and the legislatures to impose their personal political views and social conditions on others, the need for conversation is over. And so, conversations will not get back into "style" until tyrants like Meghan back off for good from attacking their political opponents. Myself and lots of other people find people like Meghan Oppresive™.
Instead of talk we have the indignant tweet, the Tumblr account filled with reaction gifs of celebrities rolling their eyes and, I only look at Tumblr for the dirty pictures.
of course, the mic drop, which signals that whatever was just said is the final word on the matter and no one need respond or dissent. With so many pre-packaged, automated responses to choose from, there scarcely seems any need to go to the trouble of having an actual conversation. The only thing Meghan has gotten right in this whole missive. The problem for Meghan is that she lacks self awareness sufficient to recognize she and her ilk don't want a conversation. They want silence, submission and surrender to their political peccadilloes. They attack language usage, as if it were their own personal preserve to make decisions they have no business or right to make.
Except that actual conversations can be fun. Crafting cogent arguments is generally more stimulating than just lobbing the “problematic” grenade and calling it a day. As powerful as any one word can be, it could be even more powerful when it’s connected to others to form sentences. “Problematic” isn’t an idea. It’s a mask for a sad lack of ideas. Allow me to introduce the top Sad Sack of Ideas, Megan Daum. Isn't she great? [Golf clap]
#1
In search of an effable villain
They sniff at themselves by the billion:
A whiff of vanillin!
"I smell Calvin Trillin...
Quick, bring me my salts penicillin!"
Sultan Knish thinks as clearly as he writes, and Judge Williams is worth writing about.
Judge Barry G. Williams once again handed the Freddie Gray lynch mob a decisive defeat, shredding the prosecution’s case against Lt. Brian Rice, the highest ranking police officer targeted by the mob.
Judge Williams stated firmly that, the court “cannot be swayed by sympathy, prejudice or public opinion.” Instead he insisted that it had to follow the law. Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who became a national figure by heading the Freddie Gray lynch mob, did not even bother to show up. She knew what was coming. And she had no interest in following the law.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Law Enforcement, black, white, brown, yellow who try to bring law and order to the street do so because they have seen first hand what lack of law and order can do to people on the street.
They don't just wear the shield they are "The Shield".
BLUF: Money.
With economic power will come political power, and the veterans of the Castro regime will have nothing left to show for sixty years of poverty and sacrifice. The ‘reform’ faction in Cuba hopes that an interim twilight period between total socialism and total capitalism will allow them to do what other ex-communists have done, and shift their political control in a socialist context into political control and economic power as Cuba changes. They hope for the kind of privatizations and investments that leave the current elite holding the sources of wealth.
The problem with that theory is that Cuba isn’t a China or a Vietnam, where there is enough wealth-creating power to unleash so that a process of economic reform can be managed in such a way that it shores up rather than undercuts the power of the current rulers. Cuba is too small and too poor.
That the Obama White House thinks that a deal with Castro under the circumstances is a diplomatic victory and a trophy to go in the trophy case is not a mark of wisdom—though one can hope that the people who arranged it are smart enough to know that, and are only making a big deal out of it because of all the aging hippies and Sandernistas out there who will hail this as a glorious victory for working people everywhere.
But it remains the case that under the current circumstances it is in America’s interest to do what we can to offer a soft landing to a failed regime and a failed polity in a neighboring state. We don’t want Cuba to collapse in poverty, anarchy and ruin. We don’t want the Cuban people to starve—and to build rafts. We don’t want order to break down. Transition will clearly come; something that is unsustainable won’t last forever. And though we may have to hold our noses to do it, when the time comes it will be better for U.S. interests to work with the heirs of the Castros to arrange a transition that they can live with. We may need to acquiesce in the creation of some new Red Tycoons in Cuba as the price of a peaceful transition.
Why not let the people stand the Red Tycoons against the wall, as was done in Romania, and have some less-tainted folks step up?
The same, by the way, is true in Venezuela. In that horror of a failing state, the idiots who have created this disaster may deserve a terrible fate at the hands of the people they have done so much to ruin, but it is in everyone’s interest to organize as smooth a transition as possible when the time comes. Anarchy, chaos, urban street fights among armed gangs, or in the worst case, episodes of civil war—none of this is good for the Venezuelan people, Venezuela’s neighbors, or the United States.
Two important countries in our neighborhood are melting down; dealing with that is likely to take much more of the next President’s time than most people now think. Pragmatic and levelheaded policy is what we are going to need, and getting to a good place isn’t going to be easy.
#5
It was all about Legacy™ and screwing American safety and principles, like the Iran deal
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2016 10:39 Comments ||
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#6
My impression is that there is a well developed, intelligent and very capable opposition in Venezuela, which actually won the recent election.
Also it is said that the daughter of the ex dictator is now a billionaire.
Is it really necessary to support the old guard in Venezuela and make them all rich?
#8
^Absolutely. The populace has to be so totally against the regime's policies, ideals, and status that they rise up themselves to Ceausescu the regime before we intervene. By feeding, aiding, and extending their submission we aren't doing them any favors in the Macro sense
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2016 11:50 Comments ||
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#9
that was for #6. Grom snuck in ahead of the "submit" button
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2016 11:58 Comments ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2016 12:14 Comments ||
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#12
MUD the opposition commando, is barely unified, overly cautious and nearly as incompetent politically as the PSUV is economically. There will be no recall election this year, the CNE (election board) along with TSJ (high court) can, does and will override any initiative by the MUD controlled Nationally Assembly. There is still guiso to be had, and heck maybe the Wiley Chinee will come thru at the last minute and keep the game rolling along until oil hits $100 again. Of course there is the off chance of famine... Which is bad politics. If the regime somehow pays the upcoming October Vene Bonds there will be famine in February. If the regime balks and defaults maybe something can be worked out with the IMF, which would likely mean a change in government.
All of the state oil companies (PDVSA) bonds lack collective action classes has does some of Venezuela's sovereign debt, so it could be vulture city.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2016 16:32 Comments ||
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#14
It [Cuba] gets more oil than it needs [from Venezuela], and sells the surplus.
The arrangement is coming unglued because Venezuela is running out of other people's money? Cuba ran out of other people's money long ago. Socialism and communism has a built-in self-destruct button that has made it unworkable wherever it's been tried.
[HERALD.DAWN] Pakistain remains a deeply challenged state. It has unsatisfactory relations with three of its four immediate neighbours. It has a strategically loser relationship with the US. It is in danger of becoming a strategic burden for China. It is under international pressure on a range of issues including its India and Afghanistan policies, its policies with regard to terrorism and extremism, nuclear and human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... issues. Its internal governance and degree of corruption in its leadership are seen as criminally irresponsible by both external observers and the people of Pakistain. In these circumstances, the absence of a full-time political heavy weight as a foreign minister may be regarded as the least of the challenges facing Pakistain today. Nevertheless, it involves a gratuitous cost.
Our current foreign policy adviser, Sartaj PrunefaceAziz ...Adviser to Pak Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on National Security and Foreign Affairs, who believes in good jihadis and bad jihadis as a matter of national policy... , is said to be a "de facto" foreign minister. But without the automatic protocol attached to a foreign minister, his status and reception abroad have to be negotiated. Moreover, neither he nor the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi are members of parliament which takes away from their political weight at home. The prime minister ‐ who is absolutely no "foreign policy" prime minister ‐ holds the portfolio. No credible explanation is offered. It is merely reported that he "is in no mood" to make anyone a full time foreign minister!
Incidentally, Aziz was twice promised the presidency and twice let down. He has been divested of his responsibilities for even the external aspects of national security which has further undermined his authority and effectiveness. That he is an internationally respected eminence seems to have counted against him. His predicament is just one reflection of our general state of affairs.
The above indicates a general lack of purpose among the politicianship which has willingly or reluctantly handed over substantive direction of foreign policy to the military and intelligence establishments. Their performance is a matter of historical record and can today be gauged by the national and international media headlines every day. They are simply not designed and therefore not qualified for the job. India-centricism has become a substitute for the arduous and complex job of formulating and implementing a foreign policy appropriate to the challenges of the 21st century - in which the price of failure can be existential. The Chinese are expected to bail us out forever even though as an emerging global power it has its own global interests and priorities that will not always comport with the institutional priorities of the security establishment of Pakistain. A day could arrive when China may not feel compelled to keep India out of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group or even a reformed United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... Security Council. Do we have any effective policy planning to deal with or avert the costs of such a scenario? Can the China Pakistain Economic Corridor be a magic wand for us? Can a soft state ever develop soft power? To all three questions the answer is a flat "no!"
Posted by: Fred ||
07/24/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
all true, that's why the only solution is to fire up the rubes in Indian Kashmir
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2016 10:40 Comments ||
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His earliest specialty was hadith, or the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, which form the basis of Islamic laws as well as guidelines for the daily life of devout Muslims. Over those years, he uncovered a long-forgotten history of female Islamic scholarship, blotted out by centuries of cultural conservatism: a tradition of women religious authorities stretching back to the days of the Prophet. As I recall, the New Testament is much nicer to women than the twelfth-century Church. Power-hungry men spinning what most could not read for themselves. Or understand.
He'd discovered nearly 9,000 women, including some who lectured, dispensed fatwas, and traveled on horse- and camelback in pursuit of religious education. The Sheikh's work on women scholars challenges bigots of all types. The Taliban gunman who shoots a girl for going to school. The mullah who bars women from his mosque. The firebrand who claims that feminism is a Western ideology undermining the Islamic way of life. The Westerner who claims that Islam oppresses women, and always has. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody knows the crayon is jam-packed with hatred of the infidel.
"Sheikh," I opened hesitantly, "I've never actually read the Quran." I've read most of the Bible, at least once, and there is a lot of killing in the Old Testament.
"Most Muslims haven't read it either," Akram said brightly, buttering his scone. "And even if they have, they don't understand it. The Quran is alien to them. Usually, they'll just go to the books of law. Or if they're interested in piety or purifying the heart, they'll read Ghazali"-a philosopher-"or Sufis like Rumi." Like reading Barclay's Bible Commentaries.
I knew, of course, that many graduates of the Muslim world's lesser seminaries hadn't really read Islam's scriptures. The boys in village madrasas, rocking back and forth, lisping lines from the Quran in classical Arabic, a language they didn't understand, might have been literally reading, but not much more. The suicide bombers and jihadist foot soldiers who had been promised a reward of seventy-two virgins in paradise were duped. Nowhere does the Quran mention such rewards for murder. Right. It's 72 Virginians. With baseball bats. Starting with Jefferson.
"Even people who go to good madrasas don't necessarily know it as well as they should," said Akram, briskly brushing scone crumbs off his khakis. "In fact, the Quran is often the weakest part of the madrasa curriculum. Far more effort and class time is given to the texts of jurisprudence or hadith."
The branches of Islamic knowledge that came after the Prophet's death, like law and philosophy, had only made the Muslim world's injustices and divisions grow, he continued. They'd moved mankind further from the source. The message of the Quran and the sunna, the example of the Prophet Muhammad, had been buried by a mountain of academic debate. But the fatwas are all rooted in the crayon, not in the minds of fallible men! Right?
Why not just go back to the Quran?
"People can be lazy." Consulting scholars and obeying their rules was safer and easier, said the Sheikh. "You don't need to read, or question, or think. You've got other people thinking for you. If you become open, it's a challenge." Chortle. They'd rather be democrats.
"You see, Carla, what's happened, really, is that we in the Muslim world have destroyed the whole balance. We've become obsessed with these tiny details, these laws. What does the Quran keep repeating? Purity of the heart. That's what's important! Why has cutting off a thief's hand-something it mentions once!-become of such importance to some people?"
Akram smiled conspiratorially. "People are really very shocked when I tell them that the four schools of law aren't really that important," he said. "If people would just read the Quran, most of these differences would finish." Sure, all the Bible scholars agree on everything!
Re-examining beliefs-most importantly, your own-lies at the heart of the Western secular tradition except for settled science. Disorientation is also a sign of the power of God, and a theme of some of the Quran's most ravishing passages. It's from a book, a non-fiction Pulitzer-prize finalist. But it's still an opinion.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/24/2016 08:16 ||
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#1
The bottom source line should be considered. Would anyone in their right mind believe for the briefest of seconds that the God of Abraham would take Moohamhead (piece of pork be upon him) as a prophet?
A child rapist, mass murderer, sex slaver, common caravan thief and moon god worshiper who finance his hordes with stolen good taken from the local Jews, Christians and even pagans who refused force conversion or death?
Hence the moniker "the pedophile for profit" accurately describes Shelkh's Mohammad. Studying past writings of his Islam is a moot point designed to justify its fraudulent existence.
Posted by: Michael Mann ||
07/24/2016 10:59 Comments ||
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#2
If the ulema and the ummah move in this direction, that would be lovely. But as Sheikh Mohammed Akram said, most people don't read the Koran...and very few of those that do will allow themselves understand it the way he does.
#3
Ideology serves people, not vice versa. Now imagine people who lost the ability for empathy, and can only cooperate with relatives. Now, I wonder, if they invent a religion - what it be like?
#4
The key word mentioned above is "lazy". As long as you are willing to get down on a rug and bang your head against the floor three times a day, you feel that effort which no other religion does is sufficient. The Imam handles the various Muslim doctrine interpretations for you each Friday afternoon at the local Mosque. And they are good at preaching passion for banging your head on the floor and leaving the rest of the brain washing up to them.
Posted by: Unelet Protector of the Sith2424 ||
07/24/2016 14:02 Comments ||
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#5
I believe I found the perfect quotation
"I have never understood the gangster mind -- I simply know what to do about gangsters." LL
#6
The damage and destructiveness visited upon the world in the name of this religion is great and growing and those who do know the true meaning of the Quran (if there is such a thing) are not speaking out. How can one believe anything to be true about a religion that embraces and sanctions lying to infidels by its promoters?
There are many, many violence inducting parts of the Koran and then about an order of magnitude more of them in the hadith.
The sheikh mentions the medieval philosopher (or you could call him an anti-philosopher) Ghazali. At the time Ghazali was alive, there was a philosophic movement to try to harmonize the Quran and Aristotle (sort of like Thomas Aquinas and interpreting the violent phrases more humanly. Ghazali wrote a book saying they were distorting the Koran and that was then end of that.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/24/2016 17:36 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...Adviser to Pak Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on National Security and Foreign Affairs, who believes in 
