Professors’ study disputes long-standing claim conservatives are more rigid thinkers

College Fix

Key Takeaways

• A recent study disputes the notion that conservatives are inherently more rigid in their beliefs, suggesting both conservatives and progressives exhibit similar psychological traits.
• The study, involving collaboration among professors, aimed to address biases in the social sciences' examination of political ideology and emphasized fair testing of the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis.
• Findings indicate that while conservatives can be rigid, this is only sometimes and to a minor degree, and political extremity at both ends correlates with less evidence-based belief updating.
• The research highlights the importance of ideological diversity in academia, suggesting that the lack of varied viewpoints may influence how political ideologies are studied.

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Remember Iryna Zarutska: When does murder get ignored? When the victim is white and the killer black

RT | Henry Johnston 

The US mainstream media tends to operate by encouraging a certain prefabricated outrage. Sensationalized narratives are cultivated along predictable tracks. But no less egregious is what the media chooses to ignore. Few events of late have better exposed the ideological underpinnings of the media - and of the elite whose narratives it plugs - than the recent brutal and shocking murder of a young Ukrainian woman on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

On August 22, a career criminal, Decarlos Brown Jr., casually walked up behind 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was seated on a train minding her own business, and stabbed her three times in the neck in cold blood, killing her. He sauntered away, still clutching the knife dripping blood.

The mindless and savage attack was captured on surveillance footage, but Charlotte's Democratic Mayor Vi Lyles pushed for it not to be released, ostensibly out of respect for the victim's family. But the footage did eventually surface, and the story spread like wildfire. But this was a wildfire that couldn't reach the impervious redoubt of the mainstream media - even after Elon Musk gave it the push into viral territory by chiming in on an End Wokeness thread pointing out the stunning media silence. 

In fact, not a single major legacy outlet - the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Reuters, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and others - picked it up...  

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‘Dystopian approach’: SEC gives blessing to MasterCard’s idea of cutting off right-wingers

RT

Blocking payments to individuals or groups by financial service firms impedes freedom of speech in a free society, journalist Ben Swann has told RT, following reports that MasterCard is allegedly on course to censor the far-right. 

The New York-based firm is reportedly being forced by left-leaning liberal activists to set up an internal “human rights committee” that would monitor payments to “white supremacist groups and anti-Islam activists.”

“The problem is that everyone has their own views and, in a free society, the idea of a free society is that you are free to have your belief systems, as long as you’re not harming anyone else physically,” Swann told RT America. “But your belief system belongs to you and you have the right be wrong. White supremacists have the right to be wrong.”

MasterCard is not the only holder of purse-strings that is mulling the selective banning of individuals from their services and funds. Patreon and PayPal have previously barred individuals from receiving payments using their platforms, due to their extreme views.

But unlike crowdfunding platforms, being cut off from one of the leading American multinational financial services corporations will, most likely, have a much greater impact on the financial stability of an individual or a group, especially after the US Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly blessed MasterCard’s undertaking. By doing this, Swann believes the government granted “big corporations the ability to control what voices are heard.”

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AOC's 'Green New Deal': Ideology Masquerading as Realism

Beau Christensen and Shane LaChance
Sott.net

News and social media platforms have been abuzz over Ivanka Trump's interview with Fox News on Tuesday where she commented on the 'Green New Deal' (GND) proposed by new congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). Here's what she said:

STEVE HILTON, FOX NEWS: You've got people who will see that offer from the Democrats, from the progressive Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'Here's the Green New Deal, here's the guarantee of a job,' and think, 'yeah, that's what I want, it's that simple.' What do you say to those people?

IVANKA TRUMP: I don't think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something.

I've spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get. So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job.

They want the ability to live in a country where there's the potential for upward mobility.

Ivanka Trump was largely blasted throughout the media as an out-of-touch privileged hypocrite who has had everything handed to her. This underscores a commonly held view by those on the Left that see the conservative 'work-for-what-you-get' sentiment as a fundamental manipulation that the elite use on the blue-collar worker to maintain their wealth.

The common worker is, on the one hand, compassionately regarded by the 'left' as a victim of capitalism, and on the other callously portrayed as a simple-minded redneck whose unlimited gullibility leads him to believe that one day he too might be 'one of them mighty fine rich folk'. Perhaps there might be something to this, but perhaps that is not all there is. There is something about this 'work for what you get' mentality that is deeply rooted within the American mindset, and exploring AOC's proposal within this context might help explain the strong response to it.

Initial reactions to the 'Green New Deal' from both the Left and Right - within the population generally and politicians particularly - has involved mostly ridicule, exasperation, scorn and dramatic condemnation (complete with hamburgers). At least one of the reasons for this was the fact that a summary of the GND (that has since been deleted from AOC's website after it was widely mocked on social media) called for economic security for everyone (even those "unwilling to work") and said air travel should be eliminated along with "farting cows." These depictions are, of course, not representative of the whole resolution, and it's possible that the outrageous summary was the work of a 'saboteur' or written up by an ideologically possessed devotee. But even after the full 'official' text was released, the response was, let's say, underwhelming, and while the proposal has its steadfast supporters (primarily among those who sponsored it), it seems that the vast majority of Americans are against it, and for good reason.

While the text does detail a few theoretically good ideas, like supporting family farms, clean water, respecting indigenous lands and treaties and reducing fossil fuel consumption to mitigate the health hazards from environmental pollution, the fine print contains all manner of objectively implausible, unrealistic or unnecessary ideas that tarnish the entire document. Basically, any 'good' is vastly outweighed by the very much ideologically-driven bad ideas. Some examples include the creation of high-speed railways, updating every building in the US within 10 years to meet new 'green' energy standards, ensuring that 100% of power comes from zero-emission energy sources, and so on. Perhaps worst of all is the fact that, underpinning the proposal is the creation of a new economy through massive government expansion. 

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Glitch in the Matrix II, The Origin of the Intellectual Dark Web

Rebel Wisdom

The phrase 'Intellectual Dark Web' was first coined by mathematician Eric Weinstein in early 2018, it quickly spread. Was this just a chance remark, or was there a plan? This film explains how the creation of the Intellectual Dark Web was part of a long term strategy, and sketches out Eric's account of the history, and the future of the project.

This is a Rebel Wisdom Documentary, to help us make more, to see exclusive subscriber-only films and join the conversation, please consider becoming a supporter on www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/plans 

We are also announcing the Rebel Wisdom Summit - our largest event yet, in London on May 12, with Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, Iain McGilchrist and Jordan Greenhall, more details here: 

https://www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/summit 

Some of these topics were sketched out in greater detail by Eric Weinstein on Edge.org. Kayfabe: 

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/... 

War on Excellence: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/... 

Russell Conjugation: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/...

Delegitimizing the white male

Paul Craig Roberts
paulcraigroberts.org

We know that the white male has been delegitimized. Women's studies, black studies, Latino studies, and Identity Politics have been demonizing, and teaching hatered of, white males since the 1980s. But where did these hate-filled special interest groups get their power? The answer is that effete white males handed it to them.

It was white male university administrators who created the anti-white male propaganda degrees called women's studies and black studies. It is the white males in the Democratic Party who endorse Identity Politics, an ideology that puts responsibility for all the evil in the world on white males.

The latest white male collapse is that of the president of Notre Dame University. Catholics, themselves formerly a marginalized people in the United States and Great Britain, are guilty, according to Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame's president, of displaying in Notre Dame's main building a wall mural painted by Luis Gregori in 1880. In the Identity Politics that now rules even Catholic universities, the 1880 painting is viewed in the 21st century as depicting native Americans in stereotypical submissive poses before white European explorers.

I would bet that most Americans would not read the painting in this way. But in American everything is determined by the few.

Notre Dame's president has decided that the solution to this "offense" is for the university to cover the mural.

Apparently the only intelligent person present at Notre Dame university is a law student, Grant Strobl, who said that "if we adopt the standard of judging previous generations by current standards, we may reach a point where there are no longer accomplishments to celebrate."

This is a good point, but I would go farther. Luis Gregori's painting was not intended to depict the submission of native Americans to the white man. Here we have another case of real history replaced by fake history with the connivance of the president of Notre Dame University.

Think about this for a moment. Is Luis Gregori's painting the only painting, the only piece of art that can be construed, or misconstrued, as giving offense? 

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