HBO’s new blockbuster series is Watchmen, a sequel to the original comic book, and they’re doing something bold and educational: the opening sequence is a recreation of the Tulsa race riots, in which a white community rose up and murdered and burned an entire black community. Even today, the city of Tulsa is searching (reluctantly) for the mass graves that were dug in 1921. I’d read about this before, and it’s unbelievably horrific — it was such an awful act of blatant racism I had trouble believing it when I first heard about it. It happened, though.

One concern is placing it in a work of fiction, and specifically a show about alternate history. I hope no one comes away dismissing it as a comic book story, because you can find real-life, historical accounts of the event fairly easily.

What I didn’t know until this morning was the extent of the open race war that went on in this country after the Civil War. It’s shocking that this wasn’t taught in any school I attended! Check out this eye-opening thread on Twitter:

Thread:

A lot of white people were shocked to learn about the bombing of Tulsa from HBO's "Watchmen" while most black people are familiar with the bombing of Black Wall Street.

Even historians mention these events as isolated incidents.

— michaelharriot (@michaelharriot) October 22, 2019

I had never heard of the Kirk-Holden War before. This was a real war in North Carolina, in which the Ku Klux Klan declared war against the state, the army was called in, and the KKK won, dictating terms to the government…terms that included allowing no Northern intervention in how they “regulated” elections, where “regulation” included murdering black elected officials. One outcome of that kind of action was that the victors celebrated by erecting Confederate monuments all over the place. Our country supported the oppression of a democratic majority! It still is.

I’ve only seen the one episode of the series so far, and to be honest, I have mixed feelings about it as a story…but as a slap-in-the-face wakeup call to deplorable events in American history, it’s a five-star triumph. It promises to develop further as a story about American race relations, and all I can say there is that it’s about time we actually had a media confrontation over it.

It’s been a long time since I last glanced at VDARE, the racist website, and there’s a good reason for that — it’s a slimy sewer with a lot of incredibly bad articles, and, surprisingly, is used by racists as a justification for the scientific basis of their beliefs.

(Narrator: There is no scientific justification for their racism.)

Anyway, what caught my eye was this brazen hack job against Emily Grossman, the British science popularizer. I like her work, so it was strange to see an article titled Extinction Rebellion’s Emily Grossman Is A Type—As Nutty As You Would Expect. How “nutty” was I supposed to expect? I guess I’ll find out.

I did quickly discover that the author was a “nutty” science denialist who rejects the evidence for climate change and misrepresents the positions of those lobbying government to address climate concerns. OK, way to put your credibility worst foot forward, guy.

These “rebels”—motto: “Rebel for Life,” because, they claim, based on falsified climate science data, that a “mass extinction” will begin in twelve years—have vowed to continue their insurrection until their demands are met.

And then he launches into a long tirade against Grossman specifically with what he thinks are damning facts against her. It’s a strange assault because he keeps writing these things that are apparently supposed to make us hate her, but I’m just reading them and saying, “So?”

Grossman—who is 41, childless and has paid £10,000 to freeze her eggs because she can’t find a man she regards as quite good enough for her

Oh, well, what a horrible harridan, too good for us! Except…isn’t it true of everyone? We don’t just have children willy-nilly, but have some standards. It’s also possible that she’s had an awesomely busy career, and just doesn’t have time for kids. There’s nothing wrong with that.

She attended the prestigious, high fee-paying South Hampstead School, an all-girls school in North London

Yes, we’re about to get inundated with evidence that she had an incredibly privileged upbringing. I agree. It’s not a crime, nor does it incriminate her personally. We don’t get to choose our family.

Grossman went to Queen’s College, Cambridge, where she studied Natural Sciences

While privileged, she also made smart choices.

Emily’s father, Ashley Grossman, is professor of endocrinology at Oxford University and a Cambridge graduate and that her mother, Susan Grossman, is also an academic, lecturing in journalism

Children of academics have a leg up in pursuing academic careers, true. I guess she should have had different parents.

Emily Grossman went on to Manchester University to do a PhD in cancer research—and then decided she wanted to become an actress

She had the discipline and opportunity to complete a PhD in a complex technical field, and then made a change in her plans. This is all good. I advise students all the time to pursue what interests them, and not to feel trapped in a rut. It’s also the case that scientific careers are really tough to break into, are demanding and often not particularly rewarding, and if you ask any scientist about the cohort that they entered grad school with, they’ll tell you that the majority do not go on to strictly academic research careers. Those who pursue alternatives are not failures, they’re often happier and more successful than those who settle into the university rat-race.

Good for Grossman. Don’t be afraid to change your goals.

Dramatic career changes tend to correlate with such traits an anxiety and mental instability

(Narrator: No evidence is provided that Grossman was anxious or mentally unstable.)

Grossman’s parents had divorced when their then only child was four; being from a broken home…predicts mental instability

(Narrator: No evidence is provided that Grossman has mentally instability.)

How do all you children of divorced parents feel about being called “nutty” because of that?

she had a mental breakdown, so changed career yet again

(Narrator: No evidence of a mental breakdown is presented.)

Actually, what’s described is that she combined her background in science with her training in acting to become a science popularizer. Smart move.

In 2013, Emily Grossman got back into science, via a BBC scheme called “Expert Women” in which she effectively auditioned, as one of 2000 applicants, to be a female science presenter.

Does anyone else find it odd to express it as auditioning to be a female science presenter, as if she had to get in front of the BBC and demonstrate her skill at being a woman?

When in 2015, Nobel Prize-winning British biochemist Tim Hunt said that women in science were an increasing problem because “when you criticise them, they cry,”—this was joke, but reported out of context— Grossman went on the airwaves to declare: “We desperately need to encourage more girls into science careers, and the concern is this might put them off.”

Uh, what is wrong with her declaration? Hunt was a bit of a fool, and to say that we need to help girls get into science seems like an entirely appropriate comment. Unfortunately, then Milo Yiannopoulos started yapping at her and marshaling his mob of know-nothings to harass her, and…

But this simple criticism was so unacceptable to Grossman that, according to senior Labour Member of Parliament Yvette Cooper, Grossman “was forced to take a break from social media”

Sounds sensible. I know lots of women who take breaks from social media, because it is a terribly hostile environment for outspoken women especially. But that’s not a good enough twist for this author.

As with the dramatic career change, this inability to cope with adversity is a sign of high Neuroticism.

(Narrator: there is no sign that Grossman is unable to cope with adversity, or that she is Neurotic.)

But wait: there is one more sin that must be mentioned.

Emily Grossman…is ethnically Jewish.

<GASP> Shock. Horror. Jewish? No. How can this be?

The revelations aren’t over yet. Grossman’s partner is…a woman. She not only failed to find a male who could meet her high standards for fatherhood, but she doesn’t even have sex with men any more.

Thus it seems Emily Grossman exemplifies a trend observed by F. Roger Devlin in his Sexual Utopia in Power: highly educated women are unable to fulfil their evolved desire to find a higher status male, so they become lesbians, specifically “femme” lesbians.

I am trying to wrap my head around this logic. So women are evolved to find high-status males as mates, presumably with the assumption that “high-status” is a property of some subset of men. But attractive, wealthy, privileged, well-educated women can’t possibly find a higher-status partner who is male, so they settle for lesbianism? Is it because their chosen partner is higher status than any male? None of this makes any sense. Are they evolved to favor maleness, or status? So why do they abandon both?

I guess he hasn’t considered yet that many people choose their partners on the basis of love, and kindness, and mutual interests, rather than the grasping calculus of capitalism. But that wouldn’t fit with his thesis, that rich Jews are acting to destroy society.

Emily Grossman can be added to the list that’s been growing for a while now. Those who spearhead our destruction are a specific type: privately educated, extremely privileged—often with academic parents—ethnic minority (frequently Jewish) and usually evidencing mental instability. In case of Grossman and Ben Van der Merwe, one can add “broken home” and “homosexual.”

A question: what do extremely privileged people stand to gain by wrecking the source of their wealth? Why is gay and Jewish treated as a failing?

As usual, a VDARE article can be summarized as unabashed Naziism written by a spittle-flecked rabid racist. How dare gay, Jewish, and hypothetically mentally ill people exist?

Goddamnit. We needed him more then ever, and now a civil rights hero has died at the much too young age of 68. As the story explains, he was steeled by the tribulations of his youth to become a great man with immense gravitas.

I hope some of his iron has been passed on to the House Democrats.

Exciting news! I criticized that silly Sovereign Nations conference that was endorsed by Dawkins, but is run by a freakin’ far right Catholic not only for its religious premise, but because it only had three speakers: Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose, who don’t have a reputable idea between them. You’ll be thrilled to learn that they have now added two more speakers to the roster, Andrew Doyle, a comedian of sorts who really hates social justice, and Titania McGrath, a radical intersectionalist poet.

Except they can’t even do that right. Titania McGrath is a fictional character, invented by…Andrew Doyle. I guess that’s one way to stretch the budget, counting all the imaginary people living in the heads of your speakers.

Last April, I decided to set up a satirical account on Twitter under the guise of radical intersectionalist poet Titania McGrath. She’s a po-faced young activist who, in spite of her immense privilege, is convinced that she is oppressed. She’s not a direct parody of an existing individual, but anyone who regularly reads opinion columns in the Guardian will be familiar with the type. Given that such individuals are seemingly impervious to reason, and would rather cry ‘bigot’ than engage in serious debate, satire seemed to be the only option.

Doyle is the living embodiment of Mr. Gotcha, that smug know-nothing who pops up to declare that criticisms of society by people who benefit from society are invalid because they live in a society, and who thinks that you can’t decry the abuse of privilege if you have any hint of privilege yourself. It’s a cunning ploy to universally reject the voices of everyone on the planet who finds the status quo intolerable.

Wow. That conference is going to be a barrel of laughs and hypocrisy. I wonder if anyone will attend?

Today is Orange Shirt Day, a day to commemorate all the Indian children who were ripped from their families and pushed into boarding schools.

Orange Shirt Day is a legacy of the St. Joseph Mission (SJM) Residential School (1891-1981) Commemoration Project and Reunion events that took place in Williams Lake, BC, Canada, in May 2013. This project was the vision of Esketemc (Alkali Lake) Chief Fred Robbins, who is a former student himself. It brought together former students and their families from the Secwepemc, Tsilhqot’in, Southern Dakelh and St’at’imc Nations along with the Cariboo Regional District, the Mayors and municipalities, School Districts and civic organizations in the Cariboo Region.

The events were designed to commemorate the residential school experience, to witness and honour the healing journey of the survivors and their families, and to commit to the ongoing process of reconciliation. Chief Justice Murray Sinclair challenged all of the participants to keep the reconciliation process alive, as a result of the realization that every former student had similar stories.

Orange Shirt Day is a legacy of this project. As spokesperson for the Reunion group leading up to the events, former student Phyllis (Jack) Webstad told her story of her first day at residential school when her shiny new orange shirt, bought by her grandmother, was taken from her as a six-year old girl.

My university was founded on the campus of one of those Indian boarding schools, and there are multiple monuments reminding us of that fact, our local version of “Never forget”, so of course I’m participating.

Is that orange enough? I should have mentioned this last week, because I looked through my wardrobe, and orange is not a color strongly represented in my attire. Another thing we did on my trip to St Paul yesterday was pick up something I could wear to class today.