Typical Canadian Views Are Wrong

The body of humanity.

The Gentle Tyranny of Nathan Rambukkana

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 Wilfrid Laurier University is the latest scandalous instance of the political weaponisation of academia.  A year after Jordan Peterson warned that changes to Canada's Human Rights Act and Criminal Code amounted to legally-compelled speech, a teaching assistant has in fact been censured by an ad hoc tribunal for presenting Prof. Peterson's argument without reflexively condemning it.  The old characterization of university as a neutral space for higher learning is now passé.  Social justice as an ideology has been fully institutionalised.

Clearly Lindsay Shepherd, the offending TA, is the hero of the day.  She had the foresight to secretly record her superiors, the presence of mind to cogently convey her position, and the courage to face down a hostile panel accusing her of gendered violence and the passive endorsement of evil.

Wilfrid Laurier will undoubtedly suffer for this episode, but it's her supervising prof Dr. Rambukkana who comes off the worst in Shepherd's recording.  He accuses her of creating a toxic teaching climate with her problematic opinions.  Nonetheless, perhaps partly because he hasn't yet given any interviews, Rambukkana does not present as a real person.  He is a caricature, an absurdly convenient condensation of trends that have worried people like Peterson.  He steps forth and offers himself as a stock character in the dramatic enactment of our collective troubles.

If it wasn't him, it would be someone else.  If it wasn't Wilfrid Laurier, it would be another university.  However outrageous this occasion may be, despite or even because of the concreteness of the evidence, the scandal functions chiefly as a target for the projections of people who have already made up their mind on these matters.  The whole thing is so unsurprising that it's tempting to damn, denounce and decry and be done with it.

I wish it were that easy for me.  You see, fifteen years ago, Nathan Rambukkana was my TA.  I remember a sweet, gentle soul, who you can almost hear behind the tremulous and uncertain tones of his inquisition.  The question that presents itself is how did a well-meaning academic end up an Orwellian villain?  This is perhaps a question for us all to ask ourselves.

Nathan, what happened?  When did justice become about revenge for hurt feelings?  How did the infinite multiplicity of possible perspectives reduce to mandatory Marxism?  Who made that argument for you, and why did you never share it with us?  It confused me then and it confuses me now.

You know, the problematising of my positionality left me a broken wreck, so I've had fifteen years of sorrow in which to try to reconcile your seeming friendliness with the antisocial angst of my later professors.  There is no rational argument to be found, as far as I can tell.

For what it's worth, I think the most helpful thing you taught us was that reading cultural studies sometimes requires letting it wash over you without trying to understand it.  In hindsight, that sounds a bit like brainwashing.

All of this hoopla is over a short clip attesting to the existence of a debate, a piece of critical thinking in a communication class that you deemed to be inappropriate for school.

Do you remember, Nathan, the time you made us watch an entire episode of The Young Ones in lieu of conducting a tutorial?  I don't know if you thought you were giving us a treat, or if you were just hungover that day, but the case you made for its relevance to our studies was extremely weak, everyone hated it, and I was offended.  But I didn't take it to your bosses, because I was under the misapprehension that you're a nice person.

Your Favourite Viola Player is an Evil Wizard

"In the case of Canada..."

"A good manner in the village"

In Malawi it is believed that a forty-something man with HIV being paid to have sex with 12-year-olds is an important cleansing to avoid the infection of the community by the girls' irresponsible ways.

Augmented Reality Breeds Dysfunction

Players of the first big "augmented reality" game, Pokémon Go, have crashed a car, fallen off a cliff, and hopped a fence in the middle of the night to catch a digital nothing beside a tiger enclosure.  In the process, they have been forced to accidentally get exercise (much to their chagrin), while also blissfully signing away their data to government, law enforcement, and private parties.

Hillary Too Dumb To Do Wrong

The Democratic presidential nominee acted carelessly and recklessly in her treatment of classified information, but certainly not criminally.  You see, she was perhaps not "sophisticated enough to understand" that "(C)" means "Classified."  So there you have it.  She looks forward to your vote.

NORAD Tracks a UFO Almost Every Day

"The Canadian documents…indicate the Canadian government has been and remains vitally concerned about the unauthorised incursion of unidentified flying objects within Canadian airspace."

Attorney General and BLM Plan "Summer of Chaos"

"You know I can’t stand those white allies, but yo right this is the best to use them. They hang on every word you say and will do whatever is asked. I just hate all that kiss ass they try to do. Like that changes who they are."

The Rape Culture of Lower Expectations

Left Party politician Barbro Sorman from Stockholm believes that not all rapes are created equal.  Rapes committed by foreigners are a lesser offense.  Immigrants should not be held to the same humane standard, because they don't have moral agency.

According to the tweet from her deleted Twitter account, "The Swedish men who rape do it despite the growing gender equality. They make an active choice. It's worse, imo."  She later clarified for Sweden's Free Times, "I’m not saying it’s worse, of course not!"

Medical Marijuana Used As Medicine

The use of prescription drugs in states with medical cannabis laws has gone down across the board.  It's estimated that if every state legalised cannabis, Medicare would save more than $468 million US on pharmaceuticals.  It's possible there would even be savings if they began to cover this so-called "medicine" that many are now taking in lieu of expensive, toxic, patented and FDA-approved drugs.

A Government Leader Is Not A "Person Like Me"

Those who have a college indoctrination, regularly consume mainstream news media, and make a lot of money, have become more trusting of institutions in the eight years since the financial collapse of 2008.  They are the "informed public."  Everyone else, the "mass populations," have certain questions and concerns.  This is corrosive to democracy!  They should have more faith in government, for the good of society.

Hillary Above The Law

The Obama-appointed FBI Director gave a press conference showing that she recklessly handled Top Secret information, engaged in conduct prohibited by law, and lied about it repeatedly to the public. But she won’t be prosecuted or imprisoned for any of that, so Democrats are celebrating. But if there is to be anything positive that can come from this lowly affair, perhaps Democrats might start demanding the same reasonable leniency and prosecutorial restraint for everyone else who isn’t Hillary Clinton.

Chatbot Overturns 160,000 Parking Tickets

A robot lawyer has successfully appealed 64% of 250,000 parking tickets, resulting in millions of lost revenue for London and New York City.  Next injustice to be fought by artificial intelligence: refugees navigating foreign legal systems.

Iceland Elects Historian

The new president of Iceland is neither a career politician nor a businessman.  He's "a scholastic expert on political history, diplomacy and the Iceland constitution," who decided to enter politics after the Panama Papers implicated the Icelandic prime minister in fraud.

Since Iceland jailed its bankers, leaders the world over hope you won't notice that "Iceland is on track to become the first European country that suffered in the financial meltdown to 'surpass its pre-crisis peak of economic output.'"

European Jewish Congress Wants United Europe

I wonder why anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe? Is it because Europeans have finally begun to notice that Jews overwhelmingly support flooding European nations with non-Europeans? Perhaps the best solution to the issue of anti-Semitism would be for Jews in Europe to respect the self-determination and sovereignty of ethnic Europeans – but I think we all know that isn't going to happen.

The Peaceful Donald

With increasing frequency over the last few months some of the most thoughtful left and progressive figures have begun to speak favorably of aspects of Trump’s foreign policy. Let us hear from these heretics.

China Surpasses America in Computing

A Chinese supercomputer has been named the world's fastest computer for the seventh year in a row – but unlike previous winners, this year's champion uses only Chinese-designed processors, representing a decline of US dominance in the field.

Nosey Faces

Facebook's new head of policy and communication is a longtime senior advisor of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.