Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

The public be damned! I am working for my stockholders!

attributed to William Henry Vanderbilt

There has been a copious silence from the NBA concerning slave labor camps in China, concerning a judge’s ruling that claiming homosexuality is a mental illness is a valid opinion and an ad by a Chinese laundry detergent company where a black man is given a tablet of the cleaner put in a washer and comes out “clean” (that is Chinese).

Now you can make the case that the ad is a joke and NBA players can take a joke and you can make the case that people have the right to an opinion particularly one that was the case the official opinion of the American mental health experts until the early 70’s and defend both of free speech grounds although the NBA would never do so if these took place in America, but rationalizing slave labor while at the same time your political allies are pushing reparations for slavery, that’s pure unadulterated capitalism.

China has recently announced that is will again broadcast NBA games and with few or no fans allowed in the arenas and US rating way down despite lockdowns where people would presumably be at home the NBA players who like the ability to make six to eight figures for playing a game rather than $7.50 to $15 an hour for manual labor jobs where being able to reach the top shelf is useful where most of said players would be without the game are not inclined to be all that particular about slavery in China if it hurts their bottom line.

In other words it’s capitalism totally divorced from morality. If the goal is to maximize profits for the league as long as laws are not broken (and none of those actions are in violation of Chinese law, they are at worst down with it or at best silent.

If that’s how they want to justify it, that’s fine, it’s on them, but I don’t want to hear a single word about “social justice” or how the NBA cares about right and wrong because the reality is these guys to a man care about their bottom line and making what they can while they can that’s it. That’s their prerogative but spare me the false moral high ground narrative.

Oh and a small note to Coke and all those folks campaigning against “whiteness” it’s worth noting that this position makes them morally inferior to the almost completely white textile workers of England during the Civil War who despite hardship due to cutoff of their cotton supply vital for their employment by the Union Blockade of Confederate ports stood united against slavery and either recognition or intervention in the Civil War.

Once you though away trust in your organization it rarely if ever comes back and once you are no longer trusted or trustworthy you will not attract trustworthy people to operate said institutions.

Even worse if you figure that out and try to change direction you discover trust once lost never comes completely back, even the spouse who forgives a cheater who begs for a 2nd chance never loses suspicion of a 2nd betrayal.

I don’t expect you to heed my warning as you cower in fear of the woke left or laugh as you secure wealth and position for your family or even downplay it as “not so bad” or alarmist but I leave you with this quote.

“First we must cross the river,” Benito was saying.  “Do you believe me now when I tell you that you must not attempt to swim it, or even get wet from it, or must you try that too?”

“What happens if I just dive in?”

“Then you will be as you were in the bottle.  Aware and unable to move.  but it will be very cold, and very uncomfortable, and you will be there for all eternity knowing that you put yourself there.”

Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle Inferno 1976

Now in fairness there likely a fair number of you who won’t care that these institutions that you are a part of will be destroyed by your actions as you’re only there for the grift, but to you others remember that when you see the ruins of these institutions you loved and served remember that you by your actions and inactions did this.

The California Department of Education will vote next week on the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, a proposed new program for all public elementary, middle, and high school students.  The curriculum, focused on “African American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander studies,” aims to “guide” California schools and is marinated in progressive ideological language, requiring that the curriculum “validate students’ lived experience” and “creat[e] space for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, or citizenship…” It seeks to “decolonize” California education, and promotes the Marxist-based “ideology of the oppressed” that denigrates Western Civilization. The curriculum discusses how ethnic studies can “address the causes of racism and other forms of bigotry including, but not limited to, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia within our culture and governmental policies.” The curriculum is another nail in America’s coffin, casting white European Christians in the villainous role of “colonizer” and further dividing our society by race.

Fortunately, the public school teachers of Los Angeles have bravely stood up for our children and refused to return to the classroom until all their Wuhan flu “safety” demands are met, heroically dooming the nation’s second-largest school district’s children to online – and, praise be to God, ineffectual – online “learning.” The teachers last week voted 91% in favor of condemning the children to classes held via tiny camera and small electronic screen, so that the children may more easily be distracted and never learn the curriculum the state promotes. The teachers’ representatives even wisely advised teachers to keep their spring break vacation photos off social media, lest people get the wrong idea. Bravo to the noble and courageous public school teachers!

Although UTLA, the teacher’s union, announced just days ago an agreement to return to the classroom in April, opposition among the “grass roots” is reportedly growing, with the far left calling the plan “homicidal.” The UTLA members will vote next week on whether to accept the agreement. We can only hope they maintain their courage and protect our children from the dangers of a California education.

As for the proposed Ethnic Studies Curriculum, what the California Department of Education fails to understand is, often – of course, not always – and in many and perhaps the most important ways, colonization and empire are good.

It is an inescapable rule of nature that the strong survive. Empires are made by strong societies. If they were not strong, they would not be empires. The Roman Empire brought many benefits to its citizens and to those they ruled, including, among other things, aqueducts, roads, and hygiene — not small things. Of course, those they enslaved may feel differently, but then, the enslaved came from weaker societies, didn’t they?

The British Empire spread concepts of human rights that have blossomed across the globe. As but one example, in the 1840s, When Hindu priests in the British colony of India complained to the British commanding general that burning widows alive on their husband’s funeral pyre was their custom, General Charles Napier famously responded, “My nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.” Widows are no longer burned alive in India.

Before the Spanish Empire conquered them, the Aztecs ripped the still-beating hearts from the chests of their slaves, all from weaker tribes whom they themselves conquered. That custom, too, is no more, thanks to colonialism.

The concept of empire and colonialization includes enough shades of grey to make an athleisure fashion designer drool. But there’s little denying that overall, the people living under the rule of the Roman Empire were better off than those under the rule of some petty local tyrant. What’s even better than empire, of course, is a loose central government allowing for local control of the provinces. Maybe one day we’ll get there.

California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum, finding this concept difficult, instead includes having the children chant to the Aztec god of cannibalism and human sacrifice.

Fortunately, in L.A. at least, our children are still safe at home, and our society remains strong enough. For now.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Was this guy a prophet or what?

In fairness I think basically you have robber barons who are manipulating people to be said busybodies, but the point is the same.