Weekly Grounding #48
News, links, writing
Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
“Safetyism Doesn’t Belong on Campus”
writes on the adoption of “safetyism” by right-wing critics of campus protests in the United States and United Kingdom at Unherd: “There has…been relatively little pushback against the sort of hyperbole purporting to justify aggressive managerial and police interventions on campuses; even where its format and tone vividly reminds one of the activist guilt-tripping of which the modern Left is so fond, and the Right normally so critical. Many cultish identitarian tics familiar from social justice activism turn up in pro-Israel discourse about the protests, and yet remain uncriticised from the Right. These include: a total failure of charity when it comes to construing the various motives of pro-Palestinian and anti-war activists, collapsing all of them into a single simple narrative of ‘hate’ towards Jewish people, despite evidence to the contrary; exhortations to move from subjective perceptions of antisemitism by particular Jewish students or groups of students to immediate protective or punitive action (or both); the glossing over of reasonable disagreement between Jewish students on, precisely, whether the protests are antisemitic or not; and accusations of confusion and self-hatred towards those who dissent.”For more on this topic, see my article, “In Defense of Woke Zoomers.”
“Activism Uncensored: DC Police Face Off with Pro-Palestine Protesters Amidst Federal Pressure”
provides some excellent video reporting on the protests at George Washington University in Washington DC. The video is worth watching in full. It captures multiple facets of the protests, counter-protests, and broader domestic political context surrounding both. One highlight from the video support’s Stock’s thesis on “safetyism.” What appears to be a GW student accompanying Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert on a visit to campus is asked whether she “feels unsafe” on campus due to the protests. The student does not cite any incident of actual danger; instead, she states “I feel unsafe when they are chanting ‘intifada.’”
Another notable part of the video occurs when Washington DC Metro Police Chief, Pamela A. Smith, tells media that “all the decisions that I’ve made is [sic] based on public safety.” While “public safety” has long been a favored justification for police crackdowns, it’s impossible to ignore the continuity with discourse surrounding public safety promoted by the covid regime.
“Pfizer Offers Up to $250mn to Settle Thousands of Zantac Cancer Lawsuits”
The Financial Times reports that “Pfizer has agreed to pay up to $250mn to settle more than 10,000 US lawsuits over cancer risks associated with its now-discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, according to people familiar with the deal…More than 70,000 cases have been brought against a host of drugmakers in the Delaware state court, while there are smaller numbers of cases in California, Illinois and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”
“Co-Founder of No College Mandates Inspires Hope”
discusses the important work of at to resist covid vaccine mandates on American college and university campuses: “When Ms. Sinatra co-founded this group, more than 1,000 of America’s ‘top universities’ were requiring that all students receive the experimental mRNA ‘vaccines.’ Today, due in part to the push-back organized by this group, only about 30 colleges require Covid vaccines (and/or booster shots). This means that, today, almost no new college student has to get one of these shots to attend college. This, in turn, means that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of current and future college students will never suffer from vaccine-caused injuries or deaths.”Rice continues: “In watching this interview and reading more about this group’s work, I was again struck by the fact it was a group of parents - and not the college students themselves - who mobilized to produce positive change. Once upon a time, college students held massive rallies to protest, say, the Vietnam War or segregation. It was not uncommon for the majority of faculty members to join in these protests. With the Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates, the college students were strangely quiet and almost universally compliant. This, to say the least, is a disturbing observation and a cultural change worth noting.”
“For Tech CEOs, the Dystopia Is the Point”
analyzes the role of sci-fi dystopia in the worldviews of Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg at : “Mark Zuckerberg…is a man who bought up the four closest homes in his neighborhood and had them demolished so he would have more space to himself; fitting, then, that his metaverse is an intensely isolated digital experience whose aim is to close out the physical world. For his own personal purposes, the metaverse framework is a useful dystopia for advocating precisely this end.”Merchant concludes: “Even if consumers aren’t aware of all of the dystopian reference points these founders and companies are pushing, they probably should be aware of the narcissistic, us-against-the-collapsing-world mentality that is active behind them. And we shouldn’t merely mock the tech set for using dystopias as marketing materials — we should try to stop them from creating them, too.”
What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.