Be accurate: Straw men are not needed

Today Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister came under fire for comments that are being described as racist. I'm not looking to comment on what was said, whether it is racist or not, etc. but rather how discourse is conducted in our society.

Here is what the Premier said:

"Young Indigenous men — a preponderance of them are offenders, with criminal records — are going off shooting guns in the middle of the night. It doesn't make sense,"

Here is how Nahanni Fontaine, NDP MLA for Winnipeg's St. Johns area described his comments:

"To be able to blanket all young Indigenous men as criminals, as gun-toting, shooting thugs, is no different than what Donald Trump did throughout his campaign. It is one and the same: racialized, disgusting narrative."

Did you notice the switch?

Pallister said "preponderance", Fontaine says that Pallister said "all."

Now preponderance means "the quality or fact of being greater in number, quantity, or importance." Notice that it does not mean "all," but rather a majority.

There is no need for Fontaine to change what Pallister said, but she chooses to do so, so that she can claim that the Premier is racist rather than having the harder discourse on the state of native males in the province of Manitoba.

Is it true that a majority of native males in Manitoba have criminal records? If yes, then there is a discussion that can be had about why that may be. If no, then there is a conversation that can be had concerning the Premier's need to effectively and accurately communicate to the citizens of his province.

Fontaine's mis-characterization of what was said, though creates a straw man that is then lambasted with accusations of racism, which makes effective and perhaps necessary conversations virtually impossible.

It seems that this politicians need to virtue signal, to grandstand for her electorate is of far more importance to her than than the facts concerning the situation of native males in her province.

Right Not Wanted

It is a sad day indeed for society when the (supposed) institutions of higher learning are both unwilling to hear disparate points of view and are able to be bullied by increasingly fascistic elements of society.

On Thursday, UBC announced in a tweet that it had has pulled an ad promoting its new swimming pool from Breitbart News, which was once led by a top adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump's adviser Steve Bannon has promoted the site as a champion for the so-called alt-right, a U.S.-based offshoot of conservatism that critics allege promotes racist, sexist and homophobic sentiment.

A campaigner at www.sumofus.org — an international group that describes itself as targeting "the growing power of corporations" — raised concerns Thursday about the ad on Twitter, asking the university to take it down.

UBC spokesperson Susan Danard said the ad was pulled shortly after it went up and concerns were raised on social media. 

A university is supposed to be a place where students are encouraged to engage with differing points of view and come to a place of understanding. Today though, universities are more akin to left-wing echo chambers where no other thoughts are permitted, leading to an understanding that to disagree is double-plus-ungood badthink.

When the time comes I'll be sure that my children don't attend UBC.

Take 2.1

Let me begin by saying that I'm going to make a greater attempt to be more active on this blog. This of course is not a tremendous task given that I had a total of zero posts in 2015 and only two posts in 2014.

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of needing to say something about the dramatic changes that are taking place in our culture. I find that I can no longer sit idly by, having conversations in my head about what is going on, without in some way putting out there for wider consumption.

The whole point of this blog was to provide me with a space for working through thoughts and ideas and if someone out there decided to engage, great, if not, at least it provided me with a means for working out what I believe.

With that said, I don't know that I'll be looking to post long pieces all the time. Sometimes it will simply be short commentary on what I see around me.

With that, let us begin.