RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/sociologys-descent-into-woke-satire/

Most casual observers, especially those with even slight conservative leanings, would agree that sociology is obviously left-wing. But this wasn’t always the case. When I began my sociology graduate work in the early nineties, it was the classical spirit of the discipline that drove me. There was then enough of the residue of what the discipline had been at its origins to enable idealistic souls like myself to imagine that sociology was still about uncovering the objective realities of social life, rather than simply producing a radical mythology that denounced all that existed and preached the necessity of total revolution.

Radical Marxist approaches were certainly there from the beginning. But many of these had at least the patina of intellectual seriousness and required substantive efforts to challenge and dismantle. However much one disagreed with Marx, for example, one could not reasonably call him a fool and a charlatan, at least if one had read him. He was wrong, but not obviously ignorant of basic things and oblivious to the requirements of argument and evidence.

Today’s sociology is so patently devoid of any intellectual rigor that most of it evokes only contemptuous laughter. The arguments advanced, the “evidence” mustered to support its partisan claims, are so weak that it is genuinely amazing to realize that the people making these cases have spent many years in educational institutions and yet have come away from all that with either no understanding of or an utter contempt for careful and rigorous argument.

Sociology Advertises Its Product

For example, the American Sociological Association (ASA) offers a series of video shorts titled “Sociological Insights.” These clips feature sociologists presenting their research in brief, visually engaging morsels. They are intended to provide an introduction to sociological reasoning and analysis. But the viewer who is not already converted to the Woke cult to which the ASA gives its allegiance can be forgiven for thinking, on watching a selection of the videos, that they were made by an enemy of sociology, as a wickedly humorous satire of the discipline.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-says-anti-israel-student-protesters-are-showing-exactly-what-the-human-emotion-should-be/

There have been many hints at the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris is more hostile to Israel than President Biden. As Democrats take a closer look at her as the most likely replacement should Biden drop out of the race, her views on Middle East policy will undergo closer scrutiny. Now, in an interview with Joan Walsh in the The Nation, Harris makes clear that she sympathizes with the anti-Israel protesters on college campuses — even though she doesn’t agree with everything they said.

Here is the part of the interview that gets to her views on Israel’s war against Hamas:

“Listen, I strongly believe that our ability to evaluate a situation is connected to understanding the details of that situation. Not speaking of myself versus the president, not at all. From the beginning, I asked questions. OK, the trucks are taking flour into Gaza. But here’s the thing, Joan: I like to cook. So I said to my team: You can’t make shit with flour if you don’t have clean water. So what’s going on with that? I ask questions like, What are people actually eating right now? I’m hearing stories about their eating animal feed, grass … so that’s how I think about it.

“Similarly, I was asking early on, what are women in Gaza doing about sanitary hygiene. Do they have pads? And these are the issues that made people feel uncomfortable, especially sanitary pads.”

The young people who have mobilized against the destruction of Gaza are unlikely to be mollified by these answers. What does she say to them?

“They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”

Harris is careful to provide herself an escape hatch — to say she doesn’t fully endorse everything the protesters say — but it’s clear that in her mind, she feels that she has to say something nice about the antisemitic protests because ultimately she is trying to win over the pro-Hamas contingent of the party

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trespass-without-fear

New York is suffering a “finders keepers, losers weepers”–style squatting epidemic, enabled by the state’s cumbersome civil process for abused landlords. As several recent stories make clear, the state’s housing courts are far too sympathetic to invaders masquerading as tenants. The situation had grown so dire that New York’s legislature passed a measure in April excluding from the definition of “tenant” those who intrude and then hunker down on property without permission.

The new law opens the possibility of a criminal-justice solution to the state’s squatting problem. But a pivotal question remains: Will New York’s 62 district attorneys, encumbered by a decade of pro-defendant policy reforms, successfully prosecute these non-tenants’ crimes? Recent experience suggests that they will struggle to do so, especially in trespass cases.

Queens district attorney Melinda Katz has been in the news for a high-profile prosecution against Brian Rodriguez, who featured in a video that went viral in April. Rodriguez, a 35-year-old burglary and narcotics ex-con, was allegedly occupying a Queens house that Adele Andaloro inherited from her parents. Before Andaloro could eject him, Rodriguez reportedly sublet her rooms. When she had the locks changed and tried to retake her property, he claimed squatter’s rights after 30 days—and had her arrested!

Katz’s office, to its credit, charged Rodriguez with five counts: burglary in the second degree, grand larceny in the fourth degree, criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree, criminal trespass in the second degree, and criminal mischief in the fourth degree. If convicted, Rodriguez faces up to 15 years in prison.