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Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

5 Jan

Suddenly a new consensus seems to be emerging among mainstream Dems and media - better late than never.

Mayors want to keep schools open. CNN and NYT finally acknowledge the developmental costs we've imposed on children with our covid containment policies.

It's amazing to

witness how a narrative becomes accepted in real-time. This is a failure of what has become of our sense-making apparatus. I know people who have been banging this drum a year ago, but they were the "wrong" people, with the "wrong views."

Remember, it took a year before the lab

leak hypothesis could be spoken about in polite company. The trigger? Jon Stewart (and to some extent, the Vanity Fair piece).

But imagine if it was okay to talk about it earlier. Imagine if it was okay to have a debate about how we're penalizing our own children earlier.

Read 7 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

23 Dec 21

@_JesseMorton

I'm heartbroken to hear about the death of @_JesseMorton. Not sure how to process this; I'm at a total lost.

Jesse was a colleague and a friend. His story from Dead Head to Al Qaeda propagandist to counter-extremist operative and researcher is a Hollywood script waiting

to be written. He devoted his new life to understanding radicalization and countering hate, collaborating with authorities and tech companies (he was rabidly anti-censorship).

We collaborated with him as well in our work promoting liberal ideas in Arabic. I will probably write

a more detailed account of his life and his story, a story that is so singular in its arc of redemption that it just warrants the best representation. He was constantly battling his inner demons, and was very candid in speaking about childhood traumas and addiction problems.

Read 4 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

9 Nov 21

https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1458171468664254480

This discussion lies atop something much deeper, much more profound. TCW, at heart, is a philosopher / thinker. Persuasion is his raison d'etre and a commitment to precision and truth is treated as the sine qua non of critical engagement with the world.

Rufo is action-oriented,

https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1458171468664254480

who lives not in the world of ideas but of cultural change and action. This is the realm of politics.

This schism goes all the way back to the trial of Socrates, and how his execution at the hands of the Athenian state brought Plato to doubt the validity and indeed,

the usefulness of persuasion.

Politics requires a certain sense of realism where the rubber of ideas have to hit the road. Time is also a factor. What good is dialectics where one is committed to truth and precision when the hemlock has been brewed?

They are optimizing for

Read 10 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

25 Oct 21

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1452076310822625282

It’s actually worse than this.

1. US bans gain-of-function research (GOR)

2. Bureaucrats, through the Charitable Industrial-Complex, funded it abroad in a lab in China

3. Global pandemic occurs, beginning in the same Chinese city with the lab

4. The media LIONIZES Dr. Fauci

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1452076310822625282

5. The bureaucrats AND the leading scientists collude to make the lab leak theory untouchable in science journals and the media, and anyone who discuses it, RACIST

6. Dr. Fauci denies funding GOR research in Congress (see Rand Paul exchange)

7. The lead bureaucrat who facilitated the actual funding of GOR research is appointed by China as part of the investigative team on the ORIGINS of Covid19

8. He dismisses the lab leak theory and drums up new hypothesis that virus origins came from FROZEN FOOD imports

Read 5 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

5 Aug 21

https://twitter.com/fairforall_org/status/1423049126409740289

These Asian kids’ stories of discrimination by the “new and improved” Boston Exam Schools admissions process is heart-wrenching to see.

For the past 30 yrs till the pandemic struck, admission to the 3 prestigious public schools was weighed equally btw GPA & the entrance exam

🧵

https://twitter.com/fairforall_org/status/1423049126409740289

result. But this year, the committee drastically altered it in the name of diversity & equity, such that 20% of all students citywide with the highest GPAs would be admitted, while the remaining 80% of all seats would be allocated based on...ZIP CODES.

This may seem on its face

to be racially neutral, but it’s not.

This is where these immigrant children who live in Chinatown come in. Chinatown’s median income is lower than Mattapan’s ($38K vs. $55K) but yet, its number of seats was slashed from 24 to 7 (a 40% decrease) while Mattapan’s *increased*

Read 10 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

4 Aug 21

I was never interested in this story. A heated exchange at the local park between two Coopers became a national incident, absorbed into a meta-narrative about the systematically racist ether that animates all our lives.

But I *am* interested in how

bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-real-sto…

narratives take shape and become established truths, mostly because what becomes collective truths affect policies and actions.

Looking at the world through this racial lens means that every person is reduced to a racial avatar (with inherent moral worth) and the storyline then

molds itself around the characters.

This is not journalism. And this is not the first time.

A woman has lost her job, her dog, and now lives in hiding, in part because this neighborhood fracas exploded out of proportion and the account presented by the mainstream media was

Read 5 tweets

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