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Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
@omni_american
Feb 13, 2023 • 18 tweets • 8 min read • Read on X
New theory: "The virtuous lie"

A virtuous lie is a falsehood that's promulgated & not corrected despite known falsity b/c it serves an "emancipatory" end.

#1619Project, New History of Capitalism, Hawaiian indigeneity: lies that're "good" b/c they free us of an oppressive past.
2/
We quite literally live by these lies. At my college, you see signs that say "This is Tongva land." No one cares that before the Tongva got here, the Hokan were here. The Tongva, an Uto-Aztecan people, replaced the Hokan, as Uto-Aztecan peoples did across western N. America.
3/
We live by these lies b/c to do so makes us good people. To question them is to align oneself w/ evil. Famous author addressed a local HS with a talk straight out of New History of Capitalism. He painted American slavery in the most gruesome colors. So far so good. However...
4/
...he lied that cotton made up 50% of the US economy and that cotton's increasing productivity resulted from increasing torture.

Logic of the virtuous lie: nobody wants to be the one who points out that this is contradicted by the best research. What, you support slavery?
5/
The author's lies were virtuous. Slavery is a moral abyss: one can never overdo one's condemnation of it...even if one lies. Such lies are virtuous, serving noble goals like reparations, as was explicit in the author's talk. To correct the lies is to oppose the noble goals.
6/
Virtuous lies (VL) differ from Plato's Noble Lie (NL) & @robkhenderson's Luxury Belief.

(1) NL promotes positive self-conception; VL, self-criticism. (2) NL reconciles us to social inequality; VL aims to dismantle inequality. (3) NL is metaphysical; VL is historiographical.
7/
Like Luxury Beliefs (LB), virtuous lies (VL) are both emancipatory & signal moral goodness. However, LB are prescriptive, e.g., "defund the police." VL, in contrast, are descriptive, e.g., "cops are more likely to kill black people." Thus, VLs provide "factual" basis for LBs.
8/
I'll update this 🧵 with examples of "virtuous lies."

From Isabel Wilkerson's book "Caste." The lie is subtle: You're invited to believe that 1/1000 black men & boys are currently being killed by the cops while unarmed. That'd be genocide! Truth here: freeblackthought.substack.com/p/what-the-dat… Image
9/
"Virtuous lies" underlie many communications at elite institutions. This talk announcement simply *presupposes* that "unkindness" is a distinctive characteristic of "our post-1492 era."

Almost every utterance on campus invites us to see the US as implicated in unique evils. Image
10/
Virtuous lie: inflating mass shooting stats.

Fact: "mass shooting" is defined by federal gov't: 3+ killed in public rampage.

There've been 141 since 1982. 3.53/yr: Far too many, but not what's claimed.

Accurate stats here (& see next Tweet):
motherjones.com/politics/2012/… Image
11/
Inflating mass shootings is a virtuous lie. It's morally "good" to inflate. It signals that you take the problem seriously. Insisting on the true number is to "minimize" & thus "bad."

Yet getting it wrong matters, b/c it impedes effective responses:

motherjones.com/politics/2015/…
12/
"Implicit bias, attitudes or internalized stereotypes that affect our perceptions, actions, & decisions in an unconscious manner, exists, & often contributes to unequal treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc." Image
13/
CA's Assembly Bill 241 (quoted prev Twt), mandating "implicit bias" education for MDs and nurses, is wholly based on the "virtuous lie" that we understand what we mean when we say "implicit bias" and that whatever it is, it influences behavior. This is an outright falsehood.
14/
The truth about implicit bias is:

"it's not clear precisely what is being measured on implicit attitude tests; implicit attitudes do not effectively predict actual discriminatory behavior; most interventions [such as CA's new law] are ineffective."

musaalgharbi.com/2020/09/16/div…
15/
CA's Assembly Bill 241, mandating "implicit bias" education for MDs: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billText…

Support for implicit bias being a "virtuous lie" that we believe because it makes us "good":

1. dailynous.com/2017/01/12/rec…

2. freedomcast.us/iopod/episode1

3. psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble…
16/
"Implicit bias" is a "virtuous lie" we live by.

It even informs law now, like CA's Bill 241, which says "Implicit bias...exists, and often contributes to unequal treatment..."

Two more sources on implicit bias, both by @jessesingal:

1. thecut.com/2017/01/psycho…

2. Ch. 6: Image
17/
It's a "virtuous lie" that for gender dysphoria, science is settled on (1) "puberty blockers for adolescents going through early stages of natural puberty," followed by, for "older teens," (2) "cross sex hormones, essentially avoiding natal puberty."

18/
Virtuous lies about puberty blockers, hormones & suicidality for kids w/ gender dysphoria are repeated w/ uncritical certainty by media elites.

@TheBARPod's @jessesingal & @kittypurrzog take @jonstewart & @LastWeekTonight to task for their untruths:
blockedandreported.org/p/episode-138-…

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More from @omni_american

Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Dec 24
"The entire historical legacy of Western civilization has been turned into a battlefield. [The book argues] that the stakes in this conflict could not be higher. For when the past is contaminated, it becomes near impossible to endow people's life with meaning in the present.🧵 Image
2/
"There was no formal declaration of war. But, sure enough, at some point at the turn of the century, a war against the past was launched. The partisans supporting the assault on the legacy of European civilization are not members of a party. They have not issued any war aims and have never formulated an explicit strategic vision. They are also a heterogeneous bunch, a coalition of disparate interests and movements.Image
3/
"Hostility towards the past evolved slowly, then all at once, its intensification occurring haphazardly without any serious long-term thought. The use of the term 'war' to account for the systematic pursuit of historical disinheritance is not simply metaphorical. In effect, this war leads to the diminishing of the authority of the past, to the discrediting of its legacy, and to the killing of the soul of communities whose way of life remains underpinned by European culture.Image
Read 8 tweets
Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Dec 21
"The hardest thing in 23 years for me to watch was the city council yesterday making their statement that in essence said every single one of us are racist by the very uniform and badge we wear. And then the news pans out, and it shows the outside of City Hall, where the city council is making their statement. And what do I seen outside? It's a mobile field force around City Hall protecting the very people that called us racist." 🧵Image
2/
2020's assault on police was, as the quote above shows, pure hypocrisy on the part of elites. But it was also evil and we knew it, bc Roland Fryer proved in 2016 that its premises were false and, in 2020, that it would cause a huge increase in the deaths of black Americans. Image
3/
The BLM-led assault on policing in 2020 led, according to @wil_da_beast630, to the homicides of 2,874 more black Americans in 2020 alone than would have died otherwise. Almost 3,000 black lives were therefore "unmattered" in a single year as a result of this movement.Image
Read 11 tweets
Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Nov 26
"Over the last 10 years, a cultural revolution has been imposed on this country from the top down. Its ideas originated in the academy, and it’s been carried out of the academy by elite-educated activists and journalists and academics."

Academia's attempt to radically reform society has been crushed: 🧵Image
2/
After trying to remake society in conformity with its (frankly, rather warped and justly unpopular) criteria:

"The politics of the academy have been defeated. Its ideas, its assumptions, its opinions and positions—as expressed in official statements, embodied in policies and practices, established in centers and offices, and espoused and taught by large and leading portions of the professoriate—have been rejected.Image
3/
The attempted revolution carried out by academics and other knowledge-economy elites had an agenda that:

"includes decriminalization or nonprosecution of property and drug crimes and, ultimately, the abolition of police and prisons; open borders, effectively if not explicitly; the suppression of speech that is judged to be harmful to disadvantaged groups; 'affirmative' care for gender-dysphoric youth (puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones followed, in some cases, by mastectomies) and the inclusion of natal males in girls’ and women’s sports; and the replacement of equality by equity—of equal opportunity for individuals by equal outcomes for designated demographic groups—as the goal of social policy.Image
Read 12 tweets
Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Nov 13
Many of my Dem/left friends feel rage at Trump voters and masochistic hatred for America, which they see as having succumbed to its own latent transhistorical forces of racism and sexism.

This belief is not only false, as @Musa_alGharbi shows in this 🧵, but it also destroys mental health and, I think, makes it nigh impossible to rebuild the party to regain broad appeal.

Harris didn't lose because of racism or sexism, nor because of wealthy elites, third parties, or turnout.

Check it out:Image
2/
Did Trump win because of racism? No:

"The GOP has been doing worse with white voters for every single cycle that Trump has been on the ballot, from 2016 through 2024. And there’s tons of evidence that Trump’s racialized language has been a major driver of this trend – it’s been a drag on his support among whites rather than serving as the key to his success.

Meanwhile, Harris did quite well with whites in this cycle. She outperformed Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden with white voters. The only Democrat who put up comparable numbers with whites over the last couple decades was, incidentally, another black person: Barack Obama in 2008.

Across the board, Harris and Walz improved their numbers with whites – men and women alike. Democrats lost because everyone except for whites moved in the direction of Donald Trump this cycle."Image
3/
Did Trump win because of sexism? No:

"Kamala’s performance with men was solid. It was her performance with women that destroyed her prospects.

Put simply, it was young and non-white women – the very people who were supposed to ensure Kamala’s victory – who instead helped usher Trump back into the White House.

In fact, even as Kamala’s candidacy went down in flames, women did pretty well at the ballot box this year. For example, as a result of this election cycle, there will be a record number of female governors in the U.S. in 2025. So far, 17 non-incumbent women won House seats; 105 female House incumbents won reelection. 3 non-incumbent women won Senate seats. There were many firsts this cycle as well, including the first transgender woman elected to U.S. Congress.

Voters didn’t seem to have any problem electing women this cycle. They just didn’t respond well to the specific woman that Democrats put at the top of their presidential ticket."Image
Read 9 tweets
Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Nov 12
Spoke with a male, "mixed" race (black and white) high school student and learned about teen views on race, DEI, and the gender divide over Trump. 🧵

1. Race: He said race at his very diverse HS wasn't an important category. They're all friends and don't divide up by race.

2. DEI: The campus DEI officer, in contrast, and other administrators are obsessed with and very sensitive about race.
2/
2a. DEI, cont'd: He and his peers tease each other amiably about race. This is a bonding mechanism. He said if the DEI officer and other admin found out, they'd be in trouble, so they keep it secret from them.

2b. The DEI officer is seen as "a bit much" and no one likes the class she teaches. All she does is tell them what they can't do or say. She talks incessantly about how to behave in order to be "sensitive." They don't take her at all seriously.
3/
3. Trump: The boys largely didn't favor Trump but they aren't worried about the next 4 years. We'll be ok. The girls think it's the end of the world, because abortion will be banned.

He said it wasn't possible for the boys to console the girls by pointing out that Trump has repeatedly said he's not in favor of a total ban, so they shouldn't catastrophize. If the boys tried to offer this perspective, the girls would freak out, and it would damage their relationship, so they keep it to themselves.
Read 5 tweets
Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Nov 9
I am 53 years old. The last 4 years amount to the most repressive, totalitarian era I've ever lived through.

"If the general atmosphere of fear we live in as people who want to speak and live freely—if all that change in American society had the fingerprints of a particular leader on it, that leader would be a fascist."
—@noam_dworman

But it was not a particular leader—it was the left. 🧵Image
2/
It was not a fascist leader but a society-wide culture of totalitarian intolerance that made me watch my words like a hawk for half a decade.

It was fear of retaliation from the left that made me lay awake at night, terrified that a student might have misinterpreted something I said in class and initiated a cancellation campaign against me.
3/
It was not a fascist leader but a leftwing culture of retribution—in the face of which tenured faculty and college administrators cowered—wielded by 18-year-olds that ended the career of a colleague of mine because she read out loud a word in an antiracist comic book. Yes, students, with the complicity of an entire college staffed with cowards whose fear was nonetheless rational, actually ended her career for reading an ANTIRACIST comic book.
Read 10 tweets

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