Buy yourself or someone you love an old dictionary for Christmas

Remember that the Left is engaged in a War of Language.

"If you're going to call what's essentially neo-racism and neo-segregation "anti-racism," I'm not going to go along with the lie of that. I'm just not." - @bariweiss

The Race and Gender Essentialists came for the Salvation Army, but they won't stop there.

Several mainline churches have embraced the "group identity is everything" left, but the Salvation Army's action was something of a surprise to a lot of people. Until I looked a little deeper into the Salvation Army's big faux pas, I was not aware how much of the language of the activist left they had adopted. Legal Insurrection has a great round-up. Here they quote Just the News:

As Americans head out on Black Friday to make a dent in their holiday shopping lists, some are sure to come across Salvation Army volunteers ringing bells as part of the annual Red Kettle campaign. But this year, the global charitable organization wants more from its donors than a donation to the needy during the holidays. With the dissemination of a recent Salvation Army guide titled "Let's Talk About . . . Racism," the Christian organization is attempting to elicit "sincere" apologies from white people for being racist.

WeirdDave noticed this reaction earlier:

Continuing from Just the News:

The guide, which was compiled and approved earlier this year by the International Social Justice Commission of the Salvation Army, aligns the organization with the ideology of the Black Lives Matter, antiracism, and critical race theory movements.

Defining "structural racism" as "the overarching system of racial biasing across institutions and society," the guide declares: "These systems give privileges to White people resulting in disadvantages to People Of Color."

The Legal Insurrection piece also includes an archive link to the 67-page guide. I wonder if they have ever issued a similar guide for discussion of other sins, such as pride or maybe supporting policies which disrupt the nuclear family?

The group that was instrumental in writing the guide, the International Social Justice Commission of the Salvation Army, is the Salvation Army's liason with the United Nations. I think that's part of the problem. They think and speak in the language of the UN. Though the 67 page guide linked above is intended for U.S. audiences. It is a reminder that the Salvation Army is a church as well as a charity.

The Federalist covered the Salvation Army's disingenuous statement when it retracted the guide for further review.

The Salvation Army issued a statement on Tuesday trying to walk back its racist claims in its "Let's Talk About Racism" guide after facing backlash.

"Elements of the recently issued 'Let's Talk About Racism' guide led some to believe we think they should apologize for the color of their skin, or that The Salvation Army may have abandoned its Biblical beliefs for another philosophy or ideology. That was never our intention, so the guide has been removed for appropriate review," the announcement states.

One of our commenters, Retired Buckeye Cop, was so concerned that he wrote a short research paper on the Salvation Army's retracted guide from a Catholic perspective, complete with references. I'm not sure if he has finished it yet, but if you are interested, we can probably arrange to get you a copy. He had some cogent observations:

Even though the anti-White rhetoric is the low-hanging fruit, what was more critical to me was to reveal that Communism was the actual goal of "Let's Talk About...Racism."

It is obvious that the Salvation Army has succumbed to temptation. Communism sounds superficially nice ("hey, everybody should share everything!!!"), but the Devil - literally - is in the details.

The authors of this document claim that White people, even though not intentionally committing racist acts, are unconsciously supporting systematically discriminating against Black people. Trying to force people to confess to sins that they did not commit, or were committed by other people, is something we would expect to see in a Franz Kafka novel, certainly not something being promulgated by a putatively Christian organization.

Well, this sets me off on a tangent.

After reading a post about Robin DiAngelo and other "anti-racist" trainers, buddahaha wrote:

To give credit where due: The term "kafka trap" has a quite definite source. It was named and defined by Eric Raymond in a post (in 2010) on his blog _Armed and Dangerous_ .

I found it. This Armed and Dangerous Essay on kafkatrapping is more than I expected.

In this essay, I will show that the kafkatrap is a form of argument that is so fallacious and manipulative that those subjected to it are entitled to reject it based entirely on the form of the argument, without reference to whatever particular sin or thoughtcrime is being alleged. I will also attempt to show that kafkatrapping is so self-destructive to the causes that employ it that change activists should root it out of their own speech and thoughts.

My reference, of course, is to Franz Kafka's "The Trial", in which the protagonist Josef K. is accused of crimes the nature of which are never actually specified, and enmeshed in a process designed to degrade, humiliate, and destroy him whether or not he has in fact committed any crime at all. The only way out of the trap is for him to acquiesce in his own destruction; indeed, forcing him to that point of acquiescence and the collapse of his will to live as a free human being seems to be the only point of the process, if it has one at all.

This is almost exactly the way the kafkatrap operates in religious and political argument. Real crimes - actual transgressions against flesh-and-blood individuals - are generally not specified. The aim of the kafkatrap is to produce a kind of free-floating guilt in the subject, a conviction of sinfulness that can be manipulated by the operator to make the subject say and do things that are convenient to the operator's personal, political, or religious goals. Ideally, the subject will then internalize these demands, and then become complicit in the kafkatrapping of others.

Sometimes the kafkatrap is presented in less direct forms. A common variant, which I'll call the Model C, is to assert something like this: "Even if you do not feel yourself to be guilty of { sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression . . . }, you are guilty because you have benefited from the { sinful, racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive, . . . } behavior of others in the system." The aim of the Model C is to induce the subject to self-condemnation not on the basis of anything the individual subject has actually done, but on the basis of choices by others which the subject typically had no power to affect. The subject must at all costs be prevented from noticing that it is not ultimately possible to be responsible for the behavior of other free human beings. . .

There is much more, presented in a beautifully coherent way.

Here's a video with some real-world examples of how these "Anti-racist" people use Kafkatraps against ordinary people, including such absurd scenarios as getting caught in a BLM protest or in one of DiAngelo's DEI seminars at work.

There's a timetable for the video in the Youtube description if you don't want to watch the whole thing. The "dark underbelly" of DiAngelo's ideology comes at 21.34 minutes, concerning how she views minority individuals. The basic discussion of Kafkatraps comes at about 3:36.

The Kafkatrap methods used so freely in "anti-racist" training are also associated with other logical fallacies. It's just amazing how many standards of civilized communication they can destroy! But here's an example of the basic "Model A" Kaftatrap from Armed and Dangerous in the video above:

Any objection to DiAngelo's argument is confirmation of her argument.

The Salvation Army also uses some language that does not come from the CRT/antiracist crowd, but which adapts their philosophies. Here's a page on lamenting and repenting:

The @SalvationArmy believes that people are complicit in the sins of their ancestors.

Seriously. pic.twitter.com/I985iTwbFA

— The Woke Temple (@WokeTemple) December 9, 2021

I was actually kind of interested in the suggested reading for Section 3, Nehemiah 1: 1-7. Nehemiah does lament, fast and repent in preparing to ask the Persian king for help. I imagined how the Salvation Army's approach might be different if they were true to scripture while imagining their white donors to be "social justice" surrogates for the Persian King (the very image of colonial privilege) in their approach to their funding needs. See Nehemiah Chapter 2:

I imagine:

"May our white donors live forever".

"We're going to need vaccine passports for everybody working to upgrade our facilities."

Did lamentations and demonstrations of communal repentance by white folk help Black victims of crime in these cities?

With three weeks still to go in 2021, at least 12 major U.S. cities have broken their annual homicide records. Two other cities are on the verge of doing so.

St. Paul was one of them.

"What do the 15 homicide-plagued cities mentioned above have in common? Every one of them has a Democrat as mayor."

Back to Retired Buckeye Cop:

Let's Talk About...Racism then bizarrely embraces considering skin color when interacting with other people. "The goal is not to become color-blind . . . we want to see each other, look past race-based stereotypes. . . . Color-blindness is often dangerous because . . . [it will] often support a supremacist ideology."

Also, the Intersectional phrase "black bodies" is used to describe Black people; this phrase denies the personhood of Blacks and values them only in terms of skin color. Furthermore, this document propounds the concept of "ancestral trauma" in which victimhood is inherited; this means that oppressor status is also inherited ? which is dehumanizing and denies free will. . .

Let's Talk About...Racism is contrary to the Roman Catholic Church. She instructs us that Jesus is the "Son of God" (CCC 442). Furthermore, "The Word became flesh so that we might know God's love" (CCC 458 ). Jesus Christ came to declare the Kingdom of God so that humanity could share in God's divine life (CCC 541), and that, by his death on the cross and Resurrection, Jesus would "accomplish the coming of his kingdom" (CCC 542).

As Saint Pope John Paul II told us, any portrayal of Jesus Christ as a "political activist" or "someone involved in a class struggle" is not correct. "This conception of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary, as a subversive from Nazareth does not tally with the Church's catechesis. Confusing the insidious pretext of Jesus' accusers with the attitude of Jesus himself - which was very different - people claim that the cause of his death was the result of a political conflict; they say nothing about the Lord's willing self-surrender or even his awareness of his redemptive mission."

The Catholic Church teaches us that "The equality of men rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it" (CCC 1935). However, we each receive different gifts from God. "These 'talents' are not distributed equally" (CCC 1936). It is incumbent upon those with more gifts to share their benefits with the needy. "These differences encourage and often oblige persons to practice generosity, kindness, and sharing of goods; they foster the mutual enrichment of cultures" (CCC 1937). The Church is color-blind.

Catholicism further defines Equality as "the capacity that all men have to reach their eternal destiny, and therefore have the right to the means required for which they were created", but "cannot be completely equal in their possession of anything," and "anything they have is ultimately a gift from God." On the other hand, the Salvation Army has adopted the alternative definition of Equality based upon a "non-theistic view of humanity" that ignores "any assured destiny beyond the grave" and, thus, requires a "mathematical sameness in sharing the world's available resources." Therefore, their interpretation of Equity is "too strict" and "inhuman." . . .

. . . Therefore, we Catholics should pray for the leadership of the Salvation Army so that they will accept the fruit of the Holy Spirit and regain gentleness of heart (cf. Gal. 5:22-23).

The Salvation Army is really twisting itself in knots here.

You might be interested in the parts of the guide Retired Buckeye Cop found especially pertinent, and how they compare with Catholic doctrine:

1. "Introduction", p.2, Let's Talk About...Racism, (The Salvation Army: April 2021)
2. "Session Three: Reflect and Evaluate", p.5, Let's Talk About...Racism
3. ibid, p.2
4. "Session Three: Reflect and Evaluate", p.2, ibid
5.. "Session Two: Describe and Analyze" , p.2, ibid
6. ."Session One: What is the Issue" , p.3, ibid
7. "Session Four: Decide and Plan", p.2, ibid
8. ibid, p.3
9. "Appendix A: Glossary", p.1, ibid
10. ibid, p.3
11. ibid, p.1
12. St. Pope John Paul II, "Opening Address at Puebla", I,4
(as quoted in Quentin L. Quade, ed., The Pope and Revolution,
[Ethics and Public Policy Center: 1982]), pp.53-54
13. John A. Hardon, S.J., Modern Catholic Dictionary, (Eternal Life: 1999), p.191
14. ibid

Remember,

"Social Justice" made the Khmer Rouge government kill 25% of Cambodia's population. pic.twitter.com/1IHpt3RgfS

— James Lindsay, Donald Trump of Intellectuals (@ConceptualJames) December 9, 2021

Music

Rivers of Babylon

Hope you have something nice planned for the weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

posted by K.T. at 11:20 AM

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