Bari Weiss's Free Press is the latest outlet to tout a conspiratorial documentary alleging that Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted. It's all nonsense.
It's discouraging that so many people have lost basic human empathy. It seems to be as a consequence, of being unable to see African Americans as fully human.
The language used on the right is of all African Americans as "thugs." Thus, Rudy Giuliani alleging that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were "passing around USB ports like vials of heroin." Giuliani won't admit he was wrong or apologize, even as his behavior lands him in the poor house.
George Floyd has likewise been treated as a "thug," even though he had (except for substance abuse) reformed, was not violent, and was no more difficult than countless people who live on the margins. The courts looked at his death carefully and in a number of venues, and consistently found that Derek Chauvin deliberately killed him.
I wonder how we, as a nation, can move beyond the sort of heartlessness implied in continuing to defame a dead man. What will it take for everyone to see George Floyd as a human being?
This is excellent. Further evidence for me that the Free Press is for grifters and the intellectually dishonest. I have never understood why it seems to have a modicum of legitimacy among moderates (or anyone). Also disappointing to know that McWhorter and Loury would jump on this bandwagon. They should be embarrassed.
I think to interpret something of this magnitude as wrongly as these parties have in this example should make any thoughtful person question whether they should ever listen to anything they say.
I like McWhorter overall, but I think one of his weaknesses is that he's more trusting of right-wing sources than he should be, perhaps in an attempt to be fair-minded.
I made a fool of myself by blabbing all about TFOM and its take on the George Floyd story at my husband solely because I had so much trust in John McWhorter and confidence in his judgment. Fool me once . . .
The trial would have been over for me the minute I heard the words "excited delirium" uttered by any of the cops in that department. Junk science used to get bad cops off the hook for illegal lethal force. Of *course* this department used it...
Upgraded to paid after reading this and will recommend to Glenn that he invites you on to present the case. I just recorded an episode with him, should post next Monday (but we didn't discuss this case).
Just heard back from Glenn, he has read your piece and will discuss with John in their next conversation. I think he will be fair and open-minded. I've known him for over twenty years.
"I pride myself on remaining open to evidence and reason, even if they disconfirm something I had formerly thought to be true. I think I’ve succeeded in that where Balko’s critique is concerned, but only to the end of correcting an earlier failure. I sometimes describe myself as “heterodox.” That means looking on all orthodoxies with a critical eye, including the personal orthodoxies we develop over time. Without self-reflection and introspection, heterodoxy risks becoming orthodoxy by another name, a shallow rebrand that betrays its own purpose."
Facts may be stubborn things, but they're also often quite dull--people lose interest. Real science is rarely as beguiling as junk science. Revisionism, by contrast, may be short on facts, except for those facts tailored to the case in point: but by design it's not dull.
The baseline facts in the George Floyd case are not innately fascinating. The minutiae of death are dreadful to contemplate, but they're also dry. For most people the facts become really compelling only in the framework of the human story--a man who was alive is dead: his murder was witnessed by the world.
The junk science model provides an alternative framework. It has the virtue of confirming biases while claiming to be scientific. If we want to believe the alternative, we can choose to skim over good science (which is often full of questions) and elevate junk science (which is generally full of answers) as an act of will.
People who reject a set of facts don't want to believe they're being arbitrary or biased or political. They want to believe they've seen through a veil of lies to a core of truth.
For them, junk science works the way a gadget in a Bond movie works. It's literally a plot device: it moves the plot forward, the movie doesn't work without it. If we want the movie to work, we suspend our disbelief. Blofeld's Eye is real.
This is obviously incredibly socially damaging: bad for the rule of law. But it's seductive.
The country is being overrun with lies and false narratives. Of couse, FOX is the core of this cesspool. White neo-fascism is taking over a part of our nation and our media. The United States is reaching crisis mode. The absence of efficacy and integrity is causing major damage to our United States. The noxious, nefarious poison coming from the right-wingers is being done with intentional destruction.
TY, Radley Balko. When folks come at us with a promise that they "confirm the documents," it always behooves one to ask what the hell that means. Which is, in this case, nothing. Your accurate language and precision-guided methods show that nothingness in all its vacuity.
This, right here, is why I subscribe, and will support you any way I can. I look at the Chauvin case, and I think regardless of anything Bari Weiss has to say, how is kneeling on an unconscious man for 9 minutes acceptable to any human who has a soul, ever??? But Bari Weiss can fucking justify it. But that argument gets me nowhere with the increasingly inhumane people who are feeling free to fly their "I don't give a damn" flags in America. You taking the time to take it point by point, without even using the "kneeling on a person for 9 minutes is just wrong" argument, is so helpful and so needed. Thank yo.
I appreciate this. I watched TFOM in December after hearing about it from The Glenn Show, and it gave me pause. There were things in it that did strike me as suspect, but I was also a bit put off by trusting a highly produced video. I appreciate the in-depth analysis that you've put together here, and I look forward to the next part of the series.
I just joined as a paying member - to support important contributions like this.
In this day and age of "doing our own research," I think we have forgotten how important it can be to have more than a surface-level understanding. It is important to know how courts and evidence work in order to understand some things that might seem improper at a glance. And of course, needing to know how thise things work gives opportunities for people to dieliberately mislead.
I wonder if, when people like C. Hughes talk about "going back to the documents," they are simply verifying that there is a doucment purporting to support a claim but not questioning it or looking for the deeper story.
'I wonder if, when people like C. Hughes talk about "going back to the documents," they are simply verifying that there is a doucment purporting to support a claim but not questioning it or looking for the deeper story.'
I suspect that this is almost certainly the case. If you think a documentary is being presented by a biased but still intellectually honest source who isn't prone to lying or gross misrepresentation, you'll probably review their work less carefully than if you suspect that you're dealing with someone trying to con you.
Unless you have expertise or training in the field in which you plan to "do your own research" you are likely to make mistakes, even if you are well intentioned and try to be unbiased. This is part of the Dunning Kruger Effect in which people overestimate their ability to analyze data outside their sphere(s) of knowledge (the other part of the DKE being when experts in a field underestimate their abilities out of unwarranted self-doubt).
Example: Just because I went to Rice U. (with a bunch of engineers) did not mean I could fix a clothes dryer with a broken drive belt. I tried, being a cheapskate and not wanting to call in a repair person. I thought I put the belt on correctly, and reassembled it properly, but when I tried to use the dryer it did not roll the drum, and somehow it fried a circuit board, ruing the machine. But I did study Biology and I know that restricting ventilation in humans can kill even without completely cutting off airflow to and from the lungs. Mammalian tidal aspiration is inherently inefficient at gas exchange (especially compared to the more efficient circular respiration of birds), and that makes human mammals vulnerable whether to respiratory disease or to compression of the chest for minutes at a time. Death comes not from injury to the lungs, but from injury to the brain, neurons begin dying in about four minutes when deprived of oxygen at normal temperatures. Heart muscle cells also begin to die, and the heart goes into cardiac arrest, then no power in the 'verse can save the person whose chest was compressed (in Floyd's case for three minutes longer). Floyd probably would have lived if he was put into the recovery position after being restrained for only a short time.
Coleman Hughes mistakenly believed he was competent to analyze court documents and autopsy reports when he has no expertise in law, biology, or medicine. He did not realize he needed help to properly understand the documents he reviewed. Hughes should have consulted experts in forensics, medicine, biology, and law while researching his article on The Fall of Minneapolis, but his elite education gave him a false sense of universality of his intelligence. His supposed universal intelligence meant consulting experts to double check his research was unnecessary. So he made serious errors in his analysis due to his ignorance of biology.
The Dunning Kruger Effect shows how easy it is to fall into this trap, for anyone. We all have our blind spots.
I waited until I had the time to give this the attention to read in full. This is absolutely a reason to have a paid subscription. You are putting in the hyper focus necessary to unravel the lies. Thank you Radley.
This is why Radley is absolutely indispensible.
Gotta love the "honest intellectual" putting out shocking lies like that.
quotation marks are the bread of life today ... "honest intellectual" haha.
A comprehensive takedown, Radley.
It's discouraging that so many people have lost basic human empathy. It seems to be as a consequence, of being unable to see African Americans as fully human.
The language used on the right is of all African Americans as "thugs." Thus, Rudy Giuliani alleging that Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were "passing around USB ports like vials of heroin." Giuliani won't admit he was wrong or apologize, even as his behavior lands him in the poor house.
George Floyd has likewise been treated as a "thug," even though he had (except for substance abuse) reformed, was not violent, and was no more difficult than countless people who live on the margins. The courts looked at his death carefully and in a number of venues, and consistently found that Derek Chauvin deliberately killed him.
I wonder how we, as a nation, can move beyond the sort of heartlessness implied in continuing to defame a dead man. What will it take for everyone to see George Floyd as a human being?
I’m always glad I subscribe to this, but especially today.
This is excellent. Further evidence for me that the Free Press is for grifters and the intellectually dishonest. I have never understood why it seems to have a modicum of legitimacy among moderates (or anyone). Also disappointing to know that McWhorter and Loury would jump on this bandwagon. They should be embarrassed.
I think to interpret something of this magnitude as wrongly as these parties have in this example should make any thoughtful person question whether they should ever listen to anything they say.
Glenn and John are going to revisit the issue in light of this piece, which Glenn has read. Should post on a week or two.
I like McWhorter overall, but I think one of his weaknesses is that he's more trusting of right-wing sources than he should be, perhaps in an attempt to be fair-minded.
I made a fool of myself by blabbing all about TFOM and its take on the George Floyd story at my husband solely because I had so much trust in John McWhorter and confidence in his judgment. Fool me once . . .
The trial would have been over for me the minute I heard the words "excited delirium" uttered by any of the cops in that department. Junk science used to get bad cops off the hook for illegal lethal force. Of *course* this department used it...
Upgraded to paid after reading this and will recommend to Glenn that he invites you on to present the case. I just recorded an episode with him, should post next Monday (but we didn't discuss this case).
Just heard back from Glenn, he has read your piece and will discuss with John in their next conversation. I think he will be fair and open-minded. I've known him for over twenty years.
Admirable from Glenn, just as I expected:
"I pride myself on remaining open to evidence and reason, even if they disconfirm something I had formerly thought to be true. I think I’ve succeeded in that where Balko’s critique is concerned, but only to the end of correcting an earlier failure. I sometimes describe myself as “heterodox.” That means looking on all orthodoxies with a critical eye, including the personal orthodoxies we develop over time. Without self-reflection and introspection, heterodoxy risks becoming orthodoxy by another name, a shallow rebrand that betrays its own purpose."
https://glennloury.substack.com/p/we-were-too-quick-to-praise-the-fall?r=7wld5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Posted now (but pay-walled till Friday I think):
https://glennloury.substack.com/p/john-mcwhorter-the-fall-of-minneapolis?r=7wld5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I think they were fair and open-minded
Thank you for this.
Facts may be stubborn things, but they're also often quite dull--people lose interest. Real science is rarely as beguiling as junk science. Revisionism, by contrast, may be short on facts, except for those facts tailored to the case in point: but by design it's not dull.
The baseline facts in the George Floyd case are not innately fascinating. The minutiae of death are dreadful to contemplate, but they're also dry. For most people the facts become really compelling only in the framework of the human story--a man who was alive is dead: his murder was witnessed by the world.
The junk science model provides an alternative framework. It has the virtue of confirming biases while claiming to be scientific. If we want to believe the alternative, we can choose to skim over good science (which is often full of questions) and elevate junk science (which is generally full of answers) as an act of will.
People who reject a set of facts don't want to believe they're being arbitrary or biased or political. They want to believe they've seen through a veil of lies to a core of truth.
For them, junk science works the way a gadget in a Bond movie works. It's literally a plot device: it moves the plot forward, the movie doesn't work without it. If we want the movie to work, we suspend our disbelief. Blofeld's Eye is real.
This is obviously incredibly socially damaging: bad for the rule of law. But it's seductive.
The country is being overrun with lies and false narratives. Of couse, FOX is the core of this cesspool. White neo-fascism is taking over a part of our nation and our media. The United States is reaching crisis mode. The absence of efficacy and integrity is causing major damage to our United States. The noxious, nefarious poison coming from the right-wingers is being done with intentional destruction.
TY, Radley Balko. When folks come at us with a promise that they "confirm the documents," it always behooves one to ask what the hell that means. Which is, in this case, nothing. Your accurate language and precision-guided methods show that nothingness in all its vacuity.
This, right here, is why I subscribe, and will support you any way I can. I look at the Chauvin case, and I think regardless of anything Bari Weiss has to say, how is kneeling on an unconscious man for 9 minutes acceptable to any human who has a soul, ever??? But Bari Weiss can fucking justify it. But that argument gets me nowhere with the increasingly inhumane people who are feeling free to fly their "I don't give a damn" flags in America. You taking the time to take it point by point, without even using the "kneeling on a person for 9 minutes is just wrong" argument, is so helpful and so needed. Thank yo.
I appreciate this. I watched TFOM in December after hearing about it from The Glenn Show, and it gave me pause. There were things in it that did strike me as suspect, but I was also a bit put off by trusting a highly produced video. I appreciate the in-depth analysis that you've put together here, and I look forward to the next part of the series.
I just joined as a paying member - to support important contributions like this.
In this day and age of "doing our own research," I think we have forgotten how important it can be to have more than a surface-level understanding. It is important to know how courts and evidence work in order to understand some things that might seem improper at a glance. And of course, needing to know how thise things work gives opportunities for people to dieliberately mislead.
I wonder if, when people like C. Hughes talk about "going back to the documents," they are simply verifying that there is a doucment purporting to support a claim but not questioning it or looking for the deeper story.
'I wonder if, when people like C. Hughes talk about "going back to the documents," they are simply verifying that there is a doucment purporting to support a claim but not questioning it or looking for the deeper story.'
I suspect that this is almost certainly the case. If you think a documentary is being presented by a biased but still intellectually honest source who isn't prone to lying or gross misrepresentation, you'll probably review their work less carefully than if you suspect that you're dealing with someone trying to con you.
Unless you have expertise or training in the field in which you plan to "do your own research" you are likely to make mistakes, even if you are well intentioned and try to be unbiased. This is part of the Dunning Kruger Effect in which people overestimate their ability to analyze data outside their sphere(s) of knowledge (the other part of the DKE being when experts in a field underestimate their abilities out of unwarranted self-doubt).
Example: Just because I went to Rice U. (with a bunch of engineers) did not mean I could fix a clothes dryer with a broken drive belt. I tried, being a cheapskate and not wanting to call in a repair person. I thought I put the belt on correctly, and reassembled it properly, but when I tried to use the dryer it did not roll the drum, and somehow it fried a circuit board, ruing the machine. But I did study Biology and I know that restricting ventilation in humans can kill even without completely cutting off airflow to and from the lungs. Mammalian tidal aspiration is inherently inefficient at gas exchange (especially compared to the more efficient circular respiration of birds), and that makes human mammals vulnerable whether to respiratory disease or to compression of the chest for minutes at a time. Death comes not from injury to the lungs, but from injury to the brain, neurons begin dying in about four minutes when deprived of oxygen at normal temperatures. Heart muscle cells also begin to die, and the heart goes into cardiac arrest, then no power in the 'verse can save the person whose chest was compressed (in Floyd's case for three minutes longer). Floyd probably would have lived if he was put into the recovery position after being restrained for only a short time.
Coleman Hughes mistakenly believed he was competent to analyze court documents and autopsy reports when he has no expertise in law, biology, or medicine. He did not realize he needed help to properly understand the documents he reviewed. Hughes should have consulted experts in forensics, medicine, biology, and law while researching his article on The Fall of Minneapolis, but his elite education gave him a false sense of universality of his intelligence. His supposed universal intelligence meant consulting experts to double check his research was unnecessary. So he made serious errors in his analysis due to his ignorance of biology.
The Dunning Kruger Effect shows how easy it is to fall into this trap, for anyone. We all have our blind spots.
I waited until I had the time to give this the attention to read in full. This is absolutely a reason to have a paid subscription. You are putting in the hyper focus necessary to unravel the lies. Thank you Radley.
A vocal minority (hopefully!) thinks police should be able to kill people without consequence.
You ought to add links to the other parts.