Always drill down to the survey itself before getting swept away by the headline.

Newsweek just published an article making a bit of an inflammatory claim:

One-Third Of Americans Don’t Believe 6 Million Jews Were Murdered During The Holocaust.

One-third of Americans think “substantially less” than 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, according to a new survey that highlights a worrying lack of basic knowledge about the World War II-era genocide.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, released the findings of its survey to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day. They show a notable lack of understanding among Americans, especially millennials, the group said.

How horrible. Like we’re not being taught about World War II and the Holocaust in school. Almost as if we don’t think Adolf Hitler was the most evil human being that walked the earth!

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Here’s the thing. Any time you see a survey like this, always drill down to the actual survey itself. Because you may learn a few things–sometimes which may paint a worse picture about your fellow Americans. And sometimes, well, you may learn just how the rhetorical wool was pulled over your eyes.

The survey itself is… fascinating.

First, you have to remember that a lot of the larger numbers showing greater lack of understanding about the Holocaust are for Millennials.

The problem is, “Millennials” are not defined anywhere in the survey that I can find. If, however, you were to define Millennials as the 20 year cohort following Generation-X (1965-1984), then the 20-year cohort referred to in this survey includes a bunch of 14- and 15-year olds, many of whom often are less sure of themselves when it comes to world history.

Further, we do not know if the total balance of Americans reported in this survey was adjusted for demographics. In other words, when the report suggests 1/3rd of Americans “don’t believe 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust”–was that number balanced for current age demographics? Or was that the folks they were able to reach by phone?

Second, you need to look at the underlying questions themselves. And the key question here is question 19:

Approximately how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust? Please select from the following list:

• 20 Million
• 6 Million
• 2 Million
• 1 Million
• 100,000
• 25,000
• Other
• Not sure

Do you see the trick here?

Here, let me ask a different question. No fair peeking at Wikipedia until you’ve selected your answer.

Approximately how many Armenians died during the Armenian Genocide in Turkey in 1915? Please select from the following list:

• 12 million
• 7.5 million
• 5 million
• 3.5 million
• 1.5 million
• 300,000
• Other
• Not sure

Okay, have your answer?

Now you can look up the answer yourself.

You see what I’ve done?

By giving a range of numbers which are mostly higher than the correct result, I primed you into thinking more people died in the Armenian Genocide than actually did. Now it’s not to understate the actual number who died–the Armenian Genocide was a pure act of evil.

But based on my question it would be easy for me to publish a breathless result saying

One third of Americans believe Turkey killed more Armenians during World War I than Historical Records show.

And of course I could then spin this headline into a tale of how Americans hate Turkey, if I were so inclined.

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The real sad part is where the executive summary headlines the fact that 58% of Americans believe something like the Holocaust could happen again. Accompany that with the answer “fewer people seem to care about the Holocaust” and it’s easy to push the narrative that Americans have forgotten and are willing to allow another Holocaust to take place in the world.

But another reading of this may be that Americans are simply pessimistic about the world and about our ability to contain evil in the world.

After all, since World War II, how many genocides have we seen?

I mean, just selecting for any Genocide where the highest accepted estimate is above 100,000 people, we’ve got the East Timor genocide, the Guatemalan genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the various Burundian genocides, the Isaaq genocide, the Anfal genocide, the Cambodian genocide, the Tibetan genocide, the Bangladesh genocide, the Indonesian genocide, the Aardakh, and I’m sure there are a few hundred thousand others I’m missing here.

So rather than paint this as a picture of Americans who no longer care or who have forgotten the Holocaust, paint it as a picture of Americans who, on watching a few million people die after World War II, have realized the fact that we forgot a hell of a long time ago.

This was my own personal takeaway as well.

“The lesson anybody on the right needs to learn, is you need to have your own video cameras running”

One thing struck me about the extended video with the confrontation between a group of Native American protesters and some Covington High School students is not “who did what,” but “who was carrying the cameras.”

If you go back and look at the extended two hour video, notice who has all the video cameras. And I don’t just mean “whipped out their cell phones”–but image stabilized cameras, hand-held recording cameras; cameras designed in part to capture broadcast quality video.

It doesn’t take much, nowadays, to capture broadcast quality video. An iPhone 7 will do the trick. But it takes extra effort (a weighted stabilization system, for example) to stabilize the video so it looks better when edited for the 11 o’clock news.

And as we’ve also seen, it’s a common tactic for protesters and criminals to confront a target and start screaming as if they’ve been harassed or assaulted; after all, one only needs to edit the video to show them screaming as if they’ve been assaulted, then show up in a second (studio-shot) piece of footage making claims they were struck or yelled at or insulted. The two edited together makes for an extremely powerful lie.

We’ve seen it time and time again: video footage from a police dashcam showing a criminal who, on initial approach (and before police officers even laid a hand on him) screaming about how he’s been assaulted, and violently struggling while shouting “I’m not resisting!”

We’ve seen it time and time again: Palestinians staging footage of themselves being assaulted, of throwing rocks at Israeli forces, of “heroic” actions as they “pull victims from buildings”–repeatedly staging the shots until they get something that plays on the international news.

It’s not to say that there aren’t dirty cops using too much force, and it is not to say there aren’t Palestinians caught in the cross fire. But one has to be suspicious–wait for all the facts to come in–before concluding that what we’re seeing on video is the real deal and not a staged production.

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So here’s the takeaway. If you’re near protesters, take out your own cell phone and start shooting video. If only so that someone doesn’t come up to you, and regardless of your political persuasion decides to make you the enemy in his own video production. And get your friends to do the same thing.

Call it insurance.

Because if it weren’t for a second group of left-wing protesters that were present that day taunting the catholic school boys and taking video tape of it, we wouldn’t have known the full story.

Whatever, dude.

Generation Xers Have The Most Gen X Response To Being Left Off The List

So it’s this CBS broadcast which got re-tweeted:

Glad that's settled pic.twitter.com/y4Fz6qqOKd

— ß¡|| Evenson (@BillEvenson) January 19, 2019

And I was suddenly reminded about the Gen-X rant published a few years ago:

Generation X is sick of your bullshit.

The first generation to do worse than its parents? Please. Been there. Generation X was told that so many times that it can’t even read those words without hearing Winona Ryder’s voice in its heads. Or maybe it’s Ethan Hawke’s. Possibly Bridget Fonda’s. Generation X is getting older, and can’t remember those movies so well anymore. In retrospect, maybe they weren’t very good to begin with.

But Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs, and actually had to pay for its own music. (At least, when music mattered most to it.) Generation X is used to being fucked over. It lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush, and 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis.

Generation X wasn’t surprised. Generation X kind of expected it.

Generation X is a journeyman. It didn’t invent hip hop, or punk rock, or even electronica (it’s pretty sure those dudes in Kraftwerk are boomers) but it perfected all of them, and made them its own. It didn’t invent the Web, but it largely built the damn thing. Generation X gave you Google and Twitter and blogging; Run DMC and Radiohead and Nirvana and Notorious B.I.G. Not that it gets any credit.

But that’s okay. Generation X is used to being ignored, stuffed between two much larger, much more vocal, demographics. But whatever! Generation X is self-sufficient. It was a latchkey child. Its parents were too busy fulfilling their own personal ambitions to notice any of its trophies-which were admittedly few and far between because they were only awarded for victories, not participation.

In fairness, Generation X could use a better spokesperson. Barack Obama is just a little too senior to count among its own, and it has debts older than Mark Zuckerberg. Generation X hasn’t had a real voice since Kurt Cobain blew his brains out, Tupac was murdered, Jeff Mangum went crazy, David Foster Wallace hung himself, Jeff Buckley drowned, River Phoenix overdosed, Elliott Smith stabbed himself (twice) in the heart, Axl got fat.

Generation X is beyond all that bullshit now. It quit smoking and doing coke a long time ago. It has blood pressure issues and is heavier than it would like to be. It might still take some ecstasy, if it knew where to get some. But probably not. Generation X has to be up really early tomorrow morning.

Generation X is tired.

It’s a parent now, and there’s always so damn much to do. Generation X wishes it had better health insurance and a deeper savings account. It wonders where its 30s went. It wonders if it still has time to catch up.

Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?

Whatever. It’s cool.

Generation X is used to disappointments. Generation X knows you didn’t even read the whole thing. It doesn’t want or expect your reblogs; it picked the wrong platform.

Generation X should have posted this to LiveJournal.

A comment left elsewhere.

Question: “Do you believe that the government is the solution to many of our societies problems?”

My answer:

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One of the best books I read in a while about the various philosophies of governance was Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions. In this book he outlines two general competing “visions”; core philosophical ideas which give rise to the major political movements we see in the world.

The first is the unconstrained vision of mankind. The idea is that human nature is essentially good, that human nature is essentially unconstrained, fixable, and can be collectively elevated to higher and higher levels of perfection. Those who follow the idea of the unconstrained vision of mankind often believe there is an ideal solution, that compromise is unacceptable, and are often impatient with institutions and processes which constrain action. And in the process, some ‘collateral damage’ is acceptable in order for mankind to progress.

They also hold that there are those who are farther along the moral arc of history than the rest of us; people who have overcome their self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers in order to help us move forward along the arc of history towards a greater perfection of society.

The second are those who hold to the constrained vision of mankind; those who believe in man after the fall. They believe essentially human nature is unchanging and man is inherently self-interest, regardless of best intentions. (Individuals may progress to higher levels of self-awareness and personal self-improvement–but that does not translate to the entire species.) Because mankind is imperfect they prefer the rule of law and the experience of tradition to help constrain behavior. Unlike those who hold to the unconstrained vision, those who believe in man “after the fall” believe compromise is essential since there is no perfect solution–only trade-offs.

They are also highly suspicious of the idea that there are those who are supposedly “farther along the moral arc”–since power corrupts. (Or, more precisely, we are all corrupt; power simply gives us an opportunity to act in our own self-interest.) Because of this, they believe in checks and balances and limits to power, and believe anyone who claims they can set aside their innate self-interest may just be trying to pick your pocket.

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I write all this to frame what I’m about to write in answering your question.

I hold to a constrained vision of man. I may not be a Christian, but I believe in the “fall of man,” and in the idea of “original sin”–the idea that we are born outside of the “grace of God” (for some definition of “God” which is not important here), and that it is up to each of us to find our own “grace.” I am highly suspicious of anyone who claims a higher moral compass than my own, just as when I look at someone materially worse off than me I can’t but help think “there but with the grace of God go I.”

I believe there are things that only the government can do.

We need laws. We need law enforcement. We need judges and juries and a system of punishment to punish law breakers–because there will always be criminals and crooks and broken people who need to be held accountable.

We also need the grace to temper our desire for vengeance, a process that is easily raised by law enforcement activities and others–so we need those who watch the watchers. We need teachers to help remind us of what grace looks like, what the seven virtues are and what they demand of us.

We need regulations. We need a way to help establish standards which (for example) assure the safety of airlines and to help establish the rules of the road–such as “airplanes traveling east to west flying VFR must fly at even-thousand plus 500 feet altitudes, west to east fly odd thousand plus 500 feet altitudes.” We need someone to establish the fact that we drive on the correct side of the road, to test the grip of tires so we know how fast we can safely corner, how one is to respond to stop signs. When we should stop so we don’t accidentally run over children.

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However, I also do not believe we are perfectible (the best we can ask for is a little more grace)–which means I am extremely suspicious of those who would like to regulate what are, in essence, personal decisions which have little influence on our neighbors.

I am strongly suspicious of moral arbiters who tell us who we may love, who we may marry, where we may live, what we may eat, how we may act in the world. And moral arbiters exist on both sides of the aisle: conservatives who think gay marriage is immoral, and liberals who think gun ownership is immoral–to me–commit the exact same sin.

They think they can make this judgement of me and others because they are elevated above me, farther along an imaginary moral arc WHICH DOES NOT EXIST.

So there are–to me–certain areas of human activity for which the Government has no moral authority to govern, areas which, as we’ve seen elsewhere in the world, when the Government gets involved, things turn into a royal cluster-fuck.

Areas such as economic activity: my freedom to buy what I wish, to sell what I wish, to work as I wish–those should only be regulated as necessary to protect property rights and to protect contracts and to prevent me from misrepresenting the products I sell. (And those only exist for the practical reason that economic transactions are inherently based on trust–trust which for an audience greater than a few hundred people cannot be had without external standards.)

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The problem is, for those in power–politicians, business leaders, the self-annointed elite in the media and experts–the feeling that they are superior to the rest of us, that they are farther along the moral arc is a feeling more addictive than cocaine and heroin.

So government is constantly intruding in areas where it has no business. Like telling people what we should or should not eat or drink.

I wish we’d just stop doing this sort of foolishness–because it never works out.

And in fact, when it goes to the extreme, often for supposedly good and moral reasons–such as when governments try to dictate how much food can cost and how much a person can charge another for his work–we get Venezuela.

A country where people have literally resorted to cannibalism in order to not starve to death.

It lacks the charity it demands of those it criticizes.

That, in a nutshell, is the reason why the new Gillette ad, which I posted about a couple of days ago, sets my teeth on edge.

It lacks the virtue of charity it demands of the men it criticizes.

Understand, by the way, that “charity” is not donating money to the poor, though alms is certainly a part of it. Charity encompasses the ideas of benevolence, generosity and sacrifice, as well as the idea of will or acting in accord with mindful will.

Charity is that virtue that asks us to look at the best in people rather than the worst, and it is the quality that allows us to be generous towards people in helping them, rather than browbeating them into submission and kicking them while they’re down.

And nothing in the Gillette ad shows any form of charity towards men. It starts with the idea that masculinity is currently corrupt and needs to be redefined; it strongly suggests those men who show charity and patience and kindness are rare.

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That, I think, is also my problem with today’s leftist attacks on improper behavior in the era of #metoo. It’s not that the values being sought are invalid or improper. Certainly we all can become better versions of ourselves–even the most enlightened can seek improvement. And certainly we all should be seeking to set examples by modeling better behavior, and protecting those who deserve and require protection.

But the left-wing movement’s attacks on culture show a lack of any form of self-awareness at its own lack of enlightenment.

Framed in another way, you cannot create kindness and compassion in others by being angry and envious yourself. You cannot show patience by using wrath. You cannot show charity towards others by being selfish and self-involved.

You cannot promote the seven virtues with the energy from the seven deadly sins.

It’s simple hypocrisy to think otherwise.

But that’s where we’re at: in an era where the advise in Matthew 7 ring hollow to a generation who see any form of philosophy or theology as old fashioned and lacking, in an era where compassion has been replaced with corporate virtue signaling by lecturing to its customers.

Gillette in the age of #metoo

My biggest complaint about the new Gillette campaign is the presumption that most men are broken and need to be fixed.

Take, for example, the scene at 0:35 of the extended commercial where a whole bunch of fathers chant “boys will be boys.”

Nowhere in the history of that phrase has the idea “boys will be boys” ever seen as anything but a justification for lax parenting. That is, the idea that one boy should be allowed to beat the crap out of another without the father intervening has never been seen as anything but the parenting of a sociopath by a negligent father and mother.

Yet somehow Gillette positions this as how entire generations of boys have been raised, with approval, by their fathers. (And where are the mothers in this scene?)

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I don’t have a problem with the idea with advocating the moral ideals of chivalry. These ideas went deeply hand in hand with the idea of the seven virtues of Christianity: of Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness and Humility.

Though sadly, in this day and age where the thought leaders of our culture suggest philosophy is dead and where Christian thought is seen as an anathema to our culture, we’ve forgotten that those virtues mean. We’ve forgotten that “chastity” does not mean “abstaining from sex” but “moral purity”–that is, sexual and physical fidelity or honor. (This idea extends beyond sexuality; for example, priests in the middle ages would perform rituals wearing white gloves to represent purity by helping to keep the hands clean.)

And remember: fidelity does not mean absence. If I am faithful to you that does not mean I remove myself from your life.

So in such a world, where we have forgotten the virtues of kindness, patience and humility–seeing them as too “christian” for our taste–what have we left?

Browbeating by a razor blade brand of Proctor & Gamble?

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In the past, men made a reasonable target for jokes because you never punch down; you always punch up. And men are raised to be a bit stoic about such things.

But increasingly this is starting to look like punching down by a culture which has declared all masculinity (and attributes seen as masculine, such as chivalry) as toxic to our culture.

Because if you have a penis and don’t self-declare yourself another gender, well, what the fuck is wrong with you? You’re clearly part of the problem. You’re automatically presumed to be the father who claims “boys will be boys” as you neglect bringing up your children. You’re the bully chasing the kids at school. You’re the college-age frat boy ogling and objectifying the girls around you.

You’re the problem.

And within a society that has no framework in which to provide context for proper behavior, since those sorts of things are old fashioned religious nonsense–what is there left but to be repeatedly scolded for things you didn’t do, rather than given a set of goals that you can aspire to?