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Leftists Redefine Bullying

Leftists, controlled by “LGBTQ” activists and in thrall to their dogma, have redefined yet another term: bullying. They seek to impose their redefinition on all of society in their relentless quest to socially condition everyone into affirmation of their sexuality ideology. There’s no better evidence that they have redefined “bullying” than their claim that Melania Trump’s campaign against cyberbullying is hypocritical because her husband allegedly cyberbullies.

The often-foolish Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recently made that claim in a column in which he argued that President Donald Trump cyberbullied former CIA director John Brennan by calling him a “political hack.” Milbank also accused Trump of cyberbullying special counsel Robert Mueller, former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, John Dean, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), Governors Andrew Cuomo, (D-NY) and John Kasich (R-OH). Milbank’s evidence that Trump cyberbullied these people? He called them names on Twitter.

Milbank’s argument raises the question “What is a bully?”

My Random House Dictionary defines a bully as “a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.”

My American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “a person who is habitually cruel, esp. to smaller or weaker people.”

My Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a tyrannical coward who makes himself a terror to the weak.”

My Oxford American Dictionary defines it as “a person who uses strength or power to coerce others by fear.”

Is calling famous adults in positions of cultural power names “cruel”? Are John Brennan, Robert Mueller, Chuck Schumer weak? Are they terrified by Trump’s tweets? Does tweeting mean things about famous adults in positions of cultural power constitute the use of coercive strength and power?

Apparently, the spanking new Leftist definition of “bully” omits all references to smaller or weaker people, which means that untold numbers of people—including countless “progressive” pundits, politicians, professors, teachers, and actors—are guilty of bullying.

If all epithets constitute bullying, then was former Obama press secretary, Jay Carney a bully when he called Milbank a “hack.”

When Milbank called U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) a coward and said the president is “surrounded by hooligans,” was Milbank bullying?

When perpetual power-seeker Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables,” was she bullying?

When Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn called opponents of the legal recognition of homosexual unions as marriages sophomoric Bible-thumpers, hankie-twisters, and poisonous debaters, was he bullying?

When the editor and publisher of the “progressive” magazine The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, said former president George Bush was incompetent, untrustworthy, and dishonest, was she bullying?

When former President Barack Obama called Kanye West a “jackass,” was he bullying? When Obama called a segment of the population bitter Bible-clingers was he bullying?

Are “progressives” bullies when they call theologically orthodox Christians ignorant, hate-filled bigots for their belief that homosexual acts are immoral?

Was Jesus a bully when he called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers?”

If someone is a hack, a jackass, or a viper, is it bullying to say so?

If we use the true definition of bullying, it becomes clear who the bullies are. Bullies are those who possess cultural power—and by cultural power, I mean our dominant cultural institutions—and wield it against those with little or no cultural power.

It is “progressives” who control government schools, academia, the arts, professional medical and mental health organizations, mainstream media, social media, and corporate America. When Trump tweeted that John Brennan is a “political hack,” he was not guilty of bullying. When Carney called Milbank a hack, he was not bullying. When cultural power-brokers call an elderly florist a bigot, they’re bullying.

For tactical reasons, “progressives” have decided that when it comes to adults talking about adults, bullying no longer refers to coercive, threatening, cruel treatment of weaker people. They do that all the time. Now it refers to any speech by conservatives that’s not pleasant, sufficiently obsequious, or ideologically aligned with their views. But remember, no one has an obligation to acquiesce to Leftist language rules.

This is not an endorsement of speech that is uncivil or intemperate, but not all unpleasant speech is uncivil or intemperate. There is even a cultural place for expressions of hatred. Decent people with properly formed consciences will hate wicked acts and will say so even in the face of coercive bullying by the culturally powerful.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Leftists-Redefine-Bullying.mp3


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Media Bias That Makes You Sick

The cause of “media activism,” now popular at some American colleges and universities, is taking an ominous and interesting turn. If this trend continues, the moderators of the stacked anti-Republican CNBC presidential debate will look like moderates.

Quite literally, the purpose of this new kind of “media activism” is to make you sick.

A so-called “Media Activism Research Conference” is being held next year in Canada to expand even further the “progressive” causes available to journalists. The event is described as a “Gathering for Grassroots and Transformative Media” at Lakehead University and “an opportunity to develop collaborations and networks among anti-capitalist, feminist, anti-racist, trans, queer and Indigenous alternative media activists and activist-researchers by sharing knowledge, skills and experiences on grassroots and transformative alternative media.”

Brace yourselves for one of the seminars, which concerns “Queer anarchist autonomous zones and publics: Direct action vomiting against homonormative consumerism.”

According to my research, and I may not have gotten to the bottom of this, it seems as if media activists in Canada are exploring vomiting as a form of social protest against capitalism. The concept of “social justice” is taking on very strange and bizarre adventures in academia.

One member of the Anarchist Studies Network defines vomit itself “as emblematic of the unsustainable contradictions inherent in capitalism, and of the body’s rebellion.”

A Lakehead University professor, Dr. Sandra Jeppesen, actually wrote an article entitled, “Projectile: stories about puking.” Apparently, to vomit is to reject the capitalist system.

Jeppesen is the point of contact for this field of study. Identified as a professor in media studies, cultural studies and anarchist theory, she was awarded almost $500,000 in research funding from the federal government of Canada two years ago, in order to “study how social activists are using ‘cutting-edge’ digital technologies to further social causes around the world and what the rest of us can learn from them.”

In fact, this forthcoming media conference is underwritten by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of the government of Canada.

If you are as curious as I am, you may find it interesting that “anti-consumerist vomiting” is described in a broader context, and that “Global anarchist movements and queer politics are integrating in mutually informing ways. The characteristics of this synthesis include liberatory theories and practices of embodied genders and sexualities in private and public, direct actions to visibilize and extend queer publics, and queer intersections with capitalism, the environment, race, disability, public space, private property and citizenship, among others.”

I don’t know how to precisely translate this material, except I did discover that “liberatory pedagogy” refers to “educational theories and practices intended to raise learners’ critical consciousness concerning oppressive social conditions.”

A paper on the topic explains, “As students and educators join the struggles to recognize oppression and domination within the sphere of popular culture, individuals whose voices were once silenced will become heard. For this reason, liberatory pedagogy seeks to empower individuals and encourage them to formulate reflective communities in and outside of the classroom that highlight social justice.”

An entire paper by Jeppesen, entitled, “Queer anarchist autonomous zones and publics: Direct action vomiting against homonormative consumerism,” goes into detail on this. I almost got sick reading it.

Meanwhile, here in the United States, things aren’t too much better. Some of our “progressive” journalists are still recognizing—and being recognized by—Playboy founder and publisher Hugh Hefner, whose Playboy Mansion was a notorious hangout for such personalities as accused serial sex abuser Bill Cosby.

Some “progressives” consider Hefner a champion of the First Amendment.

Malkia Cyril, Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice, was just given a 2015 Hugh M. Hefner Foundation First Amendment Award. We are told that during her acceptance speech, “In a small ceremony that took place beside the Playboy mansion’s infamous grotto, Malkia started off by thanking her mother, a former Black Panther who passed away in 2005, and the nearly 200 organizations that make up the Media Action Grassroots Network.”

In the Playboy Mansion and its “infamous grotto,” a place known for sexual orgies, it appears that the notorious Bill Cosby exercised a lot of power over women, some of whom may have been drugged.

Nevertheless, Cyril seemed proud of the award and proclaimed, “My mother was a member of the Black Panther Party in New York City. She ran the Party’s Breakfast Program and was editor of their national newspaper, but she was my first teacher. I sat on my mother’s shoulders at rallies for undocumented migrants, queer youth rights, women’s reproductive freedom. And I sit on her shoulders today.”

The Black Panther Party was notorious for targeting police officers as “pigs.”

The so-called “grassroots organizations” of the Media Action Grassroots Network include the George Soros-funded Ella Baker Center, formerly headed by Van Jones, the Obama Green Jobs Czar who lost his job when his communist background came to light. He is now a CNN commentator.

The Hefner awards are determined by “judges” from the media, who in the past have included Margaret Carlson, a journalist at Bloomberg News; Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher, The Nation.

Each award includes $5,000 and a commemorative plaque. The awards represent just some of the millions of dollars over the years that Hugh Hefner has paid to the media and various “progressive groups.”

Taking money from a pornographer and vomiting to protest capitalism are some of the current “progressive” trends in the media.

And you thought media bias couldn’t get any worse?


This article was originally posted at AccuracyinMedia.org.