Consider But Verify

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To be a competent human being in the 21st century you have to be very wary of how you consume information. And this is so for one simple reason: journalism today is crap.

Case in point. A few days ago, I was meandering around Yahoo Finance and I came across an article with the following title:

Why a very conservative Supreme Court will be bad for business

The article was written by Stephanie Wylie and it naturally piqued my interest. I am, after all, heavily invested in the market and I don’t want the Supreme Court screwing around with corporate profits and ruining my returns. So I clicked the link to the article and dove in. And as I was reading Wylie’s prose, I came across an accusation against Associate Justice Coney-Barrett that was highly disturbing. Here it is:

“[Coney-Barrett] also refused to re-hear a case on racial segregation after a three-judge panel approved a company’s policy of racially segregating employees, allowing the panel’s decision to stand.”

Really? A company in this day and age is racially segregating its employees? What the heck is going on? Does it have separate cafeterias for its black and white employees or separate employment tracks for its black and white employees? And a three-judge panel thinks this is okay? And so does Coney-Barrett?

Thankfully, Wylie was kind enough to provide a link to the proof that her accusation against Coney-Barrett was sound. So I followed the link and discovered that Wylie’s accusation was based on a report from an organization called People for the American Way.

I haven’t seen People for the American Way referenced in years. But I remember it being a highly partisan Left-wing group. This doesn’t mean, of course, that its opinion of Coney-Barrett is wrong. Coney-Barrett might really think that racial segregation is perfectly okay. My this-is-utter-bullshit senses, however, were tingling.

But thankfully again, the accuser had the integrity to provide corroborating evidence. People for the American Way’s anti-Coney-Barrett report had a link to the actual ruling of the three-judge panel. And here is how the ruling describes the events that led to a charge of racial segregation:

• The aggrieved, Kevin Stuckey, was a black man who lived in Chicago and worked for AutoZone.
• He started off his AutoZone career as a salesperson and was eventually promoted to sales manager after a couple of years.
• While he was working at the AutoZone store on Kedzie Avenue, his immediate supervisor, the store manager, was black and his next supervisor up the food chain, the district manager, was also black.
• Mr. Stuckey apparently wasn’t getting along with the store manager. The store on Kedzie Avenue was also in a largely Hispanic neighborhood, and Mr. Stuckey, according to the store manager, was often frustrated because he “couldn’t communicate well with the customers.”
• The store manager and district manager claimed that Mr. Stuckey asked for a transfer to another store. Mr. Stuckey denied this claim.
• In any event, the district manager transferred Mr. Stuckey to the AutoZone store on 103rd Street. The transfer was strictly lateral. Mr. Stuckey did not suffer any loss of pay, authority, or responsibilities. He remained a sales manager.
• The district manager claimed that he made the transfer because the 103rd Street store needed a sales manager and because Mr. Stuckey wasn’t getting along with the store manager at the Kedzie Avenue store.
• Mr. Stuckey remembered the reason behind his transfer differently. He claimed that he asked the district manager why he was transferred and the district manager told him that he (the district manager) wanted to keep the Kedzie Avenue store “predominately Hispanic.”
• To complicate matters, Mr. Stuckey also indicated in his EEOC complaint that he “didn’t mind” being transferred from the Kedzie Avenue store and that his district manager never made comments about his (Mr. Stuckey’s) race or the race of any other AutoZone employee.
• And to further complicate matters, after Mr. Stuckey refused the transfer to the 103rd Street store and quit, AutoZone occasionally hired new black employees to work at the Kedzie Avenue store and promoted a number of black employees who were already working there.

Now a question. Does this dispute in any way resemble the racial segregation that took place during America’s Jim Crow era? When you read the particulars of this dispute, were you chillingly reminded of white-only schools, drinking fountains, and lunch counters?

Call me nuts, but it seems to me that AutoZone was acting in good faith and merely trying to accommodate both Mr. Stuckey and its customer base at the Kedzie Avenue store. If Mr. Stuckey spoke Spanish and got along with the Kedzie Avenue store manager, I seriously doubt he would have been transferred to the 103rd Street store.

Consider but Verify

After reading the three-judge panel’s decision, I was mystified on two accounts.

First, I was mystified that the EEOC even decided to do battle on Mr. Stuckey’s behalf. We are told by our progressive overlords that “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” are dire problems in this country. Anti-black discrimination is supposedly everywhere. Why, then, did the EEOC waste its limited resources on a case that was anything but a clear-cut example of racial segregation?

Second, I was mystified that People for the American Way and Wylie were so cavalier about affixing the scarlet R to the three-judge panel and Coney-Barrett. If you’re going to label someone a racist, you better have incontrovertible proof. After all, charging someone with racism today can not only ruin that person’s career and social standing but it can also bring megaphone-armed SJW harpies to that person’s home at three o’clock in the morning. This case was hardly incontrovertible proof of racial malice, and People for the American Way and Wylie should be ashamed of themselves for using it to tarnish the reputations of the three-judge panel and Coney-Barrett.

When dealing with the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan famously said that one needed to “trust but verify.” That was a great line and a great adage for dealing with the duplicitous Soviet Union. It’s also a great adage for dealing with American journalism. Simply put, there are very few journalists in America today. Most journalists today are nothing but propagandists who are trying get you to vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans. To be a competent consumer of news, then, one has to be highly incredulous. But rather than approach American journalism with a “trust but verify” mindset, I prefer a slight twist. Instead of a “trust but verify” mindset, you need to approach American journalism with a “consider but verify” mindset. Under no circumstances should an American journalist ever be trusted.

“Okay,” I hear you blurting out. “American journalists suck. I get that. But how exactly does one approach American journalism with a ‘consider but verify’ mindset?”

Great question. And to answer it, I’ve put together five pillars of a “consider but verify” mindset. Here they are:

1. Always be skeptical. Just because that pretty face is confirming your worldview doesn’t mean that pretty face isn’t playing you.
2. If possible, go to the source material of the news (i.e., the study, report, transcript, audio, or video the news was based on) and make your own judgment. Don’t outsource your interpretation of facts to any journalist.
3. If the source material of the news isn’t available, see how journalists with an opposing ideology are reporting the matter. If you’re getting all your news from either liberal or conservative news sources, you’re not consuming news properly.
4. Journalists lie mainly by omission. They conveniently ignore information that reflects poorly on the people, groups, and causes that they favor. Again, this can best be defended against by consuming news from a variety of ideological sources. No one person, group, or cause has a monopoly on wisdom and virtue. And if your news always has the same villains and victims, you can bet your sweet bippy that you’re being manipulated.
5. Finally, here are two journalism “tricks” that really irk me. If you come across either of these in a news story, disregard said news story with extreme prejudice.
   1. Missing Asians and Hispanics. Whenever there’s a news story pertaining to race, and the news story omits data on Asians and Hispanics, you’re being manipulated. Journalists omit data on Asians and Hispanics because a black-white-only comparison promotes the narrative that America is a racist country. Take, for instance, data on household income. White households make 69 percent more than black households. That looks bad. But Hispanic households make 23 percent more than black households, and Asian households make 109 percent more. Heck, Asian households make 23 percent more than white households. Adding Asian and Hispanic data to the news story ruins the racism narrative.
   2. Media-approved tyranny. Even bad people have inalienable rights. But for some reason, many journalists don’t appreciate this, and they want you to be hostile or indifferent to the inalienable rights of the people that they don’t like. So to weaken your moral resolve, journalists appeal to authority by sprinkling their news stories with well-credentialed and well-respected “experts” who say it’s perfectly okay to poop on fascists, or communists, or white supremacists, or “radical” leftists, or people with “privilege,” or people who don’t slavishly worship at the altar of diversity, or people who don’t vote the right way—you get the idea. Such manipulation is an affront to decency and the American experiment. Don’t fall for this modern-day equivalent of two-minute hate.

Quick aside: Don’t forget, the “consider but verify” adage also applies to me. I gave you my interpretation of the three-judge panel’s ruling. But how do you know if I’m not bullshitting you? You don’t. I, therefore, urge you to read the ruling yourself and decide for yourself if AutoZone engaged in racial segregation.

Antibra

A while back, I noticed something very peculiar. A lot of whites in America are ashamed of being white and a lot of blacks in America are all too happy to exploit this psychosis. So rather than leaving the government with a monopoly on mediating white guilt and black ignobility, I proposed Resty—a peer-to-peer racial flogging app. This way, guilty whites could not only find “aggrieved” blacks easily but they could also transfer indulgences (i.e., money) to said blacks easily. The ghosts of racial-injustice past, present, and future would be quelled with a little thumb-typing on a smartphone and the costly and inefficient government middleman would be given some well-needed competition.

I’m bringing up Resty because it represents something I call open-source entrepreneurialism. A peer-to-peer racial flogging app is a great money-making idea. But I have no desire to create the app myself. And rather than keep my great money-making idea a secret, I’ve decided to broadcast it to the world. This way, anyone can come along and run with it. And they don’t have to pay me any kind of royalty, licensing fee, or tribute. My great money-making idea is truly open-source.

Okay, my first contribution to open-source entrepreneurialism was the peer-to-peer racial flogging app called Resty. And now I have another contribution. It’s called Antibra.

Unless you live under a rock, you should be well-familiar with the group Antifa. They’re the fine young Americans who fight “fascism” (i.e., any individual or institution that isn’t sufficiently woke) with fascist tactics (i.e., mob violence) and firmly believe that communism—which is materially no different than fascism—is preferable to libocracy (i.e., a constitutional republic that enshrines individual rights and limits government power). Yeah, they’re nuts. But they have a great name. And I’m tweaking that name to address a real problem: brainwashing. Antibra = anti-brainwashing.

Brainwashing is everywhere. It’s not just a plaything of journalists. It’s a plaything of educators, entertainers, advertisers, philanthropists, bureaucrats, activists, and big tech moguls. And any enterprising guy or gal could do very well for him or herself if he or she started Antibra and began fighting the brainwashing that is pouring out of every thought-shaping institution in America today. Just think of the possibilities. The head of Antibra would be…

• Famous. The likes of Fox News, CNN, and Joe Rogan would be clamoring the head of Antibra for guest appearances.
• Rich. If Antibra went national and had chapters in every state, there’s no way the head of Antibra wouldn’t be making a top-10-percent salary.
• And a fertilizer of the tree of liberty. Call me a cynic, but I suspect that Antifa will not be very fond of Antibra. If you start Antibra and have a pugilistic streak, you’ll have ample opportunities to trade spit, punches, and gunfire with Antifa.

Again, I have no interest in starting Antibra. But it’s a great money-making idea. And that’s why I added it to my small library of open-source entrepreneurialism ideas. If you want to start Antibra, you’re free to do so.

Final Thoughts

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Is my advice to consider-but-verify when consuming news good advice? Or am I being needlessly paranoid when it comes to journalism in America today? And what about my open-source entrepreneurialism idea of Antibra? Does America need a group dedicated to anti-brainwashing? Or is the notion that our elites engage in systemic brainwashing a hobgoblin of my pedestrian mind? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.