Turks and Kurds and Us

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.--John Adams


Astros behind. I never thought they would be scored on.
Mom really cut her hand.

The more freedom we have, the more there will be very feminine and masculine subcultures too, and this might explain a great deal of recent political developments — in particular the campus identity politics movement and the alt-right. The former is heavily female, while the latter is overwhelmingly male — in fact, not just male, but populated by men who seem to have difficulties with women…

Single women tend to be politically very liberal, voting for the Democrats in huge numbers, while in Britain Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has overwhelming support among young women, the vast majority of whom are unmarried. Generally speaking, the culture wars are far more intense between women because women have to make more sacrifices — whether children or career — and this inevitably influences their worldview. Political liberalism, with its strong relationship between the state and the individual, favors single women, while conservatism, with its emphasis on monogamy and support for the nuclear family, speaks to their married equivalents. And while married men with children are also more conservative than single ones, the difference is not as pronounced.

So what happens when fewer people get married and, indeed, spend time with the opposite sex? Gender-segregated politics it seems.--Ed West

 Pretty funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=616&v=QwqnRYPcrl0

On September 19, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS), a 36-year-old organization of academics specializing in the history, culture, and literature of England before the Norman Conquest, hastily voted to change its name. Indeed, the vote was so hasty that the organization had no idea what its new name ought to be (it is soliciting suggestions from members). Nonetheless, the majority of its 600-odd members were certain of one thing: they no longer wanted to be associated with the words “Anglo-Saxon.”

A report alleges that Auston Matthews and a group of friends attempted to open a car door as a security officer sat inside completing paperwork at 2 a.m. local time. This led to a confrontation between Matthews' group and the guard during which Matthews allegedly pulled down his pants.

In 1983 on this day,  a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives into a U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut International Airport. The explosion killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. A few minutes after that bomb went off, a second bomber drove into the basement of the nearby French paratroopers’ barracks, killing 58 more people. Four months after the bombing, American forces left Lebanon without retaliating.


              Turks and Kurds and Us

So we have now declared we are pulling back in Syria--not bringing guys home, mind you, just letting the Turks and the Russians loose a little in Syria by moving 50 guys around. This is going to be hard on our old friends, the Kurds. The Turks are already moving against them.

But of course, Turkey is our ally, too. Just like the Kurds. But Turkey is NATO. NATO! Turkey hosts American nuclear weapons. It has a huge number of armed military personnel and they are dangerous. Who do we owe more to? And if we have conflicting loyalties, how do we bridge them?

In 2012, then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that Americans were indebted to their Turkish allies and would not allow Syria to become a haven for Kurdish terrorists. Read that again. If abandoning the Kurds is bad for American credibility among our allies today, why wasn’t our similar abandonment in the 2012 promises to Turkey equally undermining? 

For that matter, what about the American vaunted "Line in the sand" in Syria? How about that for undermining credibility?

Really, isn't this shameless mendacious behavior just part and parcel of the disreputable practice of politics and how America has forfeited on its revolutionary promise?  

Hillary and Gabbard

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.--from a speech written for Nixon in the event the Apollo 11 mission failed


 “All the US politicians and pundits and social media virtue signalers who are quick to windbag opine on Hong Kong protests are quiet on Chile and Barcelona this week where brutal rioters are destroying their cities and police are aggressively cracking down.” --Sameer Chisty. I didn't know this guy and thought the perspective suspicious. But he's a VC,  Founder and Chairman of Streeton Partners and ex-Bain.

Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. ... By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." 

Sports Business Journal recently estimated that the NBA’s presence in China is worth $5 billion to the league. Nike, with [Lebron] James as a primary spokesman in China, received 17% of its $37.2 billion in brand revenue from Greater China in fiscal 2019…James also has served Tencent as a spokesperson, consultant and endorser of the NBA 2K League in China.

The #MeToo movement has ended the U.S. career of legendary 78-year-old Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, one of classical music’s greatest ambassadors and impresarios. (The opening line of a very angry article by MacDonald in Quillette.)

A study of four cities, Seattle, Philly, Oakland and San Francisco on the impact of taxing surgery drinks. An increase in the beverage tax rate of 1 cent per ounce decreases household purchases of taxed beverages by 53.0 ounces per month or 12.2 percent. This impact is small in magnitude and consistent with a reduction in individual consumption of 5 calories per day per household member and eventual reduction in weight of 0.5 pounds.  Separated by city, the decline was concentrated in Philadelphia, where the tax decreased purchases by 27.7 percent. There are no impacts of the taxes in the other three cities.

For Thomas: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/go-back-to-work-outcry-over-deaths-on-amazons-warehouse-floor/ar-AAIY7rF?ocid=spartandhp

A recent study of 180 academic curricula vitae found that 56 percent that claimed to have at least one publication contained at least one unverifiable or inaccurate publication, and it suggests that CV falsification could be much more common than scholars committed to professional integrity might hope. The study is small — the 56 percent reflects only 79 CVs, of 141 that claimed to have at least one publication. The researchers behind the study make no presumption as to whether the errors were intentional.

The empirical case for limited government is that although human beings have something in common – human nature – they are different in capacities and aspirations. From this it follows, not logically but practically, that government cannot hope to provide happiness to all. The most it can reasonably expect to provide are the conditions under which happiness, as each defines it, can be pursued.--will 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to meet with his Russian counterpart to discuss dividing influence in Syria as U.S. troops pull out and a five-day halt to a Turkish offensive comes to an end. (wsj)
So the hawks were right?

On this day in 1962, Kennedy gave his Cuban Missile speech, one of those events where everyone remembers where he was.

                        Hillary and Gabbard

The high-mindedness of American politicians continues with this weird thing from Hillary. Lying is like breathing.




Hillary Clinton has floated a conspiracy theory that the Russians are "grooming" Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.to be a third-party candidate in 2020, while claiming 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein is "also" a Russian asset. (In 2016, Stein won enough votes in the key states of Wisconsin and Michigan to keep those states blue, had she been able to magically gift them to Hillary. In other words, it’s a pretty fair statement that, all other things being equal, a third-party candidate, Jill Stein, may very well have cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election. Shades of Perot.)

Do you notice a preoccupation with Russians and Evil here? And when did the Left start getting afraid of the Russians anyway?

During this week’s Democratic debate, Gabbard blasted debate co-sponsors CNN and the New York Times for "smearing" her along similar lines. CNN commentator Bakari Sellers called her a "puppet" for the Russian government and the Times reported on her “frequent” mentions in Russian state news media.

"Just two days ago, The New York Times put out an article saying that I'm a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears,” Gabbard said. "This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I'm an asset of Russia — completely despicable."

Then she tweeted this.
"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.
It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."

And, true to journalistic ethics, this from a CNBC panel: “One thing that was interesting about Tulsi Gabbard’s response, I mean she went after Hillary Clinton, she was strong, she said she wasn’t gonna run as a third party candidate — she never denied being a Russian asset,” said a panelist MSNBC identifies as Kimberly Atkins. “That was the one aspect that was missing from her response, which, you know, you would think that would be within the first line or two. It was not there.”

How do we tolerate these people?

Golden Age of Mendacity

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.--Wilde


Chris made sticky buns. Really good.
Chris and I went for boys night out at Mineo's.

What’s truly striking is that President Trump has somehow placed the Democrat  2020 hopefuls in the awkward position of defending U.S. forever wars. 

U.S. negotiators dangled a Trumpian carrot before North Korean diplomats during nuclear talks two weeks ago: a promise to complete and expand a tourist resort that has been a favorite project of Kim Jong-un. The American diplomats offered the development help in exchange for denuclearization, according to the South Korean newspaper Hankook Ibo. These people are so silly.

Unrest in Chile, triggered by a subway fare increase(!), has led to looting and vandalism, with buses, stores and the headquarters of Enel Chile torched.(wsj)

New York’s season-ending defeat to the Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series on Saturday means that for the first time since the 1910s, they have gone a full calendar decade without so much as appearing in the World Series. They spent more than $2 billion on player salaries, more than any other team in the majors over that span. They employed at least eight current, likely or possible future Hall of Famers. And yet, along the way, the Yankees settled into a strange, new normal. They have become the sort of franchise their fans used to mock: great in every way but the one that counts.

In the wake of Trump’s commanded military withdrawal from northeast Syria, the once U.S.-backed Kurds cut a deal with the Assad regime!!!!

“Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”--Richard Lindzen

Has anyone seen a picture of Hilary standing recently?

On this day in 1805, in one of the most decisive naval battles in history, a British fleet under Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the coast of Spain. Nelson divided his 27 ships into two divisions and signaled a famous message from the flagship Victory: “England expects that every man will do his duty.”

In five hours of fighting, the British devastated the enemy fleet, destroying 19 enemy ships. No British ships were lost, but 1,500 British seamen were killed or wounded in the heavy fighting. The battle raged at its fiercest around the Victory, and a French sniper shot Nelson in the shoulder and chest. The admiral was taken below and died about 30 minutes before the end of the battle. Nelson’s last words, after being informed that victory was imminent, were “Now I am satisfied. Thank God I have done my duty.” Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar ensured that Napoleon would never invade Britain. 

            Golden Age of Mendacity

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

But in our modern culture, hypocrisy was the liar's high watermark. It is now long gone. There is no longer debate, a struggle between thoughtful posing, pros and cons. Instead, we have simple declarations--usually in a celebration--of a simple lie. The lie simmers, is usually countered to a much smaller audience and the liar, like a traveling circus that has milked the spot long enough, folds his tent and moves on to a new venue, a new lie.

The point is not that public people are insincere, it is that the culture no longer expects sincerity. Mendacity is the norm and we are stunned by outbreaks of honesty. This is further complicated by the public airing of difficult problems for which there may be no definitive answer--or, worse, a complex one--and the public presentation of a simplified or ideologically motivated explanation. Or, if necessary, a simple lie is presented.

What happens in a culture that no longer believes its leaders any more than it does its enemies? What happens when "trust" becomes a curious, archaic word?

What happens when a culture longs for the days of hypocrisy?

Sunday/ Physical Fatigue in the Spiritual World

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.--Thacher

Went to Mary's Vines last night, a strange little place in a redone Croatian church in Rankin, with Amy, Jeff, and Thomas. Very interesting looking place with the entire life savings of the family that bought it invested in it. One of those places you think is interesting and you hope it does well but probably would not go back. Bumbling service, $22 a glass chardonnays, and only adequate food. One of those small plate places. Earnest. And doomed.
We went to Jeff's after and watched Michigan play surprisingly well against Penn State. 
I returned well past my bedtime but stayed up to the Yankees thrilling comeback and Altuve's heroics.

The Brexit mess continues to advertise direct democracy in action.

Here is an interesting explanation of the  Saez-Zucman thesis that states the sales tax has a gigantic impact on low-income people. (It is pretty outrageous--to the point of insincerity.): "The eye-catching result here is they have consumption taxes being *sharply* regressive, e.g. 12% for the lowest income group. I’m not aware of any US state that has state + average local sales rates tax that high. And lots of goods are exempt from sales tax. So how do they get this? Well, suppose someone earns $1k in labor earnings and gets $9k in transfers, and consumes it all paying a 5% sales tax = $500 in tax. What sales tax rate have they paid (as a % of their income)? The method Treasury uses says 500/(1k+9k) = 5% (this is also what Auten-Splinter do). Saez-Zucman exclude transfers from the denominator, and thus say 500/1k = 50%. This is a matter of definition, so it’s hard to call it right or wrong, but it does seem misleading and yield some rather nonsensical implications. For example, it means that if welfare to the poor is increased, this will be measured as an increased tax rate." (from a letter to Cowen)
  
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”--Richard Lindzen

There are 40 churches in Wilkinsburg.

Would the two percent wealth tax apply to muni bonds?
How would a wealth tax impact the fat civil service defined benefit pension plans? Public pensions have values in the 3 million+ range.

 “In the closet of the Vatican,” a newly released book by the French author and LGBT activist Frederic Martel, is generating global media attention and discussion among Vatican figures in Rome. The general thesis of the book is that the Vatican is among the most active hotbeds of homosexuality in the world. Martel has said in interviews that his goal is to shed light on the hypocrisy of those officials in the Vatican who, he says, practice homosexuality and then condemn it. One Catholic reviewer called it gossip and innuendo. A more favorable review said this: "It is not quite a homage, but Martel seems to admire the evolved culture of homosexuality (not my preferred word, but appropriate in this context) in the Vatican."

"We came, we saw, he died." On October 20, 2011, Moammar Gadhafi, the longest-serving leader in Africa and the Arab world, was captured and killed by rebel forces near his hometown of Sirte. 

             Physical Fatigue in the Spiritual World

In today's reading from the Old Testament, Joshua battles the Philistines with the help of Moses, who when he raises his sacred staff on the hill overlooking the battle, the battle goes to Israel, and when he lowers it, to the Philistine. So he is helped to hold the sacred staff aloft and Israel triumphs.
This magical event is always explained as a metaphor for human virtues like persistence and community unity. But there is something more important here, the limits of the individual human in spite of the obvious and dire consequences should his efforts fail. Moses as a divine conduit is limited by his human nature. Even with a sacred artifact that guarantees the survival of his people, he is physically unable to wield it. And the artifact seems to have some dependence upon other factors. (One is never a prophet in one's own land?) 

God does not seem to be willing to be imposed. And, in our growing understanding of interactive physics, this is very strange stuff indeed.

Charts and Such

[I]t would be puerile to expect the human heart to be other than it has pleased nature to make it.--Bastait



Very nice time last night at Senti with one of Mom's associates.
Drove all over today trying to get the new ID driver's license. Hundreds of supplicants, mostly looking like terrorists.

The classic definition of "person" is that given by Boethius in "De persona et duabus naturis", c. ii: Naturæ rationalis individua substantia (an individual substance of a rational nature.) I am not sure this definition works now. But....the Yurok Tribe in northwestern California has declared, that the Klamath River now has the “rights of personhood.” The tribal elders decided the river’s rights were violated by unnamed assailants that must be brought to eco-justice. In 2017, the New Zealand government negotiated with Maori tribes to give legal standing in court to the Whanganui River.  In 2018, Minnesota’s White Earth Band of Ojibwe declared the human rights of wild rice (manoomin) and the freshwater places where it grows. Manoomin is the first plant species to claim human rights, although no one has tested the decision in tribal court.
I have no idea where this is going but it's probably bad. Definitions are really important and the lack of good definitions usually implies a lack of insight.


Expansion of wind and solar power and the Green New Deal are justified constantly on the grounds of a climate crisis. Temperatures are rising but, as the Little Ice Age ended around 1850, it is not easy to separate natural from anthropogenic effects. The latest research in the peer-reviewed literature suggests that mankind is responsible for about half a degree Celsius of the global temperature increase of about 1.5 degrees since 1850.

In 1781 on this day, hopelessly trapped at Yorktown, Virginia, British General Lord Cornwallis surrendered 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a larger Franco-American force, effectively bringing an end to the American Revolution.

                                     Charts and Such












And, especially for Sandra:

Racist Writing Assessment

Power doesn’t stay where you put it.--Munger


Happy Birthday, Ned!

The Astros look very strong. These games are on too late.

This is an interesting quote. You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. -Jessica Mitford, author, journalist, and civil rights activist
In this vein, the President of the United States has accused the Democrats of spreading a rumor that there are bedbugs in his Doral Hotel. The President.

Any Chinese person who has gone to elementary school or watched television news can explain the tale of China’s 100 years of humiliation. Starting with the Opium Wars in the 19th century, foreign powers bullied a weak and backward China into turning Hong Kong and Macau into European colonies. Students must memorize the unequal treaties the Qing dynasty signed during that period. There’s even a name for it: “national humiliation education.”

In 1959, Venezuela’s GDP per capita was 10% higher than America’s.
(Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Even countries that were once more prosperous than their neighbors have found themselves much poorer than their neighbors after just one generation of socialistic policies.--Sowell)

Discussions of income inequality promote — psychologically if not logically — the mistaken notion that the amount of total income is fixed. What someone else earns does not come from you. Another's income would not otherwise be yours.

Concern with income inequality elevates the material and denigrates nonmonetary sources of human happiness and flourishing.

Wind and solar can’t even produce enough energy to manufacture the hardware they are made from. They are a parasite on the larger economy, making a few people wealthy at everyone’s expense. They are wealth-destroying technologies.-- Patrick Moore co- founder of Greenpeace

                            Racist Writing Assessment

This is from Inoue's introduction from his book on antiracist writing assessment and teaching in college, mentioned yesterday:

"...what I address is the fact that students of color, which includes multilingual students, are often hurt by conventional writing assessment that uncritically uses a dominant discourse, which is informed by an unnamed white racial habitus, which we see better when we use analytical tools like postcolonial theory, whiteness studies, and Marxian theory. A theory of writing assessment as ecology adds these theories to our thinking about classroom writing assessments. Thus it doesn’t matter if teachers or readers see or read student writing with prejudice or with a preference for whiteness in their classrooms. It doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that the assessment ecology produces particular results, determines (in the Marxian sense) particular products, reinforcing particular outcomes, which make racist cause and effect difficult (even impossible) to discern. What matters is that writing teachers and students not only have a vocabulary for thinking about writing assessment in its most complete way, but that that vocabulary be informed by other pertinent theories. Having such a vocabulary offers explicit and self-conscious ways to problematize students’ writing assessment situations, a central activity in antiracist writing assessment ecologies." 

There is bad news for minorities in this gibberish.

Professor Noam Chomsky, called the father of modern linguistics, formulated the generative theory of language. According to his theory, the most basic form of language is a set of syntactic rules that is universal for all humans and that underlies the grammar of all human languages. We analyze and interpret our environment with words and sentences in a structured language. Oral and written language provides a set of rules that enables us to organize thoughts and construct logical meaning with our thoughts. There is a relationship between the world and the languages that have arisen to describe it.
That is to say, human language reflects our human background and our human view of the world. And our expression through language mirrors this understanding. 

Not holding students accountable to proper grammar might do them a disservice. Theoretically, they will not be allowed to translate the world as well or express that translation. And while "other theories" might be "pertinent," they may not. Their language applications may be as foolish as their economic ones.
And practically, students are not going to be evaluated in their careers by Inoue's tailored standards, particularly if Chomsky is right. They will be judged as eccentric to basic human development and the ebb and flow of that development with language. 
And if they fail to meet the objective standards they earlier ignored with whatever inpact that might have, those standards themselves will necessarily be labeled as racist.

Laborious Writing

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.--Oscar Wilde

Crazy Penguin game last night.
Meltdowngate. Both political sides accuse each other of a meltdown in the White House conference. This is months after they accused each other of conspiring with the Russians, then each other of doing something with the Ukrainians.  The Press is obviously ok with this but one wonders how much of this the public can take. 

Rainè Riggs, a neuropsychologist and daughter-in-law of Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, died on Saturday — two days after receiving a cancer diagnosis, according to an obituary shared online by Lee & Martin Funeral Home in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania. According to the obituary, the mom of three had fallen ill three weeks before her death but doctors had been “stumped” as to what was wrong with her.
She was eventually diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Riggs served as the director of behavioral medicine at Dartmouth Medical School for several years and started the Palliative Care Department for Dartmouth Medical Center, the obituary said. She also owned Riggs Geriatric Psychology in Windsor, Vermont, and spent time volunteering with homeless veterans, pediatric hospice and at ground zero in the aftermath of 9/11.


I manage the internet poorly and this was very hard to find. But, while not profound, it is a very solid presentation of the relationship between man, law and government. Well worth the watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnCXNydQs5A

European Union and U.K. negotiators agreed on a draft of a new Brexit deal, clearing a major hurdle to Britain’s exit from the bloc and setting up a crucial vote in the U.K. Parliament. The British pound spiked.

The California Department of Education has proposed an ethnic studies curriculum. The curriculum would teach children that capitalism and father figures are racist.  The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum also includes gross anti-Israel bias and teaches about a Palestinian-led anti-Israel initiative called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The curriculum also has students study issues of police brutality and asks teachers to find incidents of bias by police in their own communities. According to an article by Shelby Talcott in The Stream, California's proposed curriculum called for students to study lawmakers such as Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, both of whom have supported the BDS movement and have been accused of anti-Semitic rhetoric.

The suicide rate among people ages 10 to 24 years old climbed 56% between 2007 and 2017, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of homicide deaths decreased by 23% from 2007 to 2014 but then increased by 18% through 2017.

American boxer Patrick Day died on Wednesday in Chicago as a result of the traumatic brain injury he suffered during his fight on Saturday, where he was knocked out by Charles Conwell in the 10th round.





British general and playwright John Burgoyne surrendered 5,000 British and Hessian troops to American General Horatio Gates at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777. On September 19, a British advance column marched out and engaged the Patriot force at the Battle of Freeman’s Farm, or the First Battle of Saratoga. Failing to break through the American lines, Burgoyne’s force retreated. On October 7, another British reconnaissance force was repulsed by an American force under General Benedict Arnold in the Battle of Bemis Heights, also known as the Second Battle of Saratoga. Soon after, word of the Patriot victory at Saratoga reached France, King Louis XVI agreed to recognize the independence of the United States and French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes, made arrangements with U.S. Ambassador Benjamin Franklin to begin providing formal French aid to the Patriot cause. This assistance was crucial to the eventual American victory in the Revolutionary War.

                              Laborious Writing

American University hired a professor to teach other professors to grade students based on their "labor" rather than their writing ability. The professor that American University hired to teach that nonsense is Asao B. Inoue, who is a professor and associate dean in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University. He is also the director of the university's writing center. Inoue believes that a person's writing ability should not be assessed, in order to promote "anti-racist" objectives. Inoue taught American University's faculty members that their previous practices of grading writing promoted white language supremacy. Inoue thinks that students should be graded on the effort they put into a project.
It's an old Marxist idea that the value of something is determined by its labor input rather than its quality or how it is valued by a consumer. One wonders how they would compare the value of a play written easily by the fluid genius of Marlow with a play tortured into existence by a limited hack. While the old value take is shopworn, the racial slant is a bright new shiny lunacy. 
These people will just never stop. Under normal circumstances, they would be tuned out--like parents do unruly children--but the Press will not allow this. The parents may well get battle fatigue.