Macy and Bette forced to recant

[MissLucyEyelesbarrow]

That's it really. So depressing. It's great to see a few signs of hope in the UK (though we need to remember that every institution is captured, to some extent) but North America is lost.

I'd have thought Bette Midler had enough 'f you money' and status to say what she likes.

I should think that it won't wholly be the money but her status and legacy. It would be fascinating to understand the leverage that is being applied but I have no doubt that it is being applied and she's all but force fed the thought-terminating clichés.

She's a lifelong Democrat, iirc, and she's plausibly under some pressure from them. Which is, of course, bittersweet given that she spent a lot of time criticising the Democrats for being too polite to Trump (whom she styled as "fascist" and "dictator") when he was in office. She has a record of saying stuff that she walks back for political reasons.

My take is that every show trial , false confession , recantation and public humiliation for speaking the truth serves to further enrage ordinary men and women.

We all know she was right - and is right. The gender cult will lose but , in the USA 🇺🇸 it will be at the cost of a Republican victory alas.

I'm a man fwiw .

It's an appalling situation, where it's only those ON THE LEFT in the arts who are at the absolute top of the global tree fame-wise dare to speak out. The arts are balls deep in this at the moment. It feels like a bunch of middle class white people have found an easy way to imagine themselves into or 'allying with' a spicy 'identity' that is somehow 'cooler' than middle class white, well-heeled and capital city-dwelling whilst most often being exactly that, and doesn't actually require any genuine outreach to meet and employ people outside their white, middle class, able-bodied, well-heeled social sphere.

I can't recall any men being made to do this kind of hostage video, and they rarely have 'pronouns in bio' either. Funny that.

The bit I can never understand is what value the TRAs place on the recantation.

We know they're lying. The TRAs know they're lying. Why put so much value on the pretence, once you know it IS pretence?

The chilling effect. It reinforces preference falsification.

www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580

Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies, Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities.

A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change.

In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency.

@teawamutu

Because it’s a demonstration of power.

Male dominance. Fundamentalist religion. Big parts of all the cultures in the world. Neither much cares about individual consent as long as you submit and recant and recite.

You're both right, and it does reinforce what I kind of knew but hadn't articulated.

I am still, though, fascinated by how that feels. TRAs seem so invested in validation - how valid does it really feel when you know deep down that most people are either being kind, or scared?

Is it a total absence of empathy, so the words are all that's needed?

@teawamutu

Yes.

‘Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.’

Maybe it feels like winning, power, hollow vindication and control.

This, exactly.

Is it a total absence of empathy, so the words are all that's needed?

Yes. It's the power trip.

That video demonstrates perfectly why Kellie-Jay “holds the line”.

No capitulation to this warped and dangerous ideology.

I feel sorry for them, especially Macy after watching that hostage video. Just shows how amazing JKR has been. Takes real guts to hold the line.

The interviewer is the host of the Today Show, Hoda. She took over after Matt Lauer was fired for alleged sexual misconduct. So I suspect they know full well who actually is a woman on The Today Show, those that get sexually harassed. It’s a very famous show in the US by the way. They chose full visibility for Macy’s public recantation.

That's very interesting. Be interested if JKR, a massive Labour donator might have been similarly talked to, or at least reached out to by them.