#Stephen Douglas

[allysah]

alright…

[antebellumite]

Some antebellum guys' heights thanks to height comparison.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Bernstein and April Bleske-Rechek

Published: Apr 17, 2023

This is a guest post by Michael Bernstein (Brown University) & April Bleske-Rechek (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire). Michael Bernstein is an experimental psychologist and an Assistant Professor at Brown University. His research focuses on: cognitive biases, the placebo effect, pain, and substance use. He is an editor of the forthcoming book, The nocebo effect: When words make you sick.

April Bleske-Rechek is a differential and evolutionary psychologist. She is a full professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where she invests in mentoring undergraduate scholars and engaging students with viewpoints and data they are unlikely to be exposed to elsewhere. Her recent publications and presentations can be found on her personal website: bleske-rechek.com.

--

Let’s play a game. It’s called “Who said it: Robin DiAngelo or Adolf Hitler?” DiAngelo, in case you don’t know, is author of the NYT best-seller book, White Fragility.  We’ll give you a couple quotes and you think about whether it’s from DiAngelo or Hitler. Ready, go.

1)    Did Hitler say: “Not having a group consciousness, Jews often respond defensively when grouped with other Jews.” Or did DiAngelo say: “Not having a group consciousness, Whites often respond defensively when grouped with other Whites.”

2)    Did Hitler say: “Jews… creep up on the workers in order to win their confidence, pretending to have compassion.” Or did DiAngelo say: “Whites… creep up on the workers in order to win their confidence, pretending to have compassion.”

For the record, the first quote is from DiAngelo and the second quote is from Hitler. Though whether you were right isn’t exactly the point, as an astute reader would probably know Hitler is likely to use the language of “workers” and DiAngelo is likely to use the language of “group consciousness”. The point is that DiAngelo and Hitler are both advocating an approach that reduces behavior to group membership. They describe the behavior of all Whites or all Jews in highly critical terms and conclude that this is the nature of Whiteness or Jewishness. 

We know from decades of psychological research that people hold prejudices. But which groups in today’s society are more likely to be the target of expressions of prejudicial attitudes? And who is more likely to express them?

We decided to examine this empirically. Would agreement with the same statement, whether it be anti-White, anti-Black, or anti-Jew, vary depending on which group it referenced? And would political affiliation moderate attitudes?

We took 3 real anti-Jew quotes from Adolf Hitler, 3 real anti-White quotes from Robin DiAngelo, and 3 real anti-Black quotes from Stephen Douglas. (Douglas was a 19th century American politician who debated Abraham Lincoln). Then, we created anti-Jew, anti-White, and anti-Black variations of each quote, and showed it to 428 college graduates or college students (72% White). This means that 1/3 of participants saw the real quote verbatim, whereas the other 2/3 saw a version of the quote that was manipulated by changing the original (e.g., replace “Jew” with “White” or “Black”, or any other combination thereof). This is shown in the Table below. For each quote, participants were asked to imagine that an intellectual or political leader uttered the statement. They then indicated whether they agreed with the statement by selecting: “definitely no,” “probably no,” “probably yes,” or “definitely yes.” Participants answered this question for all nine quotes, and all were in the same frame (anti-Jew, anti-White, or anti-Black).

Table 1:

[ Red font is used to indicate the words that were manipulated across conditions. Quotes were identical otherwise. All quotes were altered to refer to either Jews, Blacks, or Whites for 1/3 of the sample. ]

The results were surprising. For 7 of the 9 quotes, agreement differed according to target group. On each of these, agreement was highest in the anti-White condition versus the anti-Jew and anti-Black condition. The figures below show the percentage of college graduates (left) and college students (right) who either “probably” or “definitely” agreed with at least one statement, broken down by target group and the original author of the quote (Hitler vs. DiAngelo vs. Douglas). You can see that agreement with both Hitler and DiAngelo is much higher in the anti-White condition versus the other two conditions. Hardly anyone agreed with the Douglas quotes regardless of target group.

For the Hitler and DiAngelo quotes we analyzed the interaction between target group and political ideology.1 This was significant for all quotes, and we once again looked at the percentage of people who agreed with at least one of the statements, shown below. Anti-White sentiment was highest across the board – for liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike. Anti-White sentiment was the highest for liberals compared to other political groups; anti-Jew and anti-Black sentiment was highest for conservatives compared to other political groups.

In a sense, our results are nothing new. We simply observed what has existed for millennia: People treat some groups preferentially to others. In the Bible, the Egyptian Pharoah enslaved the people of Israel. And interestingly, even God responded to this tribally by establishing Passover which “The whole community of Israel is to be included on the meal,” but “no foreigners are to eat it.”2  

Sweeping claims about all members of certain demographic groups seem to be on the rise in some circles. But unless you’re tuned into a relatively small number of heterodox writers like Bari Weiss or Coleman Hughes, you will rarely hear someone speculate about the counter-factual (e.g. Bob said all Whites do X vs. Imagine if he instead said all Blacks do X).

Coleman Hughes: “It [cops killing unarmed people] only gets pumped into the media when its a Black person, which gives the false impression that it only happens to Black people.” See also this survey finding that people in general, but especially liberals, massively overestimate the number of unarmed Black people killed by police.

In the language of Richard Dawkins, tribalism and prejudice may be memes. Memes, in this context, are ideas that “propagate themselves… by leaping from brain to brain” (Dawkins, 2016; p. 249). It is easy to see how tribal loyalties evolved evolutionarily (see Clark & Winegard, 2020), though finding that a mostly White sample had anti-White sentiment cannot be attributed to in-group preferences. Indeed, 55% of college students agreed with at least one Hitler quote applied to White people. Still, there is a historical precedent for people acting negatively towards their own group. In Nazi Germany, Kapos, who were prisoners but also functioned as SS guards, were often crueler towards their fellow prisoners (and frequently fellow Jews) than the Nazis themselves. 

This type of tribalism never seems to go well. Why would we expect it to benefit us now?

-

An incomplete list of disclaimers that should go without saying:

1)      Nothing in our essay is meant as an argument that DiAngelo is as evil a person as Hitler, or for that matter, evil at all. Hitler is responsible for the murder of 11 million people and the death toll from just the European theater of World War II was at least 40 million. DiAngelo is not responsible for the death of anyone. But we can recognize this fact while still pointing to similarities in their thinking.

2)      Just because a person agrees with a quote from Hitler does not mean that person agrees with Hitler’s genocide.

==

Never forget that the Grievance Studies probe rewrote a section of "Mein Kampf" as intersectional feminist "scholarship" and it was accepted and published.

[lil-als]

I think this is correct

[silas-soule]

so did they mean to make douglas look really short or

[nervoussystemmusicreverence]

Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting

Music Video

Music

Artist

Trashcan Sinatras

Composer

Trashcan Sinatras

Lyricist

Trashcan Sinatras

Produced

Simon Dine, Trashcan Sinatras

Credit

Stephen Douglas - Drums, vocals Francis Reader - Vocals, acoustic guitar Paul Livingston - lead guitar John Douglas - Rhythm guitar, vocals Davy Hughes - Bass Grant Wilson - Bass Steve Mulhearn - Organ, synthesizer Donald Gillan - Cello Wouter Raubenheimer - Viola Greg Lawson - Violin Guido De Groote - Violin

Released

August 31 2004

Streaming

[tomoleary]

Buck Rogers (Eastern Color) Complete Run, Winter 1940-1941 - September 1943

1, 2 - Dick Calkins. 3, 4, 6 - Stephen Douglas. 5 - Unknown

[lightdancer1]

Insofar as the ambitions of a single man can be said to be the specific triggers of the 1860 war, Stephen Douglas is that man:

Few states have paid as high a price for a single man's ambition as the US did for that of Stephen Douglas, save perhaps Mexico and Santa Anna where the partial disaster spawned out of Douglas's actions became a total one south of the Rio Grande. Douglas had one driving ambition, to be elected to the Presidency as the leader of the Democratic Party in a time when slavery was corroding the United States and its institutions were crumbling. For this he mortgaged everything up to and including the last national institution, the Democratic Party, and created the war before the war with Bleeding Kansas and his idea of 'Popular Sovereignty.'

The Little Giant's words are seldom quoted these days as he said them because in the appeal to vulgar racism only Donald Trump these days and Andrew Johnson would outdo him in marrying this to appeal to the Presidency in its most nakedly shameless form. The result of all of his actions were that in pursuit of evil the very thing he sought most eluded him and the country and the continent were hammered on the bloody battlefields of a dark and gruesome war.

[big-blabble]

My favourite thing about history classes, is the characters that you create around these historical figure. For example, because me and my friends have been talking about Stephen douglas so much when learning about the run-up to the American civil war, we see him as this little man jumping up and down for attention from anyone, and then people shout at him when they notice him, cuz he's being annoying.

[deadpresidents]

God damn your god damned old hellfired god damned soul to hell god damn you and goddam your god damned family's god damned hellfired god damned soul to hell and god damnation god damn them and god damn your god damn friends to hell.

Letter from a citizen to President-elect Abraham Lincoln, November 25, 1860.

I can't prove it, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this citizen didn't vote for Lincoln.

[antebellumite]

president of the united states abraham lincoln is a blorbo. henry clay is a babygirl that's occasionally woobie. jcc is poor little meow meow. daniel webster is a comfort character. stephen douglas is scrunkle scrimble spoingle skrungle scruble or something. so is william seward and anyone else under five-feet six inches. benjamin brown french is glup shitto. i'm sure that somewhere out there is a cinnamon roll smol bean in the antebellumn period but they definately aren't involved in politics. jefferson davis, james buchanan, martin van buren, and the weed man are all plinko. and andrew jackson is wife stinky bastard man kin beloved husbando waifu eeby deeby mipy and what did i just type out.

i hope this clears things up!

[thekenobee]

Cabin Pressure AND Master and Commander combo will be the death of me

[lil-als]

Random people hunger games! Featuring historical figures, Wild Kratts, politicians, and me.

Stephen Douglas being Stephen Douglas. Dang it Kerry

Chris being Chris. Booth being evil. Nixon being relatable. AND IVE GOT A FIRE :D

Charles Sumner and George W. Bush do the right thing. I sleep with Clay and Gore. AND WHO THE FUCK GAVE CHENEY AN EXPLOSIVE?

Caviva! Yay!

Zach and Aviva truce? Never thought I’d see the day. Bernie Sanders x Charles Sumner? And same, Dubya.

Taney drowns me… thinking I was an animal that could breathe underwater? Also dammit Sumner

GOOD JOB BERNIE AND ZACH. Also Booth x Chris?

AGAIN BOOTH X CHRIS. Also Zach being cute

Yay! Chris defeats his enemy and also Roger B. Taney.

NOOOOOOO!

Booth won the hunger games

[fauvester]

clays 11.. a professional robber organizes a ragtag team of thiefs to steal a fortune and his ex-fed ex-husband from his frenemy casino magnate martin van buren

[michaelwatt]

Found this gem in my folders

[heckcareoxytwit]

A preview of It's Jeff! #1

IT'S JEFF! #1

JEFF THE LANDSHARK STARS IN HIS OWN FIN-TASTIC COMIC! Since his very first appearance, Jeff the Land Shark has flooded our hearts like an adorable tidal wave! Now the ingenious, the extraordinary, the unbearably innocent Jeff embarks on his own adventures across the Marvel Universe! You thought it was safe doing laundry or going for a leisurely swim in the pool…but no activity can protect against Jeff’s cuteness! Collecting the hit Infinity Comics series from the Marvel Unlimited app, this one-shot features a brand-new cover and tail…we mean tale!

Written by: Kelly Thompson Art by: Gurihiru Cover by: Gurihiru Page Count: 44 Pages Release Date: March 29, 2023