Thursday, November 19, 2020

Joseph LeConte: Cancel Culture Moves Forward at UC Berkeley




November 19, 2020 12:56 A.M.
Re: Cancel Culture Moves Forward at UC Berkeley
 
Geologist and conservationist Joseph LeConte has significant mountains in the Great Smokies (TN) and Sierra Nevada (CA) named after him, not because he was a racist by today's standards, but because of his very real achievements in the fields of geology and conservation.  So are those achievements to be erased, air-brushed out of history, and unrecognized?  According to cancel culture, absolutely!  Stalin and Orwell would be beaming with pride.
 
What we're all learning the hard way in recent years is that campus insanity and excesses are no longer confined to the kooky radical recesses and loony bins of the ivory tower. 
 
Incidentally, Mt. LeConte in the Smokies rises to 6,593 ft. and is one of the highest mountains in all of the Appalachians.  It's considered to have the greatest relief (difference in elevation between base and summit) of any mountain in eastern North America, more than a vertical mile.  I hiked to its summit from Gatlinburg, Tennessee in about 1980 on a cold winter day; it was 7 degrees F at the base and several degrees below zero at the snowy summit and I got a bit of frostbite on the tip of my nose. 
 
BTW, did you know that the estimable, authoritative Wikipedia proclaims that the belief that cultural Marxism is a thing in the West is just a "far-right" antisemitic conspiracy theory? To wit:
 
 

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cultural Marxism is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims Western Marxism as the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.[1][2][3] The conspiracists claim that an elite of Marxist theorists and Frankfurt School intellectuals are subverting Western society with a culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and promotes the cultural liberal values of the 1960s counterculture and multiculturalismprogressive politics and political correctness, misrepresented as identity politics created by critical theory.[2][3][4]
While the theory originated in the United States during the 1990s,[5](Abstract) it entered mainstream discourse in the 2010s and is promoted globally.[5] Today, the conspiracy theory of Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media and white supremacist terrorists.[6] Scholarly analysis of the conspiracy theory has concluded that it has no basis in fact and no intellectual movement by that name exists.[5][7]  
[emphasis added]
 
Who ya gonna believe, Marxist "scholars" or "far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theorists"?  What a tough choice!


Trail to Mt. LeConte in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park
 
 

Thu, Nov 19, 2020 2:08 a.m.
Cancel Culture Moves Forward at UC Berkeley

I figure it's only a matter of time before LeConte's sparrow (Ammospiza leconteii) gets another name, just as McCown's longspur did. It is now the thick-billed longspur. McCown was involved in removing the plains Indians (is that still acceptable terminology) and also fought in the Confederate army. Bingo, his name had to go. Don't know if it keeps the specific epithet in Rhynchophanes mccownii, but I doubt it.



 

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"figure it's only a matter of time before LeConte's sparrow (Ammospiza leconteii) gets another name"

All birders had just comply. Or else damnit. World shattering.