A Convivial Romp-Response to an AMAZON 1-star Review of BRUTAL MINDS
It is with sheer delight that I respond to the very best of the negative reviews of BRUTAL MINDS.
Delight, because this 1-star entry appears to be the zenith that the retreating Left has to offer, a couple of errant shots from a twisted-in-the-saddle, masked oaf on horseback.
Several folks have asked me about the accuracy of the review, which has garnered some “likes,” and would I address it in some way.
So I agreed. And yes, I acknowledge that I had immense fun with this piece — a guilty pleasure.
In fact, I’ve not had this much fun since I skewered another Amazon reviewer’s awful canned narrative, especially as I discovered that another of that person’s reviews was her complaint about her defective sippy cup that constantly spilled her coffee. After public revelation on LinkedIn, the Sippy-Cup Reviewer removed her critical review.
No, I did not make that up about the defective sippy cup.
Sometimes life pitches you softballs and you have to swing for the fence. I’ll post Sippy Cup Reviewer at the end, I promise.
So now, here’s another fun take.
This negative review is titled “Manipulative and Irresponsible,” and it is spectacular in its deceit, its displayed lack of understanding, and in the freedom with which the reviewer writes — freedom from healthy circumspection provided by a pseudonym and the inability of anyone else to pen a response on the Amazon platform.
That’s the nature of the AMAZON beast and much of the interwebs social media as well. It’s a world where anonymous louts with attitude and an internet connection roam far and wide.
But . . .
. . . that leaves this venue. And we shall make good use of it and have great good fun doing it.
S-o-o-o-o Manipulative and Irresponsible!
This reviewer goes by the handle of randomacts. I’ve no idea whether this is man or woman, but we’ll settle on the latter. I suspect that this person did not actually read BRUTAL MINDS, but let’s allow that she might have taken time out from tearing down posters of kidnapped children to read and to review the book.
Let’s first let the reviewer speak for herself, showcased and uncensored:
As anyone who knows me can attest, I never miss an opportunity to talk endlessly about the thesis of BRUTAL MINDS, and I appreciate the opportunity afforded by randomacts. Here are randomacts’ major points and my relatively easygoing ripostes. Whether they constitute touché, I leave to the earnest reader who enjoys this sort of thing.
Point 1) The sources in BRUTAL MINDS are “opinion pieces”
In point of fact, the book is crammed with evidence.
BRUTAL MINDS effervesces with evidence. It froths with evidence which is most often cited in the perpetrators’ own words.
Even more evidence was left out than what actually appears, and that bounty of examples, persons, places, and actions will appear in the sequel to BRUTAL MINDS now being written. What does appear in the book is sufficiently damning to serve as the basis for legal action, should persons harmed choose to make issue.
The raft of evidence consists of written and published testimony by the people who are engaged in the campus brainwash (see pages 122-124), who run “workshops“ off-campus to train the fake faculty of “student affairs” in how to conduct the brainwash at their own campuses (pages 197-198), who give accounts of their “successes” (pages 68-87), and who cite the manipulative psychological techniques that they use on students in a practice that approaches criminality (see especially pages 50-55).
The reviewer ignores all of this. Of course.
Now, with full recognition that the notes section of a book on academia is not the most inviting portion of the work, let’s have a look at a sampling of actual footnotes that cite the louts who operate the brainwash at universities and which cite the academic psychological literature that “parrot“ the thesis of the book.
Point 2) Doesn’t like my footnotes
This reviewer is addled at the methodical, systematic, factual and incontrovertible presentation of a surfeit of evidence that substantiates every point contended in the book. Randomacts claims that the number of footnotes is somehow inflated.
Inflated footnotes? The book was originally 186,000 words in length and was cut by more than half by the publisher to 75,000 words to meet the strictures of publishing, which trimmed the original 956 footnotes to slightly more than 400.
Those citations range across psychology, sociology, philosophy, and the literature of social coercion that constitutes the “social justice” oeuvre — a mash-up of fake academic journals and books (see especially pages 193-195) created to form a supporting net for the pseudoscience of the praxis-oriented professoriate, as well as the countless fake instructors of “co-curricular” seminars, workshops, “conversations,” dialogues, and racial caucuses.
Many of these numerous fake journals are duly referenced in the more than 400 footnotes of BRUTAL MINDS — the articles cited, the authors identified, their actions documented, the “successful” cases that they themselves present from the schools where they operate, whether at Emory, Iowa, Ohio State, Cornell, Kentucky, or elsewhere.
If someone finds footnotes inaccurate or misleading, please mail me and indicate the error. I’ll apologize, acknowledge publicly, and correct the mistakes in the second edition. But do note that irritating as they are, those pesky typos don’t count. They’ll be fixed in any case.
As of this writing, I’ve received no messages.
Point 3) The “best example” of ‘brainwashing’ falls apart
Randomacts claims that the full-blown indoctrination example at the University of Delaware that I provided at-length (pages 98-100) somehow doesn’t count because it was exposed and “suspended within days” (a fake quote that doesn’t actually appear in the book). This newly designed program at Delaware was indeed halted when it was exposed by faculty member Jan Blits and reporter Adam Kissel as they got wind of its details and publicized the noxious program.
But as I relate in BRUTAL MINDS, not one of the people responsible were punished or removed from their student-facing positions at Delaware. In fact, it occasioned the launch of a national series of thought reform workshops in subsequent years on how to design, embed, and implement this same abusive program.
Today, it’s called the “Institute of the Curricular Approach” [originally called the Residential Curriculum Institute], and it’s run by an off-campus non-profit called the ACPA, which trains the ancillary support staff of universities in brainwash techniques. The people who created the original program at Delaware have climbed the leadership ladder — their program is described in their anodyne 2020 book The Curricular Approach to Student Affairs: A Revolutionary Shift for Learning Beyond the Classroom.
The two of them have been feted and awarded for their efforts since their Delaware launch. Their names are Kathleen G. Kerr and James Tweedy. Kerr is an award-winning honcho in the ACPA, the non-profit professional club for ”student affairs” functionaries. The ACPA’s stated purpose is “boldly transforming higher education” in ways that no one asked them to. Ways chronicled at length in BRUTAL MINDS.
Kerr climbed in the Delaware hierarchy to Associate VP for Student Affairs and is now the VP for Student Affairs at SUNY-Oswego after serving more than 30 years at Delaware. Tweedy continues as Director of Housing at Delaware.
Did this reviewer not read any of this? Apparently not, even as most of it can be found on pages 100-103.
“claim – no evidence – loaded language”
More generally, the reviewer claims that the chapter sections of BRUTAL MINDS follow a pattern of “claim – no evidence – loaded language.”
This is demonstrably false. Does it constitute a lie? AMAZON 1-star reviews can be the tools of liars and ideologically driven bottom-feeders of all sorts.
Randomacts apparently missed the extensive written testimony in BRUTAL MINDS offered by the very ideologues who conduct and advocate the campus brainwash, such as Sherry K. Watt, Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, Kathy Obear, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Stephen John Quaye, and many others — the citations from their journals, their comments to the press, the “how-to” instructions from manuals such as Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, all duly cited at length.
She ignores the primitive ideology that critical racialists propound in their own words, a strange doctrine that elevates neo-lithic pseudoscientific practices and mantras to intellectual respectability — the “medicine wheel” and the “talking stick” — all duly noted and cited (pages 205-206).
The term “loaded language” belongs to psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, who lists it as one of eight characteristics of a thought reform program, and I provide the entire 8-factor list on pages 31-40. It constitutes the model for the campus brainwash. From this, it is obvious that randomacts 1) has no clue that Lifton is the reference, 2) simply doesn’t understand it, and 3) is likely too influenced by fantasy and the paranormal to distinguish fact from fiction, which is explained below.
In the reviewer’s final point, she shares dislike of my quoting an anonymous psychologist, whom I cite in a footnote. Or, rather, she doesn’t like his anonymity. This is sort of like you, reader, not liking this AMAZON reviewer’s anonymity. Isn’t it?
So what about that single footnote where I quote the unnamed psychologist PhD from the University of Texas?
Perhaps this anonymous reviewer can write angry letters to the editors of the hundreds of publications that use anonymous sources who decline to be named to protect themselves from professional retaliation by angry colleagues . . . not unlike this anonymous reviewer randomacts, who crouches hidden under the umbrella of anonymity, huddled safely behind Amazon’s blocking of any response to her disingenuous review, doubtless “loving the irony” of it all.
The pejorative term “oaf” never had a better exemplar.
But this oafishness might well be understandable.
“Fun & Steamy“ Sexual Fantasy and Ghost Paranormal Bisexual Romance
Let’s be fair and recognize that this is all uncharted territory for randomacts, who is clearly out of her depth. In fact, her many other Amazon reviews tell us that her primary reading interest is Young Adult, Paranormal, and Bisexual Romance novels.
In fact, her reviews consist almost entirely of romance novels of various aesthetics and exotic points of view.
I assume that romance is a wonderfully escapist genre for many people, including this randomacts. She shares with us her lusty enthusiasm in reviews of Lucky Bounce (#282 in Gay Romance), Do Your Worst (#19 in Ghost Paranormal Romance), This Spells Love (#615 in Paranormal Witches & Wizards Romance), and Time to Shine (#330 in Bisexual Romance).
She finds that “steamy scenes are (ahem) quite satisfying.” She has an affinity for “spicy scenes,” “a little bit of kink,” “a fun & steamy read,” and my favorite: “Ew. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.”
Things like that.
To quote randomacts, “I laughed and laughed.” And you probably did, too.
Let’s not too hastily conclude that this extraordinary interest in sexual fantasy disqualifies her to comment on the more serious world of university administration and of potential malpractice in the bailiwick of student-facing instruction. However, the reviewer’s exotic taste in fiction — which is borderline niche-obsessive — might suggest that she is ill-equipped to face the rigors of an exposé on higher education that just isn’t “fun & steamy” enough.
Or maybe it does disqualify her. You be the judge.
In sum, our fantasist-bisexual-ghost paranormal romance-loving reviewer is simply not credible (I’m being generous here). The reviewer obviously did not read the book, perhaps only thumbing it in a vain search for those satisfying “steamy scenes.” In fact, I’d wager that randomacts has no more “read the entire thing” than I plan to read any of the cringe fantasy tomes that appear as her steady diet. That diet suggests that she lacks the intellectual chops for serious work.
But is this person ideologically motivated?
I don’t know the answer to that question. She does seem to reside on a predictably extremist slice of the political spectrum. But authentic, confident, rigorous ideological expression requires a degree of intellect not in evidence in the reviewer’s narrative, which is freighted with spite and barren of originality, honesty, and facts.
As folks on the extreme left are wont to say, she’s “lying for justice.” And not very well.
That’s the best than can be said of this grossly dishonest effort. But the good news in this whole hot mess is that this harangue constitutes the best the Left can muster to critique BRUTAL MINDS.
This is the apex of Left critique. And randomacts is probably thanking Mephistopheles right now for the blessings of anonymity. FAFO.
I never anticipated that Defective Sippy Cup Reviewer could be bested in pure entertainment value . . . and yet here we are, delightfully awestruck at the bitter musings of a sexual fantasist aficionado of exotic romance novels.
And that’s more than enough to warm the cockles of any conservative this dauntingly cold winter.