An anonymous lawyer friend (who is not Joe Doakes) writes:

I’d get in so much trouble if I posted this, but when I see people say that 70% opposethe overtruning of Roe v. Wade, my first thought is that no more than 2% even know what it says, much less what overturning it would mean.

And they also have no idea what the Mississippi law, challenged in the current case, says.

In terms of what it means?

I’m looking forward to explainingi this to pro-choicers: it means you’re going to have to do what we Second Amendment people have been doing for about the past fifty years; convincing people, one at a time, nationwide, of the rightness of your cause and case.

35 years ago, the same polls of uninformed and largely disinterested people said that 85% supported gun control, including a majority that supported banning handguns completely. That number is under 50% for the first time in a couple of generations.

And that’s because 2-3 generations of people have spent a lot of time, treasure and shoe leather convincing their fellow Americans that a constitutional right of the people is, in fact, a constitutional right of the people.

The terror the pro-choicers seem to feel about that concept tells us that while 70% of the people may respond to “Do you support women’s ‘reproductive rfights'” with “yes”, when you change it to “how are you with the thought of killing a gestating human?” it’s going to drop way off.

Americans want change, dammit!

I suspect modern Americans, if asked “should we install a single executive, with unlimited power over government, to get things done and solve the current crisis?“, it’d show something like 52% positive.

from Lynn Stuart Parramore, “cultural historian”…

Should conservatives on the Supreme Court strike down Roe v. Wade, they still won’t be able to blot out human nature and human history. They will just make life more dangerous and precarious for women in America today. Some refer to GOP politics as “medieval.” That’s an insult to medieval people — many of whom understood women’s reproductive and family planning needs far better than Justice Alito.

Click.

(ok, I cheated, I did make it to the end of the column to get to that paragraph, but only to save you from having to do it…)

“Everyone did what was right in their own eyes…” -Book of Judges

Remember when Bill Clinton bemoaned the “politics of personal destruction?” Good times. The snarling Left long ago declared conservatives in their private lives were fair game. And they’re at it again.

A leftist group posted on its website apparent home addresses of six conservative Supreme Court justices and is planning “walk-by” protests next week at their residences in the wake of the leaked draft from the high court that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

The group is called [not linking to them] — named after late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — and announced a “Walk-By Wednesday” protest set for May 11 “at the homes of the six extremist justices, three in Virginia and three in Maryland. If you’d like to join or lead a peaceful protest, let us know.”

In connection to the planned protest, the site includes a map naming the six justices — John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — as well as links to what it says are the home addresses of the “Christian fundamentalist” jurists.

CatholicVote called on Biden to speak out against this sort of tactic.

President Biden must immediately and forcibly condemn these domestic terrorist threats. Anti-Catholic zealots are plotting to intimidate and harass Catholics across the country, along with justices and their families. This country was built on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The President of the United States must stand up for both.

The organization also pointed to this incident reported by the CNA in Colorado.

A Catholic parish church in Boulder, Colorado was defaced with pro-abortion slogans the evening of May 3, marking the second time in less than a year that the parish has been targeted with pro-abortion graffiti.

Photos shared with CNA by the Archdiocese of Denver show vulgar slogans spray painted on the church, such as “F* You,” “F the Church, F** the State,” as well as numerous inscriptions of “My Body My Choice,” “You don’t speak 4 God,” and a symbol that appears to be an “A” signifying “anarchy.” Red paint was also used to deface a statue on the parish grounds.

The graffiti covers the church doors, several outer walls, and a white pickup truck in the parking lot. At least one of the outer windows of the church appears to be shattered.

Why is abortion, of all things, the highest priority for at least the activist Left? Why is it the one issue where absolutely no separation from the herd is permissible? Why does this issue fill people with so much hate that they erupt in vandalism and profanity against a church? Nobody takes to the streets and breaks windows over the Build Back Better bill saying “Bleep you, I want my bridge!”

I have my theory that I’ll expand on in time, but what’s yours?

If you listen to the pro-infanticide crowd, you might think the Unted States “lagged” behind the heathens on the Continent when it came to “reproductive rights”.

Which is why listening to the pro-infanticide crowd is such a terrible idea:

Most of Europe is more restrictive than Mississippi or Texas.

Hold that thought.

So how to stop Dobbs? Declare a sex strike:

Some on the left have come up with creative ways they think will encourage people to save Roe v. Wade.

Earlier this week on The View, co-host Joy Behar floated the idea of a sex strike.

“Women in the world have conducted sex strikes in history,” Behar explained. “In 2003, a sex strike helped to end Liberia’s brutal civil war and the woman who started it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2009, Kenyan women enforced a sex ban until police political infighting ceased. Within one week, there was a stable government.”

“We have more power than we think we do and some of it could be in the bedroom,” Behar insisted.

As a general rule, restricting the supply of something that generates little to no demand doesn’t change much. And for Behar and her colleagues, their greatest output is not sex appeal, but rather self-regard. So go ahead, get on the picket line!  And rest assured, we won’t cross picket lines on this one.

To: Gavin Newsom, Governor, the Peoples Republic of California
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Fact

Governor Newsom,

You tweeted:

I am reliably informed by people not only aligned with your party, but teaching in several of your state universities, that “men can get pregnant”.

That is all.

At the Met Gala, yet again:

Celebrities, showing their faces.

Hired help, still muzzled.

I’m not going to say that the upper crust feel that they are immune to Covid.

I am going to say that their version of “science” has convinced them that the invasion of Ukraine and the imminent repeal of Roe V. Wade has given them immunity.

Glad I could clear that up.

Am I the only one that’s noticed that a whole lot of people who chant “January 6 was an existential threat to democracy”…

…are just fine with doxxing the SCOTUS?

So we have a leak and it appears the Supremos are sending Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood to the dustbin of history. A few very brief thoughts:

• Justice Alito is right: Roe was always built on a foundation of nothing. Justice White was also correct when Roe was decided. Roe was an exercise of raw judicial power. And raw power is always used eventually.
• And if we’re in housekeeping season, now do Wickard v. Filburn.
• The Dobbs ruling, assuming it goes through, changes nothing in Minnesota. Abortion is legal by statute here.
• The leak itself is awful for the Court, but it was also inevitable. There was always an incentive to break this particular taboo and the leaker will be celebrated, not punished. MSNBC will have a corner office prepared by EOB today.
• I don’t know what Chief Justice John Roberts will do, but it’s going to be another opportunity for him to go peak weasel.
• One unanswered question — does Dobbs apply to pregnant men?

The usual caveats about interesting times are in full effect.

I’ve spent the majority of my career in the employ of Fortune 500 corporations, including my current employer. In the early years, those companies would sometimes make a show of their social goodness but they weren’t particularly wedded to a lefty agenda. That’s changed in the last 10-15 years, but recent events have some C-suite grandees thinking twice: 

The fallout from the recent political spat between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has alarmed leaders across the corporate sphere, according to executives and their advisers, and heightened the challenges for chief executive officers navigating charged topics.
At many companies, vocal employees have in recent years pushed bosses to take public stands on social and political issues. Florida’s pushback against Disney has raised the stakes.

Yeah, it certainly has. You have to wonder why a company would choose to make their appeal, ahem, more selective, but the instinct is strong:

“The No. 1 concern CEOs have is, ‘When should I speak out on public issues?’ ” said Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic PLC and now a senior fellow at Harvard Business School. “As one CEO said to me, ‘I want to speak out on social issues, but I don’t want to get involved in politics.’ Which I said under my breath, ‘That’s not possible.’ ”

It’s not possible. Put more simply, it’s dumb. A CEO who spends more than a passing moment thinking about social issues isn’t paying attention to what really matters. Younger employees, who have gone from participation trophies to believing their opinions are probative without much active contradiction, are difficult to manage, so the urge to mollify them is strong.

My current company has a full range of employee groups that cater to the constellation of grievances of the modern Left. These groups regularly get a moment to hold forth in the latest Zoom Town Hall or on the company intranet page. There’s not a lot of evidence these groups actually improve the conditions they decry, but never mind that. It’s a chance to wave the freak flag, and as an overall strategy it makes sense:

Some executives say they have learned to monitor issues that could consume public attention and increase pressure for some response. Some use employee affinity groups to help flag potentially troublesome issues. “You make it a safe forum where people feel comfortable talking about concerns or whatever, and out of that, there’s really a kind of responsibility on our part to pick up on things that really do demand some attention,” said Nancy Langer, CEO of Transact Campus Inc., a financial- technology company based near Phoenix. “I look at that as a feedback loop for us.”

The challenge, as always, is to ensure the loop doesn’t become a noose.

Erin Murphy – who was too extreme even for DFL Primary voters, after being endorsed for Governor four years ago – apparently held off on giving Twitter the ol’ heave-ho long enough to dump this bit of brilliance onto the world:

Saint Paul’s gullible and illiterate voters – many of whom vote for Murphy – believe city government has the legal prerogative to tell landlords what they can charge for their property. Checking and balancing that overreach is the same as trying to nullify an election (for sake of argument) by force.

It’s not just metro demigogues like Murphy:

So someday when a referendum in a western state bans abortion, Murphy and Port won’t support litigation?

Because it’d be “overturning an election”?

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Rule #8 in Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals is “Keep the pressure on.” In Florida, Gov. DeSantis is taking a lot of stick because he is turning that back on the radicals, and for the Left, this is an unforgiveable sin.

The Florida legislature recently fired two salvos against the advancing Forces of Wokeness. House Bill 7 was passed last month to ban “woke indoctrination.”

Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill (HB) 7, to give businesses, employees, children and families tools to stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination. The bill includes provisions to prevent discriminatory instruction in the workplace and in public schools and defines individual freedoms based on the fundamental truth that all individuals are equal before the law and have inalienable rights. This legislation is the first of its kind in the nation to take on both corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory in schools in one act. Read more here.

“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

The more publicized action was of course to pass HB 1557: Parental Rights in Education, taking a page from Virginia’s parental rights acts. The text of the bill is here. The core of the bill was to add Paragraph 8, which has 7 points under it. Five of them explicitly have to do with parental rights and what parents are to be informed of or give their consent to when it comes to their kids’ health or education.

Unless you’ve been vacationing on Pluto though, which is warmer than Minnesota these days, you know well that these have been overlooked and Point 3 is what set the fox among the chickens.

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

The Walt Disney Company, understandably playing by what it thought are the customary long standing rules where conservatives may not oppose any lefty advances on the culture front, lambasted the bill and the echo chamber weighed in with the entirely predictable suite of Dezinformatsiya, that Republicans are the ones driving the culture war, conservatives are hateful intolerant bigots and the rest. In a shocking creative story-telling plot twist, DeSantis did not lie down and grovel.

The Walt Disney Company’s self-described mission statement is “The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.”

Here’s an example of that “unparalleled storytelling.” Hulu is owned by the Disney Megacorp, and Hulu is home to The Hardy Boys, now in its second season.

I loved the Hardy Boys books as a kid, and still have a box in the basement with all the blue hardcover books in the series. Despite fears based on experience of what the modern day entertainment complex might do to a series of books that celebrated traditional values, I gave it a try. Alas, the Hulu show is the Hardy Boys in name only.

There was a supernatural element in the first season, which was fine, though an obvious attempt by these oh so creative and imaginative minds to go after the Stranger Things fan base.

The show inevitably features the rainbow coalition. The ethnic background of the cast is not the issue, but the casting was not done for story purposes, but for check-the-box purposes, and that is the issue.

The actress who plays Callie, Frank’s girlfriend, has family roots in Ecuador. Chet is black. Biff is now a girl.

Biff’s mom is an Asian woman. Trudy, the Hardy boys’ unmarried aunt, is white, and in the first season there were hints that Trudy and Biff’s mom were in a lesbian relationship. That was made explicit in season two. In addition, in season two there is a new character, a black girl who is shaping up to be Chet’s girlfriend, but she has been revealed to be bisexual. (This was the point where I stopped watching.)

This in a show about and geared towards youth, a show that shamelessly strip mines its namesake in order to attract an audience, then gleefully subverts it.

The culture war is widening. We may want to stay on the homefront and cheer on those at the front, like DeSantis, and send them care packages, but we will all need to do our part and serve in the resistance.

SCENE: The year is 2028. Mitch BERG has just been sworn in as governor of Minnesota, via a series of happenstances too bizarre to go into. He is speaking to a press conference.

BERG: As the first phase of my plan, as promised, I’m directing the state Department of Education to begin mandatory instruction in grades K-12, and in state post-secondary schools, of “Critical Marksmanship Theory”.

“CMT” teaches a few tenets that are vital for a child’s moral and social development:

1. It teaches them the essentials of the Second Amendment – how it deters tyranny.
2. Children will learn, as part of that, that throughout American history, from the Revolution through the Civil Rights movement to the “Anti”-Fa War of 2026, those with firearms have been the ones able to defend their, and their neighbors’, freedom.
3. Kids will learn that, throughout our history, the right to keep and bear arms has been a bellwether for the state of liberty, and a key defining line between citizenship and subjection.
4. It teaches that societies that exalt and propagate marksmanship are superior, more free, more prosperous and more inclusive than those that don’t.
5. It teaches kids the essentials firearm safety, which should slash the number of accidental shootings of children.
6. Finallly, it teaches kids – all kids, from all backgrounds, races, creeds, genders – how to shoot, enabling them to participate in shooting sports, self-defense, and of course the main intent of the Second Amendment, deterring tyranny.

This will begin in the second semester of this school year, which starts (checks watch) tomorrow.

Questions?

MYLYSSA SILBERMAN (Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats): Yes, Mr. Berg…

BERG: Governor.

SILBERMAN (Winces): Right. Governor Berg. What if parents object to teaching kids how to shoot, and all this history about guns?

BERG: Teachers know better than parents. Next…you.

LEAKY THE BEAGLE (A dog, writing under a pseudonym for the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.  ) Govenah Burrrgk – vot is ze sense of forcink…

BERG: Was ist den mit deine fürchtbare Deutsche accent?

LEAKY THE BEAGLE: Huh?

BERG: That’s what I thought. Security!

(Security guards push LEAKY THE BEAGLE to the ground, stomp him into incoherence, throw him out).

Next.

CAT SCAT: (The designated “fact checker” at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “”MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, she is the office manager at a small phrenology practice. ) Why would you teach children…

BERG: Because parents in half of Metro households don’t actually teach their kids the reality of history – that unarmed people are basically meat on the hoof for dictators. We want our children to learn that history. Some people don’t. We have the power, so we don’t really care what they think. Yes, you?

MATT MCNEIL: (Rises,, face flushed, hands shaking. As a wet spot stains the front of his chinos, he runs fron the building.

BERG: Huh. OK. You.

Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN (A writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.  She was Lac Qui Parle County Dairy Princess in 1987, and voted “most likely to end up as a freelance political writer” by her sorority at U of M Morris in 1992.): Yes, Governor Berg. “Critical Marksmanship Theory” seems like a massive incursion into parental rights.

BERG: You’ve seen the handout, right?

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Er…no?

BERG: Then it’s not CRM. We’re just teaching kids to shoot, as far as you know.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: What about parents who object to their kids being indoctrinated in the Second Amendment?

BERG: So you’re saying there are parents who want their kids to be ignorant of history, and ripe for the picking by criminals, tyrants and perverts?

TORSTENGAARDSEN: I’m not sure…

BERG. They sound like terrible, negligent parents to me.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Uh…

BERG: But again, we’re not teaching kids about guns right this minute, as we stand here, so quit your whining.

(TORSTENGAARDSEN, SCAT and SILBERMAN confer, briefly).

SILBERMAN: He’s right. He’s got us there.

BERG: Good. Onward…

And SCENE

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The results of a two-year-long nation-wide experiment are conclusive. We nay-sayers were right all along: mask mandates do not stop the spread of Covid.

I’m ready to accept my apology. Let the crow-eating begin.

Joe Doakes

Just as many of us were saying two years ago; masks make useful personal infection control in relatively controlled environments. As a public health measure, they are about as useful as, well, not wearing a mask.

Paul Krugman on the end of the mask cult:

My two cents? I suspect Krugman, and many maskaholics desperately want this to be true.

Part of it is Berg’s Seventh Law – they need to project their behavior onto others.

Part of it is the need on the cultural left that’s become apparent in the past two years to, at best, feel they are part of some larger struggle; they are part of a generation that’s had no Omaha Beach, no Great Depression, no Civil Rights Movement. This is it for them, and they’re milking it for all they got.

At worst? They feel their sense of petty control slipping from their grasp, and they are not about to go gently.

During World War 2 in the Pacific, American GIs famously used verbal call-and-answer passwords with the letter “L” – “Calla Lillies” was a famous one – because the Japanese language has no such sound in it; it’s hard for Japanese-born speakers, even those relatively fluent in English, to make that sound.

Likewise, an easy way to tell if someone is from Western Europe is to see how they pronounce a phrase like “Think Through The Thoughts Thurman Thought Thirty-Three Times”. A German will work hard not to say “Tink Tru Da Tots Turman Tot Turty-Three Times”; a French native, “Zink Zru Ze Zots Surman Sot Zurty-sree times”. Neither language has the “th” sound like American English does.

But if America comes, heaven forbid, to blows over our social and cultural differences, the social and cultural divides don’t really break along linguistic lines.

So as a substitute, perhaps we’d have to try this; tell someone a bit of news like this, and see if they regard it as good news or terrible news.

That should tell you what you need.

Fatherhood is high on Big Left’s hit list – especially Big Feminism and Big Intersectionality. Without strong fathers, families are missing half of the behavioral background the children need to grow to be strong people.

Debasing fatherhood is key to Big Left’s crusade to “reinvent” – i.e. destroy – the nuclear family.

Ron DeSantis signed a bill designed to rehabilitate fathers in Florida. And there’s a Minnesota connection:

DeSantis signed the bill at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers training facility in Tampa, according to WTSP, noting that he put pen to paper at the team’s AdventHealth Training Center alongside former Bucs head coach Tony Dungy, who is also the spokesperson of and contributor to All Pro Dad, a national fatherhood nonprofit program that will be provided funding via grant opportunities by the bill. DeSantis said the organization uses “evidence-based parenting education.”

Dungy gave an impassioned speech as he backed the bill, saying that it will “be such a big help to fathers in Florida agencies that support fathers in Florida.” He commended DeSantis for bringing his children with him.

The program is designed to rehab fathers who’ve gotten out of jail, and whose kids are in the social-services system.

I’m waiting for Big Feminism to start with the gaslighting.

I’m also waiting for DeSantis to make them look like the yawping psychopaths they are.

DeSantis is pulling waaaay out front in my personal 2024 poll. .

…but in this case, “going where late night TV and Saturday Night Live apparently don’t dare go anymore”: Saudi TV lampoons Lesko Brandon:

I’m old enough to remember when all presidents were fair game on American TV.

Yesterday Mr. D posted on what any conservative more than five minutes old has learned, which is conservatives are not allowed to have certain thoughts. And, a couple days ago I posted on an irony I’ve longed noticed on the Left, that they view themselves as tolerant and open and decry attempts to enforce, as they see it, conformity, yet they themselves are wholly intolerant when faced with opposing viewpoints.

All this reminded me of a friend of mine from my school daze. He’s a genuinely gentle and nice fellow, but he’s of the Leftist persuasion.

He posted this on facebook awhile back, before the election, and the resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.

I believe that the most valuable ideal is kindness.

I believe that all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religious belief
or non-belief, political alignment, sexual orientation and status in life
are deserving of respect.

I’m not perfect in embracing this next ideal but I do my best. It’s all
about having an open mind. I may not agree with the political positions,
religious beliefs, or phobias of others but I do my best to listen to and
respect others.

Then, pulling a 12-G turn, he posted this awhile later…

I am tired of listening to you all! And now I ask that if you truly believe
that we are better off under the current President, if you believe that we
don’t need stricter laws and bans of certain guns, and/or if you have or
intend to disparage the young people of March for Our Lives…then please
unfriend me now and save me the trouble of having to do so myself, which I already have done for some others.

I no longer have the patience to listen to you.

The resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.

Let’s start with a little music:

The facts we hate
We’ll never meet
Walking down the road
Everybody yelling, “Hurry up, hurry up!”
But I’m waiting for you
I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts
When is this world coming to?

Can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s tough avoiding bad thoughts these days. The larger question isn’t having bad thoughts, but whether you can express them. John Hayward, a/k/a Doc Zero, notices something important — the calls are coming from inside the house:

There is a part of the conservative sphere that has always felt populism is the ultimate sin, only the Left should be allowed to fight culture wars, and genuine conservative grassroots movements should be immediately run down with rhetorical lawn mowers.

There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.

It’s always about the rice bowls. But there’s more:

For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.

Bad faith has been a growth industry on the port side since, I dunno, Rousseau maybe. It’s certainly not a recent development. Continuing on:

Run through the list of top issues: if you want border security, you must be a xenophobe. If you oppose abortion, you must be a blind religious fanatic or misogynist. If you want smaller government, you’re cruel and greedy. Question global warming? You’re a tool of Big Oil.

We are rat bastards, aren’t we? I must not think bad thoughts. But there’s more:

But as soon as any head of steam builds among grassroots conservatives for questioning the motives of the Left on similar grounds, the timid conservatives leap into action. Tut tut! That language is out of bounds! How dare you imply Lefty’s agenda is deliberately destructive!

They’ll tell you it’s paranoia and slander to talk about the destructive agenda of the Left even as hyperventilating lefties are busy laying out their agenda with hundreds of social media videos and vowing to destroy anyone who gets in their way.

I believe Mel Brooks had a number in Blazing Saddles about this, calling it the French Mistake. In modern parlance, that would be David French. But we’re not done:

Too much of the conservative commentariat is exactly that: commentators. They were comfortable remarking on the passing scene, not changing it. “Activism” was a dirty word, something the OTHER guys did. Tossing harmless Nerf footballs of theory around op-ed pages was good enough.

Change is hard and things are pretty cozy in the covens along the Potomac. And most of all, dudes wearing tricorner MAGA hats are not our kind, dear. We must not think bad thoughts. I’ve pulled a lot out of Hayward’s thread, but there’s even more. You should read it in full. But while his cri de coeur is compelling, it is clear our betters remain in their sinecures. And we’ll come back to that topic in the coming days.

Dennis Prager once wrote “whatever the Left touches it ruins.” In the 1950s, Leftists beheld Eisenhower’s America and set about trying to ruin it. In those years, America was the colossus astride the world. The only major power in the post-war years with its economy and infrastructure intact, America’s economic engine was roaring. Fueled by the GI Bill and real purchasing power, nuclear families ignited the rise of the suburbs while doubling the country’s Gross National Product.

Entertainment of the time reflected social norms. Programs such as Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver depicted stable, healthy families. Naturally the Left saw what was good and recoiled in revulsion.

The Beat Generation was a major Leftist reaction to 1950s culture. It began at Columbia University where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and other early Beats attended. William Burroughs attended Harvard, but he spent a lot of time in New York City’s subculture and was introduced there to Kerouac and Ginsberg.

I don’t think it is an accident that the Frankfurt School had relocated to Columbia University to escape the Nazis. Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer and Erich Fromm among others helped found the basis of critical theory, the destructive brew of Marxism and philosophy that is the grandfather of today’s wokeism.

Some restaurants – including one Twin Cities favorite – are instituting “equity charges“.

They would appear to be doing it, at least in part, because they believe their customers are idiots:

On its website, Broders’ has a notice to customers notifying them of a new 15 percent “benefits and equity” charge they’ve instituted. They justify the charge, first, by explaining that “many states have allowed reduced minimum wages for service staff in the form of a tip credit.” (More on this in a minute.)

But Minnesota (the restaurant being referred to is in southwest Minneapolis) is not one of them.

Oh, also they think you’re a bigot…

“Studies have also shown that there is inequity and built-in bias in the way consumers give tips,” the statement reads. “In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers. There is gender bias as well.”

Has anyone noticed how the phrase “studies show…” may as well be a shorthand signal for “weasel words will follow”?

I used to like to ask “what studies? Where?“, But that would get us into a Bergs 16th Maw situation, almost immediately, almost every time..

SCENE: A suburban family room. MOTHER and FATHER are anxiously looking at their SON, who’s watching…TV.

MOTHER: It’s all he’s watching lately. .

FATHER: What is it?

MOTHER: He’s binging Band of Brothers

FATHER: Again? This is like the third time.

MOTHER: And before that, it was 13 Hours. And then Taken.

FATHER: I caught him watching Die Hard the other day.

MOTHER: He has the scene of him rescuing his wife from being pulled out the window with Hans Gruber as his social media avatar.

FATHER: God. I wonder what’s going on with him?

So I started binge watching “The Flight Attendant” last night.

Pros: it’s really well written. That’s nothing to sneeze at. I’ve been terribly disappointed by the writing in a lot of things I’ve seen lately (I’m looking at you, Love Life, whose laziness completely wasted Anna Kendrick).

The writers toss out a completely un-subtle “Crime and Punishment“ reference in the first couple minutes, and then go on to deliver on it throughout everything I’ve seen so far (#StuffEnglishMajorsLike). And Kaley Cuoco makes a completely believable protagonist.

Bonus pro: it’s got Rosie Perez, who may be the most underrated actress of her generation (although she’s just a tad underutilized in the first couple episodes).

It’s not Dial M for Murder, much less Gaslight, but it ain’t bad.

Speaking of that Ingrid Bergman / Charles Boyer classic…

Cons: These aren’t all in re Flight Attendant alone – far from it.

Hollywood writers seemed to have gotten together and signed a weird, junior high quality pact amongst themselves: “For decades, we wrote women as one dimensional caricatures; madonnas, whores, bimbos and housewives. Let’s pack a century of retribution into a couple of years worth of television and movies.“

Apparently, women can be protagonists, or nuanced, complex characters, or turbocharged badasses, for good or evil – or at least not incompetent caricatures.  That’s a good thing.

On the other hand, rules for men of these days seem to be boiled down to:

• Gay besties
• stock black, Asian, Latino or Semitic guys
• The villain (usually an older white guy, usually played with all the subtlety of a mustache-twisting melodrama villain, although occasionally a white woman)
  – The love interest – who is usually safely ethnically ambiguous.
• pathetic, beaten down sacks
• Buffoons, tools, frat bros (apparently all white anglo-saxon protestant males get lacrosse scholarships. I didn’t know that), frat bros that have grown up to be buffoons and tools, cliché rednecks and every kind of cad ever offered up by central casting.. Almost inevitably white, although I guess it’s a sign of evolution the screen writers are showing the occasional less than bright/moral/ethical black male character.
• Part of a married couple – usually as a hapless schlub whose league his spouse is waaay out of, but with plenty of dysfunctional, abusive cads thrown in. (Same sex couples apparently are immune to most serious dysfunction in Hollywood. Who knew?)

Patronizing? I think so.

Virtue signaling? Sure.

 Lazy? Completely.

Gaslighting?

FATHER: Junior? Why are you watching all these…

MOTHER: …movies and TV shows?

SON: Because it’s fun, for a change, for the first time in my life, to see people like I am, or plan to become, not portrayed as idiots, buffoons, fools, blackguards and expendable simps?

MOTHER: (sotto voce, to FATHER). Do. you think we should call a therapist?

If there’s one thing people love, it’s feeling better than others.

And as America has undergone its “Great Sort”, pop psychology has provided a dysfunctional society boundless opportunities to do just that. Those opportunities are scientifically dubious, but just plain feel good, because they satisfy that primal need to dunk on other people.

These opportunities came in successive waves of theories: “Conservative/liberals have better sex lives than liberals/conservatives”, self-adulatory navel gazing about Boomers/Xers/Millenials/GenZs, the brief fixation on the joys and superiority of introversion, endless diagnoses (during the Trump years, “narcissistic personality disorder” was in vogue)…

…and, I suspect, this latest one: pathologizing “stupidity”.

In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

Let’s take a look at Cipolla’s five basic laws of human stupidity:

The “five laws” are there, and make sense, more or less.

But I’m wondering – does nobody think this sort of affectation through? Ever?

Because if combine this (I predict) fad-to-be with the fad that is currently ebbing – the “Dunning Kruger Effect – people doing the diagnosing will realize that they are, largely…

…well, subject to which facile, self-adulatory cultural trope?

Again – don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…