Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

funny because it’s true

Joe Doakes

Verdict: True.

Cue the “black face of white supremacy” meme.

This nation has two choices, if we’re to remain a nation (or, potentially, a viable society).

One of them – by far the most radical and traumatic – is secession; from individual states, and maybe from the US itself.

(And no – that wasn’t “settled in 1865” any more than it was settled in 1776. It’s only “illegal” when the secedees have the will to bring the secessionists to heel).

Big media is noting one, fairly welll established, such movement, in greater Oregon:

In the summer of 2015, a chimney sweep in Elgin, Oregon, redrew the map of the American West. “Imagine for a moment Idaho’s western border stretching to the Pacific Ocean,” Grant Darrow wrote in a letter to the editor of his local paper. Rural Oregon, he insisted, should break its ties with the urbanites of Portland and liberals of Salem, and join Idaho. “The political diversity in this state is becoming unpalatable,” he argued. “Rural Oregonians in general and Eastern Oregonians in particular are growing increasingly dismayed by the manner in which Oregon’s Legislature and Oregon’s urban dwellers have marginalized their values, demonized their lifestyle, villainized their resource-based livelihoods, and classified them as second-class citizens at best.”

…

In the half decade or so since Darrow’s diatribe, a simple and outlandish idea, percolating in rural Oregon since the 1960s—what if we were just Idaho?—has grown into a grassroots secession movement. Last month, Harney County, in the high desert of eastern Oregon, became the state’s eighth to pass a nonbinding ballot measure supporting Darrow’s proposal. Move Oregon’s Border signs now dot the region’s empty highways, and Mike McCarter, a retired agricultural nurseryman and gun-club owner who runs a group pushing for the boundary reshuffle, travels the state in a bright-red trucker hat bearing the slogan. “We don’t care to move, because we’re tied to our land here,” he told me recently. “So why not just allow us to be governed by another state?” He mentioned a supporter so certain that her property will become part of Idaho that she already flies its state flag on her lawn. “We’re going to be Idaho,” she told him.

The movement has passed in nearly every county in which it’s gone to the ballot. As the article points out, it seems unlikely the Idaho legislature will accept the new border (which would drive Idaho’s western border to the Pacific – much less Oregon’s California-lite legislature full of unicorn-chasing feebs.

Let’s see – urban lotus-eaters, out of touch with and imposing their dystopian vision on the rest of the state, from a riot-torn city full of people who love central planning? Sounds familiar.

The second option – getting serious about Federalism, checks and balances, and enumerated, divided power, again – would be hypothetically simpler. And, sometimes, I think it would lead just as quickly to mass secession, as Big Left decided to hit the exits.

…that Covid provides a disturbing proportion of our society with a reason to wake up in the morning; “enforcing the misery” gives their lives whatever meaning it has.

Which brings us to this:

First, kudos to the guy, who learned the important lesson: when a woman, no matter how wrong, no matter how impaired, no matter how depraved, attacks you, don’t hit back; your best bet is to hope for enough bruising (or, nowadays with video everywhere, clear video) to make your case in court.

Which I hope the guy does – winning everything this vile shrew owns or will ever own.

Back on point: as the emergency winds down, expect more of this, as Karens, bereft of their purpose and. meaning, lash out.

And – given that most “wars of religion” are really wars over other longstanding fault lines that happen to have a veneer of religious difference slapped on, what other fault lines will the pandemic adhere to?

We’ve got race, class, region, economics…?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In Medieval times, the monks in the monastery received offerings freely given by church-goers and the monks distributed that money to the poor, called alms.  Naturally, the smell of free money brought hordes with their hands out.  Monasteries invented a new job title – Almoner – for the guy who decided which poor got the money.  With limited funds to distribute but unlimited demand for funds, the Almoner was charged with separating the Deserving Poor from the Undeserving Poor.

In modern times, we’ve lost that distinction.  We’ve mostly replaced charity with welfare given regardless of worthiness, effort, or responsibility.  “Make bad choices, get free money” provides no incentive to repent, to change, to grow in wisdom and maturity to become a self-sufficient and productive member of society.

The Salvation Army is a religion formed 150 years ago in the back streets of London to minister to the wretched poor.  Its motto is “Blood and Fire,” recalling the Blood of Christ and the Fire of the Holy Spirit.  They’re always one of the first on-scene after a natural disaster, bring comfort to those who have lost everything.  I’m not a member of their church but for years, I’ve made a point of donating at the red kettles to the point that I won’t shop Target during the holy days because Target banned the Salvation Army whereas Wal-Mart welcomed them. 

But this year, the Salvation Army is struggling.  They’ve insulted their donor base.  The big-shots forgot my donation was not payment on a debt I owed to them, my donation was a gift freely given.  There aren’t as many people ringing bells outside stores and I’m not as eager to give money to an outfit that preaches woke liberalism instead of traditional Christianity.  The leadership blames the misunderstanding on a statement by its Social Justice Committee which right-wing media have blown out of context. I ask: “Why does a Christian religion so fundamental its motto is “Blood and Fire” even HAVE a Social Justice Committee?”  They’ve lost their way.  They forgot their core mission, their reason for existing, the reason people give them money.

Disband the committee, renew your organizational focus on saving souls and alleviating suffering, and the donors will come back.  Leave social justice to the politicians. 

Joe Doakes

I interviewed a Salvation Army rep on my show a few weeks ago. He, like a lot of rank and file in the Army, pointed out that the Army is not partisan, and has to deal with social issues as they come to them; that being said, a lot of rank and file in the Salvation Army were un-thrilled by the way the natonal HQ handled things.

I still support the Salvation Army, and I hope. you do as well.

I don’t always follow boycotts.

Part of it is that most of the companies I want to boycott over recent transgressions, I shopped shopping at years ago over previous ones.

Example: I stopped patronizing Pepsi, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut back in the ’90s, when they were donating big bank to gun control groups. Dick’s Sporting Goods became traef to me when they pulled “modern sporting rifles” from their shelves.

But for those who are new to the business of shopping with purpose, here’s at least the start of some holiday Naught and Nice lists.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is looking for a new heat gun at a hardware store when Kirk THUNT, used car salesman and chairman of The Arne Carlson Project, an anti-Trump organization based in Forest Lake, walks around the corner.

THUNT: Merg.

BERG: Er…hi ,Kirk…

THUNT: You routinely refuse to condemn Donald Trump for trying to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when he was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: I condemn, and condemned, the riot, the “storming” of the Capitol, and anyone who thought they could overtake the Constitutional process by force. All the talk about killing the Vice President is just baked wind; the Secret Service would have leveled anyone who tried. The electoral commission was alarmed – justifiably – but they finished their job. Democracy was never in danger, and everyone involved is in a world of legal hurt. The federal criminal justice system is doing what it does.

THUNT: The January 6 Commission just learned that Chief of Staff Meadows has text messages proving Trump was involved.

BERG: Maybe they do.

THUNT: Maybe? So you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: The commission is an investigation – of sorts. Findings are not a conclusion. I’m not going to pretend I know enough to draw a conclusion, even if my conclusion matters to anyone. Let the investigation run its course.

THUNT: Huh. Let it run its course? So you’re right there behind the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Again, no. I am saying I believe the left has glommed onto it as a way of deflecting, eternally, away from their many very deliberate attempts to undercut out democracy, and the riots that they supported from 2015 to 2021.

THUNT: Deflection? So – you are a big fan of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: I’m pretty sure I said exactly the opposite, several times. My “crime” with you seems to be the fact that I haven’t wet myself with outrage over Trump, with regard to this episode or any other during his administration. I was a Trump non-fan back when you were watching The Apprentice. I’m intellectually honest about the things he did right and wrong, but if you’re looking for…

…on cue from me, you’ve got the wrong guy .

THUNT: So you dismiss concerns about the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: For the fourth time in 90 seconds – no. I do think Big Left uses January 6 the same way a certain European socialist leader used this episode. But we’ve got a whole new set of problems to deal with, as a nation and, frankly, as a Republican.

THUNT: So you don’t think the GOP is forever rendered toxic by its association with Trump, meaning you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when he was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Er, Kirk? I’ve just explained that every single point you make is bulls**t. And yet every time you take a breath, you tell me I support the…what is it you say?

THUNT: You are a hypocritical supporter of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: And again, I am not.

THUNT: Denial means you are an enabler of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: That’s false.

THUNT: Disagreement means you are a supporter the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Once you got on the green, you only had to use your putter twice, right?

THUNT: Nonsensical responses mean you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Look. The heat gun I’m looking for.

THUNT: Using heat guns means you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

(But BERG has already left the room)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails

You’re a cop. You’ve stopped a driver and have him standing on the side of the road because he’s got warrants for his arrest. He dives back into the car, presumably going for his gun. What do you do?

a. grab him from behind and wrestle with him. No, because he might still grab his gun and shoot you.
b. grab your expandable baton and smack him. No, because he’s diving into the car and there’s no room to swing the baton.
c. grab your pepper spray and Mace him. No, because inside the car, it’ll blind you, too.
d. grab your Taser and shock him. Maybe, depends on who else has hands on him that will also get shocked. What other options do you have?
e. grab your . . . .

. . . too late. He shot you. You’re dead and so’s your partner.

Intellectually, she intended to grab her Taser but instinctively, she grabbed her pistol. It’s a learned response. It’s what cops practice the most. Gun instructors say “train as you will fight” because that’s how your body will react in the half-second available. And cops train with guns because that’s ‘the gravest extreme,’ when the training matters most.

Officer Potter did not commit murder. This was a horrible accident but entirely foreseeable because the decision-action table is too long, too many variables to run through, and nobody can ‘train as you fight’ for all of them.

Joe Doakes

A roof on qualified immunity quite a bit – Justifiably so – but at its core, it is intended to protect people like police from excessive liability for exactly this sort of situation.

Unlike civilians, who are legally strongly discouraged from doing anything but running away from altercations, the police are expected to go toward the sound of trouble.

The pendulum likely need to swing back. I’m pretty sure this is a terrible case to enact that swing.

A relationship can survive anything, says Dennis Prager, except contempt.

And there is a lot of contempt in our society.

Mostly one-way:

Nearly a quarter of college students wouldn’t be friends with someone who voted for the other presidential candidate — with Democrats far more likely to dismiss people than Republicans — according to new Generation Lab/Axios polling.

And a disturbing number of leftists don’t want to hire or employ those people, either.

It’s the ugly, militant side of Urban Progressive Privillege: not only do people with UPP never need to recognize any different perspectives on life, they increasingly work to actively cleanse their echo chambers of any dissonance.

You could call it cultural cleansing:

The Democrats routinely call Republicans and their activists “culture warriors,” but when it comes to pushing the country in a particular direction away from where it currently is, it’s always the Democrats who have been at the forefront. On abortion, they have been pushing to open up the definition to make it as widely available and as routine as any other form of birth control. With social spending, they have moved to make it more and more available while lowering the requirements further and further, creating programs that are impossible to pay for.

On issues like education, they are tightening their control as much as possible and shutting families out, even going so far as to label concerned parents as “terrorists.”

According to Dana Milbank…

…dissenting from Big Left/Big Media/the Brandon administration is “fascism”..

Not sure if they’re trying to foment a civil war.

If they were, what would they be doing differently?

(And how is the Brandon Administration “salvaging democratic norms?” Labeling everyone that disagrees a “white supremacist?”)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I loved the Artemis Fowl books.  I just saw the trailer for the movie and I feel like crying.

Artemis is a teenaged boy, a genius and ruthless criminal mastermind, assisted by his hulking bodyguard, Butler.  The scriptwriters dragged out all the tropes to make him a naive kid guided by the Wise Old Black Man to Save the Planet from Ancient Evil and Rescue his Father . . . they turned him into a Disney Princess.

Look guys, you bought the movie rights to a wildly popular series of books because you wanted a ready-made fan base.  But that fan base knows the character and knows the story.  They don’t want you to ‘improve’ it, they want you to put the movie in their minds up there on the screen, like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.

Yeah, yeah, Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench and awesome special effects, great stuff.  But couldn’t they have done it with a new story, one that nobody knows so the fans wouldn’t mind if it was butchered?

Joe Doakes

Hey, you’re lucky they didn’t turn him into an ass-kicking girl.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

I don’t watch much TV, but a Sci-Fi series was recommended. It has commercials. They’re the same every break: out of four ads there will be one for childhood covid vaccine and one for Medicine for black homosexuals with HIV. Commercial ads are annoying enough, but relentless liberalism is infuriating.

Joe Doakes

The first cold, stormy Saturday we have, I’m going to do an ethnographic study of ads on TV, not so much to prove a political point as to illustrate the sociological absurdity that there is such a thing as “structural racism“ in our society.

…that the current, possibly-excessive, garment-rending over the “Omicron” variant is the sound of an awful lot of people who’ve gone through lives with little purpose or meaning, and have found a perverted version of both in bullying, shunning and scarlet-lettering people with different conclusions and means of dealing with Covid?

That depression and anxiety might be the least of society’s mental health issues when it comes to this pandemic – that the wave of cultural narcissism it’s released dwarves everything else (except, obviously, the suicide?)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club asks whether the Lesko Brandon administration is strolling into our next quagmire.

We canceled pipelines and oil leases at home, to signal our virtue on climate change.  The price of gas at the pump, and natural gas for home heating, is going up.  We’ve called on Saudi Arabia to pump more oil for us but we’ve also  removed sanctions on Iran, which is funding Houthis in Yemen, who are attacking Saudi oilfields.  The US could back the Saudis with arms sales or troops so they could keep pumping the oil we want, except Progressives insist the Saudis are repressing the Yemenis so we must not help them.  Can “no blood for oil” be far behind?

We’ve caused a world-wide oil shortage and are about to stumble into another war in the Middle East with conflicting policy goals and no clear mission.  But all the Left wants to talk about is Kyle.

Joe Doakes

Well, and Orange Hitler.

Who is hiding under youer bed.

Ooogabooga!

Minneapolis school parents had the opportunity to attend this virtual seminar on “Critical Race Theory“…

… Which, we are authoritatively informed, doesn’t exist, and never has existed.

I suspect that would be interesting to “demystify“

I’ve had to spend a long weekend explaining to a lot of “progressives”: it’s entirely possible that not only are both of the following true:

• Something can be a bad idea, legally and in common sense terms,
• Self-defense is not only legitimate, but a very high hurdle to meet under the law in every state I’m aware of; that it’s a “license to kill” if you consider being arrested, spending two months in jail, having to bond for $2.5 Million to get released, spending 15 months in legal limbo, God only knows how much in legal bills, standing trial with a risk of two life sentences and a couple more decades to boot, and having to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder in case some depraved, entitled lefty narcissist decides to “even the score” to be a “license to kill”.

Most disturbing? Beyond the number of people who think that:

• we should just ignore the law and make Rittenhoue an example because “we don’t want people wandering around defending themselves, or that
• “crossing state lines” is a crime, or that
• Kyle Rittenhouse was a “vigilante” for going to a riot with a gun, but Gage Grosskreutz wasn’t, or that
• Rioting is sacrosanct protected speech?

…what could be worse?

This: I think both sides missed the most important lesson.

Which is, I believe, this.

Some Background: It is human nature to create order.

thout order, prosperity is impossible – and by “prosperity“, I don’t mean “his and hers Bentleys“, I mean living as something other than a subsistence farmer.

Without prosperity, freedom is academic. (And without freedom, order is tyranny, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves).

I’m no expert, but I think this is the real lesson of Kenosha that a lot of people on the right, and a lot more on the left, need to get.

We pay taxes to government – lots and lots of them. And providing “order” is the one unambiguously legitimate role of government.

And if government isn’t going to provide order, fairly and equally across society, in exchange for the burden of supporting it, and keep our businesses from getting burned, our cars from getting stolen, our kids from getting mugged on the way home from school?

People will start creating order for themselves. And one of these next times, it won’t be a 17 year old kid with more idealism than common sense and a loaner rifle.

It’ll be people who won’t run to the police to surrender when nasty nastiness happens.

It’ll be people who do their self-defense pre-emptively. People who don’t care about the high rhetoric and due process of the legal system.

People for whom shooting people isn’t something from video games; it’s something they do or did for their livelihood, either in the neighborhood or in Fallujah or Mogadishu or Helmand or somewhere in the Pine Barrens.

It’ll be people who keep secrets – you could even say, people who observe, and enforce, “codes of silence”.

Sounds like…the Mob? A Cartel? Omar’s crew from The Wire?

Weird.

Live feed.

Count 1 (Rosenbaum): Not guilty

Count 2 (McGuinness) Not guilty

Count 3 (Jump Kick Guy) Not guilty

Count 4 (Huber) Not guilty

Count 5 (Grosskreutz) Not guilty

Strap in, Kenosha. It’s gonna be a bumpy night. :

And here’s hoping Rittenhouse follows Nick Sandman into civil court.

UPDATE: Judge Schroeder after the Jury left the room: “Motion of the defense is granted, the charges are dismissed with prejudice. Mr. Rittenhouse is released from the obligation of his bond”.

That was what you call “bouncing the rubble” .

Author Thomas Ricks on Twitter:

Three blocks from my house, August 26,2020.

Well, there is a dumbass dupe in the conversation.

Last Friday, heading into the closing weekend of the Virginia Gubernatorial contest, a group of ‘white supremacists” showed up “in support” of GOP challenger Glenn Younkin, in full Charlottesville regalia, lest anyone miss the reference. .

There was something a little fishy, though:

After they were thoroughly busted, the “Lincoln Project” – the group of “never-Trump” “republicans” that seems to always work toward Democrat Party interests [1] – admitted they were behind the stunt:

“But wait! Macauliffe and/or his staff weren’t involved!”

Yes they were.

Ben Shapiro noted last week that Macauliffe’s campaign has boiled down to “Trump!”, which is odd considering Trump isn’t in the race.

Is it a stupid, desperate stunt, intended to deflect attention away from Macauliffe’s catastrophic performance this past few weeks, along with the fact that he’s tied to the coverup of sexual abuse claims in Loudon County?

Sure.

But it’s worse than that.

This is a less-polished episode from a campaign that’s been going on since 2009 at the very least, from Obama and Biden’s cabinets (ptr) all the way down to failed “fact-checker” Dog Gone, who used to promise in this comment section that there was a wave of white supremacist terror that’d dwarf 9/11 coming up, any day now.

Tne notion that, notwithstanding the fact that actual “white supremacist” groups have been shrinking by roughly an order of magnitude roughly every generation, that white American society is building a militant arm that is just acheing to go out and take over. Every event of recent history, and even distant history, is bent to support that narrative – from the very founding of this nation to the Minneapolis riots to Emmanuel Goldstein…

…schwoops. I skipped narratives, there.

I mean, not like the narrative was ever subtle, but how stupid do you have to be to miss it?

This is just another chapter in the left’s attempt to slander half of our nation.

The fact is was.a flailing and incompetent attempt doesn’t make things better.

[1] Perhaps it should be called the Tom Horner Project?

…who referred to Trump, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Dubya, 41 and Ronald Reagan “Hitler”…

…and who called Sarah Palin a “c*nt” who faked her own kid’s birth, and called her daughter a “slut”…

… and who thought alleged comedian Kathy Griffin waving around a “Trump head“ was, you know, humor…

…and who giggled like schoolgirls who’ve just had their first joint when Rush Limbaugh, Antonin Scalia and even Tony Snow died…

…are shocked, shocked at people saying “Let’s Go Brandon”:

In this case, failed radical congressional candidate Regina Marston:

Hey, at least there’s such a thing as “too far”. 

Thing is, in a world run by people like Ronald Reagan or even John F Kennedy, this would be no big thing:

Is BIden too stupid or brittle?

Or does Big Left realize its market thrives on grievance, no matter how stupid or contrived?

Why choose?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Lesko Brandon administration has a new idea: private sponsors. The State Department announced that individuals can sponsor people evacuated from Afghanistan during the rout. The evacuees are currently held in military installation waiting to be re-homed in America. It costs less than $2,500 but the sponsor must also find them housing, furniture, food, clothing, get them signed up for welfare, get Afghan children enrolled in schools, help Afghan parents and adults find jobs, and teach them English.

Doesn’t sound like a bargain to me. The administration’s stagflation policies already are impacting my family, without taking on responsibility another. And doesn’t the Third Amendment prohibit the government forcing citizens to provide room and board for soldiers (or maybe it doesn’t apply because they’re not US soldiers, they’re Taliban soldiers, so that makes everything better)? If the government can’t take care of the millions of immigrants it’s letting into the country, perhaps stop letting them in? Maybe even – dare I say – send them back?

This isn’t like Sally Struthers asking me to sponsor little Maria for less than the price of a cup of coffee every day. This is a big commitment and I don’t even get a letter every month. Who do they think will participate? Who is this program intended for? Liberals eager to signal their virtue by writing a one-time check then dumping the load on taxpayers? A pimp running a child sex ring who gets to pick-and-choose the young, pretty ones? A factory owner who needs to fill dangerous jobs on the cheap? A landscaper who gets free labor for life?

$2,500 is a pretty steep buy-in for such speculative return. Anybody want to go halves on one?

Joe Doakes

I wonder if there’s any possible way to turn this particular “commodity“ into a market, with an exchange, perhaps is the basis for a cryptocurrency?

Don’t mind me. It’s late.

If society can’t trust its public institutions to do their jobs fairly and impartially, self-government is impossible.

We’ll come back to that.

In the generally outstanding Danish TV program Rita – about a middle school teacher fighting burnout – there was one particularly jarring moment, if you were an American parent; the eponymous teacher was discussing problems with a particular student, and reacted with derision and a little muted disgust to the idea that the kid’s parents knew better about how to deal with the situation than her and the rest of the school staff.

It’s not an uncommon view in Europe; German schools have a similar point of view, but the Scandinavians have taken it to what seems to libertarian Americans an absurd extreme.

I say libertarian Americans, with a small “L”, as opposed to more-communitarian Americans. I once ran into an American – a DFL ward heeler from Saint Paul – who said loudly and proudly in public that he was happy to leave his kids education to “the experts”. I was never sure if that was entirely because that’s what he believed, or if he knew he’s get thrown in the stocks by the teachers unions that control so much of the DFL.

But it’s worth a reminder that the sentiment – not just of my DFL friend, but of a good chunk of America – probably jibes more with “Rita” than with most of the people reading this blog.

This particular op-ed in the WaPo, written by a couple of teachers union shills, titled “Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t“, has been drawing a lot of ire on the cultural right.

The thesis of the article shows us part of the problem:

In their search for issues that will deliver Congress in 2022, conservatives have begun to circle around the cause of “parents’ rights.” …curtail the established rights that Americans have over the educational sphere. Yet what’s actually radical here is the assertion of parental powers that have never previously existed. This is not to say that parents should have no influence over how their children are taught. But common law and case law in the United States have long supported the idea that education should prepare young people to think for themselves, even if that runs counter to the wishes of parents.

And there’s a decent point in there, actually. To be educated is, in fact, to have the basis to think for oneself, to stake out one’s own beliefs in the world, to figure out who one actually is and what one really believes. By historical accident or design, my own education more or less fit the bill; I’m sure if my parents had had full sway over everything I learned and how I learned it, I may have become a conservative much later, if ever.

So. yeah – “education” in the classical sense of the term is one of the things that enables a child to become a separate, autonomous adult…

…provided that the schools actually teach critical thinking.

And that’s a big caveat:

 When do the interests of parents and children diverge? Generally, it occurs when a parent’s desire to inculcate a particular worldview denies the child exposure to other ideas and values that an independent young person might wish to embrace or at least entertain. To turn over all decisions to parents, then, would risk inhibiting the ability of young people to think independently. As the political scientist Rob Reich has argued, “Minimal autonomy requires, especially for its civic importance, that a child be able to examine his or her own political values and beliefs, and those of others, with a critical eye.” If we value that end, “the structure of schooling cannot simply replicate in every particularity the values and beliefs of a child’s home.”

Which would be a perfectly legitimate idea…

…provided the schools weren’t doing exactly what they “worry” about the parents doing.

Can you honestly say modern state schools teach critical thought?

The authors of the piece seem to think so – but I suggest they are describing an education system that has existed since the 1980s only in their fantasy.

If society can’t trust its institutions do do their job, fairly and impartially, self-government is impossible.

Can we trust public education to do the mission the authors claim it has?

I think you know my vote.

If this sign is a Democrat campaign sign…

…(and it’s likely not, since it includes none of the mandatory “Paid For By…” subtitles) then I’d love the DFL to get honest and bring it here.

And if it’s a false flag GOP parody?

Then I hope someone brings it here even more

Barack Obama found a low-key culture war – including a racial divide that had largely settled down – and fanned it, deliberately and to his electoral benefit.

And now that the wind seems to be changing?

From 2009 – when Obama started peddling the story of the impending wave of “white supremacist terror ” that was going to “dwarf 9/11” – to the exploitation of every racially-tingled incident, Obama was the Erwin Rommel of the Culture Wars. The right is still waiting for its Montgomery.

And I’d like to remind our DFL friends – the “phony trumped-up culture war’ he’s talking about is the cover-up of sexual assauilts in the Loudon County, Virginia schools.

So. .#MeToo.

The culture war, at least in terms of issues affecting the 2022 mid-terms, seems to be blowing in the Dems faces.

It wasn’t that long ago, really. We had heroes among us. Now they are so hard to find:

These days, the men and women who worked through the whole pandemic are being shamed and patronized by the very people whose cushy existences they facilitated for a year and a half. The liberal elites who holed up in the Hamptons and didn’t have contact with the outside world for a year are ready to get back to their SoulCycle classes, even if it means firing a few people they once called “frontline heroes.” The irony of the same people who screamed in the faces of policemen at the height of a pandemic turning around to demand that these cops now shut up, stop asking questions, and get vaccinated is almost too much to bear.

Hamptons, Bryn Mawr, North Oaks — wherever. As Bridget Phetasy notes in Tablet, it’s the same dynamic we’ve known for decades now: limousine liberals, parlor pinks, trust fund Trotskyites, living their Best Lives and dancing among the ruins:

While normal people tried to figure out how to juggle work, child care, and living under the same roof for 24 hours a day, celebrities were having a ball. Locked up with only their phones and without their handlers, the public was treated to an unfiltered parade of narcissism on fire. Distraught about the postponement of Coachella, Vanessa Hudgens took to Instagram Live to lament that “like, yeah, people are gonna die.” Gal Gadot talked about how “we’re all in this together” and gathered a celebrity cast to sing a horrifying version of “Imagine” from their sprawling mansions.

Nearly any version of “Imagine” is horrifying by definition, of course, but we’ll leave that aside. Now that we’re in our 19th month of two weeks to flatten the curve, the gyre is widening:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats wrote that over 100 year ago. I don’t recall attending any innocence ceremonies recently, but his point stands. We may not have mere anarchy any time soon, either: most self-identified anarchists are totally cool with the State, as long as it does their bidding. But I sense the agents of the State may not be able to make it stick. Back to Phetasy:

In L.A. County, only 54% of the Black population and 62% of the “Latinx” population have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Despite all the resources the city ostensibly devotes to equity and inclusion, it’s clear that these minority populations will be most affected by the mandates. If Black lives matter to you so much, shouldn’t you care that Black people will be excluded from restaurants and movie theaters and nail salons?

Caring is overrated, especially among the best. I don’t know what’s next, but in a world where self-regard has more cachet than self-awareness the center will not hold.

I was reliably informed by our media and scolding class that this sort of thing would never, ever happen, end it was hateful and “transphobic“ to suggest otherwise..