Open Letter To Every Republican Candidate, Everywhere

If you aren’t running on this…

…for the love of all that is holy, please tell me why?

I’ve Noticed

…that the Venn diagram of people who were dumping on Lauren Boebert’s drunken (and let’s be honest, tacky and ill-advised) make-out last summer…

…and people who are excusing, celebrating and even…uh…

…celebrating a couple of Democrat aides filming gay porn in the US Senate is a circle.

I can’t help but wonder – when he said “I would never disrespect my workplace” – what does he think doing the nasty in the nation’s upper deliberative chamber is? And what would “respect” look like?

Chaser: At least one rumor says Maese-Czeropski’s, uh, film set was Amy Klobuchar’s desk.

Watch out for flying binders!

Converts

Wonder why Big Left’s noise machine was so quick to try to gundeck The Fall of Minneapolis?

Because they’re smart enough to see that it coud change some minds.

In this case, the minds of academic Glenn Loury and the NYTimes’s John McWhorter – both of whom formerly bought Big Left’s story on the events of May 2020.

And both of whom re-evaluated things pretty radically:

Haven’t seen it yet? Make up your own mind.

Junk Food For Thought

One the current tropes among the populist right is that “college is useless, and you should send your kids to learn a trade”.

There’s a truck loaded with cinder blocks full of truth in there – for many 18 year olds, a year or two spent learning how to weld, be an electrician or mechanic or tool and die maker would be a much faster path to self-reliance than four years at college racking up debts while learning little or nothing that one needs to succeed in the world.

Now, let’s be clear, here – I don’t think college needs to be a longer more expensive trade school; there can be value to learning a “liberal art”, something traditionally intended to teach one to think rather than strictly to design, build or fix something…

provided that that that education actually teaches how to think.

We’ll come back to that.


As I’ve noted elsewhere, my father was a great teacher. He taught. high school speech, writing and literature, and college-level education classes. He was one of the two best teachers I ever had. He also used to agree, at least hypothetically, with the likes of Mike Rowe – the ideal education, he said, was spending a few months or years learning a trade, and then going on to some other course of more abstract study after one could pay the bills.

This, of course, may have been a little idealistic projection from a man who, on good day, knew which end of a screwdriver to hit the nail with. He was and remains a brilliant teacher – and one of the least handy people I’ve ever met, myself included.

When I was in high school. and college, I had not the slightest interest in going to trade school – not out of any sense of college being “above it all” or “better” – I was every bit as peripatetic back then as I am today, and if could have squeezed in learning how to machine metal or be an electrician, I would have.

But to my Dad’s point, I also figured I already had a trade; I’d started in radio when I was 15, and had learned a lot. I figured my fallback would be working at some station, somewhere. It wasn’t the dumbest idea, at a time when radio was a tough but viable way to make a living. It’s not advice I’d give a kid today, but that was then.

With the “trade” part figured out? I sought a life living in my head; I majored in English and minored in History and German. I also majored in Computer Science almost long enough to get the minor, but I hated it, and didn’t touch a computer for seven years after I graduated – but that’s another story. And for me, at least, the promise of a “liberal arts” education was fulfilled; I learned how to think, and when the opportunity to jam a bunch of different facets from my background together into a new career fell into my path, I was able to jump on it.

Of course, I’m not sure colleges today teach critical thinking the way Dr. Blake did.

But I come here not to wallow in nostalgia, but to weaponize it.


While I don’t disagree in the least with my Dad, or Mike Rowe, I also think this is a lousy time for conservatives who are so inclined to completely abandon the academy, if only because it’s people from Harvard and Penn and MIT who will write the histories and the textbooks and play an inordinate role in defining our culture…

…and if you see the people who are driving our system toward collapse and calamity today, that should be pretty terrifying. Because just as Califonria-style government followed Californians who fled to Colorado, a society run by the products of our crypto-Maoist university system – the judges, politicians and culture-definers of tomorrow – will follow you into your shop van or plumbing business.

Big Left has been ‘marching through the institutions” for over fifty years; they’re not going to be set back to square one by a season of scrutiny. But it’s an opportunity. And the future of a free society demands that some young conservatives, and the older ones that still control some levers of power (if only their checkbooks) take a shot at that tackle, before the current wave of barbarism completely rewrites the definition of “freedom” for a few more generations.

The More Things Change, The Less Things Change

There was a time when I might have asked what a metro school board, like for example Edina, might have done if a bunch of students wandered around the halls bellowing:\

“Uptown
Downtown
We Just Want Our Lebensraum

Or:

We don’t need ethnic pollution
Bring us the Final Solution!

But it occurs to me…:

…it may be the wrong quesiton these days.

The Company You Keep

As I’ve been noting for about eight years on this blog, I’m intensely ambivalent about Donald Triump.

His personality roils with traits I personally don’t care for.

But something about all the prosperity, peace and border security is looking good.

“Oh, Merg, so you just want someone who’ll make the trains run on time, yuk yuk”

Peace and security are legitimate jobs of a national government. Prosperity is the opposite of the “Fascist” dynamic you’re yukking about. And Trump at his wackiest didn’t approach the level of authoritarianism of any of Baraclk Obama’s three terms in office.

I’m on Team DeSantis [1],but if it came down to Biden, Harris or Newsom against Trump, I’d probably hold my nose and vote Trump.

The worst thing about Trump is that he, like Obama before him, is the center of a personality cult. And with Trump, soooooo many of the cultists are just so deeply dim:

Loomer – charitably described as “insane” – cites a piece on by David Greenberg, a Rutgers historian who’s never been mistaken for someone who’d throw a life ring to a conservative who fell overboard.

Bill Clinton infamously threw some of his more extreme supporters under the bus in his long forgotten”Sista Soulja” moment (in the the long-forgotten Sista Soulja”). Trump’s never gonna have a “Crazy Laura” moment.

If he did, I might have to hold my nose a little less hard.

[1] And yeah, I think in a just world Doug Burgum would be on the short list, but we don’t live in a just world.

What If Someone Threw A “Genocide”, And No Entire Groups Were Murdered?

In addition to football, we saw last week the annual “progressive” tradition of wrapping one’s self and others in un-earned victimhood.

It was “Trans Violence Awareness Week”, during which Leftis pols conjured up victims from the ether to rally the soft-minded to their cause.

Senator Smith, for starters (with a riposte from Shawh Holster)

If the Human Rights Coalition says it, its worth fact-checking:

The only catch is that no such systemic violence exists. According to Jean-Pierre herself — and, presumably, to an LGBT-rights group with every interest in magnifying the phenomenon — the total number of trans-identified Americans known to have been killed in 2023 is 26. If we round that up to 30 (to account for December) and assume that just 1 percent of the U.S. population is trans (given that, as one very limited survey shows, around 3 percent of young Americans are), we obtain an annual transgender-murder rate of 30 in 3.32 million, or just 0.9 people per 100,000 people. Even if we, alternatively, assume an American trans population of just 1.6 million — to gel with one high-quality but conservative recent estimate — the resulting murder rate would be merely 1.9 per 100,000 people.

To put that in context, the murder rate for blacks in the U.S. is currently 30–33 per 100,000 people. The African-American community is an outlier but not necessarily a remarkable one: In a representative recent year, 4.5 percent of black-male deaths were the results of homicide, versus 2.3 percent for American Indians, 2.2 percent for Hispanics, 2 percent for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders . . . and 4.9 percent for all whites under full majority. To say the obvious, all of these groups are currently living far more dangerously than “trans women.”

Holster ran down the HRC’s numbers in this twitter thread:

Long story short – like iron ore, Big Left wants to take the raw material of intra-relationship and street violence, and try to refine it into yet another social grievance to keep the ignorant and uncritical in a hot lather.

Actual Journalism

Since the entire media will try to suppress it – here’s “The Fall of Minneapolis”, by Liz Collin and the Alphanews crew:

Watch it.

Pass it along.

I won’t give you any spoilers – you already know that Mayor Frey was a hapless stooge at best, a theatrical ninny at worst.

Chief Arradondo lied through his teeth. I always sensed this – the documentary shows us in black and white.

Walz? May he rot in hell.

Watch the whole thing. If you’re not outraged, you’re probably the enemy.

Multiculturalism In Action

Scene from a “mostly peaceful demonstration” in Dacca, Bangladesh on Veterans Day:

Nah. It’s New York.

I’ll work 60 hours a week for the Presidential and Congressional candidates who will build a wall, deport any miscreants with anything less than or including a Green Card, and make naturalization 100% contingent on loyalty to American small-l lliberal principles. .

Because ss Bari Weiss points.out, this isn’t just antisemitism:

When a nation built on small-l liberalism turns its back on small-l liberalism – especially that nation’s “elites” – what does that leave the nation?

All Talk

Back when I was working in bars, I was working at this toilet bar in North Saint Paul. It was a boring Friday night in the middle of summer. Once of the bouncers left early, leaving the bar with one bouncer – a big guy with a curly perm that was trying to get into professional wrestling.

The other bouncer apparently went out to the parking lot and hoovered up a line of bad Bolivian Marching Powder, maybe spiked with PCP – because he came back into the bar, started bellowing at the room, and then throwing punches. He smacked the bartender, cutting his lip and knocking out a tooth or two. He also tangled with a couple of customers. throwing tables and chairs and bottles all over the place.

The rampage went on for a while. Five minutes? Ten? I’m not sure.

But the entire time, as the coked up loony was on his rampage, the Wrestler guy bouncer stood and bellowed “You want a piece of me? HEY! Do you want a piece of me?” over and over, like he was filming an interstitial bit for a pro wrestling tournament.

Nothing at all useful, mind you. Just bellowing ” You want a piece of me? Yeah, you! You want a piece of me“, as the guy trashed the bar and a few of its employees and patrons.

I wonder if that wannabe-wrestler isn’t working as a consultant for the GOP these days.

Conservative groups have been very susceptible to the siren song of tough, unyielding talk combined with poo-poohing actually affecting policy. One example particularly near and dear to my heart – “Minnesota Gun Right”, a group that’s not from Minnesota and will never affect gun rights, but does make a lot of tough-talking videos.

Democrats are phenomenally vulnerable nationwide – married to exploding debt, economic stagnation, genocide against Israel and “woke” decay.

And far too much of the GOP, appears to be heading to the election focused not only on talking the talk and ignoring the walk, but saying “the walk” is stuff “Establishment RINOs” do.

Ben Shapiro talked about this in the first couple of segments of his podcast a few days ago:

To much of the GOP, politics is a (picking adjective carefully) vicious cycle:

  • “The swamp” needs to be drained.
  • But the swamp has rigged the system to prevent us from draining it.
  • “The Swamp” is the product of policy – which, like any policy in a democracy, can be changed, provided you win enough elections to push policy in the direction you want.
  • But getting elected to office, and having to do the inevitable horse-trading and make the inevitable compromises that come with actually having to make policy in a divided government makes you “the swamp” (see: Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy). Indeed, talking in terms of “Moving the Needle”, as opposed to “draining the swamp” or otherwise “burning it dall down”, is itself considered being “part of the establishment”.
  • But bellowing against the Swamp feels good (and is good for fundraising). Because…repeat from the top.

Conservatives used to be able to play the long game – indeed, conservatism used to be about society’s long game. The Left sought their immediate gratification.

Maybe it’s the most toxic possible result of the collapse of the societal attention span – “conservatism”, or at least the GOP, has become the party of emotion.

Muslims: Shut Up Or Get Cut Up

Lest anyone doubted that Big Left today is Marxist to its foetid roots, we now join a white, uppser-middle class white progressive member of the Saint Louis Park School Board pulling intersectional rank on….

…Muslim parents objecting to porn in elementary schools:

That’s the thing about intersectionalism; while more virtue attaches to people the farther they go out on the intersectional tree (the transgender Afro-Muslim handicapped lesbian is the peak), the actual executive authroity is supposed to remain toward the center, with the white “prog” women.

The Enemy Within, Around And Above

This is this sort of thing that should send Americans to be barricades. This is ample reason to block freeways (in DC and Silicon Valley and Saint Paul’s Government Canyon anyway). This is a reason to break out tar and feathers and lots and lots of harsh tweets.

It’s a thread. Click through in Twitter.

Not that this is news – but here’s one of a wallet full of money quotes:

-EIP [Election Integrity Partnership – Ed.]“stakeholders” (including the federal gov’t) would submit misinformation reports

-EIP would “analyze” the report and find similar content across platforms

-EIP would submit the report to Big Tech, often with a recommendation on how to censor

If you’d told me 15 years ago that voting for candidates attitudes about censorship, lockdowns, mandates and enforcing top-down social cohesion would be as important as stances on spending, immigration, healthcare and foreign policy, I’d have shaken my head and wondered “what else are they going to tell me – CD8 will someday be Republican?”

Review And Revise

Whatever opposition I’ve had to deportation of illegal immigrants is waning fast:

I’ll work my ass off for the first Presidential candidate to promise to deport aliens who are actively hostile to everything this country stands for.

I said “actively”.

And if the people in this mob are citizens? Deport whatever immigration official or politician OKed their naturalization.

Or at least tar and feather them.

No

Professor Galloway: I hear what you’re saying.

I do.

And on behalf of all the small businesses strangled by your mistake, all the parents who watched their kids slowly go crazy and stupid, and felt their personal, social and business relationships fraying and breaking?

I reject it.

Forgiveness without atonement is meaningless.

Try again.

The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades

I’ve seen a bit of a resurcence of the traditional 20-something paranoia about “the draft” that pops up whenever the world seems turbulent.

Example:

But this post isn’t about Selective Service.

We’ll come back to that.


Minnesota’s “Peace” creep community isn’t any smarter than it’s ever been

My first response: Our GenZ “activist community” has gone from “Punch a Nazi’ to unquestioningly supporting a literal fascist government that obsesses over race and advocates and practices the annihilation of the Jews.

You’ve come a long way, Zeepers!

But let’s go back to the top of this post, with the other Zoomers fretting about the draft.

The draft – being flooded with and responsible for paying, training and managing hordes of unwilling recruits who’ll spend a year or two as mediocre to poor soldiers – is the last thing our military wants.

I’d always assumed – mostly correctly – that that was for doctrinal reasons; willing soldiers are better, more trainable, more capable soldiers.

But looking at the caliber of the demographic pool, at the top and especially in the second videos above, I can think of a other reason…

Compromise

Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.

The Fix

A “high trust” society – the kind of society where you can leave your doors unlocked, or at least not keep all your property under constant surveillance at the very least – depends on trusting your neighbors, and the institutions by which we govern ourselves.

When that trust is broken, society becomes “low trust” – a society where people don’t trust their institutions, or each other, to do the right thing; reverting to the “Law of the Jungle” becomes expedient, initially – and, eventually prudent.

And when it’s the criminal justice system?

It never took a rocket scientist to believe the Chauvin trial was swayed by, not so much “public opinion” but by “potential mob rage”.

But it’s actually written down in black and white:

I’m not saying the DFL in this state is trying to create a low trust society.

I’m just at a loss for what they’d be doing different if they were.

Fringe

SCENE: A coffee shop in Roseville, MInnesota. Avery LIBRELLE, Cat SCAT and Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK are drinking kombucha and checking their phones. Mitch BERG walks in.

SCAT: Merg!

BERG (not happy to run into the three of them) Oh, hey…

BIRKENSTOCK: Shut up. There’s an anti-semitic Nazi running for school board in Roseville!

BERG: Huh. Do tell.

LIBRELLE: Look here ZOMG!

BERG: Did you actually just say “Zee Oh Em Gee?”

BIRKENSTOCK: Shut up. Read this.

BIRKENSTOCK: We need to spread the word!

SCAT: We need to light up social media and GET THE WORD OUT!

BERG: Uh…

LIBRELLE: WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS THERE”S AN ANTI-SEMITE RUNNING FOR SCHOOL BOARD!

BERG: Look, I may be more nauseated by this guy than any of you, but let’s be honest – the guy was going to get five votes in the election. He was the farthest fringe of the fringe of the fringe.

LIBRELLE: I’m going to talk about him on my cable access show?

BIRKENSTOCK: :Your what?

SCAT: Definitely going on. my podcast.

BIRKENSTOCK: I’m putting him on blast on instagram and TikTok

BERG: Right. So, I’m just wondering if this blitz of revulsion will give him order of magnitude more public profile than he’d have had as a fringe nutcase?

SCAT: We’re being mansplained

BERG: Yeah, that’s it.

BIRKENSTOCK: You must be a sympathizer!

BERG: Er, my grandparents generation spent the best years of their lives killing people like him.

BIRKENSTOCK: When?

BERG: Er…during World War 2.

BIRKENSTOCK: During what?

BERG: Exactly.

LIBRELLE: We have to get the word out! Now!

BERG: Yeah. That’s a great idea.

BERG Slowly backs out of the shop.

And SCENE

A Modest Proposal And A Sincere Invitation

To: Jana Shortal, KARE TV
CC: KARE TV
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Books

Ms. Shortal,

Yesterday, you tweeted this, about a controversy currently being manufactured (indeed, wose manufacture you appear to be closely involved in) in Carver County:

I know – it’s 2023, and even the most trivial parts of civic governance can and do get blown far out of proportion. My father was on a library board during a fracas over the book “A History of Pornography”; The Battle of the Somme didn’t have more-entrenched sides to the debate than that one. And this was in the late 1980s, in a small town, where there was both the spirit and imperative toward civic compromise.

Now, I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I think the adult wing of the library can and should have access to pretty much everything.

For adults.

Including Mein Kampf. Not sure if you’re advocating removing Mein Kampf from libraries. Having read it in English and German, I think every high school senior should be required to read it. It’s a bad book, even if you leave out the message – Hitler was a terrible writer – but people reading it won’t trivialize the term “Fascist” anymore. Which means half of Generation Z’s political vocabulary disappears overnight. Still, Ms. Shortal, if you want Mein Kampf removed, take it up with the library board. That’s how it’s done. And the Carver County library board pretty much agreed.

Now – as far as kids go?

Tell you what: KARE should have Ms. Shortal read Gender Queer, with the book’s illustrations, on the air.

“But Mitch – why not offer the NARN’s time slot?”

Because the book would violate FCC standards for broadcast. On radio, and on TV. For adult listeners.

KARE’s management won’t allow Ms. Shortal to read it on the air. Forget about the illustrations.

Sat what you will about FCC regulations – that’s a conversation I’d love to have. But if the FCC won’t let the book on the air, is it really something a city library should be providing to children without parental approval?

That, as always, is all.

It’s A Start

The Georgia Attorney General is bringing RICO charges against 60+ “Anti”-Fa droogs:

“We contend the 61 defendants together have conspired against the construction of the Atlanta public safety training center by conducting, coordinating, and organizing acts of violence, intimidation, and property destruction,” said AG Carr, in a press conference on Tuesday.

As alleged in the indictment, the defendants are members of Defend the Atlanta Forest, which Carr described Tuesday afternoon as an anarchist, anti-police, and anti-business extremist organization.

Time to remind your “progressive” friends that “Anti”-Fa is the lineal descendant of the German Communist Party’s version of the Brownshirts – and unlike the Brownshirts, they still exist.

Watch for Democrats to claim RICO is an affront to democracy later today.

The Definition Of “Insanity”…

…is apparently…

…uh…:

…reciting scientific reality.

In a video clip that surfaced this week, the musician, who grew up in San Francisco, asserted, “When God made you and me, before we came out of the womb, you know who you are and what you are. Later on, when you grow out of it, you see things and you start believing that you could be something that sounds good, but you know it ain’t right. Because a woman is a woman and a man is a man. That’s it. Whatever you wanna do in the closet, that’s your business. I’m OK with that.”

So to recap: according to the SanFranChron, “Insanity” is something that wouldl have been considered too obvious to bother saying 15 years ago.

Berg’s 24th Law In Action

In writing this, I realize I may have a case for another Berg’s law – in a place run by progressive, every alternative to your current politicians is worse than the one you have.

People might’ve thought “what could be worse than having Al Franken as a senator?“. I give you… Tina Flint Smith.

But I digress.This was him on Twitter, yesterday, apparently either watching the debate, or having someone feed him, factoids about it:

I mean, it is ignorant enough to be something Senator Smith might say:

But I think it does the truth a disservice to just chalk it up to ignorance.

Plastic, And Fantastic

If you havne’t seen the Barbie movie? The following review is submitted for your consideration. .

If you’re going to say “I have no intention of ever going to that movie, because it’s woke crap and I don’t care what you say”, that’s also fine. . If you want to leave a comment to that effect, I respectfully ask you to take it to, say, Fraters Libertas or Anti-Strib.

If you want to tell me I’m wrong about something to do with the movie, by all means, welcome.


Counterintuitive

I was probably inclined to dislike it, initially. Not because of any of its merits (Margot Robbie can do almost no wrong), or even any of what one might reasonably predict it’s flaws might be.

But do you want to know a little secret? I’m tired of popular culture bashing men. 

And no, it’s not just a parochial, knee-jerk, gender, politics response; I hate laziness and clichés, whether Amos and Andy, or speedy Gonzalez, or every villain on “Law and Order: SVU“ (hint: it’s always the Christian conservative.)

It’s become a cliché of modern screen writing and advertising; men in popular entertainment are pretty much, either:

  • – Neutered halfwits
  • – Safe Buffoons (think Fred Flintstone) 
  • – BroDudes, with undercurrents of stupidity, malevolence, or both.
  • – villains with no more subtlety than a cad in a melodrama, tying the heroine to the railroad tracks
  • – Actors with enough star power (Matt Damon, George Clooney, Harrison Ford) to avoid the clichés.

One typical example: from two years ago, a dramedy, called “Single Drunk Female“, a fairly promising concept  about a 20 something advertising exec who drinks herself out of a career and into supervised probation.  A fascinating premise.…

… that apparently couldn’t survive without turning every male in the cast into an impotent, helpless, hopeless buffoon, a one dimensional droog, a villain, or in the case of one and only one characterl, a supernaturally wise voice of reason.

Oops – I just checked my notes, and it turns out that that character, the closest thing to a three dimensional male character, was  actually a transgender woman.

I’d rhetorically ask “imagine what a steady diet of popular culture consistently painting men (who aren’t stars) as buffoons, douche bags and villains does to boys” – but you don’t really have to imagine it, do you? Sometimes it seems boys are living down to the example that popular culture has laid out for them for the past generation.

So yeah. I wasn’t inclined to see the movie, and I started the whole proces with a bit of a chip on my shoulder.

And as I noted this morning, I’d seen a couple of great movies on the previous two weekends – Sound of Freedom and No Hard Feelings. Why harsh the buzz?

I figured I’d do like I’ve done for the last 20 installments of X-Men, 49 Fast and Furiousers and 16 Avengers and Justice Leagues, and let someone else have my seat.


But my NARN colleague Jack Tomczak said it was worth a watch – emphatically .

So I figured – why not?

To keep an open mind, I tried to avoid the reviews – but I got sucked into at least part of Ben Shapiro’s scathing reaction. I will brook no babble about Shapiro, by the way; he’s a very sharp guy, really good at most everything he does. Literally, nobody in the media is covering the Hunter Biden scandal like Shapiro. I don’t get the hate some conservatives have for Shapiro, and I don’t have to worry about it.

And I did read one other, extremely positive review, from someone who’s probably closer to my side of the cultural divide than most.

So with a few misgivings, I went to the movie.


People on the right side of the cultural fence who’ve never seen the movie can be forgiven for assuming a couple of things:

  • It’s “woke”. It’s from Hollywood, which has been destroying lots of beloved franchises lately, so it’s not an *unreasonable* default guess.
  • It trashes men. As I noted above, it’s pretty much the ultimate lazy Millennial screenwriter trick. And on the sufr the surface, sure.

————

“Woke”

Michael Knowles isn’t my favorite commentator, but he nailed this point. If you look at the story behind the story – as the director, Greta Gerwig, urges the viewer to do – it’s a very sly *critique* of “woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” feminism and the collapse of social traditions.

There are so many pointers to this – without giving out any spoilers, I’ll point you to America Ferrera’s [2] understated but brilliant “Harried Mom” character, and her interaction with Rhea Perlman’s character, presented as the woman who invented Barbie and put Mattel on the map, but who I think actually represents…well, I’ll let you figure that out on your own [3], and on and on.

But here’s the connection that sneaks up on you, that is so brilliant and shuts the whole “woke” thing down.

The movie starts in a stylized prehistoric era [4] with little girls playing with dolls – which, narrator Helen Mirren tells us, were always babies, which always left the girls always playing Mommy.

And “then came Barbie”. The little girls then smash their baby dolls and tea sets, as the scene dissolves to perfect, pink, plastic Barbie World, with women doing everything that matters and men demoted to, well, Ken.

There’s even a sly aside to the modern world’s attempt to repeal biology when Helen Mirren notes that “Midge”, the pregnant Barbie, was discontinued.

A bunch of other stuff happens, and we fast forward to the final scene, the final *line* of the movie.

I won’t spoil it. But there is no way to put the opening – the literal and figurative smashing of traditions and expectations dating back to the beginning of time – and the closing together and *not* see that this movie is a *critique* of “third wave feminism”, and the changes in social norms that they have been about for the past few generations – throughout “Barbie’s” commercial life.

I won’t spoil it. Put on your critical hat, watch it, and tell me where I’m wrong.

———–

“Men / Ken”.

As far as how it treats men – via “Ken”, singular and plural? Yep. Men are vapid, ineffectual, impotent, pointless.

And *that’s the point*. [5] And it may be even more brilliant than the critique of third wave feminism. [6]

Let’s step outside the movie and look at sociology, 2020s style.

What does every sociologist, especially on the right, identify as the problem with young men today? Lack of purpose, goals, meaning?

And that those young men fill in the gap left by the lack of *purpose* to masculinity by asserting it via mindless, deflecting hedonism and pointless violence? [7]

Because society sees them as being about as useful to the world as a bike is to a trout?

Again – no spoilers. But *that* – flopping around without purpose, and then wondering what that purpose *should* be – and its parallels with young mens struggles today, is the point of Ken (singular and plural). When you watch the movie, and see the arc of “Ken’s” behavior throughout, keep that in mind.

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So what did the other reviewers miss, that I caught?

To me, the big theme was how very important *purpose* is to life. “Barbieworld” reflects “Modern” society in that everyone has all their material wants met (in fact, to a city full of dolls, they are irrelevant), and all the affirmation they need…

…but there is no purpose.

And it’s when, and how, Barbie and Ken discover that humans (not dolls, literally or figuratively [8]), women *and* men, need *purpose* in their lives that made me sit up in my seat and whisper “holy crap, this is good”.

————

Oh, yeah. The movie is a visual joy.

And not just the Barbieland sets – which are everything you heard they are. They look just like the little Barbieworlds that the girls in the neighborhood would put together out on Mrs. Goehner’s patio, only perfect.

But there are two other visual moments that are much, much better.

The visual change when Barbie meets Rhea Perlman is jarring – and a huge cue as to what lies ahead.

And there’s a scene, near the end of the show, where Ken and Barbie realize what’s missing in both of their lives – neither in Barbie World nor the Real World, but a place that has no visual definition but slowly, subtly shifting lights that are characters in their own right – one of the most striking bits of cinemetography I’ve ever seen. I may watch it again just for that.

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Think that review was long? You should see the first one I wrote.

I don’t often urge people to go see movies – but I urge you ignore all the hype on BOTH sides, put on your critical hat, and check it out.

[1] Well, we did. Not sure if they do anymore.

[2] An actress I hate to love, but I love anyway.

[3] Hint: it’s a name the Sixth Commandment advises one not to take in vain.

[4] It’s borrowed from the beginning of “2001: A Space Odyssey”

[5] This is one of several parts Ben Shapiro got hung up on. Shapiro’s brilliant – I push back hard on the conservative hate he gets – but he totally c**pped the bed in his review. Which I *really* don’t get – it’s not like he’s too uneducated to see subtext, allusion and symbolism, especially when it’s *right there on the screen*. Very much the opposite. It’s almost like he c**pped the bed on purpose. Why would he do that? No freaking clue.

[6] Seriously. I may go see the movie again just to put together all the pieces of this subplot.

[7] No spoilers – but there’s a scene I’ll just describe as “Omaha Beach In Saving Private Ryan via Barbieworld” that made me double over laughing, and wince, out loud.

[8] Without getting into politics, much of modern society treats humans as interchangeable widgets whose meaning is to consume. I could write a piece ten times as long as this already huge review on the horrors of that subject alone.