I’m particularly proud of the interview I had last weekend with Peter Wood, author of 1620 – A Criticial Review of the 1629 Project. Wood and his book take a hammer to the historical fraud that the NYTimes sicced on the nation…

…and, worse, the miseducation of an entire generation about the history of our country.

It starts at 33 minutes into the hour:

Prager U has a similar message:

Whether government responded to Covid with draconian lockdowns (New York, the UK, Germany, Norway) or deferred to individual responsibility (most of the rural west), or skittered back and forth between both extremes (Italy, Sweden), Covid infection rates have seemed to exhibit the behavior of…

…well, respiratory viruses, waxing and waning along with weather conditions more than any government action, or lack of it.

But throughout, the pro-authoritarian (“Mascist”) wing of America’s response has had one consistent villain; Americans. “If they only followed the rules and wore their masks”, they whinge (when not whinging about the feds’ response), “we’d have already conquered this” – completely ignoring the fact that many of the places that “conquered” the virus with aggressive measures are still, or have started, suffering horribly of late).

Of course, it’s pure gaslighting. Even early in the summer, before the “Mask Wars” became part of the ongoing cultural bar brawl, Americans were wearing masks voluntarily at among the highest rates in the Western world.

And, studies show, they always have, and still are:

The data, released in [the CDC’s] weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, is roughly in line with other polls showing that most Americans report wearing masks, at least when they are inside stores.

For example, Pew Research reported in August that 85 percent of 13,200 adults they surveyed said they wore masks in stores, up from 65 percent in June.

In a National Geographic poll released early this month, 92 percent of 2,200 Americans surveyed said they always or sometimes wore a mask when leaving the house.

Now, this thread isn’t about whether masks are or aren’t effective – that discussion has happened more than a few times in the comment section.

It’s about government – as it becomes ever more authoritarian – using “masks” as a vehicle to blame the average schnook for its own failings in dealing with the pandemic.

Which is only going to get worse over the winter.

Our stereotype of the banana republic dictator is that he/she does their oppressing from above – with the military, the secret police, the “legal system” and so on.

And that’s all true – the KGB, the Gestapo, the Pasdaran, were or are all pretty effective at making life miserable, nasty, brutish and short for those who didn’t toe the authorities’ lines (and, often enough, for those who did, just to be safe).

But Americans are blessed to live in a place where, for the most part, we haven’t had to learn about how authoritarians subjugate us from “below” – by weaponizing the “underclass” against the middle.

History is chock full of examples, of whom most Americans are blissfully uneducated.

The Soviets weaponized envy against the closest thing that existed to a “middle class” in much of the USSR, the “kulaks” – which, like “counterrevolutionary”, was a fungible, malleable term that ould be expanded to include pretty much anyone those in power disdained. Sort of like “racist”, “misogynist” and “fascist” today.

The Nazi Sturmabteilung – popularly “the Brownshirts” – were a popular way for people with no particular talent or skill to fit into something, by being a thug and smacking down the opposition (and the Communists’ Rote Fahne, which lives on as “Anti”-Fa today, were the same thing for the communists).

The “Red Guards” in China certainly weaponized class envy, along with a parallel groups in Cambodia.

Former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega enlisted his “Dignity Battalions” – a “paramilitary” mass of down-and-outers and slum-dwellers who beat down opposition without a whole lot of ceremony.

Iran’s Basiji – basically a theo-political militia reporting to the Revolutionary Guards – serve much the same purpose in Iran; they are “Karen” with firearms. ]

And Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Militia of Venezuela” – basically a half-million-strong mob of thugs that bypasses the military chain of command to report to Maduro? Same exact model – a mass of characters with no particular stake in life other than upholding the regime/s that gave, or give, them any status at all.

All of them were threats looming out there, awaiting anyone who spoke up, who demonstrated, who were seen to be thinking about being a threat to the various regimes. A nervous knot in the stomach that everyone needed to keep in mind, and keep happy.

The lesson is obvious – a population that’s nervous about getting pummeled in the street, and publicly castigated out of public life by a drooling mob of (usually armed, always legally-supported) people, can’t do mundane (to Americans) things like organize, speak, oppose the regime. It ratchets the consequence curve outside the range of more and more people’s abilities to accept.

Nervous people are politically passive people.

I thought about that reading the news that Los Angeles County is decriminalizing a wide swathe of offenses:

In a new policy directive entitled “Declination Policy Directive,” Gascon has directed his subordinates not to enforce Penal Code Section 602 (trespass), Penal Code Section 415 (Disturbing the Peace), or Driving without a Valid License (Cal. Vehicle Code Section 12500).

Social justice warriors believe these are all statutes the white aristocracy uses to subjugate members of minority communities, institutionalizing racism. Resisting Arrest will also no longer be prosecuted.

Gascon will end the practice of charging minors as adults for murder and other serious crimes. He will extend victims services to the families of anyone shot by police. He will eliminate gang enhancements in criminal complaints, a practice Republicans initiated in the 1990s. He will have no cash bail, and the death penalty will no longer “be on the table.”

So – if you’re a “normal” in LA County, you have to worry about your city/county regime arbitrarily shutting down your livelihood. You have to worry about “Anti”-Fa and the cancel mob coming after your personal and professional reputation. And even without all that, you have to be concerned about the ongoing decay in your community that these sorts of policies inevitably bring.

LA County is doing de jure, by the way, what Minneapolis is doing de facto today. Watch for the student senate that runs Minneapolis to keep up with the Joneses before too terribly long.

So why did Latinos vote for Trump in record numbers?

Because they’re a bunch of bitter Jesus Freaks, according to the guy who made “bigger Jebus freaks” a political class and social identity group:

.@BarackObama: “There’s a lot of evangelical Hispanics who…the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans, or puts detainees— undocumented workers— in cages,they think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion.” pic.twitter.com/g13DHGcM7y

Is there a President in history who has so fully incorporated condescension into his brand as Obama?

BTW – GOP outreach to Latinos needs to lead, front-and-center, with this for the next four years.

Also with cooling it with the “Deport-em-all” talk.

When it comes to state-level Covid restrictions – bans, shutdowns, snitch lines and the rest – the big media and the pundit class (pardon, more and more, the redundancy) act a lot like strict but blinkered Fundamentalists confronting two-for-ones at happy hour; the impenitent deserve any horrors that befall them, in this life or the next.

All through the summer, Big Media was fairly drooling at the notion that, while Covid was ravaging New York and Boston and Minneapolis, “it’s gonna hit the red states MUCH harder”, with a perceptible thrill in their voice.

Which is all I have to explain the way Big Media has covered the surge in Covid in the Dakotas. I’ve called the phenomenon “#BlueFragility” – the notion that no matter what goes wrong in a Blue city or state – crime, corruption, costs, Covid, bureaucratic legerdemain – it’s going to be worse in the Red areas, and it’s probably their fault besides!

The level of joy that came out a few weeks ago when North Dakota’s case load surged (after a cold, wet October – the same weather that’s gonna cause a surge everywhere else, before too long) had a pronounced “Scarlet Letter” vibe to it.

And it’s not just pseudomoral schadenfreud. It’s bastardizing both science and journalism (to the extent that benighted craft can still be bastardized). Remember the Sturgis rally? When snarky bobbleheads with tin “reporter” badges uncritically regurgitated garbage “science” tying every single case in the upper midwest to the Sturgis rally? That made the headlines. The clarification – it was more like 80 cases in Minnesota – got Section C page 16.

Oh yeah – being big media, pretty much everything they’ve written about the situation is wrong. To pick just one bit of misreporting – the story from a few weeks back that Gov. Burgum was asking infected but asymptomatic staff to keep working:.

“Anger in North Dakota After Governor Asks Covid-Positive Health Workers To Keep Working.” That does sound pretty dire – the state is so swamped that the sick are treating the sick.

Except this is a phenomenon in agricultural states generally because they rely on small rural Critical Access Hospitals, often with few beds and limited or nonexistent intensive care capabilities. “COVID-19 patients and other critically ill patients who need to be cared for in an intensive care unit are typically transferred to larger regional hospitals, which can be hundreds of miles from the small critical hospitals,” notes USA Today when it’s not berating the Dakotas. This adds extra pressure to city hospitals and can potentially increase case severity and death. In fact, the CDC spells out guidance for areas in such situations that allows such working situations precisely because unlike what we normally think of as a disease case, that is, an exhibition of a certain cluster of symptoms, many Covid-19 “cases” are asymptomatic and non-spreading. It’s just one of the many idiosyncrasies of how this disease is treated compared to others. 

While I chalk this up to a frenzy of secular-revivalist fervor, the author, Michael Fumento, adds another wrinkle to the diagnosis:

Say you’re a writer in New York or Los Angeles living in something approaching a coronavirus police state and fearing for your job and pining for a pint and you learn North Dakota ranked second in least economic distress from the pandemic while South Dakota also did quite well. Further, a U.S. Census Bureau poll found that the two states least suffering from anxiety and depression right now are, yup, the Dakotas. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s freedom!

I do urge you to read the whole thing.

By the way – unlike pretty much any mainstream media figure, I’ve spent time in the Dakotas since the pandemic started. A *lot* of time. Four times since March. While there was no state mask mandate, people *on their own* were wearing them, no less than in the Twin Cities.

And in a better contrast still? Listening to Governor Burgum addressing the state is a wonderful contrast to Governor Klink; he treats his audience like someone he has to respect as adults, puts the actual science out there, and doesn’t play stupid stunts like hiding his math, a welcome comparison to the gym teacher with his knobs and levers and vanishing models.

Moving as I did from NoDak to the big city 35 years ago, I’ve had an adult lifetime of dealing with “blue” stereotypes of the rural west. I’d say “I’m gonna enjoy watching them choke on them”, but it’s probably too soon.

Downtown Minneapolis boosters are split over the news that Dollar General is putting a store on the ever-more-desolate Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.

On the one hand, you’ve got the one that chortle at all the “People of Walmart”-style stories they associate with Dollar General – a chain usually associated with towns too small or neighborhoods too poor for a Walmart.

On the other hand you’ve got the “aren’t we better than this?” mob.

Rick Nelson at the Strib kinda straddles the line:

Yes, “tacky” and “depressing” are two words to describe the appearance of a dollar store on what is widely viewed as Minneapolis’ Main Street, a thoroughfare that recently underwent a $50 million makeover. “Distressing” could be another, since the appearance of this type of merchant might be an indication that downtown’s dwindling retail scene is taking yet another step in the wrong direction.

The store’s new home in the Andrus (the historic building formerly known as Renaissance Square) at S. 5th Street and Nicollet Mall won’t be sullied with a glaring yellow-and-black Dollar General logo. Instead, there will be a hip “DGX” marquee, reflecting Dollar General’s curated version of its discount store.

So what does it all mean, for a street that the city of Minneapolis just spent tens of millions of dollars refurbing (and BLM and “Anti”-Fa spent a couple of nights hacking away at)?

Why, it’s almost as if when you treat a major city like an urban studies lab, make driving onerous and parking prohibitive, and treat public safety as a sign of misbegotten privilege even if someone hasn’t burned down your favorite destination (or closed it forever via a hamfisted lockdown), the people from the outlying parts of the city that downtown used to depend on for all that juicy revenue will take their money elsewhere?

Ilhan Omar thinks we’re the “Klan”:

Omar’s not stupid. She knows that’s not true.

She just knows that CD5 Democrats pretty much believe anything they’re told.

New Yorkers are leaving NYC in record numbers.

I’ve added emphasis in a few places:

City residents filed 295,103 change of address requests from March 1 through Oct. 31, according to data The Post obtained from the US Postal Service under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Since the data details only when 11 or more forwarding requests were made to a particular county outside NYC, the number of moves is actually higher. And a single address change could represent an entire household, which means far more than 300,000 New Yorkers fled the five boroughs.

Whatever the exact number, the exodus — which began when COVID-19 hit the city in early spring — is much greater than in prior years. From just March through July, there were 244,895 change of address requests to destinations outside of the city, more than double the 101,342 during the same period in 2019.

As long as they don’t bring their infantile New York politics with ’em…

Memory is a survival trait.

Squirrels remember where they buried the nut, so they can eat it later
to survive the winter.  Those that don’t, die.

Children remember burning their finger, so they treat fire
respectfully.  Those who don’t, burn to death.

Conservatives remember past public policy disasters, so we can avoid
repeating them.  We use monuments and books to help us remember.

Liberals remember . . . nothing.  Nothing ever happened before they were
born, except slavery, which was bad and therefore everything that
happened before they were born, is bad.  So it must all be torn down and
thrown out and replaced with something that sounds better.  And it must
be done right now, because Liberals have no patience for history lessons
or experience or hard-gained wisdom.  Why would they need any?  What
could possibly go wrong?

Half the population believes President Trump bungled the Covid response
by failing to impose a travel ban and nation-wide lock-down in January,
when Covid hit the news.  They literally cannot remember that we spent
January dealing with impeachment, or the World Health Organization
telling us Covid was nothing to worry about, or hand washing and
elbow-bumps as sensible precautions, or all the Democrat protests over
banned flights from China.  They believe 200 million Americans died of
Covid because they don’t remember differently.

Loss of memory is an anti-survival trait and half our society is eagerly
embracing it.  This does not bode well for the continued existence of
the nation.

Joe Doakes

I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to say “Progressives” (I’m not gonna continue debasing the term “liberal” – the left did enough of that) have no memory.

Orwell showed us how important controlling history – our “collective” story about ourselves – was to a would-be tyrant. This has been borne out in countless socialist and totalitarian regimes – knowing the wrong history could be a lethal error.

Having the correct memory, the one one is told to have, correctly and punctually, is a survival trait, historically (ahem) on the left.

Democrats in the Senate couldn’t get President Obama’s judicial
nominations approved under the old rules, so Chuck Schumer changed the
rules.  Republicans saw the rule change and used it to President Trump’s
judicial nominations approved.  Rule changes cut both ways.

Democrats couldn’t get Joe Biden elected using legitimate ballots, so
they kicked out poll watchers and dumped half-a-million phony ballots in
key counties to steal the election.  Democrats refused to play by the
old rules in this election.  Republicans, seeing this . . . what?  Will
keep playing by the old rules in the next election?  That means losing
for certain.  Even die-hard RINOs like Pierre Delecto and Susan Collins
aren’t that stupid.

In 2022, if Republican activists block polling places armed with
AR-15’s, burn down Democrat poll watchers’ homes, storm into vote
counting centers to throw ballots on the floor amidst thousands of fake
ballots . . . who can complain?  The old rules no longer apply, remember?

And if Democrat activists try to do the same but Republican activists
resist and innocents are killed in the cross-fire . . . is this truly
how we want future elections to run?

Will there even BE future elections?  Will President Harris allow them? 
The rules have changed . . . .

Joe Doakes

It’s only “paranoid” until it comes true.

“Anti”-Fa and the parts of BLM that are more forthright about their Marxism make no bones about the fact that it’s a revolution they want.

Violence?

With or without, they are clearly fine either way.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is standing, socially distanced, in line at the Q-Fanatic Barbeque in South Minneapolis. Focused on the smell of the delicious brisket, he’s caught by surprise as Avery LIBRELLE walks in behind him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shhh….sure enough, it’s Avery. What’s new…

LIBRELLE: You wingnuts are paranoid. [Switches to that condescending coo-ing voice that “progressives” use as they parrot this particular chanting point] Nobody is coming for your guns.

BERG: Why do you say that?

LIBRELLE: You said the same scare tactic of Obama, and he never came for your guns.

BERG: Obama had some blue seats in red states to defend – had he let slip his inner id on guns, he’d have extincted them. Well, extincted them faster, because in a lot of America a “blue state Democrat” is a little like a “dodo bird driving an AMC Gremlin”.

LIBRELLE: So – he didn’t come for guns!

BERG: He was a lot of things, but not politically stupid.

LIBRELLE: Biden is even more centrist on the issue than Obama was. So no [switches back to the condescending coo-ing voice] Nobody’s coming for your guns.

BERG: So that’s your final answer.

LIBRELLE: Of course. Paranoid wingnut.

BERG: Got your phone handy?

LIBRELLE: I lost it. Let’s use yours.

BERG: Naturally. [Pulls up Joe Biden’s campaign site, scrolls down to paragraphs 6-10]. Go ahead and read that.

LIBRELLE: [Silently mouths the words]

BERG: Either you’re lying and he is coming for our guns, or he’s lying on his campaign website.

LIBRELLE: Well, of course he’s coming for…those guns.

BERG: So in one line, you’ve gone from [mocks the cooing tone] “nobody’s coming for your guns” to “we’re coming for the guns a bunch of people who don’t know the difference between a firing pin and a crochet needle think you don’t really need to have“. That was fast.

LIBRELLE: [Mocking tone] All right, you got me. Joe Biden’s gonna break into your house and take your guns.

BERG: So in two lines, we’ve gone from “Nobody’s taking your guns” to trying to mock me for catching in covering, badly, for your own lie.

LIBRELLE: Trump banned bump stocks.

BERG: Bad Trump. Don’t change the subject.

LIBRELLE: Hey, can you lend me ten bucks?

BERG: Why?

LIBRELLE: I need to run over and buy some spray paint to paint to paint “Meat is Murder” all over this place.

BERG: Ask them [BERG points a thumb toward unamused counter guy]

LIBRELLE: Oh, great idea. I…

But BERG has already left.

And SCENE.

Florida governor DeSantis proposes broadening Florida’s self-defense laws to make shooting in defense of property against looters more legally tenable.

The media is howling that it would enable roaming packs of vigilantes to slaughter people on the streets. Like most media reports on expanding self-defense rights, it’s a lot more nuanced than that:

The law would expand the state’s self-defense law, which currently forbids “the use of force in defense of property,” by increasing what constitutes a “forcible felony,” according to the Miami Herald. DeSantis seeks to make looting or “interruption or impairment” of a business such a felony, thereby justifying deadly force to prevent it…The Republican’s bill would also make it a third-degree felony to obstruct traffic, and would allow drivers to have legal immunity if they unintentionally kill or maim anyone engaging in blocking a roadway during a demonstration, according to the Herald. The law, which is only a draft at the time of publishing, is also set to grant state authorities the ability to withhold funds from localities that choose to reduce their police budgets

Expect much pants-wetting from the class that still thinks looters are “mostly peaceful”.

But they’re missing the point. The target of this bill isn’t looters.

It’s Kamala Harris.

DeSantis is setting himself up as the “Law and Order and Competence” candidate for the presidency in 2024.

And after this past year, I gotta say he’s on my short list.

Apparently, the Menards in the Midway was worried about rioting Trump supporters.

They stacked up huge pallets of lumber in front of the doors – just like they did during the George Floyd riots / May.

Apparently, those Trump supporters I’m going to riot.

Any day now.

Just like those waves of “white supremacist terror“ we’ve been assured are imminent for the past 12 years or so.

“Anti”-Fa is an “idea”.

So are ISIS, Al Quaeda and every other toxic ideology in the history of the world.

Here’s the new documentary, “Antifa – Rise of the Black Flag”. It traces “Anti”-Fa’s roots back to the Communist Party of Weimar Germany…

…and straight through to the present day, right here and now.

Watch it:

This is not just an idea. It’s also not just a bunch of crazy kids. It’s not even just a domestic terror group. It is an insurgency.

Watch it.

Pass it along.

Make sure the Democrats, especially the MN DFL, owns it.

December, 2016: “Perhaps “blue” America, especially its “celebrity” class, has learned its lesson – that gratuitously insulting half of the population, treating them like a bunch of cartoonish caricatures, wasn’t the best approach to winning an election”.

November 2020: Narrator: “They did not learn their lesson”.

However the election comes out, I need to print up a few hundred of these.

And, in my neighborhood, rub them down with poison ivy.

The problem isnt that Trump hasn’t condemned racism and “white supremacy”.

In fact, here we see him do it 38 times:

The problem is that it isn’t literally the first and last thing out of his mouth whenever he speaks, which Democrat messaging seems to assume puts it outside the attention span of the typical Democrat voter.

Which the partisan media is counting on.

And yes, the media is partisan.

…it’s great to find Minnesota is the champion at something again.

Well, not “good”…:

More “notable”, I guess.

Read the whole thread.

Poker players look for the other guys’ “tell,” a facial tic or mannerism that indicates the bid is a bluff. When they see the tell, they know he’s faking.

The security precautions to get into the doctor’s office include standing in line 6 feet apart wearing a mask and answering a bunch of questions. But they’re self-reported answers, unverified. No, I haven’t been out of the country, I don’t have a fever, I haven’t been in contact with anybody who has the deadliest virus known to man. What if I’m lying?

It reminds me of the pre 9-11 security precaution. The airlines used to ask did you pack your own bag? Did anyone ask you to carry anything on board? Has your bag been out of your control? No. But what if I’m lying?

Self-reported security. That’s the tell. It’s all fake. And they know it. So do you. So why do we put up with it?

Joe Doakes

Because you need the damn appointment or the load of groceries, and you just wanna get home and get back to work without a pack of murder hornets…er, Karens descending on you.

Standing on principle is time consuming and emotionally wrenching. Having no boundless supply of either, I pick my battles. I suspect we all do.

From the “Bitter Barrista” comedy videoblog, we get what may be the most perfect, if coarse, response to the excesses of modern authoritarian therapeutic culture. (Language occasionaly NSFW).

First, the vid:

Then, the line:

“Has it ever occurred to you that that it’s no one else’s responsibility to make sure that you’re emotionally stable? But you can’t comprehend that, can you? Because being an alleged victim of circumstances is the only identity that you possess. You use minor inconveniences to belittle other people just so you can inflate your own sense of self-importance, because you’ve never actually accomplished shit in your life. And if you were to take that time to look inwards to reflect, you would weep at the pathetic puddle you’ve reduced the confines of your life to. Then again, life was never a game of rock, paper, a scissor, where logic doesn’t always defeat entitled bitch! By the way, I called you Karen because I’m a nice person. What I mean is C__t”

When you apply this to so many peoples’ responses to so many of life’s travails – quarantining, the results of the last Presidential election, any sort of cognitive dissonance in education, society or the workplace – it really is perfect.

I suspect Bitter Barista is affiliated with Black Rifle Coffee Company, which can only be a good thing. And it’s one of the funniest channels on Youtube, which is a low bar, I know, but it jumps it with style.

First it was Kanye West – one of rap’s most consistently creative (and yes, unbalancee) figures. [1], endorsing Trump three years ago.

Then it was Ice Cube – formerly of NWA, and more famous as an actor these days – not so much “endorsing Trump” as asking blacks what the Democrats have done for them lately, and getting a lot of “because shut up” from white progressives as an answer.

And now, Fifty Cent- who realized that under the BIden tax plan he’d just be Thirty Cent:

While I remain resolutely apathetic about celebrities’ political opinions, let’s look below the surface. Say what you will about rap [1], but at a time in the election season when celebs are supposed to be threatening to move to France, you’ve got three incredibly successful black men, actively telling their own community that the party that has considered their votes their property for two generations, doesn’t deserve ’em.

So what? Other than a lot of adenoidal progressive white and academic black critics saying Cube, Kanye and Fifty Cent were never all that good anyway, , I mean?

I’m wondering if part of the reason Biden – who, the media polls tell us, has an eleventy-teen digit lead over Trump in Minnesota – is spending to much money in an ostensibly safe state is the Democrats are worried about the black vote slipping away?

Remember – it’s been estimated that if the Dems’ take of the black vote ever drops below 80%, they are sunk nationwide. Not the whole black vote; one in five.

Is that in striking distance?

The pandemic is beginning its eighth month – and the lockdown is well into seven months of devastation America’s economy, mental health and well-being.

And you’re starting to see Big Left hopping up in down with glee – the case numbers are starting to move upward in “Red” America, justifying their almost onanistic, millenialistic desire to see the infidels pay for their impudence.

But how’s it really going out there?

I took the stats from Worldometers as of October 13th, and broke them down across a few different statistical groupings:

The Redneck Bloodbath just isn’t happening.

This is not the Babylon Bee.

“Alternate reality”.

New York still has a per capita death toll triple the national average. New York City’s economy – off Wall Street, anyway – is in the tank. It’s school system is saved from being a shambles only by having been a shambles before the epidemic. Fredo Cuomo and Ratzo DiBlasio spent the last six months playing out petty intra-party political squabbles as New Yorkers died in box lots.

Progressives do, indeed, exist in an “alternate reality”.

Don’t let the title – or the fact that it’s in the generally unforgiveable Slate, for that matter – put you off from reading this piece, “The Store That Called the Cops on George Floyd “.

This piece captures not only the history of CUP Foods, the South Minneapolis bodega whose employee called 911 on George Floyd last Memorial Day, a Palestinian immigrant family that’s worked a couple of generations of butts off to succeed in a “transitioning” neighborhood through a couple of waves of blight.

More than that, it captures the successive waves of fervid racism (Black on Arab, Black on European, Arab and Black on European), community spirit, delusion, and the unlikely trifecta of community spirit infused with delusion and racism:

Toussaint Morrison, a Black Lives Matter organizer in Minneapolis, said he doesn’t actually see any problem with CUP Foods reopening. But he doesn’t necessarily think anyone should shop there…On CUP Foods reopening, he said, “I say get a Black-owned corner store near there, and say shop here. We’ll beat all of their prices. Even if we lose money, whatever.” The point, he said, is to keep Black money in the Black community: “Whether they open or not, it’s on us as a community to not buy their shit. It’s that simple.”

So – far from dismissing it because of a “woke” copy-editor’s inelegant titling, or its laughable origins (Slate, for flock’s sake), I urge you to read it as a guide to everything that’s going to slowly strangle Minneapolis.

And to maybe hang onto it as a time capsule showing future generatons how “community” became impossible.

When Conservatives say American culture is swirling the bowl, this is
what they mean.

The statement of facts given by the Court of Appeals:

***

The Minnesota Vixens were a women’s tackle-football team.  From 2012
through 2017, they were part of the Independent Women’s Football
League.  Christina Ginther applied to play but was told she could not
join the team because league policy requires that all players be “born
female.”  Ginther is a transgender woman.

***

The issue in the case is a technical point about whether the team
tendered a claim to the league to pay for the lawyers to defend it. 
Ignore that, doesn’t matter.  The important part is the Minnesota Human
Rights Act protects the rights of a man dressed up as a woman to sue a
woman’s organization for refusing to allow him to play tackle football
against women.

Swirling.

Joe Doakes

Swirling notwitstanding, I can’t wait until a transgender female tries to break into roller derby – which is in my observation an activity packed to the gills with virtue-signaling enthusiastic progressives.

The court case would be more fun than the skating.