Text message that went out from Planned Parenthood on Thursday:

What must it be like to be the ghoul working at the Planned Parenthood “Abortion Talk” Command Post on holidays?

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.

I mean, even more than the results themselves?

https://twitter.com/Lucas_Gage_/status/1723841200090698175

Then read the comments.

Otherwise, avoid both.

I stipulate this may be just this guy’s audience, but I don’t want 90% of these people reproducing, much less babysitting. .

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

https://twitter.com/RadioGenoa/status/1723230188673048652

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?

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.

To: Millennials, And Maybe Some Zeepers
From”. Mitch Berg, Obstreperous Peasant, Millie Parent And Generational Agnostic
Re: Stop Digging

Dear Millennials – and many of you in Gen Z,

It’s not like I don’t understand the anger.

When I was in high school and college, the “Baby Boom” was barely entering its prime years. The oldest ones were in their mid-thirties. And they were sucking all the air out of the room. The world didn’t always talk about demographics, but when they did, they talked about the Baby Boomers, their shenanigans, their ways and customs and music and culture. They were the first generation in human history to not only have a “youth culture”, but to see their “youth culture” become society’s dominant social, artistic, media and eventually political culture.

And of course, the “Boomers” were having all the fun, earning all the money, getting all the cool jobs and thoroughly enjoying the soceital conversation being all about their demographic Long March.

As someone from the generation after them – whose only memory of the Beatles was hearing on the radio they’d broke up, for whom Vietnam and the Summer of Love were already history by the time I was old enough to learn about them, and who was keenly aware that I was going to be competing against an awful lot of them – I was already sick of hearing about them.

Not sick of them – per se. Just sick of all the constant overweening hyper focus on them, and the realization I’d be competing with them and their social publicity juggernaut for the rest of my life.

So, why all the background?

Because, Millennials? You are on track to be vastly more hated by your progeny than the Baby Boom.

And you Zoomers have plenty of time to do even worse.

You think the Baby Boom got entitled to having society rebuild itself around their needs, passions, dysfunctions and mistakes?

Millennials are no less entitled – and tack on a layer of manic hypersensitivity and victorian censoriousness, not instead of, but on top of all that entitlement. And where the (stereotyped versin of the) Baby Boom obsessed on and define themselves by their material achievements and accomplishments, the Millennial stereotype is people suffocating everything around them with their maladies; no crowd of Fort Lauderdale yentas complaining about their rheumatism compares to an office full of millennials with their lactoses and glutens and dysthymias and celiacs and I’m feeling depressed just writing about it. And the whipsawing of Baby Boom politics – from hippies to Reagan voters – was a lot more interesting than the mushy gullible center-leftism that had you all voting for Obama – a decision we’ll be paying for for a generation.

You’ve been warned. .

That is all.

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:

A St. Louis Park school board member criticizes Muslim parents for a lack of "solidarity" after they raised concerns about material that is "sexualized and not age-appropriate" being presented to their children. pic.twitter.com/aRjC2X2krI

— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) November 6, 2023

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.

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.

BOMBSHELL REPORT ON THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

HUNDREDS of secret reports show how @DHSgov’s @CISAgov, The GEC (@StateDept), @Stanford and others worked together to censor AMERICANS before the 2020 election, including true information, jokes, and opinions.

🧵 THREAD:

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) November 6, 2023

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?”

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

Anti-Israel protesters physically attack Jewish people for carrying Israeli flags in St Louis, USA.

🇺🇸🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/R6XNz6wiUP

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 6, 2023

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.

Professor Galloway: I hear what you’re saying.

NYU Professor calls for COVID amnesty on Bill Maher:

“I wanted a harsher lockdown policy. In retrospect: I was wrong… But here's the bottom line: We were doing our best. Let’s give a little grace and forgiveness.”pic.twitter.com/sxEY9nnhki

— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) October 28, 2023

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.

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:

Gen-Z is just not prepared for the draft. They’re genuinely worried about what it would mean for them. pic.twitter.com/X8RF38OFqn

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 25, 2023

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

Rep Betty McCollum was too busy affirming “Israel's right to defend itself" (aka GENOCIDE AGAINST GAZA) to talk to Us Palestine Solidarity Activists, arresting us instead.

As Representative McCollum must know, apartheid Israel isn’t “DEFENDING ITSELF” it is occupying Palestine. pic.twitter.com/e7hEsguVJM

— MN Anti-War Committee (@AntiwarMN) October 26, 2023

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…

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.

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:

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1714729290636415389

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/mrotzie/status/1706427221638877466

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

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:

https://twitter.com/janashortal/status/1701641595320148021

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.

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.

…is apparently…

…uh…:

Carlos Santana, who grew up in San Francisco, delivered a speech laced with anti-transgender remarks during a recent performance, telling the audience, “A woman is a woman, and a man is https://t.co/1eEjyjURro

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) August 24, 2023

…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.

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:

No one is trying to allow abortions right up to birth. You asshole, DeSantis. #GOPDebate

— Al Franken (@alfranken) August 24, 2023

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

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz Signs Bill Legalizing Abortions Up to Birth

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

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.

———-

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.

————-

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.

Movies are pretty streaky to me.

Before Gran Torino came out I think I’d gone something like 3-4 years without seeing a movie in a theater. No big deal – I scarcely noticed it, and had plenty of other stuff to keep me busy.

After the “lockdown” ended, I went to a couple of films just to throw a throbbing middle fingers at the Karens of the world. I don’t even remember the movies – just how good throwing. that finger fels. Also how much room I had. I literally was the only person in the theater more than once. #ThaanksGovernorWalz

But I’ve been light on movies again, for a while now. I didn’t grow up with comic books (other than “Flaming Carrot” and, later, “King and Country”), so I have no nostalgia for the endless Marvel and DC franchises. For that matters, I lost all interest in Star Wars after “Attack of the Clones or whatever it was called. I literally haven’t seen a single one after the third episode/sixth movie. When asked which universe I prefer, Star Trek or Star Wars, I reply “Firefly“.

And I try to avoid going to movies I reasonably believe are going to be a waste of time and money. I’ve literally walked out of one movie in my life (The Burbs with Tom Hanks).

But I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately. I’ve seen movies four weekends in a row. And – unbelievably – they’ve all been good.

• Sound of Freedom. Amazing film. . Unbelievably intense. Its critics say “it manipulates the audience ZOMG”. Right . So did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Oliver Twist” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”. That’s art, especially art for a cause, for you. .
• No Hard Feelings. Yep ,a Jennifer Lawrence film. “But she’s a lefty”. I don’t care – it’s a movie with a fundamentally conservative message. One reviewer called it “a sex comedy without the sex”, and it’s not wrong – especially given that the one nude scene is hilarious and diametrically not erotic in the least.
• Oppenheimer. I love the fact that a director trusts and audience to be able to follow a complex, non-sequential plot.

Aaaaaaaand Barbie.

“Wait – wut”

Yep. Barbie. And I’d do it again – entirely on conservative social criticism grounds .

More tomorrow .

SCENE: Mitch BERG is getting canning supplies at Fleet Farm, when Avery LIBRELLE walks round the corner.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Fuc…crying out loud, Avery, how are you?

LIBRELLE: Shut up. We figured out how to get white ammosexuals like you to support common sense gun safety regulations.

BERG: I can’t wait.

LIBRELLE: Give guns to black men!

BERG: Like this guy…

https://twitter.com/jeffcharlesjr/status/1688653967499079680?s=46&t=NQICV0vfnJ7ol-tsbeTj-A

…who’s been getting universal, comprehensive praise from gun owners of all ethnicities?

LIBRELLE: No, no. I mean if we gave stereotypical black men guns and got reactions from stereotypical white ammosexuals.

BERG: That…is, uh, ,probably factual. and uncommonly frank of you. Did you just have a wisdom tooth pulled?

LIBRELLE: They did just legalize weed in Minnesota.

BERG: Aaaaah ,yeah. Hey, look!

(BERG points at…something, LIBRELLE slowly ambles around in the other direction, at which point BERG makes his escape).

And SCENE

Senator Erin Maye Quade continues to confirm my thesis that DFL politicians count on their voters being – let’s be diplomatic – smug, but uninformed and uncritical.

SW is being required to attend a training by a literal, designated hate group for firing an employee who was harassing her co-worker. Apparently, harassing a co-worker is now protected religious liberty? I can't even https://t.co/Zf6mV68eTk

— Erin Maye Quade (@ErinMayeQuade) August 8, 2023

The Alliance Defending Freedom is “literally” “designated” as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is – and I know 95% of your readers know this – paid to defame conservative groups, leaders and thought.

It’s high time this behavior be commemorated in a Berg’s Law.

News articles we see as regularly as the rising and falling of the tide:

The spring of every election year: “Evangelicals swinging toward the left! (when a poll shows the Democrat vote among Evangelicans rose from 22% to 23%)

Every decade, during “festival” season: “Country music is moving to the left!” (when some flavor of the month singer goes on “The View” instead of the NASCAR pre-race show”

SCENE: Mitch BERG is sitting in a Chicago-style Viking restaurant in Richfield, perusing the menu. Devadip Ulysses PLOOBRADOR is escorted in and sits at a table next to BERG. PLOOBRADOR is a mystic prophet and self-described wise man who also doubles as a UPS and Doordash driver.

BERG: Mr. Ploobrador.

PLOOBRADOR: Mr. Berg. So what’s been keeping you busy?

BERG: The usual, Collapse of civil society, mostly.

PLOOBRADOR: The tribalism is truly suffocating.

BERG: Yeah, but it goes beyond that. As Dennis Prager notes, in 1861, when the US split into two nations, and provided you leave out slavery and some of the erosions of federalism that’s happened by that point, they were virtual mirror images of each other, at least in terms of structure and process.

And there is just no way that if this nation split up today that’d be the case. If the US split into two nations, one would largely reflect the Constitution as it is, and the other would likely resemble the French Republic with a little dash of Scandinavian parliamentarianism.

PLOOBRADOR: You are not wrong.

BERG: And of course, the way around that is to renew our commitment to federalism, limited government and checks and balances.

But the GOP is killing those institutions with neglect, and the Democrats are killing them very deliberately.

PLOOBRADOR: I can not argue. Decline and collapse is something that requires a great deal of acquiescence.

BERG: Right. So I’m wondering – at this point, barring a serious “coming to Jesus” re federalism at some point, which seems improbable at best…

PLOOBRADOR: …agreed…

BERG: …that some sort of “National Divorce” is inevitable.

PLOOBRADOR: Which would be the most horrible of all things. It wouldn’t be like the American Civil War, with two sides lining up on opposite sides of the Mason Dixon line. It would be more like Bosnia in the ’90s, with ideological “ethnic” cleansing expelling or removing the “infidels” reds from blue territory and vice versa.

BERG: I keep hearing that from people, saying that massive, eliminationist bloodshed is inevitable. And I have to ask – why?

At the best, it’s a matter of choice. People have to choose to be violent. And as we’ve seen, Big Left has no problem getting violent when they think the ends justify the means.

PLOOBRADOR: Hmmmm.

BERG: And at worst? Well, the notion that populations are so very intermingled means there’s a certain amount of balance of terror involved; would Big Left actually go full-bore Rwanda on conservatives in San Francisco and Chicago while “blues” are stranded in Miami, Austin and Boise?

PLOOBRADOR: That seems like an odd thing to be pollyannaish about.

BERG: I know. I just think ruling out a national divorce on relatively peaceful, if far from “good” terms, is really premature.

PLOOBRADOR: Hm. Interesting.

(WAITER, dressed in a bearskin vest and a horned helmet, approaches the tables).

WAITER: Welcome to Skraeliings Viking Restaurant. Can I take your order

BERG: I’ll have the Chicago Dog with a side of onion rings.

WAITER: Very good. And you, sir?

PLOOBRADOR: Make me one with everything.

(WAITER looks at both BERG and PLOOBRADOR, confused).

BERG: I think he’s talking about a hot dog .

(WAITER and PLOOBRADOR both nod).

And SCENE.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is standing in line at a Mexican fast-food joint when Evan Micah BRYAN walks into the store. BRYAN is 23, a 2022 graduate of Macalester with a degree in Political Science, is the Senior Communications Director for the Senate DFL Caucus.

BRYAN: MeRG.

BERG: Uh, hey…

BRYAN: ZOMGConServaTiveZ aRe tEh HiCks aND ruBEz wHo aRe aFRAID of tEH ciTIes.

BERG: As a conservative who lives in the Midway, I refute you.

BRYAN: HeEre iS TeH PrOOf ZOMG!

BERG: Its a photomeme.

BRYAN: OuR pHiLoSOphY in tEh DFL CoMMUnICatION oFFiCe iS iF wE du iT inna MeMe, iT’s ReALi-T!

BERG: Which is why your entire communications strategery is to show DFL politicians in an endless stream of selfies, and lots of end-zone ball-spiking, with no substance whatsoever?

BRYAN: No cOMMeNT.

BERG: Right. So – back to the costume. Let me guess – you are, as a DFL employee, a middle class white guy…

BRYAN: tHAT’s hOw I iDenTiFY.

BERG: …who lives in a neighborhood like Marcy-Holmes or Longfellow or Merriam Park

BRYAN: RiGHt. TEH cOOl pLaCes.

BERG: which is clogged with other young-ish single non-profit-industrial complex employees with plenty of money…

BRYAN: sURe.

BERG: You take the Green Line to a concert once or twice a year…

BRYAN: HoW ELsE woUld I fINd SaINT PaUl?

BERG: Sort of a “Fifteen Minute City”, where everything you do – your coffee shop, your grocery mart, your restaurants, your coffee shop, your bars, your restaurants, your transit stop, your coffee shop, your restaurants, your coffee shops, are all within a fifteen minute walk.

BRYAN: TeH wAY tEH wHOLe worLd sHouLD bE!

BERG: Where all the workers take the bus or drive hoopties in from Richfield or New Hope or Vadnais Heights.

BRYAN: yEp…ER, wUt?

BERG: Your “fifteen minute city” is actually an “Urban Life” theme park. But, sure, by all means, progsplain me about city life, junior.

BRYAN: HeY, loOk! MaTt RoZnOwSki iS slAshinG yOuR TirEz ZOMG!

BERG: Of course he is.

And SCENE