…liberals of the type we call “progressives” these days got very tired of me pointing out the irony that their side was the one obsessed with one level of “class warfare” or another…

…but that on many issues (guns, taxation, property rights), theirs was the patrician side of the “debate”.

It’s even more true today.

I don’t as a rule care about artists politics, anymore than I care about a politician’s taste in music.

But the flip-flop of so many “counterculture” artists to “cultural enforcer” would be jarring, to anyone who thought about it critically.

It made headlines last week: Neil Young, who’s spent the last couple weeks trying to shut down Joe Rogan, was participating in “Free Speech rallies” in 2006.

Now, you could call them anti-George W Bush rallies that had little to do with free speech; I certainly called them that at the time.

But the language Young used is interesting:

“Just getting up in front of a lot of people makes you nervous. But when you know that some of them are really going to be angry at you, and you’re in a crowd, and it’s a volatile situation, people have been drinking, whatever — you know, it makes you nervous.”

“It was just that critical time in history where things were turning. Things were changing,” he added. “Those who feel the way we do had some hope and those who don’t feel the way we do were angry that the change happened. And those people have got a voice, and they have a reason for feeling the way they do. They strongly believe in the convictions. They believe in the military.” 

“They believe that we’re doing the right thing for the world, and they have every reason to be respected for their beliefs,” he said. 

Does it look like he’s describing Rogan listeners to anyone else?

Did Neil Young become The Man? Did “Rage Against the Machine” become “Rage Enforcing The Machine?”

Maybe – but I suspect the Tea Party, and its slandering back into the shadows, from whence it emerged mean and without manners as the Trump Populist movment, had a lot to do with it. The counterculture of 50 years ago is now the dominant culture.

A friend of the blog emails:

I am in no way in favor of banning books or burning books. I am not in favor of censoring something for others. If I do not want to read something, I simply don’t. This tweet really got my thinking about fascism and the Nazis who burned books.
.

Is this person tweeting sure that it is the right wing side of the country burning Harry Potter books? Gosh, I am old enough to remember the never ending cancel culture of Liberals going after JK Rowling for questioning the transgender culture and the idea that a man can identify as a woman and be legitimately considered a woman

Harry Potter. Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry Finn. To Kill a Mockingbird. God and Man at Yale. Jordan Peterson.

Here’s the difference: On the right, the people doing the book burnings and the other authoritarian depravity‘s are almost invariably nobodies that you’ve never heard of; school boards in Tennessee, county commissions in rural Louisiana.

On the left, it’s the mainstream and leadership burning the books.

…the current President took an oath to uphold the Constitution.

On the other hands…

…his Administration seems hell-bent on destroying it.

1936: Jesse Owens, running in the Olympics, humiliates Adolf Hitler.

1948: Jackie Robinson humiliates bigots.

1980: US Hockey team humiliates the USSR.

2022: Nancy Pelosi humiliates the US and freedeom-loving people everywhere:

Nancy Pelosi urged U.S. Olympic athletes not to speak out against the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights abuses while in Beijing, saying the athletes shouldn’t risk “incurring the anger” of the “ruthless” CCP…“Make no mistake — our athletes should participate,” Pelosi said. “They’ve trained, they’re disciplined, they’ve dreamed, they’ve aspired, they’ve worked hard. But this year we must celebrate them from home as they compete in China.”

But Pelosi also indicated that she believes U.S. athletes should keep quiet in China to avoid the Chinese government’s wrath.

If we’re worried about a government’s “wrath” – particularly that of a regime that is historically among the most murderous in history, and one that is currently engaging in genocide – why are they over there, anyway?

A friend of the blog emails:

LOL. White urbanists who make up majority of attendees at MN United games upset that US Soccer chose Allianz Field for USMNT World Cup qualifier game because of the fan base whiteness.

Have any of them decided to just give their top row tickets to, say, immigrants or refugees?

I write this, not because I think my audience needs to see it, but because it illustrates something that’s right on the verge of being a Berg’s Law.

To something like wit: Democrats can tell their audience anything they want, because they know that their voting base – whether they have a Masters in Education or are non-profiteers from Linden Hills – are ignorant, devoid of facility in critical thinking, and basically intellectual herd animals.

The White House is crowing about the “economic growth” under Brandon:

You know as well as I do – it’s a dead cat bounce, up from the government-induced trough at the end of the Trump term:

If American public education taught critical thought, the Democrats would poll somewhere below the Legal Marijuana party.

When government doesn’t provide the public order that people pay their taxes and exchange a bit of their liberty for, people will seek their own public order.

This is the polite, Midwestern version of that.

It won’t stay that way forever.

Last year‘s Fourth of July picnic was cheaper than it was in 2020.

Bars and restaurants, closing in record numbers for two years, are “packed full of people“.

Crime, rising to levels we haven’t seen in a generation, is delusion from an alternate universe.

The powers that be have no idea – honest! – why it’s easier to get through the southern border then onto any ride at Disney World.

Joe Rogan and his glorified barroom bull session “spreads misinformation“, while Brian Stelter and Don Lemon are “journalism“.

Why, it’s almost as if they’ve decided their only shot at any traction this fall is nonstop gaslighting.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Is this a clever public relations ploy to divert attention from Ukraine, is it a mere prank tweaking the Left’s nose, or have Russians actually become more sensible than Democrats?

Substitute “America” for “Russia” and I could sign up today.

Joe Doakes

It’s all three.

And I suspect most conservatives already have signed up – to the private sector initiative, at least.

A friend of the blog emails:

This thread makes me extremely sad as a healthcare worker.
It is so full of people identifying themselves as fellow healthcare workers who are mocking this man for being worried about the Covid-19 vaccine affecting his heart. They claim he’ll get a new one anyway if he just gets the vaccine. He’s worried the vaccine might kill him first. I don’t know what his doctors have told him, but I think it’s a reasonable question. Have his doctors addressed his concerns? Have they mocked him like those on Twitter?
As a healthcare worker, I encounter skeptical people all the time. They don’t believe they have to follow restrictions after surgery, they don’t believe their stroke has affected their safety, they believe there’s a pill for any possible problem and don’t believe they have to do any effort for their health. It’s not my job to laugh, shrug my shoulders and walk away. I want these patients to meet their goals. I need to ask questions and listen to their concerns. I need to give them information so they can at least understand their options and risks and make informed decisions.
Our healthcare system has set up a country of opioid addicts, a country of people who have Type 2 diabetes through diet choices, a country of people with cholesterol and heart problems. All of these issues probably could be reduced through listening to people rather than just telling people what’s best for them and expecting them to follow through because “we are the experts.”
I have been on the patient end myself. Were it not for my own medical background, my experience would be much different. It shouldn’t be that way.
But, if our healthcare system is being run by some of the people in this thread, things are not going to change.

If Arhtur (not Henry) Miller were writing The Crucible in 2021-22, he’d be setting it in a public health clinic.

UPDATE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. On a day like today, I’m lucky I didn’t refer to the Minneapolis Millers.

…that the loathsome Whoopi Goldberg had said the Holocaust wasn’t about racism, I thought it was bad.

Hearing what she actually said?

‘When you talk about being a racist, you can’t call this racism,’ she said. ‘This was evil. This wasn’t based on skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. You had to delve deeply and figure it out. My point is: they had to do the work.

‘When you talk about being a racist, you can’t call this racism,’ she said. ‘This was evil. This wasn’t based on skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. You had to delve deeply and figure it out. My point is: they had to do the work.

“The Jews all look the same to me”.

Even worse.

It fits snugly into the left’s current notion that racism is a uniquely American phenomenon that has always driven everything about the American experiment.

Which is becoming accepted as gospel.

This is just your periodic reminder that Joe Biden blocked a black woman from the SCOTUS, and a wise Latino from the Federal bench, because they were black and Latino and not progressive.

Berg’s Eighth Law is universal and omnipresent.

Last week, Minneapolis Mayor Frey Took to social media to declare his vaccine mandate – which he implemented as the Omicron wave had already peaked in Minnesota – a raging success, with his phone clogged, clogged, he told us, with photos of people at jam-packed restaurants.

We must only conclude, then, that “Seven”, The long time downtown tent pole restaurant with the best rooftop in the history of Minneapolis hospitality, closed because of overcrowding concerns.

Or not:

Worries about crime in downtown also contributed. “I can’t get staff to be excited to work downtown, because they don’t feel sale” he said.

You may find Karen responding “but restaurants close all the time, and it’s got nothing to do with draconian, misguided, on scientific emergency orders!”

And Karen would be wrong:

Finally, Patterson said city-ordered requirements on masks-wearing and vaccinations dealt the business a final blow. “We’ve seen a big decline even in the past few weeks,” following the revival of an indoor mask order by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. On an average Friday night, he said, Seven could generate at least $25,000 in sales; after the mask order, Friday receipts dropped to $5,000.

With absolutely Marie Antoinnette like timing, the mayor got perhaps the puffiest puff piece in the puffy history of a puffy magazine this week; This is the week that the mayor appeared in Vogue magazine, as one does:

The mayor’s first term, which culminated in a hard-won reelection in November, gave him endless reasons to pace. Beyond Frey’s brio, he is an exposed nerve. “From the global pandemic to the economic downturn, the murder of George Floyd in our city, the subsequent unrest,” Frey speaks solemnly, “it was a lot. I don’t think anybody, including the former me…fully comprehends what this has been like.” Frey gestures to photos from four years ago, when he took office as a “bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 36-year-old.” He drank Red Stripes and sampled hot sauce with the local press. Now, like presidents gone gray in the White House, “I’ve aged a decade, easily,” Frey tells me, citing crow’s-feet, stress pimples, and trauma he hopes will manifest as post-traumatic growth. “This is a time that changed me forever.”

Speaking of changing:

from Vogue: “Frey, photographed at home in a Rag & Bone sweater with his wife, attorney and advisor Sarah Clarke, in Tory Burch and Altuzarra, and their daughter, Frida. Photographed by Alec Soth, Vogue, March 2022.” Photographs in March 2022?

Glad to know the mayor and his family are doing all right. It must be a tough time for them.

…neither Spotify nor at least some current research need him around anyhow.

Penzeys spices – The “high end“ spice store thst tried to get Scott Walker recalled, and which went completely unhinged after the Trump election – held a “Republicans are Racist“ sale on MLK day.

And is shocked to notice their sales plummeted:

Well, they’ve lost 3 percent of their “Voice of Cooking” email subscribers over it. 40,000 people just up and unsubscribed, and now CEO Bill Penzey is seriously out here trying to get his loyal brainwashed fanbase to purchase discounted gift cards in order to make up for the loss.

This is one of an increasingly long list of companies that I would love to boycott, if I had ever patronized any of them in the first place…