I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. When government doesn’t – can’t or won’t – provide the law and order that is its one unambiguously legitimate job, people will provide it for themselves.

And outside of libertarian fantasies, that can be an extraordinarily ugly thing:

On Monday, Haitian police confirmed that a civilian-organized lynch mob captured a group of gang members before beating them and burning them alive amongst gasoline-soaked tires.

Haitian police spokesperson Gary Desrosiers explained that the gang members had been roving the streets of the capital in a vehicle, which was in the process of being searched when the mob took over.

As the Daily Mail reports, thirteen gang members in total were somehow separated from police just before being arrested, and dragged into the street. They were beaten and stoned, then covered with gasoline-soaked tires and set ablaze.

This sort of thing isn’t unknown in America; organized crime and street gangs often bring, if not “law”, at least order to an area.

I’m just not sure if the mewling white progressives in Powderhorn Park prattling on about defunding the police are ready for this.

In a tweet related to this morning’s post, Rep. Koslowski wrote:

Rep. Koswlowski: You are an elected official, part of the non-profit/political/industrial complex who will likely spend the rest of your life earning a comfortable living at least, at taxpayer and donor expense.

OK, that’s the system.

However, logic gives you a choice:

• Call Republicans “fascists”
• Vote for the DFL’s social credit bill.

You get to pick one, and only one.

There’s sure been a lot of aggressive rhetoric from the DFL, especially its “LGBTQ” caucus, for the past (checks watch) 24 hours or so.

Here’s Alicia Kozlowski, elected representative from Duluth and, as such, person witih a lifetime sinecure of living on the public dime ahead of her:

Wow. That sounds serious.

It’s certainly got Rep Kozlowski’s dudgeon up:

And then there was Rep Leigh Finke with, curioiusly, the exact same type of rhetoric:

Wow. Two marquee members of the LGBTQ caucus making “defiant” noises.

I wonder what’s up with that?

Oh:

A Republican lawmaker was verbally accosted by a Democratic colleague on the House floor Wednesday because she shared a tweet from the organization Gays Against Groomers, she told Alpha News.

Rep. Dawn Gillman, R-Dassel, retweeted a post regarding legislation that would have removed existing language in Minnesota law stipulating that pedophilia is not a protected sexual orientation.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, who confronted Gillman about the retweet. Gillman said she was “yelled at and intimidated” by Finke, who apparently shouted “no!” when a colleague suggested moving the conversation off the floor.

“My interaction on Wednesday evening with Rep. Finke left me shaken and fearing for my personal safety. Instead of coming to talk to me, I was yelled at and intimidated on the House Floor,” Gillman told Alpha News. She said that this type of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in other workplaces.

The incident was corroborated by multiple representatives who were there. Gillman asked to be escorted to her car after session.

Finke reportedly upbraided [1] Gillman over circulating this article.

Several questions, here:

1. Is House HR going to get involved, or are they still chasing after Peter Callaghan?
2. Is House HR going to come after me for writing this?
3. If this story is accurate, it’d appear that the House Cisgender Caucus is the one that needs a mutual defense agreement.
4. I wonder if writing this is going to put me afoul of the DFL’s new Social Credit policy?

Speaking of Social Credit policy, I’ll be talking about that, the Giillman/Finke incident, and much. more on the show tomorrow. Tune on in.

DFL: The surplus is immense, and a monument to DFL wisdom.

Normies: It’s mostly one-time money. You turned it into permanent spending. It’ll be a deficit next session.

DFL: We ALWAYS said it was one-time money!

Earlier this week, we pointed out something that, after thirty years of the worthless Steve Sack, I thought I’d never need to: A Strib “editorial cartoonist” actually causing consternation on both sides of the aisle.

Mike Thompson seemed to me to be a huge improvement over Sack’s flaccid, entitled, completely predictable drivel:

I ended the piece earlier this week by predicting there would be consequences.

Of course I was right. Publisher Steve Grove – a man who has never many pretense of being independent of the DFL – issued the first of what I suspect will be many mea culpas:

The least sinister interpretation: after 30 years of publishing, Steve Sack’s thud-witted, one-sided, uncreative drivel, of course The Strib becomes “accountable to the community“ after publishing one cartoon that roils their publisher’s cocktail buddies.

Most sinister? The DFL directly controls what the state’s most powerful news outlet presents, and how.

They’re already trying to avoid getting a ding on their Minnesota social credit scores.

More on that tomorrow and, most likey, on the show Saturday.

…that nobody’s coming for your guns!

And if you say they are, you’re a white supremacist [1]

DFL: the police are in occupying force of oppressors, and must be defunded!

Normies: we oppose defunding the police.

DFL: hey, we never said anything about defunding the police!

It’s become a fad among “progressive” circles to “acknowledge”, at the beginning of a meeting or gathering, that the meeting is “occurring on land stolen from…” the various tribes indigenous to Minnesota.

The meeting, run almost invariably run by plush-bottom laptop-class academic/non-profit/government complex yoohoos, then continues with no land, dignity or status returned to the tribes.

I strongly suspect this bit of theatrical institutional rending of theatrical garments is more of the same: the U of M is “acknowledging” its theft from the tribes.

Sort of:

DAN KRAKER: The TRUTH report released today delves into the details of how the university profited off of Native land and people. It concludes that the U’s founding board of regents, quote, “committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples for financial gain.”

And it shows how millions of in revenue derived from timber, minerals, and other resources from Native land were invested in municipalities around the state, but not in tribal communities. Shannon Geshick is executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. She says it’s the first report in which a major university critically examines its history with Native people.

SHANNON GESHICK: One part of me is really appreciative of the– I guess– courage of the university. But also the other part of me is like, it’s time. It’s important that other voices are heard, not only the dominant voice. The TRUTH project kind of just rips that open and really reveals a narrative I think that a lot of people just don’t know.

And what will this lead to (emphasis added)?

In recent years, the University has committed to acknowledging the past and doing the necessary work to begin rebuilding and strengthening relationships with tribal nations and Native people. Openly receiving this report is another step toward honoring that commitment. While documenting the past, the TRUTH report also provides guidance as to how the University can solidify lasting relationships with tribes and Indigenous peoples built on respect, open communication, and action. As we engage in the important discussions that will now follow, that guidance will be invaluable.”

Translation to English: Expect more lip service – and, of course, more taxpayer money transferred to the academic/non-profit/government complex, “Native Division”.

DFL: we will make Minnesota a safe place for children to get gender affirming care

Normies: we oppose allowing children who can’t rent a car or consent to getting a tattoo to opt for life changing gender altering surgery.

DFL: hey, who said anything about altering gender!

The Strib finally hired a new editorial cartoonist to replace the worthless and unlamented Steve Sack.

It’s Mike Thompson.

And he’s brought a new sound to Minneapolis.

No, not the popping of the Glock full-auto conversion.

It’s the wailing and gnashing of entitled, plush-bottom, White progressive Minneapolis Yoo-hoos losing their spit over being lampooned by an editorial cartoonist.

They have no frame of reference. Modern MSM editorial cartoons have all the intellectual diversity of The Colbert Show or NPR.

So the calls for “canceling” Thompson have already started.

It’ll be interesting to see if Thompson is forced to repent of his sins.

DFL: it’s good for children younger than 13 to attend a highly sexualized drag shows.

Normies: we oppose children attending highly sexualized drag shows

DFL: don’t you DARE call us groomers!

A friend of the blog emails:

Reading this news report at Alpha News, I am struck by this question: Why don’t conservatives make common cause with the local Muslims?

They want good educations for their children, just like Moderates, Conservatives, and Christians do.

Muslims by and large are much more puritanical about these sorts of things and very specifically do not want infidels teaching this spiritually debasing poison to their daughters.

What if Senator Wesenberg and Rep Walter Hudson were to personally approach Imams in their district and statewide for their input on this issue. The Qur’an highlights the community of faith between followers of monotheistic religions (Jews, Christians and Muslims), and refers to them collectively as Ahl al-Kitab ‘People of the Book‘, a phrase that is used frequently in the Qur’an and Prophetic hadith. 

Maybe the fastest way to do this would be for the GOP to amend the education bill with a requirement that ALL MN schools, public, private, and charter be required to have these four books available for their students; “It’s Perfectly Normal,” “Sex is a Funny Word,” “It’s So Amazing,” and “It’s Not the Stork.”. I’ll bet that would shake some peaches out of the trees.

Better yet, someone tell Erin Maye Quade or Leigh Finke to push the amendment.

I bet they’d do it.

As to making common cause with Muslims, especially ones that aren’t tied at the hip to the DFL? The time is long overdue.

DFL: it’s time to ban magazines larger than seven rounds, as well as “assault weapons”

Normies: so, do you want to confiscate firearms?

DFL: how dare you say anybody’s coming for your guns! You’re paranoid!

Today’s song list:

And here’s the article I was talking about – the one that describes how the DFL treats, well, everyone.

Earlier in this exceptionally loosely linked series, I lamented that the conditions that set up the great American resurgence of the early 1980s aren’t, largely, there in our society today.

I’ll return to the example of France. The French nation and people have a culture that goes back, in one form or another, to pre-Roman times, through Vercingetorix, Charles Martel, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, a phalanx of seminal authors and artists, and centuries of stories, mythical and historical, that helped define what “French” actually meant, to the world but especially to France.

The demographic bleeding-out of World War I caused a crisis in faith in that myth – a malaise, to borrow a term that’s come up in this series before, and most certainly will again. With nearly 10% of the population dead, wounded or missing. and much of the country’s heartland devastated, it’d be fair to say France had Les Bleus

Unlike France in 1940, America hasn’t been demoralized by a great military, demographic and spiritual catastrophe in its recent past (and remember – the end of World War 1 and the invasion of France were about as far apart as 9/11 and today). In the past 40 years, America vanquished its greatest foe to date without a (non-proxy) shot being fired, followed by the greatest expansion in wealth in history. America should be stoked.

But we’re kind of the opposite today.

Every rational, sane, intellectually honest American knows our history – like the history of every nation – is full of imperfections, things that modern mores reject. That’s true of every country ever – at least, the ones that evolve positively. And for the most part, with a few extremely notable exceptions, Western Civilization has done that for the past few hundred years. The notion of “progress” in the human condition was meaningless before Western Civilization as we know it today started evolving.

And so Western culture – especially American culture – developed its own myths and legends. It was the land of opportunity, and of equality.

No, not equal opportunity for everyone at every time – but that, too, has progressed. And generations of immigrants choosing American, and disproportionally succeeding at it, are evidence that the myths have not only some basis in truth, but are in fact not merely myths of facts of American life.

But the powers that be in our culture have been working to undercut those parts of our national mythology.

Equality? In 1987, a Gallup poll showed that about a third of black Americans thought racism was a driving force in American life. In 2015, that figure had doubled. Does anyone seriously think that America got twice as racist between 1990 and the third year of Barack Obama’s third time?

Even more toxically in the long run? The notion that we are a nation of equal opportunity is being pecked away at by a league of leftist intellectual lilliputians.

I was listening to NPR a few weeks ago (so you don’t have to), a show called Marketplace, a show that tries to talk about economics.

They were interviewing Alyssa Quart, a woman whose career seems to revolve around convincing Americans that there is no opportunity. She was flogging a book, Bootstrapped: A Self-Made Myth And The Dystopian Social Safety Net It Created.

And it’s exactly as cynical as you might think:

“Boots were really important in the 19th century,” Quart said in an interview with “Marketplace” host Reema Khrais. “If you’re wealthy, you had someone who could help you put them on. If you’re a working man, you were struggling to pull them up every day. So pulling yourself over your bootstraps became this symbol of getting ahead in this country all on your own steam.”

In her latest book, “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream,” Quart looks at how this symbol helped create what she calls the “dystopian social safety net.”

“If we have a country where the social welfare state is much more fragile than, say, other advanced industrialized countries,” said Quart, “you have people then relying on this ragtag network of nonprofits, volunteers, crowdfunding.”

Quart’s message is being spread on fertile ground, at least among Gen-Zs, who’ve grown up with the message that “Boomers” got all the money and left them the scraps (which, by the way, I also felt as an angry and under-employed GenXer just out of college).

Thing is, Quart made a good point – unintentionally, and in a way that indicts the modern Left’s sabotage of American culture. She endlessly belabors the lack of government insitutions to “support” the poor, which is the usual leftist twaddle. Because…

…of course the idea of dragging one’s self up, completely solo, “by one’s bootstraps” is rare to unheard of. Of course America had institutions that fostered that.

Family.

Church.

Communities – and by that, we’re talking social communities, not governments.

Which are the things Big Left has been aggressively demolishing.

So yeah – coming up by one’s bootstraps is hard. Never easier than in any other culture in history…

…but Big Left is going to change that.

Not gonna prevaricate: This kid had me pretty depressed (in a “howling with laughter” kind of way) last week:

This young lady was the perfect antidote:

Let the Great Sort continue!

Yesterday, we talked about the Five Christians You Meet in the Movies.

And it started me thinking.

Last year, I started but didn’t quite follow through on a statistical study of race and gender characteristics in TV advertisements, as well as the tone or general sense of stereotype associated with the “Characters”. Spoiler alert: white males are subject to a certain…stereotyping, outside of ads for home improvement, sometimes. The numbers were jarringly uniform; there seems to be an unspoken (maybe) pact to portray white males as dim buffoons at best, cads at worst.

And while I don’t watch a ton of TV, I see enough to know the parallels are there.

There are five kinds of men – of all races – visible on television, either programming or advertisement, today:

The Impotent Buffoon: The most notable example of this “male” is the “boyfriend” on most TV/streamingt shows aimed at Millennials and younger. Mewling, incompetent, the inevitable inferior in the relationship whether he knows it or not. The first crisis in the plot inevitably shows him to be about as useful as a set of debate notes in front of Lieutenant Governor Flanagan. This is also the “husband” in most TV ads, these days; schlubby, married to a woman who’s waaaaay out of his league (and, in many cases, with kids who are made to appear much, much smarter than him). In a recent development, that incompetent male isn’t always white anymore (the guy in the “WeBuyAnyCar.com” ad jumps to mind).

The Douchebag: These are the people that all the “Jocks” in every John Hughes teensploitation movie grew up to be. The recent simulacrum of this type was the “partner” FBI agent in the (often excellent) Christina Applegate/Linda Cardellini streamer Dead to Me; a youngish man with all the physical symbols of being upper-middle class; he went to a pseudy-Ivy on, of course, a lacrosse scholarship, and exudes the casual arrogance that the modern TV viewer has been trained to expect to shortly see torn straight down by his senior partner – a (grabs checklist of modern “virtue” tropes) Latina single mother who worked her way up from a street, uh, FBI agent. (Sub-flavor: The gay douchebag, who usually ends up being the good guy).

Old Money: The definitive versions? The senior partners in the arbitrage firm in Trading Places.

The Melodrama Villain: Usually middle aged or older, usually coded as American aristocrats. If a show needs an “evil” Macguffin, it’s usually one of these guys. Even in car ads, for crying out loud, the “baddie” usuallyl resembles the “Goldstein” character in the Macintosh “1984” ad.

The Bankable A-Lister: Bankable A-listers are always exempt from all these tropes. Competent, intelligent, hot…perfect. The sort of thing that we’re supposed to be moving away from when the character is female.

Now, on level this is all good critical fun.

On the other hand – remember the complaints of African-Americans to Stepin Fetchit and Amos and Andy, or Natives to a century of movie stereotypes of Indians, or Latinos to decades of “lazy Mexican” tropes, who asked “why should our young people grow up with this vision of themselves all round them in popular culture?”

They were right.

If you’re a young man today, growing up as a generation of young men that’ve had their boyish “male” traits sanded off or drugged into submission by a feminized school system – and whose very testosterone levels are being eroded by diet or environment or God only knows what? When you look at pop culture around you, what do you see?

The loudest voices in our culture telling you “your type” is impotent, ineffective, useless, and if you draw a winning ticket in life’s lottery, anything from insufferable to evil?

Perhaps the proper term isn’t “stochastic terror”.

Maybe gaslighting?

Grooming for failure and misery?

Intergenerational abuse?

The more I think about it, I’m talking myself back to “stochastic terror”.

I’ve been inadvertently mis-scheduling posts lately.  It’s been a busy week. 

But my work ethic doesn’t like having just one post for a day.  

So – how about Chicago: Mobs (plural) of teens not at all stochastically terrorize THE FREAKING LOOP:

Or, to put it in the mob’s own words and pictures:

One couple who got mobbed and rescued by a good samaritan as the Chicago PD drove languidly past:

The “young man”, the boyfriend in the piece above, was black, btw.

Fearless prediction: it’s coming to Minneapolis. This summer. Just you watch.

This one goes out to everyone who ever noticed that guessing “the Christian” is always the guilty party at the end of every episode of every part of the Law and Order franchise is always right: The Five Christians you Meet In The Movies (and, let’s be honest, TV).

More tomorrow.

Every high school homeroom seemed to have that one guy – usually a little maladroit, introverted, not especially socially adept. The guy – it was always a guy – tried to cultivate the impression there was some sort of threatening undercurrent – unspecified after-dark activities, unnamed associates, vague hints that there might be some kind of hidden danger about him, so you’d better not push him too far.

We talked last week about Matt Roznowski – the House DFL Communications director who reported MInnPost reporter Peter Callaghan to House HR, notwithstanding the fact that Callaghan doesn’t work for the DFL .

Maybe Roznowski figures reporters actually do work for the DFL, It’s explain a lot.

Gotta wonder if Roznowski was that guy in high school. Current signs look pretty close.

It’s worth noting that the DFL doubled down to support their guy flexing on…a reporter for a publication supported by Big Leftymoney.

Oh yeah – their communications office apparently doesn’t like peasants criticizing them:

I need to keep reminding myself – drapes don’t have shoes.

BTW, Brian – Lech Wałęsa fought Communists. So yeah, it kinda fits.

To: MN Democrat Something Something Labor Party

From: Mitch Berg, Stochastic Moderate

Re: Truth In Advertising

All,

Many of us have been talking with you for years about removing the “farmer“ from your official party name.

With this speech by Rep. Lucy Rehm?

“Solar panels are the new corn?”

Its time. Lose it.

That is all.

80 years ago, 20 year old men pushed the Nazi juggernaut from Normandy to the Elbe, wrestled coral islands from dug-in Japanese, and went on to build the greatest society ih history.

Fast forward: 20 year old child fires a gun, heads for a safe space.

Fearless prediction: As much as people natter on about the evils of the Baby Boom, I have a hunch one day the children and grandchildren of the Millennials and Zeepers are going to hate their elders much, much more.

I’ve listened to a lot of vapid, trite radio in my life.

Janeane Garofalo’s attempt at a talk show. Most any “audio essay” by David Sedaris. Just about every local show on AM950, from Nick Coleman and Wendy Wilde and Two Putt Tommy and Steve Timmer through Bart McNeil or whatever his name is. Lots of dreadful stuff.

But I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anything quite this stomach-pumpingly vacuous as this two year old episode of “Radiolab”, an NPR podcast [1] which combines an oppressive amount of cutesy sound editing with a programming lineup that captures all of the lows of “This American Life” with none of TAL’s occasional highs.

it’s a rebroadcast [2] from a couple of years ago, when the Covid pandemic had come and gone for most of America, but was still leaving the world a Camusian hellscape for the organically-fed fashionably angsty member of the Laptop Class that work for and listen to National Public Radio.

And in it, the plush-bottom yoohoos in the studio seem to be straining to make the case that 2020 and 2021 is a candidate to be horrible years in history, as compared to…

…536AD. When something, a bunch of volcanoes or comet dust or something blotted out much of the sunlight for years, causing a chain reaction of crop failures, famines, plagues (as hungry rats invaded granaries) and wars that led to the death of perhaps 20% of the people on the planet at the time.

But Covid’s pretty bad, too!

Here’s the neat (if nauseous) trick: Listen to it, and you can almost feel like you’re sitting in a “breakfast place” on Eat Street listening to a bunch of non-profiteers bitching about how lack of rent control is genocide.

NPR should really be funding itself.

Wednesday, I wrote about the dreary history of demoralized, rootless societies. I focused on France of 1940 – for whom the end of World War I was as recent as 9/11 is today.

France had an excuse, of course; out of 8 million Frenchmen that served in World War I, 3 million became casuaties; applied to America in World War II in proportional scale, that would have amounted to 4.5 million dead, wounded and missing. A million dead out of a 1914 population of 8 million, proportional to today’s United States, would amount to 11 million dead. Plus 20 more million maimed or disappeared.

That’d be a tough hurdle to get over.

America doesn’t have that excuse today – but we’ve been through similar emotional straits. The loss of about 58,000 in Vietnam, combined with a decade of social struggle and economic turmoil as America adjusted not-always-gracefully to being not the only functional economy in the world left us with a case of the national blues that was in full depressing fury when I was in junior high and high school.

Back then, America’s moral fundamentals were strong enough that when something came along to blast us out of the moral, intellectual and economic blahs, it was a little like the first bit of screen door weather in the spring:

And yes, even this, much as the interpretation mortifies both the singer and his more dogmatic critics…

…and it’s not just my opinion.

Of course, in 1980 America’s moral fundamentals were still strong. When Herb Brooks and Ronald Reagan and even Springsteen’s wild pitch hit, Americans were still patriotic – even our left of center 39th president believed in what America stood for, even though he was lost at the controls. America still oozed testosterone, metaphorically and literally.

If you believe that there’s a move among transnational “elites” to destroy western civilization and it’s crown jewel, it’s not a stretch to think they’ve been more careful this time around about gutting the fundamentals that could lead to a recovery of our national mojo.

It’s a WSJ survey from a few weeks back, that found among other things that:

• Only 30% of 2023 respondents overall said having children was very important to them. That’s down from 59% in 1998, and 43% in 2019 – literally, down by half.
• Patriotism is down to 38% in 2023, as compared with 70% in 1998 and 61% in 2019 – again, off by just shy of a half.
• Only 43% said marriage is very important – not measured 25 years ago, but certainly a dreary decline.

The only value that went up? Money, up from 31% to 43% over the past 25 years:

“Aside from money, all age groups, including seniors, attached far less importance to these priorities and values than when pollsters asked about them in 1998 and 2019. But younger Americans in particular place low importance on these values, many of which were central to the lives of their parents,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

In the 2023 poll, just 19% of the respondents overall said they attend religious services once a week or more. Some 31% of younger respondents said that religion was very important to them, compared with 55% among seniors, the Journal reported. 

Who knew – after decades of undercutting the traditions of family and virtue and idolizing an utterly materialistic view of the universe, family and virtue are undercut and people are crassly materialistic, even to the point of societal leaders calling material entitlements like housing “rights”?

Whether by accident or conspiratorial design, American society at large today is not fertile ground for another Morning, another Miracle.

And it gets worse. More Monday.

To: Seni. Kellty Morrison
From: Mitch Berg: Prole on a mission
Re: Opportunity, if you’ve got the guts to take it.

Senator Morrison,

I left a message and an email with your office about this subject earlier this week. I’ve heard nothing. I’m sure it’s just an oversight.

Anyway – let’s try to seek some common ground, shall we?

The other day, you twote about your…er, I’m not sure whether to call it a “job”, “assignment” or what.

I’ll let your tweet explain as far as we can:

So here’s what I hope: when you say “engage” you, as an M.D., mean “address some of the horrific unintended consequences of Minnesota’s current opioid policy, which involves non-medical bureaucrats almost literally bean-counting doctors’ prescriptions for opioids to compare them to a more or less arbitrary standard that doesn’t account for patients’ actual need for painkillers, which has left a staggering number of chronic pain patiens and cancer patients in life-altering, wretched constant pain, leading to an extremely disproportionate number of suicides and other serious long-term physical and mental health issues”.

I suspect it means you will continue the feckless avoidance many of your fellow legislators have practiced, trying to avoid the misguided wrath of the Fentanyl Fatality Families mob – who deserve sympathy, but not complete obeisance at the expense of other people who need pain meds…

…and can’t get them because bureaucrats can and do hold doctors licenses hostage for prescribing, responsible, medically indicated quantities that pain patients can easily absorb (there was a time I respected doctors enough to assume they knew things like “someone in horrific pain can absorb amounts of opioids that’d kill a healthy NFL lineman, becasue that’s how the body is built”, but after this past three years I assume nothing).

Any chance you could break with the medical know-nothings of, to be fair, both parties, and do some good, here?

Go ahead. Shock us all.

That is all.