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.

It’s that time of year.  I’m receiving exhortations to Give Back such as this one from TCF Bank.  They annoy me.

Why this time of year, particularly?  The message doesn’t explicitly link December to Christmas to Jesus Christ and thence to a duty of Christian Charity, because that would be overtly religious and might offend someone.  But if my obligation to Give Back isn’t a religious obligation, from whence does it arise?  And if it is a religious duty, what if my religion takes a different view and why are you imposing your religion on me? 

How much am I obligated to give back?  10%  More?  Is it a progressive obligation – the more I make, the greater percentage I must give?  Give to whom?  My church or mosque or synagogue, because it’s a religious obligation; or some do-gooder group so I can purchase a bit of vicarious virtue?  Does ‘shopping locally’ count as ‘giving back’ if I shop at a nearby big box retailer because the little stores were closed by decree of King Herod . . . I mean . . . Governor Walz?

I dislike the modern fetish of using Christmas to promote social causes rather than remember Christ.  I prefer the old method of soliciting donations for charitable causes:

‘At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,’ said the gentleman, taking up a pen, `it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir. . . A few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”

That pitch appeals to me.  So do the bell ringers at the Salvation Army kettle.  That’s why I never pass one without dropping a buck in the bucket.  I made a special point of withdrawing $20 in ones, just to have them on hand.  Because they don’t engage in silly virtue signaling, they quietly help people in need.

Joe Doakes

1000% on board re the Salvation Army. I never pass one of them without dropping in a buck or five (or at least I never pass ’em twice – I grab cash and break the bill on the way out).

Berg’s Eighth Law of Diversity states: “American Progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.”

And given the news that Trump had the highest share of the African-American vote since Richard Nixon in 1960, I’m going to suspeect that an awful lot of progs are going to be working extra-hard at gaslighting people back into compliance. Heck, it happened during the campaign, from Biden himself (“You don’t vote for me, you ain’t black, maaaaaan”), and becoming incredibly vicious when directed at actual “out” black conservatives on the retail level.

Gaslighting, by the way, is pretty much all you get from this piece on the subject in Medium (Motto: “Like Tumblr for pretenious and often narcissistic fops”).

It was hard to find a single pullquote that simultaneously encapsulated both the piece’s awfulness and its barometric nature for Big Left’s assigned role for black progressives. They all pretty much suffice.

So I cut to the conclusion (since I don’t want you all to have to try to stomach it):

And yet, the Black Republican bridge in 2020 is a bridge too far. There is too much “I” in their statements, too much “mine.” Too many personal anecdotes, too much misrepresented history presented as evidence. If you only want to go for yours, just say so. Or better, don’t say anything; people can read between the lines. Just stop citing Black survival as a reason for siding with a party that is wiping Black people off the map.

And is there a better statement to sum up all progressivism – “there is no “I” in “Unity”?

A friend of the blog emails:

Wow! Think the media will report Covid19 at our military academies in the coming weeks. No distancing, many with masks not covering their faces. 
Nothing to see here, right?

Another friend of the blog pointed out that the cadets and midshipmen were all parts of training cohorts that were pretty much together all the time anyway. Which to me introduced the question – if we take the information civilians in GenPop are given, doesn’t that still mean that the service academies are “superspreaders?”

That being said, I wasn’t too concerned, given that everyone involved is young, healthy, selected in part for a lack of pre-existing conditions, largely sequestered away from those that aren’t, and part of a demographic cohort with roughly a 100% survival rate.

And as neither was the NDSU Bison, it didn’t rise to the level of a priority for me anyway.

Never heard of this guy and his Baltimore restaurant – but I like the cut of his jib.

Crab cakes are sounding mighty good for Christmas dinner at the moment.

Just finished my annual physical, which I must take to get my prescription renewed for diabetes medicine. The doctor mentioned I am due for a colonoscopy this year but I said I was thinking about putting it off so I didn’t catch the Covid since medical facilities are one of the most contagious places. He said oh no, it’s bars and restaurants, that’s where all the cases are coming from.

Later, he asked what I was doing for Thanksgiving, I told him my mother had canceled Thanksgiving because Covid, they live near Rochester and there’s a huge staff shortage at the Mayo Clinic. Yes, he agreed, 900 staff people are out because of Covid and everyone should stay home for Thanksgiving.

So those Mayo Clinic doctors are a bunch of drunks? They’ve been hanging out in the bars where everybody catches it?

Ridiculous.  If health care professionals aren’t catching the virus at work, it’d be the first epidemic in history where that’s true.  Here’s the chart from the Minnesota Department of Health website on November 23, 2020.

TravelCongregate LivingCorrectionsHomeless/ShelterHealth CareCommunity: outbreakCommunity: knownCommunity: no knownUnknown050,000100,000150,00

Bars and restaurants aren’t even listed separately, they’re lumped in with all other “community outbreak” which includes weddings, funerals, political rallies, riots, and workplaces that are not residences such as meat packing plants.  Bars and restaurants are nowhere near as contagious as health care facilities and that makes perfect sense – hospitals are full of sick people, of course the virus spreads there.

I’m disappointed in my doctor.  He’s just reciting the party line, no independent thought, no analysis of contradictory statements made moments apart, but I should trust him because he’s a medical professional: he has a white lab coat and everything. 

I’ve met religious fanatics before, and also Liberals, so there’s no point in arguing about it. Just nod my head and make plans to buy medicine from Mexico online. No prescription required. 

Joe Doakes

I’ll cut clinic staff a little slack – between the pandemic and the state’s bizarre gyrations in “managing” the healthcare system, it might be more fun to work in one of those meat packing plants these days.

But I said a little slack. Let’s not get carried away. The doctor that skip “critical thought” on this will do the same when it comes to that “do you have guns in the house” question, when doctors start caring about that again.

The worst part of this pandemic may be how “science” has been turned from a system for analyzing what we don’t know, into a weapon to logroll people into line behind a conclusion.

It’s not just Karens karen-ing, or @NPRNews claiming there’s a “Team Science”, a consistant, constant body of knowledge and its high priests standing united against the uninformed peasants attacking the metaphorical observatory with pitchforks and torches. That’s bad – but it’s been a problem for a while, now.

Scientists are now adopting social media tactics, and “influencing” “followers” to “cancel” scientists they disagree with.

People are turning science into Scientism – a pseudo-religious, faith-based mass of dogmas combining the worst aspects of revival religion and social media herd mentality.

It’s been nine months since Minnesota landlords have been able to evict people for non-payment.

Charity? Well, sure – and an easy one for the State to pay for, since it’s all coming out of the pockets of landlords.

In Democrat parlance, landlords are an easy, cheap villain to demonize in order to rally support among renters. They’ve been the kick toy of both cities’ administrations for decades. The small, private landlord – a working stiff renting out his parents’ old houses or his own investment property – has been treated as a convenient Man in Black for a generation; there are urban non-profiteers who literally cannot refer to these people as anything but “slumlords”.

And the campaign has largely succeeded – both Minneapolis and Saint Paul have done a fine job of zoning, coding and harassing the small landlord out of existence in the Cities (replaced largely with public housing authorities who are, frequently, slumlords, by the way).

So – is the “eviction moratorium” an act of charity, or just another way for the DFL-addled state to help the cities finish extincting the small landlord?

The state’s defense to this lawsuit may help provide some answers to that.

So after leaving the Hunter Biden corruption story sitting out there untouched during the run-up to the election, the media is suddenly “discovering it”.

Why, it’s almost as if they were worried about hurting the Democrats’ chances before November, and realize the downside is “President Harris” now.

“Almost”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Does this look like $125? On the other hand, they were delivered right to my doorstep when I know there’s none to be had within a hundred miles, so I’m not complaining.

Not for me, of course, since I lost all my firearms in that tragic canoe accident a while back. Stocking stuffers for the boys and son-in-law. Should be a pretty good Christmas this year.

Joe Doakes

$1.25 a round? I’ve seen 5.56 higher than that. That’s some good shopping.

We may have to talk.

Hypothetically, I mean.

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.

You may find yourself looking back at the past four years.

You may find yourself wondering “why did the Democrats spend so much time and effort pushing the “Russian Collusion” hoax?

And you may say to yourself “Russia? They’re a paper tiger in a demographic spiral, keeping themselves afloat with arms sales and natural gas exports. They exert a tiny shadow of their influence compared even to thirty years ago”.

And you may ask yourself “Why does this make sense?”

And you may answer that question with a hearty “Berg’s Seventh Law explains it all”, as is usually the case.

Chinese intelligence has apparently been cultivating contacts among American politicians for years:

A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a yearlong investigation.

Keeping Berg’s 7th Law, and four years of chanting points about “collusion with Russia” in mind, any guesses which party their efforts were aimed at?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Governor Walz has ordered restaurants closed for dine-in service. So on Saturday morning, I buzzed over the new Highway 36 bridge to eat breakfast at a cafe near Somerset.

Dine-in service. Normal table separation. Packed with customers. Cheerful wait staff running non-stop. Generous portions. Reasonable prices. No masks required.

If Minnesota doesn’t want my business, I’ll take it elsewhere. Because that’s The American Way, right? Maybe that will get the Governor’s attention.

Joe Doakes

I don’t know. His paycheck isn’t going anywhere.

This is Cynthia Johnson – a Democrat Michigan state representative, and her message to “Trump supporters”.

I’m done with asking questions like “can you imagine what would happen if a Republican, no matter how obscure, no matter how far removed from any actual political clout, were to say something like this?”.

We can’t. There’s no point in trying. Even asking for a pretense of “fairness” in the mainstream media’s reporting of these things is as pointless as wondering “wouldn’t it have been cool if the Japanese didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor” while climing down the cargo net into a Higgins Boat off Utah Beach; fun to think about, but utterly pointless in light of current fact.

There’s a civil war afoot – and a lot of Democrats are pretty happy about it.

Make this your mission. Whatever it takes.

Please see to it that Tide Pod Evita has a role to fit her, er, capabilities at least a year before midterms.

Thanks in advance.

I occasionally look over the traffic numbers for this blog.

The top five posts in this blog’s history – at least in terms of hits since I installed a hit counter, probably 10 years ago – were pretty steadily the same for much of that time; a piece on Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä, an article about the Gordon Kahl shootout, a few others.

But over the past year or so, a piece I wrote in 2007 about Saint Thomas University’s early adoption of cancel culture against itself seems to have run away from the pack – as in, gotten nearly triple the hits of its nearest competitor. As in, 80,000 hits to something like 30,000.

Used to be you could Google for links to individual web pages, but that seems to have been discontinued (or I’m doing it wrong).

On the one hand, immortalizing the perfidious moral cowardice of St. Thomas’s former administration is a feather in my proverbial cap.

On the other?

Who the hell is still citing an article from 13 years ago to tens of thousands of people?

Governor Walz [last Tuesday] announced a new Executive Order intended to save Minnesotan lives from the deadliest virus ever known, Covid-19.

“More than 100 people died of Covid-19 the day after Thanksgiving.  It’s sad, but it’s their own fault.  They failed to follow my instructions to cancel Thanksgiving and they paid the price for it.  I’m only sorry the scofflaws took so many of their aged neighbors with them.  This blatant disregard of my Executive Orders cannot continue.   Effective immediately, all Christmas parties are banned during the month of December.  And since we now know I cannot depend on people to voluntarily obey the arbitrary rules, I’m announcing a new compliance program.  You’ve heard of Toys for Tots?  Well, this is Cash for Christians.  Report your neighbor’s holiday gathering and receive a check from the state.  The more violators, the bigger the reward.”

In response to Republican claims that such an order would somehow violate the “Constitution,” a spokesman for Attorney General Ellison stated, “Since the Governor’s order is authorized by statute and has not been overturned by the Legislature, it is presumptively valid. There is ample legal precedent to take action against people who threaten public peace under pretext of religion, particularly Executive Order 44 issued by the Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri in 1838. The notion that the Governor lacks the authority to suspend people’s so-called “Constitutional rights” during the time of state-wide emergency is absurd on its face.”

Local ministers called a press conference to protest the order but were summarily arrested and have not been heard from since.  An aide to the Governor confirmed he has reserved the Xcel Center for several events in coming weeks and also has instructed the Minnesota Zoo to stop feeding the big cats, but rumors of plans to feed Christians to the lions on pay-per-view were denied.

In Saint Paul, Joe Doakes, reporting.

Given that the state owns a freezer morgue that is empty (since Ken Martin let John Thompson out after the election), I suppose it brings new meaning to “putting suspects on ice”….

Ilhan Omar has been paying her husband’s firm $2.7 million in campaign donations.

Under most of your community property laws, that means she’s been paying herself a whole lot of money.

And yet while prospering mightily from Omar’s campaign (they grossed $4 million in the 2020 cycle, a nearly 25-fold increase on the firm’s 2018 billings), they received Covid payroll stimulus money:

Public records show that E Street Group, co-owned by Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, received nearly $135,000 in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and $500,000 in Economic Injury Disaster loans. …

Public records show that E Street Group, co-owned by Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, received nearly $135,000 in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and $500,000 in Economic Injury Disaster loans.

Federal Election Commission filings also show that the firm received payments for other campaigns, including $175,000 from the committee of Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and nearly $130,000 from the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

When Democrats say “never waste a crisis”…

Is Saint Anthony resident got this letter recently, about their Christmas light display:

I wonder if the Karen who wrote this realizes they live in…

Wait for it…

… Wait for it…

… Saint Anthony.

There’s been a lot of chatter about Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s announcement last Thursday that his office won’t be asking bail for the following offenses starting next year:

It’s not that Henco is legalizing these activities.

It’s merely providing no direct consequences for skipping trial for accused forgers, felony-level vandals, burglars, porch pirates, kiters, shoplifters, frauds, drug dealers, counterfeiters or welfare cheats.

If they skip trial, a warrant will be issued for their arrest, and if they eventually come into contact with the law, the warrant will be on their record when they are arrested for the next offense that they won’t be charged bail for before skipping trial.

Glad we settled that.

For the last few years, I’ve secretly left candy in the grandkids’ shoes on St. Nicholas Day, a family holiday tradition which stretches back five generations (that I know of) and possibly more. This year, my daughter decided the oldest grandson could take over the role. I’m no longer needed.

I said it was fine with me so long as she gave him the lecture I received from my Mom when I took over as St. Nicholas: He must keep the secret. The little kids are entitled to the magic of Christmas as long as it lasts, same as he was. Never break the spell. Allow them to believe.

I know in my head this is a good thing, passing the torch and involving the next generation. I know the oldest grandson will do a fine job. I didn’t really want to drive all the way over there in the cold and dark anyway.

So why do I feel like crying?

Joe Doakes

I hear ya.

Background: “Cultural appropriation” is one of the few sins actually recognized by the Wokemob. One can not, it seems, be white and wear african jewelry or cook mexican food, at the risk of inciting the Wokemob.

They seem to be more tolerant of people of non-Western descent using things invented in the west, like free speech and respect for the individual (as long as they are that individual), but let’s not get carried away in technicalities, here.

Foreground: The actress formerly known as Ellen Page – most famous for starring in Juno, the inescapable and insufferable indy sensation that put former Minneapolitan “Diablo Cody” on the map way back when – is now Elliot Page, and has asked to be referred to by the pronouns “he” and “they”.

And the media – mainstream and social – have complied with that demand at a clip that would have terrified Orwell, and probably Emmanuel Goldstein as well.

Elliot Page was never a woman, Winston.

Appropriated: Brendan O’Neil has an excellent piece at Spiked on the subject, focusing on three subjects – the Orwellian completeness of the “transformation”, the deleterious effect of the Transgender mafia on gay kids…

…and the bit that caught my attention: Page’s cultural appropriation. I’ll add some emphasis.

The disappearing of Ellen Page, and the demonisation of anyone who dares to mention that woman’s name, matters because it tells us a great deal about the increasing instability and elitism of identity politics. There are many reasons we should have a frank, legitimate discussion about Ellen Page rather than robotically repeating that she is now a he and that anyone who says otherwise is a moral reprobate. First, is it really the case that Page is male? A he? How can someone who doesn’t have male biology and who has had no male experiences – boyhood, male puberty, masculine impulses, being a brother, an uncle, a father – be a ‘he’? How does that work? Is it magic? Or have words like male, he, brother and father been so denuded of meaning thanks to the cult of genderfluidity that anyone can adopt them as their preferred identity? It is not prejudiced to ask these questions; it is reasonable, and important.

And the same goes the other way, for “women” who grew up male as well. If eating a burrito made by a white woman is genocide, what is being an insta-male or female?

It’s not you. It’s not even your identity. It’s the costume of the day.

To: Democrats
From: Mitch Berg, Unruly Peasant
Re: Your Marching Orders

Dear Democrats

Consider it your moral duty to do exactly this. As much as you can, and then some.

Preferably right out of the gate in the next session of Congress.

If you succeed, Wellstone will smile down on you.

That is all.

Of course we are.

Well, except for the difficult stuff.

Suicides balloon by 31% in Minnesota since the beginning of the lockdowns.