As a history geek, I can still be amazed by historical patterns.
As someone who treasures Western Civilization, those same patterns can be pretty terrifying.
Reading through the list of “terrifying facts” about the East German Staatssicherheitsdienst, “State Security Service” ( the “Stasi”), it’s fascinating how many of them describe, or are rapidly starting to describe, the modern .left.
Continue readingNote: Thius story is safe for work. But use caution
Perhaps it’s a sign that I take firearm safety rules so very very seriously, but I can’t be the only one who looked at the specific piece of hardware in this story and got a nauseous feeling in the pit of their gut because:
None of the above was intended to be a double-entendre, pinky swear, although on second read it occurs to me that not only is every word of it is exactly that, but tjhere is literally no way around it.k
Remember when there was an unstated rule, when following news coverage of a crime in the Metro – if they didn’t mention the offender’s ethnicity or show a photo, it actually answered the question?
New addition to the rule: if the story pertains to criminal justice’s response to last year’s riots, and the offender’s ideology – “Boogaloo”, “proud boy”, whatever – isn’t mentioned, you know by omission whose “side” they were on.
Prove me wrong.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Covid has killed 600,000 Americans.
Joe Biden got 81 million votes to win the election.
The Census Bureau says Blue states gained residents in the last decade, Red states lost residents, as people flocked from warm, low-tax Florida and Texas to cold, high-tax New York and New Jersey.
Numbers don’t lie.
Joe Doakes
Something’s not quite adding up.
There was a time when news outlets in the Twin Cities would, on occasion and when it was germane to the story, reach out to people on the political right. It even got to the point, in the last aughts, when lowly lil’ ol’ me was getting occasional calls from Channel 4, MPR and WCCO Radio for a grassroots conservative perspective on stories. This hit a peak during the Tea Party years…
…and then, abruptly, stopped.
We’ll come back to that.
The “point/counterpoint” feature was, if not a staple, at least a fairly normal part of American media life not all that long ago. Before “Crossfire” – which, I’m surprised and pained to see, has been gone for over 15 years – there were others; the earliest I can remember was a weekly bit on “Sixty Minutes”, “Point/Counterpoint”, with liberal Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick – two articulate spokespeople for two diametrically opposed viewpoints.
Of course, CNN’s Crossfire was the biggest of them all. The original cast – Pat Buchanan and Tom Leyden – was the best, and sometimes created some fantastic TV – and I say this as someone who was pretty much a Democrat back then, although I hadn’t really thought that much about it (which makes me amply qualified to be a Democrat today). The most memorable bit, in those days when “white supremacist” groups operated in the open and were at least an order of magnitude larger than they are today, was an interview with a uniformed American Nazi. And Leyden, the show’s liberal and a World War 2 veteran, opened the segment by saying “My biggest regret in life was that I didn’t kill more of you back during the war” as the normally un-out-irascible Buchanan looked on, his jaw momentarily agape.
It’s a scene you wouldn’t get today – partly because any notion of patriotism and objective good and evil is gone from the left…
…and partly because Crossfire is long gone.
Now, according to Ben Domenech at Federalist, it was killed by Jon Stewart, who during a fabled appearance in 2004 completely trashed the premise of the show:
Readers will recall this was the infamous “hurting America” clip, where Stewart crapped all over the very concept of a debate show that paired left and right as co-equals in a running debate over the direction of America.
Stewart, who’s a fan of uninformed hubristic rants generally but will put the clown nose back on the minute you call him on it, went on a jeremiad against hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala as representing the worst aspects of American politics. But looking back on the ramifications of his comments — “Crossfire” was canceled months later — what do we see? There is today essentially no program on all of cable television that pairs left and right perspectives on camera as co-equal hosts, allowed to engage in free and open debate about the topics of the day.
Domenech’s premise – that event was the beginning of the end of actual debate in the media:
So we should ask: Is that a good thing? Is the media landscape Stewart helped create better for it, where Brian Williams regularly engages in Stewart-like snark (he called Ron Johnson a Russian asset the other day for reading a Federalist article into the record) and Tucker Carlson is the biggest name as a solo act in cable news?
In a context in which so much ink is dedicated to the concept of silos and the elimination of common space between right and left — and I mean the real right and left, not David Brooks and Maureen Dowd — do we honestly want a world where there is no space where these warring sides meet to do rhetorical battle?
The answer is: of course not. It’s much, much worse. The inability to have a space where such debates play out, and the inability of existing entities to provide such a space, has led directly to a degradation of our political conversation and a lack of familiarity with even the most basic version of the other side’s perspective on the world.
Domenech may have a point – the event was certainly the beginning of the end on cable.
But the stifling of actual co-equal debate began much earlier. I recall the woman who edited the “Letters to the Editor” page at the Strib, back before the internet made everyone an LTE editor, and then before social media made us all stupid, describing on a talk show how she made sure she picked only the dumb voices on some subjects, like gun control and abortion. You know which side she favored.
But it’s become absolutely airtight. As I noted way up above, local media made a point of at least acknowledging some sort of opposing opinion. During the run-up to the Republican National Convenion in 2007, I got invited on an MPR program on the planned protests, to discuss planned counterprotests. Because there was a counterpoint, and there was another side.
A few years later, when I spent some time fact-checking NPR’s fact-check column, both here and via email – correctly – one of MPR’s news execs inadvertently cc’ed me on an email to RIchert, telling her not to bother engaging. And that was the last I’ve heard from NPR, on any level, for any reason.
And it’s not just me. Far from it – even “tame” liberal Republican voices like David Brooks are getting rarer.
It was almost like a switch flipped, along about 2011. LIke the media saw what a motivated, decentralized, idealistic conservative-libertarian throng like the Tea Party could so (and did, in 2010), and figured they needed to starve it of that most precious political commodity ,air time.
I strongly suspect that the “outing” of “JournoList” didn’t end the collusion around the progressive narrative in the media – indeed, I suspect that, like an evil, adenoidal Gandalf, it just came back, bigger and stronger and more secret still.
And the nation is much worse off for it.
For someone who we were told was a “compromise” candidate that was “too far to the center” for our left, it sure seems “progressives” have warmed up to Biden, doesn’t it?
Weird.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Chickification: the process by which a formerly male activity is ruined for the men who enjoyed it.
I subscribe to a couple of airplane magazines. In the past, the articles mostly covered maintenance and repairs, flying safety practices, and heads-up notices of regulatory changes. There was endless encouragement to take kids flying to develop a love of aviation to keep the sport alive. The phrase “$100 hamburger” was tongue-in-cheek (it refers to the practice of flying your airplane to another airport for no real purpose, just eat lunch and come home. Adding up all the costs of owning and operating an airplane, that hamburger cost you $100, at least. But hey, considering the boat, motor and trailer, what did that walleye cost you? It’s not about the money, it’s about the sport). Flying apparel was logo ball caps. Flying club meetings were sitting on folding chairs in a hangar shooting the breeze with other pilots.
Lately, I’ve noticed a change in the magazines. Now that the editors are women journalism majors hired to make the headquarters office acceptably diverse, the content of the magazines has shifted. They’re all about getting more women flying, more girls interested in aviation. Flying articles emphasize mothers juggling flying careers and family. Glossy photos show foodie destinations. Flying apparel is fashionable. It’s a noticeable shift in emphasis away from old men in favor of 30-ish women. I fully expect Standards of Conduct and Speech Codes for flying club meetings within the next year. Nobody is allowed to say it, but adding women to a club changes the club and seldom for the better.
Women don’t need special programs or rules or encouragement to be accepted at a male activity such as flying (or shooting at the firing range). Just show up and the guys will fall all over themselves welcoming you. Forcing your way in is a sure way to force the guys out and after that, it’s just one big cat-fight which nobody ever wins until everyone stomps off in a huff and the club closes.
Joe Doakes
Which may be the goal, at least for some.
I’ve had Covid. It was a symptomatic case, although very manageably so.
As such – as we have established in this space, with information from the National Institutes of Health – I have an enhanced degree of, if not complete immunity, at least enhanced, probably highly-enhanced, resistance to Covid.
WIth that being said, I also got vaccinated. The wisdom or lack thereof, or that action’s adherence to your particular version of libertarian conservative, is not up for discussion, and won’t be discussed in this space. I got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, because I figured it was the minimum expenditure of effort – one shot and round of side effects rather than two – needed to get at least some of the less-irrational Karens, especially business and institutional Karens, to shut the hell up in the coming months. Given that I also have some degree of natural immunity and likely resistance, the J&J vaccine also provides the results I want; since the evidence shows I’m unlikely to get infected at all, preventing infections – the supposed upside of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines – is irrelvant to me. Preventing such an infection from killing me or putting me in a hospital, should the current understanding of science turn up flawed, is my only real goal.
Again – the fact that I got a vaccination isn’t up for discussion.
Evading Karen
What is up for discussion is this: Governor Klink has set the state’s restrictions to end on July 1. May it please the crown, thanks. Sarcasm intended. We’ll be caught up with Wisconsin – in seven weeks. Probably.
That’s right – it’ll be mandatory to wear a mask on June 30, but perfectly safe on July 1. Science!
But let’s ignore that, also. We’ve talked about that in this space for over a year, now.
Given that I, like most Minnesotans, have some combination of natural immunity, vaccination or both, masks are completely pointless.
Completely. Pointless.
And yet there is a lineup of stores – big box and ma and pa – promising to continue requiring masks after July 1.
And I want to make sure that I don’t patronize them after July 1. At all.
But how to tell which business is which?
The first step I’ve seen is this crowd-sourced map.
It’s being provisioned by people on both sides of the argument, of course – and some of the “reviews” would be comical if you didn’t realize these people have the same right to vote that you do.
What’s needed next is some way of searching for businesses that, shall we say, match your preference, so you can find ’em on the go.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Hundreds of shots fired. St. Paul experienced an increase in both violent crimes (up 25%) and property crimes (up 14.9%) last year, which Police Chief Axtell attributed to the “global pandemic, historic levels of rioting and very real economic pain.”
Not January 6th? Get on message, dude.
Joe Doakes
I’d say “I’m surprised nobody’s blamed ‘white supremacy8′”, but then Councilmember Jalali hasn’t spoken yet.
I’ve been writing this blog going on 20 years, as of next February.
And while blogging is traditionally, stereo typically fairly solitary a past time, we’ve had some company here over the years.
Of course, back in the day Johnny Roosh was a regular. Bogus Doug/Diane wrote a thing or two. And when the subject of history comes up, the First Ringer makes the occasional, much welcomed appearance.
And of course, Joe Doakes, while not quite wanting to take the plunge and become an official contributor, is about as regular as it gets. He is second only to me in terms of volume of posts over the past decade or so.
And, tomorrow morning, we will welcome a new writer to the stable here at SITD.
Why yes – I’m going to leave you a cliffhanger.
Tune in tomorrow!
A friend of the blog emails:
This article tells me a lot of things that are happening in San Francisco aren’t progressive.
Thing is, a lot of what they’re saying isn’t progressive seems to be actually what the “progressive party” nationwide supports.
Progressivism = weaponized idealism.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A heckler can shout down a speaker, preventing the audience from hearing the message. This activity is known as a ‘heckler’s veto.’ The heckler is abridging the freedom of speech rights of the speaker and audience while asserting his own freedom of speech right.
A troll can shout down a poster by thread-jacking or multiple inflammatory posts, thus preventing the audience from reading the message. This activity shall henceforth be known as a ‘Troll Veto.’ The troll is interfering with the free exchange of ideas between the poster and readers while hiding behind the rules of etiquette for polite society which the troll refuses to follow himself.
Unbounded liberty without order is anarchy. The first requirement of ordered liberty is order. In both examples, a balance of the rights justifies removing the heckler/troll.
Drop the ban hammer.
Joe Doakes
I’m loathe to do arbritrailty what the group is perfectly good at doing organically.
But thread–jacking is wearing out its dubious welcome.
I’ve repeatedly said that satire – the Babylon Bee, the Onion, of course Betg’s Law, and of course Titania McGrath, among a few others – are the real journalism of the age.
McGrath [1] proves it with this Twitter thread:
It’s really uncanny; satire exposes our reality better than NPR and Sixty MInutes, combined, have in decades.
I’ve got a lot of Catholic friends who are also conservatives.
I keep asking them – “when is your bureaucracy going to start enforcing the church’s supposed beliefs, like publicly supporting the right to life, or at least not being pro-infanticide, on “Catholic” politicians?
“We will. We will”.
But they don’t. Never.
But is the specter of Joe Biden, a publicly practicing Catholic, being called “the most faithful President in recent history” (by a chattering class that generally regards Christianity as a den of know-nothjing ignorance) and a representative face for Christianity and Catholicism in public, finally goading the Bishops into action?
Maybe, but don’t bet your mortgage payment on it:
But we now hear from a few murmuring bishops that the Church must address Biden’s unworthy reception of Communion. “US Catholic bishops may press Biden to stop taking Communion,” reads a recent AP headline. Nothing concrete, however, is likely to come from these complaints. The U.S. bishops, as a whole, lack the will to withhold Communion from Biden, even though canon law says that they not only have the right but the duty to do so. Canon 915 “obliges the minister of Holy Communion to refuse the Sacrament” to those in “manifest grave sin.” If Biden’s direct facilitation of the killing of unborn children doesn’t fall into that category, what does?
Not being Catholic, I’m not hip to the vagaries of intra-curial politics, but the American bishops strike this Orthodox Presbyterian as not a whole lot more concerned about such things than the ELCA.
My handwriting is atrocious. This dates back to elementary school, and it crosses all styles, from the cursive they tried to teach me and that I tried to practice into high school, to the regular mixed-case print I painfully adopt when filling out paperwork, to the all-cap scrawl I picked up working in radio when it was a convention.
And yet I do most of my note-taking by hand. I find it helps me to retain things in memory better. I usually transcribe the important notes to a Notepad file when I have spare time, but the written word just stick better with me.
But at best, unless I’m being very careful – as in, just about doing calligraphy (which, by the way, I’m pretty good at), my handwriting is barely legible even to me.
This article – along with a fascinating explication of the history of the modern pen – explains why. It’s the damn ballpoint.
Which might at least impart explain why I almost always use Paper Mate “Flair” felt-tip pens for my note taking – for the best combination of speed and low stress on my hand.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
How bad are things under the Garden Administration? This bad: we are facing a shortage of chicken wings.
Oh, sure, they’ll blame bad weather in Texas or supply line interruptions from Covid and of course, everything changed on January 6th.
But this never happened when the Bad Orange Man was President. Just sayin’.
Joe Doakes
The number of things coming up scarce these days – from wings to plywood to ammo – all have rational supply chain explanations.
The fact that they all started in January? Right after the Harris administration unilaterally made the increase in gas prices inevitable, with ripple effects throughout the supply chain?
Weird.
…whose first question was…
…where in the flaming hootie-hoo are these punks getting all the ammo?
The good news: there are jurisdictions in this country where election integrity is non-negotiable.
The bad news: it’s for high school homecoming royalty elections.
While employed as an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School in the same county, [Queen candidate’s mother Laura Rose] Carroll accessed the school district’s internal system to cast fraudulent votes for her daughter [Emily Rose Grover] so that she would win, officials said. The investigation began in November when the Escambia County School District reported unauthorized access into hundreds of student accounts, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Investigators found that in October, hundreds of votes for the school’s homecoming court were flagged as fraudulent, the news release said. There were 117 votes from the same IP address within a short period of time, the investigation found.
Ms. Grover and her mother face up to…
…are you ready for this…
…16 years in prison for rigging a high school homecoming royalty vote.
The FBI agent that presented false information to a FISA court, leading to a fraudulent FBI investigation that contributed materially to the rage that led to much of the electoral BS of this past eight months? He got probation.
And five’ll get you ten that school requires voter ID next year.
I’m kind of a radio nerd. Not only for doing radio, but I’m a geek about the history of the medium. Sometimes I think I should have been born in about 1900, so I could have been there at the birth of radio, which was in its own way every bit as exciting as the birth of the Internet.
And every bit as fraught with the capacity to be exploited by tyrants and demigogues, and flooded with dubious news in service of dubious narratives which are intended to become dubious history…
…but I digress.
I’m especially a nerd over the history of the use of radio as propaganda – especially the supremely fascinating story of the British and American “parody” broadcasts into German-held territory during WW2 – think “Babylon Bee”, but in service of a wartime objective.
Another story that’s always fascinating is “Tokyo Rose”. An American-born woman of Japanese descent who was marooned in Japan at the beginning of the war, Iva Toguri was the most prominent of several women associated with the radio name. A popular show among GIs and sailors – my ex-father-in-law recounted listening to her on board his destroyer off the Philippines and Okinawa – her story has always been portrayed as a bit of petty treason, at least to my generation.
But as Mark Fel.on, the world’s greatest history teacher, explains, the story was a lot more interesting than that.
And with all respect to H-Bomb, Consigliere, Megan Fatale, Duane Patterson, the Living Martyr and the rest, it’s the story of three of the world’s most fiendishly clever producers..
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
There are three weeks [as this was written. Currently a little under two weeks, Ed.] until the legislature adjourns. Republicans continue working with Democrats to keep Dictator-for-Life Walz in power and to enact Democrat agendas in police reform, tax increases, and legalizing marijuana.
Why?
Shut everything down until Walz ends the Permanent Emergency and the law
is changed to say he can declare another only with consent of both houses.Or else drop the masks, change parties and come clean with us. You’re
not staunch conservatives standing up for what’s right. You’re
Republicans in Name Only working hand-in-hand with Democrats to pass
their agenda.Joe Doakes
It’s high time the MNGOP stood for what’s right, here.
Twelve years ago, during the first year or so of the Obama administraiton, I pointed out my, shall we say, skepticism over the Administration’s, and Big Left’s, claims that we were on the verge of a wave of “white supremacist terror” that was going to, in the words of more than a few pundits, “dwarf 9/11”.
White supremacist terror was certainly a real thing. In the 1920’s, aided and abetted by Woodrow Wilson, the Klan was a major power in the South, and could even muster thousands of member to rallies here in Minnesota.
And I”m old enough to actually remember active White Supremacists doing bad things; the Medina Shootout, the shooting of Alan Berg, and others.
But to paraphrase Martin Luther King, the arc of White Supremacist organizations has been long, and has curved toward Palookaville. According to actual sources that had to keep their jobs by reporting facts, groups like the Klan, the Bund and other radical white supremacist organizations mustered:
The number of actual identifiable active “White supremacists” has shrunk, in terms of verifiable numbers, by an order of magnitude every generation.
Of course, with the election of Trump, the narrative turned: while there were fewer verifiable, actual members of organizations, the “rhetoric” of the new administration “created more sympathizers”…
…which was simultaneously unverifiable, un-testable, and conveniently allowed the keepers of the narrative to brand anyone to the right of Amy Klobuchar as a “potential” “white supremacist”. Like Candace Owens.
But I digress.
The narraative saw comical spectacles like the pathetic gaggle of a hundred or so endomorphic cretins gathered from across ten or more states to Charlottesville, parading with tiki torches before set upon by a much larger mob with the active connivance of a “progressive” mayor, presented as evidence of the coming Racemageddon.
Berg’s 20th Law reads “All incidents of “hate speech” not captured on video (involving being delivered by someone proven not to be a ringer) shall be assumed to be hoaxes until proven otherwise” has heretofore concerned itself with dime-bag racial huckstery like last week’s collossal FUBAR at Adelphi University, where university staff indulged in a “Ready, Fire, Aim” moment: an anonymous social media post declared that there was a wave of lynchings of blacks headed toward…Adelphi?
In response to the anonymous post — which included no corroborating evidence — the school sent a statement to the student body.
“There have been recent incidents of students using racial slurs, hateful comments, and reported threats of violence and retaliation on social media — and sadly, this is not the first time these issues have occurred,” said Adelphi President Christine Riordan. “To those among us who have been targeted, directly and indirectly, we hate that this has happened to you, and we hate that we have not yet found a way to stop it.”
“Ignorance, racism, hate and violence hold no place in the Adelphi community, yet those things keep happening here,” continued the communication. “We know there is no place at Adelphi for inexcusable messages of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, but such racist attacks are a stark reminder of the work we need to do to combat systemic inequality and ongoing racism in our very own community.”
Adelphi University Strategic Communications Director Todd Wilson directed Campus Reform toward another statement published the following day.
The second statement admitted that public safety and local police officers “have continued to ask for direct evidence of threats from those who have received them firsthand and none have been submitted for investigation.”
As with the entire wave – remember that word – of such hoaxes, so significant as to lead to the enshrining of Berg’s 20th Law, there shall be none.
But maybe I, and my law, have thought too narrowly.
The law focused on penny-ante hoaxes like Adelphi, or this one (one of several such in recent years, which seem to come up so frequently I have to check to make sure they’re not the same episode) or the similar one at Saint Olaf a few years back (a school which is no stranger to hate crimes, but all of them seem to be directed at the right).
But the entire “wave of terror” narrative applies. Like the scads of little hoaxes, everything about it must be observed, questioned, verified…
…and, if the pattern continues, as it usually seems to do, mocked and taunted from public life.
Woman, teacher, paranoid racist?
Product of a decade and a half of Critical Race Theory indoctrination?
Why choose?
Some of the social media feedback quips “this woman could be teaching your kids”.
If your offspring’s teacher is a member of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers, the odds are actually pretty decent she already is, one way or another.
It would seem there are two black Americas.
One whom upper middle class white progressives have appointed themselves leaders – the type that call Tim Scott “Uncle Tim” and jabber on about defunding and actively harassing the police “for racial justice“…
…and the actual people who live in the neighborhoods that are being gutted.
In Brooklyn Center, where the destruction was visible firsthand, respondents (nearly all black men of various ages) overwhelmingly opposed rioting. An African-American man in an “Army Veteran” hat commented: “We’re human, and we want to be treated with respect,” but we also need to show “respect.”
A man in construction gear remarked: “I guarantee you the people that were looting, nine times out of 10, weren’t from this area. . . . If you feel the need to lash out, then don’t get mad when people, you know, address you as a looter or a rioter.”
A woman in a Black Lives Matter mask agreed: “These are two different things: We have protesters, and then we have rioters.”
The people of Brooklyn Center seemed to hold a pretty nuanced view about the difference between protest and destruction.
On the streets of Washington, on the other hand, support for riots among the capital’s bourgeoisie was almost universal. One young woman said that “if change needs to be made, and it’s not getting done in the traditional avenues, then rioting is a good option.”
All the Democrats had to do to get the black working class that voted for Trump in two-generationi-high numbers back in the fold was not be crazy.
They just can’t do it.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Andrew McCarthy writing at National Review says the Chauvin jury was correct to convict him, not based on anything reported in the media or introduced as evidence at trial or the pervasive atmosphere of intimidation, but because the conviction means Chauvin is a bad cop and that exonerates the rest of society from the charge of systemic racism.
Sacrificing a victim to the mob is shameful. Twisting your shameful act to pretend it’s all for the greater good is disgusting. But I expect nothing less from a Never-Trumper.
Joe Doakes
It’s the sort of rationalization I expect from someone who spent way too much time in the prosecution industry.