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.
…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…
But just take my money anyway.
Exhibit 1: Now, the CDC is saying openlly…
…things that got people suspended from social media, and ostracized by Big Karen, six short months ago.
Science!
…and, according to some fairly disturbing college professors, isn’t really freedom, either.
10 year sentence – a downward departure from sentencing guidelines by nearly half – in the burning of a Minneapolis pawn shop during the George Floyd riots:
Black Lives Matter rioter Montez Terriel Lee Jr., of Rochester, New York, was sentenced Friday to 120 months in federal prison for his role in burning down a Minneapolis pawn shop during the destructive George Floyd riots in May 2020.
Lee had previously pleaded guilty in July 2021 to a single count of arson in connection with a fire that destroyed the Max It Pawn Shop on Lake St. at 2726 E. Lake St. He admitted to starting the fire on May 28, 2020, which is now considered one of many arson incidentsthat happened during the summer riots.
Oddly, the article doesn’t list which white supremacist group he was part of
Nor would I care to try.
But this Fox9 piece from last week tells the story of a Minneapolis organization – “Melanin in Motion” – which is teaching urban kids “of color” to ski and snowboard.
Now, cringey name aside, I do applaud the group’s goal; skiing and other snow sports are among Western and Northern Europe’s greatest exports.
It’s just curious how the culture cops haven’t jumped out and called this “cultural appropriation”.
Weird.
A friend of the blog emails:
Seen on Twitter- “Some people really don’t get how much more appealing a place is when we know people like them won’t be there.”
Is this:A- referring to Black Americans during segregation
B- referring to the unvaccinated
C- does it matter?
We might also add “D Dash Penzeys spices “call a republican a racist“ day“.
No shortage of bigotry out there.
No shortage of bigotry out there.
When I was a kid, working at small-town radio stations in North Dakota, my favorite part of the job was working during tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings.
Which seems counterintuitive, perhaps – but there was something about the crackle and buzz of imporance, of purpose, in the air; the increasingly urgent National Weather service bulletins, the terse phone calls from the cops and sherif, that far more than overcame the whole “there’s a tornado coming!” thing.
And as a tall, gawky, greasy-haired, uncoordinated kid with little apparent athletic talent in a town that idolized the basketball team, it didn’t hurt that I knew, all over town, people were listening.
To me.
Of course, when the warning was over, I and the rest of Stutsman and Foster Counties went back to normal life. I didn’t keep telling people to stay in their basements when the front had passed and the warning was over. Because much as I enjoyed knowing that people were paying attention (and, more important, that I could deliver what they were tuning in for, with style), there were other things in life, and I didn’t need the state of crisis to keep giving me value.
A lot of people out there today can’t say that.
Covid has brought out a strain in a small, but socially prominent, group of people that find their self-worth in crying “Crisis!”.
Not just the media – it’s a given that they will make hay out of crises; pandemics and riots make them more relevant, just as tornados made Mitch Berg’s patter more important to more people than the usual diet of local sports and Rupert Holmes records that occupied most of my time on those stations.
No – it’s regular, workadaddy, hugamommy, usually but not always left-of-center types, for whom being the harbinger brings meaning to life.
And it’s to them that so much of Big Public Health’s narrative is aimed.
Great Twitter thread on the subject:
They – on social media, in the checkout line at Target, or in the comment section here – remind me. of the kids who ran to the teacher when someone stepped out of line when talking from the classroom to the water fountain. They got their sense of personal value from enforcing rules on others – whatever the rules, however niggling and petty and useless – back then, as now.
It’s the toxic corollary to “we’re all in this together”: the unstated “…and I’m not gonna let you forget about it!”.
77 years ago last month, World War II went into a brief run of extra innings, as German troops launched a surprise attack, trying to drive a wedge between the US and British armies and take the port of Antwerp, robbing the Allies of their main logistics hub on the continent. We know it as the “Battle of the Bulge”.
In a strategic sense, the attack was doomed before it started. It may have cost the Germans more than it ganed them, burning through their last supplies of fuel, ammunition and fresh vehicles, to no gain that they were able to hold for more than a month.
But that was little comfort to the GIs on the ground – many new to the front in brand-new divisions, many more exhausted after six months of constant battle and resting in the “quiet sector” of the Ardennes, and the corner of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.
The GIs fought on – some of them famously surrounded, others who just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time, still more who rushed to the scene to hold lines in the snow that could not be passed.
They fought an enemy that was exhausted and morally shaped by five years of total war, including troops – the Waffen SS, who had made war crimes part of their “mystique” since the fall of 1939. One SS battlegroup had left a trail of war crimes, including the massacre of a group of combat engineers at Malmédy, Belgiuim, and a smaller and more obscure but perhaps even more gruesome slaughter of African-American troops at Wereth – two of a number of real shootings of American POWs, and dozens more rumored mass killings.
It’s no secret to those who read military history; at times, after hearing news about the GIs gunned down at Malmédy in particular, that GIs – cold, often cut off from higher authority, thousands of miles from home, fighting for people they largely didn’t understand, in a war none of them asked for – took rough revenge. The history of “The Good War” is not void of stories of American troops gunning down Germans, and especially Japanese, without worrying too hard about the rules of war. Americans and Brits were less likely to throw the rules of war under the treads of the passing tank than the Russians or French – all of whom took “take no prisoners” pretty literally – but war, being famously “hell”, brings the worst out of everyone at times.
Suffice to say – while the typical 18 year old American draftee was on balance, as Stephen Ambrose called him, “the. best thing that could have happened to a conquered Germany or liberated France, Luixembourg and Belgium”, some of them, sometimes, had their breaking points. It wasn’t taught in high school history class – which, when I was in school, was still being taught by some of the men who’d been there – but you don’t have to dig too far into history to find honest portrayals by GIs who, as the years rolled on, talked it out (including at least one infamous episode from Band of Brothers itself).
It’s not news, suffice to say.
If you read your history.
But this is 2022. And most Americans, including most of today’s generation of “news” reporters, never read history, or at least nothing before 1960.
“The Reveal” is an NPR ‘Investigative journalism’ program, hosted by Al Letson. This past Sunday’s episode focused on the groundbreaking investigation of a massacre of 80 German POWs in Belgium by members of the 11th Armored Division.
I listened so you don’t have to – but here it is, anyway:
So what’s. the purpose of this “investigation?”
To prove that World War II a reductionist battle between good-hearted, white-hatted GIs and cartoony black-hearted Nazis, and that some Americans did some horrible things?
Again – it’s not news.
To bring out a story that has been hidden by history?
As the story itself points out, the episode was common knowledge among people who follow the war.
That George Patton and other Army brass, at the time and during the telling of the story of the war, found it expedient to either “not publicize” or “cover up” the details of the massacre, to a people who were becoming weary of war and who were shocked by the late-campaign bloodshed? Leaving aside the whole “what the hell do they expect?” angle – who do they expect to hold accountable? 95% of the GIs are gone; all the senior officers who set the policy had passed on forty years ago.
To undercut and sandbag a key part of the American self-image? To throw crap on the notion that America has had, and acted upon, and sacrificed mightilly, for noble ideals that didn’t strictly benefit us? To liberate people we had no moral obligation to sacrifice for?
I think I’m getting warm.
A former teacher, who has drifted far to the left since I was a student, once said “the Walt Disney version of history doesn’t tell the whole story” – to which I replied “either does the Ingmar Bergman version (I suppose I could have said NIkole Hannah-Jones, as well).
Either way – when it comes to piddling on any shred of American exceptionaism, to say nothing of nobility, there is no statute of limitations.
To: The World
From: Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re: Not the tough, decisive Patton
“Comedian” Patton Oswalt has been taking flak in recent weeks for having tweeted out a photo of him standing with Dave Chapelle – who is trayf among the Wokies.
He issued a groveling apology last week.
My hot take:
If you have ever seen Oswalt’s work, and his record outside of his “comedy”, and thought he was remotely:
a) smart enough to stay on “woke” message in the first place, and
b) solid enough in thought and integrity to stand up for “a”
…then you cared about him more than I did.
That is all.
It seems the relentless watchdogs of government in the Twin Cities media are at loggerheads with the government over the Hutchinson case:
You might say that I’m a dreamer – but I remember news media that’d take government to court to get to the bottom of a story like this.
Provided they’re not a DFLer, I guess.
UPDATE: It gets worse. More at noon.
A friend of the blog, from (this is an important to the story) Saint Paul, emails:
A couple who currently rents on my block are looking to move. Not that unusual. Renting isn’t typically a long term goal of professionals. They want to move out of the neighborhood versus buying in the neighborhood. Again, not unusual. People move up, have their dream home preferences.
They are like typical woke liberals with their various signs about being welcoming, #resist, etc. They proudly voted for rent control. They proudly give money, food to the homeless and believe the homeless belong on our lawns. We don’t agree on everything politics, but they are neighborly, so I shrug off the differences.
Until I had an interesting conversation. They are looking for elsewhere because it is too chaotic here. There are too many renters and more are moving in. There is too much change. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better.
OK. But, do they see how their votes made this happen? Of course not.
I know I may be accused of being too optimistic here. But, maybe when people who voted for this move away, we’ll have more power to vote for things that will actually improve things again.
As we’ve seen on policy after policy after policy, the left seems to think:
Many of them moved to Edina, Roseville and Bloomington about the time they had the epiphany – utterly unrelated to the inevitable effects of their policies, naturally – described above.
Weird.
…that a city run by Kim Norton, which has been becoming blue-er and blue-er over time, would play passive-aggressive bureaucratic pattycake games with the citizenry…
…right?
A group of parents, with a Twin Cities law firm, are asking for records related to the district’s adoption of Critical Race Theory.
And how did that go over?
“On Nov. 12, an attorney representing the district said that it would cost ‘Equality in Education’ $901,121.15 to obtain the records and they must prepay before the district completes their request,” the report reads.
The battle lines for next November could not be clearer.
This is on the façade of the former uptown theater Dash the long beloved, offbeat art house theater that was a victim of the pandemic, and, perhaps more so, what Minneapolis has become.
“Transtifa”.
Will they be getting into a war with “Anti-“Fa? And will “Anti”-Fa Now I have to change them to “CisFa”, Or risk losing its Progressive cred?
It’s sort of reminds me of the old joke; Q: if the hair-metal bands Poison and Cinderella got into a flamethrower fight, who would win? A: The world.
Did the Boston Celtics bench Enes Kanter for dunking on the Chicoms?
What a difference a year and a few tweets slamming China for slave labor make. Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter has seen his playing time severely diminished after posting a series of social media messages attacking NBA partner China for oppressing its peoples, leaving some wondering if Kanter is being punished for his advocacy of freedom.
The Celtics are denying it.
The correct answer is “of course they are””.
I mean, isn’t that what Kaepernick saga taught us? Allegation = guilt?
(Note: I apologize to those of you who had “never, ever” in the “when will Mitch write anything at all about the NBA?“ pool.)
Author Thomas Ricks on Twitter:
Three blocks from my house, August 26,2020.
Well, there is a dumbass dupe in the conversation.
…that Duke Ellington HIgh School in Georgetown, DC is going to regard this as a, er, tactical error; they’ve canceled a fundraiser involving one of their alums, Dave…
…er, let me try that again…
DAVE FREAKING CHAPPELLE
The students said they were uncomfortable supporting Chappelle because many of their classmates identify as LGBTQ+. In his new Netflix special, The Closer, the comedian compares being transgender to wearing blackface, says “gender is a fact” and says that he’s a member of “team TERF,” meaning “trans-exclusionary radical feminists.”
I’m hoping I’m around in 30 years to see what comedians say about this era.
SCENE: It’s the studio at Minnesota Public Radio. MyLyssa SILBERMAN, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, is guest-ghosting “MInnesota Insights”, a program of insights about Minnesota,. She is interviewing Gretel STROMBERG, Executive Director of “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”.
SILBERMAN: So, big news in Los Angeles. The city is banning gasoline-powered leaf blowers. What’s your take on that, Gretel?
STROMBERG: (sounding audibly giddy). I could hardly be happier! That noise every fall just drives me crazy. And sturdies show that a leaf blower creates a biggest carbon footprint in an afternoon than a car driving from Minneapolis to Fresno.
SILBERMAN: Hmmm.
STROMBERG: But it’s also the fact that it’s just a horrible sound.
SILBERMAN: Oh, same for me!
STROMBERG (sounding like she’s trying to head off a faux pas), let me say that what I’m saying is from the perspective of a white woman of privilege…
SILBERMAN: Of course…
STROMBERG: Because white woman privilege is huge and powerful.
(Scene cuts to a community clinic in Coleraine, Minnesota, where Angela PULJUU, an LPN, is driving home from a 12 hour shift in an assisted living center)
PULJUU: Huh.
(Scene cuts to a tony home in Deephaven, facing Lake Minnetonka. Karen BERHEIM-WOLD, part-time realtor, ex-wife of a successful entrepreneur and current trophy wife of a bank CEO, is having a cup of Nespresson in her three season porch overlooking the lake)
BERHEIM-WOLD: That is so true.
(Scene cuts to a small farm in Goodhue County, where Janelle HELMBACHER is looking at price hikes in the meat aisle at the local grocery store)
HELMBACHER: What, now?
(Scene cuts to an opulent mansion in Chicago, where for whatever reason Oprah Winfrey is listening to the live stream)
WINFREY: Testify!
(Scene cuts to a school bus in South Saint Paul, where teachers aid Pauline SCZEPANSKI is wrangling a bunch of junior high kids who have gotten un-used to being around kids or following rules).
SCZEPANSKI: Huh.
And SCENE
(more…)SCENE: Mitch BERG is eating a skewer of souvlaki at a local greek joint when Avery LIBRELLE walks in. BERG tries to hide behind a menu, but LIBRELLE sees him, walks over.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, hey, Avery…
LIBRELLE: You people are so paranoid!
BERG: OK, I”ll bite. How, this time?
LIBRELLE: They’re not teaching Critical Race Theory in schools.
BERG: Do tell.
LIBRELLE: Critical race theory is taught in law schools and sociology programs.
BERG: Y’know, this reminds me of the conversation I have with anti-gunners, condescendingly cooing “nobody’s coming for your guns.
LIBRELLE: More paranoia. Nobody’s coming for your guns
BERG: Right. So I point out that politicians say that that’s exactly what they’re going to do – Joe Biden said it himself on is campaign website…
LIBRELLE: That’s just talk, not policy…
BERG: Right. That’s the inevitable next line. So I point to gun control legislation jammed down in New York, Colorado and Virginia in the past few years, and they say…(motions toward LIBRELLE)
LIBRELLE: They’re not coming for your guns right this moment.
BERG: Right. According to you all, I can’t be concerned about gun control until there’s a BATFE agent beating down my door with a photocopied warrant.
But let’s get back on subject. CRT…
LIBRELLE: Isn’t being taught.
BERG: The VIrginia Department of Education says it is.
LIBRELLE: But you can’t prove that it’s being taught in classrooms!
BERG: Teachers are most definitely teaching students that America is inseparably and irredeemably rooted in racism, that “whiteness” and racism are inseparable, that the police were originally an extension of Slave Patrols, and that the Second Amendment was framed to defend slavery and nothing more. All of which are part and parcel of CRT.
LIBRELLE: Again, CRT is taught in law schools and post-secondary education.
BERG: So none of those things are taught in schools.
LIBRELLE: Of course they are.
BERG: And they are all inseparable from CRT.
LIBRELLE: No. Its not CRT.
BERG: What is it, then?
LIBRELLE: It’s a theory about race, that criticizes.
BERG: But not CRT?
LIBRELLE: Of course not.
BERG: (looks down at menu). Look at how the price of pita has gone up…
LIBRELLE: (Looks down) Huh?
But BERG has slipped away.
And SCENE
It wasn’t that long ago, really. We had heroes among us. Now they are so hard to find:
These days, the men and women who worked through the whole pandemic are being shamed and patronized by the very people whose cushy existences they facilitated for a year and a half. The liberal elites who holed up in the Hamptons and didn’t have contact with the outside world for a year are ready to get back to their SoulCycle classes, even if it means firing a few people they once called “frontline heroes.” The irony of the same people who screamed in the faces of policemen at the height of a pandemic turning around to demand that these cops now shut up, stop asking questions, and get vaccinated is almost too much to bear.
Hamptons, Bryn Mawr, North Oaks — wherever. As Bridget Phetasy notes in Tablet, it’s the same dynamic we’ve known for decades now: limousine liberals, parlor pinks, trust fund Trotskyites, living their Best Lives and dancing among the ruins:
While normal people tried to figure out how to juggle work, child care, and living under the same roof for 24 hours a day, celebrities were having a ball. Locked up with only their phones and without their handlers, the public was treated to an unfiltered parade of narcissism on fire. Distraught about the postponement of Coachella, Vanessa Hudgens took to Instagram Live to lament that “like, yeah, people are gonna die.” Gal Gadot talked about how “we’re all in this together” and gathered a celebrity cast to sing a horrifying version of “Imagine” from their sprawling mansions.
Nearly any version of “Imagine” is horrifying by definition, of course, but we’ll leave that aside. Now that we’re in our 19th month of two weeks to flatten the curve, the gyre is widening:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yeats wrote that over 100 year ago. I don’t recall attending any innocence ceremonies recently, but his point stands. We may not have mere anarchy any time soon, either: most self-identified anarchists are totally cool with the State, as long as it does their bidding. But I sense the agents of the State may not be able to make it stick. Back to Phetasy:
In L.A. County, only 54% of the Black population and 62% of the “Latinx” population have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Despite all the resources the city ostensibly devotes to equity and inclusion, it’s clear that these minority populations will be most affected by the mandates. If Black lives matter to you so much, shouldn’t you care that Black people will be excluded from restaurants and movie theaters and nail salons?
Caring is overrated, especially among the best. I don’t know what’s next, but in a world where self-regard has more cachet than self-awareness the center will not hold.
Philippe Cunningham, Minneapolis’s first transgender black city Council woman, says that even though she has spoken, and voted for, defunding the police, she doesn’t actually support defunding the police.
Or… Something like that?
Phillipe Cunningham is the first black, gay, female-to-male transgender person to become a council member in the city. Last year, Cunningham appeared alongside eight other council members at a protest in Powderhorn Park. The centerpiece of this demonstration was a stage that prominently featured the words “DEFUND POLICE” in bold, all capital letters.
Although Cunningham voted late last year to remove $8 million of funding from the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), she said she doesn’t actually want to defund the police and was “deceived” into standing on the defund police stage.
Apparently Cunningham was dealing with a pretty incredible con man (con person?), who deceived her into saying an awful lot of things that she never really believed:
“It is possible for us to keep our own community safe,” Cunningham said. “In north Minneapolis as the buildings were being broken and burned by white supremacists and extremists, MPD was nowhere to be found … so we had to come together ourselves in order to protect our community.”
Cunningham also praised the people “who threw the first bricks at police officers at Stonewall,” calling on the crowd to “honor our elders.”
Apparently the ne’er-do-wells have moved on from the “Nigerian prince“ scam, and done it in a big way.
Be careful out there.
Berg’s 20th Law of Social Justice Warmongering 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.”
Events continue to bear this out…
A similar “attack” occurred at Albion College in Michigan. “KKK” graffiti and outrage. Roughly 450 virtue-signaling students and faculty marched against the “racism” found on campus and many boycotted classes…A black student was busted and the school didn’t mention the race of the crimina
A 17-year-old BLM activist and student at Viterbo University set fire to her own dorm. At first, she claimed it was yet another racist attack against her. She later admitted to police that she set the fire herself, but pleaded not guilty in court. The school’s president released a statement saying that the police had a person of interest, and that that person would no longer be a part of the Viterbo community, but failed to even name the student.
A black student at Wayne State University in Detroit egged her own door, hoping to snag a leadership role at the school’s Black Student Union.
Of course, among actual hate crimes, the targets are a little more traditional and prosaic.
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