Scarlett Johannson lashing back, in her own way, at the PC police’s affect on acting:

She addressed was she called the ‘political correctness’ in casting without directly mentioning her controversial casting in Rub & Tug. 
‘You know, as an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job,’ she said point blank.
She continued: ‘I feel like it’s a trend in my business and it needs to happen for various social reasons, yet there are times it does get uncomfortable when it affects the art because I feel art should be free of restrictions.’ 
‘I think society would be more connected if we just allowed others to have their own feelings and not expect everyone to feel the way we do.’

Between that and supporting Israel, she’s never gonna do lunch at Spago again.

But you know what? The interview was in conjunction with a very style-y retro photo shoot for a magazine. I’m gonna focus on that, if that’s OK. Thanks.

Last week, I caught Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix special.

I’ve always like Ansari. This special is far and away the best thing he’s done in his career.

Is it connected to his getting caught up in the #MeToo purges?

Perhaps.

But far from groveling to “woke” culture, gives the PC horde the sort of response it’s been needing from more participants in pop culture – an astringent satirical enema:

From Robert Verbruggen’s review:

Perhaps the most memorable routine, though, involves the famous Pizza Hut swastika story, where a restaurant was accused of making a pizza with the pepperoni arranged in the shape of a Nazi symbol — but some people saw it as just a regular pizza. Ansari asks the audience to clap if they thought it was a swastika, and then if they thought otherwise.
The story is made up. There never was a swastika pizza. But some audience members take sides and clap anyway. One even identifies the news source where he read about the incident. It’s a stunning illustration of how political polarization rots the brain, and it fits into a broader theme that we could do with less outrage and more honest discussion among people with differing opinions — a point Ansari makes more explicitly when discussing the uproar over a white teenager who wore a traditional Chinese dress to prom.
Refreshingly, Ansari avoids the incessant and usually unfunny Trump-bashing too many comedians rely on when short on better material. To the contrary, he points out how trivial modern America’s problems are relative to what previous generations dealt with. “Could you imagine if we had a draft with today’s people?”

It’s worth a watch.

The daughter of Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua (who we last encountered in this space eight years ago) is going to be clerking for Justice Kavanaugh…

…after she said she wouldn’t be…

…after her Mom praised Kavanaugh – apparently accurately. I’ll be adding emphsis:

Which is where our story today picks up.

Chua, [a Yale law professor and the author of the book “Tiger Mom”, a manifesto for ruthlessly deliberate parenting] who serves on the school’s clerkship committee, wrote that her daughter had accepted an appellate clerkship from Kavanaugh, but that she would find a different judge to clerk with if his nomination was successful.
She also described Kavanaugh as a “mentor to women.”
The op-ed drew severe criticism, with many arguing that she wrote it aiming to guarantee her daughter a Supreme Court clerkship.

Brief aside: using “many” as a source is becoming my journalistic pet peeve.

But let’s go one step beyond. Would a woman who wrote an entire book on parenting, which included parenting tips such as…:

…a total ban on TV-watching, play dates and sleepovers. Chua wrote of how when Lulu was 4, she rejected her daughter’s homemade birthday card for looking sloppy.
Lulu was ordered to practice the violin six hours a day, and both girls were required to play the piano flawlessly — or Chua would threaten to burn their stuffed animals. The merest hint of failure was met with name-calling: Sophia was “garbage,” Lulu a “disgrace as a daughter.”

…bat an eye at brown-nosing a SCOTUS nominee?

Dear “Many”: Your promotion from Captain to Major Obvious is granted. Congrats.

I had the rare treat of listening to the utterly ironically named “MPR News with Keri Miller” earlier this week.  And by “treat” I meant “update of the notion that Keri Miller is the one “journalist” in the Twin Cities that’d be ill-advised to tell Esme Murphy “dial back the shilling for the DFL and Big Left, you Big Left Shill, you””.  

Anyway – she had a show on Tuesday featuring a Hindi woman talking the co-option of Yoga by non-Hindi.  Not “decrying” it, per se – just urging people to be aware of, and perhaps learn something of, its Hindi roots.  

Pull quote:  the woman, Suhag Shukla, describing the various non-Hindi permutations of Yoga, including…:

SHUKLA: “…even Christian Yoga!”

MILLER: (In the background) (Disgusted, mocking snork)

Now, Ms. Shukla has a point – part of her culture has been appropriated. Like solstice trees and Chow Mein and polyrhythm and virtually everything else about every culture in the world that hasn’t been isolated from every other culture in the world, “appropriation” is a two-way street.

As someone who’s lost eighty pounds and wants to gain some flexibility and joint resiliency, I’m interested in yoga (although I haven’t done it yet). As a Christian, I have only intellectual interest in Hinduism. You wanna talk, Ms. Shukla? We’ll talk.

But since Keri Miller – and by association, the modern progressivism for which she shills – is the venue that brought me and Ms. Shukla together, let’s talk appropriation.

Big Left, like a suburban housewife going to an agnostic Hot Yoga class in a strip mall in Minnetonka, appropriates the convenient parts of the American experiment – the fun parts, like free speech and privacy. Like that housewife, or the Cafeteria Catholic, or the Allah-carte Muslim (actor, comedian, and observant but not fundie muslim Rami Yusef’s term, and I love it), they leave out the inconvenient parts – the citizen as self-sufficient atomic political unit, with the same rights, powers and responsibilities in microcosm of actual states are. The whole “government by consent of the governed” and “Free Association of Equals” bit.

If you want to practice the fun parts of the American experiment – immigrating to a country with freedom and opportunity, getting paid to be on the radio, free speech and waving signs about? Then pay some thought to the complex stuff – the tension between order and liberty, the moral right of the free market versus the stifling moral decay of socialism.

It’s a fine day for that, isn’t it?

According to the not-at-all-conservative but fairly rational Joel Kotkin, the modern left is retreating into a sort of feudalist orthodoxy:

In the past, the right, notably the segment affiliated with religious belief, was closely associated with censorship and control of thought. Today, enforced orthodoxy derives primarily from the left, emboldened by near total control of the media, university curricula and cultural products.
Remarkably [to the authors, anyway – Ed.], a recent study by the Atlantic found that “the most politically intolerant Americans” tend be white, highly educated urban progressives.
Conservatives may have once driven intolerance from the pulpit and the press, but they no longer have the ability to exercise thought control in a meaningful way.

Long ago, religious zealots embraced feudal ideals, but increasingly it’s the ultra-secular progressives who reprise the role of Medieval Inquisitors.

One of the things that originally led to “Berg’s Seventh Law” was noticing that, while John Kerry was quick to condescend to his various opponents’ lack of “Nuance” in approaching complex issues, it was in fact people on the left that exercised the most rigorously reductionistic approach to analyzing the world.

I’m happy to see I’m not alone:

Today these ideals are being undermined by a fevered rush to reject empiricism and complexity. “There’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” suggests the left’s super-star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez .
This emphasis on intent and “morality” reflects a more Medieval attitude than that of a reasoned politics that grows from facts and evidence.
As in the Middle Ages, the new progressives often seek to impose a secular version of the imperial theocracy. Like the Medieval Catholic Church, new school progressives often exhibit hostility to the roots of our own past, whether verities contained in Shakespeare, the writings of the founders or even the notion of disinterested jurisprudence. In the new fundamentalism, as in the old, there can be only one set of truths, while all others are viewed as evil.

Can you remember when this scene…

…actually didn’t remind you of a typical day at a modern American university?

I’m trying to imagine the wave of outrage that’d ensue if someone were to observe a black man mouthing off to a bunch of “white supremacists”, and getting pummeled for his troubles, and say “well, he kind of had it coming”.

Or a Jew, after getting lippy with some Nazis, “kinda brought it on himself”.

So it was interesting listening to NPR host Al Letzen – of “The Reveal”, which is one of NPR’s attempts to package African-American-sounding voices into a package palatable for the virtue-signaling “progressive” whites that are NPR’s audience. Letzen found some fame outside the NPR echo chamber a few years ago for rescuing someone who was being pummeled by some more of those virtue-signalilng progressive white guys in “Anti”-Fa.

Turns out the guy was an “out” White Supremacist. Letzen got a chance to interview him later – and his observations about how it’s naive to expect a kumbaya moment are interesting enough.

This week on the air! Host @lukeburbank and announcer @elenavox dispute the importance of their dream lives with satirist @KunkelTron, comedian @IanKarmel, radio host @Al_Letson, and singer-songwriter @lauragibsongirl.

Podcast: https://t.co/xPEk4YV59X pic.twitter.com/1I4hvkhsNu

— Live Wire Radio (@LiveWireRadio) June 28, 2019

Not nearly as interesting as his statement “brought it on himself”.

Let’s recap that; free, hateful, obnoxious speech “dservers” a group beat-down by a bunch of cowardly rich kids playing commie thug?

I’ll admit it. I’ve never much cared for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Even when I was much younger, the idea of pledging allegiance to a government skeeved me out. Governments should get the loyalty they deserve.

Starting in my teens, when I was for any reason involved in saying the Pledge, I’d hold a clenched fist over my heart, by way of saying my allegiance had best not be betrayed – because my real allegiance is to freedom, to government of by and for a free association of equals, ruling by consent of the ruled – to the ideals, not the bureaucracy headquartered in DC with branches close to wherever you live.

But the Saint Louis Park City Council, having solved all the west-suburban town’s other problems, has voted unanimously to stop reciting the Pledge before City Council meetings.

And I’m not impressed with the rationale:

“In order to create a more welcoming environment to a diverse community, we are going to forgo saying the Pledge of Allegiance before every meeting,” said Council Member Tim Brausen. At the meeting, Brausen said members might recite it in the future if there’s an appropriate opportunity, like if Boy Scouts are there.  

Any parts of that “diverse community” that are uncomfortable with the fact that this is America should perhaps re-evaluate why they’re here. Stat.

A man attacked homeless people, telling them to get out of his city.
Naturally, I deplore violence of any sort.  But it got me to wondering – which is more likely to solve the homeless problem in his town: beating the homeless while demanding they leave, or giving them food, shelter and privileges that law-abiding citizens don’t get (see, for example, San Francisco)?
The article didn’t say whether homeless people were flocking to that city, or fleeing from it.  I wonder . . . .
Joe Doakes

It’s amazing how unaffordable housing had gotten since governments all over the country made “affordable housing” a priority.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting in line to get into a Saints game. As he scans the program, Avery LIBRELLE rides up on a segway.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Er…(looks around, sees no escape) hey, Avery.

LIBRELLE: White people owe black people reparations!

BERG: Huh. So you mean that people who’ve never been enslaved are owed money by people who never owed slaves.

LIBRELLE: History has meaning!

BERG: And the actions of one’s ancestors matter, right?

LIBRELLE: Absolutely!

BERG: Huh. So – being as I am descended from people that abolished slavery 700 years before the US, or Britain for that matter, am I owed a big thank you?

LIBRELLE: (stares briefly, guns the segway)

And SCENE

Proposal to outlaw jokes on campus to fight sexual harassment, if it offends the most sensitive person they can dig up. 
Wouldn’t it be easier to go back to single-sex colleges?  No different sexes, no sexual harassment. 
And if someone offends you badly enough that your honor demands satisfaction, perhaps bring back dueling?  It certainly would help resurrect the manly arts.
Joe Doakes

Single sex colleges? Good idea – until they get turned into 1,200+-gender-combination collees.

On top of the $11 million in compensatory damages a few weeks back, an Ohio court has awarded Gibon’s Bakery $22 million – the statutory maxiumum – in punitive damages over the bakery’s defamation suite:

The counts were:
Defamation – Oberlin College and Raimondo were found liable
Infliction of intentional emotional distress – Oberlin College was found liable
Intentional interference of business relationships – Raimondo was found liable
Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar in a letter to the campus community on Friday expressed dissatisfaction with the jury’s decision, and signaled the college plans to appeal its findings.
“Let me be absolutely clear: This is not the final outcome. This is, in fact, just one step along the way of what may turn out to be a lengthy and complex legal process,” Twillie Ambar said. “We are disappointed in the jury’s decisions and the fragmentary and sometimes distorted public discussion of this case. But we respect the integrity of the jury, and we value our relationship with the town and region that are our home.”

Note to Social Justice warriors – outside your bubble, your curious illogic doesn’t fly. As Paul Mirengoff notes:

As I understand it, Oberlin argued at trial that it isn’t liable because its students, not the college, were to blame for harming Gibson’s. Then, at the damages phase, Oberlin argued that the college shouldn’t be slammed with a big damages assessment because that outcome would harm its students.
I suspect the jury hated Oberlin and its students and wanted to punish both.

And it turns out that outside that bubble, real-world rules apply..

…to the chagrin and, I suspect, the deep surprise of the SJWs.

It’s a wonderful day.

Oberlin – perennial contender for the most obnoxiously “progressive” college in the country – gets hit with an $11 million defamation judgment after its social justice legion falsely accused a local bakery of racism:

A Lorain County jury ordered Oberlin to pay $11 million in compensatory damages to Gibson’s Bakery, a local fixture since 1885 that was beset by protests and racism allegations after three black students were arrested for shoplifting the day after the 2016 presidential election.
“The jury saw that Oberlin College went out of their way to harm a good family and longtime business in their community for no real reason, and the jury said we aren’t going to tolerate that in our community anymore,” Owen Rarric, an attorney for the Gibsons, told Legal Insurrection.

The award, which could triple at Tuesday’s hearing on punitive damages, came as a warning to universities that encourage social-justice activism as student protests spill from the campus to the local community.

The protests started after three black students were arrested for shoplifting.

And what of that?

Meanwhile, the three students pleaded guilty to shoplifting and aggravated trespass while issuing statements absolving the bakery of racism.
In 2017, Gibson’s sued the college for libel; tortious influence with business relationships and contracts, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, culminating in the nearly month-long trial in Elyria, Ohio.
“The students eventually pleaded guilty, but not before large protests and boycotts intended to destroy the bakery and defame the owners,” Mr. Jacobson said. “The jury appears to have accepted that Oberlin College facilitated the wrongful conduct against the bakery.”

Let the caterwauling about “chilling effecdts” begin.

More of this. Faster.

UPDATE: It’d seem Oberlin itself is doing its best to make sure more of this happens faster.

UPDATE 2: Oberlin costs $55K a year. Don’t you just love it when people with that kind of pedigree start yapping about other peoples’ “privilege”?

(Post title h/t Paul Havemann)

This epi of “Marketplace” – or, more specifically, its A-line feature on workplaces catering to (liberal) peoples’ politics – may have been one of the most depressing things I’ve heard lately.

It starts at 17:36.

The unstated coda to the piece: “progressive” America wants to “other” all dissent out of every aspect of life.

I just left a contract at a group that was less obnoxious about it than the preening virtue-signalers in the Marketplace piece – but not, I suspect, out of lack of wanting to be. And it got me thinking – for all the talk about “tribalism” – usually from the left, aimed at the likes of Trump supporters and Tea Partiers – it’s Big Left that really takes this stuff seriously.

…is not so much that one actually be a victim…

…as it is that one successfully signals the various totems of modern victimology, and effetively controls the discussion (or has the discussion effectively controlled on one’s behalf).

Glad we’ve settled that.

It seems to have become a bit of a ritual on the left to proclaim one’s guilt for…well, all the sins the Church of Intersectionalism recognizes. The louder the better. It’s a tradition that dates back to the Cultural Revolution; to denounce oneself before being denounced (not that that was necessarily protection).

Indeed, it seems to have become literally a religious observance.

Or, alternately, a form of mental illness.

I’m a User Experience Architect.

If for some reason I decided to take two years to become an abstract sculptor – well, Mazel Tov for me, but barring some pretty significant Contract-Fu on my part, I’m not going to get paid to be a User Experience Architect.  Or sculptor, to be honest, but that’s skirting the point.

If you’re not doing the thing that you’re supposedly getting paid for, unless your potential services are so valuable that the client is willing to pay to keep that potential on tap, you might need another source of income.

National Public Radio seems to have taken up the “cause” of female athletes – Olympians, mind you – whose athletic sponsorships are jeopardized by taking time off from their sports to have kids.   NPR’s Michel Martin talked with runner Alysia Montano about the way she was thrown out on the street after becoming pregnant:

And so in that off-year, I’d hoped that we would conceive and be able to have our daughter and return to the sport. And I did conceive. I did have my daughter. And my daughter was two months old. And I got a phone call that said, I want to talk about your contracts in regard to your performance this year – which means – you mean the year that I’ve been with child? And then I was – my payment was reduced.

Wait.

Back up.

Her payment – for running – was reduced, not eliminated, during a year in which her running was eliminated?

OK, surely she suffered grievously in other ways:

MARTIN: And what about your health benefits? I mean, that was another thing that emerged in the reporting on this is that there are athletes whose health insurance was terminated. And I can’t think a very thing – many things more frightening than either being pregnant or having a child or having a newborn with no health insurance – summarily terminated. So what about you? Did you at least have health insurance to cover the delivery or the postpartum period?

MONTANO: Yes. So the way that it works is a tier system. The luck that I did have with my daughter was I fell within the tier system because I made the Olympic team in 2012, and the protection was there for me. Now, if I didn’t make the Olympic team in 2012 and I became pregnant, I would lose my health insurance.

So let me get this straight – Nike is paying you to…run.  Something that, all due respect, is the nich-iest of niche sports – a sport that literally nobody ever in history has gone into thinking of making a living at.  And when you’re running, albeit not an Olympic level for a year, due to a personal (albeit blessed) choice that biology has pretty much limited to you, you still got paid.

Could there be a more first world problem?

Well, I suppose when you’re talking about “elite” athletes…:

My point and my stance is this should not be because I am an Olympian. This needs to be something that is in place for women athletes regardless.

“Regardless” of what?  Level?  Sport?

If I’m a company selling – let me stress this – sneakers, and I’m paying someone to…run, am I bound to support them unto death, regardless?

And am I the only one frantically and vainly combing their memory right now looking for a male athlete with an endorsement contract that included years of…well, not using the product?

Apparently when I call this a First World Problem, I’m only off by magnitude:

MARTIN: There are other women in this fight with you. We saw Alysia Montano and Kara Goucher share similar stories. What does it mean to have them alongside you?

Montano later notes the real problem:

She says she wants to make sure Nike writes this protection into the contracts of new and current female athletes because, she says, track and field athletes tend to sign contracts before they are the age in which women typically start thinking about having families, and by the time they do, they are locked into contracts without protections for maternity leave.

So it’s a matter of business education, as opposed to rampant sexism.

According to police dispatch, a “crowd of 8-10 men with hammers and iron bars” attacked people on the Green Line (aka “Vomit Comet”) platform on the East Bank, at the U of M.

According to Alpha News:

A person who claimed on social media to have been at the station when the incident occurred said that the group of males had “hammers and bars,” and that they seemed to be “attacking anyone who looked like they had money or were white.” The witness, who said he isn’t white, said he didn’t want to “[take] on a bunch of dudes with blunt objects,” and that he “hurried an older white lady away” and they walked a few blocks to catch a bus.

There is considerable effort on the part of local progressives to discredit the story – as it comes from conservative Alpha News via those neocon tools, the Minneapolis Police Scanner and U of M Pollice Departments.

According to the Pioneer Press:

Police responding to a report of a group threatening people at a light-rail station at the University of Minnesota stopped seven juvenile males who fled from the Minneapolis platform, a university representative said Monday.
Two males who were carrying metal pipes were identified through video surveillance and witness descriptions, said Lacey Nygard, a University of Minnesota spokeswoman. Police issued them citations.

That first paragraph has had the local PC police all a-twitter: “Only two had pipes, not ten hammers”, because thugs never throw away pipes and crowbars when the police are chasing them, naturally.

As I’ve noted in the past in this blog, I am Minnesota’s best feminist.

Now, let’s be honest – I did it, back in blogging’s heyday (from about 2004 throug about 2009) mostly to troll lesser feminists; watching commenters at shriekblogs like “Mercury Rising” rage and thunder against a conservative guy declaring himself the “best feminist” made my heart well with joy.

But at the core, it’s still true. I do believe in the things first-wave feminist sought; things like my daughter and granddaughter being treated equally in the eyes of the law, and accorinding to their actual merits in society and the workplace.

And not only has that battle been largely won, but in some areas of society – the treatment of boys in schools and universities, the effects of family court and the “Violence Against Women Act”, the pendulum has swung a little too far.

But that’s “first-wave” feminism – the part that started with the right to vote, and continues with beating on Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK and Al Franken.

Then, there’s the kind of “Feminism” that seeks to turn women into an identity class and political bloc (progressive, natch). Some call it “Toxic Feminism”, but the technical term is “Second Wave Feminism”. Books could be written on the subject (indeed, they have been – scads of them, mostly garbage).

And in reading the bleatings of the “Feminist Identity” movement over the years, I got the same feeling I used to get when I was beset by angry junior high kids; the solipsistic grasp of the world, the same echo-chamber logic, the same grounding in a world that exists only in fantasy, the same bottomless entitlement.

Camille Paglia noticed the same thing:

My favorite period in feminism has always been the 1920s and 1930s, when American women energized by winning the vote gained worldwide prominence for their professional achievements. My early role models, Amelia Earhart and Katharine Hepburn, were fierce individualists and competitors who liked and admired men and who never indulged in the tiresome, snippy rote male-bashing that we constantly hear from today’s feminists. I am an equal opportunity feminist who opposes special protections for women. What I am saying throughout my work is that girls who are indoctrinated to see men not as equals but as oppressors and rapists are condemned to remain in a permanently juvenile condition for life. They have surrendered their own personal agency to a poisonous creed that claims to empower women but has ended by infantilizing them. Similarly, boys will have no motivation to mature if their potential romantic partners remain emotionally insecure, fragile, and fearful, forever looking to parental proxies (like campus grievance committees or government regulators) to make the world safe for them.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll no doubt say it again – the biggest problem with Ilhan Omar isn’t that she’s Muslim. It’s that she’s a progressive who’s serving as a role model for other immigrants to suck them into the world of intersectional, dysfunctional, identity-obsessed modern progressivism.

“Infinite Elgintensity” is a comically-arrogant and usually hilarious lawyer and Youtube bodybuilding videoblogger…

…who does some of the best commentary about the Social Justice militia out there, on the side.

I say that to point out that while I thought about writing something about Burger King’s self-parody-ingly “woke” Unhappy Meal campaign, once I saw IE’s video take, I gave up and decided to punt to him. Language not safe for work, btw:

(His two cents on the Gillette fiasco were worth at least a nickel as well)

And it makes me wonder – will there come a time when Millennials get tired of people not only walking on eggshells around their seemingly paper-thin collective skin, but talking and advertising down to it?)

Remember during the Cold War, when the running joke was that the best way for a small, poor country to get ahead was to go to war with the US, for all the rebuilding assistance they’d get afterward?

The modern corollary may be “the best way for a business to succeed is to become the target of liberal PC virtue-signaling and boycotts”.

Chik-Fil-A is now Ameirca’s #3 fast food joint.

Chick-fil-A, which has been the target of a left-wing boycott campaign due to the problematic socially conservative views of its founder, has absolutely dominated the chicken market over the past decade. The chain’s sale have tripled, and its U.S. market share among chicken-centric restaurants has increased from 18 percent in 2009 to 33 percent, while its chief competitor, Kentucky Fried Chicken, has seen its market share fall from 29 percent to 15 percent over the same period. That’s what winning looks like. Congrats on the boycott, libs!

And by the way – has anyone checked in on Hobby Lobby lately?

Oh.

75 years ago, thousands of Americans – teenagers or not far removed from it, mostly – waded through the surf into machine gun fire to begin liberating Europe.

This is their legacy of boldness and forthright courage:

Mr. Ford: the National Day of Prayer “stigmatizes” you in exactly the same way the Irish Fair “stigmatizes” Norwegians.

If Atheists managed to jam down a “National Day of Skepticism”, all it would do is keep them occupied (presumbly withe the vegans and crossfitters) while I go about my business.

But then, I’m not nearly that “woke”, so what do I know?

…who saw David “Going to Harvard” Hogg’s tweet…

The young people, will win. @lauren_hoggs @Alfonso_Cal pic.twitter.com/HcgUTkytdW

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) June 10, 2018

…and thought it looks like “the young” need a good laxative?

There are those who say that the definition of “insanity” is doing something over and over, and expecting a different result.  

As, for example, nations trying out socialism.  As Venezuela has done, and whose endgame was predicted three generations ago:

In 1944, Friedrich Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom that tyranny inevitably results when a government exercises complete control of the economy through central planning. Over half a century later, beginning with Hugo Chávez’s revolution, Venezuela began its own road to serfdom by expropriating thousands of businesses and even entire industries. The more fortunate companies left before it was too late, while the businesses that remained were handed over to the Venezuelan military, under whose oversight they were neglected into ruins. In a typical demonstration of class warfare, the government publicly vilified these business owners as unpatriotic, greedy lackeys of American interests, claiming that Venezuela’s poverty had been a direct result of their existence.

Chavismo created an atmosphere of distrust in which no one felt safe enough to invest in Venezuela. More important, the courts were no longer the place to get redress. Since 1999, the Venezuelan judiciary had been systematically stacked with judges loyal to the executive. Twenty years after socialism took hold of the country, Venezuela has hit rock bottom on every possible development index. Today, 90 percent of Venezuelans are living below the poverty line and inflation rates exceed 1 million percent. Record numbers of children are dying from malnutrition, and nearly all of the country’s hospitals are either inoperative or in critical need of basic medical supplies. Frequent nationwide power outages have left, at times, up to 70 percent of Venezuela in darkness. Chávez’s socialist agenda purported to be in service of the entire nation, but as Hayek reminds us, “the pursuit of some of [the] most cherished ideals . . . [produces] results utterly different from those which we expected.”

But that’s not the most comprehensive defenition.  To be truly comprehensive, you’d need to add the clause “and then import it to the United States”:

[Seattle] reporter Eric Johnson recently released a documentary called Seattle is Dying which dared to document the city’s collapse into Third World status. 
XXXXXXXXX

But instead of working to resolve the root of the problem (i.e. brain dead liberal economic policies that always lead to destitution and collapse), the city’s elite have launched a P.R. campaign to brainwash local citizens with engineered happy messages that are dutifully broadcast by local news networks.
As Seattle’s City Journal reports:
“Earlier this month, leaked documents revealed that a group of prominent nonprofits—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Campion Advocacy Fund, the Raikes Foundation, and the Ballmer Group—hired a PR firm, Pyramid Communications, to conduct polling, create messaging, and disseminate the resulting content through a network of silent partners in academia, the press, government, and the nonprofit sector. The campaign, #SeattleForAll, is a case study in what writer James Lindsay calls “idea laundering”—creating misinformation and legitimizing it as objective truth through repetition in sympathetic media.”

It took me a second to realize that the hour-long video was from KOMO, one of the city’s Big Three stations.

Watch the video. See if anything looks familiar if you’re from Minneaopolis and Saint Paul.

So how long does it take to “rehab” a left-wing celebrity “exilled” from the public eye for loathsome behavior?

Louis CK gave us a hint.

But the answer is “Probably two years, at worst“.

Seen on (and observed about) a snowflake protest sign:

You guys, the campus socialists might have one-upped Westborough Baptist 😂 pic.twitter.com/SGcTNfJ9OP— Daniel G. Weldon II 🌴☀️ (@DanWeldonFL) April 24, 2019

It’s an astute observation – but Big Left’s control over the entire education system is a lot more dangerous than Westboro, even with their platoon of carnivorous attack lawyers.