Our times aren’t as genteel and civil as…

…(checks notes)…

…World War 2.

So perhaps it’s fitting that the closest thing we’ve had from a major figure in the culture war to Churchill’s “Dunkirk” speech is this interjection from Elon Musk to the companies who are yapping about boycotting him for supporting free speech on the platform he owns:

But I”ll take it.

Politics is downstream of culture.

And this is a message that the parts of this culture that care about free expression, critical thought and liberty in general need to say, in one form or another, to the parts that don’t.

In addition to football, we saw last week the annual “progressive” tradition of wrapping one’s self and others in un-earned victimhood.

It was “Trans Violence Awareness Week”, during which Leftis pols conjured up victims from the ether to rally the soft-minded to their cause.

Senator Smith, for starters (with a riposte from Shawh Holster)

If the Human Rights Coalition says it, its worth fact-checking:

The only catch is that no such systemic violence exists. According to Jean-Pierre herself — and, presumably, to an LGBT-rights group with every interest in magnifying the phenomenon — the total number of trans-identified Americans known to have been killed in 2023 is 26. If we round that up to 30 (to account for December) and assume that just 1 percent of the U.S. population is trans (given that, as one very limited survey shows, around 3 percent of young Americans are), we obtain an annual transgender-murder rate of 30 in 3.32 million, or just 0.9 people per 100,000 people. Even if we, alternatively, assume an American trans population of just 1.6 million — to gel with one high-quality but conservative recent estimate — the resulting murder rate would be merely 1.9 per 100,000 people.

To put that in context, the murder rate for blacks in the U.S. is currently 30–33 per 100,000 people. The African-American community is an outlier but not necessarily a remarkable one: In a representative recent year, 4.5 percent of black-male deaths were the results of homicide, versus 2.3 percent for American Indians, 2.2 percent for Hispanics, 2 percent for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders . . . and 4.9 percent for all whites under full majority. To say the obvious, all of these groups are currently living far more dangerously than “trans women.”

Holster ran down the HRC’s numbers in this twitter thread:

Long story short – like iron ore, Big Left wants to take the raw material of intra-relationship and street violence, and try to refine it into yet another social grievance to keep the ignorant and uncritical in a hot lather.

Joe Doakes emails:

From Ace of Spades on Thursday the 23rd:

**

So I’m going to say something that is considered racially rude, but I’m sick of the bullshit.

Conquest without morality was the rule of all peoples and nations until a couple of hundred years ago. Only in the very recent past has morality become a major consideration in warfare.

And the people most responsible for adding moral considerations to the law of conquest were… Europeans.

People pushing the Victim Narrative pretend that their ancestors were morally superior to their conquerors. In fact, they were not. Their ancestors conquered everyone they could conquer. The Comanche Empire conquered other Indian tribes, which is why Indian tribes allied with the American government to fight the Comanches.

If Indians had advanced shipbuilding, navigation, and steel-working, they would have conquered Europe.

Native Americans’ ancestors did not refuse to do this because they were more moral. They didn’t do it because they simply couldn’t do it. They were not superior in morality; they were simply inferior in technology.

And all of this endless bullshit whining about generations-old conquests is just a nasty cope.

You’ve heard of “Victor’s Justice,” in which the winner of a war can vindictively set the terms for peace…? Well we live now in an age of Loser’s Justice, when the losers of the war can, somehow, endlessly torment the great-great-great-grandchildren of the winners of their ancestors having won in war.

And we’re sick of it, and we’re done with it. We never point this out, because we don’t want to upset people who are clearly insecure about their ancestors’ failures. Who wants to pick on the fat kid?

But by not shutting this bullshit down, we have invited endless demands on us. Endless reparations and payoffs, endless “land acknowledgements,” endless affirmative action programs, endless demands for apologies (which are endlessly offered, and endlessly rejected as insufficient), endless demands we change our lives to “honor” people we don’t even fucking know, endless demands we “center” other people and endlessly think about what we owe complete fucking strangers.

Enough. Enough.

The fact that my ancestors were good at war is no credit to me. I can’t take racial credit for what people that lived 200 years ago did.

But neither do I have to take responsibility for the actions of ghosts.

And the fact that some people’s ancestors were bad at war is not a credit card with no limits entitling the bearers to make endless demands on others.

I’m done with walking around eggshells because some people just cannot get over their distant ancestors having been shit at fighting.

***

Could not agree more.  The last man to have clear title to land was Adam, and he lost it when he got evicted for breaking the terms of his lease.   Everyone after him has title-by-right-of-conquest (nowadays called “adverse possession” by lawyers and “colonizer” by activists) including Noah, who didn’t do his own slaying but moved into a world where his patron had slain everyone for him.

Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park

I would like to throw in a claim for my Viking ancestors and their history of fomenting what we now call democracy, along with their incredible facility at conquest.

But I can’t, because justice, the sins of the fathers are not visited on the sons, either their achievements.

“The Devil’s greatest achievement was convincing the world he didn’t exist”
— “Keyser Söze”, The Usual Suspects

One of the greatest achievements of the modern Big Left is convincing the world, and itself, that the Nazi movement of the 1920s and 1930s was, like today’s “American” “Nazi” party, a movement of ignorant blue-collar and no-collar losers.

It was in fact a youth movement, led by academics and artists. Besides Hitler himself, most of the cabinet that ran Germany from 1933 to 1945, much of the party’s senior leadership were writers, playwrights, journalists, painters and academics.

Same as the Communists before them.

And same as today’s Big Left. This is Judith Butler,

And if you wonder if today’s Big Left is bigger and more powerful? You’re not alone.

SCENE: It’s September 1, 1939. In the command post of the Republic of Poland Armed Forces. Poland’s Minister of War, Jozef BECK, and the Marshal of the Polish Military chief Marshal Edward SMYGŁY-RYDZ, General Szymon NOWACKI of the Armored Force,, are at the center of a gaggle of staff officers, poring over a wall full of maps showing a dire situation.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: The Germans have cut off Gdańsk, have broken through west of Krakow, and are threatening to cut off the Poznan Army.

GENERAL NOWACKI: Marshal, we’ve got the Seventh Armored Brigade in reserve. They could hit the breakthrough from the flank.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: We’ll need the Sixth Corps to support them on the left.

STAFF COLONEL: They’re in OK position for that.

Corporal Filip PRZYBYL, the headquarters Administrative assistant, enters the command post and salutes.

PRZYBYL: Marshal, the MInister of Social Justice has arrived .

(The officers groan)

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Show him in.

(Social Justice Minister Evgeny LYBRZELSZ enters the room and doffs his French-style top hat)

LYBRZELSZ: Marshal Smygły-Rydz? I’m told you’re planning a counterattack against the Germans.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Well..yeah, The Niemcy attack threatens Poland’s very existence.

NOWACkI: If they break past Poznan, there is no obstacle between them and Warsaw.

LYBRZELSZ: We can’t launch the attack.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: (Stops short, dumbfounded) What now?

LYBRZELSZ: There is no humanitarian corridor for German civilians.

(As an air raid siren goes off in the background, the officers stand, agog).

NOWACKI: What on earth are you talking about?

LYBRZELSZ: Attacking the Germans when there’s no allowances for humanitarian aid to German civilians is immoral.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: This is a literal threat to our existence, by a nation that’s completely mobilized for war.

LYBRZELSZ: So you are committing genocide against Germans.

Entire room falls silent. The sound of bombs in the distance swells.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: So, see to the destruction of Poland, then

LYBRZELSZ: What are you, a bigot?

And SCENE

SCENE: Mitch BERG is cleaning out his garden boxes. Busy hauling stalks to the truck, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, patrolling the alley, looking for over-filled recycling bins to report to the city.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Hey, Avery…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. The GOP’s new Speaker of the House is anti-science. I have proof!

BERG: Huh. So since the Speaker’s job has nothing to do with developing theories, formulating hypotheses, designing and conducting experiments and documenting results, much less trying to figure out how the universe “really” formed, what difference does it make?

LIBRELLE: Who wants our leaders to believe fairy tales?

BERG: Let’s ignore for a moment that theology, like mathematics, logic, physics, even history, are different ways of analyzing different evidence about the universe. Let’s say that you have a brain tumor, and you need brain surgery, or you’re going to die, but quick. So you go to the world’s leading brain surgeon – the one person who can save your life. So far so good?

LIBRELLE: OK…?

BERG: That person has got to be a person of impeccable scientific credentials, right?

LIBRELLE: Of course.

BERG: So you meet that surgeon, and he explains his record – overwhelmingly successful – and his technique, his reasoning, and his plan. And everything sounds right. So far, so good?

LIBRELLE: Right…?

BERG: Then he tells you he believes the universe is 6,000 years old and was created in six days by an imnipotent God.

LIBRELLE: Oh, I’d cancel the surgery instantly!

BERG: Why?

LIBRELLE: He clearly doesn’t believe in science! But why are you wasting time with a hypothetical example?

BERG: Nothing hypothetical about it.

LIBRELLE: When I know more about science than the world’s leading brain surgeon…

BERG: Your degree was in what?

LIBRELLE: Grievance studies with a minor in Sociology!

BERG: Right. Hey, look (points down the alley) I think the Gruenbergs mixed green glass in their clear glass…

LIBRELLE: (Looks down the alley. BERG makes his escape. LIBRELLE doesn’t notice, heading down the alley and getting his…er, her…er, a smart phone camera ready to go…).

And SCENE.

I’ve seen a bit of a resurcence of the traditional 20-something paranoia about “the draft” that pops up whenever the world seems turbulent.

Example:

But this post isn’t about Selective Service.

We’ll come back to that.

Minnesota’s “Peace” creep community isn’t any smarter than it’s ever been

My first response: Our GenZ “activist community” has gone from “Punch a Nazi’ to unquestioningly supporting a literal fascist government that obsesses over race and advocates and practices the annihilation of the Jews.

You’ve come a long way, Zeepers!

But let’s go back to the top of this post, with the other Zoomers fretting about the draft.

The draft – being flooded with and responsible for paying, training and managing hordes of unwilling recruits who’ll spend a year or two as mediocre to poor soldiers – is the last thing our military wants.

I’d always assumed – mostly correctly – that that was for doctrinal reasons; willing soldiers are better, more trainable, more capable soldiers.

But looking at the caliber of the demographic pool, at the top and especially in the second videos above, I can think of a other reason…

Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.

Americans overwhelmingly consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and condemn the wanton slaughter of October 7.

But among Americans under 24 years old, the split between pro-humanity and pro-Hamas is not only depresslingly closely-fought, but the pro-terror side has a slight edge.

Putting it bluntly, a thin majority of young Americans are OK with genocide. They may couch it in intersectional twaddle, they may hedge the ugly parts.

But a generation that grew up chanting “punch a Nazi” yapping about colonialism and calling their elders “fascists” around the Thanksgiving table are now supprting an actual Fascist regime that actually is killing minorities to further a thousand year old colonial movement.

Why?

It’s the professors:

The first order of business is to heap scorn on a generation that has adopted this morally bankrupt perspective and the older adults in their lives who have so maliciously led them astray. The second task at hand is for us to understand what convinced the younger generation to sacrifice their humanity upon the altar of an intellectual fad. The answer can be found, at least in part, in one odious word that has claimed the benignity of this generation and so many before them: “framework.”

On October 13, the Atlantic published a fascinating reflection by Helen Lewis on the callous indifference her compatriots on the American left have shown toward the wanton murder of Jews for being Jews. She correctly identified the origins of this phenomenon in the intellectualization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses, which flattens the distinctions between civilian and terrorist, between West Bank and Gaza, between Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, and so on. But that flattening is the outcome. The instrument that pummels the complexities of the region into an unrecognizable paste is that detestable word, “framework.”

“Fitting Israel into the intersectional framework has always been difficult, because its Jewish citizens are both historically oppressed—the survivors of an attempt to wipe them out entirely—and currently in a dominant position over the Palestinians, as demonstrated by the Netanyahu government’s decision to restrict power and water supplies to Gaza,” Lewis wrote. Intersectionality is, indeed, the “framework” on display here. It started out as little more than a thought experiment, but it has since transmogrified into a way of life.

While our modern academic class is largely parasitical and counter-useful, they have perfected the art of self-serving logical gymnastics.

Why is Target having trouble?

“They’ve had trouble keeping their shelves stocked for years, now”.

But their stock boomed, especially during the pandemic (thanks, all you governors that strangled the competition).

No – there’s just something about May 2023.

What. Could. It. Be?

It’s hard to choose.

Option 1

Is it that Randi Weingarten and everyone who supports her are lying about the “Teacher getting fired for reading Ann Frank“?

(She was reading a version of Ann Frank that’d been tweaked to make it read more like soft-core queer porn. Not the original).

Or is it…

Option 2

Someone actually wrote a queer porn version of Ann Frank.

Because gays didn’t have so much skin in the game during the Holocaust that they didn’t need to appropriate an utterly non-LGBT story.

Truly hard to choose, to be honest.

To: Jana Shortal, KARE TV
CC: KARE TV
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Books

Ms. Shortal,

Yesterday, you tweeted this, about a controversy currently being manufactured (indeed, wose manufacture you appear to be closely involved in) in Carver County:

I know – it’s 2023, and even the most trivial parts of civic governance can and do get blown far out of proportion. My father was on a library board during a fracas over the book “A History of Pornography”; The Battle of the Somme didn’t have more-entrenched sides to the debate than that one. And this was in the late 1980s, in a small town, where there was both the spirit and imperative toward civic compromise.

Now, I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I think the adult wing of the library can and should have access to pretty much everything.

For adults.

Including Mein Kampf. Not sure if you’re advocating removing Mein Kampf from libraries. Having read it in English and German, I think every high school senior should be required to read it. It’s a bad book, even if you leave out the message – Hitler was a terrible writer – but people reading it won’t trivialize the term “Fascist” anymore. Which means half of Generation Z’s political vocabulary disappears overnight. Still, Ms. Shortal, if you want Mein Kampf removed, take it up with the library board. That’s how it’s done. And the Carver County library board pretty much agreed.

Now – as far as kids go?

Tell you what: KARE should have Ms. Shortal read Gender Queer, with the book’s illustrations, on the air.

“But Mitch – why not offer the NARN’s time slot?”

Because the book would violate FCC standards for broadcast. On radio, and on TV. For adult listeners.

KARE’s management won’t allow Ms. Shortal to read it on the air. Forget about the illustrations.

Sat what you will about FCC regulations – that’s a conversation I’d love to have. But if the FCC won’t let the book on the air, is it really something a city library should be providing to children without parental approval?

That, as always, is all.

Reports of genocide against native children in Canada appear to be at least for now greatly exaggerated:

Four weeks of excavation work at a residential school in Canada reportedly failed to turn up evidence of mass unmarked burial sites, raising questions over the claims of widespread indigenous graves across the country.

Minegoziibe Anishinabe, an indigenous group also known as Pine Creek First Nation, has excavated 14 sites in the basement of a Catholic church near the former Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba over four weeks this summer, but has yet to uncover bodies at the sites that were suspected of being possible burial locations of indigenous children, according to a report from Global News.

The work comes after ground-penetrating radar used at the sites detected what were described as “anomalies” at 14 locations in the basement of the church, part of a series of discoveries over the last two years in Canada that were reported to be “mass graves” of children who had attended the country’s residential schools.

There’s a significant part of the western left that’s disappointed.

…an academic who is also one of the architects of modern “woke” culture not publishing any academic work in four years is…well, raising eyebrows:

Boston University Professor Ibram Kendi has not published an academic paper in at least four years, according to his Google Scholar profile.

The professor, who popularized the term “anti-racism,” wrote at least two children’s books in the same period.

Professor Kendi is currently “on leave” from his job as the director of his own Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, which he founded after leaving a similar role at American University.

On the other hand, among leftist academics, four years is kind of a piker. Get back to us when he’s gone a solid decade or more, like this old friend of ours.

In the game of cheap rhetorical card tricks, the latest card up your average garden variety Leftists sleeve is saying “Define ‘Woke'”, and then plastering a sanctimonious smirk on their face as the good guys try to arf up a definition for something that isn’t really meant to be definite.

To some extent, Big Left uses terms like “woke” as a game of “Bring Me A Rock” – trying to answer a question whose parameters you don’t understand – or, ultimately, one of those greased pig contests at the county fair, where kids chased after a slicked-up piglet as the adults laugh at the hijinks.

But I love seeing smirks decaying into dejection, or better yet rage; it’s one of my life’s great joys, in fact.

So what the heck: let’s define “woke”, once and for all. For the ages.

Con Text: First, the rules:

• We’re defining it from the modern white progressive context. The term is appropriated from Black America, a relationship under whose convenient cover those white progressives scamper when you start getting close to their terms: “You just hate black terms!”, or some such dogwater.
• Leave your suggestions, or feedback on my suggestion, in the comments.
• Threadjacks of any kind, left or right, will be removed without comnent.

So let’s give this a ahot.

Rough Draft: Here’s Take 1.

“Woke: Noun: A pseudoreligious social and political philosophy that ascribes all dissent from social progressive beliefs to “systemic” problems, demands acceptance of those beliefs rather tha toleration of dissent, and calls for conversion of non-believers by social persuasion or coercion.

Go to it.

Ping: Scalia warned after the Obergefell same-sex marriage decision that it’d open the doors to use the law to de-normalize things that’d been normal for all of human history.

Pong: Massachusetts – the Caliifornia of New England – rejects an adoptive couple, Mike and Kitty Burke because, as practicing Catholics, they would merely love a gay or transgender child, rather than aggressively affirm the child’s orientation:

“Kitty expressed that she does not believe in gender affirming care for children,” the report noted, adding that she referred to such care as “chemical castration” and said she doesn’t believe that people can choose their pronouns.

Mike Burke, meanwhile, told the social worker he has many friends who are gay or lesbian and has attended several same-sex weddings. He told the social worker he would likely attend his child’s wedding if they married someone of the same sex. 

He also said he would likely not consider any type of gender affirming care for a child under the age of 18….In a later email, the social worker noted that the Burkes “have a lot of strengths” and “really seems to understand adoption/foster care.” However, she wrote, “their faith is not supportive [of LGBTQ+ youth] and neither are they.”

Is there anything Scalia wasn’t right about?

Transgender woman deadlifter breaks Canadian women’s record.

By over 200 pounds

You can tell it’s a woman. It’s the pink socks.

Movies are pretty streaky to me.

Before Gran Torino came out I think I’d gone something like 3-4 years without seeing a movie in a theater. No big deal – I scarcely noticed it, and had plenty of other stuff to keep me busy.

After the “lockdown” ended, I went to a couple of films just to throw a throbbing middle fingers at the Karens of the world. I don’t even remember the movies – just how good throwing. that finger fels. Also how much room I had. I literally was the only person in the theater more than once. #ThaanksGovernorWalz

But I’ve been light on movies again, for a while now. I didn’t grow up with comic books (other than “Flaming Carrot” and, later, “King and Country”), so I have no nostalgia for the endless Marvel and DC franchises. For that matters, I lost all interest in Star Wars after “Attack of the Clones or whatever it was called. I literally haven’t seen a single one after the third episode/sixth movie. When asked which universe I prefer, Star Trek or Star Wars, I reply “Firefly“.

And I try to avoid going to movies I reasonably believe are going to be a waste of time and money. I’ve literally walked out of one movie in my life (The Burbs with Tom Hanks).

But I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately. I’ve seen movies four weekends in a row. And – unbelievably – they’ve all been good.

• Sound of Freedom. Amazing film. . Unbelievably intense. Its critics say “it manipulates the audience ZOMG”. Right . So did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Oliver Twist” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner”. That’s art, especially art for a cause, for you. .
• No Hard Feelings. Yep ,a Jennifer Lawrence film. “But she’s a lefty”. I don’t care – it’s a movie with a fundamentally conservative message. One reviewer called it “a sex comedy without the sex”, and it’s not wrong – especially given that the one nude scene is hilarious and diametrically not erotic in the least.
• Oppenheimer. I love the fact that a director trusts and audience to be able to follow a complex, non-sequential plot.

Aaaaaaaand Barbie.

“Wait – wut”

Yep. Barbie. And I’d do it again – entirely on conservative social criticism grounds .

More tomorrow .

If the War on Terror had gone on a whole lot longer, I’m sure modern Hollywood would have gotten around to re-booting “MASH”. Because they literally have no new ideas [1].

And if they did? Corporal Klinger would appear via Zoom.

Mitch BERG is on the air in the bunker at AM1280. He’s interviewing Aaron ROSTON, writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.   He is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist – mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives. ROSTON is talkng into microphone 3, lookng over the console at BERG.

BERG:  So you’re pro-choice? 

ROSTON:  Of course.  Abortion is a human right, 

BERG:  Let’;s define “human”.

ROSTON: That’s kind of absurd.

BERG:  Possible. Let’s see. So I have a question for you. When your mother was pregnant with and delivering you, at what point was it no longer acceptable for her to “terminate” you? Please be specific.

ROSTON:  Well, that was her choice.

BERG:  Right, Understood. So at what point in the pregnancy was it no longer her choice .

ROSTON:  Whenever she said.

BERG:  So could she terminate you now/

ROSTON:  Of course not. That’s absurd.

BERG:  Why?

ROSTON: Because I’m a human.

BERG:  Sure. So when did you become a human?

ROSTON:  When I was born.

BERG:  So two minutes after you were born, you were a human?

ROSTON:  Yes.

BERG:  And thirty seconds before you were born, when you were the exact same person you were ninety seconds later, but not quite out of your mother yet – was your life worth defending?

ROSTON:  That was up to my mother.

BERG:  So the only thing that changed about the moral value of your life in that ninety seconds was you emerging from your mother? It was entirely your mother’s call?

ROSTON: Sure.

BERG:  So could she still “terminate” you?

ROSTON:  Don’t be absurd!

BERG:  Why can’t she?

ROSTON:  You can’t murder a human.

BERG:  So thirty seconds before you were born, you weren’t human?

ROSTON:  Nope.

BERG:  And a minute later you were.

ROSTON: Yes.

BERG:  With the only difference being your mother’s choice?

ROSTON:  Yes.

BERG:  And no other reason she couldn’t terminate you today.

ROSTON:  You’re clearly a racist.

BERG:  Clearly.

(AND SCENE)

Attorney General Ellison compares Justice Thomas to a “house slave”:

Ellison – whose entire career is was financed by Alita Messinger and George Soros – accuses conservatives on the SCOTUS of being beholden to plutocrats.

And about 1:00 in, he says:

“Anyone who’s watched Django – Clarence Thomas is like Steven.

Ellison is being both a little more artful than Ryan Winkler’s ape-like response that Thomas is “Uncle Tom”. “Stephen” is a dog whistle reference from a Spike Lee movie – a coded reference to “someone all real black people should hold in contempt”.

Last year, with the aid of a 14:1 spending advantage, Ellison won by about a point.

He can be beaten.

Spanish environment minister Teresa Ribera…:

1. Took a private jet to a climate conference – her 17th private jet trip of 2023.
2. Took a limousine downtown to get to the conference
3. Stopped a block away from the conference, took out a bike…
4. And rode the last 1-200 yards, as her entourage followed in their government issue “impress the peasants” rides.

It seems to be all the rage among the “progressive” “elites” these days:

Last week, I suggest that the Abenaki tribe should take Ben and Jerry’s up on their demand to “give America” back to the tribes that used to live there.

I suggested last week that that the Abenaki tribe that used to live where Burlington, Vermont – Ben and Jerry’s HQ – is today should take the company up on it, and reclaim the shores of Lake Iwannavirtusignal (or whatever it’s called).

And as if they were listening…

Dear Abenaki tribe: free airtime awaits. Have your people call my people.

Why have we learned so little about yet another spree killing in yet another blue city?

Oh:

The rifle-wielding suspect who donned a bulletproof vest before allegedly shooting dead five men and injuring two children in Philadelphia has been identified as a Black Lives Matter supporter who shared gun-toting memes on social media.

Kimbrady Carriker, 40, was nabbed shortly after the bloodshed in the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood Monday night, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, citing sources.

Cops haven’t yet publicly disclosed the suspect’s identity.

On his Facebook page, Carriker posted two pictures of himself wearing a bra, a women’s top and earrings with his hair braided long in March, three months before the alleged shooting.

Now, I’m not going to say that being trans/nonbinary predisposes anyone toward carnage. But there’s been a bit of a streak lately:

And the best the MSM can do to explain it is to compare the number of trans spree killers [1] with the raw number of mass shootings [2] – which is a little like saying “Elizabeth Taylor didn’t have a lot of husbands” by comparing her total marriage count to all of the marriages in the country.

[1] A mass shooting [2] where the only motivation is to kill people

[2] Any shooting involving 3+ victims – a botched robbery, a murder-suicide, a gangland driveby, even a self-defense shooting where someone takes out a group of attackers.

To: Ben and Jerry’s
From: Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant
Re: Performative Garment Rending Would Be A Great Flavor Name

Ben and Jerry,

You produce yet another product I’ve never bought, and being fairly strict keto, will not be buying any time soon, politics notwithstanding, so this note is of no real consequenes to either of us.

Sort of like the tweet below, in which you join the academic-nonprofit/industrial complex in its latest round of performative consequence-free virtue-signaling:

Then f***ing do it.

Liquidate your business. Give it back to the Abenaki tribe, the people who are indigenous to be area around Burlington, Vermont. All of it, down to the last dime.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenberg? Yep – back to Europe with you, where you can argue about who’s stolen what land dating back to the Romans and before, and be alarmed at how unconcerned anyone in Europe seems to be about the millennia of land-theft behind all the modern states.

After you move to Canada, of course. Which is also “stolen”, come to think of it…

Anyway – until you’ve done that, shut up. Seriously.

That is all.