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.
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.
Something doesn’t quite smell right about this story.
The bar cited Anheuser-Busch’s “move to stop its marketing campaign celebrating actress, comedian, and content creator Dylan Mulvaney’s first year as a woman.” https://t.co/dqXGAFKhPI
It’s a gay bar, dumping Bud Light over them, abandoning the Dylan Mulvaney campaign.
The stereotype of gay bar patrons is that they have impeccable taste.
We are talking Bud Light.
Anyone else seeing the problem here?
Of course, the lesson to companies is, or should be, “don’t get involved in the culture war. Because once you dip your toe in, there is no “middle ground“.
Problem is, most of the stuff that conservatives are supposed to boycott these days or products, I’ve never used, or companies I’ve never really patronized.
I hadn’t used Gillette razors for years before they beclowned themselves with their anti-masculine ad campaign a few years back. not because they were work, but because they just weren’t very good razors.
I haven’t had beer in something like five years – and even then, I didn’t drink American mass-market beer. So Bud Light was irrelevant (and is only beer in the loose possible sense of the term)
Likewise, given a choice between Starbucks, Caribou, and driving home and making French press, Starbucks always comes in last. Not because of politics, but because it’s the worst value for the dollar.
But after Target’s recent bout of self immolation, I figured that’s a company I can do without.
Yeah, self-immolation:
If you've ever wondered if they are going after your children, wonder no more.
I pity the poor schlubs at the Babylon Bee and The Onion.
How hard must it be to actually satirize the modern left?
Speaking of which – this was in the MN House:
"Not all students who menstruate are female," said DFL Rep. Sandra Feist during a hearing to consider a bill that would provide menstrual products in all school bathrooms, including boys' bathrooms. Read more: https://t.co/X5AG5JFdGzpic.twitter.com/kbVLb89ojz
I graze a bit on NPR, mostly to find material. Let’s just say it’s a “target rich environment”.
The network has a couple of shows – chock full of vaguely-black sounding accents and topics, slathered over the same progressivized-for-your-protection content they provide the other 162 hours a week, shows like “It’s Been a Minute” and “The Takeaway”, that seem to try to address, not so much the “black” audience, but NPR’s huge, relentlessly white progressive audience, apparently to make them feel, if not “more authentic”, at least a little less guilty.
But I’m here to bring the guilt back.
In recent months, I’ve heard 2-3 shows on the relentlessly woke networks – interviewing the stars of the movie “The Woman King”, an “afrocentric feminist” story about a sub-Saharan kingdom’s unit of female warriors.
The movie – and the gushy, smarmy, self-congratulatory interviews – gabble and prate on and on about female power and empowerment and inspiration and enough word salad to unstop a cement colon.
What doesn’t get mentioned? The real life “warrior women’s” main military and economic justification; procuring slaves to sell. They were a revenue-generation tool for the Dahomey monarchy.
Go ahead. Tell me where the slavery talk is. I’ll wait.
National Review’s Armond White – one of modern media’s most intellectually consistent and rigorous film critics, and incidentally a black man – was not amused:
Historical fraudulence is a problem, but the reasons behind it are what cause alarm. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood and screenwriters Dana Stevens and Maria Bello gainsay Dahomey’s role in the slave trade, trivializing the complications of that original sin. Instead, they offer another Millennial gender-flip, conceived to further sexual confusion via racial frustration and feminist anger.
This approach cannot be taken seriously because, like Black Panther and The Lion King, The Woman King is juvenile. The film’s comic-book premise treats black audiences like children. That adolescent kick over hair-pulling catfights is extended into an almost laughable, pseudo-political history lesson pitting women against men…Thus, she gives us Dahomey as Wakanda, a made-up history for uninformed viewers who feel so “unseen” that they can be robbed and conned again.
But let’s not bury the lede here.
NPR, and Hollywood.
Erasing Slavery.
It’d be so cool if NPR engaged with the proles. I’ve got so many questions.
Democrats: it is literally violence to “misgender” someone, even unintentionally, even if they are of a chosen gender you’ve never heard of“.
Unless…:
"It was obvious with the mugshot that's a man. That's not a non-binary person because in no way shape or form could they appear as a woman the next day."
Trans activist Natalee Bingham settles the gender identity question of the Colorado shooter. pic.twitter.com/eAnJi6khsK
I’m going to guess most of you didn’t know that Sunday was “World Toilet Day“ (I personally celebrate the Eastern Orthodox Toilet Day, which is December 3)
Something I didn’t know about the humble toilet; to at least one part of Big Left and, to at least one part of Big Left, it’s a social justice issue:
Unsafe toilets are robbing girls of their futures.
The people sitting at the table sure in the hell don’t look like the people you all was hugging on during the campaign🤔where is that diversity‼️‼️ https://t.co/PuTiqjac6l
Now, here’s a little dirty little secret of mine; I can and do ignore people who create new adjectives by adding “–ness” to the ends of nouns, willy-nilly.
When I first started hearing “progressive“ activists jabbering about “whiteness“ a few years back, I got to confess, I ignored it. The idea that there is some essential, internal racial trait that unifies a term that covers Armenians and Norwegians, or Italians and Irish, is the kind of laughable absurdity you get from… Well, racists who are trying to pound facts into shape to fit is theory.
It’s always hard to pick which leftist pathology to ignore, and which to take seriously.
Of course, looking at the “crowd“ in this photo, I’m not sure I would take them “seriously“ if they weren’t all intimately involved in teaching the children of whatever parents weren’t smart enough to get them out of the Minneapolis Public schools…
You might think that Israel, being in a tough neighborhood, with its survival at stake, would not allow woke nonsense to seep into its military and potentially compromise its national security. You would be wrong.
Israel for the first time ever will honor a transgender soldier with special medal of honor during the country’s annual Independence Day state ceremony, it was revealed Tuesday.
Sergeant Noam Shahar from Home Front Command’s mixed gender rescue unit will receive the President’s Medal during the country’s 74th Independence Day celebrations on Wednesday.
The soldier said she dedicated herself to setting an example even before joining Home Front Command. Last year, she chose to do her beret march- an arduous journey each IDF soldier goes through before being accepted to their respective corps – with the pride flag on her vest.
Neil Young’s Unknown Legend, one of my all time favorite songs, came up on my playlist.
It’s been, geez, two or three weeks now. I’m not sure if I’m not supposed to listen to Neil or not.
(Name Redacted)
One of the greatest aphorisms about music Dash art, really – Asia “ love the art, ignore the artist”. And I figure, once the song goes out into the world, it belongs to us (subject to copyright and intellectual property), not them.
But it is getting to the point where it’s hard to tell what you are, and are not, supposed to support if you want your dollar to stop working for the enemy.
For example, a certain brand of razor blades (which shall remain unnamed for purposes of this post) was a revelation to me when I first discovered it; I actually enjoyed shaving for the first time in my adult life.
Now, I happen to like this particular brand of razors every bit as much as I like Michael Knowles (who is an excellent writer, but kind of ok as a talkradio host) – so I was relieved to see that this particular brand of razor still sponsors other conservative talk radio, and I wasn’t going to have to go out into a razor market dominated by “woke “brands like Gillette to try and find a new brand of blades.
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.
Photo credit, no idea.
“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.)
Recently I was in a meeting with State of Minnesota bureaucrats. They said it is now the practice for state of MN meetings to start each one with this recital.
Why is this necessary? Why not an acknowledgement for the ingenious federal republic devised to govern such a vast and varied people? Why not an acknowledgement for the free enterprise market that has done more to raise more people out of poverty than any other economic system ever invented.
I was just so floored by the Land Acknowledgement. Really.
That floors me, too.
And I have sat through Saint Paul school board meetings.
Modern American “progressivism”, like all its many forebears in the past 200 years, has been all about rallying people against boogeymen. From “monarchists” in the French Revolution, to “Wreckers” in Stalin’s USSR to the Wobbly’s “Bosses”, up through “the patriarchy” and “the man” and “counterrevolutionaries” in Red China and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, and if you have a hard time distinguishing between ’em, join the club.
Today, the boogeymen…er, boogiepeople on the left are pretty much all the things that people who are included are told to be “anti”. “Anti-Racism” “Anti-Misogyny” (not just sexism, anymore – it’s the more active, more malevolent noun these days), “Anti-Fascism”, “Anti-Transphobia”, and on and on – all of which sounds like good things to be “anti”…
…and, unsurprisingly, when you dig into the “Root Causes” of all those nouns, all things trace back to “Western Civilization” in all its particulars: the Judeo-Christian value on the individual and their worth, value, rights and responsibilities and potential of each and every person, as a person with a mind, a point of view, and at the end of the day an indivisible soul of personal, societal, political, intellectual and metaphysical worth.
Those aspects of humanity are anathema to progressivism in all its flavors. The focus is on the group – the Marxists “classes”, the Nazi’s irreducible focus on race, the modern academic Left’s obsession with a byzantine network of intersectional identity groups. The individual is nothing but a vote (for now), an appetite, a widget to be moved through the production line of life (like Obamacare’s awful caricature of Progressive humanity, “Julia”). Progressivism is “Materialist”. Souls, individual intellects and thoughts and reams, all are ephemeral; humans are widgets that consume and produce, and whose worth and value (to those in power) is expressed via their membership in the collective.
Those widgets have a term. “Bodies”. Not people. Not brains. Not souls.
She’s “a gun owner herself” – which might be seen in several ways. Is “P”M moderating? Are they realizing that the culture war has slipped far enough away from them, especially over this past year, that they have to start speaking to people who need to be convinced?
And she’s apparently incredibly famous, since she apparently just goes by “Rashmi”. I’ve turned “Protect” Minnesota’s website, Facebook feed and other social media upside down, and not been able to find any reference to a last name, which is Seneviratne, by the way.
But even during the reign of the serial fabulist the Reverend Nord Bence, “Protect” MN wasn’t nearly extreme enough in its hatred of guns and (law-abiding) gun owners, enough for some people.
“P”M spawned a breakway group, “Survivors Lead” – basically a woman, Rachel Joseph, with a long history of progressive activism and a story; an aunt who was murdered, according to Ms. Joseph’s story, by a gun.
Quick aside: I don’t minimize anyone’s trauma over having a loved one murdered. But in the many times I’ve heard Ms. Joseph’s story, she’s never once mentioned a perpetrator, someone actually holding and using the gun that killed her aunt; that persons evil motivation, the legal fallout from the murder, whether that person was sentenced or not. It’d be wrong to crack wise – “what, did the gun animate itself?” – but omitting a perpetrator, his/her motives and the like from the conversation is incredibly intellectually dishonest.
Anyway – “Rashmi” and her apparent moderation are not going over well with “Survivors Lead”:
The extreme heckling the not-as-extreme about getting less extreme. That qualifies as “dog bites man”, at the very most.
Rather less so? There followed some more, er, ethnically pointed traffic on one social media feed (from which I’ve long been blocked) or another.
After which “P”M – operating through its usual social media persona, the omniscient third person that used to be Martens and Nord Bence – responded:
On the one hand, watching the agents of Big Left eating each other is one of my favorite spectator sports.
And if the biggest semi-organic anti-gun group in MInnesota (shaddap about Moms Want Action already) is pivoting from pushing Linda Slocum’s gun grab bill to highlighting the inequity of gun control (“Race, class and geography all play into who gets to have a gun and who doesn’t” – which is something every Second Amendment activist has known for 50 years) and speaking in the first “person” to the prudence of victims of violence to arm up, then in culture war terms that’s the sound of the first tank crossing the pontoon bridge at Remagen.
But…”white bodied privilege?”
What the flaming hootie hoo?
I thought for a moment – is this a shot back at the Rachel Dolezals and Elizabeth Warrens of the world, with their flip-flopping identities, by “actual” “people of color”, reinforcing the idea that while you might “identify” with one degree melanin or another, your apparent appearance still wins out in the great privilege lottery (which will, I suspect, get pilloried hard by the Trans crowd, for whom perceived identity is everything? I’ll let the fight that one out).
But no. It’s much less hilarious than that.
It’s “inclusion language” – slang or argot that one class of people use to track who is in, and who is “out” – to be sure. That’s part of it, and people are noticing:
Referring to people as bodies is a reminder, writer Elizabeth Barnes says in an interview, that “racism isn’t just about the ideas that you have in your head.” Barnes is the author of “The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, The Girl Behind the Wall.” In intellectual discussions, theories about social oppression sound almost disembodied; “we talk about prejudice,” Barnes says, “like it’s just a matter of ideas.” The point is to emphasize the physical violence done to black people through slavery, lynching, and police brutality. In the case of women, the term “bodies” highlights “what happens to women’s bodies in health care contexts, in sexual contexts, in reproductive contexts.”
But behond that?
It’s a nod to the materialism of the left – that the mind, the thoughts, the indivisible soul of the indivisual human being is not merely irrelevant, but inconvenient to the obsession with identity.
Your melanin defines you.
In some ways its a cheap ad hominem – “of course you’d think that, you are (add a reference to your target’s melanin, or lack thereof)”. But pointing logical fallacies out to the foot soldiers of Big Left is a little like arguing salinity with sharks; it’s just part of the water they swim in.
So – gun groups eating each other? Good.
The debate contributing to the ongoing hijacking of the language? Bad.
The whole thing participating, in its own little way, in the further erosion of one of the ideals that’s made Western Civilization the most successful, and humane , civilization in human history?
Cornell – the Dollar General of the Ivy League – is requiring students to get vaccinated for Covid when a vaccine is available.
Well, most students:
That is, unless those students are “Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC).” Those students aren’t subject to the same stringent vaccine requirements of their white classmates, and though they are strongly encouraged to get tested and get the flu shot, the university offers them an exemption should they choose not to. The university even describes the requirements foisted on whites as “suspect or even exploitative” to its students of color.
Cornell won’t dispatch racial scientists to check the skin tone of any of these students, or ask for a DNA test. Merely identifying as “BIPOC” is considered grounds for exemption, meaning bonafide crackers like Shaun King or Rachel Dolezal could avoid the shot, were they students at Cornell.
Because apparently one’s stated identity has physiological effects.
Background: “Cultural appropriation” is one of the few sins actually recognized by the Wokemob. One can not, it seems, be white and wear african jewelry or cook mexican food, at the risk of inciting the Wokemob.
They seem to be more tolerant of people of non-Western descent using things invented in the west, like free speech and respect for the individual (as long as they are that individual), but let’s not get carried away in technicalities, here.
Foreground: The actress formerly known as Ellen Page – most famous for starring in Juno, the inescapable and insufferable indy sensation that put former Minneapolitan “Diablo Cody” on the map way back when – is now Elliot Page, and has asked to be referred to by the pronouns “he” and “they”.
And the media – mainstream and social – have complied with that demand at a clip that would have terrified Orwell, and probably Emmanuel Goldstein as well.
Elliot Page was never a woman, Winston.
Appropriated: Brendan O’Neil has an excellent piece at Spiked on the subject, focusing on three subjects – the Orwellian completeness of the “transformation”, the deleterious effect of the Transgender mafia on gay kids…
…and the bit that caught my attention: Page’s cultural appropriation. I’ll add some emphasis.
The disappearing of Ellen Page, and the demonisation of anyone who dares to mention that woman’s name, matters because it tells us a great deal about the increasing instability and elitism of identity politics. There are many reasons we should have a frank, legitimate discussion about Ellen Page rather than robotically repeating that she is now a he and that anyone who says otherwise is a moral reprobate. First, is it really the case that Page is male? A he? How can someone who doesn’t have male biology and who has had no male experiences – boyhood, male puberty, masculine impulses, being a brother, an uncle, a father – be a ‘he’? How does that work? Is it magic? Or have words like male, he, brother and father been so denuded of meaning thanks to the cult of genderfluidity that anyone can adopt them as their preferred identity? It is not prejudiced to ask these questions; it is reasonable, and important.
And the same goes the other way, for “women” who grew up male as well. If eating a burrito made by a white woman is genocide, what is being an insta-male or female?
It’s not you. It’s not even your identity. It’s the costume of the day.
It used to drive my wife crazy that I bought Land 0 Lakes butter instead of Cub’s house brand. Cost an extra buck a pound. Why buy it?
I claimed it was because Land 0 Lakes is a farmers’ cooperative so I was helping farmers, but she could smell the cow manure in that answer. The truth is the packaging reminded me of home, of the olden days, of traditional brands I grew up with. The old white guy on the can of oatmeal. The Black woman with the kerchief around her head on the bottle of maple syrup. The mermaid on the can of tuna. And the Indian girl on the box of butter. They all changed over the years, of course, each time getting more modern looking. But now – the butter girl is gone. Just a big, empty zero where she used to be.
Look, guys, I can get butter anywhere. I don’t need to spend the extra buck for yours. That girl wasn’t hurting anything. Yeah, okay, so a couple of professional complainers bitched about it. But millions of the rest of us bought it because we knew and loved the label, the connection to tradition. You just cut me off from that.
Now there’s no reason for me to spend the extra buck. So I won’t. Ever again.
Joe Doakes
I often wonder whether companies are ever going to rebound, to snap back on the whole politically correct virtue signaling thing?
It would be interesting to try and trace the psychology of advertising and marketing as related to clinging to social trends.
Experts advise washing your hands to avoid Corona virus, at least 20 seconds, long enough to say the Alphabet or sing Happy Birthday.
I can’t believe Democrats have missed this opportunity to expand the welfare state. “Because of the wealth gap and income disparity that has existed in America since 1615, and cruelly perpetuated by the Bad Orange Man’s tax-cuts-for-the-rich-only, our most vulnerable people – the poor – who are disproportionately women and children and persons of color and LGBTQ+ – are ill-equipped to survive this deadly virus. They cannot afford to let the water run all day long. We must immediately allocate billions of dollars of Water Bill subsidies to help those who need help most. It’s a matter of survival.”
Although . . . maybe the Democrats are having an internal struggle and haven’t figured out which of their principles polls the best?
“Letting the water run to wash your hands wastes water. Millions of fish and precious woodland creatures will die of thirst as Americans steal their water and run it down the drain. This species-ist attack on the rest of the planet must end today. No More Handwashing!”
I’m so confused.
Joe Doakes
Don’t give them ideas, Joe.
Also, as a sidenote to Joe: women? LGBTQ? The poor? People of color?
No mention of transgender people?
Where are you making them invisible? When did you become transphobic. 
The idea that identity politics is at odds with liberalism has become conventional wisdom in parts of the Americanpoliticalandintellectualelite. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker hascondemned contemporary identity politicsas “an enemy of reason and Enlightenment values.” New York Times columnist Bari Weissargues thatthe “corrupt identity politics of the left” amounts to a dangerously intolerant worldview. AndNew York magazine’s Andrew Sullivanclaims the “woke left” seems “not to genuinely believe in liberalism, liberal democracy, or persuasion.” This line of thinking ispractically the founding credoof the school of internet thought known as theIntellectual Dark Web.
It is also deeply, profoundly wrong.
If you are deeply, profoundly progressive, anyway. . “Liberalism” and “progressivism” intersect only occasionally, if by “liberalism” you mean any of the traits that’ve made Western Civilization free, inclusive and prosperous in a way that is utterly anomalous through human history, which “progressives” most certainly do not.
What these critics lambaste as an attack on liberalism is actually its best form: the logical extension of liberalism’s core commitment to social equality and democracy, adapted to address modern sources of inequality. A liberalism that rejects identity politics is a liberalism for the powerful, one that relegates the interests of marginalized groups to second-class status.
“I’ve often found great enjoyment watching millennials fight with baby boomers in St Paul over “save the earth” issues. They seem to think they are vastly different from each other. I have yet to notice the difference.
Disney also slammed baby boomers’ attitudes toward millennials, who are less financially stable than previous generations and are dealing with the ever-growing threat of climate change. “And the more often you object to Millenials’ understandable resentment toward a generation that has selfishly poisoned their water, blown past every climate warning so they could drive their stupid hummers, and looked away or worse for sexual, racial and economic injustice, the more you prove their point that you just don’t understand anything of value to them,” she wrote. “Look, these kids are facing down a rising tide (literally) of changes that threatens everything you and I taught them to hold dear.” “How about you guys sit the f— down and let the kids drive,” she added. She concluded: “Get over the idea that all things pass, you are old and you need to let history do what history does: move on.”
“Nice try, Ms Disney, but I honestly don’t think millennials are more virtuous than the Boomer generation before them who thought we were all going to die. In fact, these millenials are still driving, still moving to the suburbs to raise kids, still choosing a lifestyle they can’t afford- all while telling someone else that they can’t. Why, it’s as if the two generations are the same. No wonder they are fighting. The more helpful approach might be to actually understand we can’t move on from history, we can just hope not to repeat the worst parts of the world’s history- something both liberal boomers and millennials seem hell-bent on doing.”
I’m spooling up for a stemwinder on the whole idea of turning generations into identity groups.
