DOMINIC GREEN: The war of the statues is a battle for freedom. “Statues, like all monumental architecture, are visible symbols of a political order. This is why their identity and placement matter so much. This is why revolutions begin by attacking symbols: the Virgin and Child, the Bastille, Lenin, Saddam. And this is why pulling down a monument is always a mere prelude to the real action. The iconoclast never stops there. He is clearing the ground for building a new order, as the Taliban smashed the Bamiyan Buddhas and Isis blew up ancient Palmyra.”
Archive for 2020
June 10, 2020
BEASTMODE: Cocaine Mitch Mocks NY Times After Paper ‘Begged for Mercy’ From Woke Mob.
Related: As old media squabbles, new media thrives: “Whether you love or hate [Candace] Owens or [Ben] Shapiro is beside the point. While mainstream journalists point fingers checking each other’s privilege, news-hungry readers, searching for varying viewpoints, shrug their shoulders and moved on to an alternative source of information. I’ve got news for the Brian Stelters and the Ben Smiths: those people are never coming back. Maybe the big media organizations think what they want. But even before a world pandemic led to even more layoffs in progressive news-blogs across the country (BuzzFeed has let go of over 30 employees and shut down its international news divisions), journalists were being shunted towards learning a new profession in computer scripting languages. Independent media is thriving. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook, and even smaller models such as Substack and Patreon, are eating legacy media’s lunch.”
KATHY SULLIVAN HAS BEEN TO DEEP SPACE AND DEEP OCEAN, TOO: Kathy Sullivan was the first American woman to take a walk in space in 1984 and now she’s also been to the deepest point on Earth, the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Merriam-Webster to Make Orwellian Update to the Definition of ‘Racism.’
IS THIS WHEN WOKE CULTURE JUMPED THE SHARK? 17 Black-Owned Occult Shops That Every Witch Should Support.
QUESTION ASKED BY JAMES LILEKS: “Have you ever asked yourself if there’s something you can say today that you will not say next week?”
Read the whole thing.
EVEN THEIR STRONGEST SUPPORTERS THINK THE PUBLIC-HEALTH COMMUNITY HAS SCREWED THE POOCH HERE:
By supporting, or at least tolerating, the protests, officials seem to have declared the pandemic less important than they previously made out. To some Trump supporters, the double standard validates their belief that the shutdown was a political ploy to hurt the president’s reelection prospects by harming the economy. To others, it shows that what really matters is who suffers: small businesses are fair game, left-wing protesters aren’t.
Yep. This is a historic failure. Plus:
“Flatten the curve” worked as a slogan, because most Americans wanted to avoid overrun hospitals. They didn’t want what happened in Lombardy to happen here. And, outside of New York City, flattening the curve has worked. Hospitals have been able to cope with the influx of COVID-19 patients.
But once you’ve solved that problem, then what? Officials never offered a coherent and realistic plan for going forward. Epidemiologists, people began to suspect, would demand that we stay home forever — or at least until a vaccine worked — never mind the economic, mental and physical toll. But the public was never going to tolerate a year-plus shutdown.
Read the whole thing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Low Vitamin D Worsens COVID-19: Facts & Imperatives. “There’s no reason not to fix low vitamin D & much evidence it could help a lot in this crisis. Until thedata becomes inconsistent with that possibility, fixing low D while getting more data must be prioritized.”
COCONUTS MAY NOT MIGRATE, BUT: Flame retardants easily migrate to people’s hands, cellphones.
THE SHUTDOWN IS OVER: Thirty-One States Are Pushing Forward With Their July 2020 Bar Exams Despite COVID-19.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Are These 7 Movies on the Woke Mob’s Chopping Block? “From comedies to inconvenient dramas, the following films could be ‘Gone’ next.”
We’ve moved very quickly from “Blazing Saddles could never get made today” to “No one will be allowed to watch Blazing Saddles tomorrow.”
My “Blockbuster Video at Home” hobby has never been more relevant than now.
And you know if the protests lead to a spike in cases that will somehow be Trump’s fault.
AMERICA, WE ARE LEAVING. At Law Officer.com, Travis Yates writes:
You aren’t going to have to abolish the police, we won’t be around for it.
And while I know, most Americans still appreciate us, it’s not enough and the risk is too high. Those of you that say thank you or buy the occasional meal, it means everything.
But those of you that were silent while the slow turning of the knives in our backs happened by thugs and cowards, this is on you.
Your belief in hashtags and memes over the truth has and will create an environment in your community that you will never expect.
If you think Minneapolis will turn into Mogadishu and that is far from you, it’s coming.
And when it does, remember what your complicity did.
This is the America that you made.
Read the whole thing.
HMM: Ignore the optics. Trump’s executive order could jump-start the cause of global religious freedom. “Has anyone read the executive order? Religious freedom advocates might well be frustrated that tear gas and controversy occluded a measure whose very purpose is to lift the cause of religious freedom out of the shadows. The second sentence of the order contains words that these advocates have been waiting for years to hear a president utter: ‘Religious freedom for all people worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom’.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Shot:
Those are the pragmatic reasons I buy physical media. But there’s a third, increasingly important one.
I own the first ten seasons of The Simpsons on DVD. The season three premiere is an episode called “Stark Raving Dad.” It features guest star Michael Jackson playing a mental patient who wasn’t Michael Jackson (but believed he was). It was a sweet, funny, memorable episode, and Jackson’s involvement wasn’t even confirmed/admitted until years later.
In 2019, upon the launch of the Disney+ streaming service, “Stark Raving Dad” was missing, despite a major pre-launch selling point of the service being the inclusion of the entirety of the Simpsons canon.
Why was this episode missing? Simple. The producers no longer felt comfortable with Michael Jackson’s involvement, given the allegations against him detailed in Leaving Neverland.
Most interestingly, producer James L. Brooks said of the controversy: “I’m against book burning of any kind. But this is our book, and we’re allowed to take out a chapter.”
I’m not here to defend Michael Jackson. I use this example to point out that even content that is considered substantively “permissible” may be deleted from existence because of an association. I also get pretty nervous when someone unironically says, “I’m against book burning, but . . . “
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week, as I’ve watched an op/ed by a sitting U.S. Senator that represents a majority viewpoint cause an explosion at the New York Times, and Drew Brees have to issue multiple apologies after stating the apparently-now-forbidden opinion that he believes kneeling during the National Anthem is disrespectful.
As online conservatives seemingly hyperbolically warned us for years, and which Andrew Sullivan astutely informed us in 2018, the campus culture has engulfed society at large. Another prophet on this front was Peggy Noonan, who warned us last year that Cultural-Revolution-esque struggle sessions would be here soon enough.
Now, they’re here.
—“Buy Physical Media,” Tom Garrett, Ricochet.com.
Chaser: ‘Gone with the Wind’ pulled from HBO Max until it can return with ‘historical context.’
—CNN, today.
Hangover: Today would have been Hattie McDaniel’s 127th birthday. Here is her Oscar speech after becoming the first African American to win an Academy Award, for..Gone with the Wind:
Presumably, Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles is on the shortlist for the Memory Hole as well. As John Nolte warned in 2014 at Big Hollywood: ‘Blazing Saddles’ Review: Buy a Copy Before the Left Burns Them All.
LAPD: Homicides Up 250% During Past Week of ‘Defund Police’ Peaceful Protests.
Think of it as a preview of worse things to come.
A COLLEAGUE AND I ARE WRITING AN ARTICLE ON THIS NOW — IT’S BEEN IN THE WORKS FOR A WHILE: Financial incentives have given us ever more aggressive policing — if we want real change, we must change those incentives.
AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP: Professors and students alternately cheer, play down looting and police destruction: ‘Violent protest has a positive impact on political and policy change.’ Good to know.
COLD WAR II: Decades of Lax Oversight Allow Chinese Telecoms to Conduct Espionage in U.S.
Multiple Chinese telecom firms have operated in the United States with “little-to-no oversight” from government agencies for the past 20 years, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations disclosed on Tuesday in a new report. These companies are permitted near-total penetration of American communications networks and have used this access to collect data on millions of Americans, including military members and those working in sensitive government posts.
Only in the past year has the federal government begun to take a closer look at these firms, including China Telecom Americas, China Unicom Americas, and ComNet—all Communist Party-owned firms that have been operating with impunity since the early 2000s. The Senate’s yearlong investigation concluded that the Federal Communications Commission failed to perform proper oversight on these companies, allowing them to collect data on scores of Americans. With the Chinese government exerting total control over these companies, it is likely these data are being used for nefarious purposes, the report warns.
Bill Clinton let them in, and George W. Bush and Barack Obama did nothing to stop them.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof at Hillary Clinton’s alma mater makes the case for political violence.