Archive for 2021

“ASKED?” THAT’S PUTTING IT MILDLY.

I’m reading “Here’s a Fact: We’re Routinely Asked to Use Leftist Fictions” by John McWhorter (in the NYT).

“[W]e think of it as ordinary to not give voice to our questions about things that clearly merit them, terrified by the response that objectors often receive. History teaches us that this is never a good thing.”

McWhorter is underplaying the problem. We don’t just think it’s ordinary to refrain from saying certain things (such as, to name the example he stresses, the existence of race-preferences in higher education admissions). We think it’s abnormal to the point of toxicity not to refrain.

We (as a culture) are deeply engaged in teaching young people that they must lie. The “white lie” is no longer merely permissible. It’s required. I wonder if young people have retained any of the old-fashioned commitment to truth. It’s obviously not the highest value anymore.

That’s because leftism depends on a fog of lies for its survival.

Plus, from the comments: “This entire conflict is about the aristocracy demanding to be able to make rules for the little people that they do not follow themselves.”

ROGER SIMON: The Weimar Republic Comes to Nordstrom.

And this was only a day after that between 50 and 80 looters, according to first-hand reports, invaded a Nordstrom in Walnut Creek, California, pepper spraying and punching people who got in their way before they made off with their booty in waiting cars.

Even if those numbers are exaggerated, and we have no reason so far to disbelieve them, if only 30 or 40 of those thugs ransacked the department store, imagine the horror for shoppers and employees.

Only a day before, Nov. 20, if we are to believe Twitter reports that include videos—the mainstream media no longer bothers with this—swank stores like Louis Vuitton were being looted in downtown San Francisco.

Public safety is literally defunct in the Bay Area and Los Angeles as well. Evident from their actions, the district attorneys of SF and LA have multiple times more sympathy for criminals than their victims, rich or poor.

I don’t have to remind readers how this attitude has already metastasized across the country, resulting in city after city recording skyrocketing murder rates.

In less than a year, the incompetent, ideologically-driven (or is it obsessed) Joe Biden administration has done something few would have thought possible.

They have made the United States of America almost unlivable.

Nevertheless, we do our best to soldier on as if we were already accustomed to living in an American version of Germany’s Weimar Republic, inflation, unmitigated license, and all.

Too many of us accept it, although so many of us know what Weimar led to, the rise of the National Socialist Party. We pretend that it cannot happen here, yet there are auguries everywhere.

Yes, there are good signs as well like the Rittenhouse verdict and poll numbers that show a possible Democratic debacle in 2022. But that only causes the Dems to double-down on their statist legislation, seeking yet more control for a supposedly-benign government and therefore over all of us with mandates and so forth, as that same National Socialist Party did in the thirties.

You could call that an invidious comparison but an administration that accuses parents protesting school boards of being “domestic terrorists” is pretty much capable of anything.

To be fair, the Weimar Republic came to America quite a long time ago. But as the events of the last two years demonstrated, it’s getting awfully late in the day here.

Related: Mob Targets Bay Area Stores in Third Consecutive Day of Smash-and-Grab Looting.

ANTI-MASK LEAGUE OF SAN FRANCISCO: Yes, such a group is not a fiction, though it existed years ago. Specifically, during the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19. Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Michael Watson points to the rapid manner in which San Francisco authorities reversed their mask mandate, as part of his assessment of the significance of the forthcoming “Meta Platforms.”

TIKTOK CENSORED ME FOR DEFENDING KYLE RITTENHOUSE:

My video simply argued Rittenhouse’s case exposed the hypocrisy of many on the Left who regularly fight for criminal justice reform but threw their support for fair criminal procedures out the window in the case. Here’s the text of my remarks:

“Hakeem Jeffries, a progressive congressman, literally tweeted while the trial was still going on: ‘Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key.’ And he’s the same guy that rails against mass incarceration — and I agree with him sometimes — but now, before the trial was even over, they were calling for this guy to be locked up and throw away the key … like they’ve already reached their conclusion. And they lied about it being a ‘white supremacy’ thing when it’s a white dude that shot other white people. 

You don’t have to either think that he’s a hero who did everything right and made amazing decisions or he’s an evil white supremacist who should go to jail. The truth is, I would never let my teenager go to a riot zone with a weapon — that was a bad decision to make — but in the moment, he defended himself. He wasn’t some mass shooter white supremacist, and he should be acquitted.”

What part of that constitutes “bullying” or “harassment” in any form? And this bizarre censorship decision by TikTok wasn’t an error or mistake. I appealed the removal of my video, and my appeal was denied.

It’s rather odd for TikTok to be against either bullying or harassment, considering that ultimately, Xi’s gotta have it: All of TikTok’s data is available to its Chinese parent company (and thus to the CCP).

QED: Photo surfaces showing TikTok executives posing with communist flag.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Kyle Rittenhouse and the Red-Pilling of America. “Remember, leftism only succeeds when surrounded by a fog of lies. When the fog lifts, people reject it. And the media pumped out all the fog it could. There were people who literally did not know the collection of criminals and/or perverts Kyle exorcised were as white as Mitt Romney at a Cure concert. Really. That was the media’s doing, lying that the only reason Kyle didn’t want to have his brains bashed in by these scumbags was his pallor and reporting that nonsense accordingly. But when people watched the trial, they saw something entirely different from what they had been fed by the Enemy of the People, and it stuck.”

SUCH AWFUL PEOPLE: Illinois Democrat: Kenosha SUV Rampage Was ‘Karma’ for Rittenhouse Trial. “The blood of Kyle Rittenhouse’s victims is on the hands of Wisconsin citizens, even the children.”

Mary Lemanski isn’t just the social media director for the Democratic Party in DuPage County, she also studying comedic acting at Second City Chicago. That’s the part that threw me.

“KNOWING THAT THESE PEOPLE EXIST IS DOING NOTHING FOR MY SURGING MISANTHROPY:”

Have you ever looked at a colossal piece of ancient construction and asked yourself how primitive humans had the technology to make such an amazing edifice?

No, I don’t mean the Great Pyramid or Stonehenge, I mean the Hamilton County courthouse in Noblesville, Indiana.

The internet is a powerful tool for letting credulous morons gather together in groups and heterodyne. One of these groups is made up of people who think there was an ancient civilization that dotted the landscape with these buildings and Nineteenth Century residents of North America just moved in.

Well, we can’t seem to build an attractive public building today to save our lives, so I can kind of see their point.

SOMETHING TO HIDE: Law Professor Investigated Presidential Search At His University. It Said He Was Out of Line.

It looks like they backed down when he didn’t back down, though, which is good.

Related: Administration Trying to Bully a Professor at Indiana? Officials would prefer to keep the university’s presidential transition under wraps. “The Academic Freedom Alliance has objected to this apparent attempt to harass and intimidate a member of the faculty by the university administration.”

Here’s the AFA letter.

BATTLESWARM: More Rittenhouse Trial Fallout. “Pretty much any use of the phrase ‘white supremacy’ in current political context indicates the one using it is pushing a radical left-wing social justice agenda.”

FACEBOOK’S CENSORS ARE A DISGRACE: Critic blasts ‘dangerous’ Facebook power after Kyle Rittenhouse verdict.

Rittenhouse was acquitted Friday of all charges against him stemming from the shooting of three men during riots in Kenosha, Wisc., last August. Two of those men, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, died of their injuries. Rittenhouse acted in lawful self-defense, a Wisconsin jury ruled.

Though Rittenhouse is legally presumed innocent until proven otherwise, the court of Facebook was considerably less impartial.

“One of the big things that they did was manipulate the search engine so you couldn’t even find any references to Kyle Rittenhouse,” Dan Gainor, vice president of the Media Research Center, told The Post. “They’re out of touch with normal people.”

But it didn’t only restrict search content for Rittenhouse — it actively policed its users for pro-Rittenhouse posts.

Public messages supporting Rittenhouse — some using the phrase “Free Kyle” — were removed. Even legal analysis arguing the merits of his self-defense case disappeared.

“We’ve designated the shooting in Kenosha a mass murder and are removing posts in support of the shooter,” Facebook said at the time.

“We don’t allow symbols, praise or support of dangerous individuals or organizations on Facebook. We define dangerous as things like: terrorist activity, organized hate or violence, mass or serial murder, human trafficking, criminal or harmful activity,” the company has said elsewhere of the case.

“Its dangerous that they have this much power over what can be discussed in a public forum,” Gainor said. “They could prevent free elections in every free country in the world if they wanted to.”

Even among some of the company’s left-leaning employees, the heavy hand didn’t sit well. In internal discussions obtained by The Post one Facebook employee accused his colleagues of abusing the censorious power of their platform when it came to protests in Kenosha following the shooting.

“The rioting has been going on for over three months and it’s only an issue now because people inside the company saw violence they didn’t like,” the staffer said. “Employees are drunk on the absolute power of being in control of civics in America, without ever having to visit a voting booth (if voting is even an option).”

Related: Could Facebook Swing an Election?

LEFT HAS ONLY TWO ARGUMENTS ON RITTENHOUSE: Jed Babbin explains the blinders that render these people immune to facts: The only reasons the young man was acquitted are because the system is racist and because America needs stricter gun control laws.

HMM: Not a ‘Single Person’ Thinks Biden Will Run Again.

Biden has been reassuring donors that he certainly intends to run again in 2024, but skepticism is running rampant even as panic about the heir-apparent position of Kamala Harris starts to set in. Florida trial lawyer John Morgan, who was a major donor to the Biden campaign in 2020, had this to say: “What is his health going to be in the next three years? All you have to do is look at the mortality tables in America to understand what I’m saying.”

Democrats are openly wondering why a man who didn’t show an overwhelming amount of energy in his 2020 campaign will have the strength to go out on the hustings in the fall of 2024, just shy of his 82nd birthday. Should Dems really believe his assurances about running again?

“I hear this question get asked every day,” a campaign veteran told the WaPo. “No one ever asked that question about Barack Obama. No one ever asked that question about Donald Trump.”

Democrats haven’t had a disgraced incumbent step aside since Johnson in 1968, and they remember all-too-well how that turned out.

Not coincidentally, ’68 was the year the Far Left started gaining control of the party. Those folks almost look like moderates compared to today’s Dem radicals.