ROGER KIMBALL: Garland Just Tipped Over The Dominoes: Parents across the country have suddenly woken up to the wokeness haunting their schools and poisoning the minds of their children.

Most parents don’t like that. They pay for the schools. The school board (in theory) works for them, and they, the parents, have been vocal in making their displeasure known. A left-wing lobbying group called the National School Boards Association complained to the Biden Administration that “Public Schoolchildren, Public School Board Members, and Other Public School District Officials and Educators” were subjected to “Threats and Acts of Violence” by parents whose actions “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Note the surreal accusation that schoolchildren were being harmed by “threats and acts of violence,” which, if you look at the actual instances adduced, turn out to be people arguing against the insinuation of radical, politically charged ideas into the the curriculum.

Garland’s response was to threaten to unleash the law enforcement apparatus of the state against parents by forging a “Partnership among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement to address threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.” What threats?

When I first wrote about this, I was unaware that Garland’s daughter Rebecca is married to Xan Tanner, the founder and president of Panorama, a multimillion-dollar company that sells CRT and related ESG materials to schools around the country. File that in the folder marked “optics” if not the one labeled “conflict of interest.”

Another thing I didn’t know when I first wrote about this story was that the pas-de-deux between the National School Boards Association and the attorney general was not fortuitous. On the contrary, as the always interesting “Neo” reports, it was more in the way of being a coordinated effort, what just a few years ago might have been denominated “collusion.” I’m not sure into which folder we ought to put that detail.

We are ruled by corrupt thugs. Fortunately, they’re also incompetent.

WHY WOULDN’T THEY? Biden Report Card: ‘Are voters giving up on him?’

They were chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” at the UT Football game yesterday.

Also, Tennessee crushed USC.

HERO: Someone had ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ paged at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

ROGER SIMON: Time to Stop ‘Communism, American-Style?’

Some will remember that comedy classic from 1961, “Divorce, Italian Style,”  starring Marcello Mastroianni. Unfortunately, sixty years later, we seem to be moving toward, even living through, a far less funny, real life “Communism, American Style.”

What is “Communism, American Style”?  As yet one would think it bears little resemblance to the Soviet kind with its Gulags and so forth.

Or does it?

On Oct. 6, the Los Angeles City Council proclaimed, nearly unanimously (11-2), COVID-19 mandates that require proof of vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, movie theaters, salons, shopping centers, and just about every other public indoor space you could think of in the entertainment capitol.

Others, with the encouragement of our federal government, will soon be following suit in varying degrees or already have.

Maybe Gulags aren’t needed when the entire society is living in one.

This occurred only a couple of days after Merrick Garland, the attorney general of our country—in what Mark Levin described as Stasi-like behavior—announced his jihad, apparently in cahoots with several other governmental education entities, against parents who deigned to criticize school boards for propagandizing their children with Critical Race Theory (son of Critical Theory, son of Marxism).

Garland called these concerned parents, who are springing up seemingly everywhere, “domestic terrorists.”

It turned out the AG’s own children were, via the “education” company Panorama, profiting mightily off purveying this same inducing of race hatred while pretending to be an anti-racist, totalitarian so-called theory.

Exit quote: “But the one-party system is still attractive. It obviously can be successful when paired with capitalism of various degrees. The so-called Chinese miracle is an outgrowth of that when millions, largely in the more capitalistic era of Deng Tsiao-peng, were lifted out of poverty. Virtually all the Democratic Party and an unfortunate portion of the Republican—the uni-party, as it is known—believe the Chinese are the way of the future and, as I have aid before, have consciously or unconsciously joined up with them in deeds, if not in words.”

Flashback: “Thomas Friedman Is a Liberal Fascist:” “I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an ‘economic dictatorship’ pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.”

STICKER OF THE DAY: Let’s GO Brandon! Bumper Sticker. (Bumped)

COCAINE MITCH PLAYS FOR KEEPS: McConnell Tells Biden, ‘You’re On Your Own’ When It Comes to the Debt Limit.

TIM BLAIR: Nothing Green Ever Works: the perfect six-step environmental virtue loop.

NEWSOM’S DAUGHTER IS NOT VACCINATED DESPITE HIS MANDATE FOR STUDENTS:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said that his own daughter, who recently turned 12-years-old, has not received her COVID-19 vaccination despite the state’s mandate for students.

The governor said, according to the Los Angeles Times, that his daughter has not been vaccinated because she has “a series of other shots to get first.”

Last week, California became the first state in the country to implement a vaccine mandate for school children at least 12 years of age following approval from the Food and Drug Administration. This, after the city of Los Angeles in September required public school students ages 12 and up to get their shots.

“Our schools already require vaccines for measles, mumps, and more,” Newsom said of the statewide mandate for students. “Why? Because vaccines work.”

This is not the first time that Newsom has been accused of hypocrisy for exempting himself and his family from coronavirus restrictions he urges others to follow.

As Stephen Kruiser suggested: Let’s Start Jailing Lawmakers Who Violate Their Own COVID Restrictions. “Imagine the pure, poetic justice of seeing Newsom, Cuomo, and some of the other Hitler youth (stole that from Animal House) cooling their heels in a holding cell after being caught with their masks off and their pants down.”

OPEN THREAD: Work hard, play harder.

WOEING: Boeing’s next Starliner test launch for NASA slips to 2022.

YEP:

Academia: CRT is just an obscure and benign legal theory that’s only taught in advanced classes in law school.

Also Academia: If you want a faculty job at our college, you must submit a Diversity Equity Inclusion statement that explains how you will incorporate CRT concepts into your astronomy class.

Neatly summed up.

THEY’VE GIVEN HIM LITTLE CHOICE: Joel Kotkin: Elon Musk is Leaving California Behind. “The announcement that Tesla is moving its headquarters to Texas may not be a surprise, but it confirms trends that California’s progressive gentry simply refuse to acknowledge. Tesla, among the diminishing number of large manufacturers based in the state, joins a growing exodus that includes such tech giants as Oracle and Hewlett Packard, financial firms like Charles Schwab, and a host of high-end engineering and business service companies.”

THE EMBARRASSMENT REFLEX: Evangelicals and Culture.

One might call this condition of latent discomfort, which tends to manifest as an immediate tendency to distinguish oneself from one’s less enlightened evangelical peers when pressed, the embarrassment reflex. As professor Stephen Dilley explained in First Things in 2014:

In my experience, evangelical schools are particularly deft at self-loathing. . . . In two decades and four schools—ranging from conservative to liberal, private to public, pious to secular—I have never encountered the sheer volume of self-loathing that I experienced as a student (and professor) at an evangelical college. While my experience is anecdotal, I doubt if it’s unique. Why do so many students at evangelical colleges look with disdain upon their own institution—and, in a sense, upon themselves?[4]

Dilley had few answers to the question he posed, but the situation has not improved in the years since. For an obvious case of this embarrassment reflex at work, consider a recent set of claims by conservative evangelical writer David French. . . .

Perhaps the price of elite evangelical respectability in the modern academy is adoption of the embarrassment reflex—understood as, in its deepest sense, a willingness to allow the idea of the “social” to displace that of the classically theological at the taproot of intellectual life. Such a displacement demands that evangelicals norm their theological claims against the conclusions of the social sciences, rather than vice versa—or else be tarred with the dreaded label of fundamentalist.

Well, I’m not an evangelical, or a theologian, just a former preacher’s kid, but I’ve never understood the core of Christianity as being about ensuring that elites feel comfortable with themselves. But I am aware that there’s always a market for such.

Related: We don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about. We can’t afford any fancy preachin’.

I mean, seriously.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY:

NEW CIVILITY WATCH. TNR: Here Come the Bathroom Protesters! Rude politics are inevitable when elected officials, like Kyrsten Sinema, open their doors to corporate elites but not their own constituents.

Power concedes nothing without demand. But the demands of Democratic voters are reasonable: Just pass Biden’s agenda, already! As the powerful continue to cocoon themselves within a vault of donor boodle and ordinary citizens get shut out of the participatory process, we should naturally expect an antagonistic and more confrontational public to emerge. And while many argue that the people should have the right to be rude, this is clearly not an ideal or preferable way to practice politics. Anyone who doesn’t want that future should stop asserting the ludicrous notion that affluent political elites have some inalienable right to civility, and start insisting that they earn it.

In its (somewhat) saner days, the New Republic used to be known informally as “the inflight magazine of Air Force One.” So, good luck guys with this one: You may one day regret living under the new rules you’re making.

“NEARING:” Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return.

Disaster struck the world’s biggest social network on October 4th when Facebook and its sister apps were knocked offline for six hours. It was one of the less embarrassing moments of the company’s week. The next day a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, told Congress of all manner of wickedness at the firm, from promoting eating disorders to endangering democracy. Some wondered whether the world would be a better place if the outage were permanent.

Earlier: Facebook “Whistleblower” Censored NY Post Hunter Biden Exposé Last Fall.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MEN: “Over the past 30 years or so, it seems as if our society’s traditional male role models have failed. Depending on your politics, this may be good or bad.”

Related item here.

UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: Merriam-Webster Thought Police Just Changed The Definition Of ‘Anti-Vaxxer’ To Attack Opponents Of Government Mandates.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Taliban say they won’t work with US to contain extremism in Afghanistan.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: A Renowned Composer Showed His Class Othello Featuring Laurence Olivier. Students Led A Revolt And Now He’s Accused Of Racism.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: 2022 Lexus LX 600: Return of the Toyota Land Cruiser.

LET’S GO BRANDON! LOL! This lady at the Red Sox game thinks chanting “F Joe Biden” is racist and all I can do is laugh (video).

SCIENCE: Why Are Highly Vaxxed Colleges Implementing Strict COVID Policies? — These measures have clear downsides and little proven value.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Texas Decides To Defend America: Fact, Not Brag.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Excess deaths in people with mental health conditions increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.