Archive for 2021

RIP: Joan Didion, legendary American writer, dead at 87.

Twenty years ago, reviewing The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Orrin Judd wrote, “Thankfully, we muddled through the decades-long period of dread out of which these pieces grew, but anyone who is trying to recapture the pervasive sense of desperation and gloom that drenched the late ’60s and the ’70s can do no better than to look here.  At least in these two early collections, Joan Didion’s work must rank her with Tom Wolfe as one of the most perceptive observers of late 20th Century American culture.  I really just can’t recommend them highly enough.”

STACY MCCAIN: Joe Biden, Blamer-in-Chief.

After 20 months of this constant crisis-mongering, I think I’m probably not the only one who’s thinking, well, if it hasn’t killed me yet, it’s probably never going to kill me. Pandemic fatigue, so to speak.

Don’t tell me about The Science. This is really about The Politics, and more specifically The Politics of Blame, because Democrats are trying to distract the public from the catastrophic failure that is the Biden presidency. So they wrote this speech, with its veiled allusion to Fox News (“dangerous misinformation on cable TV”), leaving me to wonder what specific “misinformation” Biden’s speechwriters had in mind. I haven’t been watching Fox News regularly in recent weeks, but if there was some specific misinformation Joe wanted to call out, why didn’t he name names? Tucker Carlson? Sean Hannity? Laura Ingraham? Who was it spreading this “dangerous misinformation”?

No, there’s just this vague accusation, without details, so that the Democratic voters listening to Joe’s speech can imagine that Fox News is 24/7 vaccine “misinformation,” in quite the same way that they imagine who the “unvaccinated” are — it’s those Evil Right-wing Republicans!

Saboteurs! Wreckers! Kulaks!

Why it’s as if: As His Presidency Founders, Biden Scapegoats The Unvaccinated.

 

HE MAKES A STRONG CASE: THE VILLAIN WHO PLANS TO DEMOLISH THE TOY SHOP IN A HALLMARK CHRISTMAS MOVIE SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT.

So why am I a villain? Oh, right, because I believe the most valuable commercial space in town could be used for something more vital than a store solely dedicated to Santa hats. Yeah, I do believe that, and you know what else? I think the growing and diverse community of Pine Creek or Snowy River or whatever-the-fuck would be better served by a thriving city center than a free-standing, dilapidated toy shop. . . .

I intend to build a five-story mixed-use complex in the middle of town, thereby making the city center more prosperous and accessible while relieving our strained housing market. But these NIMBY cocoa-snorters would rather that space be used for their favorite Christmas tree lot. Well, sorry kids, there are eleven other months in a year, and people need homes to live in.

Before I was made a widower (in a family tragedy some townspeople cruelly dismiss as my “backstory”), my wife would remind me not to lose sight of the reason for the season. And I agree. Joy, cheer, and togetherness are all very important, but lest we forget on that blessed Christmas night referenced in our carols, baby Jesus needed a room, and the town DIDN’T HAVE ONE.

So screw every single one of you reindeer-clad, ornament-obsessed weirdos who forbid progress because your one month of traditions are more important than creating affordable housing and a functional local economy for everyone year-round.

Heh.

THE KIND OF HISTORY CONQUERORS WOULD IMPOSE ON A DEFEATED NATION, TO BREAK ITS PEOPLE’S WILL: George Will: The malicious, historically illiterate 1619 Project keeps rolling on.

The Times’s original splashy assertion — slightly fudged after the splash garnered a Pulitzer Prize — was that the American Revolution, the most important event in our history, was shameful because a primary reason it was fought was to preserve slavery. The war was supposedly ignited by a November 1775 British offer of freedom to Blacks who fled slavery and joined British forces. Well.

That offer came after increasingly volcanic American reactions to various British provocations: After the 1765 Stamp Act. After the 1770 Boston Massacre. After the 1773 Boston Tea Party. After the 1774 Coercive Acts (including closure of Boston’s port) and other events of “The Long Year of Revolution” (the subtitle of Mary Beth Norton’s “1774”). And after, in 1775, the April 17 battles of Lexington and Concord, the June 17 battle of Bunker Hill and George Washington on July 3 assuming command of the Continental Army.

Writing history is not like doing physics. But event A cannot have caused event B if B began before A.

Addressing the American Council of Trustees and Alumni last month, Gordon S. Wood, today’s foremost scholar of America’s Founding, dissected the 1619 Project’s contentions. When the Revolution erupted, Britain “was not threatening to abolish slavery in its empire,” which included lucrative, slavery-dependent sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean. Wood added. . . .

The 1619 Project, which might already be embedded in school curricula near you, reinforces the racial monomania of those progressives who argue that the nation was founded on, and remains saturated by, “systemic racism.” This racial obsession is instrumental; it serves a radical agenda that sweeps beyond racial matters. It is the agenda of clearing away all impediments, intellectual and institutional, to — in progressivism’s vocabulary — the “transformation” of the nation. The United States will be built back better when it has been instructed to be ashamed of itself and is eager to discard its disreputable heritage.

The 1619 Project aims to erase (in Wood’s words) “the Revolution and the principles that it articulated — liberty, equality and the well-being of ordinary people.” These ideas are, as Wood says, the adhesives that bind our exceptional nation whose people have shared principles, not a shared ancestry.

Not if our ruling class has its way.

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: San Francisco DA Upset at Mayor For Wanting to Crack Down on Crime.

Liberal San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced earlier this month she’s cracking down on the crime spike her policies created. But that move has angered Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s even further left district attorney.

Specifically, Breed targeted the Tenderloin neighborhood for intervention efforts given the “pipeline of illegal drugs that has been fueling a surge in gun violence and deadly fentanyl overdoses,” reported CBS San Francisco.

“It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” she said. “And it comes to an end when we take the steps to more aggressive with law enforcement. More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerate of all the bullsh*t that has destroyed our city.”

On Monday, Boudin criticized the plan during a news conference.

Related: Tom Cotton: Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.

More: Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks: Will California ever be safe?

ABOUT THAT CHEVY ‘HOLIDAY RIDE’ TEAR-JERKER: It certainly brought forth some tears for me. And I am pretty sure I am not alone in this crowd.

INVASION: Normandy and Taiwan: A Comparison. As I understand it, the Taiwanese invasion plan is to blow up the Three Gorges Dam and drown several hundred million Chinese, along with a whole lot of industry and agriculture. But I predict that the CCP will use subversion, rather than brute force, as that seems to be its preferred approach.