Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

ALL SOCIALISTS DO: Biden Needs an Enemy.

If Biden needs to unite voters, whom should he unite them against? He could wage war on poverty, as Lyndon B. Johnson did. He could battle division—and the forces trying to divide Americans. Or, the Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson told me, “Biden could easily declare ‘war’ on the authoritarians threatening our democracy, much the same as Abraham Lincoln did when he pulled northerners together to stand against the slaveholders.” That is, he could spend more time trying to direct Americans’ attention to the threat posed by the Trump-directed Republican Party, which is consolidating power at the state level and turning against democracy in large numbers.

Bill Kristol, the former editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and the current head of Defending Democracy Together, is worried about the GOP’s move toward authoritarianism, but he seems skeptical that Biden can succeed at convincing the country that the danger is clear and present. “Citizens in democracies—being free and kind of happy-go-lucky, as they should be—can get a bit complacent and take their freedoms and well-being for granted,” he told me. “Historically, they sometimes only fully wake up to dangers and rise to the occasion when the external threat seems obvious and dangerous. Can they mobilize as easily against a more insidious internal threat?”

But Biden has plenty of enemies all ready:

  • Americans who want to put COVID behind them.
  • Americans who want to protect the border.
  • Newly energized terrorists.
  • Low gasoline prices.
  • Shelves full of merchandise.

Not to mention reality itself: Biden appears to read ‘end of quote’ from teleprompter during gas price inflation speech.

Anything you put on the teleprompter, Ron Trunalimunumaprzure will read!

THE FEEL-GOOD TWEET OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON! Women’s March’s profound apology for accepting this offensive and hurtful average donation amount so close to Thanksgiving belongs ‘in the Louvre.’

Flashback: Beyond the Culture of Repudiation. “In all of his political writings, [the late Roger Scruton] takes on the Left for scorning existing norms and customs, and for promoting a ‘culture of repudiation.’ The Left is ‘negative.’ It dismisses ‘every aspect of our cultural capital’ with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ ‘homophobia,’ and ‘sexism.’ Like 1984’s ‘two minutes of hate,’ this language tears down, intimidates, and can never build anything humane or constructive—it is nihilistic to the core. At the same time, Scruton wants to reach out to reasonable liberals who eschew ideology and who still believe in civility and the promise of national belonging. His conservatism can discern the truth in liberalism (another Aristotelian trait) while the partisans of repudiation see half the human race as enemies.”

UPDATE: Thanksgiving: The Left Desperately Wants to Cancel the Great American Holiday.

Yet in a weekend segment for — you guessed it — what MSNBC called “The Thanksgiving history you’ve never heard,” a person called Gyasi Ross shouts from a pre-written, Howard Zinn-influenced screed:

“The truth is that pilgrims did not bring turkey, sweet potato pie or cranberries to Thanksgiving. They could not. They were broke! They were broken! Their hands were out! They were begging! They brought nothing of value. But they got fed! They got schooled! Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence. That genocide and violence is still on the menu! And state sponsored violence against Native and black Americans is commonplace!”

I’ve heard this before. It’s not original.

I am sure Ross knows all this information because he — a rapper and storyteller from Seattle — was in the arena 400 years ago for a first-person account.

Ross’ hateful rant reminds us that not only is dangerous revisionist history alive and well in left-wing cable news, but also, no matter the topic, progressives and their media allies will always change the subject back to their favorites: race and hating America’s founding.

The Washington Post, for example, recently informed us, “Just as Native American activists have demanded the removal of Christopher Columbus statues, they have long objected to the popular portrayal of Thanksgiving.”

This crazed essay was written by their traffic reporter, I kid you not!

Today, the Politico has an article headlined: The Democratic brand is broken. The infrastructure bill isn’t fixing it.

Neither is going full Leroy Jenkins on the culture war.

Related: The Wall Street Journal Won’t Cancel Thanksgiving Editorials. “The Wall Street Journal joins Netflix, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Dave Chappelle, and Dave Portnoy in the winnable fight against cancel culture. And each battle has further exposed the shallowness of the woke’s over-indexed influence.”

(Classical reference in headline; updated and bumped.)

PEPPERMINT PSAKI: The White House Manages to Double Down on Joe Biden’s Defamation of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Today, the White House was finally asked directly about their view of the matter. Fox News’ Peter Doocy (because no other “journalist” in the room would ever bring it up) asked Jen Psaki if Biden would consider apologizing for smearing Rittenhouse with false allegations of racism. Psaki’s answer was so incoherent that it left me wondering whether they actually want to be sued.

Doocy: “Would the president ever apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse” for calling him a white supremacist?

Psaki: “The president believes in condemning hatred, division, and violence. That’s exactly what was done in that video.”

Is Psaki saying that Rittenhouse is responsible for “hatred, division, and violence”? Because her comments sure sound like the White House is simply doubling down on defaming the teenager, offering fresh evidence for his lawyers to use. Mentioning that Trump is heard on the video does not change the purpose of the video, which was to paint Rittenhouse as a white supremacist.

The facts are out there on what happened that night in Kenosha last year. There was no hatred or division involved in the Rittenhouse case, and to the extent that there was violence, it was in self-defense.

Yet, instead of just taking down the temperature here by offering some kind of clarification, Psaki pours gasoline on the fire, refusing to budge an inch. What exactly is the strategy here? It would have been easy to say the president doesn’t believe Rittenhouse himself is a “white supremacist” and that the video is being taken out of context. By contrast, the White House’s position seems to be double-dog daring Rittenhouse to file suit.

Also from Psaki’s press conference:

 

 

NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE AMERICANS: Life after sex — sex is everywhere in America, except in the bedroom.

Clothing too has become unsexy. Little House on the Prairie chic was big last spring. Now we’re back to the two-sizes-too-big outfits. No one wants to take those ugly clothes off someone. Just call me when you get home and we’ll do it on FaceTime so I don’t have to see that sack on my floor.

Then there’s the “look at me, don’t look at me” nature of social media. Women pose provocatively in full makeup and tight outfits, but all their comments are from girlfriends leaving a row of fire emojis. If a man dares post how good she looks, that guy is a creep. Message her privately and that’s “sliding into her DMs.” Men are supposed to ignore how women look which, seeing as men have started wars over the beauty of women, has traditionally been somewhat of a challenge. Women are supposed to want them to ignore how we look, but secretly not: why would we actually want that?

There’s the question of whether something men used to do with some regularity — say, lean in for a kiss with a woman without asking — is now something sinister. Huma Abedin, best known for standing by her man Anthony Weiner again and again as he exposed himself to random women on the internet, has a book coming out in which she tells the story of being “sexually assaulted” by a US senator. She says that she left a party with him, they went for a walk and she accompanied him upstairs for coffee. Upstairs, he tries to kiss her, she says no and he stops.

When I tweeted that this was clearly not assault, several responses said he should have asked her permission. Could there be anything more mood-sapping than someone asking for formal permission to kiss you? This isn’t a British period drama. Even Mr. Darcy has probably stopped asking by now.

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women? Why, it’s as if we’re turning Japanese or something.

JIM TREACHER: Journos and Other Libs Can’t Defend Darrell Brooks, So They Attack Andy Ngo.

The libs have invented a motive for Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions, even though all the evidence shows he acted in self-defense. And now they’re denying a strong motive for Darrell Brooks’ actions, outright rejecting any evidence that it could’ve been a hate crime. They abhor the truth like poison.

As Pat Moynihan said 20 years ago, “[Hannah] Arendt had it right. She said one of the great advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: Policing, journalism experts caution use of ‘looting’ in describing rash of Bay Area smash and grabs.

Similar crimes hit Hayward and Walnut Creek this weekend with waves of suspects rushing stores leading to major losses.

But according to the California Penal Code, what we saw was not looting.

The penal code defines looting as “theft or burglary…during a ‘state of emergency’, ‘local emergency’, or ‘evacuation order’ resulting from an earthquake, fire, flood, riot or other natural or manmade disaster.”

To some, the distinction may be small, but Lorenzo Boyd, PhD, Professor of Criminal Justice & Community Policing at the University of New Haven, and a retired veteran police officer, emphasized that words matter.

“Looting is a term that we typically use when people of color or urban dwellers are doing something. We tend not to use that term for other people when they do the exact same thing,” said Boyd.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidily defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,” he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. “Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

ELIZABETH WARREN JUST BLAMED HIGH GAS PRICES ON CORPORATE GREED. HERE’S WHY THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE:

The true causes of high gas prices are complicated, and ultimately, prices are set by supply and demand—not by the whims of individual companies. (Otherwise, they’d always set them as high as they could. But other suppliers and customer demand keep companies’ prices in check). Today’s high gas prices are influenced by international market dynamics involving OPEC, supply chain issues created by government pandemic restrictions, federal policies restricting the energy sector, and the Federal Reserve’s rampant money-printing that is fueling widespread consumer price inflation. So, too, some of the current increase represents a correction after 2020, a year of lockdowns, which saw unusually low demand for gas and even negative oil prices at one point.

Having “shut down oil and gas leasing on federal land and directed executive agencies to eliminate spending that serves to subsidize fossil fuel industries. Even as benchmark crude prices increased, Biden’s policies forced developers to abandon transit pipelines such as the Keystone XL pipeline, among others:” Biden orders release of 50 million barrels of oil to drive down gas prices.

MEET THE PROGRESSIVE D.A. BEHIND THE WAUKESHA BAIL CATASTROPHE:

[John] Chisholm, who was elected in 2007, supports deferrals for some misdemeanors and “low-level” felonies in order to cut down on incarcerations. And he’s taken credit for inspiring a new wave of prosecutors in cities like San Francisco, St. Louis, and Philadelphia who have enacted similar reforms. Chisholm congratulated San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin following his election in 2019, and the pair spoke at a forum earlier this year on the status of the progressive prosecutor movement.

Chisholm and other progressives support reforms to the cash-bail system, which they say criminalizes poverty. He has acknowledged that his reform-minded approach could put murderers back on the streets of Milwaukee.

“Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into [a] treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody?” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007. “You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen. It does not invalidate the overall approach.”

The Milwaukee DA said his office recommended $1,000 bail for Brooks following his arrest on Nov. 5 on charges that he punched his girlfriend in the face and hit her with his vehicle in a gas station parking lot. The woman is identified only by her initials in court papers, which indicate they have a child together. Brooks was also charged with eluding police officers when they arrived to take him into custody.

Naturally, “In the aftermath of the Waukesha car attack that left multiple locals dead and dozens wounded, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has called for an investigation into the ‘inappropriately low’ cash bond offered to alleged perpetrator Darrell Brooks Jr.”

In much the same way that the Biden administration is conducting investigations into the mysterious sources of higher oil prices and inflation.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH MATT YGLESIAS IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Yglesias: A good way to reduce racism might be to do away with mandatory diversity training.

His second bullet point is the one that caught my eye: “Doing fewer diversity trainings would, based on the evidence, likely somewhat reduce racism.” That’s just a restatement of what he’s argued above, i.e. if anti-racism training is counterproductive then a genuine anti-racist would seek to stop requiring such training, but it’s still striking.

This is where the rubber really hits the road but instead of drilling down on what seems like a key point, Yglesias sort of moves on. But the obvious point here is that anti-racism is now big business. It’s an industry with high-profile thought leaders and hundreds of individual trainers offering variations on a theme for a price. DEI has also become a growing career path for people which often seems to amount to the same messages and approaches but delivered by people who are part of the company rather than hired guns from outside.

All of these people are committed to the concept of anti-racism and I suspect few would agree that their work is counter-productive. But what if you could demonstrate that it is? Would their commitment to anti-racism lead them to abandon their own jobs? Or would they stay on the career path regardless of what the research says? To put a fine point on it, what does Robin DiAngelo believe about the efficacy of her own work? Given that she’s now made a tremendous amount of money off her workshops and bestselling book, would it be possible to get her to admit her methods are counterproductive?

What, and give up all the opportunities for grift? White fragility writer Robin DiAngelo charges an average of $14,000 per speech and makes ‘$728K a year.’

UNEXPECTEDLY: Get ready to forget the Waukesha attack.

It least five people were killed and more than forty were injured on Sunday night when a driver plowed his SUV into attendees of the annual Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The driver has been identified in news reports as Darrell Edward Brooks Jr.

The horrific attack immediately made national news because of the death toll and brutal nature of the crime. Videos surfaced online showing the driver veering towards members of the parade and narrowly missing many others. Sunday’s incident appeared eerily similar to the 2016 Berlin terror attack, where an ISIS member killed twelve people by ramming his truck through a Christmas market.

However it seems probable that Waukesha will be memory-holed by the agenda-driven media because Brooks was a black man and, according to his social media, an anti-white supporter of Black Lives Matter. This doesn’t comport with the leftist media’s demonization of white men, whose alleged privilege and toxicity are the biggest threat to America.

I don’t claim to know that Brooks was motivated by his anti-white hatred, but I do find it suspicious that the media was so eager to rule out terrorism. In fact, CNN, CBS and other outlets were reporting on an alternative motive before they had even publicly identified a suspect. The explanation they have offered as to why Brooks drove into a crowd of hundreds of people would make even the lowest IQ individual scratch their head.

Apparently, Brooks was fleeing another crime scene (“possibly a knife fight”) when he ran into the parade. It makes perfect sense, you see, when evading possible arrest to drive to a highly populated area with a heavier police presence and swerve into innocent civilians.

No one with two brain cells would think that this makes any sense, but mainstream outlets are breathlessly repeating it without offering an ounce of skepticism. Will this turn into another Las Vegas shooting? It’s been five years since that mass murder event and we still don’t have a satisfactory answer as to why Stephen Paddock would kill dozens of country concert attendees.

Rod Dreher notes that Brooks “was not fleeing a knife fight, as earlier speculation had it. He was not being chased by police. Why did he do it? Why did he drive his car on purpose into a crowd of people at a Christmas parade? We don’t yet know. But we do know from his social media postings that Darrell ‘MathBoi Fly’ Brooks really hated white people:” Click over for what is apparently Brooks’ social media postings. Dreher adds:

Again, this is all circumstantial. We can’t say what motivated Brooks to drive into that crowd of people. Was it anger over the Rittenhouse verdict? We will see. This will become clear in time, I think. But watch, listen, and read carefully to how the media report this unfolding story. A suspect with a record of posting anti-white hatred online plows his SUV into a crowd of what appears to be white people. There might well be no connection between his racial animus and what he did in Waukesha. But we all know perfectly well that if the races were reversed, we would be in media Armageddon now.

Based on the media’s response, you’d believe that a Google or Tesla self-driving car rammed through the Waukesha Christmas parade.

UPDATE: Was the Waukesha Killer a Stoner? “Cannabis use is an often overlooked commonality among mass murderers and other violent offenders — one that the British journalist Peter Hitchens has warned about for some time. ‘No, not every marijuana smoker goes out and kills. So what?’ Hitchens wrote in a piece for the Daily Mail, discussing the U.K.’s growing knife-crime problem. ‘Not every boozer gets into fights, or commits rape, or kills people with drunken driving. Not every cigarette smoker gets cancer or heart disease. But we act against these things because of the significant minority who do cause or experience these tragic outcomes.’”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: J.K. Rowling Stands Tall After Doxxing, Endless Death Threats.

The author says the trio of activists who doxxed her assumed the tactic would shut up her. They were mistaken.

“They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out. Perhaps – and I’m just throwing this out there – the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us.”

The media often rushes to defend celebrities who endure death threats and/or overly rude posts. When nasty, race-based taunts targeted Leslie Jones of “Ghostbusters” fame the media decried the wave of hate, and rightly so.

Twitter even banned a right wing personality, Milo Yiannopoulos, from the platform because it deemed he helped inspire the rage attacks.

So where’s the press accounts about Rowling’s doxxing and death threats? The Post Millennial shared the initial doxxing details. A good faith search on Google News finds no other major outlets have shared the news yet.

No enemies to the left. Dave Chappelle and Rowling have plenty of “f**k you money,” which makes them somewhat more difficult to cancel. But the trans activists are eager to move in the goal posts of what everybody else can openly discuss.

Last month, Jim Treacher noted: You Can’t Say a Man Isn’t a Woman, Because Science Is Bad Now. “You’re not allowed to say Rachel Levine is a man, even though she is. It doesn’t matter what biology says. Jack Dorsey loves science, except when it’s not trendy. So obey the rules, and quit asking what the rules are. Don’t say the wrong thing, which can change at any moment and for any reason. As Titania McGrath puts it: ‘If all opinions that I disagree with were made illegal, fascism would be over.’”

BUILD BACK BRANDON:

Meanwhile, another division of NBC is eager to wish you a cheerful holiday greeting: MSNBC: Thanksgiving’s About White Settlers Who Brought ‘Genocide and Violence.’

Many of us are still waiting for white Americans to bring some value — still waiting for white Americans to match the mythology of Thanksgiving. Freedom, justice, equality, reparations for two and a half billion acres of stolen Native land — reparations for 246 years of stolen labor — reparations for stealing Native children. Stop the killing — it’s still happening. Stop the theft — it’s still happening. Return the land — match the mythology. Then, and only then, we can all be equally thankful. Peace.

In sharp contrast, America’s Newspaper of Record is focused on true racial healing during these troubled times: Black, White Americans Join Hands Around Common Cause Of Launching Journalists Into The Sun.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Segregating kids by race — even as a class exercise — will only fuel endless racial conflict.

This coming week, 7th and 8th graders at the Lower Manhattan Community School will spend two days immersed in exercises designed to “undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community,” as a message to parents reads.

Teaching about America’s troubled past of slavery and segregation is absolutely necessary. But that isn’t what’s happening at this junior high school. Instead, the children are going to be separated and divided into groups along racial lines prior to lessons about how “racial identities influence our experiences.”

African-Americans and Hispanics will be put in one group, while whites, Asians and multi-racial students will each have their own. A fifth group will be provided for those who choose to opt out of what amounts to a racial-selection process.

The ostensible purpose is to increase sensitivity to race. But kids understand that people from various backgrounds have different experiences. After all, the school has a population that is 44 percent Asian, 29 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic and 8 percent black.

Public education in a country committed to racial equality would not, however, seek to reinforce the notion that race is what defines us as individuals. And it would never pressure a diverse group of students to essentially re-enact the shameful racial segregation that was once commonplace in American schools.

I’m so old, I can remember when we judged people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin, a concept the left appeared to have deliberately forgot.

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.

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.