Rita Abrahamsen, et al., Radical Conservatism and Global Order

At Amazon, Rita Abrahamsen, et al., World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order. #CommissionEarned

Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution

At Amazon, Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.

Peachy Keenan, Domestic Extremist

Peachy Keenan, Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War.

Civil War at CNN as "Journalist" Christina Amanapour Attacks CEO Chris Licht for Daring to 'Platform' the Front-Runner for the Republican Nomination for President -- My Conclusion: Licht is a Dead Man Walking

At AoSHQ, "But this is a news organization, right? CNN staffers have been in a "fury" since the Trump townhall. In fact, they were angry about it even before Trump exposed Kaitlin Collins as a callow, hollow leftwing sloganeer."

Americans Pull Back From Values That Once Defined United States, Poll Finds

I teach this. My son was just saying, "This is nothing new to you." He's right. It's not. But it's cool to have a WSJ article I can share with my students and use in assignments.

See, at Wall Street Journal, "America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds: Patriotism, religion and hard work hold less importance."

Positionality

Via Woke Temple:

Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option

At Amazon, Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.

Two Strains of Christian Nationalism

A very interesting Twitter thread:

There are two primary strains of right-wing Christian Nationalism in America at the moment. 🧵

There are two primary strains of right-wing Christian Nationalism in America at the moment. 🧵

1) the most extensive, called Seven Mountains theology, bubbled up from independent charismatic entrepreneurs like Lance Wallnau.

— Paul Matzko (@PMatzko) November 21, 2022

1) the most extensive, called Seven Mountains theology, bubbled up from independent charismatic entrepreneurs like Lance Wallnau. They rely on a novel interpretation of obscure biblical passages in Isaiah & Revelation that call for reclaiming 7 mountains of Christian social control, from government through education. If they succeed, then God will bless America. If they fail, then apocalypse now.

They have gone further and anointed Donald Trump as a messianic figure--what theologians call christological typology--and linked him to the biblical Persian King Cyrus, a pagan who protected the Israelites and fulfilled prophecy. I call these people "entrepreneurs" quite literally. Lance Wallnau sold $45 "prayer coins" superimposing Trump's face over Cyrus's.

You might call this a "grift," though that assumes that Wallnau isn't sincere and is just flogging goods in the metaphorical temple square.

7 Mountains rhetoric is widespread, with political operatives like Charlie Kirk and Michael Flynn using the language at their God & Country tours of megachurches.

2) But while 7 Mountains might be the most prominent Christian Nationalist variant, there is also version percolating out of theologically reformed Presbyterian and Baptist circles.

This book in particular has been getting attention on Twitter. [The Case for Christian Nationalism.]

It's not a good book--see @BrianGMattson on its demerits--but it's notable b/c it attempts to give an intellectual foundation to a movement that has been easy to ridicule as one step removed from snake handling. They're Claremont-ing, in other words.

The book is from Canon Press, which began as the vanity press for Douglas Wilson, a neo-Confederate Lost Cause apologist. (It's no accident that the author, Wolfe, has himself questioned interracial marriage.) This version of Christian Nationalism has deeper, hateful roots.

Although the theology is very different from 7 Mountains CN, this alt-Reformational CN is similar in this core regard:

Whether by rediscovery or invention, both are surfacing novel theological justifications for culture war politics rooted in Christian cultural status anxiety.

Invariably, both kinds of Christian Nationalist promote a similar political rhetoric steeped in fear of sinister, anti-Christian elites who are conniving to deconvert, degender, derace, and replace God-fearing Americans.

I'll end by noting that as a trained historian of religion & politics, right-wing Christian Nationalism is not a new phenomenon. American history is rife with variants of Christian Nationalism bubbling up, particularly at moments of intense religious & political anxiety.

The classic example is "Parson" Weems, the itinerant traveling book salesman and evangelical minister who concocted soothing fables about the virtuous Christian character of various founding fathers.

It's Weems who gave us Washington and the Cherry Tree, for instance:

It's also Weems who invented the story about George Washington praying at Valley Forge, a myth that I can tell you from personal experience lives on in the form of paintings in many a church lobby today.

Why would Weems spread these myths in the 1820s/30s?

Because Americans in general, and evangelical Americans in particular, were anxious.

They were the 1st post-Revolution generation. The Founders & veterans were dying off. Would the American experiment survive?

In the midst of the tumultuous market revolution, early industrialization, westward expansion, and religious upheaval, what would the future look like??

So entrepreneurs--literally--like Weems wove them comforting tales. Yes, America would survive and thrive as a nation because it was grounded in orthodox, religious faith. The Founders were evangelical Christians just like you.

See, look! Washington even prayed at Valley Forge!

Sidenote: the most famous GW at Valley Forge painting was made in 1975 anticipating the bicentennial by a Mormon painter named Arnold Friberg who studied with Norman Rockwell.

It's a reminder that Mitt Romney wasn't the first (or even the second) Mormon moment!

I mention Mormons as a reminder that there are older non-evangelical versions of Christian Nationalism. Joseph Smith codified American exceptionalism in the Book of Mormon in the same milieu that Parson Weems was operating in. Thus the Missouri Garden of Eden, Mormon ancestors as the ten lost tribes, the Constitution & Declaration of Independence are considered literal sacred scripture, & so on. Mormonism has American Christian Nationalism in its bones.

Friberg's 1975 painting is also a reminder that the seventies were another era of Christian Nationalist resurgence. In 1977 two charismatic Christian Nationalists wrote a book called "The Light and the Glory," which sacralized America's national history.

It spread like wildfire in the new Christian homeschooling movement, through evangelical & pentecostal Christian bookstores, and was just hugely influential. I'd argue it's right up there in terms of internal influence w/ the Chronicles of Narnia & the Scofield Reference Bible.

Again, you can immediately sense the anxiety that underpinned the book's core message. Coming off the sixties counter-cultural revolutions and in the midst of what historians have called the "decade of nightmares" (the seventies), the fear pervades the text. From the intro:

Historians who were themselves confessing Christians tried to tell evangelicals that these were paranoid myths, but they were largely ignored. The odds of finding this book in your church bookstore is infinitesimally lower than finding "The Light and the Glory" on the shelf!

I could talk about other right-wing Christian Nationalists--Rushdoony-ites! Barton and the Wallbuilders!--but I want to end by noting that before you cast the first stone at the more outré varieties, bear in mind that Christian nationalisms are pervasive. When politicians from both parties talk about America being a "city on a hill," borrowing the rhetoric from a Puritan colonist, that's Christian nationalism

When you have a wedding ceremony at the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, that's ritualistic participation in a form of Christian Nationalism.

If you stop at the "Stonewall Jackson Shrine," you're hearing a ghostly echo of a Christian Nationalist variant that emerged to contest other Christian Nationalisms.

In every case--whether it's one of which you approve or detest--remember that it is very American and very human, to want to sacralize one's political project. It might function as a soothing lie or as a political weapon, but it's always useful.

Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism

At Amazon, Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism.

The Collapse of Biden's Woketopia

From Sasha Stone, on Subtack, "And the Realignment of a New America":

“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.” ― George Carlin

Joe Biden and the Democrats have a big problem. It isn’t just that they stand to lose in the midterm elections and maybe the Presidency in 2024. They stand to lose much more than that. They stand to lose everything.

The American people, by now, have had enough. They’re sick of cowards who cannot stand up to the activists who control them. They’re not just sick of them in Washington. They’re sick of them everywhere. They’re sick of being told what they can and can’t say, what they can and can’t think.

In 2020, a New Woke Order exploded on the streets. It looked a lot like the rehearsal at Evergreen and across many college campuses all over the country. It wasn’t all of the Zoomers leading the charge, but the activists have been loud and powerful. They have captured corporate America and nearly every cultural institution in the country. And they’ve captured Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Their activism, however well-intentioned, has all but wrecked Hollywood movies; almost every network or streaming series is infused with their doctrine. It is inescapable. It’s in public schools, museums, fast food advertising, library reading lists, and sports. Most of us are developing an immunity to anything we think might be “woke,” and we will avoid it as much as possible.

Most of us know that if there is some message buried in a book or a movie, we’re going to resent being drawn in for yet another lecture on how to be better, how to do better, and how to reorder our thinking to satisfy their unending critiques. It’s so bad that someone should start a website called “Is it Woke”? That would save consumers a lot of time and trouble.

The only reason we don’t hear about it more is that any dissent is viciously attacked until an apology is squeezed out like the last bit of toothpaste in an empty tube. It is too much trouble to endure all of that panic and hysteria. So most people keep their heads down and hope it will pass.

Joe Biden doesn’t yet understand this. Most Democrats don’t. Not even the new stars in the party like Gavin Newsome or Pete Buttigieg. Not even Beto. They falsely believe that is what they must do to win Twitter and win points on the Left. The exact opposite is true. Although one must develop “rhino skin,” like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, the future will be with those who push back loudly against this ongoing madness.

In the past, we might have had some reality checks with people like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, or SNL. But no. They’ve been sucked into the Body Snatchers, too, and their comedy isn’t comedy at all. They work for the Democrats, just like much of the media. It feels like being stuck inside a Twilight Zone episode where everyone is pretending like what is happening isn’t happening.

There are many reasons the Democrats might lose in a massive red wave on Tuesday. One of those is the pendulum shift we see throughout American history that bobs back and forth between liberalism and conservatism. But I would bet that many of these voters might not even want Republicans in power and disagree with their policies.

Still, they see in the MAGA candidates something they don’t see anywhere else: unapologetic resistance to the “woke” utopia that has been foisted upon us all.

This is why Kari Lake is burning up the polls. This is why Glenn Youngkin won and why Ron DeSantis is so popular. And it’s why Trump will likely breeze through to a win in 2024. Sure, they are also offering ways to rescue America from a collapsing economy, but what people fear the most is what they aren’t allowed to talk about.

The Democrats and their robot army on Twitter or in the mainstream media seem to think that continuing to demonize the other side will work to scare voters away from them. But to many people, that’s like trying to tell them not to get in the lifeboats as the Titanic sank, explaining that the people driving the boats protested the last election.

But let’s get specific about what we mean by “woke.” It doesn’t mean inclusion. It doesn’t even mean equity. It means that the answers to humanity’s problems have finally been solved. All you have to do is measure a person’s worth by status as a marginalized person. Meet the new utopia. Same as the old utopia.

They believe that America, and other Western nations, have been built as colonizing systems of oppression specifically to keep Black and Brown people down. They have an adjunct category now for whites. They can have protective status if they’re part of the LGBTQIA community. If they are disabled, if they have some mental disorder, or even if they are old. These things elevate those deemed oppressed, left out and shut out of the American way of life, which theoretically rewards high achievement.

Joe Biden and John Fetterman are cis-gendered heterosexual white men who would usually be on the list of oppressors. Still, both have miraculously transcended their identity to become part of a marginalized group. Fetterman is considered disabled, and Biden is incapacitated due to age.

There is nothing more the Left loves than incapacitated white men. If they can wrap their fingers around a pen, they can tell them where to sign. Disability is only a protected class if you are also ideologically compliant. Elon Musk has Asperger’s but do you think that wins him any points with the Woketopians?

If you don’t have protective status, you are on the other side, the “bad” side. You are someone with privilege. White privilege, pretty privilege, thin privilege, youth privilege, straight privilege, and able-bodied privilege.

Here is a sampling of different kinds of privilege from North Shore Community College...

RTWT.

 

Yorba Linda Public School District Bans Critical Race Theory. Cal State Fullerton Retaliates by Pulling Teacher-Trainees from the District's Educational Programs

Critical race theory, arghh! It's the cancer of society, gawd.

CSU Fullerton's School of Education is literally punishng the Yorba Linda School District for the crime of its Board of Trustees prohibiting critical theory indoctrination of its students. Just one more salvo in the culture wars, one might say, and a particularly viscous one. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "After O.C. school district bans critical race theory, it faces Cal State Fullerton backlash":

Months after an Orange County school district banned teaching critical race theory, Cal State Fullerton has told school officials it is pausing placement of its student teachers in the system’s K-12 classrooms, citing concerns that district policies conflict with university goals that promote equity and inclusion in education.

Leaders in the university’s College of Education — among the biggest providers of teachers into the county’s public schools — told officials in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District that they did not believe the district would be able to support its student teachers whose training is rooted in diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice and tenets of critical race theory, according to a statement from the college.

“Clinical practicums, fieldwork and student teaching are major components of effective teacher preparation,” Lisa Kirtman, dean of the College of Education, said in the statement. “It is critical that we place teacher candidates in districts that support their growth and development.”

She added that she is open to working with the district to provide learning experiences that value “freedom of thought and expression” for the diverse student population.

Kirtman was not available for comment Tuesday afternoon. In an email, a university spokesperson said “the situation is still unfolding.”

Six student teachers from Cal State Fullerton are working in the Placentia-Yorba Linda district this academic year, down from the 70 or 80 teachers that have typically been placed in the system.

In a message to families, district Supt. Michael Matthews said leaders in CSUF’s College of Education asked the district over the summer about its commitment to “providing a just, equitable and inclusive education” after the district board narrowly approved a measure in April banning the teaching of critical race theory...

So much leftist race-ideology hogwash being rammed down the throats of our kids. The School of Education's condescension is despicable. 

RTWT.

What Does Fidelity to Our Founding Principles Require Today?

From Michael Anton, at American Greatness, "If historicism is false, then the American system can be lost. Tyranny can recur. But do conservatives see this?":

We’re all political people here, right? So we all know Senator Pat Geary? No?

He’s the Nevada senator portrayed at the beginning of “Godfather II.” He tells Michael Corleone, “I intend to speak very frankly to you—maybe more frankly than anyone in my position’s ever talked to you.” He tries to blackmail a mob boss and later ends up in bed with a dead hooker. I believe he was also a Democrat. So just about the only thing I have in common with Senator Geary is that I intend to speak very frankly to you.

What does fidelity to our founding principles require today? Let me begin to answer that question with a quote—perhaps a familiar quote to some or most of you. But it’s apt, and there’s always a chance some of you haven’t heard it, and/or that others can use a refresher.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.

Those words were spoken by G.K. Chesterton, a Brit, in 1924. He was speaking of the British Constitution, not ours. But the words strike me as especially apt to our situation.

What have our conservatives conserved? But before we answer that—hint: almost nothing—let’s first ask: what were they supposed to conserve? What do they say they are conserving in all those fundraising letters they send out that have been netting them hundreds of millions per year for most of my lifetime?

First of all, the physical territory of the United States. OK, so far so good. That at least has been conserved. And given conservative support for the military and our posture during the Cold War, it’s at least plausible that conservatives had something to do with that.

Second of all, the people. Are they doing so well?

We actually have declining life expectancies in America. We’re the only nominally “first world” country that can say that. China, with a per capita income one-fifth of ours, recently passed the United States in life expectancy.

Birth rates here have crashed. Deaths of despair—opioids, alcoholism, and the like—are soaring. Religiosity is down. Marriage is down. Divorce at least isn’t up from its 1980 peak, but it’s still endemic.

You might say that conservatives are not at fault for all this—fair enough. But their stated purpose is to conserve—and it’s rather evident they’ve failed to conserve these aspects of decent human life. That’s before we even get to demographic transformation, one of those things that is both not happening, and it’s great that it is.

Third, I would say, is the American way of life. Some of that is covered in what I just said. But there are others, for instance the total unaffordability of housing, especially for younger people. It’s impossible for average earners now to buy, except in the very cheapest markets, which also happen to be where there are the fewest opportunities.

We may add to this deindustrialization, the decline of the middle class, wage stagnation, falling standards of living, and the increasing necessity of a college degree in the job market—at a time when colleges teach less and less, charge more and more, and vacuum up middle class wealth to enrich what are effectively hedge funds with bad schools attached.

Fourth—and certainly not least—is the American regime itself. Have we conserved that? Does it function as it was designed to do? As a political scientist, and as a historian of sorts before that, I find the question laughable. If any of you want to make the case that we still live in the founders’ regime, go ahead.

Meanwhile, I will tell you some of what I see. A giant, unaccountable, unelected fourth branch of government that does what it wants without input or supervision from the people, and that usurps executive, legislative, and judicial power. Rights are routinely trampled. Two-track justice—one standard for friends of the regime, another for its enemies—is now the norm. Just last week a man killed with his car a teenager for the “crime” of being Republican. He’s already out on bail. Meanwhile there are still dozens of January 6 protesters in pretrial detention for ridiculous noncrimes such as “parading.”

The Justice Department, FBI, CIA—all the security agencies—are out of control in attacking American citizens. The FBI is now doing SWAT raids for misdemeanors. Earlier this month, the president of the United States gave a speech calling half the American population enemies of the state. I could go on.

What is conservatism’s response to all this? What is the response of “the weasels, compromisers, mediocrities, and losers of the Republican-conservative-libertarian establishment”? Those are not my words, but I like them. They sum things up concisely, accurately, and vividly.

Conservatism’s response is to get angry. But not at any of these abuses or the people who commit them. No, rather it gets angry at people like Mollie Hemingway, Julie Kelly, and Heather Mac Donald (and others) who point out these outrageous abuses.

Conservatives have long believed that the noblest thing they can do is “police” their own side. The Left of course never does this. The Left works overtime to ensure that its people are excused of murder, arson, and rioting. Meanwhile, the conservatives eagerly seek the death penalty for their own over parking tickets.

Now, am I saying we should be like the Left? A little. We ought to be more loyal, for instance. I am not saying we should excuse arson and rioting—but that’s moot anyway since our side doesn’t do that, walking through doors held open by the Capitol Police notwithstanding.

For “conservatives,” the most heroic act of the 20th century was not D-Day or the moon landing but William F. Buckley, Jr. purging the Birchers. Hence, they’re always on the lookout for more purges. Whole careers and institutions are now made of this. Think of the Bulwark and the Dispatch—of Bill and Steve and Jonah and David and Kevin. All of these “conservatives” are now character assassins out to destroy the lives of anyone even a click to their right, many their former friends.

One thing I’ve noticed is that conservatives really get mad when you point out that people who treat you like enemies are, in fact, your enemies. Finally, the conservatives find a backbone, and righteous indignation! To refer to someone libeling you, trying to cancel you, calling for your “extirpation” and even assassination as an “enemy”? How dare you! Civility in politics above all else!

What explains this? Let me give you another quote, this one from a movie. Try to hear this in your head with Robert DeNiro’s accent:

I’m sorry, but he knew about our gettin’ hit on three big machines in a row and he did nothing about it. That means either he was in on it or, forgive me for saying this, he was too dumb to see what was going on. Either way, I cannot have a man like that workin’ here.

The operative phrase here being “in on it,” i.e., part of the operation to ensure that the Right is forever feckless and useless, and to destroy anyone on the Right who scores real points against our anti-conservative, anti-liberal, anti-American and—brace yourselves, I’m just going to say it—increasingly anti-white regime.

Actually, this is what gets the conservatives most upset: noticing that the regime is all of the above. Quoting the Left’s own radical words back to them makes conservatives apoplectic. Not with rage, exactly. I don’t think they have enough thumos for rage. But with a kind of terror. Oh no! He said it! Now they’ll really get mad! Let’s not rock the boat! Peace above all! ...

You gotta keep reading.

 

California's EV Push Hinges on More Power — and Help From Drivers

At the Wall Street Journal, "Flexibility among electric-vehicle owners in how and when they charge their cars is seen as key to avoiding stress on the electrical grid":

Our idiot governor, @GavinNewsom, is pushing the chimera of an all-electric future. Why buy an electric car if you can't charge it because you have to save electricity? The ridicule writes itself. "Global warming" "climate change" is a false religion resting on blind faith. #EVs

— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) September 25, 2022

California aims to add millions of new electric vehicles in the coming years. Charging them without impairing an aging grid will require more power generation and help from EV drivers.

The state’s plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035 means more EVs will be using California’s power supplies to fuel up, adding pressure to the grid.

This summer, the state faced the threat of rolling blackouts during an extended heat wave and asked people to avoid charging and using major appliances during critical hours, raising questions of whether its electrical grid can handle the added demand from charging EVs.

The state’s success depends on a range of factors, which include influencing the behavior of many consumers who are used to accessing gasoline at any time and unaccustomed to thinking about curtailing electricity use outside of weather emergencies.

“Are people going to top off every night? Are people going to wait every few days and then charge up all at once?” asked Dan Bowermaster, senior program manager for electric transportation at EPRI, a nonprofit research group. “There are a lot of questions about customer behavior.”

To help manage the demand on the electrical grid, utilities and auto makers are offering incentives for owners to charge up at certain times and in different ways. Charging usually takes place at home over several hours, with similar kinds of chargers available at places like offices where people are parked for long periods.

Ultimately, vehicle-to-grid technology that can use EV batteries to back up power to homes or send electricity back to the grid will be adopted, analysts say.

In California, managing the stresses on the grid is important because of the expected demand added by charging. The state’s energy commission estimates that in 2030, California will have 5.4 million passenger EVs and 193,000 medium- and heavy-duty EVs, resulting in charging approaching 5% of the electric load during peak hours from less than 1% currently.

California’s strategy includes adding renewable energy supplies and limiting power demand, such as asking people not to charge EVs during critical hours, as it did this month amid the heat wave, said Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, the agency that sets air quality and vehicle emissions standards.

Ms. Randolph said EV charging isn’t going to break the grid because consumers can control when they charge and avoid busier times. “The reality is the grid is only stressed in a limited period, a few hours in the early evening on certain types of days. Most of the time it’s fine.”

A Stanford University study published Thursday found daytime public or workplace EV charging, instead of the more common at-home charging, would be the least stressful for the grid in Western states. With current electricity rate designs, the study also found the grid could face problems late at night—when EV drivers typically charge in home garages—because too many cars could start charging at once and create a demand spike.

“If everyone were doing that, it would cause really big problems,” said Siobhan Powell, the study’s lead author.

California is rapidly overhauling its electricity supplies, retiring older fossil fuel plants and adding more renewable resources such as solar, wind and battery projects, but the addition of new power isn’t coming fast enough to avoid potential problems.

Heat waves, drought and the slow pace to site and permit projects have made setting a target to decarbonize the power grid challenging. A crunchtime arrives on hot evenings when the West’s abundant solar power drops but demand for air conditioning remains high. California lawmakers voted in August to keep the state’s last nuclear plant online in a bid to ease anticipated electricity supply shortages.

“There’s some energy challenges in how we’re bringing on new resources to meet this new growth of electricity demand,” said John Moura, director of reliability assessment and performance analysis at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit that develops standards for utilities and power producers.

Mr. Moura said at-home charging sessions draw about the power of 2.5 air conditioners. He doesn’t expect the increased demand to create a problem with delivering reliable power to homes and businesses, mainly because utilities will manage the connection of new EV chargers. If they had to, utilities would delay charger connections until they could make grid reliability improvements to provide more power. It is an outcome to avoid, Mr. Moura said, because it would anger and inconvenience customers who would have EVs as their only new-car option.

“The disaster kind of comes from the rally cries from the public that utilities aren’t connecting their EVs fast enough,” Mr. Moura said. “And now that bumps up against EV mandates. That’s the train-crash scenario.”

EVs won’t arrive all at once, or even by 2035. Cars typically last more than 15 years, which means the fleet turnover in California will take place over many years, analysts say...

 

Britain's Tavistock Scandal (VIDEO)

Douglas Murray's at the video below.

And at the New York Times (the mainstream, noncontroversial take), "England Overhauls Medical Care for Transgender Youth: The National Health Service is closing England’s sole youth gender clinic, which had been criticized for long wait times and inadequate services."

Also, at Spiked, "How ‘The Blob’ smothered the Tavistock scandal: The civil service is determined to crush any dissent against gender ideology."

And from Kathleen Stock, at UnHerd, "Why the Tavistock had to fall: Its ideological roots were rotten from the start":

For years, the seeds of the Tavistock’s downfall have been hiding in plain sight, as a picture has slowly emerged of its clinicians doling out harmful drugs to gender-confused youth as if they were sweets. At the same time, though, a more subtle clue to the clinic’s endemic dysfunction has been contained in the generic communications that followed each new crisis.

“Thoughtful” is a self-description that crops up repeatedly. In response to critical reporting from Newsnight in 2019, the clinic’s Gender Identity Development Service insisted that it was “a thoughtful and safe service”. When Keira Bell and others took their case to the High Court a year later, arguing that under-16s could not give informed consent to puberty blockers, a GIDS spokesperson replied obstinately that theirs was “a safe and thoughtful service”. And when the Care Quality Commission rated the service as “inadequate”, the Tavistock’s ensuing statement defensively began: “The first thing to say is that GIDS has a long track record of thoughtful and high quality care.”

Alongside this manic insistence on thoughtfulness, there has also been a marked tendency to engage in special pleading about the especially difficult and highly contested cultural position the service occupies. For instance, in response to the damning CQC report, CEO Paul Jenkins replied that GIDS “has found itself in the middle of a cultural and political battleground”. And to the news of the closure last week, a spokesperson commented, with the air of someone sighing heavily: “Over the last couple of years, our staff… have worked tirelessly and under intense scrutiny in a difficult climate.”

Presumably what they really mean by this is that, as is now known, for several years GIDS has been caught between the emotionally blackmailing demands of transactivist organisations such as Mermaids and GIRES, talking constantly about suicide risk and lobbying hard for yet more relaxed attitudes to medicalising children, and the criticisms of those who profoundly object to the notion of a “trans child” in the first place. Former employees such as Susan Evans have reported the historical influence of Mermaids and GIRES on managers at the service, despite their lack of formal medical expertise and the possession of clearly vested interests.

Now, you might think that it is the job of a healthcare provider — and especially one who dispenses medication to children — to try to remove itself from current furores, social trends, and pressure from political activists, and to just get on with providing evidence-based medicine according to whatever gold-standard methodology is available at the time. And you might also think that while being thoughtful is all very well in a medical provider, you don’t exactly want them to emulate Hamlet. But to apply these earthbound medical standards to GIDS is to fail to recognise some of the distinctive and converging influences on the service that have led to the unholy mess we now see.

A crucial yet underappreciated part of the story is the clinic’s strong emphasis on psychoanalysis and psychodynamic approaches to mental health. The founder of the Tavistock, Hugh Crichton-Miller, was explicitly influenced by Freud and Jung. And when Domenico Di Ceglie founded the Gender Identity Service for children in 1989, later commissioned nationally as the only English NHS provider, he too was heavily influenced by psychoanalytic methods.

In a 2018 article describing his process, Di Ceglie quotes a Jungian perspective approvingly: “the psyche speaks in metaphors, in analogies, in images, that’s its primary language, so why talk differently? We must write in a way that evokes the poetic basis of mind… it’s a sensitivity to language.” He goes on to describe some of the metaphors and images he has found useful in trying help young dysphoric patients understand their own experience: the metaphor of being “a stranger in one’s own body”, for instance, or the image of navigating between the binary of sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis from The Odyssey. Throughout Di Ceglie’s published writing, there is an emphasis on the co-creation of meaning with young patients in the absence of access to any empirical certainty about who the patient “really” is.

This intellectual focus upon the fluidity and construction of meaning, and upon the power of narrative to create more stable personalities, is also heavily present in the published work of Bernadette Wren, Head of Psychology for 25 years at what insiders tweely call the “Tavi”. By her own description, she was “deeply involved” with the GIDS team for much of that time. Alongside psychoanalysis, she adds post-structuralist philosophy to her formative influences, citing figures such as Richard Rorty and Michel Foucault as important in her thinking.

True to the relativism of these philosophers, in Wren’s intellectual vision there are no objective truths but only a series of subjective narratives. She writes: “If the idea of living in the postmodern era means anything, it is that in all our activity together we are in the business of making meaning.” She continues: “In our time, it is hard to see any knowledge or understanding as ‘mirroring’ nature, or ‘mirroring’ reality.” She concludes: “There is an implication here for our work in gender identity clinics: that we are in the business of helping actively to construct the idea and the understanding of transgender, and for this we should accept responsibility.” In other words, ordinary binary notions of truth and falsity, or of discovering what is right and wrong, are inapplicable when it comes to the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth — because there are no prior fixed facts about identity, or truth, or morality here to discover. All meaning is up for grabs.

Against this intellectual background, the Tavistock’s flannel about being a thoughtful service sheltering from the storm of our present culture wars starts to make more sense. At least historically, senior clinicians at the Tavistock have never believed there is anything but certain context-bound forms of thought, floating about in a post-modern void. They have assumed meaning is constructed, not found. They have denied that there is any certain or timeless knowledge, but only specific cultural dynamics to navigate in the here and now. Under such an approach, what else could you do but be “thoughtful”?

A recognition of ambiguity within the life of the psyche would be perfectly fine — indeed, I assume, therapeutically helpful — if all that had ever happened at GIDS was that people sat around talking to one other. But the general relativist stance of senior clinicians was made incredibly dangerous for patients by the presence of an additional factor in the therapeutic mix, nestling somewhat anomalously among Di Ceglie’s stated foundational aims for his service. Alongside commonplace psychodynamic goals such as “to ameliorate associated behavioural, emotional and relationship difficulties”, “to allow mourning processes to occur”, “to enable symbol formation and symbolic thinking” and “to sustain hope”, we also find: “to encourage exploration of the mind-body relationship by promoting close collaboration among professionals in different specialities, including paediatric endocrinology.”

I don’t know about you, but when I read this, the birds — or rather the mermaids, perhaps — stop singing...

 

Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, His Name Is George Floyd

At Amazon, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. 

Democrats' Far-Left Climate Agenda Costing Americans More and More (VIDEO)

Here's Sean Hannity from earlier tonight:

The Democrat Party Pox

This t-shirt pretty much nails it. 

ABC Considers Jan. 6 Whistleblower Cassidy Hutchison For 'The View'

She's going to be a television rock star pundit.

Not sure how long she'd make on The View, though. The women on the show who've held the "conservative seat" previously --- Abbey Huntsman, Jedediah Bila, and Meghan McCain, for example --- have quit after having enough of Joy, Sunny, Whoopie, and the other left-wing nut-job on the panel. (*Eye-roll*.)

At Radar Online, "ABC Mulls Whether to Screen Test Jan. 6 Whistleblower Cassidy Hutchison As Conservative Pundit On 'The View'."

They Questioned Gender-Affirming Care. Then Their Kids Were Kicked Out of School

From Leighton Woodhouse, at Common Sense, "Paul and Beka Sinclair didn’t like that their kids’ pricey private school was teaching first graders about 'deconstructing the gender binary'":

On May 25, Paul and Rebeka Sinclair pulled their minivan over to the side of the road, just north of Lake Tahoe, and logged onto a Zoom with Katherine Dinh, the head of the Marin Country Day School.

“Today was the last day of school for your children, Charlotte and Carter,” Dinh informed the couple. The Sinclairs—she’s 37; he’s 51—had been driving home from a vacation to celebrate their anniversary. Dinh appeared to be reading a script. Two MCDS board members joined her on the call but stayed quiet. “Please do not contact any other school employees, particularly Charlotte and Carter’s teachers, as your reaching out to them will cause them further stress,” Dinh continued. “The two of you are not to be on campus again.”

It was the closing act of a year-long drama between the Sinclairs and MCDS, which charges $40,000 per student per year and had been teaching first and second graders about “deconstructing the gender binary”—the idea that there’s no such thing as girls or boys, just a spectrum of relative girlness and boyness.

The Sinclairs weren’t the only parents who had protested the new gender-identity curriculum—most families in their daughter’s class were upset and had been talking about it among themselves. But the Sinclairs had been unwilling to stay quiet. As a result, administrators had suggested that they were homophobic and accused them of tarnishing MCDS’s reputation. (An MCDS attorney had accused the Sinclairs of “defamation” for accusing MCDS of “predatory ‘grooming’ of children.” The Sinclairs never made that accusation.) Friends had stopped replying to their texts. Teachers said they felt unsafe around them. When word got out about why Charlotte, 8, and Carter, 5, had been kicked out, the Sinclairs had to decide whether they could stay in the Bay Area.

“I had no problem being a pariah in Marin,” Beka said. “We were worried about raising our kids long term in an area that was embracing these destructive ideologies.”

Beka first glimpsed what was going on in the fall of 2020. Charlotte was in the first grade then, and the students were still in remote learning, and she saw the teacher read the kids Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby.” She didn’t like Kendi’s ideas, and she emailed Dinh and Stephanie Deitz, the head of the lower school, to let them know.

A few weeks later, one of Charlotte’s teachers asked the kids to introduce their stuffed animals with their pronouns. “The six-year-olds were like, ‘What’s a pronoun?’” Beka said.

A former MCDS teacher whose daughter attended the school said his little girl was similarly confused when MCDS “started introducing gender, and you can be whoever you want, and it’s fluid. She started taking that on.”

The former teacher, who declined to speak openly, said his daughter was hardly alone. A group of girls in her class started to think of themselves as gay, and then transgender. By the fourth grade, his daughter was “dating” other girls in her class. By sixth grade—last year—she had adopted male pronouns and a boy’s name, and had started wearing a breast binder.

“You could see the old going away,” the former teacher said. “It was intense. And it was just sobering to go to these meetings week after week after week, and just talk about the same thing over and over.”

Then, one day in 2021, when everyone was back on campus, Beka noticed that all the American flags had disappeared. She didn’t say anything to MCDS. It felt important, but it also felt a little weird to bring up.

The school, Paul said, seemed intent on teaching kids to feel bad about who they were—whether it was being white, or American, or a boy or a girl.

By early 2022—Charlotte was now in the second grade—MCDS parents started noticing more red flags, according to parents I spoke to and others connected to the school. One of the children wondered what they were supposed to call their stuffed animals, since they had never asked them whether they were boys or girls. Another couldn’t reconcile his interest in unicorns with his love of sports.

(Several parents I reached out to indicated that they wanted to talk but were scared. One father said he’d call me from a pay phone, if only there were pay phones.)

Parents started to hear about weird classroom exercises designed to force the seven- and eight-year-olds to decide how they identified: They were asked which gender they “felt like.” Or to pick the pronoun that seemed right to them. Or to say which toys seemed more like boy toys or girl toys...

Still lots more at the link.

The Marin County Day School is another case of the imperative to fight back against this demonic ideological agenda. Abigail Shrier is absolutely right. 

In Defense of Political Escalation

From the irrepressible Abigail Shrier, at Common Sense, "How can we get back to normal? Those waiting for the pendulum to swing back will be waiting forever":

... Here is the problem: Almost every liberal will be content to allow our institutions and corporations to punish conservatives as long as they themselves remain unscathed. They may feel a pang of discomfort watching books deleted from Amazon, but until it is a book of theirs, they will continue to show a remarkable disinclination to speak up. (Yes, with the important exception of brave souls like J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. And the moment liberals speak out against such censorship, they are accused of being right-wing and lose the left’s protection.)

As long as Amazon never deletes books by Rachel Maddow, Bob Woodward, Ezra Klein, or Paul Krugman, America’s large and powerful center-left has proven itself all-too-willing to allow the censorship to proceed. As long as only the left weaponizes every available corporation and government agency, America will continue its decade-long shrug.

Those waiting on the mythical pendulum to “swing back,” should stop holding their breath. The gender activists are True Believers, akin to jihadists: no amount of reasoning diminishes their resolve, no appeal to data brings them pause, no urge to consider the sanctity of American liberties will convince them to cool it.

This point was best put to me by a high school teacher in Texas, a gay man, regularly hounded by his school administrators to teach gender ideology to his students. Here’s the remarkable thing: He doesn’t want to, doesn’t think it’s a good use of his time, and doesn’t believe encouraging his students to obsess over their sexual orientation during class is anywhere near as helpful to high school students as the material he trained to teach them. But he also doesn’t think passing a law banning gender ideology will make the slightest difference.

I try to tell parents, if you’re considering pulling your kids out of public school—do—because you can go to as many school board meetings as you want and complain. There’s still going to be people who are going to teach whatever they want.

If the woke continue to gain ground, where will we skeptics go to educate our children, transact commerce, find fair adjudication of our custody disputes? Where will we publish when not only the New York Times has a “gender director”—when every publication does?

That is the worry that likely motivates DeSantis, the first politician to “weaponize” the Florida tax code. He brought its hammer down on Disney to punish that one company for using its immense corporate coffers to lobby against parents’ rights in Florida. In principle, it’s a move I’m leery of. (And in the case of sending CPS after moms and dads who take their kids to drag shows, it’s a move I would oppose.)

But the gist of this stratagem—escalation—may be necessary. Indeed, it already seems to be working. Playing offense, even raising the stakes, may be the only means of achieving a much-needed truce. I’m out of better ideas. How about you?

Read the whole thing.