Twitter, the Supreme Court, the Progressive Revolution

From Caroline Glick, at the Jewish News Syndicate, "As long as revolutionary progressives maintain their control over key U.S. national institutions, Republican election victories will be insufficient to save the U.S. and restore liberty to its citizens":

May 8, 2022 / JNS) America is in the throes of a revolution. As historian Victor Davis Hanson has noted, progressives now control nearly every national institution. They control Wall Street, Silicon Valley, universities, local school boards, the teachers’ unions, the entertainment industry, the vast majority of the media, the Justice Department, the FBI and the U.S. military, and currently, the White House and both houses of Congress.

Progressives use their control over these institutions to change both the character of the United States and the rules of the game in a manner that will enable them to perpetuate their power regardless of the sentiments of the American people.

Progressives are rewriting American history. They are taking aim at God and believers, and at the nuclear family, while indoctrinating children against their families and their country. There is no area of human endeavor that progressives have not politicized.

One of the last national institutions where the conservatives hold sway is the Supreme Court. And last Monday, the Supreme Court came under a malicious assault whose clear goal is to subvert its independence. In a move without precedent in U.S. history, Politico published a draft Supreme Court decision written by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito is a member of the Court’s conservative majority.

Today’s Supreme Court comprises five conservatives, one centrist and three progressives. Alito’s draft explained why the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which removed the power of states to determine the legality of pregnancy termination, making abortions legal nationwide, was unconstitutional and overturned it. If Alito’s decision, which is supported by his fellow conservative justices, becomes final, the power to determine the legality of pregnancy termination will devolve back to the individual states.

Second, the leaker sought to incite righteous rage among progressives, that will pressure the two remaining moderates in the Democratic majority in the Senate to vote to abrogate the Senate filibuster. By preventing Republicans from using the filibuster, the razor-thin Democrat majority will be able to ram through radical legislation ahead of their expected losses in the congressional elections in November.

Among other things, unfettered by the filibuster, progressives will be able to expand the number of justices on the Court from nine to 15. And if they move fast enough, President Joe Biden will be able to pack the court with an additional six progressive justices and thus effectively seize permanent control of the high court.

As for those elections, all major polls foresee progressives suffering crushing, historic defeats in both houses. Until Obama’s presidency, when progressives seized control of the Democrat Party, polls like the current ones would have compelled the Democrats to abandon their progressive policies and make a ninety-degree turn to the center. But today, every demonstration of public opposition to progressive policies convinces progressive revolutionaries to double down. When last year parents began protesting anti-American, racist and increasingly pornographic indoctrination of their children in K-12 schools, Attorney General Merrick Garland instructed the FBI to treat protesting parents like “domestic terrorists.”

Progressive-controlled state and local governments have responded to public outcries against skyrocketing crime rates by passing laws banning pre-trial detention and bail, sending violent criminals back on the streets.

In every sphere of public endeavor, progressive politicians, bureaucrats and activists have met public opposition and protest with tyranny and rebuke.

One of the main weapons in the progressive arsenal is disinformation—the deliberate distortion of information to advance an agenda...

This disinformation campaign brings us to Twitter, the social media platform purchased last month by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Over the past decade, Twitter became the social media network with the largest influence on the public discourse. No self-respecting journalist, activist or policymaker can afford not to have an active account.

Twenty years ago, the internet and the social media platforms it generated became the largest free market of ideas in human history. They were also the engine for political victories for conservative politicians in the United States. For the first time, the internet gave conservative candidates the ability to communicate directly with voters, without the mediation of liberal/progressive media behemoths. All of this began to change during Obama’s presidency, as more and more conservative voices suffered a spectrum of sanctions, from shadow bans, which blocked their audience from seeing what they were posting, to banishment from Facebook and other social media platforms.

The process accelerated and became more extreme in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

Trump’s victory was a grave embarrassment for the Silicon Valley oligarchs. Clinton blamed them for her loss. Her basic claim was that had Facebook, Twitter and Google not permitted the Trump campaign more or less the same use of their platforms as they ostensibly offer everyone, Trump would not have won. As Clinton and her supporters put it, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and their colleagues were supposed to prevent Trump and his supporters from “disseminating disinformation,” that is, campaign materials, on their platforms. Freedom of expression, Clinton and her supporters insisted, wasn’t for everyone.

Chastened, to prevent Trump’s reelection in 2020, Zuckerberg donated $340 million to election non-profit groups he founded for the purpose of increasing Democrat vote numbers in key swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia. At the same time, Facebook and Twitter initiated a censorship campaign against Trump and his supporters the likes of which no one had ever experienced.

That censorship campaign reached its height weeks before the election, when the New York Post published the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. President Joe Biden’s son, a crack addict, had abandoned his laptop in a repair shop in Delaware. After his efforts to return the laptop were unsuccessful, the owner of the store turned its contents over to the FBI because the computer contained evidence that Biden and his family may have committed several felonies.

At a minimum, the contents of the laptop exposed that Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from foreign firms with direct ties to the Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian governments. Hunter Biden seemed to implicate his father in the influence-peddling operations in several of his emails.

The Post story was explosive because it was entirely true. It was Hunter Biden’s laptop. All the details of the deals were authentic. They exposed a web of influence peddling with hostile governments that made clear that Biden and his family were ripe for extortion by those governments. Yet, rather than allow their platforms to be used to inform the American people of this information, Twitter led the way in preventing the public from hearing about it. Twitter de-platformed the New York Post and private users who dared to link to the story. Facebook followed suit. Fifty retired U.S. intelligence and security chiefs proclaimed the story was “Russian disinformation.”

It took a year for the New York Times and Washington Post to admit that the laptop was indeed Hunter Biden’s laptop and that the New York Post stories were entirely true. In the meantime, in the name of fighting “disinformation,” Twitter, Facebook, Google and other internet giants had denied the American people access to information that, as post-election polls made clear, would have swung the election in Trump’s favor.

Since its first days in office, the Biden administration has openly pressured technology giants to increase their censorship and block conservative voices, claiming that such silencing and suppression is necessary to fight racism and fake news...

 

Thirtieth Anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots (VIDEO)

I haven't been watching the news this week, but the Los Angeles Times published a front-page story yesterday, and it was weird. I was at Fresno State in May 1992, working at the Chevron station, pumping gas, not far from my dad's house. I'd be entering graduate school at U.C. Santa Barbara in the fall.

I remember being very distressed by what little news I was able to get at the time (mainly because of so much work and school, I had no time for it). I remember lots of people coming in and out of the gas station (located at one of the busiest intersections in Central Fresno) and nearly every night each and every person haunting the streets was shouting their commitments out loud, with white folks screaming the *n-word* at the black folks who were also out and about. 

It was scary being out there, even two hours away from L.A. 

Our social and political polarization is bad nowadays, but it ain't new, not by a long shot --- L.A. was a riot torn city decades before the officers' acquittal in the Rodney King trial (the Watts Riots come to mind). 

Now almost two years out from the murder of George Floyd --- and 2020's summer of riots --- it was a strange feeling being reminded of Los Angeles like that, seeing the newspaper at the AM/PM while out for gas, while my mind quickly raced with images of both Los Angeles and Minneapolis simultaneously. 

Sixty-four people were killed 1992, with at least $1 billion in property damage over a six-day period. 

Here's an hour-long NBC News video with graphic images, starting out with some random dude getting pulled out of his Ford Bronco, only to narrowly escape being stoned to death by rioters armed with slabs of bricks, broken curbstone, huge rocks, who knows what else. 

Here's another focusing on the "Rooftop Koreans," many of whom defended their businesses with handguns and rifles. 

More at ABC News 7 Los Angeles below.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. riots are remembered 30 years later with hope and pessimism."

Also, "Thirty years after it burned, Koreatown has transformed. But scars remain";

When the city started to burn, James An’s mother was driving her new BMW in South L.A.

An was 12 years old, but he knew the luxury car — and her Korean face — could make her a target. He called her car phone and urged her to “get the hell out.”

On the radio, he heard business owners pleading for police protection as their livelihoods vanished in front of their eyes.

On television, he saw much of Koreatown on fire, including an electronics store he loved, half a mile from his family’s Korean-Chinese restaurant.

His father soon left their Glendale house, gun in hand, to defend the restaurant. “Protect your family,” he told the boy.

“I remember thinking, what the hell am I going to do? I’m 12 years old,” An recalled. “How am I going to [respond], if people come to my house with guns?”

The restaurant was spared. But many of An’s favorite Koreatown haunts were in ruins: a CD warehouse, a Kinney shoe store, an ethnic grocery store with signs in English, Spanish, Korean and Japanese.

For 30 years, An has tried to understand what happened after the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted on April 29, 1992, setting off days of looting and destruction.

As president of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles, he is in regular touch with politicians and community leaders of many backgrounds.

The days of armed Koreans on rooftops defending their businesses from rioters, with the LAPD nowhere in sight, sometimes seem a distant memory.

Black-Korean relations, once symbolized by the fatal shooting of Latasha Harlins by a Korean liquor store owner, have improved one interaction at a time, from the shopkeeper who smiles and offers warm greetings to leaders like An working to build cross-racial ties.

Latinos, who are 51% of Koreatown’s population, have successfully lobbied for a sign marking the “El Salvador Corridor.” They have teamed with Koreans on workers’ rights campaigns and school issues.

But An, 42, wonders what fissures still exist underneath.

“I haven’t been able to figure that out,” he said.

After the riots, called Saigu — 4/29 — in Korean, some business owners returned to South Korea, their immigrant dreams shattered. Others were unable to get government relief or insurance reimbursements. Some were too traumatized to keep working.

Yet, as the years passed, many Korean Americans rebuilt their businesses or started new ones. Wealthy South Koreans poured money into the neighborhood. Korean pop culture exploded globally.

At Hannam Supermarket on Olympic Boulevard, where Koreans with guns crouched behind cars in 1992, K-pop stars filmed a music video several years ago.

On the rooftop of California Market, where armed Koreans once patrolled, hipsters snack on spicy rice cakes and Korean corn dogs.

Korean Americans gradually built enough political clout to place all of Koreatown in a single city council district. A community that once felt abandoned by the police recently rallied to make sure that the LAPD’s Olympic station stayed open.

But 30 years later, everyone who experienced Saigu is scarred in some way, whether it is the unending grief of Jung Hui Lee, whose son was the only Korean American killed in the riots, or the questions still asked by a man who as a teenager saw the stores of fellow church members burned down.

“What did we do, or what did those church members do so wrong that caused this much retaliation?” said Joshua Song, 47, vice president of a company that helps businesses bridge the divide between Asia and North America. “If I try to rethink those events, there is still no resolution. Maybe that’s why it’s so traumatic.”

In some spots, the rebuilding began quickly. At 6th Street and Vermont Avenue, a strip mall that had gone up in flames was soon rising again.

Laura Park told the owner that she was interested in moving her Korean dress shop there...

Well, what did they do? For one thing, "A Korean-born merchant at the shop accused Latasha of stealing a bottle of orange juice. Latasha was shot in the back of the head, killing her instantly."

More, "Videotape Shows Teen Being Shot After Fight : Killing: Trial opens for Korean grocer who is accused in the slaying of a 15-year-old black girl at a South-Central store," and "25 years later, a vigil will honor a black teen killed over a bottle of orange juice."

There was a powder-keg waiting to explode, no doubt.  

Jamie Thompson, Standoff

At Amazon, Jamie Thompson, Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation.

Leftist Fury Erupts Over Emma Camp's Op-Ed Piece at the New York Times

Now they'll try to cancel her. (*Eye-roll.*)

At Fox News, "Liberals erupt at college student's NYT op-ed about being afraid to speak out on campus.”

ADDED: At Hot Air, "NY Times published an opinion piece on campus self-censorship and progressives are proving the author's point."

The Radicalization of Ted Cruz (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Ted Cruz Walks Back January 6th 'Terrorist' Comments in Heated Exchange with Tucker Carlson (VIDEO)."

From Amanda Carpenter, at the Bulwark, "Ted Cruz’s Humiliation Isn’t the Worst Part":

By now, you’ve heard about the clip of Ted Cruz groveling for Tucker Carlson’s approval on Fox News. Every last member of the punditocracy has taken a turn dunking on the Texas senator whom everyone loves to hate.

Hope they enjoyed it.

Because once you really understand what Cruz is apologizing for, it’s not all that funny.

The worst part of that interview wasn’t Cruz’s abject humiliation, but his radicalization. And yes, that’s saying something considering that Cruz was one of the leaders of the charge to object to the Electoral College count on January 6, 2021.

At issue is Cruz’s use of the phrase “violent terrorist attack” when talking about Jan. 6th protesters who assaulted police. For this, last Thursday Carlson accused Cruz of “repeating the talking points Merrick Garland has prepared.” Burn. Lord knows, the worst thing a potential 2024 GOP presidential contender could do is be on message with the Biden administration about Jan. 6th.

It’s worth remembering that when Cruz was coming up in Republican politics, being tough on crime was a good message. He likely clings to the notion that the typical GOP voter wants to “back the blue” and that a successful politician should be consistent in denouncing criminals on the left and the right.

Hah.

That’s just not true of Carlson’s Trump-obsessed, conspiracy-driven viewers. And the fact that Carlson created a three-part series titled “Patriot Purge” that describes Jan. 6th as a government “setup” and jailed rioters as “political prisoners” should have been a clue.

Carlson said the attack could be called a “riot” but “it was not a violent terrorist attack. Sorry.”

He went on:

So why are you telling us that it was, Ted Cruz? And why are none of your Republican friends who are supposed to be representing us and all the people have been arrested during this purge saying anything? What the hell’s going on here?

You’re making us think maybe the Republican Party is as worthless as we suspected it was. That can’t be true. Reassure us, please. Ted Cruz?

Cruz decided to come on Carlson’s broadcast the next evening, so he could help make clear how eager he is to represent the people arrested during the “purge.”

Right out of the gate, Cruz was all concessions and backpedaling. His phrasing, he said, was “sloppy” and “dumb,” and he claimed that he only meant the word “terrorist” to refer to “the limited number of people who engaged in violent attacks against police officers.”

I’ve drawn a distinction. I wasn’t saying that the thousands of peaceful protesters supporting Donald Trump are somehow terrorists. I wasn’t saying the millions of patriots across the country supporting President Trump are terrorists, and that’s what a lot of people have misunderstood.

He thought that distinction would be acceptable.

Nope...

More.

 

Ted Cruz Walks Back January 6th 'Terrorist' Comments in Heated Exchange with Tucker Carlson (VIDEO)

This was going around on Twitter yesterday. Cruz is looking more and more like a buffoon.

At Politico, "The senator brushed off his previous phrasing as “sloppy” and “frankly dumb.”

Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper January 6th Special (VIDEO)

This was the best thing I saw all day yesterday, "CNN PRESENTS LIVE FROM THE CAPITOL: JANUARY 6TH, ONE YEAR LATER."

The segment with the Capitol Police Officers was heartbreaking. 

But Rep. Jamie Rakin's interview, with his daughter and son-in-law, was heartwarming. I'll post the video if it comes available later. 

January 6th: Biden Made No Call to Sooth Americans' Frayed Nerves

 From Sultan Knish, at FrontPage Magazine, "Biden’s January 6 Anniversary Speech - and His Big Lies":

Vice President Kamala Harris set the stage yesterday for the Left’s exploitation of the first anniversary of the Capitol riot one year ago with incendiary remarks that outrageously compared the events of January 6, 2021, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and the Islamist terrorist attacks on America’s homeland on Sept. 11, 2001. This morbid comparison dishonors the thousands of lives lost on both of those catastrophic days and is a declaration of war on the millions of Americans who reject her corrupt administration.

When Biden took his turn, the self-proclaimed unifier delivered an angry, divisive January 6 anniversary speech, falsely accusing former President Donald Trump and his supporters of placing “a dagger at the throat of American democracy” by questioning his legitimacy. Evidently, in Biden’s version of the Constitution, the right to protest is reserved for Antifa and Black Lives Matter, but not for Americans.

The only dagger at the throat of democracy is Biden's renewed effort to take over and rig national elections under the false flag of voting rights and manufactured emergency because polls show there is no other conceivable way he could win the 2024 presidential election.

Biden asked: “Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation.”

When rioters were burning their way across the country, Kamala Harris and other future members of the Biden administration were raising bail money so they could go out and burn, loot, and beat more police officers.

After leftist radicals attempted to destroy a federal courthouse in Portland in July of that year, setting fires and breaching the courthouse doors, then-candidate Biden’s response to these clear acts of insurrection was to blame Trump, not the rioters.

“We have a president who is determined to sow chaos and division,” said Biden. “To make matters worse instead of better.”

Biden has refused to condemn either Antifa or Black Lives Matter by name. He will not condemn any of the Democrats, including his own vice president, who fundraised for the rioters. And he has met with Black Lives Matter leaders instead of prosecuting them for terrorism.

Kamala and Biden claim that they care about police officers. Where are they on the over 2,000 police officers injured in the summer riots?

Most Americans would agree that political violence is wrong. Yes, prosecute any Capitol rioters who actually engaged in criminal behavior, but what about the Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other leftist rioters who so far have mostly escaped any consequences for their political violence across the country in the second half of 2020? Their anarchy resulted in immeasurably more destruction, fatalities, and injuries than occurred on January 6, 2021.

This is not to excuse the criminal behavior of those who entered the Capitol illegally and engaged in destructive acts, but only to highlight the clear double standard in how the Left views the January 6th riot versus the long hot summer of leftist riots in 2020.

Biden added: “We need a president who will bring us together instead of tear us apart, calm instead of inflame, and enforce the law faithfully rather than put his political interests first.”

He is certainly not that president.

Biden's speech is the embodiment of tearing Americans apart, of inflaming tensions, and of putting his political agenda ahead of the law.

In his January 6th anniversary speech, Biden used Trump and his seventy-four million voters in the 2020 election as foils to divert attention from his own administration’s miserable failures at home and abroad during his first year in office. The COVID-19 pandemic, skyrocketing inflation, surging crime, and illegal immigrants flooding into the country in record numbers are crises still plaguing the country as 2022 begins.

There was no call in Biden’s speech for an end to political violence on the Left as well as on the Right. He made no effort to soothe the American people’s frayed nerves or look forward with a positive agenda to solve the problems his administration has created. Instead, the Divider-in-Chief chose to look backward and hype last year’s Capitol incident as a mortal threat to democracy and the rule of law.

Biden said repeatedly in his speech that he intended to separate the truth about what happened on January 6, 2021 from the “big lies” he claimed were being told by Trump and his supporters. “We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie,” Biden declared. But the President spouted at least three big lies of his own during his speech.

First, Biden falsely accused Trump of trying “to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.” Trump was certainly vocal about challenging the suspicious results of the 2020 election, but he did and said nothing to prevent the transfer of power. Biden assumed office peacefully on January 20, 2021.

Second, Biden claimed that Trump had “rallied the mob to attack.” False. During Trump’s January 6th speech at his peaceful “Save America” rally, Trump said to the attendees: "We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." (Emphasis added) Trump is not responsible for the violent actions of a fringe breakaway group.

Third, Biden exploited the first anniversary of the Capitol riot to promote the Democrats’ power-grab, voting “reform” legislation. He distorted what states are doing to protect the integrity of their election processes, claiming that “new laws are being written not to protect the vote, but to deny it. Not only to suppress the vote but to subvert it.”

Georgia’s new voting law, for example, has been a frequent target of Biden’s verbal attacks. But that law is actually more liberal in allowing no-excuse mail-in voting, as opposed to the more restrictive requirements of New York and Biden’s home state of Delaware where voters must have a valid reason for not voting in person.

Finally, to put things in perspective, it is worth remembering a far more dangerous attack on the Capitol and on members of Congress than the January 6th riot. On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalist radicals invaded the Capitol and began spraying the place with bullets. They shot five congressmen, injuring at least one seriously. Former President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentences of the Puerto Rican terrorists well before the end of what would have been their full sentences.

Despite their hysterical claims of fearing for their lives at the hands of Trump supporters, no members of Congress were injured on January 6, 2021. The only violent fatality at all that day was that of an unarmed protester, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, shot and killed at point-blank range by a Capitol police officer.

The January 6th breach of the Capitol was no Pearl Harbor. It was no 9/11. Such disgusting comparisons are a brazen appeal to raw emotions in a cynical attempt by Democrats, from the President on down, to push their plan to federalize elections for partisan gain and for permanent one-party control.

 

Democracy Isn't Dying

I've been saying this all year. Basically, despite the disruptions and violence, the system worked.

The rest is just politics.

At WSJ, "Jan. 6 was a riot, not an insurrection, and U.S. institutions held":

The Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, was a national disgrace, but almost more dispiriting is the way America’s two warring political tribes have responded. Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem intent on exploiting that day to retain power, while the Donald Trump wing of the GOP insists it was merely a protest march that got a little carried away.

We say this as a statement of political reality, not as a counsel of despair. Our job is to face the world as it is and try to move it in a better direction. So a year later, what have we learned?

*** One lesson is that on all the available evidence Jan. 6 was not an “insurrection,” in any meaningful sense of that word. It was not an attempted coup. The Justice Department and the House Select Committee have looked high and low for a conspiracy to overthrow the government, and maybe they will find it. So far they haven’t.

There apparently was a “war room” of motley characters at the Willard hotel and small groups of plotters who wanted to storm the barricades. But they were too disorganized to do much more than incite what became the mob that breached the Capitol.

The Justice Department says some 725 people from nearly all 50 states have been charged in the riot, linked mainly by social media and support for Donald Trump. About 70 defendants have had their cases adjudicated to date, and 31 of those will do time in prison. The rioters aren’t getting off easy.

They also didn’t come close to overturning the election. The Members fled the House chamber during the riot but soon returned to certify the electoral votes. Eight Senators and 139 House Republicans voted against certifying the electoral votes in some states, but that wasn’t close to a majority.

The true man at the margin was Mike Pence. Presiding in the Senate as Vice President, he recognized his constitutional duty as largely ceremonial in certifying the vote count. He stood up to Mr. Trump’s threats for the good of the country and perhaps at the cost of his political future.

In other words, America’s democratic institutions held up under pressure. They also held in the states in which GOP officials and legislators certified electoral votes despite Mr. Trump’s complaints. And they held in the courts as judges rejected claims of election theft that lacked enough evidence. Democrats grudgingly admit these facts but say it was a close run thing. It wasn’t. It was a near-unanimous decision against Mr. Trump’s electoral claims.

None of this absolves Mr. Trump for his behavior. He isn’t the first candidate to question an election result; Hillary Clinton still thinks Vladimir Putin defeated her in 2016. But he was wrong to give his supporters false hope that Congress and Mr. Pence could overturn the electoral vote. He did not directly incite violence, but he did incite them to march on the Capitol.

Worse, he failed to act to stop the riot even as he watched on TV from the White House. He failed to act despite the pleading of family and allies. This was a monumental failure of character and duty. Republicans have gone mute on this dereliction as they try to stay united for the midterms. But they will face a reckoning on this with voters if Mr. Trump runs in 2024.

As for the Pelosi Democrats, the question is when will they ever let Jan. 6 go? The latest news is that the Speaker’s Select Committee may hold prime-time hearings this year, and the leaks are that they may even seek an indictment of Mr. Trump for obstructing Congress...

Still more.

 

Biden Blasts Trump in January 6th Address (VIDEO)

He just looks old, cranky, and mean. 

For all the devastating problems we've got, this is all he's got. This is all the Democrats got. We'll be hearing about January 6th all year. Biden's just previewing his party's midterm election strategy. 

Disgusting. 

At WSJ, "Biden Assails Trump in Speech Over Jan. 6 Riot, Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election Results":

WASHINGTON—President Biden placed blame squarely on former President Donald Trump and his supporters for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, using the first anniversary of the attack to assail the former president’s attempts to undermine the 2020 election results.

Mr. Biden’s remarks, from the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, represented his most pointed rebuke of his predecessor, saying Mr. Trump’s “bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution. He can’t accept he lost.”

The president accused Mr. Trump of spreading a “web of lies about the 2020 election,” pointing to his false claims of election fraud and his attempt to block the certification of the election by Congress that day. Mr. Biden didn’t mention Mr. Trump by name, referring to him throughout the speech as the former president.

Mr. Biden credited law enforcement members, including the Capitol Police, for saving the rule of law. “Our democracy held,” he said.

Mr. Trump, in a statement released shortly after Mr. Biden’s remarks, said the president “used my name today to try to further divide America. This political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed.” Mr. Trump has said the “real insurrection” happened on Election Day in 2020, not Jan. 6, 2021.

The former president had planned to hold a news conference later in the day. But he canceled the event Tuesday night, saying he would discuss the anniversary during a coming rally in Arizona.

Mr. Biden’s remarks opened a day of remembrances on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) each led a moment of silence on the House and Senate floors. In the afternoon, Mrs. Pelosi is participating in a conversation with historians and later a series of testimonials from lawmakers. The two leaders will join a candlelight vigil on the Capitol steps in the early evening.

The attack has served as a dividing line between the two parties in Congress, and few Republicans participated in the formal commemorations. Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.), accompanied by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, was the only GOP lawmaker who attended the moment of silence in the House chamber. Democrats have called the riot an assault on democracy, and have cited the event in calling for passing new election laws. GOP leaders have condemned the action of rioters, but they have accused Democrats of trying to use the attack to embarrass Republicans for political gain.

Mr. Biden said the moment called for Americans to “decide what kind of nation we are going to be. Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?”

“We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation,” Mr. Biden said. He said Jan. 6 marked “not the end of democracy. It’s the beginning of a renaissance of liberty and fair play.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking before Mr. Biden, equated the riot to some of the darkest days in the nation’s history, including the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer called the Jan. 6 attack “the final, bitter, unforgivable act” of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Mr. Schumer said that it was important to counter the falsehood that the election was stolen because it could provide a pretext for more violence.

In a statement, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) blasted Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris over their remarks, saying that the speeches “were an effort to resurrect a failed presidency more than marking the anniversary of a dark day in American history.”

Hours before the Capitol breach, Mr. Trump spoke at a rally and urged his supporters to stop Mr. Biden’s election win, repeating his false claims that the election was stolen. Some of his supporters then marched to the Capitol and overwhelmed police officers, forcing the evacuation of lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence and temporarily disrupting the certification of Mr. Biden’s win. More than 700 people face criminal charges for their alleged actions that day.

The D.C. medical examiner’s office determined that four people died as a result of the riot, including Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to jump through shattered glass at the door to the Speaker’s Lobby. Two died of heart conditions and one from an amphetamine intoxication. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit was assaulted at the riot, suffered a stroke and died the following day of natural causes, the medical examiner’s office found.

House Democrats, joined by 10 Republicans, impeached Mr. Trump last January on the charge of inciting an insurrection. Mr. Trump was then acquitted in the Senate, with the votes of all Democrats and seven Republicans falling short of the two-thirds threshold needed to convict...

The rest is history, as they say.

The headlines have been dire at home and abroad. The drums of war are beating loudly in Eastern Europe as a showdown at the Russo-Ukrainian border looms. Meanwhile, Moscow's sent troops to Central Asia's Republic of Kazakhstan. Violent anti-government protests have threatened the regime of Nursultan Nazarbayev, which is closely allied to Russia. 

The Omicron variant is closing down government facilities and schools, and the White House has no clue on the way forward. In fact, Biden's going to shift administration policy to emphasize "living with covid," which for Democrats that the president's 2020 campaign platform to "end the pandemic" was a lie. The shoe's on the other foot, it hurts, and the race is lost. 

Still more.

Jonathan Greenblatt, It Could Happen Here

Jonathan Greenblatt, It Could Happen Here: Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable ― And How We Can Stop It.

Indian vs. Black: Vigilante Killings Upend South African Town

Ugly down there. 

Just nasty.

At the New York Times, "As rioting and looting swept the country this summer, Indians in the suburb of Phoenix set up roadblocks to police their streets. Dozens of Black people passing through wound up dead":

PHOENIX, South Africa — The blows thundered down — bats, a hammer, a field hockey stick — as Njabulo Dlamini lay curled on the pavement, trying to summon the strength to move.

He and five friends, all of them Black, had been driving in a minibus taxi through the streets of Phoenix, a predominantly Indian suburb created from the forced racial segregation of apartheid South Africa.

A mob surrounded them, dragged them from the taxi, made them lie on the pavement and beat them furiously, according to witnesses and video footage obtained by The New York Times. Some of Mr. Dlamini’s friends managed to escape. Others were chased and beaten again by the crowd, which had been whipped up in recent days by WhatsApp warnings and reports of violence by Black people streaming into their community to loot shopping centers. Mr. Dlamini barely made it across the street. He later died of his injuries at the hospital, his family said.

South Africa was convulsed this summer by some of its worst civil unrest since the end of apartheid. The imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma for refusing to appear before a corruption inquiry set off violent protests by his supporters. Soon, riots and looting erupted in parts of the country, fed by broad disgust at poverty, inequality and the government’s failure to provide even the most basic services, like water or electricity. Officials have called the violence an insurrection — an attempt to sabotage Mr. Zuma’s rival and successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in part by stoking some of the nation’s oldest racial tensions.

Nationwide, more than 340 people died in the mayhem, many in stampedes or circumstances that remain unclear. But government officials have been alarmed by a dynamic that, they say, dangerously undermines the social order: dozens of vigilante killings by ordinary citizens.

The vigilantism was especially pronounced in Phoenix, a working-class community of about 180,000 near the country’s east coast. The country’s police minister said that 36 people there — 33 of them Black — were killed in what some officials are calling a massacre. Fifty-six people have now been arrested in connection with the violence in Phoenix.

“Most of the people who died were innocent people who were traveling,” said Sihle Zikalala, the premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, where Phoenix is.

Mobs of mostly Indian residents, worried that their community was under siege, erected roadblocks on street corners. They indiscriminately stopped Black people, and sometimes beat or killed them, the police said, inflaming the long-fragile relationship between Black and Indian South Africans — two marginalized groups under white apartheid rule.

“We need to confront racism in our society,” Mr. Ramaphosa wrote in a letter to the nation, specifically addressing the Phoenix unrest. “We need to have honest conversations not only about our attitudes to one another, but also about the material conditions that divide us.”

The authorities have been far less open about their roles in the upheaval. Interviews with dozens of Black and Indian residents in the Phoenix area, as well as a review of previously unreported video footage, show that at least some of the violence and deaths could have been prevented if the police had provided basic security...

Looting and Rioting Break Out in South Africa (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Death toll rises to 72 in South Africa rioting after jailing of ex-president":

More than half of South Africa’s 60 million people live in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 32%, according to official statistics. The COVID-19 pandemic, with layoffs and an economic downturn, has increased the hunger and desperation that helped propel the protests triggered by Zuma’s arrest into wider rioting.

And watch: "Looting and rioting break out across South Africa in wake of former President Zuma’s imprisonment."

Been Busy *Shrugs*

Sorry for the lack of posting of late, dear readers. I don't mean to let anybody down, heh.

The fact is I've been swamped with work and a lot of stuff at home --- home issues especially dealing with my two sons (which, come to think of it, isn't "My Three Sons," and I'm glad, sheesh). 

I did score an Instalanche over the weekend, for this post, "New Capitol 'Attack' Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to 'Stand Down', and the Feds 'Botched' Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (VIDEO)," which was nice. 

And of course, as many of you know, I'm a blogger at Theo Spark's, and often my babe-blogging hits posted there generate a little traffic back this way, as this one did last week, "Twins?"

So, to that end, here's a couple of more hotties, at Babe Gallery, and this lovely lady below from the University of North Carolina, via Rad Chicks:

The 'Woke' New Appeal of Totalitarianism

I don't know Roger Kimball, the bow-tie-wearing editor of the New Criterion (which I do not read), and the editor (publisher?) of Encounter Books.

But his essay today is quite good, and it's interesting to me, because I could've written it myself. I've been saying the exact same things all semester, in my (at least) twice-weekly "all class" announcements, where I sometimes add an "optional" section below the "all business" section that starts my messages, and then I offer some of my own (humble) thoughts on the news of the day --- providing links to books, as needed --- and if students read those or not, I tell them, it doesn't matter much to me, because, I also tell them, they are "free to choose" what's best for themselves; and they might not care one whit what I might have to say on the bloody, horrific violence, mayhem, and organized "mainstream" media hypocrisy that's very likely propelling us to a new --- and very "hot" --- civil war, not a "cold war," which is probably what we've been in since the 1970s, in the aftermath of the mayhem and murder inflicted back during the 1960s, care of the "Destructive Generation" that grew out of the "rights revolution" of the era, and especially the "antiwar" movement that arose in opposition to the alleged U.S. "imperialist" war in Vietnam (which was, actually, a war of the most vital national security interests), and one that's a shame we lost, as I doubt Vietnam today is anywhere near as successful, as, say, South Korea, which was not "unified" by the force of arms of both Chinese and Soviet military power.

All that said, just read Kimball, who, although he can't stomach baseball (which is strange to me, indeed), is a good guy, and a darned good thinker and writer.

At American Greatness, "The Appeal of the New Totalitarians":

It’s easy to understand and reject the horrors of totalitarianism. It is much less easy to grasp its inexorable logic or its seemingly implacable attractions.

I am not a follower or a fan of baseball. But I understand that it is, or has been, an important national pastime, beloved by many, not least, as Andrew McCarthy observes in a recent column, because it offered its acolytes a respite or oasis from politics, an arena where our differences of opinion could be redeemed or at least temporarily forgotten in the benign if intense partisanship of fandom.

It is for this reason that, impervious though I am to the charms of the sport, I regard with disdain the decision on the part of the woke commissars who run Major League Baseball to abandon Atlanta, Georgia. The reason they gave was that Georgia had passed new voter rights legislation requiring, among other things, that voters present valid identification in order to be eligible to vote. They called that a violation of “fair access to voting” when in fact it is legislation, very similar to that in effect in many other states, whose chief effect will be to make elections fairer. You need an ID to board a plane, check into a hotel, enter most urban businesses, but not to vote?

I see that Delta Airlines has also joined the woke brigade by taking a public stand against the Georgia legislation. How will the airline respond if you refuse to show a valid identification before boarding? (After Delta finished with its woke high horse, American Airlines borrowed it to present its own little exhibition of politically correct grandstanding with respect to similar legislation in Texas.)

This is all just business as usual in what more and more seems like the twilight of the republic. The cultural critic Stephen Soukup has anatomized the phenomenon in a new book that we just published at Encounter called The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business. Quite apart from its illuminating historical analysis, the book is a plea to turn away from the politicization of everything that stands behind such phenomena as sports concessions and airlines—to say nothing of Hollywood, the media, and the fount of it all, academia—insinuating politics into every dimension of life. “The choice here,” Soukup writes in his conclusion, “is simple.”

If we, as a civilization allow even the spirit of capitalism to become part of “the political” and part of the total state, then we will have order—for however long that lasts. If we resist the politicization of business and of capital markets, however; if we determine for ourselves that disorder and depoliticization are the preferable options, then we not only preserve liberty but also preserve the spirit of innovation and expression that harnesses liberty to create wealth and prosperity. I think Soukup is correct, and his analysis of the way the totalizing process of the politicization of everything has proceeded in other situations should give us all pause.

Political correctness has always had a silly as well as a minatory side. The silly side is evident in its juvenile narcissism. It is so obviously a product of a rich and leisured society that it is hard to take its antics seriously. There is a reason that it had its origins in the academy. Those privileged eyries could afford to allow their charges to prance around whining about how oppressed or “triggered” or offended they were since they occupied the coddled purlieus of a place apart—apart from the serious business of everyday life and in this country, anyway, apart from the less forgiving imperatives of genuine want...

Later, I'll write a full post linking this new book from Soukup, of which and whom I was unaware, but appears to be a real winner, and, obviously, reflects back well on Mr. Kimball.

And I should have more blogging tonight, or tomorrow, so thanks again for reading. 

Plus, there's still more of the American Greatness piece at the link.

 

Well, That Didn't Take Long: Sharon Osbourne Out at 'The Talk' as Unhinged Leftists Claim Another Scalp Over Imaginary Racism (VIDEO)

So, my wife was on target, naturally. 

Sharon Osbourne is definitely out at "The Talk," and just one quick search for "Sharon Osbourne" on Twitter gives you a glimpse into the radical --- and so "pure" --- left's utter ideological fury over the audacity that this woman might actually stand up for something, that thing being, er, the truth.

Here's my earlier entry, "'The Talk' Extends Hiatus After Sharon Osbourne's 'Controversial' Defense of Friend Piers Morgan (VIDEO)."

And now at OK Magazine, with, what looks like, a bit of actual news on some likely nasty litigation to be forthcoming: "CBS Will Reportedly Have to Pay Sharon Osbourne a 'Sizeable Settlement to Keep Her Quiet' Amid 'The Talk' Investigation." Also, "'It's All Out of Control': Sharon Osbourne 'Not Expected to Return' to 'The Talk' After Shocking On-Air Meltdown, Says Source."

It wasn't a "shocking on-air meltdown." 

Indeed, Ms. Osbourne was freakin' ambushed, and she's right to claim she was set up, for whatever reason, the most likely being that this black race-mongering beatdown queen, Sheryl Underwood, came to the taping all ready to go for the big "you be racist!" backstab --- and the rest is history, or it will be, once we get more on the true juicy details of exactly how this degenerate bull came down.

The kicker is this Don Lemon segment at CNN from the other night (below), which I did not see in real time, in which he "discusses" how "calm" was Ms. Underwood in responding to the "privileged Ms. Osbourne, who shoulda just sucked it up. And further, neither has the "brother" Mr. Lemon, nor the "I ain't never seen no white person who wasn't no racist cracka" Ms. Hill, accepted Ms. Osbourne's apology, which I had not seen until today; and they claimed Osbourne's mea culpa wasn't "really" addressing" the "underlying" issue, which is that if muthaf*ckin' black folks call you out for your "enabling" of alleged "racist" treatment of "people of color" (and a "coloured" royal, no less), then you best be shuttin' the f*ck up, bitch.

And don't forget, Ms Hill was first suspended at then basically fired from  --- after a year of turmoil, and with Ms. Hill brokering some kind of "settlement," er, payoff --- ESPN, after she basically attacked Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones (on Twitter, of course) as the second coming of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. 

And this lady's been bad news for a long time. See the Washington Examiner, for example, "Lessons from Trader Jose and Jemele Hill: Calling everything racist is a really bad way to fight racism."

I'm am done.

I can barely get through Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room" anymore, and if I continue to watch the network, it's going to be just to monitor how low Zucker's FUBAR programming will go down the hole of despicable and hysterically deranged leftist racial paranoia (and obvious pro-Biden/Dem "white supremacist" propaganda).

Oh brother, Sharon Osbourne should just turn the tables and retort, "Bitch Better Have My Money." (*Eyes rolling into the back of my head.*)

San Francisco Asian Woman Who Fought Back Now Has 'GoFundMe' Campaign Closing-In on $1 Million (VIDEO)

It's been a big day, again, with work and family stuff, so blogging has been light.

But I did see the story earlier this morning, on "CBS This Morning," when at that time the San Francisco lady's "GoFundMe" hadn't yet reached $600,000.

Now the Guardian's reporting it's getting up to $800,000, and I won't be surprised if it passes a cool million over the weekend. (And I hope that helps the woman with all her medical bills, and what not, and perhaps she'll be able to "spread the wealth" to some of her neighbors, who many, no doubt, could use a hand, as this pandemic hurts everybody, even generally hard-working Asian families living up that way).  

See, "Nearly $800,000 raised for two elderly Asian people attacked in San Francisco: Video of an injured and crying Xiao Zhen Xie standing on a street corner prompted thousands to share messages and donate." 

(ADDED: Of course the Guardian had to get in the obligatory, "Anti-Asian rhetoric, fueled by Donald Trump and the far right’s insistence on using offensive, stigmatizing language to describe the coronavirus, has helped provoke violence," blah, blah.)

In any case, and good for them, but some of lady's younger Asian-American neighbors are forming "citizens' patrols" to, frankly, stand guard and protect their communities from these kinds of attacks; and remember, most of these attacks are not from "white crackers," but black "hoodlums" whose culture is already anti-social, and committing crime for these idiots is just another day "on the job."

At KPIX News 5 San Francisco: 

Now That's What I'm Talkin' About! 75-Year-Old San Francisco Woman Beats and Bloodies Her Anti-Asian Attacker! (VIDEO)

Now this is some story!

And it's interesting, because, if you think about it, it doesn't follow the script regarding recent attacks on Asian-Americans in San Francisco (so far, it's been mostly black urban hoodlums). I mean, here's some young white dude, who hates Asians, and let's say, he comes from outside the city to mount his attack? Where'd he come from? Who taught him this clearly racist and violent attitude? Because you know, while Gavin Newsom's overplaying his hand on all the "white supremacists" sponsoring the recall, it's not like we don't have any in this state. 

I mean, you have the "State of Jefferson" secession movement, and those folks, probably many of them, are no doubt "white crackers." They live in the northeast part of the state, in some of the most remote counties, including Tehama County (just south of Redding), Modoc County (at literally the most northeast corner of the state), and Yuba Country (which abuts, on the east side, State Highway 99, which following it up north, about 100 miles or so, connects back over to Interstate 5 at Red Bluff).

So, yeah, it's just a hypothesis, but still --- who is this guy and where'd he come from?

So, that brings us back to the 75-five-year old Asian lady. She was carrying a stick, and though she suffered a horrible black eye, she gave as good as it gets. Now, what should really happen is San Francisco should expedite concealed-carry permits for local Asian-Americans who want to get armed, and frankly, the city should subsidize firearms training, to put their money where it counts (but not where it "is," sadly, because S.F. District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, is a "red-diaper baby," and he'll resist anything that conflicts with the Soros-leftist's "criminals are really vicitims" stupidity, which is one of the massive drivers of residents right the hell out of this dumphole of a state).

In any case, three cheers for this woman. I hope she sets an example and emboldens other S.F. Asians (especially those of the Chinese-American community) to do the same.

Via KPIX News 5 San Francisco:

Neighbors Stand Guard as Gangs of 'Youth Thugs' Racially Harass and Threaten Chinese Immigrant Family

Now this is an interesting story.

Keep in mind that I live in Irvine, well north of Ladera Ranch (in south O.C.), and I've long joked (in a kinda "racist" way, frankly), about how Irvine is actually "Beijing West," and for years, especially when my oldest son was getting his driver's license, I used to constantly rag about how "Chinese drivers" are the absolute worst, which isn't racist to me, because they are the worst. Back in the 1980s, "No Jap Drivers" bumper stickers were very popular (and racist, with slant eyes and buck teeth poking out over thin lips). But that's not something I'd ever put on my car, and of course, in Irvine, Chinese and Korean immigrant families are in fact model members of the community. 

One thing that always amazes me is the huge number of Asian-American churches, especially Korean-American. And while you see lots of recent immigrants, wearing big dark face shields to protect their skin, and, frankly, a lot of Chinese women --- fresh off the boat --- who wear Mao jackets and such, they never bother anybody. Both my sons attended Irvine High School, and the diversity there was between different Asian-American student groups, with some Hispanic, white, and not too many black kids. 

So, it's all good, and you get used to it, and some of my Asian neighbors are the kindest, nicest people you could ever meet.

Which brings me back to this story, at LAT, which is actually horrifying, despicable, and a f*cking shame. Some of this can be traced back to Trump and his moniker, the "China virus," etc. But most if is just plain old intolerance --- and if you know the history of the O.C., so called "far-right" groups did in fact often originate here, and there are K.K.K. types that abound. So, as someone who is "mixed-race," and I've taught "Black Politics" at the upper-division level, it's not lost on me, this resurgence of racist hatred. And it's bad. Just bad for everybody, especially the victims. 

See, "An Asian American family in O.C. was being harassed. Now their neighbors stand guard":

Every night, the neighbors converge on the Si family’s two-story home, which has large windows and an expansive porch adorned with columns.

The Sis moved to this upscale Ladera Ranch neighborhood a few months ago, with the country deep in the COVID-19 pandemic and hate crimes against Asian Americans on the rise.

Almost immediately, teenagers swooped in for nightly visits, repeatedly ringing the doorbell, yelling and pounding on the door.

“I did not understand the extent of the harassment and how often it was occurring, at first,” said Layla Parks, who organized the nightly neighborhood watch. “I was immediately outraged and wanted to help.”

Violence and hate incidents directed at Asian Americans have surged across California, including in Orange County, since the beginning of the pandemic, with some blaming Asians because of the coronavirus’ origins in Wuhan, China.

A recent spate of violent attacks in Oakland, San Francisco, New York City and elsewhere has attracted national attention and sparked fear among Asian Americans, though it is not clear whether some of the incidents were racially motivated.

In February in Koreatown, two men hurled anti-Asian slurs at a 27-year-old Korean American U.S. Air Force veteran, calling him “Chinese virus” and then swinging at him, he told KTLA.

“We’re seeing an epidemic of hate right now, and we have to stand together,” state Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine), who represents the district just west of Ladera Ranch, said last week at an event to show support for the Si family.

While officials in Orange County are still compiling information on reports made in 2020, preliminary statistics indicate a tenfold increase in hate incidents against Asian Americans, said Alison Edwards, chief executive of the nonprofit OC Human Relations.

It’s a troubling uptick that experts have blamed in part on Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the pandemic, including his use of terms such as “China virus” and “kung flu.”

Last year, California saw a consistent increase in hate incidents and crimes targeting Asian Americans, said Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

Stereotyping and conspiracy theories identifying Asians as responsible for COVID-19 have been embraced by wide swaths of the country, Levin said, with a new Center for Public Integrity/Ipsos poll showing that nearly 1 in 4 Americans have concerns about being physically near Asian people.

“My kids are scared. I’m very annoyed,” said Si, 48. “At night, my wife and I could not sleep for more than three or four hours. Please, parents, tell your kids don’t do that again.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has been called to the home seven times between October 2020 and February. Deputies have ramped up patrols in the area, and the department has launched an investigation, said Sgt. Dennis Breckner.

Still, the doorbell kept ringing, Si said. Nothing helped until his neighbors stepped in, vowing to put an end to the harassment.

Parks, who takes daily walks around the neighborhood, had introduced herself to Si and his family when she noticed them moving in last year.

In early February, Si reached out to Parks for advice.

He had already told her about the constant doorbell ringing, and she had offered to help if needed.

At first, she figured it was a harmless childhood prank of “ding-dong ditch.”

But as the harassment continued, including racial slurs against the family, Parks realized this was something uglier...

Still more.

 

Not All 'Anti-Racist' Ideas Are Good Ones

You don't say? 

And this is Matthew Yglesias, someone who blocked me on Twitter back in the day. I obviously don't care for the guy, but, as it's happening a lot these days, he's been on the wrong end of leftist "cancel culture." See Fox News's report, "Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias quits, cites 'inherent tension' and desire to be 'independent' voice: Yglesias follows Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, and Andrew Sullivan in exodus of journalists from prominent news outlets."

Yglesias is up at WaPo with an op-ed, here, "Not all ‘anti-racist’ ideas are good ones. The left isn’t being honest about this: On some topics, progressives prefer pointing out right-wing hypocrisy to debating substance":

The same Republicans championing free speech and deploring “cancel culture” are trying to pass laws criminalizing protests, bar classroom discussions of the New York Times’ 1619 Project on slavery and penalize people who advocate boycotts to oppose Israeli settlements. Combine that with the idea that we’ve got more important issues to deal with, from the pandemic to the Jan. 6 insurrection, and many progressives think they don’t have to engage with the argument that the left is too conformist and dogmatic on certain topics involving race. They don’t want to hear about the San Francisco Board of Education stripping Abraham Lincoln’s name from a high school, or Oregon teacher-training materials claiming that asking math students to “show their work” reinforces white supremacy.

“One of America’s major parties has turned against democracy,” Vox’s Zack Beauchamp tweeted Feb. 9, after a Times a reporter who had used the n-word in a discussion with students about racism was compelled to resign, “and we’re talking about . . . the Times’ staffing decisions?”

But it would be a significant mistake for mainstream progressives to duck the substance of these controversies. After all, it is progressives who in recent years have attempted to increase the stigma attached to racist speech while also expanding the scope of what’s “racist.” That double move introduces complications into discussions of racism that should invite more argumentation, not less.

In educated liberal circles these days, everyone knows that racism is not just a question of individual prejudice or hatred. The conversations are about “structural” or “systemic” racism — impersonal properties of systems, embedded in processes. Certainly it’s true that race and racism have shaped many legal, political and social institutions, since America’s earliest days. But when you make the scope of racism so expansive, that necessarily means pushing the conversations into contestable terrain.

The shift from dismantling monuments to the Confederacy to erasing homages to Lincoln, for example, raises important questions about how to balance the praiseworthy and lamentable aspects of political figures. (The school board noted that during Lincoln’s presidency, the military hanged 38 rebellious Native Americans in Minnesota.) But whether to cancel Lincoln is — for most people — a fairly easy case. Consider a more challenging one, involving land use restrictions in American cities. Having studied the issue, I believe that excessively strict regulations embody structural racism in housing: Such rules price low-income people, who are disproportionately Black and Brown, out of many areas. To me, it’s clear that the sensible (and progressive) course of action is to allow denser construction in the most expensive neighborhoods; increasing housing supply will have ripple effects that reduce housing prices for everyone. But I’m also aware that many people sincerely believe that allowing real estate development fuels gentrification and displacement — and that the key to racial justice is even more stringent regulations.

Nothing is gained if the different parties in this debate call each other racists or invoke the specter of “white supremacy” to discredit their opponents. The affordable-housing question requires dispassionate analysis, not the censoriousness and scolding that might be appropriate for combating expressions of traditional prejudice, such as redlining.

Yet many commentators urge a more fiery approach. Ibram Kendi, author of the bestseller “How to Be an Antiracist,” argues for an extremely expansive concept of racism that pushes the boundaries of structural analysis to the limits. According to Kendi, any racial gap simply is racist by definition; any policy that maintains such a gap is a racist policy; and — most debatably — any intellectual explanation of its existence (sociological, cultural, and so on) is also racist. He has famously argued that anything that is not anti-racist is perforce racist.

This reaches its most radical form in Kendi’s conflation of measurements of problems with the problems themselves. In his book — ubiquitous in educational circles — he denounces not the existence of a large Black-White gap in school performance but any discussion of such a gap. Kendi writes that “we degrade Black minds every time we speak of an ‘academic-achievement gap’ ” based on standardized test scores and grades. Instead, he asks: “What if the intellect of a low-testing Black child in a poor Black school is different from — and not inferior to — the intellect of a high-testing White child in a rich White school? What if we measured intelligence by how knowledgeable individuals are about their own environments?”

We certainly could do that. But the fact remains that if African American children continue to be less likely to learn to read and write and do math than White children, and less likely to graduate from high school, then this will contribute to other unequal outcomes down the road. Education is not a cure-all for labor market discrimination, and educational disparities don’t fully account for the Black-White earnings gap. But they partially account for that gap while also leaving people less able to organize politically, protect themselves from financial scams and otherwise navigate the modern world. Stigmatizing the use of test scores and grades to measure learning undermines policymakers’ ability to make the case for reforms to promote equity — from providing air conditioning in schools to combating racially biased low expectations among teachers...

I disagree with most of this piece (Yglesias is much too soft on his fellow leftists), but he's got a point about the toxicity of Ibram X. Kendi, which is something I'm dealing with at my college, and which Tucker Carlson has been hammering in recent segments as "the most destructive ideology" of our lifetimes. 

It's bad. Very bad. And as hard as it is, I sure hope more and more parents yank their kids out of public schools. That will help, but then there's the universities families have to consider. Professor William Jacobson created a new website to track racial indoctrination on campuses all across the country, and with luck, the word will get out, and spread farther, and more and more families will vote with their dollars, and they'll ultimately abandon all the "woke" education B.S., turning instead, one hopes, to decent, family-values oriented educational institutions. 

Again, this is not easy to do, especially for families who're not wealthy, but if enough families indeed choose alternative educational paths for their kids, sooner or later the "woke" totalitarians will get what's coming to them --- ultimate repudiation and banishment from polite society.