How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities

From John Sailer, at the Free Press, "An obsession with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion threatens students, professors, and the very credibility of higher education in the U.S."

The Privatization of Policing

From Emma Freire, at Compact, "David, 26, is shoplifting peanut butter from the Stadium Shopping Center in Portland, Ore. He has been living on the streets for about a month. Already addicted to heroin, he had started using fentanyl four days earlier. The store’s personnel spot him and call their private security firm Echelon Protective Services. They know that if they call the police, they might have to wait up to two hours. And this situation needs to be dealt with right away. The shopping center’s management pays Echelon to patrol the area at all times."

RTWT.

The Year the West Erased Women

It's Ayaan Hirsi Ali, at UnHerd, "Progressives care more about semantics than emancipation."

Note From San Francisco

From Matt Taibbi, "On the way home after the holidays, notes on "cherry-picking" and a few other odds and ends":

Having seen the redwoods with the boys by day, sampled dim sum last evening, and overdosed nights on San Francisco movies (Bullitt, Vertigo, the underrated Zodiac), I’m headed home tonight. A terrific trip, which I won’t forget.

In the coming days you’ll find a new thread on Twitter, along with a two-part article here at TK explaining the latest #TwitterFiles findings. Even as someone in the middle of it, naturally jazzed by everything I’m reading, I feel the necessity of explaining why it’s important to keep hammering at this.

Any lawyer who’s ever sifted though a large discovery file will report the task is like archaeology. You dig a little, find a bit of a claw, dust some more and find a tooth, then hours later it’s the outline of a pelvis bone, and so on. After a while you think you’re looking at something that was alive once, but what?

Who knows? At the moment, all we can do is show a few pieces of what we think might be a larger story. I believe the broader picture will eventually describe a company that was directly or indirectly blamed for allowing Donald Trump to get elected, and whose subjugation and takeover by a furious combination of politicians, enforcement officials, and media then became a priority as soon as Trump took office.

These next few pieces are the result of looking at two discrete data sets, one ranging from mid-2017 to early 2018, and the other spanning from roughly March 2020 through the present. In the first piece focused on that late 2017 period, you see how Washington politicians learned that Twitter could be trained quickly to cooperate and cede control over its moderation process through a combination of threatened legislation and bad press.

In the second, you see how the cycle of threats and bad media that first emerged in 2017 became institutionalized, to the point where a long list of government enforcement agencies essentially got to operate Twitter as an involuntary contractor, heading into the 2020 election. Requests for moderation were funneled mainly through the FBI, the self-described “belly button” of the federal government (not a joke, an agent really calls it that).

The company leadership knew as far back as 2017 that giving in to even one request to suspend this or that set of accused “hostile foreign accounts” would lead to an endless cycle of such demands. “Will work to contain that,” offered one comms official, without much enthusiasm, after the company caved for the first time that year. By 2020, Twitter was living the hell its leaders created for themselves.

What does it all mean? I haven’t really had time to think it over. Surely, though, it means something. I’ve been amused by the accusation that these stories are “cherry-picked.” As opposed to what, the perfectly representative sample of the human experience you normally read in news? Former baseball analytics whiz Nate Silver chimed in on this front:

People don't distinguish enough between:

1) A ~random cross-section of communications from person/organization X
2) A cherry-picked set of favorable examples from a ~comprehensive set of communications from X

The threshold to move your priors should be **MUCH** higher under 2.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 26, 2022

Still more at that top link.

Americans Expect Worsening U.S. Economy in 2023, WSJ Poll Finds

Well, Goldman-Sachs will layoff "thousands," and will deny bonuses to "underperforming employees," whatever that means (completely arbitrary?). 

So, it's not looking like a great holiday season for many American workers. 

I'm not getting laid-off, thank goodness. 

Be kind to your neighbors out there, and perhaps say a pray for the less fortunate (or hand 'em some cash while they're out panhandling on the median at the traffic light, *sigh*).

At the Wall Street Journal, "Over a third of voters say inflation is causing them major financial strain":

A majority of voters think the economy will be in worse shape in 2023 than it is now and roughly two-thirds say the nation’s economic trajectory is headed in the wrong direction, the latest Wall Street Journal poll shows.

The survey, conducted Dec. 3-7, suggests a recent burst of positive economic news—moderating gas prices and a slowing pace of inflation—haven’t altered the way many feel about the risk of a recession, something many economists have forecast as likely.

“I just think we are headed toward a recession and it could be a pretty big one,” said Republican poll participant David Rennie, a 61-year-old retired executive with the Boy Scouts of America who lives in Shelton, Conn. “Interest rates are skyrocketing and that’s going to take us down.”

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved an interest-rate increase of 0.5 percentage point and signaled plans to keep raising rates at its next few meetings to combat high inflation. The move reflected some moderation after four consecutive increases of 0.75 point.

Economic pessimism is strongest among Republicans, with 83% expecting the economy to worsen. Slightly more than half of independents feel that way, while 22% of Democrats do.

“Our economic diagnostics have become partisan,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. “If there was a Republican president, we might see the reverse.”

Mr. Fabrizio said Democrats aren’t paying as much of a political price as one might expect for so many people having negative feelings about the economy. “You would normally see that translate into being bad news for the Democrats,” he said.

Democrats did better than expected in last month’s midterm elections, keeping control of the Senate while losing the House by a narrower margin than nonpartisan analysts forecast...

After this last election, it's pretty clear that the old standard of economic indicators is not what voters are basing the electoral decisions on. If it were otherwise, we'd see big Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress come January 3rd. Nothing that I can see foretells a weakening of the hateful partisanship that's driving the current political scene. If anything, things will get worse. While Elon's takeover of Twitter is great for owning the libs, if you look at the reaction on the left --- the fanatical, practically murderous reaction --- it's a safe bet that 2024's going to be as nasty as ever.

There's more at the link, in any case. 

A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans

Good.

It's not like they're banning A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or To Kill a Mockingbird.

We're talking about perverted, nasty stuff that's powering the left's child-grooming pipeline.

At the New York Times, "Some groups are new, some are longstanding. Some are local, others national. Over the past two years, they have become vastly more organized, well funded, effective — and criticized":

The Keller Independent School District, just outside of Dallas, passed a new rule in November: It banned books from its libraries that include the concept of gender fluidity.

The change was pushed by three new school board members, elected in May with support from Patriot Mobile, a self-described Christian cellphone carrier. Through its political action committee, Patriot Mobile poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Texas school board races to promote candidates with conservative views on race, gender and sexuality — including on which books children can access at school.

Traditionally, debates over what books are appropriate for school libraries have taken place between a concerned parent and a librarian or administrator, and resulted in a single title or a few books being re-evaluated, and either removed or returned to shelves.

But recently, the issue has been supercharged by a rapidly growing and increasingly influential constellation of conservative groups. The organizations frequently describe themselves as defending parental rights. Some are new and others are longstanding, but with a recent focus on books. Some work at the district and state level, others have national reach. And over the past two years or so, they have grown vastly more organized, interconnected, well funded — and effective.

The groups have pursued their goals by becoming heavily involved in local and state politics, where Republican efforts have largely outmatched liberal organizations in many states for years. They have created political action committees, funded campaigns, endorsed candidates and packed school boards, helping to fuel a surge in challenges to individual books and to drive changes in the rules governing what books are available to children.

“This is not about banning books, it’s about protecting the innocence of our children,” said Keith Flaugh, one of the founders of Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group focused on education, “and letting the parents decide what the child gets rather than having government schools indoctrinate our kids.”

The materials the groups object to are often described in policies and legislation as sensitive, inappropriate or pornographic. In practice, the books most frequently targeted for removal have been by or about Black or L.G.B.T.Q. people, according to the American Library Association. In Texas, 11 school board candidates backed by Patriot Mobile Action, the political action committee formed by the cellphone company, won in four districts this year, including Keller. The committee’s aim is to eliminate “critical race theory” and “L.G.B.T.Q. indoctrination” from schools, Leigh Wambsganss, its executive director, said on Steve Bannon’s show, “War Room.”

Even books without sexual content can be problematic if they include L.G.B.T.Q. characters, because they are “sexualizing children,” she said: “It is normalizing a lifestyle that is a sexual choice.”

“Those kinds of lifestyles,” she added, shouldn’t “be forced down the throats of families who don’t agree.”

By August, about three months after the new members were seated, the Keller school board had restricted or prohibited books containing profanity, violence, sex scenes or nudity. These changes resulted in the removal of at least 20 books from the district’s schools, including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and several young adult novels with L.G.B.T.Q. characters, like Adam Silvera’s “More Happy Than Not.”

In November, the board added the ban on books that refer to gender fluidity. Laney Hawes, who has four children in Keller schools, was there that day. She and some other parents felt outflanked, she said, by deep-pocketed organizations whose actions can change longstanding policies in a matter of months.

“They ran on the campaign of, ‘We’re going to get pornography and sexually explicit books out of our school libraries,’” Ms. Hawes said. “The parents didn’t have a PAC. We couldn’t compete with these people.”

Individuals and groups opposing book restrictions say crafting a national response is difficult, since policies are set locally. But some are pushing back. The restrictions, said Emerson Sykes, a First Amendment litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union, infringe on students’ “right to access a broad range of material without political censorship.”

The A.C.L.U and other advocacy groups filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Keller school district, arguing that banning books about gender fluidity creates “a pervasively hostile atmosphere for L.G.B.T.Q.+ students.”

Librarians in Texas formed Freadom Fighters, an organization that offers guidance to librarians on handling book challenges. In Florida, parents who oppose book banning formed the Freedom to Read Project, which urges its members to attend board meetings and tracks the work of groups like Florida Citizens Alliance.

“We’re trying to document the censorship movement,” said Stephana Ferrell, one of the founders of Freedom to Read. “They don’t want to use the word ‘ban.’ Instead they remove, relocate, restrict — all these other words that aren’t ‘ban.’ But it’s a ban.”

According to a recent report from the free speech organization PEN America, there are at least 50 groups across the country working to remove books they object to from libraries. Some have seen explosive growth recently: Of the 300 chapters that PEN tracked, 73 percent were formed after 2020.

The growth comes, in part, from the rise of “parental rights” organizations during the pandemic. Formed to fight Covid restrictions in schools, some groups adopted a broader conservative agenda focused on opposing instruction on race, gender and sexuality, and on removing books they regard as inappropriate.

Other groups, like Florida Citizens Alliance, have been around for years. Established in 2013, the alliance has longstanding ties to Gov. Ron DeSantis: Its co-founders, Mr. Flaugh and Pastor Rick Stevens, served on the DeSantis transition committee. The group also has partnerships with over 100 other groups, including Moms for Liberty and Americans for Prosperity Florida, a local branch of a national group founded by the billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Five years ago, Mr. Flaugh and Pastor Stevens helped draft a bill that gave all county residents, not just parents, the power to challenge a book in a school district. Opponents say it contributed to waves of book challenges. The bill’s supporters, however, say local tax dollars fund the school system, so all residents have a right to influence how that money is spent.

“They’re the ones that pay for it,” said Representative Byron Donalds, who co-sponsored the bill when he was in the Florida Legislature...

Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison's book are for mature audiences, no doubt. But these groups should shy away from banning the classics and stick to banning the left's despicable LBGTQIA+ groomer literature. It's disgusting.

 

Political Demonstrations in Open-Carry States Favor Right-Wing Viewpoints

Seems like an obvious point, since open-carry states are more likely to lean right than non-open carry states, so the New York Times has got something of a tautology going on here.

But in any case, here, "At Protests, Guns Are Doing the Talking":

Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense — increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one’s voice and, just as often, quieting someone else’s.

This month, armed protesters appeared outside an elections center in Phoenix, hurling baseless accusations that the election for governor had been stolen from the Republican, Kari Lake. In October, Proud Boys with guns joined a rally in Nashville where conservative lawmakers spoke against transgender medical treatments for minors.

In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced. Among the others were rallies in support of gun rights in Delaware and abortion rights in Georgia.

Whether at the local library, in a park or on Main Street, most of these incidents happen where Republicans have fought to expand the ability to bear arms in public, a movement bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to carry firearms outside the home. The loosening of limits has occurred as violent political rhetoric rises and the police in some places fear bloodshed among an armed populace on a hair trigger.

But the effects of more guns in public spaces have not been evenly felt. A partisan divide — with Democrats largely eschewing firearms and Republicans embracing them — has warped civic discourse. Deploying the Second Amendment in service of the First has become a way to buttress a policy argument, a sort of silent, if intimidating, bullhorn.

“It’s disappointing we’ve gotten to that state in our country,” said Kevin Thompson, executive director of the Museum of Science & History in Memphis, Tenn., where armed protesters led to the cancellation of an L.G.B.T.Q. event in September. “What I saw was a group of folks who did not want to engage in any sort of dialogue and just wanted to impose their belief.”

A New York Times analysis of more than 700 armed demonstrations found that, at about 77 percent of them, people openly carrying guns represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election.

The records, from January 2020 to last week, were compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that tracks political violence around the world. The Times also interviewed witnesses to other, smaller-scale incidents not captured by the data, including encounters with armed people at indoor public meetings.

Anti-government militias and right-wing culture warriors like the Proud Boys attended a majority of the protests, the data showed. Violence broke out at more than 100 events and often involved fisticuffs with opposing groups, including left-wing activists such as antifa

Republican politicians are generally more tolerant of openly armed supporters than are Democrats, who are more likely to be on the opposing side of people with guns, the records suggest. In July, for example, men wearing sidearms confronted Beto O’Rourke, then the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, at a campaign stop in Whitesboro and warned that he was “not welcome in this town.”

Republican officials or candidates appeared at 32 protests where they were on the same side as those with guns. Democratic politicians were identified at only two protests taking the same view as those armed.

Sometimes, the Republican officials carried weapons: Robert Sutherland, a Washington state representative, wore a pistol on his hip while protesting Covid-19 restrictions in Olympia in 2020. “Governor,” he said, speaking to a crowd, “you send men with guns after us for going fishing. We’ll see what a revolution looks like.”

The occasional appearance of armed civilians at demonstrations or governmental functions is not new. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers displayed guns in public when protesting police brutality. Militia groups, sometimes armed, rallied against federal agents involved in violent standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the 1990s.

But the frequency of these incidents exploded in 2020, with conservative pushback against public health measures to fight the coronavirus and response to the sometimes violent rallies after the murder of George Floyd. Today, in some parts of the country with permissive gun laws, it is not unusual to see people with handguns or military-style rifles at all types of protests.

For instance, at least 14 such incidents have occurred in and around Dallas and Phoenix since May, including outside an F.B.I. field office to condemn the search of Mr. Trump’s home and, elsewhere, in support of abortion rights. In New York and Washington, where gun laws are strict, there were no

Many conservatives and gun-rights advocates envision virtually no limits. When Democrats in Colorado and Washington State passed laws this year prohibiting firearms at polling places and government meetings, Republicans voted against them. Indeed, those bills were the exception.

Attempts by Democrats to impose limits in other states have mostly failed, and some form of open carry without a permit is now legal in 38 states, a number that is likely to expand as legislation advances in several more. In Michigan, where a Tea Party group recently advertised poll-watcher training using a photo of armed men in camouflage, judges have rejected efforts to prohibit guns at voting locations.

Gun rights advocates assert that banning guns from protests would violate the right to carry firearms for self-defense. Jordan Stein, a spokesman for Gun Owners of America, pointed to Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager acquitted last year in the shooting of three people during a chaotic demonstration in Kenosha, Wis., where he had walked the streets with a military-style rifle.

“At a time when protests often devolve into riots, honest people need a means to protect themselves,” he said.

Why Talk of the 'Abrahamic' Faiths is an Ecumenical Farce

From Raymond Ibrahim, at FrontPage Magazine, "Spearheaded by Pope Francis":

What if you had a deceased grandfather whom you were particularly fond of, and out of the blue, a stranger says: “Hey, that’s my grandpa!” Then—lest you think this stranger is somehow trying to ingratiate himself with you—he adds: “And everything you thought you knew about grandpa is wrong! Here, let me tell you what he really said and did throughout his life.” The stranger then proceeds to inform you that much of the good things you had long attributed to your grandfather were, not just false, but the exact opposite of what he is now attributing to your grandfather—much of which you find immensely disturbing.

Would that endear this stranger to you? Every proponent of the so-called “Abrahamic Faiths” apparently thinks so.

I will explain, but first let’s define “Abrahamism”: because the patriarch Abraham is an important figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all three religions, according to this position, share a commonality that should bridge gaps and foster growth between them.

Pope Francis is one of the chief proponents of this view. Speaking of his recent participation at an interfaith conference in Bahrain, he said his purpose was to create “fraternal alliances” with Muslims “in the name of our Father Abraham.”

Even so, Abrahamism is hardly limited to octogenarian theologians; it’s entrenched in mainstream American discourse. Thus, even the Huffington Post (rather ludicrously) claims that “Muhammad clearly rejected elitism and racism and demanded that Muslims see their Abrahamic brothers and sisters as equals before God.” In fact, Muhammad and his Allah called for perpetual war on Christians and Jews, until they either embraced Islam or lived in humbled submission to their Muslim conquerors (Koran 9:29).

That, of course, did not stop former Secretary of State John Kerry from beating on a mosque drum and calling Muslims to prayer during his visit to Indonesia—before gushing: “It has been a special honor to visit this remarkable place of worship. We are all bound to one God and the Abrahamic faiths tie us together in love for our fellow man and honor for the same God.”

After a Muslim from an Oklahoma City mosque decapitated a woman, “an official from Washington D.C. flew in to Oklahoma to present a special thank you to the Muslim congregation,” lest they feel too guilty over their coreligionist’s actions. He read them a message from former President Barack Obama: “Your service is a powerful example of the powerful roots of the Abrahamic faiths and how our communities can come together with shared peace with dignity and a sense of justice.”

Needless to say, Obama himself has often spoken of “the shared Abrahamic roots of three of the world’s major religions.”

Meanwhile, few people seem to have given this Abrahamic business much thought: How is one people’s appropriation of another people’s heritage—which is precisely what Abrahamism is all about—supposed to help the two peoples get along?

For starters, Islam does not represent biblical characters the way they are presented in the Bible, the oldest book in existence that mentions them. Christians accept the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, as it is. They do not add, take away, or distort the accounts of the patriarchs that Jews also rely on.

Conversely, while also relying on the figures of the Old and New Testaments—primarily for the weight of antiquity and authority attached to their names—Islam completely recasts them to fit its own agendas.

One need only look to the topic at hand for proof: Abraham.

Jews and Christians focus on different aspects of Abraham—the former see him as their patriarch in the flesh, the latter as their patriarch in faith or in spirit (e.g., Gal 3:6)—but they both rely on the same verbatim account of Abraham as found in Genesis.

In the Muslim account, however, not only does Abraham (Ibrahim) quit his country on God’s promise that he will make him “a great nation” (Gen. 12), but he exemplifies the hate Muslims are obligated to have for all non-Muslims: “You have a good example in Abraham and those who followed him,” Allah informs Muslims in Koran 60:4; “for they said to their people, ‘We disown you and the idols that you worship besides Allah. We renounce you: enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah alone.’”

In fact, Koran 60:4 is the cornerstone verse that all “radical” Muslims—from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State—cite as proof that Muslims “must be hostile to the infidel—even if he is liberal and kind to you” (to quote the revered Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya, The Al-Qaeda Reader, p. 84).

Thus, immediately after quoting 60:4, Osama bin Laden once wrote:

So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility, and an internal hate from the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [a dhimmi], or if the Muslims are [at that point in time] weak and incapable [of spreading sharia law to the world]. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the hearts, this is great apostasy [The Al-Qaeda Reader, p. 43].

Such is the mutilation Patriarch Abraham has undergone in Islam. Not only is he not a source of commonality between Muslims on the one hand and Jews and Christians on the other; he is the chief figure to justify “enmity and hate … between us until you believe in Allah alone.”

Islam’s appropriation of Abraham has led to other, more concrete problems, of the sort one can expect when a stranger appears and says that the home you live in was actually bequeathed to him by your supposedly “shared” grandfather. Although the Jews claimed the Holy Land as their birthright for well over a millennium before Muhammad and Islam came along, Jerusalem is now special to Muslims partially because they also claim Abraham and other biblical figures.

As a result, statements like the following from mainline Christian groups such as the Presbyterian Church USA are common: “[PCUSA] strongly condemns the U.S. President’s [Trump’s] decision to single out Jerusalem as a Jewish capital. Jerusalem is the spiritual heart of three Abrahamic faiths …”

The Muslim appropriation and mutilation of revered biblical figures is a source of problems, not solutions. When, as another example, Islam’s Jesus—Isa—returns, he will smash all crosses (because they signify His death and resurrection, which Islam vehemently denies), abrogate the jizya (or dhimmi status, meaning Christians must either become Muslim or die) and slaughter all the pigs to boot. Again, not exactly a great shared source of “commonality” for Christians and Muslims.

It is only the secular mindset, which cannot comprehend beyond the surface fact that three religions claim the same figures—and so they must all eventually “be friends”—that does not and never will get it. All the more shame, then, that supposed Christian leaders, such as Pope Francis, rely on such “logic.”

Colorado Club Shooting Suspect is Non-Binary

Well, that fucked up the left's "right-wing hate" narrative, the motherfuckers. This was an LBGTQIA+ nightclub, and the smears were just too irresistible for the vile, demonic left. 

At Twitchy, "Stephanie Ruhle didn’t let new info about Club Q shooter disrupt her narrative about ‘the far Right’."

Also, "Watch Alisyn Camerota’s brain break as she reports that CO shooter is ‘non-binary’."

Main story at the New York Post, "Colorado Springs shooting suspect Anderson Aldrich is nonbinary: lawyers."

Elon Musk: I Agreed to Let a Group of Leftwing Censors Advise Twitter on Content Moderation If They Agreed Not to Conspire to Pressure Advertisers to Boycott Twitter to Kill the Site. I Did That, But Then They Pressured Advertisers to Drop Me Anyway.

At AoSHQ, "A few weeks ago, conservatives were disappointed when Elon Musk announced Twitter would be consulting with leftwing censorship groups such as the noxious Southern Poverty Grifting Center, I mean Law Center, and the Democrat front group the ADL. A couple of days ago, the head of the ADL complained that Twitter had restored Donald Trump's twitter account. Donald Trump -- who has Jewish grandchildren. And then he asked, 'Is it time for Twitter to go?'"

As Biden Turns 80, Some Democrats See Age as Issue for Potential 2024 Bid

I can see where there might be a problem. *Eye-roll.*

At the Wall Street Journal, "The president has called himself a bridge to a new generation, but some in his party say it is time to step aside."

The Great Teacher Resignation

Interesting article, though it downplays leftist indoctrination in the schools. Otherwise, do doubt America's teachers are fucked.

See, "Empty Classrooms, Abandoned Kids: Inside America’s Great Teacher Resignation."

Good video at the link.

Red States Are Growing, While Blue States Are Mired in Decline

From Joel Kotkin, at Spiked, "A tale of two Americas: Red states are growing, while blue states are mired in lawlessness and decline":

Yesterday’s Midterms were not a victory for conservative or progressive ideology, but an assertion of the growing power of geography in American politics. It was less a national election than a clash of civilisations. Virtually nowhere in blue areas did Republicans make gains. Both the north-east and California – the central players in Democratic Party politics – stayed solidly blue. Even the most well-regarded GOP candidates, such as Lanhee Chen who ran for California state controller, struggled to make inroads in Democratic territory.

Meanwhile, the senators and governors of the leading red states – Texas’s Greg Abbott, Georgia’s Brian Kemp, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Ohio’s Mike DeWine – all won handily. Almost all blue-state governors remained the same as well, although the Democratic incumbents often won by smaller margins.

So, what is happening in this increasingly inexplicable country? Essentially, there are now two prevailing realities in the US. One is primarily urban, single and, despite some GOP gains in this demographic, still largely non-white. It functions on the backs of finance, tech and the service industries. The other is largely suburban or exurban, family centric and more likely involved in basic industries like manufacturing, logistics, agriculture and energy.

Usually, the media assume these two Americas represent equally viable political economies. But this is increasingly not the case. In population terms at least, red America is now growing far more rapidly than blue America. And this makes it more important politically. Since 1990, Texas has gained eight congressional seats, Florida five and Arizona three. In contrast, New York has lost five, Pennsylvania four and Illinois three. California, which now suffers higher net outbound-migration rates than most Rustbelt states, lost a congressional seat in 2020 for the first time in its history.

This decline in blue America has accelerated since the pandemic, due to rising crime and the availability of remote work...

Keep reading.

 

Why Elites Like Greta Thunberg Hate Capitalism

And she's so young. What a waste of a great potential.

From Michael Shellenberger, on Substack, "Free markets have lifted millions out of poverty, liberated women, and protected the environment. Why, then, are so many progressives against them?":

For the last three years, Greta Thunberg has said that her life’s purpose was to save the world from climate change. But last Sunday, she told an audience in London that climate activists must overthrow "the whole capitalist system," which she says is responsible for "imperialism, oppression, genocide... racist, oppressive extractionism." Her talk echoed the World Economic Forum's calls for a “Great Reset” away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. There is no “back to normal,” she said.

But her claims are absurd. The "whole capitalist system" has, over the last 200 years, allowed for the average life expectancy of humans to rise from 30 to 70 years of age. The "whole capitalist system" produces larger food surpluses than any other system in human history. And the "whole capitalist system" has resulted in declining greenhouse gas emissions in developed nations over the last 50 years.

Capitalism is far from perfect. It worsens inequality by making some people so rich that they can rocket into space on liquified hydrogen while leaving others too poor to afford natural gas. It is characterized by cycles of boom and bust that create frenzies of wealth followed by high unemployment. And it is constantly turning non-market relationships, including intimate ones, such as between parents and caregivers, into exchanges between buyers and sellers.

But capitalism is plainly better than any other system of economic organization yet devised. High levels of inequality are the result of more rich people, not more poor people, who are much better off under capitalism than feudalism or communism. The business cycle of booms and busts provokes manias and depressions, but it is much more efficient, and less oppressive than governments deciding what should be produced, by whom, and at what price. And while it’s true that capitalism undermines non-market relationships, that’s often a good thing, even in the case of childcare, since it allows women and others to be compensated for their labor.

Some of the people who have benefitted the most from industrial capitalism are people like Thunberg and her family. The remarkable wealth of their home nation of Sweden is due to the industrial revolution, which allows for a tiny number of people to produce food, energy, and other necessities for life so that the majority of Swedes can do other, less arduous, and more pleasurable things. The same is true across the West. In the U.S., just 2% of the population works on farms and just 8% in factories. And industrial capitalism allowed Sweden to create a generous social welfare state consisting of free health care, free education, and 480 days of paid leave for parents when a child is born or adopted. The Thunbergs are, by any global or historical standard, rich: the annual per capita income globally, according to the World Bank, is $11,000, which is less than the cost of the two chairs in Thunberg’s living room.

Capitalism is far better for the natural environment than feudalism or communism. Under feudalism, subsistence farmers rely on wood and dung for cooking fuels and must farm large tracts of land to produce a small amount of food. The industrial revolution not only liberated most people from back-breaking farming but also reduced the amount of land required, thanks to fertilizer, irrigation, and tractors. The same process allowed humans to switch from using wood to coal to natural gas and uranium as primary fuels.

The result has been the return, and “re-wilding,” of grasslands and forests around the world, including in Sweden. The reason is that market capitalism rewards economic efficiency and thus reduced natural resource use. Consider the whales. What saved them, in capitalist nations, was cheaper substitute oils, first petroleum and then vegetable oils. The Soviet Union, by contrast, kept whaling long after it was economically efficient to do so because whalers were protected from market competition.

All of this and yet, around the world, it is affluent and educated progressives like Thunberg who are anti-capitalist...

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.

 

'We Are Moving Backwards' -- A New 'Underground Railroad' in U.S. Amid Draconian Abortion Laws

 At Der Spiegel, "In the United States, abortion is no longer a basic right. The recent Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has allowed states to criminalize the act. But the battle for women's right to self-determination continues – on the streets and underground."

In California, Republicans Hope to Flip These Biden-Leaning Districts

It's going to be extremely embarrassing iIf some of the districts flip to the G.O.P. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "These California districts voted big for Biden, but Republicans are optimistic about their chances":

As the sun set behind rows of modest homes, Republican Matt Jacobs knocked on doors urging voters in Oxnard to ditch their incumbent Democratic congresswoman and pick him to improve their quality of life.

“I care deeply about this community,” Jacobs told Jacqueline Mercado, 28, adding that he was born and raised in Ventura County, a message he repeated in English and fluent Spanish in this predominantly Latino neighborhood. “I just think things can be better all around.”

With her 1-year-old daughter crawling nearby, Mercado, a Democrat, nodded vigorously when Jacobs asked if the cost of groceries was affecting her family. “Absolutely,” Mercado said, before telling him that she would vote for him in Tuesday’s election.

“I just want someone to make everything better,” said Mercado, an employee of the state’s toll-free 211 system that connects Californians with job training, after-school programs and other services. “Make things better, like inflation. That really matters, because gas is crazy right now. Food. Everything.”

Such pocketbook concerns are among the reasons Republicans say they feel good about their odds in blue regions like California’s 26th Congressional District, which Joe Biden won by 20 points.

The GOP is favored to take control of the House in Tuesday’s election, and voters like Mercado could make that happen or determine the size of its majority.

The midterms have been defined by Republicans arguing that Democrats are poor stewards of the economy and their policies have fomented rising crime and Democrats warning that Republicans are too extreme when it comes to abortion rights, threats to democracy and potential cuts to Social Security.

The 26th, largely based in Ventura County with a sliver of Los Angeles County, is probably a reach for Republicans. But the prospect of it being in play suggests vulnerability for Democrats in a number of districts in California and across the country that Biden won by double digits.

“If California Democrats have a headache in California 26, they’ve got the flu in a whole range of more competitive seats,” including contests in the Central Valley and Southern California, said David Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Democrat Julia Brownley has represented much of Ventura County in Congress since 2013. On Tuesday, the district was moved from “solid Democrat” to “lean Democrat” by Cook, which based its prognostication on a poll that showed a statistical dead heat between the candidates and the amount of money flowing in. The Cook Report also forecast tightening contests in districts represented by Democrats Katie Porter of Irvine and Josh Harder of Turlock. Many of these districts, in historically conservative bastions such as Porter’s in Orange County, are now closely split between Democratic and Republican voters, or are places where Democrats wield a numeric edge but have a Republican incumbent, such as Reps. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita and David Valadao of Hanford.

The 26th District, however, doesn’t fit into either of these categories. The incumbent is a Democrat, and though the district gained conservative Simi Valley in the 2021 redrawing of congressional maps, Democrats still have a nearly 15-percentage-point voter registration edge.

Wasserman was among the prognosticators who was skeptical when Brownley’s prospects were initially questioned.

“But clearly the environment has deteriorated for Democrats since then,” he said. “Though she’s still a clear favorite, she is not in as solid shape because Republicans have a credible candidate and there is still some ancestral Republican support in Ventura County.”

Inflation, gas prices, concerns about crime and the lack of exciting statewide campaigns are a boon for Republicans, said Democratic strategist Andrew Acosta.

“All of this is a toxic brew,” he said, adding that voters in districts like Brownley’s may be liberal on social issues but malleable on economic matters. “And we are in a pocketbook election.”

GOP politicians represented the area in Congress for 70 years, until Brownley won her seat in 2012. One out of five of the district’s voters decline to identify with a political party.

More than 20 House campaign committees and leadership PACs contributed to Brownley and Jacobs over a three-day span in late October, making it “the top House target for Republicans and Democrats alike” for such efforts, according to the research director for the California Target Book, a nonpartisan guide that analyzes races in the state. A pro-Brownley outside group recently chipped in a half-million dollars.

GOP redistricting expert Matt Rexroad said that these moves, as well as President Biden’s appearance with Rep. Mike Levin in Oceanside on Thursday, indicate that several districts in California are competitive...

 

Confessions of the Libs of TikTok

At AoSHQ, "Detransitioners tell harrowing stories about being rushed into gender "transitions" they weren't ready for -- and didn't even want."

Meet the Temporary Republicans Saving U.S. From the Left

From Sasha Stone, on Substack, "Meet the Temporary Republicans ---- Who Will Save the Country from the Left": 

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” ― Theodore Roosevelt.

What did Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill all have in common? They could see the threat and had the courage to confront it.

Tulsi Gabbard is the one Democrat who could not only recognize the threat of the modern-day Democratic Party but also dares to lead a movement to help take them out of power. And they must be taken out of power until they can get a grip and restore some sanity to the party and the country.

You see the “Temporary Republicans” mostly on Twitter anonymously or in comment sections. But don’t be surprised if you see them turn out in November.

They are parents whose children’s lives or businesses were destroyed by crippling lockdowns. Parents whose toddlers were forced to wear masks inexplicably. Even questioning the absurdity of such an illogical command was verboten....

The “Temporary Republicans” like me will return to being liberals once the Democratic Party returns to liberalism. Right now, though, they have become a puritanical cult that separates children from their parents, separates all of us from our biology, common sense, and rights under the Constitution.

For us Temporary Republicans, we have run out of options. There aren’t many alternatives in a two-party system like ours. We're stuck until we can find a way to have more than just two parties. We must throw our weight behind the best bet to take the Democrats out of power.

We’ve almost become numb to how quickly our rights have been infringed with the forced compliance over vaccines, lockdowns, and masks, and the double standards on denying the results of an election or a violent political protest. We just live with “cancel culture” now as though it’s our new normal. Most of us are still afraid to say what we really think online and sometimes in front of our friends. Maybe all of that won’t end in one election, but it’s a start.

A grassroots movement like MAGA is what has always ensured America has a healthy Democracy. Once our government, media, and powerful monopolies set about silencing them, dropping their social media sites like Parler, calling them terrorists and extremists — that tells you just how afraid they are of anyone threatening their power.

The sense of urgency comes because we are at a dangerous crossroads. Already an entire generation has come of age online, the Zoomers. Every generation that comes after them will have their entire lives online. They will have been conditioned and curated from childhood to follow Big Tech's dictates, which will control every aspect of their lives...

RTWT.

 

Woke Librarians: A National Scourge

At AoSHQ, "Woke librarians with hot pink hair and nose-rings are absolutely determined to give your children comic books showing underaged boys putting their mouths on the pee-pees of adult men."