The 'Intersectionality' Trap

From Noah Rothman, at Commentary Magazine (via RCP):

Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur! Today's #SignOfResistance, in Assata's honor, is by @Meloniousfunk. pic.twitter.com/V66au1dRnl

— Women's March (@womensmarch) July 16, 2017

Republicans didn’t always scoff dismissively at the self-destructive, reactionary, fractious collection of malcontents who call themselves The Resistance. The hundreds of thousands who marched in the streets following Donald Trump’s election once honestly unnerved the GOP. This grassroots energy culminated in January’s Women’s March, a multi-day event in which nearly two million people mobilized peacefully and, most importantly, sympathetically in opposition to the president. It was the perfect antidote to the violent anti-Trump demonstrations that typified Inauguration Day, and it might have formed the nucleus of a politically potent movement. The fall of the Women’s March exposes the blight weakening the left and crippling the Democratic Party.

The fever sapping Trump’s opposition was evident in microcosm on Monday in the meltdown of the Women’s March’s social-media presence on Twitter. “Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur,” the organization wrote, dedicating the day’s resistance-related activities in her “honor.” Shakur is perhaps better known as Joanne Chesimard, the name that appeared on the court documents in connection with her being tried and convicted of eight felonies, including the execution-style murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. She currently resides in communist Cuba, a fugitive from American justice.

The outrage that followed the Women’s March’s endorsement of a cop-killer, exile, and unrepentant black nationalist was such that the organization was compelled to explain itself. “[T]his is not to say that #AssataShakur has never committed a crime, and not to endorse all of her actions,” the group flailed. “We say this to demonstrate the ongoing history of government [and] right-wing attempts to criminalize and discredit political activists.” This fanatical display of befuddlement perfectly encapsulates the logic of “intersectionality.” It demonstrates why this vogue ideology shackles its devotees to doomed causes and sinking ships.

“Intersectionality,” the beast born in liberal hothouses on college campuses, slouches now toward the halls of power. It is a Marxist notion that all discrimination is linked because it is rooted in the unjust power structures that facilitate inequality. Therefore, there are no distinct struggles against prejudice. Class, race, gender, sexual identity; these and other signifiers are bound together by the fact that oppression is institutional and systemic. The problem with this ideology is it compels its adherents to abandon discretion. To sacrifice anyone with a claim to oppression is to forsake every victim of prejudice. So, sure, Assata Shakur robbed, assaulted, incited violence, and killed a cop. But she also hates capitalism and white supremacy. Therefore, she’s one of us.

It is this logic that has rendered the “Sister Souljah moment” a relic of the past, and The Resistance is drowning in Sister Souljahs.

One of the March organizers, Linda Sarsour, has enjoyed newfound popularity and legitimacy in the age of Trump...

Keep reading.

Also at Twitchy, "Some big names in politics, media wondering who’ll condemn Women’s March’s praise of Assata Shakur; Updated."

Trump's Alt-Right, White Nationalist Speech in Poland

Gawd, I'd completely forgotten about Amanda Marcotte!

She blocked me on Twitter years ago, and since she's had no recent meltdowns, she's totally escaped my mind (phew!).

But here she is, gurgling back up from the demonic depths, at Salon (wouldn't you know it?), "Trump’s alt-right Poland speech: Time to call his white nationalist rhetoric what it is." (Safe link.)

Actually, I think Vox beat her to this meme, but at least she's clinging to the ideological hatred, heh.

Allie Stuckey Breaks Down 'Signs of Snowflakery' (VIDEO)

She's the Conservative Millennial on Twitter.

And at Fox & Friends this morning, "Reaction after mainstream media melts down over the term 'snowflake' (VIDEO)."

Total Insanity at Evergreen State College (VIDEO)

There's still a couple of things reassuring about the whole mess at Evergreen: One, the leftist totalitarians are still outnumbered by people who oppose them (and who have powerful ways to get the opposition message out); and two, at some point, the Evergreen students will have to go out and make it in the real world. Most of these students will seek jobs at leftist non-profits and radical progressive interest groups and think tanks (if they indeed seek work at all). But if some of them want employment in regular corporate America, they'll find there's a limit at even the most tolerant and progressive firms to the obscenities of social justice extremism.

In any case, watch the video below, and read the commentary and analysis at the Other McCain, "The Catastrophe at Evergreen State":

As has been pointed out, Professor Weinstein “supported Bernie Sanders, admiringly retweets Glenn Greenwald and was an outspoken supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement” and calls himself “deeply progressive,” but that’s not enough for the thugs at Evergreen.

The Tactics Used by Hecklers Against Megyn Kelly Will Soon Be Used Against Rachel Maddow and Others

I said so much on Twitter the other day. Frankly, I was kind of shocked that NBC caved to the mob.

But see Jack Shafer, at Politico, "Megyn Kelly Pantses Alex Jones":

How, exactly, can you examine a newsworthy subject without giving him some sort of a platform? https://t.co/OpQABsvwIn

— POLITICO Magazine (@POLITICOMag) June 19, 2017

For all the pre-interview fuss, NBC’s new star exposed the Infowars host for what he is. But the controversy was never really about him.

The censorious powers of the heckler’s veto have evolved now to the point that people are willing to call for the banning and shunning of works of journalism not yet published. Former Fox News Channel and current NBC News anchor Megyn Kelly got the treatment this week as news of her Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly interview with Infowars mainspring Alex Jones, well before it was scheduled to air June 18, made the rounds. At least the Ayatollah Khomeini waited for the publication of Satanic Verses before he issued a fatwa ordering the murder of its author, Salman Rushdie.

Sandy Hook Elementary families implored NBC News to dump the segment because Jones has called the Newtown, Connecticut, school killings a hoax—by actors, not real people—designed, Jones said, to encourage new gun control laws. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio concurred, writing, “Pull the segment.” The NBC affiliate in nearby Hartford refused to air the episode because the “wounds of that day that have yet to heal.” Fleeing from the controversy, advertiser JPMorgan Chase dropped its spots from the show, and the usual voices damned Kelly for giving Jones “a platform.”

Not to be outshone, Jones performed some culture jamming of his own, releasing his own secretly recorded audio of the pre-interview in which Kelly buttered him up. “It’s not going to be some gotcha hit piece, I can promise you that,” Kelly told Jones on the tape. Predictably, Jones made his own call for a boycott, tweeting, “I’m calling for @megynkelly to cancel the airing of our interview for misrepresenting my views on Sandy Hook.”

When Kelly’s show finally aired, she took the mendacious Jones apart in such a textbook manner you had to wonder what all the shouting had been about. The Jones pattern, she said at the segment’s top, is making “reckless accusations followed by equivocations and excuses” when questioned. The two best examples of this are his promotion of the “Pizzagate“ lies about a satanic child porn ring and his wild allegation that Chobani was “importing Migrant Rapists,” as Infowars hyped its report on Twitter. In both cases, lawsuits have forced Jones to retract and apologize for airing these dishonest stories, and yet in conversation with Kelly he still hedges and quibbles like a con artist in an effort to have his conspiracy pizza and keep his yogurt, too. Likewise with the pathetic claims about the Sandy Hook killings. He’s still throwing the see-through drapery of devil’s advocacy to blur the fact that on most subjects he’s talking out of his tinfoil hat.

Short of waterboarding him, I don’t know what more Kelly could have done to expose Jones’ dark methods...

*****

Most viewers extend to broadcasters like Anderson Cooper, Chris Wallace, Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett the sort of goodwill they draw on to tackle fraught topics and subjects that will end up upsetting somebody. Due to her Fox background, Kelly doesn’t command that sort of goodwill—the protests against her show are more about her than they are Alex Jones or Sandy Hook. Kelly’s enemies, places like liberal agitprop outfit Media Matters for America, which has been riding this story hard, would likely be raising a ruckus if she went to work as a Today co-host and did celebrity fluff.

Would the calls for a Kelly boycott be so insistent if a similar technique hadn’t succeeded in driving Fox’s Bill O’Reilly off his network? My guess is that they wouldn’t. Kelly won this round, but she wasn’t the only one to pay the price. If you like edgy, truth-telling journalism, the spirited campaign against her has written a heckler’s veto playbook that future activists and scolds will eventually apply to your preferred anchor, be it Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity. You’ve been warned.

The Campus Mob at Evergreen

Following-up from last week, "Professor Bret Weinstein Attacked by Leftist Mob at Evergreen State College (VIDEO)."

What is happening at Evergreen is about college policy. It became focused on me because I objected. Rule by stigma. https://t.co/ZjuFjY130h

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) May 31, 2017

Professor Bret Weinstein Attacked by Leftist Mob at Evergreen State College (VIDEO)

You may have seen this story this past couple of days.

Unreal.

At the College Fix, "Students harass white professor for refusing to leave campus on anti-white 'Day of Absence'," and "White professor forced to flee campus as police say he’s not safe."

And at Tucker Carlson's last night, on Fox News:

Yale Awards Student 'Truthtellers' Who Bullied Faculty

The cultural revolution in America.

We're in bad shape, and it's not just on campus.

Here's Jamie Kirchick, at the Tablet, "YALE CEMENTS ITS LINE IN THE ACADEMIC SAND BY AWARDING THE STUDENT ‘TRUTHTELLERS’ WHO BULLIED FACULTY."

Yale awards racial reconciliation prizes to 2 students who harassed professor over Halloween costumes @tabletmag https://t.co/tjNlfs4wFf

— Jamie Kirchick (@jkirchick) May 26, 2017

Teaching Racism in K-12 Classrooms

From Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine, "Leftist educators are corrupting the young":

Teaching Racism in K-12 Classrooms @fpmaghttps://t.co/1s86edlNBO

— All American Girl (@AIIAmericanGirI) May 9, 2017

Teachers at Highlands Elementary, a school in Edina, Minnesota, are indoctrinating five-year-olds in order to radicalize them and encourage them to become activists obsessed with race.

Public school teachers across America already saturate students with information about racial injustice in America in a nonstop barrage of historic facts and ahistorical nonsense. And in the culture at large, the media, politicians, and the entertainment industry can’t stop talking about race. The last thing any young student in America needs is to be taught about is race. Race matters only to radicals.

Leftists believe you have to get ’em while they’re young and impressionable.

Marxist theorist Paolo Freire advocated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that schools be used to inculcate radical values in students so they become agents of social change. Freire held that the so-called dominant pedagogy “silences” poor and minority children and that there is no such thing as a neutral educational system.

Joining Freire in his desire to use the educational system to level institutions is unrepentant communist terrorist and education theorist Bill Ayers, who has long advocated poisoning the minds of the young so they can agitate to fundamentally transform American society.

“If we want change to come, we would do well not to look at the sites of power we have no access to; the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon,” he said in 2012. “We have absolute access to the community, the school, the neighborhood, the street, the classroom, the workplace, the shop, the farm.”

This brings us to Highlands Elementary, which is located in one of the most affluent cities in Minnesota. Its school district is among the best in the state, Daniel Lattier reports at Intellectual Takeout. Highlands students do well in standardized testing: more than 85 percent of its students are proficient in reading and math.

But racial and social justice indoctrination have found their way onto the Highlands curriculum over the past year, according to Lattier. The phenomenon is not limited to Highlands, he adds. “[A] large percentage of students in public schools today are being trained to view the world primarily through the lenses of race, class, and gender.”

Katie Mahoney, who took over as principal of Highlands last fall, is proud of the school’s “Melanin Project.” She tweeted April 26: “Kindergarten tackles the Melanin project! @edinaschools @LeslieStageberg[.]” (Leslie Stageberg is a teacher.)

A poster made of construction paper is shown that reads, "Stop thinking your skin color is better than anyone elses[sic]! Everyone is Special!"

This message in itself isn’t sinister. American children shouldn’t be taught skin color is a mark of superiority, inferiority, or of anything in particular.

But one has to question the appropriateness of getting intellectually, emotionally immature Kindergarteners thinking about skin color at all, before they know how to think critically.

Why the rush?

It is to soften young minds in order to make the indoctrination process easier throughout students’ time in school. If a young child is already self-righteously hyperventilating about race and supposed systemic racism in America, it makes that child more susceptible to other leftist ideas.

The Highlands Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) wasn’t lying when it stated in the banner photo of its Facebook page that “Highlands is Planting Seeds of Change.”

Something else about the Melanin Project is disturbing. Discussions of melanin have an ugly pedigree. Racists are particularly fascinated by melanin.

Radical activists use melanin for political purposes, spewing pseudoscientific nonsense to create the illusion that their warped ideas about race somehow have an empirical basis in science. Melanin itself, a blanket term for a group of pigments, is the primary determinant of human skin color. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun triggers a process by which an amino acid called tyrosine becomes melanin, which protects the skin from sun damage. The thinking is that over time the more a population is exposed to the sun, the more melanin is generated and the darker their skin.

Leonard Jeffries Jr., a black studies professor at the City College of New York, is an influential thinker on the black racist Left. This Afrocentrist academic embraces “melanin theory,” maintaining that melanin possesses supernatural powers and makes those who have large quantities of it smarter and stronger than those who don’t. Blacks are therefore, peaceful and compassionate “sun people,” and are culturally and racially superior to whites, the violent, cruel “ice people.” Melanin empowers black people to “negotiate the vibrations of the universe and to deal with the ultraviolet rays of the sun," Jeffries says.

This fetishizing of human anatomy is surprisingly commonplace on the Left. The low-rent James Baldwin wannabe, Ta-Nehisi Coates, now the toast of bicoastal elites and academics, talks about “black bodies” as objects worthy of veneration without regard to the individuals occupying them. His phraseology is now boilerplate among members of the violent, racist Black Lives Matter movement.

Highlands was recently awarded a grant that will allow fourth- and fifth-graders to take part in the Stages Theatre Company’s “Perspectives on Peace” (PoP) project, Lattier notes. PoP is run by Nikki Swoboda, “whose directorial credits include: “Virgin Territory,” which “tak[es] a hard look at the ‘ideals’ of virginity and how those are perceived in society”; and “Ball: A Musical Tribute to My Lost Testicle.”

PoP promotional material states that the project “illuminates current world events and broadens students’ attitudes toward tolerance, respect, understanding, and peace…” A promotional video for PoP that was linked to in an email sent to Highlands parents associates Black Lives Matter with “peace.”

At South View Middle School in Edina, older students are encouraged to get involved in something called Dare 2 Be Real. A presentation slide that begins with “Be The Change You Wish To See In The World! – Mahatma Gandhi” states [emphases in original]...

More.

Carmen Goséy, 'Woke' Student Leader at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Attacks 'All White People' as 'Racist'

This is really something else.

I don't get too many students who are this hardcore on my campus. This chick's got it bad.

At the the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Daily Cardinal, "Outgoing ASM chair condemns university’s attitude toward students of color."

Former ASM Chair issued a letter to the campus community condemning UW-Madison's treatment of students of color. https://t.co/zTc44WQyzG pic.twitter.com/XB1s92ALrN

— The Daily Cardinal (@dailycardinal) May 4, 2017

And at the College Fix, "Head of UW-Madison student gov. leaves in a huff; blames racism, oppression."

Here's her farewell letter:

Dear Campus Community,

As I move on from the role as Chair of Student Council, I believe it is necessary to leave honestly. The University is on stolen, Ho-Chunk land, yet does little to recognize its historic significance. For the University to truly recognize this sacred land and its inhabitants it would have to acknowledge the resentment and oppression that people of color face every day. This institution perpetuates and suppresses the voices that are the most vulnerable. As Chair, I used to be hopeful. I used to be proud. I am no longer content with the University's action and active silencing of students of color on this campus. I ask people of color to reconsider your place at this institution. I ask parents of color to rethink sending your children to this institution.

This University lacks the capacity, courage, and integrity to protect communities of color. I have held one of the highest student positions on campus, and I was a token for white supremacists. In my first semester, I was ambitious to implement change and new initiatives surrounding diversity and inclusion. However, I found myself lost and defeated. I was operating in a white position as a person of color. Now I see that this University was not designed for the success of minority communities; it was designed for white students to learn about my oppression while not having to participate in dismantling it. I have struggled with the juxtaposition of my identity and representing a campus that does not look like me or remotely relate to my experience.

Racism is an institutionalized structure which is embedded in ASM and the University. Racism is a system designed to disadvantage people of color and create inequalities in each pocket os society. All white people are racist. Not only by upholding a system of disadvantage but being born into a conditioned environment where you are many steps ahead. Being a racist is not an option, it is a condition. However, being an anti-racist is a choice. A choice that white people will have to make which boils down to what they are willing to do to actively participate in deconstructing racism.

My last and final words call out an unfortunate reality; this institution does not care about people of color. This institution does care about people of color.

Sincerely,

Your woke, ratchet 23rd ASM Chair Carmen Goséy

Seriously, "woke."

Alice Goffman's Hiring at Pomona College an 'Egregious' Case of 'Anti-Blackness'

"No more whites should be hired."

See Legal Insurrection, "Pomona College Students: Hiring White Prof an ‘Egregious’ Offense."

Following the links takes us to Campus Reform, "Students demand Pomona rescind offer to prof because she's white."

Here's the students' open letter, "Letter to the Pomona College Sociology Department."

And at Commentary, "New Rule: White Women Should Not Study Black Communities."

New Rule: White Women Should Not Study Black Communities - by @marksjo1 https://t.co/2ppy8zehgJ pic.twitter.com/HY24oSHIdv

— Commentary Magazine (@Commentary) April 24, 2017

The Four Issues Driving Trump's Populism

From VDH, at the New Criterion, "Populism, VIII: The unlikeliest populist":

Leftists deride the “bad” populism of angry and misdirected grievances lodged clumsily against educated and enlightened “elites,” often by the unsophisticated and the undereducated. Bad populism is fueled by ethnic, religious, or racial chauvinism, and typified by a purportedly “dark” tradition from Huey Long and Father Coughlin to George Wallace and Ross Perot.

Such retrograde populism to the liberal mind is to be contrasted with a “good” progressive populism of early-twentieth-century and liberal Minnesota or Wisconsin—solidarity through unions, redistributionist taxes, cooperatives, granges, and credit unions to protect against banks and corporations—now kept alive by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Good leftwing populism rails against supposedly culpable elites—those of the corporate world and moneyed interests—but not well-heeled intellectuals, liberal politicians, and the philanthropic class of George Soros, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett, who make amends for their financial situations by redistributing their millions to the right causes.

The Right is similarly ambiguous about populism. “Bad” populists distrust government in sloppy fashion, failing to appreciate the intricacies of politics that understandably slow down change. “Bad” right-wing populists, given their unsophistication and wild emotions, are purportedly prone to dangerous excesses, American-firstism, social intolerance, and anti-capitalist bromides: think the pushback by the Tea Party or the Ron Paul zealots.

In contrast, “good” conservative populists are those who wish to trim the fat off complacent conservatism, reenergize the Republican Party with fresh ideas about small government and a return to social and cultural traditionalism, while avoiding compromise for compromise’s sake. Good populists for conservatives might include Ronald Reagan or even Ted Cruz.

Within these populist parameters, Trump appeared far more the “bad” or “dangerous” populist.

Despite Trump’s previously apolitical and elite background, he brilliantly figured out, even if cynically so, the populist discontent and its electoral ramifications that would erode the Democrats’ assumed unassailable “blue wall” that ran from Wisconsin to North Carolina. In contrast, sixteen other talented candidates, some of whom were far more experienced conservative politicians, over a year-long primary race lacked Trump’s intuition about the potential electoral benefits of courting such a large and apparently forgotten working-class population.

Critics would argue that Trump’s populist strategy was inauthentic, haphazard, and borne out of desperation: he initially had few other choices to win the Republican nomination.

Trump began his campaign with exceptional name recognition and seemingly with ample financial resources. Yet he lacked the connections of Jeb Bush to the Republican establishment and donor base, the grass-roots orthodox conservative movement’s fondness for Ted Cruz, the neoconservative brain trust that allied with Marco Rubio, and the organizations and reputations for pragmatic competence that governors such as Chris Christie, Rick Perry, or Scott Walker brought to the campaign.

Trump never possessed the mastery of the issues in the manner of Bobby Jindal or Rand Paul. Ben Carson was even more so the maverick political outsider. Nor was Trump as politically prepped as his fellow corporate newcomer Carly Fiorina. Despite his brand recognition, Trump’s long and successful experience in ad-hoc reality television, millions of dollars in free media attention, and personal wealth, he started the campaign at a disadvantage and so was ready to try any new approach to break out of the crowded pack—most prominently his inaugural rant about illegal immigration.

By 2012 standards, Trump, to the degree he had voiced a consistent political ideology, would likely have been considered the most liberal of the seventeen presidential candidates. In the recent past he had chided Mitt Romney for talking of self-deportation by illegal immigrants, praised a single-payer health system, and had at times campaigned to the left of both the past unsuccessful John McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns. Yet in 2016 Trump found a way to reassemble the remnants of what was left of the Tea Party/Ross Perot wing of the Republican Party.

Such desperation might explain his audacity and his willingness to campaign unconventionally if not crudely. Yet it does not altogether account for Trump’s choice to focus on what would become four resonant populist issues: trade/jobs, illegal immigration, a new nationalist foreign policy, and political correctness—the latter being the one issue that bound all the others as well. Trump’s initial emphasis on these concerns almost immediately set him apart from both his primary opponents and Hillary Clinton...

 Keep reading.

Backlash at Orange Coast College

Following up from December, "Olga Perez Stable Cox, Orange Coast College Professor, Flees the State After Death Threats (VIDEO)."

Caleb O’Neil, the student who video-d the professor, was disciplined; then came the backlash against the college, and rightly so.

At Instapundit, "BACKLASH CAN BE A GOOD THING: A student was punished for filming professor’s anti-Trump rant. Then came the backlash."

President Trump Won't Attend White House Correspondents' Dinner (VIDEO)

Hey, sounds like a plan.

In fact, the whole thing's going to be a dud this year. A number of sponsors have cancelled after-parties, and what not -- like Bloomberg.

I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017

Added: At NPR, "Trump Will Be First President In 36 Years to Skip White House Correspondents Dinner."

Far-Left Michelle Goldberg Says of the Trump Administration: 'It's Bad'

Years ago, I read Michelle Goldberg's book, The Means of Reproduction, and was horrified. She's about as far-left as you can be while still declaiming adherence to communism (as she does). And because of that background, anything of Goldberg's is automatically suspect. She's frankly a nutjob IMHO.

In any case, make what you want of this. Naturally, I think Trump's been about as awesome as you can get, for precisely the actions that have people like Goldberg pulling their hair out. Trump takes it to the left, and for that he's rightly considered a savior of our country.

So, FWIW, at Slate, "The First Month of Trump’s Presidency Has Been More Cruel and Destructive Than the Majority of Americans Feared." (Via Maggie's Farm and Memeorandum.)

https://t.co/ahgP88gDkf #PresidentsDay

— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) February 20, 2017

Campus Leftists Create New Generation of Conservatives

Don't know Charlie Peters, but he was tweeted by Matt Drudge:

PAPER: Culture of intolerance creating new generation of conservatives... https://t.co/z4nBNyVxSs

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) February 17, 2017

Identity Politics is Toxic, But it Works

From Noah Rothman, at Commentary, "The Triumph of Identity Politics":

The Triumph of Identity Politics - by @noahcrothman https://t.co/JWAZnzEAMp pic.twitter.com/LVt0ywlpqX

— Commentary Magazine (@Commentary) February 13, 2017

How the two parties approached their respective presidential election cycle losses in this decade is revealing. While the GOP conducted its 2012 “autopsy” in the open and as a result of internal and external pressures, the Democratic Party is conducting a postmortem out of the spotlight. A weekend retreat for Democratic House members and a Monday Priorities USA gathering of progressive groups suggest the party is aware it needs to adapt. Yet even the notion that the party which won the popular vote needs to reform meets with incredulity and bitter resistance from the grassroots faithful. Surely, the admonitions of a Trump-era Democrat like Jim Webb, who on Sunday chided his lifelong party for pushing all its chips in on identity politics, will be similarly discarded by the liberal activist class. Webb’s detractors would have a point. Democrats did not lose in 2016 because they embraced identity politics; they lost because they embraced the wrong sort of identity politics.

In a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Virginia Senator Webb scolded his party for adopting a message that has been “shaped toward identity politics,” thus alienating a core and classic Democratic constituency. “The people who believe that, regardless of any of these identity segments, you need to have a voice in quarters of power for those that have no voice,” Webb added. “And we’ve lost that for the Democratic Party.”

“When you’ve lost white working people, you’ve lost flyover land,” the senator continued. Unquestionably, the Democratic Party and the liberal activists who provide it with animating energy at the grassroots level have embraced an exclusionary and contradictory sort of identity politics. For the most part, the nation’s majority demographic has come out on the losing end.

The Democratic Party’s is a kind of identity politics that views transgendered bathroom access as a civil rights imperative but sees infringements on the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act in service to ObamaCare’s birth control mandate as a necessary element of a critical public health initiative. It’s a kind of identity politics that scoffs at those who offer prayers for the victims of violence, and which rewards those who insist that “Blue Lives Matter isn’t a thing.” It is a kind of identity politics that, when a special needs man is abducted and tortured for being white in the Trump era or a self-described practitioner of Islam perform an act of mass violence in his or her faith’s name, refuses to make note of these realities for fear of handing out coveted victimhood status to the undeserving. Yet it is also an identity politics that extrapolates from almost every incident of violence committed by a male of majority extraction that America is in the midst of an epidemic of racially-tinged violence.

Some of this is real and tangible, and some of it can be dismissed as a problem of perception. All of this is divisive, poisonous, and dangerous. Republicans under Trump didn’t abandon this brand of exclusionary identity politics; they embraced them.

The rise of white identity politics didn’t occur in a vacuum. It was a reaction to the sense of alienation and isolation. This sense was a direct result of the perception among white voters that they were disliked and that their interests were threatened by opinion makers on the coasts...

Keep reading.

Canadian Exceptionalism, American Envy

Sarah Kendzior's still raging her anti-Trump crusade, at Toronto's Globe and Mail:

When @JustinTrudeau met @realDonaldTrump: Canadian exceptionalism, American envy https://t.co/w9h84JIUmQ @GlobeDebate #cdnpoli

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) February 14, 2017

Berkeley's Descent to Victimology Hothouse

From the awesome Heather Mac Donald, at the Los Angeles Times, "U.C. Berkeley’s descent from place of learning to victimology hothouse":

UC Berkeley’s descent from place of learning to victimology hothouse https://t.co/sWdeo1CVG3 pic.twitter.com/pPulRc1FtK

— L.A. Times Opinion (@latimesopinion) February 6, 2017

Even before its students rioted in the streets, distressed that right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos would dare to open his mouth in their presence, UC Berkeley presented a visual illustration of the academy’s decline from a place of learning to a victimology hothouse. Within walking distance on the Berkeley campus are emblems of both a vanished academic world and the diversity-industrial complex that ousted it.

Emblem 1: In Bauhaus-era typography, a quotation from Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo adorns the law school’s otherwise brutalist facade.

“You will study the wisdom of the past, for in a wilderness of conflicting counsels, a trail has there been blazed. You will study the life of mankind, for this is the life you must order, and, to order with wisdom, must know. You will study the precepts of justice, for these are the truths that through you shall come to their hour of triumph. Here is the high emprise, the fine endeavor, the splendid possibility of achievement, to which I summon you and bid you welcome.”

No law school today, if erecting itself from scratch, would think of parading such sentiments, first uttered in 1925, on its exterior. Cardozo’s invocation of “mankind” is alone cause for removal, but equally transgressive is his belief that there is wisdom in the past and not just discrimination. He presents learning as a heroic enterprise focused not on the self but on the vast world beyond, both past and present. Education is the search for objective knowledge that takes the learner into a grander universe of thought and achievement.

Stylistically, Cardozo’s elevated tone is as old-fashioned as his complicated syntactical cadences; his exhortation to intellectual mastery is too “masculinist” and triumphal for today’s identity-obsessed university.

His celebration of the law overlooks the teachings of critical race theory, which purports to expose the racial subtext of seemingly benign legal concepts. And he fatally omits any mention of “inclusion” and “diversity.”

There’s not a trace of the heroic on the Berkeley law school’s website today; the closest it comes to any ennobling inspiration is the statement: “We believe that a Berkeley Law degree is a tool for change, both locally and globally.”

But this bland expression of progressive ideology is positively Miltonic compared with the bromides on display just meters away from the law school .

Emblem 2: UC Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion has placed vertical banners across the main campus reminding students of the contemporary university’s paramount mission: assigning guilt and innocence within the ruthlessly competitive hierarchy of victimhood. Each banner shows a photo of a student or a member of the student-services bureaucracy, beside a purported quotation from that student or bureaucrat. No rolling cadences here, no exhortations to intellectual conquest. Instead, just whining or penitential snippets from the academic lexicon of identity politics.

“I will acknowledge how power and privilege intersect in our daily lives,” vows an Asian female member of the class of 2017. Just how crippling is that intersection? The answer comes in a banner showing a black female student in a backward baseball cap and a male Latino student, who together urge the Berkeley community to “create an environment where people other than yourself can exist.”

A naive observer of the Berkeley campus would think that lots of people “other than yourself” exist there, and would even think that Berkeley welcomes those “other” people with overflowing intellectual and material riches. Such a misperception, however, is precisely why Berkeley funds the Division of Equity and Inclusion with a cool $20 million annually and staffs it with 150 full-time functionaries: It takes that much money and personnel to drum into students’ heads how horribly Berkeley treats its “othered” students.

A member of the student-services bureaucracy reinforces the message of continual oppression on her banner. “I will be a brave and sympathetic ally,” announces Bene Gatzert of University Health Services. Cardozo saw grandeur in the mastery of the common law; today’s campus functionary sees herself in a heroic struggle against the ubiquitous forces of white-male heterosexual oppression...

Still more.

Unhinged Jessica Valenti: 'The War on Abortion is Just Beginning'

Here's Ms. Valenti, at the Guardian U.K.:

The war on abortion is just beginning | Jessica Valenti https://t.co/ApomJTiYh5

— Guardian news (@guardiannews) January 26, 2017

A common #MarchForLife sign: "I regret my abortion." But regretting a decision doesn't mean others shouldn't have the right to make one.

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 27, 2017

I hope that journalists ask #MarchForLife protesters how they feel about women going to jail for abortion (which is already happening!)

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 27, 2017

If you’ve ever wondered what the oft-used and much maligned word “patriarchy” looks like, you need look no further than a picture of Donald Trump, surrounded by white men, reinstating the global gag rule. The policy, which bans funding any international organization that dares to even talk about abortion, has contributed to thousands of women’s deaths across the globe.

The executive order was just the beginning. In the short time Trump has been president, his administration has set a disastrous course for women’s health and rights. On Tuesday, days after historic marches that put millions of women on the street globally, Republican congressmen introduced the first ever federal ‘heartbeat bill’ - a policy that would ban abortions after six weeks, well before most women even know they’re pregnant.

That same day, the House passed a bill that would make the dangerous and discriminatory Hyde Amendment – which prevents federal funds from covering abortion, even in cases of fetal abnormalities and maternal health issues – permanent. The bill, which targets poor women, would also impact abortion coverage for women with private insurance. Congressional republicans have even introduced a federal ‘personhood’ bill that would define life as beginning at conception.

While the bills will not likely get far, the new administration is sending a clear message – they’re keeping Trump’s promise to punish women who have abortions, and rolling back hard-won rights. These are far-reaching and radical policies that quite literally kill women. There is no overstating just how harmful they are.

So you’ll excuse me for laughing off recent suggestions that feminists embrace “pro-life” women in the name of inclusivity. You don’t get to feel bad about being banned from the treehouse when you’re in the middle of setting the trunk on fire...

Leftism (and feminism) is a death cult, and women like Valenti are the Joseph Mengeles of the movement.

In other words, the movement and its partisans are horrifying.

Still more at that top link, if you can be bothered, lol.