Katie Pavlich Calls Out Michelle Obama (VIDEO)

My wife called out Michelle Obama, lol.

But here's the lovely Ms. Pavlich's take, at Fox News:

The Elites Have Unmasked Themselves and Declared War

President Trump has been permanently banned from Twitter, and most other "unsocial" media platforms. 

The left is bringing on the civil war for which they keep blaming the other side. It's not going well.

At AoSHQ, "Lee Smith: The Elites Have Unmasked Themselves and Declared War." 

Here's Smith's essay, originally published at the Epoch Times:

When a regime sanctions the political violence of one faction against another, events like Wednesday’s bloody skirmishes at the Capitol are a foregone conclusion. Presumably the country’s corporate, political, and cultural elite assumed that after four years of trying to humiliate and unseat President Donald Trump that his supporters would simply accept their continued degradation, impoverishment, and disenfranchisement. Or maybe they thought that with their allied press and social media obscuring reality, no one would notice they were waging war on Americans.

Details of Wednesday’s events are still unfolding. In places, protestors overran police. A Capitol Police officer died of injuries suffered while holding off protestors and others were reportedly injured. Elsewhere it seems that law enforcement welcomed Trump supporters into the Capitol and posed for pictures with them. No doubt there were agents provocateurs among the MAGA crowd, but Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol Hill policeman when she tried to crawl through a window, wasn’t with Antifa. She proudly supported Trump, as she proudly served her country, doing four tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.

No one in the building the 15-year Air Force veteran entered illegally can explain why America is still committed to those strategically pointless wars.

Neither can anyone on the Democratic or Republican side rationally justify why large parts of the country are still under coronavirus lockdowns—public health measures draining Americans’ life savings and, as importantly, their hope—to fight an illness with a 99.7 percent survival rate.

No one can say why the senior FBI, CIA, Justice Department, Pentagon, and State Department officials from the Obama administration who plotted against Trump’s White House before he was inaugurated are still at liberty, and why some have been named to the incoming Joe Biden administration.

Nor can the representatives of the American people explain to them why the lights went out in half a dozen states election night with Trump holding commanding leads and came back on hours later with Biden in front in all six.

But don’t blame the people sent to Washington for the fate and fortune of the Americans they’re supposed to represent. Rep Liz Cheney says Trump is at fault for Wednesday’s unrest. “The president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob,” she said. The Wyoming Congresswoman is one of the staunchest supporters of the Afghanistan war, begun when her father was George W. Bush’s vice president. To hand down a war from one generation to the next is the sign of a careless and depraved elite.

Trump’s former Defense Secretary James Mattis also blames Trump. “His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice,” wrote the retired Marine General. In June, he defended the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots that caused billions of dollars in damage across the country and left dozens dead, including law enforcement officers. Those protests, said Mattis, “are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values.”

Both parties within the Beltway are joined in their attacks on Trump because partisan identity—Democrat and Republican—is no longer relevant in U.S. politics. It’s the Country Party, currently represented by Trump, vs the Establishment Party, representing the interests of an oligarchy anchored by Big Tech and owing its power, wealth, and prestige to its access to cheap Chinese labor and China’s growing consumer market.

The establishment party protects its protestors because they are the instruments weaponized to target Trump supporters. “Protestors should not let up,” vice president elect Kamala Harris said of the summer’s violence. “There needs to be unrest in the streets as long as there’s unrest in our lives,” said Rep Ayanna Pressley. “I just don’t even know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It is not hypocrisy that corporations like Bank of America and Coca-Cola that issued statements in support of the summer riots were quick to denounce Wednesday’s protests. Nor is it hypocrisy that the activists who took over parts of a Senate office building to protest the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh were celebrated while Biden and the press labeled the people who broke into a federal building Wednesday domestic terrorists. It is not hypocrisy for the establishment to draw a sharp divide allies and enemies, but just evidence that they are at war with the party of the country.

History, simple common sense, tells that when one side shoots at the other, the side taking incoming has two choices: surrender or shoot back. There is little doubt the party of the establishment will use the events on the Hill to implement further measures to punish the party of the country, for they would use any pretext—a respiratory illness, for example—to serve those ends. But now they can no longer be sure how the party of the country will respond.

 

America is Still Standing (VIDEO)

An awesome video, featuring Kelly Shackleford, for Prager University:

'Higher levels of drug abuse and overdoses, massive increases in mental health hospital visits, along with surging suicide rates among children have been cited by the Centers for Disease Control as stemming from pandemic school closures...'

At Issues & Insights, "The Real Reason Why Your Kids Can’t Go Back to School (Hint: It’s Not COVID-19)."

Joe Biden's Wife, Soon to Be First Lady, Should Drop the 'Dr. Jill Biden' Ruse

Heh.

This is hilarious, at WSJ, "Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.":

Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.

I taught at Northwestern University for 30 years without a doctorate or any advanced degree. I have only a B.A. in absentia from the University of Chicago—in absentia because I took my final examination on a pool table at Headquarters Company, Fort Hood, Texas, while serving in the peacetime Army in the late 1950s. I do have an honorary doctorate, though I have to report that the president of the school that awarded it was fired the year after I received it, not, I hope, for allowing my honorary doctorate. During my years as a university teacher I was sometimes addressed, usually on the phone, as “Dr. Epstein.” On such occasions it was all I could do not to reply, “Read two chapters of Henry James and get into bed. I’ll be right over.”

I was also often addressed as Dr. during the years I was editor of the American Scholar, the quarterly magazine of Phi Beta Kappa. Let me quickly insert that I am also not a member of Phi Beta Kappa, except by marriage. Many of those who so addressed me, I noted, were scientists. I also received a fair amount of correspondence from people who appended the initials Ph.D. to their names atop their letterheads, and have twice seen PHD on vanity license plates, which struck me as pathetic. In contemporary universities, in the social sciences and humanities, calling oneself Dr. is thought bush league.

The Ph.D. may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences. Getting a doctorate was then an arduous proceeding: One had to pass examinations in two foreign languages, one of them Greek or Latin, defend one’s thesis, and take an oral examination on general knowledge in one’s field. At Columbia University of an earlier day, a secretary sat outside the room where these examinations were administered, a pitcher of water and a glass on her desk. The water and glass were there for the candidates who fainted. A far cry, this, from the few doctoral examinations I sat in on during my teaching days, where candidates and teachers addressed one another by first names and the general atmosphere more resembled a kaffeeklatsch. Dr. Jill, I note you acquired your Ed.D. as recently as 15 years ago at age 55, or long after the terror had departed...

Too good, lol. 

And the fallout (the inevitable leftist hissy-fit), at the Wrap, "Wall Street Journal Slammed as Sexist for Op-Ed Calling Jill Biden ‘Kiddo’ and Urging Her to Drop Doctor Title."

George Gascón, New Los Angeles District Attorney, Brings His Foot Down

Gascón's a real fifth column asshole. 

At LAist, "LA's New DA George Gascón Ushers In Sweeping Changes, Less Punitive Approach to Crime."

Tucker Carlson Destroys Democrat Eric Swalwell: Congressman Pushed Beijing Talking Points as Member of House Intelligence Committee (VIDEO)

Huge, huge story that demands more scrutiny than any hoax the Dems have peddled. Sheesh.

At AoSHQ, "Tucker Carlson: We Reached Out to Eric Swalwell to Ask If, As Has Been Reported, He Had Sex with Confirmed Chinese Spy Fang Fang; Swalwell Told Us He Could Not Answer, Because the Answer Might be 'Classified'."

And at Fox News, "Swalwell scandal: Dems' hypocrisy 'breathtakingly remarkable,' White House says."

Video here, "Tucker Carlson: ‘Eric Swalwell … Used His Office To Promote Beijing’s Talking Points’ While Sitting On House Intelligence Committee."

And from yesterday, Axios broke it open, "Exclusive: Suspected Chinese spy targeted California politicians."

After 2020 Losses, Some Democrats Question Party’s Health-Care Focus

Didn't some former (infamous) political advisor proclaim, "It's the economy, stupid"? 

Well, that infamous person then was a Democrat and the stupid thing now is the Biden 2020 campaign (and all the stupid Squad-type associated losers).

At WSJ, "Some former candidates and strategists say Democrats should have focused more on people who were losing their jobs and struggling to pay rent":

After suffering losses in congressional races across the country, some Democrats are pushing the party to re-evaluate its focus on health care and prioritize the economy ahead of two key Senate races in Georgia.

Health care was the most-mentioned issue across all Democratic presidential and Senate television ads, airing nearly 1.5 million times, in the 2020 election cycle, according to data from political ad tracker Kantar/CMAG. Democrats made defending the Affordable Care Act a top issue in Supreme Court confirmation hearings weeks before the election and promised repeatedly on the campaign trail to protect the law.

Democrats took the House majority in 2018 after centering their campaigns on the Trump administration’s efforts to chip away at the health law. But after the party lost multiple House seats and underperformed in several Senate races this year, some former candidates and strategists who worked on 2020 campaigns say Democrats should have focused more on people who were losing their jobs and struggling to pay rent during the pandemic.

“I think that the message needs to shift more towards the economy,” said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who lost her race in November in a Miami-Dade County district that swung toward President Trump after voting overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“There’s a lot of fear that many people here will not be able to get back to work, that they don’t know where they’re going to be able to find their next paycheck,” she said.

Following the election, Ms. Mucarsel-Powell wrote an opinion column that in part argued Democrats need to focus on the economy to win back support among Florida Latinos. Democratic lawmakers have also squabbled in private calls over what policies to run on.

President-elect Joe Biden won after campaigning heavily against what he described as Mr. Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic, which has killed more than 276,000 people in the U.S. Mr. Biden said getting the virus under control was necessary for businesses and schools to get back to normal operations and to rebuild the economy. He made other economic promises, such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and forgiving some student-loan debt, but they were not as prominent in the general-election campaign.

Chris Meagher, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said the party’s messaging was successful: “We took back the House in 2018, we continue to have the majority in 2020 and we beat an incumbent president on that message.”

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll the month before the election found the economy was the most important issue to voters, followed by the coronavirus and health care. Voters said they trusted Republicans most to deal with the economy, while they gave Democrats the lead on health care. In Georgia, where two runoff races will decide the majority in the Senate, Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have brought up the virus repeatedly in their ads in recent weeks and tried to address both health care and economic concerns related to the pandemic.

Representatives for their campaigns said they are trying to balance both messages.

“Especially in the throes of this pandemic, you really can’t shortchange either one of those ideas,” said Howard Franklin, an Atlanta-based Democratic strategist, who said more Democrats need to intertwine the health-care and economic messages.

Brad Woodhouse, executive director of the health-care-focused Protect Our Care, said his group’s surveys have shown coronavirus relief as the top issue for voters. He said protecting people with pre-existing conditions and the Affordable Care Act are “not as resonant at this very minute,” though he said Democrats can still link those issues to their response to the pandemic.

In addition to the pandemic, Democrats campaigned on a lawsuit from GOP-led states seeking to invalidate the 2010 health law. The Supreme Court heard arguments Nov. 10 and a decision is expected before June. After health care and coronavirus, jobs and unemployment was the No. 3 issue in Democratic ads, while it was the second-most-mentioned issue in Republican ads.

Health care was the top issue mentioned in Republican ads as well, as they criticized Democratic candidates for a push in the progressive wing of the party to end private insurance and extend Medicare to all Americans. Mr. Biden and many other Democrats didn’t support that, instead backing an expansion of Obamacare by adding a public-insurance option.

Kansas state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a former anesthesiologist who lost her race for the U.S. Senate, said it didn’t matter that she opposes Medicare for All—people said she supported it anyway...

Still more.

If There Were War Right Now...

Interesting:

This young girl understand whats going on pic.twitter.com/2k9Vfs3Rko

— Once you know the truth you can not sleep (@lizzywales) December 6, 2020

It's a Con. It's Been a Con the Whole Time (VIDEO)

At AoSHQ, "Confused Old Man: If I Have a Disagreement With Kamala I'll Just Pretend I Have Advanced Cognitive Decline and Resign as Being Mentally Incompetent to Serve as President."

Joe Biden is asked about his disagreements with Kamala Harris on certain issues:

"Like I told Barack, if I reach something where there's a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I'll develop some disease and say I have to resign." pic.twitter.com/SLcvrwaPCA

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2020

Will Amazon Suppress the True Michael Brown Story?

Interesting. And I'm just learning about this. It's a Shelby Steele joint.

Watch the trailer of Vimeo (here), apparently since YouTube won't host is. 

Jason Riley wrote about it a WSJ (paywall) and City Journal:

Shelby Steele’s new film takes a critical look at the prevailing narrative. It’s now under ‘content review.’

August was the sixth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the black teenager who was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. The incident, and the nationwide coverage it attracted, marked the beginning of a period of mass protests against police, which culminated (let’s hope) after the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this May.

The fashionable explanation for what happened to Brown, Floyd and others—such as Freddie Gray in 2015 and Philando Castile in 2016—is so-called systemic racism. The activist left and the mainstream media insist that law enforcement targeted these men because they were black—and that if they weren’t black, they would still be alive. The truth is more complicated and less politically correct, and it’s the subject of an engrossing new documentary that is scheduled to premiere Oct. 16.

The film, titled “What Killed Michael Brown?,” is written and narrated by the noted race scholar Shelby Steele and directed by his son, Eli Steele. Readers of these pages probably know the elder Mr. Steele through his best-selling books and occasional Journal op-eds. But earlier in his career, Mr. Steele also won acclaim for his work in television. In 1990 he co-wrote and produced “Seven Days in Bensonhurst,” an Emmy-winning documentary about Yusef Hawkins, the black teenager from Brooklyn who was fatally shot in 1989 after he and some friends were attacked by a white mob.

In an interview this week, Mr. Steele, who is based at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explained the significance of Brown’s death and what it tells us about race relations today. “Michael Brown represented, even more so than Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and others, the distortion of truth, of reality,” he said. Mr. Steele added that when it comes to racial controversies, liberals have developed what he calls a “poetic truth,” which may be at complete odds with objective truth but nevertheless helps them advance a desirable narrative. In the case of Michael Brown, reality was turned on its head.

“It was almost absolute,” Mr. Steele said. “The language—he was ‘executed,’ he was ‘assassinated,’ ‘hands up, don’t shoot’—it was a stunning example of poetic truth, of the lies that a society can entertain in pursuit of power.” Despite ample forensic evidence, the grand-jury reports and the multiple Justice Department investigations clearing the police officer of any wrongdoing, “there are blacks today, right now in Ferguson, as I point out in the film, who still truly believe that Michael Brown was killed out of racial animus,” he said. “In a microcosm, that’s where race relations are today. The truth has no chance. It’s smothered by the politics of victimization.”

Yet Mr. Steele sees a better future, and the interviews highlighted in “What Killed Michael Brown?” help to explain his optimism. One of the film’s strong suits is showcasing the words and deeds of everyday community leaders in places like Ferguson, St. Louis and Chicago. These people are far more focused on black self-development than on badgering whites or blaming society for problems in poor black communities. They understand and accept objective truth but mostly toil in obscurity while liberal billionaires cut million-dollar checks to subsidize Black Lives Matter activism and antiracism gibberish from “woke” academics.

“It’s easy to say, ‘The white man, the white man,’ and point the finger,” says a pastor in the film whose church is located in one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. “In reality, we have to take a very close look at ourselves.” His focus is on “the transformation of the person. And we’re telling them, hey, educationally, you gotta get it together. Economically, you gotta get it together. Family and spiritually, you gotta get it together. And you have to take responsibility.”

The president of the St. Louis NAACP chapter told Mr. Steele there was no evidence that the Ferguson protests had done anything to help the black people who live there. Property values have fallen, crime has increased, and schools continue to underperform. “Let’s be clear. The progressive agenda is not the black agenda,” he says. “The people in that community are no better off than they were prior to the death of that young black child. They’re no better off, and everybody knows it.”

Amazon, which was scheduled to stream the movie, is now having second thoughts and has placed it under “content review.” Eli Steele, the director, told me that he will resort to other streaming platforms if he has to and is referring people to the film’s website, WhatKilledMichaelBrown.com, for more details on how to view it. The progressive agenda may not be the black agenda, but it is the media’s agenda. Sadly, speaking plain truths about racial inequality in America today remains controversial.

 More here. 

A Plea for a Humanist Antiracism

 At Areo:

If the astounding fact that Donald Trump received a greater share of non-white people’s votes in 2020 than any Republican president since 1960 reveals anything at all, it’s that this past summer’s racial reckoning didn’t resonate with many. In contrast to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, which found expression in historic legislation, the results of this year’s cultural upheavals have been more symbolic than substantive. Statues were toppled—not just of confederates but of abolitionists and national founders; defund the police became the impromptu battle cry of progressive activists; dissenters like James Bennett, David Shor, Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan were fired from or pressured to leave their jobs for refusing to acquiesce. But, despite the fact that major corporations from Walmart to Goldman Sachs, along with almost every major media outlet, celebrity and cultural institution came out in full support of Black Lives Matter, conspicuously few national policies advocating structural reforms in policing have emerged as a result. 

A sharp uptick in violent crime and homicides was the predictable outcome of the widespread anti-police sentiment galvanized by Black Lives Matter. Rioting caused billions of dollars in property damage in largely minority neighborhoods and dozens of lives were lost. It would be a terrible irony if a movement ostensibly dedicated to preserving black lives inadvertently cost more of them than it saved. 

Trump’s gains among non-white, women and LGBTQ voters (and his setbacks among white male voters) have not stopped some progressives from blaming the unprecedented turnout of support for him on white supremacy, patriarchy and racism. Charles Blow, for example, has commented, “All of this to me points to the power of the white patriarchy and the coattail it has of those who depend on it or aspire to it … Some people who have historically been oppressed will stand with the oppressors, and will aspire to power by proximity.” Likewise Roxane Gay has asserted, “The way this election has played out shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention or if you understand racism and how systemic it really is.” Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted that the Latino vote for Trump can be attributed to the whiteness of certain Hispanic ethnic groups. But the much more parsimonious answer is that demography is not destiny. 

This is an ideology incapable of adapting to new information. Modern, race-conscious antiracism is not just a political affiliation, like libertarianism or democratic socialism. The sense of meaning it provides in our increasingly secular society has turned it into a quasi-religious belief system that grow stronger in the face of disconfirmatory information. If our political identity is our primary source of morality, any challenge to our political worldview will be perceived as an existential threat. In modern anti-racism, resistance to reality is more of a feature than a bug. 

The misplaced assumption that racism killed George Floyd virtually guaranteed a disproportionate and jumbled response. The ostensible concerns of BLM—racial profiling in policing and the lack of accountability and transparency among officers—are laudable and well substantiated. But it was no coincidence that race and racism, rather than structural policing issues, quickly became the main issue. 

Police killings of unarmed people of any race are exceedingly rare in the US (there were only about 55 last year). The group most targeted by police are the poor. Interracial violence is extremely uncommon and black police officers may be just as likely to kill black suspects as white officers. White people are regularly killed by police and in higher absolute numbers than black people. The death of a white man called Tony Timpa, who was killed in nearly identical circumstances to Floyd’s attracted little interest. The discomfiting reality is that racial gaps in policing start to close when we account for differences in crime rates and frequency of encounters with police. Any honest conversation about policing must also take into account the around 400 million guns circulating in the population along with America’s disproportionate rates of violent crime in relation to our peer countries. Around 81% of black Americans want as much or more policing in their communities as they currently have. All these facts have been ignored and treated as extraneous, at best. Those who raised them are often viewed with suspicion. Questioning whether racism really killed George Floyd opens one up to the charge of being a racist oneself. To be against Black Lives Matter is framed as being against black lives. To be against the current form antiracism has taken is framed as being in favor of racism. This discourages honest conversation. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. If the advocates of anti-racism could address its two major blind spots—historical determinism and race essentialism—a better version would emerge. We can mitigate the lingering effects of racism in society without resorting to the same moral logic that gave rise to white supremacy in the first place: the use of group identity as a means to power and absolution. Any successful antiracist movement must begin with the premise that race is a fiction

...Still more.

Top CAP Executive Neera Tanden is Biden's Pick for Director of Management and Budget

Lame. 

She's a lawyer and political consultant by training. She's way out of her league. 

At USA Today, "Live politics updates: Neera Tanden, Biden's pick for budget chief, draws fire from left and right."

And WSJ,"Joe Biden Fills Out His Economic Team: President-elect’s picks include Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget and Cecilia Rouse to chair the Council of Economic Advisers."

BONUS: Glenn Greenwald, "Biden Appointee Neera Tanden Spread the Conspiracy That Russian Hackers Changed Hillary's 2016 Votes to Trump."

The 4-Year-Long Campaign Against Trump: Infographic

At Zero Hedge.

Post-George Floyd, Wave of 'Anti-Racist' Teaching Sweeps K-12 Schools Targeting 'Whiteness'

Colleges too, and big time. 

And as you know, I'll be writing quite a bit about this topic of "anti-racist" teaching indoctrination in the weeks and months to come, but unfortunately, it has to be done. 

At RCP Investigations. 

Also, "The Totalitarian Tendencies of the Woke."

BONUS: At the Other McCain, "The Anti-Anti-Racist Professor."

Michigan's Allegations of Massive Vote Fraud [GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION]

At Doug Ross's Director Blue, "INFOGRAPHIC: Michigan's Bombshell Allegations of Rampant Vote Fraud":

Thanks to our magnificent Constitution, the various state legislatures have complete control of the electoral process. Not judges, not unelected bureaucrats, and not the "media" (also see: an infographic on Georgia's provable vote fraud issues). Thanks to Sidney Powell and her team, please note the following, massive vote fraud likely perpetrated in Michigan. 

 Click through for all the links and the complete infographic.

 

"'Oh My Heavens' This is Joe Biden's Thanksgiving Day message. He has no idea what the Psalms are. He calls them the 'Palmists' and then looks confused..."

"Oh God" is right. 

Cringeworthy. 

At Althouse, "The LORD is my Teleprompter and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and He helps me... except when He doesn't help me... and I'm sure He has His reasons...."

Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies

Rod Dreher, at Amazon, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.

How to Be an Anti-Antiracist

I have agreed to participate in a "How to Be an Anti-Racist Book Discussion" on my campus (an event based on the currently "all-the-rage" book by Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist).

Here are the discussion points for the participants for the book discussion, which is to be held on Zoom: 

* What did you learn from the book that will help set you on a path to be an antiracist educator?

* In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi shares his own experience with racist thinking. How does his honesty help give us space to acknowledge and name our own racist behaviors and attitudes?

* Kendi writes, “The only way to undo racism is to constantly identify it and describe it—and then dismantle it.” Why does he believe we need to call out racism when we see it, even if it can be uncomfortable to identify?

* The book’s central message is that the opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” The true opposite of “racist” is antiracist. “The good news,” Kendi writes, “is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and an antiracist the next.” What does it mean to have to constantly reaffirm your identity as an antiracist? Is there any benefit to the fact that you can’t just decide you are “not racist” or an antiracist and be done with it?

* What is the first step you, personally, will take in striving to be an antiracist? How will you check yourself and hold yourself accountable if you notice you, or someone else, is being racist?

* Anyone who values immigrants from European countries and devalues immigrants from Latin America is guilty of racism. Have you ever been guilty of this type of racism? Discuss the unique resilience and resourcefulness people possess if they leave everything in their native country behind and immigrate to another, as Kendi examines in the chapter on Ethnicity.

* Identify two practices at the course level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.

* Identify two practices at the department level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.

* Identify two practices at the institutional level which present roadblocks and contribute to systemic racism.

* Why do you think it is so hard for people to not assess other cultures from their own cultural standards? How does doing this trap people in racist ideas?

And I gotta say it: Don't get mad a me, bro. 

I know there's a huge push on the right to actually shut down thinking, and, in a few cases, to actually completely embrace and evangelize the most wild claims and conspiracies against the radical left and the Democrats (but I repeat myself). At some point, you have to draw a line on how far you'll go to demonize and destroy the other side -- and to defend yourself against the other side. I'm a good person. I want to make things better: "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, then dwell on these things" (Philippians 4:8).  

But being good as I am means I will also defend myself. And to the death. And once again, lately, I'm defending myself against a lot of ideological hatred, obsessive leftist anti-conservative and anti-religious bias, and the once-again leftist condescension and hubris on social media that is even stronger than usual when a leftist Democrat "wins" the White House. Back in 2016, Facebook comments and posts I wrote after the election were reported to my college, and the same trolls have come back out of the woodwork this time around, now that I decided to give Facebook another try (for the new era, same as the old era, alas). But nah. Leftist are not driving me off the site this time. I'm sick and tired of their attacks. Defend against the left's hate. Defend against the left's destruction. Defend against the left's lies: "Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and said to Him, 'All these things I will give you if you will worship me.' Then Jesus said, "Go, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only'" (Matthew 4:8-10).

The left has abandoned the Lord and is doing the work of Satan. There's no other way, as a Christian, to understand this, and thus we must gather strength in faith and gird for the battles ahead. 

So I'm defending myself. I'm holding the line for truth and facts. I mean, ask yourself: Do leftists say and advocate things that have any basis in factual reality (for example, L.A. County's latest total restaurant lockdown is entirely devoid of any basis in scientific fact)? Nah. But frankly, if I'm going to remain employed at my college, then I've (somewhat) got to go along to get along. I've got to at least be professional and collegiate, and it's hard. Longtime readers will know that I've been fighting a ten-year war against radical leftist harassment, cancelling, and multiple attempts to get me fired. And I've been fighting against a college administration that rarely, if ever, gives me the benefit of the doubt, one that in the past has investigated the most absurd claims by anonymous trolls who tagged me and my college in the same tweets (this was after I got a lot of viral coverage for my on-the-ground reporting of the ANSWER/HAMAS protest against Israel, for example, "Communists, Hamas Solidarity Protesters Demand Israel's Extermination in Los Angeles — #ANSWERLA"). It was me who was investigated. I mean, fuck! Trolls had gotten the home phone number of the vice president of academic affairs at my school. They harassed him. They claimed I was "stalking" Cassandra Fairbanks, the erstwhile militant SoCal leftist who volte-face went all Cernovich or something shortly before Trump was elected. Now she's the doyenne of the Gateway Pundit set in D.C. (Weird, I know.) In any case, I had my administration threatening me to get this trolling "stopped," even though I literally had nothing to do with these completely anonymous randos working their evil to make things bad for me. I KNOW WHAT EVIL LEFTISTS DO. Seriously. I had an attorney at one point, and I now have an accommodation with the college on my "private First Amendment activities," as my human resources department labeled my blogging and tweeting at the time. 

Therefore sometimes I have to just roll my eyes at folks, on either side, who literally can't entertain an idea that contradicts their political ideology and positions. I blame the left most of all. But I see conservatives copying the left when they engage in the exact same kinds of speech suppression campaigns. (Wayne Dupree? C'mon.) It's out of control, and an honest person should and will call it out, from wherever it may come. (And one more time, it comes overwhelming from the left.) 

So, yeah, I'm actually reading Kendi's book, with an open mind, for the college's Zoom book discussion, I'm gonna calling be myself an "anti-antiracist" lol. 

And with that, here's Glenn Loury and John McWhorter at the Bloggingheads video. McWorther name-drops Coleman Hughes, at City Journal, "How to Be an Anti-Intellectual," and Kelefa Sanneh, at the New Yorker, "The Fight to Redefine Racism."

More later.

Ceaseless Lies From Dems and Leftist Media Created This Moment

At Fox News, "Liberal lies have created this moment – Trump can do this to secure his legacy."

Liberals have a very different idea about why President Trump was elected in 2016. Writing in Foreign Policy recently, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argued that “Trump built his political brand … by encouraging many Republican voters to see themselves as belonging to a shrinking white majority that can only maintain control of the commanding heights by undemocratic means.”

These nitwits and others in the smug intelligentsia who so despise Trump and the people who voted for him do not understand that millions of Americans love their country, and want a president who shares that enthusiasm.

When Obama declared in 2008 that small-town Midwesterners “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them … as a way to explain their frustrations," it wasn’t a “slip”; that’s how he feels.

Tens of millions of Americans have lost faith in our institutions, our media and now in our elections. After months of Democrats rewriting the voting rules, extending deadlines and pushing mail-in voting, only 44% of Republicans, a month before the election, thought the ballots would be “accurately cast and counted nationwide,” a record low.

Those doubts are now fueling uncertainty about the election outcome – uncertainty encouraged by President Trump. Unhappily, there appear to be enough instances of vote irregularities to feed suspicions, but not enough to overturn the results.

Trump supporters will want the president to be their voice going forward. Whether he chooses to run again in 2024, or whether he is content to be a senior party influencer, Trump is not going away.

RTWT.