They say revolution eats their own. In the time of wokeness, I woke every day, to find out, that Institutions or people I used to admire have completely changed, became unrecognizable, and each time more and more extreme woke. I remember watching Colbert Report in early 2010. It was funny as hell, now I cant stand to watch it for couple of minutes. ACLU, I admired it, now I dont recognize it.
I have lost some fiends, for daring to question some topics for example made up pronounces, or to say that kids should learn math and science and not have sex ed at age of five.
Many of my American friends, have also awoken from the wokeness, each time story is the same => I was as democrat, a life long liberal then I dared to question dogma, and suddenly I became right extremist.
No wonder people say, I didn't left the democratic Party and Left Wing, they left me, by imposing ever stringent purity tests.
I hope, that this will soon pass, but I told that to myself years ago, when I laughed that no way a man will declare that he is a women and start wining in female sports (i thought, this was some right wing gibberish), I was very naïve, so naïve.
TO THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT - A MODERATE DEMOCRAT IS A RIGHT WING EXTREMIST
The Democrat Party has been hijacked by the Progressives. It will never be the same. This was always the risk of identity politics - taken to an extreme. 15 years ago, I told people this path would lead to destruction of the party. But no one listened.
Identity politics ultimately narrows the base - it does not open it or expand it. It is built upon negative energy of resentment and grievances. It is not positive or upliftiing. There is no vision of a better world. It relies upon division and animosity and, in order to succeed, it must perpetuate division and animosity.
Just based on what progressivism is there is no alternative but for it to narrow into a singularity and supernova. If the Democratic Party doesn’t disassociate from progressivism that is what will happen to it. Those in the party too chicken to fight it deserve to die that political death because they encouraged or failed to discourage.
If you look at the right in America the extremists are largely shunned that is how you keep some semblance of integrity. The Republicans are about to inherit all the old centrist Democratic Party refugees.
We may also have the emergence of a third party. This may be a healthy way democracy self corrects. If none of this happens the great experiment of America is finished.
You’ve got two problems. You can count the batshits on one hand in the Republican party. The batshits go all the way up to leadership in the Dems. Hirano? Whitehouse? I could list at least 20 or 30.
You also are falling victim to relativism. Even the nuttiest Republican looks pretty moderate compared to the progressives. The polls are starting to show it. Keep you head in the sand please. It’ll ensure the lesson you get this fall and in ‘24 will be memorable if not fatal.
Well said friend. I'm sick of liberals bellyaching about "those crazy Republican extremists." Where? For every Marjorie Taylor Greene there's an AOC, Rashida Talib, Ilyan Omar and Alyana Pressley. That THEY got elected to Congress terrifies me for one. That's before you even get into the crazy progressive pols at the state level like Gascon and Boudin and the new DA in New York.
The other difference is that the likes of Greene have no chance of ascending to or controlling the upper echelons of leadership in the party, unlike the puppet masters that control Biden, Harris and Pelosi.
For as long as I can remember progressives have pointed out this or that far-right loose cannon in the GOP and used them to smear the entire party and its voters as wingnuts. It won't work anymore. People who live in glass houses don't get to throw stones.
You left out Cori Bush and Kamala Harris both of whom have lied about the death of Michael Brown. Obama's own Justice Department found the death of Michael Brown to be entirely lawful. That hasn't prevented Cori Bush and Kamala Harris from lying about it. Kamala did get Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post for her lies.
Correct. Progressives pointing at conservative Republicans are like Bernie Maddoff (who stole $ billions) diverting your attention to a shoplifter.
"Oh, look at that shoplifter - what a shame the cops do nothing about such thieves" - and then , "don't talk to me about crime until you've cleaned up all the shoplifters on my block"
Progressives are very very very good at pointing fingers and diverting attention. Everything is whataboutism.
The response to BLM riots - "What about all the white supremacists?"
Response to the Border debacle? "What about Trump?"
Response to inflation? "What about the oil executives?"
Marjorie Taylor Greene is actually pretty great. I thought she was nutty, but I didn't actually know anything about her, until I watched her on TimCastIRL podcast on YouTube. Watch the whole thing. She is pretty reasonable.
There is a crucial difference between far-left extremists and far-right extremists. The far-left runs everything and the far-right runs nothing. The 'woke' run the media, Hollywood, Tech, SV, corporate America, Wall Street, K-12 education, universities, the government (including many state governments), the FBI, the CIA, the military, NGOs, etc. What do the anti-'woke' run? Nothing.
I guess "the media, Hollywood, Tech, SV, corporate America, Wall Street, K-12 education, universities, the government (including many state governments), the FBI, the CIA, the military, NGOs, etc." don't pull any triggers in the US. You can learn so much online.
There will never be any "talking" to you. No matter what, you will always want more. I could ask you to do the same for Dems, but then there would only be a couple of people to talk to.
The relative power of the left and the right can actually be measured in a way.
Consider Prop 16 in California. Literally the entire California establishment (Harris, Feinstein, Newson, almost every newspaper, Twitter, Facebook, United Airlines and PG&E, the Golden State Warriors and the San Francisco 49ers, etc.) supported Prop. 16. Only the people were opposed
The elite/public schism is vast.
Prop 16 would have legalized racial quotas which we made illegal by Prop 209 in 1996.
Absolutely, you can measure the power of the left in California. But you can measure the power of the right in Texas, which passed unconstitutional and harsh bans on abortion and trans-ism, to name two. Every state has the same story, a wing and power imbalance for each.
Federally, left and right power wax and wane. Everyone claims the left is in charge of everything, but it isn't. Righties hold the Supreme Court and a large bloc of the federal bench. In the Trump years, not that long removed, it held the presidency, Senate, and Supreme Court, along with the Federalist Society to fill judgeships. Left controls much but not all of mainline media--Fox is mainline but hardly left--all elite academia and law schools, a sizeable amount of non-elite academia. Etc.
I think you're spot-on perfect when you say "the elite/public schism is vast." That's not so much left vs. right, but 1 percent vs. 99 percent or "we know what's good for you" vs. "let us live our own lives."
As a first point, you need to get your facts right. Texas has not banned ‘trans-ism’. That just media BS. However, the deeper point is that far-left rule is very, very real and the evidence is overwhelming.
“This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.”
Has the NYT reported this? CNN? MSNBC? Not exactly. However, what they have reported is overwhelmingly biased. Let’s look at the Google statistics, "George Floyd" get 24.2 million hits in Google. By contrast, "Tony Timpa" gets 20,700 hits in Google. "Justine Damond" gets 52,300 hits in Google. Tony Timpa died in Dallas under circumstances somewhat similar to George Floyd. Justine Damond was shot and killed by the police in Minneapolis.
Here is another example. Racial disparities are widely reported by the media. How frequently is slavery (or later Jim Crow, Redlining, etc.) mentioned as a ‘root cause’? By contrast, how often is the 34X difference in per-capita GDP between Singapore and Haiti mentioned? How often is the existence of racial disparities in Canada that are very similar to the US, mentioned. Canada and the US have very different racial histories. However, the outcomare are quite similar. Only the ‘facts’ that support the religion of ‘white racism’ (where are the white racists in Singapore or Haiti?) and/or ‘systemic racism’ get mentioned.
CRT is widely taught in public schools. Is the 34X per-capita GDP ratio of Singapore vs. Haiti widely taught in public schools? How about the fact that Canada and the US have very similar income disparities? Is that taught in public schools?
Of course, the rot (left-wing rule) goes all the way to the top. Back in 2014 Obama said “"We are a nation built on the rule of law, so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury's to make," Obama said. He said it was understandable that some Americans would be "deeply disappointed - even angered," but echoed Brown's parents in calling for any protests to be peaceful.” No where did he say that his own Justice department found that Brown was a violent thug and entirely guilty and that Darren Wilson (the police officer) was entirely innocent (if you doubt any of this, go read Eric Holder’s report on the actual events).
Did CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, etc. call him a liar? I think not.
Of course, that has not prevented Kamala Harris and Cori Brown from lying about the 2014 events in Ferguson and getting away with it.
The case of Will Thomas provides another measure of left-wing domination. A majority of Americans (see the polls) don’t think men who pretend to be women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. What’s the media split? 99:1?
Jon Stewart killed the late night TV talk show genre. I think all the Stewart wannabes use the same writers. Maybe that's why Gutfeld has been so successful. It's not like he's really that great, but nobody else is offering anything other than the same tired prog preaching, judging and shaming.
That's why I haven't watched late-night talk shows in years. I watch old Johnny Carson reruns. Sad that I have to watch 40+ year-old talk shows to find something intelligent and grown-up. Talk show hosts used to do nonpartisan political humor. Just like the print media and cable news networks, the corporations that own these talk shows have decided to court a particular kind of viewer only. Just think what comic fodder Joe Biden and Harris would have been for Carson and Leno.
Yes! You step a toe outside of the “social justice” narrative and all of a sudden you are no better than a race separatists from radical far right (regardless of your repudiation of racism or the color of your skin, sexual orientation, etc). It is so constraining and exhausting and ultimately, the opposite of liberalism.
When the high priests of wokeism are advocating segregation, the least of your worries should be the 0.001% of idiots who also advocate segregation from the other side.
Incidentally, why is it ok for public schools, universities and the like to actively enforce segregation but beyond the pale when someone else not in the public school/university vortex does the same?
I fully expect to be living in race segregated neighborhoods before I die because the race hustlers demand it.
I agree with all points. It is so frustrating when individuals cannot see or are unaware of these ironies. This all falls within the theme of ostracizing dissent: it is crucial to “social justice” scholars for their narrative to remain uncontested because they want to remain *the* social justice, *the* antiracism in the public’s eye. This is also a part of their narrative.
It is all these people have: to yell "white supremacist!" or "bigot!" (in the case of going against the Gender Ideology narrative). I don't mind that there are a few people who say whatever, but they are elevated to the "dominant narrative" while other voices of reason are shut out. Now we are in a situation where the Walt Disney company, whose business is children, is determined to take down the FL law that prevents Kindergarten through Third Grade sex and gender identity education. This may backfire on Disney as their brand becomes more and more associated with pedophilia. I guess robbers head for banks because that is where the money is and pedophiles head for Disney and Schools because that is where the children are?
Yup. Imagine being a moderate with a naive, straight, feminine daughter who suddenly thinks she's a homosexual boy part way through high school. You are suddenly the worst bigot in the world if you think something's up. Everyone around you - teachers, neighbors - beam and smile at your confused kid who says you parents are the only ones in the world who don't understand. Haven't teenagers always felt that way? But, the community used to not agree with them. Neither did doctors.
I hope she is far from these people, but your granddaughter must live outside the United States as it's everywhere here. This is by state: https://genspect.org/local/
Yes it is. You are a loving maternal person who puts their welfare first as women tend to do - not like men who want to lactate... I think I read your posts on PITT.substack.com :)
Interestingly, the shit the far left is doing is similar to the far right race separatists (the very few that there are). They have started segregation in schools in some places by actually having the black kids in their own classes. Some colleges have done segregated graduations. Both of the far sides want the same thing.
It hurts so badly. My oldest friend viciously turned on me after claiming we could agree to disagree over politics. Twice. Do I still communicate with her? Yeah, but the hurt never does go away and the band-aid on the relationship doesn’t cover a scar so much as it does a seeping wound which will never fully heal. She says I’m her longest and best friend. Like a wronged spouse, part of me still cares about her. I mourn the close friendship we once had but realize it existed because at that time we lived in the same state and were both liberal. My becoming conservative—or just less liberal—blew her mind. Now that we live 1,000+ miles apart and communicate digitally, we can be “friends.” It still breaks my heart.
You're hardly alone. I've lost at least two friends in the past 5 years, one over the Trump election (and I didn't even vote for him) and one over Covid. Just for, like you said, being less liberal than them or not being in lockstep. Not adoring Hillary. Not loving Obamacare. What is it with these people that they'd throw away a decade of friendship? It breaks my heart but I'm not going to stop being true to myself. Another liberal friend and I have "agreed to disagree," so I try not to be the first to bring up politics because I fear I'll have no friends left.
I lost my leftist religion in the early 90's. I still consider myself a classical liberal, but of course, that makes me a dangerous right winger to the Woke. I have read countless accounts here and on Quillette and many other platforms of progressives such as Eve getting cancelled or worse by the woke. Most come from the arts or academia. I was a furniture manufacturer and have spent a great deal of my life in factories. My reality has been much different. I feel compassion for these individuals but almost always notice something that makes me very pessimistic. I hear no passion to move the US out of its Wokeness. It appears their personal crisis and political values prevent them from supporting something like what Brandon Straka created, the walkawaycampaign.com. I know and support Brandon because he is certainly not what the Woke portrays him to be. He is simply courageous and understands his "liberal" world has been destroyed and he is doing everything in his power to fight that. And, he came to understand that Donald Trump is not the monster he is portrayed to be. As have I. Please do not stop reading.
Most of those who have had their lives turned upside down by the woke tyranny will simply never take that step. Trump has a very bad personality, but he does NOT tolerate violence as the Woke and progressives portray him. I support Trump and (may prefer) DeSantis because I believe we are being swept into a woke totalitarian environment that cannot be defeated by those unwilling to call it out for what it is, and are ultimately submissive when confronted by the violent mobs of the Woke. It is because I abhor violence that I believe in a strident non-violent activism.
But to reach such a conclusion one must connect certain dots. Eve, Jewish, as am I, now sees the Woke accurately as tolerant of violent anti-Semitism. I have been studying the Left since I was on it in the late 1960s. Twenty plus years ago I came to realize the Left was tolerant of violent anti-Semitism if perpetrated by Islamists. This tolerance has been broadened to allow it from BLM and antifa. Their "tolerance" is often actually advocacy.
One certainly does not have to be Jewish or a woman athlete or a straight white male to understand a horrible line has been crossed.
But because wonderful people such as Brandon Straka and Ron DeSantis and Larry Elder (another I know personally) have been painted monsters by the Woke and the Left in general, even those who have suffered terribly such as Eve will accept the Woke's characterization of them. Thus we may lose the few leaders who connect the dots and fight. The woke's domination of the means of propaganda and our culture (please read Heather MacDonald and Victor Davis Hanson) may now be complete enough to insure their owning America.
Dennies, you are right. Brandon Straka is doing amazing things in spite of his unjust incarceration. He demonstrates the bravery that is needed in this moment. We cannot be afraid of what "they" will do to us or we will lose the fight. I still believe most are not "woke," but cowed by their intimidation.
MLT, It is extraordinarily difficult not to be cowed. I believe most of us should remain stealth. But there is still so much we can do. If the masses who are non-woke are willing to fight, I want to believe we can still defeat wokeness. I have chosen to pour my time, energy and money into Nevada, a state I believe can stay sane. The last Virginia election gives me hope for Nevada. We will move to this state if need be. Pick where you can live safely and do all you can to keep it sane and safe. Where you pick to live free and safe must have reasonably honest elections. Volunteers are needed in huge numbers for poll watching, canvassing, etc. Without enough, conscientious poll watchers the left will always cheat. Every non-woke person should be a poll watcher if able.
Those who do not believe widespread cheating takes place by the left do not understand how many woke activists believe in conquest by "whatever means necessary." Personal integrity is not a value among them, purity to the cause is.
You are spot on. I, too, have seen this pattern. People will be canceled and they open their eyes to some of the crazy, but they don't make the full connection. They will still have great cognitive dissonance and not see the other connections. They'll see how they were deceived in one area and not realize the others.
Also, they need to learn about why this is happening and where this all came from. The "woke", BLM, CRT, equity, social justice. etc, etc. all stems from Neo-Marxist scholars of the past. They reject liberalism. Openly.
According to Wikipedia, "The Reign of Terror ... was a period of the French Revolution when... a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervor, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety."
They say history repeats itself. And now, over 200 years later, we are unfortunately living through Reign of Terror II.
Terms like "cis" and all those pronouns are the language of a cult religion. We can be kind to confused people without catering to an entire new religion:
It's a riff on the old Orwellian "...how many fingers am I holding up..." In short, I violate human reason with some gas lighting statement and then insert my insanity into the void. It leaves the victim ungrounded and twisting in emotional space. The real question is why and how has this manufactured idiocy come to dominate the American national dialogue? Because, Totalitarian Finance (WEF/BigTech/CCP/Democratic Party) intends to subvert and destroy the American Constitutional Republic and replace it with a new feudalistic social credit system. Your power as a Citizen is under direct assault. Fight back!!
Colbert was the same in 2010 as he is today. You haven't truly opened your eyes until you see that.
To combat this insanity, you need to recognize and oppose it even when it's not yet as powerful as it is now. Otherwise you'll contribute to the problem.
Well, with the increase in desisting and detransing, I think they're in for a reckoning on that one. Once more snd more of this gets out and people see the damage that has been done to kids, people are going to freak.
I don't recognize the ACLU anymore either. And, I agree about dogma. There are people who have tried to track down where some of it is coming from: "Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology? BY: JENNIFER BILEK"
The ACLU is an entirely different organization now. The guy that ran it in the 60s/70s was interviewed on Bill Maher and talked about hos disgusted he was with their new direction. It's woke and only interested in woke victims. They basically support the tech censorship.
This is so far beyond what a handful of adults may have chosen to do with themselves in the past. Turning things around and ending the Cult of Gender Ideology and it's grip on our institutions is 100% a hill this mama will die on :) Let's begin with reality based language. Strangio is a Cosmetically Masculinized Woman (CMW). She really is a seriously bad person. No acronym necessary for that. We've seen bad people before but on this subject such folks get a "pass" and even adoration in the press. Our society does not need to adopt magical thinking including a new religion to allow a few folks to role play. These people really do not care what happens to children and young people.
Both sides, right and left, tend to be captured by the extremes. (And the other side is pleased to see these extremes, so they can use them for ridicule; Taylor-Greene a gift to Dems, AOC a gift to Repubs). Us moderates will vote, but the True Believers will send money and volunteer.
I think Bernie Sanders is mostly wrong about stuff, but he's lively and brings up the temperature in the room. I voted for Joe Biden, but face it, he's dull.
If Bernie had been nominated in 16 I would have voted for him, only because he wasn't part of the Swamp. I ended up voting for Trump and was shocked at what an effective President he was.
You should watch Marjorie Taylor Greene on the podcast TimCastIRL on YouTube. I thought she was nutty (I'd only heard about her before this) until I watched her there and actually started looking up things about her. She's actually pretty reasonable. One of the only people who are talking about the mistreatment of J6 people as well.
Yes, but I'd prefer Desantis or Abbot, only because after seeing the lengths the left/media/deepstate/oligarchs went to steal the 2020 election, I'm afraid of them going even further in '24. OTOH, now that laptopgate is finally a thing, and Durham seems to be making progress, they may be defanged by then.
I'm not kidding. It would be much more clear. And, we can't take back reality and help anyone if we continue to endorse delusion with gaslighting language. It does not do anyone a kindness. I do not see anything that is not courteous about CFM and CMW :) Please see also
I’ve wondered about the nomenclature, and what you’ve written is ambiguous to me. Does “transgender man” mean XY [started life with a penis] but is now d/b/a a woman?
A "transgender man" is a biological woman (XX) who tries to pass herself off as a man. The actress Ellen Page who now calls herself "Elliot" Page is one such example
A "transgender woman" is a biological man (XY) who tries to pass himself off as a woman. Dr. "Rachel" (nee Richard) Levine, "Kaitlyn (Bruce) Jenner, and "Lia" (William) Thomas are all examples.
Jenner, 72, won the gold medal in the men’s decathlon in the 1976 Olympics as Bruce Jenner. She transitioned from a man to a woman in 2015.
For the past several months, she has been a vocal opponent of Thomas competing against women.
“[Lia Thomas] is also not good for women’s sports,” Jenner told Fox News in January. “It’s unfortunate that this is happening. I don’t know why she’s doing it. She knows when she’s swimming she’s beating the competition by two laps. She was born as a biological boy. She was raised as a biological boy. Her cardiovascular system is bigger. Her respiratory system is bigger.
“Her hands are bigger. She can swim faster. That’s a known. All of this is woke world that we’re living in right now is not working. I feel sorry for the other athletes that are out there, especially at Penn or anyone she’s competing against, because in the woke world you have to say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is great.’ No it’s not.”
Yes. And I remember seeing his face on the Wheaties boxes whenever I went to the supper market decades ago. Of course he always was, currently is, and will forever more be a human adult male, a man. Because no human being in the history of Earth has ever changed his or her sex. And deep down inside, under all his expensive designer dresses, his elaborate hairstyles, and his expertly applied makeup, I'm sure he knows that.
Someone else who knows that is Dr. "Renee" Richards (born Richard Raskind), the ophthalmologist who came out as a "transgender woman" back in the 1970s and famously played tennis in the women's part of the US Open. Now elderly, he has admitted to feeling deep regrets about the way his life turned out.
WilLiam Thomas is bringing attention to how our world has been turned upside down. At least that part is a good thing. Most people didn't know about how 2+2=5 today.
I love how easily you stick to the truth and don't stick your tail between your legs just because of others who are searching for ways to accrue virtue signal points, Nancy. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Hi Penny. It is a good thing that a number of transexuals can see the unfairness in sports. I just have to take issue with the idea that some people really "are trans" somehow - whatever that could mean. From Dr. McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:
"The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight. "
and
"At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. "Sex change" is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder."
Now, past a certain age if a small number of people go for the cosmetic surgeries with eyes wide open to the consequences, that may be their business. But, the problem is that Gender as a whole Ideology is promoted in the schools K - University and confused naive young people are easily undergoing irreparably harmful hormone treatments and surgeries - often at college or at the hands of planned parenthood. There are something like 26,000 regreters on a subredit. And, it all starts with pronoun and name changes which really don't seem like a big deal to the kids at the time. It is kept secret from parents until the cult has really taken hold. The whole horrible thing is not even discussed in the papers - even after the Keira Bell lawsuit in the UK.
My youngest half-brother is now a half-sister. I wasn't surprised when (s)he told me, because (s)he always had a kind of feminine energy.
Her wife posted on Facebook in support of Lia Thomas, using the "damned lies" variety of statistics to claim that William had been a talented athlete as a male, which somehow legitimated Lia's decimation of other female athletes.
Of course, that was my half-sister's wife, not my half-sister (who isn't on Facebook). I don't know what (s)he thinks, and I wouldn't dare to ask.
And thanks for the scientific accuracy -- you rightly say "genetic man", not "biological man". Someone who has transitioned has a mixed biology. But their genes are still what they were at birth - for now. In another generation that too might be different after transition.
Sorry to see you getting piled on below by some people who are hellbent on denying these elementary facts of biology.
Glad to see you got so many likes. You do indeed speak for a lot of us. The ones who wrote the nonsense back at you don't seem to. Good. There's some hope in the world.
Well, people who have had cosmetic feminizing or masculinizing, surgery do not really have "mixed biology". Have you read what Jazz Jennings has to go through to keep the fake vagina from closing (rings inside, etc.) for instance? I think most of these folks don't go for the "whole thing" though and that presents other problems with putting guys in women's spaces (some trans identified people are straight and some are gay). And, uh, I don't think anyone can ever be changed on the XX and XY level - that's in every cell in your body. We can be courteous to such folks without being forced to say we think they are another sex from what they are.
Thinking more about the "mixed" biology concept...The fact that your biology wants to heal from the "gender affirming" surgery and close up holes that should not be there, etc.- that the patient must spend his or her life fighting to keep the cosmetic fiction in place does make me question that "biology" has been changed in any way. To me, this goes back to how it is a visual trick, like photo-shopping images online - with the horrific difference that 10s of thousands of people subsequently realize they are permanently injured and there isn't much they can do about it. AND, the media refuses to report that. Of course, the teenage girls who have had double mastectomies by lazy plastic surgeons making $$$ without even reconstructing a pair of nipples - they just have physical and emotional scars: "The Call is Coming From Inside the House" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBInNGgdF2M
I'm sorry I wasted my time trying to reason with you. It would be silly for me to correct your many mistakes in fact and logic. You and I both oppose the suppression of speech by the PC crowd. That doesn't make everything anti-PC true. I at least try to figure out what is true. I recommend it to you. You won't get there by endless polemic.
I am sorry you feel that way. This response does not make any sense to me. I am glad we can agree about opposing the suppression of speech. I certainly do not "knee-jerk" oppose anything said by the PC crowd. Please have a look at the many many parent accounts on PITT.substack.com = Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans to see an angle that might have been suppressed from your view. Thank you. LM
Gene therapy is already a thing, it's just in the beginning stages now, used for the most extreme emergency conditions. It'll get easier and be applied to more things with time. It hasn't gotten to trans yet because it's not yet routine, and is not the thing most needed for trans people as yet, it's the macroscopic characteristics formed in earlier years that are most at issue and it's mostly too late to fix that with gene therapy. But it'll inevitably happen too, over the decades, for medical consistency. So will womb transplant, which is already possble but rare. Someday inevitably there will be ovary formation or transplant but that's probably farther off.
Tell you what, I don't force you to say they're biologically mixed, true though that is, and that's easy since I never tried to force anyone to say that or anything else; and you don't force me to say they're simply male or female when it's clear that biologically that's not true. Deal?
There are men who have been given a hormone concoction so that they lactate and "breast feed" babies. Can this be the most nutritious milk for a baby? Also, the motivation is sexual. That sort of man is heterosexual with a fetish. Women do not get excited about themselves having breasts. They just have them. And, they tend to want to do what is best for baby.
There may well be womb transplants into a man. Is this ethical? So many things can go wrong when it is a woman bearing the child. Is a man bearing a baby maybe selfish? Does surgically constructing a bunch of things make a person biologically a thing? That's a good question. The body tends to want to fight to heal itself so men with constructed vaginas need to wear a (metal I think) ring inside to keep it from closing, for instance.
Gene therapy is a thing and likely is in the early stages. However, you get a set of X or a set of Y from your father (an adult human male) and this determines whether you are a boy or a girl. Changing each cell in your body in this way sounds pretty far fetched. And, what would be the purpose? Would such a person have working gametes?
So, we do want to be courteous to confused people but how far should that go? Please have a glance at McHugh:
This makes me think…. Just because we can, does it mean we should? Do we want to go down these roads ??? I don’t. And why would we? How have all of human kind been just fine without all of these freakish cosmetic pharmacological interventions and suddenly now everyone can’t live without them?? Unbelievable.
I am so sorry, but I don't understand this "biologically mixed" thing. Nothing genetic changes, chromosomes stay the same, and if meds are stopped then a lot of things revert back to the way they were.
I see a lot of magical thinking going on, especially when it veers into trans humanism. From the second a human life is conceived, it is sexed. It is bathed in the hormones of that sex during it's time in the womb. Every cell of that body has the DNA blueprint for it in there. That doesn't change because someone takes cross sex hormones.
It's exhausting to fight reality, and it doesn't work.
All I could think, Eve, is that you write beautifully. Truly. Maybe you should stop wasting your time writing about fatuous garbage performed by equally fatuous, self-reverential imbeciles and focus, instead, on the themes you do here - life, truth, courage and the wonder of nature. Even with its latest descent into decay and degradation your description of LA - a city we both love - was so evocative of its beauty and promise. Don't be surprised that everything the Left claims it stands for is a lie. It is, and has always been, that way. You are joining a big tent of people who reject those lies, big and small. And who are dedicated to restoring belief in an America that is good, and just and honest and fair. Your voice is an important addition to that cause. Welcome.
May I edit? “Don't be surprised that everything the post-modern Left claims it stands for is a lie.”
The traditional, classical liberal democrat, sometimes overzealous in counter productive charity, is tolerant, respectful, and intelligent. When made aware of what woke really means, they reject it.
The thing I fear is the co-opting of our educational institutions such that classical liberal philosophy is lost. We are seeing the influence of that now.
I accept your edit to the extent I believe "classical liberal democrats" are good hearted people. But I believe they make decisions based on emotions rather than reason. I also think there is merit to that so long as our societal decision making is tempered with the rational. I think in essence that is the problem. With the reality now - we are so deeply divided that nothing is tempered at all. I am not a proponent of all or nothing. Lastly, I think the educational institutions are lost already.
You're not wrong. There's a woman I watch that talks about the state of schools and what is going on in them and how she advocates for the abolition of the compulsory school system. You're right they're lost. Her Youtube is The Reason We Learn, if it interests you. She has a wealth of info about schooling and all the stuff going. She also just started a substack under the same name.
Oh no no. Sorry, I probably could've explained it better. Lol. She argues for homeschooling, micro schools, pod schools, or back to local, community based schools that are led by the parents and community instead of the federal education system that has turned into giving tons of money to administrators and no teaching. (Only around 30% of kids are proficient in reading when they graduate. Same shocking results for math, science, and history)
She is all about education. Just not how it is being done because it isn't working and is getting worse.
The comment on emotions was not intended as an insult and perhaps it is not a good use of the word. I am referring to political Ideology and actions. And it seems to me that progressive policies are about rescuing folks that are deemed to be mistreated/oppressed/disadvantaged. That makes the rescuer feel good about themselves which is an emotional response whether the rescued person or group is actually benefitted or not. All of that money handed out as covid "stimulus" no doubt made Congressional members, and by extension their supporters, feel good that they were doing something to help but in fact it has done the opposite. Inflation hurts low income earners far more than it does those who earn more. Covid responses were largely driven by fear which is a different kind of emotion. People in red states were demonized as being heartless and cruel. As a result the covid response was completely politicized, the "science" (which to this day we do not know because scientific scrutiny takes time when a novel virus is being examined) was completely skewed and now we have people who have lost faith in the medical profession. People knew that Biden was not competent but voted for him anyway because they hated Trump, yet another emotion. A rational approach to any of those issues would have gone a long way.
Oh, no worries, I didn't take it as an insult, just a chance to affirm that most of us, whether con or lib, use a mixture of emotion and logic to get things done. Neither emotion nor logic will move the needle much.
Agree completely that "rescuing" people that don't need rescuing--or even bothering to ask them, "Ya need help?"--is exactly what we shouldn't do. Pandemic spending should have been far more targeted.
As for demonizing, that certainly went both ways. Wingers on both ends conducted a scorched-earth war against each other--and the rest of us--in order to get attention, clicks, likes, and "influence." It got ugly and personal early in the Trump years because that was Trump's preferred management style, he won the presidency with it, and everyone jumped on the train. But it's poisonous.
Disagree about Biden. He got Covid shots into arms, pulled us out of Afghanistan inelegantly but finally, and has handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine masterfully. He's not incompetent.
I didn't hate Trump. I just didn't want four more years of him and the circus. The positive things Trump accomplished--and yes, he did do some good things--were vastly outweighed by his insatiable need for attention. MAGAs and Progs responded with The Culture Wars, and the rest of us were hit by their shells. It was so tiresome I needed a break and so voted for Biden. I don't regret it at all.
"Disagree about Biden. He got Covid shots into arms, pulled us out of Afghanistan inelegantly but finally, and has handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine masterfully. He's not incompetent."
Sorry, Bill (or do you prefer William?) but Biden is a cognitive mess. He is hopelessly corrupt and, as was observed by Gates, has been wrong about every foreign policy issue. He got shots into arm with a strong-arm, unconstitutional mandate that was overturned. His Afghan pullout was a catastrophe. His handling of Ukraine has been far short of "masterful," having antagonized Russia and then refused Ukraine the arms necessary to repel the invasion he and his State Department made almost inevitable. He mumbled about the coming invasion but did nothing to stop it and his daily, public gaffes have been idiotic and humiliating. You're a very smart man but you are willfully deceiving yourself if you refuse to see that Biden is mentally and physically unfit to serve in the role in which he was installed. The world is far too dangerous a place for this nonsense and charade.
Very well put. I believe a very large majority of Americans agree on 90% of everything, yet we let the 10% cloud our view of what really is important as citizens. A good example is border security. 80% or more agree that our border should be secure yet many choose to misinterpret Emma Lazarus' poem etched into the Statue of Liberty; we let our hearts get the best of us rather than interpreting things in a practical way.
The border should be secured but we have a President who is not only failing to enforce our immigration law but is willfully subverting them by transporting illegals all over the country. If we had a Congress worth even a pile of dog doo, he would be impeached for that treachery alone.
If we had a Congress worth even a pile of dog doo . . . we would never have let the border get away from us like this. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, our immigration policy is a multi-decade, both-parties, disaster that should never have gotten to this point. But two parties wanted illegals: Democrats for the political votes, Republicans for the cheap labor. I try to avoid "a pox on both houses," but immigration is a shitshow that both parties shovel with glee.
Also, many people are buffaloed by media, social justice warriors, and out government that all these people are "asylum seekers." Just ignore that they came thousand miles through several other countries (some even flew from across the world to Mexico so they can get in 😵) to get here and that they all dress nicer than I do. 🤪
Hey, everybody dresses better than I do :-) But yeah, everyday Americans really do need to wise up and looking beyond the propaganda flowing like rivers of pus from the party most responsible for our mess: The United Corporate Party of America Inc.
"The traditional, classical liberal democrat, sometimes overzealous in counter productive charity, is tolerant, respectful, and intelligent. When made aware of what woke really means, they reject it."
Thank you for expressing my own political outlook perfectly.
WS, I think your 1/3rd right. Neo-liberals fit your definition. Neo-conservatives and neo-Marxists don't. Neocons want endless war (particularly in the Middle-East). They are not satisfied with the status quo. Neo-Marxists want a revolution. They are not satisfied with the status quo.
I agree. Eve's description of the Los Angeles hills was breathtaking, pure poetry. And her insights about the craven idiots who kowtow to the left's most egregious demands was pure truth.
Eve has what you call talent she doe ot have to worry that the insanoverse she was part of has rejected her . Talent and truth is all she needs . Stand up to the idiots you'll be fine
Nice comment, Bruce. When I finished reading Ms. Barlow's essay the one metaphor I came up with (and not for the first time these last few years) was the image of zombie like lemmings running pell mell over the cliff of mainstream woke acceptance, the blind lemmings in this case, institutional and independent media alike - stumbling over themselves to be the most relevant follower in today's microaggressed extreme progressive piety and sanctimony. With the writer writing truths as she saw them caught in the stampede.
It's not the lies of the left so much that disappoint me - the the hard right conservative side is also capable of that - it's the meek blanket acceptance of a dominant narrative by people who should, who must, know better - but defer instead to the herd instincts of the mob and tag along, repeating ad nauseam the propaganda.
As for her wasting time on fatuous garbage performed by equally fatuous imbeciles (and a good take on today's musical landscape), I heartily agree - her writing deserves better. Though I have to admit, her enjoying Jeff Buckley can only be construed as a good thing.
Well said, Bruce. As I read through Ms Barlow's essay, I wanted to jump to the comments section and scrawl something along the lines of, well, let's just leave it at that. Your post reminds us that grace is the best approach.
Beautifully expressed yourself, Bruce. I agree this was a world-class piece of writing.
The problem is that entertainment journalism and its cousins bring in the money to pay the rent. Serious writing about serious issues . . . doesn't. I hope she can do both, and maybe start her own Substack for the non-entertainment stuff.
It wasn't just synagogues which were vandalized in the LA's BLM march, it was much the city's most Jewish area. But don't you dare speak about it.
Also, don't speak about the dozens of instances of antisemitic incidents in NYC in the last month, the vast majority of which were committed by black people.
Don't speak about the fact that there were more antisemitic attacks in NYC in the last month, than anti-black attacks in the whole last year.
Don't speak about all the anti-Asian violence, also mostly coming from black people.
Don't talk about how according the latest FBI data, black people commit twice as many hate crimes as the rest of the population.
Remember, black people are always the primary victims of racism, even when every data point says otherwise. And don't dare speak about antisemitism either.
Yes as the woke screech for an "honest discussion about race" and then shut it down when confronted with uncomfortable facts. A philosophy based on lies will be the ruination of America.
Very true. The “honest discussion” comes to a screaming halt with the “It’s not my job to educate YOU” response. This is usually at some point followed by the “facts based on data are basically racist, and I shouldn’t even have to bring that up.” I just remember seeing a TV reporter standing in front of a burning building during one of the peaceful protests and the ticker line under it read “Fires under control during peaceful protest. And holy lace doilies, I’m a left of center liberal. But I still have brains.
I would add that a lo-o-o-ong string of links is sometimes provided. Which is nothing more than a sure-fire way to shut down the necessary conversation.
Bruce reminds me of Col Jessup in the movie; A Few Good Men, where he tells LTJG Kaffee (Bruce), “You can’t handle the truth! Son,” except this time the Colonel is correct!
No doubt there is systemic racism, it's just 180 degrees from what BLM preaches. It's built into academia, media, HR departments and Hollywood. Racism is now a business fueled by many of the 'studies' programs that have flourished in Liberal Arts programs, and funded by federal guarantees of student loans. It can't go away as too many people rely on it as a source of income.
Most working class and poor kids who are able to go to college are strongly encouraged to go into a field that will enable them to obtain good paying jobs (medical, engineering, computer science, etc.)
One of the "It must never be mentioned" was the targeting of churches and synagouges during the Floyd/1619 riots. I didn't know the anti-semitic attacks were as widespread in LA but its not surprising.
There was a report that made national broadcast news. It was when Jews were targeted at restaurants in LA. Guess you missed that. Also, it was front page of most major news papers.
I believe that was when Israel was there n combat with the pa. There was also targeting of Orthodox Jews in New York. I think that was separate outburst of anti-Semitic violence then the original summer riots.
With this in mind, the FBI recently announced it won't be releasing stay by race anymore. They "don't have the manpower" to collect or process the data anymore.
A major evolution of the American Color Revolution is hiding the data and insisting on trusting your "experts", especially when they're lying.
Mmmm, FBI isn't hiding the data in this case. FBI had to cut back because local and state police departments have quit providing many crime stats, being overwhelmingly understaffed and having to cut corners too.
That is the reason they provided and I am sure there is truth to it. But I also believe that many people involved have an ideological interest in hiding some of the data. This is based on years of watching Seattle media loudly emphasize the race of white criminals, and attempt to hide or downplay the race of non-white criminals completely.
Wondering Wonder, misrepresenting, and lying, come easy for you! For example, here’s what ADL said about the “LA's BLM march”; ‘…the claims of targeted antisemitic violence have been exaggerated or misrepresented.” Where is the proof that; “…the vast majority of which were committed by black people.” And how about; “…the latest FBI data, black people commit twice as many hate crimes as the rest of the population.” Is a lie according to; 2021 eight crime statistics Of the 6,780 known offenders, 55.1% were white, and 21.2% were Black or African American.
In 2020, according to this, Jews had the least incidents:
Anti-black or African-American 2871
anti-white 869
anti-Jewish 683
Sixty-five people click the cherished heart. Did they believe your lies because there racist, or are they simply ignorant?
From the FBI data you mentioned, you left this part out: "5.4% were of a group of multiple races. The race was unknown for 15.7%".
That leaves 78.9% single race offenders whose race was known. (Multi-race offenders may have been black too). Once you take that into account, the percent of attacks by Blacks was about 26.9 percent, which is more twice the Black population of 13%.
The numbers you quoted for hate-crime victims are laughable without taking into account proportion of the population. There are more than 6.5x as many blacks as Jews in the country, so even 3x as many attacks against black still means that Jews are more than twice as likely to be victims.
As far as the BLM antisemitism in LA, there were 5 synagogues and 3 religious schools vandalized, and most of the Jewish businesses on Fairfax Avenue were looted. Witnesses heard the protesters saying "effing Jews".
“The attack on our community last night was vicious and criminal. Fairfax is the center of the oldest Jewish community in Los Angeles,” Councilman Paul Koretz said. “As we watched the fires and looting, what didn’t get covered were the anti-Semitic hate crimes and incidents.”
And that was just one BLM protest. There has been plenty of other antisemitic incidents at other BLM protests. There are videos of religious Jews who support BLM being threatened and attacked too.
And if you don't like the term 'pogrom' being used for the LA BLM protest, then look at the 1991 Crown Heights riots for a much clearer example of a pogrom by members of the black community. Though as a fan of the ADL, whose leader appears frequently with its inciter Al Sharpton, it's probably been erased from your memory.
WanderingWonder - well said. Per Capita incidents is a concept leftists only understand sometimes. The 2020 national crime stats are clear that for homicides where the race of the offender is known, 55% were committed by blacks (who comprise 13% of the population). This is never discussed. Can you imagine if even 50% of murders were committed by non Hispanic whites?
Well, if 55% were committed by non-Hispanic whites, that would STILL be less than our % of the population. Last I looked, black ppl disproportionately committed more of every crime (murder and violent crime being farrr above) except for dui, drunkenness, and another drinking one that I can't remember the name of.
Yes, that was my point. Per capita, with non-hispanic whites as the majority (barely, around 60% at this point) in the USA, one would expect to see a similar ratio for murders. That is not the case at all.
Wondering Wonder, You give the links to verify the 38 hate crimes and 56 hate crimes, which I did not dispute; what I disputed was, “…the vast majority of which were committed by black people.”, Which you conveniently sidestep, your source does not supply who committed the hate crimes, I suppose you could be psychic!
You try to explain away; ‘…black people commit twice as many hate crimes….” By pointing out “…the percent of attacks by Blacks was about 26.9 percent, which is more twice the Black population of 13%.”, which is irrelevant to your comment!
Then you jump into whataboutism: (the technique of responding to an accusation by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue.) by pointing out the proportionality of hate crime, which I said nothing about. You try to obfuscate the subject by introducing unproven assertions; “And that was just one BLM protest. There has been plenty of other antisemitic incidents at other BLM protests. There are videos of religious Jews who support BLM being threatened and attacked too.”
I think it’s safe to say your lies and unsubstantiated accusations do not come from love; the question is, what belief system gave birth to these lies, and unsubstantiated accusations!
Learn proportions. I haven't looked at your numbers. But just taking what tou have, the white population is committing them at a lower proportion. 55% is far lower than their % of the population. Black people are only 13% of the population so they, by your numbers, commit them more proportionally. Much more.
Remember, anytime one tosses out the 13% of the population, divide that by half to get a general percentage of males, who commit most of the violent crime, so it's actually 7-8% of the population committing these 55% of the crime.
For anyone who has been cancelled, ostracized, or otherwise shunned for failing to parrot the woke words of the day, this piece must surely resonate. This will only stop when we, as a group, community, and country stop going along.
Personally I've stopped supporting all major social media, I've cancelled all subscription services, and I'm withdrawing support from any business that has an executive "diversity officer."
But I left Seattle in loud protest of their participation in the Woke Revolution, and that mostly means I no longer have influence in the heart of the problem.
We need more than a lack of participation, especially when so many Woke institutions get their money straight from the federal government (by which I mean the Democratic Party).
Trillions of dollars of spending to keep the Wokest on top, and then blame inflation on Putin. The Revolutionaries are dumb enough to believe it.
We need active resistance. A counter-offense built on real principles.
Ant...right on target. Promote "EVs". there is only 1/2 of society that will be able to cope with the upcoming Disaster, then we eliminate the TV...gratitude shall.
I dont know you but Im sitting here so proud of you and your accomplishments. A strong brave woman that deserves to be loved/appreciated for her talents. Stay the course. Cheers to your future!
Hardly any of us are like Eve Barlow, with her skills, audience and reputation as an author. But all of us every day face the choice to live honestly, to trust that the truth is better than lies, and to act out the proposition that wherever a forthright engagement with the people in our lives leads us is preferable to the place deception and manipulation take us. We live in an era of massive moral confusion. Competing claims about this or that code of behavior or lifestyle fascinate and distract us. In the face of all that the basic first question which ought to engage us is the one the author has faced and answered: are we going to trust the truth and demand of ourselves that we live it out? Until we have an answer we probably ought to worry less about the conduct of everyone else and the decay or corruption of the culture around us. The place to start is with ourselves.
And how many people, forced to regurgitate the latest woke insanity to save their job or avoid censure, find themselves in the same position as Galileo, forced by an earlier but no less powerful and deceitful Inquisition to recant his theory of planetary motion, remarking upon finally being released, the essential truth that "Eppur si move;" (still it moves)? We know that the entire woke philosophy is a lie. Let's just stop playing along.
I don't play along. I have lost my high paying job in a professional field, equally woke, due to my conviction (not choice) to rely on natural immunity. But long before that, many knew that I did not embrace other elements of woke culture. I believe in inclusion and mutual respect, but not in the way practiced, and have always been open. I believe that data and facts should support narratives, so I am always on the outside. Always excluded, when I appear to be in the inner circle. It is/was a soul crushing existence, and in many ways I am glad I have been ousted. The job search has surprisingly been more receptive to me than I expected, though I don't have a job yet. But I have freedom, and I have my integrity. Thank you for writing this. I believe there are more like you than not, if we can just find a way to escape and be true.
That's just the thing - most of us believe in inclusion and mutual respect. To claim otherwise is both a lie and self-deceit of the Left. But we also believe in truth. And if a person is not cutting it, or isn't qualified for a job, they don't get a pass because of irrelevancies such as skin color or with whom they sleep. And, worse, if someone such as you is fired for standing for truth, that's just not America anymore. Forcing us to lie as the price of success is insane. Or Soviet, at the very least. Sooner or later this will not end well. I have a very bad feeling about a looming tidal wave of reprisals.
The Left has built up a strawman version of everyone on the Right. Or rather, more of a boogeyman version. It's a variation on the "red neck" and "hick" stereotype that has long been used to deride people who live in rural areas. But now it's been painted with a varnish of KKK and expanded to apply to the entire Right.
It's frightening that so many people on the Left unquestioningly believe that everyone to the right of them are White Supremacist neo-Nazis who want The Handmaid's Tale to be a reality.
This is part of what concerns me. Positions if money, power and influence are being abandoned and left to the worst people. This ought to lead to the collapse of those institutions as they lose real talent, but the government props them up.
People like you losing their jobs implies the high money and power jobs go to the Woke, exactly as the Revolution planned it.
I must admit, I hate the sudden appearance of NY, PA and CT license plates all over my county.
Californians ruined my home state 20 years ago. I confess I loathe an entire state for trashing my once-livable home.
Now the NE libs are targeting my resident state.
I’ve informed hubby we have to start planning a move. I’ve no desire to watch them ruin this state too.
Not to say that you in particular Scuba Cat are responsible for any of that. It’s just the normal people in the rest of the country are suspicious of lib-world transplants who flee the destruction only to replicate it in their new locales.
My Seattle-based gay niece is horrified by what is happening in her state. She asked about moving to Florida. I was thunderstruck. Do I say, “Come on down?” Do I say “Leave your politics behind?” I love her deeply and have supported her. But do I want her politics to ruin the state I live in?
I think most of us are not planning to replicate it. Maybe in the last decade when people moved because taxes were too high and then voted for policies that would result in higher taxes, but I can tell you that I'll never vote for the DNC again. Also, I'm originally from the Midwest. If I was a transplant anywhere, it was the west coast, where I only lived for a few years.
I hope you are right but two stories: years ago I was standing in line to vote and there was a lady in line loudly opining about how things were done in Cali, why it was better, and of course how we should be doing things because those tyoe of people think they know everything. All the cowboys were clenching their jaws but were far to well-mannered to say what we were all thinking. All these years later my distinctly conservative, red county is very purple. Yesterday I was waiting in line at the car wash behind a fellow with a Laguna Beach sticker and a decal based on the American flag. Where the stars should be it said In Our America and each stripe stated a liberal value. The one that really got me was "[A]ll immigrants and refugees are welcome." No they are not. What is being encouraged at the southern border is a travesty. I do not want to co-exist with these people.
Thank you all for your support. All valid points. Lynne, God has a plan in this for me; that is how I could stand strong. Bruce, I share your concern, and I will seek justice vis a vis my employer related to the terms of my termination. And I agree with you on inclusion and respect and how you approached it, and I speak up on that point. Anthony, you are correct, often times, those leading may not be the best. I feel like they have their personal self-interest in mind, but not that of others, certainly not that of the Company (I say that as a generality, not true of all leaders, and I picture a few specific leaders as I say that.) Scuba Cat, fortunately, I live in a reddish-purple state, in a rural county next to a blue metropolis. So, my daily existence is free, it is just my work life (ending soon due to my religious convictions) that is filled with meaningless words and cognitive dissonance. I did speak up and have been vocal to all about the reason for my departure, which I know has not pleased those in power.
I think we have an obligation to speak truth to authority, painful as that may be. I also find myself wishing for a way we could go through an amicable "divorce" from the woke left. I and like-minded people could exist without them. But I don't think they could exist without us.
Elegant and inspiring. Don’t wait too long for your own substack! “All of us every day face the choice to live honestly, to trust that the truth is better than lies, and to act out the proposition that wherever a forthright engagement with the people in our lives leads us is preferable to the place deception and manipulation take us.” Outstanding
I feel presumptuous commenting on your article, as I am no scholar, no accomplished writer, no credentialed intellectual and have not suffered anything close to your experience. Nevertheless, I thank you for courage in the face of calumny, for perseverance in the face of injustice, and for resurrecting the flogged body of Truth. In the atmosphere of mass hysteria we have lived through over the past two years, perhaps actual Truth may prove to be our salvation, and a pathway to a unity that actually celebrates our differences, not our grievances.
It is a mass hysteria as you point out. No different from Salem in the 1690s. Yet we laughed at them as demented rubes. Our "woke" need to have that mirror stuck in their faces, for they are exactly like those screeching, lying, deluded witch burners.
IIRC, one of the first targets of the gang of four were the academics who were rounded up and 're-educated or otherwise disposed of. This is kind of the opposite.
Not at all, it's a softer purge. Professors who are not Revolutionaries are already getting fired, bullied, or frightened into silence. Likewise the students.
This is what a Marxist Revolution looks like from the inside. It happens slowly over years, then suddenly all at once. America needs to realize the gravity of this threat and fight back.
My solution? Get the federal government out of the student loan process. Let the schools either underwrite the loans, or partner with financial institutions to do it. All of the major indoctrination 'studies' programs would disappear overnight as nobody would loan money to fund degrees that will never be able to pay them back.
The cost to do this would be an agreement to forgive all, or most of the outstanding debt. Yes, it would be a massive cost, and is unjust to those who paid (like me) for their and their kids educations, but the indoctrination going on in higher learning has to be stopped, and the cost of forgiving the loans is the price we'd have to pay.
Is it? Academia is every bit as woke as pop culture, believe me. You can google all the academics who have lost their jobs for not being woke enough, starting with Bret Weinstein. They aren't being killed yet, fortunately, but we need to be vigilant to ensure the mob doesn't start.
My belief is that the academic setting is where all of the woke theory is emanating from. Logic has fallen by the wayside and we now no longer bend just rules, we bend facts. I meant to say that academics (for the most part) are no longer the victims, they're now the mob.
The academics not on board with the current crazy agenda are still being victimized, and I hope that as more academics are cancelled for not appeasing the woke mob enough, maybe people will open their eyes and speak out about how illiberal it has become.
You are correct. I was in grad school in the early 00s, and I this ideology pervaded my department (English). I was terrified when it began to show up in the mainstream.
It was my dream to get a PhD and teach English Literature, and I had the skill and the brains to do it. But I gradually came to the realization that people with moderate classical liberal views like mine wouldn't get hired for tenure-track position. While hiring committees can't legally ask openly about your political views, they have plenty of Shibboleths to use to figure it out.
So I left with an M.A., a massive amount of student loan debt, and a lot of anger. But I can confirm that this Wokeness arises from the Marxist Critical Theory that has pervaded Academia for the past 25 years.
All you need to know about BLM is that with all of their millions of dollars raised they haven’t helped one black family pay rent, they haven’t paid one dollar of tuition for any poor black student, they haven’t bought groceries for one black elderly person, and they haven’t done one positive thing for any black family in America. They are imposters. They are thieves. They are the poster child for greedy capitalists. The leaders of BLM have been caught using donations to buy houses for themselves, cars, vacations, jewelry, etc. They’re crooks. And if anyone is canceling Eve over “woke” phoniness she should know there are twice as many people standing behind her for her courage.
True but you have to hand it to them; it was a pretty good con. Get a bunch of guilt-addicted white liberals corporatists and trust fund dolts to take a knee and buy you a bunch of mansions, even while you're preaching that the system that made the ridiculous whiteys wealthy was rotten to the core. About as probable as the success of Mel Brooks's "Springtime for Hitler." But, holy shite - it worked beyond all measure.
I was flabbergasted at the mass buying into the BLM con in the summer of 2020 on the part of corporations, institutions and ordinary individuals. Anyone who, like me, had lived in a city like Chicago or anywhere else BLM had engaged in histrionics before that could have told them this collection of grifters isn't legit. They would shut down traffic on Lake Shore Drive and harass Black Friday shoppers on Michigan Avenue--like those people are at fault for police shootings. Consequently, none of the recent revelations about their so-called leaders shocked me one iota.
Thank you!! And the damage they have done to our country is immeasurable. The hate they encouraged, the property damage...all to line their own pockets.
I so agree about the damage done, though I’ve also come to think that it’s pretty much confined to the bubbled world of media. For me, life on the ground is actually friendlier among strangers with different backgrounds than before the Floyd daily protests and nightly destruction. As a southerner who was raised always to nod or speak when passing by someone I don’t know (the heat is enough to cause a fight to break out even without an obvious slight), I sometimes get the sense from my black neighbors that they’re trying to let me as a white person know that they don’t agree with the “systemic racism” claim being shouted on TV and online. In my cul de sac of 21 townhomes, three houses placed one of those all-caps signs about what “We believe” in their yards. All are white women. One of the signs is still up. Meanwhile, three of the townhomes are owned by black women, none of whom felt the need to join in. This is primarily a progressive white women emotional problem that has been taken up by the world.
Thank you for this piece. It shows how so many of these industries are built not on integrity and merit but on the fragile bullshit of people who will cling to their positions through any disingenuous means possible. I understand it because I worked in the corporate environment and towing the line was the way to safety, but even that didn’t last long when the company was ready to cut your position. I wish you the best of luck in the future.
Can't tell if this is a joke or not. Amazon is very much part of the problem, the epitome of liberals working to enrich the richest while telling themselves they are all about "equity".
I was being sardonic, sarcastically mocking her excommunicated from the vainglorious music industry for speaking truth and fated to join the rest of in the world of mundane employment as epitomized by the soul crushing experience of a warehouse work. I guess I was saying tough shit.
Ah, see I was nearly offered a programming position at Amazon, so I regard employment there as a ticked to power and riches. The name and stock are both worth an enormous amount, but I knew working there would come at a spiritual price.
But if you were thinking "warehouse worker" the point makes sense. They are grunts, they don't get piles of stock riches.
I want to be sympathetic. No, okay, I AM sympathetic. But. . . But as someone who long ago paid a similar price. And very long ago, lost touch totally with the world of pop culture, the world of the with-it people, a world Eve Barlow inhabited, I find it hard to be completely down about her plight. The Vulture world. Meh. Lady Gaga, I don't care. Father John Misty, I had to look him up to see if I could find out why a "feminist" would have a problem with him. I couldn't. But being conflicted about the George Floyd BLM "protests"? Conflicted about what, exactly? That not enough black-owned businesses got burned down. I just wonder, when are people going to get UN-conflictedly fed up with it all. I hope Eve Barlow is, now. Eve, you do not need that reference group of self-important ninnies. Forget about them. You don't need twitter. I hope you are living without it. You know the song, "How does it feel? To be without a home? Like a complete unknown? Just like a rolling stone?" That is not an angry song. Not song of contempt. It is a joyous song. A happy song. Be happy. Be unambiguously happy to be rid of all of 'em.
Thank you. I too had a similar experience. Mine didn't blow up quite as big as yours. My crime? Pointing out that hate crimes against Asians was not "white supremacy" because not only white people were committing those crimes. Not only was I branded a white supremacist but many of my peers on "Film Twitter" went along with it. I know the feeling of being seeing ghosts too. Every time I go to a screening, every time I go to a film festival - there is that hesitancy of people who think "is this the same person I used to know"? Yes, it's the same person. It's just someone who escaped the cult.
On Election Day 2020, as I was heading home from the park, I heard the sounds of drills. All the apartment buildings and stores were boarding up their glass doors and windows. I remember thinking, "Am I living in America?" Thank God my parents weren't alive to witness this mess and it's only gotten worse. Yes, BLM has been exposed. Yes, many of the protests have quieted. At what cost? Mob rule? A president with dementia and a veep who only garnered 1% during her own campaign. 1%!!! May God help us.
Getting rid of Trump at any cost brought us sleepy Joe. Too many people know about Harris' record as a prosecuter for her to poll well, which I find encouraging because people are often pretty ignorant.
Maybe the midterms will produce sufficient change to instigate dual impeachments. And then, the newly elected Speaker of the House will become president.
My husband and I no longer discuss issues of race or antisemitism. We have been together for more than 45 years and I thought were both politically on the same page. I no longer question the inconsistency I find in the NYT reporting of race and Israel when he can hear. The NYT is holy writ for him. Anything they write or how they decide to treat writers is fine with him.
I too have been long married (38 years) and during all that time I have never insisted that my spouse do anything in particular. However, several years back I insisted he cancel our NYTIMES subscription. I did not want it physically in the house. There are too many alternative ‘news’ publications. That said, the NYTimes has truly become a propaganda tabloid bereft of news and honesty. We have not missed receiving it - in fact, we’ve had great discussions about finding alternative media.
When the NYT forced Bari Weiss out I lost a tremendous amount of respect for them. And then firing the editor who decided to sun the Op-Ed piece by Cotton. I’m waiting for them to turn on the Ukrainians and as a Ukrainian myself, I won’t be responsible for my comments. NYT loves “victim” stories and when you are no longer a victim then it’s F;:! You! They’ve done it to Israel they’ll do it to Ukraine.
I was an avid fan of NY Times until about the turn of the century. Something changed. Maybe because they were losing money in the age of the internet. So they felt they had to become partisan to hold on to their readership. But they lost all those who cared about real journalism. And they lost all credibility and dignity. Sold their soul.
They were always left-leaning but they reported facts - even when facts went against their editorial view.
But now they are clearly partisan actors. They skew the news and censor what does not fit their partisan goals.
I used to enjoy the NYT and record all the late night comedy shows but a couple years ago I slowly and quietly stopped consuming any of it because it felt like they were personally insulting me. And not subtly either. No middle of the road at all. I wonder if they'll ever notice that a bunch of people exited the building?
I used to say that the Times has been lying since the days of Walter Duranty. But I wonder if it's just baked into their DNA and they've been doing it forever.
It is, however I have not always been the perfect mate. That’s life. The only thing that will change if I argue is that our home will no longer be a home. I refuse to give that dirt if power to those I do not know personally. These times may divide our nation but they will not divide my home
Ugh, sorry. I'm so glad my husband and I are on the same page with most of this. I can't talk to my mother about anything political because she'll regurgitate everything said by CNN and MSNBC, which is regurgitated from the CIA. I already know what the CIA wants us to think, I don't need to hear it from my mother.
Oh a few have already. We have two daughters - 19 and 22- both adopted from China and once during a call a “woke” of a group he belonged to called us “white saviors” for adopting outside our race. Both girls heard the comment and were deeply offended by the tone and sentiment. But as my older girl said, Can’t fix stupid
A heartbreaking story, one of dozens or hundreds or more at this point. My own attempt to push back against the insanity of cancel culture, following Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" that ridicule is a potent weapon, is my new novel Nevergreen -- a satirical account of campus cancel culture in particular and its ideological excesses (plus it's secretly all about the cancellation of the Jews occurring on many campuses in the guise of anti-Zionism). Full info and great endorsements may be found at https://bit.ly/Nevergreen. One of these is from the executive producer of shows such as Homeland and 24, who presumably knows a thing or two about story-telling. Please check it out.
You should send your novel to Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire film company. Good chance they would turn it into a film, as opposed to the Leftist thought police who run Hollywood inc.
Unless you become really "controversial" you need some big name contacts. I do adult medicine in the sticks so I have no idea. I had read your book and see the endorsements. If you transitioned from the dying liberal academic bubble to the more conservative entertainment orbit you might get some contacts like Bari Weiss.?
Or, consider writing a column on Substack? I believe there are a lot of people like me who only invest in media from Substack (okay, I lied, I pay for Saager and Crystal as well as the WSJ), and it seems to be exploding.
Also, you might reach out to Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker (former and current academics) or Matt Ridley. All are classical liberal authors and I’m pretty sure they all know Ben.
Matt Walsh has a youtube podcast on Daily Wire, and you could try contacting him, too. And, Brett Weinstein, the original Evergreen professor who also has a youtube channel, would probably be very eager to help. There are many other centrist podcasters who could present you on their show. Start contacting them and let the momentum build.
This was painful to read and the author has my sympathy and -- for what it's worth -- my support. One of her statements, though, strikes me as inaccurate:
It seems to me that in this case it isn't that the truth (about, say, the immorality of defacing a synagogue) scared people -- though certainly there were people scared of speaking the truth.
Rather, there were people who took it upon themselves, with malice aforethought, to punish anyone who didn't fall into lockstep with them. At the source it wasn't fear but cruelty.
They say revolution eats their own. In the time of wokeness, I woke every day, to find out, that Institutions or people I used to admire have completely changed, became unrecognizable, and each time more and more extreme woke. I remember watching Colbert Report in early 2010. It was funny as hell, now I cant stand to watch it for couple of minutes. ACLU, I admired it, now I dont recognize it.
I have lost some fiends, for daring to question some topics for example made up pronounces, or to say that kids should learn math and science and not have sex ed at age of five.
Many of my American friends, have also awoken from the wokeness, each time story is the same => I was as democrat, a life long liberal then I dared to question dogma, and suddenly I became right extremist.
No wonder people say, I didn't left the democratic Party and Left Wing, they left me, by imposing ever stringent purity tests.
I hope, that this will soon pass, but I told that to myself years ago, when I laughed that no way a man will declare that he is a women and start wining in female sports (i thought, this was some right wing gibberish), I was very naïve, so naïve.
TO THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT - A MODERATE DEMOCRAT IS A RIGHT WING EXTREMIST
The Democrat Party has been hijacked by the Progressives. It will never be the same. This was always the risk of identity politics - taken to an extreme. 15 years ago, I told people this path would lead to destruction of the party. But no one listened.
Identity politics ultimately narrows the base - it does not open it or expand it. It is built upon negative energy of resentment and grievances. It is not positive or upliftiing. There is no vision of a better world. It relies upon division and animosity and, in order to succeed, it must perpetuate division and animosity.
Just based on what progressivism is there is no alternative but for it to narrow into a singularity and supernova. If the Democratic Party doesn’t disassociate from progressivism that is what will happen to it. Those in the party too chicken to fight it deserve to die that political death because they encouraged or failed to discourage.
If you look at the right in America the extremists are largely shunned that is how you keep some semblance of integrity. The Republicans are about to inherit all the old centrist Democratic Party refugees.
We may also have the emergence of a third party. This may be a healthy way democracy self corrects. If none of this happens the great experiment of America is finished.
"If you look at the right in America the extremists are largely shunned . . ."
That Greene, Boebert, and other batshits on the right got elected to Congress suggests otherwise. Get rid of them and we can talk.
You’ve got two problems. You can count the batshits on one hand in the Republican party. The batshits go all the way up to leadership in the Dems. Hirano? Whitehouse? I could list at least 20 or 30.
You also are falling victim to relativism. Even the nuttiest Republican looks pretty moderate compared to the progressives. The polls are starting to show it. Keep you head in the sand please. It’ll ensure the lesson you get this fall and in ‘24 will be memorable if not fatal.
Well said friend. I'm sick of liberals bellyaching about "those crazy Republican extremists." Where? For every Marjorie Taylor Greene there's an AOC, Rashida Talib, Ilyan Omar and Alyana Pressley. That THEY got elected to Congress terrifies me for one. That's before you even get into the crazy progressive pols at the state level like Gascon and Boudin and the new DA in New York.
The other difference is that the likes of Greene have no chance of ascending to or controlling the upper echelons of leadership in the party, unlike the puppet masters that control Biden, Harris and Pelosi.
For as long as I can remember progressives have pointed out this or that far-right loose cannon in the GOP and used them to smear the entire party and its voters as wingnuts. It won't work anymore. People who live in glass houses don't get to throw stones.
You left out Cori Bush and Kamala Harris both of whom have lied about the death of Michael Brown. Obama's own Justice Department found the death of Michael Brown to be entirely lawful. That hasn't prevented Cori Bush and Kamala Harris from lying about it. Kamala did get Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post for her lies.
Correct. Progressives pointing at conservative Republicans are like Bernie Maddoff (who stole $ billions) diverting your attention to a shoplifter.
"Oh, look at that shoplifter - what a shame the cops do nothing about such thieves" - and then , "don't talk to me about crime until you've cleaned up all the shoplifters on my block"
Progressives are very very very good at pointing fingers and diverting attention. Everything is whataboutism.
The response to BLM riots - "What about all the white supremacists?"
Response to the Border debacle? "What about Trump?"
Response to inflation? "What about the oil executives?"
There is so much more.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is actually pretty great. I thought she was nutty, but I didn't actually know anything about her, until I watched her on TimCastIRL podcast on YouTube. Watch the whole thing. She is pretty reasonable.
There is a crucial difference between far-left extremists and far-right extremists. The far-left runs everything and the far-right runs nothing. The 'woke' run the media, Hollywood, Tech, SV, corporate America, Wall Street, K-12 education, universities, the government (including many state governments), the FBI, the CIA, the military, NGOs, etc. What do the anti-'woke' run? Nothing.
Very true. Alinsky would be proud.
Their state houses (majority) and all the trigger pullers in the US.
I guess "the media, Hollywood, Tech, SV, corporate America, Wall Street, K-12 education, universities, the government (including many state governments), the FBI, the CIA, the military, NGOs, etc." don't pull any triggers in the US. You can learn so much online.
There will never be any "talking" to you. No matter what, you will always want more. I could ask you to do the same for Dems, but then there would only be a couple of people to talk to.
Oh, dear, you don't want to talk to me? I am of broken heart.
You have to have a heart first, before you can have a broken heart.
The relative power of the left and the right can actually be measured in a way.
Consider Prop 16 in California. Literally the entire California establishment (Harris, Feinstein, Newson, almost every newspaper, Twitter, Facebook, United Airlines and PG&E, the Golden State Warriors and the San Francisco 49ers, etc.) supported Prop. 16. Only the people were opposed
The elite/public schism is vast.
Prop 16 would have legalized racial quotas which we made illegal by Prop 209 in 1996.
Absolutely, you can measure the power of the left in California. But you can measure the power of the right in Texas, which passed unconstitutional and harsh bans on abortion and trans-ism, to name two. Every state has the same story, a wing and power imbalance for each.
Federally, left and right power wax and wane. Everyone claims the left is in charge of everything, but it isn't. Righties hold the Supreme Court and a large bloc of the federal bench. In the Trump years, not that long removed, it held the presidency, Senate, and Supreme Court, along with the Federalist Society to fill judgeships. Left controls much but not all of mainline media--Fox is mainline but hardly left--all elite academia and law schools, a sizeable amount of non-elite academia. Etc.
I think you're spot-on perfect when you say "the elite/public schism is vast." That's not so much left vs. right, but 1 percent vs. 99 percent or "we know what's good for you" vs. "let us live our own lives."
As a first point, you need to get your facts right. Texas has not banned ‘trans-ism’. That just media BS. However, the deeper point is that far-left rule is very, very real and the evidence is overwhelming.
Let me offer a few examples. How many media sources have reported that the police are just as likely to shoot whites as blacks? This is in fact the truth. See “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force” (https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force). The abstract reads
“This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.”
Has the NYT reported this? CNN? MSNBC? Not exactly. However, what they have reported is overwhelmingly biased. Let’s look at the Google statistics, "George Floyd" get 24.2 million hits in Google. By contrast, "Tony Timpa" gets 20,700 hits in Google. "Justine Damond" gets 52,300 hits in Google. Tony Timpa died in Dallas under circumstances somewhat similar to George Floyd. Justine Damond was shot and killed by the police in Minneapolis.
Here is another example. Racial disparities are widely reported by the media. How frequently is slavery (or later Jim Crow, Redlining, etc.) mentioned as a ‘root cause’? By contrast, how often is the 34X difference in per-capita GDP between Singapore and Haiti mentioned? How often is the existence of racial disparities in Canada that are very similar to the US, mentioned. Canada and the US have very different racial histories. However, the outcomare are quite similar. Only the ‘facts’ that support the religion of ‘white racism’ (where are the white racists in Singapore or Haiti?) and/or ‘systemic racism’ get mentioned.
CRT is widely taught in public schools. Is the 34X per-capita GDP ratio of Singapore vs. Haiti widely taught in public schools? How about the fact that Canada and the US have very similar income disparities? Is that taught in public schools?
Of course, the rot (left-wing rule) goes all the way to the top. Back in 2014 Obama said “"We are a nation built on the rule of law, so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury's to make," Obama said. He said it was understandable that some Americans would be "deeply disappointed - even angered," but echoed Brown's parents in calling for any protests to be peaceful.” No where did he say that his own Justice department found that Brown was a violent thug and entirely guilty and that Darren Wilson (the police officer) was entirely innocent (if you doubt any of this, go read Eric Holder’s report on the actual events).
Did CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, etc. call him a liar? I think not.
Of course, that has not prevented Kamala Harris and Cori Brown from lying about the 2014 events in Ferguson and getting away with it.
The case of Will Thomas provides another measure of left-wing domination. A majority of Americans (see the polls) don’t think men who pretend to be women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. What’s the media split? 99:1?
Chairman Mao would be proud.
If Mao was reanimated, he'd be canceled for being extreme right wing Han Supremacist.
😄 Probably.
Jon Stewart killed the late night TV talk show genre. I think all the Stewart wannabes use the same writers. Maybe that's why Gutfeld has been so successful. It's not like he's really that great, but nobody else is offering anything other than the same tired prog preaching, judging and shaming.
Gutfeld is hilarious and a non-zombie like most leftists today
Stewart and Colbert both
They all participated. Fallon, Meyers and Kimmel spend each night insulting the right.
That's why I haven't watched late-night talk shows in years. I watch old Johnny Carson reruns. Sad that I have to watch 40+ year-old talk shows to find something intelligent and grown-up. Talk show hosts used to do nonpartisan political humor. Just like the print media and cable news networks, the corporations that own these talk shows have decided to court a particular kind of viewer only. Just think what comic fodder Joe Biden and Harris would have been for Carson and Leno.
Yes! You step a toe outside of the “social justice” narrative and all of a sudden you are no better than a race separatists from radical far right (regardless of your repudiation of racism or the color of your skin, sexual orientation, etc). It is so constraining and exhausting and ultimately, the opposite of liberalism.
When the high priests of wokeism are advocating segregation, the least of your worries should be the 0.001% of idiots who also advocate segregation from the other side.
Incidentally, why is it ok for public schools, universities and the like to actively enforce segregation but beyond the pale when someone else not in the public school/university vortex does the same?
I fully expect to be living in race segregated neighborhoods before I die because the race hustlers demand it.
Edit to add link:
https://www.city-journal.org/woke-segregation-and-the-ghost-of-jim-crow
I agree with all points. It is so frustrating when individuals cannot see or are unaware of these ironies. This all falls within the theme of ostracizing dissent: it is crucial to “social justice” scholars for their narrative to remain uncontested because they want to remain *the* social justice, *the* antiracism in the public’s eye. This is also a part of their narrative.
My grandparents’ first house was purchased in the 1950s and had a no sale to blacks clause in the contract. That clause was shot down of course.
I was raised to believe in equality before God and the law.
It’s a bit jarring to see the conditions behind that 1950s contract resurrected before my eyes.
Yes! Exactly.
Remember how Larry Elder was called the black face of white supremacy? I can't believe anyone is allowed to say such things.
It is all these people have: to yell "white supremacist!" or "bigot!" (in the case of going against the Gender Ideology narrative). I don't mind that there are a few people who say whatever, but they are elevated to the "dominant narrative" while other voices of reason are shut out. Now we are in a situation where the Walt Disney company, whose business is children, is determined to take down the FL law that prevents Kindergarten through Third Grade sex and gender identity education. This may backfire on Disney as their brand becomes more and more associated with pedophilia. I guess robbers head for banks because that is where the money is and pedophiles head for Disney and Schools because that is where the children are?
Yup. Imagine being a moderate with a naive, straight, feminine daughter who suddenly thinks she's a homosexual boy part way through high school. You are suddenly the worst bigot in the world if you think something's up. Everyone around you - teachers, neighbors - beam and smile at your confused kid who says you parents are the only ones in the world who don't understand. Haven't teenagers always felt that way? But, the community used to not agree with them. Neither did doctors.
Much less surgeons happy to cut of her breasts.
Sooooo glad my girl is grown and my granddaughter is far from those people.
I hope she is far from these people, but your granddaughter must live outside the United States as it's everywhere here. This is by state: https://genspect.org/local/
She’s literally in the other hemisphere so she’s safe.
Stinks for me since visiting is a major exercise but keeping her safe and healthy is more important.
Yes it is. You are a loving maternal person who puts their welfare first as women tend to do - not like men who want to lactate... I think I read your posts on PITT.substack.com :)
Interestingly, the shit the far left is doing is similar to the far right race separatists (the very few that there are). They have started segregation in schools in some places by actually having the black kids in their own classes. Some colleges have done segregated graduations. Both of the far sides want the same thing.
Have you seen the YouTube video that points that out explicitly? It's hilariously on-point.
I don't think so. Sounds great though.
https://youtu.be/Ev373c7wSRg
Omg, that is hilarious! So spot on. 😂👍🏻 thanks!
I lost a good friend over facts. The truth. Sad
Me too. People are brainwashed.
It is a cult.
It hurts so badly. My oldest friend viciously turned on me after claiming we could agree to disagree over politics. Twice. Do I still communicate with her? Yeah, but the hurt never does go away and the band-aid on the relationship doesn’t cover a scar so much as it does a seeping wound which will never fully heal. She says I’m her longest and best friend. Like a wronged spouse, part of me still cares about her. I mourn the close friendship we once had but realize it existed because at that time we lived in the same state and were both liberal. My becoming conservative—or just less liberal—blew her mind. Now that we live 1,000+ miles apart and communicate digitally, we can be “friends.” It still breaks my heart.
You're hardly alone. I've lost at least two friends in the past 5 years, one over the Trump election (and I didn't even vote for him) and one over Covid. Just for, like you said, being less liberal than them or not being in lockstep. Not adoring Hillary. Not loving Obamacare. What is it with these people that they'd throw away a decade of friendship? It breaks my heart but I'm not going to stop being true to myself. Another liberal friend and I have "agreed to disagree," so I try not to be the first to bring up politics because I fear I'll have no friends left.
The saddest part of all this is some people lose not just friends, but parents, kids, siblings, etc. It’s horrible.
I imagine it’s she who changed not you
Eve Barlow writes bravely.
I lost my leftist religion in the early 90's. I still consider myself a classical liberal, but of course, that makes me a dangerous right winger to the Woke. I have read countless accounts here and on Quillette and many other platforms of progressives such as Eve getting cancelled or worse by the woke. Most come from the arts or academia. I was a furniture manufacturer and have spent a great deal of my life in factories. My reality has been much different. I feel compassion for these individuals but almost always notice something that makes me very pessimistic. I hear no passion to move the US out of its Wokeness. It appears their personal crisis and political values prevent them from supporting something like what Brandon Straka created, the walkawaycampaign.com. I know and support Brandon because he is certainly not what the Woke portrays him to be. He is simply courageous and understands his "liberal" world has been destroyed and he is doing everything in his power to fight that. And, he came to understand that Donald Trump is not the monster he is portrayed to be. As have I. Please do not stop reading.
Most of those who have had their lives turned upside down by the woke tyranny will simply never take that step. Trump has a very bad personality, but he does NOT tolerate violence as the Woke and progressives portray him. I support Trump and (may prefer) DeSantis because I believe we are being swept into a woke totalitarian environment that cannot be defeated by those unwilling to call it out for what it is, and are ultimately submissive when confronted by the violent mobs of the Woke. It is because I abhor violence that I believe in a strident non-violent activism.
But to reach such a conclusion one must connect certain dots. Eve, Jewish, as am I, now sees the Woke accurately as tolerant of violent anti-Semitism. I have been studying the Left since I was on it in the late 1960s. Twenty plus years ago I came to realize the Left was tolerant of violent anti-Semitism if perpetrated by Islamists. This tolerance has been broadened to allow it from BLM and antifa. Their "tolerance" is often actually advocacy.
One certainly does not have to be Jewish or a woman athlete or a straight white male to understand a horrible line has been crossed.
But because wonderful people such as Brandon Straka and Ron DeSantis and Larry Elder (another I know personally) have been painted monsters by the Woke and the Left in general, even those who have suffered terribly such as Eve will accept the Woke's characterization of them. Thus we may lose the few leaders who connect the dots and fight. The woke's domination of the means of propaganda and our culture (please read Heather MacDonald and Victor Davis Hanson) may now be complete enough to insure their owning America.
I may have to sign in on my wife and daughter's laptops so that I can like this two more times, :)
Dennies, you are right. Brandon Straka is doing amazing things in spite of his unjust incarceration. He demonstrates the bravery that is needed in this moment. We cannot be afraid of what "they" will do to us or we will lose the fight. I still believe most are not "woke," but cowed by their intimidation.
MLT, It is extraordinarily difficult not to be cowed. I believe most of us should remain stealth. But there is still so much we can do. If the masses who are non-woke are willing to fight, I want to believe we can still defeat wokeness. I have chosen to pour my time, energy and money into Nevada, a state I believe can stay sane. The last Virginia election gives me hope for Nevada. We will move to this state if need be. Pick where you can live safely and do all you can to keep it sane and safe. Where you pick to live free and safe must have reasonably honest elections. Volunteers are needed in huge numbers for poll watching, canvassing, etc. Without enough, conscientious poll watchers the left will always cheat. Every non-woke person should be a poll watcher if able.
Those who do not believe widespread cheating takes place by the left do not understand how many woke activists believe in conquest by "whatever means necessary." Personal integrity is not a value among them, purity to the cause is.
You are spot on. I, too, have seen this pattern. People will be canceled and they open their eyes to some of the crazy, but they don't make the full connection. They will still have great cognitive dissonance and not see the other connections. They'll see how they were deceived in one area and not realize the others.
Also, they need to learn about why this is happening and where this all came from. The "woke", BLM, CRT, equity, social justice. etc, etc. all stems from Neo-Marxist scholars of the past. They reject liberalism. Openly.
Colbert? How could someone not find these examples as the high watermarks of late night talk/humor?
Stephen Colbert Says Donald Trump's Mouth Is 'Vladimir Putin's C*** Holster'
https://pjmedia.com/video/stephen-colbert-says-donald-trumps-mouth-is-vladimir-putins-cock-holster/
Colbert on Question He'd Like to Ask Trump: 'What Does Vladimir Putin's D*** Taste Like?' - http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/07/28/colbert-question-hed-like-ask-trump-vladimir-putins-dck-taste-like/
Pelosi to Media: Follow the Late-Night Comedians in Taking Down Donald Trump, GOP: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2016/05/12/pelosi-media-follow-late-night-comedians-taking-down-donald-trump
And like obedient Pavlovian puppies, they comply.
I'd like to ask Colbert and his ilk what George Soros's or Barack Obama's d*** tastes like
According to Wikipedia, "The Reign of Terror ... was a period of the French Revolution when... a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervor, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety."
They say history repeats itself. And now, over 200 years later, we are unfortunately living through Reign of Terror II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
True. Another parallel is the role of the press.
Good point.
Terms like "cis" and all those pronouns are the language of a cult religion. We can be kind to confused people without catering to an entire new religion:
https://mercatornet.com/pronouns-game/77649/
Hey! You're here too. Haha. (I see you in PITT a lot)
It's a riff on the old Orwellian "...how many fingers am I holding up..." In short, I violate human reason with some gas lighting statement and then insert my insanity into the void. It leaves the victim ungrounded and twisting in emotional space. The real question is why and how has this manufactured idiocy come to dominate the American national dialogue? Because, Totalitarian Finance (WEF/BigTech/CCP/Democratic Party) intends to subvert and destroy the American Constitutional Republic and replace it with a new feudalistic social credit system. Your power as a Citizen is under direct assault. Fight back!!
Colbert was the same in 2010 as he is today. You haven't truly opened your eyes until you see that.
To combat this insanity, you need to recognize and oppose it even when it's not yet as powerful as it is now. Otherwise you'll contribute to the problem.
It's a cult, man. Good for you for keeping your head above it and out of your ass. 👏🏻
The newest purity test is "pronouns". In some social circles, failure to volunteer pronouns gets you shunned. It is idiotic.
It is a way for the woke cult to identify the indoctrinated and to shun the suspect "free thinker".
Yes. It's an anathema. Twenty-first century goose stepping.
Well, with the increase in desisting and detransing, I think they're in for a reckoning on that one. Once more snd more of this gets out and people see the damage that has been done to kids, people are going to freak.
Just not going to join others delusions
Exactly.
you did not lose friends you lost people you are better off not knowing . the insane cannot run things for long they will be gone soon i hope
I don't recognize the ACLU anymore either. And, I agree about dogma. There are people who have tried to track down where some of it is coming from: "Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology? BY: JENNIFER BILEK"
https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/
The ACLU is an entirely different organization now. The guy that ran it in the 60s/70s was interviewed on Bill Maher and talked about hos disgusted he was with their new direction. It's woke and only interested in woke victims. They basically support the tech censorship.
Agreed. And, they've got CMW ("Cosmetically Masculinized Woman") Chase Strangio working hard to upend society:
"Strangio is a female lawyer employed by the ACLU." & "A cataloguing of the individuals pushing gender ideology is long overdue."
Please check out the biographies:
https://www.womenarehuman.com/trans-biographies/
Strangio is a genuinely bad person. Quote from Strangio “stopping the circulation of this book [‘Irreversible Damage’ by @AbigailShrier
] and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on”. He later deleted his tweet.
Yes. Thank you. She is.
This is so far beyond what a handful of adults may have chosen to do with themselves in the past. Turning things around and ending the Cult of Gender Ideology and it's grip on our institutions is 100% a hill this mama will die on :) Let's begin with reality based language. Strangio is a Cosmetically Masculinized Woman (CMW). She really is a seriously bad person. No acronym necessary for that. We've seen bad people before but on this subject such folks get a "pass" and even adoration in the press. Our society does not need to adopt magical thinking including a new religion to allow a few folks to role play. These people really do not care what happens to children and young people.
I recommend a glance at this by psychiatrist Dr. McHugh:
https://couragerc.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf
Both sides, right and left, tend to be captured by the extremes. (And the other side is pleased to see these extremes, so they can use them for ridicule; Taylor-Greene a gift to Dems, AOC a gift to Repubs). Us moderates will vote, but the True Believers will send money and volunteer.
I think Bernie Sanders is mostly wrong about stuff, but he's lively and brings up the temperature in the room. I voted for Joe Biden, but face it, he's dull.
If Bernie had been nominated in 16 I would have voted for him, only because he wasn't part of the Swamp. I ended up voting for Trump and was shocked at what an effective President he was.
I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016(not Clinton ever), just didn’t trust him. By 2020 I’d have crawled over broken glass to vote for him
If by dull you mean cognitively declined and controlled by Obama, I agree.
You should watch Marjorie Taylor Greene on the podcast TimCastIRL on YouTube. I thought she was nutty (I'd only heard about her before this) until I watched her there and actually started looking up things about her. She's actually pretty reasonable. One of the only people who are talking about the mistreatment of J6 people as well.
Will you vote for him again?
Yes, but I'd prefer Desantis or Abbot, only because after seeing the lengths the left/media/deepstate/oligarchs went to steal the 2020 election, I'm afraid of them going even further in '24. OTOH, now that laptopgate is finally a thing, and Durham seems to be making progress, they may be defanged by then.
If he runs again. I'm pessimistic about candidates offered by both sides.
People deserve the respect they earn. Being kind is an actual virtue. Telling truth is paramount.
99.94% of humans born are explicitly male or female. People who present as hermaphrodite account for .06%. Then there is gender dysphoria.
Telling truth with observable facts and objective evidence is the kindest act one person can do for another.
I agree. No one "is trans or cis" but we might refer to cosmetically feminizing surgery and cosmetically masculinizing surgery so that a
"TransWoman" = a Cosmetically Feminized Man (CFM) and a
"TransMan" = Cosmetically Masculinized Woman (CMW).
I'm not kidding. It would be much more clear. And, we can't take back reality and help anyone if we continue to endorse delusion with gaslighting language. It does not do anyone a kindness. I do not see anything that is not courteous about CFM and CMW :) Please see also
https://couragerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf
Well said, Paul.
A "transgender man" is a woman.
A "transgender woman" is a man.
I’ve wondered about the nomenclature, and what you’ve written is ambiguous to me. Does “transgender man” mean XY [started life with a penis] but is now d/b/a a woman?
(And, of course, vice versa.)
Not rhetorical: I’m asking for clarification.
Just replace the term "transgender" with "pretend" and you'll get it.
🎯
Yep.
A "transgender man" is a biological woman (XX) who tries to pass herself off as a man. The actress Ellen Page who now calls herself "Elliot" Page is one such example
A "transgender woman" is a biological man (XY) who tries to pass himself off as a woman. Dr. "Rachel" (nee Richard) Levine, "Kaitlyn (Bruce) Jenner, and "Lia" (William) Thomas are all examples.
Jenner, 72, won the gold medal in the men’s decathlon in the 1976 Olympics as Bruce Jenner. She transitioned from a man to a woman in 2015.
For the past several months, she has been a vocal opponent of Thomas competing against women.
“[Lia Thomas] is also not good for women’s sports,” Jenner told Fox News in January. “It’s unfortunate that this is happening. I don’t know why she’s doing it. She knows when she’s swimming she’s beating the competition by two laps. She was born as a biological boy. She was raised as a biological boy. Her cardiovascular system is bigger. Her respiratory system is bigger.
“Her hands are bigger. She can swim faster. That’s a known. All of this is woke world that we’re living in right now is not working. I feel sorry for the other athletes that are out there, especially at Penn or anyone she’s competing against, because in the woke world you have to say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is great.’ No it’s not.”
Yes. And I remember seeing his face on the Wheaties boxes whenever I went to the supper market decades ago. Of course he always was, currently is, and will forever more be a human adult male, a man. Because no human being in the history of Earth has ever changed his or her sex. And deep down inside, under all his expensive designer dresses, his elaborate hairstyles, and his expertly applied makeup, I'm sure he knows that.
Someone else who knows that is Dr. "Renee" Richards (born Richard Raskind), the ophthalmologist who came out as a "transgender woman" back in the 1970s and famously played tennis in the women's part of the US Open. Now elderly, he has admitted to feeling deep regrets about the way his life turned out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/garden/01renee.html
WilLiam Thomas is bringing attention to how our world has been turned upside down. At least that part is a good thing. Most people didn't know about how 2+2=5 today.
I love how easily you stick to the truth and don't stick your tail between your legs just because of others who are searching for ways to accrue virtue signal points, Nancy. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Hi Penny. It is a good thing that a number of transexuals can see the unfairness in sports. I just have to take issue with the idea that some people really "are trans" somehow - whatever that could mean. From Dr. McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:
"The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight. "
and
"At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. "Sex change" is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder."
https://couragerc.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf
Now, past a certain age if a small number of people go for the cosmetic surgeries with eyes wide open to the consequences, that may be their business. But, the problem is that Gender as a whole Ideology is promoted in the schools K - University and confused naive young people are easily undergoing irreparably harmful hormone treatments and surgeries - often at college or at the hands of planned parenthood. There are something like 26,000 regreters on a subredit. And, it all starts with pronoun and name changes which really don't seem like a big deal to the kids at the time. It is kept secret from parents until the cult has really taken hold. The whole horrible thing is not even discussed in the papers - even after the Keira Bell lawsuit in the UK.
Unfortunately, some do support Lia Thomas.
My youngest half-brother is now a half-sister. I wasn't surprised when (s)he told me, because (s)he always had a kind of feminine energy.
Her wife posted on Facebook in support of Lia Thomas, using the "damned lies" variety of statistics to claim that William had been a talented athlete as a male, which somehow legitimated Lia's decimation of other female athletes.
Of course, that was my half-sister's wife, not my half-sister (who isn't on Facebook). I don't know what (s)he thinks, and I wouldn't dare to ask.
Thanks for this. You're right.
And thanks for the scientific accuracy -- you rightly say "genetic man", not "biological man". Someone who has transitioned has a mixed biology. But their genes are still what they were at birth - for now. In another generation that too might be different after transition.
Sorry to see you getting piled on below by some people who are hellbent on denying these elementary facts of biology.
Glad to see you got so many likes. You do indeed speak for a lot of us. The ones who wrote the nonsense back at you don't seem to. Good. There's some hope in the world.
Well, people who have had cosmetic feminizing or masculinizing, surgery do not really have "mixed biology". Have you read what Jazz Jennings has to go through to keep the fake vagina from closing (rings inside, etc.) for instance? I think most of these folks don't go for the "whole thing" though and that presents other problems with putting guys in women's spaces (some trans identified people are straight and some are gay). And, uh, I don't think anyone can ever be changed on the XX and XY level - that's in every cell in your body. We can be courteous to such folks without being forced to say we think they are another sex from what they are.
Thinking more about the "mixed" biology concept...The fact that your biology wants to heal from the "gender affirming" surgery and close up holes that should not be there, etc.- that the patient must spend his or her life fighting to keep the cosmetic fiction in place does make me question that "biology" has been changed in any way. To me, this goes back to how it is a visual trick, like photo-shopping images online - with the horrific difference that 10s of thousands of people subsequently realize they are permanently injured and there isn't much they can do about it. AND, the media refuses to report that. Of course, the teenage girls who have had double mastectomies by lazy plastic surgeons making $$$ without even reconstructing a pair of nipples - they just have physical and emotional scars: "The Call is Coming From Inside the House" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBInNGgdF2M
I'm sorry I wasted my time trying to reason with you. It would be silly for me to correct your many mistakes in fact and logic. You and I both oppose the suppression of speech by the PC crowd. That doesn't make everything anti-PC true. I at least try to figure out what is true. I recommend it to you. You won't get there by endless polemic.
I am sorry you feel that way. This response does not make any sense to me. I am glad we can agree about opposing the suppression of speech. I certainly do not "knee-jerk" oppose anything said by the PC crowd. Please have a look at the many many parent accounts on PITT.substack.com = Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans to see an angle that might have been suppressed from your view. Thank you. LM
Gene therapy is already a thing, it's just in the beginning stages now, used for the most extreme emergency conditions. It'll get easier and be applied to more things with time. It hasn't gotten to trans yet because it's not yet routine, and is not the thing most needed for trans people as yet, it's the macroscopic characteristics formed in earlier years that are most at issue and it's mostly too late to fix that with gene therapy. But it'll inevitably happen too, over the decades, for medical consistency. So will womb transplant, which is already possble but rare. Someday inevitably there will be ovary formation or transplant but that's probably farther off.
Tell you what, I don't force you to say they're biologically mixed, true though that is, and that's easy since I never tried to force anyone to say that or anything else; and you don't force me to say they're simply male or female when it's clear that biologically that's not true. Deal?
Hi Ira, I would not force you to say anything :)
There are men who have been given a hormone concoction so that they lactate and "breast feed" babies. Can this be the most nutritious milk for a baby? Also, the motivation is sexual. That sort of man is heterosexual with a fetish. Women do not get excited about themselves having breasts. They just have them. And, they tend to want to do what is best for baby.
There may well be womb transplants into a man. Is this ethical? So many things can go wrong when it is a woman bearing the child. Is a man bearing a baby maybe selfish? Does surgically constructing a bunch of things make a person biologically a thing? That's a good question. The body tends to want to fight to heal itself so men with constructed vaginas need to wear a (metal I think) ring inside to keep it from closing, for instance.
Gene therapy is a thing and likely is in the early stages. However, you get a set of X or a set of Y from your father (an adult human male) and this determines whether you are a boy or a girl. Changing each cell in your body in this way sounds pretty far fetched. And, what would be the purpose? Would such a person have working gametes?
So, we do want to be courteous to confused people but how far should that go? Please have a glance at McHugh:
https://couragerc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/TransgenderSurgery.pdf LM
This makes me think…. Just because we can, does it mean we should? Do we want to go down these roads ??? I don’t. And why would we? How have all of human kind been just fine without all of these freakish cosmetic pharmacological interventions and suddenly now everyone can’t live without them?? Unbelievable.
I am so sorry, but I don't understand this "biologically mixed" thing. Nothing genetic changes, chromosomes stay the same, and if meds are stopped then a lot of things revert back to the way they were.
I see a lot of magical thinking going on, especially when it veers into trans humanism. From the second a human life is conceived, it is sexed. It is bathed in the hormones of that sex during it's time in the womb. Every cell of that body has the DNA blueprint for it in there. That doesn't change because someone takes cross sex hormones.
It's exhausting to fight reality, and it doesn't work.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
All I could think, Eve, is that you write beautifully. Truly. Maybe you should stop wasting your time writing about fatuous garbage performed by equally fatuous, self-reverential imbeciles and focus, instead, on the themes you do here - life, truth, courage and the wonder of nature. Even with its latest descent into decay and degradation your description of LA - a city we both love - was so evocative of its beauty and promise. Don't be surprised that everything the Left claims it stands for is a lie. It is, and has always been, that way. You are joining a big tent of people who reject those lies, big and small. And who are dedicated to restoring belief in an America that is good, and just and honest and fair. Your voice is an important addition to that cause. Welcome.
May I edit? “Don't be surprised that everything the post-modern Left claims it stands for is a lie.”
The traditional, classical liberal democrat, sometimes overzealous in counter productive charity, is tolerant, respectful, and intelligent. When made aware of what woke really means, they reject it.
The thing I fear is the co-opting of our educational institutions such that classical liberal philosophy is lost. We are seeing the influence of that now.
Edit gratefully accepted.
I accept your edit to the extent I believe "classical liberal democrats" are good hearted people. But I believe they make decisions based on emotions rather than reason. I also think there is merit to that so long as our societal decision making is tempered with the rational. I think in essence that is the problem. With the reality now - we are so deeply divided that nothing is tempered at all. I am not a proponent of all or nothing. Lastly, I think the educational institutions are lost already.
You're not wrong. There's a woman I watch that talks about the state of schools and what is going on in them and how she advocates for the abolition of the compulsory school system. You're right they're lost. Her Youtube is The Reason We Learn, if it interests you. She has a wealth of info about schooling and all the stuff going. She also just started a substack under the same name.
Does she argue "go to school if you want, skip it if you don't?" Seriously? Or is there more to it than that?
Oh no no. Sorry, I probably could've explained it better. Lol. She argues for homeschooling, micro schools, pod schools, or back to local, community based schools that are led by the parents and community instead of the federal education system that has turned into giving tons of money to administrators and no teaching. (Only around 30% of kids are proficient in reading when they graduate. Same shocking results for math, science, and history)
She is all about education. Just not how it is being done because it isn't working and is getting worse.
Huh! Sounds like an interesting new approach, I'll have to check it out. Thanks.
"I believe they make decisions based on emotions rather than reason."
Not in my experience, we don't. That said, pure rationality or pure emotion is bad for culture. Both are cruel in their own way.
The comment on emotions was not intended as an insult and perhaps it is not a good use of the word. I am referring to political Ideology and actions. And it seems to me that progressive policies are about rescuing folks that are deemed to be mistreated/oppressed/disadvantaged. That makes the rescuer feel good about themselves which is an emotional response whether the rescued person or group is actually benefitted or not. All of that money handed out as covid "stimulus" no doubt made Congressional members, and by extension their supporters, feel good that they were doing something to help but in fact it has done the opposite. Inflation hurts low income earners far more than it does those who earn more. Covid responses were largely driven by fear which is a different kind of emotion. People in red states were demonized as being heartless and cruel. As a result the covid response was completely politicized, the "science" (which to this day we do not know because scientific scrutiny takes time when a novel virus is being examined) was completely skewed and now we have people who have lost faith in the medical profession. People knew that Biden was not competent but voted for him anyway because they hated Trump, yet another emotion. A rational approach to any of those issues would have gone a long way.
Oh, no worries, I didn't take it as an insult, just a chance to affirm that most of us, whether con or lib, use a mixture of emotion and logic to get things done. Neither emotion nor logic will move the needle much.
Agree completely that "rescuing" people that don't need rescuing--or even bothering to ask them, "Ya need help?"--is exactly what we shouldn't do. Pandemic spending should have been far more targeted.
As for demonizing, that certainly went both ways. Wingers on both ends conducted a scorched-earth war against each other--and the rest of us--in order to get attention, clicks, likes, and "influence." It got ugly and personal early in the Trump years because that was Trump's preferred management style, he won the presidency with it, and everyone jumped on the train. But it's poisonous.
Disagree about Biden. He got Covid shots into arms, pulled us out of Afghanistan inelegantly but finally, and has handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine masterfully. He's not incompetent.
I didn't hate Trump. I just didn't want four more years of him and the circus. The positive things Trump accomplished--and yes, he did do some good things--were vastly outweighed by his insatiable need for attention. MAGAs and Progs responded with The Culture Wars, and the rest of us were hit by their shells. It was so tiresome I needed a break and so voted for Biden. I don't regret it at all.
A pleasure discussing with you, Lynne.
"Disagree about Biden. He got Covid shots into arms, pulled us out of Afghanistan inelegantly but finally, and has handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine masterfully. He's not incompetent."
Sorry, Bill (or do you prefer William?) but Biden is a cognitive mess. He is hopelessly corrupt and, as was observed by Gates, has been wrong about every foreign policy issue. He got shots into arm with a strong-arm, unconstitutional mandate that was overturned. His Afghan pullout was a catastrophe. His handling of Ukraine has been far short of "masterful," having antagonized Russia and then refused Ukraine the arms necessary to repel the invasion he and his State Department made almost inevitable. He mumbled about the coming invasion but did nothing to stop it and his daily, public gaffes have been idiotic and humiliating. You're a very smart man but you are willfully deceiving yourself if you refuse to see that Biden is mentally and physically unfit to serve in the role in which he was installed. The world is far too dangerous a place for this nonsense and charade.
Very well put. I believe a very large majority of Americans agree on 90% of everything, yet we let the 10% cloud our view of what really is important as citizens. A good example is border security. 80% or more agree that our border should be secure yet many choose to misinterpret Emma Lazarus' poem etched into the Statue of Liberty; we let our hearts get the best of us rather than interpreting things in a practical way.
The border should be secured but we have a President who is not only failing to enforce our immigration law but is willfully subverting them by transporting illegals all over the country. If we had a Congress worth even a pile of dog doo, he would be impeached for that treachery alone.
If we had a Congress worth even a pile of dog doo . . . we would never have let the border get away from us like this. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, our immigration policy is a multi-decade, both-parties, disaster that should never have gotten to this point. But two parties wanted illegals: Democrats for the political votes, Republicans for the cheap labor. I try to avoid "a pox on both houses," but immigration is a shitshow that both parties shovel with glee.
Also, many people are buffaloed by media, social justice warriors, and out government that all these people are "asylum seekers." Just ignore that they came thousand miles through several other countries (some even flew from across the world to Mexico so they can get in 😵) to get here and that they all dress nicer than I do. 🤪
Hey, everybody dresses better than I do :-) But yeah, everyday Americans really do need to wise up and looking beyond the propaganda flowing like rivers of pus from the party most responsible for our mess: The United Corporate Party of America Inc.
😄 Full agreement!
"The traditional, classical liberal democrat, sometimes overzealous in counter productive charity, is tolerant, respectful, and intelligent. When made aware of what woke really means, they reject it."
Thank you for expressing my own political outlook perfectly.
Yes, exactly. Currently though, the left is overrun by them. The Postmodern Neo-Marxists actually reject liberalism.
I reject neo-Marxists, neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, and neo-libertarians as different strains of the "I got mine, fuck you" virus.
WS, I think your 1/3rd right. Neo-liberals fit your definition. Neo-conservatives and neo-Marxists don't. Neocons want endless war (particularly in the Middle-East). They are not satisfied with the status quo. Neo-Marxists want a revolution. They are not satisfied with the status quo.
I agree. Eve's description of the Los Angeles hills was breathtaking, pure poetry. And her insights about the craven idiots who kowtow to the left's most egregious demands was pure truth.
Eve has what you call talent she doe ot have to worry that the insanoverse she was part of has rejected her . Talent and truth is all she needs . Stand up to the idiots you'll be fine
I was trying to think of what to "say" to M. Barlow. You did it better, Bruce. TYTY to both-a Youse.
Well said, Bruce, thank you.
Nice comment, Bruce. When I finished reading Ms. Barlow's essay the one metaphor I came up with (and not for the first time these last few years) was the image of zombie like lemmings running pell mell over the cliff of mainstream woke acceptance, the blind lemmings in this case, institutional and independent media alike - stumbling over themselves to be the most relevant follower in today's microaggressed extreme progressive piety and sanctimony. With the writer writing truths as she saw them caught in the stampede.
It's not the lies of the left so much that disappoint me - the the hard right conservative side is also capable of that - it's the meek blanket acceptance of a dominant narrative by people who should, who must, know better - but defer instead to the herd instincts of the mob and tag along, repeating ad nauseam the propaganda.
As for her wasting time on fatuous garbage performed by equally fatuous imbeciles (and a good take on today's musical landscape), I heartily agree - her writing deserves better. Though I have to admit, her enjoying Jeff Buckley can only be construed as a good thing.
Ever read Animal Farm? The parallels are easy to spot. People are called sheep for a reason. Lol
Ditto the lemming image for me. But the chilling thing is that people become aware of the issues and continue to live in fear, afraid to speak out.
Well said, Bruce. As I read through Ms Barlow's essay, I wanted to jump to the comments section and scrawl something along the lines of, well, let's just leave it at that. Your post reminds us that grace is the best approach.
Beautifully expressed yourself, Bruce. I agree this was a world-class piece of writing.
The problem is that entertainment journalism and its cousins bring in the money to pay the rent. Serious writing about serious issues . . . doesn't. I hope she can do both, and maybe start her own Substack for the non-entertainment stuff.
It wasn't just synagogues which were vandalized in the LA's BLM march, it was much the city's most Jewish area. But don't you dare speak about it.
Also, don't speak about the dozens of instances of antisemitic incidents in NYC in the last month, the vast majority of which were committed by black people.
Don't speak about the fact that there were more antisemitic attacks in NYC in the last month, than anti-black attacks in the whole last year.
Don't speak about all the anti-Asian violence, also mostly coming from black people.
Don't talk about how according the latest FBI data, black people commit twice as many hate crimes as the rest of the population.
Remember, black people are always the primary victims of racism, even when every data point says otherwise. And don't dare speak about antisemitism either.
Yes as the woke screech for an "honest discussion about race" and then shut it down when confronted with uncomfortable facts. A philosophy based on lies will be the ruination of America.
The only "honest discussion about race" they want is for you to buy into the "white privilege" narrative and then sucomb to their neo-racism.
Very true. The “honest discussion” comes to a screaming halt with the “It’s not my job to educate YOU” response. This is usually at some point followed by the “facts based on data are basically racist, and I shouldn’t even have to bring that up.” I just remember seeing a TV reporter standing in front of a burning building during one of the peaceful protests and the ticker line under it read “Fires under control during peaceful protest. And holy lace doilies, I’m a left of center liberal. But I still have brains.
I would add that a lo-o-o-ong string of links is sometimes provided. Which is nothing more than a sure-fire way to shut down the necessary conversation.
More like “based a philosophy based on lies ~that you aren’t permitted to refute.~ “
Bruce reminds me of Col Jessup in the movie; A Few Good Men, where he tells LTJG Kaffee (Bruce), “You can’t handle the truth! Son,” except this time the Colonel is correct!
No doubt there is systemic racism, it's just 180 degrees from what BLM preaches. It's built into academia, media, HR departments and Hollywood. Racism is now a business fueled by many of the 'studies' programs that have flourished in Liberal Arts programs, and funded by federal guarantees of student loans. It can't go away as too many people rely on it as a source of income.
You have to give them credit. They created out of whole cloth a market for their otherwise useless XXX Studies degrees for which they paid $100k.
I always wondered what those people planned to do to pay back their student loans. . ..
For which we paid 100k. Most of the people pushing this stuff got a free ride. It's easy to be a socialist or anarchist when others pay the bills.
True but not all of them got a free ride.
Most working class and poor kids who are able to go to college are strongly encouraged to go into a field that will enable them to obtain good paying jobs (medical, engineering, computer science, etc.)
👏🏻👏🏻
One of the "It must never be mentioned" was the targeting of churches and synagouges during the Floyd/1619 riots. I didn't know the anti-semitic attacks were as widespread in LA but its not surprising.
There was a report that made national broadcast news. It was when Jews were targeted at restaurants in LA. Guess you missed that. Also, it was front page of most major news papers.
This Jew will shoot back if attacked. But I'm in the Midwest, not L.A. We're allowed.
welp...at least we found someone, still into "national broadcast news". ..shockingly
I believe that was when Israel was there n combat with the pa. There was also targeting of Orthodox Jews in New York. I think that was separate outburst of anti-Semitic violence then the original summer riots.
Yes. But it was the same woke activists/ agitators/ arsonists.
With this in mind, the FBI recently announced it won't be releasing stay by race anymore. They "don't have the manpower" to collect or process the data anymore.
A major evolution of the American Color Revolution is hiding the data and insisting on trusting your "experts", especially when they're lying.
Mmmm, FBI isn't hiding the data in this case. FBI had to cut back because local and state police departments have quit providing many crime stats, being overwhelmingly understaffed and having to cut corners too.
That is the reason they provided and I am sure there is truth to it. But I also believe that many people involved have an ideological interest in hiding some of the data. This is based on years of watching Seattle media loudly emphasize the race of white criminals, and attempt to hide or downplay the race of non-white criminals completely.
I read that they had changed the formatting for reportage too. But IMO the stats have long been slanted for a variety of reasons.
Ant...start. OJ Simpson, "if it doesn't fit...must Aquit", while trying to fit One Glove Over Another rubber Glove"...not easy.
Sort...arrangement for "process THE data"...offhanded
The church I’ve attended for two decades instituted an armed security group for every Mass in the immediate aftermath of the Floyd riots.
We’ve had several threats deemed credible by local police and our diocese takes it seriously.
I am in Texas. Most of the churches here are very security conscious.
Yea..and some of your patrons are armed. As we seen in the one Texan church shooting a few years ago. That guy saved lives with his quick actions. 💪🏻
I never understood that but apparently there is a hierarchy of victimhood. So black trumps Jewish and transgender trumps woman.
Wondering Wonder, misrepresenting, and lying, come easy for you! For example, here’s what ADL said about the “LA's BLM march”; ‘…the claims of targeted antisemitic violence have been exaggerated or misrepresented.” Where is the proof that; “…the vast majority of which were committed by black people.” And how about; “…the latest FBI data, black people commit twice as many hate crimes as the rest of the population.” Is a lie according to; 2021 eight crime statistics Of the 6,780 known offenders, 55.1% were white, and 21.2% were Black or African American.
In 2020, according to this, Jews had the least incidents:
Anti-black or African-American 2871
anti-white 869
anti-Jewish 683
Sixty-five people click the cherished heart. Did they believe your lies because there racist, or are they simply ignorant?
https://www.adl.org/disinformation-exaggerated-claims-of-targeted-antisemitic-violence-in-los-angeles
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-updated-2020-hate-crime-statistics
https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/hate-crime
There a total of 38 hate crimes against blacks in NYC in 2021: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/hate-crimes.page
There were 56 hate crimes against Jews in February 2022: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00039/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-february-2022
From the FBI data you mentioned, you left this part out: "5.4% were of a group of multiple races. The race was unknown for 15.7%".
That leaves 78.9% single race offenders whose race was known. (Multi-race offenders may have been black too). Once you take that into account, the percent of attacks by Blacks was about 26.9 percent, which is more twice the Black population of 13%.
The numbers you quoted for hate-crime victims are laughable without taking into account proportion of the population. There are more than 6.5x as many blacks as Jews in the country, so even 3x as many attacks against black still means that Jews are more than twice as likely to be victims.
As far as the BLM antisemitism in LA, there were 5 synagogues and 3 religious schools vandalized, and most of the Jewish businesses on Fairfax Avenue were looted. Witnesses heard the protesters saying "effing Jews".
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/daniel-greenfield/the-la-black-lives-matter-rally-that-became-a-pogrom/2020/06/22/
https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/06/26/the-silent-american-jews/
“The attack on our community last night was vicious and criminal. Fairfax is the center of the oldest Jewish community in Los Angeles,” Councilman Paul Koretz said. “As we watched the fires and looting, what didn’t get covered were the anti-Semitic hate crimes and incidents.”
And that was just one BLM protest. There has been plenty of other antisemitic incidents at other BLM protests. There are videos of religious Jews who support BLM being threatened and attacked too.
And if you don't like the term 'pogrom' being used for the LA BLM protest, then look at the 1991 Crown Heights riots for a much clearer example of a pogrom by members of the black community. Though as a fan of the ADL, whose leader appears frequently with its inciter Al Sharpton, it's probably been erased from your memory.
WanderingWonder - well said. Per Capita incidents is a concept leftists only understand sometimes. The 2020 national crime stats are clear that for homicides where the race of the offender is known, 55% were committed by blacks (who comprise 13% of the population). This is never discussed. Can you imagine if even 50% of murders were committed by non Hispanic whites?
Well, if 55% were committed by non-Hispanic whites, that would STILL be less than our % of the population. Last I looked, black ppl disproportionately committed more of every crime (murder and violent crime being farrr above) except for dui, drunkenness, and another drinking one that I can't remember the name of.
Yes, that was my point. Per capita, with non-hispanic whites as the majority (barely, around 60% at this point) in the USA, one would expect to see a similar ratio for murders. That is not the case at all.
Jessica, why do you think that is? Is it genetics? Or sociological?
I think it is cultural. A culture that glorifies crime will be more likely to commit crime.
Wondering Wonder, You give the links to verify the 38 hate crimes and 56 hate crimes, which I did not dispute; what I disputed was, “…the vast majority of which were committed by black people.”, Which you conveniently sidestep, your source does not supply who committed the hate crimes, I suppose you could be psychic!
You try to explain away; ‘…black people commit twice as many hate crimes….” By pointing out “…the percent of attacks by Blacks was about 26.9 percent, which is more twice the Black population of 13%.”, which is irrelevant to your comment!
Then you jump into whataboutism: (the technique of responding to an accusation by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue.) by pointing out the proportionality of hate crime, which I said nothing about. You try to obfuscate the subject by introducing unproven assertions; “And that was just one BLM protest. There has been plenty of other antisemitic incidents at other BLM protests. There are videos of religious Jews who support BLM being threatened and attacked too.”
I think it’s safe to say your lies and unsubstantiated accusations do not come from love; the question is, what belief system gave birth to these lies, and unsubstantiated accusations!
Learn proportions. I haven't looked at your numbers. But just taking what tou have, the white population is committing them at a lower proportion. 55% is far lower than their % of the population. Black people are only 13% of the population so they, by your numbers, commit them more proportionally. Much more.
Remember, anytime one tosses out the 13% of the population, divide that by half to get a general percentage of males, who commit most of the violent crime, so it's actually 7-8% of the population committing these 55% of the crime.
That is a very good point.
Racism and victimhood have been thoroughly embedded in academia, and as long as alumni keep making donations, it will only get worse.
I don’t spend too much time thinking about lunacy. Gives me a headache.
Well, I guess you'd have to listen to NPR...
For anyone who has been cancelled, ostracized, or otherwise shunned for failing to parrot the woke words of the day, this piece must surely resonate. This will only stop when we, as a group, community, and country stop going along.
How do we do that?
Personally I've stopped supporting all major social media, I've cancelled all subscription services, and I'm withdrawing support from any business that has an executive "diversity officer."
But I left Seattle in loud protest of their participation in the Woke Revolution, and that mostly means I no longer have influence in the heart of the problem.
We need more than a lack of participation, especially when so many Woke institutions get their money straight from the federal government (by which I mean the Democratic Party).
Trillions of dollars of spending to keep the Wokest on top, and then blame inflation on Putin. The Revolutionaries are dumb enough to believe it.
We need active resistance. A counter-offense built on real principles.
Anyone have suggestions?
Ant...right on target. Promote "EVs". there is only 1/2 of society that will be able to cope with the upcoming Disaster, then we eliminate the TV...gratitude shall.
I dont know you but Im sitting here so proud of you and your accomplishments. A strong brave woman that deserves to be loved/appreciated for her talents. Stay the course. Cheers to your future!
Hardly any of us are like Eve Barlow, with her skills, audience and reputation as an author. But all of us every day face the choice to live honestly, to trust that the truth is better than lies, and to act out the proposition that wherever a forthright engagement with the people in our lives leads us is preferable to the place deception and manipulation take us. We live in an era of massive moral confusion. Competing claims about this or that code of behavior or lifestyle fascinate and distract us. In the face of all that the basic first question which ought to engage us is the one the author has faced and answered: are we going to trust the truth and demand of ourselves that we live it out? Until we have an answer we probably ought to worry less about the conduct of everyone else and the decay or corruption of the culture around us. The place to start is with ourselves.
And how many people, forced to regurgitate the latest woke insanity to save their job or avoid censure, find themselves in the same position as Galileo, forced by an earlier but no less powerful and deceitful Inquisition to recant his theory of planetary motion, remarking upon finally being released, the essential truth that "Eppur si move;" (still it moves)? We know that the entire woke philosophy is a lie. Let's just stop playing along.
I don't play along. I have lost my high paying job in a professional field, equally woke, due to my conviction (not choice) to rely on natural immunity. But long before that, many knew that I did not embrace other elements of woke culture. I believe in inclusion and mutual respect, but not in the way practiced, and have always been open. I believe that data and facts should support narratives, so I am always on the outside. Always excluded, when I appear to be in the inner circle. It is/was a soul crushing existence, and in many ways I am glad I have been ousted. The job search has surprisingly been more receptive to me than I expected, though I don't have a job yet. But I have freedom, and I have my integrity. Thank you for writing this. I believe there are more like you than not, if we can just find a way to escape and be true.
I held out and regained my medical autonomy when the Supreme Court struck down the OSHA mandates.
Most of my coworkers buckled under the threat and submitted to a medical procedure they did not want.
I feel for them.
Best of luck on the job hunt.
That's just the thing - most of us believe in inclusion and mutual respect. To claim otherwise is both a lie and self-deceit of the Left. But we also believe in truth. And if a person is not cutting it, or isn't qualified for a job, they don't get a pass because of irrelevancies such as skin color or with whom they sleep. And, worse, if someone such as you is fired for standing for truth, that's just not America anymore. Forcing us to lie as the price of success is insane. Or Soviet, at the very least. Sooner or later this will not end well. I have a very bad feeling about a looming tidal wave of reprisals.
The Left has built up a strawman version of everyone on the Right. Or rather, more of a boogeyman version. It's a variation on the "red neck" and "hick" stereotype that has long been used to deride people who live in rural areas. But now it's been painted with a varnish of KKK and expanded to apply to the entire Right.
It's frightening that so many people on the Left unquestioningly believe that everyone to the right of them are White Supremacist neo-Nazis who want The Handmaid's Tale to be a reality.
This is part of what concerns me. Positions if money, power and influence are being abandoned and left to the worst people. This ought to lead to the collapse of those institutions as they lose real talent, but the government props them up.
People like you losing their jobs implies the high money and power jobs go to the Woke, exactly as the Revolution planned it.
We need lawsuits. Lots and lots of lawsuits.
You think that based on your understanding of the rule of law. I am not sure that exists anymore.
I relocated. I recommend it.
I must admit, I hate the sudden appearance of NY, PA and CT license plates all over my county.
Californians ruined my home state 20 years ago. I confess I loathe an entire state for trashing my once-livable home.
Now the NE libs are targeting my resident state.
I’ve informed hubby we have to start planning a move. I’ve no desire to watch them ruin this state too.
Not to say that you in particular Scuba Cat are responsible for any of that. It’s just the normal people in the rest of the country are suspicious of lib-world transplants who flee the destruction only to replicate it in their new locales.
My Seattle-based gay niece is horrified by what is happening in her state. She asked about moving to Florida. I was thunderstruck. Do I say, “Come on down?” Do I say “Leave your politics behind?” I love her deeply and have supported her. But do I want her politics to ruin the state I live in?
Say both things.
I think most of us are not planning to replicate it. Maybe in the last decade when people moved because taxes were too high and then voted for policies that would result in higher taxes, but I can tell you that I'll never vote for the DNC again. Also, I'm originally from the Midwest. If I was a transplant anywhere, it was the west coast, where I only lived for a few years.
I hope you are right but two stories: years ago I was standing in line to vote and there was a lady in line loudly opining about how things were done in Cali, why it was better, and of course how we should be doing things because those tyoe of people think they know everything. All the cowboys were clenching their jaws but were far to well-mannered to say what we were all thinking. All these years later my distinctly conservative, red county is very purple. Yesterday I was waiting in line at the car wash behind a fellow with a Laguna Beach sticker and a decal based on the American flag. Where the stars should be it said In Our America and each stripe stated a liberal value. The one that really got me was "[A]ll immigrants and refugees are welcome." No they are not. What is being encouraged at the southern border is a travesty. I do not want to co-exist with these people.
My state too. I am thinking take their money and run.
Yeah, emphasis on RUN.
God bless and keep you.
Thank you all for your support. All valid points. Lynne, God has a plan in this for me; that is how I could stand strong. Bruce, I share your concern, and I will seek justice vis a vis my employer related to the terms of my termination. And I agree with you on inclusion and respect and how you approached it, and I speak up on that point. Anthony, you are correct, often times, those leading may not be the best. I feel like they have their personal self-interest in mind, but not that of others, certainly not that of the Company (I say that as a generality, not true of all leaders, and I picture a few specific leaders as I say that.) Scuba Cat, fortunately, I live in a reddish-purple state, in a rural county next to a blue metropolis. So, my daily existence is free, it is just my work life (ending soon due to my religious convictions) that is filled with meaningless words and cognitive dissonance. I did speak up and have been vocal to all about the reason for my departure, which I know has not pleased those in power.
We need more like you. Your voice is important. God bless you for speaking the truth.
I think we have an obligation to speak truth to authority, painful as that may be. I also find myself wishing for a way we could go through an amicable "divorce" from the woke left. I and like-minded people could exist without them. But I don't think they could exist without us.
Elegant and inspiring. Don’t wait too long for your own substack! “All of us every day face the choice to live honestly, to trust that the truth is better than lies, and to act out the proposition that wherever a forthright engagement with the people in our lives leads us is preferable to the place deception and manipulation take us.” Outstanding
Thank you steve - that's very generous of you.
I feel presumptuous commenting on your article, as I am no scholar, no accomplished writer, no credentialed intellectual and have not suffered anything close to your experience. Nevertheless, I thank you for courage in the face of calumny, for perseverance in the face of injustice, and for resurrecting the flogged body of Truth. In the atmosphere of mass hysteria we have lived through over the past two years, perhaps actual Truth may prove to be our salvation, and a pathway to a unity that actually celebrates our differences, not our grievances.
It is a mass hysteria as you point out. No different from Salem in the 1690s. Yet we laughed at them as demented rubes. Our "woke" need to have that mirror stuck in their faces, for they are exactly like those screeching, lying, deluded witch burners.
Thank you for the Salem analogy. I hope you don't mind me stealing it. :)
More reminiscent of the Chinese cultural revolution, if you ask me.
IIRC, one of the first targets of the gang of four were the academics who were rounded up and 're-educated or otherwise disposed of. This is kind of the opposite.
Not at all, it's a softer purge. Professors who are not Revolutionaries are already getting fired, bullied, or frightened into silence. Likewise the students.
This is what a Marxist Revolution looks like from the inside. It happens slowly over years, then suddenly all at once. America needs to realize the gravity of this threat and fight back.
My solution? Get the federal government out of the student loan process. Let the schools either underwrite the loans, or partner with financial institutions to do it. All of the major indoctrination 'studies' programs would disappear overnight as nobody would loan money to fund degrees that will never be able to pay them back.
The cost to do this would be an agreement to forgive all, or most of the outstanding debt. Yes, it would be a massive cost, and is unjust to those who paid (like me) for their and their kids educations, but the indoctrination going on in higher learning has to be stopped, and the cost of forgiving the loans is the price we'd have to pay.
I completely agree that the student loan program was. A major driver of this.
But I, personally, can't change that. Maybe I can write a letter to my Senator which will be disregarded.
I don't want to know, "what is a hypothetical solution" I want to know what can ordinary people start doing?
Other than flaming West Coast people on public forums, which is probably not helping a lot :/
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Exactly
Is it? Academia is every bit as woke as pop culture, believe me. You can google all the academics who have lost their jobs for not being woke enough, starting with Bret Weinstein. They aren't being killed yet, fortunately, but we need to be vigilant to ensure the mob doesn't start.
My belief is that the academic setting is where all of the woke theory is emanating from. Logic has fallen by the wayside and we now no longer bend just rules, we bend facts. I meant to say that academics (for the most part) are no longer the victims, they're now the mob.
The academics not on board with the current crazy agenda are still being victimized, and I hope that as more academics are cancelled for not appeasing the woke mob enough, maybe people will open their eyes and speak out about how illiberal it has become.
You are correct. I was in grad school in the early 00s, and I this ideology pervaded my department (English). I was terrified when it began to show up in the mainstream.
It was my dream to get a PhD and teach English Literature, and I had the skill and the brains to do it. But I gradually came to the realization that people with moderate classical liberal views like mine wouldn't get hired for tenure-track position. While hiring committees can't legally ask openly about your political views, they have plenty of Shibboleths to use to figure it out.
So I left with an M.A., a massive amount of student loan debt, and a lot of anger. But I can confirm that this Wokeness arises from the Marxist Critical Theory that has pervaded Academia for the past 25 years.
I don't agree. They're hundred time wORSE, right?
Maybe only because they're magnified by technology and have truly captured most if not all of our major institutions.
You've got the right of it there, Sir.
Good parallel. You're not wrong.
You write elegantly here, you are not remotely presumptuous to comment.
Nearly everyone writing in this newsletter to speak out against the Woke are Jews.
Most of them contributed to the culture and environment that turned on them, and that's why they speak out now.
You never contributed to that culture at all. You have the moral high ground and every right to be posting here.
All you need to know about BLM is that with all of their millions of dollars raised they haven’t helped one black family pay rent, they haven’t paid one dollar of tuition for any poor black student, they haven’t bought groceries for one black elderly person, and they haven’t done one positive thing for any black family in America. They are imposters. They are thieves. They are the poster child for greedy capitalists. The leaders of BLM have been caught using donations to buy houses for themselves, cars, vacations, jewelry, etc. They’re crooks. And if anyone is canceling Eve over “woke” phoniness she should know there are twice as many people standing behind her for her courage.
True but you have to hand it to them; it was a pretty good con. Get a bunch of guilt-addicted white liberals corporatists and trust fund dolts to take a knee and buy you a bunch of mansions, even while you're preaching that the system that made the ridiculous whiteys wealthy was rotten to the core. About as probable as the success of Mel Brooks's "Springtime for Hitler." But, holy shite - it worked beyond all measure.
I was flabbergasted at the mass buying into the BLM con in the summer of 2020 on the part of corporations, institutions and ordinary individuals. Anyone who, like me, had lived in a city like Chicago or anywhere else BLM had engaged in histrionics before that could have told them this collection of grifters isn't legit. They would shut down traffic on Lake Shore Drive and harass Black Friday shoppers on Michigan Avenue--like those people are at fault for police shootings. Consequently, none of the recent revelations about their so-called leaders shocked me one iota.
And the establishment media reports nearly none of it.
Contrast with 2020 and 2021 when they made glowing articles about BLM and were there by complicit in the race hustling grift.
BLM is made up of grifters and hypocrites. There will be a reckoning at the polls this fall.
Hopefully in the courtrooms too.
Thank you!! And the damage they have done to our country is immeasurable. The hate they encouraged, the property damage...all to line their own pockets.
I so agree about the damage done, though I’ve also come to think that it’s pretty much confined to the bubbled world of media. For me, life on the ground is actually friendlier among strangers with different backgrounds than before the Floyd daily protests and nightly destruction. As a southerner who was raised always to nod or speak when passing by someone I don’t know (the heat is enough to cause a fight to break out even without an obvious slight), I sometimes get the sense from my black neighbors that they’re trying to let me as a white person know that they don’t agree with the “systemic racism” claim being shouted on TV and online. In my cul de sac of 21 townhomes, three houses placed one of those all-caps signs about what “We believe” in their yards. All are white women. One of the signs is still up. Meanwhile, three of the townhomes are owned by black women, none of whom felt the need to join in. This is primarily a progressive white women emotional problem that has been taken up by the world.
Agree with all you said.
Thank you for this piece. It shows how so many of these industries are built not on integrity and merit but on the fragile bullshit of people who will cling to their positions through any disingenuous means possible. I understand it because I worked in the corporate environment and towing the line was the way to safety, but even that didn’t last long when the company was ready to cut your position. I wish you the best of luck in the future.
Amazon is hiring.
Can't tell if this is a joke or not. Amazon is very much part of the problem, the epitome of liberals working to enrich the richest while telling themselves they are all about "equity".
I was being sardonic, sarcastically mocking her excommunicated from the vainglorious music industry for speaking truth and fated to join the rest of in the world of mundane employment as epitomized by the soul crushing experience of a warehouse work. I guess I was saying tough shit.
Ah, see I was nearly offered a programming position at Amazon, so I regard employment there as a ticked to power and riches. The name and stock are both worth an enormous amount, but I knew working there would come at a spiritual price.
But if you were thinking "warehouse worker" the point makes sense. They are grunts, they don't get piles of stock riches.
Well said
I want to be sympathetic. No, okay, I AM sympathetic. But. . . But as someone who long ago paid a similar price. And very long ago, lost touch totally with the world of pop culture, the world of the with-it people, a world Eve Barlow inhabited, I find it hard to be completely down about her plight. The Vulture world. Meh. Lady Gaga, I don't care. Father John Misty, I had to look him up to see if I could find out why a "feminist" would have a problem with him. I couldn't. But being conflicted about the George Floyd BLM "protests"? Conflicted about what, exactly? That not enough black-owned businesses got burned down. I just wonder, when are people going to get UN-conflictedly fed up with it all. I hope Eve Barlow is, now. Eve, you do not need that reference group of self-important ninnies. Forget about them. You don't need twitter. I hope you are living without it. You know the song, "How does it feel? To be without a home? Like a complete unknown? Just like a rolling stone?" That is not an angry song. Not song of contempt. It is a joyous song. A happy song. Be happy. Be unambiguously happy to be rid of all of 'em.
Gotcha. Time to ditch the iphone, throw on a backpack and take a very very long hike.
"Father John Misty, I had to look him up to see if I could find out why a "feminist" would have a problem with him. I couldn't."
#Metoo. Now I've got to get that "Mr. Tillman" earworm out of my head.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
This can be summed up thusly -
When the left eats its own.
It would be better if they would eat faster.
Thank you. I too had a similar experience. Mine didn't blow up quite as big as yours. My crime? Pointing out that hate crimes against Asians was not "white supremacy" because not only white people were committing those crimes. Not only was I branded a white supremacist but many of my peers on "Film Twitter" went along with it. I know the feeling of being seeing ghosts too. Every time I go to a screening, every time I go to a film festival - there is that hesitancy of people who think "is this the same person I used to know"? Yes, it's the same person. It's just someone who escaped the cult.
Exactly this. I have the same experience online with people I used to know in the local mental health organizations I volunteered for.
On Election Day 2020, as I was heading home from the park, I heard the sounds of drills. All the apartment buildings and stores were boarding up their glass doors and windows. I remember thinking, "Am I living in America?" Thank God my parents weren't alive to witness this mess and it's only gotten worse. Yes, BLM has been exposed. Yes, many of the protests have quieted. At what cost? Mob rule? A president with dementia and a veep who only garnered 1% during her own campaign. 1%!!! May God help us.
Getting rid of Trump at any cost brought us sleepy Joe. Too many people know about Harris' record as a prosecuter for her to poll well, which I find encouraging because people are often pretty ignorant.
They still elected this package deal though.
But but "the passage of time"
Maybe the midterms will produce sufficient change to instigate dual impeachments. And then, the newly elected Speaker of the House will become president.
My husband and I no longer discuss issues of race or antisemitism. We have been together for more than 45 years and I thought were both politically on the same page. I no longer question the inconsistency I find in the NYT reporting of race and Israel when he can hear. The NYT is holy writ for him. Anything they write or how they decide to treat writers is fine with him.
I too have been long married (38 years) and during all that time I have never insisted that my spouse do anything in particular. However, several years back I insisted he cancel our NYTIMES subscription. I did not want it physically in the house. There are too many alternative ‘news’ publications. That said, the NYTimes has truly become a propaganda tabloid bereft of news and honesty. We have not missed receiving it - in fact, we’ve had great discussions about finding alternative media.
When the NYT forced Bari Weiss out I lost a tremendous amount of respect for them. And then firing the editor who decided to sun the Op-Ed piece by Cotton. I’m waiting for them to turn on the Ukrainians and as a Ukrainian myself, I won’t be responsible for my comments. NYT loves “victim” stories and when you are no longer a victim then it’s F;:! You! They’ve done it to Israel they’ll do it to Ukraine.
I was an avid fan of NY Times until about the turn of the century. Something changed. Maybe because they were losing money in the age of the internet. So they felt they had to become partisan to hold on to their readership. But they lost all those who cared about real journalism. And they lost all credibility and dignity. Sold their soul.
They were always left-leaning but they reported facts - even when facts went against their editorial view.
But now they are clearly partisan actors. They skew the news and censor what does not fit their partisan goals.
It's been sad to see the demise of a journalism.
Causal factors in their hard left shift towards social justice activist journalism:
1. NYT attracts the best and brightest from Columbia and other radically woke Ivy League colleges
2. A change in ownership, a Mexican billionaire is now a principal investor
3. The paywall incentivized pandering to their once center left, not hard left stance.
I used to enjoy the NYT and record all the late night comedy shows but a couple years ago I slowly and quietly stopped consuming any of it because it felt like they were personally insulting me. And not subtly either. No middle of the road at all. I wonder if they'll ever notice that a bunch of people exited the building?
My library puts the NYT paper copies out for recycling. I used to grab a bundle and shred it for cat litter.
What did your kitty do to you to deserve such mistreatment?
I used to say that the Times has been lying since the days of Walter Duranty. But I wonder if it's just baked into their DNA and they've been doing it forever.
My brother is brainwashed too.
His daughter went to Stanford University and got woke. Infected him with the bullshit.
> She is now unemployed and spent much of 2021 in BLM marches and other stupid endeavors.
My advice - keep your kids out of California. Woke is the real virus and there is no vaccine.
Cult
Truth!
Do you financially support her in her activism?
I did not support my niece's activism - financially or otherwise.
She went to California for college at Stanford University and got brainwashed.
Now she cannot (does not want to) hold a real job. Just wants to protest.
What a waste.
I think its best to avoid college/university in California with limited exceptions.
Phew. Pitty You.
It is, however I have not always been the perfect mate. That’s life. The only thing that will change if I argue is that our home will no longer be a home. I refuse to give that dirt if power to those I do not know personally. These times may divide our nation but they will not divide my home
I agree. Hope You didn't take me as making the suggestion, M. Adrian. I just feel for her, is all.
Ugh, sorry. I'm so glad my husband and I are on the same page with most of this. I can't talk to my mother about anything political because she'll regurgitate everything said by CNN and MSNBC, which is regurgitated from the CIA. I already know what the CIA wants us to think, I don't need to hear it from my mother.
That has to be excruciating.
Be ready to forgive when they turn on him.
Oh a few have already. We have two daughters - 19 and 22- both adopted from China and once during a call a “woke” of a group he belonged to called us “white saviors” for adopting outside our race. Both girls heard the comment and were deeply offended by the tone and sentiment. But as my older girl said, Can’t fix stupid
A heartbreaking story, one of dozens or hundreds or more at this point. My own attempt to push back against the insanity of cancel culture, following Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" that ridicule is a potent weapon, is my new novel Nevergreen -- a satirical account of campus cancel culture in particular and its ideological excesses (plus it's secretly all about the cancellation of the Jews occurring on many campuses in the guise of anti-Zionism). Full info and great endorsements may be found at https://bit.ly/Nevergreen. One of these is from the executive producer of shows such as Homeland and 24, who presumably knows a thing or two about story-telling. Please check it out.
You should send your novel to Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire film company. Good chance they would turn it into a film, as opposed to the Leftist thought police who run Hollywood inc.
Thank you for this idea. But any idea HOW to do that?
Unless you become really "controversial" you need some big name contacts. I do adult medicine in the sticks so I have no idea. I had read your book and see the endorsements. If you transitioned from the dying liberal academic bubble to the more conservative entertainment orbit you might get some contacts like Bari Weiss.?
like 'buy low, sell high,' that is excellent advice ... :-)
Or, consider writing a column on Substack? I believe there are a lot of people like me who only invest in media from Substack (okay, I lied, I pay for Saager and Crystal as well as the WSJ), and it seems to be exploding.
Please try support@dailywire.com
Also, you might reach out to Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker (former and current academics) or Matt Ridley. All are classical liberal authors and I’m pretty sure they all know Ben.
Good luck.
thanks --
Matt Walsh has a youtube podcast on Daily Wire, and you could try contacting him, too. And, Brett Weinstein, the original Evergreen professor who also has a youtube channel, would probably be very eager to help. There are many other centrist podcasters who could present you on their show. Start contacting them and let the momentum build.
Thanks, and thanks to everyone in the thread for suggestions
Don't know how they will continue to come up with interesting or funny content when the circle they are allowed to inhabit gets ever smaller.
This was painful to read and the author has my sympathy and -- for what it's worth -- my support. One of her statements, though, strikes me as inaccurate:
𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬, 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘴, 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘺. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦.
It seems to me that in this case it isn't that the truth (about, say, the immorality of defacing a synagogue) scared people -- though certainly there were people scared of speaking the truth.
Rather, there were people who took it upon themselves, with malice aforethought, to punish anyone who didn't fall into lockstep with them. At the source it wasn't fear but cruelty.