Should People in the NYT Glass House Throw Stones?

Should we celebrate Weiss for accepting what until recently stood as universals as she supports the power-obsessed ideologies that inevitably lead to the anti-freedom, cancel-culture bullying that she decries?

Will O'Toole of Otoons

The American Spectator  "Bari Weiss, a liberal hired by the New York Times strangely to bring balance to its left-wing opinion page in the wake of the paper’s misreading of the 2016 electorate, publicized her resignation this week.
"Thirty-something editor Weiss wrote 30-something publisher Arthur G. Sulzberger that “the lessons that ought to have followed the election — lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society — have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”
“ 'Everyone I knew was voting for Hillary Clinton,” she told podcaster Joe Rogan last year. She exudes identity politics but rationalizes this by claiming a distinction between “good identity politics” and “bad identity politics” (she goes for the former). She uses words like “cisgender” and “transphobic” (because everyone with their ear to the MAGA ground knows the “cisgender” and “transphobic” lingo on the lips of every red-hat wearer). She divulges, “I definitely consider myself a feminist.” Most telling of all, she suffers from the pseudointellectual tic of affixing the one-word question “Right?” to every declarative sentence as though it negates the authoritarianism of declarative sentences by Jedi Mind Tricking the listener into hearing democratic consensus when confronted with an individual opinion.Yet, hiring Weiss, an unabashed anti when it comes to Donald Trump, to offset the paper’s biases against that chunk of the population who voted for the president seems like a greater indictment against the Old Gray Lady’s slant than Weiss’s departure. A bisexual living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side who supports abortion, the repeal of the Second Amendment, a porous border, and so many other left-wing articles of faith strikes as a strange counterweight in that she sits in the scale’s cup that gravity already had pulled to the bottom." . . .

What About the Stalin Statue? The National D-Day Memorial Foundation still has some explaining to do.

If we insist - as I do - on keeping statues of American historical figures found objectional by some in this country, we must deal with the issue of displaying major participants in significant world events. Even those who were at least as evil as Adolph Hitler himself.

. . . "But who gets protested? Leftist mobs target Columbus, Washington, Saint Junipero Serra, even Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who (ironically) defeated the Confederacy during the Civil War before going to battle against the KKK and fighting for the right of black Americans to vote. And yet the ideological mobsters haven’t had a murderous communist tyrant like Joe Stalin on their target list? Why is that?

The American Spectator  "As leftists target monuments to everyone from Christopher Columbus to George Washington, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and even all of Mt. Rushmore, I was reminded of a memorial not on their radar. No, I’m not talking about the 16-foot bronzed statue of Lenin in Seattle, nor the memorials to their revered racial-eugenicist Margaret Sanger. I’m thinking of the bust of Joseph Stalin that emerged in Bedford, Virginia, in 2010.
"Do you remember that one? It remains on my mind, albeit not on the minds of progressives. First a history lesson, and then an update on the status of the statue:
"Stalin’s chiseled mug sat at no less than the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, where he was acknowledged as “General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Stalin there joined FDR, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill, who, ironically, finds himself in the ideological crosshairs of today’s Left, the subject of vandalization.
"That acknowledgment to Stalin at the D-Day Memorial was no secret. I wrote about it 10 years ago, as did others. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation had a website at one point (www.stalinstatue.com, now defunct), which featured a petition to remove the statue, with thousands of signatures from every state and dozens of countries, including some really upset folks from the former Soviet empire. Addressed to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation and President Barack Obama’s secretary of the interior, the petition demanded that the “true history of World War II must be protected from distortion and misinformation.”
"Among that misinformation: “neither Joseph Stalin nor Soviet forces played any part in the D-Day landing at Normandy.”
"Indeed, they did not. Even then, the Stalin bust represented a far graver distortion of historical reality. Consider:  . . .More...

Gov. Newsom’s California to Release 18,000 Prisoners to ‘Slow Spread of COVID-19’

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

News Punch   "Governor Gavin Newsom’s California is set to release a staggering 18,000 prisoners by the end of August to ‘slow the spread of COVID-19,’ the California Department of Corrections has revealed.
"Officials in California claim that releasing the prisoners into the public will help protect the “health and safety of the incarcerated population.”

“These actions are taken to provide for the health and safety of the incarcerated population and staff,” Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Ralph Diaz said in a press release.
“We aim to implement these decompression measures in a way that aligns both public health and public safety.”  
"Per Washington Examiner:

An estimated 8,000 inmates could be eligible for release by the end of August, in addition to the state’s reduction of about 10,000 inmates since Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in March, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said.The CDCR says its previous “pandemic emergency decompression efforts” have reduced inmate populations system-wide by approximately 10,000 people already, to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission within its facilities.According to the CDCR, of the state’s approximate 115,000 inmates, roughly 2,400 prisoners have tested positive for the coronavirus, and at least 31 prisoners have died from COVID-19 related illnesses – accounting for roughly 2 percent and 0.026 percent, respectively, of the inmate population.

The Gateway Pundit  reports: Violent criminals, pedophiles and sex offenders are being released by the thousands in California as Democrat tyrant Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his second lockdown.
"Newsom on Monday announced a complete shut down of indoor dining, theaters, bars, museums and zoos due to an increase in Coronavirus ‘cases.’ " . . .

The NFL Is on the Brink; The league survived all sorts of crises in the past, yet they are in deep trouble like never before.

Victor Davis Hanson

Then game attendance fell. So did television viewership. Apparently, lots of fans had no desire to spend their Sundays watching 20-something multimillionaires lecture them that the American flag was not worth honoring.

"The National Football League celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. This should be a time of self-congratulation for the brutal sport, which has no similar counterpart outside the United States." . . .
. . . "The league survived all sorts of crises in the past. It was one of the first professional sports to integrate its teams, doing so in the 1920s. But the integration unfortunately ceased, and the NFL didn’t reintegrate until the mid ’40s, becoming one of the last sports leagues to embrace fully a racially blind meritocracy."
"The NFL successfully absorbed the rival American Football League in 1966. So far the NFL has avoided federal safety regulations that could curb the incidence of physical trauma inherent in the sport."   But still.....
. . . "In 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem. He claimed he was protesting the treatment of African Americans.
Kaepernick was an odd revolutionary. His mother is white, his father is an African American of Ghanaian-Nigerian ancestry, and he was raised by a middle-class white couple. Kaepernick’s only prior controversy was being accused by another player of using the N-word. He denied it but was still fined by the league.
Kaepernick’s rejection of “The Star-Spangled Banner” eventually spread throughout the NFL. Even though he was a backup quarterback, Kaepernick became a #Resistance idol. Soon he was a corporate ad man, pitching Nike sneakers.
. . . 
"The inspirational song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — also known as the black national anthem — will be played before every game of the first week of the season. The league is considering letting players wear protest insignia on their helmets or jerseys. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized to players for not listening to them about racism.
"Yet the NFL capitulation poses fundamental problems for the league. It has now essentially green-lighted the sort of activism that has been eating away its profits in the past few years." .  .  .   Full article

A Silent Majority Isn’t Good Enough In The Culture War

The Federalist
"Whether the Silent Majority is enough to swing an election, it’s certainly no longer enough to swing the culture. If such a group exists, it needs to speak up."

Malleable Young skulls full of mush.

. . . "The “Silent Majority” comes up a lot these days, often in the context of a warning to Democrats about an electrified coalition of under-the-radar voters motivated to support President Trump by the left’s culture war. It’s true Democrats aren’t helped politically by their proximity to radical leftism, although I’m not sure I buy the argument it’ll cost them the Oval Office in 2020.

"Whether the Silent Majority is enough to swing an election, it’s certainly no longer enough to swing the culture. If such a group exists, it needs to speak up.

"I say that with deep empathy for everyone fearful of losing a job, friend, or relative if they push back, and for everyone with little interest in getting involved at all. That, of course, is the biggest challenge. There is a reason people are silent, and it’s a good one.

Dear Majority: your silence is allowing evil to rule over us!

"If, however, you happen to work at Boeing and a former Navy pilot is being forced to resign for a 1987 op-ed against women fighting in combat, consider that pushing back might not be as risky as you think. If you work in the public relations department, consider that weathering the social media storm might not be as costly as you think.

"If you work at the Smithsonian—or any other organization—and a deeply racist guide to whiteness is being circulated, consider that it might be worth voicing your discomfort with a document that ascribes concepts like “self-reliance” to one racial group. Consider that a smart and well-intentioned rebuttal might find more support than you realize. Consider that it might be galvanizing.

"If you work at or attend Penn State and the university is pressured to delete a tweet that welcomes conservative students, consider that a few calm defenses of the post might be enough to save it. Consider that saving it might send a message that reflexive appeasement is not necessary when angry leftists swarm on social media with unreasonable demands." . . .  Full article...    Visit the Tunnel Wall Blog

Can a Whole Country Go Mad?

Hollywood, Democrats and their candidates, academics, CNN and MSNBC "news", schools, American culture, Presidential candidates who choose foul-mouthed and America-hating soccer players for the U.S. Secretary of State, and the cancel culture with the destruction it leaves in its wake. Madness!

Judith Acosta  . . . "Like a man condemned to psychological torture in the Gulag, I started to recount all the lies we were being told under the guise of erudition and belonging.

I am not a man (anymore).

I did not have sex with that woman.

I can marry anyone, including my cat.

It’s all Trump’s fault.

"Then I wondered: Can a culture go nuts? What are the signs? And what happens when it really does?" . . .

. . . "This is what happens when God has been evicted from a culture. It is indeed a strange thing that is happening to western civilization. In the earlier stages of our culture, the existence of things unseen was hardly questioned. Today, if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist at all. The locus of control has moved from a universe of the Divine to the essential singularity: One’s Self.

"As a result of this tectonic shift, there are things happening in our culture that are truly insane. Period. As a result of this increasing insanity I have resigned from the National Association of Social Workers. I am taking down the shingle that used to stand for compassion and righteousness, but now stands for nothing more than social indoctrination and lunacy, an organization that protests against the death penalty for serial killers but rallies in favor of partial birth abortion.

"Insane." . . .  Full article here.