Isn't America Being Governed by a Mafia Family Dynasty setting things up so that there will always be Democrats in power?

 … what we are looking at in the U.S. is an attempt at dynastic rule by the Democratic party. 

writes Becky Jones, aka Professor Ornery Dragon (obrigado para Sarah Hoyt).

The current heads of the Democratic Party are attempting to set things up so that there will always and forever be a Democrat in power in the White House, and Democrat control of both chambers of Congress. When you remember that Democrats are convinced that they hold the moral high ground over Republicans, you can see why they think this is a necessary thing (even if the rest of us strongly disagree). The Democratic party is a cross between a classic monarchical dynasty and a mafia “family.”

A dynasty is simply a form of hereditary monarchy where power and position pass down through one family. … All dynasties are monarchies, but not all monarchies are dynasties. … all meant that stability was a pipe dream.

 … Xi Jinping, the current president of the People’s Republic of China, is a leader in the classic Chinese emperor/dynastic leader mold. He holds absolute power over the party and the country. He is the son of a former party leader who was purged and rehabilitated. Xi is a dynastic leader in every sense of the word.

The Democratic party has viewed itself as a dynasty since FDR ran the show. “The party of Roosevelt and Kennedy” is a thing. Democrats held a majority in the House of Representatives from 1940 or so until 1994. Since then it’s gone back and forth a couple of times, as has the Senate, but the Democrats still feel the House is rightly theirs to control. And they’ve acted like a mafia family, taking out rivals both internal and external as needed in order to expand their control.

The Democrats tried to expand and continue their dynasty in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. Not only did her candidacy not go over well with voters, it didn’t go over well within the Democratic party.

 … They dug Joe Biden back up and put him on the primary stage. If he was capable of being president, why didn’t he run in 2016? Why bow out only to return in 2020? It was Hillary’s turn in 2016. But in 2020, the family needed a familiar face and one that they knew voters were comfortable with (why anybody is comfortable with that gropey, hair-sniffing, arrogant do-nothing is beyond me), so Joe it was.

The Democratic leadership saw Biden as the Democratic party’s best hope for returning to their dynasty. They figured they could throw him out there as an Obama redux. A dynastic successor. Why him and why not bring Hillary back? She clearly wanted it. Well, fail against Trump, that bigoted, racist, rude, crude, socially unacceptable, mean-tweeting hack, and you’re toast. Hillary was toast. Also, having cognitive issues and a highly ambitious wife who only cares about the trappings of office and not the responsibilities, makes it easy to control the man holding the office. Hillary would not have been controllable.

Biden is clearly not fit for office. Press lids are called by about one p.m. every day. He’s sliding into dementia (trust me, I’ve seen Alzheimer’s up close and personal…he’s heading that way if not already there). But Biden does represent the Democratic dynasty. He’s a fitting figure head that they can prop up just like many emperors in China’s history.

As Americans, we are not used to looking at political dynasties. Oh, people use the word in reference to Bush 41 and 43, and to the Clintons. But those are not the dynasties. The true Democratic dynasty is via the party, just like the current CCP dynasty in China. The Republicans have a similar view, but the GOP party “leadership” has never had the guts to carry it out like the Democrats.

 … What this means is that we Americans are not really clear on what to look for when trying to identify a dynasty. We look for family names when we should be looking for family traits. Family traits like a mob family. The mafia runs like a dynasty up to and including shifts between the ruling family. We as citizens need to pay far more attention than we have been to who’s making decisions in our political institutions. How long have we been seeing some names in the press and on TV? That’s your clue as to who’s running the dynasty.

Between them, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden have been in office for 103 years. One hundred. And three. Years. And assuming Joe finishes at least one term, that will become 107. How is that not a dynasty?

In contrast, if we take Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and Donald Trump, we get a total of 54 years in office.

Let that sink in for a minute.

We are being governed by a dynastic mafia family. This will not end well at all.

Related: Why Are Conservatives So Naïve That They Refuse to See the Beam in the Eye of Those Who Hate Their Very Existence?

The Real Threat to Democracy: It’s a Travesty to Compare the Capitol Siege to 9/11

 

It’s a Travesty to Compare the Capitol Siege to 9/11 

explodes Debra Burlingame in the Wall Street Journal. The sister of a pilot on American Airlines flight 77, she is a founding board member and trustee of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum Foundation doubling as a director of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation. 

“I would like to see Jan. 6 burned into the American mind as firmly as 9/11, because it was that scale of a shock to the system,” commentator George Will said recently. The attempt to reconfigure the “domestic terrorist” narrative to fit the horrifying story of Sept. 11 is profoundly disheartening. 

These two events are fundamentally different in nature, scope and consequences. Mentioning them in the same breath not only diminishes the horror of what happened on 9/11; it tells a false story to the generation of Americans who are too young to remember that day nearly 20 years ago.

 … Members of Congress might have had a frightening day on Jan. 6, but on 9/11 some 200 people in the World Trade Center towers chose to jump from 80 to 100 floors above the ground rather than be consumed by fire. A woman waiting at a lobby elevator bank was burned over 82% of her body when jet fuel from the first plane sent a ball of fire down the elevator shaft and into the lobby. She spent three months in a hospital burn unit and was permanently disfigured. There are countless harrowing stories like this—of death, destruction and heartbreaking loss. More than 3,000 children lost parents. Eight young children were killed on the planes. Recovery personnel found 19,000 human remains scattered all over lower Manhattan from river to river, including on rooftops and window ledges. Victims’ remains were still being recovered years later by utility workers and construction crews. 

 … The attack brought down our nationwide aviation system, shut down the New York Stock Exchange for days, destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 16 acres of Lower Manhattan including underground subway and commuter train lines and destroyed a section of the Pentagon. Rebuilding at ground zero is still incomplete, and U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan. 

On Jan. 6, Congress resumed its session that evening.

It is deeply offensive and sad that the brutal and harrowing memories of the worst terrorist attack in American history are being deployed by political partisans. They are using 9/11 not as an example of what the American people endured and overcame together, but explicitly to divide, to stoke hatred and to further a political agenda aimed at stigmatizing the other party and marginalizing ordinary Americans from participating in the political process. That is the real threat to democracy.

It should matter that the vast majority of the people who went to the Capitol protest that day didn’t believe they were there to overthrow the U.S. government, or, it must now be said, to kill anyone.

There have been real terrorist attacks on the Capitol. But those must be forgotten because they came from the political left.

 … In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire with automatic weapons from the House visitors gallery with members in the chamber for a quorum call. Five representatives were wounded, including one, Alvin Morell Bentley of Michigan, who was hit in the chest. The perpetrators received sentences ranging from 50 to 75 years; one was released in 1978, and President Carter granted clemency to the others the following year. One week after the shooting, the House was back to business as usual. That was a time when more members of Congress had served in the military, and with the world still recovering from World War II, one doubts that anyone likened the attack to Pearl Harbor or the Battle of Iwo Jima.

We are living in perilous times. When a modern democracy deploys forces of intimidation—whether government, corporate media or cultural institutions—to promote the ruling majority’s propaganda, it is time for good people to stand up and object. The world-changing attack of Sept. 11, 2001 shouldn’t be used, either as precedent or moral authority, to create a commission whose sole purpose is to turn a straightforward law-enforcement failure into destructive political theater.

Calling the 1-6/9-11 comparison "obscene [in addition to] yet another example of the narcissism of our ruling class," Glenn Reynolds goes on to predict that 

With the passage of time, more Americans will feel that the problem with 1/6 was that it didn’t go far enough.

Republicans who revel in virtue signaling and in sabotaging their colleagues: why are people who claim to be on the right so eager to become pawns for their (unscrupulous) adversaries?

 

Following Liz Cheney’s lead, [Mitt] Romney has come out in support of a “January 6th commission,” which will serve as nothing more than a partisan battering ram for the Democrat Party going into 2022.

Noting, tongue-in-cheek, that in "a completely unexpected, never-before-seen move, Mitt Romney has decided to bend the knee and do the left’s bidding", Red State's Bonchie goes on to register how appalling the Utah senator's move is (thanks to Ed Driscoll). 

 … there’s no reason for any Republican to support this clearly partisan nonsense. The commission is set up in a way where Democrats would choose the investigators, essentially making it the Mueller investigation — part two. One of the cardinal sins a GOP politician can make is purposely playing into the hands of the left, and Romney and Cheney are chomping at the bit to do so.

  … For the life of me, I don’t understand why people who ostensibly claim to be on the right are so eager to become pawns for their political adversaries. Democrats play for keeps, and you never see them break ranks like this. Yet, Romney, Cheney, and a handful of other GOP Senators and Representatives seem intent on proving they have no strategic sense whatsoever. Again, there is no logical reason for Congress to get involved here. What are they going to do except call partisan witnesses to preen for the cameras? Any real investigation will happen at the law enforcement level, but even then, you can expect that to be largely slanted given how infiltrated the ranks are at the FBI and DOJ.

  … Romney’s chief reason for existing is to virtue signal, though. Abortion, censorship, stupid foreign wars, etc.? He’s not really into that, but give him a chance to dump on his own party, and he’s always down.

Where were Romney’s calls for a commission when a left-wing gunman nearly killed multiple GOP Congressional members? [Where, for that matter, were the Democrats’ calls for a commission then?] Where were his calls for a commission over the BLM riots of 2020 which had a far higher body count and far, far more destruction, including of federal property? [Again, the same question pertains to the leftists, in whose footsteps Romney and Cheney are so eager to follow…]

A political party can’t function like this. You can not have members who revel in sabotaging their own colleagues.

Related: Why Are Conservatives So Naïve That They Refuse to See the Beam in the Eye of Those Who Hate Their Very Existence?

Biden's incredible speed at fouling things up: Americans are like a last child, we take it and take it and take it, and then something snaps, and we are the worst enemy you can imagine

One of the earliest readers, followers, and — dare I say? — fans of No Pasarán has written as follows:

I think/fear Le Pen is nuts, but I am not terribly fond of Macron's actions to date.  He seems very much in over his head.

Biden has had a remarkable first 100 days.  I had no idea a man so stupid and so inept (and now so demented) could inflict this much damage in such a short time.  It is truly impressive.  Of course, the dementia means that is is not really him doing anything, it is idiot aides and advisors and left-over fools from the Obama administration who were never sharp enough to realize that the reason their policies did not work was because such policies never do (and not just because they could not do it "right" this time).  I believe they truly think they are, collectively, smarter than the other 330M of us.  Hubris of a degree that simply cannot be contemplated.

This clamp down is going to leave a mark.  I live in a civilized area, but my sister in California is going nuts.  I was just on the phone with a client in Irvine, and I can tell he's had enough.  A lot of people are on the edge.  Another thing I've told Europeans, and they never believed me, is this.  Americans are like a last child.  If you've ever known a kid who was the last of 4-7 kids, they generally are the type that take it and take it and take it, and then they snap, and rip out everyone's throats.  Then, while everyone in the room is still in shock, the "last" kid looks up and acts like nothing has happened.  Americans (I believe) are collectively like that, we take it and take it, and then something snaps, and we are the worst enemy you can imagine.  Once the matter is over, we hop back in and look around as though nothing happened.  Think Grant at Appomattox, relations with Japan and Germany after WWII. 

Hopefully Biden's incredible speed at fouling things up will mean we correct things before the populace completely loses it.  And no, I have no idea how that could happen, but it might.

France Has Commemorated Two Events This Week: The 200th Anniversary of the Death of Napoleon and the 40th Anniversary of Mitterrand's Election

The French held two commemorations this week : one for the 40th anniversary of the election of François Mitterrand bringing the socialists to power and the other (expo La Villette) for the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon, the emperor whose career went from Corsica to Waterloo and the island of Saint Helena… 

• Related: The Megalomaniac State Which Becomes Obese — Starting on May 10, 1981, the Leftist Government Takes on All the Aspects of a Rogue State

Update: Indeed, France's Conseil d’État justifies "the expectorations of contemporary décadence" by defending France Inter's "liberté d'expression" to declare that "Jesus is a homo."  

Isn't it far-fetched to argue that police in Minnesota or New York or… Atlanta are imbued with the spirit of Southern militias tasked with tracking down slaves?

Regarding a key contention of the 1619 Project (as well as of race hustlers) — that policing in America is allegedly rooted in the South's slave patrols — Jonah Goldberg admits that,

Yes, policing in Southern slave states has some roots in slave patrols.

But policing doesn’t. 

Policing—enforcing the law, preventing crime, apprehending criminals—has a very long tradition of existence. I don't know where it started, but for our purposes we can note that Augustus Caesar, born in 27 B.C., created the cohortes urbanae near the end of his reign, to police Ancient Rome. Policing in England takes rudimentary form with Henry II's proclamation of the Assize of Arms of 1181. In the 1600s England established constables and justices of the peace to oversee them. The Metropolitan Police Act created the first recognizable police force in the U.K. in 1829.

Meanwhile, in America the first constables were created in the 1630s in what came to be known as New England. Boston has the oldest “modern” police department. It was created in 1838. New York and Philadelphia soon followed.

They were not created to search for runaway slaves.

Elsewhere, Jonah proceeds to add even more historical information (thanks to Ed Driscoll) about police forces from around the planet, going as far back to 1,000 to 2,500 years Before Christ:

Founded in 1275, the [York Minster Police] boast that they are the world’s oldest police force. That makes them a couple centuries older than [the Vatican’s Swiss Guard].

But that doesn’t mean policing began in 1275. Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty apparently had something called “The Judges Commandment of the Police.” Ancient China didn’t call them police but “prefects.” The Babylonian’s cops were called paqūdu.

Now, you might not be able to tell from my pleasant tone and demeanor, but I’m actually pretty angry that I have to tell you this (again).

The other day, I got into a little spat with Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the 1619 Project, because she peddled to CBS the idea that modern policing has a “direct lineage” to slave patrols because, “in certain parts of the country,” slave patrols were deputized to catch slaves. She’s right about that—to a point.

 … But … Let me type this slowly so everyone can understand: The Columbus Division of Police, established in 1816, was not founded as a slave patrol. Ohio was not a slave state. In 1841, it passed a law that runaway slaves were automatically free once they made it to Ohio. Similarly, the Minneapolis Police Department, founded two years after the end of the Civil War, wasn’t built upon slave patrolling and has no “lineage”—direct or tangential—to slave patrolling.

The police officer who shot a black teen about to plunge a knife into another black teen was not in any way connected to slave patrolling. Derek Chauvin was not living down to the legacy of slave patrolling. Even Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison conceded to 60 Minutes this week that prosecutors couldn’t find any evidence that Chauvin was racist or that his crime was racially motivated. If you know anything about Ellison, you’ll know he wanted to find such evidence.  

Even the connection to slave patrolling in southern cities is, at best, literary. Does anyone actually believe that Rodney Bryant, the chief of police in Atlanta, sees himself as part of some great unbroken chain in the long tradition of slave patrolling? Of course not. And not just because Bryant is black, or because cops are not trained and educated in slave patrol tactics, but also because slavery has been illegal in the United States for 158 years, three months, and 27 days.

(This goes for Houston, Charlotte, El Paso, Nashville, Memphis, Raleigh, Lexington, Kentucky; most of the big cities in Virginia, Baton Rouge, and Tulsa—just some of the cities with black police chiefs.)

Modern policing—or even policing qua policing—owes far less to slave patrolling than NASA owes to Hitler’s rocket program. And yet no one talks about the troubling Nazi roots of modern space exploration, or asks Elon Musk if he’s exorcised the ghost of Werner Von Braun from SpaceX.

I have seen this slave patrol thing brought up countless times in interviews, and not once have I seen an interviewer say, “Really?” never mind, “What the hell are you talking about?” It’s as batty as any conspiracy theory, and it’s a deliberate attempt to heap innuendo on policing in lieu of making an intelligent argument.

And that’s what frustrates me to no end. It’s the job of journalists to call out B.S. when it’s being thrown in their faces.

Jonah Goldberg comes to this conclusion:

It is true that slave patrols were created in slave states and they were an early form of policing. How much that taints the police forces of modern-day Atlanta or Charleston or any other state is clearly up for discussion.

But it strikes me as somewhat far-fetched to argue that police in Minnesota or New York are imbued with the spirit of southern militias tasked with tracking down slaves. It even strikes me as a bit of a stretch to claim that the slave patrols of the 1840s have a lot of bearing on the actions of police departments in majority black cities like Atlanta.

Indeed, there's something uncomfortable to the idea that attempts to prevent rape, murder, robbery, etc., have some obvious racist intent behind them. Black people are just as deserving of protection from crime as anybody else.

Moreover, the attempt to paint policing—all policing "across America," in former slave states and free states alike—as the poisoned fruit of American slavery is problematic. First, every decent country has police, including the non-white ones. Second, the South lost the Civil War. Under Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans imposed the North's will on the South. The slave patrols were disbanded. Some patrollers did indeed become police. But so did African-Americans. Meanwhile, the evil energies of the patrols were primarily expressed elsewhere—in the form of vigilante groups like the KKK. When Reconstruction ended, the South imposed tyrannical Jim Crow laws.

In other words, the history is complicated. But the important point is that it is history, not America today.

RELATED: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence

Babylon Bee: Biden Admits His First 100 Days Were A Failure Since America Hasn't Yet Been Completely Destroyed

From the Babylon Bee:

As President Joe Biden’s first 100 days come to a close, he admitted to the press that he mainly saw his first months in office as a failure, as he was unable to achieve the primary goal of any Democrat: the complete destruction of the United States of America.

“If there is one thing that unites all Democrats,” Biden said, “it’s hatred of America and all of its freedoms. With me seizing the country after it’s been staggered by the pandemic, there was an opportunity for me to immediately eradicate this country. But I failed.”

It was a simple plan. After the wildly successful Trump presidency made America great again, the Democrats used the pandemic (which wasn’t really a big deal) to destroy the flourishing economy. All that they needed after that was to steal the presidential election (check) and get a meager majority in Congress to enact a radical, unconstitutional agenda to finish off the nation, the people Democrats hate more than any other.

“I thought I could destroy all freedom in 100 days with my executive orders and the help of the Senate,” Biden stated, “but I couldn’t do it. The American people are too resilient; I hate them so much.”

Related — Here are some more Babylon Bee stories from the past month or so that I have enjoyed:

• Elizabeth Warren Barred From Entering Country Thanks To Travel Ban On Indians

• In Push For Diversity, Military Canine Units To Give Equal Opportunities To Chihuahuas (For the first time, the military — which has always favored German Shepherds in the past — will admit other breeds such as Chihuahuas and Pomeranians)

• New M1 Abrams Tanks To Come Equipped With Changing Tables (In addition to the changing table, each new tank will also be slightly larger in order to fit a private lounge for breastfeeding … The new tanks should be deployed worldwide very soon, as many hotspots aren’t doing very well since backup troops had to be rerouted to rebut Tucker Carlson on Twitter)

• Billions In Damages As Military Allows Women To Park The Tanks (Billions of dollars of military equipment were destroyed today after several women were asked to park the tanks, even though women are really bad at parallel parking)

Is the Mad Magazine Cancellation News Report Truth or Is It Satire?

Since being linked on Instapundit (thanks to Ed Driscoll) and Maggie's Farm, the recent "news report" on No Pasarán — "Mad Magazine Fact-Checked by Snopes, Denounced by the New York Times, Censored by Amazon, Banned by Facebook, and Slammed by SJWs" — has caused no small amount of commotion in a number of comments sections, with a rather large number of readers either taking it outright as truth or wondering whether it was truth or satire. (An additional number of readers have been noting — correctly — that the very fact that we are wondering about whether it is fact or fiction is quite a sad commentary on our times.)

To answer the question, and since Poe's Law has been mentioned, you must first understand how the Mad Magazine news report came about. (If you are pressed for time, scroll down to the sentence in bold.)

1) THE BIRTH OF THE BABYLON BEE

Three or four years ago, devoted Instapundit readers started learning of a new humor site by seeing hyperlinks to hilarious and often spot-on "news reports" penned by members of "Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire."

In March 2018 came the scandal or, perhaps, the consecration: In a news report — one that not even The Babylon Bee could have made up — a Bee "news report" was fact-checked by Snopes (and called False). What makes the news item (the real one) doubly funny — and the Snopes website open to ridicule — is that the news item (the fake one) is utterly preposterous. (Just take the title: Did CNN Purchase an Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News?)

Soon, news outlets start chiming in — and doubling down in their defense of Snopes — saying basically, "Sure, the Bee says it is 'Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire', but how can we expect everybody to know that it is news satire?"

FYI (and in Snopes's defense), David Mikkelson has invented a whole new group of ratings (after True, Mostly False, etc), including one called Labeled Satire (which, indeed, has replaced False on the CNN washing machine report); now regularly subtitles its Bee reports as A routine review of content labeled satire; and has penned a far-from-unreasonable editorial called Why We Include Humor and Satire in Snopes.com (although he gets points off by managing to avoid any mention whatsoever of the Babylon Bee ).

Still, that hardly justifies the Bee getting threatened regularly with cancellations, de-platformings, or demonetizations by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

As Christian Toto writes on RealClearInvestigations, satirizing George Orwell's 1984 in the process,

The Babylon Bee, the right’s online answer to the satirical site The Onion, has been at war with Facebook for years

For this reason — and because the Bee's reports are so spot-on — Glenn Reynolds and Ed Driscoll have transferred the title usually bestowed on the New York Times, "The Newspaper of Record," to the Bee. 

“Satire doesn’t have the intent of misleading people.
… It’s communicating truth through satire.” 

— Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee

Incidentally, before we get to the meat of this post, as an aside, here are a couple of Babylon Bee stories that prove Seth Dillon's words correct and that I have most enjoyed in the past month or so:
• Elizabeth Warren Barred From Entering Country Thanks To Travel Ban On Indians,
• In Push For Diversity, Military Canine Units To Give Equal Opportunities To Chihuahuas (For the first time, the military — which has always favored German Shepherds in the past — will admit other breeds such as Chihuahuas and Pomeranians),
• New M1 Abrams Tanks To Come Equipped With Changing Tables (In addition to the changing table, each new tank will also be slightly larger in order to fit a private lounge for breastfeeding … The new tanks should be deployed worldwide very soon, as many hotspots aren’t doing very well since backup troops had to be rerouted to rebut Tucker Carlson on Twitter),
• Billions In Damages As Military Allows Women To Park The Tanks (Billions of dollars of military equipment were destroyed today after several women were asked to park the tanks, even though women are really bad at parallel parking), and
• Biden Admits His First 100 Days Were A Failure Since America Hasn't Been Completely Destroyed Yet (It was a simple plan. After the wildly successful Trump presidency made America great again, the Democrats used the pandemic (which wasn’t really a big deal) to destroy the flourishing economy. All that they needed after that was to steal the presidential election (check) and get a meager majority in Congress to enact a radical, unconstitutional agenda to finish off the nation, the people Democrats hate more than any other).

2) THE BIRTH OF THE MAD MAGAZINE YARN

And here is where things get interesting: it may have been Ed, or Sarah Hoyt, or Stephen Green, but I believe it was Glenn who linked to a Babylon Bee article written by an outside source who had contributed to the website. 

It turns out that people who are Prime Subscribers to the BB are (or were: see below) allowed to submit (or to pitch) articles.

Since I am known for having quite an appetite for satire, and since I am a comedy writer, I start developing my ideas for another humor outlet undergoing the same treatment and travails as the Babylon Bee. The Mad Magazine report would double as a very strong point in their favor, which they would love (I thought) to have added on their website.

Besides, I agree with the comment "The Babylon Bee Needs Your Support. Help us Save Comedy. Fight Against CNN and Snopes", and so I opened my wallet last year to become a prime subscriber.

After I put a lot of effort into the piece and after a long series of ordeals (after I finished the article in November, I lost 85% of the article on Blogspot — do not press Control Z more than once in a row after Blogspot's recent (so-called) upgrade (sic) or the entire text disappears! — and it took me four months to get the courage to re-write it), I — proudly — submitted it to the Babylon Bee last week. 

Result? 

Extreme letdown. 

In spite of their promise to this (and to all) Prime Subscriber(s), the Bee replied to the pitch with the comment that they cannot, and do not, accept outside material (with the exception of headlines). (What happened? Who knows? Maybe they had problems with one of their contributors and/or maybe some lawyer intervened with copyright issues or something…)

So there is your answer: the Mad Magazine news report
was intended to appear on the Babylon Bee website.
As a typical piece of Babylon Bee news satire.

And since I had put a lot of work into the story, and since I was pretty proud of the result, I simply decided that if nobody else wanted it, I would publish it on my blog No Pasarán. (I still read — and laugh at — the Bee's articles, although I probably laugh only 90% as heartily as before.)

If it had appeared on the Bee, everybody would have known immediately that it was satire, needless to say. (Are you listening, Facebook? Snopes?)

As for Instapundit's readers, quite a few, presumably, headed to the comments section in outrage after reading the headline without also clicking the hyperlink and reading (or skimming through) the story.

If they had, they would have had their antenna up already by the second sentence, with the identification of the Snopes spokesman as a certain Bobby Snopes Jr (even without realizing it was an homage to the Babylon Bee's parodies, often referring to a Snopes spokesman as one Bob Snopes).

There are, needless to say, many more hints that the story is not true, but to mention just two, there is the name of the SJW spokesperson (a typical Don Martin-type joke) and there is the lengthy paragraph (where the blockquote is located) of the demented Twitter spokesman who proceeds to try to prove why Alfred E Neuman is an undercover "conservative spewing Republican propaganda."

That said, even the title itself, to tell the truth, should have made people suspicious: it is utterly improbable that a headline would have listed all of the various cancellation actors — especially with a different action verb for each one. A real title would have used something like "controversial magazine in danger of cancellations from Snopes, the New York Times, and other sources," or something in that (jugular) vein.

Mad Magazine Fact-Checked by Snopes, Denounced by the New York Times, Censored by Amazon, Banned by Facebook, and Slammed by SJWs

Mad Magazine was fact-checked by Snopes in the wake of a (rare) article making fun of Joe Biden, or his memory problems, coming to light on its website.

It was rated Mostly False by spokesperson Bobby Snopes Jr, who explained that "Every one in America cannot be expected to know that Mad Magazine is, or was, a satirical publication."

The issue was brought to the attention of mainstream media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post, who decided to let fact-checkers rummage through the history of the monthly.

This only worsened the scandal, as one of their number uncovered the publication of a series of problematic articles in the 1970s called "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions."

Appalled by the negativity, the scorn, and the hatred displayed by one Al Jaffee, The Times decided to show the articles to a select group of college students at Columbia University.

The responses turned out to be almost universally negative, if not devastating: Mr. Jaffee makes us feel unsafe, said one female student who preferred to remain anonymous. It is judgmental, testified another who is majoring in gender studies, it is unsafe and triggering, said a third, while a fourth asked, "Where is the room for dialog? Don't you understand? This is precisely the reason why we need safe spaces."

Asked why anyone would write hurtful comedy like that, Mr. Jaffee, who turned 100 last March, said that that was a question that it was probably safer for him not to provide an answer to.

Amazon chimes in

Threatening to limit the distribution of, and demonetize, the periodical founded by Bill Gaines and its website, an Amazon spokeswoman requested the censure of 290 articles or so while demanding "an apology from Mr. William Gaines, from his heirs, or from whoever is in charge of the website today."

One example given of a problematic story was a 1980s James Bond 007 spoof because "in today's #metoo environment, a number of people might be triggered by Mort Drucker's hot chicks or be offended by the title, 'For Your Thighs Only'."

One e-bay fact-checker who has been going back and looking through old Mad magazines for the past two months was asked if he at least enjoyed reading the compilations as well as the vintage issues.

"Honestly, it was more of a task — a noble one at that — so I haven't really had time to laugh, although I did chuckle a bit when I read spoofs of both Bushes, [Ronald] Reagan, and [Richard] Nixon…" (Like most humor outlets then as today, at least 70 to 80% of Mad's most acerbic comedy was directed at the right and at conservatives.)

Facebook and Twitter join the crowd

At this point, Facebook joined the fray, saying it would deplatform Mad Magazine because the descriptive of the periodical's group of artists is, or was, "the usual gang of idiots", which is a synonym of "retards," which in turn is poking fun at cerebrally-challenged individuals, as seems to be the face of the periodical's tooth-missing mascot, Alfred E. Neuman.

Besides, added a Twitter spokesman, Norman Potrzebie, who brought up the subject of compassion, "doesn't this Alfred fellow turn out in reality to be an icky conservative spewing Republican propaganda?!" 

When it was bemusedly pointed out that Alfred E. Neuman rarely says more than three rather uninspiring words, Mr. Potrzebie exclaimed:

Precisely! What is that motto of his, 'What, me worry?' That is it! A talking point! A GOP talking point! If he had any brains, he would know that there are many many, many things to worry about if we want to save humanity and the planet: the coronavirus, sexism, homophobia, transgenderism, #metoo, the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, racism, systemic racism, the deplorables, global warmi — I mean, climate change — the possibility of a Republican in the White House, Pépé Le Pew, and, worst of all, the fact that in 1619, a solitary white male in a tiny Virginia hamlet 150 years prior to the foundation of the United States decided to buy 20 slaves who had been bound for Brazil.

What may be worse, actually, added Twitter's Mr. Potrzebie, is that "the very word [i.e., Mad] means insane but it also means Angry, and what kind of people get angry?"

The Haters, he snarled, answering his own question, also known as the heinous members of the Republican Party; the Haters! he reiterated as he grew visibly distraught over people he barely considered members of the human race, but monstrous beings with no brotherly love for their fellow humans. The HATERS! Mr. Potrzebie repeated once more, as his eyes started bulging and his mouth began frothing. 

The whole issue turned somewhat moot when it appeared that the magazine was no longer published
and that Bill Gaines had been dead for close to 30 years.

Was Mad Magazine's Publisher a Racist?

As we went to press, a group of Social Justice Warriors had jumped into the fray, convening a meeting on Madison Avenue, in which complaints were voiced that the "usual gang of REDACTED" at Mad Magazine (a prime example, they pointed out, being the aforementioned Mr. Jaffee) were all white artists, and that there was not a black face among them.

"Did Don Martin ever showcase an LGBTQ person?!" asked one of the participants, Fester Bestertester, pointedly. "In a respectful way, I mean."

The issue was dropped when it was discovered that two of the artists were of Latino heritage.

The issue was resurrected when it was pointed out that Antonio Prohías seems to have been a Cuban who left the tropical island as the valiant Fidel Castro and the mesmerizing Che Guevara were fundamentally transforming their nation and were gloriously bringing a bright new future to the Cuban people — so didn't that mean that the artist of Spy Vs. Spy (which in any case is far too violent) was some kind of icky (alt) right-winger from Little Havana?

The matter was dropped again when it emerged that the artist had been dead for over two decades.

The matter was resurrected once more when it was pointed out that Prohias had been replaced by a white artist.

The matter was dropped again when it turned out that, besides drawing Spy Vs. Spy, Peter Kuper is a valiant left-winger doubling as a rabid anti-Trumpist behind many Orange-Man Bad drawings for The New Yorker.

We will bring you updates to this article as they arise… 

•••••••

(And here it is! An update! Welcome, readers of Instapundit, Maggie's Farm, Uavcall, and Investment Watch!)

Another Update! Is the Mad Magazine Cancellation News Report True or Is It Satire?

The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence

As the Biden-Harris administration's Department of Education goes ahead with plans and grants for implementing critical race theory and the 1619 Project inside school rooms, it is time to summarize said 1619 Project in one single (albeit longish) sentence.

Here it is:

It is nothing short of preposterous to claim that an obscure (if admittedly heinous) one-day commercial transaction — involving two or three white males in a tiny Virginia hamlet a century and a half before (!) the founding of a nation — is more reflective of said nation and of an entire people than the 15-to-20-year era of strife and quarrels including a continent-wide war (the American Revolution along with its attendant historical documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), which concerned every single one of its (then) two and a half million inhabitants, as well as the power structure of the entire Western world.  

Indeed, the ludicrousness of the entire idea being some kind of deep revelation of some kind of a dark cryptic secret is evidence more of superstition than even of pseudohistory. 

It is also reflective of the Left being more akin to a more or less brainwashed cult than to anything else, leading Erick Erickson to complain that the 1619 Project is an exercise in religious indoctrination; Allen C Guelzo to state that the 1619 Project is not history but conspiracy theory; and Tyler O'Neil to declare that it takes an absurdly blind fanaticism to insist that today’s free and prosperous America is rotten and institutionally oppressive. (Update: welcome, Instapundit readers.)

As Paul Johnson writes, 

the total gestation period of the United States Constitution should be seen as occupying nearly thirty years, 1763-1791.

Again: How can 28 years of struggle, with brawn and brainpower, involving everything from political resistance en masse to open warfare, and involving thousands upon thousands of Americans from all parts of society leaving homes, farms, and families to pick up the musket and risk their lives, compare to a couple of nameless unknowns making an obscure business deal in a Virginia hamlet over a period of at most 28 hours?

Beyond that, what is galling is how all other nations, nationalities, and races are left out of the guilt trip and of the equation itself.

As it happens, it was by a fluke that a ship carrying 20-something slaves landed in the future United States in 1619. The vessel which was seized by pirates, the San Juan Bautista (no, not really an Anglo-Saxon or a Protestant name) was but a tiny part of a Portuguese fleet of 36+ (!) ships filled with thousands upon thousands of Ndongo slaves headed for Latin America. The slaves had been sold to the Portuguese by their Imbangala allies in Africa, a continent where, according to Scottish explorer Mungo Park, some three quarters of the inhabitants were effectively slaves (although slaves to masters of the same skin color).

As the (left-leaning) National Geographic observes (in a pro-1619 article),

In just two years, 1618 and 1619, the Portuguese-Imbangala alliance resulted in the capture and enslavement of thousands of Ndongo people, filling at least 36 ships with human cargo. These captives would be sent to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Central and South America to work as laborers. It was through this arrangement that slavery would spread to British North America in 1619, when chaos intervened and the destiny of those “20 and odd” Africans was redirected to a place called the Colony of Virginia on the Atlantic coast.

Again: The obvious question is, if the United States is to be castigated for this type of sin, why on Earth is it the only, or the main, nation to be so described (and demonized)?  How about the Spanish, Portuguese, and British kingdoms?  How about the Kongo, Dahomey, Yoruba, Benin, Imbangala, and Asante empires? How about the Arabs? And the Muslims? The Arabs and the Muslims? Why are they left out?

Ask George Avery, who goes even further outside the box:

Relatively speaking, the United States was a minor player in the African Slave Trade — only about 5% of the Africans imported to the New World came to the United States. Of the 10.7 million Africans who survived the ocean voyage, a mere 388,000 were shipped directly to North America. The largest recipients of imported African slaves were Brazil, Cuba. Jamaica, and the other Caribbean colonies. The lifespan of those brought into what is now the United States vastly exceeded those of the other 95%, and the United States was the only purchaser of African slaves where the population grew naturally in slavery – the death rate among the rest was higher than the birth rate. …

The World Slave Trade

The Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean African slave trade, which began by Arabs as early as the 8th Century AD, dwarfed the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and continued up to the 20th Century. Between the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade and 1900, it is estimated that the eastern-bound Arab slave traders sold over 17 million Africans into slavery in the Middle East and India, compared to about 12 million to the new world – and the Eastern-bound slave trade had been ongoing for at least 600 years at the START of that period.

Indeed, as horrific as crossing the ocean (the Atlantic) in chains in the hold of a ship was, crossing a scorching desert (the Sahara) on foot led to far greater death rates.

As it turns out, therefore, the only true descriptive of the situation is that The United States Was a Footnote in Slavery’s History.

So, remember: what the Left hates is not slavery (or, indeed, racism); what the Left hates is America. 

As Dennis Prager writes (in Whites Aren't Hated for Slavery but for Making America and the West),

the left … hates America, which it regards as the paragon of capitalism. By becoming the most successful country in history, America, the quintessential capitalist country, remains a living rebuke to everything the left stands for. If America can be brought down, every left-wing egalitarian dream can be realized. … What the left does very much seek is to destroy America as we have known it -- the capitalist and Judeo-Christian enclave of personal freedom.

A much longer and much more detailed version of the present post was published here:

• 1619, Mao, & 9-11: History According to the New York Times

Check out the Twitter thread:

The #1619Project Summarized
in One Single Sentence https://t.co/D8tJiIjB9d
It is nothing short of preposterous to claim
that an obscure (if heinous) commercial
transaction in a tiny #Virginia hamlet
involving at most 25-30 people …
1/5@nytimes@nhannahjones@nytmag pic.twitter.com/Qs0z9ERBK6

— ¡No Pasarán! (@nopasa) April 20, 2021

RELATED: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence 

• 1619, Mao, & 9-11: History According to the NYT — Plus, a Remarkable Issue of National Geographic Reveals the Leftists' "Blame America First" Approach to History

• Wilfred Reilly on 1619: quite a few contemporary Black problems have very little to do with slavery

NO MAINSTREAM HISTORIAN CONTACTED FOR THE 1619 PROJECT

• "Out of the Revolution came an anti-slavery ethos, which never disappeared": Pulitzer Prize Winner James McPherson Confirms that No Mainstream Historian Was Contacted by the NYT for Its 1619 History Project

• Gordon Wood: "The Revolution unleashed antislavery sentiments that led to the first abolition movements in the history of the world" — another Pulitzer-Winning Historian Had No Warning about the NYT's 1619 Project

• A Black Political Scientist "didn’t know about the 1619 Project until it came out"; "These people are kind of just making it up as they go"

• Clayborne Carson: Another Black Historian Kept in the Dark About 1619

• If historians did not hear of the NYT's history (sic) plan, chances are great that the 1619 Project was being deliberately kept a tight secret

• Oxford Historian Richard Carwardine: 1619 is “a preposterous and one-dimensional reading of the American past”

• World Socialists: "the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history" by the New York Times, aka "the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party"

THE NEW YORK TIMES OR THE NEW "WOKE" TIMES?

• Dan Gainor on 1619 and rewriting history: "To the Left elite like the NY Times, there’s no narrative they want to destroy more than American exceptionalism"

• Utterly preposterous claims: The 1619 project is a cynical political ploy, aimed at piercing the heart of the American understanding of justice

• From Washington to Grant, not a single American deserves an iota of gratitude, or even understanding, from Nikole Hannah-Jones; however, modern autocrats, if leftist and foreign, aren't "all bad"

• One of the Main Sources for the NYT's 1619 Project Is a Career Communist Propagandist who Defends Stalinism

• A Pulitzer Prize?! Among the 1619 Defenders Is "a Fringe Academic" with "a Fetish for Authoritarian Terror" and "a Soft Spot" for Mugabe, Castro, and Even Stalin

• Influenced by Farrakhan's Nation of Islam?! 1619 Project's History "Expert" Believes the Aztecs' Pyramids Were Built with Help from Africans Who Crossed the Atlantic Prior to the "Barbaric Devils" of Columbus (Whom She Likens to Hitler)

• 1793, 1776, or 1619: Is the New York Times Distinguishable from Teen Vogue? Is It Living in a Parallel Universe? Or Is It Simply Losing Its Mind in an Industry-Wide Nervous Breakdown?

• No longer America's "newspaper of record," the "New Woke Times" is now but a college campus paper, where kids like 1619 writer Nikole Hannah-Jones run the asylum and determine what news is fit to print

• Spoiled Brats? The NYT defends the 1619 project while (and by) trivializing or outright insulting its critics, with N-word (!) user Hannah-Jones going as far as doxxing one pundit

• The Departure of Bari Weiss: "Propagandists", Ethical Collapse, and the "New McCarthyism" — "The radical left are running" the New York Times, "and no dissent is tolerated"

• "Full of left-wing sophomoric drivel": The New York Times — already drowning in a fantasy-land of alternately running pro-Soviet Union apologia and their anti-American founding “1619 Project” series — promises to narrow what they view as acceptable opinion even more

• "Deeply Ashamed" of the… New York Times (!), An Oblivious Founder of the Error-Ridden 1619 Project Uses Words that Have to Be Seen to Be Believed ("We as a News Organization Should Not Be Running Something That Is Offering Misinformation to the Public, Unchecked")

• Allen C Guelzo: The New York Times offers bitterness, fragility, and intellectual corruption—The 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory

• The 1619 Project is an exercise in religious indoctrination: Ignoring, downplaying, or rewriting the history of 1861 to 1865, the Left and the NYT must minimize, downplay, or ignore the deaths of 620,000 Americans

• 1619: It takes an absurdly blind fanaticism to insist that today’s free and prosperous America is rotten and institutionally oppressive

• The MSM newsrooms and their public shaming terror campaigns — the "bullying campus Marxism" is closer to cult religion than politics: Unceasingly searching out thoughtcrime, the American left has lost its mind

• Fake But Accurate: The People Behind the NYT's 1619 Project Make a "Small" Clarification, But Only Begrudgingly and Half-Heartedly, Because Said Mistake Actually Undermines The 1619 Project's Entire Premise

• The Truth Is Out: "The 1619 Project Is Not a History," Admits Hannah-Jones, and "Never Pretended to Be" 

THE REVOLUTION OF THE 1770s

• The Collapse of the Fourth Estate by Peter Wood: No one has been able to identify a single leader, soldier, or supporter of the Revolution who wanted to protect his right to hold slaves (A declaration that slavery is the founding institution of America and the center of everything important in our history is a ground-breaking claim, of the same type as claims that America condones rape culture, that 9/11 was an inside job, that vaccinations cause autism, that the Moon landing was a hoax, or that ancient astronauts built the pyramids)

• The 1775 proclamation of slave owner Lord Dunmore was a reaction to—not a cause of—a revolution already in full swing

• Mary Beth Norton:  In 1774, a year before Dunmore's proclamation, Americans had already in fact become independent

• Most of the founders, including Thomas Jefferson, opposed slavery’s continued existence, writes Rick Atkinson, despite the fact that many of them owned slaves

• Leslie Harris: Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies (even the NYT's fact-checker on the 1619 Project disagrees with its "conclusions": "It took 60 more years for the British government to finally end slavery in its Caribbean colonies")

• Sean Wilentz on 1619: the movement in London to abolish the slave trade formed only in 1787, largely inspired by… American (!) antislavery opinion that had arisen in the 1760s and 1770s

• 1619 & Slavery's Fatal Lie: it is more accurate to say that what makes America unique isn't slavery but the effort to abolish it

• 1619 & 1772: Most of the founders, including Jefferson, opposed slavery’s continued existence, despite many of them owning slaves; And Britain would remain the world's foremost slave-trading nation into the nineteenth century

• Wilfred Reilly on 1619: Slavery was legal in Britain in 1776, and it remained so in all overseas British colonies until 1833 

• Militiamen Mere "Slave Catchers"? Blatantly Overlooking the Important Role Played by America's Militias in the French & Indian War as well as the American Revolution, Both of Which Predated the Constitution and Its Second Amendment

• Not 1619 but 1641: In Fact, the American Revolution of 1776 Sought to Avoid the Excesses of the English Revolution Over a Century Earlier

• Can the Élites' Contempt for the Voters' Desires in the 2020s Be Traced All the Way Back to the Jamestown and Plymouth Colonies? In a sense, Lincoln chose the events of Thanksgiving 1620 as our true founding in order to repudiate the events of 1619

• 2,000% better off — Economic history is unequivocal: Jefferson’s slavery wasn’t the basis of America’s prosperity; Jefferson’s liberalism was

• If slavery was the basis of capitalism, asks Rich Lowry, why did the capitalist North wage a war to destroy the seedbed of its own prosperity?

• James Oakes on 1619: "Slavery made the slaveholders rich; But it made the South poor; And it didn’t make the North rich — So the legacy of slavery is poverty, not wealth"

• One of the steps of defeating truth is to destroy evidence of the truth, says Bob Woodson; Because the North's Civil War statues — as well as American history itself — are evidence of America's redemption from slavery, it's important for the Left to remove evidence of the truth

TEACHING GENERATIONS OF KIDS FALSEHOODS ABOUT THE U.S.

• 1619: No wonder this place is crawling with young socialists and America-haters — the utter failure of the U.S. educational system to teach the history of America’s founding

• 1619: Invariably Taking the Progressive Side — The Ratio of Democratic to Republican Voter Registration in History Departments is More than 33 to 1

• Secular humanistic indoctrination dumbs down children, drives wedges between them and their parents, and has grown increasingly hostile to patriotism and parental authority

• 1619 is a "reframing" of the American story in mockery of our political origins, in defiance of actual history, with the expressed purpose of sabotaging our sense of national identity

• Denying the grandeur of the nation’s founding—Wilfred McClay on 1619: "Most of my students are shocked to learn that that slavery is not uniquely American"

• Inciting Hate Already in Kindergarten: 1619 "Education" Is Part of Far-Left Indoctrination by People Who Hate America to Kids in College, in School, and Even in Elementary Classes

• Hulu's 1619 Project Docu-Series Is Not Designed to Teach Us—and Our Kids—About (or to Hate) Slavery or Racism; It Is Designed to Teach Us to Loathe America

• In 1640, more than 5,000 English citizens were being held as slaves in North Africa: Slavery’s long, cosmopolitan history is ignored by the architects of the 1619 Project

• "Distortions, half-truths, and outright falsehoods": Where does the 1619 project state that Africans themselves were central players in the slave trade? That's right: Nowhere

• John Podhoretz on 1619: the idea of reducing US history to the fact that some people owned slaves is a reductio ad absurdum and the definition of bad faith

• The 1619 Africans in Virginia were not ‘enslaved’, a black historian points out; they were indentured servants — just like the majority of European whites were

• "Two thirds of the people, white as well as black, who crossed the Atlantic in the first 200 years are indentured servants" notes Dolores Janiewski; "The poor people, black and white, share common interests"

LAST BUT NOT LEAST…

• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"

• Victoria Bynum on 1619 and a NYT writer's "ignorance of history": "As dehumanizing and brutal as slavery was, the institution was not a giant concentration camp"

• Dennis Prager: The Left Couldn't Care Less About Blacks

• A Prager U Video and a Book, "1620," Take on the 1619 Project

• When was the last time protests in America were marred by police violence? 1970, according to Ann Coulter, who asks "Can we restrict wild generalizations about the police to things that have happened in our lifetimes?" (Compare with, say, China…)

• The Secret About Black Lives Matter; In Fact, the Outfit's Name Ought to Be BSD or BAD

• The Real Reason Why Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and the Land O'Lakes Maid Must Vanish

• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History

• Who, Exactly, Is It Who Should Apologize for Slavery and Make Reparations? America? The South? The Descendants of the Planters? …

• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Sunday Special: GoFundMe Page for Hilary in Far-Away Port Huron

The sister of an NP reader (and friend) was in a car accident "in faraway Port Huron" a month or two ago which totaled the van she uses for her charity work. (I donated $100 bucks.) The GoFundMe page set up by her friends has more details:

miss hilary was t-bone[d] by a car [in late February], as [the other driver] ran a red light and smashed right into her sending her to the hospital. thankfully the lord was watching over her and allowed her another day with us. She's going to be unable to work during this time and is going to need help not only with medical and bills but also with buying a new van for herself. 

She needs a new van to be able to continue her journey with helping the other families she helps on a daily basis. Hilary runs a good pantry for her church and spends most of her own money to supply the food and material that's donated to many families in need, just last Monday she supplied 17 families with the help they needed to feed their family during this hard time as we know many are not working and every penny counts for those bills. 

She is always and I mean Always putting the needs of others above her own and now it's our turn to show her the live and support she deserves, whether it's donating, sharing or praying it all adds up in our eyes, so please join us and help us get her back on her feet when she's able to do so and help her replace her van as its done for and she needs it in order to shop, provide for families and Continuing to do what she lives the most in life!! thank you everyone for standing behind her and showing your love and support while she heals, i know she appreciates each and every one of you.

The Two Rules of Modern Journalism

On a regular basis, Instapundit — rightly — reminds its readers of the definition of modern journalism according to Jim Treacher and to Iowahawk. Both definitions are outstanding, but I think there is room for an additional one. (Update: welcome, Instapundit readers.)

Here, then, are:

The Two Rules of Modern Journalism

RULE # 1: Because journalists are required to be open-minded, exercise independence of spirit, and display a healthy amount of skepticism, the words and deeds of politicians, leaders, and the powerful — as well as those of regular citizens being interviewed — must constantly be questioned, second-guessed, doubted, fact-checked, challenged, and, more often than not, interrupted (more or less politely). 

RULE # 2: Rule # 1 only applies to Republicans.

(And to anybody leaning conservative.)

For Democrats and leftists, the typical query is more along the lines of "pray enlighten us to your glorious plans for fundamentally transforming the United States of America (we will be quiet now)." (Close second: "kindly tell us how much people have suffered, and are still suffering, in this dreadful country of ours.")

 

The 2 Rules of Modern #Journalismhttps://t.co/GqRX8HeAAV
RULE #1: Because #journalists must
display skepticism & #Independence of
spirit, leaders & politicians must constantly
be doubted, fact-checked, challenged,
& interrupted

RULE #2: Rule #1 only applies to #Republicans pic.twitter.com/YtOxFMV6Za

— ¡No Pasarán! (@nopasa) April 17, 2021

An obsessive totalitarianism: The political cult of Wokism combines the worst aspects of every political cult in history

The strange figures known as Wokists currently destroying America aren't just reprises of earlier enemies

notes Tal Bachman (thanks to Glenn Reynolds).

They represent something rather new. The political cult of Wokism combines the worst aspects of every political cult in history.

Whether they realize it or not, Wokists themselves combine the lunatic loyalty of the Manson family with the hollow pseudo-joy of Jonestown residents, the racism of National Socialists, the inhumanity of Mao Tse-Tung, the bratty tantrums of Veruca Salt, the nihilism of Bakunin-style anarchists, the totalitarianism of Stalin's Soviet Union, the child torture and sacrifice of the Mayans, the derangement of Heaven's Gate followers, the sadistic violence of the Jacobins, and the ruthless control-freakism of the current Chinese Communist Party.

Now add to that noxious syncretic blend the Wokist use of powerful communication technologies to shape narratives and meta-narratives, destroy opponents, and recruit new converts, and you've got yourself a thing.

Through it all, a counterfeit moral imperative with a deceptively appealing name ("social justice") drives the cult. That counterfeit imperative casts all existence as one great battle between Good (Wokism) and Evil (everything that is not Woke). It denies any constraints on efforts to win that battle. It entails an obsessive totalitarianism. It forbids critical self-examination of itself. Adherents of the cult are Knowers of the One True Truth. They are crusaders in righteous battle. Only victory matters. Anyone so much as questioning the One True Truth, inside or out, must be destroyed.

Although this is often denied to outsiders, Wokist theology requires hatred of America. It teaches that America was conceived in sin and remains insufferably sinful. It therefore decrees that America deserves execution and cremation into nothingness. Into that newly-created void, Wokism itself must move. Only then will righteousness prevail. Making this happen is a sacred obligation for all cult members. Their great success shows their sincerity.

 … And what they're actually doing is something like an Invasive Parasite Play: While keeping the outer forms (like the country's name, like "elections", etc.) intact, they move in to co-opt and control the structures and institutions which really run the country (which is to say, the structures and institutions which control us). As a result, millions remain oblivious that Wokists are destroying and replacing everything that ever constituted the country—that is, that they are changing what 'The United States of America' actually is.

Among many other things, that means first targeting public order, buildings, cities, fair trials, public trust, careers, police forces, education, laws, educations, freedom of speech and religion and assembly and press, codes of ethics, corporate practices, borders, political boundaries, the military, the economy, demography, religious beliefs, customs, music, books, myths, movies, family dynamics, sexuality, heroes, villains, history, aspirations, everything, and then, wherever possible, either destroying them or replacing them with Wokist substitutes.

I mentioned above the analogy of an invasive parasite, but this play is really something even more ambitious. It's a metamorphosis play, where infiltration, destruction, and replacement is followed by transforming the United States into some completely different entity altogether. That different entity is on track to resemble the former East Germany—a totalitarian puppet-state run by a lawless secret police, subservient to a greater foreign power—far more than any iteration of America throughout its history.

Victor Davis Hanson has more to say (obrigado per Sarah Hoyt) on the subject: 

Ed Bastian [… who] makes $17 million a year as chief executive officer of Delta Airlines … thinks it is racist to require the same sort of ID to vote that Delta requires for its passengers to check-in

Yet most Americans believe voting is a more sacred act than flying Delta and, moreover, may have noticed that Delta has all sorts of partnerships with a systemically racist China. So polls show Americans approve of voter IDs. 

 … The woke revolution is not a grassroots movement. It is powered by a well-connected and guilt-ridden elite. Yet the religion of Wokeness assumes these high priests deserve exemptions. Their wealth, credentials, contacts, and power ensure none are ever subject to the consequences of their own sermons. 

Multimillion-dollar NBA stars blast America’s “systemic racism.” They utter not a word about Chinese communist reeducation camps, the destruction of Tibetan culture, or the strangulation of Hong Kong’s democracy.

Such stars’ salaries are geared to coaxing a huge Chinese market. Their domestic endorsements hinge on a younger, woke American clientele. Defending the professional sports lifestyles of rich and famous stars apparently requires loud penance by blasting an unfair America.

Take almost any woke hotspot and a growing class divide is clear.

 … The richest celebrity billionaires such as Jay-Z, George Lucas, Paul McCartney, or Oprah Winfrey weigh in a lot about the oppression of a supposedly rigged system they mastered, rarely about the plight of the less-well paid in their own professions.

So wokeness is medieval. Sin is not given up as much as atoned for—and excused—through loud confessionals.

Self-righteous elites rant about carbon footprints, needless border security, defunding the police, gun control, and charter schools. But they rarely forgo their own private jets, third and fourth homes, estate walls, armed security guards, and prep schools. Apparently to rant about “privilege” means the less you need to worry about your own. 

Wokeness is an insurance policy. The louder the damnation of American culture, the more likely a career will be saved or enhanced. 

Wokeness is classist and elitist. Those who made or inherited a fortune, got the right degree at the right place, made CEO or four-star rank, live in the right ZIP code, or know the good people, believe they have earned the right to decide what is moral for their inferiors. 

So some of them have created an entire vocabulary of deplorables, irredeemables, clingers, dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals—for the peasants and “losers” who must do what they are told. 

Wokeness is not really about fairness for minorities, the oppressed, and the poor, past or present. It is mostly a self-confessional cult of anointed bullies, and hypocrites of all races and genders, who seek to flex, and increase, their own privilege and power. Period.

The Rational Bible Series (Highly Recommended): Dennis Prager Examines Each Moral and Every Story in the Bible with an Open Mind

The third book in Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series won't be due until September. The subtitle of Prager's Deuteronomy is either God, War, and Peace or God, Blessings, and Curses.

Is the Bible, the most influential book in world history, still relevant?

Why do people dismiss it as being irrelevant, irrational, immoral, or all of these things?

This explanation of the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, will demonstrate how it remains profoundly relevant—both to the great issues of our day and to each individual life.

Do you doubt the existence of God because you think believing in God is irrational? This book will cause you to reexamine your doubts.

The title of this commentary is The Rational Bible because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. In Dennis Prager’s words, “If something I write is not rational, I have not done my job.”

The Rational Bible is the fruit of Prager’s forty years of teaching to people of every faith and no faith at all. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world in general and to you on a personal level.

His goal: to change your mind—and, as a result, to change your life.

Deuteronomy will be the third book in the Rational Bible series by the founder of Prager University, in the wake of Genesis and Exodus. In the meantime (i.e., while waiting for September), you can purchase a copy of Dennis's The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code. Alternatively, or in addition, you can head over to Prager University's free video commentaries on each of the Ten Commandments — 1 to 5 and 6 to 10 — with six minutes or less per Commandment.