The Left has an uncomplicated revulsion for Judeo-Christian religion, American traditions, American symbols, our founders, and individual rights

The author of Irreversible Damage (How The Trans Craze Is Harming Our Daughters), Abigail Shrier has had it up to here (hand high above head) with Chest-Thumpers and ‘Aw, Shucks’ Conservatives Who Personify the Right’s Love Affair with Losing (thanks to Gail Heriot). For Conservatives, says Abigail Shrier,

The way forward is not to enter a victimhood contest with intersectional Leftists (“We’re offended too!”), because the victimhood contest is a degrading distraction—and one all non-Woke are destined to lose. But it’s also disingenuous: because the mothers who are pulling the freight train of America’s next generation are not victims and society doesn’t see them as such.

They are too busy raising a family to enter victimhood contests with overgrown children. What women need—what we deserve—is a forthright defense of our rights, everywhere they are threatened. Dear Members of Congress: Mothers are not “birthing people,” and to call us that is a disgrace. To refuse to call us mothers is an abomination, too. Sex-based rights are not yours to give away.

And if Republicans can’t say that, they should pack up their things; at least they won’t be in the way. The last thing America needs right now is more wallpaper over cracks. Time to toss out the “Aw Shucks Conservatism” of navy blazers and boat shoes, the sort that believes matching jammies on Christmas suffices to save a country on the brink. That approach may have excelled when churches and civil society were strong and conservatives needed only to get married, raise a family, and perform the simple heroism of showing up. Today, it’s a loser. 

Its mistake is not in any of the hand-written niceties it revels in, which make life orderly, cozy—even lovely. Its mistake is that it treats Leftist ideologues like quirky out-of-town guests arriving for brunch. It assumes we all want the same things and are equally devoted to the perpetuation of bedrock American commitments: free speech, free exercise of faith, equal protection, rule of law.

But the Woke are not zany guests. They are home-invasion robbers. The structure they intend to leave behind will contain but a handful of the cultural artifacts they encountered. Bringing down statues of Abe Lincoln, books by Dr. Seuss and schools named for the country’s founders? That’s just their casing the joint. The large-scale heist hasn’t even started.

Aw Shucks Conservatives are willing to disagree with the Left, but they first want to get all the terminology right—“Now, which is it again: is ‘non-binary’ the same as they/them? Or ‘she/they?’” They don’t understand that the chaos is the point. While they strain to avoid a faux pas, they don’t even feel the dagger going in. They chuckle with their buddies that Woke beliefs are “nonsense upon stilts,” to use Bentham’s term—and that voters will surely respond in the next midterm election. They do not fight Silicon Valley—they are confused about whether their belief in free market economics allows it. They do not fight for women—not if it means any mud splashed on their full-break trousers. They have lost every important cultural battle and - if given over to their protection - we would lose America.

They pine for a return to debating the Kiddie Tax or privatizing Social Security. They are polite and naïve. To the activist Left, they look like a meal.

 … The Left wages war every day, in every school system in America and, no doubt, many a summer camp. It knows the stakes are high and it comes prepared to fight. It has an uncomplicated revulsion for Judeo-Christian religion, American traditions, American symbols, our founders, and individual rights. It despises the nuclear family, like good Marxists do—which is the real reason it cannot abide the words “mother” and “father.” (It understands no one was ever moved to family formation by the dream of becoming a “gestational parent.”) It does not disguise its plan to replace all of these things.

The Aw Shucks Conservatives meet the Left reluctantly and meekly, praying like hell the other side will forfeit. (It won’t.) They allow themselves to be convinced that the current madness will burn itself out, or that they could not possibly respond to even the most outlandish of Woke claims—like whether biological men’s participation is healthy for women’s sports—without a PhD in kinesiology. They dream that America will come to its senses.

The Chest-Beating Conservatives at least do not underestimate the task at hand. But they lack discipline and restraint and occasionally even seem to revel in ignorance. They find their personification in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the greatest thing to happen to the Left since Roy Moore. 

 … Here, then, is a solution for conservatives: Stop playing the Left’s game of victimhood, stop straining to adopt its lingo. I’m not suggesting that you speak disrespectfully. I’m suggesting that you’ll never win a victimhood contest, in part because you don’t believe in victimhood contests (to your credit) and it shows. The point of the Left’s quick-changing lingo is to confuse, to make it impossible to form an argument or respond to one. The lingo is very much a trap, and if you’re straining to master it, you’re already caught.

 … Speak as plainly as you can. … Nor should you accept that the point of public dialogue is to avoid offense. That has never been the point of language, though it is often the point of its opposite (silence). The goal of language in the public sphere must always be to speak truthfully and as clearly as possible. If you can avoid offense, so much the better. If you cannot, then at least you’ll have been understood.

When a member of the Administration replaces the word “mother” with “birthing people,” you don’t Aw, Shucks, as if you’ve encountered the last native speaker of Etruscan. You’re faced with a direct assault on women and the family. And you respond in kind.

Back in early February, I asked, Why Are Conservatives So Naïve That They Refuse to See the Beam in the Eye of Those Who Hate Their Very Existence?

More recently, Stephen Kruiser, who is also frustrated, asks:

How long do the mainstream media hacks have to keep exposing themselves as frothing-at-the-mouth haters of conservatives before conservatives get it?

What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? Judges have families, too

Tucker Carlson Reading @martyrmade's Viral Thread On Why So Many Trump Supporters Have Questions About The 2020 Election & Their Distrust Of The Mainstream Media pic.twitter.com/HY6MECgd3s

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) July 10, 2021

I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective

writes MartyrMade Darryl Cooper in a a Twitter thread echoed by Tucker Carlson. (thanks to Glenn Reynolds via Ann Althouse).

It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they'll defend those positions w/info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they're not particularly attached to them. 2/x

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). 3/x

These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 4/x

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 5/x

This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 6/x

At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen. 7/x

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 8/x

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. 9/x

Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 10/x

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 11/x

GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 12/x

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov't as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don't stand for the Anthem. 13/x

They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 14/x

The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 15/x

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true. 16/x

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 17/x

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 18/x

Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution. 19/x

Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now. 20/x

Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden's $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request. 21/x

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares? 22/x

Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned. 23/x

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 24/x

The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 25/x

And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 26/x

Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real. 27/x

Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!). 28/x

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 29/x

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 30/x

It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 31/x

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. 32/x

They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct. 33/x

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1,
b) The press is part of the operation,
c) Election rules were changed,
d) Big Tech censors opposition,
e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged,
f) Trump is banned from social media. 34/x

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov't is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive. /end 

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

• How to Reply If You Are Being Badgered by Leftists Insisting that You Accept the 2020 Outcome as Fair'n'Square (based on Americans Anonymous)

• Leftists' Abhorrent Behavior: The Democrat Party seeks to demonize, criminalize, and extinguish dissent from the 75 million supporters of Donald Trump" 

• Voter Fraud — A Note to Leftists Who Claim that "Not a shred of hard evidence has been produced"

• Dennis Prager: The Numerous (and Sweeping) Anomalies Regarding the 2020 Election That Cannot Be Ignored

• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party

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

• The Take of Bill Maher's Coronavirus Expert Guests Happens to Apply Perfectly to the 2020 Election 

• One of Erik's French TV appearances: 99% of the Capitol Protestors Were Entirely Peaceful, as Were 99% of the Group Which Entered the Premises 

• Stare Decisis: The Areas that Precedent Is Not Supposed to Include and Be Concerned With 

• How Would Reagan React to the November Election's Voter Fraud and the Riots of 2020? How About Abe Lincoln?

Leftists' Abhorrent Behavior: "The Democrat Party seeks to demonize, criminalize, and extinguish dissent from the 75 million supporters of Donald Trump"

The Democrats have a talent for avoiding responsibility for their contemptible actions by blaming them on the other side

writes Ed Brodow at American Thinker (obrigado per Sarah Hoyt, who — rightly — flashes the Instapundit meme "THE DEMAND FOR WHITE SUPREMACY FAR EXCEEDS SUPPLY"). 

A recent manifestation of this talent is President Biden's attempt to deflect attention away from abhorrent behavior by scores of Democrat politicians.  Throughout 2020, they shirked their duty to uphold the law in the face of civil disturbances.  Biden wants you to pretend that never happened in order to rail against what he calls a "white nationalist insurrection."  Pants on fire!  Biden should be ashamed to embrace this nonsense.

In his first joint address to the U.S. Congress on April 28, Biden identified white supremacy as the number-one domestic terror threat.  He insisted that white supremacists pose a bigger threat than foreign actors.  "We won't ignore what our intelligence agencies have determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to our homeland today," Biden said.  "White supremacy is terrorism."

For seven months, Democrat mayors and governors refused to take action against leftist violence that destroyed our cities.  In many cases, they supported the rioters.  "You have to look pretty hard to find Democrats condemning fires, riots, violence, looting, stealing, burning police cars," said author and political commentator Dennis Prager.  If you condemn only what Republicans do and applaud what was done daily by leftists, says Prager, then you don't care about truth.  "Violent protests had been championed and normalized by Democrats and their media over the last four years," Daniel Greenfield wrote in the Jewish Press.  Greenfield is referring to the attempt by the media to characterize the ongoing violence as "peaceful protests," an obvious fabrication.

On January 6, 2021, a nonviolent assault on the U.S. Capitol, spurred on by leftist agitators who were bussed in, was staged by Democrats with the collaboration of mainstream and social media, along with — if you believe Tucker Carlson's well-substantiated accusation — the FBI.  "The purpose of the entire circus was to provide a propaganda opportunity for the Left," wrote Daniel Greenfield.  By blaming the assault on white nationalists, Biden and the Democrats hope to achieve three objectives: (1) create a diversion from the 2020 riots, (2) divert attention from massive circumstantial evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, and (3) crush conservatives and Trump-supporters.

The storming of the Capitol has become the rallying point for efforts to destroy the Republican Party — Democrats' equivalent of the Fourth of July­.  With the collusion of the media, we have been force-fed allegations that the assault was an attempted right-wing coup, that Trump-supporters conducted the assault, and that President Trump was personally responsible for inciting it.  These allegations are entirely duplicitous.

Using the Capitol assault as an excuse, Democrats have unleashed a new buzzword called "domestic extremism."  The intention of this fiction is to convince the public that extremism is coming from the right and that we should fear an "insurrection" by white supremacists, which in this case refers to Republicans.  "The ruling elite are pushing the notion of rampant right-wing domestic terrorists and the danger of conspiracy theories," says cultural critic Michael McCaffrey, "in an attempt to conceal their crimes and stifle dissent."

Attorney General Merrick Garland, says Tucker Carlson, "wants you to believe and wants history to record, that January 6th was an attempted insurrection by white supremacist revolutionaries bent on taking over this country.  Because of January 6th, says the chief law enforcement officer in the United States of America, and many other members of Joe Biden's Cabinet, we must now use law enforcement and military force to arrest, imprison, and otherwise crush anyone who leads opposition to Joe Biden's government.  That's their position.  They say it out loud."  

"The Democrat Party seeks to demonize, criminalize and extinguish dissent from the 75 million supporters of Donald Trump," agreed conservative author David Horowitz.  In the wake of January 6, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking on MSNBC, referred to President Trump and his Republican supporters as "domestic enemies" and "enemies of the state."  Even many Republicans who have been Trump-supporters bought into the lie.  "Within an hour," said Dennis Prager, "every leading Republican I know of condemned in no compromised terms what happened at the U.S. Capitol."

Actually, the vast bulk of domestic extremism in this country has been coming from the left, not from the right. Six months of leftist-inspired riots, looting, burning, and murder in cities throughout the country ought to be sufficient proof of that.  But if the Democrats can exploit the Capitol attack to convince the public that evil intentions are coming from the right, it can be used to justify the canceling of conservatives and whites.

After the Capitol assault, the country took the idea of election fraud less seriously, and the destruction of our cities was practically forgotten.  "The Russia collusion was a lie," Prager said, "yet we pursued it for three years — but we can't pursue for a few weeks the notion that there may have been tampering of ballots, especially when half the country believes it.  People have to believe their votes matter."

The Democrats, including the president, argue that merely questioning the 2020 election result amounts to "insurrection" and "domestic terrorism" and should be suppressed.  This is a direct assault on the First Amendment.  "You can't have a democracy," David Horowitz warned, "if this is the attitude of a party that controls all three branches of government, is enabled by a corrupt and compliant media, and is determined not just to defeat, but to humiliate, destroy and expunge from the record an ex-president who is supported by a greater segment of the American electorate than any American leader before him."

"So what is this, exactly?" Tucker Carlson asks.  "Well, it's a big change in the way the U.S. government treats its own citizens.  We're looking at the transformation of a democratic republic into something else. We're looking at growing authoritarianism.  That's not an overstatement."

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

• How to Reply If You Are Being Badgered by Leftists Insisting that You Accept the 2020 Outcome as Fair'n'Square (based on Americans Anonymous)

• Voter Fraud — A Note to Leftists Who Claim that "Not a shred of hard evidence has been produced"

• Dennis Prager: The Numerous (and Sweeping) Anomalies Regarding the 2020 Election That Cannot Be Ignored

• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party

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

• The Take of Bill Maher's Coronavirus Expert Guests Happens to Apply Perfectly to the 2020 Election 

• One of Erik's French TV appearances: 99% of the Capitol Protestors Were Entirely Peaceful, as Were 99% of the Group Which Entered the Premises 

• Stare Decisis: The Areas that Precedent Is Not Supposed to Include and Be Concerned With 

• How Would Reagan React to the November Election's Voter Fraud and the Riots of 2020? How About Abe Lincoln?

Évelyne Joslain on NTD: Has God Forsaken America? (en français)

Dans un entretien avec Ying Huang de New Tang Dynasty Télévision, Évelyne Joslain passe une heure à répondre à la question, Est-ce que Dieu a lâché l'Amérique ?
New Tang Dynasty Télévision est la plus grande chaîne internationale chinoise indépendante, basée à New York, qui diffuse ses programmes à plus de 100 millions de personnes dans le monde. En France NTD TV est accessible gratuitement sur les canaux suivants : Orange 548, FREE 799, SFR 921, Bouygues 802.

It Turns Out that Most People Who Are Against Circumcision — in Order to Prevent Harm to "Defenseless" Babies — Are Leftists Who Also Happen to Be in Favor of Abortion

Another contribution to the Babylon Bee: 

It Turns Out that Most People Who Are Against the Procedure of Circumcision — Because It Is Allegedly "a Violation" of the Rights of the Child (i.e., in Order to Prevent Harm to "Defenseless" Babies) — Are Leftists Who Also Happen to Be in Favor of Abortion

Marching On, Right Into Battle

The story
of D-Day.

Géo's David Peyrat has an interesting article on the the only French unit to participate in the D-Day landings. Five months after taking Ouistreham in Normandy on June 6, 1944, Philippe Kieffer's "green berets" stormed another shore, this time the Dutch coastal town of Vlissingen, in order for the Allies to take control of the Scheldt river. This battle lasted far longer (eight days) than Ouistreham, as Benjamin Massieu's The Forgotten Campaign (Netherlands 1944-1945) explains, with far greater losses before the French commandos prevailed.

Après le D-Day, le célèbre bataillon français a participé à un fait d’armes méconnu : la prise de Flessingue, aux Pays-Bas, en novembre 1944. C'est l'objet du livre Commando Kieffer, la campagne oubliée, paru fin 2020 aux éditions Pierre de Taillac.

Commando Kieffer, deux mots qui évoquent un lieu et une date : Ouistreham, le 6 juin 1944. Créé à Londres au printemps 1942 par de Gaulle et Churchill, ce bataillon de 177 fusiliers marins, dirigé par le commandant Philippe Kieffer, entra dans la légende lors du débarquement allié. Elle fut alors la seule unité française à fouler les plages normandes. Entre Ouistreham et Saint-Maclou, elle perdit 20 hommes. Mais le D-Day éclipsa l’autre fait d’armes de ces courageux bérets verts : son intervention aux Pays-Bas en novembre 1944. Objectif : déloger l’ennemi de l’île de Walcheren, sur l’estuaire de l’Escaut, pour faciliter la poussée alliée. Une forteresse tenue par 10 000 soldats allemands dans le cadre du Mur de l’Atlantique.

L’ouvrage, très documenté, répare cet oubli en nous faisant revivre, jour par jour, leur mission baptisée "Infatuate", à travers cartes, extraits de journaux de soldats, mais surtout plus de 200 photos rares. Certaines, inédites, ont été prises par le capitaine Guy Vourc’h lui-même, l’un des officiers chargé de baliser le terrain afin de favoriser le déploiement des troupes régulières.

La prise de Flessingue, plus difficile et coûteuse qu’à Ouistreham

On y découvre, entre autres, des clichés de l’assaut sur le port de Flessingue, le 1er novembre 1944, mais aussi des portraits de frères d’armes, tels le lieutenant Guy de Montlaur, blessé à la joue par une balle. Les photos de la ville portuaire, totalement dévastée, témoignent, elles, de la violence des combats. Car la prise de Flessingue ne fut pas une promenade militaire à la poursuite d’un ennemi en déroute. Elle se révéla plus difficile et coûteuse qu’à Ouistreham.

Si la Royal Air Force bombarda sans répit les digues afin de créer des brèches qui inondèrent les côtes, obligeant les unités allemandes à se replier, il faudra huit jours aux hommes de Kieffer et aux troupes alliées pour venir à bout de l’ennemi. Une victoire essentielle pour prendre le contrôle de l’Escaut et permettre ainsi aux navires de rejoindre le port belge d’Anvers et approvisionner le front. Le commandant Kieffer estima que Flessingue fut "sa plus belle campagne". Elle méritait un tel ouvrage pour la porter à la connaissance du grand public.

 

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… 

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(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?