Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for March 14, 2022OT/LE

submitted by rwkastenBring on the dancing horses from self.CultureWarRoundup

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for March 14, 2022

Post small CW threads and off-topic posts here. The rules still apply.

What belongs here? Most things that don't belong in their own text posts:

"I saw this article, but I don't think it deserves its own thread, or I don't want to do a big summary and discussion of my own, or save it for a weekly round-up dump of my own. I just thought it was neat and wanted to share it."

"This is barely CW related (or maybe not CW at all), but I think people here would be very interested to see it, and it doesn't deserve its own thread."

"I want to ask the rest of you something, get your feedback, whatever. This doesn't need its own thread."

Please keep in mind werttrew's old guidelines for CW posts:

“Culture war” is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people change their minds regardless of the quality of opposing arguments.

Posting of a link does not necessarily indicate endorsement, nor does it necessarily indicate censure. You are encouraged to post your own links as well. Not all links are necessarily strongly “culture war” and may only be tangentially related to the culture war—I select more for how interesting a link is to me than for how incendiary it might be.

The selection of these links is unquestionably inadequate and inevitably biased. Reply with things that help give a more complete picture of the culture wars than what’s been posted.

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[–]rwkastenBring on the dancing horses[S,M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Per user suggestion, until traffic on this sub picks up a bit, I'm going to create a single thread that may correlate to several weeks' worth of threads in the subreddit. We have this option because saidit's automoderator doesn't appear to have the "auto-post new threads" feature. There is no cutoff that will generate a new OT/LE thread, but practically-speaking, it will probably be somewhere in the 2-3 weeks/100 comments range to start. We have flexibility at the expense of a small amount of convenience.

That said, here is the cross-link to the current OT/LE on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CultureWarRoundup/comments/vb4dy8/june_13_2022_weekly_offtopic_and_loweffort_cw/

New thread, because I care: https://saidit.net/s/CultureWarRoundup/comments/9fdw/offtopic_and_loweffort_cw_thread_for_june_27_2022/

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Canadian professor suspended for asking questions about child COVID vaccines

According to The Suburban, microbiology and immunology Professor Patrick Provost was sanctioned by Université Laval in the middle of June for his remarks.

After a post-Réinfo COVID conference email from Provost to his colleagues asking them “to share their views with the public,” someone complained to the university — whereupon the school concluded Provost’s comments were “biased” and that he “did not sufficiently analyze his data.”

Réinfo COVID is “a collective of nurses, physicians, scientists, and citizens seeking to generate debate about how the pandemic has been handled by the government.”

Provost told the Canadian Press that “As soon as you raise some concerns about vaccines, or side-effects, or complications related to vaccines, then it’s worse than the N-word. We should be able to discuss any ideas — any opinions — and because I express opinions that were going against the narrative of the government, I was suspended.”

In addition, Provost said in a June Quebecor Media piece that the COVID-19 “was very real” but asked “was it as significant as reported?” He provided data showing a mere five individuals under age 40 had died of the disease and questioned the Canadian government’s vaccine mandates and passports.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Is trans surgery just state-sanctioned mutilation? Severe body modification is never good, whether it’s done for Islamic reasons or trans reasons.

There is a question about body modification among the young that nobody wants to ask, let alone try to answer. But it’s time we put it out there. Why is it ‘mutilation’ when a young woman’s vagina is cut for religious reasons, but ‘affirmation’ when it is done for trans reasons? Why do we balk in horror at the ritualistic removal of parts of the outer vagina in young women in certain countries in Africa, but we cheer ‘bottom surgery’ as a form of ‘trans healthcare’ in the West? We need a reckoning with this moral disparity in how we view the ideological alteration of women’s bodies. We live in a world in which you can be arrested for subjecting your daughter to body modification for Islamic reasons but you will become a star on TikTok for allowing your daughter to have her breasts removed for gender-affirmation reasons. And we need to talk about that.

The issue of ‘mutilation’ – a word nobody wants to use, I know – was recently forced into the light by Katherine Deves. She was a candidate for the Liberal Party in the federal elections in Australia last month. She didn’t win her seat. In the run-up to the election she caused a storm by using the m-word in relation to trans surgery. People uncovered old social-media posts from Ms Deves in which she said trans kids are ‘surgically mutilated and sterilised’. She posted photos of young girls who have undergone double mastectomies in the belief that they are boys, describing it as a ‘complete failure of safeguarding’ that healthy young women are having their breasts removed. Strikingly, Ms Deves did not back down. She admitted her language had ‘on occasion been unacceptable’, but she said she will continue raising questions about the fad for severe body modification in the name of transgenderism. As for her use of the m-word, which so rattled Australia’s chattering class, Deves said ‘it’s very emotive, it’s very confronting and it’s very ugly’, but it’s ‘the correct medico-legal term’ for some things that happen under the trans banner.

Scott Morrison, the leader of the Liberal Party and PM until he was ousted in the May election, responded coolly to the fury over Deves’ comments. He said he would not use the term mutilation himself, but ‘gender-reversal surgery for young adolescents’ is a ‘significant issue’ that some parents are ‘very concerned’ about. Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer could take a leaf from Morrison’s book: let your politicians speak honestly about trans issues. Not everything Deves says is admirable. Far from it. She compared trans surgery to the Holocaust, which is disgraceful. She said she speaks out on trans issues because she doesn’t want to be like one of those mid-20th-century Europeans who ‘stayed quiet when the trains went past’. This was rightly condemned by the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies as ‘hyperbole’ that ‘trivialises the depth of inhumanity’ reached by the Nazis. However, it was not Deves’ offensive Holocaust comments that outraged Australia’s woke elites – it was the fact that she dared to question the ‘mutilation’ of young women who wrongly believe that they are male.

This is something we need to discuss, however offensive activists find it, however many screeches of ‘bigot’ are thrown our way. Some in Australia’s leftish media pointed out to Deves and Morrison that people under the age of 18 cannot actually have ‘gender-reversal’ surgery. That is, they cannot have their genitals altered. That’s true, but girls under 18 can have a double mastectomy if their doctor and their parents give permission. And they can be prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, as also happens in the UK (following the Court of Appeal’s overturning of the Keira Bell ruling) and in other countries. So in Australia, and elsewhere, an adolescent girl can have her breasts removed and she can receive medication that will induce ‘male’ biological traits – such as a moustache – and, at some point, infertility. Can we call this mutilation? If not, why not?

Mutilation is not a nice word, we can all agree on that. But we use it all the time. What was once known as ‘female circumcision’ is now described as female genital mutilation, given it involves the severe, irreversible alteration of a young woman’s genitals. ‘Are breast implants a form of mutilation?’, observers ask about plastic-surgery procedures. The disturbing modern trend for arm-cutting among teenagers has been referred to as a form of self-mutilation. So it is widely recognised that some forms of body modification can legitimately be described as mutilation, especially those that have no health benefits, and which may change a person’s life for the worse. So why is it verboten to say the m-word in relation to trans surgery? Why must you switch from saying ‘mutilation’ to ‘affirmation’ if a woman’s breasts or genitals are radically altered for trans purposes rather than Islamic purposes?

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Colleges Are Ethnically Cleansing America’s White Kulaks

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Biden's Sex Police: The White Houses's new regulations will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.

The new rules recommend a return to a “single investigator” model that was barred under the DeVos reform. This means one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint. The new rules also undo many of the procedural protections for the accused—including the right to see all the evidence, inculpatory and exculpatory, gathered against him. “It’s an evisceration of the procedural protections given to the accused,” says historian KC Johnson, co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities.

Under the DeVos rules, adjudication of a formal complaint required a live hearing be held that included cross examination. The Biden administration lifts this obligation. The Biden rules also call for a return to investigations initiated by third parties, even if based on rumors or misunderstandings, in which male students can be subjected to Title IX proceedings over the objection of their female partners. (Robby Soave at Reason has a good summary of the Biden proposals.)

“It’s a document that validates all of the concerns we had about due process and free speech being on the chopping block,” says Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He adds that the administration is giving schools the blessing of the Department of Education “to cut many corners that are essential for fundamental fairness.”

As vice president, Biden made clear that campuses were just the first stop in an effort to remake throughout society how males and females interact. He said in a 2015 speech at Syracuse University about sexual misconduct, “We need a fundamental change in our culture. And the quickest place to change culture is to change it on the campuses of America.”

Then just before entering the 2020 presidential race, Joe Biden was accused by several women of unwanted touching and hair sniffing. Biden didn’t quite apologize, but explained that all his physical contacts were well-meant gestures of friendship and support. This was followed by a more serious allegation of assault, a charge he credibly denied. But a male student accused of such acts under Obama administration campus policies would have faced potential expulsion and been subjected to a grueling investigation, often conducted with a presumption of guilt. A lack of intent to harm, as Biden claimed for himself, would provide no defense—the administration’s policy demanded elevating the subjective feelings of the complainant.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Brown University ends no-whites-allowed course after complaint

Brown University has backtracked on offering a “mindfulness” course exclusively to black, Latino and Indigenous students after a complaint was made to the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism.

Last month’s online “teacher training class in mindfulness-based stress reduction” was open only to “BIPOC” students, which stands for black, indigenous and people of color — although Asian students were not included in that category, the New York Post reported.

Brown reportedly established the course because “mindfulness instruction in the West has historically … failed to include and address the needs, life experiences, and priorities of marginalized communities,” according to a letter from a FAIR attorney Leigh Ann O’Neill.

The anonymous complaint to FAIR read

Brown is offering a RACE-BASED teacher training program that is ONLY open to certain demographics (black, latino, indigenous). The teachers will also only be members of what they call the BIPOC community (with support from senior teachers who may be white). This is a return to educational segregation based on skin color. Financial assistance is NOT being offered to members of other demographics who may not be able to afford the program either. (white & asian). This results in certain demographics being favored over others and is discriminatory.

O’Neill informed Brown President Christina Paxson that “establishing a teacher training program based on skin color or ancestry violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.” Since Brown gets federal aid, it must comply with the act.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Today in "ThAt NeVeR hApPeNs" news: Pennsylvania drag queen charged with 25 counts of child pornography

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Cotton, Banks spearhead bill allowing adults to sue doctors who transitioned them as minors

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., are introducing legislation Wednesday in Congress that would allow adults to sue doctors who perform gender transition procedures on them up to 30 years after they turn 18.

Under the Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act, patients or their legal guardians would be able to seek declaratory or injunctive relief against such practitioners, as well as compensatory damages and attorneys' fees. The provisions would apply only to procedures performed after the bill becomes law.

The proposed law also clarifies that federal law cannot be construed to force medical practitioners to offer such procedures and prohibits federal health funds from going to states that force doctors to perform them.

To define a "gender-transition procedure," the bill draws on definitions laid out in a March fact sheet from the Department of Health and Human Services, which claimed gender-affirming care includes social affirmation at any age, puberty blockers during puberty and cross-sex hormone therapy starting during early adolescence. Irreversible surgery to both breasts or genitalia is "typically used in adulthood or case-by-case basis in adolescence," according to the agency.

The bill also specifically defines biological sex as "the genetic classification of an individual as male or female, as reflected in the organization of the body of such individual for a reproductive role or capacity, such as through sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth, without regard to the subjective sense of identity of the individual."

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Police Open Investigation On Comedian For Telling A Joke

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A Nebraska Hospital Promotes Gender-Transitioning Kids with Drag Performances: Omaha’s Children’s Hospital is sponsoring a drag show at a local pride festival with a highly misleading booth promoting ‘gender-affirming care.’

It’s June, which now means that “pride festivals” — featuring drag queens and overtly sexual content — are popping up nationwide. You can expect to see local LGBT organizations and large corporations attempting to “out-woke” one another by sponsoring and promoting these events, some even into July.

Though such celebrations are now commonplace, it’s still surprising to see a children’s hospital sponsor a drag show while pushing transgenderism and harmful hormone therapy on children at such an event. But Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Neb., is indeed sponsoring a drag show at the 2022 “Heartland Pride Parade & Festival” in July. The event, which has a “kids corner,” features drag performers with names such as “Prince Poppycock” whose shows have promoted adult nudity and anal sex. The hospital will also have a booth at the event specifically marketed toward youth with the purpose of talking to children about “gender-affirming care.”

According to Children’s Hospital, gender-affirming care includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries, “which may involve ‘top surgery’ (creates a chest shape typical to males or enhances breasts), ‘bottom surgery’ (surgery on reproductive organs or genitals), facial feminizations, or other procedures.” (The page containing this information has been removed from the hospital’s website.)

Many Nebraskans are now rightly asking why a children’s hospital is sponsoring a drag show and promoting transgenderism to kids. Those who support and promote this type of “gender-affirming care” push the false notion that the complete and total, “no questions asked” acceptance of one’s chosen gender identity is necessary to prevent youth suicides. But the opposite is true. A new research report found that increasing access to so-called “gender-affirming care” not only failed to decrease youth suicide, but it likely also leads to higher youth-suicide rates. Nor is this about “buying time” for kids, as some may argue. It’s about a one-way road to transition. One study of children who started puberty blockers found that nearly 100 percent ultimately medically transitioned.

The simple truth is that hospitals — including those that provide high-quality care for children — can fall victim to the public and cultural pressures of the LGBT community. Moreover, hospitals can even profit from getting kids on puberty blockers and performing sex-change surgeries that remove healthy body parts — all under the guise of “gender-affirming care.”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Chicago police will no longer be allowed to chase people on foot

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

West Point cadets taught critical race theory, including addressing 'whiteness,' docs show

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained the documents from government watchdog group Judicial Watch, whichhad to sue the military twice under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get the information.

"Our military is under attack – from within," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in the press release. "These documents show racist, anti-American CRT propaganda is being used to try to radicalize our rising generation of Army leadership at West Point."

Fitton told Fox News Digital that the material was obtained as part of a request for documents related to the instruction of cadets.

Judicial Watch received over 600 pages of documents from the two lawsuits that were levied after the Department of Defense (DOD) did not comply with the legally-binding requests for documents.

The documents reveal that the Army officers-in-training are receiving lessons on CRT, which included lessons on addressing "whiteness" as well as the application of CRT when answering questions.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A Woke Mandate for the Federal Reserve: Biden endorses racial equity as a third central bank priority.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

College will pay $800,000 to settle free speech lawsuit filed by silenced Christian student

Georgia Gwinnett College repeatedly blocked a Christian student from evangelizing on campus more than five years ago. Today, its administrators have agreed to pay the price.

Georgia Gwinnett College will pay $800,000 to settle a lawsuit filed against it by the silenced Christian student, Chike Uzuegbunam, his attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom announced Wednesday. The payout represents “nominal damages and attorneys’ fees.”

The decision comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March 2021 that just because the public college had amended its restrictive free speech policies to align with the U.S. Constitution in an effort to make the lawsuit moot does not mean the plaintiff cannot collect damages stemming from the original complaint.

In December 2021, a federal district court ruled the case could move forward on its merits.

“This case should … remind other colleges and universities nationwide of the need to respect their students’ liberties. If they do not, they can and will be held accountable,” ADF Senior Counsel Travis Barham stated in a news release.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

WHO director admits Covid likely leaked from 'catastrophic' Wuhan lab accident: A source said that Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently told a senior European politician that the most likely source of the COVID-19 virus was a catastrophic accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Conservative teenager kicked out of college for tweeting support of UK government’s immigration policy

A 17-year-old boy has been kicked out of college for tweeting his support of the U.K. government’s new immigration policy seeking to deport those who arrive illegally into the country to the African nation of Rwanda for processing.

Leo Shepherd, a former student at Burnley College in Lancashire, U.K., was reportedly refused permission to continue with his second year of studies because of his implied support of the Home Office’s latest strategy in dealing with the increasing level of illegal migration being experienced on England’s southern coast.

In the offending tweet, published on June 12, Shepherd commented on a story from the left-wing Mirror newspaper, in which a prospective asylum seeker was quoted as asking for “a chance for a life,” to which he replied: “That life can be had in the beautiful country of Rwanda, which has much nicer weather than the U.K.”

On June 15, Shepherd further tweeted his disapproval of the European Court of Human Rights’ decision to grant last-minute injunctions to a number of applicants claiming that their deportation from the U.K. would infringe upon their human rights, a judgment which effectively temporarily overturned decisions made by Britain’s domestic courts.

“The ECHR blocking the Rwanda plan is utterly ridiculous, a court from across the Channel should not have any right to hinder our elected government,” the former student tweeted.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Surprise! Minnesota Antifa leader is yet another registered sex offender

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Assault on Children’s Psyches: California’s ethnic-studies curriculum is fueling a mental-health crisis among teenagers

Patricia (a pseudonym) is the mother of a teenage girl who in recent years has come to identify as transgender. She lives in California, considers herself progressive, votes Democrat, and leads a group for parents of children with rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)—that is, youth who suddenly experience distress with their bodies and believe that undergoing medical “transition” will make them whole again. When I spoke to her recently, she recounted how her daughter’s at-first-lesbian and then trans identity emerged in response to feelings of shame about being white.

I have since spoken to more than a dozen ROGD parents and parent-group leaders who tell a similar story. Their schools compulsively tell their children how awful it is to be white, how white people enjoy unearned “privilege,” how they benefit from “systems” put in place by and for white people for the sole purpose of oppressing “people of color.” Plagued by guilt, the children—almost all of them girls—rush to the sanctuary of “LGBTQ+” identity. Once there, they are catapulted into hero status. According to Patricia, some teachers at her daughter’s school are more forgiving toward “queer” and “trans” kids who hand in their homework late.

The students, especially the girls, absorb this messaging. They are acutely sensitive to how identity affects their social status and academic fortunes. They want the warmth that comes with queer/trans identity, but above all they don’t want to be thought of as vicious oppressors. Lacking maturity and self-confidence, they fail to put “anti-racist” indoctrination in its proper context. They do not appreciate its ahistorical, anti-intellectual, and anti-humanist foundations, nor are they aware of the incentives leading teachers and administrators to foist it on them. Being white is not something these teenagers can escape, but they can mitigate its social costs by declaring themselves part of an oppressed group.

The wages of whiteness for teenagers are, however, only half of the story. Decades of gay rights activism have taught us that being gay or lesbian is not something one chooses. The mainstream narrative of transgenderism—promoted aggressively in the context of civil rights policymaking—holds that even being transgender is something people have little control over. Gender identity, experts have argued in Title IX lawsuits, is innate, immutable, and “primarily dictated by messages from the brain.” Thus, membership in the “LGBTQ+ community” would seem to be nonvoluntary. One is either “born that way” or not.

To understand what is going on in California and in other states, however, it is necessary to appreciate how the grounds for eligibility in this “community” have shifted in recent years. While both homosexuality and—depending on how you define it—transgenderism are said to be organic and unchosen, being “queer” or “non-binary” (or, again, “trans,” depending on definition) takes nothing more than an act of will; one need only declare oneself so. As a college lecturer, I had students—virtually all of them white females—who had female names, female pronouns, and a female-typical look, but who self-identified as “queer.” For many of these young women, being queer can mean simply not seeing themselves reflected in the most two-dimensional stereotypes of femininity. And who can blame them?

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Environmental Organizations Are Being Looted by Their Diversity Hires

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Universities silent on moving tampons out of men's bathrooms during nationwide shortage

Women’s menstrual products are missing on many shelves in the U.S. this week. But tampons can still be found in men's bathrooms on college campuses.

As more universities focus on LGBTQ+ inclusive initiatives, tampons are more commonly found in men's bathrooms on campuses.

In December 2021, Campus Reform identified multiple universities that began including women’s menstrual products in their men’s restrooms.

[...]

Campus Reform contacted each university and asked whether or not they would continue to supply their men's bathrooms with tampons despite the shortage that directly impacts women.

Not a single school replied.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

CEOs Start to Push Back Against ‘Woke’ Employee Bullying: Corporate executives tell workers stick to business and leave politics at home

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This Florida Dem Sells Pride Merch. Just Not on His Spanish-Language Website: Charlie Crist keeps Spanish web store free of pride pins and buttons

Charlie Crist, a Democratic congressman campaigning to unseat Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) in November, offers pride-themed items for sale on the English language version of his website but offers none on the Spanish version.

The front page of Crist’s campaign web store prominently features a number of gay and transgender-themed items. On the "En Español" page, however, no such merchandise is present. Crist offers two stickers in English, one with a transgender flag and another with a gay pride flag, featuring his campaign logo. The congressman also sells a button alluding to the "Don’t Say Gay" bill, a misnomer originating from false claims made by progressive activists regarding a parental rights bill passed by Florida.

Crist’s Spanish webpage contains a handful of generic campaign items with messages translated into Spanish.

Support for Democrats among Florida Latinos has plummeted in recent election cycles. Analysts have pointed to the Democratic Party’s leftward swing on social issues as a factor in the party’s hemorrhaging of Hispanic supporters.

Political consultant Mike Madrid told Axios that "as Democrats start to focus more on white, cultural, progressive cultural issues, they're losing the fastest segment of the non-college-educated population, and that's Latinos."

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Waukesha Parade Attack Suspect To Use Insanity Defense

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Sue and Settle is back: Biden Admin Quietly Nukes Trump-Era ‘Transparency’ Initiative Tracking Settlements And Payouts To Left-Wing Activists

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Asian Recall: Data from last week’s election indicate that Bay Area Asian voters played a key role in ousting the city’s district attorney—and that they favor a more moderate politics.

In the early 2000s, political scientists Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis argued that the country’s shifting demographics were giving rise to a new Democratic coalition, one in which racial minorities would come to play a central role. President Barack Obama’s electoral coalitions in 2008 and 2012 appeared to validate these claims. Republicans looked to be in deep trouble amid the nation’s increasingly nonwhite electorate.

But in our own analyses of San Francisco’s school board and district attorney recall elections, we find evidence that the “demographics is destiny” thesis is—at least at the local level—far more complicated for Asian voters. In short, many Asian voters appear skeptical about the policies espoused by the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party, particularly when it comes to crime and admissions policies in education.

Before examining data on the Boudin election, consider some anecdotes. Mallory Moench, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, revealed a telling exchange that she had with Jade Tu, a resident of San Francisco’s Sunset District, the night of the recall election. Tu had been volunteering for the pro-recall campaign since 3:55 a.m. that morning. “She never got involved in politics before,” Moench wrote, “but felt compelled as she saw attacks, some fatal, against Asian Americans, and what she felt was a lack of empathy and consequences from Boudin.” Tu told Moench: “I just want hard criminals to be prosecuted and those who deserve a second chance to get a second chance. When someone murders someone, they don’t deserve a second chance. I care about my community, and they are suffering because of policies. [Boudin] needs to go.” Similarly, the San Francisco Examiner interviewed a 64-year-old Chinese American woman named Wai-fong Lam who, despite having arrived in the U.S. from China almost 40 years ago, had voted in only two elections: this one, and the recall of three progressive members of the San Francisco School Board back in February. “I don’t understand politics, and I barely even speak English,” Lam said to the Examiner in Cantonese, “but I do know that we no longer feel safe in this city, and that my grandchildren’s good grades will no longer be enough to get them into the best public schools. Someone needs to be held accountable.” Kit Lam, a Chinese-American parent and activist who spearheaded the school board recall and was also involved in the effort to remove Boudin, told the paper: “This is just the beginning. A lot of Asian immigrant parents were just too busy to pay attention to politics, but the recent events have provided us an opportunity and incentive to form a mechanism to organize and mobilize.”

As in other cities, that mobilization extends to political activism. Mary Jung, the former chairwoman of the San Francisco Democratic Party, spent the last several months as chairwoman of the Safer SF Without Boudin campaign. “[Boudin’s] failure has directly resulted in increased crime against Asian Americans,” Jung said on the campaign’s website. “The number of anti-Asian crimes has increased six-fold, but he is refusing to prosecute violent attacks as hate crimes and has allowed perpetrators to get away with only misdemeanor charges.”

Our evaluation of two key data points largely validates the anecdotal evidence showing that Asian-Americans played a key role in ousting Boudin. We compared support for the recall across the city’s 11 supervisor districts relative to the share of registered voters in each district who requested a Chinese language ballot. In the three districts with the smallest share of Chinese ballots (2 percent or less), just 50 percent of voters supported the recall (5 percentage points less than the citywide average). In contrast, in the three supervisor districts with the highest share of Chinese language ballot registrants (10 percent or more), 65 percent of voters voted to recall Boudin.

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IG finds taxpayers paid nearly $24 million to educate hundreds of no-show students

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[Abigail Shrier] In Defense of Political Escalation: How can we get back to normal? Those waiting for the pendulum to swing back will be waiting forever.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis earned uncommon rebuke from conservative pundits last week, when he indicated he might sic Child Protective Services on parents who take their children to drag shows.

“I’m a very big fan of DeSantis and very not a fan of kids at drag shows,” writer Bethany Mandel wrote on Twitter. “But conservatives have to recognize the Pandora’s box we’re opening by involving CPS in judgment call parenting decisions. It’s not abuse.”

Mandel is right: Child Protective Services should not be sent after these families. Parents ought to be free to make all kinds of decisions regarding what ideas to expose their children to, how and when—especially with regard to matters that we typically consider private and deeply personal: Religion is one. Sexuality, another.

But here’s the hitch: as with so many of our institutions, CPS has already become thoroughly politicized and weaponized by the left. Dozens and dozens of loving parents have told me over the last two years that CPS showed up at their homes or threatened their custody or even testified against them in court, all for the sin of failing to “affirm” their minor child’s newly-announced gender identity or vetoing the kid’s immediate medical transition.

[...]

Here, then, is the question: If our ultimate goal is returning to a normalcy in which government agencies and corporations treat all Americans fairly regardless of viewpoint, how are we to achieve this? At a minimum, we must acknowledge that these institutions are already weaponized and their artillery points only in one direction: against the opponents of the left. Acknowledge further that an ever-increasing tyranny is ratcheted upon those who dare criticize the encroachment of gender ideology into all spheres of public life. The playing field is about as level as San Francisco’s Filbert Street.

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Man denied giving blood after refusing to answer if he was pregnant

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University STEM program excludes white and Asian males, complaint alleges

The U.S. Department of Education continues to allow the University of Cincinnati to discriminate against white and Asian males in its newly worded “Undergraduates Pursuing Research and Science Program,” according to a longtime economics scholar.

Mark Perry, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Michigan-Flint, told The College Fix that the university responded to a federal inquiry into its discrimination against male applicants by making the program discriminatory against white and Asian male students instead.

The public university in Ohio did this by changing the language of a STEM program to advertise it as open to applicants from “from under-represented groups pursuing degrees and careers in STEM fields.” Previously, UC advertised it as a “Research Experience for Women Undergraduates.”

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights first opened an inquiry in November 2020. In May 2022, OCR informed Perry that it had closed its investigation into the university’s Women in Science and Engineering program because it is no longer limited by sex.

This resolution did not satisfy Perry, who said the change makes the situation worse, not better. He said he has filed a new complaint (below) against the program.

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Leftist uses car to commit terrorist attack on Trump merchandise store in Easton, MA

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Attorney Generals Demand Biden Admin Stop Colluding With Big Tech To Censor Speech

Attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana filed a motion for preliminary injunction this week demanding a court stop Big Tech companies from colluding with the federal government to inform their political censorship sprees, after the White House has repeatedly bragged about exploiting its relationships with social media companies to suppress information the Biden administration deems “problematic.”

In the motion, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry argue that the Biden administration, in partnership with Meta (formerly Facebook), Twitter, Google’s YouTube, and other Silicon Valley giants, has taken advantage of Big Tech’s grip on the social media platform market to suppress any speech contrary to their chosen narrative.

“Freedom of speech is the very bedrock of this great nation, and needs to be protected and preserved. The federal government’s alleged attempts to collude with social media companies to censor free speech should terrify Missourians and Americans alike,” Schmitt said in a statement. “The federal government must be halted from silencing any more Americans, and this motion for preliminary injunction intends to do just that.”

The fed-inspired decision to “shadow-ban, de-platform, de-monetize, de-boost, restrict content access, and suspend many speakers, both temporarily and permanently,” a press release announcing the motion states, has silenced people “from doctors and scientists, to the owner of a conservative radio show, to everyday Americans who dare to voice their opinion in the public sphere.”

As noted by the state attorneys, it was during the height of the government’s panic over Covid-19 that Big Tech censored the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration who criticized the bureaucrats calling for continuous national lockdowns. The “extensive social-media censorship on multiple platforms” endured by authors such as Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya came shortly after emails between then-Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Francis Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci demanding a “quick and devastating … takedown” of the group’s criticism.

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More WaPo Drama: WaPo’s Taylor Lorenz Removed From Features Staff After False Claims In Story

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[Matt Taibbi] The World's Most Taboo Legal Case: While the media world wept over Amber and Johnny, a lawsuit filed by a feminist group over prison sexual abuse remained earth's most ignored scandal

Even people who submit declarations in WoLF’s prison case may not be immune. On May 31st, biologist and Substack author Colin Wright submitted a declaration in the Chandler case essentially testifying to the biological difference between men and women. “Being male or female is an immutable characteristic of each human,” he wrote.

On June 10th, Wright was informed by the online commerce platform Etsy that, after a “comprehensive review,” his account was permanently closed. A letter from the firm’s “content moderation team” deemed him guilty of “glorifying hatred or violence towards protected groups.”

Wright, known for writing on Quillette about gender, science, and speech, and for being one of the few PhDs still willing to publicly endorse “biological sex” — the iron unanimity on the cultural left against this once uncontroversial scientific tenet goes beyond anything I remember from the winger anti-evolutionists of the eighties and nineties — started selling merchandise on Etsy as a secondary revenue stream. His products included stickers and hats marked with the logo, “Reality’s Last Stand.”

Clearly, Wright’s merchandise reflects a point of view about a controversial topic. But his ban came from a company that also sells “Fuck TERFs Skateboarding Cat” stickers and “Fuck J.K. Rowling / STFU TERFs” handmade greeting cards. Etsy did not respond to requests for comment.

The payment processing company PayPal also told Wright it had “decided to permanently limit your account.” This ban chronologically took place before Etsy’s move, and the company denies it had anything to do with his editorial stances. There have been cases where PayPal has been open about suspending service over content, for instance in the historic decision to stop transfers to Wikileaks in 2010 after urging from the U.S. State Department. This instance is less clear, but that’s part of the problem with the content moderation era: the processes are so opaque that even in cases where reasons aren’t announced, service terminations still end up having a chilling effect on speakers.

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You know that thing that "never happens"? It happened again.

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Christian Graphic Designer Defends Right Of All Americans To Be Protected From Compelled Speech

When the case of Lorie Smith, a Christian graphic design artist who declined to create websites for same-sex celebrations, goes before the Supreme Court, it won’t be just her rights at stake — and it won’t just be the rights of Christians.

Smith says her decision was based on the message, not the person requesting it. “I’ve had the opportunity to create custom designs for clients in all walks of life, including those who identify as LGBT,” Smith said. “For me, it’s never, never, never about the person who requests the design. It’s always about what message they want expressed.”

Smith said in a press conference last Thursday that she started her own design studio, 303 Creative, so she could promote causes she believed in, including “a heart for children with special needs, overseas missions, the beauty of marriage, animal shelters, and veterans.” When she wanted to expand her business to include weddings, the state of Colorado would not allow her to do so unless she created websites for same-sex weddings as well. “The Colorado law restricts the fundamental First Amendment rights of Lorie and other business owners like her, and it doesn’t just target Christians only,” Sen.Ted Cruz said. “Consider it this way: Should a Muslim artist be compelled by the government to draw the image of Mohammed? Should Jewish artists be forced to create art that they consider to be antisemitic? Should a Democrat political firm be forced to take on Republican clients? Should left-wing newspaper columnists be forced to write conservative columns? No, no, no, and — as fun as it might be — no.”

Cruz and other members of Congress filed an amici curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to take Smith’s case, 303 Creative v. Elenis, which the court did in February. Kristen Waggoner, general counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, will argue the case before the Supreme Court.

Waggoner said a victory in this case deals with different arguments than Jack Phillips’ case, which Waggoner also argued before the Supreme Court. “Free speech and free exercise were in Masterpiece, but the court’s holding was based on free exercise — it didn’t touch the free speech arguments,” Waggoner said. “303 Creative deals with those free speech arguments.”

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Liberals attempt to rush through Canada’s “draconian” online streaming bill that hurts indie voices

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Trans Woman Burned in Effigy in Switzerland

Every year, the small town of Bassersdorf, Switzerland builds a “Böögg” — a large doll that’s set alight for Sechseläuten, an annual celebration at the end of April and the beginning of spring.

Typically, a Böögg is created to represent a snowman and is meant to signify the end of winter. In the past, Bassersdorf has opted to go in a different direction. Instead of winter, Basserdorf has created its effigies to represent people who they deem negative, including dictators like Kim Jong-Un and Muammar al-Gaddafi, according to LGBTQ Nation.

This year, the town created one in the likeness of a trans woman, which it called the “Diversity Böögg”.

The Böögg was dressed in a rainbow skirt and red tie. It had long blond hair and makeup on one side of its face, while the other had short, curly dark hair. It also had visible breasts and a penis, the latter of which was meant to be revealed by wind, Zuri Today reports.

“When it blew up the Böögg’s skirt, many spectators grinned,” master of ceremonies Christian Weiss told the outlet. “On Facebook, you can now choose the gender from a wide range of options,” Weiss explained. “It was the same with the Böögg this year. It has different features and there is something for everyone.”

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Vice President Harris to head new Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse

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Michigan's First Openly Gay AG: 'A Drag Queen for Every School'

Speaking at a civil rights summit Wednesday in Lansing, the state capital, Attorney General Dana Nessel said, according to reporting from The Detroit News' Craig Mauger, that ''drag queens make everything better. Drag queens are fun.''

She added that there should be a ''drag queen for every school.''

Matt DePerno, the Republican candidate for attorney general, decried Nessel's comments.

''Dana Nessel continues to show just how completely out of touch she is with Michiganders,'' DePerno said in a statement.

''Students in the third grade are behind on their reading, our test scores are some of the worst in the country thanks to these disastrous COVID lockdowns and she calls for drag shows for kindergartners,'' DePerno added.

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School Nurse, 77, Fired After Exposing School for Putting Child on Puberty Blockers

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"White guy" case against AT&T can move forward, judge says

A former AT&T employee is suing the telecommunications giant, alleging the company's diversity hiring practices discriminated against him because he is a middle-aged White man.

Joseph DiBenedetto, a Georgia resident who worked for two decades as an assistant vice president inside the company's tax research department, filed an age, gender and race discrimination lawsuit against AT&T after being laid off in the fall of 2020. His complaint claimed that his job was eliminated so the company could fill upper management roles with people of color.

AT&T contested the allegation in January. The company told a Georgia judge that the reason DiBenedetto and other White employees were let go was because the company's finance division, which houses the tax department, was struggling financially. AT&T called for DiBenedetto's case to be dismissed, but Judge Mark Cohen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled this week that the case can move forward.

DiBenedetto's lawyers said in the lawsuit that their client, "a 58-year-old White guy," spent most of his career at AT&T as a high-performing employee until the company decided it wanted more people of color in management.

"Suddenly, DiBenedetto found himself lacking the assumed longevity, skin color and gender AT&T preferred," the lawsuit states.

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The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI) The wealthy, powerful, and sometimes very weird Pritzker cousins have set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology

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Why Hungarians boo taking the knee: Central Europeans do not take kindly to lectures on privilege

Hungarians are celebrating today — and not just because their football team thrashed England 4-0 at Molineux last night. They also see a moral dimension in the victory, with headlines focusing on the booing of the Hungarian national anthem and chants of “you racist bastards” from England fans, after previous controversy over England ‘taking the knee’ at an away match in Budapest on June 4.

At the Budapest game — supposed to be played behind-closed-doors due to racism from Hungarian fans at Euro 2020 — the gesture was booed by a crowd of 35,000 schoolchildren allowed to watch the game by the Hungarian FA. After heavy criticism from England manager Gareth Southgate and his players, along with widely reported comments in the British media about “brainwashed” Hungarian youth, a Hungarian government spokesperson bullishly said “anyone who thinks that children at a football match in Budapest can be blamed for any kind of political statement is truly an idiot.”

[...]

‘Taking the knee’, for example, is more than a personal confession; it’s a “public gesture” aimed at others. Southgate confirmed this after the Budapest controversy, when he said his players take the knee with the intention “to educate people around the world.”

Hungarians and Czechs react badly to such statements partly because they do not believe the English have any right to lecture them about racial politics. These countries were not oppressive colonial powers, and they have so far been left relatively untouched by globalisation — so they don’t see the need for a moral reckoning with either their past or their present. To many, the educational mission professed by England reflects a curiously self-centred view of the world.

Yet along with the sense that ‘taking the knee’ isn’t applicable, there’s an awareness that the gesture is rooted in notions of ‘white privilege’ which tend to be applied universally, without regard for the specific history of a particular social group. Countries which have been oppressed within living memory, after struggling for the preservation of their cultures — even their languages — not much further back in the past, find this inexplicable.

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California Middle School Subjected Kids To Performance By Drag Queen Named ‘Nicole Jizz’

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The State Department’s Toxic Equity Agenda: Woke forces are working to turn America’s diplomatic corps into an arm of the Democratic Party.

Though support for the Black Lives Matter movement has plummeted over the last 12 months, many United States embassies and consulates will fly BLM flags again this year to mark Juneteenth. The display of BLM and Progress Pride flags, including at the U.S. Embassy in Vatican City, is just part of the State Department’s woke equity agenda, spearheaded by Ambassador Gina Abercrombie–Winstanley, the department’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Winstanley participated in an Equity Town Hall this past week in order to discuss the State Department’s Equity Action Plan, which reads like something cooked up in the Evergreen State College faculty lounge. The 19-page document promises to “embed equity into U.S. foreign policies,” to “embed intersectional equity principles into diversifying public diplomacy,” and to “increase inclusive, equitable messaging to combat disinformation.”

A year ago, when I condemned the State Department in the Wall Street Journal for flying the BLM flag, BLM’s public support stood at around 50 percent, depending on the poll. Now that support has plummeted to 31 percent, according to a recent poll. A leaked cable in May 2021 revealed that State authorized posts to fly the BLM flag for the remainder of the year. A source told me that a February 2022 cable encouraged posts to fly BLM flags for Black History month and other occasions. The cable indicated that State Department lawyers believe that flying the flag isn’t a violation of the Hatch Act, which prevents federal employees from engaging in political activities at work. I asked a State Department spokesperson to confirm if posts were still authorized to fly BLM flags.

“Part of our work in promoting democratic principles is advancing equity, justice, and equal opportunity, both at home and abroad,” the spokesperson responded. “One way we are doing this is by providing visible representations of our policy, such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) flags and banners, to show our dedication to democratic principles, justice, and racial equity . . . hanging BLM banners on U.S. embassies and consulate buildings and raising BLM flags on U.S. mission flagpoles calls attention to our efforts to advance racial equity and access to justice worldwide.”

Ambassador Winstanley has made divisive and preposterous claims about racism and equity that shed light on the State Department’s woke culture of Equity Action Plans and BLM flags. A March 23 email invitation sent to department employees advertising a forum on “creating a more diverse and inclusive Foreign Service” bluntly led with, “For too much of its history, the Foreign Service has largely been white and male.”

In the session, posted to YouTube, Winstanley emphasized that the State Department had too many unqualified white males in positions of leadership. “We have to call spades spades, primarily European-American men, that is who has the vast majority of senior positions. That does not come about through merit, not all of them. So we are improving merit by putting that focus on diversity and inclusion.”

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Biden adviser says Big Tech needs to “stop allowing specific individuals” to spread “disinformation”

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Fannie Mae’s New Racial Bias: The government-sponsored housing giant embraces race-based subsidies.

It was probably inevitable that the Biden Administration would enlist housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to advance its woke agenda, and now it has. Last week the government-sponsored enterprises released plans to promote housing “equity” that are chock-full of race-based subsidies.

Fannie and Freddie have been under federal conservatorship since Treasury rescued them during the housing meltdown with a $190 billion taxpayer bailout. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has since regulated their capital, liquidity and underwriting, as well as the mortgages they can acquire. Trump FHFA director Mark Calabria kept the monsters on a tight leash, but there was always a risk that a future Administration would ease up and politicize home lending again. That day has come.

In September the Biden FHFA announced it would require Fannie and Freddie to “prepare and implement three-year Equitable Housing Finance Plans that describe each Enterprise’s planned efforts to advance equity in housing finance.” Translation: They must find ways to boost minority homeownership no matter the risk for taxpayers.

The plans released last week might have been written by California Rep. Maxine Waters. Central to Fannie’s plan are “Special Purpose Credit Programs” that increase access to credit and encourage “sustainable homeownership for Black consumers.”

One program would assist black borrowers with down payments. Most home-buyers are required to put down at least 20% of the cost of a new home to reduce the risks of default. Fannie’s plan would effectively require taxpayers to subsidize down payments for black borrowers. Revenue that Fannie earns on its mortgage portfolio is retained as capital to protect taxpayers during a downturn. Under Fannie’s plan, some of that revenue would go to reducing down payments.

I'm sure we all know how this song goes, so let's all sing along!

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Race must be considered in determining legality of police stops and seizures, WA state Supreme Court rules

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AFL Releases Documents Conclusively Proving Critical Race Theory Indoctrination Is Being Used In Public Schools

America First Legal, working with Wally Zimolong of Zimolong LLC, sued the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District in Chester County, PA on behalf of Ben Auslander, a father who exercised his right to review the materials that the District was using to “educate” children in the District. The District had hired the Pacific Educational Group (PEG), a California-based education consultant that claims “Systemic Racism is the most devastating factor contributing to the diminished capacity of all children” to run teacher training and shape the curriculum.

But when the time came for Mr. Auslander to see what the District and PEG were up to, the District told him he could not make notes, photocopy, or take pictures of PEG’s presentations. Mr. Auslander tried to take voice notes on his phone, but to hide the truth, the District terminated the inspection and threw him out, claiming that PEG had asserted copyright protections on its training materials.

Then, AFL sued the District on behalf of Mr. Auslander.

Unwilling to advance its baseless copyright protection claim in federal court, PEG caved and the documents were produced to America First Legal. They show that PEG’s “training” of the District staff included exercises on “walking through the barriers to teaching Critical Race Theory at your school,” and how “Critical Race Theory is a vital step in your School Transformation Action Plan.’”

Leftist teacher unions, education bureaucrats, and media officials have promised the American people that “CRT is not being taught in any single K-12 school in America.” But America First Legal has uncovered the truth and exposed their lies. Parents across the Nation should read the documents, and demand that their local school districts tell the truth about the role CRT and other woke ideology plays in teacher training, curriculum development, and, ultimately, student indoctrination.

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First ‘Trans’ ELCA Bishop Resigns Amidst Allegations Of Corruption & Racism

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Joe Biden and the poison of identity politics: The most powerful man in the West is resuscitating racial thinking.

When we hear the word ‘identitarian’, we tend to think of a certain kind of person. Young, overeducated, not a fan of freedom of speech, probably white but positively obsessed with the pain and suffering of black people. They’ll be a TikToker too, no doubt, and a professional protester, forever turning up to public gatherings to shout ‘Black Lives Matter!’, or, for extra woke cred, ‘Black Trans Lives Matter!’. Well, it’s time we shook up our vision of identitarians. Next time you hear that i-word, think not of earnest Ivy League youths who spend too much time on social media, but rather of a 79-year-old man, stiff, not quite all there, and in possession of real political power rather than just influencer fame. Think of Joe Biden.

President Biden is the most powerful identitarian in the world. His presidency has been defined by identity politics. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, anti-woke liberals insisted that the insanity of identity politics would be kept in check if the American people ditched Trump and replaced him with Biden. Biden’s an old-fashioned political operator, they said, not a player in the pseudo-left’s crazy culture war against equality, reason and science. How wrong they were. Biden has guzzled down the identity Kool-Aid. He seems to view everything through the prism of race. He openly says he will pick people for high office on the basis of their skin colour rather than their skill set. Biden’s identitarian presidency risks overturning the great gains of the post-civil rights era, and replacing the humanising ideal of equality with the divisive new ideology of ‘equity’.

Biden’s hyper-identitarianism has been thrown into sharp relief by the Ilya Shapiro controversy. Shapiro was a senior lecturer at Georgetown University Law School. He resigned on Monday after months of controversy over a tweet he posted in February. Following Biden’s race-conscious promotion of the attorney Ketanji Brown Jackson as his pick for the Supreme Court, Mr Shapiro tweeted: ‘Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog and v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.’ It was those last three words – ‘lesser black woman’ – that caused a social-media storm.

[...]

Georgetown cleared Shapiro of wrongdoing, but he resigned anyway because he believes he was being set up for discipline ‘the next time I transgress progressive orthodoxy’. To my mind, the most alarming thing about the Shapiro controversy is the idea that we should be madder with Shapiro for calling out identity politics than we should be with Biden for practising it. As an anti-racist, I fully agreed with the statement Shapiro made back in February after he deleted his tweet. ‘A person’s dignity and worth simply do not, and should not, depend on race, gender or any other immutable characteristic’, he said. ‘[Blatantly] using identity politics in choosing Supreme Court justices is discrediting to a vital institution’, he continued.

This is correct. The person who violated modern American principles, who injected the baleful consideration of race into what ought to have been a discussion of talent and vision, was not Mr Shapiro – it was President Biden. Biden expressly said he would only consider black women for his Supreme Court nominee. No whites, no Asians, no Hispanics. As a writer for The Hill pointed out when Biden made his blacks-only promise about the Supreme Court, he was engaging in an ‘explicit exclusion of more than 93 per cent of the US population’ from one of the highest-ranking jobs in America. That is flat-out discrimination. We have to let young ethnic-minority people know that they are capable of achieving great things, the woke set always says. Well, what message did Biden send to Hispanic boys or Chinese-origin girls when he made it clear none of their kind would be considered for the Supreme Court this time round? That people like them count for less?

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Mother-of-two is ordered to pay £300 compensation to transwoman over her 'transphobic' comments during angry Twitter exchange about female loos... after turning up to court wearing a badge saying 'transwomen are men'

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Home Depot Wins Ruling Rejecting Right to Wear BLM at Work

A complaint by US labor board prosecutors against Home Depot Inc. -- for allegedly interfering with workers’ rights to protest against racial harassment -- should be dismissed, an agency judge ruled Friday.

The US National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel had alleged that the company violated federal labor law by preventing staff from displaying the message “Black Lives Matter” on their aprons, as well as by threatening and punishing employees to discourage collective action.

The NLRB declined to comment. A representative for Home Depot didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry. The Atlanta-based home-improvement retailer has said that the agency “misrepresents the relevant facts” and that it is “fully committed to diversity and respect for all people.”

Federal labor law protects the right of employees, with or without a union, to engage in collective action about workplace conditions. In the Home Depot case, and another against Amazon.com Inc.’s Whole Foods Market, the agency’s general counsel argued that employers violated that law by prohibiting staff from wearing Black Lives Matter messages on their clothing.

In his ruling Friday, administrative law judge Paul Bogas wrote that Black Lives Matter messaging lacked “an objective, and sufficiently direct, relationship to terms and conditions of employment” to be legally protected.

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Pittsburgh parents sue over teacher instructing first graders on gender transitioning

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French progressives come up with another novelty: genderless bicycle paths

The French city of Lyon, controlled by the Progressives, has come up with a new woke policy.

The construction of numerous cycle paths and lanes in European cities to reduce or eradicate car traffic is no longer enough; new perspectives are needed. Lyon’s Deputy Mayor Fabien Bagnon has announced the intention to design “gender-neutral and therefore inclusive” bike paths. This is probably a follow-up to the construction of genderless playgrounds for kids, for example, in Grenoble.

Bagnon, in charge of roads and active mobility across Lyon, announced the municipality’s intentions on Twitter and immediately aroused a fuss across France.

“What comes next? Division according to age? According to the size of your calves? According to the color of the wheel?” the Lyon right-wing opposition responded.

“The deputy mayor of Greater Lyon offers you the genderless cyclist path. I do not understand it. I’m searching how sexist a road can be,” asked local journalist Emmanuelle Ducros immediately afterward.

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New York put out over $200K for drag shows in NYC public schools

New York, the state and the city, has paid over $200,000 to drag performers for appearances in New York City public schools since 2018.

The state funds came via its Council on the Arts ($50,000) while the Big Apple’s from its Departments of Education, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Community Development, and Department of Transportation ($157,000), the New York Post reports.

Since January of this year, the group Drag Story Hour NYC (formerly the Drag Queen Story Hour NYC) has made 49 appearances in 34 schools, elementary through senior high. In May, the group made $46,000 for its appearances at schools, festivals and libraries.

New York City Council has allocated $80,000 for Drag Story Hour NYC this year alone, more than triple the 2020 funding.

Drag Story Hour NYC members usually “read aloud from a list of books that teach acceptance and inclusion, including children’s classics like ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and ‘The Rainbow Fish.'” But other books “overtly celebrate” gender fluidity such as “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish.”

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Parent alleges teacher took underage son to drag show performed by sex offender

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Washington Commanders Head Coach Fines Defensive Coordinator $100,000 for Comparing January 6 with 2020 Riots

Rivera said the financial penalty the team collects from defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio will be donated to the United States Capitol Police Memorial Fund, created by Congress to support the families of USCP officers killed or injured in the line of duty.

Del Rio had called the riot a “dust-up,” and suggested that the difference in the media coverage of January 6 and the coverage of the riots that occurred after Floyd’s murder in May 2020 reflected a double standard.

“Why are we not looking into those things — if we’re going to talk about it — why are we not looking into those things?” Del Rio said on Wednesday. “I can look at images on the TV, people’s livelihoods are being destroyed, businesses are being burned down, no problem. And then we have a dustup at the Capitol, nothing burned down, and we’re going to make that a major deal. I just think it’s kind of two standards, and if we apply the same standard and we’re going to be reasonable with each other, let’s have a discussion. That’s all it was. Let’s have a discussion.”

Del Rio was defending a Monday tweet that read “Would love to understand ‘the whole story’ about why the summer of riots, looting, burning and the destruction of personal property is never discussed but this is??? #CommonSense.”

Rivera said he met with Del Rio Friday to express “how disappointed I am in his comments,” according to a statement.

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Do News or Get Canned: New CNN Boss 'Evaluating' Stelter, Acosta

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Diversity is conformity: Woke ideology is riddled with contradictions.

The strange thing about the doctrine of diversity, that superficially benign and compassionate tenet designed to protect and respect all sections of society, is just how intolerant and conformist it actually is. Some events over recent days remind us of this paradox.

Consider a tweet from Essex Police, made on Monday to coincide with Pride Month, and since widely disseminated on social media:

‘We celebrate diversity by raising the Pride Progress flag for #PrideMonth at our HQ & to honour those who championed equality before us! #WeValueDifference #PoliceinPride… We’re monitoring our posts. All hate crime will be reported & investigated’

As Vernal Scott, diversity and inclusion manager at Essex Police, felt minded to remind us: ‘Pride Month – Policing: Beneath the uniform the blood runs red and the courage and commitment to protect and serve is undiminished by sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, disability, age, religion… If you have a problem with these truths or images, let education be your fix.’

The toxic mixture of compassion and menace is unmistakable – be diverse or be re-educated! – and it’s an all-too-familiar one.

The police have form here. Last February, Merseyside Police, as part of its campaign to encourage people to report hate crime, erected on a mobile billboard a poster with the ominous words ‘being offensive is an offence’. That the impulse to be conspicuously tolerant propels some to display such bully-boy tendencies is superficially surprising. But it isn’t really. It’s the internal logic of mandatory compassion.

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New York governor Kathy Hochul forces colleges to add “preferred pronouns” in student portals, emails, and more

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Missouri Attorney General Investigation Uncovers Systemically Racist Curricula, Intrusive Surveys In Public Schools

The investigation uncovers Missouri public schools forcing students to participate in exercises that shame children for their skin color and teaching that races are inherently unequal, which violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Schmitt found such instances in 21 percent of Missouri’s 226 school districts after only two months of following up on parent complaints, indicating the problems are much more widespread. The investigations are ongoing and parents can submit more complaints to Schmitt’s office here.

The newly public records document Missouri public schools forcing students to participate in a “privilege walk” in Saint Charles County’s Wentzville School District, shaming “whiteness” in teacher training in Saint Louis County’s Rockwood School District, and applying a Marxist or feminist “lens” to reading assignments at Hickman High School in Boone County.

In the Webster Groves School District in the Saint Louis suburbs, second graders were required to answer, “When is the first time you noticed that people can be different races from you?” and, “Do you feel more comfortable around people who look like you?” according to documentation the legal nonprofit Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) sent Schmitt in a May 1 letter.

Webster Groves middle school students were also required to take a survey that asked, “Has someone ever offended you or someone you know because of your race or ethnicity, and if you feel comfortable please share how [sic],” according to SLF’s letter.

Schmitt’s spokesman told The Federalist the subpoenas are intended to help evaluate if the districts followed state laws. If not, the subpoenas could lead to lawsuits, Chris Nuelle said: “Once we obtain more information, all legal options are on the table.”

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State Department Prepares To Announce Worldwide Racial Equity Chief, Leaked Email Shows

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[Christopher F. Rufo] The “Gender-Variant Universe”: A consortium of publicly subsidized nonprofits wants to “decolonize gender” and normalize male genitalia as a form of authentic womanhood.

To begin the event, Shanks led the group in a “land acknowledgement,” denouncing white colonizers for seizing indigenous territory, and introduced the main theme of the conversation with a long lecture on “decolonizing gender.” The crux of Shank’s argument was that white European colonizers committed genocide against indigenous people and replaced the natives’ peaceful, non-binary gender system with an oppressive “colonial gender binary.” This was the origin of “transphobic violence” and set the background conditions for the oppression of “gender non-conforming people” to the present day. For Shanks, however, the white European male-female binary has always been a harmful myth. “There’s no such thing as male genes or female hormones or a male body,” he said. White colonizers invented these concepts and imposed them on non-Western cultures in order to maintain “a system that creates value for very, very few white men.”

This conceptual framework—a patchwork of queer theory and postcolonial theory—provides trans activists with a powerful victim narrative and a general explanation for individual suffering. A common thread through the presentations was the articulation of personal “pain” and “trauma,” which, they say, are caused by colonialism and can be mitigated or transcended through “queer” identity constructs. “My first introduction to colonialism looked a lot like me waking up at four in the morning, five in the morning, every morning, to sounds of my ancestors screaming from outside my window, coming from the ground, coming from the earth,” said Ganesha Gold Buffalo, the trans prostitute. “I followed those screams into the woods as a child . . . and was taught by my ancestors in those woods, in the forms of nature spirits, in the forms of elementals, in the forms of natural deities and old gods. While I was out there, I was taught many things and my mind was decolonized.”

Society, not the individual psyche, is identified as the locus of such disturbances. As such, trans activists see the route to healing not through personal integration, but through the total and unconditional affirmation of their identities by society as a whole. “For gender, myself, it’s been a constant struggle under colonialism, not to accept and affirm myself, but to find acceptance and affirmation and understanding outside of myself,” said Gold Buffalo. Her desire is to live in a society that has been liberated from transphobia and affirms her identity as a woman with a penis. “I one-hundred percent want to still be able to look in the mirror and see every part of myself as a woman, see every part of myself as a two-spirit trans woman, a beautiful being: my moustache, all of my facial hair, my untrimmed brows, my fat ass, my belly, my big dick, everything.” Randy Ford, the fundraiser, echoed this sentiment. “I want you to call me ‘Mommy,’ ‘Queen,’ ‘Daddy,’ if I want you to,” she said. For these activists, the subjective demands of gender identity must be affirmed, no matter how mercurial, self-contradictory, or absurd.

The ultimate ambition of “decolonizing gender” is to overthrow the intellectual and political regime of white Europeans and reestablish the “gender-variant universe” that was once widely accepted in pre-colonial culture. Malcolm Shanks argued that this campaign of “gender resistance” must destroy not only the concept of the gender binary but also “capitalism,” “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “imperialism,” and white European land ownership. In the meantime, as an initial gesture of good faith, the panelists recommended that straight white Americans provide direct cash “reparations” to gender-nonconforming people. “If you have access to generational wealth, if you’re white and your parents have a savings account that is very much so connected to slavery and land theft, pay people,” said Mahkyra Gaines of the Gender Justice League. “Pay people directly. Give them the money so they can have the financial security in order to rest and to heal and to connect with their communities. . . . Pay that money to us now.”

Though this kind of ideology might appear to be the work of a fringe minority, it is becoming increasingly mainstream in activist and educational institutions. The host organizations for the “Decolonizing Gender” presentations have been remarkably successful in securing taxpayer funding and gaining access to children through educational and social service programs. TRACTION conducts education programs for transgender-identifying youth and has received funding from Washington State. Gender Justice League has received funding from King County and runs a housing program for transgender-identifying homeless minors. The Lavender Rights Project and Black Trans Task Force provide legal services for LGBT youth and have received funding from King County. UTOPIA Washington provides services for sex workers, runs an after-school program for children, and has received funding from Washington State, King County, and the City of Seattle.

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GOP Senators Release Documents Showing Biden Admin Lied About Disinfo Board

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Group of white and Asian parents sue BPS over exam school admissions policy

A group of white and Asian parents is suing Boston Public Schools, seeking to have a federal appeals court force the district to admit at least five of their children into the system’s elite exam schools.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal appeals court in Boston, the Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence argues that a temporary admission policy based on ZIP codes last year deprived their children of seats in the schools, even though the students had high enough grades.

BPS this year switched to another admissions policy, also meant to increase diversity in the exam schools, by allotting seats based on areas with similar socio-economics.

BOPS said Wednesday it could not comment on pending litigation. The plaintiffs could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

But Lisa Green of the Boston Coalition for Education Equity said their the lawsuit’s primary argument “seeks to effectively prohibit any consideration of race in government decision-making.”

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Support For Banning Semi-Automatic Long Guns Hits All-Time Low: Left-Of-Center Poll

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[Ilya Shapiro] Why I Quit Georgetown: The university didn’t fire me, but it yielded to the progressive mob, abandoned free speech, and created a hostile environment.

IDEAA speciously found that my tweet criticizing President Biden for limiting his Supreme Court pool by race and sex required “appropriate corrective measures” to address my “objectively offensive comments and to prevent the recurrence of offensive conduct based on race, gender, and sex.” Mr. Treanor reiterated these concerns in a June 2 statement, further noting the “harmful” nature of my tweets.

But IDEAA makes clear there is nothing objective about its standard: “The University’s anti-harassment policy does not require that a respondent intend to denigrate,” the report says. “Instead, the Policy requires consideration of the ‘purpose or effect’ of a respondent’s conduct.” That people were offended, or claim to have been, is enough for me to have broken the rules.

IDEAA asserts that if I “were to make another, similar or more serious remark as a Georgetown employee, a hostile environment based on race, gender, and sex likely would be created.” All sorts of comments that someone could find offensive would subject me to disciplinary action. Consider the following hypotheticals:

  • I laud Supreme Court decisions that overrule Roe v. Wade and protect the right to carry arms. An activist claims that my comments “deny women’s humanity” and make her feel “unsafe” and “directly threatened with physical violence.”
  • After I meet with students concerned about my ability to treat everyone fairly, as Mr. Treanor asked me to do, one attendee files a complaint calling me “disingenuous” and the “embodiment of white supremacy.”
  • When the Supreme Court hears the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative-action cases this fall, I opine that the Constitution bans racial preferences. Hundreds of Georgetown stakeholders sign a letter asserting that my comments “are antithetical to the work that we do here every day to build inclusion, belonging, and respect for diversity” (borrowing the language from Mr. Treanor’s statements of Jan. 31 and June 2).
  • In a class I’m teaching, a student feels uncomfortable with his assigned position in a mock oral argument in 303 Creative v. Elenis, a case that considers whether a designer can be compelled to create a website for a same-sex wedding. “To argue that someone can deny service to members of the LGBTQIA+ community is to treat our brothers and sisters as second-class citizens, and I will not participate in Shapiro’s denigrating charade,” he writes on the student listserv.

I could go on, but you get the idea. It is the Georgetown administrators who have created a hostile work environment for me.

Fundamentally, what Mr. Treanor has done—what he’s allowed IDEAA to do—is repeal the Speech and Expression Policy that he claims to hold dear. The freedom to speak is no freedom at all if it makes an exception for speech someone finds offensive or counter to some nebulous conception of equity.

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Mexican President Calls for American Superstate, Open Borders

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Face mask obligation and school closures were useless, led to health crisis, says German government expert

The director of the Polyclinic for Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University of Dresden conducted a so-called meta-study comparing the restrictions in Germany with less-strict measures in other countries, according to German news outlet Die Welt.

Berner first compared Germany and Switzerland. While in Switzerland, the schools were only closed for eight weeks at the beginning of the pandemic, and daycare centers remained open almost continuously, Germany’s restrictions lasted nearly five times longer, totaling 38 weeks.

The question then becomes, was Germany five times better off than Switzerland?

The clear answer is not at all, according to the international data Berner examined.

If one compares the incidences of Covid-19 in both countries in children and adolescents up to 19, they are almost the same. Instead, the long-lasting school closures predominantly had a negative effect. To this day, adolescents in Germany, in contrast to those in Switzerland, are struggling with immense secondary illnesses, including mental disorders that have led to a dramatic increase in suicide attempts, with restrictions and closures playing the major role in this troublesome development.

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NY Governor Kathy Hochul announces law forcing online platforms to report “hateful” content

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[Bari Weiss] The Washington Post’s Descent Into Middle School Antics

It began with a joke. Actually, it was a retweet of a joke. The Washington Post’s politics reporter David Weigel retweeted the following joke this past Friday: “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.” I know what you’re thinking: Call the police on this man immediately.

I smirked when I read it. Not a full laugh, but a chuckle. Weigel apologized for the “offensive joke” later the same day: “I apologize and did not mean to cause any harm,” he said.

But it was already too late.

His colleague, Felicia Sonmez, had seized on the tweet, starting a public shaming of Weigel as a sexist. She’s spent the past few days reposting others calling her a hero; slamming one colleague who was silly enough to defend Weigel; posting about that colleague and tagging the bosses. Oh, and throwing editors under the bus (repeatedly).

Never mind collegiality or handling minor disputes privately. Never mind that Weigel quickly took down the post and apologized for the poor taste. Never mind that they were friends and he had signed onto a petition in support of her as she geared up to sue the paper for discrimination (that suit was dismissed with prejudice by a D.C. judge in March). It was David Weigel’s time to be punished.

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Baltimore County NAACP calls on Hogan to deploy National Guard to Baltimore

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Court Jesters: Secular stand-up is domesticated opposition to the regime.

Liberalism can absorb criticism of “trans” excesses by demanding a fundamental acceptance of the governing framework as payment for temporary license. And make no mistake, anyone who gets a Netflix gig fundamentally in the last analysis, commits to keeping his objections restrained within the carnival world of the stage, where rules are suspended and nothing is for keeps. “Trans rights are human rights!” Gervais reminds us at one point in his special, establishing that his jokes take place within a context of fealty to the regime—and so his protest is toothless. Pointing out the elephant in the room is a needed release valve for the pressures created by the permanent revolution. They might be grooming your kids, but on our ever-accelerating way toward the right side of history, at least we can crack some jokes about it.

Every one of the mainstream comedians who has dabbled in “transphobia” has gone out of their way to signal that they accept the fundamental framework laid out by trans activists. They make it clear that they believe in the sacred right to demand recognition as the gender of one’s choice. These comedians only quibble with the fanatics, or those who irritate them personally.

But there is no such thing as taking issue only with “extremists” in the “trans” revolution, and saying “live and let live” to everyone else. Asking to be left alone in light of a totalizing epistemic vision that requires your participation is not possible. It is the essence of transphobia, because you’re refusing to participate in the inescapable act that legitimates the trans person, namely, viewing and affirming him or her as he or she demands.

And so a legitimate question popped up in the show’s criticism from trans rights activists: If Gervais supports trans rights, which ones does he support? The “trans rights supporter” can’t exist without total surrender to the creed. “Trans” is a category that relies on the concession and support of the outside world for validation. Which parts of this game does Gervais think he can opt out of?

“Trans” is an appeal to join the faith, and outside of the faith, there are only infidels. “Don’t tread on me” is a useless norm in front of a new virulent religious paradigm, one of whose central tenets is that gendered souls are trapped in and tormented by ill-fitting bodies. If you don’t buy that story and don’t wish to validate it in others, there’s no way around your transphobia.

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Texas Lawmaker To Introduce Legislation To Defend Children From Being Subjected To Drag Shows

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Taylor Lorenz, WaPo Blasted for Repeated Unacknowledged Errors in Reporting

Taylor Lorenz, the establishment media journalist known for doxing teenagers and anonymous meme accounts and literally crying because of the ensuing backlash, is under fire for repeated errors in reporting which she refuses to acknowledge. The Washington Post, which published Lorenz’s shoddy reporting, is also under attack by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey for publishing and then deleting false claims about him.

According to Luckey, the Washington Post falsely claimed he funneled political contributions through “shell companies,” only to later delete the allegation with no disclosure.

Luckey’s comments come in the same week that the Washington Post was forced to acknowledge it “stealth-edited” an article by controversial writer Taylor Lorenz to hide its errors from the public.

[...]

The Washington Post’s story now opens with a length editor’s note explaining Lorenz’s errors.

Via the Washington Post:

The first published version of this story stated incorrectly that Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time. During that process, The Post removed the incorrect statement from the story but did not note its removal, a violation of our corrections policy. The story has been updated to note that Mazeika declined to comment for this story and ThatUmbrellaGuy could not be reached for comment.

A previous version of this story also inaccurately attributed a quote to Adam Waldman, a lawyer for Johnny Depp. The quote described how he contacted some Internet influencers and has been removed.

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Transgender Pedophile Avoids Prison After Judge Says It Would be Too Difficult to ‘Cope’ With

No word on difficultly of seething, dilating.

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Judicial Distortions: An injunction against Alabama’s ban on pediatric gender transition illustrates the problem of judicial policymaking in pediatric medicine.

Transgenderism’s swift march through the institutions has relied heavily on the courts. Among the most recent examples is Eknes-Tucker v. Marshal, in which a federal judge blocked key provisions in Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. The law bans “gender affirming” therapy for minors—a euphemism for using puberty-blocking drugs, synthetic hormone injections, and surgeries on adolescents who experience distress associated with their sex. The court issued a preliminary injunction that left the law’s ban on surgeries intact but declared the ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as very likely unconstitutional.

What makes Eknes-Tucker especially interesting is that the judge in that case, Liles C. Burke, is a Donald Trump appointee with a history of collaborating with and defending the Federalist Society. In 2020, another Trump appointee and Federalist Society friend, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote the 6–3 opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County extending Title VII protection to transgender employees using an “original public meaning” approach. Yet Gorsuch went out of his way in that case to clarify that the decision did not turn on whether “sex” meant reproductive traits or a subjective sense of self, and indeed that the Court was willing to assume the conventional definition.

In Eknes-Tucker, by contrast, the question of what makes us male or female, and how the medical establishment should understand and respond to these realities, is more central and harder to ignore. If transgender boys really are girls whose insecurities have led them to internalize stereotypes and to want to escape what feels like a confining femininity by crossing to the other side of the gender ledger, then confirming that those insecurities are sound and treating them with drugs and surgeries constitutes an egregious breach of medical ethics.

[...]

The problem with Turner’s argument is that most transgender people, and virtually all transgender plaintiffs in federal lawsuits, are anything but gender-nonconforming. It would have been more accurate for Turner to write that what defines transgender people is the fact that they do not conform to stereotypes associated with their sex but conform with gusto to stereotypes associated with the opposite sex. As clinicians and researchers who study gender dysphoria in youth have noted, most kids who show up at gender clinics nowadays are teenage girls who have internalized stereotypes about femininity, feel they cannot live up to them, and seek to escape them by appearing and behaving like stereotypical boys. Feminists and gay rights activists have long argued that transgenderism (in this understanding—for there is another one) represents a deepening of patriarchal norms and an excessive policing of gender boundaries. The DSM-5 itself lists desire to conform to stereotypes of the opposite sex as part of the diagnostic criteria for youth gender dysphoria. Since the mental health professions seem to care more about alleviating subjective distress in individuals than about changing societal understandings of human nature and sexuality, the conscience of a progressive therapist need not be disturbed at the suggestion that she is “affirming” a teenage girl in her obsessive conformity.

In short, a legalism whose original purpose was to bypass judicial caution in applying civil rights law and judicial respect for the democratic process has taken on a life of its own. There is now an entire DEI industry promoting the view that transgenderism is a subset of the broader category “gender nonconforming people.” This framing may be useful in litigation and in helping DEI racketeers secure lucrative consulting contracts, but it fundamentally misunderstands the sources of gender-incongruent behavior in minors and very likely fuels the pediatric gender transition industry. Those who believe that politics is downstream from culture would be wise to heed this as an example of how institutional realities and incentives—in this case, getting judges to believe that they are not legislating from the bench—can also shape culture.

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Multiple Tampa Bay Rays Players Refuse To Wear The Gay Pride Logo On Their Uniforms

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Kyle Rittenhouse's lawyer plans to target Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg in a slew of 'at least 10' defamation suits

Todd McMurtry, Rittenhouse's new attorney, told Fox News Digital that he had been "hired to head the effort to determine whom to sue, when to sue, where to sue."

Per the outlet, McMurtry added that he was "assured that there's probably 10 to 15 solid" cases that could be filed against "large defendants."

McMurtry singled out Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the platform of defaming Rittenhouse, per Fox News Digital. The lawyer added that Zuckerberg would be "at the top" of the list of parties to be sued by Rittenhouse, because of his "outsized voice."

"They said that he was involved in a mass murder incident," McMurtry said, per the outlet, referring to Facebook and Zuckerberg. "This was not a mass murder incident. It was clearly factually false."

He told Fox News Digital that his team would be looking into everything said about Rittenhouse to determine which comments were "legally actionable."

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Parents are still being treated like terrorists: The US educational establishment is waging a vicious culture war against families.

Last year, protests flared up at school-board meetings across the US, as parents expressed their anger and opposition to Covid mask mandates and lessons inspired by critical race theory. Amid these uprisings, in September 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter calling on President Biden to investigate the protesters, under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, for ‘domestic terrorism and hate crimes’. A few days later, attorney general Merrick Garland issued a memo directing the FBI to collaborate with state attorneys and local law enforcement to monitor and potentially prosecute anyone who threatens school administrators and teachers.

As heavy-handed and scornful as that infamous NSBA letter was, we have now learned that it could have been worse. An independent review has revealed that the original draft of the NSBA letter included an incredible appeal to the Biden administration to deploy the National Guard and military police to school districts where there are protests. After internal debate, the NSBA dropped this request, but it continued to liken parents to terrorists and hate criminals.

There was no basis for the NSBA’s claims of widespread violence at school-board meetings. The letter cited more than 20 incidents, but the vast majority of these involved speech-related disruptions, not threats of physical violence. This lack of evidence didn’t stop Garland from citing ‘a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff’ – or from using that bogus threat as the grounds to deploy the FBI against parents.

The independent review also confirms that the NSBA and the White House worked hand-in-glove on the letter. White House staff discussed a draft of the letter with the NSBA before it was issued, and shared it with Garland’s Department of Justice (DoJ). After receiving the letter, President Biden telephoned the president of the NSBA board, Viola Garcia, to thank her. As the Washington Post has reported, Garcia declined to discuss this fact publicly at the time ‘because she did not want to further the perception that the group was “in cahoots” with the White House’.

[...]

The letter has left the NSBA’s reputation in tatters. The NSBA has apologised to its state members, fired its chief executive and it commissioned this independent review. But its latest attempts to come clean about the origins of the letter don’t look likely to stem defections. According to Parents Defending Education, school-board associations in 30 states have distanced themselves from the NSBA’s letter and 25 states have withdrawn membership, participation or dues from the association. And while the NSBA may have expressed regret to its members, it has yet to apologise to the group it slandered as terrorists – parents.

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Police: Racial taunts against black/Hispanic HS football team never happened

Claims of racial taunts against a mostly black and Hispanic Boston-area high school football team are bogus, police say.

Last fall, coaches from Roxbury Prep alleged they and their team were “targeted repeatedly” by spectators’ taunts from rival Georgetown High School.

But according to 60 pages of documents from Georgetown police, there is no evidence to support these claims, the Boston Globe reports. If anything, the police report notes the game’s referees said they were subjected to “angry shouts” by the Roxbury coaches regarding their “racially discriminatory” officiating.

[...]

Roxbury coach Jamaal Hunt also alleged he and his team were “called N-bombs by players, faculty, staff, spectators.” At the beginning of the third quarter, game officials briefly stopped play while a police officer, Browner and Georgetown Principal Jeff Carovillano took up a position behind the Roxbury bench.

The latter two spoke with spectators and reported no one heard any racial epithets.

Demand continues to exceed supply.

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The Nature of Women and the ‘Woke’ Problem

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New York legislature passes bill to investigate pro-life pregnancy centers for not doing abortions

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German kids’ TV fully embraces pro-transgender content, ignores side effects and life-altering risks

Germany’s state-funded media and television networks are producing a full range of pro-transgender content, and one of their main target audiences happen to be young children. This controversial children’s programming routinely depicts transgender people as courageous figures who should not only be admired but also emulated, with little to no discussion devoted to potential downsides or side effects involved with the life-altering decisions associated with hormone therapy and surgery.

One of the biggest promoters of pro-transgender content is children’s programming giant KiKA, which receives a massive amount of taxpayer money from public television networks ARD and ZDF, both networks accused of an extreme left-wing bias. KiKA has long presented gender change, hormone blockers, and even transition surgery as positive and healthy goals for young people despite a growing number of doctors and even medical authorities, including the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, now advising against children and teens taking hormone blockers due to the adverse medical and psychological costs.

All the way back in 2016, KiKA produced a segment entitled “When you think that you are a girl, you are a girl,” which featured a 10-year-old who changed their gender. The host of the show did not offer nuanced or unbiased advice to children facing similar questions about their gender or sexuality, but instead gave a full-throated endorsement:

“Imagine you are a girl, but something inside you tells you that you would much rather be a boy — or vice versa: You have the body of a boy but feel like a girl. This is something that can make you suffer a lot. Children who are like this are often very unhappy, until they actually change their sex sometime later. It was the same with ‘Sam’ from Sweden, who until recently was still the girl Iris to everyone.”

[...]

The growth in the number of young people seeking to transition has run in parallel with more and more media and cultural outlets promoting such a procedure. Germany’s Twitter class is acutely aware of many of the left-liberal trends embraced in the Anglo world, where hashtags promoting transgender issues, films, publications like the New York Times, and social media platforms like Twitter have labeled criticism of transgender ideology as a form of hate speech.

These same true believers have found a powerful platform to spread their message through Germany’s taxpayer-funded media giants, and this trend is only expected to grow. Even figures who were once heroes to the liberal left have done little to dissuade those who have taken transgender issues as a key plank in their belief system. J.K. Rowling, for example, wrote that young girls have experienced gender dysphoria in just a matter of a few years; she has subsequently faced death threats for pointing out why this trend has could come with serious consequences.

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Google’s plan to talk about caste bias led to ‘division and rancor’

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Wheat has corrupted humanity: The grain gave birth to the tyrannical state

“Beef & Liberty”. Such was the slogan of the 18th century London dining club, The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks. The carnivorous Regency gentlemen were sensible in associating the scoffing of sirloin with freedom and the rights of Britons. Food, like the personal, is political. With Russia’s invasion of “the breadbasket of Europe”, it is wheat, the most widely-grown crop in the world, that has been sucked into existential questions. But if meat tandems with liberty, then wheat, historically, comes chained to tyranny.

[...]

The intriguing question is: if wheat-growing altered our corporeal structure, did it alter our brain? Did the systematic rituals and requirements of planting and harvesting wheat change our brains to make us more docile? Organised? Cooperative? Disconnected from nature? Did it turn us away from animism to praise of Ceres, goddess of grain crops, and then to an abstract, monolithic God of whom we ask our daily bread.

What wheat certainly did do was facilitate the rise of the state. As James C. Scott, co-director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University, explains in Against the Grain, wheat became the best way to tax the people: “The key to the nexus between grains and states lies, I believe, in the fact that only the cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation: visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable’.”

Wheat-fields are fixed and surveillable; livestock moves about. Counting sheep is easy in bed but for a state flunky on an arid hillside, the accurate checking of ovines (which are, anyway, easy to transport, and therefore to hide) is all but impossible. Similarly, communities reliant on tubers or root vegetables such as yams as their staple were more able to evade taxation since the crop can be left in the ground and harvested when the tax collector has gone home. Such societies rarely developed into states.

But where you have wheat, historically, you have state control or its like. The taxing of wheat enabled the emergence of non-productive elites, who required an armed wing to defend their regime. The food that fuelled the necessary population increase to staff the army, the fist of the state? Wheat. Nutrient poor but energy dense, fodder for the masses, it provided just enough energy and health to work, breed, fight. The early grain states were “population machines” (Scott again), domesticating people as the farmer domesticates the cow herd.

Government? Politics? I just want to grill.

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Wall Street Is ‘Trying To Punish’ Middle America For Religious And Cultural Views Through Woke Investing, Republican State Treasurers Warn

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California task force suggests reparations in report detailing lasting harms of slavery

In a report Wednesday on the lingering effects of slavery, California’s Reparations Task Force offered a sweeping list of preliminary recommendations that include ending voter approval for publicly funded “low-rent housing,” providing free college tuition and creating a new state agency to implement dozens of other forms of reparation for African Americans.

The 492-page report is the first of two the nine-member panel will send to the California Legislature, which is responsible for passing any reparations into law. Much of the initial report focused on defining the harms against African Americans from slavery to present day as the basis for a detailed plan to provide remedies in a second installment next summer.

Kamilah Moore, chair of the task force, said she hopes people “pore into the report and read it with an open mind and an open heart to really understand the African American experience in the state.” She called it the most extensive government-issued report on the African American community in more than 50 years.

Legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 made California the first state government in the country to adopt a law to study and develop proposals for potential reparations to descendants of enslaved people and those affected by slavery.

The task force, composed of elected officials, civil rights leaders, attorneys and reparations experts, voted in March to tie eligibility to lineage, defined as “descendants of African Americans enslaved in the U.S. or of free Black people living in the country before the end of the 19th century.”

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Two-Thirds of Republicans Believe Great Replacement Theory, New Poll Shows

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College requires students, faculty to agree they’ve benefited from white privilege

A Canadian college is under fire after social media users discovered the school required students and faculty joining a Zoom call to agree they have benefited from white privilege and vow to engage in acts of “decolonization.”

George Brown College, a public school with multiple campuses in Toronto, allegedly required participants to read a lengthy statement acknowledging Indigenous land ownership and the evils of slavery before clicking a box marked “I Agree” to join a video conference.

[...]

The students and faculty who click the “I Agree” box are acknowledging they “benefit from the colonization and genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this land” and are agreeing it is “imperative we constantly engage in acts of awareness and decolonization.”

The full statement reads:

“It has been the site of human activity since time immemorial. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat, Mississaugas, Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee.

The territory is the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Confederacy of the Anishinabek and Allied Nations to peaceably care for and share the resources around the Great Lakes.

We also acknowledge all Treaty peoples – including those who came here as settlers – as migrants either in this generation or in generations past – and those of us who came here involuntarily, particularly forcibly displanted Africans, brough here as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery.

As settlers or the displanted, we benefit from the colonization and genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this land. In order to engage in resistance and solidarity against the past and present injustices inflicted on the Indigenous peoples of this land, it is imperative we constantly engage in acts of awareness and decolonization.

By selecting ‘I agree,’ you are indicating your acknowledgment of this statement. Our intent is not to impose agreeance, but to inform through acknowledgment. This acknowledgment is to generate awareness and offer opportunities for personal reflection.”

After the statement was posted by Quillette’s Jonathan Kay, Twitter users harshly criticized the school.

“Layer upon layer of required performative acts…. They just teach students to be conformists,” tweeted Duke University Professor Timur Kuran.

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ANALYSIS: Higher tuition rates correlate with more woke programming

NC State’s Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity has separate "Diversity, Engagement, Training and Education" and "Equal Opportunity and Equity" units in addition to a Bias Impact Response Team.

Accordingly, the university's February 2022 Equity Research Symposium asked participants to spend a day answering the question “what does equity mean to me?”

Additionally, the ACTA report confirmed that increased university spending is correlated with higher costs for students and minimal to no improvement in four-year graduation rates.

“Tuition is not a good indicator of academic quality at all," Kyle Beltramini, a policy research fellow with the ACTA, told Campus Reform, referencing overspending as a factor in annual tuition hikes.

Beltramini hopes to encourage trustees to actively manage and push back on the high levels of spending.

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Wisconsin Public School Counselor Threatened by State for Denouncing Gender Ideology

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Judge dismisses suit seeking to end NYC’s Gifted & Talented programs

Several Big Apple high schoolers had sued the city and state in March 2021, arguing the selective admission processes perpetuate systemic racism and reinforce hierarchies in city schools.

There have been several changes to the Gifted & Talented programs since the lawsuit was introduced, including the addition of 100 kindergarten seats and 1,000 new third grade seats under Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. The plan involves universal screening of all rising kindergarteners’ talents, and the opportunity to apply for students who rank in the top 10 percent of the second grade.

Still, the plaintiffs, led by Integrate NYC, a student-led group advocating for diverse schools, suggested more changes are needed to public school admissions.

“We will definitely be appealing the ruling,” said Public Counsel Mark Rosenbaum, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, who will take the case to the Court of Appeals.

“Students of color and from low-income families in the New York City school system do not receive the same educational opportunities as their peers,” said Rosenbaum. “Every New Yorker knows this to be the truth.”

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Connecticut to hire “misinformation” expert who will urge social media sites to censor “false” posts

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Court ruling sets up free speech Catch-22 for professors at schools with Native American partnerships

A California-based federal judge recently dismissed a lawsuit by a San Jose State University professor who argued the school had violated her First Amendment rights by locking her out of the anthropology department’s human remains collection.

Professor Elizabeth Weiss said the school, acting in concert with Native American tribal leaders, was punishing her for her vocal objection to repatriation, the returning of remains to the tribes.

U.S. District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman earlier this month dismissed the lawsuit, having determined Weiss failed to include the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, whose ancestors make up a portion of the SJSU collection, as a defendant.

But there is a catch: federally recognized tribes are immune from lawsuits, so Weiss couldn’t legally do what Judge Freeman ruled she had failed to do.

Weiss’ attorney told The College Fix if Freeman’s ruling becomes precedent, it will be impossible for professors to sue schools for violating their First Amendment rights if that school has a relationship with a Native American tribe.

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BBC ‘altered gender in trans rape claim’

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OPRF to implement race-based grading system in 2022-23 school year

Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.

School board members discussed the plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading” at a meeting on May 26, presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza.

In an effort to equalize test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in their assignments, according to the plan.

[...]

Advocates for so-called "equity based" grading practices, which seek to raise the grade point averages of black students and lower scores of higher-achieving Asian, white and Hispanic ones, say new grading criteria are necessary to further school districts' mission of DEIJ, or "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice."

"By training teachers to remove the non-academic factors from their grading practices and recognize when personal biases manifest, districts can proactively signal a clear commitment toward DEIJ," said Margaret Sullivan, associate director at the Education Advisory Board, which sells consulting services to colleges and universities.

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The Great Debasement: The institutions tasked with the preservation of art are reducing great works to moralizing message-delivery systems

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The Anti-Christ now rules us all: The age of progress has turned everything into machines and money

Maybe it’s just me, but the ongoing and rapid inversion of so much we have previously taken for granted increasingly seems to be happening independently of human action. It is as if something else has become manifest in some way we can’t quite put our finger on, and has stimulated the craziness of the times. Perhaps it has become self-aware, like Skynet; perhaps it is approaching its Singularity. Perhaps it has always been there, watching, and is now seizing its moment. Or perhaps it is simply beginning to spin out of control, as our systems and technologies become so complex that we can no longer steer them in our chosen direction. Either way, this force seems to be, in some inexplicable way, independent of us, and yet acting within us too.

Let’s give this force a name: a less provocative name, for now, than Moloch or Anti-Christ. Let’s keep it simple. Let’s just call this force Progress. Then, à la Kevin Kelly, let’s ask ourselves a simple question: what does Progress want?

The Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce saw the modern era as a thorough and permanent revolution — a radical break with the human past. He defined a modern person as “someone who thinks that ‘today it is no longer possible’”. We do not tend to see our time as continuous with what has gone before, he said. Instead, we believe we live after a “violent break with history”.

In the story of Progress that informs us today, the revolutions of the modern age — industrial, political and intellectual — are assumed to have radically changed the world. By sweeping away old ways of thinking, seeing and living, modernity has produced “a type of violence capable of breaking the continuum of history”.

What Progress wants is the end of history.

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