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Identity Politics
Question for the Identitarians
As you know, if you raise any questions or doubts about aggressive gender-reassignment medicine for young people, you will be called a hater, a bigot, and maybe even a murderer since it is alleged that young people denied treatment will commit suicide in larger numbers. And yet, as the Wall Street Journal notes today, the United States is the liberal outlier in permissiveness toward such treatment. Many European nations, especially »
Dodgers Live Up to Their Name
The LA Dodgers blundered by dis-inviting and then re-inviting the viciously anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), whose very name ought to give away what they’re about (“indulge” what, exactly?), except to clueless sports executives. The resolution of the fiasco reminds me of how Reagan wiggled out of his 1985 mistake of agreeing to visit the Bitburg cemetery in West Germany, where unbeknownst to his advance team, SS troops were »
You Wonder Why People Call Him ‘Creepy Joe’
The White House actually thinks this message from Creepy Joe, with its “It Takes a Village” presumption that your children belong to the state more than to their parents, will persuade anyone: To the LGBTQI+ Community – the Biden-Harris Administration has your back. pic.twitter.com/ZlUNwWOcch — The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 13, 2023 And I doubt anyone in the mainstream media has reported on this devastating testimony before a House committee »
What Happens When Colleges Get Caught
Yesterday we reported on how Johns Hopkins University had erased the existence of women by defining lesbians as “non-men.” To refresh your memory, here’s part of JHU’s “glossary” of terms: This absurdity got wide coverage beyond Power Line, and evidently Johns Hopkins was embarrassed. Today Johns Hopkins removed the glossary entirely, and now has this in its place: Even this got modified later in the day to this: In other »
The Age of Proprietary Truth
It used to be that the idea of Truth was based on the premise of objectivity, that is, there is a reality to nature and the world around us, and our individual freedom does not extand to disregarding or altering that reality because it conflicts with our will or dreams. I may claim that I can fly, but if I actually try to act on that premise I’ll end up »
No Dodging The Democrats’ Degradation, or, “We’re All San Francisco Democrats Now”
You would think a team named “Dodgers” would know how to dodge a culture war battle they can’t win (see: Target, Bud Light), but no, the Los Angeles Dodgers managed to get picked off in the most embarrassing fashion in a pickle-style rundown entirely of their own ineptitude. Surely the conservative (and Catholic) O’Malley family that used to own the Dodgers—before the onerous estate tax forced the family to sell »
Trans-Madness
I don’t know whether it is an overstatement to suggest people with “gender dysphoria” have a mental illness, or whether there is a social contagion at work (like the anorexia epidemic among young women a couple decades ago that ultimately faded out to a large extent), but scenes like this state legislator in Nebraska aren’t reassuring that there’s a rational defense of the trans-phenomenon. (Wonder what she will do when »
If DEI Is DIE-ing, I Call DIBS
Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation in Florida defunding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in Florida’s state universities, and while the diversicrats will probably go to ground by embedding themselves with bureaucratic workarounds, it is already paying dividends. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: Statehouses’ Targeting of Diversity and Tenure Is Starting to Scare Away Faculty Job Candidates Recently proposed and passed legislation that targets tenure and diversity, equity, »
Behind the Left’s Addiction to Racism
As is well known, the problem with addiction is that it requires larger and larger doses to get results, until it becomes fatally destructive to the addict. This medical fact may well be a political fact for the left, as its obsession with all things race has lead it progressively over the last generation to find more and more of it, requiring ever more outlandish remedies, such as trillion-dollar reparations »
Bud Light Used to Know How to Lighten Up
Maybe the Bud Light marketing disaster—sales are down by about 25 percent since the Mulvaney Miscalculation—ought to be taken as an indicator of the larger capitulation of our culture to the nihilist left. Because once upon a time, about 30 years ago, Budweiser had a different perspective on the trans thing with this ad: Imagine the uproar if Budweiser used this ad today. Actually you don’t have to imagine at »
Shouldn’t Columbia University Change Its Name?
Back in December we reported on Stanford University’s attempt to instruct everyone on language use with their “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.” It read like a parody of our idiotic woke university culture today, and Stanford quickly withdrew it on account of the massive public embarrassment it generated. Now it is Columbia University’s turn. Columbia’s “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Guide” also works hard to instruct us proper meaning and »
Out: Latinx. In: Latine!
It is slowly dawning on the left that hispanics hate the campus cult term “Latinx,” so much so that in Connecticut several hispanic state legislators have introduced a bill to prohibit the use of the term by state government agencies: Rep. Geraldo Reyes, one of the primary sponsors of the bill, told CNN on Thursday that he and his colleagues behind the bill are Puerto Rican and consider the term »
Another Crash at the Intersectionality
It was only four years ago that Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon was the new shiny object for California progressives. He finished second in California’s jungle primary for the U.S. Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein, and even if he couldn’t beat the fellow Democrat in the general election, he appeared set up to succeed her when she finally retired or resigned from office. Just today Feinstein, who »
Unsinkable Ship of Fools?
Updating John’s item last night about the recording of blatantly racist remarks by Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez and others, the latest news is that Martinez has resigned as council president—but has not resigned as a member of the council. I wonder if her $207,000 salary—the highest city council salary in the nation—has something to do with it. Like most political hacks, it is doubtful Martinez could ever command »
Today in Crazy
So this turns out to be a real thing: When is the IPO happening? I want to be in on the ground floor for this one. Certain to be the next Facebook. »
It’s Official: “Diversity” = Leftism
One of the definitions in Power Line’s lexicon of modern leftist terms is “Diversity: Where everyone looks different, but thinks the same.” Virtually every office of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is a Soviet-style ideological enforcement bureau, a campus Stasi. And now the New York Times has made it official: “diversity” is a synonym for “leftism.” Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, has appointed a cabinet without a single white male. »
Case Study in Leftist Ideology Path Dependence
Cast your mind back to the early 1980s for a moment, and the early innings of the AIDS epidemic. It was widely understood that AIDS was predominantly spread through high-risk or unprotected homosexual contact, and public health authorities, even in San Francisco, initially said that gay bathhouses that were venues for casual and largely unprotected sexual encounters should be closed down. In those days, however, the ethic of “liberation” and »