“Everyone is in favor of free speech… but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” ― Winston Churchill
A guy named Anthony Novak made fun of the Parma (Ohio) Police Department by creating a parody Facebook page mocking the official police website.
The Parma constabulary took a dim view of Novak’s efforts. So, after consulting the city’s “law director,” they arrested him (Novak) for “illegal use of a computer to disrupt or impair police functions.”
A jury of his peers acquitted Novak of the charge.
If you aren’t pretty certain you grasp the definition of ‘parody,’ now is the time to look it up. Something the Parma city scions seem to have neglected: Novak has sued the city for violation of his Constitutional rights.
Win or lose that suit, he has proved the police disrupted and impaired their own function by arresting him. For speaking.
So far, though, he hasn’t been allowed to present his case. There’s this thing that encourages city “law directors” to take legal risks organizations vulnerable to Constitutional strictures would avoid. It’s known as “qualified immunity.”
According to a district court, with concurrence from the Sixth Circuit, Novak is not allowed to have this question adjudicated. He is not entitled to seek remedy because qualified immunity protects public officials from lawsuits when they violate a federal right unless “the unlawfulness of their conduct was clearly established” at the time they acted.
The First Amendment clearly established Novak’s right to parodize the local constabulary in 1787. That is his opinion, anyway. And mine. And the jury’s. The case is going to the Supreme Court.
The Onion has filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the suit. I think the Babylon Bee is consistently more creative, but The Onion got its mojo back on with this brief. It’s 23 hilarious pages. Courtesy of the Institute for Justice
The American Civil Liberties Union was once a stalwart, scrappy, absolutist defender of free speech and due process. It took serious heat for its defense* of American Nazi’s right to free expression in 1977.
*There are many accounts of this. You will find some here, here, and here.
That indomitable devotion to the First Amendment prompted me to become a card carrying ACLU member. But I haven’t been a member since ~1985 because the ACLU drifted away from this purity of principle. It continued downhill for many years, but after the 2016 election the corruption rapidly became complete and absolute.
The rotten yolk of this organization may still be called a “union,” but it now diametrically opposes the other three words in its name. Enthralled by the money gushing out of the Diversity/Inclusion/Equity cabal, ensnared by rote identitarianism, and blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome – the ACLU turned its back on the Constitution.
RIP. Here are comments from two high profile liberal lawyers. Like me, former ACLU supporters:
The ACLU has defended Nazis, the KKK, pornographers and purveyors of hate speech. I was privileged to serve on the national board of the ACLU during its golden age.
Then everything changed. The board decided to “diversify.” This meant that a certain number of women, African Americans, Latinos and gays had to be represented—which, in turn, meant the representatives of these groups were expected to prioritize the parochial interests of the groups they represented over the more general interests of all Americans pertaining to free speech and due process.
Unsurprisingly, the organization stopped prioritizing free speech and due process. Instead, it began to prioritize a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, racial issues and “progressive politics.” This trend began well before the election of President Donald Trump, but it came to a head when he took office. The ACLU turned into a money-making machine by prioritizing the anti-Trump attitudes of its new members over its traditional role as a nonpartisan defender of free speech and due process.
The ACLU is now rolling in money, but it is intellectually bankrupt in its defense of free speech and due process—especially when these core liberties conflict with its money-making progressive agenda. This is particularly true with respect to the attacks on free speech and due process on university campuses, which are rampant and largely ignored by the current ACLU.
For years, many of us who have long supporteded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have grown alarmed by its abandonment of core principles in the support of civil liberties in favor of support what seems a more political agenda…
Free speech protection was once the touchstone of the ACLU which was fearless in its unpopular advocacy. It is now an area of open retreat for the organization as the leadership seeks to appease irate donors. Despite the right to carry being a constitutional right, the ACLU has indicated that it will not vigorously support the right to lawfully carry weapons at protests. That is no more evident than in the truly shocking filing of the ACLU to oppose due process rights for students at our colleges and universities, particularly in the imposition of a higher and more consistent evidentiary standard…
The group seems increasingly committed to appeasing liberal donors and supporters in avoiding such fights. Now it has actually taken up the cause of reducing due process — a position that disgraces its long and proud legacy… It is now actively trading off civil liberties to achieve beneficial social ends.
NCLA views the administrative state as an especially serious threat to constitutional freedoms. No other development in contemporary American law denies more rights to more Americans. Although Americans still enjoy the shell of their Republic, there has developed within it a very different sort of government—a type, in fact, that the Constitution was designed to prevent. This unconstitutional administrative state within our U.S. government is the focus of NCLA’s concern. NCLA urges Americans to recognize the administrative threat and join our civil liberties movement against it.
Public statements, emails, and recent publicly released documents establish that the President of the United States and other senior officials in the Biden Administration violated the First Amendment by directing social-media companies to censor viewpoints that conflict with the government’s messaging on Covid-19.
NCLA joined the lawsuit, State of Missouri ex rel. Schmitt, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al., representing renowned epidemiologists and co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, as well as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty and Jill Hines. Social media platforms, acting at the federal government’s behest, repeatedly censored NCLA’s clients for articulating views on those platforms in opposition to government-approved views on Covid-19 restrictions.
This insidious censorship was the direct result of the federal government’s ongoing campaign to silence those who voice perspectives that deviate from those of the Biden Administration. Government officials’ public threats to punish social media companies that did not do their bidding demonstrate this linkage, as do emails from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to social media companies that only recently were made public.
The Administrative State is nowhere better established than in our Universities, and FIRE started out as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education before recognizing a broader mission. The examples below indicate that FIRE is dedicated to defending the First Amendment. The content of speech is not the issue. Whose Ox is gored is irrelevant. The speakers opinions are sacrosanct, even… especially… if they are unpopular.
A lawsuit filed last week by theater professor Richard Bugg against administrators at Southern Utah University alleges that key school officials violated his First Amendment rights when they punished him for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns.
Bugg is represented by FIRE Faculty Legal Defense Fund network attorney Jerome H. Mooney, with FLDF’s financial support. FLDF offers “first responder” legal assistance to protect the academic freedom and free expression rights of faculty at public colleges and universities, and where appropriate supports litigation when on-campus efforts meet resistance.
Bugg’s lawsuit alleges that when a student in his 2021 fall semester acting class requested Bugg use they/them pronouns when referring to that student, Bugg instead offered to use that student’s given or preferred proper name. Although Bugg attempted not to use female pronouns to refer to the student, he mistakenly did so two to three times, by his own admission. Despite Bugg’s proposed accommodation, the student filed a Title IX complaint against him alleging Bugg would not refer to the student using gender-neutral pronouns.
After a hearing, SUU determined Bugg violated university policy by engaging in “conduct that constitutes ‘discrimination’ and ‘harassment’ based on gender identity.” As punishment, SUU has required Bugg to take a class about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in the English language, and that Bugg use students’ preferred pronouns. SUU also cautioned that if Bugg’s continued refusal to use preferred pronouns causes students to avoid registering for his classes, SUU will open additional sections, and will reduce Bugg’s pay to offset the cost of the additional sections. It also threatened Bugg with possible termination.
Queen Elizabeth’s death yesterday spurred a global outpouring of grief from many of her fans, alongside discussion and debate about the complicated history of England’s monarchy. Much of this debate took place on Twitter, which, for better or worse, serves as a modern public square for commentary about current events.
But critics succeeded in at least partially silencing one such commentator: Carnegie Mellon University professor Uju Anya, who wrote on her personal account hours before the Queen’s death was announced: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating…”
CMU must publicly refuse to investigate or punish the professor
Regardless of public controversy, Anya’s tweets remain protected under First Amendment standards. Private institutions like CMU are not bound by the First Amendment to promise free expression, but, laudably, the university has chosen to do so, committing that it “values the freedoms of speech, thought, expression and assembly — in themselves and as part of our core educational and intellectual mission.” CMU goes so far as to say the “university must be a place where all ideas may be expressed freely and where no alternative is withheld from consideration.”
Now that CMU has promised faculty free expression, it cannot backtrack from “all ideas may be expressed,” to all except this one because people are mad. CMU has not backtracked, but it also has not foreclosed the threat of punishing Anya in its public statement. That’s why FIRE is asking CMU to publicly commit not to investigate or punish Anya for expressing her opinion. As we told CMU:
While some may find the timing or substance of speech about the deceased to be offensive, freedom of expression does not observe a mourning period. It applies whether speech about the recently departed takes the form of a venerating eulogy, scorn, or something in between.
If you are so inclined you can join me in supporting NCLA here, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression here.
We do need institutions to take up the banner the ACLU has ground into the mud.
Claiming speech is violence will result in violence.
Last week, Salman Rushdie was to address the Chautauqua Institution on the topic of freedom of speech. He has some experience with those who would stifle it. Thirty three years ago he wrote a book titled The Satanic Verses. He was in hiding for the next decade. And it turns out that wasn’t long enough.
For his title, he looked at a few words in the Quran, as interpreted by some Islamic historians. Islamic fundamentalists are triggered by the concept raised by those co-religionists as long ago as ~900AD. In any case, Rushdie was writing a novel. Fiction.
It’s no surprise, though, that Rushdie’s daring to discuss it was not well received in certain quarters. He upset the same Islamist fanatics who encouraged the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the threats to the Jyllands-Posten for publishing cartoons, the mass shooting at Bataclan and Pulse, and other murders, arsons and riots too common to detail.
Fundamentalist Islam insists religion and the State are one. Naturally, then, Rushdie’s temerity provoked a Muslim cleric and Head-of-State (Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini) to issue a bounty for Rushdie’s death in 1989.
AKA a ‘fatwa.’ In polities where church and state are separated, we don’t yet have a special term for state religion-sanctioned murder. We are working toward it via the Church of George Floyd, the Cathedral of Transexual Pronounism, the Pieties of the Green New Deal, and the rite of Skin Color Original Sin, but we aren’t there yet.
That does not mean progress is not being made here. This week a militant follower of Islam with ties to Iran stabbed Rushdie a dozen times. As yet, the police can’t find a motive. You have to wonder how the find their own butts.
Rushdie’s stabbing is merely a reminder that “don’t say anything we don’t like to hear” fanatics can be dangerous. We have some of our own.
Every day needs to be ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed day.’ Here’s a comprehensive “compendium of images that depict Mohammed (the 7th-century founder of Islam), spanning all historical periods, cultures, genres, styles, formats and themes.”
Here’s my own paltry contribution.
Every day needs to be ‘Everybody write The Satanic Verses day.’
Rushdie’s stabbing is ethically no different from the persecution of Kyle Rittenhouse, the firing of James Damore, the threats against J. D. Rowling, or the demonization of Nicholas Sandmann.
Surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy has instructed major tech platforms, already squirming under Congress’ thumb, to submit information about CCP virus COVID ‘misinformation’ on social media, search engines, instant messaging systems, etc., etc.. Big Tech is to determine how much misinformation has flowed/is flowing through their sites.
He doesn’t mention email, but – in the name of ‘Public Health’ – I see no barrier to him asking NSA for a dump of all email with the phrases “Fauci lies,” “Joe Rogan,” “Wuhan flu,” or “Great Barrington Declaration,” and/or the words “ivermectin,” “hydrochloroquine,” “zinc,” and “Z-pack” in any combination.
As explained in the Federal Register, Dr. Murthy wants to know
“exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of Covid-19 misinformation,” [as well as] “Any aggregate data and analysis on how many users were exposed, were potentially exposed, or otherwise engaged with COVID-19 misinformation…
“The definition of health misinformation for the purposes of this RFI is health information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence at the time…
Starting with, but not limited to, these common examples of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), any aggregate data and analysis on the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation on individual platforms including exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of COVID-19 misinformation.”
So is the flip-flop advice from CDC about whether N-95 masks work serial misinformation? How about whether cloth masks work? Is it about the possibility the CCP virus leaked from a Chinese lab? Careers were stunted for asking that question. Scientists were heartily vilified.
Is it misinformation that natural immunity doesn’t count? How about counting death with COVID as death from COVID?
“MYTH: COVID-19 vaccines can alter my DNA. FACT: COVID-19 vaccines do not change or interact with your DNA in any way.
Both messenger RNA (mRNA) and viral vector COVID-19 vaccines work by delivering instructions (genetic material) to our cells to start building protection against the virus that causes COVID-19.
After the body produces an immune response, it discards all the vaccine ingredients just as it would discard any information that cells no longer need. This process is a part of normal body functioning.
The genetic material delivered by mRNA vaccines never enters the nucleus of your cells, which is where your DNA is kept. Viral vector COVID-19 vaccines deliver genetic material to the cell nucleus to allow our cells to build protection against COVID-19. However, the vector virus does not have the machinery needed to integrate its genetic material into our DNA, so it cannot alter our DNA.”
“Preclinical studies of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, showed reversible hepatic effects in animals that received the BNT162b2 injection. Furthermore, a recent study showed that SARS-CoV-2 RNA can be reverse-transcribed and integrated into the genome of human cells. In this study, we investigated the effect of BNT162b2 on the human liver cell line Huh7 in vitro. Huh7 cells were exposed to BNT162b2, and quantitative PCR was performed on RNA extracted from the cells. We detected high levels of BNT162b2 in Huh7 cells and changes in gene expression of long interspersed nuclear element-1 (LINE-1), which is an endogenous reverse transcriptase. Immunohistochemistry using antibody binding to LINE-1 open reading frame-1 RNA-binding protein (ORFp1) on Huh7 cells treated with BNT162b2 indicated increased nucleus distribution of LINE-1. PCR on genomic DNA of Huh7 cells exposed to BNT162b2 amplified the DNA sequence unique to BNT162b2. Our results indicate a fast up-take of BNT162b2 into human liver cell line Huh7, leading to changes in LINE-1 expression and distribution. We also show that BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse transcribed intracellularly into DNA in as fast as 6 h upon BNT162b2 exposure.”
The misinformation definition does include “best available information at the time.” Which would seem sensible but for the examples of such information flipping back and forth on masking, for example, and D. Fauci’s admission that he lied about it. As he also admittedly lied about the threshold for herd immunity.
So, who determines the best available information? The government bureaucrats? Whom we know lie for political and CYA purposes?
When is mis actually dis? Maybe when spreading information you know to be false? Like Dr. Fauci’s mask/herd immunity lies, or his semantic games around gain-of-function, or his surreptitious interference with the Great Barrington Declaration?
And when does “at the time” expire? Is “vaccines do not change or interact with your DNA in any way,” now misinformation? Half-misinformation? It’s only been shown in vitro, after all. The ‘Public Health’ narrative is that we don’t tell the public until there have been a couple of gold-standard RTCs in vivo. The public won’t mis this information. If they had it they might choose not to follow our advice about an experimental vaccine.
What Dr. Murthy’s definition means is ‘whatever we tell you at the time.’ And with the threat of Congressional regulation, he’s looking to enforce that under the “Public Health” version of the 1st Amendment. So, it’s far from over when Murthy gets the social media data.
Why wouldn’t he also have to know about the disproportionate effects of the CDC’s unconstitutional seizure of the rental housing market?
UPDATE: 12:15PM, Feb5
GoFundMe has shut down the Freedom Convoy account and threatened to give the money to charity. They indicated contributors would have to apply for refunds. They’ve backed down and will be issuing refunds automatically.
A night with the untouchables
Written by a civil servant in Ottawa who lives where the protest is happening. Worth the read.
Back to our regularly scheduled program…
You may be aware that thousands of truck drivers in Canada formed a convoy 45 miles long and drove 2,000 miles to protest Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s CCP virus pronunciamentos. Overpasses along their trek thronged with cheering supporters.
The convoy arrived in Canada’s capital last weekend, and Ottawans’ lives have since been disrupted by clogged streets (lanes are open for emergency vehicles), liberal use of air horns (stopping at six PM), and protestors marching around the Parliament buildings chanting “Freedom!” And occasionally taking time out to shovel snow in public spaces, or build a mobile soup kitchen to feed Ottawa’s homeless.
The truckers, and a growing majority of Canadians, think Canada’s CCP virus rules should follow the science. That is, the rolling imposition of limited martial law should cease.
They think the Trudeau hegemony has again misinterpreted Canada’s mission statement: “Peace, order, and good government”. The truckers are leading the debate, “Resolved: Canada does not have the good government required for peace and order.”
“Peace, order, and good government” is not so presumptuous a demand as “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” nor as prone to excess as “Liberté, egalité, fraternité.” The Freedom Convoy protest, befitting Canada’s image, is preponderantly polite. In no way comparable to the “stop-the-steal” riot on January 6th/20 in Washington, nor to the gilet jaune street fighting September 12/20 in Paris.
No injuries, no deaths, no riots in the last four days in the nation’s capital, even though we have a global cause, national protest.
By February 2nd there had been 3 arrests in an estimated 10,000 protestors.
The contrast with our Jan/6 riot and the Antifa/BLM planned insurrections is inconvenient for the laptop class and the Trudeau government. They need vicious oppressors. So Ottawa’s Globe and Mail, a government subsidized enterprise, finds a way to vilify the truckers: Calling the Ottawa protests ‘peaceful’ plays down non-violent dangers, critics say
“Police haven’t reported any physical violence at the ongoing Ottawa rally against vaccine mandates and other government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions, but critics warn that conflating the absence of bloodshed with “peaceful” protest downplays the dangers of the weekend demonstrations.”
Among the dangers the Bytown anointed have cited was one guy carrying the Stars and Bars. There’s video of him being shamed and driven away by the truckers. That’s a literal false flag.
Someone painted a swastika on a Canadian flag, leading to charges the truckers are Nazi sympathizers. The strikingly more obvious interpretation is that the painter was calling Trudeau a fascist wannabe.
A woman was seen, arms in air, shouting “Freedom!” while standing on the base of the National War Memorial. This action has been described as “desecration.”
It is a beautiful and evocative statue, deserving reverence and protection: Credit Robert at SDA
So far it has not been targeted for destruction by BLM or Antifa. But the subjects are imperialist white male warriors, so it’s only a matter of time. You do have to wonder whether the men depicted would feel disrespected sharing a plinth with someone shouting “Freedom!’ in the context of CCP virus tyranny.
They were soon to be exposed to the Spanish Flu pandemic. I imagine their reaction to mandates and lockdowns would be less compliant than Justin would prefer.
Someone hung a Maple Leaf flag upside down on the statue of Terry Fox. The left was apoplectic. This statue has been dressed up many times in the past without comment from the petty totalitarianate.
A CBC newsbimbo suggested that Russia was secretly organizing the protests.
Somehow these deplorable truck driving cretins must be driven from polite society, castigated, cancelled, shamed. Canada’s precedents for using nebulous complaints from far-left activists to punish speech are well known. Mark Steyn made some of them famous.
One of CNN’s iconic contributions to Newspeak was displaying the phrase ‘mostly peaceful’ over live images of burning buildings. Having described protests involving murder, looting, arson, and vandalism as ‘mostly peaceful’, what do you do when a you need a condemnatory description of protests that involve no class A felonies? Well, war is peace and freedom is slavery. Just follow your 1984, or the Globe and Mail stylebook.
‘Dangerous non-violence’ is justification for making Thoughtcrime up as you go along. Ideas are too dangerous to trust them to free citizens.
It’s disappointing, really. These truckers went to a lot of trouble to gently stir up some shit. Even with the distinct lack of felonies… couldn’t we at least call it ‘barely raucous?’
No. No agency must be granted to these unacceptables. The Prime Minister is channeling Hillary Clinton:
“The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, or who are holding unacceptable views that they’re expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians…”
-Justin Trudeau
According to this Angus-Reid poll, Pansy McBlackface is claiming 54% of Canadians hold unacceptable views. Even Hillary only called half of Trump’s supporters deplorable, not more than half the whole population.
Not to be outdone, the leader of Trudeau’s partners, the New Democrats (think Bernie, AOC and Omar), played the race card:
“Conservative MPs have endorsed a convoy led by those that claim the superiority of the white bloodline and equate Islam to a disease.”
-Jagmeet Singh
Wow. Maybe he gets his world view from Whoopi Goldberg.
Finally, displaying the cluelessness for which he is justly famous, Ontario’s Premier:
“It’s time to let the people in Ottawa get back to their lives,” Premier Doug Ford says on fifth day of convoy demonstrations.”
-Doug Ford
Doug, you portly pontoon, it’s time to look up the word “irony.” THAT MESSAGE is WHOLLY OWNED by the protestors. YOU CAN”T POLITICALLY APPROPRIATE “Letting people get back to their lives.” The Freedom Convoy hasn’t even had their 2 weeks to flatten the curve.
Oceania, of course, was Winston Smith’s home country in George Orwell’s 1984. Problems in Oceania aren’t expressible in Newspeak.
Newspeak isn’t just a set of buzzwords, but the deliberate replacement of one set of words in the language with another. Or their removal entirely. The transition is still in progress in Orwell’s novel, but is expected to be completed “by about the year 2050.”
The Canadian Broadcarping Castration is advancing the schedule. Think NPR/PBS, but more to the left. CBC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Canada’s far left government. They are proposing a new political philosophy. It’s early days in the development of this theory, and it is as yet unnamed. I have a suggestion later.
“Ghetto; sell someone down the river; blackmail; brainstorm; savage; gypped; pow wow; tribe; spooky; black sheep; blind spot; blindsided; first world problem; spirit animal; tone deaf; lame; grandfathered in; crippled.”
You might wonder why they would bother with such a feeble effort. There are surely many more worthy words which the crippled minds of the lame SJW tribes might brainstorm, in their virtual pow pows, to create offenses with which to blackmail the rest of us: Black sheep (our spirit animal) all.
You can see where some of their angst comes from, but “first world problem?”
The term ‘first world problem’ began as meaning a trivial problem experienced by people in affluent societies. CBC’s list is an example of a first world problem. Progressives have come not to like ‘first world problem’ because it mocks stupid ideas like subjecting a list of 18 words to Newspeak.
A first world problem is running out of characters on Twitter. Or somebody else using all the hot water. But, these get uncomfortably close to having your pussy hat laughed at. Then, who knows? You go bonkers over a sign supporting the police on somebody’s lawn. From there, we might have people who hear the wrong pronoun, or get punished for committing a hate crime hoax. Jussie Smollett would not have been lionized by Vladimir Putin, but he was by Joe Biden.
Just around the first-world-problem corner from that, is some ‘Nazi’ claiming you shouldn’t live your life as if speech is violence.
Of course, CBC’s innuendo is that speech is violence. Or ought to be if you say the wrong word.
In the interests of fairly presenting the case for removing the phrase from our language, here’s an unintentionally hilarious article at Medium: Seriously, Stop Saying “First World Problems”
[B]eing poor doesn’t mean you don’t experience similar inconveniences…
Right. Someone has ALWAYS used all the hot water. Because there never is any. Then it isn’t an inconvenience. It’s just life.
The term first world problem entered public consciousness back around 2005 as a way to shame trivial complaints. Shortly after catching on as a meme, it morphed into a way to justify those grievances by at least acknowledging some people, somewhere might see it as silly. I acknowledged it, now please sympathize with me with a like or a retweet…
We are so clueless to the real world that we imagine one where there [sic] only troubles in another country must be exhaustive in scale. Beyond the reach of our imagination to picture a day in the life…
It is past time to retire first world problems. Now is an age when we need to be highlighting our connections, our humanity. Let’s leave behind our instinct to create fake divisions.
Not getting likes and retweets, of course, is a first world problem. It doesn’t mean nobody in non-first world countries ever has that problem. When you say it without irony, as demonstrated by the last two paragraphs in that quote, it means you’re a narcissistic, virtue beaconing idiot. Or a TV network full of them.
It means you have no perspective about the problems you DO NOT have. That you are a fatuous ingrate. That what is beyond your imagination is the idea that saying ‘first world problem,’ for most if us, is simple embarrassment that we have adults who need coloring books in their safe spaces.
The idea that ‘first world problems’ is yet another example of colonialist racism is merely another way to condemn your own nation and culture. The author can’t see that running out of characters on Twitter for someone without access to clean water is STILL a first world problem. His plea to stop using the term is just a way of one-upmanship in the piety sweepstakes. Which is a first world problem.
On the more serious side, we are overflowing with hate crime hoaxes. That is also a first world problem. Doesn’t happen in Iran or China. Oh, there are hate crimes – committed by the governments – but they aren’t hoaxes.
We argue about whether 7 year old children should be encouraged, by our educators, without parental consultation, to be treated with potent hormones and undergo sterilizing surgery in order to advance the cause of a handful of anti-science activists. That’s a first world problem which would appall the Taliban.
We agonize about psychological damage to young girls from Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. In North Korea watching K-Pop on TikTok gets you a public execution.
Given that CBC’s control over the population is not what we could call absolute, erasing each of these words would end up requiring some word or phrase to take their place. Some euphemism will be cycled in. Then, the screams from those acting as though they’ve been flayed and then forced to wear hair shirts will repeat. Because someone says whatever has come to mean ‘tone deaf.’
How long will it be before ‘inspiration’ is verboten because it’s a synonym for brainstorm? Is ‘problem solving’ long for this world after that? It might be fun to go through CBC’s list and see what the replacements could be, but it probably wouldn’t turn out to be humorous enough to justify the time, though Middle School Trauma Syndrome occurred to me as a first world problems replacement.
Since CBC’s political theorizing appears to be a fusion of kakistocrism and authoritarianism, we should name it malapropism.
A state practicing kakistocrism is a kakistocracy. A state practicing authoritarianism is an autocracy. A state practicing malapropism is a malarky.
The Virginia election results are ‘code’ for “Good thing for you lying scumbags there’s a tar and feathers supply chain disruption.”
Virginia’s outcome will only heighten the angst of Progs already clutching at their pearls while falling onto fainting couches – over a euphemism. The euphemism in question invokes a vulgar chant shouted by tens of thousands of spectators on television at dozens of events over several weeks. It’s not a dog whistle (hard to hear), should you wish to distinguish ‘dog whistle’ from ‘code.’
Progs are upset that the euphemism has been appropriated by people who… well, people who shouted, or just agree with, the unbowdlerized version. On the off chance you are unaware, that was “F**k Joe Biden!”
Fair enough. Like me, the Woke probably don’t watch NASCAR (where a quick thinking reporter invented “Let’s go! Brandon!” as cover for the network).
Unlike me, they probably do watch TV: Where the talking heads have been wringing hands over the euphemism for awhile now. The TV reporter should be getting royalties.
Soon, we’ll have the DOJ issuing memoranda urging FBI surveillance of any gathering involving two or more people named Brandon. Unless one-and-a-half of them used to be known as Brandy.
The pearl clutchers insist that “Let’s Go, Brandon!” is GOP ‘code’ for “F**k Joe Biden!”. No. It isn’t. It’s open and honest. Everybody Knows.
‘Code’ is Prog shorthand for a nefarious potential mind-worm. Possibly, GASP, a viral internet meme on Facebook Meta. Worse than mere vulgarity, or even mean Tweets.
‘Code’ is Prog-speak for a vile whispering campaign to secretly undermine motherhood and apple pie their suzerainty. As noted, FJB is regularly shouted by tens of thousands at televised sporting events. Lots of people are happy to shout the original, so it’s hard to see where LGB ups the destruction-of-the-Republic ante. There’s the fact that it mocks Progs, but is objecting to authoritarian overreach passé in the country that twice invented the tea party?
If you use this well understood euphemism, however, it’s a Republicans pounce level threat (ProgCon 5) to “Our Democracy.”
“Our Democracy” is Democrat code for “Anyone who disagrees with us is a white supremacist, transphobic, climate-denier.” Charles Krauthammer’s favorite verbal punching bag, Juan Williams, demonstrates: “‘Parents’ rights’ is code for white race politics“. Well, sure, isn’t everything?
‘Code’ is a slightly less conspiratorial subset of ‘dog whistle,’ but still not obvious enough for the average NYT reader to be exempt from editorial Progsplaining.
For the record, the Prog code for “F**k Trump!” is “F**k Trump!” Vulgarity in defense of collectivism is no vice.
Robert De Niro, for example, uttered it twice while introducing Bruce Springsteen at some Hollywood awards ceremony. He got a standing ovation.
Kathy Griffin reinforced the point when she held up a bloody replica of Trump’s severed head. This passes for humor among people who are trying to cancel Dave Chappelle for making actual jokes involving transgender people.
Stephen Colbert’s assertion on national TV that Trump’s mouth was “Putin’s cock-holster” was code only to the exceptionally naive. Progs thought THAT was funny. Maybe Colbert was just playing one-up on Anderson Cooper’s joke, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.” THAT was code for “testicle suckers.” The funny part, presumably unintentional, is that it’s likely Cooper knows whereof he spoke.
To decipher LGB, however, you need neither a secret decoder ring nor an eruption of whiny, civility bullshit Progsplaining angst. A lot of people are upset over mask and vaccine mandates, an ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, proposals to spend $5 trillion for dubious wealth-redistribution programs, energy shortages, Federal obstruction of the energy extraction industry, high inflation, a non-existent southern border, intimidation of parents by the DOJ at the behest of powerful left-wing agents of the K-12 education conglomerate, state sanctioned racism, cities on fire in “protest” when City officials tell the police to stand down, skyrocketing crime, supply chain chaos, half a million dollar individual “reparations” for illegal immigrants, forced denial of fundamental biology… and minimization or suppression of all those stories by defenders of a President whose approval ratings are in the tank.
There is, shall we say, unprecedented dissatisfaction (63% say the country is going in the ‘wrong direction‘, and just 42% think the President is compos mentis) with the performance of an octogenarian whose gaffe permit ran out when he became President. Who recently used the phrase “make the trains run on time,” in a speech in Italy.
“Let’s go, Brandon!,” is a polite criticism of abysmal job performance by the puppeteers. Perhaps the chant can be criticized as elder abuse. For that, though, the chanters are way down the responsibility list from his party and his wife.
But it’s not like it’s a criticism of the Office. Joe Biden doesn’t occupy that office.
