I just heard about this, and I am astounded that it could be true — and totally appalled by it.
Apparently, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has had her staff give her boyfriend a house.gov email address, claiming that he needed it for access to her calendar.
Yes, you read that correctly — and I suspect you are as surprised and shocked as I am.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a boyfriend!
A boyfriend. A boy. Male.
I mean, I just naturally assumed… you know. That she’d be more woke than that. Or something.
If you aren’t familiar with the purported assault on a young man named Jussie Smollett, you can read a pretty good account of it here. But, basically, this young gay black male actor (details which are relevant) claimed that he was attacked while walking in Chicago late at night at the end of January. He claimed his assailants were Trump supporters who committed various obviously racially-motivated offenses against him, and then fled the scene. His claims were met with expressions of outrage and support from celebrities and politicians, often accompanied by editorial comments about racism in America, the President, etc.
It now seems almost certain that Mr. Smollett staged the entire event, with the assistance of two friends whom he paid for their participation.
People do foolish and desperate things for all sorts of reasons. One rumor has it that Mr. Smollett was being dropped from a program he was on, and so was seeking some extra attention and visibility. I have no idea what else might have been going on in his life to prompt him to do something as ugly and dishonest as this, and I don’t care: he’s one individual among billions and, as I’ve said any number of times, there will always be someone doing something stupid — and, if it’s gaudy enough, someone will report it. People love drama when it doesn’t impact them.
Whatever his motivation, Mr. Smollett has done a disservice to those who are or will be victims of actual violence, and to everyone who cares about truth and justice.
But Mr. Smollett is hardly alone in fabricating injustice, nor even the worst offender. There is an entire industry in America devoted to promulgating the mistaken idea that America is a racist country — that is, that racism is a deep, widespread, and essential quality of our nation.
That’s nonsense. There are racist people; it could be argued that most people — black, white, brown, or otherwise — have some racial bias, preferences, or misconceptions. But to argue that America, a nation that has long demanded full legal equality regardless of race, that has elected all kinds of minorities to the highest offices, that is self-consciously obsessed with avoiding even the semblance of racism, and that considers a charge of “racist” to be the most damning epithet, is in any significant sense a “racist country” is both unfair and absurd.
Like Mr. Smollett, proponents of the racist America theory have had to fabricate evidence, misinterpret statistics, and impute bad intent where more prosaic explanations are readily available. And, like Mr. Smollett, they do injury both to the truth and to the victims of true racism — most significantly, victims of the racism they create with their misguided prescriptions for social justice: with their low expectations and preferential treatment, their outrage and their excuse-making.
Mr. Smollett sought to create division where there was none. Everyone who beats the racist America drum is doing the same, regardless of how well-intended, or not, their motives. Racism will diminish when, and not until, those most obsessed with it stop seeing it where it isn’t, in every disparity and imagined micro-aggression.
The Overton window, as most people probably know, is a term used to describe the range of ideas that are considered serious and worthy of, or acceptable for, public discussion and debate. As the window moves, ideas that would previously have been entertained become unacceptable, and ideas that previously would have seemed too outrageous for consideration enter the realm of legitimate discourse.
Slamming describes an illegitimate business practice that was popular after deregulation of the telecommunication industry in the 1980s. When competition was allowed in telephone service and new telephone companies began competing with AT&T, some customers would have their service switched from AT&T to a competitor without their knowledge or consent. This technique of stealing customers, known as slamming, was relatively easy to do given the procedures imposed by the government during the breakup.
The Overton window is being slammed. It is being pushed, by a hyper-activist progressive movement and an ideologically homogeneous press, far beyond anything the American people consider sensible or acceptable. The purpose of pushing the Overton window is to shift the public’s perception of which views are and aren’t legitimate and debatable. This strategy works, but it has its limits, and the new wave of recklessly progressive Democrats have gone beyond those limits, attempting to shift the public’s perceptions too far and too quickly.
We saw a bit of this excess during the Obama administration, when the President made demands about who could and couldn’t use the ladies’ room. That overreach garnered ridicule and outrage, and quite possibly contributed to a Republican presidential victory in 2016.
I think we are seeing the same kind of ideological overreach now on abortion, economic policy, environmental policy, and sexual identity. Moving the Overton window so far to the left that abortion-until-birth, socialism, the economic takeover of the United States required by the so-called Green New Deal, and the abolition of the concepts of man and woman are things that normal people are suddenly talking about strikes me as profoundly unwise, from a political standpoint. It’s too much, too fast, and too outrageous.
It’s also the consequence of a left that has given up any pretense of rigor or analysis in its thinking. When you are fueled by rage and obsessed with a fundamentally negative political ideology — one of identity/victimization, environmental apocalypse, economic envy, and an inexplicable but unquenchable passion for terminating pregnancies — it’s easy to believe that the nation will catch fire along with you — that revolution is afoot and nothing is too outrageous.
But the progressive bubble isn’t as big as the new hard-left thinks it is. They are introducing extremist ideas too fast, ideas that are not going to play well with a majority of Americans and that the left is going to somehow have to run from as we approach the 2020 elections. It will be interesting to watch the Democratic candidates try to distance themselves from an increasingly demanding and unhinged base.
Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker gave an impassioned defense of the so-called Green New Deal a few days ago, in which he mocked skeptics by pointing out that America has always been about “doing the impossible.” He says “we need to be bold again in America. We have to have dreams that push the bounds of human potential.”
Let’s be clear. The so-called Green New Deal is calling for a “mobilization on the scale of World War II and the Marshall Plan.” That’s what its supporters are saying, not its critics.
That’s bold, but it isn’t about having “dreams.” It’s about having ONE dream, and that dream isn’t yours, or mine. It’s the dream of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and her coterie of profoundly arrogant, profoundly ignorant, profoundly irresponsible political hacks. It’s the dream of progressive Democrats.
In the Democrats’ new America, there is no place for your dreams. You’ll be too busy struggling to achieve theirs. Peasant.
Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds links to a piece by Lisa De Pasquale entitled Why the Anti-Men ‘Galentine’s Day’ is Nothing to Celebrate. According to Ms. Pasquale, this recently invented February 13th holiday (another sitcom-inspired creation) has, at least in some circles, a decidedly anti-male aspect to it.
I understand her objection: men do come in for a lot of criticism lately, and young men — grade school boys in particular — are suffering from increasingly unhinged biases and hostility.
But I’m generally not very sympathetic to complaints about the mistreatment of men. We are, by our very natures, tougher than women, physically and emotionally stronger and less sensitive, less vulnerable. This is one of the reasons it’s so great to be a man, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Yes, I know men have a few legitimate complaints, mostly having to do with a lack of due process. But it’s still easier, safer, and just more fun to be a guy than a gal, so I don’t care to hear people whine about anti-male discrimination. (I do, on the other hand, feel a bit sorry for the little boys in the school yard who have to put up with misguided adult re-education efforts.)
Frankly, I think it’s kind of cute when women get together and pile on men and make fun of us. It’s like watching feisty kittens fight each other. I say, let them enjoy their sisterly solidarity.
This half-serious, casually anti-male feminism has a silver lining. These ladies, with their “The Future is Female” (and they’re half right) tee-shirts and their “male tears” mugs, are acknowledging that men and women are different. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but, after half a century of feminism’s relentless efforts to redefine women as men — first by jettisoning the bra, and ultimately by eliminating the act of motherhood itself — it’s nice to hear women talking about men as something inherently unlike themselves.
Because they’re right: men and women are different. And women, even when then they’re being feisty and cutely cantankerous, are adorable.
The British screenwriter Angus MacPhail is credited with coining the term “MacGuffin,” though it is usually attributed to Alfred Hitchcock. In drama, the MacGuffin is anything the pursuit of which serves to drive the plot forward. The MacGuffin may not itself be of any intrinsic interest; what is important is that the protagonists of the story are desperately seeking to acquire it.
In House Resolution 109 – Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, the environment — the “Green” bit — is the MacGuffin. Though the proposed legislation is ostensibly aimed at saving the planet from the looming carbon apocalypse, that really isn’t the point of this bill. Rather, climate change is simply the excuse used to justify broad and deep changes to our economy, and drastic restrictions of our choices, prosperity, and freedom. It is a truly fascistic resolution masquerading as a noble pursuit of clean water and blue skies.
It’s also a very dishonest bit of work. It begins with a recitation of falsehoods about increased severe weather events, and a claim of anthropogenic global warming that is not supported by evidence. It then trots out the ludicrously tenuous projections of economic impact four score years from now, and cites them as a justification for a truly draconian forced transformation of the economy.
The environment is really not what the resolution is about. All the talk of “renewable” and “Green” and “clean” this and that is simply the MacGuffin intended to move this ugly bit of central planning forward. What the resolution is really about is social justice, government control, and socialism.
That’s why it spends so much time talking about “indigenous peoples” and “communities of color,” and why it invokes the common — but not environment-related — leftist tropes of income inequality and racial/gender divides.
That’s why it promises to (all bold text taken verbatim from the resolution):
Maybe those are noble goals (though I actually think they’re mostly victim-baiting and grievance-mongering), but they aren’t environmental goals. They’re simply more of the left’s redistributive, identity-group social engineering.
What else does it offer? Free education:
providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States ….
Union jobs:
high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages
Guaranteed wages, benefits, vacations, and retirement for everyone:
a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States
More stuff for unions (because we love our unions):
strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain
More business regulation and micro-management:
strengthening and enforcing labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards across all employers, industries, and sectors
A big nod to the American Indian community:
obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples
And providing — that’s the word it uses — every American with:
high-quality health care
housing
economic security
food
and access to nature.
Got it? This supposed “environmental” legislation would: guarantee you a house, a job, food, a college education, and health care; strengthen unions; and provide reparations and special advantages to all sorts of “aggrieved” groups including Native Americans, the young, the handicapped, women, and minorities.
Why don’t they simply call it the Turn America into Venezuela Proposal? Because that wouldn’t sell (and, let’s be honest, because they’re too foolish to appreciate that that’s where this would go). So instead they wrap it in a dishonest claim of imminent global catastrophe, and use that as the justification for calling for de facto state control of industry and commerce, education and health care, our jobs and our homes and our lives.
The new fascists are cute and perky and full of themselves, but they’re still fascists.
As I understand it, a major concern in the slave-owning South in the years leading up to the Civil War was that newly admitted territories would enter the union as slave-free states, thus diminishing the percentage of the nation that supported, and that was supported by, slavery. The Republican party, which was formed at least in part to advocate for slave-free territories and new states, and the election of its first President precipitated a desperate move on the part of the South to separate itself from what promised to be a nation dominated by free states and increasingly critical of the remaining slave states.
I wonder if the current excesses of the pro-abortion left, the swing-for-the-fences mindset that seems to have gripped the Democratic Party and its most progressive members, is an expression of a similar desperation. The left routinely portrays America as a reactionary country on the verge of theocracy, this despite the left’s impressive record over the past half-century of achieving dramatic social transformation. While I think this portrayal is absurd, I also suspect it’s sincere, and that many on the left believe we are one Ginsburg away from rolling America back to the dark ages of, say, 1958.
I’ve marveled in recent days at the sheer chutzpah of radically pro-abortion progressives calling for abortion-until-birth, and even managing to get it passed in my state and looming in others. I wondered what inspired their confidence. Now I think that perhaps it isn’t confidence at all, but a fear that the future is unlikely to be kind to abortion — that, even as abortion law remains outrageously liberal, the public view on abortion, particularly among the young, is growing more conservative: that abortion’s appeal has peaked, and may soon be on the wane.
If that’s their thinking, I do think that the current strategy will backfire, and will actually accelerate public opprobrium of abortion.
The political spectrum runs the gamut from crazy-on-the-left to crazy-on-the-right, but most of us are somewhere between those extremes. Most human qualities are distributed on something resembling a bell curve, fat in the middle and tapering to points at each side. Political views are no exception: most of us, Republican or Democrat, left or right, conservative or liberal, are closer to the middle than to either end.
It’s easy to buy into a caricature of the great American divide, an exaggerated portrayal that casts one or both sides as extremists who subscribe to the views of the tiny little fringe down at either end of the opinion curve. This is hardly surprising: whether you’re selling advertising (the press, Hollywood), trying to claim the virtuous high ground (Hollywood, politicians), or trying to push your preferred policy (politicians, advocates), it’s useful to portray your opponent as an idiot or a monster — in short, as an extremist.
Pick your topic. Abortion? One extreme would ban it completely; another would allow it right up to the moment of birth — or, possibly, just a little bit longer. The environment? One extreme wants to outlaw private transportation and impose astronomical energy costs on the nation; another would… well, I’m not exactly sure what an environmental extremist on the other end looks like, but I’m sure there are a few of them out there.
On immigration, one extreme wants to expel every illegal alien from the country and stop immigration entirely; the other wants to abolish ICE and throw open the borders. The economy? At one extreme, people call for outright socialism, a centrally planned and managed economy, and the de facto abolition of markets; at another extreme, radical anarcho-capitalists want to get rid of government and laws, keeping only the free market.
Sex? One extreme maintains that all men are rapists and all sex is rape; another, that women should have legal rights inferior to those of men. Race? One extreme says that America is systematically targeting black people for destruction, and that blacks and whites should each have their own nation; another extreme says that non-whites are inferior to whites — and that blacks and whites should each have their own nation. (Sometimes supposedly opposite extremes resemble each other more than one might expect.)
Etc., etc.
The vast majority of us are reasonably sane, and reject the extremes. We aren’t caricatures. We’re normal people living normal lives, seeking sensible compromises, getting along with people who don’t agree with us about some things but who are, nonetheless, still decent and sensible people. Most of us don’t know many people at the extremes, though we hear about them all the time on television and in social media. This is true whether we tend to think of ourselves as right or left, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.
But here’s an odd thing. It’s hard to find respected voices on the right calling for crazy things. People on the right don’t like craziness, even when it’s coming from their own side. But it’s fairly easy to find respected voices on the left calling for things that sound nutty to most of us: abortion-until-birth (NY, Virginia, Vermont, etc.), black/white separatism (Black Lives Matter, Nation of Islam), socialism (Bernie, Acasio-Cortez, etc.), radical environmentalism, radical views about sexuality and identity, open borders, etc.
I won’t deny that there are crazy people on the right. But folks on the right try to keep them tucked away, out of sight. We don’t want to hear from them any more than the left does, and we sure don’t want them thinking they represent us. Because they don’t.
I don’t know why my friends on the left put up with the prominent extremists who claim to represent them. Partly I suspect it’s because our culture tilts left, and so left-wing extremism doesn’t stand out quite as much as right-wing extremism does: we’re all a little bit accustomed to nutty leftists. But partly, I’m pretty sure, it’s because leftist extremism is just more exciting, just feels better. Socialism sounds cool, never mind that it makes people poor and corrupt and mean and hungry. It sounds kind of romantic, in spite of its dismal record in the real world. And any claim of victimhood is going to be appealing, because we all respond to injustice, real and imagined.
So I guess it’s understandable why people who lean left tolerate prominent crazy people speaking on their behalf. But it’s a mistake: almost no one wants to live in the world the extremists would create. It would be good for all of us if their supporters would let the extremists know that crazy isn’t on the menu, and that they have to dial it back. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that the nuttiest people are going to be calling the tunes for the rest of us.
Most Americans, and by a wide margin, are in favor of legal abortion, though both opinions and laws vary as to where and when the lines should be drawn. A small percentage of Americans are opposed to the legality of abortion in all circumstances. A small percentage of Americans are in favor of the legality of abortion in all circumstances. Most Americans, perhaps unsurprisingly, would limit abortion to either the first or second trimester, with consideration given for the health of the mother and unborn child.
Those in favor of a complete prohibition of abortion from the moment of conception are in a small minority, and have no prospect of getting their beliefs implemented in law — with or without Roe v. Wade. They are simply too marginal a group: essentially every significant demographic, male and female, religious and non-religious, old and young, black and white, educated and uneducated, disagrees with them.
Similarly, those who believe that abortion should be legal up to the moment of birth are in a small minority. However, unlike the strict anti-abortion prohibitionists, this group does have significant influence. Prominent Democratic politicians are promoting and enacting legislation that effectively allows elective abortion until the moment of birth, despite the fact that very few people actually support such a practice except in the most dire circumstances of medical emergency.
Proponents of legal-until-birth legislation understand that their position is unpopular, so they use legislative legerdemain to hide the reality of their bills. The recently passed New York Reproductive Health Act is an example of this practice. The Act changes the limitations on late-term abortion, stating that an abortion may be performed
“at any time when necessary to protect a patient’s life or health.”
What exactly constitutes the “patient’s health” is not defined in the statute. However, the Supreme Court gave us some idea what the term means in 1973, in the less well-known landmark abortion case, Doe v. Bolton, when it concluded that “health” was whatever a physician deemed it to be after taking into account such factors as “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age.” (emphasis mine)
If that isn’t broad enough and vague enough — emotional, psychological, familial health? — the New York statute both remove violations of abortion restrictions from the criminal code, and states that abortions can be provided by health care workers who are not actual physicians.
This is now the law in New York state. The state of Virginia is considering similar legislation, with the enthusiastic support of its Governor. Proponents acknowledge that the proposed legislation would allow the elective termination of a healthy, viable child right up to the day of birth.
I understand that some people are fearful that abortion might be made illegal, or so difficult to acquire that it is effectively out of the reach of many or most women. I don’t think that’s a realistic concern, given the broad public support for legal abortion, but I understand how some might think it is.
I confess that I find it harder to understand the enthusiastic defense of abortion up to the moment of a child’s birth. I don’t understand why a woman would not choose to deliver the child, say by Cesarean section, and give it up for adoption, thus undergoing a procedure comparable to a late-term abortion but less likely to leave her emotionally scarred. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good, necessary, or appropriate thing to make the elective termination of a child at full gestation easier.
Safe, legal, and rare. That was what many who supported abortion rights wanted. Today we’re told that late-term abortions make up one to one-and-a-half percent of the abortions performed every year in America. That’s one per hour, every hour of every day.
Finally, I wonder how many people who, like me, are in favor of abortion being legal but not unbounded, are aware that the pro-choice movement is moving so far to the extreme, and doing so enthusiastically, and with the support of high-profile and influential Democratic politicians.
This seems like a mistake — both political and moral.
“Learn to code.”
Familiar with the phrase? It’s a rather insensitive shorthand way of suggesting that someone enhance his commercial opportunities by acquiring new skills. That can be sincere advice — Walter Brooke encouraging a young Dustin Hoffman to pursue a future in “plastics.” It can be a practical career choice, as demonstrated by a handful of out-of-work Kentucky coal miners who successfully made the transition from working bituminous mines to agile coding techniques.
Most recently — as in last week — “learn to code” is a snarky rebuke to displaced print and internet journalists, and in particular to people recently let go by Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post, and the Gannett media giant. In part, the comment is intended to be karmic, alluding to an attitude that prevailed during President Obama’s tenure when his administration bragged of shutting down entire industries (coal mining, for example) and some in the media glibly suggested the displaced workers upgrade their skills and go get good jobs — in short, “learn to code.”
I code. I’m good at it. I’ve been doing it for a long time, far longer than the average Buzzfeed journalist has been alive, I suspect. I know a thing or two about writing software, and so I want to offer some advice to the young journalists recently of Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post who might be considering a foray into the verdant pastures of my industry.
Software isn’t what you’re used to. Software is the real world.
We all have a pretty good idea — or, at least, a strong suspicion — about what goes on in the modern newsroom. We understand that most everyone thinks pretty much the same way, supports pretty much the same causes, tilts the news in pretty much the same direction. (That’s to the left, in case anyone isn’t clear on that.)
We know that standards are pretty low, particularly at Buzzfeed but pretty much everywhere else as well. (See Convington for a glaring recent instance, but examples abound.) We know that there’s a tendency to pick the news that fits the preferred narrative, and to studiously ignore inconvenient truths. Some of it — most of it, probably — is innocent, the simple consequence of living inside a bubble and breathing the same righteous atmosphere as everyone around you. It’s understandable, and even forgivable. But it isn’t real.
Software is real. Computers are remarkably unforgiving things, completely disinterested in your view of the world, your sense of what should be. Computers don’t care about your groupthink, your consensus, your so-called settled science. They simply do as they’re told — exactly as they’re told. They do it quickly, reliably, relentlessly, inflexibly, and mercilessly.
You can’t sweep software details under the carpet. You can’t ignore exceptions that don’t conform to your hopes and beliefs. You can’t make computational reality real by wishing it so, by telling others it’s so, and by agreeing with all of your peers that it’s so.
By all means, learn to code. It’s a wonderful business, a rewarding and often lucrative activity, and a lot of fun. But it’s going to require something new from you: a commitment to reality, to comprehensive analysis, to an open-minded consideration of the various sides and aspects of a problem. Approach it that way and you may be successful.
But business as usual? No, you’re going to have to up your game if you want to succeed in the real world.