Pushback

 Pushback

In these dark times, I am trying to cling to events that give us a bit of hope.  With inflation raging, the stock market imploding, the border overrun, it’s hard to find things that give one a bit of succor.  We are, in fact, living through as time as disquieting as it has been since WWII, and it is not overreacting to have genuine concerns over whether our republic will come out whole.  But it is important to keep in mind that tyrants always enjoy first mover advantage.  Freedom loving people are a bit slow to react and gather themselves, and as it did in the 1940’s, we are seeing signs of pushback against the forces of tyranny.

Immigration
In an absolutely brilliant move, the governors of Texas and Florida began to send the illegal immigrants that are pouring over the border to sanctuary cities and, in the case of Florida governor DeSantis, to the elite liberal bastion of Martha’s Vineyard.  Mayors of “sanctuary cities” like New York, DC, and Chicago griped that they “just didn’t have the infrastructure to deal with them.”  In the case of Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago, she promptly shipped them off to neighboring suburbs.  The good souls of Martha’s Vineyard, having been “enriched” by their visitors, called in the national guard and shoved them off to a military base within two days.  Nevertheless, the point had been made.  The false sanctimony of the progressives was put on display for all to see.

Trans movement
Independent journalist Matt Walsh exposed the Vanderbilt Medical Center for its hideous “gender affirmation” clinic, which disfigures preteen kids.  His expose of these modern Mengeles has triggered Tennessee lawmakers to take up a measure to bar these clinics from surgically altering minors and preventing them from administering puberty blockers.  Megyn Kelly has likewise featured interviews with individuals that regret their earlier decisions to undergo gender transition.   Abigail Shrier wrote her groundbreaking book “Irreversible Damage” (pulled from the shelves at Target) decrying the awful practice of influencing preteen girls into changing their gender.  After a late start, forces are beginning to emerge to oppose this cult-like trend.

Sweden and Italy
The Woke movement and the World Economic Forum are beginning to run into stiff political resistance.  Great Britain opted out of the EU entirely.  Hungary and Poland have been defying EU prescriptions on a number of fronts, including unimpeded Islamic immigration from the Middle East.  Sweden elected a conservative government and Italy has now followed suit.  The Swedish and Italian elections represent a rejection of the unelected authority of the EU and of the injection of Islamism into European culture.  The election of Georgia Melani is particularly satisfying, since she is a thumb in the eye of the EU and the WEF.  The leftist media is already labelling a “fascist,” a “racist” and the farthest right leader of Italy since Mussolini.  In fact, she is a civilizationist.

Safe-T Act
The Safe-T Act is the cashless bail act that was passed in the middle of the night, that, among other things, limits detainable offenses, provides that police cannot remove trespassers on you business or personal property and prohibits police from tracking down scofflaws for 48 hours after they remove electronic monitoring.  At a time when Chicago is reeling under an unprecedented crime wave, the Safe-T Act is an entirely pro-criminal statute.

The outrageousness of it compelled me to do something I have never done before—called my legislator to voice my displeasure.  She mostly spit back her standard talking points.  I went overboard to be polite and restrained—probably too much so.  When she started railing on the opposition for putting out “lies,” I politely reigned her back in and said, “I am interested in hearing why you supported it and the facts and data you looked at.” She deflected by saying “all cities are having a surge in crime.” She showed no concern whatsoever for victims of crime.   On the positive side, though, I did spend 30-40 minutes with her on the phone, she said they were working on “clarifications” to the statute, so she must be taking some heat for this.  I did my small part to push back, and I will do more.

 As I have often said, “Tyrants have first mover advantage.”  But we are seeing signs that resistance is gathering and it has to be a grass roots project

A Little Hope

 I will be converting my blog to substack shortly under the name Darkly Optimistic.  Over the past couple of years, my blog posts have been more darkly than optimistic, a sad reflection of the trough that we are in.

So I thought I’d spread just a little bit of optimism in my post this week.

I spent two week in Pinehurst, North Carolina and tried to limit my visits to social media, as working in downtown Chicago and living in a nearby suburb under Governor Pritzker can be quite taxing on the old mental health.   Even a short stay in a small town and periodic breaks from social media can have a salutary effect on a person.

While there seems to be a deluge of bad news for the last couple of years, even including talk of civil war and a national divorce, I did make a few observations while I was away from a large urban center that gave me some hope for the future, and I came away with one overriding thought:

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here were my experiences:

I drove around North Carolina for two full weeks and not a single driver cut me off or gave me the middle finger.  This is a daily occurrence in Chicago.

Not a single homeless person rattled a cup in my face.  Not a single one was huddled in a doorway.   In Chicago, you can’t walk 3 blocks downtown without confronting one. 

Most interesting was attendance at church.   I was surprised by the attendance at late Sunday morning Mass.  The local parish church is fairly large and it was fairly full.   I also noted that there were a number of entire families, many of whom had 3 or 4 small children.  And nearly everyone was dressed up.  Very few people had on jeans or shorts.  Most women wore dresses.  Men had collared shirts.  Little boys had their hair combed with Brylcreem.   Three women wore veils.   For the first time in a long time, the phrase “your Sunday best” meant something.

The next day brought some beach time.  Again, there were many families with small children.  I was struck by the fathers, attentive to their wives, playing with their children, all of them fit.  One young man carried his two year old son on his shoulder, both in identical white beach shirts, sporting the same sunglasses, same facial expression, and same facial features.   No doubt what gene pool that little boy came from.

Just being around these families was energizing and hopeful.

Gibson’s Bakery

At the same time, the ruling came down that the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Oberlin College in Gibson’s Bakery’s claim against it.  The school will have to pay a $36 million dollar judgment for defaming the bakery, now that the school has run out of appeals. 

I won’t regurgitate the facts here.  The case is fully and fairly presented (both sides) in Bari Weiss’s September 1 podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oberlin-accused-the-gibsons-of-racism-now-it-owes/id1570872415?i=1000578020237).   As someone who has worked with many family businesses over the course of my career, it was hard to listen to the facts surrounding Oberlin’s vendetta against the bakery.   Oberlin’s president either had awful attorneys or chose to stick her fingers in her ears and hum when they gave her guidance.  The Gibson family, as so many families that run bakeries, viewed their calling as a labor of love and were pillars of the community.  To hear the school students and administration set out to gratuitously destroy a multi-generation business was appalling.  The impact on the family and its employees was devastating.  I know that the Gibson’s work harder than any of those protected school administrators (and deliver more value for society).

But the final resolution gave me some hope.  At least parts of our judicial system is capable of resisting Woke ideology and is capable of delivering justice.  It was gratifying to hear that Oberlin will feel the sting of just consequences, even if those administrators don’t personally suffer any loss (after all, they are insulated, unlike the Gibson’s).

I celebrated by ordering a Gibson’s baseball cap and a box of bakery goods through the Gibson’s website.

Beyond Red and Blue

 It’s been a corrosive few weeks for national unity.  There was the F.B.I. raid on Mar-a-Lago in which agents even went through the belongings of Melania and Barron.   Then there was the rancor between Texas and Chicago, New York and D.C. as Texas governor Abbott began to ship illegals to these putative sanctuary cities.  Finally, there was the dark and menacing speech of Joe Biden, given in front of the dark blood red background, using marines as props, telling us that MAGA Republicans represent a threat to democracy, and then threatening his own citizens with F-15’s.  And if that wasn’t enough, there were the images of armed Antifa in the background of a drag queen show for children in Texas.

Everywhere you look, it appears that reasoned argument and engagement have evaporated, and have been replaced by division, anger, bitterness and hatred.  After Biden labeled Trump voters “semi-fascist,” it took all of my self-control not to send the clip to friends of mine that voted for Biden because of Trump’s “divisiveness.”   Cable news is divided into two camps—MSNBC and Fox, basically where the narratives run in parallel universes. 

It's hard to find any platform or any person that can make fact based policy arguments or make fair evaluations, particularly of Donald Trump.  I had great hopes for Bill Barr, and I thought his memoir, One Damn Thing After Another was generally about as fair as you get, but his recent statements on the raid of Mar-a-Lago betrayed his anti-Trump bias by making inaccurate statements (storing classified materials at a country club-not true) and making several assumptions about the unprecedented raid.

Nonetheless, I have identified a number of podcasts that I believe are eminently fair.   Despite the well-deserved criticism, the technology industry has provided at least one development that is worthwhile—the podcast.  Podcasts have picked up the slack that legacy media has left and have given voice to several people that legacy media has thrown overboard.  Liberated from time constraints, podcast discussions are often more nuanced and in depth.

Quillette
Quillette was the first podcast I listened to regularly.  With the slogan “Free Thought Lives” and its dedication to heterodoxy, Quillette has mostly been a great podcast to hear free thinkers that are willing to push back on Wokeness.  Still, I lost respect for its founder Claire Lehmann when she launched a series of personal and vituperative attacks on Bret Weinstein for his skepticism over COVID restrictions and vaccines.  She also has a tendency to post somewhat revealing photos of herself to show off her fit and attractive figure on social media, which, I think actually detracts from her images as a serious intellectual.  Still, Quillette remains a good podcast if you wish to swim against the tide.

DarkHorse
DarkHorse is one of my absolute favorites.  Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, evolutionary biologists that were driven from the faculty of Evergreen State by the Woke mob, and deplatformed by YouTube, this nominally progressive couple bring reason and the scientific method to the fight.   They almost always have something interesting to say, and Weinstein was one of the first to suggest that COVID may have originated in the Wuhan Lab, and warned of the ineffectiveness and safety issues of the mRNA vaccines.  Both have been highly vocal about the corruption of science in universities.  I particularly enjoy Heather’s rants and Bret’s nerdy humor.  Both are willing to engage and have lively discussions with people with a more conservative tilt that they have, which makes this podcast most thought provoking.

Honestly with Bari Weiss
Like Weinstein and Heying, Bari Weiss is a refugee from a legacy institution—the New York Times, and she has had to find an alternative way of making a living.  She is very smart, high energy and open minded.   Hers is the absolute best podcast if you want to hear frank discussions of both sides of an issue.  Her more recent podcasts included discussions of the Oberlin College case, Election Denial, and Feminism and Sexuality.  Her interviews have ranged from Mike Pompeo to Marianne Williamson.  She is a fierce defender of the principles of free speech and is on the advisory board of both the new University of Austin and the Foundation Against Intolerance of Racism.   Who knew that I would consider a liberal liberal Jewish lesbian from the New York Times to be one of young intellectuals for whom I have the utmost respect---but so much for labels.

The Glenn Show
The odd benefit of Woke is that I was introduced to the thinking and ideas of Glenn Loury and John McWhorter—“The Black Guys.”   Loury is an economist from Brown and McWhorter, a linguist, hails from Columbia.   I rarely miss their bi-weekly discussions.  Loury is more conservative of the two but McWhorter almost always gets me thinking in a different direction.   I have a special affinity for Loury since he is originally from Chicago’s South Side and his life has had its own travails, which lends authenticity to his views.  He is certainly not a lifelong ivory tower guy.  Loury and McWhorter often have disagreements and their friendship and civility toward one another is a model for all of us.

In addition to these, I also like New Discourses by James Lindsay, which is sometimes long and detailed but provides a comprehensive analysis of Woke ideology and Marxism.   Victor Davis Hanson’s weekly podcasts are a regular for me as well as Hanson provides a historical perspective on things.  Megyn Kelly’s podcast is also quite good.  Although she tilts rights, she is open minded, is an excellent interviewer, and is open minded.   Her delightful personality comes out more in her podcast than it did on legacy media.

The four podcasts that I highlighted provide a nice balance.   In this hyperpartisan and rancorous atmosphere, it is easy to get siloed and walled off from other perspectives.  Social media and its algorithms are designed to magnify these differences and harden us into tribal camps.  The trouble with Wokeness is that it doesn’t admit or acknowledge legitimate differences of opinion and neither will it acknowledge contrary evidence—it argues with the four D’s—deny, dismiss, disparage and double down.  These podcasts allow for legitimate discourse.