CSotD: At Whom The Ketchup Flies
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The new administration has made a move towards Truth in Advertising, or at least Truth in Tourism, ordering Washington DC to erase Black Lives Matter from the street, since they no longer do. They’ve also ordered the city to rename Black Lives Matter Plaza to Liberty Plaza or lose federal aid.
Any time the word “Liberty” is whipped out, you should check your civil rights, since someone is probably trying to sneak away with them.
As Fell notes, the Big Hand of Liberty is closing in on colleges, making demands on Columbia as to what it may teach and how it should regulate and discipline its students. How will our children learn about freedom if we just let schools do whatever they think is appropriate?
Columbia needed the advice, since they’ve only been in business for 171 years, and Georgetown is even younger at 133, though the Jesuits who run it have been around for 385 years, which may explain why the college resented being told to stop saying minorities and women were the equals of white men.
Apparently the Catholic Church not only has some beliefs that differ from official White House stances, but the silly notion that freedom of religion allows them to state those beliefs and even teach them.
Not only does Dear Leader echo Andrew Jackson’s (alleged) disdain for the enforcement power of the Supreme Court, but Stalin’s contempt for the Pope’s lack of an army.
Well, they say a man is known by the company he keeps.
Meanwhile, in Idaho, not everyone is welcome in elementary classrooms and it is wrong to suggest otherwise.
As Mahmoud Khalil and Lady Liberty are marched off to the re-education camps, I’m glad I visited Montreal before the crackdown on Thought Crime, because suddenly it can be hard to get back from Canada or Mexico if they can prove you ever harbored a traitorous love for terrorism, and I’ll confess to have disapproved of the My Lai massacre, which proves I was an active agent of the Viet Cong.
I also opposed slavery, putting me in league with the terrorists who attempted to seize Harper’s Ferry.
(I’d mention how I feel about the killings of Shireen Abu Akleh and Hind Rajab, but they’re actively prosecuting people for those opinions.)
So let me proclaim that, without any doubt, 2+2=5.
It’s a little tricky, knowing what you’re allowed to say in this nation of free speech and a free press, not just because executive orders have taken the place of laws, but because, as Danziger suggests, the giver of those orders is a little unsteady on what he believes at any given moment.
Or, as John Donne wrote, “Send not to know at whom the ketchup flies; it flies at thee!”
There’s not a lot of hype in Danziger’s observation, because, as Jones points out, not only does Trump want to prosecute people for disloyal thoughts and speech, but he has declared it illegal to boycott Tesla.
I’m not sure how you can tell whether someone is deciding not to buy a Tesla for political reasons, though I guess if they buy a Honda or a Chevy, that’s proof enough and we should lock them up.
Meanwhile, Pam Bondi is prepared to unleash the Department of Justice on anyone who tampers with a Tesla rather than a Nissan or a Jaguar, though, for a $25,000 donation, she’ll drop the charges.
BTW, there’s no defense in clinging to the truth, because truth is only one choice these days. Beckom picks up on a new theory that, in the gap between Trump administrations, would have been dismissed as lunacy, which is that Joe Biden ordered the slaughter of chickens not to stem the spread of bird flu but in a deliberate conspiracy to raise egg prices and make Donald Trump look bad.
As has been said here before, it’s not that you can’t make this stuff up. It’s that you don’t have to.
And it’s not as if reality weren’t difficult enough, as Bennett points out. We’ve backed ourselves into a place where none of the choices seem positive or even sane.
I’ll admit that, while I wanted the Senate Democrats to stand up to Dear Leader, there wasn’t a lot of upside to provoking a government shutdown, particularly in a world where people believe Biden was out killing chickens to create an anti-Trump egg shortage. The blame would fall where the blamers decided it should fall, and facts be damned.
In this case, the facts on either side were already damned anyway.
It would be nice to think that, when the shoe begins to pinch, the voter will wake up, but Pett captures the situation well: The curtailment of veterans’ benefits, which might have inspired fury a generation ago, won’t likely cause a ripple among those who weren’t bothered by a draft dodger referring to the war dead as suckers and losers.
In other news
I was likely stupid, ordering a Kindle edition of Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’ insider look at Facebook upper management. Facebook, or “Meta”, which nobody calls it, is attempting to shut down the book, which is a good reason to get a print copy, since, if Zuck flexes his muscles a little more, maybe his pal Jeff will start grabbing back the Kindle copies from machines around the world.
But I’m counting on not wanting to read it more than once anyway, and if Zuck & Co. weren’t so publicly incensed, I might not have bothered.
Anyway, you might get a laugh out of this column, even if you don’t want to read the book. As she writes:
Whether the Meta boss and his ex-lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg are truly beyond awful is neither here nor there. I thought he was done with factchecking
And hail and farewell to WIRY-AM, a small Plattsburgh station signing off after 76 years. The noon newscast was must-listening, especially for other journalists in the area, because if Gordy had a story, we’d damn well better have it, too.
The station served as a life-line throughout the 1998 Ice Storm, and its demise is another oasis dried up in a growing news desert.
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