90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Dr. Seuss?? Come On Man!!!

The Cancellation Of Dr. Seuss Should Disturb You, Because You’re Next

America is entering its very own Mao-like Cultural Revolution. The iconoclasm of the left’s culture war isn’t a side effect, it’s the point.

Dr. Seuss has been cancelled. Some of his work has been deemed racist, and we can’t have that. On Tuesday, the entity that oversees the estate of Theodor Seuss Geisel announced it would no longer publish six of Geisel’s books because they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Among the works now deemed unfit for children are Geisel’s first book under the pen name Dr. Seuss, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” published in 1937, and the much-beloved, “If I Ran the Zoo,” published in 1950. The former depicts a “Chinaman” character and the latter shows two men from “the African island of Yerka” in native garb.

There’s not much point in quibbling over whether these and other such illustrations in the condemned Dr. Seuss books are in fact racist or bigoted, or whether Geisel held racist or xenophobic views. By all accounts he was a liberal-minded and tolerant man who hated Nazis and, as a political cartoonist, mocked the antisemitism that was all-too-common in America during World War II.

He was also a man of his era. Later in life, he regretted some of his political work during the war that stereotyped Japanese Americans, which, as jarring as it might seem today, nevertheless reflected attitudes that were commonplace at the time.

But context and nuance don’t factor into the inexorable logic of the woke left, which flattens and refashions the past into a weapon for the culture wars of the present. What’s important to understand is that this isn’t simply about banning six Dr. Seuss books. All of Geisel’s work is, in the judgment of left-wing academia, an exercise in “White supremacy, paternalism, conformity, and assimilation.” It might be easy for conservatives to laugh that off as nonsense, but they shouldn’t, because this isn’t really even about Geisel.
The Left Is Carrying Out a Cultural Revolution

To grasp how a man known as much for his messages of tolerance as for his artistic genius could be canceled for racism, you have to understand what’s actually happening here. The left’s war on the past, on long-dead authors like Geisel, isn’t really about the past, it’s about the future. It’s about who gets to rule, and under what terms.

There’s a predictable pattern to what we’re seeing now. It’s predictable because it has happened before in much the same way it’s happening now. During China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ‘70s, the Chinese Communist Party, at the direction of Mao Zedong, called for the destruction of the “Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas. All of these stood in the way of Mao’s socialist ideology, so they had to be destroyed.

Children and students were encouraged by the communist government to inform on their parents and elders, to shame and condemn them in public. The guilty were forced to recant in “struggle sessions,” during which they were mocked and humiliated, sometimes tortured, sometimes murdered. Before it was over, millions were dead.

We’re obviously not there yet, but the woke revolutionaries who now run our elite institutions and exert outsized influence in the corridors of power are following this same pattern.

First, they come for the monuments, destroying the icons of the past and re-writing history to turn even our national heroes and Founding Fathers into enemies. The animating ethos of the mobs pulling down Confederate statues is the same as The New York Times editors who gave us the 1619 Project. And because there is no limiting principle to iconoclasm, they have moved on from...

Update: According to Swedish New Agency, Expressen the attacker is a 22-year-old Afghan citizen who has previously been convicted of drug offenses. The terrorist is said to have received regular visits from social services at home and has been suffering from “mental problems” for some time.

In virtually every instance of jihad attacks in Sweden, politicians & media hide the identity of the attackers. In rare instances when the identity of an attacked is leaked, the suspect is presented as possibly suffering from mental health issues.

———————————–

Swedish Police have shot and arrested a man in his 20’s after he attacked several people in the southern Swedish town of Vetlanda with a ax just before 3pm on Wednesday. Despite the man’s criminal record, the police stated that the attacks came as a “total surprise”. Several victims are said to be seriously injured.

The stabbings occurred in five separate locations which have been cordoned off, all within a few hundred meters of each other.
Suspect Motives/Citizenship

The assailant’s motive remains “unclear”, however, police initially said they were treating the stabbings as a ‘suspected terrorist crime.’ Hours later, police announced they are investigating the attack as an “attempted murder with terrorist motives”.

Police have refused to answer media questions about the suspect’s citizenship. However, The Editor-in-Chief at Swedish news agency, Dagens Nyheter, is reporting the suspect was first registered in Sweden in 2018, and that he previously was convicted for a low-level drug offense.

According to the the suspect’s neighbor, he spoke very poor Swedish and no English. Another neighbor states that a woman used to regularly come to the man’s home to help him.

The attacker moved to Vetlanda from another place nearby just a year ago. During the evening, police searched the man’s ground floor apartment in a residential area in Vetlanda.
Suspect Shot

Swedish newsite, Samnytt, published a video of police shooting the suspect in Vetlanda. A police car with blue lights on can be seen in the clip as well as two police officers. The children filming shout “He has a gun!”. Then a shot is heard. The video was spread on Snapchat during the evening.

The attacker was shot in the leg by officers and has been taken to hospital where he is receiving treatment under armed guard.

Political Response

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven condemned the attack as he sent his condolences to the victims and their families. (courtesy of Expressen): Translation by Fousesquawk.

This evening, I am thinking of those injured in Vetlanda and their relatives. I condemn this terrible act of violence.

We confront these heinous acts with the collective power of...

Before You Click On The "Read More" Link,

Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.

If You are Easily Upset, Triggered Or Offended, This Is Not The Place For You.

Please Leave Silently Into The Night......

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Taxes By Beers...

User Submitted Video

Girls With Guns

Dying In Darkness: Biden STILL Won’t Publish Schedule, Visitor Logs, Nor Hold A Presser… Deletes White House Comments And Petitions Pages.

Six weeks into the Biden regime, Joe’s professed commitment to truth and transparency continues to wane, with the President of the United States failing to hold a press conference, refusing to publish his schedule, hiding visitor logs from the public, and deleting the White House pages for comments and public petitions. Cynics might say that democracy is currently dying in darkness.

In press secretary Jen Psaki’s first press briefing, she told reporters that the Biden presidency heralded a commitment “to bring transparency and truth back to the government; to share the truth, even when it’s hard to hear.”

But with the new guy installed, transparency in the White House has left… something to be desired.

The schedules of the President and Vice President are not currently publicly released. President Joe Biden hasn’t held a news conference of his own (only brief, tightly-controlled press availabilities with supporting acts), and the White House website does not list petitions submitted by citizens. Even the comment line is shut down.

If this had happened during President Trump’s time in office, the front pages would be littered with allegations of would-be dictatorship, and the windows of the Brady Press Briefing room would be fogged from the hot air of CNN’s self-righteous reporters.

‘Nah.’

The White House has confirmed that virtual visitor logs, which don’t account for a bulk of activity in a White House where many meetings are held virtually, will not be released along with in-person attendee lists.

“Virtual meetings will not be subject to release—in the same way that previous administrations didn’t release phone logs—but we’re planning on regularly releasing the attendee lists for in-person meetings at the White House,” a Biden official told Politico.

Biden has also stopped federal agencies explaining how regulations will be interpreted and applied.

On his first day in office, sleepy dictator Joe rescinded a Trump executive order requiring that agency guidance documents be published online and made searchable. Biden’s order reads:

“To tackle [COVID-19, economic recovery, racial justice, and climate change] effectively, executive departments and agencies (agencies) must be equipped with the flexibility to use robust regulatory action to address national priorities. This order revokes harmful policies and directives that threaten to frustrate the Federal Government’s ability to confront these problems, and empowers agencies to use appropriate regulatory tools to achieve these goals.”

Republican senators responded to the move in a letter:

“It is only fair that people, businesses and local governments know what is required of them. Transparency will not undermine the fight against “[COVID-19], economic recovery, racial justice, and climate change,” and it is simply wrong to believe that Americans are better off not knowing which and how Federal rules and regulations apply to them.”

On the diplomacy front, Biden has...