90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Joe Biden’s State Of The Union Previewed Dems’ Fake Attempt To Walk Back Their Culture War

Joe Biden’s ”State of the Union” address clearly marked an attempt by his White House to make their culture war seem like an afterthought. It’s not, of course, as evidenced by the president’s description of abortion as “health care” and his demand that Congress pass the radical Equality Act. But the bulk of Biden’s speech focused on “meat and potatoes,” as Chris Hayes repeatedly claimed during MSNBC’s coverage.

It’s true, Biden dedicated much of his address to Ukraine, infrastructure, the economy, health care, and Covid-19. He earned a robust round of applause with a line that said, “We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It is to fund the police.” He touched on guns, immigration, and the environment, but they were hardly his focus. Notably, Joy Reid lamented the absence of Jan. 6 from Biden’s address, arguing it was characteristically devoid of “red meat.”

Reid was right to find that balance remarkable. Rather than signaling a shift away from Democrats’ scorched-earth culture war, Biden’s speech signaled a shift away from the party’s strategy of obsessing over identity politics. This comes with an enormous caveat: Democrats cannot and will not meaningfully make any such pivot beyond rhetoric.

Until they’re willing to drop truly radical policies like the Equality Act, it’s all smoke and mirrors meant to distract voters from what they’re actually doing to the culture. Democrats cannot simply pretend the summer of 2020 and the lockdowns never happened, no matter how much the media might help them try, because the party has now spent years committing to inflated definitions of bigotry that would condemn any moderation from their positions.

Sure, voters have short memories and the media is complicit. But these definitions are now baked into our institutions. They are ingrained in the minds of a generation. They’re clung to by journalists and activists that Democrats need to please.

Samuel Goldman of George Washington University disrupted the annual flood of breathless SOTU tweets with a great reminder on Tuesday night. “Guys, this speech is not for you,” he wrote. “It’s for D-leaners who disapprove of the administration and these are the lines that worked for them in focus groups. Don’t overthink it.”

That’s exactly right and it’s also why Biden’s “meat and potatoes” tone felt different. From recalls and losses like Terry McAuliffe’s to Biden’s dismal ratings to Covid missteps and brutal new polls, establishment Democrats (and even their allies in the corporate press) are worried enough about their power to start making small sacrifices in the culture war, even if they’re superficial.

And they have to be superficial, because establishment Democrats have spent years emboldening the cultural left, so much that small departures from dogma are now treated as bigotry by a vocal minority of their base. While those voices may be a minority of the base, many of them are very powerful, and they can weaponize all of Democrats’ prior cultural leftism against them to level accusations of racism and sexism and all the other -isms over rhetoric alone. See this tweet Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., blasted out to her 900,000 followers after the speech.

Biden’s heavy focus on “meat and potatoes” signaled a cynical but long overdue attempt by the Democratic establishment to convince voters they’re not frenzied culture warriors. Unfortunately for Biden and his party, they are indeed frenzied culture warriors and they’re going to have a difficult time proving otherwise without alienating the radicals they’ve tried so hard to appease. It’s at least good news that voters are rejecting...

Visage à trois #89

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

We can only hope that the madness in Ukraine doesn’t escalate to the extent that the U.S. military ends up getting involved. It’s clear that Gen. Mark Milley and the rest of the brass have learned absolutely no lessons from Afghanistan and are determined to repeat the same mistakes that led up to the catastrophically mishandled withdrawal from Kabul. If the Army were called upon to move into Ukraine, which would be an indication that the situation there had gotten wildly out of control, it isn’t at all clear that today’s woke force would pose a significant threat even to the manifestly weak and sluggish Russian forces. An American army presence in Ukraine would likely herald World War III, and we hope it won’t come to that, but if it does, look out.

These are the priorities of Milley’s thoroughly modern military: early in February, Army officers were forced to sit through an official and mandatory presentation entitled “Policy on the Military Service of Transgender Persons and Persons with Gender Dysphoria.” According to the Washington Free Beacon, the presentation gives “training on gender pronouns and coaching officers on when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery.”

While Vladimir Putin’s army was preparing to invade Ukraine, officers of the U.S. Army were learning that they have to refer to some men as “she” and “her” if they want to keep their jobs, and be attentive for moments when it might be appropriate to offer Private Jack a chance to become Private Jill (no doubt soon to be Seargent First Class Jill, for being such a useful soldier of the zeitgeist).

According to an Army spokesman, this woke presentation was “mandatory training,” and was “used to train Army personnel on the recent changes to the DoD and Army transgender service policy.” The Free Beacon reports, “all Army personnel, from soldiers to commanders and supervisors, are required to participate in the training by Sept. 30, 2022, according to the spokesman.”

All this is part of “a larger push by the Biden administration to make the military more welcoming to transgender people.” The presentation states, “The Army allows transgender soldiers to serve openly. An otherwise qualified soldier shall not be involuntarily separated, discharged, or denied reenlistment or continuation of service on the basis of gender identity.”

In a sane society, a man who thinks he is a woman, or a woman who thinks she is a man, would be recognized as suffering from a severe psychological disorder, such that he or she would not be seen as “otherwise qualified.” But the military’s presentation offers the hypothetical scenario of a “soldier who was assigned male at birth” but “says he identifies as a female” and “lives as a female in his off-duty hours.” This language reveals how this entire business is a fantasy from start to finish: human beings are not “assigned” a gender at birth, as if the baby is neuter until a doctor or parent decides it will be a boy or a girl. The baby is a boy or a girl; all the doctor and the parents do is notice which one.

The presentation directs that if a male soldier believes he is female but “is not requesting to be treated as a female while on duty,” he should be left alone. However, if the soldier “later requests to be identified as a female during duty hours and/or experiences increased distress relating to his gender identity,” an officer must “inform [the] soldier of the Army’s transgender policy and recommend that he sees a...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #267

'To abolish Whiteness is to abolish White people' lecture goes viral

A video clip that reportedly shows University of California, Berkeley, Professor Zeus Leonardo saying that "to abolish Whiteness is to abolish White people" is currently going viral.

The viral clip appears to come from a 2007 lecture titled "Teaching Whiteness in a Multicultural Context and Color-blind Era" in which the professor asked the rhetorical question, “Is it worth it to be White anymore?”

During the lecture, he argued that since White people "depend" on "Whiteness," if the latter is undercut or abolished, then the entire concept of "White people" is erased.

This is not the first time that Leonardo has been criticized for his views on White people.

The California professor previously came under fire for allegedly making similar remarks when teaching a Whiteness Studies course, namely that “white people are born human” and that they have to be “abused” into becoming White.

Leonardo "engages critical theories to inform his analysis of the relationship between schooling and social relations, such as race, class, culture, and gender," according to his university profile.

Berkeley’s Assistant Vice-Chancellor of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs Dan Mogulof told Campus Reform via email that Leonardo is legally protected by his first amendment right to free speech.

“At the same time, individual employees, including faculty, do not speak for or represent the values, perspectives or positions of the University," Mogulof wrote.

“We believe in diversity of perspective. We [don't] tell people what to believe, or punish them for what they believe in or express, but that’s not to say that the contents of a given individual’s beliefs, or expression, are consistent with our Principles of Community, that capture many of our foundational values in this regard,” the university administrator added.

Leonardo has authored numerous essays including "Critical Social Theory and Transformative Knowledge," "The Souls of White Folk," "The Color of Supremacy," "Contracting Race," and...

Democratic leadership in the House is shutting down an investigation into illegal use of taxpayer funds by Rep. Val Demings (D., Fla.), who was caught abusing mailing privileges as she runs in a high-profile statewide race.

The Washington Free Beacon has learned that the bipartisan House Communications Standards Commission last month opened an investigation into Demings following a complaint that she sent a 12-page, campaign-style mailer to Floridians outside her district. The Democratic chairwoman of the commission, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (Pa.), told her Republican colleagues in a letter obtained by the Free Beacon that she does "not believe that further inquiry is warranted" and on Tuesday will vote against investigating the matter further. Her vote against further action will effectively end the investigation.

Following the commission's initial investigation of the complaint, Demings in a three-page letter from attorneys at Elias Law Group, obtained by the Free Beacon, admitted that the mailings went outside her district. The firm was founded by longtime Democratic operative Marc Elias. Scanlon's campaign also employed Elias for "legal services," having paid his previous law firm thousands of dollars since 2019.

"This is just the latest example of Democrats twisting rules, process, and precedent to cover up the violation of a member," a senior congressional aide with knowledge of the matter told the Free Beacon. "On top of that, the involvement of a partisan attorney like Marc Elias, who simultaneously represents the chair of the Commission, only further raises issues of a conflict of interest. This was a valid complaint filed with the Commission and a clear-cut violation of the rules, yet the Democrat members of the Commission are not only moving towards dismissing the complaint but are actively blocking any attempts to further look into the matter."

Demings's attorneys blamed the private vendor in charge of the mailing for the violation and alleged that their client did not violate federal law because the mailing was not "targeted." Members of Congress are only allowed to send mailers free of charge to residents within their district regarding "matters of public concern and Congressional actions," a practice known as "franking."

Republicans on the commission, such as Rep. Kat Cammack (Fla.), do not believe the matter has been investigated thoroughly. In a letter to Scanlon, Cammack insisted that more information on the alleged mistake is required.

"Here, even though the Member is a candidate for statewide office, she appears to have engaged in little to no oversight of her vendor's operations, explaining that she was so unaware of its operations that she neither reviewed nor approved final mailing lists to ensure compliance, did not know and did not inquire concerning the vendor's mailing practices, and was overall so uninformed about the process that she did not know a violation had occurred" until the complaint was filed, Cammack wrote in her letter.

Demings's campaign for Senate has from the onset been marred by allegations of her using her taxpayer-funded office to boost an uphill bid for Senate. The Free Beacon reported that Demings violated congressional ethics the day she launched her Senate campaign by using her...