Read it.

I’m sure the resemblance to modern American universities is purely coincidental.

David Brooks wakes up and smells the napalm.

The report, “Hidden Tribes,” breaks Americans into seven groups, from left to right, with names like Traditional Liberals, Moderates, Politically Disengaged and so on. It won’t surprise you to learn that the most active groups are on the extremes — Progressive Activists on the left (8 percent of Americans) and Devoted Conservatives on the right (6 percent).

These two groups are the richest of all the groups. They are the whitest of the groups. Their members have among the highest education levels, and they report high levels of personal security.

We sometimes think of this as a populist moment. But that’s not true. My first big takeaway from “Hidden Tribes” is that our political conflict is primarily a rich, white civil war. It’s between privileged progressives and privileged conservatives.

…

What is new is how cultish this dispute has become. The researchers asked a wide variety of questions, on everything from child-rearing to national anthem protests. In many cases, 97 to 99 percent of Progressive Activists said one thing and 93 to 95 percent of Dedicated Conservatives said the opposite. There’s little evidence of individual thought, just cult conformity. The current situation really does begin to look like the religious wars that ripped through Europe after the invention of the printing press, except that our religions now wear pagan political garb.

“Time to choose a side, Dr Watson.”

Read it.

It’s worse than you think.

Read it.

No gesture is too petty for the Party of Hate.

Read it.

They’ve tried this ‘brown tide’ trick before and it has never worked. It certainly won’t work with Trump.

You’d think they’d try something else.

UPDATE: If Democrats Take Control Of Congress Expect A Caravan Of Illegal Immigrants To March On The Border Every Week, Says Former ICE Director Tom Homan

I believe it.

The Other McCain tells the story.

Everybody involved in this story is a Democrat.

The accused, Al Alvarez, is Latino and looks it.

The accuser, Katie Brennan, is Irish and looks it.

Prediction: Somehow this will be spun to be Trump’s (or at least Republicans’) fault.

Bad boys, bad boys, whacha gonna do….

Read it.

Nature doesn’t care. It’s got nothing but time.

Filling gaps is what it loves to do. I’ll bet the process is already begun.

Read it.

Tractor overturns are the leading cause of farm fatalities.

That never happens with oxen. Or mules. Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Note to self: Avoid New York.

Joel Kotkin chronicles the slide.

Feudalism was about the concentration of wealth and power in a relative handful of people. Historically, California created fortunes for a few, but remained a society with enormous opportunity for outsiders, whether from other states or countries. One of Pat Brown’s biographers, Ethan Rarick, described his leadership as having made the 20th century into “The California Century,” with our state providing “the template of American life.” There was an American Dream across the nation, he noted, but here we had the California Dream.

This proud legacy is threatened, as we point out in our study to be released Monday. Today California is creating a feudalized society characterized by the ultra-rich, a diminishing middle class and a large, rising segment of the population that is in or near poverty. Overall our state now suffers one of the highest GINI rates — the ratio between the wealthiest and the poorest — among the states, and the inequality is growing faster than in almost any state outside the Northeast, notes liberal economist James Galbraith. The state’s level of inequality now is higher than that of Mexico, and closer to that of Central American banana republics like Guatemala and Honduras than it is to developed states like Canada and Norway.

Proglodytes whine a lot about ‘income inequality’ but ignore the fact that the places with the greatest income inequality are all run by Democrats. California? New York? D.C.? Bluer than blue.

Lileks.

It’s a cliché now: Thrill-kill millennials have ruined another beloved part of American culture. They’re relentless! They have no pity. You almost wish they would take requests.

“Hey, young tech-savvy cohort, could you do something about those salad bags that can’t be opened without tearing them across the middle, resulting in all the lettuce falling on the floor?”

“We’re on it, Pops.”

Two months later, there would be a headline: “Bagged salad sales fall as millennials decide to hand-shred their own arugula.” Wait, no, I didn’t want you to kill the bags, just make them easier to open.

“Sorry, Pops, you weren’t that specific. Besides, we don’t have time to go back and change things. We have to eliminate bank tellers by noon tomorrow.”

Read it.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Read it.

Perhaps because ‘humanities’ are turning into ‘socialisties’ in most universities, and nobody is interested.

Read it.

Insert favorite Belgian joke here.

Thank God it wasn’t a Pole or we’d never hear the end of it.

Read it.

I wasn’t aware that Maine had anything that anybody else wanted. Maple syrup? Trees?

Two of Maine’s biggest industries,  lobster fishing and tourism, are facing a consumer boycott following Ms Collins’ key vote in the most hotly contested appointment to the Supreme Court since that of Clarence Thomas in 1991.

First World problems.

“Dear Susan Collins – I really struggled with this but my tourist $ just voted against ever visiting Maine while you remain in office,”  he tweeted.

If electing Collins will keep proglodytes out of Maine, I’ll send a contribution.

Read it.

I guess there aren’t any hipster hunters in France.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Note to self: Avoid kangaroos.

The Other McCain breaks it down.

It is not the case that America’s politics have become more divisive because the Republican Party has moved further right. Liberal pundits, commenting from within their ideological cocoons, habitually apply labels — “far right,” “extremist,” “white nationalist,” etc. — to depict the GOP as beholden to a dangerous fringe, but this is just paranoid propaganda. The typical Republican voter in 2018 is actually no more “extreme” than his father was in 1988. Nor is the policy agenda of the GOP now any more “far right” than it was in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The cause of the increased partisan divide is not that the Republicans have moved right, but that Democrats have moved left.

What happened, when did it happen and why did it happen?

Read it.

If this succeeds, the rest of the ‘national universities’ are going to be right in front of the crosshairs.

Unlike white people, Asians are not guilty about what they are — not being descended from slave-owners — and have the money behind them to pursue this.

Minnesota, maybe.

Why would anyone want his state’s top law enforcement officer to be in favor of violent crime? One would think, no one could be that foolish. Yet in Minnesota, the Democratic Party has nominated Keith Ellison, who has repeatedly endorsed cop-killers, who regards Antifa as the legitimate voice of the Democratic Party, and who wants Minnesota to be a sanctuary for violent criminals, for Attorney General.

Watch it.

A film star, the head of Interpol and one of China’s wealthiest investors have gone missing after apparently falling afoul of the Communist Party. The message to Chinese citizens is clear: No matter who you are, the party can get you.

Never forget that China is still a Communist dictatorship.

Read it.

It’s like being a commissar during Stalin’s purges.

Read it.

Everything can be reduced to a Star Wars metaphor.

No matter who you are, there’s somebody out there who thinks you’re a racist. That being so, the term ‘racist’ (like the terms ‘fascist’ or ‘sexist’) are empty of content; it’s just a shorthand way of saying ‘I hate you!’

Unfortunately, such HateWords are in common use among the more deranged and simple-minded of our fellow citizens. Be on the lookout, as you would when swimming in shark-infested waters.

Read it.

Yet Another Crooked Democrat.

Read it.

Democrats are raiding the elementary schools for their activists these days.

Read it.

The Party of Hate becomes the Party of Mob Rule. But you knew that.

I suggest that they don’t want to start down that road — Republicans have most of the guns.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

This is what eventually happens in a country where the government is accustomed to interfering with private lives.

And this is a ‘Conservative’ government. It would be ten times worse under Labour.

Note to self: Avoid Britain.

Read it.

Virtue Signalling stumbles on that old tree root, Unexpected Consequences.

Read it.

Of course they do.

Read it.

Reality is what sticks around even after you quit believing in it.

Read it.

No, but it allows politicians to pretend to be doing something while creating a whole bunch of well-paying jobs for … politicians. Win-win!

Next up: An Obesity Prevention Minister! Of Cabinet rank, of course, to signify the magnitude of the problem.

Read it.

I’ve seen several people observe that the anti-Kavanaugh protests of the last few weeks in Washington were demographically embarrassing for the race-conscious left. I recall seeing one comment that the composition of the protests was “whiter than a suburban country club.”

But a new study just out from a British study group makes the left’s fanaticism about diversity and political correctness look even worse. The study, Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape, makes for rough reading for the progressive race-mongers.

Read it.

If I were a young man dating today, I would reject anybody in college or with a college degree.

Those people are crazy. It’s not worth taking a chance.

Read it.

Mexicans are almost as bad as Hamas.

I don’t think they’re smuggling avocados.

Read it.

Burn the witches! Burn them!

Read it.

Just as Democrats would like to do for Republicans. Oh, wait, they already have them — they’re called ‘colleges’.

Read it.

But you knew that.

Read it.

Funny how, when proglodytes bitch & moan about ‘the rich’, they never seem to mean George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. Wonder why that is.

Read it.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Read it.

I guess we’re not totally in the toilet quite yet.

Read it.

They do that already, don’t they?

Read it.

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children recently unveiled a plan for how to terminate the lives of terminally ill kids—with or without parental consent.

The next step. Who didn’t see this coming?

Severian introduces us to Robert Jay Lifton.

1. Milieu Control. This involves the control of information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.
2. Mystical Manipulation. The manipulation of experiences that appears spontaneous but is, in fact, planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority, spiritual advancement, or some exceptional talent or insight that sets the leader and/or group apart from humanity, and that allows reinterpretation of historical events, scripture, and other experiences. Coincidences and happenstance oddities are interpreted as omens or prophecies.
3. Demand for Purity. The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.
4. Confession. Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; members’ “sins,” “attitudes,” and “faults” are discussed and exploited by the leaders.
5. Sacred Science. The group’s doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
6. Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating clichés, which serve to alter members’ thought processes to conform to the group’s way of thinking.
7. Doctrine over person. Members’ personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group.
8. Dispensing of existence. The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious and they must be converted to the group’s ideology. If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the members. Thus, the outside world loses all credibility. In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also.

The Other McCain does a deep dive.

In case you don’t pay attention to trends in “intersectional” Third Wave feminism, there is no betrayal of the cause more heinous than “white feminism.” Miss Swift was denounced as “problematic” for practicing “a feminism that assumes white (cis, straight, able-bodied, thin, middle-to-upper class) women as the default, actively avoiding critical analysis on any axis other than gender.” Miss Swift was guilty of permitting herself to be “sexualized by the male gaze,” Everyday Feminist writer Melissa Fabello complained, adding that the chart-topping singer’s “ivory tower fantasy worlds aren’t doing much to push back against systemic oppression — which, like, is what feminists are supposed to do.” Not only that, but Miss Swift’s video for her song “Wildest Dreams” was condemned as celebrating “the colonization of Africa, through the eyes of the colonizer.” Elsewhere, Miss Swift was branded “the poster child for white feminism” by Vanderbilt University’s Muna Ikedionwu, and derided by Danielle Jenkins for not “challenging the white heteronormative patriarchal system in which we live.”

Never mind the clever tunes and catchy lyrics. In the Age of Wokeness, pop singers are expected to change the world, and Miss Swift wasn’t radical enough to please the Gender Studies crowd. When identity politics and “critical theory” are the raging obsession, what’s a pretty blonde supposed to do? The liberal media dogpiled her with weird headlines: “White Supremacists Call Taylor Swift An Aryan Goddess” (NPR, May 2016) and “It’s Time for Taylor Swift to Denounce Her Neo-Nazi Admirers” (Daily Beast, August 2017). This was crazy, but everything’s gone crazy lately, what with screeching feminist mobs running around the Capitol and trying to claw their way into the Supreme Court.

Read it.

A New York Times feature article about what the newspaper calls the “dirtiest block” in the city of San Francisco observes, “For many who live here it’s difficult to reconcile San Francisco’s liberal politics with the misery that surrounds them.”

That line made me smile. For many who don’t live there — and even for some who do — it’s precisely San Francisco’s liberal politics that created the misery that the Times so vividly describes. Rent control and environmental regulations suppress housing supply, while generous welfare programs act as a magnet attracting people. That’s not “difficult to reconcile.” It’s totally and entirely predictable.

Read it.

A Muslim and a Person of Color behaving badly — what are the odds?

(I’d have been out of luck; I don’t know any Whitney Houston songs.)

Read it.

Today, people are rejecting Greeley’s advice. Not only are few Americans moving to California, but residents are fleeing the state en masse. Why? Maybe because decades of mismanagement by state leaders has increased the cost of living, caused taxes to skyrocket and made people feel less safe.

A driving force for this malaise has been California’s myopic decision to become a sanctuary for illegal aliens, and all the negative consequences that come with it. The result is that California is no longer the American Dream, but effectively a separate country altogether.

Read it.

‘Civility’ and ‘Clinton’ don’t belong in the same sentence. Certainly not in the same zip code.