Archive for April, 2022
23rd April 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
23rd April 2022
Black leaders call on woke companies to support police, not BLM: ‘They should know better’
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
23rd April 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in War
23rd April 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
23rd April 2022
“It is important to be open minded, but not so open minded that one’s brain falls out.” – Richard Feynman
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Quotation of the Day
23rd April 2022
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Imagine a world in which we could take care of our friends’ kids when they need to pop out, because our friends live a stone’s throw away. A world where any time you wanted to head out for a quick drink there would be a friend within ten minutes’ walk to go with. A world where you can easily get a pal over to set up a barbecue, or where you can play board games or have supper with friends on the slightest whim. Why don’t we live in that world already?
I live in London, a pretty large city. When I want to see my friends I often have to travel 45 minutes or an hour across town to do so. This level of latency is pretty annoying. Imagine how many Friends plotlines would have been broken if they hadn’t always been agglomerating across the hall from one another or in Central Perk.
This is much easier to do if everybody is renting in a dense urban area instead of owning homes in the suburbs, which is more usually the case.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Friends Are Under-Clustered. Why?
23rd April 2022
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I really am flummoxed by the ineptitude of President Joe Biden and his chief of staff, Ron Klain. Biden has been a Washington politician for half a century, including eight years as vice president and before that a senior senator. Klain is a consummate Washington insider, having worked for Janet Reno, Al Gore, Biden and others.
How are they this inept?
Last summer, the border got swamped with migrants. They sent Vice President Kamala Harris south of the border and the situation never improved. Activists accused border patrol agents of whipping refugees with horsewhips. The White House condemned the act. But an investigation recently revealed no immigrants were whipped. White House staff have declined to apologize for believing the allegation.
Many border patrol agents are Hispanic. The criticisms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the border patrol by the left are criticisms of Hispanic voters and their families — a constituency the Democrats are losing. But the White House seems openly hostile to both.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | 1 Comment »
23rd April 2022
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Now that’s comedy.
Against my natural inclination I’m starting to like Justin Hammer Elon Musk.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Elon Musk Rebuffs Bill Gates’ Philanthropy Request, Compares Photo of Gates To “Pregnant Man” Emoji
23rd April 2022
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Most everywhere you look on Wall Street, interest rates are going up. For everyday savers: not so much.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on U.S. Interest Rates Have Soared Everywhere But Savings Accounts
23rd April 2022
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Well, we shall see.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 2 Comments »
23rd April 2022
*sigh* I ought not to need to do this but …
- If it’s Right, it isn’t New. The whole point of Right is to be not-New.
- If it’s New, it isn’t Right. Yes, I’m looking at YOU, Jonah Goldberg.
That’s all you really need to know.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The New Right
23rd April 2022
A reporter from Vanity Fair does his obligatory ticket-punching anthropological trip outside of the Left Coast.
But the people these pieces describe, who made up most of the partygoers around me, were only the most buttoned-up seam of a much larger and stranger political ferment, burbling up mainly within America’s young and well-educated elite, part of an intra-media class info-war. The podcasters, bro-ish anonymous Twitter posters, online philosophers, artists, and amorphous scenesters in this world are variously known as “dissidents,” “neo-reactionaries,” “post-leftists,” or the “heterodox” fringe—though they’re all often grouped for convenience under the heading of America’s New Right. They have a wildly diverse set of political backgrounds, with influences ranging from 17th-century Jacobite royalists to Marxist cultural critics to so-called reactionary feminists to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, whom they sometimes refer to with semi-ironic affection as Uncle Ted. Which is to say that this New Right is not a part of the conservative movement as most people in America would understand it. It’s better described as a tangled set of frameworks for critiquing the systems of power and propaganda that most people reading this probably think of as “the way the world is.” And one point shapes all of it: It is a project to overthrow the thrust of progress, at least such as liberals understand the word.
The only thing missing is the Marlin Perkins Mutual of Omaha commercial.
“The fundamental premise of liberalism,” Yarvin told me, “is that there is this inexorable march toward progress. I disagree with that premise.” He believes that this premise underpins a massive framework of power. “My job,” as he puts it, “is to wake people up from the Truman Show.”
Yarvin understands the essential nature of Progressivism (not liberalism, which is an older and more feeble impulse that latched onto Progressivism during the Roosevelt years). This is what makes Yarvin (‘Mencius Moldbug’) worth reading.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on nside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets
23rd April 2022
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Let that be a lesson to us all.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on A Day After He Bought Electric Scooter, Man Killed in Battery Explosion
23rd April 2022
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If you look closely at everything China has done since 1999 – at all aspects of its economic, military, diplomatic, and technological relations with the rest of the world – it’s like watching “Unrestricted Warfare” come to life. One can find other glimpses into the secretive mentality of the CCP leaders, but this one is the single most important book for understanding the China of today. “Unrestricted Warfare” is the main blueprint for China’s efforts to unseat America as the world’s economic, political, and ideological leader. It shows exactly how a totalitarian nation set out to dominate the West through a comprehensive, long-term strategy that includes everything from corporate sabotage to cyberwarfare to dishonest diplomacy; from violations of international trade law and intellectual property law to calculated abuses of the global financial system. As one of the authors stated, “The only rule in ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ is that there are no rules.”
Duh – Communist.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Communist China Has Thrown Out the Old Rules of War
23rd April 2022
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In recent years, the attitude of liberals toward Critical Race Theory has been summed up as: “It doesn’t exist. And it’s awesome!” But as the infiltration of CRT into curricula across the country has become impossible to deny, promotion of racism and anti-Americanism has come out of the closet. Thus we see the public schools in St. Paul announcing a new “Critical Ethnic Studies” curriculum.
REQUIRED for all 10th graders.
Time to leave.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Critical Ethnic Studies Come to Our Schools
23rd April 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
23rd April 2022
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Already all but forgotten about in mainstream media headlines, war-torn Afghanistan has witnessed a series of deadly bombings this week, including the latest blast Friday which ripped through a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz.
Afghanistan’s national Tolo News has said as many as many as 30 people may have been killed in the attack, with dozens more wounded, and health officials at a nearby hospital have cited between 30 to 40 victims admitted.
The report details: “The district security chief, Hafiz Omar, said the blast occurred at 3:30 pm after explosives placed in the Mawlawi Secondar mosque detonated while many people were there to worship. The mosque is also used as a religious seminary.”
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Over 40 Killed in String of Bombings in ‘Forgotten About’ Afghanistan
22nd April 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
22nd April 2022
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
22nd April 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
22nd April 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
22nd April 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
22nd April 2022
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By early April, the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. had reached $4.23, up more than 78% in the 14 months since President Joe Biden took office. It’s a political albatross around his neck, but it’s one that his policy team has deliberately placed there. If the president wants to blame someone for higher prices, he need only look at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Biden promised to wage war on the U.S. energy industry. “I want you to look at my eyes,” he said. “I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.” That’s pretty unequivocal. And his policies reflect that.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on High Gas Prices: The Pain Is the Point
22nd April 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Watch: Tesla on ‘Autopilot Summons’ Hits Private Jet
22nd April 2022
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Eggs or yogurt, veggies or potato chips? We make decisions about what to eat every day, but those choices may not be fully our own. New University of Pittsburgh research on mice shows for the first time that the microbes in animals’ guts influence what they choose to eat, making substances that prompt cravings for different kinds of foods.
“We all have those urges — like if you ever you just feel like you need to eat a salad or you really need to eat meat,” said Kevin Kohl, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. “Our work shows that animals with different compositions of gut microbes choose different kinds of diets.”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Got Food Cravings? What’s Living in Your Gut May Be Responsible
22nd April 2022
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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Scientists Invent Device for Optimally Separating Oreos
22nd April 2022
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As millions of Jews continue to celebrate Passover, a holiday dedicated to the achievement of a free society devoted to the God-given rights of all people, this week also marked the left’s favorite holiday—Tax Day.
Tax Day represents more than the left’s desire to endlessly take the fruits of our labors and expand the government. Its tax plans are designed specifically to make the government the sole decider of what is produced, who benefits from it, and how our economy is shaped—socialism in practice, if not overtly by name.
The double, triple, and intentionally punitive taxation of investment—the engine that drives our economy—is how the left visits this plague on every American household.
By taxing these means of production at high enough rates, and multiple times, it hopes to drive private investment into the ground, leaving only the government in a position to dictate the details of our economy.
And this ongoing hatred of investment is behind the constant headlines “Billionaires Pay Less Taxes Than Their Secretaries!” — which is a lie; what they do is pay lower tax rates than their secretaries, because their income comes not from wages but from dividends and capital gains — the fruit of investment.
Statists would like nothing more than to tax the fruits of investment as if it were merely wage labor, as well as to strip entrepreneurs of the wealth they have gained by taking risks and working hard.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Taxes Are 1 Plague That Won’t Pass Over Your Home
22nd April 2022
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You can’t just turn a seven-year-old child loose in a comic-book store to look at the superhero comic books. Just like I couldn’t take him to the last big Avengers movie, to see which of his favorite heroes might have gotten un-murdered, after they got murdered in the big Avengers movie before that, which I also couldn’t take him to. My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers movie, and he really wanted not to see it; that is, he wished it were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was, instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him—a movie actively hostile to people like him.
I loved superheroes when I was his age. Now I’ve gone back to reading and watching superhero material to keep him company. The only problem is that the superhero industry hates children. It’s the most childish thing about the genre—not the musclebound people in tights, but the insistence that the musclebound people in tights should be grim and mature.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Superhero Industry Hates Children
22nd April 2022
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My generation we grew up being told that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me’. Western culture of course changes with each generation: now free speech is considered violence by some. There’s a whole thing happening at Twitter in particular about it. Expect it to get louder now actual money might be on the table. And do we get free speech back, or another billionaire plaything that dies in darkness, like CNN+ just did after three weeks and $100m down the drain?
Yet sometimes there obviously *is* a link between words and broken bones. Mike Tyson just repeatedly punched a man on a plane… because he repeatedly insulted a former boxing world heavyweight champion. The Russians say, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” And, boy, are there some stupid games –and words– out there. And some stupid plans and game-plans.
Relatedly, Tyson also once opined, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” On Wednesday, markets tried to plan for “peak inflation”; on Thursday, they were punched in the face, US stocks slumping (S&P -1.5%) and bond yields soaring (US 2s +10bp at the close, 10s +8bp, and 30s +6bp).
I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I would disagree with Mike Tyson – to his face.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
22nd April 2022
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The impending change in status comes after senior Disney representatives repeatedly criticized the GOP in Florida—currently the ruling party in the state—for legislation that had nothing to do with Disney’s ability to do business in the state. Perhaps not surprisingly, this caused numerous GOP officials to question why Disney was receiving special privileges denied even to Disney’s direct competitors. In the past, Disney would normally be shielded from dangers to its special status, as Disney has famously showered politicians in the state with gifts and campaign cash and other types of special favors that normal people would identify as bribes. Many of the same people who are now voting to repeal Disney’s special status have accepted such “gifts” in the past. But for whatever reason, the political landscape has changed enough in recent years that it appears to many policymakers that it is now more politically rewarding to punish Disney rather than cater to its whims. The effort to strike back at Disney was likely also fueled by national politics and the fact that Disney has long been a platform for leftwing politics through its media outlets like ABC and ESPN.
This special status was granted under a Democrat administration and would to this day not be in question if Disney had simply avoided messing with the bull.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on How Florida’s Disney-Loving Corporate Welfare Helped Crush Real Market Freedom
22nd April 2022
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Trade in the amphetamine-type stimulant Captagon in the Middle East grew exponentially in 2021, to top $5 billion, posing an escalating health and security threat, a report this month from the New Lines Institute revealed.
Hizballah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, is one of the pivotal actors, along with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s family and high-ranking members of his regime. “Lebanon has served as an extension of the Syrian captagon trade, a key transit point for captagon flows, with Syrian government-connected Hizballah leaders participating in the trade’s expansion,” said the report’s authors, Caroline Rose and Alexander Söderholm.
Analysts believe drug trafficking is a key Hizballah revenue source, providing it with hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Captagon Drug Trade Booms with Hizballah’s Help
22nd April 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
22nd April 2022
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There have been cases before of thieves using a burner iPhone and Apple Pay to spend on stolen credit cards. But now a new report quotes one fraudster as describing Apple Pay as the “easiest way” to make money.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Fraudsters Target Apple Pay in Credit Card Scams
22nd April 2022
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I am not making this up.

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22nd April 2022
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A French politician who wants to prioritize housing for French residents, as opposed to Middle Eastern immigrants and refugees, is considered extreme right. But a Canadian politician who proposes to ban purchases of homes by foreigners is considered a liberal.
What’s the difference? Mainly that Canada has approved the ban while polls show that the “extreme right” candidate is likely to lose. I guess if you call yourself a liberal you can get away with a lot that leads people to demonize conservatives.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Liberal or Far Right?
22nd April 2022
Steven Hayward at Power Line.
Administration and the Biden Clown Show that go beyond inflation, energy market disruptions, foreign policy cluelessness, and other totems of the dismal 1970s.
Carter, we tend to forget today, was the Democratic establishment’s necessary and acceptable choice to outflank George Wallace, who had a real shot of winning the Democratic nomination in 1976. In 2020, it was the credible threat that Bernie Sanders might win the Democratic nomination that sent the Democratic establishment to rally behind Slow Joe Biden to stop Sanders. One thing Carter and Biden have in common is that both largely sold out to the left wing of the party, despite prior reputation as “moderates.”
But even Carter started getting a clue by the fourth year of his presidency, increasing defense spending in the face of a growing Soviet threat, installing Paul Volcker to fight inflation seriously, and beginning, however haltingly, to de-regulate domestic energy production. Biden shows no sign of progress on the easiest of learning curves.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on I Can’t Believe I Miss Jimmy Carter
22nd April 2022
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It appears that parts of Europe are about to launch a Chinese-style social credit system. The first rollout will reportedly be in Italy, but based on the following article, the planning for the Bavarian version was first: it began back in 2019.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Ecotokens for Compliant Drones
22nd April 2022
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Before starting this research, I was unaware of the presence of yellow dots on printed paper. I find it remarkable that something so common on an everyday object could be this unknown to the public. Learning and becoming a master on a subject few people even know about feels fantastic. Even the majority of law enforcers have only heard rumors that it exists. The research itself was challenging because of the monotonous coloring and reviewing of the patterns. However, the moments when I found something useful were rewarding enough to continue.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Printer Steganography
22nd April 2022
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This essay represents a “conspiracy theory” (or better, a conspiracy hypothesis) about the uses of the term “conspiracy theory” itself. I acknowledge that the term is one of the most potent epithets that can be hurled at a writer or speaker, that it is mostly used to delegitimize and dismiss its target, and that it serves not only to discredit the claim that a writer or speaker makes but also the very investigation into purported conspiracies. The phrase represents a condensed, shorthand means of labeling a claim negatively and humiliating the claimant, disqualifying the claimant and the claim a priori. Likewise, in writing of the “conspiracy” behind the use of the phrase, I am hereby opening myself up to the charge of “conspiracy theory.”
Not all actions-in-concert are the result of conscious conspiracy. People who hold the same values and believe the same lies about their opponents will pretty much always act the same way in any particular situation. This is why doing otherwise is so remarkable.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Do Conspiracies Really Exist?
22nd April 2022
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The Russia collusion hoax was exposed long ago as a fraud, but these Rasmussen survey results suggest that it was one of the most effective fake news campaigns ever.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Fake News Lives On and On and On and On
21st April 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
21st April 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
21st April 2022
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
21st April 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in War
21st April 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
21st April 2022
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Bacteria that convert methane in the air into useful products could be a vital tool for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, if we can crack how they do it. A new discovery could kickstart efforts to engineer methane-harvesting bacteria, fight greenhouse emissions, and “mine” the air for useful compounds.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Methane-Eating Bacteria Discovery Could Help Capture Gas From the Air
21st April 2022
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Modern science was supposed to increase our understanding of the world. Instead, we seem to know less. Science has always introduced doubt regarding long-held verities. But now the authority of science, rather than the scientific method, is used to create confusion about things that had once been considered obvious and indisputable.
There have always, for instance, been rare individuals who did not precisely fit into the categories of either man or woman, but never before in human history did these exceptions lead to biological males competing in, and dominating, female athletic tournaments. There is more than compassion or tolerance at work here. America’s political and intellectual elites claim not to know what distinguishes male from female. Just a few weeks ago, the newest justice to the United States Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, stated flatly that she could not define what a woman is. This newly discovered ignorance is, supposedly, derived from superior scientific insight. Our technology advances, but our wisdom diminishes.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on What Trump and Covid Revealed
21st April 2022
Joel Kotkin & Wendell Cox.
Land ownership has shaped civilizations from their beginnings, with a constant interplay between great powers—the aristocracy, the state, the Church, the emperor—and those below them. History has oscillated between periods of greater dispersion of ownership, and those that favored greater concentration.
Today, we live in an era of ever-greater consolidation, not from knights in armor, or Communist cadres, but from the forces of big capital and an ever-more intrusive regulatory state. The result has been record-high housing prices, well above the increase in incomes resulting in a systematic decline in the ability of people, particularly the young, to buy their own house as prices rise even in less expensive areas. Supply also faces great constraints, due in part to labor and supply-chain woes and the demand shock of the pandemic and remote work.
Unless reversed, young people will be forced into a lifetime of rental serfdom.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Serfing the Future?
21st April 2022
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When Spotify in 2019 signed a roughly $25 million deal with Barack and Michelle Obama to produce podcasts, the media hailed the move as a triumph in the audio streaming service’s quest to become “the world’s No. 1 audio platform.” Now, three years later, Spotify wants nothing to do with the former first couple.
As the Obamas’ contract with Spotify comes to an end and the couple solicits bids for a new deal, Spotify is not looking to renew the partnership, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The company reportedly felt it got the raw end of the big money deal, as the Obamas were less than motivated to appear in person on the platform’s podcasts.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on How the Obamas Took Spotify for a Ride
21st April 2022
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When the Soviet communists’ hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered at the Kremlin for the last time on Dec. 25, 1991, some said that the last refuge of Marxism was in the academic institutions of the West.
They were right. That totalitarian ideology has infected American colleges and universities and other institutions that are purveying cancel culture, wokeism, censorship, and gender dogma that rejects reality.
But students, parents, and others are fighting back. And two colleges—Oberlin College and Shawnee State University—recently got exactly what they deserve: large legal judgments against them for defamatory and discriminatory misbehavior.
A third, Clemson University, narrowly escaped getting hit with a similar type of judgment after it agreed to reverse its false finding that a male student had committed a sexual assault and paid him to go away.
That student won a defamation lawsuit against a female student, her boyfriend, and her father for making bogus charges and conspired to hide what really happened.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on 3 Colleges Get Their Just Desserts