A Feminist Lament

If you reject reality you will never run out of things to complain about. So here we have another feminist lament, even though author Sarah Bernstein never mentions feminism or the ideological brainwashing it has imposed on women. 

Bernstein thrills to the progress that women have made, in the worlds of work and politics, and she remarks that, alas, the more women succeed the less men want to mate with them. One might note that successful women are not very likely to be drawn to men who are less successful than they are.

To which one is tempted to reply: you broke it, you own it.  Feminists wanted women to throw off the shackles of housewifery and to find happiness in their careers. In principle, these women, no longer wanting to be anyone’s ward, no longer needing to be protected or provided for, would naturally be more attractive to men. 

It turns out that this is nothing more than a feminist fairy tale. Feminists use it to seduce the minds of young women, to set them off on a fool’s errand, wherein they end up with big careers and miserable dating lives. 

Bernstein suggests that the solution lies in this: men will dispense with their roles as breadwinners, to become equal partners, or some such. After all, to her mind, it’s all just a cultural norm.

Dare we mention that Bernstein has no sense of reality. She does not make reference to any of the work that has been done on the biological basis for cultural norms. She would be enlightened if she read Donald Symons’ masterful book, The Evolution of Human Sexuality. 

To her rather limited mind, it’s all about cultural norms. Bernstein does not say where these norms came from and why they have persisted. She prefers to think that women’s investment in feminist ideology will eventually pay off in happy egalitarian marriages. Didn’t Friedrich Engels promise it. That reality is militating against her personal ideology… never crosses her mind. 

Besides, if the breadwinner role, the role of protecting and providing for women and children, is built into the genome, then men will be confused about what their role in the new relationship dynamic is supposed to be. 

That is, they will not see themselves as having defined roles in relation to women and will be less likely to want to make a commitment to these new women, the ones who are driven by ideology.

One hates to be too obvious about it, but many women want to have children. They want to take time to care for their children. They are not necessarily willing to give up time with children because they are married to men who refuse to provide for them.

Then again, if the meaning of womanhood lies in the right to abortion, no man will ever have to face the indignity of providing for his family. The net result of the feminist redo of gender roles is the practice of hooking up. Anonymous sexual encounters outside of any defined relationship-- it’s the ultimate feminist wish fulfillment.

But then, feminists complain when hookups do not lead to relationships. In truth, a woman who hooks up is telling the male mind that she does not want him to call back. She wants to use him in exchange for his using her-- to the feminist mind it feels like a fair exchange.

Feminists broke it. Now, we are faced with the daunting task of putting it back together again,

Rather than mewling over male resentment, why not consider what James Carville once opined, that the Democratic party was filled with “preachy females.”

As many people have noticed, the women who have been advantaged by identity politics, who have been promoted and advanced beyond their abilities, tend to talk down to men, to condescend to them, to treat them like trash. They are insecure and suspect that they were hired to fulfill quotas.

And, to be extra clear, many women who have succeeded in the world outside of the home have earned their success. And yet, the price of identity politics is that one assumes that they were hired and promoted in order to fulfill quotas. The most obvious example being Kamala Harris. 

Why would men vote for a reformed courtesan who had been nominated to fulfill a quota. It is one thing to resent women’s success. It is quite another to believe that that success was not earned, but was imposed at the expense of some man. Dare we mention that young Sarah Bernstein never considers this possibility.

Feminists fail to notice that romance and dating are a woman’s domain, a domain where women have traditionally been in charge. If there is something wrong with the way people mate and date, and you are looking to assign blame, you should follow the old French expression: Cherchez la femme.

One understands that modern courtship is a variation on a medieval custom of courtly love. When medieval lords rode off on their crusades to the holy land, they left their wives in charge of their properties. Said wives created a new ritualized form of seduction, directed at the young men who remained. That would be cooks and gardeners and stable hands. 

They concocted a ritual seduction, one that presumably never led to consummation. More importantly, courtly love was directed by a powerful woman. In the love poems young men wrote for them, they called them Lord. 

Doesn’t this sound familiar. Older more powerful woman and younger less powerful man. Evidently, the game could only continue while the lords of the manor were off fighting the crusades. Once they came home, the party was over.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.

To Govern or Not to Govern

 Among the debilitating effects of identity politics is this: too many of us cheer when a person of a certain ethnicity or skin color is given a job. Too few of us care about how well the person in question does the job.

And, worse yet, when that person shows a manifest inability to do the job, our media mavens and politicians trot out the usual response. They say that it’s all about the messaging. So-and-so was doing great, only no one knew it, because the media failed to report it. 

This is strange indeed. After all, the media promoted nothing but positive stories about Kamala Harris and nothing but negative stories about Donald Trump. And the American public responded by tuning out the media.

Truth be told, the Trump campaign, long on showmanship and short on decorum, seems to have worked. Trump dominated the media because he used the media to his advantage. He sought exposure and he overcame a funding disadvantage by going on every manner of television show, radio show and podcast. He was everywhere.

The American people did not especially like the show. They did not especially like Trump. And yet, they voted for him, because they believed that he could do the job. They understood that the mealy mouthed subliterate Kamala could not. And would never be able to do it.

It should not even need to be said, but being the first of anything does not compensate for the inability to govern. And the bottom line, when it comes to electing politicians, is governance.

And no one can govern unless he suppresses his personality and lets his actions speak for him. It is a far better approach than using soaring rhetoric to overcompensate for failure.

And it is certainly better than to complain constantly about bad press coverage.

As it now appears, the less people see of Donald Trump the more they like him. Fewer rallies; higher approval ratings. Go figure.

Now, Susan Quinn makes the salient point. Trump is currently engaged in governing. This is not the same as putting on a show.

It means that he is taking actions and unfolding a plan. In many cases his actions feel like moves in a game. Leaders in Canada and Mexico are trying to get used to the new regime.

The simple fact is, now someone is in charge. Whereas Trump is willing to use tariffs as an instrument of policy, the Biden administration has refused to upset our relationships with Mexico and Canada. Joe said so himself-- and his mealy-mouthed rejection of tariffs, because they might hurt someone’s feelings, shows precisely what was wrong with his administration.

Sane and sensible people around the world understood full well that Joe was not governing, but was reacting. 

Trump’s moves have shown him to be a negotiator. He is trying to leverage his advantages to produce a successful, negotiated outcome. He will try to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and will try to do the same in the Middle East.

Trump is seeking a middle ground. Biden was veering between being gun-shy and being trigger-happy. He showed manifest cowardice in Afghanistan and then provoked armed conflicts that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Because then no one could call him weak.

Rather than negotiate an end to the Middle East conflict, Biden kept whining about a cease fire. 

Many of us imagine that leadership involves giving orders and pushing people around. In truth, leadership requires an ability to negotiate, among the different views of different team members. If everyone is not on board, they will not do their best to implement policy.

The other side of governing is staff loyalty. Yes, one recognizes that the talking heads on television throw out the concept of loyalty as though it is a flaw. 

They do not believe that those who are appointed to executive office should be loyal to the president. They keep saying that appointees should be loyal to the country, as though there is a contradiction between the two loyalties. One understands that prior presidents had loyal cabinet secretaries and no one said a disparaging word about it.

In truth, loyalty is a good thing. It is a basic virtue. 

Obviously, the Trump of 2016 was an amateur. He had never been in government. He chose advisors and staff people who had been recommended by others. Their loyalty was not to him or to his agenda-- the agenda that the American people had voted for.

In his first administration too many of Trump’s appointees seemed to be less concerned with advancing the president’s agenda and more concerned with saving the world from Trump. That is, they were looking for good press.

Whatever their goal, the notion that a White House chief of staff would betray a confidence ought to be appalling. And yet, when John Kelly announced something that President Trump had supposedly confided in him, television’s talking heads immediately sprung to his defense, explaining that military officers do not lie.

And yet, honorable officers do not betray confidences either. Strangely, no one seemed to care about this aspect of the affair.      

So, more loyalty, a more coherent administration. It’s called governing.         

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.             

Sundaze Fundrays

As has become habitual, I pause on Sunday. It’s that time of the week, a time for reflection and contemplation. It also allows my readers to catch up on posts that they might have missed during the week.

I would like to think that among the topics of deep reflection is this one. Considering the time and effort it takes to write these posts, one would like to think that they are worthy of compensation.

Thus, in place of a tithe, I make a humble request for donations. 

I have been posting on this blog for nearly sixteen years now. It is not self-evident. I could not have done it without the financial support of you, my readers.

If you would like to show appreciation and to encourage me to continue, a good way would be by making a financial contribution. Gratitude is a virtue. 

I try to make my writing sound effortless, but, as the old saying goes, it takes a lot of work to make anything seem effortless. 

The internet is awash in blogs. I am grateful to those who have chosen to spend a small part of their days reading mine. I have tried to be worthy of their confidence, by presenting reflections and analysis that are unlikely to be found elsewhere. 

If you would like to donate please make use of the Paypal button on this page. If you prefer, you can mail a check to 310 East 46th St. 24H. New York, NY 10017.

I’m counting on you. 

If you have already donated, please pass the word along to your friends, family, associates and colleagues.

Thank  you in advance.

Saturday Miscellany

First, an appetizer, by way of Glenn Greenwald. He had this to say about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. One remarks that certain Democrats consider her to be a viable presidential candidate for 2028:

Whenever AOC talks about foreign policy, she sounds like a 7th grader having to stand in front of the class while nervously summarizing an assigned article that she only read 20% of. A few phrases she recalls pop into her head and she recites them but with no cogency.

Second, another appetizer, this time from the also inimitable Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, regarding the Hollywood Trump haters:

Here’s what I think. I think these people are goofy. They have the right to their opinion, but they’re just goofy. They hate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. 

They think our kids ought to be able to change genders at recess. They carry around Ziploc bags of kale to give themselves energy. To me—to each his own. To me, kale tastes like I’d rather be fat. 

Now, these people are entitled to their opinion, but they have an unwarranted sense of moral and intellectual superiority. “They think they’re smarter and more virtuous than the American people. And they think we’re not real people. But we were, and we are real people. 

Third, from Don Surber, a note about the death of DEI and of wokeness. We have been following the story in these columns, so Surber’s remarks are a nice topping:

The second-biggest political story of the year was the death of woke in corporations. The lemmings in boardrooms across the nation embraced the racism, sexism and heterophobia of the left, falsely believing that straight white people will be dragged away by an army of RuPauls.

Democrats marketed their campaign well by creating a deity called DEI. Diversity is our strength, they said. Equity is better than equality, they said. Inclusion will make up for past discrimination, they said.

This was brainwashing, pure and simple. Coca Cola held a training seminar that instructed people to “try to be less white.”

Fourth, as soon as the Trump election victory was announced, Democrats across the nation had a hissy fit-- how dare he deport so many fine, abiding non-citizen criminals.

And besides, they intoned, it would cost too much. As though the question of cost ever crossed the mind of a Democrat.

Now, the Washington Examiner explains that the cost of illegal migrant crime largely surpasses the cost of mass deportation.

The cost of crime from 662,000 criminal illegal migrants sought for deportation has been pegged at three times the much-hyped price of President-elect Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” plan.

In an analysis from the Crime Prevention Research Center, the costs of crime from the top targets of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations was set at $166.5 billion. That number is based on the cost to victims, a price list developed by the National Institute of Justice.

Crime Prevention Research Center President John R. Lott Jr., who did the analysis for Real Clear Investigations, said the cost was based on just one of the crimes “each of the 662,566 ‘non-detained’ noncitizen offenders on ICE’s list” has been previously accused of.

“Murders account for almost $153.8 billion of the $166.5 billion in estimated criminal victimization costs. Another $6 billion involves sexual assaults/offenses, and an additional $5.2 billion comes from sexual assaults and sexual offenses,” he wrote.

Fifth, speaking of post-election fallout, nowhere has the impact been more damaging than in the world of leftist television networks, as in MSNBC and CNN. It began in the aftermath of the election. It is continuing.

Newsmax has the story:

MSNBC’s primetime audience has dropped off by 53% since the week before the presidential election, while CNN’s has plummeted by 47%, Fortune reports.

MSNBC had an average of 632,000 primetime viewers in the week ending Nov. 24, compared to 1.34 million in the week ending Nov. 3 ahead of the election. CNN’s audience plunged from 754,000 to 398,000 in that period.

You can’t say they did not earn it.

Sixth, if  you would like to keep a step ahead of the news cycle, as soon as Democrat officials tire of defending criminal migrants, the next phase will be the debate over whether or not Trump should pardon the imprisoned January 6th demonstrators.

Newsmax has the story:

Forty percent of registered voters say they think President-elect Donald Trump will "very likely" pardon Jan. 6 protesters when he takes office in January, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The survey, conducted by Morning Consult for Politico on Nov. 20-22 among 4,012 registered voters, found that:

• 32% of registered voters said those who were charged and convicted of crimes related to the attacks on the U.S. Capitol should receive pardons/clemency on their sentences compared with 57% who said no.

• 69% said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that Trump will pardon Jan. 6 rioters, and 15% said it was either somewhat unlikely or very unlikely.

• 25% said they were either "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" that another event like Jan. 6 will happen again after the 2024 presidential election, while 55% said they were either "not too concerned" or "not at all concerned."

Seventh, taking a cue from dysfunctional Canada, the British parliament has voted for euthanasia. If you can’t heal them; kill them.

To which Daniel Greenfield responded:

The UK's NHS was practicing euthanasia for a long time.

Not only was killing the 'unfit' legal in the UK, but parents like those of Alfie Evans, were banned from trying to take them out of the UK to save their lives.

Euthanasia is a vital part of socialized medicine.

Eighth, as a final flash, President Joe Biden was walking around Nantucket holding a copy of a book by old Obama buddy, Rashid Khalidi. The thrust of the book: Israel does not have a right to exist.

From the New York Post:

Retiring President Biden hit the shops on Black Friday and surprised onlookers by picking up a copy of a book describing the establishment of Israel as “colonialism” that’s been met with Palestinian “resistance” — an acquisition its author bemoaned was “4 years too late.”

Biden, 82, left Nantucket Bookworks holding in full view of the press a copy of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017” by Columbia University professor emeritus Rashid Khalidi.

The book argues that “the modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will.”

So, people in Israel will be finding that their understanding of the mind of the Biden administration was correct. Perhaps Joe had not had his mind infested by this form of anti-Semitism, but other members of his administration cannot plead ignorance.

Considering the extent of the administration foreign policy failure, it is good to have an indication of why it went so wrong.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.

Policing Speech

Occasionally we take a look at life across the pond. The pond in question is the Atlantic Ocean, but cool people call it the pond. Go figure.

As often happens, our guide is the highly estimable Julie Burchill. At the least, her commentaries make you happy that you do not live in Great Britain. The reason, that nation is suffering labour pains, for having elected too many Labour Party members of Parliament. The new British government has chosen to get seriously into the business of policing speech.

It begins in the playground. British police have started to police children in the playground, for the horrific crime of name-calling. No kidding. 

… children as young as nine are being cautioned by the police for calling each other names in the playground.

Burchill thinks this is a very bad idea. She thinks that it is better to teach children how to deal with insults than to try to ban all insults. After all, you are never going to ban all insults. 

In order to be very clear, we are dealing here with schoolyard taunts. The rules that she offers do not, obviously, pertain to civil torts, like slander, libel and defamation.

The correct way to counter name-calling is either to hurl them back or ignore them. 

She continues:

I believe that people should be allowed to say anything they like about anyone, except for baseless accusations of criminal acts or threatening criminal acts against them. Our aim should not be ridding the internet of trolls – it can never be accomplished, and the police have far more important things to do – but to make young people utterly immune to name calling. Instead, we seem to place the emphasis on making bullies stop bullying rather than encouraging the bullied to toughen up.

As for a concrete example, Burchill confides in one of the insults that are routinely hurled at her. The subject is the fact that one of her sons committed suicide.

Given that she has spoken ill of Meghan Markle, one of the duchess’s fans threw this at her:

One of them asked me why my son committed suicide and I replied instantly, ‘Because he was mentally ill – like you’. 

The effort to censor all disparaging speech renders children weak. They never learn how to stand up for themselves, to defend themselves. They remain coddled:

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’ is still a good credo to live by. Making children feel like victims is the best way to ensure that they never succeed but become ever more weakened. By taking and dealing out verbal abuse, we get to know what the boundaries are.

Burchill wants children to toughen up, and she remarks that in Keir Starmer’s Britain, language has been criminalized and offensive speech has often led to imprisonment. 

But this criminalisation of language is already being felt in other arenas, from the people jailed for posting on social media to the journalist Allison Pearson being accused of a hate crime over a Tweet. It starts in the playground – but it ends as a provision in the Employment Rights Bill that seeks to make employers liable for staff being offended by customers or members of the public. 

This is all about infantilizing people, not treating them like adults. It also involves a totalitarian wish to produce groupthink.

Their reaction is not that of an adult talking to another adult who holds different views from them, but of parents remonstrating a rude child who refuses to obey. Starmer’s resemblance to an exasperated supply teacher was often noted before he came to power; now he has the top job, he’s headmaster, and he can jolly well make us pipe down. So, in the interests of freedom – and of fun – let’s call the head all the nasty names we want: Sir Shifty, Captain Hindsight, Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest – and, especially, Two-Tier Keir.

Of late, the Labour leader has been flirting with a ban on blasphemous speech-- but only when directed against one specific religion.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.

A Thanksgiving Message

Here’s one more thing to feel thankful for. You are not doing couples therapy. 

You would think they would have gotten over it by now. To the best of my knowledge, a consensus is forming around the notion that couples therapy is largely ineffective. It is a waste of your time and energy.

Nevertheless, Showtime has a series led by psychoanalyst and couples therapist Orna Guralnik, so perhaps some people have not gotten the message.

In the world of getting over things, most people by now have gotten over their childhood infatuation with the theories of one Melanie Klein. She belonged to the first generation of psychoanalytic thinkers.

Most people have gotten over Klein, except in South America. Before they latched on to the theories of Jacques Lacan, Argentinians, for example, were seriously infatuated with Klein’s musings about good and bad breasts, not to mention her notion that human development replays infantile attachments.

Now, Guralnik is trying to explain, in an especially lame fashion, that we need to understand America’s current divisions in Kleinian terms. She wrote it for the New York Times, which should also know better. 

As for whether or not that will cure what ails us, the example of Argentina is shining forth. For years that country seems to have led the world in psychoanalysis, whether Kleinian or Lacanian. The result, a largely dysfunctional natioin.

At least, until the arrival of the new Argentinian president, Javier Milei. You will have noticed that President Milei has turned his country around and has been producing unheard of levels of economic growth. Didn’t JP Morgan bank predict that the nation’s economy would grow at 8.5% next year? 

Milei is more libertarian than not, and one suspects that his role model is the Chilean revolution, led by followers of the Chicago School of Economics, i.e. Milton Friedman and Co. 

With a few strokes of his pen Milei put an end to the vast Nanny State that was mothering the people of his country. Good-bye Melanie Klein. Good-bye infantilizing the people. Welcome, prosperity.

As for Guralnik’s lame efforts to show how people who have differing political opinions can get along, you will not be surprised to learn that after all of the mewling over Melanie Klein she arrives at the conclusion: empathy.

That’s right. The buzzword that defines today’s therapy culture is trotted out to solve all problems. Everyone but Guralnik knows that this is girl talk, that women are far more likely to deploy empathy than are men. When you tell men to feel empathy they mostly do not know what you are talking about.

As for the question of how two members of a couple can learn to get along, to the point where a difference of opinion does not threaten their connection, the answer lies in a simple fact. If they are both members of the same team; if they have defined relationships within the team; then different opinions are not threatening to group cohesion.

Take a simple example. Today is Thanksgiving, where most people enact a social bonding ritual. You belong to a family, and being a member of a family comports with certain duties. As in, showing up for Thanksgiving dinner. 

If you think that you should not show up because your Aunt Sadie voted for the wrong candidate in the last election, you are faithless. You are saying that your role as a family member is less relevant than your deeply held ideological convictions. At that point, you deserve whatever you get-- as in, dinner with Joy Reid.

Therapy tends to think that we are defined by our childhood. That means you are just a big baby. If you define yourself as a unique autonomous individual, well then, you do not need to get along with other people. In fact, other people, not to mention the duties that define membership in a family, threaten your autonomy. 

You will end up being an ideologically driven fanatic. And we note, with regret, that the same rule applies to patriotism. If you want to know why the nation’s people are divided against themselves, the reason lies in the absence of patriotic loyalty, the refusal to see oneself as a member of a community and a nation. 

When you cannot bond over a ritual you will seek to produce an ersatz connection by fostering groupthink, by judging people by whether or not they agree with your jejune political opinions. It is a losing game, a game played by losers. Better to be a good member of your family and a patriotic citizen of your nation. At that point you will be able to accept differences of opinion without imagining that they threaten your autonomy.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.

Wednesday Potpourri

First, you recall the Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Now, we have a postmodern Nero, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, bastard child of one Fiden Castro, who was attending a Taylor Swift concert while Montreal burned.

Fortunately, there is more to Canadian politics than the hapless Trudeau. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre explained how the Trudeau policies had led to an outbreak of anti-Semitic violence. It reads like an indictment.

He addresses Trudeau:

You act surprised. We are reaping what you sowed. This is what happens when a Prime Minister spends 9 years pushing toxic woke identity politics, dividing and subdividing people by race, gender, vaccine status, religion, region, age, wealth, etc. 

On top of driving people apart, you systematically break what used to bring us together, saying Canada is a “post-national state” with “no core identity.” 

You erased our veterans and military, the Famous Five and even Terry Fox from our passport to replace them with meaningless squirrels, snowflakes and a drawing of yourself swimming as a boy. 

You opened the borders to terrorists and lawbreakers and called anyone who questioned it racist. 

You send out your MPs to say one thing in a mosque and the opposite in a synagogue, one thing in a mandir and the opposite in a gurdwara. 

You have made Canada a playground for foreign interference. You allowed Iran’s IRGC terrorists to legally operate here for four years after they murdered 55 of our citizens in a major unprovoked attack. 

You passed laws that release rampant offenders from prison within hours of their 80th arrest. 

And what is the result? Assassinations on Canadian soil, firebombings of synagogues, extremist violence against mandirs and gurdwaras, over 100 churches burned or vandalized (with barely any condemnation from you), all for a total 251% more hate crime.

And, while you were dancing, Montreal was burning. We won’t let you divide us anymore. Call an election now. We will fire you and reclaim our citizenship, our values, our lives, our freedom and, most of all, our country.

Second, meanwhile on the home front, Walmart is ditching its DEI programs. The Daily Mail reports:

In a jaw-dropping reversal Walmart is rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies - joining a growing list of major corporations that have done the same after coming under attack by conservative activists. 

Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, joining a growing list of major corporations that have done the same after coming under attack by conservative activists.

The move, which marks a seismic shift in corporate strategy, will result in sweeping changes and include abandoning a $100 million racial equity center set up in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd, to pulling out of a prominent LGBTQ+ gay rights index. 

When it comes to race or gender, Walmart won't be giving priority treatment to suppliers that are 51 percent-owned by women, minorities, veterans or members of the LGBTQ community.

Third, studies on anti-racism training have concluded that such training produces more racism than it removes. Naturally, certain media outlets have been trying to suppress the studies.

Newsmax reports:

Some diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training methods may cause psychological harm, according to a new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and Rutgers University.

The study's findings, released Monday, show significant increases in hostility and punitive attitudes among participants exposed to DEI pedagogy covering subjects including race, religion, and caste.

The NCRI study focused on diversity training interventions that emphasize awareness of and opposition to "systemic oppression," a trend fueled by the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and popularized by texts such as Ibram X. Kendi's, "How to Be an Antiracist."

"Across all groupings, instead of reducing bias, they engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice," researchers said in a release explaining the study's findings.

"These results highlight the complex and often counterproductive impacts of pedagogical elements and themes prevalent in mainstream DEI training."

The researchers said anti-Islamophobia training inspired by Institute for Social Policy and Understanding materials may cause individuals to assume unfair treatment of Muslim people, even when no evidence of bias or unfairness is present.

"This effect highlights a broader issue: DEI narratives that focus heavily on victimization and systemic oppression can foster unwarranted distrust and suspicions of institutions and alter subjective assessments of events," researchers said.

"In the effort to improve sensitivity to genuine injustices against people from designated identities, such trainings may instead create a hostile attribution bias. This could, in turn, undermine trust in institutions, even in the absence of bias or unfair treatment (as in our scenarios). These findings are particularly concerning given that ISPU's educational efforts include training Federal Agents on Islamophobia sensitivity."

Fourth, meanwhile, over in Berlin, a surplus of migrant children in public schools is damaging said public schools. The more migrant children the less all children will learn.

Thomas Brooks at Remix News reports:

Teachers at the Friedrich Bergius School in Berlin’s Schöneberg district have issued a stark warning about escalating issues they say are exacerbated by the city’s approach to mass immigration and integration.

In a seven-page letter to the district council, the staff described an environment of increasing aggression, violence, and educational struggles that has left them overwhelmed and desperate for support.

The letter highlights a central issue: Many students entering the school lack not only proficiency in German but also basic academic skills, with some having never attended school before.

Around 80 percent of the students speak a language other than German at home, and over 70 percent of the seventh graders admitted in 2023 were unable to even read a clock.

These challenges, compounded by behavioral problems and a lack of resources, have created what teachers describe as “untenable” conditions.

The strained educational system is underscored by a dramatic rise in verbal abuse and physical threats toward teachers which educators say has now become routine, while serious incidents of bullying have further eroded the school environment.

Is it happening over here? Most assuredly it is. The question is how long people will tolerate it.

Fifth, she is making noises about continuing the fight, but Kamala Harris is finished as a force in politics. A mega-donor has explained the basic truth, via Newsmax:

Compiling a huge campaign debt disqualifies Vice President Kamala Harris from holding future public office, according to a Democrat megadonor.

Attorney John Morgan, founder of the Morgan & Morgan firm, said reports that Harris' losing presidential campaign is $20 million in debt after a lavish spending spree "disqualifies her forever."

 "If you can't run a campaign, you can't run America. The same thing is going to follow Harris for the rest of her career. She cannot be trusted with the money, and the donors are going to be, like, 'Where is this money?'"

A good question… one  that will not find a good answer.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.