An observation

So I've noticed several articles mention that Ben Stiller, when discussing his critically acclaimed comedy Tropic Thunder, says he doubts if it could be made today.  Owing to the character Robert Downy, Jr. played.  Even if at the time it was passed by and supported by various members of the African American community before production.  

This is hardly new.  In recent years it has become an almost regular topic of conversation - just what in the past couldn't be made today?  What comedians of the past wouldn't work today?  What television shows couldn't be produced today?  What cartoons of old wouldn't get off the drawing board today? 

The funny thing?  When I was young and growing up, 1970s and 1980s even into the 90s, it was just the opposite.  I remember entertainers and journalists and professors and English teachers and just folks in general often saying how the latest movie or television show couldn't have been made in the past.  Sometimes owing to technology.  But often owing to changes in morals and an emphasis on the sacredness of free speech and artistic expression; an open mindedness to differing views and beliefs and lifestyles and such.  The emergence of our truly diverse and inclusive society that post-war liberalism was building.  Not that they always liked the results, but they conceded the tidal surge of emphasis on complete openness to all views and expressions was having an effect.  

But today, it's how many things in the past - including from that age of endless tolerance and diversity and inclusion - would never be allowed today?  Often because of activism by the same ones who once cheered how we were so able to push the boundaries and produce the unproducible from days gone by.  Think real hard on that, and you begin to realize that, in the immortal words of Foghorn Leghorn, we've been flimflammed.  

And the word of the day is Stochastic Terrorism

Yep.  Stochastic Terrorism is all the rage.  Apparently it's driven by the gay night club shooting that appeared to be the result of a member of the LGBTQ community (identifying as non-binary).  I guess that's why I've heard little about the actual shooting.

But all of a sudden this term has exploded across the news and online outlets.  What does it mean?  I had no clue.  Never heard of the term.   The dictionary definition is this:

the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted:

In other words, you haven't really called for violence, but we know that's your intention. Hence whatever or whoever was responsible for the gay club shooting, it was really the fault of anyone who dares challenge the leftist sex culture.  You see, any opposition to anything done by the non-heterosexual community is really terrorism, of the Stochastic nature.  That is, you might say you merely question something about the LGBTQ revolution, but you're really calling on terrorists to murder  gay people. 

The same goes for BLM, drag queen shows for kids, people opposing Democrats, not supporting gun control as the solution to our mass killings, or anything on the Left.  To question a leftwing dogma is now Stochastic Terrorism. In just a few days I've seen it applied to opposing trans and gay groomers of children, a Catholic bishop criticizing Hillary Clinton, and inciting anti-Asian hate crimes by asking about Covid's origins.  

In short, it's the next step to the abolition of freedom.  We must do anything to destroy terrorist threats to our country.  Any attempt to question a leftist doctrine or agenda is a form of terrorist threat.  Therefore, well, you know the drill.  

When the Three Joes became the patron saints of America's higher education

That is, Joe McCarthy, Joe Goebbels, and Joe Stalin.  In this case, it's the University of Washington going after a celebrated researcher with a long career working on a cure for, of all things, HIVwhile working to aid Africans.  Her crime?  She's white.  That's what the crime actually is.  The excuse?  She - I can hardly bring myself to write it - showed up at a Halloween party in 2009 dressed like Michael Jackson. 

If we put aside our identities as 21st Century Americans by trying to remember the past, we'll recall that Michael Jackson died that year.  As a result, many tributes emerged involving Americans of all skin colors - even including the wrong skin colors - dressing like the gloved one.  That was in response to the press doing its typical about face and going from pre-death Wacko-Jacko, to post-death Musical Genius Pioneer of the ages.  

But who can tell with the Left?  I didn't think people would be fighting to teach kindergarteners the glories of gay sex and genitals.  But here we are.  If you don't say men can get pregnant then naturally some on the Left want you fired.  So the thought that a white skin dressing like a black skin for any reason can be used to retroactively destroy an esteemed career should be as shocking as gas fumes at a gas station. And far more explosive. 

The saddest part?  I have a gut feeling she thought she was being perfectly obedient to the leftist celebration of Jackson by turning out dressed like that bold Civil Rights activists who broke the MTV race barrier.  Now?  Sorry.  You just can't be leftist enough.  And without even having total power yet, the Left let's us all know what is in store for everyone: Not only can our lives be destroyed for what we do, they can be destroyed because of who and what we are and what we may ever have done in the past.  Yet most seem to want this, so there you go. 

What strikes me about this US Government post?

Is the emphasis on discourse, especially online: 

I've underlined the sentences that leapt out at me.  False and misleading narratives?  Narratives?  I found that choice of words interesting, but I can't quite put my finger on why. 

Also undermining trust in Government institutions is somehow a fast track to being a terrorist threat.  All my life I've heard nothing but challenges to faith in our government.  But now it's a potential threat? 

I love the inclusion of conspiracy theories as terrorist threat.  I notice that's a big thing now.  Any challenge of an official narrative - Covid measures, BLM, voting legislation, or what have you - is dismissed as racist, bigoted, or similar.  If you provide some amount of data or facts, you're told it's all part of a vast conspiracy.  Naturally the conspiracy is driven by racism, bigotry, or similar. 

It almost sounds like we're being told to sit down and shut up.  Any questions or challenges to the official narrative will mark you as an enemy of Caesar. 

The NPR hit piece on Texas Representative Matt Krause

It's the usual we've seen so often.  A lawmaker is trying to sideline books that are used to build a case against the Christian Western tradition and the American democratic experiment.  Books that push radically leftwing and liberal ideologies, heavy on debauchery and decadence, narcissism and nihilism, are also in the crosshairs.  Of course he's a baddy for that.  

If he were trying to topple statues of abolitionists, Founding Fathers, or ban the latest books, movies or television shows called offensive by a growing number of people who see whites the way Germans saw Jews in the 1930s, he would be praised and adored.  That's the old liberal 'we start every game with game winning points' tactic.  If you're not with us, you're already Nazi.  If you're with us, there is no wrong you can do. 

For my part, I'm OK with not trying to limit books in schools, within reason.  A book that actually said Hitler was a good guy would have no place in my library, just like a book showing adolescents the glories of gay sex, group sex, or any sex for that matter.  But as for books that advocate CRT, global warming, or other leftwing agendas?  Bring them on.  Just make sure they allow other sides to be given fair say - which is all post-war liberals ever said they wanted in the first place. 

We must invoke the glorious censorship for tolerance and diversity

So a Michigan University professor has been canned for showing 1965's Othello, starring Lawrence Olivier.  

The retaliation was swift and merciless, as befits the modern Leftist State in which we live.  Instead of rejoicing in the censorship of such offensive pieces of art or literature, he dared show the film in which Olivier uses makeup to portray an individual of non-Caucasian ethnicity.  Apparently the prof had never watched it before, possibly thinking since it stared the greatest actor of the 20th Century known for his celebrated work with Shakespeare, it was worth seeing.

Immediately following the showing, he groveled apologized for having shown such an outdated and offensive piece of art.  But his groveling fell on deaf ears, as those who fail to conform 100% to the Left 100% of the time often discover.  Our universities increasingly seem like leftwing tent revivals more than institutions of learning and education.  And that's almost an insult to tent revivals.  

Thus is the world in which we live.  It's not cancel culture.  It's not wokeness.  It's leftist fundamentalism with all the intolerance and self-righteous judgmentalism associated with the worst stereotypes of fundamentalism imaginable.  And in keeping with the stereotypes of fundamentalism, it can also include condemnation based on a host of intolerable factors, including ethnicity or religion. 

Thus, if you convince your society that all Jews are wretched and evil and the cause of the Fatherland's problems, it becomes nothing at all to declare anything done by Jews to be wretched and evil and all of your nation's problems a result of those rascally Jews.  Just scratch out Jew and replace with White and you've got modern Leftwing America in a nutshell.  If it's White, it's evil, and there is no tolerance for the existence of evil in the era of the new Leftist State. 

Anything done by Caucasians in any way considered racist or offensive is now subject to immediate censorship and eradication.  All such art, literature, music and film must be banned and eliminated.  Anyone caught even thinking of showing such unacceptable fare will immediately be punished to the fullest extent of possible retaliation. 

Again, we are not longer a free country.  We haven't been for some time, at least free as defined by post-war liberalism.  That ship has sailed.  We are now a secular pagan society able to change standards on a dime and retroactively eradicate dissenting thought accordingly.   And woe be to those deemed the unacceptable in the  last swivel by the powers that be.  I hope we enjoy the ride.  

Then they came for the board games

A family favorite - purchased in the nick of time

So this is The Atlantic.  Not some fan boy site or forum where a bunch of fan boys and brand boys duke it out, making mountains out of molehills and going into hysterics over the latest change in elf fashion.  This is The Atlantic. 

And what is the gist?  The gist is the problem with board games that portray European Colonialism.  That's something I've seen on hobby forums now for the last couple of years.  Some have responded to calls that any game portraying the West's colonial past must be censored and eradicated. Other have gone farther, saying all games that portray anything West/America should be eliminated because, well, of course.  After all, if you're in Germany in the 30s, you say the same about Jewish anything.  Youngsters today are being taught to think 'Jew in Germany' whenever they see anything European/American. 

Now, that's just hobby forums where the weird can sometimes overshadow the interesting.  And in our day of politics-as-god, where everything down to Stamp Collecting.com must inject fealty to The Party into the mix, you can expect this sort of thing to spiral into lunacy.

But now we have The Atlantic.  Take it for what it's worth, it's still regarded as a respected - and quotable - source for analyzing the issues of our time.  Which I've noted is sort of what the press has figured out.  A dozen years ago, many thought the Internet and Social Media were the doom of journalism.  Somehow, some way, journalists learned to survive by weaponizing the same, and now have learned they can advance radical agendas in ways that liberal journalists decades ago only dreamed of. 

The gist of this particular story, however, is one of several prongs of the attack.  I touched on another prong of attack regarding the Cleveland Indians.  This whole 'if it was named anything by a European or Euro-American, you can be it's racist' mantra.  The point is to engrain in our minds a Pavlovian response to any term or concept from the Western Tradition.  It starts with Gypsy Moths or baseball names or pancake mix clearly being offensive and needing to be eliminated, and ends with other words and phrases - like democracy, liberty, life, rights, religious freedom, and on and on. 

The Atlantic piece is another of the Triple Joe* inspiration for the Modern Left.  In this case, the eradication of the historical record.  We either rewrite the history, or we eradicate the history.  There is no learning from it.  Presentism and all its accompanying contempt, judgment, condemnation, censorship and iconoclasm yes.  But learn?  The last thing the Left wants is for people to learn. They need drugs, sex and smartphones.  Learning will be done by the beautiful people at the best Hollywood and Manhattan parties. 

The shocking thing isn't that this is happening.  It's that it's happening so in all its flagrant glory, and yet plowing forward almost unopposed.  If we ever pondered how the terrible evils of history were allowed to happen, we need only watch the news or look out our windows and watch how we're letting it all happen again today.  As my sons have said many times, we're the generation that finally proves an education isn't enough. 

*That is, Joe McCarthy, Joe Goebbels, and Joe Stalin. 

So there you go

My old Patheos editor Sam puts out the final word on this leftist fundamentalism and censorship movement. 

Yep.  The forgiving side of me would like to think he's joking; that he's being like Colbert used to be, and trying to do a mock-up of a caricature of someone who is fighting to defend the banning of wrong-think.  That's the forgiving side of me.  After all, I'd hate to think a professor in higher education would write something like this for any reason other than humor. 

Still, the side that has seen him unload on Bishop Barron over the bishop's concern about this wave of  Leftwing 451, I'm inclined to think that it's at least partially anger on his part, and he at least means some of it. 

In any event, I have it on the best of authority that many who are bothered by the Left's donning of their merry McCarthy do, in fact, read and study books.  In fact, it's the reading of books that makes them a bit squeamish about the whole leftwing support for banning offensive culture since I know they'll never do it to me.  

I should add that I'm sure there are some who rely on common sense rather than book learning to understand it's ignorant to assume censorship will only apply to those bad people over there.  Likewise, I'm absolutely sure that if many who support this new wave of censorship  haven't avoided books, they nonetheless have read and studied all the wrong books. 

A rare picture of censor-culture Catholics being censored

 Here:

Yep, that accurately portrays the sudden outrage of having applied to them the very practices they want applied to others; 

Hilarious.  Mark, who has rejoiced time and again when Tech Companies censor conservatives, now gets his underwear in a knot because it happened to one in his circle. Note the appeal to race identity where there is no reason to think race has anything to do with it. There is no human race, there is only the skin color.  Thus says the Left.  Apparently some New Prolife Catholics approve this message. 

Meanwhile Sam, who has been leading a minor crusade against Bishop Baron since the good Bishop called out "wokeness", is equally miffed. .Note Sam's perfect acceptance of 'wokeness', which is essentially liberals punishing and censoring wrong think and silencing dissent ... until it happens to him.  Then he's - wait for it - pissed now!

Bwa ha ha ha!  You don't get better examples of hypocrisy than that, courtesy of two professional representatives of Catholic teaching in modern apologetics.  Of course on a technical level, there's nothing wrong with societies having standards and expecting people to abide by those standards, and even stepping in when people get out of line.  Freedom, after all, does have it's limits.

The problem is, those who embrace the Left are confronted with being the ones who for decades insisted that anyone banning anything, or punishing any artistic expression, or mandating conformity to any speech, were the fascist Nazis.  Trying to square liberalism's great post-war mantra of 'always tolerate freedom of expression' with the current Left invoking a self-righteous intolerance that would shame McCarthy, is one of the big challenges for progressives today. 

This is why I insist we shouldn't say woke.  Call it what it is, little leftwing advocates being the intolerant fundamentalists they so often condemn.  Just without the self-awareness. 

TCM to produce new series on essential movies

That is, movies that you need to purchase soon before they are banned forever.  The liberals who spent my youth and adulthood warning me about fascism have become the fascists they were warning me about.  Overnight, banning art, literature, films and expressions deemed offensive has become as American as apple pie.  

As usual, the moral arrogance and self-righteous superiority of those pushing this trend isn't even questioned.  It's like Jerry Falwell without the whimsy.  And since those institutions that were supposed to protect such freedoms are now the ones working to tear them down, we have nowhere to turn to stop the storm. 

What is missing from this definition of censorship

The word "Government",  that's what.  I was unable to find one dictionary that said censorship is only when the government does it.  That, of course, is the excuse of the Left as censorship, like racism, becomes officially endorsed and codified in our country.  

Last year saw 'Equity not Equality' emerge, which was merely a way to officially resurrect racism and racial discrimination.  It says, basically, that seeking a color blind society where all are equal is racism.  The correct way to address ethnicity is to judge, condemn or exonerate based on skin color, and provide benefits or strip benefits based on skin color.  Jim Crow done right.

Now, almost overnight, we have censorship.  If literature, film, art or music offends the demographic group that matters, it must be banned.  And on a point of technicality, it isn't censorship since apparently, as of now, censorship only exists when it's the government passing laws do do so.  Otherwise, it isn't censorship.  It's good ethics.

For me, that's like saying the world is flat.  All my young life, through school and college, in the media and press, it wasn't just the government that could censor.  Censorship started at home.  If we weren't willing to tolerate, respect, and allow for divergent beliefs and expressions, no matter how offensive, we were fascists.  Copious examples were used: a record store owner not wanting to carry Madonna's Like a Virgin album; the old Fantastic Beatles Boycott of the 1960s; a Florida dentist sending video types of Daytime Talk Shows to their sponsors resulting in some sponsors pulling their ads. From professors, authors, entertainers, teachers to news anchors like the late Peter Jennings, nothing said teetering on the edge of Big Brother more that instances like these. 

So once again, we have something that was sacred mantra for me growing up, something repeated a million times a year by our liberal nation as good, that's suddenly bad.  And that which was equally called evil and wrong is now good. 

Judging based on skin color, banning offensive literature or art, suppressing hate speech, violence, imposing values on others, judging others, forgiveness and reconciliation - all of these things are the polar opposite of what I learned from our liberal nation in the 70s and 80s.  As I tell my boys, it's almost as if my whole life I heard liberals say they only wanted a nation where all animals are equal.  Now that the Left has complete power, having won over Corporate America, it now can modify that by saying we must concede that some animals are more equal than others.

Expect the Leftist revolution to go the same way all other revolutions that pull such tricks go.  It won't be pretty.  But we're the ones who let it happen.  Shame on us. 

Friday foolishness

 Exhibit A:

 

First they came for the Alt-Right

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not Alt Right

Then they came for the MAGA Trumpers 

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a MAGA Trumper

Then they came for the Pro-Life Conservatives 

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Pro-Life Conservative

Finally I got what I deserved when they came for me

You get the point. And it's not just him; see Rod Dreher for one of many examples.  We are seeing the death of the Christian West and the land of the free because over half of our population is convinced either it will be a better world when it happens, or at least whatever bad happens won't happen to them. 

It takes a whole lot of golly-gee-wiz for the most educated generation in human history to be this stupid.  But then, as my sons are fond of saying, we're the generation that finally proved an education is not enough. 

UPDATE: Apparently Mark continues to praise his Reich Masters' attack on freedom of speech and the right to not be a leftist:

Again, this is no longer some 'That's strange, doesn't he get it.'  He gets it.  Just as so many got it in other times when evil rose to the top and seized power.  They just bet the farm that it will be everyone else who gets it in the neck.  

FWIW, Project Veritas and James O'Keefe own a special place in St. Blog's move to bow before the Leftist state.  When it was discovered O'Keefe and company lied about their identities in order to catch Planned Parenthood in its vile Slavery for Holocaust industry, many were able to focus on its undercover tactics to avoid confronting the Left's unprecedented Holocaust.  Without Mr. O'Keefe, there no doubt would have been a different excuse.  But that goes to show you, if you sin you can give those itching to be part of bigger sins a way out. 

UPDATE II: Meanwhile, in my other example, Rod Dreher continues to cling to every word that proceedeth from the press's mouth when it comes to attacking Trump.  Dreher is a fine example of one of conservatism's biggest problems.  That is, the tendency among some conservatives to throw each other under the bus and align with this or that part of the Left as if suddenly that Left, which is otherwise decried as the threat to the universe, becomes equal to the Gospel truth.  Dreher does it with being a Never-Trumper, with Covid, with Global Warming, and perhaps with other issues.  He's not alone, and it's the tendency among such conservatives to be the biggest boon for that Left they otherwise fear and loath. 

Thom Brennaman gets sent to the glue factory

 Apparently Brennaman, Cincinnati Reds announcer, was caught on an open microphone making a "homophobic' slur. 

Mr. Brennaman has groveled and paid obeisance to the Soviet God of the Leftist State, but right now,  he's out.  He says his word doesn't reflect him.  My guess is, it does.  Like so many high profile people whose wealth and success depends on being in line with the powers that be, he could never say what he really thinks.  This is modern America after all. 

Nothing new in the 21st Century.  No country is ever free in the sense of 'no rules, just right' or 'if it feels good, it is good.'   Liberalism promised this.  Perhaps we were stupid enough to believe it.  But the Left is now making it clear that when it comes to freedom, it never mans able to do and say anything you want.  In fact, as you watch the Left morph, you begin to wonder if freedom is even a thing anymore. 

Remember, in a totalitarian state, no amount of  past fealty to the State will do.  The minute you digress from obedience, the second you cease to be useful, then it's into the truck, and off to the glue factory you go. 

Disclaimers and Dragons

Products of our capitulation 

So my boys pointed me to an all too common story about the makers of Dungeons and Dragons going woke and including disclaimers on republished material. This is important in our modern era, in which we stoke our self-righteous embers by heaping endless contempt on those reprehensible reprobates who had the temerity of not existing in our current moment of 'superior to God righteousness.'

Apparently there was push back, especially among older fans of the game.  Youngsters, weened on the superiority of Communist totalitarianism and taught that freedom of speech and religious liberty are stealth Nazi concepts, were quite fine with such an apology from the new game wizards.  Nonetheless, those old timers warned that this would lead to slicing and dicing the materials and republishing them with changes to fit the morally superior wokeness of modern Dystopian liberalism.

Not so, laughed the youngsters (and some older ones who know the eternal infallibility of the dogma of progress).  No such thing would occur since, obviously, that would be rank censorship in a way to make Stalin blush.  All that would happen would be an addition of the obligatory disclaimer that those who came before us were simply inferior to our majestic awesomeness.

Well, that didn't take long.  Wizards of the Coast, the company that now owns the D&D material, has announced it will, in fact, be issuing heavily 'redacted' versions of the old sexist, racist, and generally Nazi infused material from those racists and sexists from TSR of old.  In a matter of weeks.  That's not bad.

Normally the lies of liberalism take some time to unfold.  It took about a decade after the first push for gay marriage, and the concerns that people could be punished for opposing it, before people began to be punished for opposing it.  It took about a decade and a half for those concerned that hate crime legislation could lead to a social mentality of censorship and thought crimes to be proven right.

But liberalism's eternal quest to live up to the slippery slope like nobody ever imagined was particularly speedy in this case.  Why Wizards of the Coast did this, I don't know.  Like so much of liberalism seems to be, was it lies meant to gain ground?  Or did they mean it when they said it wouldn't go there, but in doing so failed to fully appease the Twitter lynch mob and the dystopian fascists yearning for a new totalitarianism?  In which case Wizards buckled because the only thing that really matters is the bottom line.  I just can't say. Either way however, the results are the same.

Again, this was never my cup of tea.  I was not a fantasy fan when D&D was all the rage.  By the time I got interested in fantasy, the great Fantasy Renaissance as I called it, along with the D&D fad, had run their course.  Nonetheless, my sons are in it, and like so many things in our society, they are miffed at the fact that almost every day the Left seems to gain more ground in its quest to turn our country - if not the world - into more than Orwell ever dreamed of when imagining his dystopian nightmare.

Loyola University Stalinizes Flannery O'Conner

Rod Dreher has the lowdown.  Yet again, the young Bolsheviks demand condemnation, eradication and destruction.  And once again the older generation soils underwear and capitulates in kind.  I've not seen anything like this.  Sure, we've been weaned on this for some time, and the move toward totalitarianism has been making strides under the oft laughed at and belittled notion of Political Correctness.

But for it to turn over so quickly.  The Charleston Shooting was the beginning.  When we went from 'remove Confederate flags from state houses' to 'eradicate anything remotely to do with the South', you could see trouble brewing.  When the whole was predicated on 'we judge entire societies, ethnic groups and do so mercilessly and without humility for those reprobates who had the temerity not to be born in our righteously superior age', we should have seen the warning flags.

The election of Donald Trump blew the lid off Pandora's box.  Had the Left not wanted the destruction of the Christian West and America, it would have regrouped and reconsidered its strategies that led to such a disastrous and humiliating defeat.  But now we know the goal of the Left is nothing less than a communist styled totalitarianism built on ever changing forms of bigotry, racism, prejudice, judgmentalism, censorship, thought control, persecution and tyranny. 

The shocking thing is the speed with which this took off.  Chart it on a graph, and it's literally exponential growth. Almost every day now we judge and condemn without mercy or humility a growing mountain pile of anyone or anything that came before.  We destroy, we erase, we ban, we censor.  And those who do it are from every corner of the country, including conservatives, traditionalists, Christians and just about anyone else afraid of what has already seized our country.

Again, thinking on all the interviews and biographies and histories I've read about the  various terror states of the last century, one thing always unites the testimonies.  Whether China, or Russia, or Germany, or Italy, or any nation that became swept up in these socialist and communist revolutions, there was always one common lament: they never saw it coming because it happened so fast.  One day it was Mother Russia, two weeks later almost anything to do with Russia was being dismantled.  One day it was the German people, the next day it was the Nazis, and you had best fall in line or else.

What we are seeing happen is what those hapless fools of the last century witnessed, and we're watching it happen just as speedily.  It might be too late at this point.  The Marxists have all of the major power centers of society, and have no compunction about using lies and censorship and attack in order to stop any who deviate.  And they're enjoying a growing number of Americans scrambling to jump on board lest they, too, end up in the Left's crosshairs.  So we'll see.  But whatever, it doesn't look good.

Figures

Gone With the Wind will be aired by HBO - with a disclaimer.

I wonder if the disclaimer will mention that Gone With the Wind was made in an era that didn’t have national discussions about arming school teachers due to regular mass shootings in our schools.

Probably not. 

Adrianna San Marco is more proof that we are in an Orwell paradise

So back in the day of post-war liberalism, I was in college at The Ohio State University (and yes, you capitalize the definite article).  The Lantern was the school newspaper.  At the point I was at the main campus - roughly 1987 on - one of the big discussions was the complete freedom needed in our social discourse. Time and again staff of The Lantern posted editorials insisting we needed to loosen the bonds of our old puritanical restrictions and allow true freedom of speech to flourish.  Whatever someone wanted to say, however controversial, however 'off color', however vulgar - these must be allowed.  We must be able to use graphic language for sex and body parts and body functions (I remember a specific editorial about that).  We must be able to challenge people, even offend people.  Only in this way can we be an enlightened and free society.  That was the 'All Animals are Equal' pledge.

Fast forward, and we have young Adrianna San Marco who was fired from her post at a university paper.  Not because she dared challenge a leftist narrative within the column of the newspaper itself.  But because she posted her opinion on a conservative website.  She didn't even post it in the newspaper.  She merely expressed her opinion on her own time that the leftist narrative is wrong.  And for that she has been canned.  That is the 'We're sorry, it turns out Some Animals are More Equal Than Others' delivery.

Before I left his site for good, I saw Mark Shea was mocking the idea that banning Gone With the Wind, or pulling down statues, or punishing public figures for speaking out against or failing to align with the leftist party, was anything close to 1984.  That might be true.  Perhaps you can't find a direct parallel in Orwell's dystopian novel to what HBO did or what Mayor Ginther of Columbus, Ohio has done.  But if you trace the arc of post-war communist inspired liberalism, it's not difficult to draw an almost step by step parallel between it and Orwell's cautionary allegory Animal Farm.  In fact, given what we're witnessing occur before our very eyes, it's almost impossible not to.

Making the Inquisition look tolerant one hashtag at a time

So Jimmy Fallon has come under fire.  Now, Fallon is the one late night comedian who has gotten in trouble for daring to not always stay 100% on the Leftist plantation.  Fallon drew outrage by daring to suggest Donald Trump should be treated like any other celebrity name in the news, and was forced to take the post-modern American pose.  What's the post-modern American pose?  That would be groveling in the dirt and begging for mercy and forgiveness for daring to stray from the Leftist narrative.

Fallon is already on shaky ground.  I mean, post-moderns eschew things like forgiveness and mercy as a general rule. Much of modern multiculturalism and leftist narrative is based on the idea of never forgetting or forgiving, to hold grudges and to accuse, criticize, condemn and hold no patience for those clearly inferior to us.  In this age, Fallon can sin against the Left and even be given pardon, but don't for a minute think the Left forgets.

So now that an old SNL skit, in which he impersonated Chris Rock, has been dug up and exposed, he's been forced to assume the position and beg for mercy.  Reaction to this retroactive breach of modern sensitivities was swift, and the #Lynchmob swung into immediate action, demanding Fallon be canceled, his career ruined, his reputation destroyed. 

How many more times this one comedian, who has already disappointed the leftist sith lord empire, will be allowed to continue remains to be seen.  But it's stunning how we moderns make McCarthy's Red Scare seem tolerant and open minded by comparison.  Remember kids, when a revolution like liberalism attacks such intolerance as it once did and then dishes it out tenfold once it has power, you may want to reevaluate your support for such a revolution.

Screen Rant demonstrates why most movies today are stink piles

Failing to conform is the greatest sin

So one Angelo Delos Trinos wrote over at Screen Rant why Raiders of the Lost Ark has not aged well.  Not because of quality or directing or effects.  In a nutshell, because it wasn't made in conformity to the superior and infallible intellectual and morally superior standards of modern politically correct sensitivities. The end.

Yep. That, to me, is a best part of the movie.  Unlike most of the cinematic bilge coming out today, which is in full service and thralldom to the political Left and the rigorous demands of political correct categories, Raiders was a film when film was still an art wrapped in an industry.  Today, it's an industry in slavish devotion to a political movement with art barely making the list.

And it shows.  Today the heroes must conform to PC categories.  Oh they might have this or that doubt or this or that emotional struggle.  But if they're good they're good  because of their socially assigned categorical identity.  Likewise the bad guys will be bad in conformity to PC demands, being religious, conservative, white, masculine men, capitalists, and on and on.  No code of the 1930s was more unwavering in its demand that all film conform to its standards than the Left today.  And more to the point, most filmmakers today are happy to be slavish thralls to the demands of today's leftist state.

Basically the point of the piece at Screen Rant is that Raiders should have been a one dimensional movie with superficial ingredients taken from the multi-cultural, politically correct cereal box.  The story should have been vapid and predictable, with lame and rehashed plot points that have been rehashed a thousand times.  The characters should have been thin and hollow caricatures based on the ingredients list from politically correct categories.  And all must have been in conformity to these things 100%, or they would be condemned outright.  See filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino today, almost bowing before the modern Left and nonetheless blasted for not keeping in line 100% when he does deviate.

That would have been the movie if Raiders was made today.  I'm thankful that Angelo Delos Trinos and the requisite demands were not around in 1981 to pollute such a wonderful movie.   Because, if you read it again, you realize that the rants are based purely on the film's failure to conform to the left's PC dictates.  No concern withe quality of story, or direction, or acting, or production.  In fact, quality seems to mean nothing at all.  Only conformity to the latest now.  Because, if you haven't noticed, there is nothing as intolerant, judgmental and close-minded as the modern left.

BTW, I grow tired of the idea that anything a white European or American does is default evil.  The problem with an actor from Europe playing an Egyptian misses old 60s and 70s Japanese television where Japanese actors play Arabic characters, or Middle Eastern actors portraying Europeans in movies about the Crusades.  That's what actors were assumed to do, before the dark days of the Politically Correct Empire.  Now, as I see black musicians refusing to play Mozart because white, and white musicians refusing to play any composer because white, and any white authors decried because of their whiteness, or any white actor or male actor or heterosexual actor told to stay in a PC mandated box and don't dare come out, I'm reminded how books like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, despite their over the top predictions, can still end up falling far short of the eventual reality.

Go Miss Michigan

So young Kathy Zhu, Miss Michigan, has been booted from the Miss World pageant, and now has had her title of Miss Michigan stripped for breaking with Leftist newspeak.  She dared to question the consistency in Muslim dress as it is sometimes presented and sometimes not presented. She also bothered to mention that the press's false narrative of millions of Blacks dying at the hands of racist white people is counter to the real problem the Black community faces. 

One, of course, is a valid question, but not necessarily a fact.  But the tweet about Blacks being the biggest killer of Blacks, well out of proportion to Whites killing Whites, is a fact.  In fact, the biggest threat Blacks face today is from other Blacks.  

But again, we are already 1/3 Soviet, and with the Press and a growing number of Corporations jumping on board to eradicate freedom, life and God, it might be too late.  When the best chance we have is the reelection of a president like Donald Trump, you have to admit things are bleak.  And that's not a reflection on Trump as much as the utter impotence and cowardliness of so many who see the problem, but simply won't band together to do anything about it.  Unlike Miss Zhu.