Category Archives: Political Correctness

Evangelicals are the New Zealots, and that spells danger for democracy and for the planet.

The danger lies in the fantastical world created by evangelicals. The danger becomes personal in the symbol of guns and precarious in their climate denial. They are Zealots in the truest sense because they are on a suicide mission marching us all to a new Masada.

Evangelicals in America have spent more than a century at war with secular America. With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, evangelicals long frustrated, alienated, angry and belligerent believe they are on the cusp of total victory. With the fervor of the ancient Zealots of Jerusalem in the first century A.D., evangelicals have gathered the Christian army for what they hope will be their final victory. Failure to see evangelicals as Zealot warriors reflects misunderstanding the lengths to which they will go to win.

At first, I thought the Zealots were the best possible metaphor for evangelicals, but metaphor doesnt do justice to this group. Evangelicals are the New Zealots.

The original Zealot movement took root in Jerusalem in the first century. What would it have been liketo grow up in a Zealot family in Jerusalem in 55 A.D.? Home would have been an incendiary mixture of Jewish patriotism and sheer hatred of the Romans. There would have been a fiery zeal for acts of violence. Were they the Proud Boys of Jerusalem? The Patriot Front?

TheZealotswere apolitical movementin first centuryJudaismthat sought to incite the people ofJudea to rebel against theRoman Empireand expel it from theHoly Landby force of arms.The Zealots, captured by a holy zeal rooted in the fantastical notion that a minority religious/political group in Palestine could defeat the Roman legions, incited the Roman army to invade Palestine in A.D. 66.

After Rome reduced Jerusalem to rubble and the Temple to ash, the Zealots retreated to the mountain fortress of Masada to make a last stand, which ended in mass suicide to avoid being captured by the Romans.

The image sticks: People fomenting insurrection, communicating violence and using emotions to spur people to rebellion against an unbeatable foe. A capital city reduced to dust and ashes. A people destroyed by religious zeal the desire to control everything. The metaphor cries out, signaling Jan. 6, 2021, was only the beginning for the New Zealots.

Here we encounter the New Zealot party a combination of passionate religion and right-wing politics first predicting, then promoting, apocalyptic violence. Evangelicals have raged against the liberal hordes, the supposed demonic enemies of the American way of life, for more than a century.

Something has gone terribly wrong among this once deeply committed tribe of people. They have turned from bearing witness to waging war.

Something has gone terribly wrong among this once deeply committed tribe of people. They have turned from bearing witness to waging war. They have changed the truth-speaking boldness of the gospel into the conspiracy-theory-laced alternative truth of secular politics. The New Zealots churn out religious emotion like Fox News spins out political emotion 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Conservative evangelicals always have inhabited a fantastical world different from the world occupied by the rest of humanity. In this fantastical land, a charismatic, powerful preacher with no theological education will be granted more authority on global warming, COVID, immigration and abortion than a room full of Ph.D.s, scientists, historians and philosophers.

This notion of the fantastic originated in my fascination with the genre of fantasy in cinema and television. Prime-time fantasy violent movies garner huge ratings because they encourage identification with violent antiheroes. As I watched Season 1 of The Old Man, I gasped at the protagonists proficiency in killing people. Yet I found myself pulling for the ex-CIA killing machine, played by Jeff Bridges.

Similarly, but in the real world, New Zealots support violent antiheroes in order to win at any cost. The only principle that matters is might makes right. Evangelicals have morphed into an army of Platos Callicles the definition of pure evil masquerading as a good person.

New Zealots support violent antiheroes in order to win at any cost. The only principle that matters is might makes right.

When we encounter an extraordinary event, in the moment we cannot decide whether we are hallucinating or witnessing a miracle, we participate in the fantastic. The fantastic allows a Trump supporter to watch the Jan. 6 investigation hearings and conclude this is a witch hunt.

In fantasy, truth has no role to play. Beliefs about truth and reality are arbitrary. The fantastical world of conservative evangelicals is an imaginary world they believe they once inhabited, and they believe it is being taken away from them. In their fantastical world, they war against fellow Christians who accept abortion, gay rights, feminism and climate change.

Evangelicals have produced a fantastical world for so long, they no longer recognize fact from fantasy. They believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and conspiracy theories promoted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green. Not since the cinematic pair Thelma and Louise have two women created as much chaos as Green and Rep. Lauren Boebert.

The fantastical claims of evangelicals about the Bible mix seamlessly with the fantastical claims of right-wing politics. Disneyworld is an example of a fantastical world. In American politics, the place the New Zealots go to have their dreams fulfilled is the Supreme Court. The court has become fantasy land Disneyworld for the New Zealots. Main characters in Disneyworld: Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and Mary Poppins. Main characters in the fantastical world that dominates the Supreme Court: John, Clarence, Samuel, Neil, Brett and Amy.

In its recent term, the Supreme Court, demolished portions of the wall of separation between church and state, declared abortion illegal on the federal level, rolled back Native American rights in Oklahoma and restricted the right of the EPA to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants.

The most dangerous issue facing the future of the planet has been decided in fantasy land.

Along with the court already ruling to destroy parts of the Voting Rights Act, it sided with a part of America that is as white as tennis outfits at Wimbledon. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the courts conservatives, admitted the transition away from coal to reduce carbon output may be a sensible solution to the crisis of the day. This didnt stop him from joining the 6-3 vote to do just that. The most dangerous issue facing the future of the planet has been decided in fantasy land.

Rhetorical scholars suggest holding common fantasies transforms collections of individuals into cohesive groups. Through symbolic convergence theory, individuals can build a group consciousness that grows stronger as they share a cluster of fantasy themes.

For New Zealots, the cluster of fantasy themes includes precarious white male existence, exhibited as melancholy and victimization; notions of freedom based on libertarianism; commitment to gun culture; climate-change denial; history denial, including attacks on wokeness, political correctness and Critical Race Theory; and an insistence America was founded as a Christian nation. These issues bounce around our culture like pinballs, creating noise and flashing lights, but no substance.

The unifying trope of this cluster: Fantasy.

In the process of creating this fantastic world, an ethos ultimately overshadowed and conquered its creators. I believe it because it is unbelievable the church father Tertullian allegedly said. When a version of the Christian faith that depends upon believing 12 or more unbelievable ideas before breakfast dominates our politics, we live in a fantasy world. The same people who brought us a literal Bible, a real Adam and Eve, an actual flood, rocks that float, a sun made to stand still by the word of a prophet, and a preacher swallowed by a large fish and then spat out now bring their fantastical, nave, enchanted world to politics.

In the fantasy world of the New Zealots, the fictional becomes real, truth becomes fake, facts become irrelevant. Fantasy land proffers a different set of truths: The 2020 election was stolen. Black Lives Matter is a socialist terrorist group. Democrats are devils and mortal enemies.

Americans susceptible to the fantastical are not looking for an evangelist to tell them they are sinners responsible for our current state, but for a preacher who will paint pictures of supernatural, horrible enemies. The New Zealots world is dark; things are not always what they seem to be, and evil forces work behind a veil of secrecy.

The New Zealots world is dark; things are not always what they seem to be, and evil forces work behind a veil of secrecy.

Whispers from the camp of the New Zealots have grown into a crescendo of angry shouts: How can we account for our present situation unless we believe men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? And This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.

Reflecting hyperbolic tendencies of the fantastic, New Zealots conspiracies acquire superhuman, supernatural proportions. They would have us believe American historians have not told us the truth about our nations past. In place of history, they recite a revisionist version of a white, Christian and godly America. They would have us believe science is a vast conspiracy designed to destroy faith, starting with evolution and continuing with requirements to be vaccinated and wear masks for COVID.

Like a church full of Joe McCarthys, the New Zealots live in a fantastical world populated by evil geniuses and sinister cabalists in unholy alliance. Their foes parade as journalists, honored generals, secretaries of state and presidents, all meeting in richly paneled but outwardly innocent-looking barns. They pore over secret documents, engaged in secret plots involving spies, espionage and infiltration, ultimately bent on destroying Christian civilization. Scenes from Spider Man and Thor would be a match for the fantastical world of the New Zealots.

This world turns out to be a response to fear. Only when we recognize the fantastic as a form of spiritual impoverishment can we evaluate what the New Zealots have wrought. They are false prophets. In an age increasingly suspicious of the bases of belief, they provide sustained doubt. The fantastic offers the sound and fury of political activity while, in fact, signifying nothing.

Only when we recognize the fantastic as a form of spiritual impoverishment can we evaluate what the New Zealots have wrought.

The fantastical seems to act as human compensation for a failure of the transcendent. The evangelical insistence on a literal reading of the Bible falls under the same category of being unable to accept other ways of reading and being in the world. Fantasy and literalism are imagined principles attempting to make up for loss of faith.

Now, the fantastical world of evangelicals has invaded national politics. This is no longer about Eve and dinosaurs; this is about the survival of democracy. Now, the politics of the nation come layered with multiple fantasies constructed around nativist, heteronormative, sexist, ablest, racist, classist power dynamics.

The fantastical world has given us dangerous political fantasies that depict white males as victims, history as misguided, science as fake and climate change as a hoax. This fantastical world should seem bizarre. But to New Zealots, it now sounds like common sense, even as it threatens to block actions that would prevent existential threats to our survival as a species.

The New Zealots are just getting started, and they have no concern for how many millions of people they will put in harms way. Their lack of empathy for humanity and overwhelming zeal for ultra-conservative values endangers us all.

Their lack of empathy for humanity and overwhelming zeal for ultra-conservative values endangers us all.

After all, Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, cavalierly insisted that God drowned close to 4 billion people. Pastor Robert Jeffress believes that after the rapture, billions of people who refuse to accept Jesus as Savior will be destroyed.

The expansion of authoritarian rule, supported in America by evangelicals, has had negative effects on human life and security. Even more alarming than the threat to democracy is thethreat to human life.

Pushing gun control and climate denial, the New Zealots lurch toward an apocalypse of their own making, but there will be no Jesus at the end to save them with a rapture. There will be only the mass suicide of the planet. Zealots indeed!

Rodney W. Kennedy serves as interim pastor of Emmanuel Freiden Federated Church in Schenectady, N.Y. He is the author of nine books, including the newly releasedThe Immaculate Mistake,about how evangelical Christians gave birth to Donald Trump.

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The fantastical world of the New (evangelical) Zealots - Baptist News Global

By Vic Medina| Published 3 days ago

Feel free to put this in the why hasnt this happened already category: Star Trek fans are petitioning to have actor/director Seth MacFarlane take over the franchise. In a petition posted on Change.org, fans of the iconic sci-fi franchise want the Family Guy creator to take the creative helm for the Star Trek universe, which they say has lost its way under the leadership of Alex Kurtzman. In the petition, fans argue that Kurtzman has little respect for the brand Gene Roddenberry created well over 50 years ago, and want MacFarlane, a devoted, life-long fan of Star Trek, to correct the franchises current course.

The current turmoil among Star Trek fandom is based mostly in the decision by CBS to use Star Trek as its signature brand to build up the Paramount+ streaming service. In addition to the classic Star Trek shows and films available on the platform, CBS has created four more series, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds, exclusively for the service. Those series are below the standards of Star Trek that Gene Roddenberry created, many fans say, who point to The Orville, the Seth McFarlane sci-fi series on Hulu, as a show that truly captures the spirit of what the current Star Trek should be.

Alex Kurtzman has little respect for the wealth of information and progress that the Star Trek universe has built up over more than 50 years, the petition argues. They take issue with the darker, grittier direction of the franchise, different from the brighter, optimistic direction Roddenberry created. The petition also states that, with Seth MacFarlane in charge, Star Trek will be able to achieve its full potential, realize Gene Roddenberrys vision, and add to its already robust fan base. The petition was started months ago by John Johnson of Mesa, Arizona, who claims that he is just a Trekker who wants the best for the franchise. Like so many petitions on Change, however, it didnt get much attention. That changed after this past weekends San Diego Comic Con, where fans felt underwhelmed by the announcements at the Star Trek panel, which included announcements for yet two more Star Trek shows for Paramount+. Kurtzman was vague about details on those shows, only suggesting that they will likely have female leads. The petition was noticed by some fans, and began to gain traction.

Therein lies the point of contention between Star Trek fans and Kurtzman himself, who fans say approaches creating new Trek content by filling multicultural checkboxes, with an eye on political correctness, rather than crafting a great premise and compelling stories, which are then brought to life with a cast reflective of our times. Seth MacFarlane on the other hand is a lifelong Trekker who has shown that he can create a compelling story, that respectfully and meaningfully looks at some of the problems ailing our modern world, the petition states. While the term woke is often overused and misapplied, it has been used by most disaffected Star Trek fans as the best description for the flawed approach Kurtzman and CBS seem to be taking with the franchise.

CBS, and Kurtzman himself, seem to realize things arent going well, as they have attempted to make come corrections by embracing the past. After two seasons of Picard that have been largely underwhelming (it scores a mere 40% from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes), Kurtzman announced that the third and final season would finally reunite the original crew of the Enterprise for a final adventure. There was also a heavy hint that the Lower Decks series would crossover to Deep Space Nine, providing the opportunity for that series actors to return to the franchise to voice their characters. Lower Decks, an animated comedy set on the starship Cerritos, has been criticized by fans as a Family Guy ripoff, and more proof that Seth MacFarlane would bring a more faithful and respectful approach to new Star Trek content. His work on The Orville is a testament to his creative genius and respect for fans, the petition states.

Bringing in a high-profile creator isnt always the answer to reviving a wayward franchise. JJ Abrams is proof of that: his handling of the Star Trek franchise, beginning with the 2009 movie reboot, only angered fans who felt it abandoned the best aspects of Roddenberry Trek for a Star Wars-like approach. In all fairness, Abrams was handicapped by the limitations of not having the rights to classic Star Trek concepts and designs available to him. Its a complicated matter, best described here if you are unfamiliar with what happened. Rumors of Quentin Tarantino taking over the Star Trek franchise never materialized, although the Oscar-winner admits he has developed an idea for an R-rated adventure. Seth MacFarlane may not be the answer Star Trek fans are hoping for, but based on his loving homage to Star Trek seen in The Orville, it is a risk fans are willing to boldly take.

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Fans Want Seth MacFarlane To Take Over Star Trek, Here's The Petition - Giant Freakin Robot

Matt Damon thought it was all very clear three or four months ago. For the actor from Massachusetts, the world was divided into cryptocurrency users and crypto-skeptics. The former were bold people ready to follow the tides of progress. The latter were stubborn losers, ignorant plebes, poor devils who couldnt recognize a promising investment opportunity if it danced naked on their lap.

That, at least, was the message behind Fortune Favors the Brave, this springs marketing campaign for the digital investment platform Crypto.com, starring Matt Damon.

The strategists behind the ad campaign spared no expense. It launched with a Super Bowl commercial. Today, the minute-long clip is laughable: the Mars (2015) protagonist compares cryptocurrency investors with space travel pioneers like Galileo and Neil Armstrong.

The commercials pompous tone inspired mockery on social media. South Park went on to parody it. But few explicitly questioned its message. An approachable celebrity was inviting us to invest in financial assets at the vanguard of technology. What was the problem?

Months later, successive collapses have brought some cryptocurrencies values to record lows. Matt Damons participation in Crypto.coms advertising ploy no longer seems so innocent. Since the end of May, the actor has faced relentless attacks in the same arenas where he was once adored. Months later, after the successive crashes that have brought the price of some of the most popular cryptocurrencies to historical lows, Matt Damons participation in the Crypto.com publicity masquerade no longer seems so innocent. Since the end of May, the actor has been mercilessly buffeted on the very forums that seemed to adore him.

On Twitter, the worlds most bustling water cooler, he has been called a grifter and scam artist. Hundreds of more-or-less anonymous users accuse him of causing them to lose their life savings by investing in volatile or fraudulent assets.

If Damon were a company, wed say he was suffering a reputational crisis. After decades slowly building an image of a normal guy, unchanged by fame and fortune, he ended up linked to a financial disaster, the object of public scorn. And the now-viral marketing campaign only adds to the humiliation.

He has opted for a tactical retreat. He has not spoken about the topic. He is limiting his public appearances until the storm quiets.

For Damon, a baby boomer born in 1970, keeping a low profile may not be an issue. He has never had much of a social media presence. This is a man after all, who boasts about his disdain for political correctness. Until recently, he thought Facebook and maybe Instagram were the only social networks necessary to use. And he only stopped using the word faggot when his daughter Stella convinced him that it was offensive for homosexuals below 40.

The strange thing, really, is that someone like him would end up involved in a promotional campaign for digital assets. But Damon took his role as Crypto.com ambassador very seriously. With the enthusiasm of a convert, in close collaboration with the cryptocurrency platform, he launched an NGO dedicated to delivering potable water to regions of the planet that lack it. The initiative raised money by, of course, selling digital artthe famous NFTs, virtual images that have sold for fortunes.

At the end of 2021, the cryptocurrency markets had begun to erupt into the mainstream. The challenge was to get normal peopleeven poor peopleon board. And who better than someone with the street cred of Matt Damon? Jemima Kelly, technology markets expert at the Financial Times, points out, ironically, that Matt was paid down to the last cent in solid US dollars, as simple and practical as it would have been to pay him in Bitcoin.

The Massachusetts actor isnt the only celebrity whose reputation has suffered after the crypto apocalypse. The VIP crypto outcasts are legion. The British model Cara Delevingne has been scorned for participating in a charity campaign in which an NFT of her vagina was auctioned. Snoop Dog and Ellen Degeneres recently began toting their investments both in cryptocurrency and NFTs, and today theyre paying the price. Even Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, actively promoted the sale of crypto art on social media, only to end up recognizing that he didnt really know what he was selling.

Cameroonian NBA player Joel Embiid starred in another Crypto.com spot, Bravery is a Process. The campaign was launched on May 6, and it was the first attempt to counteract the negative impact of the plunge in Bitcoins value.

In it, Bill Self, the man who discovered Embiid when he was a teenager who barely knew how to toss a ball, utters a phrase that now seems more unfortunate than ever: Even when our path didnt make sense to everyone else, we kept going. In other words, buy Bitcoin right now, when everyone is selling to try to salvage the remains of the shipwreck.

Reese Witherspoon also associated herself with the image of that now-infamous world. The actress authored the viral phrase Crypto is here to stay. Now, she says she may have spoken out of ignorance. What she hasnt explained, though, is how much money she made by becoming a lobbyist for a product she never believed in.

But few have been quite as embarrassed as Gwyneth Paltrow, who posted a tweet affirming that cryptocurrency is feminist because it allows women to invest under the same conditions as men. That is, as Jemima Kelly says, that feminism, as Paltrow understands it, is about giving women the opportunity to participate in pyramid schemes.

The list goes on. Elon Musk has invested in almost everything imaginable, including in digital assets. In 2021 the magnate boasted that every time he tweeted, the value of crypto assets climbed 10 points. Today, those words follow him. Paris Hilton, meanwhile, doesnt seem to care about the negative repercussions of her ad campaigns, receiving constant insults on social media for baptizing her last two dogs Crypto and Ether, after the cryptocurrency Ethereal. She continues attending to her community of 17 million Twitter followers.

The actress Mila Kunis, football player Tom Brady and tennis player Naomi Osaka are among the other celebrities who now refuse to talk about their previous associations with the cryptoverse. Its a part of their pasts that theyd rather forget, a lucrative skeleton in their closets.

Larry David also got burned. In November, the comedian appeared in a viral ad in which he complained about newfangled inventions like electricity and the wheel, going on to insist that hed never invest in anything that started with crypto. The campaigns tagline was dont be like Larry. Today, Jeff Schaffer, the clips director, says, Neither Larry nor I have the slightest idea how these financial products work. We havent bought them and we dont follow their evolution, so we cant say much about them.

If any celebrity is now gaining unconditional fans for their attitude towards Bitcoin, it is Keanu Reeves. In a conversation with The Verge, Reeves laughed when asked if he had thought about investing in digital assets like NFTs, allegedly unique pieces of art that are, in his words, easily reproduced.

For Dani Di Placido of Forbes magazine, Keanu once again represents the wisdom of the common man: if you dont understand why someone would pay millions to own a .jpg that anyone could copy, maybe its because it doesnt make any sense. Di Placido adds, I cant wait to explain to my grandchildren that, in the middle of the climate apocalypse, we accelerated the consumption of fossil fuels in order to invent new coins and sell each other a handful of images of bored monkeys. Maybe Matt Damon should have talked to Keanu Reeves before he filmed that Super Bowl ad.

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From Matt Damon to Gwyneth Paltrow: Celebrities who pushed crypto now paying for it in popularity - EL PAS USA

San Francisco mayor London Breed has promised a crackdown on the bullshit that has destroyed our city. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Its been seven or eight years since a wave of illiberal norms around the discussion of race and gender began to hit an expanding array of progressive institutions. The name for this phenomenon kept changing, from political correctness to call-out culture to cancel culture to wokeness, because every time a new label came along, Republicans would slap it on literally anything that wasnt right wing. (Mitt Romney recently blamed President Bidens economic policies on his woke advisers.) What remained of the liberal left would have to clarify that, no, what they were critiquing was stuff that was really far out there: impenetrable jargon, irrational mobs, struggle sessions, creepy forced apologies, absurd firings.

In certain quarters, a deep fatalism set in about the survival of liberal values, articulated by critics including Andrew Sullivan and Wesley Yang, who has described the lefts new thinking as successor ideology a term that presumes it is destined to displace the old liberal ideology. Michael Lind, a co-founder of New America, claimed that, within the center left, debate has been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned: Black Lives Matter, Green Transition, Trans Women Are Women, 1619, Defund the Police.

But I dont take the success of the illiberal left for granted. I think it can be halted. In fact, I suspect that the floodwaters are already receding.

The way the illiberal left has been dealing with race and gender is of a piece with the way it has approached a range of debates in the social-media era. Activists reduce nearly every issue to a moralistic binary and cast any dissent as a personal failing. Disagree with the policy activism of the Sunrise Movement? Youre a boomer happy to let the planet fry after you enjoy your remaining time on it. Not sure single-payer health care is the best strategy? You must want people to die on the street.

It is on identity-related issues that this style of thinking has made the most headway. Academia has produced left-wing philosophical challenges to liberalism that treat speech as tantamount to violence and regard political disputes as a zero-sum conflict between oppressor and oppressed. And while these illiberal norms often originated on campus, they have expanded into progressive communities like primary schools (mostly private ones), media, publishing, and political and social-activist organizations.

What has made this all feel so unstoppable is that critics had reasons to be afraid of speaking out against it. When the New York Times forced science writer Donald G. McNeil Jr. to resign for quoting (not using) a racial slur, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan suggested that anybody who disagreed with his termination was also racist. Its not hard to believe, she wrote, that any White person who would freely utter or defend the most offensive racial slur in English may well be someone with a history of other problems. This is a pure distillation of witch-hunt logic: Anybody who objects to the fairness of the proceedings is presumptively implicated in the crime of the accused.

But a system based on frightening dissenters into submission is a brittle foundation for social change. What appeared to be broad assent within elite institutions was actually enforced silence. It is beginning to give way to careful but firm pushback on campus, in media, and in politics.

After a Chinese-born professor had to give up teaching his class at the University of Michigan in October for showing students a dated film in which Laurence Olivier appeared in blackface, nearly 700 faculty members signed a letter calling for his reinstatement. The dean of Yale Law School, a staging ground for some of the most notorious abuses of this era, publicly expressed regret after school administrators last year tried to make a student recite a humiliating apology script following a trumped-up outrage (he had sent a jocular party invitation referring to his apartment as a trap house). This spring, after protesters shouted down a Federalist Society event on campus, the dean called this unacceptable and said at a minimum it violated the norms of this Law School. Meanwhile, a growing list of colleges is following the University of Chicagos 2015 establishment of the principle that a campus should be a place for free debate.

The recent Times editorial defending free speech against threats on both sides represents a turning point. The articles rather anodyne free-speech-is-good argument masked its larger significance: Americas most important newspaper was implicitly promising not to let social-media outrage campaigns dictate its decisions. The Philadelphia Inquirer in February published a history of its own blinkered racial past by Wesley Lowery that revealed how angry readers forced its well-regarded executive editor to resign over a column by the papers architecture critic* lamenting the burning of buildings during the George Floyd protests. While Lowery told the story in a neutral, just-the-facts way, it was impossible to interpret its publication as anything but a confession of error.

After Democrats lost seats in Congress in 2020, and nearly lost the presidency, they began to say out loud things they only whispered privately before. Former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter blamed white wokeness for denying the crime wave in his city. Congressman Ruben Gallego seethed over the lefts use of the word Latinx: When Latino politicos use the term, it is largely to appease white rich progressives who think that is the term we use. San Francisco mayor London Breed, whose city is also facing a spike in crime, lashed out at the bullshit that has destroyed our city.

I can think of three reasons why the PC wave may be ebbing. The first is that many liberals who were uncertain how to respond to these norms have seen enough of them to decide they dont like them, having gone from positive or indifferent to critical. Writers like Matthew Yglesias and Jeffrey Sachs, who a few years ago were dismissing the notion of any rising trend of illiberalism on the left as a myth, have since conceded the trend is very real. Left-wing publications like Jacobin and commentators like Briahna Joy Gray have increasingly criticized the lefts rigid approach to gender and identity.

Second, the cultural changes brought about by these ideas quickly exposed their inherent impracticality. One response to the Floyd murder was a massive surge in demand for workplace racial-sensitivity training, some of which was clumsy and some of which was simply ludicrous. Some anti-racism trainings defined white supremacy to include written communication, a sense of urgency, scientific, linear thinking, planning for the future, and other habits of any viable organization.

The third, and largest, factor curtailing political correctness was the 2020 elections. The defeat of Donald Trump removed an accelerant in the discourse. By rubbing the countrys face in his unapologetic racism, and posing as a transparently disingenuous critic of cancel culture (who was, in reality, trying to cancel his critics all the time), Trump did more to encourage PC excess than a thousand Robin DiAngelos could have.

The Democrats middling performances in 2020 and the 2021 off-year elections, and the lessons they might contain for the upcoming midterms, have brought elected Democrats face-to-face with the consequences of allowing the most militant members of the progressive movement to bully their party into adopting maximalist stances on issues like school closings, immigration enforcement, and crime. Its now much harder for progressives to depict, say, support for enforcing immigration law or opposition to defunding the police as inherently racist when its clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions support them. There is an old saying that politics is downstream from culture, but in this case, culture is downstream from politics. When Democratic elected officials openly blamed their troubles on purity tests imposed by social activists, it gave permission for liberals elsewhere to resist tactics to which they had previously submitted.

It turns out that democracy itself has been the corrective factor. The passions of the past half-decade have shown that, for all its faults, the Democratic Party, with its multiracial coalition that is accountable to the public, is the institution in American life that is best equipped to beat back illiberalism. The Republican Party succumbed completely to fanaticism long ago.

*Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Philadelphia Inquirers architecture critic resigned over a column published during the George Floyd protests.

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Political Correctness Is Losing - New York

In an interview with the far-left Daily Beast, director David Cronenberg blamed political correctness for the lack of sex scenes in modern movies.

Given that theres so little adult sex in contemporary mainstream North American cinema, the Daily Beast asked, has it become more difficult to make an intensely eroticized film likeCrimes of the Future?

Of course, Im aware of how things have cycled, because I feel like Ive been here before with political correctness, and now its something else, Cronenberg replied. But it really is the same thing, which amounts to people trying to censor what other people say and think and do. It seems to be a common thing with us human beings that we do that periodically. I have to ignore it.

Crimes of the Future is the latest from the 79-year-old director of The Fly (1986), Scanners (1981), Dead Ringers (1988),Eastern Promises (2007), The Brood (1979), and The Dead Zone (1983), among others.

Cronenberg is primarily known as a creator of body horror, where we witness terrible things happen to a persons body. The Fly is a pretty extraordinary example of that and one of the best remakes ever made.

Keep in mind that it is not just sex missing from movies. It is also sexiness. Now that the humorless puritan harpies in the Woke Gestapo are in charge, any attempt at sexiness is attacked as something akin to rape. Oh, that awful male gaze. Oh, that awful objectification.

I havent seen Crimes of the Future, but if the past is prologue, whatever sex might be in will not violate the Woke Production Code prohibiting sexiness. Sex that degrades and disgusts is fine with the Woke Gestapo. Ugliness is the new beauty the more disgusting, the better.

Im not criticizing Cronenberg. He is what he is, a terrific and original filmmaker. But its not his style thats verboten. Whats verboten is beauty, erotica, titillation, wish-fulfillment, the forbidden joys of T&A you know, those things that make life worth living. That has never been Cronenbergs style.

The same oh-so progressive Hollywood that has spent decades ridiculing the Eisenhower 1950s as stuffy and puritan is now a hundred times more stuffy and puritan. The awful fifties gave us Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, and the bullet bra. The Woke 2020s are like living in a convent. Never in the history of movies has sexiness been censored and outlawed. Its disgraceful and a violation of human nature.

Anyway, as someone who is pro-objectification and T&A, lets hope this era of Woke McCarthyism ends soon.

The seventies and eighties really were awesome, and I have the Blurays to prove it.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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Nolte: David Cronenberg Blames Political Correctness for Sexless Movies

Is our society becoming too sensitive day by day? From our culture, political correctness, religious beliefs, to what we eat or do or wear, people have actually gone mad and become sensitive to the power of irrationality. From social media to everyday life and everywhere in between, diversity of thought is being slowly snuffed out.

We all have a right to free speech, albeit with limits. But it appears that problems start whenever that free speech is exercised to say something unpopular. In a bid to create an increasingly tolerant society, are we in some ways becoming less tolerant to divergent voices? And is this really a bad thing?

If it feels like political correctness is an ever-expanding concept, then it might also be a deeply unpopular one. Among the general population, 80% believe that "political correctness is a problem in our country". Even young people are uncomfortable with it. On this particular issue, the 'woke' are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isn't a good proxy for support of political correctness, and it turns out race isn't either. We may feel that insisting upon an increasingly politically correct society is a good way of protecting those who have historically been oppressed or subject to greater disadvantage, but according to research, this may not always be the reality. It seems that most people in today's world are offended by something or the other, whether it be something political, a religious belief, some random movie or even a schoolbook.

People who inhabit social media are a great example. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, are laden with people attempting to find an issue with something that does not exist. However, the subject of sensitivity is difficult to tackle, because what makes anyone the judge of what you can or cannot be sensitive about? There is a saying: Good morning. Welcome to social media! Give it a few minutes and very soon someone or the other will disagree with you and within seconds the start of a full blown war of words. Boom! And minutes later, it goes viral.

Here is the thing: Sensitivity, if given a suitable reason, is understandable and easy enough to accept. For example, before films with explicit content, such as a rape or suicide, a scene that might trigger an individual due to a past incident in their life is a logical explanation for being sensitive about a certain film. It is a completely different thing to protest the showing of a movie because you specifically are offended by it and its contents, no matter the important lessons it aims to teach.

This is true for even children and young adult literature. Many renowned authors who have written excellent and inspiring books filled with exceptional themes, lovable characters and a captivating plot, have had their best-selling books banned from schools due to their graphic text and mature themes. Many classic novels have reshaped the imagination, but were once banned because of their content. If students cannot learn, through school-assigned literature, these valuable lessons that might move them in positive ways, how else will they learn them?

Certainly not in entertainment, as movies and OTT platforms are also chastised for being too honest. Any form of art must always be kept in a safe and special place. The art in which dramatic performers act with flair to express what are often unbelievable stories, where playwrights are free to compose the most magnificent scripts that may contain the juiciest topics of today, from race to politics, homosexuality, gentrification and suicide.

Our thoughts and ideas are a form of expression. Though everyone would like to be safe, life is not filled with seat belts or helmets or knee pads. There are bumps and gashes that everyone must go through, and when you suffer them, you learn and you feelthat is the point of being alive.

While we're on the topic, let's move on to political correctness. Nowadays it appears that if anyone goes against a popular opinion, they are the enemy. Say a person leans neither Right nor Left, and have views from both sides, taking a moderate stance on many important issues, such as abortion, gay marriage, immigrants and education. No matter one's belief, there will always be someone there to counter their stance, thus putting them in the position of being insulted for believing their own ideas.

I'm sorry, but whatever happened to freedom of speech? Are people not allowed to have a difference of opinion? Now, as I said earlier, if someone is offended by what one person has said, a respectful conversation should ensue as to why that is. Otherwise, disparaging someone's opinions because they do not match your own is unfair, rude and distasteful.

Oversensitivity is a sentiment that most people run into regularly nowadays, especially on social media, and this hypersensitive mindset is good for nothing but resentment and anger. Calm down, recognize that everyone has different beliefs and stop getting so upset about nothing.

Originally posted here:

The Oversensitivity Overkill - The Citizen

There comes a time when enough is enough, and I have found that, when I reach that point, its time to hit the road.

Diane and I recently completed a swing through Kentucky, and, while we obviously kept connected to The Alpena News through its digital edition, we also enjoyed stepping away from the normal grind of news, news, news.

While the Roe vs. Wade decision did not escape us, nor the Michigan Legislature reaching consensus on the 2023 state budget, we didnt allow ourselves to be absorbed by that chatter. Instead, we hiked mountain trails, went spelunking in a cave, and, of course, visited some historical sites always a must for any of our excursions.

But, for those who really know me, you also know I never escape the news entirely.

The historical stop we made on this trip was to the birthplace and early childhood residences of President Abraham Lincoln. It was fascinating studying the early history of Lincolns life and how, but for a few disputes over property deed claims that led to his father moving the family to Illinois, Lincolns life might have taken a different course entirely.

A great orator and writer, I was struck by one particular quote of Lincolns during the visit.

History is not history, Lincoln wrote, unless its the truth.

Which led me to wonder: What truth will my grandchildrens children grow up with in this push for political correctness in todays culture?

This past week, much was being made of new polls that were taken showing an erosion of faith in the American ideals that our country was founded on. A Rasmussen Poll revealed only 27 percent of people believe the founding fathers would consider the United States a success.

Worse, 53% said the Founding Fathers would look to todays county as a failure in this exercise of democracy.

Admittedly, the Rasmussen Poll is a conservative one. Turning to a more liberal-based national poll, the Gallup poll, only 38% said they were extremely proud of the country.

Both polls reveal a disturbing reality in the country today our country is hurting.

Events like Jan. 6 have taken a toll on the populace as everyone tries to decipher truth from fiction. The further we move from that date, the more we wrestle with the reality of perception from that day becoming the reality, whether it is true or not.

As I pondered Lincolns quote, I was reminded of another president, Ronald Reagan, who, at the end of his term, reminded Americans that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

Weve got to teach history based not on whats in fashion but whats important, Reagan said. If we forget what we did, we wont know who we are. Im warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.

All of us conservative and liberal, white and Black, young and old, male and female owe it to our children to not allow the American spirit to disappear.

Our Founding Fathers may not have been perfect, but they formed a republic that has stood the test of time. They, and the brave men and women who gave their lives for our freedom, deserve our efforts to preserve and appreciate their sacrifice.

And that, my friends, is the truth.

Bill Speer recently retired as the publisher and editor of The News. He can be reached at bspeer@thealpenanews.com.

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We must work to restore the American spirit - Alpena News

Bette Midler recently made a political statement that kind of made sense.

The liberal actress posted a tweet on Independence Day complaining about the erasure of women that got more than 100,000 likes.

WOMEN OF THE WORLD! she wrote. We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They dont call us women anymore; they call us birthing people or menstruators, and even people with vaginas! Dont let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!

While Midler is wrong about abortion, which kills an innocent human being, the second half of her tweet makes more sense.

Midler is correct that these woke terms people use to describe women are terrible, and liberals should stop using them.

Nowadays, liberals, including politicians, use terms such as birthing people and menstruators (or people who menstruate). Notably, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) have referred to women as "birthing people." Meanwhile, terms such as humans with vaginas, people with vaginas, and bodies with vaginas have appeared in the liberal sphere.

These are terms used to describe those whom normal people would refer to as women. Liberals who use these terms see them as inclusive because they include women who say they're men and women who identify as made-up Tumblr genders.

While the liberals who use these terms may feel like theyre being inclusive, theyre not. Its not hard to call women women. Instead, they opt for dehumanizing, and frankly gross, alternatives.

A few years ago, just about everyone would have agreed that calling people by the name of their genitals or a reference to their genitalia is not only an insulting and gross reduction of people but also perverted. The facts remain the same: It's still gross and dehumanizing.

This also correctly feeds into the perception that liberals are too woke and politically correct. That approach is off-putting to normal people, who dislike the PC police: 80% of Americans view excessive political correctness as a problem, according to a 2018 poll conducted by More in Common.

Along with using terms such as Latinx and womxn, these weird terms to describe women are not a good look for the Democratic Party; notice we dont see any Republicans using these terms. If the Democratic Party wants to win elections, it should want people to think its candidates are normal people. Needlessly weird behavior like this will not help that perception, even if it has little to do with policy.

Here is the solution to this issue: Call people what they are men and women. Its not hard.

Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.

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Bette Midler is right about the erasure of women - Washington Examiner

Ive always loved Barstool Sports, but the companys freakout after Roe fell has been telling. Theyre willing to challenge elite politics when it comes to just about everything except sexual ethics.

In one of his Emergency Press Conferences last weekend, Portnoy reacted to Dobbs v. Jackson by saying the nation is going back in time. Portnoys employees at Barstool got busy retweeting his video and posting their own pro-abortion content as well. This includes the second biggest personality at Barstool and Portnoys right hand, Dan Big Cat Katz. Katz reacted differently when Portnoy interviewed former President Donald Trump two years ago, lambasting him for politicizing the company.

The CEOs support for abortion, then, is all the more revealing about where the left draws the line on what matters to them. If Portnoy wasnt kicked out of his social standing for his take on Covid restrictions or for speaking with Trump, his brazen appeal to the left on abortion shows how strongly they value men and womens ability to have sex without consequences.

Barstool has raked in immense profits from podcasts like Call Her Daddy which provide women step-by-step guides to encourage new sexual experiences. While CHD Host Alex Cooper promoted female empowerment through performing raunchy sexual acts, men like Portnoy benefit from an increasingly loose culture surrounding sex. And his freedom to sleep around and enjoy womens bodies for carnal pleasure partially hinges on easy access to abortion.

In lock-step with most on the left, Portnoys arguments in the video concerning a womans geographical abortion access and disrespect for conservatives regard for the Second Amendment hold no substantive constitutional ground. This makes sense considering he then ushered in one of the most consistent narratives of the leftist elite: the Constitution is no longer useful or worthy of respect.

At what point do you look at the Constitution and say hey, this was written by people who had slaves. Maybe not everything is exactly to a tee in the Constitution? Like a million years from now, youre going to use a document written Portnoy said. The world evolves, people evolve, technology evolves, youve got to evolve. You cant stick with this document and look at that and be like thats the end all, be all.

The obvious fallacies in that argument aside, Portnoy isnt a full-fledged progressive by any means. In fact, he has a reputation for riling up the left. As the leader of what can only be described as a media and pop culture behemoth, Portnoys staunch views on individual liberty have generated a lot of negative attention from corporate media.

They groan when Portnoy appears on Tucker Carlson Tonight, they roll their eyes as he champions private enterprise through his pro small business charity, The Barstool Fund, and they threw a fit when he met with President Donald Trump for an interview at the White House. Barstool Sports as a company is known for its outright rejection of political correctness.

Much of what makes Portnoy so iconic and Barstool so appealing to young people are these acts displaying such indifference for what causes corporate America seems to heed. According to a poll in Morning Consult, Gen Z-ers are far less likely than millennials to hold a favorable view toward cancel culture. Portnoys recent comments and his companys actions, however, fail to provide the kind of independent thought unabridged by special interests that they crave. His arguments from the press conference are uniform to that of other woke corporations.

Later in the video, Portnoy called the left crazy and President Joe Biden a moron. But he defended his voting for them due to what he sees as the rights involvement in Supreme Court failures, and he used the opportunity to insert one more plug of support for another leftist cause: same-sex marriage:

I end up having to vote for a moron like Biden because the right is going to put Supreme Court people in who are just ruining this country by taking basic rights away You look at what theyre doing and its like, youre taking away basic rights. Whats next? Same-sex marriage? Like what is next? Its insane. Thats why we have to vote for the moron like Biden whos borderline incompetent because its too dangerous to vote Republican.

Barstool also now has an LGBT podcast entitled Out and About, for which the company allocated $100,000 toward a rainbow flag truck. Many of the companys most famous personalities were at the gay pride parades in Chicago and New York City in June, which they made sure no one missed on social media.

Further publicizing his recent elite opinion, a former critic of his at the liberal Business Insider published an article highlighting Portnoys pro-abortion viewpoint the same day Portnoy posted the video.

This level of pandering on sexual ethics helps someone like Portnoy eliminate some of his own bad press hes amassed and makes him more appealing to those within the elite social spheres he runs, such as the Hamptons where he bought a nearly $10 million beach house earlier this year. Even though Portnoy has garnered so much of his following from young people eager to cling to a figure who doesnt subscribe to the accepted mainstream narrative, hes no rebel when it comes to toeing the line on what the left values most highly.

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Barstool Subverts Elites On Everything Except Sexual Ethics - The Federalist

Jim Splaine| Columnist

Portsmouth is a beautiful, incredible, fabulous, unique, fantastic, amazing city.OK, enough words.Some newcomers of the past 20 or 30 years like to say they made it what it is today, but what our community is today comes from the contributions of the "collective 'we'" of the past 400 years.

I suspect thereisacelebration of that next year.

Sometimes unnoticed, one of our special assets is our ever-growing diversity of people and their backgrounds.As this past week's naturalization ceremony at Strawbery Bankereminded us, if we were all the same, Portsmouth would be so boring.

One of my favorite city councilors, John Hynes, who knew a lot about economicsand the value of population and opportunity diversity with his professional business development background, would often call Portsmouth a "world-class city."

He named Portsmouth that for a number of reasons.Through the years, that diversity has also included income, and therein lies the message of this commentary.There are indeed two Portsmouths:the rather well-to-do, and the not-quite so.

More: Splaine: Courageous local legislators led fight for gun safety 20, 30 years ago

That doesn't mean we're divided as a population.It just means that for some, Portsmouth has a lot of opportunities to "buy" things whether they be good housing, going to restaurants often, attending lots of ticketed music and theater events, or enjoying many of the other benefits of a world-class city.

And it means for others who cannot afford quite so good housing, or eating out at restaurants or attending the non-free activities of our community, they have to look for other ways to enjoy their days and nights.

A lot of people fall into that second category.They may be some of our retired citizens who live on fixed income.They may be working at lower-pay jobs.Regardless of age, someone making $15 or $20 an hour certainly experiences life in Portsmouth much differently than a professional who may be making six figures.

And with current-day inflation, well, it's tougher.

For many of us of the lower-income scale, going to a restaurant for dinner is a luxury. Forget it if two or three kids are involved. And with utility and electric bills about to explode, we can expect it to be more difficult for a lot of people to put aside enough for a weekly night out on the town.

More: Splaine: NH State Police now have body cams.Why can't Portsmouth?

Fortunately, the "it takes a village" spirit of our city also provides a lot of free activities, so there is always something for our residents and their families that costs, literally, nothing. More on that in another column, but a walk through our vibrant downtown is free. A self-tour through the historic South End, free. We have nature trails, free. Library, free.Nearby beaches, free.Parks, free.Sitting in Market Square and enjoying the ambiance, free.Many music and theater events, free.Hundreds of ways to enjoy a summer, or winter, without spending hardly anything.

Just put down the cell phone and do it.

The "it takes a village" spirit of our community goes to how we decide to use our tax money.Beyond the concerns our government has for maintaining our sidewalks and city buildings, providing police and fire protection, and serving the needs of our business community through the planning, legal, and economic development offices, there is attention paid to the many needs of those who need help.

More: Splaine: The Portsmouth Factor highlights importance of Juneteenth

Money spent on recreation and schools, as well as for our welfare and health departments, fills the needs of the large segment of our population that cannot afford private schools, and whose children benefit from the efforts of our school and recreation departments to provide free and equality of participation for children of families of all economic levels and for our older folks too.

Our city cares.

There is more we can do.More we need to do.Let's hope Portsmouth continues to be a magnet world-class city that attracts people of wide income diversity.We need that balance.All are welcome here.

Portsmouth is a cool place to call "home."

Today's quote:"Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness.It is the key to growth." - Jesse Jackson, 1984 and 1988 presidential candidate who ran in the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation primaries.

Nexttime:In 2023 fireworks or drones?

Jim Splaine has served variously since 1969 as Portsmouth assistant mayor, Police Commission member and School Board member, as well as New Hampshire state senator and representative.He can be reached atjimsplaineportsmouth@gmail.com.

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Splaine: Two Portsmouths: The rather well-to-do, and the not-quite so - Seacoastonline.com