Merely three years after I revealed here in Taki’s Magazine that both the Ferguson Effect of the mid-2010s and the Floyd Effect of the 2020s had driven up not just homicides but also traffic fatalities, The New York Times has gotten around to noticing that the recent big increase in driving deaths had something to do with George Floyd.

Of course, the Times launches its 4,000-word article “Traffic Enforcement Dwindled in the Pandemic. In Many Places, It Hasn’t Come Back. The retreat has happened as road deaths have risen” the same way it neuters its explanations of these decades’ parallel rise in shootings: by attributing it to the pandemic rather than to political and cultural choices by elite institutions like, say, The New York Times. After all, the Times’ 10 million subscribers don’t pay good money to have their worldviews undermined:

In the early days of the pandemic in 2020, traffic stops by the police plummeted around the country…. By the end of 2023, the police in Baltimore, New Orleans and San Francisco were making fewer than half the traffic stops they did prepandemic.

But, gingerly, reporters Ben Blatt and Emily Badger start raising the subversive possibility that this rise in road carnage wasn’t solely caused by Covid:

This decline [in traffic stops], seen in an Upshot analysis of local law enforcement data, accelerated a shift that began in many places before the pandemic, suggesting that the police have pulled back from a part of their job that has drawn especially sharp criticism. To many communities, traffic stops have led to racial discrimination, burdensome fines and deadly encounters—not road safety. But the retreat of law enforcement from American roadways has also occurred against the backdrop of a rise in road fatalities.

The authors point out that traffic fatalities increased from 2019 to 2022 in 27 of America’s 30 largest cities.

They then offer subscribers something of a trigger warning:

It’s hard to draw a straight line from the decline of enforcement to the rise of road deaths, but their likely connection has unsettled researchers, safety advocates and police officials.

Finally, in the ninth paragraph, they admit it wasn’t just the pandemic, but that the sacred memory of George Floyd might also have played a role:

Today’s picture suggests, rather, that as the police have responded to both the pandemic and cries for reform after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, they have also withdrawn from their role pulling over speeding cars and reckless drivers.

The phrase “Black Lives Matter” never appears in the article (and the word “black” only once), but the Times does get up the courage to mention the cultural turning point when BLM emerged in the media:

And the share of Americans who say they have been pulled over has fallen since at least the late 1990s in a periodic federal survey tracking contacts between the police and the public. That share has dropped in particular since 2015, after the police shooting death the prior year of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

“The decline in traffic enforcement predates Ferguson by probably 10 years or more—that’s an important thing,” said Jeff Michael, a former longtime official at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who now studies road safety at Johns Hopkins University. “But Ferguson certainly had an effect. That’s without a doubt. Ferguson, and everything after.”

That is apparent in Ferguson itself, among some other cities.

Traffic stops are down 88 percent in Ferguson since the Obama Justice Department, unable to document its accusation that the inner suburb’s underpaid police department was racist, denounced it for running a speed trap. Not surprisingly, motorists in Ferguson are now speeding more.

And dying more. Traffic deaths on the main drag through Ferguson have almost tripled since Ferguson.

The journalists continue trying to break it gently to loyal readers that the Times hasn’t been giving them the full story when it kept blaming everything bad that happened in the 2020s on Covid:

In data from this era, it’s hard to separate the effects of the pandemic from the demands for reform, or to know if policing patterns might have bounced back from the first shock had the second never happened.

Well, there are a few obvious steps an analyst can take to disentangle.

First, you can break out who died in traffic accidents during the Ferguson and Floyd Effects.

The CDC tracks the causes of all deaths in the United States with a six-month lag. Today you can look up the demographics of fatal motor vehicle accident victims from 1999 through the end of 2023.

Let’s compare the era of the Floyd Effect—June 2020 to December 2023—to the same 43 months a decade earlier—June 2010 to December 2023—which was before either the Ferguson or Floyd Effect.

Total motor vehicle deaths among non-Hispanic whites went up 9 percent.

That’s bad. Car crash carnage should be falling steadily.

But traffic fatalities among African Americans grew an appalling 78 percent.

That blacks have become much worse drivers over the past decade seems newsworthy to me, but nobody else will touch the story.

A half century ago, blacks weren’t bad drivers. Street racing was more of a thing among white working-class kids, as in American Graffiti, Grease, and Bruce Springsteen songs. But in this century, while young whites have lost interest in cars, young blacks have felt a growing need for speed.

This cultural shift might be interesting to readers, but it’s apparently considered in poor taste to mention it because it violates the most sacred rule of the prestige press in this century: Never say anything critical of blacks.

Second, there’s the remarkable correlation during the Ferguson Effect and, especially, the Floyd Effect between road deaths and homicide deaths.

Up until Ferguson, whites had a slightly higher per capita car accident death rate than did blacks (note that whites drive more miles on average, but this graph is per capita, not per mile). But blacks pulled far ahead in June 2020.

The shape of homicide victimization trends is strikingly similar:

Deaths by homicide grew 17 percent among whites from 2010–2013 to 2020–2023 but 71 percent among blacks, even though blacks started with a radically higher rate of dying violently (usually at the hands of other blacks).

Why the correlation? That’s likely because traffic stops are the most common way the cops discourage both bad driving and carrying illegal handguns.

But the article never mentions the concurrent explosion of black-on-black shootings in the days following George Floyd’s demise. That the War on White Supremacy waged by all nice people drove up both car crashes and murders is presumably one red pill too many for even the bravest New York Times article.

Third, in no other major country did either traffic deaths or murders go up notably in 2020 because, while many foreign elites paid lip service to the racial reckoning, nobody else’s ruling class were so stupid as to shoot their country in the foot by sponsoring an actual cultural revolution.

Fourth, a study by the Automobile Association of America found:

Drivers without valid licenses accounted for almost the entirety of the increase in driver fatal crash involvements in May–December 2020 relative to the corresponding forecast.

While deaths were up less than 1 percent among drivers with valid licenses, they shot up 45 percent among those without.

How come?

Depolicing.

If the cops are not pulling over as many drivers anymore due to George Floyd and the mostly peaceful protests, why not risk driving just because your license is suspended, nobody will insure you, you have several outstanding warrants, you have fake license plates, you’re driving a stolen car, and you need to carry your Glock everywhere in case you run into that guy you’re going to shoot for dissing you on Instagram?

In conclusion, this article on the car crash catastrophe of the 2020s is intellectually unimpressive by the standards of Taki’s Magazine’s coverage of the issue. But by the standards of The New York Times of the 2020s, it’s a vast step forward.

So, congratulations to the authors.

My regular readers know that sometimes I’ll take a roundabout route to get to my point.

Dave’s Regular Readers: “Sometimes? You pull that shit every week.”

Sorry, imaginary regular readers. You want me to be brief? Maybe you should’ve fought harder to keep me on Twitter like you do for Nazis like Lucas Gage. Because then I could quip instead of essay.

Dave’s Regular Readers: “Why are you yelling at us? We’re imaginary. By the way, how’s that descent into schizophrenia coming along?”

Quite well, imaginary regular readers. Quite well.

See what I did there? I took a roundabout route to get to my roundabout route to get to my point. As a writer, I’m very much like a stinkbug. Unpleasant and unwanted, but still in its own way a marvel of nature.

So here’s the roundabout route. In my youth I was an accomplished musical theater actor, winning two Macy Awards (that’s the national high school musical theater trophy) for my role as Bobby in the 1986 production of A Chorus Line and as Sorebutt McGee in the 1985 production of Slappy Dickthruster AIDS His Friends (my character sings the classic ballad “He shoved it, he shoved it, and surprisingly I loved it. Yet now my joy is stalling; my T-cell count is falling”).

The joke is that musical theater is gay. Just in case I was being too subtle.

I loved musical theater because as a straight guy I never understood why it was more “manly” to grab dudes by the waist and wrestle around with them on a gridiron than it was to serenade beautiful ladies on a stage. Musical theater was where the hot white chicks were; football was where the sweaty black dudes dwelled. Not that I could’ve played football anyway. I was frail back then. And today? I’m so weak a small breeze could knock me over.

And a large breeze could kill me, which is why I refused to stand behind Roseanne Barr at last week’s MAGA chili cook-off.

Dave’s Imaginary Regular Readers: “Will you get to the fucking point, asshole?”

Memo to self—up the clozapine to 20mg.

Brigadoon was my least favorite play. Thank God I never had to be in it. It’s everything people hate about musicals. Sappy, slow-paced, cloying. But for all its faults, it features one instructive moment.

For those unfamiliar with this faggoty crapfest (i.e., anyone married with children), the plot centers on two 1950s hipster-cat New Yorkers (“skibidee-bee-bop hep mamma, jazz, cigarettes, and lung cancer”) on vacation in the U.K. who find themselves trapped in a supernatural Scottish village that only appears out of the highland mist once every 100 years so that the locals can sing shitty songs.

Yes, it’s every bit as exciting as it sounds.

So the hepcats (played by Gene Kelly and Van Johnson in the 1954 MGM film version, a movie that used to be employed to euthanize death row prisoners until the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1974) are stuck in this ghostly town. The Kelly character really takes to the place. He falls in love with a ghost girl and he chows down on ghost haggis and generally finds ghost life appealing. But the other city slicker can’t deal with the fact that the town, by its very existence, violates the laws of physical reality. The idea that there’s a ghost village and ghost girls and ghost haggis drives him mad; his mind is broken by the notion that the laws of physics are suspended in this place.

He ends up killing one of the ghost inhabitants, and he says to his buddy, “What’s it matter? Nothing is real here. And if nothing is real, why should I care if I kill a guy or not? Reality doesn’t exist in this place.”

Of course, I’m paraphrasing the text.

Dave’s Imaginary Regular Readers: “You were too drunk and lazy to cut-and-paste the actual dialogue from the play, weren’t you?”

Memo to self—30mg.

Anyway, it’s an interesting concept in an otherwise forgettable play. Two young “modern men” find themselves in a land of unreality. One takes to it like a fish to water, while the other can’t get past the lack of logic and reason. And the latter guy ends up killing a man because why not? In a magic land where everything’s an illusion, where reality doesn’t dwell, why worry about anything?

Which brings me to the Trump assassination attempt conspiracy theories…

Dave’s Imaginary Regular Readers: “Oh, you’re finally getting to the fucking point?”

…and the fact that we have not one but two conspiracy theories on the right.

The Alex Jones/MAGA theory: The Secret Service, in (secret) service to THEE DEEP STATE, set Trump up to be shot. But a lucky head move on his part at the very last second saved him. “They” tried to kill MAGA, and “they” failed. Praise kek, groyp, and doge for that head tilt. Alex Jones says there was a second shooter, yet both missed the kill shot.

And then we have the Unz theory: Jews don’t lose. If Jews had genuinely wanted to kill Trump, they’d have succeeded. Jews never miss. The fact that Trump survived means that he was meant to. The Jew-backed “shooter” had a clear bead on the guy, so the “miraculous survival” is by itself proof that the entire thing is a charade, staged by the kikes to fool MAGA into thinking Trump is on their side.

Where do we find the logic, the reason, the through line of rationality here? Jones is applying none of his Sandy Hook skepticism. It’s not just that the video of the shooter’s dead body on the roof shows no cascade of blood (see last week’s column), it’s that the guiding principle of every conspiracy nutcase is “cui bono.” According to Jones and every similar lunatic, “cui bono” is all it takes to suss the truth of any event. The person who “bonos” is always the culprit. And Trump “bono’d” the most from the shooting. Heroic photo op, grazed ear injury, Biden drops out, classified documents case nixed.

CNBC did a whole piece on Trump’s post-shooting bonos.

I wrote about the “cui bono” idiocy in 2017—this is far from a new theme for me—so maybe it’s striking me more than you the extent to which it’s earth-shaking that Jones has dropped “cui bono” as his sleuthing tool of choice. It’s like Sherlock Holmes surrendering his spyglass. And nobody’s noticing it. The “noticers” aren’t noticing.

And according to Unz, the Jews faked the Trump shooting because they want him reelected…but if “they” hadn’t “stollen” the 2020 election he’d still be in office, so they robbed him of a victory only to then be like, “Oy, wotta mistake we made,” so they hoax up an assassination attempt when…I mean…if they control election outcomes, why not just re-steal the 2024 election for Trump? Why the need for a public spectacle? Just manipulate the election results.

To be fair, there are leftists who are calling the Trump shooting a false flag, and they’re proving my point that at the core there’s no difference between leftist and rightist lunatic ideologues. Mae Brussell and Alex Jones are the same beast. But damn, it’s fun to see MAGAs being Alex Jonesed by the left. Where’d the blood come from on Trump’s ear? He ducks down and suddenly it’s there when he stands up? That American flag photo-op pic is too perfect! Eyewitnesses at the event tell conflicting stories of what they saw (which according to Alex Jones is proof that an event was purposely faked as opposed to proof eyewitnesses are unreliable not due to conspiracy but honest memory imperfections). Where was the ear bandage the next day? Why’d it suddenly appear a day later the size of a pancake? And what about the spectators in the stand? Some don’t seem to be acting as I would if I were witnessing an assassination attempt.

Hey, leftists are just asking qwestchins! They’re noticing!

Seeing MAGAs get Jonesed by “qwestchins” might be the greatest pleasure I’ve taken all year. You embraced this shit—now eat it.

But the icing on the cake was that the Trump assassination attempt conspiracy theories came the same week that Candace Owens declared that she can no longer believe in a round earth, because she no longer believes in science. The earth may very well be flat, says the retarded ghetto welfare whore you shower with donations. Physical reality doesn’t exist, she says.

It’s Brigadoon. Ghost village, flat earth.

It’s astonishing—and horrific—that one of the highest-profile rightists who claims to oppose trannyism is now saying “science isn’t real.” The only argument against trannyism is that two-sex gender is an undeniable scientific reality. But now Owens is saying that “there is no science.” Okay, so in that case “a man who thinks he’s a woman becomes a woman” can’t be disproved. It’s as correct as “the earth is a floating pie tin.”

Jesus Christ.

Are any of you people actually enjoying this?

And some of the highest-profile rightist accounts on Twitter are claiming that Biden died weeks ago and was replaced by a robot or AI or a dude in a mask.

Yep, it’s all fun and games.

Except the thing is, the current rightist fetish of “everything’s fake we’re in the Matrix it’s all an illusion the earth is flat the Holocaust never happened” might be a poor long-term strategy. How can I best put this…if you’ve ever owned a working or herding dog, as I have, you know that anarchy makes them unstable. They need structure. Human children also need structure. Structure is important in keeping the world functioning. Structure means stability. Maybe the wackiest aspect of the Alex Jones “reality’s an illusion” dumbasses is that many of these loons are into crypto, a system dependent upon belief in the reality of the system. Belief makes crypto strong. If you stop believing, crypto fails.

Yet these same cretins joyfully scream, “There’s no reality! Believe in nothing,” and they don’t expect any societal repercussions. But of course there’ll be. Yes, it’s hilarious fun to tweet flat earth! Holohoax! But when you push the “it’s all an illusion” talking point, you’re going to divide the audience. Some, like the Gene Kelly character in Brigadoon, will eat it up. They’ll love it. But others, like the Van Johnson character, will check out. It will alienate them. If nothing matters and it’s all holograms and hoaxes, why even take part? Why vote?

As we approach November, rightists—not all, but way too many—are banking on “everything’s a staged op” as a winning strategy. Okay, roll them dice. Nobody listens to me anyway, so let’s just see if it works. Maybe Harris will prove such a bad candidate that this fetid strategy succeeds.

I make no predictions. I say nothing more than I’m curious to see how it turns out for you.

Best of luck.

I must admit to slightly mixed feelings about Argentina’s current libertarian President Javier Milei. On the one hand, he is a mentally disturbed chainsaw-wielding nutcase who has established a private kennel-cabinet of cloned psychic dogs who he thinks give him legitimate financial advice (see my article here). On the other hand, for a certified lunatic apparently being advised by puppies, he does have some highly sensible policy platforms (see my other, counterbalancing, article here).

I felt further ambivalence recently when hearing Milei had sacked his Undersecretary for Sports, Julio Garro, after Garro had demanded a public apology from Argentina’s all-conquering national football (as in “soccer,” if you’re American) team, who had just celebrated winning the Copa America tournament by singing a derogatory chant about their defeated “European” (or otherwise) opponents in the previous 2022 World Cup Final, France. According to Buenos Aires’ finest, “They all play in France, but they’re all from Angola…. Their mom is Nigerian/Their dad, Cameroonian/But in the [passport] document [it says] ‘Nationality: French.’”

The players only spoke the truth here. As such, President Milei didn’t think Garro was justified in demanding an apology of the team, arguing that “No government can tell what to comment, what to think, or what to do, to the World Champion Argentine National Team, or to any other citizen. For this reason, Garro is no longer Sports undersecretary.”

Quite right! It isn’t the job of politicians to place restrictions upon people’s free speech. But, by sacking Garro, wasn’t Milei sort of placing restrictions upon Garro’s free speech too?

Political Pitch
I suppose the problem comes when persons in positions of official power begin abusing their right to free speech to restrict the free speech of other, far less powerful, individuals, like Milei thought Garro was doing. Sticking with football/soccer, consider the case of Gareth Southgate, who has just stepped down from his role as manager of the England football team following their rather pleasing loss to Spain in the final of Euro 2024 on 14 July.

Unusually for a football manager, Southgate was not judged a success primarily on sporting grounds—because, although reaching two successive Euros finals, he never actually won any trophies at all, his immensely boring side continually benefiting from freakishly fortunate draws before then immediately losing to the first decent opposition they met.

But this didn’t matter, as his relentless obsession with abusing his position to promote DEI crap, from BLM to “mental health,” made him the ideal England manager for our times: useless at his job in a sporting sense, excellent at it in a propagandistic political sense.

Under the fashionably waistcoated Southgate, the entire team became transformed into a living platform for promoting equally fashionable new cults like Critical Race Theory and Rainbow Laces gay worship, all whilst England’s Football Association said sweet FA—because they themselves were in on the whole thing too, as were the vast majority of the adoring woke British media.

Seriously Foul Play
The most egregious Establishment embrace of Southgate came in the shape of playwright James Graham, author of the 2023 drama Dear England, named after an emetic 2021 “Open Letter to the Nation” penned by St. Gareth back in 2021. The play told the fascinating story of England’s progress to the final of Euro 2020, where they lost on penalties in the final to Italy after various black players missed their spot kicks, causing them to receive banana emojis online.

According to the BBC, the play addressed not only the vital issue of race but also how Gayboy Gareth “helped change notions of masculinity for today’s team” by forcing them to engage in collective homosexual acts with one another in the dressing room, at least metaphorically. A review in The Guardian informed us of how Southgate wheeled a psychologist named Pippa Grange into the team’s training area, where she made them all keep little girly diaries about their feelings, “to talk about their fear, to face it.” Fortunately Wayne Rooney had already retired from international football at this point, otherwise Gareth and Pippa would have had to have taught him how to hold a pen with his feet and write first.

In Graham’s own testimony, England’s loss to Germany in the semifinal of Euro ’96, when Southgate, then still a player, missed the penalty, which put his side out, was “the first time I cried over a football match.” It should have been the last time, too, James, you’re not a bloody baby, but instead it seems he has associated Southgate with his own subjective inner thoughts and feelings ever since.

Southgate was appointed to the England job in 2016, just after the Brexit referendum, and as such “The first story-beat of the play” is that “The country is in the grip of the Brexit referendum aftermath, and in comes Gareth” to sew up all the new political wounds and bring the nation back together. “There’s something Shakespearean about it, isn’t there?” Graham asked, evidently hoping a “healing” England victory would mean it was very much All’s Well That Ends Well.

In light of England’s recent Euro 2024 efforts, Graham’s opus is now being revived, both on stage and for BBC TV, with a brand-new climax. As such, Graham has been hitting the friendly media, promising to add further scenes about how, by making the team more gay, girly, and black, Southgate had allegedly performed “an institutional reset in our public life.” In a sense, I suppose he did. In Graham’s view, Southgate’s multiyear project “worked on all the measurable instruments except for the tiny thing about them winning the trophy.” That’s DEI for you in a nutshell. Maybe the England team’s next manager should be Kamala Harris?

Wokeness, to the Letter
What precisely was Gareth’s Southgate’s Letter to the Nation that formed the basis for Graham’s play? It was written in 2021, ahead of that summer’s Euro 2020 tournament (delayed from the previous year due to Covid-19; it wasn’t named by someone with dyscalculia) and addressed then-pressing issues like the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, mental hygiene, and social media abuse. The actual football came across very much as an afterthought.

In the spirit of Match of the Day, here are the edited highlights:

Dear England,

It has been an extremely difficult year…. And what I want to speak about today is much bigger than football…. [Everyone] has a different idea of what it actually means to be English…. This [multiracial England team] is a special group. Humble, proud and liberated in being their true selves. Our players are role models. And, beyond the confines of the pitch, we must recognise the impact they can have on society…. I have never believed that we should just stick to football…. I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players. It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate…. Why would you choose to insult somebody for something as ridiculous as the color of their skin? Why? Unfortunately for those people that engage in that kind of behaviour, I have some bad news. You’re on the losing side. It’s clear to me that we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society, and I know our lads will be a big part of that…. I am confident that young kids of today will grow up baffled by old attitudes and ways of thinking. For many of that younger generation, your notion of Englishness is quite different [e.g., for all the African and Arab ones imported over here and given free passports, like the Argies just sang about]…. I understand that on this island, we have a desire to protect our values and traditions…but that shouldn’t come at the expense of introspection and progress…. If we can do that, it will be a summer to be proud of.

Yours,
Gareth Southgate

Usually, footballers pay PR people to write their public communications for them, even illiterate tweets grunting “The boys done good.” In this particular instance, I have the horrible feeling Southgate may actually have written every last sanctimonious line.

Graham’s Crackers
You can see why someone like James Graham gets such a moral hard-on over the man. This is an actual word-wank the playwright had over him: “As much as the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the England manager looks after the soul of the nation.”

How so? For James “Euro ’96 Made Me Cry and So Did Brexit” Graham, writing in his cherished powder-pink Hello Kitty My Special Important Big Girl Emotions Diary 2024, which his mum bought him the day after he had his first period aged 39, Mr. Southgate “was everything we didn’t have in our politics at that time [the post-Brexit era]: a long-term plan, a genuine desire to unite people around a particular project, rather than divide people and cause upset and pain and toxicity,” like evil Tory PMs Boris Johnson, Teresa May, and Liz Truss, all of whom have cameos in his play, did.

What mendacious toss. Graham is best known as a political playwright, who, despite producing works with titles like Brexit: The Uncivil War, is clearly unable to conceive that culture wars, like football matches, take two sides to fight.

Apparently, Southgate is a “unifying” figure. If so, why did fans throw cups at him? Why did they boo when he needlessly encouraged his players to take the knee for BLM? Why did he pointlessly alienate others by telling TV he thought the Brexit vote had “racial undertones”? And if, as his Open Letter claimed, you should never “choose to insult somebody for something as ridiculous as the color of their skin,” why did he demand an “end to white privilege in football” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s completely sports-irrelevant death?

The more fans jeered, the more Southgate doubled down on his determination to “educate” them into thinking like he did. He could have just kept quiet and let his team’s football do the talking. Sadly, his team’s football was shit, so evidently this was no longer an option. To speak out in such a context is to do the actual dividing, to lace your mouth shut being by far the more productive course for not actually estranging people. “Togetherness” here is really just a ruling-class euphemism for “enforced conformity.”

Gareth Southgate made me hate the England team. Because I’m English.

He Shoots Himself, He Scores!
Now that he’s been told all this, how will James Graham’s forthcoming final-act rewrite of Dear England now conclude? Hopefully, with a highly dramatic suicide. I suggest that, the very morning after his resignation, Gareth sits down at his desk for the final time in his FA office, opens his morning mail, reads the first letter he finds, and places his head in his hands in pure Samuel Beckett-like existential despair, before going out onto the training pitch and immediately hanging himself from the nearest goalpost.

Why? Upon a big screen above the stage, the contents of the following Open Letter Reply From the Nation appear blown up in big, foot-high letters for all to read:

Dear Gareth,

Fuck off, and shut up.

Yours,
England

The Week’s Most Sciatic, Rheumatic, and Olympiadic Headlines

THE LONG HOT SUMMER GAMES
In the immortal words of Orson Welles, “Muah-ha-ha the French.” Arrogant when they should be humble (rude to tourists for no reason), humble when they should be arrogant (surrendering their nation to immigrant savages), the world’s version of “if I could buy you for what you’re worth and sell you for what you think you’re worth, I’d be a billionaire” is now hosting the Olympics.

And as expected the event is starting out stupid.

The French have declared the 2024 Olympiad the “climate change games.” And, showing the canny common sense that led them to try to civilize Haitians, the Frogs are launching their climate crusade by banning avocados.

Well, that’ll mend Mother Earth.

Yes, Paris officials have banned avocados from Olympic Village because of the “carbon imprint.” And whereas Mexicans love to lecture American whites for “disrespecting” their “national fruit” by calling guacamole “guac,” there’s been no protest from the Mexican team regarding the ban. Maybe that’s because no one knows there is a Mexican team (Mexico’s won only thirteen gold medals in the entire history of the Games, and all were in the leaf-blowing competition…which ironically is now banned because the blowers run on gas).

Worse still, Parisian Olympics officials have banned air-conditioning! Oh, and french fries are banned as well. A slap in the face to America’s black athletes: In searingly hot dorms with no AC, rooms in which no fry could possibly go cold (a black person’s dream), fries will not be allowed.

That’s just mean.

Also, the French banned hijabs on female athletes, leading to protests from Muslim nations.

Brilliant. In a year in which Israeli athletes will already have a target on their backs, make the Ali Akbars even angrier.

Perhaps Paris officials should get advice from Munich about how to handle a hostage crisis.

Wait…scratch that.

LA MARSEILL-YUCK
If you’ve never heard of Felix Bourg, get ready for your head to explode.

Literally.

In April 1922, Bourg decided to play the best prank in history (or at least the best until this year’s “Kamala’s the best we’ve got” prank the Democrats just pulled). Placing a stick of dynamite in his top hat, Bourg lit the fuse and went strolling through town, greeting friends with a friendly nod.

Then his head blew up.

There’s commitment to a bit, and there’s commitment to a bit.

The French reacted to the gag with such shock and outrage, they swore to never again tolerate humor. Hence their embrace of Jerry Lewis.

So don’t expect the Paris Olympics to be funny.

Intentionally, that is.

An obstacle faced by French Olympic authorities was that the Seine was too polluted for swimming (a people known for stinky cheese and body odor have smelly rivers? What a shock). So at great expense, the river was (kinda) cleaned. Which led the nation’s massive constituency of welfare recipients to bitch that the money should’ve been spent on them instead.

So—and this is true—the layabouts plan to re-pollute the river by mass-pooping in it before the swim events.

French “Resistance”? More like “Rear-sistance.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese Olympic swimming team, which tested positive for drugs so many times Kamala fellated them just for the contact high, has been allowed to compete, as long as they take regular drug tests during competition.

The Chins will now have the “privilege” of swimming in the Dungtze.

Frenchies, are you trying to start a new Covid?

DRESSAGED TO KILL
Adjusted for inflation, what’s Clint Eastwood’s most profitable movie? Dirty Harry? Million Dollar Baby? Unforgiven? Nope—it’s Every Which Way But Loose, in which Eastwood drives around Bakersfield in a pickup truck with a lovable orangutan named Clyde as they listen to country music while punching bikers in the face.

The film’s based on the work of Charlotte Brontë.

Sadly, the orangutan who played Clyde was beaten to death by his trainer for the crime of stealing a doughnut. According to the L.A. Times, the animal was “beaten for 20 minutes with a 3 1/2-foot ax handle. He died soon after of a cerebral hemorrhage.”

Okay, just try to enjoy that movie now. Even Sondra Locke’s ghost is like, “Damn, Clint, that’s some cold-ass brutality.”

To continue with the Olympics theme, Charlotte Dujardin, Britain’s gold-medal hopeful in the dressage category (“dressage” is of course show-horse riding, although in parts of Britain it’s also Eddie Izzard wearing a miniskirt and scratching his balls), had to pull out of the competition last week after video surfaced of her beating the living tar out of her horses.

Dujardin’s backup plan to compete while riding large bottles of glue was rejected by Olympic officials.

There’s no word on who leaked the video, but according to the AP, an anonymous source named “Wilbur” told them the horse personally complained “that psycho bitch is killing me.”

A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And this one gets whipped till his voice is hoarse.
You never heard of a talking horse?
Because Charlotte Dujardin disciplines him by force,
So he stays silent from fear, perforce.

JUST SAY NOTOTHEN
UCLA is one-third Asians studying STEM, one-third whites studying black history, and 3 percent blacks studying cold fries. And now this esteemed “educational institute” has hatched a genius idea to up its enrollment.

A rooftop garden where students can take psychedelic drugs.

Yes, put a bunch of nitwit youths ten stories up and give them LSD.

To be fair, the number of “I can fly” deaths might make the endeavor worthwhile.

UCLA’s odd plan comes as blue states struggle with increased drug-related crimes. Last month in Reedsport, Oregon, Joshua Heckathorn, a 20-year-old white slacker, got stoned on pot and killed 18,000 salmon in a hatchery by pouring bleach into the tanks because it made him giggle (to be fair, bleach has the electrolytes fish crave).

Last week fish-genocider Heckathorn (aka Adolphin Hitler, Pollock Pot, Joseph Sta-ling, Ayatollah Koimeini, Mako Zedong, and Ide Amin) got a whopping thirty days in jail, and he’s already out.

Heckathorn told The Oregonian, “Pass the bong…and the Clorox.”

Meanwhile in Virginia, after Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate (not to be confused with Paul Nudie-Gate, the scandal in which Rand Paul ran naked through Congress waving his wanker) complained of rising pot-related crime, State Dems replied that the problem would be solved via legalization…this the same week Politico reported that Colorado’s legal weed market is collapsing because the black market remains dominant.

It seems it’s not only the users who’ve broken their brains on pot; the pro-legalization politicians are right behind them.

TWERKPLACE VIOLENCE
DEI has produced one inadvertent benefit for whites: With whites kicked out of the workforce, disgruntled “people of color” have no one to target but other POCs.

Take the case of UPS driver Expedito De Leon. And honestly, has there ever been a better name for a delivery guy than “Expedito”? He was born for the job, like a cook named Delicioso or a septic tank cleaner named Caca. Sadly, Expedito was murdered by his lifelong friend and fellow UPS driver Jalipa Fontanoza (whose name seems more suited for a Taco Bell menu item). After an office fight, Jalipa trailed Expedito on his Irvine, California, route and shot him fourteen times. He then took the corpse and threw it over a homeowner’s fence to dent it, because UPS delivery habits die hard.

And last month in San Francisco, a discrimination lawsuit was filed by Asian ex-fireman Gabriel Shin over a 2022 attack that left him permanently disabled. His crew had been ordered to hire a black man because the tiny Chins at the station kept getting tossed around by the firehose. So the station hired ungentle giant Robert Muhammad, a man simultaneously tightly wound and not tightly wrapped. Immediately, Muhammad’s coworkers saw signs of mental instability (like, more than normal in angry blacks). He became paranoid that the “slant-eyes” were talking about him behind his back (don’t ask what he thought they were putting in his Coke). And for their part, the “forever-Democrat” Asians tried to mollify the guy, even to the extent of offering to work his shifts if it would stop his outbursts.

No dice. Muhammad fixated on Shin as the “Chink enemy,” and on Shin’s day off, Muhammad grabbed a hydrant wrench from the station, drove to Shin’s house, and turned him into Pow Zedong with a furious combination of blows to the arms, head, and ribs.

Practically comatose (“the Great Sleep Forward”), Shin’s life was saved when a white neighbor came to his rescue with a handgun and Muhammad fled (that the white neighbor could differentiate between a Chinaman’s pained screams and normal Chinese conversational screeching was impressive).

The city refused to fire Muhammad. Instead—and this isn’t a joke—it fired Shin when he refused to drop the charges. The city’s fire chief Jeanine Nicholson, who never neglects to boast “I’m LESBIAN” during every interview, personally okayed booting the Cantonkneecapped Shin as punishment for his racism.

So now Shin’s suing the city for discrimination, claiming that Muhammad—who still works for the SFFD—was given preferential treatment because he’s black, while Shin is unemployed and crippled.

Shin then yelled Kamala 2024!

Coda (also not a joke): When a process server went to the station to hand Muhammad legal documents, Muhammad followed the guy in his car and tried to run him off the road.

It seems at the moment that between calling the fire department or letting your house burn, San Franciscans are safer doing the latter.

A straw poll of taxi drivers in Paris that I conducted in the run-up to the Olympics suggested less than enthusiasm for them. While such straw polls may not even be representative of taxi drivers, let alone of the population as a whole, this is a method employed by many journalists and is often as accurate as any other. Taxi drivers have sensitive antennae.

Far from salivating at the prospect of increased fares, most of those to whom I spoke wanted to abscond from the city for the duration of the Games: They had decided to take their annual holidays while they lasted. They were exasperated by the constant roadworks beforehand that added greatly to the difficulty and aggravation of getting round the city, all for an ephemeral festival in which they took no interest.

The Marquis de Custine, in his great book Russia in 1839, remarked with regard to Tsarist Russian military parades that tyrannies go to great lengths to produce trifles, a remark subsequently borne out in all communist dictatorships. But when democracies hold the Olympic Games they are not far behind. Parisian life has been disrupted for months by the preparations for them, which will have cost far more than they returned. You can rely on almost any government to make bad investments.

It was claimed by enthusiasts for the Games that they would bring in extra tourists: But Paris, with 44 million visitors a year, hardly stands in need of yet more. On the contrary, there are often so many tourists that it appears on the sidewalks that there must be a crowd going to or being disgorged from a sporting stadium nearby. At St. Michel, I have had sometimes to queue as a pedestrian merely to cross the road at a crossing.

But the Olympics have had the reverse effect to the one intended. Air France reports a significant drop in the number of people wishing to come to the city. Hotels are less full than usual, and prices have fallen rather than risen, as was confidently, but mistakenly, expected. Only the price of a Métro ticket has doubled. Ordinary tourists want to avoid the city during the Games, and I think they are right to do so.

The Games have been a powerful stimulus to authoritarianism. The world situation being what it is, tight security measures against terrorism and internal disruption have to be great. A left-wing deputy to the Assemblée nationale, whose constituency is largely Muslim, has said that Israeli athletes were not welcome in the Olympics, hardly an attempt to cool the temperature.

Tens of thousands of policemen have been deployed for the thankless task of making the Games safe, which have had to be made proof against drone attack. It is said that 20,000 homeless illegal immigrants, some of them sheltering in shantytowns along the highways into the city, have been swept up and dispersed throughout the country. I am not a supporter of illegal immigration or its consequences, but this has been done not to solve the problem but to mislead visitors to the Games and make them feel more comfortable or less uncomfortable: the kind of thing that dictatorships do.

People whom I know will not be permitted to drive their cars during the Games and will have to carry passes to gain access to their own streets and homes. To avoid living under a kind of curfew, they are leaving the city for the country.

And all for what? The last thing the Games are about is international friendship: International rivalry is more like it. The most dreadful regimes have often tried to justify or legitimate themselves by the number of medals their athletes have won, often at great and inhuman cost to the athletes themselves, who have been drugged and all but tortured from an early age.

This nationalist rivalry is nothing new and is an inexpungible aspect of the Games. Recently, I read the account of the first modern Olympics, held in Athens in 1896, by Charles Maurras, later to be a supporter of Marshal Pétain. It is clear that a kind of febrile nationalism was present from the first, just waiting to be exploited by the worst of totalitarians, as if the performance of some athletic feat marginally better than anyone else redounded to the glory of the father- or motherland of the winning athlete and justified or excused the suppression of dissent, the murder of opponents, and the imprisonment in abominable conditions of untold thousands. Only one major country has consistently stood out in its resistance to the fatuous Olympian “ideal,” so-called—India.

Most of the people to whom I have talked, both in Paris and elsewhere, regarded the Games beforehand with gloom and a sense of foreboding. They thought of them as the pet project imposed on the population by a self-promoting, not to say megalomaniac, political class. The criterion of success of the Games, as far as they were concerned, was an end to them without a serious terrorist incident having taken place—not exactly indicative of an anticipation of joy. And they thought that the most likely legacy of the Games, barring a serious incident, would be a further mountain of debt.

The London Olympics of 2012 were deemed a great success because they seemed to go smoothly and nothing terrible happened during them. This was in a world situation considerably less fraught than the present one, but still they left the bitter aftertaste of debt with little to show for it except a hideous, contorted, and pointless steel tower designed by the sculptor Anish Kapoor that only broke even for a time during the Covid lockdown when no one was allowed to visit it.

Curiously enough, back in 2005, when it was announced that London and not Paris would host the 2012 Olympics, the French were very disappointed. It was the third time in twenty years that Paris had been rejected by the International Olympic Committee as the site of the Olympics. “The French,” wrote Jacques Julliard, the historian and journalist, “had the impression of a deep injustice, almost a conspiracy…. It was a day of great national humiliation.”

And now many think, “If only the International Olympic Committee had rejected Paris a fourth time!”

Theodore Dalrymple’s latest book is Ramses: A Memoir, published by New English Review.

Alcoholics Anonymous is no longer a fellowship of men and women, as used to be reassuringly stated at the start of every meeting.

It’s now a “fellowship of people,” because AA is embracing gender ideology, attempting to increase ethnic membership, and is bringing in a new safeguarding policy that has already taken aim at men with criminal convictions.

This fall, it will publish a Plain Language version of the Big Book, in which words are changed for “gender balance” and the program “made accessible to fifth grade reading level.”

It’s hard to think of an organization more likely to lose every ounce of its usefulness once wokeness gets to work on it.

When they have finished polishing up the messy business of getting sober to bring it into the age of hurt feelings, and made roomfuls of drunks “safe” and “equal” by today’s definition, it’s hard to imagine what will be left.

Moreover, the erosion of gritty old AA in candlelit backrooms may well happen by stealth unless more members like me break their anonymity to tell the wider world what is going on, risking a form of ostracizing akin to what happens to Scientologists who break ranks.

Traditionally, of course, what happens in meetings should stay in meetings. But when criminals who have done their time are banned under the guise of keeping women safe from possible future harm, Minority Report-style, secrecy is not the best option.

People who don’t go to AA blithely assume, I think, that it is old-fashioned and unchanging. In fact, it is changing just as much as any other organization, it’s just that its members aren’t allowed to talk about the lunacy being enacted, and all public debate is stifled, effectively, under the anonymity principle.

Having been sober 23 years and a constant attendee in all that time, I was dismayed when I encountered in Surrey, England, what turned out to be a concerted attempt from the “top” of AA GB to force a politically correct agenda on the membership in a way that ought not to be possible under its bottom-up structure, by which the grassroots membership is meant to decide everything, and a form of benign anarchy is meant to prevail.

I must point out, having reached out to AA World Services in New York, that they distance themselves from a lot of what is happening in Britain, and when I talk to my friends in America they often say, “British AA has lost the plot.”

But if that is the case, World Services might want to consider intervening to protect its brand, because it was an American pioneer who first invented this, and it is arguably one of America’s finest-ever exports.

Specifically, I discovered that a question was corporately staged at AA’s 57th general service conference in York, England, in April 2023, to promote safeguarding.

This conference, incidentally, also agonized about how to encourage more alcoholics from ethnic minorities because the membership of AA “is predominantly white.”

A debate noted the need to explore “the barriers to entry” for black and Asian people. Well, the main barrier to entry is Muslims not being allowed to drink by their own culture, I would have thought. So unless they’re suggesting we get religiously teetotal people drunk in order to then get them into AA, they should let that disparity go.

Leaving that lunacy aside, I was leaked an email trail in which the general secretary of AA GB instructs a grassroots member many months ahead of this conference, in contravention of all AA practice, on the wording and tabling of a question on the need for “safeguarding officers” in meetings.

“Just added a couple of things and amended slightly…please submit later on today if possible. With much thanks and gratitude. LIF,” writes the general secretary, with LIF being a coded sign-off meaning Love in Fellowship.

In the event, the idea met with little enthusiasm among delegates. The only decision reached was that it was up to individual groups, and even that did not gain the two-thirds majority needed to enforce it. But the debate convinced a lot of people that this was the way things were going.

When safeguarding officers then started appearing, apparently spontaneously from the membership, people accepted them. And when one that I encountered started issuing edicts, breaching AA’s hallowed third tradition (the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking), that was almost overwhelmingly accepted too.

This is nothing less than the unraveling of what stockbroker Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith invented nearly a hundred years ago in the Midwest, after Bill didn’t want to drink in the bar of The Mayflower Hotel, Akron, one night and reached for the phone, and was put in touch with fellow drinker Bob, through a series of amazing coincidences.

Learning that two drunks can keep each other in remission by talking and helping others like themselves, often going into unsafe situations to do so, they began the ever-expanding miracle of AA.

It has lasted so long both because it is so loose in its rules, and because, in terms of its central beliefs, it trades on moral certainties. I would argue it is still firmly rooted in Christian principles. Twelve Steps based on moral and spiritual aims, with promises at the end similar to those in the Bible. Twelve traditions that clearly set out that anyone can come, and members must never cast anyone out, no matter how difficult their behavior.

So what happens when those moral certainties and Christian principles are called into question by trendy secularism, by wokeism, and by a concern for safeguarding women not just from potential harm, but from hurt feelings, at the cost of an open-door policy that has always allowed felons and troublemakers access because that is the whole point?

I first became aware of the changing tone a few years ago, when the preamble started being adapted in meetings to get rid of “men and women.” I noticed a lot more members than usual were closing meetings by inviting people to join them in the serenity prayer “using the word God as they understood Him, Her, It, or Them.” So stupid.

I heard the main speaker at one meeting say, “I would like to tell you what happened to me as a child, but I don’t want to trigger anybody. I’ve been told not to share it.”

Of course, this is the way the world is going. But if you can’t share your darkest trauma in a self-help group, where can you share it?

Meanwhile, the rewrite of the Big Book has produced less a plain language version, from the leaked excerpts I’ve seen, and more a plain stupid version.

To make it “gender balanced” they have made a metaphorical mention of a jaywalker female, for no reason.

The original text is poetry. “War fever ran high in the New England town…’ is one of the best openings to any book. They say the simple version is needed because of falling literacy levels. In which case, why bother with any book?

But the worst part is the drive to protect women from encounters with men in what is arguably the most obviously unsuitable place for any woman, or man, to search for dates. No one should do it, and if you do get involved romantically with a fellow member, expect disaster and you won’t be disappointed. And yet…

Around the time of coming back to meetings after lockdown, a year before that question started being arranged for the 2023 conference, a member I knew began to be informed he was being banned from meetings—eventually over a dozen—because he was allegedly flirting with women, and because he had previous convictions relating to women. These were nonviolent and related to long-term partners.

A member calling himself “the safeguarding officer,” and whose name eventually turned up on that email exchange about the conference with the general secretary—surprise, surprise—issued a “safeguarding alert” about the banned member to 200 meetings in two counties warning women not to give out their phone number. Hysteria broke out. The banned member was verbally and physically attacked in meetings.

I fought the man’s corner, and without naming anyone but myself, I wrote about the need to defend the ability of convicted criminals to access meetings, as long as they didn’t disrupt them on the night.

So ended my unquestioning loyalty to the fellowship, for which I incurred the wrath of AA. I was approached by members at meetings and told I was considered “a problem.” I received lengthy emails from the chairman of AA GB containing pious lectures about behavior.

“What is this, Scientology? The Amish?” I kept asking, incredulous. In fact, both those organizations would behave much better. At one point a friend rang me and told me that a senior member of the board had called me a “nut job” in remarks that had gone round like wildfire. My response: “Of course I’m a nut job. I’m in AA.”

Attempting to cleanse its meetings of difficult people is obviously bad business for Alcoholics Anonymous. There will be no one left in meetings.

I should add that up until now, the history of AA is remarkably void of violence, nor have there ever been reports of incidents of prejudice.

The meetings have always policed themselves well, and they continue to do so, mostly oblivious, with the majority of the membership unwilling or unable to question what is changing.

For those long enough sober to look into it, a new safeguarding policy document reads like a child has written it, and the number of banned members grows. They include, most shamefully, a schizophrenic lady in London who had been attending for years but was voted out permanently a few months ago after she shouted at someone during an obvious breakdown.

It is so often the irony that wherever you have an organization that is banging on about inclusivity and the need to protect feelings, there you will find the most exclusive membership policy, the worst infighting, and a good deal of hurt.

I see that Democrats are going with the image of Kamala Harris as a bad-ass prosecutor.

Hey, wait! Maybe now they’ll finally have an opportunity to mention that Donald Trump is a CONVICTED FELON. Did you know he was found guilty of THIRTY-FOUR FELONIES by a jury? (I’m not sure where, but it must have been in a neutral jurisdiction.)

Thus, Harris’ first speech since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee began with her boasting about the cases she’d handled as San Francisco district attorney:

“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

OK, Democrats, you want to make this campaign about crime? Game on. Guess who is one of the principal figures responsible for the crime wave currently engulfing California?

That would be Kamala Harris.

As attorney general, it was her job to give propositions appearing on the ballot accurate titles and explanatory summaries. In order to fool the voters into passing Proposition 47 — decriminalizing crime — and Proposition 57 — allowing the release of thousands of violent criminals — Harris intentionally lied to the voters about what these laws would do.

Proposition 47 basically turned every crime into a “misdemeanor.” Grand theft, commercial burglary and possession of illegal narcotics — all misdemeanors.

Theft of anything worth less than $950 — even theft of a gun — became a misdemeanor, no more consequential than a waiter giving a straw to someone who didn’t ask for one. As Californians have since learned, that $950 cap does not include the tens of thousands of dollars required to repair smashed car windows, store fronts or display cases.

As a result, smash-and-grab robberies have become the new sport in the Golden State, leaving entire inner-city neighborhoods without a pharmacy. The police don’t even respond to thefts of less than $950. Retail stores have to keep their entire inventory under lock and key, including ordinary items, like shampoo and toothpaste — and those are the ones that aren’t closing permanently. San Francisco’s landmark Union Square shopping district is now plastered with “For Lease” and “Going Out of Business” signs. Roughly 50% of all videos on the internet are clips of California “teens” dashing out of upscale stores with armloads of stolen goods — Gucci, Prada, Burberry, Luis Vuitton.

Last year, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco topped the list of the U.S. cities with the most retail theft, according to the National Retail Federation. A fourth California city, Sacramento, came in at No. 7. These days, when a customer tries to actually pay for something, the cashier calls the manager.

The shoplifting is so pervasive that, earlier this year, a Target shoplifter strolled out of the store right past Gov. Gavin Newsom. During a CNN report on the rash of thefts in San Francisco, three shoplifters hit the CVS as they were filming.

Also good for business: Tourists are warned not to rent cars, because they’ll only be broken into. Drug addicts clog the sidewalks, writhing in their own needles and fecal matter.

How did Harris describe a proposition that would declare open season on the law-abiding? She titled Prop 47 “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” something I cannot even say without doing air quotes.

For her next act of breathtaking mendacity, Harris deceived voters about Prop 57, which allowed the early release of thousands of violent criminals, including those convicted of attempted murder, grand theft, child molestation, drug use and possession and drive-by shootings.

Among the violent offenders given early release because of Prop 57 is Gregory Gadlin, sentenced to 35 years to life for assaulting his girlfriend with a 7-inch butcher knife, slashing her in the face, back, stomach and hand, leaving her with limited mobility.

Gadlin had previously been convicted of raping his 11-year-old niece, forcing her to orally copulate him and urinating in her mouth.

And before that, Gadlin was convicted of rape and sodomy of a pregnant 17-year-old. He’d offered to drive the girl to a hospital after she’d been attacked by two girls but, instead, took her to his home, where he hit her in the face, raped her, sodomized her and forced her to orally copulate him.

Another violent criminal released under Prop 57 was Luis Steven Flores, convicted of assault with a deadly weapon (a semi-automatic gun), battery on a peace officer and battery of another inmate.

And yet another violent criminal, Alfredo “Freddy” Casillas, shot a rival gang member and nearly beat him to death. His “good behavior” in prison consisted of stabbing a fellow inmate and hiding a homemade weapon in his cell.

The parole board conceded that both men had an “extensive history of violence” — but then cited Prop 57 and released them both.

And how did Harris title Prop 57? “The Early Parole for Non-Violent Criminals and Juvenile Court Trial Requirements Initiative.” Her summary told voters that “a ‘yes’ vote supported increasing parole and good behavior opportunities for felons convicted of nonviolent crimes …” (Do you know how to do air quotes?)

Harris on attempted murder, the rape of a child, battery of a police officer: Let ’em all out!

But she’s a real crime slayer when it comes to Trump describing his extortion payment to Stormy Daniels as a “legal expense” on a campaign finance report. (Democrats get to “34 felonies” because Trump wrote “Legal expense” on 34 different documents. It’s like saying a bank robber who stole $34 committed 34 bank robberies.)

On the plus side, maybe Harris’ ludicrously pro-criminal record will finally convince Trump to stop bragging about all the black criminals he released in a quixotic (and moronic) bid to win the black vote — following the advice of his trusted advisers, Jared Kushner and Kim Kardashian.

TRUMP: Let’s see … should I sacrifice the votes of millions of Americans fed up with crime in order to get up to 20% of 13% of the vote? Why, that’s 0.026% of the vote. YES! Hey, guys! Biden called you “super predators.” Did you know I’m letting people out of jail?

Instead of going on and on (and on) about his deep esteem for black criminals, here’s a non-idiotic idea for Trump.

The 30-second spot:

(Footage of a mob mass looting a store)

“In California, this used to be a felony. Thanks to Kamala Harris, it’s now a misdemeanor and effectively legal. She wrote the misleading wording for the ballot proposition that made it possible.”

Michael Mailer, son of the great novelist Norman Mailer, is a Harvard grad, a liberal, and an outstanding amateur boxer who advanced further in the Golden Gloves competition than any other Harvard wimp ever has or ever will, for that matter. Michael is a talented film director and producer who has numerous movies under his belt and is at present working nonstop when not arguing with yours truly about politics. He’s also my closest friend.

My beef with the movies is a simple one: the virtue signaling practiced by greedy little bald fat men who cast black actors as historical white persons. It not only signals total dishonesty, intellectually and otherwise, it is pathetic in its efforts to virtue-signal and please the left. Totalitarian regimes have tried this in the past. I remember as a child watching a UFA German production of Titanic. The only officer who did not panic but rescued many women and children pushed aside by eager-to-save-themselves fat Anglo-American capitalists was a German. I remember telling my Prussian nanny afterward how lucky those he saved were to be dealing with a German. (Fraulein agreed.)

So, are these modern Hollywood types like the Nazis, so scared of the truth they have to invent black dukes in Regency Britain? Actually, it’s a laughing matter, and what we should be doing is what an audience member did when he told Bono—who had pompously declared during a concert in Glasgow that “Every time I clap my hands a child dies in Africa”—“Well, stop fucking doing it, then.” We should boycott any movie that dishonestly presents the past and stop rewarding cowardice.

And by this we are not in any way denying past injustices, but representing fictional and factual history. The lefty point is, of course, that they feel injustices more keenly than anyone else, which is the biggest lie of all. Having a black actor play Hamlet as a top drug dealer’s son in Harlem and uttering, “To is or not to is, is the fucking question,” does not benefit anyone, starting with the fools who might pay to watch it. The trouble with America today is that everything is seen through the lens of oppressor and oppressed. The media and the movies perpetrate this myth, and I for one no longer read, listen to, or believe a word the media says, and do not watch movies made after 1959. (Except Michael’s films, and especially Heart of Champions.) Viewing ourselves as morally superior to our ancestors is a crock, and reinterpreting classic works an even bigger crock. But let’s have some fun.

Let’s create the sprawling saga that came to define the antebellum South as a new-and-improved Gone With the Wind movie. No longer black stereotypes in evidence, but Captain Butler as a gay man secretly in love with Ashley Wilkes, played by a black man, with Mamie as a trans, and Scarlett obsessed with Melanie, a Native American whose name was Florensiensis Naledi back out West. It’s bound to work and please the self-obsessed morons who now demand warnings when reading Papa Hemingway’s classics. The super aggressive trans lobby might take umbrage at Mamie’s weight, but to hell with them. And the same goes for the late Edith Wharton, who would have been even more aghast viewing this version of Gone than if she had spotted a turd in the middle of her drawing room.

By now, dear readers, you probably have guessed I’m no Hollywood groupie. Modern Hollywood, that is. The irony is that the few actors I have known were not only gentlemen in the old sense of the word, but became close friends with yours truly, politics aside. The late David Niven was a Gstaad neighbor and was in life as elegant and word-perfect as in his films. David was a very nice man with a good war record, and self-deprecating to a fault. As was Roger Moore, an even closer friend and neighbor, whose jokes were the funniest ever and were matched only by his generosity for the needy. And then there’s Harvey Keitel, whom I met at a party and when introduced to him asked him what was a nice Jewish boy like him doing in the Marine Corps instead of being down in Wall Street screwing Christians? “Who is this guy?” Harvey exploded to no one in particular. “I like him.” It was the start of a you-know-what friendship. The late Louis Jourdan, heartthrob of the ’50s, ditto, and Mathew Modine, as sweet and nice as they come.

Unfortunately, today the f-word has become a synonym for sincerity. The movies are mainly responsible for this, the lack of talent of writers and directors being exposed as millions of f-bombs are uttered nonstop by trained seals, sorry, actors. All it takes is a look at films like The Best Years of Our Lives, All About Eve, and The Razor’s Edge, all great classics without a single f-word ever necessary, and one realizes how far our culture has declined. And it gets even more painful at the sight of Americans in front of brain-dead celebrities and those who interview them, the degrading self-abasement a true portrait of our time.

I considered writing about presidential politics, but the way things are going lately, by the time you read this on Wednesday, we may well be on to a whole new storyline I can’t anticipate.

So, I’m going to go off topic and reflect on a new paper by two economists about an early example of Cancel Culture, the 1947–1957 Red Scare in the movie industry, “McCarthyism, Media, and Political Repression: Evidence from Hollywood” by Hui Ren and Tan Tanyi Wang. It’s reflective of the rise of intellectual imperialism among economists:

Beyond the accused, we find that the anti-communist crusade also had a chilling effect on film content, as non-accused filmmakers avoided progressive topics. The decline in progressive films, in turn, made society more conservative.

The two economists congratulate themselves:

To our knowledge, we are the first to show that the Hollywood witch-hunt not only ruined individual careers but also changed the types of films Americans were exposed to, reshaping their political preferences in the process.

To make their case, the authors have assembled a vast trove of numbers from sources like the Internet Movie Database.

Yet, in reality, of course, few topics have been written about at vaster length over the past three generations than mid-century movie industry politics. And, despite their lack of data science chops, much the same theses have been put forward by historians and film critics for my entire lifetime: The House Un-American Activities Committee inquests in 1947 and 1951 helped push the film industry, and perhaps the country, away from the left.

But historians and critics aren’t economists, so they don’t count.

Academic economists used to write largely about dry topics like interest rates, but over the decades they’ve self-confidently shoved their way into more fun subjects that long were the province of now-woebegone academics like sociologists and cultural studies professors.

The economics profession has been doing better economically than other social sciences in recent years, in part because many elite colleges feel that offering a business administration major would make them look déclassé. So, students who intend upon business careers often find themselves majoring in economics, because, at least, economics is related to money. So, colleges still need teaching economists, even as undergrads flee the humanities and most of the social sciences to computer science.

And changes in technology have created more private industry jobs for economists with doctorates. When I majored in economics in 1980, professors put a fair amount of effort into explaining what microeconomic theory revealed about how to maximize profits in business. But when I went into the corporate world, I quickly discovered that businesses instead often ran on traditional simplistic rules of thumb. Why? Not because executives didn’t know anything about economics (like me, many had majored in the field), but because in 1982 they didn’t have the practical tools to collect data and change prices in real time.

Today, however, Amazon, having all the data in the world, employs something like 400 workers with PhDs in economics to figure out how best to manipulate prices.

For example, a few days ago, Amazon put the Kindle digital download version of my anthology Noticing (normally $29.95) on sale for $9.95. How long will it be at this price? Beats me. Amazon itself might not know. But I’d imagine that the algorithm that decides when to lower and raise prices was worked out by a bright microeconomist to maximize the wealth of Jeff Bezos.

The explosion in data availability has made the economics profession less theoretical and more empirical.

For instance, when I took financial economics in MBA school in 1981, my term paper was on whether the results of World Series games involving New York baseball teams drove the Dow Jones average up or down. If the Yankees won, did Wall Street traders feel more optimistic and thus bid up stocks?

Back then, I had to thumb through thick reference books and jot down a few hundred numbers with a pencil.

It was dull work.

(My finding: No, as the Efficient Market Hypothesis would predict, the outcome of World Series games had no detectable impact on New York Stock Exchange prices. But NYSE volume was down during daytime World Series games in New York, presumably because brokers were at the ballpark.)

Not surprisingly, back then, economists inclined toward the kind of theorizing you could do on a chalkboard. But now, economics grad students tend to be aces at finding and analyzing data.

For example, one of the most innovative economists of the 21st century is Harvard’s Raj Chetty, who has built amazing databases out of previously confidential numbers, such as your 1040 tax returns. Granted, Chetty is notably less than fecund in coming up with theoretical insights to explain his findings. But still, the data he has pulled together is extraordinary.

These changes in the field of economics have done a lot of good. But let me point out some tendencies of modern economists.

For one thing, the globalization of American economics has led to many of the most wizardly data analysts being Asians like Raj Chetty, Hui Ren, and Tan Tanyi Wang, clearly people with little intuitive feel for U.S. realities. America is a complicated place, so, despite all that is written about the USA, you can’t expect even 150-IQ foreigners to be adept at understanding it.

Another problem is that contemporary economists tend to be averse to giving examples from their data. For instance, in “McCarthyism, Media, and Political Repression,” the authors argue that the anti-Communist witch hunt led to fewer progressive films being made.

But what are progressive films, you might ask? Well, the authors have gone to great lengths to make up a list of “Benchmark Progressive Films” from Hollywood’s golden age. Yet they leave their list out of their main paper and relegate it to their data appendix, perhaps fearing that a list of movies would be too unprofessionally interesting.

The most famous of their progressive examples turn out to be three Depression-era prewar movies: Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 Modern Times, 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Preston Sturges’ 1941 comedy Sullivan’s Travels about a rich movie director who impersonates a hobo to get the background to film the socially conscious novel O Brother, Where Art Thou? Then, in more prosperous 1947, the concerns of progressive movies seemed to evolve from brokeness to wokeness with two films about anti-Semitism: Gentleman’s Agreement and Crossfire.

Meanwhile, on their list of “conservative benchmark films” is 1939’s very funny anti-Communist Ninotchka, in which Greta Garbo plays a stern Soviet commissar sent to Paris:

Buljanoff: How are things in Moscow?

Ninotchka: Very good. The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.

I’m guessing cowriter Billy Wilder came up with that line.

Lists of movies are intriguing. But they tend to raise more questions than they answer. For example, what are the politics of Sturges fans the Coen Brothers? I’ve seen all 19 of their movies, but I still don’t know.

Hence, you could wind up arguing for hours about the exact political leanings of most of the best movies. For instance, The Grapes of Wrath was based on the novel by John Steinbeck and starred Henry Fonda, both left-of-center personalities, but it was directed by the conservative John Ford, who was so memorably portrayed recently by fellow conservative director David Lynch in liberal Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.

A related unfortunate tendency of modern data-crunching economists is that they don’t like sorting their data and then presenting the tail ends for readers to inspect and opinionize about. Economists tend to assume that the cardinal sin is to notice outliers because they couldn’t possibly be representative of tendencies. So the authors don’t mention that screenwriter Lester Cole of the martyred 1947 Hollywood Ten admitted that all Ten had been Communist Party USA members at one point.

On the other hand, one mistake that economists, being not as politically correct as other social scientists, make less is to confuse correlation with causation.

Thus, I’m dubious about the authors’ contention that movies drove voting, rather than movies reflecting, with an erratic lag, broader cultural shifts. I was around in the early 1950s, but I can vividly recall Reagan’s 1980s, when a large fraction of movies were as liberal as in the 1970s, but a handful of conservative films like Top Gun turned out to be surprise hits.

For instance, Ghostbusters’ anti-EPA regulator scenes turned out to be sensations during the 1984 election season. Still, the inspiration for the movie was not state-of-the-art Reaganism, but Dan Aykroyd’s ancestral involvement with not-terribly-fashionable Spiritualism, going back to his great-grandfather trying to contact the dead through séances.

Although American culture turned around to be pro-business in the 1980s, the current spate of movies about great moments in corporate marketing like Air, Flamin’ Hot, and Tetris took several decades longer to come about.

It would make perfect sense if the late 1980s had produced a lot of movies about early-1980s products like Reebok and the IBM PC-XT.

But they didn’t.

Sometimes, that’s just the way things work out.

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and untermenschen. This Jew is no happy concentration camper, as the Trump assassination attempt wrecked my summer of sleep.

See, I hate summer. The weather, the bugs, the AC bills. So in June I hatched a plan: I’d go off the wagon, drink from July 1 through September, and sleep the entire summer away.

I pre-wrote ten columns. That meant I could go ten weeks without having to be sober enough to be cogent.

What could go wrong?

Well, a John Hinckley/Mark David Chapman-looking “Rust Belt farmer mated with a pig and didn’t have the decency to kill the offspring for bacon” shot up a Trump rally, and now the dog days of summer are hounding me, because a couple of the columns I wrote last month need to be updated.

This one about conspiracy-mongering needs an update, as the Trump shooting “theories” are too good to pass up. Still, I’ll let it run as written in June, and I’ll do a part II next week.

Did I ever tell you about the hippie chick and the veal?

Tina was a real sweetie, quite blonde, quite pretty. In the early 1990s we traveled together to Nazi death camp sites because I know how to show a girl a good time.

She was a self-styled New Age guru. One of her favorite mottos was, “Yer beliefs determine yer reality!”

And I’d ask, “You mean figuratively, like, if you have a positive outlook, you’ll be better able to deal with adversity?”

And she’d respond, “No, literally. If you have cancer but believe you don’t, then you don’t. If you believe you’re a millionaire, you’re a millionaire. Yer beliefs change yer reality.”

“You can alter the physical world with ‘yer beliefs’?”

“Yep!”

And I’d say, “You know that’s batshit insane, right?”

And she’d flash the condescending smile of a wise woman benevolently tolerating a fool.

So one night we’re in Vienna, at a fine restaurant. And I see they have veal. And hot damn do I love veal. I ordered the scaloppine, and Tina barked at me, “That’s baby cow! Precious baby cow! How can you eat that?”

And I replied, “I believe it’s a cucumber salad. And since my beliefs determine my physical reality, it actually is a cucumber salad.”

I’ll never forget her shocked response: “No! No! You’re not supposed to use it for that!”

Tina’s “guru” bullshit was intended for hippie-dippy morons who seek to flee reality. And I got a hard-on of happiness turning that lunacy around on her, and against her.

If you’re well-versed in conspiracy-mongering—the Alex Jones/Jim Fetzer “false flag” stupidity—you know that the keystone phrase of “Everything’s a staged psy-op” is “Where’s the blood?”

These “sleuths” will view photos of a crime scene and declare, “Where’s the blood?” and you’re supposed to go, “Oh wow, right! It must be a fake because there’s no blood! Jim Fetzer is a SLOOTH!”

I wrote about this eight years ago in a piece called “False Flaggots” (read it here). A founding myth of the Jones/Fetzer cult is that the average human body contains as much blood as a large aboveground swimming pool, so when a body’s punctured, the blood will flow endlessly, for hours, for blocks.

When murderous incel Elliot Rodger took his own life at the close of his 2014 rampage, the “proof” it was a false flag was that the car in which he shot himself in the head didn’t fill up with blood that cascaded down the street like a tsunami. The idea that the blood from the head wound could be contained inside the car, absorbed by the upholstery and carpeting, was ridiculous to the supersleuths.

Now, you can show these idiots any number of historical photos, like pics from the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, for example—a garage full of bullet-riddled men, some corpses with a small trickle of blood, some with zero trickle, but no “tsunami.” You can try to explain how blood congeals (no flaggot has ever once used the term “livor mortis,” and no, that’s not one of my wacky puns), how things like clothing and temperature can influence blood trails, but they won’t listen.

With the Boston Marathon bombing, the “proof” that it was a false flag was the pic of the guy with his leg blown off being wheeled away. “That leg should be spraying a geyser of blood like a firehose!” the flaggots declared.

Where’sthebloodwhere’sthebloodwhere’stheblood?

Following the Pulse nightclub shooting, flaggot extraordinaire Paul Craig Roberts “where’stheblooded” the shit outta the event based on one photo:

A couple of people were helping a guy with tattoos in place of a shirt, but there was no sign of blood. About 6 people were carrying a person stretched out prone (no stretcher) down a street. There was no blood and it looked like a crisis acting performance. Why prone? Is an injured person really able to keep his body stiff so that he can be carried along prone parallel to the ground?

First of all, Roberts, being a functional retard, doesn’t know the difference between prone and supine. And yeah, if you’re playacting at being Sherlock Holmes, it helps to know that difference (here’s the pic he’s describing). Second, the injured person was being carried by six people—two at the legs, two supporting the back, two supporting the head and shoulders. Yes, an injured human can be carried that way “parallel to the ground.” Third, most of the injured man’s body is obscured by those carrying him; we can’t see if there’s blood on the body.

Roberts would eventually declare Pulse a hoax because none of his readers could prove it happened by examining the photos. That’s the extent to which these lunatics believe that every criminal investigation comes down to amateur losers staring at AP photos.

Look, I could go on. Just Google “where’s the blood” and “false flag” to see what a huge trope this was, especially during the Obama years. No one could post anything about a mass shooting without a bunch of flaggots screeching,“Where’sthebloodwhere’sthebloodwhere’stheblood?”

But now we have a fascinating role reversal. Flaggots are boosting wartime casualty photos from Gaza (“look what the ZIONISTS are doing to the CHILDRUNNNNN!”). Boosting them unquestioningly. Gone is the sleutherism, the skepticism, the qwestchins. And even though much of what comes from the Palestinian side is of questionable veracity, many of those Gaza pics are 100 percent real. Adults and children with head injuries and missing limbs.

And no geysers of blood anywhere!

Before I got booted from Twitter, I was trolling flaggots who posted Gaza photos by commenting, “Where’sthebloodwhere’sthebloodwhere’stheblood?” And the flaggot response reminded me of hippie chick Tina: “No, no, ‘where’s the blood’s’ not supposed to be used for that! It’s a tool for fighting Obammer GUN GRABBERS! You don’t use it to help Zionists!”

With Gaza, we’ve seen limbs blown off just like in Boston and no geyser of blood. We’ve seen head wounds that don’t flood a city block. And we’ve seen fewer than six people carry supine bodies (Roberts, the worthless cretin who thinks six humans can’t carry a body, gets his books published by Penguin. Penguin! While I’m considered too toxic for even small-time publishers. That fucking stings. Yes, it’s self-indulgent for me to bring that up, but when exactly should it stop bothering me?).

So I’m curious if any flaggots are willing to admit that “where’s the blood” was always an idiotic trope.

Well, they don’t have to. Because the flaggot community has moved on. Sure, there are still a few odd “where’s the blooders” on Twitter—some tards never understand when a catchphrase is played out—but for the major flaggots, the days of “where’s the blooding” every mass shooting are over.

Why?

Three reasons, all overlapping.

First, Obammer’s come and gone, and he didn’t “take yur gunz.” Of course, you can say, “Yeah, but he’s secretly controlling Joe and Kamala, and they’ll take yur gunz and take the rap,” but c’mon, how many times can you predict a gun grab that never comes?

Second, flaggots have become political preterists (“we’re in the post–End Times”). No more predicting future gun-grabs; the “enemy” made its move already by stealing the 2020 election and framing MAGA for J6. The apocalypse has happened. Saying “They’ll take yer gunz” is passé. The Antichrist “took yer president.”

Everyone’s favorite Musk-coddled neo-Nazi Stew Peters summed it up in a recent tweet: “We’ve been programmed to sit and do NOTHING while astroturfed riots and other false flags happen all around us. Why? To keep you from noticing that our elections are 100% FAKE and stolen.”

Get it? Those little false-flag shootings Jones/Fetzer/Roberts used to spend hours deconstructing? Distractions, all! While those guys were “where’s the blooding” a Walmart massacre, yer elekshun was being stollen!

MAGA/flaggot obsession with 2020 “vote fraud” and J6 “frame-up” has made mass-shooting sleuthing passé.

Add to that the third thing—Jews! A segment of the far-right got tired of talking about nameless “theys” carrying out tiny ops in schools and movie theaters and malls. Time to name the they and paint larger portraits. The Jews are destroying civilization as we know it! Who has time to “where’s the blood” a measly restaurant shooting! That’s a symptom. Fight the cause: Baron Rothschild!

“Where’s the blood” was reactive. Today’s young conspiracy tards want to be proactive! Name the they, and take the fight to the they (by saying “wooden doors” a thousand times and putting “Christ is King” in your bio on Twitter; that’ll defeat ’em!).

None of this is unusual; it’s present in all ideological movements: a thirst for the “hard stuff.” “Diplomatic” oldies are eventually eclipsed by “stop beating around the bush—name ’em and slay ’em” youngsters.

The Obama-era Alex Jones nonspecific sleuthing (“Who’s to blame?” “Obammer!” “Yeah, but who’s behind Obammer?” “Uh…elites!”) that supposedly bankrupted Jones via the Sandy Hook civil suit (I’ll believe it when I see it; Jones will be fine. You still donate to Bannon, who embezzled from you. You’ll surely rescue Jones) is not “hard” enough for today’s young rightists.

“Don’t bore me by saying ‘they’; we’re way past that point. I need something more specific.”

Says Elon Musk.

The fact is, there was never an Overton Window. Never something that expands laterally, that “allows more stuff to come through,” that makes ever-more-extreme material “acceptable.”

That was always a nonsensical notion.

There’s an Overton Gateway. It has depth, not width. It’s not something ideologues look at, it’s something they go through, pursuing ever more hardcore extremism, and it need fit no more than one person at a time, though its capacity for one-by-one is endless.

And as idiotic as I used to find “where’s the blood,” I must admit, as I look at the state of Musk’s “slay the Jews” Twitter, I kind of miss it.

Like my hippie chick’s ramblings, it almost seems quaint, grading on a bell curve.

---