"People find anything offensive, but we pushed back and we won. So f*** them. Until the next time. They haven’t gone away."

"They’re just licking their wounds. They’ll be back with something madder. But remember who it is next time? Right? It’s always these sort of educated, middle-class, privileged, elitist, sort of people telling ordinary working-class people what they can and can’t do and say and laugh, not realizing how important comedy is to ordinary people."

Said Ricky Gervais, in his new Netflix special, "Mortality," quoted in "Ricky Gervais Uses Netflix Special To Declare Victory Over 'Virtue Signalling' Elites Who 'Find Anything Offensive' — And Reveals Golden Globes Gag He Bottled" (Deadline).

Also: "The most annoying thing about virtue signalling is people being smug about having the morality of the age. You’re what you’re like because of where you are and when you are.... I’m willing to admit that if I’d have been born 300 years ago and I was white and wealthy, I’d have probably owned slaves...."

And then — I'm saying this based on having watched the show — he proceeds to fake-fawn over himself for being a particularly benevolent slaveholder. He virtue-signals within the slaveholder role. And the implication is that's what today's virtue-signalers are doing, praising themselves within the standards of the time but blind to the larger picture.

"At the heart of Mr. Hegseth’s vision is an insistence that waging war is fundamentally different from other vocations in society because it is deadly and is meant to be."

"'This is life or death,' he said. 'As we all know, this is you versus an enemy hellbent on killing you.'... [T]he government’s duties to citizens who find themselves in harm’s way, fighting for their country, are not like its duties to citizens in other circumstances.... In a life-or-death occupational setting, there is no room for preferential treatment like affirmative action. No soldier should ever be led or covered by someone who has been promoted for reasons other than military effectiveness. That criterion is not bigoted. It arises from a reasonable philosophy of the limited mission of the military...."

Writes Christopher Caldwell, in "That Hegseth Speech Was Actually Pretty Good" (NYT).

"I view Stanford and MIT as mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation at this point...."

"The combination of DEI and immigration is politically lethal. When these two forms of discrimination combine, as they have for the last 60 years and on hyperdrive for the last decade, they systematically cut most of the children of the Trump voter base out of any realistic prospect of access to higher education and corporate America.... So of course you have to go overseas to get qualified PhD candidates, most of the native born kids who could have been in that pipeline were cut out of it.... I was born in 1971 in Iowa and grew up in Wisconsin. My cohort of citizens was told that we just had to put up with this as a cost of prior American bigotry even though the discrimination was now aimed at us. And for the most part we did. But the insanity of the last 8 years and in particular the summer of 2020 totally shredded that complacency. And so now my people are furious and not going to take it anymore. The universities are at ground zero of the counterattack since they are BOTH actively discriminating against us AND primary origin points and propagation vectors.... They declared war on 70% of the country and now they’re going to pay the price...."

Wrote Marc Andreessen in a group chat with White House officials and technology leaders.

Quoted in "Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreesen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI/The investor in a private group chat also criticized Stanford and said colleges are biased against Trump voters: 'My people are furious'" (WaPo).

My prompts to Grok were "What does Marc Andreessen mean by 'my people'?" And then: "That's going to be seen as racist by a lot of people. Why wasn't he smart enough to use different words? One answer would be that he meant to signal to white people that they need to come together and fight for their own interests." Answers: here.

"Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting 'Sickness?'"

"Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!"

Said Donald Trump (on Truth Social).

That message follows the news: "The Trump administration says it will freeze $2 billion in funding after Harvard refuses its demands" (NYT).

The demands — in the words of the NYT — are "that the university reduce the power of students and faculty members over the university’s affairs; report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities; and bring in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is 'viewpoint diverse,' among other steps."

"The threat to democracy — indeed, the existential threat to democracy — is the unelected bureaucracy of lifetime, tenured civil servants..."

"... who believe they answer to no one, who believe they can do whatever they want without consequence, who believe they can set their own agenda no matter what Americans vote for. So, Americans vote for radical FBI reform, and FBI agents say they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote for radical reform in our energy policies, but EPA bureaucrats say they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote to end DEI — racist DEI policies, and lawyers in the Department of Justice say they don’t want to change. What President Trump is doing is he is removing federal bureaucrats who are defying democracy by failing to implement his lawful orders, which are the will of the whole American people."

Said Stephen Miller, at yesterday's press briefing.

Want to see a murder?

Libs in the White House press corps screamed at Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that Elon Musk is “unelected!”

What happens next is a fatality.

I promise you - this is the single best video on the internet today:pic.twitter.com/Nxcw0qTtj1

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 20, 2025

ADDED: In the same vein, here's Victor Davis Hanson:

 

"What do we mean when we talk about diversity? Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one is mistreated because of them..."

"... which I will always fight for? Or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia, which I have also experienced. And it is how Trump Republicans are made."

Said Pete Buttigieg, at a "Future of the Democratic Party" forum, responding to a question from David Axelrod about the "spectacle of the Democratic National Committee chair election," quoted in "Pete Buttigieg slams Democrats' 'Portlandia' approach to pushing diversity" (Yahoo! News).

Pete Buttigieg is abandoning ship on DEI, admitting that it often amounts to "making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia."

Buttigieg is like a LibBot2000, fine-tuned by McKinsey consultants. The tide is turning.pic.twitter.com/5IFC5zqb3V

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 20, 2025

"The issue of the female aviator’s identity is particularly sensitive as Mr. Trump has also blamed diversity, without evidence, for the crash."

"In addition, Pete Hegseth, the newly confirmed defense secretary, has said that the military has diminished its standards by welcoming women and racial minorities into its ranks. He has echoed Mr. Trump’s comments on rooting out diversity programs in the government.... Mr. Hegseth said on Thursday that the Black Hawk helicopter was 'doing a required annual night evaluation' flight and was being flown by 'a fairly experienced crew.'..."

From "Army Withholds Identity of Helicopter Pilot Killed in Crash/The names of two male crew members were released, but the family of the third aviator requested privacy" (NYT).

The reason the Army gave for withholding the name, we're told, was "her family’s request for privacy." And "It is unclear what specifically motivated the aviator’s family to make the request."

If we had the name, everyone would be able to research her, to read anything she may have written on social media, to look at photographs of her, and to express all sorts of opinions about her, including — taking a cue from Trump — theories about how she was promoted beyond her merit. Her death — and the death of everyone else in the disaster — would merge with the discussion of DEI and Trump's dramatic effort to snuff it out nationwide.

"[I]f you’re a college graduate with a humanities degree and want to make a salary while still vaguely doing something that deals with reducing racism in America..."

"... D.E.I. is one of the few possible career paths. The problem, at a grand scale, is that D.E.I.’s malleability and its ability to survive in pretty much every setting, whether it’s a nearby public school or the C.I.A., means that it has to be generic and ultimately inoffensive, which means that, in the end, D.E.I. didn’t really satisfy anyone.... Both the inspired and the terrified built out a D.E.I. infrastructure in their workplaces.... Trump... is taking a relatively powerless program, vilifying it, and using its dissolution as proof that he has single-handedly ended the woke era.... [T]he war on D.E.I. is almost certainly a catchall scapegoat meant to distract from Trump’s larger plans to gut the federal government, but I also can’t imagine it will hold the public’s attention.... Trump is going to need a better distraction, but one thing we know about him is that he stubbornly sticks to a theme. He might not be able to credibly blame diversity for everything from plane crashes to children’s reading scores, but I imagine he will try."

Writes Jay Caspian Kang, in "What’s the Point of Trump’s War on D.E.I.? To distract from his larger plan to gut the federal government, the President has taken a relatively powerless program and turned it into an excuse for everything that goes wrong in the country" (The New Yorker).

Counting blessings, running short.

10 hours ago:

We were blessed to have LA fire and police depts doing their jobs so well. We are safe and out. There are several elementary schools in our neighborhood and there was an enormous community effort to evacuate the children safely. Can not speak more highly of the LA fire and LAPD. pic.twitter.com/bdsSJmvQel

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

 

13 minutes ago:

Priorities stated in her bio below.

Refilling the water reservoirs would have been a welcome priority, too, but I guess she had too much on her plate promoting diversity. pic.twitter.com/7GXgBR3RO2

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 8, 2025

"The University of Michigan will no longer require diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions...."

"Critics view them as a form of compelled political speech that are often used to evade legal restrictions on affirmative action.... [A] survey conducted for the committee found that more than half of Michigan faculty members believed diversity statements placed pressure on professors to express specific moral, political and social views.... Thomas Braun, a biostatistics professor who led the committee, said he hoped the university would still find a way to allow job applicants to discuss how their work related to diversity in the broad sense, without imposing ideological litmus tests. 'I think all faculty should be able to explain how their own personal experiences inform what they do everyday as a faculty member, and how it fits in the core values and mission of UM,' Mr. Braun said in an email. 'If that seems impossible to some individuals, then maybe UM is not the right fit.'..."

The NYT reports.

That word "fit" is doing a lot of work. Anyway, at least now faculty and prospective faculty won't have to formally explain how they fit the University's specific moral, political and social views, but they will still need to fit and to be able to explain how they fit. 

Isn't the formal statement the easier part of this fitness test? Especially with A.I.

"Pride Month has always been about a political and progressive embrace of our rainbow of choices. But lately..."

"... I find myself feeling alienated by loud voices among activists in the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community on all sides of the Israel-Gaza war. They’re intolerant of nuance, complexity and opposing views."

Writes Amichai Lau-Lavie, leader and a co-founder of Lab/Shul, in "The Pride March Doesn’t Have a Place for Me" (NYT). Amichai Lau-Lavie "is the spiritual leader and a co-founder of Lab/Shul, an everybody-friendly, God-optional congregation in New York City."

Why would a parade about pride partake of nuance, complexity and opposing views?

"I like diversity. Diversité as you would say. I like diversité" — said Donald Trump.

Hilarious. Quoted in "Trump's real-time reviews of 2024 VP possibles and other surrogates," at Axios, which obtained an audio recording of Trump making comments about the various possible candidates.

He was talking about Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.). 

Go to the link to read Trump's assessment of the 11 possibles. What struck me — other than his jocose Frenchification of the word "diversity" — is how he had nothing but good things to say about each of them. Not a shred of negativity. And it's not as if he just inarticulately called them all "great."

"When your community no longer reflects morals and values, it might be time to move."

 Says the website Conservative Move, quoted in "Sick of Your Blue State? These Real Estate Agents Have Just the Place for You. Agents in South Carolina, the fastest growing state in the country last year, say that many newcomers are Republicans eager to leave the Northeast and West Coast" (NYT).

Yana Ghannam, a recent client of [a Conservative Move real estate agent], said that she had moved to Greenville from Livermore, Calif., because she wanted to make friends who wouldn’t criticize her for voting Republican or for being anti-union. “It was very much, ‘Oh you have to do this to fit in, you have to do that,’” Ms. Ghannam said of her life in Livermore.

There's a big difference between: 1. Wanting to live where everyone thinks like you, and 2. Wanting to be free of rejection for failing to think like everyone else.

Reason #1 is anti-diversity. Reason #2 is pro-diversity. Don't mix up the 2 mindsets! A conservative might want to leave a blue state because Democrats are treating them with hostility. That is, Democrats are in mindset #1, seeking uniformity. 

What are you supposed to do if you want good social interaction among people who enjoy a diverse marketplace of ideas? I'm afraid the only option — even if your motivation is to flee hostility (Reason #2) — is to go to the place where people agree with you (which would be Reason #1 if it were your motivation).

"Biden has nothing to say about the future. The future is beyond his imagining...."

"If the Republicans are offering right-wing populism, the Democrats can’t just continue to offer grievance agendas, especially since most of those grievances have been dramatically meliorated. The dirty little secret of Diversity, Equity and Identity (DEI) programs is that they’re indicative of past-thinking, not the future. Indeed, when someone like former Harvard President Claudine Gay—a product of the DEI-industrial complex—blames her firing on racism, not lunkheaded Congressional testimony and plagiarism, the traditional Democrat identity-rhetoric begins to seem laughable.... At this point, the Dems need to offer an anti-identity agenda, an American unity agenda...."

Writes Joe Klein, in "It's Not Just Biden/The Democrats are Senescent, too" (Substack).

But Klein is 77 (the same age as Trump) so he says it's not for him to say what belongs in the Democrats' future-looking agenda. He wants "some fresh young genius" to tell us what to do, someone who understands... what? Video games and A.I.! 

"The New York Times presents this piece as some kind of Pentagon Papers-esque exposé."

"But I guarantee you that a majority of Americans - including probably most Democrats -- believe that DEI/Anti Racism went too far post George Floyd and we need to get back to aiming for a color blind society."

That's the highest rated comment on the article "'America Is Under Attack': Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade" by Nicholas Confessore (NYT).

The next 4 highest rated comments are similar:

"Suddenly, everywhere you look, the Jews are disappearing. You feel it like a slow moving pressure system..."

"... an anxiety of exclusion and downward mobility. Maybe you first noticed it at your workplace. Or maybe it hit when you or your children applied to college or graduate school. It could have been something as simple as opening up the Netflix splash page. It’s gauche to count but you can’t help yourself: In academia, Hollywood, Washington, even in New York City—anywhere American Jews once made their mark—our influence is in steep decline. For many Jews, the first instinct is to look inward: We blame intermarriage, assimilation, the loss of the immigrant work ethic. This is, of course, a cope. Because the most significant cause of the decline isn’t Jews themselves, but that American liberalism, our civic religion, has turned on us. Where Jewish success was once upheld as a sign of America’s strength and progress over its prejudices, Jewish 'overrepresentation' is again something to be solved, not celebrated...."

Writes Jacob Savage in "The Vanishing/The erasure of Jews from American life" (Tablet).

(I know "Judaism" isn't the right word for this issue, but it's a tag I've had for a long time.)

"The more I push[ed] for policy change, the more resistant the leadership became. It was a highly macro-aggressive environment."

"I couldn’t take the necessary steps that were needed to lay the groundwork for innovative equity work in the department.... It’s been fairly traumatic for me.... It created such a hostile work environment for me that I literally could not return to the office... I was hospitalized because of just how stressful the work environment became and I had little support...." 

Said Jordan “JT” Turner, who resigned from his position as Princeton's first Associate Director of Athletics for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), quoted in "3 Princeton DEI staff members resign, alleging lack of support" (The Daily Princetonian).

"Composed and genial, [Karine] Jean-Pierre was successful in observing the first rule of media briefings – do no harm – but did appear a little too cautious on one point."

"She was repeatedly asked if she would 'call out' individuals such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson or Republican members of Congress who fan the flames of extremism and the 'great replacement' theory. Time and again she refused. 'It doesn’t matter who it is,' she insisted. 'If a person espouses hatred, we need to call that out. I’m not going to get a back and forth on names and who said what.' One reporter asked if Biden sees a connection [between the Buffalo massacre and] Trump’s 'ultra-Maga' movement.... When the press secretary said, 'We’re not going to get into politics here,' another journalist loudly objected that this seemed to be letting the culprits off the hook.... Critics will say the Biden administration is pulling its punches.... [T]he job of White House press secretary is often about ducking controversies and not making headlines. Psaki was masterful at promising to 'circle back' and 'not get ahead of the president.' Now, like the TV time traveller Doctor Who, the press secretary has regenerated in different and diverse form but with essentially the same character."

From "Karine Jean-Pierre makes history but inherits a world of trouble/The White House’s first Black press secretary used her opening remarks to reflect on this new chapter" by David Smith (in The Guardian).

It's an odd locution — "diverse form." Smith is referring to something Jean-Pierre herself said as she introduced herself on her first press briefing: She's "a Black, gay, immigrant woman." How can one person be "diverse"? Anyone is only the collection of characteristics that they are, and each of us has our set of things. I think "diverse" ought to refer to a group of people, and to call an individual "diverse" is to expect your listeners to fill in the picture, to visualize a larger set of people who are different from the one we're calling "diverse." The group — here, presumably, all the White House press secretaries in history — is understood to be white, straight, and born in the U.S.A., so Jean-Pierre makes this group more diverse. 

It reminds me of how people sometimes say about an individual, "He's different." That tends to be an insult. Different from what? You're presuming a norm, and he's off the norm. Someone saying "She's diverse" ought to think about whether the intended praise is some kind of insult. It presumes the person you're talking about is the variation, and the basic form is somebody else. It's otherizing!

Anyway, I'm glad Jean-Pierre didn't indulge in connecting dots about the Buffalo murderer's manifesto and things Republicans think. That's some of the lowliest discourse I've seen in this millennium.

"The University of Wisconsin System’s free speech survey, which was set to go out Thursday to all undergraduates, has since been pushed back to fall 2022...."

"The survey asks about self-censorship, opinions toward viewpoint diversity, perceptions of campus climate, knowledge of the First Amendment and consequences of expressing oneself.... Tyler Katzenberger, press secretary of Associated Students of Madison, said... 'We get what the survey’s trying to address and we think it's an important cause to discuss, but why is there not a survey addressing diversity issues in the System?... Why are we prioritizing this over other more pressing diversity issues?' Katzenberger said ASM additionally questioned the legitimacy of the survey because it received an exemption from UW-Stout’s institutional review board, which protects the rights and welfare of human research subjects. However, Eric Giordano, executive director of the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service, said in a statement that representatives from most other campus institutional review boards (IRBs) also 'reviewed the project and determined that the research did not qualify as human subjects research.'..."

The Capital Times reports.

Interesting that the student leader speaks of "diversity issues" repeatedly, apparently without noticing that the survey is about an issue that is labeled "diversity": "viewpoint diversity." Maybe for students, "diversity" is a term of art, and it only means diversity of identity groups and has nothing to do with the life of the mind. 

Anyway, they're censoring the censorship survey. 

"I genuinely do love you and your community. You’re so human and beautiful. You make New York City special."

"I have no idea how we ever lose to the Republicans given that you all are frankly in, like, leadership roles all over the Democratic Party. We have, like, this incredible secret weapon. It’s not even secret. It’s like, we should win everything because we have you all." 

Said Andrew Yang, referring to the gay community and gunning for the endorsement of that Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City. And they hated it! 

I'm reading "Andrew Yang, Looking for Endorsement, Offends Gay Democratic Club/Participants described Mr. Yang’s remarks as offensive, saying that even as members of the club wanted to discuss policy issues, he mentioned gay bars" (NYT). 

Now, why did they hate it? I'm guessing they prefer some other candidate, and they ran to the New York Times to send out their negativity against Yang. He's the frontrunner, and he needs to be taken down. He expressed nothing but love and inclusiveness, but apparently, they don't want their special status talked about, they just want a policy-based discussion of the kind he would do with any group, including the least diversityish people. Who knew? 

But, I wonder, if he'd come on like that — talking policy in the same way he would with, say, straight white people — would they have run to the New York Times and claimed to have been offended that he showed no interest in their particular status and fed them generic material he could have served anybody?

I don't know. But I will disapprove of the line "You’re so human." All humans are human. To say "You’re so human" is to imply that the humanness was in question or that other humans are less human. It's a bit like "Black lives matter" in that it states a fact, but the only reason to state it is that there's a background notion — alive in the hearts of other people — that black lives don't matter. You might tell gay people "You're so human" because you mean to say: There are other people out there who think you're subhuman or barely human. 

Here's how members of the group expressed their offense: