COVID’s in the news again. On the heels of a highly credible study proving that masks were useless as a means of preventing the spread of the virus, a new assessment by the US Department of Energy states that the pandemic was likely caused by a lab leak in China. Remember when so-called experts, public health officials, the media, and progressives generally reviled that theory as a racist fringe conspiracy? (President Biden’s farcical press secretary still clings to that position.) Remember when merely questioning the effectiveness of masking could get you denounced and cancelled as a cold-hearted mass murderer? Remember when natural immunity was poo-pooed as MAGA malarky? Well, it was all politics, all a lie, and a great deal of the damage that was done to America’s social and economic fabric was inflicted by people—calling themselves enlightened, progressive and on the side of “the Science”—who spread those lies.
False in one thing, false in everything. Many of the people who lied and lied about COVID are the same people who’ve been shoving the toxic ideology of gender down our throats—in which process they’ve employed every possible tactic of intimidation and bullying. But the tide is turning. In Europe, second thoughts about allowing young children to be “transitioned,” i.e. mutilated by drugs and surgery, are strongly on the rise. And the claim that gender ideology is based on “settled science” is coming under scrutiny. The British Medical Journal—hardly a bastion of MAGA conspiracy mongering—now says that the science is anything but settled, and that the rush to transition young children with gender dysphoria is a bad idea. So here we have another example of contemporary progressivism’s ideological depravity—a postmodern form of child abuse perpetrated in the name of sensitivity, inclusion, and diversity.
James Bond has a license to kill, so you’d think that the nasty little censors of progressive Wokedom would hesitate to screw with him. But no: Having rectified Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl, they’re desecrating yet another icon of popular literature. “Sensitivity readers” have been commissioned to remove “offensive language” from the novels by Ian Fleming that launched the Bond franchise. In a new edition of the series marking the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel, many of Fleming’s race and ethnicity references are either deleted or rewritten to spare the feelings of black people. Interestingly, however, this sensitivity was not extended to Asians and other ethnicities. To borrow a line from another politically incorrect writer, it seems that all BIPOCs are equal, but some BIPOCs are more equal than others.
Be she ever so inept and unlikeable, a progressive politician can always count on a timely and supportive media profile. Take “Lori Lightfoot Makes Her Case to Chicago” by Peter Slevin in The New Yorker. An uncharitable analysis of Lightfoot’s case would be that it consists mainly of racial bombast and gross incompetence, well laced with arrogance, and that she bears considerable responsibility for the current, dismal state of the Windy City. Not according to Mr. Slevin, though! He harks back to Her Honor’s pandemic glory days, when “Lightfoot posted charming video sketches encouraging people to stay home and wash their hands.” Seriously, he wrote that. And of course, most of the city’s problems are held to be beyond her control. But strive has he might, Slevin does not contrive to make this nasty, petty, race-baiting piece of work look at all attractive. Probably Lightfoot is going to be booted out of office in the upcoming mayoral election, and good riddance.
Some progressives are so bad that even other progressives can’t stand them. “Like it or not,” writes Michael Moritz in the New York Times, “San Francisco has become a prize example of how we Democrats have become our own worst enemy.” No kidding! Moritz describes how a small band of progressive extremists, adept at gaming the political system, have made San Francisco effectively ungovernable. In the name of inclusion, diversity, and other shining progressive virtues, one of America’s great cities has been transformed into a dystopian landscape of crime, homelessness, drug abuse and general squalor. Moritz professes to be optimistic about the future of “Democratic San Francisco”—but his stated hopes remind me of nothing so much as Mikail Gorbachev’s happy talk about rebooting “scientific socialism,” circa 1988.
Public education has long been a progressive satrapy and the results are in: disastrous for American children on multiple fronts. From basic skills to political and social indoctrination, assorted leftist ideologies and a plague of magical thinking have replaced commonsense educational principles. Particularly egregious is the progressive education establishment’s war on merit, as exemplified by the Fairfax (Virginia) school district’s ridiculous pledge to ensure “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” Thirty seconds’ thought is sufficient for any person with functioning gray cells to conclude that such a promise can only be fulfilled by valorizing mediocracy—a prospect that seems to faze the people running the public education system in Fairfax County not at all. Hey, so what if the kids can’t read at grade level? The name of the game is—equity!