Progressivism’s race to the bottom of the IQ scale has always been competitive, but Joy Reid has just reset the standard. Over the weekend, she tweeted this in response to a charge that she’s pro-Marxist: “Marxism is a radical theory of economic class equality. So if you apply that to race (which actually has nothing to do with Marx but ok let’s play your silly game) it means radical race equality. Tell me how that’s a bad thing. Explain it like I’m five. Fascists are silly.” Hmmm, well, if we applied Marxism to race, I suppose there’d be a gulag full of people who had the gall to criticize the 1619 Project or opine that explaining anything to Joy Reid like she’s five would go over her head.
Also over the weekend, progressives got another helping of what they keep calling a nothingburger: new revelations concerning the scope of Twitter’s collusion with law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the federal government. Matt Taibbi laid out the details in a long Twitter thread. Among other interesting tidbits, this installment of the “Twitter Files” revealed that the members of the platform’s senior leadership, including then-Head of Trust & Safety Yoel Roth, were meeting weekly with representatives of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The shade of J. Edgar Hoover must be smiling. Read the whole thing, as they say—and as you do, bear in mind that the apologists for this Orwellian scandal call themselves defenders of “our democracy.”
In related news, New York state’s new Social Media Hate Speech Accountability Act takes effect today and, as Charles C.W. Cooke explains on NRO, it’s a twofer. The law requires any website with a comment section to develop and publish a policy on posts that “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group” on the basis of “race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” Moreover, it mandates that such websites must “give readers a way to complain about” it if they see it. This is doubly problematical. First, what qualifies as “hate speech”? No definition is offered, and that determination is left, it seems, to aggrieved readers. Second, where does New York State get off dictating in this manner to private entities? The last time I checked, the First Amendment was still on the books and applicable to all fifty US states. That means that the Empire State has no power to tell us what we can’t say, nor what we must say. Mr. Cooke suggests, therefore, that we just tell New York’s speech commissars to shove it. I second that.
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California have scored a breakthrough with transformational potential: a fusion reaction that yielded more energy than was required to produce it. For years and decades the inability to produce a net positive fusion reaction bared the way to the development of economically viable fusion power. Now that barrier has been broken. If it can be made commercially practical, fusion promises to deliver clean, cheap, virtually unlimited power. Fusion would render all existing power sources obsolete—not just fossil fuels but nuclear fission, solar, wind, renewables, the lot. So I have no doubt that in a few years, idiot environmentalists will be gluing themselves to priceless artwork in protest against this dangerous new technology.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona bolted from the Democratic Party last week and now identifies as an independent. There’s somewhat less to this than meet the eye, since she’ll caucus with the Democrats, preserving their Senate majority. Nor does it seem likely that Sinema, whose politics are center-left, will choose to join the Trump-tainted Republican Party. Still, it’s a blow to the Dems—not to mention an own goal. Furious at Sinema’s failure to pledge unconditional allegiance to the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party, progressives took to treating her as a pariah. It seems that eventually she got tired having her appearance mocked, and of being chased into the ladies’ room by obnoxious protesters. Good going, comrades…