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Saturday Potpourri

Three cheers for Fran Lebowitz, a new General Eclectic, Bari Weiss's Substack, and more
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Well, we are at the end of what for me was a tough week. Below, a bunch of little things worth noting:

Manufacturing Enthusiasm

I work at a small company in the software industry. We provide our services to various organizations to help them meet government and regulatory requirements, including how the companies they hire for services pose a risk to their business. I work for a fairly conservative company, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideology has not taken hold publicly in management, nor has there been anything in online company chat groups.

Below is an article that addresses a consistent thread throughout Live Not by Lies, as well as your reporting over the past several years: the influence of the power holders on culture. It is from the Credit Union Times, discussing “DEI in 2021:Gender Affirmation Benefits Find More Support Among Employers.” As described, employers, or those in white collar positions of power, are those pushing to have these services provided to employees. There is no indication this is a desired service for anyone other than the employers. And they do their due diligence of course, by quoting the Human Rights Campaign (sarcasm).

A stark quote jumped out to me that seems to demonstrate the utterly contradictory nature of the DEI movement: “Employers want to create a culture where employees feel no one is being treated differently.” Haven’t we heard over the past year’s worth of protests and riots that to treat people the same is to be a racist? It seems the white collar power holders are not listening to their credentialed overlords in the academy, nor their own rhetoric when they put out press releases to support the protests / riots, or their ketman in not rocking the boat.

News From The Monks Of Norcia

They have restored the ruined church on the mountain! Here’s a screenshot from their latest newsletter:

They also sent out a sampling of the texts they listened to during meals last year, as is the Benedictine tradition. Very small-c catholic!

New The General Eclectic Video Podcast

My podcast partner Kale Zelden and I are getting better at this, though the video on my end was scruffy. Here’s our third episode. It’s going to move to TAC soon:

Kamala Harris Explains ‘Equity’

Some readers of this blog say that my criticism of the Biden executive order demanding “equity” in federal employment was too negative. All Biden said is that there should be racial impartiality in hiring, they say. What these readers don’t understand is that “equity” does not mean “impartiality in hiring.” It means that any outcomes that do not reflect ethnic proportionality are understood by that fact to have been racist. We are talking about the difference between equality of opportunity, and equality of outcome. Harris herself posted this short video during the campaign to make clear what they mean:

Biden’s Pro-Trans Executive Order

The president’s executive order this week compels schools that receive federal funding to allow males who identify as females to compete in athletics as women. A reader who is an athlete writes:

The Boston Marathon was not run last year because of Covid-19, but the time I ran at a marathon earlier in 2020 would have put me in 277th place in my age group at the 2019 Boston Marathon.

In the same age group for women, I would have been in the top 10.

They better get ready for the fast broad with the beard, because here they come.

Bari Weiss’s Substack Newsletter

I’ve subscribed to it. Here’s a link to the new one (it’s free for now). Excerpt:

The truth is that Joe Biden is a fig leaf. He is a fig leaf for the deep problems that roil our country, for the totalizing ideologies spreading through the nation like wildfire, and for the dramatic political realignment that we are living through.

I understand people breathing a sigh of relief. I did. But the Joe Biden presidency will require a different kind of attentiveness. The maladies of the Trump era were painfully obvious, sometimes dangerous, and often clownish. QAnon is not exactly subtle. Leaving aside Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, Trumpian forces don’t hold much power in American life. But the fringe ideologues on the left are savvy, smart, and organized, with purchase at every level of American culture and politics.

Consider the fact that Hillary Clinton recorded a podcast with Nancy Pelosi this week in which she said of Trump: “I would love to see his phone records to see whether he was talking to Putin the day that the insurgents invaded our Capitol.” And the speaker of the House responded: “All roads lead to Putin.”

Really? That’s still the play after four years?

The group that fell for Russiagate has long owned the culture. Now it’s won the presidency and controls Congress. What will happen?

I’ll leave it to the rest of the press to compete over who can signal the most outrage over a Vogue cover of Kamala Harris:

Or how to properly praise the Biden administration’s pyrotechnic aesthetic:

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