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Black Lives Matter Tag

As we've covered here at LI, antifa violence in Portland, Oregon, and beyond long pre-dates the George Floyd protests that devolved into riots in cities across the country.  Yet the leftstream media would have us believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the antifa anarchists creating mayhem in Portland are peaceful protesters. We are seeing the most stunningly blatant and deeply bizarre gaslighting by both Portland mayor Ted Wheeler and the media about what has been going on in Portland.

Here we go again, the great debate over whether "cancel culture" is real. It is real, as I wrote in my op-ed at Real Clear Politics, Cancel Culture Is Real. The people claiming cancel culture is not a real thing, that it's just a gripe of people who don't like being criticized, almost always are those on the giving, not receiving, end -- the people on campuses and in the culture who hold power in given institutions.

The Associated Press decided last month to capitalize the word "Black" when writing about race and culture. On Monday, the AP chose not to capitalize the word "white" because "white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color."

I learned something new today. For decades leading symphony orchestras have used "blind auditions" to hire musicians. That is, the musicians are not seen at all, only their music is heard. That way, implicit or explicit racial, ethnic, or gender bias cannot enter into the hiring decision, only the quality of the music. It is as close to a pure meritocracy as I can imagine.

Trader Joe's is one of those quirky, fun kind of stores that has seen enormous success in part because of its lighthearted quirkiness.  Light-heartedness, really anything remotely resembling humor, is in the process of being rooted out and banned by the cancel culture scolds, so of course, they came for Trader Joe's.

The Minneapolis City Council unanimously voted to declare racism a public health emergency and vowed"to allocate funding and other resources to “name, reverse, and repair the harm done” to people of color in the city."