About Last Week…

Last week (hey, that’s in the title of the article!) the Richmond council passed an ordinance blaming Israel for, well, everything.

Horrible, stupid, historically inaccurate, and offensive?  Sure – but that never stops the Democratic Socialists of America.

You see, a majority of the council are members of that august group, a group that has decided that Israel is full of colonizers, apartheiders, capitalists, and that is has military and it believes it has a right to exist.  Each one of those is a DSA no-no, and the fact that Israelis tend to be Jewish, well, that’s just an added bonus.

How and why did the council come to such a conclusion?  Richmond is a hotbed of deep left politics – the first city of any size to have a Green Party mayor, a Democrat to Republican ratio of 13 to 1, an on-going battle with the Chevron refinery located there because fossil fuels are bad, the schools have a junk food ban to combat obesity that hasn’t really worked, and a group called the Richmond Progressive Alliance that seems to rule the roost and advocates for exactly what you think they do.

In other words, the vote to say “Yay Hamas!” should not have come as a surprise.  And I thought it was the far right nazis who wanted to kill Jews?  Times change…

…As do the meaning of words, a discovery I made while visiting a certain college campus recently. While there, I had to pop into the men’s room to, um, fix my hair when I noticed a sticker on the mirror.

An official school sticker.

I cannot be sure if they are posted in ladies’ rooms or pan-gender self-care spaces or whatever, but they are in men’s rooms. 

First, it reminded the reader that discrimination and harassment can come in many forms, including race, language, sex, age, and “gender, gender identity and expression…”

Second, it mentioned how you can report any such discrimination or harassment and how the Office of Equal Opportunity will help you “navigate formal or informal options for resolution.”

Formal, you’re fired, informal, everyone will shun you, I suppose?  Maybe?

But then the sticker apologized for itself:

“We understand this sticker may not include all the identities or intersectionality of many identities.  We are continually trying to be more inclusive with the language we are using.  Let us know how we can make it better.”

Glad they cleared that up.  

More seriously, keeping language fluid is an actual tactic of the woke/equitarians because it imparts a very specific power – the power to define any debate by re-defining the language itself.  The “when we decide something else is being oppressed, we’ll change the list and the word for it” trick is quite common, actually – From a previous piece entitled “Sandwiches against racism”: 

For the purposes of this plan, we will use the term BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color). We recognize that language is fluid and the intersectional justice movement is redefining terminology regularly.

But to be honest, I never thought I’d see the word “intersectionality” on a bathroom wall.

Speaking of walls, Gavin Newsom has made both the most and the least out of his trip to China.

He talked to the car company he gave $1.4 billion to make COVID masks, chatted about the climate with various Chinese government officials who have absolutely no intention of doing anything about it, and he got some neato headlines:  

From the LA Times: “Despite diplomatic tension, Newsom is going to China to promote cooperation on climate change” 

From CNN:  “ ‘Divorce is not an option’ for US and China, Newsom says after Xi meeting”

From France (see – he is a world leader!): “California governor presses China’s Xi on climate cooperation”

And just in case that wasn’t enough to convince the public of how wonderful and important the trip was, here’s just one of the taxpayer-funded web pages from the governor’s site:

The icing on the cake?  A piece in Politico – remember, the trip was aimed at DC to help Gavin become president, not aimed at California to make things better for its residents – that touted – with only a small hint how meaningless they are – how important the trip was because of the multiple Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) he signed.

The story notes that voters tend not to really care about MOUs, but stressed that if the MOUs are about “climate” they actually do. Voters know MOUs are – except for the fact they are used to justify costly and fun overseas travel and get quick and easy headlines and tick resume boxes – pointless.

As to pointless – and confirming what the Globe said in a previous article:  here’s the boilerplate paragraph from one of the five MOUs he signed off on:

Section V. No Legal Obligations, Rights, or Remedies

This Memorandum of Understanding is a voluntary initiative. It does not create any

legally binding rights or obligations and creates no legally cognizable or enforceable

rights or remedies, legal or equitable, in any forum whatsoever. In addition, the

pledges in this Memorandum of Understanding are not conditioned upon reciprocal

actions by other Participants; each Participant retains full discretion over

implementation of its pledges in light of the Participant’s individual circumstances,

laws, and policies; and each Participant is free to withdraw from the Memorandum.

In other words, like a check from that brother-in-law we all have: worthless.

Thanks for reading the Globe!