FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

You probably already know this 1965 Waterloo gig,

but it was new to me. I love Chuck coming in late,

but still ripping it up like a pro.

•   I have to admit the statue-toppling thing going on is mostly funny to me, especially eloquent de-plinthings like the one Edward Coaston got in Bristol. Sure, take down all the Confederate Columbuses you like -- but I'd trade all that just to put Trump, Mnuchin, Barr, DeVos, and a few others on a dunking stool over an acid bath. In fact I'll be "moderate" about it and compromise: I'd accept seeing them tried in an honest court.

But if we can't have that, iconoclast away! It's not like we've got a Rodin or Saint-Gaudens Jefferson Davis to protect on aesthetic grounds. And as for the unloved items now defended disingenuously by terrified wingnuts, they don't seem to have suffered much at all. Here's Micah Mattix at The American Conservative:

HBO Max drops Gone with the Wind from its archive because to keep the title available “without an explanation and a denouncement of [its racist] depictions would be irresponsible.” Ah, yes, let’s avoid “irresponsibility.” 

I’ve never seen the film and have no desire to see it...

LOL. I've seen it twice, it's not so hot. At least Birth of a Nation is well-made!

...but it’s now the number 1 film at Amazon and number 5 at Apple. Pamela K. Johnson reminds us that Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, became the first African American to win an Academy Award. “I’ve sat through GWTW exactly once as research for a historical novel in which McDaniel is a character. I don’t like the film either. At the same time, it is sad to see the actress get canceled along with the movie. She endured so many trials to stand, briefly, in the spotlight.”

This is a pathetic dodge (but a popular one among conservatives now), using the long-dead McDaniel as an excuse to protest Gone With The Wind being "canceled" on... [checks notes] HBO Max. Plus which Mattix's same damn item says you can STILL GET GONE WITH THE WIND AT AMAZON AND iTUNES.

So in what sense is it "canceled"? A better word (and Mattix being one o' them-there intellectual conservatives should use it) would be "disfavored." And that's the whole grift here; they're not angry because they can't have their totems, but because their totems have been shown, vividly, to be out of favor, and they can't have the warm satisfaction of believing that everyone else was watching GWTW or tolerating a slaver's monument not because it happened to be on or because they were polite, but because they, too, secretly and in their heart of hearts, loved the Old Ways and the lash and chains and state violence that enforced it. Fuck these snowflakes.  The mob, of which I am now in charge, decrees: You'll take having to click on a different website than before to get your product, and you'll like it!

•  As mentioned previously, Rod Dreher has been flipping out over the Dusky Hordes and their SJW Dhimmis swamping his Backyard Republic -- but he's still got his wits sufficiently about him to do the occasional "reader" "mailbag"! In the latest, one "reader" tells us she knew Nikki Oliver, one of the leaders of Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, in high school, and that Oliver "used to be an outspoken Christian who attended a non-denominational megachurch," but alas the megachurch was not truly godly -- "theology was fairly shallow," presumably lacking hellfire and tongue-speaking -- and Oliver's high school was "very diverse -- racially, socially, and economically... incredibly secular," which presumably explains Oliver's heathen radicalism; the "reader," conversely, found the Real Jesus and now hopes Trump's reelection "delays the rise of the leftist totalitarians until 2024."

Better still is the story told by a "reader" whose friend, can you believe it, turned into a white nationalist! And guess whose fault it is:

This transition began with his own reactions against the elite anti-racism movement and the Democratic party.

Totally reasonable, right? I mean, no one likes Democrats, or anti-racism either, it's so elite. All that having to watch what you say, like no using "colored."

At first I was able to have very interesting conversations with him about his concerns, his growing sense of isolation, and his defensiveness and anger (which I completely understood and in many cases agreed with). It was even refreshing to have conversations with him.

Ha, I'll bet he didn't watch his language!

But then it somehow tipped into strikingly different territory. He crossed a line into what I’d actually call white nationalism.

"Buddy, I find your positions refreshing, but do you have to wear the armband in public?"

This is a heartbreaking thing to watch: to see a previously sensible, smart, kind, and nuanced person descend into spewing a sort of ethnocentric vitriol that denigrates others, while using valid concerns that I truly agree with as their justifying axioms. It feels like you’re going insane.

Emphasis in the original, amazingly.

I had honestly always imagined (wrongly) that a white nationalist looked a certain way (like a mug shot of a serial killer, essentially), and had just always existed as such...

But then I looked in a mirror. Ha! Just kidding.

...but my friend’s journey in that direction was slow and subtle and even influenced by such small things as a couple of first coffee dates with super-woke girls he didn’t like...

In the world "reader" never enters, this is known as a Red Flag. But aside from incel-unfriendly dates, what set this lovely fellow on the road to Quiet Parts Out Loud?

But with the woke movement pushing more and more destructive dynamics (and showing no sign of slowing those), I see whispers of the potential for these beginnings in other people as well...

Of course!

I suspect that when he realized what was happening – that people like him had become the scapegoats for woke elites’ claims that, by and large, were actually a violent power grab made in the name of “justice” – he just cracked at some point and likely threw his lot in with the only folks he saw who would offer him a valued place in their group.

So you see, your honor, this is really a good boy gone bad -- driven into the arms of Hitler by social justice warriors who cruelly attacked him -- well, not him specifically, but things he believed in, like, you know, umm err -- well, good things like I believe!

But it is very frustrating talking to moderate or progressive friends who look at me like I’m crazy when I suggest that the anti-racism movement may be furthering white nationalism, giving fodder to a fringe movement that welcomes people like my old acquaintance, who may believe they have no other safe place to go.

Yeah, if you push that "anti-racism" thing, you've gotta expect people to go racist, it's like you're asking for it. Why can't we compromise and just be sorta racist?