• If you missed it yesterday, here's the first Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie of the week, a report on the truckers and their grifts (as Jan Němec might have put it). No longer content to drive in circles on the beltway, some of the Rush-Hour Reenactors have invaded the area are going into town and honking their horns to general bemusement and middle fingers. Here's what the brain trust has planned for today:
Real Braveheart material there. Wonder how long before they realize their leaders have pocketed most of the donations?
• And for funsies, and as I am in the giving vein, a fanciful look at Fox News' attempt to damage-control Tucker Carlson's Putinphilia. It's hilarious, to me anyway, that the Russians are running Carlson's broadcasts as propaganda -- which, come to think of it, is what Fox has been doing, but the context really makes it obvious. And he's not the only one -- here's a good thread on Brexit conman Nigel Farage's Putin advocacy. Remember how Kevin McCarthy, before he was brought to heel, said he thought there were two people Putin paid, Dana Rohrabacher and Trump? He was really lowballing it.
• I could not let the day pass without observing the latest high-profile cancelculture crybabies -- and this time it's not just one of the New York Times' several rightwing symps, present or past, but the entire Times editorial board itself:
For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.This social silencing...
Time out. What's the shaming and shunning? Someone talked back? People stopped hanging out with you?
Also, the Times has a poll that shows most Americans have been cancelcultured:
Consider this finding from our poll: 55 percent of respondents said that they had personally held their tongue over the past year because they were concerned about retaliation or harsh criticism.
I know how they feel. More than once I've had a strong urge to say, "You don't know what you're talking about, you stupid fucking asshole," or "Jesus Christ, that is one ugly bitch," and held my tongue. I'm a victim too! And if it's like that for me, a prominent Substack author, imagine how it is for racists and neo-Nazis!
The thing's full of lulus like this:
Roy Block, 76, from San Antonio, described himself as conservative and said he has been alarmed by scenes of parents being silenced at school board meetings over the past year.
Parents being silenced? I thought the big thing was parents raging at school board meetings and loudly demanding schools ban teaching the history of racism. I wonder whether the Times asked Block for a citation. But maybe that would be cancelculture too.
“I think it’s mostly conservatives that are being silenced,” he said.
You do, huh.
“But regardless, I think it should be a two-way street. Everybody should have an opportunity to speak and especially in open gathering and open forum.”
I'd really like to know what open gatherings and forums are preventing him or anyone else from speaking. Maybe the Times could have asked... but there I go again, suppressing speech by asking impertinent questions.
I broke down this shit a long time ago. "Cancel culture" is a propaganda ploy, and the working people whose speech is actually suppressed by economic need and at-will employment will gain nothing by the proposed remedy -- which, as near as I can tell from every single goddamn article these people put out about it, is to kiss the asses of blowhards who never stopped talking in the first place.
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