“Peak Woke”

A teacher behind a series of historical murals at a Toronto high school is furious they’ve been taken down as the school board says they’re being evaluated for whether or not they honour truth and reconciliation.

Woke hysteria is a hateful thing.

The United States Air Force Academy is training its cadets to “use inclusive language” that bars them from calling people “terrorists” or using male and female identifiers, according to an official presentation being used by the elite military school and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The appearance of a transgender teacher from Oakville, Ont., who went viral on social media and has since received international attention, is, to be very kind, perplexing in the extreme. Regardless of one’s psychological or political disposition (identity is very political these days), it cannot be consistent with simple notions of appropriateness and professional dignity to take to a classroom of high school students wearing mammoth prosthetic breasts and a tight-fitting shirt.

Woke is the new mass hysteria.

Bill Maher says that woke schools’ lessons on critical race theory and decisions to conceal transgender students’ new identities from their parents are driving liberal voters into the arms of Donald Trump and the Republican party.

During a discussion screened Friday with Trace Adkins, Julia Ioffe, and John Meacham, Maher stated that his two biggest issues when it comes to voting are democracy and the environment.

He admitted that he doesn’t have children but said his friends who do have kids ‘don’t like it when they come home and say they divided the class today into oppressors and oppressed.’

Since I started writing this newsletter, once about every couple of weeks I have received a missive from someone troubled by a controversy involving race, usually in the workplace.

These readers feel that their opponents in these fusses are unfairly tarring them as racist. Typical disputes they find themselves embroiled in include whether a school program should devote itself centrally to antiracism, whether it is fair to hire people ranking skin color over qualifications, whether reparations for slavery in a local context are appropriate and what they should consist of, and whether a piece of art should be deemed racist.

The word “woke” — originally used to describe awareness of discrimination — has been adopted by figures on the political right to discredit policies and politicians they consider too progressive, experts say.

The word was directed earlier this week at the Liberals and NDP by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. And some Liberals have been dancing around the term when asked about it by journalists.

“It’s a term that’s been evolving fast,” said Jennifer Saul, a professor who specializes in the philosophy of political language at the University of Waterloo.

h/t DM

The billionaire warned that California is starting to seem like Saudi Arabia

The third annual National Conservatism conference kicked off Sunday in Miami, Florida, bringing together a who’s who of figures associated with the so-called “New Right.” Topics of discussion included how to combat the rise of China, how to fight back against gender ideology, and, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation’s David Azerrad, how to resist the “blackpill” of living in a country in which “the elite is corrupt and so are the people”.

Marian the Librarian, the prim, bespectacled love interest of con artist Harold Hill in the classic musical, “The Music Man,” wouldn’t recognize her profession today.

Libraries, for decades the ultimate safe spaces, have become ground zero in the ongoing culture wars, with battles over banned books, drag queen story hours and free access to porn raging all over the country — from Louisiana to Idaho to Washington State as well as cities like New York and LA.

“Being visibly queer is a form of resistance” writes this school librarian as she promotes the book ‘Flamer’ which contains pornographic content pic.twitter.com/RpJRzcULsE

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 11, 2022

Nature Human Behavior, one of the most prestigious journals for social science research, recently published an editorial titled “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans.” Though short, the article generated tremendous pushback among academics and intellectuals concerned about the spread of social-justice ideology into science. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker said the journal was “no longer a peer-reviewed scientific journal but an enforcer of a political creed,” while Greg Lukianoff, the CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, described the journal’s statement as “an epistemic catastrophe.” What did the editorial say?

A ballooning number of hiring and tenure decisions require candidates to express written fealty to political doctrines

In 2021, the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) School of Medicine—ranked fourth in the country for primary care—released a 24-page “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan,” listing dozens of “tactics” for advancing “diversity and racial equity” over the ensuing half-decade. One of those tactics reads: “Include a section in promotion packages where faculty members report on the ways they are contributing to improving DEI, anti-racism and social justice.” The plan promises to “reinforce the importance of these efforts by establishing clear consequences and influences on promotion packages.”

The United States obsesses over whether biological men can compete in women’s sports as transgender females.

Crime is spiking at levels not seen in 40 years. But some consider it racist to suggest that arrests, indictments, convictions, and incarcerations deter crime.

Major U.S. downtowns almost overnight went from mostly safe and clean to terrifying and toxic — and we brag that we are at least “tolerant” of the medieval conditions.

When connoisseurs yield to commissars, the result is as ugly as you’d expect.

If you think of art museums at all, you probably imagine them as places that are filled with beautiful things, that put on high-profile so-called blockbuster exhibitions, and that throw glitzy—sometimes tacky—parties.

They are all that, but they’re much more