LIVE AT FIVE: 05.01.15

“Why invite the potential headaches of teaching a lesbian graphic novel in a religious institution?” asks Professor Scott A. Dimowitz in an essay published in an academic anthology this month. “In the course of several iterations of a class on Literary Feminism that I teach at Regis University, a Jesuit school in Denver, Colorado, I have used Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and selections from her long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For to explain postmodern life narratives that incorporate nontraditional matter and a nodding acquaintance with Roman Catholic Church doctrine.”

Perhaps the disclosure of Professor Dimowitz’s curriculum is shocking to some alumni of Regis University and to Catholics who don’t realize how “postmodern life narratives,” including feminist gender theory, now pervade academia. As I previously explained (“Introduction to Feminist Theory”), “there are very good reasons why the proceedings in Women’s Studies courses are generally not discussed outside the classroom.” If parents and alumni were aware of what was being taught in these programs, and if voters understood how taxpayer subsidies to higher education are helping fund such ideological indoctrination on campus, we might expect a political firestorm to erupt. One can easily imagine a congressional committee hearing on what Professor Glenn Reynolds has called The Higher Education Bubble, where the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” aspect of this nonsense could be exposed to public scrutiny.

There are now Women’s Studies programs at some 700 U.S. colleges and universities, enrolling more than 90,000 students annually, and these programs are the intellectual command centers of the Feminist-Industrial Complex. Many thousands of professors are employed to teach courses in this interdisciplinary field. Carmen Rios, the self-described “raging lesbian feminist” who is Communications Coordinator at the Feminist Majority Foundation, has explained:

Is it Gender Studies? Women’s Studies? Women’s And Gender Studies? Sexuality Studies? Gender and Sexuality Studies? LGBT Studies? Queer Studies? Feminist Studies? . . . Women’s Studies remains an interdisciplinary field, making its name all the more difficult to decide on. Is it Women’s History and Theory, or is the program really Lesbo Recruitment 101?

She said that, not me. Regis University describes its program:

Women’s and Gender Studies examines the intersections of gender, race, and class, and also considers how gender roles are constructed in different global cultures and historical periods. Women have made important contributions in traditionally defined “male pursuits” (politics, science, art, etc.) Although traditionally understudied, women’s experiences and participation have led to the reexamination of long-held interpretations and conventional wisdoms in a wide variety of academic fields. Uniting all women and gender studies inquiries is the effort to understand and explain inequality between men and women, and to envision the possibility of new social practices that could bring about greater equality, mutual understanding, and human flourishing.

And also, lesbian comic books. Professor Dimowitz explains that he teaches Bechdel’s cartoons because this helps “defamiliarize traditional linguistic life narratives and form a uniquely productive site of tension and destabilization of students’ assumptions about gender, sexuality, and the very nature of what constitutes aesthetic merit, which few of the other traditional texts were able to achieve to the same extent.”

Exactly how does all this relate to the aims of a Catholic university? Professor Dimowitz is eager to explain:

To be clear about my own position . . . I was raised in a particularly strict form of Pennsylvanian, Croatian-immigrant Roman Catholicisim. . . . Years later I find myself teaching Catholic students, although Regis is a Jesuit university and Jesuits have always been more of a distinctly unconventional form of Catholicism. . . . As a specialist in postmodern literature and gender studies, I have an investment in engaging students in open discussions about representations of gender and sexuality in contemporary literature and culture.

Hmmm. So now the professor talks about his Literary Feminism class:

The course is offered as part of Regis University’s Integrative Core Curriculum, which was established in 2009, seeking to integrate juniors’ and seniors’ understanding of four key areas: (1) Diversity and Cultural Tradition, (2) Global Environmental Awareness, (3) Justice and the Common Good, and (4) The Search for Meaning. As a Diversity and Cultural Tradition course, Literary Feminism has two pragmatic goals, among others: (1) to introduce students to the idea of gender as a performative act, and (2) to understand the complexities and varieties of human sexual expression and representation. These goals reflect an overall tolerant approach to the study of gender and sexuality. . . .

So here we find the postmodern “idea of gender as a performative act,” i.e., the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix. One wonders what would be the reaction to Professor Dimowitz’s recitation of all this academic jargon, if you could present it to the devout priests who established this university, originally called Sacred Heart College, in the 19th century? One wonders, indeed, what the Pope must think of this, considering how he has twice in recent months condemned gender theory. In an interview with Italian journalists Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, Pope Francis compared gender theory to the doctrines of the Hitler Youth and, on April 15, Pope Francis described “so-called gender theory” as “an expression of frustration and resignation that aims to erase sexual differentiation because it no longer knows how to come to terms with it.” Anyone who expects Catholic institutions of higher education to heed the Pope and fight against the nihilistic doctrine of gender theory, however, will be disappointed to discover what Professor Dimowitz is teaching at Regis University:

This graphic nature of the form is clear throughout Bechdel’s 2006 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, a darkly humorous coming-of-age memoir of Bechdel’s childhood growing up in a funeral home run by her father, a closeted homsexual who was also a high school English teacher with a penchant for seducing some of his male students.

(Feminist Literature is so wholesome and inspiring!)

The book cycles its meditations around the event of Bechdel’s father’s death, which she believes may have been a suicide. Juxtaposing her own coming out story as a lesbian against her father’s inability to lead an authentic existence. Bechdel in Fun Home metanarratively meditates on the nature of life writing. . . . The book is frank about sexuality and blunt about her father’s statutory rapes of high school boys, and the text even includes several panels in which Bechdel recreated imagined scenes of seduction of these students. Bechdel struggles to understand her ambivalent responses to her father’s death while trying to unify a life narrative out of the fractured collage of documents and memories.

Again: Why is this being taught in a Catholic university? Do the parents who are paying $33,060 a year to send their children to Regis University have any clue what is being taught there? Does anyone even care? Professor Dimowitz says 70 percent of freshmen at Regis “self-identify as Roman Catholic.” However:

Many incoming students . . . have a rather cavalier attitude toward Church orthodoxy, which is part of an overall movement in contemporary attitudes. In America, especially, belief in strict Vatican law is clearly trending away from dogma. . . . According to a 2011 Pew survey of Americans, clear majorities “across most demographic groups say homosexuality should be accepted by society” and not discouraged or ignored (which are the two other categories). Interestingly, Catholics, in general, favor acceptance at 64 percent, which compares positively to the overall population’s acceptance, which is only 58 percent.

Here it should be pointed out that the choices Pew offered — whether homosexuality should be “accepted,” “ignored” or “discouraged” — omit other alternatives, particularly “tolerated,” i.e., an attitude somewhere in the range of “live and let live” or ‘who the hell cares?” This kind of toleration of homosexuality has in fact been widespread in America for decades, even while gay activists have hyped up claims that America is gripped by “homophobia.” So, sure, given the three choices the Pew poll offered, most people would say “accepted,” particular because they know that’s the answer they’re supposed to choose. We return to Professor Dimowitz’s discussion:

This general trending toward acceptance [of homosexuality], especially among millennials, opens up a fertile space for dialogue with students of a traditional college age.

(Professor Dimowitz gets paid to have a “dialogue” about gayness with college kids, and he seems quite eager to do so.)

When asked in a survey, “How did you feel about our openly discussing homosexuality in a Catholic school?” the Regis students were overwhelmingly positive. . . . Of course, part of this positivity is perhaps a function of Regis University’s generally progressive Jesuit orientation, and the question might receive a different response from a far more conservative school.

The bottom line, then, is that Professor Dimowitz and the administration at Regis University are comfortable with the idea that moral issues should be determine by (a) public opinion polls, or (b) “progressive Jesuit orientation,” and certainly not by (c) that old-fashioned “Thou shalt not” stuff in the Bible. Any institutional resistance we might have expected Catholic educators to make against society’s drift toward nihilism has been swept away. A progressive devotion to radical egalitarianism (the heretical “liberation theology” that embraced Marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America during the 1980s) steadily replaces devotion to God at institutions like Regis University.

Being “conformed to this world,” they teach “doctrines of devils.”

“Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. . . . He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that — do not listen.”
— The Exorcist (1973)

Nobody believes in that kind of stuff anymore, I guess.

If feminism is the cause of your problem, the solution to your problem is not "more feminism." http://t.co/afi6QPqQ8W pic.twitter.com/yikYfDQ6JY

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 30, 2015

Category: Catholics, Education, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox, 04.30.15

Posted on | April 30, 2015 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ugh. So easy to screw things up by eating the wrong food. Anyway, here’s some linkagery in lieu of Live at Five; there will also be a book post later today (or maybe Friday) with some updates on the Hugo Awards kerfluffle.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: GoFundMe?
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: A Mild Defense Of Alcoholics Anonymous
Michelle Malkin: Debunking Obama’s Bilious Baltimore Babble
Twitchy: Adam Baldwin Puts A Hulk Smash On Mark Ruffalo’s Recommended Reading For “White America”
Shark Tank: Bernie Sanders Announces He’s Running For President

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Baltimore “Hero Mom” Berates Son For Participating In Riots
American Thinker: Another Thrilling Episode Of Blacks Behaving Badly
BLACKFIVE: EFMB – Giving It Your All
Conservatives4Palin: Gov. Palin – The Slap Heard Round The World
Don Surber: A University Stands Up To Unpatriotic Students
Jammie Wearing Fools: Confirmed – Baltimore’s Incompetent Hack Mayor Ordered Police To Stand Down In Face Of Violent Thuggery
Joe For America: American Patriots, Your Kiddies Must Dress Islamically For “Field” Trips!
JustOneMinute: They Must Have Seen This Coming
Pamela Geller: Students Publicly Humiliated By School Because Parents Refused Permission For Mosque Visit
Protein Wisdom: Is Your City Burning? Thank A Democrat!
Shot In The Dark: A Thought Experiment
STUMP: 80 Percent Funding Hall Of AWESOME – Experts Say…
The Gateway Pundit: Obama vs. Reagan On GDP Growth – Not Even Close
The Jawa Report: In Japan, R2D2 Flies You
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Lawyer – If SCOTUS Rules For Same Sex marriage, Religious Schools Could Lose Tax Exempt Status
This Ain’t Hell: Brooke Baldwin Apologizes To Veterans
Weasel Zippers: Michael Moore Demands America Disarm The Police
Megan McArdle: Blame The Machines

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Category: Linkagery

Feminism’s ‘Rape Culture’ Insanity

Posted on | April 29, 2015 | 152 Comments

Does anyone else remember the “Culture War” of the 1990s? Conservatives like Bill Bennett and Robert Bork argued at the time that the decadence of popular culture — as evidenced in everything from gangsta rap to video games to Quentin Tarantino movies — was corrupting morality, inciting violence and sexual perversion. Here we are, two decades later and feminists are saying basically the same thing.

This is part of what the whole “rape culture” discourse is about. Whereas most of us think of rape as a criminal act perpetrated by individuals, feminists want to indict culture — or “misogyny” or “male supremacy” or some other way of blaming larger societal forces beyond the act of the individual rapist. Therefore, feminists now adamantly insist, it’s the way we talk about sex, or the way sex is depicted in advertising, movies and TV shows, which causes rape. So now the Speech Police patrol the Internet, ready to denounce as a “rape apologist” anyone who contradicts the feminist narrative. No one can be permitted to express doubt toward the Scientific Truth of the Feminist-Industrial Complex. After Christina Hoff Sommers spoke at Georgetown University, the student newspaper published an editorial that accused the College Republicans (who hosted Sommers’ lecture) of having “knowingly endorsed a harmful conversation on the serious topic of sexual assault.”

Merely to have a conversation is harmful on the 21st-century campus.

What sort of conversations are students permitted to have? Feminists apparently had no problem with the Foucault-influenced postmodern gibberish spewed by Emma Sulkowicz in a “Sexual Assault Awareness Month” event at Brown University:

“There does not exist a scientific way to prove non-consent. . . . When it comes to sexual violence, scientific proof is impossible. . . . If we use proof in rape cases, we fall into the patterns of rape deniers. . . . When a person claims that their theory is a science, they disqualify other types of knowledge. . . . Let’s change the question from ‘Did she consent that night?’ to ‘Did she have the power to consent that night?’ . . . This is not about physical strength. . . . This is about historical power. . . . Seeing is the origin of interpretation. Interpretation is the origin of knowing. . . . If truth is scientific, then art cannot access truth. But perhaps there is something beyond the truth.”

Uh, “something beyond the truth”? Something we might call a lie?

This is pretty much what Paul Nungesser’s federal lawsuit says: “Emma Sulkowicz Is a Vindictive, Dishonest and Crazy Slut — Allegedly.”

Far be it from me to presume to know what transpired between Nungesser and Sulkowicz on the night of Aug. 27, 2012. She claims he held her down, choked her and forcibly sodomized her. There is no evidence at all to support her claim, however, while Nungesser says that everything between them was consensual and quotes Facebook messages from her that would appear to suggest that Sulkowicz was quite enthusiastic about sodomy (see paragraph 16 on p. 5 of Nungesser’s lawsuit). As for a possible motive for Sulkowicz to lie, Nungesser’s lawsuit offers a credible explanation in paragraphs 30-31, p. 10:

As is evident from Emma’s Facebook messages to Paul during the summer prior to their sophomore year, Emma’s yearning for Paul had become very intense. Emma repeatedly messaged Paul throughout that summer that she loved and missed him. She was quick to inquire whether he was in love with the woman he was seeing abroad.
Thereafter, she continued pursuing him, reiterating that she loved him. However, when Paul did not reciprocate these intense feelings, and instead showed interest in dating other women, Emma became viciously angry.

“Hell hath no fury,” etc. This is an entirely plausible scenario, if you are familiar with a certain kind of high-maintenance young woman — what I call the “Daddy’s Precious Darling” type — who believes herself to be so special that she deserves to have whatever she wants. If Sulkowicz thought her hookups with Nungesser were about love, and if he treated this as just something casual? Yeah, you could see how she would feel herself to be “the woman scorned” and decide to avenge herself by falsely accusing him of rape seven months after the night in question.

Student targeted by anti-rape mattress-carrying protester sues university. http://t.co/uUdNGg0MKK pic.twitter.com/Y6gDJGjyfE

— The Independent (@Independent) April 25, 2015

Starting to come around to the idea that a woman who became famous for carrying a mattress around campus isn't the picture of mental health.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 25, 2015

All of that, however, was a preamble to this: Robby Soave at Reason magazine wrote an article with the following headline:

Student Accused of Rape By ‘Mattress Girl’ Sues
Columbia U., Publishes Dozens of Damning Texts

A fair summary of the case, but when it was posted to Tumblr.com, a certain segment of feminist readers went berserk, including one 22-year-old who unleashed this:

Okay, I have something to f–king say about this sh*t, as someone who was raped and isn’t the “ideal” victim.
Like, yes, they had an ongoing sexual relationship.
However, he forced her to have anal sex against her will. Rapist seems to think that previous discussion of anal sex = consent. It is f–king not. You can be having sex with someone and if you start to do something to them they didn’t consent to, that they don’t want, that’s f–king rape.
She still texted him afterward? With “yearning” messages? Oh, wow. I can’t believe real humans who experience emotions are pegging this as evidence that she’s a filthy liar. When you have an established relationship with your rapist, it’s very f–king complicated. I allowed my rapist to torture me for 2½ years. We were dating. I loved him! Maybe, just f–king maybe, this woman continued to care about the man who raped her. That is NOT uncommon at all. And society tells women that when you care about a man, you have to please him. I would send my rapist “sexy” messages because I thought that’s what I had to do to get him to continue caring about me so I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about the rapes and have to cope with it.
f–king f–k all of you, holy f–king SH*T

Do you see the problem here? This anonymous Tumblr blogger says she was tortured by a rapist because she “loved him!”

Maybe I’m hopelessly naïve. Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life.

Maybe the world has changed in the past 30 years, and maybe there are lots of young women who date rapists and let themselves be tortured for 2½ years. “I loved him!”

Or maybe these women are crazy.

Also, maybe, conservatives were right about the Culture War. Maybe raising young people with no religious faith, letting them fill their minds with violence, noise and graphic sex is a bad idea.

Furthermore, the British Independent reported in August 2014:

A study on why teenage heterosexual couples may engage in anal sex has revealed a climate of coercion, with consent and mutuality not always a priority for the boys who are trying to persuade girls into having it.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine interviewed 130 teenagers aged 16-18 in three sites across the country to “explore expectations, experiences and circumstances of anal sex among young people”.
The qualitative study found that anal heterosex appeared to be “painful, risky and coercive, particularly for women”, while males spoke of being expected to persuade or coerce reluctant partners.
“Anal sex is increasingly prevalent among young people, yet anal intercourse between men and women—although commonly depicted in sexually explicit media—is usually absent from mainstream sexuality education and seems unmentionable in many social contexts,” the study, published on BMJ Open, says.
It found that some young people normalised “coercive, painful and unsafe anal sex,” in an issue that needs to be addressed by health workers and schools in sex education.

Guys: DON’T DO THIS. Stop watching “sexually explicit media” (i.e., porn) and remember that sexual fantasy is called “fantasy” for a reason. All that weird and kinky stuff — especially stuff that is painful, degrading and unsanitary — is not what she wants.

Or if she does want it, she’s probably so crazy you don’t want her.

See paragraph 16 on p. 5 of Nungesser’s lawsuit.

Also, notice the footnote at the bottom of p. 7: Chlamydia.

Feminism and porn are both bad ideas. Butt sex? Bad idea. False rape accusations? Bad idea. You know who likes bad ideas? Crazy women.

Just in case you haven’t been persuaded yet:

A woman diagnosed with herpes at the age of 20 has written an emotional essay about living with the common condition to fight the stigma surrounding it.
Ella Dawson, now 22, said she had never had unprotected sex and thought she “wasn’t the sort of person STDs happened to” when the symptoms first appeared during her time at university in the US.
She found the diagnosis days later devastating, feeling a “tidal wave of shame” hit her in the student health centre. . . .
Six months after being diagnosed, she decided to start telling more people she had herpes to help herself get over the mental block.
Ms Dawson says she never had a negative reaction dropping the “herpes bomb” at parties and in class discussions at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Wesleyan University, annual tuition $47,972. Ella Dawson graduated last year with a bachelor of arts in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in feminist media analysis.

There is a word for this, and the word is crazy.

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools …" Romans 1:22 (KJV) https://t.co/cdkP3qkJJV

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 29, 2015

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Category: Sex Trouble

Forgiving Brooke Baldwin

Posted on | April 29, 2015 | 33 Comments

by Smitty

Another day, another unfortunate utterance by someone on the Left. Watching the clip, it’s clearly a scripted set-up between her and good ol’ Elijah “fake racial slurs” Cummings.

But let us express compassion for poor wee Brooke, a thirty-something special snowflake from the UNC Chapel Hill Department of Commie Propaganda (that is, Journalism). When I went to boot camp in 1987, my company commander was a SMC Baldwin. That’s Chief Signalman for you civilian types, though the rating was apparently merged with Quartermaster in 2004.

I kind of wonder what old Baldwin would think of his namesake slandering veterans as though military service turns Americans into some kind of foreign, invasive species. Veterans support and defend the Constitutional right of Brooke and her ilk to be as false and useless as they want to be. There is some irony to be mined in how the era of Hope and Change segregates Americans into victim groups, like the Baltimore rioters, and target groups, like veterans, Christians, and males (trifecta for me!).

So, take your paycheck, Brooke. Take it knowing that, even though you’re on the wrong team, at least some veterans forgive you. We pray that wisdom find you, and you truly repent past the casual tweet and instead start doing some useful reporting. While you had EC on camera, for example, you could have diverted from your talking points to inquire if Cummings approved of Martin O’Malley’s 2013 gun law, which probably did little to help societal politeness recently in Baltimore.

But, again, we’re in a forgiving mood, and, besides: we expect absolutely nothing from you whatsoever, Brooke. It’s only when you veer negative that something must be said.

via Breitbart

Category: CNN, Media Bias

Why Do Feminists Hate Beauty?

Posted on | April 28, 2015 | 125 Comments

“The digital armpit that is Tumblr.com seems to be the preferred medium of young feminists who, although they have accomplished nothing and have no credentials, find that they can become Internet Superstars by disparaging men. It seems that the most formulaic, banal and stereotypical derision of males is enormously popular with a certain type of young woman.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, March 12

Exactly why a particularly stupid and rancid type of feminism flourishes on Tumblr is a topic that would require more time than I can afford to put into it today. My wife and I are celebrating our 26th anniversary, and so I’ll spare you my theories about Tumblr feminism. What I want to do instead is to link this Ace of Spades item about a feminist hate-storm against a company’s “Beach Body” ad:

This upset the Social Justice Tumblrinas, who began arguing that Everyone already has a “beach body,” because everyone — well, every woman — already has the perfect body with no need of improvement. (Note that feminists are usually critical of men who could stand to do some pushups.) . . .
Oh, and Protein World called the feminists — many of whom are vandalizing their advertisements, or even threatening to destroy their offices — “terrorists.”

What is it about the celebration of female beauty that angers feminists so much? Gosh, I just can’t imagine what it could be.

"Intercourse with men as we know them is increasingly impossible." — Andrea Dworkin, 1974 http://t.co/YWbqbodQmp pic.twitter.com/rb36QYh85E

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 27, 2015

.@Van_der_Leun Spelling, grammar, facts, logic — entirely optional on feminist Tumblr! @AceofSpadesHQ https://t.co/wwlRX4ZMuH

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 28, 2015

@Van_der_Leun Also, anonymous. Imagine an army of angry teenage Melissa McEwans free to say whatever, with no accountability @AceofSpadesHQ

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 28, 2015

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Category: Sex Trouble

Anarchy in Baltimore

Posted on | April 28, 2015 | 128 Comments

What happened Monday night in Baltimore, the Economist reported, “is perhaps best described not as a riot but as anarchy”:

Though there are police lines, there are few protesters or people fighting the police or hurling stones. Indeed, where the police are lined up, the people standing around are mostly taking photos on their phones. Drive a few blocks in any direction, though, and suddenly it feels lawless. Groups of young men, boys really, wearing bandanas and hoodies, stand on street corners next to derelict buildings, staring at anyone passing, and occasionally throwing projectiles at cars. Young women hurry home carrying bags of stolen loot: food, clothes, and bottles of beer and liquor. On the occasional street here and there cars burn freely. Shops, of which there are not many in this abandoned corner of the inner city, are ravaged, their windows smashed, their shelves picked over. Cars hurtle through red lights at high speed, music blaring, boys leaning out of the windows. And everywhere the intense smell of smoke and the buzz of helicopters overhead.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

As night fell, looters took to Mondawmin Mall and a Save-A-Lot and Rite Aid in Bolton Hill, loading up cars with stolen goods. About 10 fire crews battled a three-alarm fire at a large senior center under construction at Chester and Gay streets, as police officers stood guard with long guns. . . .
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake declared a curfew across the city starting Tuesday and for the next week, from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for adults and 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. for children aged 14 and younger. She drew a distinction between peaceful protesters and “thugs” she said engaged in rioting Monday intend on “destroying our city.”
“It’s idiotic to think that by destroying your city, you’re going to make life better for anybody,” Rawlings-Blake said.

(“Idiotic”? Ma’am, these are Democrat voters you’re talking about.)

At Rawlings-Blake’s request, Gov. Larry Hogan signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency and activating the Maryland National Guard. . . .
The governor is sending 500 state troopers to Baltimore and requesting as many as 5,000 officers from neighboring states, he said in a press conference.
“I have not made this decision lightly,” Hogan said. “The National Guard represents a last resort.”

Of course, if the National Guard can’t restore order, President Obama could deploy the 82nd Airborne Division, or maybe order some Predator drone strikes against the rioters, but we probably don’t want think about that “last resort.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers intellectual excuses for the rioters:

Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city’s publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor of that city and the commissioner of that city’s police still have no idea what happened. . . .
The citizens who live in West Baltimore, where the rioting began, intuitively understand this. I grew up across the street from Mondawmin Mall, where today’s riots began. My mother was raised in the same housing project, Gilmor Homes, where Freddie Gray was killed. Everyone I knew who lived in that world regarded the police not with admiration and respect but with fear and caution. People write these feelings off as wholly irrational at their own peril, or their own leisure. The case against the Baltimore police, and the society that superintends them, is easily made . . .

Right. Liberals must blame “society,” despite the fact that the “publicly appointed guardians of order” answer to a “society” (i.e., the citizens of Baltimore) who in 2012 gave 87% of their votes to Barack Obama. Yet it is predictable that, to people whose politics is a simple devotion to (a) electing Democrats and (b) supporting liberal policies, the evidence of failure leaves them angry, confused and hunting for scapegoats. Democrats cannot be blamed, nor can the party’s most loyal constituents be held responsible, and the possibility that liberalism is itself the problem — well, no, thoughts like that never cross the mind of someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates. His worldview is completely fact-proof and immune to the influence of logical deduction.

This is the political gospel of modern liberalism: People who vote 87% Democrat are never to be blamed for anything they do wrong. And really, the liberal asks, isn’t “wrong” kind of a judgmental word when applied to the peace-loving citizens of Baltimore?

Signs that your country might be a science fiction dystopia. http://t.co/WSfTn1bcCM pic.twitter.com/2GHu1fiyiJ

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) April 28, 2015

There really should be a Pulitzer Prize for Internet memes. #BaltimoreRiots #tcot @TrucksHorsesDog pic.twitter.com/eTmEMj7e38

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 27, 2015