Virtue signaling

Tuesday

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

The problem with Greta Thunberg

Like Agatha Christie’s “rescuer from the sea," Greta Thunberg swept upon Gaza to save the starving, the homeless, the bombed – and the bombing – from destruction at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces, only to be intercepted by one of the IDF’s boats and offered a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in plastic (which looked not at all like an item from a Jewish delicatessen). La Thunberg later characterized the incident as a kidnapping. Following that, she was presumably (as promised by the Israeli Defense Minister) compelled to view footage of the events of October 7, 2023, before being loaded on to a CO2-dispersing passenger jet and flown to France, en route to her native Sweden. She explained that to remain longer in Israel would have been to discredit her cause.

Greta

Friday

Dave Seminara

Welcome to the woke World Cup

The World Cup has just begun and it’s already shaping up to be the wokest iteration of the world’s grandest sporting event in history. Twelve years ago, corrupt FIFA officials awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a Gulf state of less than three million people and about the size of Connecticut. In the intervening years, most of the criticism of this decision focused on the bribery scandal that engulfed FIFA and claims from human rights groups that some 6,000 migrant laborers died on the job during the frenzied construction of eight stadiums and other buildings for the tournament. Attacks on the host country have broadened in recent days, focusing predominantly on Qatar’s laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Tuesday

Peter Van Buren

The left thinks social media is reality

Spotify once took a run at Joe Rogan. YouTube banned Dan Bongino. Twitter permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene. Twitter also famously canceled Donald Trump, and for a while, me. As with the suspension of Trump (and on a much, much lesser scale, me) progressives cheered the deplatformings the way public lynchings used to attract a picnicking crowd. The left controls social media (as well as most mainstream media) and so day by day their unreal world becomes ethically more cleansed, more free of things they do not like, and with all the bad news (Hunter Biden) made to go away. The world online is the way they want it to be, with the real world held at bay behind the screen. Like living in The Villages in Florida, or maybe in the Matrix.

Monday

Charles Lipson

Why Republican governors sent those immigrant buses

Since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris won’t come to the border, the border is coming to them. On Thursday, two buses of illegal immigrants unloaded in front of Harris’s vice presidential residence. Others have arrived in downtown New York, Chicago, and D.C., to the fury of local mayors and governors. A small planeload caused an uproar on Martha’s Vineyard when it landed on that self-proclaimed sanctuary island. More busloads are sure to come, probably in cities like Philadelphia, Boston, Minneapolis, and perhaps a beach community in Delaware. The immigrants are being transported from Republican-led border states to northern Democratic enclaves, which have long proclaimed themselves “sanctuaries” for the migrants they are now so appalled to find arriving.

Thursday

Teresa Mull

Puppy privilege

On a recent visit to Nashville, I took my purebred Norwich Terrier, Pitkin, for a stroll. A twentysomething girl toting a yoga mat and an iced coffee squatted on the sidewalk to oblige Pitkin’s pleas for pets. “Oh my gosh, he’s soooo cute!” the girl said between babbles of baby talk. “Where did you get him?” “From a breeder in Oklahoma.” “Oh,” the girl scoffed. “I would never buy a dog.” She took her protein-deprived, sustainably clothed self away. Pitkin and I were left to face facts: we had just been dog-shamed. Buy a dog. Her glare made me feel as if I’d come by my beloved furry friend through the Middle Passage. Pitkin looked up to me and cocked his head. He seemed satisfied, but I was not. Was not even my dog immune from the self-righteous?

dog

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

‘Don’t Look Up’ and Hollywood virtue-signaling

I sat down to watch Adam McKay’s Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up over the Christmas break with an unusual burden of expectation. Half the people I’d known who had seen it — admittedly, mainly those on the right — had denounced it as unfunny, heavy-handed agitprop, whereas their politically opposed brethren praised it as "timely," "inspiring" and "important." Would I finish watching it and sign up for a series of Greta Thunberg podcasts, or smash my television in and take to the streets, hollering? To be honest, the film is neither offensive nor clever enough to arouse such strong opinions.

Friday

Matt Mayer

Virtue-signaling isn’t courage

It is completely understandable for African Americans to be outraged at yet another death of a black man by overly aggressive police officers. That outrage, when channeled into legitimate protests and marches, could become a force for good. Ultimately, protests and marches, like those in the 1960s led by Dr Martin Luther King, J., could increase the awareness among non-African Americans of the constant sense of trepidation and fear felt by African Americans. This could help spur the urgent reforms needed to push America towards that 'more perfect Union’.Unfortunately, it appears there were as many violent riots as peaceful protests in city after city.

courage