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HT: Bird Dog.

Victor Davis Hanson finds that Joe Biden’s scolding negativity reminds him of the key moment of another democrat presidency.

Biden frowns. He grimaces. He occasionally barks and yells as he delivers a gloomy view of America and its people, past and present.

Admit it: We are all racists, then and now, captives of Jim Crow still. Biden needs as many fabricated enemies as he can find; otherwise, his speeches, his demeanor, his agenda are little more than absurdities. They cannot stand or fall on their own merits because they have none. So grumpy Biden, in his latest and final incarnation, is always anti-something, usually anti-Trump, anti-racism, and anti-everything traditional America is for.

Lots of bad white people still need to be rooted out—outside of the beltway. These are the ones never woken by Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the media, academia, the corporate boardroom, professional sports, and the foundations. These retrograde deplorables apparently won’t give up their “privilege” without a fight.

Bidenism demands these environmental desecrators must stop boiling the planet. We are a xenophobic nation that won’t let pioneering migrants enter the United States. We are a Neanderthal America full of people who won’t wear their masks when vaccinated and outdoors. We are a battered America still reeling from the Trump disasters on the border, the Trump failed coup on January 6, the Trump racism that led to peaceful equity marches all last summer.

So America needs a booster shot, a new way of electing presidents, a rebooted Supreme Court, new Senate rules, more states, and so much more—with so little time. The downer message makes Jimmy’s Carter’s old cardigan sweater sermons look inspiring, as the grey and sullen Joe himself makes Carter in retrospect seem sunny.

RTWT

Actual quotes from this new CIA recruitment ad:

"I am a woman of color"

"I am a cisgender millennial"

"I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder"

"I am intersectional"

I think it's safe to say the contemporary American left has failed.pic.twitter.com/ruUzWSeIur

— Aisha Ahmad (@aishaismad) May 2, 2021

HT: Vanderleun.

Daily Wire:

About one-third of employees at software company Basecamp quit days after bosses told them to keep ideology out of the workplace and focus on the company’s actual business.

“We make project management, team communication, and email software,” CEO Jason Fried wrote April 26. We don’t have to solve deep social problems, chime in publicly whenever the world requests our opinion on the major issues of the day, or get behind one movement or another with time or treasure. These are all important topics, but they’re not our topics at work.”

Tech journalist Casey Newton said about one-third of the company’s roughly 60 employees took buyouts shortly after, with one fuming: “Basically the company has said, ‘well, your opinions don’t really matter — unless it’s directly related to business…’ A lot of people are gonna have a tough time living with that.”

Newton reported at Platformer that woke tensions boiled over after, in December, a new hire “volunteered to help the company work on diversity issues.”

This included criticizing the fact that for years, many employees had contributed to a list called “Best Names Ever” in which they placed funny customer names — of “the sorts of names Bart Simpson used to use when prank calling Moe the Bartender: Amanda Hugginkiss, Seymour Butz, Mike Rotch.”

A third of the company joined a diversity initiative behind the volunteer, and two employees who had contributed to the list of funny names asked why there had never been an “internal reckoning” over it. They apologized for their involvement and included a link to something called the “pyramid of hate” from the Anti-Defamation League.

The pyramid lists “non-inclusive language, microaggressions” at the bottom and “genocide” at the top, saying, “If people or institutions treat behaviors on the lower levels as being acceptable or ‘normal,’ it results in the behaviors at the next level becoming more accepted.”

Basecamp chief technology officer and co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson, the father of the popular web development framework Ruby on Rails, condemned the list of funny names but found the invocation of genocide to be an example of “catastrophizing” that had the effect of shutting down rational conversation.

When one employee continued to push this line of logic, Hansson pointed out that that employee, himself, had participated in discussions making fun of customers’ names. “You are the person you are complaining about,” he thought, Newton reported.

Soon after, Fried, who along with Hansson has long been recognized as an expert on cultivating productive workplace culture, said the company was making changes to make sure there was “no forgetting what we do here.”

There would be “no more societal and political discussions” on official company channels, he said, calling it “a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places.”

On Twitter, John Breen, whose bio describes him as “He/Him. ADHD. Software developer. Queer. High Maintenance,” tallied the exodus in a thread that began:

Let's keep track of the folks who are leaving @Basecamp and do what we can to find them a new home where they're allowed to exist without being told they're divisive:

— John Breen (@_breeeeen_) April 30, 2021

“Ex-basecampers: we need people like you at Mozilla!” one Mozilla employee responded.

RTWT

Jan Matejko, Konstytucja 3 maja 1791 roku [Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791] 1891.

230 years ago today, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth adopted the first written Constitution in Europe, the second in the world.

Wikipedia article.

The adoption by Poland of a Liberal Constitution so alarmed the despotisms of its neighboring empires that they invaded and punished Poland with the Second Partition of 1793. The actual document was seized and carried off and locked away in the Kremlin in Moscow, in a trunk tightly chained, as if it constituted a kind of weapon of mass destruction, which to autocracy and despotism perhaps it did.

Human remains at Kolyma.

Ten films on the subject of Communism’s demicide.

The most comprehensive statistical source for democide statistics, Death By Government, puts the toll at 106 million. Necrometrics estimates that Stalin and Mao alone killed 60 million. Wikipedia, defining democide more narrowly, puts the toll between 21 million and 70 million. The Museum of iCommunism estimates 100 million murdered. The Black Book of iCommunism estimates 80 to 100 million.

But these are just statistics. As psychologists have pointed out, it’s impossible for the human mind to grasp the magnitude of that level of horror through sheer numbers. Just as Schindler’s List was instrumental in getting the public to come to finally terms with the Holocaust, it is perhaps through film that death toll of communism can best be understood.

Every May 1st for the last several years, Ilya Somin has written an editorial for the Washington Post declaring the “May Day” so beloved by the Left to be renamed “Victims of Communism Day.” I concur, and so, while socialists blissfully celebrate their worker’s paradise this May Day, indifferent to the human cost of their political philosophy, I propose that well-meaning people consider watching a film on the subject, both out of respect for those lost and to be intellectually armed against the ignorance of those still in denial. Here are some recommendations.

RTWT

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M.S. Rau Antiques has quite a historical object for sale:

“This exceptional Regency desk was specially crafted for one of the most legendary men in Western history, Napoléon Bonaparte. Commissioned by the British government for Napoléon’s personal use during his exile on the island of St. Helena, the exceptionally rare relic was crafted by George Bullock, one of the most important British cabinetmakers of the 19th century. Absolutely extraordinary in both provenance and craftsmanship, a piece of furniture of this incredible importance is rarely seen on the market.

Literature:
London: World City 1800-1840, Exhibition Catalogue, 1992, by C. Fox, pp. 410-411
“Napoleon and George Bullock” in Furniture History, 1998, by M. Levy, p. 21 and p. 91″

“Price on request” meaning: “You can’t afford it!”