The Bookworm Beat 5/3/16 — the “guest blogger” edition and open thread

I have a business meeting this morning, which normally would have meant no morning post. However, my friend Wolf Howling sent me such an interesting email, I’m turning it into today’s Bookworm Beat:

From Glenn Reynolds at USA Today:

Because political leaders’ chief concern is their own power and position, they’re willing to do almost anything to stave off a collapse, except reduce their own power and position. Kicking the can down the road usually just makes the problem worse in the end, but politicians would rather do that than make any sacrifice up front.

This sums up my view of the progressives.  Their power — and possible accumulation of power — comes first before anything.  I will never forgive these people for what they did over Iraq, trying to legislate a defeat that would have put al Qaeda on steroids, the cost of which would have been horrendous.

And then there are the vegans:

The news has come as a shock to many vegans, who have been regular customers of the restaurants and claim the Engelharts have built their brand on not just serving vegan food but clearly wrapping themselves in the righteousness of the vegan cause — which they argue has now been undermined. “The reason we’re so upset is that veganism is a belief system,” says Carrie Christianson, who started the Facebook boycott group. “You are patronizing a restaurant that you think has that philosophy, and it turns out it doesn’t. Vegans should know that this restaurant has a farm that slaughters animals.”

That’s the key line in this article: “The reason we’re so upset is that veganism is a belief system” — in other words, like radical environmentalism and radical feminism, veganism is one of many alternate religions that are subsets of the holistic New Age Left. (Nietzsche killed God, but man is hardwired to believe in a cause higher than himself. When traditional religion is rejected, the odds are pretty good that something cultish will be chosen to replace it.)

The restaurant owners chose to cater to the faithful, apparently without pondering the jihad they would face if and when their core customers discovered that they were apostates. Or as a wise social critic once described the nihilistic alternative lifestyles of California, “You can checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

Related: Speaking of alternate religions, as Ace writes, “I am indebted to Christina Hoff Sommers for pointing out that every identity politics cult is just a conspiracy theory with a racial (or gender) edge.”

And here is something I’ve been pointing out for a very long time — the green movement is an utter disaster for the lower and lower middle class.

THE GREEN WAR AGAINST THE WORKING CLASS: “To the left, the families whose lives are ruined are collateral damage to achieve their utopian dream of saving the planet. The Stalinists who now run the green movement believe the ends justify the ruthless means.”

Related: Hillary Flip-Flops on Coal, Now Wants Coal to Prosper.

From ABC News (actually, from their Incredible Irony Dept), Obama says Trump is not qualified to be President.

And others have been pondering whether a cat can have an existential crisis.

Conservatives have been talking about the pathetic girl who tried to disrupt Crowder at U. Mass.  I already wrote yesterday that this girl has been taught all about how fat shaming is a horrid evil instead of being learning that obesity can have a negative impact on her quality of life and health.  Boy, did I call that one.  Apparently, fighting “fat shaming” is her raison d’etre.  Robert Stacy McCain has the whole story — with a useful illustration, which I present here:

I will only add as an aside, it really wasn’t until the rise of the Bern that it began to dawn on me that the progs are blaming capitalism as an evil.  Now that I notice it, it seems pervasive throughout the community organizing subculture and all of the grievance studies programs.  On that subject, here’s a slightly related and interesting in its own right post on the Heterodox Academy trying to bring viewpoint diversity to scholarly disciplines.  My own belief is that will not happen so long as tax dollars underwrite the ivory towers.

I never thought that I would be glad to see Germans turning militant, but times change.  Add pitchforks to this story and it would be perfect.

And lastly, a psychologist tries to wrap his head around the “radical narcissism” of pc culture.  Interesting post.