When you can't live without bananas

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Friday, May 26, 2023

Links - 26th May 2023 (1 - General Wokeness)

White flight from immigration?: Attitudes to diversity and white residential choice - "Whites select significantly less diverse neighborhoods than nonwhites, but there is little or no racial difference in the destinations that white liberals and conservatives, British Brexiteers and Remainers, and American Trump supporters and opponents move to."
Damn racist white conservatives, Brexiteers and Trump supporters!

Food guidelines change but fail to take cultures into account - Los Angeles Times - "Ethnic variations have been suggested for years, but there is still little guidance given to Americans of different backgrounds on how to eat more healthfully.  “There’s different ways you can be racist,” said Esosa Edosomwan, a certified nutrition specialist and behavioral coach in Washington, D.C. “You can be racist by omitting people, by making guidelines that only cater to a specific group.”"
You need 20 different food pyramids, and then people will still call you racist for saying their favourite ethnic foods are unhealthy

Meme - "WHAT IS YOUR THIRD WISH, MASTER?"
"MY FINAL WISH IS TO UNDO THE IMPACTS OF SLAVERY!"
*Black man sitting on soil in village with trees, shitting cow and straw huts* "SHIT"
GRASS TOUCH

Suspect in fatal stabbing of Edmonton mother and child had lengthy, violent record - "A man suspected in a fatal double stabbing of an Edmonton mother and child was released on bail 18 days before the killings.  According to sources, Muorater Arkangelo Mashar was the suspect who was shot by Edmonton police officers last Friday following an attack on Carol Ann Robillard, 35, and her 11-year-old child, Sara Miller, who had recently started using the first name Jayden.  Robillard and Miller were both killed in the stabbing outside Crawford Plains School... A combination of court and parole records reveal that Mashar had a long history of charges and convictions for violent attacks dating back nearly 14 years, with victims in both Alberta and Manitoba. He had been in and out of prison and jail many times, and had been convicted of assaulting both people in the community and a fellow inmate."
Pro-crime liberal policies strike again

Toronto school takes down Mother's Day message following criticism - "“Life does not come with a manual. It comes with a mom.”  The woman, whose children do not attend the school, objected to the message because it leaves out many families.  She decided to go public with her concerns and her initial post has since been commented on dozens of times.  “I don’t know if this is a terribly misguided attempt at wishing folks a happy Mother’s Day or just generally the worst sign possible …,” she wrote. “I don’t feel like this represents the neighbourhood it’s in, the cohort of families at this school, or anything really.”  The woman told CP24.com that it should have been a “no-brainer” for the school to post a more inclusive message, especially given the presence of many non-traditional families in the wider community.  Dozens of parents have since chimed in on the post, most of whom said that they find the message problematic.  One person said that the greeting was in “bad taste” while others called it “inappropriate,” and “mega exclusionary.”  Those who shared concerns about the message said that it does not take into account different kinds of families, those with “kids in foster care, kids with two dads, kids who have no contact with their moms, kids who have abusive moms,” who may or may not see their mother figure as the one who holds the “manual” of life."

Marcia Gay Harden Reveals 'All My Children Are Queer' During Telethon - ""What drives me is — my children are all queer," the actress continued. "My eldest child is non-binary. My son is gay. My youngest is fluid. And you know, they are my kids and they teach me every day.""
What a coincidence

Family of 8th grader forced to play cotton picking game asks for $10M settlement - "The incident happened on Feb. 8. at Gunston Middle School. Sidney was forced to play "nose dive" by his substitute teacher, a game which required him to pick up cotton balls with his face. The substitute claimed that the game was a list of approved games from the school district... "We're supposed to put the Vaseline on our nose and pick cotton. I remember she asked for volunteers, and then everybody looked at me in the class," Rousey said. "[The teacher] was looking at me and forcing me to go up there to play the game. I didn't really want to, but I didn't want to get in trouble with the teacher. So, I went up there to play the game and I didn't really want to."...
The activity, called “nose dive,” was part of a list of optional team-building activities for 8th-grade Gunston students to foster collaboration... Arlington Schools announced it would take the game off the school's list 10 days later at a school board meeting and said they were reviewing other games on the list... Fairfax also brought up that Arlington County opted not to change the school's name, despite its namesake's link to slavery... But Kirkland said the money is the last thing on her mind right now."
It's racist to ask black kids take part in school activities

Brewery forced to change beer name after complaints over White Face - "The name of an award-winning beer has been changed by a brewery following customer complaints that it was racist. Moon Gazer’s White Face beer has been sold in pubs across the country for the past three years.  The company has received calls from pub landlords in recent months, complaining that customers had complained about the name.  Cheeky Jack, a play on the American name for a hare – a Jack Rabbit, will be the new name of the American-style IPA."
???

Why do movie villains have so many dermatological issues? - "“These visual cues evoke in the audience apprehension or fear of the unfamiliar and provide a perceptible parallel to the villainous character’s inward corruption,” the authors write. The pattern “may contribute to a tendency toward prejudice in our culture and facilitate misunderstanding of particular disease entities among the general public.” Associate enough sadistic killers with largely benign skin conditions, and those skin conditions start to seem a little bit ickier."
I'm sure viewers love films where you can't identify the villain. Russians it is - they're the only race/nationality you can scapegoat now

Some religious employees subjected to ridicule and stereotyping, survey finds - "WHILE most Christian employees in the UK and the United States feel positive about expressing their faith at work, others have been subject to ridicule and hostility from colleagues, on the basis of stereotypes, new research suggests. The research, conducted by a business-psychology consultancy, Pearn Kandola, was published on Wednesday in the report Religion at Work: Experiences of Christian employees... most (74 per cent) chose not to wear a religious symbol at work. Of the 154 Christian employees who did wear religious dress at work, one third (32 per cent) did not feel comfortable reporting an incident involving these items.  This percentage was higher among the 371 UK-based Christian employees: 82 per cent chose not to wear religious dress or symbols at work. Of the 66 UK-based Christian employees who did choose to wear religious dress or symbols at work, 36 per cent said that they did not feel comfortable doing so... The recently published 2021 Census found that England and Wales are now minority Christian countries"
This won't stop liberals from mocking Christians for never knowing what discrimination is

Meme - "Secular Person: I want to do X.
Christian: You're free to do it.
Secular Person: But you think X is wrong.
Christian: Yes.
Secular Person: Because you want to control me.
Christian: No. You're free to do whatever you wish.
Secular Person: But you think X is wrong.
Christian: Yes, but only because I want what's best for you.
Secular Person: But I want to do X.
Christian: You're free to do it.
Secular Person: But I want you to say that X is good.
Christian: I can't say that.
Secular Person: Why are you such a hateful, intolerant bigot?"
Not all secular people are woke

Racist White Progressives Love the ‘N-Word’ When It’s Being Used Against Clarence Thomas - "Usually, white progressives are pretty adept at hiding their racial bigotry. But there is just something about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that unlocks their inner Bull Connor and compels them to expose their racism. This has become even more apparent after the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade...   What is even more interesting about this is that Twitter has not yet bothered to censor any of these blatantly racist postings. We already know what would happen if a bunch of white conservatives posted tweets with racial slurs against someone like Stacey Abrams, right? They would not only be deleted but those posting the epithets would likely be permanently banned.  Nevertheless, this just further illustrates that those on the far-left who claim to be champions for racial minorities and warriors fighting against racism tend to have more in common with David Duke than they would care to admit. Indeed, if you doubt this, just look at some of race grifter Robin DiAngelo’s work.  This story also reminds me of Malcolm X’s comments on racism among white liberals and conservatives. He criticized both, but noted that “the white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the ‘smiling fox.’”  In one of his speeches, he said:      “The white liberal differs from the white conservative in one way. The liberal is more deceitful and hypocritical than the conservatives. Both want power. But, the white liberal has perfected the art of posing as the negro’s (sic) friend and benefactor.”"

It shouldn't be up to the CRTC to decide if Canadians can watch Fox - "Sage Whoopi Goldberg was on The View not long ago insisting that the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler, the vilest racist the world has even known, was not racist and that — hold your stomach when reading this — because the Germans were white and the vilely persecuted and murdered Jews were white, it was therefore not “racist” criminality, but according to Goldberg just another sad example of “man’s inhumanity to man.”... If the CRTC wants to freelance a spot of censorship, have a glance at The View.  More to the point, why have they indicated a broadcast jihad against Fox? For the many who don’t like Fox, who detest Fox, it is their very special dark beast. And in an era of inflated and wild partisanship, hostility to a network “not on your side” has become a passion. However, a regulatory agency of one country is not the ideal supervisor, overseer, judge of the broadcast politics of another country. Were they an ideal overseer, I would like to hear their views on CNN, CNBC, some of the bigger networks. In any comparison with Fox and MSNBC the only challenge is: how and on what rational basis can either one of these claim the slightest superiority — in news accuracy, tone, quality of hosts, per-determination of political positions, or culling of guests to match the partisan leanings of the hosts and network. Or CNN — a disaster of a network, a total collapse from its early days decades ago. No CRTC, you should not be contemplating banning Fox. Any more than you should consider banning CNN or CNBC. Yet if you go after one, you must, by logic and fairness, go after all. Meantime, if you really wish to act as judge and censor, how about looking at matters closer to home, the arrival of such eerie entertainments as Drag Kids, a perplexing “cultural” offering from the national broadcaster, CBC. What part of CBC’s mandate covers such programming, I will leave to President Catherine Tait to determine. It would be very interesting to hear her views on this. It would be a much more useful exercise of her attention than writing sour letters to the leader of the opposition."  
On reddit, liberals were cheering the possibility of Fox being banned. Of course, try and ban anything that they like and...

Meme - "Leftist: It's not political, its just being kind. We support the little person powerful governments and corporations. Only heartless morons oppose us!
Also leftist: How dare Disney's supranational legal status be revoked!"
"I never thought I’d live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone" - John Lydon, The Sex Pistols

Rob Henderson on Twitter - "Every 6 months my mind returns to this heatmap indicating that conservatives devote the majority of their empathy and care to family and friends and liberals devote most of their concern to plants, trees, and inert entities such as rocks."
The tweet somewhat misrepresents the findings. It's not that liberals devote most of their concern to plants, trees and inert entities such as rocks, but they are more likely to include non-humans and non-living things in their moral circles. Also, the study found they are more likely to value humans and non-humans the same way
Addendum: The paper is "Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle"

Meme - Wokam's Razor - by @TheRabbitHole84:
"All the experts agree." - NPCs
"Well, not all of us." - Expert
*Cancelled* *Shoots expert*
"All the experts agree." - NPCs

Graduate wins payout after essay marked down ‘for not criticising Israel’ - "A Jewish graduate who sued a university and said she was delayed from graduating because her essay did not criticise Israel has been awarded an undisclosed sum from the University of Leeds.  Danielle Greyman has settled her legal claim with the institution, which will pay her the money, without any admissions, under a “commercial settlement” of her claim for damages. The University of Leeds agreed to the settlement on the condition that it did not recognise any wrongdoing on its part.  The sociology graduate said her coursework was wrongly failed because it did not blame Israel for the crimes of Hamas against the Palestinians. However, the appeal process and re-marking took more than a year and the university’s confirmation of her entitlement to the degree came too late to enable her to take up a place on a masters’ course at Glasgow University... Dr David Hirsh, senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, produced a report reviewing the marking of her coursework. He said: “This essay was not a fail.” Greyman chose “State crime and immorality” as an optional module in the final year of her sociology degree, in 2020-21, which was assessed by an essay of about 5,000 words. With her tutors’ agreement, Greyman decided to write about the crimes against Palestinians by Hamas and the contribution of the UN to these crimes. She said she was specifically advised by academics not to discuss Israel or debate fault between Hamas and Israel since the essay was about the crimes of Hamas against Palestinians. However, her essay was failed and the reasons given, Greyman claims, were that it did not discuss the alleged crimes of Israel and that it was too short, even though it met the required length."

Netanyahu blames Soros for Israel anti-deportation campaign - "Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros is behind the public campaign against the government’s plan to deport Sudanese and Eritrean migrants to a third country in Africa, widely believed to be Rwanda, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said... He also said that former US president Barack Obama “deported two million infiltrators, and no one said anything.”... Soros, who is Jewish, is a strident critic of Israel and has supported a number of NGOs with radical left-wing agendas, such as Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, Yesh Din and al-Haq. A source close to Netanyahu said the prime minister was referring to the fact Soros contributes to the New Israel Fund, a left-leaning clearinghouse for Israeli civil rights groups, which in turn funds organizations that oppose the deportations."
Damn anti-Semitic Netanyahu! The ADL must condemn him immediately

George Soros' quiet overhaul of the U.S. justice system - "While America’s political kingmakers inject their millions into high-profile presidential and congressional contests, Democratic mega-donor George Soros has directed his wealth into an under-the-radar 2016 campaign to advance one of the progressive movement’s core goals — reshaping the American justice system.   The billionaire financier has channeled more than $3 million into seven local district-attorney campaigns in six states over the past year — a sum that exceeds the total spent on the 2016 presidential campaign by all but a handful of rival super-donors.   His money has supported African-American and Hispanic candidates for these powerful local roles, all of whom ran on platforms sharing major goals of Soros’, like reducing racial disparities in sentencing and directing some drug offenders to diversion programs instead of to trial. It is by far the most tangible action in a progressive push to find, prepare and finance criminal justice reform-oriented candidates for jobs that have been held by longtime incumbents and serve as pipelines to the federal courts — and it has inspired fury among opponents angry about the outside influence in local elections."
From 2016. If you're anti-crime or against billionaires' involvement in politics, you're anti-Semitic

Corporate Media Runs With George Soros 'Holocaust Survivor' Lie - "Elon Musk tweeted a milquetoast five-word criticism of George Soros, sending the corporate media into a full-on moral panic about “anti-Semitism.”... George Soros is the exact opposite of a Holocaust survivor; he was a Holocaust perpetrator back in his native Hungary when he enthusiastically sold out his own fellow Jews to his adopted Nazi daddy.  Here the tale straight from the horse’s mouth. His glory days confiscating Jewish property with his Nazi benefactor “made his character,” he says, teaching him his business ethics.  “Was it difficult?” the interviewer prompts Soros, probably expecting an expression of some level of remorse. But he didn’t get it, because he was interviewing a demon.  “Not at all… it created no problem at all,” Soros replies...   Jake Tapper, as the rest of the corporate media is wont to do, also erroneously describes Soros as a “philanthropist.” Soros is a philanthropist like Pol Pot was a saint.  He is a ruthless international currency trader who has almost singlehandedly crashed numerous national economies – including most famously the 1997 Asian financial crisis kicked off by his manipulation of the Thai baht."

Meme - ..... @millze2010: "Like I said per capita is a system that whites created to look less violent while making us look more violent"

Francis Fukuyama’s Master Concept - "His framing of our present crisis as one of identity politics—which he understands broadly enough to encompass right-wing as well as left-wing versions, the international scene as well as domestic conflicts—is lucid and insightful... Leftists will object: The Men’s Rights Movement has deep roots in the patriarchy, just as American white nationalism has deep roots in the racism and slavery of American history. In short, how could left-wing identity-politics have provoked right-wing versions that precede them?  Against this objection, Fukuyama would argue that those closest to the mainstream are not saying (in the manner of John C. Calhoun) that whites are superior to other races and thus deserve to enslave them. Instead, these conservatives are claiming that their white, European identity has been ignored and disrespected by the elites (in media, academia, and politics) while other identities have been recognized and celebrated by that same elite. The roots, stem, and leaves of white nationalism are in the Confederacy, Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow south, but its sickly flower has indeed been pollinated by left-wing identity-politics. So identity politics now animates the right as well as the left in America. It also explains the international scene in the way any candidate for a “master concept” must. Putin, for instance, appeals to a widespread sense that the West has not respected Russia’s historic dignity. By associating various symbols with this aggrieved identity (e.g., the Russian Orthodox Church) and demonizing various scapegoats as threats to it (e.g., gays), Putin permits Russians who may be suffering in any number of ways (e.g., poverty) to feel that they are nonetheless owed respect as citizens of a great nation.  Substitute Erdoğan, Orbán, Duterte and Bolsonaro for Putin, make appropriate adjustments to account for the symbols evoked by these leaders to suit their national cultures, and you have plausible explanations for the populist authoritarianism of Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines and Brazil respectively... So, too, can the appeal of political Islam across the Muslim world, or for that matter the appeal of Islamic terrorism to young Muslim men in the Western world. Citing the work of Oliver Roy, Fukuyama notes that most of the terrorists who have become radicalized were beforehand no more political than they were poor. “Neither these issues nor any kind of religiosity drove them,” concludes Fukuyama, “so much as the need for a clear identity, meaning and a sense of pride.” This need began to burn when “they realized that they had an inner, unrecognized self that the outside world was trying to suppress.” Although they quote the Koran, then, they are really expressing Luther’s Christian inward turn, Rousseau’s Romantic critique of social corruption, Kant’s rationalist argument for universal human dignity, and Hegel’s historical prophecy about the need for universal recognition... Whether a country leans left or right economically, whether it favors more authoritarian or more libertarian government—these will be matters of circumstance. What is becoming universal, according to Fukuyama, is how these rivalries are framed: as contests over identity.  What would falsify the thesis would be a renewed, persistent, and ultimately victorious focus by the left and right on economics. If Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn were to win national elections, if the Republican party were to expel Trump and return to its agenda of free trade and Reaganomics, then Fukuyama’s thesis would be in trouble. Neither seems likely as of this writing."

NYC hospital ‘Karen’ on leave after viral fight over Citi Bike - "The Bellevue Hospital employee branded a “Karen” after she was caught on video allegedly attempting to hijack a Citi Bike that a black man claimed he had already paid for has been placed on leave...   The bewildering encounter exploded online, with critics calling the unknown provider a “Karen” and castigating her for allegedly weaponizing her “white woman tears.”"
NYC hospital 'Karen' paid for Citi Bike at center of fight with black man - "The Bellevue Hospital employee — who was branded a “Karen” on social media afterward — rented the bike first, lawyer Justin Marino said in a statement to The Post Wednesday.  He also provided two Citi Bike receipts from May 12, which were timestamped just minutes apart.  The first receipt reviewed by The Post shows the bike being taken out before it was re-locked one minute later, which Marino said is the bike seen in the video.  The second receipt shows another bike being taken out a minute later from the same docking station and was the bike Marino said his client used to get home after being “heckled and pressured to find a new bike” by the group.  The hospital employee, who Marino says is a six-months-pregnant physician assistant, was placed on leave by NYC Health + Hospitals... As she backed it up from the docking station, a group of five people approached her and claimed the bike was theirs, he said. “One or more individuals in that group physically pushed her bike (with her on it) back into the docking station, causing it to re-lock,” Marino said in the written statement.  One of the individuals then covered the bike’s QR code, stopping her from paying for it again so she could leave, Marino said.  “In blocking the QR code, this individual’s arm was touching my client’s pregnant stomach, a condition of which she had made them aware,” he added. “Throughout this time and for the remainder of the video, roughly five individuals were telling her to get off the bike and heckling her.”  “The fact anyone would treat another person like this is tragic, especially a visibly pregnant woman,” he said."

White Quebec historian claims discrimination over job posting - "A historian at Montreal’s Dawson College has filed a human rights complaint over a prestigious job posting that’s open only to women, Indigenous people, those with disabilities and racialized groups. Frédéric Bastien, who specializes in Canadian history, said he saw a job posting for his specialty at Université Laval in Quebec City. But the diversity rules disqualified him right off the top... It’s the latest salvo in a debate over the diversity requirements of the research chair program, which are top-tier university positions funded by the federal government. A number of universities have job postings with similar restrictions... In recent months, a number of university job postings have had restrictive hiring criteria. Earlier this year, the University of Waterloo was hiring for three jobs, two of which excluded all cisgender men — regardless of ethnicity — and another was hiring exclusively Indigenous candidates."
We keep being told that white people don't and have never faced discrimination

Richard Dawkins vows 'I'll use every one' after scientists condemn words including 'male' and 'female' - "Richard Dawkins has vowed to "use every one of the prohibited words" that scientists have called to be phased out because they are no longer inclusive.  On Tuesday, academics working in ecology and evolutionary biology called for the avoidance of words such as male, female, man, woman, mother, father, alien, invasive, exotic and race.  Instead, they encouraged the use of terms such as "sperm-producing" or "egg producing" or "XY/XX individual" to avoid "emphasising hetero-normative views"... “The only possible response is contemptuous ridicule,” he told The Telegraph. “I shall continue to use every one of the prohibited words. I am a professional user of the English language. It is my native language.   “I am not going to be told by some teenage version of Mrs Grundy which words of my native language I may or may not use.”  Other experts also branded the alternatives "absurd" and argued they could cause confusion in scientific fields. They also pointed out that the terms "egg producing" and "sperm producing" were simply synonyms for male and female, and continued to confirm that sex is binary.   Prof Karol Sikora, a cancer expert, said: “I certainly do not agree and such language will not be appearing in any of my scientific work.”  Commenting on the research on GB News, Francis Foster, the comedian, said: “As always with these things it’s completely meaningless, it’s going to obfuscate what we are actually talking about and it’s laughable, it’s beyond parody.”  The EEB Language Project, which was launched in this month’s Trends in Ecology and Evolution journal, is compiling a repository of "problematic words" that have been identified by US and Canadian scientists as harmful and it suggests alternatives. For example, participants have flagged the term "citizen science" saying it could be "harmful to people who do not have a nation state". Instead they suggest "participant science or community science". The academics warned that minority researchers were experiencing "microaggressions" from words such as "invasive".  They also claimed that anti-trans language has been used to describe male snakes that engage in female mimicry, and warned phrases such as "sneaky mating strategy" could "normalise problematic male sexual behaviour".  The term "invasive" or "non-native species" is also deemed to be "xenophobic, anti-immigrant, and militaristic" and could be replaced with "newly-arrived" or "nuisance species", they suggest. Writing in the journal, the authors said: “One of our authors trained in the USA recalls ‘how tired I was as an undergrad hearing how invasive species from other countries decimate pristine US ecosystems. It reminds me of when people tell me or other people of colour to go back to where we came from. Why would I want to be in a field that exoticizes immigrants or reinforces narratives that immigrants are a plague?’”  Even the phrase "double-blind", which is often used to describe trials in which neither the participants nor scientists know if someone is on a drug or placebo, has been deemed potentially offensive to those with disabilities, as has the phrase "survival of the fittest"."

The woke censors are not going anywhere - "The battle over Roald Dahl is over for now, but the culture war goes on. Penguin Random House’s response to the barrage of public opinion is a strategic withdrawal to the high moral ground – the publisher claims it censored Dahl to protect the “imaginations and fast-developing minds of young readers” – followed by a flanking move in the direction of the parental wallet. Parents can now buy Puffin’s bowdlerised, early-reader Dahl, then graduate the little darlings to the hard stuff from Penguin, which will now issue the original Dahl in what it calls the Classic Collection... what kind of reactionary bigot would indoctrinate a child with racist, classist, heightist, fattist and foxist humour, let alone send the kid to school with a Classic?  No right-thinking parent – which is to say, Left-thinking parent – would dare. Better to play it safe for the good of the children. Best, in other words, to surrender to politicised censorship.  So this is not a victory for free speech or common sense. Penguin Random House has reaffirmed the principle that led it to bowdlerise Dahl in the first place: the sinister and pernicious idea that books should be censored to reflect contemporary sensibilities. The public outcry is but a small setback for the commissars of culture. The literary Stalinists – the Dahlinists – have, as they like to say, “normalised” the idea that the past can be rewritten. The censors will return to work on Monday, red pens in hand. America has given many good things to the world, though not lately. The advent of a two-tier Dahl is a further foothold for America’s worst export of all (worse even than rapping and wearing pyjamas in the street): the culture war. This is a class war masquerading as a moral crusade. The new puritans, like the original Puritans, see themselves as a spiritual elite, tasked with curing the souls of the heathen masses. The new elite are the old elect. There is not much difference between dunking witches and deleting The Witches. When Penguin Random House says it has the “privilege and responsibility” to protect young minds, it means that the privileged have a responsibility to tell the plebs what to think. The assumption is that everyone is a racist until proved otherwise, that children will go rogue if they read the wrong books, and that only those in possession of the correct doctrine should be in positions of authority. Dahl was a snob with a cruel sense of humour, so it is nothing if not appropriate that his books will now be sold in class-conscious versions. But the modern lexicon of passive-aggressive control contains no more dismal phrase than: “That’s not appropriate.”  American history is full of original sins – racism, genocide and slavery among the least appropriate. The only ways to escape such a past are to deny its existence or to claim to have been born again into a new innocence. Having lived in blue-state America for nearly two decades, I can report that neither option is working out. American society is split, and there can be no way back. Americans have not reached the post-racial Promised Land. They have made a desert of their culture, but neither side calls it peace. Britain exported the most fanatical of its Puritans to America long ago. It has no reason to import a degraded American puritanism now."

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