Mostly Good News Stories, Despite the Iowa Caucus(posted 1/19/24)

Today I’ve got a couple of lighter stories, and a few post-caucus thoughts on the state of the election.

First up, the great conservative humor site Babylon Bee continues to impress.  They ran into a little controversy this week with a joke they posted about Vivek after he dropped out of the race.  It was a silly and harmless joke, but apparently a lot of conservatives got upset enough to give the Bee some grief about it.

Which is really annoying, because we’re supposed to be the folks with a sense of humor.  It’s the humorless leftists who are always getting triggered, pulling their non-binary onesies over their heads and running for safe spaces when a somebody tells a joke involving ethnicity, gender, or pretty much anything.

(I remind you of this oldie:  Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb.  A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!) 

In his response to the critics, the Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon confirmed my positive impression of him: “Some of our readers have expressed concern about this report, suggesting it did not meet the high journalistic standards they’ve come to expect from us. We want you to know that we’ve listened to you. We’ve heard your voices. And they are stupid.”

Perfect! 

Of all the things that should not be taken too seriously, jokes are right up there near the top.

For example, here’s a humor test: a Breitbart story yesterday reported a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the headline, “Factory activity in New York suffered an unexpected collapse in January.”

The story goes on to fill in the gory details: the index of business conditions plunged 29.2 points in January to a negative 43.7, and a drop of 58.2 points over two months.  (Numbers below zero indicate worsening conditions.)  Those stats are the worst since April of 2020, when the economy was decimated by the sudden pandemic lockdowns.

Don’t see the humor in that?  It’s in a subtle word choice from the headline: “unexpected.” 

Okay, so I’m no Norm MacDonald.  But I find the absurd to be funny, and nothing is more absurd than a bunch of leftists foisting economy-crippling policies on a state, and then calling the resulting cripple-ation (cripple-osity?  cripple-tude?) “unexpected.”

It would be like saying, “Dems Prevent Cops from Arresting Criminals; Crime Unexpectedly Skyrockets.”  Or, “Newsom Tries to Fiscally Rape Productive Taxpayers; Productive Taxpayers Unexpectedly Flee California.” 

Or, “The DNA Test Results for Blonde, Blue-eyed Liz Warren are in: She’s Unexpectedly Categorized as Super-Duper-Blindingly White.”  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In another feel-good story, Bilal Nofal has been eradicated.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, “Bilal Nofal” is not a super contagious virus that we’ve discovered a cure for.  Although come to think of it, you should have probably always maintained at least 6 feet of distance from Bilal Nofal.

Because Nofal was a top Hamas spy chief, “in charge of investigating suspects of espionage.”  That means he sadistically tortured people he suspected of helping the Jews.

I use the past tense because on Tuesday the IDF was flying a plane over Nofal and then – yada yada yada – he experienced a SBAMD.  

If you’re not up on your military acronyms, that’s a Sudden Ballistically-Assisted Molecular Disassembly.

Also, since it’s never “too soon” to mock a dead terrorist scumbag, here’s a fun fact: Bilal Nofal’s name can be disassembled and reconfigured (just like his body was on Tuesday) (HA!) into the anagrams “albino fall” and “anal fob ill.” 

(Cue the NBC “The more you know” theme music.)   

Ooh, I’ve got one more.  If only CO would make me the honorary headline writer for Cautious Optimism, I would title the above story as follows:

“Anal Fob Ill F**ks Around with the Jews; Unexpectedly Finds Out.”   

And here’s one more feel-good story, this time from Missouri, where a burglar named Darren Venneman was plying his trade of breaking into houses on Strawberry Lane in Qulin last Saturday night.

Unfortunately for him, the homeowner was a Second Amendment enthusiast, who responded by shooting him five times.  In other words, Venneman got ventilated on the mean streets of Qulin, Missouri. 

If by “mean streets” you mean… Strawberry Lane, I guess?  Yeesh.

Venneman was airlifted to a hospital, but died of his wounds.  The local sheriff says that the homeowner won’t face charges, since he acted in self-defense. 

Because: Red State!

But even in common sense red states, people still have to endure the scourge of the media.  And local media seemed to sympathize with the burglar, calling his death “tragic” and “untimely” and an “unforeseen tragedy.”

Though it sounds to me like his death was extremely timely, in that he broke in and was immediately – you might even say “punctually” – shot. 

Also, “unforeseen” is close enough to “unexpected,” and thus worth a Simpsonian “HA-HA!”  (As in, “Moron Breaks into Gun Owner’s House, is Unexpectedly Shot.”)

Nonetheless, the media story ends by expressing condolences to Venneman’s friends and family, saying, “May they find strength and support during this difficult time.” 

But judging from local commenters’ reactions to the local news story posted on Facebook, the community is coping with their grief just fine. 

Sample comments include, “Excellent! Good for that homeowner!” and, “Try that in a small town!!” and, “This is how we thin the herd.” and, “Bet he won’t do that again.”

Indeed.  God bless Missouri!

Finally, I congratulate the always-Trump contingent of CO nation after the first caucus; the polls were accurate, and Trump’s margin of victory in Iowa was impressive.

I’m still a DeSantis supporter, and while I’m not surprised at the depth of support for Trump among the base, I’m disappointed that I won’t get to see RDS give Biden the old SBAMD in November.  (Not least because I think Biden would have been forced to debate RDS at least once, and that would have been a blood bath for Brandon!  I know that Trump would destroy Biden too, but by refusing to debate in the primary, he’s given Biden’s handlers the excuse to refuse a debate in the general, which he will absolutely do.)

DeSantis is a fighter, but absent a meteor strike in the next month or so he’ll have to withdraw, and Haley is farther to Trump’s left than Trump is to DeSantis’ left, and thus she’s not an option for me.   

So the base has made its choice, and the die has been cast, and we must win in November, so when RDS suspends his campaign, I’ll be getting back on the Trump train with both feet.  

I’m really hoping that the optimism of the super-MAGA segment of CO nation (and the entire nation) is justified.  I’m more worried than that, for reasons I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I also see some positive signs, too.  The bogus lawfare cases against Trump seem to be crumbling on several fronts, and polls indicate that a lot of people (though not as many as should!) see those cases as illegitimate.

Trump still has his strengths, and if we can keep Biden from dropping out, Trump’s biggest weakness (his historically bad, underwater disapprove/approve numbers of -15 points) should be trumped by the fact that Biden is the only other pol in recent history with the same, -15 number. 

And Biden’s all-around terribleness should ensure that number doesn’t get any better, and will likely get even worse!

And Trump’s numbers in Iowa remind us that you’ve got to give it to him: the man is a human tornado!    

I want to see him drop out of the sky and destroy a bunch of MSM empty heads, then skip a few miles before descending and turning the DNC headquarters into kindling, then skip up again and come down on Biden’s White House and level the place. 

Would I like it if he could also discipline himself, and maybe avoid dropping down and taking out some grade schools and orphanages, and some conservative subdivisions full of people who don’t love him but will support him, too? 

Absolutely.   And if he could say at least two or three smart and funny and true things for every counter-productive one, that would be another bonus. 

His speech on Monday and his interview on Wednesday were steps in the right direction: “We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not gonna have time for retribution.  And remember this, our ultimate retribution is success.” 

Yes!  More of that, please! Hamas delenda est!

I’m Still Capable of Being Surprised, Up to a Point (posted 1/15/24)

You know the kind of cliches that indicate that something will never happen?  Like saying, “The gals on the View will have an intelligent conversation… when pigs fly.”  Or, “Joe Biden (RIP) will achieve a foreign policy success… when hell freezes over.”

Well I think I’ve discovered a new cliché of that type.  And I can use it in a sentence.

Like this one: “The MSM will cover a conservative fairly … when a big blue city’s Democrat mayor says something true about economics.” 

Okay, so it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  But on January 10th, when a reporter tried to get New York City (RIP) mayor Eric Adams to criticize Gov. Hochul’s decision to not raise taxes, he said this accurate thing, which I swear I am not making up:

“Well, we are one of the highest-taxed states in the country outside of California, and you have to find the right balance.  [I]n NYC in general, 2% of New Yorkers pay 51% of our taxes.” 

And then – flap your wings to warm them up, piggies – he said, “We’re seeing a hemorrhaging of, not only working class people, but we’re concerned about losing that high tax base…” 

Before he finished with – strap your skates on, Hitler, Jeffrey Epstein and Fidel Castro – “…because that tax base pays for our police officers, our teachers, our firefighters, keeps our streets clean.”

I know.  You could have knocked me over with a feather plucked from the wing of an aerodynamically successful swine. 

A leftist mayor said something true about the dangerous results of leftist fiscal policy.  I think this might be a new day dawning.  We might be on the verge of a return to sanity, opening the possibility of a functional bipartisan—

Oh no, wait.  This just in, from one day later:

When asked in an interview about the unfolding illegal immigrant disaster in his city, Adams said that NYC “has done a great job” handling the surge, and that, “This has nothing to do with sanctuary cities.  Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into the [country].  They’re here legally.”

Annnddddd… we’re back.  Pigs can’t fly.  Hell is still hot.  And big city Dem mayors are still allergic to reality and accountability.

Case in point, the Round Mound of Unsound Policy, Illinois Governor Pritzker, has sent a letter to Texas Governor Abbott, asking him to stop sending illegals to Chicago.  “I plead with you for mercy for the thousands of people who are powerless to speak for themselves.  Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives… do not send more people to our state.” 

In recent months, Pritzker has called Abbott’s policy “a cheap political stunt,” and in his new letter he complained that, “Hundreds of children’s and families’ health and survival are at risk due to your actions.” 

Got that?  It’s not Biden’s fault for inviting millions of illegals to flood across the border, and it’s not Illinois Democrats fault for declaring Chicago a sanctuary city for all of the future illegal Democrat voters in south and central America (mi casa es tu casa!).  It’s the Republicans’ fault.

Your party has opened the border, J.B.  I know how surprised you are that even with all of this global warming that is about to boil us to death, the forecast for Chicago right now is for a freezing cold winter.

If only there were some places where the Mexicans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans and Venezuelans could live where they weren’t in danger of becoming Latinx-cicles.

Oh wait.  There are such places.  And they’re called Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela. 

So get off your high horse, put down that comically oversized turkey leg, and give your party’s leader a call.  (Fair warning, though: you may need a Oujia board.)   

One final piece of advice, and this is a paraphrase of Claudine Gay’s immortal words from Animal House (“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”):  

Delusional, two-faced and double-chinned is no way to go through life, Governor.

Meanwhile, in Texas, rational people are continuing to do things right. 

One such rational person is Terry Willis, a resident of a Houston suburb.  This week his surveillance cameras alerted him to a small group of Biden voters (I’m guessing about that part… but I’d bet Hunter’s life on it) going through his neighborhood, trying the door handles on parked cars.

When four of them came up his driveway and let themselves into his ATV, which was on a trailer behind his truck, he walked out into his yard to speak with them. 

He said, “I apologize that our evil society has given you such a bad deal in life.  Please help yourself to my sanctuary ATV.  Because: Massachusetts!”

Oh no, wait. This story happened in Houston.

So when he walked into his yard, he was carrying his AR-15 rifle.

Because: Texas!

He racked in a shell and said, “I don’t think you want to do this.”  And the criminals ran away, leaving a trail of cowardice and human waste in their wake.

When interviewed, Willis said, “For approximately 20 years, I’ve had a concealed weapons permit.  I’ve also been through hunter safety courses.  I’ve built guns.”

Did you get that?  While leftists have been building DEI programs, abortuaries and memorials to recidivists like Michael Brown and George Floyd, Terry Willis has been building guns!

Did I get a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, watching that news story?  Maybe.

I can’t think of a better way to end this column than with Terry’s closing words to a local reporter:

“I’ve worked for 40 years of my life.  Everything that I’ve got… never stole anything, and I’m just not taking it anymore.  This ain’t the place to come, because we’re tired of it.”

Yes.  Yes we are.

But if those misunderstood youngsters are looking for a place where citizens ARE willing to take it some more, and are NOT tired of it, I’d suggest Chicago.

But get yourself a clean pair of pants and a nice warm coat first!

Hamas delenda est!   

I’m Looking on the Sunny Side, So Far this Year (posted 1/5/24)

I’ve got the uneasy feeling that there’s going to be a lot of unsettling news as 2024 goes on, but for now the year is fresh and new, and I see a lot to be optimistic about. 

FSU got deservedly humiliated in their bowl game, anti-Semitic identity hire Claudine Gay got tossed out of her Harvard presidency, and the Native American president of Penn got tossed overboard even more quickly than Gay did. 

Okay, I’m not sure the Penn lady is an Indian, but since she’s as white as Liz Warren and has nice cheekbones, I’m just assuming.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

In the ongoing battle of Hebrews vs. Terrorists, the good guys are putting wins on the board by taking hateful creeps off the board.  On January 2nd, a bunch of Bond villains from Hamas, Fatah and other “Palestinian” and Lebanese terror groups were meeting in Beirut.  (I picture a bunch of guys with eye patches and facial scars sitting in high-backed chairs around an enormous conference table over a glass floor covering a giant aquarium filled with sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads.)

Then the Mossad and IDF came calling, as reflected in my super-accurate re-enactment here:

Sound at the door: Knock, knock.

Hamas money and weapons guy Salah al-Arouri: Who’s there?

Door:  Kosher drone.

Salah (confused): Did anyone order a kosher drone?

Collection of thugs: We ordered death to Israel, with a side of death to America, but no kosher drones.

Salah: Wait a minute… kosher?

Drone: KA-BLAM!!! 

The following day, an assistant commander in Islamic Jihad’s northern Gaza division with the ridiculous name Mamdouh Lulu was recorded live as he walked on a Gaza street, talking to a companion.  As the Israeli eye in the sky watched, the two split up and Lulu went on his merry way, probably with visions of having non-consensual sex with a goat dancing in his head.

Annnnddddd… he was vaporized in an Israeli airstrike.  Which sounds about right, since lately the leading cause of death for terrorists in Gaza is “spontaneous vaporization.”

I’d like to think that the pilot said, “Screw you, Lulu,” when he fired the missile.

But one thing is clear: Lulu didn’t even have time to say boo hoo before he went bye bye.    

That very same day, a huge crowd of terror enthusiasts gathered for an upbeat tribute to the late Iranian super-villain Qasem Soleimani (or, as he became known after Trump found out his whereabouts, “goo in a Jeep”) in a cemetery (appropriately enough) in the Iranian town of Kernan.

Annnndddd… several bombs went off in the crowd, killing over 100 people and wounding at least 140 more.  And before you can say, “Yeah, but how many innocent people may have been hurt or killed in those explosions?” remember that the crowd was there to venerate the memory of a Jew-hating mass murderer.

So, zero.  Zero innocent people.

As satisfying as it would be to chalk this karmic strike up as yet another successful Israeli chess move, reports suggest that a Sunni Muslim group was behind the bombing.  I’m not a Muslim-ologist, but I understand that many Sunnis are not particularly fond of the Shia running Iran.   

So let me first applaud those Sunnis. And to the Shia, I just have one question:  Are you going to let those guys get away with that?   

But it’s not just vaporizing terrorists who are getting this year off to a good start.  It’s also some imploding DEI spending initiatives.

One hopeful story on Breitbart reported that after a huge increase in DEI programs and hiring several years ago, “tech giants including Zuckerberg’s Meta and Google have slashed their funding of DEI programs in 2023 by up to 90 percent.”   And as AOC could tell you, that’s nearly half!

Even as PR flaks and spokes-castrati at the tech companies continue to mouth platitudes about the value of DEI, their shareholders and bosses have realized that that value is commensurate with the number of innocent people attending Soleimani-Fest ’24, and they’re trying to avoid having the market give them the Lulu treatment.

Meanwhile in Florida, Ron DeSantis has caused yet another big leftist interest group to weep and gnash their teeth.  (Man, I wish we could have a conservative door-kicker like that guy as our president!)  This time it was a huge teachers’ union – the United Teachers of Dade (UTD) in Miami-Dade county – who is looking at de-certification because of a RDS-backed right-to-work law requiring that a union meets a dues-paying membership threshold of 60% to stay in power.

Despite a panicked push to boost their membership – including sleazy tricks like smearing the law’s backers and kicking substitute teachers out of their bargaining unit to lower the number of teachers required to meet the 60% threshold – the UTD came up short. 

And now Florida parents may be about to gain even more control over their kids’ education.  And an influential public union that is way less concerned with educating students than with laundering union dues for Democrat candidates and the DNC. 

Finally, I’ve got a few thoughts about the very encouraging signs coming out of the Claudine Gay implosion at Harvard.  I don’t think that forcing her out means that Harvard and other universities have learned their lesson and will now reform themselves.  If they had, they wouldn’t let her return to a faculty position and get paid $900K a year.  (That’s more than I make in several years, and I never plagiarized in my dissertation, or anywhere else!) (If by “several years” I mean “ten years!”)

But I do think that the damage to the reputation of Harvard and Penn and universities in general is serious.  The public has seen behind the curtain, and now recognizes the corruption and inexcusable and offensive racial politics there.  The empress was obviously wearing no clothes.

And very stupid and ugly glasses!

The premise behind affirmative action was always that it would only involve a very light touch on the scale, and only to tilt an outcome when two job applicants or students were very evenly matched in every other way.  If that was ever true, it hasn’t been true for many, many decades. 

The recent SCOTUS debate and ruling on affirmative action in college admissions revealed the ugly truth that preferred minorities with bottom-quintile test scores and qualifications were being admitted at higher rates than whites and Asians in the top several percent. 

And Claudine Gay’s exposure just hammers that home.  A non-identity hire trying to become president at a top school like Harvard would need to have published a number of books, at least several of which would have to be ground-breaking, influential works in their field, amongst a large number of articles and decades of high-profile service.

Gay wrote a total of zero books, and only 11 peer-reviewed articles. And she didn’t even write most of those, as her prolific record as a high-volume plagiarizer proves! 

Not to mention that every one of those articles was about race – one of the least rigorous fields in academia, to put it nicely – and all of them were predictably banal and unoriginal, as they only re-packaged the fashionable prejudices of the left: whites are evil and racist, the West is terrible and America is worse, “people of color” are eternally oppressed victims.      

Gay is a hack and a mediocrity, and she went out as she came in: playing the race card, and playing the victim, and lying her butt off. 

It’s right and salutary that the American public got to see that.

More please!

Hamas delenda est!   

Ready for a New Year (posted 1/1/24)

I hope that your year has started off as well as mine.  Since we had covid on Christmas, we had our Christmas celebration on New Year’s Day, with Karen’s brothers and their families coming to the house to feast and exchange gifts. 

So I started 2024 off with a Merry Christ-year!  (Which I generally prefer to a Merry New-mas, though your holiday mileage may vary.)  

As always, on the cusp of a new year, one’s mind naturally turns to marking the passage of time, and looking backwards and forwards simultaneously. 

When I look back on 2023, I’m extremely grateful for many things happening in my personal life – disproportionately so, given the perilous condition our nation appears to be in: a relationship with my Creator who loves and forgives me; the patient, smokeshow wife; the healthy and thriving kids; the envy of canine-dom in the form of Cassie the Wonder Dog; the chance to live in a state with the best governor in the country, etc. 

And though I’ve said it before, I’ve probably not said it enough: the chance to sound off on the Cautious Optimism site has been a source of great comfort and joy in my life.  I mean that sincerely: comfort and joy!  (Yes, I’m still in a Christmas mood, since we just celebrated today, and the 12 Days of Christmas extend through January 5th.) 

In December of 2016, the Great and Powerful CO invited me to contribute my occasional musings to this site, and since then I’ve had seven years of getting stuff off my chest, and lowering my blood pressure, and meeting so many great people.  I can’t thank all of you enough! 

If I can risk tainting the new year with a shameless plug…As regular readers know, when I post a new column here, I post the most recent column to my WordPress site, Martinsimpsonwriting.com.  There you will find all of my columns going back to 12/16, as well as some pictures, a few short stories, and a few videos.  If you like what you see there, you can click “subscribe,” and you’ll get an email notification each time a new column appears.

Looking forward, I’m going to be posting a handful of short stories I wrote during another life as a fiction writer, and a lot of pics of my (finally!) restored Victorian house, Rosewood.   I’m also going to try to record and post at least one video a month on various topics of interest.  (If anything is on your mind that you’d like to see discussed, please let me know.)   

When I look forward to the next year in the life of our country, though, things are a lot more cloudy.  In an election year when the stakes are so high and our national life so troubled and deteriorating, my fascination with politics – properly understood and undertaken – alternates with an increasing disgust with the grubby reality of politics as they are actually pursued.

When I’m in the latter mood, Wordsworth’s words sum up my instinctive distaste for public life: “The world is too much with us; late and soon/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” 

Since I’ve retired, I’m not as focused on getting or (hopefully!) spending.  My big-picture concerns now require more focus on how I spend time than on how I spend money.  And spending time thinking about politics and politicians can often seem a foolish expenditure indeed!

But as soon as I say that, I recognize that politics are shaping the world that my kids and future grandkids will live in, and so attention must be paid.  Plus, it is therapeutic to mock dishonest pols and bad ideas.  Besides, both Thomas Moore and C.S. Lewis said that the devil cannot stand to be mocked, and those guys knew a few things.

And if that applies to Satan, I’m sure it applies to his minions (i.e. most politicians) too. 

But there will be a lot of time for mockery later.  For now, I’d just like to point out at least one silver lining during our current national malaise.

Although some of our problems are definitely hard to solve – social security is going broke, our national debt is staggering, our universities need ground-up renovation – many of them really are not. 

It’s amazing how many “crises” should be simple to solve, because they arise from logical errors that would be ended with the application of the most basic common sense.  For example: 

It’s not good to sterilize young people, or cut healthy body parts off because they are going through a phase of discomfort with their bodies and/or mental illness.  (The defining characteristic of being young is going through phases, so don’t make permanent and irreversible physical changes!)   

You get less of what you punish, and more of what you reward.  So if you reward criminals – make excuses for their crimes, minimize their punishments (ridiculous plea deals, short or no sentences, no penalties) – you get more crime. 

Giving a drunk a drink doesn’t help him, and most of our welfare system is the institutionalized form of buying alcohol for alcoholics.  Stop that.

A country without a border cannot remain a country, and cutting illegal immigration by 95% is a very simple task.  It’s very hard to stop the last 5% or so, but if you build physical barriers and man them with adequately armed officers, and then take into custody and either immediately jail and deport everyone you catch, the draw for future illegals will be stopped. 

Law and order MUST be maintained throughout our society, and our current hands-off strategy seems literally insane to me.  Allowing mobs of protestors to attack public and private buildings, and to close off major highways and bridges, and to terrify students and cops and paralyze major universities (just as allowing millions of illegals to break into our country and disperse throughout it) – all of these are voluntary choices.

Mind-bogglingly, inexplicably, and weapons-grade stupid choices!

Especially because, again, the solution is so simple and obvious, in every case:

When a-hole narcissists block a highway or bridge to paralyze a major city, give them a few quick warning honks, and then drive right through them.  (If any of them suffer injuries but then have to wait a long time for an ambulance to reach them because of the congestion they’ve caused, they can use that writhing-in-agony time to reconsider their life choices.)

When pro-terrorist students riot and assault other students and university officials, expel them permanently and jail them immediately.

“But Martin,” I can hear you saying, “despite the brilliance of your words, the logic of your argument, your personal charisma, and (let’s not deny it) your knee-weakening physical attractiveness, we don’t have the resources or manpower to drive-over and pepper spray and jail and deport millions and millions of Biden-voting wastes of space!”

Yes, but we wouldn’t have to.  We’d only have to demonstrate our determination to the first few troublemakers, “pour encourager les autres,” as the Frenchies say.   

Picture this:

The first antifa thug in a crowd to throw a bottle at the cops gets a faceful of pepper spray and/or birdshot and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first BLM whitey-hater who storms a courthouse gets a bean-bag round to the groin and then is cuffed and arrested…

The first two arrogant morons who try to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge are partially squashed in a game of human Frogger, and if they survive that, are cuffed and arrested in the hospital…

How do you think their co-would-be-revolutionaries would react after seeing that? 

Or how about this: What if the two gender-confused, identified-as-male-at-birth “leaders” of a clot of cosplaying grievance-studies majors who attack a pregnancy-support center or Supreme Court justice’s house were arrested and taken to jail.  And once there, they were photographed and printed and tossed into a holding cell – with their frosted pink hair and facial piercings, wearing a “Queers for Palestine” t-shirt over a gender non-binary skort — with a dozen recidivist criminals.

And the next day, after their rich yet feckless parents have bailed them out, what if they limped back to the collective and told their tearful tales of prolapsed this and bruised that, and how they discovered a whole new meaning of “misgendering” in jail…

What do you think would happen to the attendance at the next hate-filled leftist assault on a public institution or building?

Okay, that last example might be going a little too far.  On the other hand, if we have to err on the side of either letting the rioters destroy our society, or letting criminals open a can of macro-aggressions on their temporarily incarcerated carcasses, let’s go with Door #2. 

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, predictable and swift consequences will concentrate the mind of even the most mouth-breathing, AOC-IQ-level miscreants among us.  So why haven’t we tried that lately?

Let’s learn the lessons of 2023, and make 2024 the year of re-instituting cause and effect, and reaping what you sow.  

Hamas delenda est!