Diddy Case Says More About Our Culture Than His Perversions

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

What the hell is wrong with people? If you felt compelled to cheer the “not guilty” verdicts against Diddy, there’s something wrong with you. There’s something wrong with a lot of people, as morons reportedly poured baby oil over themselves outside the courtroom as the verdict was read, demonstrating that our culture is in an endless, accelerating cycle of rot.

There is no reason for you to have ever heard the name Karen Read, unless you know her. But you probably don’t know her, yet you have heard her name. She ran over her fiancé and killed him, maybe she was drunk, maybe she wasn’t, I didn’t follow it that closely. 

I also couldn’t escape it because the media covered her trials like she was a celebrity because she was an attractive white woman, and attractive white women being involved in murder cases (victim or perp) gets almost as much media attention as a celebrity and slightly more attention than a minority having a conflict with a police officer. In other words, the hierarchy of media concern is: 1) celebrities, 2) attractive white women, 3) minority victim vs police of any configuration, 4) nothing – there is no 4, nothing else matters because it doesn’t rate.

It's a sickness in society, a perversion of our culture that celebrity is so “big,” but more than that we have completely obliterated the line between famous and infamous. One used to be something to aspire to, the other a cautionary tale. Now there is no difference. 

Ask kids what they want to be when they grow up and one of top answers you will get is “influencer.” They probably can’t explain what that is, likely thinking it is someone famous who doesn’t have to do all that much (truth is, they have to do a lot and constantly, as the public will quickly move on to the next big thing). In other words, they want to be rich and famous and haven’t given it much thought beyond that.

It is the job of adults to get kids to think of things beyond that, but too many “adults” are sucked into that celebrity/attention vortex too. That’s how you can end up with a crowd of adults outside a courtroom in Manhattan cheering a domestic abuser and sexual deviant (and quite probably much, much worse) being found not guilty of a series of crimes. 

What is missing in their lives that this is how it would even occur to them to spend any of their time on the planet this way?

I assume they have no families or their families don’t like them, and who could blame them? 

All (mostly) joking aside, we do need to figure out why it is so many people in this country scramble to be a part of something horrible and side with horrible people, guilty or not. I doesn’t matter that Diddy was found not guilty, he’s nothing close to what anyone should want or accept as a person who you’d be happy to have date your daughter or befriend your son. He’s a very sick person, a sickness that is likely fed by having so much money everyone around him indulges anything he can think up and no one has been able to tell him “no” and make it stick in any meaningful way in the last 30 years. 

But that sickness is also fed by people who put up with him; people who have seen the video of him beating holy hell out of his girlfriend in a hotel hallway and still support anything about him because he’s rich and famous. That is the sickness we need to root out.

I don’t care about Diddy and how much, if any, time he’s going to spend in prison for the crimes he was convicted of, I’m more concerned with why people cheer him and people like him. Or with why people you’ve never heard of become famous or people found not guilty of murder, but who are responsible for the death of someone, can sign a movie deal and it be perfectly normal seeming.

If we don’t get a handle on our culture soon, our culture will get a hand on us…right around our necks. 

X22, And we Know, and more- July 3rd

 

The Problem with a Resistance-Centered Party

posted by Roberta Cole at American Thinker 

Right-wing pundits have diagnosed many on the left with TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome.  This TDS is supposed to explain the left’s opposition to literally everything this administration introduces.  Jason Cohen in an article in the Daily Caller discusses ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith’s comments on Jasmin Crocket resisting everything introduced by Trump.  She also has made it clear that it is a higher priority to resist Trump than to pass legislation.  Cohen also mentioned Chuck Schumer, who said on Morning Joe in March that the Democrat party’s “job” is to weaken the president’s popularity.

This behavior is hardly new.  Trump’s first term was treated the same.  All we saw from the Democrats was resistance.  It was at this time Hillary Clinton saidthat Democrats will be civil when they are back in office.  Was it, and is it, TDS or just an attempt to weaken Trump’s popularity and influence an election?

Congress has several responsibilities, including oversight over the Executive Branch.  But that oversight does not include stopping a duly elected president from exercising his duties.  It does not mean abandoning legislative duties to the American people and voters.

This yelling, screaming, altering the truth, and avoiding any good news about the current administration worked (with a little help from a viral gift from China) to get rid of Trump last time.  Joe Biden was to be a uniter, a moderate, someone who would bring stability to our leadership.  Was he?  He was no more a moderate than Obama was a moderate.  Hence, the policies the left enacted during the Biden presidency were things the American public did not want — they kept Biden under wraps to keep the agenda under wraps.  It worked!

It may be a little more difficult this time.  The agenda is being publicized, proclaimed, and posted by members of the Democrat congress and media.  Calling Trump a divider scores no more points — the division is that the left doesn’t want any other party in power.

If the Democrats stop caring about legislation, stop representing their constituents, and just choose to oppose everything Trump does, will this win friends or influence voters?  It doesn’t seem to matter to them, and that just doesn’t make sense.

Resist.  Resist.  Resist.  Resist.

Resist deporting illegal criminals.  When Colorado governor Jared Polis says we want to keep our criminal illegals, he is not talking for or to the people of Colorado.  Would anyone really say, “Please, let the criminals stay and terrorize our neighborhoods”?  The only people willing to say such things may not have businesses to rob or daughters to be kidnapped.  In other words, these people believe they will not be affected.  Ninety-seven percent of the American population is in favor of deporting criminals (Pew, March 2025).  How can they declare that they care about the common man?

Resist DOGE.  Government waste has been a topic throughout my lifetime.  We pay taxes to the government, and the government wastes money, buying 37,000 software licenses for 13,000 people working at the GSA.  We have an administration that wants to cut out waste, be good stewards over taxpayers’ money, and save our entitlement programs by cutting fraud.  This is another commonsense issue Democrats oppose.  How can they be capable of managing government fiscal concerns?  Tesla, the highest selling E.V. in the world, friend to the climate change movement, was attacked with fire because Elon is involved with DOGE.  How do they continue to say they care about the E.V. solution to climate change?

Resist Protecting Women’s Sports.  This is another 80/20 issue.  We have separate male and female sports because men have physical advantages over women.  Men are generally taller and stronger.  They have larger hearts, lungs, and more muscle mass.  They are not men off the street, but current male athletes who decide to play as women with women.  According to the March 2024 U.N. report on Women’s Sports, 900 medals have been won by men instead of women.  The number of women living the consequences is much higher according to latest xx|xy ad.  Nineteen hundred women have been displaced by men.  Who can say they care about women’s issues when they allow men to replace women?

Resist America.  Support Iran’s proxy, Hamas.  Iran is not an ally of America, but an ally of China and Russia.  Israel is our one ally in the Middle East — a democracy with free people of all nations.  The Israelis do not occupy anyone’s land.  They won a piece in a war they did not start.  They gave land away to achieve peace (Gaza Strip), but all it did was provide Hamas a place to stage missiles and dig tunnels to attack Israelis.  

Genocide?  Iran and their proxies continually state that their objective to wipe out all Jews around the world.

The issue between Jews and Muslims is not new and did not begin with the creation of Israel.  There were issues in the seventh century with the advent of Islam.  Muhammad attempted to convert the Jews, but the Jews stuck to their faith.  Jews were then slaughtered or pushed out of the city.

If you want America to fail, instead of becoming great again, it may be reasonable to support people who chant, “Death to America!”  

This resistance asks people to protest, to commit violence, to promote issues that are contrary to the DNC platform.  The party will, however, without a blush, reclaim ownership of this set of principles once it is back on the campaign trail.

Are we watching and listening to the current rhetoric?  How can we believe that the left cares about law and order to protect the American people?  How can we believe that the left can be fiscally responsible when in government?  How can we believe that the left supports E.V.s and cares about the climate change leftists keep talking about?  How can we believe that the left really cares about women?  How can we believe that the left cares about America as a sovereign nation?

I must ask: Which is the ruse — the professed Democrat platform when Democrats run for office or the current resistance movement that appears to undermine that platform?

According to what we are hearing and seeing today, it may be both.

No Visas for Garbage Foreigners Who Hate Us

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

America finally decided to take its own side in the fight for civilization by canceling the concert tour visa for a ridiculous British punk/rap duo called Bob Vylan – get it? It’s like “Bob Dylan,” except “Vylan,” which sounds like “villain.” That’s the cleverest thing about them. They are basically Milli Vanilli with tattoos, worse music, and less originality – though, having heard snippets of their gawdawful racket, if I were them, I’d cop to plagiarism like the OG Milli Vanilli rather than take the blame for creating the sonic atrocities they call songs. It’s bad even for metal rap, with lots of shrieking about how they want to kill Jews, among other things. Wikipedia describes their oeuvre thusly: Bob Vylan “merges elements of punk, hip hop, grime, and hardcore, and features criticisms of the British establishment, inequality, racism, sexism, and homophobia.” It sounds bad enough that you can probably get Harvard class credit just for listening to it.

Bob Vylan’s popularity, such as it is, is attributable solely to the kind of self-loathing only affluent dumb people in the West are capable of. We’re probably not supposed to point out the obvious, but to send a tingle down the legs of the femboys and posh girls, they cultivate a sort of Third World tribal barbarian vibe; lots of scary shouts, tattoos, unwashed dreads, and no-shirt/shorts attire designed to evoke the kind of primitive tribesmen who once fronted to British soldiers and received a volley of musket fire in return. Of course, that was back before the English sacrificed their testicles on an altar to Princess Di.

Apparently, they are also vegans, as if you needed another reason to despise them.

In any case, they were going to do an American tour, but they just did the big Glastonbury concert in Britain, where they led a chant of “Death to the IDF” to their audience of pasty morons with bad teeth. Now, there are about 675,000 people in the IDF, mostly Jewish (not by coincidence), and it’s fair to ask whether Bob Vylan wants to murder all of them or just some portion of them. Of course, the regime media will be eager to jump in with an explanation that the obvious meaning of what Bob Vylan said isn’t exactly what Bob Vylan said, and it’s your fault for thinking that the words Bob Vylan used meant what the words Bob Vylan used mean. You’re probably racist because you expect the duo to communicate with its language. In short, they’re either psychotics or pretending to be psychotics.

We get a lot of this kind of gamesmanship on the left. Down in South Africa, you have stadiums full of savages stomping out their catchy ditty “Kill the Boer,” only to have outlets like the New York Times jump to explain that this is really an aspirational notion, not a literal call to killing white farmers, even though the same people are literally killing Boers as we speak. Similarly, we get Democrat ingenue Zohran Mamdani demanding that we “Globalize the intifada,” and then we are told it doesn’t actually mean murdering a bunch of Jews, even though his friends are globalizing the intifada here in America by murdering a bunch of Jews. At some point, whether you are a psychotic or just pretending to be a psychotic, it doesn’t matter. If you’re psychotic adjacent, we need to treat you accordingly.

Leftists love this kind of butch posturing; it allows them deniability of the fact that it’s not posturing, it’s a game plan. Remember, Step 1 is to deny it happened. We’re almost at Step 2, where they admit it’s happening, but it’s not that bad. That will be followed by Step 3, where they admit it’s happening a lot and contend that it’s actually a good thing. Step 4 points out that the real problem is you noticing what they are doing because you are racist, Islamophobic, or some other lame epithet.

Well, the Department of State noticed what happened. The dubious duo decided they wanted to come into America as if we need more foreign scumbags in America, and after their little performance at Glastonbury, Marco Rubio – who, somewhere along the line, got born again hard – pulled their visa to come to tour America. America imports way too many things these days, and the last thing we need to import are more foreigners who want to spread the poison that contaminated their Third World hellholes and drove them to flee to Europe in the first place. It’s not like anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Western civilizationism are jobs Americans won’t do. Sadly, we have plenty of Americans willing to adhere to scummy Marxist pathologies – in fact, we have thousands of commie incubators across the country. They are called “colleges.”

Are we refusing to allow these foreigners into America because of what they intend to say? Yes, and it’s about time. If you’re in America, you have a right to free speech, even if you’re a blithering idiot who embraces unconscionable evil. But we’re not talking about the Democrats at the moment. We’re talking about strangers to our country, invited guests who presume to take their invitation, light it on fire, and attempt to make it a suppository for their hosts. No, we are neither legally nor morally obligated to allow these degenerates to cross our border and plant their filthy feet upon our sacred soil. It’s about time we stood up for ourselves, and a basic part of that is not to let every weirdo, loser, and mutation with a hit single and an earnest wish that we all be murdered into our country.

There was a time, not that long ago, when I would have had second thoughts about barring somebody’s entry to the country because of what he might say. I like the First Amendment. I like free speech. I also like not having foreigners help destroy the country that made those things possible. It’s not as if Bob Vylan is out there leading its grotesque Glastonbury crowd in cheers to free that poor woman who their dictatorship imprisoned for 30 months because she tweeted something mean. They support that, and they would support doing it to you. Why would we help them? They’re like that meme about how, when I have no power, I demand freedom because that’s your principle and how I deny you your freedom when I have power because that’s my principle. We don’t have to ask what a country run by the likes of Bob Vylan and its fan base would look like; we have only to look at the kind of garbage countries they idolize.

It’s about time that we all realize our enemies are leveraging the rights of us citizens in order to enslave us citizens. Some of us are red-pilled; we declined the opportunity to join a suicide pact where we go first. We gave unbridled tolerance for wretched deviance a shot, and what did we get? People murdering Jews. Perverts in our schools skeeving on our kids. Basically, every problem we now face was a large part because we somehow got it into our heads as a civilization that our principles require we put up with this crap. But if a principle leads you to disenfranchisement, enslavement, and death, it’s a pretty crappy principle, and we’re not going to do those anymore. 

There is zero reason, morally, legally, philosophically, or of any other kind, for allowing these kinds of degenerates into our great nation with the express intent of them seeking to undermine it. Does that make us hypocrites? No, it makes us adults. And it makes us not suckers.

This Small New Mexico College Is Breathing New Life into the Western Great Books Tradition

 

 By Ian Oxnevad   |   For Minding the Campus   |   July 2, 2025

What is the West? Stepping onto most college campuses today, it is something to be reviled rather than defined. The Italian scholastic Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD) is often most credited with arguing for a harmony of human reason and divine revelation as leading to truth, and the use of reason in approaching divine texts. Revelation allows for the existence of an objective moral truth and the basis for why existence functions as it does. Aquinas was far from the only thinker to take this approach to theology and philosophy. Lesser-known to most in the West today, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and the rabbi-physician Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) approached the pursuit of truth much as Aquinas did. Now, a new master’s degree program at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is not only preserving the Western tradition but also bringing it back to life.

St. John’s is a Great Books college, and something all-too-rare in today’s higher education. Adopted in 1937, the college’s core curriculum includes reading “foundational texts of Western civilization.” Over the course of a four-year degree and “close reading of 200 great books across 3,000 years,” students read Greek tragedy from Aeschylus, the comedy of Aristophanes, the Hebrew Bible, Plato, and the works of Blaise Pascal. Last month, St. John’s College announced the launch of a new Master of Arts in Middle Eastern Classics program, offering students the opportunity to study classical medieval texts from Islamic and Jewish traditions alongside Arabic and Hebrew.

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Attacked by both the left and the right, this approach to education is exceedingly rare today. The left has waged a war to eradicate the West as a defined civilization from college classrooms for years. Back in 1987, figures like Jesse Jackson led marchers at Stanford University to throw out its “Western culture” program. On too many campuses, the works of pop singers like Taylor Swift and racial theorists like Ta-Nehisi Coates are better known among students than those of Dante or Euclid. Disenchanted by intellectualism, the right is similarly dim. Conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk’s book The College Scam makes a popular case that higher education itself is empty and corrosive. Demonized and silenced by one side and ignored by the other, the soul of the Western tradition has few places left to breathe. But St. John’s College is building its lung capacity.

Medieval Jewish and Muslim classics are more “Western” than many realize. The 10th-century Persian philosopher Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi wrote extensively on the Aristotelian tradition and echoed Plato in his own work about an ideal political system. Students reading the poems of the Jewish poet Judah Ha-Levi (1075-1141) and the Persian mystic Rumi (1207-1273) will be exposed to Judaism and Islam beyond identity politics, but rather as spiritual paths and traditions that interacted with the medieval and Renaissance Western tradition. St. John’s associate dean, David Carl, stated that “these texts are not marginal or secondary writings and once stood at the center of the West’s intellectual life … alongside the classics of ancient Greece and modern Europe.”

Beyond reintegrating classics from medieval Judaism and Islam into the Western canon, St. John’s approach is arguably more transformative because of how it handles the process of teaching. St. John’s College President J. Walter Sterling stated that:

Students don’t just encounter two religious or intellectual traditions—they encounter one another…through slow reading, shared inquiry, and serious conversation, they begin to see the common questions at the heart of both traditions—and perhaps, the shared humanity at the heart of all education.

Whether St. John’s College is aware of it or not, they are reviving a philosophy of education that originates in the Renaissance, and involves a subtle re-sanctifying the curriculum in both material and delivery.

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The new works and thinkers that St. John is incorporating widely share the assumption of the existence of God and a divine presence in the universe. Such ideas are taboo across the vast majority of American college classrooms, but nonetheless have positive implications for how students approach other ideas about politics, science, and ethics when these grander ideas of transcendence are embedded at their core. Not only that, the slow reading of physical books, discussion, and argument in a face-to-face seminar setting re-humanizes. The educational experience. These elements of metaphysics and humanism are suddenly brought back to life in the New Mexican desert.

Something that is potentially amazing is happening at St. John’s College. Not only is the college maintaining its rare gem of a Western great books curriculum, but it is also deepening it in a way that is spiritually meaningful and socially empathetic. For far too long, conservative proponents have only been able to hold up Michigan’s Hillsdale College as an example of higher education done right. American universities do not need another “conservative” campus; rather, they need more of the right philosophy of education. St. John’s College is taking a step in the right direction with this new program. And to answer Charlie Kirk, it is not a scam. Instead, it is a search for truth that happens to be in Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew.

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Image: St John’s College in Santa Fe by Capt Swing on Wikimedia Commons

About the author: Ian Oxnevad is senior fellow of foreign affairs and security studies at the National Association of Scholars.

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/07/02/this-small-new-mexico-college-is-breathing-new-life-into-the-western-great-books-tradition/

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You Can’t Celebrate 1776 While Ignoring The Invasion We’re Dealing With In 2025

If we ignore the invasion that has occurred, we’re not honoring the founders, we’re betraying them.

Brianna Lyman reporting for The Federalist

While millions of Americans gather to celebrate Independence Day, the very sovereignty that this holiday honors is slipping away right before our eyes. Beneath the parades and patriotic displays, the nation is reeling from the consequences of a mass invasion — and the only solution to the problem is being fought by the left and the political ruling class.

On July 4, 1776, 56 men pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to a cause that could cost them everything. These men weren’t simply protesting a tax they didn’t like or quibbling over policy — they rebelled against the most powerful empire on earth. If they failed, death would be certain. But they signed anyway, because to them, the cause was greater than comfort. It was about a people asserting their right to self-governance based on the natural rights of man — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The founders knew something modern elites seem determined to ignore, however: Not every people is capable of sustaining that kind of government. Self-government requires a certain character and cohesion. Alexander Hamilton said as much in 1799: “I hold with Montesquieu, that a government must be fitted to a nation, as much as a coat to the individual; and, consequently, that what may be good at Philadelphia may be bad at Paris, and ridiculous at Petersburg.”

In other words, not every people was capable of political freedom because not every people is grounded in the same moral code, religion, civic understanding, and cultural norms that helped forge this nation. A republic is not held together by geography, but by bonds of belonging and loyalty. It requires a people who speak the same language, revere the same traditions, and share the same worldview and morality.

As George Washington reminded in his farewell address, “The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”

But 249 years later that national identity is being erased.

Under then-President Joe Biden, the nation allowed more than 10 million illegal aliens to invade the country, overwhelm cities, bankrupt social programs, and devastate American communities. But, notably, it’s not just mass illegal immigration that is a problem, but mass migration, legal and illegal.

Mass migration, as I’ve previously written, is a cultural wrecking ball, because without assimilation there is no America. And assimilation on any meaningful scale is impossible when millions arrive illegally and remain indefinitely.

As Alexander Hamilton warned in 1802, “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”

As I previously wrote, mass migration destroys that “common National sentiment” and disrupts the “uniformity of principles.” Mass migration “severs the deep-rooted ties of tradition and shared identity that bind a republic together.”

Which brings us to the greatest, most pressing policy questions for our generation: mass deportations.

Despite insistence from the left that mass deportations are cruel, they’re not. They are what a sovereign nation does to protect its people. We have millions of unassimilated illegal aliens in the country, many of whom have recently taken to the streets of major cities to burn the American flag, demand rights they are not owed, and sow societal discord. They’re not building cohesion; they’re causing a degree of division that makes a well-governed society impossible.

But the left is using the courts to halt or slow President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, fighting tooth and nail to bring back deported alleged wife-beaters and human smugglers. When Trump tried to strip nearly half a million migrants of a made-up status granted to them by the Biden administration, an Obama-appointed judge ruled that each individual case must be adjudicated individually. It’s a paralyzing decision — as noted by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on X: “If every one of them got the trial that you’re asking for, it would take centuries to remove them.”

But that’s the entire purpose. The left is desperate to stall mass deportations for a host of political goals, including congressional and Electoral College apportionment. And, in their effort to turn America into just another globalist spot on the map, they know they must undo the bonds of liberty. What better way to do that than to import a host of foreigners who refuse to assimilate and bring with them values, religions, and moral codes that do not comport with American values?

If we are going to honor 1776, we can’t simply light fireworks and wave our flag. We have to act like the founders did — with courage, clarity, and a commitment to national survival. That means choosing Americans — our communities, our future — over foreign nationals.

The spirit of 1776 was about forging a nation — a nation defined by a common identity, beliefs, and borders. If we ignore the invasion that has occurred, we’re not honoring the founders — we’re betraying them.

Only 36% Of Democrats Are Proud To Be American

It is worth noting when significant portions of one party reject being proud to be American in the span of one decade, while another remains completely unaffected by the shift in sentiment.

Ariel McDowell reporting for The Federalist

Gallup poll revealed Monday that only 36 percent of Democrats say they are proud to be an American, down from 87 percent in 2001. Meanwhile, at least 84 percent of Republicans have identified themselves as proud Americans throughout the last 24 years.

According to the poll conducted in early June, 87 percent of Democrats in 2001 identified as “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, compared to 36 percent in 2025. Meanwhile, 92 percent of Republican respondents said they were proud to be American, an increase from 90 percent in 2001.

A respondent is identified as a “proud” American if they report being either “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, as opposed to “moderately,” “only a little,” or “not at all.” “Proud” answers were the norm for Americans before the most recent decade and remained consistently high across the political spectrum from 2005-2015, ranging from 81 percent to 85 percent. However, the first significant nosedive was seen in 2017, when only 75 percent of respondents said they were proud as opposed to 81 percent the previous year. Enthusiasm has continued to fall since then. In 2025, American pride among respondents sits at a record low of 58 percent. Most of the variation is found in the answers of Democrats and Independents.

Democrat respondents’ pride appeared to be more affected by which party held the White House, a factor which may play a role in the recent plunge. The first and second Trump administrations coincide with both major dips in Democrat patriotism. In response to these statistics, Brad Smith, law professor at Capital University Law School, suggested in a post on X that Democrats’ pride hinges more in their success as a party than consistent loyalty to the nation as a whole.

Another notable distinction can be seen generationally. Even among Republicans, younger people expressed consistently less pride in being American than the generations prior. While 77% of Democrats and 92% of Republicans among the Greatest and Silent Generations responded that they were proud to be American from 2016-2025, only 24% and 65% of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, in Generation Z responded likewise.

While Democrat respondents’ pride in being American has consistently been lower than Republicans’, the severe plunge from 80% to 36% in a ten-year span is novel and striking. This shift in sentiment is manifesting culturally as well. Over the past several years, popular culture has repeatedly downplayed and undermined national pride, instead advertising a critical stance.

The New York Times published an article in 2023 with the headline, “No More Sparklers for These Folks,” anecdotally listing the downsides of celebrating the Fourth of July both ideologically and practically. A related sentiment is echoed in the Reader’s Digest article, “I’m a Black American — Here’s Why I’m Not Celebrating the Fourth of July,” published in 2024. Similarly, elite academic institutions have increasingly promoted anti-American rhetoric in their teaching and literature, such as Harvard Gazette’s article, “Why America Can’t Escape it’s Racist Roots.”

Not only has popular culture and academia betrayed patriotic sentiment; the Democrat platform has joined these institutions in anti-Americanism, advocating open borders, critical race theory, gender ideology, and socialist policies. It is not surprising that between mainstream culture and their own party’s platform, their constituents lack pride in being American.

Whether this sharp decrease in patriotism is the result or the cause of popular culture, it warns of yet another unyielding ideological division along partisan lines. It is worth noting when significant portions of one party reject being proud to be American in the span of one decade, while another remains completely unaffected by the shift in sentiment. This harsh divide will inevitably have difficult ramifications on political discourse.

Target Finding Out What Happens When You Cut Off Money for the Congressional Black Caucus Nonprofit

Becky Noble reporting for RedState 

One of the first things President Donald Trump did upon his return to the White House was to sign an executive order eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs nationwide. And as we found out during Pride Month, many corporate sponsors dropped their sponsorship of those events. But as usual, Democrats and the left have no problem doing a little arm-twisting to get what they want when it comes to all things DEI. Now, an infamous group of House members is putting the squeeze on a corporation that is discovering that once you cave to those woke demands, you are trapped.

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is threatening to put the screws to retail giant Target in the form of a boycott. This is in response to Target's announcement that they would be ending DEI initiatives, including the termination of a corporate sponsorship program that has been an economic boon to the group's nonprofit arm. 

In 2020, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, a stampede of companies and corporations donated huge sums of money to various enterprises that pledged to further the cause of social justice. Target was at the front of the line, donating at least $1.4 million to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a think tank that works with the caucus. Target then pledged $1 million over the next five years through its "Racial Equity Action and Change" (REACH) initiative to "advance social justice and racial equity for Black individuals," which was topped off with a $200,000 donation for "meeting expenses" in December to "honor" several caucus members. 

But Target shut down the DEI cash flow after the Trump executive order, and also announced that they would be cutting back REACH and revisiting "corporate partnerships to ensure they are directly connected to our roadmap for growth." The CBC Foundation appeared to be ripe for slashing. Now, the CBC has decided they need to show Target who's boss, and is essentially saying to them, "nice retail chain you got there, would be a shame if there was a boycott" unless they reinstate DEI programs. The CBC's politely worded statement after a meeting with Target CEO Brian Cornell read in part that they:

...warned that efforts to restore consumer and public trust without genuine action and accountability would risk inflicting lasting damage to the company’s brand and credibility. 

Translation: get in line or else.

However, the chairman of the conservative watchdog group, National and Legal Policy Center, Peter Flaherty, is wise to the CBC's game, saying:

The Congressional Black Caucus threat of a boycott after Target ended financial support has all the earmarks of a shakedown. CEO Brian Cornell has always been an easy mark for racial activists.

Flaherty also noted that, ironically, Cornell met with Rev. Al Sharpton earlier this year about a potential boycott. What a coincidence. 

The CBC and its "foundation" have been the subject of scrutiny as far back as 2010. CBC members have been big backers of some of the heaviest donors to the foundation, including the online poker industry and AT&T. And you know it's sketchy when even liberal groups like Color of Change and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have questioned the CBC and its relationship with the foundation. The New York Times has also written that the CBC and the CBC Foundation "are so deeply connected it is sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins."

As for Target, they are finding out exactly what happens when you cave to Democrats and the left on anything. Once you do it, you are trapped, and there is no easy way of getting out. And how do they know that if they do pony up the cash, the CBC still won't call in their boycott foot soldiers? The answer is, they don't. Target's hard learned lesson: When you go woke, there is more than one way you can go broke.

"The CEO also emphasized that Target’s values of 'inclusivity, connection, drive' are 'not up for debate' and said that the company is 'committed' to sharing how its values create an impact." 

This reversal came after Cornell met with Al Sharpton. 

We are losing this battle.

FBI ‘Suppressed Intelligence’ On Chinese Meddling In 2020 To Cover For Christopher Wray

Grassley’s office says that the evidence was never investigated further, despite signs of credibility, because of a ‘sudden and “abnormal”‘ decision to stop further proceedings and ‘bury the IIR’s existence,’ because, as the FBI put it, ‘the reporting will contradict Director Wray’s testimony.’

Breccan F. Thies reporting for The Federalist

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interfered with an investigation into Chinese meddling in the 2020 election to cover for former Director Christopher Wray, who had just testified to Congress that he had seen no evidence of a coordinated voter fraud effort, According to previously classified documents released Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

The FBI “suppressed intelligence” of alleged Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in the 2020 election, including the production of ‘”tens of thousands’ of fraudulent drivers’ licenses to manufacture mail-in votes for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden,” according to a press release.

“These records smack of political decision-making and prove the Wray-led FBI to be a deeply broken institution. Ahead of a high-stakes election happening amid an unprecedented global pandemic, the FBI turned its back on its national security mission,” Grassley said. “One way or the other, intelligence must be fully investigated to determine whether it’s true, or if it’s just smoke and mirrors. Chris Wray’s FBI wasn’t looking out for the American people – it was looking to save its own image.”

Grassley released the documents after FBI Director Kash Patel declassified them and sent them to the Senate.

The apparent proof of a conspiracy to protect Wray come after Patel in June declassified documents further detailing the attempt from the CCP to produce the fake IDs to be used as validation of mail-in ballots and rig the 2020 election for Biden, as The Federalist reported.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), officers caught 1,513 shipments of fraudulent documents, including 19,888 driver’s licenses, between January and June 2020, the majority of which came from China and Hong Kong.

Records released Tuesday show the FBI’s decision to “recall and suppress” a Sept. 25, 2020, Intelligence Information Report (IIR) from the Bureau’s Albany Field Office, which included information from a Confidential Human Source (CHS) showing evidence of the CCP plot.

Grassley’s office says that the evidence was never investigated further, despite signs of credibility, because of a “sudden and ‘abnormal'” decision to stop further proceedings and “bury the IIR’s existence,” because, as the FBI put it, “the reporting will contradict Director Wray’s testimony.”

“Most concerning to me, is stating the reporting would contradict with Director Wray’s testimony. I found this troubling because it implied to me that one of the reasons we aren’t putting this out is for a political reason, which goes directly against our organization’s mission to remain apolitical and simply state what we know,” an FBI Albany intelligence analyst said. “Likewise, at the field operational level, I do not feel it is our job to assess whether or not our intelligence aligns with the Director. … My concern is that I think it gets dangerous if we cite potential political implications as reasons for not putting out our information.” 

The FBI recalled the report to “re-interview the source,” but also told “recipients” to “destroy all copies of the original report and remove the original report from all computer holdings.”

One day prior to the original report, Wray had testified in a Senate hearing that he had not seen any evidence of wide spready vote-by-mail fraud, but that if he did, it would be something the FBI “would investigate seriously … and aggressively.”

“We have not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it is by mail or otherwise,” Wray testified at the time. “[B]ut people should make no mistake we are vigilant as to the threat and watching it carefully, because we are in uncharted new territory.” 

Apparently not enough to pursue credible evidence of a scheme from the Chinese to rig mail-in ballots in favor of Biden. The rationale provided to Albany staff for the recall was that Headquarters deemed the report not “authoritative,” but this characterization was met with disagreement by those in the Albany office,” a June 27 letter from FBI Assistant Director Marshall Yates to Grassley states. “Albany staff further warned against FBI assuming the role of sole gatekeeper for the Intelligence Community (IC), emphasizing that suppressing field-generated reporting could deprive other IC elements of the opportunity to corroborate or discredit intelligence.”

According to FBI emails released from Grassley, Albany Field Office agents kept asking why the report would not be released, with the response being, “Again, the reporting will contradict Director Wray’s testimony.”

A subsequent reply from an agent stated, “I’m not trying to be a pain on this, but after taking some time thinking this over I just want to voice my opinion and concerns on this issue and make it clear I do not agree with the reasoning for not putting this out.”

“Now’s the time to rebuild the FBI’s trust,” Grassley said. “Director Patel’s willingness to work with me to establish renewed transparency and accountability is a critical part of that process, and I applaud him for his efforts.”