Wokism

Graffiti by railroad tracks

The Charlestown food truck controversy is erasing people.

By Justin Katz | March 22, 2022 |

Issuing his groveling hostage statement for expressing his professional opinion at a public meeting, Charlestown Emergency Management Agency Director Kevin Gallup may have saved himself from cancelation, but in doing so, he gave more of our shared ground of freedom away to the woke wave: “Like everyone, I have blind spots,” Gallup said. “I hope…

Firedancer in a ring of fire

Politics This Week with John DePetro: Setting RI on Fire (and not)

By Justin Katz | March 21, 2022 |

John and Justin discuss high-profile political races, threats to RI freedoms, and the possibility of arson.

A man with braids

They call it the “CROWN Act” because they’re making subjects of us all.

By Justin Katz | March 21, 2022 |

In a curious alignment of political machines, both the Massachusetts House and the House of Representatives in Congress independently passed their own “CROWN Acts,” which both would, as WPRI’s Kayla Fish puts it in the case of Massachusetts, “prohibit discrimination based on a person’s hair.”  Naturally, the bill is being sold in racial terms, but…

Assorted Patriot Front stickers

Simplistic moral panic is more dangerous to RI than white supremacists.

By Justin Katz | March 16, 2022 |

According to Jack Perry’s uncritical recitation of the Anti-Defamation League of New England’s warning about an increase in “white supremacist propaganda,” Rhode Island is seeing a dangerous increase.  By their own standards, though, the ADL and the Providence Journal are contributing to the threat.  Consider the last line of the article: “By using propaganda to spread…

A water drop and ripples

Paying your debts is social justice.

By Justin Katz | March 8, 2022 |

Maybe I’m just entering that late-middle-age phase, but it seems to me that younger adults — or all of us, with reference to times that were before our time — too infrequently understand the experience of the past.  Consider this find from Tim Worstall for Accuracy in Media: A new piece from Teen Vogue says that…

A water drop and ripples

Why not just leave anachronistic “plantations” in place where it’s historical and difficult to remove?

By Justin Katz | March 8, 2022 |

Patrick Anderson follows up on the state’s ongoing efforts to change its official name everywhere, following a constitutional edit during the last election: You don’t have to look too hard to find the words Providence Plantations on state buildings, a year and a half after Rhode Island voters deleted them from the state name. The…

A skull screams amidst hands

The Cultural Weaponization of Public Education

By Justin Katz | March 1, 2022 |

Concerns that the predominant culture might insinuate itself unnecessarily into everything that schools attempt to do have flipped to the aggressive practice of using schools to deconstruct and destroy the predominant culture behind parents’ backs.

A water drop and ripples

Should Ukrainian refugees expect a modern American welcome?

By Justin Katz | March 1, 2022 |

Democrat Governor Dan McKee’s letter to Joe Biden expressing our state’s willingness to house refugees from war in Ukraine raises many questions.  For instance, why is this particular offering worthy of a prominent, grandiloquent pronouncement while accepting midnight flights of illegal immigrants (mostly young men) is not? Separately, one wonders what it means to welcome…

A white student looks away

Is the Met School abusing students with anti-racism indoctrination?

By Justin Katz | February 28, 2022 |

South Kingstown parent advocate Nicole Solas has been, let’s say, having words with Met School special education teacher Emily Bowden.  The back-and-forth is mainly social media snark shooting, so we shouldn’t assume that Bowden’s bombast is evidence of the school’s operation, but she does facilitate an important point that isn’t often made in these arguments.…

Ocean State 131 with Anticommunist/Anticapitalist flag

Was the Providence Nazi protest a false flag or inconsequential opponents’ feeding off each other?

By Justin Katz | February 22, 2022 |

Convenient, isn’t it, that a small group of people making noise and waving a Nazi flag can turn an inconsequential Communist reading by an unknown socialist organization into the hot story of the day in Rhode Island, providing massive advertisement for their little left-wing library? Attempting to make the event seem significant, the Boston Globe tacked…