F**king Mondays: Anti-Woke Woes, Trump's NYTimes Helpers, and Marijuana Highs!

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays!”, your handy guide on what to read to start your week!

Criticizing your own

Over the weekend I posted a note on Substack criticizing the anti-woke industry. In summary, I argued that while I abhor identity politics, the anti-identity politics industry is just as toxic. In response, a reader wrote this:

I wanted to take a bit of time to respond to this idea that criticizing the left means exonerating the right. Firstly, my post explicitly calls out the anti-woke industry, so it’s a little odd to get a lecture on not being a good liberal. To the specific criticism that I am “parroting the trope of identity politics as an inherently left-wing phenomenon,” the reader clearly hasn’t followed my work closely over the years. For reference, here’s what I wrote about right wing identity politics in 2022 in the wake of Payton Gendron’s racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, NY supermarket:

There is nothing on the left that is remotely comparable to what we are seeing in mainstream right wing circles. Radical identity politics adherents on the left aren’t posting Nazi themed manifestos online. They aren’t calling for a war on minorities, and they certainly aren’t live streaming their own gun massacres. Payton Gendron is just another episode of extremist right wing identity politics taken to its logical conclusion.

And to be clear: white supremacism and ‘great replacement’ theory is identity politics. The right just doesn’t call it that.

I frequently encounter the criticism that criticizing the “woke” left plays into right wing hysteria. The point of my post on Notes was to ask how this can be done without playing into that hysteria. I genuinely don’t know, but left wing identity politics has become so extreme, so uncompromising, and so racist (particularly to Jews) that I no longer feel the need to preface my criticisms. My aim is to criticize constructively, so the left can do away with this nonsense. The right’s objective is to destroy the left, whereas my objective is to help save it.

It is essential that liberals speak out about the excesses of left wing identity politics. I’ve lost count of the number of liberals I know who privately express anger over the radicalism spreading through our schools, media, and workplace, but are too afraid to do so publicly.

If the left doesn’t tackle this problem head on, we are handing Donald Trump votes in November. Trump has almost trebled his support amongst African Americans since 2020, and the majority of Latinos now support him over President Biden. These are frightening statistics and should be a wake up call for for the left. Liberals can spend as much time as they want criticizing Donald Trump, but if they continue catering to the fringe of the party, they won’t win at the ballot.

So yes, right wing identity politics is awful, but left wing identity politics could sink Biden in November. So for the love of God, speak out about it before it’s too late.

The New York Times can’t help itself

The New York Times spent all of 2016 and 2020 pretending Joe Biden and Donald Trump were moral equivalents for the sole purpose of turning the elections into a horse race. The Times wasn’t unique in this cash grabbing strategy, but as the nation’s most important newspaper, it should have been held to a higher standard. Apparently, the Times is pathologically incapable of learning from its past mistakes, and in 2024 it continues to follow the exact same formula.

I’m not sure whether it is intentional or just a matter of reflex, but the editorial team seems to be entirely incapable of stating the obvious when it comes to Donald Trump. Just look at the first headline the Times posted on a new Biden ad, and what they changed it to after an onslaught from readers:

Here’s the rewrite:

By definition, the Biden campaign can’t ‘paint’ Trump as a felon, because he is a felon. This would be like saying ‘Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as Man Who Wears Orange Makeup’. In New York Times world however, everything must be done to distract readers from Trump’s criminality so it can promote the two-way horse race spectacle.

In fairness to the Times, they did change the headline, so maybe this is progress?

Weed smokers rejoice!

Some extremely positive news for those convicted of marijuana convictions in Maryland. Via the Washington Post:

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued a mass pardon of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday morning, one of the nation’s most sweeping acts of clemency involving a drug now in widespread recreational use.

The pardons forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people in what the Democratic governor said is a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown people. Moore noted criminal records have been used to deny housing, employment and education, holding people and their families back long after their sentences have been served.

This is an example of what smart, pragmatic Democrats like Moore can do when in office. Rather than join the culture wars, Moore has governed quietly and taken practical steps to make the lives of thousands of people better.

While I am opposed to much of the race essentialism on the left, it is issues like this that make me proudly liberal. The marijuana laws are a racist, pointless relic of the past, and it is high time (no pun intended) the country follows Moore’s lead and makes up for them.

See you next week!

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