It’s been great the last couple of weekends to see a few more guests in this campground. They roll in late Friday or Saturday and leave Sunday or Monday — they’re here for a quick getaway, maybe rushing the season a bit. We know what that’s like.
Our hosts lose money every winter. There’s no getting around that, regardless of how many sites are occupied during the colder months. They can’t charge enough to absorb the higher demand for electric or offset wear-and-tear inflicted by harsh conditions. We’re grateful that they’ve welcomed us, along with a few others, for the second straight winter.
With spring comes more business. That’s what we’ve started seeing. In a conversation with one of our hosts yesterday, we learned that advance reservations for the camping season are looking good, the best they’ve ever had at this point.
That makes us happy. These good people are our friends.
As much as I talk about weather, somehow last night’s forecast got by me. Shortly before 1am, Scout reached up and pawed at me — she heard thunder before we did. I lifted her onto the bed with us, and almost immediately thereafter a band of serious boomers blew through.
We had downpours off-and-on for three or four hours. Sure didn’t see that comin’.
By 7am the rain had tapered off to drizzle.
I seem to be in a commentary groove right now. After weeks of barely mentioning culture, politics and world events, the last several Ubi Libertas Blog posts have plunged back into observation and unequivocal opinion.
Yeah, you’ll get that here.
Today I’ll be looking at a couple of things I’ve encountered in the last 24 hours. One is simple, the other a bit more complicated.
Last fall some marketing wizard at Kellogg’s decided it’d be a good idea to launch “Cheez-It Reality TV Collector’s Cheddition” packaging. It was a series of just two — a vapid ‘Jersey girl from a show canceled over a decade ago, and an arguably famous drag queen.
It doesn’t take a genius to see what they did there — putting the insufferable “Snooki” on one box was covering fire for slapping a cross-dresser on another.
I’m not wrong about that, by the way. Woke Nation, no doubt, rejoiced.
See, it wasn’t enough for identity-crazed progressives to erase Aunt Jemima from pancake syrup, Uncle Ben from rice, Rastus from Cream of Wheat and the Indian “butter maiden” from Land O’Lakes. No, they had to find a way to put a fetish freak on boxes of crackers.
Here’s a tip: We can’t change this. It can’t be stopped and it can’t be undone — it’s too late for any of that. We could stop buying everything Kellogg’s makes and it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference.
This is the culture. And we let it happen.
Before I get into the second subject I want to address today, a caveat.
Actually, it’s more of a warning.
I insist that you don’t — repeat, do not — make any direct connections between what you’re about to read and Deb or me. There are no conclusions for you to draw about why we’ve chosen to move to The Ozarks. Are we clear?
I had the misfortune to work in corporate “cubicle farms” for over 20 years, beginning in the ’80s and ’90s. Sentenced to that soulless environment, many of my co-workers and I were devoted to reading the Dilbert cartoon, daily and Sundays — funny as hell and often edgy, its sarcasm captured the nonsense that was our working life.
The strip’s creator, Scott Adams, isn’t what I’d consider my ideological soulmate. I always sensed that he tilted toward the Left. I mean, he expressed support for the likes of Bloomberg and Slick Willy, though he’s also said that he’s politically agnostic and “leans libertarian, minus the crazy stuff.”
As progressivism overran politics and wokeness poisoned the culture, however, last year he penned sendups of fluid identity, pandemic theater, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance). He paid the price in lost syndication for defying The Holy Narrative.
A few days ago, he saw the results of a Rasmussen poll that asked the question,
“Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘It’s OK to be white.'”
The poll found that 26% of black respondents answered “disagree,” while 21% said they weren’t sure. Adams reacted in a video posted to his regular channel:
“If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people — according to this poll, not to me — that’s a hate group. That’s a hate group, and I don’t want anything to do with them.
“And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I can give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the fuck away.”
“There is no fixing this. You just have to escape.”
Fallout was as swift as it was predictable. More newspapers and newspaper groups dropped Dilbert. The well-oiled Outrage Machine is bent on canceling Scott Adams, once and for all.
Of course, they’re accusing him of “Racism!“ Curiously, they also like to point out that his characterization, “nearly half of all blacks” — that is, a total of 47% of Rasmussen respondents who hold that either it’s not “OK to be white” or don’t know — is inaccurate and therefore inflammatory.
Let’s stop right here and all take a deep breath so we can look at this critically.
I’ll begin with the obvious question: Is what Scott Adams said “racist”?
Absolutely not. In fact, I contend that his response to the Rasmussen poll is reasoned and intellectually honest, not itself an expression of racism but a reaction to the pattern of racist attacks on white Americans we all see every single day.
(An aside here — when you read news stories about this, I want you to notice how print and digital media present the words “black” and “white.” Per the Sacred Stylebook, the former must be capitalized but the latter is not. Dismiss it as a small point if you want, but it’s a symbol of what chafes Adams.)
Let’s tell the truth about this — what Adams said is tame as fuck compared to the constant barrage of hate leveled against white Americans. That’s beyond credible dispute, so spare me your political correctness and Rodney King quotes.
As for criticism of “nearly half” as inaccurate — fine, suppose that only 26% of the black people around you judge you unacceptable no matter what you do, merely because your skin is white. How is that even an argument? How is that better? Is it a good place to be? Is that a community in which you’d want to live?
Finally, do black Americans constitute, as Scott Adams says, a “hate group”?
I don’t presume that any individual black American is hateful, nor do I believe that most are. The problem is what I refer to as “Race Inc.” — that’s the wellspring of racist hatred in our culture. It gave us “critical race theory” in schools, launched laughable tokenism, vaporized the meritocracy, destroyed The Black Family, birthed three generations of The Entitled Class and crippled a nation.
And it’s persuaded one in four black Americans that it’s not “OK to be white.” Do you want to live with those odds?
Scott Adams sure doesn’t. I can’t say that I blame him, nor do I find his advice — “based on the current way things are going” — at all unreasonable. That, my friends, is what it’s come to.
Many times over the last few years, explicitly and implicitly, I’ve encouraged readers of this blog to gather with like minds, to escape urban madness, to take righteous flight from the cultural rot that typifies America’s cities. And my advice never has considered or been motivated by race.
Scott Adams isn’t wrong, but his thing isn’t my thing. There are myriad other factors.
If you do as either of us has suggested, however, escaping may — may, I say — improve your odds.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
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