The Crowhill Journal

“Dark Brandon” started off as a Chinese meme that mocked Joe Biden. It was then taken up as a theme for t-shirts and has now — based on Biden’s recent speeches — been adopted as a good strategy by the White House. I heard clips recently of happy Democrats, gleeful that they’ve unleashed “Dark Brandon.”

Good.

Generally speaking, I like things to stay civil among politicians. I like them to say “my distinguished colleague from New York,” and “the gentleman from Kentucky,” and so on. I like them to dress decently, avoid using profanity, and maintain an acceptable public decorum.

But “generally speaking” doesn’t apply to the absolute insanity we’re living through. The two parties aren’t arguing about how much gun control we need, or how much we should spend on social programs. They’re at war. Democrats hate and mistrust Republicans and Republicans hate and mistrust Democrats.

I don’t like saying this, but it’s about damn time.

Democrats have been pushing completely insane policies.

• Allowing men to compete in women’s sports.
• Teaching children to hate their country.
• Insisting that boys and men are toxic.
• Promoting a divisive and incoherent “diversity” ethic.
• Failing to protect the border.

And those are just the insane policies. There are also lots of misguided / stupid policies, like …

• Opposing fossil fuels when they don’t have a realistic replacement.
• Spending lots of money during a recession.
• Revitalizing Obama’s naive Iran deal.
• Promoting misguided bail / policing reform.

I could go on, but it’s not to the point. The point is that the Democrats have been waging an aggressive war against traditional America for a very long time, but they’ve been able to hide behind the false (but somehow marketable) idea that they’re the nice guys who love tolerance and acceptance and kindness, and it’s only The Bad Orange Man and his followers who are causing all the trouble.

Biden — and through Biden, the Democratic establishment — has finally, openly owned this hatred. Those who oppose their agenda are “full of anger, violence, hate.” They are a threat to the Republic.

Very good. Give in to the dark side, Brandon. Maybe conservative America will finally wake up to what we’re facing here.

This is not your father’s politics, where the Democrats say “let’s do all this,” and the Republicans say, “okay, but only half.”

It’s far more serious.

Just as the parents of school children finally (belatedly) realized how nutty school had become when they could see it on Zoom at the kitchen table, the public is finally seeing the clash of these two ideologies.

They are diametrically opposed. One must die.

Dark Brandon has pulled back the veil. America will now see what’s at stake.

Do we have the balls to deal with it?

The story is that research has shown that having women on boards of directors helps a company’s profitability. That may be true, but there’s cause to doubt the conclusion because you’re not allowed to say the opposite. Any research that showed that having women on boards hurts a company would be suppressed. It would end careers, the researchers would be labeled as Nazis and driven to suicide, etc. (I’m exaggerating, but only a little.)

IOW, you can’t believe conclusion A if nobody is allowed to contradict it.

But let’s set that aside and assume it’s true, for the sake of argument. Let’s say honest research has clearly demonstrated that companies that have more women on their board of directors outperform companies that do not.

Personally, despite what I say above, I think there might be something to the idea. Women can bring a different perspective, and viewpoint diversity is very important. As a side note, that illustrates the cognitive dissonance on the left, because they want to say “men and women are equal” and also say “adding women to a board of directors makes it better.”

Moving on …. Would such research justify a rule that all companies must have some number of women on their board?

I don’t see how that follows, and I think such a rule contradicts everything we’ve concluded over the years about discrimination. That is, you can’t judge an individual situation on the basis of group characteristics.

Even if we are 100 percent sure that having more of such and so group is correlated with better outcomes, that does not justify a bias in favor of hiring people in that group. This is elementary and basic stuff, but if you need convincing, just run it through your mind a few times with some other groups. Irish, Calvinists, basketball players, former Marines, people who can play the piano. Pick any group you like. Then imagine a hiring situation where a company picks applicants based on their membership in that group.

You can’t do that. It’s insane.

“Oh, sure, Bob is way more qualified than Jack, but Jack can play the piano, and we don’t have enough piano players on the board.”

It’s hard to know when an observation indicates a real change, or whether you just started noticing it more. For example, it’s common for people to take note when they see something three times in a day. E.g., “I’d never even heard of zucchini bread, and then I heard it mentioned three times in one day!”

It’s possible you had heard of zucchini bread before, you just never paid attention, and this time you did. It’s also not that unusual for there to be clumps in random distributions.

So I make this observation with the understanding that it might not have any significance at all, but it seems to me that it’s far more common these days for drivers to slow down or stop in the middle of the road, without any consideration for the people around them. I blame this on Google maps, and similar technology. People slow down or stop to read the directions.

But I’m curious if anyone else has noticed this.

A few years ago I went to DelFest in western Maryland, and I get their emails. Today I got a recording of Sierra Hull, who is an amazing mandolin player, and a lovely singer. But she has one of those “too sweet” voices that doesn’t do it for me unless she’s singing with a man. I feel the same way about Allison Kraus. She has a lovely voice, but it’s too sweet. It’s more enjoyable when she’s singing with Robert Plant, or some other guy.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Listen to the parts where Sierra is singing by herself, and compare that with when she’s singing with the fiddle player.

You can hear the same in “Compass” with Darrell Scott.

If you’re familiar with Allison Kraus, compare any of her songs with duets she does with dudes, like “How’s the World Treating You” (James Taylor), “Rich Woman” (Robert Plant), or to some extent in “Whiskey Lullaby” (Brad Paisley). Although she also sounds good with Dolly Parton in “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me.”

I was scanning the headlines from a magazine I’ve recently taken interest in and noticed how many social buzzwords it had. Imposter syndrome. Diversity. Quiet Quitting. Obsessions about race and sex.

It got me wondering (for the millionth time) which came first. Is the public actually preoccupied with these topics, and the media is dutifully covering them, or is the media creating obsessions by endlessly framing issues from a certain point of view?

The answer is obviously “both” — it almost always is — but “both” doesn’t mean one isn’t dominant.

My strong suspicion is that it works this way. Some small group of socially connected, elite types get obsessed with some issue. Media elites rub shoulders with that crowd, so they pick up those attitudes. “This is the new thing that everybody is talking about.” That filters down into the newspapers, magazines, silly TV talk shows, etc., and then becomes the new thing that “everybody” is talking about.

I stand athwart this nonsense. I won’t play. I try hard not to use the hip new words and phrases.