It has come to this: the above image currently appears on a Dhavani billboard in Times Square. The company proudly tweeted it out, writing,
As you know, we’re extremely passionate about creating high-quality, fashionable and innovative products in the most sustainable and ethical ways possible.…But the state of the world weighs heavily on us. There is a palpable tension in the air, an untenable clash of ideals, and we can no longer just sit back and watch….hat’s why we’ve decided to #StandForSomething and become the world’s first and only Activ(ist)Wear™ company. DHVANI is a brand for people who are committed to making the world a better place. As of today, with each purchase, we will donate to a featured nonprofit partner.
Yes, fomenting hate and denigrating the elected leader of the United States is the way to make the world a better place. That’s the message. Now run out and put money in their pockets.
It is increasingly clear to me that the future of our nation, government and culture depends upon how many Americans eventually realize that no matter what they may think of President Trump, those who shamelessly employ these tactics and this kind of rhetoric are a far, far greater threat to our values.
Commenting on this phenomenon, conservative commentator John Hinderaker writes,
Can you imagine what would have happened if a billboard had appeared in Times Square, depicting President Obama in a similar posture? No, actually, I don’t think you can. As Jim Treacher reminds us, a rodeo clown was cashiered for merely wearing an Obama mask….The interesting question, for me, is whether Republicans should imitate the Democrats’ tactics next time we have a Democratic president, which could come as early as 2021. For a long time my answer was, of course not–we are far above such repellent tactics. Now, I am not so sure.
Historically, the deterrent to violating longstanding cultural and political norms was the fear of a voter backlash. But the Democrats’ disgusting behavior has met with little condemnation, no resistance, and, so far at least, no pushback from voters. So one is tempted to ask, why not? It is one more instance, I suppose, of our culture sliding downhill, perhaps irredeemably.
Ethics Alarms 
Actually, there is pushback. It’s just from conservatives and moderate voters. The Democrats don’t care about those voters because they’re deplorable. They only care about the ones in lockstep with their cant and with any poll they can cite, regardless of how weighted it is, that shows most people agree with them. Those that disagree…the ones that helped elect Trump in 2016… rarely bother to complain. They know they will be painted as racists and white supremacists.
The pushback may come in 2020 when those quiet conservatives and moderates vote.
That there is no pushback from progressives is evidence of hypocrisy and ethics rot. It shouldn’t matter whom such tactics are aimed at. They are hateful, divisive, and destructive.
We are agreed there. They’ve been corrupted by their party leaders to believe that these aren’t ordinary times so the ends justify the means. The fact that Trump (and his supporters) exist is provocation enough. I wonder when these so-called progressives will want to put all like-minded people into “protective custody” because they don’t want to be held responsible for spontaneous expressions of right-mindedness on the part of their own followers.
I believe that phrase. ‘the ends justify the means,’ is a corrupting statement. It might apply if you are referring to your own self alone. Like sweating and aching is justified by great abs, but no one has a right to force another outside Basic. No ends can justify this slow motion coup attempt. (Though the Babylon Bee is on a roll) If they had sucked it up and worked on finding a better candidate that was acceptable to the middle they’d be far, far ahead for next year.
“That there is no pushback from progressives is evidence of hypocrisy and ethics rot.
Forget it, Jack: they are socialists.
The Progressive left have become so self-assured of the righteousness of their beliefs and policies that they no longer fear any influential reprisal. The MSM and social media, the most likely source of pushback, are ground-zero for the Progressive movement. They support this type of personal denigration of the president because this time it’s different, it’s Trump. Any damage done to the office itself is deemed an acceptable price to pay. Next time, when a democrat is in office and is attacked in a similar fashion, the indignation and condemnation you see lacking will occur with great fervor. They will ignore any issues raised about hypocrisy because those issues will only be raised by the Deplorables. They and only they are right, everybody else can pound sand! Attempt to disagree, and suffer the full force of the MSM and the social media hordes.
This attitude of complete and total righteousness of their actions is the real danger. The MSM adds legitimacy to the social media hordes and the virtue signalers, and encourages a total lack of respect or any semblance of ethics in their interactions, because they know the media will not pushback. Halons Razor be damned. Stupidity as an excuse has long left the building. This is malice, pure and simple.
That is what really is different this time. Many on the Progressive left truly hate those who do not toe the line completely and no longer fear openly demonstrating their hatred. The fact that the avenues of reprisal are mostly controlled by the Progressives is likely to mean that the chasm to society caused by this vitriolic hatred will get worse before it gets better. Without any means of impactful pushback to this type of behavior, how can we expect anything different? How far is too far? Who knows? I fear we haven’t seen the limit, yet.
Very nice comment, Bill. I strongly agree with both your observations and conclusions. It’s not a pretty picture and I don’t see it getting any better. The coastal baby boomers have been smug and self assured since they were kids in the sixties and seventies. Worse yet, some sort of hardening of the intellectual arteries combined with Trump’s election has pushed them over the edge. I guess I should have seen it coming but I didn’t.
Thanks. The really frightening question is: What is going to happen if Trump wins reelection?
More whining from the Woketarians.
Agreed, Bill.
jvb
Sometimes I think the answer is to respond in kind. I think it was great when that woman stabbed the Trump baby balloon with scissors. I also think it was great when somebody threw a rubber stress ball at obnoxious Scottish lefty George Galloway, hit him in the head, and knocked him right out. It was greater still when a Jew confronted Galloway, called him out for the anti-Semite he is, hit him in the mouth, and broke his jaw. Maybe if the Proud Boys start thumping on Antifa a bit more, or a few of us righties start telling a few lefties off at dinner, they’ll get the message.
It’s the barn door situation Jack wrote about the other day. If things keep escalating, eventually some horrific event will take place. THEN AND ONLY THEN will there be demands for more civility and pushback on those who promote hatred. Whether it is an advertising campaign like this of the faux hate crimes about which Mrs. Q spoke.
I expect, when the right finally responds with the same or greater force, that the left will disregard all of its own responsibility and blame the right for being “radical”. In fact, I think this has been the rough plan for many years now. Their response won’t be that “we” need to calm down but that “you” need to be disarmed and silenced. There is no good faith from them. Look at all the consequences of the open, recorded, public assault on Andy Ngo, for instance, in comparison to a high-school student’s smirk.
This is doubly revolting will you put it in the context of what just happened with the NBA. Corporate America has no problem snuggling up with the real evil of the Chinese government because profits. We are lectured that we can’t ignore the massive profit opportunity coming out of China.
Yet here we have a company crapping on half of America.
I am baffled as to how we got here. How did progressives get to the point where there is not that much of a gap between the two parties in the US, yet they view the opposition as worse than totalitarianism? All of this reviews them as the far greater danger to a functioning republic.
*when
How did we get here? Simple. The Left has moral superiority on its side. With that, you can justify anything because those who disagree are not just wrong but are evil and must be destroyed at all costs. What the Left seems to have forgotten, is that a lot of those lousy Deplorables are armed to the teeth and will let Remington, Winchester, Armalite, and Smith & Wesson do their talking, Bobby O’Rourke be damned.
jvb
You know, one thing I kind of get tired of is whataboutism. Yes, we all can imagine the horrible media response if Obama were treated as an object of ridicule in advertising like Trump. And to be honest, that backlash would be exactly the right response.
What is truly tragic is the dead ethics alarms of the left — and the fear of appearing non-conformist. I think that latter is really what keeps them silent, the fear that they will be challenged as Trump enablers if they object to the truly awful abuse of the presidency in general and President Trump in particular. If someone on the Left objected to Dhavani’s imagery and virtue signaling, they would be raped on Twitter and Facebook. Nobody with a job they don’t control, or customers who care about social media wants that experience.
Courage of conviction is one thing the Left cannot allow, unless it is their convictions. So it is no surprise at all that there are crickets for criticism on this one from that side.
Fear will keep the local Leftists in line — fear of Darth Twitter and the social media Battle station.
Well, any company that can write drivel like “DHVANI is a brand for people who are committed to making the world a better place” is wholly incapable of reasoning outside of their little corner of the leftist world. They, and the Left, are “quiet in conscience and calm in their right, confident their ways are best.”*
Check out Dhvani’s Twitter page. The photos they choose to define their company say it all.
jvb
*Ed. Note. Oh, Dear God. Stop him! Once again this poster/commenter throws more Rush lyrics at EA commenters, as if that good-for-nothing Canadian Triumvirate has anything substantive to say about anything. He quotes “Witch Hunt”, from “Moving Pictures”? Really? Can’t someone break his fingers or suspense/terminate his access to the internet? Good grief. Why didn’t he post the next set of lyrics? Well, here they are in all their glory:
“The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill”
This song deals with religious zealotry and extremist positions. Does this commenter really want us to believe that the Left is totalitarian? That Leftism has become the new religion of The Woke? How can he say that? The Left is committed to making the world a better place. By definition, the Left can’t be treated the same as “right wing” extremists. When we he learn that?!
Commenting on this phenomenon, conservative commentator John Hinderaker writes:
The image pictured — a woman of color strangling or tying-up a white man — is a perfect image of the idea that ‘demography is destiny’. It shows you, in clear and definite terms, what the future holds for you (if you are European American).
And there is not one person writing on this blog who has — or can — acknowledge this. Certainly it cannot be spoken about openly (though I suppose that inside your minds the thoughts do form…)
What I find interesting to consider — to pose as a question — is Is it ethical to somehow, willingly or unwillingly, as a choice or inadvertently — to deny and not to see what is actually going on and what the ramifications will be (are now showing themselves to be in fact) for your children and for your nation?
A quote from The Dispossessed Majority (Wilmot Robertson):
*You* are no part of the solution, *you* are profoundly part of the problem. What will it take for *you* to see?!?
[That *you* is a linguistic convention meaning ‘a great number of you-plural’. There is no other way to express it in English].
Robertson wrote in the 1970s and laid it all out then. Forty-fifty years later what he saw occurring, and the ramifications of that, are now coming to the fruition point. And still: no awareness, no willingness to grapple with the profound ethical and moral issues at stake. Indeed, remaining passive and cowardly is held to be the ethical stance to take.
Good Lord.
Perhaps if the “progressive left” be renamed ” regressive left” the self proclaimed moral superiority will disapate. They have branded virtually all conservatives as Alt-Right who are then compared to various right wing fringe groups like the Aryan Brotherhood. It is time that we define the left wing opposition to American cultural values as the Regressive Left with equivalent characterizations to authoritarian regimes.
The policy positions espoused by those that claim to be progressive are throwbacks to authoritarian rule and hardly based on democratic principles. Rules will be for the hoi po loi and not for the leadership. The same argument that the ends justify the means will be used directly on the masses who thought nothing of using the tactics on their political adversaries.
While of course I am located in *sheer evil* myself and have resigned myself to playing a Shakespearean anti-hero (though I just realized there is no lovable female evil hero in Shakespeare, and who wants to assume the role of Lady MacBeth or Goneril?), I am proposing that there is a *root* to Occidental and American liberalism and its assumptions and predicates that can be located.
If it serves your purpose, whatever that purpose is, to isolate a ‘progressive left’ and to separate its value-structure from that of the American political center and so-called American Conservatism, then I guess you will continue in that vein with predictable results. I suggest that this needs to be more closely looked at.
I further suggest that the origin of the entire definition-structure that supports and upholds Americanism as it has developed and the creature that it is today resulted from and was born out of the European crisis of the first half of the 20th century. The way that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in political and moral terms was established is to be found in this complex. America, of course, assumed the role of the Hero and was, of course, supported by God and His ministering agents & angels. You either identify with that *truth* or you risk stepping onto the wrong side of the fence. I wish to present the suggestion that these *framings* arose out of war propaganda offices. And they were communicated through media-systems, through education centers, through the TeeVee, through films, novels and other cultural productions, but also empowered and given ‘moral strength’ by economic interests.
The hard part, and very definitely for people who have been (I use the term here neutrally and accurately) indoctrinated into these peculiar and tendentious views, is to modify this basic structure. It has become illegal, essentially, to do so. To do so involves one in thoughtcrime. The entire *Patriotic Model* is not an accurate model for understanding reality. But here is the most difficult part: in order to understand ‘reality’ better and more accurately, one needs to fairly revisist and reconsider the political theories that underpinned European reaction. That is to say social, cultural and religious reaction in the interwar period. This involves looking into the political theory of numerous unsavory and vilified characters whose ideas, now, are off-limits. And were you to do this you would, also inevitably, brush shoulders with numerous characters who are branded as ‘evil’ and ‘Alt-Right’ and all those who oppose, in different ways, the ideological project of ‘Patriotic Americanism’ as it has been created and established as a coercive discourse’.
That coercive discourse is very powerful among that sector you call ‘Progressive Left’ and also ‘Democrat’ in America today. But their reach and their penetration is far more thorough: these ideas literally understructure your views and all those who write on this blog. Certainly Jack, the blog creator and director, has views that are soundly based and founded on Progressive Principles.
When you say ‘Aryan Brotherhood’ you yourself mean people like David Duke, Richard Spencer, George Lincoln Rockwell, Wilmot Robertson to name the recent ones, but then there is Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard and dozens of others from the early 20th century who are thoroughly off-limits to your review, and then many many various and different people who are, in fact, fundamentally expressions of an ‘original Americanism’ which you yourself wish to undermine, vilify, excommunicate, toss into the *outer darkness* and make irrelevant. (I use the *you* I often use which only means ‘many people’ and ‘people like you’. I regret that linguistically I have no other term and thus my circumlocutions and near neologisms are necessary).
If you want to locate ‘self proclaimed moral superiority’ you will need to turn the lens of examination around and focus it on yourself and your *core ideological structures*. You see, I say this and by saying it make myself hated and ‘the enemy’. That is how this game works, Chris. You step out of line and then, as a reaction, you become subject to a restraining coercion based in false moralism.
This false moralism understructures — I suggest with a certain boldness — just about everyone who contributes to this forum-blog. You will not ever succeed in opposing ‘the progressive left’, and they will continue to overswamp you, and eventually and at some possible point annihilate you, until *you* can actually see and understand the determining factors in the equation.
The ‘Alt-Right’ and the Dissident Right is making this effort of analysis, or reanalysis.
This American Progressive Left — they virtually run the show — does, of course, associate even the tepid and so-called ‘American Conservative’ with the Nazi-Fascists because the so-called Conservative has allowed this to happen. He and she collapses on the ground when any of these hot terms are used. These are *magic words* as Jonathan Bowden pointed out: use them and your enemy has no possible defense.
Within conventional American Conservatism — let’s take one example — the government of Maduro in Venezuela is a dictatorship. Though he was elected (as Hugo Chavez certainly was) by thorough popular support. Yet *you* — because you are righteous and good — understand that it is right and proper to overthrow that popular figure democratically elected. You see? In the most important categories *you* show yourself profoundly confused, and this because you are America and heavily indoctrinated (again I use this term in the neutral and accurate sense). I could go on & on & on & on with one solid example after the other . . . and *you-plural* would not ever be able to register it. Because there is an imposing structure that would capture what I say and annihilate it before it could be considered at an ethical and moral level.
In order to get to the bottom of *what is going on today* requires a total re-organization of principles, predicates and ideological stance: historical and cultural review. Branding, shaming, fierce labeling, group-tactics and manipulation & coercion: this is what the game is often about. It is very hard to get round that.
Cockscomb . . . or Cuckscomb? 🙂 I ask this in the plaintive voice of Cordelia.
The interesting thing about King Lear is the whole question of *voluntary dispossession*.