The Voting Bloc Against Bossiness

The Dontells don’t want to be told what to think, what to say, or what to do.

“Meet the Dontells, sure to be a political force in the next few elections. Their mantra is simple: Don’t tell me what to do, hence the name. Their telltale sign is an obvious case of ODD. What’s that? Oppositional defiant disorder, which, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, is a behavior disorder, often in children who “are uncooperative, defiant, and hostile toward peers, parents, teachers, and other authority figures.” Yeah, I’ve got that.

Also add: Don’t tell me what to say, to think, to pay. Backlash was inevitable against the metastatic absurdity. Use only paper straws. Don’t tell me what to do. You can’t say “master bedroom” anymore. Oh yes I can. That 6-foot-tall dude winning all the NCAA women’s swimming meets is really a woman. I don’t think so. Every threat is existential. Maybe to you. No abortions ever. What? Your taxes pay people not to work. Make it stop!

Tea partiers and red-hatted MAGA supporters pushed back against Obama-era bossiness. They didn’t want high taxes to pay for open-border welfare, gun confiscation or being woke poked. Heck, they even supported a blundering bloviator for president. That’s how desperate their Dontell dedication was. Note, there is a fine distinction between the Doncares (I don’t care), the Leavmis (leave me alone), and the Dontells. The first two groups rarely vote. But Dontells vote in droves, on both sides of the aisle.

Amazingly, the whole Dontell thing still comes as a huge surprise to self-important city dwellers on both coasts. Yes, most big-city progressives like to be dominated and enjoy being told what to do. Walk/Don’t Walk. Mind the gap. Wait in long lines. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations. Calorie counts in doughnut shops. Confiscatory taxes. New York’s (unconstitutional) ban on large sodas. San Francisco’s ban on Happy Meals. The seemingly mandatory use of words such as “positionality” and “performative” in conversation.

Liberals, implied in the name, say they are for freedom, but are they? The progressive wing is full of authoritarians telling others what to do or how to think: America is a racist country. Wear a mask. Limit charter schools. Bees are fish (in California). “A drag queen for every school” (Michigan’s attorney general promises). ESG. CRT. DEI. I could go on. Meanwhile, Dontells are fed up with submission.

…Many Dontells rally around the yellow Gadsden flag with its coiled rattlesnake and declaration “Don’t Tread on Me.” In 2016 a controversy raged over whether the Gadsden flag was racist. Really? There’s that insulting implicit bias again. Dontells hate the thought police.

It’s about freedom. Are Dontells libertarians? Not necessarily. There is a deeper psychology of freedom that runs through society, way beyond Ayn Rand fanatics or Cato Institute donors or even crypto-crazies. This is especially true in Silicon Valley, even though its residents won’t admit it. Disruption almost by definition is not listening to what others tell you to do.

We no longer live in a nanny state, but a bossy state. You must express the prevailing opinion or face mockery. Do this, don’t do that. Instead, let’s eliminate ODD in our lifetime. The Dontells’ philosophy is simple: How about you live your life, and I’ll live mine. Don’t tell me what to do, say, think or pay. Oh yeah, and don’t tread on me . . . because I vote.“

As we observed on our recent trip to the Lone Star State, Texas is BRIMMING with Dontells.

In a related item, NRO‘s Charley Cook provides…

The Only Proper Response to a National Gas-Stove Ban

It falls so far outside the federal government’s purview that it doesn’t even merit a counterargument.

“One could advance any number of compelling arguments against the Biden administration’s reported desire to institute a nationwide ban on gas stoves. One could note that such prohibitions are clearly not within the federal government’s constitutional powers. One could question the president’s priorities in a time of inflation and consumer alarm. One could observe that the study that has led the administration to consider outlawing gas stoves is ridiculously — and deliberately — flawed. One could even ask how such a measure — which would make many forms of ethnic cooking more difficult — could be squared with all that fashionable talk of systemic implicit racial bias. And yet to offer any of these objections would ultimately be counterproductive, insofar as it would signal an acceptance of the premise underlying the policy, which is that this is the sort of matter that a free people should expect their federal government to superintend.

I do not accept this premise, and, as a result, I must offer up a response wholly different from the ones above. Namely: Bugger off.

That’s right. The correct response here is a rather simple one, all told: Go away. Leave us alone. Stick your ludicrous propositions where the sun don’t shine.

…I have come increasingly to suspect that the deepest fault line in these United States lies not between people on the “left” and the “right,” or between the Republicans and the Democrats, or between the north and the south, but between the sort of person who spends their days wondering how many more hours they might be able to eke out if they lived in a pillow-lined concrete bunker, and the sort of person who intuits somewhere deep down in their soul that a world without any rough edges is a world that is less worth living in.

Justifying the administration’s proposed move, CPSC commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. explained that “products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” What, I wonder, would be excluded from that definition?

On second thought, forget I asked. I wouldn’t want to give him any ideas.“

It’s worth noting Richard Trumka, Jr.’s father was the long-time president of the AFL-CIO; Guess it’s safe to say making a living feeding parasitically off the effort of hard-working Americans runs in the family.

Next, NRO‘s Ryan Mills reports…

Seattle Public Schools Sue Social-Media Platforms for Intentionally Harming Children

“Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media giants are intentionally hooking vulnerable children on their platforms and flooding them with harmful and exploitive content, according to a new lawsuit by Seattle public-school leaders that accuses the tech companies of creating a youth mental-health crisis in the state of Washington and elsewhere.

The 92-page lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court alleges that Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat “have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms.”

The tech giants have built features to maximize users’ time on their sites, and they use complex algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to “exploit the neurophysiology of the brain’s reward systems to keep users coming back, coming back frequently, and staying on the respective platforms for as long as possible.”

The lawsuit alleges that school districts in Seattle and across the country “are uniquely harmed by the current youth mental health crisis,” because “schools are one of the main providers for mental health services for school-aged children.” School districts have had to hire additional mental-health staff, develop new mental-health resources, train teachers to help students with their mental health, increase disciplinary services, and repair property damaged by students struggling with their mental health, the lawsuit states…”

Three thoughts immediately come to mind: (i)…

…(ii) These issues couldn’t have had anything to do with the teachers union-backed school shutdowns during the scamdemic?!?; and (iii) This is life once again imitating art, in this case, one of our favorite scenes from Animal House:

They can’t exploit the vulnerable brains of youth; Only we can exploit the vulnerable brains of youth!

Moving on, here’s a sextet of special selections certain to pique the interest of inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). House Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally kept a promise by removing Adam Schiff, Eric “Honeypot” Swalwell and Ilhan Omar from their respective committees.  McCarthy confirmed to the AP Omar would be removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee and Schiff and Swalwell kicked off the Intelligence Committee, observing “Schiff has lied”…repeatedly…”to the American public” and since “Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector”, the Speaker isn’t going to grant him one in government.

Reports Omar plans to join the Extramarital and Incestuous Affairs Committee remain unconfirmed. 

(2). After listening to Fed chairman Powell’s refusal to become embroiled in the climate change hoax…

“Without explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools to promote a greener economy or to achieve other climate-based goals We are not, and will not be, a ‘climate policy maker.’ We should ‘stick to our knitting’ and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities.“

…Best of the Web asks, “How often does a speech from a Beltway regulator leave you wanting more?”  

(3). Courtesy of the lovely Shannon, the Journal‘s Jinjoo Lee explains while using up America’s oil reserve was easy, refilling it won’t be, ominously adding “the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s current inventory might be the new normal”.

Which doesn’t bode well for our national security posture.

(4). As Townhall.com‘s Spencer Brown reports, while getting stray House Republicans to allow his election as Speaker was hard, Kevin McCarthy may well find herding those Capitol Hill cats even harder, though he’s off to a pretty fair start.

(5). We find it criminally hypocritical Joe Biden won’t spend a dime to help those living with the horrors of his open border policies, but finds his family’s security worth half a million of our tax dollars.

(6). Though we’d no clue Rob Gronkowski holds an annual beach festival during Super Bowl weekend, we’ve since learned when he does, he’d appreciate his fans looking, but not touching.  Curious attitude for someone who invites fans to his beach festival.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these from Ed Hickey…

…Balls Cotton…

…whose last one is a perfect segue into this apt comparison occasioned by 46*’s token tour, courtesy of the lovely Shannon:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Sports Section, and a question: Why is a player like Quay Walker, who has pushed not one…

…but two members of the opposing team’s staff…

…still in the NFL?  And why was #95 not also ejected, or #90 not penalized for an obvious forearm to the defenseless running back’s head?  In the interest of fairness, Walker has since apologized, but these incidents leave us supremely confident we were correct in our decision to boycott professional football when these overpaid prima donnas first started kneeling.

Magoo

Video of the Day

John Stossel highlights the lies and hypocrisy of purported public health experts and their shills in the MSM. BTW, this is an edited version, as YouTube age-restricted his original video.

Tales of The Darkside

Ami Horowitz delves deep into the demented minds of The Left. The real question isn’t if borders are racist, but rather what ISN’T racist?!?

On the Lighter Side

Bill Maher counters the claims of Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist with no more expertise in virology or epidemiology than you, as demonstrated by both his ignorance of the crowded conditions in Third World cities and the different outcomes in non-lockdown TX and FL vs. NY and CA.