I almost hate to take Sundays off from the newsletter because it means that so much “progressive” insanity piles up that it’s hard to catch up with it all on Monday.  Here’s today’s Leftist Lunacy List:

Ohio’s Bowling Green State University has gone so PC, it’s even outraged some Hollywood liberals by stripping the name of that threat to America’s youth, Lillian Gish, from the university’s theater.  Known as “The First Lady of American Cinema,” Gish had a career that began in the earliest days of silent film and was one of the very first “movie stars.”  In 1914, she appeared in her mentor D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” a landmark film in terms of its length, narrative structure and cinematography, but one with a racist, pro-KKK plot. 

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/06/20/lillian-gish-theater/

A number of Hollywood luminaries and film historians protested the college’s move, pointing out that Lillian and her actress sister Dorothy were never advocates for “racist or exclusionary practices or perspectives.”  They called it “unfortunate and unjust” to single her out for one early film in a 75-year career and make her “a scapegoat in a broader political debate” (wonder how many of them defended Kate Smith when she was “disappeared” for cutting two early racist songs out of hundreds of recordings over a number of decades?)  

But the college stood by its decision to non-person Lillian Gish, saying they found no record of her denouncing the film (FYI: she died in 1993, long before people realized they were supposed to dig things up out of distant history to feel offended by.)  This story says the college ruled that “while Gish was perhaps not a racist, she still had to pay a price for her association with the film.” 

Think about that: maybe she wasn’t guilty, but she still has to pay a price for her guilt by association.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you an “institution of higher learning, circa 2019!”

Incidentally, President Woodrow Wilson (considered the first “Progressive” President) showed “Birth of a Nation” in the White House and declared that it was like “history written in lightning.”  Here is a list of things named after Wilson that we’ll need to strip his name from in order to keep leftist snowflakes from melting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memorials_to_Woodrow_Wilson

In California, the University of California Santa Cruz removed the El Camino Real Bell due to protests that the bell was “a racist symbol that glorifies the domination and dehumanization” of indigenous peoples (again: it’s a bell.) 

https://www.westernjournal.com/historic-catholic-marker-deemed-racist-school-issues-removal/

This comes several days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom (there are four words that deeply trigger and offend me) issued an executive order apologizing to California Native Americans for the state’s history of “violence, maltreatment and neglect,” for sanctioning “over a century of depredations and prejudicial policies” against them, and declaring that “we can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial.” 

If I might make a modest proposal:  If you feel that bad about it, then give it back to the Native Americans.  That will clear your guilty leftist consciences, and I am absolutely certain the Native Americans would do a far better job of running California than Gavin Newsom and the state’s cloth-headed legislature.  

Finally, while it’s hard to pick, this may be the most ridiculous leftist snowflake news of the weekend: Ravelty, an online community of knitters and crocheters, announced that they are banning any expressions of support for President Trump from the site because…

“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."

https://pjmedia.com/trending/8m-member-craft-site-ravelry-bans-support-for-trump-undeniably-support-for-white-supremacy/

To state the obvious: no, it isn’t.  I supported Trump, and I detest white supremacists, as do most Republicans I know (the Party was founded to end the Democratic institution of slavery, as I keep having to remind pundits. Maybe they should watch “Birth of a Nation” to be reminded of who created the KKK.)  If they wanted to ban all political comments from a site about knitting, that would make sense.  But this is just partisan censorship based on idiocy.

This is an example of the common practice of leftists being unable to defend their own failed, counter-productive policies by citing experience, facts or reason, so they redefine terms (in this case, “support for Trump = white supremacy”), then attack the straw man they created.  To them, sharing a knitting pattern for a “Make America Great Again” throw means you want to exterminate minority races.  Have they been sniffing their bottles of Fray-Check?   

I do have to thank the social justice warrior censors at Ravelry, though, for giving me an opportunity to say something I never thought I could say and mean so literally:

“Hey, leftists: tend to your knitting!”

To sum up: add historic Catholic church bells, a female movie pioneer and knitting to the list of things that must be thrown down the memory hole to soothe the “triggered,” all in the name of “inclusion” (they obviously must’ve changed the definition of that word!)

Donald Trump based his entire campaign on the power of four words: “Make America Great Again.”  I suggest that school administrators, politicians and others being hounded to censor history embrace the power of two words:  “So what?” 

“I’m triggered and offended by that thing that’s been there for a hundred years!”

So what?

“I will protest and yell and scream!”

So what?

“But all my self-righteous outrage is causing me pain and trauma!”

So what? 

Just keep saying these two simple words until the headache goes away.