Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly. || Gone fishing, with goat. || Bit gusty. || African film posters of note. || When parrots share. || Pizza beyond the pale. || Probably best to just buy a new one. || Paranormal activity. (h/t, Damian) || Children of the night. (h/t, Julia) || The secret lives of snails. || Good day at the office. || When the trashcan brings you coffee. || Small child containment system. || Coming through. || Three amigos. || The thrill of pufferfish neurotoxin. || “I thought there was something wrong with the movie.” || I did not know about these. || Close enough. || Unfriending of yore. || That’s my sister! || Road rage scenes. || And finally, I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here.

Meanwhile, over at Salon, where the delusional hyperventilate, Mr Chauncey DeVega once again rails against Donald Trump. Today we’re being warned of his “political thuggery and mobster-style behaviour.” The current President is, we’re told, a “dictator.”

The question is… whether anything or anyone is capable of stopping him.

To embellish this tale of impending doom, Mr DeVega turns to academia. Specifically,

I recently spoke with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat in an effort to better understand where America is on its road to fascism and authoritarianism in this fourth year of Trump’s regime.

It’s a regime, you see. Mr DeVega likes this word and uses it no fewer than nine times, as when telling us, confidently, that,

The American people are in a manic state because of Trump’s regime.

Not just Salon columnists, then, but the entire population. Apparently, 300 million people are teetering on the verge of a psychotic episode.

Dr Ben-Ghiat, a lecturer in Italian Studies, is of course on-message:

I’m very upset that there are in fact Trump supporters and I have zero sympathy towards them.

This is followed by pointed references to Hitler and Mussolini – because hey, why not? – and whisperings of a cowed and fearful media:

Many people in the news media are afraid to really engage the fact that Trump is an authoritarian because if they do so then reality becomes too threatening, and therefore they would have to take a different stance publicly.

Readers are invited to take a moment to reflect on Mr Trump’s famously warm and not at all fractious relationship with the mainstream media, which never, ever calls him names. Like “proto-fascist,” for instance. Or when MSNBC’s Niccole Wallace breathlessly announced that the President was genocidal and, for reasons left to the imagination, clearly bent on “exterminating Latinos.” Or when the same broadcaster’s Frank Figliuzzi suggested that Trump’s lowering of flags following a shooting tragedy was actually a coded salute to Adolf Hitler.

Apparently, these things never happened, are not in fact bizarrely routine, and the pundits at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, NBC, Salon, etc., are just too terrified and deferential to admit, as Dr Ben-Ghiat puts it, that “they are living in the middle of a fascist, authoritarian takeover.”

“I like how it looks aesthetically next to my hand tattoos.”

Also, open thread.

Remember, students. You are not an individual, but a mascot of a notional group. 

From Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, By Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo.

It occurs to me that when these clowns bang on about analysing events through a racial or identitarian lens, as for instance here and here, what they mean is shoehorning people through an identitarian keyhole, then pretending that the subsequent cartoonery and narrow contrivance, with its phantom evils and funhouse-mirror bigotry, is some universal profundity and proof of the speaker’s personal sophistication. The possible results of such “social justice education,” in which group affiliations, however contrived or incidental, are foregrounded and categorised, and their acknowledgement made habitual and a matter of great importance, are not hard to fathom. 

Update, via the comments:

I question his commitment, frankly. (h/t, Damian) || I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. || Incoming air. || Nommy nommy nom. || If we all flap together, this baby is ours. || Bubbles of hydrogen. || Bathroom door distinction of note. (h/t, Holborn) || A brief history of colour charts. || It’s how they reproduce. || Vintage pulp magazine archive. From Astounding Stories to Weird Tales. || Parachutist of note. || Popcorn. || Fair point. (h/t, Damian) || The thrill of algae. || Long shot detected. || Land of ice. || Lunatic asylum notebook of note. || Last year, summarised. || At sea, diabolical scenes. || Suboptimal delivery service. || And finally, as time-saving measures go, it was, it has to be said, a partial success.