Three cheers for Congresswoman Omar.

No, really: she wonders why power-apologist journalists are going after donors to the Freedom Convoy following a hack-n-doxx. 

Short answer: because that's what journalism is today--a corporate apologetics ministry for the oligarchy.  And oligarchs want people to know their lane and not disrupt the neoliberal machine. 

It's all class warfare these days--and crushing smallholders with the temerity to annoy leviathan is an absolute must. 

A reminder from Pixar:

And another from Orwell:

Ernst Jünger.

Jünger (1895-1998) was a German soldier, poet, philosopher and author of several books. I am almost done with his The Forest Passage.

It is hard to categorize this short work, but I have hit upon "an anti-1984" as my best, if far too simplistic, shorthand.

It is a call to conscience-based resistance to all forms of totalitarian dehumanization, and it does so in an almost-stream-of-consciousness fashion. Junger managed to anticipate the dehumanizing power of advanced communication technology, and its effectiveness in the hands of those who would chain us, first of all to fear.

Drawing upon our wells of theology, poetry, myth and courage, it asserts that we can--and must--successfully resist. Even if the success is only in one's soul. My favorite quote, from near the end:

When all institutions have become equivocal or even disreputable, and when open prayers are heard even in churches not for the persecuted but for the persecutors, at this point moral responsibility passes into the hands of individuals, or, more accurately, into the hands of any still unbroken individuals.

Here is a quote from a different work, giving you a sense of the man.

My evil star, however, had fated me to be born in times when only the sharply demarcated and precisely calculable were in fashion.... "Of course, I am on the Right, on the Left, in the Centre; I descend from the monkey; I believe only what I see; the universe is going to explode at this or that speed" - we hear such remarks after the first words we exchange, from people whom we would not have expected to introduce themselves as idiots. If one is unfortunate enough to meet them again in five years, everything is different except their authoritative and mostly brutal assuredness. Now they wear a different badge in their buttonhole; and the universe now shrinks at such a speed that your hair stands on end.

A final note: Jünger was received into the Catholic Church two years before he died...at age 103. 

 

Orwell, Spain and the Catholic reader.

 Orwell (L), photographed as member of the POUM militia forces 

fighting for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War.  

It is no understatement to say that George Orwell's service as a volunteer soldier for the Spanish Republic during the 1936-39 conflict was the clarifying moment of his life:

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

[The last eight words are sometimes lopped off of the above quote, an Orwellian edit I will not repeat.]

Such a statement makes reading Orwell's works about the War an absolute necessity if one wants to understand him. These works are his war memoir, Homage to Catalonia (1938) and the pre-Homage notes contained in Spilling the Spanish Beans (1937), Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942), and Notes on Nationalism (1945).

But.

The unpleasant reality facing an observant Catholic reader of Orwell is that he reads as one who has drunk deeply from the wells of English hostility towards "Popery." To be sure, he does not use terms like popery, Romanism or make derisive references such as "hocus-pocus." But he did say things like "stinking Catholics," alas. Orwell was baptised an Anglican and buried--at his direction--according to Anglican rites. He also seems to have periodically attended Anglican services despite being an atheist.

In addition to reflexive Anglican anti-Catholic attitudes, Orwell biographer Gordon Bowker also points to young Eric Blair's sour experiences being educated by Ursuline nuns as a formative moment. 

Even with the above in mind, Orwell's casual--even occasionally celebratory--acceptance of the destruction of the Catholic Church in the Spanish Republic still shocks. 

A January 1937 report presented to the ruling council of the Republic by minister-without-portfolio (and later justice minister) Manuel de Irujo revealed there was not one open Catholic church in Republican-held territory--with the exception of the Basque provinces. 

The convents and abbeys had been emptied as well, and their former occupants usually imprisoned or shot.

At that point, the Republicans controlled at least half of Spain's territory, and the majority of its population and urban areas.

The revolution had snuffed out open worship by Catholics. But that wasn't all: de Irujo reported that Republican security forces made regular sweeps of private homes, removing and destroying religious items and paraphernalia.

As it turned out, de Irujo (himself a Basque) was the only minister who thought religious persecution was a problem, and the report was quietly buried. 

[As an aside, one of the reasons the Basque region fell so quickly to the Nationalists during the latter's 1937 offensive was that Basques as a whole--even the fiercely-separatist ones--were appalled by the violence of the revolution. Many Basques wanted to separate from Spain, but only a minuscule number wanted to separate from the faith. Plus, there were still a significant number of Basques with an attachment to Carlism, and the latter were all-in on the uprising.]

In Homage, the perceptive Orwell was correct when he observed that the Church in places like Catalonia had lost touch with the people. Too often it was in fact the dutiful handmaid/schoolmarm of those with money and power--something we still see in high places today. Indeed, in a visit to a Catalan cemetery, Orwell notes that he saw only one headstone with a religious message. He also archly reports that the secular headstones were larded with cringeworthy praise for the deceased.

So it would be fair to say that there existed a profound disconnect between the majority of Catalans and the faith of their forebears which happened long before the events of 1936.

And yet, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the public extirpation of the Church in the Republic met with Orwell's approval. In Spilling the Spanish Beans, he describes the Church as parasitic and sneeringly dismisses reports of nuns being raped and murdered (the latter indisputably happened). In Homage, he describes with with unstinting admiration the leveling effect of the anarchist revolution in Barcelona, with the erasure of class distinctions and modes of behavior, and describes the dismantling of former churches as part of this sea change.

Later, he states with full approval that there was not a Catholic church open in the Republic (the situation in the Basque provinces does not figure much in his writing) before the summer of 1937, and dismisses the Church on more than one occasion as a "racket." And the killing or exile of priests is another fact he reports without a hint of objection. In fact, one gets an unpleasant whiff of Outer Party members denouncing Eurasia's atrocities even as they celebrate Oceania's.

So...why? Why would a man who genuinely loathed totalitarians regardless of handedness view the Republican Red Terror with, at most, just a shrugging acknowledgment?

1. Orwell dismissed war propaganda as a matter of course.

Part of it can be ascribed to his disdain for pro-Franco reportage in England, which he regarded as propagandistic garbage. To be fair, he would level even more venomous criticism of leftist newspapers. Indeed, perhaps the most valuable aspect of Looking Back is his unstinting attack against the falsification of history by partisanship and propaganda. The seeds of what would become 1984 were beginning to bloom in this essay.

2.  Orwell's perch gave him a limited view of the War.

Another factor is his lack of information about the national scope of Republican atrocities, which was not something trumpeted by the Republic as it sought to influence Western public opinion. It is safe to say that he was not fully up to speed on this, either. His time in Spain was spent on the Aragon front and in Catalonia. Soldiers--even in revolutionary militias--do not get to wander around.

The problem here his view does not alter much after the Civil War ends. He concedes in Looking Back that there were Republican atrocities, and he further indicts both sides for believing and disbelieving atrocities depending on who was doing them:

I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence. Recently I drew up a table of atrocities during the period between 1918 and the present; there was never a year when atrocities were not occurring somewhere or other, and there was hardly a single case when the Left and the Right believed in the same stories simultaneously.

Is there a veiled admission of his own ideological blinders here? Perhaps. But again, one is faced with a silent, yawning void when it comes to sympathy for papist victims of the revolution.

3. "Political Catholicism."

A third factor at play is his candid loathing for what he called "political Catholicism." In his discussion of this phrase in Notes on Nationalism, he attempts to take the late G.K. Chesterton to the woodshed for being an exponent of such. In fact, Orwell goes so far as to equate the "political Catholicism" of Chesterton with Communism:

Ten or twenty years ago, the form of nationalism most closely corresponding to Communism today was political Catholicism. Its most outstanding exponent – though he was perhaps an extreme case rather than a typical one – was G.K. Chesterton. 

Whilst one can find fault with Chesterton's oeuvre--hack work and bad analysis will never be lacking in any writer of prodigious output--it is difficult to see this equation as anything other than the reflex of a man who has a bug about Catholicism. While his formulation theoretically allows for distinguishing between "political" Catholicism and that of a less-objectionable "non-political" sort, I have yet to stumble across Orwell finding something praiseworthy in any form of Catholicism. Even though Orwell states genuine admiration for Chesterton as as a writer of talent and an anti-imperial "little Englander," you will not find any admiration for Chesterton as a Catholic.

Where this inconsistent-but-still believing Catholic comes down in his assessment of Orwell is here: the man simply had a blind spot on the subject. And it was one that operated almost at the level of reflex, to boot. It was not something that he was ever able to remedy, either--quite simply because he was incapable of recognizing it. Perhaps if his small circle of friends and associates had contained a believing Catholic, things might have turned out differently. Or maybe not even then.

Ultimately, I find his case to be salutary. It is a reminder that honest men have their blind spots and can still operate in good faith. Even the most objective and ruthlessly analytical of them can miss things for whatever reason. And from that, we can learn something about ourselves--if we are being honest.

 

"It's not Orwellian if it's private enterprise! If you don't like it, start your own commercial behemoth!"

Just anticipating the usual brain-dead libertariot responses to this development:

Amazon drivers must consent to invasive biometric workplace surveillance or be fired.

Telescreens are just fine if corporations are using them, comrades!

Some drivers are understandably concerned about the new technology, as Amazon will be collecting data on everything from miles driven, speed, acceleration, braking, turns, and following distance. The cameras can even sense when a driver yawns (or appears to), and certain behaviors will trigger the sending of footage to Amazon, which could be used to reprimand drivers later. Reuters has reported some drivers have quit instead of signing the consent form. 

Hat tip to Liberty Journal for this revelation.

George Orwell describes American political narrative shifting in 2021.

 Hell, over the last 18 hours....

Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one of the central London squares at the moment when it happened. It was night, and the white faces and the scarlet banners were luridly floodlit. The square was packed with several thousand people, including a block of about a thousand schoolchildren in the uniform of the Spies. 

On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. 

His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. 

The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia!

Burn, baby, burn!

I honestly don't care if Portland turns into a massive cloud of slowly-dissipating ash.

You get what you vote for, and this what you wanted.

Have fun watching local businesses die and insurance premiums soar.

What bugs me is that this will prolong the never-ending ammo shortage.

Commissar Dorsey's newest purge is underway.

For those of you who care about Twitter, an interesting report from one of the newly-unpersoned.

The straining out of small fish has begun.

As a consumer of Mystery Grove's (another of the purged) catalog, permit me to recommend their small-but-worthwhile collection here--while it can still be found.

 

The ultimate private prison is being built around us.

It has digital bars--but they're built by "private enterprise," so it's perfectly Constitutional.

Behold, your electronic purchases are being sifted and referred to the FBI--and Lord only knows where else in our Permanent Patriot Act America.

And we're good with it, because convenience.

I'll let Andre Gregory explain it:

 

Update: While hip-hop isn't, to use the modern parlance "my jam," Tom MacDonald has some insights as well:

They never freed the slaves, they realized that they don't need the chains
They gave us tiny screens, we think we're free 'cause we can't see the cage

 

Amy Welborn explains why switching social media platforms probably isn't the answer.

Typically lucid and cogent insights on a hot topic:

Over the past couple of days, the calls to Follow Me on [Alternative Platform] have heightened. I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook (and hardly any at all commenting or “discussing”), but every other post, it seems, over the past few days has been invitations to migrate, declarations of cancellation and so on.

I won’t be following anyone on to any new platforms. Not a one. In fact, this is a clarifying moment for me. It’s time to take a few more steps away. I’m in the process of stripping down my FB presence – they don’t make it easy, that’s for sure. It might take a few weeks, but in the end, I’ll still have a FB page, but it will only have a week’s worth of posts on it at a time – and none of those personal, just links from here.

(My only concern – and the reason I’m taking time – is to catch personal photos or anecdotes I might have posted there, but not saved elsewhere.

Before this (yes) wall o’ text, let me just give you an abstract. Maybe save you some time:

If you’re frustrated by the limitations of social media, discern why. Maybe it’s not time to find another, more acceptable form of social media. Maybe it’s time to turn away. 

* * *

What about this? What about seeing this as a clarifying moment and girding your loins and actually leaving the cave?

Maybe begin with the following. First recognize that this internet/social media loop is not random. It didn’t just happen. Like marketing, it’s designed.

It’s designed to elevate and harness various aspects of human personality and behavior, not for the benefit of society, not for your personal benefit, but for their profit.

There’s no nobility here. There’s no idealism. It’s about money and power, period.

It’s about using particular types of energy that make you tick, like you’re a cog in a machine.

• First, and most obviously, you’ve given up your data. All of it. It’s there, from your Social Security number to what you searched for on Ebay just now. It’s all there.

But of more interest to me is how this ecosystem engages and exploits:

• Our curiosity
• Our nosiness
• Our anxiety
• Our loneliness
• Our aspirations
• Our desires
• Our tribalism
• Our anger
• Our ego
• Our creativity
• Our drive for change
• Our desire for freedom

Yes, the Internet can help us direct our good qualities in positive ways. But I think it’s clear, particularly in the context of the authoritarian ecosystem this is turning out to be, it’s mostly a negative and it’s time to leave it behind, as much as we can.

For it is good and natural to:

• Want to know and understand
• Feel as if I belong
• Know that I’m not alone in my views, interests and loyalties
• Express myself
• Connect
• Play
• Share what I know
• Share my gifts

How does social media exploit these good, even holy aspirations and desires and turn them into destructive, demeaning dross? 

Read it all--and discern accordingly.

And let me just add that the odds that the tech titans are going to leave alternate platforms alone are too low be meaningfully calculated--see, e.g., Parler. You will likely move in only to find your new digital home condemned because the gatekeepers have determined that it isn't like all the others.

There's a term for someone who relies on Big Tech's streaming services, cloud storage and the like.

That term is "idiot."

To wit: Bob Dylan's pro-Israel "Neighborhood Bully" is nowhere to be found on Youtube.

It's "hate speech" for the tech platform's Committee of Public Safety--and they never explain themselves.

The gatekeepers insist you follow their "Everything that is not mandatory is forbidden" policies to the letter--especially when they don't spell it out. But I suppose they don't have to--the left has made it pretty clear where Jews can expect to stand in the future. 

Not that it stops Jewish voters from pulling the lever for the parties of the left, but what can you do?

And another part of the endgame is obvious:

But the censorship is not ultimately the point. A platform like YouTube is not just a “content provider,” like a digital jukebox. It’s not an artist, which can choose which versions of which songs it chooses to make available to whom and when. It’s a ledger, on which the shared events and references that together add up to something like a social or cultural whole are recorded. Instantaneously altering that shared database based on nothing more than the half-formed political whims of whatever cadre of censors has been appointed to control the “hate speech” algorithms is the first step to controlling memory itself. I see it, and it scares me.

This is the future Big Tech is building.

A world where slavery is acceptable so long as you adhere to HR's newest inclusivity memo.

 Hat-tip to Don and Steve Skojec for the find.

 

The story isn't what's alleged to be Hunter Biden's laptop.

The story is Big Tech showing us the Orwellian depths to which they are willing to descend to protect their political friends on the left.

I strongly suspect the laptop data is garbage--my faith in Rudy Giuliani's reliability cannot be detected with the most sensitive of instruments.

But watching our Silicon Valley overlords straight-up censor entire newspapers and lock out the Press Secretary?

That's a promise of things to come.

Just imagine what they'd be willing to do to ordinary people.

Applying antitrust to these entities is long overdue.

 

The Miranda Warning, Updated for Social Media.

You have the right to remain silent, except as set forth below.

You do not enjoy any constitutional rights of free speech or protection against coerced speech on any platform owned by monopolistic tech giants.

You do not enjoy any presumption of good faith regardless of whether you speak or not.

As defined in this warning, "reader(s)" includes people who know you in real life, including family and friends.

If you choose to remain silent, your silence on a matter of controversy can and will be taken by the reader(s) at their sole discretion to be tacit agreement with the worst possible take on the matter.

Further, the reader(s) at their sole discretion can and will associate your silence as agreement with the worst possible people--living, dead, or fictional.

Likewise, if you choose to remain silent, your silence can and will be construed as an act of violence at the sole discretion of the reader(s).

Should you choose to speak, everything you say can and will be amplified and used against you in the court of public opinion.

Neither factual accuracy nor incontrovertible evidence in your speech are relevant if the reader(s) feel(s) strongly otherwise.

Everything you say can and will be given the worst possible spin.

Everything you say can and will be used to associate you with the worst possible people, as set forth in Warning Line VI above.

Even if you speak in agreement with the reader(s), this can and will be deemed as an act of violence erasing more deserving voices.

You can be presumed by the reader(s) to own and enjoy a cache of Fascist literature, agreeing with all writers deemed to be bad people, living, dead, or fictitious, regardless of whether you have ever heard of them or not.

Things you never said, much less agree with, can and will be attributed to you as if you read it straight from this presumed cache.

Said definition of "Fascist Literature" will be determined at the sole discretion of the reader(s).

At all times, your speech is subject to characterization as "violence" at the sole discretion of the reader(s).

After the reader(s) have defended themselves from your silence or speech, we admit that you technically have the right to retain a lawyer to speak on your behalf--or to even file expensive, dicey litigation--as part of a likely-futile effort to put your shattered life back together.

However, this presumes you have the resources to afford a half-decent lawyer willing to brave association with an obvious dirtbag like yourself.

If you cannot find or afford such a lawyer, you should have thought of that before not speaking or speaking.

Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you?

Having these rights in mind, do you wish to speak or not speak on the internet?

The future of cancellation culture.

In saner times, a friend of mine once said during the sexual abuse scandals that the Catholic Church would one day be vilified for policies against child abuse. Not sure if he believes the same now--changing times and circumstances have altered his perspectives on a good many things. At a minimum, I doubt he would repeat that prediction in public.

Regardless, he was on to something, given the rapid disintegration in the consensus on sexual mores which followed the no-fault divorce revolution which began in the 1960s.

But happily for some, there will always be people who are cancel-proof. For example, if the former teenager is a valuable member of a progressive vote farm or holds an office too valuable to concede to the opposition, then there is literally nothing that person could have said or done in the past that would damage their standing. Look at Governor Blackface-Or-Klan-Hood in Virginia, Joy Reid, and Justin Trudeau, to name but three.

Hail the Daily Party Line and all will be well for you.

For everyone else, the gulag beckons.

I'd say we're about ten years out from soft-focus sympathetic "mainstream" media portraits of child sexual abusers. But then again, I'm always an incorrigible optimist.

Hat-tip to Ace for the find.

Dunning-Kruger Incarnate.

That would be Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo of the Airline Terminal News Network.

Yesterday, while they were agreeing with the Year Zero Statue Purge, the duo regaled those waiting in Boarding Zones 4-9 with this nugget of insight into the beliefs of 2 billion people across the globe:

“Jesus Christ, if that’s who you believe, if that’s who you believe in, admittedly was not perfect when he was here on this earth.”

The latter of the duo is allegedly a practicing Catholic, and nodded along amicably. Not so by the way, he resents being called "Fredo," so much so that he spectacularly beclowned himself in his initial objection to the moniker. But as yesterday shows, he confirms on a regular basis why the nickname fits. Truly, Cuomo's only qualification for his role is his surname, but like the poor, nepotism will always be with us.

The former is also a staggeringly-incompetent blowhard even by the low standards of television journalism, but he thus far lacks a compelling nickname. Then again, he doesn't rise to the level of one. He's a nonentity, gaining the notice of the public not trapped in transportation hubs only when he says things like the above. Were it not for his media perch, it is difficult to envision a job he could do outside of sales, where soothing customers with affirming bullshit is a useful skill.

If you have noticed a strain of anger in my posts on various topical matters, you are correct to do so. It stems from a constant low-grade despair. Right now, the two things I have been centered in for my adult life, faith in Almighty God and love of country, are punchlines for the ruling class of both church and nation. A coalition of venal bureaucrats, radical partisans and too-immature youths in the grip of a mob mindset are ascendant in both.

Well, active youths mobbing about aren't exactly a major problem in the Catholic Church--three generations of "it doesn't matter" have sunk in. But otherwise the problems are congruous.

And there is almost no resistance in either case. The center cannot hold because there is no center. All is an accelerating spiral downwards, growing more vertiginous and hallucinatory in its madness.

The lamps are going out all over the world, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Maybe the despair isn't so low-grade after all.

"Recontextualization."

Get used to that nasty little euphemism.

Boston is removing the city's Emancipation Memorial.

And if you thought it would end with Confederates.... it won't end.

The Cluster B histrionics being indulged here will just move to the next disordered grievance. And then the next. Then the next, ad infinitum.

And why not? There is no resistance and for a moment they get the buzz of minor celebrity and pretend heroism.

Here you go for the story, and the template for the future:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/01/us/boston-statue-removed-trnd/index.html

No jokes, please--we're Woke.

The City of Dearborn's Downtown Development Authority placed some lighthearted signs encouraging social distancing. Here are two of them.

With the second, two young ladies cried "Microaggression!" and let slip the dogs of scold.

[Podcaster Rima] Fadlallah says that this is more than just using a shawarma to represent Arab Americans, but it's about the microaggressions that she feels are constantly targeted to the community. [Fellow podcaster Yasmeen] Kadouh said that Arabs in the country deal with misrepresentation and identity erasure every day, and now it's at home.

"The place that we call home and the place that houses our traditions and our community should not be the place that offends us in a way where we feel like our identities are being made fun of," Kadouh said.

One can legitimately wonder just how many people were offended, apart from the two complainers. But youth must be served, no matter how confused.

Confused? Yes. Because in the name of fighting "erasure," a reference to Arabic culture that has entered the mainstream was erased.

Always remember:

So about that bust of Christopher Columbus that stood for 110 years in downtown Detroit?

Past tense.

Executive decision:

The decision by Mayor Mike Duggan to pull the bust from public view in Detroit's downtown comes as several Columbus statues have recently been destroyed, vandalized or removed in America amid public outcry against the Italian explorer during racial justice protests.

John Roach, a mayoral spokesman, said via text message that "the mayor decided it ought to be placed in storage to give us time to evaluate the appropriate long-term disposition of the statue."

The bust's removal from its perch on Randolph, north of East Jefferson, makes it the second visage of a figure this month to be removed from the public eye in Metro Detroit. The statue of late Dearborn Mayor Orville Hubbard was recently pulled from the grounds of the Dearborn Historical Museum.

“I've been bothered for a while by the fact that the statue is occupying such a place of prominence next to City Hall right on Jefferson, and I supported City Council, three years ago, when they voted to eliminate Columbus Day as a holiday in the city of Detroit," Duggan said Monday.

Roach said he was not aware of any group's involvement in the removal of the bust and added there were no other statues planned for removal as of Monday. Duggan, meanwhile, said the city will work with community members to decide the appropriate measures for the bust's future.

No more removals planned “as of Monday.”

But by Friday we will have always been at war with Eastasia. 

By the way, "right on Jefferson" means Jefferson Avenue. 

And Detroit's Jefferson Avenue was named for guess who? 

So how long before we see the street signs sent to the memory hole?

For those of you familiar with Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series, the forthcoming  community consultations on all of these issues will be Lord Vetinari in full effect:

[Lord Vetinari] was a great believer in letting a thousand voices be heard, because this meant that all he actually needed to do was listen only to the ones that had anything useful to say, ‘useful’ in this case being defined in the classic civil-service way as ‘inclining to my point of view.’ In his experience, it was a number generally smaller than ten.

The people who wanted a thousand, etc., really meant that they wanted their own voice to be heard while the other nine hundred and ninety-nine were ignored, and for this purpose the gods had invented the committee.

Vetinari was very good at committees, especially when Drumknott took the minutes. What the iron maiden was to stupid tyrants, the committee was to Lord Vetinari; it was only slightly more expensive, far less messy, considerably more efficient, and, best of all, you had to *force* people to climb inside the iron maiden.

So those of you--who for some bizarre reason--may be developing a suspicion that the "community members" discussing Columbus will be light on Detroit's Italians, who were instrumental in placing the bust back in 1910, are probably on to something. 

And how much longer will the Knights of Columbus be welcome at City Hall when the bust of their namesake "bothers" the Mayor enough to have it unceremoniously removed?

Year Zero never ends.