#Cliven Bundy

[tentacion3099]

[everbright-mourning]

Baker Creek A.K.A. rareseeds.com is run by some pretty shady fucks. In 2019 they invited Cliven Bundy to present at their spring festive. Who's Cliven Bundy? He's that guy who decided to hole up with some armed disciples instead of paying the federal gov't for grazing rights on federal land. Here's a link to the Vox explainer from 2014. He's also said some pretty racist stuff about black people and slavery which is in the above article.

They did dis-invite him after enough people pointed out he was a horrible dude but issued an extremely non-apology about it. Link to a seed-blogger with the non-apology inside.

In any case, I'm just mentioning this here so people know not to buy heirloom seeds from Baker Creek, since the name wandered across my dash recently. There's some folk who just don't know, and that's fine! Now they do.

I don't have better places to buy seeds at my finger tips - but maybe check the next link down in the search for 'heirloom seeds' when everybody is ordering seeds next year!

[vinceeasley]

Perspectives: From the president to the Bundys, the political press is becoming obsolete

…Closer to home, that lack of trust in the self-styled “legitimate” media can be seen in the information divide that has emerged in the trial of Cliven Bundy, his sons and a handful of supporters currently underway in Las Vegas. NPR recently bemoaned that “parallel universes” were emerging in which established news outlets reporting on the case are being upstaged by Bundy family supporters using…

[botaniqueer]

Seed Sources

I updated the sources list for 2024! Here is the Google Docs link for sharing off Tumblr. A lot of my gardening guides are written with the Pacific Northwest in mind, but this should useful for most folks on Turtle Island. For people elsewhere I'm not 100% sure how many of these are able to ship off-continent but it's worth checking out! EDIT: I have found out the hard way that indented bullets do not work on Tumblr for web browser so I have tried my best to make them visually distinct. The Google Doc is formatted properly though.

General/Big Brand Seed Shops

Burpee Seeds

Ed Hume Seeds

Johnny’s Seeds

Renee’s Garden

Territorial Seed

Independent online fruit and veggie shops 

(More exotics and rare cultivars)

Adaptive Seeds

Breeds plants specifically to adapt them to the Pacific Northwest

Alliance of Native Seedkeepers

Indigenous-owned seed company

Experimental Farm Network

A network of plant breeders with an extensive collection of unusual cultivars and species of edible plant that don’t commonly appear elsewhere.

Very reputable

Pro-Palestine

Fedco Seeds

Good on social justice issues and have awareness of white supremacy

Maui Seed Company

Lots of Hawaii-growing species, plus soaps!

Pricey

Smart Seeds Emporium

Some of the photos are enhanced stock photos which is a little annoying, but I have ordered from them

True Love Seeds

Works with Black and Indigenous populations to source seeds and does education projects regarding race and ethnicity

Contains unusual seeds from breeding projects

Pro-Palestine

Uprising Seeds

Pro-Palestine

Local to the Pacific Northwest

Succulents and Other Ornamentals

Mesa Garden

Smart Seeds Emporium

Lots of ornamentals in this shop as well as food plants

Germination can be inconsistent on some of their seeds

Avoid/Blacklist

Baker Heirloom Seeds

Take credit for seeds from other sellers, including Indigenous farmers.

Work with Cliven Bundy and upholds white supremacy

[fox-bright]

Requisite Yearly We Do Not Buy from Baker Creek post

It's seed catalog time! One of my favorite times of year, honestly. While my garden mostly sleeps, full of dry leaves and fluffed-up birds and cold breezes, I'm indoors contemplating tomato varieties and telling myself that *this* will at last be the year I get the peas in on time.

As it is that appointed time, my usual yearly reminder: don't buy from Baker Creek!

Baker Creek are racist, fascist assholes! They intended to platform Cliven Bundy at their yearly conference, and Native seedkeepers have said that Baker Creek stole from them (and sell the product of that theft). They did a For Ukraine fundraiser that actually went to a far-right Ukrainian organization invested in obliterating LGBT rights.

Baker Creek might have some fun varieties of seed, but I can very nearly guarantee that if you see something there you want, I can find it or an analogue for you somewhere else.

Here's a selection of seed companies I personally have bought from, or people I trust have recommended; there will be a secondary and possibly tertiary reblog, since Tumblr only allows me to do ten links at once. If there's a company you've bought from and liked, please leave a review for them in the comments! What did you get, what did you like, how was the germination? Native Seed Companies: (please, please feel free to add more in comments to this post)

Companies Specializing in Native Pollinator Plants and Seed:

New to me last year, but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED seed preservation company (they have an incredible selection! My 2023 germination of their seed was like 98%! But they only accept paper order forms):

Cool weird nightshades, I got a bunch of dwarf tomato seeds from them last year and THEY didn't suffer from peppergate because they're a small company that does a lot of their own seed:

A list of ten more companies or so, which I buy from every year, will follow in a reblog in about two minutes; please share that one instead of this one.

[abigail-pent]

truly I wonder if people see news stories about Israeli settlers in the West Bank and take that as evidence that Israel as a nation is a settler-colonial entity. like there *is* such thing as an Israel settler but that is only some people. specifically the people who are going into territory that is meant to be governed by the Palestinian Authority and making their homes there, with the goal of pushing Palestinians out of their own territory (the borders of which were agreed upon after the 1967 war). those people are definitely violent, and they are definitely supported by the right-wing Israeli government, and they are also definitely a minority of Israelis. they have a pretty (imo) messed-up view that the kind of ethnic cleansing they are doing is a good thing, or like beneficial to the safety of other Israelis. these positions are, in my opinion, pretty fucking indefensible. but again - this is a small subset of people. their actions, while sanctioned by Bibi and his friends, don't represent the entirety of Israeli society. that would be like saying everyone in America approves of like Cliven Bundy and all those white supremacists who hole up in compounds and commit violence about it.

but I wonder if the terminology is being (wilfully) misunderstood and used to fuel misinformation. because there's a difference between acknowledging the very literal reality that there are some Israeli people who are called settlers and are currently colonizing territory in the West Bank, and saying that the whole country is inherently settler-colonial and therefore ought to be eradicated. Jews are indigenous to that part of the world and we should have the right to live and self-determine there. But we should also be abiding by these treaties, it's fucked up of individuals to be flouting them and it's fucked up of governments that support that.

edited: important context from @zorciarkrildrush in the notes: not all settlers settle for ideological reasons, some do for economic reasons. I still think it shouldn't be happening at all, but it's important to understand the nuance here and not paint people with too broad of a brush. I'm keeping the above for my own accountability.

[manorpunk]

On the one hand, the Polycrisis of the 2030s is hard to explain. It was one of those events where everything had been heaped upon a structure which could no longer bear any of it, World War I-esque in its many parts, none of which could be untangled from their neighbors, resisting any attempt at a satisfying conclusion.

On the other hand you can just say “remember Cliven Bundy? imagine three of those guys popping up every week up every week.” Some say it counts as a second civil war, often accompanied with a recitation of “every civil war in history has been fought between the same two factions: bandits and autocrats,” which is a quote from Maria von Zuckerberg-Lorraine’s bestselling novel, Authoritarianism is Good When I Do It. Incidentally, the book goes on to define these two terms broadly to support an increasingly tortured metaphor. it’s pop-philosophy, and some things never change.

conversely, another popular option is to rant about the Chinese, which by this point it is merely being a sore loser.

a third answer is to describe it as more of a managed decline of the American Imperium, the almost organic process of an empire breaking into its constituent parts - Sunny Roosevelt could, perhaps, be analogous to a Diocletian here. yikes.

in any case, one thing is clear about the Polycrisis: the shadow it casts over these past few decades (speaking in 2069) still looms far too large for us to know what ‘really’ happened, and also that it’s kind of a stupid name for such an important event, but it caught on early.

[transgenderer]

The 2014 Bundy standoff was an armed confrontation between supporters of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and law enforcement following a 21-year legal dispute in which the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) obtained court orders directing Bundy to pay over $1 million in withheld grazing fees for Bundy's use of federally owned land adjacent to Bundy's ranch in southeastern Nevada.

On March 27, 2014, 145,604 acres (589 km2) of federal land in Clark County were temporarily closed for the "capture, impound, and removal of trespass cattle." BLM officials and law enforcement rangers began a roundup of such livestock on April 5, and Cliven Bundy's son, Dave, was arrested.[2] On April 12, 2014, a group of protesters, some of them armed, approached the BLM "cattle gather." Sheriff Doug Gillespie negotiated with Bundy and newly confirmed BLM director, Neil Kornze, who elected to release the cattle and de-escalate the situation. As of the end of 2015, Cliven Bundy continued to graze his cattle on federal land and still had not paid the grazing fees.

as far as i can tell, bundy just like...continues to illegally graze his cattle? its weird. he got briefly arrested cuz he tried to go help out those people who seized that govt building. but he got out

[lastweeksshirttonight]

A few months ago, I was talking with @tellthemeerkatsitsfine and brought up the casual idea of rewatching Last Week Tonight in its entirety and blogging about it. She told me she thought that would be a great idea, and thus, my brain immediately started panicking. "People will SEE your LONGFORM WRITING! You might have to be VULNERABLE and OPEN and people might see you as more than a Pez dispenser for John Oliver content!! YOU CAN'T DO THIS!!!" My anxiety is clearly very fun and very logical.

Anyways, the idea lay dormant, held at bay by anxiety, until recently - I have a brand new computer, free time, and a real desire to try and write something more substantial than "i cannot" on this blog. For real, my longform writing is not that bad! I hope.

With that context out of the way, here goes a new experiment for me - revisiting every past episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Will this be any good? Who fucking knows. But we're doing it. Strap in.

Last Lee Tonight (wherein Lee rewatches Last Week Tonight for an undetermined and probably nonexistent audience) Season One, Episode One

(original air date: 4/27/2014) Major topics covered: POM Wonderful vs. Coca-Cola; the 2014 Indian election; the NSA

"Welcome, welcome, welcome... to whatever this is."

My enduring memory of Last Week Tonight starting is my mom calling me and angrily asking me why "that guy you like" was on a billboard, like I'd personally been responsible for him getting his own HBO show. I don't know why she was so angry about it, I just remember responding with something along the lines of, "maybe other people think he's hot too?"

Going back and watching this first episode now is extremely weird. As you can probably tell from the list of topics covered above, the show hadn't yet settled into its now famous format, and instead bounced from topic to topic like an R-rated Daily Show. It's not a terrible idea for a show structure. There's some clunkiness to this early iteration of LWT because of it, especially given that there's no commercial breaks to aid with transitions, but it's perfectly watchable. Its weirdness lies almost entirely in the fact that I (and everyone else watching it now) know it's going to become something very different very quickly.

It starts like most LWT episodes start now, with a recap of random shit that happened last week. There's a lot going on in this section - John talks about the banner week for "unrepentant racists and recording devices" as he briefly covers Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy, multiple popes being canonized as saints, and Obamacare websites failing to meet demand. This is a very 2014 series of headlines and they are blasted through in about 5 minutes. Weirdly, John doesn't devote any space to what Cliven Bundy actually said to piss people off that week (and if you aren't familiar with Cliven Bundy, the man is rancid so it could have been a lot of different things), but does show a clip of him being introduced on a morning show holding a dead cow. As you do.

The breakneck speed of this episode is startling coming from our current LWT state. The Obamacare website bit, which takes about 3 minutes in total including the Lisa Loeb cameo, is the kind of thing that they would spend 20+ minutes on in future seasons/episodes. I do love Lisa Loeb and forgot she sang a song on LWT telling Oregon how much their Obamacare website sucks. (One of my favorite songs of all time is "Falling in Love". You should give it a spin.)

From there, we go into the 2014 Indian Election (and, briefly, the 2016 Presidential Election, which, at the time, was 926 days away. JEB!), which had only been discussed on the McLaughlin Report at the time despite being the biggest election on the planet. Its primary focus is the two leading candidates, Rahul Gandhi, described by John as "wow that guy is handsome", and Narendra Modi. John does something intriguing with this piece - it starts very jokey and surface-level before taking a hard turn into discussing Modi's potential involvement in a literal massacre of thousands. I wish John did this more often nowadays. I get that it's probably hard to execute when everyone expects LWT to be the most depressing 'comedy' on television, so a sudden swerve like that is far more expected, but it was a really deft turn that clearly left the in-studio audience unsure of how to react. Moments like that are worth seeking out.

A moment that has occupied my brain since I saw this nearly ten years ago - "how dare you say I take money? How dare you say I take money? How dare you say I take money? How -"

Our first "And Now This" is John McCain telling the same joke about Russia over and over and over again. Repetition is a secret theme of this episode.

We now move on to Pom Wonderful vs. Coca-Cola, or "why two beverages are fighting each other in the highest court of the land". I'm calling this segment Pom Wonderful vs. Coca-Cola bc of its Wikipedia designation, but this segment is far more about food labeling, a subject near and dear to my celiac-ridden ass. Pomegranates, as it turns out, cannot help you cheat death, and Minute Maid has less than 1% pomegranates in their pomegranate juice. The kind of health claims companies make with their foods are still batshit, and it's wild that I have to struggle through reading whole lists of ingredients to try and find gluten while companies pretend their Pop-Tarts are actually beneficial to anyone. This also gives us the first instance of John Oliver urging the audience to do random acts of social vandalism, by definitely not advising them to put fake health claim stickers on food products. I wish I could find the "contains 4 whole pomeranians!" sticker, I definitely used to have that.

A second "And Now This" is a taped segment about cheerleader mistreatment in the NFL. This is also infuriating to behold. I hope things have gotten better for cheerleaders, but given that this is the NFL, I doubt it.

This feels the most like a modern LWT segment, in that it could easily be retitled "How is This Still a Thing" and would only need minimal changes to work. Seriously, pay cheerleaders the money they deserve, they're athletes too.

Finally, we move to the NSA, and John interviews General Keith Alexander, the former head of the NSA. It is obviously important for me to tell you that John is in a different suit for this.

(Is there some sort of discount store for weird orange vases)

Information security and privacy was a huge cornerstone of the early years of LWT, and yet I'd somehow totally forgotten about this interview. This is basically a TDS field piece, as John questions General Alexander about what the NSA is actually collecting from the US public. He's pushing Alexander hard, and this makes a great companion piece to his later interview with Edward Snowden. There's even insets of reporting on NSA wrongdoing! It's almost indistinguishable from the things he did on The Daily Show, and since I've been in a very nostalgic headspace for that show, I appreciated it.

John admitting he'd abuse the hell out of NSA clearance is hilarious. As is John saying the Washington Football Team is a slightly less tainted brand than the NSA.

As a collective experience, I stand by saying that it's very weird to watch this now. At the time, though, this was exactly what I wanted out of a John Oliver-led show. It'll be interesting to see how this show shifts into its current form over this first season - since I haven't rewatched these episodes in ages, it'll be a "new" experience for me too.

Random notes:

Lee obviously focuses on important things corner: Light blue checkered shirt with blue solid tie and gray jacket is a solid look for John. He also is between bangs and no bangs, giving me a brief period of time to mourn the loss of #bangsappreciationhours. 8/10. Interview suit is more staid but blue is still a nice color on him, 7/10.

It's funny to see the pop-in social media boxes being used for their actual purpose of sharing links, and not for John randomly calling something "#feminism" or being mad about Fifty Shades of Gray. The show has evolved in ways both big and small.

The parts of this episode I was able to find on YouTube are so bizarre. Neither of the main segments seem to be there, but LWT's YouTube channel had the portions embedded above, which, aside from the interview, are such WEIRD things to highlight. I know a lot of these used to be on YouTube, too, but it looks like they've been culled.

Christ the Tumblr post formatter on desktop really hates when I try to click around to edit long ass posts.

Please let me know if this is actually any good or interesting, I truly don't really know if this is of value to anyone.

[ravnlghtft]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

#20yrsago EZBake Oven for your PC https://web.archive.org/web/20040613185610/http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/ezbake.shtml

#15yrsago Ant slaves’ murderous rebellions https://web.archive.org/web/20090402193006/http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/the_rebellion_of_the_ant_slaves.php

#10yrsago Rob Ford and Canada’s neoliberal agenda https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-passion-of-rob-ford-or-the-neoliberal-making-of-torontos-municipal-crisis/

#10yrsago FCC adds 100MHz of spectrum to the commons https://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/202170-fcc-votes-to-boost-wi-fi/

#10yrsago German labor ministry bans after-hours email from managers to employees https://web.archive.org/web/20140401101146/http://ibnlive.in.com/news/germany-bans-managers-from-calling-or-emailing-staff-after-work-hours/461070-79.html #10yrsago Bizarre, paranoid warning about imaginary predators choosing victims through bumper-sticker-ology https://www.freerangekids.com/that-sticker-on-my-car-is-not-endangering-me/

#10yrsago The Internet should be treated as a utility: Susan Crawford https://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5587138/susan-crawford-internet-public-option

#10yrsago Rich, admitted child rapist granted probation because he “would not not fare well” in prison https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2014/03/28/sunday-preview-du-pont-heir-stayed-prison/7016769/

#10yrsago Expiration Day: YA coming of age novel about robots and the end of the human race https://memex.craphound.com/2014/04/01/expiration-day-ya-coming-of-age-novel-about-robots-and-the-end-of-the-human-race/

#5yrsago Internal files reveal how US law enforcement classes anti-fascists as fascists, and actual fascists as “anti-anti-fascists” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/01/intelligence-law-enforcement-report-leftwing-terrorists-charlottesville

#5yrsago Wells Fargo is looking for a new CEO https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/investing/wells-fargo-ceo-tim-sloan/index.html

#5yrsago The strange tale of Runescape’s Communist republic https://thespinoff.co.nz/pop-culture/29-03-2019/free-armour-trimming-the-communist-revolution-inside-runescape

#5yrsago Slovakia’s first woman president is an anti-corruption, pro-immigrant environmental campaigner https://www.kgou.org/world/2019-03-31/the-erin-brockovich-of-slovakia-is-elected-the-countrys-first-female-president

#5yrsago The weird grift of “sovereign citizens”: where UFOlogy meets antisemitism by way of Cliven Bundy and cat-breeding https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/business/sovereign-citizens-financial-crime.html

#5yrsago Citing transphobic policies, 172+ googlers call for removal of Heritage Foundation from Google’s “Advanced Technology External Advisory Council” https://medium.com/@against.transphobia/googlers-against-transphobia-and-hate-b1b0a5dbf76

#5yrsago America’s best mobile carrier is also the first phone company to back Right to Repair legislation https://www.vice.com/en/article/eveezj/a-cell-phone-carrier-breaks-with-big-telecom-announces-support-for-right-to-repair-legislation

#1yrago Flickr to copyleft trolls: drop dead https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/01/pixsynnussija/#pilkunnussija

[vague-humanoid]

“I’m very interested in how people perceive landscape based on their religious points of view," she explained. "I began to look at the LDS settlement in the West and what ideas were brought with settlement. There was a real effort to establish a place that this new religion could practice without feeling oppression. In terms of the way land is viewed now, it’s important to understand that package of things that were bundled in the idea of Zion.”

"There is the idea that as a landscape is considered promised, what that means in terms of a religious obligation to utilize it. There are also texts or revelations that you can find in Mormon history that it’s incumbent upon a member of the church to be the hero, to protect the Constitution," she explained. "You have prophecy, you have religious significance of the Constitution, you have the way that land is utilized, which all have religious implications. The Constitution is essentially part of a sacred canon. I think you’re seeing that in Idaho — and it’s not just LDS — but it is a part of what informs the Bundy family.”

"There is a real anti-government history in the church. They were trying to escape the U.S. government," she explained. "When they went to the Great Basin, it was Mexico. And so they really felt like they were going to have this autonomy. I think it informs the way they see land, that you have this history of anti-government sentiment that continued throughout generations, especially in rural places in these areas that were settled by Mormons. There’s a history of anti-government sentiment, there is a history of generation, after generation, after generation of Mormon land use."

[vinceeasley]

Perspectives: From the president to the Bundys, the political press is becoming obsolete

“…Closer to home, that lack of trust in the self-styled “legitimate” media can be seen in the information divide that has emerged in the trial of Cliven Bundy, his sons and a handful of supporters currently underway in Las Vegas. NPR recently bemoaned that “parallel universes” were emerging in which established news outlets reporting on the case are being upstaged by Bundy family supporters…

[sunken-standard]

Couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t see a post in my queue or recent reblogs.  Have come to the conclusion I’ve been blocked for not being as vehemently anti-bigot as I should have been in a bit of very old discourse about Cliven Bundy being invited to speak at Baker Creek Seed’s expo.

I mean it’s fine that they ignored my point about Baker Creek still doing more good on balance just by virtue of selling a huge variety of rare and high quality seeds for a very reasonable price (let alone their humanitarian relief work, which I didn’t mention anyway).  As with everything else, us poors are priced out of ethical, morally pure consumption and if we don’t feel sufficient guilt for unashamedly supporting a flawed company, then we too are part of the problem.

I kind of feel bad for these kids.  Such tiny worlds they live in.  People are nuanced and even the shittiest assholes have something good about them.  Cliven Bundy saved a watermelon variety from extinction; everything else about him is pure douche.  I’m not privy to the what surrounded the Baker Creek people deciding to invite him to speak (I suspect Christian Nationalism and possibly trying to expand the customer base farther into the lucrative market created by the right-wing “homesteader” boom), but honestly, I don’t care.  At the end of the day, there was enough pushback to make them rescind the invitation to Bundy.  The morally correct choice was eventually made, all’s well that ends well, whatever.

[sideburndanny]

Book Review

You know how nothing right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro says has any basis in fact, right? Well, there was one time he tried to write fiction on purpose — “tried” being the operative word. Back in 2016, Shapiro wrote True Allegiance, an embarrassing attempt at political intrigue so horrendously written it made My Immortal look like something by Aldous Huxley.

Let’s recap Ben Sha-P-Word’s book and see why he could never get work as a Hollywood writer:

The book opens with a quote calling Shapiro the new Ayn Rand. Not only was the quote from a review of a different Shapiro book, but it’s out of context; the rest of the sentence describes his writing as “hamfisted propaganda” that is “worse than you imagined.”

Our hero, Brett Hawthorne, is a buff, macho, aggressively white US army general who loves his white wife almost as much as he loves his job of killing terrorists. He’s so masculine that he survives a nuke none the worse for wear and says “Take a bullet for you” as a substitute for “I love you.” Other heroes include General Whitey’s token Black friend who dies once the story no longer needs him; Bubba Davis, a Texan oil tycoon running for office so he can get rid of regulations that cut into his profits; Officer O’Sullivan, a cop who kills a Black kid but feels bad about it (by which I mean “he’s afraid Black people will be mad at him,” not “he feels guilty for murdering a child”); and Soledad Ramirez, a cattle rancher who bombs buildings as revenge for the EPA cutting into her business (DIVERSITY WIN! The analogue to Cliven Bundy is a woman of color!)

The main villain, President Mark Prescott, is basically (the right-wing fantasy version of) Barack Obama but White; he’s an evil monster who pals around with terrorists and orders drone strikes on US soil to take out political enemies, but he’s also a feckless, bumbling coward who can’t do anything right. (Remember, the enemy is always too weak and too powerful at the same time!) Also, the narration implicitly compares his administration to Nazi Germany, because the Intellectual Dark Web loves them some projection!

All the Black characters have names like Levon Williams, Jim Crawford, and Kendrick Malone and they talk like 1970s Blaxploitation characters. Crawford is a sleazy huckster posing as a civil rights activist, Levon is a crack dealer who lucks his way into a position as Crawford’s right-hand man before killing him and taking control of his operation, and Kendrick is the 8-year-old Black kid that Officer O’Sullivan kills in cold blood, sparking civil rights protests across the country. Apparently, Levon and Crawford set Kendrick up to be killed and orchestrated the protests as a sinister plot to disempower US police, which apparently absolves Officer O’Sullivan of all blame even though Crawford’s plan only worked because Officer O’Sullivan was willing to murder a child. Also, Levon and Crawford plan to create an all-Black police force, which the novel explains would only be possible if police forces lowered their education standards and started hiring criminals.

Lest you think Black people are the only group Ben is racist against, worry not: Middle-Eastern countries are portrayed as interchangeable hellholes populated entirely by terrorists united in the goal of wiping the USA off the map, and of course their leader is named Mohammed. The terrorists get away with their plans because the coddled American SJWs are too afraid of being called racist to stop them.

And it wouldn’t be a right-wing novel without paranoid conspiracy-mongering; in addition to portraying the US President as being in bed with terrorists, showing BLM activists as child-sacrificing manipulators, and depicting the entire Middle East as a giant terrorist cel, it’s explained that environmentalist activists are being paid off by foreign oil companies in a scheme to make American oil unable to compete on a global scale, and the story ends with China leading Russia, Japan, Canada, and all of Europe in an invasion against the United States.

And just LOOK at this prose! “She felt tears welling in her own eyes.” “He could feel the threat before he felt it.” “Suddenly, O’Sullivan’s head filled with a sudden clarity.”

And of course, Shapiro is such a horrible debater that he repeatedly makes his own side look bad and gives the strawman villains totally valid points completely by accident. As TV Tropes pointed out:

In short, this book should tell you everything you need to know about who Ben Shapiro is and what he believes. The error we’ve committed as a species was believing for a moment that he ever had anything worthwhile to say.

[pscottm]

Opinion | Cliven Bundy Still Defies the Federal Government - The New York Times