Aiding and Abetting?

Acting as an accessory?

Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald is defending with a straight face his decision to fire two employees who, while thieves were robbing a Lululemon store, verbally objected to the thefts, filmed the thieves in the act, and called the police.

McDonald insists that employees should “let the theft occur.” He went on:

We put the safety of our team, of our guests, front and center. It’s only merchandise. They’re trained to step back, let the theft occur, know that there’s technology and there’s cameras and we’re working with law enforcement.

This is, to use the technical term, a crock. The employees he fired used cameras—the ones in their cell phones—and they worked with law enforcement—they called the cops on the thieves.

Stepping back and letting the theft occur: that puts the safety of Lululemon employees front and center how, exactly? Allowing the crimes to occur unhindered only makes Lululemon stores—and other stores in the immediate area—even more susceptible to crime. And that endangers even more store employees and those customers who are present when criminals accept the McDonalds of the nation’s invitations.

I report. You decide. Or something like that.

Hypocrisy

The Progressive-Democratic mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has provided a canonical example. Now he’s pretending to be upset by a graduation speech by a City University of New York School of Law graduate that was itself as bigoted as the anti-Semitic speaker.

We cannot allow words of negativity and divisiveness to be the only ones our students hear[.]

This from the man who deliberately, with conscious racism, accused a border State governor of racism for transporting illegal aliens—who volunteered for the trip—to sanctuary cities like the one over which he reigns.

His virtue-signaling is deeply offensive.

Gavin Newsom’s Racism and Sexism

This is made manifest in the kerfuffle over who he has said he’ll appoint as a California Senator should sitting Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) retire before the end of her term in January 2025.

Newsom drew criticism for not appointing a Black woman to replace Kamala Harris when she assumed the vice presidency and has since vowed to do so should he receive another chance to appoint a senator.

Notice that. Newsom doesn’t say he would appoint Feinstein’s replacement on the basis of qualification for the position, on the basis of being able to function effectively as a representative of that person’s California constituents, on the basis of merit. No, he said he’d appoint someone on the basis of his first and most important criteria: that the person would be black and a woman.

Appointing someone to office because that person is black is blatantly racist.

Appointing someone to office because that person is a woman is naked sexism.

Newsom is looking to score a two-fer.

And That’s Not All

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) objected to Senator Ted Cruz‘ (R, TX) characterization of her party.

Why don’t you go ahead and tell people what happened to the parties after that [Republicans voting for the 1964 CRA in greater percentages than Democrats], Ted.

Cruz answered.

Sure. —First, the Dem party founded the KKK. —Then the Dem party wrote Jim Crow laws. —Then the Dem party filibustered the Civil Rights Act.
Today, the Dem party filibusters school choice—trapping millions of Black kids in failing schools. —Today, the Dem party pushes abolishing the police, which results in many more Black lives murdered. —Today, every Dem senator voted against my bill to stop DC from throwing 40% of Black kids out of schools bc of vax mandate….
—And today, the sitting Dem President—Joe Biden—gave in 2011 a flowery eulogy for an “Exalted Cyclops” of the KKK[.]
And to add to all that, the Dem party aggressively supports open borders—which has led to the deaths and brutal assaults of thousands of Hispanics….

Cruz, however, left out some things the Progressive-Democratic Party did and is still doing, things that dangerously magnify the foregoing.

  • They long ago began pushing for gun control laws explicitly to keep blacks and white supporters unarmed and helpless against the atrocities inflicted by their KKK, and they’re still pushing for gun control laws that would effectively disarm blacks, even as they rail against a Supreme Court that upholds the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution.
  • They nationalized minimum wage laws explicitly to keep black Americans from migrating north to compete for jobs with white union workers on the basis of being willing to work for lower wages, and now they’re pushing to raise that minimum wage even higher.
  • They’ve revived and updated for the 21st century their 1950s racist segregation efforts to include sexist bigotry, now calling it identity politics, a broad bigotry that has become a core plank in Party’s platform.

Reparations and Bargaining

California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom convened a “Let’s Give Reparation Payments to the Government-Favored” task force. Kenneth Blackwell exposed part of the purpose in his recent Fox News op-ed.

The idea was simple: the task force would deliberate, generating regular headlines, and then eventually propose something. Either the proposal would be feasible, in which case Black Californians would get some nominal amount of money and Newsom could claim a “win,” or it would be outlandish, in which case legislators would balk and Newsom would claim that he had done everything in his power to correct historic injustices.

The intent is in that “either” part: the proposal would be feasible, in which case Black Californians would get some nominal amount of money. In the so-far realization, California citizens identifying as black and having lived in the State for a nominal period would get hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of taxpayer—fellow citizens’—dollars, ostensibly because of the sins of a century-and-a-half ago and the claimed continued failures ever since.

That’s the strategy, and it’s a standard bargaining technique. Open with a high bid, let yourself get talked down to a lower amount—this charade is far from played out—and walk away with something that you didn’t have any of at the start. And in the present case, still don’t deserve.

The current phase is epitomized by one California citizen’s mantra: Our vote is for sale. No reparations, no vote. Selling their civic duty to the highest bidder.

Each is an example of the cynicism of the Left and its Party.