The leadership of the New York Times has justly received a full measure of ridicule for bowing to “woke” fears that a meretricious, right-wing opinion piece by meretricious, right-wing Sen. Tom Cotton might somehow endanger the lives of black Times staffers, even though, “arguably”, allowing street violence and looting might threaten their lives as well. Amusingly, Cotton’s stupid piece was ably dissected in real time by the non-woke Daniel Larison for the American Conservative, “Cotton’s Appalling Militarism” before the woke folks at the Times woke up and started bawling for heads to roll, which they most unfortunately did. Larison even argued, ahead of the timorous Times folks, that Cotton’s piece shouldn’t have been published, though, naturally, he didn’t want anyone to be fired.1
Unfortunately, it’s not only Times folk who live, it seems, in almost constant fear of imaginary dangers. The Minnesota State Highway Patrol was also forced to take action, to slash tires of cars that might be driven too fast, thus endangering state troopers’ lives. Yep, yep, yep. You just can’t be too careful these days.
1. Those defending the Times’ original decision—other than those who wanted to send in the troops—argued that the Times, after all, has published opinion pieces from all sorts of disreputable people—actual terrorists, for example—which is true. But the justification for such decisions is that “we” need to hear from all sides. Tom Cotton is a U.S. senator. He can make a speech in the Senate, hold a hearing, or go on TV any day of the week. We all know what Tom Cotton thinks. And what it is, is fascism.
