Conservative: The #Resistance Takes an Ominous Turn

“The toxicity of the resistance to President Trump has risen in recent days,” The Washington Examiner’s Byron York worries. A recent Washington Post op-ed even argued for “denying public accommodation” to Trump supporters. Then there was the New York Times column calling for the doxxing, or public identification, of Customs and Border Protection workers over their role in enforcing US immigration law, which the author compared with “the Holocaust and genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda.” The latest: Antifa’s beat-down of Andy Ngo (a contributor to these pages), which sent him to the hospital. York sums up: “Shunning, shaming, doxxing, attacking. As the 2020 campaign reaches full speed, would it surprise anyone to see all of it increase? And all from people who congratulate themselves for standing against hate.”

Media critic: Biden Against the World

John Ziegler at Mediaite argues that Joe Biden is “by far the safest path for Democrats” to beat President Trump in 2020, and yet “some of the media personalities who should theoretically be his biggest defenders are instead acting like sharks ready to pounce on him at the first sign of blood.” On top of attacks from the right, Biden faces a barrage of criticism from left-wing media. Maybe it’s because, unlike Sen. Liz Warren or Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the former veep just isn’t “exciting, he is not historic, he is not particularly ‘woke,’ he is not at all ‘diverse’ and he is basically Barack Obama’s leftovers.” To overcome bipartisan media hostility, Biden “would have to get exceedingly lucky.” After all, “when the media wants a result badly enough, and works in self-interested unison to get it, it almost always happens.”

From the left: Honesty on Busing

Sen. Kamala Harris said Sunday that she supports busing to desegregate schools, which “puts the entire debate” about Joe Biden’s opposition to the practice in the 1970s “on a more honest footing,” argues Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall. Because while Biden is getting slammed for opposing the practice back then, “virtually no elected officials — certainly very few at the federal level — have supported the federal government using busing as a tool for ­desegregation in the last 40 years.” Harris’ statement is thus refreshingly blunt, but as to the other candidates, “it hardly make sense” for them to be “hitting Biden for opposing busing then when they don’t support it now.”

Iconoclast: Nike’s Spineless Chinese Kowtow

In National Review, Kevin Williamson notes that “Nike, the athletic-shoe giant, has pulled a product off the shelves” after the shoe’s chief designer cheered Hong Kongers protesting Chinese repression. Put another way: The designer “tweeted his support for liberal democrats against mass-murdering national socialists, and Nike sided with the mass-murdering national socialists.” Yet the same brand’s ads gave the “heroic treatment” to NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee during the National Anthem. “The corporation’s role in American community life is not merely economic,” Williamson contends. It “is a source of status and indeed a source of meaning for those affiliated with it. . . . What ideology will our corporate giants embrace? That is one of the most ­important and least explored questions of our time.” Judging by Nike’s capitulation to the Chinese Communist Party, the answer “is not good.”

Culture critic: Oreo Peddles Gender Ideology

The makers of Oreo cookies have taken to lecturing consumers “about how to use transgender pronouns,” sighs Joy Pullmann at The Federalist. “In partnership with the [National Council of Teachers of English], we’re giving away special-edition Pronoun Packs and encouraging everybody to share their pronouns with Pride,” the company wrote in a recent Facebook post. The NCTE, Pullmann notes, has been “politically far-leftist for decades.” The company might rethink, given Facebookers’ mocking comments, such as: “Guess I’ll be purchasing some Keebler cookies henceforth. They identify as Oreos, so they’re basically the same thing.”

— Compiled by Sohrab Ahmari & Ashley Allen