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The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

Cultures grow and prosper by creating from within and absorbing from without. The arrant stupidity and ignorance displayed by those who use the historically inconsistent term "cultural appropriation" is a testament to the Long March," which has dumbed down education to the point at which we have American college graduates with no understanding of how their own culture has evolved, and are completely unaware of the tremendous benefits the world has enjoyed, courtesy of America.

Can We Fix America's Food-Appropriation Problem?
[Safe link...no clicks for GrubStreet]

Last month, a small-business owner named Karen Taylor made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. After a viral tweet exposed the racist and orientalist language used to market Taylor’s company, which specializes in $15 prepackaged congee kits and is called Breakfast Cure, critics made quick work of tearing the self-styled “Congee Queen” to shreds. Taylor, who is white, eventually apologized, and an essay on her company’s website, which was originally titled “How I discovered the miracle of congee and improved it,” was quickly edited (although the original title is still easily found in the page’s metadata).

For a week, my Twitter timeline was filled with Asians and our allies airing their righteous anger, sharing touching personal testimonies on what congee meant to them, and ridiculing Karen’s “white lady” ingredients like blueberries, apples, and cinnamon. On TikTok, multiple POC creators uploaded videos of themselves trying — and choking on — Breakfast Cure–style congee.

Notice the casual and unsubstantiated "RACISM"^TM charge? Its intent is to delegitimize her target, because her audience, mush-brained internet addicts, accept it as the gospel. Once the charge is made, there can be no more debate.

This dreck was written by Frankie -- me love you long time -- Huang, a pompous entitled twit who claims the mantle of moral superiority simply by stating an unsupported accusation of racism.

I emphasized that there's nothing particularly sacred about the dish, that anyone can make it, but that it doesn't make it okay for a white woman to anoint herself the Queen of Congee.

Ah yes...a White woman! Burn her! Except...the author of this vile piece is herself a "cultural appropriator" extraordinaire. She was born in China but them came to America to appropriate all of our disgusting Western ways, like educating women and not forcing abortions, or having a culture that accepts the abortion of girls as a matter of course. And than penicillin that you took for strep throat? Spit it out! That was the product of evil British Empire culture!

I am reminded of General Sir Charles James Napier, who forced the cultural mores of the West on the Hindus of India by -- shockingly -- ending the practice of "Sati" (suttee), the burning of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands.

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Perhaps we should agitate for the return of that particular cultural artifact...the respect for human life...and demand that the Hindus and others return to their own pure cultures...without modern medicine and respect for life and internal combustion engines and electrical power grids and air conditioning and barbed wire and...