Wednesday, September 23, 2026

The "tolerant" are the nastiest of all

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As Robby Starbuck put it, you cannot possibly be prepared for how crazy this story is.

It's long, but it's so worth it. Treat yourself.


It takes place at Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, a lesbian bar in western Massachusetts, which several weeks ago declared that on Saturday nights it would from now on be mask optional. One night per week, masks optional.

Yes, they still have a mask policy -- in fact, patrons are expected to wear KN-95 "or better." In other words, suffocation masks.

The responses went like this:

"Just say you’re being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with."

"People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience."

"I hope your venue gets firebombed."

We might review a few facts for a moment, not that they matter to insane people: (1) there are no reported Covid cases in Greenfield and haven't been for a long time; (2) there is no evidence that people wearing masks are enjoying better health than people who are not; (3) the most significant meta study of masking, the Cochrane Review, was summed up by its chief scholar as "It is irrational to mask"; and (4) this includes suffocation masks: Bavaria and Berlin mandated masks of at least that strength, and their results were no different from the results anywhere else.

Now back to Crazyville:

The bar's owners were accused of being "ableist," even of engaging in eugenics. (All the kinds of accusations normal people might make, right?)

So the bar posted an apology for its tone, and the apology wasn't accepted because its Instagram card hadn't included alt text for the visually impaired.

Responses went like this: "This is not an accessible post. It indicates the lack of care or interest in Disability intersectionality."

When Last Ditch opened, its three owners wanted to be as inclusive as possible, so their policy was that nobody would be turned away because they couldn't afford the cover charged. "Poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space."

As time went on, people unsurprisingly stopped paying the cover charge, and of course Last Ditch let them in anyway. As a result, the owners couldn't pay their bills, their employees, or even themselves.

So they decided to relax the mask rule. By that time only one owner remained. One of the others had left to enter clown school.

They held their monthly community meeting on September 11, with a therapist mediator. Some people attended via Zoom, where they overwhelmed the Zoom chat with angry messages, all of which were read aloud.

The mediator tried to calm people, and actually made a reasonable point about online platforms having the potential to alienate people from each other. (Nobody making a reasonable point went uncontested, of course.)

"I love that you are here online," she began, but noted that "these platforms alienate us from each other. I’m talking about social media.... I would love to get to a place where we all know each other's face, where we all know each other's name."

This plea for civility was responded to with comments like this, from a black Zoom attendee, "A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgment of harm and I’m hearing a WHITE therapist...center[ing] the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff."

The remaining owner got her turn to speak, and eventually broke into tears describing how desperate the situation is. She needs to pay $3900 rent by Monday. She is on the hook for the bar's $50,000 loan. She's lived in her truck for six months and been working several other jobs. Her credit rating is ruined.

Any human sympathy at all? These are leftists, so of course not: humanity is for their high-sounding slogans, not how they act toward other human beings. Instead, a critic answered with, "You chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings. This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior."

The owner was being racist, you see.

The meeting didn't resolve anything. Someone proposed that Noire, the black critic, attend the next community meeting, The response: "There's a lot of emotional and physical labor that goes into this, so for you as a white person that asks for me to stay for another meeting for free...is incredibly disingenuous and racist. I'm not doing that."

Imagine trying to cater to people like that.

If you ever thought maybe we were dealing with people who were really devoted to helping the less fortunate or something, and were maybe just overzealous, you can get that out of your mind. Imagine a society with these people in charge everywhere: it would be the exact opposite of toleration, you can be sure.

Oh, and I neglected to mention: one of the owners uses it/its pronouns, and the black person complaining is a gender-expansive lesbian who identifies a black man and isn't even a regular at the bar, since he lives an hour away.


As Starbuck noted, the least crazy aspect of this story is the part about one of the owners leaving for clown school.

Well, I'm going to challenge you, dear reader, in the few months we have left in 2026, to do something more productive than a nearly four-hour meeting with people calling you a eugenicist for making masks optional one night per week, and a racist for being sad that you have to live in your truck.

By this time of the year, many people have resigned themselves to failure: another year went by, and the big thing I promised myself I'd do again went undone.

Maybe it was a professional goal, a financial goal, a fitness goal, a family goal, a goal related to a hobby or a passion, whatever. And it didn't happen. 

So most people say: well, I guess I'm just not a doer, and they go on to eat Cheez-Its in front of TV.

You and I are not most people.

Whatever that big thing is, that you thought you needed a year to accomplish, you and I are going to do together in just the final 90 days of the year. It's called, appropriately enough, The Final 90.

I could write you emails about how crazy the world is and just leave it there, or I could write you those emails AND challenge us to do something.

Everyone else has given up on 2026. How about you and I fit something glorious into what's left?

Knock yourself out of your comfort zone, which is really a straitjacket, and let's end the year with a bang:

 

Tom Woods






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Tom Woods · PO Box 701447 · Saint Cloud, FL 34770 · USA

California Declares State of Emergency

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Sept. 21 as the state prepares for what he described as the strongest El Niño storm season on record. Newsom... ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
September 23, 2026

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