This question struck me as I was reading the essay, “Tuscaloosa,” in an issue of the Black Warrior Review, a literary magazine run out of the University of Alabama. The essay revisits the 1540 Battle of Mabila, in which the conquistador, Hernando De Soto, decisively beat the Choctaw warrior, Tuscaloosa, for control of central Alabama. Although Tuscaloosa lost, the fact that he fought back against the Spanish is interpreted by the essayist as “a refusal [to accept] the ideology of manifest destiny.”

Went back to Philz the other day after my boycott, which was due to their homophobia. I guess the CEO, Mahesh Sadarangani, realized what a dolt he’d been, because he recently apologized to the gay community and retracted his anti-gay rule. Of course, that was only after customers began shunning the chain, which threatened to bankrupt Philz.

Two items from yesterday’s S.F. Chronicle struck me because both are about the horrible, damaging impact that far-left woke politicians have had on Oakland.

I’m not so sure the Supreme Court got it wrong when they threw out one of Louisiana’s majority-Black congressional districts. The six conservatives who voted to invalidate the gerrymandering that created the district argued that Black voters no longer need such protections as were accorded them by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when segregation was rampant, Jim Crow still ruled much of the South, and Blacks were still denied many of the rights the rest of us enjoyed. According to the Republican majority on SCOTUS, Blacks now have their place at the table. Nobody and nothing is stopping them from voting for the candidates of their choice. So the elaborate mechanisms of the Voting Rights Act are now anachronisms.

Did you know Oakland actually has an official “Strategic Action Plan” for homelessness? Yes, from the swamp of the City Council has emerged, like a lizard crawling out of the muck, the SAP, which “focuses on preserving affordable housing, preventing homelessness, and ensuring community stability through strategic initiatives and funding allocations.”