Article content continued

Art has wandered a long way downhill since Michelangelo blessed the world with his Pietà

Now, given a banana and a roll of duct tape, all that’s really required is for the right people to say it’s art. What a magical world we have when, if someone wants something to be a something else, all he or she has to do is simply say so. Unqualified self-declaration is a most curious route to truth or reality. This magical thinking has its impact in other areas.

Outside the art world (I presume it’s outside the art world, but in these times one can never be sure) there’s a group that calls itself “antifa” — by its own declaration a foreshortened version of anti-fascist. This group’s routine is to dress up in black, head-to-toe, and beat up people its members disagree with. The vicious assault on the reporter, brave Andy Ngo, will serve as a potent example of its practice. But because it calls itself antifa, some even in our always hyper-scrutinizing and vigilant media are willing to fall in line with the group’s own self-description, ignore its members’ actions, and compare them — dear Lord — with the heroes who stormed Normandy beaches nearly 75 years ago!

One doesn’t need to look up Politics and the English Language to understand that if merely asserting something is what it plainly isn’t — in many cases its exact opposite, in fact — unhinging words from their meaning, becomes acceptable, the world will fairly quickly become a crazed and unbearable jumble. Living in such would feel like being chained to a chair, trapped, watching endless cycles of Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on The View.