Better in their words…

American jeans break liberal brains—culture shift incoming?; NYT floats autism-as-progress balloon, catches fire; Trump hammers rogue Brazilian judge—democracy enforcement, Trump-style; more.

Source: CONCESSION CYCLES ☙ Thursday, July 31, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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American actress, director, and car mechanic Sydney Sweeney is having a cultural moment, and now we all are, too. This probably exposes my lack of engagement in current pop culture, but I have never seen a movie or show starring the blonde bombshell. Of course, I’ve heard of her. As a Gen-xer whose pop references are firmly founded in the 80’s, I would probably compare Ms. Sweeney to Pamela Anderson or Erika Eleniak, but with a broader acting and directing range. Unfortunately for Ms. Sweeney, she works in a more progressive time, and every single thing she does is, apparently, triggering. Now, meet the latest AWFL Award contestant. This is not Sydney Sweeney:

CLIP: Affluent, White, Female Liberal tortures non-white customer service lady over white woman appearing in jeans ad (2:58).

I do not suggest you watch the low-production-value clip. This insecure, middle-aged woman apparently thought it was a good idea to make a TikTok clip of phoning and, in an annoyingly smug, intolerably condescending, but ironically midwitted way, demanding the American Eagle Outfitters’ customer service desk connect her to the marketing department.

That’s her whole TikTok. She didn’t get through. The customer service lady at American Eagle seemed confused but unrattled. So, nothing happened. Why publish the TikTok? Because —and only because— it signaled her virtue.

Her complaint was only that AE’s ad used a “white woman in these times of rampant racism,” and employed a half-clever play on words: “Sydney Sweeny has good jeans.” Get it? The complainant sure did, and repeatedly insisted that American Eagle was, therefore, “promoting eugenics.”

Just like Hitler.

This befuddled woman —who is white— is clearly suffering from Helsinki Syndrome, self-loathing, and probably has a bad case of Monkeypox-like Trump Derangement. Maybe she should try ivermectin.

But here’s the thing: it wasn’t just her. Something shattered this week after Ms. Sweeney’s admittedly well-fitting jeans decorated the nation’s airwaves. One of MSNBC’s AWFL producers, Hannah Holland, published this equally unhinged op-ed:

I could accurately edit that headline and sub-headline to boil down Hannah’s main point: “whiteness … is ugly and startling.” See for yourself. That’s what she’s saying.

I’ll bet you $100 bucks right now that Hannah Holland is white, affluent, and liberal. (Don’t take the bet.)

Hannah allowed that Ms. Sweeney was only earning a living, but she was still disappointed in her. As for America, the obviously British MSNBC producer has had it. “The advertisement, and the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it,” Hannah sneered, “is noninclusive at best, and overtly promoting white supremacy and Nazi propaganda at worst.”

In sum, Hannah branded American Eagle’s ad campaign as a gateway drugto white supremacy, Nazi nostalgia, and capitalist excess of every imaginable sort. And, like me, she identified the counter-cultural element. She fretted that Ms. Sweeney is profiting from “a crumbling and fractured American culture.” She thinks we are going backwards: “Sweeney embodies the near mythological girl-next-door beautiful but low-maintenance sexy femininity that dominated media in the 1990s and the early 2000s.”

As evidence this is a cultural moment and not just a few AWFLs being awful, behold some of the endless series of headlines. Vanity Fair:

The Jewish Journal (hint: Jewish people are not amused that a jeans ad is being compared to World War II’s horrors):

(“Whoever uses the word Nazi when it does not apply should be forced to wear jeans that don’t fit,” the article charitably offered, in good humor.)

The swelling controversy burst out of its jeans top and brushed against the Nation’s highest office. The Wrap:

The pearl-clutching response —e.g. claiming the ad “flirts with Nazi-like eugenic imagery”— isn’t mainstream backlash; it’s elite panic. It shows that the progressive cultural high priests are losing their grip. They can’t enforce their dogmas through shame anymore, so they are trying to escalate to Hitlerian rhetorical levels.

American Eagle has not apologized or pulled the ad, which it almost certainly would have done twelve months ago. No solemn Instagram notes app confession, no forced collaboration with a DEI consultant. Instead, it’s riding the moment —with a 30% off sale on all jeans. And it’s not alone. Adding fuel to the cultural bonfire of vanity-signaling, Dunkin Donuts piled on with its own ad, featuring an attractive white gentleman proclaiming himself “king of summer” and attributing his reign to “good genes.” That’s right: they’re doubling down.

We’re now living in an upside-down world where saying you’re fit, attractive, and happy is “eugenic imagery,” but chemically sterilizing kids is “healthcare.” The cultural tide is shifting—not with a scream, but with a smile and a discount code. And the people lighting the outrage fires? They’re not defending the marginalized. They’re defending their monopoly on what you’re allowed to enjoy.

Turns out the revolution won’t be televised. It’ll be wearing jeans. And holding a coffee. With good posture. And sitting on a Mustang.

Finally, say what you like about Sweeney’s genes, but heaven help us, we have come a long way in three years. Calvin Klein, 2022:

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If you thought a straight-faced media reporting Nazi dog whistles about a jeans ad was moronic, just wait. It’s like they just can’t help themselves. Yesterday’s obscene New York Times headline requires a screenshot:

I know, but wait. It gets worse. The article was a limited hangout, revealing the narrative that will be deployed against Secretary Kennedy’s undeniable data: the shocking rates of childhood autism, depression, ADHD, and anxiety. David Wells —who usually writes the climate op-eds for the Times— explained that the data isn’t showing an environmental catastrophe, as Kennedy claims.

No, it’s just better diagnosis.

I’ll summarize. Wells argued that the dramatic rise in rates of autism, ADHD, and other mental and developmental diagnoses over the past few decades may appear alarming. But in Wells’ view, it actually reflects a maturing societyand a more humane, scientifically literate approach to human neurodiversity. It’s virtuous de-stigmatization that lets previously ignored people finally get the help they need.

If that all sounds like pseudo-scientific gobbledigook, that’s because it is.

The key to unlocking the lie behind Wells’ thesis is noticing what he didn’tsay. Of all the conditions he named, he left one huge one (literally) out: childhood obesity rates. Unlike fuzzy autism and ADHD diagnoses, which can be rebranded as “neurodivergent” or “differently gifted,” obesity resists positive reframing at the clinical level. You can’t say someone is “thriving with chronic inflammation” with a straight face. Even the body-positivity movement has trouble squaring that circle as the health consequences pile up.

Not only that, but halfway through the article, in one short sentence, Wells himself undermined the entire thesis. “Even in the midst of diagnostic inflation, genuine incidence may well be growing,” Wells generously conceded, adding, “and many clinicians with experience spanning decades do report distressing trends among their patients.”

Watson, we call the testimony of experienced clinicians evidence.

Finally, Kennedy saw this argument coming a mile away. In a recent press conference, when confronted by a reporter, RFK pointed out that if skyrocketing autism rates were just due to overdiagnosis, we’d expect to see rising rates in diagnosed adults, too. But we don’t. It’s just kids. Even though Kennedy’s rebuttal occurred well before this op-ed appeared, Mr. Wells failed to address that common-sense rejoinder.

That one metric —basic, observable, common-sense— shreds the Democrats’ diagnostic inflation theory.

Our new HHS Secretary deserves credit. In only a few months, Kennedy has moved the needle all the way to the end of the progressive concession cascade. “It’s Not Happening!” → “Okay, It’s Happening, But It’s Extremely Rare.” → “Fine, It’s Happening, But It’s Not What You Think.” → “Actually, It’s Good That It’s Happening.”

David Wells just did a speed run through the entire progressive concession cycle. In one tidy, rhetorically self-cancelling essay, Wells managed to race through the whole four-stage institutional gaslighting gauntlet in under 2,000 words. In other words, RFK has collapsed pharma’s narrative defense perimeter, and forced the New York Times to start writing post-hoc justifications for a medical trend it can no longer suppress.

It’s just like where geo-engineering is headed.

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Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a wonderfully encouraging story headlined, “U.S. stiffens sanctions against judge at center of U.S.-Brazil feud.”

Brazilian Supreme Court Alexandre Judge de Moraes, who looks like the love child of a silent-movie-era vampire and a Bond villain straight from central casting, and who single-pennedly ordered Twitter’s Brazilian assets be confiscated for failing to properly censor citizens’ tweets, is now, officially, in diplomatic terminology, a persona non-grata.

The dispute centers around former president Jair Bolsonaro, a key ally to our President during Trump 1.0. Bolsonaro lost what was expected to be a landslide victory in a very sketchy election featuring brand-new electronic voting machines (ahem), and then after “losing,” swiftly found himself subject to various banana-republic-style criminal prosecutions for election interference and —allegedly— attempting a coup.

If the music sounds familiar, be assured that everyone else paying attention caught the tune as well. Including President Trump, who last week demanded the Brazilians knock it off and unplug the political persecutions. The Brazilians refused. Then Judge de Moraes, who apparently loves poking marsupials, announced he would personally oversee Bolsonaro’s upcoming trial.

Yesterday, Trump announced 50% tariffs on most Brazilian goods.

Also yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett announced that the U.S. was imposing sanctions against de Moreas under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, an Obama-era law ironically passed as a weapon against Russian officials. Here’s de Moreas’ official “designation:”

Secretary Bessett’s announcement explained:

“Alexandre de Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against U.S. and Brazilian citizens and companies. De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro. Today’s action makes clear that Treasury will continue to hold accountable those who threaten U.S. interests and the freedoms of our citizens.”

The Magnitsky designation allows the Treasury Department to seize all US-based assets of the designated foreign individual. Turnabout is, as they say, fair play. It also revokes de Moraes’ visa. Don’t feel too much sympathy for the bald jurist. Even the Times couldn’t sugar-coat his record:

I realize you’re tired of hearing this, but for several reasons, the sanctions were historic. “Legal experts” expressed shock. Liberals vented outrage. The NYT called it “a highly unusual use of some of the gravest human rights sanctions the U.S. government has at its disposal— a sanctions list shared by many of the world’s worst human rights abusers.”

Not just “highly unusual.” The Trump administration just did something no previous U.S. government has ever done: it slapped human rights sanctions on a sitting Supreme Court justice of a major allied democracy.

The gloves are off.

It’s easy to see what informed Trump’s views of “human rights abuses.” After spending years as the personal target of lawfare campaigns, media blacklists, and coordinated censorship in the name of “democracy,” Trump knows exactly what weaponized prosecution looks like. He’s lived it.

So when the President sees a foreign judge jailing political opponents without trial, ordering tech platforms to silence dissent, and then presiding over those same trials like a powdered-wig Torquemada, he doesn’t need a State Department memo to recognize a human rights abuser. Trump isn’t theorizingabout authoritarian overreach; he’s making foreign policy out of personal experience.

Progressives are flummoxed. Their prosecutorial excesses under President Cabbage created a murky, smoke-filled rhetorical battlefield where “protecting democracy” meant arresting political opponents, censoring dissent, and redefining speech as violence. Now Trump is using their own moral language —human rights, rule of law, democratic norms— as a cudgel.

And it’s working. Liberals don’t know whether to cheer or panic. After all, wasn’t de Moraes only protecting democracy by detaining his critics without due process and ordering social media platforms to delete posts without any explanation? Isn’t that what good global citizens do now?

But their problem is: how is what Trump is doing any different?

Now, President Trump is applying their own lawfare tools, their own moral vocabulary, and their own precedents— but this time, aimed right back at the international clerisy that thought it could deploy lawfare and never face the same consequences. Trump didn’t change the rules. Trump is just enforcing the new rules that they wrote.

Have a terrific Thursday! Return here tomorrow morning, for more essential news and commentary.

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