Blue on Blue: The Left Eats Itself in Oregon

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? I'm easy-come, easy-go on this one. 

Yes, I know we're in the middle of a hard-fought election cycle, but this ... this is just too rich to pass up, even if it might be staged. If it seems too good to be true, etc etc etc. I get it. However, this looks pretty real at the moment, and even if it is performance art, it exemplifies what happens when wokeism creates conflict between aggrieved identity groups. 

I often quip that woke will eat itself. This is what that looks like, in real time, on the streets of Oregon. Do not bail out early, because I promise you the final shot will be well worth the payoff:

This is the most amazing video you will watch today. Enjoy 😘 https://t.co/FxoekPSaRz

— Erich Hartmann (@erichhartmann) October 25, 2026

As one commenter replied in the X/Twitter thread:

In one video we have the implicit racial paternalism that makes her performative woke empathy possible, the consequent counter-racism & entitlement she enables, and the total breakdown of social trust & order that everyone has to endure as a result of it.

It's like a work of art.

When two Karens go to war, none is all that you can score ...

This is like a work of art, which does make it seem too good to be true. However, it seems very unlikely that someone would stage this in traffic and have their cameraman start filming mid-argument. And why stage it in Oregon, one of the wokest places on earth? A social-media producer might pull this where a satire on woke would land better – say, in Texas or Florida, or maybe even in Colorado or Ohio. 

And the bumper stickers all over Karen #1's car? Chef's kiss. Five stars, no notes. 

True or not? My friend Kira Davis leans toward true, even while noting that this does look like an episode of Portlandia. Kira finds common threads between this and the undisputed story of the decline and fall of The Last Ditch, a lesbian bar in Massachusetts that enforced a COVID-era masking policy, along with a ban on police entry and drug paraphernalia. When the bar began to fail and started offering one mask-optional night a week to boost traffic, the result was "death threats, tantrums, and boycotts," which forced the bar to close altogether.

The two stories offer similar lessons for observers, but especially for those buying into the victimology of woke:

The progressive system cannot support itself. It only runs on the fuel of victims. The problem is, eventually you run out of victims, because when everyone is a victim, no one is. What are progressives to do when that happens?

They must compete for victim status, and that requires finding someone to victimize.

And around and round it goes.

They have no one but themselves, their DEI professors and human resources to blame. It’s not my fault they never imagined they would be the victims of their own ideology. Idiots never think that far ahead.

This is the system they’ve all consented to - the bar owners, the bar customers, the indignant white lady and the trolling non-white man - all of them. They’ve consented to a system of victim-ranking and antiracism. But these are hollow systems. They have no internal structure, so at some point it must all fold in on itself.

And this is why it's worth discussing in the context of these midterms. It's almost a perfect analogy for what will happen if the woke Left regains political power in the US, albeit perhaps a bit too comical. Public life will devolve into tribalism, stalling progress for everyone else while grievance tribes scream at each other to gain supremacy in their intersectionalist utopia. As I wrote in July:

This is about the inherent contradictions of political systems based on grievances of interest groups, particularly those based on either immutable characteristics or religion. Giving priority to groups based on grievances allows for no possibility of stable alliances or cooperation based on shared values. All that matters is relative power and priority for each grievance group. Chaudhry had to choose between Muslims and LGBTQ+ communities. Texas Democrats are currently split between black voters, Hispanic voters, and white progressives in the US Senate race. Intersectionality had to be created to resolve these conflicts, and, as we can see in both WA-09 and Texas, it fails miserably because the losing grievance group refuses to accept the results. Broad-based political parties that adopt intersectionality will eventually disintegrate over the tribalism it rewards.

Choose wisely next week. Bismillah, the Left will not let this go.

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today's show features:

•  We're just a week out from Election Day, and both Ed and Andrew Malcolm have voted. What is driving your decisions? 
• Andrew's column reminds everyone of the stark choices between the disaster of the Biden Regency and the gains made by Donald Trump. 
• Also, why did Barack Obama diss Cheesecake Factory? We also tackle the corrupt 60 Minutes report on a deported "dad," and why CBS News still hasn't recovered under Bari Weiss. 

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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