#Woke women are the new enemy and other commentary

“Torch-carrying neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were the face of white ­supremacy in 2017,” recalls RealClearPolitics’ J. Peder Zane, but in 2020, it’s “Nice White Parents” — the title of a New York Times-distributed podcast that argues that it’s because this group won’t send their kids to “truly integrated schools” that “black and brown children” don’t excel. The podcast’s charge is part of “the left’s broader effort to demonize an unlikely group as it seeks to reduce every issue in American life to questions of race: liberal white women.” Being nice, you see, “is no longer enough.” Since most Americans aren’t really racist, “the push is for everyone to become ‘anti-racist’  ” and “actively strive each day to dismantle” the “systemic injustice that defines America.” Which includes sending your kids “to demonstrably lousy schools to serve the greater good.”

Climate beat: ‘Clean’ Energy Actually Isn’t

The idea that “fossil fuels are ‘dirty’ and renewables such as electric vehicles are ‘clean’ has become a fixture” across the political spectrum, notes Tilak Doshi at Forbes. Yet if you look “under the hood” of, say, EVs, “the dirt found would surprise.” Minerals, like cobalt, used for EV batteries, are concentrated in a few countries where environmental and labor regulations are weak or nonexistent, with some materials traced to “dangerous” mines and those that employ child labor. And the amount of raw materials needed for the entire world to use EVs far exceeds known ­reserves. The environmental and social impact of “vastly expanded mining for these materials — some of which are highly toxic when mined, transported and processed” — can “only be imagined.”

Conservative: Yellow Safe Spaces for Righties

New York conservatives are a rare species. But they can find camaraderie among yellow-cab drivers, who “tend to be very conservative or, if liberal, quite anti-leftist,” Chadwick Moore quips at Spectator USA. On a ­recent trip home from La Guardia Airport, Moore heard his driver mutter, “None of this makes any sense, it’s such bullsh - - t.” Moore replied, “ ‘Total insanity,’ which loosely translates to, You are my brother and I will take a f - - king bullet for you! Trump 2020!” Another time, his Caribbean driver “spewed comments so right-wing, I thought they only existed on the Internet.” What explains it? For one thing, many drivers listen to talk radio all day. For another, cabbies “work for themselves, and that comes with the dangerously right-wing attributes of self-reliance and discipline.”

Foreign beat: John Hume’s Tragic Mistake

The “Northern Ireland conflict can give any global conflict in the last 50 years a run for its money when it comes to sheer and unremitting exhibitions of human depravity,” reflects Cameron Hilditch at National Review. So it was an extraordinary feat for John Hume, who died Sunday at 83, to help “secure the Belfast Agreement of 1998, which put an end to the Troubles” and earned him a joint Nobel Peace Prize. But though a “gifted leader marked by extraordinary moral courage,” Hume made “a tragic error” that “legitimized the violence he abhorred and ensconced it firmly in the heart of government”: He brought “Sinn Fein into the mainstream of Irish politics” by making the “political wing of the Irish Republican Army” — with “a higher murder rate of its captives than ISIS” — a “partner in peace.”

History lesson: All Cuisine Is ‘Appropriation’

“As the ancient settlers of the Mesoamerica” expanded, they spread chilis, which have ended up in “almost every cuisine in the world,” marvels The New Statesman’s Stephen Bush. Eighteenth-century botanists thought “the habanero pepper was an indigenous Chinese plant,” but it came from the Amazon, spread by the Portuguese empire. Nothing seems more Korean than kimchi, but the early, pre-chili version “was not a spicy dish.” That’s why people are wrong when “they talk about cultural appropriation in food — the history of cuisine is of constant exchange and evolution.” What matters is “respect” and giving credit where due. So “don’t feel guilty” about changing recipes. “A world in which people didn’t would be considerably poorer.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board