A Glimmer of Hope

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post in which I had given up on my alma mater, The University of Chicago.  Once a beacon of serious scholarship, free speech and free inquiry, the university began to be consumed by Critical Theory and Wokeism a few years ago.  I was astonished at how fast the change had come.   The Mob attempted to cancel professors Harald Uhlig (economics) and Dorian Abbot (geophysical sciences) last year.   Its English Department announced a de facto bar on white students in its graduate program, saying it would only admit students interested in Black Studies (my email response to my old professor was posted on this blog (https://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-letter-to-my-first-professor.html)).  Even the Booth School of Business got into the act.  Formerly a  leader in quantitative management announced that, among other measures,  it would employ “unconscious bias” training at the school.  It would employ this remedy without establishing that any bias existed at the school or that such training would be effective.  Empiricism at Booth gave way to alchemy.  I saw that this very special place was rapidly deteriorating into an ideological swamp like Smith College, Oberlin or UW-Madison.   Finally, when the university announced that it was considering gracing Critical Race Theory with its very own department, I threw in the towel, and decided I would abandon my connection with the school.

Yet, just when I thought all was lost and the university would slip under the waves of Wokeism, I was alerted to an upstart publication started by UChicago students, The Chicago Thinker (thechicagothinker.com).  With the slogan “Outthink the Mob” as its banner, The Chicago Thinker announced its mission:

Some things are too sacred to surrender to the mob, and the free exchange of ideas is one of them.  The Chicago Thinker challenges the mob’s crusade against free speech by publishing thoughtful conservative and libertarian commentary, in addition to fact-driven reporting.

Perfectly and concisely stated.

There are so many things right with this project.   First, it is an initiative by STUDENTS.   It is a hopeful sign that at least a core of young people have enough independent and critical thinking skills to have resisted the critical theory and Woke indoctrination endemic to our education system and have the courage to put their names on this publication.   Second, the university’s response to the introduction of the Woke virus to the school has been a pusillanimous reiteration of the Chicago Principles, while at the same time permitting critical theory to begin to exert power and influence over the entire institution.  The Chicago Thinker is a tool to push back, defend the principles of free speech and free inquiry and aggressively blunt the intellectual attacks that have begun to take their toll on the university.  As I have often stated, Critical Theory and the Chicago Principles are fundamentally at odds.  One will eventually have to yield to the other.   The Chicago Thinker’s mission perfectly states this concept in its first sentence, “too sacred to surrender.”   This group of students have stated it in a blunt and direct way that the administration and faculty have failed to do over the last several years.

I am so delighted by this initiative and am guardedly optimistic that it could begin to turn the momentum and help bring the university back from the precipice.

In the same week, the university announced its new president, Paul Alivisatos, a scientist from UC Berkeley.  He received his undergraduate degree the same year I did (’81) and hopefully he leaves Berkeley thinking behind.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know him or don’t remember him from The College.  But a president from that vintage would likely have had grounding in Western Civilization, the U.S. Constitution and will likely hold the Chicago Principles dear.   My deep suspicion is that the Woke folks took advantage of President Zimmer’s health problems and the gap in leadership at the university to begin to establish a foothold.   President Alivisatos will have a great challenge on his hands to exert leadership and turn this momentum around.  I hope he recognizes the threat.

I hope that I was too hasty in giving up on the university.  I would be overjoyed to state that I had overreacted.  A new publication devoted to turning back the mob and a new president firmly committed to pushing back against an ideology that is beginning to erode  the core of everything the university stands for gives me some hope.

Political Violence

 

There is lots to worry about right now.   COVID19, the economy, the threat from China,  cyberattacks on our government and corporate systems, the refusal to opens schools, Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  The list goes on and on.

But if you had to ask me what I worry about most, it’s the acclimation to violence and death based on political leanings.

President Biden’s statement on the Chinese concentration camps in which the Uighurs are being detained was nothing short of horrifying.    When confronted with the issue, Biden shrugged it off as “different cultural norms,” despite very reliable reports of what is going on in these camps keep surfacing.   The “never again” mantra after the horrors of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Treblinka have apparently faded into obscurity.   So much has been written about why Roosevelt didn’t bomb the rail lines or take firmer action and why Pope Pius XII maintained relative silence in the face of the reports, yet here we are again.  We fought a world war against axis powers that enslaved peoples and exterminated them and imposed their will on other nations.  We expended great sums of money and fought proxy wars against a Soviet Union that ran the gulags.  Yet 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, America’s leader is willing to dismiss the camps with an “Oh, well, multiculturalism, you know.”  Even worse has been the tight-lipped Pope Francis, who shows no hesitation to berate the West on climate change and immigration, but when it comes to actual concentration camps in China, it’s crickets.

In the same week, conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh passed away.  The expressions of glee from the left on social media were very disquieting.   “Cancer took cancer” posted one person.  Another posted, “the worst part about Rush Limbaugh being dead is he’s not alive to see how happy people are that he’s dead.”  That people celebrate a person’s death, whatever his or her political leanings is absolutely abhorrent.

Almost a year after Andrew Cuomo issued an order that condemned thousands of New Yorkers to their untimely deaths, we are finally getting some calls for an “investigation”  after a whistleblower came forward and claimed that Cuomo covered up the actual number of infected individuals that were reintroduced into nursing homes.   This all happened despite President Trump’s deployment of a navy ship and opening of the Javits center to house these people.   Similarly, transgender Rachel Levine, health director in Pennsylvania (whom Biden tapped for his administration) moved her mother out of a nursing home just before Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf issued a similar order in that state.  Moving infected people into these homes is at best negligent, and possibly criminal.  It is on the order of killing someone in a drunk driving accident.  These decisions were made for political purposes.  And the media (and some of his Democratic colleagues) are just now catching up.

Finally, symbolism and words are important.  After Trump’s election, we had the acting out of a stabbing murder of Trump in Central Park, and the terrible image of a beheaded and bloody head of Trump held up by Kathy Griffin.  Kamala Harris joked about killing Trump and Pence in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres.   Joe Biden talked about beating Trump up if they were in high school.  Former SNL star Jane Curtin said that her New Year’s wish was for the Republican Party to die.  Hillary Clinton famously wrote off Trump supporters as “deplorables.”  Obama wrote them off as people that “bitterly cling to their guns and religion.”  Yes, you can dismiss the symbolism as, “Oh, well, that’s just art.”  But it expresses desire and is worrisome.  Similarly, when political leaders express, even in a joking fashion, a desire to use physical violence against an opponent, you should take notice. And when they label entire segments of our society, and treat them with contempt, you should take notice.  Think Hutus and Tutsis.

All of these things worry me a great deal.  This callous disregard for “the other” makes it nearly impossible to have a sane debate or conversation.   In the case of Joe Biden’s callous disregard for the plight of the Uighurs, it leads me to wonder out loud if Biden and his supporters might be similarly inclined to treat their political adversaries in the same fashion.

We Don't Know

 

A major source of social discord has been our inability to  ascertain facts around big events without any degree of certitude.   In some cases, facts were intentionally distorted or muddied.   In others, fact gatherers were intentionally impeded.  Some of the most important events of the last year have been so politicized that our perception of reality is being altered and controlled.   And when we raise legitimate questions, we are vulnerable to being labeled a conspiracy theorist.   

The Capitol “Riot”
Donald Trump was acquitted in the 2^nd impeachment hearings despite those hearings being devoid of any Constitutional basis  or purpose,  or any semblance of due process whatsoever.  There is unanimous agreement that the incursion of the Capitol building by the rioters was abhorrent.   The optics were terrible for the rest of the world.  Yet, we still do not have many of the salient facts as to exactly how it happened and who was involved.  Why did the police seem to escort people into the building?  Who were all these people, exactly?   How large was the Antifa element mixed in (we have evidence of some).   If it was an insurrection or coup, why were the perpetrators completely unarmed?   What did Trump do to “incite” these people to enter the premises?   There is no “smoking gun” of any indication to incite as Trump urged people to protest peacefully.  He even called up 10,000 National Guard troops to be at the ready that D.C. mayor Bowers that went unrequested.   Th media immediately labeled it an “insurrection” and “attempted coup.’   AOC’s claim that she feared for her life was discredited (she was in her office nearby).  The media assertions that 5 people died has since been tempered.  We know that the press flat out lied about  officer Brian Sicknick that was reported to have been killed by a thrown fire extinguisher--- a falsehood that was repeated by the White House statement.  The only shot fired in this “insurrection” was by the capitol police on an unarmed woman and her shooter is yet unnamed.   

Christmas Bombing
In the early morning hours while nearly everyone was asleep and sugar plumbs dancing in their heads, a massive bomb went off in Nashville after giving off warnings by loudspeaker of the imminent explosion for 15 minutes.  There were no deaths other than the bomber himself.   His target may have been  the AT&T building, although questions remain.   Unlike Islamic terror acts or the Oklahoma City bombing, this bombing was clearly meant to destroy buildings and not harm people.   But again, questions remain.  The F.B.I. announced 48 hours later that the bomber was a lone wolf.  So the F.B.I. was able to go through his emails, phone records, interview his co-workers, friends, relatives, neighbors and other contacts in 48 hours.   Case closed.  In about a week, the story completely disappeared from the news cycle and the press has not shown a smidgen of curiosity about it since.

COVID19 Origins
In the early weeks of the outbreak of COVID19, we were told by the press that COVID19 originated in the Chinese wet markets.   Other reports blamed the rare pangolin.  Still others talked about bat soup.  The latest hypothesis being reported is that it originated from frozen food imported into China.  Of course, journalists all reported these things as true.  How do they know this?  Well, the Chinese Communist Party or W.H.O. told us.  Oh, ok. These were being reported even as they knew that a Level 4 bioresearch lab existed in Wuhan. 

Meanwhile, the CCP jailed the first doctors that discovered the virus,  barred our own CDC from inspecting,  destroyed samples (even the reliable NYT was dismayed over the Chinese response).  Days later, the Chinese ambassador was on the Sunday talk show circuit implausibly accusing the U.S. military of causing the outbreak.  Responsible scientists like Bret Weinstein that raised the possibility that the virus resulted from a lab leak were written off as conspiracy theorists. 

Now, we are learning that the Wuhan lab obtained a patent for bat cages even though WHO claimed that it had not harbored live animals at the lab.  Last week, W.H.O. announced that it would no longer consider a lab leak as a possibility, then was contradicted by Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director of WHO.  Dr. Tedros early in the crisis heaped effusive praise on China as a model for how the outbreak should be handled (coincidentally, our own Dr. Fauci did the same with New York and now we are learning that Governor Cuomo fudged numbers with respect to infected patients introduced into nursing homes)>

A year later and we still don’t have good answers.   Or good numbers.  

Death of George Floyd.
The death of George Floyd triggered riots all summer long, hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the coffers of Black Lives Matter (with no accountability), and acts of contrition and “unconscious bias” training and diversity efforts by almost every institution of any size. 

And on its face, the optics of the event looked terrible.  Officer Derek Chauvin pinned Mr. Floyd to the ground with his knee on his neck for 9 minutes.   Underlying all this was the assumption that police treat blacks differently than whites.

But the case has yet to come to trial.  And as we learned with the Covington kids, a single image or film isn’t dispositive.   There are depositions to be had.  Witnesses to be examined and cross examined.  Autopsies and toxicology reports to review.  

Until all this happens in an adversarial proceeding, we simply don’t know how George Floyd died.

And there are many unanswered questions.  Why didn’t the EMT’s check his breathing or pulse?  Why didn’t the responders do rudimentary CPR on the spot?  With a potential neck injury, why did they flop him on a gurney like a sack of potatoes?   Why were the EMT’s armed and wearing Kevlar? 

Until this case is tried, all we have is narrative.

2020 Election
The reality is that we really don’t know who won the 2020 election.   Was it free and fair?  It certainly wasn’t fair.   The MSM and social media blacked out relevant stories about Joe Biden’s son late in the campaign.  State election boards, governors and judges arguably violated the Constitution with election rule changes that are granted to the state legislatures.   Among other problems, counting ballots without signatures and mail-in ballots without chain of custody documentation invites fraud. 

Then we had conduct on election night itself.  Six states simultaneously stopped counting   There were anomalies in the data, with spikes for Biden with ballots trucked in during the dead of night.  There were districts with more ballots than registered voters.  Then there were suspicious incidents like suitcases full of ballots dragged out from under tables and people blocking the views of observers.  And this does not even address questions about the Dominion voting machines.

Like the George Floyd incident, almost none of this was adjudicated.  Most of the complaints were dismissed on grounds of standing.  The bleating from the left was that there was no evidence of fraud.  There was plenty of evidence AND suspicious behavior. 

In all these cases, we have yet to obtain a verifiable conclusion because the facts have either not been ascertained or have been told to us by highly unreliable sources.   The MSM has been incredibly uncurious about some things (the Nashville bombing, and Hunter Biden’s laptop, for instance).  In the case of COVID19, the CCP and WHO both engaged in highly suspicious behavior, as did many people around election night, with many events that were left unexplained.   When loose ends and anomalies go unexplained, all we have is competing narratives.   

And with a stranglehold on almost every media outlet, the Radical Left (and China) believes it can control this narrative.  From the beginnings of the COVID19 outbreak,  China appeared more interested in controlling the narrative than in controlling the virus.  Likewise, the statistical anomalies and behavior have yet to be satisfactorily explained, leaving a significant segment of the electorate to believe that the election may have been stolen.

You can’t brush off millions of people as conspiracy theorists.

The Queen's Gambit

 

I had heard some good things about the mini-series, The Queen’s Gambit, so I bit down hard on my principles and signed up with Netflix at least temporarily so I could see this series.  It seemed like it was on everyone’s top 10 list for 2020 and I was moreover curious to see how someone could create a compelling drama out of chess.

I have had a personal fascination with the game since grade school, when Bobby Fischer became a virtual rock star by beating Boris Spassky in 1972.   I have dipped in an out of the game periodically and gave it up for awhile after getting my ego seriously bruised due to a shellacking by an 8 year old kid in a tournament.  Yet, the game has always fascinated me because of its structure, its beauty and the quirky people that get absorbed in it.

The Queen’s Gambit did not disappoint.   Based on the novel by Walter Tevis (published in 1983), The Queen’s Gambit centers on the trials and tribulations of Beth Harmon, played masterfully by Anya Taylor-Joy.  The series is set in the late 60’s and somewhat of a timepiece as well.   Harmon is orphaned and is sent to live in an orphanage.  She is introverted and self-marginalizing when she first arrives.  As had been the practice, the resident children were given tranquilizers and it is there that little Beth begins her struggle with drugs and alcohol.  It is also in the orphanage that nine year old Beth begins her chess journey by befriending the maintenance man, Mr. Shaibel, played by Bill Camp, a chess enthusiast that not only teaches her how to play, but teaches her the sportsmanship and manners of the game.

I wrote a piece last year about Bobby Fischer and Janis Joplin, two iconic figures of that era.  Both Fischer and Joplin were enormously talented---geniuses in their respective fields, socially awkward, with troubled, self-destructive tendencies. 

One of the outstanding features of the mini-series is the way the creators managed to borrow bits of the characters of both Fischer and Joplin and synthesize them in Beth Harmon.  Harmon had Fischer’s temperamental nature, fierce competitiveness and need for solitude.  After she is adopted, like Fischer, she grows up in a single parent household.   The series has all the elements of great storymaking—an enigmatic, talented central character possessed of exceptional talent, yet has internal demons to overcome.  Overlayed on all this is a coming of age story, as this abandoned little girl grows and develops into a world class competitor.  We see Beth develop as a complete person—emotionally, intellectually, and sexually.   She evolves from a somewhat surly little girl to a fully blossomed woman competing in a largely male world.  The storyline is also a timepiece, with the Cold War as a backdrop, setting the state for Beth to compete against the Soviet juggernaut, as did Bobby Fischer almost 50 years ago.

One aspect of the mini-series that I found most compelling was her struggles to develop normal relationships, and we see her grow as the series progresses.  Because of her status as an orphan and later abandonments, her instincts are to be aloof and standoffish.  Yet, she is able to forge relationships with Mr. Shaibel and her adoptive mother, as surrogate parents.   And she finds at least some level of kinship with Jolie from the orphanage, Benny, her sometimes chess opponent, sometimes tutor and sometimes lover, and Harry, also her sometimes friend, lover wannabe and tutor.   These people also struggle with her, each in his or her own way, to accept Beth on her terms. 

The chess scenes were excellent.  While they speeded up play for the series, they captured the realism and the intensity of tournament play.   The producers used former world champion Garry Kasparov and chess coach Bruce Pandolfini as consultants to the series.  The camera work was superb and focused a great deal on close facial expressions during play. 

And, as an aside, yet another Polish actor makes a splash.  Marcin Dorocinski convincingly plays the steely and taciturn Russian champion Vasily Borgov (turned down the role).   This continues a great run for Polish talent as of late.  Zophia Wichlacz lit up the stage in the PBS mini-series World on Fire and Magdalena Kolesnik blew audiences away with her stunning performance in Chicago International Film Festival winner Sweat.  Yay, Poland!

The Queen’s Gambit is an exceptional piece of work by creators Scott Frank and Allan Scott.   It combined great casting, great writing and acting, excellent and very deliberate setting selection and superb character development.   Like a great novel, it left me hungry for more at the end.  While there will be a temptation to produce a Season 2, that temptation should be resisted.  Leave this masterpiece as is.