The Infirm and the Fearful

 

Make no mistake- we are going through as wrenching a period as WWII, an outcome uncertain and the changes to our society, our world, will be permanent changes.   Whether they usher in a prolonged dark period or a return to some form of enlightened, free society will depend on steadfast leadership.  So far, I don’t see it.   What I see is the old and the fearful.

The people now at the helm and that are charged with the responsibility of guiding us through this period are simply old and decrepit.  President Joe Biden is an old 78, and obviously struggling with dementia.  If he puts his pants on with the zipper in the front 5 days in a row, he’s having a good week.  He often struggles to find the right words.  This is a guy that you would not let house sit while you were on vacation and have confidence that he would remember to feed your cat or water your plants.  Biden makes the old Soviet premiers—Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko look like spring chickens.   And Biden is at the top of the decision making tree.

Then we have the old war horse, Nancy Pelosi at 80 is still browbeating legislators, spinning, threatening, and manipulating to advance her goal of a one party, big government system.  Unprincipled and undemocratic, she is ruthless and as power obsessed as any woman in world history.

Finally, there is Anthony Fauci, elected to nothing, but granted de facto unchecked power by the emergence of COVID19.  At age 80, Fauci’s proclamations, often incorrect unsupported by evidence, carry the weight of legislation.  He is responsible for the needless shutdowns, the closing of schools and businesses and the nonsense of double masking, masking of children, and social isolation of our nation.  Without regard to the economic and emotional costs, his inconsistent views have done more permanent damage to our society than Osama bin Laden.   The grotesque aspect of Fauci is that he has been in the SAME BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNMENT JOB FOR ALMOST 40 YEARS, AND HAS NEVER TAKEN ANY PERSONAL RISK, YET DEEMS HIMSELF TO BE AN EXPERT ON ADVISING AN ENTIRE SOCIETY ON MANAGING RISK, and has been empowered to do so. 

We are at a critical juncture as we set a path for the nation’s future, and three of the people that are making crucial long lasting policy decisions themselves have very limited futures.

Not only are we facing multiple threats with ancient leadership, our leadership class is stoking and magnifying fear.  During the last existential crisis of the West, we at least had FDR (“we have nothing to fear but fear itself”) and Winston Churchill (“we shall fight them on the beaches… we shall never surrender”).  This week, in the face of a pathogen with a 99.7% survival rate, the new head of the CDC Rochelle Walensky announced that (“I am scared…I feel a sense of impending doom”).   How did this woman ever achieve a leadership position?   A Margaret Thatcher she is not.  Imagine if our other leaders had said such a thing at critical times—Eisenhower on D-Day, the Founders that knew they would be hanged by the British for signing the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln after the First Battle of Bull Run.  In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson recounts how Winston Churchill, against the advice of his advisors, would sometimes go out on his roof at night to observe some of the air battles going on overhead during the Battle of Britain.   How is this nation supposed to overcome when leaders like Walensky are so timid, uninspiring and anxiety-ridden?   This is a time to present courage, fortitude and equanimity if you are in the public eye.

I have great faith in the American people and great faith in the spirit of the nation, but it will be difficult for us to overcome these obstacles until we force the obsolete and the timid to move off the stage.

The Four Big Lies

 

You ask yourself, “How did I get here?”
Once In a Lifetime

-David Byrne, Talking Heads.

I asked one of my old history professors, Daniel Pipes, a speculative question.  If medical science extended his life long enough to write a new edition of William H. McNeill’s seminal work, The Rise of the West, to mark its 100^th anniversary (2063) what would the preface say?

The West is not doing well at the moment.  Every day, it seems, brings another bit of news that suggests that we are being torn apart, that the liberal society founded on the precepts of the Enlightenment is coming apart.  We don’t yet know the ultimate outcome but it’s clear that the West is experiencing its most challenging crisis since WWII and in America, since the Civil War.  I would entertain other factor, but I would posit the rapid and accelerating decline of the West on The Four Big Lies, some of which I was lured into believing.  I will put these out on the table and invite others to offer more. In subsequent posts, I will expand on these falsehoods.

Chy-na

This is the Big One.  The free market gurus and corporate America peddled this one for years.  As recently as four years ago, I heard Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama proclaim it in person—If we have open trade with China, a prosperous middle class will emerge, demand more freedoms from the Chinese regime, AND THEY WOULD BECOME MORE LIKE US.  This view will turn out to be the most disastrous judgment in the history of Western Civilization.

What we got was precisely the opposite.  Our relationship was never really reciprocal- it was abusive.  China never gave us the access to their markets that we gave China.  China stripped out our industrial base, caused a collapse of our middle class and the attendant social ills, stole our intellectual property, hacked into our systems, crushed democracy in Hong Kong and now openly threatens a free Taiwan.  Xi Jinping altered their constitution to become president for life and obstructed and covered up the disastrous outbreak of COVID19.

The most insulting part of this is that they didn’t become more like us.  We became more like them.  Our freedoms have been greatly eroded.  The tacit partnership between Big Tech and Big Government has tremendously weakened the 1^st Amendment and created a surveillance state.  Worse, the Democrats seized power and are well on their way to executing on a plan to create a one party system (see, e.g. HR-1).

If we fight them there, we won’t have to fight them here.

This was the mantra of George Bush and largely continued under Obama.  The Forever Wars.

This had its origin in the Gulf War of 1991.   The U.S. led coalition, with its Cold War enabled military routed the world’s 3^rd largest army with a dazzling display of advanced technology, air power and a very disciplined volunteer force in 100 days with light casualties.  The ghosts of Vietnam had finally been exorcised.

Ironically, the war went too well and subsequent presidents were tempted to use the military with less restrained and with hard to defend purposes.  The initial black eye was the loss of 18 Rangers in chaotic Somalia.   Then there was the Cole incident. 

The failure of 9/11 allowed a handful of zealots to inflict incredible damage to the U.S. and we followed it with an 18 year war in which we could not subdue an early 20^th century force in Afghanistan.  While I can see how we got drawn into Afghanistan, George Bush and Dick Cheney led us into a costly misadventure in Iraq (which our friends, the French tried to talk us out of and were called cowards in return).  We lost people, money, and international prestige over this debacle with no real gain. 

An underestimated cost of the overuse of our military is that every time we engage someone, our adversaries are watching us, studying our tactics and our technology and planning accordingly.  We continue to act as if the juggernaut military of 1991 still exists.  It does not.  It is now too busy training in Critical Race Theory, and integrating women and transgenders to be a feared fighting force.

Systemic Racism

The notion of “systemic racism” has permeated throughout our governmental and academic institutions.    Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo are its chief hawkers of this unsubstantiated and destructive idea, and it is now being preached as gospel in the armed forces.  It is being packaged and sold as an extension of the Civil Rights Movement, outed by author James Lindsey as The Big Lie.  Bret Weinstein proclaimed that Kendi’s “Anti-racism” was sophistry in his last podcast.  John McWhorter  launched a brilliant attack on “antiracism” in the excerpt from his upcoming book, The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and their Threat to a Progressive America. 

(John McWhorter: The Neoracists - Persuasion)

The problem is that systemic racism doesn’t exist.  There is scant evidence to support it.  In point of fact, the “systems” mostly flow in the other direction.  Colleges and corporate America have been recognizing racial preferences for years.   Both institutions have materially lowered the bar and set aside positions for African American for a long, long time.   Yet Kendi and DiAngelo have been remarkably successful in getting the nation to spin in circles and adopt their religion.  Chief Diversity Officer jobs are a top position at many institutions (ironically, almost none held by whites).   Nearly all companies and universities now require “implicit bias” training.  Why send people off to the re-education camps when they show up voluntarily to hear this as part of their work or education?

Systemic racism is like Bigfoot.  Lots of people are convinced that it exists, when we know that it was largely extinguished over 50 years ago.  Yet people like Kendi have convince a large number of people that racism is everywhere. You just have to look hard enough. And keep looking.   I urge you to listen to James Lindsey’s Podcast, “NO! Critical Race Theory Does Not Continue the Civil Rights Movement!

NO! Critical Race Theory Does NOT Continue the Civil Rights Movement - New Discourses

Still, the faux religion of CRT is shredding the cohesiveness of our society and I fear that it will lead to its ultimate dissolution if it is not stopped soon.  I am not encouraged at the moment.  Remember, it took 50 years to prove the famous Patterson film clip of Bigfoot as a fraud.

15 days to flatten the curve.

Yes, we just passed the first anniversary of 15 Days to Flatten the Curve.  We actually flattened the economy and many of the basic rights guaranteed under our Constitution.   Next to our embrace of China, our policy response to COVID19 will be seen by historians as a hideous and grave error.  It has led to the crushing of thousands of businesses and the disruption of all of our lives.  But the worst effect has been on the lives of our children and on our liberties.   Politicians learned that they could invoke the fear of a microbe and brush away the Bill of Rights.   Poof! Almost all of our guaranteed freedoms gone and mostly sanctioned by a feckless Roberts Supreme Court.  Our Constitution is now fluttering in tatters in the wind.   Our youth has, and will continue to bear the brunt of the damage—an entire year without in person school, normal activities and socialization taken from them, and an unsustainable amount of debt piled on their backs to pay back out of their earnings in the future.  Youth suicides are predictably spiking as so many are choosing death over the future our cruel politicians have constructed for them.

The confluence of these 4 Big Lies are, in large part, responsible for the place we find ourselves in.  I am not entirely pessimistic, but I am a realist.  The West is facing its darkest days since Nazism swept across Europe.  We will need leadership, strength and courage to overcome, and we need to muster it soon.

The Costs of Woke

 

Well, well, well, lookie here.

Brett Blomme, president of the foundation that was pushing Drag Queen Story Hour on the nation’s libraries, was arrested on seven counts of child porn charges.

While the nation was tangled up in protecting children from the toxic masculinity of Mr. Potato Head and the racist imagery of the dreaded Dr. Seuss, a real predator was stalking our children.

If you need a reason to speak out against Woke culture, Mr. Blomme has given you one.

As libraries across the country hosted Drag Queen Story Hour, where a drag queen would read  stories to children aged 3 to 8, few had the sense to say no to this pathological event.  Even the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed which said that the kids looked confused, but that it was a fairly benign event.

They were dead wrong. 

At the time, I wrote a strident opposition piece to Drag Queen Story Hour and sent it to our local library as well as to Chairman of the Board of Trustees at The Newberry Library.  The Newberry Library never responded and the local library sent me their “official” tolerant milquetoast policy statement  in return.

Drag Queen Story Hour has nothing to do with tolerance.  It is astonishing to me that the leaders of these organizations failed to discern between tolerance and grooming.  No one had the fortitude to stand up and say NO, this program is not appropriate for children.  What, exactly, did they think was the purpose of this foundation and the push to expose children to drag queens?  How can anyone argue that drag queen story hour is a healthy, nurturing activity for children?

I was not in any of those meetings when Drag Queen Story Hour was presented as an activity.  But it’s a good bet that the fear of being labeled a “bigot” or “homophobe” or “transphobe” was not something they wanted to confront.  It was just easier to be Woke and permit Drag Queen Story Hour.

But the reality is that because they were unwilling to stop and ask whether having children crawl on the lap of a drag queen was appropriate. 

Hint: It’s not.

The arrest of Blomme is exactly why we need to muster the courage to stand up to Woke.  Because no one had the spine to risk being called a bigot, children were put at risk.  The managers of these libraries were facilitating pedophilia, perhaps unwittingly.  We have a duty to protect these children, even at some social cost to us.  The reality is that pedophiles have been desperately seeking to latch on to the LGBTQ movement in order to normalize their sick activities.  The NYT has run op-eds about decriminalizing pedophilia and treating it like an illness.  The Left has been attempting to change the language, demanding that we refer to pedophiles as Minor Attracted Persons.   Netflix had no inhibitions about broadcasting the program Cuties that sexualized young girls.  We need to stop being naïve about how harmless this has been to kids.  It is most certainly not.

I sent the article on Blomme to both the local library and to The Newberry Library, with a sarcastic message, “thank you for your role in facilitating this worthy cause.” In a business, the exercise of judgment this bad usually results in dismissal.  Apparently with not-for-profits, there is little accountability for giving predators access to our children.

Wokeism and Pushing Back

 

For those of you that do not realize it, we are in a religious as well as a political war.  It is a religious struggle unlike the ones that have gone before- unlike the Crusades, unlike the Spanish Inquisition, and unlike the jihad of Islamic extremism (although it sometimes partners with it). 

I recognized it fairly early… about three years ago, and I was quite alone but now I am hearing similar things from notable voices—Douglas Murray, James Lindsey,  Bret Weinstein and others---that Wokeness is a new religion.  According to Douglas, man has a need for religion and with the decline of Christianity and Judaism in the West, Wokeness has come along to fill the void.  It has moved very quickly, taking over large swaths of our government, our educational institutions, from K-12 through universities, and much of large corporate America.   Once you begin to think about Wokeness as a new religion, more about the current turmoil in the West makes sense.  For instance, taking little children to Drag Queen Story Hour seems absurd, until you accept that these moms believe that they are taking their kids to some sort of religious service of a religion they believe in.  I do not even think about it as “political correctness” anymore—it has evolved from that harmless nuisance on college campuses to something more virulent.

Like Christianity, Wokeness has a Holy Trinity and a priesthood.  The Woke Holy Trinity is comprised of:

Racial Justice

LGBTQ Militancy

Climate Change

In addition to a Holy Trinity, Wokeness has its four gospels--- the gospel according to Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Michelle Obama.  But unlike Judaism or Christianity, it has no mechanism for redemption.   Judaism has its day of atonement- Yom Kippur.  Catholicism has the confessional.  But Wokeism has no redemptions.  It tolerates no dissent.  Its precepts are taken as articles of faith.  Each of the trinity contains a kernel of truth.  Blacks did suffer systemic racism, but it is debatable how much of it lingers.  Gays did suffer from some discrimination, but it was on the wane and gays were granted “marriage equality” in the U.S, and we should not sacrifice womens’ sports on its altar.  Yes, we should be good stewards of the environment, but that does not mean we should collapse our economy in pursuit of clean energy on unrealistic timetables. 

But Wokeism blows all these things up, magnifies them, and distorts them beyond all recognition. According to the Woke,  Blacks suffer from systemic racism,  are being indiscriminately killed by police, and the entire system is racist and must be dismantled.  Gender is a social construct and fluid. Climate change is manmade, happening so fast that it threatens all of mankind and requires massive and immediate government intervention.    Empirical evidence that contradicts any of these articles of faith is summarily dismissed, and anyone serving it up is written off as “alt right,” “right wing extremist.”  

If you doubt the seriousness of this movement and its dreadful implications for our society, I urge you to listen to this short exchange between Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist and a self-proclaimed liberal  (but pro-science and pro-free speech) and members of the racial justice mob on the new platform Clubhouse.

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEK3fNJvCyI&t=82s

In this clip, Bret (who has a wonderful weekly podcast with his wife, Heather Heying (Dark Horse Podcast)), naively attempts, in good faith, to engage these people in a reasoned, intellectual conversation.  A few minutes in, it is apparent that he is trapped in a Maost type inquisition in which he is accused of being racist and transphobic (Weinstein is about as far from those things as you can get).  The black supremacist mob cuts him off, shouts him down, then accuses him of trying to “wiggle out” of answering their accusations. This clip is important and anyone that reads my blog should take a few moments to listen carefully.  This is the mob.  It cannot be reasoned with.  It does not wish to hear your point of view.  If you do not accept their doctrine, you are guilty.  Period.

In his latest New Discourses podcast in which James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories, explains that this movement is NOT an extension of the civil rights movement, ends his podcast with this assertion:

“The question ‘Does this (CRT) continue the work of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s?’ has a definitive, clear, unambiguous, simple answer expressed in two letters—NO! ‘ ‘This is a paradigm shift’ they say.  No it’s a radical flipping over.  It’s not a paradigm shift.  It’s a radical inversion of the Civil Rights movement.  And these f***ers claim the Civil Rights movement as if they were its new heroes and champions.  They are literally rejecting it.

It’s the most effective lie that has ever been foisted in the world in the last 100 years.  And you say, “No, in 100 years?  You ignore the Nazis.  You’re ignoring Stalin.  You’re ignoring Mao.’ Where do you think this is going if this isn’t stopped?  It’s the same logic as all that.  It’s got Hitler’s race.  Mao used race.  It’s got the same cultural revolution moves as Maoism.  It’s got the same underpinnings.  Where do you think this is going?

And it’s taking down a society not like Russa or torn destroyed Germany between the world wars or peasant, broken China.  It is taking down the strongest liberal society in the world.”

This is deadly serious stuff.  Douglas Murray and Bret Weinstein have also wondered aloud how this doesn’t end in gulags (prompting Weinsten to sell “First Against the Wall Club” paraphernalia.  I do not think these intellectuals are being hyperbolic).  I watched The Killing Fields a few weeks ago and was haunted by the similarities between what is going on now and the re-education camp scene

In just the past couple of weeks,  the Mob has successfully gotten Mr. Potato Head de-gendered, Dr. Seuss canceled, and a film about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas de-platformed.  Coca-Cola has told its employees to “try to be less white.”

It has powerful allies in media, government and academia and is growing in strength.  Bari Weiss wrote a masterful article, “The Miseducation of America’s Elites,” which I highly recommend.

The Miseducation of America's Elites - Common Sense with Bari Weiss (substack.com)

While Wokeism has momentum, the pushback has begun.  As I noted last week, conservative and libertarian students at the University of Chicago started an online publication “The Chicago Thinker” with its motto “Outthink the Mob.”  These courageous students are willing to put their names on this publication,  in full knowledge that it risks their embryonic careers.

And a diverse group of public intellectual started a new foundation – The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR)(www.fairforall.org) .  It’s statement is wonderfully crafted:

“Increasingly, American institutions—colleges and universities, businesses, government, the media and even our children’s schools—are enforcing a cynical and intolerant orthodoxy.  The orthodoxy requires us to view each other based on immutable characteristics like skin color, gender and sexual orientation.  It pits us against each other, and diminishes what it means to be human.”

FAIR is precisely the kind of organization that is needed to counter the toxic and dangerous movement that Lindsay has been speaking and writing about.  FAIR has a wonderful, diverse (both racially and politically) group of people behind it—Bari Weiss, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Peter Boghossian, Melissa Chen, Samantha Harris, Steven Pinker, John McWhortle, Megan Kelly and Abigail Shrier among them.  James Lindsay labeled FAIR, the Un-Woke ACLU.  I have already signed up for FAIR’s newsletter, made a donation and sent an email to become a volunteer.

So many friends of mine are seeing this assault on our culture and on our basic principles of reason and the Enlightenment coming from all sides but are at a loss as to what to do.   Signing on as a donor and volunteer for FAIR is a good start (www.fairforall.org).

Yes, we are behind in the game.  And yes, it looks pretty dark and gloomy at the moment.  But the initiative of the students at The University of Chicago and the folks that have started FAIR, both within weeks of each other signal that the battle has been joined.  It is a battle that must not be lost.