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.

Letting Go

 

With deep regret, I am detaching fully from The University of Chicago. 

The University of Chicago  has meant a great deal to me throughout my life.  I fell in love with the university from the beginning—its magnificent gothic architecture, its synthesis with the city, its intellectual vibrancy, and its connection with my family history (one of my grandfather’s first jobs as an immigrant was as a busboy at the Shoreland Hotel).   I have so many wonderful memories of strolling through the Quadrangles, studying in Harper Library,  having a beer at Woodlawn Tap, where the fellow sitting at the barstool next to you might be reading Ulysses.  I had some incredible professors—Frank Kinahan and Joe Williams, William H. McNeill and Daniel Pipes, Donald Fiske, and Robert Streeter.  I was married in Bond Chapel.  In 2010 and 2013, I helped organize reunions of our football teams from the late 70’s on campus.  Last year, this group raised a memorial fund for Daniel Tepke, one of the coaches and former administrators of the school.

I have made it a habit to return to Hyde Park for Reunion Weekend almost every year to renew my connection with the university, renew old friendships and make new and interesting ones.   A few years ago, I attended a wine and cheese event during Reunion Weekend and chatted with a young woman that was just graduating and planned to do graduate work in Poland the following year.  She confided to me, “This is the first place where I felt like I fit in.  I am terribly afraid that I will never find another place with so many people like me.”  I smiled and responded, “Well, I have some bad news for you.  You won’t.  But you can always come back and visit.”  I have had similar conversations over the years with graduating students.

The skies have darkened over Hyde Park recently,  and not just because of pandemic.  Since the university unveiled the Chicago Principles, the university has conceded a great deal of ground to Critical Race Theory (CRT) proponents.  Recently, one of the architects of the Chicago Principles, Geoffrey Stone, caved to demands that he stop using the “N” word in class, because a student found it offensive.   Although he used it only as an illustration in his First Amendment class, Stone conceded and agreed to cease.  While the usage of that word is hard to defend, Stone’s concession was notable.  It silenced the mob for a bit, but it was the first small chink in the armor.  CRT never stops with initial, small victories.

Then there were the mob attacks on Harald Uhlig and Dorian Abbot.   The university responded to Uhlig’s case by vowing to review all of his social media posts for hints of “racist content.” It found none.  Abbot had the temerity to suggest that the university look to talent in admissions and appointments rather than race.  And the mob promptly descended on him.  In Abbot’s case, the university did affirm its free speech principles, in a communique but in the same message also affirmed its commitment to its diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DEI) policy.  The fact that students and faculty attempted to “cancel” both Uhlig and Abbot for espousing eminently defensible positions tells us that the Chicago Principles and DEI will be in conflict over the long run—and DEI now has the upper hand. 

 Last summer, the English Department announced something of a de facto “no whites” admissions policy, stating that it would only admit graduate students that are interested in Black Studies for the coming year.  This decision made national news.  Not just some of the spots were reserved for Black Studies students--- but ALL of them.  With some twisted logic, the English Department sought to fight purported systemic racism with… systemic racism.  So much for Dickens, Hemingway, and Jane Austen. 

All of these events are direct outgrowths of Critical Theory and its inherent aggressive activism that has begun to tighten its grip on the institution.   Now we learn that the university is seriously contemplating an entire department devoted to CRT. 

I will make some predictions about the direction of the university if it continues down this path.  Having already taken over an entire formerly esteemed department (the Department of English), and graced with its own entire department, CRT will begin to consume the entire university, and all of its disciplines.  As an inherently activist movement, it will elbow its way in to become the self-appointed overseer of permissible publications and faculty and staff appointments.  It will scour publications and university communications for any hint of racism.   The kinds of attacks suffered by professors Uhlig and Abbot will become commonplace, and faculty will begin to fear having a label attached to them by this department.  The calls for decolonializing reading lists and required reading will become irresistible.   The heralded machine of the economics department that produced so many Nobel Laureates will grind to a halt with the sand of CRT in its gears.  The department will never again produce another Robert Fogel.  Reading lists that formerly featured the Iliad, Max Weber, Alexis de Toqueville and Adam Smith will inevitably give way to the work of the likes of Ibram X. Kendi, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Robin DiAngelo.   

I also predict that within 3-5 years, the university will establish a committee to review the Chicago Principles for “appropriate and necessary adjustments” as a result of a push by the Critical Race Theory Department.  The result will be less freedom of speech, a lower level of intellectual rigor and an adherence to a doctrine that seeks to impose its framework on all other disciplines.  Its anti-Enlightenment approach will be felt across the university (the Booth School of Business is already sponsoring workshops on “white privilege”).   None of this will happen overnight---the university has some great momentum---but so does CRT, and we’ve already seen it exert a powerful influence over the school and it is gaining velocity.  Elevating its status by granting it an entire department will forever change the character of the university.

Much is made by CRT proponents of “inclusiveness.”  That word began to creep into university messages in a letter to incoming students by president Zimmer a couple of years ago.  On its face,  the word is benign, welcoming, and warm sounding.  In practice, however, CRT assigns a very different meaning in corporate and academic environments.  Like the fellow that was able to force Professor Stone to adjust, “inclusiveness” shifts power.  By claiming certain speech makes them feel “unsafe,” it enables individuals to shut off speech they don’t like, that makes them uncomfortable, and less included.   Exposure to ideas that make one uncomfortable or “unsafe” is one of the reasons people flock to The University of Chicago. 

The University of Chicago is not, and should not be, inclusive, but rather EXCLUSIVE—not by skin color, gender, sexual preference, origin, religion or any of those dimensions, but by intellectual capability, passion and desire to engage in free inquiry and free thought.  The university necessarily can and should EXCLUDE individuals that are not dead serious about scholarship and intellectual development, and those that are timid about having their intellect challenged.

I would probably actually be less troubled if the university  sought to establish a Department of Astrology rather than one devoted to CRT. A study by The Pew Research Center showed that approximately 25% of Americans believe in astrology and  I would not be surprised if a similar percentage of people also believed in CRT.  There is about as much empirical evidence to support Astrology as an academic discipline as there is in support of CRT.  And unlike a  CRT Department, an Astrology Department would not make demands on other departments.  An Astrology Department could then legitimately claim that “the fault lies not in ourselves but in our stars.”

It is ironic that the university that gave me sufficient critical thinking skills to understand the toxicity of Critical Theory is now drinking its poison in large gulps. It is corrosive to the university and to society writ large.  Consequently, I have to detach.  I won’t be coming around anymore.  I’ve unsubscribed to mailings.   I won’t be attending reunions even when pandemic clears.  I just can’t bear to watch the inevitable decline that will inevitably follow the university’s embrace of CRT as an academic discipline while the ideology simultaneously undermines the university’s foundations.  It is like watching a parent destroy themselves with alcoholism.

I had high hopes that, unlike other universities,  The University of Chicago would remain a bulwark against Wokeism and CRT.  But the institution that has been a source of great pride for me is now well on the way to “just the place I went to school.” 

Bloodless Revolution (so far)

 

Let me try to make sense of all this for you and give you my interpretation of what has occurred to our great nation.

You can choose to believe me or not and in the coming weeks, we will likely see more evidence pile up that my interpretation is the correct one.  If it turns out that I am incorrect, I will be happy to admit it.

If everything seems confusing to you, it is meant to be.  That means it’s working.  You don't know for sure who really won the election because the evidence of fraud was never heard.  You don't know who perpetrated the chaos in the Capitol building because the media told you it was Trump insurrectionists.  You don't know why the Christmas bombing that killed no one occurred in Nashville because after only 48 hours, the FBI told you it was a lone wolf.  You don't even know who will be president with any certainty.  You know that this bumbling, stumbling, dementia ridden old fool is not capable.  

I am going to tell you in a blunt way, so you can look straight at it and deal with it.

We all were overjoyed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.  It turns out that our celebration was premature.   The fight against Communism wasn't over.  It was only halftime.

The American Experiment is over.   I don’t say that lightly and without a great deal of grief and sorrow in my heart.   The tables have been flipped on us.   What has been done to us is what we were able to do to Iran in 1953, Chile in 1973 and Afghanistan in 2002.   We have lost our Republic.

There were lots of clues leading up to this, if you listened carefully.  Probably the most salient clue was the purported last words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “My most fervent wish is that I not be replaced until a new president is installed.”  That was an important quote for two reasons.  First, RBG never said it.  This is what the media said she said.  RBG would NEVER have said that.  She was a supreme court justice, and excellent lawyer, and a person who understood the importance of word choice.  We do not install a president and RBG knew that.  This quote was manufactured just as the Russian hoax was, the “many fine people” hoax was, and the “bat soup” story was.  It never happened but the words are telling, because that is what happened.  Biden was installed.

Some have called it a “Color Revolution,” and it certainly looks like one.   I coined my own term for it

A Techno-Bolshevik Revolution with a Reverse Apartheid Twist

Like the 1979 Iranian Revolution, this revolution relied heavily on a coalition of support—Antifa and BLM (which had a significant element of white youth involved) to perpetrate violence all summer.  The violence was staged as an implicit threat to the Supreme Court of what would happen if it ruled with the Trump administration.  And it worked—perfectly.   SCOTUS kicked away the challenges on procedural grounds, even though the last minute voting rule changes by governors, secretaries of state and judiciaries were eminently justiciable as violations of the Constitution which require legislatures to choose electors.  Media fully cooperated by withholding damning evidence on Hunter Biden, calling states early and proclaiming Biden the winner.   Then, it shut out Trump completely and incredibly banned him from social media.

Like our own Revolution, this one also had an outside power giving a big assist--- China.   China’s goals are to displace the U.S. as the global financial and economic power.   It simply could not tolerate another 4 years of Donald Trump, because Trump was on to their game.  As with RBG’s quote, I do not think it is a coincidence that COVID19 appeared on the horizon just as soon as the CCP figured out that the impeachment proceedings were going nowhere.   The conventional view was that it would be crazy to use a bioweapon, because you couldn’t control it and you could suffer large numbers of deaths in your own country.  But with a population that is aging, it is a small price to pay for crippling and dividing the West, especially the U.S.  I believe that it is more likely than not that COVID19 was a bioweapon attack.

This time, Communism wasn't going to make the same mistake it did last time.  Somehow, it got to the Vatican.  Communism underestimated the strength of the Catholic Church in the 80's and the influence of John Paul II.  Either with money or subterfuge, Benedict took early retirement and Communism found a pliable figure in Francis, who mostly spouts of decrees that are indistinguishable from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and rails against Trump but is steadfastly silent when it comes to China's human rights crimes.  He has said nothing about the arrest of Jimmy Lai, the top Catholic voice in China, and dissident nuns and priests in the underground.  Not a word.  The Vatican has been effectively neutered as an opposing force.

In America, the two-party system in America is gone.  With radical Democrats in full control, they will attack the filibuster, pack the court, attempt to do away with the Electoral College, offer statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico—all things that kept a two party system viable.

The Bill of Rights is gone.  With Big Tech silencing you, your voice will not be heard unless you wish to go back to handing out flyers.  And if you dare express a conservative viewpoint, the mob may cancel you anyway.   Using COVID19 as a pretext, your freedom to worship has been negated as has your freedom of assembly (unless you are protesting on behalf of BLM).   Private property rights have been shattered. You may no longer evict tenants in many jurisdictions and as we saw with the gym operator in New Jersey, the state will take all of your property if you defy it.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights now are like tattered sheer curtains blowing in the breeze.  AOC and the media are openly talking about de-programming and re-educating Trump supporters.   The PBS lawyer who was caught talking about taking children from their parents and putting them in camps was not engaging in bluster.  They mean it.  Critical Race Theory has been adopted in so many school districts,  in government offices, and in many corporations.  The camps are effectively in operation for the most part.  You just go to them.  Soon, you won't have a choice.

The Left will continue to hound Donald Trump after he leaves office.  Deutsche Bank will begin to foreclose on his properties.  The New York AG will find some trumped up charges to bring against him.  Former General Mattis has said he plans to make him “a man without a country.”  Hillary wants Trump's phone records to see if he contacted Putin on January 6.  This is all third world dictatorship stuff.  None of it is normal.

Dispatching 30,000 troops to the Capitol for inauguration sends a clear message to the American people.  And its not one that a duly elected president would send.

Swallow hard.   You know what has happened. A revolution has occurred. The America that our Founders created for us is gone and we need to come to terms with that.  In subsequent posts I will discuss what this means and what conservatives and libertarians and Constitutionalists can and should be doing- at least until I get deplatformed (and then I will find another route)  For now, let us take time to grieve and mourn and gather ourselves.

For now, educate yourself.  Educate yourself on how Communism and a totalitarian state operates.  Watch the films The Lives of Others, Never Look Away and Mr. Jones.  Read the writings of the dissidents-- Havel, Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Benda, and those that resisted the Nazis, like Primo Levi and Victor Frankl. 

Prepare yourselves.

Resolutions

 

The picture I posted is an actual flyer that I pulled from a bulletin board at UIC aa couple of years ago that sent a shock through me as if I had jumped into Lake Michigan in January.  It should shock you.  But this is what is at stake now, and their movement is on a fast track.   And it demands that our adjustments need to be on a fast track as well.  This is truly evil stuff we’re facing, as evil as Nazism and Stalinism.  And that’s not hyperbole.  It’s real.   To my Jewish friends that have bought into the Socialist/Woke movement, please start paying close attention.  This is where it’s headed and it is deadly serious stuff.

The turn of the calendar is traditionally the time we take a look back on the events of the past year, and look forward to a fresh start with new goals and new commitments.  There is something deeply embedded in our nature to do this.  It is so vital to our being that Catholicism makes it a sacrament.  Confession allows an individual to expunge his or her shortfalls, and liberated from them, to start afresh.

Now that the Socialist/Woke coup is nearly complete, I’ll need to adjust how I approach them.  And going into 2021, the adjustment requires even more thought and consideration.   Typically, I do not share my goals with anyone—they are very private matters.  But this year, I’m going to break with precedent and make part of my 2021 resolutions public.   Some aspects of them are not really new resolutions—I just thought about them in a more coherent and organized way.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, like one of those last Japanese holdouts on an island after WWII had ended, you know that something fundamental is happening to our society.  In later posts, I will try to provide my take as to what is really going on to try to bring some clarity (it is all meant to be confusing).  But at the root of some of this chaos and discord is Critical Theory, a pernicious, racist, Neo-Marxist philosophical movement that is fundamentally anti-Western, anti-individual and anti-liberty.  It is threatening to dismantle and neuter Western Civilization and has already commandeered large swaths of our society.   It anesthetizes you with benign sounding words and phrases:  “Black Lives Matter,” “Gender Neutral,” “Build Back Better,” “Reimagine”  and, of course, the very soothing and virtuous sounding words, “Social Justice” and “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Who can argue against black lives mattering, or inclusiveness?    But it is every bit as harsh, brutal and unforgiving as the Marxist/Leninist regime that our grandparents faced, only much more sophisticated and technologically enabled.  We do not yet have a gulag, although that may be coming.  The Critical Theorists may have figured out that they don’t need to do such things.   They would actually prefer coerce compliance in more subtle ways.  But they will when they learn that this isn't working.

And it’s not in some far off outpost.  It’s here, coursing through the veins of our institutions—our large corporations, banks, law firms, and especially our cultural and educational institutions.   It is designed to kill the soul of the individual and subsume you into the collective.   Like the xenomorph in the franchise film Alien, it has adapted its defenses.

 I am a dissenter.  I will not be checking my imagined privilege.   I will not be embracing diversity, equity and inclusiveness.  And I will risk being labeled, marginalized, shunned, and even imprisoned.  So here are some of the resolutions I am committing to this year.

-Disconnecting

I will completely disconnect from institutions and people that espouse or promote Critical Theory/Wokeism (which includes BLM).  This process is already underway.   I turned off the N.F.L., terminated my subscription to the New York Times and to The American Scholar when it featured a cover article “The Problem With Whiteness.”   I stopped my membership at the American Writers Museum when it featured a program with Kathy Griffin and stopped my support of The Newberry Library when it ran Drag Queen Story Hour, aimed at 5-8 year olds.  When the Newberry Library wrote an impassioned piece about changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, I suggested that the institution step up and deed the land on which the library sits back to the tribe from which it was “stolen.”  I received no reply.

Perhaps the most difficult severing is my relationship with The University of Chicago, my alma mater.  I have always felt blessed to have received two degrees from that institution.  But I began to see signs that the university was slipping into Wokeness a couple of years ago and it astounded me how quickly it sank into the morass.   Earlier this year, economics professor Harald Uhlig was targeted for merely suggesting that BLM not make defunding the police a part of their platform, which created a firestorm.  The university responded by  vowing to review all of his social media posts for signs of racism.   Then there was the English Department’s decision to only admit graduate students that were interested in Black Studies, which I wrote about.  Finally, there was the attack on science professor Dorian Abbot.   Abbot raised issues with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies of the university, expressed his view that the university should hire the best, no matter what color, and was promptly mobbed.   Colleagues and students issued a series of demands on the university, stating that if he just wanted to hire the most talented, then “you are part of the problem.”   The university, to its credit, reaffirmed its Chicago Principles of free speech but at the end of its statement reaffirmed its commitment Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, not realizing that free speech and DEI are incompatible and eventually free speech will have to go, and Chicago Principles will eventually lose out. 

Perhaps the worst sign that the university has fallen to the CRT mob has been the Booth School of Business, which instituted “white privilege” questions in its leadership course survey and committed to unconscious bias training.  A school that purports to be at the forefront of quantifiable management techniques and empiricism decides to adopt training to cure a problem that the UK recently decided is utterly ineffective.

Of course, there was the decision to admit ONLY students that are interested in Black Studies next year, a topic that I previously blogged about (Common Sense: A Letter to My First Professor (commonsense-mark.blogspot.com).   Again, with great irony its justification for doing so was written in the most incomprehensible, gummy prose.  So much for Dickens and Chaucer. 

The University that I loved and is so much a part of my identity simply does not exist anymore.  And I will no longer support it or engage with it.  I have a reunion coming up that I will take a pass on and will not participate in the class gift.   I have great memories and great reverence for what the university is and what it did for me and it pains me greatly to watch the CRT barbarians breach the walls and begin to overrun the place. 

-Speaking and Acting Truth and Refuse to See Race.

I will speak truth in my life and in my blog.  I will call out DEI for what it is—a form of reverse apartheid.  I will call out BLM for what it is—a Marxist organization committed to undermining Western Civilization.  

I will not participate in unconscious bias training, ever.   My biases are pretty conscious.   If you have a good attitude and perform, I like you and will want you as part of my team.  If you have a poor attitude and do not perform, I do want to exclude you.  Period.  Your skin color matters not a whit to me.   I will not respect any  artificial boundaries of inclusion.   Indeed, excellence REQUIRES exclusion and it has nothing whatsoever to do with skin pigmentation.  To suggest that it does is rationalizing blather. 

I will continue to live by the creed of MLK and judge people for what they are, not by the color of their skin.  My credo will be Refuse to See Race.  Absolutely and without exception.  I will only see race as a descriptive term if there is criminal activity involved--- the carjacker was Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, etc.  Otherwise, race doesn’t figure into my consideration at all.   I judge you by your words and behavior---nothing else.  Hence the sleight of hand of Black Lives Matter.  Yes, black lives do, indeed, matter, but so does black behavior.  I will not hesitate to call out bad behavior, no matter what your skin pigmentation.  So all this stuff about being sensitive to other cultures is nonsense.  Yes, I’m good with cuisine, art, literature and music (except violent misogynist rap music).  But if your culture involves honor killings, female genital mutilation, burkas, having 5 kids from 5 different fathers I have to support, carjackings and such, I will not hold back my contempt for those aspects of someone’s culture.  And I’m not going to walk on eggshells talking about it.

Networking

I will distance myself from individuals that are hawking, supporting or expressing sympathy with Critical Theory   CRT has begun to encroach in my personal relationships as well.   When one of my old classmates sent me an email with “To My White Friends” in the subject line, I responded on my blog and deleted him from my contact list.  Next time he is in town and contacts me for a get together, I’m sure to be tied up and unavailable.  As I would with a proselytizing religious fanatic, I have better things to do.  This isn’t an intellectual game anymore to be played in the campus coffee shop.  These zealots are putting their racial and economic views into action.  And I know where this leads.  

Likewise, I automatically disconnect from anyone on LinkedIn that (i) uses preferred pronouns in his or her profile, (ii) wears a mask in his or her profile picture, or (iii) posts political preferences.  Several people posted congratulatory messages on LinkedIn regarding Kamala Harris.   Beep.  Gone.  No one would dare post anything suggesting support for Donald Trump, or any other Republican for that matter. 

Finally, Facebook is no longer part of my life.  After seeing the misguided posts regarding the Covington incident and Nick Sandmann (as well as Facebook’s blatant attempt to control speech), I decided that I am simply not going to participate in that circus.   I still maintain a Twitter account, but given the purge, Twitter may be gone soon as well.

This is only the beginning.  As the Woke Left ratchets up its suppression, I will ratchet up my resistance accordingly. 

Game on.

Questions

 

I have questions.

The two main reasons conspiracy theories are running rampant is that (i)  journalism died, and (ii) Critical Theory has gained a foothold, which emphasizes “my truth” instead of “the truth,” and the two reinforce each other so that probing questions do not get asked or get brushed aside.

So, here are some of my questions, and if anyone has a plausible explanation, I’m all ears. 

-The FISA Court clearly failed by permitting unverified material to be used to surveil the Trump administration.  The FISA Court is a special ex parte court which allows certain procedures to proceed without being contested and a departure from our adversary system, and it broke down in this case.  Why haven’t the people who did this been held accountable and why hasn’t Chief Justice John Roberts (who oversees the FISA Court) spoken up about this breakdown and what he intends to do about it?

-The MSM keeps repeating the refrain “no evidence of massive fraud” as if it were saying vespers.  Why were windows blocked to obstruct views in Michigan?  Why did we have more votes than registered voters in Pennsylvania?  Why were ballots rolled out in suitcases from under tables?  Why did 6 states all stop counting ballots simultaneously on election night?  No alternative explanation for any of these behaviors has been offered.

-Joe Biden stated that his party conducted massive voter fraud operation.   The MSM shrugged it off.  Why did he say that?

-Ted Wheeler, mayor of Portland, just announced a crackdown on Antifa.   Why now?  Why the sudden epiphany?  His enlightenment on the road to Damascus occurred in the same week Nancy Pelosi’s and Mitch McConnell’s homes were vandalized by Antifa.  Is there any connection?  And by the way, why is there no footage from the security cameras available at their respective homes.

-Why did the mayor of Moscow’s wife wire $3.5 million to Hunter Biden?  What was that payment for?  The Biden family also received a $5 million “loan” from China.  Was that repaid?   Where did the money go?

-Black Lives Matter raised over $1 billion, receiving funds from Bank of America, the N.F.L., Unilever, Nike, AirBnb and on and on.  Where did all the money go?  Can you name a single significant project or achievement so far?  An education center?  Scholarships?  Funding for HBCU’s?  Health care centers?  Entrepreneurship programs?  Anything?   A building?  Child care?   Most often, charities do a very specific proposal and corporations engage in a long due diligence process, often lasting over a year or more before wiring money to a charity.  Did any of these companies do this?

-Back to poor old George Floyd.  I am still troubled by the events surrounding his “death.”  I have been through first aid training and one of the basic tasks that a first responder must do before attempting to move a victim is to check his pulse and check to see if he’s breathing.  The responders did not do that in this case.  In addition, the officer knelt on his neck for 9 minutes, putting pressure on the cervical area of his neck.  With a possible neck injury, a first responder would NEVER move someone in the way that they moved George.   Without taking his pulse, without seeing if he was breathing, and with a possible neck injury, they schlepped him on the gurney like a sack of potatoes, and whisked him away.   Why didn’t his family sue for this prima facie malpractice handling of him?  Further, these were not EMT’s that popped out of the ambulance.  They were armed men, and at least one of them was wearing a Kevlar vest.   That’s not who is usually dispatched with an ambulance.

-Then there is the Nashville bombing.  Within 48 hours, the FBI declared that they had identified the perpetrator and announced that he was a “lone wolf” and also said that he was not on their radar screen.   How does the FBI come to this conclusion so quickly?  How did they go through his cell phone contacts, his texts and emails, interview all of these people, his neighbors, co-workers, neighbors, etc., all in 48 hours to make that determination.

-How can Eric Swalwell still be on the House Intelligence Committee?  Same with Ilhan Omar. How can it possibly be justified?

-An African American man was shot and killed by a police officer in Minneapolis the other day (which was being carped about by Ilhan Omar) in an exchange of gunfire.  Yet, there were not riots.  Is the African American community now able to distinguish this shooting from the Jacob Blake shooting or the Rayshard Brooks shooting or is something else going on here?  Why did Minneapolis not go up in flames this time around?

I’m no devotee of Alex Jones.   Or conspiracy theories.  But I am a devotee of matching numbers to narratives, to tracking cash flow and common sense answers to straightforward questions.  I welcome answers to any or all of those that I have posed.