Hold Your Powder

 I learned by lesson in 2019, or at least I think I did.  I saw the headlines and the photos propagated by the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets depicting a smug teenager in a MAGA hat, seemingly harassing an old Native American man, who the mainstream media also said was a veteran that had done a tour in Vietnam.

The outrage on Facebook boiled up, some among friends of mine.  I also felt this surge of indignity about this punk.  Many celebrities weighed in, including Joe Biden, calling young Nicholas Sandmann  a white supremacist, and on and on.   Fortunately, I refrained from making any comment the matter on social media.

In the days that followed, as other recorded film clips became public, the truth began to emerge.  What had occurred was precisely the OPPOSITE of what the media had portrayed.  The Native American was an activist, a grifter, found out not to have seen combat in Vietnam, and he was the one that was in Sandmann’s face, harassing him.

Then there was the NASCAR noose, found by Bubba Wallace that triggered the dispatch of 15 FBI agents to investigate a purported hate crime.  The incident went viral in the MSM and social media, only to have the FBI determine that the “noose” was a garage pull.

But in the hysteria, Nikki Haley couldn’t help herself.  Before any of the facts could be determined, she tweeted out how much she deplored it, and racism in general, blah, blah, blah.  Her lurching impulsiveness and virtue mongering, among other things, has crossed her off my list for any serious national post.

Of course, there was Jussie Smollett.  “This is MAGA country” on a cold Chicago night was so implausible so as to be laughable.  Within hours, almost every thinking person smoked out the hoax.  That incident caused me to conclude that fake hate crimes were worse than real hate crimes, because while hate crimes target an individual, fake hate crimes tear at the fabric of society. 

We also had the incident at the border in which the media claimed that a border agent was taking a whip to border crossers.  That was demonstrably false, the photographer said it was false, Tyler Mayoras knew it was false.  Yet they perpetrated it anyway.

There have been a plethora of fake hate incidents, the most recent being the assertion of a young woman on the Duke volleyball team that someone had used a racial slur to taunt her.  There was no corroboration and no video of the purported incidents.  Like “hands up don’t shoot,” and the Bubba Wallace “noose,” many of these incidents simply didn’t happen. 

Which brings us to Paul Pelosi, who was purportedly attacked by an intruder and injured with a hammer this weekend while Nancy was away.  As of this writing, there appear to be a number of facts that just aren’t adding up,  The strange police call, “His name is David and he is a friend.” There are reports that a third person met the police at the door.  Yet we have no details about who this person was.  And the broken glass from the glass door was seen to be outside, not inside, leading one to believe that the glass was broken from the inside.  Police won’t release the bodycam video.  The details don’t add up and they keep changing.

Yet Hillary Clinton, Rob Reiner, Laurence Tribe, Reuters, among others immediately attributed the incident to “far right wing extremists, “ either directly or indirectly, without a full accounting of the facts.   Incredible.  We really don’t know what happened, and may never.

The lesson in all this is ----hold your powder when a news story breaks.  Do not accept narrative that  the media and the authorities.  It is especially  important  when the event either involves charges of racism a hate crime,  “far right extremism.”  Always be a little skeptical.  The truth is hard to come by these days.  But eventually it does come out.

 

 

Detachment

 If you’re like me, your world has been turned upside down over the past three years.  Institutions that you thought you could count on have gone rogue.  People that you counted on as friends abandoned you if you questioned the wisdom of the jab or masking.  If you did not genuflect to the image of Ibram X. Kendi, you were branded a racist.  Of course, if you showed any support for Trump at all, you were a fascist. If you questioned child pornography in middle school libraries, you were labeled a book banner.   If you dared raise questions about the 2020 election process, you were a conspiracy theorist and a threat to democracy.

It was as if someone had, in the middle of a chess game, kicked over the board and scattered all the pieces.

What is a rational person to do?

Having struggled with some of these things myself, I can offer a few tips, as to what to do with people and institutions as Woke madness grips the West.  

The answer, I think,  lies in detachment.  I have found that viewing Wokeness through the model of addiction is the most useful for managing relationships in this era.   Al-Anon and Hazelton teach detachment from the addicted person.  

Detachment is neither kind nor unkind.  It does not imply judgment of the person or situation from which we are detaching- it is simply a way we can protect ourselves.  By separating ourselves from the adverse effects of another’s personal addiction(s) [or Wokeness], it can be a means of detaching; this does not mean that we need to physically separate.  Detachment can help us look at our situations realistically and objectively.  

Viewing a person or institution gripped by Wokeness through the prism and model of addiction is the most useful way of managing your relationships.

First, is the easy part—institutions that go Woke.

 And so many went fully Woke.  And they went fast.  I was a charter member of the American Writers Museum when it opened in 2017 and started with programs featuring Ernest Hemmingway, Laura Ingalls Wilder and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  But within 3 years, it was featuring Kathy Griffin and an obscure transgender writer. I immediately dropped my membership, just as I dropped the Newberry Library as soon as it sponsored Drag Queen Story Hour for kids.

Those were the easy ones.  The University of Chicago was harder because I had such deep ties to the institution and because it had such an impact on my development and was part of my identity.  But when the school decided to admit into its graduate English program only students that were interested in “Black Studies,” and the business school sponsored a program on White Privilege, it was time to say goodbye.    Because some of my oldest friendships center on the University of Chicago, the trick has been to detach from the institution without detaching from my old friends.  I have asked to be removed from their email list and the alumni magazine.  Yet I will attend events where my friends are present.   So far, I have achieved a balance.

In general, detaching from institutions does not present too many difficulties.   You drop your memberships and donations and stop attending events or fundraisers and swap out.  I have substituted other non-Woke organization (Library of America, for instance) to become affiliated with. 

People are much harder—especially when they are closer to you.  As Jodie Shaw (formerly of Smith College) noted – your circles will contract considerably.  And she was correct.  Mine have.

Some, I had to simply let go of.  My great uncle sent me a blistering, nasty email when I civilly challenged his liberal orthodoxy on climate change.  I left my regular weekly golf foursome when they contracted a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome and could talk about nothing else for four hours at a crack.  Likewise, I disconnected from professional contacts that inappropriately used professional platforms like LinkedIn to spew their TDS or worship of Kamala Harris or registered their bellyaching over the Dobbs decision.   I either mute or delete contacts that put pronouns in their bios.  I figure if I don’t know you well enough to know what you are, it’s going to be hard to do business together.  I call it de-networking.  

The hard part involves the Woke that are either family members or with whom you have long term, valued relationships. I have had some success by having frank discussions with them about steering clear of topics involving politics.  I just tell them it’s something I would prefer not to discuss, that there are other things I’d rather talk about.  Usually, they will respect that position.

Coming to grips with the realization that a Woke individual or an institution captured by Wokeness is similar to having an alcoholic or drug addicted friend or relative.  Your best bet is detachment.  It’s hard, especially if these were people that were close to you. It’s disorienting.  But when reason, data and logic are ineffective, you have little other choice.  Arguing with the Woke is a complete and utter exercise in futility.  You will not persuade them, and the longer you exchange with them, the more you look foolish for even bothering to engage.  It will not be an intellectually honest exchange of views.  It is usually easy to figure it out pretty quickly because they inevitably resort to labeling early on.   You are called a “fascist,” “racist,” “bigot,” “Trumper” or such other slander.  On social media and in person, I have a simple rule—once someone engages in that, the conversation stops.

I continue to adjust to this new game, but I’m learning and I hope these suggestions will be helpful to you.

Detachment is never easy, but if you learn how to do it, it will help your own mental well being.

 

 

Quick Hits

 

I haven't had much time to post lately, but I wanted to at least jot down a few brief thoughts, so here are some questions and observations.

I have a few questions and observations.

-Five months after the leak of the Dobbs opinion, we still have no information on the leaker.  The MSM has long since dropped following it faster than they dropped the Las Vegas shooter or the Nashville Christmas bombing.  Why haven’t we heard from Chief Justice Roberts on the matter?

-Led by Iranian women, the country is experiencing the most serious rebellion against the mullahs since the Green Revolution.   After the death of Mahsa Amini (like the death of Neda Agha-Soltan in  at the hands of the “morality police,” Iran has exploded once again with young women protesting, burning their hijabs, cutting their hair.  Yet the MSM is almost totally silent.

-I predict that the next 18-24 months will witness a liberal/conservative convergence.  Tulsi Gabbard leaving the Democratic party was consequential.  It has already begun, mostly with Jewish progressives that have been canceled.  Maud Maron, Bari Weiss, Bret Weinstein, among other sensible progressives are leading the way in rejecting much of the Woke agenda.  I see much more of this coming.

-The biggest false phrases--- systemic racism, gender affirmation, voter suppression, toxic masculinity.  They describe nothing and are fraudulent labels placed on things that simply do not exist.  They are cute, clever and deceptive.  They describe nothing.

-BLM leader Patrisse Cullors absconded with millions of “donations” for her own enrichment.  No one can name a single scholarship or professor at an HBCU endowed by BLM, or any meaningful project whatsoever that actually improved black lives.  Why hasn’t a single attorney general gone after her? 

-We have lost the capability of learning from our mistakes.  In Iraq, we learned to our chagrin what happens when you leave a security gap.  Others quickly fill the void.  In Iraq’s case, ISIS occupied the space that a security force occupied.  Not content to blunder in someone else’s society, we decided to repeat the folly in our large cities by defunding the police.  What we got was warlords.   The lesson is that when you defund the police, you don’t get no police; you get different police.  And you won’t like them.

-At one time, I held college professors in higher esteem than I did farmers and truck drivers.  What a terrible mistake in judgment about who contributes more to society.

That’s all, folks.

 

Cruelty

 I should know better.  As someone who has read fairly extensively about the Third Reich and the Holocaust and who has frequently attended events at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, as well as having read a fair amount on Mao’s China and Stalin’s gulags and starvation of Ukraine, I should know what cruelty humans are capable of perpetrating.

Still, the cold indifference to human life is disquieting, even more so since it has become manifest here.

Iran.

The murder of young Mahsa Amini by the “morality police” of Iran has sparked widespread protests in Iran.  They are reminiscent of the Green Revolution of 2009, toward which the Obama administration was largely tight lipped.  The brutal killing of Amini echoes of the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, then 26 by Iranian security forces.  This time, the uprising seems more widespread and threatening to the mullahs.  Oddly, the American left feminists are strangely silent as courageous Iranian women take to the streets, burning their hijabs, cutting their hair and demanding freedom.   American congresswoman Ilan Omar, who has an opinion about all things oppressive, is pretty mum on the struggle of her Islamic sisters in Iran.

Russia

Whatever your views on Russia and Zelenskyy, the snuffing out of so many innocent lives in Ukraine by Putin is disquieting, particularly when Russia threatens the world with nuclear weapons.  There are no good guys in this picture.  Zelenskyy is like the pro bona litigation client that is ok with spending bottomless legal fees and unwilling to settle.  Putin, on the other hand, has utter disregard for human life. 

China

The situation with the Uyghers is abhorrent.  Its takeover of Hong Kong was despicable.  Its cover up and handling of COVID19 was horrendous.  It continues to let fentanyl pour in to the U.S. and kill 100,000 people a year.  Yet, big business, academia and entertainment are still deferential to the CCP, even as it threatens Taiwan. 

U.S.A.

Once the bastion and enforcer of human rights, the U.S., human rights now takes a back seat to Wokeness.  Its Democratic city mayors are satisfied with the killing and murders of thousands of innocent cities so they can advance their notion of social justice.  The leftist mayors and governors were happy to permanently arrest the development of children under the guise of COVID policies in schools.  When the Dobbs decision was rendered, blue state politicians went apoplectic.  In Illinois, governor Pritzker initiated a program of mobile abortion units, echoing the Nazi mobile extermination units.

Worse, by permitting the crime surge in U.S. cities, government officials are implicitly subordinating the lives of innocent citizens to the interests of violent criminals. 

It’s hard not to get depressed when faced with all this.  I always thought that the U.S. would never advance political and ideological interests ahead of the lives of this citizens.

This is no longer the case. The cold indifference to human life has come home.

1972

 It’s rare that we get to revisit our boyhoods but 1972 by Scott Morrison allowed me to do just that.  Rolling back the clock by 50 years, 1972 recounts the Cold War matchup between Team Canada (really, Team NHL) and the Soviet Union.  Billed as an exhibition series, the event evolved into a battle between the West and the Soviets, played out on a sheet of ice.

1972 was a year of intense competition between East and West.  Three years earlier, the U.S. had overcome an initial deficit in the space race to put a man on the moon ahead of the Soviets.  Earlier that summer, the brash, idiosyncratic Bobby Fisher overcame an in initial two game deficit to best Boris Spassky and dethrone the Soviets in their national pastime—chess.

The series was initially promoted as merely an exhibition series and the promoters had a difficult time at first selling the idea to the N.H.L. players.  1972 was pre-big contracts and many N.H.L. players had off season jobs or ran hockey camps to support their families.  After a bit of haggling, the organizers agreed to pay the players a small cut of the gate, which amounted to only $2-3,000 per player.  In addition, the competing W.H.A. was just getting off the ground and the fledgling league had just signed Bobby Hull to a million dollar contract.   The organizers decided that they would limit players to N.H.L. players, which meant that one of the league’s most prolific goal scorers would be left off.  The other sidelined star was Bobby Orr, who was nursing a knee injury.  Team Canada would be without the two superstar Bobby’s.

Nonetheless, Team Canada was stacked with talent.  At the time, the N.H.L. was a 14 team league. Led by Phil Esposito,  the All-Star team had Yvan Cournoyer, Brad Park, Jean Ratelle, Vic Hadfield, the brothers Pete and Frank Mahovlich, Gary Berman, Dennis Hull, and Gary Bergman  with Hall of Famers Ken Dryden and Tony Esposito in the nets.

The arrogant, yet out of condition Canadiens expected to make short work of the Soviets, who had played together and were in peak condition.

Imagine the shock when the Soviets smoked Team Canada in game 1, 7-3.  The Canadiens won game 2, 4-1 and game 3 ended in a tie, but the Soviets won game 4 and had a 2-1 lead when the series went back to Moscow.  The Canadian fans booed their heroes, causing de facto captain Phil Esposito to give an emotional speech expressing his disappointment in the fans.

Things looked very bleak after the Soviets won game 5 in Moscow to take a commanding 3-1 lead in the series.  With their backs against the wall (just as Bobby Fischer was against Boris Spassky a few weeks earlier), Team Canada began to gel and rallied to win games 6 and 7, for a decisive game 8.

In game 8, Team Canada again had to fight to come from behind as the Soviets took the lead 4 times in the game.  Going into the third period, the Soviets had a two goal lead, 5-3 and the Soviets had informed the Canadiens that if the game was tied that the tiebreaker rules said that the Soviets would win on points (right?).  The tenacious play of Phil Esposito enabled Team Canada to come back and tie the game with less than 10 minutes left with a goal by Yvan Cournoyer.   Tensions boiled over when the goal light failed to go on and a brawl nearly ensued with organizer Alan Eagleson having to be escorted out of the rink.  Recall that just weeks earlier the Olympic officials had made some suspiciously bad calls in the finals between the Soviets and the U.S.  With less than a minute to play, the game looked like it would end up in a tie.  But there was a scramble around the Soviet goal.  Announcer Foster Hewitt made the memorable call:

Henderson made a wild stab for it and fell.  Here’s another shot…right in front.  They score!  HENDERSON HAS SCORED FOR CANADA!

All of Canada went wild.  Just as Bobby Fischer had crawled back from a deficit against Boris Spassky, Team Canada had salvaged its national pride in its native game.

Much has changed in those 50 years.  The game has changed.  The series opened up the league to European players, and later, Russian and Eastern Bloc players.  The  economics of the league have changed.  No player needs to work side jobs to get by.  Some of the changes have undoubtedly been for the better.  Rules changes have made the play faster.   Players are more skilled.   Fights and violence have diminished.  Fighting and violence marred the Summit Series and there is still controversy over Bobby Clarke’s intentional slash of Soviet star player Valerie Kharlamov that broke his ankle. 

Still, the league was smaller.  Teams played each other more frequently, so one could identify more easily with teams and players.  The N.H.L. had 14 teams at the time and now has 32.  

And it is with a bit of sadness that many of the players are gone now.   Tony Esposito.  Pat Stapleton.  Stan Mikita.  Bill White.  Gary Bergman.  Rod Gilbert.  J.P. Parise.  Bill Goldsworthy.

And 50 years later, there is still a lot of anxiety about a nuclear confrontation with Russian.

Some things never change.

Pushback

 Pushback

In these dark times, I am trying to cling to events that give us a bit of hope.  With inflation raging, the stock market imploding, the border overrun, it’s hard to find things that give one a bit of succor.  We are, in fact, living through as time as disquieting as it has been since WWII, and it is not overreacting to have genuine concerns over whether our republic will come out whole.  But it is important to keep in mind that tyrants always enjoy first mover advantage.  Freedom loving people are a bit slow to react and gather themselves, and as it did in the 1940’s, we are seeing signs of pushback against the forces of tyranny.

Immigration
In an absolutely brilliant move, the governors of Texas and Florida began to send the illegal immigrants that are pouring over the border to sanctuary cities and, in the case of Florida governor DeSantis, to the elite liberal bastion of Martha’s Vineyard.  Mayors of “sanctuary cities” like New York, DC, and Chicago griped that they “just didn’t have the infrastructure to deal with them.”  In the case of Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago, she promptly shipped them off to neighboring suburbs.  The good souls of Martha’s Vineyard, having been “enriched” by their visitors, called in the national guard and shoved them off to a military base within two days.  Nevertheless, the point had been made.  The false sanctimony of the progressives was put on display for all to see.

Trans movement
Independent journalist Matt Walsh exposed the Vanderbilt Medical Center for its hideous “gender affirmation” clinic, which disfigures preteen kids.  His expose of these modern Mengeles has triggered Tennessee lawmakers to take up a measure to bar these clinics from surgically altering minors and preventing them from administering puberty blockers.  Megyn Kelly has likewise featured interviews with individuals that regret their earlier decisions to undergo gender transition.   Abigail Shrier wrote her groundbreaking book “Irreversible Damage” (pulled from the shelves at Target) decrying the awful practice of influencing preteen girls into changing their gender.  After a late start, forces are beginning to emerge to oppose this cult-like trend.

Sweden and Italy
The Woke movement and the World Economic Forum are beginning to run into stiff political resistance.  Great Britain opted out of the EU entirely.  Hungary and Poland have been defying EU prescriptions on a number of fronts, including unimpeded Islamic immigration from the Middle East.  Sweden elected a conservative government and Italy has now followed suit.  The Swedish and Italian elections represent a rejection of the unelected authority of the EU and of the injection of Islamism into European culture.  The election of Georgia Melani is particularly satisfying, since she is a thumb in the eye of the EU and the WEF.  The leftist media is already labelling a “fascist,” a “racist” and the farthest right leader of Italy since Mussolini.  In fact, she is a civilizationist.

Safe-T Act
The Safe-T Act is the cashless bail act that was passed in the middle of the night, that, among other things, limits detainable offenses, provides that police cannot remove trespassers on you business or personal property and prohibits police from tracking down scofflaws for 48 hours after they remove electronic monitoring.  At a time when Chicago is reeling under an unprecedented crime wave, the Safe-T Act is an entirely pro-criminal statute.

The outrageousness of it compelled me to do something I have never done before—called my legislator to voice my displeasure.  She mostly spit back her standard talking points.  I went overboard to be polite and restrained—probably too much so.  When she started railing on the opposition for putting out “lies,” I politely reigned her back in and said, “I am interested in hearing why you supported it and the facts and data you looked at.” She deflected by saying “all cities are having a surge in crime.” She showed no concern whatsoever for victims of crime.   On the positive side, though, I did spend 30-40 minutes with her on the phone, she said they were working on “clarifications” to the statute, so she must be taking some heat for this.  I did my small part to push back, and I will do more.

 As I have often said, “Tyrants have first mover advantage.”  But we are seeing signs that resistance is gathering and it has to be a grass roots project

A Little Hope

 I will be converting my blog to substack shortly under the name Darkly Optimistic.  Over the past couple of years, my blog posts have been more darkly than optimistic, a sad reflection of the trough that we are in.

So I thought I’d spread just a little bit of optimism in my post this week.

I spent two week in Pinehurst, North Carolina and tried to limit my visits to social media, as working in downtown Chicago and living in a nearby suburb under Governor Pritzker can be quite taxing on the old mental health.   Even a short stay in a small town and periodic breaks from social media can have a salutary effect on a person.

While there seems to be a deluge of bad news for the last couple of years, even including talk of civil war and a national divorce, I did make a few observations while I was away from a large urban center that gave me some hope for the future, and I came away with one overriding thought:

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here were my experiences:

I drove around North Carolina for two full weeks and not a single driver cut me off or gave me the middle finger.  This is a daily occurrence in Chicago.

Not a single homeless person rattled a cup in my face.  Not a single one was huddled in a doorway.   In Chicago, you can’t walk 3 blocks downtown without confronting one. 

Most interesting was attendance at church.   I was surprised by the attendance at late Sunday morning Mass.  The local parish church is fairly large and it was fairly full.   I also noted that there were a number of entire families, many of whom had 3 or 4 small children.  And nearly everyone was dressed up.  Very few people had on jeans or shorts.  Most women wore dresses.  Men had collared shirts.  Little boys had their hair combed with Brylcreem.   Three women wore veils.   For the first time in a long time, the phrase “your Sunday best” meant something.

The next day brought some beach time.  Again, there were many families with small children.  I was struck by the fathers, attentive to their wives, playing with their children, all of them fit.  One young man carried his two year old son on his shoulder, both in identical white beach shirts, sporting the same sunglasses, same facial expression, and same facial features.   No doubt what gene pool that little boy came from.

Just being around these families was energizing and hopeful.

Gibson’s Bakery

At the same time, the ruling came down that the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Oberlin College in Gibson’s Bakery’s claim against it.  The school will have to pay a $36 million dollar judgment for defaming the bakery, now that the school has run out of appeals. 

I won’t regurgitate the facts here.  The case is fully and fairly presented (both sides) in Bari Weiss’s September 1 podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oberlin-accused-the-gibsons-of-racism-now-it-owes/id1570872415?i=1000578020237).   As someone who has worked with many family businesses over the course of my career, it was hard to listen to the facts surrounding Oberlin’s vendetta against the bakery.   Oberlin’s president either had awful attorneys or chose to stick her fingers in her ears and hum when they gave her guidance.  The Gibson family, as so many families that run bakeries, viewed their calling as a labor of love and were pillars of the community.  To hear the school students and administration set out to gratuitously destroy a multi-generation business was appalling.  The impact on the family and its employees was devastating.  I know that the Gibson’s work harder than any of those protected school administrators (and deliver more value for society).

But the final resolution gave me some hope.  At least parts of our judicial system is capable of resisting Woke ideology and is capable of delivering justice.  It was gratifying to hear that Oberlin will feel the sting of just consequences, even if those administrators don’t personally suffer any loss (after all, they are insulated, unlike the Gibson’s).

I celebrated by ordering a Gibson’s baseball cap and a box of bakery goods through the Gibson’s website.