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.

 

A Glimmer of Hope

 

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

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

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

Perfectly and concisely stated.

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

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

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

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

Political Violence

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Don't Know

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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