Wreckage

Those of us who suggested, way back in March, that the idea of an economic shutdown was a panicked overreaction based on already known scientific data about SARS-Cov-2 have sadly been proven correct. Even worse, we argued that any virus, including this one is like any other natural phenomenon and cannot be effectively controlled in the manner suggested by so-called public health experts. Their recommendations were myopic, did little to reduce the spread of the virus over the long term, and probably caused more non-virus related health problems (and deaths) across the population.

The few voices who tried to assess the risks objectively warned that we were headed toward an economic catastrophe. Sadly, that's what has occurred.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment:

Democrats and their media allies have trapped themselves in a contradiction. They are deploring Thursday’s grim second-quarter GDP report even as they demand a repeat of the lockdown that caused the economic catastrophe. What do they expect when government orders Americans to sit in their homes for weeks?

That’s the main message from the 32.9% decline in GDP, the worst ever recorded. The damage extended across the private economy—from business investment to manufacturing and housing. But the greatest harm was from the collapse of consumer spending as the shutdown crushed the service economy.

Consumer spending fell 34.6% and accounted for some 25 percentage points of the GDP decline. The fall in transportation, recreation, food services and hotels was brutal. But the biggest surprise was the plunge in health-care spending during a health-care crisis. Health care represents about 12% of the U.S. economy and its collapse subtracted 9.5 percentage points from GDP.

How does that happen in a pandemic? The answer, as our friend Don Luskin points out, is that politicians panicked in March and waited for a surge of Covid-19 patients that the pandemic modelers told them would arrive. Blessedly, the modelers were wrong, and far fewer hospital and intensive-care beds were needed. But the economic harm from stopping all elective surgeries and barring visits to doctors was severe and unnecessary.

It was also a terrible public-health blunder. That harm will play out for years as Americans discover cancer, heart-disease and other diagnoses that were missed or delayed.

I take absolutely no pleasure in saying, "... told ya so."

One can only wonder whether the Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media would have played things differently had a Democrat been president. Whether the ubiquitous death scoreboards would have been updated daily and with such covert glee; whether the nation would have been shutdown; whether petty Democrat tyrants at the local and state levels would have criminalized public gatherings; whether schools would have been closed and whether teachers unions would refuse to go back to work, even now; whether "cases" (a majority asymptomatic) would become the new scoreboard number; whether any of this "covidiocy" would have happened. 

I think we all know the answer to that, and it's not just a guess. In 2009-2010, the H1N1 pandemic swept the globe. Millions were infected and hundreds of thousands died, and yet, the media was sanguine about the outbreak—no shutdown, no school closures, no social distancing, no masks, no canceled events, no scoreboards—NOTHING.  Oh ... by the way, Barack Obama—a Democrat—was president.

But remember, all of the wreckage we see today had nothing to do with politics, right?

Everything is What It is

Roger Kimball begins an interesting essay with words uttered by Joseph, Bishop Butler in 1726. Bishop Butler said: "Everything is what it is, and not another thing." In essence this means—when someone tells you they're doing something for a noble reason (e.g., saving lives), but behind it all, they're doing it out of self-interest or to further some less noble  goal, recognize that it is what it is. Extrapolating this to the modern day, Kimball writes:

... almost everything happening in our society—all the craziness, all the posturing, all the distracting noise, exaggeration, and downright mendacity—all of it is not about itself but about something else, and that something else is Donald Trump. 

A new, flu-like virus is abroad in the land. The anti-Trump establishment goes to work: How can we blame it on Trump? He shuts down flights from China at the end of January: charge him with being racist and xenophobic. He consults experts. They tell him it is not a serious threat. He goes on television and says that: hysteria! Then he swings into action, mobilizes American manufacturing prowess and turns out more ventilators, protective gear, testing kits, and new therapies than anyone thought possible. The curve flattens. The political weapon that was COVID-19 falters. No problem. Declare a race war!  Smash up the storefronts. Get everybody talking about racism all the time. Ignore the fact that the people overwhelmingly harmed by Black Lives Matter are inner-city blacks. Blame everything on Donald Trump. 

The unremitting, monolithic wall of noise that has been crashing against Donald Trump since election day 2016 has gotten louder and louder, more cacophonous, more furious, more irrational. Everything is what it is, and not another thing. But the one thing that takes precedence over everything now is defeating Trump, which means defeating not only Trump himself but what he stands for—those 63 million voters who put him in office, for starters. 

But it’s more than that. The forces of anti-Trump hatred comprise not just Democratic aspirants to high office but also, and more significantly, the media (social and otherwise), the spoiled, pajama-boy Left, and—above all, perhaps—the entrenched administrative apparatus of government, the self-engorging bureaucracy of the state whose fundamental allegiance is to the principle of self-perpetuation.  

It is all of that which Donald Trump came to office to sweep clean, like Hercules confronting the Augean stables. The first time around the reaction was a compact of contempt and ridicule, but that was only because Trump could not win. The smartest people in the world—Bill Kristol, Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow—they all knew he couldn’t win. So they didn’t come together in a single caterwauling primal scream to stop him.  

This time they have. And since they control almost all the major megaphones, it can sometimes seem that everyone is against Donald Trump and no one is for him.

It can seem that way, but of course it is not. And that is chiefly for two reasons. First, there are those 63 million voters—perhaps it will be 66 or 68 million this time. Voters whose voices you don’t hear in the pages of the New York Times and whose rigged Google searches and Facebook hot spots somehow leave out of account. They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, to Washington and Thomas Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil  America is. 

For now, they remain quiet, their fury just below the surface. 

The silent ones listen to Joe Biden, a swamp creature if there ever was one, complain about everything from the plight of African Americans to our crumbling infrastructure, to income inequality, to our failed social programs. They watch as Biden is co-opted by the very people who advocate defunding the police and applaud those who tear down statues (or burn down buildings) and shout down people who might disagree.

And the silent ones (Kurt Schlichter refers to them as "Normals") stop and think—this clown (Biden) has been in Washington for 40-plus years; he's was VP for 8 years, and he did NOTHING of substance to correct the problems he now tries desperately to lay at Trump's feet. 

He tells us he would have stopped COVID-19 in its tracks. Sure he would have. He tells us he's the best hope of people of color. That, after a lifetime of "gaffes" that cast doubt on just how pure his attitudes about people of color really are. He tells us he's a moderate. And then proceeds to adopt an agenda that is eerily similar to the one proposed by Bernie Sanders, a socialist demagogue that even the Dems rejected as their presidential candidate. He claims to be mentally clear, yet has trouble stringing three coherent sentences together when he answers an unscripted question.

Trump, who is cast as a "racist" along with his tens of millions of supporters among the silent ones, has done more for African Americans in 3.5 years (e.g., highest levels of employment, highest wages, prison reform) than Biden did in his four decades in power. Despite the hate, Trump has governed moderately, improved the economic health of the the middle class, tried to extract us from wars that have gone on far too long, demanded fair trade, fought the deep state and its bloat, and yes, become the sworn enemy of the Left and the deep state. Trump is coarse, combative, and a narcissist. He hasn't always succeeded, but he has tried. Unlike Joe Biden, he actually accomplishes things that matter to the country and the people in it.

And so the silent ones scratch their heads and ask, "Why should we vote for Joe Biden and allow the Democrats to lead?"

The answer they'll ultimately come up with is ... "We won't!"

NOT in Crisis

I live in South Florida which, according to Team Apocalypse's trained hamsters in the media, was (until just this week) the "epicenter" of COVID-19. Oddly, people are NOT falling dead in the streets, hospitals are NOT overcrowded with people on ventilators, and life proceeds with more than a few theatrical virus precautions, but it proceeds.

Issues and Insights reports:

“Florida Sets Yet Another Coronavirus Record: 173 Deaths In A Day.”

“A record 173 Floridians died from the virus Thursday, an average of more than one every eight minutes.” 

“The 134 new confirmed deaths is the second-largest increase on record, coming five days after the largest one-day jump of 156 last week.”

“COVID-19 has ravaged Florida, with more than 237,000 people testing positive and 2,013 dying from the virus in July alone.”

So what characteristic do all of the reports share? They are all false. [emphasis mine]

It is not true that 173 people died from COVID-19 “in a day” in Florida. Nor did 134, or 156 on previous days.

It is also untrue than 2,013 had died in July when that story was published. 

All of these scary headlines are based on the number of deaths reported by the state on any given day. This is not the same as the number of deaths that occurred on those days.

The difference might seem trivial. But it’s crucial because the press is using the timing of Florida’s death reports to whip up a frenzy about COVID-19 running riot in the state.

Team Apocalypse and their trained hamsters correctly assume that the general public will not understand these differences and that dishonest headlines like those noted will increase already high levels of  fear, uncertainty and doubt.

And that's the whole point. The goal of all of this is to keep people scared with the hope that they'll blame Donald Trump and/or FL Gov. Ron DeSantis (who has done, despite media lies, a remarkably competent job in handling this crisis in FL) and vote them out of office. There are plenty of catastrophists who will blame Trump but it appears that the majority of them are Democrats who would not have voted for Trump and/or DeSantis in any event. I know of people—all of whom are (coincidentlally) Democrats, who are so traumatized by COVID-19 that have not ventured out of their homes since Mid-March. All you can do is shake your head.

If the past five months have taught us anything, it's that there is a considerable lack of critical thinking among large segments of the general public, driven by an inability to understand real data that defines the limits of the threat posed by COVID-19, and augmented by blatantly dishonest "reporting" that has been intended to sow hysteria for political purposes.*

So to our friends up North: Rest assured, Florida is NOT in crisis. The hamsters desperately need Florida to fail so that their 'shut-it-down' narrative remains intact. Florida just won't accommodate them. Too friggin' bad.

FOOTNOTE:

-----------------------------

*   During the COVID-19 shutdown, the petty tyrants of Team Apocalypse has established a variety of near-insane dictates to satisfy the hysteria that they themselves have sown throughout the general public. The Democrat politicians who are the backbone of Team Apocalypse have told us that:

• beaches, parks and places of worship MUST be shut down, but massive protests are perfectly fine;
• businesses MUST be crippled with impossible regulations or shut down entirely, but we must spend indiscriminately to support public sector unions who have refused to work in the COVID-era;
• masks MUST be worn not only in enclosed spaces (like an elevator) but outside in the open air. 
• we must close down our re-openings when more "cases" are reported, even if half or more of the people identified by those "cases" show absolutely no symptoms at all and the vast majority of the remainder have symptoms no worse than a bad cold;
• We MUST close down schools indefinitely, even though there has NEVER been a documented case of a child giving COVID-19 to a teacher, and children themselves are threatened far more severely from the common flu than they are from COVID-19
• and on and on.

A collection of supporting catastrophists (a.k.a. "covidiots") cheer on the Dem politicians at the federal, state, and local levels. The media hamsters support all of this with dishonest reporting and sensationalized claims.

And then, leading Democrats have the unmitigated gall to tell us they are "data driven" and "follow the lead of science." The problem is that the majority choose to ignore actual data and real science that doesn't fit their catastrophist narrative.

Unfit

A real world 'experiment' has been ongoing for the past 3 or 4 decades. It the story of ideologically driven leadership, irresponsible, politically driven decisions, and really, really bad outcomes that are fully documented for anyone willing to take a look.

Kim Monson writes:

We are fortunate indeed to have real world results that we can look at for how well or how poorly governing philosophies and agendas work. America’s major cities have been dominated by the Democratic Party for decades, and the results are in.

All but 3 of America’s largest cities are run by Democratic mayors. The 3 largest cities – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, are losing population every year.

Several of the most violent cities in America, including Albuquerque, Memphis, Detroit, Chicago and Washington, DC are run by Democrats.

States that are bleeding population every year due to high taxation, over-regulation, decaying cities and failing public services including New York, Connecticut, California and others are all run by Democrats.

States that have low to no income taxes, are right-to-work and favor energy development do better economically than high tax, forced union and energy unfriendly states. According to the annual economic outlook rankings published by the American Legislative Exchange Council Center for State Fiscal Reform, in 2019 the bottom ten states were all run by Democrats and the top 10 states except two were run by Republicans.

In fairness, cities are difficult to govern, but the near uniformity of bad outcomes for decade after decade under Democratic leadership is noteworthy. In the rare situations when Democrat mayors have been replaced by more conservative leadership (e.g., the election of Republican Rudy Giuliani in NYC in the 1990s, followed by moderate Michael Bloomberg), a financially ruined city plagued by all of the problems outlined by Monson saw a significant turnaround. When New Yorkers inexplicably decided to elect hard-left Bill DeBlasio as Mayor, the same toxic problems returned, and now the city is again in dire condition.

Now, the Democrats tell us that they, and they alone, can take the country forward. In yesterday's post, I wrote about a major scandal associated with an attempt by the Dems and their supporters to destroy a newly-elected president:

The soft coup is yet another example of what this country will encounter should the Democrats achieve victory in November. During the Trump era, the Dems have demonstrated again and again that they will do anything—anything—to regain power. 

The hard data acquired from the decades long 'experiment' involving our largest cities and many of our most prominent states indicates that once they do attain power, the Dems make an absolute mess of things.  Monson writes:

The evidence couldn’t be more clear. Democrats are incapable of governing well, or in some cases, such as Seattle or Chicago, governing at all. Every single city that has problems with decaying infrastructure, gentrification, crime, violence, homelessness and other social pathologies [is] governed by Democrats. 

Maybe it's just bad luck, or difficult circumstances, or someone else's fault. Maybe. But it's far more likely that the Dems are unfit to govern.

UPDATE:

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There's a bit more to consider that just bad leadership. There appears to be a growing trend among prominent Democrat politicians to ignore the mob violence that is destroying the living conditions within some blue cities. By "ignore," I mean that they either: (1) refuse to admit that "peaceful protests" have now morphed into dangerous riots, or (2) have decided that the best course of action is to allow the left-wing extremists who commit vandalism, arson, thievery, and violence to go unchecked (think: the Mayors of Seattle and Portland).

Molly Hemingway writes:

The media have not explained why they have worked so hard to downplay or obscure the left-wing violence laying siege to cities across the country. However, it is the same approach being taken by Democrat leaders such as Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. Asked about the left-wing violence in Portland, Nadler denied it was happening:

In [a] video, Nadler says the evidence of wanton violence in Portland is a “myth” being spread only in “Washington, D.C.” As he says that, another video of that widespread violence is played.

The media and other Democratic activists seem to believe that if the truth of the violent sieges of cities is told, it will benefit Republican candidates in November. While their gamble with the truth may pay off electorally, it is at great cost to the republic, the citizens of those cities, and the public benefits that were once provided to the journalism industry.

The Dems wanton disregard for public safety will not go unnoticed, even if their trained hamsters in the media refuse to report the riots (a.k.a. "largely peaceful protests") accurately. The Dems' position on the riots is a lot like a cheating wife caught naked in bed with their lover as her husband walks into the room. First, she vigorously denies the cheating and then asks, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

In the case of the left-wing riots in blue cities nationwide, the eyes have it.

Pushback is coming.

What You Can Unsee

Those of us who have been reporting on the soft coup attempt against Donald Trump for the past two years were hopeful that irrefutable evidence that identified the hard facts and the perpetrators within the FBI, the intelligence community, and the deep state would be identified. That evidence is now available, not as hearsay, but in government documents containing the written words of the perpetrators. U.S. Attorney John Durham is said to be preparing indictments. Good.

The Democrats' trained hamsters in the media have done their best to avoid the story, to call it a "hoax" or a "conspiracy theory" and to deride anyone who has expressed concern that it represented an unprecedented political scandal and a weaponization of federal government against the Democrats' opponents. Even worse, a trail of bread crumbs leads back to the Obama presidency—something that the hamsters will protect at all cost—lying, omitting and obfuscating continuously until the story folds.

The same people who use the phrase "a threat to Democracy" when Donald Trump acts to protect a federal court house from a leftist mob that wants to burn it down are eerily silent when clear evidence that senior members of the Obama administration (who were holdovers into the Trump presidency) acted to undermine a newly-elected president. That's a "threat to democracy," but hey, the Democrats sit at the pinnacle of morality, so somehow a soft coup was justified. After all, it's perfectly okay to negate the vote of 60-plus million people when you're on the side of the angels.

Jonathan Turley comments:

The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring facts, following the release of yet another declassified document that directly refutes past statements about the Russia collusion investigation. The document shows the FBI used a security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.

What is astonishing is that the media has refused to see what should be one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media endlessly covered former Obama administration officials ridiculing suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign or of  improper conduct in the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.

Turley, a law professor, goes on the lay out the copious evidence of the soft coup attempt and then writes:

Documents also show [former FBI-Director James Comey] briefed President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on the investigation shortly before the inauguration of Trump. When Comey admitted the communications between Flynn and Russian officials appeared legitimate, Biden reportedly suggested using the Logan Act, widely viewed as unconstitutional and never used to successfully convict a single person, as an alternative charge against Flynn. The memo of that meeting contradicts claims that Biden he did not know about the Flynn investigation. Let us detail some proven but mostly unseen facts.

First, the Russia collusion allegations were based in significant part on the dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign repeatedly denied paying for the dossier until long after the election, when it was confronted with irrefutable evidence that the money had been buried among legal expenditures. New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman wrote, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it and with sanctimony for a year.”

Second, FBI agents warned that dossier author Christopher Steele may have been used by Russian intelligence to plant false information to disrupt the election. His source for the most serious allegations claims that Steele misrepresented what he had said and that it was little more than rumors recast by Steele as reliable intelligence.

Third, the Obama administration was told that the basis for the FISA application was highly dubious and likely false. Yet it continued the investigation as someone leaked its existence to the media ...

Fourth, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and inspectors general found no evidence of collusion or knowing contact between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. What inspectors general did find were false statements or possible criminal conduct by Comey and others ... 

Finally, Obama and Biden were aware of the investigation, as were the administration officials who publicly ridiculed Trump when he said there was spying on his campaign. Others, like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, declared they had evidence of collusion but never produced it. Countless reporters, columnists, and analysts have continued to deride, as writer Max Boot said it, the spinning of “absurd conspiracy theories” about how the FBI “supposedly spied on the Trump campaign.”

It is not hyperbole to state that the soft coup is the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States, and yet, a biased, dishonest, lazy, and  and incompetent media refuses to report on it.

Turley concludes:

Willful blindness has its advantages. The media eagerly covered the original leak and the false narrative of collusion, despite mounting evidence that it was false. They filled hours of cable news coverage and pages of print on a collusion story discredited by the FBI. Virtually none of these journalists or experts have acknowledged that the collusion leaks were proven false, let alone pursue the troubling implications of national security powers being used to target the political opponents of an administration. But then, in Washington, success often depends not on what you see but what you can unsee.

The soft coup is yet another example of what this country will encounter should the Democrats achieve victory in November. During the Trump era, the Dems have demonstrated again and again that they will do anything—anything—to regain power. Their viciousness and dishonesty resulted in the Russian collusion hoax, false accusations of collusion, phony whistleblower stories, copious leaks that were invarably false, the Mueller investigation, the Kavanaugh hearings, and the impeachment travesty to name only a few. 

They're hoping that they and their trained hamsters can convince voters to "unsee" a scandal that truly does represent a "threat to democracy." 

The Dems have no boundaries. They do NOT deserve to lead.

UPDATE - 1:

--------------------

The soft coup scandal just gets worse for the Democrats and for members of the Obama administration (although you'd never know it even existed if you watched the Dems' allies in the mainstream media). John Solomon reports:

The revelation that Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source for his dossier was an American resident tied to a liberal think tank close to the Obama administration has triggered new investigative interest.

The identification of Igor Danchenko as Steele’s subsource — reported by Real Clear Politics and then confirmed by Danchenko's lawyer to the New York Times — means Steele’s dossier relied on someone who wasn't based in Russia despite claims to the contrary by the FBI.

In at least two of the applications for its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting Trump adviser Carter Page, the FBI referred to the primary sub-source of the document as "truthful and cooperative" and "Russian-based," according to Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's report last December.

Danchenko also worked for several years until 2010 at the Brookings Institution, a think tank familiar to many in the Obama administration and to one key witness in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the National Security Council and an impeachment witness against Trump, worked at the Brookings Institution in 2016 and co-authored a paper with Danchenko prior to the dossier being assembled, according to Real Clear Politics.

In addition, the president of the Brookings Institution — former Clinton administration figure Strobe Talbott — contacted Steele early in the Russia collusion probe and requested a copy of his dossier to share with Obama administration officials, according to Steele's recent testimony in a British lawsuit.

So ... it looks like the Democrat elites and their think tank buddies were involved in this travesty and that the Obama administration was at the very least aware of the smear and at worst, was complicit in its evolution. 

The Dems and their trained hamsters have tried oh-so-hard to bury this. They didn't succeed, but they'll keep trying.

UPDATE - 2 (7-29-2020):

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Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. comments:

The surface scandal here is the FBI’s knowing use of the bogus Steele dossier to spy on an extraordinarily minor Trump campaign associate.

The deeper scandal, of course, is the Obama administration’s promotion of the myth that Mr. Trump was a Kremlin agent.

So how did the New York Times handle the outing of Mr. Danchenko this week? As if somebody definitely did something wrong, and it was whoever brought Mr. Danchenko’s identity to light.

“Trump Allies Help Expose Identity of F.B.I. Informant,” went a headline over a 2,200-word story, exuding disapproval that Congress and members of the public were holding a previous administration to account when the Times had chosen not to.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. The paper’s coverage of the Danchenko outing is everything a Freudian slip should be—a full-blown Technicolor revelation of neurosis. But that doesn’t mean the newsroom is not full of curious, persistent and hardheaded people who are trying to find out things. You can see it in much of their reporting. But in the perfumed ranks of senior editors, where this story was likely reshaped to meet institutional and political needs, something else prevails: fear. Fear of the loss of status, fear of being thrown to the wolves in the next social-media eruption.

I might even be tempted to say that everyone involved in the paper’s pathologically revealing treatment of the Danchenko story should be frog-marched out of journalism on principle. Except for one thing: At least the Times reported the story, and even confirmed Mr. Danchenko’s identity after it was exposed by diligent volunteers on the web. Other news outlets almost uniformly ignored the latest revelation despite its centrality to the melodrama that engulfed the country for three years. If you think something is wrong with American journalism, you’re right.

"Enemy of the American people," you wonder? 

"The mainstream media?" you ask.

Yep.

Pathetic

The following Twitter exchange occurred yesterday ...

Let's deconstruct this.

We have Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and other companies who has accomplished more in the last 10 years than Bernie Sanders, a socialist politician, has accomplished in his entire lifetime—in fact, more than a leftist demagogue like Sanders could accomplish in 10 lifetimes. 

Musk MAKES things. He has succeeded in disrupting the automotive industry by introducing cool, high tech, innovative products that have led the way toward electric vehicles—transportation that will reduce pollutants and improve the environment. He has created companies that employ about 40,000 middle class workers. He has proven that private enterprise can outdo government in space exploration—doing it better, cheaper, and more effectively than big government. There's much more, but you get the point.

Sanders TAKES things. He flaps his mouth and espouses a tired, leftist ideology that has over the last 100 years ruined the lives of hundreds of millions of people and literally destroyed countries. He has accomplished nothing of substance, has never worked in the private sector, but ironically, has somehow become a millionaire. He, like most leftists, resent the success of people who MAKE things and actually change the world for the better. 

But it's worse than that. People like Sanders not only resent the makers, They want to confiscate their rewards and distribute them to the takers. Hence, rather than encouraging people to get back to work, Sanders wants them dependent and on the dole, where his big government ideology can control them.

The word "pathetic" is appropriate, but it applies to Sanders, not Musk. There's nothing more pathetic than seeing an aging socialist who has accomplished nothing of substance in his life criticize a young entrepreneur who has literally made the world a much better place. 

A Poll of Sorts

The trained hamsters in the mainstream media can barely contain their glee as they report polling that indicates huge electoral leads for Democrat Joe Biden—a cognitively-disabled politician whose strategy is stay hidden, generally refuse to answer media questions, and speak in broad platitudes that are both inane and do not represent the direction that his political party will take him. The media, however, praises Biden strategy because their polls tell us he's winning. Maybe, but there's another much more reliable 'poll' that just might say otherwise.

First, a little context—something that the hamsters avoid like facts that don't fit their narrative.

Gun sales are at near-record levels. What is somewhat surprising is that many of the people who are buying guns are first-time buyers. They never had a gun in their home and may have even been anti-NRA, but they're buying now. 

It's reasonable to consider that simple reality as a poll of sorts. 

Roger L. Simon comments:

... I believe Trump has probably already won the election. (Okay, the weasel word “probably” is in there—we’re still some months out).

It should be obvious. Too many Americans are what Kurt Schlichter aptly calls “normals.” These people aren’t just white. They are brown and black and yellow and everything in between.

Some of them are friends and relatives and co-workers who aren’t saying a word about anything, who rarely ever do, who don’t want to get their cars keyed or something a whole lot worse to happen to them. But they are there.

Some of them even cringe at some of Trump’s presumed excesses, but they cringe more at the thought that police will not be there in an emergency for their families. And they’ve seen that happen all around.

They also despise the cancel culture because they are basically good human beings.

They don’t see a difference between “defund the police” or “redirect the funds” because political spin is as familiar to them as apple pie.

They may not have heard of Howard Zinn but they do not want to hear their country being bad-mouthed to their children in school. And they want their children to go to school.

These people, when they walk into the voting booth, are not going to be worrying about whether Christopher Columbus was or was not a racist or whether someone waved a Confederate flag at a NASCAR race.

They are going to be worry about whether they can walk their dog at night without fear of being shot.

They really, really don't like to be called "racists" or bad people because they won't capitulate to the insane demands of the left-wing woke mob. And yeah, because they work every day to keep food on the table and their families safe, they're also going to worry about their job, their wages, and the amount of money the government takes out of their paycheck. Finally, they're going to vote.

Pushback is coming.

Despicable

I am proud to say that I have been skeptical of the collective hysteria about COVID-19 since early April. My many, many posts on the subject speak for themselves. I was willing to accept a 15-day lockdown in March in the hope that governmental leaders would develop appropriate strategies for protecting the most vulnerable (even in March, super-seniors had already been identified as the demographic that had the most to fear from the virus) and then reopen the country. By the end of the first 15-days, I was convinced that our "leaders" had become the prisoner of two ideas and were about to make catastrophically bad decisions. 

That's exactly what happened. Stampeded by a media that at best was irresponsible and at worst, was downright evil in its effort to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt, government at all levels panicked and gave in to hysteria. "Leaders" refused to assess risks in a calm and thoughtful manner, adopted strategies based on grievously flawed predictive models, listened to public health "experts" who were myopic in their world view, and elevated "safetyism" to the level of a religion. Their subsequent actions, culminating much later with state and local capitulation to rioters in many cities, have grievously hurt our country. By late April, I was derisively referring to the catastrophist crowd as Team Apocalypse.

In a well-crafted and extremely troubling lecture (be sure to read the whole thing) that explores the nexis of Team Apocalypse's shutdown of the country and the state/city Democratic leaders who allowed "peaceful" protests to become dangerous riots, Heather McDonald writes:

Over the last four months, Americans have lived through what is arguably the most consequential period of government malfeasance in U.S. history. Public officials’ overreaction to the novel coronavirus put American cities into a coma; those same officials’ passivity in the face of widespread rioting threatens to deliver the coup de grâce. Together, these back-to-back governmental failures will transform the American polity and cripple urban life for decades.

Members of Team Apocalypse (i.e., the main stream media, public health experts, Democrat politicians at the local, state and federal level, and a relatively few GOP catastrophists) cloak their malfeasance in moral posturing. They tell us that all they care about is public safety, yet they refuse to acknowledge that their actions may very well cause more harm over the long term than the virus they irrationally fear. They—not the virus—have created a catastrophe that McDonald describes: 

By now, the collapse of government legitimacy is complete. For three months, public officials abdicated their responsibility to balance the costs and benefits of any given policy. They put the future of hundreds of millions of Americans in the hands of a narrow set of experts who lack all awareness of the workings of economic and social systems, and whose “science” was built on the ever-shifting sand of speculative models and on extreme risk aversion regarding only one kind of risk.

The public officials who ceded their authority to the so-called experts were deaf to the pleas of law-abiding business owners who saw their life’s efforts snuffed out. They engineered the destruction of trillions of dollars of wealth, through thoroughly arbitrary decision making. And then they stood by as billions more dollars of work burned down. Public order and safety, equal treatment under the law, stability of expectations—all the prerequisites for robust investment have been decimated. The failure to quell the riots means that more are inevitable. Any future business faces possible destruction by another lockdown or by looting—which it will be is anyone’s guess.

As politicians turned petty tyrants blithely destroyed the lives and liveihoods of tens of millions of wage earners, private contractors, gig workers, and small business people; as they created levels of financial stress ("How do I pay my rent? How do I pay for groceries?") that were unknown to millions; as they exacerbated serious health conditions unrelated to the virus because people were too afraid to get treated, and as they tore at the social fabric of our country, those leaders should be ashamed. 

McDonald concludes:

The coronavirus lockdowns demonstrated our leaders’ ignorance of economic interdependence. After the riots, that ignorance has been shown to run far deeper. It is an ignorance about government’s most fundamental obligation: to safeguard life, liberty, and property. It is an ignorance about human nature and human striving.

Property and capital are not soulless abstractions, easily replaced by an insurance payout, as the rioters and their apologists maintain. (The Massachusetts Attorney General noted that burning is “how forests grow.”) Capital is accumulated effort and innovation, the sum of human achievement and imagination. Its creation is the aim of civilization. But civilization is everywhere and at all times vulnerable to the darkest human impulses. Government exists to rein in those impulses so that individual initiative can flourish. America’s Founders, schooled in a profound philosophical and literary tradition dating back to classical antiquity, understood the fragility of civil peace and the danger of the lustful, vengeful mob.

Our present leaders, the products of a politicized and failing education system, seem to know nothing of those truths. Pulling the country back from the abyss will require a recalling of our civilizational inheritance.

If it were only "ignorance," I'd feel better, but it's more than that. When you look a little deeper, it's easy to see the signs that much of this was precipitated by a desire to oust a president theyTeam Apocalypse despised. They were willing to sacrifice lives and livelihoods for power. And that makes their actions despicable. 

"Peaceful"

Have you noticed how often the Democrats' trained hamsters in the media use the adjective "peaceful" when describing the protests in Democrat cities like Seattle or Portland or New York or Minneapolis. Everything is PEACEFUL, every protester is PEACEFUL, the entire atmosphere is PEACEFUL. 

As the weeks passed following the George Floyd murder, things got a little less "peaceful" as the leftist "protestors" began committing acts of vandalism, then arson, then thievery and destruction, and finally violence and death. The hamsters were forced to add an adverb—"mostly peaceful." And when the "protesters" started to attack the police, it wasn't protestors' fault—the meany police officers and/or federal agents were the problem, not the protesters who by that time had morphed into a "mostly peaceful" violent mob. The classic in this genre is the BBC News (UK) headline: “27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests." There must be some number, say, "1000 police officers injured," that would allow the BBC to characterize the "protest" as "violent," but maybe not.

In Portland, the hard-left Democrat mayor has allowed effective mob rule every night since late May. He has instructed the police to accept vandalism, arson, thievery, and destruction, along with acts of violence, rather than protecting the citizens and businesses of his city. 

Enter Trump and Federal law enforcement when the mob decided to vandalize and then torch a federal court house. The Democrats, true to form, described Trump's actions as a "threat to Democracy." The poor "mostly peaceful protesters" (a.k.a., a leftist mob) were characterized as the victims in all of this. The Dems and their presidential candidate essentially showed solidarity with the extremist Antifa and BLM groups, hyperventilating over "Stasi-like tactics" employed by the feds and arguing that the federal government has no right to protect its property when local official refuse to do so. Uhhh, wasn't it the Stasi that was spawned by the Communist states that the leftists are trying to re-create here? Oops, never mind.

The Editors of the Wall Street Journal comment:

Critics have complained that federal agents obscure their identity and operate out of unmarked cars. Officers legitimately fear being identified by name and harassed at home, and their superiors have sometimes allowed them to obscure nameplates while still displaying their patches and badge numbers.

Meanwhile, protesters routinely dress in identical “black bloc” attire and obscure their faces. They’ve made a habit of swarming officers who attempt an arrest, creating chaos, and helping the suspect disappear. Unmarked cars help federal agents surveil the scene without attracting unwanted attention, and they also enable law enforcement to complete arrests by choosing a safe and opportune moment to make their move. Those arrested are read their Miranda rights and booked as usual.

We understand Mr. Trump’s desire to restore order, but he’s also saving Democrats from themselves. State and local Democrats will blame federal intervention for any and all disorder, deflecting attention from their own failures. The media will echo whatever they say. Progressives run Portland, Chicago, New York and other cities now experiencing a surge of violence. If they want to indulge the mayhem, then let them live with the consequences.

The consequences for the Dems are far more serious than chaos and burning buildings in blue cities. The nation is watching, and despite the gaslighting being done by Democrat mayors and governors and prominent members like Nancy Pelosi, it's pretty obvious that the Dems can't control their own crazies. In fact, it's even worse than that. Mayor and Governors in blue locals are cheering them on.

Voters observe the Dems sympatico reaction to what are clearly riots and rioters and extrapolate to the national scene. It's one thing to watch the chaos in Portland or Seattle as Democrat leaders look the other way or label it a "summer of love." It's something else altogether to think that under Dem leadership nationally, this could become not the exception, but the norm. And when Democrat leaders covertly endorse defunding the police (who protect those voters from all types of crazies), the rest of the story writes itself.

Pushback is coming.

UPDATE -- 1:

-------------------

Issue & Insights comments:

This is part of a pattern of how the [extreme] left works: Destroy the rule of law, the backbone of our free republic. Intimidate ordinary citizens into silence. Then support and elevate rule by power of unelected street thugs in Antifa and BLM. The meek may inherit the earth, but they won’t get the big cities.

None of what we’re seeing should be viewed as a surprise or some sort of accident. Far from it. The city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, and Portland’s far-left city council, have not only permitted the violence, but enabled and encouraged it – just as mayors in Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles have done.

Imagine for just a moment the media reaction if right-wing mobs were torching cities like Portland -- for 56-days straight! I don't think you'd see the word "peaceful" used one time—not one. And the Dem mayors of those cities? They be demanding federal intervention.

Oh, BTW, Portland, Oregon hasn't had a GOP mayor or city council since the 1950s.

UPDATE -- 2:

-------------------------

Kurt Schlichter considers all of this and writes about pushback:

What's next?

Well, next we normal people riot. 

But it will be a quiet riot. Not the mediocre eighties band either – and you will not feel the noize. It will be a wordless, marchless riot of normal people, and it will occur on November 3rd at the voting booth. We’re not going to burn, loot, and destroy our own stuff, the stuff we built and paid for. Also, we have jobs. No, we’ll riot with our ballots, electing Republicans down the line, while pillaging the Democrats and sowing their fields with salt.

That’s how we fight will back. Don’t miss the fun. If you aren’t registered, register. If you can’t make it to the polls, get an absentee ballot. Every hand, hold high your figurative pitchforks and torches! Burn baby, burn.

Heh. To borrow a phrase from the Bernie Bros, we will indeed "feel the "burn."

UPDATE -- 3 (7-23-2020)

--------------------------------------

Steven Green shows us a video of a Portland protester who, in attempting to set fire to the federal court house, sets himself on fire instead. His comment just about covers it:

... a peaceful protestor peacefully sets himself on fire while attempting to peacefully burn down a courthouse with peace in his peaceful little heart.

Yep. "Peaceful" all the way down. 

Back-to-School -- III

The New York Times is the newspaper of record for Team Apocalypse. The COVID-19 related dishonesty and distortions that have been published in the NYT since March, 2020 are far too numerous to count, but they've succeeded in creating hysteria among the paper's progressive readership.

In a recent op-ed entitled, "How to Re-Open Schools without Killing Teacher and Parents," the author writes:

More than 140,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, and there are growing outbreaks in many states. No other developed nation has sent children back to school with the virus at these levels. Data about transmission in classrooms is limited. Many teachers have health risks and are understandably afraid to return. The safest course would be for kindergartners through 12th graders to continue with online courses in the fall.

Obviously, the author is entitled to her opinion, but her argument is so thin and outrageous, it deserves a rebuttal and fisking. let's take her paragraph one sentence at a time:

More than 140,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, and there are growing outbreaks in many states. 

Of these deaths, the CDC reports that a grand total of 22 children of primary and middle school level have died. There are about 60 million school age children in the U.S., so the probability of a child succumbing to the virus is 0.0000037 percent. 

No other developed nation has sent children back to school with the virus at these levels. 

No other country is testing to the extent that we have, and therefore, no other country has analogous data on "cases"—the latest scare tactic employed by Team Apocalypse. The following industrialized countries, all of whom are still experiencing "cases," have put their children back in school:  China, South Korea, Germany, Denmark, France, Sweden, Israel, South Africa and dozens of others. Many strategies are in place to have kids in school full time.

Data about transmission in classrooms is limited.

That's because our political leadership panicked and closed schools almost immediately. The data that are available indicate that transmission from children aged 4 to 10 to adults is much less likely than adult to adult transmission.

Many teachers have health risks and are understandably afraid to return. 

In general, teacher ages range from 22 to 64 years old. In the entire United States, 23,600 people in that age group have died of COVID, the vast majority with significant health risks and above the age of 55. There are about 3.3 million teachers in a population of 330 million or about 1 percent of the population. To be very conservative, let's assume teachers have a 5x higher risk of contracting the virus than the average person (no data are available to support this and there are studies that indicate that children are less likely than others to transmit the virus, even if they have it ). That means in an absolute worst case scenario, we could expect 1,180 teachers to die of the virus from all causes including being in the classroom (or going out to eat or coming into contact with someone at the grocery store). The probability of a teacher dying from COVID from any cause is 0.0357 percent, less than 4 one-hundredths of one percent.

The safest course would be for kindergartners through 12th graders to continue with online courses in the fall.

Actually, no it isn't. Steve Welch notes:

As of June 17, 26 American children under the age of 15 have died from COVID. That is not a misprint: 26 children under the age of 15. By comparison, in the first six months of this year, an estimated 122 children under the age of 15 died from the flu, 536 children died in car accidents, and another 349 died in pool drownings. I don’t hear anyone saying we should stop putting kids in cars or letting them swim in pools.

In fact, you could argue that even with the virus, kids just might be safer in school that they are at home.

And none of this considers the loss of learning, the ineffectiveness of on-line learning in the 4 to 14-year old cohort, and the profound psycho-social ramifications for children. So by all means, let's keep schools closed so we don't "kill" teachers and grandma. The kids? They become pawns for Team Apocalypse and its politically motivated narrative.

UPDATE -1:

--------------------

This tweet by Joe Biden (yeah, I know, it was probably written for him) provides clear proof that he's become a card carrying member of Team Apocalypse:

Following this logic in states where "cases" are going up (but deaths are going down and hospitalizations are becoming shorter and shorter), we should definitely close all grocery stores, force first responders to stay in their headquarters, and severely limit other medical care. After all, like education, these services are critical, but providing them where "...infection rates are going up or remaining too high is just plain dangerous.”

I know that Biden isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier and given his cognitive disability, I suspect he's unable to absorb the hard numbers or percentages I present in the body of this post. But still ...

In reality the only "danger" associated with reopening schools is the danger posed to Team Apocalypse's narrative and far more important, the threat to their political strategy that so far, just might be working.

UPDATE- 2 (7/22/2020):

-------------------------------------------

The Times of London reports on a recent study:

There has been no recorded case of a teacher catching the coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, [emphasis mine] according to one of the government’s leading scientific advisers.

Mark Woolhouse, a leading epidemiologist and member of the government’s Sage committee, told The Times that it may have been a mistake to close schools in March given the limited role children play in spreading the virus.

I'm waiting to see how team Apocalypse spins that. Maybe we should ask Joe Biden (see Update-1) what he thinks of the report. Oh, wait, Joe Biden doesn't take any questions, and I can guarantee he hasn't read the report. In fact, I wonder if he knows what The Times of London is.

Consider this melodramatic comment by a member of some teachers union as related by James Freeman:

This also creates a rather awkward moment for U.S. teachers unions and their media friends. Recently in the New York newspaper called the Times (no relation), a teacher named Rebecca Martinson opined:

Every day when I walk into work as a public-school teacher, I am prepared to take a bullet to save a child. In the age of school shootings, that’s what the job requires. But asking me to return to the classroom amid a pandemic and expose myself and my family to Covid-19 is like asking me to take that bullet home to my own family. 

Perhaps a bit overstated? Charlotte Hays of the Independent Women’s Forum calls Ms. Martinson’s op-ed “An Emotional Plea To Play Hooky” and observes:

Nobody can or should be forced to continue in a job that she deems too dangerous.

But what struck me about Ms. Martinson’s piece is that she never lets on about her risk. She doesn’t tell us if she lives with elderly, vulnerable family members. She doesn’t tell us whether she has underlying conditions that would make her susceptible to COVID-19.

The most prominent fact cited is that 75 “school-based” employees of the New York City Department of Education lost their lives to COVID-19 between March 16, 2020 and June 22. While each of these losses is undeniably tragic, to make these numbers meaningful, we need to know which ones contracted the infection because of their jobs. New York City’s public schools began shutting down in mid-March.

The Times report from the U.K. suggests that the number is zero. 

That 's about the same as the credibility of Team Apocalypse at the moment. 

Oracle

It's really hard to be elevated to oracle status—particularly when most of your policies and predictions (along with your early reliance of grievously inaccurate "scientific" models) have been wrong or noticeably off-base. 

But none of that stops the Team Apocalypse's trained hamsters in the media from breathlessly hanging on ever word uttered by Dr. Anthony Fauci. To cement his status, the hamsters continually characterize Fauci as this country's "foremost epidemiology expert." I suppose that's possible, but then again, an appeal to authority (Fauci's) means little when the authority is as often wrong as he is right.

Part of Fauci's allure is that "he stands up to" the hated Donald Trump (even though Trump has been no more incorrect in his prognostications and recommendations than Fauci). But another element of Fauci worship is that he is a public health catastrophist, making recommendations that might work in a public health vacuum, but fail miserably when the nation's overall 'health' must be measured in a real world that demands that people put food on the table, go to work, enjoy the outdoors, participate in sports, send kids to school, combat depression and other psychological illnesses (precipitated by a total shut-down), go to the hospital for the myriad conditions that affect us all, and otherwise live their lives.

Recently, Fauci praised New York stating: “New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly by doing the things [i.e., draconian shutdown] that you’re talking about.”

Hmmm. They "did it correctly?"

That would be the same New York that was the epicenter of the virus in April/May with over 32,000 deaths (about 22 percent of the nation's death toll) with only 6 percent of the nation's population. That occurred with a complete shutdown.

That would be the same New York that re-inserted 80-plus year old virus patients back into nursing homes that house the most vulnerable population—the result ... at least 4,500 needless deaths and probably more. Other states did NOT do this.

That would be the same New York whose Governor believed flawed epidemiological models and demanded 30,000 to 40,000 ventilators and then needed only 6,000; who demanded a hospital ship and the conversion of the Javits Center for additional beds. Both facilities remained virtually empty.

That would be the same New York City whose weathier population fled, immigrating to other states where they likely spread the virus.

That would be the same New York that has been devastated economically, and has suffered from severe riots that in part, at least, can be attributed to its shutdown.

Matt Margolis writes:

Last month, The Wall Street Journal spoke with “nearly 90 front-line doctors, nurses, health-care workers, hospital administrators, and government officials, and reviewed emails, legal documents, and memos, to analyze what went wrong” in New York, and identified seven missteps: improper patient transfers; insufficient isolation protocols; inadequate staff planning; mixed messages between state government, city government, and hospital officials; over-reliance on government sources for key equipment; procurement-planning gaps; and Incomplete staff-protection policies.

But, yeah, Dr. Tony tells us that New York "did it right" because he loves, loves, loves draconian shutdowns. Naturally, he;'s a fan of Governor Andrew Cuomo who did just that.

With Fauci as their oracle, the trained media hamsters gleefully trumpet the fact that Florida (with a GOP governor) is now seeing more virus "cases" than New York. What they fail to note is that FL has had less than 6,000 total deaths (almost half are people 80+ years old with co-morbidities) out of a population of 20 million. One-fifth the number of deaths as New York. 

The hamsters also fail to note that even with large increase in "cases," the length of hospital stays and the overall death rate nationwide is going down week over week. 

But now, the Oracle is all about "cases." Maybe he should spend a moment and provide his acolytes with a bit of scientific and statistical context. Nah, that's not the job of an oracle.

UPDATE-1:

--------------------

Team Apocalypse modifies its catastrophist narrative daily to maximize fear, uncertainty and doubt. Over the weekend, the narrative has been modified to criticize the fact that test results take too long to process. That according to the Team is somehow a failure at the national level. Talking heads note that almost half the cases are now asymptomatic, and therefore any delay at all could mean that those asymptomatic cases could be infecting others. The humanity!

Let's deconstruct this.

First, the fact that cases show absolutely no symptoms is a good thing. First, it means that the viral load for the person is meager or that the strain of the virus has become less virulent. In addition, the more people who contract the virus, the more quickly we'll reach herd immunity.

But let's assume that Joe Biden is appointed Medical tzar (a frightening thought), takes control, and magically provides tests that provide instant results. I mean on the spot—either you have COVID-19 or you don't, and you'll know within seconds. Sadly, that provides little real benefit. 

You test negative, but on your way out of the testing center you come into contact with a person who does have the virus and you're infected. Now you have the virus and you're asymptomatic or you have very mild symptoms and think it's just allergies. What good did the INSTANT test do for you?

So what will Team Apocalypse recommend—testing for every citizen, every day for months on end. I think even Dr. Anthony Fauci would agree that that's ridiculous, but ... maybe not.

UPDATE-2:

------------------------

This rant by Stephen Kruiser encapsulates the way of lot us who are NOT on Team Apocalypse feel about the current status of the COVID-19 crisis:

I’m so old I remember when it was a good thing to have a healthy and inherent lack of trust for government officials. Now we are supposed to be worshiping at the Altar of Fauci and not asking any questions lest we be accused of wanting to create a wholesale COVID slaughter.

Clarifying once again: I am aware that this a highly contagious virus and that COVID-19 cases have been spiking this past month. I’m not minimizing or dismissing anything.

However, even that discussion has been a dishonest one. We’re supposed to believe that fifty people in a bar or a hundred people in a church are the cause for the uptick but that tens of thousands of people protesting and rioting is perfectly safe. 

Dishonesty and gaslighting has been the norm since the virus struck in earnest in March. All of the hard facts (not just those selected to increase hysteria), context, and yes, "science" have been virtually non-existent.

The catastrophist narrative began, I suspect, as an understandable effort to frighten the public purposely in order to "slow the spread," but quickly morphed into the media-driven effort to encourage click or viewership 24-7. It then further transformed as politicians in cities and states who became "petty tyrants" decided they could control peoples' lives and livelihoods on a whim. Finally, the entire COVID-19 milieu became toxic once Team Apocalypse realized that the virus and the shutdown could be used to defeat Trump and take power.

That's where we are. It's not a good place to be.

Abstractions

The Left has a way with abstractions. As our nation has evolved to become a better place over the last half century, specific instances of person-to-person racism have declined in number; educational and employment opportunities for people of color has increased substantially, and black and brown faces are seen everywhere—in entertainment, in industry, in the professions, in science, in sports. And where work must still be done, the nation has established laws that facilitate the hiring and advancement of people of color. That's something to celebrate, recognizing that work must still be done, but celebrate nonetheless.

But celebration of achievements in the area of race is simply not within the vocabulary of modern leftists. Since they have trouble picking out specific or categorical instances* of "racism," they've decide to fall back on the "systemic racism" narrative—an abstraction that is vague enough to sound serious, but in fact is meaningless, if real societal change is desired.

Scott Nelson comments:

America today is suffering from a tyranny of abstractions. Ostensibly, we’re seeing a mass movement against racial injustice—but what specific injustice are we talking about? Is it the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis? The police officers involved have been fired and criminally charged. Is it a problem of police brutality in the Minneapolis police department? It’s up to the elected district and state’s attorneys to investigate those involved in police misconduct. Is it a problem of anti-black police brutality across the country? A study from August 2019 finds no evidence of anti-black disparities in cop shootings. Is it that black people are being killed in general? In 2018, there were 7,407 black homicide victims; 90% were killed by other blacks.

The problem, then, seems lamentably unclear, and this abstraction is hardly incidental. Racism traditionally referred to acts between individuals; individuals can be held responsible for their actions. But discussing racism as a systemic problem makes everyone responsible—and no one.

The wide berth given to the charge of racism thus allows for great flexibility, enabling Black Lives Matter movements to spread across the world. While other countries may not share America’s particular narrative about slavery, most can point to some act of discrimination in their past. Discrimination of some sort is inevitable, since every community that comes into existence does so with a shared sense of who it is and who it is not. Unfortunately, racial differences are one of many ways that groups have historically distinguished themselves from one another. It was the genius of the American Founding Fathers to lay the framework for a community based on what all humans can believe in—namely, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In this shared conviction there are no masters and slaves; all humans are dignified and partake of true equality.

The real problem is that abstractions—in particular, the systemic racism abstraction, does little to serve the African American community. It does, of course, encourage a sense of victimization, providing a ready excuse that conveniently ignores other structural failures that have occurred and continue to occur within parts of the African American community.

In an odd way, the Left's use of abstractions like "systemic racism" is a form of soft racism itself. It suggests that people of color are unable to overcome "the system" (a canard that has been proven untrue millions of times). The Left argues that the system itself must be dismantled so that people of color, who the Left views as unable to overcome the challenges the system poses for everyone, can get the special help they need. That's arrogant and condescending, but the Left is so caught up in their utopian ideal of "social justice," they just don't see it.

FOOTNOTE:

-----------------------

*  Cases like the horrific murder of George Floyd are NOT indicative or everyday police encounters with people of color, despite what the Left wants us all to believe. Their narrative is a lie, intended to inflame racial tensions, not solve problems.

Back-to-School -- II

The Democrats and their media hamsters, all charter members of Team Apocalypse, are desperately trying to keep our schools closed. Using pandemic porn as their driver, they make dishonest claim after dishonest claim, trying to convince the catastrophist wing of the general public that kids and teachers will die. For insurance, they argue that grandparents will wither and succumb to the grim reaper because their grandkids go to school. 

Unlike the leftist "activists" who become outraged over the use of the wrong pronoun, there is more than sufficient reason for the rest of us to be outraged by Team Apocalypse's lies about school re-opening.

Steve Welch comments:

For those who don’t get the outrage, let me try to put it in simple terms.

Yes, COVID-19 is dangerous, especially to our elderly population and those who are high-risk. Yes, there will be some young, healthy people who die from COVID, as is true with the 38,000 people who die from car accidents each year, or the 2,000 children who died last year from cancer.

As of June 17, 26 American children under the age of 15 have died from COVID. That is not a misprint: 26 children under the age of 15.[*]  By comparison, in the first six months of this year, an estimated 122 children under the age of 15 died from the flu, 536 children died in car accidents, and another 349 died in pool drownings. I don’t hear anyone saying we should stop putting kids in cars or letting them swim in pools.

We are stealing our children’s youth and ultimately will be stealing their adulthood, because they will lack the education and social skills to succeed, and we are saddling them with a greater and greater amount of debt as we destroy our economy. Disrupting schooling also forces parents to try to homeschool their children and work their job at the same time.

The effects will be more pronounced in poor communities that lack the technical infrastructure to allow children to access and be successful in distance learning. For the social justice warriors who have understandably been working for equal opportunity in society, this is the sword to die on.

Every person I know in his 70s—every single one—says kids should go back to school. I cannot imagine a single grandparent in this country who would not sacrifice isolating himself for the next six months so his grandchildren can have the joy of playing tag with their friends on the playground or dissecting a frog with their lab partners.

Yes, teachers are at greater risk than students. Doctors and nurses, many of whom are also high risk, continue to go to work every day treating actual COVID patients because that is their job. Individuals working in meat plants are keeping America fed, often under dangerous working circumstances.

Workers put themselves at risk by stocking the shelves at the supermarkets to ensure Americans survive. I cannot imagine teachers not willing to make the same sacrifices. Behind ensuring Americans have food, ensuring our children are well educated is a very close second in top priorities as a society.

And yet, Team Apocalypse is happy to keep it all shut down—let the kids be damned. After all, anything that destabilizes the body politic is a good thing for them. Elect a cognitively-disabled Joe Biden and it will all go away.

The Democrats along with their public sector union supporters seem willing to sacrifice our kids and grandkids education and psychological well-being to win an election. To say that's despicable doesn't even begin to cover it.

FOOTNOTE:

-------------------------

* There are about 60 million kids under the age of 15 in the United States. That means that the death rate is (get ready) 0.43 kids per million. As a percentage that's 0.0000433 percent! And yet, the Team Apocalypse fools tell us this is all about keeping kids safe. It isn't ... and even if it was, the numbers just don't a support their faux-concern.

The Doorman

If Donald Trump's first term as president has taught the Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media anything at all, it's that they MUST continue to focus on their narrative. Stated as simply as possible, their narrative is the following: 

Trump and his supporters are racists who don't care about the "plight" of people of color; they reject "science," thereby putting the entire country into jeopardy due do the boogieman virus, COVID-19; they are "environmental criminals" who would prefer to see the "earth destroyed;" they are "Russian puppets" who "do the bidding" of Vladimir Putin; they are meanies who aren't playing nice with China and they are the tools of "the rich" and encourage "income inequality."

To reinforce and promote this narrative,* every hour of every day is spent ignoring hard facts that challenge the narrative, purposely avoiding any context that would have the public ask questions about the narrative, working overtime to change the subject when the narrative appears to weaken; assiduously avoiding any reporting that runs counter to the narrative, and, most important, outright lying (the term 'fake news' comes to mind) when the narrative is seriously threatened.

The strategy turns the media into a propaganda organ, and it works. After all, the polls indicate that Joe Biden, a cognitively-disabled swamp creature who has accomplished relatively little in his 40+ years in Washington, is going to win easily. Gosh, those would be the same polls that indicated the Hillary Clinton was going to win in a landslide in 2016. It appears that the Dems, never ones to learn from their mistakes, are already celebrating their victory in November. We'll see.

Biden, who I believe is unable to actually make decisions on his own, is rapidly becoming a tool of the hard-left. In essence, the Bernie Bros are grasping for power through the back door, using Biden as the doorman. Kim Strassel comments on all of this:

On Tuesday Mr. Biden released his $2 trillion climate-change plan—one of the few times he’s produced a detail on anything. It is radical—no surprise, since it is the product of a task force co-chaired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mr. Biden vows to outlaw all use of coal and natural gas to generate electricity within 15 years. He’d ban oil and gas production on federal land and offshore. He’d drive to “zero emissions” cars. He’d apply “aggressive” new “appliance- and building-efficiency standards.” He’d create a new “Environmental and Climate Justice Division” of the Justice Department to mete out “jail time” to corporate officials whose businesses “continue to pollute” communities.

Mr. Biden is promising to delete the jobs of millions of Americans—at a time of soaring unemployment. A study by the National Ocean Industries Association finds that a ban on offshore drilling alone would cost 200,000 jobs, damaging regional economies. Mr. Biden would overrun the nation with solar panels, wind turbines and charging stations. [On all personal level, I'm all for some of these things, but I don't want them mandated—I want the market to decide, not the Democrats.] Basic consumer choice would disappear for vehicles, dishwashers, even homes. The Justice Department would become a weapon against businessmen who run afoul of fast-changing progressive standards.

To make this happen, Mr. Biden endorsed a plan to kill the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to move most legislation forward and has long served as a guardrail against drastic partisan proposals. He joined progressives this week in calling on a prospective Democratic majority to abolish it if Republicans don’t go along with his plans.

It appears that the Dems are perfectly happy re-applying something they've learned during the COVID-19 debacle—it's okay to destroy economic activity, to upend culture, to keep kids out of school, and to put the middle class workers at significant risk, as long as all of it results in their acquisition of power. Like Team Apocalypse in the first half of 2020, they've decided that their doorman, Joe Biden, can be manipulated into positions that are far from his self-defined "moderate" political stance. 

There was NOTHING moderate about Team Apocalypse. Their approach was and continues to stoke fear and ultimately hysteria across the land while adopting and encouraging extreme policies that increase debt and the size of government while accomplishing nothing that benefits the American people. Team Biden will follow suit.

FOOTNOTE:

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* Each of the Dems' narrative points are demonstrably untrue. Hard facts and the administration's actions and accomplishments from 2017 to 2020 belie the narrative's claims, but none of that matters in the end.