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2021-
2021-05-31
f
EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO POLICY MYOPIA (AND
EMOTIONAL SUPPORT MASKS)
The
Twilight Zone, Hogan’s Heroes, and the
Emotional Support Mask
“Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
I’m not sure about the former.”-Albert
Einstein
Two of our favorite TV
shows are The
Twilight Zone and Hogan’s Heroes. These shows
provide lessons as we tentatively emerge from the
herd stupidity (see Einstein’s quote) that led to
the establishment of our state-run Covid religion in
March 2020. An episode of The Twilight Zone comes to mind
when contemplating the Covidians who cling to their
emotional support masks and other revolting,
pseudo-scientific “nonpharmaceutical interventions,”
supported by the public health police state and the
coronavirus lockdown chorus in the media.
In The Twilight Zone
episode titled “Eye of the Beholder,” Janet Tyler
undergoes plastic surgery to correct her
“deformity.” The plot centers on Janet waiting in
the hospital to see if her plastic surgery is
“successful.” This is her 11th trip to the hospital
for treatment and she is desperate to look like
everyone else.
During the entire
episode, Janet’s face is not shown, but we are
constantly told how hideously ugly she is. The
nurses, doctor, and other people who attend to her
in the hospital also have their faces shielded. When
the bandages are finally removed from Janet’s face,
we see that, in fact, Janet is beautiful, while the
self-declared “normal” doctors and nurses are
mutilated, deformed monstrosities.
The lesson to be learned
from this episode is that those of us who choose to
be maskless are normal, while those who make our
children wear masks for seven hours a day and keep
them from playing with their friends are grotesque
and deformed, both mentally and physically.
Infectious disease experts, working with teachers’
union bosses and supine politicians, continue to
maim and deform parents and children in the name of
protecting public health. We must be saved by these
enlightened priests, rather than relying on our own
sound judgment.
Several days ago, one
the country’s most prominent Covidians, Mayor Bill
de Blasio, announced that New York City public
schools will “fully reopen” for in-person learning
in September. Of course, he also stated that
students and teachers will still be required to wear
masks, even though almost all teachers and many
students will be vaccinated by that date. Of course,
anti-social distancing will also apply, along with
other Covid mitigation policies to prevent normal
childhood development. It seems that the unethical
and deviant child experiment must continue for the
indefinite future.
The second lesson from
TV history comes from Hogan’s Heroes. You may recall
that a key character in this show was Colonel
Wilhelm Klink, the bungling, vain, cowardly, and
self-serving Commandant of Stalag 13. In every
episode, Colonel Klink proudly states that “no one
has ever escaped from Stalag 13.” Klink’s maniacal
and myopic focus on this one statistic makes him
oblivious to the fact that Colonel Robert Hogan of
the U.S. Air Force and his fellow prisoners of war
are engaging in major sabotage and rescue operations
against the Third Reich. Klink is even considered a
“success” by his superiors in Berlin, even though he
is clearly an abject failure.
Klink’s obsession with
a single statistic brings to mind another source
of government failure in the “war” on the
coronavirus: policy
myopia, exhibited by our new bureaucratic
masters, infectious disease experts, and their
staunch supporters, politicians, who
enthusiastically implement their “recommendations”
and “guidelines.” Infectious disease experts have
fully captured government in a clever coup d’etat,
armed with faulty epidemiological models that have
repeatedly shown themselves to be wildly
inaccurate and “scientifically” designed lockdowns
and “reopening” strategies that always “succeed.”
They work well with virtue-signaling politicians,
who look for short-term fixes with instant and
visible results to “solve” problems. Like Colonel
Klink, the infectious disease experts have a
maniacal obsession with “cases,” while
simultaneously ignoring all the collateral damage
– the death and destruction created by the
quarantines, lockdowns, and reopenings themselves.
The end result is that infectious disease experts and the
politicians who implemented their draconian
policies have succeeded in doing more damage to
our economy and society, and yes, even to public
health, than all the recent enemies of Western
civilization combined. These officials also
seem to have a single goal in mind, reducing the
number of individuals who contract the virus. Such a single-minded approach is not
consistent with an appropriate cost/benefit
analysis of the consequences of their proposed
actions.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a
professor of medicine at Stanford University, who is also a health economist and
therefore familiar with the concept of trade-offs
in decision-making (unlike infectious disease
experts), notes that studies repeatedly
show that children who wear masks completely
undermine the very limited benefit masks provide by
touching them and repeatedly taking them on and off.
Moreover, there are serious repercussions to child
social development when children are masked that go
beyond “simple” physical irritation and difficulty
breathing. Bhattacharya emphasizes
that the development needs of young children
require them to see other people’s faces.
For example, learning to speak requires seeing a
person’s lips move. Older children also need to see
the face to learn body language and how to
appropriately interact socially.
Despite
the strong scientific evidence on the
ineffectiveness of masks for adults, and the harms
inflicted by masking children, it’s a puzzle as to
why so many individuals continue to insist on
their usefulness. Perhaps
masks simply provide an emotional support
mechanism for people who have been
unfortunately frightened out of their wits by the
pseudo-scientists and the profit-maximizing media.
It’s time to ditch the emotional support mask and
those who advocate its use. (read
more)
2021-05-31
e
EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO LAS VEGAS (OR NOT)
Contra Emotional Alarmism, ‘Global
Warming’ Doesn’t Threaten Las Vegas
New York City can’t
claim any farms, nor do you see herds of cows when
you’re riding up Avenue of the Americas. Is the city
“food insecure” as a consequence? Not in the least.
To produce in a market economy is to import.
Applied to New York
City, it’s populated by some of the world’s most
talented people from around the world. These
remarkable people are pursuing all manner of work
specialties, and their brilliance exists as a
relentless magnet for imports. This includes food.
So yes, New York City is
“food dependent.” The city known for having some of
the world’s greatest restaurants doesn’t produce any
of the food that the city’s chefs cook for their
customers. The main thing is that NYC’s dependence
is of no consequence. So long as its inhabitants and
its visitors are productive, New Yorkers and those
who visit will never go hungry.
What’s true about New
York City is also true for Switzerland, the country.
That the rich European nation is “oil poor” is of no
consequence in much the same way that it doesn’t
matter about NYC being “food poor.” Taking it to
another level, famously neutral Switzerland could be
at war with or embargoed by every oil-producing
nation and corporation on earth, yet it would still
consume the world’s oil as though it had bubbled up
right outside of Zurich. The Swiss would simply
purchase oil from those that the countries and
companies are selling it to.
In a market economy,
we’re ultimately all trading with one another. And
as there’s no accounting for the final destination
of any good, readers need never fear an inability to
access any market good. So long as they’re
productive, the world’s plenty will make it to them.
Which is why a “famine”
could never cause starvation. Catchy song though it
may be, Band-Aid’s 1984 fundraising tune “Do They
Know It’s Christmas?” indicated that the tragic
starvation the Ethiopians were suffering was a
result of its people living in a nation where
“nothing ever grows.” By that measure, New Yorkers
are starving. In reality, a lack of economic freedom
is what caused food supplies to decline in the
African nation. To produce is to once again import,
whether from across the street or the other side of
the world. Ethiopian starvation was a tragic result
of a lack of production.
All of which brings us
to a recent piece by Timothy Egan, a rather
alarmist and emotional columnist for the New York Times.
Egan believes that so-called “global warming”
exists as an existential threat to Las Vegas. Yes,
you read it right.
On its
own such a view redefines ludicrous. It implies
that the journalist in Egan knows something that
hundreds of thousands of Americans, and
realistically millions, don’t. As they move
to Vegas in greater and greater numbers, it would
seem they’re blind to the devastation that awaits
them. It doesn’t stop there.
As evidenced by the mass
migration of Americans to Vegas, there’s enormous
investment flowing into the city and surrounding
towns. Think about it. Migration is usually a
consequence of economic opportunity, and economic
opportunity emerges from investment. Translated for
those who need it, people are moving to Vegas in
droves because investors are directing enormous
wealth to the desert oasis on the assumption of
positive returns born of better times ahead.
Does
Egan know something investors don’t know?
According to the columnist, planet Earth is
suffering “fast declining health” due to rapid
warming. As Egan sees it, human excess is bringing
on a “megadrought” out west that is “one of the
worst in nearly 500 years.” Imagine that!
We live pretty high today with our gas guzzling cars
and cucumber-cool air conditioning that is
supposedly bringing on earth’s death. It raises a
question about just what the Sybarites were doing
out west 500 years ago to parch the land. Oh well,
it seems the hedonists of centuries ago either
survived; that, or planet Earth did. One gets the
feeling this same Earth will outlive Egan. And
generations worth of future Egans. So will Vegas,
Phoenix, Los Angeles and the rest. Stop and think
about it.
If it’s
really true that human activity has changed
weather patterns for good such that water will be
no more out west, the very humans who brought on
what Egan deems Armageddon will innovate around
what the newspaperman deems a problem. The irony
here is that Egan himself perhaps hinted at how
they’ll do it.
As he put it in his
comically overwrought column, “To build Hoover Dam
in the 1930s, an army of Depression-era daredevils
poured enough concrete to form a two-lane road from
Seattle to Miami. The dam powered Los Angeles and
birthed modern Las Vegas.” Which is the point.
“Cracked” and
“sun-baked” as the western U.S. might be (Egan’s
words), the well of human ingenuity is never
parched. Certainly not in Las Vegas or Los Angeles.
The wealth in both locales is beyond abundant. And
to produce is to import.
Applied to the western
cities allegedly facing desiccation, what they lack
represents economic opportunity. Just as New York
City’s “food dependency” doesn’t limit food intake
for New Yorkers, or “oil dependence” doesn’t limit
Swiss consumption of crude, readers needn’t view a
western water shortage as tantamount to western
death. That’s the case because water is a market
good like anything else. Since it is, what Vegas et
al are said to be bereft of will be taken care of
with ease in the marketplace. It’s what capitalists
do, notwithstanding Egan’s nail-biting.
It’s
seemingly lost on the Times columnist that smart as he
may be, his knowledge is nano of trillions of
nanos relative to the marketplace. In other words,
what has Egan in the fetal position is, if an
actual threat, already priced. Investors and
people have moved on, and are moving their wealth
and talents to what Egan claims is doomed. The
joke is on Egan, and his “theories.” (read
more)
2021-05-31
d
EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO EDUCATION (PRINCETON
ACCOMMODATES STUDENTS OF COLOR)
"Princeton delenda
est"
Princeton eliminates Greek, Latin
requirements for Classics majors to combat
'racism'
Classics majors at Princeton University
will no longer be required to learn Greek or Latin
while studying Ancient Greece and Rome.
Classics majors at
Princeton University will no longer be required to
learn Greek or Latin while studying Ancient Greece
and Rome.
School officials
cite the purported need to combat racism. The
university announced the decision in its May 2021
issue of Princeton
Alumni Weekly.
According to
Princeton's website, the Classics
department "investigates the history, language,
literature, and thought of ancient Greece and
Rome. We use the perspectives of multiple
disciplines to understand and imagine the
diversity of these civilizations over almost two
thousand years and to reflect on what the
classical past has meant to later ages, and to our
own."
Classics, which
previously required an intermediate proficiency in
Greek or Latin to enter the concentration, has now
eliminated that prerequisite as well as the
requirement to continue taking classes in Greek
and Latin languages.
The university states that students are still
encouraged to take either of the languages, but
director of undergraduate studies and professor of
classics Josh Billings said that the "breadth of
offerings remains the same."
Changes to the
Classics requirements reportedly predate a call
from the University's
president Christoper Eisgruber to combat systematic
racism at Princeton, but Billings said that a new
urgency was sparked after the widespread protests
on racism last summer.
"We think that
having new perspectives in the field will make the
field better," said Billings. "Having people who
come in who might not have studied classics in
high school and might not have had a previous
exposure to Greek and Latin, we think that having
those students in the department will make it a
more vibrant intellectual community." (read
more)
2021-05-31
c
LEST WE FORGET II
U.S. MILITARY
INTERVENTIONS SINCE 1890:
FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO
SYRIA, NIGER AND SAUDI ARABIA
The following is a
partial list of U.S. military interventions from
1890 to 2019.
This guide does not include:
* mobilizations of the
National Guard,
* offshore shows of
naval strength,
* reinforcements of
embassy personnel,
* the use of
non-Defense Department personnel (e.g., Drug
Enforcement Administration),
* military exercises,
* non-combat
mobilizations (such as replacing postal strikers),
* the permanent
stationing of armed forces on bases,
* covert actions where
the US did not play a “command operation” role,
* the use of small
hostage rescue units,
* most uses of foreign
proxy troops,
* U.S. piloting of
foreign warplanes,
* foreign or domestic
disaster assistance,
* military training
and advisory programs not involving direct combat,
* civic action
programs, and many other military activities.
Forces: N:
Naval, B: Bombing, NT: Nuclear
Threat, CO: Command Operation, NW:
Nuclear War,
J: Jets, T:
Troops
COUNTRY
OR STATE Dates of intervention
Forces Comments
SOUTH
DAKOTA
1890 (-?)
T
300+ Lakota civilians massacred at Wounded Knee.
ARGENTINA
1890
T
U.S. “interests” protected in Buenos Aires.
CHILE
1891
T
Marines clash with nationalist rebels.
HAITI
1891
T
Black revolt on Navassa Island defeated.
IDAHO
1892
T
Army suppresses silver miners’ strike.
HAWAI’I
1893 (-?) N,
T
Independent kingdom overthrown, seized 1898.
CHICAGO
1894
T
Breaking of rail strike, 34 killed.
NICARAGUA
1894
T
Month-long occupation of Bluefields.
CHINA
1894-95 N,
T
Marines land in Sino-Japanese War
KOREA
1894-96
T
Marines kept in Seoul during war.
PANAMA
1895 T,
N
Marines land in Colombian province.
NICARAGUA
1896
T
Marines land in port of Corinto.
CHINA
1898-1900
T
Boxer Rebellion fought by foreign armies.
PHILIPPINES
1898-1910 N,
T
Seized from Spain, killed 600,000 Filipinos.
CUBA
1898-1902 (-?) N,
T
Seized from Spain, still hold Guantánamo base.
PUERTO
RICO
1898 (-?) N,
T
Seized from Spain, occupation continues.
GUAM
1898 (-?) N,
T
Seized from Spain, still use as base.
MINNESOTA
1898 (-?)
T
Army battles Ojibwe revolt at Leech Lake.
NICARAGUA
1898
T
Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.
SAMOA
1899 (-?)
T
Battle over succession to throne; annexed east.
NICARAGUA
1899
T
Marines land at port of Bluefields.
IDAHO
1899-1901
T
Army occupies Coeur d’Alene mining region.
OKLAHOMA
1901(-?)
T
Army battles Creek Native revolt
[...]
LIBYA
2011(-?) B, M, T,
CO
NATO coordinates air strikes and missile attacks vs.
Qaddafi govt.
IRAQ
2014(-?) B, M, T,
CO
Air strikes & Special Forces intervene vs. ISIS.
etc.
SYRIA
2014(-?) B, M, T,
CO
Air strikes & Special Forces intervene vs. ISIS. etc.
NIGER
2017
T
Special Forces combat Islamist insurgents, fly
drones.
SAUDI
ARABIA
2019(-?)
T
Mobilization against Iran in Saudi Arabia & UAE
after drone attacks
(read
more)
2021-05-31
b
LEST WE FORGET I
How Memorial Day began and how
it was transformed
Sadly, many people —
especially younger folks — don't even know why we
celebrate Memorial Day, let alone how and where the
commemoration began. It is an interesting and
moving story, indeed.
The roots of the
remembrance reach back to [the time of the ]War [to
Prevent Southern Independence]. As the war that
took the lives of 620,000 Americans neared its end,
thousands of Union soldiers, being held as prisoners
of war, were placed into camps around Charleston,
South Carolina. Conditions at one of these
camps, a former racetrack near Charleston's Citadel,
were so bad that more than 250 prisoners died from
disease and exposure. They were buried in a mass
grave.
Three weeks after the
Confederate surrender, on May 9, 1865, over 1,000
recently freed slaves, accompanied by regiments of the
"U.S. Colored Troops," as well as a handful of white
Charlestonians, entered the camp. They created a
proper burial site for the Union dead. Then they
gave readings, sang hymns, distributed flowers around
the new cemetery, and dedicated it to the "Martyrs of
the Race Course."
In May of 1868,
General John A. Logan, the commander-in-chief of the
Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veterans' group,
issued a decree that May 30 should become a nationwide
day of commemoration for the soldiers who had died in
the recently ended Civil War, also known as the War
between the States. General Logan dubbed this
official remembrance "Decoration Day" and encouraged
Americans to lay flowers and decorate the graves of
the war dead across the land. Many believe that
he chose May 30 because it was a rare day that didn't
fall on an anniversary of a major Civil War battle.
Originally, the
holiday was intended to commemorate only those killed
in the Civil War, and by 1890, every former Union
state recognized Decoration Day as an official
holiday. After the United States entered World
War I, the tradition was expanded to include those
killed in all America's wars.
In
1964, Decoration Day was changed to Memorial Day via
federal law.
Then, four years
later, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 went
into effect. This moved the traditional Memorial
Day observance from May 30 to the last Monday in May,
thereby making Americans associate the holiday with
the first long weekend of summer. Partying,
boating, barbecuing, and game-playing, rather than
honoring those who sacrificed their lives to benefit
and protect ours, became the order of the day.
For this reason, a few veterans' groups continue to
lobby for a return to the May 30 observance.
So,
fellow citizens, this Memorial Day, remember to turn
the music off for a moment, stop your boat, set down
your tongs, and step away from the ladder ball
game. Think of those who gave their lives for
all their loved ones and countrymen — and one
precious idea.
And think of those
1,000 freed slaves, the U.S. Colored Troops, and the
handful of white Charlestonians who took it upon
themselves to consecrate a burial ground for fallen
Union soldiers.
Then raise your
glasses and make this pledge with me:
[T]hat
from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain — that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom — and that government of the people, by
the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.
This nation needs a
new birth of freedom now more than at any time since Lincoln
spoke these words in 1863.
And it will not
experience one unless we each do our part. No
matter the cost. (read
more)
2021-05-31
a
“The society that
separates its scholars from its warriors will have
its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by
fools.”
— Thucydides
2021-05-30
f
LOOKING FOR TRUTHS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
How Telling The Truth On
Campus Gets You Persecuted
Canadian free speech
activist Lindsay Shepherd's book, 'Diversity &
Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech
Crisis,' tells the Orwellian story of how colleges
abandoned teaching truth in favor of conformity.
“Words
are violence.” “Cultural appropriation.” “Cisgender
norms.” “Intersectionality.” These are some of the
phrases aggressively (and endlessly) foisted upon
American society. They are employed to attack and
vilify the critics of wokeness. And they are spawned
and perpetuated in the bogs of the liberal academy.
Canadian free speech
activist Lindsay Shepherd knows something about this
pseudo-intellectual claptrap. She suffered through
years of it at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario,
Canada, both before and after her now-famous decision
as a teaching assistant of a communications studies
course to present a Jordan Peterson clip regarding
pronouns.
The fallout from that,
which I reported on a 2018
Federalist article, dramatically changed her
life, and made her a heroine of those who prize free
expression and are concerned about the intellectual
decline of university campuses. Her new book, Diversity &
Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech
Crisis, exposes how morally and
intellectually bankrupt the academy has become.
Yes, It Really Is That
Insane
Shepherd’s
story proves the risible and ridiculous character of
the contemporary university. Much of this
falls within what she calls the “oppression Olympics.”
One professor discouraged white students from raising
their hands during class, alleging they have more
opportunities in society than students of color.
Other professors put
“land acknowledgments” — recognitions of the
indigenous peoples who earlier inhabited a certain
piece of land — in their email signatures. At one
campus demonstration, a speaker claimed that adding
yogurt to hummus is cultural appropriation.
It’s
not just the asininity of the academy, but its
pettiness. When Shepherd tweeted part of a syllabus
from a professor regarding land acknowledgments, the
professor threatened to silence her with
intellectual property violations.
Another time, a grad
student who engaged in online sparring matches with
Shepherd demanded she leave the communications study
lounge, where she was printing some documents. When
she refused and called him “petty and pathetic,” he
lodged a formal complaint with the university.
Shepherd was eventually cleared of the charge.
During the tribunal
with three Wilfrid Laurier employees to discuss
Shepherd’s provocative video clip, professor Nathan
Rambukkana referred to Shepherd’s “positionality.” He
further chastised her for making her students feel
“uncomfortable” and fostering an “unsafe learning
environment” by allegedly promoting “gendered
violence” and “transphobia.”
Diversity &
Exclusion also exposes how universities have
become places not to inculcate portions of the Western
tradition, train young people how to think, and
prepare them for professional life, but centers of
intellectually incurious indoctrination.
“I had
been under the impression graduate school attracted
the most open, inquisitive, and curious minds, but
instead I was finding rigid ideological conformity
and disavowal of those who deviate ever so
slightly,” writes Shepherd. Her readings had
titles like “Dialectics of Colonial Sovereignty” and
“The Future Birth of the Affective Fact: The Political
Ontology of Threat.”
According to Shepherd,
the currently popular “biopolitical theory” is a study
in nothingness. She explains:
The biopolitics
acolytes deployed a specialized, obscure language
that made it seem like they were doing something
so distinguished that a layperson just could
simply not understand it, when really there was
nothing substantive about what they were saying.
The nothingness of their endeavor was cloaked with
fancy terms like ‘necropolitics,” ‘subjectivity,’
and ‘governmentality.’
The
perverse effect of this indoctrination is visible in
how students responded to Shepherd’s battle with the
university over free speech, which originated in her
simply raising for discussion the use of pronouns
(which faculty described as “violent speech” and
“gendered violence”). The university’s
“Rainbow Centre,” for example, declared: “Debates
about gender neutral pronouns or the validity of trans
identities are not only discussions about
(dis)allowable speech but, also, affronts on the
reality of trans experience.” Such debates, it
claimed, even “constitute a form of epistemic violence
that dehumanizes trans people by denying the validity
of trans experience.”
What
Shepherd experienced first-hand are the tactics
employed by tyrannical ideologues to defame and
delegitimize opponents. In an irony student
activists seemed unable to appreciate, they
characterized a free-speech rally as “actually
silencing trans and non-binary students” and engaging
in “transphobia.” As R.R. Reno has noted at First
Things, by accusing one’s intellectual opponents as
suffering from some sort of “phobia,” the activist
ideologue leverages the supposedly clinical and
scientific against the allegedly backward and bigoted.
This
uneducates students in logic, rhetoric, and debate,
teaching them instead to vilify their opponents via
name-calling, caricature, and “guilt by
association.” Peterson, according to one student
petition, engages in “gendered white supremacist
ideology.” Shepherd, one Canadian professor claimed,
is an “alt-right provocateur” who deploys “White
Lady Tears.”
Shepherd, they
declared, was supposedly alt-right because she showed
a video of Peterson, a bestselling mainstream author
some alt-right people support. This is utter nonsense.
We Need More Lindsay
Shepherds
For
most of her life, Shepherd by default considered
herself a leftist. She was not religious (and
enjoyed listening to prominent atheist
intellectuals); she favored pro-choice,
environmental-conscious policies; she was concerned
about wealth inequality; she harbored no opposition
to gay marriage. Yet she, unlike many of her
classmates, was intellectually curious and
uninterested in simply regurgitating Michel Foucault
and other postmodernists. In other words, she was
willing to have her intellectual premises tested.
For
that, Shepherd was attacked and maligned, not only
by the academy, but by much of Canadian media. No
longer at home among the liberal intelligentsia, she
joined the Conservative Party of Canada. She now has
had trouble finding employment because of her
reputation.
Her $3.6 million
lawsuit against the professors and administrators at
Wilfrid Laurier, as well as the university, for
harassment, intentional infliction of nervous shock,
negligence, and constructive dismissal, is still
pending. I hope she gets every penny.
What’s
to be done? Shepherd calls for the closure of campus
diversity offices, which she believes undermine the
pursuit of knowledge by elevating identity politics
over uncomfortable truths.
That’s just a start. The purpose of the academy in the Western
tradition is to transfer to students a conception of
objective truth. The very name “university”
derives from the idea that a diversity of subjects
(mathematics, science, history, language) are all
unified as part of a broader, coherent human
understanding of reality.
Now
the academy peddles in postmodern deconstructionism
that questions whether objective knowledge is even
possible. Even math and logic are now said to be
“racist” and “colonialist.”
Yet if the
deconstructionists, postmodernists, and adherents of
critical theory are correct that our intellectual and
cultural traditions are inaccurate, immoral, and
incoherent, what’s the point of even having a
university? They have, in effect, argued themselves
out of their jobs.
State
governments, which possess the power to influence
public academic institutions, need to take more
interest in what is happening in state universities
and apply the necessary pressure to stop these
worrying trends, which evince not only an
intellectual suicide but a socio-cultural one. Our
leaders must demonstrate the courage to curb what is
killing us. What we need are politicians who
demonstrate the kind of courage displayed by Lindsay
Shepherd. (read
more)
2021-05-30
e
LOOKING FOR RACISTS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
The New York Times Says My Hometown Is
Racist. Here’s Why They’re Wrong
The New York Times’
article exposed Democrats' deep-seated fear and
frustration at having lost their grip on blue collar,
rural voters.
Left-wing New York Times
columnist Reid J. Epstein traveled to Marathon County,
Wisconsin last week to defame
my hometown and smear its working-class
residents as racist because they refused to commit our
community to racial “equity.”
Earlier
this month, the Marathon County Executive Committee
shot down a proposed resolution
called “A Community for All,” which aimed to
“achieve racial and ethnic equity” and to
acknowledge “systemic inequality.”
The resolution,
proposed by the county’s “Diversity Affairs
Commission,” a committee many residents had no idea
existed until now, was originally called “No Place For
Hate.” The resolution was drafted last spring after
George Floyd’s death and was hotly debated by board
members for nearly a year until the committee voted it
down 6-to-2 on May 13.
Epstein “reported” on
the vote in a disparaging article, projecting his own
political narrative onto a place he visited for no
more than a few days. The “fight” over the resolution,
claims Epstein, “is amplifying the tensions that had
been simmering before Mr. Floyd’s death” and “ripping
at the communal fabric in this central Wisconsin
county.” Only a political hack could describe our
quiet, blue-collar county as “simmering” with racial
tension.
This Isn’t About
Racism At All
Talking with board
members and community leaders it’s easy to see that
opposition to the resolution had nothing to do with
“racism.”
Those
who opposed the resolution simply did not believe it
was the county board’s place to comment on problems
in other cities that were irrelevant to Marathon
County. “My focus is on good policy and
making good budget decisions that affect Marathon
County,” said County Board Supervisor Chris Dickinson,
“not what’s happening in Minneapolis, California, or
Portland.”
Others said they
believed the board should be focusing on things that
would benefit citizens, not fighting over an
ideological resolution. “Folks from Marathon County
are really expecting us to work on infrastructure,
keeping taxes low, and building our economy back up,”
said Mayor Brent Jacobson of Mosinee, who is also a
Marathon County Board supervisor.
No one I interviewed
opposes diversity or racial inclusion. In fact, they
were very much in favor of these concepts. But
unfortunately, the resolution was never about
diversity or attracting new people to the area.
Indeed, board members
I spoke with said the diversity commission refused to
compromise and were adamant about using language that
“aligned with a critical race theory mindset, things
like systemic racism, white privilege, and equity,”
said Dickinson. “That tells me there’s some other
agenda besides just being a welcoming community,” he
added.
Residents
of Marathon County are smart. They understand the
difference between equality and equity, as
promoted in the resolution. Equality
is about opportunity for all. It’s a thoroughly
American ideal. Equity is about trying to
engineer equal outcomes. It’s a Marxist goal,
and board members opposed “A Community for All”
because they rightly perceived the resolution to be a
Marxist Trojan horse that, once passed, could have
much farther-reaching implications.
In a ridiculous
paragraph that can only be described as projection,
the Times’
Epstein asserts that the “The racial divisiveness that
President Donald J. Trump stoked during his four years
in the White House endures in the daily life of towns
like Wausau… exacerbated by the deaths of Black
Americans at the hands of white police officers, and
leading to new battles over whether racism is baked
into local institutions.”
Start with the fact
that, according to Deputy Chief Matthew Barnes,
Wausau, the rural county’s largest city, has never
seen an officer shooting involving a black citizen.
Marathon County is
predominantly white, but has become increasingly
multiracial over the years. Notably, during the
Vietnam War, local churches welcomed Hmong refugees
from Laos who bravely helped Americans fight the
communist North Vietnamese. The Hmong community now
makes up about 9 percent of Wausau’s population, and
is the second-largest Hmong population by percentage
in the United States.
What
The New York
Times wrote about Marathon County residents
says more about The New York Times than Marathon
County. Leftists love to paint flyover America as
racist because they fear multiracial blue-collar
workers uniting against elites, globalism, and
policies that disadvantage the working class.
In 2016, Time Magazine
named Wausau the most middle-class city in America.
Its blue-collar residents look for representatives who
have their best interests in mind, irrespective of
race or even political party. In fact, Marathon County
has historically been a swing area, and over the years
has thrown its support behind Ronald Reagan, Bill
Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and twice for
former President Donald Trump.
The
recent switch from blue to red in Marathon County is
not unlike the political swing seen in other rust
belt areas. The New
York Times article reads like a revenge
piece against Trump country. Someone should really
tell Democrats that they won’t get these voters back
by calling them racist.
Why Is This Happening?
Marathon County
residents wondered what motivated this nasty article.
Who called for this equity resolution?
And why does Marathon County have a “Diversity
Affairs Commission” in the first place? The answers
all come down to apathy and negligence in local
elections.
County Board
Supervisor William Harris, a Florida-born lawyer, was
elected to the County Board in 2020. Harris, who is
African-American, was a major supporter of the
resolution. “I want to feel like I’m a part of this
community,’’ he declared prior to the vote, suggesting
that if the Black Lives Matter-inspired “equity”
resolution didn’t pass, it would be proof that he is
unwelcome in the community — an odd conclusion from an
elected member of the county board.
In another bizarre
statement, Harris blasted county officials for pushing
rural broadband access and rural health care because,
according to him, these things mostly benefit white
people. So rural broadband is racist?
Harris shows professional class “privilege” when he
resents that rural working-class people also desire
internet access and health care.
Wausau
Democrat Mayor Katie Rosenberg was quick to throw
Wausau under The New
York Times bus. She shared the
article on her Twitter account, with a scolding
message, “My peers on the county board and our shared
constituents shouldn’t have to fight for basic
acknowledgment.”
My peers on the county
board and our shared constituents shouldn't have
to fight for basic acknowledgement.
— ✌ Katie
Rosenberg (@katierosenberg) May
18, 2021
Overriding the wishes
of her constituents, Rosenberg created a city-wide
racial “equity” proclamation, “A Community for All”
which states that “the city of Wausau recognizes
diversity, inclusion, and equity as essential to
positive and healthy lives…”
There are so many
people who did the work already on A Community For
All:
@YeeLengXiong1,
La'Tanya Campbell, @klo1622,
William Harris, and the whole
Marathon County Diversity Affairs Commission. I
want to use my platform to
support their work and their voices.
Thank you.
— ✌ Katie
Rosenberg (@katierosenberg) May
18, 2021
Despite publicly
promoting the disparaging New York Times story by sharing it
on social media from her widely followed blue
check-marked Twitter account, Rosenberg now
disingenuously claims she is unhappy with the way our
community was portrayed in the article. Rosenberg
reinforced The New
York Times’ narrative by publicly condemning
her former county board colleagues who opposed equity
resolution.
“Those comments were
devastating,” Rosenberg told Up North News of those who opposed
the resolution. “I read the comments from my former
colleagues and I bristled.”
It is widely known
that the mayor has bigger political aspirations. Her
voluminous tweets prove she is attempting to walk a
fine line between appearing loyal to her constituents,
while also posturing and virtue signaling to a
national audience and the Democrat donor class.
I think the most
amazing accusation levied against me today is that
I colluded
with the @nytimes
to have the most negative story about my community
in
decades published published internationally.
Do you think I
would use my influence to make us all look like
THAT?!
— ✌ Katie
Rosenberg (@katierosenberg) May
19, 2021
In many ways what
happened in Marathon County is a cautionary tale for
every community. Local elections
matter. Especially county boards.
Meg Ellefson, a local
conservative talk radio host, said, “The conservatives
in this community sat back and weren’t paying
attention to our (local) elected leaders.” The result
has been the likes of Harris and Rosenberg, the equity
resolution, a horrendous Times article, and a useless
and divisive “Diversity Affairs Commission.”
Pay Attention to Your
Own Local Government
Marathon
County is so much more than what the New York Times
wrote after a couple of days of driving around with
a Prius and an agenda. Understanding the
values and concerns of this area might actually help
The New York Times
crowd understand the 2016 election. After all,
this is an area that, until 2010, was represented by a
Democrat congressman for 42 years! It voted for Barack
Obama and Trump.
If the Times is looking
for racism stories, they should spend more time close
to their home office in Manhattan where black
on Asian crime and antisemitic
attacks are terrifyingly on the rise. In Marathon County, by contrast,
blue-collar whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics
have been living and working in racial harmony.
The lesson in all this
for Marathon County residents is to pay closer
attention to local races so representatives on the
school board, county board, and in the mayor’s office
reflect the values of our community. These
values are not based on race; they are largely
economic issues that affect families of all colors.
We should also be wary
of candidates who care more about political ambition
than they do about the good name of our community, a
community that has a long and proud history of
welcoming immigrants.
It’s
understandable that Democrats and their partners in
the corporate media are angry that Marathon County
is no longer reliably blue, but that is no excuse to
smear them as racists. Four years after Trump’s
unlikely election, liberals are still in no mood for
serious political introspection.
The New York Times’
article was hurtful and damaging for our community,
but it also exposed Democrats’
deep-seated fear and frustration at having lost
their grip on blue-collar, rural voters. One
thing is for certain, though, lashing out and
insulting them is no way to win them back. (read
more)
2021-05-30
d
GEORGE SOROS TRAVEL AGENCY BRINGS PICKPOCKETS TO
TEXAS?
(This is very bad news. Gypsies teach their children
to steal from an early age. They infest tourist
hot-spots, stealing anything that isn't nailed down.
Most of them are on welfare. How can they afford the
transatlantic flights?)
Why Roma [illegal] migrants
from Europe are taking rafts from Mexico to enter
the U.S.
ROMA, Texas (Reuters)
- Among the hundreds of Central American [illegal]
migrants crossing the Rio Grande river daily on rafts
from Mexico to Texas, dozens stood out on a recent
day. They were generally taller and some wore skirts,
stylish shoes and tracksuits, while many of the other
migrants wore T-shirts, pants and jeans.
U.S.
border patrol officers who apprehended them near the
river tried to speak to them in Spanish. There was a
pause as some of the [illegal] border crossers
explained in broken English that they were
Romanians, a Reuters photographer said.
Scores of Romanians
who are part of the Roma ethnic minority [better known
as gypsies] have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in
south Texas in recent weeks to seek asylum,
highlighting the far-flung origins of some of the
[illegal] migrants who have contributed to border
arrests in recent months reaching a 20-year high.
Reuters witnessed
large groups of these [illegal] migrants crossing the
Rio Grande on rafts on multiple occasions in May. The
[illegal] migrants Reuters spoke to said they were
fleeing racism in Romania and wanted to seek asylum in
the United States.
The Roma are Europe’s
largest ethnic minority and [best known pickpockets,]
have a long history of social exclusion and
discrimination [often due to their rampant criminality
and marrying off their 12-year-old daughters].
Over three
weeks, a Reuters photographer saw nearly 200 Romanians
crossing at different points along the Texas border,
many extended family groups of 10-15 people.
Border
patrol agents have apprehended 2,217 Romanians so
far in fiscal year 2021, more than the 266 caught in
fiscal 2020 and the 289 in fiscal 2019, according to
data provided by the U.S. Customs and Border
Protection agency.
More than 2,000
Romanians crossed the southwest border in fiscal year
2016. Current arrivals are on pace to be the highest
since 2007, the earliest year for which citizenship
arrival data is available.
Margareta Matache,
director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for
Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, said
many Roma fled Romania to escape persecution and dire
economic circumstances, partly fueled by the COVID-19
pandemic.
"Currently, U.S.
policies and policy proposals offer hope for more
humane and just policies, including for immigrants,"
Matache said. "They (Roma) are looking for a better
life in a place where they are not exposed to
violence, discrimination, and disrespect."
The Romanian
government said it had not been notified by the United
States of any detained citizens but said its embassy
officials have contacted local authorities after
reading media reports.
The European Union
Agency for Fundamental Rights found in a 2016 survey https://bit.ly/3bS6jSb
of nearly 8,000 Roma people in nine European countries
that about 80% of the Roma population was living below
the national poverty line.
There is no official
population count for Roma people, who reside in many
countries and have long faced [well-founded] prejudice
in Europe and worldwide. Most live in eastern Europe,
particularly in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and
Hungary.
According
to Romanian media reports, many Romanian migrants
fly from Paris to Mexico City as tourists as they do
not need visas to enter Mexico. Then smugglers take
them by bus to the U.S. border where they cross the
Rio Grande by boat or raft. (read
more)
2021-05-30
c
MASS SHOOTING IN DEEPEST, DARKEST MIAMI
The Natives Are Restless,
Black Lives Don't Matter
Two people were killed
and more than 20 people were injured in what police
called a “targeted and cowardly act” early Sunday
morning outside a Northwest Miami-Dade banquet hall.
The shooting took
place just after 12:30 a.m. at a release party for
local rap “artist” at the
El Mula banquet hall, located at 7630 Northwest 186th
Street.
Miami-Dade Police
Department Director Freddy Ramirez said as many as
eight people were transported to hospitals in both
Miami-Dade and Broward counties while 12 others drove
themselves to the hospital. At least one victim is
reportedly in critical condition.
This
marks the second mass shooting in South Florida on
Memorial Day weekend. (read
more)
2021-05-30
b
TO THE ILLEGITIMATE IDIOT PRETENDING TO BE VICE
PRESIDENT
Kamala, you show us every day
how unfit you are to hold high office. This is what
Memorial Day is about.
Sear this image into that small brain of yours.
You have no idea how many Americans are praying for
the swift release of the results of legitimate
forensic audits of the stolen election.
November 3rd, 2020 is a day that will live in
infamy.
D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy, 6 June 1944 Robert
Capa
2021-05-30
a
ABOUT THE ILLEGITIMATE IDIOT PRETENDING TO BE VICE
PRESIDENT
*
______________________
Permission is hereby granted to any and all to
copy and paste any entry on this page and
convey it electronically along with its URL,
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2021 ARCHIVE
2020 ARCHIVE
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News and facts for
those sick and tired of the National Propaganda Radio
version of reality.
- Unlike all the legacy media, our editorial offices are
not in Langley, Virginia.
- You won't catch
us fiddling while Western Civilization burns.
- Close the windows so you don't hear the
mockingbird outside, grab a beer, and see what the hell
is going on as we witness the controlled demolition of
our society.
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usually comes from one source. It comes quietly, with no
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and incessantly.
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