"It's not strictly embedded in the traffic light system but, uhm, it is a given, up to 25 actually, in a red area."

yeah, but did your PM go on national television to officially announce that *checks notes* orgies can resume? pic.twitter.com/cG4YyIvEZT

— Calliope Ryder (@callioperyder) December 10, 2021

The report explained, "New Zealand moved to a traffic light system with freedoms based on whether people live in red, amber or green areas. The decision came despite global fears about the Omicron variant, which partially evades vaccine-induced immunity. New Zealand has had some of the strictest COVID-19 restrictions in the world during the pandemic and retains tough border curbs. Ardern has said the authorities are working hard to avoid introducing the Omicron variant into the country."

At the The Gateway Pundit, it was reported Ardern was giggling as she made the announcement. (read more)

But to get all that in one commercially available product, you would have to spend $3,900 per trash can. Confronted with the hard cost of its stated requirements, San Francisco County officials could have ponied up—or settled for a functional but less-than-perfect trash can. Incredibly, however, they settled on the third-best option: About three years ago, San Francisco embarked on a yearslong process to design its own bespoke trash cans from scratch. The cost “could now hit as high as $5,000 a can,” Chávez reported in September. “San Francisco will spend from $6.6 million to $16.5 million to replace the city’s existing public trash cans” by current estimates, but “who knows what things will cost when the manufacturing actually commences.”

This is what happens when you solicit input from everyone about all the things that would be good, then create a process that discourages compromise on any of those issues, even to the detriment of what was supposed to be your primary goal—whether that goal is procuring new trash cans or creating an outdoor-dining culture. (read more)

“Is that from last year?” I asked.

“No, it’s a few days old,” she said, her voice sinking to a growling murmur. “These people.”

I am old enough to remember the good old days when holiday-advice pieces were all variations on “How to Talk to Your Tea Party Uncle About Obamacare.” As Christmas approaches, we can look forward to more of this sort of thing, with the meta-ethical speculation advanced to an impossibly baroque stage of development. Is it okay for our 2-year-old son to hug Grandma at a Christmas party if she received her booster only a few days ago? Should the toddler wear a mask except when he is slopping mashed potatoes all over his booster seat? Our oldest finally attended her first (masked) sleepover with other fully vaccinated 10-year-olds, but one of them had a sibling test positive at day care. Should she stay home or wear a face shield? What about Omicron?

I don’t know how to put this in a way that will not make me sound flippant: No one cares. Literally speaking, I know that isn’t true, because if it were, the articles wouldn’t be commissioned. But outside the world inhabited by the professional and managerial classes in a handful of major metropolitan areas, many, if not most, Americans are leading their lives as if COVID is over, and they have been for a long while.

In my part of rural southwest Michigan, and in similar communities throughout the country, this is true not despite but without any noticeable regard for cases; hospitalization statistics, which are always high this time of year without attracting much notice; or death reports. I don’t mean to deny COVID’s continuing presence. (For the purposes of this piece, I looked up the COVID data for my county and found that the seven-day average for [mostly false] positive tests is as high as it has ever been, and that 136 deaths have been attributed to the virus since June 2020.) What I wish to convey is that the virus simply does not factor into my calculations or those of my neighbors, who have been forgoing masks, tests (unless work imposes them, in which case they are shrugged off as the usual BS from human resources), and other tangible markers of COVID-19’s existence for months—perhaps even longer.

Indeed, in my case, when I say for a long while, I mean for nearly two years, from almost the very beginning. In 2020, I took part in two weddings, traveled extensively, took family vacations with my children, spent hundreds of hours in bars and restaurants, all without wearing a mask. This year my wife and I welcomed our fourth child. Over the course of her pregnancy, from the first phone call to the midwife a few months after getting a positive pregnancy test until after delivery, the subject of the virus was never raised by any health-care professional, including her doula, a dear friend from New York.

Meanwhile, our children, who have continued to attend their weekly homeschooling co-op since April 2020, have never donned masks, and they are distinctly uncomfortable on the rare occasions when they see them, for reasons that, until recently, child psychologists and other medical experts would have freely acknowledged. They have continued seeing friends and family, including their great-grandparents, on a weekly basis. As far as I can tell, they are dimly aware that “germs” are a remote cause of concern, but only our oldest, who is 6, has any recollection of the brief period last year when public Masses were suspended in our diocese and we spent Sunday mornings praying the rosary at home.

The CDC recommends that all adults get a booster shot; I do not know a single person who has received one. When I read headlines like “Here’s Who May Need a Fourth COVID-19 Vaccine Dose,” I find myself genuinely reeling. Wait, there are four of them now? I would be lying if I said I knew what all the variants were or what differences exist between them. (They all sound like the latest entry in some down-market action franchise: Tom Clancy’s Delta Variant: A Jack Ryan Novel, Transformers 4: Rise of the Omicron.) COVID is invisible to me except when I am reading the news, in which case it strikes me with all the force of reports about distant coups in Myanmar.

Granted, my family’s experience of 2020 was somewhat unusual. But I wager that I am now closer to most of my fellow Americans than the people, almost absurdly overrepresented in media and elite institutions, who are still genuinely concerned about this virus. And in some senses my situation has always been more in line with the typical American’s pandemic experience than that of someone in New York or Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles.

The best example of this fact, apart from the agita about holiday travel, is outdoor masking. Prescinding from the question of whether there was ever any meaningful evidence in favor of outdoor transmission, let me point out that until I found myself in Washington, D.C., on a work trip in March, I had never seen anyone wearing a mask outside. For someone who had never worn one in any situation, it was bizarre to find thousands of people indifferently donning these garments outdoors, including those walking alone or in pairs at night after leaving bars or restaurants where they had presumably taken them off. It was even stranger seeing people recognize one another in the street and pull their masks down casually, sometimes but not always before stopping to engage in conversation, like Edwardian gentlemen doffing their top hats.

I came away from this experience with the impression that, whatever their value, masks long ago transcended public health and became a symbol, not unlike In This House We Believe signs or MAGA hats. This, no doubt, is why in my part of America, the only people one ever sees with masks are brooding teenagers seated alone in coffee shops, who seem to have adopted masks to set themselves apart from the reactionary banality of life in flyover country in the same way that I once scribbled anti-Bush slogans on T-shirts. The survival of such old-fashioned adolescent angst is, at any rate, deeply heartening.

As far as my wife and I are concerned, an atmosphere of parochialism hangs upon relentless adherence to CDC directives. By European standards, hand-wringing about masks in schools is as silly and absurdly risk-averse as the American medical establishment’s insistence that pregnant women not drink coffee or wine. Indeed, there is something small-minded and puritanical and distinctly American about the whole business of obsessing over whether vaccinated teachers remove their face covering during a long school day. (When I read such things, I experience the same secondhand embarrassment I felt upon witnessing an American tourist in Rome ask a waiter at a trattoria to remove the ashtray from the outdoor table at which the employee in question had just been smoking.)

I am always tempted to ask the people who breathlessly quote what various public-health authorities are now saying about masking and boosters whether they know how the National Institutes of Health defines a “problem drinker”? The answer is a woman who has more than one “unit” of alcohol a day, i.e., my wife and nearly all of my female friends. These same authorities, if asked, would probably say that considerable risks are associated with eating crudos or kibbeh nayyeh, or taking Tylenol after a hangover. (This is to say nothing of cannabis, which is of course still banned at the federal level.) My point is that sophisticated adults are generally capable of winking at overly stringent guidelines. In the case of COVID, many are not.

I wish I could convince myself that for once in my life with COVID we were actually experiencing a healthy break from the usual pattern, according to which the latest silly novelties—no-fault divorce, factory-sliced bread, frozen meals, and, of course, infant formula—are adopted enthusiastically by the upper middle classes, who then think better of them by the time the lower orders come around.

But I am afraid that the future, at least in major metropolitan areas, is one in which sooner or later elites will acknowledge their folly while continuing to impose it on others. I, for one, would not be surprised if for years to come it were the expectation in New York and California that even vaccinated workers in the service industry wear masks, the ultimate reification of status in a world in which casual dress has otherwise erased many of what were once our most visible markers of class.

After all, you never know how they spent their Thanksgiving. (read more)

1: Do you have any idea how many Americans are now dying with/from/near Covid each day? The answer is still over 1,000 on average, but the daily death count - which was a national media-fueled obsession for a year - has been entirely forgotten.

2: What percentage of 5-11 year-olds have been Covid vaccinated? More than a month after jabs for kids were approved, the answer is barely 15 percent - not even one child out of six - despite a massive advertising and media campaign. And I can promise you that number is not going to budge much going forward. The parents who were dumb enough to give their kids a quasi-experimental and short-lasting “vaccine” for an illness that even before Omicron was a cold for most have already done so.

3: When was the last time you heard anyone suggest mandating Covid vaccines for kids? See question 2. Even deep blue state politicians have gone silent on this issue (again, except for the moronic soon-to-be-former mayor of New York). And even the craziest vaccine fanatics have mostly found other issues to froth over. Elections have consequences, and the Virginia election sure did.

4: How many different federal district courts have now ruled the Biden vaccine mandates unconstitutional? I believe the answer is ALL. All the courts.

5: What are the odds the Supreme Court follows suit? Yeah, that bet has been taken off the board. Too likely. Too much action on one side.

6: How many companies have “suspended” or “paused” their vaccine mandates since the courts stepped in? Not quite all, in this case. But many, including bellwethers like Oracle (which as a couple of readers noted to me is particularly telling since it is known for treating employees like widgets).

The labor market is tight and companies don’t want to fight with 20-40% of their employees, especially since the vax nuts are now indicating they are going to try to make boosters a standard or quasi-standard to “remain” vaccinated. (Remain? Vaccination by definition should be a permanent or at least semi-permanent - as in lasting a decade or more - condition.)

7: Speaking of boosters, do you know anyone who actually believes the public health authority/media attempt to rewrite history and pretend that boosters within six months of vaccination were planned?

Here’s the thing about the booster. I don’t think the booster will work. I think it will fade within six to eight months. The Israelis are four months in, and they are clearly concerned, even though cases haven’t actually spiked yet.

But in the unlikely event it DOES work, great! No one will need a fourth shot.

And in the much more likely event it doesn’t? We have already seen exponential decay in willingness to take a third shot, and that will surely continue to the fourth, especially as side effects continue to pile up. Even the dullest MSNBC viewers will eventually figure out they are better off taking their chances.

So either way, the third shot is the end of the line.

—

And all this was BEFORE Omicron, the little cold that could.

Now, this analysis is US-focused. Europe is older, more frightened, leans harder left, and has national and supra-national bureaucracies with powers that make woke American progressives drool. Australia and New Zealand are in even worse shape, as they have never quite shaken the dream of zero Covid.

But I am increasingly convinced that by this time next year, barring some medical catastrophe, we will see all the Covid mandates - including the vaccine push! - the way we now look at school closures (and police defunding) - as regrettable and never-to-be-repeated episodes of societal insanity. (read more)

A new public opinion poll featured in The Hill has found that the US military's reputation is in free fall:

The Ronald Reagan Institute just announced that public confidence in the military has continued its precipitous drop. The institute’s November 2021 poll found that only 45 percent of those polled report "a great deal of trust and confidence in the military" — down 25 points in three years. The institute adds "Increasing numbers of Americans say they have little or not much confidence in the military, which is up 15 points in the last three years."

The military isn’t the only public institution suffering a bad reputation, but it is used to basking in public esteem. As a result, it may not know how to recover.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, given that especially over the past year the Pentagon has devoted itself to the woke agenda, putting out recruitment videos that focus on forging leaders, strength and conditioning, preparation for war-fighting, overcoming obstacles "diversity", "acceptance" and LGBTQ++ campaigns.

Recently GOP Senators have begun to take aim at what appears a clear erosion of the military's old school values of toughness, overcoming odds, and forging strong leaders and unit cohesion. For example last spring the mainstream media heavily criticized Sen. Ted Cruz for calling out the dangers of a 'woke and emasculated' new military.

"Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea," he wrote on Twitter, commenting on a video comparing Russian and US military recruitment adds. 

Rod Dreher at The American Conservative says of the declining public confidence in the military: "You can blame Obama and Biden, as well as the senior US military leadership, for the institutionalization of wokeness in the armed forces — and you can blame Trump for not doing enough to stop the madness. Word is getting around about what they have done, and are doing, to military culture. The brass is making enemies of the core people who serve."

He points out that the vast majority of recruits come from southern states and red states, based on the most recent available data. (read more)

A Lancet study comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated people in Sweden was conducted among 1.6 million individuals over nine months. It showed that protection against symptomatic COVID-19 declined with time, such that by six months, some of the more vulnerable vaccinated groups were at greater risk than their unvaccinated peers.

Doctors are calling this phenomena in the repeatedly vaccinated “immune erosion” or “acquired immune deficiency”, accounting for elevated incidence of myocarditis and other post-vaccine illnesses that either affect them more rapidly, resulting in death, or more slowly, resulting in chronic illness.

COVID vaccines are not traditional vaccines. Rather, they cause cells to reproduce one portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the spike protein. The vaccines thus induce the body to create spike proteins. A person only creates antibodies against this one limited portion (the spike protein) of the virus. This has several downstream deleterious effects.

First, these vaccines “mis-train” the immune system to recognize only a small part of the virus (the spike protein). Variants that differ, even slightly, in this protein are able to escape the narrow spectrum of antibodies created by the vaccines.

Second, the vaccines create “vaccine addicts,” meaning persons become dependent upon regular booster shots, because they have been “vaccinated” only against a tiny portion of a mutating virus. Australian Health Minister Dr. Kerry Chant has stated that COVID will be with us forever and people will “have to get used to” taking endless vaccines. “This will be a regular cycle of vaccination and revaccination.”

Third, the vaccines do not prevent infection in the nose and upper airways, and vaccinated individuals have been shown to have much higher viral loads in these regions. This leads to the vaccinated becoming “super-spreaders” as they carry extremely high viral loads.

In addition, the vaccinated become more clinically ill than the unvaccinated. Scotland reported that the infection fatality rate in the vaccinated is 3.3 times the unvaccinated, and the risk of death if hospitalized is 2.15 times the unvaccinated.

A June report on Israel's Channel 12 News revealed that in the months since the vaccines were rolled out, 6,765 people who received both shots had contracted coronavirus, while epidemiological tracing revealed an additional 3,133 people contracted COVID-19 from those vaccinated individuals.

Meanwhile, in the New England Journal of Medicine researchers have found that autoimmune response to the coronavirus spike protein may last indefinitely: “Ab2 antibodies binding to the original receptor on normal cells therefore have the potential to mediate profound effects on the cell that could result in pathologic changes, particularly in the long term — long after the original antigen itself has disappeared.” These antibodies produced against the coronavirus spike protein could be responsible for the current unprecedented wave of myocarditis and neurological illnesses, and even more problems in the future.

Indefinite uncontrolled autoimmune response to the coronavirus spike protein may produce a wave of antibodies called anti-idiotype antibodies or Ab2s that continue to damage human bodies long after clearing either Sars-Cov-2 itself or those spike proteins that the shots cause the body's cells to produce, explained former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.

Spike protein antibodies may themselves produce a second wave of antibodies, called anti-idiotype antibodies or Ab2s. Those Ab2s may modulate the immune system’s initial response by binding with and destroying the first wave of antibodies.

“Our immune systems produce these antibodies in response to both vaccination and natural infection with COVID,” wrote Berenson. “However - though the researchers do not say so explicitly, possibly because doing so would be politically untenable - spike protein antibody levels are MUCH higher following vaccination than infection. Thus the downstream response to vaccination may be more severe.”

America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) Chief Science Officer former Pfizer Vice President Michael Yeadon responded to the research: "This is unprecedented. What is happening is not understood. (read more)

“I’ve always been anti-gun,” said Debbie Mizrahie of Beverly Hills. “But I am right now in the process of getting myself shooting lessons because I now understand that there may be a need for me to know how to defend myself and my family. We’re living in fear.”

During Black Lives Matter protests last year, Mizrahie told The Post, her neighbor’s home was firebombed with Molotov cocktails.

“My kids were outside and they saw a huge explosion,” she said. “[The neighbor’s] backyard went up in smoke. Trees burned down … But it’s only gotten worse. Beverly Hills has been targeted.”

Mizrahie, a 40-something mother of two teenagers, isn’t alone. Ever since the protests last year descended into riots and lootings, a growing number of Beverly Hills residents have been buying weapons.

“It’s gotten to a point where residents feel insecure even going from their door to their car,” said resident Shirley Reitman. “A lot of residents are applying for a concealed carry weapon permit, even though that’s a great challenge in LA County.”

According to LA County Sheriff Alejandro Villanueva, the department has received 8,105 concealed carry weapon applications and approved 2,102 of them since he took office in December 2018, compared to his predecessor having issued 194 permits in four years.

“Even hardcore leftist Democrats who said to me in the past, ‘I’ll never own a gun’ are calling me asking about firearms,” said Joel Glucksman, a private security executive. “I’d say there has been an increase of 80 percent in the number of requests I’m getting this year.”

That trend increased last week, Glucksman said, after a beloved black philanthropist, Jacqueline Avant, was killed in her home
 by Aariel Maynor (image below).

“The killing of Avant shows that even having a security guard isn’t enough to deter someone,” said Mizrahie. The victim and her husband, legendary music executive Clarence Avant, had a private security guard on duty when she was killed around 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 1.

“What you’re seeing is the spillover into these communities of crime and violence,” explained LA police officer Steve Robinson. “Before, you would never hear of a robbery or a shooting [In Beverly Hills], or if you did, it was once or twice a year. In 2020, the Beverly Hills Police Department pulled 18 guns off Rodeo Drive. You go back any year before that, and it may have been zero to one or two.”

Ironically, hours after Avant was killed, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón “distributed a fundraising letter seeking to overturn a law that would keep her [alleged] killer in prison,” according to the Washington Examiner.

The bill he was pushing for would eliminate additional prison time for using a gun during a crime.

Critics already blame [George-Soros-funded] Gascón for releasing many violent offenders with few restrictions. Last year, he eliminated cash bail for many offenses.

“It’s like we’ve been taken over by gang members and criminals because they know that Gascón is going to make sure he doesn’t prosecute them,” said one woman, a writer in the entertainment industry, who did not want to be identified. “He’s saying, ‘Hey, go out and rob someone for $900 worth. Get arrested, go back out on the street.”

A California ballot initiative, passed in 2014, allows the theft of items up to $950 before the crime counts as a felony, as well as the possession of three grams of hard drugs including meth. The combination, say law enforcement, has been toxic.

“It’s a revolving door at the back end because the DA doesn’t want to prosecute and got rid of cash bail,” said Glucksman. “So now police are saying to [private security firms], ‘Hey, I understand they’re trespassing, but we don’t want to take that arrest, because there’s nothing that’s going to be done. It’s a waste of our time and it’s a waste of money for us to expend the energy and take care of things that aren’t going to be attended to by the courts and legal system.’ The DA is sitting there going, ‘Nope, pop this one out the window. It’s not like they stabbed somebody or they murdered somebody or raped somebody.’”

More than 1,800 people have been shot in Los Angeles in 2021, up from 1,530 in 2020. Homicides in LA rose nearly 50 percent, from 161 to 236, between January to October of 2020 and 2021.

There had been 361 homicides in LA in 2021 as of Dec. 9. That’s still a far cry from the peak: 1,984 homicides in 1991.

But longtime residents of Los Angeles said they were less affected by violence in decades past.

“I don’t ever remember crime being so high,” the entertainment writer said. “We used to leave our doors unlocked. I would leave my keys in the car with the door unlocked. Not anymore. We’re seeing not just burglaries but also robberies. We are seeing emboldened gang members and criminals holding guns to people’s heads.”

Last week, two armed robbers invaded a holiday party at a house in Pacific Palisades and took a watch, jewelry and phones from startled guests.

“Everyone I know is anxious about going out to dinner,” said the entertainment writer. “People are afraid to wear their wedding band. They’re afraid to wear a watch. They’re afraid to carry not just an expensive bag but any name-brand bag. I keep wondering, are people going to get used to this level of crime?”

Beverly Hills and surrounding neighborhoods like Brentwood and Bel-Air are famously home to liberal celebrities. People interviewed on Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive wanted me to know that they are very concerned about racism and police brutality.

But the killing of Avant was a wake-up call. “My industry is filled with progressives who have the luxury of being idealists and espousing philosophies they they thought would never come back and bite them,” said the entertainment writer, who is in her early 60s. “There’s a shift now that it’s become so much more dangerous.”

She mentioned a robbery on Nov. 30 in Hancock Park, a tony neighborhood south of Hollywood, when two men robbed a woman with a baby at gunpoint.

Glucksman said some criminals are sober and deliberate but many others are addicts and more reckless, breaking into cars randomly.

“Some are carrying around bats with them,” he said. “Three or four years ago my guys would see something like that once every couple of months but now we are now dealing with it on a daily basis, multiple times a day.”

After Glucksman’s guards arrest a suspected criminal, they turn them over to LA police and file a report.

“We are finding vagrants totally plastered out of their minds in private residential areas where our clients are and we have to call the paramedics to take them to the hospital because they were non-responsive [on drugs],” said Glucksman. “This is happening multiple times a week.”

Gascón has reduced the LA County jail population by nearly one-third, from around 17,000 to 12,000. The California prison population declined from 127,000 in January 2019 to 99,000 in July 2021.

“Unfortunately, for the majority of people released from prison,” noted Glucksman, “it’s harder for them to find jobs than others. They’re without skills or an education. Nobody wants to hire them. So … they’re going to return back to their old ways.”

On Wednesday, Gascón held a press conference defending his controversial rollbacks on bail and and additional time for using a gun during a crime, as well as charging juveniles as adults.

“We have set a path for ourselves,” said Gascón, “and turned around the criminal legal system in the country in a way that will be more humane, more equitable and, above all, will create a safer environment for all of us.”

Critics called his remarks “tone-deaf.”

Few people interviewed by The Post, including police, said they favored mass incarceration. “You shouldn’t be in jail for the rest of your life,” said police officer Robinson. “But if the three offenses happened to be violent offenses, the probability is that you probably have committed at least 30 crimes of the same nature and they haven’t been caught.”

Beverly Hills residents have organized themselves, block-by-block and in nine city zones, for self-defense. The emergency preparedness committees, Just in Case Beverly Hills, were started by Vera Markowitz, a former 1960s radical who was a member of the New Left Students for a Democratic Society before moving to Beverly Hills.

Today, she views public safety and fighting discrimination as two sides of the same coin. “Two years ago I got rid of the Beverly Hills police chief because she had cost the city $25 million in lawsuits by former police officers alleging that she was racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic,” said Markowitz.

 (The police chief has stated that she retired.)

The entertainment writer and her retired business exec husband, meanwhile, organized neighbors to hire private security. “We got all these homes to buy in way more than I anticipated,” she said. “But it turned out there wasn’t private security available. There is complete panic out there.”

Security firms charge between $2,000 to $4,000 a month to patrol neighborhoods. “A lot of people are mad about it because people moved here in part because of the police and we’re paying a lot of money in taxes to be in Beverly Hills,” said the retired business executive.

Beverly Hills Police Department is under-staffed and just hired five new officers to make up for the 17 it lacked to meet the minimum required for public safety. That’s still a blip compared to LA, which has 500 fewer police officers today than it did this time last year.

Private security executive Bryce Eddy runs Covered Six. One of his clients is the city of Beverly Hills, which hired his firm in June of 2020 after looters smashed store windows on Rodeo Drive.

“The police were overwhelmed,” said Eddy. “In October 2020 we were out there with 22 vehicles and 40 armed guys per shift for 80 armed guys a day. We reduced crime by almost 40 percent. They kept us on until January. After we left, crime spiked back up 90 percent.”

In February, three alleged gang members stole a $500,000 Richard Mille RM 11-03 Flyback Chronograph watch off the arm of a man eating lunch at the Beverly Hills restaurant Il Pastaio. The same month, criminals robbed seven people of their Rolexes in neighborhoods bordering Beverly Hills.

In response, the city hired Eddy’s firm again. “We’ve been back ever since,” he said.

Los Angeles’ progressive city government reduced the LA Police Department’s budget by $150 million in July, lowering its staff to its lowest level in 12 years. Today, LA has 500 fewer police officers than it did at this time last year.

The irony is that cutting police budgets, noted LAPD officer Steve Robinson, “means less training, which means we are going in the opposite direction. And criminals on the streets are more emboldened.”

There is now a bipartisan recall campaign underway that could remove Gascón from office, and all of the fearful Beverly Hill residents interviewed by The Post said they supported it.

“I think I’m still radical,” said Markowitz, “but I’m radical in the middle. I’m just not on the extreme of anything. I’ve always believed that when you believe in something, you fight for whatever it is.” (read more)

UPenn transgender swimmer Lia Thomas says it's completely fair to compete against women:

"Everybody is able to compete in the category they’re most comfortable with unless there’s a proven unfair advantage that they have." pic.twitter.com/JGzeUZ0SnG

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 9, 2021

Here’s this morning’s hit with Fox News talking UPenn’s transgender swimming crushing all the women swimmers. pic.twitter.com/8y0dFsMDtt

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 8, 2021

The second female Penn swimmer to speak out, who was granted anonymity due to what is viewed as threats from the university, activists, and the political climate, wants people to know that Penn swimmers are “angry” over the lack of fairness in the sport as Lia Thomas destroys the record books and brings fellow teammates to tears.

The second Penn swimmer to come forward was at the University of Akron Zippy Invitational where she watched Lia Thomas beat fellow teammate Anna Kalandadze by 38 seconds in the 1650 freestyle. OutKick’s source described Penn swimmers on the Akron pool deck as upset and crying, knowing they were going to be demolished by Thomas.

“They feel so discouraged because no matter how much work they put in it, they’re going to lose. Usually, they can get behind the blocks and know they out-trained all their competitors and they’re going to win and give it all they’ve got,” the source said.

“Now they’re having to go behind the blocks knowing no matter what, they do not have the chance to win. I think that it’s really getting to everyone.”

After just five meets and the Akron Invitational, Thomas has not just destroyed opponents. The Penn freestyle records are being rewritten by a swimmer who was second-team All-Ivy league in 2018-19 — as a male.

Akron was an absolute beatdown by Thomas, but it wasn’t without disgust from fans who were in the building watching meet, pool, and school records drop one after the other.

“Usually everyone claps, everyone is yelling and cheering when someone wins a race. Lia touched the wall and it was just silent in there,” OutKick’s source said during a phone interview.

“When [Penn swimmer] Anna [Kalandadze] finished second, the crowd erupted in applause.”

Friday, Thomas set a new 500 freestyle Ivy League record. Saturday saw Thomas touch the wall in the 200 freestyle, which is now the nation’s fastest time in the event. And then there was the 1650 that left fans in disgust.

OutKick’s source said that after the 200 freestyle, Thomas could be overheard bragging.

“That was so easy, I was cruising,” Lia Thomas allegedly said.

According to OutKick’s source, Thomas was unhappy with her time after the 500 race, but while standing in front of teammates, made sure to mention, “At least I’m still No. 1 in the country.”

“Well, obviously she’s No. 1 in the country because she’s at a clear physical advantage after having gone through male puberty and getting to train with testosterone for years,” OutKick’s source said. “Of course you’re No. 1 in the country when you’re beating a bunch of females. That’s not something to brag about.”

Thomas’ current best times racing for the women’s team:

200 free: 1:41.93

500 free: 4:34:06

1650 free: 15:59.71

Thomas’ best times racing as a male the first three years at Penn:

200 Free … 1:39.31

500 Free … 4:18.72

1,650 Free … 14:54.76

NCAA women’s swimming records:

200 free: 1:39:10 (Missy Franklin)

500 free: 4:24:06 (Katie Ledecky)

1650 free: 15:03:31 (Katie Ledecky)

A team source who was at Wednesday’s meeting says the administration drew a line in the sand and announced that Thomas wasn’t going anywhere and it was non-negotiable.

That leaves disgusted teammates no choice but to either stay quiet or speak up against the wishes of the school and risk repercussions. The second swimmer to speak out says that it’s her belief that coach Mike Schnur is just staying quiet and going about his business.

“He is just following the NCAA rules and the situation is out of his hands,” she said.

After years of battling for Title IX and equal rights with men in college athletics, the biological women are pretty much being told to shut their mouths and move along by the school and the NCAA.

“While they say they care about all of us, our interests are in direct conflict with the interests of Lia in regards to fair competition and getting to compete. While we support Lia as a person to make decisions for her own life, you cannot make that decision and then come and impede on other people and their rights,” OutKick’s source added.

“Your right doesn’t supersede everyone else’s right.”

So what’s the solution here? Thomas’ teammate doesn’t have a magical policy that the NCAA should follow to make everyone happy.

“I don’t know what the solution is, but I know this is not it. Because people talk about how the trans community might’ve been marginalized before and this is supposed to be helping, but you can’t help the trans community by marginalizing [biological] women.”

“I know no matter what, biological women will never be on an equal playing field with transgender females.”

During an interview published Thursday by swimming outlet SwimSwam.com, Thomas spoke out for the first time since destroying pool records and said, “I’m just thrilled to still be able to swim and I love to compete and I love to see how fast I can go. It’s sorta an ongoing evolution of what I think I can go.”

As for the records Thomas now holds, he doesn’t seem to have any regret in smashing biological female swimming marks.

“I’m proud of my times, my ability to keep swimming and to continue competing. And they’re suited up times. I’m happy with them and my coaches are happy with them,” Thomas added.

And that was that from Thomas. No shame. No mention of not claiming the records so that they can remain the property of biological women. Thomas is moving on — with the records.

As for the biological women, they’re left to battle it out for second place in the freestyle events and receive lectures from school administrators who want them to be good foot soldiers so the school isn’t attacked by an angry transgender community for speaking out against Thomas.

“Honestly, this is so upsetting to us because we want to be acknowledged for our hard work, but it seems like this just keeps overshadowing us. Put Lia out of the picture — we have a really good team this year. We have one of the best teams we’ve had in years, and that’s being overshadowed by [Lia],” OutKick’s source said.

“Even without Lia, we had the chance to win the Ivy League this year, which is a huge deal for us. We train every single day and give up so much for this sport. And I love swimming. I do it because I love it. It’s been a part of my life forever, and this is a slap in the face that the NCAA doesn’t care about the integrity of women’s sports.”

Penn returns to its home pool on January 8 with a meet against Dartmouth as Lia Thomas continues on a path that figures to turn into NCAA titles in March.

“This is such a cloud over everything. A cloud in the locker room, especially the last few days because we all know of how things have changed in the last week,” Thomas’ teammate concluded. (read more)

In a strongly worded opinion joined by the high court’s three liberal justices, Roberts wrote that the "clear purpose and actual effect" of the Texas law was "to nullify this Court’s rulings." That, he said, undermines the Constitution and the fundamental role of the Supreme Court and the court system as a whole.

The opinion was a remarkable plea by the chief justice to his colleagues on the court to resist the efforts by right-wing lawmakers to get around court decisions they dislike, in this case Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in the United States, within limits. But in this case, his urgent request was largely ignored by the other justices on the court who were appointed by Republicans.

His point to them was that the court system should decide what the law is, and it should resist efforts like that of the Texas Legislature to get around the courts by limiting the ability of abortion providers to sue.

It is a basic principle, he wrote, "that the Constitution is the 'fundamental and paramount law of the nation,' and '[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.'" He cited as proof the landmark 1803 Marbury v. Madison case, which established the principle of judicial review, allowing the court to nullify laws that violate the Constitution.

“If the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery,” he said, quoting the 1809 U.S. v. Peters case, which found that state legislatures can't overrule federal courts. “The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.”

The Texas law, which took effect in September, delegates enforcement to any person, anywhere, who can sue any doctor performing an abortion or anyone who aids in the procedure. That makes it virtually impossible for abortion providers to sue the state to block the law, S.B. 8. Texas has argued that the law's opponents had no legal authority to sue the state because S.B. 8 does not give state officials any role in enforcing the restriction.

Roberts has said that politics has no place at the Supreme Court and has made it clear he will resist efforts to draw the court into partisan cultural fights, fearing that the perception of partisanship will undermine the court's legitimacy.

With the court now having a 6-3 conservative supermajority, Roberts wound up siding with the three liberal justices: Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. The addition of three justices by former President Donald Trump meant Roberts could not find another vote for his position, leaving him largely in the minority in the abortion ruling.

Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University, said Friday on MSNBC that “the real question here is whether or not Chief Justice John Roberts is chief justice in principle as well as name.”

“The question here is how can he rein in that hardcore conservative bloc of the court?" she asked. "And it seemed obvious last week in oral arguments, and this week — in terms of how these opinions are written, and where the chief justice finds himself — that maybe he's having a hard time keeping all of the conservative bloc in line.”

The Supreme Court ruling Friday said that abortion providers in Texas can move forward with their lawsuit challenging S.B. 8 along a very narrow path. But it kept the law in effect while the court battle unfolds, which abortion rights supporters said would prevent large numbers of low-income Texas women from obtaining abortions during the legal fight. (read more)

Explosive newly-obtained payment logs show that, in 2020, the Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability (CRH) received a staggering $3 million from Soros' nonprofit group, The Foundation to Promote Open Society.

Records of the huge payouts were found in the transaction history of Soros' Open Society Foundations' grant database.

CRH is a clearinghouse of resources for radical local activists on how to organize anti-police efforts.

The group provides materials on pushing for abolishing and defunding the police.

Tax forms show that the CRH hub sits under the umbrella of the most prominent dark money network in America.

Of Soros' funding, $2 million went toward creating a "budgeting Academy program" to "train community safety advocates in how to advocate around their local municipal budgets," the grants show.

The remaining $1 million was for general support.

Soros' nonprofit previously sent $1.5 million to the resource center in 2019.

Of that, $500,000 went toward establishing the hub, tax forms show.

Soros' funding of CRH is yet another instance showing how his cash funds efforts to reshape the justice system.

For years, Soros has showered district attorney races with money, oftentimes backing the most progressive candidate.

His nonprofit empire has devoted hundreds of millions toward "racial equality," including tens of millions for local efforts for criminal justice reform. 

CRH describes itself "as a resource for local advocates and organizers working to address the harms of policing in the U.S." that seeks to "cultivate community safety and accountability outside of the criminal legal system."

The hub provides research, reports, data, model policies, toolkits, and "other resources to the field" and supports campaigns with technical assistance needs, according to its website. 

Among those materials is a 24-page memo CRH wrote that "reviews alternatives to policing in the context of police abolitionist frameworks, offering insights and sharing successful strategies for advocates in the field."

The memo is one of more than 700 resources on the site.

CRH notes that it does not necessarily support or endorse all materials in its hub. 

Several far-left groups contribute materials, including No Cop Academy, Cops Off Campus Coalition, and The Digital Abolitionist, all of which provide resources marked under its "abolitionist" tab. 

Its website further shows that CRH directly works on projects concerning police defunding.

The hub "houses and staffs" the website defundpolice.org in partnership with several national movement organizations.

CRH hosts weekly two-hour "invest/divest learning communities" that are attended by 40 to 60 organizers across the country focused on "Budget Advocacy, Community-Based Safety Strategies, Police Fraternal Association Contracts, and Reparations for police violence."

The hub also hosts a Defund Police Fellowship that supports 16 fellows in 13 cities with money to support organizing staff.

It also "offers monthly training and skill-building sessions, weekly office hours with budget, campaign strategy, and communications experts, and a peer mentor program," its website states.

According to the Soros group's tax forms, CRH is a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit incubator managed by the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Arabella Advisors.

The New Venture Fund provides its tax and legal status to groups it houses, meaning that projects under its umbrella do not have to file tax forms to the IRS that would show information such as board members and financial information. 

The New Venture Fund raked in $965 million in anonymous donations in 2020, Fox News previously reported.

It is one of four funds Arabella Advisors manages, along with the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund. 

The four funds in the Arabella-managed dark money network pulled in a combined $1.6 billion in secret donations last year, tax forms show.

But while none of the funds disclose donors on their tax forms, Soros' nonprofit outright states the cash is going to the New Venture Fund to be passed off to the CRH.

Soros' funding for the project comes on the heels of his years-long efforts to elect progressive prosecutors in dozens of cities around the country. 

"These are little-noticed offices; you don't have to spend very much money to get elected to a prosecutors' office," Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a statement. 

"When you do, you have an enormous influence over who actually gets prosecuted and charged with crimes," Lehman said.

"You can rule out whole classes of crimes of meriting prosecution." 

Lehman said Soros' funding helped candidates "easily grab" the prosecutor position in several cities. 

Parker Thayer, a researcher at the Capital Research Center, estimated that Soros has dropped $28 million into prosecutor races since 2015.

Soros' Open Society Foundations also devoted $220 million in 2020 to a "racial equality" push, which included $70 million for local efforts geared toward criminal justice reform. (read more)

She is shunned by all her vaccinated friends (including other nurses) who:

• blame her for the pandemic

• feel it is dangerous to be around her

• say she is selfish

• say that she isn’t “a team player”

• claim she is evil for not doing the right thing by getting vaccinated.

She calmly tells her friends that as someone who is COVID recovered, she is much safer to be around since even if she gets re-infected, she cannot transmit the virus. And furthermore, if she does get re-infected, she won’t get hospitalized or die.

Caroline is superior to her vaccinated friends from both a risk and burden perspective. There is no evidence that she can infect her friends and she isn’t a burden on society if she gets re-infected. Her friends don’t have a single advantage over her in any way.

Her friends tell her that what she said isn’t true and is misinformation.

Wow. What Caroline says comes right from the CDC (showing if you are COVID recovered there is no evidence that shows you can transmit a subsequent infection) and a Harvard study (showing people who have recovered immunity don’t get reinfected). (read more)

This is a fact that is no longer in dispute, as even the CDC admits this, as their most recent report states:

As of November 24, 2021, VAERS has received 1,949 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis among people ages 30 and younger who received COVID-19 vaccine. Most cases have been reported after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), particularly in male adolescents and young adults. (Source.)

The only debatable points are, 1, whether or not these cases are “rare,” and 2, if the benefits of COVID-19 mass vaccination of young people outweigh the risk for heart disease.

And it is on these two points that the CDC is lying to the public, as I will conclusively prove in this article.

The second point is actually very easily debunked, by simply looking at publicly available statistics on COVID-19 deaths for this age group.

As of December 1, 2021, out of 779,402 alleged COVID-19 deaths covering almost 2 years now, only 630 of those were under the age of 17.

And even those 630 alleged deaths in this age group are not necessarily caused by COVID-19. It just means that when they died, they tested positive for COVID-19.

So there is no benefit to vaccinating children under the age of 17 for COVID-19 when they have almost a statistically zero percent chance of dying from COVID-19, when it is known that these shots cause heart disease.

As to the claim by the CDC that instances of heart disease caused by COVID-19 shots are “rare,” the factual evidence states otherwise.

I ran a search in VAERS, the U.S. Government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, for all cases of “carditis” following COVID-19 shots for this age group, and from the 11/26/2021 release of VAERS data, it returned a result of 666 cases. (Source.)
(read more)

He blamed the mistake on his “confused brain” when the two students arrived to class late on Sept. 24, while he was reading a classmate’s work.

Several students said Trogan’s bizarre overreaction, rather than making a simple apology, made matters worse for him.

“The offended student assumed my mistake was because I confused that student with another Black student,” Trogan wrote, according to a Nov. 29 article in the Fordham Observer. “I have done my best to validate and reassure the offended student that I made a simple, human, error. It has nothing to do with race.”

He blamed the mistake on his “confused brain” when the two students arrived to class late on Sept. 24, while he was reading a classmate’s work.

Several students said Trogan’s bizarre overreaction, rather than making a simple apology, made matters worse for him.

“Trogan was a nice teacher for the 5 classes that I had him for, but he never attempted to get to know me personally (in a 14 person class),” wrote one newspaper commenter who claimed to be in the Composition II class. “I don’t think he deserved to get fired, but his response to a small issue was what blew the entire thing up.”

Fordham spokesman Bob Howe told The Post the school “takes personnel matters very seriously,” but claimed “media representations regarding this issue do not reflect the facts in Dr. Trogan’s case.” He refused to elaborate.

Trogan was a popular instructor, according to dozens of reviews on Rate My Professor.

“He doesn’t quite let on how much he knows and what he’s accomplished, but he is quite brilliant but humble and not stuck up,” a former student wrote.

Neither Trogan, his union, nor Sims, returned messages. The second student, who has remained anonymous, declined to comment to The Post through an intermediary. (read more)

USA Today published a convoluted, garbled mish-mash of “antiracist” Critical Race Training crazy disguised as a serious piece of “journalism” . . . . or maybe it’s an op-ed?  Who can tell in these final days of leftwing propaganda disguised as “news”?

In an effort to promote equity and access for kids of color, girls and low-income students, many math teachers are shifting toward inclusive instruction. It’s controversial. https://t.co/S3WS2LlZg8

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) December 7, 2021

NOTE: USA Today changed the headline after endless and well-deserved mockery to “Is Math Education Racist?”

As is so often the case when leftist propagandists engage in what could be meaningful discourse, the team of four writers on this piece (FOUR!) start out asking the wrong question and, in the process, completely recasting and mischaracterizing the actual debate that is taking place regarding the decimation of K-12 maths education.

This is the same rhetorical gaslighting the left uses when saying “but CRT isn’t taught in K-12 classrooms.” And, in fact, this article provides an excellent example of exactly how CRT has taken root in K-12 classrooms without the actual legal theory being “taught.”

CRT In K-12 Maths Classrooms

The debate about mathematics being “racist” arose due to the “antiracist” rantings of Critical Race Theory proponents. This Marxist ideology sees every disparity between blacks (and to a lesser, begrudging degree other minorities, except Asians) and whites as inherently, always, and only rooted in “white supremacy” and a “systemic racism” that favors white people. There is no other possible explanation, including the actual reasons for these disparities.

It is important to note that CRT is really about blacks, slavery, and reparations. However, since black people makeup only about 13% of the total U.S. population and are thus are not large enough in voting bloc terms, regressive Democrats still living in their glory days, ’60s Helter Skelter Charles Manson race war lunacy decided it would be good to lump in Latinos, Hispanics, Native Americans, even Hawaiians in this racist division of Americans into identity politics voting blocs for the purposes of a cold (or if they can manage it, hot) racial war on American soil.

The goal is to turn this “unjust” system of racism on its head, destroy everything (burn it all to the ground, as they like to say), and build up new systemic racism that favors blacks (and to a lesser, begrudging degree other minorities, except Asians.) at the expense of whites (and, of course, Asians).

In order to accomplish this goal, it’s important to scour every field and find out where disparities between blacks and whites exist, point at it while screeching RAAACISM!, and then dismantle whatever it is. In this case, it’s mathematics. Asians as a group excel at maths, with whites also doing quite well, while blacks, statistically speaking, tend not to do as well. The only possible reason for this racial gap in maths achievement, according to the childish, binary “thinking” of these Marxists, is racism (just substitute race for class to see how this new twist on Marxism works).

Instead of doing something logical like finding a way to improve the maths scores of blacks, the chosen approach is to just declare the field racist and posit that maths is not only over-emphasized in STEM (which literally stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math—the first three of which cannot exist without the latter) but that no one of any race needs advanced courses in maths, that maths is “intuitive” and that students just spontaneously “feel” the answer to algebra or geometry problems.

Because, they assert, if a student thinks/feels that the answer to “what does two plus two equal?” is fifty-eleven, that’s a win because they are “engaged” enough to provide any answer at all. And everyone knows you get a participation badge for engagement and would be very very sad if you knew that your “fifty-eleven” answer wouldn’t qualify you for AP maths. No worries, math is subjective, just like the Humanities. And we eliminated AP courses in maths, anyway! The goal is not to teach maths (or anything) but to ensure “equitable outcomes” (meaning that everyone does equally poorly and is equally stupid.  Again, this is Marxism focused on skin color rather than class.).

While the USA Today article begins with a delightful discussion of K-12 teachers engaging students in maths with “singing, dancing, and sculpture,” one might be under the impression that the debate about maths education in the U.S. is about how maths is taught.

The debate, however, is whether or not the field of mathematics itself is racist (as noted in the original USA Today title). Is it “racist” to require a correct answer, to say that two plus two is always and can only be four? The racist “antiracists” say it is.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May, 2021:

The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” Apparently, that’s also racist.

Yes, according to the racist “antiracist” CRT training, objectivity is racist. As is being on time (perhaps, given the war on maths, even being able to tell time is racist?) and sending back cold food in a restaurant.

This ridiculous dumbing down of mathematics was recently blasted by STEM professionals who are alarmed and dismayed at the crazy.

USA Today’s Gaslighting “Antiracist” Propaganda

Not only does the USA Today article begin with the wrong question, a fact they appear to concede having changed the title from “Is Math Racist” to “Is Math Education Racist,” but they then proceed to skate past the actual debate before flitting over the left’s pet deflections and bizarre stance on (teaching) mathematics as intuitive, subjective, and nonlinear.

They approvingly note:

But other, bolder recommendations to make math more inclusive are blowing up the world of mathematics education. Schools are collapsing math “tracks” to put kids of all abilities in the same classes and adding data science courses that carry the same prestige as calculus, long seen as a gateway to a career in STEM fields – and elite colleges.

Another heated issue: the extent to which math education should include real-world problems involving racial and social inequities. Fairly or not, that debate has landed in the murky soup of “critical race theory” digressions.

The changes have pitted mathematicians and math educators against each other and sparked criticism from affluent parents upset by the elimination of gifted tracks. They’ve caused upheaval in one state, California, as professors, parents and teachers spar over proposed changes to the state’s K-12 math framework.

“We’re not changing or lowering the standards. We’re outlining how inequitable the teaching of math is right now,” said Jo Boaler, a Stanford University math education professor at the forefront of the changes.

Ah, yes, all that demand for correct answers, showing one’s work, and not only understanding the underlying mathematical principles but being able to apply them is so “inequitable.” And stuff.

The article then flits from random point to random point—California math wars, “dropping a math beat,” why axing gifted maths programs “works,” and the ludicrous section on why this application of CRT in K-12 in maths education is not actually the application of CRT in maths education (it is)—before concluding on a note that undermines any argument they think they are making for dumbing down maths to ‘help’ black people.

In Yonkers, New York, parent Cheryl Brannan didn’t think her daughter was getting enough support in math and science class, either. That was 10 years ago, but it prompted Brannan to launch an outside tutoring program for Black girls.

Brannan’s daughter, Sayidana Brannan-Douglas, now 24, remembers being tracked in high school. She was placed in advanced algebra in ninth grade, but not advanced earth science, based on her middle-school scores.

Since then, Brannan-Douglas and more than 1,000 middle and high school students in Westchester County have participated in her mom’s summer camps or year-round programs to practice math and science skills and to learn about careers in STEM fields.

. . . . Brannan-Douglas now knows she would have been fine in advanced science with additional resources, akin to those found in the camps and workshops her mom started.

She went on to attend SUNY’s Stony Brook University, majoring in technological systems management.

“In middle school, I wasn’t underqualified,” she said. “I was underresourced.”

So wait, Brannan-Douglas was capable, she just wasn’t provided the advanced placement course in earth science she needed to excel? Then, why, pray tell, are the “antiracists” insisting on eliminating all of these resources for black students? Why are “antiracist” radicals essentially writing off all black students as “underqualified” and ensuring that they are forever “underresourced” under the ‘math is racist’ banner?

Isn’t the true message of Brannan-Douglas’ story that she needed more and better maths instruction, including access to AP classes, not less?

USA Today Lambasted For Incoherent Nonsense

Math isn't racist… but the "educators" who think it needs to be changed and made easier because some black kids struggle with it… ARE.

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) December 8, 2021

No, math is not racist. Major venues like @USATODAY even asking this question is a sign of cultural sickness.

Racial disparities can be addressed (in part) by using the best evidence-based pedagogical practices that enable student learning. Please stop suggesting math is racist pic.twitter.com/aZHAC9L0rR

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) December 8, 2021

"Is math racist?" is not an article on The Onion.

— Eve Barlow (@Eve_Barlow) December 8, 2021

Is this a joke? pic.twitter.com/02DH4I4MrV

— Daniel Lacalle (@dlacalle_IA) December 8, 2021

Dr. Fauci stated, “Free will. I respect that, but these are unusual times.”    Pull your chair a little closer, and allow me to whisper in your ear: ‘There will always be unusual times.’

Historically, this type of communal outlook has been used as a talking point to justify some of the darkest times in world history.   Politicians, eugenicists and some very disturbed world leaders with grand opinions of their own importance, have long espoused this same ideology.  It is a twisted and sick worldview that eventually leads to the same repeated conclusion.  WATCH [1 minute]:

The most sovereign of all human conditions is the right of an individual to be free.  As soon as the state begins eroding the right of the individual, bad things start to happen.  The communal mob is a fickle assembly who will always cull itself with ever-changing denominators of purity….

The ideology of Anthony Fauci is dangerous.

Allow me to expand….

The Fabian Plan for gradual Socialist Revolution was as definitive as it possibly could be. To say it has been an ideological conspiracy was/is simplistic in the extreme.

The Fabian plan included instituting widespread educational programs for its leadership and its minions, and as time progressed, it opened schools, such as the London School of Economics, and the New School of Social Research.  Later, they expanded to Columbia University in New York City and beyond.

One stroke of genius was that instead of advocating a Socialist State, the Fabians assisted in the implementation of the Welfare State; which, as we should all know, is merely a few steps away from a purely Socialistic State. It was, of course, implemented gradually and played upon the weaknesses of human nature to gain popularity.

Unlike the usual Socialist points of views, the Fabians didn’t advocate complete State ownership of businesses, industry, agriculture or land.  Instead they sought to involve the State into very specific areas of importance such as electric power production, transportation, precious metals and of course, credit. The remaining balance of economic systems would be left to the private sector, however; it would be highly regulated by the State and operated according to the wishes of the State.

If you look at Great Britain, you will see that they accomplished their goals with ease.  The Fabian entry into American life has been more difficult; however, the goals are the same, and they have made enormous advances toward those goals.   Most of their accomplishments have been realized without using that dreaded word: ‘Socialism’.

They have brought the Fabian Dream to America through an extremely brilliant system that has been openly accepted by the voters of this country without the hint of suspicion on their part that they were voting a socialistic system into place.

Now, make no mistake about it, Fabian Socialists are Statist.  They are absolutely authoritarian in their philosophy. Their long-term goal has always been a socialistic dictatorship with full imposition of a very legalistic society where the individual is simply a part of the collective.

An example of this can be found in the writings of one of the founders of the Fabian Society, George Bernard Shaw.  Speaking of the Socialist Utopia, he said: “Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not the character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”  Does this century-old quote sound like the recent remarks from the World Economic Forum: “You will own nothing, and be happy”?

Of course, all of this would be in the best interest of society as a whole and the whole made up simply of parts, individuals merely cogs in the machine of social justice. This idea of social justice is the biggest selling point and perhaps the easiest to peddle to the people.

Programs of social reform, incremental at first, allowed for the tempering of the people; allowing for them to grow accustom to the intervention of the State in the affairs of the individual. Of course, such reforms are never an end unto themselves only stepping stones to a greater Socialist construct of society.

Regarding the great strides made toward these goals, Max Beer stated with confidence: “There was no reason for Socialists to wait for revolution. The realization of socialism had begun the moment when the State became accessible to social reform ideas.” Indeed, the revolution was already half realized at the moment when the State stepped over the threshold of progressive social construction and intervention into the private lives of the people.

The first step in any Socialist plan is the reform of capitalism, when the capitalist system is sufficiently neutralized, the rest comes relatively easy.

The first step to an efficient plan of capitalist neutralization is control over the money supply, and for that a central bank is required along with a fiat monetary system.  In this country that was initiated with the advent of the Federal Reserve.

Later of course, must come effective controls over major infrastructure and services, all accomplished through the New Deal. The New Deal accomplished substantial feats toward the Fabian Socialist construct with numerous price controls, quotas, subsidies, inspections, regulations, licenses, fees, penalties and massive government interventions into what was formerly private enterprise.

Although you would never hear politicians of either political party admit to support the ideals of socialism, they nevertheless not only support such measures, but also promote them. Indeed, we have watched a greater push toward socialism, though few realize it.

The government is assuming more and more responsibility for and authority over the economy, all under the guise of protecting the people from potentially unscrupulous free marketeers. We are always being moved, mostly nudged, another small step closer to the dream society of the Fabians.

Of course, these are simply steps, essential parts to a much broader agenda, one that is authoritarian in nature and execution, even the centrally planned economy is a mere step, not the end product. It is all carefully crafted, manufactured to ensure the most popular support possible for “people-friendly” solutions while instituting a fraudulent system of central control over the unsuspecting public.

The system has been marketed to the public, one specific component at a time, each component essential to the completion of the whole, and that is the brilliance of this gradual imposition of Fabian Socialism in this country.

The greatest bulwark against tyranny in America has always been the system of private ownership and free enterprise.  It is the cornerstone of our system of government, and without it our freedoms and liberty are in jeopardy.

Central economic planning is, in a very basic sense, the keystone to Fabian Socialism, for in order for it to succeed, central State planning and control must replace the system of free enterprise.

While it was not necessary for the State to actually own or directly control all the elements in the economy, it is enough for the State to have the right to assert itself in any area that it deems necessary. The Fabians called it “the democratization of economic power”, in other words socialized and centralized control over economic direction within the country.

In 1942, Stuart Chase, in his book “The Road We Are Traveling” spelled out the system of planning the Fabians had in mind; the interesting thing is to look at that plan in comparison to 2021 America.

1. Strong, centralized government.
2. Powerful Executive at the expense of Congress and the Judicial.
3. Government controlled banking, credit and securities exchange.
4. Government control over employment.
5. Unemployment insurance, old age pensions.
6. Universal medical care, food and housing programs.
7. Access to unlimited government borrowing.
8. A managed monetary system.
9. Government control over foreign trade.
10. Government control over natural energy sources, transportation and agricultural production.
11. Government regulation of labor.
12. Youth camps devoted to health discipline, community service and ideological teaching consistent with those of the authorities.
13. Heavy progressive taxation.

It should be evident that while Socialists no longer use the name, that the plan is socialism at its heart. The Fabian Socialist Revolution began in earnest in this country in 1933 with the imposition of the Welfare State and has been steadily progressing since.

Those who are promoting this system, whether in the Republican Party or Democratic Party, are nothing less than traitors, guilty of a type of high treason that deserves the most punitive penalty for such treachery. Listen carefully to the propositions of Joe Biden, AOC and Democratic leadership; I suspect you will quickly find their positions are not only similar, but they propose in essence and detail the Fabian Socialist construct.

The system that these marauders are imposing upon us will, if not halted with forceful opposition, ultimately alter our system of government beyond recognition. It is being accomplished with equal parts respectability and equal parts antagonism.   The Fabians would not dream of such an imposition without popular support, and they will make sure they have popular support.

In 1933, they proposed that private enterprise had failed leaving the jobless to starve and hope to fade.  This was the premise for the State to step in, save the country and protect the people from the dangers associated with the inherent problems of free enterprise.

Today, this COVID call is very similar, the State must step in to protect the people. The Corporate State is, in the minds of Fabians, the ultimate protector of the common man, the provider of security on all fronts, but it requires our complete compliance and the relinquishment of our liberty in exchange.

♦ The State is ultimately the one source of wealth and health.

The problem is that the wealth is the people’s wealth confiscated in exchange for their hard labor. It is, in essence, a plan for a modern feudal society of peonage, and the people are the peons.

A worse problem arises with health.  Once we give our healthcare responsibility to the State, well, they start making decisions for us; including how many of us around are actually good for the State.  Cue Dr. Anthony Fauci…

…”free will. I respect that, but these are unusual times.”

(read more)

A Boston University student newspaper editorial board suggested this week that the campus’s “safety issue” could be solved by “outright abolishing” the campus police.

“From their own public statements to their racist history and present, it is clear the BUPD is not designed, nor does it seem willing, to protect all students on campus. Defunding this institution — or outright abolishing it — and creating new services in its wake that better address student and community needs may actually improve student safety,” the editorial board of the Daily Free Press wrote in an editorial on Wednesday.

“To put it simply, you would always have someone to call — the number would just be different,” the editorial said. “For instance, BU could increase funding for Scarlet SafeWalk, a program in which students escort anyone feeling unsafe to their home. BU could create a mental health task force specifically designed to deal with mental health crises and expand funding and resources for BU’s Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Center.”

The editorial board argues that “racist police institutions” cannot create a safe campus, and it claims the campus police department “has an egregious history and present of violence and racism.”

The board detailed several incidents of alleged misconduct by the police, going back several decades.

The editorial mentions the 1984 case of Boston University Police sergeant Kevin Bourque, explaining that Bourque fatally shot an unarmed 19-year-old named Christopher Dignan. Fox News adds context to the claims, citing reporting from the Associated Press in 1985 that reveals an investigation found that Dignan was operating a stolen vehicle and tried to run over Bourque when the officer cornered the vehicle two miles from campus. Bourque then shot and killed Dignan and was later cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident.

The editorial also cites an April incident in which “the BUPD wrestled a Black man to the ground who they suspected had assaulted a student” and says the students who recorded the incident were made uncomfortable by the officers’ use of force.

However, a Boston University spokesperson told the campus newspaper at the time of the incident that the man had been “escorted from 595 Comm. Ave. and directed to leave toward Kenmore Square but instead followed the officer towards Silber Way and became combative and confrontational, including spitting on one officer and pulling his protective mask off.”

Boston University is far from the only private university where students have called to defund or altogether abolish campus police; students at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago made similar demands last year in the wake of George Floyd’s [fentanyl overdose] death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. (read more)

Funny thing about extortion: It works.

Biden figures that he must signal he is with the hard Left, and congressional Democrats figure that they must vote accordingly. Omarova is a case in point. She wasn’t going to be confirmed regardless, so her nomination gave Biden and Senate Democrats a cost-free way of keeping their crazies on board.

Cost-free? I must be nuts, you’re thinking, because when the next election rolls around, voters will remember that so many Democrats backed an out-and-out socialist. Maybe, maybe not. No one ever went broke underestimating the memory of voters, after all. But consider the alternative scenario: What if Biden and establishment Democrats lost the hard Left by refusing to engage in these gestures? The result would be internal fracturing, primaries, and the party establishment on the receiving end of the tactics for which the Bolsheviks are notorious. (You may have noticed that it wasn’t conservatives who ran the Cuomo brothers out of their powerful gigs.)

Moreover, it is a blunt fact that Marxism is respectable on the modern left — even popular. Communism is not in the depths of disrepute, as it was a generation ago. That’s what happens when (a) you no longer have in Moscow a concrete example of what a monstrosity communism is, and (b) you cede the universities, as well as primary and secondary education, to Marxists. Polling over the last several years (see, e.g., here and here) shows plunging support for free-markets (labeled “capitalism,” which would have brought a smile to Marx’s face) and surging support for socialism. That socialism’s supporters have no idea what they’re talking about — well, see (a) and (b), supra.

These are the Democrats’ voters. With the electorate closely divided, Democrats need them to vote. Ergo, Democrats have to come up with ways to keep them in the tent and energized, without actually doing too many of the ruinous things they want done, which would hurt Democrats along with most Americans.

Omarova is one example of how they do this — the appointment of radicals to top posts in the administrative state (especially the “quasi-independent” agencies). Another is the appointment of progressive-activist lawyers to the federal bench, something to which the public pays scant attention but which the hard Left watches closely. There is also the pronouncement of mandates and executive orders that direct implementation of progressive policies (or the undoing of anything associated with President Trump, no matter how beneficial the Trump policy in question). These, too, are relatively cost-free for Biden: The administration knows its usurpations of legislative authority will instantly be challenged and probably stayed in court, so no real harm will be done; eventually, the administration will probably lose the litigation, but by then, when the public has forgotten what little it knew in the first place, Biden will have shown radical leftists that he is on their side, fighting for their objectives.

The rational person’s reaction to this is that it has to hurt Biden and the Democrats with the electorate at large. But modern political theory begs to differ. Today’s strategists contend that elections are at least as much about catalyzing a party’s base voters as appealing broadly to the public. President Trump made this easier for Democrats to pull off — while the Biden campaign signaled that it was with the Left on core issues, the candidate was able to win over the vast middle of the electorate simply by not being Trump and staying out of sight.

That is why, for example, Biden steadfastly refused to say he was opposed to court-packing and to ending the legislative filibuster, even when these positions put him at odds with most voters. Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court had brought these issues to the fore immediately prior to the election, and Democrats lacked the votes to stop her confirmation. Biden couldn’t afford to infuriate the base at that point. So, even though he had a long public record of opposition to these radical proposals, he declined to say he’d oppose them if elected, opting instead for another rope-a-dope maneuver: a presidential commission that would brow-knit over “transformational change” without actually doing anything..

It should go without saying that the GOP has radicals of its own to worry about. But Republicans lack Democrats’ unity, organization, and internal discipline. Though Trump’s still-ardent followers wield significant influence, they know the Republican establishment is not with them. They know many elected and otherwise influential Republicans will often rebuke them in a way the Democratic establishment wouldn’t dare rebuke its base constituents.

The replacement of a politics built on cultivating broad electoral appeal with a politics built on appeasing and energizing your party’s extreme elements is a ruinous development for the country. I hope it can be reversed. For now, though, I think we need to be grimly realistic about the fact that Biden will continue to nominate radicals and announce radical policies — precisely because, in the long run, it is to his advantage to do so.

In the mafia, being prosecuted and sentenced to time in prison has always been deemed a cost of doing business. So mob groups divert some of the proceeds of their crimes to take care of the families of the imprisoned. To further encourage loyalty, mobsters are promoted or otherwise rewarded upon release from prison if they’ve kept their mouths shut. The Left makes similar arrangements, in recognition of the fact that winning elections is not an end in and of itself, but a short-lived opportunity to push for transformational change.

Losing elections is a cost of doing business. For the Left, the point is to exploit election wins by issuing radical decrees and taking hard votes that usher in statist policies and drastic cultural change. Yes, it will be unpopular and will probably cost Democrats control of Congress or the White House for a cycle, or a few cycles. But based on long experience, Democrats are betting that Republicans will never even try to roll back the tide. In the meantime, the leftists who lose their elected and appointed posts will be handsomely rewarded — with board memberships, think-tank fellowships, academic perches, top executive positions in ever-more-woke corporate America, and so on. In no time flat, Republicans will stumble, the public will forget, Democrats will gradually win back control of the government, and the cycle will repeat itself.

While we ask why the Left would risk so damaging its electoral hopes by nominating Marxists for top jobs, the Left laughs . . . and transforms our society. (read more)

Indeed, no sooner had the ACLU filed its “transgender bathroom case” in 2015 than conservatives answered the call of duty. One leg into armor, conservatives lurched forth from the trench, pea shooter in hand, never clear what we were fighting for or whether anyone was behind us. It turned out, no one was: A flurry of bathroom bills sunk to the bottom of the ocean, except North Carolina’s, which died in repeal. All for what? To keep an unhappy biological girl with a five o'clock shadow out of the boys’ room?

In any case, conservatives lost — and not just politically. The Fourth Circuit recently decided that a separate, unisex bathroom provided to Grimm stigmatized the child, effectively punishing “transgender status” in violation of Title IX. The Supreme Court denied certiorari, refusing to revisit this mess.

Whatever your views on sex-based rights (and mine are probably as strong as anyone’s), it was hard to see this particular battle as anything other than picking on a child. Grimm had extended absences from school and seems to have suffered greatly through the embarrassing ordeal of public hand-wringing about where one transgender-identified teenager could use the bathroom. It isn’t hard to see that any child would have suffered in Grimm’s position.

Top lawyers for the ACLU argued the case, and while they held judges spellbound with the promise of another civil rights verdict, they sent Republicans into apoplexy. While Republicans ranted, the Left won conquest after conquest.

Here, specifically, is what the Left achieved in the intervening six years: 22 states enacted conversion therapy bans, making it impossible for therapists to offer trans-identified youth any alternative to transition; nearly every medical accrediting organization adopted “affirmative care,” solemnly promising to suspend all medical judgment and rubber-stamp transitions, even by minors; gender ideology wormed its way into public school, laid eggs, and hatched endless confusion; schools across the country, with the explicit approval of the Obama administration, began conspiring to conceal minors’ declared gender identities from their parents; and hundreds of pediatric gender clinics cropped up to meet a sudden demand, heedless of the dangers, peddling phony mental health benefits and dismissing international warnings.

In other words, while conservatives pounded lecterns over school bathrooms, they lost five winnable battles to a radical and unpopular ideology. They painted themselves once again into American Gothic, which might have made them sympathetic, had they not hired the portrait artist and grasped for a pitchfork.

Did anyone consider showing sympathy for Gavin Grimm? The school board created a separate bathroom for Grimm, which Grimm felt reluctant to use. Grimm claimed that the stress and the stigma associated with having to use a separate bathroom from the other students led to “holding it,” causing frequent urinary tract infections and suicidal thoughts.

I spoke to three doctors about Grimm’s urinary tract infections. Each physician admitted that urinary retention might cause such infections. But besides suffering embarrassment, Grimm began a course of testosterone that year. Both an endocrinologist and the pediatrician I spoke to said it was at least as likely, and probably more likely, that the testosterone had caused Grimm’s infections.

Testosterone can make a girl’s urethra “friable,” meaning the urethra begins to crumble or break down. And so, while Grimm and the ACLU blamed Republicans for Grimm’s pain, the actual source may have been the risky, experimental treatment provided by doctors too busy self-celebrating to take seriously these risks.

Conservatives might have said: Here is one more distraught American teenager, handed dangerous drugs in place of a solution. The long-term risks of testosterone to a woman’s body include infertility, sexual dysfunction, a cardiac event, endometrial cancer, vaginal and uterine atrophy, and, yes, frequent urinary tract infections. Republicans might have gone after Grimm’s reckless doctors and an activist medical system that has all but abandoned its Hippocratic oath when it comes to gender medicine.

Conservatives might have trained their sights on social media, which spreads self-harm like a flu, and the Big Tech firms that push this harmful drug on other people’s children. They might have opposed the schools that peddle gender confusion to preschoolers and help middle school children “transition” in secret. They might have fought those laws in several states that allow minors to begin transitioning treatment without parental consent. They are, at last, confronting the mass experiment on children in the form of puberty blockers, which place bone density, brain development, and sexual function at risk, and, for good measure, jeopardize fertility. Doctors who took a Hippocratic oath and promised only to heal began removing healthy breasts of girls as young as 13.

Here, then, is what winning might look like. Conservatives ought to spend the next decade championing one of the most aggrieved constituencies: America’s parents. We might fight for decent, evidence-based medicine or responsible therapeutic practices. We ought to show compassion for those children with gender dysphoria while taking note that the activists are exploiting them to advance a cynical, dangerous agenda. We ought to oppose gender ideology in the schools, which is both harmful and broadly unpopular. We ought to defend the rights of women and girls where they are threatened because an America that is no longer safe or fair for them is hardly worth saving at all.

And no, Gavin Grimm is not an example of the last issue. As a biological female, Grimm posed no threat to the boys in the bathroom. This is not standing on principle. This is turtling: Withdrawing into a shell to declare, Not in my bathroom. Batten down the hatches and wait for the floodwaters to wash away the wicked. Just don’t breach my threshold, my town, my state, my church.

It’s a defensive posture and a losing strategy. It strikes this deal with the broader culture: We will not attempt to alter or influence you, so long as you do not invade our space. The majority culture is now held hostage by illiberal social-justice warriors who care little about individual liberties. In the end, the authoritarians always liquidate the ghetto.

But there is something else, too: When you stop contributing to the broader culture, you forfeit all right to influence its direction. What then is our next move? Roll the dice on which way Chief Justice Roberts will vote? It’s little wonder he’s refused to hold the line. He calls this buckling upholding the “institutional integrity” of the court. But he might as well say: Fight your own damn battles.

Conservatives’ chief asset is also our chief liability: We are willing to fight unpopular battles because we’ve never been popular. We are less easily seduced by the good opinion of those who’ve always withheld it. But we often lack strategy for this reason, too. We seem to have no idea what would appeal to other humans. Putting conservatives in charge of political strategy is like putting the debate team in charge of prom; the only guarantee is that no one else will show up. Opposing a high school child, one who’s had to miss long stretches of school for mental health issues, offers no lasting victory.

In the battle against gender ideology, conservatives have already demonstrated both reluctance and ineptitude. They believe they raise barriers to the Left, but more often, their tight-lipped unlikability serves as a trampoline, propelling the Left to even greater heights.

Conservatives do not think of themselves as defenders of “women’s rights” and adopt that mantle clumsily. Conservatives prefer to fight for faith and babies, and defending women sounds too much like supporting abortion. Or, perhaps, conservatives have unwittingly swallowed the Left’s propaganda that unrestricted abortion and women’s rights are synonymous. And so, conservatives trip over their own feet, rushing to make abortion and religious liberty the point of every argument, making themselves the punchline of every joke.

But there is also good news: We cannot afford to lose. There is no more important battle. That ought to suffice to provide clarity of purpose.

At stake are the rights of parents to safeguard their children from the activists who have given them alarming powers to alter their own bodies. At stake are the rights of women, who spent generations fighting for a fair and safe America and now stand on the verge of losing both. We ought to fight unhesitatingly for lesbians, a sexual minority that simply wants to raise stable families, and instead finds its spaces invaded by biological men who demand to be treated as women. We might fight for the girls and women who are about to lose every prize, scholarship, title, and trophy once reserved for female athletes. We might show some self-respect and toss out of office allegedly conservative politicians who sell out our young women.

Biological sex matters because truth matters. Any society that abandons sex-based protections for women and girls plunges into demoralization and darkness. Young women’s bodies literally cradle our future. We cannot allow activists and their shoddy science to wreck them.

Female athletes make America proud. Our nation, so often maligned as a “patriarchy,” has for years invested in the development of female excellence and achievement. Don’t allow woke marauders to junk female achievement as if it were a Columbus statue.

Others may shirk the cause of female prisoners because they lack even a smidgen of political clout. Conservatives ought to take up their cause because allowing any trapped woman to be raped and beaten is cruel and unconscionable. Because any society that allows a male sex offender into a locked cell with a woman is as beastly and inhumane as the Left has for so long claimed.

If the chuckleheads who seem to guide strategy for most Republicans and conservatives continue to allow the looting of women’s rights, we ought to give up the cause of conservatism. The Left doesn’t require our help. And there are better uses of our time than serving as its clumsy foil. (read more)

On January 8th, 2021, I had my own encounter with intolerance in academic medicine. Via Zoom, I gave a Grand Rounds lecture to the Yale Department of Psychiatry, where I had been a resident for four years and an assistant professor for five. I left New Haven in 1993 to pursue a health policy fellowship in Washington, DC and eventually joined a think tank there, but remained a lecturer in the department. My talk was about the year I spent assisting with treatment efforts in Ironton, a small, embattled town in south-eastern Ohio that was reeling from the opioid crisis.

I discussed the “deaths of despair” phenomenon and showed photos of haunted industrial landscapes and the lonely downtown area. I presented national data on the characteristics of individuals who abused prescription pills and on the frequency with which addiction develops. I talked about the culture of prescribing in rural mining towns and the myriad factors that caused the crisis. I closed by highlighting the heroic efforts of Irontonians to boost the economy and the morale of their beloved town.

One month later, I received an e-mail from the chairman of the department, a fine man and brilliant researcher whom I have known since we were interns together in the 1980s. He admitted that he had not anticipated “the extent of the hurt and offense that folks would take” to my presence. He appended an anonymous complaint that he had received from an unspecified number of “Concerned Yale Psychiatry Residents.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has taken an interest in this case and describes the complaint:

After the talk, however, an unidentified and unenumerated group of “Concerned Yale Psychiatry Residents” sent a letter of complaint to John H. Krystal, chair of the department of psychiatry, objecting not only to the content of Satel’s lecture, but to the idea that Satel, a former assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale who remains a lecturer on the faculty, would be invited to give the address at all:

We, a concerned group of Yale Psychiatry residents, are writing this letter to express our disappointment with the Grand Rounds presentation given on January 8th, 2021 by Dr. Sally Satel. This presentation was given two days after the white supremacist insurrection that occurred at the Capitol and was further traumatizing to us and many of our colleagues.

The language Dr. Satel used in her presentation was dehumanizing, demeaning, and classist toward individuals living in rural Ohio and for rural populations in general. Dr. Satel is known for her highly problematic and racist canon that explicitly blames individuals facing structural inequities for their own health outcomes.

The “dehumanizing, demeaning, and classist” language in question? The letter gives two examples. First, the title: “My Year Abroad: Ironton, Ohio and Lessons from the Opioid Crisis.” Second, the letter mentions a brief, affectionate aside Satel made toward the end of her lecture, highlighting the owner of what she referred to as an “artisanal coffee shop, one I would not expect to find here.” This “dehumanization,” they write, “should never be given a platform in Yale Department of Psychiatry.”

What about that “highly problematic and racist canon?” The students focus their ire on two of Satel’s prior published works in particular. In her 2006 book “The Health Disparities Myth,” Satel and her co-author argue that socioeconomic status and geography factor far more than racial bias in explaining racial disparities in healthcare outcomes, which she does not deny exist. Satel makes a similar argument in another book cited by the residents, “PC, M.D.,” in which she argues that chalking up racial disparities in healthcare to racial bias oversimplifies the problem.

The letter condemns Satel for having “the audacity to challenge Reverend Al Sharpton, an exemplary individual and activist.”

So we’ve got a mention of January 6th, which had absolutely nothing to do with the lecture, followed up by a defense of Al Sharpton.

Does anyone else find the politicization of psychiatry and other forms of medicine disturbing? Then again, this is the school of psychiatry that used to be home to Dr. Bandy Lee. Suddenly, that whole situation makes more sense. (read more)

The question I get most often—the thing that most interviewers want to know, even when they’re pretending to care about more high-minded things—is:  What’s it like to be so hated?  I can only assume that’s what some of you rubberneckers want to know as well:  What’s it like to be on a GLAAD black list? What’s it like to have top ACLU lawyers come out in favor of banning your book? What’s it like to have prestigious institutions disavow you as an alum? What’s it like to lose the favor of the fancy people who once claimed you as their own?

So, perhaps I’ll begin by telling you a little bit about myself mainly because I’m not so different from many of you. I grew up, daughter of two Maryland State judges, in a multi-racial suburb in Prince George’s County, Maryland. I attended a community Jewish day school, which I loved. In high school, I worked as a stringer for the Washington Jewish Week and edited my school paper. I attended Columbia University, where I received the Kellett Fellowship for two years of graduate study at Oxford. From there, I earned my J.D. from Yale Law School and then clerked for a Clinton-appointee on the D.C. Circuit.

At the beginning of my clerkship, I accepted a setup with a guy from Los Angeles, and by the end of that year, had decided to follow my then-boyfriend to California. I took a job with a terribly prestigious LA firm, whose daily tasks nearly anesthetized me. I married my boyfriend, struggled to hold onto pregnancies, quit law firm life and had three children. I taught them to read and sang them songs very badly and wrote a series of unpublishable novels. Most people who’d known me before wondered what the hell I was doing.

I began writing a few op-eds for our local Jewish paper, one of which was spotted by a Wall Street Journal editor, who invited me to submit to the Wall Street Journal. I did, and in the course of that year, published 13 op-eds with the Journal. One of those op-eds inspired a reader to contact me and tell me the story of her teen daughter who was rushing into a sudden gender transition. After trying and failing to find an investigative journalist who wanted the assignment, I took it on myself. My investigations turned into a book called Irreversible Damage.

All of which is to say: I’m not a provocateur. I don’t get a rush from making people angry. You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down.

Why am I unwilling to back down? Why wouldn’t I prostrate myself before the petulant mobs who insist that my standard journalistic investigation into a medical mystery—specifically, why so many teen girls were suddenly identifying as transgender and clamoring to alter their bodies—makes me a hater? Why on earth would I have chosen to write this book in the first place and am I glad that I wrote it?

You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective and unwilling to back down.

If you’re here, you no doubt are familiar with at least some of the unpleasantness you encounter whenever you deviate from the approved script. So, again, what’s it like to be the target of so much hate? It’s freeing. That’s what I’d like to talk about tonight.

As an undergraduate studying philosophy, I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering whether my will was free. This is the metaphysical question of whether anyone can be said to have acted ‘freely.’ And most of the philosophers seemed to agree that our will wasn’t all that free. The hard determinists painted a world in which every human action was ultimately explicable by the wave function of elementary particles, ultimately leading neurons to fire—setting off of axonal conduction well beyond our control and none of which we directed.

Even if you weren’t a hard determinist, you struggled with the obvious problem that human decisions – and the reasons behind them – are structured by one’s upbringing, experience or even inborn personality traits, all of which shape our motivations. Compatibilists claimed that, at most, one could hope to live according to one’s own motives and preferences. That is, motives and preferences that were largely determined by things like personality.   

“The Actions of man are never free,” 18th Century determinist Baron Holbach once wrote. “They are always the necessary consequence of his temperament, of the received ideas, and of the notions, either true or false, which he has formed to himself of happiness, of his opinions, strengthened by example, by education, and by daily experience.”

I remember reading those lines as an undergraduate, tugged by the worry that Holbach was right: maybe our motivations were determined by our personalities and upbringing and received ideas. Today, I read them and think: if only.

In 2021, it seems a luxury to worry that a will determined and shaped entirely by received ideas and our own personality-driven desires might not be entirely free. Today, before any of us decides what it is we want, we open our phones and participate in our own manipulation at the hands of those who actively want us to think, and see, and vote differently than our own wills would have us do. If we were not entirely free before, in other words—we are far less so now.

Every dating app pushes us toward the same few attractive mate choices; Spotify presses us to like the same music; Amazon pushes us to purchase specific books and away from others. If you’re under the impression that the books Amazon recommends to you are based solely on a content-neutral algorithm, I can disabuse you of that fiction right now. I once asked one of my sources at Amazon, who was concerned about the ways the search results were being manipulated, whether he’d ever seen a book deliberately boosted. Yes, he said. Becoming by Michelle Obama. When that book came out – he told me – virtually every search you did led to the recommendation to buy the former First Lady’s book. And the opposite is also true. There are books that are never recommended by the Amazon algorithm, irrespective of how well they’ve sold or how likely a specific shopper is to buy them. Or, at least, there’s one such book. I’ll let you try and guess what it is.

But the larger point is, your will is being toyed with, subverted, manipulated. And in a fairly insidious manner. None of you will be shocked to hear that Google promotes certain search results in order to lead us to a certain perspective. But did you know that, for contested entries, Wikipedia assigns editors, some of whom are ideologically committed activists, many of whom have very particular views they want you to walk away with. 

If you form views based on those Wikipedia articles or reports by corrupt fact-checkers, if you act based on them, are you exercising freedom of will? Given that you’ve been spun and prodded along to a pre-determined conclusion by hidden persuaders, perhaps you aren’t. Perhaps you’re left in the same sorry state as the Moor of Venice: toyed with, subverted, manipulated. Acting out someone else’s plan, pointed in the direction that he wants you to walk.

We’ve spent a lot of time in the past few years debating whether this kind of manipulation is at the root of our political divisions, but I don’t think we’ve paid enough attention to an even more basic question: how it has interfered with freedom of conscience and ultimately free will.

When polled, nearly two out of three Americans (62%) say they are afraid to express an unpopular opinion. That doesn’t sound like a free people in a free country. We are, each day, force-fed falsehoods we are all expected to take seriously, on pain of forfeiting esteem and professional opportunity:

“Some men have periods and get pregnant.” “Hard work and objectivity are hallmarks of whiteness.” “Only a child knows her own true gender.”  “Transwomen don’t have an unfair advantage when playing girls’ sports.”

On that final example of a lie, the one about transwomen in girls’ sports, I want you to think for a moment about a young woman here at Princeton. She’s a magnificent athlete named Ellie Marquardt, an all-American swimmer who set an Ivy League record in the 500-meter freestyle event as a freshman. Just before Thanksgiving, Ellie was defeated in the 500-meter, the event she held the record in, by almost 14 seconds by a 22 year old biological male at Penn who was competing on the men’s team as recently as November of 2019. That male athlete now holds multiple U.S. records in women’s swimming, erasing the hard work of so many of our best female athletes, and making a mockery of the rights women fought for generations to achieve.

Ellie Marquart swam her heart out for Princeton. When will Princeton fight for her? Where are the student protests to say—enough is enough. When a biological male who has enjoyed the full benefits of male puberty—larger cardiovascular system, 40% more upper body muscle mass, more fast-twitch muscle fiber, more oxygenated blood—decides after three seasons on the men’s team to compete as a woman and smashes the records of the top female swimmers in this country, that is not valor—that’s vandalism.

Where is the outrage? Imagine, for a second, what it must be like to be a female swimmer at Princeton, knowing you must pretend that this is fair—that the NCAA competition is anything other than a joke. Imagine being told to bite your tongue as men lecture you that you just need to swim harder. “Be grateful for your silver medals, ladies, and maybe work harder next time,” is the message. Imagine what that level of repression does to warp the soul.

Now, imagine, instead, the women’s swimmers had all walked out. Imagine they had stood together and said: We will meet any competitor head on. But we will not grant this travesty the honor of our participation. We did not spend our childhoods setting our alarm clocks for 4am every morning, training for hours before and after school, to lend our good names to this fixed fight.

“Be grateful for your silver medals, ladies, and maybe work harder next time,” is the message. Imagine what that level of repression does to warp the soul.

I know why students keep their heads down. They are hoping for that Goldman or New York Times internship, which they don’t want to put in jeopardy. Well, any institution that takes our brightest, most capable young people—Princeton graduates!—and tells you can only work here if you think like we tell you to and keep your mouth shut, that isn’t really Goldman Sachs and it isn’t the paper of record. It’s the husk of a once-great institution, and it’s not worth grasping for. Talk to alums at these institutions: they sound like those living under communist regimes. That’s the America that awaits you if you will not speak up.

You who are studying at one of the greatest academic institutions in the country only to be told that after graduation, you must think as we tell you and recite from this script—why were you born? What’s the point of being alive? Computers are vastly better at number crunching. They’ll soon be better at all kinds of more complex tasks. What they cannot do is stand on principle. What a computer cannot do is refuse to lend credibility to a rigged competition—to refuse to strengthen its coercion—making it that much harder for the next female athlete to speak up. What the computer cannot know is the glorious exertion of the human will when it refuses to truckle in the face of lies and instead publicly speaks the truth.

Machines will soon be better than humans at all kinds of complex tasks. What they cannot do is stand on principle.

I didn’t write Irreversible Damage to be provocative.  In a freer world, nothing in my book would have created controversy. I wrote the book because I knew it was truthful and I believed recording what I found—that there was a social contagion leading many teenage girls to irreversible damage—was the right thing to do. I also believe if I hadn’t written it, thousands more girls would be caught up in an identity movement that was not organic to them but would nonetheless lead them to profound self-harm. But I didn’t write it specifically to stop them. I wrote it simply because it was true.

When I testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in March, I started by stating that I am proud to live in an America where gay and transgender Americans live with less stigma and fear than at any point in American history. That is the glory of freedom as well—the chance for adults to live authentic lives and guide their own destinies. And allowing mature adults to make those sorts of choices for themselves is absolutely a requirement of a free society. Yes, you can reject the false, dogmatic insistences of Gender Ideology and still wish to see transgender Americans prosper and flourish and fulfill their dreams in America. I do.

I wrote the book because the story of one mom and her teen daughter compelled me, and so did that of the dozens of other parents who then spoke to me—mothers and fathers who sobbed as they described how their daughters had become caught up in a craze that seemed completely inauthentic to the child, but which they were powerless to arrest.

I wrote the book not because I believed the fancy institutions I’d attended would celebrate me, or even acknowledge me, after I had done so. I wrote it because I knew that the point of all the educational opportunities I received that my equally-qualified grandmothers never had, the purpose of all the sacrifices my parents had made for my education—for all the time my teachers and professors had taken with me—couldn’t be to plod through life on a forced march. The point of all the hours my parents and teachers and mentors had devoted to me, was surely not to become the world’s best-oiled automaton. The point of all of that privilege—and yes, I think that was a kind of privilege—was to be able to write and think as others lacked the will to do.

Spotify employees tried to hold that company hostage because they carried my podcast episode with Joe Rogan. Amazon employees threatened to quit if they continued to carry my book. GoFundMe shut down a grass-roots fundraiser by parents, who reached into their own pockets, to advertise my book. And the ACLU threw its entire, century-old mission in the garbage, all because of one book with which it disagreed. Joining these petulant mobs is not a show of strength, and it is not freedom. It’s closer to servitude.

I wrote Irreversible Damage because I knew the point of all the educational opportunities I received—opportunities my equally-qualified grandmothers never had—couldn’t be to plod through life as a well-oiled automaton.

True, if you dare exercise your will, you may sit for decades on the Supreme Court, as the eldest member, the only African American, perform your duties admirably and with integrity, and perhaps not a single elementary school in America will bear your name. Does anyone doubt this is a discredit to his detractors—not to Justice Thomas?

I cannot claim to know if we are truly free in the metaphysical sense. But if the universe is anything less than thoroughly determined down to the last sub-atomic particle, then we must also agree that freedom admits of degrees. And if that is true, then we are far less free today in this decade—that you, as undergrads, have lost a significant measure of freedom that your parents once had.  Take it back.  Take it back. It’s yours to demand. Take back the right to speak your mind—thoughtfully, courteously, with a goal in mind beyond giving offense. The list of unmentionable truths expands so rapidly, without reason other than the attempt suffocate a free people so that they forget the exhilaration of a lungful of air.

If you are someone who believes you have pronouns or would like to supply them, by all means, that is your prerogative. Whenever anyone asks me to use their preferred pronouns, and I can do so without confusing my audience or muddying an argument, I do so and I think this is an important courtesy. But –when asked, I will not state my pronouns and if you don’t believe in Gender Ideology, you shouldn’t either. When you state your pronouns, you participate in the catechism of Gender Ideology – the belief that there are ineffable genders, unknowable to all but the subject. That no one can possibly know I am a woman unless I’ve supplied these. I do not believe this. I regard this as nonsense. When asked for my pronouns, I say: “I am a woman.” Take back your freedom. Reclaim it now.

Psychiatrists and pediatricians tell me they are afraid to resist an adolescent’s demand that she be given puberty blockers because they’re afraid—if they point out the risks or the hastiness of the decision—they will lose their licenses. Parents tell me they are afraid to push back on the activist teachers and social workers at their kids’ school for fear of being called some flavor of phobe. Whatever freedom is—it isn’t that—and all of the wonderful education you have earned here will have been wasted if you find yourself one day observing some lie predominating in your own field and the best you can do is sit on the phone with me anonymously lamenting the state of things. You will soon be graduates of Princeton. Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom.

It isn’t in those moments when you do just what’s expected that your will is tested. It isn’t in those moments when you recite the script that you exceed what any computer can achieve. Those moments when you managed to make yourself a faceless member of a pre-approved chorus will slide away as though you were never part of them.

The wonderful education you have earned here will have been wasted if you find yourself one day observing some lie predominating in your own field, and the best you can do is sit on the phone with me anonymously lamenting the state of things.

You will, each of you, have the chance to matter. You will find yourselves at hospitals or in banks or in courtrooms and at newspapers where you will see things happen that you know to be wrong—where you find that the standard line is actually a lie. You may have found yourself there already. If you’re fortunate enough, you may even find yourself one day with children of your own, knowing you are their best defense in this world. And you’ll feel the nub of your will, pressing you to do something—say something. And when that happens, don’t sit there like a sock puppet.

I’m 43, which I realize makes me very old to many of you. But not so long from now, you’ll wake up and be 43 yourselves. And when I look back on my life thus far, it occurs to me that the decisions of which I am most proud—the ones that strike like an unexpected kiss—are not the times when I obeyed the algorithm. They’re the times when I defied it and felt, for a moment, the magic and power of being alive. When I felt, even for an instant, the exquisite joy of not being anyone’s subject. When I had the unmistakable sense that I’ve existed for a purpose, that I stood the chance of leaving the world better than I found it. You don’t get any of that through lock-step career achievement and you certainly don’t get that by being the Left’s star pupil.

You feel that frisson when you choose a person to commit yourself to knowing full well that any marriage may fail; when you bring children into a world where there are no guarantees of their safety or success. When you summon the courage to fashion a life, something that will remain after you are gone. When you speak the truth publicly—with care and lucidity.  And when you say to the world: you cannot buy me with flattery. Purchase my colleagues or classmates at bulk rate. I am not for sale.

Thank you. (read more)