Victims and Victims

Whatever one thinks about the appropriateness of the lock downs over  the epidemic, it is indisputable that they produced real victims – people whose businesses or livelihoods  were damaged or ruined,  dying people in nursing homes who spent their last days alone because they were locked away from their family and friends, sick people left to suffer because the surgery they needed was banned as elective, children  who coped  poorly with the disruption of their lives’ routines, and many others.

There are also phony victims – officials responsible for shutdowns with sad tales of being triggered by “hateful” criticism from unruly subjects rude enough not to like being pushed around.  As one example a transsexual official in Pennsylvania has made national news and gained sympathetic attention in the traditional media by whining that some people who don’t like the way the lock down has gone in that state have been mean by failing to respect that fact that he prefers to be seen as a woman, even going so far as to ridicule his pretense and call him “sir”.  That may have been bad manners.  It may have been rude, counterproductive, and beside the point of opposing  the lock down.  But that is all it was.  It did not make him a victim, any more than being called a fat lunatic makes Trump a victim.

I will save my sympathy for the real victims, and let the thin skinned politicians and bureaucrats suffer as they may.  It is healthy for the country for people to treat politicians and bureaucrats  as a class as objects of ridicule.  Besides Truman was right about heat and kitchens.

Sending in the Feds?

In recent weeks in Portland and other cities there have been violent riots with assaults, vandalism, arson, and a few murders.   State and local officials have shirked their responsibility to stop the rioting and restore order.  A few have sided with the rioters. (People in the traditional media have ignored or played down the story, often with quite irrelevant claims that most demonstrators in most places have behaved peacefully. Most airliners flown on September 11, 2001 landed harmlessly, but that did not change  the newsworthiness of the story of the four which did not.)   The behavior of even those officials who did not has often been disgraceful.  People in those cities have a right to expect that their municipal and state governments will protect their lives and property, and that has not and is not happening. Several mayors and governors should be voted out of office at a minimum and, if possible, sued or prosecuted for gross and often willful negligence. 

There is a natural question of what should the federal government do in the streets of those cities.  While sympathizing with the decent people living there, I  think  the correct answer is not much yet. Things have not reached the point of an insurrection  against the United States.  The pathetic secessionist theatre in Seattle was a long way short of a Fort Sumter, and the riots are a long way from actual rebellion.  It is not time for martial law.

I think  it is fine for the federal government to send in forces sufficient to defend federal property in places where the local authorities refuse to do the job. I think it is appropriate for federal officials  to prosecute  rioters who violate federal civil rights and anti-terrorism laws. I think it is necessary for the feds to identify  and deal with the people and organizations funding and coordinating the rioting. However I do not think federal officers should be patrolling and pacifying the streets (unless their help is requested by state officials). In this country that is the job of state and local governments, and until things get far worse, it should be left  to them, feckless and remiss though they may be. 

The federal government has far too many cops, bureaucrats, snoops, and assorted enforcers as it is. We do not need a precedent for the feds taking over local police work. 

The Smithsonian Joins the Klan

Note: in the following I am assuming that the story of the document  and exhibit I mention is not a hoax, that the exhibit is real, and  that it is not presented  as a parody or joke but as something those responsible for it mean to be taken seriously.  If my assumption is false, I will  be glad to hear it.

According to the news, an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National  Museum of African-American History and Culture on the evils of “whiteness”  has a display which listed the following characteristics and beliefs as being particular to white people and whiteness and  by implication inappropriate for or even oppressive to black people :

·       individualism, self-reliance, and autonomy

·       the nuclear family with a father, mother, and children

·       an emphasis on the scientific method  and objective, rational linear thinking

·       the notion that hard work is the key to success

·       jurisprudence following elements of English Common Law

·       respect for property and  authority

·       politeness and civility

·       communicating in writing

·       planning for the future and delaying gratification to achieve goals later.

It is useful,  though disgusting, information to learn that the people running the Smithsonian now think it is appropriate to smear and attack people based on the color of their skin. It is another example of  how bad things are in the country  and how far formerly respectable organizations and institutions have sunk. It is something to keep in mind when considering  whether to support the Smithsonian in any way. When someone goes to the  trouble of giving you formal notice that he is your enemy, it pays to believe him and act accordingly.

While the intent of this item was to show contempt for white people, the result is to show a shocking contempt for black people.  As a list of things particular to white people it could have been prepared by grand dragons of the Birmingham Ku Klux Klan of the 1950s. I have heard bigots claim that black people are too shiftless to be independent and self-reliant,  too immoral to have stable families, too stupid to think clearly and rationally, too lazy to work and become successful, too savage  to be law abiding and respect  other people’s  property, too crude and ill-mannered to behave civilly, too dumb to speak and write well, and too frivolous to set goals and work to achieve them.  It is interesting that the Smithsonian seems to agree, at least to the point of seeing such values and behaviors as white attributes inappropriate for and foreign to black people.

This nonsense probably will not damage many white people. Any white person foolish to take it seriously is probably already fouled up enough that swallowing  a little more propaganda won’t matter. The danger is that a young black person might believe it and reject things that help make a successful and proper life possible.  That is another reason it would make a really hateful old time Ku Kluxer proud.

   

A New Name

Some people have wondering  why the NFL has decided to be so vigorous in displaying its political correctness – with plans for mass Kaepernick-style  kneeling, playing a so-called black national anthem before games along with or instead of the American national anthem,  dropping millions of dollars annually in “social justice” protection money, and  so on – given that the percentage of leftists among its fans is probably very small and the percentage of fans who find this stuff offensive is probably pretty high. It could be that Goodell is acting from the heart without regard to consequences, but that is not a guess anybody  should put money on.  It is more likely that he and the owners have made a cynical calculation that they can buy off the lefties for political reasons without offending the ordinary fans enough to get them to stop watching games.  They may be right, but it could  get interesting if they are wrong.

The latest news from the league is that the team in Washington will no longer be called the Redskins, but will get a new and presumably politically correct name.  In the spirit of the times,  I would like to offer a suggestion for what I think is the appropriate new name.  The team should be called the Washington Soviets.  I don’t remember where I first heard this idea, but it surely makes sense. The team’s colors are more  burgundy and yellow than a true red and yellow but they are close enough. The profile of the Indian would be replaced by one of Stalin. In place of the dangling feathers, there would be a hammer and sickle. It is a natural. It would please BLM, antifa, traditional media people, and other important influencers. It would reflect the culture of the team’s home town as well as “Steelers” does for Pittsburgh.  The corporate goofs who have refused to sell shirts with the Redskin logo would have no problem with hawking the image of a man who wanted to liquidate people  like them. The Internationale would make a swell substitute for Hail to the Redskins.  

The NFL needs a to make a progressive statement like this.  It deserves for this to happen.

After it is accomplished,  it will be time to get on to fixing Cowboys, 49ers, Packers, Vikings, Saints, Buccaneers, Texans,  Chargers,  Jets, Raiders, Chiefs, Patriots,  and other problematic names of teams. Doing good has no end.

Bad News Books

“Making predictions is hard, especially about the future” – attributed in various forms to Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, a folk proverb,  and other sources

Some doom and gloom books can be interesting and informative – the sort that draw their conclusions from situations and trends in the real world, as distinct from  those that rely on  mystical prophecy, secret knowledge from space aliens or the pyramids, astrology,  numerology,  or whatever other nonsense an author might think of.  In the last few days, perhaps inspired by the things going on in the last month or so, I reread  a few from years ago. 

The late 1970s were a good time for books in the genre, and it is easy to see why.  The economy was in  an inflationary depression.   Some cities seemed to be becoming unlivable.  The Soviets were winning the cold war. Terrorists were hijacking airplanes, murdering people, and even killing athletes at the olympics.   The Vietnam war and its peace settlement had been a  total failure.  The last three elected presidents were name Johnson, Nixon, and Carter.  It was a mess.

A man named John Pugsley wrote a very popular book called The Alpha Strategy. In it he observed correctly that the dollar had lost much of its purchasing power since World War II, that government actions cause monetary  inflation, that stocks and bonds had performed badly since the late 1960s, that taxation and regulation  were harming the economy and making people’s lives worse, and that the country was in bad shape. His solution was for people to abandon investing in stocks and bonds and put their money into stockpiles of goods  - razor blades, wine, linens, hand tools, food, all sorts of things that would store well – they could consume in the future and not have to buy at inflated prices with depreciated dollars and also into stockpiles of raw commodities held for purposes of investment.  He concluded “the next decade promises to be the most turbulent decade in this century. The plunder is mounting. The die is case. The economic storms are unavoidable, and the outcome for most individuals will be the destruction of their wealth.”

Mel Tappan, who was probably the most famous of the survivalist authors,  went farther than writers such as Pugsley.  He correctly saw increased crime and terrorism, serious  inflation, the decline of the cities, the failures of government schools, the threat of nuclear war, the cold war going against the United States, risks of breakdowns of social order, the threat of a grasping and over reaching government , the decline of respect for citizens’ rights, and the general malaise in society. He decided it was too late to save the country, and  that it was  time literally to head for  the hills. (The main text of his book Tappan on Survival begins with Yeats’s famous blood-dimmed tide passage.)  His solution was to move to a small town far away from any big city, military base, or nuclear power plant, purchase a plot of land nearby,  become a self-sufficient farmer/rancher,  arm oneself appropriately, and hope that  one could avoid  or together with one’s neighbors could fend off  the gangs of looters (governmental or freelance) that  would pour out of the cities when society collapsed.  His book is full of practical advice on the skills, tools,  and attitudes one would need to make the move successfully.

Pugsley, Tappan, and others writing at the time were completely wrong about what was to come. The next decade, the 1980s, was one of remarkable peace, prosperity, and security.  The United States won the cold war. Inflation was brought under control. The economy was strong and growing. Stocks and bonds did well over the decade, while gold and silver did poorly.  There was no need to head for the hills. 

There were still people at the end of the 1980s who were afraid big trouble was coming despite the end of the cold war and the general prosperity.  James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg  correctly saw the rise of radical Islam as a geopolitical force,  the economic power and growth of Japan, problems of crime  and unrest in big cities, the looming danger from  politically correct multiculturalism, and other problems  in the world. In their 1991 book the Great Reckoning they predicted that that the United States would suffer a great depression in the 1990s and be replaced by Japan as the world’s leading economic power. They were spectacularly wrong. The 1990s were a second decade of peace, prosperity, and security with technological innovations driving a vigorous American economy.  Japan endured a lost decade of economic stagnation.

These authors and various others who wrote in the genre were not fools. Many of the things they saw as dangers were (and still are) real, and some of the things they predicted could have happened.  They were just wrong in allowing their disgust and pessimism over some  things in the country to cause them to miss or ignore things which could have led to better outcomes than those they predicted over confidently. I wonder if the danger for us now is not the reverse. The two decades since Y2K have not been a match for the 80s or 90s, but for those of us who avoided fighting in futile wars in  Iraq or Afghanistan,  didn’t lose our shirts in  one of the three big financial panics, and didn’t have our jobs or businesses outsourced overseas, things have been pretty good.  Technological advances have continued. There is no  serious foreign military threat, though the Chinese are working on it.  The country has been generally prosperous.  We may be too complacent. Forty years are a long time.  Reading these books or some like them might help correct that.  There are things to worry about, and, after all, Yogi or whoever really said it was right.

Racism and Privilege

“The sense-of-life emotion which, in Europe, makes people uncertain, malleable, and easy to rule, is unknown in America: fundamental guilt. No one, so far, has been able to infect America with that contemptible feeling”  - Ayn Rand essay “Don’t Let It Go”,  1971

The term “racism” has a precise meaning. It is a doctrine that one race is inherently biologically superior or inferior to others or another and derivatively a program or ideology based on that doctrine. These days it is used carelessly to refer to bigoted or prejudiced behavior or even anything that a hypersensitive “person of color” chooses to be offended by. That is wrong, and it is not mere pedantry to insist it is. Ordinary bigotry consists of judging and treating people based on the race or ethnic group to which they belong.  Racial prejudice is the act of assuming that a person of a given race will behave in a way one thinks many in that race do rather  than evaluating him or her as an individual. The distinctions are important. Prejudice and bigotry are bad enough, but actual racism is worse and more dangerous.  It gave us the Jim Crow era in the south. In an extreme form it can lead to Auschwitz.

The term” privilege” also has an exact meaning. It means a particular benefit, advantage or favor granted, usually in some official way,  to a person or persons which is not bestowed on the population at large.  It is quite different from benefits a person might enjoy from  his own behavior or the ordinary events and accidents of life  - things  such as general good health, determination, good parents,  a strong and reliable character, helpful mentors, a willingness to work hard and plan ahead, and so on.

The term “systemic” too has an exact meaning. It means common to a system and its structure throughout  - as opposed to something localized - and affecting it throughout. Something systemic is different from something frequent or even widespread.

Taken literally the notion of systemic racism in the United States is absurd. There are a few racists out there – the pathetic losers who dress up as Klansmen or Nazis,  some of the 1619 crowd on the left, Louis Farrakhan,  and some others.  However they are of insignificant influence and certainly do not infect the entire population.  Even if people talking about systemic racism really mean systemic anti-black racial discrimination, one has to ask which systems?  Governments, universities, corporations, and non-profit organizations typically have rules and policies which are either neutral or favoring black people rather than discriminating against them. People in the traditional media usually  protectively hold (non-conservative) black people to lower standards than others and often avoid criticizing them for even egregious behavior.

  The obvious possible exception people are likely to think of would be the police. The behavior of cops toward black people  varies from place  to place and from cop to cop.  There seems to be nothing systemic or systematic about it.  However there are bigoted officers , and law abiding black men often receive undeserved attention.  Since September 11, 2001 some things in this country have gone too far in the direction of trusting and giving power and leeway to people in law enforcement at all levels of government, and reforms are needed. Citizens need to be vigilant  in keeping  the behavior of the police under proper control, and people in some places have done a poor job of it.

As to privilege, for the last few decades this country has had explicit, mandated black privilege in the form of affirmative action quotas for hiring and promotion in government and corporations, race based set asides and subsidies, quotas and lower admission standards at universities, and other programs and activities.  A white person in the Jim Crow south had privilege. White people today do not.

The corruption of language makes discussion and clear thought more difficult. When done intentionally, it is also a warning sign that those doing it are up to something. It this case it is fairly clear what.  

Spontaneous and About Bad Cops?

The consensus of people in the traditional media has  been that the  recent demonstrations and riots were  spontaneous outbursts triggered by the killing of George Floyd and a desire to make police behave better, and that the many attempts to damage, desecrate, or destroy statues and monuments  were the same.   Of course as others have pointed out, it is hard to see what statues of Columbus, Thomas Jefferson,  Abraham Lincoln, or Robert Gould Shaw have to do with brutal or bigoted cops, but that was the story being told.   It is also hard to see what looting or burning down stores, assaulting and sometimes murdering people, or creating a secessionist mini-Confederacy in Seattle did to aid the cause of requiring police to behave, but that also was the story being told.

It is hard to take the  sanitizing stories about the motives of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and their hangers on seriously.  Many individual demonstrators may have been sincerely focused on making the police behave better and more fairly. Many individual rioters may have been ordinary hoodlums  taking advantage of  the chaos  to steal something, smash something, or burn something down. However it is fairly clear that the organized hard leftists were interested less in George Floyd or reining in bad cops than in anti-American, pro-Marxist agitprop – with Floyd (who certainly deserved better) as their convenient, cynically selected Horst Wessel of the moment.  The stuff with the monuments illustrates this very well.  Or one can take the  trouble to go BLM’s web site. They make their objectives pretty clear.

There are reasons for  doubting  the other part of the conventional view – the  notion the events were spontaneous.  One does not have to be a conspiracy enthusiast to have noticed that there were a lot of very similar things, with very similar patterns of behavior happening very quickly in many different places when the trouble began. There was more than a whiff of planning  and organization in what happened. Some conservatives have suggested the whole thing was a putsch organized and paid for by George Soros. Of course these days you can find people blaming just about anything they don’t like on  Soros,  Koch, or sometimes both, often without evidence.  Still BLM and Antifa are not living off tithes from their members’ day jobs. Somebody is paying, and the somebody or somebodies are not friends of the United States or of a free and liberal society.  I have seen no evidence that foreign governments are involved, but if the Chinese foreign intelligence service is not helping BLM and  Antifa, Chairman Xi should fire its director. It is an interesting question and one that probably will be left untouched by people in the traditional media but perhaps looked into by someone else.