The Dogs Don’t Like It

I once heard a story, probably apocryphal, about a pet food company that unrolled a new brand of dog food to great excitement. After the initial burst of interest, sales of the new brand dropped rapidly. Week after week fewer boxes of the new brand sold. Finally, the CEO of the pet food company called a meeting of all the chief executives of the company to determine why the new brand wasn’t selling. One executive after another proposed ever more elaborate theories about the declining sale. Maybe the advertising campaign needed to be changed, they said, or maybe the boxes were the wrong size or color. Perhaps the company needed to change the price. None of these theories seemed satisfactory to the CEO until finally, he turned to a lowly lab technician who had helped develop the new brand. “I think” the technician stammered nervously, “the problem might be that the dogs don’t like it.”

Last week the Democrats suffered some stunning losses in the off-year elections, elections they would normally have won easily. In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin narrowly defended former governor Terry McAuliffe in a race the Democrat was widely expected to win. The Republicans swept the state, winning the governorship and the elections for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General as gaining a majority in the lower house of the Virginia legislature. In New Jersey, one of the bluest states, Republican Jack Ciattarelli almost defeated Phil Murphy in the governor’s race. All over the country, the Republicans have won odd elections and ballot initiatives, which does not bode well for the Democrats’ chances in next year’s midterm elections.

Naturally, the Democrats are trying to discover the reason for their unexpected losses. Perhaps they were too moderate. Maybe if Terry McAuliffe had run more to the left he would have won. Maybe the voters are frustrated because Congress has not passed an infrastructure bill or done more to enact Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. Maybe Republican voter suppression tipped the scale in their favor. Probably Republican fear-mongering about trumped-up culture wars encouraged conservative Deplorables to vote while discouraging decent people. Then, there is the old standby; it was racism. The people of Virginia and elsewhere are racist, and the unfortunate losses were the result of a whitelash. Never mind that Virginians just elected their first Black, woman Lieutenant Governor, this was White supremacy at work.

An obvious white supremacist

So far, what had been missing in these post-election analyses is the obvious fact that the Democrats lost because the people do not like the woke, extreme leftist policies they have been pushing. People do not want their children to be taught race hatred, even in the name of fighting against racism. White parents do not want their children taught that they are evil oppressors because of their skin color. Black parents do not want their children taught that they are helpless victims because of their skin color. No one wants their children to be taught to hate themselves and their own country.

Parents do not want their daughters raped by skirt-wearing boys who claim to be gender fluid. They do not want their children to be exposed to pornographic materials allegedly t0 promote gay acceptance but which seems suspiciously like grooming by pedophiles. People want their children educated, not indoctrinated. They are growing weary of schools shut down for COVID while they go out to work, somehow ensuring that remote education is working.

People are also tired of the vaccine mandates, the mask mandates, and the whole idea that someone in some office in Washington, or Richmond, should have the power to control or destroy their lives, based not on any consistent scientific principles but seemingly on random whims. People are exasperated by higher prices and empty shelves in stores. They are angered by a border in chaos, increasing crime rates, and their country being humiliated abroad.

Most of all, people are upset with a ruling elite that refuses to take their problems seriously. Parents who take issue with their children being taught Critical Race Theory are racists and domestic terrorists. Americans complaining about the economy are spoiled and need to lower expectations. We are deplorable for wanting leaders that put America and Americans first. Instead of coming up with solutions, they laugh at us.

If the Democrats want to win elections they need to start paying more attention to what the people out there really want and less attention to Twitter activists ideologues. If they do this, the Democratic Party might become a truly American political party again and not a continuing menace to our freedom and way of life.

Soft Bigotry

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has recommended that college athletes should no longer be required to submit SAT or ACT scores to be eligible to compete in Division I or Division II sports. Since I don’t follow professional or college sports, I only learned about this latest development from this article at townhall.com.

The NCAA Standardized Test Task Force recommended that high school students preparing to compete in Division I or Division II sports should not have to submit SAT or ACT scores.

 

“This work reflects the NCAA’s commitment to continually reviewing our academic standards based on the best available data and other relevant information,” said Morgan State President David Wilson, who led a group of representatives in both divisions in carrying out a nearly six month project on the matter. “We are observing a national trend in NCAA member schools moving away from requiring standardized test scores for admissions purposes and this recommendation for athletics eligibility aligns directly with that movement.”

The announcement from Friday comes as part of the NCAA’s eight-point plan to “advance racial justice and equity,” which includes reviewing eligibility requirements, reviewing the league’s Academic Progress Rate and its impact on historically black colleges and universities, and implementing “unconscious bias training” for all national office staff.

I wonder if it has occurred to the NCAA administration that by dropping standardized tests to advance “racial justice and equity” they concede that some races are intellectually or academically inferior to others. If they feel that they have to abandon academic standards because some groups; probably African Americans and perhaps Latinos, do not score as highly as other groups on standardized tests, they must be inherently inferior and cannot by nature compete on a level playing field, therefore, the standards must be rigged in their favor or done away with entirely to preserve the myth that everyone is equal. This reasoning strikes me as racist through and through.

I am sure the people responsible for this policy would deny it is racist at all. They would no doubt assert that a level playing field is impossible given the history of oppression and racism some groups have faced. It is only fair that groups that have faced discrimination in the past should receive extra assistance now. Very well, but if discrimination based on race is wrong, as I believe it is, then it is wrong to discriminate against or for anyone by race. Two wrongs do not make a right. In any case, the claim that systemic racism causes Blacks to score poorly on standardized tests fails to explain why other people who have been the victims of discrimination, Jews and East Asians, tend to score very well on such tests; scoring better than the Whites or gentiles who have been oppressing them.

If a racial group, such as African Americans does poorly academically, it must be either because the members of that group really are inferior, on average, or because some external factor, economic or cultural which inhibits their potential. Either way, we do no favors by pretending the problem isn’t there or attributing it to some mythical systemic racism that somehow only manifests itself in hate crime hoaxes.

I cannot emphasize enough that if a particular group, I’ll call it Group X to avoid real-world implications, really is inferior intellectually to Group Y on average, that cannot be considered justification for discriminating against individuals of Group X. We are talking about averages. There will be many intelligent members of Group X and many unintelligent members of Group Y and a considerable degree of overlap. You will not find zero members of Group X among the top tier academically, just relatively fewer than members of Group Y. You will see relatively fewer Group X doctors, lawyers, scientists, and engineers, not none at all. There is no reason to exclude members of Group X from pursuing such occupations. But, there is also no reason to inflate the numbers of Group X by lowering or eliminating standards to pursue equity. That helps no one, least of all the members of Group X who have actually earned their place but now find themselves tainted by association with those who have not.

If, on the other hand, there is some external factor inhibiting Group X from doing as well academically as Group Y, we are also not helping the members of Group X by lowering or eliminating standards. Instead of trying to discover what might be holding Group X back, we are whitewashing the problem in the name of equity. Even worse, the people who push lowering standards in the name of racial equity make the problem worse by attacking those who are actually trying to solve the problem as racists.

Getting back to the real world; my opinion is that no race or population is inherently inferior intellectually or academically. If African-Americans do not do so well on standardized tests, it is because external factors prevent them from realizing their full potential. What these external factors might be, I cannot be sure. I am no expert. I would hazard a guess that the breakup of the Black family and a persistent attitude that academic achievement is somehow not authentically Black or getting good grades is acting White. It is not a coincidence that the East Asians and Jews I referred to as doing well come from cultures that prize strong families and academic achievement.

The NCAA’s recommendation to no longer require standardized tests for athletes to promote racial equity is a step backward in racial progress. It rests on the unspoken assumption that Blacks cannot compete on a level playing field because they are inferior and so must receive extra help from well-meaning Whites. It is the soft bigotry of low expectations or, perhaps the hard bigotry of no expectations at all. It ought to be stopped.

Who’s the Boss

While many states are banning the teaching of the Marxist-inspired and racist Critical Race Theory in classrooms, some teachers are vowing to defy these laws. According to the Washington Free Beacon:

Thousands of teachers are pledging to teach critical race theory in the face of state laws seeking to ban it from classrooms.

More than 5,000 educators have signed the Zinn Education Project’s “Pledge to Teach the Truth” since June 21. In the letter, the leftist education group claims the United States was founded on “structural racism and oppression”—tenets of the Marxist-based ideology called critical race theory.

Legislatures in several states have passed bills to restrict educators from teaching critical race theory to students. Florida’s education board outright banned teachers from using material from the New York Times’s 1619 Project. Teachers in Idaho are banned from teaching that any race or sex is inherently inferior or superior to another. And Rep. Glenn Grothman (R., Wis.) introduced a bill in the House that would prohibit teachers and students in the District of Columbia from making confessions about inherent racism based on skin color.

Racism is integral to the founding of the United States, the pledge states, and failing to educate students on “the roots of U.S. racism” is deceptive.

“From police violence, to the prison system to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression,” the pledge states. “To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them—not educate them.”

In addition to listing the names, cities, and states of the pledge’s signatories, the Zinn Education Project posted personalized statements from the teachers.

“I refuse to teach my students an alternate history rewritten by the suppressors in power,” Jessica Williams, from Tucson, Ariz., said. “They have the right to learn about the contributions and impact that Black Americans, women, LGBTQ+, Latin/a/ex, Native Tribes, Asian and Pacific Islander, all religions other than Christianity, and all other non-white Europeans have had to America.”

Who do these teachers think they are? What gives them the right to fill impressionable young people with hatred against their own country? Their students are not their children, and they do not have the final say on what they teach in their classrooms. The parents of the students are the ones who ought to decide what the instructors teach. The parents have, in effect, hired the teachers to teach their children the knowledge and skills they require to be successful citizens. I think that very few if any parents would consider a doctrine that foments race hatred and division to be among those skills. It is the parents who are the boss, not the teachers.
Critical Race Theory has no more business being taught in our public schools than scientific creationism or the scientific racism of a century ago. Even if there were any truth or merit behind this poisonous nonsense, the parents are nearly universally against having it taught in the public schools and they or their elected representatives ought to have the final say. The teachers who signed this pledge have practically stated that they do not care what the parents, their bosses, want them to teach in the public schools. They have pledged to work against the wishes of the parents, their bosses. If I ignored the commands of my bosses, I would lose my job. I see no reason why it should be different for these teachers. Every single one of them should be dismissed and barred for life from teaching in any public school system. If they really want to teach Critical Race Theory, let them open up their schools for any parent foolish enough to pay them.

 

This Flag Stands for Freedom

In Cuba, the people are fighting for their freedom against Communist tyranny.

 

Just as the people of Hong Kong have been protesting the despotic rule of the People’s Republic of China.

 

Isn’t it ironic that all over the world the American flag is a symbol of freedom, except here in America? In the United States, our leftist elite despises the flag as a symbol of racism and hate. They are triggered by the sight of the flag. Children are taught to hate the American Flag. 

 

Children are being raised to desecrate the flag. pic.twitter.com/RtNBo3u1st

— Marie Oakes (@TheMarieOakes) July 9, 2021

 

I think this tells us everything we need to know about the American flag-hating left. They are not fighting against racism but freedom. They despise the greatest symbol of freedom in the world as much as they despise the freedom that flag represents. These socialists are on the same side as the tyrants of Cuba, China, and everywhere else freedom is denied to the people. They are on the same side as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and every other despot who tormented the people he ruled. Their Critical Race Theories and 1619 Projects and socialist politics are simply a way to attempt to impose the same sort of totalitarian rule that the brave people of Cuba and Hong Kong are fighting against. 

For millions of people around the world, the American flag stands for freedom. It is a pity that is no longer the case for so many people here at home. 

Sortition

Back in 1979, James Bovard wrote an op-ed in the New York Times proposing that Congress be composed of conscripts rather than volunteers who choose to run for office. This Independence Day, he revived the notion on his blog.

July 4th is my Independence Day, regardless of how depraved the government has become. Forty-two years ago, the New York Times printed a satire I wrote on the failure of the All-Volunteer Congress.  Some congressmen wanted to revive the military draft in order to have a higher quality army.  I showed that the same argument could be used for drafting members of Congress because “it is only the ego-starved who volunteer for Congressional duty now. These people are forced into Congress by their psychological or mental poverty, as no real alternative or treatment exists for their condition.”

Unfortunately, conscription is now fashionable – and the New York Times editorial and op-ed pages are leading the charge.  Two months ago, the Times editorialized on the benefits of forcing all young people to “serve.” Two days ago, NYT published an article by the president of Rutgers calling for “compulsory national service for all young people” in order to “make us more self-reliant” and to “secure the blessings of liberty.” NYT editorial page has apparently gotten rid of both its fact checkers and its BS radar.

The fact that the nation’s most respected media and many prominent officials are calling for imposing conscription epitomizes the growing contempt for individual liberty.  I’ll write more on that shortly.

Here are some excerpts from the original article:

The All-Volunteer Congress has proved to be a failure. Its cost is extremely high and there is not a proportional representation of minorities. There are also many doubts about the honesty and intelligence of the recent volunteers. Many of Congress’s recent failures are owing the low quality of its composition.

In a society with 50 percent women and over 10 percent black and Hispanic populations, these groups are very underrepresented in Congress. When we consider the injustice of these statistics, superficial objections against conscription are easily swept away.

A viable democracy needs to have a racially, sexually balanced set of representatives. The latest statistics issued last November proved that this lack of representation is worsening.

It is only the ego-starved who volunteer for Congressional duty now. These people are forced into Congress by their psychological or mental poverty, as no real alternative or treatment exists for their condition. Naturally, Congress is psychologically off-balance, because of the nature of the people who currently volunteer.

Most of the members of Congress are between 30 and 60 years of age. There is no group that enjoys the benefits of society more than this group. They have the highest salaries, the nicest homes, the largest cars, and the most power. However, this group is deeply entrenched in hedonism, and has thus far turned a deaf ear to the needs of the country.

Mr. Bovard explains how the new system would work.

With a service-oriented Congress, every man and woman would be required to register with the Selective Service Commission on their 30th birthday.

Every second year, everyone’s name would be placed in a giant basket, and the Secretary of Labor would pull out the number of names needed for that session of Congress.

The new members would receive a subsistence allowance (an honorable precedent established during the Revolutionary War), as it would not be right to overpay someone for what he owed to society.

The moral caliber of Congress would be improved by conscription. The environmental and personal background of many of today’s volunteers appears to be conducive to fabrication. Randomly picking people off the street would give a much higher level of honesty and responsibility.

Mr. Bovard wrote this article as satire, but the proposal that Members of Congress, and perhaps other government posts be selected by lot is not as crazy as it sounds. That is just what they did in ancient Athens and some other Greek city-states. Government by randomly selected individuals is called sortition, dymarchy, or stochocracy. Strange as it may seem, sortition has been used to select government officials of states in various times and places, with varying results.

We call ourselves a democracy here in the United States, but a citizen of fourth-century Athens would disagree. He would point out that the definition of a democracy is a state in which the people themselves make the laws and would state that our system of government by elected representatives is really a kind of elective oligarchy. Electing representatives is not all that democratic, as our Athenian friend would argue since the already wealthy and connected would be more likely to have the leisure and means for pursuing a political career, the elected representatives would not be representative of the citizenry as a whole. In time, an Athenian might argue the officeholders and representatives would tend to form a closed elite excluding outsiders from offices and political power forming political dynasties If he were of a philosophical bent, our Athenian friend might note that the people most likely to seek office and power are the very people who ought not to have it.

In contrast, our Athenian would point to his own city as a perfect example of democracy in action. In Athens, the laws and basic decisions of government were made by the people as a whole in the Ecclesia, the body of adult male citizens. A six thousand man body would be somewhat unwieldy so there was a sort of executive committee of five hundred called the Boule or council. This Boule was made up of fifty men over the age of thirty and selected by lot from each of the ten Phyle or tribes of Attica and ran the day-to-day affairs of the city. Members of the 501 man juries and many other officials were also selected by lot, though, notably, the ten Strategoi or generals were elected.

The Athenian system worked well enough, though it was not without its flaws and perhaps we should consider adopting certain elements of the Athenian constitution for ourselves. Of course, An ecclesia of a hundred million would be impossible to manage, and our Athenian friend would certainly argue that democracy is only possible on a small scale, but we could select Congress by lot, as James Bovard suggests satirically. The drafted members of Congress would be more representative of the Congressional districts they represent, the states the selected Senators would represent, and the nation as a whole. The people drafted for Congress would not become isolated from the needs of the citizenry, as politicians are wont to do in our current system and politics would be open to the people, not a self-selected elite.

The major objection to drafting Congress is that the people selected might not be experienced or competent enough to serve in Congress. In response, I would point out that we are not exactly sending our best and brightest to Congress.

 

I’m sure a brief search could find many more instances of Congressional idiocy. Surely ordinary people off the street could do at least as well, without the greed for power that animates many people in politics. Besides we need not include the whole population in the lottery. Perhaps exemptions for physical or mental incapacity could be granted, just as they were when men were drafted to serve in the military.

No system of government is perfect and sortition has its own set of flaws, yet I think that on the whole drafting ordinary people to serve would make a better, more responsive government. The people selected would be more focused on doing the job of legislating so they could get on with their lives, rather than focusing on winning the next election.

Seriously, I think sortition is worth a try. The result couldn’t possibly be worse than our current system.

 

Of Masks and Queues

Our governor here in Indiana has lifted the mask mandate. It is about time. We, Hoosiers, have been asked to wear a mask for about a year now and if there ever was any legitimate health reason to require citizens to wear masks in their daily lives, it has long since passed. The Chinese COVID-19 epidemic is receding. Vaccines are now available and probably the entire population has been exposed to the virus. There really is no reason to continue the mask mandates and lockdowns.

Yet, the order to lift the mandates has been surprisingly controversial. Those governors which have lifted their states’ mask mandates have been derided as science-denying Neanderthals even as COVID vaccines have become available and cases have been dropping. There is clearly no current justification for continued mask mandates and lockdowns if indeed there ever were. Why is there this insistence on compelling people to wear masks? I have a sort of a theory based on Chinese history. 

In 1644 the Manchus invaded and conquered China. Who are the Manchus, you might be asking? Well if you look at a map of China, the north-eastern part of China, north of Korea used to be called Manchuria.

These days it is called other names for various historical and political reasons, but never mind. The Manchus are the people who live in Manchuria.

The Manchus were a semi-nomadic steppe people much like the Mongolians. As is often the case when a less sophisticated people live alongside a more advanced nation, the Manchus came to admire the Chinese and began to adopt Chinese culture, settling down into cities and farms and importing Chinese artisans. Eventually the Manchu royal family, the Aisin-Gioro clan decided that they admired China so much that they should be the Emperors of China. They began to call themselves the Qing Dynasty and their king proclaimed himself Emperor

So, as I mentioned, in 1644, the Manchus invaded China. At the time China was beset with the usual political unrest, rebellions, and natural disasters which signified the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven from one dynasty, the Ming in this case, to the Qing so the Manchus were able to conquer China.

After they had consolidated their control, the Shunzhi Emperor decreed that every Chinese male must show his loyalty to the Manchus by wearing his hair in the Manchu fashion; his head shaved in the front and long in the back, gathered into a braid or queue. This decree was not popular, except among the toadies and collaborators among the Chinese. The Chinese viewed the Manchu as barbarians and had no desire to emulate them in any way. Moreover, Confucius had taught that as a person’s hair came from his parents, it was an act of disrespect to one’s ancestors to shave to cut one’s hair or beard.

After some initial resistance, the Chinese complied with this decree for the next two and a half centuries, as long as the Qing remained in power. For Westerners, the queue was the stereotypical Chinese hairstyle. Why was this? The Chinese outnumbered the Manchus by more than ten thousand to one. Why did Chinese men continue to wear their hair in a fashion they despised as a mark of their subjugation to a hated occupier? Well, for one thing, the Manchus were fierce steppe warriors, and the Chinese weren’t. Any man who refused to wear the queue was likely to be summarily beheaded as a traitor. A village where the men stopped complying could be destroyed.

Aside from that, China has never been a country that prizes individual liberty or great initiative from the masses. China has been a culture in which the common people were expected to obey their betters and let the Emperor and his Mandarin scholar-officials do the thinking for them. Obedience to their superiors had been pounded into the heads of the Chinese for two thousand years. And yet, the Chinese did resist. As the dynastic cycle progressed and the Qing began to decline, rebellions against the Manchus become increasingly common. The first thing the Chinese did when rebelling was to cut off their queues or let the hair in the front of their heads grow out. 

It seems to me that this insistence on continuing to mandate masks is less about controlling the COVID pandemic at this point and more about compelling a visible sign of submission to the regime, just like the Manchus required Chinese men to wear their hair in a queue. Why else should there be this insistence that everyone wear a mask, regardless of whether they have been infected? It seems to me that in a free country, the decision to wear a mask ought to be up to the individual. If you feel it is necessary to wear a mask to avoid contracting the coronavirus, by all means, wear one. If I believe that having had the coronavirus and been vaccinated believe that I am in no danger and therefore do not believe that wearing a mask is necessary, I shouldn’t be made to wear one. Why the name-calling and mask shaming? 

Maybe you think this is going a bit far. Well, consider this:

Wearing a mask is presented more as a gesture of loyalty to “President” Biden and his agenda than an actual health measure. 

The Chinese wore their hated queues under the threat of superior force and lived in a culture that emphasized conformity. We Americans allegedly have a culture that emphasizes freedom and individualism and no one is threatening to chop off our heads for not wearing a mask, at least not yet. So what is our excuse? Why are we being intimidated into continuing to wear masks even as the pandemic ebbs? Are we really that easily frightened? What happened to the people who wear willing to fight for their freedom?

If you want to wear a mask go ahead. If you don’t want to wear one, don’t. That is what people do in a free country. We don’t let our betters tell us whether to wear a mask. We decide for ourselves. Let’s take off the masks and be free. 

Unscientific American

Scientific American used to be a respectable magazine that reported on the latest scientific discoveries for a popular audience. Sadly, that no longer appears to be the case. Take, for example, this interview with “forensic psychologist” Bandy X Lee, in which she discusses the “shared psychosis”: of President Donald Trump and his followers and how best to wean his followers away from their shared delusions. It used to be regarded as highly unethical, in the psychiatric profession to offer a diagnosis of a person the professional has not interviewed and in fact, the American Psychiatric Association has the Goldwater Rule in its ethical guidelines. This rule states:

On occasion, psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement

Ms. Lee brushes this objection aside in the interview.

In doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline, known as the Goldwater Rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.”

How precisely Trump’s government could be considered “destructive” is not mentioned. The usual reason given by leftists is that Trump has been undermining our constitutional and democratic norms. In fact, it is the leftists who have been undermining the norms to get Trump. They have corrupted and politized our intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies to supple falsified information concerning Russian collusion. They have incited riots and unrest in our major cities. They have imposed censorship in social media to influence the election. They have rigged that election to ensure Trump’s defeat. Ms. Lee herself has abandoned longstanding ethical guidelines to engage in a political attack. I would say that the complaints about Trump undermining norms are prime examples of leftist projection. Ms. Lee’s comparison of Trump to Nazism says much about her own delusions. Ms. Lee might also want to consider the history of Soviet misuse of psychiatry to define dissidents as mentally ill. Her own suggested treatment of allegedly delusional Trump supporters comes dangerously close to Soviet standards. There is a reason why the Goldwater rule exists.

Consider what she has to say when asked what motivates Trump supporters.

The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

and

In Profile of a Nation, I outline the many causes that create his followership. But there is important psychological injury that arises from relative—not absolute—socioeconomic deprivation. Yes, there is great injury, anger and redirectable energy for hatred, which Trump harnessed and stoked for his manipulation and use. The emotional bonds he has created facilitate shared psychosis at a massive scale. It is a natural consequence of the conditions we have set up.

For healing, I usually recommend three steps: (1) Removal of the offending agent (the influential person with severe symptoms). (2) Dismantling systems of thought control—common in advertising but now also heavily adopted by politics. And (3) fixing the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to poor collective mental health in the first place.

I wonder if Ms. Lee has actually spoken to any Trump supporter. She might consider that many of them have real grievances that have been unaddressed by any national figure before Trump ran for president. She might also try to understand that many of Trump’s supporters have benefited from his policies. There is a reason why more people voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016 and why the Democrats had to hype up the COVID-19 threat and then resort to fraud to defeat Trump.

Scientific American had no business publishing this interview with Bandy X Lee. She has acted in violation of ethical guidelines. She has not met or interviewed Donald Trump and is therefore not qualified to submit any psychiatric diagnoses. She is entitled to her opinion about Trump, and other public figures, but such opinions belong in a political opinion journal, not in a publication devoted to scientific matters. The decision by the editors of Scientific American to publish this interview is an indication of the sad decline of any institution taken over by the left. Leftists infiltrate formerly respectable institutions, “wokeify” them, and leave a sort of husk divested of its former virtues. The left is like a sort of parasitical fungus I once read about that eats away at an insect from the inside out leaving only its carapace intact to lure more victims. Such is the fate of the formerly Scientific American.

Rhyming History

Mark Twain is supposed to have said that history does not repeat but it rhymes. Whether or not Twain actually said it, the meaning of this expression is that while historical events do not repeat themselves precisely, there are certain patterns to history. People are people, whatever the differences in geography or culture, and people tend to react to similar events in similar ways. With this in mind, I would like to consider certain historical events with which the current political situation is starting to rhyme in some ominous ways.

The first rhyme begins on January 30, 1933, when German President Paul von Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Hindenburg did not like Hitler very much. Hindenberg was an aristocratic Junker of the old Prussian mode and a monarchist and he despised Hitler as a demagogue and a plebian rabble-rouser. The Nazis, while short a majority, had become the largest party in the Reichstag and it was impossible to form a governing coalition without them. Hitler’s price for such a coalition was to be named Chancellor. Hindenberg had done a creditable job as a Field Marshall in charge of the German military in World War I, but by 1933 he was old, he was 85, tired, and perhaps a bit senile. He succumbed to the pressure to make Hitler Chancellor, against his better judgment.

Hitler was not yet a dictator, though. The Nazis held only three cabinet posts and there were new elections for the Reichstag coming up in March. Most observers felt that Hitler could be contained. Then, on  February 27, a fire broke out at the Reichstag building. A Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was found on the scene and arrested. While many then and since have suspected the Nazis of starting the fire themselves, the historical consensus is that van der Lubbe was indeed the arsonist. Nevertheless, the Nazis were swift to take advantage of the incident, citing the fire as evidence of a widespread Communist conspiracy to overthrow the Weimar Republic and institute a Soviet regime.

Is history repeating itself, or rhyming?

The Nazi press spread stories of an imminent Communist takeover inciting panic among the German population and the following day  President von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree, giving Hitler emergency powers, suspending the civil rights of the German People, including freedom of speech and the press and the right to peaceably assemble. The Communist Party was banned and those Communists not already in custody are rounded up and arrested. A month later, on March 24, the Enabling Act was passed, giving the Chancellor the power to rule by decree. Hitler was now a dictator and only President Hindenberg’s prestige and control of the German army stood in the way of absolute power for Hitler. This last barrier was removed when Hindenberg died on August 2, 1934. Hitler combined the offices of president and chancellor and assumed the title of Fuhrer and Reichskanzler.

Does all of this begin to sound familiar? Substitute Democrats for Nazi, Conservative for Communist, and Capitol riot for Reichstag fire and I could easily be talking about the current political situation. There is no Hitler to be found anywhere, thank God, and no one is actually talking about establishing a dictatorship, yet, but it is clear that the Democrats are using last week’s riot at the capitol to justifying attacking our most basic civil rights, with the aid of their Big Tech allies. Conservatives are already being purged from social media platforms, and who can tell what the coming Democratic Congress will enact. Prominent Progressives are openly talking about the need to “reprogram” Trump supporters, people are losing their jobs for backing the wrong side, and Democrats are talking about the need to rein in media “misinformation”.

I have long opposed comparing any politician or political party to Hitler or the Nazis. No one in mainstream American politics, I have said is anything at all like some of the worst people in human history. I might have to revise that position. If the Democrats are going to make use of the Nazi playbook, line by line, then I am going to start calling them what they have revealed themselves to be, Nazis or Fascists.

Meanwhile, if history continues to rhyme in this fashion, I am afraid we are in for some very dark times.

 

The Capitol Hill “Insurrection”

If you are expecting me to condemn the people who stormed Capitol Hill the other day, forget it. It’s not going to happen. The Democrats spent all last summer excusing and condoning the thugs who destroyed property and ruined lives. I am not going to condemn the of an unruly mob of people on my side while they continue to justify violence and repression by activists on their side. I am not going to demand my side play by Marquess of Queensbury rules while their side literally is getting away with murder.

For the last four years, well for many decades really, the leftists have been excusing and condoning violence. They have assaulted and harassed Trump supporters and conservatives with impunity. They have written articles extolling the virtues of punching Nazis, by which they mean anyone to be right of Stalin, and called for a violent insurrection against the Fascist Trump. Last summer, not only did these same Democrats who are busy condemning this “assault on democracy” not only stood by while Antifa and BLM thugs burned down our cities, they actively sided with the terrorists, with the disgraceful spectacle of prominent Democrats taking a knee while wearing kente cloth to show solidarity with actual insurrectionists.

Now, after spending years normalizing political violence, these people are shocked and saddened people on the other side seem to have adopted the new rules they themselves have established. I say seems to because there is reason to believe that the assault on the Capitol was incited by leftist activists posing as Trump supporters. Whatever the truth of the matter, the leftists are upset that both sides can play by the new rules. Some people on the left have made the argument that Antifa/BLM violence is justifiable because they have legitimate grievances about the conduct of police departments. This neatly ignores the fact that Republicans have legitimate concerns about the integrity of the last election. In any case, it simply does not work that way. If violence is an acceptable means to redress grievances by one faction, it is an acceptable means to redress grievances by all factions. You cannot say, “We are permitted to cause mayhem but you are not because we are on the right side of history and you are not.” Like it or not, and to tell the truth I do not like it, the new rules are going to apply to everyone. The Left has spent the recent past being the instigators of violence. They had better become used to being the recipients of violence. If you push people long enough, they will start to push back.

We tried to be nice with the Tea Party. We protested peacefully and worked within the system. We even picked up our garbage. They laughed at us and called us racists and political terrorists while the people we thought were on our side stabbed us in the back. So, we became a little less nice and elected Donald Trump. They called him Hitler and us Fascists, tried to block everything we wanted him to do for us, and even impeached him. They blocked out voices in social media claiming that we were haters.

Last year, they looked the other way as thugs burned down our cities. They made us prisoners in our homes and destroyed our businesses under the guise of fighting a pandemic. They deliberately crashed the economy to harm our President’s chance of reelection and when that wasn’t enough they stole the election before our eyes and told us we were crazy and dangerous to democracy for objecting. Now the same people who had no problem with actual terrorists murdering people want to hang us for treason because a few of us went a little unruly in the defense of our freedom.

We tried to use the ballot box but they stole the election right in front of us. We have used the soapbox, but the tech tyrants and the media are doing their best to silence and marginalize us. It is getting to be time to use the ammo box.

It’s time to stop being nice.

 

 

 

Vote Reparations

Vote reparations are the newest idea from the loony left that every conservative is talking about. What is vote reparations? We’ll let Brandon Hasbrouck explain in his article in the Nation.

Black votes in this country are worth less than white votes. Joe Biden won the Electoral College because Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia turned out in significant numbers. But even with overwhelming Black support—94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden!—the outcomes in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were worryingly close.

We’ll skip over the very real possibility that those close votes were the result of fraud for the sake of the argument. 

One core problem is the Electoral College. Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House. By comparison, Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District—which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black—has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state. This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating. Unequal representation has led to unequal health care outcomes, which the Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened. Without sufficient voting power, Black communities receive substandard education, and politicians are free to appoint judges who sanction mass incarceration, abusive policing, and electoral disenfranchisement.

This is all by design. The Constitution’s framers set up the Electoral College to protect the interests of slave states. Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means. Abolishing this system would mean that ballots cast by Black voters—or any voters, for that matter—would count the same.

But there’s another way to undo the damage of the Electoral College and other structurally racist political institutions: We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents. The poisonous legacy of slavery applies to Black people regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived in this country. Vote reparations should also extend to Native Americans. Slavery is rightly called America’s original sin, but so too was the United States’ genocidal seizure of land from its original inhabitants. Various legal forms of disenfranchisement have applied to them. It wasn’t until 1962 that all Native Americans were allowed to vote, and even then they faced—and still face—electoral obstacles. These are not the only examples of American oppression; we should include in vote reparations others who have suffered similar disenfranchisement.

Basically, the idea that Blacks, and perhaps other people who have suffered from past and present discrimination should get two votes to make up for past wrongs. 

There is a lot to object to in this idea, not least of which is the old maxim that two wrongs do not make a right. You cannot remedy injustice against one group by practicing injustice against the other. I will have more to say about that in a moment, but first, I think it is worth observing that the whole idea of vote reparations is based on a false premise, the idea that the constitution and particularly the electoral college were designed to perpetuate slavery. Logically, if the premise is false, the conclusion must also be false.

Contrary to what the architects of the 1619 Project contend, the constitution was not designed to perpetuate slavery. The framers of the constitution wanted to create a republican government that would preserve liberty for themselves and their descendants. The founding fathers drew from many sources, both ancient and modern for inspiration, including the greatest political philosophers throughout history, particularly Aristotle, Polybius, John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Montesquieu. These thinkers generally believed that the best way to preserve liberty was to create a mixed government, that is, a government that included elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, all in balance with a separation of powers. The framers of the constitution wanted a system that was somewhat democratic, but not too democratic, so they included undemocratic features, like the Electoral College into the constitution. The founding fathers did not want the president to be elected by the people, the people might not know the candidates very well. They wanted the president to be elected by representatives of the people, selected by the state legislatures. None of this had anything to do with slavery. In fact, the Constitution, and especially the Declaration of Independence, with its declaration that all men are created equal had rather a corrosive effect on the institution of slavery. 

Getting back to the subject of vote reparations, then. Aside from the obvious injustice of awarding differing numbers of votes based on race and color, the problem I have with this sort of restorative justice is that I wonder when does it all end. At what point are the previously oppressed and the previous oppressors even? If we embark on a policy of privileging the descendants of the oppressed at the expense of the descendants of the oppressors? If Blacks get reparations paid by Whites today, do Whites have a claim on reparations a hundred years from now based on the oppression their ancestors endured at the hands of privileged Blacks? 

It may seem ludicrous to consider Whites being oppressed by Blacks today, but how do people like Mr. Hasbrouck think Whites are going to react when they see their Black neighbors getting two votes? Probably the same way they think about any government policy that shows preference to Blacks at the expense of Whites. Few Whites are going to simply shrug their shoulders and say, well they deserve the extra votes because our grandfathers oppressed their grandfathers. The Whites are inevitably going to feel discriminated against, with some justification. Dismissing their just grievances as simply as more racism will only make them angrier. 

So, where does it end? Do we simply continue on an endless cycle of discrimination, flipping back and forth between the races, or do we put an end to discrimination and treat everyone as equal? Do we continually revisit the injustices of the past to foster an endless sense of grievance or do we move forward into a brighter future? Vote Reparations would only take us back to an endless pattern of racism today, racism tomorrow, and racism forever. I think it is better to aim for a future of liberty and equality.