RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/06/covid-19-and-the-problem-with-official-science/

All models are wrong but some are useful, which cannot be said of the casualties projected for a disease that has proven about as lethal as a seasonal flu. Recall that 1969’s Hong Kong flu killed an estimated one million worldwide but did not stop the Woodstock festival. Yet driven by fear and folly we have trashed an entire economy.

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.  —Lord Salisbury, 1877

The desideratum in modern governance is evidence-based policy. It is not always achieved or, as we have seen with the coronavirus panic, possible. It is far preferable, however, to policy-based evidence, which was to be found with the rushed production of new evidence that had not met the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration quality assurance processes in a desire to influence Donald Trump’s deliberations over whether to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement (as I describe in my forthcoming essay in Climate Change: The Facts 2020).

In climate science the problem appears irrevocable. Scholars like Roger Pielke Jr in his book The Honest Broker have pointed out that there is no linear relationship between science and public policy: scientific findings rarely lead to single policy conclusions. Despite this, the epistemic community in climate science seems to think that even more scary model-driven scenarios will lead policy-makers to do “the right thing”.

https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-enacts-tariffs-travel-ban-on-chaz

Trump has announced a new set of tariffs and a travel ban on CHAZ, escalating the trade war between the United States and the fledgling nation-state.

“Effective immediately, no travel to or from the foreign country of Seattle,” the president said at a press conference. “Additionally, a 25% tariff will be placed on all goods coming from CHAZ, once they start exporting things.” The president will also be cutting all diplomatic ties with the communist nation, further increasing tensions.

The tariffs aren’t expected to do much, however, as the only thing the people of CHAZ have been able to produce so far is a few beans in the community garden.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/14/class-not-race-divides-america/

Nothing is stranger in these tense days than the monotony of the inexact and non-descriptive mantra of “white privilege” and “white solidarity”—as if there is some monolithic white bloc, or as if class matters not at all.

In truth, the clingers, the deplorables, the irredeemables, and Joe Biden’s “dregs” have very little in common with those who so libel them, but superficially share supposedly omnipotent and similar skin color.

In the past, we saw such tensions among so-called whites in CNN’s reporting of the allegedly toothless rubes at Trump rallies, in the Strzok-Page text trove about Walmart’s smelly patrons, in the callous coastal disregard for the five-decade wasting away of the American industrial heartland, in the permissible elite collective disparagement of Christian evangelicals, and in the anthropological curiosity about and condescension toward such exotic, but presumably backward, Duck Dynasty and NASCAR peoples. 

As a result, we have reached the surreal point at which the nation’s privileged whites on campuses such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, in the top echelon of politics, and the corporate and entertainment worlds, all deplore in the abstract something they call “white privilege” in others who have never really experienced it. 

Of course, whatever such a thing is, they possess it in abundance but give no hint they have any intention of giving it up other than rhetorically or through the medieval concept of hair-shirt penance and Twitter confessionals. On the other hand, they are furious that middle-class whites do not join their theatrics of bending the knee and offering abject apologies for original sins. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/the_morning_after_the_riots_end.html

There will come a morning when the protests stop, the riots end, the fires are extinguished, and insufficiently woke editors will cease to be intimidated.

The Democratic leadership will no longer wear kente cloth or take a knee.

Before us will be shopping malls littered with shards of glass and merchandise that looters couldn’t carry off. The burned-out vehicles and rubble of once-viable businesses will scar our communities.

The notion of people of color will become less meaningful as the Korean dry cleaner weeps over the ruins of his business. The Palestinian-American in Chicago looks at the liquor store he inherited from his father and wonders if he can rebuild the business.

The Asian restaurant owner whose small take-out establishment supported a family and sent two children to college will wonder where to begin again. The Mexican-American business owner will wonder why he was targeted. The black firefighter who built a sports bar that was burned to the ground will ask the same question.

The corporate directors of the smoldering manufacturing facilities will consider pulling up stakes. There are no riots in rural America. 

The injured or assassinated police, be they white, black, or any other color, will be remembered by their fellow officers and many in their communities as having been blue — the only color that mattered.

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2020/06/engineering-america.html

Rule of Reason no. 2542

I open this column with a review of the overture to the nationwide riots, destruction, and looting that occurred over the last few weeks.  The venu is in a Shoprite store on Staten Island, NY, in which a masked, loud-mouthed shopper with his masked harpies together chased a a maskless shopper out of the store. Calling her a “dirty assed pig.”  It’s more horrifying than any of the rioter videos I’v e seen, and I’ve seen the most grisly ones. It’s evidence of how non-intellectual most Americans are and how submissive they have become in lieu of the virus “crisis.”  Had I been there, I would’ve been maskless, too ( and as I always will be), and challenged the thug to chase me out. If he’d become toe-to-toe with me I would have smashed an egg in his face. If he wanted to take it further I was perfectly willing to take it to the next level.  I’ve had many fights in my life and lost not a one.

Tucker Carlson wondered what was going on in the country . His video is worth a listen.

This is what is going on, among other developments.  Colorado passed a law that requires that parents be punished for refusing to have their children Covid-19 vaccinated, and that they be “reeducated.”  Where have we heard that term before? This “reeducation” is ubiqitous in many state governments and agents of “authority” tasked with the imperative of instituting the “new norm” of submission.

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Ignorance is the bane of civilized society. It is inexcusable in a country with free high schools. In a manifestation of cancel culture, mobs tear down statues of yesteryear’s heroes. I wonder: what is gained by destroying historical artifacts? Where is the curiosity expressed by Washington Irving in Sketchbook almost two hundred years ago? “I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievements.”[1] Should we rename army bases in a moment of exuberant zeal, or would it be wiser to debate the issue when heads are cooler? Are past wrongs righted when relegated to the ash heap of ignorance? Can we assume we have reached perfection where our descendants will find nothing wrong in today’s actions? Would those whose bravery stems from being part of a mob tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus have had the courage of the Italian navigator to sail across an infinite sea to an unknown land?

History must be considered in context and with perspective. It is impossible for us to judge the behavior of our forefathers based on today’s moral standards, just as it will be unfair to us for our descendants to mock our actions today based on values a hundred years hence. Should we ignore Columbus because he is now pilloried as a racist, more than five hundred years after his voyage of discovery? Should we disregard Thomas Jefferson, and the words he wrote about self-evident truths and of how all men were created equal with unalienable rights, because he kept slaves? Cannot we admire the former and criticize the latter?

The cultural war is perhaps most pronounced in the Washington D.C. environs, where 283,000 federal bureaucrats work. They are joined by about 14,000 staffers for the 535 Congressmen and Senators. Lobbyists comprise another 11,600 people. Added to the mix are thousands who work in media. In all, they make up almost 20% of the metro areas workforce. These are highly paid people who live in four of the nation’s five wealthiest counties – Howard (MD) and Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington, all in Virginia. It is a self-contained culture where most jobs are based on who you know. Once hired, they are ensconced, moving from agency to lobbyist firm to agency. But as Richard Grenell, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and ex-acting Director of National Intelligence, recently noted, the D.C. culture is autonomous, where there is “no outside thought, there’s no perspective.” While forty million Americans lost their jobs due to a state-mandated shut-down of the economy, these people kept theirs, even when told to stay home – most paid from our tax dollars. The contrast to the rest of the country is startling. It was this narcissistic cocoon that Donald Trump threatened to dismantle in 2016 when he pledged to “drain the swamp.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/13/expert_models__fear__stress_pandemic_143428.html

“It’s the science, the science, the science, not politics.” This from leaders calling for the continuation of the shutdown. It is “the science” they say they’re responding to when they tell us how to live every moment of our waking lives. It is the science that tells citizens in Michigan not to buy seeds, not to take their boats out on the lake. It is lifesaving not to go to church. It is lifesaving to wear masks even when you are walking in the park. It is lifesaving to stay six feet apart. Listen up. We, your leaders, have no choice. It’s the science. And remember, if you don’t listen to us, it’s death, and more death, everywhere death.

Apparently, our science-induced leadership has a formula to solve the virus pandemic: Science + (or x) Fear = The Virus Cure. In other words, shut down the economy. Again, there was no choice. Lives were at stake.

Here is what John Kay of the Financial Times has written about science: “The objective of science is not an agreement on a course of action but the pursuit of truth. … Science is a matter of evidence. … The route to knowledge is transparency. … The route to truth is the pluralistic expression of conflicting views. … There is no room in the process for any notion of scientific consensus.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/scott_adams_has_had_a_brilliant_insight_about_the_demand_for_reparations.html

Whenever Democrats push race to the forefront of the news, reparations pop up. The theory is that, because their forebearers were kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in America, blacks will never catch up economically to whites. It doesn’t matter that there are no slaves or slaveowners today; that most whites are not descended from slaveowners; or that racism impoverished, rather than enriched the South.

Scott Adams’ brilliant insight cuts through all this: The comparison isn’t between black wealth and white wealth in America. Instead, the comparison must be the difference between black’s average net worth in America versus black’s average net worth in Africa. After all, the act of stealing blacks from Africa is the “but for cause” of all wrongs done to blacks.

Adams imagines a neutral space alien calculating reparations. He informs earthlings that black versus white net worth in America isn’t the correct calculation:

“If I’m going to calculate the, let’s say, the theft from the black community, if you were to measure the theft — let’s say just theft – that this slavery was. In other words, you stole the productive part of their lives, etc., and you used it for yourself. So here’s the number I need: I need how does the average economic situation for the average black person in this country and then, to compare it, I want to compare it to the average life of a black African.:

And you say, “What?”

When will there be a March to Support Law-Abiding Police Officers?

As the country sees the spectacle of anti-cop rants and total disrespect for the badge, I am reminded of the 1925 piece by William Faulkner titled “The Cop.”  It is way past due to hearken back to the time when, as a young lad, he would desire to

… be a patrolman; in a blue coat and swinging a casual stick and with a silver shield on my breast, I would pace the streets away with the measured beat of my footsteps.  What to compare with this grandeur?  To be the idol and fear of the lads, to be looked upon with respect by even grown people; to be the personification of bravery and the despair of criminals.

What a different time and place.  Almost a century ago, most folks understood the danger that police faced and had a respect for the thin blue line that protected them from criminals and murderers.

Fast-forward, and can we really be surprised at the anger and dismay expressed by New York police boss Michael O’Meara as he declares, “Nobody talks about all the police officers that were killed in the last week in the United States of America and there were a number of them.”

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2019/no-need-to-plead-guilty/

“Tempting though it is to just sit back and allow the left to self-harm, we shouldn’t do that. Racial politics is so ugly, and so fundamentally dangerous, as we know from the history of the twentieth century, that we have to expose concepts like “white privilege” for the toxic nonsense that they are. Those of us who live in Britain and America – among the least racist, most tolerant societies on earth – have a duty to stand up to this tsunami of gobbledygook before it sweeps us all away.”

The concept of “white privilege” is some-times credited to the African-American writer W.E.B. Du Bois, but the phrase didn’t enter the lexicon until it was used in a 1989 paper by the feminist academic Peggy McIntosh. “As a white person, I realised I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage,” she wrote in “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” With the American accent very firmly on “white” rather than “privilege” or any other aspect of class which British ears would so much more readily hear.

Not only is McIntosh white, she is, by any measure, astonishingly privileged. She grew up in an affluent suburb of New Jersey where the median income was four times the national average, and her father, who was a high-ranking scientist at Bell Laboratories, owned patents in several valuable electronic inventions.

After attending Radcliffe, UCL and Harvard, where she earned a PhD, Peggy married Dr Kenneth McIntosh, the son of a Columbia professor. According to William Ray, a Canadian journalist who wrote about her for the online magazine Quillette last year: “Peggy McIntosh was born into the very cream of America’s aristocratic elite, and has remained ensconced there ever since.”

But when McIntosh writes about her “privilege” she doesn’t mean in this conventional, upper-class sense. Rather, she is referring to the advantages she enjoys in virtue of being white and which, in her view, all white people share. The “knapsack” she unpacks isn’t a $1,000 Burberry backpack of the kind Peggy and Kenneth might take on a hike in the Adirondacks. No, it’s a bag full of useful things that all white people carry with them, regardless of how disadvantaged their upbringing.

Given the success of Indians across the Anglosphere, it would make more sense to talk about “brown privilege”