RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/art-institute-of-chicago-redefines-its-purpose-as-antiracism

“Western civilization is not about whiteness; it is a universal legacy. But the guardians of that civilization, by portraying it as antithetical to racial justice because of demographic characteristics, are stunting the human imagination—and impoverishing the world.”

The Art Institute of Chicago is not the first museum to turn on its docent program. But it is the most consequential. It is worth tracing the developments that led to the docent firings in some detail. The Institute is a case study in what happens when museums and other cultural organizations declare their mission to be antiracism. The final result, if unchecked, will be the cancellation of a civilization.

Chicago’s Art Institute, founded in 1879 as both a museum and an art school, emerged from the post–Civil War wave of museum building. Successful businessmen from San Francisco to Boston created grand receptacles for European art in the spirit of democratic elitism, believing that history’s masterpieces should be available to all. The Institute’s original holdings consisted almost entirely of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture, reflecting the centuries-long view that the classical world represented the pinnacle of artistic achievement in the West. Soon, however, Chicago’s Gilded Age benefactors began donating a more sweeping range of works, starting with a bequest of 44 predominantly Barbizon School oil paintings from the widow of Henry Field, brother of the Marshall Field & Company founder. More than four dozen classics of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism came the Institute’s way in 1925 and 1926. Non-Western traditions started filling out the collections as well; the largest gift in the Institute’s history, from civic leader Martin Ryerson in 1933, included Asian art among Old Master paintings, textiles, and decorative arts.

Philanthropists underwrote the nearly continuous expansions of the Institute’s 1893 Beaux-Arts building on Michigan Avenue to accommodate the growing holdings. Today, the Institute constitutes one of the finest repositories of global art on the American continent; one small corridor, containing exquisite pastel portraits by Martin Quentin de la Tour, Chardin, and other Ancien Régime artists, alone warrants a visit.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/04/woke-capital-wont-save-the-planet-but-it-will-crash-the-economy/

Judged by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s latest letter, January 2022 might turn out to have been the highwater mark of woke capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism is not “woke,” Fink says, because capitalism is driven by mutually beneficial relationships between businesses and their stakeholders. He’s right. What Fink describes is capitalism pure and simple, the stakeholder modifier adding nothing to the uniqueness of capitalism in harnessing competition and innovation for the benefit of all.

Fink’s shift is more than rhetorical. Just three years ago, in his 2019 “Profit and Purpose” letter, Fink told CEOs that the $24 trillion of wealth Millennials expect to inherit from their Boomer parents meant that ESG (environment, social, governance) issues “will be increasingly material to corporate valuations.” Now Fink tells them that “long-term profitability” is the measure by which markets will determine their companies’ success, dumping the ESG valuation metrics he’d previously championed.

Why, then, launch a Center for Stakeholder Capitalism, as BlackRock intends, and not simply a Center for Capitalism? “Your company’s purpose is its north star,” Fink says, echoing the Big Idea of his “Profit & Purpose” letter. BlackRock is the largest shareholder in Unilever. London-based Terry Smith, a top 15 Unilever shareholder, slammed Unilever’s top management for being obsessed with public displays of sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on business fundamentals. In his letter to Fundsmith shareholders, Smith wrote, “a company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot.” Ouch.

The days of woke CEOs criticizing democratically elected politicians for, say, not mandating unisex bathrooms, also seem to be drawing to a close. CEOs should be thoughtful in how they address social issues, Fink says, advising them to show humility and stay grounded. But Fink himself has some way to travel along the humility road. He requires all companies BlackRock invests in to set short-, medium-, and long-term targets for greenhouse gas reductions—as if BlackRock is an enforcement arm of government and net zero is a done deal. “Incumbents need to be clear about their pathway [to] succeeding in a net zero economy,” he writes.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/gofundme_shuts_down_the_canadian_truckers_fund.html

GoFundMe, a site that holds itself out as the go-to place for online fundraising, just shut down the Convoy 2022 Fundraiser, which had passed $9,000,000 (Canadian). The same organization that funded the violent and illegal Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, as well as myriad other violent BLM organizations, says that, once law enforcement told it that the Convey was dangerous, it was obligated to shut everything down. Adding insult to injury, GoFundMe is refusing to return the money donated, which runs directly counter to its “GoFundMe Guarantee.”

To give context to just how awful GoFundMe’s behavior is, here are a few facts. To begin with, this is not the first time GoFundMe has yanked the rug out from conservative fundraisers. It’s a sign of the truckers’ political naivete that they didn’t go straight to GiveSendGo, a Christian-based online fundraising site.

As this Fox Business article details, GoFundMe has repeatedly cut off funding for conservatives. An athlete who believes only in monogamous, heterosexual marriage had his fundraiser (unrelated to his marriage beliefs) stricken. GoFundMe also cut off a fundraiser for a bar owner who had dared to call George Floyd—a multi-offending felon who held up a pregnant woman with a gun to her belly and who died after sticking fentanyl up his derriere—a thug. It’s also shut off people who sought to raise funds after losing their jobs because they refused to get vaccinated.

No conservative or non-leftist group should ever use GoFundMe again.

Also, GoFundMe has freely and happily funded incredibly violent organizations. It kept open the fundraising platform for the illegal Seattle Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, which radicals set up during the height of the George Floyd riots. It was undeterred even after people got murdered there, along with other acts of extreme violence.

GoFundMe also kept the money flowing to BLM. We’ve learned now that much of BLM appears to be a giant communist grift, with the leaders apparently siphoning off millions for themselves.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/why_ivermectin_was_disappeared.html

It’s a common occurrence in winter. A patient calls a primary physician to report a nonproductive cough, slight hoarseness, muscle aches, and a low-grade fever. The physician, and likely the patient, realize that this is almost certainly a viral upper respiratory infection. If the patient were in the office, the physician may test for a streptococcal bacterial infection, but it will likely be negative.

This is probably an infection with a rhinovirus, adenovirus, or endemic coronavirus. Despite this, the afflicted patient will happily proceed to the pharmacy to pick up their prescription for an antibiotic. The patient will feel as though the physician was proactive, something the doctor certainly understands.

This prescription, however, will be of no value to the patient and may actually cause issues. Yet pharmacies in the U.S. see this type of prescription thousands of times a day.

It occurs despite the fact that physicians are constantly reminded that gratuitous antibiotic prescriptions come with side effects and can lead to antibiotic resistance. Beyond that, there is no tangible resistance to this practice from the medical establishment or healthcare authorities.

Now let’s imagine another patient calls in. This patient also has a dry cough scratchy throat, muscle aches, and a low-grade fever. Only this patient had a COVID test kit at home and tested positive. The physician wants to prescribe a medication with no risk of bacterial resistance and a very benign side-effect profile. He’s read lots of literature to suggest it will be helpful. There are a significant number of double-blind studies showing it to be effective in the treatment of SARS Co-V2.  It has been used in multiple countries with excellent results. Except, in this case, the physician will find it impossible to prescribe that medication. It will be impossible because that medication is Ivermectin. And somehow it has been removed from the market.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/02/21/the-lab-leak-origin-of-covid/#slide-1

Plenty of evidence points to it.

When Covid-19 first darkened our lives in the opening months of 2020, it was not only reasonable but logical to suspect that the virus had originated from some animal sold, slaughtered, or served in a Wuhan wet market.

In November 2017, Smithsonian magazine published an eerily prescient feature piece by Melinda Liu titled “Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic?” It offered a vivid portrait of China’s urban wet markets as the perfect petri dish for viruses jumping species: “Stalls overflowed with graphic evidence of the morning’s brisk trade: boiled bird carcasses, bloodied cleavers, clumps of feathers, poultry organs. Open vats bubbled with a dark oleaginous resin used to remove feathers. Poultry cages were draped with the pelts of freshly skinned rabbits. . . . These areas — often poorly ventilated, with multiple species jammed together — create ideal conditions for spreading disease through shared water utensils or airborne droplets of blood and other secretions.”

A wet market appeared to be the origin of the first SARS outbreak. Researchers Wenhui Li et al., as they wrote in the Journal of Virology in December 2020, were able to determine, fairly quickly, that “exotic animals from a Guangdong marketplace are likely to have been the immediate origin of the SARS-CoV that infected humans in the winters of both 2002–2003 and 2003–2004. Marketplace Himalayan palm civets (Paguma larvata) and raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) harbored viruses highly similar to SARS-CoV.” Americans saw and heard relatively little coverage of that outbreak at the time, as it peaked right around when the U.S. was invading Iraq in 2003. But the first SARS pandemic infected more than 8,000 people and killed more than 700.

Just about every virologist in the world is certain that SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus that causes Covid — is most like those found in bats; they differ on whether it is likely to have jumped directly from bats to human beings, or whether it passed through an intermediate species such as a pangolin — the scaly-skinned mammals that are among the most widely illegally trafficked species in the world.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tear-down-these-masks-11644019001?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

The adults who run a number of Virginia school boards have decided to wage legal warfare to maintain their ability to force children to cover their faces. The Washington Post’s Hannah Natanson and Rachel Weiner report:

An Arlington judge has issued a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s mask-optional order for schools—a major victory for the seven school boards that sued to stop the order, and a sharp rebuke for the new governor.

The Post reporters outline the legal case made by the school boards:

The first part of the argument hinges on the fact that Virginia’s constitution specifies that school boards have the power to oversee the school systems in their localities. By declaring masks optional in school districts statewide, Youngkin is intruding on school boards’ constitutionally granted authority, the plaintiffs in both suits argue.
The second part centers on a piece of legislation passed last year that requires all school districts in Virginia to comply with federal health guidance to the “maximum extent practicable.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends masking inside schools for all individuals over the age of 2, regardless of vaccination status. Because of those CDC guidelines, the plaintiffs argue, Youngkin’s order making masks optional is forcing school districts to break the law.
At a hearing in early February, Arlington District Court Judge Louise DiMatteo seemed unswayed by this argument, noting that no district complies with all of the CDC’s recommendations.

This column is also skeptical of the school boards’ argument, and is certain that their underlying policies are unsupported by the facts. There is no need for the school boards to agree with the governor on the questions of state law to recognize that they cannot prove clear public health benefits justifying the indefinite masking of children and the developmental harms that result.

No one can accuse the editors of the Atlantic magazine of being insufficiently hysterical about the risks of Covid during this pandemic. And even they had the good sense recently to publish medical scientists Margery Smelkinson, Leslie Bienen, and Jeanne Noble noting:

We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.

https://www.city-journal.org/new-study-finds-covid-lockdowns-had-no-benefit

A new study from Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Applied Economics supports what I and others have long maintained: lockdowns do not work, and their economic, social, educational, and psychological costs far outweigh any health benefits they might bring.

Early in the pandemic, epidemiological modelers predicted catastrophic casualties that could be averted only with stringent lockdown measures. In response, nearly every country around the world imposed lockdown measures by the end of March 2020. Yet little evidence existed to support such actions, and the modeling studies were fatally flawed. Now the Hopkins literature review and meta-analysis, by Professors Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung, and Steve Hanke, finds that lockdowns—“defined as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)” such as school and business closures and limitations on movement and travel—“had little to no effect on Covid-19 mortality.”

The authors reviewed thousands of studies and culled 34 that had reliable and sufficiently relevant data to review. The results were mixed: several studies found no statistically significant effect of lockdowns on mortality; other studies found a significant negative relationship between lockdowns and mortality; and others found a significant positive relationship between lockdowns and mortality—i.e., that lockdowns actually increased deaths from Covid-19.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18203/are-secret-puppeteers-still-directing-american

Over the years much has made about the lobbyists and advisors who prowl the corridors of power in Washington D.C. Many seek publicity profiles in the hope it will convince potential clients and countries that they have high-level “access.” Others cultivate their cable news appearances as pundits and commentators, relishing the limelight.

Yet what we have come to learn over time that the greater the media exposure, the less these individuals play a role in actually affecting the nation’s policies and politics.

Consider the role of Michael Podhorzer.

According to published reports, Mr. Podhorzer is a long time senior advisor to the president of the AFL-CIO, one of the most powerful labor federations in the nation. There are some 57 unions under its umbrella and they represent some 12.5 million people. His fellow Democrats are reputed to call him a “wizard” for his skill in leveraging technology on behalf of the union’s public policy agenda as well as their chosen candidates. Marry that communication technology with a field force of millions of union men and women and Mr. Podhorzer has a potent national weapon to wield in determining who will implement America’s foreign and domestic policies and who might even be trying to undermine our Constitution (here, here and here).

Until a recent Time magazine exposé, he was very much out of sight, and deliberately so, as he provided strategic direction to the union. According to the Time profile he was also a key member of a group that applied enormous organizational and computing power to the task of electing their preferred candidates.

Over time, it would become obvious that former President Donald J. Trump was not their preferred candidate.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/asked-your-pronouns-dont-answer-lgbtqia-sogie-gender-identity-nonbinary-transgender-trans-

A seemingly innocuous question masks a demand for conformity with a regressive set of ideas.

“What are your pronouns?” is a seemingly innocuous question that has become increasingly common. Pronouns are now frequently displayed prominently in social-media bios, email signatures and conference name tags. Vice President Kamala Harris features “she/her” pronouns in her Twitter bio, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg includes “he/him” in his. Then there are the singular “they/them” pronouns used by “nonbinary” people who identify as neither male nor female, as well as a growing list of bespoke “neopronouns” such as “ze/zir” or “fae/faer,” and the even stranger “noun-self” neopronouns like “bun/bunself” which, according to the New York Times, are identities that can encompass animals and fantasy characters.

A recent survey of 40,000 “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth” in the U.S. found that a full 25% use pronouns other than she/her and he/him exclusively. The Human Rights Campaign, which claims to be the “nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” recently tweeted that we should all begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are _____. What are yours?” We are told that asking for, sharing and respecting pronouns is “inclusive” to trans and nonbinary people, and that failing to do so may even constitute violence and oppression.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/men-and-the-future-of-america/

Senator Josh Hawley has struck a powerful rhetorical blow against woke communism.

Senator Josh Hawley recently gave a much commented upon speech on the virtues of masculinity. It was a very fine speech; indeed, it may have been one of the most significant senatorial speeches of his generation.

Hawley understands that the traditional traits of masculinity—stoicism, competitiveness, conquest, achievement and aggression—are good and necessary for a self-governing society, as long as they are channeled into behaviors, such as productive work and providing for a family, that serve the common good. He also knows that if these natural traits are suppressed they get channeled into dysfunctional behaviors—crime, drugs, pornography, and the like.  

As good speeches do, his speech surprised his listeners. We no longer hear talk about manliness in public. The radical left, whom I call the “woke communists,” have forbidden it. The great virtue of Hawley’s speech is that he talked about this forbidden thing, and in doing so gave others permission to talk about it. Hawley knows—as the woke comms know—that politics is ultimately about what it means to live a good life, and therefore what it means to be a human being and what it means to be a man or a woman. The woke comms are determined to destroy traditional sex roles as part of their project to destroy America. Hawley’s speech on masculinity must be understood in this larger context.

If Senator Hawley chooses to give more speeches along these lines, I have some unsolicited advice: provide a comprehensive understanding of the woke comm regime, which he points to in his speech but does not fully develop. He needs to give concerned Americans a framework to order and understand the historic events unfolding around us: we need to see clearly and fully the principles that animate the woke comms, their objectives, and their strategies. What do they want and how they are going about getting it?