RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-movement-to-deconstruct-justice-and-social-order

American cities are entering a period of chaos. Protests and riots have dominated headlines, but beneath the surface, activists are launching an unprecedented campaign to overthrow the traditional justice system and replace it with a new model based on a radical conception of social justice.

In Seattle, where this campaign may be most advanced, activists have crafted a narrative about police brutality, mass incarceration, and punitive justice that leads to a natural sequence of solutions: “abolish the police,” “divest from prisons,” and “defund the courts.” Over the past three decades, the city’s radical-progressives have seized control of municipal government—with the notable exception of the criminal-justice system, which they see as the final obstacle to total control. If they can dismantle it, activists believe, they can bring about their transformation of society.

The city’s political establishment has joined the campaign to “deconstruct justice.” Since the outbreak of the George Floyd–related protests starting in late May, elected officials in Seattle and King County have announced their intentions to defund the Seattle Police Department, permanently close the county’s largest jail, and gut the municipal court system. They believe that, when the oppression of the justice system is lifted, a new society can be shaped through criminal diversion, psychotherapy, and harm reduction.

The theoretical underpinnings of this movement can be traced back to the academic currents of “critical race theory,” long pervasive in university humanities departments, which holds that all legal structures—and society generally—can be understood as a function of embedded racism. The law is shot through with white supremacy, critical race theorists believe, which must be rigorously identified and dismantled if true justice is to be achieved. In recent years, critical race theory has expanded beyond the academy and become a force in progressive politics.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-inauthenticity-behind-black-lives-matter-11606069287?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina gave a remarkable speech at this year’s Republican National Convention. Yes, here was a black man at a GOP event, so there was a whiff of identity politics. When we see color these days, we expect ideology to follow. But Mr. Scott’s charisma that night was simply that he spoke as a person, not a spokesperson for his color.

Burgess Owens, Herschel Walker, Daniel Cameron and several others did the same. It was a parade of individuals. And in their speeches the human being stepped out from behind the identity, telling personal stories that reached for human connections with the American people—this rather than the usual posturing for leverage with tales of grievance. So they were all fresh and compelling.

Do these Republicans foretell a new racial order in America? Clearly they have pushed their way through an old racial order, as have—it could be argued—many black Trump voters in the recent election. I believe there is in fact a new racial order slowly and tenuously emerging, and that we blacks are swimming through rough seas to reach it. But to better see the new, it is necessary to know the old.

The old began in what might be called America’s Great Confession. In passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, America effectively confessed to a long and terrible collusion with the evil of racism. (President Kennedy was the first president to acknowledge that civil rights was a “moral issue.”) This triggered nothing less than a crisis of moral authority that threatened the very legitimacy of American democracy.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/11/22/outrage-erupts-at-antisemitism-panel-featuring-noted-antisemites/

Outrage erupted on Twitter over the weekend after the far-left anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace announced it will be co-sponsoring a panel on antisemitism featuring panelists who oppose the existence of Israel.

Denying that right is considered antisemitism under the working definition adopted by the US State Department and many nations and institutions around the world.

The panel, billed as “Dismantling Antisemitism, Winning Justice,” claims in the event description that, “Antisemitism is used to manufacture division and fear. While anyone can fuel it, antisemitism always benefits the politicians who rely on division and fear for their power.”

“We will explore how to fight back against antisemitism and against those that seek to wield charges of antisemitism to undermine progressive movements for justice,” it states.

Claims that Jews collaborate with the powerful to harm the underprivileged and enhance their power are extremely old, and were widely used to justify the brutal 19th century pogroms in eastern Europe.

Appearing on the panel will be Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who supports a “one-state solution” in which Israel is replaced by an Arab state; Peter Beinart, the only Jewish panelist, who has openly rejected the existence of Israel in its current form; Marc Lamont Hill, who has publicly recited the  slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”; and Barbara Ransby, an academic who supports the antisemitic BDS movement.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/lockdowns_are_serial_killers_end_them_now.html

We are constantly told by our political leaders and the compliant media that a pandemic lockdown is absolutely necessary if we are ever to defeat the COVID virus. Mask mandates, quarantine camps, self-isolating, limited sociability, the stoking of public fear and panic, the shuttering of businesses and the attendant cratering of the economy have become, once again, the false solution to a politically ginned-up crisis — déjà vu all over again. The trouble is: none of this works, none of this is necessary. Texas Tech professor Gilbert Berdine sums up: “After taking the unprecedented economic depression into account, history will likely judge these lockdowns to be the greatest policy error of this generation.”

information is beautiful via ShiftFrequency.com

Psychiatrist Mark McDonald writes: “Not only have Americans become afraid, they have become infected by … a pandemic of hysteria … a delusional psychosis. A delusion is a fixed false belief contrary to reality. Americans today believe that we must keep our businesses closed, that we must keep our children at home, that we must wear masks over our faces and isolate ourselves from human beings in order to keep us alive. That is false. That is a lie. And it is killing us. It is killing us physically, mentally, socially, psychologically, it is killing our country, and it must stop.”

There is no doubt that the lockdown is “killing” every country and destroying the urban hub of cultural life and economic activity wherever it has been imposed. Consider London, for example, a great and historic metropolis which has become a virtual ghost town, communally dead, everywhere shops and businesses closed that will never re-open again, a harbinger of massive financial collapse. London has fallen. And many cities and nations in the West will follow suit. Take a look at New York, Chicago and L.A.

Powerful confirmation of the absurdity and harmfulness of the lockdowns comes from the recently circulated Great Barrington Declaration, prepared and signed by eminent physicians and epidemiologists, which arrives at the following conclusion:

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

For a democracy to collapse into authoritarianism, what are required is a man or a woman and a movement. In Trump, we have a man but no movement. On the Progressive Left, we have a movement but no one person. To be effective, the movement must have the backing of the media, the academy and a sufficient number of bureaucrats who run government – advantage, the Left.

Trump is criticized by his detractors as a neo-fascist, a would-be dictator, but, apart from his love for America and his call to “clean the swamp,” he has no overriding political philosophy. The Tea Party did not expand during his White House tenure. The Progressive Left calls for an expansionist government that will provide more regulation, a “green new deal,” free college, all of which will mean higher taxes and limit individual freedom. They have on their side mainstream media, the academy and most of the bureaucracy that runs Washington. But they have no one individual around whom they gather.  Some might look at this as an optimistic appraisal – a leader with no real movement and a movement with no one leader – and assume an Alfred E. Neuman stance.

However, there are cultural trends abroad that should worry a believer in a free and open society. In the essay, from which the rubric was drawn, Mr. Xiao wrote about his father and his contemporaries, now living in the United States: “…they can feel a certain febrility in the air which reminded them of the events of half a century ago.” Former President Obama, in a recent speech, prescribed “a combination of regulations and standards within industries to get us back to the point where we at least recognize a common set of facts,” suggesting a need for an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. In a speech on November 12 before the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, Justice Samuel Alito warned that “tolerance for opposing views is now in short supply in many law schools, and in the broader academic community.” Richard Stengel, who joined Joe Biden’s transition team, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post in October 2019: “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.” Whose Truths? Whose lies? Whose guardrails?

https://www.city-journal.org/bidens-covid-advisors-ignore-high-costs-of-lockdowns

For the lockdown-weary, a brief window of hope opened after the presidential election. With Joe Biden victorious, Democratic politicians and their media allies lost their incentive to weaken Donald Trump’s economy and stoke Covid-19 panic among voters. And with Republicans well-positioned to retain the Senate, governors and mayors in blue states could no longer count on a windfall from a Democratic Congress to rescue them from the consequences of their lockdowns. Finally, cooler heads could prevail—right?

So much for that fantasy. Instead of reconsidering their policies, local officials are restricting more businesses and closing more schools, as New York City has just done. Journalists continue treating Covid deaths as the only ones that matter, while ignoring the mounting medical and social toll from lockdowns. Promising more restrictions, Biden has created an advisory board comprised of individuals who favor stricter lockdowns and foresee restrictions continuing until late next year, even if a Covid vaccine is quickly approved.

Biden and other leaders claim to be following “the science,” but that obviously doesn’t include the research showing the high costs and low benefits of lockdowns and school closures. Closing schools was a dubious move in the spring, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that it would likely do little to stem the pandemic (and noted that school closings in other countries had failed to make a discernible impact). Today it makes even less sense in light of the accumulated evidence.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/19/covid-19-lockdowns-lead-to-a-failure-to-thrive/

What in the hell are we doing?

There once was a time, like any other time before the year 2020, when people would have been ashamed to openly boast about abandoning their aging parents during the holidays.

But broadcasting plans to ditch ailing mothers and fathers for Thanksgiving is the latest in COVID-19 fashion. Thanks to more heartless, cruel guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and outlandish orders issued by tyrannical governors of both political parties, families are planning to forego holiday traditions to avoid infecting each other with the virus.

“I already canceled Thanksgiving and Christmas with my 91-year-old mother because I DON’T WANT TO KILL HER,” left-wing pundit John Aravosis declared on Twitter. Dozens of his followers chimed in to announce similar plans. 

Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s education secretary, after disclosing he and his family had contracted coronavirus despite following all the rules since the start, said he had not seen his 85-year-old mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, since last spring. “I’ve been able to do almost nothing with her for six months,” Duncan admitted on CNN. “But there’s nothing worse than having the people you care about contract this virus.”

That is, of course, a preposterous statement. It would be easy to name dozens if not hundreds of “worse” things that could happen to a loved one; for example, slowly withering away in a long-term care facility, isolated from family, desperate for human touch and interaction. But that is exactly what’s happening across the country as most states continue to impose harsh restrictions for nursing home visits. The most prosperous country in the world is allowing its most vulnerable citizens—men and women who defended and built America—to die of Third World causes including “failure to thrive,” a common ailment among children in impoverished nations.

“I’d Rather Die From COVID Than Loneliness”

According to an Associated Press story this week, an estimated 40,000 nursing home residents have died prematurely since March, resulting in a 15 percent increase in “excess deaths” at those facilities. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/correct-diagnostics-needed-walter-williams/

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The former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, Meria Carstarphen, last year said, “White students are nearly 4.5 grade levels ahead of their black peers within Atlanta Public Schools.” In San Francisco, 70% of white students are proficient in math; for black students, it is 12% — a gap of 58%. In Washington, D.C., 83% of white students scored proficient in reading, as did only 23% of black students — a gap of 60%. In Philadelphia, 47% of black students scored below basic in math and 42% scored below basic in reading. In Baltimore, 59% of black students scored below basic in math and 49% in reading. In Detroit, 73% of black students scored below basic in math and 56% in reading.

“Below basic” is the score a student receives when he is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and grade level skills. How much can racism explain this? To do well in school, someone must make a kid do his homework, get a good night’s rest, have breakfast and mind the teacher. If these basic family functions are not performed, it makes little difference how much money is put into education the result will be disappointing.

In 2019, the racial breakdown of high school seniors who took the ACT college entrance exam and met its readiness benchmarks was 62% of Asians, 47% of whites, 23% of Hispanics and 11% of blacks. That helps explain a 2016 study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce “African Americans: College Majors and Earnings.” It found that black college students were highly concentrated in lower-paying and less academically demanding majors like administrative services and social work. They are much less likely than other students to major in science, technology, engineering and math, even though blacks in these fields earned as much as 50% more than blacks who earned a bachelor’s degree in art or psychology and social work.

James D. Agresti, the president and co-founder of Just Facts has just published an article titled “Social Ills That Plague African Americans Coincide with Leftism, Not Racism.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/our-dysfunctional-race-relations-bruce-thornton/

Commentator and radio host Larry Elder recently posted an insightful tweet: “It is a sign of progress that today in America ‘race relations’ pretty much comes down to just one thing: how black people feel about white people––and how white people feel about how black people feel about white people.”

Unpacking this comment will reveal how dysfunctional “race relations” and racial discourse have been for half a century since legal segregation was ended.

First, I suspect the word “progress” carries a double edge. Of course, the condescending and patronizing sensibility that underlies “white” America’s obsession with black people’s opinions of them is a tremendous improvement over the indifference and neglect at best, and at worst the daily demeaning humiliations and physical violence of the past.

But the goal of the Civil Rights Movement that brought down legal segregation wasn’t for blacks to become “mascots,” to use Thomas Sowell’s metaphor, of enlightened white people’s moral preening, or superficial compassion, or need for racial redemption and absolution. Rather, it was for black people to be in full possession of the unalienable rights upon which the country and the Constitution were founded, and hence to be politically and legally equal to other Americans. The color of their skin, then, would be irrelevant to their political and national identities and the “content of their character.”