RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/lockdown-theater-brings-hoopla-and-amateur-epidemiologists_3318336.html#

I know that a lot of people are eagerly awaiting the roll-out of the new Netflix compilation of all the White House pressers from the Coronavirus Task Force. I’m told that, thanks to the sponsorship of Hermes scarves, all 876 hours will go on-line at once, so those of us under virtual house arrest can binge watch it for the next month or so. Those with a premium account can opt for an edition that omits any questions from Jim Acosta.

Speaking for myself, I hope it comes soon, for it looks as though we may soon be allowed out of our houses again. I’ll like that, though I expect that there will be a period of adjustment. When you are in a dark room for a while and then go out into brilliant sunlight, the light is dazzling.

That’s one reason coming out of a movie theater on a sunny summer afternoon is so disorienting. You get acclimated to the tenebrous environment. I suspect something similar and even more disorienting when the Lockdown ends.

I wonder when the critical reassessments will start. That will probably depend on the state of the economy, though I would like to find a more emollient word for the pulsing “élan vital” that sustains us. “Economy” sounds abstract and somehow in opposition to human things, whereas in fact it is part of what makes human things possible.

An acquaintance of mine made what I think is an astute observation when he wrote that “Politicians and bureaucracies tend to respond to crises with theater. After 9/11 it was airport security theater. Following Corona it was lockdown theater. There’s some utility to it, but only some, there is much more hoopla.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/04/suicide-of-the-west-postponed/

“Latter-day progressives recommend accommodation with all things non-Western and, more ominously, all things anti-Western. To take the contrary view, as Donald Trump has done, makes him the enemy of very powerful interests. Russiagate, the Ukraine impeachment farce and every other faux scandal laid at the White House door are the consequence of that.”

Donald Trump may have been too wilful and too much of a know-it-all to be indoctrinated by what James Burnham called, as early as 1964, “the ideology of Western suicide”. Trump-haters will loathe me saying so, but there is at least one connection between Trump and Churchill. The latter, despite the lengthening shadow of Nazi Germany, was himself too wilful and too much of a know-it-all to accept what others regarded as “inevitable”. His opposition to appeasement throughout the 1930s and his determination, as prime minister in 1940, to spurn Hitler’s overtures in the aftermath of the Battle of France might seem straightforward enough now, but that is with the benefit of hindsight. Equally, with Trump. Recall his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, impose tariffs on goods imported from China, insist on a hard border with Mexico, call North Korea’s bluff, quit the Paris Agreement, ad infinitum. Like it or not, Trump’s aversion to mollification, which is just another word for appeasement, makes him in a sense Churchillian.

The ideology of civilisational suicide, argued Burnham in Suicide of the West (1964), had its origins in the Great War. The war was a calamity with consequences still playing out half-a-century later, and we could now say more than a century later. There was an observable decline in confidence about the merits of Western civilisation, from both internal and external points of view, during the inter-war period. This process only accelerated after the Second World War. James Burnham based his claim, partly at least, on the withdrawal of Western-sponsored governance in Africa, the greater Middle East and South Asia. As the West literally shrank during the decolonisation era, foreign policy experts had to come up with a new worldview, a new kind of liberalism, to account for this changing reality. Some of the military adventurism involved in the Cold War—for instance, the Korean War and America’s Vietnam War—disguised (and acerbated) a surge of unabashed anti-West creeds throughout the world. The Muslim Brotherhood, Maoism, Guevaraism, Khomeinism, Juche, Fanonism and so on are but a few examples. Edward Said’s Orientalism, as a radical form of liberal “broadmindedness”, has encouraged one generation after another to cast off their Westocentric and patriotic “biases” in order to accommodate themselves to a post-America global community.

https://dianebederman.com/what-is-the-meaning-of-america-first/

“From this day forward,” Trump said at one point, “it’s going to be only America first. America first.”

We hear a lot today about the term America First; always attached by politicians, pundits and professors to Donald Trump, and in a derogatory manner.  America First is a racist term they say. It was. There is a show on TV now called; The Plot Against America,  based on a novel by Philip Roth,  that takes place around the time of the Second World War.  At that time there was a group of people calling themselves America First which had its roots in the America First Committee (AFC), founded in 1940. These people opposed any U.S. involvement in World War II, and were harshly critical of the Roosevelt administration, which it accused of pressing the U.S. toward war. At its peak, it had 800,000 members across the country, included socialists, conservatives, and some of the most prominent Americans from some of the most prominent families. There was future President Ford; Sargent Shriver, who’d go on to lead the Peace Corps; and Potter Stewart, the future U.S. Supreme Court justice. It was funded by the families who owned Sears-Roebuck and the Chicago Tribune and of course had its share of antisemites.

These people walking around calling for America First tended to be white Christians who wanted America to remain white and Christian. Echoes of their German compatriots who called for Germany to be an Aryan nation, nice, white, blond people. No one else. I don’t know if it is hypocritical or ironic that the man behind the plan was dark haired and looked nothing like his idealized Aryan German.

America First.  That was white nationalism, white racism and antisemitism.

That was then.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/swans_of_a_different_color_.html

The next catastrophe might not be a virus

The advent of COVID-19 and the subsequent nation-wide lockdown amounts to a wake-up call of historical proportions. It has alerted us to the possibility of “black swans” swimming into our lives, or in the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his bestselling The Black Swan, our susceptibility to “the role of the exceptional event leading to the degradation of predictability.”

A “black swan” is characterized by three attributes: “it is a rarity,” “it causes an extreme impact,” and we come to understand it only “after the fact.” The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 was such a “black swan” — a malign event we did not expect and plan for. At the same time, most beneficial discoveries and technologies did not come from design, planning or predictable outcomes but were rare events with positive implications; for example, Sir Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin. But what most concerns us is the negative “black swan,” with its destructive radius owing much of its malignity to the “built-in defect of conventional wisdom.”

Of course, the trope of the “black swan” is not Taleb’s invention but enjoys a long pedigree, going back to the Latin poet Juvenal’s sixth Satire against marriage, where the perfect wife is considered a disaster since she would be impossible to live with. In other words, something “good” = something “bad.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/18/a-deadly-if-dutiful-deference/

On March 14, when the current coronavirus hysteria was beginning to get going in earnest, I said “one of the silver linings” of this panic would be that “the people who will be blamed when it is over—which it will be, and soon—are the people who stoked the insanity.”

That was a little over a month ago and guess what? “Soon” is “now.”

I am not thinking primarily about the burgeoning protests against the draconian and largely pointless “lockdowns” and interdictions ordered by power-hungry governors and other high-handed politicians. Those have been gratifying, and I suspect that the protests against really egregious actors, like Gretchen “Cruella de Vil” Whitmer, the wretched governor of Michigan, at least for now, will only gather momentum in the coming weeks.

But I am hoping that the deeper and longer-lasting response will be a quiet revolution in sentiment against the people who abetted this wealth-destroying panic: against the media, first of all, but also the obscure bureaucratic elite that stoked the fear and helped spread the hysteria.

Every day, it seems, brings new reasons to distrust the models and projections that turned the American public into a fearful, quivering jelly. A month ago we were told that unless we turned our world into a giant condom and took care not to touch anyone or anything, millions would die. In recent weeks, those numbers have been revised downwards again and again, even as the strategies for counting cases and fatalities due to the insidious new virus have spiraled upwards. There is a great eagerness in municipalities thirsty for government funding to overstate the number of people affected by the virus.

In New York, the smoldering omphalos of the disease in America, with just over 40 percent of the cases nationwide, a third of fatalities were not even tested. Rather, they are said to have succumbed to “COVID-19 or an equivalent.” An equivalent, Kemo Sabe, like those generic drugs made in China that are supposedly the equivalent of the brand name varieties.

Things are moving quickly now. After losing some 10,000 points in a few weeks, the market has regained more than 5,000 points just as abruptly. Who knows whether that rally will continue. It’s pretty clear, though, that many of the 20 million jobs that evaporated and tens of thousands of businesses large and small that have been crushed will not be coming back. How do we deal with that?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15902/made-in-the-usa

Today, America must meet the challenge of the Coronavirus and Civilization-Abusers. We did it in years past, with patriotic Americans and a determined mobilized military against the Axis Nations — Japan, Germany, and for a time Italy — as well as against polio with the Salk and Sabin vaccines.

Whether it is in developing 5G or other technologies, America needs to mobilize and be the world’s leading export nation, the same way we became energy independent and a leading energy-exporting nation.

We have to grow our economy and not rely on enemies of democracies to import our essential goods, either medical or technological.

Kids are eager to soak up from television what people have done to make America great. Uplifting American “can-do” educational programming and documentaries could cheer them up and show them the way.

Eighty years ago, it was Hitler and Pearl Harbor, and more recently 9/11.

Today, America must meet the challenge of the Coronavirus and Civilization-Abusers. We did it in years past, with patriotic Americans and a determined mobilized military against the Axis Nations — Japan, Germany, and for a time Italy — as well as against polio with the Salk and Sabin vaccines.

https://blog.engati.com/chuck-brooks-ai-economy/

AI, the Economy’s Backbone | Chuck Brooks | Engati Engage

In the current digital era, Chuck Brooks reveals that technology defines who we are and what we do and AI will be the backbone of the Economy. We also discuss the emergence of digital in Customer Service and the growth of the remote economy.

Chuck Brooks is a globally recognized thought leader for Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies. He is President of Brooks Consulting International and an Adjunct Faculty at Georgetown University. LinkedIn named Chuck as one of “The Top 5 Tech People to Follow on LinkedIn.” He was named by Thompson Reuters as a “Top 50 Global Influencer in Risk,” by IFSEC as the “#2 Global Cybersecurity Influencer,” and as a “Top 50 Global Marketer.” He is also a Cybersecurity Expert for “The Network” at the Washington Post, Visiting Editor at Homeland Security Today, and a Contributor to FORBES.

Summary of Interview on AI on the Economy with Chuck Brooks

We’ve summarized most of the answers to this interview in this section. But if you’d like to go through the full interview, there’s a link to the YouTube video below this section. 

How ready for a change do you think the customer service industry is and what role do you think AI plays in bringing about that change?

Chuck believes a technological transformation is already taking place. With or without COVID-19, the world has been progressing to digital in the last few years. He believes that tapping into Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has the capability to reshape the landscape. According to Chuck Brooks, with AI and ML, one has the ability to analyze data to focus on trends. In fact, AI and ML has already been used in many industries- from medical to cybersecurity, to manufacturing and industrial. We’re using these technologies to even fight the virus!

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-4-15-what-is-the-proof-that-this-covid-19-thing-really-is-a-crisis

We are in the midst of an event that is completely unique in the history of our country, and as far as I can tell, in the history of the world: namely, the intentional suppression by governments (in the U.S., both federal and states) of a very large percentage of economic activity, in an effort to control a dangerous disease. There are estimates that the U.S. economy could decline by as much as 38% from its recent peak as a consequence of this great economic suppression. In a matter of just a few weeks, tens of millions of people, many of low to moderate income, have been suddenly thrown out of work; hundreds of thousands of businesses have closed, of which an unknown number may never be able to reopen; and trillions of dollars of value have been lost in the stock market.

Surely this kind of devastating government response would not be undertaken unless this disease represented a true crisis, and unless there was also solid evidence that the economic suppression would quickly end the crisis. But how do you distinguish what constitutes a “crisis” that warrants such a drastic response, versus something that is part of the normal and ongoing pain of human existence? And even if this is a bona fide crisis, why do we think that suppression of economic activity will improve the situation?

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

We are told we live in an era of science. Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote, “the good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.” But is that really so? Does not science change as new evidence is gathered? Statisticians use models to justify their findings. Yet models are only as good as their inputs. The epidemiologists’ models we have seen regarding COVID-19 have changed markedly over the past few weeks. In mid-March, Imperial College in London predicted 2.2 million deaths in the U.S., with no mitigation. By the first of April, modelers at Oxford saw that number drop to a range of 100,000 to 240,000, with some mitigation. Now the estimate is 60,000. A University of Virginia model shows COVID-19 will peak this summer, while Health Metrics Evaluation at the University of Washington suggests the virus will “peter out” in May. Models make assumptions about, among other factors, human behavior, the measurement of which is an art? What is a person to believe?

If we are to base our beliefs about COVID-19 on the basis of “evidence,” it is unsurprising that confusion abounds. We presume, with strong reason, that it came from the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province, China, but whether from a live bat sold for human consumption at a wet market or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control has never been made clear. We are told coronavirus is highly contagious. Ten days ago, the Los Alamos National Laboratory published an article in which they claimed that the transmission rate for COVID-19 is between 4.7 and 6.6. For comparison purposes, the seasonal flu, the transmission rate is 1.3. (The transmission rate is also referred to as the regeneration rate, or the R0.) At the midpoint, 5.7, over ten rounds, one person could infect 36 million people. The chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control in Beijing puts the transmission rate at between 1.0 and 5.0. At the midpoint of 2.5, and after ten rounds, one individual could infect 9,538 people.  Which are we to believe?

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/16/the-tyranny-of-scientism-and-the-subversion-of-science/

Let’s not pretend we’re being guided by “science.” It’s tyranny disguised as the common good to rationalize authoritarian tactics employed by politicians like Phil Murphy and his like-minded colleagues. And too many Americans are falling for it, no questions asked.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy unintentionally defined this critical moment in America’s history. “We weren’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this,” he explained about his draconian decrees, including a ban on religious gatherings, to fight coronavirus. “First of all, we looked at the data and the science and it says people have to stay away from each other.”

Murphy’s comments undoubtedly buoyed the egos of academic “experts” across the country. A leading politician boasted, without the slightest sense of remorse, that his fidelity to the almighty deity of “science” prevailed over protecting the rights of his state’s citizens.

The first 10 amendments to the Constitution? Meh. The six-foot distancing rule concocted by a handful of careerist bureaucrats in Washington? Bow and scrape.

“Science” is a one-word cudgel wielded by dishonest elected officials, journalists, and yes, scientists, to force us to conform to their political whims; this is particularly true of climate change. The Democratic Party, we are assured, is the “party of science.” Democratic lawmakers and candidates routinely promise that they “believe in science.” The idea that humans are the main (or sole) drivers of global warming is “settled science.”