"It's Not My Fault!"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“It’s Not My Fault!”

December 11, 2021

 

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process

never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”

                                                                                                                                Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

                                                                                                                                You learn by Living, 1960

 

Being accountable for one’s actions and taking responsibility are fading qualities in our “woke” age. In the mid 1960s, on a snowy street in New Hampshire after a day’s skiing, my father, driving home, knocked a woman down, sending her to the hospital. The police told him it was not his fault. Nevertheless, he assumed responsibility, visiting her regularly until she recovered and was released. Such chivalry no longer exists. Like merit, hard work and objective truth, gallantry and graciousness are now, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in the December issue of The Spectator, “manifestations of heredity and ‘whiteness,’” – therefore to be condemned. 

 

“Victory has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan,” is an old quote used by President Kennedy. Today’s politicians no longer take blame for policies gone wrong. Instead, they follow advice Napoleon is alleged to have given: “Never retreat, never retract, never admit a mistake.” When the January 6 march on the Capitol turned disastrous, Donald Trump never admitted that his words that afternoon helped provoke it. But neither has Hillary Clinton accepted blame for the Steel dossier, which was at the heart of the $40 million (taxpayer money) discredited Mueller investigation. Governor Andrew Cuomo placed COVID-19 infected patients in nursing homes, leading to a plethora of unnecessary deaths. Has he expressed remorse or assumed responsibility? No. Has he expressed sorrow for abusing women who worked in his office? No. “Oh yes, the past can hurt,” says the shaman Rafiki in The Lion King, “but you can either run from it or learn from it.” Politicians choose to run from their past, not learn from it.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci belittles those who disagree with him by claiming an attack on him is an attack on science. Yet the science about COVID-19 has changed as more has been learned. But his arrogance forbids any display of humility, or admission of personal responsibility regarding helping to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Dr. Fauci’s denial gained two Pinocchio’s from left-leaning The Washington Post.) The recent rise in energy prices, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren, is due to oil and gas producers “putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends…ahead of Americans.” Apparently higher prices have nothing to do with restrictions on drilling and cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline extension, policies which the Massachusetts Senator supports. In a recent article in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote, regarding the disastrous flight from Afghanistan: “Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco in the past half century.”  

 

“It’s not my fault; the dog ate my homework!” has become a common response. Running away from personal responsibility has infested society. “Failure is not an option,” is a phrase one associates with NASA; but was taken literally by Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos who never apologized for misleading investors, instead placing blame on her Svengali-like partner. There have been no mea culpas from journalists following four years of filling airtime and front pages of newspapers regarding the discredited Russian collusion story? Teachers are not held responsible for the failure of their students in international testing. Global warming is the fault of selfish consumers, not the elitists who pompously pontificate when stepping off private jets. The surge in crime during the “summer of Love,” when billions in dollars in property was destroyed and twenty-five people were killed, was not the fault of the perpetrators. It was the ‘system’ and white supremacists who made them do it. The Biden Administration places blame for the increase in crime on COVID-19 – “…the virus is a root cause in a lot of communities,” is the way White House press secretary Jen Psaki put it last week. In a June 18, 2020, New York Times article, Professor Robin D. G. Kelley of UCLA, wrote: “Given that we are in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, looting should not surprise anyone...stealing commodities isn’t senseless” Really? And that makes it okay? Mightn’t the surge in crime have something to with disparaging and defunding the police? 

 

Alec Baldwin – certainly inadvertently – shot and killed cinemaphotographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust, a film of which he is one of the producers. Has he taken responsibility? No. In fact, he claims he didn’t pull the trigger. Nevertheless, Ms. Hutchins was killed by a bullet discharged from the firearm he was holding. Still, Mr. Baldwin says the killing was not his fault. Has Jussie Smollett expressed remorse for concocting a crime meant to increase his ratings? This nationwide attitude of denying personal responsibility suggests a “woke” and nihilistic culture that permeates our society and threatens our nation.

 

Mahatma Gandhi is quoted in his posthumously published The Essential Writings: “It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s acts.” The United States has survived for almost 250 years because its people are free to succeed or fail, to act in their own interest, within the law. In the same book quoted in the rubric, You Learn by Living, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” Being free means being accountable. The words, “It’s not my fault,” have become too pervasive and suggest we are moving in the wrong direction. Errors are the fault of those making them. There may be understandable excuses, but faults should be acknowledged and corrected.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome Persists"

 This is being sent this evening, as I have an early morning doctor’s appointment – a routine checkup, but I do not want to be late. 

 

The rubric in the essay below is from Joseph Epstein, one of the best essayists writing today. It was selected before the Left’s deranged brouhaha over his reference to Dr. Jill Biden. Their attitude (the Left’s) certainly does not portend a return to normalcy, if normalcy is defined as civility and reason. In fact, I would suggest their forced and supercilious reaction indicated behavior in need of therapy. Of course, they likely feel the same way about me, which is what makes democracy so interesting.  

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Trump Derangement Syndrome Persists”

December 15, 2020

 

“In stage three [of Trump Derangement Syndrome], one is ready to believe anything

– anything pernicious or salacious, that is – about Mr. Trump and to reject anything

he has done that might be good for the country, if only because of the man who did it.”

                                                                                                                                                Joseph Epstein (1937 - )

                                                                                                                                                Wall Street Journal

                                                                                                                                                July 9, 2020

 

While I have not fussed much over last month’s election results, I believe, despite the Electoral College certifying the election, that there was fraud and other shenanigans. How else to explain halted vote counting in swing states; election rules changed without authorization from state legislatures; unsigned mail-in ballots, etc. Can we really believe that a candidate who spent much of the campaign in his home received ten million more votes than did Barack Obama in 2012? Congress and state legislatures should ensure that voter laws are explicit and fair. One is left wondering, not only about voter fraud, but about the size of the turnout. Apparently 156 million people voted, or 66% of registered voters, the highest percentage since 1900 and twenty percent more people than in 2016! Now, Mr. Trump’s options are gone; nevertheless, when politics smell fishy, it is usually more than a week-old Mackerel in the trunk of a car. 

 

Last Friday’s lead editorial in our local paper, The Day, stated: “But Trump has caused profound damage, having convinced tens of millions of people who voted for him that Biden is not a legitimate president.” Whether the statemen is true or not, I do not know, but the hypocrisy of the paper’s editorial board is heavier than a London fog. They, and most of mainstream media, never condemned the “Resistance” that for four years claimed Trump was an illegitimate president. They avoided the subject of Mr. Biden’s noticeable deteriorating mental acuity and stayed away from the Hunter Biden scandal. The Day posits itself as independent. Their masthead reads: “The newspaper should be more than a business enterprise. It should also be a champion and protector of the public interest and defender of the people’s rights.” Sadly, the paper, like so many others, has become a defender of the progressive movement and a foe of the messiness that is natural to the democracy of a free and independent people. In looking for potential threats to liberty, the media has a habit of ignoring peril from the left, like the hairbrained schemes of stacking the Supreme Court and doing away with the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Wannabe tyrants do not alienate the media and reduce the power of government, as Trump has done with his sarcastic remarks to the press, and as he did in cutting regulations. Budding despots befriend the media, and they increase personal and government power through rules and regulations, like Governors Cuomo and Newsom. 

 

Trump will leave office in January, but it is unlikely the media will move on. “The spirit of Trumpism,” as Roger Kimball wrote recently, “is not vanquished.” So, Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) will remain, as it has served to bolster the bottom lines of media enterprises. Do the New York Times and the Washington Post expect to maintain their reader and viewer-ships when their big stories are about the patterns on Biden’s socks, or querying about his mending ankle? Will mainstream media do an about-face and lavish praise on Mr. Trump for reducing black unemployment to record lows, for creating Operation Warp Speed that gave us a vaccine in record time, for getting four Arab nations to recognize Israel, for confronting China on stealing technology, or for marginalizing Iran in their pursuit of nuclear weapons? It is far more likely they will continue to hound the only U.S. President whose net worth dropped by more than a billion dollars while he served the American people. To do so is good for their bottom line. Will Mr. Biden be queried about his deteriorating mental state or his son Hunter who made millions, using his Dad’s influence, from a country that is America’s largest economic and military threat. Will Hunter be treated with the same disdain as President Trump’s children? Not likely, as that would offend ‘woke’ readers.

 

Joe Biden promises a return to normal. In May 2019, while seeking the Democratic nomination, he said, “The country is sick of division. They’re sick of the fighting. They’re sick of the childish behavior.” However, which Party sought to divide people by race, gender and sexual orientation? Which Party was behind the riots that devastated cities like Portland and Seattle? Was it not childish for Democrats to boycott Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017? Mr. Biden’s words were ones with which no one can disagree, but how to achieve conciliation in a nation where, as Walter Williams once said, “liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual,” not the right to free college and healthcare? Will Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer put politics aside, link arms with Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy and sing Kumbaya? Will the concept of diversity expand to include diversity of opinion? Will the police again be allowed to confront criminals without fear of losing their jobs? Will borders be opened to anyone, so long as they register as Democrats? Will Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia be admitted as states, to assure four more Democratic U.S. Senators? Will the Supreme Court be expanded to achieve a progressive majority? Will Black Lives Matter and Antifa recede into the shadows, as their usefulness has ended with the ascendancy of Biden and Harris? Will one-Party rule be the future for this rich and diverse nation? “But let there be no change by usurpation, for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed,” wrote George Washington in his 1796 Farewell Address?   

 

And what about our schools and universities? Will teachers’ unions put students first, even if it means sending them to non-unionized charter schools? Will colleges become venues for open debate? Will university professors’ welcome conservatives who might influence the malleable minds of students, yet untutored in their progressive, Orwellian world? As long as the spirit of Trumpism exists, it is more likely that dissent will be forbidden, no matter which Republican carries the banner. One thing we know – tyrants, from the right or the left, cannot abide those who disagree. 

 

Trump Derangement Syndrome says more about those who have it than about Mr. Trump. It is a condition in which an individual’s visceral hatred for Mr. Trump causes him or her to forsake logic and reason. It is held by those who see in Mr. Trump’s character a man who fights as hard and as ruthlessly as do they. And it will be around as long as Mr. Trump and what he stands for are perceived as a threat to the ‘deep state’ and a progressive agenda. But it is not aimed solely at Mr. Trump. It is what he represents, a threat to our cultural elite and the cozy lives of Washington’s insiders. Ulysses Grant was not liked by traditional West Pointers, but he was fearless; he had common sense, an abiding faith in ultimate victory, and he did not let up. Lincoln may not have admired his whiskey habit (though he offered to send a barrel of Grant’s favorite to his other generals), but he respected and needed his fighting spirit. The United States has had the same two Parties for the past two hundred and sixty-six years. Yet one Party dominates our culture, media, universities, public-sector unions, Wall Street, global firms, tech companies, ‘green’ businesses and Washington’s bureaucracy. In Trump, the American people found an individual who fights for the average American and helps reverse the slide toward stateism. A free people cannot live in a one-Party country.

 

One consequence of what we have witnessed: January’s Senatorial runoffs loom ever more important. As Monday’s Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial stated: “There is a time to fight, and a time to concede.” Now is the time for Republicans, including Mr. Trump and his supporters, to accept Mr. Biden’s victory and to focus on Georgia.

"The Media - Abdication of Responsibility"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“The media – Abdication of Responsibility”

May 21, 2020

“Politics and the press; two cherished institutions that spoke

with tongues so forked they could double for fine dinnerware.”

                                                                                                Harlan Coben (1962-)

                                                                                                One False Move, 1998

It may be splitting hairs, but President Trump is wrong when he calls out The New York Times and Washington Post for printing “fake” news. What those papers are printing is “slanted” news, articles biased toward a leftist, political ideology. Fake news is fabricated, while slanted news is prejudiced, where a reporter selects what to emphasize, deemphasize or omit based on personal political preferences. Satire (“An obsolete kind of literary composition, in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.”[1]) is a form of fake news. However, with the exception of good satire, both fake news and biased reporting are a disservice to readers seeking truth. It is the latter that is subtler, so more difficult to discern and address. The burden for determining what is real and what is false is the consumer’s, as reporters have abandoned responsibility to readers and viewers.

Owners, publishers, editors and bloggers can spout whatever opinions they choose. This is a free country and that is their right. But when opinions filter into news stories, and news is reported as unvarnished truth, the consequence is divisiveness and a threat to freedom, which relies on a well-informed citizenry.

Professor Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington teaches a course called, “Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data.” In a phone interview with Michael Rosenwald, printed in the Columbia Journalism Review in the fall of 2017, he said “The average American spends nearly an hour a day on Facebook. Doing what? Mostly spreading bullshit.” Whether that is true or hyperbole, I do not know, but a Pew Research Center survey in 2016 essentially confirmed the trend. It found that 14% of U.S. adults shared news they knew was fake. Other surveys support the contention that people willingly pass on information they know to be fake, if it aligns with their preconceived political opinions; for example, promoting Trump derangement syndrome has become daily fodder for the leftist media.

Fake news should make us all wary. If something seems amiss, it probably is and should be double-checked. But slanted news is a beast of a different kind, especially when it appears in so-called respectable news sources. In a free country, the press has the right to print or report what they will. That principle predates our own Constitution. In Commentaries on the Laws of England, in 1770, William Blackstone (1723-1780) wrote: “The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.” Thus, while political bias in mainstream media is not “illegal,” a free but irresponsible press is subject to libel. But, more important for our purposes, an irresponsible and unaccountable press does not serve the people.

Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote to Lafayette that “the only security of all is in a free press,” anticipated the willing obeisance of a pliable media to a favored political leader. In a 1785 letter to the Dutch statesman Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, Jefferson wrote: “The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers. [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of news writers who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever may serve their ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” It was a lesson understood by Lenin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and others of similar ilk. When mainstream media and political leaders align, freedom is at risk.

One of the most egregious recent examples of biased reporting had to do with the Russian investigation that should have ended with the Mueller report. Nine reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election and its connection to the Trump campaign. In making the award, the Pulitzer Prize Board cited twenty articles between February 9, 2017 and September 8, 2017. We now know that the reporters got the story wrong. Whether they were stupid, incurious or blinded by biases is unknown. We do know that their editors failed to confirm facts. They were advocates for a political cause, not independent investigators. There has been no apology from the Pulitzer committee, nor any Mea Culpas from the reporters. In fact, it now appears that any collusion that took place in 2016 was between Democrats and the U.S. intelligence community. Where are those same investigators?

Reporting on COVID-19 has been politicized, swathed in biases, innuendos and inaccuracies. For example, why have not investigative reporters looked into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision to send post-hospital, virus-infected patients to nursing homes rather than to the U.S.N.S.  Comfort, or to the make-shift hospital at the Javits Center? The most vulnerable are the elderly with comorbidities, many of whom are in nursing homes, where about 50% of all COVID-19 deaths have occurred, a fact known since the first deaths were recorded in Washington State in February. And, what about death counts?  Are they too high or too low? Colorado’s Democrat Governor Jared Polis’ decision to call out the CDC for exaggerating death counts received limited news coverage. Early models exaggerated the virus’ virulence. Now, today’s New York Times reports a Columbia University model estimates that 83% of all deaths would have been prevented if the lockdown had occurred two weeks earlier. How can they know with such precision? If the numbers accord with the narrative, the estimate is accepted as fact. In taking hydroxychloroquine, the President was accused of ignoring science. No mention was made of Michigan Democrat, State Senator Karen Whitsett, a COIVID-19 survivor who credits the drug with her survival.

While government cannot demand a newspaper or cable news channel report honestly, people are best served when editorial comments are consigned to opinion pages and news is presented accurately and without bias. With major news sources having forgone responsibility to the public, getting correct information has become the responsibility of the people. Freedom should be foremost in our minds, and valid information is a critical part of the process. As Albert Camus said in 1957, “A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.” Biased reporting, with social media having joined the hunt, has become ubiquitous. It is when the press and politicians collude that democracy and freedom are at risk.

---

[1] Ambrose Bierce (1842-c.1914), The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906, a satirical dictionary.

"The COVID-19 Pandemic - Some Random Thoughts"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“The COVID-19 Pandemic – Random Thoughts”

March 18, 2020

“Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic;

it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation.”

                                                                                                Vannevar Bush (1890-1975)

                                                                                                Scientist, Educator, Inventor

Sensible advice has been offered by many: Scrub your hands, socially distant yourself; isolate yourself if sick. Nevertheless, manifestations of fear and panic are all around us. Restaurants, bars and casinos have closed in the part of the Country where I live. Colleges have sent students home. Schools have been closed, while grocery stores cannot keep up with demand for toilet paper, hand-wipes, latex gloves, disinfectants and many other household and food products. ‘Social distancing’ is nowhere to be seen when it comes to filling one’s larder or closet. Yet, with the exception of products directly related to coronavirus, like hand-wipes and latex gloves, final demand for items like toilet paper and frozen foods will grow in terms of population expansion, or about 0.5 percent. (In Connecticut, population growth will probably decline about 0.2 percent, as it did in 2019.) Understocked shelves will become overstocked.

“Any man’s death diminishes me,” John Donne wrote, and all deaths are, indeed, to be regretted. But perspective should be maintained. The question we all struggle with: Is the fear we exhibit rational? We don’t know, but containment and mitigation seem to be working, at least in China and South Korea. According to their numbers, since last November China has had 190,000 individuals infected with COVID-19 (out of a population of 1.39 billion). Just under 7,500 have died, implying a mortality rate of 3.9 percent. Keep in mind, numbers from China are suspect and between 30,000 and 40,000 people die every day in their Country. South Korea’s statistics are likely more accurate. Their first case was noted on January 20. As of March 16, two hundred and twenty thousand people had been tested in South Korea, out of a population of 51.4 million, 8,320 cases had been confirmed and 81 had died, or just under one percent. Health officials in Seoul claimed on March 9 that their Country had passed the peak of the contagion. They credit their “trace, test and treat” system, where an individual can drive to a testing site and have samples taken from the back of one’s throat and nose. A few hours later, the individual will get a call if the test is positive or a text if it is negative.

The world was slow to take note of the seriousness of the crisis. China, a Communist dictatorship, delayed informing the outside world for a month and a half. More than three weeks after China did, and with the contagion already having infected half a dozen countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared, on January 23, that the coronavirus did not constitute a public emergency of international concern. (It would be March 11 before they declared it a pandemic.) Early on, the President was ahead of the curve. He formed a White House task force for coronavirus on January 29, led by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alexander Azar, and he shut down flights from China on January 31. On February 27, he placed Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the Task Force. Contrary to some reports, the White House did not “gut” the National Security Council’s counter pandemic effort. But he was slow in promoting tests for the virus and urging the search for a vaccine. He was not alone. The press was more interested in impeachment than in informing their readers and viewers of the virus China had exported, which was beginning to contaminate the world.

Throughout most of February and early March, the U.S., President Trump appeared to minimize the health impact of COVID-19, while he emphasized the need for calm. It was not surprising, and he was not alone. As a businessman, he knew what fear and panic do to an economy – creating artificial shortages, while negatively impacting economic growth. Keep in mind, every day the U.S. economy generates roughly $60 billion in national income. Shutting down commerce will have serious consequences for individuals, many of whom will be laid off, even if temporarily. Government will step in to help – the House passed an $850 billion stimulus bill yesterday – but we should not forget that we are already carrying the largest amount of debt, relative to GDP, since World War II. Adding another trillion is important now, but even low-cost debt must be repaid. When (not if) interest rates move back up, the pain is going to be severe – for governments, corporations and consumers. Neither should we forget that an economic system that preserves uneconomic businesses for “humanitarian” purposes is neither compassionate nor financially viable.

The closing of restaurants, gyms, casinos, schools, colleges and churches is critical and will limit the spread of the virus. While there is much that is unknown about COVID-19, it is known to have a high R0 (R naught), a mathematical determination of its contagion properties. Questions remain: Will healthcare be rationed? Will further restrictions be imposed? However, we cannot ignore its effect on the economy, the education of our youth and the social and spiritual well-being of us all. While we cannot return to normal, we must be alert to unintended consequences.

As well, we should be wary of hyperbole, of those who see a crisis as something for personal advantage. Last Sunday, Goldman Sachs, according to Zero Hedge journalist Tyler Durden, spoke to 1500 clients and told them 50% of Americans will contract the virus and that mortality rates could reach two percent. Perhaps they will be right, but that would contrast with less than one tenth of one percent of South Koreans and Chinese who have contracted the disease. In Italy, the 30,000 cases thus far represent about 0.05% of their population. In the U.S., the disease will become more widespread before it abates, but one wonders if Goldman was pandering to hedge funds that were short the market. If they were, they had happy clients on Monday, when the market dropped thirteen percent. It is only to be expected that Democrat Presidential candidates will use the virus against Mr. Trump. (Republicans would do the same were roles reversed.) We should also note the pandemic has brought a cease-fire – probably temporary – in the partisanship that has marked our politics. Both Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York have praised the President for his response to the crisis. (A cynic might say they were looking for federal funds). However, Governor Cuomo complained on Monday that “the federal government has been behind on this crisis from day one.” Still, praise is praise.

In a recent column, Peggy Noonan wrote that telling people not to panic is bad advice. I disagree. People should be told to be wary, especially around the elderly and the vulnerable: to wash their hands regularly and vigorously, to avoid unnecessary personal contact, to sneeze or cough into a Kleenex or handkerchief, to use handwipes and surgical gloves when in stores, and to stay home, especially when a fever or cold persists. But we should not panic. “Panic,” as Stephen King once wrote, “is highly contagious, especially when nothing is known, and everything is in flux,” as it is now. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “…panic is the terror of ignorance, surrendered to the imagination.” “Fear,” as Vannevar Bush is quoted in the rubric above, “cannot be banished,” but it can be rationalized. During the depths of the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt said, in a fireside chat, when so many were fearful: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Our hospitals and healthcare are second to none. Containment and mitigation will conquer COVID-19, so long as we comply with basic rules of hygiene and common sense. We cannot and should not, let fear and panic catapult us into a recession or worse – a situation where Constitutional rights are abrogated.

"What Has Become of Us?"

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“What Has Become of Us?”

October 31, 2019

“Have we lost our minds?”

                                                                                    Andrew Cuomo (1957-)

Governor, New York

                                                                                    October 26, 2019

While Governor Cuomo’s exclamation was in response to the increasing number of assaults by the mentally deranged in New York City, it is one that has applicability across our political landscape, not just for the unhinged way Leftist politicians treat truants and criminals in our cities, but in most all ways political. Have we all gone bonkers? I wince at President Trump’s coarseness and grimace as he Tweets as fast as a Shetland Pony sheds its winter coat. Then I listen to anti-Trumpers and their lemming-like hatred that betrays an emotional response rather than a reasoned reaction. Seen as a threat to the comfortably established elite, the majority of Democrats wanted to impeach Mr. Trump on November 9, 2016. And I wonder: What ever happened to e Pluribus Unum?

Phrases and words: Identity politics; victimization; equality; wokeness. Identity politics is segregation by a different and more politically correct name. Real victims are ignored, while perpetrators are mollycoddled as deserving of special care for having been “victims” of society governed by old, white men. Equality has morphed into homogenization, deflating the individual to an inflated collective. The cream in our public schools can no longer find its way to the top. Wokeness is a Tesla-like vehicle for social justice warriors.

Politicians, abetted by a media that has foregone any semblance of investigative independence, to become a propaganda arm of the Party they prefer. They have given new meanings to those phrases and words mentioned above. The consequence has been a shock to the Judeo-Christian culture in which most of us were raised, when Albert Einstein once wrote, and we all believed, that “only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

Here we are now, three years after the fact, yet a refusal to accept the outcome of the 2016 election persists. Civil discourse is a thing of the past. We have intelligence agencies that colluded against a Presidential candidate. Public schools, especially those in inner cities who keep a watchful (and jaundiced) eye on equality, teach to the lowest common denominator, which means that those who have been identified as “gifted and talented” cannot be separated, so taught differently and thus given a chance to disengage from the claws of mediocrity that entrap them. In many of these same cities, the homeless – some mentally sick, others addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and a few simply down on their luck – ply our parks and streets. Instead of offering the dignity of a job and asking proper behavior in return for food and shelter, we provide them free needles and let them soil streets, sidewalks and parks. In our desire to explain away criminal acts and civil misbehavior as a consequence of victimization, we ignore the plight of real victims. Men and women are tried in the press, without benefit of due process. The “broken windows” policy of policing, first described in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling and based on the theory that if man lives in a neighborhood where property and people are respected crime rates will decline. It worked in New York City in the ‘90s and early 2000s but has been abandoned because of accusations that minorities were unfairly targeted. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss: “How did we get so stupid so soon?”

We have coastal mayors and governors who tell us, in dystopian language, that we are facing imminent danger from man-caused climate change; that streets will soon be under water and fires will rage, unless we address these immediate apocalyptic climate threats, which always involve more spending. As Holman Jenkins wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal regarding the California fires: “PG&E can’t keep trees off its power lines but can supply exact numbers for how many LGBTQ workers it employs.” The coming Armageddon due to climate change is a rallying cry in political campaigns and an argument used when suing oil companies in these blue, coastal cities and states, yet the bonds these same entities issue carry little or no warnings of any climate scare. Can it be that these paragons of virtue are not so direct when it comes to the interest rate costs they would have to pay if honesty prevailed? An op-ed on this subject, written by Peter Schweizer of the Government Accountability Institute, was in this past week’s Wall Street Journal.  When a psychotic individual commits mass murder, we first blame the weapon and second cite the NRA as facilitator, yet, to my knowledge, no NRA member has been accused of mass killings. Cities with some of the toughest gun laws in the country have the most gun deaths. Gun safety, taught by the NRA, is never considered an option. Mark Zuckerberg is demonized for saying that Facebook is committed to supporting free expression, while Google is lionized for walking away from a U.S. defense contract based on ideological concerns. California has allowed the non-profit NCAA to pay student athletes. But, have they considered the negative effect on college athletic programs, like skiing, swimming, hockey, rowing, squash, softball, track and field that rely for funding on profitable sports like basketball and football? Where California goes, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey will follow. “How did we get so stupid so soon?”

Politicians use their index fingers to sense the direction of the wind, then go with the flow. It matters not the long-term consequences of their decisions. It is winning they want. If Socialism is wanted, even if misunderstood by the electorate and the politician, then Socialism it shall be.  Yet, as Anthony Trollope wrote about politics and politicians more than 150 years ago in Phineas Redux: “The best carriage horses are those which can steadily hold back against the coach as it trundles down the hill.” Like the three blind mice, Paul Krugman, Frank Bruni and Nicholas Kristof (among dozens of similarly endowed columnists for the New York Times and Washington Post) chase after one another in their end-of-the-world prophecies if the Trump Presidency continues. Yet, minority employment is at record highs and overall unemployment at record lows. Even the third quarter GDP, which was expected to be slow, came in at plus 1.9 percent, better than expected, and above the average for Obama’s eight years. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) placed in charge of the impeachment inquiry (a rare event), bizarrely parodied before Congress the President’s telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – the phone call that was the basis for the impeachment inquiry in the first place.  “How did we get so stupid so soon?”

As Americans, we are fortunate to live in this extraordinary country, with its democratic government, free-market capitalist system, its people and natural resources. Yet, do we appreciate what we have? Michael Walzer, a professor emeritus at Princeton, writing in the Spring 2002 edition of ProQuest, said that maybe “…the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent (intelligent, responsible, morally nuanced) politics.” Even the poorest among us live lives of luxury (central heat, flush toilets, prepared foods and cell phones) unimaginable by our forefathers. And now, progressives put all that at risk. California is the epicenter of progressive thinking. If it were to stand alone, the State would be the world’s fifth largest economy, producing 3.5% of the world’s GDP. Its people have had a living standard as high as any in the world and it produces just one percent of global emissions. But that lifestyle is at risk, as the State insists on policies harmful to the economy, yet helpful to the wealthy – rebates for electric vehicles – while detrimental to the poor and middle classes – gas and energy prices that are the highest in the United States, zoning that forces low and middle income people into long commutes and urban public schools that pay attention to union demands rather than the needs of students of poor and middle class families. In a First World State, they today have a Third World electrical system. The Left insists that progressive states like California, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Jersey are the future. “How did we get so stupid so soon?”

In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce described a politician as “an eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared,” a description which is indisputable. I look upon what we have wrought and recognize that the Founding Fathers would be aghast. I answer Governor Cuomo’s exclamative question, “Have we lost our minds?” with a resounding Yes!