They Came For Kermit, But I Was Not A Muppet

 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/public-confessions

As I read the linked, the Marxist / Progressive / Whiggish idea of "the right side of history" kept flitting through my brain.

This article does a reasonable job of debunking the idea of history having "sides". 

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it imputes an agency to history that doesn’t exist. Worse, it assumes that progress is unidirectional. But history is not a moral force in and of itself, and it has no set course. Presuming otherwise embraces the dangerous tendency that the great English historian Herbert Butterfield dissected in his 1931 essay, The Whig Interpretation of History. Butterfield was writing about the inclination among certain historians to see the Reformation as a unalloyedly positive force—a secularizing, liberalizing movement that led inexorably to liberal democracy in the 20th century. Butterfield objected that this wasn’t at all how things worked. It was just a retrospective reading.

The philosophical term for  this thought is eschatology, thus giving rise to a somewhat common intellectual conservative criticism of liberalism/progressivism as "immanentizing the eschaton". Marxism, Christianity and Progressivism often assume an inevitable "arc of history" to a wonderful final end. With Marxism and Progressivism, "the end/goal" is some sort of hazy  "utopia", with Christianity it is the return of Christ.

Wokeism and Cancel Culture believe that they are part of this inevitable march. 

Last Friday, [February 5, 2021] Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science reporter for The New York Times since 1976, and one of the mainstays of the paper’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic—a matter of life and death for millions of people around the planet—was forced to leave the paper. “Dean and Joe” (Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor, and Joe Kahn, managing editor) announced to Times staffers that McNeil had cited a racial slur in a conversation with two high school students, and therefore had to go, since “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent” (italics mine; I will come back to those words later).

McNiel ran afoul of the "Woke/Cancel" culture, because he had used "the N-word" in reference to someone else being suspended for using "the N-word". It offended people, so he had to go -- offence is in the mind of the offended, that is the only "standard" in exactly the same way as "sexual harassment" is proven if the "victim" feels "harassed/offended", the "perpetrator" has to go. 

The top link goes into more specific depth of the parallels of "Wokeism" to Stalinism. 

This all seems so bizarre that it is hard to take is seriously, but they came for Kermit! If you are not a Muppet, you may feel secure, but if they can get Kermit, is anyone really safe? 

The Whiteness Whale

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being/

We hear a lot about the evils of "whiteness" in these days of "wokeness". It is human nature to prefer "like" -- we are social beings with our natural urge being to prefer those most like us (our family), our community (the country mouse and the city mouse), our profession, and on and on. We by nature prefer our "group/identity". Historically, "Americans", or "Christians" were large groupings that superseded most other "identities". In the Civil War, "Northerner" and "Southerner" became identities that superseded being "American", with the results being less than optimal. 

 Identity politics seeks to divide on many factors -- race, sex, wealth, etc. The "old ideas" of things like Western civilization, the Constitution, the two parent family, Christianity are "white, racist, sexist, etc" ... BAD! The goal of identity politics is to divide and conquer. 

In the view of the left, this human "preference for same" is a beautiful thing when it used by people "people of color" or other approved "identities" ( women, gays, trans, etc ). Increasingly since the late 1980's, the concept of "whiteness" is a new branding of old terms like "conservative, Christian, or Republican". (for the left, all synonyms for "bad") 

Here is a discussion from the linked. 

The notion of whiteness emerged from debates among academic leftists near the end of the Reagan/Bush era. They were wrestling with the old American political anomaly: why working-class whites supposedly voted against their own interests by failing to embrace socialism. The recent appearance of Reagan Democrats and growing working-class support for the Republican Party had been a particularly galling development. Alexander Saxton’s The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (1990), followed closely by David R. Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991), attempted to tackle this “problem” with a new perspective. “Whiteness,” each book claimed in its own way, explained all.

I like the idea of "Whiteness" as a "white whale" (and I hope it is as unsuccessful as Ahab) . I see Whiteness as an obsessive desire to destroy the foundations of Western civilization. 

Whiteness, according to this pervasive left-wing narrative, inspires and shapes all problems in the United States, which therefore must be relentlessly racialized in order to root whiteness out. As one critic who accuses Greek and Roman classical texts of undergirding a Western civilization of racial repression recently put it, “Classics and whiteness are the bone and sinew of the same body; they grew strong together and they may have to die together.” To such ends a flotilla of progressive Ahabs grimly pursues the whale of whiteness into every inlet and channel of American life with political harpoons poised and ready to strike.

"Whiteness" is more or less a new version of the old cry of "racism" -- it is another all purpose smear that can be thrown at anyone at any time, and if they complain it is not a valid charge, that is tacit admission that the charge is valid!  

"Dog Whistle Politics" gives a good description of the "White privilege / racist" attack. Whiteness is just newer and more generic. 

No Vaccine When Biden Took Office

There was no vaccine when Biden took office (January 20, 2021). This MUST be true, because the MSM assures us that Joe is a capable and honest man! This is the time for us to trust the president, the media, and all government institutions! It is a time for unity! 

Here we have a video from December 21, 2020 that purports to be Biden getting vaccinated. Fake news? It seems impossible that a competent person would forget having been vaccinated when we are assured that it is an IMPORTANT matter. So we are left to choose from the following: 

• Biden is correct, he is competent, truthful, and there was no vaccine when he took office. 
• The MSM and much of the US health system is lying to us, and has been  about the status of the vaccine since mid December (the alleged video was faked)
• Biden is not competent, truthful, or both. 

Which one seems most likely? 

I'm personally going with trusting our highly capable and truthful president! 

When he recommends the Nth dose, I'm going to rush on down! 

Goldilocks has always given me confidence. So how many tests do we need before we run for the woods? 

"You need to cast a wide net to find Goldilocks," said John Grabenstein, a former executive director of medical affairs for vaccines at Merck and a former Defense Department immunologist. "You want to look at shorter intervals, you want to look at longer intervals, to determine when is the best time, if needed, to re-vaccinate."

 

Remembering Rush

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/02/a-word-from-rush.php

The linked PL post brought me back to this post from 2018 celebrating 30 years of Rush. https://privatemoose.blogspot.com/2018/10/thirty-years-of-rush.html

I didn't listen to Rush very much ... too much entertainment vs information for my taste, but I did appreciate that for a whole lot of "salt of the earth" Americans, he validated what they knew in their hearts and the MSM disparaged. 

Reagan got rid of the "fairness doctrine" which was really the doctrine that made American media the equivalent of "Pravda". If you put on a show that presented a view different from the media deep state complex, it required you to provide "equal time" to the opposing view -- which nobody would listen to, since they already had CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, etc. Cancelling the "fairness" doctrine made Rush possible. 

It will be a pleasant surprise if the left doesn't bring back that doctrine -- it is essentially what we see on the internet now with "de-platforming" and "canceling". 

I'd put Reagan and William F Buckley in the same class as the excellent Boswell quote from the PL link. 

“He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best. There is nobody. No man can be said to put you in the mind of Johnson.”

Cuomo, Covid, One Party Rule

Article

Why can't you trust Covid "death tolls"? A quote from the linked: 

"DeRosa admitted that ‘basically, we froze’ out of fear of a US Justice Department investigation into how thousands of nursing home patients had died. A ProPublica investigation had found that Cuomo’s March 25 mandate that state nursing homes admit coronavirus patients was akin to ‘introducing fire to dry grass’. An investigation by the state’s Democratic attorney general found that the real numbers boosted the official nursing-home death toll by more than 50 percent, to what is now a total of 13,432. New York State only has some 100,000 patients in nursing homes."

There is no "trust in government" for sane people, especially when there is one party rule as there is in New York. Sadly, as we saw clearly under Trump, the vast federal and state bureaucracies are where the real power is. Thankfully there are still a few who will stand up as this courageous attorney general did, but it is now quite late, and we will likely never know at what cost. The Cuomo family is powerful -- our nation is massively corrupt at all levels, the New York AG had best be very cautious. 

If a state is significantly in Democrat control, you can't put much stock in any number coming out of it -- more government power is the only goal of the Democrat party, and since they support the killing of babies, we know they have no limit to what they will do to maintain and increase that power. Manipulating any sort of number -- especially vote counts, is standard operating procedure. 

Are Republicans not the same? Certainly there are some that are the same, however the overall goal of the Republican party is LESS government, not more. In general, Republicans at least claim to care for the unborn and recently born. Naturally, as humans, they are FAR from "perfect", however there is a reason that over 90% of media, academia,  legal, and government employees vote Democrat. 

POWER! 

You can trust government to nearly always do whatever it takes to expand their power. As in the case of this brave AG, it is the rare exception that really proves the rule! 

How many people died OF Covid vs WITH Covid? We have no idea -- nor do we have any idea about any government number reported, except they are all (including vote counts) reported with a heavy pro government bias! 

Cold Californiacation Of Texas

 https://www.americanexperiment.org/2021/02/texas-winter-weather-iced-wind-turbines-and-rolling-blackouts/

The problem with California crazy is that it spreads. 

As usual, the Bee has the jist of it ..."People who moved to Texas from California are finally feeling at home now".

When the government gets in your market, bad things happen -- like you start to rely too much on less reliable energy sources like natural gas, wind, and solar vs coal and nuclear, and then when it gets really cold and calm with your solar panels covered with ice, well then the lights go out! 

How could this possibly be? We were once assured that WARMING was "settled science". Now we are assured of "Climate Change", which is indeed a very certain prediction like "markets will fluctuate", and "people will be taxed during their lives, and even after death" (estate taxes). 

Bill Gates is still certain that warming is the change that is happening and it is critical -- he wants to cover the sun! If we do that, at least little things like the lights and heat going out will seem minor in comparison. It will be REALLY "cool"!

The linked is worth the read, but the crux is: 

Federal subsidies for wind pay wind-turbine owners $24 per megawatt-hour for electricity regardless of whether the electricity is needed or not. These subsidies allow wind operators to make money even if electricity prices turn negative. This means some power plant operators need to pay customers money if they continue to supply electricity to the grid when the prices are negative, while wind generators will make money courtesy of our tax dollars.

We have a thousand gallon propane tank that we refill if it goes below half, and a gasoline powered generator that will run the place in total comfort (no AC) for a couple hours. We generally keep about 12 gallons of gas on hand which we rotate to keep fresh. 

Is this "perfect"? Certainly not ... it is a "hedge" that lets us have  enough reserve to "tough it out" in cold temps without power for "24 hours" keeping the place from freezing, and us somewhat "comfortable". Then we start draining the pipes and looking for "other means" . 

Events like current Texas lead me to think that being able to operate our generator on propane may be really nice! 

You can be smarter than a nation that allows elections to be stolen so they get a guy like Biden who is certain to work hard to move the nation to 100% unreliable (but environmentally sound!) energy sources! 

Hey, frozen masked people will be HAPPY to get on heated boxcars!  Who says that Biden doesn't have a plan! -- and it isn't a "conspiracy", because we are watching it happen in front of our lying eyes.

Moral Believing Animals, Pass 2

This is my 2nd pass through this important work. I now have the hardcover to lend out to "locals". 

I'd make the title "Moral, Believing Beings", but I'm not the author ... 

My blog on the first pass is here.

A link to a more detailed review here. 

The SHORT summary:

1. The book makes an excellent case that we ALL live by faith in mental models/narratives -- we have no choice as "moral, believing, animals" since those models are as necessary as "air" for us.  Wittgenstein seems to agree.
2. Given that, our situation requires we "choose" the model/narrative that seems best to apply to our shared condition, and/or is more effective for a meaningful life, and potentially eternal life. 
3. If we can come to terms with these assertions (hard task, given our propensity to believe that our current model is THE TRUTH), we might all be able to understand that all our models are really floating in the same boat of unprovable faith! Perhaps, even if we are not able to make that leap, we can at least have less malice toward our fellow believers

Like all believers (which this book strongly asserts we all are), I would love to "convince" you that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life. I understand that is not very likely, though I believe that with the power of the Holy Spirit, ALL things are possible! 

In any case, perhaps we can understand why we have our differences. 

Wittgenstein

 https://newcriterion.com/issues/1988/12/the-philosophical-porcupine

A name I have trouble remembering the proper pronunciation of  though it is really easy if one remembers that "witt" is VIT!

The linked is probably all one really needs to know about Wittgenstein ... as the linked says: 

In other words, in Wittgenstein’s view, philosophy—and by extension rational discourse generally—is helpless when confronted with anything that really matters.

So Wittgenstein claims to have shown definitely that philosophy is only really useful for showing what can NOT be shown by philosophy! 

far from being a positivist, . . . Wittgenstein had meant the Tractatus to be interpreted in exactly the opposite sense. Where the Vienna positivists had equated the “important” with the “Verifiable” and dismissed all unverifiable propositions as “unimportant because unsayable,” the concluding section of the Tractatus had insisted—though to deaf ears—that the unpayable alone has genuine value. . . . Wittgenstein’s silence in the face of the ‘unutterable’ was not a mocking silence like that of the positivists, but rather a respectful one. Having decided that “Value-neutral” facts alone can be expressed in regular proposition form, he exhorted his readers to turn their eyes away from factual propositions to the things of true value—which cannot be gesagt [stated] but only gezeigt [shown].

The positivists/materialists believe that all that matters is "particles and progress", Wittgenstein believes that it is the inverse -- it is what you CAN'T say that really ultimately matters!

Therefore in this crazy thought world, demanding vorcifiserly that there is no God, one of their main philosophers says that you can't know anything about that philosophically. 

My inclination though is not really "practical" ... that is what I tried to focus on (sometimes successfully) at IBM for 34 years ... so I may well try to understand Wittgenstein in more detail at some point. 

Sacrificing Children

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/02/what-we-are-doing-to-our-young-people-is-a-crime.php 

In the old testament, when the people turn from God to Baal, the sacrifice of children is a common result. In the US, this became official policy with Roe ... children, like souls, can be "inconvenient". They are a burden rather than a gift to be cherished -- why would you do much "for the kids" when you see another option that you see as making you "happier"? 

If the children have to be sacrificed at the altar of increased government control (a basic "good" in the increasingly fascist nation), why not? If they go to school, possibly bringing home Corona, it may even endanger YOUR life (or so we are told) -- and when this world and you being "happy", entertained, anesthetized, comfortable,etc, maximizing your time in this vale of tears is the prime objective, 

Reality seems to be sinking in for some:

I believed them. They were measuring their situation against people with less. With nothing.
Still. What surprised me is how money didn’t make this OK. These parents looked terrified. Two of the fathers cried; one turned off his video because he could not keep it together. Two of the mom had outbursts, and I couldn’t blame them. Everything they said was true.

Even relatively conservative people like Hinderaker are losing the fact that money doesn't make much at all "ok". The link is worth a sad read. 

So what is a Minnesotan to do? LEAVE!

Do Lockdowns Encourage Greater Virus Lethality?

Interesting article about a possibility why Covid evolved may be more lethal. 

The 1918 lethal flu started out mild like typical flu. The common flu (and colds) spread easily and don't kill their hosts ... or often don't even make them ill enough to stay home. All the better to let their hosts get out and spread better. The strains that are LESS lethal are naturally selected. 

In 1918 europe however, the sick soldier was often sicker (cold, nasty trenches, etc) and was therefore transported to hospitals by healthcare workers. The sicker you were, the more likely you were to get transported and spread the flu. The MORE severe (and thus more likely to be lethal) strains were naturally selected. 

Ridley (the author of the column) is smart and quite humble (I've read books and other articles by him) -- he admits to making mistakes, unlike our "experts" and mass media. 

There is some evidence that the response to Covid may be causing selection of more severe (and thus more likely to be lethal) strains with the health system as a vector. 

**IF** this is a factor, encouraging people to go and get tested (not a problem if you believe masks are very effective), and making them afraid enough that they are driven to seek hospitals for treatment. 

If we allowed the general population to get out, the less severe strains would win the selection race. 

As Ridley points out, we don't KNOW that ... it is a possibility. 

If we were a free society with lots people thinking and discussing their thoughts,  very little censorship (either overt or through shaming) of possibly "crazy" ideas, past experience would suggest that better ideas being "naturally selected" would win out. 

In our current culture, the expression of thoughts like this article is likely to get you labeled as a "dangerous crank" and possibly "cancelled", or at least shamed. 

Respect for actual free speech and diviersity of thought/discussion as a prime cultural value once "naturally selected" the old territory between Mexico and Canada as "exceptional". 

What is cancel culture and shaming selecting?