The Real Cost

While coordinating its messaging about "mostly peaceful protests" in the wake of George Floyd's death, the media has deliberately ignored the massive destruction of livelihoods and the continuing violence (including large increases in shootings) ignited in its aftermath.  It has "privileged" the narrative of white and black radicals over that of the suffering of so many of our fellow Americans in those communities most impacted by the protests.

Progressive writer Michael Tracey has been traveling the country, documenting the impact of the "peaceful protests" in cities and towns nationwide with articles, interviews and photos on his twitter feed and in this article from Medium.  He finds the scale of destruction and the impact on lives to be truly terrible and only being covered in some local outlets while being suppressed by the national media. For his efforts he is being denounced by other progressives.  From Medium:

We are now approaching the two-month mark since the riots that erupted across the United States in late May and early June. There is a reasonable argument to be made that these riots were unprecedented in U.S. history — or at the very least, since the 1960s. Yet if one surveyed the national media today, you’d barely even know anything happened. Nor would you likely be aware that those who bore the brunt of the destruction — largely minorities whose sensibilities don’t fit into any neatly-delineated ideological category — are still acutely suffering from the fallout.

So many of the people I’ve encountered across the country were perfectly happy to talk about their experiences in the last two months, although many did not want to go on-record for understandable reasons. Still, there would be plenty of fodder here for heart-felt retrospective specials on CNN or in the New York Times magazine about the impact of these historic riots — and yet no such coverage has been forthcoming. It’s quite a puzzle.

Of the dozens and dozens of randomly-selected black Americans that I have so far spoken to across the United States, only two expressed what one might call a “positive” view of the riots, and they were both young men. Everyone else I have encountered is unabashedly scornful of rioting, and many even express apprehensions about the basic logic of a movement referred to as “Black Lives Matter,” which incongruously appears to them to have caused increased suffering in their predominantly black neighborhoods.

Once again the most vulnerable in our society are paying the price but apparently one acceptable to white and black radicals.   The media, academics, NGOs and their wealthy funders don't care either.  As Kevin Williamson noted in a June 17 column, The Revolution Comforts The Comfortable:

There is no revolution in these United States by the poor and the excluded against the rich and the powerful. Instead, there is a civil war among certain members of the broad affluent class against the adjacent affluent cohorts. There is no hatred in this world quite like the hatred of a $100,000-a-year man for a $200,000-a-year man, except maybe the hatred of a $200,000-a-year man for a $200,002-a-year man.

It’s always the same thing: Our newspapers are full of intense interest in Harvard’s admissions standards but have very little to say about New York City’s dropout rate. 

George Floyd is still dead. Jacob Frey is still mayor of Minneapolis. Medaria Arradondo is still the chief of police. More than a third of black students will drop out of high school in Milwaukee. But Forbes has announced a change in its in-house stylebook and will henceforth honor the woke convention of uppercase Black vs. lowercase white.

Bennet was pushed out on behalf of marginalized black Americans, which necessitated that Bennet immediately be replaced by . . . a well-off white woman who went to Georgetown and Columbia and won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about that great loathsome theater of American middle-class anxiety: restaurants. (“The real price of inexpensive menu items,” the Pulitzer people summarized.) Well-off white women from elite colleges run the diversity-and-sensitivity racket like the 17th-century Dutch ran the tulip racket, like the De Beers cartel used to run diamonds.  

And meanwhile the lives documented by Tracey have been altered, in some cases irrevocably and none of the insane ravings of the Woke will change that. 

The Woke Temple

I've been recommending James Lindsay's New Discourses for those interested in gaining a deeper knowledge of the perverse world of academic Critical Race Theory and Social Justice, but realize his work and that of his collaborators can be quite dense at times, simply because the theories they are trying to explain are so bizarre and illogical sounding to sane people.

For a shorter course I suggest the twitter account of The Woke Temple, which conveys an accurate sense of the distorted thinking these damaged people are using to inflict on our society.  Woke Temple uses a lot of graphics and you may be tempted to think they are parodies of Wokeness but they are all sourced to the actual literature.

Here's your mini-course:


<

White Fragility says:

Racism is occurring in this interaction. [p80]

The doctor has a “deeply internalized sense of superiority to Blacks that he is unaware of or can’t admit”. [p1]

“Anti-Blackness is the foundation of his identity as a white person”. [p90]

🤔🤨😩😠😡🤢🤮🤮🤮 https://t.co/FCEKEmBjuF

— The Woke Temple (@WokeTemple) July 27, 2020

Worst of all, they don't know the history of baseball!


uh-oh!


An argumentative technique used over and over again by the Woke:

Starting With A Bang

I remember this event from 61 years ago on this date.  Being a San Francisco Giants and Willie Mays fan I followed the team closely and I learned about it the next day when the New York papers reported on the explosive debut of rookie Willie McCovey.  It was the combination of going 4-4 with two triples that emblazoned in my memory.  And I've never forgot the opposing starting pitcher was Hall of Famer Robin Roberts.

Today In 1959: San Francisco Giants rookie Willie McCovey makes a sensational major league debut, going 4-for-4 with 2 triples vs. Philadelphia #Phillies pitcher Robin Roberts! #MLB #Baseball #History #SFGiants pic.twitter.com/BXyCQVkBVP

— Baseball by BSmile (@BSmile) July 30, 2020

Willie only played 52 games in 1959 but hitting .354 with power was enough for him to win Rookie of the Year honors.

McCovey ended up in Cooperstown but the start of his career began oddly for an eventual Hall of Famer.  The Giants already had Orlando Cepeda who could play first base.  They could play Cepeda or McCovey in the outfield but neither was particularly good.  In addition, the rap on McCovey, a left handed batter, was he couldn't hit left handed pitching.  The result is Willie was platooned during the 1960-62 and 1964 seasons, rarely facing left handers.  In 1965 the Giants came to their senses, playing him everday, and for the next six seasons he was one of the top sluggers in the National League.

The New Leninists

Woke progressive thought, Social Justice, and Critical Race Theory are related to traditional Marxism and communism but they are not quite the same thing.  Marxism is purely materialistic and while elements of the current movement are also, the Woke are primarily focused on achieving the cultural hegemony first championed by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who originated the concept of "the march through the institutions".   Unlike Marxism, with its class focus, the current movement uses race (with other strains emphasizing gender) for its societal analytical purposes.  In that regard the current moment in America is as if the Weather Underground terrorists of the 1970s, who advocated violent revolution, justified the murder of Robert Kennedy because he voted to sell military jets to the Jews in Israel, and celebrated the Manson murders, were now running the New York Times and the Democratic Party.  The Weathermen split from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) because they rejected the traditional Marxist class analysis, instead placing their hopes on an alliance with revolutionary black groups (for more on the Weathermen read The Company You Keep).

However, both movements share a disdain for democratic institutions that allow for a variety of viewpoints and permit the possibility of the dominant viewpoint being changed by the electoral process.

I was struck by this common viewpoint when recently reading the testimony of Daniel Tobin, Faculty Member, China Studies, National Intelligence University (NIU) to U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on March 13, 2020.  The NIU was formerly known as the National Defense Intelligence College and the Joint Military Intelligence College, and is a federally chartered research university in Bethesda, Maryland.  The Commission was created by Congress and its members are appointed by the Senate and House of Representatives majority and minority members.

Tobin's testimony is valuable and insightful regarding the long-term aims of the current regime in Beijing and it has certainly influenced my thinking.  His analysis is quite different from what is normally seen and demonstrates an unusual and in-depth acquaintance with party documents often not examined by Westerners.

In the context of our current American crisis, it was this passage that demonstrated common themes in the views of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Woke Progressives.  Just substitute the references to "class" with those of "race", if you are Woke make inoperative the references to "scientific" since that is a concept linked to White Supremacy, and share the horror both movements share regarding any dissent.

To begin, the Party's values, rooted in Marxism-Leninism, offer a view of politics incompatible with values of the United States and its allies.  In the Free World today, we see individual people as ends and believe liberty is worth prioritizing, even if it makes political decisions more difficult and costly and even if at times works against our collective security.

Leninism, by contrast, makes individuals into means toward the achievement of collective ends.  For Beijing, as for Lenin, collective material welfare ("common prosperity" in the Party's contemporary official lexicon) rather than political freedom is the criteria by which it judges success.

Lenin saw democratic institutions as mere tools of oppressive class interests and the democratic process as a mask for the class interests of the group in power.  He advocated instead rule by a single Party governing on the basis of its scientific deduction of the laws of history.

Beijing today continues to argue that the Party, representing the Chinese people's interests as a whole, is a bulwark against the particular interests that capture the political process in liberal democracies.  For the Party's leaders, the dictatorship remains justified by the need to repress the enemies of the Chinese people's collective interests.  Worse, since Leninism defines the Party's ideas and decisions as "scientific" and "correct", for Beijing dissent is not the legitimate expression of individual interests or those of a specific sub-group but rather sabotage of the Party's collective, nation-building effort.  It is not political participation but state subversion.

The difference between the CCP and the Woke is that the CCP uses a very structured planning process that gets into the details of implementation and execution of policy.  It is extremely disciplined.  Woke on the other hand, is very good, because of its origins, in deconstructing reason and institutions, but is incoherent as a consistent ideological path to the future, and resists detailed planning, relying instead on sloganeering as its end point.

Should the CCP and Woke ever come into conflict, the former, with its discipline, planning, and ruthlessness, will prevail.

In The Air Tonight

I went down the YouTube hole last night after following the recommendations in the sidebar.

First up was Phil Collins performing In The Air Tonight at Montreux in 2004.  Terrific performance though I was wondering till the last second whether he'd make it to the drum kit on time.

Released in 1981, with its video a staple on the early MTV, In The Air Tonight remains a standard with its mysterious image-laden lyrics and, of course, the dramatic entrance of the drums in the third verse (and inspiration for generations of air drummers!).  It's also a reminder of how good a drummer Collins is.  To really appreciate his drumming listen to Genesis before Peter Gabriel left.

That prompted me to remember another version of the song by Phil.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Amnesty International ran two fundraising concerts in London called The Secret Policeman's Ball and The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, which became two albums and a movie.  This was back when AI was a genuine human rights organization supporting those persecuted across the political spectrum and before it was taken over by the Leftists who now wear its skin as a suit and demand the same respect once accorded that organization.

In the 1981 concert, Phil does a solo version which is quite different but quite good.  His voice was much more supple twenty years earlier.

Which then reminded me of Sting's performance at the same concert of Message In A Bottle.  What a voice!

And finally, I recalled Pete Townshend's performance at the 1979 event.  He does Pinball Wizard from Tommy, a lovely and sensitive version of Drowned from Quadrophenia, and Won't Get Fooled Again from Who's Next in a way you've never heard before.

Rhetorical Tricks: It's Always About America

Recent events have prompted me to go back and republish some pieces I wrote several years ago that relate to our current crisis.  This is from five years ago when I noticed President Obama using a rhetorical trick that, until then, I'd only seen employed in the academic world and which turns out to be a precursor to today's Woke speech.  It's no accident - at Harvard Law School Obama was friends with Professor Derrick Bell, one of the founders of Critical Race Theory, the plague now spreading hate and divisiveness in today's America.

The trick is designed to disable the reasoning ability of those not familiar with history or the world outside of the United States.  It is designed to make the listener dumber.  It's simple really - when speaking of America’s ills, ignore the broader global context, so the audience remains focused on America’s sins. but when confronted with the ills of another country, always be sure to refer to what you characterize as similar ills in America. That way, no matter what, the focus remains America’s ills.

Here are the two examples that caught my eye back in 2015 (with some slight edits).

Earlier this week the New York Times reported that President Obama made the following remarks during what it refers to as comedian Mark Maron’s “WTF” podcast:

The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.

Reading the remainder of the Times article reveals no reference by the President to the rest of the world. Since my purpose is not to debate the accuracy of the President’s assertion (I agree the U.S. has a continuing legacy from slavery, but disagree with much of his analysis) but to discuss context, it would seem that in fairness, as well as enhancing our understanding, he should be mentioning the legacy of slavery that all of us carry around the world - it is distinctly not unique to America.

President Obama's purposeful distortion is just another form of American Exceptionalism - America as uniquely evil.

What is unique to American and England was that the impetus for ending racial slavery came from Anglo-Saxon Christians beginning in the late 18th century, not from anywhere else in the world.

Every country in the Western Hemisphere imported African slaves (imports into the colonies that became the U.S. and into the U.S. until Congress banned the import of slaves in 1808 are less than 4% of the total), Spain, Portugal, France and Britain prospered from the slave trade, the Arab world imported millions of African slaves, African rulers sold fellow Africans for that purpose, and slavery outside of the African context existed in most societies for thousands of years.  For a more nuanced and sophisticated view we recommend reading The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law In The American Hemisphere by Robert J Cottrol (2013), a fascinating comparative study and here's a recent speech by someone else who's spoken more thoughtfully about the subject.  In other words, America does have problems in this area, but they are problems we share with much of the global community.  As Cottrol points out, in some instances we've dealt with them more successfully than others, in some respects not, but it would seem that, in the President's phrase it's "still part of" much of the world's DNA.

Moreover the reference to DNA constitutes a modern day version of a blood libel by the President (no surprise, since Critical Race Theory is based on a blood libel), marking those who have played no role in slavery or its legacy but remain tainted because of their birth.

Now, let’s look at the flip side; the interview the President gave last month to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic on the nuclear deal with Iran. Goldberg, who is very sympathetic to the President, presses him on the Iranian regime’s anti-semitism because to Goldberg it indicates they are irrational in their decision making. To expand on Goldberg's point - he is saying that when a regime's leaders are fixated not just on the destruction of the State of Israel, but go around leading chants of "Death to the Jews!"; alternatively deny the Holocaust, then turn around and say Hitler gave the Jews what they deserved; and seriously believe in a global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, they tend not to confine their irrational thought processes to that one issue; more importantly it may mean they just don't think using the same calculus about risk that we do.

The President airily rejects this, saying “Well the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival” and then goes on to point out that, after all:

"there were deep strains of anti-Semitism in this country"

In that remark the President equates the Iranian regime, with its bizarre core beliefs about Jews, with his own country which provided a refuge for more than 2 million Russian Jews fleeing Czarist oppression, including  my paternal grandparents and maternal great-grandparents (my grandfather immediately after arriving enlisting in the U.S. Army and serving in the Philippines), and whose first President wrote the magnificent letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. 
A moment's thought reveals the inane nature of the President's remark.

It is very cleverly done. As with all these types of statements there is an element of truth. There was, and still is, some anti-semitism in America but to equate it with Iran you have to be incapable of making the type of distinctions that thoughtful individuals who know history and are capable of self-reflection do all the time, or at least used to be able to make.  It appears that the purpose of the 21st century educational system is to leave students incapable of making the distinctions that were once the mark of an educated person.  Unfortunately, it seems to be a successful strategy.

What the technique does is turn the argument inward, always forcing examination of America and, for those who object, bogging them down in time-consuming arguments about why those employing the trick are wrong and diverting them from discussing the core proposition.

When you see this rhetorical trick deployed by the Woke, don't fall for it.

Soul Sacrifice

Santana. August 1969. Woodstock.  I'd never heard Santana before that afternoon.  By the end of the set, which ended with this song, I was a fan.  It was electrifying.  Looking out from the stage we were way back on the hill to the left.  Couldn't see much from that far away but the sound was clear and loud.  And Soul Sacrifice is what I still remember best from the set. Carlos Santana guitar, Greg Rolie organ, and talented drummer Michael Shrieve, who'd just turned 20 in July.

Read It And Weep And Then Fight Back

"[Critical Race Theory] is evil.  It plays on people’s best nature; it takes good people and twists them to its purpose." 

 - James Lindsay, Progressive, operator of New Discourses, author, with Helen Pluckrose, of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody (to be published next month), and crusader against Critical Race Theory, which if unchecked, will destroy liberal democracy because of its authoritarian nature.

I am writing so much on this topic because the Woke have created the greatest threat to the United States since the Civil War.  They either control or have intimidated many of our nation's leading institutions and have the functional support of one of our major political parties as they ramage through the streets of American cities and drive anyone who opposes them from the media, educational institutions and jobs.

This is not about police brutality and dealing with the vestiges of racism.  That's a useful discussion.

Instead we are under assault by race hustlers, grifters, haters, those bent on revenge, academic theorists of the left, and nihilists, all of whom hate America and everything it has ever stood for and manipulating the feelings of good people who do not understand the goal is revolution, not reform.

Here's a taste of what is going on:

As I've been saying a while it is difficult to tell the difference between white nationalist and Woke progressives.

Memes. Seattle white supremacists. pic.twitter.com/0rZqY9QG1I

— James Lindsay, recolonizing the West (@ConceptualJames) July 25, 2020

Cecilia Loving, chief diversity and inclusion officer of the New York City Fire Department defends a decision to kick Lt. Daniel McWilliams — one of three firefighters in the iconic 9/11 Ground Zero flag-raising photo — off a color-guard procession so it would be all-black.

Loving said it’s okay to replace a white member with an African-American to “uplift our identities and our separate ethnicities in order to instill a sense of pride and community and support for one another.”

The New York Times and its readers have been delusional for four years in calling Donald Trump a fascist and projecting all of their authoritarian visions onto a fictional version of the Trump administration.  There are many repellent things about Trump but he is not a fascist and many of his worst remarks make him sound like a Woke progressive (see What Would Otter Do?)

The @nytimes editor's note on my op-ed: we won't publish "needlessly harsh" or "incendiary" pieces.

The @nytimes today: POTUS using federal law enforcement to protect federal property is just like Hitler. pic.twitter.com/DXgfXDwQzX

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) July 25, 2020

For years I underestimated the impact of what I saw as silly theories being taught to college students.  I was wrong.  And now I find out that over the past decade these same hateful and divisive theories have infiltrated K-12 education.

I was sent this letter from Chinese immigrant parents, written to the ungrateful Chinese-American students at Yale calling their parents and the broader Chinese-American people "anti-Black racists." They stand with the American people, not the ungrateful revolutionaries. pic.twitter.com/YfKi6AcMPr

— James Lindsay, recolonizing the West (@ConceptualJames) July 25, 2020

Letter from Seattle Chief of Police informing residents that due to the actions of the City Council the police can no longer protect their property from the rioters who have been supported by that same City Council.  In Woke America, you are on your own.

I am a mom, a public defender, an elected public-school council member and a City Council candidate. But at a city Department of Education anti-bias training, I was instructed to refer to myself as a “white woman” — as if my whole life reduces to my race.

Those who oppose this ideology are shunned and humiliated, even as it does nothing to actually improve our broken schools.

Though facing severe budget cuts, the DOE has spent more than $6 million for the training, which defines qualities such as “worship of the written word,” “individualism” and “objectivity” as “white-supremacy culture.”

Read on. 

7/
Namely, that social speech policing is always an attempt to win a debate using social power to marginalize your opponent rather then attempting to persuade people by engaging with the substance of the disagreement.
Cancel culture is a 21st century implementation of this.

— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) July 24, 2020

 

The California State University system is requiring their half a million students to take at least one course in ethnic studies or social justice—the system’s new established religion. https://t.co/LMp7k2h2Eq

— Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) July 24, 2020

 

When I taught at Princeton, every Rawlsian blathered on about liberalism’s essence boiling down to, “reasonable people can disagree.” Even while every department in the humanities and social sciences worked ceaselessly to make sure everyone had the same view about everything. https://t.co/pRoFGpR4uc

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) July 23, 2020

On police defunding.  The consequences, more crime and violence impacting minorities disproportionately, are actually intended by its proponents.

Caldwell on defunding the police: pic.twitter.com/MbUZFN9lgQ

— RE-OPEN THE SIZZLERS (@CaesarSalad99) July 23, 2020

"Nice" white parents are the problem with public education.  In related news, KIPP Academies, a respected charter school network has dropped its motto of "Work Hard. Be Nice." because of its association with white supremacy.  Little did we know!  And, by the way, it is a myth public schools have been defunded in recent decades.

To understand what’s wrong with our public education system, you have to look at what’s arguably the most powerful force in our schools: White parents. Listen to the trailer for “Nice White Parents,” a new series from @serial, brought to you by @nytimes. https://t.co/ljXOFNOZFO

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 23, 2020

How patronizing!

This is straight-up tragic. The “anti-racism” sweeping institutions still ends up rendering black people as somehow different, other, unable to meet even basic standards. Ralph Ellison weeps.

“Rutgers English Department to deemphasize traditional grammar” https://t.co/5DUaKKcRW1

— Thomas Chatterton Williams 🌍 🎧 (@thomaschattwill) July 22, 2020

Glenn Loury on how Ta-Nehisi Coates provides guilty liberal elites the words they need whilst our discourse around race refuses to address the suffering and deaths of thousands of Black people every year

It is a morally reprehensible situation and he gets rightly heated pic.twitter.com/uVQjI3F8nI

— Ash Parks (@TheRealAshParks) July 14, 2020

So much of what you see under cover of "Black Lives Matter" is "black lives matter except for black cops, unborn black children, black crime victims, and black schoolchildren."

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) July 19, 2020

DiAngelo is not only a racist, she's a grifter.

According to Robin DiAngelo, "'rationalism' is a white criterion for hiring, a white qualification that should be reconsidered."

If you think rationalism is a white trait, you are a racist.

The author of the bestselling book in the country is a racist.https://t.co/yJ16xevMQD

— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) July 18, 2020

Heh.

Far-Right Extremist Suggests Treating People Of All Races Equally https://t.co/pCpagerf7v

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 17, 2020

Well, it is a good thing to have some ambition in life.

Protest organizer claims their mission is the “abolition of the United States as we know it”

pic.twitter.com/HHj90FyReT

— ELIJAH RIOT (@ElijahSchaffer) July 18, 2020

Multifactoral causation?  Nah, that's white privilege.  Tweet from African American professor at historically black university.

What if culture and training, effort, genes, and prejudice ALL play a role in where you end up in life?

***Incoherent shrieking begins...people start fighting at random...society collapses***

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) July 18, 2020

A progressive journalist exposing the media scam reporting the riots and protests were "mostly peaceful".  In reality they had devastating consequences for the lives and livelihoods of those in minority communities.  Read on.

More crap from Robin DiAngelo.

See I know that most people are not going to make it to page 149 of this cursed book to discover this nugget: a positive white identity is an impossible goal. Would you believe this if I wasn’t showing you pictures? #WhiteFragility pic.twitter.com/RPcV3chGBu

— Karlyn Borysenko - on Parler/Minds/Gab @Karlyn (@DrKarlynB) July 17, 2020

Yet another Progressive weighs in to object:

The portion of people who view their race as defining them declined a lot during the 20th century, coinciding with a big decline in implicit and explicit bias. These folks really looked at that and said we want to crank it up again?

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) July 17, 2020

 

Destroy The Four Olds

A decade ago a friend in China gave me a bound volume called "Red Memory" containing posters from the Cultural Revolution (for background read We Thought Mao Was Doing A Wonderful Thing).  The introduction contained this sentence:

"We hope that such crazy and flimflam years will never come again"!

They have come again in China and they are on the verge of coming here.

From Laudator Temporis Acti (Praiser of Times Past)

Guo Jian et al., Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2006), pp. 70-72:

DESTROY THE FOUR OLDS (po sijiu). This campaign was initiated by Red Guards in August 1966 aiming to sweep away all "old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits" (hence "Four Olds") in Chinese society. Endorsed by the Cultural Revolution faction of the central leadership, the campaign resulted in unprecedented damage to the nation's historical landmarks, valuable artifacts, and other material witnesses of culture and civilization and claimed thousands of innocent lives nationwide—1,772 in the city of Beijing alone.

The phrase "old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits" as a pejorative reference to all traditions—Chinese or foreign—that were deemed nonproletarian from the viewpoint of the Culture Revolution ideology first appeared in a 1 June 1966 People's Daily editorial entitled "Sweep Away All Cow-Demons and Snake-Spirits." Lin Biao used the phrase in his speech at the mass rally of 18 August and called on Red Guards to wage war against the Four Olds. As a prelude to Lin's battle cry, an ultimatum had already been drafted by Red Guards at Beijing No. 2 Middle School on the night of 17 August, declaring war on barbershops, tailor shops, photo studios, and used book stores. On the day after the mass rally, Beijing's Red Guards took to the streets and started to smash street signs and name boards for shops, restaurants, schools, factories, and hospitals and replace them with new labels. Chang'an (meaning "eternal peace") Avenue in the center of the city, for instance, was renamed East-Is-Red Avenue, and Beijing Union Hospital, which was established by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1921, now became Anti-Imperialism Hospital. Red Guards made speeches, distributed pamphlets, and put out posters on the streets that dismissed various fashions in hair and dress, stylized photos, pointed boots, and high-heeled shoes as evidence of bourgeois lifestyle. They would stop passers-by whose appearance was unacceptable and humiliate them by shaving their hair, cutting open their trousers, or knocking off their shoe heels. The official endorsement of such actions in two Peoples Daily editorials on 23 August helped to spread the fire of the anti-Four Olds campaign across the country and prompted Red Guards to move further to raid churches, temples, theaters, libraries, and historic sites, causing irretrievable damage. During the raid upon the historic Confucian Homestead, Confucian Temple, and Confucian Cemetery, for instance, more than 1,000 tombs and stone tablets were destroyed or damaged, and more than 2,700 volumes of ancient books and 900 scrolls of calligraphy and paintings were set afire. Across the country, countless books that were deemed "old" were burned, especially those in school libraries.

During the campaign to destroy the Four Olds, violence against innocent people escalated. On 23 August, a group of Beijing Red Guards shepherded several dozen writers, artists, and government officials from the Municipal Cultural Bureau to what used to be the National Academy of imperial China, where a huge pile of theater props and costumes, all deemed "old," was burning. The Red Guards ordered their victims to kneel down around the fire and beat them so hard with belts and theatrical props that several victims lost consciousness. Lao She, a well-known writer and one of the victims of this notorious event, took his own life the next day. Such brutality was widespread during the campaign, especially at the struggle meetings that Red Guards held against their teachers, the so-called black gang members, and the people of the "Black Five Categories." It had become commonplace for Red Guards during the months of August and September to ransack private homes and confiscate personal belongings of the alleged class enemies. Some homes were raided several times by different groups of Red Guards. In Shanghai alone, an estimated 150,000 homes were illegally searched. In the name of sweeping away the Four Olds, the raiders took away not only cultural artifacts that were considered "old," but also currency, bank notes, gold and silver bars, jewelry, and other valuables. At the height of the Destroy the Four Olds campaign, Chairman Mao Zedong continued to hold inspections of millions of Red Guards in Beijing, while Lin Biao, standing by Mao's side at these inspections, continued to praise the Red Guards' attack on the old ways.

Small Sample Size

With the baseball season about to open with only a 60-game schedule we are about to embark on an experiment in small sample size of that kind that drives sabrmetricians crazy .  Enjoy.

Don't Be A Scribbler

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Reflections on the Revolution in France:

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

via Laudator Temporis Acti

Bad Prediction

"The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

- Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the opinion for the Court in Grutter v Bollinger (June 23, 2003)

We are now 17 years down the road and not only are racial preferences not going away but racial preferences and even segregation appear to be the wave of the future.  Looks more like Diversity Now! Diversity Forever!  Oh, joy.

The Grutter decision upheld by 5-4 (with Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist and Kennedy dissenting) the official admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School that sought to achieve student body diversity.

The concept of "diversity" in school admissions was first introduced at the Supreme Court by the concurring opinion of Justice Lewis Powell in Regents of Univ. of Cal. v Bakke (1978) in which Powell wrote that attaining a diverse student body was the only interest asserted by the university that survived scrutiny.  However, because no other justice joined Powell in his opinion the Courts, as O'Connor expressed it, "have struggled to discern whether Justice Powell’s diversity rationale is binding precedent."  O'Connor, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer, in stating "The Court endorses Justice Powell’s view that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify using race in university admissions" rendered discussion of the precedential value of Powell's opinion moot.

And with that we were off to the diversity races as academic institutions rapidly established Offices of Diversity & Inclusion to spread the new gospel of Critical Race Theory and suppress any dissenting voices as racists and heretics.

The End Of The Enlightenment?

Woke progressives and Critical Race Theory proponents reject the idea of tolerance expressed by George Washington in his 1790 letter to the Hebrew congregation of Newport, Rhode Island.

"It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights."

In the late 18th century, President Washington's view of tolerance as not something bestowed by a dominant group, or individual, the kind of tolerance easily revocable upon the discretion of the dominant group or individual, but rather as something we owed to each other as equals, was distinctly American.  Bestowed "tolerance" was the concept used in the rest of the world, and is still the governing concept in many countries today.  In other "tolerant" societies of the time, the Jewish Community would be considered supplicants; in Washington's they were equals.

The social justice left and the white nationalist right are just different sides of the same coin - both view race (and in some instances gender) as the sole defining aspect of society - their only difference being who ends up on top at the end.  To accomplish this they must be the sole dispensers of tolerance.  Their vision takes us down the road to an authoritarian world, with them as the dictators of tolerance.  Listen to them very carefully, when they use the word tolerance or concepts that sound similar because what they really mean is the willingness to be tolerant of only that of which they approve.

[UPDATE] After posting this I came across a video by two comedians which says the same thing in a more entertaining way.


In a society of more than 300 million people with different backgrounds, education, aspirations, skills, desires, and ideas the only way to operate a country based on those ideas to is forcibly squash dissent.

As President Calvin Coolidge noted in his July 4, 1926 address on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, commenting on the truths of its preamble:  

If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

The current moment poses a great risk to America.  We see the streets, much of our public discourse, and many institutions now under the sway of reactionaries who would take us backwards, to the days before the Enlightenment, to an era where each group has a pre-ordained and set role in a well-established hierarchy, with each group pitted against each other in order to allow the rulers to maintain control.  A world devoid of a sense of common humanity, designed to thwart the ability of people to cooperate and work together at their own initiative without the prior approval of their rulers, with an intimidated citizenry living in fear they might say the wrong thing and branded as heretics.

Super 70s Sports

Relax and have a few good memories and laughs with Super 70s Sports.  And, yes, I know they sometimes dip into the 60s and 80s and even, occasionally, venture into the 90s.

The NBA was better when bearded guys were trying hook shots over dudes with male pattern baldness. Don't tell me otherwise. pic.twitter.com/bVQJSDXq4k

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) July 18, 2020

Greg Luzinski held out in 1983 when the White Sox refused to let him bat while wearing a beer holster. pic.twitter.com/MKHUPC24t6

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) July 18, 2020

If you’re old enough to know what this is, don’t forget to schedule your next colonoscopy. pic.twitter.com/ggalh3sGEW

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) July 17, 2020

Right as he was about to inbound, Bill Walton was struck with the thought: "What if WE'RE the aliens?" pic.twitter.com/UDtrXEL2OQ

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) July 17, 2020

Social Justice Is Not Justice

I'm reposting this piece I published four years ago on this date because, sadly, what I feared has come true and the deluge has arrived in the form of the Woke progressives and Critical Race Theory, a torrent of rage and distortion designed to deny our common humanity and create divisiveness and chaos in American society.

(from LA Times, OJ in center, F Lee Bailey, left, Johnny Cochran, right, Robert Shapiro, rear in profile)

THC recently saw the fine ESPN documentary OJ: Made In America, which he had not intended to watch, but happened to tune in just as the first of the five two-hour episodes began and found riveting.  The film begins with OJ Simpson's college and pro football career, takes us through the racial tensions of Los Angeles during the 1960s, when OJ starred at the University of Southern California, and then covers his successful broadcast and pitchman career after retirement from the NFL, his marriage and separation from Nicole Brown, the murders, the trial and its aftermath.  While worth watching it is also appalling and depressing, as we relive the miscues and errors of the prosecution and LAPD and are exposed to the cynical trial strategy of the race hustlers, a strategy eerily similar to what we see being played out in America right now, and, on that, THC stands with Michael Jordan.

Last week, THC watched the debut of Bill Simmons' new HBO show, Any Given Wednesday (you can watch a segment with Ben Affleck's epic Deflategate rant here).  THC has always enjoyed Simmons' loony mixture of fandom and sportswriting and The Book of Basketball is on his list of Ten Most Enjoyable Books You'll Ever Read.  After last year's bitter breakup with ESPN, which shut down Grantland, his terrific sports and pop culture site, Bill is relaunching himself with the HBO show and a new website, The Ringer (which, so far, falls far short of the standard of excellence he set with Grantland).

At the close of the show, Simmons remarked the OJ documentary, "helped Caucasians finally understand the OJ verdict", which helped crystallize THC's thinking about the documentary as a perfect illustration of the difference between "social justice" and "justice".  They are not related terms; in fact, they lead to opposite results.

As Simmons points out, the documentary does an excellent job placing OJ's career and the trial in the context of America's, and more specifically, Southern California's, history of race relations from the 1960s through Rodney King and the LA riots of 1992, only two years before OJ was charged with murder.  It follows OJ through his deliberate strategy of "deracializing" himself and becoming popular with white America and then his transformation, as part of his defense in the murder trial, into the face of black America, abetted by the taped racist remarks of LA detective, Mark Fuhrman (who is interviewed and treated fairly); a transformation which proved successful in gaining his acquittal.

At the same time, the documentary leaves the viewer in no doubt that OJ Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.  The word "slaughtered" is probably more apt than "murdered", as we are shown photographs of the bodies and taken blow by blow through the killings.

Readers of Bill Simmons realize he likes to opine on race and politics, but the glib, engaging, and sometimes overwrought, fun he has when it comes to sports and athletes, ill-suits him when it comes to more serious issues.  Bill got it half right with his statement, but to capture the full message of the documentary, he should have added, "and it should help African-Americans understand why others were so upset with the OJ verdict".

As Made In America illustrates, OJ's acquittal was an example of social justice; a means by African American jurors to get back for all the historic wrongs of the Los Angeles Police Department.  The acquittal was also an example of failure, when it came to justice for the two murdered people.

Putting "social" in front of "justice" is not just a way of modifying or, in some views, perfecting justice. It is a means of subtracting from the traditional American concept of justice, as a term meant to describe what is owed to each individual, regardless of their standing in society.  Social justice is about, to use a term increasingly common today, privileging groups based upon race, ethnicity, gender, class or any other category favored by advocacy groups (the neutral term applied to Leftist activists) and academia, to the exclusion of justice as it applies to non-privileged individuals.

Historically, it is a reversal of what might have been called social justice in earlier periods of American history.  The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, can be fairly characterized as acts of social justice, designed to undo the denial of individual rights to African-Americans by virtue of their race.  In doing so, they did not lead to new acts of individual injustice, in contrast to the "social justice" as it is understood today (perhaps a better word for the modern use of the term is "payback").  Many of those who supported the social justice legislation of the 1960s did so because of their belief in remedying injustice, but now see what is happening in modern America as merely an opportunity for groups to assert social and legal dominance using the rubric of social justice.

We've seen in the past century the fruits of social justice taken to its extremes.  In an early example in the 1920s and 1930s Soviet Union saw millions of kulaks, small rural landowners, denounced as class enemies and robbed, exiled, starved and/or murdered.  Under Soviet theory it did not matter what any individual kulak did or believed; their very inclusion in the designated group made them enemies of the state.  We've seen the pattern repeated over and over again under socialism, communism, and fascism, and it is why social justice is so dangerous a term when it is used, as it is by its advocates today, as a means to deprive individuals of liberty and justice.  If we lose sight of justice, the deluge will follow.

Rushmore

Good movie!

I did not watch President Trump's July 3 speech at Mt Rushmore because I can't stand watching or listening to him.

Then I heard the speech described as "dark and divisive" and defending the Confederate flag.

I thought to myself, why can't we have a President who talks like this instead of Trump?

Our Founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity.  No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America.  And no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.

It was all made possible by the courage of 56 patriots who gathered in Philadelphia 244 years ago and signed the Declaration of Independence.   They enshrined a divine truth that changed the world forever when they said: “…all men are created equal.”

These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom.  Our Founders boldly declared that we are all endowed with the same divine rights — given [to] us by our Creator in Heaven.  And that which God has given us, we will allow no one, ever, to take away — ever. 

Oh, wait.  That is what Trump said!  After reading the media descriptions I decided I needed to actually read the darn thing and to my surprise it is probably the first speech given by the President with which I agree 100%!

He went on to say:

We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed.  Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God.

We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture.

We embrace tolerance, not prejudice.

And he accurately pointed out the danger currently emerging in America, a danger threatening every decent American whatever their race, ethnicity or religion:

The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice.  But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society.  It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance, and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of repression, domination, and exclusion.

That those in the media and elsewhere who actively promote divisiveness, racial hatred, and intolerance accuse the President of the same is merely a matter of projection for them.  It is what they are all about.

Then I saw Senator Tammy Duckworth state that the Mt Rushmore speech was about "dead traitors" so thinking I'd missed something I went back and reread the speech.  Here are all the people and groups named by the President during the speech (excluding the ones already on Rushmore):

U.S. Grant
Andrew Jackson
Martin Luther King
Frederick Douglass
Wild Bill Hickok
Buffalo Bill Cody
Wright Brothers
Tuskegee Airmen
Harriet Tubman
Clara Barton
Jesse Owens
George Patton
Louis Armstrong
Alan Shepard
Elvis
Mohammed Ali
Walt Whitman
Mark Twain
Irving Berlin
Ella Fitzgerald
Frank Sinatra
Bob Hope

I don't see any traitors?  Do you?

Go read the speech for yourself.

And yesterday the Trump Administration, which I've been repeatedly assured by progressives is racist, conducted the first execution of a federal prisoner in 17 years.  The person executed was a white supremacist.

The Opening Chord

It's one of the most famous and mysterious chords in pop music history - the opening chord to A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles single released on this date in 1964.  The song became #1 everywhere that had record charts at the time - UK, US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, as did the album of the same name and the movie was both a critical and popular hit.

The song sounded different and more sophisticated than the previous Beatle songs.  Here it is with its distinctive opening chord.

Figuring out what was played on that chord was a source of dispute for years.  Below is a 2014 account by Randy Bachman based on his visit to Abbey Road studios where Giles Martin, son of George Martin, played the original tapes.  Bachman was guitarist for The Guess Who (No Time, American Woman, These Eyes) and later Bachman-Turner Overdrive (Taking Care of Business, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet).

I really enjoy listening to Bachman's explanation because he is such a fan himself and his excitement and enthusiasm is engaging.

Only Progressive Lives Matter

I try not to react to everything I see on the internet for fear of becoming THAT GUY.  At first, I was going to ignore this tweet from Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Obama during his entire presidency, and a long-time friend regarded as his closest confidante.  Because it manages to combine both incredible stupidity, partisanship, ignorance, heartlessness, and contempt for the intelligence of her readers I decided to address it.  Here's the tweet:

From the epicenter to zero deaths. Short term sacrifice saves lives!!! https://t.co/iHJktiPX5p

— Valerie Jarrett (@ValerieJarrett) July 13, 2020

The tweet was written to support the current media narrative that states like New York and New Jersey did everything right regarding covid because they had Democratic governors and states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona, which now face rising case counts, did everything wrong because they have Republican governors.

As I've said before, anyone Left or Right trying to score political points in the midst of this pandemic is a fool.  We should all be humbled by the extent to which we don't know and can't predict the course of this virus.  The virus is not interested in our politics.

As to the comparison itself.  The short-term sacrifice Jarrett refers to are the 24,000 dead so far in New York City due to covid (and that includes the single worst decision by any governor so far; Andrew Cuomo's decision to send covid positive patients back to nursing homes, leading to thousands of deaths).

New York City has 8 million people.  Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona combined have 67.5 million and, as of today, 12,700 covid deaths.  To reach the same per capita toll as New York City these four states will have to reach 203,000 deaths and New York will have to avoid a second wave.

To say New York's "short-term sacrifice" was worth it in order to condemn the states progressives dislike is misleading and stupid.  There's also a coldness to it that is morally repulsive - a Only Progressive Lives Matter tone that cheers on covid deaths in red states in order to make progressive governors look better.  At this point, no one can say that New York City "saved lives".  Her tweet is nonsense.  I can only assume Jarrett is completely innumerate or just doesn't care what the facts are and the people who follow her are too lazy and ignorant to do their own fact-checking.

I wish partisans on all sides would just shut up.

Black Pumas

How about some new music?  This is Fire from the 2019 debut album by Black Pumas.  The singer is Eric Burton and guitarist (and producer) is Adrian Quesada. And this is Colors from the same live session.  Looks like a great band to see in concert.

Indigo

Stanley Clarke, Al DiMeola and Jean-Luc Ponty from their 1995 album The Rite of Strings.

The Walled City

Taken from the Mount of Olives, this 1858 photo shows Jerusalem, under Ottoman rule since 1517 and still contained within its old walls.

Your Future 3

To paraphrase Kevin Williamson:

If you want to know who has power in our society look at who gets the endorsements from big companies, the college and foundation scholarships and fellowships, and glorification in the media and then look and see who is marginalized and in fear of losing their jobs.

These are Kaepernick's two most recent tweets. pic.twitter.com/msm7StKAtR

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) July 6, 2020

In addition to his Disney partnership, the ex-quarterback has a multi-million dollar deal with Nike, which allows him to ban sneakers with the Betsy Ross flag, and Netflix just announced it is making a series based on his life story.

Kaepernick lied when he started the taking a knee business and telling us it was only about police brutality and not about the American flag.  This is what he said back in 2016 about kneeling:

"I’m not anti-America, I love America…. I think having these conversations helps everybody have a better understanding of where everybody is coming from.” 

He hates America and all it stands for and it has made him millions on top of the millions he made playing football.  That he supports murdering racist and homophobic thugs like Huey Newton, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and opposes freedom of speech doesn't seem to bother his sponsors.

And there are so many like him who've created layers of false narratives and torture our language in order to pretend to be oppressed.

It's time to speak the truth.

The Covid Thing

The last time I wrote about Mr Corona was in April.  Today let's talk about the situation here at THC Central. 

Until Memorial Day, Arizona, and particularly Maricopa County (Phoenix metro), where THC HQ is located, had been managing Covid.  Case loads stayed relatively low in the county as had the death toll, which had hit those in Long Term Care (LTC) the hardest, with 71% of all fatalities in that category.

In early May the state began easing restrictions on top of rapidly expanding testing beginning in the latter part of April.  While cases went up somewhat during May, it seemed primarily an artifact of the increased testing as the positive rate declined from 9% in mid-April to 5% in mid-May.  At the end of Memorial Day weekend Maricopa had 8,340 cases.  As of today's report, the county has 64,686 cases though the amount of testing has only doubled during that period.  Moreover, positive test rates are exceeding 20%.

During the first 70 days of the pandemic, Maricopa had 368 deaths, 71% of which were LTC.  In the 40 days since we've had 475 deaths of which 44% were LTC.  Likewise, we had 1,092 covid-related hospitalizations in those 70 days, compared to 1,729 in the 40 days since May 25.  And the figures for the most recent 40 days are an undercount as Maricopa only reports cases confirmed by positive tests and there is a 7-10 day lag period in that reporting.

While the Maricopa case count has gone up 8x, the entire state has seen a 6x rise during this period.

What happened?

I believe a number of factors are in play.  For the state as a whole the disproportionate impact on our Indian communities has continued.  They amount to 4% of our population but 15-18% of cases and fatalities.  More recently, the main border towns, Yuma and Nogales, have seen an explosion in cases as American nationals and dual citizens flee the deteriorating covid situation in Mexico (and Mexico is concerned about covid infected Americans coming into that country).  Some of the impact from this is probably also having an effect in the Phoenix area.

In Maricopa during Memorial Day weekend and for the next couple of weekends we saw bars and restaurants jammed with young people and according to contact tracing by the county health department this was a major source of new cases.  The marches and demonstrations related to George Floyd's death may also have played a factor.

I think weather and air conditioning also probably played a significant role.  In Phoenix our outdoor time of the year is from October into mid-May, after which the heat forces us indoors, whether in bars, other public venues, or our homes.  We know that covid is more transmissible in crowded indoor conditions and air conditioning can move the virus around.

The post-Memorial Day surge has been accompanied by a change in demographics.  Through that weekend 47% of Maricopa cases were below the age of 45.  Since then 67% of cases have been in the 0-44 age bracket.  Those 65+ constituted 22% of cases as of May 25, but only 8% of those reported since.

The other significant demographic change has been in the Hispanic population which is 31% of Maricopa County.  On May 25, Hispanics accounted for 38% of cases and 32% of hospitalization, but since then 52% new cases and 43% of those hospitalized.

The result has been, at first glance, paradoxical.  Because the new cases have shifted to a younger and healthier demographic the hospitalization rate which stood at 13.1% on May 25, has been only 3.2% over the past 40 days, while the fatality rate dropped from 4.4% to 0.9%.  In that respect, while the case numbers are bad, hospitalizations and deaths significantly lag that rate of increase so Arizona does not look like New York in March and April (and if back then New York City had available the amount of tests we have today, it would have resulted in at least the same number of daily new cases as we are seeing for the nation as a whole right now).

Yet average daily hospitalizations and deaths have increased because the absolute number of cases has risen so dramatically and that increase has placed increasing stress on Maricopa hospitals and healthcare providers who are beginning to run short of beds, equipment and PPE.  I expect deaths to increase this week.

If the situation does not begin to turn around in the next 7-10 days we will hit a breaking point and may see deaths escalate further as less individual attention can be given to each patient and then the situation could become closer to New York.  I hope that with the institution of mask ordinances two weeks ago and the closing of bars we will see an improvement.  We need it.

An Exceedingly Restful Finality

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

- Calvin Coolidge, July 4, 1926

Lincoln Memorial in 1917 before reflecting pool was built.

In New Orleans, a WW2 veteran was turning 100 years old.

This is how the neighborhood came out to celebrate: With food, music — and masks all around.

Then the commanding officer of @USCoastGuard base showed up.

Wait for the salute — it's worth it.#Humanity 😷🎶🎈 pic.twitter.com/97pUzdItJg

— Goodable (@Goodable) July 2, 2020

Anyone Want To Go In With Me On This?

A Old West town in New Zealand and a 900 acre ranch for $7.5 million.  Only a six-hour drive from Auckland on the North Island.  I like it.

Just One Of Those Things

A gem from Cole Porter.  Often performed in a light, upbeat style, Frank Sinatra's interpretation is different.  First up is from the 1950s movie Young At Heart, followed by a very slowed down, saloon song version live from The Sands in Vegas in 1961.  You'll notice a suppleness in Sinatra's voice in the 50s that was gone by the 60s.

Responsibility

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.

— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) July 1, 2020