Greenberg Re-enlists

 In May 1941 star Detroit Tigers ballplayer Hank Greenberg became one of the first players drafted into the U.S. Army.  Because the U.S. was still at peace, and the first American history peacetime draft so controversial, those drafted only served a few months.  Hank, who'd been promoted to sergeant in an anti-tank unit, was honorably discharged on December 5, 1941.  At 30 years old, Greenberg was looking forward to returning to baseball in 1942, along with his $55,000 salary, after missing all but 19 games in 1941 (instead of 55K for the 1941 season, he made $21 a month with the Army).  Hank's last full season in 1940 saw him whack 41 home runs, drive in 150, bat .340 and win the league's MVP Award. Over the four season from 1937 to 1940 he'd averaged 43 homers and 149 RBIs a year.

Two days after his discharge, Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.  Shortly thereafter, Greenberg announced his intention to re-enlist and was inducted into the Army Air Corps on February 1, 1942, becoming the first major league player to volunteer after Pearl Harbor (to be followed quickly by another of the great stars of that era, Bob Feller).  Hank issued this statement:

“This doubtless means I am finished with baseball, and it would be silly for me to say I do not leave it with a pang; but all of us are confronted with a terrible task – the defense of our country and the fight for our lives.”

"We are in trouble and there is only one thing for me to do - return to the service."

The Bible of Baseball, The Sporting News ran this story:

Back in the service, Greenberg attended Officers Candidate School in Fort Worth and then was assigned to run athletic programs and inspect various U.S. facilities.  Wanting to be closer to the action, now-Captain Greenberg requested transfer to a combat theater.  In early 1944 he was assigned to the 58th Bombardment Wing, the first group of B-29s to be deployed to China.  Flying the dangerous route over The Hump (the Himalayas) from India to China, Greenberg helped set up the base in Sichuan.  Returning to the States in late 1944, Hank was finally discharged on June 14, 1945.  He'd served 47 months on active service, more than any other major league player.

Two weeks later he was back in uniform, hitting a home run in his first game.  Over the remainder of the season, Hank hit 13 homers, drove in 60 and batted .311, capped by a ninth inning grand slam in the final game of the season to clinch the pennant for the Tigers.  In the World Series, Hank hit two more homers and Detroit won in six games. 

The next year Greenberg hit 44 more home runs and drove in another 127 runs.  He'd go on to be elected to the Hall of Fame and you can easily pencil in another 160 homers and 500 ribbies missing from his career total due to his wartime service.

Hank Greenberg, the son of immigrants, was also significant as the first 20th century Jewish superstar in baseball.  During the 1930s he'd borne anti-semitic hazing from some other players but handled it with grace.  Whether at the ballpark or serving his country he always did the right thing.

St Stephen's Day Murders

Saint Stephen, considered the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death in 36 AD.  He is celebrated on the second day of Christmastide, December 26, a day considered a holiday in several countries, including Ireland.  One writer describes it as:

. . . the day where the previous day’s indulgences are to be dealt with, boarded up and cleaned out. It’s also the day where simmering tensions that may have been temporarily quelled by the season’s festivities start to arise, and the quickest way to assuage them is by drowning them in liquor and leftovers. 

In 1991, Elvis Costello created his sardonic take on the day which he recorded with the great Irish band The Chieftains.  Enjoy. 

I knew of two sisters whose name it was Christmas

And one was named Dawn of course, the other one was named Eve. 

I wonder if they grew up hating the season, The good will that lasts til the Feast of St. Stephen 

For that is the time to eat, drink, and be merry,  

Til the beer is all spilled and the whiskey has flowed.  

And the whole family tree you neglected to bury,  

Are feeding their faces until they explode.  

There'll be laughter and tears over Tia Marias,  

Mixed up with that drink made from girders.

Cause it's all we've got left as they draw their last breath,  

Ah, it's nice for the kids, as you finally get rid of them,

In the St Stephen's Day Murders. 

 

Uncle is garglin' a heart-breaking air,  

While the babe in his arms pulls out all that remains of his hair.  

And we're not drunk enough yet to dare criticize,  

The great big kipper tie he's about to baptize. 

With his gin-flavored whiskers and kisses of sherry, 

His best Chrimbo shirt slung out over the shop.  

While the lights from the Christmas tree blow up the telly,  

His face closes in like an old cold pork chop.  

And the carcass of the beast left over from the feast, 

May still be found haunting the kitchen. 

And there's life in it yet, we may live to regret,  

When the ones that we poisoned stop twitchin'.  

There'll be laughter and tears over Tia Marias, 

Mixed up with that drink made from girders. 

Cause it's all we've got left as they draw their last breath,  

Ah, it's nice for the kids, as you finally get rid of them,

In the St Stephen's Day Murders.

God Bless All Of You On This Good Earth

Christmas Eve 1968.  Apollo 8 is on its mission carrying the first humans to escape low Earth orbit and the first to circle the Moon - Frank Borman, Jim Lovell (later commander of Apollo 13), Bill Anders.

Several weeks before lift-off the crew had been told that NASA had arranged for them to do a live Christmas Eve broadcast to the world.  When Borman asked what they should say, all they were advised was that it be "something appropriate".  With the help of the wife of a correspondent friend who had been raised in a French convent, they decided to read the opening chapters of the Bible, from Genesis (as explained in the video below).  No one on the ground at NASA was aware of what they would say, until they started reading.  For many reasons, this would not happen today, both from a process and substance perspective.

After reading the opening verses of Genesis, the crew closed with its own benediction:

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on this Good Earth.

Hearing those words, in those circumstances, had a huge emotional impact on those who heard it, and it still affects me when I listen to it more than 50 years later.

The video below tells the story, followed by what listeners heard on December 24, 1968.  All of the Apollo 8 astronauts are still alive, Borman and Lovell at age 92, and Anders at 87.

 

(Text read by crew of Apollo 8)

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.

COVID + 9

The most recent installment in my monthly series, published on the 22nd of each month.  For prior posts go here.

The situation in the U.S. continues to be bad, though it may be peaking or slightly past peaking in some states. 

Europe continues to be hit very hard.  Germany, which came through the April/May wave pretty well is currently having the equivalent of 3,000-4,000 deaths a day (based on U.S. population).  The next large country which may experience an upsurge in deaths is Turkey which is currently seeing 200-250 daily.  Over the past month that country has seen a tremendous upsurge in cases not yet reflected in deaths.

In Asia, South Korea and Japan continue to have very low death rates but during the past 2-3 weeks both countries have seen their highest daily death tolls since the start of the pandemic, though in absolute terms much lower than that in Europe and the Americas.

------------------------------------------------

Now that vaccines are available we can look forward to covid being brought under control over the next 3-5 months (our ER doc daughter was vaccinated yesterday).  There has been a lot of discussion about priority setting for who gets vaccinated and when.

Here's a very sensible one scheme from the U.K. which it describes as representing "around 99% of preventable mortality from COVID-19".

1.  residents in a care home for older adults and their carers

2.  all those 80 years of age and older and frontline health and social care workers

3.  all those 75 years of age and older

4.  all those 70 years of age and older and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals

5.  all those 65 years and older

6.  all individuals aged 16 to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at serious risk of disease and higher mortality

7.  all those 60 years of age and older

8.  all those 55 years of age and older

9.  all those 50 years of age and older

Here's an analysis explaining the UK approach:

The U.K. plan makes sense if your priority is saving lives.  Fatality rates skew very much towards the elderly with covid.  Here's the current U.S. data showing each age group as a % of overall covid deaths:

85+ :   31%

75-84: 27%

65-74: 22%

55-64: 12%

45-54: 5%

35-44: 2%

25-34: 0.7%

15-24: 0.2% 

Along the same lines this is the Arizona mortality rate per covid case by age:

65+:     10.3%

55-64:  2.3%

45-54:  0.8%

20-44:  0.2%

< 20:    0.02%

What this means is if you get covid and are 65 or older your chance of dying is 51 times that of someone between 20 and 44 who has covid.  NOTE: If Arizona broke its 65+ data down in more detail you would probably see something more like a 5% rate for those 65-74, 10% for 75-84 and 20% for those 85+.  

A way to visualize the differential risk by age:

Another example of age and health differentials can be seen by comparing mortality data for U.S. military personnel with that of Veteran's Admininstration patients.  The fatality rate per confirmed covid case for the younger and healthier military personnel is 0.11%, while for the older and health impaired VA patients it is 4.33% or nearly 40X greater.

There is an alternative methodology to that selected by the U.K. which would focus on years of life saved.  For instance an 85 year old may have an additional life expectancy 4 years, versus an 40 year old with 40 years of life expectancy.  Who should get priority for the vaccine?  I don't think the arguments are as strong as that in an age-based scheme because the death rates skew so dramatically with covid, but it is an argument at least worth thinking about. 

Unfortunately the United States seems focused on other factors, at least in part, which led to the flawed recommendations made on Sunday by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (it now goes to CDC Director Redfield for a final decision).  According to Stat News, the panel recommended the highest priority for those in long term care and health care workers which makes sense, with the second priority to those 75 and older and frontline essential workers, which makes less sense, and the third priority to those 65 and older, people 16 to 64 years old with high-risk medical conditions, and essential workers not included in the second phase of vaccination, which makes even less sense, if the priority is saving the maximum amount of lives.  It turns out that was not the Committee's highest priority.

Here's an alternative approach, rejected by the "experts".

The first problem is the size of categories the CDC and Committee is using which is going to lead to a lot of confusion and infighting, particularly because they contain 202 million people (60% of U.S. population) and there will only be about 100 million vaccine doses available before March (24 million in Phase 1a, 49 million in Phase 1b, and 129 million in Phase 1c).  This is how academics decide things, not people with practical experience on implementation. The U.K. approach takes much smaller slices of population in a clearly understandable sequence, and should be much more manageable. 

But the real problem is when you try to answer the question - why would the CDC committee recommend a priority list that would result in more deaths?  The answer is the injection of Critical Race and Social Justice Theory and into public health decisions.

Frontline essential workers are defined as:

"first responders, teachers and other education workers including day care workers, food and agriculture workers, correctional facility staff, postal workers, public transit workers, and people who work in manufacturing and in grocery stores"

And Stat News quotes Peter Szilagyi, a committee member and pediatrician at UCLA;

“I voted for this recommendation because in my opinion, it follows the evidence about the risk from coronavirus and the ethical principles that we have developed on ACIP to maximize the benefits and minimize harms, promote justice, and to minimize health inequities.  We are trying to thread the needle here.” 

Stat News goes on to mention the lone dissenter to the committee recommendation:

Henry Bernstein, a pediatrician and professor at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, said he felt that adults aged 65 and older should have been in Phase 1b. The toll the virus takes on people 65 to 74 is not substantially different from its impact on people 75 and older, he argued.

So, what's going on here?  Bernstein's position is very clear.  If you look at risk and lives you save many more lives by including 65-74 year olds in Phase 1b.  

But what, precisely, is Dr Szilagyi saying?  He's rambling about "ethical principles", "justice" and "health inequities".  That's just jargon.  What does it mean in practice?  Why can't he say what he means as clearly as Dr Bernstein?  It's because he trying to obscure what he means.

Let me translate.  What Dr Szilagyi is saying is, "because blacks are a disproportionate amount of essential workers, and are at disproportionate risk, it is inequitable to give them lower priority on the vaccine, so older people must be lower priority and more of them die, including those at most risk, black seniors, in order to be equitable."  Please don't mistake talk of "equity" for that of "equality".  Equality is treating people equally, though the may eventually have different outcomes in life.  Equity means that any difference in outcome for a minority is attributable to white supremacy, is therefore racist, and society must be adjusted to correct that outcome.

Yes, I know it doesn't make sense but that's the way these social justice people think, and now you know why he won't say it clearly.  When Dr Szilagyi says, "We are trying to thread the needle", he is referring to designing a system in which more people die than necessary but which, in his calculation, is fairer racially and, at the same time, obscuring what they are doing.

To understand how the committee came out here, it is important to note that the CDC "experts" originally were going adopt an even worse alternative.  This was their original draft analysis.  First they looked at science and implementation and the 65+ category came out ahead:

Ah, but then come Ethics!  

And suddenly, non-healthcare essential workers are ahead!

So, the original recommendation was that essential non-healthcare workers get priority over anyone who was over 65 and not in long-term care.  And, as one commentator noted:

"Incidentally, this report has many classic bureaucratic hallmarks: - the spurious symmetry of three equally weighted categories, each with sub-categories - the erratic marking thereof - the artificial separation of "Ethics" and "Science" - the opaque and questionable modelling"

This leaked and the blowback was so severe the committee agreed to extend priority to the over 75 crowd, even though substantial lives could be saved by lowering the age to 65.  No surprise, the New York Times found a bioethics "expert" (bioethics, by the way, is an immoral academic field) to opine that more elderly white people needed to die in order to provide equity.

Not to be outdone, Marcella Nunez Smith of Yale's School of Public Health, and co-chair of Joe Biden's newly announced COVID-19 Advisory Board, complimented the CDC experts for "taking political interference out of the process" and for their "grounding in inequity".  Huh? They took science out of the process and injected ideology.  These people are dangerous.  Americans will die because of them.

[IMPORTANT ADD: Just after publishing this post I came across an article by Aaron Sibarium at the Washington Free Beacon, "How the Centers for Disease Control went Woke", which is worth reading in its entirety.  It provides additional background on the vaccination priority process and how Critical Race Theory informed it.  A couple of excerpts describing how Wokeness distorted the process:

The result was a kind of moral double counting, in which closing disparities promoted two separate values, whereas saving lives promoted just one. As phrased, equity and fairness sound like they are at odds with harm reduction: If vaccinating by age minimized deaths across all racial groups, but widened the gap between racial death rates, the principles seem to rule out that strategy, since it would increase racial disparities overall.

The CDC also expressed concern that vaccinating by age would amount to immoral—and potentially illegal—discrimination. The evidence its experts cited, however, arguably favored doing just that.

One graphic from Oliver's presentation, used to illustrate the trade-offs of prioritizing the elderly, cites a statement from the American Geriatric Society that "age should never be used to exclude someone from a standard of care, nor should age ‘cut-offs' be used" to allocate scarce supplies. 

The CDC committee thus took two statements that championed the interests of the elderly and used them to justify a plan that would disproportionately kill senior citizens —implying that age-conscious alternatives were discriminatory, even as the race-conscious plan passed with unanimous support at a subsequent meeting.

All of this—the exclusions, the contradictions, the moral redundancies—helped disguise the agenda that it justified, giving unscientific value judgments an air of scientific assuredness.]

FURTHER ADD:  I came across this piece by stalwart liberal Yascha Mounk describing the moral depravity involved:

". . . there are also some bedrock principles on which virtually all moral philosophers have long agreed.

The first is that we should avoid “leveling down” everyone’s quality of life for the purpose of achieving equality. It is unjust when some people have plenty of food while others are starving. But alleviating that inequality by making sure that an even greater number of people starve is clearly wrong. The second is that we should not use ascriptive characteristics like race or ethnicity to allocate medical resources. To save one patient rather than another based on the color of their skin rightly strikes most philosophers—and most Americans—as barbaric. The Centers for Disease Control have just thrown both of these principles overboard in the name of social justice.

In one of the most shocking moral misjudgments by a public body I have ever seen, the CDC invoked considerations of “social justice” to recommend providing vaccinations to essential workers before older Americans even though this would, according to its own models, lead to a much greater death toll. After a massive public outcry, the agency has adopted revised recommendations. But though these are a clear improvement, they still violate the two bedrock principles of allocative justice—and are likely to cause unnecessary suffering on a significant scale.

Since states will now have to decide whether to follow the CDC’s recommendations, the fight for a just distribution of the vaccine is not yet over. At the same time, the past days have already taught us two lessons that sum up some of the most worrying developments of the past years: The attack on philosophically liberal principles has by now migrated from leafy college campuses to the most important and powerful organizations in the country. And, in part as a result, it is getting harder and harder to trust institutions from the CDC to the New York Times."

Everyday I am more convinced that getting rid of the poison the Woke are injecting into American society must be the #1 priority for decent Americans.

Now let's look more closely at the definition of the frontline workers to be included in Phase 1b. First responders mean police and firefighters, not EMTs.  My comment two paragraphs below covers them.

But why teachers?  We've known since summer that schools are low risk for covid, both for students and teachers.  And unlike the others in this category who've been working since the start of the pandemic, most teachers have not been working in person and their unions have been insistent on keeping schools closed despite the science.

The other categories also contain significantly lower mortality risks.  In some instances, for instance meat packing plants, we've seen major case outbreaks but with very low mortality rates.  Moreover, we have now gone for nine months with covid, with essential workers not having access to vaccines, and our supply chains have not been disrupted (to my surprise but it is true).

If the mortality demographics of covid were different there might be a case for prioritizing groups with lower mortality but who can transmit to more those more vulnerable on the theory that transmission chains can be broken.  But the covid mortality rates above 65 are so much higher than for those younger that strategy would take much longer than direct vaccination of the vulnerable.

A UK strategy, stratified for age in smaller groups, would also capture those essential workers below 65 who have dangerous conditions which may cause issues if they get covid.

The good news is that the CDC just make recommendations and each state can set its own priorities.  Texas has just announced its priority approach which is closer to that of the UK than of the CDC committee.   Other states are taking the social justice mantra even further - Massachusetts is prioritizing prisoners over elderly not in long-term care and those of any age with two or more comorbidities.

ADDED: One final note.  There is a glaring inequity that is being studiously avoided in the discussion of covid impacts.

Of those older than 85, about 60% of deaths are of women.  This is not unexpected as the average lifespan for women is five years longer than for men (81 years v 76 years), the first inequity we encounter. 

But, according to the most recent CDC data, of those who have died from Covid and are less than 85, 60% are men, a figure far outside the normal range, indicating that the coronavirus is hitting men much harder, the second inequity.   

 -------------------------------------------------

Seven of the eight countries I predicted last month would pass 400 deaths per one million population have done so (Poland, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Georgia, Costa Rica).  The exception is Tunisia (357) where the current wave has slowed down.  Of the four countries predicted as possibly passing 400, only one (South Africa) had done so, though Ukraine will surpass 400 in 3-4 days and Canada in about 10 days. 

Two other countries joined the 400 club - Greece (417) and Lithuania (404).

Eight more countries will surpass 400 in the next month - Costa Rica (398), Ukraine (387), Albania (386), Canada (381), Russia (356), Germany (337), Serbia (319), Slovakia (296), and Latvia (245).  Paraguay (296), Tunisia (357), Jordan (354) and Azerbajian (225) may also join the list.  By next month the only European countries not to be over 400 will be Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, and Belarus (I don't place much credibility in data from that last one).

And, on any given day, about three dozen countries are exceeding 1,000 deaths if scaled up to U.S. population levels.

NOTES:

1.  I originally picked 400 as a marker when the U.S. rate was lower (688) and because of the wide variability in how each country determines covid deaths.  It is misleading to do direct comparisons and we really have no idea if one country with a reported rate of 700 is different from a country reporting 800.  For consistency's sake I will stick with 400 as the benchmark, but if you are looking for comparisons to the U.S. I would look at 600 and up.

2.  This list only includes countries with populations in excess of one million.

3.  In predicting which countries will pass 400 I'm not doing modeling or statistical analysis.  It is based on my gut feeling having watched daily data for several months.

4.  A per capita rate of 400 means 0.04% of the population has died from covid; a rate of 1000 translates into 0.1% of the population.

5.  The countries are shown below by continent, listed from highest per capita mortality rate to lowest.  In parens are indicated the rates for the past 3 months (Oct/Nov/Dec).  A - is used to denote a month where the rate was below 400.  Countries new to the list are shown in Boldface.

Europe

Belgium (908, 1337, 1610), Slovenia (-, 506, 1163), Bosnia & Herzogovina (-, 695, 1159), Italy (612, 825, 1156), North Macedonia (420, 714, 1123), Spain (738, 911, 1059),  UK (652, 809, 1004), Bulgaria (-, 416, 994), Czech Republic (-, 668, 985), France (524, 746, 944)), Hungary (-, -, 877), Croatia (-, -, 813), Sweden (586, 633, 806), Switzerland (-, 467, 797), Romania (-, 524, 763), Moldova (407, 533, 696),  Netherlands (404, 518, 620), Poland (-, -, 614), Austria (-, -, 613), Ireland (-, 408, 437), Greece (-, -, 417), Lithuania (-, -, 404)

North America

USA (688, 792, 999), Mexico (676, 783, 915), Panama (599, 681, 836), Costa Rica (-, -, 401)

South America

Peru (1026, 1074, 1121), Argentina (607, 816, 931), Brazil (732, 794, 883), Chile (720, 786, 845), Colombia (581, 691, 800), Bolivia (730, 759, 785), Ecuador (705, 744, 785)

Africa

South Africa (-, -,  423)

Asia

Armenia (-, 658, 901), Iran (-, 531, 639), Georgia (-, -, 547)

 

NOTES:  India, with covid per capita mortality rate of 106, has 146,000 covid fatalities or 8.5% of global deaths.

India and China, with 36% of the world's population, have 9% of covid deaths, meaning 91% of deaths are distributed among the other 64%.

This Happened

 My apologies dear Readers for missing the 50th anniversary of an astonishing event.  On December 21, 1970 this happened:

According to Smithsonian Magazine, here's how it went down. A bored and restless Elvis had flown into Washington DC.  On the flight from LA, he'd scribbled a note to the President:

"Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out," he wrote. All he wanted in return was a federal agent's badge. "I would love to meet you," he added, informing Nixon that he'd be staying at the Washington Hotel under the alias Jon Burrows. "I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent."

After an early morning landing, Elvis and an aide took a limo to the White House where he dropped off his note at an entrance gate at 630am.    The letter ended up with Nixon aide Bud Krogh, who loved the idea and managed to persuade Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman.

Around noon, Presley showed up at the White House bearing a Colt .45 pistol in a display case as a gift for the President (it was taken from him before meeting with Nixon).

Smithsonian gives this account of the meeting:

Nixon's famous taping system had not yet been installed, so the conversation wasn't recorded. But Krogh took notes: "Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also those in the vanguard of anti-American protest."

"I'm on your side," Elvis told Nixon, adding that he'd been studying the drug culture and Communist brainwashing. Then he asked the president for a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

"Can we get him a badge?" Nixon asked Krogh.

Krogh said he could, and Nixon ordered it done.

Elvis was ecstatic. "In a surprising, spontaneous gesture," Krogh wrote, Elvis "put his left arm around the President [Nixon was not a touchy-feely guy] and hugged him."

Here is the President's thank-you for the gift:

And here is the badge that Elvis so desired:

A Higher Call

(From Military Aviation History)

On December 20, 1943 an American B-17 pilot, Charlie Brown, a 21-year old from West Virginia, was on his first mission, part of a 500 bomber raid on Bremen, Germany.  This was during the period before long-range fighters were available to escort bombers all the way to their targets, leaving the B-17 "Flying Fortress" formations vulnerable to German fighters who took a heavy toll on the American bombers (see A Falling Of Fortresses: The Schweinfurt Raids for more details).

Brown's plane, Ye Olde Pub, dropped its payload over target, but after being severely damaged by anti-aircraft fire on the approach run, was then set upon by a dozen German fighters, wounding several of the crew, and killing the tail gunner.  Charlie was losing control, ending up inverted at one point, before managing to stabilize the plane at an altitude of less than 2,000 feet.  Left behind by the rest of the returning American bombers, Brown would have to get Ye Olde Pub home by itself, crossing Germany and the Netherlands before reaching the relative safety of the North Sea.

It was at that point that German air ace Franz Stigler, with 29 enemy aircraft shot down to his credit, appeared behind Ye Olde Pub in his Me-109, and prepared to deal the fatal blow to the B-17.  Seeing the tail gunner laying in a pool of blood, the severe damage to the plane (of the four engines, one was completely destroyed and two others damaged, part of the nose cone and most of the rudder gone - not visible to Stigler, the oxygen, hydraulic and electrical systems were also damaged), and realizing most of the B-17's guns were inoperable, he hesitated, finally deciding he could not fire on the crippled plane.  He then pulled up next to the cockpit and signaled Brown.  For the next few minutes, until Ye Olde Pub reached the North Sea, Stigler flew next to the low-flying B-17 to discourage anti-aircraft fire and other German fighters from attacking.  Over the North Sea, Stigler waved goodbye to Brown and then returned to Germany.

Brown managed to make it back to England.  He was debriefed by intelligence officers to whom he told the unbelievable story of the Me-109 pilot who saved them.  After reporting up the chain, the officers came back to Brown and told him to tell his story to no one - they did not want word of a humane German act getting out.  For his part, Stigler told no one because he would face a court-martial and severe punishment.

Charlie Brown flew 26 more missions during the war (of the ten man crew of Ye Olde Pub only Brown and 3 others survived flying the required number of missions) and then stayed in the Air Force until 1965.  He never told anyone the story until 1985 when he mentioned it at a reunion of his bomber wing.  That prompted him to wonder what happened to the German pilot and he began a search.  In 1989 Franz Stigler came across one of Brown's messages in a German magazine for Luftwaffe veterans.  Stigler left Germany in 1953, settling in British Columbia, and often wondered if the B-17 crew made it back to England.

In 1990, Brown and Stigler met for the first time and became good friends, in frequent contact and meeting at least once a year until they both died, months apart, in 2008. 

These two videos tell their remarkable story:

An extraordinary code of honour

The Franz Stigler and Charlie Brown incident 

The tale is also told in great detail in Adam Makos' excellent account, A Higher Call. 

(Charlie Brown, left; Franz Stigler, right)
  The story of Brown and Stigler also raises interesting questions of how we remember people and exploits and how that remembrance depends on who does the remembering.  Brown and Stigler attended reunions in America and Britain, telling their stories to veterans.  As you'll see watching the videos, Charlie Brown's bomber wing gave Stigler an award in recognition of his act of chivalry.  Yet Franz Stigler flew on behalf of one of the worst regimes in history and killed other British and American aviators while doing so.  In one of the videos linked above they both reflect on this.

Good Thing

From the Fine Young Cannibals in 1989.  What a groove.  #1 in the U.S.  A British band they unfortunately fell apart shortly thereafter.  The lead singer is Roland Gift.  The piano solo is by Jools Holland, former keyboardist for Squeeze.

The song was also featured in the 1987 film Tin Men, starring Danny DeVito and Richard Dreyfuss.  Set in Baltimore in 1963, the film makers thought the retro sound of the band and the song fit well.   This video includes scenes from the movie.

Closed Ecosystem 2

This is a post from October 2016 which I thought timely today and a followup to my A Closed Ecosystem post from October 2020.  It was originally published under the title, "Is Dean Baquet Dumb?".  On reflection I don't think that's the problem, though Baquet is not as smart as he thinks he is.  The problem is he lives in an echo chamber where the people he knows just repeat the same things to each other so often they think it must be true (an example of this phenomenon can be found in this Congressional committee interview of a former Obama administration official who, in 2017, went on MSNBC to proclaim, presumably with some authority given her background, regarding Trump's collusion with the Kremlin.  When asked about what she knew, it turned out zero, but she assumed it was true from what she read in the press!)

I'm serious.  Dean Baquet is the editor of the New York Times.  I've often been critical of the Times because of the paper's bias, as well as the general incompetence and credulous nature of its reporters.   But I've just read an interview with Baquet by Ken Doctor of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard that's left me wondering if Baquet is ignorant or whether he just lives in a bubble where people say the same nonsense to each other over and over again until it becomes accepted as the truth.  I was alerted to the interview by an article at Powerline but found their summary so startling that I was unwilling to accept it as accurate until reading the interview myself.

("Stop me if you've heard this before", Dean Baquet from Nieman Lab) 

Two factual assertions Baquet references in the course of the interview raise the question of how smart he actually is.  The first is this comment:

The dirty secret of news organizations — and I think this is part of a story of what happened with Bush and the Iraq war — [is that] newspaper reporters and newspapers describe the world we live in. We really can be a little bit patriotic without knowing it. We actually tend to believe what politicians tell us — which is a flaw, by the way. I’m not saying that with pride. 

The lesson of the Iraq war, which I think started us down this track, was that I don’t think people really believed that the administration would actually lie about the WMDs, or that they would say the stuff so forcefully. 

Who really believed that Colin Powell would get up in front of the United Nations, a guy who was known for integrity? I think that was a shock to the system.

Ah, the old Bush lied gambit!  Except we now know that is not true, as every investigation, even by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, concluded President Bush did not lie about the intelligence and, as we know from the Dueffler Report on the interrogations of Saddam's military leaders and cabinet officials, they also thought Iraq had WMDs.  The question of lying is separate and distinct from whether Bush's decision on going to war was correct and about the competency of his plans for its conduct and the aftermath.  On those issues, I think him a failure and he deserves plenty of blame, though also some credit for ultimately deciding to proceed with the Surge, which President Obama cited in 2011 for bringing the security and stability to Iraq that enabled him to withdraw American forces.  What Baquet repeats is simply a Progressive talking point without a shred of actual factual support.  It's a myth.  This is from a journalist?
 
And remember Joe Wilson, of the "missing 16 words" and Valerie Plame fame, who became a Democratic hero for claiming the Bush Administration lied about Saddam's pursuit of nuclear weapons (the Senate Intelligence Committee found that Wilson was the one lying)?  Less well known is that Wilson gave a talk in 2002, opposing the planned invasion, in part on the grounds that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons that would inflict enormous casualties on American soldiers (Al Gore took the same position).  I guess everyone lied.

The second is this passage:

I was either editor or managing editor of the L.A. Times during the Swift Boat Incident.  Newspapers did not know — we did not quite know how to do it. I remember struggling with the reporter,  Jim Rainey, who covers the media now, trying to get him to write the paragraph that laid out why the Swift Boat allegation was false…We didn’t know how to write the paragraph that said, “This is just false.”

For those of you who may not remember, the "Swift Boat Incident" was, in their view, the slandering of Presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record during the 2004 campaign.  If you notice, Baquet refers to it as an "allegation".  In the preferred liberal summary, the Incident was about mischaracterization of Kerry's record as a Swift Boat commander during the war and the awarding of his combat medals.  In reality, the television ads by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth focused primarily on Kerry's treasonous actions in carrying out secret negotiations with the communist government of North Vietnam and in denouncing his fellow soldiers for atrocities in front of the U.S. Congress, a denunciation used by the communists as justification for torturing American POWs.  All of this is completely true.

A secondary theme was an attack on Kerry's claim, made on the floor of the Senate, that he spent Christmas on his Swift Boat in Cambodia, in what would have been an illegal incursion at the time, a demonstrably false claim.  The final claim was that his actions in combat were not deserving of his medals and that he had manipulated the system to obtain them.  This claim is controversial and the only one in which the Veteran's group which may not be accurate (unfortunately the Wikipedia entry on this topic focuses almost exclusively on this last point and is very one-sided).

When YouTube first became available several years ago, I went back and found the original Swiftboat ads.  Unfortunately, they are not all still available but my fragmentary notes indicate that six of them focused on Kerry's post service actions - negotiating with the enemy, his Congressional testimony and throwing the ribbons from his medals away in a protest.  Two others and part of a third dealt with his Christmas in Cambodia fabrication and one part of one raised the question of the validity of his medals.  I view all except the last as fair game. 

The Swift Boat Veterans were a coalition of two groups.  The first were POWs, held in North Vietnam under brutal conditions, who deeply resented John Kerry's support for the enemy.  The second were members of the Swift Boat unit who had served with, before or after Kerry.  The leader of the second group was John E O'Neill, who had debated Kerry on the Vietnam War back in 1971 on the Dick Cavett show.  I happened to see O'Neill on C-Span during the 2004 campaign.  In response to a question he referred to President Bush as "an empty suit".  This was always about John Kerry, not Bush.

By mischaracterizing the substance of the Swiftboat attacks and turning them into merely a dirty political tactic, Democrats and their media accomplices sought to avoid dealing with the substance raised by the ads; Kerry's statements after his service disparaging the U.S and his fellow servicemen and the question of why so many people disliked the man.  I was still reading the Times back then and the Swift Boat ads were out there for weeks before the paper wrote a word about them, apparently because it wasawaiting instructions from the Kerry campaign about what to respond.  The Times finally printed a front page story presenting the Kerry campaign response, but omitting a full explanation of what the controversy was about it must have been very baffling for many readers.  In any event, Baquet appears to have fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Strangely enough, during the 2004 campaign there was an incident that really was what Democrats call Swifboating; the attempted smear of George W Bush by 60 Minutes and Dan Rather over his service in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG) during the Vietnam War.  You want to know how bad TANG was?  Let's do a thought experiment.

Brett Hume at Fox News reports a story a few weeks before the 2004 election, claiming John Kerry got his Vietnam War medals under false pretenses as a way to get sent home early from the war and avoid further combat because he was a coward.

Hume's main source for the story is a Republican politician in Massachusetts who is also a Vice-Chair for the Bush reelection committee, a fact not disclosed in the story.

The politician's daughter has denounced his story about Kerry as a lie, but this does not appear in the story.

No one who actually served with Kerry confirms the story.

Brett Hume's son has been working on fundraisers for the Republican party in Massachusetts.

The Fox News producer of the segment knows beforehand that the charges of cowardice were false and that Kerry volunteered to remain in Vietnam.

Before the segment aired, the Fox News producer calls the Bush campaign to give them a heads up that it would be running.

And, most importantly of all, it turns out the key document, supposedly created in 1973, is of doubtful provenance, with the person providing it to Fox giving three different stories of how he obtained it and then turns out it was created with the 2003 version of Microsoft Word!

Everything I've just outlined is accurate except for substituting Fox for CBS, Kerry for Bush, and changing the circumstances slightly to match Kerry's history.  How do you think the New York Times would have covered this story?   We would have never heard the end of it and TANGing would now be a common term for disreputable political smear campaigns.

I've come to expect "Bush lied" and accusations of "Swiftboating" from people who don't know much.  I didn't expect the editor of the New York Times would be one of them.  He seems like someone with very little intellectual curiosity.

ADDED: Baquet was to carry his conceit further when, after Donald Trump's election in 2016 he announced to readers of the Times that the paper would lie to them about the incoming President in order to topple him and reverse the results of the election.

ADDED:  And we have further evidence of the degradation of journalism with the recent announcement by the University of Texas School of Journalism that it had created the Dan Rather Awards for News and Guts in order to honor the newsman responsible for the 60 Minutes hoax regarding George W Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.

Chedworth Villa

 During the summer of 1978 I bicycled with two friends through England's West Country and wrote about some of that trip in Avebury Redux (which sets out the entire itinerary).  Prior to arriving in Avebury, we'd ridden through the lovely Cotwold Hills and outside Cirencester, stopped to see Chedworth Villa, a 4th century Roman villa that had been partially excavated.  

Recent excavations at Chedworth may lead to revisions of the accepted account of the end of Roman Britain.

The accepted account starts with the Roman invasion in 43 AD, at the time of the Emperor Claudius, with the area south of the current border with Scotland occupied by the 70s.  Over time, towns are rebuilt on the Roman model and the Roman lifestyle is adopted by the British tribal elite as well as retired soldiers from the three Legions stationed on the island.  

The island was generally prosperous and may have benefited during the 3rd century from an influx of wealthy landowners from Gaul, which suffered much from barbarian raids during that era.  Historians and archeologists believe the height of prosperity was reached during the first half of the 4th century with a remarkable flourishing of large villas, particularly in the West Country.  Over the past half century, investigations have revealed that Britain became so stable and prosperous that it's population was much higher than previously believed, possibly reaching well over 4 million in the 4th century, a figure not exceeded for the next 1,000 years of English history.

Various rebellions and increased raids from Scots via land and Irish and Germans by sea lead to a period of decline later in the 4th century.  As the rest of the Roman Empire came under increasing barbarian pressure, British garrisons were run down as troops were moved to the continent.  The last evidence we have of coinage being sent to pay the British garrison is in 402.  In 406 or 407, the increasing chaos led the British legions to proclaim one of their commanders as emperor and he took the name Constantine III.  He took most of the remaining garrison across the English Channel and into Gaul.  Initially he was successful, bringing barbarian incursions in Gaul under control and with the province of Spain endorsing his claim as emperor.  However, by 409 the situation had changed and Constantine was losing ground (he was to be murdered in 411).  That year or in the following year the Romano-British elite decided that rather than continue to pay taxes for dubious benefit they would expel the remaining Roman officials and govern themselves.

At that point, Britain falls out of documented history for some time, only emerging two centuries later in a grouping of kingdoms dominated by Anglo-Saxons.

Several things are thought to have happened during those first two or three decades of the 5th century.  

(1) Politically, the province broke up into many different areas, each ruled by local elites, with conflict beginning to erupt between them.

(2) With no new coinage coming in, and none being minted, it became harder to support mass production local industries such as pottery and tile manufacturers and the need for large scale skilled work forces declined.  Imports were also sharply reduced.  From being part of an integrated economy, connected with the Mediterranean world, Britain became an isolated outpost.

(3) Though decline had begun in the latter part of the 4th century, the process accelerated in the early 5th for Roman based town and villa life, with town populations diminishing and public systems like water supply and public buildings not being maintained, with villas either abandoned, or with sections abandoned and the remaining portions converted to cramped living quarters.

(4) Roman control of the provinces on the other side of the English Channel became shakier, virtually ceasing by the 430s, further reducing communication.

(5) Several of the new British statelets, particularly those bordering the North Sea, began recruiting German tribesmen as mercenaries to protect them from Irish, Scottish and other German incursions.

(6) Eventually the Germans revolted, killed many of the British and began seizing control of territory, slowly moving west until defeated in the late 5th century at Mount Badon by British forces led by Ambrosius Aurelianus, a descendant of Roman-British nobility.  Despite his Roman name, Aurelianus and others like him were more like warlords, leading warrior bands from their hillfort bastions.  After being stymied for several decades, a renewed German offensive brought the rest of England, excluding Wales and Cornwall, under control in the last quarter of the 6th century.

In recent decades evidence has been uncovered that the decline of post-Roman Britain may not have been as precipitous as previously thought, particularly away from the North Sea coast and Kent in the southeast.  Evidence of new building and water piping has been discovered in some towns.  There is still clear evidence of decline but many towns may have existed as recognizable entities well into the 5th century before finally succumbing. 

And that brings us back to Chedworth, one of the largest villas of the Romano-British period, with 35 rooms, located just a few miles from Cirencester, by the end of the 4th century the second-largest town, after London, in Britain.  Archaelogists have recently announced the dating of a new room and mosiac unearthed at the villa (shown in the photo at top).  The room was built no earlier than 424 with the mosiac installed later.  Though not of the same quality as 4th century mosiacs, it indicates the survival of enough of an industry to supply the tile and skilled designers and workmen to install, something not previously thought possible in the 2nd quarter of the 5th century.

(Rooms at Chedworth)

This article from The Guardian contains more details.

"What is so exciting about the dating of this mosaic at Chedworth is that it is evidence for a more gradual decline. The creation of a new room and the laying of a new floor suggests wealth, and a mosaic industry continuing 50 years later than had been expected."

Stephen Cosh, a Roman mosaic expert, said in a statement: "I am still reeling from the shock of this dating."

"There are very late Roman mosaics in the area for which archeology can only ever say they must be later than a particular date, without being able to say how much later," Cosh added.

"But none has ever been suspected to be this late. It will be important to research further sites in the region to see whether we can demonstrate a similar refurbishment at other villas which continued to be occupied in the 5th century. But there is no question that this find at Chedworth is of enormous significance -- it's tremendously exciting."

There have also been finds of fifth-sixth century pottery from Africa and Palestine among the ruins at Chedworth, which are strong indicators of sub-Roman high-status occupation at the time.  

These, and other recent discoveries, indicate that in the Cirencester region, Roman life may have continued for much longer than previously thought.  Though a Roman type life may have continued it would be fascinating to be able to explore the different mindsets; comparing the villa owner in 330, living in a world in which Rome's rule and the stability and the relative safety it afforded, would continue indefinitely, and one in which the owner could travel unimpeded within the Empire from Britain to Egypt, with that of the villa owner in 430, cut off from the continent, with relative safety confined to a small geographic area around Cirencester, with the only coins left circulating, minted more than a quarter century before, and harder each year to find the materials and skilled labor needed to maintain a Roman lifestyle.

 

(Reconstruction of the villa)

Everybody's Got The Rain

 The reckoning is beckoning

Rainy Day In June from 1966 by The Kinks

Are The Parties Over?

In the wake of the election, both parties face critical questions going forward.  Both are in disarray, both headed in potentially dangerous directions.  During the course of 2020 I have become increasingly pessimistic about the outcome, not just because of what is happening within the parties but because of larger trends in American society.  We cannot survive as a functioning society if the outcome of every national election becomes a potential extinction moment for one party or the other. We need two viable parties with supporters that agree to some common set of rules.  That no longer exists. What happens next?

The Democrats

For the Democrats, it can be summed up simply - will it revert to the party of traditional liberals and progressives, like former New York Times writer and editor, Bari Weiss, or will it become the party of the intolerant totalitarian-minded haters who work for the New York Times and drove Bari Weiss out?

I don't use the word "totalitarian" lightly, preferring in past posts to refer to "authoritarian" tendencies.  On reflection, watching what has happened over the past few months and better understanding the academic theories driving the Woke, I think totalitarian is the more accurate word.  It is a totalizing philosophy that considers the personal as political.  It reaches everything in life, including one's private thoughts.  They will come for your job, they will destroy your career, they will deny you educational opportunities.  Everything in your life is in play.  It is an unending version of the Salem Witch Trials. You can read my Your Future series for more on this philosophy.

They feel threatened as long as everyone in society is not in accord with their beliefs.  And eliminating that threat requires complete control of society.  It reminds me of the scene in Godfather II, when Michael Corleone responds to Tom Hagen’s question about why Michael needed to continue to kill people when he’d already won his gangland war, “I don’t feel I have to wipe everyone out, Tom. Just my enemies“.   And anyone who does not agree with them is an enemy to the Woke.

U.S. Grant's observation in his Memoirs of the cause of the Civil War also comes to mind:

Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves.  But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South . . .  

The encroachments Grant refers to are the Fugitive Slave Act and other intrusions into the life of the North that the Southern slave owners insisted upon because they felt threatened.  The Identitarian Philosophy bear similarities to the attitude of the Southern aristocracy in the 1850s, which felt threatened by anything going on elsewhere in the United States that could be seen as undermining the legitimacy of its ruling philosophy.

During the decades leading up to the Civil War, that aristocracy became more aggressive in demanding the demolition of opposition to its rule.  It demanded, and actually undertook, censorship of abolitionist literature being transported by the postal service.  For several years it imposed a gag rule on the House, forbidding discussion of any resolutions regarding slavery.  In 1857, the Supreme Court gave us the first "Living Constitution" opinion in Dred Scott, rewriting American history in light of current conditions in order to meet the modern needs of a 19th century America, potentially opening up the entire country to slavery.

And we hear echoes of John C Calhoun in the Woke.  They agree completely with Calhoun's reinterpretation of American history which insisted that blacks were excluded from the American compact (that was the point of the 1619 Project), and we see Calhoun's nullification theory in action today in Progressive sanctuary cities where violent illegal aliens are privileged over the life and safety of law abiding Americans, including legal immigrants.  Now that I think about it, we can see the evolution of Southern views on slavery from a regrettable situation which would end someday to Calhoun's formulation of slavery as a "positive good", reflected in the change in language around abortion from Bill Clinton's "safe, rare, and legal" to its celebration today as a positive good not subject to any restriction.

It's why the New York Times and other media now run pieces explaining why the First Amendment needs rethinking; it's why media and the social media companies now classify and censor as hate speech, any opinions that do not align completely with the Woke creed. 

Do I think most Democratic voters support this philosophy?  No. But the party activists, including those who will fill Biden administration positions, do.  More dangerous for our future is how the events of this year revealed how many of our institutions are under the control of those who subscribe to this quasi-religious creed - look at our universities, the infiltration of these concepts into the K-12 system, the media's overwhelming support, the high tech oligarchs and their employees, public employee unions (particularly SEIU and teacher's unions), major foundations, and many large corporations.

Do I think Joe Biden supports this philosophy?  No, because I don't think he is capable anymore of understanding what is going on.  He thinks when he speaks of "systemic racism" that he means "being against racism", but the people around him know better, and it is those people I am worried about.

Can old-fashioned liberals mount a successful counter-offensive against this pernicious development?  We need a Democratic Party that turns away from the suppression of dissent, so I hope so, but have my doubts.  I now read a long list of liberals/progressives who understand the danger of Woke philosophy - Wesley Yang, Asra Nomani, Claire Lehmann, Zaid Jilani, James Lindsay, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Andrew Sullivan, Seerut Chawla, Bari Weiss, Inaya Folarin Iman, Mike Nayna, Colin Wright, Heather Heying, Chloe Valdary, Helen Pluckrose, Debra Soh, Bo Winegard, Bret Weinstein, Jody Shaw - they are impassioned and eloquent, but lack political influence.  It will require a lot more liberals waking up to the danger, a danger that will swallow them, not just the Right, if it prevails.

The Republicans

Three questions:

Can the post-Trump GOP find a path that rejects the coming attempt by the Romney/Sasse/Bush Remnants to regain control while avoiding falling into the fever swamp of crazies?

Will Donald Trump allow the growth of a non-Trump GOP which can tread that path?

Is there a candidate who can retain Trump's appeal to new voters and bring back some of the suburban voters alienated by Trump's personality and antics?

Unless the answer is yes to all, the GOP will have trouble sustaining its national viability.

The repulsive, impulsive, chaotic traits of Donald Trump contributed to his defeat.  But he also realigned the GOP and began creating a new coalition, drawing more than 10 million new voters in this election - more working class, more Hispanic, and with a start on adding black support.

The pre-Trump GOP of chamber of commerce friendliness, always scouting for foreign interventions to Make America Great Again, pretending to care about controlling immigration, afraid of taking on the underlying cultural issues, and running for the hills anytime it is accused of racism, is dead and any attempt to revive it will rip apart the party.  

Donald Trump's time is over.  The question is whether he recognizes it.  Does he want to run again? He will be closer to 79 than 78 on inauguration day in 2025.  I don't think he will wear well with the greater public.  He'll be tweeting and holding rallies and looking even crazier than before because he will not have any positive accomplishments to point to over the next four years to offset the nuttiness.  It would be a disaster if he runs in 2024.

Unfortunately, he retains a large personal following and will be influential if he chooses to be so, I fear a temptation too hard for him to resist.  Even if he ends up not running in 2024 but manages to smother the emergent of any potential successor more palatable to a larger part of the electorate it is a big problem for the future of the GOP and, worse case, it could tear the party apart if he remains a prominent figure.

And this is what I mean by the crazies:

Lin Wood

@LLinWood

CCP & 1000’s of US citizens worked together to try to steal 2020 election at top of ticket & selected down ballot races. Serbia, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba, CIA, George Soros, Bill Gates, Biden, Clinton Foundation & many national state & local officials from both parties involved.

A new and successful GOP will need to look closer to Trump on substance than to the old GOP.  It will be non-interventionist (and when action is needed it will be quick, overwhelming and decisive as with the Iranian Soleimani), engaged with the world but not subservient to international institutions, smart about taking on China from the perspective of protecting American security and jobs, less focused on tax rates for the wealthy but willing to take on the bureaucratic regulatory state, serious about border security and immigration policy, and willing to forcefully take on the educational, media, corporate and tech establishments, and confront those attempting to reracialize American society.  Can it be done?  Theoretically yes, but as a practical matter it will be difficult.  It will require politicians savvy enough to put a coalition together and smart enough to avoid the personal pitfalls associated with Trump.

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Looming behind all this is a fiscal crisis for the country somewhere down the road.  Our federal spending habits will prove unsustainable at some point.  The Democrats haven't cared and Trump's presidency allowed the GOP to stop pretending it cared.  It's like how the Democrats pretended to care about illegal immigration until they thought it politically safe to endorse open borders.  There is no visible solution since no one in national politics is serious about it so best not to think about the problem.

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There are some glimmers of hope, amidst the ruin.  I mentioned that I do not think the majority of Democratic voters, unlike party leadership and activists, support the Woke.  We got some evidence in California last month.  Californians gave nearly 2/3 of their votes to Biden, who carried the state by five million votes.  At the same time, they decisively defeated a ballot proposition proposed by the Democratic Party, and backed by public employee unions and tech oligarchs who outspent opponents 17-1, which would have eliminated the anti-discrimination provision of the California constitution.  The votes of Asians and Hispanics were key to defeating the proposition.  This was a direct rejection of the Woke attempt to re-racialize America.

Another ray of hope is how Democrats and the media have chosen to attack the Trump administration's actions to forbid training using race and sex stereotypes and scapegoating in the federal government and by government contractors and grantees.  Democrats and their media allies have deliberately and repeatedly lied in describing these actions as banning diversity training.  As explained in a prior post, Trump's order states it:

 . . .  does not prevent agencies, the United States Uniformed Services, or contractors from promoting racial, cultural, or ethnic diversity or inclusiveness

Democrats and media are lying in their description because they are aware that most Americans, across the political spectrum, would agree that Trump's action banning training based on racial hatred, stereotypes and designed to be divisive, is justified.  They would find it shocking that such actions are needed 56 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

As to the Republicans, ask me in the middle of 2021, because it will take a few months before we get a glimpse as to whether the party can avoid the multiple pitfalls in its path, but the events of the past few weeks are not a good omen.

One further reflection helps me battle my increasing pessimism.  Growing up during the Cold War for the first 40 years of my life hovering in the background was the possibility of a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.  It was very difficult to see a path that could resolve matters short of ultimately some type of major conflict, whether planned or inadvertent.  I think anyone predicting in 1980 the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later would have been thought out of their minds.  Yet it happened to the surprise of most of us.  A reminder of the limits of our ability to predict the future and the contingent factor of unexpected events and singular personalities.

Conspiracy Theories 2

Now that the Supreme Court has properly refused to hear the Texas case, the Electoral College can proceed to do its work tomorrow.  Joe Biden will be the next President.  Those filing the Texas case knew it would not succeed.  The AG of Texas is under investigation and was doing what he could to divert attention from that scandal (even the state's Solicitor General declined to sign on to the lawsuit).  The other state AGs who signed on knew it was a loser but did so to position themselves with Trump supporters for their political futures.  And the President liked it because it helps him build the "stab in the back" narrative he's going to use once he's out of office.

The web of the supposed conspiracy built around Dominion software and inane statistical analysis along with the repeated use of false facts finally fell of its own weight as a legal matter, though it is now gospel for the President and at least some of his followers.

In an election so close - if 22,000 voters in AZ, GA and WI had voted for Trump instead of Biden, we would have a tie in the Electoral College; if 38,000 in those three states plus Nevada had voted differently, Trump would have won the Electoral College vote - is it possible that enough fraud may have occurred to tip the balance?  Yes, it is possible, though I don't think likely, but that possibility was buried under an avalanche of malpractice and outright crap from the Trump legal team and its supporters, and the President's encouragement of this insanity via his twitter account demonstrates it is time for him to go.

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Having said the above, I am reprinting, with some edits and additions, part of my November 23 post on Conspiracy Theories.  We should each use our independent judgement in assessing the validity of claims regarding election tampering.  We should not take at face value the crap from the President and his team.  And speaking of crap, the Democratic Party and its media allies have lost any credibility when it comes to commenting on Trump's efforts.  You simply cannot believe what they say.

Regarding the current electoral dispute, particularly that of manipulation of the voting systems, there is an aspect that explains, though it does not excuse, some of the current belief of Trump supporters in such a conspiracy; the Russia collusion hoax and the entire way the Democratic Party and its media allies have destroyed norms over the past four years.

As I've written, when the issue of possible collusion between the Trump campaign, or Trump himself, with the Russians was raised in late 2016 and early 2017 I thought there might be something to it.  Over the next four years I read more than 10,000 pages of original source documents, not relying upon being told by others what they said.

If you had told me in January 2017 the Clinton campaign had taken Russian disinformation regarding Trump, disseminated it to the media in an attempt to influence the election, and gone to the FBI in order to prompt it to obtain a warrant to spy on their opponent's campaign, I would not have believed it.

If you had told me in February 2017 that once Clinton unexpectedly lost the election, the Democratic party, federal bureaucrats (including the Director of the FBI deliberately lying to the President) and their allies in the media, would convert the campaign actions into a conspiracy to unseat the new President and, failing that to create an ongoing investigation designed to hamstring the administration, provide a continued series of media leaks, attempt to trap the President into an obstruction of justice charge, and damaging the President in the 2018 mid-terms, I would not have believed it.

But, in fact, that is what happened.  We had an unprecedented conspiracy at the highest levels of government.  The greatest scandal in American political history.  And it worked.  A November 2018 Economist/YouGov poll found that 63% of Democrats believed the Russians directly hacked the voting results in 2016, a conspiracy theory for which there is absolutely no evidence. The Democrats rode this to regaining the House in 2018 and the Mueller investigation would still be ongoing if Bill Barr had not finally stepped in to call a halt to the farce.

Moreover, those who believe Trump is the victim of an electoral conspiracy need merely look at Democrats and their media allies who for four years have denounced Trump as a Hitler-like figure who is destroying democracy and taking America down the road to fascism.  If they really felt that way, why wouldn't they feel justified in engaging in some election fiddling to stop him?  You'd do anything you could to stop Hitler, wouldn't you?

And once he took office, Democrats refused to recognize the legitimacy of the election.  Editors of major publications like the New York Times and New Yorker announced they would lie about the President because they would refuse to "normalize" him - a vow they more than fulfilled over the last four years (for two examples of what the Times is willing to normalize read this and this).  In the Senate, Democrats obstructed presidential nominees to an unprecedented extent, simply because they were nominees of Donald Trump.

And while they railed against Trump lies, most of his typical idiotic puffery variety, they had no compunction about repeatedly lying themselves (read, for example, Rushmore and Good People on Both Sides).  In a column in the pages of the Wall St Journal in May 2019 Holman Jenkins accurately described what has transpired:

Mr Trump is said to upset the norms of our political life, but how exactly?  By lying? By engaging in demagoguery?  By making absurd claims?  His real trick has been to be a one-man satire of our politics.  And so far he has yet to find an opponent or critic - whether Mr Biden, or Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney - who doesn't prove his point.

To show what a liar he is, his enemies entangle themselves in lies.  Democrats have turned themselves into a party of Adam Schiffs, who, whatever his previous virtues, now is wholly defined by his promotion of the collusion canard.  It's an amazing psychological feat to squander their advantage over Mr Trump in this way.

Ditto the media.  In their eagerness to traffic in falsehoods about Mr Trump, his media critics lend him strength.  We face the weird prospect now of a world-class scandal involving the FBI and the intelligence community being aired even while much of the press is committed to being part of the coverup.

And lest we forget - what about the U.S. Postal Service conspiracy that made headlines for weeks late this summer and early fall?  A story with no substance became the hook for a Democratic conspiracy theory about Trump stealing the election.

As for accepting the result of the 2020 election, pray tell me - what did the storeowners who boarded up their properties in Washington, Manhattan, Boston and other cities just prior to the election, anticipate?  Enraged Republicans storming the streets, wreaking havoc?  No, they knew from this summer's experience, it would be the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party taking to the streets if Biden lost and they also knew that the Democratic politicians who rule those cities would allow it to happen just as they had during the summer.  It is impossible to overstate the impact of what happened in American cities this summer in terms of destroying norms.  We've had riots before.  The difference in 2020 was Progressive mayors in city after city standing aside, and often encouraging, while party supporters destroyed property and business and, since then violent crime has surged (and who knew that cities governed for decades by Progressives were such hellholes of racism?).  For the first time, Americans of all races understood that we are dependent on the whim of Progressives as to whether we would actually be protected against criminal elements.  We have entered a new world.

And speaking of what happened this summer, isn't the Black Lives Matter movement and Critical Race Theory one huge conspiracy theory?  Imagine, all the "evil" in the Western World attributable to, and explainable by, a single factor; a giant conspiracy to maintain white supremacy - the one thing that explains all.  And, if you deny it, it just proves you are part of the conspiracy.  It comes along with a full set of false narratives - Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Omar Mateen, disproportionate and exaggerated numbers of unarmed blacks killed by police - the list goes on and on.  This is classic conspiracy thinking in the guise of social justice and academic theory - more interested in authoritarian social transformation than in trying to solve some of the legitimate problems facing America regarding race.

Remember when before the election any claims about links between Hunter Biden, his father, and foreign powers was denounced as a Trumpian conspiracy, which most media refused to report on and saw Twitter actually shut down the feed of the New York Post which reported on the story?  Now that we know that the New York Post was correct and there is a DOJ investigation of Hunter it is evident there was a conspiracy - a conspiracy not to report legitimate stories if they undermined the anti-Trump narrative.

So while the Dominion voting machine conspiracy theory and other nonsense should be denounced and Trump needs to accept his defeat, we are not going to sit quietly and listen to lectures from Democrats and the media about "norms" and "conspiracies" when they've been complicit for four years in smashing norms, encouraging the conspiratorial fantasies of their followers, have yet to acknowledge their own shoddy behavior (indeed, they still mock those who say it is a hoax), lost the last shreds of their integrity, and making their own towering contribution to the destruction of trust in American institutions.

We are all slowly going crazy (well, some more quickly than others) and unless we find a way to halt this spiral the outlook is grim.