Ukraine Blues

I've no useful thoughts about what to do regarding Ukraine and Russia (as of this moment it looks like the Russian attack has started).  It's a terrible situation but as to how to respond I'm not sure.  While I've long been in favor of the U.S. and our European allies stating that Ukraine will not be offered membership in NATO, Putin's recent statements make clear what was already obvious to anyone paying attention over the past decade, NATO was never really the issue; Putin views Ukraine as an illegitimate state that should rightfully be part of Russia and NATO's actions merely provided a handy argument for mobilizing Russian public opinion.  

Like Russia, Ukraine is an incredibly corrupt state where the prospect of lucrative contracts drawn in and entangled a long series of Republican and Democratic consultants in its scandals (see, for instance, Paul Manafort and Hunter Biden).  It's a mess.  Putin's actions are outrageous but we and the Europeans are not going to go to war over it.  Ideally, the European countries would get serious in investing in their own defense (some Eastern Europeans countries like Poland are already doing so but, then again, the EU bureaucrats hate Poland) and be prepared for the future, while we concentrate on China, but I have serious doubts that scenario will happen.  This is no longer the unipolar world of the 1990s.  We can't be, and should not be, everywhere - even in the unipolar world we overestimated our ability to impact others; today our capabilities are much more constrained.  The world has changed, and so have we.  If we don't care about our own borders, why should we care about other borders?

What I do want to spend some time on is addressing the reemergence of the predictable media narrative about Donald Trump versus his predecessor and successor.  Some examples:

This column from Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post titled, "With Biden Standing Firm, Putin Must Wonder: Where's Trump When I Need Him?" 

And this gem from John Harwood:

as a top WH nat-sec aide, Fiona Hill watched President Trump weaken NATO, squeeze Ukraine, cozy up to Putin

from outside govt, she has advised President Biden as he leads NATO to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression

"couldn't get a sharper contrast"https://t.co/v9rUb717R9

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) February 20, 2022

A recurring theme on my posts regarding Trump is the disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions.  Disconnects in political rhetoric are not uncommon, but it is the nature of Trump's disconnect that contributed to his Russia problem and his larger political shortcomings.  As is often the case with Trump, he is his own worst enemy, providing his opponents with their best ammunition. His reckless, careless and off the cuff patterns of speech are, I think, reflective of his actual thoughts, but since those thoughts are chaotic, unstructured, improvised, and impulsive, it's just part of the whole package of Trump.

In the case of Russia, Trump made repeated terrible statements during the campaign of 2016, including expressing moral equivalency between Russia and the U.S., statements that if made by President Obama would have sparked outrage by Trump supporters.  Unfortunately, it didn't end with the campaign; in 2017 he made embarrassing comments to the Russian Ambassador about firing Comey to help his relationship with Russia, in 2018 his disastrous remarks at the Helsinki Summit with Putin prompted me to write that Trump acts like a star-struck teenage girl around Putin, and, in 2019, getting on the phone to Vlad to gloat over the collapse of the Mueller Report.  Trump's own statements are why I gave initial credence to the possibility of the Russia collusion allegations being true.

Trump's pattern followed in many other areas, making it easier to, for instance, accuse him of authoritarianism.  It deserves mentioning that Trump's intuitive instincts are what enabled him to survive much of this. On many issues he had the ability to be able to express sentiments broadly reflective of public opinion on issues like immigration and foreign policy though he was unable to formulate or implement solutions on a sustained basis.  As I learned in my business career, there is an enormous difference between expressing generalized goals or actions and actually having a plan to carry it out. In 2018 or 2019 I saw Tucker Carlson interviewed on C-Span (I've never seen his Fox show having not watched any cable or network news show in at least a decade) who captured it best - he praised Trump's ability to raise questions on important issues that conventional D and R avoided confronting directly, but pointed out Trump was not capable of solving those issues because of his disinterest in the details of government, ignorance, and laziness.  But, at least he had the instincts; his unscripted talk was often a word salad but one from which, if you read a transcript, you could extract the underlying meaning.  In contrast, Kamala Harris also produces word salads, but they are empty of underlying meaning so have no nutritional value.

And, as we saw repeatedly, the problem was not just Trump's rhetoric when it came to Russia; it was the also the opposition's strategy of inventing stories to meet the needs of its narrative.  One of the stories that emerged during the 2016 campaign was Trump's supposed intervention during the GOP convention to weaken the proposed platform statement on Ukraine because of his sympathy for Russia, a story that got wide play in the press.  I took it to be true because it was consistent with Trump's statements at the time.  When the Steele Dossier became public in early 2017 it contained an allegation that Paul Manafort, working with the Russians, had influenced the GOP platform on Ukraine via his contact Carter Page who had directly effected the change at the convention.

The truth, when it finally emerged with the release of the four FISA warrant applications on Page and the report of the Department of Justice Inspector General on said warrants, was quite different.  The Steele Dossier allegations regarding the platform were included as justification for the warrant and these allegations were certified as being reliable and accurate by a number of senior FBI and DOJ officials, including James Comey.  The warrant applications referenced as supporting material the news media stories about the weakening of the GOP platform.

However, as the IG report revealed, the FBI was never able to corroborate the platform allegations (indeed there is no evidence Page ever met Manafort or that he had any involvement in the platform), and that the news stories about it were planted by the Clinton campaign, based upon the Steele Dossier which it had paid for, so the FBI used media stories based on the Dossier to validate the accuracy of the Dossier!

Because its remit did not extend to examining the underlying truth of the assertion that the GOP platform had been weakened, regardless of how it occurred, the IG report went no further.  However, I did, as reported in The DC Bubble & The FBI, looking at both the details of how the GOP platform on Ukraine was changed and comparing it with the 2016 Democratic party platform.  It turns out the original GOP platform was stronger than the Democratic platform and the changes strengthened it further.  The entire story was a lie, propagated by the Clinton campaign and its media allies.

The Actions

Let's look at what the Trump administration actually did starting with an excerpt from my 2018 post on the Helsinki summit:

Last year Walter Russell Mead, writing in The American Interest, had an interesting take on Trump's policy towards Russia.  Mead is a mainstream foreign policy expert, who seems to be an old-style liberal.  I have no idea who he supported in the 2016 election.  Mead pointed out:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

• Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
• Blocking oil and gas pipelines
• Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
• Cutting U.S. military spending
• Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran

He then goes on to note that while these were President Obama's actual policies, Trump was doing the opposite in each area.

You'll note that the Biden Administration has renewed the Obama policies as to four of the five items listed above (the exception is military spending).  In the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference with American elections released in January 2017, the appendix includes an explicit finding that the Kremlin supported the anti-fracking movement in the U.S. for the purposes of damaging energy development in this country.

And what else was the administration up to?  As I noted in that 2018 post:

. . . the United States has just entered into an unprecedented joint security arrangement with Sweden and Finland designed to address the Russian threat.  The President just caused a storm of controversy by accusing Germany of becoming too economically dependent upon Russian natural gas and has been demanding our NATO allies increase defense spending.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a Trump appointee, gave a speech at the Hudson Institute in which he said cyberthreats were our #1 security risk, and that the threat came from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, calling Russia as "no question . . . the most aggressive".

Here are some other actions during the Trump administration:

In 2017 authorized the sale of anti-tank weapons to the Ukraine, which the Obama administration declined to do.  This news article describes the action as "likely to become another sore point between Washington and Moscow".

Strongly supported the Three Seas Initiative by twelve EU nations in Eastern Europe to cooperate on infrastructure initiatives, designed in part to reduce dependence on Russian energy resources, including building liquefied natural gas terminals in Poland and Croatia. 

Withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty because of Russian refusal to address its continued violation of the treaty.

Opposing the Nordstream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany.

On July 6, 2017, President Trump gave a speech in Warsaw, where the Polish government is strongly anti-Russian.  Excerpts:

We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.

Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to defend ourselves and our societies.

To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would point out that the United States has demonstrated not merely with words but with its actions that we stand firmly behind Article 5, the mutual defense commitment.

Words are easy, but actions are what matters. And for its own protection — and you know this, everybody knows this, everybody has to know this — Europe must do more. Europe must demonstrate that it believes in its future by investing its money to secure that future.

That is why we applaud Poland for its decision to move forward this week on acquiring from the United States the battle-tested Patriot air and missile defense system -- the best anywhere in the world. (Applause.) That is also why we salute the Polish people for being one of the NATO countries that has actually achieved the benchmark for investment in our common defense.

Trump's reference to "our tough stance" is with regards to his insistent that NATO nations live up to their treaty commitments regarding defense spending, which they had failed to do, instead relying on continued American military support.  Thanks to Trump's tough stance, many of the NATO countries have increased defense spending.

 To what extent can all these actions be directly attributable to Trump?  Did he ever have an overall strategic plan on relations with Russia?  How much occurred without his knowledge?  How much took place where he "knew" but did not understand?  I have no idea, but it did occur during his administration.   At the same time action cannot be completely separated from rhetoric.  Trump bears responsibility for both.  That his rhetoric undercut his actions and the perception of those actions is Trump's fault.

There is another element that may have influenced Putin's relatively restrained behavior during the Trump administration and which is directly attributable to Donald Trump -  his unpredictability, however "nice" his rhetoric may have been towards Putin.

In December 2016 I attended a talk at Yale by Gleb Pavlovskiy, a supporter of Putin who had worked with him until 2011, when he became an opponent of the regime.  In the course of his talk he was asked about the prospects of American-Russian relations with the newly elected president:

His views on Trump were mixed.  He started off by saying:

"For the first time Russia has received a worthy partner - almost as unpredictable as we are"

Later, he referred to Putin now having "a strong sparring partner".  He felt the way Trump had wrong-footed his opponents along the way to victory was very much like Putin's style; splitting your opponents but keeping together your supporters.  On the one hand, with Trump in office there was an opportunity for "a new strategic dialogue" and "reduction in tensions", but on the other, the very unpredictability of Putin and Trump made it difficult to forecast any specifics.  He did emphasize the Trump is playing a much stronger hand than Putin.  Overall, I took from the discussion that he thinks Trump may be as big an improviser as Putin.

There are two specific instances of Trump unpredictably which may have given Putin pause.  The first was in February 2018 when a large force of Russian mercenaries and allies were spotted heading towards U.S. military positions in Syria.  After failing to heed warnings to halt, our forces attacked, killing 90 Russian citizens and about a hundred of their allies, with the Americans incurring no casualties. 

The second occurred on January 3, 2020 when Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, following an attack on the American embassy in Baghdad by Iranian backed militia.  It was widely reported that presented with a set of response options, Trump picked the most extreme one - killing Soleimani.  The reporting also stated that those presenting the options did not expect Trump to select that option.  And despite widespread media predictions, the action led to no large scale response by Iran.

In summary, while it is possible to confuse correlation with causation let's set forth the basic chronology of Putin's foreign adventures:

2008 (Bush) - Invasion of Georgia

2014 (Obama) - Invasion of Crimea, intervention in Donbass region of Ukraine

2015 (Obama) - Intervention in Syria

2022 (Biden) - Ukraine Crisis

Before And After

I've written of the Obama administration interaction with Russia here.

As for Biden, he has followed the opposite course of Trump; very tough rhetorically, much softer actions.

Announced we would extend the INF despite Putin's failure to address violations.

Refused, until recently, to continue providing lethal military aid to the Ukraine.

Labeling Poland a "rising totalitarian" regime, grouping it with a real totalitarian regime, Putin's ally, Belarus.

Refused to impose sanctions regarding Nordstream 2, going so far as to support Senate Democrats in using what the Democrats had been telling us was the "Jim Crow" filibuster to stop a GOP sponsored resolution.

Curtailing American energy development.

Negotiating a renewed nuclear deal with Russia's ally, Iran.  For my critique of the original deal go here (I've actually read the JCPOA, unlike most commentators).

I can't resist adding that during the Obama administration, Joe Biden was the point man on American support for Russia's successful application to join the WTO. 

Like I said at the start, I have no idea of the best course of action regarding Ukraine.  However, the criticism of Trump reveals people in the media and elsewhere who just repeat the same lines to each other over and over again and then believe them, nodding knowingly to each other, because that is all they hear.  For more on how this works read Inventing Stories.

I don't want Trump back as president and will oppose him, but the reality is the opposition has nothing better on offer.  The vapidity of the Washington crowd is remarkable.  The failure to ever re-examine their basic assumptions is appalling.  Does anyone really have confidence in Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Wendy Sullivan when it comes to foreign policy, when all they can do is just keep repeating the conventional wisdom as if it were a chant?

In all his shallowness, Donald Trump revealed the hollowness of the Washington crowd in both parties.  The reality is there are no adults in the room at this point, whether D or R, even as they point fingers at each other about what is unfolding.

UPDATE:  As of last night, debates over the relative responsibilities of American presidents since 1991, European actions, and Putin motivations are now just a matter for historians.  The question now is what is to be done given the circumstances we face now?

The choices we and others now face, along with others I anticipate coming over the next few years, will require decisions with full acknowledgement that the consequences cannot be predicted as discussed in Mastering the Tides of the World.

Chaos Under Heaven

Josh Rogin (1) is a foreign policy opinion writer for the Washington Post, a self-declared "agnostic Democrat" and a China hawk.  We listened to Bari Weiss interview Rogin on her podcast and which got me intrigued enough to read Chaos Under Heaven, his book on U.S.-China relations during the Trump administration, a book I recommend to others.

Rogin's starting point is that the China regime is a threat to the U.S., a threat that has greatly accelerated under Xi Jingping, and a threat that has compromised many U.S. institutions and public figures.  The author puts it this way:

Virtually everyone I interviewed for this book had an awakening story; a moment in their personal or professional lives when they realized that the grand strategic competition between the United States and China was the most important foreign policy issue in the world and the most important project they would work on in their lifetime.  Many also said this was an awakening to the aggressive and malign character, behavior, and strategy of China's leadership: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a hundred-year old revolutionary organization that is determined to expand its influence and increase its power, and which has few limits to the methods it will use to advance its own interests.

Put simply, a China that is militarily expansionist, economically aggressive, internally repressive, and increasingly interfering in democratic societies poses enormous challenges for the United States along with all of our allies, friends and partners.  The effects are already seen in our national security, our investments, our industries, our schools, our media, and even our elections.

. . . Washington had lost the bet it made twenty years ago, when it had granted China permanent normal trade relations in the hope that helping China expand economically would cause it to liberalize politically and that would lead to peaceful coexistence.

I largely agree with this assessment though it was not my view twenty years ago.

The author views the Obama administration as being "played" by China into viewing the relationship being between competitors with room for cooperation while, in reality, China is inherently hostile to the U.S. 

We saw this play out in the relative evaluation of Russia v China between the Obama and Trump administrations.  The incoming National Security Advisor for Trump, Michael Flynn (2), thought China a bigger threat than Russia; the Obama administration thought the opposite.  In her House Intelligence Committee testimony of September 8, 2017 Susan Rice, Obama's NSA, complained about her meeting with Flynn:

"We spent a lot more time talking about China in part because General Flynn's focus was on China as our principal overarching adversary. He had many questions and concerns about China. And when I elicited - sought to elicit his perspective on Russia, he was quite, I started to say dismissive, but that may be an overstatement. He downplayed his assessment of Russia as a threat to the United States. He called it overblown. He said they're a declining power, they're demographically challenged, they're not really much of a threat, and then reemphasized the importance of China." (pp.46-47)

I suppose Rice thought, particularly in the context of 2017, that her anecdote was clever.  It doesn't look that way now.

After that setup we move quickly to the Trump administration.  Early on, Rogin writes of his invitation to join meetings of mid-level bureaucrats trying get the administration to take a tough line on China, with Josh acknowledging both his sympathy toward them and his access being based on his willingness to write in support of their desired policies.

I'd summarize his take on the Trump administration as making some of the right steps to reverse the course set by the Bush and Obama administrations but beset by flawed implementation due to the erratic nature of Donald Trump and his inability or unwillingness to spend the time needed to understand the details of the relationship between the two countries, though the president's instincts seemed supportive of the hard liners, as well as unresolved conflicts between those in his administration promoting a much harder approach and those, primarily linked with Wall Street, who favored a more accommodating stance.  The hardest of the hardliners were people like Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn who, according to Rogin, were willing to blow up the entire relationship while another group centered around Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Matt Pottinger and Robert O'Brien in promoting a more aggressive approach towards resetting the relationship.  The Wall Street crowd was lead by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, a 25-year Goldman Sachs executive who headed Trump's National Economic Council for two years, Larry Kudlow, and other friends of Trump from the Street like Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman who were outside the administration but had the President's ear at times. (3)

Rogin describes the policy arguments and political infighting all under the eye of the unpredictable and erratic President.  Given Rogin's personal policy preferences and the nature of this type of reporting generally I can't say whether he gets it all accurately portrayed in every detail but given the personalities involved and what I saw of the administration's actions his overall picture rings true to me.

The book reaches its climax with the Covid-19 pandemic, for which Rogin condemns the China government's obfuscation and obstruction during the initial phases of the outbreak and then in preventing an investigation of the causes (Rogin thinks a lab leak is the most likely source).  

Rogin reports that during the early phase (January-February) China and the U.S. tried to cooperate but he relates a February 6 call between Xi and Trump that is startling.  According to Rogin, in that call Xi "asked Trump not to take any more excessive actions that would create further panic".  He "also told Trump that China had the coronavirus outbreak under control, that the virus was not a threat to the outside world, and that it was sensitive to the temperature and therefore would likely go way when the weather got warmer".  Four days later, at a White House meeting with state governors, Trump said, "Now, the virus that we're talking about having to do - you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat - as the heat comes in", without revealing that "a lot of people" meant Xi.

At the same time the administration was being very careful in its public statements because in private discussions China diplomats were threatening the halt of exports of badly needed medical supplies if the U.S. said the wrong things.

Finally becoming aware that he was being misled by Xi, on March 18 President Trump referred to Covid-19 as "the Chinese virus", although it was only in mid-April that administration officials first stated publicly that a leak from the Wuhan lab was a possible origin of the pandemic (statements triggered by a April 14 column in the Washington Post by Rogin based upon his obtaining a document leaked from his government sources).(4)

It remains unclear to me what the Biden administration posture on China is.  In fact, it may be unclear to the participants.

What is the nature of the threat?

I spent a lot of time in China between 2000 and 2011.  At the start I was cautiously optimistic, but by the end of the decade my views were changing.  And since the ascension of Xi Jinping it has become evident that rather than China becoming part of the existing world economic system it is seeking to reshape that system to both protect the role of the Chinese Communist Party and to dominate that system.  The levers it controls are much broader and more effective than the Soviet Union, which was a military power but an economic and technological pygmy.  

The intertwining of China with the global economy has enabled China to make global companies advocates for its policies, continually promoting even deeper economic ties.  This was a phenomenon I recognized during the decade I spent involved with that country.  My responsibility was running global environment and safety programs that were consistently applied no matter where we operated.  In that role, I was increasingly interacting with social responsibility "stakeholders".(5)  In our meetings they seemed to believe that multinational companies would be able to influence China government policies on environment and safety.  After a few years on the ground in China, my view was the opposite.  I knew that any global company would, if China said "jump", ask "how high?".  These NGO stakeholders had the power equation reversed.  It remains true.  American and European companies fear the China government much more than that of the United States.  They've been converted into lobbyists for China.

It is difficult enough for manufacturing companies to disentangle from complex global supply chains centered on China, even if they want to, but the American financial services sector is engaged in active collaboration with the regime (as for the tech sector, see this recent article on Apple's arrangement with China that allows it to continue to do business there). Americans investing their savings and retirement accounts into managed plans are often investing in China companies whether they know it or not.  Virtually every large American bank and financial services company is strongly linked to China or working to improve those links.  And they know who calls the shots.  Recently, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, quickly apologized for making a joke that offended the Chinese Communist Party, something he would never do in similar circumstances in the United States.

Just as in the Trump administration, the Wall Street crowd wields power in the Biden administration.  In the case of Biden, while Goldman Sachs plays a role, as it does in all administrations, it is BlackRock execs who are most closely tied to both the administration and China.  BlackRock, the largest money manager in the world with $7.8 trillion under management, was recently approved as the first foreign-owned company to operate a wholly-owned business in China's mutual fund industry, a move that drew criticism from George Soros who called it a "tragic mistake" that would "damage the national security interests of the U.S. and other democracies".  Brian Deese of BlackRock (I worked with his mother many years ago) runs the National Economic Council and Adewale Adeyemo is #2 at the Treasury Department.  The White House Office of Presidential Personnel, which manages all political appointments for the administration, is run by Catherine Russell.  From 2009-13, Russell was Chief of Staff to the Second Lady, Jill Biden, and began working as a staffer for Joe Biden in 1987.  Russell is married to Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor to President Obama from 2010 to 2013 and currently Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the firm's global think tank.  Donilon's brother Mike is a Senior Advisor to President Biden.

The issues around disentangling ourselves from China are complex.  I don't understand all of them, nor their implications.  I hope someone does.  Just as we have levers with China, China has levers with us.  I do know the failure to take control of our own actions will just result in a deeper dependence on China.  Here is one example.  If the U.S. were to try to greatly expand its development of solar and wind power and the use of batteries, technologies requiring enormous quantities of metals and rare earths, it will face a choice.  Either expand domestic mining and milling operations or become dependent upon China, particularly for rare earths, letting that country determine our future.

For further reading on China:

Balding's World

Tanner Greer 

Michael Pettis 

Henry Gao

China - U.S. Relations in the Eyes of the Chinese Communist Party 

Groping the Elephant of Common Prosperity 

The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning 

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(1)  Let's get this out of the way right now.  I'm continually getting confused between Josh Rogin, Seth Rogen, and Joe Rogan.  They need to caucus and decide who has to change their name.  Please guys, do this for me.

(2)  Yes, I know, he's nuts.  How much of that was always there and how much induced by the Mueller gang's persecution which broke him financially and apparently emotionally, I can't tell.  But he was correct in his relative assessment of Russia and China.

(3) Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump make only passing appearances in the book but my sense is that their views were probably closer to the Wall Street crowd.  One can only imagine what a real press would make of Hunter Biden's China connections.

(4) The chronology also undermines the retroactive attempt to pin discussions of the lab leak theory on Trump's "xenophobia".  We now know that on January 31, 2020 virologists were communicating among themselves, and with Dr Anthony Fauci, that a lab origin was possible.  After Fauci arranged a conference call (the details of which remain unknown) a couple of days later, the same scientists, on February 4, completely ruled out a lab origin and then began the media campaign denouncing anyone believing such a release was a possibility as a conspiracy theorist and racist.  With the revelations of NIAID's relationship with the EcoHealth Alliance it is evident that the conspiracy and racist charges were deliberately made to divert attention from the connections between the Alliance, Fauci and the Wuhan lab.  All of this happened before references by Trump to the Wuhan or China virus.

The technique of accusing anyone critical of the Chinese government as being racist is not limited to this circumstance, and it is one China is well aware of and uses in its own propaganda.  For a recent example see this op-ed by Michele Bethel in the Wall St Journal.  Bethel's stepfather founded MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research in 2000 and Michele had been a Board member for the past seven years, lived in Shanghai for several years and speaks Chinese.  Ms Bethel became concerned that the Institute's work with Chinese institutions could "unwittingly . . . be aiding the country’s repressive security apparatus or its military, whose officers have published articles declaring biology a new domain of warfare."

According to Ms Bethel,

When I first aired these concerns a few years ago, other board members took offense. One said that any serious inquiry into the ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party would be “racist.” A key member of the institute asked me to “stick to science” and not to mention China again.

On reading the Reuters article last month I raised my concerns again. Board members again dismissed the issues I cited, saying scientific progress is paramount. One characterized my motives as “political”—a head-scratcher, given that I don’t wear my centrist political views on my sleeve. 

Do any of these Board members really think these concerns are "racist"?  I doubt it, but it is a convenient tool to bludgeon anyone who raises questions.  The bigger issue is the extent to which the academic world has been compromised by the flood of Chinese money into its institutions.

(5) "Stakeholders" in this context refers to self-appointed NGOs who actually don't care about the future of a particular company but have larger ideological goals in mind.

BlueAnon

Many of us have heard about QAnon, but there is also BlueAnon which is not talked about as much.  The reason we are in such trouble as a society is a majority of politically active people believe in one or the other.  I use "politically active" because I don't think anywhere near a majority of Americans (aka "normies") believes in either.

I'm still not even exactly sure what QAnon is, other than a crazy bunch of conspiracy theories which led to some idiots storming the Capitol on January 6.  I also consider Trump's "Stop The Steal" and the ongoing election "audit" here in Maricopa County (a county where the GOP has 4 of the 5 county supervisors and the county recorder, who supervises elections, is a Republican, but somehow a sophisticated conspiracy led to Biden narrowly carrying Maricopa while simultaneously allowing all these other Republicans to be elected) as QAnon Lite at a minimum.

BlueAnon is the Left equivalent of QAnon, a bundle of conspiracy theories believed and promoted by many Democratic activists and the media.

I was reminded of the pervasiveness of BlueAnon while reading an article by Charles W Cooke about Rebekah Jones.  Jones is the self proclaimed "data scientist" who supposedly found that Governor DeSantis of Florida was cooking the books on Covid.  In reality, Jones is an IT person who constructed a dashboard for the state but had nothing to do with data handling.  She's a known fabulist who has been fired from several jobs but nonetheless become a darling of many on the Left and the media because she has cleverly pushed a narrative the Left loves, as Cooke's article explains.  In turn, it has inspired a whole series of BlueAnon conspiracy narratives about DeSantis which have all proven false.

Although a cursory examination of Jones and her claims would have easily shown them to be fraudulent she received glowing coverage from MSNBC, USA Today, NY Times, Washington Post, NBC, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, Fortune, NPR, Yahoo News, and CNN (though Jake Tapper of that network was the only journalist to raise questions about her).  This highlights one of the main differences between QAnon and BlueAnon; unlike QAnon, BlueAnon is openly reported as credible news and endorsed by media which has historically presented itself as non-partisan. 

Nothing in Cooke's article is new.  I've followed the Rebekah Jones saga since May 2020 and most of this has been known for many months and reported in other sources ignored by Democrats. Indeed, it is the unshakeable belief in Jones despite overwhelming facts to the contrary that brand this as prime BlueAnon.

In late March 2020, I thought Florida was headed for a New York type Covid disaster, based upon what I thought about the virus at the time.  I was wrong.  It turns out Governor DeSantis has done a reasonably good job navigating between keeping Floridians safe and avoiding the economic catastrophe faced by those in some other states.  It's a particularly impressive accomplishment given that Florida has the largest percentage of 65+, the most vulnerable to Covid, of any state

Of course, the Daddy of BlueAnon theories, the Ur-moment, is Russia Collusion!!  It was all fake (as laid out in my series) This BlueAnon theory was widely reported for three years and Rachel Maddow became BlueAnon central on it.  It also spawned a whole subset of BlueAnon beliefs; Deutsche Bank, Alfa Bank servers, Michael Cohen in Prague, Trump Tower Moscow, Russian financiers for the Trump Org, the Ukraine plank in the GOP platform, Carter Page as mastermind, Cambridge Analytica, all of which were false, as was the Steele Dossier, the original source for the theory.

Nonetheless, the power of BlueAnon can be seen in the April 2020 results of a Harvard-Harris poll in which 53% of respondents believed the Steele dossier, "was real in its findings of Trump colluding with the Russians" and helped the Democrats to regain control of the House in 2018.(1)

BlueAnon also thrives when the press and its followers repeat a false story often enough to each other that it just becomes an accepted belief, with no one questioning the underlying facts.  That President Trump, in the aftermath of Charlottesville, proclaimed there were "fine people on both sides" of the statue argument and included white nationalists and neo-nazis in that description, is widely accepted, and was crucial in cementing the Trump as nazi fascist racist theme the press was developing.  At the time I accepted it since I don't like listening to Trump, had not watched the press conference, and mistakenly still had enough residual belief in the mainline press to accept what they were reporting on a public statement was accurate.  It was only a year or so later upon coming across a transcript of the press conference that I realized the story was false; Trump on two occasions in that same press conference stated he was not including white nationalists and neo-nazis in his characterization of "fine people", saying "them I totally condemn" and calling them "bad people".  If you tell someone today what Trump really said and they refuse to believe you, they are BlueAnon.(2)

BlueAnon also has its panic inducing theories.  An example was the claim in August and September 2020 that President Trump was planning to use the U.S. Postal Service to steal the election in November.  This one was seized and promoted not just by the press but by Democrats in Congress and became a big story for a few weeks though there has never been a legitimate shred of evidence to support it and the theory was dropped as soon as it was no longer useful.

We'll end with the biggest and most powerful BlueAnon conspiracy of them all - Critical Race Theory and systemic racism.  This conspiracy theory would have us believe there is a secret conspiracy of white people, including Jews, to manipulate the English language and the structures of society to maintain white privilege and supremacy.  CRT is a perfect example because in order to believe in the theory it requires the faithful to deny the reality all around them.  Further, it is a theory under which one, and only one, factor, explains everything in society and any questioning of the theory is proof that the questioner is part of the conspiracy.  That the theory has become the express basis for the policies of the Biden Administration poses a grave danger to the survival of America as a free country.

If there is a white conspiracy it sure looks like the least effective conspiracy I know of.  Here's reality:

Millions of non-whites want to, and do, emigrate to the United States though we are told by CRT the country is an appalling racist society.

Millions of non-white immigrants - Asian, Hispanic, African - are doing quite well in America with Asian and African incomes above average white income and Hispanic incomes rapidly approaching parity despite CRT telling us there is systemic discrimination against them.

Saying Black Lives Matters is celebrated, saying All Lives Matter will get you fired, despite what CRT tells you.

Black people are privileged over white people when it comes to college admissions and being hired and promoted in academia, by foundations, government, media and large corporations despite the conspiracy posited by CRT.

Unarmed black people killed by police receive national coverage while the killings of non-blacks in similar circumstances remain local stories (search Tony Timpa, Michael Ramos, Daniel Shaver, Hannah Fizer - the last a 25 year old unarmed white woman shot five times by a policeman while driving to her job at a convenience store in an incident 19 days after George Floyd died).  Perhaps we do need to be saying All Lives Matter.(3)

We live in one of the most multi-cultural, multi-ethnic societies in human history and most people get along on a day to day basis, despite the alleged white conspiracy.

In the 19th and early 20th century, black people tried to pass for white because being white was an advantage.  In 21st century America, white people try to pass for black, hispanic and native American because it gives them an advantage.  This should not be happening according to CRT.

The prime example of reality versus theory is our VP, Kamala Harris.  Her high-caste Brahmin mother emigrated to the U.S. because it offered her opportunities she could not find elsewhere.  Her high-caste mixed-race Jamaican father emigrated to the U.S. because it offered him opportunities he could not find elsewhere.  Harris realized it was critical to her political success to be seen as an authentic black person.  She got her political start as mistress to the most powerful politician in California, the most populous state in America, who happened to be black.  All of this has led to a successful political career which should not be happening under CRT theory.

A recent example of reality versus theory is the recent rise of Stop Asian Hate! with Asians cast by CRT as the victims of white supremacy.  The reality is that white progressives and black activists have teamed up to deny Asians access to colleges and universities and are actively working to destroy gifted and STEM public school programs or eliminate meritocratic admissions because too many Asians are being too successful in such programs.  Meanwhile, we all continue not to talk about the truth we all know which is that for years blacks have disproportionately been the perpetrators of violent attacks on Asians.  For more on this read the last part of With Only One Lense, Vision Is Impaired.

The theory versus reality divide is particularly painful to recognize for me since in today's climate my posts on this topic would probably get me fired from many jobs if I had not already retired.  This despite the fact that for my entire life I have been committed to the equal treatment of my fellow citizens and acknowledging the century of disgraceful treatment of freed slaves and their descendants as they sought assimilation into American society and were rejected both South and North (see Readings on Slavery for some reflections on this).  Nonetheless despite my beliefs and my actions over my lifetime I am considered racist under CRT, not an anti-racist, and my writings critical of it serve in their twisted reasoning as proof of my racism.  How did we come to this?  How did people who think like this come to power?

One could go on and on about this but CRT, like other BlueAnon and QAnon, is simply a mass delusion.

As Arnold Kling recently observed:

When I consider the political/cultural climate these days, it feels like a nightmare in which I am on a highway and all the other cars are being driven by 4-year-olds . . . There seem to be few adults in the room in politics, universities, or even major corporations.

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(1)  Both Trump's "Stop The Steal" and the Democrat "Russian Collusion" are election conspiracy theories.

In the case of "Stop The Steal" Trump's frequent claim he won in a landslide is nonsense and he knows it, according to an interview his recently resigned Communications Director gave to Politico in December 2020.  According to Alyssa Farah, while the campaign's internal polling showed the race tighter than the public polls, the final results conformed with their polling which showed Georgia as the only state they thought Trump would win that he didn't.  And the Dominion software conspiracy theory is flat out insane. 

The Russia Collusion theory involved the 2016 election and was false but used by Democrats, as noted above, to influence the 2018 and 2020 elections as led by Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi they denounced Trump's election and presidency as illegitimate.  There is one significant difference between 2016 and 2020.  In 2016, Hillary was urged by several IT security experts to contest the results in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan based on discrepancies they claimed to have found between counties using electronic voting machines versus those using optical scanners and paper ballots.  Clinton declined to do so, while Trump took a different course in 2020.

Is it possible that more local, smaller scale fraud could have led to Trump's loss of the crucial states?  Possibly, but even if so, almost impossible to detect after the fact, though the Democrat's insistence on voting changes that negatively impact ballot security are not reassuring in that respect.  Making each vote count means ensuring both voter access and ballot security, a point lost on many.

Exit question: If the conspiracy theory you believe in says that the sitting President is a neo-nazi, racist, and fascist who, if reelected, will end democracy, wouldn't it be immoral for you not to do everything in your power to prevent his reelection, including altering election results? 

(2) President Trump's July 3, 2020 speech at Mt Rushmore prompted a similar distortion by the Democrats and the media.  In a clearly coordinated effort the speech was labeled as "dark and divisive" by multiple outlets and described as being about "dead traitors".   As with Charlotteville, these were outright lies.  You can read the speech and my analysis here.

(3) I've watched the videos (from the police officer cameras) of the Shaver and Ramos shootings and believe both were unnecessary and unjustified and found the Shaver incident particularly awful to watch.  Is there a need for policing reforms?  Yes.  In the immediate aftermath of Floyd's death there was an opportunity for reform as even voices such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity joined the outrage.  But Democrats and their paramilitary wing were more interested in a broader societal transformation that would benefit them electorally, deliberately sabotaging any bipartisan efforts, making this a race issue and not a policing issue, while ironically using the "Jim Crow" era filibuster to stop Senator Tim Scott's police reform proposal and using BLM as a wedge issue.

Regarding theory versus reality, the number of unarmed blacks killed by police in 2019 is between 13 and 27, depending on which database you use, while killing of unarmed non-blacks is about 3X that of blacks.  The percentage of blacks killed is roughly consistent with the percentage of crime committed by blacks in the U.S.  The impact of theory as amplified in media can be demonstrated by recent survey data showing a large proportion of self-described white liberals believe at least 1,000 unarmed blacks are killed each year by police, a number approximately 50X greater than reality.  As far as interracial black and white violent crime it accounts for only about 3-5% of all violent crime and 80% of it is black on white.

A Note On Emissions

Today's Wall Street Journal carries an article stating that President Biden is expected to call for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by 50% as of 2030 from a 2005 baseline.  It was accompanied by a chart labeled "2018 CO2 Emissions" which shows the U.S. as contributing 15.3% of global GHGs while China accounted for 29.7%.

I suspect most Americans would overestimate our current contribution to GHG emissions and would be unfamiliar with the long-term trend.  The WSJ article notes, US emissions are already 21% lower than the 2005 baseline.  In 2000, the U.S. accounted for 24.2% of emissions while China was 12.9%.

But what are we talking about when we talk about emissions?  That's a subject most journalists and politicians don't understand.

What Counts?

There are three different ways to count what we refer to as Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

The first is CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, which is what the Journal chart portrays.  But this does not capture the full picture because, despite the widespread impression, CO2 emissions from fuel combustion are not equivalent to GHG emissions.

There is a second category of greenhouse gases unconnected (with one exception) to fossil fuel consumption and CO2.  These substances contribute to warming because of their chemical and physical properties.  These are:

Methane: largest sources production and transmission of fossil fuels (32%) and livestock (28%).  Rice cultivation on flooded rice fields is another major source of methane.

Nitrous oxide (N2O): largest source is agriculture - manure and use of nitrogen fertilizers. 

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs): used in refrigeration, air conditionings, building insulation, fire extinguishing systems.  In the 1990s and early 2000s many companies switched to using HFCs in order to cease using CFCs which were discovered to damage atmospheric ozone.

Perfluorochemicals (PFCs): compounds that repel both oil and water and used in many industrial and consumer products.

Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6): used as electrical insulator and arc suppressant.  Essential to maintenance of electrical grids.  No known substitutes.

Although all of these substances are emitted in far less volume than CO2, scientists have calculated that the Global Warming Potential (GWP) for each is substantially higher than for equivalent amounts of CO2.

Methane is estimated to have a GWP 21X higher than CO2.  For N2O it is 310X higher, for HFCs 150-5,000 times higher, PFCs 6,000-9,000X, and for SF6 23,900X.  As you can see, even a small release of SF6 is significant.

We will refer to these as GWP substances going forward.

In the final category are CO2 emissions related to land-use, including deforestation, which is a significant factor in countries like Brazil and India. 

A full GHG accounting would require counting all three categories.  It's important, because if proponents of action want to determine whether any proposed action might be effective you need to accurate count what you are trying to track.  Anytime you read an article on GHG emission by country try to figure out what they are actually counting.

How Are We Counting?

At the most basic level, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, are subject to the least variation.  However, there are several different government agencies that are doing the accounting and there is some variation based upon methodology and how they account for uncertainties.

For instance, the chart in the Journal article is sourced to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a source I've also relied on in the past.  In the text it also states that U.S. emissions for 2020 are expected to be 21% lower than the 2005 baseline, but no source for the assertion is identified.

Another source I've used in the past is the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency which has been doing annual reports on CO2 and GHG emissions globally for the past twenty years.  If you look at the report issued by NEA in 2020 with emissions estimates as of 2019, you'll find different numbers than those of the IEA.  For instance, 2018 fossil fuel related emissions in the U.S. are 4.92 gigatons according to the IEA and 5.24 in the NEA report.  The discrepancy is even bigger for China, which IEA reports as 9.6 gigatons and NEA as 11.2.  Even within the definition of fossil fuel combustion the agencies differ as to what is included.

Once you start including GWP substance related emissions like methane, HFCs and SF6 things get even more difficult.  Inherently these estimates are more difficult to derive and, particularly in the case of China, may be subject to manipulation.  The NEA uses error bars to report its combined CO2 and these emissions and its bar for China are much larger than for the U.S. and EU.

The scope of all of the GWP substances is enormous when combined, increasing the importance of knowing what is being measured.  According to the IEA, CO2 fossil fuel combustion emissions in 2018 were 32 gigatons but according to the NEA, 2018 emissions, including GWP substances were 52 gigatons!

The NEA figures for CO2 from fossil fuel combustion show from 2005 to 2019 an increase of 85% in China and decreases in the U.S. and EU of, respectively, 14% and 22%.  For CO2 + the GWP substances, the NEA shows China with an increase of 70%, a decrease of 7% in the U.S. and 19% in the EU.  As you can see, none of these match the 21% decrease cited in the Journal article.

And if you try to do a comprehensive global assessment including all land use variants the process will be subject to even more uncertainty.

The NEA Report

Since I have access to the most recent NEA report and not the IEA report, I'll summarize its findings.  The NEA uses both fossil fuel emissions and those from substances with GWP.

In recent years, the U.S., EU and Japan have consistently shown decreases while China, India and the Russian Federation have increased.  While China emissions are increasing slower in the 2011-19 period than they did in 2000-10, the opposite is true for India.

As of 2019 China was 28% of global GHG emissions while the U.S. was 13%.  Whether it is the IEA or NEA, the specific numbers are different but the conclusions are the same.  In 2000 the U.S. had double the emissions of China while today it is reversed.  

Here is the long term trend as shown in a NEA graphic:

Another take on recent trends from Bloomberg:

The reductions proposed by the Biden Administration are about 1.8 gigatons by 2030, which is equivalent to what China and India added from 2013 to 2019.  Under the Paris Accords neither country has agreed to emissions reductions during the next decade.  The U.S. goal, if achieved would reduce current global emissions by 3.5% but emissions globally would not be reduced.

A related topic that often comes up when GHG emissions reductions are discussed are historical emissions, usually in the context that although China's current emissions are 2X the U.S., cumulative historical American emissions are much higher.  This was a good talking point in 2005 but things have changed since then.  I looked at the NEA data from 1990 to 2019 and then at the IEA which has data back to 1970.  Assuming the 2020 data is about the same as 2019, over the half century since 1970, China and U.S. emissions are about equal.

China has stated that it will begin reducing its emissions in 2030.  If current trends continue for the next decade and if the U.S. takes no further reduction actions, by 2030 China and U.S. emissions will be about equal over the period 1945-2030 (actually China emissions will be slightly higher).  Should the U.S. undertake significant reductions the two countries will have had similar cumulative emissions over the past century.

Xi And Biden Agree On America

Last month's meeting in Alaska between China and U.S. officials got a bit tense.  I want to specifically focus on a couple of remarks by Chinese Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi. (You can find the full transcript here.)

Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States, and they have various views regarding the government of the United States.

On human rights, we hope that the United States will do better on human rights. China has made steady progress in human rights, and the fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself as well . . . And the challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated. They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter. It did not come up only recently.

Although the American officials responded to some of the Chinese comments, they did not directly respond to the comments quoted above.

They didn’t because the Biden Administration agrees with these criticisms by China.

In the past, American administrations with critical views of prior administrations, or of American history, have always addressed this using expressions such as “America straying from its values” or “yes, America has sometimes fallen short of our aspirations but we are always trying to improve.”  In other words, any supposed defects can be corrected by referring back to the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the words of the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln.  Even President Obama, as annoying and deceptive as he could be at times, used this rhetorical device.

That approach is not available to those representing the Biden Administration.  With its continued statements regarding the need for “equity,” the adoption of the principles of Critical Race Theory, and its nomination of appointees saturated in CRT, the Biden Administration is promoting an entirely different view of America.  Simply put, America never had legitimate aspirations or values; the “ideas” of liberty, freedom, equality, self-governance, even the idea of democracy, were just smokescreens for the permanent seizure and holding of power by white people and used to maintain white supremacy.  There were no legitimate ideas or principles behind the Founding.  It was simply a power grab.  In Biden’s view, this rotten history means we are no longer anchored in core principles, instead America must be reconstructed on a completely different basis.  The Administration believes China is correct in asserting “the challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated” because it believes our very Founding was illegitimate.

The Biden Administration is promoting a radical repudiation of traditional American values.

Politico has an article explaining that Secretary of State Blinken is “racing to address a 232-year-old problem, the department’s overwhelming and entrenched whiteness” and has appointed a Deputy Assistant Secretary “in every departmental bureau to take charge of diversity, equity and inclusion issues.”  There you have it; AmeriKKKa; evil at the beginning, still evil today.  No wonder he didn’t respond to the Chinese.

We received further confirmation in the recent speech our new ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, made on April 14, which received some media attention because of this line:

I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.

However there is so much more wrong with Thomas-Greenfield's remarks (full remarks can be found here).  The speech was given at the 30th Annual Summit of the National Action Network, an organization founded and still led by Al Sharpton, who made his reputation as a race hustler, con artist, and Jew-baiter, before becoming President Obama's go-to guy on race issues and being blessed with a featured show on MSNBC.  Despite his tawdry history, the ambassador lauds Sharpton with these words, "Your lifetime of activism is an inspiration to us all".(1)  She also makes sure to make multiple references to the need for "equity".(2)

That the ambassador has become well-versed in the language of Critical Race Theory can be seen in this passage:

We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union – and have been since the beginning – and every day we strive to make ourselves more perfect, and more just. In a diverse country like ours, that means committing to do the work.

In CRT speak, "do the work", means white people need to come to grips with white privilege and supremacy and not question the premises of CRT.  

She also obediently gave the nod of approval to Black Lives Matter, providing special privileging to an organization dedicated to the overthrow of American society, the establishment of a new race-based order, and the destruction of the nuclear family.

Just look at the way the Black Lives Matter movement spread this past summer.

All of this explanation in service of explaining why the United States is reengaging with the United Nations, a morally compromised and corrupt organization dominated by dictatorships and anti-Semites! 

As to her key passage, which I will requote:

I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.

This is pure CRT and 1619 Project stuff.  CRT is a repudiation of the Civil Rights Movement which used our founding documents and principles to move the conscience of white Americans.  The 1619 Project seeks to eliminate 1776 and 1789 as the founding dates for the United States because those dates represent the illegitimate racist founding of the Republic.  It's why the 1619 Project makes only passing reference to Frederick Douglass, who famously spoke of the founding documents as anti-slavery, and minimizes the role of Reverend Martin Luther King, who spoke so eloquently of the principles embodied in those documents.

Instead, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield supports CRT which embraces the theories of John C Calhoun, the South Carolina politician who proudly proclaimed slavery a positive good and promoted the theory that the Declaration and Constitution only applied to white people, a theory adopted by Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision.  Even some Confederates found Calhoun's theories far-fetched.  In his famous 1861 Cornerstone speech, Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens noted that the Confederacy's new Constitution corrected the great error of the founding documents which had asserted "all men are created equal" by adding language explicitly limiting that concept to whites and eternally protecting the property right of whites to enslaved black people.

How strange and dispiriting to have an American administration in the 21st century reverting to the theories about the American founding of a white supremacist who died in 1850.  Maybe not so strange given the reactionary and race-based nature of Critical Race Theory.

I've begun to realize that those who invoke CRT seem to fall into three categories.

(1) The true believers and haters.  I think Kristen Clarke, Biden's nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, fits in this category.

(2) The political opportunists who see CRT as just another arrow in the Democratic Party's quiver in order to keep black voters paranoid about white people and Republicans, while instilling a continued sense of futility and powerlessness in order to maintain 90+% of their vote.  Kamala Harris and Joe Biden fit here.

(3) The final category are those who don't fully understand the implications of CRT and just see it as another way to fight racism.  They believe the multiple false narratives woven about race in America by the media, academia and progressives.  Many Democratic voters and some public figures fall in this category.  People of good intentions which CRT then twists to its purposes.  And some of them have trouble intellectually following a logic trail (though CRT tells me that is a trait of white supremacy).  My sense is Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield falls in that category.  I think she is a person of goodwill but with cloudy thinking.  Carefully reading her full speech it is difficult to make logical sense of it.  It is a collection of bromides that don't seem to mean much when read together.  

But the bottom line is I doubt any other UN Ambassador from any other country is running around making statements like this about their own country.  If she thinks this will somehow strengthen her posture at the UN she is sadly mistaken.  China and other countries will know how to turn her own rhetoric against her, as we have already seen from what happened last month in Alaska.

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(1) "Activism" means "radical left ideology".

(2) "Equity" is a term from Critical Race Theory, which has replaced "equality" which was the goal of the Civil Rights Movement.  Equity is based on the conspiracy theory that any statistical difference in any outcome between racial and ethnic groups is because of deliberate acts by white supremacists (a term that encompasses all white, including Jews, and, depending on the circumstances, can also include Asians and Hispanics).  Inequities can only be cured by dismantling the system of white supremacy and imposing numerical quotas.

Good Move

Since I disapprove of pretty much everything the Biden Administration has done so far, believing it to be the most radical in American history, I thought I'd give the man some credit for his announcement today of the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, a decision I completely agree with for the reasons set forth in this post from January 2020.  I also agreed with President Trump's draw down of forces and his plans to complete withdrawal this year.  There is no good purpose in keeping our military there and it is an action that should have been taken many, many years ago.

Two other notes:

I think it baffling and insulting for President Biden to set the withdrawal date for September 11.

It is ironic for him to claim the mission is over since we pursued Bin Laden to "the gates of Hell" since then VP Biden opposed President Obama's 2011 decision to go after Bin Laden in Pakistan.

Lies

Great Beatlesque style single by The Knickerbockers from 1965.  A one-hit wonder New Jersey band they adopted the British approach - listen to how "girl" becomes "gurl" in the lyrics.

Speaking of lies, let's quickly note three current lies promulgated by the Biden Administration.

The filibuster as a "Jim Crow" relic.  Historically a lie.  More recently, only Democrats have used the filibuster since 2014.  When, in 2017 President Trump asked Sen. McConnell to end the filibuster, McConnell refused to do so.  Just last year, the Democrats used the filibuster to block Senate action on Republican Senator Tim Scott's police reform bill.  Senator Scott is the first black senator elected from a former Confederate state since Reconstruction.

The Georgia voting legislation, as yet another "Jim Crow".  Basically, everything President Biden is saying about it is a lie.

There is no border crisis.  Yes, there is.  Can you imagine if President Trump was blocking access to border facilities by the press and even members of the opposition party?

The difference between when President Trump lied or, more commonly, blustered and exaggerated, is media reporters would challenge him on it and then report.  Now propaganda outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and the networks work overtime to amplify Biden's lies.

Fighting The Good Fight

". . . stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself. Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin color. Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on their skin color.” - Jodi Shaw

I have been working on a post about the new and radical Biden administration and the future of the GOP which has grown quite long and unwieldy so am breaking it up into several parts.  This first section focuses on the ideological struggle that is the #1 priority for our country today; defeating Critical Race/Social Justice Theory (CRT), a subject I've written frequently about in the Your Future series.  This morally corrupt ideology continues to sweep through American institutions, and is now being promoted as a top priority by the new administration. If successful, it spells the end of a nation based on tolerance and the acceptance that we can be one country even while containing a multitude of viewpoints and backgrounds.  For those of us who have always promoted equality under the law, removing discriminatory barriers, and encouraging and welcoming true diversity in our workplaces and lives, what is unfolding around us is a disaster that was unthinkable a few years ago.

There is a growing community of liberals/progressives who understand the illiberal nature of the threat posed by CRT to the continuance of America as a democracy and to the core values of freedom of speech, conscience, and equal treatment under the laws.  This is extremely important because it is only if effective opposition grows across the political spectrum that this threat can be defeated because so many of our institutions - academia, media, the federal bureaucracy, the tech companies and many other corporations, NGOs - are dominated by the left.

As liberal criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield recently wrote, referring to liberals who failed over the years to resist this trend:

They should have said no at the outset and not empowered the woke into believing that they ran the show, but they believed it would pass, the woke would grow up and recognize their childish ideas. That, of course, hasn’t happened, and it wasn’t just some dumb college kids doing typically dumb kid stuff. And a lot of people have been hurt by it.

It’s going to be a lot harder now, after so much of the intellectual infrastructure of society has been bastardized in an effort to placate the woke, to call bullshit and end it. But if we don’t put away the guilt and grow some guts, the damage may be unfixable. People may not be guilty for society’s historic transgressions, but we will be guilty for the cowardly failure to put an end to it.

Below are some of these liberals/progressives (a couple might characterize themselves as centrists and there even a couple of self-described socialists) you can find on Twitter(1) and, through them, links to longer articles and examples of the insanity that has been unleashed.  Because of their background and beliefs they provide valuable insight on the growing intolerance of the Woke Left and how to combat it.  Most are Americans, with a sprinkling of Aussies and Brits (all of the Anglosphere is under assault from Left Totalitarians).  Almost all of the Americans strongly opposed Trump and voted for Biden in the hope that his reputed moderation would temper the onslaught of CRT, a hope now dashed as I will explain in the next post.

Andrew Sullivan (purged from NY Magazine for being insufficiently Woke; "And so our unprecedentedly multicultural, and multiracial democracy is now described as a mere front for 'white supremacy'"),

Wesley Yang ("At the start of the MeToo purge, there were a few pieces by women noting their trepidation about its potential course whose authors were all cancelled; the race purge has successfully preempted such pieces from running in the first place.")

Zaid Jilani ("the left has replaced social liberalism with social control")

John McWhorter ("The big question about The Elect is not how to get through to them (usually impossible) but how to keep them from taking over and destroying lives"), 

Bari Weiss (purged from the NY Times for being insufficiently Woke; "We all know something morally grotesque is swallowing liberal America"; read 'Spirit Murder', Neo-Segregation and Science Denial in American Schools),

Seerut K Chawla ("the woke believe 'language creates reality', which is why 'problematic' ideas must be censored & not heard"), 

Inaya Folarin Iman ("The end of 'woke' thinking may, in part, come from the exhaustion of its followers.  It requires self-destructive levels of emotionalism to sustain itself"), 

Mike Nayna ("it becomes necessary to depersonalize the 'enemies of Society' in order to transform the official lie into truth" quoting Aldous Huxley), 

Colin Wright ("It's shocking how badly critical theory bungles everything it touches.  On important issues of race, sex, biology, medicine, etc, it reliably produces the most flawed conclusions and morally corrupt prescriptions imaginable"), 

Chloe S Valdary ("The problem is that so many are looking at people of color as symbols for certain ideas instead of full-fleshed individuals.  But I'm not an idea, I'm not a symbol or a figment of your imagination.  I'm a human being."), 

Peter Boghossian ("If organizational diversity and inclusion were about removing barriers so that minorities can succeed, I'd be an ardent supporter.  But 'diversity' and 'inclusion' are not about that"), 

Wokal Distance ("Don't you ever let any of these people ever pretend that they are honest.  They make no effort to give people charitable reading and then use uncharitable reading to justify smear jobs"), 

Glenn Loury (read Unspeakable Truths about Racial Inequality in America), 

Dr Debra Soh ("We can support equal rights without denying science or biology"), 

Abigail Shrier ("fact checked" by USA Today and Instagram for making a factually accurate statement regarding the Biden EO on Gender Identity), 

Michael Tracey ("The most disturbing thing about this radically expanded definition of 'harm' is that some portion of the people claiming to be 'harmed' by anodyne utterances of words probably are being sincere - their psyches really are that fragile.  And they are attaining positions of power"), 

Geoff Shullenberger ("One right to work argument has long been that union dues, which can be funneled towards causes and candidates beyond the immediate interests of members, are coerced speech.  Now it seems a pro-union position is 'lol of course being in the union means total ideological agreement!"), 

Ayishat Akanbi ("If you are convinced that one racial group has a monopoly on wickedness, then historically, you wouldn't have been hard to convince that some races were evil"), 

Samuel Kronen ("I think systemic racism is a vague concept, white privilege an unhelpful one, and cultural appropriation an objectively good thing.  I may be wrong, but I am normal, and anyone concerned with creating a better world will have to engage with people like me without name-calling", and read Is Critical Race Theory un-American?),

Thomas Chatterton Williams (on the new Chicago commission to review statutes including those of Lincoln, "What is there to 'review' about statutes of Abraham Lincoln?  If there can't be statutes of Lincoln we're essentially saying there can't be statutes at all.  He saved our country and died for it.  What has anyone else done?")

Bo Winegard ("His views on race and sex . . . are likely as far from reality as imaginable, but since they cohere with the views of woke elites, we don't and won't hear much about how far from reality Biden is")

Brett Weinstein (purged from Evergreen State College for teaching evolutionary biology), 

The Woke Temple ("I endeavor to present the teaching of Woke Ideology & Critical Race Theory objectively and accurately using their scholars' own words.")

Obaid Omer ("I left Islam for liberal values.  Now Woke liberals are embracing a new religion. To even question the extent to which racism was everywhere resulted in accusations of being a racist. I couldn't help but notice there was an almost fundamentalist, faith-like aspect to these claims.")

Lee Jussim ("Leftwing Authoritarianism has 3 manifestations: Dogmatic intolerance of opponents; Willingness to censor opponents; Endorsement of violence, bullying, social vigilantism.")  You can also find his blog at Psychology Today.

Also recommended is Helen Pluckrose (on Twitter) and Counterweight, the organization she and others recently founded in the UK (but also providing services in America) with this mission statement

We are here to provide you with practical information and expert guidance to resist the imposition of the ideology that calls itself “Critical Social Justice” on your day-to-day life. Our primary focus is on people who find themselves in situations where they need to push back at this ideology in their place of work, university, children’s school or elsewhere and defend their right to their own ethical frameworks for opposing prejudice and discrimination. We connect you with the specific resources, advice and guidance your particular situation requires. The Counterweight community is a non-partisan, grassroots movement advocating for liberal concepts of social justice that include individualism, universalism, viewpoint diversity and the free exchange of ideas.

Counterweight has been overwhelmed by requests for help since it launched last week.  Under the Biden Administration such an organization is even more relevant.

Of special note are Asra Q Nomani and Judea Pearl, both on Twitter.  Nomani, journalist and Pakistani immigrant, is part of a group of Asian immigrant parents in the DC suburbs fighting to keep Thomas Jefferson HS for Science & Technology, one of the top merit-based STEM high schools in the country, from being dismantled in the name of "equity", because parents of Asian ancestry make their children study too much (I wish I were kidding, but this is an actual accusation being made to justify eliminating merit admissions - something that is also happening in New York City, San Francisco and other Progressive dominated cities).  Judea Pearl, a California academic, is the father of Danny Pearl, the journalist beheaded by Pakistani jihadists almost twenty years ago because he was an American and a Jew.  Asra Nomani met Danny Pearl in Pakistan and is still following the ongoing and very active court proceedings regarding his murderers.

Jodi Shaw, ("The repeated insistence that our ability or willingness to engage in these performative rituals as a continued condition of our employment is a potent brand of harassment - the kind everyone colludes in because we are too afraid not to")(2), graduate of Smith College, who works as an administrative assistant there.  After a two-year ordeal of Woke brainwashing, in desperation Ms Shaw went public with a YouTube channel about what was happening at Smith.  UPDATE: Ms Shaw has just resigned from Smith.  Rather than accept a settlement from the college that would have required her to stay silent, she is leaving without anything.  You can read her full resignation letter below (3).  It is worth your time to do so.

For those interested in the theoretical nuts and bolts and bigger implications behind CRT, the New Discourses website provides very well done primers.

Essential online magazines to read are Tablet and Quillette, neither of which are conservative.  Tablet is "a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture" which provides a wide range of stories from different perspectives and has increasingly featured more articles related to CRT.  Quillette describes itself as "a platform for free thought. We respect ideas, even dangerous ones. We also believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress."  Founded to provide an outlet from those threatened institutionally across the political spectrum it has increasingly focused on the threat from the Left because that's where the threat is.

These liberals and progressives realize they are at the same, and sometimes greater, risk as conservatives in terms of losing jobs, careers, reputation if they dissent from any of the commandments of CRT but have the courage to speak out.  We need more like them. 

Anti-woke liberals and progressives also have to come to grips with the fact there is something is wrong with modern liberalism which has allowed this ideology to flourish.  CRT has been able to use the tenets of liberalism to infiltrate and then metastasize within the institutions liberals used to dominate.  Liberalism has proven defenseless against an ideology which rejects its foundational beliefs in tolerance and rational inquiry.  

There are also conservatives providing an invaluable service in providing concrete examples of the use of CRT materials in education and training.  Sources are parents whose children are being subjected to this insane and hateful garbage and employees of companies and government agencies being subjected to training sessions which employ techniques used during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  Christopher Rufo is on Twitter and you can also find him at christopherrufo.com

One of the stunning revelations of the past year is the extent to which these pernicious and destructive doctrines have already taken root in our educational system.  You can follow an ongoing lawsuit filed by the black parent of a mixed-race child against a private school, alleging her child is being forced to make compelled speech endorsing CRT concepts, contrary to his personal conscience and beliefs, and was retaliated against when he objected.

I could go on and on with horrifying examples of what is happening in our society but if you sample just a few of the names I've mentioned above you will find plenty. 

And finally I can't resist recommending Titania McGrath, a British woke spoof account.  When started in 2018 it seemed over the top absurd but you can no longer distinguish the satire from what the woke are doing in reality every day. 

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You can read earlier entries in the Your Future series for more about CRT so here is a summary:

CRT is a conspiracy theory, which unlike QAnon, has considerable support in American institutions and now in the Federal government.  It claims that the only determinant for actions in our society is race (sometimes gender is added), a society which has been constructed by whites in a conspiracy to maintain white supremacy and systemic racism.  All of the language used in our society has the sole purpose of maintaining that dominance.  The proof of that dominance is any result in our society that is not "equitable" (that is, does not result in numerical equality of each race) because race and white privilege is the only explanation for inequitable results.  To argue against this is to use the language of white supremacy and thus adherents of CRT do not need to be engage with its opponents, instead they can simply be denounced because to argue against CRT is in itself proof of racism.  

If you think the language of "equity" which has replaced "equality" in our discourse does not have real world implications think again.  Last fall the CDC's public health advisory panel on vaccinations established priorities for the new covid vaccines based on equity principles even though the CDC's own modeling showed that thousands more would die based on those principles.  The panel of public health experts effectively endorsed voluntary manslaughter because they valued equity above human lives.

Think about it - "equity" means treating individuals and groups differently in order to achieve "equal" outcomes.  And since we know that an equal outcome in the sense used in CRT is only momentary and will come out of balance over time, discrimination in how individuals and groups are treated will be forever.

Many people misunderstand how CRT uses the term "systemic racism" (a term which is the organizing principle of the Biden administration).  It has nothing to do with legal, institutional, or conscious racism.  In CRT lingo any society in which any outcomes as measured by racial groups do not reflect the proportion of that group, as it exists in that society, is, by definition, evidence of "systemic racism".

Given this viewpoint, CRT holds that power, and who has it, is the only important organizing principle in society; not ideas, not competing interests.  CRT will use processes to gain control and power but does not believe those processes need to be reciprocal or neutral.  Once they have achieved control and power, those processes can be discarded.  As President Erdogan of Turkey said to King Abdullah of Jordan, "democracy is like a bus, when it gets to my stop I get off".  Or as Frank Herbert put it in Children of Dune:

"When I am Weaker than you, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom because that is according to my principles."

And that is why the progressives and liberals listed above are trying to ring the alarm about this New Faith which has infiltrated and is destroying traditional liberalism.

Because everything in how society is organized is solely determined by the white conspiracy to perpetuate white supremacy, everything in society needs to be reordered and there is no distinction between the political and the personal.  That is why it is necessary to purge anyone who says or thinks anything defined by CRT as racist from jobs, careers, educational opportunities, regardless of whether their actions demonstrate any racism.

It is why our very language is changing because it is by the use of language designed by whites that white supremacy is maintained.  Once language changes the structure of society can be changed.  This explains why teaching and training curriculum based on CRT seem, to normal people, to be spouting nonsense like 2+2 does not necessarily equal 4 or that having a meeting agenda is a white supremacist way of thinking.

CRT repudiates the notions of the Civil Rights Movement that we share a common humanity and creed.  It is why the 1619 Project, historical nonsense based on CRT, almost eliminates Frederick Douglass and minimizes the role of Dr Martin Luther King when it comes to race in America because their ideas were not based solely on race.  It repudiates the ideal of neutral processes when it comes to judging people as individuals.  It is why the 1619 Project seeks to erase the real American founding because that founding is based on universal ideas.

Don't believe it?  Here are two Critical Race theorists, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic, writing in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction:

Unlike traditional civil-rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundation of the liberal order; including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.

Here's a little more wisdom from the same duo:

For the critical race theorist, objective truth, like merit, does not exist, at least in social science and politics.  In these realms, truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group. 

For my liberal friends who have difficulty understanding how radical the woke at places like the Times are, think about those great narrative historians of America you enjoy reading - Ron Chernow, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Joseph Ellis, David McCullough.  Through the lenses (a favorite woke term) employed by the woke these authors promote white supremacy and privilege and are as deserving of the bonfires as anything written by William F Buckley.

CRT denies that the individual can think outside this structure imposed by white racists.  It denies the power of ideas, other than those focused solely on race.  It is why CRT and white nationalism resemble each other.  Both believe that race is the sole determinant upon which American society should be based.  Their difference is in who should be on the top.  And, in some instances, CRT and white nationalism focus on the same "enemies".  During 2020, the NY Times, the major proponent of CRT in the media, published an article listing the most powerful people (as defined by the paper) in America.  The purpose was to demonstrate that blacks are underrepresented and thus provide another example of systemic racism.  Interestingly, elements of both the Woke Left and white nationalism quickly identified that there was a subgroup within the white power elite identified by the Times - a subgroup with the most disproportionate number of powerful people compared to their percentage of American population - Jews.  Under CRT any group which has a larger than equitable share of power has gained that power via a conspiracy designed to obtain and then control its position of supremacy - therefore Jews, who are also white whether they consider themselves or not to be so, have conspired to attain and then maintain that position, a viewpoint CRT proponents share with white nationalists. For more on the dangers facing Jews from the New Racism read Pamela Pareksy's piece in the Spring 2021 edition of Sapir:

In the critical social justice paradigm, Jews, who have never been seen as white by those for whom being white is a moral good, are now seen as white by those for whom whiteness is an unmitigated evil.

Though, as this article from the Hedgehog Review tells us, the New Racists' problem with religion is not limited to Jews.  This is scary stuff.

The ascension of CRT has occurred with dizzying speed.  After a long academic gestation period it burst onto the scene like the creature bursting from John Hurt's chest in Alien and with the same ruthless destructiveness.  As twitter person The End Times puts it, "Ibram Kendi's [author of How To Be An Antiracist] racism went from fringe to published book to mandatory policy in a handful of years".  Now Kendi has an endowed chair at Boston University, along with $10 million in funding from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, from which he can spout his anti-democratic and totalitarian views such as:

The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.  The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

To best sum it up, a young English woman who joined the woke movement motivated by a feeling of solidarity with marginalised groups, left after realizing it was not really about:

Solidarity:  it creates division amongst people based on certain identities, even between different minorities

Equality: it creates hierarchies based on certain identities

Improvements: it wants to dismantle

Inclusivity: it excludes people from the wrong identities

Compassion: it's about hatred, revenge and anger

Diversity: it wants everyone to think and behave the same way

Lessening discrimination and stigma: It creates more

Liberation: It thrives on authority and control(4)

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(1)  Pro Tip about twitter.  It's easy to set up a Twitter account.  I have one and have never Tweeted and never plan to.  I use it to read people and organizations I'm interested in.  In turn, those people and groups provide useful links to more lengthier pieces as well as original documents.  If you hit the Follow button on a Twitter account, your own account will show to anyone who looks what you are Following.  To avoid that, bookmark Twitter accounts you want to read regularly as Favorites on your phone and just use those when wanting to access an account.

(2)  The climate of fear is not limited to America.  Here is a prominent English academic and feminist deplatformed because of her views on transgender issues speaking on the fear.  Feminists who think there are biological differences between the sexes are under fierce assault, accused of transphobia by activists.  Here's a young woman fired from her job for refusing to kowtow to those denying biology.  JK Rowling, a firm feminist and progressive, has been under attack for the same reason, but been able to resist deplatforming because she is such a valuable property for her publisher and representatives.  Unfortunately, some other women who have supported her, have been deplatformed because they are not as valuable to their publishers and literary agents.

(3)  Jodi Smith resignation letter:

Dear President McCartney:

I am writing to notify you that effective today, I am resigning from my position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life at Smith College. This has not been an easy decision, as I now face a deeply uncertain future. As a divorced mother of two, the economic uncertainty brought about by this resignation will impact my children as well. But I have no choice. The racially hostile environment that the college has subjected me to for the past two and a half years has left me physically and mentally debilitated. I can no longer work in this environment, nor can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity and freedom.

I graduated from Smith College in 1993. Those four years were among the best in my life. Naturally, I was over the moon when, years later, I had the opportunity to join Smith as a staff member. I loved my job and I loved being back at Smith.

But the climate — and my place at the college — changed dramatically when, in July 2018, the culture war arrived at our campus when a student accused a white staff member of calling campus security on her because of racial bias. The student, who is black, shared her account of this incident widely on social media, drawing a lot of attention to the college.

Before even investigating the facts of the incident, the college immediately issued a public apology to the student, placed the employee on leave, and announced its intention to create new initiatives, committees, workshops, trainings, and policies aimed at combating “systemic racism” on campus.

In spite of an independent investigation into the incident that found no evidence of racial bias, the college ramped up its initiatives aimed at dismantling the supposed racism that pervades the campus. This only served to support the now prevailing narrative that the incident had been racially motivated and that Smith staff are racist.

Allowing this narrative to dominate has had a profound impact on the Smith community and on me personally. For example, in August 2018, just days before I was to present a library orientation program into which I had poured a tremendous amount of time and effort, and which had previously been approved by my supervisors, I was told that I could not proceed with the planned program. Because it was going to be done in rap form and “because you are white,” as my supervisor told me, that could be viewed as “cultural appropriation.” My supervisor made clear he did not object to a rap in general, nor to the idea of using music to convey orientation information to students. The problem was my skin color.

I was up for a full-time position in the library at that time, and I was essentially informed that my candidacy for that position was dependent upon my ability, in a matter of days, to reinvent a program to which I had devoted months of time.

Humiliated, and knowing my candidacy for the full-time position was now dead in the water, I moved into my current, lower-paying position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life.

As it turned out, my experience in the library was just the beginning. In my new position, I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting “Rich, white women! Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae. I listened to my supervisor openly name preferred racial quotas for job openings in our department. I was given supplemental literature in which the world’s population was reduced to two categories — “dominant group members” and “subordinated group members” — based solely on characteristics like race.

Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.

Although I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it. This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades Smith College.

The last straw came in January 2020, when I attended a mandatory Residence Life staff retreat focused on racial issues. The hired facilitators asked each member of the department to respond to various personal questions about race and racial identity. When it was my turn to respond, I said “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that.” I was the only person in the room to abstain.

Later, the facilitators told everyone present that a white person’s discomfort at discussing their race is a symptom of “white fragility.” They said that the white person may seem like they are in distress, but that it is actually a “power play.” In other words, because I am white, my genuine discomfort was framed as an act of aggression. I was shamed and humiliated in front of all of my colleagues.

I filed an internal complaint about the hostile environment, but throughout that process, over the course of almost six months, I felt like my complaint was taken less seriously because of my race. I was told that the civil rights law protections were not created to help people like me. And after I filed my complaint, I started to experience retaliatory behavior, like having important aspects of my job taken away without explanation.

Under the guise of racial progress, Smith College has created a racially hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and hostility flourish. In this environment, people’s worth as human beings, and the degree to which they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, is determined by the color of their skin. It is an environment in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation.

I can no longer continue to work in an environment where I am constantly subjected to additional scrutiny because of my skin color. I can no longer work in an environment where I am told, publicly, that my personal feelings of discomfort under such scrutiny are not legitimate but instead are a manifestation of white supremacy. Perhaps most importantly, I can no longer work in an environment where I am expected to apply similar race-based stereotypes and assumptions to others, and where I am told — when I complain about having to engage in what I believe to be discriminatory practices — that there are “legitimate reasons for asking employees to consider race” in order to achieve the college’s “social justice objectives.”

What passes for “progressive” today at Smith and at so many other institutions is regressive. It taps into humanity’s worst instincts to break down into warring factions, and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial segregation and demonization are wrong and dangerous no matter what its victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong. It is psychologically abusive.

Equally troubling are the many others who understand and know full well how damaging this is, but do not speak out due to fear of professional retaliation, social censure, and loss of their livelihood and reputation. I fear that by the time people see it, or those who see it manage to screw up the moral courage to speak out, it will be too late.

I wanted to change things at Smith. I hoped that by bringing an internal complaint, I could somehow get the administration to see that their capitulation to critical race orthodoxy was causing real, measurable harm. When that failed, I hoped that drawing public attention to these problems at Smith would finally awaken the administration to this reality. I have come to conclude, however, that the college is so deeply committed to this toxic ideology that the only way for me to escape the racially hostile climate is to resign. It is completely unacceptable that we are now living in a culture in which one must choose between remaining in a racially hostile, psychologically abusive environment or giving up their income.

As a proud Smith alum, I know what a critical role this institution has played in shaping my life and the lives of so many women for one hundred and fifty years. I want to see this institution be the force for good I know it can be. I will not give up fighting against the dangerous pall of orthodoxy that has descended over Smith and so many of our educational institutions.

This was an extremely difficult decision for me and comes at a deep personal cost. I make $45,000 a year; less than a year’s tuition for a Smith student. I was offered a settlement in exchange for my silence, but I turned it down. My need to tell the truth — and to be the kind of woman Smith taught me to be — makes it impossible for me to accept financial security at the expense of remaining silent about something I know is wrong. My children’s future, and indeed, our collective future as a free nation, depends on people having the courage to stand up to this dangerous and divisive ideology, no matter the cost.

Sincerely,

Jodi Shaw

(4) Update: I recently came across a piece by Assistant Village Idiot, a psychiatric social worker, that pointed out something that has troubled me but have been unable to quite identify my concern or articulate it.  What, precisely, is CRT trying to build as it strikes me as logically incoherent and difficult to discern what, at a concrete level, it envisions for the future. AVP pointed out that CRT has, so far, produced no true art.

This is a major red flag for the intellectual foundation of a philosophy, that artists in no medium can bring forth anything of interest. The heart of artistic expression is transposition, of reframing or new understanding of one concept and making it manifest in another. If you can find nothing to transpose, it means there is nothing there.

This is unsurprising, as Theory never pretended to be making anything, only analyzing it.  It's right there in the name, Critical Theory. It critiques. It is described as a tool for interrogating everything else. "Interrogate" is supposed to have a more refined meaning than the picture that pops into our head from movies, of guys sitting in a chair under bright light, getting beat up after any bad answer. It's supposed to mean "asking questions." In reality, it's pretty much the sadistic guys with the brass knuckles. You either aren't interrogated at all because you're on their side, or you get the crap beat out of you. 

So we interrogate history with Critical Theory. We look at American education through the prism of Critical Race Theory. We examine music or literature via Theory. But we never make anything with it. Making something requires talent, courage, and effort.  A critical theorist might have any or all of these things.  But they aren't required for the job.