As horrible as all of what Bari had written and shared about sounds, I have high hopes for California's (of course, who else?) rejection of the "the ideas of natural gifts and talents". You see, since my early years I have dreamed of becoming a famous athlete, of playing in the World Cup and of scoring against some of the rubbish teams of the world, like Celtic, or Birmingham City among others. This dream was killed by a bunch of coaches (I guess I'll have some canceling to do) who deemed me insufficiently talented. This proves that all of them were in fact vicious white supremacists promoting this ridiculous idea that only young, athletic, gifted people who know how to play a certain sport should be allowed to do so, which lead to the creation of the athletic supremacist elite. The fact that a short and fat, and not particularly agile old guy has never achieved anything in football - the fact that there are disparate outcomes between Messi and myself - is proof that sport is discriminatory and that there is systemic athletic supremacist discrimination against the rest of us.
Now, practices are also part of white supremacy, so I cannot be expected to do that. I also don't feel like playing in the next World Cup in Qatar as it might be way too hot, but I'll be ready for the next one. In the meantime I feel like playing in the NBA a bit, to stay active.
Sometimes I feel that a way to push back against this psychosis is to push their premises to their logical conclusions. I guess talent agencies in California may have to become equity agencies...
Get vaccinated. Get back to life. Should be simple but it's not. I was deemed eligible to receive the vaccine weeks ago by the esteemed authorities here in California but I declined. Why? Because there's no evident upside. I would have to observe the same protocols as if I weren't vaccinated; masks, social distancing, mandatory telework. If I travel more than 200 miles on public transportation, I have to self-isolate for 10 days upon return. Since I have no risk factors, I have no personal concern for a disease that has a 99.7% survival rate. So what's the point?
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.” Mark Twain. The significance of this quote is that what we are witnessing now is nothing new. In a democracy, demagogues are often successful at raising money and winning the popular vote. They often start their political career on the simple slogan of “I believe that all children can learn.” Whereupon they embrace and enact mindless fads. Three decades ago it was “self-esteem,” two decades ago it was “whole language” and now it’s abolishing all standards. Not only will these fads take a decade of destruction until they peter out, but by then many of the school board members will have moved on to City Council and possibly mayor.
And it happens on a national level. Best buddies George Bush and Barack Obama both allowed all major social media companies to swallow up the competition while failing to insist on coding being taught in the public school curriculum.
Kudos to Barry Weiss and others, for raising consciousness either globally or locally. This is a non-partisan activity, as I believed that Thomas Sowell and Theodore Dalrymple were voices of sanity during the 90s. I am happy to donate five dollars a month to people on the left, right and center willing to risk mob ridicule or worse, by playing the timeless role of soothsayer cautioning against the demagogic grain or cultish belief. It was sad to see the way Ms. Nomani was treated with transparent contempt. Nonetheless, her courage is inspiring.
Yes. It's important to get back to life. I'm almost 70 and had my second Moderna vaccine last month, so I'm now fully protected. Last week, my fully vaccinated friend visited me at home. We spent several hours together, had a great time, and didn't wear masks. This morning, I went grocery shopping. I wore my mask and carried a Clorox wipe, but I ditched my usual face shield and gloves. For the first time in over a year, I felt pretty relaxed in the store and barely worried about catching the virus.
Incidentally, Nicholas Wade, a well respected science journalist whose work has often appeared in Science, Nature, and the NY Times. has written a detailed, must-read article on Medium. The article states that the virus that causes covid-19 leaked out from a lab in Wuhan that had been working on ways to make coronaviruses more deadly.
The mainstream media has willfully ignored this story for over a year. Thankfully, Nicholas Wade's article has gathered all the evidence together, and his argument for the lab leak hypothesis is compelling. I encourage everyone to read the article. It should put the nail in the coffin into the never believable idea that covid-19 arose from natural causes.
Well, since you are in Georgia, you might as well do as the Romans. Order a glass of milk and cornbread. Crumble into milk. Eat with spoon. That said, Georgia is so full of Yankees fleeing the consequences of voting Democrat that there may be no one left in GA making cornbread. 😃
Critical Race Theory has snuck into our schools at an alarming rate. Equally alarming is the silence of parents for fear the schools will punish their children academically and/or not promote them for college acceptances.
Westminster in Atlanta GA is a nationally ranked school, top 10 year after year. Feeder school to Ivy Leagues and an endowment that makes most colleges jealous.
The content coming out is truly terrifying. It’s an indoctrination for the Democrat party and has been and is continuing more aggressively to preach, not teach, radical leftist, Marxist and socialist ideology.
I’m not apart of the school, my children attend a different school, but have many friends with children there. They had an IG page for a while called WOKE AT WESTMINSTER that would have blown your mind. They took it down, but the letters from who ever is running it continue to be circulated. More and more info being leaked ... I assume from faculty, teachers and parents. 5th graders having to select from 9 different identities, forced to state their pronouns and sign agreements, along with their parents, not to be racist. Duh.
"But Thomas Jefferson is diverse: the school is 79 percent non-white. The most recent freshman class is more than 70 percent Asian American."
From this, may we conclude that the definition of "diverse" is "having a minority of white people"? A place with 70+% Asian Americans is "diverse," but if it were 70+% white it would be "uniform"?
What about the margin between "more than 70%" and "79%"? Are those people from Africa? South America? Israel? Lebanon? Is a person of pure German ancestry from Argentina "diverse"? What about a person like Thor Halvorsen, of Swedish ancestry from Venezuela. "Diverse" or "white"?
On the other hand, I assume the "Asian-American" category includes Indian, Pakistani, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc., people, which is a pretty darn "diverse" group in my book. One the other, other hand, the "white" category would include Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, French, Irish, and maybe a handful of the boring local type.
Maybe some thinkers could discuss what "diverse" means and whether the definitions make any sense, as they did in the very interesting collection of essays on "systemic racism."
I find the video of Asra Nomani appearing before the school board horrifying. The actions of the Chair were the same as Communist judges in show trials, Nazi judges in Germany, McCarthy et al - including often, Chairs or their alternates in Senate and House Committees. This woman was a totalitarian poster "person". Her actions weren't just procedural.
Besides my hope that you don’t work too hard trying to service too many troubling issues, I’ll only add a couple of points about the COVID vaccination discussion and ask people to think about them with open minds.
I’ve suggested to my friends and family to hold off the exaggerated fears of the vaccines and get their vaccinations for COVID largely behind them, just like I faithfully get my flu shot annually.
BUT I don’t think that forcing mandatory vaccinations on segments of the population who are at minuscule risk (i.e. below age ~30 with no other relevant health challenges) is wise at all, especially when huge populations around the world are at real risk and are dying. The vaccines are approved under Emergency Use Authorizations, not fully evaluated for longer term effects. Forcing “near zero risk” individuals to take these could be viewed as a giant chemical experiment. It’d be a sad day if we forced this and in a couple of years found we’d forced serious problems onto many millions of people.
This is the common sense that many of the people who push back right now are trying to exercise. They’re not getting any help from the Government or Media, who are just pushing the only thing they can think of.
That said, I’ll offer a slightly qualified “Here, Here !” for your suggestions.
My other thought is about the Wuhan lab leak discussion. Although my education and career has been in Nuclear Physics and Engineering, I do understand a fair amount of fluid mechanics and aerosol movement (and have closely followed Dr. Lindsey Marr’s work). Just anecdotally, the COVID infections bursting out around the whole world in a couple of months simply doesn’t make sense for a locally generated illness with this kind of fatality rate. It was just way too acute. Way too rapid.
Thank you Bari! Your emails always help me think deeply. The SAPIR article was indeed brilliant. As a non-religious 47 year old American Jew who values tradition and the adversity facing her immigrant mother (born in a German refugee camp!) I feel exactly like the college student described in the essay. But more importantly, as a mother, and yes it is Mother’s Day, I increasingly worry for my children, and all children, as this neo-racist (I wholeheartedly subscribe to John McWhorter’s terminology) ideology continues to take hold in education, politics, media, the arts and in corporate America.
I'm writing this from an Australian perspective. We have been effectively Covid19 free for almost a year but to achieve this we have also effectively closed our national borders and subjected those who do return, to forced quarantine in specially adapted hotel floors for 2 weeks, at the returnee's expense. Because we have just re-discovered that we are a Federation of States, we have also discovered that the Federal Government can control who enters / leaves the country and has to foot the bill for everything, but the States have emergency powers that control all aspects of life - with enormous policing power. We mistakenly copied the US Federal system back in 1901. We have suffered 7 different sets of lockdown / masking/ social behaviour regimes, more severe in "Labor" states, but really, almost blind to political allegiance. The largest factor has been first, the naked fear and latterly, the intoxication of power, of the State Premiers (House Leaders - Governors are titular). Vaccination is now proceeding at a pace and is sought by all of the population, regardless of politics. Masks and restrictions come on and off depending on the occassional (tiny) escape of the disease from the quarantine system. But chaos can occur in a moment at the whim of the "nastiest" State Premiers who can blacklist any part of the nation if there has been a quarantine leak, causing destruction of travel plans and scheduled functions. Half of our own family, live in Israel which is highly vaccinated but not disease free. We have been told by our Prime Minister not to expect totally free travel for possibly another 2 years and that will be in a world of abrupt, unexpected imposition of restrictions and self funded, weeks of quarantine. So our day to day life, at least in Sydney, New South Wales, has become almost normal (though last week the imposition of masks on public transport and in shops, and some restrictions were reimposed because one, just one person, with the disease could not be traced (we check in/out to a State system at all places). This week, masks are for public transport only. Schools have been back for 9 months - Politics blind, - State Governments controlled. Almost total freedom but with constant uncertainty.
Bari- As a long time resident of Savannah, I can tell you that our city is truly a hidden gem... and our Jewish community is one of a kind. Happy to give you some recommendations if you want!
Thank you for your brave writing and clear thinking. But please don’t fall into a lackadaisical posture that there are crazies on both sides of the mask debate. There’s no good reason it should be mandated, and especially in schools. Mandates are harmful medically and socially. This issue is the linchpin; this is the key remaining Covid battle. If individual sovereignty is regained for this issue, a lot of the other dominos you write about will fall. That includes Covid matters and otherwise. It’s a battle worth fighting before the history of these draconian measures gets whitewashed.
Thank you for this essay. It is an update, but perhaps more importantly a reminder that we need to continue to think about and act on these issues. I think this paragraph is worth rereading:
"The danger in treating reasonable liberals like Oster as science-denying baddies is summed up perfectly in Emma’s piece by Dr. Monica Gandhi: “Those who are vaccinated on the left seem to think overcaution now is the way to go, which is making people on the right question the effectiveness of the vaccines.” ". Except that it is making some people on the left question the effectiveness, too.
Sarah Halimi's murderer was not "let off because he had smoked pot". In fact, it was the opposite: under French law, drug use is an aggravating factor in most cases.
The Court ruled that he was in the throes of a psychotic episode when he killed her, hence not criminally responsible for his act. It refused to consider his drug use as an aggravating factor, because the law re. criminal responsibility in cases of mental disorder does not spell that out. So, it was a horribly narrow ruling following the letter of the law.
At President Macron's request, a reform of the law is being drafted. It will be presented to the Cabinet in late May and then sent to Parliament.
Most people here in France, are horrified by Sarah Halimi's murder. I think it's a turning point in terms of public awareness of antisemitic violence and crimes.
Luckily for you I did not subscribe for your local weather reporting abilities. It was not that hot in Savannah today. Also I can recommend more “Teva” Coffee shops if the kids pretending to go to SCAD\SCAD kids are a problem.
As horrible as all of what Bari had written and shared about sounds, I have high hopes for California's (of course, who else?) rejection of the "the ideas of natural gifts and talents". You see, since my early years I have dreamed of becoming a famous athlete, of playing in the World Cup and of scoring against some of the rubbish teams of the world, like Celtic, or Birmingham City among others. This dream was killed by a bunch of coaches (I guess I'll have some canceling to do) who deemed me insufficiently talented. This proves that all of them were in fact vicious white supremacists promoting this ridiculous idea that only young, athletic, gifted people who know how to play a certain sport should be allowed to do so, which lead to the creation of the athletic supremacist elite. The fact that a short and fat, and not particularly agile old guy has never achieved anything in football - the fact that there are disparate outcomes between Messi and myself - is proof that sport is discriminatory and that there is systemic athletic supremacist discrimination against the rest of us.
Now, practices are also part of white supremacy, so I cannot be expected to do that. I also don't feel like playing in the next World Cup in Qatar as it might be way too hot, but I'll be ready for the next one. In the meantime I feel like playing in the NBA a bit, to stay active.
Sometimes I feel that a way to push back against this psychosis is to push their premises to their logical conclusions. I guess talent agencies in California may have to become equity agencies...
Get vaccinated. Get back to life. Should be simple but it's not. I was deemed eligible to receive the vaccine weeks ago by the esteemed authorities here in California but I declined. Why? Because there's no evident upside. I would have to observe the same protocols as if I weren't vaccinated; masks, social distancing, mandatory telework. If I travel more than 200 miles on public transportation, I have to self-isolate for 10 days upon return. Since I have no risk factors, I have no personal concern for a disease that has a 99.7% survival rate. So what's the point?
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.” Mark Twain. The significance of this quote is that what we are witnessing now is nothing new. In a democracy, demagogues are often successful at raising money and winning the popular vote. They often start their political career on the simple slogan of “I believe that all children can learn.” Whereupon they embrace and enact mindless fads. Three decades ago it was “self-esteem,” two decades ago it was “whole language” and now it’s abolishing all standards. Not only will these fads take a decade of destruction until they peter out, but by then many of the school board members will have moved on to City Council and possibly mayor.
And it happens on a national level. Best buddies George Bush and Barack Obama both allowed all major social media companies to swallow up the competition while failing to insist on coding being taught in the public school curriculum.
Kudos to Barry Weiss and others, for raising consciousness either globally or locally. This is a non-partisan activity, as I believed that Thomas Sowell and Theodore Dalrymple were voices of sanity during the 90s. I am happy to donate five dollars a month to people on the left, right and center willing to risk mob ridicule or worse, by playing the timeless role of soothsayer cautioning against the demagogic grain or cultish belief. It was sad to see the way Ms. Nomani was treated with transparent contempt. Nonetheless, her courage is inspiring.
Yes. It's important to get back to life. I'm almost 70 and had my second Moderna vaccine last month, so I'm now fully protected. Last week, my fully vaccinated friend visited me at home. We spent several hours together, had a great time, and didn't wear masks. This morning, I went grocery shopping. I wore my mask and carried a Clorox wipe, but I ditched my usual face shield and gloves. For the first time in over a year, I felt pretty relaxed in the store and barely worried about catching the virus.
Incidentally, Nicholas Wade, a well respected science journalist whose work has often appeared in Science, Nature, and the NY Times. has written a detailed, must-read article on Medium. The article states that the virus that causes covid-19 leaked out from a lab in Wuhan that had been working on ways to make coronaviruses more deadly.
The mainstream media has willfully ignored this story for over a year. Thankfully, Nicholas Wade's article has gathered all the evidence together, and his argument for the lab leak hypothesis is compelling. I encourage everyone to read the article. It should put the nail in the coffin into the never believable idea that covid-19 arose from natural causes.
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Well, since you are in Georgia, you might as well do as the Romans. Order a glass of milk and cornbread. Crumble into milk. Eat with spoon. That said, Georgia is so full of Yankees fleeing the consequences of voting Democrat that there may be no one left in GA making cornbread. 😃
Critical Race Theory has snuck into our schools at an alarming rate. Equally alarming is the silence of parents for fear the schools will punish their children academically and/or not promote them for college acceptances.
Westminster in Atlanta GA is a nationally ranked school, top 10 year after year. Feeder school to Ivy Leagues and an endowment that makes most colleges jealous.
The content coming out is truly terrifying. It’s an indoctrination for the Democrat party and has been and is continuing more aggressively to preach, not teach, radical leftist, Marxist and socialist ideology.
I’m not apart of the school, my children attend a different school, but have many friends with children there. They had an IG page for a while called WOKE AT WESTMINSTER that would have blown your mind. They took it down, but the letters from who ever is running it continue to be circulated. More and more info being leaked ... I assume from faculty, teachers and parents. 5th graders having to select from 9 different identities, forced to state their pronouns and sign agreements, along with their parents, not to be racist. Duh.
"But Thomas Jefferson is diverse: the school is 79 percent non-white. The most recent freshman class is more than 70 percent Asian American."
From this, may we conclude that the definition of "diverse" is "having a minority of white people"? A place with 70+% Asian Americans is "diverse," but if it were 70+% white it would be "uniform"?
What about the margin between "more than 70%" and "79%"? Are those people from Africa? South America? Israel? Lebanon? Is a person of pure German ancestry from Argentina "diverse"? What about a person like Thor Halvorsen, of Swedish ancestry from Venezuela. "Diverse" or "white"?
On the other hand, I assume the "Asian-American" category includes Indian, Pakistani, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc., people, which is a pretty darn "diverse" group in my book. One the other, other hand, the "white" category would include Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, French, Irish, and maybe a handful of the boring local type.
Maybe some thinkers could discuss what "diverse" means and whether the definitions make any sense, as they did in the very interesting collection of essays on "systemic racism."
I find the video of Asra Nomani appearing before the school board horrifying. The actions of the Chair were the same as Communist judges in show trials, Nazi judges in Germany, McCarthy et al - including often, Chairs or their alternates in Senate and House Committees. This woman was a totalitarian poster "person". Her actions weren't just procedural.
Bari, THANK YOU for your great work.
Besides my hope that you don’t work too hard trying to service too many troubling issues, I’ll only add a couple of points about the COVID vaccination discussion and ask people to think about them with open minds.
I’ve suggested to my friends and family to hold off the exaggerated fears of the vaccines and get their vaccinations for COVID largely behind them, just like I faithfully get my flu shot annually.
BUT I don’t think that forcing mandatory vaccinations on segments of the population who are at minuscule risk (i.e. below age ~30 with no other relevant health challenges) is wise at all, especially when huge populations around the world are at real risk and are dying. The vaccines are approved under Emergency Use Authorizations, not fully evaluated for longer term effects. Forcing “near zero risk” individuals to take these could be viewed as a giant chemical experiment. It’d be a sad day if we forced this and in a couple of years found we’d forced serious problems onto many millions of people.
This is the common sense that many of the people who push back right now are trying to exercise. They’re not getting any help from the Government or Media, who are just pushing the only thing they can think of.
That said, I’ll offer a slightly qualified “Here, Here !” for your suggestions.
My other thought is about the Wuhan lab leak discussion. Although my education and career has been in Nuclear Physics and Engineering, I do understand a fair amount of fluid mechanics and aerosol movement (and have closely followed Dr. Lindsey Marr’s work). Just anecdotally, the COVID infections bursting out around the whole world in a couple of months simply doesn’t make sense for a locally generated illness with this kind of fatality rate. It was just way too acute. Way too rapid.
Thank you Bari! Your emails always help me think deeply. The SAPIR article was indeed brilliant. As a non-religious 47 year old American Jew who values tradition and the adversity facing her immigrant mother (born in a German refugee camp!) I feel exactly like the college student described in the essay. But more importantly, as a mother, and yes it is Mother’s Day, I increasingly worry for my children, and all children, as this neo-racist (I wholeheartedly subscribe to John McWhorter’s terminology) ideology continues to take hold in education, politics, media, the arts and in corporate America.
I'm writing this from an Australian perspective. We have been effectively Covid19 free for almost a year but to achieve this we have also effectively closed our national borders and subjected those who do return, to forced quarantine in specially adapted hotel floors for 2 weeks, at the returnee's expense. Because we have just re-discovered that we are a Federation of States, we have also discovered that the Federal Government can control who enters / leaves the country and has to foot the bill for everything, but the States have emergency powers that control all aspects of life - with enormous policing power. We mistakenly copied the US Federal system back in 1901. We have suffered 7 different sets of lockdown / masking/ social behaviour regimes, more severe in "Labor" states, but really, almost blind to political allegiance. The largest factor has been first, the naked fear and latterly, the intoxication of power, of the State Premiers (House Leaders - Governors are titular). Vaccination is now proceeding at a pace and is sought by all of the population, regardless of politics. Masks and restrictions come on and off depending on the occassional (tiny) escape of the disease from the quarantine system. But chaos can occur in a moment at the whim of the "nastiest" State Premiers who can blacklist any part of the nation if there has been a quarantine leak, causing destruction of travel plans and scheduled functions. Half of our own family, live in Israel which is highly vaccinated but not disease free. We have been told by our Prime Minister not to expect totally free travel for possibly another 2 years and that will be in a world of abrupt, unexpected imposition of restrictions and self funded, weeks of quarantine. So our day to day life, at least in Sydney, New South Wales, has become almost normal (though last week the imposition of masks on public transport and in shops, and some restrictions were reimposed because one, just one person, with the disease could not be traced (we check in/out to a State system at all places). This week, masks are for public transport only. Schools have been back for 9 months - Politics blind, - State Governments controlled. Almost total freedom but with constant uncertainty.
Bari- As a long time resident of Savannah, I can tell you that our city is truly a hidden gem... and our Jewish community is one of a kind. Happy to give you some recommendations if you want!
Thank you for your brave writing and clear thinking. But please don’t fall into a lackadaisical posture that there are crazies on both sides of the mask debate. There’s no good reason it should be mandated, and especially in schools. Mandates are harmful medically and socially. This issue is the linchpin; this is the key remaining Covid battle. If individual sovereignty is regained for this issue, a lot of the other dominos you write about will fall. That includes Covid matters and otherwise. It’s a battle worth fighting before the history of these draconian measures gets whitewashed.
Thank you for this essay. It is an update, but perhaps more importantly a reminder that we need to continue to think about and act on these issues. I think this paragraph is worth rereading:
"The danger in treating reasonable liberals like Oster as science-denying baddies is summed up perfectly in Emma’s piece by Dr. Monica Gandhi: “Those who are vaccinated on the left seem to think overcaution now is the way to go, which is making people on the right question the effectiveness of the vaccines.” ". Except that it is making some people on the left question the effectiveness, too.
Sarah Halimi's murderer was not "let off because he had smoked pot". In fact, it was the opposite: under French law, drug use is an aggravating factor in most cases.
The Court ruled that he was in the throes of a psychotic episode when he killed her, hence not criminally responsible for his act. It refused to consider his drug use as an aggravating factor, because the law re. criminal responsibility in cases of mental disorder does not spell that out. So, it was a horribly narrow ruling following the letter of the law.
At President Macron's request, a reform of the law is being drafted. It will be presented to the Cabinet in late May and then sent to Parliament.
Most people here in France, are horrified by Sarah Halimi's murder. I think it's a turning point in terms of public awareness of antisemitic violence and crimes.
Luckily for you I did not subscribe for your local weather reporting abilities. It was not that hot in Savannah today. Also I can recommend more “Teva” Coffee shops if the kids pretending to go to SCAD\SCAD kids are a problem.