Saturday Miscellany

First, when I heard that Luigi Mangione was suffering from a back injury I naturally assumed that he was in pain because he had been deprived treatment by United Healthcare. Ergo, he murdered the CEO to express a grievance.

Now, however, we learn that he had never had any dealings with United Healthcare. He assassinated Brian Thompson in order to foment discontent with healthcare in America.

We also know that he came from wealth, and thus could have gotten better treatment or a better insurance policy. 

Second, it’s a mere sidelight, but it’s worth mentioning. As you know Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the pathetic little AOC want us to understand why Mangione did what he did.

They have borrowed the notion from therapy, where it is assumed that if you understand why you are suffering what you are suffering you will naturally be relieved of your pain. 

Dare I say that this is not true.

Third, among the better thinkers on the political left is Van Jones. His commentary does not always present the party line, which is refreshing.

The other day he offered this remark about the recent election:

The mainstream has become fringe and the fringe has become mainstream. There are platforms, there are people out there that are getting 14 million streams and we’re on cable news getting 1-2 million.

Donald Trump understood that and we didn’t.

Jones also remarked that Democrats were wrong to keep calling Donald Trump stupid. It makes us, he said, sound like idiots.

Fourth, on the transmania front, Great Britain has just banned all puberty blockers. James Esses reports:

The UK government have just announced that they are indefinitely banning puberty blockers. This day will go down in history as the day that safeguarding of children came back into existence.

Fifth, Benjamin Ryan offers some interesting commentary on puberty blockers.

Whether doctors were actively or consciously lying or not, the fact is that multiple sets of patients from multiple nations, including the original Dutch cohort, have shown that almost all children put on puberty blockers for gender dysphoria continue onto cross-sex hormones. The notion that blockers provide a "time to think" is strongly contradicted by all this data. 

Documentation indicates that the British knew this: As @hannahsbee writes in Time to Think: "In 2019, an official investigation" of the NHS's study of puberty blockers advised "that clinicians and researchers 'avoid referring to puberty suppression as providing a "breathing space" to avoid risk of misunderstanding.' Instead, the purpose of the treatment should be described as being offered to children demonstrating strong and persistent gender identity dysphoria 'such that the suppression of puberty would allow subsequent cross-sex hormone treatment without the need to surgically reverse or otherwise mask the unwanted physical effects of puberty in the birth gender."

In other words, blockers are meant as an on-ramp to hormones and the central purpose of the intervention during early puberty is to aid in passing as the opposite sex as an adult and to minimize the need for surgeries to aid in that goal.

Sixth, Daniel Hannan offers sane and sensible commentary about transmania. From The Daily Mail:

People have the right to change sex through reassignment surgery. They have the right to stop short of a full operation but to adjust their appearance. They have the right, if they prefer, simply to have hormone replacement treatment. And, indeed, they have the right to do nothing except cross-dress and use whatever pronouns they please.

What they do not have the right to do is tell the rest of us what words we are allowed to use. In a liberal society, trans people, including Dawson, would be at liberty to call themselves male or female. And others, including Roberts, would be equally at liberty to describe them in any way they pleased.

By this test, as by so many others, we are no longer a liberal society. We have invented a right not to be offended and elevated it above every other.

The reason I describe wokery as 'sanctification' is that its tenets are not subject to debate in the normal way. They are treated, rather, as absolutes, like matters of religious faith. This can lead us into all manner of absurdities. 

That’s right, wokery is the right not to be offended, applied solely to certain supposedly disadvantaged groups.

Seventh, as you know, we have been having a great tariff debate. I have refrained from offering an opinion because I do not know enough about tariffs to pretend that I have a worthwhile contribution to the debate.

You also know that Donald Trump has been threatening to impose tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China. 

Limiting ourselves to the China factor, the Financial Times reminds us that if we beat on China with tariffs, that nation will retaliate. It has happened before:

As has been the case since 2018, China has been quick to coun­ter­punch, in this case by ban­ning or lim­it­ing US pur­chases of sev­eral crit­ical min­er­als while tight­en­ing con­trols on graph­ite.

China’s retali­at­ory action is a sur­gical strike with stra­tegic con­sequences for key US indus­tries, ran­ging from semi­con­duct­ors and satel­lites to infrared tech­no­logy and fibre optic cables, to lith­ium bat­ter­ies and solar cells. These actions are com­par­able to what Wash­ing­ton is seek­ing with its “small yard, high fence” strategy aimed at restrict­ing access to crit­ical US tech­no­lo­gies.

That is not the only way that China can reciprocate:

The US is also heav­ily reli­ant on low-cost Chinese goods to make ends meet for income-con­strained con­sumers; the US needs Chinese sur­plus sav­ing to help fill its void of domestic sav­ing; and US pro­du­cers rely on China as Amer­ica’s third-largest export mar­ket. This means the US depends on China as much as China depends on Amer­ica.

The FT explains that we are in a codependent relationship with China, and that we should not forget that we depend on China as much as China depends on us.

Much of the post-elec­tion policy dis­cus­sion has focused on tar­iff ini­ti­at­ives likely to be forth­com­ing in Trump 2.0. Sino-Amer­ican code­pend­ency urges us to think less about uni­lat­eral actions and more about the retali­at­ory responses to those actions. Trump’s nation­al­istic view of “Amer­ica First” ignores how much a sav­ing-short US eco­nomy depends on China for goods and fin­an­cial cap­ital. China has plenty of “Trump cards” to send a very dif­fer­ent mes­sage.

One understands that the Trump threats are largely rhetorical. After all, despite the fact that Trump has taught too many people to denounce China as an evil empire, he did invite the president of China to his inauguration. President Xi declined.

Newsmax reports:

Chinese President Xi Jinping has declined to attend President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, reports CBS News.

Xi was personally invited to the Jan. 20 event by Trump, but experts told the Associated Press attending the inauguration would be too risky to accept.

"I don't think the Chinese will take the risk," Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank, said. There could be risks in the guest list, for example,

 Sun said, noting that Taiwan's top diplomat in the U.S. attended the swearing-in of President Joe Biden in 2021. Beijing considers Taiwan to be Chinese territory and has repeatedly warned the U.S. that it is a red line not to be crossed.

Clearly Trump wanted to extend a conciliatory gesture toward our competitors in the Middle Kingdom. 

Perhaps we are heading toward detente.

Eighth, speaking of good news. J D Vance invited Danial Penny to join him and the president-elect in the latter’s suite for the Army-Navy game. Penny accepted.

Ninth, more and more lawyers are discovering that transmania is a fruitful area for litigation. Hopefully, these lawsuits will save children from mutilation.

The following is from Kaitlyn Schwanemann:

A UCLA student is suing multiple California health care providers and hospitals for medical negligence, alleging she was wrongly diagnosed with gender dysphoria and then “fast-tracked onto the conveyor belt of irreversibly damaging” puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery, according to her lawsuit.

Kaya Clementine Breen, 20, said she experienced sexual abuse as a young child, and by the time she was 11, she “began struggling with the thought of developing into a woman and began to believe that life would be easier if she were a boy,” according to her suit filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court. 

When she expressed this to her then-school counselor, the counselor told her “that she was transgender and called her parents to tell them the same.”

Tenth, it’s a new low, even for Congressional Democrats. As Israel racks up more and more successes in its war against its enemies, a significant number of House Democrats want to embargo arms to Israel. 

BREAKING: 40% of House Democrats have sent a letter to Biden, demanding an arms embargo on Israel.

As Israel is making the world a safer place, Democrats are pushing for terrorist groups to stay in power.

Maybe, they never want to win another election.

Keep in mind that lifelong Democrat Alan Dershowitz quit the party because it had become infested with anti-Semitism.

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