Is Trump a Russian Stooge?

Trump, the Russian stooge. Such is the trope being peddled by lying Andrew McCabe. Worse yet, Trump has destroyed the sacred Atlantic alliance, the one led by the weak sisters of Western Europe.

After all, those who pretend that the trans-Atlantic alliance obliges the United States to follow Europe's lead are up in arms against Trump. Consider the evidence. Trump is sanctioning Iran, because Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism.  He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. The Obamaphile Europeans want to continue to do business with Iran, because, after all, Iran continues to murder homosexuals. And it jails women for taking off the hijab. It is trying to establish an advance operating base in Syria, the better to attack and invade Israel. And it finances the terrorist operations of Hezbollah and Hamas.

And, let’s not forget that Germany itself led the march toward open borders, thus flooding its country with Muslim migrants who cannot assimilate and who are prone to prey on the local populace.

As the recently departed Karl Lagerfeld once said, a propos of the Merkel open arms policy:

One cannot – even if there are decades between them – kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place,” he said. “I know someone in Germany who took a young Syrian and after four days said ‘the greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust.'”

From that you would naturally conclude that Trump is a danger to everything we hold dear. After all, he declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. And we cannot have that.

Of course, the leader of the Western European weak sisters alliance is Angela Merkel. Now, as you know, Merkel has contracted to build a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, making her country dependent on Russian natural gas. The Trump administration has been lobbying intensely against the project, for obvious reasons. It would make Germany dependent on Russian gas. It would send massive amounts of money to Russia, thus allowing it to build up its military capabilities.

To which the grandees assembled in Munich last week cheered. Because Trump is a Russian stooge.

What did Trump have to say about this last year? Glad you asked.

Via Zero Hedge:

"It’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia," Trump said before meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday morning, according to a Bloomberg report from last year. 

Will the real Russian stooge please stand up?

She Leaned In; She Didn't Get the Job; She Was Offended

What do you make of this letter? The letter writer sent it to Miss Manners, a national treasure, to ask about an etiquette issue. So Miss Manners answered by commenting about the etiquette issue.

And yet, the problem lies elsewhere. If I were to have my say, I believe that the letter shows what happens when you lean in. A woman was approached about a job offer. She asked about the hours. They responded quickly. She leaned in. They ghosted her. And they did not offer her the job. So, she leaned in again, got snippy and wrote them a text criticizing them for not getting back to her.

Unfortunately, it’s what happens when you lean in. Here, without further ado, is the letter:

I received a text from an individual stating they had an opening with a certain company and would like to know if I was interested. When I asked what hours they were looking for, they responded fairly quickly.

But when I asked a couple of follow-up questions, one of which being could they match or exceed the pay of my current employer, I heard nothing. I assumed they were no longer interested.

The next day, I sent them a text stating that, while I wasn't so much upset over not being offered a job, I would have appreciated it if they would have just said so. They replied an hour or two later that they were out of the office and unable to reply. My response was that it was rude to leave in the middle of a conversation, regardless of whether in-person or by text, and that at the very least, if they had to go, they should have warned me by saying so.

I no longer have any interest in working for this company. Am I wrong to expect a semi-quick response? Even when I'm busy, at work or otherwise (when I'm driving, I have an app that does it for me automatically), I'm always quick to respond to messages with a "Can't talk now, I'll let you know when I can."

Basically, she disqualified herself. She did not express her interest in working for the new company. She did not offer to present a resume or recommendations. She asked what the new company could do for her. When she raised the issue of salary, for a job that she had not yet been offered, she ended the conversation. It was the wrong question. It showed someone who was self-involved and was unlikely to be a team player.

Evidently, in today’s overly litigious environment companies have little reason or interest in explaining why they have not hired a candidate. Our letter writer has contracted a serious case of leaning in, so she continued to assert herself, and threatened the company. She wrote another text telling them that they had an obligation to tell her that she was no longer in the running. When they offered an auto-response, she got huffy because they were being rude to them. In truth, when they did not reply to the second text-- the one about salary-- that was the message. It was the dog that didn't bark. It told her that she was not in the running.

Well, maybe they were. But, the truth of the matter is that she made a grandiose display of bad manners and defective etiquette. She got what she deserved. As Michelle Obama said of leaning in: that shit doesn’t work.

The Case of the Sorry Jackass

We always want to give credit where it’s due, so here’s one for our least favorite advice columnist Ask Polly. Yesterday she was responding to an anguished young woman who, by her own testimony had been "on the Polly train."

The woman had been doing what Polly said, had undergone therapy and whatever… and still was seriously alone and embarrassed. It was not working. Things were getting worse. She is in emotional turmoil. She has accepted Polly’s idiotic injunction to embrace her imperfections, even her badness… and it was not working. She had figured out to regulate all of her emotions and no one was responding.

To put it in slightly different terms, she had gone through the therapy that taught her that she needed but to do the proper amount of emotional gymnastics and the world would open itself to her. It was bad advice to begin with. It’s still bad advice. But, Polly, who does not know any better, keeps hawking it. After all, she has a great gig at New York Magazine, and her millennial readers do not know enough or are so emotionally damaged that they think she is handing out pearls of wisdom.

All except the woman who calls herself Embarrassingly Alone. We are surprised that Polly is responding to this letter because it indicts Polly for the insipid mindless advice that she gives out.

And Polly seems to understand that part. In a rare moment of self-awareness Polly offers an accurate description of herself:

I’m not some all-seeing judge. I’m just another sorry jackass muddling through, trying to do my best and failing half of the time.

When it comes to her column, half the time is wildly optimistic.

So Polly offers empathy. It’s a good thing to offer when you don’t know how to think and when you do not want to admit how you and your band of brainless therapists have contributed to this mess.

I don’t think you’re being melodramatic. I hear you. You’re telling me that you’re hurting and nobody shows. I’ve felt that way before, and I know how shitty it feels. Even though you’re blending together the past and the present, your family and your friends and me, it’s still accurate for where you are right now. Right now, it’s obvious that nobody is showing up the way you want them to.

Of course, this merely repeats what Embarrassingly Alone has written… so Polly has nothing to say, except that she is a “sorry jackass.”

Anyway, I enter in evidence some excerpts from the anguished letter, written by a woman who is a recovering anorexic and who has undergone more than her fair share of therapy. Here, therapy is the problem, not the solution:

My hands are covered in jam because I just had a breakfast I didn’t want. I’d like to go wash them, but I’m too sad to care enough to make myself actually stand up. I was struggling with anorexia for the last several years, in and out of treatment, and I’m just now figuring out how to eat, but it doesn’t feel very beautiful or interesting. It kind of just feels shitty and sad and banal and like you always have sticky hands from a stupid breakfast you didn’t want to eat.

I can’t really explain to you why I’m writing except to say that I’m starting to suspect that some of the main people I’ve relied on and looked up to in my life don’t really understand how abandoned the world can leave you, and I’m starting to feel like a weird freak who knows the secret (that the world can really fucking leave you) and, in that knowing, I’m marked like motherfucking Cain. I’m trying to love and trust my people and to tell them that I’m sad and angry, but these days I’m wondering if they don’t know how abandoned I feel.

She wants all of these people to feel her feelings. I wonder where she got that idea? Therapy has made her a self-absorbed whiner and complainer. Therapy did not tell her that such an attitude sends other people packing. Friends want to see you at your best, Aristotle said, not at your worst. Even, and especially when your therapist and Polly have told you that your worst was your truth.

Moreover, when therapists tell their patients to be independent and autonomous, not to rely on other people, to be perfectly self-sufficient… they are suggesting that they will always be alone.  This is what Embarrassingly Alone has understood. I fear that she has understood it correctly.

They just keep telling me things that would technically be good for people who haven’t been dreadfully alone to hear, but when you have stared into that abyss of absolute self-reliance, then hearing the people you love say that you need to figure things out in your heart, and then, after, come to them with whatever you’ve realized — well, that sounds a lot like someone walking quietly out of the room and locking the door behind them, shrugging, Figure it out, kid, this will be fun. And I can’t admit to them what I’m looking at — this locked room, this empty coast — because then they’ll start to wonder what must be so wrong with me that I’ve learned what those things look like.

Again, the notion that you need but fix what’s inside, that you need to recalibrate your emotions and then, lo and behold, the world will flock to your doorstep… was and still is a lie. And, of course, EA understands that she did not just learn it from therapy. She learned it from Polly:

I’ve been on the Polly train of trying to accept being broken, but I think I’m butting up against a wall of what I let myself believe broken meant. I’m realizing that the depth of anger in my heart, the rage and horror and deep sadness, goes way past the wall I always told myself was the boundary of the rational. I had never even been to that wall — I spent all of my time being so loving and careful and compassionate, and now that I’m finally inching toward it, I’m suddenly seeing that where I am is just beyond.

And naturally, therapy has taught EA to blame it all on her family. Dare we suggest that she did not have a very good family life. But, rehashing the past, feeling sorry for your upbringing, will not cause people to show up for you, to reach out a hand of empathy. It makes her self-involved to the point where other people are avoiding her:

My family was one of tirelessly fluctuating moods, erratic and violent and then loving and gentle; when they were in the good moods, you felt like they were the most special, extraordinary, private thing in the world, and when they were in the bad moods, you were very convinced that everyone, your mother and your sister and your brother, hated you more than they could say. It was a kind of repulsion. So they hit and they spit and they yelled, until after a while they would calm down, and if you were very, very quiet and very still and very careful, sometimes you could reach out to them at exactly the right moment and squeeze them or joke or reassure them or make fun of yourself and then they would calm down, laugh, shake their heads as though they were waking up out of a trance.

Now that her therapist has taught her to blame it all on her family, she judges her friends according to whether or not they feel her feelings:

I’ve started believing and trusting people in the last few years, finding friends who I felt really knew things and understood the world and the Real and the Honest Broken Beauty sorts of things. But, Polly, I’m starting to feel like they don’t understand what it’s like to be an abandoned kid in the middle of a packed house, where everyone is yelling at you. I’m starting to feel like they don’t know what it’s like to say, with your legs buckling under you and your face contorted and your body starving, Please help me, I need you, and to get nothing back.

As noted, she believes that she need but appear to be weak and pathetic… and that people will show up for her. In a better world she would have understood by now that she has been fed a line of bullshit… and should stop wasting so much time and effort trying to follow the bad advice dished out by her therapists and Polly:

Everyone’s advice seems to amount to something like this — that I need to admit my brokenness, that I need to ask people to come with me in the terrible truth of my weakness. But Polly, I swear I have. And nobody showed. I see my friends freaking out — in real ways, important ways, reflecting honest suffering — and I see their family mobilize around them. They do it in shitty, inadequate ways, but they’re trying, and you can see it. They try and they act and they’re there. But, Polly, when I’ve broken down — when I was starving, when I was in danger — and I admitted how broken and hungry I was, how I couldn’t eat, how I couldn’t move — everyone just kind of sat there and blinked and looked uncomfortable. And nobody showed up. So I pulled myself to treatment, and I tried really hard to be honest, and everyone said what an easy patient I was, and my insurance dropped me when I had gained enough weight. 

They have all told her to accept being broken. Perhaps they have no idea of how to fix what is broken, but it’s bad advice. EA calls them out on it:

… honestly, Polly, I’m tired, and I feel like you’re going to read every sentence of this judging me for being melodramatic or empty or stupid, for not having the grace to accept my life as a beautiful broken thing. I do feel like my life is beautiful, but right now I feel amputated, Polly, you know? And when I hear you, or my dear friends, or my therapist say things like, Accept how broken you are, accept that no one can help you except for you, all I hear is how dreadfully, terribly, depressingly alone I am.

Polly, I’ve cried, I’ve fallen apart, and nobody shows. All of the things you say will come, they don’t come. It’s just me, standing at the entrance of an enormous tunnel, and it’s dark and muggy and smells like shit, and I don’t know how I got there, and I feel like any second someone is going to round the corner and hurt me, so I scream, and all I get back a few moments later is the echo of my voice. It sounds so fucking scared, Polly, and still nobody shows.

Evidently, the woman does have some talent as a writer. In some ways she seems to have more talent than Polly. She ought now to follow the logical outcome of her own analysis and ignore the advice that she has been given, to reach out to other people, to offer something positive and good to them, to do an occasional good deed… and to disregard the notion that if only she whines and complains enough, they will come running.

Saving the best for last, I believe that her use of the expression “nobody shows” is brilliant. It is not grammatical, but that makes it even more interesting. It’s possible to defy the rules of grammar and succeed. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

We assume that she means something like “nobody shows up.” But she might also be thinking of the fact that when a woman is pregnant, people commonly say that she is or is not showing. Or else, it could have something to do with putting on a show. Or with a game of show and tell. The implications are intriguing and engaging.

But, consider this one: have you ever heard of children playing a game called: you show me yours and I’ll show you mine. You know what it means. I do not need to explain. And yet, what happens when you show yours and the gesture is not reciprocated. After all, EA has exposed her weakness, her vulnerability and her shame— exactly as Polly keeps recommending— and other people do not reciprocate. They do not show theirs. They do what any normal human being would do. They turn away. They look elsewhere. Because they are trying to help her to save face… to save the face that she just gave up by showing herself to be weak and pathetic.

Who Is Lara Logan?

You know about Lara Logan. You have read, as we all have, her interview with Mike Ritland. Since Logan is no longer the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, she can now speak her mind. Call it liberation, but Logan has used her freedom to denounce the mainstream media for overt and frank political bias. In that she follows the lead of Jill Abramson who said as much about the New York Times.

Logan declared that journalists are not really journalists any more. They are political activists and lobbyists for liberal interests. This means that their sense of what is factual and objective has disappeared. In a journalist is ethically obliged to report the news, without fear or favor, without mixing it with opinion, today’s journalists are morally deficient. It’s not about opinion journalists… who are in the business of offering opinion. It’s about the journalists who pretend to be reporting the facts but are really promoting an ideology.

As it happens, Logan is no longer with CBS. We do not know why she was dismissed or whether she simply resigned. At the least, we know that she, a victim of gang rape, was treated shabbily by her former employer.

So says Breitbart, (via Maggie's Farm) and the point is worth emphasis. You recall that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was idolized for offering up unsubstantiated allegations that she was groped by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh. And of course Anita Hill became celebrate as a heroine of the resistance for denouncing Clarence Thomas for using bad language n her presence.

Now, Breitbart reports, we have a woman who was gang raped on Tahrir Square in Cairo Egypt during the heady days of the Arab Spring. And who has been summarily dismissed from her job.

Breitbart offers details of the assault. If you choose, you can read them. They are beyond harrowing. It emphasizes that Logan is receiving different treatment as a rape victim because her experience does not fit the narrative.

We are only a few months removed from such hero treatment being lavished on women who suddenly came forward with implausible and unproven allegations of decades-old misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Those women were universally described as “survivors,” but Lara Logan never is. Criticism of those women – even polite questions about the inconsistencies in their claims – was denounced as “attacking” them, but Lara Logan enjoys no such courtesy. The left long ago decided Logan is a “right-wing shill,” and that political identity trumps everything else about her.

Logan did not receive much deference from CBS News after suffering horribly on their behalf. She evidently parted company with the network months ago, a parting so low-key that both supporters and detractors assumed she still worked there and might have been sacked for her interview with Ritland. CBS representatives this week were vague about exactly when she left.

That’s not the departure one would expect for a journalist who doggedly stuck with a major story despite clear threats to her safety and went on to survive a brutal mass rape. No company is obliged to employ anyone in perpetuity, of course, but Logan’s treatment has been paid scant attention by the people who would normally erupt in outrage if a woman with her background was disrespected.

Why the silence over Logan? Aside from her supposed right-wing tendencies, there is the simple fact that her public gang rape defies the Obama administration narrative of democracy breaking out in Egypt.

The fall of Hosni Mubarak was supposed to be a lovely flowering of democracy. The view Lara Logan got of the proceedings from that filthy street in Cairo did not fit the narrative, so her story does not loom large in the media’s collective memory.

Hate Crimes Ignored

The national media and the nation’s politicians are consuming themselves over the supposed hate crime committed against actor Jussie Smollett. As of now, the information is slightly sketchy, but it appears that Smollett was being less than truthful in his account of the events. It even appears that he might be indicted for filing a false police report. Stay tuned.

Many politicians and media outlets are now wiping the egg off their faces… but do not expect anything to change. They have decided that hate crimes by white Trump supporters against African-Americans fulfill all the terms of their narrative. Thus, that it did not really matter that it happened.

Ben Shapiro reminds us that two hate crimes occurred on January 29. One was the supposed attack on Smollett. The other occurred in Brooklyn, NY. The perpetrators were African-American and the victim was Jewish. Thus, it did not merit any national attention.

Shapiro describes what happened:

That same night, a Jewish man in New York was beaten by three thugs. Nothing was stolen. The attack was caught on video.

Outside of a report in The Jerusalem Post, the story received virtually no attention.

Was this a one-off event, an outlier? Not at all. Shapiro continues:

This isn’t the only story of anti-Semitism in New York. Not by a long shot. Two weeks before that beating, a Jewish man, 19, was “violently assaulted” as he walked past a local laundromat by a group of teenage black males. In December, a 16-year-old Jewish teen spent a week in a hospital after being beaten by two other teens; witnesses said that the teens screamed “Kill the Jew.” The NYPD categorized the attack as “gang related” rather than a hate crime, angering Jews in the area. This weekend, vandals shattered the window of a Chabad in Bushwick as the rabbi and his family slept inside.

This list goes on.

In fact, according to NBC New York, “The city has seen a sharp increase in reported hate crimes so far in 2019, the NYPD said. Police had investigated 42 hate crimes through Feb. 4, compared with 19 at the same point last year. Most of those were anti-Semitic.” The New York Times reported in October of last year that “there have been four times as many crimes motivated by bias against Jews — 142 in all — as there have against blacks. Hate crimes against Jews have outnumbered hate crimes targeted at transgender people by a factor of 20.”

Why the lack of coverage? Simply put, the prevalence of anti-Semitic hate crimes does not fit the narrative:

Indeed, the narrative the Left wishes to push is that America is deeply discriminatory and bigoted, rife with hate. But by statistics, Jews are by far the most likely group to be targeted in America on a per capita basis. This is a problem for the intersectionality-oriented Left, which sees Jews not as victims but as part of the power hierarchy in the United States. How can the Left uphold its hierarchy of victimhood if Jews are the chief targets of hate crime – and furthermore, if such hate crime is largely perpetrated by non-white supremacists, people who supposedly lie higher on the victim hierarchy than Jews?

Furthermore, Jews are inordinately successful and well-treated in the United States; outside of Israel, there is no more philo-Semitic country on earth. So if Jews, the most statistically victimized group in America, aren’t particularly victimized, what does that say about the narrative of America as racist, bigotry-ridden hellhole?

And, by the by, let’s not forget that Ben Shapiro is routinely excluded from college campuses. He is simply too dangerous. 

So much for the marketplace of ideas. So much for reporting all the facts.

The Cost of Overcoming Shame

I’ve been writing about this seemingly forever, so I feel obliged to point out that two Axios reporters have finally gotten shame right. As you know, led by dimwits and halfwits our intelligentsia has decided that shame is bad and that we should immediately overcome it. They do not understand that shame involves how other people see us, and thus, that ridding our minds of it entails either ignoring the way we look to others, that is, our public reputation or actively embracing shamelessness.

People who insist that we must overcome shame are recommending that children sext images of their genitalia to other children. When they say that we should all expose our most shameful secrets they do not understand what that implies. If so, they should stop talking about shame.

Eliminating shame has cost us something. It has certainly cost us our moral compass. Because having a sense of shame means having a moral sense. So said Confucius, and you are not going to dispute Confucius.

Axios reporters David Nather and Scott Rosenberg note sagely that our leading public figures have gotten the message. If they refuse to take responsibility they can simply hunker down and wait for public attention to move on. They have overcome their sense of shame. 

Meaning: public figures who have been derelict in their duties no longer do the honorable thing. They no longer resign in shame… and therefore they refuse to spare the public the agony of having to watch them trying to pretend that nothing happened. They set a bad moral example and help produce a culture where what matters is what you can get away with. 

Their actions imply that they did nothing wrong. This means, as happened in the notably shameless former president Bill Clinton, that sexual harassment and sexual assault were acceptable behavior… if you supported the right policies.

The authors count the ways:

• You see it with [Virginia Governor Ralph] Northam (D) insisting he's going to stick it out in office after the discovery of a racist photo in his medical school yearbook — which prompted him to acknowledge that he wore blackface in 1984 to impersonate Michael Jackson.

• You see it with Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) insisting he won't resign after sexual assault allegations by two women.

• You see it with Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) staying in Congress after being stripped of his committee assignments over racist comments.

• You see it with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) keeping his seat in Congress despite accusations that he knew about sexual abuse of athletes at Ohio State University and didn't do anything about it.

• You see it with Reps. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) running for re-election — and winning — even though they're facing federal indictments.

• You see it with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) being re-elected after his highly publicized trial on corruption charges. (He was acquitted on seven counts, and the Justice Department dropped the rest of the charges.)

They also mention Once-Great Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May who keeps losing Parliament votes on her Brexit plan and who refuses to take the hint and resign.

The authors point out that Bill Clinton and his band of enablers led the way toward a culture of shamelessness. But, it’s not just that his supporters did not hold him to account. They defended him to the death.

But, if we are looking for the origin of this bad cultural habit, this sign of ethical decline, we should go back a little further and consider a point that I have made in my book on Saving Face. 

The Vietnam War was arguably the biggest foreign policy failure in our history. It was the first war America lost. And yet, not one of the leaders of that failed operation was really held to account. Not one apologized in a timely fashion. Most of them, from Robert McNamara to Walt Rostow to McGeorge Bundy went on to distinguished careers. 

Why were they allowed to get away with it? Simply put, they were Democrats. They were liberals. They were working for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. They had been brought into government by the sainted John Kennedy. Thus, they did not need to apologize for their manifest failure. Worse yet, no one even thought that they should. Better to shift the blame to the troops and to the Nixon administration.

Harm Reduction Drug Policies

I’m sure you want to know. After all, enquiring minds always do. I’m sure you want to know how liberal policies by liberal mayors in liberal cities have turned some of these cities into hellholes. Especially on the oh-so-blue west coast.

Now, Erica Sandberg offers an explanation… the best one we have seen. The reason that San Francisco has been invaded and occupied by drug addicts and the homeless can be traced directly to a policy called: harm reduction.

Its purpose is simple. To make it safe and easy to shoot up, to take drugs, to sustain an addiction.

Sandberg explains:

Drugs are destroying San Francisco’s most densely populated and desirable neighborhoods, as more and more addicts, many of them homeless, fill the streets. Politicians and activists are pushing “harm reduction,” which, in a clinical sense, means a “set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use,” such as overdose or the transmission of disease. But in a contemporary context, it also means “a movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs.”

Harm reduction, originally a controversial public-health measure, has become a religion among advocates, even as fears that the practice would normalize drug use have been borne out. Organizations like the San Francisco Drug Users Union demand “a safe environment where people can use & enjoy drugs” and a “positive image of drug users to engender respect within our community and from outside our community.” True believers dominate City Hall as well as a network of affiliated, politicized nonprofits that operate in the city with little oversight or accountability. In this environment, questioning harm reduction or its effects borders on heresy. But are the programs actually helping impoverished addicts? And what is the impact on the community?

Yes, indeed. Drug addicts have rights. They have the right to be addicted. They have the right to use clean needles. And they have the right to dispose of said needles wherever they please. Was this what John Locke was thinking when he began theorizing about human rights?

The harm reduction program assumes, as an article of faith, that addicts will stay addicted. It assumes that they will either use dirty needles or clean needles. Some proponents of harm reduction suggest that their programs will help wean people off of drugs. Of course, this is simply a lie. Reality says otherwise.

Under the circumstances, Sandberg continues, we can justify some of the harm reduction programs. Unfortunately, they have been extended to include providing all of the paraphernalia needed to keep taking drugs:

It’s true that sterile needles reduce the transmission of blood-borne infections, and injecting narcotics under supervision can lower the risk of overdose and death. But harm reduction goes far beyond promoting these kinds of needle-safety measures. For example, At the Crossroads, a nonprofit, assembled “safe snorting kits” for at-risk and homeless youth. Baggies were filled with straws, chopping mats, plastic razor blades, and instruction sheets. Other groups offer crack-cocaine “safe-smoking” kits. A proposal to open “safe injection” sites, opposed by Jerry Brown, is favored by Governor Gavin Newsom, and is likely to succeed.

Harm reduction advocates pay lip service to helping people to quit taking drugs. But, Sandberg continues, their policies are really designed to remove the stigma around drug use. And that means, as always happens when you remove a stigma, more drug use.

Harm-reduction efforts are sometimes sold as ways to connect with addicts, offer them other services, and help them get off drugs. But those laudable goals are not really what motivate advocates, who want mostly to remove the stigma surrounding drug use. Addicts may eventually pursue treatment or stop using on their own, but a central principle of harm-reduction theory is accepting and respecting drug use. As a result, an astonishing number of addicts on San Francisco streets hover on the edge of death, despite a continuous supply of clean needles.

What happens when you reduce a stigma?

The advocates have certainly succeeded in reducing stigma—it’s easy to find people openly injecting into their arms, legs, toes, and necks. Their exposed flesh shows infected sores; they stumble, fall, and pass out. There seem to be more of them, and in worse condition, every day. Addicts congregate on sidewalks, in parks, subway stations, and outside businesses. They die in school doorways.

The proliferation of used needles on San Francisco’s streets provoked a public outcry. And it even provoked some local government action:

San Francisco’s streets and transportation system are littered with discarded syringes. After massive public outcry (and streams of embarrassing media reports) about the proliferation of hazardous medical waste on the streets and sidewalks, the city contracted with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, at approximately $1 million per year, to hire a cleanup crew. Roughly 60 percent of the needles now get collected.

Of course, in a decadent culture, a culture in decline, people use addictive substances to numb the psychic pain. In the meantime, San Francisco’s quality of life continues to decline:

Meantime, quality of life in the city continues to erode. Tourism is threatened, retailers close, and families leave. Yet harm-reduction zealots remain adamant in their views. During public discussions about safe-injection sites, they dismiss legitimate concerns about increased drug-dealing, burglaries, violence, and vagrancy. In community meetings, Department of Public Health representatives disregard residents’ misgivings. Typical complaints—“Why are you doing this? Bloody needles are everywhere, people are injecting in front of my kid’s preschool, I’m afraid to take my dog for a walk”—are met with responses that usually begin, “This is harm reduction.” In San Francisco’s brave new world, there is no room for the skeptic.

An astonishing picture. All in the name of the gospel of harm reduction.

Remember the Hippocratic oath, which opens: First, do no harm.

San Francisco now encourages people to harm themselves and others… in the name of harm reduction.