Fauci Exonerates Fauci

More than a million Americans died, so Dr. Anthony Fauci is taking a victory lap. After all, it could have been two million. 

When interviewer Neal Cavuto asked Fauci this:

Do you think shutdowns particularly for kids who couldn't go to school that it's forever damaged them?

The good doctor responded:

I don't think it's irreparably damaged anyone.

As a counterpoint I offer part of a book review by Sarah Menkedick in the New York Times. In it the reviewer recounts her experience of the lockdowns, and offers some comments on a book length treatment of the topic. Of course, some parts of America did not lock down. Some states did not close schools, but, for now, limit ourselves to those that did.

Menekdick writes:

No societal shift has impacted my adult life as profoundly as the extended closure of schools during the pandemic. At first, I mourned my career, which I gave up to facilitate the purgatory of Zoom “school” for my first grader. Then I mourned my family’s precarious, hard-won harmony, which dissolved into endless fights about time, work and space. Finally, I mourned the faith I’d held, without ever recognizing it as such, in public institutions. I discovered I no longer believed in school. I no longer believed in many of the systems I’d taken for granted as mostly valuable and functional. I spun out into despair, then anger, then a flat, terrible resignation.

Anya Kamenetz’s book “The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now” hauled me back to that time. It is a relentless account of ruptures in so many Americans’ lives, from mental health crises to hunger to academic failures and accidents (in one of the most startling anecdotes, a 7-year-old boy is shot while breaking into a building when he should have been in school). 

That should suffice for now. Those who wish to read more, aside from the information we have been sharing on this blog for two years now, can refer to the Kamenetz book.

Prime Minister Party Girl Sanna Marin

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, feminists insisted that women be recognized for their achievements, not their private parts. Feminists did not say it, but they were surely implying, if they knew what they were implying, that women should keep private matters out of public spaces. And that means, they should keep their private affairs out of the workplace and out of public view. In other words, no more walks of shame.

At the same time, some feminists were also saying that the personal is political, which implies that the political is personal. They were encouraging women to politicize their personal lives, turn their kitchens into war zones, fight for the revolution in their salons and boudoirs. By extension, and it does not take too much of a stretch, women were being told to bring their private matters into the workplace. Since women had a superior capacity for empathy and since they were more attuned to their emotions, they ought to share these on the job, on the factory floor and in the boardroom.

Unfortunately, more than a few males, being less than intelligent about these matters, thought that they were being invited to make the workplace a place to party. They failed to respect the wall between public and private and launched far too much sexual harassment. They personalized the political, that is they acted as though private matters were relevant to office interaction.

Anyway, this brings us to a case that is causing anguish across the Western world. If you wonder what’s wrong with the Western world, the case of Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin puts it all in relief.

At a time when Finland is poised to join NATO, becoming a military protectorate of America, Marin was photographed getting down and dirty at a party. Prime Minister Party Girl-- at a time when Russia and Ukraine are fighting it out, Western Europe sends out the image, not of strong and resolute leadership, but of a nation that does not respect itself. We will not belabor the point, but in terms of gross improprieties, we note that Marin is a married women. Unfortunately, being married no longer counts. Obviously, Finland is joining NATO-- and not a minute too soon.

And yes, I do not mean to put the onus on Sanna Marin, but surely the Western European and American obsession with showing itself to be sensitive, empathetic, compassionate and caring, that is of advertising its feminine qualities, must have played into Vladimir Putin’s assessment that the West was weak and that it needed to be put in its place. After all, the leader of Ukraine once appeared on Dancing with the Stars.

So, Prime Minister Party Girl Sanna Marin embarrassed herself and embarrassed her country and embarrassed the Western world. Little doubt about that. And yet, the reaction from the media and from Western feminists has been a clear and resounding defense of Party Girl Sanna. 

Do not for an instant believe that these great minds have minds at all. Do not for an instant believe that they understand the least little bit about shame.

Strangely, they have not the least sense of the difference between public and private behavior. They righteously intone that the girl has a right to party when the issue has nothing to do with the girl’s right to party. In truth, the issue is whether the girl has a right to make herself a public spectacle.

Some things you and I and all normal people do in private, we do not post on the internet. We do not show off our private activities in a public space. If we did, other people would think less of us, would see us as lesser, would identify us as not quite ready to assume awesome public responsibilities. Then again, being an American protectorate means that you can keep in close touch with your inner adolescent.

Allow me to speculate that the prime minister of a country like Finland has some very serious security. And allow me to explain that her security detail ought, if it is worth anything, to have stood firm in defense of her public image. Said detail should never have allowed their prime minister to be photographed when engaged in erotically charged dancing. And in her ministerial residence, no less. When we are dealing with a head of government, a public image of resolute competence should prevail, as a role model for all other citizens. 

Naturally, women across the Western world have been appalled by the whole incident. They are not appalled at the implication that women leaders, especially young women leaders, are not ready for prime time, but they are appalled at what they mindlessly call the double standard. By their mini minds women have a right to party and the world would never be scandalized by images of a man partying. Dare we ask which male leader around the world today has been photographed engaged in erotically charged poses during a drunken bacchanalian revelry?

The answer is: none.

Besides, most political leaders are simply too old for such antics. Imagine Margaret Thatcher partying at 10 Downing Street? I am sure that you do not want to imagine Maggie partying. Right?

Of course, age matters. And the eroticism or lack thereof regarding the human body, especially the human female body, is not a social construction. It is a biological reality. This means that women possessing such attributes would do better to maintain a strict discipline and reserve their private antics for their private lives.

If they represent their nation’s government and project it around the world, they should take special care to maintain proper decorum and dignity. And they should instruct their security to act accordingly. Otherwise they will be embarrassing themselves and embarrassing their fellow countrymen and women. You do not want to become an international joke because your political leaders are senile or stupid or cannot keep their private matters private.

Rest assured, that no matter what the feminist leaders are telling you, that the embarrassment the nation has suffered is no joke. It is no laughing matter. Finnish diplomats, Finnish executives, even Finnish tourists will now be looked at with a somewhat less than respectful eye. Trust me, this will not make them happy or confident. Losing respect is no laughing matter and not something you can cover over by claiming that since everyone does it in private-- speak for yourself, bunky-- then we should all feel comfortable doing it in public. As a moral principle, that one is especially pathetic.

In the meantime, back in the world of female world leaders, we cannot resist saying a couple of words about that great feminist leadership role model, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. We recall that when Ardern shut down her country feminists were cheering this example of strong, decisive female leadership. The fact that Ardern had, right before taking office, given birth to a child, did not mitigate their fervor for girl power.

Anyway, if you were to ask how Ardern is doing these days, one cannot offer a more relevant piece of data than the fact that, according to polls in New Zealand, the fair Jacinda now has an approval rating that is-- hold you breath-- 30%. That’s even worse than Joe Biden. It’s even worse than Donald Trump. One does not know why the population of New Zealand-- which is, no kidding, majority sheep, in the ovine sense-- has turned on the ever-so-competent Jacinda Ardern, but such is political life. 

Why Don't Men and Women Get Along?

According to Dr. Greg Matos, men and women are not coupling up very much any more. For some reason, Matos seems to believe that the fault lies with men. One suspects that he is showing off his empathy for his female patients. After all, God created men so that women can have someone to blame for their mistakes.

Dare we say, he does not seem to concern himself with the male perspective on this question.  A curious omission.

Anyway, here is his opening:

Younger and middle-aged men are the loneliest they’ve been in generations, and it’s probably going to get worse.

Then he says that men are the larger portion of the long term single. One finds this rather strange, because if more men are long term alone then, logically speaking, more women would also be long term alone.

This is not my typical rosy view of relationships but a reality nonetheless. Over the last 30 years, men have become a larger portion of that growing group of long-term single people. And while you don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be happy, men typically are happier and healthier when partnered.

As it happens, and on the basis of very little evidence, Matos suggests that women are becoming increasingly selective. And that men are failing the test of empathetic communications skills.

With so many options, it’s not surprising that women are increasingly selective. I do a live TikTok show (@abetterloveproject) and speak with hundreds of audience members every week; I hear recurring dating themes from women between the ages of 25 and 45: They prefer men who are emotionally available, who are good communicators, and who share their values.

In the first place, if women want partners who are emotionally available, who are good communicators and who share their values, they would do better to marry women. Their partner choice is seriously narcissistic.

Of course, Matos does not consider that women at age 25 are not in the same position as women who are age 45. It’s a matter of genetics and hormones. These women all believe that they have never been hotter and that they are totally desirable. Clearly, this is not a male perspective.  

Evidently, we would want to ask whether the men in question want to have children or not. This would obviously impact their willingness to have a relationship with a women who are 45. Duh?

Better yet, are these women feminists? Did they learn their relationship expectations in Women's Studies courses? Do they denounce the patriarchy and insist that their men do the dishes and share all household chores?

And then there are issues like: do they engage in casual sex before building a relationship? One might mention that women who hook up are telling men that they do not want relationships. At least, that is what men believe. And that is certainly what said men's mothers believe. 

Why would a man confide in a woman who does not want a relationship? 

And, of course, these women are assuming, as an article of faith, that they are eminently desirable, that they have never been hotter and that they are completely self-sufficient. And what if a man’s perspective does not accord with their bloated self-esteem?

Just because all of her girlfriends consider a woman to be the best of the best, that does not necessarily concord with a male perspective. And besides, men are no longer allowed to express their preferences. They are no longer allowed to say that they want to marry someone who is going to be a wife. So, they suppress their opinions and act them out. 

Dare we mention that the Matos equation does not include any considerations of having a defined relationship, like a marriage.

Besides, sad to have to say it, but the disparities between male and female communication style has been studied and discussed for decades now. Over three decades ago Deborah Tannen opened up this field. Strangely, Matos, drowning in his own empathy, ignores it completely.

We cannot say as much of Daily Mail columnist Max Pemberton. The good doctor does a far better job of helping us to understand why men and women do not communicate, or better why they are not going to be able to communicate when imperious women insist on imposing their own conditions for said communications.

It ought to have been obvious to Matos, but it was not, that the women who are attempting to impose conditions on relationships are probably not very desirable to men and are pretending to blame men lest they have to recognize that their own beliefs and experiences have written them out of the marriage market. Nothing like shifting the blame.

Pemberton offers his more sane and sage view:

But are men that bad at communicating? I’m not convinced. I think the issue is that, increasingly, society views the way women communicate — sitting down with a coffee and having a chinwag, opening their heart and discussing the minutiae of every emotion — as the way to do it. 

So, we live in an increasingly feminized society and women believe that all men should be just like them. This causes them to fail to understand the way men communicate:

Yet, I listen to men in conversation and they’re not the closed books many believe. Rather than talk about feelings for the sake of it, they tend to discuss concrete, real-world things such as sport or politics, and then punctuate this with snippets of how they are feeling and their problems. 

For me, the real issue lies not in the contrasting methods by which the two sexes communicate, but in the different expectations to the responses given.

Pemberton continues:

The complaint I often heard when working with couples was that the man didn’t ‘listen’ — but when you drilled down into exactly what this meant, it was often that he didn’t respond in the way that was required. This meant that, while he may have heard what his partner was saying, he didn’t make the right emotional noises back to her. One wife illustrated the problem perfectly. 

She would come home each evening and wanted to talk about her day. She’d recount all the ups and downs in the office and her husband would sit silently as she talked on, except when he occasionally responded by offering advice. 

And Pemberton makes an excellent point. Women drone on about their feelings and fill the air with their complaints because they have been told that it’s therapeutic. They have been told that they must talk it all out, lest they repress something and get cancer:

There’s a view that talking about problems — airing things for the sake of it — is good for your mental health. You may be surprised to learn that there’s actually no good evidence for this. 

Certainly, men are more likely to take their own lives, but the reasons for this are incredibly complex and can’t simply be put down to men not talking about their feelings enough. 

Interestingly, despite women being lauded for their communication style, they don’t experience any better mental health. In fact, they are more prone than men to conditions such as depression and anxiety. 

A nice conclusion. You would think that women, for all their ability to express their feeling and for all of their empathy, would enjoy better mental health. The truth is, they do not.

So, put that in your hookah and puff on it.

[Afterthought: One hates to mention it, but one feels compelled to give it at least an afterthought. If we referring to the over-forty women in my neighborhood, we remark that nearly all of them have had their faces treated with Botox. Hmmm. For those who do not live in my neighborhood, take a gander one day at Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Her face has not moved in ten years.

Putting aside the aesthetics of masking your facial features, I would note that people do not just express themselves and do not just communicate by using language. They communicate via facial expressions. The easiest way to know how anyone is feeling is to mimic-- unconsciously-- his or her facial expressions. When a woman Botoxes her face, she cancels this mode of communication. The man who unconsciously mimics her facial expressions does not feel feelings. He feels a basic deadness.]

What Are Furries?

This is all so ridiculous that it must be true. If you thought things were bad in the good old USA, take a look at what is going on in Australia.

You would think that people in Australia would have retained at least a semblance of sanity. Apparently not.

Children there have taken the next logical step beyond transgenderism and identify as animals. One would like to think that it’s all satire. One would like to think that the children are trying out for roles in the next Catwoman movie. Apparently not. If you insist on looking at the bright side, consider that these teenage girls might also have identified as pussies-- and we can’t have that.

So, the Daily Mail reports from a Melbourne private school:

A teenage girl now reportedly identifies as a cat with the Melbourne private school where she attends supporting her 'animal behaviour'.

The year eight student does not speak during school hours, according to the report in the Herald Sun, despite being described as 'phenomenally bright'. 

A parent reportedly told the paper that the school let the girl behave like a cat as long as it did not distract her or other students.

'No one seems to have a protocol for students identifying as animals, but the approach has been that if it doesn't disrupt the school, everyone is being supportive,' a source close to the family told the newspaper. 

Maybe the girl is just making a political statement, enacting a reductio ad absurdum of the latest in transmania. We would like to think so. And yet, one wonders where the girl’s parents are during all of this. 

And besides, now that we happily put tampons in the boys restrooms, will we be putting litter boxes in all restrooms now? And besides, what happens when she goes into heat?

Apparently, the cat girl is not alone in her mania:

The Herald Sun also reported there was a boy who identified himself as a dog for a period of time and had been treated by Melbourne psychologist. 

In March it was reported that female students at an elite Brisbane private school were walking on all fours and cutting holes into their uniforms for tails because they identify as cats or foxes. 

'When a girl went to sit at a spare desk, another girl screamed at her and said she was sitting on her tail; there's a slit in this child's uniform where the tail apparently is,' a concerned parent told the Courier Mail.

The school denied the claim from the parent. 

Again, we would like to think that these children are offering up a cultural commentary, but perhaps not.

Of course, as part of the latest mania about cosplay, or dressing up in costume to play a role in some idiot drama, we do have a subculture of “furries.” That is, people who identify with or who pretend to identify with furry animals. They no longer have personae, but have fursonas. 

'Furries' is a sub-culture of people who identify as animals, often dressing up in costumes as part of what they call their 'fursonas'. 

There have been reports of students identifying as 'furries' at US schools. 

In January, a Michigan school district was forced to deny that litter boxes were provided to students who identify as 'furries' after a woman made the claim in a school board meeting last month.

District superintendent Michael E. Sharrow replied it was 'unconscionable' that he had to address the issue in an email to parents that was also posted on Facebook.

'Let me be clear in this communication. There is no truth whatsoever to this false statement/accusation! There have never been litter boxes within MPS schools,' Sharrow said.

But, have there been students who identify as cats and dogs? Enquiring minds want to know? Apparently, litter boxes are on step too far.

High school students notwithstanding, there are groups of adult furries, who get together in costume and who lick each other, or some such:

Furscience says fursonas are a form of 'self-expression' and 'creativity'.  

'Creating a fursona is a creative exercise, which can have a number of psychological benefits,' the site states.

'Inventing a character can help you think about who you are as a person and who you would like to become. 

'For example, if you've always stood out in school for being tall, having a giraffe fursona might help you feel more comfortable with your height.'

About half of furries worldwide are found in the US or Canada with Australia reported to have about one per cent of those participating in the trend.  

You knew that someone somewhere would declare that this form of cross-species dressing and play acting was therapeutic. 

It looks like Western civilization is in bigger trouble than I had thought.

Environmental Paganism

It’s a fun thought for a Sunday morning. The new much-acclaimed Democratic legislation pretends to be saving the planet and reducing inflation. No one really believes that it will do so, but that is unimportant. It’s not about results; it’s all about the spin. And Joe Biden and his minions in the media keep saying that the new law is a great leap forward. Remember the last Great Leap Forward, instituted by Chairman Mao? 

Anyway, I cannot help but agree with Stephen Moore, to the effect that the current climate change hysteria represents a return to paganism. It has produced a cult.

After all, as we and many others have noted, our advanced civilization believes fervently in mutilating children. A pox on your house if you dispute the new pagan dogma. Is this a form of human sacrifice? You bet it is.

So, Moore recalls a statement from none other than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to the effect that the new legislation is good because it shows us willing to make a sacrifice to assuage an angry planet. No kidding. We cannot allow the planet to be angry at us.

Pelosi (D-CA) claimed the wind, solar, and electric subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act would placate an "angry" planet. "Mother Earth gets angry from time to time, and this legislation will help us address all of that," the speaker said.

This is a highly revealing statement. Do Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues really believe that spending $300 billion on Tesla subsidies (with batteries made in China), windmills (made in China), and solar panels (made in China) is going to save the planet, stop the rise of the oceans, and lower the global temperature?

If they are merely promoting a pagan religious cult, they do not care whether the bill works as intended. They are undermining the religion of the patriarchs and Western monotheism. That seems to be an important goal in their cultural revolution.

For an in-depth analysis of the encroaching paganism, I recommend Tara Isabella Burton’s excellent book, Strange Rites. 

As for whether it will work, the truth is, only the dopes and dupes who run Western governments are working to destroy their countries, in order to placate the goddess of the Planet. As you know, the rest of the world, our opposition and our adversaries, from Russia and China and India, to Africa and South America, does not grant credence to schoolchildren, and is ramping up energy production, from coal to nuclear to fossil fuels. No fools they.

In truth, if the legislation works as intended, it will not change much of anything:

Even if this additional $300 billion were to work as planned, the Wall Street Journal reports that the impact on global temperatures in the coming decades would be to lower them by 0.001%. So, instead of the global temperature being an average of 59 degrees Fahrenheit, it will be 58.999 degrees. Thank God! We are saved from Armageddon.

But, what really matters, Moore notes, is that we are going to sacrifice the economy, and repeal the Industrial Revolution, because it has offended the goddess of the Planet. 

But as Pelosi's quote makes clear, this is about symbolism. It is about ruining the economy as a sacrifice to Mother Earth. Marc Morano, the journalist who runs the Climate Depot website, asks: "Will human sacrifices be next to appease the 'angry' Earth gods? Actually, this bill will create human sacrifice by imposing even more suffering from energy deprivation, supply chain issues, good shortages, inflation, debt, and bad science."

Who will suffer? Poor people, of course. Since the new law is specifically designed to help the poor people who constitute the Democratic base, you can feel reasonably confident that poor people will suffer the most. It’s like the aberrant notion that the best way to educate minority children is to fill their minds with critical race theory. When schools do it, they discover that the supposed beneficiaries of their largesse do not know how to read and write. But they can mouth leftist platitudes.

Nowadays, Europe, following the lead of Sri Lanka, is becoming energy deprived. It is now rationing energy. And, of course, the great Angela Merkel succeeded in empowering Vladimir Putin, Russia and China.

He's right. The suffering that will occur from this assault on American energy security and reliability could be profound — and it will be the lowest-income people who will be hurt the most. Inflation will rise as energy prices soar. The shortages of energy will cause hardship for many consumers, including food shortages. Europe, which got hooked on the green energy fad, is now rationing energy. In Spain, there are new restrictions on using air conditioning to set the temperature of your store or home at less than 80 degrees — during a heat spell. It's one of those sacrifices to Mother Earth.

As for the climate science, Moore reminds us that, however hot it has been in America this summer, it was hotter in the 1930s. It is good data point to weigh:

The warmest years in North America are not recent years — instead, they occurred during the 1930s amid the Dust Bowl era. This was before 80% of the carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere. Back then, tens of thousands of U.S. residents died from extreme weather. But now we have, through modern electric power and technological innovation, major ways to reduce death rates from weather events. The way to save the Earth is through more growth, more innovation, and a richer planet.

And, of course, the American public does not care. It has not bought the new paganism. It wants a better economy. And it prefers the One God, the God of Moses, to the pagan divinities that Moses freed us from:

Only 1 out of 20 people rate climate change as the No. 1 problem facing our country. The public wants lower inflation and more prosperity. This law delivers neither.

The God that most of us worship wants us to create peace, prosperity, and light. The god of radical environmentalists will deliver darkness, despair, and decline.

The Kids Are Not Alright

The kids are decidedly not alright. Surveys of the mental health of college students has exposed some appalling problems. Over the past eight years student mental health has declined, to the point where most of today's college students are mostly either depressed, anxious, suicidal or suffering from eating disorders. 

Over 60% of American college students today are suffering from mental illness. 

The New York Post reports (via Maggie’s Farm):

Researchers at Boston University recently revealed some staggering findings — that depression among college students increased by nearly 135% over eight years, while anxiety surged 110%.

Lipson’s team also looked at rates of eating disorders, non-suicidal self-injury and suicidal ideation, which increased at rates of nearly 96%, almost 46% and 64% respectively. As for “flourishing,” rates decreased overall.

Obviously, the Covid lockdowns had a largely deleterious impact on college student mental health:

To no surprise, depression increased most on average during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2020 and 2021, over 60% of students met the criteria for at least one mental illness — double the rate of 2013.

The authors bemoan the fact that fewer and fewer students are signing up for counseling, though, I have been hearing that up to 40% of some student bodies do consult with counselors and psychiatrists:

Furthermore, they noted a decrease in the rate of college students seeking help and mental health services, especially among racial and ethnic minorities.

So, the researchers suggest that we need more mental health professionals, though they remark that good ones are a rarity. I am impressed by this qualification, because one of the realities here is that most of the counseling, especially the kind that tells young people to get in touch with their feelings, to feel their feelings and to indulge their sometime capacity for empathy is worse than useless. It is the problem more than it is the solution. In truth, since so many people think that it's the solution, the chances are good that it's the problem.

Similar mental health data has been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calling it a “cry for help” from young Americans.

The shocking numbers come at a time when good therapists are increasingly few and far between, according to the federal Health and Resource Service Administration. The agency has estimated that the US will be short 8,000 clinical, counseling and school psychologists by the year 2025.

One suspects, without having done any surveys, that the problem is much larger than the availability of counseling. One also suspects that the problem lies in the culture at large, in a culture that tells white students that they must hate themselves for their white privilege and that tells non-white non-male students that they are oppressed.

If that is the cultural expectation and the prevailing dogma, one can easily understand why these students are becoming mentally ill in large numbers. They are doing it to survive their college years and their college classes.

One does not know for a fact, but one suspects that the Asian-American students who have gravitated toward the STEM field are not suffering the same mental distress.

As for the culture, consider this aberration. We recall that a former American president touted the therapeutic benefit of hope-- he called it, agrammatically, the audacity of hope.

One might imagine that hope is the cure for depression, because after all, the word despair means hopelessness. As it happens, this is untrue. Hopelessness might characterize depression, but the cure for depression is pride-- pride in achievement, pride in accomplishment, pride in country.

Right now, these are largely tabooed. Ergo, the more vulnerable among us are suffering from a surfeit of useless hope. And they have learned not to take pride in their achievements. They have been taught; it has been drummed into them, that their achievements were unearned, the product of their privilege. If they fail, they are told that it's not their fault; they are victims of the white power elite and can only succeed by burning down their neighborhood. It’s a good way to produce mental illness.

As you might know, it wasn’t always thus. Some of us remember a time when Americans were proud to be Americans. For those of us who do not, I offer a description offered nearly two centuries ago, by a French observer of America. It should be listed under the category-- how far we have fallen.

Alexis de Tocqueville said this:

In the United States the interests of the country are everywhere kept in view; they are an object of solicitude to the people of the whole Union, and every citizen is as warmly attached to them as if they were his own. He takes pride in the glory of his nation; he boasts of its success, to which he conceives himself to have contributed, and he rejoices in the general prosperity by which he profits. The feeling he entertains towards the State is analogous to that which unites him to his family, and it is by a kind of egotism that he interests himself in the welfare of his country.

Of course, that was before therapy took over our culture and before we learned that we could not graduate college without expressing full throated hatred of our country. If you wrote today what Tocqueville wrote in the early nineteenth century, you would flunk out of college. Better yet, you would be attacked by your teachers and classmates-- and would be sent off for thought reform.

If may be mere happenstance, but this morning the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by a schoolteacher named Daniel Buck. In it, he explained what has been happening in America’s graduate schools of education, the ones that prepare teachers for pre-college education. This shows what children are being taught in public schools, and it tells us that these students have had their psyches mangled well before they arrive in college.

For the record, among the products of that system, we count one Dr. Jill Biden, she of the affected title. As it happens, Dr. Jill is still teaching in a community college. Obviously, we are not talking about the summit of academic achievement.

Anyway, Buck describes the education he received in Wisconsin as he was preparing to become an eighth grade teacher:

I studied for a master’s degree in education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015. My program was batty. We made Black Lives Matter friendship bracelets. We passed around a popsicle stick to designate whose turn it was to talk while professors compelled us to discuss our life’s traumas. We read poems through the “lenses” of Marxism and critical race theory in preparation for our students doing the same. Our final projects were acrostic poems or ironic rap videos.

I emphasize the fact that this had nothing to do with education. It was therapy, and nothing but therapy. Students learned nothing except how to write themselves into an oppression narrative, and to therapy their psyches.

In place of academic essays, graduate students write personal poems or collect photographs. These kitschy activities infantilize what ought to be a rigorous pursuit of professional competency.

So, we have produced an academic system where braindead teachers, many of whom would have loved to teach, are subjected to thought reform in their graduate education courses. Since that is all they know, that infects what they teach children.

The result, children who end up knowing nothing, being unprepared to work in the real economy, suffering from one or another form of mental illness, but fully capable of voting for the right candidates. 

It's the Cover Up, Stupid!

Let’s see. Many of the nation’s big cities are being destroyed by criminals. Local mayors do not know what to do. Local prosecutors, as happened in New York, are decriminalizing crime, letting perpetrators go and otherwise looking the other way.

With a few exceptions, the media has been ignoring the issue, because it makes Democrats look bad.

And let’s not forget the migrant invasion taking place on our Southern border. Or the rampant inflation that is eating away at our prosperity. And, by the by, how are things going in what's left of Ukraine?

So, we are dealing with a failed administration and a massive urban political calamity.

Take a look at this report, from the Daily Mail. 

San Francisco, Cleveland and Portland have the most deserted downtowns in the US as soaring crime rates in the Democratic cities scare away workers and tourists.

In a recent study by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California Berkeley, San Francisco's downtown area was found to be only 31 percent active over the spring of 2022 when compared to pre-pandemic levels, with Cleveland at 36 percent and Portland at 41 percent.

Leading the crime statistics is San Francisco:

According to the latest available FBI Unified Crime Report, San Francisco had the highest overall crime rate of the 20 largest cities in the United States, recording 6,917 crimes per 100,000 population in 2019. 

The rising crime rate was produced by the movement to defund the police. It was also produced by a media and politicians who refused to call the Black Lives Matter riots an insurrection:

A year later following the Black Lives Matter protests, the call to defund the police grew among Democratic leaders.  

San Francisco Mayor London Breed demanded cities defund the police last year, announcing that the Golden Gate City would be one of the first to do so and promising to slice $120million from the budgets of its police and sheriff's departments.

The city also greenlit its first open-air drug market in San Francisco's civic center, which spurred vagrants in homeless encampments across the city to use illegal substances out in broad daylight.  

Breed has since made a screeching U-turn and announced she was asking the city's Board of Supervisors for more money to be given to the police to stamp out drug dealing, car break-ins, and theft.

Now, what is the national Democratic Party offering to solve this problem? You might say that is incapable of getting a grip on the problem, and you would be right.

It has another approach, one that is championed by the Democrats and a few former Republicans. That is, to shift the blame. Witness the constant coverage of the January 6 investigation. That means, to cover up the problem by ranting hysterically about Donald Trump. And to turn loser Liz Cheney into a modern day Joan of Arc. For all of her supposed love of the truth, Liz is a model for disloyalty, a tool who is being used by Democrats to cover up the BLM riotous insurrection.

So, while crime engulfs your neighborhood, while smash and grab robberies, looting and pillage become commonplace, and while Democrats are radically incapable of taking responsibility for their failed policies, we have Democratic political operative James Carville explaining that the real problem is Donald Trump’s handling of documents.

According to Carville, Trump's possible mishandling of documents is the worst thing that has happened to the country since 9/11. When Democrats engage in cover-ups, when they distract your attention from their failures, they go big:

Carville explained:

This Mar-a-Lago story … might be the biggest story since 9/11….

This is just one small bit of hyperbolic rhetoric, but, rest assured the FBI raid on Donald Trump and the attending chaos is designed for one primary purpose: to shore up the Democratic Party’s chances in the upcoming elections. And to do so by distracting the nation from the crime wave that the Democratic Party unleashed and that it does not know how to stifle.

But, the important point is that the FBI raid on Donald Trump has only one political purpose-- to distract you from Democratic incompetence.

To state the obvious, the Republicans have their own responsibility for what seems about to happen in the upcoming elections. For having nominated a series of people who have no idea what they are doing, for having nominated them on the basis of Trump support, Republican voters simply played into the Democrats' hands.

[And take a look at this, from normally sane Financial Times columnist Edward Luce, seconded by former CIA director Michael Hayden: