Fellow blogger Henry Stern, who founded and blogged at InsureBlog, passed away this earlier month. We’ve only cheated briefly from time to time but supported each other’s blogs, and he even guest posted on mine. I knew him first from the Ace of Spaded HQ as “ibguy” and later chatted on Twitter and e-Mail practically until his untimely passing.
His obituary can be found here.
He will be missed.
Nineteen years ago today, America was attacked. Never forget the victims who died, and those who fought back.
In Pace, Requiescat.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Purge bad teh juju.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Because we can’t have nice things, at least when they are produced by “pale penis persons”, a museum director was induced to quit his job because he wouldn’t preclude the possibility of the museum acquiring work by said “pale penis persons”.
“Until last week, Gary Garrels was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster.
“‘Gary’s removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable,’ read the petition. ‘Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?;
“This accusation—that Garrels’ choices as an art curator are guided by white supremacist beliefs—is a very serious one. Unsurprisingly, it does not stand up to even minimal scrutiny.
“The petitioners cite few examples of anything even approaching bad behavior from Garrels. Their sole complaint is that he allegedly concluded a presentation on how to diversify the museum’s holdings by saying, ‘don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists.’
“Garrels has apparently articulated this sentiment on more than one occasion. According to artnet.com, he said that it would be impossible to completely shun white artists, because this would constitute ‘reverse discrimination.’ That’s the sum total of his alleged crimes. He made a perfectly benign, wholly inoffensive, obviously true statement that at least some of the museum’s featured artists would continue to be white. The petition lists no other specific grievances.”
While your humble author has fisked Mrs. Hoyt’s anti-mask rants before, it is only fair to give voice to the other side, so in the spirit of balance, the following scientific missive from famed physician barber Theodoric of York is presented.
Theodoric of York, COVID-19 Health Specialist
I am please that Sarah A. Hoyt wishes to save people from the dangers of masks and bring us back to the historically proven methods of medicine such as leeches. Rather than test our assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a “scientific method” , she recognizes that we should blindly folow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries! As she notes:
“Our ancestors might not have had the germ theory or a precise understanding of how disease was passed on. However, they were practical people, by and large. Had to be, since they lived on the cutting edge between nature and civilization. They lost more babies to disease (and famine) than they reared and their healthy productive lives were maybe 20 years.”
I am in complete agreement with her that that masks are not magic and ought to be avoided just as much as the so-called “anti-bacterial lotions”. Instead, bloodletting and leeches ought to be used, as she also notes:
“A lot of things from bleeding to leeches to honey on wounds have been found to work. Our ancestors, it turns out, were not stupid. Only our presentism, from the safety of a society with near-magic antibiotics, allows us to sneer at them and imagine ourselves superior.”
Reject these “magical” masks and antibiotics, just as she has! You can’t trust these doctors of the 20th Century!
“Okay, then. So, let’s talk about the closest thing we have to this – though the mortality of Winnie-the-flu is nowhere near the same as that of the 1918 flu – the epidemic of 1918.
“Masks for everyone, women, children (and cats?) were tried. They had no appreciable effect. [Note the comments on that blog about how coronavirus was going to decimate the Third World. It didn’t. It also failed to decimate the homeless. It is a nothingburger. The Y2K of viral infections.]
“So, if they worked in 1920, why didn’t this pre-antibiotic world keep using them to deal with flus and colds?
“Well, because they didn’t.”
I am a scientific man who understands that people from even 50 years ago do not become sick from demonic possession or witchcraft, or that a mask will ward off magical viruses. In fact, Sarah A. Hoyt astutely notices that viruses being transmitted from mask to mask is much more dangerous than getting COVID-19 and spreading it to unmasked persons!
“Masks aren’t magic. If you wear them on that grocery store trip, you might get virus ON the mask. And then breathe it out over everything, for instance.”
Truly wise words.
The riots lead by wannabe revolutionaries have been allowed to get out of hand by elected politicians who are giving tacit approval, and beyond torching businesses, they are now going out of their way to harass innocent people, even to the point of going to their homes to harass them and block them from leaving from or getting to their homes.
And who do these pro-riot elected politicians actually go after? People who are trying to defend themselves from the insurrectionist mob. They will let Antifa, et al., run free to engage in violence and arson, but will drop the hammer of the state on anyone who dares defend themselves from the de facto government approved mob. But what choice do some people have? Is it really so surprising that people will go full “Roof Korean”, and stand up to protect themselves from these hyperviolent wannabe revolutionaries even with the elected politicians trying to aid and abet these murderous scum?
And when that happens, people won’t just get beaten by Antifa, but people are going to die… and it already has happened. A Trump supporter was killed by #BlackLivesMatter/Antifa supporters in Portland. These monsters are willing to kill in order to destroy America, and prove yet again that their “justice” is nothing more than mob rule.
Antifa just want to burn things down and destroy the entire “system”. They don’t actually care about Black lives and see anyone who doesn’t riot with them as the enemy… including other members of the far Left who openly agitate for #BlackLivesMatter.
BLM arson attacks overnight in Kenosha, Wisc. spread to the Bradford Community Church, a far-left universalist religious organization. The church’s sign in support of #BlackLivesMatter was consumed in flames. pic.twitter.com/u02CIwsnIm
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 24, 2020
And when I said they torch each other, I did mean that literally.
A man just got lit on fire. Chaotic night in Portland already #PortlandRiots #Portland pic.twitter.com/iWOP0is6MQ
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 6, 2020
News of the Week for Sept. 6th, 2020
Sohrab Ahmari has embraced a manichean “if your not with us then you are against us” attitude that Antifa would agree with, and gone all in with adopting the “tear it down” strategy of the Left under the deluded idea that by merely fighting back, total victory will be achieved and lack of a “f**k you WAR” attitude is proof of being the enemy.
“It is simply this: that the political left neither loves you nor shares many loves with you, certainly not the love of neutral norms and procedures that have long been the stock-in-trade of the center-right establishment. . . . To be sure, some ‘moderate’ liberals still mouth the old rhetoric — “free speech”, “free inquiry”, etc — and get canceled for their trouble. But what their movement as a whole seeks is the brute enactment of substantive liberal commitments.”
There is an obvious logical error here that Dan McLaughlin (AKA @BaseballCrank) points out:
“That’s . . . news? I have known that for 30 years. So has most everyone in the conservative world who has been following politics that long. And it’s older even than our lifetimes. Ahmari purports to discover, in 2020, what Edmund Burke knew in 1790. There are few hardier perennials than the observations that the activist Left is driven by anger against conventional American society and doesn’t care about the classical-liberal principles of the American founding, and that Democratic politicians and their pundit class have no fixed principles besides getting what they want. Ahmari goes on to say that it is merely empty ‘whining’ when ‘unwoke’ conservatives argue in favor of those principles and norms, and in favor of fairness and decency and telling the truth, instead of creating a mirror image of the Left that cares about nothing but substantive outcomes, that never asks any question but Lenin’s ‘Who does what to whom?’
“The core of the problem with this line of thinking from Ahmari and others is that it assumes the world is divided entirely into the activist Right and the activist Left. Of course, you can’t persuade the other side they are wrong to do the things they do. But you can persuade other people. That includes not only those in the center who will never be at home on the Right or Left, but also those who are less strongly tied to one side and are capable of changing sides.
“Shut up and enjoy your conquering enlightened overlords” is a take that does fairly encapsulate the Leftist ideology which is currently seeking to dominate. ‘Twould be “problematic” otherwise, as problematic as fictional Spartans trying not to be conquered.
Comedy pic.twitter.com/Ml6MqHDTHG
— Dataracer (@Dataracer117) August 13, 2020
Putting aside the fact that this is a highly stylized and fictionalized portrait of history that practically screams “artistic license”—the real Xerxes wasn’t an over 6’ tall Brazilian, for example—the take is a bad one. Of course foreigners are to be feared and attacked when they are literally invading your country with the explicit goal of conquest and subjugation. Of course the Spartans were wight and able-bodied, and the movie doesn’t whitewash the fact that physically disabled children were exposed to the elements. And yes, the Spartans were warriors by trade, but thy didn’t engage in aggression and violence for s**ts n’ giggles. Heck, in the movie, as in real life, they were the victims of aggression.
And while the franchise was limited, the Greek city states did enjoy literal democracy, and certainly not a political philosophy what wasn’t invented until millennia after the historical events took place. Yet all this is “problematic” because the movie has themes that don’t fit in with the woke narrative.
The concept of “smashing the duo-normative concept of marriage” is often dismissed as the fancies fringe eccentrics or bong-loving ex-Congresswomen who pose naked with goats. But when it, or any other mad idea, is embraced by an actual government body—it becomes a situation that requires our attention… and our action.
“A new domestic partnership policy in Somerville that recognizes polyamorous relationships is a powerful symbol, advocates and academics said, though the specifics of its protections remain limited.
“The move is thought to be the first of its kind in the nation, and another step forward in the push for civil rights for those living outside heterosexual marriages.
“‘The Somerville ordinance is an exciting turning point for people who are polyamorous or in multipartner families,’ said Diana Adams, the executive director of the Chosen Family Law Center in New York. ‘There has been tremendous momentum and energy and hope for this for many years.’”
“Adams said the law center hoped to push similar ordinances in other small, progressive cities, in a strategy similar to the one that secured the legalization of same-sex marriage across the country. Polyamory refers to people in consenting relationships with multiple partners.”
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