Maybe a reminder is necessary on “Latinx.”

By Justin Katz | December 22, 2021 |
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A water drop and ripples

Enforced use of the term, “Latinx,” is exactly the cultural imperialism that progressives claim to oppose.  As usual, they only actually oppose the forced spread of ideas that don’t jibe with their own beliefs.  Just look at how Marisa Penaloza writes about a Pew Research Center survey finding “only 3% [of Latinos] say they use the term.”  I’ve emphasized the key words in the following:

  • “Latinx Is A Term Many Still Can’t Embrace”
  • “Latinx has not caught on.
  • “only 23% of Hispanic adults have heard of the term Latinx.”
  • “Some argue that Latinx is not Spanish enough, but Vazquez says they need to remember that ‘Spanish…is the original language of colonization.'”

The condescending attitude is that change is inevitable, and resistance is retrograde.  When it’s useful to claim, progressives insist that “our Black and Brown brothers and sisters” have “beautiful cultures.”  When those cultures disagree, the script instantly flips to a reminder that brown people were colonizers, too.

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The thing about Michael Fine is that he’s a socialist.

By Justin Katz | December 22, 2021 |
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A water drop and ripples

Interestingly, Dr. Michael Fine is against non-vaccination shaming, mainly because he isn’t very confident in the vaccines we have against COVID.  One gets the impression, however, that he makes that concession in order to promote his real goal:

If everyone stops going to bars and restaurants TODAY, and stops shopping TODAY, we’ll see a drop in community transmission in about ten days, or two to three generations of spread. The load on hospitals and other health care folks will start to drop in about two weeks.

… we can just stay home for a bit, take the responsibility for public health back from a government that puts business and commerce before human lives, and, in doing so, rebuild our democracy just a little, doing for others what we would want others do for us.

He doesn’t explain how destroying our fellow citizens’ livelihoods furthers democracy.  Some might think doing so will make more people dependent on the government that has so disappointed Dr. Fine.

It’s a strange ideology, socialism, desiring to consolidate power in a few as a first principle against all evidence of wisdom.

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The Salvation Army’s slide is only a mystery inside the mainstream bubble.

By Justin Katz | December 22, 2021 |
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A Salvation Army bell ringer

Kelly O’Neill reports for WJAR that the Salvation Army is 11% behind on donations in Rhode Island and 30% in New Bedford.  Whether the percentages are “behind the goal” or “behind last year” isn’t clear, but it amounts to tens of thousands of dollars in this area.  Rhode Island’s state coordinator, Roger Duperree points to staffing shortages for bell ringers, but his New Bedford counterpart doesn’t seem so sure:

“Last year, we met our goal. This is strange for me this year because we are not close to the goal,” Maj. Michael Jung said.

Outside of the mainstream bubble, however, these results aren’t surprising at all (regarding both the donations and the volunteers).  If you don’t exist entirely within the boundaries of approved information, you know that a wave of disapproval swept through the country when an internal guidance document came to light showing the Salvation Army to have swallowed the racist, antiracist pill:

The resource guide itself contains “five sessions” to “help delve into the topic of racism and the Church.” Those include entire sections titled. “Self-Care for People of Color,” “What is Whiteness?,” “Lamenting and Repenting — a Conversation Guide,” among others.

The guileless Christians in the organization helpfully expose just how racist this ideology is, admonishing the reader to “stop trying to be ‘colorblind’,” because not being racist “actually ignores the God-given differences we all possess, as well as the beautiful cultures of our Black and Brown brothers and sisters.”  As is typical, all cultures are beautiful… unless you’re white.  In that case, your culture must be deconstructed to show the decidedly non-beautiful core of “white supremacy.”

For people with white skin, “a sincere apology is necessary.”  In response to donation shortfalls across the country, the organization hid the guidance in a desk and offered a palpably non-sincere apology for having been maliciously misunderstood.  Maybe some donors were satisfied with that lack of repentance, but when certificates “redeemable for one white apology in lieu of a cash donation” are circulating widely, at least part of the Salvation Army’s mystery may be solved.

 

Featured image by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

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In the modern context, Dune’s Pain Box would be an Affirmation Box.

By Justin Katz | December 21, 2021 |
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The pain box in Dune 1984

With Dune back in the popular culture, all people of good will and right mind should be relieved that it includes one of the most profound moments of the book, captured here in the prior movie adaptation because it was the best clip I could find quickly:

 

 

The quick summary is this:  The priestess lady is testing the protagonist.  She presents a choice: he sticks his hand in a box that produces pain, and if he can take ownership of his will and keep his hand in the box, he lives; otherwise, she’ll prick him with deadly poison, and he’ll die.  The test will prove he’s human.

Something of the same sentiment can be found in an effectively censored speech by Abigail Shrier at Princeton University reproduced on Bari Weiss’s Substack.  For context, Shrier rocketed into the hall of cancelation fame when she dared to publish a book investigating the dreadfully harmful contagion of teenage girls’ proclaiming themselves to be something other than teenage girls only to have their schools and doctors abet their adolescent impulses toward irrevocable self-mutilation against the will of their parents. Here’s the profound conclusion:

I’m 43, which I realize makes me very old to many of you. But not so long from now, you’ll wake up and be 43 yourselves. And when I look back on my life thus far, it occurs to me that the decisions of which I am most proud—the ones that strike like an unexpected kiss—are not the times when I obeyed the algorithm. They’re the times when I defied it and felt, for a moment, the magic and power of being alive. When I felt, even for an instant, the exquisite joy of not being anyone’s subject. When I had the unmistakable sense that I’ve existed for a purpose, that I stood the chance of leaving the world better than I found it. You don’t get any of that through lock-step career achievement and you certainly don’t get that by being the Left’s star pupil.

The lesson I hope we’ve learned since Frank Herbert first published Dune in 1965 (but fear we have not) is that we shouldn’t assume that the truth is the opposite of what others say it is so that we can prove our autonomy by rebelling against it.  That is basically what the transgender craze is bringing to life, but it is merely another way of lacking free will.  The difference is only that the computer algorithm that controls you introduces a negative sign at some point.

Imagine not a pain box, but an affirmation box, and the priestess will kill you as a non-human if you do not withdraw.

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Another RI journalist grays the border between media and government.

By Justin Katz | December 21, 2021 |
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A water drop and ripples

One can’t fault individuals for making the best career decisions for themselves at each step, and we should assume that every professional is doing the best he or she can to do a job well and honestly in the moment.  Still, every time a Rhode Island journalist proves that a job in government communications is an integral part of the career path, the credibility of the whole enterprise takes a hit.

This time, as Katherine Gregg of the Providence Journal notes on Twitter, it’s Daniel Kittredge of the Cranston Herald, joining the Rhode Island Senate’s communication office.

This is a problem that the journalism industry has to work out.  The public can’t trust a news media that is interwoven with government.  The decision to publish unhelpful stories, or even unhelpful details within otherwise neutral, or even healthy, stories, could be a future obstacle to that lucrative PR job.

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This is encouraging news about COVID immunity.

By Justin Katz | December 21, 2021 |
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A water drop and ripples

In some alternative reality, the Western world is having an intelligent, informed, science-based discussion about biology and the appropriate measures to take against COVID-19.  In that world, an article like this, by Joseph Mercola in the Epoch Times, isn’t limited to a relatively unknown publication but is being widely discussed on all forms of major media and acknowledged by government officials:

The antibodies declined in the first months after infection, as should be expected, then leveled off to about 10% to 20% of the maximum concentration detected. In a commentary on the study, Andreas Radbruch and Hyun-Dong Chang of the German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin explained:

“This is consistent with the expectation that 10–20% of the plasma cells in an acute immune reaction become memory plasma cells, and is a clear indication of a shift from antibody production by short-lived plasma cells to antibody production by memory plasma cells. This is not unexpected, given that immune memory to many viruses and vaccines is stable over decades, if not for a lifetime.”

Of course, we shouldn’t go too far in the other direction and should acknowledge that much remains unknown, but the idea that no information outside the rah-rah vaccination line should be recognized is bizarre.

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How can “open government groups” be so blind to the reality of remote public meetings?

By Justin Katz | December 21, 2021 |
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American flag behind a barred window

I’m honestly baffled that a coalition of “open government organizations” would call on Democrat Governor Dan McKee to reinstate executive orders allowing government bodies to meet remotely again:

We therefore once again strongly urge you to reinstate your earlier executive orders so as to permit public bodies to meet virtually and thereby allow the public to monitor and, where authorized, participate in those meetings remotely. The discouraging and admittedly tiring length of time that we have all had to deal with the effects of Covid demands more, not less, attention to ensuring public oversight of the democratic process.

We’d be better off mandating that government be completely closed down except for vital services.

COVID-driven remote meetings set open government back decades in Rhode Island, made it much more difficult to hold government officials accountable, and put a huge wet blanket on public participation.  From my experience, this has been so obvious that one almost has to conclude that activists are manipulating ACCESS/RI to advance the complete antithesis of what they claim to support.

The media people on the list, like Scott Pickering of the East Bay Media Group and Ethan Shorey of the Valley Breeze, are perhaps well meaning and only hoping to make their employees’ lives easier.  However, those with any experience advocating for issues, like Steven Brown of the RI ACLU and John Marion of Common Cause RI, should see the manifest problems.

Sure, it would be great if all meetings had to be live-streamed, recorded, and made available in streamable online archives for on-demand viewing.  But allowing elected officials to go back to the near-complete situational control of participating in public meetings as if they were corporate staff meetings is a recipe for corruption.

Having the power, with the click of a button, to completely silence undesired speakers (as if they no longer existed) and easily enforce the most strict and unreasonable time limits, while preventing the need to endure so much as a tense room, is every corrupt official’s dream.  Open government groups ought to be the most concerned organizations about this step, not its lead advocates, which makes you wonder where their sympathies actually lie.

 

Featured image by Justin Katz.

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Did we tip Magaziner off to a political opportunity?

By Justin Katz | December 21, 2021 |
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A water drop and ripples

This isn’t exactly a difficult political opportunity to identify, but it’s fun to wonder whether somebody on Seth Magaziner’s campaign team listened to my weekly segment with John DePetro, yesterday:

We must address the dangerous hospital staffing shortage that has created a state of crisis in emergency rooms and other care delivery facilities across the Rhode Island.

Today, I proposed the following measures to address the emergency room staffing shortage…

He goes on to list precisely the sort of steps the state should be taking (rather than trying to put residents in a mandatory bubble) to alleviate healthcare provider shortages.

The caveat (naturally) is that our agreement is only on the short term.  Magaziner’s a progressive, so with a horizon past the political opportunity of an immediate crisis, I’m sure his preferred policies remain of the sort that destroy nations.

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Mainstream vaccine advocates should just stop lying.

By Justin Katz | December 21, 2021 |
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Infectious bronchitis virus

I was perfectly comfortable receiving the Pfizer vaccine against COVID.  I investigated how they work and reviewed the numbers, and decided it made sense.  Since I wrote that post in May, however, public health authorities and those who’ve put them on a pedestal have continued to sound like pitchmen rather than scientists, which has made me increasingly reluctant to follow their advice.

Most confoundingly, a level or two down from the experts in the range of informed citizens, people are sharing pro-vaccination stories that even advocates should see through.  One such person recently shared a CNBC article by health and wellness reporter Cory Stieg.  The headline this person was promoting is pretty nearly a lie:  “Natural immunity doesn’t protect you as well as the Covid vaccines — here’s why.”

The article does not support that assertion in the least.  It’s clickbait.  The most Stieg can claim is:

If you’ve recovered from Covid, you do have a degree of immunity against the virus — but the amount can vary significantly, based on the severity of your illness and how long ago you recovered.

Currently, there’s no known way to test your immunity levels.

Well, duh.  But if “there’s no known way to test your immunity levels,” doesn’t that apply to vaccines, too?  Of course it does.  That’s why such matters are judged through experiments and statistical analyses, and statistically, natural immunity is better.  Indeed, as I’ve pointed out, the confusion comes from the fact that public health authorities are counting anybody in whom the most-sensitive test is finding any trace of COVID as a “case.”  The more reasonable conclusion is that they don’t have immunity because they weren’t really infected.  (And yes, that means the scare numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are dramatically overblown.)

The failure of experts to lead the way in a reasoned and honest presentation of the facts justifiably increases skepticism in the public even of things that prove reasonable when investigated.  By the numbers, three circumstances are roughly equal when it comes to determining that you’re of reduced risk:

  • One, if you’ve had COVID, especially if you’ve actually had it, rather than simply testing positive after being identified through contact tracing
  • Two, if you’ve been vaccinated
  • Three, if you’re young

Sure, none of these factors cancel out, so the person at the least risk, which means almost no risk at all, is the one who fits in all three categories, but the incremental benefit is fractional and well within the range of what a reasonable public health regime ought to leave to the individual, particularly when there’s any risk at all of side effects from the vaccines.

Unfortunately, we’re not being governed or guided by a reasonable public health regime, but a fleet of vaccine salespeople swept up in an ideological campaign.

 

Featured image by the CDC on Unsplash.

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Politics This Week with John DePetro: Shouting into the Echo Chamber

By Justin Katz | December 20, 2021 |
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A skull screams amidst hands

On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:

  • McKee’s bumps businesses with mask mandate
  • His administration lacks balance
  • Diossa raises questions about qualifications in government
  • School threat mania shows lack of adults
  • GOP mask mandate response shows life
  • Sleep Out RI proves reactionary governance
  • Bostom edges himself out

 

Featured image by Arisa Chattasa on Unsplash.

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