Get it Off Your Chest

This is the place for comments that would otherwise be deleted for being off topic.

In the event you need some really good advice before this New Year ...

 

H/T to Mustang.

Black Fragility And Neoracism

The story and ensuing kerfluffle about the above, a question on a Civil Prodecure II exam at U. Illinois-Chicago Marshall Law School. appeared in my email yesterday morning. Brief excerpt:

...Prof. Kilborn’s offense was using the “n” and “b” words on an exam. Not the words themselves, but literally the letters “n” and “b” in a question about employment discrimination.

Aren’t we supposed to use letters instead of words, isn’t that the “correct” way to do it? Nope, not to some students....

According to the UIC JMLS Black Law Association, the wording of the question caused some students to be distracted and distressed — one student to the point of having heart palpitations.  Furthermore (emphases mine):

...UIC is now demanding that Prof. Kilborn go through re-education.... 

[...]

Last Friday, the university informed Professor Kilborn’s lawyer that Professor Kilborn would be suspended from teaching this Spring at UIC’s John Marshall Law School (although still paid, and still required to perform administrative duties) so that he can participate in rather time-intensive “re-education” programs: Download 21; 12.16 from Alsterda 

Professor Kilborn will be subjected to an 8-week indoctrination course–20 hours of coursework, required “self-reflection” (self-criticism?) papers for each of 5 modules, plus weekly 90-minute sessions with a trainer followed by three more weeks of vaguely described supplemental meetings with this trainer. Since the trainer will provide “feedback regarding Professor Kilborn’s engagement and commitment to the goals of the program,” disagreement or skepticism about the content of the program is presumably not welcome....

Read the entire article HERE.

Dr. John McWhorter addressed the above dispute and draconian consequences in his essay Black Fragility?   His entire essay is worth reading.  For expedience's sake, however, please note the last two paragraphs of Dr. McWhorter's essay (from which I developed the title of this blog post; emphases mine):

...[W]e must be able to understand black people’s history in slavery and Jim Crow as well as redlining, to be appalled at the story of Henrietta Lacks, to comprehend that racism is something more than name-calling and prejudice, to worship the work of Viola Davis, to savor Amanda Gorman’s poem at President Biden’s inauguration – while also facing that when a black law student claims heart palpitations upon reading “n-----” in an exam question about a discrimination case, it is a performance, and must not be allowed to derail lives and careers.

Protests of this kind test us on how committed we really are to assessing black people according to the content of their character. Normal people don’t fall to pieces when seeing “n*****” on a piece of paper, regardless of their race. The neoracists who have barred Jason Kilborn from campus in pretending this isn’t true are operating upon an assumption that black people are morons. This is a rather fascinating rendition of “antiracism,” and to treat it as “allyship” is nothing less than a cultural sickness.

Read Dr. McWhorter's entire essay HERE.  Worth your time and consideration.

Related video:

Elizabeth Gonzalez Is Back!

Some of you may remember blogger Elizabeth Gonzalez (also AKA Layla), who used to have the site called The Hill Chronicles.

After an extended absence from the blogosphere, her "mojo back" (her words to me in a text), Elizabeth has returned to the blogosphere! You will find her at Politics Rewritten.

A Christmas Visitor

Posted by Warren

(Originally posted on "Longrange" for Christmas 2004)

4:00 am 12/24/04

There was a knock on my front door which startled me awake. My dogs were barking which required my dire threats to quieten them as I answered the door.

Maybe you have heard of our weather and the unusually cold temperatures and large amount of snow that has fallen in the last 24 hours. I live just south of Interstate 64 in Southern Indiana and you may have seen the news about the closed Interstate and stranded motorists on the national news.

A man in his early fifties, about my own age, stood at the door. He was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, a field jacket and sock hat. His glasses were frosted and his pale white hands and reddened knuckles gave witness that he wore no gloves.

He told me he was lost and asked for directions to a certain address. I told him that he missed his mark by a mile and a half and asked him where his car was. He said he was walking.

I invited him in and sat a chair for him by the warm air from the furnace vent. He was shivering uncontrollably and a faint whiff of alcohol was on his breath. I asked if I could fix him something to eat but he refused and accepted a hot cup of coffee.

My wife talked to him as he warmed himself and I could hear him speaking as I prepared his fresh coffee.

My son heard his voice and came into the living room to sit and listen, and to watch, just in case.

His story unfolded.

He was homeless veteran, he had been sleeping in a box, under a bridge over the Ohio river, several miles to the West. He had decided that it was too cold and he might freeze to death if he didn't find safe shelter with more than a cardboard box to keep him warm. About midnight, he had left his meager possessions and headed for his sisters home, a mile or so from my own home. He had walked past in the blowing snow and the dark but continued walking. He was lost, confused and probably somewhat drunk. Hypothermia can add confusion to even the sober mind.

As he spoke, I realized that he had mental problems as do many of the homeless.

There are places that provide refuge for the indigent, I'm sure he knew, but they don't accept anyone who is intoxicated, which I'm also sure he knew.

He drank his coffee then asked me if I would drive him to his sisters home. He then offered me two dollars. Of course I refused the money but offered to take him where he wanted to go.

I intended to take measures to see after him and he seemed anxious to leave.

As I drove, he told me that his sister was out of town but he had permission to use her house in an emergency. I was worried that he was just lying for reasons of his own but I was determined to see the thing through, even if I had to call the police to ensure his well-being through this cold weather.

As we drove up to the house, there was a porch light on and smoke coming from the chimney vent. Even so, it was apparent that there was no one home, the snow around the house was undisturbed.

I asked him if he was sure he could get in, he said, "Yes, she (his sister) told me where the key is." He reached out his hand, as if for a hand shake, and when I offered mine, pulled my hand to his lips and kissed it saying, "God bless you".

I was profoundly embarrassed but stayed long enough to see him dig around in the snow and find a key, unlock the door and wave goodbye.

I drove home, my thoughts disturbed, by the events that had taken place.

My wife was relieved as I returned and I started preparing food (very early,) for Christmas Eve. As I cut up fruit for salad and prepared the turkey for baking, my son came up behind me, hugged me and kissing my head, said, "Dad, you did a good thing."

Again, I was embarrassed, not by my son's hug and kiss but by his praise.

It was the right thing to do.

My son told me that he tries to help the homeless ones that hang around his place of employment. We spoke of how little we can actually do for them and I was proud of my son for being a good man and doing the right thing.

As I continued to prepare food for Christmas Eve, my thoughts drifted to a couple seeking shelter in Bethlehem and the birth of the Lamb of the New Covenant, and I felt God's Peace.

May God's Peace and blessings be with you all!
Merry Christmas.

Warren

Post Note:

First, please watch "Mary, Did You Know?" as performed by the Pentatonix, an a capella group. I hope that you love it as much as I do:

====

Eighteen years ago, I first posted this true story -yes it actually happened- and I am always asked to brush the cobwebs off and re-post it for Christmas. The post note is changed to reflect my feelings and events.

"Mary, Did You Know?" by the Pentatonix, is my favorite Christmas Carol. If you haven't heard this version before or if you would like to hear it again, I urge you to put on your headphones or good speakers and have a listen. 

Maybe below you could tell me your favorite Carol.
This year, I'm spending Christmas with my new bride, AOW, in our new home. It has been a year of many happy changes.

Christmas Eve, we shall celebrate with one of my brothers and my son and daughter-in-law.

Once again, and to all my friends -and you know who you are!-
Merry Christmas!
Warren

Merry Christmas to all who stop by this site. Be blest!

How About Something Funny?

 

MUCH MORE HERE

For The Fourth Sunday In Advent

(For politics and an open thread, please scroll down)

First, read about the Choir of King's College (emphases mine):

The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, is one of the world’s best-known choral groups. Founded in the 15th century, it ranks among the oldest of its kind, and, while originally created for singing the daily services in the college chapel, now enjoys an international tour schedule that has seen it perform all over Europe and beyond. Every Christmas Eve, millions of people tune in to watch the choir’s A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s – a service which has been continuously broadcast since 1928.

Recorded in 1994, this reissue joins the group’s already extensive discography of Christmas music – recordings that have enhanced its worldwide fame and reputation. The compilation mixes some of the best-loved traditionals, including Once in royal David’s city and O Come all ye faithful, with more recent repertoire – such as Rutter’s rousing What Sweeter Music and Judith Weir’s striking Illuminare, Jerusalem (specially commissioned by the choir for its 1985 annual service). Also featured are traditional German, French, Dutch and Polish carols (including two settings of Dulce Jubilo) – works which, together with Pärt’s enchanting Bogoróditse Dyévo [meaning Mother of God and Virgin], contribute to a wonderfully eclectic disc that provides over an hour of festive cheer.

This music is an important part of our heritage of Western Culture, of Christianity. Volume up!  The index to the selections is below the video.

 

Track list: 

 00:00:00 Once in royal David’s city 

00:04:41 Rejoice and be merry 

00:06:11 Ding dong, merrily on high  

00:08:19 What Sweeter Music 

00:12:37 O little town of Bethlehem  

00:16:17 A Spotless Rose  

00:19:25 Heer Jezus heeft een hofken (organ variations) 

 00:26:44 King Jesus hath a garden  

00:30:10 The Lamb  

00:33:39 Bogoróditse Dyévo 

00:34:55 Infant holy, infant lowly 

00:36:43 Illuminare, Jerusalem  

00:39:12 While shepherds watched  

00:41:54 Quittez, pasteurs 

00:45:05 In dulci jubilo (organ prelude)

00:48:06 In dulci jubilo  

00:50:46 The First Nowell 

00:56:09 Coventry Carol  

00:59:17 Personent hodie  

01:01:49 O come all ye faithful 

Artist: The Choir of King's College, Cambridge 

Stephen Cleobury (conductor)

Get it off your chest

Just because we are all just experiments in Dr Megel.... ummm errr Dr Fauci's 'whatever' camp, doesn't mean.... something something something or the other. 

bum bum bum   bum bum bum   bum bum bum bum bum

Warren

Covid by the Numbers

Silverfiddle Rant!

From the New York Times, as plagiarized by Dnyuz: 

"...the United States stands on the cusp of surpassing 800,000 deaths from the virus..."

"Seventy-five percent of people who have died of the virus in the United States — or about 600,000 of the nearly 800,000 who have perished so far — have been 65 or older. 

Thank you, New York Times for this excellent article. This brings home the fact that... 

One in 100 older Americans has died from the virus. 

That is a frightening crude mortality rate for that demographic: 1% of all people over 65. The Times adds...

For people younger than 65, that ratio is closer to 1 in 1,400.

That is a crude mortality rate of roughly 0.1% for those under 65. Data from the UK--where the government actually tracks and reports useful metrics--reports that for people under 65, around 70% of Covid deaths were people with pre-existing conditions. This is useful information our government should be collecting and reporting.  That brings the death rate for the healthy under 65 population to down around 0.03%.  When adjusted for time (a flu season is about 4 months), this makes Covid for that demographic three times deadlier than the 2019 flu season. *

For all people under 65, Covid is ten times as deadly as a more severe flu season, but that number is meaningless.  We need stratification by age and preexisting conditions to make informed decisions. 

For two years now, government and the Infotainment Media Complex has harassed and assaulted us with horrible, hysterical, and factually inaccurate reporting on Covid.  Preening government camera hog Fauci hasn't helped matters, nor has the shrieking, blubbering mess of a bureaucrat Dr. Walensky.  The New York Times article puts human faces on the numbers and puts the data into an understandable context.

By now, Covid-19 has become the third leading cause of death among Americans 65 and older, after heart disease and cancer. It is responsible for about 13 percent of all deaths in that age group since the beginning of 2020, more than diabetes, accidents, Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Government stupidly hounded, cajoled and propagandized working age people and children and adolescents, closing down schools and businesses, when it should have ditched the scary language and simply issued data-driven advice so people of all ages could make their own informed decisions.  

Did government commit elder abuse by blaring alarums at the elderly--who are the demographic that has the highest trust in government--to "lockdown" and "self-quarantine" for going on two years now?  Could government have done a better job informing them, so they could make their own risk/reward decisions?

Please go read the article.  It has quotes and anecdotes from a broad spectrum of older folks.  And before you go, please give this John Prine song a listen...

* NOTE: Back of the cocktail napkin calculations.  I was too lazy to dump it all into a spreadsheet and get exact numbers, and showing my work would have made for some dry reading.  Here's another comparison. 

Recommended Reading

See The California Crime Wave: The state’s justice system has become a tragic joke by Michael Reagan (Patriot Post, December 10, 2021).  The beginning of the essay: 

My daughter has a nice little house in a safe neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. 

Until recently she never really had to worry about crime or her personal safety. 

But now suburban places like hers in Northern California and Southern California are being hit by a crime wave that has never hit them before. 

 As you’ve seen on national TV, “smash-and-grab” gangs are hitting shopping malls like the one near her — the same one I often take my granddaughters to. 

And now there are even young thugs who’ll follow you home from the mall and break into your house.

It's no wonder my daughter is afraid to go out to her mailbox in the dark by herself....

Read the rest HERE.

"Smash-and-grab attacks" are not only occurring in California. See Spike in smash-and-grab attacks means bad news in store for shoppers (New York Post Editorial Board, November 21, 2021). 

In your view, what are the causes of these "smash-and-grab attacks"?

And what are the remedies?

For The Third Sunday Of Advent 2021

(For politics, please scroll down)

An instrumental feast for the ears! Minimize and listen for a while:

Get if off your chest.

 In an attempt to scale back off topic comments, we have decided to make "Get it off your chest" a recurrent post, perhaps weekly.

Abusive comments might still be deleted at the Administrator's discretion.  If you don't like it, you may haul your ass on down the road. You may complain if you wish, but just remember, "Our Blog, Our Rules!"

 

Warren

 

Cult of Covid: Mass Formation

Silverfiddle Rant!

“In a world of propaganda, the truth is always a conspiracy”

 - Herbert Hildebrandt 

In a world becoming increasingly unhinged, I place my faith in God and thank Him for family and good friends.

Still, I have had my doubts.  I see it.  Others see it.  Why are so many supposed experts and elites spewing such nonsense, and why do they appear to be obfuscating and propagandizing instead of providing clear facts and sometimes telling us simply that they don't know?  

CDC Director Rachel Walensky tearfully wailing about "impending doom" (that ended up not happening). 

Why are good, smart and rational people acting so irrationally? Covid kills, it is real, but we understand it now, how it is transmitted, what it does to people based upon their health and age, and we have drugs to help those who get sick from it.  Those fanning the flames of hysteria fail to put covid in context.

Child Abuse

We know Covid is less dangerous to those 18 and under than the seasonal flu, yet the government allowed the teachers unions to mau mau them into mandating vaccines for children, forcing them to wear masks, and conducting performative school shutdowns.  This is government-sanctioned child abuse on a mass scale, propelled by the largest collective case of Munchausen by Proxy in human history. 

As I've already said, The Lord is my consolation, but I am human, and finding other people--good, smart, highly-educated people--who are also alarmed by this societal mass hysteria comforts me.

Disproportionate Response

Prof. Mattias Desmet is a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium, and he also has a degree in math and statistics.  He noticed early on that the covid data did not match the out-of-all-proportions response by governments around the world.  

Here in the US, 75% of Covid deaths are in people above 65 years old, yet government destroyed jobs, livelihoods and academic careers of students and working age people.   And governments today continue hounding this cohort and fomenting pogrom-like frenzies against them while refusing to publish clear statistical information on just how few people with no comorbidities are in danger of death.

Desmet posits this is a Mass Formation, aka Mass Hypnosis.  He lists four conditions that make a society ripe for this:

1. Lack of Social Bonds.  

2. Lack of meaning in life

3. Free-Floating, Inchoate Anxiety

4. Free-Floating Frustration and Anger

All that is left is the spark.  In this case, covid: 

This has now happened. The anxiety and lonely isolation many felt before the pandemic and during the pandemic found their perfect “object of anxiety” and is solidly locked on to the pandemic and vaccine narrative…they cannot be tolerant or allow dissent or different voices and don’t want to even hear any questioning.  (Quoted in Dr Herd)

All the free-floating anxiety and anger, now turning into panic, becomes attached to the Object. Sudden connection through this heroic struggle together against the Object creates a new solidarity, a social bond that has been lacking, which in turn, creates meaning. People then feel that they can control their psychological discontent by participating in the strategy, even if it’s utterly absurd.. (Paraphrased by Barbara With)

So, those who succumb to this find a comforting solidarity with other like-minded souls and a new purpose in life.  They also collectively focus their bile and anger at those who refuse to join the collective.

Dr Desmet estimates that in a mass formation...

30% of people are deeply hypnotized

40% are not but go along with the crowd — if this 40% stop hearing dissenting voices of reason they will unite with the hypnotized to go along

30% that cannot be hypnotized; we must keep speaking out

I haven't done his explanation justice here.  Please go listen to the fascinating interview with him at Peak Prosperity.  You can also watch the video there, or you can read the transcript.  If you are a podcast listener, you can search for the podcast by entering 'peak prosperity podcast'  

* - Final Note: Mass Formation is a concept that can be applied to many phenomena including political movements.  Some will be tempted to cite 'MAGA' or 'Trumpism,' and its manifestations in 'Stop the Steal,' and the Jan 6th Capitol incident and I would not disagree.  However, this is pale deflection.  

The Covid Mass Formation is orders of magnitude more dangerous because it is impacting billions of lives across the globe and threatens to reorder western societies along a more totalitarian model.  MAGA enjoys the support of no major media outlets, no governments and no major institutions.  Covid Hysteria is stoked daily by governments, press and institutions across the globe.

I will delete off-topic comments.  If you want to fit this model to any phenomena you deplore, do it on your own platform.

Related:  Unherd: Inside Australia's Covid Camps

More Links

Unherd: Breaking News from the World of Ideas

Editorial: Has everyone gone insane? Check your mass formation

Editorial: Part II COVID in the age of mass formation

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False -  John P. A. Ioannidis 

UK Office of National Statistics - Covid Deaths and Preexisting Conditions

Covid Deaths - Preexisting conditions

Causes of death and comorbidities in hospitalized patients with COVID-19

Philosopher's Stone - A little out there, but I reject nothing out of hand anymore

For The Second Sunday Of Advent 2021

(For politics, please scroll down)

"The First Noël," performed by Frederick Rousseau (b. 1958):

[the above artist's YouTube channel]

Get it off your chest!

We are getting too many off topic comments, so if it's off topic, put it here or get it deleted! 

 We are generally very lenient when it comes to comments and let almost anything, that is even tangentially related, go. As most of you know, I act as the "trash man," and I take out the rubbish. 

If one of your comments gets removed or permanently deleted, you can blame me. 

 Warren

Recommended Reading

See 10 Amazing Facts About Unborn Babies You Should Know Before SCOTUS Rules On Dobbs.  Many of these details were unknown at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. 

Do you believe that Roe v. Wade will be overturned by the SCOTUS?