Statement on Second NYC Lockdown from New York Young Republicans

Today, we wake up to a quieter city—a dying city. Democrat politicians like Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio have taken direct, authoritarian, anti-American action to effect the destruction of thousands of small businesses. In doing so, they have destroyed the American Dream for untold numbers of entrepreneurs to satisfy the whims of an elite that disrespects and disserves all Americans.

Andrew Cuomo stands at the vanguard of these rabidly power-hungry politicians. This morning’s closure of indoor dining is but the latest anti-business action he has taken. The callous, arbitrary, and malicious technocracy that the Democrats have constructed and the altar at which they worship the deity “Science” (which bears little relation to the faithful execution of the scientific method) exists only an excuse to justify their every self-serving action.

Cuomo’s own statistics hold dining, both indoor and outdoor, responsible for less than two percent of China Virus transmissions, while indoor gatherings at residences account for over seventy percent. This action, taking effect just as a cold spell swoops into the city, will lead to greater China Virus transmissions. Cuomo does not care about this; he cares only about his own image. We know that Democrat politicians across the country, including Cuomo, have hypocritically violated their own restrictions; do they seriously expect everyday Americans not to do the same?

This Club knows that indoor dining can be conducted in a safe manner. We proved that with the execution of our 108th Annual Gala, which was held in accordance with all applicable regulatory restrictions and which resulted in zero known or suspected cases of China Virus transmission. We also know that the restaurant industry has been strung along by Cuomo and de Blasio, asked to invest in an ever-changing set of infrastructure that aligns with the order of the day. This makes for an untenable state of affairs.

We stand with every business that suffers due to Democrat-mandated, unscientific lockdown orders. We call on the business community to defy these orders en masse as Mac’s Public House has. We call for civil disobedience to defend Liberty and the rights of Americans to associate freely and to conduct business as they choose.

We condemn Democrats’ new favorite hobby of rule by fiat. We condemn Cuomo’s actions and denounce his pathetic charade of success best demonstrated through the recent publication of his self-laudatory book on his handling of the China Virus in New York. And we stand with the families of the thousands of nursing home residents whose blood indelibly stains his hands.

Via email: Info@nyyrc.com

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Mourning the death of the great Republic

Over the last month, I like tens of millions of other Americans have been wrestling with grief. We may not have recognized it as such but what we have been feeling and experiencing is a deep, painful, raw grief.

It would be too simplistic to chalk it up to a bitterly fought election. It is far more than that. For what I believe we are mourning is the loss of our nation. I have come to see what I and so many others are going through as the mourning process for the death of the United States.

For those who dismiss this or laugh, you have no power over me or my thoughts. With the death of my country, I no longer care one way or the other what you think. You are alien to me, vile creatures who frankly disgust me. And how else could we react? The evidence is crystal clear that the election was stolen. The individual you are about to install is a demented fool who cannot prevent himself from spouting out the truth – he had the greatest voter fraud operation ever known and he is prepared to step down and hand the government over to a pathetic witch who couldn’t get 1% of the vote in the Democrat primaries.

As with any death, there are five stages of grief that most people experience. Once on the “other side” of those stages you can begin to look forward. That is where I find myself today and where I trust millions of my fellow patriots will soon join me. Let’s review the stages

The first stage of grief when the loved one has expired is denial. Everyone I know tasted that on November 4 and 5. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true that the communists had won. When people went to bed, Trump was winning in all the states in question. By morning, large “dumps” had turned the tide. That denial clouded our judgement and prevented swift action in the days immediately following the election that might have saved America’s life. But we didn’t move, we trusted someone in the GOP or the campaign or the White House would do what was necessary. They didn’t – either from the same paralysis we had or due to collusion with the enemy. Now, it doesn’t matter. What could have been done was not done.

The second stage is anger. No need to dwell on that one. The rage that most of us felt was debilitating. I, for one, could not speak to anyone but my closest friends. I found myself falling into fantasies of mass retribution of the most heinous kind. But life intervenes and the rage fades. Oh, it is not gone. The overwhelming thirst to hurt the usurpers and their fellow travelers will, I hope, never go away. But for now, the anger needs to be put aside.

The third stage of grief is “bargaining.” That one has not lasted very long for me either. Once I saw that the so-called “leaders” of the Republican Party were already licking their chops at working with the Commander-in-Thief Biden, I knew there was no deal to be made. We always knew in our hearts that the GOP was complicit in the attacks on Trump starting from before he took the oath of office as was the CIA, the FBI, and the rest of deep state traitors. But once it smacked me and others in face, it was obvious that there was no bargain to be had. That hated Trump. They hated the millions of us to who voted for him more. They had nothing for us.

Of course, the fourth stage of grief is depression. And, it is very hard not to be depressed. The agenda that will be pushed now is not just the death of America; it is an act of contempt for all that America was and what many of us had prayed it would be again. But now the government will open the borders and destroy any cultural cohesion while killing the hopes of American workers. The plutocrats will get their wage cutting, job killing dreams come true. We will trade away our sovereignty to a gaggle of globalist bureaucrats from failed counties just so the scum of Corporatist America can make a few more points on their mountains of money.

And, worst of all, our sons and daughters will be put to war to be policemen of the world, dying and being mangled to make the world safe for Central Bankers and their trolls. The cycle of endless war that Donald Trump did so much to be bring to an end will be relaunched in a sea of American blood and wasted treasure.

Pretty tough to not be depressed. But out of this progression we reach the final stage of grief, acceptance. And that is where I find myself today, accepting the fact that the election was stolen, that an illegitimate occupation government sits in Washington and that all of us will have a very heavy price to pay for our failure to prevent it. I accept that this is where we are today.

But acceptance does not mean I am stuck where I am. It does not mean that I have to meekly go along with the insults and indignities that flow from the occupiers. I am still free to act, to refuse to participate in the orgy of destruction and hate that are the hallmarks of the Democrat-Marxist regime. And, regardless of the censorship and the daily dose of raw propaganda sold as “news” or “entertainment” or “sports,” I can seek ways to find the others with whom I agree and speak with them, to build a true organization free of the death-grip of the empty husks that pass for political organizations today.

This is where I am, accepting where we stand and looking for an effective vehicle and platform from which to launch the most vicious counter-attack possible. Time for grief is over. Yes, it is sad. The United States was a great place and beautiful experiment in self-government. But it is gone. All any of us can do now is fight to have a say in what will rise from the ashes and work for the Restoration of our once-great nation.

https://dailytorch.com/2020/12/on-the-other-side-of-grief/

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Asymptomatic People Do Not Spread COVID-19

According to media reports, COVID-19 “cases,” meaning positive PCR test results, are soaring across the U.S. and around the world, leading to the implementation of measures that in some cases are stricter than what we endured during the initial wave.

However, as detailed in several recent articles, including “Why COVID-19 Testing Is a Tragic Waste,” PCR tests are being used incorrectly, resulting in the false appearance of widespread transmission.

In reality, the vast majority of people who end up with a positive test will not develop symptoms and aren’t infectious. Needless to say, if you’re not infectious, you pose no health risk to anyone, and being placed under what amounts to house arrest is nothing but cruel and unusual punishment for no reason whatsoever.

Positive Test Rates Have No Bearing on Mortality Rates
In The Highwire report above, Del Bigtree breaks down how excessively high test sensitivity leads to falsely elevated “case” numbers that in reality tell us nothing about the situation at hand. As noted by Bigtree, what’s missing from the COVID-19 conversation is the actual death rate.

“If COVID is a deadly virus, what should we see when cases increase?” he asks. The answer, of course, is an increase in deaths. However, that’s not what’s happening.

Aside from a small bump at the beginning, when doctors were unsure of the appropriate treatment and some states recklessly and irresponsibly sent infected patients into ill equipped nursing homes, the death rate has remained relatively flat while positive test rates have dramatically risen and fallen in intervals.

In the video, Bigtree features a November 4, 2020, tweet by White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas showing the number of positive tests (aka “cases”) in blue and COVID-19 related deaths in red, since the start of the pandemic up until the end of October 2020. As you can see, there’s no correlation between the positive test rate and subsequent deaths.

Vast Majority of ‘COVID-19 Patients’ Are Asymptomatic

One of the explanations for why positive test rates and mortality do not go hand in hand is the simple fact that a vast majority of those testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic. They simply aren’t sick. The PCR test is merely picking up inactive (noninfectious) viral particles.

In one study,2 which looked at pregnant women admitted for delivery, 87.9% of the women who tested positive for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 had no symptoms. Another study3 looked at a large homeless shelter in Boston. After a cluster of COVID-19 cases was observed there, researchers conducted symptoms assessments and testing among all guests residing at the shelter over a two-day period.

Of 408 people tested, 147, or 36%, were positive, yet symptoms were conspicuously absent. Cough occurred in only 7.5% of cases, shortness of breath in 1.4% and fever in 0.7%. All symptoms were “uncommon among COVID-positive individuals,” the researchers noted.

Asymptomatic Transmission Is Very Rare

During a June 8, 2020, press briefing, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, made it very clear that asymptomatic transmission is very rare, meaning an individual who tests positive but does not exhibit symptoms is highly unlikely to transmit live virus to others.

“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They’re following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts, and they’re not finding secondary transmission … it’s very rare, and much of that is not published in the literature,” Van Kerkhove said.

Just one day later, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies program, backpedaled Van Kerkhove’s statement, saying the remarks were “misinterpreted.”4 Needless to say, when you’re trying to justify the implementation of a vast surveillance network, it’s no good to admit a vast majority of people are having their privacy infringed upon for no good reason whatsoever.

Asymptomatic People Pose No Risk to Others
Most recently, a study5 in Nature Communications assessed the risk posed by asymptomatic people by looking at the data from a mass screening program in Wuhan, China.

The city had been under strict lockdown between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Between May 14 and June 1, 2020, 9,899,828 residents of Wuhan city over the age of 6 underwent PCR testing. In all, 92.9% of the entire city population participated in the testing. Of these, 9,865,404 had no previous diagnosis of COVID-19 and 34,424 were recovered COVID-19 patients.

Not a single one of the 1,174 people who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual tested positive.

In all, there were zero symptomatic cases and only 300 asymptomatic cases detected. (The overall detection rate was 0.3 per 10,000.) Importantly, not a single one of the 1,174 people who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual tested positive.

Additionally, of the 34,424 participants with a history of COVID-19, 107 individuals (0.310%) tested positive again, but none were symptomatic. As noted by the authors:6

“Virus cultures were negative for all asymptomatic positive and repositive cases, indicating no ‘viable virus’ in positive cases detected in this study … The 300 asymptomatic positive persons aged from 10 to 89 years …

The asymptomatic positive rate was the lowest in children or adolescents aged 17 and below (0.124/10,000), and the highest among the elderly aged 60 years and above (0.442/10,000). The asymptomatic positive rate in females (0.355/10,000) was higher than that in males (0.256/10,000).”

More HERE (See the original for links)

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IN BRIEF

Black Lives Matter accuses Biden of ignoring it: "It's demeaning to our hurt and trauma" (Fox News)

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, former VP contender, turns down Team Biden offer (Daily Wire)

Smart strategy: Trump urged to send Paris climate plan to Senate for ratification to block Biden (Washington Times)

NY Times assistant who edited Senator Tom Cotton's "Send in the Troops" column resigns (Daily Beast)

Facebook "fact-checking certifier" is a Hillary Clinton superfan (Post Millennial)

For the record: Media said a vaccine by end of year was impossible (Daily Wire)

The hidden crisis: Elderly people are dying from isolation (NBC News)

Self-victimhood (read: "wokeism") is a personality type, researchers find (Reason)

Russian hackers breach U.S. government, targeting agencies, private companies (NBC News)

Seattle City Council considers new "poverty defense" to excuse misdemeanor crimes such as theft and assault if culprit is homeless, addicted to drugs, or has mental health issues (Daily Mail)

Multiple people stabbed, 23 arrested during election protest in Washington, DC (National Review)

Video shows Proud Boys tackling counterprotester wielding a knife amid DC violence (Washington Examiner)

Despite the Illinois State Police's best efforts, deep-blue Illinois leads the way in 2020 gun sales (The Truth About Guns)

California judge blocks Governor Newsom from enforcing lockdown order on Catholic churches (Washington Times)

While New York goes out of business, Cuomo throws himself a birthday party (FrontPage Magazine)

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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The surprising stock market

I follow only the Australian stock market but it generally mirrors Wall st. and I gather that it is still doing so at the moment

The surprise is how robust stock values are at the moment. The lockdowns knocked about 12% off the value of my portfolio but the election has substantially reversed that. My portfolio is now only about 6% down on where it was

There were a lot of pundits who said the market was in for a big fall. So what happened? It seems to be that investors now expect gridlock in American politics. And gridlock is something conservatives rather like. If there is no agreement in politics, no new laws will be passed and no new regulations will be issued. That means that businesses have to cope with market challenges only, not political changes. While the politicians are squabbling with one another, it gets them off the back of business

There was a good example of that during the British prime ministership of the unfortunate Theresa May. Her weak leadership plus a near balance in the House of Commons meant that very little got done politically. And British business boomed at that time.

So it seems that U.S. business is expecting something similar now. And that expectation will be well and truly fulfilled if, as expected, the GOP retains control of the Senate.

And over the last 4 years the GOP has very largely become the party of Trump. His attitudes and policies have not only won huge approval among the GOP rank and file but have also percolated into the thinking of most Senators, the contemptible Mitt Romney being the obvious exception. But even waverers like Romney, Collins and Murkowsky have generally gone along with the rest of their Senate colleagues anyhow. So a Senate dominated by Trump thinking will be a total roadblock to any of the insane new legislation that Biden has proposed.

And note that the GOP has also done well both in the House and in picking up State governorships. So even if sufficient new votes are "found" to deny the GOP complete control of the Senate, Congress as a whole will end up finely balanced and should as such fulfil its traditional role as a brake on change. Getting a majority for anything in either house is not easy. Only measures with a considerable degree of consensus behind them normally get up.

It took the first two years of his presidency for Obama and his supporters to get Obamacare through, during which little else got done

And I haven't even mentioned yet the now very conservative Supreme Court. The one big thing that conservatives wanted from Trump was to rebalance the Supreme Court and he achieved exactly that. And the Supreme court has a proven ability to knock on the head any adventurous legislation or regulations -- JR

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Brash and bold, Trump’s legacy will endure

Donald Trump has transformed America. The election is gone, Trump is still there. At time of writing, the odds favour Joe Biden getting across the line. Trump’s huge vote and Republican advances in congress could be seen as a moral victory. But Trump is not remotely interested in moral victories.

Everyone’s calculations got thrown out this election because people who voted on polling day voted Trump, while those who voted by mail-in ballot voted Biden. Therefore in some states Trump had leads of hundreds of thousands, which withered when the mail votes were counted.

The purpose of Trump’s allegations are twofold. One is to give some momentum to the legal challenges his campaign has launched against counting certain votes that they claim came in too late or were otherwise invalid. It is perfectly legitimate for Trump to pursue all legal avenues.

However, even if they have some modest success, these actions won’t get so many votes excluded that it changes the result.

Second, Trump sets up the narrative that the election was stolen. This enables him to stay the centre of attention and continue what he loves most, wage a campaign of grievance.

There is a theoretical, extreme scenario in which Republican state legislatures, say in Georgia, decide votes have been rigged and so choose only electoral college delegates who will support Trump as president. It’s technically possible but pretty much inconceivable if courts have ruled the votes valid.

One of the ironies of Trump’s likely defeat is it means the Republican Party is not rid of Trump. He can threaten to run for the presidency again for the next three years. If he had won the presidency, at least the Republicans could start to sort themselves out about who they can run next time, and on what basis.

But Trump’s legacy for the Republicans, for America and for the world is huge. It does not hinge on this one set of comments.

Let’s consider them one by one: Trump’s legacy for democracy, for America, for conservative politics and for the world.

First of all, consider Trump’s vote. Biden won the popular vote. He has about 74 million votes now and by the end of all states doing all their counting will have probably a couple of million more. He already has more votes than have ever been cast for any presidential candidate previously in US history. On any measure, that is a huge achievement for Biden. If as seems likely he inches ahead in the electoral college and becomes president there can be no doubting the legitimacy of his presidency, nor his singular place in the history of American presidential elections.

Guess who has the second highest popular vote in US presidential history? One Donald J. Trump. He has about 70 million votes now and he too should end up with a million or two more by the end. More people voted for Trump than ever voted for Barack Obama, the previous record holder, or for Hillary Clinton last time, or for any other president.

Not only that, Trump clearly held up the Republican vote. It’s still murky but it seems that the Republicans have held control of the Senate and have actually picked up a net gain of six seats in the US House of Representatives. It’s possible that two senators will have to go to run-off elections in Georgia on January 5. The Republicans would need to win one of them to retain control of the Senate.

This is because Georgia has a provision that if the winning candidate does not win 50 per cent, a run-off is held. Would Georgians vote to constrain a Biden presidency with a Republican senate? Would they vote to make it more likely a Biden presidency could get key legislation passed? What role will Trump himself play in such an election?

But let’s stick with Trump’s vote for a minute. According to the US liberal establishment, the nation was reeling under its moral revulsion at Trump and his Republican enablers. This is plainly just not true. Republicans picked up a state governorship in Montana and now control the governor’s mansion in 27 of 50 states.

Not all the seats in the House of Representatives are decided, but one projection suggests the Democrats will end up with 226 and the Republicans 209. It is rare for a president to sweep to power and his party lose seats in congress. That suggests Biden was more popular than the Democratic Party and its far-left platform.

It is also important because in two years there will be a mid-term congressional election. In these, the president’s party normally loses seats. This happened in huge bad results for Democrats in Bill Clinton’s first mid-term election in 1994 and similarly in Barack Obama’s first mid-term in 2010. Obama was personally popular yet Democrats lost 63 house seats in 2010. There is every chance that in two years Biden could be president, but the Senate, the house and a majority of state governors all Republicans, with the federal court system and the Supreme Court mainly peopled by judicial conservatives.

There are lots of reasons for conservatives to be deeply worried about the long-term effects of Trumpism. Electoral failure does not seem to be one of them. As one wag put it, the election was a contest between those who disliked or hated Trump’s personality, as opposed to those who disliked or hated the Democrats’ swing to the left. Democrats talking of socialism, defunding the police and ending fossil fuels is enough to make voters very wary. Commentators routinely decry gridlock. But Americans vote for gridlock quite deliberately. In Maine Biden trounced Trump in the presidential vote. But Republican senator Susan Collins trounced her Democratic challenger. Despite the heightened partisan divides of America, millions of Americans voted deliberately to put Biden in the White House and make sure he couldn’t do anything.

Even people who like Trump find him exhausting. The mood of America may have been quite well captured in these paradoxical results: we want a sleepy old guy who is kindly and snoozing in the White House, and a congress and judiciary that keeps him paralysed. In this time of ideological turmoil, we vote deliberately for do-nothing government. Elmer Fudd in the White House, Deputy Dawg in the Senate, Yogi Bear in the house and Dudley Do-Right in the judiciary. Put sports back on the front page (except when it’s taking a knee).

Trump also has changed the content of conservatism in some positive ways. Trump will get 47 or 48 per cent of the vote in the end. This actually understates his support. Because of the structure of the electoral college, he didn’t campaign at all in California or New York or even Illinois. If he had campaigned in those states he wouldn’t have won them, but he would have tightened the popular vote considerably.

America is just about a 50-50 nation and Trump was considered the best man by roughly half America. If polls tell you otherwise ignore them, for in this election the polls proved themselves worthless, systematically understating not only Trump’s vote but the conservative vote generally, and by appalling margins.

The old ideological construct of the pre-Trump Republican Party is dead. It won’t come back. Trump himself is much less an international outlier here than is often claimed. The old Tory dispensation is dead in Britain. Boris Johnson won his huge parliamentary majority on the back of Brexit and support from northern working-class England and in exchange his policies included a lot of big government and intervention for working-class people, including industry policy. Scott Morrison was returned to government by provincial Queensland seats and working-class Tasmanian seats and he has put all ideology in the bottom drawer if not altogether the dustbin of history. His government is taking direct measures to revive manufacturing.

Centre-right parties around the world are seeking and gaining the support of working-class people while centre-left parties are dominated by green, woke identity-politics, climate-change crusades, and draw their support from upper-income, service-industry, limousine liberals.

The poorest three states in mainland America are Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. They all voted overwhelmingly for Trump and now always vote Republican. The states at the other end of the income scale, the wealthiest states in America — Maryland, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Connecticut — now always vote for the Democrat in presidential elections. US citizens with average incomes and below overwhelmingly donated money to Trump. Those with above average incomes overwhelmingly donated money to Biden. Trump also got more non-white voters than any recent Republican. They’re not that woke either.

The old Republican program was free trade, low taxes, lower spending, cuts to welfare to reduce the deficit, globalisation, strong defence, global security leadership, border control. Trump is an outlier in his often gross rhetoric. But in his actual policies, he is fairly normal contemporary centre right. He junked the version of free trade that saw the US obey the rules but endure enormous trade deficits with China and other nations that don’t obey the rules. For Canada and Mexico Trump didn’t embrace protectionism but negotiated a better deal. He wants a much bigger manufacturing industry and lots of manufacturing jobs. He kept border control and low taxes and, pre COVID-19, his tax cuts produced a booming economy. But he won’t cut welfare because he now represents millions of people who are on welfare or might go on welfare one day.

Trump kept the commitment to strong defence and the military budget reflects that. But he doesn’t like providing security to allies who don’t bear their share of the burden. Some reaction like this was bound to come eventually. The failing here is not primarily Trump’s, but rather that of free-riding US allies.

But here is one Trump innovation. He utterly, straightforwardly, vigorously, contemptuously rejects the politically correct, woke culture. In my view he does this coarsely and crudely. But as one wag put it, Trump is the only middle finger ordinary Americans had available to raise at the preening left-liberal establishment which holds that they are all racists and their national sentiment contemptible.

Can a more mainstream Republican, who doesn’t have Trump’s genius for making himself the centre of attention, overcome the enormous financial advantage the Democrats now have? Big tech, social media and almost all mainstream media went all in for Biden. Social media crossed a dangerous Rubicon when it started censoring Trump and mainstream newspapers and conservatives if they weren’t backing Biden.

This is the most sinister, anti-democratic and genuinely disturbing development of this election. Trump was never an authoritarian leader. He doesn’t control the military, the media, the judiciary or a mass movement in the streets, and he has never disobeyed a court ruling against his administration. The real danger of US authoritarianism now comes from the alliance of political power in Biden and the Democrats, with financial power in Big Tech, media power in social and mainstream media, and cultural power in Hollywood. They share ugly, coercive conformism.

Which is why Republican control of the Senate and so many state governorships is so important, and so healthy.

In international affairs Trump damaged American soft power. But hard power is more important than soft power. Trump built new leverage against China, Iran, Mexico, NATO partners, even multilateral institutions which desperately want the Americans back. If Biden is smart he will use that leverage to achieve US policy aims, not just give it away in a silly desire to reverse everything Trump did.

Out of office, Trump has the potential to be wildly destructive, not least of Republicans. But so far, his legacy is mixed, by no means all bad.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/us-election-2020-brash-and-bold-trumps-legacy-will-endure/news-story/0321856a15d41e46f1fc1190293580a6

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Infectious Disease and Authoritarianism

I am a great admirer of Jordan Peterson and agree with him on most things.  I certainly sympathize with the panic that seized him when his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. They were a pair since childhood so the loss was maximal. I myself was pretty upset at the recent loss of a long relationship but I cannot imagine how I would have felt if my  relationship had stretched so far back.

I had support that meant I had no need to turn to anxiolytic drugs but I certainly understand that he did.  As is always the danger, use of such drugs can induce dependence and it is rather heroic that he fought so hard to defeat that dependence.  One hopes that he is back to full health soon.

I am not sure how recent is his article below but it does indicate a mind not at its best.  For a start, I can locate no article that is as he describes it. I think he is voicing a garbled memory of a well-known article about parasite load: "Pathogens and Politics: Further Evidence That Parasite Prevalence Predicts Authoritarianism".  Parasite load is high in Africa so a number of theories about it have been circulated -- e.g. here.

What it is NOT, however is a disease.  It is not of viral or bacterial origin.  It is caused by invertebrates. So Peterson's recollection that the study caused disease is incorrect.  It is also incorrect that the study was about psychological authoritarianism.  It was about political authoritarianism.

Finally, what can we make of the high correlation Peterson reports.  He is generally pretty good on statistics but it  would seem that he has not heard of ecological correlations. In statistics, “ecological” correlations have nothing to do with environmentalism.  They are "ecological" ones in Robinson's (1950) sense -- i.e. the units for analysis were not indivisible. As Robinson shows, such correlations can easily be beguilingly high, particularly where the units for analysis are few, and such correlations are not estimates of individual correlations.

As Menzel (1950) has pointed out, however, ecological correlations do not have to be estimates of individual correlations to be of interest. Ecological correlations tend to tell us more about broad processes than details within such processes.

The correlation between national IQ levels and national income levels reported by Lynn and Vanhanen are ecological correlations and H.C. Lindgren’s finding of a -.61 correlation between high income and voting for Richard Nixon in the the 1972 U.S. Presidential election is another example. It implied that richer and more highly educated people MUCH preferred the way-out Leftist McGovern

So Peterson is judging the correlation he reports by irrelevant criteria.  An ecological correlation of .7 is mundane, not striking

REFERENCES

Lindgren, H.C. (1974) Political conservatism and its social environment: An analysis of the American Presidential election of 1972. Psychological Reports, 34, 55-62.

Menzel, H. (1950) Comment on Robinson's "Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals" American Sociological Review 15, 674.

Robinson, W.S. (1950) Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 15, 351-357.


There was a paper published in PLOS ONE about a year ago. They were looking at [the following issue]. Let’s say I assessed your political attitudes—I could do that with, say, an authoritarian belief scale, because authoritarianism has been studied quite a bit since the end of World War II. Nobody really knew what to do with it in relation to personality, but it doesn’t matter; you can assess it with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

These people did two things: they did a cross-country survey and then within-country surveys. So if you were looking at a phenomenon, you could look at the country level—US vs. Canada—or you could go into the US and then you could look at a state level. And it’s nice to do the analysis of both levels, to see if it replicates itself across the two different conceptual strata.

And what they found was mind-boggling. It’s Nobel-prize-winning stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

The correlation between the prevalence of infectious disease in a locale and the degree to which authoritarian beliefs were held in that locale was about point 7. It’s like, you never see that in the social sciences. That’s higher than the correlation between IQ and grades, which is about as good as we ever get in terms of prediction.

So it’s like, really? It’s that high? And one of the things that implies is that one of the ways to get rid of authoritarian attitudes, assuming that you want to get rid of such things, is through public health.

SOURCE 



Nordic Countries Accelerate Opening and Abandon COVID-19 Testing Plans

One has to wonder if parts of Europe are a harbinger of what is to come for the United States in the COVID-19 pandemic. If it is, what is coming out of the Nordic countries is all good news. Revised testing guidelines, slower rates of infection and expedited opening are all indicated in the experience in Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland might be better than expected. It won’t make the “lockdown until November, we need 5 million tests a day” crowd happy at all.

Sweden has chosen a different path to public health from the beginning of the pandemic. Seeking to protect their hospital system and increase immunity in the population, they put light recommendations in place and allowed shops and primary schools to stay open.

Despite the hands-off, high-trust approach, Sweden falls in about the middle of the pack for deaths per million in Europe. Yet their disease penetration in Stockholm, a metro area of about 2.6 million people, is only 7.3% as of the end of April according to antibody testing.

This is far below expectations given the original R0, or measure of how contagious a virus is. Original estimates said this rate could be as high as one infected person infecting 5-6 others on average. Sweden’s approach suggests this might be much lower, which would be good news.

In Norway, they have abandoned their plans for broad-based testing:

Norway’s health agency has abandoned plans to test broadly for coronavirus after judging that the spread of infection in the country is now so low that doing so would be pointless.

Instead, tests will be reserved for those who have symptoms of coronavirus, those who work in healthcare or elderly care homes, and those in risk groups.

If 12,000 random people were tested in Norway today, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health estimated in a press release issued on Monday, 15 would test positive, of which only one would have a real coronavirus infection.

Based on the low forecasted infection rates and an even lower symptomatic disease forecast, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health issued new testing guidelines that mirror the kind of sentinel surveillance Dr. Deborah Birx has been describing for months. It suggests testing asymptomatic individuals in specific circumstances, not broadly:

After an outbreak of infection in elderly care homes, all employees and residents of the affected units should be tested

When diagnosing infection in health institutions, it may be appropriate to test asymptomatic close contacts

When new residents move into nursing homes, testing may be appropriate.

Prior to certain hospital stays or procedures (although this is up to each hospital).

In some cases, foreign universities or employers might require testing. This can be done on a private basis.

Research: In some research studies, all participants will be tested regardless of symptoms.

They also set COVID-19 testing priorities that focus on symptomatic individuals, screening specific populations and contact tracing.

In addition, Switzerland is accelerating its reopening efforts:

"The Federal Council thereby indicates that it wants to end the extraordinary situation again after three months and get out of the situation thanks to which it ruled in many areas by emergency law."

The Health Minister proposed changes and as of June 6, 2020, the only significant restrictions that will remain in place are bans on gatherings of more than 300 people. All schools, indoor and outdoor entertainment including sporting events, will be allowed.

 Their phased reopening approach has been progressing quickly since beginning on April 27th.

Additional information on vaccine testing tells us the United Kingdom is also seeing declining infection rates. They have declined to the point researchers are concerned about successfully completing the trial.

All of this is good news as America contemplates how to proceed with reopening on a regional level even a few weeks behind.

SOURCE 

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Fauci changes tune, now says second COVID-19 wave may never happen — and mask-wearing is symbolic

He is clearly out of his depth

Talk about an abrupt about-face. Dr. Anthony Fauci now says that a second wave of COVID-19 may not even happen and that wearing a mask is largely symbolic at this point.

What about the second wave?  In a Wednesday interview with CNN's "Newsroom," Fauci — member of the White House's coronavirus task force — said that a second COVID-19 wave is not necessarily inevitable.

"We often talk about the the possibility of a second wave, or of an outbreak when you're reopening," Fauci explained. "We don't have to accept that as an inevitability."

"Particularly," he continued, "when people start thinking about the fall. I want people to really appreciate that, it could happen, but it is not inevitable."

Fauci admitted that he is beginning to feel more and more optimistic as days go by, and insists that the U.S.'s expanded capability for testing is bolstering the COVID-19 response.

He pointed out that a second wave is entirely preventable if the U.S. is able to have the "workforce, the system, and the will to do the kinds of things that are the clear and effective identification, isolation, and contact tracing."

In April, however, Fauci insisted that second wave of coronavirus was inevitable.

During an interview with MSNBC, he said, "It's inevitable that the coronavirus will return next season. ... When it does, how we handle it, will determine our fate."

And so what about the masks?
Fauci also said that Americans should wear face masks in public to protect themselves — but also to get into good practices.

"I want to protect myself and protect others [by mask-wearing], and also because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that's the kind of thing you should be doing," he added.

During the interview, the infections diseases expert also admitted that wearing a mask is not 100% effective, but says that it is a gesture that shows "respect" for other people.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

DOJ makes George Floyd death investigation a "top priority" after protests, rioting, and looting grip Minneapolis (Fox News)

Attorney General William Barr appoints U.S. Attorney John Bash to investigate "unmasking" requests by Obama officials (Washington Examiner)

A solid bedfellow: William Barr has become Trump's religious-liberty enforcer (Washington Examiner)

House passes Uighur human rights bill — via proxy vote (Axios)

Vaccine development threatened because infections are declining (PJ Media)

Over 2.1 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, pushing total job losses to 40 million from coronavirus lockdown (Fox Business)

A whopping two-thirds of furloughed workers may temporarily be receiving more money in unemployment benefits than they did from their jobs (MarketWatch)

Opening businesses while keeping churches closed is constitutionally problematic (Washington Examiner)

Is a $1 million donation the reason Governor Andrew Cuomo gave immunity to nursing homes? (PJ Media)

For the record: The Central Park dog case is Covington 2.0 (National Review)

Trump administration to end Iran deal waivers in a blow to Obama-era pact (The Washington Post)

California district attorney launches investigation into whether Joe Biden's accuser, Tara Reade, lied while testifying as expert witness (The Daily Caller)

Two days after WHO abandons trial testing, France bans hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatment (The Hill)

Policy: Hong Kong's worst-case scenario is happening before our very eyes (The Heritage Foundation)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

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The diseased Leftist mind

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history's lessons on the evils of collectivism.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are "workers," "minorities," "the little guy," "women," and the "unemployed." They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims' plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the "root causes" of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: "Big Business," "Big Corporations," "greedy capitalists," U.S. Imperialists," "the oppressors," "the rich," "the wealthy," "the powerful" and "the selfish."

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is "In Government We Trust." To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone's material welfare, provide for everyone's healthcare, protect everyone's self-esteem, correct everyone's social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions.

With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism's irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism's distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.

As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind's relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia-to live what Jacques Barzun has called "the unconditioned life" in which "everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways"-the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world's economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal's attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda's principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.

SOURCE 

The above was written in 2006 by Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist.  It still makes a strong case today

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Amy Klobuchar for sanity

A Leftist view

If Democrats want to win, and most do, they should give the senator from Minnesota a look

If you were among the 8m people who watched this month’s Democratic primary debate in Ohio, you might think Democrats are chiefly concerned about health care or foreign policy. To hear Joe Biden, you might even suppose taxes on people “clipping coupons in the stockmarket” is something their voters care about. But you would be wrong. Poll after poll suggests most Democrats are overridingly concerned to defeat Donald Trump. And they are willing to select whichever primary candidate they think likeliest to do that. While this has given rise to an arcane debate on the left about whether “electability” is even a thing (left-wingers, who win few elections, say it is not), Democratic voters might consider that one of their primary candidates already has a history of pegging back Mr Trump’s electoral gains. That is Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota—whom Lexington recently joined aboard her shiny new “Amy for America” bus in eastern Iowa.

Brisk, diminutive, with a line in self-deprecating humour—and another in comfortable cardigans and shoes—the 59-year-old politician offered herself to the small crowds of Midwesterners awaiting her as one of their own. The title of her autobiography—“The Senator Next Door” —“might have been written for Iowa!” she joshes in Cedar Rapids. She can see Iowa from her front porch in Minneapolis, she says in Sigourney, a flyspeck of coffee and antique shops amid vast acres of corn country.

She can see Canada from it, too, she adds, in a quick pop at Sarah Palin, between listing her centre-left policies. Ms Klobuchar is for making Medicare more available but not free for all. She is for expanding access to public college, but not free four-year degrees. She is for banning assault weapons but not forcibly buying back the millions in private hands. Midwesterners like their politics unthreatening, realistic and with a touch of humour to smooth over areas of disagreement, she believes. The facts back her up. Some of the Democrats’ biggest gains in last year’s mid-terms were made in the Midwest by pragmatic candidates who argued, as she does, that “to be progressive you have to make progress”. She also has a record of outperforming her party in Minnesota by wooing independents and moderate Republicans. Last year she won reelection by 24 points in a state Hillary Clinton won by two.

That was one of the most stunning results of the 2016 election. Minnesota last went for a Republican presidential candidate in 1972. That Mr Trump came so close to breaching such a strong section of the erstwhile Democratic “blue wall” encapsulated his strategy of sweeping up ageing white Midwesterners. It gave him narrow wins in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (which is Midwestern in part), and will again be his likeliest route to victory next year. If he can hang on to even one of those states, or crack Minnesota, he will probably win re-election. If he loses them, he probably won’t. Trump-averse Democrats should therefore ask themselves this question: Who can win the Midwest? And if they do they will find Ms Klobuchar—who would beat Mr Trump in Minnesota by 17 points, according to the latest polling—ready with a half-decent joke. “We’re going to build a blue wall around those states and make Donald Trump pay for it!”

Then why is she not doing better in the polls? The Economist’s aggregate puts her on only 2%. She points to the early stage of the race, the congested field and greater name-recognition for the front-runners. A pithier response would be: Mr Biden. The former vice-president has dominated the primary’s moderate lane despite his familiar shortcomings as a campaigner and more recent doubts about his mental acuity. Having decided he would be likeliest to beat Trump, his supporters have been forgiving. Yet Mr Biden’s seat-blocking candidacy has made it hard for lesser-known though perhaps more compelling moderates to get attention. It persuaded Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio not to enter the race, has put paid to Governor Steve Bullock of Montana and pushed Senator Kamala Harris further to the left than she otherwise might have gone. Given Mr Biden’s weakness, true left-wingers such as Elizabeth Warren have meanwhile had a free run at framing the debate.

Yet Mr Biden may now be in trouble. Ms Warren has overhauled him, his fundraising is in crisis and the likeliest-looking moderate alternatives—Ms Klobuchar and another Midwesterner, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of Indiana—have some momentum. After both piled into Ms Warren in Ohio, they were rewarded with a gusher of donations that might previously have gone to Mr Biden.

Minnesota nice enough

Mr Buttigieg appears better placed to take advantage; he is brilliant, a fresh face and has a big lead on Ms Klobuchar in fundraising and a smaller one in the polls. Yet for risk-averse Democrats he has two potential handicaps. He has never won an election outside South Bend. He also has hardly any support from African-Americans —and as an openly gay man dogged by poor race relations in his home city, he may struggle to woo them.

Ms Klobuchar is also imperfect. Her charisma is more apparent in Sigourney than on the national stage. And she has a reputation for being not terribly “Minnesota nice” to her staffers. Yet that should not matter against Mr Trump—a one-man Democratic turnout machine with the highest staff turnover of any modern president. And Ms Klobuchar has three strengths. She has an electoral record to scare Mr Trump. She appears relatively inoffensive to left-wingers, while hewing as close to the centre as her party’s leftward drift allows. (Her platform, which includes a promise of a $15 minimum wage, is notably to the left of Mrs Clinton’s.)

In straightforward Midwestern style, she also seems to know who she is—unlike Mr Buttigieg, Ms Harris and even Ms Warren, all of whom can seem torn between leftist idealism and reality. “I’m a dose of sanity,” she says. “If you’re tired of the noise and the nonsense, tired of the extremes, you’ve got a home with me.” Anxious Democrats might yet consider that to be good enough.

SOURCE 

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We need a superhero to fix America's problems

The mess is great

We are failing to see a cancer in America that's metastasizing and threatens us all.  Those on the right of the political spectrum recognize and yearn for a cure, while others on the left embrace with their distorted vision a socialistic goal they believe will ensure the betterment of society.  This philosophical chasm has resulted in a dangerous paralysis.

From a conservative viewpoint, this division prevents any chance of eradication of the root cause of a growing societal threat.  It's the cancer found in most of our major cities, especially those with Democrat mayors and sanctuary declarations.  The symptoms are clear: disrespect for the rule of law, disdain for law enforcement, no moral obligation of residents to play by the rules, and the increasing entitlement mentality for free stuff.  This cancer is eating away at our nation.

While America proudly clings to its technological advancements, there's little to be proud of when it comes to the social ills plaguing our large metropolitan areas — homelessness, substandard housing, crime, racial strife, disenchantment with our political system, and lack of hope that the future will be better, to name a few.  Who's to blame?  One might start with the mayors of Detroit decades ago who practiced broad-daylight graft and corruption, stealing from residents of all colors.

One might also surmise that this pattern for theft has been the playbook for today's officeholders, especially Democrats, who rule large cities for their own greed without regard for the welfare of their citizenry or fear of legal retribution.  Making unachievable campaign promises, denigrating the character of political opponents, and doing little to improve the urban quality of life have worked well for the Left while filling the coffers of those in charge.  San Francisco, a primary example of a once beautiful, safe city that attracts thousands of tourists each year, has become a symbolic outhouse overrun by homeless, drug-addicted dropouts.  And all of this in the backyard of the speaker of the House of Representatives, who believes that fabricating impeachment charges against President Trump far exceeds the importance of enhancing the lives of her own constituents.

How will this blight, not only for the Bay Area, but for other cities as well, get resolved?  It won't until the voters in these cities understand how the incumbent politicians are leading residents astray.  The difficulty is finding a way to counter the political machines and force them from office.  Term limits, if enacted, would help, but the very people impacted are the ones who must initiate the change of congressional terms.  The chances are slim.  It's similar to the old adage of hiring the fox to guard the henhouse.  The chickens will suffer identical consequences to what many helpless, cowering electorates are currently experiencing when rotely pulling the voting machine lever every two years.

The country's only salvation from ruin may be in the timely discovery of a cure for political myopia.  Unfortunately, it will be impossible for this cure to be technology-based.  It's going to take a political superhero.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Liberals Beyond Stupid

Read the excerpt from an article by Ray Kraft below.  It sets out well a problem that conservatives constantly encounter:  Why are Leftists so unreachable by reason? You can point out holes in their arguments but they are unmoved.  And some of their claims are entirely out of touch with reality. "All men are equal", being the prime example of that.  And they can change positions on a dime -- as Mr. Obama did: In the Senate he was against gay marriage. As president he was for it.

I think I can explain why they are like that.  Freud understood. Sometimes people NEED false beliefs to make them happy with themselves and with life.  Not everyone can face reality head-on. The use of mind-altering dugs is proof of that.  Even in prehistoric times they brewed beer.  Men have always needed to blunt the harsh impact of reality.  Some of us can come down from delusions and finally face the real world and others can do that only partially or not at all.

And the Leftist has a particularly strong need that he has to cope with.  He is a born-angry person; Born-miserable; Born unhappy. And the happiness research is very clear:  You are largely born with your level of happiness/unhappiness. Some things can lift you up and some things can drag you down but it is transient.  You soon revert to your chronic level of unhappiness.

The Leftist could take anger management classes or prayerfully approach the wisdom of Christ but he does not do that.  He does what Freud called displacement.  He explains his anger as caused by something outside himself  -- as caused by "injustice", for instance.  But the world is awash with injustice.  Just the fact that 50% of the population is of below average IQ is a huge injustice. So conservatives just accept that while doing what little they realistically can do to ameliorate problems.

But the Leftist does not want to solve any problem.  He wants to mentally bathe and luxuriate in problems.  Even if some problem is solved, there will always be more problems.  He needs injustices to explain to himself why he is so angry.  So he sees himself as living in a world of evil, conniving people.  "I'm not mad. There really are lots of bad people out there" is his message to himself.

And as Freud pointed out, such false beliefs tend to be deeply entrenched. The defensive person cannot afford to let go of his false beliefs.  Lose too much of his protective belief system and he will have to face his own unfortunate nature head-on.  He would have to face the reality that there are no sufficient grounds for his unhappiness.

So, in a word, the Leftist NEEDS his angry beliefs.  He cannot afford to let go of them.  Compared to his needs, logic and reason is a very weak force


I am coming to suspect that liberalism may be a genetic defect, or at least a congenital defect, because in the correspondence I get froms libs I observe that most of them are completely unable to grasp even the most rudimentary concepts of logic and reason, and also completely unable to grasp the idea that they are not grasping the most rudimentary concepts of logic and reason.

I am not sure that it is merely beyond their will, I am coming to suspect it is beyond their ability.

Those who are able to think more or less rationally and logically tend to become conservative and Republican, while those who are unable to think more or less rationally and logically tend to become liberal and Democrat.

Which makes the Democratic party (as it is today) by definition the party of illogic and unreason, the party of emotionalism rampant.

This may have something to do with the fact that Logic, as a subject, is no longer taught in most schools.

The libs who are not thinking coherently always think (or feel) that they are thinking coherently, no matter how clearly and cogently one points out that they are not. They are apparently unable to recognize (much less understand, or analyze) the inconsistencies and non sequiturs in their own thinking -

For instance, if one points out that the observed one degree of global atmospheric warming over the last century (per the IPCC report) is hardly conclusive proof of catastrophic runaway global warming, and probably within the margin of measuring error (!) the response is Yes! There is Global Warming! Didn't you see Al Gore's movie?! . . . so there really is Global Warming, Toto, I guess, even if we can't actually see it.

Yes, some glaciers are melting, but the fact that glaciers have been melting for the last ten or fifteen thousand years since the beginning of the end of the last ice age is an uncomprehended, or incomprehensible, idea, that cannot possibly have any relevance at all to the faith and doctrine of Global Warming!

SOURCE 

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Anglosphere governance is the Gold Standard

MARTIN HUTCHINSON

Assuming Britain finally manages to edge its way out of the EU, it will look for other affiliations. The obvious one is with the core Anglosphere of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. At first sight, this looks like a model driven by mere nostalgia. Not so: the governance of the Anglosphere is the best in the world, in terms of assuring the happiness and prosperity of its citizens. Thus, a loosely associated Anglosphere can serve as a global model.

The concept of global association of the Anglosphere countries was first postulated by James C. Bennett in his 2004 book “The Anglosphere Challenge.” At that time it appeared quixotic. Britain was locked into an ever closer European Union with countries clearly outside the Anglosphere, the United States was becoming increasingly ethnically diverse and moving away from its founding model, while Canada, Australia and New Zealand were surely too small and insignificant to be more than bit-players in the future world. Overall, the world was becoming increasingly globalist, economically and politically, so nation states seemed anachronisms as modern communications bound the world together in an ever-improving, increasingly democratic whole.

For both positive and negative reasons, the Anglosphere has become more real, and should be taken seriously. The seemingly inevitable process of democratic globalization has gone into reverse. The dream of global government came closer and was revealed to be an authoritarian nightmare. The EU has shown itself both economically feeble and increasingly reminiscent of the centrally planned economies of pre-1991 Eastern Europe. China, far from becoming more democratic as it became richer, has become more authoritarian and an increasing threat to the interests of its neighbors and the world.

On the other hand, the Anglosphere has become more real, not less. Canada and Australia have grown rapidly in population, so they are no longer mere appendages of the largest Anglosphere members, but weighty participants in their own right. The United States, having flirted with Wilsonian attempts to dominate the world and globalist attempts to immerse itself in supranational governance, has reasserted its independence and its unique national personality. Britain, much to everybody’s surprise, has voted to leave the European Union and, if it indeed emerges, can reclaim its place as a substantial mid-range world power with a unique policy approach. In a hostile and dangerous world, the Anglosphere countries will increasingly be drawn to work together, as they already do in intelligence collection through the Five Eyes system.

For several reasons, the Anglosphere countries represent a “Gold Standard” in global governance. Most important, all the Anglosphere countries except New Zealand operate “first past the post” (FPTP) electoral systems, in which the winner in each constituency needs only a plurality of votes. The United States also operates such a system on a state-by-state basis for its Presidential elections. New Zealand operated its electoral system on this basis until 1996, when it switched to a mixture of FPTP and proportional representation.

The effect of FPTP is to suppress the representation of minor parties, preventing the legislature from becoming fissiparous. Accordingly, nearly all governments in an FPTP system are formed through decisions of the electorate, and not by horse-trading between political groups after the election has ended.

Contrast this with proportional representation systems as used in most continental European countries. Here, there are several major parties, and governments are formed by negotiation between the parties to put together a majority after the election has ended. This has two effects. First, shifts in public opinion have almost no impact on the composition of governments; a group can have a very good election, increasing its representation substantially, and still be left out of government if other parties combine against it. Second, new parties with views outside the mainstream are often ostracized by traditional parties, with “grand coalitions” being formed to exclude them even when they gain a substantial percentage of the vote.

Thus, voters with policy priorities not represented among centrist governing parties are essentially disfranchised, leading to their further alienation. Apart from being undemocratic, this is highly dangerous; it was the principal mechanism by which the Nazi party took power in Germany in 1930-33. In FPTP countries, one or other of the main parties has every incentive to pick up an issue on which a substantial part of the electorate feels strongly and act upon it, as evidenced by the election of President Trump in 2016 on the issues of opposing heavy low-skill immigration and opposing globalization.

As countries grow larger (or amalgamate into larger units) the need for FPTP becomes greater. New Zealand, with a population of only 4.8 million and only 120 members of its House of Representatives, can rest assured that its elected representatives will be sufficiently close to the electorate and to each other that political changes can be accommodated, even with a partly proportional system (the populist nationalist New Zealand First party holds the balance of power and has in the past allied with both major parties).

Conversely the European Union, with a population of 512 million in 28 countries, 751 MEPs and no effective union-wide political parties, is an extreme case of a proportional representation system in which the same centrist parties are always in power by coalition with each other, voters’ opinion is completely ignored, and MEPs elected by populist voters are determinedly shunned by the groups that run the parliament. It is thus a wholly undemocratic and very dangerous government system, leading in practice to rule by a self-selecting cadre of unelected anti-democratic bureaucrats. George Soros’ Open Society in Eastern Europe has attempted to reproduce the governance of the EU rather than of the Anglosphere; it is thus the enemy of true openness and democracy.

It is not surprising that Anglosphere political systems are more representative, less dangerous and more economically successful; they all descend from the systems put in place by the immensely successful generation of statesmen that contained William Pitt the younger, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool and the U.S. Founding Fathers. That generation of statesmen were repelled by the violence and irrationality of the French Revolution, so established systems in their own countries that allowed the maximum freedom while discouraging violent upheaval. Through their intelligent, benign governance, they also gave full rein to the emerging forces of industrialization that were in the long run to enrich their people beyond all imagination.

Even before 1789, the British and U.S. systems had shown themselves more flexible than that of France, for example. In the late 17th century, both Britain and France were believers in Thomas Mun’s theory that successful statesmen try to accumulate “treasure” by exporting more than they import. However, the French application of this principle, by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, involved import substitution, making the French economy uncompetitive, while the British version involved colonization and developing addictive export crops of sugar and tobacco, which could be taxed to produce revenue. Then in the years to 1720 France followed the Keynesian madman John Law into dumping its people’s savings into notes of a bankrupt bank, while the British restricted themselves to stock market speculation, a less damaging activity when it went wrong.

Outside Europe, there have been a few examples of fine governance that did not follow European models. Song dynasty China, for example, was undoubtedly the world’s best run society of the 11th and 12th Centuries, with a mandarinate selected on merit through open examinations. While that society did not lend itself to entrepreneurship or technological innovation, it was by far the most satisfactory home for ordinary people before the Renaissance, including Greece and Rome. Alas, it succumbed to Mongol conquest, and subsequent iterations of Chinese governance have been greatly inferior, more tyrannical and even less capable of dealing with innovation. China’s current regime, while economically fairly successful (though nowhere near as successful as it claims) is hopelessly repressive and a major threat both to its people’s liberty and that of its neighbors.

Even Anglosphere countries have seen their political systems degraded since their apogee in 1800-25. The German invention of socialism was avoided in the United States (until now) but badly affected the other Anglosphere countries, making their economies far more sluggish than they needed to be, and working against the small government with light, transparent regulation that epitomizes the Anglosphere tradition. In the United States, Democrats, Whigs, Republicans and Progressives replaced the wholly admirable Federalists. In Britain, the Whigs forced through their gerrymandering 1832 Reform Act after which the Tories, heirs to the finest traditions of government, engaged in pre-emptive surrender to the left for the next 150 years, until Margaret Thatcher brought at least a temporary halt to the decline.

Thus, the traditions of Anglosphere government are now not so clearly superior as they might be. Nevertheless, non-Anglosphere countries such as India that have adopted an Anglosphere political structure have seen some success in recent years as they have developed two viable political parties that can alternate in power and around which political forces can gather. It is however still unclear whether this healthy political structure can overcome India’s “permit raj” bureaucracy that is EU-like in its density and opacity. Counterexamples like Argentina, with one dominant party of the left and perpetual economic decline, will also encourage their neighbors to move in an Anglospheric direction.

Now Brexit offers Britain an opportunity to work with other countries of similar political traditions. Federation is not an option — Britain has seen enough of the disadvantages of that in the last 46 years and will not want to repeat them. But a loose trade and political backscratching agreement, which allows each of the parties to gain benefits from the capabilities of the others, is an attractive way forward. The eventual structure will not be an Empire, but if carefully designed it can gain for all parties concerned many of the advantages and few of the disadvantages of that much-maligned entity.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here

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Gross hypocrisy and Leftist bias in Wikipedia: Altemeyer

Revised and updated

I put up some information on the Wikipedia page for Bob Altemeyer.  Altemeyer is a particularly witless Leftist psychologist who made large and derogatory claims  about conservatives that he later had to retract.  But there was nothing on his Wikipedia page about that retraction.  So I put up a brief account of that.  What I put up was wholly scholarly and fully referenced -- just what Wikipedia says it wants.  But criticism of Leftists is not allowed of course, so my contribution was deleted after only a few days.

I imagine that they will find some quibble to justify their deletion of my entry but I am pretty sure that the outcome would have been different had I praised brainless Bob. Anyway, after a couple of run-ins with them, I have no confidence in being able to navigate my way onto Wikipedia again -- so I am putting up below what I originally submitted to Wikipedia. Altemeyer is an unusual name so a Google search on that name should still find my comments, whether the Wikipedians like it or not:

The centerpiece of Altemeyer's research is a questionnaire he designed called the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. If you get a high score on it you are allegedly revealed as a Right-Wing Authoritarian. A major problem with the RWA scale is revealed, however, when we find that it identifies the Communists of the old Soviet Union as right-wing.  But if they are right-wing who is left wing? 

His confusion arises from his apparent  definition of conservatism as "opposed to change".  That definition is however politically naive.  Conservatives from Burke onward have never been opposed to change as such but rather opposed to changes desired and enacted by Leftists.  Is Donald Trump opposed to change? The current Left/Right polarity is between conservatives who want less government control and Leftists who want more of that.  Altemeyer seems to be unaware of that so his work has no current political relevance.

In detail: The decline and fall of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe enabled use of his RWA ("Right Wing Authoritarianism") scale there. Studies in the East such as those by Altemeyer & Kamenshikov (1991), McFarland, Ageyev and Abalakina-Paap (1992) and Hamilton, Sanders & McKearney (1995) showed that high RWA scores were associated with support for Communism!! So an alleged "Rightist" scale went from being Rightist to being a predictor of Leftism! If you took it at face-value, it showed Communists were Rightists!

After that, Altemeyer more or less gave up his original claim and engaged in a bit of historical revisionism. He said (Altemeyer, 1996, p. 218) that when he "began talking about right-wing authoritarianism, I was (brazenly) inventing a new sense, a social psychological sense that denotes submission to the perceived established authorities in one's life". It is true that he did originally define what he was measuring in something like that way (in detail, he defined it as a combination of three elements: submissiveness to established authority, adherence to social conventions and general aggressiveness) but what was new, unusual or "brazen" about such a conceptualization defies imagination. The concept of submission to established authority was, for instance, part of the old Adorno et al (1950) work. What WAS brazen was Altemeyer's claim that what he was measuring was characteristic of the political Right. But it is precisely the "Right-wing" claim that he now seems to have dropped and the RWA scale is now said to measure simply submission to authority. See:

    Adorno,T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J. & Sanford, R.N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper.

    Altemeyer, R. (1996). The Authoritarian Specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Altemeyer, R. & Kamenshikov, A. (1991) Impressions of American and Soviet behaviour: RWA changes in a mirror. South African J. Psychology 21, 255-260.

    Hamilton, V. L., Sanders, J., & McKearney, S. J. (1995). Orientations toward authority in an authoritarian state: Moscow in 1990. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 356-365

    McFarland, S. G., Ageyev, V. S., & Abalakina-Paap, M. A. (1992). Authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 1004-1010

MORE

What I said above was designed to be acceptable encyclopedic writing but I can go further than that.  I can offer a more extended critique of Altemeyer's work.  And continued critique would seem to be needed.  The RWA scale is still widely used in psychological research and generally seems to be used without any awareness of the invalidity of the instrument.  It is still commonly paraded as a measure of something right-wing, which it clearly is not.  So I think a more extended consideration of what it measures is called-for.

In the beginning

In one sense, what it measures is perfectly clear;  It measures the old 1950 Adorno  conception of authoritarianism -- in which Marxist theoretician Theodor  Adorno and his friends claimed to have discovered a "new anthropological type": The authoritarian.  Authoritarians were conservative, racist, both dominant and submissive, rigid in their thinking, "intolerant of ambiguity",  and a product of bad relationships with their father. The authoritarian was just a maladjusted psychological mess generally. Adorno did not claim that all conservatives were authoritarian but it became generally assumed that they were. Leftists just loved the idea.

It was clear early on -- even to Altemeyer -- that the F scale which the Adorno team devised to measure their conception of authoritarianism was fatally flawed.  But that did not dent the great appeal that the Adorno theory had for Leftists.  And Altemeyer was one who drank the Kool-Aid.  He swallowed the Adorno theory hook, line and sinker.  His project was to devise a better measure of the concept rather than to question the concept.  The RWA scale was his replacement for the old F scale

But it was very much like the F scale.  Its items consisted of aggressively worded versions of popular sayings from the past.  Pflaum (1964) had shown that you could create a parallel form of the F scale by gathering together sayings that had been popular during the pre-war "Progressive" era.  Progressive ideas dominated American life throughout the first half of the 20th century so ideas that were popular at that time were also progressive or at least compatible with progressivism.

The Progressive era

But what were progressive ideas?  The ideas do not sound progressive now.  The great hero of the progressive era was Teddy Roosevelt.  He even founded his own "progressive" party (often referred to as the "Bull Moose" party).

So what did TR believe in? He believed in battleships (he built lots of them) and that war is a purifying force for a nation.  He had many ideas that sound "Right wing" these days, largely because modern-day progressives tend to reject them. See here and here for a fuller account of the American "Progressive" era.

And Adorno, Pflaum and Altemeyer all created collections of the old Progressive ideas and proudly presented them as being both authoritarian and "Right-wing".  That conservatives had been in opposition throughout almost the whole of the Progressive era was ignored.  The wars of conquest (Cuba, the Philippines etc) waged under the aegis of TR were met with conservative isolationism.  And the big government ideas of FDR were solidly opposed by conservatives of the day.

After WWII

So in the immediate post-war era we had the strange spectacle of pre-war Leftist ideas being presented as conservative. And most Leftists bit the bullet.  Pre-war Progressive ideas had been shared by another prominent socialist of the pre-war period, Adolf Hitler, so it was urgent to distance post-war Leftists from his ideas.  And what better way to do that than to try to pin such ideas onto conservatives?  In 1950 all Leftists would have been be aware that Hitlers ideas had also largely been their own until recently  but Leftists can pivot on a dime when it suits them so Leftist psychologists did just that.

So it is true that the RWA scale statements do reflect authoritarianism -- but it is the authoritarianism of the pre-war Left.  Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian.  In Mr Obama's famous words, Leftists aim to "fundamentally transform" their society.  And it was not the geography or topography of America that  Obama was talking about.  It was the American people.  He wanted to make them do things that they would not normally do (like pay more in taxes) and to stop them from doing things that they would normally do (like mock homosexuals).  Whether or not you agree with the desirability of his program, the point is that it was inescapably authoritarian.  It aimed to dictate behavior.  Conservatives do have some authoritarian impulses at times (restricting abortion etc) but Leftism is authoritarian root and branch.  Telling other people what to do and making them do it is the whole of their program.

Looking inside the black box

So what do conservatives do when confronted with RWA statements?  Because of the old fashioned content of the items they may agree with some of them.  Conservatives tend to have some respect for things of the past.  But that agreement will not be politically relevant. That they can see something in the old ideas will not tell you anything about their likely choices on the current political scene. The old ideas are not at issue so will not influence current choices.

Leftists, on the other hand, will tend to reject most of the statements as something they now disagree with -- but  will rightly see them as not of current political relevance now so will not relate them to current political choices. Their attitude to the old items will not influence their currtent choices.  So neither their agreement nor disagreement with the statements will predict their current political choices. And it doesn't.  The scale is an exercise in political irrelevance.

So from both sides of politics you will have agreement with the statements that is not of current relevance -- and that shows in the fact that conservatives and Leftists are not demarcated by agreement with the scale items.  It  explains why big scorers on the RWA scale are just as likely to be on the Left as on the Right.  It is just not a scale of current political relevance.   Some of the items may touch on what are still current issues but the aggressive way they are expressed will not be supported by either conservatives or Leftists -- e.g. items supporting oppression of homosexuals would be generally rejected by both sides.

So the RWA scale measures an old-fashioned form of LEFTISM but not anything of current political relevance. Which is why the scale does not correlate with current political preferences in (for example) American Presidential elections.  A lot of high scorers would have voted for Mr. Obama.

And it also explains why high RWA scorers in Russia today tend to be members or former members of the Communist party.  In Russia today, Communism IS old-fashioned Leftism

Reference:

Pflaum, J. (1964) Development and evaluation of equivalent forms of the F scale. "Psychol. Reports" 15, 663-669. 

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The left should focus on lifting poor people up, not tearing rich people down

But they get their buzz out of hating the rich

Today’s progressives love touting themselves as champions of the working class. And to them, there’s no better way of doing so than through their anti-rich rhetoric.

Take the response to former Starbucks CEO and billionaire Howard Schultz announcing he was considering running for US president in 2020.

There are many criticisms to be made of Schultz’s pitch. He has tried to present himself as a relatable ‘self-made’ man. But it’s likely most Americans would relate more to the barista behind a Starbucks counter than the self-described ‘rags to riches’ former CEO of the company.

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and others have also suggested that Schultz running as a centrist independent would actually help Trump.

But progressive lawmakers, some of whom are millionaires themselves, have chosen to hit out at Schultz’s personal wealth.

Massachusetts senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren attacked the billionaire for thinking he could ‘buy the presidency’. She is worth $4.7million, making her the 69th wealthiest person in Congress according to Roll Call.

However you feel about Schultz’s potential candidacy, his wealth is beside the point. But this line of attack reveals that many progressives have become myopically obsessed with the super wealthy recently.

Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently agreed to the notion that a system allowing billionaires to exist is ‘immoral’. This comes shortly after her proposal to raise the marginal tax rate on incomes over $10million to between 60 and 70 per cent.

Warren has been pushing similar ideas. She wants to create an annual tax on the ultra-wealthy, with a two per cent tax on those making $50million or more and up to three per cent on billionaires.

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is also back in the game, introducing a bill that would tax estates of those who inherit more than $3.5million and reinstate the 77 per cent estate-tax rate on wealth over $1 billion.

These progressive superstars constantly talk up the corruption of the one per cent. But this only helps to hide the fact that most of the policies they are pushing for would actually hurt working Americans.

The popular idea of a Green New Deal, which aims to fight the growing threat of climate change by investing in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure, would no doubt kill thousands of jobs in the fossil-fuel industry. Those blue-collar jobs, which are already scarce, often define the community they serve and would be gone forever if the plan was ever implemented.

The ones pushing for these radical climate-change policies often deflect the concerns over lost jobs with claims that cleaner, more environmentally friendly jobs would be right there waiting for workers. Little do they see how dispensable that makes many of the affected blue-collar workers feel.

The idea of tuition-free college is another favourite proposal of progressives.

They claim it would give everyone an equal opportunity to get a university education. But they fail to recognise other pathways to success, particularly in the skilled trades, which are often more economically beneficial in the long run.

Progressive politicians’ focus on free college only really makes sense when you consider that their supporters are more likely to be found on a university campus than in a manufacturing plant.

The estimated cost of Sanders’ original free-college plan was about $47 billion a year, to be paid for by a speculation tax, also known as a ‘Robin Hood tax’, which would place a levy on every stock, bond or derivative sold in the US.

But, amid the push to tax the rich to fund preposterous entitlement programmes, you barely hear any ideas from progressives like childcare tax credits or paid sick leave. Nor do you see many progressives fighting for workers to be able to collectively bargain.

They are pushing policies that would bring down the rich instead of policies that would improve life for working-class Americans.

In the end, it is only elite progressives who have this obsessive wealth complex. Struggling Americans aren’t sitting around every day thinking about how much they despise the one per cent. They’re too busy trying to pay bills, pay back loans, and put food on the table.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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