«because the vast majority of them belong to the oppressor class»
That is quite simplistic: white liberals are mostly "trusties", that is they are not part of the class of "masters", but of the class of "servants", they are the servants deputised by the masters to "manage" the other servants on a day-to-day basis, or to provide professional services. From England a quote on what it means to become a "trustie", a spoof on the "Red Flag" song:
“The working class can kiss my arse, / I’ve got the foreman’s job at last. / You can tell old Joe I’m off the dole - / He can stick his Red Flag up his hole.”
Some "trusties" and other servants delude themselves that they have become masters because they have become "investors" by managing to buy some small bit of real estate or accumulate a small share-based 401(k) account, but even their "investor" status is tenuous. From England again a suitable quote as to this, from Tony Blair (a Bill Clinton clone) meeting one of them during a campaign:
“I met a man polishing his Ford Sierra, self-employed electrician, Dad always voted Labour. He used to vote Labour, he said, but he bought his own home, he had set up his own business, he was doing quite nicely, so he said I’ve become a Tory.”
When I reread Orwell's 1984 this past year, something occurred to me that never had before. Winston Smith represents Oceania's oppressive, totalitarian, Big Brother government as monolithic and inescapable. He also recognizes that their controls don't apply to the "proles" — who make up 85% of the population! And they don't apply to the "party insiders" who make up the top 2% or so, and can pretty much do whatever they want. Thus the entire "Orwellian" surveillance state apparatus in the novel is devoted entirely to monitoring and controlling the 13% of the population who think there's something to be gained by holding on to their precarious position of being elite-adjacent, while looking wistfully on at the proles' freedom of speech and thought.
That's an excellent characterization. The only quibble I'd have is that it's no surprise that a *self-employed* person would be come Tory (or Republican in the U.S). The folks that really stick to the 'trusties' class as you describe it are the ones who make their living largely either by government subsidies and transfers such as most educators, health care and similar professions, and the mass of government bureaucrats, or are in business such as finance or insurance that depend on government regulation to maintain their status quo.
«no surprise that a *self-employed* person would be come Tory (or Republican in the U.S).»
The driver usually is real estate and shares; because other than that virtually all the self-employed are servants hired with time or piecework wages, rather than masters in their own right. Some are in partial overlap, like the dentist who has hired a nurse and a receptionist, but at a very small scale that does not a master make, because the bulk of the dentist's revenue still comes from their own work, on an hourly or piecework basis, not from that of their servants.
«The folks that really stick to the 'trusties' class as you describe it are the ones who make their living largely either by government subsidies and transfers [...] are in business such as finance or insurance that depend on government regulation»
Working for the government means being a servant in almost all cases, and nearly all trusties work in private industry, as McDonald "shift managers" or Amazon "warehouse supervisors" etc. etc. etc.
The difference between "bulk headcount" servants and servants who are trusties is that trusties are given generic directions from their masters, so they have some limited autonomy, but only respect to how they turn them into specific directions to the servants they supervise, which have close to zero autonomy in their work.
I have to go with Coco here, even though I appreciate your explication. The "masters" can't pull their stunts *without* the "trusties" on board -- the trusties are essential to the whole operation. Just because there's an upper tier and a lower tier of the oppressor class doesn't mean there's not an oppressor class.
«just because there's an upper tier and a lower tier of the oppressor class»
That point of view seems to be both blind to the difference in nature, and politically blind too:
* There is a difference as to the "class": the "trusties" may be the tools (e.g. fast-food shift supervisor) or complicit (e.g. anti-union consultant) of the rule of the "masters", or simply receive some crumbs off the table (e.g. plastic surgeon) of the "masters", but they are not in the same class. Maybe "oppressors", but not "oppressor class"; consider the role of the servants who work at the lower rung of the political police forces of many countries.
* It is politically blind because a standard point of "masters" is to direct the resentment of their "servants" to the "trusties" who merely express the rule of the "masters", both to split the "servants" among themselves, and to deflect anger from themselves. It is the ancient "The cossacks are bad, but the czar is good (even if the cossacks work for the czar)" technique.
* Also the "masters" do have an upper and lower tier, but the lower tier is not the "trusties" servants, it is the barely-independent masters like the owner of franchise shops, or the owner of the premises cleaning business who was its manager before it was spun off. They often are not much better off than the "trusties", but have much greater authority to set strategy.
* Some "trusties", like the doctors who co-own a large practice in which they also work, are in part "masters" and in part "trusties", and that is far more common in modern times that it used to be the case in older times, and that perhaps is a source of confusion.
I think we are arguing semantics here, but I thank you for the response.
<<consider the role of the servants who work at the lower rung of the political police forces of many countries>>
Unless you're somehow drafted into the political police, you choose to join the political police. That is to say, you voluntarily participate in oppression.
<<It is the ancient "The cossacks are bad, but the czar is good (even if the cossacks work for the czar)" technique.>>
No argument here. It's just my opinion that this technique is beginning to outlive its usefulness with regard to the present political situation in the USA; I don't pretend to have any kind of accurate universalist view.
The blunt and unsophisticated point I have attempted to make is that the "servants"/working class/indigent may not care too much about the gradations between higher and lower "trusties" and lower and higher "masters." I believe that they will tend to view anyone who does not have to struggle daily for mere survival as part of the "oppressor class." As you note, this is no doubt an overly broad term, but people whose primary daily concern is perpetuating their existence have little time for niceties.
«the "servants"/working class/indigent may not care too much about the gradations between higher and lower "trusties" and lower and higher "masters." I believe that they will tend to view anyone who does not have to struggle daily for mere survival as part of the "oppressor class."»
But that is the political blindness: the servant classes have rarely succeeded in fighting the masters class for a better deal without the "help" of the "trusties" ("Craig Russell" refers to this in his mention of 1984).
Creating a political alliance between "masters" and "trusties" (usually via real estate and stock share ownership) is pretty much the essence of reaganism.
Here is an indian dreaming of a reaganite electoral coalition in India to focus politics on "labor market reform" instead of waste like "the right to food, education, or to work":
“The electorally decisive “median voter” is stuck at an income level that prevents a coalition of middle and upper income voters from pushing for further reform, and the politics of redistribution trump the politics of growth. To many, it would appear that India has already achieved this unenviable scenario, in which the government’s flagship economic schemes are centred on entitlements such as the right to food, education, or to work and not, for instance, on reforming arcane labour laws.”
I've never seen "trusty" in any other context but in the American prison farm, where it describes the prisoner who is given special privilege over the other prisoners to manage those prisoners. The bosses trust him. But it's the same thing of course.
It's just the upper end of the working class, isn't it? The working class consists of people who have to work, or think they have to work, and those who depend on or live off them. The next class up is supposed to be the petite-bourgeoisie, those who have to work but own their own tools, or who have some kind of credential that is actually worth some sort of entrée into the shallow end of the money vat. ''Trusty'' is an excellent metaphor for this role.
Modern white liberals are basically workers at the min Truth who have to tell you how the gruel is double plus good today. Thank god I'm a prole and have the freedom to get drunk
Liberal elitists have resurrected racism as their new smokescreen to distract from the reality of economic disparity. Some CEOs today make 900 times what their workers make. Millions of US citizens get up every day and go to work 40 hours a week for wages that do not sustain them. Millions of children have to be fed at school because there is not enough food at home. Bezos is the richest guy in the world and instead of building his new facility somewhere with lots of unemployed people, he dangles it over cities to see who can give him tax breaks and cheap energy. What a grubby creep!
Not really, just ignorance like so many others. The reality is that a crony-capitalist system has allowed inequality to flourish and technology is lightyears ahead of legislation. One of the primary roles of government is to ensure a fair and orderly system of commerce. That includes enforcement of all laws for all participants, including removing barriers to entry - something Bezos, and technology in general, have successfully prevented when working with cowardly (bought) politicians.
This seems to me like a natural development of capitalism. As capitalists grow in power and influence, they get control of the government and other public institutions, and they tend to cohere because of class interest. Why should they support a fair and orderly system of commerce when they can do better with an unfair or disorderly system? And if the winners tend to win, inequality is assured and is in fact considered by many to be a desirable arrangement. Even light interference with the arrangement (for example, the New Deal) is often bitterly resented and vigorously opposed.
Pure capitalism is a system that consumes itself, ending in feudalism. It starts out with many players in open competition and slowly the smartest and luckiest buy out the others until there are a few megaplayers that monopolize markets. Pure capitalism never worked well in early America. There were booms and busts every 20 years and resulted in robber barrons ruling everything - Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, etc. Teddy Roosevelt broke the trusts and graduated income tax with Sherman Antitrust laws helped to control greed. Those were the glory days of capitalism. Unfortunately, antitrust laws were not used for decades and the 4,000 pages of tax loopholes destroyed graduated income tax laws. Sadly we are back where we started in 1900.
Base instincts in humans won't allow pure capitalism to work and the tradeoff is declining freedoms as regulations increase. Capitalism is superior as an economic system when participation is highest and regulations are evenly distributed, something that has been declining for decades, possibly signaling an ultimate socialist outcome in the U.S. The irony: in all systems it's believed that elected officials will/can fix this but very few have the altruistic ability to put citizens first and instead, those same base instincts create the marriage of politician and corporation to give us our current crony-capitalism..
When General Milley talked about "white rage" I immediately wondered if "white guilt" isn't really the potent force that he should be studying.
I worked, until a few months ago, for a very large prestigious bank and it was amazing to see how diversity, equity, and inclusion dogma was effortlessly folded into the corporation. And no wonder: it makes few demands on corporate business models......has nothing to say about carried interest, outsourcing, ethnic cleansing in supply chains and so on. And it especially has little to say about executive compensation.
In other words, the claims of anti-racism are essentially spiritual and fundamentalist, hardly contra class concerns of wealth. It's in fact a huge secularized religious indulgence-selling juggernaut. Indulgences sold in no small part to assuage white-guilt.
Anti-racist aims are the antithesis of what Occupy Wall Street wanted.....and corporations hated, as well as then attorney general Eric Holder who declared banks as "systemically important" and the risk of Financial Crisis prosecution melted away.
So true, but I think "white guilt" is a hoax too. It's a performative pose for power, job security and social prestige -- I doubt 1 in 50 feel anything remotely like guilt, just bewilderment and confusion. The sociopaths fake the guilt, of course, as a tactic.
Somehow the absolute worst of the 1920s KKK has become a generally accepted "white archetype" and the entire society goes along with this as an accurate characterization of 200 million people.
There is no real world history here anywhere. No understanding of global cultures. No understanding of the predations and abuses in other racial societies. No acknowledgment of the history of racial issues and tribal issues anywhere in the world. Total ignorance of the real history of slavery worldwide over thousands of years of human experience. Absolute blindness to the hard achievements of enlightenment thought.
It's a gigantic philosophical and epistemological grift.
Matt is afraid of white people finding their identity? Which identity? The KKK, for sure. But what about the "white people identity" that sponsored and facilitated the world's most prosperous and peaceful multi-ethnic societies that attract immigrants from all over the world and who have as friends, lovers, husbands and wives people from a veritable blooming bouquet of other nations. I guess we kick their KKK asses too if we can make a buck or get a brownie point for doing it. What do we have to lose? Integrity? What's that if it gets in the way?
This is all a pathetic grift.
Mr. Reed is right on about class issues. Too bad society is so lost kicking the imaginary asses of people who died 100+ years ago. Those are easy asses to kick and the money is good, I guess, if that's your profession.
I too believe "white guilt" is fake. You only buy indulgences if you intend to continue sinning, because you're committed to the sin. What looks like "white guilt" in the Milley doofuses of the world is actually "What do I have to say to keep me safe from the credulous pitchforked unwashed?"
I don't know. ''White guilt'' may be a real thing, and therefore exploitable in ways far beyond a mere con. Humans are naturally tribal because of the way we evolved. Since we don't run around the jungle in small bands any more bashing each other with clubs -- mostly -- we need to find other ways of dealing with our instincts besides metaphorizing them into racism, nationalism, war, and imperialism. But apparently it's difficult for a lot of people. Hence the guilt -- a kind of psychic debt to oneself and one's community. And the bad behavior which we tolerate in our great leaders.
White guilt *IS another TOTAL crock of crap most easily bought or blundered into by those who never took a class in Basic Logic 101.
We wonder whether Charles Manson was *really a murderer, since he himself (as far as we know) did not physically kill *anybody. He encouraged his "girls" (whom he recruited between the sage ages of 14 to 16 ) to do his bidding. Now, did Chuckles kill those Manson victims, or did Ted and the girls kill the Manson victims, or DID *I KILL THE MANSON victims ?
Wow ! I never THOUGHT of that before ! Chuckles Manson was WHITE. Ted was white, the girls were white. I am white. Maybe I should be in prison, or at least start paying retributions to the families of the Manson/Manson Girls' victims *because I AM WHITE TOO !
What about other serial killers, *the GREAT majority of whom are white and male JUST LIKE ME ?? Need I not start forking over segments of my social security checks to the families of *their victims because I am also White ?
IF the above strikes you as decidedly , uh ...... senseless and *stupid, then you have the gift of logic within, however acquired. The *only people accepting "white guilt" are, like the "marks" of P.T. Barnum, the "[White] suckers born every minute.]
As a white male, I am not responsible for the actions of ANY *OTHER white males even NOW, much less "guilty of" acts performed by white males clear back into antiquity long before I was *born. Anyone who thinks I am "guilty of the sins of the father" is mixing me up with the Catholic Church inspired idea of "Original Sin", which you will be disappointed to learn, as crazy as it is, is not at all race specific !
No human being is responsible for the sins of their ancestors unless that human directly, and via free choice, *participated in the sins of their ancestors. You know, like the sons of 1930s gang leader Ma Barker for instance.
The rest of this is talking pure twaddle. We cannot "correct" history [except to start telling the TRUTH about it]. I am Irish. I am not asking England to pay for 700 years of oppression, theft of our goods and our people, and the rest of their cesspool of sins and crimes against the Irish. I do not compare the experience of the Irish with the experience of Africans brought North as chattel slaves. I am just saying, we cannot "correct" history with a purseful of coins.
In the case of persons of color in the U.S. what we CAN do is STOP the present and ONGOING oppression of these people, and of their equally innocent offspring !
You may have seen coverage of the recent resignation of one of the CEOs of the Black Lives Matter movement. BLM raised $900 million in donations. The CEO, at age 37, who’s now been criticized by both the left and the right, owns four homes, one a $1.5 million property in Malibu. The BBC, where I read the story, says there’s no evidence of misappropriation of funds on her part. So be it. However, this is a movement that has been mostly of and for the elite, with substantial corporate support. It is not a grass-roots movement. Where I live, we see plenty of BLM signs in the yards of wealthy whites. The only people of color they encounter are the ones who cut their grass and clean their homes. They would never have Support a $15 Hourly Wage signs in their yards.
Once again the corporations win. With every rainbow flag or black actor placed in an ad it increases a company's ESG rating. I doubt that there's a social issue one could raise that corporate & monied interests couldn't manipulate for their own profit.
I'll believe corporate BLM loving bullshit when I see all the white CEOs and board members replaced with people from George Floyd's zip code.
It's also quite amusing how most of those squawking loudest about white privilege are using that squawking to move themselves into the rarified air of the monied privileged.
Having long ago given up on cable TV entirely, and using a strongly ad-blocked browser, I was shocked to discover, on a recent vacation (the room had regular cable), that half the population of the country is black and another quarter some clearly (if only partially) non-white heritage! (I live in a part of the country where such a change would be last noted)
I mean, good for them, they seem almost uniformly to be happy, well-to-do and possessed of perfect dentation. I was also surprised by the strong "back-up dancer" vibe given off by so many of the black males, but hey, NuPride flags all around, amirite?
I mean, a cynic might say they almost look like landscaping/home decor accessories from a very high-end interior decoration boutique. ("Boardroom model (choice of gender) free with purchase of full "Diverse Pool Party" set. The finest diversity, curated by our staff of Reparative Decoration experts!") But who's that cynical?
Me, I'm off to get one of those hybrid "app creator/workout instructor" models, currently on sale.
Adolph Reed might be my favorite intellectual to listen to. He has such a rare talent to say brilliant things while not being condescending, stay true to his values, and be funny all at once. Thanks for the interview.
I kind of hate Duke for realz too. Laettner's NCAA elite-8 championship last split second buzzer-beater, Rupp arena, Big Blue Nation 1992 .. . never forget.
So we have that in common.
*btw Katie Halper's video lighting, display and background ambiance is a lot brighter and nicer than yours .. . fwiw.
I remember drop kicking an ottoman across the living room when Laettner made that shot….I’m a big college hoops fan, but whomever is playing Duke is always my favorite team besides Ohio State!
Matt, "The currency of what counts as racism has inflated like the Dutch market in the late 1920s." Believe he said "deutschemark", not "Dutch market".
We are such a strange country. it seems clear that the Democrats are morphing into a party almost exclusively for Blacks, transgenders and Latinx. And Republicans are morphing into the party of non-college educated whites, aka rednecks. I can't think of any other country where the traditional elite, and still the largest chunk of voters, the white and Asian middle and upper class, are unwanted by all. Even weirder, most of that group still hugs closely to the Democrats, who increase their taxes and call them racists in return.
I agree with you about the Republican direction but as Mr. Reed is pointing out (somewhat obliquely) the Democrats do want to become the party of middle and upper middle class college educated whites. The whole focus on 'anti-racism' is branding by white Democrats to distinguish themselves from white Republicans, and to try to keep the hold they need on racial minorities because they don't have the numbers to defeat Republicans otherwise.
Take a look at Trump's numbers in 2020. He gained votes across the board with exception of white men who were supposed to be his strongest supporters.
That's true, although I think it's been easy for the Dems to capture the elite vote while the Republicans have descended into the Trump abyss. And I know third parties never work in this country. But traditionally parties were north vs south, or city vs country, or rich vs. poor. This is the first time where platform wise it's poor white vs poor Black. The Dems have uniquely offered the majority of voters nothing more than the shame of racism and cultural opprobrium to keep them corralled. It just seems like this might be the opportunity for a real third party offering something positive to the majority group for a change.
The Post-War Era offered the Republicans a chance to go full-on Prosperity Populist, but instead they went jingoistic social conservative. Whiff! Woosh! Yer OUT!
Your last sentence should cause you to question the stereotypes/strawman demographics directed towards the Republicans. Though really, who gives a shit about Republicans? I'm just strongly anti-anti-American and anti-authoritarian, areas where the Republican Party record is far from perfect.
" it seems clear that the Democrats are morphing into a party almost exclusively for Blacks, transgenders and Latinx. And Republicans are morphing into the party of non-college educated whites, aka rednecks. "
Not exclusively at all. Kind of the point is that there's no shortage of meritocratic white wokie allies. And the Republicans, if you've noticed, have been picking up more working class and small business-owning black and Latino / Hispanic voters. Keep up the woke shit, and the surburban whites who voted for Joe may not stick around. And it's not really the Republicans shitting on Asians. The Dems are making them a lower priority then other preferred demographics.
But that's what they've always been, and the Republicans have always been the party that wants lower taxes. Now neither party is really offering anything to their constituents other than hatred of the other party.
Postipressionist has demonstrated an absence of credibility as long as they've been posting here. The best response to their bogus claims is to refute them; if you don't have the time, assume from prior experience that they're fraudulent and ignore them.
The biggest problem with refuting a bogus claim is that it requires several paragraphs to do so. While it only takes a few seconds to make up some numbers and attach a bunk link to them.
Come on. That isn't even a coherent claim. Are you saying that 83% of Democratic Party voters are in public housing? I can't tell. (Meanwhile, only 63% are "on welfare.")
fwiw, the term "Welfare" is a Trigger Word implying that the recipients are shiftless people permanently on the dole (and also in your case, Postipressionist, "minorities".)
Welfare programs have morphed from being aimed at the utterly indigent and disabled to a sort of partial safety net for low-income working people, as a partial offset for declining wages and lack of job security (which, once again, your hobbyhorse views as 100% due to "immigrants", Postipressionist.)
You only offer links when it's convenient to you, and sometimes the information in them provides evidence that's exactly opposite to what you're claiming- or it's some sort of non sequitur or irrelevancy that indicates your inability to comprehend the material. As with the Pew Research link in your post above, which leads to a dead page on the Pew poll site https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/poch - but doing a keyword search on the site brings up one result, which shares most of the details of the URL you provided
However, the information on that page bears no resemblance to the statistics you provided. For one thing, the linked article only looks at the topic of food stamps (a type of income assistance for which working people are eligible):
"Overall, a Pew Research Center survey conducted late last year [2012] found that about one-in-five Americans (18%) has participated in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. About a quarter (26%) lives in a household with a current or former food stamp recipient.
Of these, about one-in-five (22%) of Democrats say they had received food stamps compared with 10% of Republicans. About 17% of political independents say they have received food stamps.
The share of food stamp beneficiaries swells even further when respondents are asked if someone else living in their household had ever received food stamps. According to the survey, about three in ten Democrats (31%) and about half as many Republicans (17%) say they or someone in their household has benefitted from the food stamp program...."
How many of your numbers were just plucked out of the air, offered with no reference? All of them.
It's almost as if you were counting on offering a dead page as a link reference, to cover for that.
I will graph the two-party vote, more data is at the end. Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats.
I've just read the 33 pages of the 2004-2007 Maxwell Poll reference link from which that Wall Street Pit article claims to draw its statistical claims.
The claimed data specifics are not found in that source.
What is being measured here? I'd assume the proportion of people receiving Welfare payments would be about 100% of the people receiving Welfare payments. My browser can't find the page you cite.
I will graph the two-party vote, more data is at the end. Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats
I've just read the 33 pages of the 2004-2007 Maxwell Poll reference link from which that Wall Street Pit article claims to draw its statistical claims.
The claimed data specifics are not found in that source.
Also, no one is going to find a link address that is improperly typed. The live link for the Wall Street Pit article that you apparently intended to reference is
The majority of welfare recipients (80%) are democrats. Is it any wonder that democratic politicians formulate policy which caters to the non productive componants of society, relative to the working people. This is the constituency of the democratic party, which has come to expect votes in exchange for handouts.
The Vast Majority Of Welfare Recipients Are Democrats ...
The Vast Majority Of Welfare Recipients Are Democrats Posted on October 4, 2013 by stevengoddard 63% of welfare recipients are black or Hispanic, and those groups vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Liberals always say Whites take most of the welfare but they are the most of the population. That's what Huff Post does. The correct way is to find the % of the individual groups that are on Welfare. If there were the same amount of Latinos as Whites, Latinos would be using TWICE as much Welfare as Whites.
Postipressionist: now- since your earlier attempts to support your claims have failed- you're reduced to offering "references" that consist of unsupported canards found in the City-Data Forum (not the site itself, which is a fairly reliable metric data resource) and a blog by one rando issuing a blatantly inaccurate conclusion drawn from a single-variable data comparison that does not say what he claims it says.
Ironically, the guy's blog is named "Real Science" (he name-checks Richard Feynman!). And he can't even properly parse an elementary-level statistical inference.
To cut to the chase: according to the linked chart (data from 2003), the percentage of families (no locale shown in the data reference- Iowa? Chicago? the U.S.? Oz?) receiving "welfare":
White: 32%
Black 38%
Hispanic: 25%
And here's the takeaway that the resident data analyst comes up with, as the conclusion:
"63% of welfare recipients are black or Hispanic"
Yeah, he literally added together the two numbers for "teh minorities" from that chart, and came up with that whopper.
It apparently didn't occur to him that there are twice as many "non-Hispanic whites" in the US as the combined black and Hispanic population.
Nor was Real Science Guy able to realize that according to the survey chart he linked, the proportion of the black American population receiving "welfare" (unspecified) is less than 20% higher than the percentage of whites, and that proportion of the surveyed Hispanic population receiving welfare benefits is actually around 25% lower than that of the white population.
And then he uses that F-level statistical interpretation to draw this sinister linkage: "those groups vote overwhelmingly Democratic." So much for data precision. And using metrics and math to draw accurate statistical interpretations.
The final guffaw in this laughfest is that your post also offers conclusions in your last paragraph that disregard the fact that according to the data source you've linked, the percentage of Latino Americans (aka "Hispanics") getting welfare is actually LESS than the percentage of white Americans who get it. So to address your data projection, if there were the same amount of Latino Americans as white Americans and those percentages remained the same, the Latinos would be drawing around 25% LESS in welfare than the equivalent sized white population. Not "TWICE as much", lol.
(fwiw, the "non-Hispanic white" population currently outnumbers the Hispanic population by a factor of more than 4 to 1.)
This is basic 6th/7th grade math. It looks like you need a refresher course in it.
Meh... Democrats morphed into the Banking Cartel party almost 3 decades ago now, and most people in the country simply don't know any better about what is what and who is who. Most Democratic policies do just as much harm to those communities you mention, as Republican's policies. Also, Trump pulled a larger number of Latinx voters in the last election, which is amazing when you really think about it.
Just because someone didn't go to college or lives in rural areas doesn't make them a redneck, and quite frankly, your average redneck is probably smarter about the world than your Harvard doctorate (the real world). Even if said Redneck will light himself on fire with his own fart.
Also, I would argue forever that the average Joe Redneck, and the average educated Democrat if they actually sat in a room and talked to each other would agree on likely half of all issues, or at least be able to be civil about most issues.
Most of the rural people are survivalists. In Louisiana, everyone has land, gardens, cows, horses and are canning for the winter. They will be around long after Harvard becomes defunct due to lack of intelligent students.
After severely watering-down student requirements and achievements, after charging Harvard Tuition for kids to sit around watching old B&W episodes of
"The Honeymooners" for Harvard CREDIT, you mean to tell me that Harvard *presently has "intelligent students" ?
The PBS Newshour ran a bit of research showing that U.S. Colleges, during the Sixties and Seventies, awarded "Straight A averages to about 17% of the student body. Those same universities NOW award Straight A averages to almost 43% of the entire student body. Almost HALF !
Aren't you *thrilled to hear that American students are now THAT MUCH brighter than their doddering parents were *at that same age, and in ONLY *one generation ? By eliminating "The Humanities" as part of a functioning College Education, decades ago, we NOW produce College Graduates in the U.S. that cannot locate *CANADA on an unmarked map of North America !
The College response to THAT glaring beacon of ineptitude in the "Halls of Higher Learning" is now, of course, to eliminate ENTRANCE EXAMS clean across the board ! Think of the money students and parents will now save when they no longer have need to buy the CHEAT SHEETS to the College Entrance Exam of lil' Offspring's Choice !
You are amazed by the number of foreign students on Campus from India and other parts of Asia ? Don't be. They can read circles around your child, they can do math, and the Indians, at least, will kick our backsides in SPELLING !
Fake entrance exams, fake classwork, fake labs, fake education, and graduates still feeling entitled to graduate and START AT THE TOP with the best of firms.
Sweetie, do you *really think that ALL of these prospective employers are UNAWARE that you just spent four years (or more) posing in a TV STAGE
mock up of a College ? Potential employers will be correspondingly happy to offer you a fake JOB.
I have quite a few students who went to Ivy League schools. They are all incredibly knowledgeable and highly skilled for a person of that age. They can do advanced mathematics and physics and chemistry and know impressive amounts about history, geography, psychology, and economics. They are undoubtedly far more advanced than previous generations of young scholar. The ones who study hard sciences or classics continue to deepen their knowledge.
Kids these days are better at everything than their Boomer or Xer parents ever were, because they have access to vastly better instructional resources through the Internet. For example, when I played in little league, I just did whatever coach told me as far as hitting technique — today my kids can watch Barry Bonds in slow no 10k frames per second and see *exactly* how the best do what they do, and as a result they are way better than I ever was.
According to the Business Insider report in 2018, its education ranking was 38th in math scores and 24th in science. The United States' education rankings have been falling by international standards over the past three decades.
Around the Mexican INCURSION we started dropping:
It costs nearly twice as much per head, per capita, to educate a child in a foreign language than it does to educate a native-born child in English.
former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stated: “History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.”
In many areas an extremely large number of students show up in a short period of time. This leads to an almost overnight crisis of school overcrowding, major teacher shortages, huge educational budget shortfalls, and a lack of school equipment and resources for all students. From big cities to small towns, immigration overload has adversely impacted the carrying capacity of many schools. This reality means that countless young people, both natives and new immigrants, are paying for Washington’s failure to get the immigration problem under control.
The ongoing problems related to the estimated 12 million+ illegal immigrants living in the United States. The list includes better protecting our nation’s southern border, soaring costs of billion dollar entitlement programs, increasing pressure to grant citizenship to undocumented residents, and the criminal consequences of more and more states, cities, and other government entities adopting “sanctuary” policies.
“The reality is this: The federal government gives us basically no money to support these children, so the funding is coming from the state budget and mostly from the local budget.
CONCLUSION It is expected that immigration will account for 96% of the increase in the school age population over the next 50 years. “If mass immigration continues, the education of all children in America will continue to be undermined. Education costs will continue to escalate and quality of education will continue to decline.”
Thank gawd it is still happening *somewhere ! With grade inflation and the elimination of SAT / ACT it is hard to see it lasting long. And, of course, the full decline will not be like flipping off a light switch.
"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper".
~ T.S. Eliot
I have a friend who was the first in her family to complete an American University Degree when she earned her B.S. in microbiology from Colorado State. Four year course. She was so proud of it, she could not wait to show me her transcripts. Page after page, she had been allowed to take *nothing but Hard Sciences, in which she did very well.
What was glaringly absent were courses in anything *else !
Since Colleges have "trimmed out" The Humanities, Colleges are no longer offering a well-rounded College Experience. What this young woman's parents had PAID FOR was a flippin' TRADE SCHOOL induction into Science. All data and technique, and NO context in how that applies to the world of humans. Or how it developed in the past *into what it is now. Or how the Ancient Greeks attempted to answer those self-same questions of philosophical science with which we *still wrestle today.
You do not mention one way or the other, but I have to assume that you teach at a private school. Yes. As the "Noah's Ark" of American Education sinks under the last waves, the few private schools not yet completely corrupted into elite diploma mills will go down last. But, if we are to save, yes, even to *improve American Education, let's stop pretending that "there's no problem here" ! "Nothin' to see ..... just keep movin' by, folks ! "
Totally agree. They are eliminating Advanced Placement because it is a White Supremacist program. That's like confirming that Whites are more intelligent.
It is just jaw-dropping in its entirety ! People *still save up all their children's lives to afford to send the little tykes to America, and have them educated in an *American Institute of Higher Learning. Now, in the MIDST of that struggle, we have these *previous premiers of American Higher Education bending over BACKWARDS to guarantee that a U.S. Education will no longer be worth the paper it is written on by the time today's little local Johnnies and Janies even get there.
Forget the Foreign Students for "continuing education". They will *arrive in America *far better educated than future-Harvard can ever provide for them ! But they will still have the cost of room and board, and no-kidding Harvard Tuition, higher even than it was when Harvard and other present American Diploma-Mills WERE "real" Colleges.
Oh, well, the only thing that remains constant is Change !
I propose that the level of intelligence of the average applicant has almost zero effect on the operation of the Harvard enterprise. It should also be noted that possession of "An Ivy League Degree" (and the networking/connections associated therewith) is considered a fine substitute for "intelligence" when it comes to being admitted into the elite echelons of American society.
(NOTE: very clear requirements exist for those being entrusted with the handling of the actual billions that have inexplicably gravitated upwards over the last few (many?) decades.)
For every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired in a STEM job. That study 2 was by three experts in the field (Hal Salzman, a Rutgers professor, B. Lindsay Lowell, of Georgetown University, and Daniel Kuehn, who has worked with both the Urban Institute and EPI).
The proof is in the pudding. This is what the 40s to 80s produced:
WE built the first skyscrapers, discovered and harnessed ELECTRICITY invented assembly lines, refrigerator, Cyclotron, TV, Microwave, Integrated Circuit, Personal Computer, FORTRAN (computer language 1957), Solar Cell, CDs, LCD, Firewire, Fiber Optics, Bypass surgery, Catalytic Converter, RAM, Fiberglass, 3D Printer, Airplane, Industrial Robot, LASER, Adobe Flash, Hand Held Calculator, liquid fuel, LED, Kevlar, Nylon, Magnetometer, Theoretical Physics, Washing Machine, Transistor, Silicon Valley, Touch Screen, mobile phone, Polio Vaccine, MoS2 water purification, Air Conditioner, The Cloud, Face Book , GPS- internet, - you name it. Almost ALL US born and educated in the US …. And ALL EUROPEAN!
We are now importing people from India because we have no one able to do simple math. You can see it by the math scores of our youth in relationship to the world. No more calculus, Advanced Placement until the 11th grade. because we don't want anyone to feel they are inferior. We are ALL EQUALLY dumb!
According to Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, however, that's not entirely accurate. Wikipedia is "broken beyond repair" and no longer reliable, Sanger asserts.
"Wikipedia is no longer reliable"- I never thought that it was reliable for every topic. That's a judgement to be made on the basis of the reference links offered for each article. The more political the topic, the more important it is to track the reference sources and the bibliography offered in the end notes.
I do get why there's so much of a push in some quarters to damn Wikipedia across the board- every article, every page, from those on chemical compounds to those on disputed elections: because so many of the indisputable objective facts found in the content effectively refute people who want to remain "free" to make up their own information.
Thank you for interviewing Professor Reed. My husband and I enjoyed the UI episode and we think you and Katie should consider having Reed on as a regular guest. Reed's wisdom should be heard by as many generations of Americans as possible.
Speaking as a biologist who works on disease, I think there is a link to being black and brown. One link is simple, vitamin D and A. Black people have some of the lowest vitamin D levels in the country, which is because most don't like to get darker, so they stay out of the sun, and they need a lot more sun than white people do to keep their vitamin D up.
For the native Americans, there is a different genetic issue. We are here because 95%+ of native Americans died from the European disease pool. Primarily, that was influenza and coronaviruses. The observation that the natives died - entire villages of them - was the origin of the phrase, "Manifest destiny." We didn't understand the germ theory of disease back then.
That said, otherwise, I think Reed is quite correct.
How dare you not agree that Coronaviruses are racist and that nothing other than experimental mRNA injections can prevent POC from getting sick. Stick to the Fauscience, man!
I do think that vaccines are the best way to prevent anyone, including POC from getting sick. I have, hmm, let's see what's in the lab fridge. Vaccines for: Ebola. West Nile. Hanta virus. COVID-19. All of them are nucleic acid vaccines. Vitamin D is, however, well documented for making people susceptible to all kinds of infectious disease when it is low.
Not an antivaxxer by any means but it sure is interesting that herd immunity suddenly stopped working in 2019 after being so effective for millions of years.
Immunity is the same as it ever was. There is this phenomenon called the primate barrier where certain viruses (and DNA vaccines) don't produce much antibody. They do fine with CD8 T-cells that kill the cells that are infected. Coronaviruses appear to be of the type that does not produce strong antibody response in most people. This means that CD8 T-cell response is it, and without antibodies to prevent infection in the first place, the virus keeps going. Those who recover and get it again typically get a light case, often so light they may not know they are sick and shedding virus everywhere.
I have tried to interest native American groups in this topic. They don't seem to care. I don't know if it is possible to connect outside of this forum without posting email publicly, which I don't ant to do.
if herd immunity worked for every disease, we wouldn't have to worry about influenza and the common cold (which are incidentally single-strand RNA viruses, as is covid 19.)
It works for influenza. But each new strain manages to evade adaptive immunity, and present as new. (There is also a recycling of strains because after 40-60 years, generations grow up without exposure and the old viruses can spread again.)
Influenza though, can reassort because it has 7 or 8 separate RNA segments that operate like chromosomes do. So influenza is a lot more flexible than coronaviruses are, because coronaviruses have long single strands.
Yes. I was referring to the wider phenomenon of the disease influenza itself, not the specific strains.
You of course have a specialized educational background, and know that single strand RNA viruses have an infuriating tendency to mutate rapidly in ways that make them resistant to being counteracted completely, as has been possible with, say, smallpox (a DNA virus.)
«herd immunity suddenly stopped working in 2019 after being so effective for millions of years.»
The "best" way "herd immunity" works is by killing all hosts that have weak resistance against the disease, so the next generation is mostly immune. That works very well indeed. The problem swith SARS-2 and that approach are:
* It has a kill rate of 1-3% of the infected, so it would kill around 3-10m people in the USA.
* It tends to kill oldies past reproductive age, so it would not select for resistance against the disease in the next generation.
This is difficult for me to understand since I have extremely low vitamin D levels and a great immune system for a 30 year diabetic. I've theorized that blood tests fail on me because my blood is lipemic most of the time (another genetic bonanza) and D is fat soluble.
«I do think that vaccines are the best way to prevent anyone, including POC from getting sick.»
Ah the usual "distraction" argument vax vs. novax from the much important issue, the enormous difference on death rates per 100,000 among three groups of countries:
0.53 New Zealand, 0.35 China-mainland, 0.09 Vietnam
The difference is due to more civilized countries using a test-trace-isolate approach, which has not been adopted in the USA and other "Washington Consensus" countries because it is deemed "collectivist", but has prevented a lot of sickness and death and avoided a lot of job losses:
«While the number of UK deaths has entered the hundreds of thousands, New Zealand has recorded only 25 deaths from Covid-19 so far. Taiwan has recorded seven, Australia 909, Finland 655, Norway 550 and Singapore 29. These countries have largely returned to normal daily life. [...]
Countries that managed to effectively contain Sars-CoV-2 implemented screenings of new arrivals and 14-day quarantines for those entering the country. [...]
The second fatal flaw in the UK’s response happened on 12 March, when the government made the fatal decision to stop community testing, abandoning its line of sight over who had the virus and where it was spreading. Community testing is absolutely vital for controlling the virus. This was later resumed, but England outsourced testing and tracing to private firms instead of using local public health capacity.
Isolation – a key part of the test, trace, isolate response – was only ever an afterthought, and there has been little support for people who would struggle to stop working for 14 days. Even now, the majority of people have been refused a discretionary self-isolation payment, while statutory sick pay is a paltry £95.85 a week. By contrast, Finland and Norway offer 100% and 80% of income to people who are self-isolating. The result of the UK’s inadequate support is that many who have tested positive have ended up going into work and infecting others.»
As to "disparate impact" the lockdown+vaccinations approach of the anti-collectivism governments of the USA, UK, etc. has caused a lot more deaths, a lot more sickness, a lot more economic ruin among poor people, many of them black and brown, than test-trace-isolate, but all we hear is vax-novax arguments as a distraction.
Unfortunately, you are right. I chose vaccination because we will never do the socially responsible thing, no profit there. Anyway I will be trying out Professor Reed's podcast, always good to hear an intelligent thoughtful conversation.
But vaccination is the end game anyhow: test-trace-isolate as an alternative to half-baked general permanent lockdowns "just" minimizes the impact in both health and economic damage while developing the vaccines, which are the endgame. But minimizing the damage and giving a lot more time to develop and test vaccines is a big thing.
“the socially responsible thing, no profit there.”
It is not just about “no profit”, it is mostly about the propaganda impact: Reagan said “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help’”, and therefore a government funded and organized public health project is "collectivist" and ideologically incompatible with neoliberalism. The the huge marketing campaign and profit opportunity for Pfizer and AstraZeneca and Moderna and J&J are also very welcome of course. A supporting quote about the Prime Minister of England:
But of course it did: there are two ways to do it, test a few people potentially infected and do a lot of tracing, or test a lot of people and do little tracing.
Different countries have adopted different mixes of test and trace, with different results: the japanese approach of very selective testing was not that successful because it had death rates "only" 16 times lower than the USA, instead of 100 times lower like countries with a better approach.
«Proximity to Chinese COVID viruses over time and residual immunity is regarded as one possible explanation for the low rates among Asian nations with took radically different approaches.»
Are Finland, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland all asian nations with proximity to China or rather "collectivist" dictatoships? :-)
«South Korea and Taiwan locked down and tested and traced»
Again, there are variants in the test-trace-isolate approach: some countries do an initial hard lockdown to slow down infections while preparing a test-trace-isolate system, some had it ready already, so for example China-Taiwan did not have a hard short lockdown like China-mainland, and did not do mass testing, only selective tracing:
«Authorities activated the island's Central Epidemic Command Center, which was set up in the wake of SARS, to coordinate between different ministries. The government also ramped up face mask and protective equipment production to make sure there would be a steady supply of PPE. The government also invested in mass testing and quick and effective contact tracing. Former Taiwanese Vice President Chen Chien-jen, who is an epidemiologist by training, said lockdowns are not ideal. Chen also said that the type of mass-testing schemes undertaken in mainland China, where millions of people are screened when a handful of cases are detected, are also unnecessary. "Very careful contact tracing, and very stringent quarantines of close contacts are the best way to contain Covid-19," he said.»
«What did this island of 23 million people do right? It has had 553 confirmed cases, with only seven deaths. Experts say closing borders early and tightly regulating travel have gone a long way toward fighting the virus. Other factors include rigorous contact tracing, technology-enforced quarantine and widespread mask wearing. [...] Also, as it’s not easy to make people stay in quarantine, Taiwan has taken steps to provide meal and grocery delivery and even some friendly contact via Line Bot, a robot that texts and chats. There is also punishment -- those who break quarantine face fines of up to NT$1million ($35,000). [...] Taiwan has world-class contact tracing -- on average, linking 20 to 30 contacts to each confirmed case. In extreme situations, such as that of a worker at a Taipei City hostess club who contracted the virus, the government tracked down as many as 150 contacts. Then, all contacts must undergo a 14-day home quarantine, even if they test negative.»
The approach the government of China-Taiwan to test-trace-isolate was particularly successful, but the different approach to test-trace-isolate of China-mainland was also successful, even if less so.
Both were *a lot* more successful than the reaganista lockdown approach of the USA, UK, France, Italy, etc.
«Speaking as a biologist who works on disease, I think there is a link to being black and brown.»
Ah but the argument becomes really hairy if the link is from “being black and brown” to being more susceptible to COVID, which is a very different argument, because the "vitamin D deficiency" argument applies to a lot of other group. There is nothing that says that the vitamin D deficiency argument applies only or even mostly to black and brown groups.
It is like the famous sickle cell anemia issue, which affects several other groups besides USA based black people, because like vitamin D deficiency it is not racist:
“In several sections of Africa, the prevalence of sickle cell trait (heterozygosity) is as high as 30%. Although the disease is most frequently found in sub-Saharan Africa, it is also found in some parts of Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, and India, all of which have areas in which malaria is endemic. The mutation that results in HbS is believed to have originated in several locations in Africa and India.”
Also even among people of african descent sickle cell anemia is not prevalent, it is only prevalent among those groups that lived in malaria-infested zones, and it so happens that many black slaves sold by their black owners to slave traders and transported to America came from a narrow range of areas that were malaria infested, so sickle anemia is not a racial characteristic among black people either, it is a geographical one.
My (very lay) understanding of the Vitamin D science is that skin metabolizes UV into Vitamin D and melanin in the skin blocks UV so it would seem that Vit D deficiency may be related to skin-color in a way that, as you point out, sickle cell anemia is not. I think this could very well be one of the reasons black people are having worse Covid outcomes.
As a biologist who works on disease what are your thoughts on the vaccine companies and the government using the Relative Risk Reduction numbers of first 95% effectiveness, now 64%, instead of the Absolute Risk Reduction percentages of max 1.7%?
I think that further research will demonstrate the fact that a lot more Native Americans were wiped out by the more volatile European diseases such as Smallpox, etc, than were wiped out by the common cold, flu, ague and the sniffles. During this time Smallpox continued to kill the whites as well, but the Natives, having NO vestige of immunity to the volatile European plagues, died en masse and frequently to a person.
Any second year history minor can tell us that there existed no germ theory of diseases at this time, and, consequently, no penicillin or other antibiotics either. But, then, why belabor the obvious ?
That is a good guess but not correct. There are records from the Plymouth colony recording this. It was a pattern continued across North America. In 1917, with good supportive care, 50% of a recently contacted native village in Canada died. Smallpox killed, but the rates of death from smallpox were lower. The extreme symptoms of smallpox probably helped play a role there.
I have a paper on ice from 12 years ago that I started. I got to a point where I would have to spend 6-12 months in the national archives after collecting a body of historical materials. I got permission, but I just don't have the time for it.
Europeans, Africans and Asians have evolved to resist these diseases. Today, there are very few, if any, pure blood native Americans in the lower 48 states. Interbreeding made it possible for them to survive, although there is still a persistently higher death rate among hispanics and native Americans.
Antibiotics would not matter. They do not affect viruses. I mentioned the lack of disease theory because generally speaking, people will often not remember that the original settlers here had no idea how disease happened. Our founding fathers of the nation mostly did not either. Disease was punishment or judgment from god.
Brian, there's an earlier part of the story that you should research: the catastrophic impact wrought by contagious diseases endemic to Europe that were carried by the Spanish conquistadores to the idigenous tribal societies of Florida and the American Southeast- principally by the DeSoto expedition that began in Florida in 1539.
Perhaps we devolve into "dueling histories" here. I have, and I recommend a book called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen. The title prompts the question: "How do we know that the 'lies' in *your book are any better? The answer turns out to be a voluminous and impeccably annotated bibliography, from which we can read an *original letter from an inhabitant of the Jamestown
colony, in which he *describes what I write about above. Deaths IN Jamestown from a smallpox epidemic, with a strong number of survivors among the whites,
and a 100% death rate among the Natives remaining around Jamestown. Natives *returning later to Jamestown could not *believe that any force killed *all of their people, and only *some of the Whites. In the original letter from the white resident of Jamestown back to England, he *bemoans the fact that these proud and fierce Native Warriors were *forced to conclude (what I am certain that the Whites had told them anyway) - that the White God WAS stronger than were the Native god(s) due to the *fact that their chronological understanding of the World left them no *other conclusion.
The other thing that "sunk" the Native prospects was the fact that only at the *end of European expansion did the Native tribes band together (The Plains Tribes) to *unite against the White Invader. Prior to that time, the Natives wanted to enlist the White Man as an *ally against their *own traditional enemies.
I grew up in Eastern Montana, near the Crow Reservation, and just across the S.Dak border from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Lakota Reservations. You will know that there was *never a "one size fits all" plan for "dealing with" the various tribes, and times when Europeans clashed with Natives.
The Jamestown event, when the people who WERE THERE claimed a 100% fatality rate among the Natives, (a fact which mystified the Whites as much as it did the Natives) was a much earlier time than the White Interaction with the Plains Tribes around whom I grew up. By the time the "Long Knives" were wiping out the Plains People (Arapahoe, Northern Cheyenne, Cree (down from Canada) Lakota, Crow, and Blackfeet (Western Montana) we still did not have "germ theory", but we *knew that smallpox infested blankets were "Bad Juju" !
Therefore, in confrontations with the Plains Tribes, we were *gifting the Natives with smallpox infested blankets to keep them "warm in the winter."
Louis Pasteur is credited as the founder of Germ Theory, and by 1844, Louis is still only 20 years old.
I appreciate and concede to your mention of the fact that Antibiotics do not affect viruses. They likewise do not affect rust, or '57 Chevies. This is to my previous point of "belaboring the obvious". I was listing antibiotics as an example, like man-powered air flight, and Model T Fords, of *other things that we *obviously did not have during the genocides of "Manifest Destiny" which was an excuse, and *not an actual reason for anything. It was just the Long Con, no matter how convincingly it might have been "dressed up". That the disease resistance of the Europeans might have been *one weak-kneed excuse for the Long Con, does not make it THE reason for the Long Con.
Given that Louis Pasteur, founder of Germ Theory is not born until 1822, it is a GREAT bet that NONE of our Founding Fathers had the least clue regarding Germ Theory as the source of diseases, and not just "bad air" as their fellow Deists of time were proposing. This is what "malaria" actually *means. "Bad Air."
The diaries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the primary source for Steven Ambrose's history Undaunted Courage, also document that the first source of contagious diseases imported from Europe among the tribes of the Missouri River valley and northern Great Plains were the Europeans (mostly French voyageurs) involved in the fur trade in the late 18th century, the era immediately prior to the outset of the L&C Expedition (1803-1806). The fatality rate in some of the villages they encountered in the region that's now known as Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas was extraordinarily high, like 70%-90%. Most of the diseases that proved so lethal weren't even considered particularly severe for Europeans- measles, chicken pox, mumps.
Absolutely so. Even today, we see many French Place Names in precisely those States. I myself was born in Laramie, WY. not far
from Old Fort Laramie, which was built on the Laramie River. The name Laramie is an Anglicized pronunciation for the French Fur Trapper in that area named Jacques La Ramie.
Cheyenne (both the town, the County, and the tribes people, is a French name as well. What we still call the Northern and Southern Cheyenne people originally called themselves "Shah-HEE-ay-la" people. The word "Sioux" is clearly a French name (because who *else spells like that ;-D ) applied to all of the various tribes of what are actually Lakota people. The Absaroka People of SE Montana, who Scouted for Custer at the Little Big Horn, are disparagingly called The Crow Nation, but, of course, that is not what they called themselves.
They were the traditional enemies of the Lakota long before the Europeans ever showed up. The Crow called themselves differing names, but Absaroka is the only accurate name I can pronounce. ;-D
Thank you so much for your very accurate observation, especially because I myself had forgotten that it was not only the White European "Plague" diseases that killed *so many of the Native people, but even diseases like measles, chicken pox and mumps, as you note, which are STILL dangerous in the White community if they are encountered as an adult.
I did not applaud it at the time, but I had all of those diseases before I was out of Second Grade.
No one *need question that kind of acquired immunity !
Some visitors, and even locals around the area of Eastern Montana, and NE Wyoming where I grew up, will comically react to all of the many French names for animals, Natives, and topography.
The problem invariably turns out to be the fact that said visitors and locals *forget, if they ever knew, that the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 allowed President Jefferson to buy from the French Monarch 828,000 *contiguous square miles of the Western Mississippi Basin, extending, as Lewis and Clark found, all the way to the Eastern tips of Rocky Mountain Range in Montana in one corner. At less than 3 cents per acre. Prior to that purchase, all of that area had been claimed by France for *some time ! Those French fur trappers really were the *first of the "crazy" Mountain Men to take on the Rockies and try to explain to the Natives this "French Father" from across a Big Water the Natives had never heard of, who had just flat-out laid *claim to ALL of their ancestral lands. You are *going to NEED a smooth language to talk your way out of *that one ! ;-D
Some confusion will also arise these days among those who *do recall reading something about "The Louisiana Purchase " in school, but they just assumed it to have meant that we bought a tract of land equivalent in size to the modern-day State of Louisiana.
I wonder if Di Angelo is on the spectrum--socially awkward with no filter, earnest sharing without any humor or capacity for gauging her audience, and attraction to ideological crutches as cover for her insuperable difficulty negotiating nuanced social situations that also help her earn a living.
As an explanatory thesis for her bizarro world, self-reinforcing claptrap, that is kind of attractive, especially as she does not seem clever enough to have come up with such a remunerative grift from whole cloth.
"However, he’s deeply at odds with “antiracist” thinkers like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi, which has put him on the outs with current intellectual fashion in some segments of the political left." Do you mean segments of the political left who are tolerant and can read?
Reed is wrong to abandon the class, not race, argument. The disparities in life outcomes are nearly all explainable by number of adults in the household engaged with raising the children. Read Daniel Patrick Moynihan's prophetic report; it is predictive. When corrected for number of parents in the child's household, outcomes are nearly identical. Regardless of race, people who were raised by single adults have near-identical outcomes in housing, employment, incarceration, health, education and all other outcomes. The same is true of those raised in multi-adult households. Race doesn't influence outcome, number of parents do. But, you can't build a multi-trillion-dollar race war profiteering industry by admitting to the truth.
And, by the way, the amount of melanin in the skin affects how much Vitamin D is created. Vitamin D plays a key role in defending against viruses. The more melanin, the less Vitamin D. For children living in high-rise housing projects, the omni-present babysitter, the television, sees plenty of the kids during the day. There are few green spaces in which to play, and playgrounds are too often the province of drug dealers. So, children of color get less sunlight (less Vitamin D), less time outside (almost impossible to infect another outdoors), and are more apt to be raised on a non-healthy diet. It's real.
"But because statistically speaking, young Black men were more likely to commit crimes than other people. And the thing was outrageous, of course, the argument was outrageous, . . . '' Unsubstantiated assertion, unless "of course" counts as substantiation.
In light of reference to "universalism" in this piece - seemed to me time, past time, for us to anchor our "identities" as members of the "human race" - this proliferation of "identities" whether re color, gender, sexual orientation and all their various permutations and combinations seems to me a recipe for coming apart instead of coming together ... And we gotta do the latter, lickety split - Mother Nature is pretty fed up with us ...
Even if I don't agree with him on anything else, at least he doesn't subscribe to the woke disease, which means he's intellectually honest and one could actually have a debate with him. Similar to Zizek.
I don't claim to be up on leftist politicians, but this seems odd to me, as a libertarian, looking in to the different left factions. This anti-race stuff and critical race theory just looks like Marxism with a new face. Like they couldn't sell class warfare here, but they can sell this and slide Marxism in. BLM claims to be Marxist. So I find this odd. It looks like the perfect vehicle to pull it off.
Chris Hedges quoted a Simpson's scene thst sums up the insanity of identity issues burying issues of equality.
Lecturer: "5 white men own 90% of the world's wealth!"
Lisa: "that's terrible!"
"2 of them should be women and 3 should be people of color!"
But modern white liberals cannot have a progressivism that is based on class, because the vast majority of them belong to the oppressor class.
«because the vast majority of them belong to the oppressor class»
That is quite simplistic: white liberals are mostly "trusties", that is they are not part of the class of "masters", but of the class of "servants", they are the servants deputised by the masters to "manage" the other servants on a day-to-day basis, or to provide professional services. From England a quote on what it means to become a "trustie", a spoof on the "Red Flag" song:
“The working class can kiss my arse, / I’ve got the foreman’s job at last. / You can tell old Joe I’m off the dole - / He can stick his Red Flag up his hole.”
Some "trusties" and other servants delude themselves that they have become masters because they have become "investors" by managing to buy some small bit of real estate or accumulate a small share-based 401(k) account, but even their "investor" status is tenuous. From England again a suitable quote as to this, from Tony Blair (a Bill Clinton clone) meeting one of them during a campaign:
“I met a man polishing his Ford Sierra, self-employed electrician, Dad always voted Labour. He used to vote Labour, he said, but he bought his own home, he had set up his own business, he was doing quite nicely, so he said I’ve become a Tory.”
When I reread Orwell's 1984 this past year, something occurred to me that never had before. Winston Smith represents Oceania's oppressive, totalitarian, Big Brother government as monolithic and inescapable. He also recognizes that their controls don't apply to the "proles" — who make up 85% of the population! And they don't apply to the "party insiders" who make up the top 2% or so, and can pretty much do whatever they want. Thus the entire "Orwellian" surveillance state apparatus in the novel is devoted entirely to monitoring and controlling the 13% of the population who think there's something to be gained by holding on to their precarious position of being elite-adjacent, while looking wistfully on at the proles' freedom of speech and thought.
That's an excellent characterization. The only quibble I'd have is that it's no surprise that a *self-employed* person would be come Tory (or Republican in the U.S). The folks that really stick to the 'trusties' class as you describe it are the ones who make their living largely either by government subsidies and transfers such as most educators, health care and similar professions, and the mass of government bureaucrats, or are in business such as finance or insurance that depend on government regulation to maintain their status quo.
«no surprise that a *self-employed* person would be come Tory (or Republican in the U.S).»
The driver usually is real estate and shares; because other than that virtually all the self-employed are servants hired with time or piecework wages, rather than masters in their own right. Some are in partial overlap, like the dentist who has hired a nurse and a receptionist, but at a very small scale that does not a master make, because the bulk of the dentist's revenue still comes from their own work, on an hourly or piecework basis, not from that of their servants.
«The folks that really stick to the 'trusties' class as you describe it are the ones who make their living largely either by government subsidies and transfers [...] are in business such as finance or insurance that depend on government regulation»
Working for the government means being a servant in almost all cases, and nearly all trusties work in private industry, as McDonald "shift managers" or Amazon "warehouse supervisors" etc. etc. etc.
The difference between "bulk headcount" servants and servants who are trusties is that trusties are given generic directions from their masters, so they have some limited autonomy, but only respect to how they turn them into specific directions to the servants they supervise, which have close to zero autonomy in their work.
I have to go with Coco here, even though I appreciate your explication. The "masters" can't pull their stunts *without* the "trusties" on board -- the trusties are essential to the whole operation. Just because there's an upper tier and a lower tier of the oppressor class doesn't mean there's not an oppressor class.
«just because there's an upper tier and a lower tier of the oppressor class»
That point of view seems to be both blind to the difference in nature, and politically blind too:
* There is a difference as to the "class": the "trusties" may be the tools (e.g. fast-food shift supervisor) or complicit (e.g. anti-union consultant) of the rule of the "masters", or simply receive some crumbs off the table (e.g. plastic surgeon) of the "masters", but they are not in the same class. Maybe "oppressors", but not "oppressor class"; consider the role of the servants who work at the lower rung of the political police forces of many countries.
* It is politically blind because a standard point of "masters" is to direct the resentment of their "servants" to the "trusties" who merely express the rule of the "masters", both to split the "servants" among themselves, and to deflect anger from themselves. It is the ancient "The cossacks are bad, but the czar is good (even if the cossacks work for the czar)" technique.
* Also the "masters" do have an upper and lower tier, but the lower tier is not the "trusties" servants, it is the barely-independent masters like the owner of franchise shops, or the owner of the premises cleaning business who was its manager before it was spun off. They often are not much better off than the "trusties", but have much greater authority to set strategy.
* Some "trusties", like the doctors who co-own a large practice in which they also work, are in part "masters" and in part "trusties", and that is far more common in modern times that it used to be the case in older times, and that perhaps is a source of confusion.
I think we are arguing semantics here, but I thank you for the response.
<<consider the role of the servants who work at the lower rung of the political police forces of many countries>>
Unless you're somehow drafted into the political police, you choose to join the political police. That is to say, you voluntarily participate in oppression.
<<It is the ancient "The cossacks are bad, but the czar is good (even if the cossacks work for the czar)" technique.>>
No argument here. It's just my opinion that this technique is beginning to outlive its usefulness with regard to the present political situation in the USA; I don't pretend to have any kind of accurate universalist view.
The blunt and unsophisticated point I have attempted to make is that the "servants"/working class/indigent may not care too much about the gradations between higher and lower "trusties" and lower and higher "masters." I believe that they will tend to view anyone who does not have to struggle daily for mere survival as part of the "oppressor class." As you note, this is no doubt an overly broad term, but people whose primary daily concern is perpetuating their existence have little time for niceties.
The primary trusties at the moment are tenured Professors and content Editors.
«the "servants"/working class/indigent may not care too much about the gradations between higher and lower "trusties" and lower and higher "masters." I believe that they will tend to view anyone who does not have to struggle daily for mere survival as part of the "oppressor class."»
But that is the political blindness: the servant classes have rarely succeeded in fighting the masters class for a better deal without the "help" of the "trusties" ("Craig Russell" refers to this in his mention of 1984).
Creating a political alliance between "masters" and "trusties" (usually via real estate and stock share ownership) is pretty much the essence of reaganism.
Here is an indian dreaming of a reaganite electoral coalition in India to focus politics on "labor market reform" instead of waste like "the right to food, education, or to work":
http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/2011/08/is-india-heading-into-a-middle-income-trap/
“The electorally decisive “median voter” is stuck at an income level that prevents a coalition of middle and upper income voters from pushing for further reform, and the politics of redistribution trump the politics of growth. To many, it would appear that India has already achieved this unenviable scenario, in which the government’s flagship economic schemes are centred on entitlements such as the right to food, education, or to work and not, for instance, on reforming arcane labour laws.”
I've never seen "trusty" in any other context but in the American prison farm, where it describes the prisoner who is given special privilege over the other prisoners to manage those prisoners. The bosses trust him. But it's the same thing of course.
«never seen "trusty" in any other context but in the American prison farm [...] the same thing of course.»
I think that was also used in southern plantations... It is indeed a loaded term that I used intentionally. :-)
I think Samuel L Jackson played a trustee in that Jango movie
I believe the term is "house n****r," which is largely interchangeable with "trusty."
Yeah and my old man would have called that being a "straw boss."
It's just the upper end of the working class, isn't it? The working class consists of people who have to work, or think they have to work, and those who depend on or live off them. The next class up is supposed to be the petite-bourgeoisie, those who have to work but own their own tools, or who have some kind of credential that is actually worth some sort of entrée into the shallow end of the money vat. ''Trusty'' is an excellent metaphor for this role.
Modern white liberals are basically workers at the min Truth who have to tell you how the gruel is double plus good today. Thank god I'm a prole and have the freedom to get drunk
Liberal elitists have resurrected racism as their new smokescreen to distract from the reality of economic disparity. Some CEOs today make 900 times what their workers make. Millions of US citizens get up every day and go to work 40 hours a week for wages that do not sustain them. Millions of children have to be fed at school because there is not enough food at home. Bezos is the richest guy in the world and instead of building his new facility somewhere with lots of unemployed people, he dangles it over cities to see who can give him tax breaks and cheap energy. What a grubby creep!
As a "liberal" friend said to me - "you're just jealous".
Arrogant blindness
Not really, just ignorance like so many others. The reality is that a crony-capitalist system has allowed inequality to flourish and technology is lightyears ahead of legislation. One of the primary roles of government is to ensure a fair and orderly system of commerce. That includes enforcement of all laws for all participants, including removing barriers to entry - something Bezos, and technology in general, have successfully prevented when working with cowardly (bought) politicians.
This seems to me like a natural development of capitalism. As capitalists grow in power and influence, they get control of the government and other public institutions, and they tend to cohere because of class interest. Why should they support a fair and orderly system of commerce when they can do better with an unfair or disorderly system? And if the winners tend to win, inequality is assured and is in fact considered by many to be a desirable arrangement. Even light interference with the arrangement (for example, the New Deal) is often bitterly resented and vigorously opposed.
Pure capitalism is a system that consumes itself, ending in feudalism. It starts out with many players in open competition and slowly the smartest and luckiest buy out the others until there are a few megaplayers that monopolize markets. Pure capitalism never worked well in early America. There were booms and busts every 20 years and resulted in robber barrons ruling everything - Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, etc. Teddy Roosevelt broke the trusts and graduated income tax with Sherman Antitrust laws helped to control greed. Those were the glory days of capitalism. Unfortunately, antitrust laws were not used for decades and the 4,000 pages of tax loopholes destroyed graduated income tax laws. Sadly we are back where we started in 1900.
Base instincts in humans won't allow pure capitalism to work and the tradeoff is declining freedoms as regulations increase. Capitalism is superior as an economic system when participation is highest and regulations are evenly distributed, something that has been declining for decades, possibly signaling an ultimate socialist outcome in the U.S. The irony: in all systems it's believed that elected officials will/can fix this but very few have the altruistic ability to put citizens first and instead, those same base instincts create the marriage of politician and corporation to give us our current crony-capitalism..
No argument here.
When General Milley talked about "white rage" I immediately wondered if "white guilt" isn't really the potent force that he should be studying.
I worked, until a few months ago, for a very large prestigious bank and it was amazing to see how diversity, equity, and inclusion dogma was effortlessly folded into the corporation. And no wonder: it makes few demands on corporate business models......has nothing to say about carried interest, outsourcing, ethnic cleansing in supply chains and so on. And it especially has little to say about executive compensation.
In other words, the claims of anti-racism are essentially spiritual and fundamentalist, hardly contra class concerns of wealth. It's in fact a huge secularized religious indulgence-selling juggernaut. Indulgences sold in no small part to assuage white-guilt.
Anti-racist aims are the antithesis of what Occupy Wall Street wanted.....and corporations hated, as well as then attorney general Eric Holder who declared banks as "systemically important" and the risk of Financial Crisis prosecution melted away.
So true, but I think "white guilt" is a hoax too. It's a performative pose for power, job security and social prestige -- I doubt 1 in 50 feel anything remotely like guilt, just bewilderment and confusion. The sociopaths fake the guilt, of course, as a tactic.
Somehow the absolute worst of the 1920s KKK has become a generally accepted "white archetype" and the entire society goes along with this as an accurate characterization of 200 million people.
There is no real world history here anywhere. No understanding of global cultures. No understanding of the predations and abuses in other racial societies. No acknowledgment of the history of racial issues and tribal issues anywhere in the world. Total ignorance of the real history of slavery worldwide over thousands of years of human experience. Absolute blindness to the hard achievements of enlightenment thought.
It's a gigantic philosophical and epistemological grift.
Matt is afraid of white people finding their identity? Which identity? The KKK, for sure. But what about the "white people identity" that sponsored and facilitated the world's most prosperous and peaceful multi-ethnic societies that attract immigrants from all over the world and who have as friends, lovers, husbands and wives people from a veritable blooming bouquet of other nations. I guess we kick their KKK asses too if we can make a buck or get a brownie point for doing it. What do we have to lose? Integrity? What's that if it gets in the way?
This is all a pathetic grift.
Mr. Reed is right on about class issues. Too bad society is so lost kicking the imaginary asses of people who died 100+ years ago. Those are easy asses to kick and the money is good, I guess, if that's your profession.
I too believe "white guilt" is fake. You only buy indulgences if you intend to continue sinning, because you're committed to the sin. What looks like "white guilt" in the Milley doofuses of the world is actually "What do I have to say to keep me safe from the credulous pitchforked unwashed?"
I don't know. ''White guilt'' may be a real thing, and therefore exploitable in ways far beyond a mere con. Humans are naturally tribal because of the way we evolved. Since we don't run around the jungle in small bands any more bashing each other with clubs -- mostly -- we need to find other ways of dealing with our instincts besides metaphorizing them into racism, nationalism, war, and imperialism. But apparently it's difficult for a lot of people. Hence the guilt -- a kind of psychic debt to oneself and one's community. And the bad behavior which we tolerate in our great leaders.
@ craazyman
White guilt *IS another TOTAL crock of crap most easily bought or blundered into by those who never took a class in Basic Logic 101.
We wonder whether Charles Manson was *really a murderer, since he himself (as far as we know) did not physically kill *anybody. He encouraged his "girls" (whom he recruited between the sage ages of 14 to 16 ) to do his bidding. Now, did Chuckles kill those Manson victims, or did Ted and the girls kill the Manson victims, or DID *I KILL THE MANSON victims ?
Wow ! I never THOUGHT of that before ! Chuckles Manson was WHITE. Ted was white, the girls were white. I am white. Maybe I should be in prison, or at least start paying retributions to the families of the Manson/Manson Girls' victims *because I AM WHITE TOO !
What about other serial killers, *the GREAT majority of whom are white and male JUST LIKE ME ?? Need I not start forking over segments of my social security checks to the families of *their victims because I am also White ?
IF the above strikes you as decidedly , uh ...... senseless and *stupid, then you have the gift of logic within, however acquired. The *only people accepting "white guilt" are, like the "marks" of P.T. Barnum, the "[White] suckers born every minute.]
As a white male, I am not responsible for the actions of ANY *OTHER white males even NOW, much less "guilty of" acts performed by white males clear back into antiquity long before I was *born. Anyone who thinks I am "guilty of the sins of the father" is mixing me up with the Catholic Church inspired idea of "Original Sin", which you will be disappointed to learn, as crazy as it is, is not at all race specific !
No human being is responsible for the sins of their ancestors unless that human directly, and via free choice, *participated in the sins of their ancestors. You know, like the sons of 1930s gang leader Ma Barker for instance.
The rest of this is talking pure twaddle. We cannot "correct" history [except to start telling the TRUTH about it]. I am Irish. I am not asking England to pay for 700 years of oppression, theft of our goods and our people, and the rest of their cesspool of sins and crimes against the Irish. I do not compare the experience of the Irish with the experience of Africans brought North as chattel slaves. I am just saying, we cannot "correct" history with a purseful of coins.
In the case of persons of color in the U.S. what we CAN do is STOP the present and ONGOING oppression of these people, and of their equally innocent offspring !
>I guess we kick their KKK asses too if we can make a buck or get a brownie point for doing it.
Good luck finding them.
You may have seen coverage of the recent resignation of one of the CEOs of the Black Lives Matter movement. BLM raised $900 million in donations. The CEO, at age 37, who’s now been criticized by both the left and the right, owns four homes, one a $1.5 million property in Malibu. The BBC, where I read the story, says there’s no evidence of misappropriation of funds on her part. So be it. However, this is a movement that has been mostly of and for the elite, with substantial corporate support. It is not a grass-roots movement. Where I live, we see plenty of BLM signs in the yards of wealthy whites. The only people of color they encounter are the ones who cut their grass and clean their homes. They would never have Support a $15 Hourly Wage signs in their yards.
Once again the corporations win. With every rainbow flag or black actor placed in an ad it increases a company's ESG rating. I doubt that there's a social issue one could raise that corporate & monied interests couldn't manipulate for their own profit.
I'll believe corporate BLM loving bullshit when I see all the white CEOs and board members replaced with people from George Floyd's zip code.
It's also quite amusing how most of those squawking loudest about white privilege are using that squawking to move themselves into the rarified air of the monied privileged.
I may have to re-think some things, though.
Having long ago given up on cable TV entirely, and using a strongly ad-blocked browser, I was shocked to discover, on a recent vacation (the room had regular cable), that half the population of the country is black and another quarter some clearly (if only partially) non-white heritage! (I live in a part of the country where such a change would be last noted)
I mean, good for them, they seem almost uniformly to be happy, well-to-do and possessed of perfect dentation. I was also surprised by the strong "back-up dancer" vibe given off by so many of the black males, but hey, NuPride flags all around, amirite?
I mean, a cynic might say they almost look like landscaping/home decor accessories from a very high-end interior decoration boutique. ("Boardroom model (choice of gender) free with purchase of full "Diverse Pool Party" set. The finest diversity, curated by our staff of Reparative Decoration experts!") But who's that cynical?
Me, I'm off to get one of those hybrid "app creator/workout instructor" models, currently on sale.
Adolph Reed on political economy and culture (and sports, too, amazingly) is like Oscar Wilde on art: he's right about everything.
In the middle of the interview we had to break and he and I had a long talk about UNC-Duke hoops. Dude hates Dukies for real, it’s hilarious.
Adolph Reed might be my favorite intellectual to listen to. He has such a rare talent to say brilliant things while not being condescending, stay true to his values, and be funny all at once. Thanks for the interview.
Former union organizer and lifelong Kentucky basketball fan here. Seems that Mr. Reed and I would have quite a lot in common.
Until Cal manages to keep a veteran backcourt, he won’t win another NC.
the "rat" comment about Coach K made my day
I kind of hate Duke for realz too. Laettner's NCAA elite-8 championship last split second buzzer-beater, Rupp arena, Big Blue Nation 1992 .. . never forget.
So we have that in common.
*btw Katie Halper's video lighting, display and background ambiance is a lot brighter and nicer than yours .. . fwiw.
I remember drop kicking an ottoman across the living room when Laettner made that shot….I’m a big college hoops fan, but whomever is playing Duke is always my favorite team besides Ohio State!
Certainly Duke is Duke --- they're on TV more than Leave it to Beaver re-runs." - Pete Gillen, circa 1997
Matt, "The currency of what counts as racism has inflated like the Dutch market in the late 1920s." Believe he said "deutschemark", not "Dutch market".
Thanks. ugh Rev.com
Good point. Deutschmark makes sense. Dutch market doesnt(except for tulip mania and that was centuries before)
Thanks. I was wondering what he was talking about.
Although the deutschemark was inflated in the early 1920s, not the late 1920s. In the late 1920s just before Hitler it was deflated, I think.
We are such a strange country. it seems clear that the Democrats are morphing into a party almost exclusively for Blacks, transgenders and Latinx. And Republicans are morphing into the party of non-college educated whites, aka rednecks. I can't think of any other country where the traditional elite, and still the largest chunk of voters, the white and Asian middle and upper class, are unwanted by all. Even weirder, most of that group still hugs closely to the Democrats, who increase their taxes and call them racists in return.
I agree with you about the Republican direction but as Mr. Reed is pointing out (somewhat obliquely) the Democrats do want to become the party of middle and upper middle class college educated whites. The whole focus on 'anti-racism' is branding by white Democrats to distinguish themselves from white Republicans, and to try to keep the hold they need on racial minorities because they don't have the numbers to defeat Republicans otherwise.
Take a look at Trump's numbers in 2020. He gained votes across the board with exception of white men who were supposed to be his strongest supporters.
That's true, although I think it's been easy for the Dems to capture the elite vote while the Republicans have descended into the Trump abyss. And I know third parties never work in this country. But traditionally parties were north vs south, or city vs country, or rich vs. poor. This is the first time where platform wise it's poor white vs poor Black. The Dems have uniquely offered the majority of voters nothing more than the shame of racism and cultural opprobrium to keep them corralled. It just seems like this might be the opportunity for a real third party offering something positive to the majority group for a change.
One third party that worked is the Republican party, formed just in the 1850s and having its Presidential candidates elected as soon as 1860.
The GOP coalesced the flotsam and jetsam of the collapsing Whigs-they filled a necessary vacuum, but didn’t really emerge as a true third option,imo
The Post-War Era offered the Republicans a chance to go full-on Prosperity Populist, but instead they went jingoistic social conservative. Whiff! Woosh! Yer OUT!
Your last sentence should cause you to question the stereotypes/strawman demographics directed towards the Republicans. Though really, who gives a shit about Republicans? I'm just strongly anti-anti-American and anti-authoritarian, areas where the Republican Party record is far from perfect.
" it seems clear that the Democrats are morphing into a party almost exclusively for Blacks, transgenders and Latinx. And Republicans are morphing into the party of non-college educated whites, aka rednecks. "
Not exclusively at all. Kind of the point is that there's no shortage of meritocratic white wokie allies. And the Republicans, if you've noticed, have been picking up more working class and small business-owning black and Latino / Hispanic voters. Keep up the woke shit, and the surburban whites who voted for Joe may not stick around. And it's not really the Republicans shitting on Asians. The Dems are making them a lower priority then other preferred demographics.
I think we're saying the same thing.
And Democrats are morphing into the Welfare citizen:
Welfare recipients vote Democratic
81% receive Public Housing
74% Medicaid
67% Food stamps
64% disability
63% welfare
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/poch
But that's what they've always been, and the Republicans have always been the party that wants lower taxes. Now neither party is really offering anything to their constituents other than hatred of the other party.
If it has always been this way then why hasn’t the trillions of dollars in these programs given to Democrat voters improved their lot?
Postipressionist has demonstrated an absence of credibility as long as they've been posting here. The best response to their bogus claims is to refute them; if you don't have the time, assume from prior experience that they're fraudulent and ignore them.
The biggest problem with refuting a bogus claim is that it requires several paragraphs to do so. While it only takes a few seconds to make up some numbers and attach a bunk link to them.
Come on. That isn't even a coherent claim. Are you saying that 83% of Democratic Party voters are in public housing? I can't tell. (Meanwhile, only 63% are "on welfare.")
fwiw, the term "Welfare" is a Trigger Word implying that the recipients are shiftless people permanently on the dole (and also in your case, Postipressionist, "minorities".)
Welfare programs have morphed from being aimed at the utterly indigent and disabled to a sort of partial safety net for low-income working people, as a partial offset for declining wages and lack of job security (which, once again, your hobbyhorse views as 100% due to "immigrants", Postipressionist.)
You only offer links when it's convenient to you, and sometimes the information in them provides evidence that's exactly opposite to what you're claiming- or it's some sort of non sequitur or irrelevancy that indicates your inability to comprehend the material. As with the Pew Research link in your post above, which leads to a dead page on the Pew poll site https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/poch - but doing a keyword search on the site brings up one result, which shares most of the details of the URL you provided
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/
However, the information on that page bears no resemblance to the statistics you provided. For one thing, the linked article only looks at the topic of food stamps (a type of income assistance for which working people are eligible):
"Overall, a Pew Research Center survey conducted late last year [2012] found that about one-in-five Americans (18%) has participated in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. About a quarter (26%) lives in a household with a current or former food stamp recipient.
Of these, about one-in-five (22%) of Democrats say they had received food stamps compared with 10% of Republicans. About 17% of political independents say they have received food stamps.
The share of food stamp beneficiaries swells even further when respondents are asked if someone else living in their household had ever received food stamps. According to the survey, about three in ten Democrats (31%) and about half as many Republicans (17%) say they or someone in their household has benefitted from the food stamp program...."
How many of your numbers were just plucked out of the air, offered with no reference? All of them.
It's almost as if you were counting on offering a dead page as a link reference, to cover for that.
Are Welfare Recipients Mostly Republican? - Wall Street Pit
Search domain wallstreetpit.comhttps://wallstreetpit.com/89671-are-welfare-recipients-mostly-republican/
I will graph the two-party vote, more data is at the end. Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats.
I've just read the 33 pages of the 2004-2007 Maxwell Poll reference link from which that Wall Street Pit article claims to draw its statistical claims.
The claimed data specifics are not found in that source.
https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/campbell/programs/Merged_Data_Set/
What is being measured here? I'd assume the proportion of people receiving Welfare payments would be about 100% of the people receiving Welfare payments. My browser can't find the page you cite.
Are Welfare Recipients Mostly Republican? - Wall Street Pit
Search domain wallstreetpit.comhttps://wallstreetpit.com/89671-are-welfare-recipients-mostly-republican/
I will graph the two-party vote, more data is at the end. Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats
This was the correct address.
I've just read the 33 pages of the 2004-2007 Maxwell Poll reference link from which that Wall Street Pit article claims to draw its statistical claims.
The claimed data specifics are not found in that source.
https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/campbell/programs/Merged_Data_Set/
Also, no one is going to find a link address that is improperly typed. The live link for the Wall Street Pit article that you apparently intended to reference is
https://wallstreetpit.com/89671-are-welfare-recipients-mostly-republican/
Most welfare recipients are democrats
http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/1687053-most-welfare-recipients-democrats-9.html
The majority of welfare recipients (80%) are democrats. Is it any wonder that democratic politicians formulate policy which caters to the non productive componants of society, relative to the working people. This is the constituency of the democratic party, which has come to expect votes in exchange for handouts.
The Vast Majority Of Welfare Recipients Are Democrats ...
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/the-vast-majority-of-welfare-recipients-are-democrats/
The Vast Majority Of Welfare Recipients Are Democrats Posted on October 4, 2013 by stevengoddard 63% of welfare recipients are black or Hispanic, and those groups vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Liberals always say Whites take most of the welfare but they are the most of the population. That's what Huff Post does. The correct way is to find the % of the individual groups that are on Welfare. If there were the same amount of Latinos as Whites, Latinos would be using TWICE as much Welfare as Whites.
Postipressionist: now- since your earlier attempts to support your claims have failed- you're reduced to offering "references" that consist of unsupported canards found in the City-Data Forum (not the site itself, which is a fairly reliable metric data resource) and a blog by one rando issuing a blatantly inaccurate conclusion drawn from a single-variable data comparison that does not say what he claims it says.
Ironically, the guy's blog is named "Real Science" (he name-checks Richard Feynman!). And he can't even properly parse an elementary-level statistical inference.
Here's the single chart that he references (from a now-dead reference link): https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/screenhunter_1248-oct-03-23-01.jpg?w=640&h=342
(Maybe someone can find useful leads to the source of this now-dead link from its URL: https://resources.oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/group/SP10-BL-POLS-Y490-26253/schram-contextualizing welfare policy.pdf )
To cut to the chase: according to the linked chart (data from 2003), the percentage of families (no locale shown in the data reference- Iowa? Chicago? the U.S.? Oz?) receiving "welfare":
White: 32%
Black 38%
Hispanic: 25%
And here's the takeaway that the resident data analyst comes up with, as the conclusion:
"63% of welfare recipients are black or Hispanic"
Yeah, he literally added together the two numbers for "teh minorities" from that chart, and came up with that whopper.
It apparently didn't occur to him that there are twice as many "non-Hispanic whites" in the US as the combined black and Hispanic population.
Nor was Real Science Guy able to realize that according to the survey chart he linked, the proportion of the black American population receiving "welfare" (unspecified) is less than 20% higher than the percentage of whites, and that proportion of the surveyed Hispanic population receiving welfare benefits is actually around 25% lower than that of the white population.
And then he uses that F-level statistical interpretation to draw this sinister linkage: "those groups vote overwhelmingly Democratic." So much for data precision. And using metrics and math to draw accurate statistical interpretations.
The final guffaw in this laughfest is that your post also offers conclusions in your last paragraph that disregard the fact that according to the data source you've linked, the percentage of Latino Americans (aka "Hispanics") getting welfare is actually LESS than the percentage of white Americans who get it. So to address your data projection, if there were the same amount of Latino Americans as white Americans and those percentages remained the same, the Latinos would be drawing around 25% LESS in welfare than the equivalent sized white population. Not "TWICE as much", lol.
(fwiw, the "non-Hispanic white" population currently outnumbers the Hispanic population by a factor of more than 4 to 1.)
This is basic 6th/7th grade math. It looks like you need a refresher course in it.
The Blade quote was on point…..fashion and trend have always been as important to the post WWII left as anything else….just ask Pablo Picasso
Meh... Democrats morphed into the Banking Cartel party almost 3 decades ago now, and most people in the country simply don't know any better about what is what and who is who. Most Democratic policies do just as much harm to those communities you mention, as Republican's policies. Also, Trump pulled a larger number of Latinx voters in the last election, which is amazing when you really think about it.
Just because someone didn't go to college or lives in rural areas doesn't make them a redneck, and quite frankly, your average redneck is probably smarter about the world than your Harvard doctorate (the real world). Even if said Redneck will light himself on fire with his own fart.
Also, I would argue forever that the average Joe Redneck, and the average educated Democrat if they actually sat in a room and talked to each other would agree on likely half of all issues, or at least be able to be civil about most issues.
Most of the rural people are survivalists. In Louisiana, everyone has land, gardens, cows, horses and are canning for the winter. They will be around long after Harvard becomes defunct due to lack of intelligent students.
@Postimpressionist
After severely watering-down student requirements and achievements, after charging Harvard Tuition for kids to sit around watching old B&W episodes of
"The Honeymooners" for Harvard CREDIT, you mean to tell me that Harvard *presently has "intelligent students" ?
The PBS Newshour ran a bit of research showing that U.S. Colleges, during the Sixties and Seventies, awarded "Straight A averages to about 17% of the student body. Those same universities NOW award Straight A averages to almost 43% of the entire student body. Almost HALF !
Aren't you *thrilled to hear that American students are now THAT MUCH brighter than their doddering parents were *at that same age, and in ONLY *one generation ? By eliminating "The Humanities" as part of a functioning College Education, decades ago, we NOW produce College Graduates in the U.S. that cannot locate *CANADA on an unmarked map of North America !
The College response to THAT glaring beacon of ineptitude in the "Halls of Higher Learning" is now, of course, to eliminate ENTRANCE EXAMS clean across the board ! Think of the money students and parents will now save when they no longer have need to buy the CHEAT SHEETS to the College Entrance Exam of lil' Offspring's Choice !
You are amazed by the number of foreign students on Campus from India and other parts of Asia ? Don't be. They can read circles around your child, they can do math, and the Indians, at least, will kick our backsides in SPELLING !
Fake entrance exams, fake classwork, fake labs, fake education, and graduates still feeling entitled to graduate and START AT THE TOP with the best of firms.
Sweetie, do you *really think that ALL of these prospective employers are UNAWARE that you just spent four years (or more) posing in a TV STAGE
mock up of a College ? Potential employers will be correspondingly happy to offer you a fake JOB.
I have quite a few students who went to Ivy League schools. They are all incredibly knowledgeable and highly skilled for a person of that age. They can do advanced mathematics and physics and chemistry and know impressive amounts about history, geography, psychology, and economics. They are undoubtedly far more advanced than previous generations of young scholar. The ones who study hard sciences or classics continue to deepen their knowledge.
Kids these days are better at everything than their Boomer or Xer parents ever were, because they have access to vastly better instructional resources through the Internet. For example, when I played in little league, I just did whatever coach told me as far as hitting technique — today my kids can watch Barry Bonds in slow no 10k frames per second and see *exactly* how the best do what they do, and as a result they are way better than I ever was.
Than why has the US fallen from #1 in the world the 60s to #38/ Math and #24/Science in 2018 ?
Education Rankings By Country 2021
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by-country
According to the Business Insider report in 2018, its education ranking was 38th in math scores and 24th in science. The United States' education rankings have been falling by international standards over the past three decades.
Around the Mexican INCURSION we started dropping:
It costs nearly twice as much per head, per capita, to educate a child in a foreign language than it does to educate a native-born child in English.
former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stated: “History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.”
In many areas an extremely large number of students show up in a short period of time. This leads to an almost overnight crisis of school overcrowding, major teacher shortages, huge educational budget shortfalls, and a lack of school equipment and resources for all students. From big cities to small towns, immigration overload has adversely impacted the carrying capacity of many schools. This reality means that countless young people, both natives and new immigrants, are paying for Washington’s failure to get the immigration problem under control.
The ongoing problems related to the estimated 12 million+ illegal immigrants living in the United States. The list includes better protecting our nation’s southern border, soaring costs of billion dollar entitlement programs, increasing pressure to grant citizenship to undocumented residents, and the criminal consequences of more and more states, cities, and other government entities adopting “sanctuary” policies.
“The reality is this: The federal government gives us basically no money to support these children, so the funding is coming from the state budget and mostly from the local budget.
CONCLUSION It is expected that immigration will account for 96% of the increase in the school age population over the next 50 years. “If mass immigration continues, the education of all children in America will continue to be undermined. Education costs will continue to escalate and quality of education will continue to decline.”
https://npg.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Impact-of-Immigrant-Children-schools-FP.pdf
Than why are we importing foreigners and leaving OUR graduates on the unemployment line.
Good to hear.
@Nathan
Thank gawd it is still happening *somewhere ! With grade inflation and the elimination of SAT / ACT it is hard to see it lasting long. And, of course, the full decline will not be like flipping off a light switch.
"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper".
~ T.S. Eliot
I have a friend who was the first in her family to complete an American University Degree when she earned her B.S. in microbiology from Colorado State. Four year course. She was so proud of it, she could not wait to show me her transcripts. Page after page, she had been allowed to take *nothing but Hard Sciences, in which she did very well.
What was glaringly absent were courses in anything *else !
Since Colleges have "trimmed out" The Humanities, Colleges are no longer offering a well-rounded College Experience. What this young woman's parents had PAID FOR was a flippin' TRADE SCHOOL induction into Science. All data and technique, and NO context in how that applies to the world of humans. Or how it developed in the past *into what it is now. Or how the Ancient Greeks attempted to answer those self-same questions of philosophical science with which we *still wrestle today.
You do not mention one way or the other, but I have to assume that you teach at a private school. Yes. As the "Noah's Ark" of American Education sinks under the last waves, the few private schools not yet completely corrupted into elite diploma mills will go down last. But, if we are to save, yes, even to *improve American Education, let's stop pretending that "there's no problem here" ! "Nothin' to see ..... just keep movin' by, folks ! "
Can we ?
Totally agree. They are eliminating Advanced Placement because it is a White Supremacist program. That's like confirming that Whites are more intelligent.
@Postimpressionist
It is just jaw-dropping in its entirety ! People *still save up all their children's lives to afford to send the little tykes to America, and have them educated in an *American Institute of Higher Learning. Now, in the MIDST of that struggle, we have these *previous premiers of American Higher Education bending over BACKWARDS to guarantee that a U.S. Education will no longer be worth the paper it is written on by the time today's little local Johnnies and Janies even get there.
Forget the Foreign Students for "continuing education". They will *arrive in America *far better educated than future-Harvard can ever provide for them ! But they will still have the cost of room and board, and no-kidding Harvard Tuition, higher even than it was when Harvard and other present American Diploma-Mills WERE "real" Colleges.
Oh, well, the only thing that remains constant is Change !
I propose that the level of intelligence of the average applicant has almost zero effect on the operation of the Harvard enterprise. It should also be noted that possession of "An Ivy League Degree" (and the networking/connections associated therewith) is considered a fine substitute for "intelligence" when it comes to being admitted into the elite echelons of American society.
(NOTE: very clear requirements exist for those being entrusted with the handling of the actual billions that have inexplicably gravitated upwards over the last few (many?) decades.)
Than why are we hiring foreigners at all?
America Has More Trained STEM Graduates than STEM Job Openings
https://cis.org/America-Has-More-Trained-STEM-Graduates-STEM-Job-Openings
For every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired in a STEM job. That study 2 was by three experts in the field (Hal Salzman, a Rutgers professor, B. Lindsay Lowell, of Georgetown University, and Daniel Kuehn, who has worked with both the Urban Institute and EPI).
The proof is in the pudding. This is what the 40s to 80s produced:
WE built the first skyscrapers, discovered and harnessed ELECTRICITY invented assembly lines, refrigerator, Cyclotron, TV, Microwave, Integrated Circuit, Personal Computer, FORTRAN (computer language 1957), Solar Cell, CDs, LCD, Firewire, Fiber Optics, Bypass surgery, Catalytic Converter, RAM, Fiberglass, 3D Printer, Airplane, Industrial Robot, LASER, Adobe Flash, Hand Held Calculator, liquid fuel, LED, Kevlar, Nylon, Magnetometer, Theoretical Physics, Washing Machine, Transistor, Silicon Valley, Touch Screen, mobile phone, Polio Vaccine, MoS2 water purification, Air Conditioner, The Cloud, Face Book , GPS- internet, - you name it. Almost ALL US born and educated in the US …. And ALL EUROPEAN!
We are now importing people from India because we have no one able to do simple math. You can see it by the math scores of our youth in relationship to the world. No more calculus, Advanced Placement until the 11th grade. because we don't want anyone to feel they are inferior. We are ALL EQUALLY dumb!
yeah, right, In 1940, maybe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28695425-strangers-in-their-own-land
Today.
Drop Wikipedia as it is LEFT BIASED to a lie:
Wikipedia is no longer reliable, says co-founder - The ...
https://techreport.com/news/12235/wikipedia-is-no-longer-reliable-says-co-founder/
According to Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, however, that's not entirely accurate. Wikipedia is "broken beyond repair" and no longer reliable, Sanger asserts.
"Wikipedia is no longer reliable"- I never thought that it was reliable for every topic. That's a judgement to be made on the basis of the reference links offered for each article. The more political the topic, the more important it is to track the reference sources and the bibliography offered in the end notes.
I do get why there's so much of a push in some quarters to damn Wikipedia across the board- every article, every page, from those on chemical compounds to those on disputed elections: because so many of the indisputable objective facts found in the content effectively refute people who want to remain "free" to make up their own information.
It is difficult. Real Clear Politics seems to be center.
I guess I should have read your comment more thoroughly. My rant stands, but obviously it shouldn't be directed at you Arrow.
This is great. Love Adolph Reed.
Thank you for interviewing Professor Reed. My husband and I enjoyed the UI episode and we think you and Katie should consider having Reed on as a regular guest. Reed's wisdom should be heard by as many generations of Americans as possible.
Speaking as a biologist who works on disease, I think there is a link to being black and brown. One link is simple, vitamin D and A. Black people have some of the lowest vitamin D levels in the country, which is because most don't like to get darker, so they stay out of the sun, and they need a lot more sun than white people do to keep their vitamin D up.
For the native Americans, there is a different genetic issue. We are here because 95%+ of native Americans died from the European disease pool. Primarily, that was influenza and coronaviruses. The observation that the natives died - entire villages of them - was the origin of the phrase, "Manifest destiny." We didn't understand the germ theory of disease back then.
That said, otherwise, I think Reed is quite correct.
How dare you not agree that Coronaviruses are racist and that nothing other than experimental mRNA injections can prevent POC from getting sick. Stick to the Fauscience, man!
I do think that vaccines are the best way to prevent anyone, including POC from getting sick. I have, hmm, let's see what's in the lab fridge. Vaccines for: Ebola. West Nile. Hanta virus. COVID-19. All of them are nucleic acid vaccines. Vitamin D is, however, well documented for making people susceptible to all kinds of infectious disease when it is low.
Not an antivaxxer by any means but it sure is interesting that herd immunity suddenly stopped working in 2019 after being so effective for millions of years.
Immunity is the same as it ever was. There is this phenomenon called the primate barrier where certain viruses (and DNA vaccines) don't produce much antibody. They do fine with CD8 T-cells that kill the cells that are infected. Coronaviruses appear to be of the type that does not produce strong antibody response in most people. This means that CD8 T-cell response is it, and without antibodies to prevent infection in the first place, the virus keeps going. Those who recover and get it again typically get a light case, often so light they may not know they are sick and shedding virus everywhere.
Thank you for this explanation. In the last two years I haven’t seen or heard this information anywhere else. Again Substack comes through.
I have tried to interest native American groups in this topic. They don't seem to care. I don't know if it is possible to connect outside of this forum without posting email publicly, which I don't ant to do.
if herd immunity worked for every disease, we wouldn't have to worry about influenza and the common cold (which are incidentally single-strand RNA viruses, as is covid 19.)
The stupid, it hurts...
It works for influenza. But each new strain manages to evade adaptive immunity, and present as new. (There is also a recycling of strains because after 40-60 years, generations grow up without exposure and the old viruses can spread again.)
Influenza though, can reassort because it has 7 or 8 separate RNA segments that operate like chromosomes do. So influenza is a lot more flexible than coronaviruses are, because coronaviruses have long single strands.
Yes. I was referring to the wider phenomenon of the disease influenza itself, not the specific strains.
You of course have a specialized educational background, and know that single strand RNA viruses have an infuriating tendency to mutate rapidly in ways that make them resistant to being counteracted completely, as has been possible with, say, smallpox (a DNA virus.)
«herd immunity suddenly stopped working in 2019 after being so effective for millions of years.»
The "best" way "herd immunity" works is by killing all hosts that have weak resistance against the disease, so the next generation is mostly immune. That works very well indeed. The problem swith SARS-2 and that approach are:
* It has a kill rate of 1-3% of the infected, so it would kill around 3-10m people in the USA.
* It tends to kill oldies past reproductive age, so it would not select for resistance against the disease in the next generation.
This is difficult for me to understand since I have extremely low vitamin D levels and a great immune system for a 30 year diabetic. I've theorized that blood tests fail on me because my blood is lipemic most of the time (another genetic bonanza) and D is fat soluble.
That may well be correct.
«I do think that vaccines are the best way to prevent anyone, including POC from getting sick.»
Ah the usual "distraction" argument vax vs. novax from the much important issue, the enormous difference on death rates per 100,000 among three groups of countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country#Table_of_death_rates
211.70 Italy, 197.74 Poland, 192.25 United Kingdom,
184.48 United States, 166.01 France, 142.25 Sweden,
127.05 Switzerland, 109.95 Germany
17.63 Finland, 14.85 Norway, 11.92 Cuba, 11.72 Japan,
8.03 Iceland
3.20 Thailand, 2.89 China-Taiwan, 0.63 Singapore,
0.53 New Zealand, 0.35 China-mainland, 0.09 Vietnam
The difference is due to more civilized countries using a test-trace-isolate approach, which has not been adopted in the USA and other "Washington Consensus" countries because it is deemed "collectivist", but has prevented a lot of sickness and death and avoided a lot of job losses:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/27/five-ways-the-government-could-have-avoided-100000-covid-deaths
«While the number of UK deaths has entered the hundreds of thousands, New Zealand has recorded only 25 deaths from Covid-19 so far. Taiwan has recorded seven, Australia 909, Finland 655, Norway 550 and Singapore 29. These countries have largely returned to normal daily life. [...]
Countries that managed to effectively contain Sars-CoV-2 implemented screenings of new arrivals and 14-day quarantines for those entering the country. [...]
The second fatal flaw in the UK’s response happened on 12 March, when the government made the fatal decision to stop community testing, abandoning its line of sight over who had the virus and where it was spreading. Community testing is absolutely vital for controlling the virus. This was later resumed, but England outsourced testing and tracing to private firms instead of using local public health capacity.
Isolation – a key part of the test, trace, isolate response – was only ever an afterthought, and there has been little support for people who would struggle to stop working for 14 days. Even now, the majority of people have been refused a discretionary self-isolation payment, while statutory sick pay is a paltry £95.85 a week. By contrast, Finland and Norway offer 100% and 80% of income to people who are self-isolating. The result of the UK’s inadequate support is that many who have tested positive have ended up going into work and infecting others.»
As to "disparate impact" the lockdown+vaccinations approach of the anti-collectivism governments of the USA, UK, etc. has caused a lot more deaths, a lot more sickness, a lot more economic ruin among poor people, many of them black and brown, than test-trace-isolate, but all we hear is vax-novax arguments as a distraction.
Unfortunately, you are right. I chose vaccination because we will never do the socially responsible thing, no profit there. Anyway I will be trying out Professor Reed's podcast, always good to hear an intelligent thoughtful conversation.
“I chose vaccination because we will never do”
But vaccination is the end game anyhow: test-trace-isolate as an alternative to half-baked general permanent lockdowns "just" minimizes the impact in both health and economic damage while developing the vaccines, which are the endgame. But minimizing the damage and giving a lot more time to develop and test vaccines is a big thing.
“the socially responsible thing, no profit there.”
It is not just about “no profit”, it is mostly about the propaganda impact: Reagan said “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help’”, and therefore a government funded and organized public health project is "collectivist" and ideologically incompatible with neoliberalism. The the huge marketing campaign and profit opportunity for Pfizer and AstraZeneca and Moderna and J&J are also very welcome of course. A supporting quote about the Prime Minister of England:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/23/greed-and-capitalism-behind-jab-success-boris-johnson-tells-mps
«The UK’s successful vaccine rollout was thanks to “greed” and “capitalism”, Boris Johnson has told Conservative MPs»
«Japan did not "test and trace."»
But of course it did: there are two ways to do it, test a few people potentially infected and do a lot of tracing, or test a lot of people and do little tracing.
Different countries have adopted different mixes of test and trace, with different results: the japanese approach of very selective testing was not that successful because it had death rates "only" 16 times lower than the USA, instead of 100 times lower like countries with a better approach.
«Proximity to Chinese COVID viruses over time and residual immunity is regarded as one possible explanation for the low rates among Asian nations with took radically different approaches.»
Are Finland, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland all asian nations with proximity to China or rather "collectivist" dictatoships? :-)
«South Korea and Taiwan locked down and tested and traced»
Again, there are variants in the test-trace-isolate approach: some countries do an initial hard lockdown to slow down infections while preparing a test-trace-isolate system, some had it ready already, so for example China-Taiwan did not have a hard short lockdown like China-mainland, and did not do mass testing, only selective tracing:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/29/asia/taiwan-covid-19-intl-hnk/
«Authorities activated the island's Central Epidemic Command Center, which was set up in the wake of SARS, to coordinate between different ministries. The government also ramped up face mask and protective equipment production to make sure there would be a steady supply of PPE. The government also invested in mass testing and quick and effective contact tracing. Former Taiwanese Vice President Chen Chien-jen, who is an epidemiologist by training, said lockdowns are not ideal. Chen also said that the type of mass-testing schemes undertaken in mainland China, where millions of people are screened when a handful of cases are detected, are also unnecessary. "Very careful contact tracing, and very stringent quarantines of close contacts are the best way to contain Covid-19," he said.»
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-29/this-place-hasn-t-had-a-local-coronavirus-case-in-200-days
«What did this island of 23 million people do right? It has had 553 confirmed cases, with only seven deaths. Experts say closing borders early and tightly regulating travel have gone a long way toward fighting the virus. Other factors include rigorous contact tracing, technology-enforced quarantine and widespread mask wearing. [...] Also, as it’s not easy to make people stay in quarantine, Taiwan has taken steps to provide meal and grocery delivery and even some friendly contact via Line Bot, a robot that texts and chats. There is also punishment -- those who break quarantine face fines of up to NT$1million ($35,000). [...] Taiwan has world-class contact tracing -- on average, linking 20 to 30 contacts to each confirmed case. In extreme situations, such as that of a worker at a Taipei City hostess club who contracted the virus, the government tracked down as many as 150 contacts. Then, all contacts must undergo a 14-day home quarantine, even if they test negative.»
The approach the government of China-Taiwan to test-trace-isolate was particularly successful, but the different approach to test-trace-isolate of China-mainland was also successful, even if less so.
Both were *a lot* more successful than the reaganista lockdown approach of the USA, UK, France, Italy, etc.
How many of those vaccines did you participate in the trials of?
One
Any bad side affects?
My dose was 10X normal. I had a very sore deltoid for a day and a 4 hour fever.
I think obesity is the more direct difference.
«Speaking as a biologist who works on disease, I think there is a link to being black and brown.»
Ah but the argument becomes really hairy if the link is from “being black and brown” to being more susceptible to COVID, which is a very different argument, because the "vitamin D deficiency" argument applies to a lot of other group. There is nothing that says that the vitamin D deficiency argument applies only or even mostly to black and brown groups.
It is like the famous sickle cell anemia issue, which affects several other groups besides USA based black people, because like vitamin D deficiency it is not racist:
https://www.medscape.com/answers/205926-15311/what-is-the-global-prevalence-of-sickle-cell-disease-scd
“In several sections of Africa, the prevalence of sickle cell trait (heterozygosity) is as high as 30%. Although the disease is most frequently found in sub-Saharan Africa, it is also found in some parts of Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, and India, all of which have areas in which malaria is endemic. The mutation that results in HbS is believed to have originated in several locations in Africa and India.”
Also even among people of african descent sickle cell anemia is not prevalent, it is only prevalent among those groups that lived in malaria-infested zones, and it so happens that many black slaves sold by their black owners to slave traders and transported to America came from a narrow range of areas that were malaria infested, so sickle anemia is not a racial characteristic among black people either, it is a geographical one.
My (very lay) understanding of the Vitamin D science is that skin metabolizes UV into Vitamin D and melanin in the skin blocks UV so it would seem that Vit D deficiency may be related to skin-color in a way that, as you point out, sickle cell anemia is not. I think this could very well be one of the reasons black people are having worse Covid outcomes.
As a biologist who works on disease what are your thoughts on the vaccine companies and the government using the Relative Risk Reduction numbers of first 95% effectiveness, now 64%, instead of the Absolute Risk Reduction percentages of max 1.7%?
@Brian the Scientist
I think that further research will demonstrate the fact that a lot more Native Americans were wiped out by the more volatile European diseases such as Smallpox, etc, than were wiped out by the common cold, flu, ague and the sniffles. During this time Smallpox continued to kill the whites as well, but the Natives, having NO vestige of immunity to the volatile European plagues, died en masse and frequently to a person.
Any second year history minor can tell us that there existed no germ theory of diseases at this time, and, consequently, no penicillin or other antibiotics either. But, then, why belabor the obvious ?
That is a good guess but not correct. There are records from the Plymouth colony recording this. It was a pattern continued across North America. In 1917, with good supportive care, 50% of a recently contacted native village in Canada died. Smallpox killed, but the rates of death from smallpox were lower. The extreme symptoms of smallpox probably helped play a role there.
I have a paper on ice from 12 years ago that I started. I got to a point where I would have to spend 6-12 months in the national archives after collecting a body of historical materials. I got permission, but I just don't have the time for it.
Europeans, Africans and Asians have evolved to resist these diseases. Today, there are very few, if any, pure blood native Americans in the lower 48 states. Interbreeding made it possible for them to survive, although there is still a persistently higher death rate among hispanics and native Americans.
Antibiotics would not matter. They do not affect viruses. I mentioned the lack of disease theory because generally speaking, people will often not remember that the original settlers here had no idea how disease happened. Our founding fathers of the nation mostly did not either. Disease was punishment or judgment from god.
Most Mexican American Hispanics have a high Native American ancestry…Cortes and Cordoba didn’t bring no wives…
Brian, there's an earlier part of the story that you should research: the catastrophic impact wrought by contagious diseases endemic to Europe that were carried by the Spanish conquistadores to the idigenous tribal societies of Florida and the American Southeast- principally by the DeSoto expedition that began in Florida in 1539.
There are a lot of references and leads on the topic to be found in the 1997 DeSoto biography/American history by David Ewing Duncan https://www.davidewingduncan.com/books/hernando-de-soto
@Brian
Perhaps we devolve into "dueling histories" here. I have, and I recommend a book called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen. The title prompts the question: "How do we know that the 'lies' in *your book are any better? The answer turns out to be a voluminous and impeccably annotated bibliography, from which we can read an *original letter from an inhabitant of the Jamestown
colony, in which he *describes what I write about above. Deaths IN Jamestown from a smallpox epidemic, with a strong number of survivors among the whites,
and a 100% death rate among the Natives remaining around Jamestown. Natives *returning later to Jamestown could not *believe that any force killed *all of their people, and only *some of the Whites. In the original letter from the white resident of Jamestown back to England, he *bemoans the fact that these proud and fierce Native Warriors were *forced to conclude (what I am certain that the Whites had told them anyway) - that the White God WAS stronger than were the Native god(s) due to the *fact that their chronological understanding of the World left them no *other conclusion.
The other thing that "sunk" the Native prospects was the fact that only at the *end of European expansion did the Native tribes band together (The Plains Tribes) to *unite against the White Invader. Prior to that time, the Natives wanted to enlist the White Man as an *ally against their *own traditional enemies.
I grew up in Eastern Montana, near the Crow Reservation, and just across the S.Dak border from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Lakota Reservations. You will know that there was *never a "one size fits all" plan for "dealing with" the various tribes, and times when Europeans clashed with Natives.
The Jamestown event, when the people who WERE THERE claimed a 100% fatality rate among the Natives, (a fact which mystified the Whites as much as it did the Natives) was a much earlier time than the White Interaction with the Plains Tribes around whom I grew up. By the time the "Long Knives" were wiping out the Plains People (Arapahoe, Northern Cheyenne, Cree (down from Canada) Lakota, Crow, and Blackfeet (Western Montana) we still did not have "germ theory", but we *knew that smallpox infested blankets were "Bad Juju" !
Therefore, in confrontations with the Plains Tribes, we were *gifting the Natives with smallpox infested blankets to keep them "warm in the winter."
Louis Pasteur is credited as the founder of Germ Theory, and by 1844, Louis is still only 20 years old.
I appreciate and concede to your mention of the fact that Antibiotics do not affect viruses. They likewise do not affect rust, or '57 Chevies. This is to my previous point of "belaboring the obvious". I was listing antibiotics as an example, like man-powered air flight, and Model T Fords, of *other things that we *obviously did not have during the genocides of "Manifest Destiny" which was an excuse, and *not an actual reason for anything. It was just the Long Con, no matter how convincingly it might have been "dressed up". That the disease resistance of the Europeans might have been *one weak-kneed excuse for the Long Con, does not make it THE reason for the Long Con.
Given that Louis Pasteur, founder of Germ Theory is not born until 1822, it is a GREAT bet that NONE of our Founding Fathers had the least clue regarding Germ Theory as the source of diseases, and not just "bad air" as their fellow Deists of time were proposing. This is what "malaria" actually *means. "Bad Air."
The diaries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the primary source for Steven Ambrose's history Undaunted Courage, also document that the first source of contagious diseases imported from Europe among the tribes of the Missouri River valley and northern Great Plains were the Europeans (mostly French voyageurs) involved in the fur trade in the late 18th century, the era immediately prior to the outset of the L&C Expedition (1803-1806). The fatality rate in some of the villages they encountered in the region that's now known as Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas was extraordinarily high, like 70%-90%. Most of the diseases that proved so lethal weren't even considered particularly severe for Europeans- measles, chicken pox, mumps.
Absolutely so. Even today, we see many French Place Names in precisely those States. I myself was born in Laramie, WY. not far
from Old Fort Laramie, which was built on the Laramie River. The name Laramie is an Anglicized pronunciation for the French Fur Trapper in that area named Jacques La Ramie.
Cheyenne (both the town, the County, and the tribes people, is a French name as well. What we still call the Northern and Southern Cheyenne people originally called themselves "Shah-HEE-ay-la" people. The word "Sioux" is clearly a French name (because who *else spells like that ;-D ) applied to all of the various tribes of what are actually Lakota people. The Absaroka People of SE Montana, who Scouted for Custer at the Little Big Horn, are disparagingly called The Crow Nation, but, of course, that is not what they called themselves.
They were the traditional enemies of the Lakota long before the Europeans ever showed up. The Crow called themselves differing names, but Absaroka is the only accurate name I can pronounce. ;-D
Thank you so much for your very accurate observation, especially because I myself had forgotten that it was not only the White European "Plague" diseases that killed *so many of the Native people, but even diseases like measles, chicken pox and mumps, as you note, which are STILL dangerous in the White community if they are encountered as an adult.
I did not applaud it at the time, but I had all of those diseases before I was out of Second Grade.
No one *need question that kind of acquired immunity !
@Mascot
Some visitors, and even locals around the area of Eastern Montana, and NE Wyoming where I grew up, will comically react to all of the many French names for animals, Natives, and topography.
The problem invariably turns out to be the fact that said visitors and locals *forget, if they ever knew, that the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 allowed President Jefferson to buy from the French Monarch 828,000 *contiguous square miles of the Western Mississippi Basin, extending, as Lewis and Clark found, all the way to the Eastern tips of Rocky Mountain Range in Montana in one corner. At less than 3 cents per acre. Prior to that purchase, all of that area had been claimed by France for *some time ! Those French fur trappers really were the *first of the "crazy" Mountain Men to take on the Rockies and try to explain to the Natives this "French Father" from across a Big Water the Natives had never heard of, who had just flat-out laid *claim to ALL of their ancestral lands. You are *going to NEED a smooth language to talk your way out of *that one ! ;-D
Some confusion will also arise these days among those who *do recall reading something about "The Louisiana Purchase " in school, but they just assumed it to have meant that we bought a tract of land equivalent in size to the modern-day State of Louisiana.
I probably would not agree with this guy on a whole host of things but I bet he would be a blast to sit and have a beer with.
I wonder if Di Angelo is on the spectrum--socially awkward with no filter, earnest sharing without any humor or capacity for gauging her audience, and attraction to ideological crutches as cover for her insuperable difficulty negotiating nuanced social situations that also help her earn a living.
As an explanatory thesis for her bizarro world, self-reinforcing claptrap, that is kind of attractive, especially as she does not seem clever enough to have come up with such a remunerative grift from whole cloth.
"However, he’s deeply at odds with “antiracist” thinkers like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi, which has put him on the outs with current intellectual fashion in some segments of the political left." Do you mean segments of the political left who are tolerant and can read?
Reed is wrong to abandon the class, not race, argument. The disparities in life outcomes are nearly all explainable by number of adults in the household engaged with raising the children. Read Daniel Patrick Moynihan's prophetic report; it is predictive. When corrected for number of parents in the child's household, outcomes are nearly identical. Regardless of race, people who were raised by single adults have near-identical outcomes in housing, employment, incarceration, health, education and all other outcomes. The same is true of those raised in multi-adult households. Race doesn't influence outcome, number of parents do. But, you can't build a multi-trillion-dollar race war profiteering industry by admitting to the truth.
And, by the way, the amount of melanin in the skin affects how much Vitamin D is created. Vitamin D plays a key role in defending against viruses. The more melanin, the less Vitamin D. For children living in high-rise housing projects, the omni-present babysitter, the television, sees plenty of the kids during the day. There are few green spaces in which to play, and playgrounds are too often the province of drug dealers. So, children of color get less sunlight (less Vitamin D), less time outside (almost impossible to infect another outdoors), and are more apt to be raised on a non-healthy diet. It's real.
"But because statistically speaking, young Black men were more likely to commit crimes than other people. And the thing was outrageous, of course, the argument was outrageous, . . . '' Unsubstantiated assertion, unless "of course" counts as substantiation.
Does this mean I can say "all lives matter" without being labeled a racist?
Probably not.
Shucks - how come?
You'll have to ask Robin D. She may have addressed it in her most recent book-like product.
Frankly, have no desire to read her book - my original ? was asked in light of Reed's interview
Oh, sorry. I have no idea. I hit Robin D. overload a few months ago, and can't take any further discussion of her idiotic existence seriously.
In light of reference to "universalism" in this piece - seemed to me time, past time, for us to anchor our "identities" as members of the "human race" - this proliferation of "identities" whether re color, gender, sexual orientation and all their various permutations and combinations seems to me a recipe for coming apart instead of coming together ... And we gotta do the latter, lickety split - Mother Nature is pretty fed up with us ...
How dare you!
Reed offers the granularity of understanding required. Great interview.
Even if I don't agree with him on anything else, at least he doesn't subscribe to the woke disease, which means he's intellectually honest and one could actually have a debate with him. Similar to Zizek.
I don't claim to be up on leftist politicians, but this seems odd to me, as a libertarian, looking in to the different left factions. This anti-race stuff and critical race theory just looks like Marxism with a new face. Like they couldn't sell class warfare here, but they can sell this and slide Marxism in. BLM claims to be Marxist. So I find this odd. It looks like the perfect vehicle to pull it off.