Are the Democrats afraid of losing an election?

The New Neo Posted on by

Nonapod writes:

The administration seems to be behaving awfuly brazenly (or brazenly awful) for a president with such evidently low approval ratings. I guess they don’t care that so many people hate them? They just keep doubling down. They’ve all but openly declared war on American citizens. It’s surreal.

I believe that they don’t care all that much, for several reasons.

The first is that they learned from Obamacare that if they push through an unpopular program by hook or crook, it becomes very hard to dislodge. So they will push through programs they think benefit and enhance their own power, whether the people want them or don’t want them. It is all about power.

The second is that they think they have control of all the institutions, and that their propaganda machines will be able to calm down enough people that they can continue with their power grabs.

The third is that they think they can control the voting process in their favor. There are many many avenues for this. One is of course MSM propaganda, another is the control of social media (see for example this recent announcement about Google and YouTube). Another is weaponizing the DOJ and lawfare. Another is the ability to win elections by fraud, especially elections that are at all close.

In light of all this, I’m actually somewhat surprised that the Biden approval polls have gone down as much as they have. Of course, I think that Biden’s approval ratings should be around 1% at this point (or at any point, actually). But I realize how strong the Democrats’ propaganda machine remains.

The real question is whether reality will be stronger, and whether that will happen soon enough to avoid further disaster.

Condi Rice on CRT

The New Neo Posted on by

Condi Rice spoke about CRT during an appearance on the TV show “The View”:

“My parents never thought I was going to grow up in a world without prejudice, but they also told me, ‘That’s somebody else’s problem, not yours. You’re going to overcome it and you are going to be anything you want to be,'” Rice said. “That’s the message that I think we ought to be sending to kids.”

“One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow White people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past – I don’t think that’s very productive – or Black people have to feel disempowered by race,” she added.

“I would like Black kids to be completely empowered, to know that they are beautiful in their Blackness, but in order to do that I don’t have to make White kids feel bad for being White,” she said….

“It goes back to how we teach the history. We teach the good and we teach the bad of history. But what we don’t do is make 7- and 10-year-olds feel that they are somehow bad people because of the color of their skin,” she added. “We’ve been through that, and we don’t need to do that again for anyone.”

These sentiments used to be mainstream for people who are black or white or mixed, right or left, Democrat or Republican. Now they are much less so, and therefore when someone such as Condoleezza Rice utters them it makes news.

And although I haven’t looked at the reaction to her statements on social media, my guess is that a great many on the left will insult and ridicule her because after all she’s just a Republican, which makes her another “black face of white supremacy.”

Democrats propose more spying on your bank account

The New Neo Posted on by

They’re now talking about the triggering amount being $10K:

Democrats are vowing to crack down on tax cheats by giving banks new requirements to disclose to the IRS accounts that have total annual inflows or withdrawals of at least $10,000.

The plan would help fund President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar economic agenda, potentially raising $700 billion and reducing the need for tax increases to offset the cost of new social spending. Democrats say this plan to catch tax evasion by the wealthy and boost federal revenues is critical to address inequalities in a tax system that forces middle-income people to pay all they owe, while high-earners can shield their income from the IRS.

“This is very clear this is about wealthy business owners at the tippy top of the top,” Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. “If you don’t have $10,000 above your paycheck, Social Security income or the like coming in or going out, there’s no additional…

The Treasury is proposing two new data points — the sum of all the deposits and the total value of withdrawals — to add to a tax form where banks already report interest amounts and other account data to the IRS.

The proposal used to involve a mere $600, but I guess that dog wouldn’t hunt and now they’ve upped it to a gargantuan (that’s sarcasm) $10K. But we’re not talking about any “tippy-top” here.

Not that that matters. Once again, as with so many other things, computerized systems make this proposal relatively easy to implement; my guess is that it would have been difficult prior to computers storing all the information. The slippery slope of government intrusion is fully greased up these days and their plan is to monitor more and more people for less and less reason, and to use that monitoring for political ends.

And my guess is that they were never serious about the $600 threshold. It was just a stalking horse to make the $10K look so much better.

Is Joe Manchin considering leaving the Democratic Party?

The New Neo Posted on by

There are rumors to that effect.

I say no, he’s not, and that if he’s talking about it behind closed doors that’s just to threaten the Democrats. Manchin now appears to be one of the most powerful people in the Senate, perhaps even the most powerful. I write “appears to be” because these jockeyings for power are so loaded with behind-the-scenes machinations that it’s hard to be certain about anything.

Manchin has a history of talking a moderate line and then caving and voting with the Democrats when it matters. I have to say that this time it sounds different. But isn’t that what Charlie Brown always says to Lucy?

Revolution and lyrics: personal change versus structural change

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter John Tyler writes:

Speaking of the meaning of songs, consider John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which came out in 1971.

If one did not know any better, you would think the lyrics were written by Karl Marx or Lenin.
This song is probably the favorite of Bernie Sanders and AOC, among others.

That brings up something I’ve long thought about – and written about several times, at least in the comments – whether song lyrics influence people in terms of big life decisions or political positions, and if so how common that is.

I’m probably on one end of the spectrum in that regard. Although I like music a lot and certain performers or songwriters or composers very much, I don’t think a song has ever influenced my political life or opinions. The most I can say about lyrical guidance is that sometimes I’m affected in the sense of the philosophical and emotional (for that latter, sometimes acting as a releaser for a good cry about something). For example, some of the lyrical offerings of Leonard Cohen have a philosophical attitude that appeals to me – in particular the songs “Anthem” and “Going Home.” But I don’t think they change my attitude much if at all.

I know there are people who are quite different, those who look up to musicians and/or lyricists (or did look up to them when young) as thought leaders in the political sense.

And let me add that I’ve never liked the song “Imagine” – not even musically, and not lyrically. The lyrics have always seemed to be those of “a dreamer,” just as the song says – a fantasy rather than anything that could be translated into reality. Nor does the singer even suggest a way to accomplish such a transformation into something realistically possible. The song is indeed an anti-religious, anti-capitalist, New-World-Order-ish sort of thing, but in a very vague way.

Has it influenced many people? I wouldn’t be the best judge of that, but this page about “Imagine” calls it “one of the most influential songs of the 20th Century.” The essay doesn’t point to any particular backing for the claim, but if it’s true then yes, the song has probably done some damage. But I see it more as reflecting what was already strongly in the air at the time, and then perhaps magnifying it.

John Lennon apparently wrote “Imagine,” but he also supposedly had written “Revolution” three years earlier (1968), in which the lyrics say:

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re all doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait…

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You’d better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow

At the time of “Revolution’s” release, I had taken a course in college called “Russian Intellectual History,” which was deeply influential for me in understanding the Sixties years I was experiencing. I no longer remember the names of the Russian writers I’m referring to, but the gist of it was that same argument between improving oneself versus improving the world.

And so I saw Lennon’s message in both songs – for what it was worth – as consistent, because both songs were speaking up for personal transformation. “Revolution” was explicit about the personal rather than the activist collective, and “Imagine” seemed to be dreaming about how personal transformation would lead to societal transformation if enough people practiced it, rather than the other way around.

Open thread 10/20/21

The New Neo Posted on by

Young people who do reaction videos to this song on YouTube have no idea what it’s about, although they usually like it. But even after they look up what it’s about, they still don’t what it’s about. How could they?:

The UK’s fundamental transformation through COVID restrictions

The New Neo Posted on by

On how COVID restrictions have transformed the UK – not COVID itself, mind you, but the response to it:

What was once the land of “keep calm and carry on” could now be the “most frightened nation in the world.” So says Laura Dodsworth, author of A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic. Data seem to bear her impression out. According to an Ipsos MORI poll conducted in July, an impressive 27 percent of Britons want to impose a government-mandated nationwide curfew of 10 PM—not then in force—“until the pandemic was under control worldwide,” which might be years from now. A not-inconsiderable 19 percent would impose such a curfew “permanently, regardless of the risk from Covid-19.” Presumably, these are people who don’t get out much. While 64 percent want Britain’s mask mandate in shops and on public transport to remain a legal requirement for the duration of the global pandemic, an astounding 51 percent want to be masked by law, forever.

There’s more: some 35 percent want to confine any Briton who returns from a foreign country, vaccinated or not, to a ten-day home quarantine—permanently, Covid or no Covid. A full 46 percent would require a vaccine passport in order to travel abroad—permanently, Covid or no Covid. So young people today would still be flashing that QR code on whatever passes for smartphones in 2095, though they might have trouble displaying the device to a flight attendant while bracing on their walkers. Likewise, the 36 percent who want to be required to check in at pubs and restaurants with a National Health Service contact-tracing app forever. A goodly 34 percent want social distancing in “theatres, pubs and sports grounds,” regardless of any risk of Covid, forever. A truly astonishing 26 percent of Britons would summarily close all casinos and nightclubs forever. Are these just a bunch of fogies who don’t go clubbing anyway? No. In the 16-to-24 age bracket, the proportion of Brits who want to convert Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London’s Soho into a community lending library, even after Covid is a distant memory, soars to a staggering 40 percent.

I haven’t come across a poll in the US asking the same or similar questions, but my guess is that the numbers for permanent restrictions of this type would be somewhat smaller. Only somewhat, however. The US has a more robust history of valuing individual liberties (free speech, for example, and having no official state religion). However, the UK numbers are still shocking, because the UK certainly has some of that tradition as well.

One of the very first things I said to a friend when the COVID restrictions began was: “We’re all going to end up with OCD.” “OCD” is obsessive-compulsive disorder, and although I was making a joke I was also somewhat serious. My early sense was based on the tenaciousness of OCD symptoms, once induced and adopted. If a person has any tendency towards OCD at all – and a lot of people do even though they haven’t actually displayed OCD symptoms prior to COVID – and that person has been doing a bunch of things that the person thinks has kept that person safe from disease, it can be very hard to give them up. It generally requires an active decision and effort to do so. It’s an effort a lot of people won’t make.

And for some, all of these restrictions offer secondary gains. For example, if a person has any sort of social anxiety, it’s easier to stay away from people, once you’ve gotten used to it. Computers make isolation less onerous, too.

Lastly, youth has been so protected compared to earlier generations. So many diseases have mostly been vanquished that were horrific scourges even in my lifetime – polio, leukemia (which was virtually always a death sentence when I was young, and struck a considerable number of children), and mumps and measles (the latter of which had the possibility of significant and highly serous complications such as encephalitis). These advances are great, but they have made the younger generation less willing to shoulder any health risks, and that makes them more susceptible to advocating restrictions on liberty in the name of health.

The Capitol breach

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter Barry Meislin.]

Most of us here have seen similar videos of January 6th before. We know that a certain number of demonstraters – a large number, actually – were let in, and that they almost certainly thought it was allowed, and that they were not violent.

What we still don’t know (at least, I haven’t been able to find it although the intensive investigation must have uncovered it) is how many people were actually violent, where that happened, whether anything provoked it or whether they started it, who they were, and where they all are now. We also don’t know who let them in; some seem to have been Capitol Police, and some were anonymous masked people dressed in black. Those are important questions, and although it’s been over nine months since January 6th, we still only have inadequate bits and pieces of the answers.

Instead, the misinformation and outright lies about that day’s proceedings still hold sway. For example, in that very thread I just embedded, you can see the following replies:

We are pushing the idea that they were let in, but I think we’re forgetting the assault and violence outside that broke the line of defence and killed police.

Note the word “we” – even though I doubt that this person (if it is a person rather than a bot) is part of the “we.” Note also the spelling of the word “defense” as “defence.” Although that might just be an error, it’s actually the Australian and UK spelling. Interesting, no?

Here’s another from a different user (for some reason I can’t get the specific link, but it’s in the thread from someone who calls himself “Miles Q Black”):

y’all missed the part where the savages #MAGATerrorists brutally attacked police officers- murdering a police officer.

The original narrative about Officer Sicknick’s death is the gift that keeps on giving to the left. I have no idea whether these replies are from actual people, but they certainly might be, and at any rate I have little doubt that the sentiments therein are shared by huge swaths of American voters.

And another thing about COVID and multiple myeloma patients

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday we were discussing how a disease like multiple myeloma almost certainly made Colin Powell susceptible to dying from COVID despite having been vaccinated. Now I see there’s even more to it:

Patients with active chronic lymphocytic leukemia or multiple myeloma mounted lower antibody responses to mRNA COVID-19 vaccination than healthy individuals, according to data from two reports published in Blood.

The findings suggested the lower antibody response may be a result of both the cancer and its treatments…

“Patients with CLL are predisposed to develop infections due to inherent immune defects related to their primary disease and as a result of therapy. The mechanisms underlying the immunodeficiency in CLL may also reduce response to vaccines,” Herishanu told Healio. “We found that the antibody response to BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in patients with CLL is markedly impaired and affected by disease activity and treatment.”

Double or triple whammy.