Gracefully Flattening the Tara Reade Curve on China
A title that makes no sense, but covers all the points that need to be made
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Tara Reade and the Mirror
You know, I sometimes make people mad with the things I say. Shocking, right? Here’s the most recent example.
The real issue is 2020: dumber than 2016. But for four years a lot of pundits on the left have, out of one corner of their mouths, attacked Trump as a serial rapist and out of the other corner of their mouths attacked him as all talk. The tweet was sarcastic and the reaction to it was pretty revealing, particularly all the people saying, essentially, “well it’d be just one for Biden and many for Trump.”
More importantly though is this: progressives have assured us that they would never, ever have a Trump. I have said they eventually would and they would never admit it. Even reasonable progressive pundits have gotten angry with me for saying this. They live in abject denial. Unfortunately for them, a committed progressive partisan has dared to say the quiet part out loud. Check out Gloria Allred’s daughter, Lisa Bloom:
Let me be perfectly clear — Joe Biden is not their Trump. Frankly, I think Joe and Jill Biden are very decent and likable people even as I disagree with them on public policy. But the Bloom tweet is revealing. Certainly, a lot of people will say they disagree. But then they have to be asked why they believed Christine Blasey Ford who had zero people corroborating her story.
Yesterday, the Associated Press wrote a 1,046 word piece about Tara Reade and in the last 92 words revealed two more people have come forward who claim Tara Reade told them what happened. One was in the time frame of the assault. The other in the early 2000s.
Reade, at this point, has more people who she told around the time of the assault than Ford has had ever. She has more credibility than Ford ever had.
What is remarkable is not the leftwing pundits and Democrats who deny this. It is expected that the very Democrats who condemned Kavanaugh would try to obfuscate on this. What is remarkable is the media. Where is Ronan Farrow or the New Yorker or Jane Meyer or NBC News or the rest of them? The only prominent talking head who currently has a justification for silence is Michael Avenatti and that’s because he is in jail. The very people who tried to bring down Kavanaugh hiding behind the veneer of objective reporters are now no where to be found or are trying to throw up Potemkin Villages of obfuscation to avoid having to deal with Reade’s allegations.
If you realize that Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Joe Biden, and the laundry list of others were never about #metoo or sexual harassment or assault, but over whether or not people should be able to murder babies, you’ll understand the double standard. The Brett Kavanaugh attacks and Joe Biden defenses have never been about the patriarchy or power. They have always been about preserving the right to kill kids.
Democrats should see themselves in the mirror when they see Trump supporters. So long as their guy can beat the right, they’ll embrace whatever it is. They’ll never admit it, but they’ll know it is true even as they try to distinguish.
I’ll give Kathleen Parker the last word:
In the aftermath of the Kavanaugh hearings, Ford became a symbol of women’s empowerment. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine and received awardsand praise for her courage. She also suffered vicious social media attacks and threats, as did Kavanaugh and his family.
She has largely kept to herself since, which is surely good for her soul but is also a reminder of another lesson in the decades-long culture war over sexual harassment. Once the feminist power brokers are finished with you, they move on to slay other monsters. Unless it’s one of their own monsters.
Moving the Goalposts on Flattening the Curve
I asked over the weekend if anyone knew any of the champions of “herd immunity” who’d gone out to get the virus. I actually really was curious. But my question was met with outrage as if I was insulting people. I actually really am curious. I hear so many conservatives advocate herd immunity, oblivious to what it would entail, I presumed some had. Thankfully, they have not.
I say that because the model for herd immunity has been Sweden, even as the Swedes deny they are pushing herd immunity. Well, things are not going well in Sweden. They have a 12% mortality rate and, per capita, have way more infections than the United States — in fact, the sixth worse on the planet right now. All the worst hit places on the planet are in Western Europe. Yay socialized medicine!
My point isn’t to gloat on any of this. I think “herd immunity” is what a lot of people have gravitated towards with no other solution to counter shelter-in-place. It’s just a bad argument. What has been a good argument is shelter-in-place to flatten the curve. Yes, it would make the virus hang around longer, but it would give our hospitals time to prepare, allow the full production of PPE, and ramp up testing capacity nationwide. We needed to do it because we are facing a virus that is more deadly and more contagious than the flu.
All the people saying “it’s just a flu” really are talking out of their asses, to be blunt. They are in the minority, know it, and so are screaming more loudly. They are also fighting yesterday’s fight.
The fight that must be fought now is on reopening. We inarguably flattened the curve. The virus is inarguably going to be around. So how do we reopen?
Unfortunately, many of the very same people who demanded we shelter in place to flatten the curve are moving the goalposts. We have gone from flattening the curve to “crushing the curve” or eradicating the virus before going outside.
The virus is not going away. Flattening the curve was never about stopping people from dying. It was about avoiding an overwhelmed hospital infrastructure. We have had time to prepare resources and hospitals. It is time to reopen.
This Sean Trende piece really captures my thinking and I regret I didn’t write it. He is spot on.
This seems to reflect a wider phenomenon of people being driven into “teams” regarding the shutdown. We’ve become polarized on the issue, and indeed this polarization is beginning to reflect our underlying politics. This is an unwelcome development. One of the dynamics about team sports is an inability to see the other side’s point of view; indeed, that is in many ways the point of teams. As this virus develops, flexibility will be crucial in determining how well we come out of it, and a willingness to listen to the viewpoints of those we don’t generally agree with is probably the most important trait we can have. But, as with so many other things, that seems to be one more fatality resulting from this virus.
Dealing with China
When I was a child, we took a trip to Houston, TX to visit my mom’s cousins. I remember sitting on the floor playing while everyone sat around with the television on in the background. The Republican Convention was the only thing on television. I don’t really remember the speech from the time, but I heard Jeane Kirkpatrick give her famous speech. The UN Ambassador went on a tirade about the “blame America first” Democrats who had been meeting in San Francisco.
Kirkpatrick was a Democrat hawk who came into the Reagan Administration in reaction to a Democratic Party that had rapidly drifted left to the point Ted Kennedy would try to get the Soviet Leader Andropov to do an American media tour to defuse tensions in the run up to the 1984 election. Kennedy wanted to advise the Soviets on how to navigate the American media to show they meant peace as a way to undermine the strong “evil empire” stance Reagan had advanced.
In her speech, Kirkpatrick said of the Democrats who had convened to nominate Walter Mondale in San Francisco,
They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.
But then, somehow, they always blame America first.
When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.
But then, they always blame America first.
What was different between then and now is that while the media leaned left, it was still mostly run by men who had fought on the battlefields of Germany and the islands of the Pacific. They may have leaned left, but they were not really haters of America even if they thought Reagan was too belligerent.
Now, however, the American media is too willing to spread Chinese communist propaganda to own the President. Because Trump is President, the media would rather believe a tyrannical regime that ruthlessly murders dissidents and runs concentration camps.
Consider Politico, which ran what amounts to Chinese propaganda. Turns out the Chinese citizens who China allows on Twitter hate President Trump. A more interesting story would be why Twitter lets China’s propaganda agents push lies on Twitter when Twitter is banned in China.
Remember, Twitter says it will delete false information. But China’s foreign minister who previously tweeted that the virus came from Wuhan has now more than once blamed the United States. Twitter left those tweets up. CNN recently ran Chico’s propaganda about its growing naval might. Reuters has repacked Chinese communist produced propaganda pieces as news stories too.
A generation of American reporters who gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt during the 9/11 situation after a very contentious 2000 election has given way to a generation of reporters who came of age with Obama and were fed into media outlets by leftwing groups.
CNN ditched a competent and likable morning host to free a slot for Valerie Jarrett’s daughter. MSNBC and NBC routinely hire as reporters people who started at leftwing groups. About the only network that does not do that is Fox, which in turn is regularly attacked by the leftwing hacks who get the veneer of objectivity at the other networks.
The United States is going to have to find a way to counter China’s rise and it will do so with a press corps and Democratic Party aligned with China, in part because Orange Man Bad™️.
Honestly, one of the worst aspects of this President’s tenure is a go it alone tendency that is effectively rudderless and based on the whims of the Commander in Chief. The United States should be working behind the scenes to rally a multinational coalition against China right now, but is not.
The United States could get Australia, Britain, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, and plenty of other countries China has betrayed in the past few months to leverage the World Trade Organization and other entities against China.
The President is stuck on tariffs and instead needs to be leader of the free world. It is the GOP that is abdicating that leadership at a time the Democrats seem perfectly content to hand off global leadership to Chinese communists.
We need better, clearer thinking on China than we are getting from the Trump Administration. But we need more American thinking than we are getting from the Democrats and their friends in the press.
The Secular Religion Lacks Grace and Leads to Tyranny
I mention the left/media’s love of China. It is not a surprise that an increasingly secular group could prefer a command-control society to one where the various presidents are still sworn in with a Bible.
In New York City, the Speaker of the New York City Council wants Samaritan’s Purse gone. The Good Samaritan in the Bible is one of the most famous parables. In it, the religious people avoid a man in a ditch who had been set upon by robbers. But the Samaritan, from a group of people largely treated as outcasts by society, showed Christian love to the man in the ditch and took care of him. The Samaritan did not ask if the person was Jewish, a believer, straight, gay, transgendered, etc. He just showed brotherly, Christian love.
That is the whole purpose of Samaritan’s Purse, a nonprofit that goes where many fear to go. The charity works in Christian and non-Christian nations. It is striking that the organization was more favorably received in pagan Asian cultures than in New York City. Its willingness to help in New York was met with hostile cries from gay rights activists. Nevertheless, Samaritan’s Purse persisted in helping others without regard to the needy’s preferred pronouns or orientation.
Now, with the need receding, New York pagans are back to persecuting the Christian group. Why?
Well, the secular religion does not have a concept of grace. If mercy is sparing others from something they deserve, grace is giving others something they do not deserve. It is a uniquely Christian concept that secularists lack. To the extent they possess it, it is a holdover from a more Christianized American era that might be reflective in their upbringing. Generally speaking, however, those who speak the loudest about tolerance are the least tolerant.
The problem with the secular religion, whether it be communism, nazism, fascism, or Western secular hedonism, is the perverse soteriology.
In the Christian doctrine of salvation, if you repent and trust in Christ, you are saved. Everyone else around you may go to hell, but you will spend eternity with Christ. In every other major world religion that accepts a higher power than the mob, accepting the higher power leads to your own redemptive path.
In the secular religion where the mob is god, though you yourself may repent, you are still damned so long as there are other unrepentant sinners out there.
Let’s say, for example, that you repent of your belief that climate change is nonsense and accept mankind is to blame. You trade in your car for a bike. You unplug your home from the power grid and put up solar panels and a windmill. You invest in unicorn farts for extra power. You also take up composting and a religious devotion to recycling.
You are still damned to a hell on earth so long as your neighbor is driving his SUV, having more than 2.25 kids, and burning incandescent lightbulbs. He must be punished, re-educated, silenced, or driven from society in order for you to be saved.
The same holds true with transgenderism. Let’s say you finally give up the quaint scientific notion that boys cannot become girls and instead embrace the secular religion’s dogma that we are born gay or straight, but get to choose our own gender. So long as a Christian bigot is out there saying otherwise and risking convincing others of truth, you cannot get your heaven on earth. The bigots must be censored, silenced, driven from society, or worse.
It makes people mad when I say it, but ultimately the difference in Western societies between the Islamic radical and the Western secularist is whether one’s life is taken or just destroyed. Both pursue the ruination of their enemies, heretics, and dissidents. Only one takes life. Except…the twentieth century and the twenty-first are full of secular regimes that are perfectly willing to take lives to ensure their heavens on earth.
Thankfully, there is only a violent fringe element on the secular left in most western societies today. But they sure do bat eye lashes at China and many of them still make excuses for Soviet excess.
Secularism cannot get salvation so long as the damned are free to believe contrary things or mouth off in society. The soteriology of the secularist ends in damnation for all unless the saved purify the other, willingly or not. We are getting a small taste of that in New York City’s pagan secularists trying to drive a Christian charity out of town now that it is no longer useful to them. We are getting a slightly larger taste of it as secular elite willingly embrace China over an elected American president because he, who they once embraced, dared to change the letter next to his name from “D” to “R” and beat them.
Imagine now if Tara Reade came out tomorrow and said she meant Trump, not Biden.
I'm still laughing at the ending of this one. The whole thing reads like a Sad-but-True monologue of the American battle within. Well done Erick!!
Erick. All points well covered. Thanks. Last sentence was so powerful.