We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
When it comes to the COVID-19 event, we have been experiencing a serious case of tunnel vision. As we focus on the day to day increase of COVID-19 things could look pretty grim, but as we take a step back and look at the comparative total mortality here in the US, things aren’t much worse than a bad seasonal flu, like that last seen in 2017-18. If you take the New York City region out of the mix, the rest of the country is cumulatively well within the expected mortality.
Written by a young white lady, of course. She probably never tried to run even a candy shop.
If I had my own shop, I would confront looters with firearms. My "shop", so to speak, is in an office suite up in a building in Manhattan, and the corona mess has damaged our business enough already.
Being constructive is so hard, but being destructive is a no-brainer.
If you’re shopping at Walmart because you believe it’s one of the last big chains with mainstream American values, you might want to rethink that idea.
The current coronavirus pandemic appears more comparable in terms of overall mortality to the influenza epidemics of 1957 and 1968, or the British flu epidemics of the late 1990s. Of course, the United States and United Kingdom did not only not shut down for any of those epidemics, they received little attention outside the health care system.
One of the issues I've been grappling with during all the recent nonsense is the idea, somehow, the U.S. is 'flawed'. In this article, Dr. Benedict Beckeld discusses what is best described as 'self-hatred' or fear of the familiar, oikophobia, as it relates to the U.S.
Sure, of course our nation is flawed. Those flaws are, in a way, our best feature, because they require constant discussion. Our Constitution memorialized free speech to ensure that discussion takes place. A friend asked if we're racist. Answering 'Yes' would imply everyone is racist and all our institutions are racist. So the only answer is 'No'. What IS true is we're more open about the racism which still exists. We show it, we talk about it on the news, we deplore it even as we work our way through it. Our dirty laundry is regularly on display for the world. Other nations either suppress their discussions, or are heterogeneous enough that racism isn't an issue they need to deal with too much. That allows them to judge us, and their judgments reach people in the U.S. and resonates. There is a strange self-loathing which sometimes accompanies wealth and success.
If we, as a nation, have a detrimental flaw, it's the hatred of what we are and what we've accomplished, and engaging that self-loathing. To that end, I can never be a leftist, let alone a Democrat. I hear too much about hate from them. They hate Trump, they hate what the U.S. represents, they hate our history, they ignore our accomplishments, somehow assuming these accomplishments rationalize the errors of our past. Accomplishments don't rationalize anything, they're just accomplishments.
Some of our citizens just need to learn to stop hating themselves. They need to learn to love our history with all its mistakes, and by default, our nation again. We have fixed so many mistakes. Why focus only on errors? We build on our successes, we don't build by focusing on failures. We can use the failures to improve, if we approach them constructively.
P.S. - I was sharing thoughts with a friend about what binds us as a nation. It is the Constitution, from my perspective. I know most of the people I referred to in this post, if they hate the U.S. and what it stands for, then they hate the Constitution. But the Constitution is, still today, an astounding and outstanding achievement. It does not grant rights, it protects them. Its amendments attempts to enumerate some of these rights, but makes it clear those listed are not all there are. This is very different than almost every other nation's basis. From this point of view, we are very much a nation, since the right to oppose, or hate, the Constitution is enshrined in the Constitution itself.
City politicians are covering themselves in shame in the current crisis. Take this loony tweet from City Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan): “If there is a spike in coronavirus cases in the next two weeks, don’t blame the protesters” but rather “racism” and the NYPD: “Police are increasing covid risk by using tear gas and putting people in crowded jails.”
Let’s all pretend a Republican now serves as mayor of Minneapolis rather than for one day out of the last 59 years. Let’s all pretend Democrats do not enjoy a political monopoly over every big city plagued by the worst violence. Let’s all pretend white supremacists and Nazis and Russians destroyed American cities rather than the people who vote for the people saying white supremacists and Nazis and Russians destroyed American cities. Let’s all pretend that one cop’s inhumanity indicts the entirety of law enforcement but many activists’ violence says nothing about the protests.
New York City, the home of finance capitalism, has a Communist mayor! He was the ultimate luxury good for the so-called “progressive” virtue-signaling rich. But now that things are serious the costs of Mayor de Blasio’s luxury leftism are obvious. Between the excessive and incompetent coronavirus shutdown and now the riots, New York City has been set back 40 years. Even Gov. Andrew Cuomo can see it...
And just like that, it became clear that the national torture of three years of the Russian collusion investigation simply should not have occurred. The problems were myriad. In Rosenstein’s words, the FBI “was not following the written protocols, and that significant errors appeared in applications.” What has emerged from the recent inspector general’s report and this testimony is that the Obama administration’s efforts to investigate and prosecute Trump administration officials wasn’t based on facts, but negligence or malice.
Riots are not good persuasion and will not get you a job. Scott lost three promotions in his business career because he was a white male but he'd love to be helpful if somebody told him how. (brilliant podcast) "Not a f-ing corporation in America is looking to hire a white person."
Or stay out of trouble and learn a trade. He tells it like it is.
I agree that doing things for other people is a foundational life strategy. Never expect gratitude, though. People resent helpfulness because it makes them feel helpless. It is complicated.
It's coming to a DSM near you one of these days: Orthorexia nervosa.You may find many victims of this disorder in the socially-distanced lines at Whole Foods. It's a harmless preoccupation other than the risk of annoying or boring your friends.
Another one is Binge Eating, aka Binge Eating Disorder. These are people who will ask for seconds, or eat ravenously until the food is gone. Historically it was just called the sin of gluttony, but now it's a diagnosis. It is interesting to me how various behaviors, maybe once attributed to demons, later to sins, are now DSM diagnoses.
CNN last week, "How are we going to stop these sunbathers on California beaches?!!!" CNN this week, "Masses in the streets walking arm in arm. Good for them."
Image: My answer to the question is "No" 
The Gospel According to Peter Thiel - 
The winner of the riots/protests 
Image via