I Want a New Left

First They Came for the ... Smokers?!

I confess I never paid much attention to the anti-smoking campaign, not being a smoker. But then that’s the way this apparently works. “First they came for the Jews, but I wasn’t Jewish, so I did nothing.” So, not being a smoker, I did nothing, I’m ashamed to say. All I did was get a quiet chuckle as I thought of some ardent smokers I knew when I was in grad school who were also ardent leftists. “It’s your fellow leftists who are doing this to you,” I thought. By that time, I had lost track of them and never learned what they thought of the matter.

Anyway, see here. The author points out that the anti-smoking campaign simply meant that obesity went out of control. Maybe that’s just correlation, but maybe not. And as Thomas Sowell says, there aren’t solutions, just trade-offs.

China’s Three-Child Policy

Recognizing that there will be an enormous problem taking care of an aging population with a much smaller younger population to do the work, China has reversed course on its one-child policy, and is now allowing up to three children. It’s not working very well. See a video about it here. The one-child policy was implemented so brutally that there just aren’t enough young women around who could have three children so as to turn things around, plus, their numbers are decreasing all the time. And it’s very expensive to have children, so having even two can be a big problem. The policy is being ridiculed on China’s social media.

When I was young, the idea of zero-population growth was all the rage, but I can’t remember anyone pointing out that to get there, we would have to reduce the population by a lot, and that that would entail that vast numbers of elderly people would need to be supported by a much smaller number of young people. According to the elites back then, there were no problems with zero-population growth, while having an exploding population was an enormous problem.

The elites of every era are wrong about something. What are our elites wrong about?

The Ruling-Class Media Made Its Choice

And now they must live with it. At this link there is a survey of a bunch of countries from various parts of the world showing that Americans trust their media less than citizens in any of these other countries do. Heh. I initially thought the list would be just European countries plus Australia, but there are plenty of Third World countries on the list, too. Well, our media made its choice, and it’s a bad one.

And let me remind them that they are working with a model of society that is fifty years out of date. Fifty years ago almost all marginalized people supported the Dems, but that is no longer the case, so bashing Trump supporters means bashing lots of marginalized people. If you are part of the media, please think about this, and think about whether you really want to be a part of it.

The Greens in Germany: Popular and Unpopular Simultaneously

See here. People like environmental ideas, but not making sacrifices for the environment. Heh.

An Oldie from My Blog Seven Years Ago

But still relevant. See here. A black guy who is a math student complains that he is “surrounded by systems of support that do not actually guarantee my academic success.” What is it with all this talk of systems this and systemic that? I never once thought in these terms when I was a math major fifty years ago.

National March for Palestine in DC

This apparently was a thing (here), but it failed to get many marchers or much media attention. Heh.

Christians in Iran: A Threat to the Regime?

I don’t really believe this, but apparently some do, including (apparently) the regime itself. See here. The claim is that there are a growing number of secret Christians in Iran and that the mosques are empty. Heh.

More on Targeted Iranian News Websites

Here. There are a couple points I want to make. First, they were targeted because they were not using an .ir URL, so they were not wholly under the control of the Iranians. (I assume that is the way these things work.) Also, I have to wonder if this really happened or if it is something the Iranians cooked up to force U.S. negotiators into making more concessions. Another possibility is that it was done by some rogue outfit within the U.S. government that Biden and his handlers would not have allowed to act, if they had known about it ahead of time. Then again, here is a report of a U.S. destroyer sailing in the strait between China and Taiwan, something I never imagined Biden would allow, but which he must know about. So, who knows?

The U.S. Shut Down News Agencies’ Websites in Iran and Other Middle Eastern Countries?

This is hard to believe. See here. The powers-that-be here in America seem very intent on shutting up the voices of ordinary Americans who reject the Narrative and who are on social media. But I didn’t think they cared about news agencies in Iran (or among the Palestinians). And is it even technologically possible for them to do this? Or are they just blocking Americans from seeing these websites?

It’s hard for me to fit this in to what I believe about our elites. Anyone?

What Do We Call This Racial Obsession?

Math is racist. Now, black holes are connected with something racial and there is a college course about it (here). A few months ago, someone insisted that white men who marry black women are racist. A few years ago someone insisted that Taco Bell was racist for not having french fries. When blacks attack Asians, we are told it is due to white supremacy. A while back, I noted the comment of someone who said his children and nephews and nieces thought that learning facts that were unflattering to blacks was racist. People living in cities that are spiraling downwards because of racial politics, such as Minneapolis, usually cannot see that they are spiraling downwards, and keep doing the things that increase the downward spiral. (For example, they are in denial that the rise in crime is the result of their hateful attitudes toward the police.) Various people have committed hoaxes against themselves in order to pretend that they are victims of hate crimes, and the elites go bananas and talk about how terrible it is that these things happen. They never seem embarrassed afterwards when they turn out to be hoaxes. Various other people have pretended that they are people of color, even though they are white through and through. There are politicians who imagine that there are no poor whites. There are whites who are ashamed of being white. An environmental group has disbanded because they acknowledged that they were too racist (here). There are highly educated people who don’t know the difference between using the “N” word and mentioning it, with the result that famous black authors can’t be used in the classroom.

So, what do we call all of this nonsense? And I’ve only just touched the surface of things. I’m sure most people could add fifty other items to the list. Moreover, if I had known back in the late 1960s that racial matters were going to dominate all of leftist discourse and energy so that class matters were wholly ignored, I never would have joined the left. But these people simply cannot help themselves. They cannot stop themselves from seeing racism everywhere. I thought claiming that math is racist would bring most people to their senses, but it hasn't. To call them racialists seems a little tame. So does calling them wokesters. We need something clever and cutting.