Reading the Subtext Aloud

Jonah returns for the weekend Ruminant to address the growing unease he gets from the ...

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Jonah returns for the weekend Ruminant to address the growing unease he gets from the national protest movements. What’s going to be more damaging: the protests, or the massive overcorrection from the critics of the protests? With a little bit of perspective, it should be easy to see that everyone is manipulating data for their own ends – the epidemiologists, the protesters, and, of course, the Executive (to put it politely).


Show Notes:

–This week’s G-File

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  1. Richard Fulmer

    The idea that freedom is oppressive was hardly original to FDR. For example, George Fitzhugh, an antebellum slavery proponent, argued:

    "The dissociation of labor and disintegration of society, which liberty and free competition occasion, is especially injurious to the poorer class; for besides the labor necessary to support the family, the poor man is burdened with the care of finding a home, and procuring employment, and attending to all domestic wants and concerns.

    "Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares altogether, and slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism. In fact, the ordinary wages of common labor are insufficient to keep up separate domestic establishments for each of the poor, and association or starvation is in many cases inevitable. In free society, as well in Europe as in America, this is the accepted theory, and various schemes have been resorted to, all without success, to cure the evil. The association of labor properly carried out under a common head or ruler, would render labor more efficient, relieve the laborer of many of the cares of household affairs, and protect and support him in sickness and old age, besides preventing the too great reduction of wages by redundancy of labor and free competition. Slavery attains all these results. What else will?"

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  2. Richard Fulmer

    I disagree with David’s Sunday post about systemic racism, though I understand his passion. One of the problems with the idea of systemic racism is that it denies black agency. The message is that African Americans can do little or nothing to improve their lives or the lives of their loved ones until white Americans perfect themselves. Such perfection will be a long time coming.

    Yes, there are systemic problems with policing, problems with the welfare system, and problems with the regulatory state that all need to be addressed. Many of the institutional barriers to upward mobility, though, aren't racist. Some are well-intended, others are meant to protect the status quo:
    - Zoning restrictions and building codes protect current homeowners.
    - Minimum wage laws protect union members from competition from unskilled labor.
    - Job licensing laws, onerous business startup regulations, and the war against the gig economy protect existing businesses that don't want to compete with new rivals.

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  3. Richard Fulmer

    If I tried, I could probably come up with something for which giving up my integrity and selling my soul might (might) be worthwhile. Defaming someone like Mattis to defend someone like Trump doesn't come close.

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    Ajax81613

    You say at one point something to the effect of “I’m sure if I were black I would feel more passion about [police abuse of and racism towards black people].” Why is it that you don’t feel passion for injustice towards others but you do if it affects you? I didn’t get the sense that many of the white people in the peaceful protest crowds were conservatives. This would seem to me to be the opposite of the teachings of Christ. At what point is it justified to place one’s personal moral judgement ahead of the teachings a of Christ?

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    BrandonAlleman

    Little late listening to this. Hard to keep up. I thought the first part of this one suffered from some of the same tempest of emotion faults it was criticising. I take the point about some epidemiologists working outside their lane and being hypocritical. I thought it was more narative driven than fact driven to say it was all epidemiologists that said this and to say that any epidemiologists said that church gatherings were evil or stupid. I think you inserted your subtext for the text a bit here and were oversimplifying and grouping up a lot of the arguments of the protests.

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      Ajax81613

      I had the same thought. Can we have the source for your allegation that there were people calling churchgoers “evil,” please?

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  6. Sven Wilson

    Jonah is a little too shocked that public health officials are "carving out" exceptions for the protesters. Schools of public health were long ago taken over by social justice warriors. There are a few data-driven social scientists among this crowd, but they are mostly outnumbered by political activists.

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  7. Mark F

    What the Ruminant is missing is the Butlerian response. I have a suggestion. Let subscribers submit NYWTIAP for it. Heck, I've got a little cash for a charity if that'll make it happen.

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  8. Matthew

    I agree with the frequently made argument that the election isn't about Trump v. the media, and that Trump is an unacceptable occupant of the White House. With that said, I don't think anger at the New York Times is a mere distraction. I'm a center right person who used to regularly read the New York Times (I still do, although I'm increasingly unsure why) and listen to/read NPR. My disgust towards Trump has made me more skeptical of conservative institutions and in some ways more sympathetic towards left-leaning institutions. But I find myself far more frustrated with legacy media institutions than I used to be. For example, this week The New York Times ran a story that suggested that police brutality towards black people and the coronavirus were parallel plagues, and that went on to argue or favorably quote arguments that black people had a choice between dying of coronavirus or dying from police brutality. Yes the coronavirus has killed 100,000 people so far, and about 1,000 people (of all races) per year die from police violence (total--surely some of those killings were tragically justified, surely some were examples of immoral police brutality devoid of racial animus, surely some were examples of racially motivated, unjustified killing). In the short run, this probably doesn't matter as much as Donald Trump's many abuses of power, many exhalations of cruelty, many celebrations of ignorance and lies. But I do think it embodies a rot in that the most elite intellectual and media institutions are willing to abandon arguments based on truth. Trump is a more direct, serious, and grave danger in the short run, but intellectual rot at elite institutions speaks poorly for the long term prospects of the united States.

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    BWG

    Jonah, I'm generally with you on everything you've discussed over the past few days. However, I think Adam White's comparison with the Wisconsin primary is not a good one. First, the Governor asked the Republican controlled legislature to change it to all-mail-in, but they refused. You yourself have defended wearing a face covering as something we do to protect our most vulnerable, and denounced those who refuse to wear one for imagined political reasons. I see the Republican's rejection of the switch to mail-in as the absolute opposite of your stance on that - putting politics above the health and safety of their most vulnerable citizens. Second, I think precisely because the Wisconsin primary was an orderly event scheduled far in advance of the conventions, it's very reasonable to reschedule and convert to mail-in given reality was vastly changed by COVID-19. (Moral outrage, on the other hand, is difficult to postpone. How badly did you want to vent about all the BS that's gone on this week? Could you have postponed that venting to next week?) Third, everyone knew the Wisconsin primary would not change anything - at that point it was clearly Bite-em and Tchump. So the argument that the protests won't substantially change anything applies equally to this primary. (And I think the protests WILL actually change some things, though not all the yammering from the left, as you say.) Fourth, that was at a time when the pandemic was still exponential, and it was very reasonable to be very vocal about the consequences of risky behavior. So in summary, I totally get that the leftist health "experts" are being two-faced by condemning that primary, then saying it's OK to go out and protest. I just think it's not as good a comparator as you would argue.

    Don't we live in SUPER interesting times! It does just about make my head explode now and then, but there are also stunning moments like Mattis's letter that rise above all the BS. I wish he would run for president, he would so elevate the conversation. (He's a hometown guy here in the Tri-Cities WA area, and I try to be objective, but prob am not. I'd like to hear more of his opinions on domestic issues - that letter was a good start, and I assume they would be conservative, but there's lots of terra incongito. I know, I know, he's denied having any interest in joining that race - that doesn't stop me from wishing.) It would be refreshing to hear a conversation about things that are actually important, instead of soundbites in between panicky reactions to this or that twitter attack, or to another international crisis created by incompetent leadership. Speaking of which, it's about time for N Korea to do something really provocative since we've been paying them absolutely no attention for months now. But then they might still be pretty busy with the pandemic that's not officially happening.

    Still waiting to hear back from you on that offer of pet therapy in exchange for a lifetime membership.

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      BWG

      BTW, Mattis graciously agreed to give a Memorial Day address on one of our local radio station, which you can still hear here: https://1027kord.com/listen-to-memorial-day-speech-from-retired-marine-general-james-mattis/. Scroll down a little to the second image. So different from anything I hear from Pres. Trump.
      And apologies for the aspersions on Vice Pres. Biden's and Pres. Trump's names; that was inappropriate (rank?) trollishness. In my defense, it was equal opportunity trollishness.

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  10. rob

    i love the new intro. i think the best part of the intro is zoe singing.

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