The Unapologetic Bias of the American Left. What ended liberal dissimulation about slanted reporting is a new pride, or rather an arrogance, about bias itself. The new liberated defiance is something like, “We are biased. Damn proud of it. And what exactly do you plan on doing about it?” Jim Rutenberg infamously announced in January 2017 his profession’s proud defiance of now ossified norms in a new age in which reporters would “throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century.” Christiane Amanpour felt she was now released from the old chains of professed “objectivity.” ~Victor Davis Hanson
The Age Of Covidian. There is another old-time expression that applies in this Covid drama. This one is from Eric Hoffer. “What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.” In the case of Covid, the panic is becoming all three. It has turned into a mystery cult for many, a jobs racket for others and a money maker for global capital, which has not allowed this crisis go to waste. Rather than a plague from the gods, Covid-19 is manna from heaven for the ruling class. ~ The Z Man
OK, Senator. It is theater. It is not real. The true politics of Judge Barrett’s appointment are not what we saw on TV: no, the real politics happened elsewhere and at another time. Amy Barrett is not playing along, or is only playing along to the absolutely minimal degree necessary while signaling that she knows this is not real. It may also signal, as one generation finally starts to hand the reins off to another, that the contrived-for-television spectacle judicial confirmation hearings have become is over. ~ Kevn Stuart
The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Snake Oil. Many drugs are given to patients on the basis of probabilities, though the patients to whom they are given often do not understand this. They believe that drugs are prescribed to do them good here and now rather than on a chance, sometimes quite remote, that they will do them good at an unspecifiable time in the future. In addition, few treatments are 100 percent successful, and whether a treatment with a low but definite rate of success, though with unpleasant side effects, is worth taking depends on the seriousness of the disease to be cured or ameliorated. In other words, therapeutics is an art as well as a science, ~ Theodore Dalrymple
Otiosus rants. The capture of essentially all major cultural institutions by unhinged political fanatics with daddy issues, is among the signs of our times. Those who resist are driven out of employment; those who accede have a lock on the splendidly-paid positions, for which beleaguered taxpayers are billed. The consequences to Western Civ are not trifling. ~ David Warren