Politics

Beware the Abundance of Caution

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This morning I listened to Kevin Warren, Big 10 commissioner, explain in a press conference that he was cancelling the B1G conference basketball tournament.  He spent 13 minutes repeating how important is to ‘show leadership’, ‘do the right thing’ and that he ‘talked to a lot of people’, without elaborating on any of what that means.

He used the term ‘fiduciary responsibility’ about half a dozen times.  I’ll save you the time and trouble of looking in up in Collin’s dictionary:

fiduciary 

ADJECTIVE

designating or of a person who holds something in trust for another; of a trustee or trusteeship

a fiduciary guardian for a minor child

Gosh who’s gonna argue with ‘doing the right thing’?  Especially when it’s ‘crystal clear’, and part of your fiduciary responsibility?  But nothing in these phrases indicate he even understood the factors in play, much less how to weigh them.

When a reporter asked what had changed to make him decide to cancel the tournament, he replied with “I don’t think anything changed,”

Huh?  Something changed Kevin, an hour ago we were going to play a 4 day basketball tournament and now we aren’t.  Please tell us you don’t make decisions like this based on how your morning coffee is settling.  My guess is that Kevin had just been notified that in a few hours the NCAA would announce cancellation of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, so there would be no big dance for the B1G tournament winner to attend.  Which means conference commissioners had a brief window in which to take the stage and look principled.   Kudos to the Commish for grabbing his glimpse of the PR spotlight before getting upstaged by the NCAA.

But noticeably absent from his press conferences was any quotes from the CDC or WHO, no statistics, no worse case scenarios about what might happen if the tournament went on as planned.  Maybe cancelling the tournament was the right thing.  But if so, it should be easy to defend in public statement without overworking the weasel-phrase generator.  Simply saying with conviction that ‘we want to do the right thing’ and that it’s ‘crystal clear’ doesn’t absolve anyone of acknowledging the costs and consequences of their actions.

Here’s some questions I wish journalists would have had the courage to ask:

  • Commissioner, what specific data from the CDC or other health departments convinced you that holding the B1G tournament was a risk was too great to take, and why was it OK to play yesterday’s games but not the rest?

 

  • Commissioner, the student athletes – the ones you said this decision is all about – came to these schools to compete and this tournament was the last chance for many of them to play organized basketball at a national level. Do you think they feel robbed of their opportunity because you are panicking about what you don’t know?

 

  • Commissioner, have you considered the hundreds of part-time workers who won’t get B1G paychecks – ticket takers, concession stand workers, security people, ushers, maintenance people, janitors, Uber/Lyft drivers – because you are ‘doing the right thing’? These aren’t CEOs or spoiled professional athletes, these are people working 2 jobs to try to pay the rent, single moms putting food on the table, college kids paying for books…  did you take into account your ‘fiduciary responsibility’ to them when weighing  the hypothetical risk of holding the events as scheduled?”

 

  • Commissioner, what specifically makes you believe we will ever be able to have public NCAA events in the future – won’t there always be a threat when you have thousands of people in an arena? How is the situation unique this year and how will you know when it’s safe to resume conference play?

Tough questions, but being a major conference commissioner comes with big responsibilities.  All the stakeholders deserve to know that their interests were given due consideration.

But let’s be real – life will go on without the B1G Tournament, and despite hardships felt by those workers immediately affected the financial impact won’t cripple the greater economy.

But the bandwagon affect has been scary to watch.

Public gatherings are being canceled at unprecedented rates – school events, college classes, reunions, St Patrick day festivals, corporate meetings, rallies, church services..  all of the announcements I’ve seen are sparse on the details, and they all seem to feel it’s safe to say something vague about ‘abundance of caution’.   Apparently the socially acceptable response to these announcements is to stand and offer a polite golf clap to the courage and leadership it took to reach such a bold and difficult decision.

Let me be clear – I don’t envy anyone in the position of having to decide whether to cancel a public event.  And I don’t minimize the tradeoffs they have to weigh, especially with so much still unknown about Covad-19. I’m not even really that upset with Commissioner Warren.  I’ll say it again, maybe cancelling sporting events is the right thing to do right now.

But we are witnessing an insidious force that extends far beyond Covad-19:  The sweeping and unchecked power that can be wielded over our economy and lifestyles by getting the right powerful people to say the magic words “abundance of caution”. It’s almost like shouting ‘Expelliarmus’ and watching the dark forces of skepticism vanquished before your eyes.   Imagine if someone figured out how to manipulate this power for their own, more directed purposes?

Indulge me for a moment:

Here’s a site listing some of the church shootings in the US since 2012.  No one can dispute the tragedy of each case, people died.  Suppose some threats were to materialize against people of a certain congregation or denomination.  Is it so hard to imagine local or county officials urging people of faith to stop having public gatherings out of ‘an abundance of caution’?  Should we all stand and golf clap at their bravery as we cancel church?

Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos all had their approved speaking appearances at UC Berkeley abruptly cancelled by campus police due to ‘an abundance of caution’ over protest threats. They didn’t get their legally afforded opportunity for free speech, but we should say thanks to campus police for keeping us safe?

Is it hard for anyone to imagine the Democratic National Committee cancelling the rest of the 2020 primaries and awarding the nomination to Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders out of ‘an abundance of caution’ that crowds and campaigning will spread coronavirus?  Should Bernie supporters just take another one for the team?

On 9-11, Al-Qaeda and all of their global sympathizers celebrated the crash of the twin towers and the Pentagon, which were symbolic targets of American financial and military power.  They rejoiced that three thousand Americans were killed, but the enduring legacy was the damage done to the US economy and disruption to our way of life.  Such is the goal of terrorism – make people feel unsafe, lose faith in their institutions and leadership, and alter their way of life.  Somewhere in the world today, two terrorist are communicating with each other in coded messages:  Omar:  forget the plutonium, all we need is a new strain of the flu.  We visit a few airports, train stations and shopping malls and let ‘abundance of caution’ bring the Great Satan to its knees! We’ve been working too hard all these years!

Here’s a thought:   Let’s take that $50B allocated to combat Covad-19 and issue level 4 hazmat suits to every person in America, and make it immediately mandatory that they wear it in public from this day forward.  If you’re not on board with this, then spend some time thinking about how/where/when we should define the boundaries for the ‘abundance of caution’.

With any decision you get all the data you can, weigh your options, weigh the consequences and costs of being right and wrong about each, and then make a move.  Sometimes abundance of caution is the best route because the costs of being wrong are so severe.  And maybe that’s what’s going on today with Covad-19.   But are right to demand that the data is really being gathered, the costs are really weighed, and our leaders are considering all of our best interests and not those that are trending best on social media.

Journalists need to be reminded that it’s not rude or crass to ask leaders to prove that they have done their homework before they impose the burdens of their decisions on us.  It’s OK to challenge ‘abundance of caution’.

We don’t have to golf clap on cue at every press conference.

Time To End Offensive Christmas Music

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2018 has brought a long overdue awakening of holiday songs that have oppressed and offended people for decades.  Radio stations’ courageous banishment of the outrageous “Baby It’s Cold Outside” inspired us to make a difference.

We at the government’s Department of Offensive Holiday Lyrics and Traditions (DOHLT) initiated a broader survey of seasonal music.

Our findings are shocking.

Here are just a few you should be aware of.

Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer/Run Run Rudolf;    A poor animal is shamed and ostracized by his peers for a physical anomaly, then exploited when his handicap is deemed beneficial to the heavy handed sleigh driver.   Nothing to feel good about here.

Sleigh Ride and Jingle Bells:  Both of these popular songs implicitly endorse the enslavement of horses for entertainment in the name of holiday revelry.  Have we no shame?

The Christmas Song:  Where do we start? ‘Open Fires’ dump poisons into the air, which is destroying our planet. We couldn’t find any studies on the concentration of chestnut smoke in the atmosphere but it’s gotta be killing something somewhere.   We suppose ‘the Turkey’ could be a protected free-range bird was noticed in the woods, but it likely refers to something more nefarious that would horrify our PETA friends.  And that ‘mistletoe’ suggests the same kind of promiscuity that started this whole awakening.  We also object that it only applies ‘to kids from 1 to 92’.  It’s both arbitrary and heartless to exclude those 93 and above from good wishes, even if poorly expressed.

The Little Drummer Boy   We checked with the musicians union and they are pretty sure this child’s percussion performance violated some fundamental rights.  If he played his own arrangement he should get retroactive copyright royalties for every time this song has been played.  If he pirated someone else’s beats he should have given proper attribution.  Then there’s the whole child labor problem.  He should have been provided with counsel before this gig. In any case, we can no longer support a musical celebration of this exploitation.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear:  This song romanticizes a time before man has polluted the planet and brought us to the edge of extinction from climate change.  There are no more clear midnights thanks to our manmade toxic atmosphere.  Might as well be called ‘Whistling Past the Climate Change Graveyard”.  How can we scare people into compliance with this kind of feel-good fantasy?

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year:  Pretty subjective, blatantly excluding anyone who likes spring summer or fall.  Let’s not build those walls.

Santa Baby/ I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus:  Don’t even go there.

White Christmas: Racist

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen:   Sexist.

Grandma Got Run over By A Reindeer:  C’mon man.

 

We could go on but you get the point. The best way to make sure you aren’t offending someone this holiday season is to avoid Christmas music altogether.  Have some fruitcake and some eggnog if you must, but keep this good cheer nonsense to yourself.

We at DOHLT are proud to make this contribution for a better society.

P.S:  We were inspired by our respected colleagues at WUSSI who made a similar analysis of the NFL’s offensive team names.

http://truthgunner.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-new-politically-correct-nfl.html

 

 

 

How far can I throw my toys?

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The Kavanaugh confirmation process has been perhaps the most profound illustration of partisan politics in my lifetime.  I can’t recall seeing a congressional hearing that was actually substantive, but this one is embarrassing.  In addition to the Democratic senators desperately hurling spitballs at Kavanaugh and hoping something will stick, the hearing has been interrupted several times by choreographed protests from the public gallery.  ABC News describes the situation this way: ”The protesters are part of a nationwide campaign to disrupt the confirmation process. A broad coalition of activist groups, including abortion rights groups, gun control organizations and labor unions.”  Senator Feinstein offered an ambiguous, halfhearted apology to Kavanaugh for ‘the circumstances’ but also stated “it was imperative everyone understand how strongly Democrats and progressives feel about Kavanaugh’s ascension to the nation’s highest court.”  Apparently a disregard for civility and disrespect for public decorum are critical measures for the strength of these feelings. We should be very impressed.  

Sadly, this is not extraordinary.  The left has long conflated protest and purpose, assigning nobility to the former that must be earned by the latter.  Martin Luther King was driven by a strong purpose that necessitated protest.  His legacy is the change he brought to race relations in America.  But purpose requires conviction, thought, justification, rationale, persuasion, and appealing to a sense of reason and fairness.

That’s hard.

Skipping straight to the more visible protest actions is an attractive shortcut. Rosa Parks was a heroine for refusing to bow to an unjust social policy.  Colin Kaepernick can’t even explain what he is protesting, much less his purpose. But Nike wants to paint him as a hero.

Conservatives are typically not predisposed to such public tantrums, which is perceived as soft conviction for their values.  They don’t take to the streets, disrupt public discourse, turn over cars, smash windows and set things on fire, or drive people out of resturants so they get categorized as spineless sheep who can easily be bulldozed back into the basement by a strong, vulgar display of offensive behavior.  So this becomes the strategy of the left.

What is especially bewildering is that after losing a presidential election they were supposed to win – and losing to a brash, inexperienced ‘buffoon’ – the left still refuses to acknowledge the 62 Million+ voters who have a voice in American democracy.  Instead they are indignant.  They are enraged that the Democratic process has worked against them.  They feel cheated.  Something must be broken. The entirety of the Democrats’ focus in the past 22 months has been to find a way to invalidate the results of the 2016 election, in other words to force conservatives back into irrelevance.   This is not lost on the Trump voters.  Nobody on the left has suggested a policy to reach out to them with an alternative plan to channel their frustration.  Instead, the unspoken strategy of the left is to create a political process that does not include them. What Democrats and pundits don’t recognize is that the more voters feel ignored and marginalized by Washington and the media, the more they are galvanized against their oppressors.  These relentless efforts to disenfranchise them just pours fuel on the fire, which the left won’t even acknowledge exists.

Which brings us back to the Kavanaugh confirmation process.  Since Roe v Wade the left has realized that it’s far more convenient to advance an agenda via courts than the laborius process of persuading the electorate.  Laws to legalize abortion would have never passed in 1973 but the Supreme Court made legislation irrelevant. Gay marriage failed nearly every state ballot initiative but Justice Kennedy alone made it legal.  No one can rationaly defend a law that the US should have no borders but the same effective result can be achieved if a few justices declare as unconstitutional any efforts to enforce such policies.

This is why the left is so panicked about this judicial appointment.  It’s about to get much harder to find new constitutional rights in the Supreme Court.  Rather than campaign to appeal to ALL the people, Democrats still shun the process that wins elections and codifies laws of the land.

They still believe the most effective policy is to throw their toys out of the crib harder and farther.

 

 

Outrage is All the Rage

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A January 22, 2018 letter to the WSJ from Cynthia Cross of McLean Virginia reeks not only of outrage at President Trump’s (alleged) ‘loathsome’ comments about s-hole countries, but her righteous indignation at his lack of compassion for foreigners.

“Why would we want to admit people into the U.S. from these countries? Because, Mr. Trump, those people are most in need of a better way of life—they, not citizens of relatively affluent and safe countries like Norway, are the “tired,” the “poor,” the “huddled masses” for whom our nation is a true beacon. Our immigration policies should serve those whose famine-stricken, war-torn and impoverished countries render them most desperate to immigrate. The fact that our president doesn’t understand this strikes me as a far bigger problem for our country and the rest of the world than his disgraceful language.

 

This moral preening looks honorable, but doesn’t fit when applied to personal values.  I wonder how many poor, huddles masses Ms. Cross is currently accommodating in her home?   Even a superficial glance at American society exposes hundreds of thousands – if not millions – in need of even basic life necessities like food and clothing.  If helping those less fortunate is the real goal, we need not look internationally to find opportunity.

 

Or perhaps Ms Cross simply can’t understand the America First foundation of Trump’s presidency.  Eight years of apologizing for America’s success by the previous administration has created a warped sense of American guilt, as if our prosperity has come at the expense of others.

 

Such penance demand is a fallacy.

 

I don’t know if Ms Cross has kids, but if so I’m guessing she – like any good mother – makes sure they have food to eat, clothes to wear, a safe and sound education and healthcare.  Does she not care about kids in Somalia?  Why do her kids get to come first?   Put this argument a nationwide context and America First becomes more understandable, and in fact honorable.  Are the slums of Baltimore less worthy of attention than the slums of Haiti?

 

I also scratch my head at the cognitive dissonance that leads Ms. Cross to be outraged at the loathsome and vulgar categorization of ‘s-hole countries’ but in the next breath call them impoverished, war torn and famine stricken.  To-MAY-to or To-MAH-to?  What should we call a country that allows – in fact causes – its citizens to wallow in poverty for generations?  A question rarely asked is why more people aren’t outraged at the Mexican or Haitian leaders for fostering an environment people are so eager to flee?

 

Yet America pays more guilt tax than any other country. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, $13.5B was donated and pledged for relief, over $4B of which came from private donations.  My daughter even took up the cause, soliciting contributions from friends and family to send away.  We feel good about ourselves for showing compassion, and rightly so. But 7 years later, where are Haiti’s schools, hospitals, infrastructure, electricity, sanitation and jobs?  Do we think another $20B will solve the problem?   Or is the best way to help Haitians while preserving their culture and heritage to tell them to give up and become Americans?  Perhaps a real solution is more complex than can fit on a poster, a tweet, or a 2 minute celebrity rant at an awards show.

 

But even posing such discussion topics elicits venomous accusations of heartlessness and xenophobia, which further hinders reform that can help people.  Immigrant championing is the vogue bandwagon for virtue signalers, especially for those who defer the solution to a ‘Rich Uncle Sam’, as if he is a real person responsible for solving the problems they can’t be bothered with.

 

How refreshing it would be if Trump bashers would offer some tangible, constructive ideas to solve real problems instead of hijacking public discourse to vent their abject yet unsophisticated hatred.