Daily Digest |  |
- Pretendians
- New York to discriminate on basis of race in covid therapeutics access
- A Dry Run for Tyranny
- Live From the Beach at Noon!
- Shapes of things: Laptop from hell edition
| Posted: 01 Jan 2022 06:16 PM PST (John Hinderaker) Who knew that Elizabeth Warren was part of a movement? Apparently she is one of a great number of people who try to advance their careers by pretending to be American Indians. We noted here a news report to the effect that close to 20 percent of white kids “identify” as Native American on their college applications–a strategy that apparently is often successful. Now the New York Post reports on a list of some 200 people, prominent in academia, politics and the arts, who have falsely claimed to be part Indian. Real Indians, it seems, are outraged that others are trying to horn in on their privileged status.
I was interested in this list, which you can see here, in part because I have been laid up for several days with an appalling cold and have spent the time, inter alia, watching the first three seasons of Yellowstone. One of the principal characters in that series is a young woman named Monica who is married to one of the Dutton sons. Monica is an Indian, and the woman who plays her, Kelsey Asbille Chow, certainly looks like a Native American:
However, as Miss Chow’s last name suggests, she is not an Indian. She is half white and half Chinese, according to Wikipedia. Her Chinese-American father is a doctor, and she went to Columbia. The Pretendians list suggests that Chow has falsely claimed to be Native American. But let’s put that aside for a moment and ask, why should that matter? She looks the part, and is very attractive, certainly what TV producers are looking for. She is, in my opinion, an excellent actress, and plays the part of Monica well. So why should we care whether one of her grandparents was an Indian? What bearing does that have on her ability to play the part? Some might say that non-Native American actresses should not “steal” parts from actual Indians. But casting is a zero-sum game. Many one-quarter Indian actors and actresses are more than capable of playing white or Asian parts. Should they be barred from doing so on racial grounds? As a society, we are at a crossroads. Are we going to be a racist country, obsessed with genetic qualifications, perhaps adopting the Democratic Party’s antebellum one-drop rule? Or will we continue down the path of individual merit and accomplishment that we have been on, although no doubt imperfectly, for more than a century? Too, what do we make of the rush to claim the evidently privileged status of Native American? Why are there hundreds of “Pretendians,” falsely alleging they are Indians to advance their careers? If Native Americans are discriminated against and “marginalized,” whatever that means, why do so many people pretend to be Native Americans? Pretty much everything that is said about race in the USA is a lie. The prevalence of “Pretendians” is one more data point indicating the sickness of our race preference-obsessed culture.    |
| New York to discriminate on basis of race in covid therapeutics access Posted: 01 Jan 2022 06:03 PM PST (Paul Mirengoff) The state of New York has decided to distribute anti-covid treatments in part on the basis of race and ethnicity. It will discriminate against Whites in providing access to therapeutics in short supply, which monoclonal antibody treatment and antiviral pills currently are. The policy sets forth a list of eligibility criteria for oral antiviral treatment, all of which must be satisfied to receive treatment. They include factors of age, weight, covid test result, and mildness of symptoms. So far, so good. But the last criterion, medical condition and other risk factors, includes this:
Thus, the last criterion can be satisfied by virtue of being Black or Hispanic/Latino, but not by being White. As Wesley Smith puts it:
This amounts to race discrimination, pure and simple. The policy should, and I assume will, be challenged in court. Erin Silk, a spokesperson for the New York Department of Health which formulated this policy, told Fox News that the state’s “prioritization guidance comes directly from the CDC” and that neither “race nor ethnicity would disqualify an individual from receiving treatment.” She added:
It doesn’t matter what the source of a racially discriminatory policy is. The CDC can’t bless violations of the law. The claim that neither race nor ethnicity will disqualify an individual from receiving treatment is disingenuous. It’s true that Whites aren’t absolutely disqualified from receiving treatment. But some white individuals who would receive treatment if they were Black will miss out on treatment because they are White. That’s illegal. As to poverty, the policy doesn’t give priority to the poor, it gives priority to non-Whites. And it gives them priority whether or not they are poor. It favors non-poor Blacks over poor Whites. Throwing in the phrase “systemic poverty” doesn’t help the state’s position. Whatever “systemic poverty” might be, there’s no plausible, non-tautological case that Whites never experience it. The policy itself tries to justify the discrimination with the assertion that “longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.” But non-Whites are capable of living healthy lifestyles of the kind that minimizes risk from the coronavirus. Even if “inequities” have rendered non-Whites disproportionately vulnerable to the virus, that’s no reason to grant preferences to non-Whites who, due to their choices or just plain luck, don’t have indicia of increased risk — e.g., obesity. New York’s policy is an instance of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in action. It is an application of Race Marxism to medicine. In this article, Laurel Duggan describes broader applications of Medical Race Marxism that are seeping into patient care and research, for example. This is a movement that needs to be taken on and stopped. New York’s discriminatory covid treatment policy is a good place to start.  |
| Posted: 01 Jan 2022 02:45 PM PST (John Hinderaker) The proto-fascists among us have delighted in issuing “emergency” orders relating to the coronavirus. These have included, among others, shutdowns and mask and vaccine mandates. The Governor of Minnesota went so far as to issue an “emergency” order prohibiting all residents of the state from leaving their houses without his permission. Many have speculated that statists’ overreaction to covid has been a dry run for more “emergencies” to come. Indeed the supply of potential emergencies is large, particularly when “science” can reliably be deployed on behalf of the state. Support for such speculation comes from an article published by Cambridge University Press under the auspices of the American Political Science Association. The article is titled “Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change” and was authored by Ross Mittiga, a young academic who ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017 as a Democrat. The following quotes are from the article’s abstract. I declined to enrich these miscreants to the tune of $25 by buying the full article.
Yes, the “contemporary political theory literature,” along with writings on political theory from the 17th Century to the present, the U.S. Constitution, etc.
Of course. Tyranny is always imposed for our benefit. Always.
Whether they were legitimate or not is hotly debated, but that is the premise. Now the point:
Of course it does! Actually, a lot of things pose a graver threat than covid.
The abstract concludes:
Got that? Do what the Greenies want, or we will declare an emergency and jam our measures down your throats. If we did it with covid, we can do it with global warming, too. The precedent has been set, and we can expect a lot more talk along these lines in the years to come.  |
| Posted: 01 Jan 2022 10:18 AM PST (Steven Hayward) The silliest thing I do every year—aside from reading the New York Times—is the annual noontime polar bear dip in the Pacific Ocean at noon. This year I’m going to attempt once again to livestream the thing on Facebook. (I tried last year, but had too high a frame rate on my GoPro so it didn’t work very smoothly.) If you have nothing better to do at noon Pacific, click here and you should be able to watch the silliness. I’ll probably go live about five minutes before noon just to work out the technical kinks. Historian Stephen Tootle is expected to join the festivities, along with a doctor pal, just in case my heart needs restarting. Here’s what it looked like three years ago, and in the meantime, Happy New Year!
 |
| Shapes of things: Laptop from hell edition Posted: 01 Jan 2022 07:38 AM PST (Scott Johnson)
The story is familiar to Power Line readers, yet in Devine’s telling it comes infuriatingly to life — an almost unbelievable story of censorship and suppression in the land of the free. I had forgotten some of the pertinent details until listening to Devine’s plenary address to the National Conservatism Conference this past November 2 (video below). The title of her speech is “The Laptop from Hell and New Censorship Regime,” which puts the the emphasis where it belongs. In her remarks Devine pauses over the contribution of the national security establishment of the United States. They rose in unison to condemn Devine’s story as Russian disinformation. Their absurd “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” remains posted online where it can serve as a continuing reproach to those who take our politics and media at face value. UPDATE: The Examiner’s Virginia Aabram includes the laptop from hell as one of five theories that dropped the “conspiracy” in 2021:
I think the “conspiracy” dropped in 2020, but the conspiracy of silencers and suppressors is the real deal and it lives.  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Power LinePower Line. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment