Facemask idiocy. Trolled on racism. Internet abuse

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New York mandates face masks.  Germany appears to be mandating them once more starting this fall. They have made no attempt to prove that they work. They simply, resolutely ignore the hundreds of studies that show that they don’t. This has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with disease.

Though I have seen quite a few custom facemasks, I have yet to see one with a sarcastic message. This is an oversight! Though you could do it yourself, I find it for $6.95 you can have it done. Though the advertisement shows only text, since I am sure that the text is reduced to a photo image, it is highly likely that they would accept your own artwork.

I propose a reader contest. Come up with the most creative design for your own facemasks.

·       This face diaper is crap
·       Facing government masking idiocy
·       Masking government incompetence
·       Support the goon maskerade
·       Maskimal Government Incompetence
·       Slow suicide by breathing my own exhaust

Please post your suggestions in the comments.

As predictable as the sunrise, I got trolled with regard to my email to liberal acquaintances yesterday that not only should Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird not be excluded from school libraries, but neither should Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and HL Mencken. Of course, liberals consider these authors to be authentic racists.

One response I got seemed to me to be an invitation to commit racism: “By the way, what are your views on the censorship in American schools and libraries of LITTLE BLACK SAMBO, the childrens story about the little Indian boy who used tigers to manufacture ghee; and THE UNCLE REMUS STORIES?” I was delighted to be proven wrong. In a subsequent email this guy (not Mr. MIT) said he had read Uncle Remus to his own children.

So I misread this fellow. Others on the email distribution have yet to weigh in. I am always suspicious. Liberal accusations of racism, sexism and so on are often crafted such that there can be no adequate response. They are of the “Have you stop beating your wife yet?” variety. They are smug in the conviction that you are racist and whatever answer you offer is going to simply prove it.

What follows is not appropriate to this case. Happily so. However, it does so often apply that I’m not going to throw away my words.

We who like to see the world as it is have been fending off these accusations for a long time and have become quite practiced at explaining ourselves. A good article arrived just yesterday in Taki magazine.  Well written, but it won’t change anything. There is nothing I can do to persuade a convicted liberal that I am not a racist. The only reason to try is to attempt to sway others reading the dialog. There is, however, never anybody who really cares.

I was only half as cynical 20 years ago. At that point they had only been calling me names for 30 years. In response to being slandered as a racist I researched the question and came up with this article, which I posted here on Substack today. I’ll stand by what I wrote then.  Since it is only for reference, I did not release it with an email.

Most people conflate racial stereotyping with racism. To do so is to deny measurable differences among groups of people. This in turn leads to awkward problems.

Elite universities have committed a series of errors. Long ago they denied admission to Jews. The Jews now dominate American academia. They gave affirmative-action preference to East Asians for a while, then discovering how successful they were, started handicapping them in the admissions process.

Other minorities have not suffered this reversal. No matter how great the preferences they have been awarded, the achievement never matches that of other racial groups. Per Einstein "insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." That has been the stated expectation for fifty years.

Americans have a cyclopic view of the world, imagining ourselves at the center of it and discounting everybody else's experience. American liberals like to imagine that we white Gentile Americans are the only ones capable of prejudice. They suppose that no significant prejudice exists outside of our borders.

If they would venture into other parts of the world they would discover that stereotypes are universal. Overseas Chinese dominate business in Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila and Saigon. The native people of those cities all hold the same prejudices (or stereotypes, as you wish) about the Chinese.

There are substantial communities of Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Jews and the descendants of African slaves scattered throughout Latin America. The majority populations, of varying mixes of European and Native American ancestry, characterize them by the same stereotypes as we do in the USA. They don’t call it prejudice – just reality.

Safari guides in Africa compare notes about clients from all over the world. The stereotypes they have formed about Chinese, Japanese, Israelis, Germans and other nationalities conform almost exactly with the stereotypes prevalent in America. Their stereotypical view of black Americans would be called prejudice if they were white.

The U.S. has sent its military all over the world. Everywhere they go, the local people form similar stereotypes about the ethnic groups within the American Armed Forces. The French, who proceeded the Americans in Vietnam, had similar racial diversity within their military. The Vietnamese stereotypes about the minorities in the French army transferred effortlessly to the American army.

The notion that we “deplorables” are uniquely racist is absurd. We been brainwashed, browbeaten all of our lives about the importance of diversity.  When we do allow ourselves to entertain opinions about various ethnicities, they conform closely to those held throughout the world.

In local news, we discovered some naughty pictures on the computer that Eddie uses. Oksana is more upset than I am. Eddie, like any normal kid, will encounter pornography, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, profanity and every other manner of impropriety. We know that much of it comes from other kids, but he has his own curiosity. It would be stupid to try to protect him from it. We have to convince him that these things get in the way of leading a satisfying life. He simply has to learn to say no, and refuse to waste his time.

He does not and will not have a smart phone. The solution for the time being is to lock up his computer and let him use my second one for school work. I hope that the knowledge that I can check his browsing history will deter him from misusing it.

That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man has his hands full calming down an upset wife and children. The children do outrageous and obnoxious things from time to time to provoke reactions, and we seek to find the middle ground of letting them know what the standards are without losing our own composure.

Graham