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One<\/strong><\/p>\n Cupich.<\/p>\n Two weeks ago, Cardinal Blase Cupich announced<\/a> that the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Chicago would be responding to the George Floyd killing by including the item in its curriculum:<\/p>\n In an in-person interview at the rectory at Holy Name Cathedral, Cupich said the archdiocese\u2019s goal is to have all Catholic school students participate in a discussion about Floyd\u2019s killing and its aftermath.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we need an educational piece in our parishes, in our schools, in our religious education,\u201d Cupich said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re looking to put that together for this fall because racism is taught. Nobody is born with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Cupich said the core of what the students would be learning is \u201ca simple message.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cThis is not rocket science,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the Gospel. So, it\u2019s bringing the Gospel to this issue.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sounds fine enough, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 But how do you teach a kindergartner that a police officer in another city killed a man, without giving them the fear that they are to fear the police?\u00a0 That\u2019s not as bad as teaching young students about the Holocaust, to be sure, but it\u2019s a complicated, confusing lesson, especially if the word (or phrase) of the moment, \u201csystemic racism,\u201d is thrown in.\u00a0 An article yesterday described one mother\u2019s observation of the New York City Public Schools\u2019 anti-racism curriculum<\/a>, which was, of course, not Gospel-oriented, but, well, given Cupich\u2019s prior statement<\/a> that the riots in Minneapolis were understandable and only to be expected, that the cure is a \u201cfair legal system, equitable education and employment opportunities and ready access to healthcare,\u201d and that we already know what to do and simply have to \u201ctake up the hard work\u201d \u2014 I have doubts that anything Cupich-approved would be as simple as learning about the Gospel. \u00a0\u00a0 At any rate, here\u2019s the author\u2019s take-away about her NYC experience:<\/p>\n My son learned that he is perpetuating the problem of racism, and that he doesn\u2019t even know how he\u2019s doing it, and that his whole family is racist, even if they don\u2019t think they are. The kids also learned that there\u2019s no way to fix it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Two<\/strong><\/p>\n The BSA.<\/p>\n Separately, the BSA sent an e-mail to all families yesterday.\u00a0 My initial reaction was that this is just one more instance of the endless e-mails coming from anyone I\u2019ve ever had any contact with, with a repetition of the same corporate-speak as all the others.\u00a0 But they are making three changes; one is the usual name-changing routine (a few years back, the Order of the Arrow was already banned from using Indian-style costumes), and here are the three others:<\/p>\n A Diversity and Inclusion merit badge would be harmless enough \u2013 there\u2019s already a Disability Awareness badge \u2013 but elevating it to Eagle-required status, not so much.\u00a0 In this world we inhabit now, I don\u2019t trust that the designers of such a badge could come up with a set of requirements that\u2019s activist-approved that are reasonable and appropriate for middle school boys in a diversity of circumstances.\u00a0 Requiring that \u201cevery element of [their] programs\u201d must \u201cdenounce racism\u201d? \u00a0 And requiring \u201cdiversity and inclusion training\u201d for BSA volunteers?\u00a0 There is already a several-hours-long training required every two years for Youth Protection, and every troop\/pack leader struggles to get every volunteer to do the training before the deadline.\u00a0 One might say, \u201cwell, of course volunteers should do this\u201d but it is nonetheless true that it is a real roadblock to getting adult volunteers.\u00a0 To add more training requirements on to this might again, in isolation, seems like a good and right thing to do but YPT and D&I training are two different things \u2014 YPT isn\u2019t merely about \u201cdon\u2019t abuse kids\u201d but active requirements to prevent abuse by others, such as following two-deep rules and understanding when children might be at risk from another adult.\u00a0 D&I training?\u00a0 It\u2019s a checkbox \u2014 but a costly one.\u00a0 And, again, BSA is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings.\u00a0 I get that it cannot risk being accused of racism, that the stakes are too high, that it needs a lot of cooperation from a lot of people to make it through bankruptcy in the best-case scenario which it promotes, as opposed to a version in which it is stripped of all its camps and can no longer function.\u00a0 But making families jump through anti-racism hoops will drive them away and destroy the program.<\/p>\n Three<\/strong><\/p>\n Contact tracing hypocrisy.<\/p>\n Back in May, the governor put out his recovery\/reopening plan.\u00a0 We\u2019re currently in Phase 3 (which is really Phase 1, but he labelled the tightest lockdown as Phase 1 and the slight loosening \u2014 retail stores permitted to operate on a curbside pickup basis \u2014 paired with the mask mandate as Phase 2).\u00a0 It called for the implementation of contact tracing to move to Phase 3 and at the time he announced grand plans for a statewide program to start in late May.\u00a0 It further called for fully-implemented contact tracing \u2014 90% of cases \u2014 to move to Phase 4.\u00a0 Later in May he changed his tune and said that individual county health departments were already doing contact tracing so that box was checked, and the state is just going to help those local departments, and even later he said that contact tracing isn\u2019t actually a requirement for his Phases anyway.<\/p>\n But (you can read more at my JaneTheActuary.com article<\/a>) both the city of Chicago and suburban Cook County have now announced that they will not even begin hiring contact tracers until August.\u00a0 This is well, well behind other states.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because rather than hiring quickly, they are prioritizing hiring in a \u201csocial justice\u201d-oriented fashion.\u00a0 The whole program is being treated as a \u201cjobs program\u201d primarily, so that hiring from economically-distressed areas is being prioritized, as well as hiring from the \u201cgroups hardest hit\u201d (that is, blacks and Latinos).\u00a0 Activists are calling for Chicago tracers to be directly employed by the city rather than hired through community nonprofits, because they should swell the ranks of unionized workers.\u00a0 Now, I well understand that a contact tracer must be able to gain the trust of those they are working with, so that hiring with indifference to the ability to understand the life experience of those infected, is not particularly useful \u2013 but these delays go well beyond an effort to address those concerns to a level of indifference about the urgency of contact tracing, in service to \u201cprogressive\u201d \u201csocial justice\u201d economic goals, that is deeply irresponsible.<\/p>\n Four<\/strong><\/p>\n Lockdown hypocrisy.<\/p>\n New York City, for example, remains under a lockdown in which large gatherings are banned.\u00a0 On Monday, city workers welded shut a playground<\/a> which has been a flashpoint in conflicts in which the city has been tightly enforcing regulations against, and seemingly singling out, the city\u2019s Hasidic Jewish community in Williamsburg.\u00a0 The day before, large crowds gathered for a \u201cBlack Trans Lives Matter\u201d rally.\u00a0 Across the country, the very same politicians who stressed the urgency of staying at home, even at severe costs \u2014 families unable to hold funerals for loved ones, or visit with them in the hospital, climbing suicide rates, financial struggles beyond the ability of the government to wave away with a money-spigot \u2014 now insist that anti-racism protests are the sole exception to those lockdowns.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to recite the endless instances \u2014 you know they are there.<\/p>\n Five<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBlack and Brown\u201d<\/p>\n Is the word \u201cblack\u201d to be capitalized when used with reference to people of sub-Saharan African origin?<\/p>\n I can see both sides.<\/p>\n On the one hand, abandoning issues of \u201crace,\u201d it is functionally a label for what you might call a super-ethnic group, at least when it\u2019s with respect to individuals in the United States, and we consider ethnic group labels to be proper nouns, and in English, we capitalize proper nouns even when used as adjectives.\u00a0 (German would be easier \u2013 capitalize all nouns, capitalize no adjectives.)<\/p>\n On the other hand, it is still, grammatically, a color name, even if used metaphorically.\u00a0 We don\u2019t capitalize color names.<\/p>\n But now even the Boy Scouts say that it \u201cstands with Black families and the Black community.\u201d\u00a0 Capitalization of that word has become a shibboleth, a necessary means of signaling that you\u2019re right-thinking when it comes to the fight against racism.<\/p>\n And here are some excerpts from the Chicago Sun Times<\/em> announcement on the matter<\/a>:<\/p>\n On Monday, we joined the growing list of news organizations around the country that have opted to capitalize Black when using the word to describe a culture, ethnicity or community of people. . . .<\/p>\n We also instructed our journalists that in the event the terms Black and Brown are used together to collectively describe a group, we will capitalize the \u201cB\u201d in both words, such as \u201cBlack and Brown communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Our decision puts Black on the same level as Hispanic, Latino, Asian, African American and other descriptors.<\/p>\n We also told our journalists to continue to lowercase the \u201cw\u201d in white.<\/p>\n Our decision to capitalize Black is an acknowledgment of the long-standing inequities that have existed in our country, and the unique role that Black art and culture have played in our society. Cultural trends among white people, e.g. Italian Americans, Irish Americans, etc., are much more disparate, which was a key factor in our decision not to capitalize white.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The first sentence I am fine with as a valid approach \u2014 \u201cBlack describes an ethnicity so it is capitalized.\u201d<\/p>\n But the use \u201cBlack and Brown communities\u201d belies this first statement.\u00a0 That\u2019s merely a political statement:\u00a0 nonwhite individuals are oppressed so they are deserving of capitalization.\u00a0 After all, they are not a \u201cgroup\u201d \u2014 they are disparate groups whom activists seek to bring together in a common anti-racism effort.\u00a0 \u201cBrown\u201d people are deemed to include Hispanics\/Latinos (that is, everyone immigrating from the South, regardless of whether they are pale or dark-skinned), North Africans and Middle Easterners (who may rail against or shrug off our government\u2019s categorization as \u201cwhite\u201d), and Asians from across an entire continent, who don\u2019t really have anything in common that would justify this claim that they are a \u201ccommunity of people\u201d rather than a skin color \u2014 not to mention, of course, that \u201ccommunity of people\u201d is not something that\u2019s capitalized as a general rule.<\/p>\n And the last paragraph is the real whopper \u2014 \u201cOur decision to capitalize Black is an acknowledgment of the long-standing inequities that have existed in our country.\u201d\u00a0 And \u201cwhite people have no common culture so that label isn\u2019t capitalized\u201d?\u00a0 Grammar is not about opinions on the worth of people \u2014 certainly not a declaration which attempts to lock-in a proclamation of the worthiness of some but not others.<\/p>\n Six<\/strong><\/p>\n Cult.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been said over and over again that the American nones, without a traditional religion, are re-creating a new religion for themselves, with their beliefs in environmentalism and social justice activism approaching religious intensity, and with growing enthusiasm about the supernatural \u2014 astrology, \u201cMother Earth\u201d and the like.<\/p>\n An article in The American Conservative<\/em>, \u201cThese Aren\u2019t Protests, They\u2019re Religious Ceremonies<\/a>,\u201d observed the ways in which the anti-racist protests were rapidly developing their own religious rituals, from kneeling, to prostration, to even footwashing of the black leaders by whites.\u00a0 The article reports,<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/em> ran an article on how people must keep repeating the names of police victims, and protestors routinely chant a list of names as if it is a litany of the saints. It is a transparent attempt to transform the victims into martyrs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And in precisely the manner of cults, an op-ed in the New York Times<\/em> encouraged readers to cut off family members who refused to attend protests or make financial donations to activist causes.<\/p>\n Seven<\/strong><\/p>\n Brainwashing.<\/p>\n An extended twitter thread<\/a>, here captured in a single article<\/a>, provided some history of China\u2019s success in \u201cbrainwashing\u201d its POWs during the Korean War.<\/p>\n Unlike the North Koreans, who \u201cwho favored savagery and harsh punishment to gain compliance,\u201d<\/p>\n The Chinese were very effective in getting Americans to inform on one another, in contrast to the behavior of American POWs in WWII. For this reason, escape plans were quickly uncovered and escape attempts themselves were rarely successful.<\/p>\n When an escape did occur, the Chinese usually recovered the man easily by offering a mere bag of rice to anyone turning him in. In fact, nearly all American prisoners in the Chinese camps are said to have collaborated with the enemy in one form or another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Chinese achieved this, Zero HP Lovecraft writes, by starting small, for example, by being asked to make mild statements such as \u201cThe United States is not perfect,\u201d but then, once these small pieces of compliance are gained, asking for more \u2014 listing out \u201cproblems with America,\u201d for instance, in an essay which is then broadcast.<\/p>\n Suddenly he would find himself a \u201ccollaborator.\u201d Aware that he had written the essay without any threats or coercion, a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed and with the new collaborator label, resulting in more extensive acts of collaboration<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The author also describes an approach of essay contests, ostensibly harmless, but actually insidious:<\/p>\n A similar technique involved political essay contests that were regularly held in camp. The prizes for winning were invariably small\u2013a few cigarettes or a bit of fruit\u2013but were sufficiently scarce that they generated interest from the men<\/p>\n Usually the winning essays took a pro-Communist stand, but not always. Most prisoners would not want to enter a contest that required writing a Communist tract. So the prize was sometimes given to essays that supported the USA but made small concessions to the Chinese view<\/p>\n The men participated voluntarily in the contests because they saw that they could win with an essay favorable to their own country. But perhaps without realizing it, they began to shade their essays a bit toward communism in order to have a better chance of winning.<\/p>\n The Chinese wanted as many Americans as possible to enter these contests so that, in the process, they might write things favorable to the Communist view. If, however, the idea was to attract large numbers of entrants, why were the prizes so small?<\/p>\n They chose to employ the smaller rewards because they wanted the men to own what they had done. No excuses, no ways out were allowed. A prisoner who salted his political essay with a few anti-American comments could not be permitted to shrug it off as motivated by a big reward.<\/p>\n It was not enough to wring commitments out of their men; those men had to be made to take inner responsibility for their actions. We accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n