Yet, throughout this pandemic, notice how many global health scholars were totally silent on lockdowns. How many global health researchers said nothing as India sacrificed the future of a generation with school closures? How many US based disparity researchers or early childhood advocates were silent on school closure? I believe most were quiet!
Most Academics Went Silent. Why? Continue Reading
Beyond empathy, to combat a psychic epidemic we need meaning in our lives. Not an ersatz top-down solidarity, dreamt up by technocratic communications experts, but genuine, socially meaningful relationships, purpose and values. Lockdowns and restrictions squashed exactly what we need to flourish as human beings in order to counteract a psychic epidemic. For the good of the collective, we must recapture meaning and values as individuals.
The Moral Cruelty of the Pandemic Response Continue Reading
The values and ideals for which many have fought and died are being killed off in committees or decried as outdated ideas. Liberalism is decried as bourgeois by the Left. The Right sees liberalism as too weak to combat formidable adversaries like Russia and China. We liberals are on the defensive, that’s for sure.
A Liberal Moment, But Which One? Continue Reading
The NIAID’s “Dr Fauci In The News” website, which throughout COVID Mania, has tracked hundreds of its directors major media appearances, has not posted a new appearance since February 17.
Where’s Fauci? Continue Reading
A review of college mitigation policies suggests that the more elite the college the more draconian the mitigation measures. With some digging, you can uncover a wide range of excellent private and public colleges. Most important to keep in mind; any school that makes complying with mandates a non-negotiable condition to making dreams come true should promptly be removed from the list.
Covid-19 at College: Which Institutions Stayed Sane and Which Went Insane? Continue Reading
Some anonymous drone at LinkedIn took it upon his or herself (there are no other options) to waste the time and hurt the reputation of a customer. When that customer got fed up by such horrendous abuse from a company that was supposed to provide a service, that same anonymous, unaccountable petty person or collection of people told that customer to go spend money on lawyers to sue LinkedIn for access to the data that customer (erroneously) believes he owns.
The Not-Very-Hidden Agenda of the Fact Checkers Continue Reading
Digital Brownshirts are just the most visible and forward-leaning elements of a much broader effort to install the logic of the algorithm—a providential and vertically-imposed concept of truth that vitiates traditional fact-finding and admits neither human intelligence nor scientific debate—as a cornerstone of our human interactions and cognitive processes.
Digital Brownshirts and Their Masters Continue Reading
Consider that the powers and plans to do this still exist. They can do it again. Mardi Gras can be canceled again. You can be locked in your home. Your church, business, gym, and favorite watering hole can be closed. They have promised as much. This is what needs to change.
Mardi Gras Saves the World Continue Reading
For the duration of Noah’s educational experience, caregivers have put themselves first, with his needs utterly disregarded, the permanence of their impact on his life and his long-term ability to communicate cruelly displaced by the safety theater imposed by his school system.
A Child’s Life In a World on Mute Continue Reading
By going with the grain of how we think and act, the state-employed ‘nudgers’ can covertly shape our behaviour in a direction deemed desirable by the regime of the day – an appealing prospect for any government. The ubiquitous deployment of these behavioural strategies – which frequently rely on inflating emotional distress to change behaviour – raises profound moral questions.
The Nudge: Ethically Dubious and Ineffective Continue Reading
Specific companies were handed billions by the federal government, after which alternative ways of medicating or dealing with the virus were roundly ridiculed. In other words, the federal government embraced an “expert standard.”
History Won’t Be Kind to Operation Warp Speed Continue Reading
Some degree of levity about the comedic qualities of the last two years is merited but it needs to be complemented by a serious commitment toward radical reform. We need a new way to think about how a good society can develop freely even in the presence of infectious disease. Freedom needs to be nonnegotiable.
Is Covid Policy Comedy, Tragedy, or Both? Continue Reading
