The Meltdown of Commercial Real Estate
In case you’ve still got money in a bank, Bloomberg is warning that defaults in commercial real estate loans could “topple” hundreds of US banks.
The Meltdown of Commercial Real Estate Read Journal Article
The WHO Pandemic Agreement: A Guide
The commentary below concentrates on selected draft provisions of the latest publicly available version of the draft agreement that seem to be unclear or potentially problematic. Much of the remaining text is essentially pointless as it reiterates vague intentions to be found in other documents or activities which countries normally undertake in the course of running health services, and have no place in a focused legally-binding international agreement.
The WHO Pandemic Agreement: A Guide Read Journal Article
The Crucifixion of Kulvinder Kaur
If the current trend of ruining the careers of honest, courageous physicians and scientists is not stopped, such choices will become, for want of a better word, academic. The outstanding, outspoken, and independent physicians will be run out of the profession. The remaining rank-and-file, already more submissive than their persecuted betters, will quietly comply with orders from above, knowing what will happen to them if they don’t. The newly minted doctors, freshly indoctrinated in today’s Pharma-driven curricula, and pre-selected for compliance via mandatory vaccinations and other human resource department litmus tests, will goose-step through their practice directives and clinical protocols, no questions asked.
The Crucifixion of Kulvinder Kaur Read Journal Article
Don’t Slow the Spread of Joy
We spent years needlessly frowning behind masks and protocols. We didn’t smile. I frowned at my unreasonable cello playing. I didn’t smile, but I should have. I learned my lesson after that first recital. Now — I smile no matter how badly I play. It is the most important thing an aspiring cellist can do after a performance. Smiles will always be an infection we should Start to Spread.
Don’t Slow the Spread of Joy Read Journal Article
The Taboo Ingredient for Progress: Shame
What no one told us, however, is that this reformist method of engendering peaceful change was highly dependent on the existence of a broadly-subscribed ethos of honesty, goodwill and, perhaps most of all, healthy shame in the class of people possessing an outsized ability to promote new ways of approaching social problems.
The Taboo Ingredient for Progress: Shame Read Journal Article
The Social Pole Switch
I struggle to find words to describe how weird the last four years have been. I’m now starting to think that Covid represents a social pole switch worldwide. Perhaps it has happened before, perhaps it is the first social pole switch in history.
The Social Pole Switch Read Journal Article
How Will We Remember the Pandemic Era?
Jump ahead a couple decades from the present and it seems almost certain that there will be no shortage of people reluctant to accept that organizations like the CDC behaved in a disreputable and dishonest manner. Moreover, it does not seem difficult to imagine mothers reprimanding sons for vowing disobedience in future pandemics, while older relatives shake their heads in disbelief at how young contrarians somehow don’t understand the reason we locked down and masked up was to do our part and help flatten the curve.
How Will We Remember the Pandemic Era? Read Journal Article
In the Shadow of Oedipus
I want to take the thesis of the last essay a step further and explore what might be causing our collapse. Is it a coincidence that we are suffering in so many different areas of life right now? Is it a little misstep on an otherwise progressive path? If we are on the verge of collapse, is it part of the arc of all great civilizations? Or, like Oedipus, do we suffer from some tragic flaw — a collective destructive character trait that we all share — that is responsible for bringing us to this place at this moment in history?
In the Shadow of Oedipus Read Journal Article
The Year of Elections
This is the year of elections, with 50 (World Economic Forum), 64 (Time), or 80 (Guardian) countries and the EU going to the polls, accounting for almost half the world’s total population. The list includes the US and India, the world’s most powerful and populous democracies, respectively. The US presidential election is the most internationally consequential of all while, by sheer weight of numbers, India’s is the most awe-inspiring.
The Year of Elections Read Journal Article
Shifting Alliances and Building Tribes
Is it time to disassemble sides and camps, to intermingle tribes, so we may think more critically and independently, build alliances to grapple with real and substantial challenges we share, challenges that get ignored while governments harm our health, waste our resources, order violence, and overreach their power and authority? Rulers and cartels, who have gotten paid all along, want us down in the street fighting each other. That way, they retain their power and keep getting paid…while nothing changes all that much.
Shifting Alliances and Building Tribes Read Journal Article
Jesus or…Amazon…Loves You
What could we count on after lockdowns descended? Mainstream churches shuttered doors while the local AA meeting near my house met at a park in the winter. Another 12-step meeting met under a tree in the yard of the church in warm months and under a porch awning when it rained. Church bureaucracies ordered doors closed. What had happened to us? Yet, Amazon never stopped.
Jesus or…Amazon…Loves You Read Journal Article
Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched
The prevailing attitude in public life is just to forget the whole thing. And yet we live now in a country very different from the one we inhabited five years ago. Our media is captured. Social media is widely censored in violation of the First Amendment, a problem being taken up by the Supreme Court this month with no certainty of the outcome. The administrative state that seized control has not given up power. Crime has been normalized. Art and music institutions are on the rocks. Public trust in all official institutions is at rock bottom. We don’t even know if we can trust the elections anymore.
Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched Read Journal Article