fun dance pic.twitter.com/oNeRFltpmw
— Model Hub (@ModelHubz) August 8, 2020
Sunday, August 9, 2020
Saving TikTok
Anne de Paula
"Everyone should wake up in the morning feeling beautiful." - Anne de Paula https://t.co/uJEefTvtZe pic.twitter.com/NpzsgRqwgk
— Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) August 7, 2020
California to Empty Prisons, Dump Convicted Murderers on the Streets
This will not turn out well.
See, "California is releasing some murderers due to COVID-19. Some say it should free more":
Although Gov. Gavin Newsom and corrections officials have focused on freeing nonviolent offenders from prisons to slow the spread of coronavirus, they also are letting out people who have committed violent crimes but have serious medical conditions. https://t.co/vB3GUpCLoo— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 9, 2020
Terebea Williams was 22 when she shot her boyfriend, drove 750 miles with him bleeding in the trunk of his own car and then dragged him into a Northern California motel, tied him to a chair and left him to die.Keep reading.
Convicted of murder, carjacking and kidnapping, Williams went on to earn a college degree during her 19 years in prison, where she also mentored younger inmates and was lauded by administrators for her “exceptional conduct” while incarcerated.
The contrasting portraits of Williams as stone-cold killer and rehabilitated model prisoner highlight the difficulties in a plan to release thousands of California inmates to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has killed at least 52 of those incarcerated and sickened more than 8,700 others.
This spring, the state expedited the release of 3,500 inmates because of the coronavirus, and in July it freed 2,345 others early. Thousands more are eligible for release, including at least 6,500 deemed to be at high risk because of medical conditions that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19.
Although Gov. Gavin Newsom and corrections officials have focused on freeing nonviolent offenders, they also are letting out people who, like Williams, have committed violent crimes but have serious medical conditions.
Williams, 44, walked out of a women’s prison in Chowchilla, Calif., on July 29, lopping decades off her 84-years-to-life sentence for killing Kevin “John” Ruska Jr., who died of infection from a gunshot wound to the gut.
Some prisoners’ rights advocates say Williams exemplifies the type of inmate who should be released — one who has already served a lengthy sentence, poses a low risk of reoffending and is particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Some are also pushing to expand the criteria for early releases to include similar types of inmates now serving life without parole for murder.
But in Williams’ case and others, officials have drawn the ire of prosecutors, victims’ rights advocates and family members amid questions about which and how many inmates are being released — and whether it is being done with enough transparency to protect the public.
“The governor of California, Terebea’s public defender and the politicians of California have used COVID to allow this cold, calculated, lying, unremorseful murderer out of jail 65 years early, without giving the victim, Johnny, a voice,” said Ruska’s cousin, Karri Phillips...
Friday, August 7, 2020
Quick Change Artist
No one cares pic.twitter.com/Hf7NQJlsN9
— TRY NOT TO GET A BONER (@dontgetboner) August 5, 2020
Yesterday Was the 75 Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
In any case, here's a cool thread from Foreign Affairs:
“August 6, 1945, will remain forever a milestone in human annals. On that date the world’s first atomic fission bomb was dropped upon Japan,” the military correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin wrote in our October 1945 issue.https://t.co/2bm5UAvf6h
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
The detonation of atomic bombs in Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 devastated both cities, killing tens of thousands of people in the initial blasts alone. In the 75 years since, avoiding the use of nuclear weapons in war has preoccupied generations of policymakers.
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
In our July 1953 issue, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the project to develop the bombs used in World War II, wrote about the existential danger of the era of nuclear war:https://t.co/qKo6IfX4ZQ
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
In April 1956, Henry Kissinger considered how the bomb had transformed notions of war and peace, and what that meant for Cold War policy:https://t.co/46Pmz7nCdg
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
In January 1957, U.S. Army historian Louis Morton examined the deliberations that went into the decision to use the bomb:https://t.co/YaFl9QJr8Y
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
In summer 1983, the physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, who participated in the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb project, advocated for disarmament: https://t.co/BGiB9k8rJF
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
No nuclear weapon has been used in war for 75 years—“the single most important accomplishment of the nuclear age,” according to Nina Tannenwald. But the norms and institutions of nuclear restraint are unraveling.https://t.co/qkzgqQDlSi
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
The next 75 years are not guaranteed. As Ernest J. Moniz and Sam Nunn write, catastrophe “has become disturbingly plausible . . . all that is needed is a spark to light the tinder.”https://t.co/yidPdgc3tG
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020
Pelosi Lashes Out at Judy Woodruff During PBS Interview
There's an expectation among Democrat party leaders (created by the media) that the media will never ask them any question that could potentially hold them accountable for anything.
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) August 6, 2020
We Deserve Better Than Trump Versus Biden
In the last week, two videos have appeared showing the US presidential nominees of the two major political parties in action. Each is grimmer than the last. https://t.co/5W32VdEvs7
— Jacobin (@jacobinmag) August 6, 2020
WATCH: Biden pushes back on cognitive test question: ‘Why the hell would I take a test?'
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) August 5, 2020
“C’mon man. That’s like saying, ‘You — before you got on this program you took a test where you’re taking cocaine or not, what do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?’” https://t.co/zMBd4PkQg9 pic.twitter.com/Vcdsso4zxU
.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”
— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Monday, August 3, 2020
Stop Apologizing to the Mob
And this part, especially:
The article goes on to mention Trader Joe’s also pushing back against cancel culture. At Ricochet, Bethany Mandel writes, “How to Handle to Mob: Stop Apologizing:”
Ellen [DeGeneres] and her producers need to take the Trader Joe’s tactic: responding to a petition that some of their labels were racist, the supermarket chain pushed back and defended themselves, saying they are not racist and they’re not going anywhere. After the first statement about justifiably troubling workplace behavior, this is what those involved in the show should have done with repeated reports of workplace malcontent. “We are sorry that these individuals speaking to you off-the-record are not happy working on one of the most successful shows in daytime history. They know how to contact HR with a resignation letter and are invited to do so at their earliest convenience.”
Today's Shopping
Also, Kaufman – 100% Cotton Velour Striped Beach & Pool Towel 4-Pack – 30in x 60in.
Plus, Banana Boat Sunscreen Ultra Sport Performance, Broad Spectrum Sunscreen Spray - SPF 30 - 6 Ounce Twin Pack.
More, Tirrinia Mens Wide Brim Sun Hat with Neck Flap Fishing Safari Cap for Outdoor Hiking Camping Gardening Lawn Field Work, and Volcom Men's Quarter Straw Hat.
And, ABCCANOPY Canopy Tent Pop Up Canopy Outdoor Canopies Super Comapct Canopy Portable Tent Popup Beach Canopy Shade Canopy Tent with Wheeled Carry Bag Bonus.
Still more, Coleman 48-Quart Performance Cooler, and Coleman Portable Cooler with Wheels | Xtreme Wheeled Cooler, 50-Quart.
BONUS: William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.
Paige Spiranac Updates
Someone just said I’m stupid for starting a podcast because no one cares what I have to say and I should stick to bikini pictures....Nah I’d rather do both😘
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) May 7, 2020
So enjoy the podcast and the pic https://t.co/CuqAucyItE pic.twitter.com/vkU4Cruo2m
My roots just wanted to say hi pic.twitter.com/aJ4fVyKEUO
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) June 23, 2020
Smiling because the Rocket Mortgage Classic is this week! It was one of my favorite events I attended last year. Although I’m so bummed I won’t get to be in Detroit, I’m excited to watch! Who do you think is going to win the @RocketClassic? #ad pic.twitter.com/CtnAT3kafT
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) June 29, 2020
NEW podcast episode! You’ve been asking for @KayceSmith to be a guest and we delivered! We talk about dating, turn ons, tell some juicy stories, and of course talk sports! Click the link to listen-https://t.co/9440xvQJVw pic.twitter.com/6qIkk7mnZw
— Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) July 7, 2020
Vita Sidorkina
"I want to set a good example for my daughter to be a good mother, wife, friend and independent woman."- Vita Sidorkina https://t.co/5WvtONFQQV pic.twitter.com/AHNgGDgpfs
— Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) August 3, 2020
Samantha Hoopes Travel Message
Check my new blog post: https://t.co/OO2JJdfOOL
— Samantha Hoopes (@samanthahoopes) August 3, 2020
Feeling proud and extremely lucky to be married to such a strong and inspiring woman. Congratulations to my wife @samanthahoopes who got back on set for a photoshoot after only four months after giving birth to our beautiful son George W. https://t.co/b7dNAs0p3h
— Salvatore Palella (@palella) July 20, 2020
I’ve been wanting to post this for so long and share with you my journey into motherhood raw & unfiltered. Just a reminder about how photos are deceiving, angles are everything & we are all human and in that we all have our flaws! These are shot 4 months after my baby & 7 months pic.twitter.com/wWcLXZjkbB
— Samantha Hoopes (@samanthahoopes) April 17, 2020
it I am proud of my new shape, new skin & new body! There is no such thing as perfection & beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We are all human and take time to heal, give yourself that time & cherish what’s in front of you & what matters most. 👶🏻💕#SH
— Samantha Hoopes (@samanthahoopes) April 17, 2020
Riots and Demonstrations from Portland to Jerusalem
Over the past several years, public discourse in the United States has seen a lot of new lows. It saw another one this month when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to federal officers in Portland, Oregon as “stormtroopers,” that is, Nazi Brownshirts.Still more.
In a tweet on July 18 and in subsequent remarks, Pelosi accused the federal forces deployed to Portland of “kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti.”
Pelosi’s allegations would cause a political earthquake – if they were true. But they aren’t true. And the fact that she slandered federal officers as Nazis is a deeply disturbing testament to where the Democratic Party – of which she is the senior elected official – stands today and what its intentions are.
For the past two months, the progressive city of Portland in the progressive State of Oregon, has been the scene of chaos and rioting. The liberal media have misleadingly characterized the riots as “peaceful demonstrations.”
Night after night, hundreds of “peaceful demonstrators” have vandalized and destroyed stores and other businesses, transforming downtown Portland into a war zone. Over the past five weeks, the focal point of the violence has been the federal courthouse.
“Peaceful protesters” from Antifa and other radical groups have been attacking the federal courthouse in Portland with incendiary devices including pipe bombs and commercial grade fireworks. Federal officers charged with guarding the courthouse have been blinded with lasers and attacked with stones, metal balls shot from slingshots, bricks and two-by-fours, among other things.
The rioters are backed in their efforts by city and state officials as well as national Democrats who have castigated federal forces protecting the courthouse as “occupiers,” the “Gestapo” and of course “stormtroopers.”
As for the alleged “kidnapping” of peaceful protesters, local journalist Andy Ngo explained this week that Pelosi’s statement channeled Antifa propaganda.
Ngo told Fox News, “That’s an Antifa talking point that is being repeated by sympathetic media.”
He explained that federal officers charged with protecting federal property are using plainclothes agents in unmarked vehicles to peacefully apprehend leaders of the violence. This is a routine, entirely legal tactic which Ngo explained is only being castigated now is because “it is quite effective.”
On the face of it, as Democratic politicians, Pelosi and her colleagues in Congress and Oregon should support the federal forces trying to end the riots. After all, like New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles, Portland is a Democratic city. The businesses being destroyed are owned by their voters.
So why are Pelosi and her partisan colleagues and their media adjuncts instead depicting the rioters rendering downtown Portland a war zone as “peaceful protesters” and slandering the law enforcement officers defending federal property as Nazis?
The obvious answer is politics. The Democrats support the rioters because as they see things, the longer chaos reigns in the streets of America’s cities, the better their chances of defeating President Donald Trump in November.
The Democrats have a number of resources that the Republicans lack and the riots bring them all to bear. They have fanatical progressive activists angry that Bernie Sanders isn’t the nominee but willing to burn America.
They have wall to wall support from the media from NBC to the New York Times to Facebook and Twitter.
The Democrats have limitless funds to maintain the violence and mayhem indefinitely. This week, Alexander Soros, George Soros’ son announced that the family foundation has earmarked another quarter billion dollars to Black Lives Matter. And the Soroses are not alone.
As the past four years of Trump-Russia mythology and legally baseless, politicized prosecutions and investigations have shown, the Democrats control much of the so-called Deep State which controls the levers of the permanent bureaucracy.
The Trump-Russia collusion narrative largely disintegrated under the weight of evidence and the absurd impeachment process over the past several months. And with its decline the Democrats began casting about for a new cause.
They found it with the coronavirus pandemic. In one fell swoop, the virus from China swept away Trump’s fast-growing economy with record low unemployment across all ethnic and racial groups.
With schools abruptly closed and jobs abruptly lost the optimistic America of 2019 became the destabilized, poor, frustrated and insecure America of 2020.
Yet, despite the best efforts of the commentators, support for Trump was not falling apart, at least not enough to ensure an electoral victory for Joe Biden. And Americans were beginning to figure out a way through, as the rising stock market indexes indicated.
But then came the riots. The proximate cause of the riots and protests was the police killing of George Floyd. But their context was the pandemic and the elections in November. The riots gave the Democrats a way to galvanize their radical progressive base (on the streets, in Congress and in the media) around their favorite issues – race and identity politics.
For the Democrats, the best part of the riots is that unlike the pandemic, for demonstrators and their media flacks, it is easy to make the case that Trump is to blame.
Trump’s in charge and America is burning. Trump’s to blame. Trump’s in charge and there is racism in America. Trump’s to blame.
If Trump quells the riots, he will be guilty of police brutality, (with stormtroopers) – thus proving the point. If he fails to quell the riots, he is an ineffective boob. And so, with a bottomless pit of money, the riots will continue, at least so long as the Democrats feel they benefit from them, and they haven’t figured out something else to do...
Saturday, August 1, 2020
A Broad Ideological Project to Dominate Society
Idol smashing and cancel culture are part of a broad ideological project to re-educate Americans, writes @andrewmichta https://t.co/SA56KmsMBA— MaryAnastasiaO'Grady (@MaryAnastasiaOG) August 1, 2020
Czesław Miłosz, a future Nobel Prize-winning poet who had just defected from Poland, began work in 1951 on a book called “The Captive Mind.” Even as Stalinist totalitarianism tightened its grip on Eastern Europe, many Western European intellectuals lauded the brave new world of Soviet communism as a model for overcoming “bourgeois forces,” which in their view had caused World War II. Living in Paris, Miłosz wrote his book, which was published in 1953, to warn the West of what happens to the human mind and soul in a totalitarian system.Still more.
Miłosz knew from experience, having lived through the Communist takeover, how totalitarianism strips men and women of their liberty, transforming them into “affirmative cogs” in service of the state and obliterating what had taken centuries of Western political development to achieve. Totalitarianism not only enslaved people physically but crippled their spirit. It did so by replacing ordinary human language, in which words signify things in the outside world, with ideologically sanctioned language, in which words signify the dominant party’s ever-changing ideas of what is and is not true.
Since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, nationwide protests, which quickly turned to riots, have been hijacked by the neo-Marxist left, morphing into an all-out assault on American cities and institutions. This assault is underpinned by an audacious attempt to rewrite history that turns specific past events into weapons not only to overpower political opponents but also to recast all of American history as a litany of racial transgressions.
The radicals have turned race into a lens through which to view the country’s history, and not simply because they are obsessed with race. They have done so because it allows them to identify and separate those groups that deserve affirmation, in their view, and those that do not. What is taking place is the resegregation of America, the endpoint of which will be the rejection of everything the civil-rights movement stood for.
What is driving the radical protesters and rioters—who are enabled and manipulated by the “digital intelligentsia” in the press and an expanding segment of the political and business classes—is contempt for the freedom of anyone who fails to comport with their image of a just society. In authoritarian systems those in power seek to proscribe certain forms of political speech and social activity. Totalitarians claim unconditional authority to reach deep into each person’s conscience. They prescribe an interpretation of the world and dictate the language with which citizens are permitted to express that interpretation. Authoritarian regimes leave largely untouched the private civic sphere of human activity; totalitarians destroy traditional value systems and reorder the culture. That is why they are harder to overthrow.
The ill-named progressivism that has inspired shrill demands to dismantle police forces and destroy statues is only a small manifestation of a massive project aimed at the re-education of the American population. The goal of this project is to negate the story of the American republic and replace it with a tale anchored exclusively in race categories and narratives of oppression. The nature of this exercise, with its sledgehammer rhetoric that obliterates complexities in favor of one-dimensional “correct” interpretations, is as close to Marxist agitprop as one can get.
Why do American elites, who might be expected to favor preserving the nation that has elevated them, support the effort to dismantle it? Their thinking seems to be that the radicals destroying monuments and issuing wholesale denunciations of America’s past are wreaking destruction on ordinary Americans and their history, not on the elites and their ideology. Today’s elites as a rule do not believe they have any obligation to serve the public, only to rule it, and so they express little or no disapproval of college students toppling statues on federal land or looters raiding supermarkets. To criticize them would open elites to the charges of “populism” and “racism.”
Why do American elites, who might be expected to favor preserving the nation that has elevated them, support the effort to dismantle it? Their thinking seems to be that the radicals destroying monuments and issuing wholesale denunciations of America’s past are wreaking destruction on ordinary Americans and their history, not on the elites and their ideology. Today’s elites as a rule do not believe they have any obligation to serve the public, only to rule it, and so they express little or no disapproval of college students toppling statues on federal land or looters raiding supermarkets. To criticize them would open elites to the charges of “populism” and “racism.”
Yet the elites are playing a dangerous game. Such “canceling”—of historical and living figures alike—increasingly mirrors what happened under communism in the Soviet bloc, where the accusation of being out of step with the party was enough to end one’s career and nullify one’s reputation.
This is about more than statues and history. Those who control the symbols of political discourse can dominate the culture and control the collective consciousness. If you doubt this, ask yourself why there has been so little backlash from ordinary, nonelite Americans. Our sense of self has been progressively deconstructed. We feel in our bones the wrongness of the violence being visited on the nation but lack the language to speak against it.
The resegregation of American society is fundamentally undemocratic and un-American. It envisions a social hierarchy based on DNA. It is also incompatible with individual freedom and constitutional government. Hence the drive to overhaul the U.S. Constitution, rewrite textbooks, and restructure museums by race and sex quotas.
Democracy cannot survive in a society in which winners and losers are adjudicated arbitrarily according to criteria beyond individual control. Any society built around the principle of skin color will become a caste system in which accident, not merit, will allocate value and benefit. Civil society will be buried once and for all.
The current radical trends carry the seeds of violence unseen in the U.S. since the Civil War. The activists ascendant in American cities insist on the dominance of their ideological precepts, brooking no alternative. Such absolutism forces Americans away from the realm of political compromise into one of unrelenting axiology, with one side claiming a monopoly on virtue and decency while the other is expected to accept its status as perpetually evil, and thus assume a permanent penitent stance for all its real and imagined misdeeds across history.
Only when the state creates a space for an unbiased debate over history can a discussion truly take place unhindered by ideology and dogma. Only then can a society move toward a consensus on a shared understanding of its past and how its collective memory should be shaped. The U.S. is roiled by spasms of violence and intolerance today because government at all levels—public education systems, states that allow universities to promulgate speech codes and “safe spaces,” court decisions that define constitutionally protected speech as, in effect, everything but political speech—has abdicated its duty to protect the public space. Children are rampaging through the cities because the adults have left the room.
America is in the throes of a destructive ideological experiment, subjected to a sweeping and increasingly state-sanctioned reordering of its collective memory, with the increasingly totalitarian left given free rein to dominate public discourse...
Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, China Maneuvers for International Leadership
See Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, at Foreign Affairs, "The Coronavirus Could Reshape Global Order: China Is Maneuvering for International Leadership as the United States Falters":
The coronavirus pandemic is testing the foundations of the United States’ global leadership, write Kurt M. Campbell and @RushDoshi, and so far, Washington is failing the test. https://t.co/eSL749sszA
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) July 30, 2020
With hundreds of millions of people now isolating themselves around the world, the novel coronavirus pandemic has become a truly global event. And while its geopolitical implications should be considered secondary to matters of health and safety, those implications may, in the long term, prove just as consequential—especially when it comes to the United States’ global position. Global orders have a tendency to change gradually at first and then all at once. In 1956, a botched intervention in the Suez laid bare the decay in British power and marked the end of the United Kingdom’s reign as a global power. Today, U.S. policymakers should recognize that if the United States does not rise to meet the moment, the coronavirus pandemic could mark another “Suez moment.”Still more.
It is now clear to all but the most blinkered partisans that Washington has botched its initial response. Missteps by key institutions, from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have undermined confidence in the capacity and competence of U.S. governance. Public statements by President Donald Trump, whether Oval Office addresses or early-morning tweets, have largely served to sow confusion and spread uncertainty. Both public and private sectors have proved ill-prepared to produce and distribute the tools necessary for testing and response. And internationally, the pandemic has amplified Trump’s instincts to go it alone and exposed just how unprepared Washington is to lead a global response.
The status of the United States as a global leader over the past seven decades has been built not just on wealth and power but also, and just as important, on the legitimacy that flows from the United States’ domestic governance, provision of global public goods, and ability and willingness to muster and coordinate a global response to crises. The coronavirus pandemic is testing all three elements of U.S. leadership. So far, Washington is failing the test.
As Washington falters, Beijing is moving quickly and adeptly to take advantage of the opening created by U.S. mistakes, filling the vacuum to position itself as the global leader in pandemic response. It is working to tout its own system, provide material assistance to other countries, and even organize other governments. The sheer chutzpah of China’s move is hard to overstate. After all, it was Beijing’s own missteps—especially its efforts at first to cover up the severity and spread of the outbreak—that helped create the very crisis now afflicting much of the world. Yet Beijing understands that if it is seen as leading, and Washington is seen as unable or unwilling to do so, this perception could fundamentally alter the United States’ position in global politics and the contest for leadership in the twenty-first century.
MISTAKES WERE MADE
In the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease now referred to as COVID-19, the missteps of Chinese leaders cast a pall on their country’s global standing. The virus was first detected in November 2019 in the city of Wuhan, but officials didn’t disclose it for months and even punished the doctors who first reported it, squandering precious time and delaying by at least five weeks measures that would educate the public, halt travel, and enable widespread testing. Even as the full scale of the crisis emerged, Beijing tightly controlled information, shunned assistance from the CDC, limited World Health Organization travel to Wuhan, likely undercounted infections and deaths, and repeatedly altered the criteria for registering new COVID-19 cases—perhaps in a deliberate effort to manipulate the official number of cases.
As the crisis worsened through January and February, some observers speculated that the coronavirus might even undermine the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. It was called China’s “Chernobyl”; Dr. Li Wenliang—the young whistleblower silenced by the government who later succumbed to complications from the COVID-19—was likened to the Tiananmen Square “tank man.”
Yet by early March, China was claiming victory. Mass quarantines, a halt to travel, and a complete shutdown of most daily life nationwide were credited with having stemmed the tide; official statistics, such as they are, reported that daily new cases had fallen into the single digits in mid-March from the hundreds in early February. In a surprise to most observers, Chinese leader Xi Jinping—who had been uncharacteristically quiet in the first weeks—began to put himself squarely at the center of the response. This month, he personally visited Wuhan.
Even though life in China has yet to return to normal (and despite continuing questions over the accuracy of China’s statistics), Beijing is working to turn these early signs of success into a larger narrative to broadcast to the rest of the world—one that makes China the essential player in a coming global recovery while airbrushing away its earlier mismanagement of the crisis.
A critical part of this narrative is Beijing’s supposed success in battling the virus. A steady stream of propaganda articles, tweets, and public messaging, in a wide variety of languages, touts China’s achievements and highlights the effectiveness of its model of domestic governance. “China’s signature strength, efficiency and speed in this fight has been widely acclaimed,” declared Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. China, he added, set “a new standard for the global efforts against the epidemic.” Central authorities have instituted tight informational control and discipline at state organs to snuff out contradictory narratives.
These messages are helped by the implicit contrast with efforts to battle the virus in the West, particularly in the United States—Washington’s failure to produce adequate numbers of testing kits, which means the United States has tested relatively few people per capita, or the Trump administration’s ongoing disassembly of the U.S. government’s pandemic-response infrastructure. Beijing has seized the narrative opportunity provided by American disarray, its state media and diplomats regularly reminding a global audience of the superiority of Chinese efforts and criticizing the “irresponsibility and incompetence” of the “so-called political elite in Washington,” as the state-run Xinhua news agency put it in an editorial.
Chinese officials and state media have even insisted that the coronavirus did not in fact emerge from China—despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—in order to reduce China’s blame for the global pandemic. This effort has elements of a full-blown Russian-style disinformation campaign, with China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman and over a dozen diplomats sharing poorly sourced articles accusing the U.S. military of spreading the coronavirus in Wuhan. These actions, combined with China’s unprecedented mass expulsion of journalists from three leading American papers, damage China’s pretensions to leadership...
Professor Mike Adams
He was also a fighter for free speech and due process on campus, who was persecuted in his lifetime and, after being driven to take his own life, was mocked and cursed after his death. He deserved better — we all do. But that won’t happen until we treat people as people instead of as instruments for our own agendas. This will take a general awakening, and I can only pray it happens soon.And from Michelle Malkin:
Mike Adams—Doer of the Word by @michellemalkin https://t.co/8f1rjxfkhv
— Denise McAllister (@McAllisterDen) July 29, 2020
Ran into the incomparable @MikeSAdams at the grocery store today! Follow this stalwart champion of life & free speech! pic.twitter.com/lQWHon6tuV
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) July 28, 2018
'Largely Peaceful,' Translated to English, Means Violent
60 days of demonstrations in cities like Oakland, Portland, and Seattle are described as “largely peaceful."
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) July 30, 2020
Any “peaceful demonstration” capable of “intensifying” into setting fire to a courthouse was never really “peaceful," writes @MichaelBarone.
https://t.co/Xk11wTy3R8
"Protestors in California," tweeted ABC News, about an incident in Oakland, "set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified."More.
If you'd presented your ninth-grade teacher with that sentence in your weekly writing assignment, she might have taken out her red pen and asked you, "How does a peaceful demonstration intensify?"
This sentence, however, was written not by a ninth-grader but by an adult, a professional journalist working for one of the world's major television news organizations. It was not an accident. As Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy noted, "George Orwell could not improve on this."
Any "peaceful demonstration" capable of "intensifying" into setting fire to a courthouse, damaging a police station and assaulting law enforcement personnel was never really "peaceful" in the first place.
As The New Criterion editor Roger Kimball wrote, "the overriding criterion for choosing which narrative to plug" is which "will do the most damage to Donald Trump and Republican prospects in the November election."
The narrative that serves that purpose is that the demonstrations that broke out after the May 25 death of George Floyd are peaceful, and the demands of many demonstrators to "defund" the police are a reasonable response with no downside risk. Video footage suggesting the contrary has appeared sparingly, if at all, on broadcast news, CNN and MSNBC...