What do Robert E. Lee, Christopher Columbus, Miguel Cervantes, Fr. Junipero Serra, U. S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson have in common? They’re all of European descent, they represent received wisdom, and their statues have been defaced or removed by “demonstrators”. At Bloomberg Stephen L. Carter remarks:

But there’s a difference between, say, Ulysses Grant (his statue shamefully toppled in San Francisco), who whatever else he did pursued the Union cause with a vengeance, and the men who fought for the actual goal of preserving White supremacy.

As for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the case for leaving their statues in place is strong, because although they held slaves, the views they expressed about the practice tended to be in advance of the position of the nation at the time. (This doesn’t excuse either Washington’s brutal treatment of his captive workers or the viciousness of Jefferson’s comments on Black people in Notes on the State of Virginia.)

I agree broadly with those sentiments but I don’t think that Mr. Carter fully appreciates what’s happening. That lack of understanding is reflected in the rules he proposes for removing statues:

Rule Number 1: No statue is entitled to continue to exist merely because it exists now. The activists are right about this. Change in our decisions over whom to commemorate is often sensible.

[…]
Rule Number 2: In particular, what we should ask is whether the views of the person to whom objection is now being raised were above or below the median position held by people of the era. And if they were below, how far below did they lie?

As Jonathan Swift observed, it is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. Reason has little to do with the paroxysms wracking our cities; emotion has everything to do with them. Reasonable plans and programs are not being put forward and they should not be expected. They are cris du coeur.

I think they’re a broad rejection of received wisdom per se. Away with all the old white guys! “OK, boomer” extended to all of history.

There is some concern in Chicago about the possibility of another contagion being transmitted, this time by text message—the Blue Flu. Dana Kozlov reports at CBS Chicago:

CHICAGO (CBS) — Along with a spike in violence in Chicago this past weekend comes with a new push by members of the police union to get officers on the street to stand down – and even stay home.

As CBS 2 Political Investigator Dana Kozlov reported Monday night, it all started with a text message.

The text told officers not to volunteer to work on days off, to limit arrests, and to call in sick to make a statement to Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the City Council about how much officers are needed.

The bottom line – it is calling for what is known as “blue flu.”

The head of the Fraternal Order of Police is not denouncing the move. But the mayor calls it stupid.

The background of this is that the officers in the Chicago Police Department have been working without a contract for three years, Mayor Lightfoot was elected, at least in part, in the hope she would reform the police department (without raising taxes), we’re in the middle of what may be an historic spate of murders on the South and West Sides of the city, and the mayor has been highly critical of police officers lately.

Their old contract prevents the police officer’s union from organizing such actions itself but that doesn’t pertain to individual police officers. So far not much has come of these text messages but under the circumstances they are concerning.

I mentioned yesterday that I was blue. Here’s one of the reasons for it. I don’t see any way for what’s been going on to turn out well. It won’t turn out well for people who live in cities and in particular it won’t turn out well for blacks who live in cities.

My views on the American Civil War and the Confederacy are pretty harsh. Four of my great-great-grandfathers (at least) served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Two of them died young of the privations they experienced during the war, impoverishing their families for generations. I grew up in walking distance of a Civil War battlefield. You could kick up old musket balls was as easy as digging your toe into the ground. Walls and fences had bullet holes in them. When I was a kid there were still people around who remembered the Civil War.

I don’t have any fondness for the movie Gone With the Wind—it paints far too glossy a picture of the antebellum South as does the book. I saw the pre-civil rights era South. It was terrible. I don’t know why the statues of Confederate generals weren’t taken down fifty years ago.

But if statues or other commemorations of Washington, Jefferson, or Grant offend your sensibilities you really owe it to yourself and the rest of us to find a country with a history more to your liking. You can hardly open your wallet without gazing at a commemoration of a slaveowner. The Confederate generals are dispensable but Washington and Jefferson aren’t.

And why stop there? Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were not a bit better. Their records speak for themselves. Harry Truman’s family were known to be Southern sympathizers (they were Kentuckians). Jimmy Carter’s family owned slaves and his great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy. His celebrated peanut farm, just 20 miles from Andersonville Prison, was built on land from which the Creek Indians had been forcibly ejected. Some of Bill Clinton’s ancestors fought for the Confederacy, too. If you seriously hold the view that history taints you forever, I see no way you could vote Democratic.

The immediate effects of the violence that has broken out in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Davenport, Philadelphia, and dozens of other cities will be to make the lives of the people who live in the neighborhood even more difficult than they were before. It will become harder to buy food and pharmaceuticals. Farther down the line big companies are unlikely to invest stockholders’ money in those neighborhoods.

Even farther down the line real estate values and, along with them, the tax base will erode. I’ve heard that 20% of all homes in Minneapolis were newly listed for sale within a week of the disturbances there. It’s hard to see how the cities most affected will survive without property taxes or sales tax. There’s a lot of talk about police reform but reform costs money.

The group in the picture above is just one of several I saw on my morning walk with Kara last Saturday. I wanted to make a couple of observations.

First, I honestly don’t see how social distancing can have much effect at all unless and until people are willing to lock their teenage children in their rooms. They are not adults and cannot be expected to be as responsible as adults. Heck, getting adults to act in a responsible manner is hard enough. I see no such willingness.

Second, to believe that social distancing even in slowing the rate of transmission of SARS-CoV02 can be effective you’ve got to make some pretty strong assumptions about human behavior, community spread of the virus, and networks that are simply not in evidence.

I think we’re fully committed what I consider the worst possible outcome—letting the virus run its course and attributing that natural course to the actions that have taken, viz. lockdowns, social distancing, wearing masks, etc.

I strongly recommend Satoru Nagao’s brief post at the Hudson Institute, purporting to be advice on what India should be doing in the face of China’s provocations. I think it actually is suggesting what India should not be doing with a soupçon of U. S. and Japanese interest. Here’s the part which I think should impel some reflection:

The first similarity of note is China’s repeated disregard for international law when laying claim to new territory. In the South China Sea, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague rejected China’s claim to sovereignty over much of the South China Sea in 2016. Despite this, China continues to claim and occupy the area. In the East China Sea, China did not claim the Senkaku Islands before the 1970s. China’s attitude has since changed due to the potential existence of oil reserves in the East China Sea. Now, Chinese Coast Guard ships enter Japan’s territorial waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands and pursue Japanese fishing boats to claim sovereignty over this sea. The nonobservance of this international border further demonstrates China’s attitude of territorial entitlement and disrespect for international law. And China is expressing the same attitude at the India-China border. In this case, Dr Lobsang Sangay, the President of the Tibetan exile administration, expressed that the Dalai Lama considers the disputed territories of both Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh (along the LAC) to be a part of India. Thus, there is a high possibility that China’s claim to areas along the India-China border is legally baseless.

A second recurring facet of China’s behaviour is its exploitation of military power vacuums. For example, China occupied half of the Paracel Islands just after France withdrew from Indochina in the 1950s. In 1974, China expanded its presence to all of the Paracel Islands after the US withdrew from South Vietnam. Additionally, China occupied six features of the Spratly Islands after the Soviet Union decreased its military presence in Vietnam in 1988. Again in 1995, China laid claim to Mischief Reef after US troops withdrew from the Philippines.

I hesitate in daring to offer India advice. I think its situation is a difficult one. It is an enormously populous country, it probably is not too much to say that it is home to more people who are poor by just about any standard than there are in the entire balance of the world put together, at least a half billion. Obviously, economic development is much in India’s interest and, at least as things are framed right now, it is hard to see how China and India can prosper simultaneously.

China is cultivating a closer relationship with Pakistan, a country which many people in India consider a mortal enemy. Since the end of colonialism India has tried to steer a neutral path, first through official autarky and more recently through a sort of one-way autarky.

Both China and India are nuclear powers. Both have large, untested armies.

Dr. Nagao’s advice to India is to avoid helping China increase the size and power of its military. Sounds pretty prudent to me.

I’m in a bit of a blue funk (U. S. meaning) today for many reasons on many fronts. More about that later.

I’m not a father and at this point of my life it’s pretty unlikely I’ll become one. My wife’s father died a generation ago. I considered him a friend but he wasn’t a father figure to me. My own father died two generations ago. One of my life’s great regrets is that my dad died just as I was beginning to cultivate a grown-up relationship with him. All I can say is that I think he was a great man and I miss him. My siblings barely remember him.

Happy Father’s Day to all who can actually celebrate it. If you don’t realize it, understand that you are already blessed.

I strongly recommend you read this piece by John McWhorter at Quillette. Here’s its conclusion:

Police officers are too often overarmed, undertrained, and low on empathy. Some police officers are surely racist and act like it. But it does not follow that white cops routinely kill black people in tense situations out of racist animus. This scenario may seem plausible—I believed it until only a few years ago. But there are times when facts are counterintuitive, and it is important to get the facts right and to analyze them with clear eyes and a clear mind (the enlightening work of criminologist and ex-cop Peter Moskos is helpful in this regard). Rhetoric has a way of straying from reality, and to get where we all want to go, it is reality that we must address.

Can police forces be made better and should they be made better? Definitely. Should they be “defunded” and the money be used for other purposes? At least in Chicago you’re not going to free up much money that way, much of what is spent on those “other purposes” will be used to line the pockets of community organizers, and black people will suffer more from crime and violence, nearly all of it perpetrated on them by their neighbors.

I think you’ll find this account of a nursing home in Baltimore that has protected its residents from COVID-19 enlightening. From the Dan Rodricks at the Baltimore Sun:

“So we already had procedures in place for dealing with infections,” Reverend DeWitt says. “The next thing we did was eliminate residents going out unless it was for a crucial medical procedure. All employees who were not involved in direct care were told to stay home and work from there if they could. I personally have not been [inside the nursing home] for 11 weeks.”

The home stocked up quickly on extra masks, gloves and gowns. DeWitt scheduled his janitors so that the nursing home received thorough cleanings day and night. He asked each staff member involved in the care of residents to limit travel and contact with their family members. On reporting for work, staffers had to fill out a questionnaire about their outside activities and health conditions. “And we took their temperature three times a day,” DeWitt says.

Masks were dispensed to all the residents. Community meals were eliminated, and residents ate in their rooms. Employees were provided food so they would not have to go out for lunch or dinner. Rooms with one television and two residents got a second TV to help meet social distancing.

The nursing home hired an extra activities coordinator to visit with residents, coach them through daily exercises, play board games with them or take them for walks. This was particularly important because, says DeWitt, up to half of his residents have no relatives who visit them, and he was concerned they would feel even more isolated during the pandemic.

DeWitt and his staff did all this before seeing directives from government agencies. “We didn’t wait for guidance from the Centers for Disease Control or from the Maryland Department of Health or from Baltimore City,” he says. “We did what we thought was prudent at the very beginning of the pandemic.”

“Porch visits” are allowed—visits by relatives or friends in which the resident remains on the porch while the visitors remain on the sidewalk for or five yards away. There have been no cases of COVID-19 among the residents. The nursing home is small and this is completely anecdotal but I think the measures put in place were prudent and indicative of the things that should have been done one a much larger scale, especially the proactive stance. I have also read accounts of nursing home in which the staff sheltered in place right along with the residents from the earliest days of the pandemic. Handling difficult situations prudently is hard sometimes.

At Foreign Affairs Michèle A. Flournoy remarks on how the U. S. can prevent a war in Asia:

Yet even as it strengthens its capacity to deter China, Washington must also reopen a sustained high-level strategic dialogue with Beijing—a practice that every administration since Richard Nixon’s has adopted, until the current one. Reestablishing a forum in which China and the United States could regularly discuss their respective interests and perspectives, identify areas of potential cooperation (such as nonproliferation and climate change), and manage their differences short of conflict is essential; tactical discussions on trade issues are simply not enough. After all, deterrence depends on the clear and consistent communication of interests and intent in order to minimize the risk of miscalculation. Given Beijing’s assumption that the United States is preoccupied and in decline, Chinese leaders’ propensity to test the limits in areas such as Taiwan or the South China Sea, and the faulty, potentially escalatory assumptions embedded in Chinese military doctrine, such a dialogue cannot come too soon.

I’m afraid she’s whistling past a graveyard. Given her assumption, there’s nothing that the U. S. can do to prevent a war in Asia. China and the United States are not the only actors.

What we can do is reduce the likelihood of China and the U. S. going to war with each other, a conflict in which I do not believe there would be any victors. We can just say “no”. We should promote our own interests, not construe those interests too broadly, and stop promoting the interests of other countries as though they were our own.

I found this passage of her post the most interesting:

Since the 1991 Gulf War, the PLA has gone to school on the American way of war and developed an expanding set of asymmetric approaches to undermine U.S. military strengths and exploit U.S. vulnerabilities. Of greatest concern is the substantial investment Beijing has made in “anti-access/area-denial” (A2/AD) capabilities. Ranging from persistent precision strikes on U.S. logistics, forces, and bases to electronic, kinetic, and cyber attacks on digital connections and systems inside U.S. battle management networks, these capabilities are designed to prevent the United States from projecting military power into East Asia in order to defend its interests or allies. As a result, in the event that conflict starts, the United States can no longer expect to quickly achieve air, space, or maritime superiority; the U.S. military would need to fight to gain advantage, and then to keep it, in the face of continuous efforts to disrupt and degrade its battle management networks.

The Chinese military has also made rapid advances in cyber- and artificial intelligence—thanks to China’s massive theft of Western technology, state support for its leading technology companies, and doctrine of “civil-military fusion,” which requires that any commercial or academic technological advancement with military implications be shared with the PLA. Technological investments have come along with doctrinal innovations. Chinese military doctrine now holds that the side that can make and execute battlefield decisions most quickly will gain a decisive advantage in any conflict. China’s theory of victory increasingly relies on “system destruction warfare”—crippling an adversary at the outset of conflict, by deploying sophisticated electronic warfare, counterspace, and cyber-capabilities to disrupt what are known as C4ISR networks (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), and thereby thwarting its power projection and undermining its resolve. Among other things, this means that the United States can no longer assume that its satellites—essential for navigation, communications, early warning, targeting, and much more—would escape attack during a conflict. Given China’s ability to interfere with, spoof, damage, or destroy U.S. satellites, Washington can no longer take space for granted as an uncontested domain during war.