Stephen Roney's Blog, page 223

A Journal of the Plague Year

New evidence from Germany is that the coronavirus is becoming less deadly. We have seen the death rate fall as the infection rate rises. We had thought this might have to do with more young people getting the virus. The German figures show this is not so: the death rate is falling quickly among older patients.

In other news, trials of the Oxford vaccine have resumed. The one patient who fell sick apparently had something unrelated to the vaccine.




'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

No Justice, No Peace; No Money, No War

Trump has now brokered three peace deals in quick succession: Kosovo and Serbia, UAE and Israel, Bahrain and Israel. Trump is a professional deal maker. Business is about “busy-ness,” about finding ways to get things done. I think we are seeing the value of entrepreneurial skills in government.

The prospects seem good now for an overall end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, a dangerous sword dance that has lasted since 1948. The prospects are also good for an end to Islamist terrorism; the existence of Israel, and the West’s backing for the Jewish state, was the main complaint. We could be seeing another moment like the moment the Berlin Wall fell. The Middle East may fully join the modern world.

For one thing, the rise of Islamism looks a lot like culture shock. Traditions, like people, go a little hysterically nativist on first contact. Culture shock in the face of globalization is a good explanation for Nazism in Germany; perhaps too for Stalinism in Russia, Juche in North Korea, and Maoism in China. These things pass, sooner or later, and things calm down, as the new and foreign grows more familiar. Ideally without Holocausts and world wars. Perhaps this explains the troubles in the Balkans as well--suddenly exposed to the winds after decades behind a curtain of iron.

Along with this, and Trump’s talent for dealmaking, there is another critical f actor. Do you remember, gentle reader, when “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland seemed insoluble? They went on for decades. Then they suddenly ended in 1998, with the Good Friday accord. Now all anyone worries about is whether there will still be an open border, without any kind of border check, after the UK leaves the EU. What happened?

The money ran out. The IRA was funded by the Soviets, then by Libya. Gaddhafi pulled the funding. The IRA wilted, and Sinn Fein was forced to go the political route. To everyone’s benefit, including Sinn Fein.

A similar consideration probably stands smiling deferentially behind the present peace agreements. Thanks to fracking in the US and elsewhere, the money is running out to fund the eternal conflicts in the Middle East; and Islamic terrorism worldwide. The wasta, the leverage, the Gulf States had over the rest of the world, that needed their oil, was considerable, and is now gone. If they are going to keep their profitable economies going, they need to work harder at making and keeping friends, at encouraging investment and trade.

Bahrain joining in the deal feels significant. Bahrain is nearly a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia. During the Arab Spring, the Saudi Army went in to restore order. Bahrain would not have signed on without Saudi prior approval, and so looks like a stalking horse. Probably the Saudi royals are watching public reaction before committing themselves.

With the Magic Kingdom in, the rest of the GCC is overwhelmingly likely to follow: Oman, Kuwait, Qatar. Along with Egypt and Jordan, already signatories to peace deals, this is the centre of gravity for the Arab world. Others will probably come in as well.

A general Arab-Israeli rapprochement then puts critical pressure on Iran, already in financial trouble and vulnerable to civil unrest.

All this raises a further consideration.

The eternal conflict in Northern Ireland, the Middle East quagmire, and Islamic terrorism around the world, depended heavily on funding, generally funding from abroad. So heavily that, funding withdrawn, peace breaks out.

Who is funding the current conflict in the USA, from Antifa and Black Lives Matter?

Someone certainly is.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

What Trump Told Woodward

It flies through the air with the greatest of ease--
That coronavirus at which not to sneeze.

In 2016, Donald Trump was not my candidate. I thought his nomination by the Republicans was disastrous. I would never have supported Clinton, but would have preferred almost any other Republican.

Not the first time I’ve been wrong.

The reality is that he has done an unusually good job, by all visible indications. If any president deserved a second term, he does. The fact that the polls are still against him seems insane.

There is currently a scandal, it is true, about his supposed lying to the public about the COVID pandemic. And demands that Kayleigh McEnerny must also resign for saying that Trump did not lie. Because he told Bob Woodward on February 7 that the coronavirus spread by air and that it was more severe than flu. At the same time, and later, his public announcements were that the virus was “under control” and that Americans should "Just stay calm. It will go away."

I can’t see any lie here; except by the Democrats. If Trump “knew” that COVID was spread by air, and was worse than the flu, he can only have heard this from the experts. The experts at the same time were telling the public that COVID was under control, the risk was low, and they did not know whether it was spread by air. These same experts who advised Trump, or others like them, would have advised members of Congress. No members of Congress were warning the public as of February 7 that COVID was more serious than they realized, and was spread by air. China was saying at the same time that it was under control and probably was not spread by air. The WHO was still refusing to confirm airborne transmission as of July 8. The Centre for Disease Control would not confirm either that it was airborne or how deadly it was. Bob Woodward too obviously knew whatever Trump knew, having just been told by Trump; and he too told nobody.

They were all, of course, acting rationally and in everyone’s best interests. Nobody knew any of this for sure; it was speculation, although reasonable speculation. Everyone was trying to keep everyone calm. Trump was more honest than anyone: he actually publicly said, at the time, that his prime concern was to keep everyone calm. He was the most honest.

It is this that the corrupt elite cannot tolerate.

Trump is consistently a straight-talker. Those who oppose him seem to lie persistently and without compunction.




'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Further Thoughts on Systemic Racism

Canada is not a racist country. This should be so obvious that it feels wrong to have to say it. Are we mad?

Yet that is suddenly a common charge. That is the charge when we hear of “systemic racism.”

Of course, there is and has been racism in Canada. We humans are herd animals. Just as we instinctively favour members of our own family over strangers, we instinctively favour people who look like us. This tendency is unworthy of us as Christians, objectively unjust, and we must fight it daily. As St. Paul tells us, there is no Jew nor Greek in Christ. We are all children of the one Father, and so are all brothers.

Claiming racism is systemic in Canada is different. Envy and lust are also instinctive. It does not follow that they are encouraged by “the system.” Rather, the system, our social norms, is designed to restrict them.

Most of the world’s nations are based on race. This is a simple truth. This is considered normative. Black’s Law Dictionary gives its first definition of “nation” as: “A large group of people having a common origin, language, and tradition and usually constituting a political entity.” Common origin is usually assumed. Yet Canadians have no common origin.

The first article of the United Nations Charter, repeating a principle of international law, reads: “All peoples have the right to self-determination.” “A people” generally means an ethnic group; Europe’s borders were redrawn after WWI on this premise.

Unlike other nations, Canada is not, and never has been, based on race or ethnicity. In part, no doubt, this has been a lucky accident of our history. But at a uniquely early stage, before, say, Britain, France, or the US, all were accepted as civil equals, despite race, creed, or place of origin. If you are born in Canada, you are Canadian. If you were not, Canada has pursued for the most part unusually open immigration policies.

The Canadian system of government and Canadian society more generally has developed in a variety of ways to ensure human equality and prevent racial discrimination. One has the right to a fair public trial following established laws and procedures; one has the right to present one's case; one has the right to be judged by a jury of one's peers. Our constitution formally prohibits any laws that discriminate due to race. Our federal system allows minorities to be largely self-governing in order to protect their distinct cultures or regional interests against the majority.

It has been charged that Canada is systemically racist because a disproportionate number of black Canadians—and aboriginal Canadians—are in prison. However, an equivalently disproportionate number of black and aboriginal Canadians report being the victims of crime, with the perpetrators being black or aboriginal. There is, accordingly, no way of saying whether the judicial system, if it is discriminating on the basis of race, is discriminating against, or in favour of, these minorities.

It has been charged that Canada is systemically racist because of the different legal treatment accorded our aboriginal citizens. The charge of different legal treatment is indeed fair here—but this is imposed by treaty, and cannot unilaterally be changed. The Canadian government has long wanted to retire the Indian Act, and cannot without Indian consent.

It has been charged that Canada once allowed slavery. This is technically true; but all nations have allowed slavery at some point. Canada probably had the fewest slaves, for the briefest of times. Most of the documented history of slavery in Canada is the one decade or so between the arrival of the UE Loyalists and the first court cases brought over the matter, which declared slavery illegal. Upper Canada, Ontario, was one of the first jurisdictions anywhere to formally outlaw the practice. 
It has been charged recently that Canada is systemically racist because some ice cream trucks perhaps operating in Canada play the tune “Turkey in the Straw” as their jingle. If there could be something racist about a tune, this would still not constitute systemic racism. It would only be unintentional racism. An interesting debate might then be held on whether unintentional racism is possible: whether we can think thoughts without thinking them. That such a thing is raised as an example of Canada's “systemic racism” is a measure of how hard it is to find racism in modern Canada.
We have no right, no doubt, to be proud of any of this. We are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors, either good or bad. That itself is racist thinking.

But it is no trivial thing to declare this Canadian system, this Canadian society of peace, order, and good government, carefully constructed over these many years by this remarkably diverse population to prevent racism and unequal treatment, itself racist. Perhaps it can be improved in detail; perhaps in some cases it fails to operate as intended. That is not what the term “systemic racism” means. It implies scrapping the system; tearing down all the statues, everything, and starting over. Given that all other systems known to man are more racist than this one, this demand to overturn the system is hardly likely to improve things. It seems rather intended to allow racist instincts free rein.

Given our ethnically and racially diverse population, it almost amounts to a demand for race-based riot in the streets. 
No, strike “almost.”




'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Salve Regina

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Systemic Racism in Canada. Not.

British Anti-Slavery poster, 1795.



Cathy Majtenyi, writing in the Catholic Register, makes her case that Canada is a “systemically racist” nation in part by the fact that our ice cream trucks, or somebody’s ice cream trucks, play “Turkey in the Straw,” and partly by noting that “Black people are disproportionately represented in arrests, courts, and jails both in the U.S. and Canada.”

There are problems with this latter argument. First, Blacks are also disproportionately represented as the victims of crime. Prosecuting Black criminals is therefore, right or wrong, not something done against Blacks for the benefit of Whites. Second, men are also disproportionately represented in arrests, courts, and jails in Canada. If this demonstrates systemic discrimination against Blacks, it must also demonstrates systemic discrimination against men. Shall we demand reparations?

Majtenyi blames the higher incarceration rate for Blacks on the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. She argues that Blacks simply then were charged and convicted with crimes in order to retain the use of their labour. “It was therefore in the best interests of the white economic and political elites that former slaves become ‘criminals’ so that they could legally continue to provide their free labour.”

Problem: the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution never applied to Canada. As Majtenyi has just pointed out, Black incarceration is also disproportionately high in Canada. She has just disproven her own assumption.

She has also proposed a conspiracy of monumental proportions: all that nonsense about due process, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and a jury of one’s peers is somehow a cover for a secret pogrom in which the police, prosecutors, legislators, judges, and randomly selected jury members are complicit.

Majtenyi does try to argue that slavery was a major factor in Canada as well as the US. “By the late 1790s,” she points out, “some 3,000 enslaved people of African descent were in British North America.”

She does not mention that the great majority of these had arrived only a few years earlier, with UE Loyalists fleeing the newly-independent 13 colonies. Along with a large number of former slaves freed and resettled by Sir Guy Carleton at war’s end. Or that slavery had no legal basis in these colonies. Only a few years later, as soon as cases were brought before them by slaves seeking to be free, the courts and legislatures of Canada declared slavery illegal. Upper Canada was one of the first jurisdictions anywhere to do so by formal legislation, in 1793.

All lands can be rightly accused of having at one time or another practiced slavery. Canada comes remarkably close to being the sole exception.

Majtenyi maintains that “white” Canadians traditionally considered Black persons “less than human.” Surprising if true, because the Bible makes it clear that all men are brothers under the skin, all being created by the same God in his image. John Locke, founding our current philosophy of government in the 17th century, based his principle of human equality on this fact. Before him, in the English Revolution, the Levellers rallied supporters with the chant “When Adam delved, and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?” The French Code Noir, 1685, which governed slavery in their slave-holding colonies, imposed on the slaveholder the obligation of baptizing the slaves and seeing to their religious instruction. One does not need to baptize pigs or cattle.

The real reason for slavery, of course, was financial: cheap labour. Most slaveowners and political philosophers of the day seem to have been aware that it was immoral, but to have turned a blind eye because it was too lucrative. But when an attempt was made to morally justify it, in Christendom, it was not on the grounds that Blacks were less than human. It was on the premise that slavery was somehow in the best interests of the enslaved. Most often, that Africans were uncivilized, and slavery was a form of tutelage.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

White = Racist

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."


Why are the SJWs and the cancel culture going after “Turkey in the Straw” and the ice cream trucks? After all, the charge of racism levelled against “Turkey in the Straw” could be levelled as easily against about any possible person or cultural artifact: that it was used by someone who knew someone who was racist.

I struggled to entertain the idea that the censors were good-hearted but mistaken: that they might, like Rousseau, think people were born good and loving, and that bad things came from civilization and culture. So they were foolishly trying to get us all back to an Alpha point, with none of that awful history to burden us.

But bad as that would already be, I immediately I realize the reality is worse. The SJWs and cancel culture actually insist on the significance of history at least as often as they repudiate it. The whole premise behind “white privilege” is that any white person born today is benefitting from what people of the same skin colour did long ago; and that every black person is born disadvantaged by the past. Forgetting the past and starting over on a basis of equality is simply not on offer.

In other words, it is not that the modern left wants to end racism. It is that they want racism. “Turkey in the Straw” is a target not because it is racist, but because it is a significant cultural accomplishment, a memorable tune, and it was composed by pale-skinned people. Being white is what is “racist.”




'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

I Scream

In the latest edition of the Catholic Herald, Cathy Majtenyi informs us that “Today’s racism is built on a bedrock of history.” The example she cites is “Turkey in the Straw,” recently withdrawn by Good Humor as the jingle played by their ice cream trucks, because it enshrines and celebrates a “racial injustice created more than 100 years ago.”

This troubles me. The distinctive sound of the ice cream truck, and the tune “Turkey in the Straw,” are a part of our shared heritage. We have too few such little grace notes in our lives, too few things we share as a community and a society, too few things that bring us together. We hear that jingle, and for a moment each one of us is a child again. It is reassuring that some things never change.

Who would want to take one away? It is like robbing from eternity. It is, almost literally, like taking candy from a baby.

And how can “Turkey in the Straw” be racist? How can a tune be racist? Music is non-representational.

How many children, hearing that tune, or even adults hearing it, are thinking racist thoughts as a result? Is this plausible? Is this even sane?

“Turkey in the Straw” is a folk tune. Being a folk tune, it is not associated with any particular lyric; many lyrics have been set to the tune, and new ones are probably added every day. That is the way with folk tunes. Were you to hold every folk tune somehow responsible for every lyric ever sung to it, all folk tunes would be offensive to someone.

Including, almost instantly, whatever new jingle Good Humour can concoct.

The oldest published lyrics to the tune we commonly refer to as “Turkey in the Straw” are an Irish song, “The Rose Tree”:

A rose tree in full bearing,
Had flowers very fair to see,
One rose beyond comparing,
Whose beauty attracted me;
But eager for to win it,
Lovely, blooming, fresh, and gay,
I found a canker in it,
And threw it very far away.

Ireland is the land of happy war songs and sad love songs. Possibly insulting to roses, but nothing racist here.

“Turkey in the Straw,” however, if we are going to use that title, refers to another set of lyrics, which emerged in the 19th century.

Turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay
Turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay
Roll 'em up an' twist 'em up a high tuc-ka-haw
An' twist 'em up a tune called Turkey in the Straw.

Obviously, the tune predates the lyrics. Yet, again, nothing racist.

Went out to milk, and I didn't know how,
I milked the goat instead of the cow.
A monkey sittin' on a pile of straw,
A-winkin' at his mother-in-law.

These lines are just nonsense. A comic folk song with a rural setting. At least since ancient Greece, the rural or rustic has been understood as comic. This one perhaps with a bit of a twist: it sounds as though an urbanite is being laughed at for not knowing how to fare on a farm.

Growing up, I only knew of a different lyric, a common campfire song:

Oh, the cow kicked Nellie in the belly in the barn
And the old farmer said that it would do her no harm

Repeated endlessly. Something that endlessly amused a small child. Like the ice cream truck.

Again, just a comic verse with a rural setting. Nothing racist about it. You might construe it as sexist, if you did not know cows were female.

Majtenyi explains: “in the 1800s, minstrel performers in the U.S. attached racist lyrics to the melody.”

So what? Racist lyrics can be sung to any tune, and probably have. This is surely an unjust appropriation on their part and denigration on her part of a piece of my Irish heritage. And if they ever did, surely no one remembers those lyrics.

Given the date she cites, Majtenyi and Good Humor are apparently thinking of a song called “Zip Coon” that used the melody and appeared in the 1830s. Its lyrics were variable, but apparently the chorus is constant:

O ole Zip Coon he is a larned skoler,
Sings posum up a gum tree an coony in a holler.
Posum up a gum tree, coony on a stump,
Den over dubble trubble, Zip Coon will jump. 

Again, really just nonsense—a comic rural verse. It only happens that now the comic rustic character singing the song is black.

Zip Coon is not clearly being insulted; there is not a tone of hostility. It is a real accomplishment, and a legitimate kind of scholarship, to be able to sing well. The verse is humourous, but not cutting. It is not satire. It merely contrasts, like the “Turkey in the Straw” lyric, the difference between the skills that matter in country life, and in the city.

Were the rustic, like Nellie or the old farmer, or the narrator of “Turkey in the Straw,” understood to be white, there is nothing offensive here. We laugh readily enough at whiteface clowns, and they are usually understood to be rustics. That is what the word “clown” means.

How then can it be offensive simply because the comic rural character is, in this one version of the lyrics, in a Southern US setting, portrayed as black?

This indicates not discrimination against blacks, or African-Americans, but discrimination in their favour. It is commonplace to laugh at “hillbillies” or “rednecks” or “bubbas,” and we all do. But the instant it is suggested that the skin of the clown is black, laughter is not permitted.

That is, in a word, racism. Skin colour ought not to matter. We are all the same under it.

And indeed, we all, under those skins, have delighted in the sound of the ice cream truck. We all lose something when we no longer can: simply because of the colour of our skin.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Journal of the Plague Year

I have had an intuition for some time that the pandemic would effectively end in September. I think that may be happening. Good news is coming in quickly.

- The death rate is apparently much lower than feared. Something like 0.3%. Many, if not most, people who get the virus have few or mild symptoms. This is why the death rate looked higher before, perhaps—we were not testing enough.

- Studies suggest now that something like 50% of the population has natural immunity.

- New studies show Vitamin D is effective against the virus. Basically, people who die from it are people who have a Vitamin D deficiency. A cheap and readily available prophylactic and cure is suddenly available.

- New large studies suggest again that hydroxychloroquine works too. If only we can get governments to approve its use…

- Testing has improved, and could soon be far better—using trained dogs, using new faster and cheaper tests. This alone could stop the pandemic. Quarantine the sick, and everyone else can resume their business.

- There are rumours that we should have at least one highly effective vaccine by November. The US is apparently expecting two by then. India expects one. The UK expects one. Russia and China are already vaccinating, although we do not know their vaccines are effective..

- There is growing evidence that we can hit herd immunity at only about 20% of the population—either through vaccination or through contracting the virus.

- The virus seems to have died back in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand, where it struck first. This suggests that it may be about to die back spontaneously elsewhere.

- The US economy seems to be roaring back even without the virus beaten.

Unfortunately, the virus leaves a bitter aftertaste--of how we did not come together to fight it. Instead, the bad guys took advantage of the opportunity.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Duelling Memes

Which one is cooler? Which one gets your blood pumping? The professional video produced for the DNC?

 

Or the supposedly fan-produced Trump meme?

I prefer the latter. I especially like the message "We don't segregate."

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.