Thoughts: new old, and borrowed

 The different reactions to the Rittenhouse case have been interesting, if somewhat predictable.  For some reason, this case became a poster child for a bunch of issues and - as a result, lots of misleading information appeared in the media.  My personal opinion is that the jury had a tough, but essentially correct call.   A more meaningful case, to me, is the  Ahmaud Arbery case, if you are interested in cases about whether "white privilege" an issue or not.   It certainly appears that the local prosecutors were at best negligent and at worst racially biased in not dealing with this case from the beginning as a crime.   

 This is the question asked in this article - https://news.yahoo.com/nicholas-goldberg-focusing-trump-may-110017326.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall - and it reflects the arrogance of many commentators on the left or right (although my perception is that the left suffers much more from this than the right).  In a democracy, the voters have the last word, and when commentators focus on how "wrong" they are, or if they are "despicable", or "domestic terrorists" they are defying democratic principles and just working to divide the electorate - and the country.  Indeed, one on my biggest disappointments in President Biden is that he has governed as much more a "divider" that the "uniter" he campaigned as.

 Recently I read this article (  https://www.city-journal.org/scientific-merit-and-the-equity-cult?utm_source=RC%20Investigations%20Today&wallit_nosession=1 ) and was saddened and disturbed.  A peer reviewed article was withdrawn from publication not for any errors in technique or data, but rather because the results were not supportive of discriminatory hiring, but rather supported reducing " individual subjectivity in scientific hiring and tenure decisions."  While one article is not critical, the trend to not publish facts due to feelings is really dangerous to science and to human knowledge.   It more resembles the Middle Ages or Taliban dictatorships than a free press and open society.  Efforts to promote " “science inclusiveness” over objective data lead to disaster, both for science and for society.  Reality doesn't care about feelings - reality will happen regardless of hurt feelings or lack of "inclusiveness".  Science should be ...

 Freedom of the press is vital to the working of any democracy.  That does not mean that the press has to be completely honest, or un-biased, or without "mis-information" (a dangerous term in itself).  However, it does mean that a full range of press opinions needs to be presented to the public.  This essay by Andrew Sullivan (https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/when-all-the-media-narratives-collapse-650 ), does an excellent job of presenting the many errors by the main stream media (MSM).  And the issues isn't that the press makes errors, it's that the errors are far too consistently in only one direction.  (The suppression of the Hunter Biden computer before the election is one of the more egregious examples.)  That is a danger to the concept of a free press - and ultimately an danger to the nation.

It's been a while, but I hope to get more active on this from now on. I'm going to use it for opinions and thoughts that may make some people uncomfortable. For example - slavery has been a part of the human condition for thousands of years and it's only with the dominance of Western Culture (evolved from Christian beliefs that all are equal before God) that it's become an unpardonable sin. While I agree (I am a product of my culture), Western capitalist society has been the death of slavery, not its cause, as I have heard anti-capitalist claim.