This is your final warning

Earlier today, armed demonstrators stormed the Michigan State House protesting the state’s stay-at-home order.

I’m not going to delve in to the specific politics around the stay-at-home order, or whether I think it’s a good idea or a bad one, because there is a more important point to be made here. Actually, two important points.

(1) Nobody got shot. These protesters were not out-of-control yahoos intent on violence. This was a carefully calibrated and very controlled demonstration.

(2) This is the American constitutional system working correctly and as designed by the Founders. When the patience of the people has been pushed past its limit by tyranny and usurpation, armed revolt is what is supposed to happen. The threat of popular armed revolt is an intentional and central part of our system of checks and balances.

We aren’t at that point yet, though. The Michigan legislators should consider that they have received a final warning before actual shooting. The protesters demonstrated and threatened just as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and other Founders expected and wanted citizens to demonstrate and threaten in like circumstances.

I am sure there will be calls from the usual suspects to tighten gun laws and arrest the protesters as domestic terrorists. All of which will miss the point. Nobody got shot – this was the last attempt, within the norms of the Constitutional system as designed, to avoid violence.

If the Michigan state government responds to this demonstration with repression or violence, citizens will have the right – indeed, they will have a Constitutional duty – to correct the arrogance of power via armed revolt.

This was your final warning, legislators. Choose wisely.

Published
Categorized as General

859 comments

  1. Who had “Michigan” on their card for “where ACW 2 broke out?”

    (I don’t think it’ll get that far, but one never knows)

    1. TBH, it seems more plausible than most. Generally populist, generally on a downhill slope, and generally cranky.

      1. Lets add to that, large swaths of relatively self-reliant folks that feel “ruled” by two or three large-ish metropolitan areas (Detroit-Lansing-Grand Rapids)

        Pretty much everyone north of Flint is not a fan, and large bits south of Flint as well…

        1. Agreed, folks I’ve met from the Upper Peninsula remind me more of people from rural Mississippi than Detroit.

  2. The left absolutely REFUSES to listen to anyone on the center or right that says, “stop it or we will ******* kill you”. They think it’s a joke. They think they can stomp on people’s faces forever.

    The leaders of Michigan are morons and tyrants.

    1. Well yes. Refusing to negotiate with terrorists is a time-honored approach to questions like that.

      1. I agree that the people in the official buildings probably see it that way.

        Unfortunately those who are servants have spent generations thinking themselves masters over all. It is long past time that they were taught that lesson.

        1. So if someone had started carrying guns to Congress to protest the draft in 1942, what would your reaction have been?

          1. Um, that the person is engaging in the political process via Constitutionally-protected actions? What are you suggesting our reactions should be to that?

            1. Your reaction to this seems to be cheering and “Yeah, kill ’em all!”. I’m just wondering if you’d react similarly in other circumstances.

              Anti-draft and anti-shutdown protests are perfectly fine. Anti-draft and anti-shutdown massacres are not. Quit cheering for the latter.

              1. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” — Thomas Jefferson

                The entire purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow the citizenry to overthrow a government turned tyrannical. We are approaching that point.

                1. Quite honestly, if we’re using the standards of the time, we’re long passed that point. George III’s parliament was not nearly as tyrannical as our own right now.

                  If the American revolution was just, then so would revolution be now. And I don’t mean just because of the COVID stuff. I mean the crushing tyranny of beaurocracy and taxation that we live under, and the usurpation of state power into federal, and especially the states like NJ, NY, CA, etc. that trample on the second amendment.

                  1. George III’s parliament was not nearly as tyrannical as our own right now.

                    But you do have representation now, which lack was the actual trigger of the American Revolution back then.

                    Revolutionary violence is a legitimate response to a situation in which one’s under oppression and lack any recourse, but as long as one has representation and can solve matters by legislative and judicial means, that’s the path that ought to be taken.

                    1. I suppose that depends on how much voter fraud is present.

                      In my state for example (Illinois) Chicago does what it pleases. And we are so cynical that “how many dead people voted this time?” is an everyone knows that everyone knows joke.

                      Not being in Chicago, and not voting according to what Chicago wants means that my vote is utterly worthless, because they will just add a couple extra names from the cemetery.

                    2. The lack of representation was a factor, but only one. The tipping point was the British trying to cease munitions from the colonists at Lexington and Concord.

                      I’d argue that because of the structure of the government, any significant change through the electoral process is absolutely impossible on a sane time-scale. One cannot elect candidates, reliably, that aren’t establishment. Trump is an abberation; things will return more or less back to normal with the Jeb Bush’s of the world running the party.

                    3. But you do have representation now, which lack was the actual trigger of the American Revolution back then.

                      Representation was merely an excuse. Do you really imagine that, had the UK offered the colonies one MP each, the rebels would have said “Right ho, that’s all right then”, and gone home?! Thirteen votes out of 650 would not have defeated any of the legislation the colonists thought intolerable, so why would they suddenly tolerate them?

                    4. Reynolds vs Sims.

                      On the federal level we have the Senate and the House, with different seat apportionment. House seats are based on population (theoretically of number of citizens represented, but perversion of the Census throws this into question), Senate seats are fixed at 2 per state. More populous states have more sway in the House, but the Senate means all regions have a say.

                      That decision requires all state level legislative districts to be based on population. No possibility of the regional balancing effect of the Senate allowed on the state level.

              2. Are you simply not the sort of aggressive-but-highly-self-disciplined, cautious, strategic thinker that this event is primarily a warning for?

                There are two types of people we don’t have the information to predict the actions off if a civil war were to immediately develop. a) The people who themselves don’t know. b) The people who are keeping their own council, paying careful attention, and waiting. For anyone who thinks ahead to winning that war, both are important, and the b type that overlaps with aggressive-but-disciplined, etc is of fairly critical importance.

                A risk averse game, that reminds people that arms are a widely distributed thing, but that only displays them in disciplined uses that can pass for peaceful assembly, is a best way to retain or recruit the a and b types to the cause.

                Letting people like you and the governor be hysterical ninnies is battlespace preparation. /If/ battle is needed. If not, if you do not actually have the courage of your convictions, the pre existing rule of law wins without a shot being fired.

                Criminals are pretty much all inherently opposed to the pre existing rule of law. People complain about them rotting forever in prison, but killing all of them would be about as effective at the task of preventing them from interfering with the rest of us as we go about our ordinary business.

                The Nazis and the Imperial Japanese were unwilling to tolerate an existing peaceful status quo with the US constitution. We killed them until they rethought that position. That was not the wrong thing, and is not something to regret even if it can be called a massacre.

                1. I don’t mind guns in most protest contexts. But inside the legislative chamber is too much like the way a lot of thugs have risen to power for me to be happy. It’s over a line, at least in my eyes.

                  1. Historically, more thugs have risen to power through the ballot box. Hitler’s putsch failed, he won some votes instead, and then when he started deploying the guns it was in an official capacity rather than as an external protest. (I’m simplifying here, but not much — see our gracious host’s Why I Am An Anarchist for some further discussion.)

                    Personally I haven’t read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but I have read another of Shirer’s works, the Berlin Diary. Which begins with the 6th of February 1934 French crisis, which you will note also did not lead to a fascist coup in France.

                    And from a libertarian perspective, most of the world’s supposedly ‘legitimate’ democratically-elected governments qualify as thugs too.

                    Which examples did you have in mind? Pride’s Purge of 1648?

                    1. The two that came immediately to mind for me were Napoleon’s coup of 18 Brumaire, and Hitler’s SA/SS thugs surrounding the Reichstag to push through the Enabling Act. But yes, Pride’s Purge would also be a good example.

                      None of these involved any actual violence beyond the level of arrests, you’ll note. Merely the threat of it was sufficient.

            2. Oddly enough, distributing flyers opposing the draft isn’t Constitutionally protected.

              (per the infamous “yelling fire in a crowded theater” case)

              1. If it was re-adjudicated today it almost certainly would be…unless it was a Democrat who had initiated the draft order.

          2. FDR was an evil, evil man, and a tyrant. His organizations were substantially Wilson’s Progressives, who Teddy termed Fake Progressives, and a malignant sore upon the nation. Wilson’s merry friends carried out pogrom mass murders within the US. Look at the massacres of blacks around 1920. They were morally equivalent to the Nazis and the IJA.

            The Axis was no more a serious existential threat than our own modern foes. If lack of enthusiasm in our current wars is not treason, if protesting our current wars is not treason, than likewise was not treason then.

            The Axis needed to be taken down, but FDR was hardly innocent and beyond criticism.

            1. The primary difference between Hitler and our Progressives during the Progressive Era is that Hitler cut to the chase and was slightly ahead of the curve.

              We are unbelievably lucky that that happened.

              1. Morally, yes. Practically, no.

                FDR died in the mid forties, only about eighty years after the ACW. Very near living memory, and the 1880s were living memory.

                Blacks alive during the 1920s and 1940s had a much higher mix than current that remembered the circumstances where armed was the difference between being murdered by the Democrats and not. They remembered the time before the anti-black terrorism of the ’20s and ’30s and maybe even ’40s enough to give a context to that terrorism. The blacks alive during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, in comparison, were more heavily shaped by the terrorism of the ’20s and ’30s, and less aware of the previous period. And FDR’s FBI would have contributed to the appearance that his regime was not something that could be safely resisted as part of the ordinary course of life.

                Whites of the time likewise where memories are concerned. Range wars, wild west, Hatfields and McCoys, were lessons in what degree of advantage you could afford to permit your local political rivals. And people remembered Wilson, and thought about it, even if they did not dare speak of it. FDR’s opposition was very different from Hitler’s opposition. And because of FDR mobilizing for war against the Axis, the soldiers propagandized against the Axis could come home, see the Axis’ objectionable qualities in what FDR got away with, and resolve to prevent it from happening again. Which meant that JFK’s opposition was different from Mao’s.

              2. Not really.

                There’s a good argument to be made that Hitler was flat out insane and *wanted* to destroy Germany/Europe/The World. The Progressives of that era were…they were wrong, but mostly they really thought (and still do think) that they can order the world the way it’s *supposed* to be.

                1. Hitler didn’t want to destroy Germany or Europe until he knew he was losing. Before that, he wanted to own it.

            2. I’m not saying FDR should be canonized. I’m not even sure if I’d be pro-draft. But I’d sure as hell be opposed to anyone who tried to intimidate Congress into eliminating the draft.

              (Also, I think you’re way too optimistic about the level of threat posed by the Axis, but that’s a separate conversation.)

              1. Slavery is Serious Business. Attempted drafting is easily in the category of crimes bad enough to be worthy of death if there is a death penalty.

                1. Then just about every wartime President before the Bushes should have been shot. Including Washington and Lincoln. You can make a libertarian argument here, but you can’t really hold up the American Revolution as a model very well, since Washington et al enacted conscription.

                  1. Every President and Congress, to be clear.

                    Maybe if that were a genuine consideration at all times, the politicos would be less inclined to tyranny.

                    The sheep may bleet, but the wolves won’t care until and unless the sheep dogs demonstrate that they, too, have sharp teeth.

              2. Cannoninzed.

                As in shot out of a cannon?

                FDR shot out of a cannon?

                Yeah, I’m strangely comfortable with that.

              3. I’d sure as hell be opposed to anyone who tried to intimidate Congress into eliminating the draft.

                Fuck off, slaver. There was never any constitutional authority to compel my labor carrying a weapon, and now there’s an amendment that specifically forbids involuntary servitude.

                I would happily take up arms to fight anyone attempting to enforce conscription.

                1. >I would happily take up arms to fight anyone attempting to enforce conscription.

                  I’d be with you on that.

                  The first conscious political position I took in my entire life, when I was a child in the 1960s, was opposition to the draft. Robert Heinlein was right: a society that can’t raise enough volunteers to fight its wars deserves to lose them.

            3. Look at the massacres of blacks around 1920. They were morally equivalent to the Nazis and the IJA.

              Gramsci alert! Using and you are lynching negroes to draw an equivalence between the US and totalitarian dictatorships is a piece of Soviet dezinformatsiya so hackneyed I thought it only lived on as a punch-line and as a didactic example of tu quoque and related fallacies. But unless BobtheRegisterred[sic]Fool is trolling or otherwise insincere, apparently not.

              1. Not lynching. Massacres with tens or hundreds of dead, then in some cases covered up for decades.

                All three of the Nazis, Communists, and Democrats have carried out domestic massacres that in some way profited them politically. That is a reasonable standard of wrong doing for judging when a political organization’s institutional culture might reasonably put it forever beyond the bounds of what one can justify supporting. And look how readily some of the political figures who came out of the most deeply compromised state parties switched their coats towards aligning with the communists once they could no longer politically profit from white supremacism.

                At the moment I’m forgetting if the Oklahoma one was 1919 and Arkansas 1921, or vice versa. Arkansas one was apparently carried out by officers of Wilson’s federal government.

                Definitely there are personal aspects to the degree of my grudge against the American Democratic parties. I think that part of my rating is a) not counting foreigners as truly civilized b) counting foreign lives at a discounted rate, or American lives at a higher rate. Of course, Axis treatment of American POWs was not super kind, and may well exceed anything one could point to in terms of FDR’s CO camps.

                Plus, if numbers are your deal, and if you count abortion, 50 million beats 13 million.

                1. Assuming you’re referring to this, it sounds like a bunch of unorganised locals sporadically committing violence. Horrific, yes, but a far cry from the brutally impersonal machinery of the Nazi death camps. There was no bureaucratic government Office Of Killing All The Blacks; the government’s rôle seems to have been economically-repressive Jim Crow laws. Evil as this is, let us not conflate it with industrial genocide, lest we weaken our ability to condemn the latter. (Therdiglob, anyone?)

                  I stand by what I said. Drawing a moral equivalence between these events and Nazi or Communist totalitarianisms is a textbook fallacy.

                2. > American lives at a higher rate.

                  Speaking as someone who’s raised his right hand and donned a military uniform in three different decades, I’m perfectly comfortable counting American lives at a higher rate than foreign lives, no matter how civilized.

              2. In this case I’m perfectly comfortable with comparing President Wilson *specifically* with totalitarian dictatorships BECAUSE HE TRIED TO BE, and in many senses was.

                Censorship, re-segregating the federal government, etc. etc. He may not have been a thug himself, but he certainly made use of them.

                1. I could be wrong, but I think Wilson is largely responsible for discrediting the term “progressive,” leading FDR and other advocates of modernizing society with Scientific Socialism Lite to steal the term “liberal” and relabel the retreating classical liberals as “conservatives.” Their subsequent 30-40 years of failed governance then largely discredited “liberal,” but that’s another story.

                  1. Yes, the Progressives keep discrediting their name for themselves and end up having to steal a new one. Only weird part is they keep getting away with it. Voters let them become born-again virgins as many times as they want.

          3. The government didn’t need a draft in 1942 to get soldiers – people were lined up to volunteer. It had one, I understand, chiefly as an administrative convenience. Anyone who protested the draft then would have faced public contempt and suspicion, whether they were armed or not.

            1. Surely that makes it worse — “it’s not even a matter of military necessity, we’re just enslaving our population for administrative convenience“. How is that OK? I mean, I can understand it in countries that buy into the idea that the individual subject is ultimately the property of the State, but the US is supposed to be the place that rejected that.

          4. Carrying weapons to Congress used to be common (though it wasn’t in 1942, yes). Even using them under what one considered to be severe enough provocation was not unknown. Look up what Preston Brooks did to Charles Sumner.

            1. I’m quite familiar with it, and even 170 years later I’m disgusted that Brooks wasn’t tossed in jail for it. But Congressmen carrying pistols to defend themselves, or clubbing someone (however brutally) on the Senate floor, is different than an external group showing up as a “final warning”, in our host’s words, of imminent mass murder.

              1. of imminent mass murder.

                You keep saying that. Is it your magic talisman you hope will reach into people’s minds to make them think the same way you do?

                1. I don’t want you hiding behind bullshit. The stated argument here is “If they don’t do what we want, somebody ought to shoot them to death”. (Or at least “will shoot them to death” – not all posters have explicitly advocated for such)

                  If you say “Yes, this is worth mass murder”, then fine – I’ve said that about killings multiple orders of magnitude larger than this (Hiroshima comes to mind). But you ought to own the label. If you’re not willing to, then you should really re-examine your thought processes.

                  1. How about you quit making shit up and pretending we said it, prick?

                    > The stated argument here is “If they don’t do what we want, somebody ought to shoot them to death”.

                    No, it isn’t. You are making that up.

                    If someone threatens me with violence (via law enforcement), continues threatening me with violence, and repeatedly grabs more power and ability to threaten me with violence, my responding by telling that person to stop or I will defend myself with necessary, reciprocal violence is not murder or threat of murder, it is a statement of my right to self-defense especially from a tyrannical government.

                    That you keep pretending there is no distinction between that and your broad-brush accusations of murder-lust is a stunning display of gross dishonesty.

                    That you quibble over what constitutes the correct tyrannical behavior to resist suggests you yourself are a would-be tyrant, or are so ideologically poisoned you wouldn’t know a tyrant if you were being tossed in the gulag by them yourself. Which, as it happens, was a pretty common condition of people treated thus.

                    1. >The stated argument here is “If they don’t do what we want, somebody ought to shoot them to death”.

                      No, it isn’t. You are making that up.

                      Quoth ESR:

                      There is a moral difference of some significance between “we’re threatening to kill you right now” and “we’re threatening to kill you if you persist in your anti-Constitutional actions”.

                      The demonstrators were doing the latter.

                      In other words, the protesters were saying “we’re threatening to kill you if you persist in your anti-Constitutional actions”. It’s an argument that includes the justification for doing so, of course, but it’s the same thing. If you do the thing we dislike, we will shoot you to death.

                      Again, there are cases where I accept that argument. If you want to engage in genocide, I will be entirely pro-shooting you to death. But it’s still advocacy for killing.

                      Also, that last paragraph sounds like some of Ayn Rand’s dumber opinions. “If you do not agree with me on literally everything, you’re just a commie who deserves to die in a train crash. Any amount of bad makes everything completely awful and irredeemable.”

                  2. I think we need to define our terms. What scale does “mass murder” mean in this context?

                    Also, I take umbrage at the use of “murder”. Murder is an act where killing is the end, not the means. It is not correct to say that a cop cleanly killing a perp in a shoot-out is a murder. It’s also not correct to say killing a man in self defense is murder.

                    I want to reiterate, I don’t personally advocate the means involved here, but if it comes to shooting, I’m not comfortable calling it murder. Calling it killing is fine.

                    Also, the goal of the protesters clearly wasn’t killing, otherwise they would have done it. If it does come to shooting, I’d hope that they would kill the minimum number to get the political change they require, and no more. I’m certainly more than willing to kill to protect my family, but I hope to never need to do so, and when I do, I would stop shooting if the attacker fled.

                    1. I think we need to define our terms. What scale does “mass murder” mean in this context?

                      Some substantial fraction of the Michigan legislature, presumably. Anyone on the pro-killing side want to weigh in on the number of bodies you’d think appropriate?

                      I’m not comfortable calling it murder. Calling it killing is fine.

                      I think it’s murder, and the law does, but I accept that most people here disagree with me. I’ve been trying to change up my terminology somewhat as a result.

                      Also, the goal of the protesters clearly wasn’t killing, otherwise they would have done it.

                      People here seem to be saying that the goal is killing next time (assuming they don’t get their way on pandemic response policies), so I was jumping ahead to that one.

                    2. People here seem to be saying that the goal is killing next time (assuming they don’t get their way on pandemic response policies), so I was jumping ahead to that one.

                      No, that’s clearly not true. The goal of the protesters is to end the lockdown. Some here see killing as a legitimate means, not the goal. No one here, I presume, *wants* killing.

                    3. Fair. The preference order seems to be
                      1) End the lockdown peacefully.
                      2) Shoot the people responsible for the lockdown continuing.
                      3) Accept a continuing lockdown without violent protest.

                      #2 being above #3 is my problem.

        2. Destroying the government that tramples on your rights is NOT terrorism, you ass!

          I’d like to better understand this line of reasoning by checking for the presence or absence of belief consistency, as here from abroad (I’m in Brazil) we tend to read a lot about how the US weights things differently depending on the color of who is doing it.

          Suppose this protest was carried by almost 100% black people wearing stereotypical gangsta-style clothes, tattoos etc., and they’re protesting what they understand to be tyrannical acts of the government towards their rights. Other than that, they act exactly the same in all aspects as these demonstrator acted. Visualize this scenario in your mind, as if you were learning of it just now.

          Would you say exactly the same? Or would your interpretation be vastly different?

          This is an honest question. I was pretty opposed to arm bearing rights until a few years ago. This blog has changed my mind on that, but not completely (I’d say I’m about 80% there). So there’s still some way to go before I buy fully into the US-style of right-wing understanding of this matter.

          1. In principle, I don’t see a difference. In practice, dressing like gangsters is a sign of culture (as distinct from race) that can be concerning, but I don’t think it’s enough to rule out the merits of such a protest. If it was the exact same as this protest, though, the same concerns about bearing arms that are implicitly aimed at legislatures would apply, though, so I’d oppose that.

            As an example, the Black Panthers of the 60s-70s apparently first rose to prominence by going around town, finding black people getting hassled by cops, and showing up with guns to ensure there wasn’t a power imbalance. That always struck me as a pretty reasonable thing to do, especially in a fairly racist era. Their later escapades (many of which involved assassinating cops) were far less noble, but that first one sounded pretty good to me when I first read of it. It was an open, armed, and explicitly racial threat to the established order, but from the accounts I’ve read it happened fairly soberly, and that part of it didn’t result in actual violence. I have a lot of time for that sort of thing.

            1. In principle, I don’t see a difference. In practice, dressing like gangsters is a sign of culture (as distinct from race) that can be concerning, but I don’t think it’s enough to rule out the merits of such a protest.

              Agreed.

              If it was the exact same as this protest, though, the same concerns about bearing arms that are implicitly aimed at legislatures would apply, though, so I’d oppose that.

              Ah, this I think provides a good angle for the misunderstanding.

              For as long as we have an armed citizenry those guns are pointed at the legislature. And the executive, and the courts, and the officers. That is why we are an armed society; the defense against crime is just a bonus.

              But it is easy for the elected servants to forget this when the guns are locked in the safe.

              1. I agree with the principle of an armed society as Hitler insurance. I disagree that we’re facing Hitler.

                    1. Yes, there is.

                      Hitler and his government was a cult of personality. It would almost certainly have fallen apart upon his death.

                      Stalin was the head of a government and on his death things continued pretty much as they had before, with only slight modifications of his policies.

                      If we were facing a Hitler one bullet would do the job as we’d be facing the results of a single person.

                      We aren’t. We’re facing a Stalin–the perverse results of a system.

            2. That always struck me as a pretty reasonable thing to do, especially in a fairly racist era.

              Thank you. I’m a little bit closer to that now. :-)

              I’d like to note though that I read a center-left comment to a news piece about this protest in which the author compiled a small list of similar incidents in the US that were dealt with very harshly by local governments, up to and including by openly firing on protesters. The most recent of those was in the late 1980’s or around that time-frame, I don’t remember exactly. He remarked that in those cases right-wingers didn’t talk about enacting a 2nd Civil War or anything of the sort to oppose governmental tyranny. Rather, most comments on the right-wing media were openly supportive of the governmental reaction.

              That comment is what prompted my question here. Would you say things would be different now? That the right in general changed its instance, moving from a selective support of 2nd Amendment rights to one of full and unconditional support for it? Or is your position in the minority?

              And if it’s in the minority, do you think it’s growing?

              1. I can’t answer the question of how racial attitudes changed, because I grew up in an era where the right didn’t care about race, but was constantly lambasted for racism. So I’ve never known the subject to be anything but a political bludgeon for shutting people up.

                There are some related changes that I can speak about though:

                1. In recent years our police have become so corrupt that even many of our Law And Order types are reaching the point of “fuck da police”. The parkland shooting being a good example: cops hiding in cover instead of doing their job, while kids are being killed. But any time someone complains about the police acting like a paramilitary force they are met with whining about how dangerous the job is and so they need all sorts of extra privileges.

                2. Despite what the media tells you the NRA is the ultra-softy, never-seen-a-compromise-they-didn’t-like faction in american gun politics. In recent years the factions that are truly hard line “no infringements, PERIOD” have come to the fore and dominate the conversation on our side.

              2. Key question: did the guy list Kent State?

                Because close examination of that incident suggests behind the scene manipulation by the communists.

                The initial shots were fired from a weapon that may well not have come in with the Guard.

                Lots of Americans really do not like communists, and some of them have an eye for the sort of stuff communists pull. Folks who trust mainly written histories in textbooks may not hate communists at all. Folks aligned towards other ways of knowing tend to hate communists because of oral history from neighbors, etc, who had escaped the communists.

                The three things to look for on that list are a) events stage managed by the communists b) events where the news media of the time was a fairly successful disinformation operation c) events in the more warlike period in American domestic history. Regarding c, ACW was the big domestic war, there were very many smaller wars. A lot of that seems to have settled down with the highways, the telephone, the television, and maybe to some degree the railroad.

              3. Also, these days the NRA likes to brand itself a civil rights organization. That is apparently a relatively recent shift, with a change in the institutional culture.

                Originally, after the ACW Union officers founded it to promote sports, because they were not happy with the level of marksmanship in Union troops.

                There are some black specific anecdotes in the late 1800s about gun ownership as a way to avoid being lynched, but those were apparently not the mainstream of GOP politics, or anything to do with the NRA.

                The notion of gun ownership as a way to make domestic massacres more costly for governments seems to have developed out of the American experience in WWII. Which did see some immediate acts on thinking along those lines, but the NRA apparently still thought of itself as a sports promoting organization until the forcible 1976 change in its leadership.

              4. the author compiled a small list of similar incidents in the US that were dealt with very harshly by local governments, up to and including by openly firing on protesters.

                I’d have to see that list, and research the facts of each case, before I could possibly respond. Just because he has characterized these events as similar to this one doesn’t make it so.

          2. Suppose this protest was carried by almost 100% black people wearing stereotypical gangsta-style clothes, tattoos etc., and they’re protesting what they understand to be tyrannical acts of the government towards their rights. Other than that, they act exactly the same in all aspects as these demonstrator acted.

            In particular without completely trashing and vandalizing the surrounding neighborhood? If they managed to pull that of I’d be extremely impressed, given that they’ve never managed a feat like that before. Heck, white leftwing activists can rarely manage it.

            1. > If they managed to pull that of I’d be
              > extremely impressed, given that they’ve
              > never managed a feat like that before.

              The marches in the early ’60s were pretty clean where that’s concerned. Not as clean as the TEA Party rallies, but lacked any destruction or deliberate trashing.

              > Heck, white leftwing activists can rarely manage it.

              When have they ever?

            2. 100% someone would get shot. This might be racial, it might be cultural, but note it’s irrelevant, because either way it’s predictable.

          3. Suppose this protest was carried by almost 100% black people wearing stereotypical gangsta-style clothes, tattoos etc., and they’re protesting what they understand to be tyrannical acts of the government towards their rights.

            The key phrase there, that hides a lot of crucial differentiation, is “what they understand to be”. Without knowing what “tyrannical acts” they’re protesting, and what rights they claim to be protecting, I can’t answer your question, except to say that the color of the protesters is completely irrelevant — and not one in a thousand of the Michigan protesters we’re discussing would say otherwise. Race consciousness almost doesn’t exist on the political right in the USA; 99% of what you read about it is pure projection from the left, who are obsessed by race and can’t imagine that anyone else isn’t. At almost all right-wing protests or events, actual racists are made unwelcome as soon as they reveal themselves.

      2. When you offer me a deal that I would have to be retarded to accept, when you offer me a deal that if I have any sense at all, I will die rather than accept, I may provide a simple no.

        Then if you keep on making the offer, with the same terms I reject before, and maybe hint that I could die if I reject, I may simply say no again.

        (And ‘get in the car or I stab you’ is a bad offer to accept. Better to be stabbed and bleed out in a less convenient location than be transported to a prepared torture room or dumpsite. That most people don’t think that ahead that way, and can be stampeded in to going along, means that my refusal may shock you, but it is only your opinion that you make the life and death decisions for the group.)

        But I can see your agitation. I can calculate what means you may use if I continue to simply refuse.

        Is this an innocent man? Is this a sane man?

        If you are acting in malice, it would be better that I kill you, than it would be for me to be killed by you for refusing. If you are malicious, it is better for me to be killed or maimed while trying to kill you.

        How serious are you? What will you sacrifice?

      3. Alsadius> Refusing to negotiate with terrorists is a time-honored approach to questions like that.

        The trouble with this viewpoint is that the term terrorism has a fairly specific definition in federal law — one that doesn’t match what the protesters did here. (Unless you persuade a judge that the mere carrying of a gun is “an act or acts dangerous to human life”, which is a stretch.)

        1. Everyone in this thread is treating this protest as an implicit death threat. I’m not sure of the precise legal meaning of “dangerous to human life”, but threats to kill people would seem to qualify under most imaginable definitions.

          1. You are dismissing the “we will defend our rights, with force if necessary” interpretation out of hand.

            The obvious counter is that every time a law enforcement officer (for example) walks within n feet of me, I am under an implicit death threat. (And for a large fraction of Americans of one race or another, that’s a arguably a defensible position, not just a snarky one.)

            1. I’m not dismissing your argument. I’m taking it seriously. (Plural “you” throughout, FYI)

              You argue that it would be right and proper to murder legislators if they do not change these policies. You claim that this may imminently happen, and seem strongly supportive of such an action.

              You claim that the coronavirus restrictions are a sufficient cause for violent revolution. I acknowledge that this is your argument, and that you sincerely believe it. However, that doesn’t change the fact that a) you are advocating mass murder to get your way on a political question, and b) you live in a democratic republic, and could replace these legislators with others more to your liking if the American public thought similarly.

              Basically, you lost the election, and think that you should not be allowed to lose on this question of policy, so you want to slaughter the other side to give yourselves power. If we were discussing genocide, yeah, I’d be on your side. But we’re discussing face masks and TGI Friday’s. Do you really and truly think that’s worth mass murder?

              And even if the answer to the above is “yes”, remember that murder is very unpopular. You cannot imaginably win the fight that would result if this actually happened. So you’d shoot a few state officials, and then wind up with gun laws like Canada’s or England’s. Do you actually see that as a victory?

              1. What part of “if we wait SIX FUCKING MONTHS to vote the bastards out, people will STARVE AND DIE because the FUCKING FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN BROKE DOWN” do you not understand?!

                  1. Because people whose livelihood depend on the food supply chain running are sounding the alarm, perhaps?

                    1. There’s disruptions, and those will hurt economically. But it’s orders of magnitude too small to create a famine. Food is an industry exempted by every “essential service” law, for obvious reasons, and the biggest issues seem to boil down to “Items that are usually packaged for commercial sale are tough to sell retail”.

                      That is not an issue that will persist in anything even remotely close to a famine. 50lb bags of onions will show up in the grocery stores if there’s no 5lb bags. The equipment all still works, the workers are all still there, and we can adjust to these disruptions if there’s a need. And if households start shopping like restaurants, the supply chain issues will disappear, even economically.

                      A couple million head of chickens getting slaughtered for no gain is trivial by the standards of the food industry – that’s about a tenth of a day’s production. And that’s the worst of the stories I’ve heard. It sucks, both for the businesses involved and on principle. But it’s not a serious threat to the food supply.

              2. >Basically, you lost the election, and think that you should not be allowed to lose on this question of policy, so you want to slaughter the other side to give yourselves power

                No that’s not it at all. The specific minutiae of the lockdowns are only surface.

                What gives revolutionaries the right to kill coercive Closer politicians is that they have seized extra-Constitutional powers, which they are exercising in an arbitrary and capricious manner, based on fact claims that it turns out they had no sound warrant to believe in the first place. It’s what the Less Wrong crowd calls a meta-level indictment, not an object-level one.

                Those coercive lockdowns are now continuing in the face of mounting evidence that they do more harm than good, simply because the Closers are too invested in their power grab to back away from it. It doesn’t matter so much what the power grab is about, it’s the grab itself that is a just cause under the U.S. Constitutional system for revolutionary violence

                1. Which provision of the constitution is being violated here? (Remember, this is the Michigan state constitution we’re discussing – unlike the federal one, it doesn’t seem to be a constitution of enumerated powers, so for an act to be unconstitutional would require a violation of a specific section, instead of constitutionality requiring authorization by a specific section).

                  As for why the provisions continue, most places seem to be rolling them back, as the disease has peaked and will continue to recede(at least, for the moment). Michigan’s a lagger here, but somebody will always be last. But disagreements over where the evidence points are all a pretty typical part of practical politics.

                  1. >Which provision of the constitution is being violated here?

                    Could be the Michigan State Constitution, could be the Federal one. The State government doesn’t get to violate the Federal constitution with impunity. And guarantees of freedom of assembly are clearly at issue here, as well as taking prohibited by the Fifth Amendment. Note that violation of Federal Constitutional guarantees by a state or local government is specifically a crime designated “Conspiracy to violate civil rights under color of law.”

                    I’ll defer to the demonstrators on this; it’s not for me to address or enumerate their object-level grievances, just to make the meta-level point that they were behaving correctly within the Constitutional system in response to an arbitrary usurpation of tyrannical power.

                  2. Alsadius> Which provision of the constitution is being violated here?

                    The provisions in the Fifth and Fourteeenth Amendments against depriving people of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law. The governor’s executive order is putting an entire state’s population under house arrest, which self-evidently counts as a deep infringement into the liberty of Michigan citizens.

                    (Remember, this is the Michigan state constitution we’re discussing […])

                    No, not exclusively. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly applies to the states. And according to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, most of the Bill of Rights’ provisions, including those of the Fifth Amendment, apply to the states, too. (For details, you can search the web for the keyword “incorporation”.)

                    1. Yeah, I skipped incorporation for brevity. My point was that it’d still need to be a violation of an explicit provision, not an expression of an enumerated power, because I expected the “You don’t even understand enumerated powers!” argument if I didn’t say that. But that is an explicit provision.

                      I don’t think it holds up – curfews, mandatory evacuation orders, and the like are fairly common in disaster situations, and so far as I know they’ve never been overturned. But it’s an argument I think you could take to a judge without too much laughter ensuing.

              3. So…you do not agree there are rights that no government, no matter how large the majority, may validly infringe?

                For if there are such rights, then defending those rights, up to and including with lethal force, is justifiable.

                1. It is amazing (by which I mean frightening) how often people talk themselves into a corner where — by the beliefs they say they hold without exception — they would have zero moral problem with being the one pulling the trigger at the edge of a mass grave. So long as some authority told them to and it was part of the law.

                2. Of course there are. But I’m not sure how something like “Don’t run crowded nightclubs in the middle of a pandemic” infringes any of those rights.

                  1. Alsadius> ’m not sure how something like “Don’t run crowded nightclubs in the middle of a pandemic” infringes any of those rights.

                    How about “never leave your home unless someone’s life depends on it”? (It’s item 2 in this particular order.) Are you seeing any infringements of liberty rights in that?

                    1. Looking at the lengthy lists of exceptions below that (part 7, in particular), I’m not sure how big the difference between the two is.

                      Also, it looks like the relevant law has been on the books since 1945. Not strictly related to your comment, just an interesting point I hadn’t realized prior.

                  2. Have you bloody looked at a map of Michigan?
                    https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus

                    Yes, there are over forty three thousand cases, and yes that’s horrible. But they are all in bloody Detroit and Grand Rapids.

                    Even C frigging NN did a piece a couple days ago, some sixty year old dairy farmer alone on the farm with his forty year old son, nobody else for bloody miles around. Haven’t dumped any milk yet but will soon need to because _everything_ is closed so nobody is buying anything.

                    What do you think is in all of those super pale blue areas in that map? Ninety five thousand square miles of wall-to-wall nightclubs?

                    Now the morons in Orange Beach defying orders and going to the beach anyway? With the population density freaking Los Angeles has? Where’s the righteous indignation for the lives _they_ are putting in clear and present danger? Oh but it’s a blue state, and none of them needed to be packing heat to be acting as implicit mass murderers (bored, no less! Self described at that!). So that’s just peachy then.

                    1. https://xkcd.com/1138/

                      Also, remember that rural areas get hit later in pandemics, because it takes time for diseases to spread away from dense hubs, but they don’t typically get hit any less.

                  3. The Michigan restrictions are much stupider than that.

                    California hasn’t had nearly as much pushback, because the orders here were much more sensible.

                    This surprised the hell out of me – I’d figured Newsom for a pretty-boy airhead who got ahead using his family money and charm – he certainly wasn’t very good as Mayor of San Francisco.

              4. > You argue that it would be right and proper to murder legislators if they do not change these policies.

                Uh, no, I never said that. The only argument I have made so far is that the mere fact of _carrying_ a firearm is not in itself a threat of “murder”, implied or otherwise. If one believes it does constitute such a blanket threat, then my question (which you ignored in favor of attributing multiple arguments to me which I did not make) is why I should not consider any, say, passing LEO as making a similar threat of murder toward me.

                > You claim that this may imminently happen

                I didn’t claim explicitly that it would happen; I certainly don’t have any belief as yet that it will “imminently” happen. (The frog-boiling analogy has already been brought up several times, and my cynical side tends to lean toward that as the most likely outcome.)

                > and seem strongly supportive of such an action. You claim that the coronavirus restrictions are a sufficient cause for violent revolution.

                Bloody when? Link or GTFO.

                1. There’s a reason why I specified that I was using “you” as a plural throughout that post. I haven’t been tracking exactly who’s said what for the most part, so it was a general response to the commentariat here. Sorry if that was unclear.

                  1. You don’t have to be sorry, just address the actual point I made.

                    Either the mere possession of a holstered firearm is _not_ prima facie an “implicit murder threat” — in which case kindly stop claiming that EVERYONE in the thread is “supporting threats of mass murder”. (Not that I consider myself alone in that but hey, let’s start small and simple.)

                    Or, you can agree that the mere presence of an LEO (or mall cop or whatever) within shooting distance of me while bearing a holstered weapon is similarly automatically making an “implied murder threat” toward me.

                    1. ESR’s original post was, in essence, “This is a death threat”. I’m taking that claim seriously.

                      If you wish to argue that it’s not actually a death threat, fine. But there’s a lot of other people here who you should probably mention that to as well.

                    2. > I’m taking that claim seriously.

                      Ok, so you are taking the position that armed protest is de facto a potential threat of lethal violence, yes?

                      Next Question: If the protesters were not armed, it wouldn’t be a threat of potential lethal violence, even if the underlying political assumptions (i.e. the occasional necessity of rebellion) are that it is? Politics is war by another means, etc.

                      If your answer to that is yes, then you are clearly ascribing magic powers to the bearing of arms that imbues with lethal menace those carrying weapons. It follows then that anyone bearing arms is so imbued. That necessarily extends to government officers, such as law enforcement.

                      Therefore, since you are complaining about protesters being armed, the logical end is that you believe only government has the right to wield such a lethal threat, and citizens do not.

                      And that is why we’re responding to you the way we are.

                      Do you really not grok this?

                    3. Ok, so you are taking the position that armed protest is de facto a potential threat of lethal violence, yes?

                      Not really, no. I’m taking the position that ESR wrote a post saying “These guys are issuing death threats. Please, everyone, take these death threats seriously”. It has nothing to do with magical gun powers, because ESR doesn’t think that way.

                      By the standards of this crowd, I am far from a gun expert. But when all the gun experts say “Yes, this is a death threat, and here’s all the reasons we’re threatening to kill them”, what exactly am I supposed to take from that?

                      And as I’ve said several times, I’m okay with shooting actual tyrants. I smiled to see Saddam Hussein hang, and I’d have smiled even more if it’d been a local rebellion that did him in. Ceausescu’s little Christmas present was well-deserved.

                      But those guys were mass-murdering dictators with infamous iron fists. The Michigan issue seems like the definition of “light and transient causes”, as the Declaration of Independence phrases it. Similarly, I agree with the right of self-defence, but “He was black and had a gun holstered” is not sufficient cause to kill in “self-defence”.

                    4. Similarly, I agree with the right of self-defence, but “He was black and had a gun holstered” is not sufficient cause to kill in “self-defence”.

                      Strawman. When’s the last time anyone made such a claim?

          2. 5.B.I “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;”

            Mind that this conditional is not suffixed with the word “or” or “and” — it is not an optional one. The state legislature is not the civilian population, it is a special group of people assigned to oversee the civilian population, while themselves being checked by the civilian population.

            If the governor and/or legislature have gone rogue and are acting against the population, it is the population that has a duty to deal with it. Basically everyone ever understands that bloodshed is preferably avoided, but it is also sometimes necessary.

          3. > Everyone in this thread is treating this protest as an implicit death threat.

            No, we are not.

            We are treating the protest as a *WARNING* that if these overgrown HOA presidents don’t stop threatening OUR lives, we will retaliate.

            You are working from the assumption that Government has the right to tell us how to live our lives, and that includes destroying supply chains because they aren’t (and none of us are) smart enough to organize the whole thing from the top down.

            That is an invalid assumption.

            1. > overgrown HOA presidents

              That’s the best thing I’ve read ever.

              I wish I could upvote +10 instead of just +1.

      4. That’s a fascinating implicit definition of “terrorism” you have there.

        (TLDR: rulers are generally considered legitimate targets.)

          1. Soldiers and those who command soldiers are legitimate targets in general, not just in war. Killing them is hostilities/civil war/regular war, not terrorism.

            Or from another POV: It takes two sides to make peace, one to make war. Any side who shoots a ruler makes war.

    2. The Michigan Senate and House are held by R’s. From what I understand, the state of emergency expired, meaning that Gov Whitless has no ability to make more rules. The Michigan legislature did not vote to extend the state of emergency and is (if you believe what you read) suing Whitless.

      Yeah this is getting frustrating. People are getting more and more fed up. Some understand it – they’re at risk or living with family members that are at risk – but more people are getting angry and fed up. They were going to accept the May 15 date, but to to extend it to the end of May? Clearly political. Too many people are losing jobs, but many are making as much as before on unemployment. Unknown if Whitless is going to be spanked.

  3. from the Detroit Free Press:
    -snip-
    At least one state senator expressed worry when she saw demonstrators shouting and carrying firearms in the public gallery.

    “Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us,” state Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, posted on Twitter, along with a photo. “Some of my colleagues who own bullet proof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our Sergeants-at-Arms more than today.”
    -/snip-

    No apparent awareness that her own malfeasance and incompetence is what brought those people – her EMPLOYERS – there to complain.

    1. Holy cow, I had read this fifty times before finally seeing the crux of the joke.

      You can damn well bet the _first_ law they put on the books was the one declaring Sergeants-at-Arms to be Essential Workers. Healthcare and other assorted losers was two or three days later.

      “Oh please, Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms, you come and stand right next to me. And don’t you trouble yourself about that silly six foot rule, that’s strictly for the proles.”

      I know I just quoted this a few blog posts back (in response to Jeff Read’s approval of Queen Ardern declaring the possession of blunderbusses to be a Privilege Granted by ye Throne and certainly not a “right” of ye dirty little people), but dang it’s not my fault it remains so frequently relevant:

      “E must be a king.”
      “Ow dya know?”
      “E asn’t got shit all over im.”

  4. I’m surprised at how Democrats are screwing this up. Newsom in California is a prime example. I understood the need for tough measures early on, because we needed to flatten the curve and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. But the hospitals are not even close to overwhelmed. In fact, many are in financial trouble and laying off people because of a lack of non-coronavirus patients. Even cancer patients aren’t getting treatment!

    Meanwhile NYC is the epicenter of the worst outbreak in the country, but only yesterday did de Blasio order that subway cars be sanitized once a day! Seems a little late, don’t you think?

    We have 600 unemployed for every virus death, and millions of people who want to get back to work are stopped by government officials whose pay and jobs aren’t threatened. Cheering on the lockdowns are the professional class of lefty pundits, who can work from home. The message seems to be “Screw the proles and small businesses, and oh by the way, vote for us in November so we can stop Trump!” It’s a bold plan….

    1. > We have 600 unemployed for every virus death

      That’s virus death that happened, not death the lockdowns are preventing (which is the relevant comparison-point).

      How many people die in the “just reopen everything” scenario? Best estimate I’ve seen for IFR is 2% with functional hospitals, 4% if overwhelmed (which they would be) and herd immunity kicks in at 40% at the earliest, so 1.6% of Americans dead (roughly 5 million). Obviously weighted toward the old and the poor.

      That’s a *lot* of casualties.

      Using any of the standard numbers for weighing lives against money, that’s several years worth of GDP.

      Also, that sort of devastation would almost certainly wreck the economy worse than the lockdowns have done. I don’t have a formal model of this, but it’s both common sense and the strong consensus of economists.

      So what should we do? Work as fast as we can toward a plan to reopen noncatastrophically. I’m mostly hoping for a vaccine (we could start rolling it out in a month if our society were halfway sane), but a lot of smart people think a test-and-track system could be assembled faster. Either way, capacity should be estimated by doing math on actual numbers before we start betting all our lives.

      1. Real deaths are a fraction of what the models said would happen with lockdowns far more restrictive than this. At this point it has become clear that doing nothing would probably still have fewer deaths than the deaths-with-lockdown model said.

      2. You’re ignoring the studies that show known infection rates are at least an order of magnitude too low. In short, far more people are being infected than the official numbers say. Further, there’s no way to stop it short of herd immunity in the absence of a vaccine. Finally, you are ignoring the serious public health consequences of the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. In short, the numbers just don’t support lockdowns, and people are NOT going to stay locked down till we get a vaccine in 12-18 months.

        We’re reopening whether our Democrat lords and masters want us to or not, and sooner rather than later.

        1. An order of magnitude? Are you saying NYC is 200% infected?

          Seriously, I’m sure there are plenty of terrible models out there. The one I’ve been working from is:

          https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/03/17/estimates-of-the-severity-of-covid-19-disease-another-bayesian-model-with-poststratification/

          Finding IFR is actually rather tricky, and I tend to expect Andrew Gelman to get a lot right. This is his shtick.

          But if you don’t trust him and want something simpler: San Marino has *already lost* more than 0.1% of its total population to covid. Belgium and Italy aren’t far behind. Do you really think the pandemic is more than 10% over?

          1. Yeah, maybe.

            It might already be over.

            Culture and mores are not uniform over the whole human population. In space or time.

            Some places are effectively run by screw ups who for all practical purposes do not care about human life. People may try to deny the spatial variation, but I am sure that you will not deny the temporal variation. Unless you propose that Bergen-Belson was a result of that government trying to preserve human lives in the same way that your favorite modern government would?

            A person can believe that the customs of the modern Italians are substantially bad where ordinary respiratory diseases are concerned. A person can believe that the ordinary death rate for Italians each year from flu was already high.

            I certainly already disliked Italy, Belgium, New York City, etc, and am quite prepared to believe them callous or incompetent enough to have unusually high death rates. I’m not sure where this San Marino is, but if it is in California, likewise with bells on. I also do not trust any government anywhere enough that I would never believe that their official numbers are fraudulent.

      3. >How many people die in the “just reopen everything” scenario?

        How many die if we keep everything closed? Models suggest the Great Recession caused (in the modern sense of that word) the deaths of 200K people.

      4. How many people die in the “just reopen everything” scenario? Best estimate I’ve seen for IFR is 2% with functional hospitals, 4% if overwhelmed (which they would be) and herd immunity kicks in at 40% at the earliest, so 1.6% of Americans dead (roughly 5 million). Obviously weighted toward the old and the poor.

        Bullshit. This numbers are pulled out of someone’s ass.

        If we did a *hard* reopen with *good*, reasonable and accurate explanations of why people should work from home where possible, wear masks when contact with the general public, and practice good hygiene (wash your hands with soap between tasks, disinfect your hands or change gloves between patients/clients/etc) you’d at best see a minor blip.

        People I see (and I’m shopping for and delivering groceries for a rather miserable living right now) are wearing masks/face coverings (about 2/3rds of them anyway) and are mostly following the protocols. Between them and those who will stay sequestered as much as possible, no there will NOT be a massive upswing in the cases.

        In fact I’d go so far as to bet (if I had any cash left to bet with) that there will continue to be a general downward slope in cases as we head into the summer months, and we won’t see any problems again until next flu season.

        Or we can keep everyone locked up and watch our entire supply chain fall apart because NO ONE understands all of the “essential” jobs to keep it running.

        The virus has been moving around the country since *early January*. The first confirmed death with Wuhan involvement was in early *FEBRURARY*.

        Allowing businesses, including bars, restaraunts and gyms to reopen doesn’t mean going back to “normal”, it means letting people make choices about what levels of risk they can tolerate.

        On the flip side they have to learn to properly evaluate risk. This virus is about as deadly as the flu would be *if we didn’t know how to treat it*. We do know how to treat the flu and we *still* lose 12 to 61 THOUSAND people every year.

        CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

        (Note that there are some people who make a credible argument that these numbers are exaggerated. There is also credible evidence that the numbers of Wuhan Virus deaths are exaggerated, but not at the same scale)

        Are we going to shut the country down every time a Republican is in the White House and we have a bad flu year? Are we going to lock down the country every time a new bug comes out of China or Africa?

    2. Point of order: De Blasio can’t order the subways to do anything, and hasn’t. He has no control over the MTA.

      And cleaning the trains every day would be difficult without closing the system down for a few hours, which means having to make other arrangements for those who depend on the system during that time. The MTA finally decided that with ridership down only 12,000 people use the system between 1am and 5am, so they’ll close it then and provide alternatives for those 12,000.

      Probably more important than the actual cleaning will be rousting the bums out at least during those hours, which it is to be hoped will mean that some fraction of them won’t immediately go back in.

      This is a problem increased at least an order of magnitude right after the New Year, when the new bail laws came into effect. I was riding the subway every day, at off-peak hours including late at night, and it was very noticeable. It was hard to find a car that wasn’t being used as a bedroom/toilet by at least one bum, and the police were unable to do anything about it. I once saw a pair of cops trying to get one of these people to at least sit up instead of lying down. Eventually they gave up. (And unlike the subways, the cops are under De Blasio’s authority.)

      But I understand that when most people (including me) stopped riding the system the problem got even worse, probably by another order of magnitude. So we’ll soon see how much it’s mitigated by the new regime of forcing them out once a day.

      1. And cleaning the trains every day would be difficult without closing the system down for a few hours

        I’m entirely willing to believe that the MTA designed an entire railway system that’s incapable of cycling rolling stock out of service for maintenance, but am unclear on why in that case pension revocation and prosecutions for negligent homicide aren’t underway.

  5. Politics is semi-sarcastically defined as “making decisions via words, not swords” (It really comes from Plato’s “Republic”, AKA Plato’s “Politiká”, ‘the affairs of the cities’).

    Showing up with swords speaks to that older tradition, and not the explicitly revolutionary tradition of the American revolution. It causes more than a little concern.

    –dave
    (Canadian guy, from the British side in the revolution (:-))

    1. >Showing up with swords speaks to that older tradition

      Fact. There are cantons in Switzerland that have retained the requirement that in order to speak and vote at a town meeting, you need to carry a sword.

      There is good reason that this requirement has survived the obsolescence of swords as practical weapons. If you don’t immediately grasp that reason, I strongly recommend that you think about this for a while.

      1. Which is understood in those cantons, but would cause bewilderment in, for a random example, either ancient or modern Greece.

        My point is that the United States has created a new tradition, very different from the British of (mad) King George III, but which is not known to everyone, even in America. To someone from outside that specific tradition, arming oneself has a meaning almost exactly the _opposite_ of what you are expressing.

        And yes, they’re wrong. But unless you communicate that effectively, you’re going to be regarded as offering to “end the King’s Peace”.

        I know and respect your tradition, but I swore an oath to defend the Queen’s Peace, so I’m rather aware of the other one (;-))

        1. To someone from outside that specific tradition, arming oneself has a meaning almost exactly the _opposite_ of what you are expressing.

          And yes, they’re wrong. But unless you communicate that effectively, you’re going to be regarded as offering to “end the King’s Peace”.

          And that’s a big problem with the 2A community in general. Gun Culture 2.0 is great for a number of things, but really bad at communicating its real goals. So much focus on both gaming and self defense, not so much on the cultural importance and meaning of being armed.

          I can’t blame the community too much, however. The rest of the country has such a naive understanding of guns, violence, and the nature of power that any communications with them is an uphill battle because you’re effectively speaking a different language.

          1. It’s surprisingly easy for me to understand the US debate, despite being a foreigner and from a very different governing tradition.
            Two of the problems of starting a dialog are
            – how _long_ it takes to get started communicating with someone who wants to debate it good faith, but doesn’t know you have hugely different basic assumptions
            – finding yourself debating with someone who _doesn’t_ want to debate it in good faith, but sounds a lot like the first guy (:-()

      2. I can think of two. The easy one is that it helps keeping people polite. The harder one is, how to put it… talk about government is often put in overly light and sweet terms. That, like, it is how society discusses and solves its problems. In reality, government is all about the direction of the use of force, be that war or law enforcement. It is a far more serious and harsher business.

        Talking about the state in such light and sweet terms, was often noticed and criticized by libertarians, but I am not sure they understand the reason. The reason is that there was such a thing as a state and a state church, then they got separated, and now the state itself became a church, exactly as Pobedonostsev predicted. Why and how it happened is a long story.

        But the result is best put into the model of four-class analysis. The warrior-aristocrats are gone. There are soldiers, you might be a sheepdog, but ain’t aristocrats. Basically the priesthood took over, but it is not really the old, openly religious priesthood, but intellectuals who act in the role of priests, telling coordinated stories, telling what is right and wrong etc. The other two classes, entrepreneurs and employees roughly stayed as they were.

        When the warrior-aristocrats were in power, the symbol of government was openly the sword or sceptre. They knew and admitted that it is about force. When the secular priesthood took it over, it had to become something like a church.

        1. Inana has stolen the temple from An, wantonly unleashes her wrath upon any who would disrespect her by raising a competitor, and sends her heavenly bovines to trample those who spurn her. Remember Ebih! Remember Enkidu!

    2. (Canadian guy, from the British side in the revolution (:-))

      Well there’s yer problem. /s

      But your objection is a mild one; I can’t wait to see Winter’s sputtering when he wakes up.

    3. The Greek Democracies and Roman Republic are perhaps better understood as armies that to function at their best had to distribute shares in the government that they used to extract resources from the territory they held. There is a reason that they did not give women the vote, and it was sound for them.

      America’s Republic is in this model, except that modern firearms make it practical to extend a provisional share to women and the poor.

      Your society is rather more in the line of warrior aristocrats providing military service up the hierarchy, with land disbursed down the hierarchy to fund things, and everyone else as chattel.

  6. Wolverines!

    That happens to be the famous war cry in Red Dawn (1984) and also the mascot of the University of Michigan.

  7. Serious upheavals begin by moving very slowly, then arrive suddenly.

    Kinda like a 100-carriage fright train.

  8. Guestapo Gretchen has a problem, but why not Guestapo Gavin, or Concentration Camp Cuomo.

    In ignored flyover country news, Governor Kristi Noam of South Dakota, that just said “use your common sense” had a parade around the governor’s mansion in support. The only hotspot is a Chinese owned Pork processing plant staffed by muslim refugees.

    Next door in Wyoming where the restrictions are not “stay at home”, there were fairly loud protests. No difference in guns, but here people open carry everywhere so it would be hard to detect an escalation. Considering the distrust, the per capita gun ownership is more than 2x the next highest state. Note Governor Guestapo Gordon was the least conservative GOP candidate since the true ones split the vote. The Democrat running was to the right of Mitt Romney.

    Noam 2024!

    1. > The only hotspot is a Chinese owned Pork processing plant staffed by muslim refugees.

      Er…why do either of those things matter? Do you think that the virus cares where you’re from?

      1. Do you know what “social distance” means? The term didn’t just spring up from the brain of Zeus this year you know.

        Different cultures have different ideas of how far apart people stand, how much physical contact there is, etc. This is called “social distance”, and it is one of the major factors in how easily diseases spread through the population.

        1. Sure, and I could see that argument for Chinese, but most Muslim refugees I’ve ever met don’t seem to come from low-personal-space cultures in nearly the same way. I’d expect Manhattan to be far worse, and relative to population Manhattan seems to be doing best among New York’s boroughs.

          The meat plant part of the above-quoted sentence seems far more relevant to me than the nationality of those involved.

          1. You haven’t seen many Northern Plains Scandinavians. For them, 6′ is uncomfortably close. Similarly, facing directly at someone while talking is kinda aggressive.

          2. I can tell by your comment that you’ve never spent much time in an Arabic country

            I swear half the time dealing with Saudis in KSA was spent backing up to get out of breath range.

            1. This is true. I’m familiar with Muslims in this part of the world, but I’ve never been to a country where they were a majority.

      2. Do you think soil is magic, changing deeply ingrained subtle behaviors by standing on it?

        Am I suddenly going to start thinking in a fashion you consider sane, simply from standing on Italian, Belgian, Russian, Canadian, Austrian or Californian soil?

        Would I suddenly stop being a huge Curtis LeMay fanboy if I visited Japan? Stop admiring Sherman if I stayed in a hotel in Atlanta? Stop loving the passive periphrastic, Cato the elder’s example, the phrase, and the standard the Romans set for us in the Punic wars if I were to walk the site of Carthage?

        With great effort a person can change their future self to be different from their past self. Barring the destruction of the self, a person’s past selves are visible in their future selves. People are influenced by the people they are around. When a person moves from being around one group to being around another group, they bring traces of the first group’s influence.

        Carthage ought to be blotted out.

      3. > Er…why do either of those things matter?

        What, you believe that all cultures are the same all the way down?

  9. This is likely to escalate.

    The left is predictable. They never learn. They never reconsider. They never, ever reflect on the possible long-term consequences of their actions. They will only double-down.

    1. I really wish the left did not have the determination of the Terminator mixed with the stupidest political ideas ever conceived by mankind.

    2. Escalation scenarios?

      1. Sheriffs and local governments refuse to enforce Gestapo Gretchen’s orders?
      2. Guys with guns start guarding businesses that open?
      3. Good old fashioned tree decorations?
      4. Widespread disobedience?
      5. Nothing?

      At this point my money is still on #5.

      1. I believe there have already been several county sheriffs and local PDs stating they’re not going to enforce some or all of the various parts of the orders.

        First one that comes to mind was the “no taking out personal watercraft.” If going out fishing or even just to get out in the fresh air and sun on a boat, which will FOR SURE keep you at LEAST 6ft away from other people (except maybe your family that’s on the boat with you, but you’d otherwise be locked in your house with them, so) thenwhy ban it?

        Oh, wait, I recall now. Because you’d have to touch a gas pump handle that might’ve been touched by someone else who might’ve had COVID. Local PD / county sheriffs all pretty much said “yeah, we ain’t worrying about people out on their boats.”

        So, I’d say right now we’ve got a mix of #1, maybe a dash of #3, and a sprinkle of #4.

  10. Something worse few notice, and where are the SJWs?, is that 80% of the deaths are people over the age of 80.

    If 70% of the deaths were blacks, or women, or pick your victim group, there would be an outcry.

    We are making the AIDS mistake – Mayor Diane Feinstein didn’t close the bathhouses so tens of thousands died – but we had to worry suburban housewives about the risks.

    That is the root of the problem. 1. We are NOT protecting the vulnerable demographic, and 2. we are destroying people’s lives with a general lockdown.

    1. I’ve been seeing a pretty steady outcry because blacks and Native Americans are dying at disproportionately high rates.

      As a Boomer, I find it amusing that I’ve been moved from “die as fast as possible” to “must be protected”.

      1. >As a Boomer, I find it amusing that I’ve been moved from “die as fast as possible” to “must be protected”.

        Well that depends. It seems there really are people looking to kill you if they find you more useful dead than alive.

        See my nursing home post.

    2. > 1. We are NOT protecting the vulnerable demographic,

      Outside of New York, yes we are.

      My mother’s assisted care facility has been locked down for over a month. No visitors, minimal to no social interaction, meals delivered etc.

      The long term care facilities here on the Front Range are also in lockdown–when I make deliveries there (see above for explanations) I don’t get past the front door.

      But you know what? Most of the elderly I interact with DGAF (self selected sample, may not be representative). They have lived long lives, and they’ll take basic precautions, but they remember REALLY shit like polio, smallpox, mumps, measles, rubella, and whooping cough.

      One old lady I delivered to had a reasonably sized order, but only cared about two things–her calcium supplements and her *diet* tonic water to go with her gin.

  11. Tyrants ACTIVELY WANT the Obamic Plague to last as long as possible. This is the opportunity of a lifetime for them. Destruction of the economy and mass casualties must continue until they have completed their usurpation of power.

  12. I *wish* these militias would apply some larger-scale strategic thinking.

    “Just reopen everything” is a terrible idea, but there are good policies that aren’t getting implemented.

    Last I checked there are two vaccine candidates that we’re pretty sure are safe and effective. Pretty sure isn’t good enough, but it could become completely sure given a hundred person challenge trial and a month. That would be illegal, but it could happen with a militia guarding it.

    We still don’t have decent numbers for total infected or reproduction rate. We could, if we did random testing, which we could easily afford by using non-FDA-approved tests. It would be illegal, but it could happen with a militia guarding it.

    We also don’t have good data on how antibody tests relate to the progress of the disease. The solution is simple: find some high-risk people, test them daily with all the Ig- tests and a QPCR, graph results starting from time-of-infection. I’m not sure if this would be legal, but I bet the reasons it hasn’t been done involve a lot of governmental friction. All that could be cut through with determination, goal-oriented thinking, and firearms.

    Less ambitiously, there’s PPE issues. I’m not sure if there are factories that are physically but not legally capable of making medical-grade meltdown fabric. If so, they could be guarded.

    Failing that, imported PPE is being seized by feds and vanishing. Militias could protect it.

    We’re in this awkward position where the people who know what specific tyranny is taking place and the people who are prepared to take up arms against tyranny are in different social bubbles.

    Eric: Might you be able to bridge them?

    1. Actually, a challenge trial would be ethical, and arguably legal.

      The ethical question in the trial is “does the volunteer have an equal or better chance of being treated as well as if they caught it accidentally”.

      In any trial managed by doctors, they would be guaranteed as good or better treatment than a random person off the street.

      –dave
      (Legal in Canada, ethical globally. Legality in your jurisdiction? Seek local legal advice (;-))

      1. Speaking of challenge trials, I’m endlessly amused that an allegedly scientific civilization hasn’t thought of reopening one city, as opposed to say the entire country at once.

        Prototypes? Phase I trials? Are they tasty?

    2. You seem to presume that there are effectively officers doing strategy for the militia which could be contacted, provided with information, and then act on it.

      The people with those strengths well developed are likely to be very risk averse, and militia-like-behavior leadership above the NCO level is likely to be wisdom-of-crowds or playing a very cautious deniable game.

      Officer-like leaders likely to be effective in a civil war are either professionally trained, or have developed a fairly high level of ability. Professional training is most likely to be in the US military. US officers are developed in the direction of strategic thinking, but are very cautious of losing their pensions, and very aware that, even post retirement, because they still hold commissions the UCMJ still has some jurisdiction. NCOs are developed away from strategic thinking. Amateurs with high ability and excellent strategic thinking know that professionals have some serious advantages, and would not lightly risk committing to a fight with them.

      Your ‘better’ strategic choices are also things that force in aid of would be more of a clear cut criminal act. The actual people with guns at this are most likely either a) prior service military b) civilian gun owners who are not criminals. The military actually will imprison people whose history in service shows a pattern of willingness to use force in aid of criminal acts. The people who have actual careers in the military become a little bit careful of the legalities of their use of force. The selection pressure on civilian gun owners is a little different, but similar net result. The people inclined towards crime go into crime, the people not inclined stay out of prison by not being hyper idiots. These people aren’t going to be finding obviously criminal ways to use force with wisdom-of-crowds leadership, unless they are very stressed, with provocations that look civil war like. (And sure, there are heavily armed criminals in America. Those wind up dead if they use force at every prompting, as opposed to just when they can profit criminally. They aren’t seizing drug trafficking turf at a state capital building.)

    3. > “Just reopen everything” is a terrible idea,

      No, it isn’t. We’re past the hump, we have a handle on how to keep the spread rate down (masks, hand washing, distancing) and other work, no one is being forced to get out there and interact with the great unwashed.

      > but there are good policies that aren’t getting implemented.

      Yeah, welcome to the real world.

  13. As a resident of Michigan, it’s interesting to follow these protests and both how the various news covers them and the responses (in the comments on said news) from people.

    On one forum site I’m a member, the members are largely in favor of the protests, with many of the commenters going so far as to say they’d be attending precisely BECAUSE they’re currently sitting at home waiting to go back to work. Yet, when you hit up the comments on Detroit News or (lord help you) the Michigan sub-Reddit and the best way to describe many of the comments is “government me harder Mommy Whitmer!”

    My feeling fairly quickly went towards, if the state gov here had gone with a “look, we don’t know how bad this thing is going to get, or how infectious it is, but it looks like it could be quite bad. So we’re *strongly* recommending you and your employers make arrangements to work from home and that people stay away from other people. Be sensible about this.” Then quite likely, there’d be no protests.

    But instead, we got Whitmer going from 0 to near full lockdown in barely a week, then adding restrictions in what felt like a very capricious manner. Which only served to further aggravate people. Frankly, at this point, if people think the Blanchard-Engler-Granholm years were bad, well, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet…

    1. > Yet, when you hit up the comments on Detroit News or (lord help you) the Michigan sub-Reddit and the best way to describe many of the comments is “government me harder Mommy Whitmer!”

      I wonder how many of those were planted by the state government. One of the fascist left’s favorite tactics is to make their popular support look bigger than it really is–witness practically the entire 20th-century history of the media.

      1. You think the only way to get a bunch of left-leaning comments on Reddit is for governments to fake them?

        You’ve never been on Reddit, have you?

    2. I don’t know those specific commenters, but I know a bunch of people who are financially much better off if the government forbids them to work than if they chose not to because it’s unsafe. They have contracts with force major clauses, and the government action keeps them off the hook for large amounts of money they don’t have.

      I don’t know how common this is. My circles could easily be nonrepresentative. Either direction.

      Just one more factor in the mix.

      1. Frankly, right now, my wife is doing MUCH better because her employer laid her off (I’m still working, and would be up the solid waste creek without a motive device if I were laid off.)

    3. Just to check my impressions, Michigan’s legislature has been trying to take away Whitmer’s emergency powers and stop the lockdown, right? All the irrational diktats have come from the Governor alone, and she’s the one people have been protesting?

      1. Yep. Right now the legislature is Republican-controlled and the Governor is a Democrat. So for the most part, the legislature blocks or tries to block her, and vice-versa.

        IIRC, the first protest was over the heavy-handedness of the lockdown orders, largely a bunch of small business owners who’re getting absolutely HOSED. Operation Gridlock was intended as both a protest and something of a slap in the face. Namely, everyone involved (which was most) would obey the “social distancing” requirements, by staying in their cars and driving in a circle on the streets around the capitol building (while still letting emergency services and PD through.)

        This protest looks like they skipped the traffic jam and went for boots on the ground and in the building, and likely was because she’s extending the order and the rumors (at the time, since proven true) that she was going to extend / continue with the state of emergency declaration with or WITHOUT the legislatures agreement. Add to that comments that could be boiled down to “I’m not giving up these powers and no one can make me” sort of things, and well…

        Here we are.

  14. Do you want a gun ban? Because this is how you get a gun ban.

    Whether you think it’s right or wrong, the PR on this is disastrously bad. Waving your gun to make a political point is about as socially acceptable as waving your dick to make a political point.

    1. If the politicians wish to take the next step in the escalation that is their prerogative.

      1. If you think it’d be “the politicians”, and not ~70% of the nation’s populace, you’re missing the point.

        1. In recent years we have learned that far far more of the populous is us than we ever expected.

          First was the slow breaking of the media stranglehold through talk radio and then the internet. Then the election of Trump instead of Her Holiness. Then the Lobby Day Rally. Now that all across the country — even in places we had written off as hopeless — people are angry with the obvious crap the politicians are ordering.

          1. People, yes. A majority, though? There’s a majority who think the left sucks, for sure. The number who want to murder them is not a majority. (And thank god for that.)

            1. I don’t want to murder every leftist. (It would make a helluva dent in my ammo stash.) However, every tyrant in political power is fair game, and has been since 1776.

                1. Popular revolutions don’t get that way because everyone all at once decided on the same opinion.

                  It is a dance: provide enough of a threat that the powers are forced with a choice of either backing down (you win), or responding with excessive force (you win). As this process is repeated you eventually reach the legitimacy collapse stage, only then does everybody join your cause.

                  1. In theory, sure.

                    In practice, it’s vastly more common for the idiot amateurs running the “revolution” to shoot themselves in the foot, destroy their popular support, and wind up watching their movement crumble. Usually with a nice side order of death and/or jail time.

        2. If what the majority wanted was a factor in America, illegal immigration would be zero, legal immigration would be a fraction of its present number, and the Mexican border would be a solid wall.

          America isn’t a democracy, though.

          By the way, did you know ad populum is a fallacy?

          1. It’s only a fallacy if my argument was “it’s right because people want it.” My actual argument was “you’ll lose elections because people disagree with you.” That’s not a fallacy.

    2. > this is how you get a gun ban.

      Do you want the boogaloo? Cause this is how you get the boogaloo, folks.

      > the PR on this is disastrously bad.

      Only to shrinking violets, leftist assholes, and tyrants. Fuck ’em.

      > socially acceptable

      Given this is explicitly political, I assume you actually mean “politically correct.” Lots of things can be socially acceptable but still fucking reprehensible, therefore that is a shit measure.

      I suspect you underestimate the degree to which this is good PR. A very large segment of the citizenry is very pissed off these days. So far they’ve been nice. They enjoy when someone stands up and reminds the tyrannical bastards that niceness is a courtesy that can and will be rescinded if needs must.

      Think that’s a rude thing to do? Good, that means you’re listening. Take it seriously.

      1. I too use cutesy names for mass murder. It’s what all the cool kids are doing.

        You might think that the PR shouldn’t be bad, but that doesn’t change what it is.

        And no, I didn’t mean “politically correct” at all. That term has a distinct lack of concrete meaning, and even insofar as it is useful, it applies to totally different situations. I mean that if you go to a random neighbour in a random mid-sized American town, and said “Yeah, I went down to the legislature the other day. Made sure to pack heat too, so that those bastards will get the right idea”, you’d be unlikely to get three cheers for your bravado. The most likely response you’d get is them telling their kids not to ever visit your house.

        1. > I too use cutesy names for mass murder. It’s what all the cool kids are doing.

          Since you are apparently ignorant about this, allow me to inform you: the boogaloo is not shorthand for mass murder, it’s shorthand for Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo.

          That you seem not to know this speaks heavily to the reasons why you are so confused about what people are saying; you actually don’t know what we’re talking about, and have decided to adopt your own prejudices as explanation.

            1. What do you think war is, exactly?

              A thing which is distinct from murder. As evidenced by (a) defeated line combatants generally not being tried for murder by the victors, and (b) the concept of “war crimes” as something not logically entailed by “war”.

              To reiterate Andrew Ward’s point elsewhere: you seem unable to distinguish between “murder” and “killing”. Not every killing is a murder.

              1. Sure, launching attacks on organized bodies of enemy soldiers is generally in a different category. So when the Michigan legislature dons uniforms and operates as a military force, then shooting them is “war”. Have they done so?

                I was overly brief above, and should probably have expanded a bit. Revolutions and civil wars, especially in the opening phases, tend to look very little like a true war. Don’t think of the American Civil War circa Fort Sumter. Think of Bleeding Kansas. Or, more likely, the revolutionary bombers of the 1960s, who never got anywhere near “war”, and just did occasional terrorism and rapidly devolved into coke-addled bank robbers.

                We’re not talking about Geneva Convention stuff here. There is currently no group you can attack in a war-like fashion, aside from the US military itself, and I doubt anyone here has that in mind. Nor is the existence of any such group on the horizon. If the right engages in a lot of mass murder I’m sure the left will form up into paramilitary groups, but while that might involve you starting a war, it won’t represent you fighting one when you start.

              2. Fun fact: for centuries only assassination, secret killing, was considered murder.

                The most recent term I know of for killing boldly, from the front, is ‘vig’. When committing vig, a) they can fight back, making it an unforgeably costly act, and b) you can and will be held responsible, even if the act itself is legal.

                Conflating vig and murder is very convenient for those who wish ultima ratio regum to remain solely in the domain of kings.

                1. for centuries only assassination, secret killing, was considered murder

                  Yep, it’s one of the things about saga-period Iceland mentioned in DDF’s Legal Systems Very Different From Ours. Apparently if, after killing, you went past three dwellings without reporting the killing to the inhabitants of any of them, it was considered murder and you forfeited legal defences like “he attacked me first” or “he’s an outlaw”.

    3. Sooo…
      You define “waving your gun” to be carrying a firearm slung or in a holster?

      Because I watched a bit of coverage on Youtube (FROM one of the TV stations, NOT a crappy cell phone video from someone in the crowd) and the only things waving around were American and Gadsen flags.

      Before you jump in saying “but the optics are still bad from that,” they’re bad BECAUSE the anti-gun crowd has MADE them bad.

      1. And anyone who doesn’t have their head in an anatomically impossible position should have figured out over the last few years that saying or doing what is considered politically “rude” is probably what you should do. Trump does it every day, and despite having as much mud hurled at him as is physically possible none of it sticks.

      2. I see two possibilities.

        1) The guns were irrelevant to the protesters’ point. In which case, focusing on them this much is erroneous, and tbh a bit weird.

        2) The guns were relevant to the protesters’ point. In which case, you guys are right that it was an implicit threat of mass murder over a question of the details of pandemic response. Which is, if you’ll pardon my French, totally fucking insane.

        This is not some poor benighted dictatorship we’re discussing. The state election is in six months. If you think the current crop of legislators is doing a poor job, you can replace them with their opponents, not with well-aerated, room-temperature versions of themselves. Even with four-boxes models, you’re about one and a half boxes in and trying to jump to #4.

        1. Did you know that every politician has a gun to the head of every citizen, via law-enforcement, all the time, with the implicit threat of murder?

          Many citizens want to make sure that world-state is actually balanced, and ensure that the politicians are viscerally aware of that, especially in a time where civil liberties are already constantly under serious attack never mind the draconian pandemic response. And you think that is insane?

          1. We do not live in a society where people are murdered by the government over policy disagreements. If you’re arguing that this is turnabout and thus fair play, then you need to bridge the gap between killing Michael Brown for assaulting a cop and killing Gretchen Whitmer for disagreeing with you about legislation.

            So far, nobody in this thread has even attempted to do so. It’s all been chest-thumping about how somebody else might get violent.

            1. We do not live in a society where people are murdered by the government over policy disagreements.

              If you really believe that call your local police and tell them that you are turning your house into a combined Meth and Machinegun factory. By your own words you have nothing to fear.

              Or, perhaps you could be honest and admit that if you do not follow the dictats you will be raided with tremendous force, and little care if one of the members of the SWAT team should get an itchy trigger finger.

              1. I don’t fear that they’d send out a sniper team to kill me for it, no. I certainly have no particular fear of calling up the police and saying that their gun and drug laws are dumb, or that I’ll be voting for the Legalizing Dangerous Stuff Party – policy advocacy is perfectly acceptable. Likewise, I wouldn’t mind telling them I was an elected official representing the LDSP.

                Presumably you’re not an anarchist. (If you are, disregard the following – we won’t agree anyway.) If not, that means that you think laws are in a separate category than the views of individuals, and that they can be enforced more readily and violently. Of course the cops enforcing laws and me enforcing my preferences aren’t on the same level. Even if I feel very strongly about those issues, I don’t get to make a citizen’s arrest against a legislator who bans weed.

                1. > I don’t fear that they’d send out a sniper team to kill me for it, no.

                  Depending on the disposition of the local police in question, you really should. Policing in America has gone cloud-coocoo-land, with rampant militarization and judicial rubber-stamp sanction for heinous behaviors against the citizenry. They are a modern praetorian class and act like it in too many cases, all to protect their own precious skin while stamping with their boots.

                  It’s not all movie-plot behaviors; most of it is banality-of-evil stuff like no-knock raids, destroyed homes, dead dogs, and harassment for engaging in Constitutionally-protected activities.

                  1. Yeah, it’s a total shit show. But the issue there is paranoid tacticool warriors who think that a random grow-op deserves the SWAT team and then screw up the address on the warrant. That’s a totally different category than Putin’s treatment of reporters he dislikes.

                    1. > But the issue there is paranoid tacticool warriors

                      Who end up killing, sometimes outright murdering, people who have policy disagreements with the politicos who provide cover for the tyrannical cop behavior.

                      You’re splitting hairs and shifting goalposts. You’re talking like the people who enforce policy are separate from people who make it.

                      Frankly, your arguments are so confused I’m not sure you aren’t suffering from cognitive dissonance due to compartmentalization at a level resembling brain damage.

                    2. You don’t see a difference between political assassination on one hand and a cop who gets freaked out and goes for his gun while enforcing silly laws on the other.

                      But I’m the one with brain damage. Right.

                      You know the really funny thing? I’m fairly right-leaning, fairly libertarian, generally pro-gun (despite living in an area that is very much anti-gun), and I go out of my way to defend people like you when lefties of my acquaintance go after you for being various flavours of evil. Reading this thread, I’m starting to wonder if that’s a mistake. I still think well of the right overall, but you guys might actually be as lunatic as they suggest.

                      I was probably this bad of an internet tough guy when I was 18, but it seems like most ESR readers are old enough to have kids that age. What’s your excuse? I mean seriously, I’ve seen less pigheaded revolutionary bravado from people who name their university student election slate “Team Che” and make a point of all drinking from the same can of pop to show that they’re comrades. It’s not like you’re actually going to do anything, after all.

                    3. > But the issue there is paranoid tacticool warriors
                      > who think that a random grow-op deserves the SWAT team

                      You know about zero cops, right? And by “know” I mean guys you’ve eaten with or had a drink with.

                      The problem isn’t “tacticool cops”, it is, like many things, massively corrupt and incompetent leadership at the local level. The San Jose mayor ORDERED police officers NOT to protect Trump supporters from left wing violence. The same thing is purported to have happened in South Carolina–although there the allegations are that the police *deliberately* funnelled the “proud boys” into left wing thugs.

                      Because of my interest in martial arts and firearms I’ve known–in the sense of having dinner, drinks, or rolling around on the mats–about a dozen active cops, and I’ve got a former police officer as a close friend.

                      The problem is *never* the front line guys being out of control, it’s *always* their leadership not doing it’s job.

                      And frankly if you instructed me to take my team and hit a “grow house” I’d do it SWAT/SEAL style–hard and fast with LOTS of noise and LOTS of bruises. Most grow operations (prior to legalization) were well defended and often had a lot of illegal weapons. By getting in FAST and putting people on the floor and in cuffs as quickly as possible you prevent someone from getting froggy and you prevent having to shoot them.

                      Of course my people would be trained to the extent my superiors would allow, which is the problem today. The idiots running most of the cities in the US today have some idiotic notion that violence never solves anything, and that police officers are just social workers with badges.

                      I suspect you’re one of those people.

                    4. >The same thing is purported to have happened in South Carolina–although there the allegations are that the police *deliberately* funnelled the “proud boys” into left wing thugs.

                      Confirmed. I know one of the organizers from the chat channel that organized the Lobby Day demo. I’ve heard a first-hand account of exactly that.

                    5. @William O. B’Livion:

                      I suppose I was probably a bit too subtle about this, but I didn’t specify which level of the org chart the idiots were at.

                    6. The San Jose mayor ORDERED police officers NOT to protect Trump supporters from left wing violence.

                      Then they obeyed the order. ¯\_(?)_/¯

                      They had something to say about this at Nuremberg, didn’t they?

            2. > We do not live in a society where people are
              > murdered by the government over
              > policy disagreements.

              Vicky Weaver and a whole bunch of Branch Dividians could not be reached for comment.

              You might be able to ask Elian Gonsalez about it, if you flew to Cuba.

        2. >The state election is in six months.

          Michiganders can’t afford to wait six months. Spending that much time under Whitmer’s restrictions would likely wreck the state’s economy past repair for a generation.

          1. Go look up the economic crash that happened after WW1. It was about as deep as the Depression by some measures, but it was over within about a year. We remember the decade that contained it as “the roaring twenties”. Or the Volcker crash of 1980, which was an externally imposed crash largely unrelated to economic conditions (it was mostly to display credibility on the part of central banks, and thereby kill inflation), and which again happened with no substantial follow-up damage, and led to a solid decade of rapid growth as soon as it ended.

            I don’t expect substantial lingering damage here. The economy is still fine, it’s just hibernating. Once we turn the light switch back on, it’ll wake up. I’m not saying the impact will be zero – some restaurants won’t reopen, airlines will struggle for a few years, and so on – but it’ll be substantially smaller than 2008, despite the crash being deeper. There’s no substantial structural issues to work through in the recovery this time.

            Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes

            1. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes

              We are a century past “light and transient causes”.

              I’m going to copy what I said in another chat:

              Flashpoints are rarely about something worthy of the trouble they start.

              Tea taxes were a really fucking stupid reason to start a war and get people killed over. Except it wasn’t about tea was it? It was about years of abuses, attempts to gain redress only to be ignored and more abuse piled on, until eventually that damn tea was just too much.

              1. Revolutions only make sense when it’s impossible to change the government through peaceful channels. Revolting against North Korea’s government would be a perfectly logical thing to do(if there was any chance of success, at least). But when you have a clear path to change the government, and it doesn’t need to involve mass killings, you should use those ones.

                And yes, this sometimes requires patience. But just ask what your reaction would be to a movie character whose attitude towards life was “Bored now, time to start murdering!”.

                1. And the threat of revolution, that there are defined lines which if crossed will personally cost the politicians their lives, is an important part of that balance.

                  For the same reason that the knowledge that a little old lady might pull out a gun and kill her attackers reduces muggings.

                2. The problem here is that there are some rights that no government, regardless of how large a majority it commands, may infringe and still retain its legitimacy. The Bill of Rights lists many, but by no means all, of them. Yes, that includes the Second Amendment.

                3. I don’t think change is possible within the political process. Trump is a weird abberation — after he’s out, it’ll be back to the Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio type candidates in the GOP, and the democrats have proven they can’t sustain anything outside the establishment, and third parties will remain non-viable. The machine is a beast that must be fed and sustain itself.

                  Now I don’t personally want revolution for a lot of complicated reasons outside the scope of this discussion. But saying “just vote them out” is just going to replace “them” with near-clones. And if you subscribe to “a right delayed is a right denied” theory proposed by a darling of nearly everyone in American society today, then waiting for multi-generational change through dozens of iterations of “vote for someone slightly less bad” is not a useful option.

                  I frankly wish our elected politicians _were_ afraid of armed revolution. The democrats should frankly be more afraid, because they have two opposing sides that hate their guts: the hard-core socialists and the right.

                4. > Revolutions only make sense when
                  > it’s impossible to change the
                  > government through peaceful
                  > channels.

                  When you have a news media *actively* lying and faking stories to support one side, and you have them starting to agitate for censorship it is starting to look like “peaceful” channels are getting clogged up.

                5. (wrote a better version of this Friday, but it seems to have disappeared)
                  Wow, thirty million Americans are unemployed, and you mock some of the most desperate of them as “bored”? I consider myself extremely lucky to have a job like programming where it is at least possible to work from home, and even more fortunate to work for a company smart enough to have sent us all to work from home when all this started. I can’t imagine mocking anyone in less fortunate circumstances as “bored”.

                  Even CNN did a piece a couple days ago about places like Wyoming, South Dakota, etc; lots of tiny little towns with tiny population, tiny population density, negligible infection rate, trickle of tourism at the best of times.

                  Do we really need the same lockdown measures in every locale? Do the citizens of that locale have any say in the measures applied to them? These seem like important questions to me, both in the abstract (“prudence indeed” or “blood of the patriots”?) and practical (do we actually have the right to tell a particular farmer, or even a nightclub owner, that she has to lose her business For The Sake Of Society?). To sneer at people struggling with these questions as “bored mass murderers” is easy, and no doubt fun; I can’t speak for “everyone” of course, but I consider it puerile, to say nothing of unconvincing.

                  1. I was recently re-watching Buffy season 6, so a certain character who says “Bored now!” and kills people may have been at the forefront of my mind.

                    Looking back at it, I should have phrased that one a bit better. Apologies.

                    As for adjusting lockdown measures to local conditions, I’m 100% in favour. Some of the things these protesters are saying I agree with on policy grounds. My opposition here is to the argument of “Shoot the legislature if they keep up these policies”, which is being made quite explicitly by many people here. (I don’t know if the armed protesters have said the same, but even if they haven’t, I’ll still push back on the arguments here.)

                    1. And when you finally manage to squeeze a razor blade between the concepts of “remind the political elite that they really do serve at the will of the people” and “physically pull the trigger”, you may be a step closer to enlightenment.

                    2. What razor blade? They get a reminder every four years, no guns needed. There’s a world of difference between the two, and the fact that you think they’re as close as you do is what worries me.

            2. China of course fudges their numbers and didn’t really improve GDP by 20% year over year, but it’s undeniable that they grew extremely quickly. Why? Because they were just copying how the West does things.

              Similarly in this case all that needs to happen is the West to copy itself; it will recover extremely fast. A few lucky winners are perhaps going to learn the difference between “””structural unemployment””” and a pile of useful workers that don’t currently happen to have jobs.

          2. Also, I feel the need to add one more thing. You have so little faith in the economy that you think a shutdown of some months could cripple the economy for a generation. And you’re a libertarian?! If you think that little of the private sector, I’d expect you to be a Sandersnista.

            1. If the lockdowns end now the economy will recover quickly.

              After six months of forced idleness, we’ll have eaten the seed corn. And that’s not just a metaphor. Did you see the announcement for Tyson Foods’ CEO that the food distribution network was breaking down?

              We are at – maybe past – the point where “shelter in place” is doing more harm than the disease it’s meant to control ever could have.

              1. I’ve seen stuff about the food supply chain being a mess, yes. But it’s nowhere near so bad as you imply. Do you actually think we’ll have a famine next year?

                1. Farmers are dumping food now because their distributors can’t buy it.

                  Animal herds are just on the edge of mass slaughter because their distributors can’t buy it.

                  If we continue on the lockdown for another 6 months, yes, I believe there will be a famine.

                  1. The amounts are large in an absolute sense, and tragic, but they’re small relative to the rather stupendous agricultural output of the US or the world.

                    How many sacks of rice and beans have you bought?

                2. > But it’s nowhere near so bad as you imply. Do you actually think we’ll have a famine next year?

                  Maybe not now that Trump has declared meat packing essential, and ordered the plants to remain open. But yes, we were well on track for that.

                  What you apparently don’t understand is that if the supply chain empties out, you can’t just say “Okay, the meat packers are now open! Let’s have some meat!” That doesn’t magically make cattle of marketable size appear out of nowhere.

                  The gestation period for cattle is over 9 months, and it then takes roughly 18 months to raise the calf to marketable size (this varies depending on grain-fed v. grass-fed, and some other factors).

                  If the beef pipeline went dry, it would take more than two years before beef started coming out the other end. Minimum. And that’s assuming the cattle breeding and feeding operations were even still there, rather than having disappeared in bankruptcy.

                  That you suggest rice and beans is another indication of how fundamentally clueless you are. Beans are okay, but the United States does not and cannot possibly produce enough rice to feed the population. The climate is all wrong for that.

                  A more clueful person would suggest buying sacks of corn or wheat and a hand mill. Corn and wheat, we can grow.

                  1. Meat packing was essential everywhere, as was all food production. Some individual plants shut down because their staff were all sick, but none were shut down by government order that I’m aware of. And I’ve read enough stories on this that I would have expected to hear of any mandatory shutdowns.

                    As for rice and beans, you misunderstand me. I wasn’t discussing what you’d buy in a year. I was asking how you’d stocked up right now. Rice and beans are extremely cheap staples, very easy to prepare, with very long shelf lives, and the combination gives most of the basic nutrition you need to survive. In a lot of places online, the phrase “rice and beans” is a byword for “the cheapest diet you can really survive on”. And both are still on the shelves, at least where I shop, so you can still be stockpiling. Sure, a lot of rice is imported, but the imports are still happening, so you can still buy rice.

                    But if you prefer, consider flour, potatoes, carrots, canned corn, or anything else. Whatever your “Oh man, I’m glad I’ve got a couple hundred pounds of that on my shelf!” food would be in a famine. If you don’t have literally hundreds of pounds of such foods stockpiled, your actions are failing to match your words. (Hell, I’ve got ~50 pounds of rice on a normal day, even without any special stockpiling.)

                    Why do you think that you should only stockpile things that the US grows locally? One would think you’d rather stock up on the things you wouldn’t be able to get, add some variety to the home-grown stuff.

                  2. If the beef pipeline went dry, it would take more than two years before beef started coming out the other end. Minimum.

                    “Run dry.” Right, there’s no beef anywhere in the world and substitution isn’t a thing.

                    Not denying there would be a price shock, but this is rank ignorance about how resource allocation works.

          3. “Michiganders can’t afford to wait six months. Spending that much time under Whitmer’s restrictions would likely wreck the state’s economy past repair for a generation.”

            That might be the case, but I think few people are actually doing the math to determine that, particularly because it’s difficult to know how to even begin a cost-benefit analysis with so many disparaging variables.

            A British team of economists has recently tackled that problem and developed a framework to do that kind of thing. It’s the first such attempt, and may well be faulty, but at least it’s a way to try to put actual numbers on this.

            The authors exemplify how it works with taking some data, making some assumptions where the data isn’t clear, and finding a tentative optimal date for reducing UK’s lockdown as June 1st. But that’s just an initial calculation that can be fine tuned with better data

            It’d be interesting to see this approach applied to the case of Michigan, if possible with even better granularity. Then one would have a more scientific answer to the whole situation — which well may be the government is right in keeping the restrictions for more time; or it could go the other way and it’s already past the time to open up things; or maybe even both, it varying with county — than going for discussions based on first principles.

            If you’d like to check it, here’s the paper:

            Clark A, De Neve J-E, Fancourt D, Hey N, Krekel C, Layard R, O’Donnell G (2020). “When to release the lockdown: A wellbeing framework for analysing costs and benefits.” CEP Occasional Papers, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

            I’d like to know your take on it.

        3. You keep writing “mass murder” when I think what you mean is “killing tyrants.” As with your previous complaint about “politically correct,” “murder” also has a concrete definition as distinct from “killing.”

          This seems intentionally dishonest, given your objection to “politically correct.”.

          1. “Murder” is, most often, defined by laws. Such killings would be violations of those laws. Thus, they would be murder in a legal sense.

            I understand that you do not consider them to be murder in a moral sense. But I think you’re very obviously wrong there. I think it is clearly murder in a moral sense as well, not merely a legal sense.

            1. But I think you’re very obviously wrong there.

              Yes, we know that’s your conclusion. But you don’t get to assume it as a premise, and that includes throwing around the word “murder” as an emotive attempt to define your opponents as wrong.

              1. Would you feel any differently about my posts above if I’d used “mass slaughter of unarmed civilians” instead? I’m flexible here, as long as you’re not trying to weasel out of the obvious meaning of your arguments.

                1. Actually that is better: the added precision makes it easier to address.

                  “Mass slaughter of unarmed civilians”

                  First of all “Mass Slaughter”….. no. If the boog should come the goal is to be very precise in who is killed: politicians who gave illegal orders, officers who carried them out. This isn’t even close to indiscriminate killing.

                  “Unarmed”: is a general unarmed because he isn’t personally carrying artillery into position?

                  “Civilians”: *They* certainly don’t think of themselves as “civilians”.

                  You could say the same sentence about a situation where a pack of feral “teenagers” jump someone on the street and get shot. And you would be exactly as wrong for the same reasons.

                  1. In the context of a handful of attackers, dozens dead is “mass”. It’s fun to talk about civil wars, but you don’t go straight from grumpiness to Gettysburg overnight. Given that this would likely be the first shot(I used the Bleeding Kansas analogy elsewhere), it shouldn’t be looked at on the scale of a war.

                    Unarmed also refers to the fact that they don’t pose an imminent threat to life and limb, or even an indirect one. You can make an “indirect threat to liberty” argument (and clearly, you have), but I find that to be really tenuous. And yes, I agree that in some sense, the perpetrators of a gang-beating are “unarmed”. But when they’re trying to kill you, it’s not a meaningful sense of the term. When they’re trying to save you, it is.

                    As for “civilians”, well, they sure don’t think of themselves as military.

                    1. Why do our police force typically refer to non-police as civilians then? That’s something I find very disturbing, and default to dis-trusting the police until an individual officer proves himself trustworthy.

                      And I’m quite lawful by nature. I *want* to trust police and authority. But a peace officer that refers to me as a civilian shows no good faith. Likewise, our elected servants typically act as if we are there for them, hence the distrust. At least with formal aristocracy, everything is transparent.

                    2. In the context of a handful of attackers, dozens dead is “mass”.

                      This is a fair point. The so-called “Boston Massacre” killed what, five people?

            2. “Murder” is, most often, defined by laws.

              So the Nazis didn’t “murder” any Jews by that definition.

              1. This is why I made a point of discussing the moral as well as the legal. Laws aren’t everything. But for the difference between “killing” and “murder” they’re the usual go-to, so that’s where I started.

        4. > The state election is in six months.

          Tell me… is the governor’s office up for grabs? Because the legislature isn’t the problem here.

          1. Looks like the Governor is an off-year election, so she’s in until 2022. But a sufficient legislative majority can override her vetoes, or flat-out impeach her.

      1. Everyone in this comment thread is taking the death threat as implicit, so I was simply taking that view seriously. If you don’t want me to take it seriously, you guys need to stop being serious about it.

        (Caveat: You, personally, have not done so that I’ve seen. But it wasn’t written as a response to you personally.)

          1. Literally, no. In the sense that actually matters (i.e., making death threats), everyone in this comment thread seems to think they were.

            1. Careful, man. You’re making stuff up in your head and then attributing it to other people, classic Cluster B style. Or you’re just lazy and don’t give a shit that the things you say have not more than a glancing resemblance to the truth.

              1. Come off of it. Point me to any comment, anywhere in this thread, that discusses protesters bringing guns into the state house and doesn’t consider it to be a death threat. It’s everywhere, from ESR’s title on down. Do you honestly believe that anyone here is treating this as anything other than a death threat? Most treat it as a righteous death threat, I treat it as a ridiculous one, but let’s not pretend that it’s anything other than what it is.

                You yourself said upthread that basically every wartime elected official in American history should have been killed. Our host said explicitly in the OP that armed revolution is the correct response here, and that carrying guns without using them was a “final warning”. Can you give me any alternate interpretation here? Because I sure don’t see one.

                1. >Do you honestly believe that anyone here is treating this as anything other than a death threat?

                  There is a moral difference of some significance between “we’re threatening to kill you right now” and “we’re threatening to kill you if you persist in your anti-Constitutional actions”.

                  The demonstrators were doing the latter. Don’t confuse it with the former.

                  1. How much of that confusion of the moral difference is Gramscian damage? It seems to be part of a more general case: E.g. letting a holstered, concealed handgun carelessly become momentarily visible and pulling out that handgun and waving it around are both “brandishing.”

                  2. So you’re saying, in so many words, that the intention is to kill them if they continue? I’ll let ktk know.

                    (Yes, I understand that you believe this is justifiable homicide. I even understand why you think that. I just think it’s morally wrong, and massively counterproductive besides.)

                    1. The intention is to force them to follow the constitution they swore to uphold.

                      Just like the police exist to force you to follow the laws.

                      You, and the government, have a choice. Follow the rules or face the consequences.

                2. > Point me to any comment, anywhere in this thread, that discusses protesters bringing guns into the state house and doesn’t consider it to be a death threat.

                  Since I cannot read minds, and comments are not thinking beings, this demand is idiotic. All of goddamn human society hinges on implicit death threats, we’re just polite enough not to bring it up any more than we absolutely must. You’re just hen-clucking about your assumed-lessers being uncouth.

                  > You yourself said upthread that basically every wartime elected official in American history should have been killed.

                  No, I did not, you lying sack of shit.

                  YOU posited an if-statement suggesting a certain logic. I agreed that the logic as you framed it is consistent, except that to be correct you must also append Congress to your formulation. The implication is that Congress would have been equally responsible.

                  I then posited a hypothetical (that’s what the word “maybe” means, jackass).

                  You decided in your own head that I was advocating murder, and then attributed your thought to me, like a goddamn loony.

                  1. I am well aware that text comments are not sentient. “Treated as”, if you prefer.

                    As for what you said, if you thought of it as a hypothetical, that was very much not clear. Here’s the comment thread:

                    (third party)> Attempted drafting is easily in the category of crimes bad enough to be worthy of death if there is a death penalty.

                    (me)> Then just about every wartime President before the Bushes should have been shot.

                    (you)> Every President and Congress, to be clear. Maybe if that were a genuine consideration at all times, the politicos would be less inclined to tyranny.

                    Which part was hypothetical? The fact that there were drafts historically? The existence of a death penalty? I assume, from this comment, that you intended “Maybe if that were a genuine consideration…” as a hypothetical, but it sure sounded like advocacy.

                    If you picked unclear phrasing, fair enough, and I’ll accept any amendments or clarifications you want to make.

                    1. Ah, yes, it’s my unclear phrasing, not your kneejerk assumptions. It’s all so clear now, Mr. “I’m too subtle.”

                    2. Yes. I was too subtle on one point, which I apologized for. But I can still read a simple declarative English sentence.

                      I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not just trying to weasel out of a losing argument. But if that’s the case, you screwed up your phrasing. That’s fine, but I’m not taking the blame for you. Certainly not after you went to great pains to call me a liar because I can read a simple English sentence.

                    3. > But if that’s the case, you screwed up your phrasing. That’s fine, but I’m not taking the blame for you.

                      Your deliberate choice to read the word “maybe” as “should be”
                      and ascribe some kind of murderous mindset behind it is your malfunction, not mine.

                      > Certainly not after you went to great pains to call me a liar because I can read a simple English sentence.

                      I call you a liar because you invent thoughts and statements in your head and then dishonestly claim people here expressed those thoughts and statements. You are making up your own interpretations of people’s words and assuming your interpretations are a truth everyone shares, as though you are a mind reader and know what people are really saying.

                      That you keep doing it, even after being called out on it, suggests you are doing it knowingly and with intent. Therefore, I call you a liar.

                      To help you: my intent in calling you this is to send a hard interrupt to your brain, in the off chance that you really don’t realize what you’re doing, so you might reevaluate your behavior.

                      Yes, it’s rude, but dishonestly ascribing reprehensible things to others is more so. I’m just calling you a liar; you’ve been calling me a would-be murderer. So, yeah, fuck you.

                    4. my intent in calling you this is to send a hard interrupt to your brain

                      Funny, it just looks like a sleazy way to avoid criticism to me.

                      But I’ll ask this straight: Do you think it would be justifiable to kill one or more elected officials over the Michigan coronavirus lockdowns, assuming they continue as-is? (Call it “revolution”, “defence against tyranny”, or whatever, if you prefer)

                    5. > But I’ll ask this straight: Do you think it would be justifiable to kill one or more elected officials over the Michigan coronavirus lockdowns, assuming they continue as-is?

                      Last response to you, because you’re getting boring (and still haven’t addressed the fact that you keep dishonestly putting words in our mouths).

                      Assuming the draconian, heavy-handed power-grabbing continues, I think it could be justifiable to force an official from office. Death is the least preferable method.

                      The reason guns get involved because it is presumed that such an official is also so armed by way of law enforcement and security.

                      If a bunch of citizens showed up empty-handed and demanded immediate resignations, how effective could they be against armed resistance? So, guns come into play necessarily.

                      The assumed caveat is that the citizens taking this action understand that they may face severe, even lethal, penalties for this coercive action even if they are successful. Sometimes that risk is necessary.

                      You, however, assume that the only reason guns would be present is to mow someone down in cold blood. Which is why we keep bringing up the police example, because we are not talking about killing people, we are talking about an equivocal use of the threat of deadly force to ensure compliance, just like all law enforcement is built on.

                      But, nope, we’re just murderers who want people dead, according to you. You are such a snake.

                    6. I never said it was about bloodlust – quit putting words in my mouth. I said that you were willing to kill over this, and that you shouldn’t be.

                      Basically, your comment boils down to “I’d rather not kill people over this, but I’m willing to if the alternative is getting a bad policy outcome on this question”. Thing is, almost everyone who kills people over policy disagreements would rather have a peaceful outcome. There’s the occasional true sadist or sociopath(Beria comes to mind), but most ideologues turned violent would rather win without the violence. Lenin seems like he’d have been just as happy without the gulags if he could get what he wanted without them. But he preferred gulags to a non-communist nation, so he implemented gulags to make communism happen, no matter what anyone else wanted.

                      I don’t being up Lenin as an example to say that the argument can only be made by someone as bad as Lenin. Your argument is not inherently bad – there are times that it’s a reasonable thing to say, as all the genocide examples in the thread indicate. But it is really goddamn dangerous. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I will win this fight, using every ounce of power at my disposal” has a godawful track record though history.

                      So yes, if the protesters tried asking for resignations peacefully, they might lose. Guess what – in a democracy, you lose sometimes. When you lose, you try again next time. You do not shoot the winners. Because at that point, you’re not fighting for democracy, you’re fighting for your own preferred brand of tyranny. That’s an attack on the Constitution, not a defense of it.

                      It’s not because you’re a cold-blooded murderer – I don;t think you get happy at the idea of killing per se. It’s because you’ve lost the plot. You don’t understand what democracy is or why we care about it, you only care about a particular policy outcome, and be damned to anyone who stops you. You will win, even if you have to kill all your opponents to do it.

                      Guess what? You won’t win, because the vast majority of the country can see something you can’t. If you try this, you damn well should lose. And they will fight you, and they will beat you, and your side will be worse off than you were before you started down this road to damnation.

                    7. > I never said it was about bloodlust – quit putting words in my mouth. I said that you were willing to kill over this, and that you shouldn’t be.

                      You said murder, repeatedly, and doubled down on it when countered, you dishonest bastard. That you later changed it to mere “killing” does not change this fact.

                      I’m dropping this completely. I believe I have made a full accounting of myself.
                      Feel free to keep making yourself look like a deranged fool.

                    8. Alsadius: “You don’t understand what democracy is or why we care about it”

                      Damned straight I care about it. But there are some things it is not legitimate for any democracy to do! Period. End of discussion.

                      Any democracy that takes such an action renders itself illegitimate thereby, and any action taken to reverse said infringement, or to overthrow the government that committed it is no in opposition to democracy, but in defense of it.

                    9. @ktk: You can kill without it being about bloodlust. Still killing, though.

                      @Jay: Yes, like pandemic response.

                      The governor of American Samoa cut the island off from the outside world in 1918. I can’t see exactly how long it lasted, but it seems to have been about a year and a half. A year and a half with no commerce with the outside world, on the orders of one governor who wasn’t even elected by the people her ruled over. They were stuck on a flyspeck island(with no ability to import or export goods) by government order – surely that’s a greater imposition than Michigan’s going through. And this was under American law, no less.

                      Tell me – should someone have shot Governor Poyer for that? Because in history as it happened, they gave him a medal for saving a couple thousand lives.

    4. > Waving your gun to make a political point is about as socially acceptable as waving your dick to make a political point.

      Open-carry protests are this century’s version of gay pride parades.

        1. > I might need to think on that one.

          Careful, you don’t want to sprain anything.

    1. That’s it. The boog starts in Michigan.

      When we came up with a catchy name for killing our political enemies who won’t leave us alone, the left should have thought “oh shit they’re getting serious”, but as others mentioned they always double down.

      There will be shooting in Michigan before May ends….

    2. The thing is, the Emergency Powers of the Governor Act of 1945 gives her that authority, and the later Emergency Management Act of 1976 explicitly says that “This act shall not be construed to […] Limit, modify, or abridge the authority of the governor to proclaim a state of emergency pursuant to Act No. 302 of the Public Acts of 1945, being sections 10.31 to 10.33 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, or exercise any other powers vested in him or her under the state constitution of 1963, statutes, or common law of this state independent of, or in conjunction with, this act.”

      So it would seem that she’s in the right and the legislature is in the wrong.

      1. The thing is, the Emergency Powers of the Governor Act of 1945 gives her that authority, …

        Except that when an individual statute is found to conflict with higher law (like the state or national constitution), it is declared invalid. Yes, this takes an action by the court – the MI legislature is suing the governor right now to get such a ruling.

        So far, things are proceeding within normal processes. But the demonstrators pointed out what could happen if the normal processes break down….

  15. Unfortunately, there’s no Schelling point for the boogaloo, and frog boiling has been working for the last 150 years.

    1. Yeah, but this is different. This is one of the most blatant power grabs in all of history. The entire bill of rights has been rendered moot with the addition of an invisible “unless there is a pandemic” clause. Either we fight back or America is over. I am saddened to my core that leftists in America no longer have any concept of what America is. And it’s not like freedom loving Americans have anywhere else to go. We’re backed into a corner. The left lost their God damned minds when they lost the election in 2016. They are trying to burn the country down to “save” it. But if our America will be destroyed, what is there to lose in going to war? They’ve already told us that if they win we’re going to the gulags. There will be civil war, and it looks like it starts in Michigan.

      1. They’ve already told us that if they win we’re going to the gulags.

        [citation needed]

          1. So one local organizer for a losing candidate? There are tens of thousands of people at that level in any given serious campaign. The biggest thing I could find him doing is running a phone bank of like a dozen people.

              1. So a local organizer who was somewhat less useless than most. Hardly a likely Biden cabinet pick, though.

                Have you ever volunteered on an election campaign? People like him are a dime a dozen.

                1. > People like him are a dime a dozen.

                  “Certainly the organization is infested with Bolsheviks! That’s a feature!”

                  1. The Sanders campaign? That’s like saying a hornet’s nest is infested with hornets. It’s not an infestation, it’s their natural home.

      2. Yeah, but this is different. This is one of the most blatant power grabs in all of history. The entire bill of rights has been rendered moot with the addition of an invisible “unless there is a pandemic” clause.

        Freer countries than the USA have clauses in their constitutions that allow the government to override individual rights in service of the public good.

        The Constitution is not a suicide pact. You don’t have the right to put someone else’s life at undue risk. If exercising your rights endangers other Americans — as gathering in groups does under COVID-19 — then you are no longer entitled to exercise those rights. Stay-at-home orders, and stiff penalties for violating them, are absolutely the right approach to take in order to control the spread of the virus and endanger as few lives as is feasible, absent extensive testing, contact-tracing, and quarantining measures (which, if you cared so much about “muh freedoms”, you would have advocated for in the beginning when it mattered).

        1. “Freer countries than the USA have clauses in their constitutions that allow the government to override individual rights in service of the public good.”

          If their rights exist at the government’s whim, they’re not freer than we are.

          1. Funny story – in Canada, the clause allowing rights to be overridden was explicitly added to check government power. The relevant provision was written in 1982, by which point the risk of activist judges was very clear. So they added the option for some rights(and specifically, nothing to do with elections) to be overridden, in a limited way, so as to stymie efforts to use judicial activism to derange government policy.

            Also, while the US Bill of Rights is extremely clear in its language, in practice the same restrictions exist in the US as everywhere else. Free speech doesn’t include publicizing my tax returns, or the location of carrier groups in wartime, or burning Blu-Rays of The Lion King.

            1. Can you expand on this? I’m curious, but the way you explain it makes zero sense, and needs elucidation.

              They added the ability to nullify rights as a way to prevent rights from being trod upon? I don’t get it. Are you using two separate senses of “rights” without explaining them?

              1. The notwithstanding clause in the Canadian constitution requires that the provincial legislature (it has never been used by the Canadian federal government) explicitly declare which parts of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are being overridden, and how. All overrides of the Charter must also be temporary.

                It’s a useful tool because it actually allows the Canadian constitution to still be in force, even when the government takes emergency measures that override individual rights. In the USA when this is done, and the people accept it, it puts the legitimacy of the Constitution into question, because neither the government nor the people seem to have a problem with routine violations of the Constitution.

                In other words, if you don’t provide a way for the government to override personal rights when absolutely necessary, they’ll do it anyway and now you’re really screwed because now the government does not respect the rule of law applied to itself.

                1. Interesting.

                  I get it, but it’s clearly coming from a political culture that presumes The Government as an entity is more important and has more rights than the citizenry it supposedly serves.

                  So, it’s no longer a bug, now it’s a feature! Feh.

                  1. I think it would be more correct to say it’s from a culture where the government is “trusted”, in the sense of “trust but verify”.

                    We know it has great power, the army and police powers, but we expect it to act in our best interests, and treat it harshly when it doesn’t.

                    The classic example of the latter was the 1993 election, when the PCs went an absolute majority to only having two seats in parliament.

                    Historically, the governments of the day have tried hard, failed often, fixed stuff pretty often, and had to be spanked occasionally.

                    Considering we used to be ruled like peasants by (mad) King George III, it’s a really unexpected outcome.

              2. Basically, the concern was things like Roe v Wade, where judges invent “rights” whole cloth, and in so doing they infringe upon other rights. (At minimum, there’s the right to decide political questions through the political process, but often more.)

                By creating an escape valve where elected officials can override judges, it creates a check on judicial authority, and prevents them from running away with things too badly. However, the “notwithstanding clause” is itself limited in several ways (only applying to some issues, mandatory sunset provisions on all laws affected by it, etc.). It’s a more Canadian-style approach to balancing powers, more or less.

                We also have a far more left-leaning judiciary than the US, with no Federalist Society equivalent, so this is more of a concern.

                (But yeah, this is an odd duck of a provision, and it took me a very long time to wrap my head around it.)

              3. Check out Section 1 and Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Canadian Constitution.

                If you have any legal background, it will absolutely terrify you.

        2. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

          The Constitution is literally our social contract. You don’t get to violate a contract just because it is inconvenient.

          Especially when that contract is the only source of legitimacy the government has. Violating it means they lose that.

          1. But, in many cases, you do get to violate a contract when extenuating circumstances make the cost of being bound to it too great. This tends less to be the case in the USA, where the Supreme Court tends to hold that a contract is a contract is a contract, and a situation where your only choices are to submit to a binding arbitration agreement with your cellphone provider or not get cellphone service at all is totally legal. But it does happen sometimes, even here. For example, in many states if you sign a lease, and the property you’re renting is in or falls into unlivable condition and the landlord refuses to make repairs, you are entitled to break the lease without paying the landlord.

            COVID is a little more than “inconvenience”. It’s like nothing we have dealt with in a hundred years. We have tools to mitigate the illness and death it spreads — one of the most effective, yet low-tech, being new temporary social norms backed up with consequences for noncompliance. We should use the tools we have instead of hoping for, say, a miracle cure based on bogus, debunked chloroquine research.

            Oh, and — the government gets its legitimacy from the people. Most Americans support temporary sacrifice of some civil liberties to help flatten the curve.

            1. >We should use the tools we have

              Oddly enough, we haven’t really used the one proven tool we have – true quarantine of the sick or possibly sick. Instead, we’re ‘kinda, sorta, but not really’ quarantining everyone.

              Concretely, we should have prevented anyone from leaving certain neighborhoods in NYC early on. And certainly have prevented outbound flights from the NYC airports.

              The other 320 million residents would then have the ability to provide succor to the 10-20 million quarantined residents.

              1. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons needs to scope Troutwaxer’s post on the topic.

                Notice how Eric fell silent and quietly dropped the chloroquine topic. Everybody gangsta around here till someone rolls in with facts.

                1. >Notice how Eric fell silent and quietly dropped the chloroquine topic.

                  Um, you mean because I noticed that its effectiveness is now quite well demonstrated and I no longer feel a need to argue the point? Yes, that’s correct.

                  Oh, and speaking of falling silent: How’s that peak-oil collapse coming along, Jeff?

                  1. We’re well past the peak in terms of conventional oil sources.

                    We’ve bought ourselves a reprieve in the form of tar sands and fracking, but it’s only a reprieve — and it’s a costly one. The fracking chickens haven’t come home to roost yet, at least in terms of public awareness of the human and environmental harm caused by the procedure, but that’s in part due to the efforts of Brave Men And Women with experience in military psychological warfare, being hired by oil companies to wage such warfare against Americans who are opposed to fracking. Nevertheless, Vermont and New York have banned fracking, with more states doubtless to follow. And whither the bounty of oil then?

                    1. We’re past the peak in terms of old sources, but have increased production with new sources, yes. That was always the argument against peak oil theory – technological innovation will give us new sources that can keep producing. So the fact that it’s happened proves those of us who were making that argument 15-20 years ago right, and the ones who were saying the peak was inevitable wrong.

                      It’s probably a bit worse for the environment than “stick a pipe in the ground and get free oil”, sure. But it’s not nearly so bad as the greens seem to think.

                      Also, fracking typically produces a lot of gas, not just oil. And the massive supply of gas has helped move America off coal, which has made it the only major nation whose carbon emissions have gone down in recent years. Fracking is actually a great boon for the environment, because of its downstream economic effects.

                  2. Did you bring the treatment up with your doctor when you tried to get tested for the virus? If so, what did s/he say?

                    1. >Did you bring the treatment up with your doctor when you tried to get tested for the virus?

                      I did not, because my guess is that I had it in January and recovered.

                      If I thought I had it now I’d want HCQ/azithromycin immediately. I’m already taking zinc.

                    2. Definitely agree with you on the subject of zinc, as well as Vitamin D-3. (I planted a garden this year, considering possible interruptions to the food supply, and so am getting plenty of sun!)

                2. > Notice how Eric fell silent and quietly dropped the chloroquine topic.

                  Have you considered the possibility that Big Pharma has a vested interest in discrediting a cheap, out-of-patent drug so they can sell an expensive brand-new patented solution at monopoly prices?

                  1. That’s assuming a lot more conspiracy than is warranted under the circumstances. The media and sections of the political establishment have an interest in scoring points against Orange Man, so there’s a concerted argumentum ad Trumpum against anything he speaks of with approval.

                    1. I know. I was specifically trying to convince Jeff to reconsider HCQ from a “why are you supporting the big evil corporations?” perspective. Not that I believe big corps are necessarily evil, but I doubt that pointing out reflexive hatred of Trump will convince him.

              2. From the Washington Post: Hydroxychloroquine is now linked with an increased risk of death — based on a high-sample-size, worldwide study of hospitalized COVID patients.

                Trump’s promotion of HCQ, in an absence of clinical evidence that it does any good (and surplus of clinical evidence to the contrary), is dangerous to Americans.

                His second impeachment should be interesting…

                1. 1) The study is a retrospective analysis, so it’s hard to draw conclusions. It’s very likely the patients who received hydroxychloroquine were the sicker patients. Numerous doctors have reported that taking it early makes a big difference.

                  2) There is no mention of zinc in the paper. Numerous doctors say zinc is critical.

                  3) The study itself warns against the media’s conclusions:

                  Our study has several limitations. The association of decreased survival with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine treatment regimens should be interpreted cautiously. Due to the observational study design, we cannot exclude the possibility of unmeasured confounding factors, although we have reassuringly noted consistency between the primary analysis and the propensity score matched analyses. Nevertheless, a cause-and-effect relationship between drug therapy and survival should not be inferred. These data do not apply to the use of any treatment regimen used in the ambulatory, out-of-hospital setting. Randomised clinical trials will be required before any conclusion can be reached regarding benefit or harm of these agents in COVID-19 patients.

                  1. Yeah, but none of that is relevant to Jeff or his enablers in the media. We have Real Science from Real Scientists that says Orange Man is Bad!!1one; why would we bother with nuance about correlational studies and treatment regimens? Those are things that are only allowed to be understood by the Experts that we’re telling everyone to leave things to.

                  2. Still, chloroquine is NOT a very good life saver against COVID.

                    People taking it died more often than those that did not take it.

                    But we will see. There are large trials:
                    https://www.tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk/news/copcov-begins-to-test-in-uk-if-chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine-prevent-covid-19

                    https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52737169

                    But the lot of you sound like those homeopathy peddlers. There is no evidence, so it must work. Counter evidence does not count.

                    Btw, chloroquine is an immune suppressor (modulator). Not always the best drug to prevent an infection.

                    1. >Btw, chloroquine is an immune suppressor (modulator). Not always the best drug to prevent an infection.

                      No, infection suppression is the Z-pack’s job. Immune suppression is good for preventing tissue damage by cytokine storm.

                    2. ” Immune suppression is good for preventing tissue damage by cytokine storm.”

                      Sometimes it could. However your Toddler In Chief takes it as prevention while he is not infected. And that is what many people do, partly on his advice (and some die from it).

                      Studies using Chloroquine to treat COVID ahve also been stopped because of significantly increased death rates.
                      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/chloroquine-study-coronavirus-brazil

                      I also see the study putting doubt on the usefulness of chloroquine, examining very, very many patients, is taken apart for not being the textbook case of randomized prospective studies. No such scrutiny for the original small case studies that suggested it might work.

                    3. >Sometimes it could. However your Toddler In Chief takes it as prevention while he is not infected.

                      Which is a good idea. Many front-line medical professionals are quietly doing the same, because a drug that suppresses viral replication is exactly what you want as an anti-COVID prophylactic.

                      >(and some die from it).

                      I thought from the beginning that the the one notorious case was a concealed murder by the victim’s wife, and sure enough it has now spawned a murder investigation.

                    4. @PapayaSF
                      It is difficult to judge these claims as there is no way I seem to be able to find these studies. What is stated in this newspaper article is rather vague.

                      What I do find is a lot of cautionary reports:
                      https://ijme.in/articles/the-icmr-bulletin-on-targeted-hydroxychloroquine-prophylaxis-for-covid-19-need-to-interpret-with-caution/?galley=html

                      What I do see is a lot of people claiming success with every positive hint, and yelling “faulty study” at every negative finding.

            2. Or we can simply accept that it’s at most only marginally more fatal than the seasonal flu, accept that people – and not a lot of them, compared to the numbers from seasonal flu every year – will get sick and die, and get the herd immunity that is the only thing that will stop this pandemic.

              The people have been scared to death by the leftist MSM’s continual trumpeting of horror stories and numbers inflated by “science” modeling that has no more connection to reality than other models used recently to try to drive public policy. Of course they want to sacrifice liberties. They can make that sacrifice for themselves, but they cannot make it for me.

              1. They can make that sacrifice for themselves, but they cannot make it for me.

                Contrariwise, it’s clear you don’t mind sacrificing lives to get the economy started again. But you have no right to make that sacrifice on others’ behalf. So stay at home when possible and follow your state and local authorities’ rules for outbreak containment, social distancing, and PPE — and quit bitching “but muh freedoms”. Your freedoms end where exercising them endangers others.

                1. Do you understand that, by your standards, banning everything would be justified?

                  Seriously, man, you have to stop watching the likes of CNN, MSNBC, and CBS News; and reading Jeff Bezos’ blog (The Washington Post) and Carlos Slim’s blog (The New York Times).

                  And by the way, you’ve made it clear that you don’t mind sacrificing lives to famine to stop pestilence. So stop trying to destroy the food supply chain and let people get back to work!

                  1. “And by the way, you’ve made it clear that you don’t mind sacrificing lives to famine to stop pestilence. ”

                    That is another problem with Libertarianism: Famines in the USA are NOT caused by lack of food, but by a lack of willingness to feed the poor.

                    There is enough food in the USA to feed every American several times over. But there is simply no motivation to do feed the poor adequately.

                    1. >Famines in the USA are NOT caused by lack of food, but by a lack of willingness to feed the poor.

                      The U.S. does not have famines. Ever. Even by the loosest possible definition we’ve only ever had one, and that was in the 19th century on an offshore Alaskan island inhabited by Aleuts not connected to the domestic trade network in staple foods.

                      That said, famine is a political choice everywhere, and that has been true for many decades. Probably since the mid-19th century, though I’d need to do research I haven’t to be sure.

                      >But there is simply no motivation to do feed the poor adequately.

                      There are zero actually poor people in the U.S. An important way we know this is that our supposed “poor” are overweight. They don’t have a problem with not enough food, they can and do eat too much because food is so cheap. Also they normally own things like cars and refrigerators and computers and air conditioners.

                      (Well, if they’re not “homeless”. Which is to say mentally ill people who are on the streets because we made an unwise decision to shut down almost all of our insane asylums back in the late 1960s.)

                      By many measures of purchasing power, including square feet of living space and rates of automobile ownership, the American “poor” average a higher living standard than middle-class Europeans.

                    2. I’ve got to agree with Eric on this one – the chances of a famine are low. I would extend what he wrote to say, “regardless of whether we social distance or not,” because I don’t think any governor is going to declare farm-work non-essential!

                      I will also note that I’m planting a REALLY BIG GARDEN this year, just in case. In the best-case scenario, my friends and family will all receive gifts of fresh vegetables. In the worst-case scenario I’ll have something to eat in case of a low-probability event such as the virus mutating or someone at some level of government making an unexpected bad decision.

                  2. Do you understand that, by your standards, banning everything would be justified?

                    Please stop being an idiot. You’ve take reductio ad absurdum to a new level of stupidity. Next you’ll start whining about Stalin!

              2. “Of course they want to sacrifice liberties. They can make that sacrifice for themselves, but they cannot make it for me.”

                That is the basic tenet of Libertarianism. And that is why Libertarianism has no answer to the real threats of life like pandemics. When the freedom of the one kills the other, Libertarianism breaks down.

                Infectious diseases kill people. You refusing to take action against spreading the disease will kill other people. This is demanding your freedom to do what you want even if it kills other people. And it is not you who decides how much risk other people should take.

                Your talk about the severity of COVID-19 is not based on any facts. And random web sites, twitter and facebook message are not facts.

                1. > You refusing to take action against spreading the disease will kill other people.

                  This is an incorrect characterization. It’s not refusing to take action, it’s not blindly following the orders of others.

                  But then, good commies like yourself have a default state of following any order so long as it comes from The People’s Sanctioned Authority, so the confusion is understandable.

                2. > Libertarianism has no answer to the real threats of life like pandemics. When the freedom of the one kills the other, Libertarianism breaks down.

                  Bullshit. I already said this back when Jeff Read posted a similar “no Libertarians in a pandemic” bullshit comment, so I apologize to the folks who have seen this story already. The company I work for had an emergency IT meeting on March 12, fully a _week and a half_ before the governor of Illinois issued his shelter-in-place order. We’re not a “software” company, development is all in-house, but the meeting was to announce that we had to days to set up all the other non-IT employees to work from home (as would we be). As of Monday Mar. 16 over half the company was at home, by Wed. Mar 18 it was 100% (minus a skeleton crew of basically the one “real” IT guy who handles hardware and networking as opposed to software developers like me).

                  Since then I have worked from home, not because of some appointed overlord telling me to do that, but because yes i _get_ that it is safer for me and my family, and _because I am lucky enough to be able to do that_.

                  Farmers can’t work from home. Most small business owners can’t work from home. I am grateful that I can work from home and reduce by however small amount the risk of others getting infected, but it is _not_ my place to tell others to risk or lose their business when they don’t have that luxury.

                  1. @darrin
                    “Since then I have worked from home, not because of some appointed overlord telling me to do that, but because yes i _get_ that it is safer for me and my family, and _because I am lucky enough to be able to do that_.”

                    This is not about YOU being prudent. This is about EVERY person being prudent.

                    In an epidemic ONE infected person can infect and kill a very large number of people. That is where “Live Free or Die” breaks down. Society has to have the powers to prevent such people from risking the lives of others.

                    Look up Typhoid Mary
                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon

                    The Typhoid Mary case is also instructing. If society wants someone to go in quarantine, they also should pay for the damage. That was not always done.

                    That is where the USA does not shine at all.

                    1. In an economic crisis, ONE uninfected farmer can still be put out of business if the same lockdown measures are imposed on NYC and rural farmland. That is where “Live as the collective demands” breaks down.

                      This is not about YOU assuming that what you feel is prudent for others is aximoatically correct. This is about EVERY person making judgments about what they consider prudent for their own particular situation.

                      Same question to you that Alsadius brushed off and that Jeff Read has ignored three times: do you have similar “tsk-tsk”ing to direct at the beachgoers in Los Angeles, the crowds thronging Central Park in New York City, or the house parties in Chicago? Why is your ire only directed at people (VERY far from densely populated areas) trying to continue working to support their homes and families?

                    2. In an economic crisis, ONE uninfected farmer can still be put out of business if the same lockdown measures are imposed on NYC and rural farmland.

                      That’s why we declare some kinds of business “essential.” We definitely want the farmers to keep working. We also want them to wear a mask and practice social distancing when they go to town! Making this distinction isn’t hard.

                      And yes, I do see “…similar “tsk-tsk”ing” directed at beachgoers, etc.

                      The problem here is the reflexiveness of the tit-for-tat behavior by the right, and the automatic assumption that someone who dislikes Trump’s response to COVID-19 is trying to hurt you. We’re not trying to hurt you. We’re trying to get you to learn enough to save yourselves by not engaging in obviously risky behavior! This isn’t “we want to dominate you.” This is more like, “Please practice safe sex when you start seeing a new person.” It’s not political, it’s just basic, fucking common sense!

                    3. > This is about EVERY person being prudent.

                      > In an epidemic ONE infected person can infect and kill a very large number of people. That is where “Live Free or Die” breaks down. Society has to have the powers to prevent such people from risking the lives of others.

                      Since you like links so much:
                      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52135814

                      From that article:
                      “People have been advised to stay at home… Prime Minister Mark Rutte described the Netherlands as a “grown-up country”. “What I hear around me, is that people are glad that they are treated as adults, not as children,” he said on Friday.”

                      Advised, not ordered. So all these “failures of Libertarianism” (as if we had anything approaching Libertariansim in the US anyway) screeds should be taken with a “do as I say, not as I do” grain of salt.

              3. …at most only marginally more fatal than the seasonal flu…

                Thanks for playing, Jay, but the worst seasonal flu in recent memory was the H1N1 in 2009, which killed a grand-total of 12,469 people in the course of a year.

                COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. will go over 100,000 in the first 90 days. Assuming that holds for a year we’ll see around 400,000 deaths, which makes COVID-19 roughly 32 times more fatal than H1N1. I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but you should start getting it someplace else.

            3. in many cases, you do get to violate a contract when extenuating circumstances make the cost of being bound to it too great.

              Write break clauses into your fscking contract, then, don’t go waving your incompetent drafting around as an excuse to treat your obligations as optional. Because pacta sunt bloody servanda, dammit, and every time we let some scrub wriggle out of one, we weaken the fundamental basis of co-operation.

              (Of course, there are other problems with the Constitution-as-contract, but they’re more along the lines of ‘the citizen has not signed it’ or ‘in most cases any consent the citizen has given was under blatant duress’; unfortunately for your position that doesn’t exactly get the State out of its obligations.)

            4. and in such a case, the contract becomes null and void.

              Since the only authority the US Govt has is from the “Contract” with the States via the Constitution…

        3. > The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

          Oh, I agree. That’s why I’m disobeying government orders to stay at home, not engage in economic activity, and cause a famine thereby.

        4. You don’t have the right to put someone else’s life at undue risk.

          No, you don’t have the right to *actually harm* someone else without just cause. No harm, no foul. Even under the law of negligence, where you can be sued because your act or omission harmed someone even though you didn’t intend that, there needs to be actual harm or there is no legal cause of action.

          The expansion of “no actual harm” into “no activities that some government bureaucrat or media talking head thinks pose an ‘undue risk'” is one of the key aspects of the tyranny that so many commenters in this thread are talking about.

          1. No, you don’t have the right to *actually harm* someone else without just cause. No harm, no foul.

            Yeah except no, that’s not how the law actually works. Let me introduce you to the crime of reckless endangerment. If you act in such a way as to create a substantial risk of injury to another person, you can be criminally liable for such an act, even if no one was actually harmed as a result. These laws have been on the books for decades at least and are not part of some sinister boiling-frog strategy. They’re there to protect people, and to incentivize being careful and responsible in circumstances where people might come to harm.

            Reckless endangerment seems an appropriate charge to levy against people who knowingly and willfully violate stay-at-home orders.

            1. Let me introduce you to the crime of reckless endangerment.

              Let me introduce you to the concept of reading comprehension. Try re-reading the second paragraph of my post and applying it to “reckless endangerment”.

              Yes, the law sometimes makes things crimes that shouldn’t be crimes. Sorry if that’s news to you.

        5. You LOVE tyranny don’t you?

          The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

          No, it isn’t. But “public safety” and “it’s for your own good” are not the root passwords to do whatever you want.

          You don’t have the right to put someone else’s life at undue risk.

          If exercising your rights endangers other Americans — as gathering in groups does under COVID-19 — then you are no longer entitled to exercise those rights

          You’re never been particularly clear on what a right is.

          Your fear level doesn’t get to determine what my rights are.

          Stay-at-home orders, and stiff penalties for violating them, are absolutely the right approach to take in order to control the spread of the virus and endanger as few lives as is feasible,

          We lose an average of 88 THOUSAND people ever year from alcohol in one fashion or another. CLEARLY we need an executive order banning the sale of Alcohol in this country REGARDLESS of the constitution.

          It’s very difficult to determine exactly how many deaths occur every year from Sexually Transmitted diseases, but given the end results of HIV, HPV (not all variants are covered by the vaccine), Herpes (increases the risk of cervical cancer, mostly by increasing the chances of HPV risk), Tertiary Syphilis, etc., it’s CLEAR that we need to enact laws–by fiat if the legislature won’t see the clear need–that require AT LEAST a three month interval AND a comprehensive STD panel between sexual partners, and to make sure this is complied with you will be required by law to register your partners with the county disease control board.

          Because the environment is SO important and EVERYTHING you do impacts it, we need to reduce not only people’s carbon footprints, but their water footprint and their overall consumption footprint. We have determined that no one needs more than 50 square feet of living space, three pairs of shoes and 4 changes of clothes….

  16. The thing about Michigan vs. New York is that while Gretchen Whitmer is just as stupid and incompetent as Cuomo or de Blasio, she’s also incredibly obnoxious. I think this may prove decisive.

  17. Really….the armed peaceful protesters “stormed” the Michigan capitol? Words mean things, and that word has specific connotations and paints a picture of battering rams, catipaults, and trebuchets smashing doors and walls for access. To my knowledge, none of that happened. No one was tied up and hauled away for summary execution, either. Scary people showed up carrying scary guns and shouted things.

    But don’t tell the media that, because the mental image I descibed is EXACTLY what the alphabet media wants the uninformed idiot to have.

  18. I get the sense that most of the people here think a certain thing when they think “death threat”, that is very different from what the average traditional media consumer thinks. In this forum’s crowd, it’s normally carrying around a large bundle of conditions and rules of engagement, understood over years of exposure and reinforcement. One could start to understand it as “we’re prepared to kill, but we’d also prefer it not come to that”.

    A lot of this threat is also employed as deterrent. Talk about it, in order to make it less likely.

    Sometimes talking about it doesn’t apply to the venue. One has to show, not tell. So, people carry. Having a gun says “we’re prepared to kill”. Keeping it holstered says “we’d prefer it not come to that”.

    Anything said or shown has the risk of being misinterpreted, especially by professional reporters, let alone their audiences. How does one say or show the things above, such that a reporter will interpret it as intended? How does one show they’re not willing to take this lying down, without being regarded as having an itchy trigger finger? Unfortunately, traditional media seems to have provided no radio button for this. You either protest, and can be ignored, or protest while armed, and must be arrested, and then ignored.

    Alsadius, as an especially vocal poster on this, I hope you’re factoring this all in when you analyze the problem.

  19. Anybody looked at the models listed here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/22/upshot/coronavirus-models.html?searchResultPosition=4
    -Have to follow links from the article to actual models as the NYT doesn’t know what it’s talking about but I repeat myself.-
    or anyplace else and found anything that impressed or interested them? My first impression is the science is very much pre-model. The models are useful as a clear way to see factors and weights from the particular institution – that is maybe as hypothesis but none of them validates by theory or prediction to my limited eye. Bad or lacking data makes it hard to reject one too. Maybe looking for conditions under which a given model would be useful is a useful way to spend enforced time indoors.

  20. Did Whitmer just win the VP race?

    Female? check
    Swing state? check
    Fire up the D base? check

    1. Since the Democratic base includes a lot of blue-collar workers she’s put out of their jobs, prevented from buying garden seeds and child car seats, and forbidden from doing many low-risk outdoor activities, I don’t think they are necessarily fired up in the way you think.

      1. Since the Democratic base includes a lot of blue-collar workers

        Does it still? They have been saying “f- you” to blue-collars for decades. I suspect the only blue-collar workers still voting for them are the old set in their ways type who vote D because “my father and grand-father always voted D”, and don’t pay enough attention to notice that the Democrats have abandoned every principal that caused his father and grand-father to support them.

    2. No, she failed it as utterly and spectacularly as anyone I’ve ever seen in the political arena in quite a while who wasn’t outright caught in a sex crime.

      Prior to these protests, she was getting floated as being on the short list for the VP position, which as we all know even if half the country is too thoughtcrime-controlled to say, is very likely going to be President if elected under Biden, because he’ll be lucky to make it to inauguration, let alone serve his term. Call it high-singled-digit percentage chances of becoming the President.

      Indeed, Michigan is a big swing state; smallest percentage margin of going for Trump in the last Presidential election. The problem is, Gretchen badly misread why she was on the shortlist. She was on the shortlist because she might be able to collect enough votes in Michigan to swing it Democrat next election. The way she would do this is by competently handling this issue and impressing all the Republicans in the state enough to at the very least not vote against the Biden/Whitmer ticket. It wouldn’t take much.

      Instead, she read it as a chance to, exactly as you say, “fire up the D base” and try to impress the Democratic party elite by being the Democratiest-Democrat she could possibly be. Instead of impressing and pacifying the Republicans in her state, she is aggressively and directly antagonizing them and creating a huge constituency that would crawl over broken glass to vote against her in the election, to say nothing of the fact there’s already people willing to crawl over broken glass to re-elect Trump.

      She failed at the most basic political level and trashed her chances at the Presidency as comprehensively as anyone I’ve seen in a while.

      She’s a prime example of a Democrat politician who is where she is because she grew up imbibing the Democratic Kool-Aid, and believes the shows for the rubes are the essence of the platform.

      1. >No, she failed it as utterly and spectacularly as anyone I’ve ever seen in the political arena in quite a while who wasn’t outright caught in a sex crime.

        While this is true, a lot of Democratic candidate-aspirants this cycle have been disaster areas so comprehensive that Whitmer fails to look particularly bad by comparison to them. I give you Beto “skateboard” O’Rourke, for example. Or Kamala “kneepads” Harris. Or Elizabeth “Lieawatha” Warren.

        Accordingly, I think it would be unwise to write off Whitmer’s chances just yet.

        1. Don’t forget Eric “Nuke All Gun Owners” Swallwell.

          That guy makes AOC look like a genius.

  21. Is that it? Start A war for pandemic handling measures? You must be out of your mind. in this war if you shoot first you will lose. Maybe the Chinese are looking to weaken the world economy and buy it all cheap, but hey it was America which participated in destroying Germany, you collaborated with Commies all this time until now. You are kind of eating what you cooked. Another war, the last war before the commies world domination and you will start it over this lame thing? Americans have no faith and cant tolerate hardship.

    1. I think many Americans are willing to tolerate hardship when it makes sense. But saying (e.g.) “You can’t buy garden seeds at the store because there’s a pandemic” does not make sense.

      1. Yeah, much as I’ve been coming down hard on the protesters here, that rule is just bonkers.

    2. It actually makes a certain amount of sense. The reason right-wing protests tend to fail in recent decades is that right-wingers tend to have jobs that they can’t abandon without suffering economic hardship. Now with the lockdown, they no longer do and thus have nothing left to loose by protesting.

      1. It’s a funny joke that “We don’t protest because we have jobs”, but most protests are on the weekend, and the right has put together some pretty big ones. We just care a lot less about street protest in general, and spend a lot less effort on doing it well.

        1. and what day of the week was the protest being discussed here?
          Hint: it wasn’t on the weekend.

  22. /me continues to envy the hell out of the US for having the rkba. Over here it was waaay outside the Overton window by 1998, and I don’t even know where to begin trying to change that.

    I hope all you Yanks realise just how dang lucky you are.

      1. “Here” is the UK. Where, in addition to a lockdown, we now have a Two Minutes’ Love once a week where everyone stands in their doorway and claps the socialist health service (some people distinguish between “clap for carers” and “clap for the NHS”, but many don’t). Which really creeps me out, because that kind of performative fervour can go some dangerous places.

        1. The best thing you can do, and it’s the longest game, is to get involved however possible in the shooting sports, an then get as many other people involved.

          The more firearm ownership and legal/sporting use are normalized the easier it is to pressure politicians to “relax” the laws a bit.

  23. I’m not very happy about this.

    A mob threatening government officials with violence may represent the popular will. It may also represent an aggressive organized minority imposing its will.

    Only a few years ago in Wisconsn, mobs of “demonstrators” invaded the state capitol building, trying to intimidate the state legislature. The mobs were almost entirely government employees associated with labor unions.

    Further back in history… The Reconstruction Era state governments in the South were overthrown by a combination of mob violence against state and local officials and elections rigged by force. Not an admirable precedent.

    1. A mob may represent an aggressive organised minority imposing its will. The government definitely represents an aggressive organised minority imposing its will (while concealing this with the charade known as “representative democracy”).

      I can understand not being happy about the existence of aggressive organised minorities and their ability to impose their will. But c’mon, even if it’s just that the current tyrants-incumbent are facing some competition, that’s still grounds for a little bit of optimism, no?

    2. Thing is, right now the hard right does not have the hardened shooters and supporters to pull off anything like the Reconstruction/Segregation change over.

      That changeover happened because a) locally greater numbers of Confederate veterans (for the violence) and people upset about the outcomes of the ACW (The Tyrant Lincoln Monster Sherman narrative believers) b) The Republicans knew that they could not continue to rule the South or the country that way, and maybe even felt guilty for having done so. Keep in mind that it was not much later when the Mugwumps put in the civil service system, because they did not like the spoils system. And Posse Comitatus probably would not have passed and been retained if Republicans didn’t feel that maybe they have misused power abusively during Reconstruction, and ought to plug the loophole.

      We have veterans, but probably not at the per capita rate of ACW veterans, feeling as hard done by as some of them felt. Politically, the right is split into a bunch of factions, at this point only really held together by disgust with how insane the anti-Trump left has gotten. (Okay, yes, Never Trump is technically right, and isn’t really trying to win this presidential election. Even Never Trump has split into the displaced grifters, and the folks who aren’t scared enough to back Trump, but are still disgusted by things like the standard of evidence presented accusing Kavanaugh.) We would probably need further radicalizing events to wind up in that degree of trouble.

      I think a lot of people here are not considering the implications of what would have been needed to stage manage the political side of things. Legislatures are normally fairly dysfunctional, but would be more so if not for a lot of work done behind the scenes. If you need to pass something fast, you try to arrange the votes beforehand. Rather than throw something out, and see what people think. Surprised people are unpredictable. I would guess that someone already knew how the vote would go and that the protest was encouraged as part of the showmanship for the actual event of the vote. To some extent I see this as a message by the Legislature, possibly to the state bureaucrats. Probably not a great precedent, but I think we may be setting a bunch of unhappy precedents right now.

      1. > Thing is, right now the hard right does not have the hardened
        > shooters and supporters to pull off anything like the
        > Reconstruction/Segregation change over.

        You are aware of the GWOT that has been waging for almost 19 years now, right?

        That has run a bunch of US military folks–who lean pretty conservative/pro-freedom/anti-communist–through exactly the kind of fighting one does in an insurgency, right?

        There’s a *ton* of battle hardened shooters out there. They won’t get involved initially because they’ve buried some friends, had others blow their brains out, and have a few missing large parts of their bodies.

        Guys like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Crenshaw

        He probably won’t be shooting since he’s missing one eye and can’t see too good out the other one.

        1. If I find myself in a place where Congressman Crenshaw is leading a fight, I’ll follow him through hell. He’s earned it.

          1. >If I find myself in a place where Congressman Crenshaw is leading a fight, I’ll follow him through hell. He’s earned it.

            Not eligible for the Presidency, alas. American citizen, but born in Scotland.

            1. My understanding is it doesn’t matter where you were born, if you were born a citizen, that’s all that matters. And all it takes is one American parent to be citizens, and he had two.

              1. >My understanding is it doesn’t matter where you were born, if you were born a citizen, that’s all that matters. And all it takes is one American parent to be citizens, and he had two.

                There’s a live dispute about this. It depends on the intent of the phrase “natural-born”. Most Constitutional scholars think it means a President must have been born in the U.S. And it has affected some political careers.

                Jennifer Granholm, a Democratic governor in Michigan, was at one point touted as presidential timber, but that was quietly scuppered because she was born in Canada.

                There was a very minor flap about John McCain having been born in the Panama Canal Zone, but as that was a U.S. overseas possession at the time nobody seriously thought a court would rule him ineligible.

                Barack Obama was represented as having been born in Kenya in the publicity for one of his biographies. Whether or not that was true, it set off quite a shitstorm about his later eligibility for the Presidency.

                1. As Wikipedia notes, it’s probably never going to be settled in court: aside from the issue of standing, there’s also the issue of whether this is a non-justiciable political question.

                2. > There’s a live dispute about this. It depends on the intent of the phrase “natural-born”.

                  Not really.

                  If you’re a Progressive having one American family member SOMEWHERE in the family tree qualifies you.

                  If you’re not being born in an American hospital in an American state *barely* qualifies.

                3. “Most Constitutional scholars think it means a President must have been born in the U.S.”

                  I’ve read several scientific papers on the subject. While this has never been ruled on in court, most experts agree that “natural-born” means “being entitled to it by birth”. So a child born to Americans abroad is a natural-born citizen (e.g. Ted Cruz), whereas someone who has to go through naturalization is not (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger).

                4. No, most Constitution scholars do not believe that birth in the United States is the requirement.

                  That question was asked and answered in the negative back in the 1800s, with regards to General George Meade, the victor of Gettysburg. Like many other successful (and one not-very-successful) generals, he was touted as a Presidential candidate.

                  After Pickett’s Charge was definitely repulsed, a regimental band saluted General Meade with “Hail to the Chief”, and a wag on his staff said “Ah there, General Meade – you’re in grave danger of becoming President of the United States.”

                  Meade was born in Spain, where his father was in business, and also US Naval agent. The elder Meade was a merchant from Philadelphia; Meade’s mother was from New Jersey. George came to the US with his parents at the age of 3. However, no one ever questioned his status as a “native born” citizen.

                  1. >No, most Constitution scholars do not believe that birth in the United States is the requirement.

                    *blink* Then why wasn’t I hearing that during the various recent flaps around Granholm/McCain/Obama?

                    I’m not being obstreperous, I just find your claim difficult to square with objections that serious people have raised in the recent past.

                    1. I’m not being obstreperous, I just find your claim difficult to square with objections that serious people have raised in the recent past.

                      Polarized people gonna polarize;
                      partisan ideologues gonna be partisan….

                      Just Sayin’……

                    2. Because Obama’s father isn’t/wasn’t a citizen, and if he was born overseas he did not meet the requirements to be an automatic citizen.

                    3. >Because Obama’s father isn’t/wasn’t a citizen, and if he was born overseas he did not meet the requirements to be an automatic citizen.

                      That doesn’t explain why there was any question at all about McCain.

                    4. @Rick: Except that his father’s marriage to his mother was bigamous, and thus illegal. Under US law at the time, the child of a single mother who was a US citizen would also be a US citizen from birth.

                  2. @Alsadius: The State department says this “A person born abroad out-of-wedlock to a U.S. citizen mother between December 24, 1952 and June 11, 2017 may acquire U.S. citizenship under Section 309(c) of the INA if the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person’s birth and if the mother was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the person’s birth.

                    In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Sessions v. Morales-Santana, 582 U.S. ___, 137 S.Ct. 1678 (2017), a person born abroad out-of-wedlock to a U.S. citizen mother and alien father on or after June 12, 2017, may acquire U.S. citizenship at birth if the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person’s birth and was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a period of five years, including two after turning age 14, in accordance with Section 301(g) of the INA.”

                    As I recall the issue was if his mother met the residence requirement.

                5. Granholm was not born a US citizen, so she is indeed ineligible to the presidency.

                  There was never any issue with McCain, but just to reinforce that he got the senate to pass a resolution affirming that in its opinion he was eligible.

                  The blurb claiming 0bama was born in Kenya was not for one of his actual books; it was in a list of authors put out by his agent when he first registered with her, long before he ever actually came up with a book. It’s pretty standard for agents to make these things up without bothering to check the facts with their client. Or even to deliberately lie in order to make the client look more interesting. It also falsely claimed his father was Kenya’s finance minister. The agent who wrote it has publicly admitted it wasn’t based on anything her client had told her.

              2. The rule s that you must be a natural-born American citizen, not a naturalized one.The precise meaning of “natural-born citizen” has never been settled in court…but if he was born abroad to American citizens, it would be a shock if he were to be found ineligible.

        2. Yup, there’s a lot of American veterans with a lot of experience at insurgency-type warfare. That’s another obstacle you’ll need to overcome.

          (What, did you think the average soldier would support you killing American legislators?)

          1. Don’t be so certain they won’t…they take that oath very seriously, and there are lots of domestic enemies of the Constitution in the various legislatures.

            1. A few would join you, I’m sure. A lot more see shooting the people who won the election as a threat to the “republican form of government”.

              1. But how many of those see shooting people who violate the Constitution as a bad thing? Their oath is to the Constitution, not to any person or group of people.

                1. Which would be why I quoted a relevant provision of the Constitution. It’s not especially clear-cut that the solution is more constitutional than the problem here.

          2. > What, did you think the average soldier
            > would support you killing American legislators?

            I have a total of 10 years of active and reserve military time, spent a year in Iraq as a civilian contractor and two years in another location working fist in glove with American servicemen.

            I’ve got a *pretty* good feel for their attitudes.

            Ultimately as in all things it would depend on the details, but given that the politicians are arguably SHITTING ALL OVER THEIR OATHS TO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION, I’d say that the REMFs would support the politicians at a rate of about 25%–a lot of them are minorities from innner city districts who joined the military for a steady paycheck, “job training” and the retirement package.

            Amoung *actual* combat veterans? I’d be surprised if the Stalinists got support from one in 10.

            1. So why hasn’t the revolution already happened? Sounds like it’d be over in about an hour.

              1. Because a hot civil war would SUCK, even if we won and won quickly. Winning the cold civil war without having to fight actual shooting battles is so much better that it’s worth going for.

  24. Sorry, this is pathetic. If you were calculative you would send those people to the borders to stop massive influx of illegal immigrants which will be used as a ‘representative democratic’ army to erode all your rights at some point in the future. This is the real thing you see, introducing a massive amount of foreigners every year is weakening a country and sets the stage for revolution that will degrade the quality of life for everyone (most of those don’t care and will be used as peons willingly by any force that wants to takeover the state and have no care for the rights and liberties you already have). But people willing to kill to get back to work ? this is almost the reverse of the gulags situation, more akin to an “Islamic”-gulag where the citizens already surrendered to a life of work and drudgery even in the face of pandemic and acting like it’s all they know and all they deserve. Obviously those have nothing to lose are mostly those who are at a deficit of brain cells and you are dependent on them because in rabbitsocracy those who multiply fastest (read= the dumb and foolish ones) sets the tone.

    If you ask me, when your president speaks like a grade-Z mob gangster, mocks and belittles reporters, replies illogically this is more a shameful event and you hadn’t gotten your guns out at that. Your economy is at the hands of China, the American ethos is literally done with, all your films are bullshit CGI with PC common denominator rule-em-all bag of tricks, and this is lower than what the native population had.

    But ofcourse you miss all that because you are led to polarized distinctive politics that tears your country up. It is really sad that the nation that hosts many of the smartest minds in the world (at the expanse of other poor places) , the best bibliotheques is throwing all lines of advancement and greatness it could reach and settles on less than mediocre political us-vs-them base fights. But I guess that is what happens when too many foreigners are allowed to interfere and their voice accounted just like veteran citizens.

  25. ESR> (2) This is the American constitutional system working correctly and as designed by the Founders.

    Eric, I agree your analysis is correct as far as it goes. Civil disobedience and the threat of armed resistance were indeed part of the process by which Americans were supposed to protect their civil liberties.

    That being said, I also find your analysis incomplete about one crucial point: Before it comes to that, the people were supposed to exhaust their nonviolent options in that process first. In your post, you implied but have not demonstrated that the Michigan protesters had done that.

    After reading through this thread, I re-consulted the chapter in William Blackstone’s Commentaries “Of The Absolute Rights of Individuals”. Asserting and securing these rights was the reason Americans faught their revolution and wrote their constitution.

    These absolute rights of individuals, according to Blackstone (*), consisted of three substantive and three procedural rights. The substantive ones were life, liberty, and property. Let’s take it as given for now that the governor of Michigan violated the liberty of Michigan citizens.

    Once someone had violated your rights, you were supposed to exercise your three procedural rights in order: (1) Sue the other side in court; (2) petition the royal court (now the legislature) to change the law in a direction more protective of your rights. Only after you had made an honest effort tat that, and failed, you were supposed to use the last resort: (3) escalate the conflict by civil disobediance and armed resistance.

    The part where your analysis is incomplete, in my opinion, is steps (1) and (2). How do you conclude that the protesters have tried tried litigation and petitioning hard enough, and failed clearly enough, that armed resistance is now appropriate?

    ——————————-
    (*) A note to any pedants about the English-vs-American law thing: In the Eighteen-zeroes, tthe American jurist George Tucker published a widely-read comment of his own on Blackstone, describing how the American revolution changed the system described by Blackstone. It doesn’t materially affect the chapter on the absolute rights of individuals. (I can dig out the reference on request.)

    1. >The part where your analysis is incomplete, in my opinion, is steps (1) and (2). How do you conclude that the protesters have tried tried litigation and petitioning hard enough, and failed clearly enough, that armed resistance is now appropriate?

      The fact that they felt driven to armed resistance at all at a pretty good clue in itself. That is a very, very risky thing to do, and people who aren’t mental cases generally don’t do it casually or self-destructively. If these people aren’t shown to be part of the 3% high-deviant cohort with extensive histories of crime and substance addiction I think they are entitled to a rebuttable presumption that they have exhausted other remedies.

      One important factor in this situation is the remedies you describe are slow. The protesters may judge that the harm from the lockdowns is escalating so rapidly that justice delayed won’t be justice at all. It is not for me to second-guess them on this; I’m not walking in their shoes. Again, I think they are entitled to a rebuttable presumption that they have gauged the harm correctly.

      1. > I think they are entitled to a rebuttable presumption that they have exhausted other remedies.

        Isn’t that a naive assumption ? Everything on film and mass media is political these days.

        > One important factor in this situation is the remedies you describe are slow

        It’s often the case that waving a gun at someone’s face may get some things done fast, but not necessarily in a right way.

        Making your elected representatives malleable and squeezable to the threat of violent force can actually destabilize the stability of your regime and destroy every end people wants to work to achieve.

      2. esr> The fact that they felt driven to armed resistance at all at a pretty good clue in itself. That is a very, very risky thing to do, and people who aren’t mental cases generally don’t do it casually or self-destructively.

        A moral panic might do it. Libertarians are just as human as, say, environmentalists. There’s no reason non-crazy Libertarians can’t have moral panics and do crazy things under their influence.

        One important factor in this situation is the remedies you describe are slow. The protesters may judge that the harm from the lockdowns is escalating so rapidly that justice delayed won’t be justice at all.

        Or again, they could be suffering a moral-panic attack. I specifically remember an old thread of yours where you point out how moral panic leads climate scientists to call or action against global warming far prematurely — long before they have the necessary data to conclude that action would do more good than harm. My libertarian-moral-panic hypothesis would fit analogous corner-cutting behavior in Michigan as well.

        But alright. Let’s stipulate that the protesters reasonably concluded, as you suggest, that justice delayed would be justice denied. That would only mean they had good reasons for cutting corners with the Founding Fathers’ process. But that wasn’t your original claim. Your original claim was that they followed the Founding Father’s process. So it appears you just moved your own goalposts.

        Side note: A good illustration of the Founding Fathers’ process without shortcuts is the middle of their Declaration of Independence. Observe how they recall all the peaceful, and no doubt time-consuming, remedies they sought before taking the drastic, dangerous and potentially self-destructive step of declaring independence and starting a civil war. And as their rhetoric makes clear, they were convinced that their patience played an important role in legitimizing this drastic step when they ultimately too it. It’s a striking contrast to what we saw in Michigan.

        1. It’s a striking contrast to what we saw in Michigan.

          A reminder that “what we saw in Michigan” was not shooting the Governor and declaring independence, merely entering the legislature building while open carrying (which is apparently legal), thus giving a really strong hint that (a) the fourth box does exist, in case the Governor had forgotten and (b) the protestors consider that if their protest is ignored and the Governor sticks to her present course, then they will be justified in opening that box.

          You and Alsadius both seem to be blind to the difference between this “final warning” and, y’know, actually opening fire. Possibly because they both involve guns in the possession of The Little People, and what could possibly be worse than that?

          1. There’s an important difference between threatening to kill them and actually killing them. Both are felonies, but murder is worse than uttering death threats.

            My point is that uttering death threats is bad enough to be worthy of criticism. But you’re right, it is not literally murder. (Under the Michigan legal code, I think it’s technically considered to be torture, oddly enough.)

            1. Try to get your head round this.

              The Governor’s actions up to the time of the protest were not sufficient to justify killing her — and indeed the protestors didn’t.

              Plausible forecasts of the Governor’s future actions include some which would justify killing her, and the protest was to make clear that, in that event, the protestors would be willing to act on that.

              (And you’re still tossing the word “murder” around like it has any place in this conversation.)

              So either you believe:

              (1) no amount of tyranny ever justifies taking up arms and killing the tyrant. In which case fuck you and the theory you rode in on

              (2) it’s somehow improper to give any warning, display of capability or other indication that you would kill a hypothetical tyrant, until the tyranny has actually reached the level that justifies the killing (because that would be a “death threat” and eo ipso Baaaaad). Which of course makes it that much harder to establish ‘common knowledge’ of the willingness to resist, thus making successful revolution against such a tyrant harder, in which case See figure 1.

              So which is it?

              1. Given that I was discussing legalities in that particular post, “murder” was the correct word.

                And to answer your question, 3) There is an amount of tyranny that’d justify overthrow, but this is so far short of it that discussing the possibility is a sign that the person having the discussion has completely lost perspective.

          2. Edward Cree> You and Alsadius both seem to be blind to the difference between this “final warning” and, y’know, actually opening fire.

            Actually, my very first post to this thread was me pointing out to Alsadius that the mere carrying of guns was not dangerous to anyone’s life, and that Alsadius was wrong to characterize it as terrorism.

            My point in this sub-thread was specifically about the absence of lawsuits and petitions.

        2. >Let’s stipulate that the protesters reasonably concluded, as you suggest, that justice delayed would be justice denied. That would only mean they had good reasons for cutting corners with the Founding Fathers’ process. But that wasn’t your original claim. Your original claim was that they followed the Founding Father’s process. So it appears you just moved your own goalposts

          It’s not cutting corners if the peaceful remedies would not in fact be remedies at all because they cannot possibly be enacted or take effect in time. I could not in good conscience urge the demonstrators to substitute doing something useless for something potentially effective.

          Maybe it changes your evaluation if you know something I didn’t at the time I wrote the OP: many of the legislators present during the demonstration agreed with the protesters’ grievances and supported them being there to put pressure on the others.

          1. It’s also worth noting that the emergency measures being protested were pushed through via a shortcut. The particulars were decreed without going through the usual law-making process with the usual political checks and balances. Insisting that the protesters take the slow path to undo those quickly imposed emergency measures is a double standard.

          2. esr Maybe it changes your evaluation if you know something I didn’t at the time I wrote the OP: many of the legislators present during the demonstration agreed with the protesters’ grievances and supported them being there to put pressure on the others.

            Did these legislators’ support specifically extend to ahowing up inside the state capitol with guns?

            My only problem is with the protesters’ premature escalation. I sympathize (despite some qualifications) with the substance of their grievances, and I have no problem with the fact that they’re protesting.

            1. >Did these legislators’ support specifically extend to ahowing up inside the state capitol with guns?

              Yes, as a matter of fact. Most of the Michigan state legislators are, as it turns out, Republicans with views about armed revolt and the second Amendment similar to mine. I didn’t know this when I wrote the OP because our media are doing their expected best not to let that truth get out.

              Also note that the protesters carrying arms where they did is completely legal. They couldn’t be charged under Michigan law unless they made terroristic threats, which they didn’t.

  26. This will be a three-parter, mainly because the website is rejecting the post out-of-hand, probably on the basis of length.

    Anyway, I’m going to try to be diplomatic. I’m going to try to attack the post rather than the poster. And I’m going to apologize in advance for any failures in diplomacy, because the top post in this thread is the ‘least-lucid’ thing I’ve seen posted on this blog in the last decade.

    The top post misses everything that might provide context, and in doing so, essentially gets everything wrong, except perhaps where it implies, quite correctly I assume, that a big protest by people carrying guns gets 2nd-Amendment types all worked up… so worked up I think, that what the author wrote about the incident unfortunately missed the forest for the trees. (Here I imagine someone from the peanut gallery sarcastically typing, “Troutwaxer, tell us how you really feel!”) The sad thing is, this is the diplomatic version. The undiplomatic version got erased three drafts ago, and was so hot-headed my computer overheated!

    So why do I think the top-post is so… (blasphemy redacted) appallingly thoughtless and irrelevant? Maybe irrelevant is the wrong word. The post is, in fact, very relevant. It’s just that the relevance is completely context-free. It discusses what might be a great victory for public protest – but only in a very restricted world, a world where we’re all wearing blinders, a world which is completely free of cause and effect, context, or political understanding. For starters, the post doesn’t notice that the protests were heavily astroturfed and encouraged by Trump, who tweeted “Liberate Michigan”

    As Wikipedia noted (link below):

    “One of the first protests was in Michigan on April 15, 2020. It was organized via a Facebook group called “Operation Gridlock”, which was created by the Michigan Freedom Fund and the Michigan Conservative Coalition. A spokesman for the Michigan Conservative Coalition encouraged groups in other states to copy the Operation Gridlock wording and templates. Protesters in numerous other states said they were inspired by Michigan, and they used Michigan’s material on their own websites, Facebook groups, and Reddit pages to promote their protests. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer called attention to the fact that the Michigan Freedom Fund is funded in part by the DeVos family, but a spokesman said the family had nothing to do with the protests.

    The Trump campaign declined to answer whether it was directly involved with organizing the protest in Michigan, but key protest organizers who did identify themselves were Meshawn Maddock, the wife of Republican state representative Matt Maddock and a member of the national advisory board for Women for Trump, and Marian Sheridan, who serves as a vice chair on the Michigan Republican Party.

    Here are a few articles on who encouraged the protests and how:

    https://time.com/5825840/anti-quarantine-protests-organizers-trump/

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/devos-has-deep-ties-to-michigan-protest-group-but-is-quiet-on-tactics

    https://www.salon.com/2020/04/20/astroturf-gun-rights-activists-and-prominent-gop-donors-push-protests-of-coronavirus-restrictions/

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-protests-astroturf.html

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/coronavirus-quarantine-protests-facebook-groups

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_responses_to_the_2020_coronavirus_pandemic

    Note the strong presence of “all the usual suspects.” The Kochs are involved. So is the DeVos family, (despite their claims that they are not.) And a few ex-Tea-Party types. Naturally, there’s a right-wing law-firm involved, and you can bet the reporters have missed a few names and faces in pursuing the story.

    And who does Trump want Michigan liberated from? Aliens? A Foreign Power? The Second Coming of Cthulhu? Nope. Trump wants to liberate Michigan from it’s own democratically elected governor, (it’s important to note while you think about this that Michigan is the state ranked sixth in the nation in deaths per 100,000) who has responded to the extremely high level of positive cases and deaths in her state by very sensibly and intelligently closing down everything she could, while Republican legislators in Michigan, (who like the GOP (Grifting Old People) across the nation have quite horribly and immorally politicized the COVID-19 outbreak,) took her to court to force her to stop saving lives!!

    https://www.statmap.org/rankedstates.html

    (I’m probably being a little unfair here. There are some Republican governors who did the right thing and closed their states as quickly as it made sense – note where their states fall on the list above, and of course I’ve already noted Bush II’s competence on this matter – while Democrats like Cuomo didn’t close his state nearly as quickly as he should have, and is probably to blame not only for the major problems in New York, but also in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusets, etc. Why’s he’s a media superstar these days is beyond me, (except that he’s got far more sense than Trump!))

    And of course Trump got into the act after the protests he’d demanded, telling us by tweet that the protestors in Michigan were “very good people,” which seems to be his code for “their views on race are similar to my own.” The full quote was, “The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire. These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.” Make a deal. Could that mean, “do something that’s medically unsafe?” That’s how it sounds to me. Yeah, make the crazy people who don’t understand infectious diseases and epidemiology happy!

    1. >Could that mean, “do something that’s medically unsafe?”

      Considering the utter and complete failure of the modelers, and the actual statistics on COVID mortality anywhere people aren’t as crammed into each others’ faces as the New York subways, “medically safe” is what South Dakota and Sweden have been doing: no tyrannical and un-Constitutional lockdowns to begin with.

      There is no medical justification left for the power grabs that are now going on. None. Hospitals overwhelmed? Never happened. Vent shortage? Never happened. Death rates? Order of magnitude below the predictions even with most effective mitigation assumed.

      If the Trump campaign was involved in organizing this, good for Trump. It’s a virtuous action in defense of civil liberty I can set against his many failings. I’m OK with him gaining a political benefit from virtuous behavior.

      1. The reason the modelers have failed (except for New York) is that most states have locked down. The six counties in California that were our candidates for a New York style outbreak were locked down on March 16th, with schools closing on March 13th. Considering that the doubling rate for cases at the time was around 3.7 days, the difference between California and New York, where full-state shut downs started happening on March 23rd should be obvious… New York had a chance for three more doublings in that ten days, and sadly, it shows in the numbers.

        The death rate I read about from China in early March was around 2 percent. If you look at the numbers of deaths in the U.S. (around 65,000 as of yesterday) versus confirmed cases (around 1,110,000 as of yesterday) you’ll see very clearly that our death rate is just less than 6 percent. In other words, we’re well-above the death rate China saw!

        https://ncov2019.live/data

        And if you think we’re doing well, you might compare the numbers for the U.S. with the rest of the world. You’ll notice we’ve done so poorly at controlling the disease that the U.S. cases are approximately 1/3 of the world’s total.

        https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

        You might also consider that we’re just getting started; if the numbers are to be believed, less than ten-percent of the U.S. is currently infected, and the disease is still working it’s way into the rural areas. We could easily see 10-20 times the number of deaths we’re seeing now, and God help us if the scientists who think it’s difficult to develop antibodies against Corona virus are correct!

        As to the matter of Civil Liberties, I don’t see anyone chasing these yahoos down and arresting them for their bizarre facebook posts – the idiots literally couldn’t get arrested, despite blocking a hospital’s emergency room entrance – or taking their guns or bibles, or hauling them off to camps, or anything else which would indicate that their rights or religions aren’t being respected… so I’m not sure I’d say that the protestors are having their liberties restricted in a fashion which is out of line with the dangers – keep in mind that Michigan is the sixth-worst state in the U.S. where COVID-19 is concerned.

        Also note that the concerns laid out in our founding documents were “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The right of some dumbass to fail at mask-wearing and social distancing stops where my right to Life begins, and I’d just as soon not have my Pursuit of Happiness interrupted so the Presidents’ failures end up on page 2 because he and his allies got a bunch of yahoos in Michigan riled up at the people who are trying to keep them from dying!

        What I am seeing is a combination of monumental selfishness and total cluelessness about who’s causing the problem, or even what the problem is – maybe we could all not die, and maybe our government could support us in this hope! (Which is where the government of Michigan is failing.)

        Unfortunately, the kind of stupid, thoughtless politicization we’re seeing was probably inevitable once Trump went on the attack after people began demanding that he do his job and unleash the Feds against the disease instead of wanking himself at Mar-A-Lago!

        1. >The reason the modelers have failed (except for New York) is that most states have locked down

          Bullshit. This is a weak post hoc ergo propter hoc rationalization being thrown out to justify epic-scale predictive failure. We’re running orders of magnitude below the projections that assumed most effective mitigation measures.

          On top of this we have the example of places like South Dakota and Sweden to demonstrate that the ceterus paribus effect of lockdowns is pretty close to statistical noise. Because of differences in local response we’re seeing an experiment in comparative effect that couldn’t be much better if it had been deliberately designed, and the result is that the next time I hear an epidemiologist advocate coercive lockdowns my response is going to be “fuck you and the horse you rode in on”.

          I’m angry with myself for not being more skeptical sooner. I should have known the “science” was bullshit as soon as the political power grabs started to dominate over voluntary civilian response.

          >And if you think we’re doing well, you might compare the numbers for the U.S. with the rest of the world. You’ll notice we’ve done so poorly at controlling the disease that the U.S. cases are approximately 1/3 of the world’s total.

          You’re making it difficult for me to stay polite. GodDAMMIT, you have to normalize for population when making that claim – big countries having more cases is inevitable and not a function of quality of response. Per capita – which does indicate quality of response – we are are in fact doing extremely well.

          >You might also consider that we’re just getting started; if the numbers are to be believed, less than ten-percent of the U.S. is currently infected,

          I used to believe numbers like that. Until they kept being bullshit and noise every time we seropositivity-tested a larger cohort, and the estimates of asymptomatic infection went up, and the estimate of CFR went down. Three weeks ago I was rude to the “it’s just the flu” crowd; now I think I might have to apologize to them in another month.

          1. The important part for reducing infection rate is people not doing the things that can spread diseases. The disease doesn’t care if you do it because you want to or whether the government made you, all it cares about is whether you do it.

            I’d wager that both Sweden and North Dakota have behaviours very similar to Michigan, in practice. I doubt nightclubs are open in either, I’d wager a lot more people are working from home than normal, and strangers probably still cross the street when walking towards you.

            Yes, that means that some of the coercive measures are likely unnecessary. That is especially true in areas where the populace is generally, for lack of a better word, well-behaved. If you have a populace willing to go out of their way to help each other, despite great personal inconvenience, laws probably aren’t needed to get social distancing. Anecdotally, Sweden and North Dakota both seem like places with pretty high social cohesion levels, so the need for it is much lower there.

            Note also that this does cut against the “it’s just the flu” arguments. If the death rate for coronavirus (with massive distancing efforts) and the flu (with no distancing efforts) are the same, the former is a far worse disease, because all those distancing efforts are needed just to keep it equal. It’s a bit like saying that I’m as good a basketball player as LeBron James, as long as his legs are broken.

            1. >Anecdotally, Sweden and North Dakota both seem like places with pretty high social cohesion levels, so the need for it is much lower there.

              Sweden used to have high cohesion. Until they invited in a bunch of barbarians from the 7th century.

              There’s been a pretty well controlled experiment running south of the Mason-Dixon line where cohesion is much lower than South Dakota’s due to ethnolinguistic diversity and large illegal-immigrant populations. Again the result is pretty clear: ceterus paribus the jurisdictions with lockdowns simply aren’t doing noticeably better than the ones without. The actual mortality drivers don’t notice the difference.

              And that says we’re paying a huge price in lost liberties and economic damage for nothing.

              1. Again the result is pretty clear: ceterus paribus the jurisdictions with lockdowns simply aren’t doing noticeably better than the ones without. The actual mortality drivers don’t notice the difference.

                Oh yeah? Explain Florida and Georgia, both of which have had spikes of COVID cases after easing lockdowns recently.

                Lockdown isn’t the only solution to the crisis, but it’s the price we have to pay for not taking responsible measured action (testing, contact tracing, quarantining) early in the pandemic.

                To support those… fucking idiots in Michigan as patriots for demanding the right, with implied threat of violence, to increase spread of COVID and put American lives at risk is appalling.

                1. >Oh yeah? Explain Florida and Georgia, both of which have had spikes of COVID cases after easing lockdowns recently.

                  Get back to me when those spikes are above the noise level for all-cause mortality – or anywhere near the expected number of excess deaths due to lockdown-induced suicide and stress diasthesis. Lockdowns kill, too.

                  1. Do lockdowns take 2,909 lives in one day? Because that’s what easing the lockdowns did on May 1.

                    1. N.b. that figure is nationwide. The point stands: more people die when lockdowns are eased.

                    2. It’s been bouncing around 2000 +/- 500 for weeks. Also with a distinct pattern of weekly variance in reporting.

                    3. >Do lockdowns take 2,909 lives in one day?

                      Uh. No. The incubation period makes that kind of fast mortality from the change impossible. If removing the lockdowns causes a real mortality increase, you’ll see it two weeks or more later, not the next day.

                      Even then you can’t make assumptions. You’re left with the problem of explaining why lockdown vs. no-lockdown jurisdictions with similar demographics and exposure don’t show large differences in mortality rates per capita – the Netherlands (293 per million) vs. Sweden (263 per million), for example.

                      As often as not, COVID mortality is higher in the locked-down member of such pairs.

                      Same pattern holds in the U.S. Bottom-up adaptation works and keeps mortality rates low except in places like NYC where living conditions expose everybody to large viral loads. Mandated lockdowns at best do so close to nothing that they’re not worth the economic cost. At worst they inflict net harm.

                      If lockdowns actually made a serious positive difference, Sweden should be a plague hellhole now. Instead it’s doing only a little worse per capita than the U.S., doubtless due to inferior medical infrastructure.

                      What your figure actually demonstrates, if true, is there’s a lot of random noise in the mortality rates. Not very surprising, there.

                    4. Right, because easing the lockdowns caused an immediate death toll.

                      I think not.

                    5. Dude, you’re beclowning yourself. The disease takes a couple weeks for spread to be obvious, because of the fairly long incubation period, and mortality takes even longer. And eased restrictions aren’t the same thing as “everyone goes back to New Year’s Eve”-level crowding. And finally, as others have said, the daily death toll was around that level before.

                      Those death tolls are why we should take it seriously, of course. But they’re not an hour-by-hour tracker of the merits of various policy approaches. You need to look at them over a period of weeks, minimum.

                    6. That’s fucking ridiculous.

                      According to the CDC, which is suspect but the best we have, SYMPTOMS take 2 to 19 days to develop after initial infection.

                      Easing lock-downs on 1 May would have caused ZERO deaths by now (4 May).

                    7. Had to give you a “-” on that one Jeff. It will take a couple weeks for any changes to be obvious. (Current doubling rate seems to be about 24 days, so maybe longer. We’ll see.)

                2. > those… fucking idiots in Michigan

                  What about the violaters of the beach closures in Orange County Los Angeles? Alsadius ignored that question when I asked it, care to take a crack at it?

                  Statistically, there was of course a non-zero probability of one of the weapons brought into the Michigan State legislature going off, accidentally or intentionally. That’s presumably a primary if unstated component of Alsadius’s argument: we can’t prove that a discharge was impossible, so we can’t logically rule out the “intent” of mass murder.

                  Statistically, there is a non-zero probability of one of those “fucking idiots” from Orange County infecting and killing someone in my family. All it would take is some moron from LA going to see one of his college buddies in Chicago, or some moron Chicago businessman deciding he was “bored now!” sitting in his LA hotel and heading to the beach since “everyone else was”.

                  So, we can also call those LA douche bags “fucking idiot bored-now mass murderers”? Or are those epithets exclusive to red staters?

                  Ha ha, yes I know what rhetorical means. Again, the beach goers weren’t actually carrying any of those wicked firearms, they were just fucking around on the beach, which no lefties will have a problem with of course. Bread and circuses are what the elite are all about, after all.

                  1. The people in California were dumbasses, no doubt about it. Contrariwise, the counties which did open their beaches were Ventura and Orange counties, both of which tend red. (Orange County was the home of Bob Dornan.)

                    1. Can anyone find a single documented instance of anyone catching a respiratory virus from a stranger six feet away at a beach? It seems highly unlikely to me.

                    2. Okay, how about Central Park, NYC? CNN showed it thronged yesterday, despite months of Cuomo pleading people to continue to obey the shelter-in-place and mask directives. That blue enough for anybody? Anyone gonna call the NYCers “fucking idiot bored mass murderers”?

                      This one will get me in even more trouble no doubt… but again, I am getting this all from the holy writ of CNN itself. This was last week, forget exactly whether Wednesday or Thursday: cell phone footage of a “house party” in Chicago (newscaster’s description). Can’t find a CNN link, but this (among the several that show up on google) attributes it to CNN:

                      https://www.kmov.com/news/viral-video-shows-large-chicago-house-party-during-coronavirus-outbreak/article_c4282018-8884-11ea-aeb0-d3e89b17e6c3.html

                      So who wants to step up and call those depicted in the video “fucking idiot bored mass murderers”? Anybody?

                      Or else explain to me –if that seems easier– how a bunch of farmers trying desperately to save their livelihoods and families are more “fucking idiots” than people who just had to have their day on the beach, or picnic in the park, or group twerking.

                    3. CNN showed it thronged yesterday, despite months of Cuomo pleading people to continue to obey the shelter-in-place and mask directives.

                      Are you sure this isn’t another wide angle lens camera trick.

                  2. What about the violaters of the beach closures in Orange County Los Angeles? Alsadius ignored that question when I asked it, care to take a crack at it?

                    I don’t recall seeing that one. Can you point me in the right direction?

                    Statistically, there was of course a non-zero probability of one of the weapons brought into the Michigan State legislature going off, accidentally or intentionally. That’s presumably a primary if unstated component of Alsadius’s argument: we can’t prove that a discharge was impossible, so we can’t logically rule out the “intent” of mass murder.

                    FWIW, that thought had not crossed my mind. Accidents happening would make the protesters look like damn fools, and might result in negligent homicide charges, but I was discussing the possibility of intentional killings.

                    Can anyone find a single documented instance of anyone catching a respiratory virus from a stranger six feet away at a beach? It seems highly unlikely to me.

                    FWIW, it also seems unlikely to me unless the infected person is coughing a lot, but by the law of large numbers it’s probably happened once. That’s un-testable, though, because that kind of community spread cannot plausibly be traced.

                    1. The chance of a negligent discharge is not zero, but it’s pretty close to zero, especially if the weapon is stored and not being handled.

                      Modern firearms will not go off unless the trigger is pulled, and almost all rifles have mechanical safeties. (And, that assuming that the weapons had a round up the pipe at all).

                    2. > I don’t recall seeing that one. Can you point me in the right direction?

                      It was in the post where I linked to the map of covid-19 cases in Michigan.

                      I mistakenly wrote “Orange Beach” in that post instead of “Orange County” while posting from my phone, sorry about that.

                    3. Ah, I found it. Basically asking where my outrage was against people going to the beach?

                      tl;dr, the beach isn’t inherently dangerous, as long as you keep your distance. It’s like parks(which should never have been closed), or sidewalks(which haven’t been). For individuals who actually do act dangerously, I’ve got plenty of condemnation, but “going to a large open area” isn’t enough to earn you a dose of it by itself.

            2. It’s South Dakota, not North Dakota, that’s been the subject of the current hate storm from the Democrats and the media (BIRM). This matters because I had my first sit-down meal in a restaurant in over a month last Saturday night in a little town just south of Sioux Falls named Tea. The barbecue joint we went to had every other table marked as Reserved. The wait staff took appropriate precautions. The food was properly coked (though there was a distinct lack of smoke in the meat, sadly).

              You see, people in the Dakotas know that they can trust each other to do the right thing. And they haven’t paid any sort of a price in cases for it. (That pork plant in Sioux Falls that had the cluster of cases would not have closed if SD had had a lockdown: it would have been designated an essential business.) I can’t speak for the people of the coasts where leftism holds sway, but out here, people can be expected to Do RIght.

          2. “This is a weak post hoc ergo propter hoc rationalization being thrown out to justify epic-scale predictive failure. We’re running orders of magnitude below the projections that assumed most effective mitigation measures.”

            Sigh. More sighing. The current level of deaths seems to be around 2000/day. IF things simply continue as they have been for the last month, no increase in the level of deaths, we’ll end up around 60,000 deaths a month. And that will mean COVID-19 easily outstrips cancer, diabetes, or heart attacks as the worst killer of the year. In fact, it will be the worst set of cold/flu deaths since the 1918 flu. That’s without anything like “continuing exponential increase” or the problem of whether things start to get worse again when the temperature goes down. Here’s a useful chart:

            https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en

            “You’re making it difficult for me to stay polite. GodDAMMIT, you have to normalize for population when making that claim – big countries having more cases is inevitable and not a function of quality of response.”

            More sighing. Have you done the math? If you assume 400 million Americans (an overestimate by any measure) we’re 0.5% of the world’s population. By that measure, we should not have anything close to a third of the world’s cases. We also have 25% of the world’s deaths, which means that at the very least our death rate is running in overdrive!

            And once again, we’re only two months into this thing! We had our first US death on February 26th of this year, then the total deaths increased from 2 deaths to 2000 deaths over the course of a single month. That’s 10 doublings in 30 days! By early April we’re seeing more than a thousand deaths a day. By mid-April we’re seeing an average of 2000 deaths/day, and this has continued up to the present day. If that doesn’t terrify you, I don’t know what will! (Hint, 2000 deaths/day means 540,000 deaths by the end of the year. That’s without any increase in the death rate at all!

            Also note that the death rate levels out around April 9th, 2 weeks after shelter-in-place orders go out. (There’s one big jump on 4/14, when New York changed their methods of counting deaths.)

            Here’s another useful chart:

            https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily

            This chart also tracks the number of tests done every day; note how we didn’t do our first test until February 27th, (long after South Korea was doing thousands of tests a day.) The upshot of this is that we were not testing enough for all of February and most of March, and may still be under-testing. The other upshot of this is that there are a lot of “pneumonia” and “flu” deaths in March and April that might need to be re-categorized.

            1. Two words: herd immunity. There’s no reason to believe that the current death rate will continue the entire year or any substantial part of it.

            2. >The current level of deaths seems to be around 2000/day.

              I no longer trust that figure. Every since the emergency package gave hospitals the ability to slap a 15% surcharge on treatment if COVID-19 is implicated, those numbers are corrupted.

              >Have you done the math?

              Yes, I have; remember who you’re talking to. Our per-capita mortality is about the same as Germany’s, which is at the bottom (fewest deaths) of the list of countries where mortality reporting doesn’t suck. Possibly less because our mortality figures are corrupted now.

              >The upshot of this is that we were not testing enough for all of February and most of March, and may still be under-testing.

              It is utterly certain that we are under-testing. Do you know why that is?

              Let me give you a clue. Two days ago I called my GP and tried to set up antibody tests for myself and my wife. His office told me they won’t do that yet; the tests aren’t reliable, too many false positives and false negatives.

              So even if every single hospital were resisting the urge to profit-take by stuffing every possible instance of mortality into the box marked COVID-19, they could not honestly know the rate.

              Get back to me when you can establish a mortality rate based on reliable tests and incentives that don’t reward inflating it.

              1. The problem with this statement is that you’re conflating antibody tests (unreliable, test for whether you’ve had COVID-19 in the past and now have any resistance) to PCR tests (ridiculously accurate, easy, and cheap, can essentially be done with off-the-shelf lab components; but tests only for the presence of SARS-CoV2 right now). Patient diagnosis relies on the latter, as does detection of spread.

                Undertesting to detect spread has nothing to do with unreliable tests and everything to do with FDA/CDC regulations. Remember the lab in Washington that was testing people and got a Cease and Desist order from the feds, because their test hadn’t been approved yet? The reason they felt like they were qualified to switch from influenza testing to COVID-19 testing is because they were doing something that, to biochemists, is child’s play. In a sensible world, the paper-pushers who countenanced that letter would face a firing squad for it.

                Anything involving antibodies, by contrast, is deep black magic and fiendishly hard to get right. That there are a ton of false positives and false negatives from those tests is almost certainly true; but you should be taking this into consideration when evaluating the California studies as well.

                1. There are lots of varieties of Corona Virus. Making sure you’re testing for the right one is probably pretty deep stuff and difficult to get right. Note my post elsewhere on the subject; IIRC the numbers they found were consonant with the expected false-positive rate. (Not to mention the other things wrong with the study.)

                  1. With all due respect, do you have any idea what you’re talking about?

                    PCR is basically the grep of the biochemistry world. Designing a PCR test with laser-like precision is not hard. The only “post elsewhere” of yours I can see that you might be referring to is about seropositivity tests, but I already agreed that those are finicky, so I don’t know why you’d be correcting me about that.

                    1. I meant for antibody tests. Sorry if that wasn’t communicated clearly.

            3. Another factor that you are omitting from your analysis: you are assuming that all reported CoVID-19 deaths actually were due to CoVID-19. Unfortunately, the incentives here are really perverse. Because states seeing more CoVID-19 cases and deaths get more funding from the feds, hospitals are now reporting any death at all where the patient was possibly suspected based on symptoms of having the virus as a CoVID-19 death, even if the death weren’t due to the virus itself, and even if no actual testing (e.g. serology tests) were performed and no virus confirmed present. Hell, the CDC actually put out guidelines suggesting this very method of counting CoVID-19 deaths!

              How many deaths were actually caused by the virus? How many were due to preexisting conditions? How many didn’t even involve Winnie-the-Flu? How many were deaths that would’ve gone unnoticed before we hospitalized everyone with the sniffles? We don’t know, and we’ll probably never know for sure.

              1. You wouldn’t happen to have a link to the guidelines, would you? I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of misunderstanding here.

            4. “If you assume 400 million Americans (an overestimate by any measure) we’re 0.5% of the world’s population.”

              400,000,000 = 0.5% x 80,000,000,000

              The world population is not 80 billion. It is about 7.5 billion. US population is about 320 million. 320,000,000 / 7,500,000,000 = 32 / 750 = 4.27%.

              I find it very hard to take seriously any argument from someone who makes such a gross arithmetical error.

              1. You’re quite correct that I made an error, (I used a calculator to divide 400 million by 8 billion and forgot to move the decimal point – definitely my bad.)

                But the argument is exactly the same if the U.S. is 5 percent of the world’s population. We shouldn’t have 32 percent of the world’s cases and 25 percent of the world’s deaths. Those numbers point to extraordinary incompetence.

                1. Mostly on the part of other nations, though. You think Africa is running millions of test kits? India? Do you think China or Iran are honestly reporting the numbers of deaths they’re experiencing?

                  Really, you can only compare the US to other developed liberal democracies. Dictatorships will lie, and undeveloped nations can’t get reliable numbers. And by those standards, the US is about average. If you look at the G7 nations, for example, the US is 4th – Italy is the worst, then the UK and France are close behind. The US is about half their level, Canada and then Germany are about half the US level, and Japan is way lower than anyone else.

            1. >A tool to help compare normalized numbers. Only useful for folks who want to make meaningful comparisons.

              No big surprises there except for the part where Germany’s per-capita death rate fell through the floor while I wasn’t looking. Good for them. Unless they’ve buggered up their reporting the opposite way from the U.S., that is.

              U.S. still coping better than Italy, Spain, UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, and Switzerland. Outside the G20 there are of course good reasons to suspect massive under-reporting.

              Canada is an interesting outlier.

              1. The Confirmed Case fatality rate in Belgium, UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden and Spain are alarming, all over 10%

                I’m not sure if this being confounded by the rate of testing.

                1. >The Confirmed Case fatality rate in Belgium, UK, France, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden and Spain are alarming, all over 10%

                  Governor Cuomo gave figures at at a press conference today that a major survey in New York State found a CFR of 0.75%. That’s from an antibody-indicated infection rate of 13.9% statewide, rising to 21% in parts of NYC.

          3. On top of this we have the example of places like South Dakota and Sweden to demonstrate that the ceterus paribus effect of lockdowns is pretty close to statistical noise

            Predictable from TSA behaviour, among many others. I predicted it in January: “there will be something akin to a self-destructive overreaction. Causes damage but not via folk getting fevers.”

    2. I’m sure one could come up with a provocative list of wealthy left-wingers who actively encouraged stringent shutdown measures, too.

      And so what? There are always people who have motives for supporting any position in a debate. That doesn’t invalidate the position. To do that, you need logic and evidence. Saying “person X supports this, and person X has something to gain from doing so” is just a variant of ad hominem. Try presenting a reasoned argument.

      1. You mean something that might have a medical basis, like how social distancing, wearing masks, and staying inside when/where possible keeps people safe? I assumed I was dealing with people who understood these simple facts. Was I wrong?

        1. In much the same way that unplugging the computer and removing the power cable makes it invulnerable to viruses…

          And safe for how long? Wearing masks doesn’t make the mask wearer safer, it simply reduces the chance of them spreading ejecta due to sneezing/coughing etc. If they aren’t infected, the mask does nothing.

        2. To this, I have only two words: “herd immunity”. You see, that’s the only thing that will stop this short of the vaccine that won’t, if they rush through every trial, be here for 12 mote months, 18 more if the more usual processes happen.

          So we can either stay locked down and suffer the devastating consequences to the economy and all the public health consequences that brings for the next year, or we can accept that the real world death rate from this is at the absolute worst a couple of times more than the seasonal flu and that the death rate outside of nursing homes is two orders of magnitude smaller yet, reopen the economy with targeted restrictions designed to protect only those at heightened risk, and get ourselves to herd immunity – and stop this thing once and for all.

          Anyone who argues that we need to stay locked down for the next year is calling for killing hundreds of thousands through suicide, depression, domestic violence, and other economic consequences, for the sake of preventing a few thousand deaths from the WuFlu.

          Fuck that noise.

          1. the real world death rate from this is at the absolute worst a couple of times more than the seasonal flu

            You’ve said this a few times. The seasonal flu typically kills about 0.1% of people who get it, and typically infects about 10-20% of the population. The latest numbers I’ve seen on coronavirus have it killing around 1% even if everyone gets proper medical care (using numbers from places that have done comprehensive and/or random testing, like Diamond Princess and Iceland), and many more if the medical system collapses. While it’s hard to tell how far it’ll go (especially if we stop a lot of the social distancing stuff that’s holding it at bay), it seems like areas with major outbreaks have case counts substantially higher than that.

            Combine ~10x the death rate with a meaningfully higher infection rate, and you have something that’s much worse than the flu. A death toll twenty times as high, in the absence of aggressive social distancing, is very plausible.

            And this isn’t theoretical. For example, here’s a record of deaths per week in England and Wales. The average in the beginning of the year, before coronavirus hit for real, was 11,543 per week. The worst week was 14,058. And remember, this is all causes – car crashes, cancer, heart attacks, whatever.

            The week ending April 3rd, they had 16,387 deaths.

            The week ending April 10th, they had 18,516 deaths.

            The week ending April 17th, they had 22,351 deaths.

            People are dying, from all causes, twice as fast as usual with coronavirus running rampant. Do you think this is a fluke? Because it sure looks like a pretty big deal to me.

            1. >The latest numbers I’ve seen on coronavirus have it killing around 1% even if everyone gets proper medical care

              The most recent estimates I’ve seen based on the California studies are 0.3-0.5% Which is still not “just the flu”, but the rate keeps going down as larger cohorts get tested. That decline might flatten out… but I chose my words carefully when I said I might be having to apologize to the “just a flu” people in a month.

              Right now you and Jay look about equally likely to be correct. But the historical trend is towards Jay.

              1. The California studies weren’t terribly good, and have been heavily criticized:

                https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/20/feud-over-stanford-coronavirus-study-the-authors-owe-us-all-an-apology/

                https://www.salon.com/2020/04/26/scientists-feud-over-hyped-stanford-coronavirus-antibody-study-the-authors-owe-us-all-an-apology/

                Note how the Standord study’s authors also wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that ” a universal quarantine may not be worth the costs” so there’s a pre-existing agenda that’s operating as well.

              2. There’s another reason the mortality rates are going down. Treatment protocols are improving. We’re doing way, way better now than two months ago.

            2. And what does that curve look like for, say, 2017-2018, the last bad year we had of the seasonal flu? I’d be willing to bet it looks a whole lot like that. Or, say, 1956-1957?

              The problem with the 1% number is that it doesn’t include a hell of a lot of people who get infected and never become symptomatic, and therefore never get tested. When entire populations get tested, the number drops to well under 0.5%.

              And another statistic that’s getting overlooked by the murderers of our economy: I don’t know what the fraction is for other states, but in Minnesota as of a couple of days ago, of 343 total deaths, 99.24% had significant comorbidity. That number is far higher than I had guessed. It also says that restrictions narrowly targeted to protect the vulnerable will greatly ameliorate the number of deaths without causing the remainder problems.

              And you still haven’t accounted for the well-known, well-understood cases of morbidity and mortality from severe economic dislocation – and the only thin unknown about this economic dislocation is just how much worse it will be than the Great Depression. Those effects will swamp those form the disease itself, and that is totally iatrogenic.

              We don’t kill economies for the seasonal flu. We killed ours for this, and we will be paying the cost for years.

              Enough of this crap. Herd immunity now!

              1. The records back to 2010 are on that website. In that whole period, the worst week was 16,237 deaths. Only four weeks were over 14,000 in ten and a quarter years.

                But yes, if you pick the right year’s seasonal flu, this is “just the flu”. Look at 1918’s, and it’s fairly light. (Of course, we pretty much did shut down the economy for that one in a lot of places, despite being far poorer and coming off the worst war in human history…)

                And no, the 1% number is based on random sampling. The official death rate is just over 7%, based on the ratio of deaths to official cases. The ratio of deaths to closed cases is a whopping 18%. So we’re already applying a pretty huge adjustment factor for hidden cases to get to 1%. I won’t swear to that number on a stack of Bibles, but 0.5% seems extremely low. Diamond Princess, for example, had 13 deaths on 712 cases(1.83%), and everybody on board got tested quite rigorously.

                As for economic mortality, I’m quite aware of its existence. But it’s far smaller than the toll of unchecked coronavirus, probably by at least an order of magnitude. I expect the economic death toll to be lower than the actual coronavirus death toll, even with all these social distancing measures. (Remember, it’s already killed about a quarter of a million people. The daily death toll at peak was almost a 9/11 per day. And we’re sure as hell not at herd immunity yet.)

          2. Here’s the problem with your thinking; We have a thing called the case/fatality ratio. That is, how many of the people who test positive actually die. But what we don’t know, because of the poor testing numbers, is the ratio of the population that will die; obviously this number is different than the case/fatality ratio because not everyone is going to get sick.

            But how do we know our ratio of deaths in the total population is correct? That’s the $64,000 question. With poor testing we don’t know how may COVID-19 deaths we’re missing. That is, if someone couldn’t get tested, then died of “the flu” or “pneumonia” in April, how can we know whether the person died of COVID-19 or not? At some point we’re going to have to look at flu/pneumonia numbers for 2020 and see if they’re much higher than they should be, not to mention the rate of comorbidities; that is, if someone dies of stroke due to pulmonary embolism caused by Corona Virus, and that person wasn’t tested…

            In short, we may have a lot of false-negatives when it comes to causes of death! If you’re talking about “herd immunity” and you don’t have enough testing you don’t know how many people – what percentage of the population – you’re condemning to death in the cause of herd immunity!

            How confident are you about rolling those dice?

            Before you answer, note the following link:

            https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

            …which will take you to the John Hopkins Corona Virus dashboard. If you look under the map you’ll see that you can click the arrow and bring up the case/fatality ratio, which ranges from .81 percent in South Dakota to 8.32 percent in New York – somewhere between 3 million and 30 million deaths if you’re wrong about false negatives and the ratio of deaths for the population as a whole.

            1. “If you’re talking about “herd immunity” and you don’t have enough testing you don’t know how many people – what percentage of the population – you’re condemning to death in the cause of herd immunity!”

              WE. DO. NOT. HAVE. A. CHOICE!!!!!

              There are exactly two things that will stop this pandemic:
              1) Herd immunity.
              2) A widely deployed, effective vaccine.

              The second choice will take us at least a year, more realistically 18 months.

              Not even the most wild-eyed Stalinist – for that is what it takes to pick this option – can realistically think the people of the United States will remain locked down for the year to 18 months it will take for option 2 to become available. (“The peasants are revolting!” “Yeah, they stink on ice! Woof!”)

              So either you get what it takes to get to herd immunity, or you get armed revolt. Pick one. There is no door number three.

              1. Option 3: short sharp lockdown (3-4 weeks) followed by testing, contact tracing, mobility restrictions, and if need targeted regional lockdowns.

                First phase aims to dramatically reduce total cases, second phase only needs to keep R < 1.

                See Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand. Maybe even Germany, Astria, Czech Republic.

                1. There are two other things that could work. The first would be a good palliative, something that works on Corona Virus like AZT works on AIDS.

                  The second is “flattening the curve.” I’m not sure Jay ever heard/saw a good explanation, so I’ll try to explain it. Imagine a community in a midwestern state with a small hospital that only has 10 ICU beds, all badly needed by Corona Virus patients. What happens when someone comes in after a heart-attack, stroke, or bad burn? Guess what, there now aren’t enough ICU beds for everyone and someone dies.

                  Now imagine that people in this town are staying at home, wearing masks when they go outside, etc. Now we’ve brought the number of Corona Virus cases that need ICU beds down to six, and there are ICU beds for other people who need them. (This is what the stories about heart-attack victims in New York are all about – they didn’t flatten the curve quickly enough.)

                  I also see that you mentioned testing and contact tracing. This is where the Trump Administration really screwed up, and it’s the reason why we’re all “sheltering in place” right now. Trump did not push testing and contact tracing the way he should. (He was getting intelligence briefs on COVID-19 as early as January 3rd., and his adminstration blew it badly in other ways as well.)

              1. If you read the notes on that page:

                Provisional death counts may not match counts from other sources, such as media reports or numbers from county health departments. Our counts often track 1–2 weeks behind other data for a number of reasons:

                Death certificates take time to be completed. There are many steps involved in completing and submitting a death certificate. Waiting for test results can create additional delays.

                States report at different rates. Currently, 63% of all U.S. deaths are reported within 10 days of the date of death, but there is significant variation among jurisdictions.

                It takes extra time to code COVID-19 deaths. While 80% of deaths are electronically processed and coded by NCHS within minutes, most deaths from COVID-19 must be coded manually, which takes an average of 7 days.

                Other reporting systems use different definitions or methods for counting deaths.

                I don’t think anything was removed from the data. It’s just lagging.

              1. See above where I post some objections to those studies; short version, they were heavily criticized and one of the doctors has published an editorial on the subject prior to undertaking the study.

                1. I’m not talking about the antibody studies.

                  There is no plausible scenario where real cases are close to known cases. This point was part of the reason for why we supposedly had to lock everything down. And it matches what we know happened in China (for whatever Chinese numbers you happen to believe).

                  1. “There is no plausible scenario where real cases are close to known cases.”

                    I’m not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that the number of real cases and the number of reported cases don’t match?

                    1. There are a very large number of people who get infected, are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, and are not tested.

        3. > social distancing,

          I assume you mean the magic 6’/2m number the soi disant “experts” pulled out of their ass. In which case:
          > implying that Wuhan coronavirus can magically jump 6′ from an infected person

          > wearing masks,

          As someone else said earlier in the thread, all that does is prevent infected sputum from spreading out, and the virus with it. Also, I’m not even sure masks are necessary outside; sunlight kills the virus. If masks are needed anywhere, it’s inside.

          Which brings me to:

          > staying inside when/where possible

          Yes, because packing people together in close quarters is the best way to prevent spreading the virus. Oh wait…

          In fact, viruses spread faster indoors than outdoors. Wuhan coronavirus is no different. The right thing to do, then, is not to confine and isolate everybody, but only the old and infirm.

          1. If you’re inside with hundreds of people, yes. If you’re inside with three others (like I am), then it’s something fairly close to herd immunity.

        4. > and staying inside when/where possible keeps people safe?

          That’s just it, it *DOES NOT KEEP PEOPLE SAFE*. It merely changes the risks they are exposed to.

          One of the (allegedly at this point) risks for serious complications from the Wuhan Virus is low blood serum vitamin D. You get that (best) from being outside in the sunlight. How many kids are locked in crowded apartments and tiny homes unable to get outside and do what kids NEED to do.

          One family I know is a single mom with three kids “on the spectrum”. She is very poor–worked in in-home health care–and they live in a small apartment. That’s got to be fucking HELL on their mental health.

          I lost a filling week before last. Can’t get into a dentist until I’m either in pain, or experience swelling. You know the link between dental plaque and arterial plaque, right? This lockdown IS RISKING MY HEALTH.

          Lots of “elective” surgeries have been cancelled. Elective doesn’t mean “unnecessary” it just means “you need to get this done when you can”. How many people are you putting at risk because they can’t get corrective surgeries now?

          How many people (especially older people) can’t get to the gym to do their physical therapy/exercise that make EVERYTHING in life easier?

          Doctors and nursers are being laid off and/or furoloughed because they AREN’T ALLOWED TO SEE PATIENTS. How many people are not going to get their Type II diabetes diagnosed for another three months and now much MORE damage will that do to their bodies? How many people won’t get their thyroid conditions sorted out in that time etc. etc.

          How many people (raises hand) are out of work and very stressed out about paying their bills, and what does long term stress do to the body?

          No, this isn’t making *anyone* safe, it’s just pushing the risks around so that they can tank the economy and hand the presoidency to whomever is chosen as Biden’s VP.

          1. One of the (allegedly at this point) risks for serious complications from the Wuhan Virus is low blood serum vitamin D

            High vitamin D is a such an effective broad-spectrum antiviral that you no more need a study to detect it than you need a study to determine the effect of a guillotine. N=1 is more than sensitive enough.

  27. All this speculation about armed revolt should consider a few things.

    1) Democrats, the media, and other parts of the Left would love to have their opponents start shooting. They would be portrayed as the Nazi White Supremacist Haters the left never shuts up about. The public optics would be terrible. Look how much mileage they got out of Charlottesville. Hell, probably 40% of the country still thinks “Trump said Nazis were fine people” even though that has been thoroughly debunked. If protestors got violent, probably 70%+ of the country would be against whatever the Nazi White Supremacist Haters said they wanted. No amount of pointing to the Constitution would make a difference. Barring a series of government offense far worse than we see now, armed revolt is an almost impossible PR challenge to overcome.

    2) The Left knows this, so I would not be surprised if they had some agents provocateur in the mix, advocating violence. And of course FBI agents, perhaps doing the same thing.

    1. This leftist is insulted that you think I’d like to see a bunch of yahoos start shooting. I’d like to see a bunch of yahoos educate themselves and explain to the Michigan legislature that they WILL receive help, both medical and economic, or the legislature will be looking for new jobs soon!

      1. Thinking people on both sides would prefer to defenestrate their enemies from the Overton Window without any shooting, thus winning a Sun Tzu style victory of supreme excellence. Much of the face-making and saber-rattling is maneuvering in an attempt to achieve this.

        If shooting can’t be avoided, there’s a big propaganda advantage in being able to paint the other side as the aggressors. The left has a large provocateur and propagandist advantage here, and it’s a given that they will use it. The debate on the right is how much we should limit and hobble ourselves in a possibly-unsuccessful attempt to avoid the propaganda hit, vs just taking the propaganda hit and carrying on.

        I’d like to see a bunch of yahoos educate themselves and explain to the Michigan legislature that they WILL receive help, both medical and economic, or the legislature will be looking for new jobs soon!

        You would like your political enemies to play the mugs game that ends with them losing and becoming good little leftist peasants. Of course you would; just like I’d like to see you and all the other leftists just give in, shut up, and accept political irrelevance.

      2. I assume he meant that it’d be tactically useful to the left, not that lefties would be genuinely happy to see it. (At least, I sure hope that’s what he meant)

        1. Not all, but many would be genuinely happy. There was plenty of leftist glee about the death in Charlottesville because it vindicated their worldview and gave them a martyr and propaganda victory.

        2. I’m really against a civil war, even though I’m sure the right-wing side would lose. (I spent a very interesting couple of months watching the Romance Writers of America blow itself to bits between December and February. The argument was racial/class-based in nature with the standard Conservative vs. Liberal tropes playing out, and two things were obvious. The first is that the conservatives/racists who previously ran the RWA got beaten to a bloodly pulp. The second is that it was really, really bad for the organization as a whole, including multiple local chapters leaving the organization) Taking both parts of the lesson to heart, I’d rather not, thank you, not even a little bit!

          1. Why do you think the right-wing side would lose? Hint: Which side believes that the Second Amendment means what it says about “shall not be infringed”, and which side do you think the average soldier is on?

          2. even though I’m sure the right-wing side would lose

            Seriously? The USA is rather different from the RWA. In this country, the right-wingers have most of the guns and hold the territory where most of the food, water, and power comes from. How long could the leftist cities hold out without those things?

            1. I’m not so sanguine. Historically, the left has a great deal of expertise in killing large numbers of people. My bet would be on the right winning a bitter Pyrrhic victory, but the uncertainty is very large.

              And I hope like hell that Troutwaxer isn’t really confusing the difference between what happened with the RWA and a hot civil war with people shot dead and their bodies lying in pools of their own blood. What happened with the RWA might be considered part of the ongoing cold civil war, but compared to an actual shooting war it was just a polite book-club discussion that got a bit heated.

              1. Historically, the left has a great deal of expertise in killing large numbers of unarmed people.

                Fixed it for you.

                1. They’re better at that, of course, but they’ve also won a fair number of civil wars in the last century or so. The left might not be so pro-gun as the right (at least, not before a war is looking likely), but they tend to be much better organized.

              2. The problems for the Right in all this are population numbers and non-White concerns over White Conservative racism. Let a bunch of white people in Michigan start ACW II, and they will instantly find that they’ve lost everyone else. They’ll lose all the White Liberals, plus the LGBTQ people. They’ll lose the Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Pagans, etc; not to mention the Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. This means that the Conservatives who care enough to start ACW II will be heavily outnumbered, with something like 70 percent of the U.S. population instantly aligned against them. Many of them – Blacks and Hispanics in particular – will be fairly Conservative themselves, but will choose the other side due to concerns over White Conservative racism.

                I don’t think the White Conservatives who are talking about the Boogaloo really get the population numbers. This is exactly what happened to the RWA, and why I think the RWA blow-up is a good case study.

                The RWA is run out of Texas, and prior to February the director of the organization was a Nice Conservative White Woman, (unless you happened to be not-White, in which case she wasn’t very nice at all, at least from what I’ve read.) The higher-ups in the organization tended heavily White, and when the blow-up happened they discovered that they didn’t understand the demographics of their organization very well, because all the White Liberals, the Hispanics, the Blacks, the LGBTQ people – everyone I mentioned above – all lined up against them.

                I’m going to provide a link, but I must warn you that following the link, and then following all the links in that link will take you down a very deep rabbit hole.

                https://www.claireryanauthor.com/blog/2019/12/27/the-implosion-of-the-rwa

                If you’d rather skip the rabbit hole, look up the demographics of all the various groups I’ve mentioned above and imagine how the politics would run. (I’ll also note that a lot of Liberals are quietly arming themselves, because the current Conservative movement has them badly spooked.)

                I had an excellent opportunity to tool up a couple years ago and didn’t take it, because one of the people who lived in my household at the time wasn’t someone I could trust around guns – but I would have had a very nice little stash…

                I don’t plan to deeply debate this particular sub-issue and may not reply to anyone who posts beneath this post, but I did want to acquaint you with my thinking on the subject and suggest a couple places to look for further information.

                1. The only reason that people are concerned about white conservative racism (look how easily that rolls off your tongue! Your elitist masters must be proud.) is that the MSM has whipped them into a frenzy about it exactly as Hitler whipped Germany into a frenzy over the Jews.

                  Here’s a free clue for you: the vast majority of conservatives are less racist than the leftist elites. We believe that anyone can succeed if they work at it, and that everyone should be allowed to try. We’re not racist enough to think that black people are so feeble that they can only succeed with the forcible suppression of the majority by Big Government.

                  LGBTQ people? Not all of them are leftists, despite the picture the MSM paints otherwise. (Hint: Check out the Pink Pistols. They’re not a bunch of leftists. The gun grabbers have well and truly driven them off.)
                  Black people? You’re ignoring the Blexit movement, of black people who are tired of living on Nancy Pelosi’s plantation and being taken for granted by the leftist elites, just as you have.
                  Hispanics? They’re a lot more conservative than you think.

                  1. Jay, the question isn’t “which side really is racist and which side really is not?”

                    The question is “How do the historical suspicions and concerns play out when choosing sides in a possible ACW-2?”

                    A Black conservative, for example, may agree that it’s a good idea to make laws against LGBTQ marriage and that this is worth fighting a war over, but also ask themselves, “If we win, what are White Conservatives going to do about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments?” then reluctantly decide to join the Liberal side or sit out the war because the results of being wrong about those amendments is much too big a risk to take.

                    How you feel about the idea that Conservatives are racist is irrelevant to the Black Conservative’s decision about which side to join.

                    1. Any actual black conservative knows that nobody in the right wing of US politics will touch the 13th, 14th, or 15th Amendments, because he’s found out what conservatives really are like, as opposed to the bogeyman version the media present to him.

                      If you’re thinking of black people who would be conservative, if not for the constant propaganda fed them by the media … well, I rather think seeing Leftist governments descend into bullying incompetence will undeceive them.

                    2. I won’t even bother to find links that contradict you – much too easy and a terrific waste of my time.

                2. They’ll lose all the White Liberals, plus the LGBTQ people.

                  They’ll lose the “Liberal” LGBTQs… but you already counted them. I don’t think there’s any reason for them to lose the ordinary gays who, not being “Liberals”, don’t feel the need to make a big identity-politics song and dance about their private lives.

                  They’ll lose the Jews

                  Now this claim you’ve got no excuse for — OGH has written about Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, the Nazi gun laws, and how never-again impacts on 2A thinking.

                  Pagans, etc

                  They might lose the woo-woo fluffy bunnies. But those are the same White “Liberals” you already counted at the start. May I remind you that OGH is a Pagan?

                  not to mention the Blacks

                  Because, as we all know, Blacks never carry guns. Especially in situations where they view the police as an invading army.

                  (I wonder if The Waxer is aware that gun-control in the US started out in the South as a racist policy to disarm free blacks?)

                  will choose the other side due to concerns over White Conservative racism.

                  Anyone who’s not already a fully-paid-up-and-lobotomised member of the Left can tell the difference between “White Conservatives” and, y’know, actual racists. With the latter, you don’t need to hyperventilate over ‘dog-whistles’; it turns out that racists are pretty damn obvious, because they go around saying on record things like “$ethnic_group are a corrupting influence on human purity” or, if they happen to be Left-inclined, “evil $ethnics are controlling finance and the media from behind the scenes to further their sinister plot for world domination”. (Compare the evidence for anti-semitism in the UK Labour party to the “evidence” for Trump racism, say, and you’ll see very different standards of proof being applied.)

                  I don’t plan to deeply debate this particular sub-issue and may not reply to anyone who posts beneath this post

                  Translation: “I know I’m full of shit, so I’m gonna precommit to ignoring anyone who calls me out on it.”

                  1. It’s like Sad Puppies but for bodice rippers.

                    The conservative/racist Sad Puppies were beaten to a pulp, too.

                    1. I tried going through your link about the RWA thing, though frankly it’s super-long and I only got to the end of August 2019 and then skimmed a bit.

                      But from what I see, it’s the usual airy “You’re a racist because I say you are!” and “You support Trump? Anti-semite!” bullshit. There’s no actual evidence of racism in the bits I saw, besides one person’s say-so.

                      If you have a shorter summary, I’d be curious to see the left-hand side of this, but what you’ve shown me so far leaves me pretty skeptical.

                      Also, I wouldn’t scream too hard if you anted to call the Rabid Puppies…well, rabid. But the Sad Puppies were mostly about what kind of stories they wanted the genre to focus on. That’s not racist. It’s not even especially conservative, for that matter. (Eric Flint’s a commie and generally well-liked by the Sad Puppies, for example)

                  2. I’m not particularly concerned about the question of which side was/is right. But watching it play out was a real lesson in how people lined up and took sides.

  28. The First Amendment, a look of frustration on his face, mutters, “I can’t believe it’s come to this, I didn’t want to come here. I’m tired of running damage control every time he makes a mess.”

    “Right,” sighs the Second Amendment, “you’re the control and if that fails, I’m the damage.”

    (actually an excerpt from Doom 3 of 2004, where Jack Campbell (the mercenary/bodyguard) is talking to Elliot Swann (the lawyer/investigator acting on behalf of Union Aerospace Corporation’s Board of Directors).)

  29. Breaking out from several comments above.

    From a comment by Alsadius Here:

    > In other words … If you do the thing we dislike, we will shoot you to death.

    You can make anything sound like anything if you’re enough of a reductionist ass about it. Example:

    “I am going to break your bones, rape your wife and children, and feed them to my dogs,” says the dangerous psychopath.

    “Having made your threat, if you make any move towards that action, I will stop you with lethal force if necessary,” says the man being threatened.

    You then come along and tut-tut the threatened man, explaining how his logic is just “if you do this thing I don’t like, I will shoot you to death” and declare that the man would then be a murderer, as though reducing the argument that far is in any way fucking honest. That is what you are doing now. You are upset that citizens are genuinely willing to defend their lives liberty and property when threatened. Fuck you, tyrannical prick.

    Note how I’ve used something you actually said when referring to you, like a sane person.

    > Also, that last paragraph sounds like some of Ayn Rand’s dumber opinions. “If you do not agree with me on literally everything, you’re just a commie who deserves to die in a train crash. Any amount of bad makes everything completely awful and irredeemable.”

    Please, keep openly pretending I’m saying things that you yourself are making up. It really helps your credibility.

    From a comment by Alsadius Here:

    > You don’t see a difference between political assassination on one hand and a cop who gets freaked out and goes for his gun while enforcing silly laws on the other.
    > But I’m the one with brain damage. Right.

    Hey, look at you, changing shit and pretending I said something I didn’t again. You just keep doing it!

    Politicians, legislators, make the laws. Those laws are passed with the implicit knowledge that they will be enforced with threat of death. Law enforcers are the executors of that threat, but it is the legislators making it. They are equally culpable. Your logic is apparently that the people giving the orders are not responsible, only the people carrying them out. That is ridiculous.

    > I was probably this bad of an internet tough guy when I was 18, but it seems like most ESR readers are old enough to have kids that age. What’s your excuse?

    I’m a sixth-generation Texan of Scottish ancestry by way of Ireland.

    That you think I’m being an “internet tough guy” is fricken hilarious. I’m being friendly, if highly annoyed at your constant cries of “murderer!”

    > I mean seriously, I’ve seen less pigheaded revolutionary bravado from people who …

    Seriously? That’s kinda cool. I’m just having a conversation.

    1. Again, “If you do the thing we dislike, we will shoot you to death” can be justified. Your example is one case where it would be. But it requires justification, and a pretty high level thereof. My concern is that a) I don’t think your side is meeting that standard, and b) I think you’re really glossing over just how ugly this approach will get in practice if someone were to actually pull the trigger.

      1. And in all of this you are ignoring or have forgotten how someone gets into public office.

        The Constitution is written in plain language, anyone may read it. If one has doubts about the true intent behind any part the Founders left numerous documents explaining that in detail, which are also open for anyone to read.

        People taking public office swear oaths regarding their duties as a public official. “Defend against all enemies foreign and domestic” is not just some amusing and quirky cultural cliche.

        The upshot of this is that you can not enter public office and have any excuse for not knowing what your job is. These people went in accepting that there were certain lines they are never allowed to cross on pain of removal from office or death, usually while campaigning on crossing exactly those lines.

        If someone enlists in the military (not drafted; enlists), spends his time in the enlistment waiting room, and boot camp, and when deployed, about how he can’t wait to be an officer who can order the troops under him to fire on civilians. And then, upon reaching a rank where he can give orders he issues that order. This piece of trash has no business complaining if one of his subordinates immediately turns their gun on him and sends him straight to the hell he so richly deserves. Or if lucky enough to not be immediately killed, that he is dragged in front of a court martial.

        Of course the big joke is that our politicians do not care about their responsibilities; they blatantly behave as though it is just some wacky meaningless rituals they have to perform to get the power that is theirs by right.

            1. Experiments in physics are both simple and repeatable. If the same were true in politics, we’d have a lot less need for debate.

              1. Stop being obtuse.

                Parts of the Constitution that politicians campaign on violating are written in extremely clear and simple language. Language so clear that you have to warp the very grammar of the language it is written in to make it not say what it says.

                Claiming that “it’s just a disagreement bro” is no less silly than claiming my trajectory off a cliff is a matter of opinion.

  30. > https://xkcd.com/1138/

    So a map of the geographic distribution of coronavirus in Michigan is as irrelevant to a discussion of the geographic distribution of coronavirus in Michigan as a Martha Stewart fan club map? Here I thought you held a position that I happened to disagree strongly with but that you were at least attempting to present with some semblance of intellectual honesty. Thanks so much for so clearly demonstrating the seriousness with which you are willing to consider arguments contrary to your own.

    > Also, remember that rural areas get hit later in pandemics, because it takes time for diseases to spread away from dense hubs, but they don’t typically get hit any less.

    Obviously I’m wasting my time at this point, but in case anyone else gives a shit, it already IS later, as the CNN crowd is so fond of lambasting Trump for. Those little towns haven’t been shielded by some Land That Time Forgot effect that will totally break down if they drop their own state’s magical lockdown (if any). Yes, the big cities saw a huge rampup from nearly nothing to frighteningly large numbers in a few weeks from late March onward. (To paraphrase Gru, yes, I went to kindergarten, I know how exponential functions work.) Lockdowns are totally appropriate there, and in neighboring areas / states, because of the large numbers of people normally going in and out.

    But how many tourists from NYC normally go to some random tiny town in Montana? How many Detroiters normally spend their weekends on this guy’s milk farm in the UP? Why is all of the intellectual energy on this devoted to the false dichotomy of “open everything especially the cities” or “shut everything down including Farmer Dan who lives a hundred miles from anyone”?

    One lockdown to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them!

    1. Your map above is absolute numbers mapped over area. That is a profoundly useless way to map population data. Per capita is the only meaningful measure for something like that. And I’m sure you’d be happy to point that out if someone told you that the US has the most deaths in the world and therefore Trump fucked up somehow.

      FWIW, I did test per-capita numbers, and Wayne County (Detroit) was about twice as high, per capita, as the other other counties I tested semi-randomly. But even if it was half as high, you wouldn’t be able to tell it from a look at the map you linked. “Detroit has the most people with ___ in Michigan” is a really unimpressive statement, in any context.

      On policy grounds, I agree with you. Lockdowns in big cities with mass transit should obviously look different than lockdowns in rural areas. But that doesn’t change how diseases spread. Let’s say that nobody from NYC visits backwoods Michigan. But they visit Detroit, and Detroit gets sick. People from Detroit visit Grand Rapids, and Grand Rapids gets sick. Then someone from the sticks visits Grand Rapids to pick up a new truck from the dealership, and they bring coronavirus home. Then it gets passed around the grocery store in the local small town.

      This takes time, which is why rural areas will get sick slower. At any given time they’ll have fewer cases. But their physiology is the same as us urban-dwellers, and unless they stick it out to the point of herd immunity (like American Samoa did by cutting off the rest of the world from 1918-20), they will catch it at some point.

      The goal of all these distancing measures is to keep the spread rate low enough that hospitals don’t get overwhelmed. That applies just as much in small towns as in big cities – perhaps more, if they have less in the way of hospital beds. So even if the details can and should differ, the broad strokes will mostly stay the same.

      1. The logical goal is to keep the infection (and thus hospitalization) rate low enough to be just below the medical system’s capacity.

        We are so far below capacity that hospitals are running into financial troubles because they are keeping everything in reserve for the surge which will happen any……. week…….. now………..

        1. Can you cite a source for that? Or multiple sources.

          I wanna do further research, because Greg Abbott also said something similar about the situation in Texas.

          Also I’m firmly convinced that a few stats (NY, NJ, CA, MI, MA)
          are hiding recovery numbers. I’m in Texas and our total recoveries are more than half of the total number of confirmed cases (not including the 1500 or so people who are hospitalized)

          However, New York has barely any recoveries! I call bull doodoo

          1. I suspect all kinds of bad record-keeping, of the following kinds. My list below is in no particular order:

            1.) As you said, not tracking recoveries. I don’t regard this as a terrible sin, but consider that the normal course of COVID-19 seems to be five or six weeks, and that being officially “recovered” may be a matter of being retested. (Five weeks ago there were 165,000 cases in the U.S., so many of the cases probably aren’t over.) I’d also guess that in places where there are a lot of cases tracking recoveries is not something anyone is putting a lot of time into.

            This COVID-19 tracker shows 178,000 people having recovered in the U.S., so maybe they’re not doing as badly as you’d think.

            https://ncov2019.live/data

            2.) Inadequate testing. This is the big sin of COVID-19 in the U.S., and goes back to the Trump Administrations major failing. The way to avoid lockdowns was to do testing and contact tracing as early as possible, like the South Koreans, and we’re still not seeing enough tests to go around. I suspect we all know of someone who for one reason or another should have been tested and wasn’t. :-(

            3.) Inadequate diagnosis of COVID-19 as the cause of death. I suspect that in February and March in particular there are a lot of deaths by “flu,” “pneumonia,” or possibly “stroke” that should have been enumerated as Corona Virus deaths. Unfortunately, the only way to prove those is to do statistical analysis of the number of deaths, and the epidemiologists currently have other priorities. This may well be going on in smaller, rural hospitals where they don’t have the necessary resources to do good testing.

            4.) Deaths which are COVID-19 related by not directly caused by COVID-19; that is, the heart-attack that got triaged out of an ICU bed because a COVID-19 patient was using the ventilator and the heart-attack patient thereby died.

            5.) Permanent injuries due to COVID-19. We know that one of the things Corona Virus does is cause blood clots, and frequently in the lungs, not to mention the possibility of secondary infections. We probably won’t have good data on what happens to a COVID-19 patient who spends two weeks on a ventilator for months, but I’m guessing it won’t be pretty.

          2. >Can you cite a source for that? Or multiple sources.

            The Mayo Clinic (the best hospital in the country) expects to loose $3 billion this year. They recently made everyone take a 7-20% paycut to reduce it to a mere $1.6 billion loss.

            Even in NYC, our surge hospital capacity (the navy hospital ship) stood down due to lack of need.

            https://www.twincities.com/2020/04/10/facing-3b-loss-mayo-clinic-announces-payroll-spending-cuts-for-remainder-of-2020/

            1. And their clinic group has shuttered multiple small rural clinics across Minnesota and Wisconsin, ostensibly to concentrate their resources on their hospitals (one of which I live less than a mile away from).

          3. >> We are so far below capacity that hospitals are running into financial troubles because they are keeping everything in reserve for the surge which will happen any……. week…….. now………..

            > Can you cite a source for that? Or multiple sources.

            I can offer my personal anectdatum. A housemate was working at a hospital under a contract-to-hire arrangement. He was well liked by his manager, and had made a number of observations on how the tech infrastructure at the hospital could be improved and modernized to make it easier for the doctors and nurses to do their jobs, and was backing his ideas up with numbers instead of just spitballing. Two weeks ago, he was laid off, over the protest of his manager, because the upper management had decided a blanket Terminate All Contractors was the best way to address the budget shortage.

            1. I can’t speak to the cited example. In many institutions it’s not a matter of in reserve it’s a matter of clearing space both specialized and in the corridors for general isolation. Still true in a general sense. For contractor layoffs the general rule is that labor contracts and certainly union contracts will provide that no bargaining group employee can be laid off while there are still contractors -non-union – working. This implies for companies like Boeing that the contractor is laid off, followed by union members, followed by returning contractors, followed by grievances.

        2. Yup. I mean, not everywhere – NYC might actually be overwhelmed a bit – but in most places in the US that’s true.

          Despite the fact that I’ve been arguing with you guys a lot in this thread, I probably agree with you ~80% on policy measures for dealing with coronavirus. It’s really just the “killing legislators” thing that I’m arguing against.

      2. > Your map above

        Not MY map, you numpty, a map of the Health Department of the State of Michigan.

        > is absolute numbers mapped over area. That is a profoundly useless way to map population data

        You could write Ms. Whitmer and tell her that. I gotta say I really don’t get your argument though. If you have a huge chunk of land in rural Michigan with only 1 or 2 cases — the most-pale blue areas I mentioned — and there are only 4 people in that county, then OMG that would be a fifty percent infection rate, and OMG that would be way worse than Detroit, jenkies!

        Um, no, we would still only be talking about 4 people, and you would have to stretch pretty hard to claim that’s somehow a bigger problem than the infections in the _cities_ making up both the bulk of the infections (as shown in the map) and the bulk of the state population (as shown by Well _Duh_). Yes, per capita is great when someone is saying something dumb like “Oh dear look how many more absolute cases the US has than Leichtenstein! How horrible we are!” If you really want to claim that one of those rural counties actually has a huge per capita rate not reflected on the map due to some weird local population density effect, and also think you can back that up, be my guest.

        > Let’s say that nobody from NYC visits backwoods Michigan. But they visit Detroit, and Detroit gets sick. People from Detroit visit Grand Rapids, and Grand Rapids gets sick. Then someone from the sticks visits Grand Rapids to pick up a new truck from the dealership, and they bring coronavirus home. Then it gets passed around the grocery store in the local small town.

        No, they don’t, not if the big cities that are precisely the ones that NEED to stay locked down actually STAY locked down, until such time as they don’t need to be any more. That doesn’t necessarily imply that the farms and tiny town need to take the same measures. (When the CNN reporter was visiting those tiny little towns in Wyoming and Montana etc, he had a mask on, and the masked local health official also masked was following him like a hawk making sure he kept the mask on and kept his distance from the locals: “You’re the one here most likely to put us in danger.”) That’s exactly what I meant when I asked why so many are treating this as a false dichotomy; why do Cuomo and Whitmer et al feel a need to keep the _whole_ state closed indefinitely? Why is Trump necessarily a loony for asking which _parts_ of the economy (ie which locales) can be reopened, and when, and to what extent?

        (Not that I’m disagreeing with Trump having “fucked up” in various ways mind you. But I’m asking about this specific policy issue here.)

        1. Yes, and it’s not something you “said”, because you typed it. Do you really want me to write my comments like a lawyer?

          Your original claim was that basically all of the cases were in big cities, and therefore the smaller centres didn’t need to worry. (Or something in that vein – you weren’t explicit about the “therefore…”, but it sure sounded like you were saying that a lower response was justified since less concern was needed). You seem to be doubling down on that here as well, given your 4-person county example.

          Over 97% of the world’s coronavirus deaths are outside of Belgium, so does that mean they don’t need to worry? Because telling the worst-hit country not to worry is a bit of an odd outcome from your logic.

          FWIW, I agree that there should be some gap in responses, if only because of public transit and large venues. And in the samples I checked, the worst hit areas per capita were indeed the big cities. But the gap was way smaller than the map implied at first glance. In general, I’d prefer that sources which can easily mislead be prefaced with a note so that it’s clear you’re not trying to sneak one by.

          Seeing what can be re-opened is good sense at this point. As with most things Trump does, his words are batshit crazy, but his actions aren’t nearly so bad.

          1. Google says Belgium has a population density of 991 people per square mile, and that Michigan has a population density of 177 people per square mile. That’s 177 without me attempting to exclude Detroit and the other large cities. So no, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if someone actually considered it prudent to apply slightly different policies despite the otherwise vast similarities between rural Michigan and Belgium.

            The rural areas depicted on the MDHHS map have generally low populations, low population densities, and extremely low incidences of the virus despite it having been in the nation for nearly four months now. I’m honestly not clear just what you are claiming is misleading about the MDHHS map, let alone how I could be trying to “sneak one by”.

            > therefore the smaller centres didn’t need to worry.
            I’m actually saying that this was not a crowd of gun-toting nightclub owners storming in from Detroit. I’m also saying that a farmer out in deep rural Michigan ought to have some say in weighing the risks of catching the virus from such a nightclub owner versus *losing* the farm he owns and depends on for supporting his family. But you’ve already got a great track record here telling people what they really mean, so don’t let me slow you down.

  31. I’m going to try to make my second point about the top post here. Hopefully the site will let me post something long and link-filled; it seems to be fighting me pretty hard when it comes to copying-and-pasting something I wrote in an editor. Anyway, I’ll stop complaining about the spam filter and let fly…

    One of the problems with the top post is the question of “what should have happened.” That is, what if we had a competent president in office and a pandemic was beginning. The answer here is obvious: We’d do lots of testing and contact tracing, and make sure people traveling from China, Iran and Italy are not allowed to enter the country. (Those three countries were the worst hit back in February.)

    But the testing and contact tracing is what’s important here. Start early enough, back when there are no more than a hundred known cases and test and trace contracts aggressively, and you don’t have to shut down the country. This is what South Korea did, and you can read about the details here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_South_Korea

    South Korea currently has 10,801 cases of COVID-19 and has experienced only 252 deaths.This is with a population of 51.7 million people; approximately 1/6 the population of the U.S. I’ll bet their economy is working just fine!

    So why didn’t we do the same thing? The simple fact of the matter is that the Trump Administration screwed the pooch, and you can read all the details at the link below. Here’s a sample:

    JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2020

    –U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

    The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

    For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.

    But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.

    You can read the whole timeline here:

    https://jmillersexcerpts.blogspot.com/2020/04/timeline-of-coronavirus-pandemic-and-us.html

    I’d really suggest reading the whole thing. If your information sources are poor it’s a revelation. Just in case that link doesn’t satisfy, I brought more…

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-pandemic-response-was-hindered-by-missed-opportunities-ignored-warnings-2020-04-12

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/how-many-warnings-did-trump-ignore/610846/

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/03/coronavirus-officials-warned-last-year-about-pandemic-threat/

    https://www.vox.com/2020/4/12/21218305/trump-ignored-coronavirus-warnings

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/navarro-warning-trump-coronavirus.html

    https://www.wired.com/story/an-oral-history-of-the-pandemic-warnings-trump-ignored/

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/28/21239663/coronavirus-presidential-daily-intelligence-briefing

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/trump-received-coronavirus-warnings-daily-intelligence-briefings-pdb

    What should be obvious, if you’ve followed a couple of the links above and read them carefully, (or just paid minimal attention to a news source other than Faux) is that the screw up was immense, not merely screwing the pooch, but fucking the poor dog so hard it died bleeding from multiple orifices. In short, Trump was utterly incompetent and foolish, breaking everything that could have fixed the COVID-19 situation.

    At the most basic level, what the states have done in issuing lockdown orders, is try to fix the problem caused by Trump refusing to do testing and contact tracing as early and hard as possible. If he’d followed the South Korean model iI think we’d have something like 1300 deaths and 55,000 cases right now. Instead we currently have 67,382 deaths and 1,158,040 confirmed cases in the U.S.

    So in light of this, why are a bunch of yahoos in Michigan going after their governor, who was left in an untenable situation by Trump? That’s easy! Because Trump told them to! He’s sending armed people (who are apparently too stupid or misinformed to wearing masks or practice social distancing) to intimidate one of the people who’s trying desperately to clean up the mess Trump himself made!

    And considered in this light, maybe the phrase in the top post, The protesters demonstrated and threatened just as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and other Founders expected and wanted citizens to demonstrate and threaten in like circumstances is (being diplomatic) just a little bit over the top. Do we really want to compare these deluded assholes to the Founding Fathers? I don’t fucking think so.

    I think we want to take the protestor’s guns away and send them to stand in the corner, then when they’ve calmed down, we can explain to them that their hero is actually a hell-spawned fuck-up and ask them whether they’re tired of winning yet? And maybe rub their faces in a few corpses… but maybe I’m being a little grumpy there.

    One of the big problems here, not acknowledged by the top post, is that the Governor of Michigan is a Democrat, and the legislature is run by Republicans. The Governor having done the smart thing by telling people not to go outside and mingle with the possibly-infected, I would hope that the legislature would follow-through on the good sense and help the people of Michigan with all the issues of collecting unemployment, paying the rent, etc. But I’m guessing they haven’t done that.

    But getting back to the gaslit and thoughtless protestors… If they had half a brain they’d be calling on their legislators to give them enough unemployment and health support to make it through the pandemic without losing their either their lives or their livelihood. They’d be shoving their muzzles into the face of some GOP-tard who insists that it’s OK if the people die so the economy can be revived and asking “Why do I have to go back to work as a waitress or beautician instead of having the state help me pay the rent so…” (cocks gun) “…I don’t fucking die?”

    The failure to either acknowledge or consider any of the issues I’ve written about above is why I found the top-post both offensive and extraordinarily clueless.

    1. I’m not about to follow your stack of hard-left sources all pushing the same Orange Man Bad narrative. My tolerance for The Atlantic and Vox is about one article a day before I start getting physically ill, and I’ve never seen any very good reason why I should pay to get past the NYT paywall. The whole testing and tracing thing is a red herring: you’re blaming Trump for the failures of the Deep State.

      We are far past the point where testing and tracing will do us any good. For one thing, that would call for a China-level surveillance state, something Americans who aren’t bicoastal elite leftists or their lower-class thralls won’t put up with. (The former, of course, are just fine with it; they want us to be China anyway, with them at the top running everyone’s lives cradle to grave, of course.) For another, how, exactly, do you plan to test 350 million people?

      And complaining about the lack of testing now is just plain silly. In all of that, none of your lefty idols are acknowledging that there is no way to stop this virus short of herd immunity – which they are doing their damned level best to stop and kill the economy dead in the process. They want power so bad that they won’t blanch at killing a hundred thousand Americans to get it. (Or less.)

      Of course, Trump stopped travel from China on January 31. For that, your lefty friends roundly excoriated him for being raaaaaciss, something none of them has ever retracted. There is no way he can do anything you will approve of, so why shouldn’t he raise his middle fingers to you all? I do.

      Any gaslighting here is being done by the MSM and the Democrats, who are telling us that we have to be penniless for the good of all and Big Government would save us if it weren’t for the nasty, eeeeevil Republicans. Hogwash. We know what we need to do, and how to do it, and who needs protecting and who doesn’t (how many nursing home deaths would there have been in New York if Andrew Cuomo hadn’t forced nursing homes to take in WuFlu patients?! Bet the MSM won’t be asking that question.) and why we don’t want a Big Government nanny state taking care of us with all of th strings that would come with it.

      1. You should both put aside the partisanship and the question of who to blame for later.

        On the actual issue (COVID), there are things you can do short of herd immunity, as other countries clearly demonstrate.

        Do you doubt that Singapore, hardly a left-wing place, will successfully control the virus? New Zealand?

        In fact, you don’t even need a super successful government; the Czech Republic is (at least so far) on its way to crush the curve while reopening their economy.

        1. Hong Kong is notably excluded from that list. Why? Because their initial success has been wiped out …people getting to herd immunity.

          No, the only way to stop the virus is to get either a vaccine or herd immunity. Anything else is just a delaying tactic.

          As for the partisanship, well, tell the Democrats who are trying to make sure our economy is not just destroyed int he present, but for decades to come, that.

          1. Jay, delaying tactics save lives. They do so three different ways.

            1.) They keep hospital services form being overwhelmed, and thus killing people who don’t have COVID-19.

            2.) They increase the number of people who will survive to be vaccinated.

            3.) They give time for a palliative to be invented. I’m not thrilled about taking the equivalent of AZT for a year, but the idea is preferable to dying.

            1. No, Jay is right, delaying tactics are nonsense. As are semi-serious but long lockdowns. It’s the worst of both worlds, economic damage + not even killing the virus.

              Better: short (3-4 week) but very strict lockdown. That crushes the curve. Add in universal mask wearing and limiting events to say <50 people to manage risk afterwards, while reopening the economy.

              Require travellers to quarantine for 14 days.

              You don't need perfect compliance. If you achieve R<1, the virus peters out naturally.

          2. tell the Democrats who are trying to make sure our economy is not just destroyed int he present, but for decades to come, that.

            Do you actually believe that’s their objective?

            1. > Do you actually believe that’s their objective?

              Given public anti-Trumpers’ expressed desire for an economy crash they can pin on him in hopes of winning 2020, yes. I mean, if we take them at their word.

          3. Hong Kong is notably excluded from that list. Why? Because their initial success has been wiped out

            Actually, it hasn’t. They appear to have crushed the curve and are requiring anyone who comes in from outside to be quarantined for two weeks.

        2. “Putting aside the partisanship” is exactly what Trump was supposed to do. Fighting pandemics has been a matter for which planning has taken place under both Republican and Democratic administrations. (Pandemic fighting is one of the two things I actually liked about the George W. Bush administration.) Both sides (up until Trump) took a very science-conscious, epidemiology-informed view, and built plans on top of those concerns – which Trump threw right out the window!

      2. OK, Jay, I’ll do the reading for you…

        NOVEMBER 2005

        In 2005, President George W. Bush was reading a book. The book was John Barry’s history of the 1918 influenza. The book spurred Bush to start poking around to see if the country was ready to handle another pandemic.

        In a November 2005 speech at the National Institutes of Health, Bush laid out proposals in granular detail — describing with stunning prescience how a pandemic in the United States would unfold. Among those in the audience was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leader of the current crisis response, who was then and still is now the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

        DECEMBER 2015

        The Obama administration and medical firm Halyard Health of Alpharetta, Ga., announced the project to develop a rapid pandemic mask production line. (I know this looks out of place, but I promise it’s not.

        I mention both the Bush and Obama administration to make the point that anti-pandemic measures were a nonpartisan/bipartisan issue until Trump decided to LITERALLY throw out the playbook!

        JANUARY 13, 2017

        The Obama administration’s transition team conducted tabletop disaster response activities with Trump’s top aides. One of those tests was eerily prescient—a strain of novel and deadly influenza they called H9N2, origination in Asia and quickly spreading to Europe and then to the U.S. “Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918,” the Obama team told Trump’s aides in the exercise, according to the documents and interviews from that transition effort obtained by Politico.

        Those materials show that the “Trump team was told it could face specific challenges, such as shortages of ventilators, anti-viral drugs and other medical essentials, and that having a coordinated, unified national response was ‘paramount.’”

        Note that the Obama administration prepared a pandemic playbook, which the Trump administration ignored. You can also read the playbook itself at the link below.

        https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285

        JANUARY 20th, 2027

        Trump is inaugerated – everything that happens after this is on the Trump administration.

        FEBRUARY 1, 2018

        The Washington Post writes “CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak.” The meat of the story is “Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.”

        MAY 2018

        At the urging of John Bolton, the White House dismantled the National Security Council’s global health security office. Trump bristled when asked about his decision to disband the office at a news conference in the Rose Garden [in March 2020].

        SEPTEMBER 2018

        The Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic.

        The plans, submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by medical manufacturer O&M Halyard, were the culmination of a venture unveiled almost three years earlier by the Obama administration.

        But HHS did not proceed with making the machine. To which I should ad, “…under the Trump Administration.”

        JULY 2019

        Trump eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, leaving the US without an observer on the ground in the most likely spot in the world to spark a global pandemic.

        Do I really have to point out how short-sighted this was? They probably saved $2-300,000 with that one!

        SEPTEMBER 2019

        Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.
        The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

        Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the program.

        I’m sure the seventy-thousand people who are CURRENTLY DEAD not to mention their families, approve heartily of the cost savings! (Not the mention the people who will be dead in the upcoming months!)

        OCTOBER 2019

        The Department of Health and Human Services conducted a series of exercises, called Operation Crimson Contagion, about a hypothetical virus that: emerged from China; caused a fever and respiratory illness; was spread around the world by air travel; and generated a global pandemic. As The New York Times reports, operation “Crimson Contagion” was actually a series of exercises intended to test every aspect of the government’s response to the outbreak of a novel disease. The “not to be disclosed” report showed the results of that test were nothing short of terrible.

        Maybe someone at the White House should have done something about this! The really sad thing is that there’s a lot more I didn’t put into this post. (Dude! Fucking educate yourself!. Your arguments are pathetic and your actual knowledge of the history of all this could fit in a thimble with room to spare!)

        And so on. I suspect I’m close to going over the maximum length, so I’ll start again in a post below.

      3. Continuing the reading Jay won’t do. Note that the Coronavirus kicked off in November of 2019, so everything below happened after that.

        I’m including the next link in fairness to Trump. This is a timeline “…from the National Review on the extent of China’s attempts to spread misinformation or conceal the severity of COVID-19:”

        https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devastating-lies/

        In fairness to the Anti-Trump view, where COVID-19 is concerned, reread the entries above from February 1st and May of 2019 – the programs Trump cut existed to make sure we got the truth from China. Also, despite China’s attempted cover-up many other countries did better than our’s at handling the virus.

        JANUARY 3, 2020

        The White House got its first formal notification about coronavirus on Jan 3. Within days, US spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat by including the first of many warnings in the President’s Daily Brief.

        JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2020

        –U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

        The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

        For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.

        But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.

        JANUARY 9, 2020

        WHO released a “national capacities review tool” [which] is to … help national authorities to i) identify main gaps ii) perform risk assessments and iii) plan for additional investigations, response and control actions.”

        JANUARY 10, 2020 (or) JANUARY 11, 2020

        China published coronavirus genome allowing tests to be developed. While South Korea was able to roll out widespread testing in early February 2020, Trump’s CDC would be unable to produce a reliable test until late March.

        Chinese researchers made the sequence of the virus public.

        JANUARY 2020

        Without wearing PPE, Trump’s HHS employees entered a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being received at an Air Force base in California, and then moved freely on and off the base, likely sparking the spread of the virus in California.

        JANUARY 22, 2020

        Trump made his first public comments about the coronavirus in a television interview from Davos with CNBC’s Joe Kernen. The first American case had been announced the day before, and Kernen asked Trump, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?”

        The president responded: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

        https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/trump-on-coronavirus-from-china-we-have-it-totally-under-control.html

        FEBRUARY 2, 2020

        Trump goes on Sean Hannity’s show and claims: “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.” Trump extols our “tremendous relationship” with China, and adds: “We did shut it down, yes.”

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrqd7xt2Xk
        (Around 6:42 in the video.)

        And so on. This is just a small sampling of Trump’s incompetence on the subject. Most of what I posted above came from https://jmillersexcerpts.blogspot.com/2020/04/timeline-of-coronavirus-pandemic-and-us.html

        Otherwise I’ve posted the links. I’ve also found some reporting that hopefully won’t push the “Way too Liberal” button for some of you (and especially for Jay,) so here are a couple articles from Business Insider plus I’ve reposted the links to the Wired and Marketwatch articles, which are hopefully not too far to the left. I’d say the essential reading to really understand the awfulness of Trump’s response are the J.R. Miller timeline immediately above and the Wired article, which goes back at least three decades and puts a lot of the issues into a larger context.

        https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-timeline-trump-failures-undercut-pandemic-response-2020-4#2018-the-white-house-disbands-the-nscs-pandemic-response-team-two-top-officials-depart-the-administration-and-the-administration-starts-slashing-public-health-funding-2

        https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-trump-was-doing-as-coronavirus-was-rapidly-spreading-2020-4

        https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-pandemic-response-was-hindered-by-missed-opportunities-ignored-warnings-2020-04-12

        https://www.wired.com/story/an-oral-history-of-the-pandemic-warnings-trump-ignored/

    2. We’d do lots of testing and contact tracing, and make sure people traveling from China, Iran and Italy are not allowed to enter the country.

      Sure, that’d happen if the people who were railing at Trump for daring to call it the ‘China virus’ were in charge. Because they never let the appearance of racism override policy considerations.

      I think we want to take the protestor’s guns away and send them to stand in the corner

      We know you want to take their guns away. That’s why we both hate and mock you.

      But getting back to the gaslit and thoughtless protestors

      Someone’s gaslighting them, for sure, but it ain’t Trump and it ain’t Eric either. Look in the mirror.

      If they had half a brain they’d be calling on their legislators to give them enough unemployment and health support

      The false-consciousness refrain of Marxists everywhere… “if only these proles were smart (like me), they’d be good little Socialist Revolutionaries”.

    3. The lack of testing was due not to “the Trump administration”, but specifically to the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, which tied up functional testing kits in bureaucratic red tape for weeks. I suppose you could fault Trump for not realizing that the CDC and FDA would play idiot paper-pushing games instead of doing their actual jobs in an emergency. But somehow I suspect that if Trump had tried to clean house at those agencies before the Wuhan virus appeared the Democrats and the media would have screamed that “Trump wants us all to die in a plague!”

      At any rate, blaming “the administration” in general for the failures of specific agencies is illegitimate. It’s shielding the actually guilty to smear the innocent.

      1. The CDC and the FDA are both under Trump. If they’re fucking up and he’s the boss… Do I need to draw you a map?

        1. Well according to the Democrats him actually exercising power over the bureaucracy is apparently an impeachable offense.

        2. What? Do you seriously believe everyone in the federal bureaucracy has their job thanks to Trump? That he, or his loyalists, chose these people?

          For heaven’s sake, the first Civil Service Act was passed in 1883. The President’s control over the federal agencies is a pleasant legal fiction. In practice Congress has more real influence, because they control the agencies’ budgets – and even that isn’t used much.

          If you think Presidents should be really responsible for what bureaucrats do, he needs the power to fire them at will; which is exactly what the Pendleton Act took away. If you think he is responsible, you don’t know the law.

          1. Every president with a lick of sense knows that Truman was right. “The buck stops here.”

            More than anything else, it’s the President’s job to set the tone for both the country and his administration. And if that means he gets together with the heads of the CDC and the FDA, says “Why don’t we have tests?” and busts some heads, maybe says, “I want the WHO test approved and in production by Monday, if it’s not I want your resignations…”

            If it means he spends his daily briefings teaching basic epidemiology – something he should be doing and isn’t – that’s what the job entails. He has failed utterly. His job was to follow the medical science, amplify people who know what they’re doing, like Dr. Fauci, and otherwise keep his mouth shut. And he’s failed at all of these!

            He was being briefed on this in early January, and if didn’t realize it was a major crisis by February he’s dumber than I thought!

            1. In point of fact, I understand Trump did call in the head of the CDC when the news broke that 1) tests for the virus existed but 2) the CDC was keeping anyone in the US from using them. Which is to say, Trump acted when he found out there was a problem. Unless you believe the CDC said to him “Yes, South Korea has developed an excellent test for the coronavirus, but we haven’t filled out the paperwork yet so we can’t use it” and Trump replied “Oh, that’s too bad, get back to me when the paperwork’s done”?

              And in case you’ve forgotten, Trump shut down travel from China on January 31, because of the virus – and was roundly condemned for it, too, by … come to think of it, the same people who now want lockdowns to continue indefinitely. That shows he knew there was a problem well before any other Western politician was willing to admit it.

              Finally, I strongly disagree that the President’s job is to echo what the designated experts are telling him. The CDC are supposed to be the nation’s experts on epidemics, and if Trump had listened to them we’d be a lot worse off than we are. No, the President’s job is to use his judgement, to examine the advice he’s getting with a skeptical eye, and to set policy. If that means calling out certain state governors who are doing patently irrational things, not only can he do so, he ought to.

              1. In point of fact, I understand Trump did call in the head of the CDC when the news broke that 1) tests for the virus existed but 2) the CDC was keeping anyone in the US from using them.

                Do you have any cites for that? Because I have a ton of cites showing that Trumps handling of COVID-19 was a complete shit-show. Have you followed any of those links?

                1. You have a ton of cites that show Trump’s handling of COVID-19 is a complete disaster — however, all of those cites are from people who have publicly declared Trump an enemy who should be destroyed at all costs.

                  Had the Press declared that they didn’t particularly like the fact that Trump was President, but that they were nonetheless going to do their best to give him a fair shake, and objectively report on things, we would be a little more accepting of those links you provided.

                  As someone who hasn’t really liked President Trump, I have come to actively despise the Press even more, for their naked and obvious efforts to destroy him. In the end, they have only hurt their own credibility.

  32. I think y’all are underestimating how much the treatment protocols have advanced in the last couple months. Unfortunately the Federal alphabet soup still appears to be a stable two weeks behind the curve and therefore doing at least as much harm as good, but nothing to be done about it. My prediction: in another week or two the soup will figure out that Plaquenil/Remdesivir needs to be administered as soon as symptoms present rather than waiting until the patient needs to be hospitalized to have any meaningful effectiveness.

    1. Seriously, has the Federal alphabet soup (or the WHO) done anything helpful throughout this entire pandemic, because I can’t think of anything of the top of my head?

      1. So far they’ve done an excellent job of ensuring people’s bank accounts don’t exceed FDIC limits.

      2. Unfortunately, Trump screwed up by the numbers. Took money away from the CDC and other offices which deal in pandemics, didn’t put the necessary items into the federal stockpile after being briefed on COVID-19 in January, didn’t arrange for adequate testing and contact tracing, didn’t pay attention to his Presidential Daily Brief, babbles about hydrochloriquinine and injecting bleach, won’t listen to the CDC, etc.

        The sad thing about this is that the kinds of protocols Trump should have implemented come as close to being bipartisan/nonpartison as you can imagine. George W. Bush was hugely concerned about pandemics (He read a book about the 1918 Flu in 2005 and started working the issue) and there have been efforts in many previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, to build up the necessary protocols and infrastructure.

        And WHO has not done badly. They were sending out warnings very early in the game, (though they were badly hampered by the Chinese, who sat on necessary data for much too long) and they developed one of the first Corona Virus tests. Unfortunately, Trump seems to have decided that WHO is one of his enemies, and hasn’t been interested in what they have to say.

        1. The WHO is nothing but a shill for the lying Chinese Communist Party. The head was installed by the Chinese and doesn’t contradict his masters at all, ever. They have utterly destroyed any credibility they had,

        2. Dude, FFS, can you please apply a touch of critical thinking? Let me help with just a few questions.

          1) When did the WHO receive information from Taiwan that CommieFlu was human transmissible, and what did they do about it?

          2) What was the CDC’s budget under the Trump administration? Which of their (and FDA’s) colossal blunders were the results of poor funding rather than epic bureaucratic incompetence?

          3) Have you ever considered actually looking into the history of using injected hydrogen peroxide and ozone in oncological treatment? Quartz UV lamps for throat infections? Hint: Trump’s weird brainstorm isn’t nearly as insane as the media thinks. If they weren’t ignorant scum… Ah, what can I say? Journalism is like the urine filled kiddie pool of writing. Other kinds of writers have to do actual research.

          4) Speaking of the WHO and Tedros Adhanom: How the actual fuck did the asshole who claimed the Ethiopian cholera outbreak was “acute watery diarrhea” get to be the head of the WHO? Yes, he really said that.

          5) When was the last time the WHO said something useful? Being two weeks late to the news doesn’t count.

          6) Speaking of the WHO: How was their messaging this time different from every previous time they cried wolf (SARS, MERS, etc.)?

        3. And WHO has not done badly.

          You mean like saying there was no evidence of human to human transmission, that masks don’t help, and the quarantines are useless?

  33. if by stormed you mean waited in line to get in. The news has been misreporting this heavily.
    1) most of the legislators were on the side of the protestors
    2) its legal to carry guns in the Michigan statehouse, protestors do it all the time.

    1. > 2) its legal to carry guns in the Michigan statehouse, protestors do it all the time

      Holy shit, doesn’t that END the debate here? I had tacitly been assuming that it was least an _administrative_ violation, while still believing that a holstered weapon does _not_ prima facie constitute an implied “murder” threat.

      How can doing something one is _explicitly_ permitted to do under law (in that jurisdiction) be a “threat” of any kind, implicit, explicit, deep-fried, mass murder, mini-murder, or otherwise?

      1. Because our gracious host wrote a lengthy post about how this was totally a death threat, and we’re commenting on that post. What the protesters actually did isn’t really relevant – while I can’t speak for others, my concern is what you guys seem to want them to do next.

        If I show up at a city council meeting with a big jug of water, and someone says “Yeah, you should drown the mayor with it!”, a third party can say that they’re wrong and a bit scary, without any reference to my intentions. Even if I’d never dream of drowning him, the fact that someone wants me to is pretty concerning.

        1. > Because our gracious host wrote a lengthy post about how this was totally a death threat

          Depends on what level of complexity one is capable of considering an issue, I guess. The only place I see “threat” mentioned in the original post is:

          “The threat of popular armed revolt is an intentional and central part of our system of checks and balances.”

          (and in two further uses of the word “threatened” referring to activities of the protestors not directly characterized as death threats.)

          Maybe I’m wrong, and esr can certainly correct me if I’m wrong, but that statement reads to me as a general one, describing as it does a “system of checks and balances” in the abstract and not the specific activities of the protestors. That is, the protestors were _not_ at that point immediately “threatening an armed revolt”, but reminding the politicians that, as an armed populace in an ostensibly free country, a forced continuation of the government policies being protested could, if further pursued without any regard to the will of said populace, ultimately lead to such an armed revolt. So not a “threat of death” necessarily, but a “threat of a threat of death” (or “(threat of a)^n threat of death” for some n that I’ll certainly admit is a lot smaller than some of those politicians might like).

          > while I can’t speak for others
          Ha ha ha stop, you’re killing me.

          > what you guys seem to want them to do
          You have no idea what the fuck I _want_. Judging by the number of other commenters here who have made the same observation, you don’t seem to give a shit.

  34. Pingback: Strange Daze
  35. Just an informational note for those who think that Sweden is doing a good job. It is number ten worldwide, for deaths, as normalized by population. (If not normalized, it’s number twelve.)

    https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

    So if everyone would please stop citing Sweden as a country that’s doing really well, that would be a considerable contribution to the accuracy of our dicsussions. By the numbers Sweden appears to be doing rather poorly.

    If you’re looking for a country that’s doing really well, check out South Korea, our wonderful capitalist ally that’s done a really great job of testing and contact tracing. If normalized by population it appears to be in the bottom thirty for deaths – and they haven’t locked their country down! Not normalized by population it appears to be in the bottom third of all countries. It’s the same link, BTW, just fiddle with the software a little.

    Also, I’ll be interested to see what happens with Georgia and Florida over the next couple weeks. Assuming good testing (not necessarily a great assumption) their numbers should be very telling one way or another, on the subject of lockdowns.

    1. Top 10, so still doing better than countries that did lockdowns.

      You didn’t bother to look at the data before posting the link did you?

      1. >Top 10, so still doing better than countries that did lockdowns.

        Sweden’s doing better than most of the G20. Not as well as the U.S. but that’s to be expected; compared to us their medical infrastructure sucks. You really don’t want to be anywhere but the U.S. in times like these.

        1. Sorry Eric. Sweden is one of the top-ten worst, not the top-ten best. If you go to the link above you can see who the best are, and it’s fairly easy to distinguish countries who have low numbers because they did the right thing from countries who have low numbers because their infrastructure is crap.

        2. The best comparison is neighboring countries. Here are deaths per million (as of 04/05):
          – Sweden 265
          – Denmark 83
          – Norway 38
          – Finland 41

          Unfortunately, the death countis not the best measure, as deaths are classified differently per country, and also undercount the true number of deaths. Better measure is excess mortality (deaths in 2020 compared to 2019), but we won’t have those numbers for a while for many places.

          For now, the ranking is (from worst to best):
          1. UK (420), Italy (477), Spain (540)
          2. US (204) and Sweden (265)
          3. Gemany (80) and Austria (66)
          4. Eastern Europe: Poland (18), Czech Republic(23), etc.
          5. Australia (3.7), New Zealand (4), South Korea (5), Taiwan (0.25)

          So no, the US & Sweden are not doing particularly well.

          1. >So no, the US & Sweden are not doing particularly well.

            Not if you ignore Italy, the U.K, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland, no. Since I’m not ignoring most of the G8 and G20 I will continue to maintain that the U.S. is doing quite well.

            Especially considering that most of the few places doing better (Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, South Korea) have much smaller and less diverse populations. This makes logistics and coordinating a nationwide response easier, whether market- or government-mediated.

            The U.S. has a tougher problem to solve than anywhere else that is reliably reporting fewer deaths per million, but our bottom-up response has been pretty effective.

            1. Come on, Italy, UK and Spain were explicitly on that list, in front of the US.

              You’re right: smaller population does help, and local responses are the way to go. That does skew things against the US, but not against Sweden. Their pop (10 million) is pretty comparable to other EU countries.

              1. >Come on, Italy, UK and Spain were explicitly on that list, in front of the US.

                Not in the RealClearPolitics table. Didn’t you chase my link?

                1. Sorry, I meant that I listed UK, Italy and Spain as being worse than the US (list was worst to best). Southern Europe being worst, Australia, NZ and East Asia being best.

        3. > You really don’t want to be anywhere but the U.S. in times like these.

          I generally agree, but this situation does seem quite different. How much $$$ would you be willing to bet, at what odds, that the overall 2020 mortality rate for the US will be better than that of Australia or Germany?

          I wouldn’t stake much on it…

          1. >I wouldn’t stake much on it…

            I wouldn’t either, but my reluctance stems from the amount of noise in “mortality” measurements and how people routinely ignore confounders.

            For example, the U.S. started out maximalist about COVID deaths (reporting anyone dying with antibodies as a COVID death even if something else killed them). Germany is minimalist – they preferentially designate any cause of death other than COVID. Now the U.S. has corrupted its reporting by offering hospitals a 15% monetary incentive to overreport COVID deaths.

            We therefore can’t really compare U.S. figures to German figures. Though people will try.

            Actually I’m doing more than betting money that the U.S. is where you want to be during a global pandemic crisis. I’m betting my life.

            1. Yeah, that’s why I mentioned overall mortality & excess mortality. Take all-cause mortality. Or, look at the excess: 2020 vs previous 5 year average. Potentially age-adjusted.

              That’s hard to fake or miscount. A dead person is a dead person. I doubt the US will come out top of the pack.

              1. >I doubt the US will come out top of the pack.

                I don’t expect it to either. We have too many hard problems that the countries I expect to see on the good end of the mortality stats don’t.

                What I’m pushing back against is the notion that the U.S.’s response has been systemically terrible compared to other countries. It hasn’t been, and most of the bungling has been from the usual suspects in our bureaucracy and permanent political class – exactly the people critics of the U.S. response tend to think should have more power.

                1. We should compare to the best. Beating Italy and Spain is pretty weak sauce; a great country shouldn’t strive to be about average.

                  No argument against the latter part. The FDA and the CDC completely screwed up. And I’m not going to mention the WHO…

                  Heck, the whole reason vaccine development takes 12+ month is regulatory nonsense. The 1957 vaccine took 4 months, and technology should be making things faster…

                  1. Heck, the whole reason vaccine development takes 12+ month is regulatory nonsense.

                    Not true. Some of those regulations are there for very good reasons, like preventing a vaccine study from killing or causing permanent damage to 20 healthy young men in less than 24 hours…which is one of the events that led to some of said regulations. The primary point of FDA regulations is safety.

                    To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t useless or minimally-effective regulations that could introduce delays, but without solid evidence I’d err on the side of them being safety measures. In the case of vaccines, it’s pretty clear that the goal is 1) safety, and 2) long-term efficacy. The latter takes time, and can’t start until the safety (and safe dosing rates) are established…thus why 12 months is very fast.

                    This all leaves out, of course, that that was an influenza virus, not a coronavirus…and work has been ongoing for many years to find a way to vaccinate against coronaviruses, yet we still have the common cold….

                    1. We already have vaccine candidates. And human challenge trials (HCTs) would speed up vaccine testing considerably.

                      But in any case, shouldn’t I decide what I put in my body? If I’m fine with vaccinating myself after a successful HCT (I am), shouldn’t it be up to me?

                      In fact, being young and healthy, I would totally sign up for being a HCT participant, for sufficient monitary compensation of course. Shouldn’t that be my choice, rather than some bureucrats?

                2. I’d argue the U.S. lead the pack. When we were blocking travel from Wuhan, the Euros were literally organizing hug-a-Chinaman rallies.

                  1. It lead the pack with China travel restrictions (along with Taiwan and New Zealand).

                    It significantly lags the pack when it comes to mask wearing.

                    Its lock-down is/was at best average.

                    In terms of testing, it was initially lagging, but has since catched up. Still not top of the pack, but doing OK.

                    It amazes me that people are either claiming the US is doing terribly, or that it’s doing great.

                    In fact, it’s doing about average among developed countries. I expect that when it’s all over, the total death toll (relative to population) will also be roughly at the median.

          2. Neither would I. But I am a New Zealand citizen living in Australia, and don’t think that overall mortality rate is the sole metric by which pandemic response should be judged. In fact, I think the figures will show that we vastly over-reacted, both in Australia and especially next door in New Zealand.

        4. “You really don’t want to be anywhere but the U.S. in times like these.”

          Under any other president I’d agree, but let’s take the up a year from now…

      2. Sorry dude, the bottom ten (or twelve) is still crap. As to lockdowns, were they nation-wide, like ours wasn’t? Were they obeyed? Were they well-structured? There’s a lot of room for “stupid” in the word “lockdown.”

        1. How a lockdown was done is a relevant question, but risks venturing into No True Scotsman if you just throw it out without supporting data.

          The fact remains: we were insistently told that Sweden would be in doomsday plague conditions. In the real world it is doing about on par with the other western countries which took far different measures. That puts a severe upper bound on the effectiveness of measures.

          1. More Swedes are dying than need be. That alone is enough reason for Sweden to rethink its measures.

            1. What, you’re not happy enough telling Americans what to do, now you’re ordering the Swedes around too?

              1. I’m sure everyone in this thread has opinions about what other countries should do. But it’s not about “ordering” anyone around. Jeff’s not on the side saying that noncompliant legislators should be shot, after all.

                When you have opinions, but decline to back them with deadly force, the more common term is “suggesting”.

                1. > Jeff’s not on the side saying that noncompliant legislators should be shot, after all.

                  No, you and he are on the side saying those pesky little UP kulaki should scurry back to their kolkhozi and not trouble their betters, or they’ll face sterner measures than a mere lockdown of said kolkhozi.

  36. > What razor blade? They get a reminder every four years, no guns needed.

    Utter bullshit. Either their term is up, or they or their campaign manager screw up in a way the media hopes will be of interest to the proles but concerns their successor not a whit (let alone induce any change in typical politician behavior). Or on _very_ rare occasions they themselves “choose not to pursue a further term” because they have already sucked their fill at the public teat, aka are starting to see news pieces about them with words like “indictment” or “task force led by the Attorney General” in them.

    I don’t mean “remind” in that “yeah yeah of course I’ll fulfill my oath of office, where is the cash box kept again?” sense. I mean viscerally and actually reminded, as the Honorable Miss “are we sure _all_ the Sergeants-at-Arms have been summoned back from their bathroom breaks?” was. There’s a “world of difference” as you say between Whitmer getting a similarly slightly-urine-damped-panties moment (should she choose to pursue her course without any regard to those who voted her in) and anyone actually using their legally possessed firearms.

    1. You haven’t watched very many elections, have you?

      I’ll pick the US House, because it’s big enough for random chance to be less of a role, and easy to find data on.

      In 2018, 5 incumbents got primaried and 30 lost re-election.
      In 2016, 5 incumbents got primaried and 8 lost re-election.
      In 2014, 5 incumbents got primaried and 13 lost re-election.
      In 2012, 13 incumbents got primaried and 27 lost re-election.
      In 2010, 4 incumbents got primaried and 54 lost re-election.

      So out of five elections totaling 2175 seats, there were 32 primary election defeats and 132 general election defeats, or about 7.5% chances of losing. That’s in a House that’s thoroughly gerrymandered, where anyone who thinks they’re likely to lose steps down before the race. If you take the same numbers for the Senate (which I’ve expanded to cover 2008, to ensure each seat is shown twice), there’s 23/200 who lost, plus one who got primaried but won the general as a write-in candidate anyways. (You can see the impact of gerrymandering in the gap between 7.5% loss rates in the House and 11.5% in the Senate).

      So yes, incumbents win a fair bit. But losing is more than common enough to keep them honest. (Well, at least somewhat honest.)

      1. > (You can see the impact of gerrymandering in the gap between 7.5% loss rates in the House and 11.5% in the Senate).

        Does that follow? It seems like too much apples-to-oranges to me. There are enough additional Representatives compared to Senators that I would expect more of the sort of indifference one sees in local elections.

        That is, since each state has only two, and voting is state-wide, individual Senators are stronger household names to each voter. The proportional representation of the House means smaller voter blocs, and less exposure to the public at large excepting ranking and highly visible Representatives.

        That would mean Senators have a statistically larger number of eyes on them come election season, coupled with longer terms. A given Senator, it seems to me, would be more likely to evoke ire strong enough to warrant removal than a given Representative.

        Beyond that, given the population size disparity, 11.5% and 7.5% may not even represent a meaningful difference, but I’m not sure about that.

        1. This is a a complete inversion of the original intended role of the House where the idea was that they’d be more in touch with their constituents since they had fewer of them. Of course, that was in the days when political discussions took place in the local tavern rather the internet.

        2. Fair. The gerrymandering thing is what I expect the cause to be, but I don’t rightly know.

      2. I didn’t say that incumbents always win, I said that the next little political rodent that scurries out of the wainscotting is indistinguishable from their predecessor.

        “Don’t blame me, *I* voted for Kodos.”

  37. So yes, if the protesters tried asking for resignations peacefully, they might lose. Guess what – in a democracy, you lose sometimes. When you lose, you try again next time. You do not shoot the winners. Because at that point, you’re not fighting for democracy, you’re fighting for your own preferred brand of tyranny. That’s an attack on the Constitution, not a defense of it.

    You’d best tell this to the Deep State (FBI, CIA, etc.), as Donald Trump won the last presidential election, and they’ve been trying to get him out of office ever since.

    The people you’re arguing with have noticed what’s going on, and are unpersuaded by your attempts to insist upon the Marquis of Queensberry rules for one side only.

    P. S. Lenin *loved* the gulags. He would have instituted them out of the sheer love of power over others. As have most Communists.

    1. How’s that working out for them?

      Also, it’s a bit of an odd position to say that you can try to remove an elected official from office for unconstitutional actions by shooting them, but not by following an impeachment process.

      1. There’s an old legal principle that if the government refuses to be bound by law, the people no longer have any duty to the law either. In situations where the entire system has become hopelessly dysfunctional from the viewpoint of upholding the law, the legally defined impeachment process is no longer a possibility. You will note that when a dictator gets deposed, he tends to come to a very bad end if the people manage to get their hands on him, since the very institutions that under a functioning rule of law would have protected him from mob justice are exactly the ones he has dismantled.

        For the record, I don’t think the United States is there yet, not by a long shot. But I’m concerned about the trajectory.

        1. The phrase “elected official” was doing important work in that sentence. Neither Trump nor Whitmer is a dictator, and both are subject to judgement by voters, as well as the possibility of impeachment for violating laws.

          1. Right. After their homes are laid waste and the economy is in tiny fragments. By the time they face the voters, the damage will have been long done.

            1. Is there any policy issue that allows a newly-elected official to turn back time and undo damage? Because “the damage is done” seems like it describes every issue, but we don’t avoid democracy as a result.

          2. Are you sure that Whitmer isn’t a dictator? States of emergency and states of disaster have to end after 28 days under Michigan law, unless further authorized by joint resolution of the Michigan legislature. She declared her state of emergency on March 10th and had it legislatively extended until April 28th. Efforts were made to negotiate a further extension, but those failed, and as far as I can tell, she has no legal authority to continue issuing and enforcing emergency orders and decrees at this point. And yet she is.

            Whitmer is a dictator and tyrant who is illegally usurping the legislative functions of the Michigan legislature. She should be impeached, but it would also be appropriate for Trump to declare her in insurrection against the US (US states are required by the Constitution to be representative democracies, not tyrannies) and remove her by force.

            1. >The should be impeached, but it would also be appropriate for Trump to declare her in insurrection against the US (US states are required by the Constitution to be representative democracies, not tyrannies) and remove her by force.

              Much as I’d like to see that ugly fascist Whitmer shot or hung, declaring a state of insurrection will not fit here as neither the state nor any portion is in revolt against the authority of the Federal government. Failure of the state government to put down a revolt against it could conceivably trigger that condition as well but has not happened either.

              I do however think I see a way the Act of 1807 could apply in the absence of armed insurrection. The Republican majority in the legislature might be able to invoke clause (2)A, holding that Whitmer’s unlawful and unauthorized extension of the state of emergency beyond the 28-day limit “hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law”.

              Whitmer arrested and thrown in a Federal prison is not much compared to what she actually deserves, which is to be strung up on a lamppost by enraged citizens pour encourager les autres, but I’d take it.

              1. “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.” Article 4, Section 4.

                By threat of domestic violence, Whitmer is denying the state of Michigan a republican form of government.

                The Michigan legislature is currently suing Whitmer to get her to stop. If she doesn’t stop in the face of a court order, they’re perfectly within their rights to ask Trump to squash her, and Trump would have an obligation (“United States shall” means it is compulsory) to protect them from her.

                1. Unfortunately, we’re not likely to get a final court order (i.e., after exhausting all opportunities for appeals) before 2025.

                  The legal system allows anyone with moderate financial resources to tie it in knots, Lilliput style. IMHO, because it’s easier to make decisions w.r.t. to process than to the underlying issues.

    2. The deep state? You mean the appointed experts who actually know something about law, science, or the particular problem-set they were hired to deal with? That Deep State? Dur… Duh! I’m totally afraid of someone who’s been with the CDC for twenty years, dealing with one potential epidemic after another. They must be a cummuniz or terroriz or Moose-lip or sumthin… Doh! I guess I’ll get my gun and go yell at teh gubnor!\

      *Spits!

      1. Hey Troutwaxer, if you want to engage in grossly uncharitable caricatures instead of making an argument, this is you:

        > “He has a credential! Oh my god, he has a CREDENTIAL! I’m practically creaming my pants just looking at the length of his CV! Quick, put this guy in charge of everything, I love his big long record, his juicy list of titles, I can’t imagine that either demonstrated competence or will of the people should play a part!”

        Because seeing how the CDC and the FDA conspired to limit testing and other failures, twenty years of experience there does not sound like a point in favor of the deeply entrenched paper-pushers.

        1. Trout usually hides his sneer of contempt behind a facade of sophistication; it’s interesting to see the mask slip and the viciousness make an overt appearance. It’s nice. More honest.

          1. I find most complaints about the Deep State to be simply contemptible, because the alternative is to put someone in charge who doesn’t have a clue about the subject matter and doesn’t know how to make stuff happen within the government. Complaints about a particular department or administrator, when backed up by evidence, are very acceptable to me.

            1. You’re looking at the issue in a different way than people who are so peeved about the population of unelected bureaucrats running the federal government commonly referred to as the Deep State.

              The issue is less about the competence (real or imagined) of them, the issue is how are they held accountable? Who actually runs the government? The only means by which the States can affect the operation of it is via Presidential elections. If the elected representative of the people in this capacity is not allowed to affect changes in the system, who is, and what is even the point of the election?

              I say fire the entire lot of them on general principles, because they demonstrably hold a power position counter to the entire point of our Constitutional system of governance. They cannot be removed without a complete shitstorm erupting unless they and/or their handlers approve of it; if the electorate still wants them gone, too bad, they’re just idiots and fuck ’em.

              If only this, I’m glad for Trump’s presidency, because he has shown us all just how deeply, dangerously entrenched these people have become. It’s a serious threat to our republic, and when folks like you just scoff and roll your eyes, it sure looks a lot like you support that threat.

          2. Behind the contempt is abject terror. Hence all the replies to a pro-gun post.

            Sophisticates are sophisticated. Many layers, like an ogre or something.

        1. Another “expert” bites the dust:

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/exclusive-government-scientist-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaking/

          @Troutwaxer This is why the so called “expert” class is despised so much.

          “Ms Staats, a left-wing campaigner, made a second visit on April 8 despite telling friends she suspected that her husband, an academic in his 30s, had symptoms of coronavirus.

          She and her husband live together with their two children in a £1.9 million home, but are understood to be in an open marriage. She has told friends about her relationship with Prof Ferguson, but does not believe their actions to be hypocritical because she considers the households to be one.”

          And this is why I loathe left-wing activists so much. What was the bitch planning to do if she broke down on the way?

          1. What an asshole. As bad as those fools in Michigan.

            Here’s the important thing. COVID-19 is not a partisan issue. It is a scientific and medical issue, and anyone of any political persuasion who breaks the social distancing rules deserves a couple weeks in the intimate company of a ventilator – and may well get what they deserve.

            But you do have a logic problem here, which is that you’re overgeneralizing – one bad person doesn’t taint the whole British epidemiological establishment – and he did resign, probably because someone said, “Professor Ferguson, you have set a very bad example. So now you have a choice…” which is exactly what I would have said had I been in a position to do so.

            As to your lapse in logic, the CDC has about 11,000 employees. If your logic is accurate, all of them are devious assholes who seek to destroy America. In actual fact, I’d guess that they have the same percentage of jerks as any group of 11,000 people – the usual 5-10 percent. It is this lapse of logic that allows you to believe in a “Deep State” rather than an organization with appointees from both Republican and Democratic administrations, which is struggling to do a good job despite all the usual issues… ‘nuf said I think; you’ll either recognize the lapse in logic or you wont.

            1. the CDC has about 11,000 employees. If your logic is accurate, all of them are devious assholes who seek to destroy America.

              A key point you seem to have missed: the libertarian critique of government (and large bureaucratic organisations in general) does not require it to be staffed by evil people. Rather, it is the incentives that shape the behaviour of those in the organisation which, by suffering greatly from Goodhart’s Law, principal-agent problems, streetlight effects, etc., etc., tend to drive destructive outcomes even when everyone involved is piously trying to improve things.

              The rationalists call it Moloch or, less poetically, inadequate equilibrium, and it’s not unique to government, but several structural features of government conspire to concentrate and distil Moloch’s essence into an elixir of suck.

              1. I don’t disagree with you at all. Some organizations succeed and some fail, becoming very toxic indeed.

                What I was critiquing was Inkstain’s unthinking acceptance of the idea that you could get a good idea of an organization, or the general utility of experts by looking at one bad apple – who was apparently thrown out of the barrel as soon as his problems became apparent.

                My personal name for this is the “Cardiologist Problem.” Let’s say you set out to smear the medical science of cardiology. You’ll always be able to find bad-example cardiologists; this one committed malpractice, that one killed her husband, but the simple fact of the matter is that cardiologists, for any of their human weaknesses, spend most of the their time saving people who’ve had heart attacks – but if you examine all cardiologists you’ll find a bad apple you can publicize – and congratulations, in the course of doing so you’ve destroyed a useful medical science!

                But back to the issue you discussed above, and with reference to COVID-19, it’s essentially a matter of betting on which process is going to produce the best possible outcome. In one corner – one process – we have the experts who’ve been studying the problem and running both computer simulations and epidemiological wargames for years, not to mention handling issues like this season’s flu or Legionaire’s disease, or Ebola or whatever…

                vs.

                A New York real-estate developer and whatever process he’ll cobble together?

                How do you bet?

                Or maybe it’s you in the hot seat. Do you trust your own intuition, or do you happily accept the briefing book the CDC has dumped in your lap, which says “You need to have this many ventilators in the national stockpile. If you don’t have that many, here are your options for using governmental power to get more quickly.”

                What’s the way to bet? Your intuition versus an epidemiologist with 20 years of experience? And if you’re the guy in charge do you lay back 99% of the time and become a mouthpiece for the experienced epidemiologist – which is probably what you should do, or do you ignore their advice because your medically inexperienced gut is telling you different?

                1. Do you trust your own intuition, or do you happily accept the briefing book the CDC has dumped in your lap

                  Well, I’m intelligent and numerate, which while many of the CDC’s employees may well be, the CDC as an organisation isn’t (because Moloch). So I would demand to be given the evidence to support the briefing, and insist that any queries I raised about the validity (or relevance!) of that evidence be answered to my satisfaction, and once we go from positive analysis to normative policy, I definitely wouldn’t automatically accept the recommendations of the Moloch-infested empire-building bureaucracy, instead using my own understanding of economics (the continuum limit of game theory) to reason out the nth-order consequences of various policy options. I wouldn’t have the time to do analysis of this depth for every issue that crossed my desk, naturally — but I think it not unreasonable to say that for an issue of this magnitude, I’d make the time. Or at the very least, hand it off to someone I trusted to both share my values and exhibit the kinds of intelligence and understanding required — in which category ‘top civil servants’ would be unlikely to qualify.

                  But sure, you go ahead and round that off to “trusting my gut instead of listening to the experts”. I’ll be over here with the grown-ups.

                  1. Employees at CDC are winners of the CDC game. Turns out that game is actively antithetical to disease control.

                    Most Presidents are winners of the POTUS game. As we can see in Trump, if someone can simply overpower the incentives, you can briefly see slightly less inferior performance. The problem is both policy and, over time, personnel.

                2. One bad apple?
                  In April 2020, I noticed the document Advice on the use of masks in the community, during home care, and in health care settings in the context of COVID-19, issued by the World ‘Health’ Organization, and downloaded it from their site for later reference. It bears the seal and signature of the WHO, with no name attached. It says things like:

                  > WHO continues to monitor the situation closely for any changes that may affect this interim guidance. Should any factors change, WHO will issue a further update.

                  strongly indicating this is an official institutional position, not one man’s opinion.

                  And while it says the sick people should wear masks to limit spread, it also says there’s no evidence that wearing masks protects healthy people from getting sick.

                  The WHO has since issued an updated document saying there is limited evidence that wearing a mask may be beneficial for healthy people.

                  What’s the way to bet? Your intuition versus an epidemiologist with 20 years of experience?

                  *hollow laughter*

                  1. Your problem here is that you’re taking something pretty complex, then simplifying it, then trying to make propaganda of the whole thing.

                    So here are the complexities: First, is COVID-19 an airborne virus, and if so, what is the mechanism? Second, since PPE is limited, do we need to save it for medical personal? Third, the CoronaVirus is a particle of a certain size, requiring an N-95 rated mask to prevent entry.

                    But it turned out that COVID-19 was airborne, but it didn’t go airborne on it’s own, it floats on droplets of mucus, spittle, sweat,etc., which means that an ordinary cloth mask was useful, because it catches those droplets. It turned out that people were quite happy to DIY masks and put the instructions on Youtube, which meant that proper N-95 masks could be reserved for medical people and first responders. So the whole process played out in real-time – I think there were a couple of quick-and-dirty studies – and everyone is doing the best they can – with the end result that everyone with half-a-brain wears a mask in public.

                    Here’s the thing. Any process involving multiple bureaucracies, a rapidly-evolving situation, and human beings is going to produce mistakes and missteps. But those mistakes and missteps aren’t why I’m angry at Trump – they could just as easily have happened to Obama.

                    I’m angry at Trump because he doesn’t know how to bet. He doesn’t understand that the bureaucracies are all there to help him solve problems, that they have enormous institutional knowledge, (which they’re happy to share) and that he doesn’t have to make shit up as he goes along! They may be problematic and unweildy for all kinds of reasons, but if a leader uses them properly s/he can make sure that a million N-95 masks are in Wisconson by Thursday!

                    This is the problem with the Republican/Libertarian distrust of government. When given power they’ll treat their own helpers with suspicion and disrespect. They don’t get the help they need because they don’t imagine that the bureaucracy might want to do a good job (despite any obstacles) and so they end up making shit up as they go along and they’re not even aware that there are CDC employees who’ve got the full-time job of writing contingency plans for pandemics! Then something bad happens and it’s “Doh! Heck of a job Brownie.”

                1. I’m sure the CDC knows many things. Having said that, actions matter far more than the many things you know. And from that standpoint, the actions of the CDC over the first three months have been so catastrophically deleterious that in a sane country the whole organization would have been disbanded by mid-March and the management thoroughly investigated for deliberate malfeasance.

                  1. Well, let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s imagine a possible pandemic which starts in a foreign land, and the CDC and other big U.S. bureaucracies – with many of the same individuals as are employed in these bureaucracies now – are heavily involved. This pandemic is truly horrible, spreads like wildfire and does terrible damage to the bodies of those who are infected. In addition to the disease itself, there is heavy panic…

                    Now look up how many people died in the U.S. of Ebola in 2014… and consider the fact that Trump wasn’t in charge.

                    1. Sigh. Ebola does *NOT* spread like wildfire with proper sanitation. Not even close. It was trivially contained.

                      But if you want to play this game, let’s talk about the H1N1 Influenza outbreak back in 2009. The one the CDC completely botched under the Obama administration. Now, influenza is nowhere near as transmissible as CommieFlu appears to be, yet it went on to infect 60 million Americans. If it had a 0.5% fatality rate that the Wuhan virus seems to have, it would have killed over a quarter million in this country alone. And we had a vaccine! Which was an epic fail, given that the Obama admin promised 160 million doses by October of 2009 and less than a fifth of that number was available. Need I mention there were full supplies of PPE left over from the Bush 2.0 administration?

                      So please stop confusing competence with blind stinking luck.

            2. >Here’s the important thing. COVID-19 is…a scientific and medical issue

              I don’t agree with the initial point… COVID-19 has some scientific and medical components, but it also has significant economic and political components. Personally, I’d even say the later two dominate.

              More generally, scientists do their discipline a great disservice when they invoke the magic words “science teaches us that…” beyond the narrow confines of the actual scientific questions.

          2. Since we’re on the topic of Fergusson:

            @esr & @Jay Maynard You guys are gonna get a kick out of this one: https://github.com/mrc-ide/covid-sim/issues/116

            For the rest of you – *Fergusson’s model was not repeatable*.

            Let this sink in for a minute.

            Not only was it extremely dependent on initial inputs, but rerunning it with identical inputs DOES NOT YIELD IDENTICAL RESULTS.

            How are you supposed to audit that?

      2. Comes now news that political ideology has more to do with the perceived threat of COVID than actual experience.

        Honestly, this article is way too charitable to conservatives. As with global warming, the liberals’ assessment comports more closely with the highest quality data we have. The conservatives, by contrast, distort reality into a sinister plot/hoax to keep their ideological Great Enemy at the fore: dirty commies destroying muh ‘Murican freedoms.

        1. As with global warming, the liberals’ assessment comports more closely with the highest quality data we have.

          So Manhattan not being flooded is a right wing cover up? Look we’ve been through this already multiple times, and I’m getting tired of your BS.

        2. You’re projecting. It’s the conservatives and libertarians whose assessment is closer to reality. The fake liberals are the ones distorting reality into a sinister plot to keep their ideological Great Enemy at the fore: evil capitalists (in the case of CAGW, oil company execs especially), backwards Bible-thumping rednecks, and of course, Donald Trump.

          1. Fascism point 4: Obsession with the Plot of a State Enemy that is, as convenient, overwhelmingly strong and pathetically weak. Typically used to deflect well-deserved blame for the failures of fascism.

      3. Soo… When our favorite expert (Anthony Fauci) declared on March 9, “If you are a healthy young person, there is no reason if you want to go on a cruise ship, go on a cruise ship”, he wasn’t two weeks behind the curve?

        The reason we’re skeptical of the experts is that we’re sick and tired of them beclowning themselves. At best, they’re mentally behind the virus by 2-3 weeks. Their goddamn job is to be at least 2 weeks ahead.

      4. When you say “appointed experts who actually know something about law, science, or the particular problem-set they were hired to deal with”, I hear “unaccountable and mostly anonymous bureaucrat know-it-alls who have absolutely no danger to their job security, can make horrible decisions that have no actual basis in law, science, or the problem-set they are hired to deal with, and who is particularly incompetent with the problem sets they create in fields that they are absolutely and utterly ignorant in, yet won’t face impeachment, re-election, or even firing from a superior, and who have the power to create regulations, create punishments for said regulations, and then find people who violate those regulations and punish them.”

        The biggest reason the Deep State is a problem is because they think they are experts, and they are experts in their own little domains, but they are absolutely clueless on the effects of their decisions on ordinary people trying to make a living.

  38. I see that you don’t have an actual argument.

    So go defenestrate yourself, autofellator.

  39. (popping)
    > I’m not being obstreperous, I just find your claim difficult to square with objections that serious people have raised in the recent past.

    Back in 1977-78, my High School civics text took it for granted that a child of American citizen parents was a natural-born citizen, even if born overseas. The unstated assumption was that both parents would be US citizens.

    The live question is whether or under what circumstances *one* US citizen parent is enough to make one a natural born citizen, if one is born outside the US. (Which was an issue when Ted Cruz sought the nomination in 2016.) The idea that having *two* US citizen parents is not enough for natural-born citizenship, if one is born outside the US, looked to me to be a politically-motivated attempt against McCain; a sort of tu quoque in response to the ‘birther’ claims about Obama.

  40. I just noticed this, which is a pre-pub study of a new variety of COVID-19, which may have a better mechanism for entering a cell than the previous version of COVID-19.

    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.069054v1.full

    And here’s a critique of the publication.

    https://twitter.com/BillHanage/status/1256422856436613126

    Could someone with really good medical/virological/epidemiological chops take a look at this? I’d be curious about whether the science is any good and whether the significance of the new strain is anything to worry about.

    Assuming the paper is correct, it might explain why, after the West Coast of the U.S. saw the first COVID-19 cases we had a huge explosion of cases in New York – it seems that the new strain comes from Europe, which would naturally transmit to the U.S. East Coast more quickly than the old strain, which hails from China.

    The main issue I’m seeing is that even a change to the infectiousness of the virus that is too small to confirm might have large consequences, since disease transmission is a numbers game and things happen exponentially – for example, if it raised the transmissibility from 2.3 to 2.35 we might never prove what had happened, but after 5-6 dozen doublings the consequences would be noticeable, which might also explain what’s happened in New York and New Jersey.

    1. The implications of the new strain are also such that we cannot assume anyone who catches one strain of COVID-19 will not get reinfected. It also messes with our capability to develop effective vaccines.

      But no, the biggest threat is MUH TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT. Help, help, I’m being repressed by being made to stay in, watch Netflix, and WFH!

      1. “Deputy Antoinette, the peasants are complaining about food supply chain breakdowns, isolation-induced suicide, lack of general medical care, and other such things!”

        “Well, let them watch Netflix!”

      2. Again the sneering dismissal of 30,000,000 Americans out of work, plus who knows how many more unable to “WFH” but not counted in those numbers for whatever reason.

        1. A similar number of Americans would be out of work — hospitalized from the virus — if we did nothing. And millions would die.

          1. So the discredited models claimed.

            So you and Troutwaxer keep insisting despite the evidence.

            1. The current rate of deaths seems to be around 1900/day, and I’d guess there’s some undercounting, (which I’m not going to consider) but at 1900/day from now until next April 7th,* plus the current 62,000 deaths which took place at that rate, I’d guess (365 x 1900) …around 750,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. this year, as per the current system for counting.**

              * April 7th is the first day we saw deaths approaching 2000/day, at which point things seemed to level out a little, so I’m using that as the “anniversary date” and subtracting the approximately 11,000 COVID-19 deaths between 2/26/2020 and 4/7/2020 from my estimate. Obviously this is a “back of the envelope” calculation.

              ** At some point in the next couple years the epidemiologists and statisticians will tell us the real number, which will be the number of all 2020 deaths minus the number of 2019 deaths, along with some kind of fudge factor to account for increases/decreases in population, etc. I’ve seen decent arguments that the number of deaths is under-recorded, in which case Jeff may be right about a million deaths – or more.

              1. You need a bigger fudge factor than that. Deaths by vehicle, air pollution, running into aggressive drug-addled weirdos will likely all decrease, for instance, whereas deaths due to financial stress (not necessarily suicide, cortisol levels will be way up which will aggravate chronic disease) will increase.

                1. >deaths due to financial stress (not necessarily suicide, cortisol levels will be way up which will aggravate chronic disease) will increase.

                  Just by way of comparison, models suggest that the Great Recession ‘killed’ 200K americans.

                  Another interesting moral question is how you compare the numbers. Does everyone count the same? Do 35 year olds count more than 85 year olds i.e., lost QALY? Do suicide deaths count less than disease deaths i.e., consent vs non-consent?

                2. Agreed completely – there are all kinds of factors which have changed via the lockdown, and will change regardless even if the whole country “reopens.”

                  Furthermore, how the “fudge factor” is set up will say a great deal about who’s compiling the numbers, and I’d imagine that there will be considerable controversy over that point.

                  The one minor disagreement I have with you is that deaths due to stress are part of the second-order issues of a pandemic; if the country had never locked down there would be people who were stressed over going to work, particularly if they have to deal with the public or have an employer who isn’t employing proper sanitary measures.

          2. > A similar number of Americans would be out of work […] if we did nothing.

            Even in such a case I am pretty sure I would not feel a need to sneer at those hospitalized and dying as just whining because they’re missing their “Netflix”.

            I don’t get how hypothetical people in an alternate universe suffering justifies mocking people who are _actually_ suffering in _this_ universe.

            On that subject, I’ve asked multiple times with no response, are you also mocking the “repressed” on the LA beaches who were missing their surfboarding? Or the “repressed” in NYC Central Park who were missing their frisbee-chucking? Or the “repressed” in that Chicago house party who were missing… whatever the fuck people do in house parties? (Careful on that last one! If you choose your mocking adjectives injudiciously there, someone might bring out the “r” word!)

            You’re not even _consistently_ disgusting.

  41. I find most complaints about the Deep State to be simply contemptible, because the alternative is to put someone in charge who doesn’t have a clue about the subject matter and doesn’t know how to make stuff happen within the government. Complaints about a particular department or administrator, when backed up by evidence, are very acceptable to me.

    “I find most complaints about the quality of my program to be simply contemptible, because the alternative is to put someone in charge who isn’t a programmer and doesn’t know how to write code. Complaints about a particular module or line of code, when backed up with telemetry, are very acceptable to me.”

  42. The differences with the politics of AIDS in the 1980s are quite fascinating. Back then AIDS was 100% fatal, but contact tracing was forbidden as counterproductive and an invasion of privacy. They would only give you your AIDS test results in person, because telling you by phone was seen as inviting suicide. San Francisco closed bathhouses but no other businesses, and we didn’t have cops telling people in the parks to stay six feet apart.

    Now the political wing that objected to tough measures to stop a 100% fatal disease is willing to crush civil liberties and the entire economy for months to stop a disease that’s much more easily spread but rarely fatal.

    About the only thing that’s the same is that both plagues are supposedly the fault of Republican presidents, one despite his distinct lack of support for gay sex and IV drug use, and the other despite his well-known germophobia and antipathy to China and loose borders.

    Whoever’s writing this simulation has quite a sense of humor.

    1. I don’t know how old you were at the time, but there was immense suspicion of contact tracing by the homosexual community of the 1980s, because at the time being Gay was fairly dangerous – being outed vastly increased the chance that someone might get fired or treated badly by their neighors, family, or government. Asking someone to out their friends would just about guarantee that the patient wouldn’t return, and might even actively avoid you. This was during the Reagan years, and Ron and Nancy were taking their political advice from the Religious Right, so there wasn’t much trust. (This is one of the consequences of prejudice.)

      Even now telling a contact tracer who you sat with at lunch is much easier than telling a contact tracer who you slept with!

      Unfortunately, you have to adapt your tactics to the territory.

    2. The differences with the politics of AIDS in the 1980s are quite fascinating. Back then AIDS was 100% fatal, but contact tracing was forbidden as counterproductive and an invasion of privacy.

      With the result that quite a lot of the gays so concerned about getting stigmatized for their acts ended up dying instead.

      Incidentally, due to what I assume are medical privacy laws enacted during the AIDS era, we now have the issue of authorities not releasing the names of people who died from COVID-19.

      About the only thing that’s the same is that both plagues are supposedly the fault of Republican presidents,

      Another thing they have in common is health authorities being more concerned about fighting stigma than fighting the virus and so initially downplaying the virus.

      Now in both cases they appear to be exaggerating the danger to the general public, admittedly for different reasons.

      1. Incidentally, due to what I assume are medical privacy laws enacted during the AIDS era, we now have the issue of authorities not releasing the names of people who died from COVID-19.

        I was just exiting the medical-billing business when HIPAA was passed around 1995, and IIRC the concern was the damage big data could do by making your medical/psychiatric/genetic issues easily available. The issue wasn’t particularly HIV, but what would happen, for example, if a potential employer could order your genetic profile online, find out if you’d ever been hospitalized for a psychiatric intervention, (or “merely” what you’d discussed with your psychologist) or whether you were diabetic, etc.

    3. “willing to crush civil liberties and the entire economy for months to stop a disease that’s much more easily spread but rarely fatal”

      Intriguing isn’t it? a month or so back Quilette had an article that started with the statement that this was going to lead to the biggest wealth transfer ever. It went on to make some proposals I didn’t agree with, but the longer this situation goes on the more I think the authors may have been on to something with that opening statement. There’s something fishy about all this.

  43. More on the subject of astroturfing. Apparently a couple security contractors, including Brian Krebs, looked into the websites used by the “reopen” movement and discovered that most of them are linked to gun-advocacy groups, conservative lobbiests, and right-wing organizations.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2020/04/24/security-researchers-say-the-reopen-america-campaign-is-being-astroturfed/#48444ac46506

    https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/whos-behind-the-reopen-domain-surge/

    One of the groups is the Dorr Brothers, and I just read the following reporting on them:

    Iowa state Rep. Matt Windschitl, who shepherded through a 2017 bill that created a Stand Your Ground law and allowed Iowans to sue local governments for creating gun-free zones, said Iowa Gun Owners first opposed the bill — in the form of continuous fundraising emails to their members — but weren’t actively involved in talks. They then took credit for its passage, he said, prompting him to call out the group on the floor of the Iowa House as a “scam.”

    “They are not motivated by a genuine appetite for advancement of Second Amendment virtues,” said Windschitl, a trained gunsmith. “They are there to stir the pot and make as much animosity as they can, and then raise money off that animosity.”

    “I’m all for advocacy,” said Minnesota state Rep. Jim Nash, a leading pro-gun Republican in Minnesota. “But the best advocacy groups go in with the end goal in mind of the legislative outcome they want, not just their personal wealth increasing. And that one you can quote me on exactly.”

    https://www.cleveland.com/open/2019/08/how-one-ohio-gun-rights-group-aims-to-upend-the-public-debate-by-scaring-republicans.html

    https://www.dorrbrotherscams.com/p/how-dorr-brothers-work.html

    1. >looked into the websites used by the “reopen” movement and discovered that most of them are linked to gun-advocacy groups, conservative lobbiests, and right-wing organizations.

      I bet you don’t realize you’ve just increased the credibility of people you think are villains.

      Well of course those are the people organizing the reopen protests. When everybody to the left of them is jerking off to fantasies of epidemiologically-rationalized fascism, who else is it going to be?

    2. Irrelevant digression – no one was discussing astroturfing – and smear by association. Two fallacies in one swoop!

      You’re getting as bad as Winter, you are.

      1. > smear by association.

        And that’s ignoring the unstated assumption that conservative/right-wing == bad evil people who only do bad evil things for bad evil reasons. Standard Progressive shibboleth-tossing. You can almost see trout looking around for the moral approval he thinks he’ll earn for his correct devil-naming. Reads not unlike “The only people who want that are… Jews!”

      2. I discussed astroturfing in my first post on the matter. The astroturfing is one of the reasons I find the top-post on this thread to be so awful – a bunch of yahoo’s responding to Facebook posts by lobbiests and tweets by the Orange Dumbass aren’t exactly freedom fighters. I said so several days ago and there was some discussion of the matter at that time.

    1. Stunning.

      Hiding behind a handwave of “it’s stochastic, you gotta take an average” is amazing. Absolute, embarrassing amateur-hour. The way it’s described here, you’d have trouble even getting an average to replicate, since apparently the whole thing is non-deterministic. Might as well just throw out random numbers, because that’s what it’s almost certainly doing.

      I imagine the so-called scientists just ran it until they got numbers that, say, looked close to their expectations, and published those. A really expensive, overly-complex way of just fucking guessing.

      1. but mah science!!!!!

        The entire crew who worked on that monument to amateur programming in ANY capacity should be named, shamed, and any and all degrees revoked with prejudice and Imperial College should be fined 10x all the money they wasted on that steaming pile.

        No wonder they never allowed external reviews.

        I will be the Holy Climate Models aren’t any better.

        1. >I will be the Holy Climate Models aren’t any better.

          While I never expected to see a more fetid clusterfuck than the AGW models, it looks on first inspection that this one is actually worse. I won’t know for until I’ve seen the actual code, though.

          1. I work as a data warehouse administrator for a quite large insurance company (and good statistics are the lifeblood of this business), so I have a lot of contact with our actuaries. Regarding climate warming models, one of them once said “if we did our models like that, the company would be broke, and we’d all be in jail”.

      2. From the article, it doesn’t look like good code. That being said, it’s not the only predictive model which says we’re in trouble if we reopen too soon, (type “predictive model COVID-19 into Google if you don’t believe me.) So I suspect that it’s a “stopped clock being right twice a day” rather than anything else – and of course the whole thing has become very politicized, (which wouldn’t have happened if Trump had two brain cells to rub together) so it’s not hard to imagine anyone’s code being “bent” at this point.

        All that being said, did anyone else notice the Arizona Department of Health Services ordering an Arizona State University and University of Arizona team to “pause” their work of data on COVID-19 cases? Or the fact that Florida has decided not to publish their COVID-19 death statistics?

        https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/

        https://www.abc15.com/news/coronavirus/arizona-state-health-department-tells-modeling-team-to-stop-work

        The fix is in, and not in a good way.

        1. So I suspect that it’s a “stopped clock being right twice a day” rather than anything else

          Except for not being close to right, but that’s a minor detail.

        2. >The fix is in, and not in a good way.

          “But she said the health department is classifying deaths based on an individual’s legal residence to avoid double counting by states.”

          Oh yeah, that’s super-suspicious. Not.

          This is shitty journalism. You wave your hands frantically, stir around a lot of mud, make it look like there’s a huge murky controversy – and only in the last sentence of the article does it turn out that there is a perfectly sane and reasonable explanation for it all.

          1. If the spokesperson for Florida’s current Governor told me it was raining I’d go outside and see for myself.

            1. >If the spokesperson for Florida’s current Governor told me it was raining I’d go outside and see for myself.

              You’d prefer the candidate who was caught naked with a rent-boy and a bag of meth, high off his ass? That was pretty lurid, even for a black Democrat machine politician.

              I think Florida had a narrow escape there. I don’t have any particular fondness for DeSantis, but he seems at least competent. Gillum likely would have fucked up the pandemic response at a cost that doesn’t bear thinking about. Diversely.

              1. This is one of the most annoying aspects of criticisms of Trump’s response to the virus. Critics have 20/20 hindsight but have only an imaginary person who would have made better decisions. They can’t point to anyone on their team who actually advocated a tougher approach early on. On the contrary, the usual suspects on the left talked about xenophobia, racism, and over-reaction in January, February, and into March. The media was filled with “It’s just the flu, don’t be racist” pieces. If Hillary had been president, she’d never have shut down travel from China and Europe so early. Instead, she’d have had hug-a-Chinese anti-racism PR events. We’d be much, much worse off.

                1. I’ve actually been thinking the same thing, not exactly as a defense of Trump, but asking myself what I could fairly criticize and what I couldn’t.

                  So what could we minimally expect of a President?

                  In the run up, I would expect that s/he would not get rid of the CDC position in China, that he not dismantle the National Security Council’s global health security office, and that he should have been more careful generally about cutting CDC’s funding.

                  Once we were actually dealing with a pandemic, I would expect that s/he personally make sure that there were tests – enough tests available in the U.S. as soon as possible, even if it meant bringing in the WHO test or the South Korean test rather than using something invented here.

                  I would expect that s/he take seriously the intelligence reports that we are on the verge of a worldwide pandemic and make sure that we had all the materials we need – PPE, ventilators, etc. The president does have the power to do this!

                  I would expect that s/he become the educator in chief, making sure that everyone in America knew how bad the disease was, what the chances are of dying when you catch it, how exponential spread works, how the disease is transmitted, etc., and most crucially, not transmitting misinformation.

                  I would expect them to make sure testing and tracing was happening as early as possible, including closing the borders as appropriate. (I’m totally against prejudice, but fuck me if I want to let foreign citizens carrying a disease into the country. If they’re our citizen and coming in from someplace like Italy, we can ship them to a quarantine facility and test them, etc.)

                  I would expect that the President wouldn’t tout something as a “miracle cure” without the appropriate scientific evidence. (Coughs the word “Hydrochloroquinine!”)

                  I would expect the president to be as non-partisan as possible, and to impress upon all his underlings that the disease was not to be politicized and that they should strive very hard to be bipartisan and generous to the other side (where the disease was concerned only, of course – it is an election year!)

                  Don’t do stupid stuff like calling COVID-19 “the Chinese virus.”

                  I would expect, in the event that test-and-trace wasn’t enough to fix the problem, that the president would work with the governors to arrange a consistent lockdown policy, and work with Congress to make sure that we had an intelligent way to make sure that everyone was able to pay the rent/utilities/grocery bills. (Trump gets 1 out of a possible 3 points here; he did sign some bail-out bills, but I didn’t like the bills much, and he didn’t work with the governors on the crucial state-level stuff.

                  Extra points for having FEMA park trailers in the hospital parking lots so people working with the disease don’t have to risk taking it home to their family.

                  Extra points for being super-inspiring.

                  Extra points for wearing a mask in public and making sure his underlings do the same.

                  Extra points for televising his Corona Virus test and those of his/her underlings.

                  Extra points for not picking fights with WHO, China, his political opponents or his chief epidemiologist during this time.

                  The problem is that there’s no way to be nice to Trump about this. However I try to arrange things for fairness I can’t help but give him a failing grade.

                  If you read all the way through any of the links I posted above, it’s hard to imagine anyone being more wrong than Trump was, not just in how he initially handled the flu, but in how he dealt with his bureaucracy in 2017, 2018, and early 2019. The multiple, ongoing fuckups were/are literally beyond all belief! (Link below.)

                  https://jmillersexcerpts.blogspot.com/2020/04/timeline-of-coronavirus-pandemic-and-us.html

                  1. Aw, Trouty, go easy on Trump. He’s a busy man with so much to do — like get his lawyers to suppress evidence in the rape case his victim is bringing against him.

                    I think I can hold my nose and vote for Biden knowing I’m supporting the lesser of two sexual offenders…

                    1. Even though Biden’s eight (yes, eight) accusers are actually more credible? Even though there are pictures of Biden doing and saying creepy things like sniffing a girl’s hair and talking about boys rubbing his legs? Even though Biden is probably a pedophile–not ephebophile, pedophile? Even though Biden is a senile old fart who is literally demented, is not qualified to run the country, and probably won’t even make it to the primary convention, much less the general election?

                2. >On the contrary, the usual suspects on the left talked about xenophobia, racism, and over-reaction in January, February, and into March.

                  On top of that, the usual suspects were wasting bandwidth on impeachment.

    2. And the man responsible for foisting this bug-ridden model on the world is the same Neil Ferguson who just lost his job, because he broke the lockdown regulations based on his advice to get some nookie. The “one bad apple”, as Troutwaxer put it.

      Make it a law: no computer model may be used to set public policy unless the code is published under an open source license and has been systematically vetted by professional programmers. Anything else isn’t science, but credential worship.

      1. >Make it a law: no computer model may be used to set public policy unless the code is published under an open source license and has been systematically vetted by professional programmers. Anything else isn’t science, but credential worship.

        Good idea. Won’t happen; too many people are invested in the AGW error cascade to allow it.

        1. “Make it a law: no computer model may be used to set public policy unless the code is published under an open source license and has been systematically vetted by professional programmers.”

          Agreed.

      2. systematically vetted by professional programmers

        I see a danger here. Having such a law means that the government is now in the business of deciding who is and who is not a “professional programmer”. That kind of arrangement has a risk of turning into occupational licensing.

        Apart from that, a thousand times yes.

        Frankly it’s ridiculous that anyone will listen to, or publish the results of, ‘scientists’ who don’t release their modelling code, public policy or no. But it’s not something journals will insist on, because the journal system is its own vortex of suck. It’s amazing that any good science still gets done these days.

      3. Don’t forget the raw data as well. One can have a perfectly correct model, and if you feed it with bogus data, you’ll still get a bogus result.

    3. Wow. How long before they’re caught “hiding the decline” in COVID cases?

      On a different note (still on-topic for A&D), I see in the comments there a lot of people calling the model “amateur”. I was going to chime in and say, no, an ‘amateur’ is ‘one who does it for the love’, a craftsman; this model is the work of someone who desires the end result but has no love or even respect for the process or the craft. Unfortunately, the obvious word for that (borrowed from publishing) is ‘hackwork’, which has an unfortunate hash collision with ‘hacker’. What should we call it instead?

      1. Potemkin code? Looks impressive but under the hood there isn’t any substance.

        Back when I was an active modeler I referred to a particularly bad module as “Soviet Code” in that it was ugly and unmaintainable but gave reliable and testable answers. Ferguson’s steaming pile doesn’t even do that..

        1. That’s an accurate description of the consequence in this case, but I was looking for a word for the cause. Plenty of Potemkin code is produced by professionals (“this ERP from Oracle is 20GB and cost a fortune, it must be amazing even though we haven’t figured out how to do anything with it”), and not all hackwork is Potemkin (because sometimes (rarely) they’re not trying to impress anyone).

          1. Cargo cult programming, then? The people programming go thru the motions of good programming practice are OK with crap formulas encysted under layer after layer of ad-hockery until the Heisenbugs take over. I’m pretty sure Our Esteemed Host originated the term but I think it applies.

            One week we were trying to reuse a module after the original maintainer left and were totally stumped by a constant inserted in the main formula. After much testing and analysis we determined the original coder bungled his unit conversions and rather than fix the fundamental error he just threw the Bugger Factor in to adjust things.

      2. “Junk code” is short, punchy, memorable, but I still like “hackwork” and don’t think it has much of a connection with “hacker.” I think most people know that hacking is done by hackers, but hackwork is done by hacks: meaning superficial, rushed, uninspired, rote, done for money, and not for love or for art.

        1. I think most people know that hacking is done by hackers

          Most programmers, maybe, but the muggles still think a “hacker” is a guy who breaks into computers (and fights over a videotape robot with Angelina Jolie. Ghod, but that film was terrible.) and I’m looking for a way to explain it to them in case they get it into their heads that programming needs to be regulated to ‘professionalise’ it. Anything that could attach more negative connotations to ‘hacker’ is a no-no.

          (Of course, I could be totally wrong here. I don’t think in connotations (associational learning is a NT thing) so my mental model of people who do is probably inaccurate.)

  44. This sort of thing can trigger a civilian war and mass blood shedding. You already said you believe the mystical power of the jews. And you know what happened to those who pushed in the 1930s. They lost and they will probably lose an escalation again!

  45. Hey Eric, I had a somewhat grim, but I think very interesting thought on this subject. COVID-19 is an issue where there will probably be reliable numbers, so I think it’s possible to run a somewhat ugly but very interesting experiment in prediction and politics. Hypothetically, you and I (representing two political extremes) could each choose a primary and backup source of Corona Virus data. Then you could ask people to describe their politics and make a series of predictions about what the future holds for our pandemic: Total number of cases. Total number of (Squick!) deaths. Cases and deaths per month. Rate of future increase/decrease in cases as the country “reopens.” What palliatives will be end up having mainstream medical approval vs. those that don’t check out? Total number of deaths after epidemiologists and statisticians have checked 2019 deaths against 2020 deaths. Maybe someone can suggest some good ways to track the economy state-by-state as well, and we can see whether reopening early is a good economic strategy…

    Then revisit the issue every ninety days and everyone can check their beliefs against reality. I think it’s a worthwhile experiment, though I’d certainly understand if you don’t want to conduct it on your blog.

    1. >I think it’s a worthwhile experiment, though I’d certainly understand if you don’t want to conduct it on your blog.

      Alas, I can’t commit the amount of time that would be required to do it right.

          1. Thank you very much. I am working to get something up right now. Meanwhile, (and I only want answers from the right-wingers here,) what online resources do you use to track the COVID-19 issues? Not blogs or other newsmedia, but actual trackers, such as the John Hopkins tracker here:

            https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

            I’m specifically interested in sources which track number of cases, number of deaths, number of recovered, etc. on a day-to-day basis, or which track various curves and rates of increase, like this one:

            https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en

            (You may have to scroll up and down a little and change the size of your screens, but eventually you will see a curve and a rate of increase printed near the curve.)

            My plan, as the “Liberal” is to pick a couple sites, and also to involve some Conservatives/Libertarians in picking sites so there’s hopefully as little dispute as possible over what the actual numbers turn out to be. If we could end up with a 2-3 good sites which the rightwing types here agree are useful, that would be great. (I want more than one site for backup purposes, that way if one site goes down there will be an agreed-upon replacement.)

            Note that I’m excluding one particular site from consideration. The programmer is a high-school student and IIRC this is his first major programming project. I’ve noticed that it doesn’t seem to follow a 24-hour day, sometimes showing an increase of as many as 200,000 new cases worldwide in a day, and the days seem to last longer than 24 hours. I’ve no doubt the kid is destined for great things, but he’s not there yet. In the interests of not embarrassing anyone, I’m not posting the URL. (If anyone else knows the site and has the time, you might get over there and offer to help with the day-counting-issues.) But that particular site is excluded.

            So if anyone is interested in testing their ideology against a real-world problem, let me know here!

    2. >Hypothetically, you and I (representing two political extremes)

      I just noticed this.

      Troutwaxer, if you think the differences between you and me span more than a pretty small fraction of political configuration space you, really, really need to get out of your bubble more. Well over 40% of the U.S.’s population is so far on the other side of me from you that you’d probably get vertigo if you clued in.

      1. Anyone too far to the left of me or the right of you probably isn’t sane. I just wanted someone well-rightward of me to pick some of the material we’d be benchmarking against.

        1. >Anyone too far to the left of me or the right of you probably isn’t sane.

          I told you you need to get out of your bubble more. What a weirdly parochial thing that is to believe!

          1. That depends how I mean “too far,” doesn’t it? Like you, I enjoy the company of some really weird people! (And I’d also distinguish political sanity from psychological sanity, at least a little and maybe a lot!)

          2. I’ve noticed of late more and more political commentators, from all corners of the compass, characterizing disagreement with their political opinions (and especially with their axioms) as evidence of mental illness.

            Is it just me, or does this send shivers up your spine too? Calls to mind ‘euthanasia’ centres for the ‘mentally ill’ …

            1. >Is it just me, or does this send shivers up your spine too? Calls to mind ‘euthanasia’ centres for the ‘mentally ill’ …

              Well sure, there’s that. But I’m actually more concerned about the fact that “your politics is crazy” is nowadays true more often than it used to be.

              For many Americans politics has replaced religion as their principal generator of delusional insanity simply because politics, filling the vacuum left by the collapse of conventional religion, has attached itself to the emotional receptors religion used to occupy and become more religious in its categories and dynamics.

              1. “your politics is crazy”

                That is just an euphemism for “your politics is fact-free and defies reality”.

                It is a common believe that crazy people do not live in reality, so it is only a small step to infer that people who adhere policies that defy reality are crazy.

                But that ignores the fact that defying reality and denying facts is an age old policy to avoid rational arguments you cannot win when your real motivation cannot be stated aloud.

                1. > That is just an euphemism for “your politics is fact-free and defies reality”.

                  https://www.rgj.com/story/opinion/voices/2017/04/26/republicans-show-all-signs-mental-illness-cory-farley/306959001/

                  https://www.foxnews.com/media/alec-baldwin-americans-mentally-ill-vote-trump-again

                  https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/459416-alabama-church-posts-sign-reading-a-black-vote-for-trump-is

                  … and I’m sure you’d find much of the same commentary on the right, as well. I don’t think any of these people are using mental illness as a euphemism.

  46. I noticed another interesting thing about this whole COVID thing in recent times:

    The left-sympathizing main stream media seems to have have almost succeeded in quietly silencing criticism of China’s handling of the crisis and their lack of transparency in communicating to the world about the virus outbreak. Even debate about whether was a potential bio-weapon or a naturally occurring one has been silenced. Are the experts really convinced that it is a natural virus? Has any other natural virus been this virulent in recent times? Did the virus really originate from bats? If so, why not earlier? Did the contact with bats/animals really start in China only recently? Why are the Chinese so eager to transfer blame for the origin of the virus on US/Europe? This really makes me think… but barring a few, most of the traditional left-leaning media has not raised these questions.

    Before debating why we need lockdowns (or not) we should ask, who brought the world to this state in the first place?

    1. The mainstream media doesn’t report criticism of the PRC, that’s true. That doesn’t mean such criticism has been silenced, or that it’s having no political effect. For instance, manufacturing in China is taking a major hit from the virus outbreak and the PRC’s mishandling of it … and several governments are offering firms money to move their factories out of China.

      1. I used the word “silencing” in the sense that the MSM are not reporting criticism of PRC. And also there is this leftist school of thought that attributing the origin of the virus to any particular country is “racist” – which is utter nonsense. I think the leftist media would love to “silence” actively if they could, but they are doing their best to make people forget China’s role in all this.

        1. On one hand, I do somewhat agree with you. A fairly deep dive will tell you that the problem seems to stem from Wuhan’s mayor, who worked fairly hard to keep news from getting out, and the mayor’s party superior, and it was at least two weeks before anyone in China admitted that there was human-to-human transmission, so to say the least, the Chinese aren’t exactly covered in glory over all this, and they may have violated their international agreements by not reporting this to WHO and their treaty partners.

          On the other hand, the head of the CDC was briefed by his Chinese counterpart in early January. U.S. Intelligence began reporting the problem up their chain of command in late December. By the end of January COVID-19 had shown up multiple times in the Presidential Daily Brief, and Alex Azar, the head of Health and Human services had at least attempted to have a conversation with Trump on the issue.

          So while it’s very legitimate to complain about the Chinese misbehavior, and I hope our diplomats will do something about it, China’s misbehavior doesn’t remotely excuse how the issue was handled on the U.S. side. Trump’s administration simply didn’t do anything they should have done.

    2. It’s largely a coincidence having to do with the Cathedral’s interests and the CPC’s interests being the same in this case. Generally, the Cathedral wants to suppress any thoughts of China screwing things up because foreign >> domestic. Can’t let the locals develop any sense of pride.

    1. >Unrelated to the above, I would be interested to hear your opinion on the ferguson model code.

      That’s easy. It’s utter shit.

      1. That’s easy. It’s utter shit.

        Back when I worked on underwater vehicles, we had a navigation specialist on staff who wrote the algorithms used to determine vehicle position himself. His code was an impenetrable mishmash of the “write FORTRAN in C” variety, replete with one-letter variable names, lots of globals, etc.

        When it came time to write the vehicle’s navigation module, you know what we on the software engineering team did? We took that C code and found a way to compile and link it verbatim into the nicely factored, unit-tested, object-oriented, written with modern (for the time) C++ practices, navigation module — because the nav guy got his fucking Ph.D. in autonomous underwater vehicle navigation and we software engineers knew jack shit about it.

        It doesn’t matter if the code is crappy from a software engineer’s standpoint. It was written to do a specific job, using assumptions and formulas which most SWEs are not qualified to critique — and inasmuch as the code has been verified to give the expected output for a given input, those SWEs need to sit down and let the domain experts do their job.

        1. > and inasmuch as the code has been verified to give the expected output for a given input

          But that’s just it. The model wasn’t verified–and couldn’t be, because it gave different answers every time!

        2. That code isn’t shit just because it’s written like shit. It’s shit because it has bugs like this gem: https://github.com/mrc-ide/covid-sim/issues/168

          And as for black boxes in general, the following situation made a big impression on me 20 years ago. This was my first real job, interestingly.

          One fine day the head of accounting calls over the IT department into his office. Apparently, all the corporate reporting for the year was handled by an Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of lines of macro code. The accountant who built the spreadsheet and been refining it for about 5 years left the company 9 months prior. That morning it suddenly and inexplicably stopped working.

          That was a beautiful mess. Nobody in accounting knew Excel that well, let alone VBA. Nobody in IT knew any accounting, nor was VBA their strong suit either. And holy shit that was not well structured code.

          Out of morbid curiosity, what were you “software engineers” planning to do when your underwater vehicles started sinking on the night of the full moon and the domain expert was on a two month sabbatical in Tahiti?

        3. There is a newfangled concept in software engineering called “refactoring”, which you may possibly have heard of. It means that, if you know what outputs ought to be generated from each possible set of inputs, and you have a way of testing what outputs a program does generate from those inputs, you can safely change how the program is written, because if you make a change that breaks a test you’ll know you’ve made a mistake.

          No doubt you didn’t have time to rewrite your navigation specialist’s impenetrable mess of code into something that anyone but him could understand. But there’s also no doubt that someone working on that codebase eventually had to go into that impenetrable mess to find out why it wasn’t working as expected and fix it, because you decided to take your specialist’s knowledge on faith.

          And heck, at least your specialist did verify his code. Ferguson didn’t. We know that, because it doesn’t give consistent answers when run repeatedly on the same data. If your calculator, asked the same question repeatedly, replies “4”, “5”, “3” and “a suffusion of yellow”, you’d be an idiot not to get a new calculator. But Ferguson had no problem with his model doing just that. That alone is grounds for rejecting every model done under Ferguson’s supervision.

  47. good point! do what i say or else! because i’ve got a gun!

    and just because i haven’t shot you yet, doesn’t mean i won’t next time!

    again, you have been warned, do as i say, or i will shoot you!

    you’re such a cool dude, with an extremely deep grasp of how democracy works:

    we elect you so that we can do other things, while you do your things, until we disagree with the things that you do, and then we threaten you with guns.

    what a fabulous country and version of democracy, looks like it’s functioning well.

    just like GPS, you suck on more levels i can even begin to tease out.

    though i am a tease, don’t you think? you like to be teased?

    1. Not a democracy. Explicitly not a democracy. Democracies are stupid. The Framers weren’t stupid.

  48. Over the weekend I saw Pelosi in various CNN interviews going on and on about all the “swastikas” and “skinheads” at the Michigan State Legislature protests.

    I can’t confirm this at all after a brief googling. (BBC has a video on their site for example, I didn’t see any swastikas; a couple of the older farmers were in various stages of balding but I saw no further justification for labeling them “skinheads”.)

    Is there anything at all to this, or is this entirely made up from whole cloth, and nobody is calling Pelosi et al. on it?

    1. The swastikas I saw in photos were on signs to protest the authoritarian nature of the lockdown. They were accusatory and mocking, not support for National Socialism. Pelosi is just flailing, and of course the mainstream media isn’t interested in calling her out.

      The bigger news that the media is ignoring (for as long as they can): the transcripts that Schiff was forced to release. All the Democrats who publicly said they had evidence of Trump/Russia collusion actually said the opposite when under oath. Schiff knew this for years but lied about all the “evidence” he had and kept the testimony secret. The whole collusion hoax is now exposed. Trump is tweeting about Obamagate, and the term has trended on Twitter for two days. It looks like The Storm is finally here.

  49. There are zero actually poor people in the U.S. An important way we know this is that our supposed “poor” are overweight.

    Overweight, but undernourished. Because the food they can afford to buy is calorie-dense, but otherwise does not provide adequate nutrition. Because they’re poor. And poverty kills. . Without access to adequate nutrition or health care, the poor die in greater numbers. What’s more, poverty reduces your cognitive capability, due to bad living conditions, bad food, and the effect of stress on the body and brain, meaning that the conservative trope of “the poor can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” is pure fantasy.

    They don’t have a problem with not enough food, they can and do eat too much because food is so cheap. Also they normally own things like cars and refrigerators and computers and air conditioners.

    By going into debt.

    (Well, if they’re not “homeless”. Which is to say mentally ill people who are on the streets because we made an unwise decision to shut down almost all of our insane asylums back in the late 1960s.)

    Or drug addicts, many of whom got addicted to drugs because of systemic failures in the health care system, including profit-minded insurance and pharmaceutical companies favoring opioids and people losing their insurance and turning to readily available street substitutes.

    In the case of the mentally ill, what alternative are you proposing? That we continue to keep them caged up and subject them to the Mengelian horrors of asylum “treatment”?

    By many measures of purchasing power, including square feet of living space and rates of automobile ownership, the American “poor” average a higher living standard than middle-class Europeans.

    Which is to say that they have more stuff. But an excess of stuff is not really linked to higher quality of life. When it comes to the essentials — like health care and education — the poorest European has access to better than most middle-class Americans. As for living space, having a bigger apartment than Europeans matters little when the water is toxic, as it was for the poor in Flint, MI.

    The problem of the poor and homeless in the United States is a lack of political will — or resources — to do the right thing. These are the people most directly impacted by the Republican “starve the beast” doctrine of the 1980s — meaning that market fundamentalists like yourself, when put into power, achieve monstrous results.

    Explaining away the problem won’t solve it. Better social safety nets will go a long way.

    1. > the poorest European has access to better than most middle-class Americans.

      Says the man who’s never lived there. I have. You live in a fantasy world.

      1. And when did you last live in Europe? If I understand your history it was more than forty years ago, maybe longer by 5-10 years. Things do change.

        1. >Things do change.

          They do, yes. I’ve been back to visit since and it’s clear just from looking around that the gap in living standards has widened since I lived there, not narrowed. It’s not that European individual purchasing power has fallen, it’s that the U.S. has gotten fantastically wealthier since the 1970s and Europe hasn’t.

          I lived in Europe during the last years of the postwar boom. The U.S. eventually figured out how to recover from that change in conditions; we can tell that Europe never has by the extremely high rates of long-term unemployment and low rates of new-business formation there. Both of which are heavy drags on per-capita wealth; notoriously, Sweden (considered a wealthy European country) has about the per-capita wealth level of Alabama, the poorest U.S. state.

          Here is one very visible index: price and quality of food. Europeans still spend about the same percentage of their income on staple foods that Americans did in 1970, possibly more (it’s been a few years since I saw figures in The Economist), while the labor-hour cost of food in the U.S. has plummeted. Try eating at a restaurant in Europe; you’ll be startled by how small the portions are by U.S. standards, and unless you’re in a high-end gourmet place the quality of the ingredients will usually be noticeably inferior.

          Go look up rates of automobile ownership. Two-car families? Common in middle-class America, still pretty rare in Europe. One thing that hasn’t changed in 40 years is how cramped European living quarters are by American standards. And the vaunted health care? Go look up the per-capita figures on distribution of … say … MRI machines. Many deep rural areas in the U.S. have better access to these than major cities in Europe.

          1. Here is one very visible index: price and quality of food. Europeans still spend about the same percentage of their income on staple foods that Americans did in 1970, possibly more (it’s been a few years since I saw figures in The Economist), while the labor-hour cost of food in the U.S. has plummeted.

            And yet, almost every time I see a European post on Hackernews about travel to the United States, they are struck by an immediate first impression, the terrible, wretched, abominable quality of U.S. food. (That is, when they aren’t being harassed by the jackboots in our customs agencies.) Part of the reason for this is that European food-safety laws have actual teeth, and many of the additives, preservatives, and other chemicals present in U.S. food wouldn’t pass muster in Europe. Europeans also tend to prefer fresh food that’s locally sourced, and will pick the cruddier-looking, but more flavorful and nutritious, produce over the better-looking but flavor- and nutrition-poor produce that Americans prefer.

            Try eating at a restaurant in Europe; you’ll be startled by how small the portions are by U.S. standards, and unless you’re in a high-end gourmet place the quality of the ingredients will usually be noticeably inferior.

            Europeans have stuck to reasonable portion sizes. American portion sizes have ballooned, contributing to the obesity epidemic.

            Go look up rates of automobile ownership. Two-car families? Common in middle-class America, still pretty rare in Europe.

            Which means that urban Europeans live in more walkable and bikeable communities — and their carbon footprint is much lower. Car ownership is higher in the USA because you need a car here, no thanks to city planners who, in collusion with the auto industry in the 20th century, dismantled public-transit routes and set up suburbs.

            And the vaunted health care? Go look up the per-capita figures on distribution of … say … MRI machines. Many deep rural areas in the U.S. have better access to these than major cities in Europe.

            Which, in turn, has spurred the development of less-expensive but still accurate diagnostic techniques that don’t require an MRI machine. Going by things like “access to MRIs” is statistical gerrymandering; instead, try looking up stats on life expectancy, health outcomes, and how these factors vary with personal income (they are highly dependent on income in the USA, but they remain high — higher than the U.S. average — whether you’re rich or poor in Europe or Canada).

            Again, quality of life depends highly on your metric for quality. When you’re using “more stuff=better” as your metric, the USA comes out on top. Europeans tend to use more nuanced metrics.

            1. >Europeans tend to use more nuanced metrics.

              The “more nuanced metrics” are excuses being made for material poverty brought on by shitty political economics.

              The fact remains that most middle-class Europeans will never have the purchasing power of a “poor” American, never live in a house as large as the average “poor” American, and will never see a medical facility as comprehensively equipped as those routinely available to “poor” Americans.

              1. As an ex-New Zealander (now Australian), I was aghast to see their Government explicitly adopt this “nuance” as policy:

                https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/8/18656710/new-zealand-wellbeing-budget-bhutan-happiness

                “To Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the purpose of government spending is to ensure citizens’ health and life satisfaction.”

                How far from “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” can you get without going full Communist, Fascist, or Theocratist?

                I guess NZ is about to find out. I’m certainly in no hurry to return.

            2. “Europeans also tend to prefer fresh food that’s locally sourced, and will pick the cruddier-looking, but more flavorful and nutritious, produce over the better-looking but flavor- and nutrition-poor produce that Americans prefer.”

              Once again I doubt very much that lumping all Europeans together for categorical statements has any validity. Just as I find that lumping all of the people living in the U.S. of A together for diet does not describe the country I know. I’ve lived from south of Miami to north of Boston to south of Seattle – not very far south in Renton – as well as Kansas and Colorado and Ohio and a few more places in between and of course on the economy in Europe too. We had moneyed friends on the shore of Lac Leman who had a large hybrid sweet corn patch because they couldn’t buy good fresh corn locally so they grew their own.

              When I lived in Chicago I was struck by the variety of dining. With no extra effort it was possible to get lunch in Greektown and be the only person in the restaurant who couldn’t follow the menu and conversation in modern Greek (my only exposure being Attic and Koine). There were neighborhoods in Berwyn where everybody in the neighborhood could trace back to the same small town in Italy. Again everybody in a not very pretentious but thoroughly authentic Italian restaurant could at least handle the meal with Italian learned at home.

              Stopping in Colfax Washington, on the Palouse a food raising part of the country where localvores could be happy but a lot of lentil dishes are imported recipes, my wife one day took a bite and said this is real southern barbecue. The proprietor wandered over and said he was from the American South, wanted to live on the Palouse, and so brought something he thought was undersupplied to support himself. Stopping again a few months later my wife said this is not real southern barbecue, no way. Again the proprietor wandered over and said southern dialect warning come to find out that the southern barbecue market was saturated with negligible demand. Apparently tastes differ both individually and by regions.

              We are assured above, for what it’s worth, that Americans are eating according to their own poor preferences while Europeans are eating according to their own superior preferences.

              It’s not for me to instruct people who know their own preferences and satisfy them what their preferences by rights ought to be and how to satisfy the preferences chosen for them by others.

              In fact as noted in the original post I might could (southern dialect speaking in the tradition of Scots-Irish approach to independent thinking) find a gun or two to deal with anyone who seeks to should on me and mine.

            3. And yet, almost every time I see a European post on Hackernews about travel to the United States, they are struck by an immediate first impression

              > post on Hackernews
              Found your problem.

              FWIW, here’s my impressions as a Brit who has, in the past four years or so, travelled to Boston, MA (and also Montreal and Seville, for comparison).

              Fast food chains seem to have about the same level of quality in the US, UK and Canada; Spain was a bit lower. The US definitely had the lowest prices; OTOH I did get the impression that burger patties, specifically, were using more fillers/extenders than would be normal in the UK.

              The US seems not to understand chips. I’m talking about actual chips here, chunky things you can mop up gravy with, not ‘matchstick’/’straw’ fries and certainly not crisps (I have no idea why you call those ‘chips’). The only American concept of them seems to be oven chips, which are strictly inferior to the fatty greasy kind as found in any British fish-and-chip shop. (I believe that Canada gets this at least somewhat right, as I can’t imagine poutine — which I haven’t tried — working without it.)

              Speaking of crisps, apart from the bigger bag, Frito-Lays were (unsurprisingly) pretty much indistinguishable from Walkers. However, I didn’t see much sign of higher-quality specialty crisps in the convenience stores. Maybe Americans just aren’t that into crisps. (Brits, on the other hand, will talk your ear off for hours about how Seabrook’s are better than McCoy’s, and whether Salt & Vinegar should come in blue packets and Cheese & Onion in green or vice-versa.)

              In terms of proper sit-down restaurants, Boston seemed to have about the same quality standards as London (i.e. higher than most of the rest of the UK) for the food, even though the environment (decor, ambience etc.) was tacky; the prices were definitely lower than London prices (possibly by as much as a factor of two). In Spain I think the general quality was lower, but I can’t be sure as my recollection is tainted by how dull their cuisine was (they seemed inordinately proud of a bland orange-coloured soup).

              Conclusion: the US about matches UK food standards, at somewhat lower prices; Canada is roughly on a level with the UK; Spain is just rubbish; and when will Americans realise that curry is awesome?

              Now I’m hungry…

              1. >Maybe Americans just aren’t that into crisps.

                We are, but the major national brands are at best mediocre. Frito-Lays are especially bad – I’d have to be starving to eat those.

                Here in Pennsylvania we have a regional brand called Herr’s that is very good and on sale everywhere, but it’s less common outside the Mid-Atlantic region. Utz’s are pretty good too.

              2. >OTOH I did get the impression that burger patties, specifically, were using more fillers/extenders than would be normal in the UK.

                Get out of the crappy low-end burger joints and that will rapidly cease to be true.

                1. Oh, absolutely. The gourmet burger fad that’s swept the UK over the past decade or so is pretty much entirely copied from the US. (And I love it.)

                  I only meant that Americans seem to be willing to take the low-end a bit lower in that particular regard. (I’m specifically thinking of Shake Shack, whose patties were at the level I’d normally associate with the sort of shady kebab van that’s open at 4am to feed drunken students coming out of the nightclubs.)

                  I think Americans approach starch-inflated hamburgers the same way they do HFCS sodas: the mass market grumbles but keeps buying them, while the middle-class has the time to hunt for places that sell the good stuff. Time seems to be one of the main things US folk have less of than Europæans, somehow.

              3. >FWIW, here’s my impressions as a Brit who has, in the past four years or so, travelled to Boston, MA (and also Montreal and Seville

                I will note that one of the things that has changed for the better since I last lived in the U.K. is British cooking. When I lived there the native idiom was deeply, almost comically awful; to be fair, U.S. cooking at the time wasn’t very good by today’s standards either, though it was rather better due to more general access to high-quality ingredients.

                In the 50 years since, both countries have improved their cooking quite dramatically. I still find I need to be a little more careful when visiting Britain (buying further up the price distribution) to avoid terrible food, but at least that’s actually possible in this century.

                Advice to travelling foreigners in the U.S.: Stay out of the low-end fast-food joints. Avoid anything labeled “Italian” except pizza and sandwiches, some serious culinary crimes get covered up by tomatoes and cheese. Chinese restaurants outside coastal cities and their exurbs are no-go. On the other hand, you should not leave until you’ve had steak and barbecue the way we do it; good barbecue used to be hard to find outside the Deep South but that is changing.

                1. Request for information: Do you count Chicago as a “coastal city” for the purpose of avoiding/not avoiding Chinese restaurants?

                  1. >Request for information: Do you count Chicago as a “coastal city” for the purpose of avoiding/not avoiding Chinese restaurants?

                    I don’t know. I do know that I’ve never had what I’d consider good Chinese in the area around Detroit, which is relatively near Chicago and also a Great Lakes port, but I haven’t spent enough time in Chicago to answer you.

                    Where I know the good places are: the LA, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Philadelphia Chinatowns. I’ve heard credible reports that Seattle’s is good.

                    I just checked and Chicago has a Chinatown, too. Likely there’s some decent food there. The rule is basically that Chinese restaurants not near enough a Chinatown to have to compete with it tend to be awful and best avoided.

                    Another heuristic, believe it or not, is how they’re housed. Chinese places in strip malls are generally terrible; look for one in a standalone building to improve your odds.

                    1. Where I know the good places are: the LA, San Francisco, New York, Boston and Philadelphia Chinatowns. I’ve heard credible reports that Seattle’s is good.

                      Boston’s Chinatown is… mixed. There are some great spots there, but a few that will leave your guts roiling as well. For a specific example of what qualifies as “good” try Mary Chung’s in Cambridge. A wide selection of excellent food brought out on big serving plates to be eaten the Chinese way: communally, with everybody taking a little off the plates with what they want. Oh, and it’s a local hacker hangout — I’ve dined there with some of the real Big Deals in the Lisp community.

                2. I will note that one of the things that has changed for the better since I last lived in the U.K. is British cooking. When I lived there the native idiom was deeply, almost comically awful

                  I suspect the reason it’s improved is because British cooking (at least, the bits that get noticed) now mostly isn’t the “native idiom” (apart from a few things like pork pie and Yorkshire pudden that you can pry from my cold dead hands). 50 years ago, we hadn’t really integrated our immigrant populations (Windrush etc.) to the extent we have now, and our culinary flagships are mostly fusion (the old joke about Britain’s national dish being Chicken Tikka Masala is not that far from the truth, and AIUI it’s unlike anything you’d actually be served in India).

                  Judging by Eric’s old post on the capsaicinization of American food, that’s not so different to what happened in the US, except there it was Mexicans, rather than Indians (and West Indians), teaching the locals what flavour was.

    2. “Overweight, but undernourished. Because the food they can afford to buy is calorie-dense, but otherwise does not provide adequate nutrition”

      Nonsense indeed. Lately, where I live, potatoes have been free to all who want to carry them home- there has been home delivery by volunteers and by public agencies including by LEO for those who asked for it.

      The Irish experience of long ago reinforced that potatoes and milk are a complete diet. Notice that includes vitamin C and other critical but rarely short nutrients.

      When I was a starving student I lived on ramen boiled with split peas and lentils. Bulk purchase and room temperature storage was easy and cheap with nothing more required. Ramen with seasoning was cheaper then bouillon cubes while the noodles, peas and lentils made a complete protein and a one dish cheap to cook meal. A variety of dirty rice with brown rice and turkey necks or canned tuna is nutritious and cheap enough. Brown bread with peanut butter runs cheap and nutritious. A brown bag of boiled potatoes and hard boiled eggs runs cheap and provides good portable nutrition.

      There can be issues. During the height of the Cuban refugee crisis new and sometimes penniless refugees were given ample supplies of peanut butter and powdered milk. The meals were traditionally planned and prepared by women who had little notion of how to feed the family on the subsidized food that was available in abundance.

      Indian Health Services are fully subsidized but throwing money at the problem has accomplished very little.

      Starting with preconceived notions of who to blame leads to a misidentification of the real problems. Amazing numbers of people who find the real problems too tough will seek out easier problems. Taking the advice of totalitarians as to what the real problems are, who to blame and what the solutions are leads to a great deal of blaming but very few solutions. Blaming “wrong-minded” people for the wrong problems is easy but doesn’t lead to any useful solutions.

    3. > The problem of the poor and homeless in the United States is a lack of political will — or resources — to do the right thing.

      Does it actually count as hypocritical any more that the person spitting on the (Michigan) poor for being “muh frEEEdums” “gimme muh netflix” “fucking idiots”, has flipped back to the role of Noble Man of the People? Or is that just par for the course in political discourse nowadays?

      I guess the noisy annoying poor have faded sufficiently from the public view that Dedushka Jeff can slip the mask back on and go back to promising the virtuous, deserving poor (you know, the nice ones, who sit in the cities and quietly collect their welfare checks, and would never be so gauche as to _protest_ anything, let alone about going back to work) a glorious future paradise, once we get rid of those horrid bourgeois pigs that is.

    4. >the water is toxic, as it was for the poor in Flint, MI.

      It is some next level audacity to cite the government run public water supply and failure thereof as some sort of a black mark on the free market’s track record. Next you’re gonna say education is crap in the US, because there’s too little government intervention in it.

  50. The authoritarian-right has been howling for decades about how this or that crisis requires their preferred policies to be put into place. But the authoritarian-right exaggerates the danger, supplies studies and papers that are fatally flawed or outright fraudulent, and issues sneering rebuttals about how their critics are willfully blind. In addition, the policies they tout would often be ineffective or actually counterproductive even if the danger were real. The solutions proposed by the authoritarian-right against AIDS, or Islamic terrorism, or single-parent children, or whatever, all have malicious ulterior political motives behind them. Or perhaps not ‘malicious’ but ‘delusional’ as the right-authoritarians sincerely believe their policies to be good ones.

    The lockdown, shutdown, social-distancing, mask-wearing-plague-LARPing response to the pandemic has been the same thing, only from the authoritarian-left instead of the authoritarian-right. I’m not buying it any more than I bought, say, the right-wing calls for criminalizing homosexuality and segregating homosexuals as a response to AIDS.

    1. This is a reasonable level of cynicism. Have you considered Pascal’s wager as applied to masks and social distancing?

        1. No it’s a matter of framing. In my world COVID-19 is a medical issue first and foremost. COVID-19 is a virus with certain characteristics, and will therefore obey certain epidemiological rules, and the rules COVID-19 obeys can’t be changed by anyone’s shaved-ape political grunting – and that goes for the left as well as the right.

          Once you see COVID-19 as a purely epidemiological issue it becomes a matter of choosing those behaviors which are statistically most likely to increase your survival. Thus I regularly take Vitamin D3 and Zinc, as well as low-dosage aspirin. (HCL doesn’t look good, but I’m keeping an open mind and maybe someone will do an experiment with a statistical approach I can respect.) I keep masks in my car and wear them whenever I leave the house/car. I don’t make social visits to friends/family right now and try to stay out of stores and restaurants because that’s what the statistics tell me.

          Being a Democrat/Liberal is absolutely secondary to my attempt to play the numbers until a good vaccine comes along.

          It happens to be that the current administration didn’t get it right (on damn-near anything pandemic related) but I do recognize that either Bush I or Bush II would have gotten most things right, as would have either Clinton or Reagan (or at least 3/4 of the other Republican political candidates in the 2016 election.) So from my point of view this is not should not be political.

          The thing that makes this political is that Trump – not Republicans, not conservatives, but Trump – is a massive fuck-up and Trump and his people are pulling every political lever they can find to attempt to look good after failing utterly to provide even basic pandemic protections for the American people. The only question is whether they succeed or fail in their attempt to politicize an epidemiological issue.

          1. > No it’s a matter of framing. In my world COVID-19 is a medical issue first and foremost.

            Says the fellow who equated virus transmission with eternal damnation, via evocation of Pascal. Seems a little off-base.

            I get what you mean, but your choice of gedankenexperiment reveals your perspective bias. In any case, it’s trivial to flip it around and use Pascal to argue the inverse of your point, since you are applying it to things which do not have the value-extremes he was working with, so it seems kind of, well, silly. One has to implicitly agree with your value system in the first place for it to be a valid point. It can be used to argue any supposed public health issue, from any side.

            In other words, it sounds like a fancy-sophisticate way of saying “Won’t someone please think of the children?!”

            Aside:
            – Side A argues for Behavior X, hand-waving away externalities.
            – Side B argues against Behavior Y, which is coercive force used to ensure Behavior X, due both to variances in the severity of the externalities and to satisfy basic principles of liberty.
            – Side A chastises Side B, seemingly perceiving B’s argument to be against Behavior X.

            And people think libertarians have naive, overly-simplified reasoning. Sheesh.

            1. Aside:
              – Side A argues for Behavior X, hand-waving away externalities.
              – Side B argues against Behavior Y, which is coercive force used to ensure Behavior X, due both to variances in the severity of the externalities and to satisfy basic principles of liberty.
              – Side A chastises Side B, seemingly perceiving B’s argument to be against Behavior X.

              Just to pick a piece of conservative leadership, in 2003 George W. Bush said, (and I’m compressing here) “I’m going to invade Afghanistan, but here at home I’d like everyone to continue being good to your Muslim neighbors.” Then he pushed both policies forwards, and I didn’t disagree with either policy, though I disagreed a lot with George W. about other things. Point is, this is what leadership looks like: you state your policy and you push it forward consistently, setting examples where necessary. (Obviously there’s a lot more to it, but I’m not here to give a lecture on leadership.)

              The problems you point to above are all problems with leadership. Ask yourself what a good leader would have done to make the arguments not happen and you’ll see that the entire dichotomy between “gun toting people without masks” and the “autocratic” governor of Michigan are entirely artifacts of poor leadership leading to (very broadly) a failure of morale. If the person at the very top had set a good example you wouldn’t be seeing these problems.

              1. > The problems you point to above are all problems with leadership.

                Interesting. You need better leadership, you’re saying? Because you’re on Side A, and behaving as described. Now, it sure looks like you’re deflecting by raising up Your Priesthood’s Great Satan as scapegoat, in a way that seems mildly non-sequitur from the immediate conversation.

                But I could just as easily be misreading. These comment chains have gotten quite byzantine.

          2. > Once you see COVID-19 as a purely epidemiological issue it becomes a matter of choosing those behaviors which are statistically most likely to increase your survival.

            I would say “thanks, Captain Obvious”, but, that’s like, 2nd Lt Obvious at best. Yes, as a computer programmer living in a 150-dwelling high rise on the south side of Chicago, and fortunate enough to work for a company that went WFH a week and a half before The Government told us to, I wear a mask, I socially distance, I stay inside, and my wife has gone through more bleach in the past couple of months than Tite Kubo.

            What started the thread in the first place was whether measures appropriate to NYC and Chicago and other very densely populated areas, needed to also be applied (and enforced by government action) in much less densely populated areas like, say, rural Michigan.

            If such a rural Michiganer, or anyone else in such a low-density area decides they really need to keep working (and DON’T have the luxury of working from home), because their home and family’s immediate welfare is at stake, then I for one lack the balls to say that they are NOT “choosing behaviors which are statistically most likely to increase” said welfare. Kids needs to eat TODAY, and the fact that there are six people in a neighboring county (in a nursing home which has since been locked down) is for THEM to take into account, not me.

            > The thing that makes this political is that Trump – not Republicans, not conservatives, but Trump – is a massive fuck-up

            You’re at best half right. I’ve in the past kind of hated the “it takes two to tango” argument, but here it’s pretty well spot on. If I express umbrage at someone having the gall to characterize those Michiganers as “fucking idiots” — to not just assume that they know anything about the lives of people two thousand miles away, but to be absolutely CONVINCED that those people can’t possibly be making the best choice they know how to under circumstances he is completely ignorant of — well, obviously I must be a fucking idiot to, and just talking through my MAGA hat, and not basing my position on considerations higher than red vs. blue.

            Yes I _know_ there is a non-zero theoretical probability that some Michiganer opening there general store out in Whoknowswhere UP will — through a chain of events Alsadius laid out somewhere up above — infect and kill me. And there’s symmetrically a one-in-bajillion chance that I would infect and kill them instead. The whole point of rationality though is _not_ to make policy decisions based on assumptions about infinitesimal probabilities we can’t possibly know let alone know accurately. If I can stay at home with minor inconvenience and am privileged through no real desert of my own to be able to WFH, yes, sure, I will do that, because _I_ consider the cost non-large compared to the non-negligible (again, city) risk, even if I don’t accurately know what the risk is. Someone in South Dakota _doesn’t_ have the option of working from home, has a family to feed, and the rent was overdue _last_ month? Sorry, I am not enough of a piece of rat shit to call them a “fucking idiot” or “bored mass murderer.”

            And yes I consider Trump an obnoxious blowhard, and I won’t bother arguing with anyone calling him a “massive fuck-up” either. But again, it takes two to tango. He’ll say two or three things that are basically right, and twenty or thirty things that are basically content-free blatherings (mostly hoping pretty obviously to get a rise out of the audience). And which will CNN hammer on repeatedly over the next three or four days? Trump could go on national TV and say that he poops gold, and normal people are gonna shake their heads and say “wtf-ever”. CNN will assemble a panel of three of their top White House reporters, the Chief of Gastroenterology at Johns Hopkins, and the Chair of the Economics Department at Oxford, and go over in painstaking detail for an hour and half with Anderson Cooper on how he can’t _possibly_ be directly excreting any statistically significant quantities of precious metals, and even if he did, that would actually be really bad for the world economy.

            1. If such a rural Michiganer, or anyone else in such a low-density area decides they really need to keep working (and DON’T have the luxury of working from home), because their home and family’s immediate welfare is at stake, then I for one lack the balls to say that they are NOT “choosing behaviors which are statistically most likely to increase” said welfare.

              Ask yourself if we could have had a well-organized lockdown which provided everyone with what they needed? And while you’re doing so, note that a lockdown was only necessarily because Trump failed to “test and trace” starting with the first case in the U.S., not to mention all the other ways he fucked up. Put succinctly, why do need lockdowns? Because Trump fucked up over and over again!

              Then notice that the same guy who fucked up is tweeting “Liberate Michigan” and bringing in the Second Amendment instead of tweeting, “Stay home, we’re working hard to get you guys some money so you don’t have to get sick!” (and then following through!)

              Once again, ask yourself whether, with the right leadership, we could have had a successful lockdown (or avoided a lockdown altogether?)

              1. May as well point out – again – that the failure to do testing and contact tracing is squarely on the CDC, not on Trump. Trump is responsible, in the sense that he’s in the CDC’s chain of command, but he damn well isn’t at fault. I’m betting that a large majority of Trump’s “errors” you’re thinking of are of that kind: in the immortal quote from Animal House, “You fucked up – you trusted us.”

                For an example of an error that is on the head of the man in charge, I give you Andrew Cuomo’s order that patients infected with the Wuhan virus be housed in nursing homes, to spare capacity in the hospitals. That judgement call directly cost several thousand lives, and it was obvious beforehand that it would do so – nursing homes, by definition, are full of precisely those people most vulnerable to coronaviruses, and most likely to die from them. And Cuomo signed that order himself.

                Indeed, seeing that the New York metropolitan area accounts for, what is it, 40% of the US’s cases and deaths, and apparently a lot of the other plague spots here were spread by travellers from NYC … Cuomo and DeBlasio may well be more at fault, personally, for the damage from this disease than any other pair of elected US officials. If they had kept their own city clean in the first place, we might never have seen a countrywide lockdown at all.

                1. Trump is in charge of the CDC, and had been for three years when COVID-19 struck. ‘Nuf said there, I think, or do we no longer respect presidents who believe that “The buck stops here.”

                  Regarding Cuomo/De Blasio/New York, I don’t have any clue why he/they comes off like a hero. New York’s administration is probably in the bottom-five worst state administrations where COVID-19 is concerned. (And some of the Conservative/Republican governors have been very good, BTW. – Once again, this is not should not be about parties.)

                  I would disagree with you on your claim that the countrywide lockdown is New York’s fault. We have lots of major airports on both coasts, and as it turned out cases were coming in from both Asia and Europe. At a guesstimate we’d be at something like 50 – 60,000 deaths nationwide right now if New York had locked down as early as California.

                  But a big part of the problem is that we haven’t had a well-organized nationwide lockdown. We’ve had states locking down and Trump very reluctantly playing along for as long as he could stand it, then we see idiotic tweets like “Liberate Michigan.”

                  Unfortunately, by the time he’s done Trump will make James Buchanan look like Churchill!

                  1. *snort* Cuomo comes off as a hero because the New York Times wants him to be seen that way, and nearly every US media outlet just echoes what the Times is saying. It has nothing to do with the facts, and everything to do with politics.

                    As for a “well-organized national lockdown” … given the actual characteristics of this disease, I doubt that lockdowns were ever necessary. We didn’t know that back in March, of course, when all we knew was what had happened in China and Italy, but we know a lot more now. Standard public health measures like quarantining the sick and the vulnerable – separately – would have done the trick, as far as I can tell.

                    Also, under US law a President actually can’t order a nationwide lockdown, well-organized or otherwise. You need general police powers to do that, and those are vested in the states. The sort of coordinated response you seem to be envisioning isn’t permitted under the Constitution.

                    Nor, really, should it be. Response to contagious disease just isn’t the sort of thing that can be done well by the federal government. Heck, it isn’t even something state governments are good at. It calls for flexible adaptation to local and changing circumstances. That’s true even when the disease is everywhere – it still has to be handled locally. And what is right and necessary for urban cores where people live in each other’s pockets is wrong and wicked in farmland where each house stands on its own five or twenty acre tract.

                    You might, you know, ask how many of Trump’s “fuckups” that aren’t him wrongly believing that a federal agency could actually do its nominal job without his personal supervision, are simply places where your bias towards centralized top-down solutions is distorting your judgement.

  51. > Once you see COVID-19 as a purely epidemiological issue it becomes a matter of choosing those behaviors which are statistically most likely to increase your survival.

    That begs the question – you’re assuming that I’m interested in maximizing my chances of survival.

    I’m not.

    I’m interested in maximizing the chances that I, and especially my children, will enjoy a continued high standard of life, arising from high levels of economic, political, and intellectual freedom.

    That entails sensible precautions during an epidemic, definitely – because one needs to be alive to reap those benefits :)

    But over-reactions like New Zealand’s crazy Level 4 home arrest (sorry, lockdown) and their $85,000 national debt per family just don’t cut it. There’s a balance to be struck, and it’s not simply a matter of optimizing for one variable among many.

    This SMBC comic pretty much sums up my position on the matter:

    https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20130206.gif

    1. There’s a balance to be struck, and it’s not simply a matter of optimizing for one variable among many.

      I would agree, and I’m not exactly cowering in my home right now. But I do wear a mask when I leave the house, etc., and I’ve made some decisions about where I will and will not go. But you should also ask yourself what freedoms you’ve actually lost? Is someone going to arrest you just because you start an online discussion group about the glories of Pol Pot or Nathan Bedford Forrest? I very much doubt it. Are you going to be dragged away from your home because you wrote your Congresscritter a letter about “those people” (whoever they would happen to be in your case?) I don’t think you’re losing anything except perhaps the freedom to travel, and if that doesn’t come back when the pandemic is over I’ll be very surprised.

      As to the economic aspects, you might want to consider these:

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/pedrodacosta/2020/04/03/pandemic-economics-lessons-from-the-spanish-flu-in-1918/#1d7b246f797a

      https://gritdaily.com/1918-influenza-pandemic-economy/

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/pandemic-shutdowns-actually-helped-economic-growth-in-1918-flu

      https://gcfp.mit.edu/pandemics-depress-the-economy-public-health-interventions-do-not-evidence-from-the-1918-flu/

      It looks to me like lockdowns and social distancing payoff fairly well when the pandemic is over. Otherwise I’m not sure we’re in enough disagreement to have a long discussion.

  52. Troutwaxer said:
    > And yes, I do see “…similar “tsk-tsk”ing” directed at beachgoers, etc.

    Really? Jeff Read called them “fucking idiots” as well? Can you point me to where?

    Alsadius called them “bored mass murderers” as well? Can you point me to where?

    > It’s not political, it’s just basic, fucking common sense!

    That’s the exact opposite of what Winter just said. It’s not sufficient to have “YOU being prudent” or individuals exercising their “basic, fucking common sense!”, it has to be Enforced by Society, aka the “right” guys with guns. When the _wrong_ guys with guns show up at a state legislature to explain that Society’s universally enforced policies are preventing them from working to support their families, calling them “fucking idiots” and “bored mass murderers” is very much a political characterization of their behavior.

    If you’re sincerely just offering “prudent common sense”, and disagree with Winter that it should be enforced in a Statist fashion, then I’m confused why you chose to snipe at my post while ignoring the one of Winter’s that I was responding too. I’m certainly not advising people _not_ to wear masks, or _not_ to distance themselves as appropriate; as Harry Potter would say, “Reversed stupidity is not intelligence.” (In case you missed the context literally two posts above the one you replied to, I was disagreeing with Winter’s claim that such measures _had_ to be imposed from above by the State, and couldn’t possibly be exercised by intelligent people acting in their own best interest.)

    If on the other hand you do agree with Winter that the State enforcing — with violence if necessary — what _he_ considers “prudent” and the forms of social distancing _you_ “want” others to follow, then claiming that enforcement isn’t “political” is disingenuous at the least.

      1. I’m not asking about the fucking “leadership”. (And I’m not going to bother re-asking my question above about whether you agree with Winter on applying State action to enforce everywhere your perceived notions of necessary pandemic measures; your dodging that tells me all I need to know there.) But for the nth and fucking last time I _am_ asking where you get the arrogance to declare people “fools” thousands of miles away from you dealing with personal situations you are completely ignorant of, just as I’ve asked what gives Read the “right” to call them “fucking idiots” and Alsadius to call them “bored mass murderers”.

        You fuckers ASSUME that they _must_ be acting irrationally or indeed stupidly merely because they reach different _conclusions_ from you — “they’re not doing what _I_ want, so they must be pretty stupid!” The possibility never occurs to any of you that they might in fact be _rationally_ weighing the one-in-a-thousand or one-in-a-million or whatever against the one in ONE chance of personal financial disaster in the case of someone who has _already_ received a foreclosure notice from the bank or a maibox full of “90 DAYS FINAL NOTICE” bills.

        > “Stay home, we’re working hard to get you guys some money so you don’t have to get sick!” (and then following through!)

        It is actually quite hard to laugh and vomit at the same time, my thanks to you for teaching me a new skill. Yes the check my wife and I got was a great boon to us, given that we are LUCKY enough (not “obedient” enough, do you leftist fucks have any concept of the difference?) to be able to work from home. A great hedge against possible price increases when stuff like toilet paper and such start appearing in the stores again.

        But for a small mom and pop business? Or a family where none of the wage-earners are LUCKY enough to be able to work from home? $2400 is a single credit card bill for the latter (at best), any advice on all the other bills piling up over the last three months? How to “Stay home!!! Ya damn fools!!!” when the eviction notice comes? For the former… $2400 is _nothing_, a drop in the bucket compared to the expenses of any small business. Oh but they can apply for one of those “loans” for small businesses… after getting in line behind the LA fucking Lakers’ $4.6 MILLION dollars paid out under that “working hard to get ya some monees” program. It wasn’t Trump signing the check for that one.

        Again, why don’t you spineless sheltered “shut and watch your netflix” aristocrats call the Chicago house-partiers “fools” and “fucking idiots” and “bored mass murderers”? Better yet, come on down here to the south side of Chicago and call folks that to their faces? I would LOVE to watch that little “political discussion” go down. No, it’s a bunch of schlubs up in rural Michigan (and other areas with infection counts orders of magnitude below the urban ones) trying to pay their bills that have you all lathered up.

    1. It’s not just me or Winter or J. Random Citizen deciding what is prudent. Health experts have determined that if social-distancing and masking rules are not followed, the risk increases substantially of spreading deadly disease.

      This is a “your right to swing your fist ends at your neighbor’s face” issue. Your right to gather closely and not wear a mask ends when doing so would endanger others. It is well within the purview of the state to implement and enforce — with guns if necessary, though hopefully it won’t come to that — rules that prevent people from endangering others. What’s more, failure to give these rules force will mean that someone, somewhere, will unnecessarily spreads the disease and put others at risk of either contracting serious illness, or asymptomatically and unwittingly spreading the disease to someone who will contract serious illness.

      That’s what you don’t seem to understand. It’s a different fucking ballgame now. And the kind of pig-ignorance you displayed is exactly what I was talking about when I called the Michigan armed insurrectionists “fucking idiots”. It’s not just not having common sense, it’s refusing to listen to common sense. It’s refusing to listen to common sense and then going and picking up a gun and marching on your elected officials threatening revolution if you’re not allowed to proceed in your pig-ignorance endangering innocent others within society. That is sheer fucking dangerous idiocy.

      Oh, and it’s a Kodak moment of white privilege to see those armed-to-the-teeth idiots directly threatening civil society with lethal force being defended by conservatives up to and including the POTUS, while unarmed black men are still being murdered by cops and vigilante “citizen defenders” alike. Perfectly okay for white cops to kneel on a black man till he suffocates, but when a black athlete kneels during the anthem – ohohoho, we’ve got a problem here, can’t allow that!

      Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. But that’s white, conservative America in 2020 for you.

      1. > Health experts have determined that if social-distancing and masking rules are not followed, the risk increases substantially of spreading deadly disease.

        Have they now?

      2. > Your right to gather closely

        The Michigan protesters _can’t_ “gather [as] closely” as people in NYC even if they wanted to. There aren’t _enough_ of them. None of them were protesting “having to wear a mask”, but being put out of business by policies suitable for dense urban areas that are _not_ suitable for these rural areas.

        > It’s not just not having common sense, it’s refusing to listen to common sense.

        Again, the axiomatic assumption that your perceived “common sense” is the right one but just being ignored. A general store owner out on the edge of Wyoming decides that the risk of being infected (remember https://geodacenter.github.io/covid/map.html#? That’s the map _Winter_ pointed to) compared with the risk of losing their business and home and ability to support their family; you don’t just get to assume in a blanket fashion that none of these people are exercising just as much as you or me deciding to stay locked down in our cities.

        > I called the Michigan armed insurrectionists “fucking idiots”

        Yeah I fucking heard you the first time. And I’ve asked multiple times now why you _haven’t_ called the people in Chicago still holding “house parties” — this was a story I saw on _CNN_, this is not alt-right fairy tales — “fucking idiots”. Gathering _closely_. Not wearing _masks_. A hell of a lot more risk of causing me or my family an infection living on the south side of the same fucking city. (For the record _I’m_ not calling them “fucking idiots” either — it’s their house, their party, nobody in the high rise where I live is doing that shit.) And you’ll ignore that question _again_ this time as well.

        If you called _everyone_ “fucking idiots” for violating these orders, that would still be a bit more collectivist than I personally could stomach (let alone that it’s _still_ begging the question of why the _same_ lockdown policies need to be applied whether the population density is 50,000 or five per square mile, and whether the county infection rate is in the tens of thousands or just the tens). But I’d at least keep my mouth shut about it, it would at least be a _consistent_ opinion to hold.

        But you give the Chicago house-partiers a free ride for the “right” to shake their asses around in a room with a hundred people in it, while spitting vitriol at people protesting being prevented from _working_, from feeding their _kids_, denying that they even have “common sense” — can’t they just shut up and go to a house party in Detroit? Ah but no, they happen to be white. They happen to live in an area where the 2nd amendment has not yet been curtailed. They happen to be trying to _work_, not asking for a handout. So of _course_ it’s perfectly clear to you and your ilk who the “bad guys” are, none of those fucking idiots’ personal circumstances count for shit to you.

        And then on top of drawing that “absolutely disgusting” line between those two groups, you have the gall to spout about a “Kodak moment of white privilege”? How about the story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/04/security-guards-death-might-have-been-because-he-wouldnt-let-woman-store-without-mask/) of the Family Dollar doorman asking folks to come in and getting shot to death for it? Not a cop, not an authorized agent of the government, just a regular Joe trying to make ends meet in a private job at a privately owned dinky little store. And they didn’t just bring a gun, they didn’t issue a “threat”, they just drove up and shot him dead. Take _that_ “refusing to listen to common sense and then going and picking up a gun” and shove it as deep as it will go in any orifice of your choice.

        _You’re_ the one cherry-picking “racial” issues here. _You’re_ the one who hates poor people (unless they’re your favored “right kind” of poor people) far more than any republican ever did.

        But that’s while, liberal America in 2020 for you.

        1. “the Family Dollar doorman asking folks to come in and getting shot to death for it”

          _to put on a mask before coming in_ was the intention there. There were a lot of typos in that post but that one was the most egregious, sorry.

      3. > This is a “your right to swing your fist ends at your neighbor’s face” issue.

        You’re absolutely right in characterizing the issue in this way. I was remiss in not addressing this before, and I apologize for the double post.

        A recent study (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2765641) found the probability of contracting covid-19 after being in contact with someone already having the disease was about 0.007. That’s direct contact, largely in the case of household members or non-household family members, and not assuming masks or social distancing.

        Let’s be generous and assume a six-degrees-of-separation rule, despite neither you nor I being Kevin Frigging Bacon. Further let’s assume Bob Smith goes back to running his general store in the UP _without_ masks and _without_ asking social distancing measures of his customers (even though none of the protesters in Michigan were actually demanding this, they just wanted to reopen their businesses where possible, throwing masks and distancing into that mix is your side’s spin). And further, none of the six (or more) people in the chain between you and him wear masks or distance either, and unfortunately you yourself on a busy day of WFH and Netflix forget to wear your mask when you pop into Starbucks. (It counts as groceries! Of course YOUR fucking Starbucks better be open while the flyover folks go fuck themselves, amirite? But I digress.)

        In that worst-case scenario you have a one in ten trillion (0.007^6) chance of getting sick, all entirely the fault of that fucking idiot Bob of course.

        Your right to force someone two thousand miles away from you into bankruptcy and the destruction of their family ends when you can’t even establish that they pose as much as a one in a trillion chance of harming you.

        (And in case anyone asks, that’s JAMA Internal Medicine, bitches, not a preprint from some chemical engineers in frigging Dubai.)

        > unarmed black men are still being murdered by cops

        Yeah walk me through this one, “step by step”. I’m the libertarian, you’re the strong-central-Statist, and _you’re_ dropping deaths by police brutality at _my_ door? How do you manage to ever face in a direction other than due north with all the iron-y in your head? Either put me on the fucking jury when a piece of shit jackboot does something like that or kindly shut the fuck up.

        1. > unarmed

          Fucking hell I even missed THAT, twice now.

          Pop quiz, which of the two of us favors Constitutional carry, and which of us fucking DOESN’T? I’ll give you three guesses.

          (Hint: it’s not the one agreeing with Queen Ardern that bearing arms is not a right but a “privilege”.)

      4. > Oh, and it’s a Kodak moment of white privilege to see those armed-to-the-teeth idiots directly threatening civil society with lethal force being defended by conservatives up to and including the POTUS, while unarmed black men are still being murdered by cops and vigilante “citizen defenders” alike. Perfectly okay for white cops to kneel on a black man till he suffocates, but when a black athlete kneels during the anthem – ohohoho, we’ve got a problem here, can’t allow that!

        Every white (and nonwhite), conservative American I know — or even am aware of — condemned George Floyd’s killing in no uncertain terms.

        1. >Every white (and nonwhite), conservative American I know — or even am aware of — condemned George Floyd’s killing in no uncertain terms.

          Agreed. A unanimity which is given more point by the fact that the same conservatives understand that Floyd was a career criminal with a history of violence, and no innocent. Even scum like him don’t deserve the death he got.

          1. Disappointing. Didn’t they (and you) learn by now to wait for all the facts to come out before jumping on these kinds of media hyped condemnation bandwagons? In particular, what do you think of the autopsy report stating that asphyxiation or strangulation was not the cause of death?

            1. >In particular, what do you think of the autopsy report

              The eggshell-skull applies. I could believe that George didn’t die of asphyxiation, but supposing that his death was causally unconnected to having a knee pressed on his neck for ten minutes is ridiculous.

              I say “could” rather than “can” because I don’t trust the hard-left crew now running Minneapolis not to have I delivered a lot of pressure on the ME for a politically convenient verdict.

              1. Hey, turns out George Floyd had a bunch of fentanyl (and probably some other drugs) in his system when he died. Quite possibly explaining both why he died and why it took four cops to restrain him.

                One would think people like you would know by now not to trust the media on these kinds of things, but it’s always “I’m not a racist, see I’m willing to denounce your alleged racist.”

                1. >Hey, turns out George Floyd had a bunch of fentanyl (and probably some other drugs) in his system when he died.

                  I have absolutely no doubt that he did. I repeat: eggshell-skull rule. Unless you think Floyd George would have outlived the eight minutes he spent with a knee crushing his neck if that knee had not been crushing his neck, it’s still murder.

                  >One would think people like you would know by now not to trust the media on these kinds of things, but it’s always “I’m not a racist, see I’m willing to denounce your alleged racist.”

                  It’s not about trusting the media, and I don’t fundamentally care about the race angle in this case any more than I did when I denounced Eric Garner’s strangulation-by-cop. It’s the blatant, callous, tyranny that is important here, not the skin color of the victim.

                  1. It’s the blatant, callous, tyranny that is important here, not the skin color of the victim.

                    Skin color matters here, because it’s a major determining factor in whether you will be subjected to legal police procedure or blatant, callous tyranny.

                    1. > Skin color matters

                      Pfft, OK, racist.

                      God damn, you progressives are just cranking out the hits lately! Can’t wait to see what you come out with next!

                    2. (Trying again since my first post didn’t seem to get through)

                      Justine Diamond, also a resident of MPLS, would beg to differ–or at least, she would if she were still alive after being shot by a cop.

                    3. Skin color matters here, because it’s a major determining factor in whether you will be subjected to legal police procedure or blatant, callous tyranny.

                      Sort of. If you’re white, you get arrested for going to church. If you’re black, you can riot and loot stores and the police get issued stand down orders.

                    4. Right, the Brownshirts (and their supporting government) would have been just _fine_ folks if only they hadn’t killed a few Jewish people.

                  2. It’s the blatant, callous, tyranny that is important here, not the skin color of the victim.

                    It’s both. One one hand, we’ve heavily militarized the police, so they’ll have “parity” with the worst conceivable criminal.

                    Think about that one for a moment. Consider the actual probability of a street-gang composed of
                    ex-Navy-Seals, led by a super-genius, who smuggled heavy weapons off a Marine base, then ask yourself if “parity with the worst conceivable criminal” is really what you want of your police.

                    Along with “parity with the worst conceivable criminal” goes the idea that “our inner cities are are war zones which much be placed under heavy occupation.”

                    (Granted, the inner cities are not nice places, but let’s keep a sense of perspective please!)

                    Add militarization of police to institutional racism, plus a couple other things like qualified immunity and you’ve got a really toxic mixture!

                    1. > Add militarization of police to institutional racism

                      What, exactly, is “institutional racism?”

                      Can you define it in a way that is testable and falsifiable, and not a stand in for The Hand of Satan?

                    2. Sure. A good example of “Institutional Racism” is when a cop puts his knee on some guy’s neck, and the guy dies, and the coronor says it wasn’t asphyxiation, and they don’t even think of arresting the three other cops who didn’t stop the kneeling cop until protestors burn down the police station, then they’re not sure how to charge them…

                      Or in Los Angeles yesterday, when Black shop owners called 911 about looters, then got arrested while the looters ran away!”

                    3. > Sure. A good example of “Institutional Racism” is

                      Examples are not a definition, you mook.

                      You’re just pointing at people doing bad things and saying “See! Satan!”

                      You have to convince me Satan is real before you can expect to convince me his hand is present.

                  3. And just to add my own suspicions to the mix, I wouldn’t be surprised of ‘roid rage played a part in all this.

                2. Did he? Or is that just what the Man’s coroner said? Because that coroner also somehow insisted that Floyd was not asphyxiated despite having a 200-pound or so cop crushing his neck with his knee for several minutes (and the independent coroner Floyd’s family hired disputes that claim).

          2. Well, former career criminal, from what I’ve seen so far. The few stories I’d managed to google so far said he’d saved taxpayer expense in Texas by waiving right to trial by jury, served his sentence, and made an apparently sincere effort to make a new start up north.

            It’s been a while since I’ve felt this mixture of horror and revulsion. Even if the allegation were true, a counterfeit twenty obviously isn’t a violent crime. And that’s a big if to me; do I trust some deli clerk to identify one? Heck, I go to the atm machine once a week, and I count my twenties but don’t particularly look at them; and I certainly wouldn’t know a fake one if it bit me in the ass. I keep imagining myself in this poor guy’s place; so yeah, he definitely didn’t deserve this.

  53. I wonder if you would comment on the recent riots in Minneapolis and elsewhere, considered as a step beyond the final warning? There would appear to be at least one faction within the rioters, the ones who burned down the precinct station instead of looting local businesses, who are intent on reminding our hired thugs that their “monopoly on violence” is a polite social fiction. But I’d love to get your perspective, if you have time.

    1. No justice, no peace.

      I’ve heard a lot of talk hereabouts about how, if U.S. soldiers were ordered to fire on American citizens, they would rebel.

      Looks like Trump is sending the 82nd into Minneapolis and putting those theories to the test.

      1. >I’ve heard a lot of talk hereabouts about how, if U.S. soldiers were ordered to fire on American citizens, they would rebel.

        I think many of them would refuse orders to fire on American citizens exercising their right to revolt against a tyrannical government, for example in reaction to attempts at confiscation of civilian arms.

        These rioters don’t qualify. They may mouth political slogans, but their actions make it clear that the actual goals are looting and vandalism. This is the Free-Shit army; if the 82nd is ordered to fire on them, it will – and it will be right to.

        Incidentally, if anyone actually gets shot, I would prefer it be the white Communists rather ineffectually trying to use the blacks as pawns, rather than the blacks themselves – for whom teargas and rubber bullets ought to be sufficient chastisement.

        1. white Communists

          The cops themselves are much more likely to be inciting these riots than communists.

          Minnesotan authorities have also linked the riots to out-of-state white supremacist movements. Once again, much more political violence originates from the right than from the left.

          1. Which ones? Anyone can point at nebulous “white supremacist movements;” but if you and they can’t name them, I’m gonna call BS.

            1. If you follow Jeff Read’s link it talks of “rumors” of “possible” white supremacists. So no, there is no actual _evidence_ of this “political violence originating from the right.”

              1. There’s about as much evidence as there was for Satanism cults kidnapping and murdering people in the 70s and 80s.

                At this rate, if history is a worthy guide, it won’t be until the 2030s or 2040s before people at large start realizing how stupid this all is. Rather disheartening, really.

              2. > So no, there is no actual _evidence_ of this “political violence originating from the right.”

                As opposed to, for example, lots of riots footage of Antifa stirring up shit.

          2. Minnesotan authorities have also linked the riots to out-of-state white supremacist movements.

            I refuse to believe that any of the people saying that BS are actually capable of believing it without judicious use of doublethink.

            Especially when you consider the the same commies twitting things like “burn it all down” two days ago, are now attempting to blame all the arson and destruction on “white supremacists” when it turns out destroying cities isn’t actually good PR.

            1. > Especially when you consider the the same commies twitting things like “burn it all down” two days ago, are now attempting to blame all the arson and destruction on “white supremacists” when it turns out destroying cities isn’t actually good PR.

              I think this sort of behavior comes from axiomatic beliefs such as that they are good by definition, therefore if bad things happen, it can’t be because of anything they did, it must be the defined-as-bad people.

              Not so much double-think, more like arrogant unquestioning naivety and assumption of personal righteousness. Like yesterday’s political Christians, or maybe really any brain-damaged collectivists.

              1. Like yesterday’s political Christians

                Except they never engaged in this kind of doublethink.

                A better analogue is the “country X wasn’t real communism/socialism”, by people who were perfectly willing a tout country X as a model socialist state until it failure became too obvious to ignore. In fact this kind of rewriting history to evade blame for their failures is the standard way leftists deal with their failures.

                1. The problem with this thread is that everyone is assuming perfectly spherical black people on a frictionless surface, in a vacuum.

                  I think we’re all a little smarter than that.

                    1. Checking the post above… you’re right, I didn’t reply to the correct thread. Regardless, I’m arguing with the people who assume that there is only one kind of protestor/looter/rioter rather than possibly multiple groups with multiple agendas – akin to physics problems which assume a frictionless surface in a vacuum rather than more realistic circumstances… It looks like I wasted a perfectly good witticism. **Sighs.

      2. > No justice, no peace.

        Oh, I dunno. Chicago’s finest were out in force today; they even closed off a stretch of several miles’ worth of Lake Shore Drive exits, here on the south side in the Hyde Park area. I have no fucking clue what positive outcome that was meant to accomplish; my wife on her way back from church had to reroute ten blocks further south (yeah sending a lone white woman further down the south side, no potential problems in that course of action). And at 9pm they actually issued a curfew, a literal lockdown, just in case any of us little people were to forget that the privileged race is of course the Blue one (and those above them in the hierarchy). You can keep things _plenty_ peaceful if you’ve got a gun at your hip, any “civvies” similarly armed are de facto criminals, and you have the entirety of the State at your back shielding you from any consequences not just of your planned actions but of your merest whims.

        The video of the event is of course horrific, blatantly horrific in many ways. But one of the more subtly horrific aspects is the plight of the bystanders. I hear at least three, possibly four distinct voices pleading with the thugs to at least let the guy breathe. None of them of course issue any sterner warning toward them, let alone make a physical move to help Mr. Floyd.

        And I can’t in good conscience blame them. Best case scenario, they manage to help Mr. Floyd, who survives — thus proving the thugs’ claim that “he’s fine”, and the bystanders are charged with assaulting “police officers”. Worst case they are just shot for attacking “police officers” performing their “lawful duties”, and there are five bodies instead of one.

        In a JUST world, the (armed) bystanders would consider themselves well within their rights to state, “Officers, if you do not release this man’s neck and allow him to breathe, we will consider that an act of excessive force, and initiate a citizen’s arrest of you accordingly;” knowing that even if they were forced to draw down on the aggressors, any judge they eventually faced would consider only the facts of the case without regard to said aggressors being Special Blue People.

        But by all means, let’s continue working toward a stronger, more authoritarian Government, and make sure that any “fools” with the audacity to protest the actions of that Government are universally harangued as “fucking idiots”. Stalin and Hitler were pussies; we don’t even need a _secret_ police, we’re well on our way to the genuine article.

        “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
        ? Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

    2. >I wonder if you would comment on the recent riots in Minneapolis and elsewhere, considered as a step beyond the final warning?

      It’s a rather different case than I was discussing. The rioters aren’t threatening to hang politicians from lampposts – I’d have quite a bit more sympathy for them if they were that kind of insurrection.

      No, this seems to be more a Free-Shit-Army riot in which the major motivation is getting to do the looting and vandalism thing while the police stand down for fear of being pilloried as racists. Certainly our domestic Communists are organizing the riots and trying to use them for political ends, but they’re pissing in the wind – they don’t have any effective way to use this violence for political ends.

      If anything, I think this spasm actually helps Trump’s re-election chances. With smoke rising from a dozen cities swing voters are probably going to run towards the law-and-order candidate, something Trump clearly knows and is positioning himself to exploit.

      1. It’s true that there’s clearly a lot of people who are in it for the riot itself and the chance to loot; that’s why I said “one faction”. But it does seem to me that burning down a police station is unusually on-point, in terms of directing mob violence at a political end. True, police are not politicians even if the words share a root; but nevertheless they are at least part of the mechanism of government. A police station is, so to speak, a military target, if you view the government as your enemy; it’s part of the enforcement mechanism. The local businesses are collateral damage; but if I were in charge of using riots as a means of opposing USG, I would say that this one had an unusually high (that is, nonzero!) ratio of intentional to collateral damage.

        I agree about what this does to Trump’s reelection chances; but I suggest that a riot is usually both directed at, and most effective against, local and not national governments. (I’ll make an exception for riots by the mob of the national capital – the mob of Paris has indeed toppled several French governments.) The Democratic power structures of our cities might perhaps walk a bit more carefully over the next few years, whatever happens at the state and federal levels.

        1. >A police station is, so to speak, a military target, if you view the government as your enemy; it’s part of the enforcement mechanism.

          It matters why the government is your enemy. You could be a patriot exercising the Constitutional duty to revolt against tyranny, as in the Battle of Athens. Or you could be a criminal who merely wants to loot and burn. In he second case I will side with the police in defending their station even though I judge Floyd George’s death to have been wrongful in the extreme.

          Just to be clear: if the rioters had strung up the cops who killed George, the police chef, the mayor, and the District Attorney, that I would consider justified and proper revolutionary action. Looting and torching black-owned businesses, not so much.

          1. > Looting and torching black-owned businesses, not so much.

            I get what you’re saying here, and back in the Rodney King days I would have totally agreed. Those “rooftop Korean shopowners” that have become a meme were definitely heroes. But nowadays, my certainty has eroded a lot. Not that I approve of the rioters trashing private businesses by any means but… I think I am starting to at least suspect where the, well mentality of course but subconscious drive is coming from. You’re the one who taught me what Gramscian damage is, and I’m certainly not going to be saying anything new to anybody here on that. But I was struggling to find a common explanation for the brutal murder of Calvin Munerlyn in Flint getting a lukewarm reaction that faded fast, versus George Floyd’s brutal murder sparking nationwide city-burning.

            When I first visited Russia one the first differences that freaked me out was that you don’t have Sally’s Bakery, or Fred’s Bakery, let alone Au Bon Pain. You just have BULOCHNAYA, one every few blocks, exactly the same font on each sign, exactly the same layout inside. And the manager isn’t there because the owner vetted them before hiring and trusts them, let alone because they _are_ the owner and still sweating how they will pay off the loans over the next ten years, they’re there because they know someone on the gorodskoy sovet, and slipped them enough more under the table than any of the other candidates to get the post. That was in the early nineties anyway, and the mentality of things being actually privately owned took a long long time to build up.

            Here I think the opposite has happened over the last twenty years or so (maybe longer and I just didn’t notice then). Sure everyone will _say_ they know what private ownership is and of course they support it, you don’t want the government _literally_ owning everything (unless you support Bernie Sanders ha ha). But subconsciously… well, the “owner” is there with the approval and licensing of the government, and must comply with all the local and non-local regulations… and come on, “No Shirt No Shoes No Service” isn’t _really_ at the owner’s insistence, it’s a Public Safety thing, there’s probably an ordinance for that, you couldn’t _actually_ not let someone in your store for “no good reason”, that would be just as bad as the “No Coloreds” signs (or “No Irish” a century before that). So when a “cop” (yeah yeah security guard whatever) exceeds his authority and actually tries to prevent a good citizen from walking into a “public” Family Dollar, well, he was just asking for it, us citizens got our rights (“muh freedums!” as so fond of snarking) after all. And given that all those involved were the same race, nothing for the media to latch on to and thrust to the forefront of public attention in that regard.

            And when the sparks hit the powder kegs this weekend, of course it doesn’t occur to the rioters that hey, some dude _owns_ this Dunkin Donuts, probably a black dude, not just because of a handout but because he sunk a loan into the franchise payment and has been putting blood and sweat in is business for years now. They just see the City streets, flooded with City cops responding to the protesting, in front of long rows of shops that exist only at the behest of the City.

            And of course Jeff Read and Troutwaxer and Winter and a million others will call me “pig ignorant”, are you stupid of COURSE we believe in property ownership… provided you’ve obtained all the licenses and paid all the fees and obey all the ordinances and keep up with the tax code changes and hire the exact proportion of employees of one characteristic or other we specify to the third decimal place. And if you infract on any of these accidentally (God himself won’t help you if it’s deliberate) then of course we will send Men With Guns and Badges to take it all away. But yeah don’t worry you totally own your business.

            Again, I’m definitely not _agreeing_ with that attitude of the rioters, but I don’t think I’m disagreeing with a position the rioters consciously hold; the communist mentality has seeped in deeply and congealed far beneath the surface. I reacted pretty hotly when Jeff Read pinned the blame for incidents of police brutality on “conservatives” (again, rather than the “Incontrovertible Strength is a Government Feature, not a Bug” left)… but at this point I find I am starting not to care. Things are in a real “sow the wind, reap the whirlwind” state more than ever, and if someone want to fiddle around during the burning and say it’s the other team’s fault, then pfft.

            The Michigan protesters and George Floyd both taught us the same lesson; sadly in the former case with their reputation irrevocably smeared (the vile liar Pelosi calling them Nazi skinheads on national tv), and sadly in the latter case with his brutal, senseless and undeserved death (the subhuman filth Chauvin grinning viciously as he _knows_ the bystanders won’t dare lift a finger against one of the Blue). They taught us what it looks like to have, as Solzhenitsyn put it, “nothing left to lose”.

            1. > where the, well mentality of course but subconscious drive is coming from

              That should be “well _not_ mentality” of course. (In the course of rephrasing from a different version I accidentally dropped the “not”.)

              > (“muh freedums!” as so fond of snarking)

              That should be “as _some here are_ so fond of snarking”.

              My apologies for those and all the other typos.

          2. Just to be clear: if the rioters had strung up the cops who killed George, the police chef, the mayor, and the District Attorney, that I would consider justified and proper revolutionary action. Looting and torching black-owned businesses, not so much.

            Of course. Nevertheless, if the US decides to bomb a weapons factory, we will accept some amount – possibly quite a large amount – of civilian casualties in the city blocks surrounding it. I suggest that if you are using a riot as a means of attacking the illegitimate city government, then businesses belonging to uninvolved parties are similarly collateral damage. The rioters who are there for loot rather than politics are, as it were, partisans in the original sense of the word – irregular troops, locally recruited, who gave cover to your armies and interfered with the enemy’s scouting and supply, usually working out some local grievances in the process. I’m suggesting that there are different factions within the rioters, and one of them is using the looters as cover for something approaching a real attack on the city government.

            I suggest that once force is used, then someone’s going to get hurt and, generally speaking, very many of those someones are not going to be the original offenders. And we ought to apply the same rule to irregular urban warfare as we do to our regular army, which is that some amount of collateral damage is just going to happen and must be accepted if you’re going to accept violence as a tool at all.

            1. I’m suggesting that there are different factions within the rioters, and one of them is using the looters as cover for something approaching a real attack on the city government.

              Yeah, a movement with factions. Who’d a thunk it?

      2. If anything, I think this spasm actually helps Trump’s re-election chances. With smoke rising from a dozen cities swing voters are probably going to run towards the law-and-order candidate, something Trump clearly knows and is positioning himself to exploit.

        I think you’d be right under most circumstances, but after 100,000-plus deaths from Coronavirus, a stock market crash, and the current protests the general perception is that Trump has lost control of the country. It’s not “law and order” time, it’s “lost the mandate of heaven” time.

        1. Democratic mayors and Democratic governors are standing around wringing their hands while criminals destroy large parts of their cities – criminals who are Left revolutionaries, where they have any discernible politics at all – and you think this somehow hurts Trump’s chances of reelection?

          Piffle. The only people who will blame Trump for this are the people who see his hand behind every affliction the USA suffers, and those people wouldn’t vote for him if he multiplied loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes. They made up their minds in 2016 and won’t be moved by anything; they are already accounted for.

      3. Trump is finished.

        November will come around with the country still in an economic and social shambles, and Americans will look around and wonder, is America Great Again™ now? Are we really better off than we were in 2016?

        And the answer to these questions alone would make them hold their nose and vote for Biden.

        But comes now news that the cops used tear gas to disperse crowds in front of two DC churches so that Trump could get a photo op. This flagrant abuse of government power might, in and of itself, be an impeachable offense. Whatever the case the optics are horrible and should lay bare for all, even small-government conservatives, the truth about Trump: he’s a bully who wields government power indiscriminately for his own benefit.

        1. November will come around with the country still in an economic and social shambles

          Ah yes, Trump opposes Democratic governors’ insane lock-down policies. Said policies wreck the economy. Democrats attempt to blame Trump for wrecking the economy. Are you really that stupid or do you think the voters are?

          But comes now news that the cops used tear gas to disperse crowds in front of two DC churches so that Trump could get a photo op.

          Too bad that’s a lie.

          Whatever the case the optics are horrible

          So what do you think about the optics of Democratic mayors and governors cheering along as their own cities get burned down by rioters?

          1. Ah yes, Trump opposes Democratic governors’ insane lock-down policies. Said policies wreck the economy. Democrats attempt to blame Trump for wrecking the economy. Are you really that stupid or do you think the voters are?

            Lockdown policies are indeed insane under normal circumstances. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a deadly pandemic going on out there.

            Too bad that’s a lie.

            Where’s the proof? Every major news outlet is reporting the incident pretty much as I described it. So where’s the evidence to the contrary? Trump’s statement? Trump lies as easily as he opens his mouth — go to FactCheck.org and see.

            So what do you think about the optics of Democratic mayors and governors cheering along as their own cities get burned down by rioters?

            Where is this happening? I’d genuinely like to know.

            1. > I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a deadly pandemic going on out there.

              Wa-hey, I was wondering when someone was gonna finally remember that, ha ha. Not a lot of social distancing going on from what’s been shown by “every major news outlet”. But hey, at least they’re all wearing masks _now_, right? Couple weeks ago being asked by a Family Dollar security guard to put on a mask totally warranted a lethal response; suddenly it’s the Heighth of Fashion me droogies.

              And sorry must have missed your take on that other video I linked to, the white lady (well-masked, thank goodness!) stealing a cheesecake, that was protesting police brutality _how_ exactly? Can you walk me through “step by step” how that’s gonna bring about a Glorious Paradise of Racial and Lots of Other Kinds of Harmony under a Strong Authoritarian State? You said “skin color matters”, so it should be easy to explain under your Theory of Everything why some white bitch should be stealing a fucking _cheesecake_ for the Good of the Revolution. Honest question; I am worried that when civilization collapses and I can’t program anymore, I am obviously not smart enough to join antifa.

              > Lockdown policies are indeed insane under normal circumstances.

              If they’re _universally_ and identically applied regardless of local needs / conditions, they’re _still_ insane. Assuming _everywhere_ in the US is New York City is insane. Remember that map https://geodacenter.github.io/covid/map.html# Winter linked to a couple weeks back? Remember how the horrible disaster up in Toole Montana (six deaths!!!) was merely the tip of the iceberg, how the rural areas were about to be laid waste, just as Northern “Rural” Italy (with a population density a mere 2 orders of magnitude higher) had been?

              Uh, how come that map _still_ looks essentially the same (outside the cities) as it did a few weeks back? Places have been _opening_ since then, lockdowns prior to the jackboot Minneapolis assholes had been _lifting_, as a result covid-19 trends were clearly, how did someone put it, “skyrocketing”? Are you saying you can’t see any downward trend in the “New Cases” graph over on the left, or is your monitor upside down?

        2. > the cops used tear gas

          Except the _very first line_ of the linked article says the cops _didn’t_ use tear gas, they used smoke and “pepper balls”.

          Further down in the article it says the cops were there (at about 6:45) to begin dispersing the crowd prior to the 7pm curfew that had been enacted specifically in response to the attempt to burn down the church the night before.

          It’s a bit disingenuous to condemn the dispersal of “peaceful protesters” “just for a photo op at a church”, when those “peaceful” protesters were trying to destroy that church less than 24 hours earlier.

          1. Oh man, I had not watched the video included in that link until just now. Awful lotta not-so-black folks getting their heads smacked and their faces punched in… even a white _news_ crew from Australia.

            Are we still sticking to the story that police brutality is only applied when “skin color matters”, as opposed to “whenever the fuck the blue bastards think they can get away with it”?

          2. Fantastic example of prog-left derangement. Given two potential explanations for an event, they will pick whichever one has the least evidence and makes Trump look bad.

            Watching Jeff the last year or so has been like watching Gollum during Frodo and Sam’s journey south through Ithilien. You hope that you’re actually seeing some light coming through, but then… spiders, ash, and fire.

            1. >This is the work of a tyrant.

              Er, what tyrant? The CO of the Park Police? Donald Trump? Trump, I’m pretty sure, was too busy seizing a photo-op to give orders about what munitions the Park Police ought to use.

              You’re being silly. A “tyrant” would have shot those people or put them in the Gulag. None of them got so much as a night in jail or a fine, unless there were follow-up prosecutions that the press didn’t report.

            2. > The crowd that got dispersed was peaceful. It was not the same crowd that tried to burn it down.

              And people are supposed to know this… how exactly? Are you saying the fact that they were in violation of the new curfew played no part in it?

            3. > This is the work of a tyrant.

              When you were being told that about Whitmer’s actions (against the will not only of her constituents but _her own legislature_ that supported gradual lifting of restrictions) to keep rural Michiganers locked in place with no economic means to support themselves, you praised her and called them “fucking idiots”.

              When you were told the death of George Floyd was the work of a tyrant — a petty tyrant, king only of his own beat but absolute monarch of it nevertheless, supported as he is by similar petty and not-so-petty tyrants all the way up the chain — you sneered that nah, it’s them white supremacists, if leftists _really_ ran the show you’d never see shit like this. (An airtight argument given that Minnesota is the southern-most state in the continental US and has voted Republican in every Presidential election in the past ninety years.)

              Now suddenly you’re whining about _other_ tyrants. Yeah, I get it, you want Strong Central Authoritarian Government when it’s _your_ SCAG. When it’s not thumping the skulls _you_ want thumped, but an entirely different set of skulls, suddenly you’re huffing and puffing about tyranny.

              And the people you’re huffing and puffing _to_ are precisely the ones who (for the most part here) are pretty fucking sick and tired of having ANY of the damned fucking tyrants around. I’m supposed to be “happier” under Biden’s kind of tyranny than Trump’s kind of tyranny.

              Screw that noise. How did that old saying in the sixties go, “What if they had an election, and no one came?”

  54. Having grown up in a third world country where rioting is the norm, I do not agree that damage to innocent people or their property is collateral damage that must be accepted.

    Collateral damage is either deliberate damage that is unavoidable or accidental damage that may or may not have been avoidable. Looting and vandalism are malicious and anti social acts that are committed either for profit or for fun (“some people just want to watch the world burn”-Alfred, Dark Knight 2008)

    Since I am fully on the side of the protesters, I sincerely hope they can reign in these criminal elements before they become rampaging rapists and murderers. The energy and momentum of the protests needs to guided by expert leadership, and be directed to the removal of tyrants from positions of power, whether by threat, force or coercion.

    In summary, I believe the looters are not protesters, nor do they represent the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement. They are profiteering predators. However, violent protest is justified if the violence is directed intelligently to tyrants who believe they can oppress us (regardless of political party or race)

    1. nor do they represent the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement.

      So what is the “spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement”? It seems to be only concerned for Blacks killed by police rather than Blacks killed by other Blacks even though the latter vastly outnumber the former. Furthermore, the BLM movement tend to result in less policing of Black neighborhoods and thus vastly higher number of Blacks killed.

      1. There’s already a whole justice system set up to catch your run-of-the-mill murderers. There’s no equivalent that seems to take murderers with a badge nearly so seriously. It happens sometimes (and should be praised when it does), and the protesters get it wrong in cases like Ferguson (and should be condemned when they do), but it’s still the case that a cop is a lot more likely to get away with murder than anyone else, even when they’re caught on camera. That is a real problem, and I won’t condemn people for complaining about real problems.

        1. > That is a real problem, and I won’t condemn people for complaining about real problems.

          – Group A complains that the justice system specifically protects cops only when they murder people of the Magic Skin Color

          – Person B points out that cops murder fewer people of the Magic Skin Color than warrants specifically condemning the system as whole for that reason

          you completely miss the point, and actually change the argument to “cops murder people” instead of “cops murder Magic Skin Colors” and act like you’re providing an argument against Person B.

          What’s it like living with a flurry of bees in your head?

        2. The problem here is that our whole social concept of policing is very poor. We view cops as “gun-toting heroic defenders of law and order.” Unfortunately, that’s the thoughtless ideal of a sheep who’s begging to have a boot on his/her neck.

          I prefer thinking that goes a more like this: “Police officers are minor, civilian bureaucrats in charge of enforcing laws against criminal behavior and may as necessary carry a light weapon in self-defense (against the possibility that a criminal might behave violently.)”

          I’d probably go on to say something about how a law-enforcement body’s ability to take down criminals is far more a matter of having good organization and communications than owning weaponry, but that part might be just me…

          1. .> We view cops as “gun-toting heroic defenders of law and order.”

            Uh, “we” certainly don’t believe anything of the kind. Not before this fiasco, and certainly not in its fucking wake.

            1. When I say “we” I’m not talking about people on this blog – I know better than that. I mean that it’s the “standard narrative,” (and a very poor one!)

          2. I prefer thinking that goes a more like this: “Police officers are minor, civilian bureaucrats in charge of enforcing laws against criminal behavior and may as necessary carry a light weapon in self-defense (against the possibility that a criminal might behave violently.)”

            Um, arresting people is inherently a violent action, thus the police’s job is and must be inherently violent.

        3. > That is a real problem, and I won’t condemn people for complaining about real problems.

          No doubt the cheesecake stolen by this decidedly non-black woman
          https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/video-shows-woman-carrying-cheesecake-midst-violent-downtown-riots/FWKHYTP4A5BZXD6VUVKONDVNWM/

          will send a strong message about how police brutality and the strong centralized government that supports it need to be curtailed.

          There’s very justifiable protesting going on; there’s a good deal of violence that while not morally justifiable, I consider analyzable given factors I’ve being trying to understand; and then there’s external groups (ie _not_ members of any disenfranchised race) like the antifa stirring shit up.

          And then calmly returning to their lair to feast on a little free cheesecake. Awesome. Oh but no, Jeff’s got it pegged, she’s definitely a white supremacist, you can tell by the strawberries.

    2. > I do not agree that damage to innocent people or their property is collateral damage that must be accepted.

      On a moral level I agree entirely, and I would like to reiterate that I did not intend to “explain” anyone’s behavior in the sense of _justifying_ it; but rather that I’m searching for an “explanation” at a causal level, orthogonal to issues of right and wrong. In a nutshell, I’m claiming that the infusion of communist principles into a large part of our political discourse, coupled of course with having historically and even currently been treated as “intrinsically inferior” by a non-zero fraction of “those with power” has left some people with very little mental/moral machinery to bring to bear against “burn it all down” types of memes.

      > I sincerely hope they can reign in these criminal elements before they become rampaging rapists and murderers.

      The question is what incentives can be provided at this point to the contrary… other than of course increasing police and government violence. The Minneapolis jackboots have once again delivered a message that whether you steal and loot, or don’t steal and don’t loot, your life will end with a jackboot’s knee on your neck. The fact that I see the message directed at me as well would be considered laughable due to my whiteness. (Even though like I said, I get a bunch of twenties at a Walgreens ATM every week, I would never have any damned clue if any of them were counterfeit.) The fact that one of the jackboots was actually not “white” doesn’t get much traction either.

      Some chat channel I was lurking in last night, there was a lot of traffic of the form “gotta kill all the whites this time”, “nothing will change until there are more non-whites than whites in government” were common. Arguing that the problem is actually the _Blue_ race and the institutional attitude that they are intrinsically superior to us civvies, an attitude shared by government officials all the way up the chain, is abstract and unconvincing. The _perception_ is once again “white versus black”, and certainly nothing the media presents has or will suggest otherwise.

      If anyone thinks things are bad now, wait till it comes out that there was no “fake” twenty in the first place, that the clerk made a mistake (honest or otherwise), and that George Floyd died not for “a matter of twenty dollars” but literally for _nothing_. Lotta people before long gonna wish they’d _heeded_ the final warning against Gonvernment Elites considering their authority absolute — that every one of “muh freedoms” is not a right but a privilege bestowed from on high — instead of dismissing those making the warning as “fools”, “fucking idiots”, and “bored mass murderers”.

      1. It isn’t the Whites in government, it is the Progressives..

        Policing problems seem to be concentrated in D-controlled cities where picayune laws are vigorously enforced (selling single cigarettes is a prime example) by police that have no support from the DA or City government.

        1. Sure, definitely, I agree. I’m just saying the perception out there seems to be quite different.

  55. On the subject of White people engaging in violence, here’s some good links. I should note before presenting them that this is an evolving situation; while there are some specifics it’s not entirely known what’s motivating each individual, and the idea that there is some kind of over-arching conspiracy is not remotely proven.

    What should be understood is that there is a very large culture on the left which engages in peaceful protest. If one is a member of this culture the rules and tactics are well-known, and this culture includes training classes on what should and should not be done if one is hoping to have a non-violent demonstration.

    On the other hand, if one is going to their first protest, and is not a member of the culture, and that person has watched TV coverage of protests, which usually focuses on whatever went wrong… one might think that protests are all about breaking windows – and of course they are not. I offer this as an alternate explanation for some of the acts of violence that have been seen. Also, some people are just jerks.

    On the other hand, some of the video I’ve linked to has some pretty disturbing implications…

    For starters, here are two White people charged with rioting in relation to the protests, in both cases the motivation is mostly unknown:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/protests-white-instigators/2020/06/01/b916bd98-a426-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

    https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/1/21277363/lets-start-riot-galesburg-man-federal-charge-related-rioting-chicago

    Here’s a story about Twitter taking down some suspicious material:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/twitter-takes-down-washington-protest-disinformation-bot-behavior-n1221456

    Here’s a series of tweets which link to videos of White people engaging in violence against property during the recent protests. Some of the material makes me a little suspicious.

    https://twitter.com/Freeyourmindkid/status/1266661155994550272

    And of course there’s the famous “umbrella man:”

    https://www.ajc.com/news/police-deny-link-mysterious-umbrella-man-who-broke-windows-during-riot/3j8cSrRBHjvnvX0PRwIYIP/

    To what degree anyone is fanning the flames is unknown. I think we’re going to have to wait and see what’s learned as people have time to sift through the data, which won’t happen until the protests die down. I should also note a couple things in passing. First, that the use of provocateurs is a very old tactic. Second, that everyone carries a video camera these days, and this will ultimately bring us lots more data on what happens during any kind of crisis.

    1. It should also be understood – especially by you – that there’s a large culture on the Left that engages in violent protest. Antifa is part of that culture, and Antifa members are very much involved in the current riots. So much so, in fact, that it’s probably safe to assume (until solid evidence is found) that any white people found rioting in black neighborhoods are members of Antifa, not of mysterious right-wing racist groups which are wholly invisible otherwise.

      And the reports of pallets of bricks dropped off for rioters’ convenience – well, that shows there’s a lot more than the occasional idiot new to protesting who thinks breaking windows is just good clean fun involved here. That was planned and premeditated. That means a conspiracy to commit mayhem, and incite others to do likewise.

      The peaceful protestors on the Left also need to understand that being associated with riots, looting and arson, as the US media is insisting on doing (by describing the riots as “peaceful protests” of the sort they would stage) is the kiss of death for them and any cause they support. It is now much less likely than it was before the riots that the reaction to George Floyd’s death will go any farther than trials for his killers. We cannot, in particular, expect the Minneapolis PD to put any effort into reforming its procedures or vetting its officers to discourage a reoccurence. Absent the riots, that might have happened.

      1. So much so, in fact, that it’s probably safe to assume (until solid evidence is found) that any white people found rioting in black neighborhoods are members of Antifa, not of mysterious right-wing racist groups which are wholly invisible otherwise.

        All of the extremist killings in the USA in 2018 were perpetrated by right-wing racist whites. All of them.

        So no, if someone winds up dead, by the statistics alone I’d say it’s far more likely that a racist killed them than an Antifa.

        1. And, in other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

          Do you have something to say that’s actually relevant to what I said? Like, say, an example of a white rioter who is not a member of Antifa?

        2. > All of the extremist killings

          Citation needed. Even if it were true, Michael Brazier was discussing rioting and violence in general, and hadn’t mentioned killings specifically, so, non sequitur.

          Were all the cheesecake thefts in 2018 perpetrated by “right-wing racist whites”? Either way, what’s the reasoning again for why a “right-wing racist white” woman would dress up in a burka to fool us all into thinking she’s antifa, while looting and robbing a Seattle Cheesecake Factory? Not exactly a black-owned business (https://www.google.com/search?q=david+evelyn+overton&tbm=isch), so, what’s the motive here? Stealing a cheesecake is gonna stop police brutality how?

      2. Well, I have to turn in my prophet credentials.

        Majority of Minneapolis City Council Signs Pledge to Disband Police Department

        … They might as well have signed a pledge to abolish the city government entirely. If there’s no Minneapolis PD, just who is going to enforce city ordinances? How will the courts ensure that people show up to be tried, or to testify in trials? Who will collect property taxes, if someone decides not to pay them?

        I’m almost tempted to hope the city council goes through with this, just to see what happens when a modern city’s government commits suicide. But there are lots of innocent Minneapolitans who don’t deserve to be plunged into a legal vacuum.

        1. @Michael Brazier
          “I’m almost tempted to hope the city council goes through with this, just to see what happens when a modern city’s government commits suicide.”

          What about a police force that does not honor:
          We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
          See more at:
          https://andrew-updegrove.com/equality-before-the-law-or-not/

          What I see a lot is declarations that:

          Every white (and nonwhite), conservative American I know — or even am aware of — condemned George Floyd’s killing in no uncertain terms.

          But these Conservatives also condemned even more forcefully every possible policy measure that might have prevented the killing. One of the first things the Trump administration did was stopping investigations into police brutality and the oversight installed:
          https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/16/13640540/trump-obama-police-brutality

          Not even making lynching a federal crime seems to be possible in Conservative America.
          https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/politics/rand-paul-anti-lynching-bill-senate.html

          How do you call a person abhorred by injustice, but objecting to any measure to prevent or redress the injustice?

          1. > police brutality and oversight

            The vox article might be compelling if one completely ignores the politics of the cities given as examples. Yeah, ok, there’s the first one cited, Ferguson, MO. But then after that come Cleveland, Baltimore, Chicago… these are _blue_ cities. Cities run under _left_ democratic policies, not “conservative” ones.

            You did get that I was _joking_ above about Minnesota? That it is actually the _northern_ most continental US state, and has voted _Democrat_ in US presidential elections for the past ninety years?

            I’ve lost count of how many times this has been said in these threads so I honestly have no idea just how obnoxiously repetitive I’m being, so I apologize to everyone who already gets this and didn’t need to hear it yet another time: a strong and brutal police force is a characteristic of a strong authoritarian central government, which provides political and legal cover for the actions of that police force and in turn is protected by it.

            And of course it’s easy for the parasites themselves (symbiotic with each other, but both parasitic on the “host” body of us civilians at the bottom of the power ladder) to bemoan the symptoms they themselves cause, to “raise public awareness” in favor of further strengthening government powers. The article you cite itself admits that Obama’s “investigations” were “often failing to reach many of their goals because the financial costs imposed on local governments are just too high for a budget-strained city to afford.” Obviously Trump’s the bad guy for not wasting even more resources pitting one faction of the bureaucracy against another.

            From your first link:
            > How many white people, for example, can get their heads around the belief of many people of color that they would be better off with no police at all?

            Uh, the hint is that it starts with “L” and ends with “ibertarian”. The sad bit of the article is where they talk about all of the “principles” of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence that have eroded… without mentioning the erosion of the 2nd Amendment which was the only linchpin keeping the others in place. (You do remember that the first gun control laws, the poster children of left liberal policy, were designed to keep firearms out of the hands of the _black_ community, no?)

            > How do you call a person abhorred by injustice, but objecting to any measure to prevent or redress the injustice?

            Well if you said “a person _claiming_ to be abhorred” I’d have said, duh, a politician, pretty much regardless of stripe. As stated, yeah, that is a stumper. Maybe if you could actually show me an example of one in the wild somewhere I could try figure out what to call it.

            1. “The vox article might be compelling if one completely ignores the politics of the cities given as examples.”

              Cities tend to vote Democratic in the USA, so this is not a surprise. And I do not care about the political association of the city council. The behavior of the police is what is at stake here.

              “a strong and brutal police force is a characteristic of a strong authoritarian central government, which provides political and legal cover for the actions of that police force and in turn is protected by it.”

              It is conservatives that call for the protection of police officers against misbehavior claims. It is conservatives that rally to defend the police when they have crossed the line again (aka, Blue lives matter, anyone).

              “And of course it’s easy for the parasites themselves”

              Police officers should not unnecessary kill people and most certainly never extort the population. Ferguson was not an exception. Nothing about “parasites” has anything to do with these simple rules.

              “Uh, the hint is that it starts with “L” and ends with “ibertarian”.”

              And these Libertarians object to all policies that reign in the misbehavior of the police. That is my point: If you are abhorred by police brutality you should support measures to prevent it. If you reject any such measures, your outrage looks insincere.

              Btw, the same Libertarians start commenting about police killings by dragging up past convictions of victims who were unnecessarily killed by the police. As if they consider killing people justified if they have been convicted before.

              ” Maybe if you could actually show me an example of one in the wild somewhere I could try figure out what to call it.”

              Which of the “Every white (and nonwhite), conservative American I know” mentioned in the comment above actually supported policies to reign in police brutality? Say, by voting for a politician who wanted to implement such policies?

              And which of those conservatives voted for elected officials and politicians with a track record of NOT reigning in police brutality in any way? Which of those conservatives supported Trump shutting down all those police brutality investigations?

              1. > And these Libertarians object to all policies that reign in the misbehavior of the police. That is my point:

                And your “point” is such rank and utter bullshit that I’m ashamed of myself for even bothering to reply.

                We don’t want a government-sponsored police force in the first place, let alone a brutal and abusive one.

                > Which of the “Every white (and nonwhite), conservative American I know” mentioned in the comment above actually supported policies to reign in police brutality? Say, by voting for a politician who wanted to implement such policies?

                You said just above that that you “do not care about the political association” of those in charge. That means you are failing to care about what is precisely the central issue here: these are all Democrat controlled cities. Regardless of who voted them in or why, THEY THEMSELVES DO NOT WANT TO REIGN IN POLICE BRUTALITY. If they did they would have done it already. Minnesota, as I said, has been Democrat for NINETY FUCKING YEARS. How much more time do they need to muster their resources against those sneaky nasty conservatives lurking in their volcano lairs?

                Nobody would remember Lenin, Stalin, or Hitler as anything other than a pseudo-intellectual whackjob, a hick Georgia farmboy (no not that Georgia, the other Georgia), and a failed art student respectively, if not for the uniformed thugs at their beck and call.

                And yes I know perfectly well that the position I am actually advocating is a total pipe dream. Believe me, nobody knows better than me that being a Libertarian in Chicago is like being a whore in the Vatican: you can make all the noise you want, but nobody is ever going to give a shit.

                But in the world we _actually_ live in, I will repeat to you what I said to Jeff Read above: either put me on the jury against one of these jackboot ratfuckers, or kindly shut the fuck up.

                1. “We don’t want a government-sponsored police force in the first place, let alone a brutal and abusive one.”

                  If you vote, you get the police as a package deal. So, when these “concerned conservatives” vote, which officials do they vote for? How many candidates are actually calling for the abolishing of the “government-sponsored police force”? Were the “concerned conservatives” voting for such candidates? Not really, the majority voted for Trump, who never hid his feelings about (not) controlling the police.

                  > “That means you are failing to care about what is precisely the central issue here: these are all Democrat controlled cities.”

                  As I wrote above, most populous cities in the USA are Democrat controlled cities, so that is not a distinguishing factor.

                  What is also well known is that the situation in the USA is such that municipal elected politicians are largely powerless to change police policies short of defunding. One reason being that the highest courts, the DA, as well as the complete police force will back even the most miss-behaving officer.

                  And defunding is exactly the one tool you are ridiculing here.

                  All other powers over the police and judicial system are at the law makers and federal levels. And at these levels, conservative politicians in both parties have consistently blocked change. See, e.g., how fast the Trump administration stopped all investigations into police misconduct. Let alone everything else he did to cover up violence:
                  https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/30/21275588/trump-policing-policies-doj-george-floyd-protests

                  But he was not alone in his covering up for violence:
                  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/chauvin-did-what-trump-asked-him-do/612574/

                  When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Ronald Reagan blamed the activist for his own murder, hissing that King’s death was the kind of “great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order.”

                  1. > If you vote, you get the police as a package deal.

                    You’re saying that like it’s my fault. Please point out the “police don’t get to brutalize and kill innocent people” ticket here in Chicago, and I will gladly start voting for them.

                    > So, when these “concerned conservatives” vote, which officials do they vote for?

                    You claimed above it was “Libertarians” supporting racist and brutal powerful police forces. I called bullshit on that, now you are demanding that I answer for another nebulous group of “conservative” voters. Just how many disparate political viewpoints am I expected to answer for here?

                    > As I wrote above, most populous cities in the USA are Democrat controlled cities, so that is not a distinguishing factor.

                    Which I still don’t get whether that’s a terminal case of cognitive dissonance or a deliberate (if pathetic) attempt at bullshitting. You can’t seriously be claiming that in a primarily Democrat-controlled city “the highest courts, the DA, as well as the complete police force” are conservative anti-Democrats.

                    > conservative politicians in both parties have consistently blocked change

                    Oh wait you _are_ seriously claiming something even stupider: when a Democrat is publicly supportive of a position you’re debating against, you will call that position “conservative” and tag the Democrat similarly as “conservative” (and assume we’re dumb enough to forget yet again that a strong and brutal police force is a characteristic of leftist ideology since the beginning of the twentieth century). Must be cool to be able to disassemble facts and put them together a whole different way, like Legos or something.

                    > And defunding is exactly the one tool you are ridiculing here.

                    You damned fucking liar, I have NEVER said anything about “defunding”, let alone ridiculing it. How the FUCK is supporting the libertarian position of _not_ having a state-sponsored police force equivalent in ANY way to “ridiculing” “defunding”? I’ll ridicule Democrats for _claiming_ to support “defunding” when there is no way on earth or hell they will ever _actually_ go through with it. If you’re too stupid (or too big a fucking liar) to see the difference, that is in no way my responsibility.

                    And please stop throwing vox puff pieces on Trump at me. I already pointed out that first one itself admits that Obama’s vaunted “investigations” hadn’t actually accomplished anything; Trump’s actions there are easily explained by simple budget considerations. More importantly, Trump isn’t anything near a libertarian, so I don’t consider myself under any obligation to justify all of the multitude of his policies you disagree with. (I’ll bet you a metric dozen donuts most folks here who _do_ style themselves conservative don’t consider Trump “conservative” in an absolute sense either, only within the narrow confines of the top two American parties.)

                    1. Oh wait you _are_ seriously claiming something even stupider: when a Democrat is publicly supportive of a position you’re debating against, you will call that position “conservative” and tag the Democrat similarly as “conservative” (and assume we’re dumb enough to forget yet again that a strong and brutal police force is a characteristic of leftist ideology since the beginning of the twentieth century).

                      Winter is Dutch, dude. From his perspective, both the Democrats and the Republicans are right-wing parties that support a corrupt form of state capitalism. The Netherlands has communists occupying seats in its parliament. America doesn’t have an actual left with any political power — just college kids with pink and purple hair making a loud, disorganized fuss.

        2. > But there are lots of innocent Minneapolitans who don’t deserve to be plunged into a legal vacuum.

          The cynical side of me is convinced that’s the intended goal, to once again make anyone with even the most minuscule libertarian tendencies look complete crazy, while never actually intending to go through with such a measure.

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