Category Archives: J Robert Smith

SPECIAL: COVID-19 and the Coming Great American Disillusionment

J Robert Smith

  • May 9, 2020
  • 4 min read

Updated: May 12, 2020

“I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.”― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

— goodreads.com … Quotes about Disillusionment

“All knowledge hurts.”― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

— goodreads.com … Quotes about Disillusionment

THE TAKE

Back in late February, we were told that the Black Death was soon upon us. But in less than two months, nothing of the sort has happened. Americans haven’t had to swab disinfectant over doorways in some public health Passover ritual. The “Great Deadly Contagion 2020” is a bust, of sorts. Yes, there’s a COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s contours more resemble a nasty flu season.

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SPECIAL: Rebellions Against Tyranny in the States are Growing

J Robert Smith

  • May 4, 2020
  • 4 min read

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

— Thomas Jefferson

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

— Declaration of Independence

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SPECIAL: Why Do We Keep Acting as if the COVID-19 Pandemic is Worse than It is?

J Robert Smith

  • April 19, 2020
  • 4 min read

Truth: This virus is new and can be deadly. We have been afraid that something bad was going to happen. We knew we were not prepared so we hit the panic button. We were wrong and caused a lot of unnecessary damage. We don’t want to admit it so we are stuck. Everyone is to blame.

— Rod Shapard, Twitter Post, April 19, 2020

Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

— Bertrand Russell, “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.88, Routledge

When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule, and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.

— John Locke, Chapter 18, Of Tyranny, “On Gouvernment”

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SPECIAL: Does Democratic Governors’ Petty Tyranny Spell Doom in November?

J Robert Smith

  • April 17, 2020
  • 4 min read

At least one protester, Monica Faith Ussery, 51, of Holly Springs [North Carolina], was charged with violating the [Governor Roy Cooper’s] executive order.

“I have a right to peacefully assemble,” she said as officers led her away, her hands bound with a zip tie. “God bless America.”

— The News & Observer, April 14, 2020

[Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer’s order generated a great deal of pushback. It includes a prohibition on large retailers selling allegedly nonessential items, such as paint and outdoor supplies, meaning stores like Home Depot had to tape off those sections from customers. Lawncare services have been temporarily shuttered. With very few exceptions, the order prohibits people from traveling between residences [snip]

— Reason, April 15, 2020

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SPECIAL: Following COVID-19 Pied Pipers Off the Cliff

J Robert Smith

  • April 10, 2020
  • 3 min read

An expert avoids all of the many pitfalls on his or her way to the grand fallacy.”

— Henry Mintzberg Collection of Expert Quotes

“When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.”

— Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August

THE TAKE

The experts and epidemiological models have been embarrassingly wrong. COVID-19 isn’t a figment of our imaginations, but it’s not the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic – not by a long shot. We’re in the midst of an historic overreaction to a contagious infection. Tens of millions of working Americans and small businesses are paying the price. Paychecks and jobs, lost, and small businesses hanging by threads.

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SPECIAL: Why are Democrats, MSM Excusing Xi Jinping’s COVID-19 Catastrophe?

J Robert Smith

  • April 5, 2020
  • 5 min read

[Rep. Sean] Casten’s [D-IL] sin, in the National Republican Congressional Committee’s view, was a pair of conference calls during which he told constituents that China had acted “quickly” and “to their credit … shut down the entire province that this was in, and they seem to largely have isolated the cases.”

— The Washington Post, April 3, 2020

Most critically, Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors—unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.

— Foreign Policy, April 2, 2020

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NEWSFEED THURSDAY: Coronavirus can’t be a Crisis that becomes a Catastrophe

J Robert Smith

  • March 26, 2020
  • 3 min read

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

— Helen Keller

THE TAKE

In the fight to subdue the coronavirus contagion, the nation is hunkered down. Businesses, big and small, considered nonessential, are shuttered. Schools are closed. Sports, amateur and pro, are shelved. Restaurants are struggling. In some places, “shelter at home” is mandatory. In others, its voluntary.

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NEWSFEED MONDAY: Why Leftists Add “Democratic” to Socialism

J Robert Smith

  • March 2, 2020
  • 3 min read

Disinformation [ dis-in-fer-mey-shuhn, dis-in- ]

deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda:

— Dictionary.com

[Winston] Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, and his job is to rewrite the reports in newspapers of the past to conform with the present reality. Smith lives in a constant state of uncertainty; he is not sure the year is in fact 1984.

— The Conversation, June 12, 2019

THE TAKE

What’s so bad about socialism that leftists have to qualify it with “democratic?” Isn’t socialism supposed to be inherently… democratic?

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NEWSFEED TUESDAY: Democrats Headed for a British Labour Party Disaster

J Robert Smith

  • Feb. 25, 2020
  • 3 min read

Some of the most astute analysis of Labour’s thumping loss has come from Lisa Nandy, member of Parliament for Wigan, who resigned from Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet in 2016 over his management and her party’s Brexit position. Nandy is an outside shot for the leadership, but she has impressed with her straight talk on where the party went off the rails. Speaking about feedback from voters, she says:

“There was just a general sense that at the top of the Labour Party we don’t speak for people like them anymore, a sense we don’t have skin in the game, that we’re not rooted in those communities, and we’re just not like them, and we don’t come very often to just ask people what they think and to listen to what they’ve got to say.” [bold added]

— Bloomberg, via the Japanese Times, January 12, 2020

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NEWSFEED MONDAY: Bernie’s Never-Ending Fidel Castro Crush

J Robert Smith

  • Feb. 24, 2020
  • 3 min read

“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?” Sanders told Anderson Cooper.

— Fox News, February 24, 2020

Castro’s End: With Fidel Castro’s death at 90, the encomiums are rolling in, especially from what remains of the American Big Media. But in fact, Castro during his 58 years of dictatorship was an evil man, a communist who tortured, killed and imprisoned with no remorse, a tyrant who tore a once-beautiful country apart and sent its finest citizens into exile.

— Investors’ Business Daily, November 26, 2016

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