freedom and reason

For literally decades I’ve had to correct people on this particular bit of terminology. (More recently, I blogged about this in 2014 concerning “The Cliven Bundy Case.”)

I am hearing a lot of talk lately about “states rights.” States don’t have rights. People do. The most important of those rights are those the state is obliged to protect, for example the right of the people to peaceably gather and freely express their opinions, for example opposition to government policy. 

States have powers, not rights. In the United States, a constitutional republic, we have a system of authority that delegates or grants states powers in several areas, while keeping states subordinate to the federal government under the authority of the United States Constitution (the Supremacy Clause). This is why we call our country the “United States”—the states are united under one authority that operates on the principle of federalism.

I appreciate the fact that President Trump understands this relationship. He’s leaving a lot of decisions to states concerning when they’re going to reopen. At the same time he asserts his authority to step in if states badly handle reopening. 

The media treats this as if it’s a contradiction. But they don’t understand our system. It is in fact the essence of the United States of America to allow states (and local governments) to make decisions relative to the circumstances of their citizens and residents, not just administratively, but also substantively, while ultimately being answerable to the national government. 

States are ultimately answerable to the national government because the citizens of each state are first and foremost citizens of the United States. This is why President Eisenhower could federalize the National Guard and command them in Little Rock (see also Article I, Section 8). Moreover, anybody who’s in the country is ultimately under the authority of the national government.

This is the reason I find sanctuary cities and sanctuary states to be such a deeply troubling development, especially in light of the fact that it’s the national government that is in charge of immigration and borders.

I have lately been seeing a lot of negative comments on my Facebook feed directed at atheists. I am not saying that this is a general trend, just that I have a rather large friends list and I am a bit struck by the sudden surge in nastiness. Could it be the helplessness people are feeling about our present situation is presaging a revival of religious faith? I hope not. That’s a scary scene. Fear and religion is a worrisome combination. Those who cast doubt on faith belief become the enemy under such circumstances. Folks are already in the mood to throw democracy and liberty under the bus. An Inquisition may feel like the logical next step.

Part of it, of course, is the brand of identity politics that fetishizes Muslims, that makes the followers of Muhammad a ritual totem for the anti-Western crowd (there are other ritual totems, but I don’t wish to enlarge the scope of offense-taking), and that makes criticism of Islam blasphemous. Moreover, Islam is exotic. Absurdly, atheism is said to be a cover for something called “Islamophobia.” Is it not curious that the religious beliefs that explicitly negate Islam (you know, Judaism and Christianity) are, by some ecumenical alchemy, unproblematic? Rather, it’s those who do not hold religious beliefs who are the bigots. But, then, atheists have always been the most dangerous people.

It is important to point out for people who draw an equivalency between theism and atheism that these things are not actually equivalent. Indeed, one is a thing, a belief; the other is the absence of a belief in the thing. Atheism is like “aunicornism,” only unicornism is not a widespread belief (although I had a student once insist that unicorns are mentioned in the Bible and therefore belief in them is legitimate), so such a word finds no purchase. Childish beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy need no word indicating the absence of faith in them, either. We recognize that we grow out of them (for obvious reasons) and move on. (It is worth considering that Santa Claus, and now the Elf on the Shelf, are Yahweh-like in their omniscience. They know when you’ve bad or good. They are ritual objects used for the little theists-in-training.)

Theism is the belief in a god or gods, in particular the belief in a personal deity. This belief is a form of faith belief, as there is is no reason, logically or empirically, to subscribe to it. We do not value most belief that has neither logical nor empirical bases. Yet there is this exception carved out for religious belief. You are even permitted to see the faith belief of other religious groups as unwarranted while believing yours is the correct belief on the basis of no reason whatsoever and enjoy entrée in the ecumenical community. More abhorrent than those who believe in different gods from yours (for at least they believe in the supernatural) are those who believe in no gods at all. Those individuals must be singled out for special opprobrium. 

So let’s remember for goodness sake that atheism is the absence of belief in a god or gods. Think about how the word “asexual” means the absence of the sexual. Asexual is not a type of sexual. It literally means that some thing is not that thing. If there were no such thing as sexual, then asexual would be a nonword. Likewise, atheism only exists as an designation because there is theism and because theism is, in a way Santa Clausism isn’t, to be believed by reasonable people. If there were no theism, there would be no need for a word that indicates the absence of it. 

Thus, I never came to “believe” in atheism because atheism is not a belief. That’s the wrong way to put the matter. The problem many have with me is that I never came to believe in any god. I am not even a failed theist. I am a soulless person (except the soul I manufacture with my creative energies). I have to identify as an atheist because the world has made an assumption, namely that theism is not only a credible position but an important thing to be.

It’s like being uncircumcised. If cutting off parts of the genitalia of little boys were not a standard thing some parts of the world (unfortunately in the part of the world I was born into), we wouldn’t have a word for the absence of genital mutilation. We wouldn’t even be talking about “intact penises.” After all, we don’t talk about intact ears (thank goodness Vincent Van Gogh never became a messiah figure). “Uncircumcised” is another designation the theists have hoisted upon us.

Don’t smear me as a bigot for not believing in rubbish.

It has been clear to me for a long time now that my existence on an ideological landscape divided between conservatives and progressives (the latter of whom are mistakenly called “liberals”) makes my politics confusing to a lot of folks. I am neither a conservative nor a progressive and so my opinions do not align with these standpoints in anything remotely resembling a lockstep fashion. Nor am I a Republican or a Democrat. That’s probably the greater problem since it they can’t count on me for a vote.

The assumption made based on my long-held criticisms of conservatism and the Republican Party, on racism, sexism, and so on, as well as my status as a sociologist, is that I am a Democrat and a progressive. But I am a libertarian socialist whose values run extremely liberal on most things (except economic matters), while my method for grasping the social world is Marxist. In fact, I am an orthodox Marxist, which is more liberal than progressive (an understanding that Neo-Marxism obscures). In other words, I am a humanist who believes in individualism and a set of universal rights associated with species being that may be ascertained through scientific work. I do not subscribe the paradoxical cultural Marxist view that truth is relative and that free speech is a weapon of oppression (a la Marcuse). To the extent that I see imagined communities, I see them as expressions of alienation.

Since my worldview is shaped by these principles and not partisan ideologies, I come to opinions reached not on whether the arguments align with conservative or progressive ideologies or the platforms of the Republican or Democrat parties, but whether they are consistent with my values (democratic, humanist, liberal, rationalist, republican, and secularist) and the dictates of scientific reasoning (which I regard as tied to my values). If you listen to or read my arguments and find yourself wondering why I would express some view in light of other views I have expressed, or not express attitudes you think that I should, for example daily public loathing of Donald Trump, it may be because you are determining the appropriateness of opinions on ideological and partisan grounds rather than through the method I use to arrive at my opinions. You don’t have to use my method, of course. But, by the same token, I don’t have to use your’s.

I am not saying I’m infallible. I have publicly confessed my errors many times. I was wrong to downplay the threat of Islam to humanity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I was ignorant of the terrors intrinsic Islam. I was too religiously tolerant. More crucially, I suffered on account of peer pressure from an ideological desire to express an absurd level of religious tolerance. I am not proud of this. I am also not proud of failing to appreciate aspects of rational Christianity for its fostering of rationalism and secularism. I regret portraying American in a negative light, for accepting and sometimes even adding to the narrative used by progressives to delegitimize the greatest republic in world history. I regret casting votes for Al Gore and John Kerry. I wish I had cast those votes from another candidate or not cast them at all. At the same time, I have never regretted never voting for Republicans.

Long ago, the American pragmatist William James differentiated between the “once born” and the “twice born.” James was a theologian, so the terminology is especially provocative. He described the once born as having a childlike faith in their opinions. Not just faith in the religious sphere. Adherence to any worldview without reason. (I would add to this class those apologists who use their intellect to keep themselves from doubting.) Once born practice is, in essence, thinking out of reflex (or an act of rationalization). Once born persons enjoy a simple, uncomplicated worldview, one that does not cause them much anxiety. Indeed, their certainty in the convictions cushions the pains of the actual world—a world of uncertainty.

The twice born, on the other hand, may believe exactly what they would have believed had they not been born again, but they do so only after rationally examining their convictions, finding rational justification for them, and obtaining a fuller understanding of them. At the same time, the critical examination of belief causes them to give up many of their convictions, and this can be a great source of angst and anxiety. Twice born people are more likely to be unhappy and dissatisfied. But they are also less likely to be zealots and bigots (remember—bigotry is the attitude of expressing an unjustified certainty in one’s own opinion). 

I am not always consistent in my striving to be a twice born person. As I said, I am not infallible. But admitting this is part of becoming ever more reasonable in my thinking. It is ironic that those who accuse others of arrogance are often the epitome of the accusation. They don’t know how to regard free thinking and self-critical people. This is the corruption of partisan ideology on human cognition. Ideology conditions people to believe what is expected from those with whom they identify and to resist deviating from the party line. The method doesn’t check claims against anything but the Manual of Correct Thinking. The consistency partisans seek is not the practice of adjusting consciousness to the world via a rigorous method, but rather by aligning one’s opinions with a ideological checklist. This accounts for most people. So those of us who are not part of the frame become an enigma. And people strongly dislike things they cannot understand from the frame they’ve been given.

Being a Democrats or a Republican is a lot like being a religious fundamentalist. And I’m an atheist.

A party for working people would focus on health, education, income, and retirement security for all people. That means high-quality health care for everybody, a guaranteed job at a living wage or adequate compensation for unemployment and disability, an end to mass immigration and a return to domestic high-value industrial production, free public education through college for all who qualify and job training for those who do not (or do not wish to go to college), and a universal and guaranteed pension program. That’s it. Beyond these guarantees, life should largely be left to individuals to live as they decide. Indeed, guaranteeing basic rights to health, education, work, and leisure allows individuals the maximal degree of freedom to make something of themselves.

A party for working people would guarantee formal equality and promote in law and policy substantive equality. That means it would eschew the progressive politics of law and policies based on demands for equity and diversity. Such law and policies are discriminatory, privileging some individuals over others on the basis of group identities. Indeed, law and policies based on group identity should be categorically illegal. Proposed laws and policies should instead the necessity of individual rights and liberties regardless of race, sex, etc., for freedom’s sake. A working class party that represent all working people would demand that the government guarantee fundamental liberal and secular freedoms for all people, free speech, freedom of conscience, etc. It would explicitly reject political correctness and speech codes and vigorously protect the right of individuals to express their opinions and to be offensive.

A party for working people would operate on populist principles of individual rights and liberties while rejecting the progressive politics of perpetuating corporate power and class hierarchy legitimized by tokenism. A party for working people would promote a strong national government based on liberal and secular values and the ethic of individualism. Obviously, the Democratic Party cannot be that party. It is a progressive corporatist organization that works against the interests of working people and individual liberty. It pushes equity and diversity over equality and merit. It fragments the working class by promoting identity politics and multiculturalism. It interferes with free thought and expression. 

I hear people wonder aloud why working people would vote against their own interests by voting Republican, as if Democrats actually represented working class interests. Identity politics and political correctness are not in the interests of working people. Identity politics and political correctness comprise the hegemonic work of progressive capitalist power. This work is about fracturing the working class by identity and then subduing a patchwork of groups through tokenism while marginalizing other groups. It’s a divide-and-conquer politics. The Democratic Party is a dead end.

In light of this, it’s not difficult to understand why so many working class people vote Republican. They see in the Republican Party a negation of the work of the Democratic Party, the latter’s work representing a harm to their interests. Even if the Democratic Party guaranteed health, education, income, and retirement security for all people, it would still be objectionable if it did not also eschew leftwing identitarian politics. The Republican Party is not a viable option in the long run. But neither is the Democratic Party. Folks are going to have to come to terms with that fact.

The CDC estimates that, for the 2019-2020 flu season (last surveillance point was April 4, from the end of September), there were 39 million flu illnesses. The number of positive tests for the flu was 291,241. I will refer to positive tests as flu cases. That’s quite a discrepancy. I explain this in a moment.

The CDC attributes 24,000 deaths to the flu so far this season. That’s a case-lethality rate of 9.7%, or roughly one dead for every ten persons who test positive—a shocking statistic. However, on the basis of the estimated number of actual illnesses, the death rate is 0.75%, or less than one in a hundred.

The multiple used this year to estimate actual cases from positive cases is a factor of 134. There are complex reasons why this number is utilized and you can read about the mathematical models used to make the estimate in the following CDC page: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm. The model was developed because epidemiologists are aware that far fewer cases are confirmed by testing than actually exist in the population.

There are 675,243 confirmed cases of and 34,562 deaths from COVID-19 so far. That is a case lethality rate of 5.1%, or roughly half the case lethality rate for the flu based on confirmed cases. However, we must keep in mind that the CDC does not report case lethality rate for the flu. It uses the epidemiological estimates to calculate the death rate.

Applying the same extrapolation as applied by the CDC to flu illnesses this year yields 106 million COVID-19 illnesses. That would put the death rate at 0.63% from COVID-19. Again, the lethality of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is less than that of influenza.

Now, it is unlikely that 106 million Americans have had or currently have COVID-19. I am only applying the multiple to raise the issue about reporting of relative risk.

Consider that he standard estimate for asymptomatic and mild (cold-like) cases is around 80%. Accepting that number, that still represents 21 million flu-like illnesses from SARS-CoV-2. That still seems like a large number (and this would have implications for the degree of herd immunity discussed in my previous podcast). If It is possible that either asymptomatic and mild cases are a greater percentage of the total number of cases or the multiple is smaller for COVID-19 than it is for the flu. But the question we should be asking is why has no multiple been applied to COVID-19 at all?

The comeback will likely be that we don’t yet have the experience with this virus to know to approximate that number, but we surely know the number is significantly greater than zero. If 80% have no symptoms or only mild symptoms, then the majority of cases are not being tested. And there are many with severe cases that are to tested. These obvious facts should be communicated clearly by authorities and the media. All reporting about deaths should emphasize this point.  

Or to put this another way, we might ask why there is a multiple applied in the case of flu illnesses. My guess is that, at least in part, a one-out-of-ten case-lethality rate for influenza would provoke calls for social distancing, sheltering-in-place, and quarantine for the flu, and that would make normal life impossible. Smartly, an epidemiological model is applied to reduce the rate of death from the illness.

But the problem here should be obvious. The authorities and the media are comparing apples to oranges—and they are doing so in a direction that makes COVID-19 seems much more deadly than the flu. To be sure, COVID-19 is deadly. It may very well be more deadly. But how much more deadly? For sure, it is not nearly as deadly as the case-lethality rate makes it appear since it is obvious that most cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection are unreported, whereas dead bodies from flu-like viruses rarely go unreported (at least not for long). (And we have seen authorities including the COVID-19 death counts bodies that have not tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.)

We need authorities to come clean on this discrepancy. Not being clear about the relative risks of COVID-19 over against the flu feeds the panic exploited by the federal and state and local governments to justify the sharp and unprecedented curtailment of freedom and democracy. It appears that they have manufactured the panic.

To those who say that the folks who want the lockdown to end are for killing people, I hope they’re for the abolition of automobiles to prevent the 35-40 thousand automobile deaths that occur annually in the United States alone, many of those deaths occurring through no fault of the victims (drivers, passengers, and pedestrians). 

If the scolds are not posting memes about the genocidal intentions of those who drive automobiles (I confess, I drive one), then the scolds must know that they’re tacitly agreeing to tolerate those tens of thousand of deaths of their brothers and sisters for the sake of the freedom and convenience of traveling by automobile. 

Remember, the risks associated with automobiles involve more than just deaths from accident. Tens of thousands of people die prematurely (many more than from accidents) from air pollution caused by car exhaust. And what about all the people injured in automobile accidents?

How has society dealt with the risks associated with automobiles? Not by taking away automobiles or punishing people for driving them (unless they cause death and injury in a manner society does not approve of). We have not dealt with the risk of automobiles by limiting the freedom of individuals who want to travel by automobile. We have instead taught people how to drive more safely, have made automobiles safer, and have made automobiles more environmentally friendly. 

Suppose we could reduce the frequency of suicides by punishing people who say things that may contribute to a person’s motivation to perpetrate self-harm. To be sure, there is often a preexisting condition like depression lying in back of self-harm. But who is attributing COVID-19 deaths to high blood pressure or type II diabetes? It’s the pathogen (that the vast majority of people survive). With suicide, it would follow that persons saying hurtful things to vulnerable people is the proximate and therefore primary cause of death from suicide. Would that justify suppressing the right to free expression? Or is free expression for all who wish to pursue it more important than the lives of those who are prone to suicide?

I can keep producing examples in this fashion. Many things we do as free people have risks associated with them. The authoritarian approach to risk is to restrict or take away freedom. Authoritarians treat freedom as the problem. If speech motivates actions deemed detrimental to others or to society, then speech needs to be curtailed. People have to be controlled. In contrast, the humanist approach is to make things safer and make people wiser, not shut down the freedoms that make life worth living.

Maybe we will one day have a risk-free alternative to the automobile (I hope so, but not everybody does). Maybe one day we will solve the problem of mood disorders and suicidal ideations. Maybe one day we will have an effective therapy for viruses. Until then, if risk reduction involves sharply limiting human freedom, then at least be consistent and limit your own freedom. Stay away from cars by sheltering-in-place (albeit sometimes cars collide with houses so you may never be completely safe). Rarely is anybody forced to drive an automobile (or take a bus, or a train, or a plane). Stay home and let the rest of the world go on driving—and living.

In the end, humans cannot mastermind death, disease, and injury. Nor can the government. Life is risky. Death is inevitable. We can take steps to reduce the risks for most things we face in life. But we mustn’t adopt measures that substantially diminish the freedom of all.

At least the present crisis exposes a massive error on the part of Western powers. I will be charitable and assume that the Western bourgeoisie did not intend to put the United States in an inferior position with respect to China. I will assume for the sake of considering the situation in which we find ourselves, that the Chinese were considered by the globalists (the neoimperialists), to be a typical third world country, one that could be peripheralized for the sake of capitalist accumulation in the core in the context of the fall in the rate of profit in the post-WWII period (thanks to economic nationalism and the organized labor movement), its leadership shaped into colonial collaborators. Put simply, the Western bourgeoisie sought to turn China into its workshop in its neoliberal war on labor and the left, launched in the United States in the 1960s. 

But things didn’t turn out so well, as the COVID-19 calamity makes clear. Why? China wasn’t the typical colonial dependency. The sophistication of the Chinese Communist Party, the state apparatus under its ruthless command, controlling infrastructure and real estate, meant that, whatever surplus the West hoovered out of China’s export processing zones, the regime would share in that surplus. The Chinese Communist Party plowed the value it extracted from the Chinese proletariat into development and expansion, while exploiting its international linkages to draw more capital to territory. Now a totalitarian nightmare state controls the global supply chain.

Imagine the response of Western publics if this degree of interpenetration had been achieved for the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It would have been scandalous and those responsible for it branded traitors. The shift in mass consciousness with the dismantling of the Soviet Union was seismic. Despite the continued threat of nuclear war, worry about weapons of mass destruction largely evaporated. While the Chinese Party continued to oppress the largest population on the earth, armed with advanced nuclear weapons, awareness of the threat of totalitarian socialism went missing with the oligarchic pillaging of Soviet Union. Nixon’s journey to China had prepared the ground for good will towards the most totalitarian regime in existence. As the Soviet Union faded into memory, the Western intelligentsia declared the “end of history.” In reality, globalization established the beginning of the end of the West.

Have folks considered why Democrats, hardliners on post-socialist Russia, fingering Trump as Putin’s stooge, are so soft on China? Why are the Russophobes attacking Trump for deflecting from his own failures by putting the finger on China?

I fear the authorities who claim to know best have made a terrible mistake. In the absence of an effective vaccine (or any vaccine at all) for SARS-CoV-2, they have prevented the population from developing widespread immunity to the virus, what we call “herd immunity” (or “herd protection”). Since this virus is now part of the seasonal mix (that’s right, it’s not going away), this means that the same situation experienced this spring will be re-experienced in the future. If we had to lockdown on account of this virus this time, that is, if the lockdown were necessary, then we will have to lockdown again next time. But we won’t. This suggests that not only was the lockdown unnecessary, but that the whole exercise was counterproductive to the ends of reducing future outbreaks of the virus. A lot of hope is being placed on finding an effective vaccine in record time.

What is “herd immunity”? When an infectious agent enters a population that has no immunity to it, it spreads very quickly. One person can infect many people. Each newly infected people in turn infects more people. And so on. This is called “community spread.” If a sizable proportion of the population is immune to the agent, a limited number of spreaders will in turn slow the spread. For example, if 80% of a population is immune to a virus, only one out of every five persons may contract and spread the virus (exposure does not necessarily mean infection). Without 100% of a population enjoying immunity from the agent, some persons may still contract and spread the virus, but 80% herd immunity means fewer outbreaks of the virus and the virus may be effectively contained. It is generally accepted that between 70% and 90% is a high degree of herd immunity.

There are two ways to achieve immunity to a virus. The first way is to contract the virus and survive it. If a large enough number of persons get the virus and survive, the population will have achieved some degree of herd immunity. The second way to achieve immunity to a virus is an effective vaccine. For example, presently, the efficacy of the seasonal flu vaccine is around 35-40%. Others have immunity from acquiring the flu in previous seasons. The flu is still widespread. Many people get sick from it. And some will die from it. But many people won’t get sick from it thanks to their own immunity and to the immunity of others. So even with lower levels of herd immunity, the detrimental mass effects of a virus are mitigated.

Keep in mind that some viruses are more stable than other viruses. DNA viruses, such as chickenpox (varicella), mutate rather slowly. One may acquire life-time immunity after contracting and surviving a DNA virus. RNA viruses, such as influenza, mutate more rapidly. Exposure provides time-limited protection. However, not all RNA viruses mutate as quickly as others and exposure to any strain may provide some protection to mutants of that strain. This is why the flu vaccine has limited efficacy in providing herd immunity and becomes less effective over time while, at the same time, those who acquired a flu strain in years past may have immunity for this strain in future flu seasons. For example, the Hong Kong flu, influenza A (H3N2), while devastating during the 1968-1969 flu season, continues to circulate without the accompanying devastation. Many of us who lived through that virus, however much our immunity to it is diminishing over time with the mutation of the virus, acquired some degree of immunity to the Hong Kong flu. Moreover, re-exposure to the virus boosts our immunity response as our bodies learn to recognize variations on the original pathogen.

And this brings us the problem of the response of many governments to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The world population is 7.8 billion people. The number of confirmed cases of the virus is 1.9 million. Of those confirmed cases, 121,987 have died. That leaves 1.8 million who, if they all survive, with possible immunity. That’s 0.023 percent of the world population. In the United States, which has been hit harder by this virus than most countries, with 328.2 million people, and 563,820 confirmed cases (after subtracting deaths), the percent with possible immunity is 0.17 percent. That is obviously far below the levels we need to manage future outbreaks of COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. 

We know that most people who get the virus are asymptomatic (they are exposed and produce antibodies but do not develop the disease COVID-19) or have only mild symptoms. The evidence suggests that this accounts for eight out of every ten persons. Most of those persons are not tested. Moreover, there are some with severe symptoms, that is, those who experience a flu-like illness, who are also not tested. They recover without medical intervention. Let’s suppose that there is ten times the number of confirmed cases in the population who will become infected and acquire immunity. That takes us to 1.17 percent herd immunity, still far below what is needed to limit future outbreaks.

In other words, the lockdown has prevented the achievement of anything close to a desirable level of herd immunity. It seems to me that the smart thing would have been to identify those who were at special risk from the virus and protect them while allowing the virus to burn through the world population. This would have relegated the virus to the common viral mix the human population endures every year without calamity. 

One argument for the lockdown wasn’t so much to prevent people from getting the SARS-CoV-2 virus per se, but to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to save hospitals from being overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases. While this seems reasonable, and many are lauding the lockdown’s accomplishment over against the apocalyptic predictions, getting through the current period with a limited number of infections, represents a pyrrhic victory. Politicians and pundits love the war metaphors, so while we will have won the battle, we are facing much greater loses in the next season of war, which will cover many more months than the period encompassing the present pandemic. The question we should be asking of the official rational is why weren’t hospitals prepared to deal with COVID-19? But this is aside from the question raised by this essay. Or, perhaps, I might put it this way to bring this into consideration: why did we sacrifice acquiring herd immunity for the sake of the failure of the medical-industrial complex?

For those of you who have been reading my blog of late, you know that I am critical of the societal reaction to the Wuhan virus. In this essay, I want to discuss several issues that have me troubled, foremost establishment and popular apologia for the Chinese Communist Party.

First, it is clearly the case that the Chinese Communist Party suppressed information about the virus and allowing infected persons to leave Wuhan and travel the world. Despite evidence of a novel virus in November 2019, as late as mid-January, Chinese officials were denying or downplaying human-to-human transmission of the virus and censoring doctors and scientists, for example Dr. Li Wenliang, who himself became a victim of the virus altering being accused of “spreading rumors” for alerting other doctors about the appearance of a new form of pneumonia. By the time China finally publicly confirmed human-to-human transmission, it was already too late to stop the global spread of the virus. And China continues to deceive by censoring research on the origins of the virus, compelling any work to be reviewed by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

China’s lies were amplified in a disinformation campaign organized by the World Health Organization (WHO), led (since 2017) by Ethiopian Tedros Adhamon, whose praise of the totalitarian regime’s respond to the virus has been effusive. In the face of the obvious, that had China acted sooner the frequency of cases in Wuhan could have been reduced by up to 95 percent (University of Southampton), Tedros identified China’s actions as a model for the world. This was quite a turnaround from the WHO’s crisis of China during the SARS outbreak in 2003, when that organization criticized China for its obfuscations and lack of preparation. For its part, the WHO under Tedros did not declare a global health emergency until a week after China confirmed human-to-human transmission. It would take more than a month before the WHO would declare COVID-19 a pandemic. At this point, the virus had spread to nearly every continent. 

In an email to The Atlantic’s Kathy Gilsinan, White House trade advisor Peter Navarros writes, “Even as the WHO under Tedros refused to brand the outbreak as a pandemic for precious weeks and WHO officials repeatedly praised the [Chinese Communist Party] for what we now know was China’s coordinated effort to hide the dangers of the Wuhan virus from the world, the virus spread like wildfire, in no small part because thousands of Chinese citizens continued to travel around the world.” When Trump criticized the WHO, the media quickly told the story as the efforts of a president to deflect criticisms of his response. “Where were the warning signs? Who should have blown the whistle?” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asked at a recent daily briefing. “The president has asked this question, and I think he’s right. The president’s answer is the World Health Organization should’ve been blowing the whistle.”

Why didn’t the WHO blow the whistle? It is useful to know the background of Tedros, whose official title at WHO is Director-General. Tedros is a member of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front and associated with the Ethiopian People’s Liberation Front, openly Marxist-Leninist organizations until the demise of the Soviet Union led to the abandonment of communist rhetoric. In October 2017, in an early indicator of Tedros’ quality of judgment, the Director-General appointed Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabi, notorious for human rights abuses, to serve as WHO Goodwill Ambassador. It was payback for Mugabi having engineered Tedros’s candidacy for the position. This decision led the editor-in-chief of the prominent medical journal Lancet to call Tedros “Dictator-General.” 

The headline of Gilsinan’s Atlantic article (“How China Deceived the WHO”) attempts to portray the organization as a victim of Chinese deception. But Tedros’ background and his actions suggest otherwise. Taiwan notified Tedros at the end of December that a new form of pneumonia had been identified in Wuhan and that there was human-to-human transmission. In January, Tedros met with Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, about would be identified as SARS-CoV-2. The WHO stated in a January 14 tweet: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus.” That tweet echoes a declaration by the Wuhan Health Commission. Indeed, Berkeley research scientist Xiao Qiang, who closely monitors official statements coming from China, finds the WHO’s messaging routinely echoes those of the Chinese government. In February 2020, Tedros stated that there was no need to address the matter in the manner taken by US President Donald Trump, who, on February 2 imposed travel restrictions on China, as it would interfere with “international trade and travel.” Tedros said: “Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.” Throughout this period, Tedros praised China for its containment of the virus. In April, in response to criticisms of Tedros and the WHO by US President Donald Trump, Tedros admonished critics of his leadership with this highly disturbing statement: “If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it.”

Second, I am skeptical of the approach the government has taken in terms of its purported efficacy, effects, and ambitions. Sweden is pursuing a less restrictive model without the consequences suggested by those who push the more restrictive model. Health officials are well aware of the fact that, for most children and adults, infection from this virus is asymptomatic or mild. I have reported this on this blog. In the United States, most people could have continued to go about their lives, learning and working. And living. They would in the course of the pandemic acquire herd immunity, which would reduce the frequency and severity of future outbreaks. This virus is now part of the viral mix that circulates the planet every year. The practice of social isolation has severely damaged the economy, which itself comes with health effects, as well as imposing heavy emotional and psychological burdens populations.

Governments have not before responded to a virus in this manner. Governments have, with little public resistance, expanded police and surveillance apparatuses. Once instituted, such constraints on liberty are rarely lessened. Those who violate shelter-at-home and quarantine rules are being punished, forced to wear ankle bracelets. Dr. Anthony Fauci has suggested an immunity registry. Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy is advocating the idea. Why stop with this virus? Why not have certificates for every virus antibodies? What if someone forgets and leave their certificate at home? Should individuals be chipped? Or how those little tattoo animals get? Visible under a certain frequency of light? Like 9-11, this virus represents an opportunity to pull a lot of things off the shelf. House arrest, cell phone tracing, mandatory vaccination, and antibody registries are just a few of them.

Third, the way the media and governments have presented the facts of this virus feeds the hysteria that governments need to obtain compliance from the public for the shuttering of social life. For example, by reporting a case death rate in light of confirmed cases instead of a realistic model of the number of actual cases, which is likely at least 10-20 times greater than confirmed cases, the lethality of the virus has been exaggerated. Even the observation that with more testing death rates will decline is spun as if more positive cases would make the threat of the virus even greater. Once a narrative of deadly pestilence is up and running, suggesting greater numbers without at the same time helping the public understand that this makes the virus more ordinary fuels panic. Another example is the routine failure to use proportionality in reporting. The big headline of late is that the death toll in United exceeds the total death toll in Italy. But the reporting failed to remind the public to keep in mind that the population of the United States is much larger than Italy. Same with Spain. Proportionally, the US death toll is about a sixth of that in Italy and Spain. 

Anticipating that some will accuse me of downplaying the severity of this health threat, I have said all along that this virus is deadly to the elderly, those with comorbidities (such as high blood pressure and type II diabetes), and those with compromised immune systems. At the same time, influenza is deadly, yet we have never shuttered our society on account of this. The Hong Kong flu of 1968 (influenza A [H3N2]), to take a notable example, killed some 100,000 persons in the United States alone (around a million worldwide). Like the Wuhan virus, most deaths were among those 65 years of age or older. H3N2 continues to circulate as a seasonal influenza A virus. The 2017-2018 flu season also took many tens of thousands of lives in the US (H3N2 was the predominant strain). Of course I am not saying that this virus is the flu. It’s not. They’re different viruses by definition. What I am comparing is the response to viruses. As a sociologist, I am trained to ask about the societal reaction piece. Why is the reaction so radically different this time? 

Recently the media prompted Dr. Anthony Fauci to confess that an earlier lockdown of US society probably would have saved lives. It’s an obvious answer. If you believe that the mitigation regime advocated by Fauci saved lives, and it is intuitive for anybody who understands the germ theory of disease that it would, ignoring everything else, then you would have to say that, the earlier the intervention, the more lives would be saved. This response is so obvious that to ask the question of Fauci is a bit dishonest. That is, there is an ulterior motive here: in the current political climate, the no-duh answer is meant to be used against a president the establishment media has endeavored to delegitimize, first claiming Trump was a Russian agent, then claiming he sought help from Ukraine to destroy his eventual 2020 rival, currently former Vice President Joe Biden. But whether the federal government could have acted earlier depends on the information on hand. A lot of countries were caught flat-footed by this. Why? Because the Chinese Communist Party was determined to suppress vital information. The question is part of an effort by the mainstream media to lay at Trump’s doorstep the connivance of the establishment to hold China blameless for its machinations.

The establishment White House press corps is, frankly, embarrassing. It’s not just about going back to work—what they constantly harp on when Trump talks about ending or lessening the lockdown. It’s about getting back to life. The question, “Should Americans have to choose between health and work?” is asking “Should Americans have to choose between health and life.” I guess you don’t have to choose between them and you can be a germaphobic agoraphobic shut-in (hope you have an independent source of wealth to draw on). But most of us don’t want to live like that.  Establishment journalists ask questions as if we will never get back to life. “Will cases spike when we get back to life?” Of course they will. These people act as if humans have never had to deal with a virus before. People contract and die from the flu. Higher per case death rate with the flu, in fact. Do we shut down life on account of it? I haven’t seen that before. The same logic that says we cannot get back to life because people will get a virus means that we can never get back to life. The level of absurdity is astonishing. Orwellian double consciousness.

Finally, apologia for the Chinese Community Party is the piece that has me most troubled today. That so many Americans, from the establishment commentariat down to our young people, so readily apologize for the action of the Chinese government is a testament to the social logic of globalization and the corruption of common sense by postmodernist thinking. For the Chinese Communist Party, truth is subjective, serving whatever ends the party sees fit. The CCP is the epitome of the postmodernist regime. Maoism is the foundation of identity politics and New Left ideology. This is where this “woke” rhetoric comes from. It’s anti-Western in fundamental attitude. It’s Third worldism run amok. It’s why Tedros can be such an appealing figure. For those who loathe the West, an African is a powerful substitute for an objective Director-General. We are being told that China was wounded by Western imperialism, so who is the West to complain about the behavior of its totalitarian government? In other words, we had this coming to us. We hear the same nonsense when the West highlights China’s human rights record, which is appalling. What about the West’s human rights record? They decry. Please. There’s no comparison.

When I hear about how the United States’ response to the virus is the worst, but that China handled it brilliantly, and any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party is portrayed as an attack on the Chinese people and therefore “xenophobic” and “racist,” and that we should trust the China-centric WHO, my mind, in search of an explanation for such insanity, turns to the images of mobs of social justice warriors at American universities surrounding professors and hurling woke slogans at them. Such scenes are reminiscent of something else that many of you may remember: Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The parallel is not coincidental.

The New Left fascination with Maoism, anti-colonialism, and Thirdworldism in the 1960s-70s had an enduring effect on left-wing thinking. In time, leftwing ideologues became cultural managers at universities pushing anti-Western sentiment in various programs and administrative offices. If you’ve even been compelled by your employment contract to participate in a “diversity and inclusion” seminar, to learn about “microaggressions,” to be accused of “white privilege,” made to feel guilty for being of European ancestry, to go through what is essentially a reeducation camp, then you have experienced Maoism. Elites have joined regressive leftwing ideas with transnational corporate ambitions. The culture industry encourages the masses to mock and marginalize those who ask why their leaders would sell out the working classes of the West, to smear their comrades as “nativists” and “nationalists.” A new generation of politically-active Americans have been swimming in a profound anti-American stew that serves up the interests of globalists as progressive politics. The New Left has produced a menagerie of useful idiots.

Those who warned about the perils of globalization and international finance in the 1990s were branded “conspiracists” and “antisemites.” Remember that? Folks were waking up from a long nap only to be gas lit. Black helicopters.

Same with those who warned about the surveillance state and corporate domination. They were “diagnosed” with “paranoia.” Tinfoil hats. 

Now those who observe that the United States is indeed dependent on its most powerful rival, China, and the global supply chain it engineered under the cover of transnationalism are accused of “xenophobia” and “racism.” 

Same with those who ask why Western governments would subject their workers to cheap foreign labor. Do folks think capitalists are replacing native-born workers with foreign labor out of humanitarianism? They’re doing it to maximize profits and crush labor. How did they make those on the left not only okay with that but eager to virtue signal about it?

Have folks figured out yet that such accusations exploit New Left weaknesses and postmodern stupidities to suppress and derail working class concerns and interests? The left today is pathetic.

“Look at my mask. I’m such a good person.”

When war and surveillance and so on are not lines in the sand for the progressives who tell the left to vote Democrat to preserve the possibilities of progressivism, one must realize how deeply co-opted those whom you call your comrades have truly become. Progressivism is the problem. 

Without a left-wing populist-nationalist movement, the United States is doomed. The Democratic Party right down the Squad exists to prevent such a movement. The so-called “democratic socialists” are sheepdogs. The American worker is being absorbed into a global system of corporate domination. It has been absorbed into a global system of technocratic control. The system has totalitarian aspirations.

The present situation is the wet dream of the neoclassical economist. When are folks going to wake up from the nightmare? Remember the Chicago school economist telling us how much more important markets are than democracy? How commonwealth must give way to private power? We are going through authoritarian exercise to deepen the conditioning to that principle. They are enclosing everything. 

That sounds “paranoid,” doesn’t it? Good dog. 

All things considered, I would rather have personal liberty than a progressive police state that checks my thinking. Today, I live under the twin evil of corporate capitalist rule and Orwellian control over language—thought control. 

I reject contemporary left-wing politics. It’s worse than stupid. It’s anti-worker and anti-liberty. I say this as a Marxist and a socialist. I am not with you. I am a libertarian.