Author: Ryan Osentowski

My name is Ryan Osentowski. I am a conservative blind guy going through life using the structured discovery method. I currently work as the Station Manager at a radio reading service for the blind. My passions include politics, writing, cigars, old-time radio, quality TV shows and movies, food, music, reading, clocks, swimming and tbd. I hope you will enjoy what you find here. If you don't...try it with a strong dose of alcohol.

Betrayal: Part Two

I get it.

There’s a reason why I pasted Erick Erickson’s letter in this blog. It resonated. You live with something for years until it becomes part of you. Every day, it stares back at you from the depths of the mirror, but you’re so used to it that you can’t see it. You don’t know when it became a part of you. You don’t know when you learned to live with it. But you know it’s there. Kind of like being fat. One day, you put your pants on and your belt is tighter and you have to go up a notch. You don’t know when it happened, but you know why it happened.

It feels as if the last six years of my life have been rife with betrayal. In 2015, I was a Republican. I held a certain set of conservative beliefs that informed my world view. My daily enmeshment in a hostile work environment where my beliefs were constantly challenged, assaulted and ridiculed only strengthened them. Those who identified as liberals and progressives in my life acted predictably. The derisive barbs, the clumsy baiting in the break room, the pointedly unsubtle conversations within earshot, the mocking laughter were all true to form for leftists. At some point, I stopped arguing, recognizing the futility of any attempt at constructive dialogue. Mike Rosen and conservative allies on social media were my quiet workplace refuge.

It was one thing to be assailed by liberals. It was quite another when the party I believed in slowly surrendered to a hostile external force that sought not to change it for the better, but to erode it for the sole purpose of self-glorification.

In April of 2016, I attended the Colorado state Republican convention in Colorado Springs. I heard a lot of dialogue during that day. Most of it was healthy and respectful. Some of it was unhealthy and toxic. All of it was robust. I had no inkling that five years later, the GOP would be transformed into a monoculture of personality held hostage to the ego of one man.

I didn’t leave the GOP after Trump was elected. I recognized that most of the people who voted for him did so for reasons of pragmatism. He wasn’t their first choice in the primaries and they were stuck with him. Trump was not the final straw for me. That honor belonged to Roy D. Moore, a senatorial candidate in Alabama who had quite apparently sexually harassed a number of women. The GOP didn’t care and happily endorsed him. Apparent electoral victories had blinded them to reality. That was when I walked away.

That was over four years ago. Nothing the Republicans have done in the interval have made me regret my decision to leave. On the contrary, their subsequent words and deeds, particularly after Election Day, 2020 have only shown me that I made the right choice in walking away. The putrid resolution passed a week ago censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, while simultaneously labeling January 6th as, “Legitimate political discourse,” proves to me that the GOP party I once knew is now an alien wasteland.

But worse than the betrayal of a national party populated by figures I don’t know is the sudden and radical metamorphosis of people I do know. Relatives and friends who once championed the same conservative values as I do (the value of honesty in politics, respectful discourse, the value in the rule of law), now make sad excuses when leaders like Trump take every rule we’ve ever lived by, wipes his ass with it and flushes it down the crapper. It makes me wonder if these people, some of whom were moral mentors, ever really believed what they preached to me, or if they were always lying. Sadly, they can’t see the changes within themselves. They think everyone else has changed while they have remained static. But this isn’t true. Their refusal to see what they have become while deflecting their role in it is tantamount to betrayal.

One person who was fundamental in the shaping of my conservative values literally got in my face when he learned that I wouldn’t vote for Trump in 2016. “Ryan, your problem is that you’re unseasoned!” he said.

Unseasoned? I participated in two separate Republican primaries as a delegate in Colorado. I’ve visited Washington D.C. three times and been to Capitol Hill as a member of the National Federation of the Blind. I was even involved in student government at UNL for two years when I went to college there. I think it’s safe to say that I am the member of my family who is the most seasoned when it comes to politics. Another mentor, a man who is a devout Christian, characterized the attack on the capitol as, “Civil disobedience.” Sadly, this style of argument has only become more commonplace during the reign of Trump and after.

I’ve never been accosted while peeing in a public bathroom, but I have been bullied, hectored and guilt tripped by people who took my descent from the common Republican ethos very personally. They acted as if I was the traitor. I’ve even had idiots on Facebook call me a traitor, as if my refusal to bend the knee to one man embodied the betrayal of my basic patriotism and love of America. Yet, this is their warped view. This is where we stand today.

As bad as things are in the mainstream political realm, it’s worse as a blind guy. In 2015, I was a solid member of the National Federation of the Blind. My journey with the Federation had been a rocky one. As I stated in my resignation letter, my level of involvement with the organization has fluctuated over the years. When I first became involved, I was deep in the movement. By the time I moved to Colorado, I was on the periphery. By 2015, I had worked at the CCB as a summer youth counselor and was an elected officer in the Denver chapter. It felt good to be home again. When I moved to Omaha, I was quickly elected as Second Vice-President. I agreed to serve despite a growing reservation about the changing direction of the organization. This was solidified in December of 2020 when the #MarchingTogether Movement took root.

I won’t go back over my journey in detail. One can read my past blog entries on the subject if one wishes to chart my progress. I will simply write of two separate incidents that happened that proved to me that it was time to head for the exit.

The first occurred on July 31, 2021 during a contentious state board meeting of the National Federation of the Blind of Nebraska. The subject of the suspension of Fred Schroeder came up. Naturally, much volatile discussion ensued. One member who was a participant at the meeting, though not elected to the board, began to defend Schroeder, claiming that he should not be judged solely on his transgressions. He worried that Schroeder’s accomplishments would be overshadowed by these accusations that some leaders felt were a result of a, “Kangaroo court.” I argued vociferously that the punishment of Schroeder did not go far enough. His retort to me was, “Ryan, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

This was a man who identifies as a Republican and a conservative. This was a man who sat with me in a Village Inn in 1998 over green chili and peanut butter pie and argued passionately that Bill Clinton should be impeached for his conduct in the Oval Office. This was a man who argued vehemently that character matters in our leaders. Yet, I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about!?

While this verbal tumult was occurring, the people who should have had the most to say sat silent. That includes the state president, who also serves as a member of the national board. She largely stayed out of the conflict. She might have weighed in and given us a clue as to the happenings behind the scenes that went into the decision-making process, but this isn’t how Federation soldiers are trained. They don’t go off script, they don’t contradict the national leadership and they always refer questions (particularly those born of descent) up the chain of command to the message factory in Baltimore. In other words, she was doing her duty as a Federationist, all while neglecting the needs of the membership on a local level.

Eight days after the board meeting from hell, I sat alone in my recliner with a cold beer in my hand and listened to a podcast featuring Wayne Pearcy’s story of abuse suffered at the hands of a camp counselor during his time as a summer student at the Colorado Center for the Blind in 2004. Wayne never named his abuser, but it was clear that he was talking about Brent Batron.

Brent Batron, a one-time mentor and friend to me and to dozens of other students and counselors. Brent Batron, who had espoused the paramount virtues of positive role modeling at seminars, chapter meetings and in private conversations. Brent Batron, who had resigned abruptly from the CCB eight months before the podcast dropped. The Nebraska board meeting was bad, but this was infinitely worse.

I worked for Brent for three months in the summer of 2014. I loved the guy. I respected the guy. Hell, I even hoped that when the time came for Julie Deden to finally step down, Brent would take the reins as the Executive Director of the CCB. Brent was smart, but not intellectually imperious as are so many leaders in the NFB upper crust. He was relatable in a blue collar, down-to-earth way. He was a family man who appeared to be faithful to his wife and kids. He was a born teacher who made you want to be better at your job. He was funny, good natured, friendly and approachable. He was also a predator. When Wayne dropped his revelations, I instantly knew they were true. I didn’t have any direct knowledge. I’d heard a lot of names whispered throughout my time in the NFB. Brent’s was not one of them. I don’t know how I knew. I just fucking did.

It is impossible to explain the pain this harsh truth wrought without explaining the role my time at the CCB played upon my psyche. Looking back, I view my job at the CCB in the Dickensian sense. “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” I was a guy doing God’s work, showing blind youth how to live as independent, self-reliant blind people. I was also a guy in over my head, teaching teenagers skills that I was never fully sure of within myself. I always felt as if I were running in quicksand, never certain if I was serving as a positive or negative example as a competent blind adult. The constant weight of responsibilities for the welfare of someone else’s kids after years of bachelorhood took a toll. I found myself sleeping in fits and starts, jerking awake suddenly in the night wondering if one of my boys had snuck out to smoke pot. I would stand in the shower in the early morning wondering how to face another day guiding a kid with obvious cognitive impairments, hoping he could just get himself dressed. I would go through another day dead sure that I was facing harsh judgments from my fellow counselors. There were even a few times when I thought of just quitting and going back to my quiet life, but I stayed for the kids and for Brent. If I could just stay on Brent’s good side, I knew I was doing something right.

By the end of the summer, I was burned out, exhausted and in a black hole of despair. I felt like an utter failure. I had planned to get certified in O&M instruction, but honestly, it was a relief when the job at AIN became available and I could change course. Being responsible for other people was too soul-crushing to be endured for an intractable period of time. Now, years later, I discover that I spent the best parts of myself worrying about what affect I was having on the young and impressionable, all in service to a sexual predator and his enablers! Days and weeks of partial insomnia and self-torment while others who were guilty of actual sins slept soundly? Nights of sweating bullets wondering how I would get through the next day without making another mistake while our leader drew his designs on one of our boys!? Fuck! That!

Sidebar: Karma can be a royal bitch or it can be kind. If not for my time at AIN, I never would have ended up at Radio Talking Book, which proved to be the best job I’ve ever had. God bless Jane and Bekah. They both shepherded me through a lot of heart healing.

Last August was when I stood in front of the mirror and saw betrayal staring me in the face. That was when I knew with absolute clarity that it was time to leave. Now, I am a man who is politically homeless and philosophically destitute. I still have my conservative principles, but the betrayal from the NFB cuts far deeper. The Republican Party was merely an apparatus that I would play a minuscule role in in hopes of furthering political change, but the NFB was my community. They were my kindred spirits in the world of blindness. They wrought a kind of betrayal that inflicts the most grievous wounds of all… The betrayal of family.

There is no betrayal more deeply personal. And I don’t mean to get all emo on you guys here, but it hurts. It hurts like a mutherfucker. That’s all I’m saying. The pain is fuckin’ real. And this kind of pain…all I’m saying is…I don’t know when the fuck it’s gonna go away.

Betrayal: Part One

This newsletter from Erick Erickson is worth keeping. It begins in the realm of politics, but shifts to the realm of the church by the end. Yet, the themes he addresses are universal, even as the examples he sites are rooted in the moment. I will address the theme of betrayal in a subsequent post.

If you want to learn more about Erick Erickson, you can find podcasts of his daily radio show on any major platform. Even Spotify. If you want to read more of his writings, check him out on Substack.

Here is Mr. Erickson.

__On Betrayal and Screedalism
Erick-Woods Erickson
Feb 8

In the Spring of 2016, three men showed up on my front porch. I had written that I would not support Donald Trump for President in 2016. I’d go third party. They were angry with me and their anger led them to my front porch.
Their faces were mean. Their voices were tense. But they were there for my sake. They wanted me to know if I didn’t support Trump, they’d get me fired from radio. I needed to think about my family. I needed to think about my health insurance. I needed to think about my income. I needed to think about my future.
I did. I doubled down.
My children were chased through a store by a man yelling at them that their father was destroying the country. A woman at our church told my wife, after my wife announced she had cancer, that the woman wanted to hit me. I got accosted going from our Sunday School class into church one day. My kids got bullied at school and lost their friends. My son got shoved into the dirt. The school was no help. We wound up having to move our kids to a new school.
More than once, I got yelled at in the airport while peeing. I’m not making that up. I use the stall now. It’s one of the reasons I covet private jets. On multiple occasions, men followed me into the airport to lecture me while I was peeing. Once, at a Chick-fil-A in north Atlanta, an old man came in and did that too. Each of these were by people who vehemently disagreed with me about stuff, mostly Trump, and thought they could correct me. I had a woman come up to me in a restaurant with friends and start berating me for having ridiculed Trump’s “Mexico will pay for it” claim on the border wall.
I had betrayed the fans.
Now, the silver lining here is that it forced me to be a better radio show host. My ratings not only went up, but for the last two radio quarters on my flagship station, they have actually been higher than Rush’s ratings at the height of the 2020 presidential election.
But to this day, I get angry hatemail and email and Facebook comments from people who were once diehard fans who felt a great sense of betrayal. I had been their boy. Now I am a traitor.
We’re in an Age of Betrayal.
We know fewer people personally. We connect to people online. We become “friends” with the person on Instagram and obsess about their lives. All we know is what they show us on social media. When it turns out they have views diametrically opposed to ours, we hate them. They betray us. We’ve created our connection, to a degree, in our heads by extrapolating ancillary information to what is presented. When they provide the actual ancillary information and it does not match that which we conjured in our heads, we feel betrayed.
Celebrity culture, even in the church, can do that. In politics, we spend time in battles with people fighting alongside us. Then one day we find ourselves on opposite sides and feel betrayed. More often than not, we cannot agree to disagree. We must be aggrieved and launch subtweets.
It’s why the left is so angry at Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan.
Chappelle hasn’t been saying anything different about transgendered people. He’s been making these jokes for a while. Back in 2019, he got the Mark Twain award and they showed a clip of one of his trans jokes and everybody laughed.
But now…now some wonder if he really is on their side as he says or does he not like them. They’re hyper-sensitive to begin with and they feel betrayed. They have to attack because they laughed with him and now they think he was actually getting them to laugh at themselves. They are not just betrayed, but the butt of jokes they laughed about. He must pay.
Joe Rogan is a pot-smoking, pro-gay rights, Bernie Sanders supporter. But Rogan frequently dares to have conversations with people with whom he disagrees. He is not combative. He is not disagreeable. In an age of COVID where progressives are Henny Penny expecting the sky to fall, Rogan interviewing people who don’t believe the sky is falling is a great betrayal. This is the comedian, MMA guy, Fear Factor guy who just talks to people. It’s a betrayal now that he talks to people the left already thinks are betraying them, their lives, and their world view. Rogan must pay.
Betrayal is hard because it is premised on a goodbye we did not control or agree to. The root of betrayal translates to “thoroughly handed over” or “thoroughly traded away.”
When one is thoroughly handed over, that person is separated from us painfully largely because they thoroughly handed themselves over. That pain manifests itself in showing up at a house to issue threats or heading to the New York Times to give the tell-all expose on the sins of those you left behind.
It ends in cancellation.
We live in an Age of Betrayal. We don’t have to know our immediate neighbors. We construct communities of like-minded people on social media who we don’t really know. When one then turns out to not be who we presumed or utters heterodox opinions, we thoroughly hand them over to our opponents. We don’t exercise grace or give room to disagree.
I like Beth Moore a lot. We don’t always agree on stuff. But I like her tremendously. I’ve gotten to hang out with her a bit once. She’s sent encouraging Biblical materials to my daughter. She has, through her writings, ministered to my wife. You will note please that Beth Moore, though mentioned in the David Brooks piece in the New York Times that has nursed everybody’s senses of betrayal, did not participate in it.
I get more angry text messages from friends for defending Beth Moore and Tim Keller than any other topic these days. I can openly disagree or praise any politician and might get one or two text messages. If I say anything at all nice about or defend Moore or Keller, I might as well turn off my phone.
People who once loved them feel betrayed by them. Frankly, Beth Moore has way more reason to feel betrayed by people than people have reason to feel betrayed by her. But you don’t see her out there on the attack. People expect grace and don’t want to show it and for reasons, mostly political, it turns out Beth Moore is not who they imagined in their head. Honestly, though, she’s way cooler.
Tim Keller is another one. There is an entire cottage industry on Twitter to nitpick Keller’s tweets, mostly by people who crave his prominence and will never have it. Keller is largely above it all. He has bigger battles to fight these days. But there’s a concerted effort to write him out of evangelicalism instead of recognizing Jesus had twelve Apostles and all of them approached the gospel differently. Only one of them betrayed the gospel. And if you think Keller is Judas, you might need to repent.
But you feel betrayed.
I got a lot of stern emails about my piece last week on envagelicals needing to cool it. One person told me I came across as inauthentic. The person doesn’t know me at all so has no way to calibrate my authenticity to determine the inauthenticity. Another said I didn’t want to give up some perceived insider status so straddled the fence.
No, I made it pretty clear what I thought. You just didn’t like it. I’m not one of those people who thinks if I piss off every side I must be doing it right. Sometimes, when you do that, you’re just a jackass. But here, I just happen to think the people who are friends who feel the need to fix evangelicalism by ratting it out to the New York Times are doing more harm than good. And aligning with the Jesus and John Wayne lady, who is openly hostile to Biblical orthodoxy, not just evangelicalism, is a big way of saying you don’t want to fix things, but burn things down.
But I also think a lot of friends who feel betrayed by these friends of mine don’t appreciate how betrayed those friends feel from their treatment for daring to think differently mostly about politics. In other words, I have a lot of friends who feel betrayed by each other and expect them all to feel betrayed by me for not picking a side.
Betrayal is in us these days. The only way out is to work to not thoroughly hand over those we love to those we hate. It requires making an effort to get to know one another far better than we can know them on social media and when that’s impossible, to simply offer them more grace than we think they’d ever offer us. In environments where we create friendships now online, it requires more effort to maintain those friendships and make them real instead of binary.
Everybody wants to be a victim these days. Everyone wants to complain about someone hurting their soul. Christians on social media want to be Screedal Christians, writing screeds to denounce the ones thoroughly handed over to something, they’re not quite sure what, but they know it is bad.
If I’m betraying you for saying all of this, I’m sorry.
But y’all, I’ve been lectured while peeing by people who feel betrayed. I know what I’m talking about and I’ve just learned to move on and not burn bridges recklessly. It’s okay to disagree without feeling betrayed. And often, when you think you’re the butt of the joke, you just lack a sense of humor.

Golems

In the wake of the Parkland school shooting four years ago, a new slogan began to emerge on social media. “Journalism is activism.” Michael Blanding crystallized the premise in an August 21, 2018 article for the Washington Post. Blanding posed the question, “Where does journalism end and activism begin?”

In reading the article, it was no surprise to see a generational split on the question. Older journalists believed that a healthy distance should be kept between the activist class and the newsroom, while younger journalists and journalism students believed the opposite.

The Post painted a sexy picture of Rebecca Schneid, editor of the Parkland High newspaper for her belief that journalism is, in fact, activism. Who would dare argue the point in the wake of yet another mass school shooting? In fact, the point seemed to resonate with many moderates and leftists as basic common sense in the wake of then President Trump’s relentless attacks on a non-compliant media.

In the years since, activist journalism has only become more popular with burgeoning issues such as the #MeToo Movement, the resurrection of Black Lives Matter, talk of election fraud and a quickly transforming international landscape. With social justice causes now at the forefront of our collective consciousness, who could possibly argue that activism doesn’t have a place in journalism? And we’re not talking about mere political punditry, but hard news reporting akin to the Washington Post, the New York Times and digital publications like Slate and the Huffington Post.

The finer point amongst the younger journo/activist class is that not every issue has two sides that deserve exploration or nuance. LGBTQ rights, racial justice, climate change and a host of other progressive causes really only have one side, and that side is the truth. Yet, how easily that mindset can carry us down a slippery slope. COVID-19 is the glaring contemporary example. As Joe Rogan, a podcaster who has recently come under fire explained, things that we accept as basic truths in a given issue have a way of changing over time.

When young people and committed progressives thing of activist journalism, they probably hold a certain image of it in their heads. An idealistic reporter fighting for the oppressed, the downtrodden and the marginalized. Avatars of truth and justice speaking truth to power, given voice to the voiceless, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. As it is in any other facet of life, the story may start out that way, but as it passes through the conveyer belt of humanity with all of its complexities and imperfections, the end result is usually radically transformed from the initial idea.

Exhibit A: Fox News

Roger Ailes died three months after Donald Trump assumed the presidency, but by then, the Frankenstein monster he had created had reached full strength. Ailes created Fox News in the mid 1990’s as an answer to a media whom conservatives rightly believed were biased against them. Talk radio flamethrowers like Rush Limbaugh to introspective thinkers at the National Review all reached the same conclusion. That is why Fox News found a climate in which it was able to flourish.

FNC grew in stature during the Bush years in a post 9/11 world. Some predicted its demise once Obama took office, but Fox proved to be indomitable now that it had a nemesis in the White House against whom it could chafe. What Ailes didn’t fully realize was how the monster of populism that he was fostering would turn on him at the slightest hint of descent. He found out when Donald Trump came down the escalator on June 15, 2015.

Trump didn’t take long to lash out at Fox. His attacks were leveled against Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, who asked him a question that displeased him at a presidential primary debate. According to Kelley’s book, Ailes was in between the proverbial rock and a hard place. He wanted to defend his employees, but he also didn’t want to alienate Trump. As it turned out, he managed to ingratiate himself to The Donald, while Megyn soon left Fox.

Roger Ailes unceremoniously left Fox News on July 21, 2016, over a year before the birth of the #MeToo Movement. Yet, he was a harbinger of things to come. He left due to a series of sexual harassment scandals that plagued the company. His departure did nothing to stop the juggernaut that was Trump. The dye was already cast. Trump won the election and throughout his presidency, he heaped favorable praise on Fox News, particularly on Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and the Fox Morning hosts.

When Trump lost to Biden in 2020, the folks at the Fox News Decision Desk got into a lot of trouble with viewers because they called Arizona for Joe Biden early. Even though they were proven correct, many fans never forgave them. No one was more infuriated than Trump. It was a dispiriting surprise when Trump went unpunished for his actions that lead to the attack on our nation’s capital, but it was no surprise that people like Chris Stirewalt were let go from Fox due to his role on election night, 2020. Few of us who paid attention were surprised when we recently learned that text messages were flying back and forth between White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and various Fox hosts including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade on January 6. Even though they are opinion makers, they are the faces of Fox News. Fox detractors and casual viewers don’t associate Fox with the hard news wing, represented by quality journalists such as Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Jennifer Griffin. In the wake of the departure of Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson has taken the place as Fox’s number one spokesman. Carlson has progressively become more and more unhinged over the years. His crowning achievement has been a documentary on Fox Nation, a private platform outside of the cable news channel, which floats the conspiracy trial balloon that January 6th was instigated by the FBI. This is likely the reason why Chris Wallace abruptly departed from Fox and defected to CNN.

How will that work out for him?

Exhibit B: CNN

CNN, once a prestigious and trusted source of news throughout the ‘90’s, is now viewed as the anti-Trump network. From all outward appearances, they have embraced this image. It is no coincidence that their ratings sored during Trump’s presidency, even as their various prime time hosts railed against Trump and all of his excesses. It is also not a coincidence that their ratings plummeted once he left office and lost his Twitter account. To watch CNN, you might think that they didn’t play a significant role in the rise of Trump. Yet, if you think back to the election cycle of 2016, they covered as many Trump campaign rally events as did Fox. They merely took a different angle in their approach, feigning outrage on camera while gleefully watching the uptick in the ratings numbers behind the scenes.

Trump aside, CNN, along with many other mainstream outlets, fawned over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo shortly after the outbreak of the pandemic in March, 2020. Cuomo was painted as, “America’s governor,” keeping a steady hand at the helm even as President Trump went crazy at his daily press conferences. No one outside of Fox News and a few other conservative sources talked about Cuomo’s scandalous behavior with respect to his shady book deal, his shunting of patients to New York nursing homes and his fudging of the death numbers once investigators became suspicious. No one on or off CNN cared that Cuomo was holding syrupy conversations with his brother Chris, an employee and prominent on-screen presence at CNN. When a woman came forward and accused Cuomo of sexual harassment in December, 2020, it was barely a blip on the media radar.

On August 24, 2021, Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned after a series of claims of sexual harassment were lodged against him. The story was broken by the New York Times, not CNN, and only after the scandal was too big to be ignored.

On December 4, 2021, Chris Cuomo was fired from CNN after an internal investigation showed that he was using his media contacts to dig up dirt on his brother Andrew’s accusers.

On February 2, 2022, Jeff Zucker abruptly resigned as the president of CNN. He claimed that he was engaged in a consensual romantic relationship with an executive and had failed to disclose it in a timely manner. The executive of which he spoke turned out to be Allison Gollust, Vice-President of Chief Marketing Officer at CNN. She also happened to be a former Communications Director for Governor Andrew Cuomo. In light of a lawsuit brought against CNN by Chris Cuomo, we can be sure that many more facts will be unearthed in this case, but it’s not hard to guess where the trail will lead. Zucker, Gollust and Chris Cuomo did their best to use CNN to lionize Andrew Cuomo in the hopes of aiding him to sell more books and possibly to further his future political career.

The handwringing of CNN’s public faces such as Don Lemon, Brian Stelter and Jim Acosta has been predictable and predictably self-indulgent. They claim that Chris Cuomo is the real villain and that the termination of Zucker is a punishment that did not fit the crime. Again, I suspect that there is much to the story that will come to light in the coming months. But more to the point, the unctuous outrage pouring forth from the CNN talking heads is reminiscent of the performative anger that spewed forth from loyal Fox News stalwarts such as Hannity, O’Reilly and Ingraham in the wake of Ailes’ departure. In both cases, it is doubtful that those who trumpeted their disapproval didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes despite their protests of good faith ignorance.

At this point, all two of you who read this may be saying, so what, RyanO? These are two old white guys who misbehaved themselves, got caught and got canned. What does that have to do with the search for truth and justice? If the point isn’t obvious, I can’t do anything for ya.

Both Ailes and Zucker didn’t start out as men in charge of news empires. They started out as young, hungry warriors who wanted to bring their own brand of activism to the marketplace of ideas. They quickly realized that activism starts in grass roots, but real change is brought about through legislation. Legislation is authored by politicians. Politicians are influenced by lobbyists, who are merely professional activists who are lucky enough to profit from their idealism. Politicians are flawed, imperfect human beings who can easily be tempered by a multitude of dark forces. Many of those dark forces are journalists who serve as conduits through which flow mutated ideologies. Often times, that ideology starts out in pure form, but no matter which side of the political spectrum it springs from, it is corrupted by base human drives; greed, lust and envy. One day, these activists suddenly realize that they are sitting atop a major platform with millions of loyal followers. They then realize that said platform can be used to elevate preferred politicians to higher office.

That’s how we find ourselves with living golems like President Trump and Governor Cuomo. A good deal of their success can be laid at the doorstep of activist journalism. When journalism proves popular and results in ever increasing ratings and clicks, it feeds the beast. That beast results in corporate executives crawling into bed with the very politicians against whom they are supposed to be the watchdogs. When certain personalities prove too successful for the suits upstairs to control, you get Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo. The journalistic organs they purport to serve are mere extensions of political parties or figures.

If you think I’m engaging in hyperbole, ask yourself why you haven’t heard about the latest kerfuffle involving Black Lives Matter? Did any of you know that the California Attorney General has formally warned the group that they are delinquent in the registration of charitable contributions totaling millions of dollars from 2020? Did you know that other states are launching inquiries into the fundraising practices of BLM? Did any of you notice that the BLM fundraising page has been suspended? If you don’t read the Washington Examiner, a conservative alternative to the Washington Post in the D.C. Beltway, you wouldn’t know it.

Is the investigation of BLM activist journalism, or is it mere hackery? If it is the latter, what constitutes the former? Is there a good kind of activist journalism and a bad kind? My educated guess is that the answer would depend upon which side of the political divide you get your news from. If you hail from the right side of the spectrum, you likely believe that the most successful non-profit advocacy organization currently in existence should account for all of its assets. You probably believe that the public has a right to know what BLM is doing with their money. If you hail from the left side of the spectrum…white privilege, systems of oppression, systemic racism, etc. Yet, if you were to substitute the NRA for BLM, you would see that very spectrum engage in a teeter-totter effect.

“Democracy dies in darkness,” indeed. I’m sure the Uyghurs would agree.

Activism starts with a specific narrative. This is fine as far as it goes. Activists are human beings whose experiences drive them to push for change in the public square. But personal experiences can also result in viewpoint bias, blinding people to all of the variables at play. Good journalists who are interested in fairness and balance should be able to weight those variables in the reporting of a story. When it’s done well, you get quality newshounds like Jake Tapper, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Karl, Jennifer Griffin and the good folks over at The Dispatch. When it goes wrong, you get Dan Rather and Mary Mapes.

If you’re the right kind of reader, you’ll judge Dan Rather on his entire body of work. If you’re the wrong, kind, you’re one of those suckers who thinks that Robert Redford was convincing in Truth.

Suppress This, Muthafuckas!

One of the reasons I am leaving the National Federation of the Blind is due to its entrance into mainstream partisan politics with the passage of Resolution 2021-02. If you honestly hold a good faith belief that voeter suppression exists on a grand national scale, and that Republicans are actively engaging in it through election reforms in various red and purple states, then you likely are in favor of the NFB’s position.

If, like me, you believe that all of the talk from President Biden and the Democrat party about voter suppression amounts to self-serving political rhetoric, then you likely find the passage of Resolution 2021-02 to be a dubious proposition. If you are in the former camp, you will likely not find the following newsletter from Jonah Goldberg to be persuasive.

I am pasting it here as another snapshot in time. A day after Biden’s shameful speech in Georgia, and on the week when I will make my official exit from the National Federation of the Blind after 27 years of service, I will offer this series of arguments from a man who can articulate them far better than I ever could. I am offering them as an illustration, not only of why the grandios claims of voter suppression are bogus, but also as an illustration of how such spurious claims are used for rank partisan purposes.

If you find this newsletter to be useful, please consider subscribing to The Dispatch for thoughtful news and analysis from a conservative perspective. Here it is.

About That Speech …
As his presidency spirals downward, Joe Biden lashes out.

Jonah Goldberg

Jan 12

Hey,
I’m going to try to not lose my temper, but I make no promises.
This is from Joe Biden’s inaugural address, which is eight days shy of exactly a year ago.
We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you we will not fail. We have never ever, ever, failed in America when we’ve acted together.
This is from his speech in Georgia yesterday:
So, I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered? At consequential moments in history, they present a choice: Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?
So, what changed? To listen to Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, most Democrats, and a whole bunch of journalists, what changed was an existential threat to democracy. “Voter suppression” is a plague sweeping across the land that literally threatens to end democracy in America. Biden & Co. base this grave appraisal on three distinct claims.
The first is that there has been an epidemic of laws “making it harder to vote.”
The second is that Georgia is at the bleeding edge of this effort with voter suppression laws so heinous that they, by themselves, represent “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Last is that Trump loyalists are in the process of rigging the 2024 presidential election by preparing an end run on legitimate vote counts.
So, here’s my grading of these claims: The first is very, very weak. The second is shameful, demagogic, ahistorical garbage. The third is incomplete.
Restricting the right to vote.
So let’s start with the first claim. It comes almost entirely from an accounting by the Brennan Center for Justice.
As Joe Biden said yesterday, “Last year alone, 19 states not [only] proposed but enacted 34 laws attacking voting rights.”
Here’s how the Brennan Center put it October:
In all but seven states, regular legislative sessions are now over. Between January 1 and September 27, at least 19 states enacted 33 laws that make it harder for Americans to vote. At the same time, lawmakers in many states responded to Americans’ eagerness to vote by making it easier for eligible voters to cast their ballots. Between January 1 and September 27, at least 25 states enacted 62 laws with provisions that expand voting access.
I don’t know which state got in a restrictive law to bump up the tally to 34, but it doesn’t matter. As you can see, nearly twice as many laws enacted expanded voting as restricted it.
Now, the Brennan folks make a perfectly fine point that not all voting rights laws are equal. If, for example, a state banned absentee voting—which hasn’t happened—that wouldn’t cancel out a state expanding absentee voting by another week.
But here’s the first problem. Many of these laws essentially repealed the changes made to account for the pandemic. A reasonable person can argue that they should all be made permanent, I suppose. But a reasonable person cannot plausibly argue that returning our voting practices to those in effect in 2018—when Democrats had sweeping victories—is proof that democracy is on the cusp of being eliminated and that anyone who supports the status quo ante of 2018 is taking the side of Jefferson Davis and Bull Connor. (Heck, voter laws were much more restrictive across the country a decade earlier, according to the criteria pushed by Democrats. Does that mean Barack Obama was elected our first black president in a Jim Crow country? Big, if true.)
Now, some laws went further than that, and I am entirely open to arguments that some of those changes were ill-advised. Heck, I agree that some were ill-advised and unnecessary. But none of these changes amount to “Jim Crow 2.0.” One reason I know this is because nobody—including Joe Biden—has been able to point to a single example of a law that comes within miles of Jim Crow restrictions. If they had such an example, you can be sure they wouldn’t be keeping it secret.
Consider voter ID laws, which are constantly cited as part of this racist, undemocratic tsunami. Tightening voter ID laws may or may not be a good idea. Personally, I think they’re fine in principle. But let’s concede that they’re bad. You know who else thinks they’re fine? A very large majority of Americans, including a majority of black Americans. A Monmouth poll this year found that 80 percent of Americans support voter ID requirements and only 18 percent oppose them. That’s not a new finding. In 2016, Gallup also found that 4 in 5 Americans support voter ID requirements, including 77 percent of nonwhite voters.
Again, are the majority of Americans siding with Jefferson Davis? Really?
And just to be clear, not all of the laws expanding the “right to vote” are good. Democrats have been pushing to make ballot harvesting (allowing individuals to collect ballots from others and drop them off at polling locations or early-voting drop boxes) easier. I think that’s wrong. If you disagree with me, that’s fine. But if you think that makes me a racist, my response is, “Go to Hell.”
Georgia, out of their minds.
More on that in a moment. Let’s move on to Georgia, which, we are told over and over again, is slipping back into Jim Crow because of an election law, SB 202, passed in March. The next day Biden called the law “un-American” and “Jim Crow 2.0.” Again, I don’t think the law was necessary and there are parts of it that I think are bad, but there are also parts of it that are good. Or, more to the point, good from the perspective of making it easier to vote. It expanded early voting to 17 days, including two Saturdays. It did tighten the window to get an absentee ballot in the first place to … 67 days prior to the election. The horror.
A lot has been made of the law’s “ban” on bringing food and water to people waiting in line to vote. But it does allow for polling places to provide water and says this restriction applies only: “(1) Within 150 feet of the outer edge of any building within which a polling place is established; (2) Within any polling place; or (3) Within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place.” More horror.
By the way, the average wait time to vote in 2020 was less than three minutes.
Again, reasonable people can disagree about all of these provisions. But Biden is trying to bully reasonable people, especially reasonable Democratic senators, with accusations of racism. That’s grotesque.
Jim, what now?
Let’s pause to talk about Jim Crow for a moment. When assessing the very real evils of Jim Crow, restrictions on voting are pretty low on the list. I’m not saying they weren’t evil, but the root of their evil was that they were a means to an end to secure far greater evils—like the ability to beat or lynch blacks, often with impunity. Jim Crow impoverished generations of blacks by preventing them from participating in the economy, traveling, or utilizing their constitutional and God-given rights. Jim Crow was a form of apartheid.
If Georgia has been moving toward Jim Crow 2.0, one has to wonder: Why are so many blacks moving there, never mind staying there? The black population of Georgia nearly doubled from 1990 to 2019. Whatever you think about their right to vote, a lot of them voted with their feet to live in Georgia—and disproportionately from states like Chuck Schumer’s New York, where voting is notoriously difficult compared to places like … Georgia. Again, Georgia has 17 days of early voting. New York? Nine. Georgia allows “no excuse” absentee voting. In 2020, Andrew Cuomo signed a bill allowing people to use COVID as an excuse. A ballot initiative to allow “no excuse” voting failed by a healthy margin in 2021, a state where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by more than 2 to 1.
They come from below.
Okay, let’s move briefly to the third claim: that Trump loyalists are positioning to ignore the will of the people by ignoring legitimate votes. These claims take two forms: 1) Some “Big Lie” Trump loyal Republicans are running for office and can’t be trusted to follow the rules, and 2) Some states have passed laws that put partisan officials in charge of the election process (or empower them to overrule apolitical state officials).
Obviously, I would prefer such people not run for office. But to date, they haven’t done anything yet, and so I don’t understand what people think can be done about it. Surely people have a right to run for office and, more importantly, if voters elect such candidates, the self-styled saviors of democracy can’t really be arguing that the will of the voters must be ignored.
As for the second problem, I think those changes to state laws were unnecessary, unhelpful, and in some cases indefensible. But again, if duly elected officials change laws within the boundaries of the Constitution, I’m at a loss to see how that is, in itself, undemocratic. It’d be one thing if they were enacting Jim Crow style laws. That would be undemocratic. But. They’re. Not.
Dividing America.
Okay, I think I’ve been remarkably restrained. So let me speak a bit more freely now. Biden’s speech yesterday, and this whole project, is shameful, dangerous, stupid, and profoundly hypocritical.
Because the wheels are coming off his presidency, Biden has decided to divide Americans in ways he vowed he would not. Now, I don’t have any problem per se with politicians “dividing Americans.” Democracy is about disagreement, not unity. Unity is Biden’s bag and, as I pointed out at the time, I thought Biden’s unity schtick was clichéd nonsense. I’ve spent the better part of two decades ranting about the “cult of unity.”
But I do have a problem with a president dividing Americans by casting people he disagrees with as evil racists bent on destroying democracy—particularly when it’s not true (and when Biden himself played footsie with the very segregationists he’s now associating with his political opponents). Even worse, his lies are intended to sow even more distrust in our elections purely for partisan gain.
And let me just say right now that if any readers come at me with, “But what about Trump?” their arguments will find no purchase. I’ll stack my record of criticizing Trump for spewing hateful lies against pretty much anyone. But Biden staked his entire presidency on taking the high road; on not being like Trump. He vowed in his inaugural address, “I will be a president for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.” He cribs Obama’s better rhetoric about there not being red states and blue states but the United States all the time. And he threw it all away yesterday.
And for what? I could go on about how the legislation he wants would make our electoral system worse in myriad ways, but that misses a crucial point. This legislation almost surely won’t pass, and probably the only way it can pass is by getting rid of the filibuster (even then it’s unlikely). If Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi actually cared about saving democracy and thwarting the Trumpist threat from below, or the joys of unity and bipartisanship, they’d focus on reforming the Electoral Count Act or writing a bill that could attract the votes of people like Mitt Romney. Instead, they’d rather cast Romney—who, as Sarah Isgur notes, was the first senator in American history to vote to impeach a president of his own party—as a partisan hack in league with Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis. If he cared about letting the “will of majority” prevail in the Senate as he claims, he’d work to craft legislation that a majority of the Senate could support. Instead, he’s saying they have to swallow policies that have been on the shelf for years or be guilty of racism.
That’s cynical and shameful—but it’s also so incredibly stupid. If this thing doesn’t pass, Biden will be the second president in a row to tell voters in Georgia there’s no point in voting because the system is rigged. If it does pass, thanks to a successful effort of abolishing the filibuster, these idiot demagogues will still probably lose the House and Senate in 2022. And if they lose the presidency in 2024—a reasonable bet—they might see all of these “reforms” repealed by Republicans. And Democrats would be powerless to stop them without the filibuster.
Biden’s presidency is spiraling into abject failure. Calling tens of millions of Americans racists to change the subject isn’t just bad politics and bad policy, it’s immoral, and it deserves to put him on the wrong side of history he keeps prattling about.

Resignation

Dear Fellow Federationists:

It has been my pleasure to serve as your president for the past year. However, I am writing to let you know that I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination as President of the Omaha Chapter in January, 2022. Once my term has concluded, I will be leaving the National Federation of the Blind. The following letter will explain my reasons.

I have been a member of the NFB for 27 years. There have been times when I have stood at the periphery of the organization, particularly during my first several years living in Colorado. Yet, I could never fully bring myself to part from the movement that has played such a central role in shaping me as a blind adult. But now, I feel the time has come for me to take my leave.

I have many reasons for choosing to exit at this time. Some are personal, some are professional and some are political. The biggest reason involves the scandals that have erupted across the movement over the past year. When a number of women came forward with their stories of survival in December, 2020, I instantly believed them. I did so because of things I witnessed while serving in various leadership roles in the Nebraska affiliate, as well as working for and being involved with the Colorado Center for the Blind. Though I was tempted to leave the organization at the end of 2020, I decided to give our national leaders one more year to see how they would respond to the allegations brought forth by the survivors. I also wanted to take proper stock of the efforts of the #MarchingTogether Movement, spearheaded by our erstwhile state colleague, Stacy Cervenka. Though I did take exception to some of Stacy’s tactics and messaging, I felt that her core mission to hold the leadership to account for the crimes of certain leaders within the movement was a valid one.

After a year, the view from the trenches appears to be that little below the surface has changed. The collective of survivors appears to have gone silent and the leadership of the NFB, while mouthing all of the right words, does not appear intent upon real, substantive reform. While I applaud the formation of a survivor-lead task force, I question how much influence they have upon the leadership, or in which direction their influence might flow. I also take note that not a single person in a leadership role at the National Center, or at any of our three training centers, has appeared to have been punished for their active or passive complicity in the crimes of their subordinates. The one high-profile ejection, that of Fred Schroeder, does not go far enough in my view. Schroeder was given a five-year suspension from the organization with the option to return if certain conditions are met. I find this decision to be unfathomable, particularly when President Riccobono claims to possess empathy and compassion for victims of sexual misconduct. It is incomprehensible to me why permanent, irreversible expulsion would not be warranted.

The recent revelations published by David Gilbert in the Colorado Sun about the CCB, particularly those involving Brent Batron, a man for whom I directly worked and for whom I once held immense respect, serve as the final straw. If you have not yet read the piece, I urge you to do so and form your own conclusions. It is lengthy, but worth your time. For me, it served as one heartbreak too many. This, plus the recent election of Jessica Beecham as president of the Colorado State Affiliate, tell me that nothing has or will change in Colorado. My past observations lead me to believe that, as the Colorado affiliate goes, so goes the national movement.

Another reason I feel my time has come is due to the recent passage of Resolution 2021-02. During my entire tenure within this movement, I have taken heart at the notion that the NFB has been non-partisan in its mission. We will work with leaders of both political parties and will not endorse or adopt any political message from either camp. With the recent rise of more vocal elements of the woke left in the upper ranks of our organization, this position appears to be shifting. The NFB has now taken the position that voter suppression exists and that the blind are victims of it. I realize that many (perhaps all of you) might feel that this is a valid viewpoint, but you must be aware that it is certainly a partisan view that is often espoused by political leaders on both sides of the aisle who are more interested in servicing their own political agendas than in serious voting integrity. Since the electoral structure in the Federation at the national level is not set up for any meaningful challenges to the current leadership, and given the recent encroachment of leftist politics into our national messaging, I have no real reason to believe that any attempts at a substantive contest of ideas would be successful. I have no interest in lending any more of my time, energy or finances to an organization that trumpets progressive notions of diversity, equity and inclusion, all while doing less than its utmost to vindicate survivors of sexual assault within our ranks.

If you compare the history of open societies in the western world with those of more dictatorial, oppressive cultures, what you will find is that valid elections are the ultimate method of self-cleansing and self-correction. Said elections must be transparent and open to all citizens without fear of implicit or explicit consequence for each individual vote. Right now, we don’t have that at the top. If you doubt me, ask yourself when we’ve ever seen a national contest for president, or any other board position of import. I dare say that you will be hard-pressed to think of one. Moreover, if you will examine the plight of other organizations grappling with the issue of sexual misconduct, you will find that groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention are engaging in a more open, honest struggle with the issue. Those of you who may be apt to dismiss the SBC as a bunch of maga-loving, bible-thumping rednecks would do well to research the firestorm that erupted last summer. Then compare it to the recent history of the Catholic Church, where sexual predation is still a recurring problem, and where power flows to and from a very few at the top. Then compare the power structure and culture of top-down leadership within the Catholic Church to that of the NFB. I think the similarities will strike you.

I suspect that my decision will come as a disappointment to some of you. I humbly apologize for this. I have made many wonderful friends during my time in the NFB, both in Nebraska and in Colorado. I have also learned that many so-called friendships are transitory and transactional, dependent upon one’s status within the organization. These have been painful but necessary lessons for me to learn in the journey of my life.

This is why I genuinely feel that a clean and total break from the NFB is the best thing that I can do for myself emotionally, spiritually and professionally. It was not an easy decision, but it is telling that, as I was putting the final touches on this letter today, I happened to glance at the Braille Monitor and saw a quote from Ibram X. Kendi that was offered without critique or balance. This served as assurance that my decision is the correct one.

I will chair the January meeting, thus fulfilling my obligations to the chapter. After that, I am leaving and my decision will be final. My exit from the NFB will be a quiet one. I will not trash talk on social media or flame specific leaders. If asked, I will offer honest criticism and praise to the NFB, but I will not seek strife or confrontation without provocation. I do not intend to be a crusader for reform. I will simply follow the path of many of my friends who have circumspectly departed from the movement, carrying on with their own quiet lives and leaving the NFB to its ultimate fate. Nor will I join the ranks of any other national blindness organization that hangs its hat on anti-Federationism. That is not why I am doing this. I will just go quietly into that good night without fanfare or drama, this letter serving as the closing remarks to this long, circuitous chapter in my life.

Thank you to all of my friends for your steadfast love and support. Thank you to those few good and decent leaders who role modeled positive behavior for me.

Merry Christmas.

Sincerely,

Ryan Osentowski

American Frankenstein

Kyle Rittenhouse is an American Frankenstein.

I’m not saying he’s actually a monster. I don’t know the kid and I don’t know what was in his heart the night he killed two people and wounded one other. I do believe in our system of jurisprudence. Many social media lawyers are screaming about racism, vigilantism, heroism, gun rights, etc. These are all narrative templates. From what little I know of the trial, it sounds to me as if prosecutorial ineptness and overzealousness played more of a role in his acquittal than any other factor.

I believe that the phenomenon of Kyle Rittenhouse is an American Frankenstein. He may have had youthful romantic notions about getting a gun and defending a community, but shit got real when progressive politicians, activists and a sympathetic media established a permission structure for mobs to go forth into the streets and commit violence in the name of justice. That collective mob serves as a blind, heedless juggernaut that gives no thought to consequences or reactionary forces that manifest themselves as an impulsive 17-year-old boy with an AR-15.

I am certainly open to the notion that said mob was born out of police brutality, but even so, reckless, destructive ideas such as “defund the police” only served as fuel for the street juggernauts to grow in size and scope. That is a primary reason why no cops were available to defuse the situation between Kyle and his pursuers.

An additional factor in the chaos of 2020 was Donald Trump. He is another American Frankenstein.

Republicans are celebrating recent and unexpected electoral victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Many pundits are confident of a massive red wave that will reclaim legislative sanity across the country next November. But Trump, fueled by his own insatiable pride and an incessant need for political pugilism, may have other plans. His role in the upcoming midterm elections will be dictated, not by any sense of constructive social cohesion, but by which candidate demonstrates the proper fealty to him. Regional electability will play no part in Trump’s discernment.

Trump is the monster that his voters created. His actions in Georgia in December of 2020 are the reason why Congress just passed a 1.2 billion dollar spending package that will only fuel inflation. You want to cast stones at Congressman Don Bacon? Why not the man who insured a Democratic senatorial majority?

A lot of the people who put Trump in office and who would like to see him returned there are the same folks who label Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero. Kyle is not a hero. Nor is he a villain. Like Victor Frankenstein’s creation, he is a tragic figure, too young and stupid to understand that his rash actions on August 25, 2020 will, for better or worse, likely brand him for the rest of his life. It is sad to behold, and sadder still that so many people are too busy clinging to their own hot takes to exercise the appropriate compassion for a soul that is very likely damned.

Whatever the case, we can only be sure of one thing in the next year. More American Frankensteins will be coming.

The Curse of Happiness

Here’s the irony about David Chase, the television producer who created the landmark series, The Sopranos. Much like the characters he created in the HBO mob drama, the man is a pillar of misery. He has everything in his life that should make him happy, but like a flock of ducks, happiness seems to elude him.

I’ve never heard Chase state this explicitly in any interview, but I think he always wanted to be a film maker. But somehow, he ended up as a television producer. He found himself chafing against the constraints of network sensibilities from the 1970’s when he served as a writer on The Rockford Files, to the 1990’s when he worked on Northern Exposure.

At long last, HBO and Chase came together in a match made in heaven. The lack of broadcast network control allowed Chase to write and produce The Sopranos with no creative inhibitions. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he stated that he thought the pilot would fail and he would turn it into an independent film. No such luck. Instead, The Sopranos was a groundbreaking, runaway smash that became the gold standard for everything that came after it on television.

After The Sopranos concluded, Chase made one film called, Not Fade Away. If you’ve never heard about it, there’s a reason. It was entirely forgettable.

Chase was plagued by fans and media figures who all wanted to know if he would ever make a sequel to The Sopranos. It is doubtful that he ever would have done so, even if James Gandolfini had lived. Chase is no more likely to spell out the meaning of the black screen of doom than George Martin is to finish his epic fantasy series. But I think he still wanted to make a film that would be taken seriously by both fans and critics. At 75 years and counting, what better way to go out on his own terms than to make a prequel to his greatest achievement? Yet, in a usual Chase twist, said prequel would hype the origin story of Tony Soprano, but would fake out hopefuls who would crowd into movie theaters everywhere. It would really be the origin story of Tony’s doomed protégé, Christopher Moltisanti by way of his father, Dicky (Alessandro Nivola), with Tony’s role relegated to the background.

So we get The Many Saints of Newark, a period piece set in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s that tells the story of tensions between the mafia in its glory days and African-American gangsters who were trying to break into the game amidst the Newark riots of 1968.

I won’t try to render a synopsis of the movie. It’s pretty convoluted. The high-lights include James Gandolfini’s real life son Michael playing teenage Tony. And here’s a nitpick from a blind fan. Many critics drool over how much Michael looks like his daddy, but he sure as shit doesn’t sound like him. The adolescent future mafia kingpin we are treated to sounds more like A. J., Tony’s wussbag son from the series.) I seriously doubt this was intentional.

Another irony. There’s a reason why television has come so far since the days of NYPD Blue and Seinfeld. It is the best visual medium for storytelling. If Chase had not caught lightning in a bottle with HBO and turned The Sopranos into a movie, he either would have been accused of doing Goodfellas light, or Analyze This heavy. But the idea of a mafia boss going to a psychiatrist to talk about his inner turmoil allowed the writers to meticulously build this universe of flawed characters. It was a formula, but a winning one that kept audiences coming back week after week, season after season. It was also a formula that could not be duplicated 14 years after the series finale. The complexity of the characters, the quiet moments that illustrated their three dimensional aspects, high-lighted by the occasional brutality of their lifestyle, could not be manufactured in a two-hour movie.

There were other things that worked against Chase. This movie was originally set to premier in September of 2020, but the production schedule was delayed due to an illness in Chase’s family. He wanted to direct it, but said illness forced him to turn the reins over to Alan Taylor. Then, there was the pandemic which hit the movie industry hard, shuttering movie theaters across the country and placing an emphasis on streaming services. Once again, this phenomenon worked for and against Chase. Many people found time to get introduced or reacquainted with The Sopranos as they sat stranded on their couches during lockdown like Uncle Junior. This should have stoked the fires of interest of Many Saints, but reports indicate that Chase was angered when he learned that HBO was going to drop the movie on their streaming platform on the same day when it was released to theaters. He clearly wanted this project to be treated solely as a feature film, but many fans regarded it as little more than a TV movie.

Sidebar: I have a buddy here in Omaha who is a movie buff and I invited him to go watch Many Saints with me in the theater when it premiered last Friday. He said, “It’s not really a big screen event. Let’s do pizza at my place and we can watch it there.” No such luck. His internet was down, so we had to settle for Independence Day and Husker volleyball.

After watching the movie alone in my living room with my cat, I have concluded that I am thoroughly against prequels. Whether it’s Breaking Bad, Star Wars or The Sopranos, writers can’t help but play connect-the-dots. Instead of scenes occurring organically, many of them have an obligatory feel, as if they have been created for fan service, rather than to serve a unique story. Many Saints is no different, with the rise and fall of Dickie Moltisanti, to a cameo by Tony’s future wife Carmela, to an ominous voice-over track from Michael Imperioli that falls like an Annville again and again. It does indeed feel as if Chase is ripping off Martin Scorsese, from the omnipresent source music in every scene to Ray Liotta playing the unlikely dual role of Christopher’s grandpa and grand uncle. It seems a shame that Chase can’t enjoy being shaped by his experiences as a television producer, but would rather exude Scorsese envy as he tries to break out on the big screen.

At the end of it all, the movie was just mediocre. I feel about it the same way I did about the Breaking Bad and Deadwood movies and how I’ll probably feel about the return of Dexter next month. It may have filled some bank accounts, but it was all rather superfluous. It probably would have come off better as a limited series, but that’s clearly not what Chase wanted. And in the typical style of Chase, nobody really got what they wanted. There’s talk of Terence Winter of Boardwalk Empire fame possibly producing a sequel, but I won’t hold my breath.

As for David Chase, I’m reminded of a line from The Crown, rendered by Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth. “That’s the thing about unhappiness. All it takes is for something worse to come along and you realize that it was actually happiness after all.”

Perhaps David Chase can have that one etched on his lonely tombstone in his lonely graveyard when his time comes at last.

“It’s What You Deserve!”

Most TV critics such as David Bianculli seem to agree that, if the Golden Age of Television occurred in the 1950’s in the age of I Love Lucy, than the Platinum Age of Television took place between 1999 and 2010, heralded by the rise of premium cable networks such as HBO. The Platinum Age was kicked off by The Sopranos and came to its natural conclusion with Game of Thrones.

One of the last great series of the Platinum Age was Boardwalk Empire. Most people don’t immediately mention it when they speak of the pantheon of great shows, but I recently rewatched the entire series and am reminded that Boardwalk Empire is a solid, consistently compelling piece of entertainment from start to finish.

The program was created by Sopranos alum Terence Winter and the pilot was directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese, so it is no surprise that it is a gangster epic. Based on a novel by Nelson Johnson, the premise concerns the passing of Prohibition in 1920 and the subsequent rise of bootlegging gangsters across the country. The protagonist is Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson (Steve Buscemi), the fictional crime boss of Atlantic City who is loosely based on the real life politician, Enoch Johnson. In the pilot, Thompson’s youthful protégé Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), meets up with a young, inexperienced Al Capone (Stephen Graham) and the two commit a bold but ill-considered robbery of a shipment of whiskey. Naturally, because it’s a gangster story, the robbery goes wrong and a blood bath ensues.

Meanwhile, Nucky Thompson meets Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald), a young Irish immigrant who is a supporter of the temperance movement because of her drunken, abusive husband. Thompson takes pity on her, so naturally, murder ensues. And, of course, we have the dogged law enforcement agent in the character of Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon), who is dead sure that Thompson is a criminal mastermind, but who can’t convince his superiors of this obvious fact.

So begins the saga of Boardwalk Empire as we venture forth through this historical period and meet real life criminals such as Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. We also meet real law enforcement figures such as J. Edgar Hoover and Elliott Ness. We even get to meet political figures such as Warren Harding and Joe Kennedy. In true Wouk style, fictional characters mingle with historical figures and small, insignificant events mushroom and have a major impact on history.

Sidebar: Dana, since you’re about the only person who reads this blog, you might not be aware that Arnold Rothstein is best known as the gangster who fixed the World Series in 1919.

On the surface, Boardwalk Empire is a crime drama, but as is often the case with premium shows in the Platinum Age, there is far more beneath its seething façade than guns, booze and blood. Since it is a period piece, we get to see the state of race relations in the country, particularly through the eyes of Chalky White (Michael Kenneth Williams), a local African-American criminal boss who is in league with Thompson. We see shades of the suffragette movement as Margaret fights for women’s right to vote. We see the lives of veterans of World War I as Jimmy returns home and meets his friend Richard Harrow (Jack Huston), a lethal sniper whose face was disfigured in combat. We even get a glimpse into the life of a closeted lesbian artist in the personage of Jimmy’s wife Angela (Aleksa Palladino.)

There are simply too many characters and stories to give their proper due in this entry. Special shout-outs go to Shea Whigham as Nucky’s brother Eli, Anthony Laciura as Nucky’s put-upon German butler Eddie Kessler, Charlie Cox as Irish hitman Owen Sleater, and Dabney Coleman as The Commodore, Nucky’s former mentor and the original architect of the modern Atlantic City. The Commodore’s lust for power is surpassed only by his lust for under-aged girls.

Boardwalk Empire is a masterpiece of storytelling with its intricate plotting, which sometimes weaves three or four stories together in various locations from New Jersey to New York City to Chicago. But at its heart, it is a crime epic, complete with the usual gangster tropes. Throughout the series, Nucky finds himself in various wars over booze and territory with Rothstein and Luciano, psychotic Gyp Rosetti (Bobby Cannavale), and Dr. Valentin Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright), an African-American drug lord who challenges Chalky, and even Jimmy Darmody himself. Since Buscemi is the unquestionable star of the show, you don’t often wonder how he’ll come out, but the enjoyment of the story is seeing how it plays out and which beloved supporting character will be the next to die.

Boardwalk is not perfect. No show can make that claim. Some characters exit the show before their time. The most obvious example of this is Jimmy, who exits the show after the second season. Alas, reliable internet gossip suggests that Michael Pitt was a talented but troubled actor and had to be let go for the good of the show. Other characters such as Agent Van Alden seem to outlast their usefulness. I found Van Alden’s arc to be fascinating when he was a pious prohibition agent who chased after Nucky, but less interesting after he fell from grace and ended up in Chicago in the employ of Al Capone.

Some critics seem to think that Steve Buscemi was miscast as an alpha male type gangster who controls an entire city. I don’t entirely disagree. I can buy Buscemi as the wheeling and dealing politician who is the master of the back room deal, but he doesn’t exude the menace necessary to prevail in physical conflicts with gunmen of New York and Chicago. Still, even if you aren’t entirely persuaded by Buscemi in the role, he is not a bad actor and the writing carries him through.

This is a minor nitpick, but the theme music is completely incompatible with the time period and feel of the series. “Straight Up and Down,” by the Brian Jonestown Massacre, is raw Scorsese with its heavy rock guitar feel and would have been far better suited to a ‘60’s or ‘70’s setting, rather than the Roaring ‘20’s.

The fifth and final season jumps ahead eight years and takes place in 1931, around the time that Prohibition was repealed in America. The truncated season has a Godfather II feel to it as we juxtapose a current day assassination conspiracy plot against Nucky in Cuba with flashbacks to Nucky’s childhood as he rises from poverty to power and makes one moral compromise after another along the way in service to The Commodore.

I mentioned that The Sopranos and Game of Thrones bookended the Platinum Age of Television. Whenever you hear those two landmark series referenced by fans, most will inevitably say something to the affect that, “The series is great, but the ending sucked.” This is not the case with Boardwalk Empire. Fans may or may not be able to predict the ending, but no one denies that it was fitting to the series that came before. The only two shows I have seen that stick the landing as well as Boardwalk Empire are Breaking Bad and The Shield.

It is impossible to reference the series finale without taking a moment to tip my hat to Gretchen Mol, who played the part of Gillian Darmody. Gillian is Jimmy’s mother and as the series progresses, it becomes clear that their relationship is far more dysfunctional and toxic than that of Tony and Livia Soprano. There are times throughout the story when I actively despised Gillian, but as we learn more about her past, I gained more sympathy for her. I cannot think of her ultimate fate now without being haunted by it. The arc of Gillian Darmody suggests writing that is expert at crafting the gray areas that typify the anti-heroes and anti-heroines of the Platinum Age of Television.

In a fortuitous turn of fate, I was putting the finishing touches on this entry when a news alert flashed across my phone. Michael K. Williams, who played Chalky White to perfection in this series, as well as Omar on another HBO crime epic, The Wire, was found dead. He was 54 years old. Mr. Williams was a master craftsman, every bit as talented as his Emmy magnet contemporaries like Gandolfini, Cranston and Dinklage. God bless MKW and all of his excellent work.

As for Boardwalk Empire, it stands up very well after seven years off the air. I suspect that history will treat it far more justly than it has treated its source material, The Volstead Act.

By Your Command

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a TV producer named Glen A. Larson decided to rip off George Lucas in an attempt to bring the hype of Star Wars to the small screen.

One year after Star Wars blasted into theaters across America, a science fiction popcorn extravaganza called Battlestar Galactica burst into living rooms everywhere.

The premise concerned the 12 colonies of humanity who were annihilated by the robotic Cylons in a sneak attack. Only a rag tag fleet of spaceships survived, headed by the Battlestar Galactica, commanded by Lorne Green as Captain William Adama. The series was a continuous chase between the surviving humans and the murderous Cylons, who sounded a lot like my first talking Apple 2-E computer in elementary school, as the humans desperately tried to seek out the 13th colony, known as Earth.

This translucent plagiarism did not go unnoticed by 20th Century Fox, who sued Universal Studios for copyright infringement. The results were an out-of-court settlement, while history has rendered its public judgment. Battlestar Galactica lasted for only one season spanning 24 TV episodes, ending in April of 1979. Every kid that I grew up with had Darth Vader or Han Solo on his lunch box. No one knew who Starbuck was.

21 years later, a writer/producer named Ronald D. Moore angrily parted ways with the producers of Star Trek: Voyager. On his way out the door, he penned a pithy manifesto explaining that Star Trek was becoming juvenile, irrelevant and outdated.

After working for four years on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Moore had enjoyed a good deal of creative freedom on the franchise’s sequel series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Moore got to explore themes as wide-ranging as war, religion, overt politics and paranoia; themes that were frowned upon by Gene Roddenberry in previous Trek incarnations. Moore found Voyager to be a tired rehash of TNG (which it was) and was ready for new challenges.

Moore might have gone down in TV obscurity with Carnivale being his greatest achievement, but then, the god of fate smiled upon Mr. Moore in particular, and Hollywood in general. The kiss of fortune came on September 11, 2001, when 19 Muslim extremists hijacked four American planes and turned them into missiles aimed at various targets on the East Coast. The dye was cast for America to enter into a long period that would come to be known as the war on terror.

This war saturated the socio-political landscape of America and more concretely, was waged with boots on the ground in Afghanistan and later, in Iraq.

Like popcorn pop culture, history has rendered its judgments on the war on terror, but in the meantime, a glut of new creative TV sprung forth from the creative loins of Hollywood from such producers as Joel Surnow, David Simon and, of course, Ronald D. Moore. All of these producers used the war on terror as a springboard for creative ideas ranging from an invincible counter terrorist agent, to analogous metaphors to the war on drugs, to the total annihilation of the human race in another galaxy far, far away.

Moore watched an unaired pilot of a resurrected Battlestar Galactica produced by Richard Hatch of the original BSG cast in the late ‘90’s. That flight into creative fancy became the basis for the new reimagined Battlestar Galactica in 2003. At first, BSG aired as a two-part miniseries on the Sci Fi Channel. The ratings were dismal and the show might have died without resurrection once again, but for the intervention of the BBC, who agreed to help finance the regular series if they could have the privilege of airing each new episode before it aired on Sci Fi. Everyone agreed and the show burst forth, much to the delight of critics and a growing fan base across two continents.

The basic premise of BSG 2003 was the same as its 1978 predecessor. The Cylons, a race of artificially intelligent but sentient life forms, obliterated the 12 colonies in a sneak nuclear attack. The remnants of the fleet fled, staying just one step ahead of the Cylons at every jump.

Several of the characters remained. Commander Bill Adama was played by Edward James Olmos, an actor who seems to only speak in a low, growly half whisper, yet who could project the necessary weighty moral authority to guide the fleet through one tragedy after another. English actor Jamie Bamber played his son, Lee ‘Apollo’ Adama. When it came to Starbuck, the powers that be did a very (ahem ahem) enlightened thing and swapped the gender. Starbuck became Kara ‘Starbuck’ Thrace (Katee Sackhoff), much to the consternation of Dirk Benedict. James Callis played Dr. Gaius Baltar, the narcissistic scientist who betrayed humanity by unwittingly allowing the Cylons access to the defense systems on Caprica by way of his penis. Boomer, an African-American male Viper pilot from the original, became Sharon ‘Boomer’ Valerii (Grace Park), a female pilot who turns out to be a sleeper Cylon agent.

Moore stirred in some original ingredients to his interstellar brew. Included were Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin. She begins the series as the cancer-stricken Secretary of Education, but is quickly promoted to President of the civilian fleet when she is the sole survivor in the political line of succession after the Cylon attack. Some of the best drama from the early seasons occurs as Roslin and Adama wrestle each other over moral, tactical and political decisions that affect the very survival of humanity. Tricia Helfer plays a Cylon agent known only as Six, and who appears only in the mind of Dr. Baltar; at least, early on in the series, until we learn that there are numerous copies of Six running around space in various get-ups.

And there is one of the great twists of the reboot. The Cylons are no longer cheesy ‘70’s era robots. They are now evolved into fully flesh and blood antagonists who can easily blend into the fleet and work to undermine the efforts of humanity to save itself by acting as spies, saboteurs and propagandists. Once the humans discover this, paranoia runs rampant throughout the fleet as the major question becomes, who is really human and who is really a Cylon? The stakes are further raised when we learn that Cylons cannot die, but merely download into another copy and return if they are killed.

The first two seasons of this epic series range from good to brilliant television. Moore did in deed surpass Star Trek (and even Star Wars) in his wish to tell a thoughtful, compelling story of human survival and desperation in the wake of a genocidal apocalypse. The tone and tenor of the series is best summed up by the premier episode, “33,” in which the fleet is attacked by the Cylons every 33 minutes, thereby depriving them of sleep. The episode climaxes with Starbuck and Apollo being forced to fire on one of their own vessels in fear of its being infiltrated by the enemy.

Other plots involve a continuous tug-of-war between Adama and Roslin over religion, Boomer’s inner conflict as she realizes that she is a Cylon, Baltar’s continual cerebral encounters with Six and the discovery of another military ship (The Pegasus) commanded by Michelle Forbes, which ultimately causes more problems than it solves.

If only Moore and company had not yielded to the lesser angels of their political souls, Battlestar Galactica might have gone down as one of the best science fiction TV epics of all time. Alas, cracks begin to appear in the show’s third season. The humans have settled on a planet they name New Caprica and are trying to rebuild their civilization when the Cylons show up and establish an occupation force. President Baltar immediately surrenders and is taken prisoner, the remaining space fleet jumps away in order to fight another day, and the planet bound military under the command of Colonel Tigh (Michael Hogan) forms a resistance to fight the invaders. Said resisters come complete with suicide bomb vests, which was a deliberate and sympathetic comment on the plight of insurgents battling U.S. forces in Iraq, circa 2006.

You can be skeptical of the wisdom of the Cylon occupation plot and still enjoy it as I did. The arc climaxes with an epic battle as Adama and Apollo return to save the survivors on New Caprica. More powerful than the battle was Colonel Tigh’s murder of his wife, whom he learns has been colluding with the Cylons.

Much of the remainder of the third season concerns the aftermath of New Caprica as the fleet continues to search for Earth. Baltar is held captive by the Cylons and he learns more about their culture. Starbuck and Tigh deal with PTSD. Apollo, Adama and Roslin all question their choices. A bunch of the crew hold boxing matches to work out their feelings. All of the main characters get married while being in love with someone else. Baltar is returned to the humans and is put on trial for the betrayal of his own people.

And this, my friends, is where the show officially descends into Stupidville. Apollo acts as Baltar’s lawyer and manages to get his client acquitted. This is due to an Aaron Sorkinesque speech in which he basically says, “Sure, President Baltar did some questionable things, but we all do questionable things in the fog of war.” Apollo’s assertion that there are always moral equivalents in war was a nonsensical means of letting Baltar (and by extension, the Cylons) off the hook. The anger and desperation that fueled the early episodes slowly gives way to a facile sense of proportionality that humans and Cylons are equally guilty, even though the Cylons committed genocide, which is acknowledged in our own civilization as a war crime. Rationalizations such as these are often made in comfortable circumstances around a conference table in Hollywood, far from the battlefield of reality.

About the same time as Baltar is getting off, several crew members begin humming notes to All Along the Watch Tower. They meet up in a cargo bay, set up a chorus of a humming choir and figure out that they are all sleeper Cylon agents. One of them is Colonel Tigh. Even though the groundwork was laid for this, the twist still falls flat.

Meanwhile, Starbuck, who died in a cosmic maelstrom three episodes before, suddenly reappears with no explanation and claims that she knows the way to Earth. If you were like me, you finished up the third season finale and muttered, “What the frack?” aloud.

The fourth season is a slog to finish. Starbuck keeps screaming, “WE’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!” which may as well be a metaphor for life in the writers’ room. Baltar becomes a David Koresh-style figure as he becomes the leader of a cult. The Cylons fall into civil war as they begin to question their campaign against humanity. Roslin keeps having weird visions that don’t ultimately amount to anything. Adama softens from a stalwart military figure into a flaccid consort who reverses and re-reverses himself whenever a character cries loudly enough. More characters keep prattling on about God, destiny, fate, etc.

By the time the humans make it to ancient Earth and we learn that we got our Greek mythology from the 12 colonies, I was too weary to care. All I can tell you is that Roslin succumbed to her cancer, Adama built a cabin somewhere in the wilderness and Starbuck disappeared without explanation.

Ahh, Gods. I don’t even have the energy to write about the two TV movies, Razor, and, The Plan.

Why did such a promising series go off the rails? The answer lies in TV critic Alan Sepinwall’s book, The Revolution Was Televised, in which he interviews Ronald D. Moore. Sepinwall dubs Battlestar Galactica as, “Sci-fi for the thinking man.” As Jonah Goldberg points out, only if you don’t think too hard.

BSG is a victim of high-minded pretentions that ultimately amount to nothing more than one big deus ex machina. The writers constantly tease the audience with the promise that the Cylons have some great master plan. As it turns out, their plan is a series of tortured, contorted retcons that make no sense. Moore admits that he merely relied on his instincts in plotting the series, particularly in the final two seasons. He had no grand vision as to where the fleet was going or what they were doing. The resurrection of Starbuck with no explanation is the ultimate proof of Moore’s rudderless, half-baked theologizing under the guise of science fiction. It’s one thing to engage in world-building, but quite another to betray your audience by making them feel cheated by failing to answer questions that you’ve dangled in front of them all along. Many fans compare the underwhelming series finale to that of Lost, another show that was much better at asking questions than it was at delivering satisfying payoffs.

I first tried watching this show during the platinum age of television back in the mid-2000’s. I ultimately gave it up because it was just too visual for me to follow. But I held out hope that one day, I might get it described. The Brits finally accommodated me, but I knew what I was in for. I was spoiled on the ending. Still, I wanted to make up my own mind. If anything, most fans have underplayed the idiocy of the final season and the finale.

Two spin-off series to BSG were attempted, Caprica and Blood and Chrome. Neither got very far, Moore having squandered his credibility with those whom he needed to entice for another investment. . Today, no one aside from diehard fans speaks much of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Meanwhile, the world waits with baited breath for season three of The Mandalorian.

Put that on your algae cracker and have a good crunch, Mr. Moore. You can digest it and shit it out, along with the hard fact that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the better series. It is certainly more padded, but it is more consistently entertaining and explores most of the same themes as BSG and does so more effectively.

So say we all, except certain fan boys masquerading as critics. Such as Alan Cylonwall.

Final tidbit. One quote you hear repeated again and again is, “All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” Think that’s deep? Wrong. That quote was lifted from Peter Pan. Maybe the ending would have been more satisfying if the crew of the Galactica had wound up in Never Neverland.

The Science Is Unsettled

As a man who has taken both shots of the miracle vaccine, let me now quote the right and honorable Charles C. W. Cooke of National Review.

“I am done with all this nonsense, whatever the CDC says.”

Contrary to all of the doomcasting from the fear-monger types, we are far from the same position in which we were in in April, 2020. Simply put, the vaccine was the game-changer and that bell cannot now be un-rung. We have distributed it to approximately 60 percent of our population freely and for free. The government is now begging people to take it. Though the messaging of the CDC and the president has been abysmal, America has done a better job of vaccinating its populous than almost any other country in the world.

When the pandemic first began, we knew very little about the virus. Remember wipe-down frenzies and hand-washing theater? But more to the point, the vaccine was only a vague light at the end of a dark tunnel; a tunnel that most experts predicted we might very well still be in today. The announcement of the arrival of not one…not two…but three vaccines by last Christmas was a miracle indeed. And yes, it was solid evidence of American exceptionalism.

Now, through its typical muddled messaging, the CDC would further undermine public confidence in the vaccine by insisting that those who are fully vaccinated should still wear a mask. This is patently absurd! The burden of responsibility has now shifted to the unvaccinated. If they choose to live in willful ignorance of the benefits of the vaccine versus the possible long term costs of contracting COVID-19, that is their choice. This choice applies equally to red and blue America.

Pssst! All you vaccine snobs. There are a lot more Team Blue anti-vaxers than you would care to admit.

I believed in masks when they were appropriate. I believed in health guidelines when all of society was at risk. But acting as if the situation on the ground hasn’t changed and that the vaccinated and unvaccinated should shoulder the burden of responsibility equally is typical bureaucratic illogic.

I will not surrender to the hysteria. I will wear a mask if my boss orders me to do so. I will not place a poor bus driver, store clerk or restaurant server in the position of being a mask cop; a job they didn’t sign up for. But my non-sexual default position is, mask off. The Delta variant will be disappearing in a matter of weeks and we will deal with mutations when they occur.

PS: Fuck Fauci. Fuck Walensky. If you want to hear a non-partisan medical expert who has been a voice of reason since the beginning of the pandemic, follow Scott Gottlieb.

Here is an article from the aforementioned Charles C. W. Cooke that serves as another excellent snapshot in time. If you find it useful, I highly recommend National Review for thoughtful conservative content, particularly the NRPlus digital feature.

COVID-19 Has Given Us Progressivism Unleashed
By Charles C. W. Cooke
July 29, 2021 2:08 PM

Thankfully, if history is any guide, the backlash will last a lot longer than the pandemic.

Earlier this week, the investor Paul Graham took to Twitter to criticize the many millions of Americans who have grown skeptical of the scientific establishment during the COVID-19 pandemic. “If you think you don’t trust scientists,” Graham wrote on Twitter, “you’re mistaken.” In reality, he wrote, “You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step on a plane, or for that matter turn on your
tap or open a can of beans.”

On its own terms, this is of course correct. It’s also entirely non-responsive to the question at hand, which is why so many otherwise-reasonable people have come to conclude that “science” is being routinely used as a means by which to launder political authority. Over the last 16 months, institutions
from the CDC to the NIH to Facebook have been caught making up the rules as they go along — not because the data upon which they were relying was changing
by the minute, but because their political aims had shifted, so their rationale had to as well.

In an excellent piece over at Slate, Kerrington Powell and Vinay Prasad contend that public-health officials have a choice: They can either “report facts and uncertainties
transparently,” which is science; or they can “shape information, via nudges, to influence the public to take specific actions,” which is politics. What
they can’t do is both — at least, not without leading switched-on observers to recognize the ruse. “When experts or agencies deliver information to the
public that they consider possibly or definitively false to further a larger, often well-meaning agenda,” Powell and Prasad conclude, “they are telling
what is called a noble lie.” And noble lies ain’t science.

There is a good reason that American citizens do not tend to question the science behind why airplanes fly, and that is that American citizens are not
given constantly evolving rationales for why airplanes fly — or, even worse, lied to about how the mechanics of flight work in order to advance a discrete goal. If every time American Airlines overbooked a flight, the FAA issued a set of contradictory statements about the likely effects of uplift on aluminum wings, we’d have a lot more flight-skeptical Americans than we do —and with good reason.

Mercifully, this is not how governments behave when the issue is travel, plumbing, or beans. In the case of COVID, however, it absolutely has been. Since the pandemic started, we have been told that masks were useless and that they were imperative; that protests were disastrous super-spreader events and
that they were safe and necessary; that the lab-leak theory was racist, conspiracist nonsense and that it was the most plausible explanation; that any vaccine that was developed while Donald Trump was president was likely to be rushed and dangerous and that to refuse to take such a vaccine is death-cult-like behavior. It is true, of course, that “science” doesn’t care about any of this vacillation — SARS-CoV-2 will ravage your unvaccinated body without the slightest care for why you declined to protect yourself from it. It is also true, though, that when diametrically opposed theories are sold to the public under science’s auspices, people will quickly switch off. Figures such as Graham can snark as much as they wish about the beautiful immutability of the truth, but the reality is that, outside of a few kooks, the many Americans at whom those barbs are aimed are not really rejecting “science” so much as they are rejecting the people who have glued themselves to it as a means by which to accumulate more power.

That rejection is likely to survive the end of the pandemic. Indeed, if this trend continues, it will take a long time for American progressivism to recover from the fallout. In its Wilsonian form, progressivism is a system in which the elected branches attempt to permanently outsource many of the country’s key political decisions to an ostensibly disinterested technocracy. When that technocracy is trusted, as it was for a while in the early 20th century and again in the 1950s and early to mid 1960s, those attempts enjoy a sufficient degree of support. When that technocracy is not trusted, as was the case after the fall of Robert McNamara and during the malaise-ridden 1970s, those attempts create a mighty backlash. In the long run, progressivism will always fail,
because it is incompatible with human nature and because it is simply not possible to abolish politics, but it can work for a short while, providing that its technocrats have the discipline to prioritize science as a neutral process over “science” as a deceptive buzzword. Unfortunately for today’s progressives, the technocrats of this era chose precisely the opposite course.

Observers who wonder why so many within our government have been unwilling to let go of their power would do well to consider that the endless series of lockdowns, mask-mandates, and social-distancing rules that we have just lived through has been progressivism in its purest form. Just as war is the health of the state, the arrival of COVID-19 provided the perfect impetus for the rampant safetyism, unchecked authority, hysterical micromanagement, mawkish moral crusading, and interminable federal spending that the sorts of figures who graduate from public-policy and public-health programs spend their lives dreaming about. For the better part of two years now, they’ve had an absolute ball. If history is any guide, they’ll spend the next 20 or 30 picking up the tab.