The Activists Protesting the Death of George Floyd Are Doing Everything Wrong

I made the mistake of subjecting myself to the viral video starring Tamika Mallory of formerly of Women’s March fame. She gave an extended diatribe about the protests (and riots and looting) that happened in response to the death of George Floyd. She claimed that America looted its wealth from black people and Native Americans. She claimed that “mental illness” had been inflicted on black people by the system. She claimed that the state preferred to “preserve a white nationalist and white supremacist mindset.” And she claimed that it’s OK to burn down Target, because Target should be on the streets with her. Amongst other things.

There’s a lot to unpack there. For starters, the primary thing worth noting is that the speech (as is typical of social justice activists) makes dozens of accusations without offering real proof. For example, I’ve noted before that the “America was stolen” narrative is a reductive and lazy view of American history. Reality is far more complicated than the simple story social justice activists tell themselves. But this is frequently asserted as irrefutable fact by the more radical members of the left.

As for some of the other inanities she pushed, let’s start with this idea that America has inflicted mental illness on black people. This is a common talking point intended to explain away things like higher crime rates or rates of single motherhood (a factor that has been shown to lead to higher crime rates) that a normal person would imagine is a failure of personal responsibility. The idea is that because the system is the way it is, these behaviors have actually been inflicted on black people. It’s a fairly transparent way to deflect blame and responsibility.

This is obviously ridiculous, since studies show that about 15% of the black male population (the numbers are obviously smaller for women) have spent time in prison. So it sure looks like the overwhelming majority of black people are quite capable of avoiding criminal behavior. It’s kind of hard to argue that a behavior is inflicted on a community when so many appear immune to it.

But there actually is one form of mental illness that is being inflicted on the black community. It happens every time she and people like her insist that America is white supremacist and systemically racist. If you say this often enough, even when all of the empirical evidence seems to indicate the literal opposite, people will start to believe it. This is a great way to increase anxiety amongst black people.

I remember something the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt once said. He noted that “trigger warnings” actually increase anxiety. One example he provided was that when test subjects were warned that they were entering a dangerous neighborhood, their anxiety increased. Trigger warnings don’t set people at ease. They make things worse.

So what do we suppose happens to black people when we tell them their nation is racist? Serious anxiety, that’s what. Such claims just encourage black people to assume the system is rigged, and thus not put forward the effort necessary to achieve something. This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the mental illness that is being inflicted on black people. Although, clearly not all of them.

And the idea that America is white supremacist and white nationalist is patently absurd. We’ve worked harder than most countries to reduce racism. And I find it ironic that Tamika Mallory, who accuses all of America of being white supremacist, has actual ties to a hate group. Specifically, the Nation of Islam, one of the few black supremacist groups recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center. This is one of the reasons she was forced out of the Women’s March.

Oftentimes when activists throw around nebulous terms such as “White Supremacy”, and “Systemic Racism” are just code for economic inequalities between races. The mistake made by people who utter these pat phrases is that they presume that inequality must be the result of injustice. This is so intellectually lazy that it’s painful. More serious critical thinkers will acknowledge that systemic issues can contribute to inequality. But they would also have to acknowledge that personal choices also contribute. Like, say, having kids out of wedlock.

And lastly, the idea that Target should be in the streets with the activists is the most entitled thing I’ve ever heard. Particularly because the reason they aren’t getting support from many of us is their own fault. They took an incident on which there was near 100% agreement on, and started pushing absurd, loony, radical politics into it which immediately drove away anyone with an ounce of sense. And even more of us were repelled when the fires broke out.

But I think this is actually all of secondary importance. The most important takeaway from the lengthy harangue is that very few real solutions were offered. Apart from “arrest the cops”, by which she means arrest cops all over the country who unjustly kill a black person. Of course, since 235 black people were killed by cops last year (the overwhelming majority of which were justified) that wouldn’t result in many arrests. Apart from that one little tidbit, there’s no explanation from her of how to solve “white supremacy” and so forth.

Listening to the protestors isn’t much more helpful. Apart from the typical “Dismantle the Patriarchy” and “Dismantle White Supremacy” stuff, the only specific policy request I saw was
“Defund the Police.”. Which is a clear demonstration of the protester’s limited grasp on reality. Defunding the police would cause a surge in crime, most of which would be concentrated in minority communities. This isn’t something you do if you think Black Lives Matter™. Police reform would require an investment in better recruitment and training and certain equipment (body cams, etc.) which would cost money. So reform probably requires more money, not less.

Apart from these minor demands, I see very little in the way of specific policy goals. This reminds me of the Occupy movement, although that was a bit different since that movement seemed to have millions of various tiny demands from the assorted splinter factions that showed up to its rallies. This movement doesn’t appear to have any significant, tangible demands at all. But the thing they do have in common with Occupy is that there is no cohesive message.

This ambiguity manifested in the somewhat ill-fated discussion on The Breakfast Club between Charlamagne Tha God and Rush Limbaugh. I was pleased that it wasn’t a complete $#!+show. But poor old Charlamagne did a great job of showing everything that’s wrong with the rhetoric of the activists currently in the street.

He made the mistake of claiming that because of white privilege, what happened to George Floyd would not happen to a white man. Except, that it did happen. To Tony Timpa in Dallas. Who was also cuffed and pinned to the ground, and eventually died. This didn’t make national news, and the cops involved were convicted of nothing. So the idea that white people would have privilege in a case like this is sort of unproven. If anything, the reality is quite the opposite.

Having said that, it does leave the door wide open for certain police reforms. Because it’s not just a black/white issue. Literally anyone can be the victim of a brutal cop. And finding ways to prevent brutality would therefore benefit everyone. But the idea that lethal use of force happens disproportionately to blacks is false. Approximately 25% of crime is committed by blacks, and approximately 25% of people killed by cops are black. So the higher rate of deaths caused by police in the black community is really just a symptom of crime rates. The real solution to that would be reducing criminality. But activists appear to be more interested in reducing the number of police, which would probably just make things worse.

Charlamagne went on to claim white supremacy was done by design and the whole purpose was to marginalize black people. This is a true statement in Mississippi. Fifty years ago. It’s not so true today. White supremacist nations don’t have Affirmative Action programs and various public assistance programs for minorities. And they sure as hell don’t elect black presidents.

He also said we must “Dismantle the mechanism of white supremacy.” Whatever that means. It’s certainly not the David Duke/Richard Spencer definition of white supremacy. That type of white supremacy, which assumes white people are genetically superior, has been relegated to the fringes of society. It’s followers are treated with scorn and derision by virtually everyone. That type of white supremacy has effectively already been dismantled. So clearly he must be talking about something else. But he never got around to defining it.

If we can’t specifically identify which parts of the system are white supremacist, how can we know what to dismantle? Unless, he thinks the entire system is white supremacist. He wouldn’t be the only one. Bernie Sanders rather strangely claimed that our system is “top to bottom racist”. Yet another assertion that went unexplained, by the way. And the sheer volume of “revolutionary fist” avatars I see on Twitter posting in such ridiculous hashtags as “#boycottAmerikkka” suggests that there are many involved in this discussion who want to dismantle the entire thing.

But no one says what they’d replace it with. Although the “quiet part” with the fist activists is that they want to replace everything with socialism or communism. Tamika Mallory hinted at this as well in an interview on Democracy Now, when she vaguely placed blame on “capitalism”. And numerous activists have openly stated on Twitter and other places that their true goal is replacing capitalism. Apparently, George Floyd just provided them with a convenient excuse.

The problem with this is that, historically, systems like that have produced greater injustice than others. These systems typically result in starvation, poverty, and oppression (See: Gulag Archipelago. See Also: Xinjiang Re-education Camps) And they really aren’t good for minority populations. Just ask the Tatars or the Uyghurs. So if you think Black Lives Matter ™, this isn’t a good idea at all.

So that’s a non-starter. And if that isn’t the solution, then the only plausible approach is the gradual reforms we’ve achieved over the years using the powers and rights built into our constitution. But we can’t do that if no one will bother to tell us what the problem is. This is why Occupy fizzled, and it’s why this movement will fail too.

They need to come up with specifics. Right now, all we’ve got are spurious claims of widespread racism, which are inconsistent with known, empirical data. And all of this spurred on by a murder which we haven’t even proven was racially motivated yet. Derek Chauvin could have just been a bad cop. There were many complaints against him, including some from white people. It is plausible he was just a brute, and not necessarily racist.

So if the current movement doesn’t want to fizzle out like Occupy, the first objective is to unload the most radical views. We’re not replacing our system with a brutal, repressive ideology that was rendered obsolete in the early nineties. We’re not going to have massive reparations or wealth redistribution. Similar attempts made in other countries have historically ended in disaster. Police and other reforms are possible. But we need to know what specific reforms the protesters want, or there’s no conversation.

One of the oft-repeated themes from black writers is that black people understand white America better than white America understands them. Another is that white people can’t see the privilege and systemic oppression. I don’t know if that’s true. It does seem to vastly underestimate the ability of white people to have empathy or be able to understand a new concept, which I find a little offensive. But let’s assume that these things are true. That would mean that white people cannot fix the problem without someone explaining it.

But the activists in the street appear either unwilling or unable to explain it. Infuriatingly, asking for an explanation or evidence tends to result in accusations of white privilege or racism. So this leaves us at an impasse. Because we are also often told that white people are responsible for fixing these problems. But if we accept the assumption that white people can’t see it, we can’t fix anything if no one takes the time to explain where the racism is.

We know that simple disparate impact or inequality is not in and of itself evidence of racism. We know that completely dismantling the system and replacing it with something radically different is off the table. The only option is for the dissidents clamoring for justice to get specific. Tell us what you’d do to fix the system. Get past repeating these vagaries such as “Dismantle White Supremacy” or “Dismantle The Patriarchy”. Tell us what you think is wrong with the system and how you’d fix it. Then the rest of us will push back against anything you say that seems incorrect or unworkable. And it’s time to start accepting that challenging these ideas are not evidence of racism and are not evidence of “White Fragility”™. This is how real progress is made. Through dialogue. Not by dubious accusations and vituperative rhetoric. And certainly not by setting cities on fire.

The Real Reason The Protests Are Out of Control

In 1992, the Rodney King riots broke out when four officers were acquitted of beating a black man. Many people are drawing a comparison between that and the riots in response to the apparent murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But the circumstances are noticeably different in one particular way.

In 1992, the rioters at least had the sense to wait until after the trial before rioting. In this case, even though there was broad agreement that this was a murder (or at least a crime of some sort) and it was a foregone conclusion that the officer involved would be arrested, uprisings have broken out even before the process of arrest and trial has even had a chance to work.

Some supporters of Black Lives Matter and related organizations claim that the protests were necessary in order to push the department to arrest Derek Chauvin. There is no proof of this. Not only is it possible that the MPD would have arrested and charged Derek Chauvin, there are recent cases, such as the conviction of Amber Guyger (who killed Botham Jean in his own apartment) which happened without this level of unrest.

Some argue that this case is more egregious than others we’ve seen, but this argument rings false as well. People have drawn a comparison to the case of Eric Garner, which seems similar because the suspect apparently suffocated and a surprisingly large number of cops responded to a pissant crime which barely seemed to warrant the attention of even one police officer. But although there was outcry in that case, the response was not this extreme.

And there was another case that was far more egregious, the shooting of Walter Scott. He was shot in the back by a North Charleston police officer, who is now in jail. The response to that case was muted compared to this one. So the assertion that the George Floyd case is worse than others is ahistorical. The cause of the animosity must be something else.

Many inhabitants of the Twitterverse appear to think that this is happening because people have finally had enough with racism. George Floyd is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. This narrative is flawed, though, since anyone familiar with the facts would be able to see that America is not racist. A long time has passed since the days of slavery and Jim Crow. America is not only one of the least racist countries in the world, but racism has consistently declined over the years. Besides, there is not yet any proof that the motive in this case was racism. Derek Chauvin could just be a giant douchebag.

All too often, people proposing this have ulterior motives. This is usually just a weak attempt to invalidate the American system, a system which works better than most, if not all, in history. This narrative is frequently advanced by people whose ultimate objective is to replace the system with something radically different. So the proper response to the “racist” narrative should be a dramatic roll of the eyes.

But I digress. Other supporters of the dissent point to disproportionate police violence, against black people. 25% of the people shot by police are black, even though black people are only 13% of the population. This stat is misleading, though, since even though black people are only 13% of the population, 25% of the crime happens in the black community. So the violence is proportional to crime rates, as I’ve pointed out before.

The real cause is something else. One point that the British writer Douglas Murray has made regarding the seeming increase in extremism around the world is that when the economics fail, people turn to more loony ideas. For example, in the wake of the great recession, the Occupy movement broke out. We’ve also seen the emergence of white supremacists, like Richard Spencer. Similar extremism erupted in the Great Depression, which fueled the flames of World War II.

Right now the economy is trash, thanks to the coronavirus. And people being out of work naturally increases fear and frustration, which can easily turn to rage. George Floyd may have been the spark, but the economic downturn is the real fuel for the fire. The activists are focused on the wrong target, but eventually that will diminish, because it’s happened before.

One of the reasons Black Lives Matter seemed to wither away over the past few years is that they moved away from the reasonable work of ensuring police accountability and began merely echoing leftist talking points, oftentimes based in a reductive, revisionist view of American history. Such as “America is based on slavery and genocide”, a talking point I debunked at some length recently.

When this happened, more rational people who wanted to ensure police accountability, but didn’t buy the Howard Zinn view of American history, abandoned the movement. The sheer volume of “AmeriKKKa” tweets I see online tells me that this ludicrous rhetoric will again damage the credibility of BLM and although we may see more police accountability, some of the more extremist ideas being pushed by these activists will be reined in by the more sensible amongst us.

This is good, because if the true source of the uproar is the virally induced recession, then the American government is not where the fury should be focused. Even though there were numerous missteps by federal and state politicians that potentially made the virus worse, they do not hold primary responsibility.

The ultimate blame lies with the Chinese government. The virus emerged from the polluted, unsanitary conditions their system produced. As I’ve noted before, this is typical of communist governments and noticeably less true in the democratic, capitalist free world. Hopefully, people will redirect this ire away from false narratives on America and towards the real threat.

But I digress. Again. The madness of these crowds, which is truly the result of the downturn resulting from COVID-19, is evidence that the cost of the lockdown may be starting to exceed the benefit. The argument in favor of ending lockdowns has always been that the cost of staying closed, which can consist of deaths from other causes (suicide, domestic abuse, etc.) and destroyed lives from lengthy unemployment, will exceed the cost in lives from spikes in COVID cases. With anarchy breaking out all over the country, we may have reached that point.

And there may be one peculiar silver lining to this strife. The people in the streets are not locked down and not socially distanced, although they are taking precautions with hand sanitizer and masks. So we’ll be able to see if the non-lockdown model used by the Swedish works. In the wake of this turmoil, we’ll be able to see if they cause a spike in COVID cases and deaths. If they do not, then it’s time to end the lockdown.

Even if there is a spike, though, it may be time to end the lockdown. Because even though the anger we see in the streets was set off by George Floyd, it is not the true origin of the anger. If George Floyd’s death hadn’t happened, something else would’ve set people off. Truly, it already did, since there have been other protests over the lockdown in recent weeks.

So Derek Chauvin has been arrested and will be tried, which is good. But the potential for riots and demonstrations won’t go away even if he’s convicted. They won’t go away until the economy returns to normal. So it’s time to restart the economy and end the lockdown. Although we should reenter the world cautiously, masked and socially distanced, we have to reenter the world. If we don’t restart the economy soon, the furor will boil over and the rioters will just burn the economy down.

The Internet Is Right That George Floyd Was Murdered And Wrong About Almost Everything Else

A cop stuck his knee in George Floyd’s neck for about five minutes. Despite the fact that he was handcuffed and begging for the cop to stop. He didn’t, and when Floyd went limp, the cops called an ambulance. Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Now there have been some, many in fact, cops caught on tape whose actions may have appeared questionable to some, but in fact were completely justified. This is not one of those cases. Putting a knee in the neck is a not unheard of way to subdue a suspect. But when the suspect is cuffed and on the ground, it is not necessary. Certainly not for five minutes. There’s a reason this move is no longer sanctioned by most Minnesota law enforcement agencies.

There are always a few people saying “we don’t know what happened before the tape.” In many cases in the past, that has been a relevant statement. But not in this one. It appears, from the things the officers say, that he was resisting getting into the car. But no amount of resistance justifies sticking a knee into the back of someone’s skull for five minutes.

This is a murder. Even if he didn’t actually intend to kill him, it is a murder. The law holds that gross negligence is the same as intent. So even if the officer wasn’t trying to kill him, he of all people should have known that the force he was using was excessive, and his willingness to continue doing it is grossly negligent. I’d expect him to be charged with second or third degree murder, since there’s no evidence of the premeditation that would be necessary for first degree murder. And the cops who failed to stop Derek Chauvin should be charged as accessories.

Even though it’s abundantly clear that this was murder, what’s not at all confirmed is if this was racially motivated. But, predictably, people all over the Internet, especially the cesspool that is Twitter, are all too quick to blame all police, systemic racism, the history of Jim Crow and slavery, and the entire United States collectively for this single incident.

The Young Turks‘s Cenk Uygar ranted at great length about how all cops are racist across the country and are trained to be thugs and trained to believe that black lives don’t matter on his YouTube channel. He sneered at any attempt to proclaim that police departments across the country might be a bit different. And he pompously declared that anyone who was against the Black Lives Matter movement is racist. Amongst other things. It’s a rather lengthy diatribe full of all sorts of generalizations, smears, and straw man arguments.

It should be patently obvious that different cities and different states have noticeably different police departments. They’re not all structured the same way and they’re not all trained the same way. Sloppily conflating all of them is an exercise in intellectual laziness. Perhaps he should follow the example of Samuel Sinyangwe, who pointed out (although I haven’t confirmed this personally) that the Minneapolis police department has a poor record of violence and Derek Chauvin had many complaints against him. At least he’s willing to acknowledge that the problem may be local. Certain police forces have a bad reputation, like Baltimore. But not all.

Many activists, including protestors in Minneapolis, made the spurious charge that cops are more dangerous than COVID. Cops killed about 1,000 people in 2019, according to the Washington Post, which was about the same as previous years. That’s actually not that many. More people die per year from freezing to death (about 1,300) than are killed by police. It would take the police departments of the country 100 years to do the same damage as COVID. And a review of the data on Mapping Police Violence shows that the overwhelming majority of incidents where the police kill someone are justified. As usual, the activists exaggerate the threat. Which helps no one.

Various other inhabitants of the Twitterverse belabor the fact that about 25% of the people killed by police are black, even though they’re only about 13% of the population. Therefore, AmeriKKKa is racist. Checkmate. But the fact is, about a quarter of crime is committed by black people, so if a quarter of people killed by police are black, that is in direct proportion to the crimes committed. Which is where it should be. So this rhetoric falls flat too.

Still others draw a false equivalency with Dylan Roof, the Charlottesville mass shooter. They point to the fact that he was arrested without incident and was given a meal, implying that cops would go easy on a white man. But this is a ridiculous comparison. Dylan Roof didn’t resist at all, and the cops involved are literally different people. They’re in a different city and a different state. This particular slice of the Twitter mob is making the same mistake Cenk made and judging all police by the actions of a few. And by the way, if you don’t give food to a kid that hasn’t eaten in days, it’s a civil rights violation. How do you think people would feel if Roof got off on a technicality?

Others push a meme of Colin Kaepernick kneeling next to the officer kneeling on George Floyd. Personally, I never cared about Kaepernick’s kneeling. He’s allowed to say and do what he wants. And I’m uncomfortable with the fact that he could never get a job in the NFL again, since firing or refusing to hire someone due to their political beliefs is wrong.

My problem with Kaepernick was that he, like much of Twitter, started pushing excessively woke and revolutionary (Read: Reductive, revisionist, and cognitively bankrupt) rhetoric. He typifies the flawed rhetoric of Black Lives Matter activists, who exaggerate the threat and push false narratives. The way to push back against detritus like this is to challenge the flawed narrative with facts and logic, not to silence it.

But I digress. The Kaepernick meme repeats the mistake of assuming that this was racially motivated and implies, as Kaepernick falsely did, that black people receive disproportionate violence at the hand of police. Something I’ve already disproven.

Still others are even more laughable. Many pushed a meme purporting to show Chauvin in a “Make Whites Great Again Hat”. This was later debunked by Snopes and the Washington Post. It was actually internet troll Jonathan Riches. Others claimed that Chauvin was praised at a rally with President Trump. This was debunked too. These fails should, if anything, demonstrate why one shouldn’t get carried away. You’ll start believing any old nonsense.

This is where activists go off of the rails. Instead of pushing for justice in this specific case, they try to push narratives that America is white supremacist. The truth is, America is one of the least racist places on the planet. They also push the perception that violence against black people is on the rise. It’s not. Violence has declined across the board for forty years or more. This is the safest time to be alive in American history. Even with the coronavirus.

At least one meme out there appears to at least acknowledge that there isn’t an increase in violence. It claims (I’m paraphrasing) that there isn’t more racism, we’re just catching more on tape. This is partly true. There isn’t more racism. Racism has been declining for decades. But where the meme gets it wrong in assuming this incident was racist. That is not proven yet. All that is proven is that a cop used excessive force. There is no proof as to motive. It is entirely possible that this cop is merely a brute who would use excessive force on any suspect, regardless of race. And attempting to broadly apply that to the entire department or all police departments is precisely the sort of bigotry that activists purport to be opposed to.

It is important to be careful when condemning police violence. In the past, certain cases, such as Walter Scott and Botham Jean were obviously unjustified shootings. But others were not. I marveled today at the activists in Minneapolis with their hands up in the “Hands up, don’t shoot” posture. They still don’t appear to realize that Michael Brown never had his hands up. The Justice Department reported, under Eric Holder’s leadership, that two of the witnesses who claimed this later admitted to lying. The third one prevaricated when confronted.

Some of the cases protested by Black Lives Matter and other activists have been actual illegal acts. Others were tragic mistakes, such as the cop who shot Tamir Rice, not knowing that his toy gun was not real. Others have ended up being entirely justified. So treating all of these cases as identical and calling them police murders is counterproductive.

You may have noticed that Black Lives Matter has been out of the news for a while. I’m sure part of it was their tendency to back narratives that ended up being false. And their willingness to blame all police and all of society, in spite of empirical evidence sufficient to override the false impression a few anecdotal incidents may give, severely damaged their credibility. And therefore damaged any momentum towards reform.

There are always things that can be improved, but if the rhetoric of activists rages out of control and ignores facts, the inevitable result will be push back from opponents and apathy from all others, who don’t know who to believe. If activists (including Twitter slacktivists) don’t stick to the truth, they sabotage their own credibility. An activist who truly desires change will carefully analyze the facts, and not lash out in ill-considered rage.

Coronovirus Actually Shows The Failings of Communism, Not Capitalism

There’s been endless pontificating about how the coronavirus outbreak shows how capitalism has failed. Climate activist Greta Thunberg (and apparent virus expert, at least as far as CNN is concerned) insisted that this proves that “our societies aren’t very resilient.” Leftist writers at Salon.com and Al-Jazeera insist that this proves capitalism failed. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other progressives are attempting to use the crisis as a reason to institute socialist reforms.

And a few days ago, the rather absurd hashtag #RIPCapitalism trended in response to news that Jeff Bezos was well on his way to becoming the world’s first trillionaire. Because Amazon is making a killing delivering much needed items to people sequestered in their homes. It’s not clear how a capitalist making money by providing for the populace during a pandemic is a failure of capitalism, but I never considered Twitter to be a particularly logical place.

The fallout from the virus isn’t necessarily a failure of capitalism. America and many European nations were caught off guard, but the capitalist nations of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan took action early and weathered the storm fairly well. So this hasn’t been because of any inherent weakness of capitalism. It’s just that certain capitalist countries didn’t react as quickly and as well as others. It’s about specific policies, not about the economic systems in those countries. It does indicate a failure in communism, though. Specifically, in the ultimate source of the virus (and a surprisingly large number of others), China.

It’s believed that the virus came from bats. Bats that are sold for food in the somewhat less than sanitary “wet markets.” But why do the Chinese eat bats? Bats are notoriously unsanitary. They’re basically flying rodents. It’s well known that spores from bat guano can cause cave disease. This is primarily a lung disease, but it can also get into the brain and cause significantly altered behavior. This is where the term “bat shit crazy” comes from. So what could possibly motivate someone to eat something like this?

The answer has to do with the numerous famines that came from Mao’s failed communist policies. Policies such as the ill-fated Four Pests Campaign, where the Chinese attempted to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. Eliminating sparrows in particular was a huge mistake. The Chinese government believed that because sparrows would occasionally eat crops in the field, that killing them would increase crop yields. What they failed to realize is that sparrows also eat insects that eat crops. Without them, these insects ran wild and crop yields fell.

This and other policy failures resulted in mass starvation. So, when the more common meats in the human diet were in short supply, the Chinese government encouraged farmers to raise certain wild animals as food, including bats. Although food is no longer in short supply in China, at least not as much as it once was, the practice of eating bats and other strange animals became embedded in the culture. It’s actually become something of a bourgeois thing to do, and not the act of desperation it would have been decades ago. And if Mao hadn’t bumbled so many times, it’s likely that it would not be a part of their culture.

This is not the only failure of government policy that contributes to China’s poor health. Despite the outward face that China puts on with cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong which appear to be the picture of modernity, health hazards are common in China. They have out of control air pollution. They lose thousands of workers per year in coal mines due to unsafe conditions. And the wet markets aren’t the only unsanitary conditions in China. Chinese rivers are full of trash and sewage, for example.

Similarly unsafe conditions supposedly exist in China’s viral research labs. Some reports suggest that a research lab in Wuhan may be the ultimate source of the infection. Scientists don’t believe the virus was engineered, but the possibility that it was a naturally occurring virus that was being studied in the lab has not been ruled out.

It’s obviously more likely that a virus being studied in a lab would be naturally occurring one. Most viruses studied in labs are not engineered. At least, one would hope. I think we would all prefer that people not spend much time engineering viruses. But there have been reports that the lab in Wuhan had atrocious biohazard controls, and the Chinese, unsurprisingly, have been very much against having international inspectors review the site. This has naturally aroused suspicions of a cover up. It’s not uncommon for an authoritarian communist government to prioritize face-saving over problem solving.

China’s communist government appears unable to keep things clean. It reminds me of the utter rot and environmental degradation we saw in places like East Germany or Czechoslovakia before and shortly after the iron curtain fell. The communist governments of Eastern Europe were an absolute mess. And so is China. It’s not surprising that so many viruses have come from there.

The top down nature of their government concentrates too much power in too few hands, so when one of the communist party bosses makes a mistake, there are not sufficient checks and balances in the system to correct for it. In addition, the Chinese government has no respect for basic human rights, like free speech. If the people were able to criticize the government, they would be able to restrain them from these missteps.

Instead, the government suppresses anything that might make them look bad. But this disaster may be too big for them to suppress the truth. We already know they silenced the scientist who discovered the virus, and he ultimately died from the disease. And the New York Times also reports that the party silenced citizens in Wuhan who spoke out against the government.

This reminds me of the time the Soviet Union tried to suppress the truth of the Chernoybl disaster and spread misinformation. But the disaster was too big to cover up, and the truth eventually got out. Mikhail Gorbechev, the last general secretary of the communist party of the Soviet Union believed that the catastrophe may have been the thing that finally brought the Soviets down. And many, such as renowned historian Niall Ferguson, believe that COVID-19 may be China’s Chernobyl.

Many critics of China are proposing all sorts of sanctions to seek redress from China. Some have even proposed cancelling the debts owed to China. This is probably a bad idea, since it would damage the credit of the countries who do so and also the global debt markets. Others propose tariffs or seizure of Chinese assets. Many companies are considering moving their operations in China to other countries, perhaps even back to their home countries. And countries who were heavily involved in China’s Belt and Road infrastructure plan are threatening not to pay China for the work done as recompense for the damage done by the virus. These things could decimate China economically. And the same way economic troubles contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the blowback from COVID-19 could cause the Chinese communist party to come crashing down.

The Chinese government knows this, and their propaganda arms are cranking up and pushing back against criticism. Early on, China attempted to float the idea that the virus actually came from the United States. This is obviously balderdash, but it’s something that many Chinese people believe, since Chinese censors would block any information not approved by the government. The party has more recently insisted that the West stop finger pointing. And, predictably and tiresomely, they have tried to push the idea that the criticism is “racist”.

But as long as the criticism is directed at the Chinese government, and the Chinese Communist Party, it is not and can not be racist. Criticism of policies and mistakes is inherently unracist. We would literally be judging these institutions and the people who run them by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

There is a chance this will cause the collapse of the party. Which I hope is true, primarily for the sake of ordinary Chinese citizens who live under their boot. The Chernobyl disaster was a failure of communism and exposed in the Soviet Union the inefficiencies, inherent weaknesses, and vast corruption that seems inevitable with communist countries. The coronavirus may do the same thing for China.

An open, democratic, and free society would be far less likely to produce these viruses. Capitalist countries are generally more sanitary than others. A free China could finally produce a government that could clean up the messes in China. The virus may finally expose the inherent weaknesses of China’s communist system, and finally free it’s people the way Eastern Europe was liberated thirty years ago.

The United States Is Not Based on Slavery and Genocide

So when left leaning types have nothing better to do, they tend to drop deuces all over America. Last week liberal pundit Anand Giridharadas slammed Americans for being “freedom-obsessed” even though we’re “a country founded on slavery and genocide.” Ta-Nehisi Coates has famously claimed that “slavery made America”. Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer recently for her dubious work in the New York Times frequently panned “1619 Project” included in her essay the oft-repeated throw away line “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” As with most people who echo this odd sentiment, she never bothers to explain what they mean by that. And of course, failed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called America “racist from top to bottom.”

Honest historians acknowledge that slavery was a significant part of the economy in past centuries. But how much of the growth in the North, South, and West in those centuries can truly be attributed to slavery is a subject of much debate. Clearly, much of the southern economy was driven by slavery. And there were bankers and businessmen in the much larger northern economy who benefited from slavery. Bankers would make money financing the slave trade and certain mill owners used southern cotton in their textile mills.

But if the northern economy received most of their income from slavery, why were northerners so intensely opposed to new slave states? We are often told, often by left leaning historians, that many in the North were not motivated by moral reasons to end slavery, but economic reasons. If that is true, then it suggests that they were not deriving most of their income from slavery.

And this would not be surprising. The burgeoning northern economy in those days was characterized by a move away from slave labor. And it was five times larger than the southern economy. So, it is true that some of the American economy was based on slavery, but to state that all or most of it was is not a statement consistent with known facts.

Honest historians also acknowledge that there were wars with indian tribes as well, although they stop short of calling them genocide. The Indian Wars started for a variety of reasons. In some cases the United States started the wars, and in others a conflict was started by an indian tribe. These wars were messy, and usually consisted of the two sides trading horrible atrocities. No one is really clean. For every massacre at Wounded Knee there is a Fort Mims Massacre.

Land was taken in those wars, some of which might have been justified and some of which might not have, depending on the circumstances of the particular conflict. But at worst, this was conquest, not genocide.

And it’s well known that the overwhelming majority of native deaths came from the spread of disease. Native tribes, having never come into contact with smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, or any number of other European diseases, succumbed in droves. If unintentionally spreading disease is genocide, then the Chinese have a little explaining to do with COVID-19.

Also, much of the land occupied by America was not conquered, but purchased from the natives. And not every tribe was conquered, some willingly joined with the United States. In some cases this was entirely voluntary, in other cases this was in self-defense, such as when the Crow sided with the United States seeking protection from the Lakota tribe that was aggressively trying to seize the central plains.

The point is, reality is far more complicated and nuanced than the somewhat intellectually lazy and broad assertions that are repeatedly spewed by left-leaning pundits. America has dark parts of her history, but truthfully no more so (and frequently less so) than other nations. This does not make us unique. And the idea that these bad chapters are the only thing that shapes our history is something that an agenda driven activist would attempt to bandy about, not an honest student of history.

As for this idea that racism is in the DNA of America, since no one bothers to explain what that means, I’ll identify it for them, I guess. The DNA of America is the Declaration of Independence. The most pure rendition of our basic principles. There is no part of this declaration which evinces intrinsic racism or a desire for slavery or conquest. On the contrary, these principles produced an environment that would gradually allow us to move away from these antiquated ideas that existed for most of human history.

We’ve never quite lived up to our highest ideals. But who has? It is normal for people to fall short of high standards. The founders obviously fell short in many ways. And the higher the standards, the easier it is to fall short. One could argue that if we ever succeeded in living up to our standards, it would just mean that our standards weren’t high enough.

What is true is that over the years we’ve drawn consistently, incrementally closer to that original ideal. The original Constitution encapsulated some of the ideas from the Declaration. It also retained certain sections that were inconsistent with the DNA of America, such as an allowance of the existence of slavery. This is because the original Constitution was a compromise, agreed upon by thirteen very different colonies. Perfection was not possible. But over the years, the Constitution has evolved to become an increasingly closer representation of our true founding document.

One thing that these pundits frequently miss is the simple fact that the overwhelming majority of wealth and economic growth in the United States has happened in the past fifty years. After the passage of civil rights laws. After the end of segregation and Jim Crow. Well after the end of slavery and the Indian wars. If anything, one could argue that our economy is not based on slavery or genocide or racism, because it only grew faster after we started to move away from those practices. As we drew closer to the ideal of freedom set down on July 4, 1776, things continued to get better.

Some, such as Bernie Sanders, point to the wage and wealth gap as evidence of the legacy of slavery and genocide and oppression. But the wage and wealth inequality argument falls apart when we see that the wage and wealth gap actually increased after the end of Jim Crow, redlining, and other such practices. Although it does coincide with a large increase in single motherhood. These gaps, and their true underlying causes, should be addressed, but assuming the cause is events of previous centuries is sloppy reasoning.

And one thing that makes these more negative interpretations of American history highly suspect is the fact that the people pushing the idea of America being based on slavery, genocide, and racism are of a particular political mindset. Not just liberal, because true liberals would be interested in setting the record straight, not engaging in reductive, historical revisionism. The people I’m talking about are true leftists, not liberals. People who want to change the American system into something radically different. And they definitely have a motive to distill American history down in the most negative way possible.

When you have a system that, despite numerous flaws, generally works well, and better than most (if not all) other systems in human history, it’s difficult to convince people that radical change is necessary. The only way to do this would be to somehow invalidate the system. To claim that the system was the result of theft and oppression and not productivity and innovation, for example. This is especially true if the alternative system being proposed is something of Marxist origin with an extremely poor record of success.

These same people pan our gradual progression towards an increasingly perfect union as “incrementalism”. But incrementalism is how the world works, if you believe in peacefully negotiated progress. Our system has not only produced more freedom than others, but has constantly improved as a result of collective action by all Americans of all races, national origins, and ethnicities. Incrementalism is what happens when these disparate groups carefully debate improvements to society. Radical change typically only happens with violence and oppression, as we saw throughout the twentieth century in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. And this typically produced the opposite of progress.

The proposed alternative by the variously woke of the world is a system that has not only not produced justice and equality, but has consistently made things worse. This was seen in the Soviet Union and various Marxist revolutions throughout the world. This was more recently seen in Zimbabwe and Venezuela, which were crushed under the corruption that appears to inevitably result from socialism.

These attempts at revisionism, often from misguided acolytes of the polemicist Howard Zinn, do not seek to correct the record from a history that has at times been somewhat whitewashed. Instead, they seek to interpret the facts of history in the least charitable way possible. Instead of seeking the truth, they seek to create new truth that is convenient for their ideology.

The United States is not based on racism, slavery, or genocide. These do not exist in our true DNA. Instead, the people who have been tasked with realizing the vision have had the common human condition of being imperfect. And have fallen short of the ideals. But we are always drawing closer to them. So, whatever problems we may be facing, they are not reasons to change radically. Instead, we should keep continually reforming as we always have, and drawing closer to the goal of becoming a true reflection of the DNA of the United States as laid out in the Declaration of Independence.

The Progressive’s Sudden Moderation Gives Me Hope For The Millennial and Zoomer Generations

So the progressives of the world have spent a lot of time dragging the new class of progressive politicians in recent weeks. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Katie Porter, Pramila Jayapal, and Ro Khanna all chose to vote for the CARES act, according to the Intercept. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, once a strong Nancy Pelosi critic, has softened some of her views and called her “Mama Bear”, to the horror of many of her supporters who despise so-called “corporate” Democrats. And, of course, plenty of hardcore progressives are annoyed that Bernie Sanders chose to back Joe Biden. Several progressive commentators, like YouTube’s Jimmy Dore, have been slamming the new crop for selling out, and condemn them as no longer being progressives, just political climbers.

One of the most curious things about the new class of progressives (not the politicians, their supporters) is just how obstinate they are. We saw this four years ago with #BernieorBust. When the primaries didn’t go their way, they refused to support Hillary Clinton. Republicans were much more practical, and chose to get behind their candidate (with the exception of a relative few NeverTrumpers), despite many having reservations. This is how Trump was able to win.

More recently, this manifested itself in opposition to the CARES act. Although most progressives voted yes (the sole exception apparently being AOC), progressive voters decried the bill as a corporate bailout. Despite the fact that there were numerous necessary and important provisions to help the general public, the fact that it had a few things they didn’t like was a dealbreaker.

But what they’re missing is that this is how things get done. Every big bill (unless there’s a rare majority for one party in both houses) is a compromise. There will always be a few provisions that this or that group doesn’t like. A bill that one group thought was perfect would be unacceptable to others. Welcome to Democracy. This is how the sausage is made. Maybe it’s gross sometimes, but there’s no other way to do it.

Progressives apparently want each bill to be the legislative equivalent of succulent filet mignon, slowly roasted to perfection. That never happens. Each bill that passes is at best venison. Generally good, but a bit tough and hard to swallow, and with a funny, gamey aftertaste. There is no perfect bill, because the only way to pass most bills is to put in provisions suggested by various parties. This means there will be things that liberals, conservatives, and progressives don’t like about the bill.

The progressives didn’t sell out. They’re just picking their battles. Holding up a relief bill as important as the CARES act would’ve been political suicide. Making nice with Pelosi and other (relatively) moderate Democrats is necessary to get things done. And if you want to remove Trump from office, Biden is the only option now. They’re slowly realizing that they do have to make deals and compromise and occasionally do things they don’t like in order to make things happen.

Otherwise, they’d be voted out. Uncompromising people don’t stay in office very long. And if they’re removed, their ability to make change evaporates. And since there have been reports of some of them sliding in popularity in their districts, they may need to stop being so intractable to stay relevant.

This gives me hope for Millennials and Zoomers. They are heavily on board with the new progressives, often radically, militantly so. And Bernie likes to claim that he won the future by getting younger voters. More moderate people find this frightening, since many of the ideas they’re pushing have failed spectacularly in the past.

But it’s normal for people to get more practical as they get older. Many people are extreme in their views in their youth. But as their ideas are tested by the reality of growing up, getting jobs, paying bills, and having a family, they tend to moderate their views, and are more willing to accept half-measures, compromises, and deals to get things done.

The sudden pragmatism of the progressives is evidence that they’re starting to realize that they have to do some horse trading to get things done. They can’t be too radical, because it will make them ineffective. And they will have to go along with the establishment types occasionally to get support on their own bills. So if they can do it, maybe their followers will too. Maybe the younger generations will modify their views as they mature, and unload some of their more ridiculous ideas. Once they’ve reconciled their ideas with reality, maybe they’ll become more sensible and less radical.

Now, this sudden compromise doesn’t mean the progressives are suddenly moderates. AOC will still push ideas that most of us thought were rendered obsolete in 1991. Omar and Tlaib will still push virulent and bizarre anti-Israel rhetoric. Porter will still use her committee seat as a campaign platform to produce headlines by berating CEOs with loaded questions. But this willingness to deal suggests that as they gain more experience in the way the world truly works, they may unload some of the more radical ideas for more rational ones. And hopefully their supporters will too.

The French Doctor Who Wanted To Test Coronavirus Vaccines in Africa May Have Been On To Something

There was a bit of a row a couple of days ago when a French doctor suggested experimenting with a COVID-19 vaccine in Africa. This immediately resulted in social media doing what it does best. And that is broadcasting mass-produced outrage. Often in the form of badly spelled tweets. Usually butthurting over colonialism and racism and whatever. The standard Twitter rage mob.

One tweet that was spelled correctly was from Star Wars star John Boyega, who said “Africa isn’t a testing lab you pieces of $#!+.”. Okay, I changed that last bit. Similarly angry statements emerged from all over, followed by the usual calls for cancellation and whatever. Naturally, the French guy surrendered. And by that I mean apologized. Now, maybe he was being racist, maybe he was just being clumsy, as he claimed. I don’t care. But he may have been on to something.

Here’s what the doctor said. “Should we not do this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments and no ICUs?” I don’t think this is quite true. There are some masks, treatments and ICUs. But what is true is that the medical infrastructure of many parts of Africa badly lags behind the rest of the world. And if a deadly virus gets loose in Africa, the results could be absolutely devastating. Hospitals are frequently undersupplied in Africa. And even wealthy Africans could be at risk.

An example of this is Zozoro Makambe, a prominent broadcaster in Zimbabwe. He returned to Zimbabwe from a visit to New York, and within a week or so was complaining of a fever. Doctors initially believed that he did not have coronavirus, but he was eventually admitted. What followed was a disaster. A statement to the Daily News of Zimbabwe details how his family desperately tried to scramble to get the necessary resources to save him, finding that critical equipment and medicine was not in supply at the hospital, and in some cases, the country.

Normally, this sort of story would be considered a comedy of errors, but it ended with him dying, so it’s not funny at all. Understand that this was a journalist of some repute, from a wealthy, politically connected family. His father had been a politician and a member of the ruling ZANU-PF party, amongst other things. If you think about it, he’s kind of the Zimbabwean equivalent of CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

Chris Cuomo is also a prominent journalist from a wealthy, politically connected family. Son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo and brother of current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. And he has contracted COVID-19, but appears to be recovering. And I don’t think anyone was that worried about him succumbing to it. He was always going to have the access he needed to healthcare and doctors and so forth.

But a man in Zimbabwe who was nearly twenty years younger than him with a similarly privileged background did. Granted, this man did have a compromised immune system from the removal of a tumor a few months earlier. But he was still young and healthy, and in America or any other advanced nation, would have likely survived.

So if the system in Zimbabwe can’t save a relatively upper class type, imagine what happens when the disease gets its claws in the truly destitute in Zimbabwe. Of which there are many. It would be a biblical level catastrophe. Many of the healthcare systems in advanced nations were caught off guard, but they’ve been able to respond and adapt. I fear that if the same thing happened in less developed countries, they’d be unable to do the same. It appears to already be happening in Ecuador.

So far, the disease has been slow to enter Africa. This led to a rather ridiculous theory that black people were resistant in the early days of the outbreak. But Idris Elba begs to differ. As does the late Zozoro Makambe. The real reason is that there is less traffic, especially air traffic, going in and out of Africa, so there were fewer people spreading it. This is especially true in landlocked interior. This is why the parts of Africa that did have early exposure were in the more populous and highly travelled coastal areas.

The disease took longer to spread into inland areas, where the traffic is often land traffic traveling on roads in incredible disrepair. Traveling on these roads takes a long time. This slows the movement of people. Therefore, it slowed the viral invasion.

But it’s going to spread there eventually. If we were to immunize Africans so that they are far less likely to contract the virus, then they wouldn’t be in a position to have to react to a massive level of infection. Which many countries, like Zimbabwe, aren’t prepared to handle.

Now, Zimbabwe is a unique mess. Years of decline, primarily due to massive internal failures and corruption by the ostensibly social democratic ruling ZANU-PF party have left their economy in tatters. Not every country in Africa is quite this much of a wreck. But many are, and virtually all do not have the medical infrastructure to handle a crisis on this level. If we don’t take a preventative approach, then we’ll have a situation like Liberia during the Ebola outbreak, where we have to send in the 101st Airborne to sort things out. Only this time, it will be far, far worse.

Now that French doctor may have been racist as hell. Or maybe he wasn’t full racist, just a little condescending. Or maybe he was just trying to make a valid point in the most tactless way possible. I don’t care. There is a valid point buried in this. Africa can’t handle a pandemic. The same way AIDS ravaged the continent, while other places were able to manage it, should be proof enough. Prevention may be the only chance they have. If we leave it to the meager hospitals built by corrupt dictators who have spent most of their lives lining their pockets, COVID-19 might end up being the Black Death of Africa.

Millennials and Gen Z Kids Need to Settle Down With This #OkBoomer Stuff

Kids these days. I’m hearing a lot of griping about how their parents screwed up the world. Global warming, wealth inequality, mass shootings, student debt and so forth. This sort of stunning ingratitude is all too common amongst the younger generations. They don’t appear to realize how the older generations made the world better, and spend all of their time on focusing entirely on the mistakes the older generations made.

When older people call them on this, the slightly snippy reply from from these young adults is “OK, Boomer.” Which loosely translates as “shut up, person who screwed up the world.” This is applied broadly to any generation older than the Millennials, not just Boomers. But is it truly fair to treat Boomers like they screwed up the world? Let’s think about the things Boomers and the Silent Generation did, with an occasional assist from Gen-Xers.

One that even the most hardcore woke Millennial would have to acknowledge are the advances in Civil Rights and Women’s rights produced by the Boomers. They were in the streets for the rights of minorities. They pushed back against Jim Crow and redlining. They demanded equal rights for women. And they succeeded. There were a few things they didn’t get, like free abortions on demand or slave reparations. But perhaps that’s because those would have been a bridge too far. Regardless, the generation of the Millennial’s parents and grandparents advanced the cause of liberty in a manner more extraordinary than perhaps any generation before it.

Nerdier members of those generations advanced mass communications. This may not seem super sexy, but think for a second. In previous generations and centuries, things could happen halfway around the world and you might never hear about it. Or at least not hear about it for months. But when reporters could file stories that hit print or nightly news within days or hours, the response became more rapid. When Boomers heard about atrocities in Vietnam or starvation in Ethiopia, they could take timely action.

Speaking of timely news, the world was sort of blown away when they watched a couple of guys land on the moon in 1969. The older generations did that. And the entire world witnessed it. And the guys who did it did so in peace and on behalf of all mankind and left a memorial to all astronauts and cosmonauts who died getting into space.

And let’s not forget what may be the greatest achievement of the second half of the 20th century: the defeat of communism. After the fall of the Berlin wall in the late eighties and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties, millions of people across the world were uplifted from poverty and oppression. Some of those countries are truly free countries now. Others are at least more free than they were. This was one of the pivotal moments in the 20th century and probably all of human history. Your parents and grandparents did this, young people.

This may be why there was Crazy, Ridiculous Economic Growth. It started before the end of the Cold War, but most of it happened after that. 75% of the wealth of the United States has been produced in the past fifty years. Years where our own record on freedom and equality was better than it had ever been. Years where the oppression of older, oppressive ideologies (such as fascism, communism, and colonialism) were on the decline. Freedom and equal rights appears to have finally produced results. Lots of old white men theorized about it in the late 18th century, and the older generations appear to have realized it better than anyone else.

Some of their advances occurred in mundane but important ways. Like food and medicine. The Boomers made advances in medicine and food production that ended disease and hunger not just in America, but in distant places around the world. One early boomer meme before the Internet was even a thing was “there are hungry kids in China”. My parents told me that when I refused to clean my plate. But that’s not a thing anymore, because of the actions of their generation.

And there’s one other little thing. Computers and the Internet. The Boomers made your computers and video games and consoles and websites possible, although some of that was done by my own GenX generation. You couldn’t even throw down your little #OkBoomer memes if they hadn’t made that possible.

Despite all of this, there are a number of things that young people endlessly scream about. We hear endless complaints about mass shootings, despite a long term decline in mass shootings and violence in general. We hear endless screams for socialism and communism, even though the literal opposite of that is what made the world great.

One of the most confusing complaints is in regards to global warming. Yes, the world is warming. Yes, the cause is primarily human made. But have you given any thought as to why? The global population has roughly doubled over the past forty years. In 1972, it was 3.85 billion, half of what it is today. When the population was half of that, it was sometime in the early 20th century. It was half of that shortly before the end of the 18th century. And it was half of that roughly 150 years earlier and half of that about 700 years earlier and half of that 1800 years earlier. It used to take centuries to double the population, now it takes decades. And this is not a simple geometric increase, it’s a sudden, meteoric rise.

This is because the Boomers made food and medicine available. The consequence is that the human population expanded suddenly, requiring more energy. The energy sources required to support this population produced emissions, warming the earth. The Boomers dropped the ball on this. They could have done better. But this happened primarily because they wanted food and medicine (especially vaccines, the most important of all medical advances) spread around the world. Hardly evidence of ill intent. This problem was caused by them solving other problems. Unintended consequences are a thing for every generation.

Here’s something you need to know if you don’t already: Your parents were right about just about everything. After years of fighting with my parents as a teenager, it slowly dawned on me in my mid-twenties (after I’d moved out, finished college, and started paying my own way for a few years) that they had been right in almost every one of those arguments. There are a few things my parents might have been wrong about (LGBT rights, global warming, whether or not superhero movies are good), but for the most part, they got it right. Because they learned the lessons from their parents, which were passed down from their parents, and so on. The lessons of our ancestors are not irrelevant. Some truths are timeless.

Truth is your parents and grandparents (with an assist from your older cousins, brothers, and sisters, the Gen Xers) made the world better than it has ever been. They solved millions of problems. They also caused thousands of new ones. So it goes for every generation. They did way more good than bad. So acknowledge that, and don’t waste your time griping about the things they missed. Instead, spend your time fixing the things they missed. And remember this when you have this same conversation with your children and grandchildren.