The Ticking Time Bomb of Social Security

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Nov 24, 2021

At a time when President Biden and congressional Democrats are pushing to expand the breadth of entitlements to include free preschool and subsidized child care, little attention is given to the fact that the country’s biggest existing entitlement program—Social Security—is a financial wreck.

The program’s payouts have exceeded revenue since 2010, but the recent past is nowhere near as grim as the future. According to the latest annual report by Social Security’s trustees, the gap between promised benefits and future payroll tax revenue has reached a staggering $59.8 trillion.

That gap is $6.8 trillion larger than it was just one year earlier. The biggest driver of that move wasn’t Covid-19, but rather a lowering of expected fertility over the coming decades.

That trend has already been steadily undermining the program. In 1960, for every Social Security beneficiary there were 5.1 workers adding payroll taxes to the system. That ratio has shrunk to 2.7 and is expected to reach 2.2 by 2036.

The Social Security trust fund is projected to run out in 2033. Absent other action, that would trigger a 20% cut for everyone receiving benefits at that time.

While 2033 is just 12 years from now, it’s hard to predict when an appropriate sense of crisis will actually take hold in Washington. We can, however, speculate on what measures the inevitable reckoning with the program’s insolvency could include.

Payroll Tax Hike Coming?

First, Congress could look to increase revenue. According to the Social Security trustees’ report, maintaining current benefits would require a major hike of the payroll tax—from 12.4% to 17%. Most Americans already pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes.

For those employed by others, the current 12.4% Social Security tax is split, with employers and employees each paying 6.2%. Self-employed people pay the full 12.4%, though income tax deductions cushion the blow somewhat. (Many economists argue “employer contributions” are largely an illusion: the employer payroll tax reduces wages, they say, which means the cost is ultimately borne by employees.)

In addition to raising the payroll tax rate, Congress could also expand its reach. Today, it’s applied to incomes up to $142,800. Many Democrats, including Biden, have proposed repealing that cap, either gradually or all at once.

Defenders of the cap say it’s consistent with Social Security’s founding philosophy that an individual’s benefits should be related to the amount they contributed—if benefits have a ceiling, so too should the individual’s required contribution.

Repealing the cap would make the program more explicitly redistributionist in nature. Higher earners could end up receiving benefits that are just a quarter of what they contribute.

Other Social Security Fixes: Pick Your Poison

In 2017, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Peter DeFazio proposed not only removing the payroll tax cap—misleadingly calling it a “loophole”—but also hitting high-income households with a new 6.2% Social Security tax on investment income.

In addition to considering novel ideas like that one, we can expect policymakers to take inspiration from the last major “fix” to Social Security. Brokered by President Reagan and House speaker Tip O’Neill in 1983, it centered on:

• Decreasing benefits, by increasing the normal retirement age from 65 to 67, with the change gradually implemented according to birth years.
• Making Social Security benefits taxable for higher-income beneficiaries. Up to 85% of a beneficiary’s benefits are now taxable. This tax originally affected 10% of beneficiaries, but now hits more than half of them.

Of course, taxing benefits is just a roundabout way of cutting them: Rather than trimming their monthly payments, Uncle Sam commands half of today’s beneficiaries to give some of the money right back.

In addition to increasing the normal retirement age and raising taxes again, Congress may also consider means-testing—that is, cutting benefits outright for those above certain income levels.

The problem with means-testing is that the overwhelming majority of benefits are paid to lower and middle class Americans. Unless it hits the middle class, means-testing doesn’t put a meaningful dent in program outlays.

Meanwhile, means-testing carries an administrative cost. According to a study by the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research, that administrative burden “would eliminate most, if not all, of the savings from a plausible means test on affluent beneficiaries.”

There’s another crafty way to cut benefits—for all beneficiaries: Reform architects could put a damper on Social Security’s cost of living increases. With inflation surging, that’s not a possibility to be taken lightly.

Younger Americans Beware

While there’s no way of knowing which assortment of changes will comprise the next round of Social Security reform, one thing seems clear: If the 1983 reform is any indication, we can expect the consequences of the next big fix to fall heaviest on younger people.

“The largest tax increases and the maximum benefit cuts targeted people who were 11 and younger at the time,” wrote Brenton Smith of Fix Social Security Now. “The political calculus behind the bipartisan compromise is simple: 11 year-olds can’t vote.”

Originally a safety net for the elderly—at a time when full retirement age was beyond life expectancy—Social Security is increasingly a mechanism for transferring wealth from younger people to older people. On average, that means it’s also a mechanism for transferring wealth from less well-off people to more comfortable people.

That reality is masked by the government-cultivated myth that our individual payroll taxes go to an account used to fund our own benefits. In truth, they’re immediately paid out to retirees who entered the system before us.

As the ratio of younger workers to older beneficiaries continues its decline, expect the victimization of youth by this compulsory Ponzi scheme to grow ever harsher. In that light, Social Security’s dilemma isn’t so much a financial crisis as it is a crisis of conscience.

This article was originally featured at Stark Realities and is republished with permission.

Surprised? Another Hate Crime Hoax Exposed

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Aug 30, 2021

In mid-May, news broke of a disturbing incident at Bucknell University: Outlets across the country reported that, on the eve of final exams, a mob of 15 to 20 intolerant male students had victimized the school’s LGBTQ community via an attack on a residence hall established as a “safe space” for community members.

The intruders were members of a former Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) fraternity chapter that was shut down in 2019 over hazing violations. Before hosting the “Fran’s House” LGBTQ residential group, the building at the center of the disturbance was TKE’s decades-long home at Bucknell.

Students living in the house said the TKE brothers banged on doors and windows, yelling, “Let us in…this isn’t your home…this is our home.” One apparently exposed himself; someone allegedly urinated on the porch.

That same evening, the house’s residential advisor published a lengthy and emotionally-charged open letter to Bucknell President John Bravman, recounting how the experience of “20 inebriated former fraternity members harass(ing) the LGBTQ+ community” left his “legs shaking with adrenaline.”

On the morning after the disturbance, Bucknell raced to issue a statement condemning what it called a “horrific incident.”

In a fateful contradiction, the university simultaneously promised an independent investigation to ascertain the facts while embracing the assumption that this was an attack on the LGBTQ community.

“We cannot erase the ugliness and subsequent trauma of last night’s transgression against the students of Fran’s House and, implicitly, many others, but we can commit to addressing it in a way that protects LGBTQ Bucknellians and better ensures their safety in the future,” said the statement issued by Bravman along with the school’s provost and its associate provost for equity and inclusive excellence.

Bucknell’s dramatically-worded embrace of the hate crime narrative poured gasoline on the public relations fire. By characterizing the episode as a “horrific incident” against LGBTQ students that left administrators “sorrowful,” the university handed journalists and editors just what they needed for sensational, click-inducing coverage.

Stories erupted at the nation’s most prominent outlets, with headlines describing a shocking hate crime at the highly selective Pennsylvania school:

• The New York Times: Bucknell Investigating “Horrific” Harassment of LGBTQ Students
• USA Today: Bucknell University Condemns “Horrific” Attack on LGBTQ Residence: “We Are Outraged and Sorrowful”
• The Washington Post: “Horrific” Attack on LGBTQ House Sparks University Investigation

Social media lit up with indignation. A professor arranged for people to take shifts standing guard outside the house. Students organized a “solidarity march against toxic masculinity.” TKE’s national office condemned the incident as an “act of intolerance.”

And then, two months after the school’s nationwide hate-crime humiliation, Bucknell announced that a university-commissioned independent investigation by law firm Cozen O’Connor “found no evidence that the students outside of Fran’s House on May 13 were motivated by bias against the residents and their affinity as an LGBTQ+ community.”

Good luck finding that news at the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, NBC News, CNN, Fox News, New York Post, The Hill, Boston Globe, The Advocate, New York Daily News, Insider Higher Ed, Los Angeles Blade, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times and countless other outlets that pushed the false, Bucknell-encouraged hate crime angle.

Hate Motive Doubtful from the Start

I took special interest in this incident: I graduated from Bucknell and I’ve been an enthusiastic booster of my alma mater.

When I first saw the headlines, I was embarrassed that such an ugly event happened at Bucknell. As I read the details, however, I immediately grew skeptical about the hate crime narrative and troubled by the university’s official statement.

From all accounts, it sounded like drunk senior-class TKEs—still deeply resentful of the university’s closure of their chapter—took a final trip to their cherished former home and obnoxiously took out their lingering anger at the expense of whomever was unlucky enough to be occupying it.

Consistent with that, something was conspicuously absent from the witness accounts: any claim that homophobic, transphobic or similar slurs were directed at them. Rather, the TKEs yelled, “This isn’t your home…it’s our home.”

As supposed evidence of an anti-LGBTQ motive, the residential advisor said the TKEs “(swung) a metal bar at our flag pole that displays our pride flag.” However, it seems plausible the inebriated intruders would have taken a swat at any flag on “their” house other than a TKE flag.

I wasn’t the only doubter of the hate crime narrative. Days after the incident, freelance journalist and self-described former “gay frat boy” Skylar Baker-Jordan, writing at Medium, said his initial reaction was “outrage.” After diving into the details, though, he concluded “there is nothing in this reporting to suggest what happened was a targeted attack on the LGBT community.”

It’s one thing for the occupants of the LGBTQ house—rattled by a jarring disturbance—to leap to the conclusion they were targeted because of their LGBTQ status. It’s another for the university to embrace that assumption in a message to the campus community and the media.

Reacting to a CNN story, a Bucknell classmate texted me his own thoughts, which concisely summed up the situation: “Don’t think it was quite an intentional LGBTQ hate crime, but it is now.”

Hate Crime Assumption a Recurring Phenomenon

In Bucknell administration offices, in newsrooms, dorm rooms and across social media, the fact that LGBTQ students lived in the house was enough to trigger firm convictions that the fraternity brothers’ trespassing was motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias.

Had a different special interest group happened to live in the former TKE house, we’d likely have seen headlines decrying a racist, xenophobic or anti-semitic attack at Bucknell. On the other hand, as Baker-Jordan wrote in May, “Had (this) been a regular dorm, this never would have made national news.”

The Bucknell incident exemplifies a broader phenomenon in which aggression directed at people who are members of a marginal group is assumed to be motivated by the victims’ status. Of many examples of this national syndrome, two stand out as particularly illustrative.

In March, a white man attacked three massage parlors in Atlanta, killing eight workers. The killer’s whiteness and the fact that six of the dead were Asian women was enough to ignite a media, government official and public uproar characterizing the attack as a racist, anti-Asian hate crime.

In the immediate aftermath, the Washington Post alone published sixteen articles framing the attacks as racially motivated. Then we learned the killer had patronized some of the parlors he attacked. He told police he’d battled sex addiction and lashed out at the parlors because he viewed them as a source of temptation—not because of the heavily Asian demographic profile of their employees.

In 2016, Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. Five years later, politicians and activists continue to promote the fiction that Mateen was driven by anti-LGBTQ bias. There is absolutely no evidence to substantiate that assumption and plenty to contradict it.

Clinging to hate crime mythology about the Pulse attack isn’t just a dishonest means of advancing the LGBTQ cause, it also does harm by hiding Mateen’s real motive: He made it emphatically clear he killed in retaliation for the U.S. bombing of Muslims in the Middle East. Burying that motive diminishes Americans’ ability to weigh the domestic costs of their government’s foreign interventions.

As if baseless assumptions about real events weren’t enough to thwart Americans’ ability to gauge actual levels of intolerance in the country, the picture is further muddied by outright hate crime hoaxes, such as a black student writing racist graffiti at Albion College in April.

Kentucky State University criminal justice and political science professor Wilfred Reilly has created a database of hundreds of such hate crime hoaxes and written a book about the phenomenon.

Bucknell’s Reaction a Disservice to the University and LGBTQ People Everywhere

Particularly where college administrators are concerned, the urge to overreact and baselessly authenticate the hate-victim claims of aggrieved parties is, to some extent, understandable.

After all, in a woke culture that declares “silence is violence,” administrators who fail to immediately embrace the victims’ narrative run the risk that an activist mob will turn its wrath on school officials, accusing them of being “part of the problem.”

On top of the danger to reputations and job security, there’s the chance they could find themselves, like the president of Evergreen State College, essentially taken prisoner in their own office.

Of course, however imperative it may seem while under duress, abandoning reason, respect for facts and due process has its own costs.

Given Bucknell’s subsequent investigation found no evidence that the TKEs’ hooliganism was motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias, the university’s statement implicitly endorsing the bias-motive claim fed a media misinformation frenzy that baselessly bruised the school’s reputation.

Needlessly embarrassing alumni, students and faculty wasn’t the only bad outcome: The university’s approach surely stoked undue anxiety among LGBTQ people across the country.

“Stories like this, framed in a way to suggest there was some concerted attack on the LGBT community…help perpetuate an unwarranted climate of fear on our campuses,” wrote Baker-Jordan, who noted that support for gay and lesbian people has doubled over the last 30 years. “This was not a targeted attack on the LGBT community, rather a fraternity party gone too far. That distinction matters, because I do not want LGBT students feeling any less safe than they need to feel.”

By cultivating excessive fear via a false account of what happened at Bucknell, the nationwide mischaracterization of the incident feeds a cycle where future incidents in other places will be more prone to misinterpretation too.

It should be also be noted, that, while some of the TKE brothers who descended on their former house were apparently guilty of harsh, intrusive and lewd behavior that frightened members of Fran’s House, the university’s May 14 implication that the TKEs had carried out an anti-LGBTQ attack was inconsistent with the ideals of due process and fair treatment of the accused.

I asked Bucknell if President Bravman regretted the May 14 statement language, or if the university wished to acknowledge any lessons learned from the barrage of bad publicity invited by Bucknell’s dramatically-worded embrace of a false narrative.

A university spokesperson referred me to Bravman’s July 12 statement that “summarizes findings of the investigation and represents Bucknell’s final position on the incident.” However, that statement lacks any evaluation of the administration’s handling of the episode.

Meanwhile, since there’s been essentially no follow-up reporting that an outside investigation contradicted the school’s initial stance, for too many people, their “final position” is that Bucknell had a “horrific” anti-LGBTQ incident in May.

Bucknell Grants LGBTQ Group’s Request

In an open letter posted shortly after the incident, Bucknell’s LGBTQ residential affinity group requested it be assigned a permanent residence: “Under no circumstances should Fran’s House be in jeopardy of losing their physical space due to the requirements Bucknell enforces to fill roster spots as opposed to creating inclusive living spaces.”

In July, when Bravman announced the findings of the investigation, he declared the former TKE house would become “the permanent campus affinity house for LGBTQ+ students and their allies.”

When it made its plea for a permanent space, the LGBTQ residential affinity group said, “Never again should someone feel entitled to come to our home and say it’s ‘their house and not ours’.”

At the same time, let’s hope Bucknell University will never again undermine its own reputation by impulsively endorsing a false narrative.

This article was originally featured at Stark Realities and is republished with permission.

Government Never Had Control Over the Pandemic

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Aug 16, 2021

In the early 11th century, King Canute—while at the peak of his power—set out to demonstrate to his fawning courtiers the limited power of royal edicts.

After having his throne placed by the sea’s edge, he sat down and commanded the tide to stop rising. When the water began washing over his feet, he declared, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings.”

Nearly a thousand years later, facing a different force of nature—COVID-19—an entire global generation of presidents, prime ministers, governors, mayors, public health officials, scientists and citizens is being given the same lesson.

However, where Canute’s lesson sprang from his humility, this lesson springs from the hubris of the present-day ruling class and the credulity of the masses who place far too much faith in their rulers’ power.

The lesson was pointedly driven home on July 19th. That was “Freedom Day” in the United Kingdom, with government ending restrictions on social contact, allowing the reopening of remaining establishments such as nightclubs, and abandoning mask mandates.

Two weeks before Freedom Day, as the Delta variant relentlessly pushed the UK’s case count higher, 122 prominent scientists and doctors submitted a letter to The Lancet calling the planned easing of restrictions “a dangerous and unethical experiment.”

On the eve of Freedom Day, the UK’s daily case count was over 40,000. Imperial College London mathematical biologist Neil Ferguson told the BBC it was “almost inevitable” the end of restrictions would prompt daily cases to soar to 100,000 and perhaps even 200,000.

Mother Nature was about to deliver a harsh comeuppance to Ferguson and others who’d have us believe government restrictions and mask mandates offer a potent defense against Covid contagion: Cases promptly went into a two-week free fall.

In addition to fostering well-founded doubt about the benefits of lockdowns and face coverings, the turn of events should also cultivate healthy skepticism about the pronouncements of the public health establishment.

Hopefully, Ferguson’s particular humiliation will immunize officials, journalists and citizens against trusting Imperial College London’s COVID-19 models.

Those models, which played a key role in enabling unprecedented, draconian lockdowns around the world—have been wildly wrong again and again. For example, Imperial College London projected Sweden’s relaxed approach to COVID-19 would leave nearly 100,000 Swedes dead by July 1, 2020. The actual count: 5,700.

The United States has endured its own false alarms about what will happen when government-imposed restrictions are eased. Grim predictions and accusations of gubernatorial indifference to human life accompanied the ending of restrictions and mandates in states like Iowa, Texas and Florida, and proved as wrong as the ones made in the UK last month.

Lacking Canute’s humility and undaunted by contrary evidence, the great majority of officials, scientists and pundits who’ve favored coercive government measures have proven stubbornly incapable of entertaining the possibility that these interventions—which have boosted depression, suicide, alcohol abuse, drug overdoses, domestic violence and undiagnosed cancer—aren’t a net positive for public health after all.

That resistance to contrary evidence extends to a great many everyday citizens whose unwavering support of lockdowns, business restrictions, remote schooling and mask mandates is part of a politicized tribal identity.

Exasperatingly, that tribe embraces “trust science” as a mantra, oblivious to the fact that the scientific method hinges on the reliable replication of results that supports one’s theory—something sorely lacking where lockdowns, masking and other measures are concerned.

The “trust science” crowd is likewise oblivious to the fact that scientists are far from unanimous in supporting those government-imposed nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), and that highly-credentialed scientists from esteemed institutions are among the most vigorous dissenters.

The most prominent demonstration of such dissent came with the October 2020 “Great Barrington Declaration.” Led by professors from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, epidemiologists and public health scientists from around the world expressed their “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”

The declaration has now been signed by more than 58,000 medical and public health scientists and medical practitioners. Their numbers and credentials don’t guarantee their views are correct; however, they do bely the presumption of a scientific consensus behind coercive mitigation policies.

Among three original Stanford signatories to the declaration is biophysics professor and Nobel Prize recipient Michael Levitt. He and a group of Stanford and international scholars have been analyzing Covid-19 data since January 2020.

Referring to the steep drop in cases after UK restrictions were eased, Levitt recently asked the Twitter-verse: “Can anyone show clear correlation between NPI or other restrictions & reduced COVID-19 cases anywhere? I keep trying & failing. We really need to know this to deal better with future pandemics.”

Levitt isn’t the only reputable scientist who sees little if any correlation between government-imposed NPIs and COVID-19 trajectories.

“We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, in a recent interview with the New York Times. “These surges have little to do with what humans do. Only recently, with vaccines, have we begun to have a real impact.”

“We had record high cases, hospitalizations and deaths in January, followed by a precipitous decline throughout February and into March…this does not reflect anything to do with…human mitigation. This is the natural ebb and flow of the virus we’ve seen time and again around the world,” said Osterholm on his COVID-19 podcast.

In that vein, those who exclusively attribute today’s surging case counts in southern states to lagging vaccination rates and purported local mismanagement should note that:

• The southern wave’s timing roughly parallels the region’s 2020 summer surge, which should prompt consideration that seasonality—alongside Delta’s greater transmissibility among even the vaccinated—may be the dominant driver
• While Florida is considered the new epicenter of the pandemic, the state’s vaccination rate matches the national average
• Oregon, despite an above-average vaccination rate, is experiencing its own sharp spike—but has been spared the kind of contemptuous scorn that journalists and Democratic politicians heap on Republican-led Florida

Every NPI Deserves Scrutiny

Over the course of the pandemic, some anti-Covid-19 measures have fallen out of favor in light of new findings and observations. For example, with the understanding that surface transmission of Covid-19 is extremely unlikely, far fewer people are wiping groceries with Clorox.

Perhaps because they’re bolted into place, the nation’s thicket of plexiglass dividers have shown more staying power, despite research indicating they may not only be futile, but could actually be making matters worse by thwarting ventilation. In March, the CDC withdrew its recommendation for barriers on school desks, but has apparently stopped short of discouraging their broad use elsewhere.

Though it’s now socially acceptable to question the use of disinfectants and plexiglass, questioning masks can get you suspended from social media and tarred as a promoter of disinformation—even when you’re citing peer-reviewed studies.

However, with other widely-embraced mitigation measures fading in light of new data, intellectually honest people should be equally open to the question of whether widespread face-covering—particularly with anything other than an N-95 mask—is worthwhile.

That forbidden discussion is starting to creep into mainstream media. In a recent appearance on CNN, the University of Minnesota’s Osterholm—a former COVID-19 advisor to President Biden—caused a stir by saying, “We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out.”

That’s because Covid-19 particles are astoundingly small. Hard as it is to imagine, the imperceptible gaps in surgical masks can be 1,000 times the size of a viral particle. Gaps in cloth masks are well larger than that.

Osterholman has offered a highly relatable standard by which to judge if a particular face covering serves as a meaningful barrier against particles that small: “If you were in a room with somebody smoking, would you smell it in your device that you are using?”

That standard not only eliminates cloth masks, but surgical ones too.

Beyond the realities of nanoparticle science and the conclusions of previous studies, the case for masking is undermined by what we’ve observed during the pandemic.

Sweden, for example, never widely embraced masking. While its per capita Covid death count is well higher than neighboring Finland and Norway, it’s the 15th lowest out of the 31 European Union countries and the UK.

If face-covering were such an essential life-saving practice, Sweden wouldn’t be found in the middle of the EU pack. It would be dead last.

That said, using COVID-19 death counts alone to evaluate outcomes is problematic. Different testing protocols can mean an individual would be positive in one country and negative in another. Jurisdictions also differ in what exactly comprises a COVID-19 death—was it a death from COVID or merely with COVID?

More importantly, though, when we solely focus on Covid-19 deaths, we ignore the suicides, fatal overdoses and other unintended deaths that result from the lockdowns themselves.

That’s why it’s best to compare countries using excess all-cause mortality: total deaths beyond what’s expected in a normal year. By that measure, lockdown- and mask-eschewing Sweden had one of the best 2020 excess mortality rates in all of Europe—23rd-lowest out of 30 countries.

(It again trailed Finland and Norway, but a variety of factors undermine the idea they present a full-on apples-to-apples comparison; what’s more, by some measures, Finland and Norway had even less stringent policies during the first several months of the pandemic.)

CDC is “Following the TV Pundits”

Vinay Prasad is an associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and co-author of Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives. “Medical reversal” is what happens when new data shows a commonly-accepted practice is not helpful—or is actually harmful.

Decrying the lack of randomized trials backing many COVID-19 policies, Prasad recently wrote, “When it comes to non-pharmacologic interventions such as mandatory business closures, mask mandates, and countless other interventions, the shocking conclusion of the last 18 months is this: We have learned next to nothing,”

Referring to the CDC’s decision to once again recommend universal indoor masking in areas of higher COVID-19 transmission, Prasad wrote, “The CDC director calls this ‘following the science,’ but it is not. It is following the TV pundits.”

While declaring his openness to the possibility that masking can be an effective public health intervention, Prasad says mandates should be driven by evidence—and that the CDC isn’t offering any.

Prasad, who doesn’t shy away from endorsing coercive government action when he thinks it’s warranted, concludes:

“When the history books are written about the use of non-pharmacologic measures during this pandemic, we will look as pre-historic and barbaric and tribal as our ancestors during the plagues of the middle ages. What the books won’t capture is how, in the moment, our experts were simply so sure of themselves.”

This article was originally featured at Stark Realities and is republished with permission.

Revenge of the Masks

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Jul 29, 2021

Just when the forces of rationality had seemingly established a beachhead in the public health domain, they’re back on defense again, as the CDC declares vaccinated and unvaccinated people should wear masks indoors in areas of the country experiencing high transmission, and every schoolchild should be condemned to wear a mask all day long.

The moves, which come in response to surging case counts, seem to demonstrate an impulse that animates many questionable government policies: “We have to do something,” regardless of whether that something can be reasonably expected to have a material impact on the problem at hand.

Ample Reason to Doubt Masks’ Value

Most public and media discussion of mask policy reflects a foundational assumption that may well be false—namely, that widespread, all-purpose mask-wearing has had any meaningful impact on slowing the spread.

Intuition tells us covering our faces must be worthwhile. After all, if the virus is emitted from our noses and mouths, covering those openings has to make a big difference, right?

That gut feeling misleads us, though, because we tend to only think of the virus in terms of visible, tangible droplets masks can absorb. Indeed, the initial scientific consensus held that COVID-19 was exclusively transmitted by droplets, prompting the emphasis on distancing six feet from each other—room enough for gravity to pull those droplets out of the air.

That exclusive-droplet-transmission consensus proved wrong. We now know COVID-19 is spread to a great extent via aerosols—a term that describes particles so small they can easily float along in the air, traveling well beyond six feet.

Even that description fails to convey how unfathomably small COVID-19 viral particles actually are—and why masks are a mismatch.

How small are they? As little as 20 nanometers.That means the “material gaps in blue surgical masks are up to 1,000 times” as large as a Covid-19 viral particle,according to Colin Axon, who has advised the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

Gaps in typical cloth masks can be 5,000 times the size…to say nothing of all that air that’s merely redirected past masks’ edges when we exhale.

A Tale of Two Countries

While the comparative virus and mask dimensions give one pause, they merely form the basis of a reasonable hypothesis that masks do little to inhibit the mobility of viral particles.

What really counts is observed results in the real world—and what we’ve observed should sow creeping doubt in even the most fervent masking advocate.

“All around the world you can look at mask mandates and superimpose on infection rates, you cannot see that mask mandates made any effect whatsoever,” said Axon to The Telegraph.

While there are many illustrations of that conclusion, perhaps none is more vivid than a comparison of Sweden—which, as a society, never went all-in on masking—and Germany, whose government in January went beyond merely requiring “face coverings” and mandated the use of medical-grade masks.

Despite Sweden’s sharply lower use of masks—and a much more relaxed approach in general—the country’s 12-month experience is essentially indistinguishable from what’s observed in Germany. Rather, one sees a force of nature taking its seasonal course.

“The best thing you can say about any mask is that any positive effect they do have is too small to be measured,” said Axon, a Brunel University (London) lecturer in engineering who notes that “when the particle enters another body, it returns to a biomedical issue, but the mask debate is about the particle journey,” where his knowledge applies.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s experience delivers a one-two punch. First, there’s no indication the imposition of mask mandates slowed transmission, which marched along in seasonal fashion. Second, the recent reopening of the country and lifting of mask mandates amusingly coincided with the beginning of a steep reversal of the summer surge in cases.

(Graphs courtesy of Ian Miller, whose Twitter and Substack pages offer many more statistical illustrations that raise questions about the effectiveness of both masks and lockdowns.)

Masks May Be Counterproductive

As with so many ill-considered government programs—such as the war on terror or the war on drugs—mask mandates may actually serve to amplify the peril they’re meant to minimize.

That’s because unwarranted confidence in masks can give wearers a false sense of security and lead them to neglect risk management steps that are actually worthwhile.

That’s the view of Harvard Medical School epidemiologist and biostatistician Martin Kulldorff. “Naively fooled to think that masks would protect them, some older high-risk people did not socially distance properly, and some died from #COVID19 because of it,” he said in a May 2021 tweet.

Kulldorff’s tweet was short-lived. Twitter’s thought police, whose Orwellian curation of Covid content centers on a presumption of CDC infallibility, promptly blocked the tweet and locked the Harvard scholar out of his account.

Masks: The Last Taboo in Covid Discourse?

Today, relatively few scholars and prominent health professionals join Kulldorff and Axon in publicly questioning the value of widespread masking.

However, if the history of the controversy over COVID-19’s origin is any indication, there may be many others who harbor doubts, but, fearing the social and professional repercussions of speaking their minds, are waiting until it’s safer to do so.

In May of this year, nineteen scientists published a letter in the journal Science demanding an investigation that would examine the possibility the virus escaped from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. One of the scientists said she and others didn’t speak up last year because they were apprehensive about being associated with Trump and his supporters.

There’s an obvious parallel to masks, which have been embraced by millions of Americans not only for their perceived health value, but as a means of signaling their virtue and membership in the liberal and/or anti-Trump tribe.

https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/1393191013808754688?s=20

That emotional and political attachment to masks—which infects the media as well as individual citizens—represents a powerful barrier to an intellectually honest evaluation of their effectiveness. The sooner that barrier begins to crumble, the better off we’ll all be.

This article was originally featured at Stark Realities and is republished with permission.

Why Patriots Shouldn’t Pledge Allegiance

by Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | Jun 14, 2021

Flag Day is upon us, with the Fourth of July not far behind. No better time for a frontal assault on a cherished American ritual—the Pledge of Allegiance.

Though conservatives will be most aghast at this undertaking, the open-minded ones will soon discover they should be among the pledge’s greatest critics.

Before I open fire, a brief explanation for international readers: The Pledge of Allegiance is recited by children across America at the start of start of each school day. It’s also incorporated into many meetings held by federal, state and local governments and private groups as well.

Standing and facing the flag with hand over heart, one recites: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

A Government Loyalty Oath Written by a Socialist

Many who consider the pledge a cornerstone of conservative values will be surprised to learn it was written by a Christian Socialist named Francis Bellamy, who was run out of his pulpit at a Boston church for preaching against capitalism, and who called Jesus Christ a socialist.

His radical cousin, Edward Bellamy, wrote a popular novel, Looking Backward, which glowingly describes a future in which government controls the means of production and where men are conscripted into the country’s “industrial army” and compelled to work in roles assigned to them by central planners.

While working for The Youth’s Companion, a children’s magazine, Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, timed to be introduced in patriotic celebrations accompanying the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival.

According to a summary of Bellamy’s account of his writing of the pledge, he aimed for brevity, as well as “a rhythmic roll of sound so they would impress the children and have a lasting meaning when they became grown-up citizens.”

Given his beliefs, Bellamy was well-suited for creating a loyalty oath that conditions Americans to subordinate themselves to a powerful central government. Make no mistake—in pledging allegiance “to the republic,” Americans are doing precisely that.

That’s consistent with Bellamy’s wish for state sovereignty and individual liberties to yield to a centralized national government, but it’s starkly at odds with the founding spirit of the country.

Central to that spirit are the notions that government should be a servant and not a master, and that all government should be viewed with deep, ongoing wariness— certainly not the reverence demanded by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Free people have no business pledging loyalty to any government. It’s government that has a duty of loyalty to the people, with no more essential demonstration of that loyalty than the protection of the rights of individuals.

Conditioning America’s Youth for Subservience

Bellamy didn’t just write the pledge, but also instructions for an accompanying ritual that feels simultaneously religious and militaristic:

“At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the Flag the military salute—right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it… At the words, ‘to my Flag,’ the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, towards the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.”

Yes, Bellamy directed civilian children and adults to render a military salute to the flag, perhaps laying the philosophical groundwork for the eventual creation of the socialist “industrial army” his cousin envisioned in his novel.

The arm outstretched toward the flag came to be called the “Bellamy salute,” and it endured for several decades before its striking similarity to the Nazi salute prompted its replacement in 1942 by the familiar hand-over-heart gesture.

I haven’t always felt this way. Conditioned by 13 years of public school, I continued sincerely reciting the pledge at various functions far into my adult life. Following my U.S. Army service, I’d even stand at attention with heels locked—Bellamy would’ve been proud.

It was only after learning the true meaning of liberty and the animating spirit of our system of government that my mind was changed. If your experience is like mine, once you begin recognizing the pledge as the authoritarian loyalty oath that it is, you’ll soon develop disdain for its nearly every phrase.

50 States, Infinitely Divisible

Two elements of the pledge are especially destructive of a healthy mindset regarding the relationship between the American people and government: “One nation” and “indivisible.”

First, in creating the United States of America, the founders were not forming a single nation. The U.S. Constitution is a compact of independent states, with the word “states” taking its highest political meaning that puts Virginia, for example, on par with France.

That compact delegated certain, limited powers to a federal government so it could perform stated functions in service to the separate states. As James Madison wrote, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Fifty different sovereign societies exercising numerous and indefinite powers, without regard to the federal government and, whenever necessary, in outright defiance of it. That’s the United States of America.

With each “one nation” incantation, however, American children and adults are conditioned to view their states as insignificant political subdivisions, while embracing the primacy of the federal government and the centralization of power in Washington, DC.

However, of the pledge’s 31 words, “indivisible” should give greatest offense to American patriots. The very existence of the United States—created by secession from the British empire—is a testament to political divisibility as a foundational human right.

The Declaration of Independence explicitly expresses that sentiment:

“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed—that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

By reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaiming the United States of America “indivisible,” Americans disclaim their human right of self-determination. They also surrender their ultimate means of holding government accountable: Every government should exist under perpetual threat of disintegration.

Scouring the pledge for positives, one can appreciate that Bellamy rightly referred to the government as a republic and not a democracy—an important yet underappreciated distinction.

Likewise, we can all embrace the idea of “liberty and justice for all.” However, the pledge implies that’s the current state of affairs, rather than a far-off ambition.

That ambition is undermined by the powerful central government advanced by Bellamy’s pledge. Today, it faces a potent new threat from those who, pursuing “equity,” seek to undermine the rights of individuals by imposing new forms of government-sanctioned discrimination.

Making an Idol Out of Cloth and a False God Out of Government

Civics aside, it’s worth noting that, since its introduction, the pledge has also sparked objections on religious grounds—and I’m not referring to the 1954 addition of the words “under God,” and its attendant controversy about the separation of church and state.

Rather, many religious people reasonably view pledging allegiance to a flag as a form of idolatry, or something uncomfortably close to it. Before you scoff at the idea that the U.S. flag has evolved into a “graven image” in the Second Commandment sense, consider that citizens are encouraged to dispose of worn-out flags by burning them and, after a period of silent reflection, burying the ashes.

Other religious individuals are put off by the idea of swearing faith to a government. One such critic quotes the Christian bible’s Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters.” You don’t have to ponder that long to see many profound conflicts between the bible’s values (e.g., “blessed are the peacemakers,” “thou shalt not steal”) and the U.S. government’s.

An Authoritarian Spectacle That’s Not Going Anywhere

No matter where the hand is placed in what Gene Healy rightly calls a “slavish ritual of devotion to the state,” it’s safe to say if the Pledge of Allegiance had never existed, and Americans were to observe a similar rite in another country, most would surely recoil at the authoritarian spectacle.

Alas, there could be no such opportunity: Richard Ellis, author of To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance, looked but couldn’t find another country that has anything like it.

Created by a socialist and now fiercely championed by those who think they’re conservatives, the Pledge of Allegiance will likely continue warping Americans’ thoughts about the relationship between citizens and government for many more years to come.

This article was originally featured at Stark Realities and is republished with permission.