FREE SPEECH ONLY FOR THE "WOKE"

Remember the bloody sock? It became the symbol of the Red Sox World Series championship in 2004 that ended “the curse of the bambino” — an 86-year-long drought following the Babe Ruth trade in 1918. The sock was worn by pitching ace Curt Schilling who’d just had surgery. With a bleeding ankle, he still won the crucial game six of the American League Championship series against the New York Yankees. That put the Sox into the World Series in which Schilling won game two in a four-game sweep of the Cardinals.

Schilling is a hero to New Englanders, but not to the liberal Boston Globe which ran the Sunday headline: “Will Curt Schilling’s inflammatory rhetoric keep him out of the Hall of Fame?” Sports writers cited his conservative politics for their negative votes. Now Schilling’s scalp hangs in the cancel-culture hall of fame. No one can doubt that Schilling is one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but to liberal media his politics are deplorable, especially his support for Donald Trump.

Kati Couric

I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 — and I would again given the same choices. So would tens of millions of other Americans, but our vilification is accelerating. In 2016 Hillary Clinton called half of us “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” However, two weeks ago former mainstream media news anchor Kati Couric suggested we need to be “deprogrammed.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson echoed that saying: “there are millions of Americans, almost all White, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed.”

How would that be done? Gulags?

WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin

Fellow Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin said: “We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party” and leave no survivors. She also said we have to blacklist Trump supporters from universities and media. And it’s not just media; Former FBI Director James Comey said: “The Republican party needs to be burned down … It’s just not a healthy political organization.”

James Comey

Does that sound like inciting violence? Just as Cool Hand Luke was warned, you conservatives have to “get your mind right.” I only hope the above-named “progressives” envision only a night in the box and not life in a concentration camp or a bullet in the back of the head. But, then again, WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin said: “We have to level them, because if there are survivors… they will do it again.”

Leftists in academia control what students learn, but Pew Research said last week that almost all Americans increasingly get their news from their smartphone or tablet, often on platforms like Twitter and Facebook and Google. These are owned and operated by liberals who use their power to censor news like the Hunter Biden laptop story they spiked until after Biden won the election.

Smith College Professor Loretta Ross

For years now our colleges and universities have banned conservatives speakers. Now Smith College Professor Loretta Ross says Trump supporters must be: “treated with the same public condemnation that the Nazis received after World War II.” For Professor Ross, “The term “Nazi” is not even strong enough to convey the opprobrium and disgust human rights activists feel for those who brazenly claim they are simply patriots with different opinions.” It’s hard to believe students pay Smith $75,000 a year to learn this stuff.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley says: “Many professors admit…they are afraid to speak out… about the rising level of intolerance [for conservatives]… In over 30 years of teaching, I have never witnessed the level of intimidation at colleges and universities that we have today.”

Democrats, and some Republicans, are pushing impeachment of President Trump because of his remarks at the White House on January 6th, which they claim incited a violent takeover of the US Capitol the same day. In a column January 7th, I called on Trump to resign for the same reason, but what is the point of impeaching him after he’s gone? None I can see except spite and fear he might run again.

Now my newspaper column is affected by the leftist cancel culture. My piece last week explaining why I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and listing his accomplishments was spiked in one of the newspapers that has carried it nearly every week for decades. The Conway Daily Sun had no problem running the previous column telling Trump to resign, but the publisher claims he spiked last week’s (and others recently) because of “factual errors.” I responded that he owns the paper and he can print or not print whatever he wants, but scoffed at his pretense of political objectivity. He has agreed to discuss his claims with me face-to-face on my local Valley Vision TV show “Left & Right” February 3rd.

That should be interesting.

DANGEROUS DISTRUST OF ELECTORAL PROCESS

Yes, I did call for President Trump to resign two weeks ago. However, it may surprise readers to know that if I could go back to 2016, I would vote for him again; 2020 too. Despite his behavior since losing reelection, I see his presidency as a net positive. Impeaching him now is farcical given that he’s leaving office anyway but the Dems want to prevent him from ever running again because they’re afraid of him.

Biden brags about getting Ukraine prosecutor fired

This latest impeachment for inciting violence may have grounds, unlike the 2020 effort which charged Trump with asking Ukrainians to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling. Pelosi ignored then-vice-president Biden on videotape threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine to stop a Ukrainian investigation into Hunter Biden. Mainstream media allies cooperated on both fronts.

Ever since Trump got the Republican nomination in the summer of 2016, mainstream media has amplified every Democrat effort to impugn him. First they magnified the Clinton campaign’s fabricated Steele Dossier and dubious Trump/Russian collusion story. They ignored Obama’s use of intelligence agencies to spy on Trump’s campaign before the 2016 election and then afterward on his transition team. They cheerleaded the dubious Mueller Investigations into General Flynn and President Trump, neither of which found anything to prosecute and only succeeded in bankrupting Flynn, destroying his reputation, and crippling Trump’s presidency.

Conservatives did a slow burn watching all this and 90% negative media coverage of Trump’s presidency despite its long string of successes: Trump isolated Iran and its terrorism. He killed Iran General Soleimani, ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and al-Qaeda leader Qasim al-Rimi, among others. He forged the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab leaders. He spurred economic growth that Obama claimed would be impossible. He reduced illegal immigration and built over 400 miles of new border wall. He hammered out favorable trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, the EU, and China. He appointed hundreds of pro-life judges and three originalist Supreme Court justices.

He eliminated the Obamacare individual mandate, reformed the VA, withdrew from the Paris Accord and the Iran nuclear agreement, got NATO Countries to pay their fair share, cut restrictions on oil drilling and coal exports, fast-tracked and funded a COVID vaccine, brought unemployment to record lows, raised median household income to record level, brought home troops from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, reformed the criminal justice system, and created the Space Force. Trump may be the most controversial president ever, but he’s also one of the most accomplished, especially considering he did all that in four years.

After losing on November 3rd, however, Trump claimed election fraud. Mainstream media said there was no evidence. Millions of Trump voters however, watched as Trump was winning that evening when swing states abruptly stopped counting votes, sent observers home, and resumed counting. By morning they were reporting that Trump was losing. Pennsylvania extended its deadline for counting votes without constitutional authority, after which the votes swung to Biden.

Is that evidence of election fraud or coincidence? Millions of Trump voters believe it was cheating. Mainstream media denied it all and called the election for Trump. Hundreds of observers made sworn depositions of voter fraud. That is evidence. Only two eyewitnesses, for example, are needed for a murder conviction and sometimes only one, but mainstream media continued claiming there was no evidence. There’s also video of ballot stuffing in Georgia. Law suits alleging fraud were dismissed on procedural grounds like lack of standing. There is plenty of evidence for election fraud largely perpetrated by Democrats, though probably not enough to overturn the result.

Our Founders gave us freedom of speech for many reasons, but one was for irate citizens to blow off steam by expressing their anger verbally and in writing. Here in 2021, people don’t use 18th century broadsheets; they use Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Those outlets are owned and run by leftists who have been censoring news and posts with which they disagree, especially about election fraud. Because they’re private companies, they probably aren’t violating the 1st Amendment, but they’ve assumed enormous political power and they’re using it against conservatives, so far under the legal protection of Section 230.

We now have a huge percentage of our electorate that no longer trusts the electoral process. One could debate whether that mistrust is justified or not, but there’s little dispute that it exists. That is a huge threat to our republic that should give all of us the shivers.

Trump has been accused of narcissism even by supporters. What they at first saw as a character flaw was turning into an unraveling after his election loss, and it accelerated week-to-week. By January 6th it had completely blinded him to the political reality that Biden’s election would not be overturned. His unwillingness to accept that is embarrassing for all who voted for him. I will not vote for him in any 2024 primary and I hope he doesn't get the Republican nomination again. Right now I'm looking at Nikki Haley.

LEFT & RIGHT OCTOBER 28, 2020

 

In the left chair for this show sat John Burroughs, MD. He calls himself centrist, is politically independent, and “looks at every policy on its face.” As the show went on, I saw nothing that would contradict that self-assessment. The first cold question from our producer asked if we were concerned that, because newly-sworn Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared with the president at the White House, she would be a pawn of the president. John said he wasn’t concerned. He said Barrett was certainly conservative, very much against abortion as a Catholic, and “Barrett’s primary loyalty is not to the president, but to the law.” He said nothing with which I would disagree. Interestingly he believes Barrett would not vote to overturn Roe V Wade, and suggested she might recuse herself as a Catholic because she had done that earlier as an appellate judge in a capital punishment case which the church opposes. Second question from the producer listed several right-wing groups and asked if we thought voters would be put in danger from those and some left-wing groups. I said that there are very few paramilitary right-wingers who might cause damage like the Oklahoma City bombing, but there are far more left-wing groups like BLM and Antifa who, though they would cause comparatively little damage to people with their tactics, they would cause far more overall damage to property. Right wing groups tend to be made up of former military people who have been trained to kill, and they’re more dangerous that way. BLM and Antifa will through Molotov cocktails at police cars and burn down buildings. John said both groups like creating chaos, unrest, and violence more than making political statements and that’s their commonality. They like imposing their views on the public at large because “they believe their personal values transcend the rule of law.” He says Donald Trump is dodging questions about whether he would incite violence through such groups should he lose the election. I asked him if he thought Democrats wink at violence by BLM and Antifa. He said both parties wink at extreme behavior by their respective radicals. As we discussed possible election outcomes, John mentioned the Safe Harbor Deadline, with which I was not familiar. The Electoral College sets a date by which states must report to the Electoral College the results of voting within their state. Our producer then printed some documents John read setting the date this year as December 8th. If there are challenges to the vote count they must be resolved within each state by that date. [SIDE NOTE: These procedures will now be playing out. This show was taped six days before the election, but now the results are being challenged in lawsuits by President Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Trump is demanding a recount in Wisconsin. Arizona may not have gone for Biden as reported and not all the votes are counted as of this writing the afternoon of November 5th.] Given that we didn’t disagree on topics we covered, and this wasn’t a pure Left & Right show, I decided to pick his brain about medical issues, asking why he believed masks are effective with the Covid virus. He said they inhibit spread but don’t prevent it entirely and cited examples. I then asked him about two organizations of doctors, one in the US called the “Frontline Doctors” and the other an international group who signed “The Great Barrington Declaration." Both disagree publicly with various policy recommendations by our NIH and CDC. And, both groups had been censored by Twitter and Facebook as a result. John had not heard of either, but it turns out he agreed with the Great Barrington Declaration, which states that economic and school shutdowns do far more harm than good and are unwarranted. About the Hunter Biden laptop, John believes it’s a hoax perpetrated by the Russians. I brought up Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s recent statement that there’s no intelligence to back that up. John, however believes more in a committee report by Senator Chuck Grassley supporting his assertion, which I had not read. At the end, he agreed to come onto future shows and explore other topics like Roe V Wade.

WILL IT HAPPEN AGAIN?

Regular readers of this column know where I’ll be putting my X on November 3rd. Four years ago, however, I was wasn’t thrilled about voting for Donald Trump. His personality was repulsive. His gratuitous insults were off-putting. It didn’t bother me, however, that he called his final opponent “Crooked Hillary,” because she was crooked. During one of their debates, Hillary said it was a good thing we didn’t have Donald Trump in charge of the law in our country.

“Because you’d be in jail,” said Trump. His timing was exquisite and I was thinking, “Who is this guy?” I could have kissed him.

It bothered me, however, that he had badly trashed his fellow Republican candidates in the primaries. Most of them were decent people and didn’t deserve it. During the ensuing campaign against Crooked Hillary, I agreed with nearly everything Trump said he would do, but doubted he would follow through. Politicians all make promises… you know the rest. Meanwhile, the Democrat media — and that’s just about all of it — gave him enormous attention. Trump charged up their viewership because no one who talked like he did had ever become the nominee of a major political party.

If mainstream media knew then how much they were helping his election chances with the exposure they gave him, they never would have done it. Against all odds, he won, making fools of media pundits. Hillary lost and “charitable” contributions to the Clinton Foundation dried up immediately. Liberals were in shock. They cried openly. Me? I found myself cheering, and that surprised me. I had to sit down and think about why I was so happy. Part of it was the shock on the faces of smug mainstream media pundits. They didn’t know what to say. They never saw it coming. Neither did I actually, but I liked it.

The day after Trump won, Democrats and their media allies began plotting to reverse the election and overthrow Trump, by hook or by crook and mostly the latter. Obama was still in office, so he and his lackeys in the intelligence agencies continued what Crooked Hillary was doing — working with Russians to smear Trump. They used the Steele Dossier which was bought and paid for by the Clinton Campaign and the Democrat National Committee and tried to convince us all that Trump was a Russian asset.

Trouble is, they had no evidence. Nothing in the Steele Dossier was true, but that didn’t stop them. Trump haters in the deep state conspired to appoint a special prosecutor to dig up evidence.  There was none to dig up, but it took Robert Meuller and his huge staff two years and over $30 million before he was forced to admit it. They lied; they spied, and Trump was still standing. After Democrats won control of the House in 2018, they impeached him for a phone call he made to Ukraine about Biden family shenanigans, but he was found not guilty in the Senate.

Then, ironically, Hunter Biden left a laptop with a computer repairman in Delaware and forgot to pick it up. On it are emails indicating that both Hunter Biden and his father, Joe, were indeed involved in shenanigans with Ukraine — and elsewhere. Also on it are videos allegedly showing Hunter Biden having sex with minors. A further irony is that, four years ago, Anthony Weiner’s laptop fell into the hands of the NYPD pursuant to their investigation into Weiner exposing himself to underage girls online. Also on it were over 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump remains in need of a personality transplant — but he has followed through on his campaign promises. I don’t have to like him, but I am going to vote for him without misgivings. Why? I’ll quote a nameless young lady whose video explaining that in less than a minute was posted on Gateway Pundit here. A partial transcript follows:

Here she is

“If you are liberal and can’t stand Trump and can’t possibly fathom why anyone would vote for him, let me fill you in.  We can’t stand you.  You’ve done everything in your power by trying to destroy this country by tearing down our police, our borders, our history, systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into thinking socialism is the answer to everything. Demonizing religion and faith and glorifying abortion, violence and thug culture.  And calling us racists… We are voting for Trump because of you!”

Maybe it sums up why you too vote for Donald Trump. If he’s reelected, I’ll enjoy watching mainstream media pundits go nuts again, but I’m afraid of what their followers will do in the streets. Meanwhile, those pundits are trying to blame Russia for the Hunter Biden laptop scandal they're trying desperately to contain. Will it work?

LEFT & RIGHT SHOW WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2020

David Jones, history teacher at Fryeburg Academy and instructor at Granite State College, sits in the left chair this week. I invited him on the show after he wrote a letter to the editor criticizing one of my columns. His letter is one of our topics.

As usual, we open with a question from the producer concerning recent arrests by federal officers protecting federal property in Portland, Oregon. It asks whether we agree that federal officials should be there to quell protests, and questions their tactics, allegedly including arrests without informing those arrests of the charges against them.

I’m against quelling protests, but believe strongly that resulting riots, arson, and looting must be quelled. Local, Democrat mayors and governors are sanctioning these crimes and that’s dangerous. If, as claimed, people are arrested and held without being informed of the charges, it’s a violation of their due process rights. Federal officials are constitutionally allowed to protect federal property no matter where it is.

David believes Trump might be playing to his base in this election year by deploying federal officials to confront rioters. It remains to be seen if that is politically efficacious for him. Citing effectiveness of the sixties civil rights protests in swaying public opinion, he suggests today’s swing voters are with Black Lives Matter protestors. 

From there we opine about President Trump and his policies, with me supporting the latter and David supporting neither.

At the end of the show we address David’s letter about my column’s claims that college professors are overwhelming leftist. I cite various sources including a wide-ranging statistical study indicating that the Democrat to Republican ratio of college professors and their political contributions in an election year is as high as 95:1.

David counters that the National Association of Scholars who did the study favors traditional study of western civilization. He asserts the more important question would be: does that bias manifest in biased teaching?

I cite the books used most in our prestigious graduate schools of education (like Columbia) as being overwhelmingly leftist. The best-selling book of them all is by Bill Ayers, an unapologetic, radical revolutionary who is proud of bombing banks and military installations during the sixties and seventies. He teaches teachers at the University of Illinois Chicago and he advocates “teaching for social responsibility” which he believes means turning out little revolutionaries across the country in our public schools.

David suggests that part of academic inquiry is reading those books that are on the fringe. He takes issue with the terms “anarchist” and “radical Marxist” and says there are no working definitions for them.

I say a Marxist is an anti-capitalist at least before we run out of time.

Left & Right Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair. The first question from the producer asks about reports that Trump was ignorant of Russian payments to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. It’s no surprise to me, I say. Russians have been supporting the Taliban against US forces for nineteen years. When Russian invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US supported Bin Laden and others against the Russians. I don’t see what the big deal is. Mark’s answer is circuitous. He talks about frequent communications between Trump and Putin, then mentions what he claims are examples of Trump’s racism like retweeting someone saying “White Power” from a gold cart in Florida. I asked what that had to do with Putin paying Taliban and Mark related what Trump aide John Bolton said about it: that Trump probably was briefed on the Russian payments but didn’t pay attention, that Bolton saw that often with Trump and his daily intelligence briefings. I bring up Trump’s July 4th speech at Mount Rushmore and outrageous mainstream media reaction to it, quoting headlines from The NYTimes and The Washington Post depicting the speech as “dark and devisive.” Mark quotes Trump saying there is a new far-left facism in corporate boardrooms.” I agree with that because corporation are kissing BLM butts and coming out in support. Mark claims 70% of the American people support BLM. I doubt that. Mark claimes: “Trump said angry mobs are tearing down statues of our founders, our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave or violence.” I ask, “You don’t agree with that?” “No,” says Mark. “What?” I say. “Have you been watching television?” It went on like that for the rest of the hour, quite contentious. See for yourself.

Left & Right Thursday, June 4, 2020

We start with a question from the producer: "Do you agree with the generals that moving the protesters [from Lafayette Park] was a violation of their constitutional rights? Mark said he would be.motivated to demonstrate against that action if he lived in Washington, DC. I don't agree with Mattis and other generals that deploying the military to suppress violence would be a violation of the Constitution as the generals state. I don't think it's necessary to do so yet, but we're' getting close. We discuss my column for the week which denies that "systemic racism" exists. I define racism, which is a belief that race is inherently superior or inferior to another. Mark would expand that to various manifestations of what I would call discrimination. He cited discomfort whites might experience encountering a group of blacks given the high crime rates among young black men. I don't see that as racism by a white person against blacks. I see it as logical caution given known crime statistics. We go into several other topics like Twitter and the First Amendment. Mark says social media uses "platforms" and is not subject to the same regulations as newspapers and TV stations.

What The Heck Is "Systemic Racism?"

Good news: After three months, the coronavirus has been knocked off the front page.

Bad news: It’s been replaced by riots in our cities.

On Monday of last week, a horrified world watched Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin kill a handcuffed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck while he pleaded for mercy. My first question is: why wasn’t Chauvin arrested for murder until Friday?

My second question is: how does anyone know racism made Chauvin do that? Because the cop is white and the victim was black? Could Chauvin be an equal opportunity brute? Looking for evidence that he’s racist, all I could find was a Mercury News interview with the owner of a nightclub at which, ironically, both Chauvin and Floyd worked, Floyd as a bouncer. The owner said Chauvin was overly aggressive with black patrons who were fighting compared to Hispanic patrons who were.

If, as reported in multiple venues, there were multiple previous complaints about Chauvin, how did he keep his job? The police commissioner is black. The state attorney general is black. The US Congresswoman for the district is black. Leftist Democrats have controlled the city and state for decades. All have more influence on local police behavior than some nebulous concept like “systemic racism.” 

Rather than look in the mirror, they blame others. Some blamed President Trump. Minnesota Governor Walz blamed drug cartels. Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner, John Harrington blamed white supremacists. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey also blamed white supremacists, organized crime, and foreign elements, then he actually cried at a press conference.

Leftist Mainstream Media blame systemic racism. On leftist Joy Reid’s MSNBC show over the weekend, author Bakari Sellers said: “This is not just about George Floyd. This is about systemic racism and systemic injustice and systemic oppression.” Also appearing was Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MIN) in whose district the riots began. She and Joy Reid nodded solemnly while Sellers blamed systemic racism. On ABC’s “This Week last Sunday, Omar said: ”There really was also many people who chose to demonstrate and not abide by the curfew, who felt like they also were terrorized by the presence of tanks, by the presence of the National Guard, and a militarized police.”

The long-time, left-wing paper called; The Nation, ran the headline: “There’s Only One Possible Conclusion: White America Likes Its Killer Cops.” Writer Elie Mystal claims: “The police are never going to voluntarily stop killing black and brown people… until the majority of white people in this country make the killings stop.”

Leftist public schools are teaching lessons on “systemic racism,” but what, exactly, is that? If you look it up you won’t find a definition that doesn’t employ circular reasoning. Google it, for example, and among the first hits will be Ben & Jerry’s take, entitled: "7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real." The first way is: “Racism At Every Level of Society” and it goes on listing racial disparities in wealth distribution, education, housing, and health care. All are assumed to be caused by racism of whites against blacks — circular reasoning again.

During the Obama administration, the US Department of Education started offering lessons on "systemic racism" for public schools using the same circular reasoning: ”Implicit racial bias can help us to better understand how institutional [systemic] racism and other forms of bias affect educational experiences of students from marginalized communities.” They, too, list the disparities and blame racism.

Several of our big-city police chiefs blame Antifa for turning peaceful demonstrations into riots. So does Attorney General Barr and President Trump. Meanwhile, Democrat NYC Mayor DiBlasio’s daughter was arrested for throwing rocks at police. Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar’s daughter tweeted support for rioters. Minnesota Attorney General and former congressman Keith Ellison. So did his son. All are Democrats and Keith Ellison is a former DNC Chairman.

Look around at the cities in which people are rioting. All have been run by Democrats for decades. There’s definitely a pattern here but don’t expect Mainstream Media to report on it.

Have We Overreacted?

Up to now people worldwide and here at home have largely cooperated with government shutdowns, but things are changing. The economic cost has been unprecedented. More people have lost their jobs than did in the Great Depression. Small businesses people spent their lifetimes building have been severely hurt and some have been destroyed. Trillions in stock values have gone “Poof.” Almost every American life has been disrupted in some way. Backlash has begun around the country with demonstrations at various statehouses where Democrat governors ordered the strictest, most-extended shutdowns.

As we’re learning more about this virus, some are beginning to question whether it was all necessary. Sweden, for example, has allowed businesses and most schools to remain open and left it up to individual citizens how to respond. They’ve come under criticism from across Europe including from neighboring Norway, a very similar country in nearly every way, which shut down much as America has. Sweden wagered that most citizens would eventually get the virus anyway and it would achieve herd immunity more quickly while other countries extended their vulnerability.

By some calculations, Sweden has had more deaths than Norway per capita, but Covid-19 mortality statistics are worked out differently across the globe. Here in America, for example, deaths of people who never tested positive for Covid-19 are nonetheless counted as victims of the virus. Those who did test positive but who may have died of more serious co-morbidities are still counted as victims of Covid-19. As I wrote in last week’s column, our shutdown was largely prompted by a virus model by Neil Ferguson out of Oxford University that has since proven way overblown.

Neil Ferguson caused panic

We don’t yet know if Sweden’s bet will pay off. While its death rate is twice Denmark’s, it’s only half of France’s according to Vanity Fair last Friday. An Israeli study published last week indicates that the virus goes through all human populations in eight weeks regardless of whether a country shuts down or not. President Trump’s Covid-19 Task Force pats itself on the back for saving thousands of lives with its shutdown policies, but are they correct? If the Israeli model proves true, what’s the likelihood that Trump would ever admit he was wrong? In an election year?

Even less likely to admit it would be mainstream media. All through March and April, they’ve done little but spread fear and criticize Trump for not shutting down early enough or strictly enough. Some Libertarians have suggested that neither federal nor state governments have legitimate authority to shut down the country and lawsuits have been filed to challenge them. We have so far used computer models and algorithms to predict the path Covid-19 would take, but now we’re seeing evidence that many models were flawed.

No major media figure nor political leader has dared question whether this has all been necessary. Did total shutdown increase the likelihood of a second viral wave in the fall? We don’t know. Will Sweden’s milder approach decrease that likelihood? We don’t know that either. Political leaders with their medical advisors have been forced to make decisions based on incomplete data. To what degree will they be held responsible if subsequent data prove them wrong? We don’t know, but it’s a safe bet that political partisans will point fingers if they believe it will help them electorally.

As testing for both the virus and antibodies to it are administered more widely, we’re learning unexpected things. So far — and we still have a long way to go — we’re learning that many more of us have been exposed to Covid-19 than expected. It looks like upwards of 30% of Americans may have antibodies but few if any symptoms. Would this be good news or bad news?

Usually I watch Fox’s Bret Baier deliver the news at 6:00 PM weeknights, but he’s often preempted of late by President Trump and his virus team. Trump hogs the podium and repeats things so much that I’ve been switching over to CBS, ABC, and NBC. What strikes me most about network anchors there is their melodrama, especially when reporting on the virus, and wonder if it’s genuine or affected. I suspect the latter.

Swedish leaders and their medical advisors have withstood withering criticism for their outlier policies both from within Sweden and from across the globe. Whatever the outcome, they won’t avoid repercussions. It might be continued condemnation, but it might ultimately be praise. We don’t know yet. How much criticism will this smalltime columnist receive for even suggesting that American politicians and media may have overreacted at enormous cost to our economy and our day-to-day lives? We don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll find out very soon.