I have three little girls, who are in college now. When they were young we rarely gave them candy or soda. Those were special treats for birthdays, or travel, or holidays, or whatever. But that was not part of their everyday diet. We weren’t fanatics about it, but we avoided junk in their diet. Nothing wrong with the occasional treat, but that wasn’t how we lived every day. And we raised three very strong, healthy kids.

We lived in the mountains of Tennessee, and often would have a fire at night, out on the deck (That’s me, on just such an evening, pictured to the right.). We’d sit around the fire, look at the views of the mountains, admire the sunset, and enjoy the cool evening mountain air. It was idyllic. I enjoy bourbon, and on those evenings I would often have a bourbon and Coke. Or three. I mix them with an emphasis on the bourbon, adding Coke mainly for color, and to avoid the appearance that I’m drinking straight bourbon. Anyway, on one of these lovely evenings, the adults were sitting around the fire, and I had a beautifully potent BOURBON and coke sitting on the ground next to my chair.

My daughters were running around, catching fireflies, chasing the dogs, playing tag, and doing the things that little kids do on beautiful summer evenings. Until my middle daughter noticed what appeared to be a Coke sitting on the ground next to my chair. “What a special treat!” she thought to herself. “He won’t notice if I just take one drink!” she thought.

So I’m listening to one of the adults tell a story, when all of a sudden I hear a little girl choking and gagging on the ground behind my lawn chair. I jump up, run around my chair, and try to help her.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

“Daddy, what’s wrong with your Coke!?! Ewwww!!!!”

It took me a second, and then I realized what she had done. A good father would have been very sympathetic and gotten her something to drink to get the taste of bourbon out of her mouth. I, of course, laughed myself silly. Along with the other adults. I still chuckle, just thinking about it. Maybe you had to be there. She looked so horrified and disgusted and green around the gills. She was maybe eight years old. She was so cute.

With entertainment like that, who needs TV?

I thought of that night today for some reason, and I smiled. What a great night.

And then I thought of Americans who voted for Joe Biden.

They thought they were being rebels. Going against the grain. Sneaking around, maybe even cheating a little bit to get what they wanted, and sticking it to the man.

Now, having taken a drink from that red Solo cup sitting on the ground – now we find out how much they like it.

If we’re lucky, they’ll get sick, and gag when they realize what they’ve done. And if we’re lucky, the adults around them will laugh at them. And if we’re lucky, they’ll eventually laugh along with the adults, learn from their mistakes, and change their behavior (and their votes) in the future.

For some reason, I find all of those possibilities to be unlikely. And I suspect that the consequences of their little fit of pique are likely to be painful for everyone. I hope I’m wrong, but I see the next four years involving a lot of disgusted gagging from all of us. Not just from those who decided to drink from this cup for questionable reasons. But from the rest of us, too.

Maybe I’m wrong. Hopefully I am.

But from a society-wide standpoint, drinking from the wrong cup can be extremely unpleasant. Not just for those who snuck a drink from the wrong cup. For everyone else, too.

Those who do so hope it will be like a little kid drinking from Daddy’s cup – C’mon! It’ll be fun! Let’s stir thing up a bit! What do they know! Haha!

And honestly, when it’s just a little kid getting a snoot full of bourbon, it is sort of funny.

But this – this is not funny.

This is not funny, because I feel like my kid took a drink of something that they weren’t expecting, but I’ll be the one gagging.

This is not funny.

Is there any reason to hope? Many conservatives openly feared that Trump would be merely a blessed delay, a brief reprieve from the inevitable rise of the brain-washed totalitarians among us. Après Trump, le deluge. The destructive leftist fantasies that have been a staple of intellectuals since Rousseau invented the role of the parasitical, selfish, self-promoting but verbally adroit intellectual selling political fantasy are now in full flower. (Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot would have set records for numbers of followers if Twitter were around then.)

It is never rational argument that defeats the fantasists. With the conspicuous exception of Ronald Reagan, conservatives generally don’t seem to know that if listeners think the choice is between the drab reality they know versus a glowing possible future, they will trade the cow for a handful of magic beans every time. The fantasists are often only stopped cold by reality when people are dumb enough to give a fantasy regime a try–often at horrific cost.

The fantasists will likely get their turn in our nation. Maybe now. Almost everybody under 50 has been subjected to intense anti-American and anti-western propagandizing at every level of education. All of our major news organizations are either expressly captive to an inimical ideology or (as in the case of Fox News) muzzled by increasingly woke corporate sponsors. We can no longer watch sports events without propaganda. We are gaslighted daily about race, sex, economics, and our physical environment.

Maybe even scarier, the COVID policy disaster demonstrated that a hell of a lot of Americans seem to like the idea of obedience to strictures provided by nominal experts. And the willingness to find new ways to enforce the new order is also chilling. Gauführer, come quick! My neighbors are harboring an unvaccinated family in their attic.

The legacies of the Founding Fathers, Ronald Reagan, and even Martin Luther King are being systematically erased in schools, entertainment, and governance. The mindless mobs in our city streets are evidence of that rot.

Can we hope?

Recall H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic War of the Worlds, in which the invading Martians defeated us at every level. It was the earth’s bacterial and viral life forms that finally stopped them. The clever Martians were unable to function in our real world. Similarly, the Russian Communist Party controlled every aspect of life for several generations. It was not possible to openly express or easily find opinions contrary to the party line. What brought it down was the unconcealable fact that its dogma and methods don’t work. Reality cannot be denied indefinitely.

What is noteworthy about the unfolding Biden Administration is its complete lack of originality in any way, shape, or form. Democrats invariably market themselves as the party of novelty, progress, and a bright (government-led) march into the future. In contrast, the Biden vision is to reheat leftover policies that did not work when they were implemented before. In addition, they will likely smuggle in a few of the worst ideas of the Leninist Youth wing of the party just to make sure failure is guaranteed.

If mediocrity can be said to have heights, a Biden Administration will indeed reach new ones. For the moment at least, Biden is excluding the hard left in favor of a set of retreads who did a lousy job the last time they were in power combined with alumni of the tech companies that delivered his electoral “victory.” Soon, Jimmy Carter will seem like a combination of Pericles and Bismark by comparison.

I think my biggest regret of the coming Biden economic and diplomatic failure may be that the hard left will not get the blame so the requisite periodic cure of the fantasy diseases will be incomplete.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party has quietly become vastly more diverse than it was a generation ago when Lee Atwater was crafting a southern strategy. The hopes and successes of new Americans brushing aside the ashes of identity politics is likely going to be at the core of the party in its emerging incarnation. Let’s hope so. Making reality great again is never a bad way to go.

Be sure to use the secret knock when you visit the bunker. I hate to waste ammo and lose friends.

A bar owner declared that he would no longer put up with arbitrary totalitarian state edicts that would destroy his business, and called on the people of America to take to the streets to protest.

An insurrection against these totalitarians is now the only remaining hope of America.

Stay tuned. If the owners of my hardware store in Southwest Ohio decide to join the movement, I will be on the streets of Loveland, Ohio to join them.

In Staten Island as I write this, the revolution is underway. People are in the streets. Pray that it will spread. They can’t arrest us all.

Editor’s note: Here’s a popular video making the rounds about what’s happening in Staten Island:

BREAKING 🚨: Staten Island bar owner arrested for defying lockdown orders.@JohnnyTabacco tells @gregkellyusa, "Governor Cuomo is a mobster." pic.twitter.com/4ZUaNSoHau

— Newsmax (@newsmax) December 2, 2020

As many of you are aware, a young lady and seemingly a first-rate female athlete got on the same field as Vanderbilt’s men’s football team and proceeded to kick a rather unexceptional 35-yard squib.

I have nothing to add to this spectacle. I would like to query if any of you know the answer to the following. There has been much debate here in Connecticut (which is really just a thinking man’s Vermont) directed to whether biological males that identify as women should be permitted to compete against biological females, most notably in track and field events. It seems a given that biological males that identify as male cannot compete against women. In short, no one argues that men should be allowed to compete with women – only men that are women (or is it women that are men?) are afforded such an opportunity.

So how is it that Ms. Fuller, who seemingly is all woman, is able to play with and compete against the boys? I presume that whatever laws or regulations that prohibit men from racing against women would apply here, no? I have never seen a law that allows for women to compete in men’s sports but prohibits the reverse. Such a law would seem to be discriminatory on its face.

Could the gentleman rated number 2,457 in the world in men’s college tennis be permitted to thrash the number one rated female in order to snatch the cup? Is there any way to stop such a thing? If not, why are men not competing in women’s sports as men? What am I missing? Would it not be heralded as a great moment akin to Ms. Fuller’s? And don’t say common sense. Common sense left town when a young lady with a five o’clock shadow dashed across the finish line at the women’s 5K.

Has anybody anywhere asked this question? Has anyone in the mainstream responded?

Lastly, something has been on my mind and, as we are clearly not to acknowledge it, I’d like to throw it out there. I’ve spent four years listening to the verbal and emotional histrionics of Trump Haters saying things such as “How do I tell my daughter to be of high character when the President is such a low life,” and “How do I explain to my daughter that sexist pigs like the President can rise to the top”, etc. Well, congratulations. Whole new worlds of opportunity are available to all young ladies everywhere.

Mothers everywhere may now confidently counsel their daughters that “It is OK if you are an inauthentic, lazy, mentally subpar underachiever with a laughable academic background and not an original or honest thought in your head. In today’s world, if you are willing to show some cleavage and hook up with an ample, repulsive, married, but very politically powerful, man, you can make it to the top on your back all the way to Vice President!” And, yes, I am aware that Ms. Harris more likely made it to where she is on her knees. But that is, as far as I know, conjecture and I will not grant such an observation credence.

There. I said it.

Bonus points: I am a White, heterosexual male. Or am I a lesbian trapped in the body of a man? Seriously, am I? Can I snag the “L”, the “G” and the “T?” How would I know? How would anyone know?

Ted Cruz came out last night with a highly cogent argument for the Supreme Court taking up the case in Pennsylvania that would disqualify the mail-in ballots.

“Today, an emergency appeal was filed in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the election results in Pennsylvania. This appeal raises serious legal issues, and I believe the Court should hear the case on an expedited basis.

“The Pennsylvania Constitution requires in-person voting, except in narrow and defined circumstances. Late last year, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law that purported to allow universal mail-in voting, notwithstanding the Pennsylvania Constitution’s express prohibition.

“This appeal argues that Pennsylvania cannot change the rules in the middle of the game. If Pennsylvania wants to change how voting occurs, the state must follow the law to do so.

“The illegality was compounded by a partisan Democrat Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, which has issued multiple decisions that reflect their political and ideological biases. Just over a month ago, Justice Alito, along with Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch, wrote-correctly, I believe-concerning the Pennsylvania court’s previous decision to count ballots received after Election Day, that ‘there is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution.’

“In the current appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the claim based on a legal doctrine called ‘laches,’ which essentially means the plaintiffs waited too long to bring the challenge. But, the plaintiffs reasonably argue that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has not applied that doctrine consistently and so they cannot selectively enforce it now.

“Even more persuasively, the plaintiffs point out that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has also held that plaintiffs don’t have standing to challenge an election law until after the election, meaning that the court effectively put them in a Catch-22: before the election, they lacked standing; after the election, they’ve delayed too long. The result of the court’s gamesmanship is that a facially unconstitutional election law can never be judicially challenged.

“Ordinarily, the U.S. Supreme Court would stay out of election disputes, especially concerning state law. But these are not ordinary times.

“As of today, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, 39 percent of Americans believe that ‘the election was rigged.’ That is not healthy for our democracy. The bitter division and acrimony we see across the nation needs resolution. And I believe the U.S. Supreme Court has a responsibility to the American people to ensure that we are following the law and following the Constitution. Hearing this case-now, on an emergency expedited basis-would be an important step in helping rebuild confidence in the integrity of our democratic system.”

The initial lawsuit is summarized as follows:

Conservative Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and others contend state officials had no right under the Pennsylvania Constitution to expand mail-in voting in 2019, and the state Supreme Court was wrong to uphold that statute. The group called it “an unconstitutional, no-excuse absentee voting scheme.”

“Pennsylvania’s General Assembly exceeded its powers by unconstitutionally allowing no-excuse absentee voting, including for federal offices, in the election,” the challengers argued in court papers. As a result, the election was “conducted illegally.”

The group seeks an emergency injunction from the nation’s highest court to block the completion of any remaining steps in the state’s certification of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results, which took place last week. The petition was submitted to Associate Justice Samuel Alito.

This is not a fraud case – it is about the legality of the changes to voting law. It will be interesting to see what the Supremes do – especially Clarence Thomas, who is very much about states’ rights.

Although it’s impossible to say for sure, Trofim Lysenko probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history. Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation. Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage.

…

Lysenko forced farmers to plant seeds very close together since, according to his “law of the life of species”, plants from the same “class” never compete with one another.[14] Lysenko played an active role in the famines that killed millions of Soviet people and his practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages.[14] The People’s Republic of China under Mao Tse-Tung adopted his methods starting in 1958, with calamitous results, culminating in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1962. At least 30 million died of starvation.[14]

…

On the one hand, this rehabilitation is shocking. Genetics almost certainly won’t be banned in Russia again, and the rehabilitation effort remains a fringe movement overall. But fringe ideas can have dangerous consequences. This one distorts Russian history and glosses over the incredible damage Lysenko did in abusing his power to silence and kill colleagues—to say nothing of all the innocent people who starved because of his doctrines. The fact that even some “qualified scientists” are lionizing Lysenko shows just how pervasive anti-Western sentiment is in some circles: Even science is perverted to promote ideology.

Again and again, we hear the question “Don’t you believe in science?” This is an odd question because pure belief isn’t necessary for science. One must understand the process of confirming empirical results against a hypothesis. If the empirical results (the facts) don’t confirm the hypothesis (the narrative) then there is no science whether you want to claim to believe in science or not. Of course, one believes in Religion because it will by definition go beyond any empirical result. In the 20th century, we have something called ideology. This has the unfortunate quality of looking or sounding like science but it isn’t. One believes in the narrative but not the facts. There is no science in ideology. This can be a very dangerous phenomenon. Lysenko had a powerful understanding of Stalinist Communist Ideology. His theories of crops adapting to the environment were completely false scientifically. Yet, because these theories so pleased the Soviet Idologues he was put in charge of Soviet Agriculture with disastrous results. Not only did it cause huge numbers of deaths in the Soviet Union but his ideological idea was also persuasive in China and caused even more deaths there.

From 1970, the first Earth Day, until about 2003, there were a variety of sophisticated hypotheses about Man-Made Global Warming. Unfortunately, the accuracy of the empirical data available was so weak that it wasn’t possible to confirm or deny these hypotheses. Yet, the ideology of Made-Made Global Warming insisted on belief without any actual scientific confirmation. Massively draconian legislation was drafted and put into effect on these unconfirmed hypotheses. The economy of the United States and the rest of the World was severely restricted by this legislation.

In 2003, after multiple satellites with well-proven look down infrared temperature measuring technology had been in orbit for a few years, accurate measurement of the surface temperature of the earth was finally available. What was announced was that there was a pause in Global Warming. As the models, now long in use, had relied on the surface temperature of the earth in their measure of Global Temperature did not match the hard reliable empirical data now coming from the satellites, these hypotheses would be rejected as scientifically invalid. In short, to the extent we understood the science at the time, Man-Made Global Warming did not exist. Certainly, all of the draconian legislation resulting in the massive restriction of the economy in retrospect looked completely unwarranted.

Of course, as they say, the story wasn’t over. Dealing with an ideology is not like dealing with normal scientific inquiry. The ideologues will cling to their hypothesis, claiming and acting, as if their naked hypothesis, without confirming data, had been science. Now, these idealogues realized that their game was up. The new data threatened the existence of their ideology. So they tried first to undermine the new data. From NOAA, an organization never designed to be collecting such data, new data was referred to as showing that Man-Made Global Warming was still happening. Of course, the scientific community asked to see the actual data set as would be customary. NOAA refused to release the actual data set. A freedom of information lawsuit finally forced them to release the data set. It was soon discovered that as one might have assumed, NOAA had no new data but had repackaged the old data available before the accurate satellite data had become available. With this scheme exposed now the ideologues’ ideology was in real jeopardy. They were forced to try to do real science. First, as would be their right, they constructed new hypotheses that involved the temperature of the deep ocean. However, immediately, they moved to their non-scientific, ideological, interpretation. There was no accurate data on the temperature of the deep ocean to confirm their hypotheses (same old problem). The ideologues went ahead and claimed that Man-Made Global Warming did exist even though, once again, they had not proved this scientifically. If the Biden administration, irrespective of massive proof of massive fraud, is allowed to take office it is likely that this ideological unconfirmed hypothesis will once again be accepted as scientific proof when it is not. Then a new round of unjustified draconian legislative measures will be applied and the world economy will be crushed needlessly.

We have been hearing the term “Excess Deaths” in the media over and over. It sounds simple enough but is it? Look up the CDC definition and it is anything but simple.

Counts of deaths in the most recent weeks were compared with historical trends (from 2013 to present) to determine whether the number of deaths in recent weeks was significantly higher than expected, using Farrington surveillance algorithms (1). The ‘surveillance’ package in R (2) was used to implement the Farrington algorithms, which use overdispersed Poisson generalized linear models with spline terms to model trends in counts, accounting for seasonality. For each jurisdiction, a model is used to generate a set of expected counts, and an upper bound threshold based on a one-sided 95% prediction interval of these expected counts is used to determine whether a significant increase in deaths has occurred. Estimates of excess deaths are provided based on the observed number of deaths relative to two different thresholds. The lower end of the excess death estimate range is generated by comparing the observed counts to the upper bound threshold, and a higher end of the excess death estimate range is generated by comparing the observed count to the average expected number of deaths. Reported counts were weighted to account for potential underreporting in the most recent weeks.

Comparing these two sets of estimates — excess deaths with and without COVID-19 — can provide insight about how many excess deaths are identified as due to COVID-19, and how many excess deaths are due to other causes of death. These deaths could represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths, or potentially could be indirectly related to COVID-19. Additionally, death certificates are often initially submitted without a cause of death, and then updated when cause of death information becomes available. It may be the case that some excess deaths that are not attributed directly to COVID-19 will be updated in coming weeks with cause-of-death information that includes COVID-19. These analyses will be updated periodically, and the numbers presented will change as more data are received.

…

Estimated numbers of deaths due to these other causes of death could represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths, or potentially could be indirectly related to COVID-19 (e.g., deaths from other causes occurring in the context of health care shortages or overburdened health care systems). Deaths with an underlying cause of death of COVID-19 are not included in these estimates of deaths due to other causes, but deaths where COVID-19 appeared on the death certificate as a multiple cause of death may be included in the cause-specific estimates. For example, in some cases, COVID-19 may have contributed to the death, but the underlying cause of death was another cause, such as terminal cancer. For the majority of deaths where COVID-19 is reported on the death certificate (approximately 95%), COVID-19 is selected as the underlying cause of death.

…

These estimates are based on provisional data, which are incomplete. The weighting method applied may not fully account for reporting lags if there are longer delays at present than in past years. For example, in Pennsylvania, reporting lags are currently much longer than they have been in past years, and death counts for 2020 are therefore underestimated. Conversely, the weighting method may over-adjust for underreporting, given improvements in data timeliness in certain jurisdictions. Unweighted estimates are provided, so that users can see the impact of weighting the provisional counts. However, these unweighted provisional counts are incomplete, and the extent to which they may underestimate the true count of deaths is unknown. Some jurisdictions exhibit recent increases in deaths when using weighted estimates, but not the unweighted.

We have learned from the very first sentence that I have quoted above that excess deaths is an estimate completely dependent on the number of deaths that historically occurred from 2013 to the present. The validity of this depends first on the statistical pure model that is employed. There are three questions. First, does the data actually conform to the model and thus verify the hypothesis? Second, is the model itself a valid model of reality or is there some inherent flaw in its logic? Third, was the data gathered properly and reliably? For this discussion, I am most concerned about the third question but does not imply that the first two can be dismissed. For me, an old instrument salesman, the really glaring problem is in the empirical measurement itself. COVID doesn’t seem to kill anybody all by itself. It kills very elderly people with compromised lungs and multiple comorbidities. Thus, determining the actual cause of death would be a very murky process. Add to this that there is a financial incentive for the hospitals to name the cause of death as COVID one really must look very carefully at the results. There is going to be a reevaluation of all of this at some point and I expect cooler heads may have a very different interpretation. From above:

Additionally, death certificates are often initially submitted without a cause of death, and then updated when cause of death information becomes available. It may be the case that some excess deaths that are not attributed directly to COVID-19 will be updated in coming weeks with cause-of-death information that includes COVID-19. These analyses will be updated periodically, and the numbers presented will change as more data are received.

The CDC comments as if the fact that weeks after a death was recorded as “not attributed directly to COVID” it is then changed to a COVID death, means that COVID is being underreported so keep watching as the numbers go up. This completely fails to accept the possibility that the hospital administrator may have visited the physician and mentioned offhand the amount of money the hospital would receive if the death in question would be attributed to COVID. He then asks the physician to “reconsider” his finding. This would mean that the COVID death numbers we will end up with will be very high, not too low, and will be adjusted down. This also points out just how difficult it is to judge the cause of death because COVID isn’t capable of killing all by itself and will always be part of a team effort with other causes. Again, to me, this suggests a weak virus and not a strong one. By the way, it should only take one visit for the administrator to make it clear that the physician should get with the program and bend his judgment so as to record the death as COVID.

I haven’t got to all of the “fudge factors” that are being baked into these “Excess Death” calculations. We know that such fudged models are prone to confirmation bias. The famous “hockey stick” curve that tried to prove Man-Made Global Warming was a result of multiple fudge factors that were adjusted and even then the data was cherry-picked to produce the hockey stick.

Hysterical headlines that scream about deaths caused by COVID, which can only mean the estimated Excess Deaths, should be classified as some sort of ideological belief system and not science. Even more hysterical headlines about new outbreaks of COVID cases, which mean that many more people have been tested and show anti-bodies, is used to imply that more lockdown is justified. This too is not science but an ideological belief system at work.

We have seen this before. Lysenko is on the loose again. There are two Krakens that have been recently released to harass the American public. First, a massively fraudulent election, and second, a massively overhyped pandemic. Perhaps not so oddly enough, the same people have perpetrated both.

Regards,

Jim

Powerline recently linked to a an extraordinary article from The Non-Partisan New York Times, entitled, “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.” If you haven’t read it, you really should. The author of this piece, Zoe Beery, is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn who has previously enlightened her readers with pieces like, “What Abortion Access Looks Like in Mississippi,” and “Global Quest for ‘Green’ Concrete Goes On, as Researchers Ask if it Can Be Done,” and “Climate Inaction Means Children Born Today Will Face Severe Health Risks, New Report Warns.” You know that The New York Times is really trying to shed its reputation as a leftist rag when it hires writers such as this.

Anyway, Ms. Beery’s most recent effort, “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism,” is an extraordinary article about some extraordinarily ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. Namely, young people who have inherited enormous amounts of money and seek to prove that they are true-believer Marxists. To demonstrate their virtue. Or something. For example, 25-year-old Sam Jacobs, who feels guilty about having a $30 million trust fund:

A socialist since college, Mr. Jacobs sees his family’s “extreme, plutocratic wealth” as both a moral and economic failure. He wants to put his inheritance toward ending capitalism, and by that he means using his money to undo systems that accumulate money for those at the top, and that have played a large role in widening economic and racial inequality.

I understand why Ms. Beery refers to these multi-millionaires who are in their 20’s and 30’s as “rich kids” – they sound remarkably immature. Which is, I suppose, what leading a remarkably sheltered life can do to someone. For example, the fabulously wealthy 30-year-old Rachel Gelman, who describes her politics as, “anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and abolitionist”:

My money is mostly stocks, which means it comes from underpaying and undervaluing working-class people, and that’s impossible to disconnect from the economic legacies of Indigenous genocide and slavery,” Ms. Gelman said. “Once I realized that, I couldn’t imagine doing anything with my wealth besides redistribute it to these communities.

Some of these 30-year-old ‘kids’ seem scarred by the means used by their families to earn money. Like Pierce Delahunt, a 32-year-old self-described “socialist, anarchist, Marxist, communist, or all of the above” who apparently hasn’t given a lot of thought to what words like anarchy and communism actually mean. His family made a lot of money building outlet malls, and Mr. Delahunt appears to be struggling to deal with, well, a lot of things:

“When I think about outlet malls, I think about intersectional oppression,” Mx. Delahunt said. There’s the originally Indigenous land each mall was built on, plus the low wages paid to retail and food service workers, who are disproportionately people of color, and the carbon emissions of manufacturing and transporting the goods. With that on their mind, Mx. Delahunt gives away $10,000 a month, divided between 50 small organizations, most of which have an anti-capitalist mission and in some way tackle the externalities of discount shopping.

I try to imagine myself “tackling the externalities of discount shopping” and I draw a blank. If that is one’s mission in life, what does one do when one gets out of bed in the morning? The behavior of some of these ‘kids’ seems odd, but less so when you consider their goals, which are much odder.

The article goes on and on. Please do read it. You won’t learn anything, but you’ll feel much better about yourself when you’re done. And you’ll be reminded of why you don’t read The New York Times. And why no one else does, either.

Imagine a 35-year-old single mother who works as a waitress in a truck stop on Route 66. Imagine her reading this, about her fellow 30-somethings in this article. The waitress does not have the time or the money for foolishness or empty condescension, and I suspect she would take a dim view of those who use their immense resources to promote socialism, which will raise taxes on everyone, including 35-year-old single mother waitresses. These rich kids don’t care if their income taxes go up. They’ve got theirs. This is about taxing everybody else. And then they’ll feel virtuous, while waitresses’ lives get more difficult.

More difficult than they already are.

Giving $50 million to a sheltered, immature 30-year-old with adolescent levels of certainty and delusions of grandeur is dangerous. Daddy would do more good for society by simply burning his money in the back yard. But he loves his kids, so he sends them to some Ivy League version of ‘Socialism U,’ gives them a pile of money, and shrugs his shoulders when they attempt to destroy the system that allowed him to earn all that money.

Eh, he got his too, so whatever, right?

With great power comes great responsibility. These ‘kids’ understand power. But they don’t understand responsibility.

Someone like that can do a lot of damage. And as Zoe Beery explains at length, they intend to do just that.

These 30-year-old ‘kids’ think they can buy self-respect. They’re about to be disappointed. And everyone else is going to pay the price for their failed experiment.

These wealthy elitists just can’t comprehend that the waitress has learned more about the world at the truck stop then they did at Harvard. But they don’t care. Their empty souls demand the payment of tribute. No matter how many people get hurt. Whatever.

They’ve got theirs.

So for them, it’s all just a game. But for truckstop waitresses and the rest of us, this is no game. Destroying capitalism will make a lot of people very poor, and very miserable. It always does. But to the trust fund kids, it’s just a game.

They’ve got theirs.