Post hoc ergo propter hoc presidency

I am not trying to sound smart, and I can’t really speak Latin. The expression is simply the standard term for a logical error. In vernacular, it means “after that, hence because of that,” as most of you know. It is common for humans to draw causal connections from temporal sequences. In my field, substance use and addiction, "gateway theory," based on the same fallacy, has ruled over research and policy. Hardly anybody cared that it does not matter which drug one starts with for the risk of poisoning or addiction. But it's not just that the false causes are used as guides for action. Once they are in play, the true causes are ignored.

Does anybody doubt Trump would win, hands down, over Biden if not for the Chinese virus? He almost did (or has won) despite the Democrat agitprop that spread the calumny of the virus deaths' being Trump's fault. Nobody cared that Trump's trump card was economics, his China trade measures were substantial part of its success, and the virus came from China smack at the good time to destroy Trump's advantage. The progressive media (a clear redundancy) ignored China's role  in the spread of the virus, while Trump was depicted as a Plague-time well-poisoner.

What is the connection between the China virus and Biden's creeping out of his basement to possible presidency, with his pothead sidekick aiming at the Resolute Desk? All that was thanks to the common human mistake of readily taking “after that” for “because of that”, Trump's presidency—hence COVID deaths, the false conclusion endlessly propagated by Democrats and their media, exactly the "Organs" of the Democrat Party, as their counterparts used to be honestly called in the Soviet Union. Who cares that those deaths have no relationship whatsoever with Trump, who has done the maximum he could to withstand the biological attack while fighting the sabotage of Democrat governors, the posturing of know-nothing buffoons from NIH and WHO, and the constant attempts of political assassination from the Democrat Congress and Biden's "xenophobia" accusations. The NY governor Cuomo has actively murdered seniors by his order for care facilities—nobody will charge him with the crime. It is Trump who bears its consequences. Who cares that the US, despite all the Democrat agitprop, is far from the worst corona-wise in the world. It’s Trump's fault just because he was the president when it happened—forget all the praises Cuomo has given him in a fit of honesty.

Forget that it has been and would still be Trump's team that has born the brunt of the Chinese biological attack—and this is what it is. Even if—and it's a big if—the virus were not cooked in that Wuhan "institute," it was definitely deliberately spread to kill the US economy and thus remove Trump, the enemy of China. The Democrat fifth column was only happy to help, busy with the same work ever since Trump had been elected. Those are the causes ignored. Forget what is at stake: America’s freedom, energy independence, peace, Middle East conciliation, trade fairness, and honesty with allies and enemies. Let’s just pray that the utopia that this country has been does not turn into another nightmare of the communist takeover and bread lines. That has been a true cause-effect relationship.

The party that fought for slavery, that has revived racial conflict in this country and supports pogroms, that has open antisemites as its vocal and unrestrained leaders, that has given Iran billions to fund world-wide terror and pave its way to nukes, that is ready to reinstitute your tax-funded payments for terror murders of Israelis, that has its projected president neck-deep in corruption and client connection with the true enemies of the US—it is now on the verge of gaining unlimited power. A one-party totalitarian state, partnered with its benevolent creditor, Communist China. No Latin needed.

Intersectionality of hate

The unwieldy word “intersectionality” is relatively new. The dictionary says it was invented in 1989 to describe the confluence of various forms of discrimination. That is possible, even though 1989 does not sound like representing a time period when the likely correlation between various expressions of xenophobia would manifest in a most pressing fashion. In reality, however, the term is much better defined as a confluence of various victimhoods. More precisely, it denotes an assemblage of accusations with assigned guilts—viz., the guilts of not belonging to a class of victims, regardless of  any actual guilt.  Those excluded from among the victim classes are ipso facto oppressors. This, naturally, graywashes real oppressors--they become part of the many, those who committed genocide in Poland or Rwanda, and those who are trying to stop Taliban terror. Thus, a “white” heterosexual male is by default “intersectionally” guilty of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. 

"Whiteness", the main defining concept in the determination of "intersectionality," also covers certain groups regardless of their race, despite what that color word would seem to mean. The Jews, for instance, are viewed as "white" irrespective of their color and non-European (Asian) origin. Hence, they are not victims anymore but, by the Manichaean default, oppressors. Linda Sarsour, a prominent Democrat activist, said that Jews can't be feminists, which is one of the intersectionality component groups. The Jews' oppressor status evidence is also in the firm defense of Congresswoman Omar by her progressive Democrat colleagues. Instead of getting her censured, Omar's antisemitic statements have brought  her an appointment to the Foreign Affairs committee. There she is able to translate her Jew-hate into US policy.

In contrast to Judaism, being Muslim places one into the "brown," hence "intersectional," category, whatever the actual skin shade. Linda Sarsour is a very lightly-pigmented co-religionist of Omar's. She is a shariah and terrorist supporter, aka Obama's "champion of change" and a leader of the intersectional Women's March. She is not concerned that her Muslim devotion is incompatible with anything feminism stands on, considering that Islam scripturally holds women much below men (e.g., Koran 2:282), and Muslims above all non-Muslims (Koran 3:110). Indeed, the March was disavowed by its Jewish organizer, Vanessa Wruble, upon learning that  she was twice disqualified from it, as "white" and as a Jew. Now, to be fair, when denying the Jews their share of coveted intersectionality, Sarsour was cautious to talk about those Jews who supported Israel. Then, everyone knows that Jews generally do support the Jewish state, and everyone knows what those "anti-Zionist" provisos are worth. Sarsour's activist colleagues from the March, who adore Farrakhan, make no such fine distinctions and hold all Jews responsible as white, slavers, and generally exploiters. 

As in card games or rock-paper-scissors, there is a system of victimhoods, one trumping another. I may not have fully figured it out, with all its contingencies, but being Muslim trumps homosexuality. You may be a homophobic antisemite, but in combination with being “black” and a membership in the Nation of Islam this brings you to sit two seats from a Democrat US president. 

Being “straight” "white" non-Muslim male is trumped by all, let alone by being a "Latina," as asserted by Sonia Sotomayor. Her remark on how her ethnic origin makes her better qualified than any "white" male has landed her in the US Supreme Court as a Justice, ironic as that may sound. Heaven forfend that male has wealth. Then, the only protection from being considered fully inhuman is his generous support of all progressive causes there are, always on the verge of being denounced for any infraction. That support, however, may keep even a wealthy Jew afloat on the sea of otherwise ineluctable guilts—that’s why Soros's water is fine. His hate for Israel is par for the course. Being conservative, on the other hand, is unforgivable and punishable violently.

Hate for conservative opponents, for Israel, and for religion—except, Allah forbid, Islam—comes in one neat intersectional package. That is the modern Democrat ideology, which has evolved from its slaveholder KKK racism and statism of old times to race-, sex-, and other identity-baiting, with overt socialism on top. Long gone are the times when socialism was viewed as a swear-word, to be strenuously denied if accused of, like a shameful secret habit. It is now the mainstream ideology of the party that won popular vote in the last presidential elections. It is as mainstream and flaunted as admitting to drug abuse, also no longer a secret, to be "I-did-not-inhale" coy about. Consider Bernard Sanders. He sounded slightly off calling himself “Democratic Socialist” when running for Democrat nomination in 2016 (beware of the need to use “Democratic,” same as in DPRK or GDR). Despite the comforting adjective and the expectedly overwhelming support by the younger and entirely ignorant generation, by Obama's henchman's admission, the establishment was not ready yet to employ his communist demagoguery in full. There is no such reticence anymore in the Democrat Congress, whose members expound wild agitprop slogans and describe their drug abuse as the most natural experience.

Intersectionally with hate for capitalism, which is in a word hate for economic and political freedom, almost as many Democrats "sympathize more" with Palestinian Arabs as with Israel. An almost the same proportion, 35%, predominantly the young ones, hold an unfavorable (mostly or very) opinion of Israel, more than double that of Republicans. In another poll, a measly 27% of Democrats sympathized with Israel vs. 78% of Republicans. As Tuvia Tenenbom notes in his "The Lies They Tell," choosing "Palestine" over Israel is as certain for a progressive in the US as belief in man-made climate change. It is irrational to demand from the Congress Democrats to act against antisemitism, when their young and cool colleagues, representing the new generation of their electorate, are Jew-haters, the recent Deputy Chair of their party was a member of the Mein-Kampf-strength antisemitic Nation of Islam, and the entire Black Caucus, including Obama himself, happily met with Farrakhan, the preacher of Jew-hate whom Democrat presidential candidates reverentially call "minister." (The kompromat picture was immediately stashed away and remained hidden not just before Obama's presidential nomination but to the end of his second term.)

In their hate, they intersect with Farrakhan’s and his friend Rev. Wright’s morbid racism and antisemitism, and with the Jew-hating Palestinian Arabs—93% of their population, according to the recent poll. The hate-filled Arab population of the land illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt before the Six-Day War, governed by its two grotesquely corrupt and murderous regimes of their own choice, Hamas and the PLO, are the ultimate victims, intersecting victimhoods from colonialism, imperialism, Jews, whites, Crusaders--you name it. Regrettably, they also intersect with Jewish quislings who, like Bernard Sanders, faithfully follow their Bolshevik predecessors in their hate for capitalism, Jews, and freedom. Antisemitism, including its Jewish variety, is inevitable on the way to the totalitarian uniformity of progress.

It is Communism, now comfortably conjoined with another totalitarianism, Islam, that is the final intersection to which "intersectionality" leads. As a century before, parallel totalitarian movements gain strength around the world that does not want to remember. The Communist and National Socialist flags differed only in the small emblem on their bloody background. Today, the entire spectrum can be found in the colors of the vanguard of the immense expanse of humanity rolling in the same general direction: to squash freedom, whatever idiosyncrasies individual groups entertain, Muslim, feminist, progressive, socialist. Paraphrasing a little, "Intersectionalists of all stripes, united!"

Nobelists and I

Honestly, I’ve never hoped to be listed among Nobel prize winners—just not my caliber, for many reasons. Nonetheless, I have recently been. You may be surprised, but that was no cause for joy. You won’t be surprised that it was unwarranted, in more than one respect. Let me dispense with the suspense. The events occurred in an online discussion of a statement by the leadership of the National Prevention Science Coalition, of which I had been a member. Along with the audience of over 500 coalition members, I was informed by an authoritative scientist that he had heard “such rhetoric” as mine from “some very smart people like James Watson and William Shockley, and frankly, it scares the shit out of [him].” 

So, as you can see, although the discussion was among scientists (you could be misled by my opponent's coprolalic lexicon), my joining the Nobelist ranks had nothing to do with science. As you likely know, the gentlemen I was made to share company with are known not only for their discoveries, but also for their prejudice against the intellectual abilities of people of African descent, which those Nobel laureates viewed as not only inferior but genetically so. You’d think that Watson should have known better, considering that there is no surefire way currently to know if the IQ differences between the poorly defined racial groups have anything to do with genetics. You may also ask how I, knowing that and having a history of public objections to those views among scientists, could be such a troglodyte as to share those very views—not only in my mind but in my public rhetoric, in our times—and before securing a Nobel prize. You’d think I must be hopelessly deranged. 

You’d be mistaken. I have never said anything that could be considered “such rhetoric.” What I did say is that I had not seen any evidence that Officer Chauvin killed George Floyd because of racism, to use as a pretext for the ongoing social disorder, and that “implicit bias,” a current buzzword, is an Orwellian thoughtcrime, which requires telepathy to be proven. That is, even if the studies that have produced that concept register the objective phenomenon of different expectations associated with different population groups, some real, some false, those statistical data, i.e., population sample-derived, cannot be applied to any particular individual—or to all, to summarily accuse them of prejudice. That accusation would be as wrong and prejudicial itself as accusing all “black” males of inclination to murder because the frequency of murder in that vaguely defined population is higher than that in some other groups.

One does not need to be a scientist to understand that, but scientists, who are supposed to understand that perfectly, are guilty of despicable dishonesty when they pretend they don’t, drawing wrong conclusions from questionably designed statistical studies, translated into imaginary dystopian concepts. There is, however, nothing uncommon in creating those concepts among scientists or in their insisting on falsehoods even when proven otherwise: science has often been remarkably dogmatic. That has always been the case when scientists followed a totalitarian ideology. Under the Party’s protection, they have even outlawed whole branches of science, getting rid of scientific competitors, be it genetics under Stalin or relativity physics under Hitler. Totalitarian ideology, displacing morality with virtuous phraseology, is capable of permitting not just lies, but murder—be it for the sake of class struggle for communists or race struggle for Nazis.

In fact, where a totalitarian ideology, which is what the current progressive social-justice-structural-racism set of cliches strives to be, controls a scientist’s mind to convert scientific opponents into enemies, when the opponents’ views are perceived as opposing that ideology, nothing coming from that scientist can be trusted. The enemies’ theories and results will be at best ignored. Discussions are verboten, and that precludes scientific process. 

That is what has happened with the prevention scientists I communicated with. The NPSC director quickly “turned off the spigot,” as she put it. Her self-contradicting explanation: “I’m not making a unilateral decision to dismiss your perspective simply due to the points you are arguing.  However, they are inconsistent with the values of NPSC and so, as director, it is at my discretion to determine when to step in.” Understandably, she did not object to my being accused of racism, a calumny that in our times is akin to a Soviet citizen’s being publicly denounced as a Zionist lackey of capitalism.

The last time my perspective has been officially inconsistent with any values was back in the USSR I fled from. People accused of that thoughtcrime and attendant invented sins (they had to be invented, just like my racism) were blacklisted at various levels. It may be a small consolation that a recent editorial in one of the top scientific journals, Nature, nightmarishly declares the entire “enterprise of science” racist—even though I am not sure that white(black)washes my individual crime. Just as back in the USSR, I am happy about my inconsistency with those "values," even though that has forced me to leave—this time, the NPSC. I only wonder what kind of blacklisting I should expect.