Culture critic: Doctors’ James Bond Moment
Newzandar | John O’Sullivan at The Pipeline compares the 1,200 medical professionals’ recommendations that people join the Black Lives Matter protests in the midst of the pandemic to “a James Bond movie in which a Bond super-villain recruits ‘top scientists’ to spread a deadly virus”—”eerily similar,” in fact, to the plot of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” The doctors don’t want to spread COVID-19, but they are trying to make public health more political, and this is starting to look “familiar.” In fact, Lancet editor Richard Horton makes the clear case that physicians ought to take a political stance. Unfortunately, “the Man on the Clapham Omnibus is no more an expert at combating racism than doctors.” Furthermore, rather than “ameliorating racist feelings,” the protests “with their accompanying riots, are at least as likely to be exacerbating racist feelings.”
Foreign Desk: The Brazen Badness of Beijing
Victor Davis Hanson writes in The Daily Caller, “China is now on the move — without apologies,” while America “tears itself apart with endless internal quarreling and media psychodramas.” Beijing made the decision that “it might as well not let such a pandemic go to waste, if it’s going to be blamed for the spreading virus due to its deceit anyway.” In an attempt to “strangle what was left of Hong Kong’s weakened democracy” and “intensify its ongoing border conflicts with India”: “What better way to rattle the world’s largest democracy than to demonstrate to the world that a defiant China is dangerous?” The Middle Kingdom has been compelled by the COVID-19 situation “to give up its nice-guy façade”: From saying “So what?” in response to criticism about its malware cover-up, it now says, “What exactly are you going to do about it?”
Watch the campaign: The Dangers of “Defund”
The demand to cut off funding for law enforcement has “grown increasingly loud,” but as CNN’s Chris Cillizza notes, doing so “carries massive political risk for Democrats.” Unsurprisingly, given that defunding the police is “a clear political loser,” National Democrats have “spent the last few days dodging about whether they support defunding efforts.” Either “activists… demanding radical change” or “a majority of the country,” which opposes the move, must be alienated by Democrats. In the absence of a viable alternative to dismantling the police force, “the call to ‘Defund the Police’ will continue to be music to Trump’s ears.”
Gotham Journal: Self-Praise of Pathetic Pols
Matt McDonald of Spectator USA snarkily writes, “With the economy in tatters, storefronts boarded up or broken and citizens in the street demanding justice, Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo speak with one voice as they say to New Yorkers: ‘You’re welcome.'” After “weeks of state-mandated lockdown, thousands of preventable nursing-home deaths, and days of angry protests and looting,” the two gloated over the state’s reopening on Monday. The thousands of people who had taken to the streets earlier, including Chiara, the mayor’s daughter, “who was arrested for blocking traffic,” “must be news to the thousands” that the rally had just begun. In contrast, Cuomo “spent the virus season shirking responsibility for New York’s nursing-home catastrophe and bantering with his brother on CNN.” Regardless of the situation, it appears that Cuomo and de Blasio have become accustomed to responding in the same way: remaining unaware, making a number of mistakes, blaming one another, and declaring triumph. Why fix something if it’s working well, like half of Manhattan?
An Intercultural Civil War, from the right
Ben Domenech of The Federalist laments that “America woke up to a moment of clarity” this week: “In the midst of a great cultural civil war” is the situation. After George Floyd’s horrific death, Americans were “largely united” in their “anger and frustration,” but “we’ve been coming apart ever since.” The nation is facing a conflict between law and order and “revolutionary racial radicalism” as a result of the protests, which have “now led to more than a dozen deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and theft,” as well as “images of woke white protesters” kneeling and “apologizing to the mob for sins they did not commit.” Sadly, this “leftist campus antagonism,” which is now “powerful and tangible,” has won the respect of prestigious organizations and enterprises. It’s “you will kneel, or you will pay” for these new radicals.
compiled by the editorial board of The Post
source: nypost