Propaganda Files: Legal Culpability for COVID Deaths

I'm going to begin the "Propaganda Files" series by discussing an opinion piece in Newsweek by attorney Neil Baron. I chose this piece for my lead-off because analyzing it highlights the difference between how I approach things and how people now publishing in American media generally approach things. I bring certain (perhaps naive) expectations to the table, and these are not the expectations of most authors in Newsweek or brand name newspapers or CNN or MSNBC.

My approach and expectations make me an outlier, evidently, although I think I am a reasonable man with logical, obvious expectations. My antennae, however, seem to be tuned to very different frequencies.

Baron's piece, published January 26, is titled, "The Question of Legal Culpability for COVID Deaths." Let me say, first, that I find nothing "wrong" with the piece in terms of facts or logic. I have a problem with what the piece does not say. The disconnect for me, regarding this particular article, is quite jarring. I chose to tackle this piece first because it really does serve as a convenient example of what I see as a pattern by American media.

I highly recommend everyone read it. He begins by comparing Ethan Crumbley's parents, who are charged with manslaughter, to those politicians who discourage Covid vaccination or mask-wearing. The parents can be charged with manslaughter because they were aware that their actions or lack thereof contributed to the risk. As Baron writes, "Proving those charges doesn't require proving intent to cause another's death, only the awareness of risk." 

It's a fascinating argument, and it's hard to evade the legal logic of an analogy to states' anti-mask mandates or the Supreme Court's ruling against President Biden's vaccine mandate. Baron closes with, "They can't help but be aware of the risk of unvaccinated deaths, yet they're choosing to ignore it. That ought to be against the law, and probably is."

My Expectations

Although I heartily endorse Baron's intriguing piece, I had some problems with it. The self-subscribed limits caught me by surprise. With "The Question of Legal Culpability for COVID Deaths" as the title, I had certain expectations. 

First, since I consider deaths due to Covid vaccines as "COVID Deaths," I thought there would be at least some brief mention of culpability and liability involving vaccination deaths or disabilities. It honestly didn't occur to me that the topic wouldn't be mentioned at all. Certainly the U.S. government has some estimate regarding vaccinations gone wrong. But not one word or one number. Topic non grata.

I also thought that if bad red state politicians' advice was considered possibly criminal, then bad CDC advice, like telling people early on that mask-wearing wasn't necessary, might be mentioned as also possibly criminal. The non-mask advice, it turned out, was primarily to conserve mask supplies for medical workers. Certainly, the CDC should have some legal exposure from not recommending masks, especially when other countries were simultaneously saying that masks worked. But no mention of CDC legal exposure.

Perspectives

I have nothing negative to report about what Baron wrote, other than my surprise (given the title) about what he decided to not write. If DeSantis and various are culpable and legally responsible for legislating in favor of pro-risk behaviors that result in more "COVID Deaths," then so was the CDC when it gave misguided advice on masking for the primary purpose of conserving masks for health care workers and not mentioning that was the reason for the advice. 

I flew to Las Vegas during those early days. My girlfriend argued for my wearing masks based on interviews she had watched with South Korean doctors. I argued that the CDC knew what it was doing. I wore gloves, as the CDC recommended, but no mask. I can tell you matter-of-factly that had I contracted Covid and died, the CDC would have been culpable. 

Whatever the limited scope of Baron's piece, given the Newsweek headline title, I expected both a glance at vaccination bad-outcome culpability and CDC culpability. But not a peep. Regarding culpability, I thought I was asking obvious questions that anyone would ask. When these kinds of holes or limitations appear in an article ostensibly about culpability, I need to ask why. I don't think the answers have much to do with column inch limitations.

And that is my point. Much of what is published by Newsweek, USA Today, CNN, and so on assumes a particular perspective that asks some Covid questions, addresses some Covid topics, and consistently avoids others. When perspectives are always framed a certain way, when the rhetoric is generally scripted, relying on these perspectives becomes both rote and laden with unseen risks. In the weeks ahead, these "Propaganda Files" will feature patterns of submission and omission that suggest an overriding editorial process in action. This editorial process may be plotted, planned, and micro-managed administratively, or it may simply be that a ubiquitous intellectual fashion sense results in non-investigative homogeneity. If what's not said forms an unyielding media pattern, if the holes left by what isn't asked are consistent, then we have endemic American propaganda.

Being a professional gambler, I tend to ask everything. That is not a popular thing to do in the 2022 United States. Not popular at all.

Bob Dietz

January 28, 2022

Propaganda Files: The Case of Covid

The entire spectrum of American media has flailed and floundered in its attempt to grasp, much less report, on the realities of the pandemic. During the Trump Covid year, Americans were treated to major media both debunking and supporting Trump's carny barker predictions and recommendations, many of which were absurd and blatantly wrong. It was relatively easy for those of us not in the clown car to see that none of the clowns knew how to drive. Occasionally, some Americans took to drinking bleach or goose stepping to whatever administration blather was promoted at the moment, but for the most part, the emperor didn't do much to hide his intellectual nakedness.

A year under Biden has been very different in style, if not in result. The carny barker has been replaced by mellifluous preachers, telling us more of what we want to hear, but in a smoother-than-Trump way. Trump was a gate-crasher selling used cars with a megaphone. We invited Biden in, and he's pushing some version of societal Amway. All we have to do is buy in to whatever he's selling, and all will be right with both our personal worlds and the culture in general. Except, of course, it isn't.

As propaganda goes, the Biden blather hasn't been as obvious or absurd as Trump's, but really, could anyone gild those Trump informational lillies? Instead, the Biden administration and the bulk of American media have introduced an overwhelming wave of Covid spin. As propaganda, it's not terribly subtle, but it is ubiquitous, which is perhaps why it goes largely unexamined and unchallenged. In twelve months, Biden, American pharmaceutical firms, and American media in general have generated background noise that not only attempts to drown out contrarian voices, but that filters out all data not supportive of a particular grand Covid-19 narrative.

I'm an old former journalism major, and I have never witnessed anything like it. The edits used in presentations, the specific repeated misrepresentations of contrarian arguments, the tidal wave of homogeneous messaging, I have not seen this coming from the United States in my lifetime. These "Propaganda Files" will break down specific media stories and themes. Most of the manipulations and unfair practices are rather easily identified, which is what bothers me as a critic attempting to highlight this stuff. Every Journalism 101 grad should be able to see the problems upon first exposure to most articles. Media professionals and academics teaching the subjects can certainly see all of this more easily and clearly than me. But the homogeneous goose stepping continues with minimal pushback from anyone but a far right more invested in whackadoodle conspiracy fluff than reality. 

How did we get here, and why?

Intro to 2022 Propaganda

Today, as an introduction, I'd like to discuss some of the words crucial to the pandemic. Originally, when the pandemic began in the U.S. in early 2020, "mitigate" meant to make the pandemic less severe or serious for the country as a whole. That initially meant taking actions to stop the spread of Covid. Two years later, the word "mitigate" has become, as used by American government institutions, something quite different. Instead of describing ways to fend off the spread of a deadly virus, now it refers more to reducing the economic impact and to reducing the number of hospitalized or dying. "Mitigate" no longer refers to stopping disease spread, but to conceding virus ubiquity and managing consequences rather than managing spread. What's fascinating is that, with the introduction of vaccines, one would anticipate the definition of "mitigate" moving away from acceptance of virus spread. The transmissibility of Delta and Omicron, however, has eased the use of "mitigate" in the other direction.

The Biden administration and current U.S. narratives try to have it both ways. What is implied in all of the pro-vaccine "mitigation" language is that vaccination somehow still prevents spread, although with Delta and Omicron, there is little evidence of that. 

This transition from "mitigate" referring to "stopping virus spread" to "mitigate" as meaning "managing the economy and the economy of health care" is significant. It is not some kind of necessary or natural evolution in attitude and use of the term. Many other countries still define "mitigate" as primarily referring to stopping the spread of Covid itself. 

"Civic Duty"

"Civic duty" is another phrase that has evolved during the last two years. Mention of and emphases on "civic duty" initially referred to mask wearing and social distancing. These were individual acts with clear benefits to others as well as to self. Unless people are morbidly obese and living up three flights of stairs, there is no objective cost to wearing a mask or maintaining social distancing.

Now, "civic duty" has extended to some amorphous need to get vaccinated so as to keep oneself out of hospitals and reduce stress on the not-really-national health care system. This is a very curious and dramatic shift in the media definition of pandemic "civic duty."

The original emphasis really carried no negatives for self. But getting a vaccine that is effective only against the variant du jour is a different type of alleged civic duty. It creates (eventually measurable) self risk with each application, and the individual assumes all kinds of long-term risks. This is not an exaggeration, as long-term Covid and vaccine effects are still unknown since we are nowhere near anything that could be considered long-term.

Analyzing Propaganda

These evolutions in meaning have been pernicious, that is, gradual and increasingly subtle. I'm sure that there are hundreds of graduate students in fields from communication to social psychology who are cataloguing the language of these times and who are also fully aware of the shifts and manipulations. Eventually, actual scientists will come forth with their observations regarding the influence communication of the last two years. Until then, I'll stick to what I do best -- point out the obvious that few appear to notice and fewer want to discuss. Then I'll just plod forward, doing the best I can.

What I believe will happen with most of my analyses is that people will be surprised at the obviousness of what I point out, they'll acknowledge it because there won't be a way to ignore it, and then most will say, "But..." Their first reflex will be "But," and then there will be an excuse or a pooh poohing of the observation. Those in journalism, however, are going to be sensitized. And that's all I can really do.

The majority of these "Propaganda Files" will focus on specific articles with particular journalistic flaws that should be caught by anyone who's taken two journalism courses or who has ever worked at a newspaper. There's no shortage of examples, so I'll get to it.

Bob Dietz

January 28, 2022 

Everyone's a Racist

Let me begin with my premise, namely that virtually everyone is something called "racist," which I'll get around to defining in a bit. One of the problems with my premise, and it's a significant problem, is that there doesn't appear to be anything concrete in the real world that corresponds to something called "race." Biologists and physical anthropologists came to the conclusion 50 years ago that "race" doesn't really exist on its own. Race, it turns out, may be more of an epiphenomenon, something that arises out of the inherent structures and priorities of various cultural contexts. If this is correct, then "race" is a tool rather than some objective thing that exists of its own accord. A convenient Aesop's Fable emerging due to forces, "race" as an epiphenomenon would potentially have much in common with consciousness. It's worth noting that the "race" in "critical race theory" is also viewed by critical race proponents as an epiphenomenon that obfuscates numbers and statistics regarding wealth inequality, incarceration disparateness, vertical mobility, and other structural elements baked into the American experience.

However, taking a deep breath, let's ignore all that for now. Critical race theory isn't going anywhere soon, so we can circle back to it another time. Today, I just want to promote my theory that pretty much everyone is racist, including me. My theory requires my personal definition of what is racist, which I will explain in due time. But first, some personal history.

Growing Up

I grew up in a lily-white small coal mining town in Pennsylvania, just 10 miles or so from Centralia, the famous little berg that's now abandoned as it falls into the 50-year-old mine fire burning underneath it. By lily-white, I mean my town had no black people. Zero. We were sans African Americans. Until I turned six, in 1963, I had never seen an African American. 

When I was six, my father decided to take me on a summer trip to visit my aunt and her family, whom I had never met, in Philadelphia. It was just my dad and me in the car as we drove the two hours. A few minutes into the trip, my father launched into a serious monologue about how black people were "just like us" and there was no reason to be concerned. Minutes passed, and he started on the same topic again. He had been an engineer in the U.S. Army, he explained, and worked with many black people. They were "just like us."

If there was one thing my religiously attending Lutheran Sunday school had taught me, it was "Red and yellow, black and white; they are precious in His sight," so I had never really considered skin color as making people different. I couldn't understand why my dad kept repeating this stuff. I just nodded my head in agreement.

Finally, after another hour or so as we approached Philadelphia, he broached the subject of "Philadelphia has a lot of black people" a third time. I had struggled to figure out what he was getting at. I interrupted and asked, "So auntie and my cousins are black?" Dad stopped his spiel and started laughing. I had no idea why he felt my conclusion was funny, but it turned out that, no, auntie wasn't black. 

My Personal History with "Nigger"

It may come as a surprise to people, with my being a self-avowed racist, that I have never actually called or referred to anyone as a "nigger." As I mentioned, I grew up in a hard-scrabble, completely white town, so it's been odds-against that I never referred to anybody as a "nigger." I'm not particularly proud of this; it just kind of happened via Sunday school and Spider-Man comics. My non-use of "nigger" in that way is a curious byproduct of happenstance and my micro-culture. It's sort of similar to my never having been with a prostitute in the Biblical sense (I have hung out with a few). Not really something to be proud of per se, but now that it's part of my self-definition, it's not likely that I'll break the pattern.

Just because I never called someone a "nigger," however, does not mean that I haven't used the word. I have zero problems discussing the word "nigger" by saying "nigger." In fact, it seems silly to do otherwise. And I have quoted other people directly who used the word "nigger." I have also said, "Well, that is what is referred to as 'nigger rich.'"

Are these uses of "nigger" why I consider myself racist? No, they are not. If you think that banning the saying of it solves much of anything, good for you. I'm not that kind of optimist.

Why Everyone is Racist

Saying you're not racist doesn't make you not-a-racist. In this era of 24/7 personal surveillance, never saying anything racist also does not bestow unto you not-a-racist status. Nobody knows what goes on in that head of yours, so recording what comes out of your mouth isn't necessarily much of a clue as to your racism. And if we suddenly acquire mind-reading skills, I'm not sure that completely solves the "who's a racist" dilemma either. Is what percolates through our consciousness a sufficient measure of us?

My theory, which would define 99.9999% of us as racist, bypasses what comes out of our mouths, what flits through our minds, and all manner of self-reporting. If we physiologically react differently to people different from us, then I submit that we are racist. To the degree that our culture defines race in terms of skin color or physical features, then if we physiologically respond differently to "the other" than we do to clones of ourselves, we are racist. 

Thus, if we are hooked up to a GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) monitor, an EEG, and an EKG, and our physiology responds in disparate fashion to a room full of "crackers" versus "niggers," then we are racist. Your body doesn't lie. I'm not saying that our responses need be heightened or more extreme to indicate racism. I'm saying that difference in reaction would be the indicator. 

Cultural Conundrum

If "race" isn't really a thing, as physical anthropologists have argued, then we all need to step back in awe and examine the effects our culture may impose on our physiology.

Consider the brilliant Dave Chappelle's character, Clayton Bigsby, the blind black white supremacist who think he's white because no one's told him otherwise. Think about Bigsby's physiological reactions to people he's told are white or black. In his series of Bigsby sketches, Chappelle plugs into the unsolvable nature of our cultural labyrinth, which traps us in a maze without perspective and without anything we can use as a mirror. 

We are all racists, which is quite a thing to be when there may not be something called "race."

Bob Dietz

January 24, 2022

 

Bob Dietz: Racist!

Now that both MLK Day 2022 and 2022 Las Vegas Raider playoff hopes have ended, it's time I confessed. By public metrics currently in use in the United States, I am unabashedly racist. Not slightly, meanderingly racist, mind you, but a full-blown evil doer with racist inclinations dripping from my pores. While this may come as a bit of a surprise to my family, friends, and business associates, I assure you all. "Racist Bob Dietz" should be my new moniker. When I'm finished with my confession, Roger Goodell and sportswriters everywhere will concur.

Agreeing with Gruden

That's right, folks. Sometimes I agree with Jon Gruden. If you'll remember, Raider head coach Gruden was forced to resign due to the leaking of various and sundry indelicate emails. Gruden had the racist audacity to say that NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith had "lips the size of Michelin tires." Smith is black.

I understand that an offhand, wink/wink, unnecessary reference to Smith's lips reeks of a juvenile, racist subtext. Gruden had any number of racist options to employ in that email, however, and he chose a fairly soft one. Did the man deserve to lose his career over some third-grade crack about another man's lips? If that were the racist bar, I suspect that virtually every NFL exec would be unemployed after an examination of personal emails.

I was brought up attending Lutheran Sunday schools and reading Spider-Man, so I'm programmed to not make fun of people's physical characteristics. That kind of fun is a mean habit. Smith's lips are not really as big as Michelin tires, thus I'm forced to disagree with Gruden's analogy. Had Gruden said that Smith's lips "put Jumbo Tootsie Rolls to shame," then I'm on board with it. That would have been accurate, as Smith's lips are quite prominent. 

Now, had Gruden said that Smith's lips were "the color of Michelin tires," then I'd also have to agree with Gruden. I'm no tire expert, but my cursory examination of the Michelin sales site yielded 48 tires, and they were all black. Talk about discrimination. You'd think Michelin would make at least one pasty tire for we Germanics. Or maybe a nice off white for Slovenes. Gruden, you see, is allegedly of Slovene descent. He probably can't pronounce his ancestors' capital, Ljubljana, and no Michelin tires match his skin color. No wonder he walks around scowling like Chucky.

Lamar Jackson

I'm just getting warmed up. 

I love Lamar Jackson, but I need to come clean about my racism. Lamar Jackson isn't Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, or Tom Brady, but who is? What Jackson brings to the table are some non-optimal mechanics that don't much matter because he knows what he's looking at, he's quite accurate, and he understands how to lead an NFL team. You would think that his style of play wouldn't lend itself to NFL comebacks, but he's fine. He's very comfortable and effective winging it in situations where he's down two or three scores. Playing from behind, he's saved my wagering bacon a couple of times in 2022.

But now comes my racist reveal. If you're going to excoriate Jon Gruden and ban him from the NFL because of his comments regarding lips, then I guess I'll never run for political office. Lamar Jackson, to my eye, has a nose that occupies an immense amount of face. That Jackson nose takes up more square face-age than any nose deserves to occupy. His schnozz looks like you put actor Samuel L. Jackson in the ring with Mike Tyson, and told Tyson he could only hit the actor in the nose. The sole public figure with a bigger schnozz than Lamar Jackson was Jimmy Durante.

The Disney NFL

So the NFL gets Gruden canned while hanging onto thousands of emails that undoubtedly contained more pointed racism and sexism than anything leaked from Gruden. Such woke hypocrisy. Wokepocracy, I guess I'll call it. The NFL posing as a progressive entity, winnowing out the Neanderthals like Gruden. Wokepocracy at its finest. 

After the email leaks, I saw Gruden routinely referred to as "racist," with basically just a couple of emails as evidence. I saw media attaching "racist" to his name adjectivally as in "Racist Jon Gruden" headlines. Suddenly the NFL was a bastion of progressivism, and Jon Gruden was a racist devil. Sure. 

Well, if Gruden can be "Racist Jon Gruden" after commenting on a man's lips, I guess I'll join the racist club by acknowledging the reality of Lamar Jackson's nose. I'm sure Roger Goodell and sports writers everywhere agree.

"Racist Bob Dietz" has a nice ring. I'm hoping to collect un-merit badges. Next on my list is "sexist." Stay tuned.

Bob Dietz

January 19, 2022

 

Anocracy Now

 "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."  Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Apocalypse Now, 1981)

The thing about napalm -- it's hard to ignite. But once it's lit, death and destruction are almost assured. It burns so hot that nominal contact causes second degree burns that are difficult to treat. Anything more than nominal contact and surviving becomes problematic.

The United States has called itself a democracy all these decades while fostering an institutional skeleton that is essentially undemocratic. The electoral college, the Senate, and the Supreme Court are all undemocratic institutions. One man/one vote is not on their list of priorities. 

On Sunday, January 9, CNN's Fareed Zakaria hosted a special report, "The Fight to Save American Democracy." Zakaria is behind the times. The United States lost its status and label as a democracy two years ago. We are now considered an anocracy.

The Democratic party, for decades, has tolerated the racist nature of the electoral college, the Senate, and the Senate vetting of the Supreme Court. Now these same built-in evasions of one man/one vote are being used by the GOP to hijack future presidential elections. Well, this was always a possibility. So don't be shocked that protocols designed to evade one man/one vote have become fascist tools. 

If you do the math, the biggest effect of the electoral college is valuing white votes over minority votes. And how does West Virginia, with a state population the same as Philadelphia, hold the agenda of an entire nation hostage? Biden won the presidency by eight million votes. West Virginia has fewer than two million people, yet here we are. An American president who won by eight million votes forced to negotiate policy with the don of The Mountain State. The inestimable Joe Manchin helms a populace that is somewhere between 93% and 94% white. Do you really think the Senate and the U.S. government would work this way if the occasional state was between 93% and 94% black? And Washington, D.C., with a population half that of West Virginia, is nowhere near statehood and two senators. How could it be? The D.C. population has a black plurality.

Political napalm has always slicked the skin of the presumed American democracy. Now that this Trump-centric GOP has ignited it, both the democratic facade and the rotted guts of U.S. political institutions are afire. I shed no tears. The democracy-undermining problems have always been obvious, but have never been addressed. Hand me my fiddle. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Bob Dietz

January 11, 2022

O'Brien's Sports Gambling Op-Ed: A Brief Analysis

Note: This entry continues my discussion of Timothy O'Brien's December 21 op-ed, published by Bloomberg Opinion. The first entry regarding this subject was my January 1 "Good" Addictions versus "Bad" Addictions.

I guess I had a problem right off the bat with the title and the sub-heading. "Will Sports Gambling Foster Addiction?" came first. 

When these anti-gambling pieces show up during Christmas shop-a-mania gluttony, I always want to sub in other consumer choices. "Will Buying a New Chevy Foster Addiction?" or "Will Buying Steak Dinners Foster Addiction?" or "Will Buying New Underwear Foster Addiction?" The answer to all of these questions is probably yes, so why focus on one choice, sports gambling, out of many?

Then the sub-heading, "Most people wager online purely for fun, but millions are vulnerable to financial and social misery." Hoo boy. I have umpteen issues with that line. First of all, how does Mr. O'Brien know that "most people" wager online "purely for fun." That's a lot of conjecture for one sentence. Maybe everybody wagers, at least in part, due to addiction. How does Mr. O'Brien possibly know that they don't? And I'm not even going to get into definitions of "fun" and "misery," which are problematic trigger words without clear definitions in the real world, to say the least.

And then we have the "but millions are vulnerable to financial and social misery." If you plug any expenditure, like "most people order fast food online" or "most people shop for real estate online" or substitute anything for "wager," then the "millions are vulnerable to financial and social misery" could conceivably follow no matter the particular expenditure named.

Most consumerism fosters more consumerism of the like. The measure of addiction isn't whether a recognized cottage industry has sprung up to identify it or whether it's in the DSM-5. The measure of consumer addiction is whether a behavior leads to repeating the behavior. People scream wolf to call out overspending on gambling, while pooh poohing overspending on everything else.

More than 70% of Americans die in debt, and the average debt is more than 60K. That's the frame in which American consumer decisions are made. What has led us to this American reality has little to do with gambling, and certainly not much to do with sports gambling. Every caveat Mr. O'Brien mentions for sports gambling in this piece could be applied to all consumer goods, services, and experiences. Certainly Mr. O'Brien is aware of that, but he chooses to not mention it.

Affleck Effects

I could go line by line through Mr. O'Brien's piece and deconstruct most of the points. Maybe I'll do that later in the year as an exercise. For now, I want to address the curious opening with the name "Ben Affleck" as the first two words, followed by the line, "the movie star and avid gambler who has struggled with alcohol addiction."

Using Affleck's name to open the piece is a helluva hook, but it's really a cheap shot. If you're going to make the scientific case for cross addiction relevance (gambling and alcohol), then go ahead and make it. Don't just insert a line about Affleck's self-reporting that he's an alcoholic for no good reason. The implication of that line is that Affleck's alcoholism somehow directly relates to his sports gambling front man work. The line is clearly meant to suggest that there's a problem with Affleck promoting sports gambling BECAUSE he's an alcoholic. Well, if you're going to make that case, don't go halfway. Let's see some stats. Get into the reputational mud and explicitly argue your point. Don't just imply something and walk away.

Mr. O'Brien is usually a fine writer, but this was a cheap opening hook with an even cheaper implication. Worthy, really, of The Weekly World News.

If I were Affleck, I would be enraged by what amounts to an irrelevant opening cheap shot as a way to sell a piece. I suppose Affleck is familiar enough with the travails of print implications lacking facts, but I suspect Bloomberg Opinion as the source was a bit of a surprise.

Bob Dietz

January 8, 2022

 

January 6: Saving Anocracy?

One year after MAGA rioters swarmed the Capitol, yesterday's news programming featured a bevy of democracy-saving appeals. President Biden gave a remarkable, pointed speech. The speech was about 12 months late, but better late than never.

I had just one issue with all of the "democracy on the brink" rhetoric. What democracy was everyone talking about? The United States, to my mind, is a pseudo-democracy. It waves its alleged democratic leadership in the face of the world while its governmental design is anything but one man/one vote. 

I went into all of this back in my October 30, 2020 "My Case for Trump." The presidency is determined by an electoral college that is rigged against non-whites. The Senate features a two-per-state representation that no third grader would consider fair, and that is (surprise, surprise) rigged against minorities. The House comes closest to actual democratic principles if you ignore all of the gerrymandering that mostly is rigged against minorities. And the Supreme Court is filled by people recommended by the president and vetted by the Senate, the least democratic of these government institutions.

So how a government designed to circumvent democracy can call itself a democracy is beyond me, but it does, and on a very regular headline basis. Evidently people besides the usual academics are coming around to my way of thinking. The fashionable word right now is "anocracy." Anocracy means a blend of democratic and autocratic government. Palatable junior varsity authoritarianism; a kind of proto-fascism. 

The Center for Systemic Peace downgraded the U.S. system of government from a democracy to an anocracy in 2020. The United States lost its status as the world's oldest continuous democracy, which is now Switzerland. The curious thing is that I don't remember the U.S. change of status being announced from the rooftops. I guess pseudo-democracies try to keep the pseudo part quiet.

Anocracy, however, has recently become front-page fashionable. When CIA advisory panel member, Barbara F. Walter, defined the U.S. as an anocracy, and decided to write a book about it, our non-democracy status made the news cycles. Meanwhile, three retired generals wrote a Washington Post op-ed not only agreeing with the anocracy label, but warning of a civil war in 2024. It turns out that anocracies are much more likely to have civil wars than democracies or autocracies.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't really know the word "anocracy" until the recent publicity. Not being politically fluent, all I had to offer was "pseudo-democracy," which is still true enough. 

We should all be shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that a government utilizing Rube Goldberg machinations to evade actual democracy should find its built-in hypocrisies coming home to roost. No need to save a democracy these days, despite yesterday's headlines. Those timbers rotted a long time ago. It's time, rather, to try to destroy an anocracy. And then see what emerges in its place.

Bob Dietz

January 7, 2022

Covid 2022

We'll be fighting in the street

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgment of all wrong

They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I'll get on my knees and pray

We don't get fooled again

Don't get fooled again

The Who (1971)

It's been a while since I've written about covid. A long time, actually. We now have a Democratic administration, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House. Let's compare the striking differences between early Covid 2022 and the waning weeks of the Trump administration a year ago.

1) Despite all warnings and indications of how the virus would evolve, the United States finds itself woefully lacking in testing. Tests are difficult to find; testing sites can feature hours-long waiting. That's a check under Trump and a check under Biden.

2) An administration pushing largely ineffectual mitigation strategies to rein in the variants while declaring there is no need to panic. Carry on with your Christmas shopping and go see a ball game (or bowl game). It doesn't matter if there's a highly contagious disease and a stadium crammed with 50,000 people. Buy some tickets and take a chance! That's a check under Trump and a check under Biden.

3) Hospitals filling to the brink while the administration declares the dangers of children not attending school in person, despite no real data regarding long-term covid consequences in children (or adults for that matter). That's a check for Trump and a check for Biden.

4) Questions arise about the utility of testing and keeping infection counts. The CDC giving contradictory advice that appears to be slanted to maintaining economic normalcy as a top priority. That's a check for Trump and a check for Biden.

5) Trump's Dr. Scott Atlas not knowing what he's talking about while promoting government actions that will grease the skids towards herd immunity. Biden's Dr. Anthony Fauci, while absolutely knowing what he's doing, refusing to argue against government actions that push Americans into the same herd immunity cattle-auction chute. Check for Trump on herd immunity. Check for Biden on herd immunity hiding under no name.

6) A soaring economy with stock market gains and one-percenters padding their lives on pandemic outcomes. Check for Trump. Check for Biden.

7) Pushing the narrative that soon to be available or currently available vaccines are the answer to solving the covid crisis, even as Professor Andrew Pollard, developer of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, says, "We can't vaccinate the planet every six months." Check for Trump. Check for Biden.

8) Major American news networks almost completely ignoring covid numbers in other countries whose mitigation efforts have been radically different and superior to the United States. Check under Trump. Check under Biden.

As many Americans died of covid in 2021 as died in 2020. Somehow that has become lost in the vaccination rhetoric. CNN no longer does a daily Covid death tracking chart. Why not? Instead, it features a chart showing vaccinations. Why? And not a story bubbles to the CNN surface highlighting vaccine-related deaths or the dearth of knowledge regarding long-term covid consequences.

Propaganda in 2020. Propaganda in 2021, albeit with the widespread and blatantly manipulative use of the word "science" as an adjective or noun.

Yeah!

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

The Who ("Won't Be Fooled Again") 1971

Bob Dietz

January 5, 2022

College Football Playoff Report

With Alabama handling Cincinnati 27-6 and Georgia beating Michigan 34-11, college football has been bestowed with an all-SEC final. I'm tempted to quote Gomer Pyle, "Surprise, surprise, surprise," which entails both the 2021 reality and the self-fulfilling rigged design of the NCAA football playoff process. A few of my observations follow.

First of all, people who follow me know that I had the Bearcats at 150-1 to win the national title. Did I think they had a chance to really win the thing? Well, as I publicly stated, I thought they had about as much chance as my friend Tony and me wrangling Elizabeth Hurley into a threesome next weekend. 

While about 70% of 2021 college football teams had 16 starters or more returning due to covid rules and regs, Cincinnati did not. Personally, I thought that the 2020 version of the Bearcats was at least a touchdown better than the 2021 version. The 2020 Cincinnati squad beat a 2020 UCF team that was also better than this year's Bearcats. Anyone who watched Tulsa versus Cincinnati this year had to expect that Alabama would be able to comfortably run against the Cincinnati front seven. The game played out as anticipated.

I don't want to diminish what Cincinnati accomplished this year. They played fabulously, and the coaching staff did a Grade A job of getting them prepped to play their best against their best opponents. As Nick Saban said post-game, Cincinnati was a mentally tough, disciplined, hard-nosed outfit that deserved to be in the playoff. 

In the other semi-final, Michigan's linebackers and safeties spent much of the game too close to the line of scrimmage and too far from the perimeter. Georgia attacked the perimeter with easy first-down completions, and Michigan was always trailing the plays with terrible tackling angles. The Bulldogs anticipated Michigan's defensive priorities, and Georgia play-calling exploited those priorities. 

Despite the SEC monopolizing the title game (cue up Gomer again), the conference appeared pretty raggedy. Nobody looked good except Alabama and Georgia. I kind of thought the SEC was down a notch this year, and that was likely the case despite the two high-profile heavyweights. The bowls shined a spotlight on the ordinariness of the rank-and-file SEC teams.

The title game line caught me by surprise, which rarely happens. I expected Alabama to be -2 or thereabouts. Instead, Georgia is -2 1/2 to -3. Now let me explain why this surprises me. Heading into the semifinals, the Tide ranged from +110 to +120 to win the title while Georgia was +130 to +140. I assumed this translated into Alabama as a title game favorite. I was wrong. Evidently, this disparity was due to the belief that Michigan was somewhat live as compared to Cincinnati. It was not due to Alabama being considered better than Georgia, despite the evidence from their first meeting. 

Since I hadn't really perceived either underdog as live, I expected Alabama to be favored versus Georgia. The idea that Georgia was somehow more impressive than Alabama in the semis is alien to me. Alabama executed a sound game plan and, to use a wrestling term, laid on Cincinnati much of the game. They had control and saw no reason to take risks. That, to me, was as impressive as anything Georgia did versus Michigan.

Had the playoff field been expanded, the two long shots I would have had interest in would have been Utah and Wisconsin. The Utah/Ohio State game demonstrated why, despite all of their offensive firepower, Ohio State would likely have fared little better than Cincinnati or Michigan versus Alabama and Georgia. Ohio State's front seven never solved their run-stopping problems. If anything, the Buckeye defense looked worse against the run down the season stretch. Every good rush offense hurt them.

That's it for now. I'll comment on the bowls in general next week.

Bob Dietz

January 3, 2022

"Good" Addictions Versus "Bad" Addictions

Timothy O'Brien, the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, published a piece on December 21st that explores the potential ramifications of the legal online sports betting explosion. The piece was widely distributed, and my local paper, the Johnson City Press, ran it accompanied by a half page photo of one of my favorite hangouts, the Westgate SuperBook.

While the piece was informative and accurate, it was also what I would call a fashionable keyhole piece. "Fashionable" because between now and the Super Bowl, it's fashionable in the United States to run anti-sports gambling pieces in the media, it's fashionable to raid local illegal books and bust Elks clubs for block pools, and it's fashionable to rant about the financial burden of gambling immediately after the American populace has taken out second mortgages to cover their Christmas expenditures. "Keyhole" because these pieces inevitably focus from a particular narrow perspective without placing such gambling spending in the overall consumer context that is 2022 America.

Being a contrarian sort, I hammered out a brief op-ed to respond to Mr. O'Brien's op-ed. I'll present that brief op-ed here. I'll then do a follow-up that addresses some of the specifics of Mr. O'Brien's piece and why I think they are, while accurate as given, so ignorant of the larger consumer context that they amount to crying wolf while surrounded by a half dozen wolves in a kennel that has also been invaded by a thousand flying piranhas. The wolves are, I argue, the least of your worries.

So without further ado, I present my op-ed, which sticks to basics.

Opium is in the Eye of the Beholder

Timothy O'Brien's sports gambling opinion piece in the December 26 Johnson City Press is a solid informational piece. To make his case, however, Mr. O'Brien purposefully ignores the larger context of American consumerism in which the gambling problems play out. Without context, what gets lost is that sports gambling is just one item on a buffet of consumer opiums.

First, I'd like to recommend what I consider the must-read magnum opus for modern gambling, Natasha Dow Schull's Addiction by Design. Dow Schull is an anthropologist. Her book focuses largely on machine gambling, but she has assembled and summarized a trove of recent gambling research into one place. The book is a gem and a wonderful survey of what happened when American uber capitalism bonded with gambling.

Next, I'd like to introduce myself. I've spent the last 40 years as a professional sports handicapper specializing in college football. That means, in essence, that I've been a consultant to high stakes sports gamblers for more than four decades. I'll name drop here; Billy Walters was one of them, albeit briefly. I was featured in former Seattle Times reporter Mike McCusker's "Tipsters or Gypsters?" McCusker's report was published annually out of Las Vegas. I've been in the invitation-only Wise Guys sports handicapping contest for more than 30 years.

Nobody has to convince me about the addictive nature of sports gambling. Nothing has been more frustrating through my 40 years than telling clients what to do on Saturday, and then having them blow that and more on Sunday because they want action. I am well aware that no amount of good Saturday advice guarantees that clients will wind up with a lifetime profit. Odds, in fact, are against it.

Stepping back for a broader view, the question is whether enabling people to thrive with one opium does them any real good when they have easy access to thousands of opiums. Stepping back still further leads to questions I tackled in an old paper I presented at the 1982 Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking. Those questions involve an American culture that allows gambling, drugs, and even sex to be labeled as "addictions," but is hesitant to categorize fast food gluttony, buying new cars, and watching television as addictions, too. Sports gambling may be addictive and a negative in American life, but is it any more addictive and does it do any more damage to body and wallet than a lifetime of Big Macs and Whoppers? Similarly, time is money in a wage-per-hour economy, but I don't see any public service announcements for Television Addicts Anonymous or Netflix Anonymous.

What I argued in that paper is that until gambling losses reach an enormous chunk of one's income, are they really worse than any other decadent, expensive American proclivities?

The online targeting of gamblers that Mr. O'Brien mentions in his piece is routinely employed by American companies selling everything from shoes to movie tickets. Why should sports gambling online targeting be any different? I've got Joseph Banks, Men's Wearhouse, and Saks popping up every time I'm online. Surely everyone is aware that this kind of specific messaging is standard operating procedure across most businesses. Nobody needs as many button-up shirts as I have, and maybe nobody needs forty-thousand-dollar pickup trucks or Disneyland vacations, either.

As Young Sheldon's Georgia and Connie argue when justifying their laundromat/casino this season, "Who are we to decide how people spend their money?" When American life features a cornucopia of unnecessary opiums on which to spend, it's a convenient kind of keyhole view that enables writers and the public to assign 800 numbers, addiction cottage industries, and labels ranging from "irresponsible" to "sin" to one particular opium as compared to all the others.

Bob Dietz

January 1, 2022