Society

‘To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,’ George Orwell famously observed. He was talking not about everyday life but about politics, where it is ‘quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously’. For years before the 2020 election, nearly all American conservatives were in favor of standing up to Big Tech — but most were also against changing the laws and regulations enough to make such a stand effective. And yet the threat from Silicon Valley was literally in front of our noses, day and night: on our cell phones, our tablets and our laptops. Writing in the London Spectator more than three years ago, I warned of a coming collision between Donald Trump and Silicon Valley.

So far the Massachusetts vaccine rollout has been going about as smoothly as the Patriots’ first season sans Tom Brady. There is plenty of room for improvement.  Frankly, the Commonwealth should have nailed the rollout. When it comes to healthcare — well…it’s kind of our thing. According to US News, Massachusetts currently clocks in at #2 for best healthcare in the country, second only to Hawaii. That’s not to mention the fact that Massachusetts’s single-payer system was one of the main inspirations for Obamacare. That’s right: the blueprint for Barack’s crowning achievement actually originated from one of Mitt Romney’s binders. But the current COVID statistics tell a different story.

Where is Jack? You know, Jack-the-Giant-Killer? The little fellow who caught the giant Cormaran in a deadfall and dispatched him with a pick-ax? Who strangled the giant Blunderbore and his brother? And who tricked the double-nobbed giant Two-Heads into stabbing himself?   I realize that today’s children’s books are less sanguinary, and some readers may need a refresher in the exploits of the Cornish boy who set things right back in a time when giants were in the habit of abusing their monopoly on size and strength. Jack made up in ingenuity and quick thinking what he lacked in brawn. And we could use his help right now. For once again, we have a plague of giants. Giant Twitter. Giant Apple. Giant Facebook. Giant Google.

If your aim is to stop America descending into civil conflict, it’s hard to think of a less effective method than forcing millions of people to abandon public platforms and instead use some segregated messaging system. Big Tech companies are not actually de-escalating hate online censorship, and corporate media companies are merely using their actions as an excuse to de-platform their ideological competition. The Silicon Valley overlords should think about this as they carry out an unprecedented purge of users following the siege of the Capitol. President Trump’s personal and official Twitter accounts have been ‘permanently suspended’ (oxymoron?) and Facebook has banned him from posting.

On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was confronted by CNN’s Rosa Flores in a clip that soon went viral. Senior citizens had begun the vaccination process in Florida. Most counties rely on an appointment app but several counties in Florida had allowed seniors to get vaccinated on a first-come-first-served basis. This had led to long lines with some elderly waiting overnight in their cars.  Flores was asking a leading question, the kind only Republicans get from CNN: ‘What has gone wrong with the rollout of the vaccine? We’ve seen phone lines jammed, websites crashing, and also senior citizens waiting overnight for the vaccine.

Donald Trump said during the second and final presidential debate on October 22 that he was optimistic a vaccine would be ready 'within weeks’. When moderator Kristen Welker asked if that was a 'guarantee’, Trump replied that it was not, but that the US would have a vaccine by the 'end of the year’. It wasn't the first time he had made this prediction publicly: 'I think we’re going to have a vaccine by the end of the year,’ Trump said back in May. The media could have accepted that the President probably has better insight into the timeline of vaccine development and approval than those not involved in the process.

Virginia governor Ralph Northam: first a doctor and now apparently a theologian. Northam took a shot at churchgoers during a press conference announcing the state's latest coronavirus restrictions on Thursday, arrogantly explaining to Virginia residents how they are supposed to understand their relationship with God. While reminding churches to practice social distancing and require masks indoors during Thursday's presser, Gov. Northam smugly remarked that 'you do not need to sit in the church pews for God to hear your prayers.' Northam also asked people of faith what the most important thing is this time of year: 'Is it the worship or the building?' 'For me, God is wherever you are,' he added.

After eight months of frantic work, several coronavirus vaccines appear ready for launch. But there are 330 million Americans, and decidedly less than 330 million shots right now. So the great question America must ask is, who should receive the vaccine first?At least, it was supposed to be a great question. Mercifully, the New York Times has come forth like the Good Witch of the North to show us the way. Figuring out health policy is easy, it turns out: just decide the best policy based on race.That was the clear message of a Saturday article posing the question: 'The Elderly vs. Essential Workers: Who Should Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First?

When I was a young attendee of a Charismatic Christian church, people were very keen to make themselves look ‘cool’. There was Christian rock. There was Christian rap. There was something called The Street Bible, which reframed Biblical stories through a modern lens. I don’t want to be too mean about this stuff. Some of the Christian rock was pretty good. The Street Bible had a sense of humor about itself. Even the rap wasn’t that bad. (I say that because I know what you are imagining. ‘My name is Ben and I’m here to say/Worship God and don’t be gay.’) Hillsong, at the time, was a very cool church. They had enormous services, and hit songs, and pastors who looked as if they had walked out of daytime television.

Twitter has been quick on the draw when responding to tweets by President Trump in the last month, as he furiously and mistakenly attempts to make his case for winning an election he did not win. Within minutes, Trump’s tweets are flagged as containing disputed information regarding the election. Twitter is very invested in babysitting the President of the United States, sometimes with cause. But the tech giant’s scrutiny of spurious posts from other governments is not as close: if Twitter will not label a tweet as containing false or ‘disputed’ information, it is by default suggesting that it is accurate. This is the dilemma Jack Dorsey has created for himself in assigning his company to be the absolute arbiter of truth.

TV pundits and reporters may personally be cheering that President Trump appears likely to be booted from office come January, but the transfer of power is bad news for the networks that employ them. CNN and MSNBC saw record-high ratings over the past four years thanks to President Trump, who supplied just the right kind of drama for their wine-sipping audiences. What will the networks talk about if they're not melting down over Trump tossing a roll of paper towels during a hurricane relief effort or serving a personally purchased fast-food spread to championship-winning college athletes?

Last month, the Vatican and the Chinese Communist party announced the renewal of a two-year agreement on the appointment of bishops in China. Under the deal in 2018, the Catholic Church lifted the excommunication of bishops hand-picked by the atheist CCP and formally recognized them. Besides interfering in such appointments, Beijing subjects Chinese Catholic congregations to state regulation and the reeducation of what it considers insubordinate priests. These methods are evidence of the party’s efforts to cull Catholicism of the traditions, doctrines, and practices that have defined the faith for millennia.  Anyone who prizes religious freedom worldwide should be disturbed. Why is Beijing so hostile toward those looking to practice their faith according to their conscience?

Find a comfortable spot on the carpet, children, the New York Times has a lesson for you all about how to curate editorial content. While fishing through his neighbor's recycling this morning, Cockburn was amused to see, on page A15 of the Times, a piece about his favorite poll aggregators, RealClearPolitics. What on earth could the site have done to earn the scrutiny of the Gray Lady? Brace yourself, dear reader: you may find parts of the report unsettling: '...RealClearPolitics and its affiliated websites have taken a rightward, aggressively pro-Trump turn over the last four years as donations to its affiliated nonprofit have soared.' Dear heavens! Rightward and aggressively pro-Trump?

They also serve who only stand before the camera and talk nonsense. As the Resistance pick through the rubble of the Trump regime, CNN anchors are counting the cost, and not only in dollars, tens of thousands of which they pocketed for jabbering histrionically around the clock.‘As Election Night 2020 bled into Election Week, the talking heads on CNN became something like members of our families,’ writes Kate Storey at Esquire. Every family has its grandiose narcissists, its liars and sex pests, though not all have a 9/11 truther like Van Jones who can cry on cue.‘I was getting a new coffee every half hour,’ says Jake Tapper, heroically risking simultaneously losing control over both his mouth and his colon.

On Tuesday the Vatican published its long-delayed report on the subject of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the insatiable sexual predator who served as archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006 but continued to wield huge influence in the Catholic Church until 2018, when he was finally exposed by the media and forced to resign as a cardinal.Less than a week later, it’s becoming clear that the document is a laborious but clumsy whitewash. Let me explain why.The ostensible purpose of the 500-page report was to explain how McCarrick rose to high episcopal office despite the fact that his beach-house assaults on seminarians were common knowledge among US bishops and Vatican officials for decades. And this it succeeded in doing, more or less.

Joe Biden had barely finished his acceptance speech on Saturday when journalists, tired and weary of four years of mean tweets, started congratulating each other. Jake Tapper was dropping 'Bye Felicias' on Twitter like a catty mean girl to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Jim Acosta could finally take a break. It was no longer a dangerous time to tell the truth in America. ​Members of the national media seem to be under the impression that the result of the 2020 election was about them and their adversarial relationship with Donald Trump. Margaret Sullivan, writing at the Washington Post exhaled, 'The media never fully learned how to cover Trump. But they still might have saved democracy.’ At ease, soldiers.

In his victory speech on Saturday night, Joe Biden quoted the 1970s Roman Catholic hymn, ‘On Eagle’s Wings’. The President-elect said that its message helped him cope with his various personal tragedies, which are undoubtedly very real and sad. Still, Cockburn wonders whether Biden is correct in his assessment that this particular hymn ‘captures the faith that sustains’ America. If Biden is right about that, then Cockburn wonders whether the ‘battle for the soul’ of the nation was even worth having.Of course, Cockburn doesn’t pretend to be a Catholic, let alone a good one, but having borrowed a friend’s Bible, he suspects that the hymn in question — a bastardization of Psalm 91 — rather misses the point.

Pfizer announced Monday that a coronavirus vaccine the company was working on had proven to be 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19. It is not only great news for the country, but appeared to be a big win for the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed. Vice President Mike Pence praised the 'public-private partnership' for spurring development of the vaccine. It turns out that Fox News's Sean Hannity was essentially right when he said that Trump could cure cancer and the media still wouldn't like him. Pfizer immediately distanced itself from its partnership with the Trump administration. The media quickly followed suit, determining that the President deserves no credit for the vaccine's quick development.