Dear Weekend Jolter,
That these Olympic Games are even proceeding is a testament to the impunity with which the Chinese Communist Party operates on the world stage — let alone within China’s own borders.
We here at National Review think it’s important to provide counterprogramming during these Games, to broadcast the ugly truth about the CCP even more prominently and frequently than we normally do. If you find this work valuable, we do hope you’ll consider a donation as part of our webathon, lasting now through the end of Beijing’s propaganda Olympics.
Jimmy Quinn provides a roadmap here to the appalling conduct you probably won’t hear much about (beyond obligatory and equivocal mentions) on the broadcasts of Friday’s opening ceremony and beyond:
Starting in 2020, Beijing has all but eliminated Hong Kong’s autonomy and democracy with its imposition of a new national-security law. Effectively, the party criminalized any speech it deems to be dangerous — and claimed the ability to prosecute offenders anywhere in the world.
Key pro-democracy figures were imprisoned or forced into exile, and the city’s authorities shuttered independent sources of news, most prominently Apple Daily.
Campaigns against Christians, Falun Gong adherents, and other religious minorities in China continued apace, and in 2020, the party initiated a new effort in Inner Mongolia to assimilate ethnic Mongolians into Han nationalist identity, prohibiting schools there from using the Mongolian language.
But the proximate cause of Western outrage over the Games is the genocide of Uyghurs.
A wealth of evidence amassed by researchers, journalists, and victims has over the past five years revealed that the Chinese government, in a campaign ordered by Xi, is working to eliminate that ethnic minority group.
Jim Geraghty, meanwhile, pulls absolutely no punches in explaining the pervasive conflicts of interest that make space for Chinese abuses:
Everyone with a role in these Olympic Games wants to avert their eyes, pretend everything is normal, and act like China is just another host country. Beijing thinks it is about to enjoy the benefits of a two-week propaganda festival broadcast to television screens and web browsers all around the world. And you’re unlikely to see or hear too much lambasting of the crimes and scandals of the Chinese regime in a lot of other mainstream news institutions. ABC is owned by Disney, NBC is owned by Comcast, CBS is part of Viacom, the Washington Post is owned by Amazon, Bloomberg is owned by . . . Bloomberg. All of these giant companies want continued access to the Chinese market, and the overwhelming majority of the leaders of these giant companies want to avoid antagonizing the Chinese government.
The internment of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs is perhaps the most blatant of China’s crimes. The list hardly ends there. As Nina Shea details here, China for years has been persecuting the group Falun Gong, targeting them “for involuntary organ harvesting, in addition to mass internment, disappearance, and torture.”
Involuntary organ harvesting. This is our Olympics host and an elevated member of countless international organizations. How? And for how much longer will the civilized world abide it?
This all raises the question of how we, as Americans, should approach these Olympics, if we engage with them at all. Jimmy Quinn writes here on how Beijing will revisit its 2008 Olympics playbook to distract the world from its crimes. Wesley J. Smith implores would-be viewers to simply not watch: “Make these Games the lowest rated in television history.” Jay Nordlinger writes here about the road to these Games, and about what makes China so undeserving of them. To boycott, or not? Here’s how Jay comes down:
I don’t think I’ll watch. . . .
It is my personal belief that the Olympic Games should not be held in a police state. Any of them. Lots of countries are not police states. Pick one of them.
The link for our webathon, once more, is here. Donations go toward supporting more of this kind of reporting and analysis, which is more important than ever. Have a look through NR’s China archives, and especially last year’s special issue of the magazine, for more of our work on this ever-growing threat. And see here — a U.S. senator introducing a sanctions bill while citing a recent issue of NR on display beside him — for just one example of the impact that work has.
Either way, we appreciate your readership and hope you will continue to stand with us to call out one of the great menaces to human freedom, truth, and democratic values known to the world. And the world does know it.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
The border breakdown is getting worse, which is why the Biden administration is trying to keep a lid on it: Biden’s Border Mess
The Fed should join the fight against inflation: The Fed Should Tap the Brake
ARTICLES
A. J. Caschetta: Media Attack Investigative Reporter for Investigating and Reporting on CAIR
Mark Milke: The Cultural Revolution Up North
Peter J. Wallison: Congress Is Changing — for the Worse
Philip Klein: Trump’s Continuing Disgrace
John McCormack: Trump Admits He Wanted Pence to Overturn the Election
Dan McLaughlin: What Qualifies a Supreme Court Justice
Carrie Campbell Severino: Breyer Retirement a Triumph for Dark-Money Intimidation
Charles C. W. Cooke: The Power of ‘No’
Kyle Smith: Move On from Covid Panic
Nate Hochman: Georgetown Law Students Stage Sit-In, Demand Dean Fire Ilya Shapiro
Nate Hochman: Inside Georgetown Law’s Campaign to Cancel Ilya Shapiro: ‘This Is Melting Down’
Caroline Downey: U.S. National Debt Hits $30 Trillion for First Time
Wesley J. Smith: Johns Hopkins Analysis: ‘Lockdowns Should Be Rejected Out of Hand’
Elliott Abrams: Amnesty International Joins the Anti-Israel Jackals
Abigail Anthony: Princeton University Ballet Is Not Guilty of ‘White Supremacy’
Ben Sasse: Delete China’s Spy App
Marco Rubio: American Big Business Must Stop Colluding with China
CAPITAL MATTERS
Kevin Hassett pinpoints MMT as an underlying driver of our inflation mess: Inflation: A Modern Fiscal and Monetary ‘Mess’
Ryan Bourne follows up on the same topic, this time with a neat analogy about scissors: Why Economists Disagree on Whether Inflation Was a Supply or Demand Problem
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
A comprehensive new documentary claims Bill Cosby supplied signals all along about his predatory behavior. From Kyle Smith: The Cosby Horror Show
Armond White highlights a more uplifting doc on the singer of British punk band X-Ray Spex: The Poly Styrene Story Is a Lesson for Us All
Yet more uplift, from Brian Allen, on a great British museum, its dazzling collection, and its founding family: A Look at the Wallace Collection, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
FROM THE NEW FEBRUARY 21, 2022, ISSUE OF NR
Jim Geraghty: Made in China: On the Lab-Leak Origin of Covid
Kevin Williamson: The Inflation Beef
Douglas Murray: The European Dream
Ross Douthat: The Limits of Encanto’s Family Love Story
WELCOME THESE GOLD-MEDAL EXCERPTS TO THE PODIUM, PLEASE
Speaking of China . . . Jim Geraghty’s cover story in the forthcoming NR issue is more essential reading on the Covid lab-leak theory. There’s lots here, but for purposes of this newsletter, consider just the Chinese government’s suspicious behavior since cases were first reported:
In late January and early February [2020], the Chinese government ordered all labs processing samples of the strange new virus to destroy them. On January 3, China’s National Health Commission ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them. The justification for this order was public safety, although it is hard to see the public-safety benefit in suppressing information about the disease.
It took a year to get a World Health Organization investigative team into Wuhan, and when that team arrived, it encountered angry refusals to turn over raw data about the earliest cases. According to the New York Times, “disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.” The Chinese government has refused to allow another team of investigators to enter Wuhan or the labs in the city. The Chinese government does not care if it looks guilty. . . .
In theory, the pandemic could have started with some random Chinese person who didn’t have any connection to the bat coronavirus research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan CDC. This person would have a spectacularly unlucky run-in with a bat or other animal, and that random Chinese person caught the exceptionally rare naturally occurring animal virus that infects, sickens, and spreads among human beings like wildfire. This same hyper-contagious bat virus would have the exceptionally unusual trait of being extremely difficult to find in bats.
This extraordinarily unlucky person would then travel to the metaphorical doorstep of one of the three labs in the world doing gain-of-function research on novel coronaviruses found in bats and start infecting other people in the city of Wuhan. Under the natural-origin theory, the Wuhan laboratories just happen to be mind-bogglingly unlucky that events played out in a way that so closely mimics the consequences of a lab accident.
That would be a remarkable series of coincidences.
Or, within the walls of an institution that we know was doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses found in bats, aiming to make them more contagious and virulent, at an institution that we know was insufficiently staffed to operate safely, a single employee may have not worn his personal protective equipment correctly one day in late 2019. A single employee may have been scratched or bitten by a bat, or inhaled a virus shed by a bat undergoing the stress of an anal swab, or just carelessly wiped his eyes or nose or mouth. After that employee left the lab and returned home for the evening, he would have been shedding viruses once the infection took hold — in his home, through the public-transportation system and streets and sidewalks, and perhaps he or a family member visited a seafood market.
If you haven’t watched The Chair, may this newsletter slinger recommend it, if only to properly prepare you for the scene Nate Hochman relays here of this week’s Georgetown Law “sit-in” to demand the ouster of Ilya Shapiro. As in the show, it is clear that the student inmates run the university asylum:
A chastened-looking [Dean] Treanor spent more than an hour answering questions from what appeared to be the [Black Law Student Association] leadership team in a closed auditorium. The dean, striking an apologetic tone, echoed the language of the activists in the crowd, assuring the assembled students that he was “appalled” by the “painful” nature of Shapiro’s tweets and promising to “listen,” “learn” and ultimately “do better.” But he also seemed to be attempting to appease the students without committing to any definitive disciplinary action for Shapiro. “Since we’re a private institution, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to us,” he said. “It’s not the First Amendment that’s the university’s guideline.” But “on the other hand, the university does have a free speech and expression policy which binds us.”
The crowd was skeptical, directly criticizing Treanor’s messaging as “dishonest” and pushing for more aggressive action against Shapiro. One student floated the idea of defunding the Center for the Constitution “if, worst-case scenario,” Shapiro “were allowed to remain,” suggesting that Shapiro’s tweets can’t “be divorced” from the Center: “If Shapiro is there, then his ideas and his rhetoric will be the Center,” she insisted. . . .
At another juncture, a student demanded that the dean cover for the classes that the activists had missed as a result of the sit-in, suggesting that the move should be part of a “reparations” package for black students. She followed up by insisting that students be given a designated place on campus to cry. “Is there an office they can go to?” she asked. “I don’t know what it would look like, but if they want to cry, if they need to break down, where can they go? Because we’re at a point where students are coming out of class to go to the bathroom to cry.”
“And this is not in the future,” she added. “This is today.”
The administrators took the law student’s query seriously. “It is really, really hard to walk out of class or a meeting in tears, and you should always have a place on campus where you can go,” Dean Bailin told her. “And if you’re finding that you’re not getting the person that you want to talk to or not getting the space that you need, reach out to me anytime — anytime — and we will find you space.”
Yet another student pressed the deans to send out an email attacking BLSA’s critics. “Something that’s important is to remind our classmates that are attacking us that they are only here because our ancestors were sold for them to be here,” she said.
In keeping with this theme, Abigail Anthony has a dispatch from Princeton, where ballet has been declared a tool of white supremacy:
As a freshman, I joined Princeton University Ballet, the student-run club for recreational ballet. Auditions are required for membership, and we perform a show each semester. We have the luxury of practicing in multi-million dollar studios with Steinway pianos. But recently, the club has gained a new feature by adopting a trendy moral initiative: combating systemic racism.
In 2020, Princeton University Ballet released a statement on the Black Lives Matter movement, claiming that “ballet exists within and benefits from systemic racism and structures of white supremacy” and announcing the club’s “responsibility to stand clearly against racism and anti-black injustices.” The club updated its mission statement to emphasize a commitment “to the pursuit of a more inclusive environment” and raised $7,010 to donate between Black Table Arts and HomeWorks Trenton.
Now, leaders of the ballet club have released an “action plan” detailing new efforts to promote anti-racism. Evidently, the enlightened mission requires a delicate fusion of narcissism and self-abnegation. The document asserts that “ballet is rooted in white supremacy and perfectionism. We are all entering this space with a mindset that what we see as perfect is a white standard.” Of course, there is an admission of guilt: “we want to acknowledge that our leadership and those who composed this plan are all white.”
The authors declare that they “aim to decolonize our practice of ballet, even as ballet remains an imperialist, colonialist, and white supremacist art form.”
Kyle Smith reclaims the phrase “move on” for a righteous cause — ending the Covid state of hysteria:
The Danes today ended nearly all coronavirus restrictions and announced frankly that “Denmark is open.” Denmark has moved on. England, which already had looser standards than the rest of the U.K., ended nearly all restrictions two weeks ago, with minor exceptions such as a requirement to wear masks while using public transportation in London. England has moved on. Within the United States, even Democrat-run Colorado has moved on. Many other states have eliminated virtually all restrictions.
Yet instead of moving on himself, President Biden continues to embrace restrictions as if they’re a ten-year-old girl with delicious-smelling hair. “We got a way to go on that,” he proclaimed on Monday, when asked when some semblance of normalcy might return. He went on to hint that he might be unable to stop America from backsliding toward the disaster of more school closures. But even as he promised to “try like the devil to keep schools open,” schools were already ignoring his supposedly demonic efforts: Flint, Mich.’s schools remained closed, guaranteeing yet more learning loss for its poverty-stricken, majority-minority student body, despite the district’s having received $114 million in federal funding on top of its usual funding, a we-just-won-the-lottery windfall that amounted to more than $27,000 per student.
Announcing a move-on strategy would boost Biden with everyone but the hardcore neurotics who, we now know, form the base of the Democratic Party. Since these folks would eat a bowl of thumbtack cereal before they’d ever vote Republican, they’re unlikely to desert Biden when told masks are optional. They’re stuck with the president and the rest of Team Blue, but Biden does not have to be stuck coddling them. Covid panic could be his Sister Souljah, given a smart verbal swatting as the center cheers; instead it’s his Iraq War, an endless slog with little prospect of a clearly favorable outcome. . . .
The country has had enough. The proper response will continue to be the one that should have been national policy for the entire Biden era: This virus is never going away, but if you’re vaccinated you have very little to fear.
Last, a few words about Trump and his statements last weekend, from Philip Klein:
He spent this past weekend making one reckless statement after another — consequences be damned.
During a Saturday rally in Texas, Trump said of prosecutors investigating him and his business practices that, “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.”
His defenders would no doubt argue that Trump specified “demonstrations” and only if something done was “wrong or illegal.” But we know that Trump has a low threshold for “wrong and illegal” when it comes to prosecutors targeting him, and we saw on January 6 what happens when he summons a mob to demonstrate after convincing them of rampant corruption in the country and in the elections. . . .
Trump topped things off with a statement issued on Sunday night once again falsely claiming that Mike Pence, as vice president, had the ability to change the outcome of the election. The statement ends, “Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!” . . .
No matter how much damage he causes to the country, Trump will never learn anything from the consequences of his actions. The only way to start to change things is for Republican voters to pick somebody else in 2024 who does not behave like Trump.
Shout-Outs
Alex Gutentag, at Tablet: COVID Affects Your Memory
Alexa Schwerha, at Campus Reform: Have you or a loved one been ‘affected’ by ‘free speech?’ Colorado State University has resources to help.
Patrick Hauf, at the Washington Free Beacon: Labor Unions Collected $37 Million in COVID Relief They Were Ineligible To Receive
Marc Thiessen, at the Washington Post: Biden blocked the first Black woman from the Supreme Court
CODA
There’s a rich tradition of string quartets and ensembles of other denominations covering pop and rock music (see Apocalyptica’s Metallica covers). But one can really go down the rabbit hole with Vitamin String Quartet’s seemingly endless library of tributes. This one, of the ever-changing quartet playing Radiohead’s “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” is particularly gorgeous. Ironically, the arrangement served several years ago as the background music not for a film but an episode of Westworld.
Got a tune? Want to share? Send a link to jberger@nationalreview.com. Thanks for reading.