2020: Inconsistencies of White Liberals – Freedom without Responsibility and the Radical Individualism in the U.S. – The Reign of Liberal Fundamentalism ②
Jul 27, 2020
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NOTE: This piece was written, re-written and edited and went through several modifications from the original post that was offensive to many others. For those who have read that piece, I sincerely apologize for my ignorance and offence I have done to you. Yet, I still find it dangerous to “let go” of the arguments offered by liberally minded people whose strength used to be founded upon accepting pluralities of ideas, listening to the other side of the arguments without preconceived notions or hostility and above all, on encouraging them to ask questions without fear of being ostracized. Although the essay begins with the June 14th, 2020, amidst of emotional burst and everyone blaming everyone else out of despite, I only left out this part to show that the hypocrisy is ongoing even at the end of July, when things are relatively calm with regard to the protest. I begin with my statement of purpose, followed by the facts and surroundings and then my most fundamental questions no liberal persons have ever given me a straightforward answer but only obfuscate, using “what-aboutism” – in short, I have grown to see more and more inconsistencies in liberals who were trained to think critically and without inconsistencies – the virtue of which we held was to admit what is wrong and apologize if a liberal makes a mistake. This tendency disappeared at around 2012 in my subjective experience, culminating in 2020. This is why I felt a moral obligation to ask questions in civil manners. I hope somebody can answer my questions with consistency.
Prologue
“It’snot hard to like a guy when he’s doing well. The measure of a man is how does he behave when things are otherwise?” – The West Wing
It is June 14th, 2020. Now, I am sure that the title of this essay alone would make people feel offended and uncomfortable as well as enraged by the mere implication of the adumbration that you are in fact wrong. But I humbly ask my readers to set aside for any judgments until you have read this till the end and given a proper and appropriate thought to it because while I claim you are wrong, I do not believe you are stupid. Furthermore, this is not a sweeping generalization about white people but a rational observation about white people as a tribal movement. I also want to make this clear before I begin that I am not speaking of the matter at hand as a political statement. I am rather critiquing what is a steady social movement, which began as a seemingly innocuous act of traditional liberalism.[1] It is a philosophical treatise in its core, not a political discourse. In this, I follow the examples of Socrates, Francis Bacon and insights of Nietzsche. “If one has trained one’s eye to detect the symptoms of decline,” continues Nietzsche, “one also understands morality… Morality denies life.”[2] Just as he was compelled to speak out, the philosopher must be the evil conscience of his age. It seems that over the decade, liberals have taken a wrong turn and became self-enlightened, blurring a distinction between liberals and radical lefts. They neither conceal their good nor their evil, but they have thrown off all shame and they have become the very thing they had despised of becoming. I say this, because I have lived through the change and put up with their inconsistencies. Yes, I grew up in this tumultuous time, and to that extent, I too am a decadent. The only difference between them and I, other than the different types of self-imposed identities, is that I recognized the change and I have struggled against the populist rhetoric. Just as Socrates was tried and executed by making sense, as a philosopher and a historian, I feel obliged to tell you that I know that I do not know. It is in accordance with this sacred philosophical tradition that I am about to tell you that you need to recognize that you do not know that you do not know. Just as medical practitioners take the Hippocratic oath, I too have taken the Socratic oath to question when I endeavoured to practice philosophy. To get on with the claims made by, what I used to think of as, my fellow self-proclaimed liberals and leftists, is to betray that oath I made. It is not only contrary to the essence of philosophical discipline maintained for over millennia, but also dangerous to the future of philosophy as such. Once again, I say this in line with the prominent philosophers in the past: the philosopher must be the evil conscience of his age.[3] Let me now proceed with the enquiries necessary to flesh out the blissful ignorance the liberal fundamentalists so endearingly embrace.
I use the term “liberal fundamentalism” to mean more or less “individualism gone too far.” To that extent, the term can mean “Individual fundamentalism” (= a belief that a subjective, transient individual conviction acts as if their sacred ‘manifest’ that can be re-written at any given moment, trumping over the freedom of others)
I: The Facts and the Surroundings
It is important to briefly explain the current state of affairs. For without it, even though this essay is not a political discourse, my view would be eschewed as one of many fanciful philosophical enterprises. It is June 14th, 2020, as I have indicated at the beginning of this essay. This fact is significant, as we are in the middle of a pandemic. At the end of 2019, an infectious disease named COVID-19, a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began to spread from Wuhan, China. The epicentre of this outbreak soon moved from Asia to Europe, then onto the North America. On March 11th, 2020, World Health Organization announced it as a pandemic by the alarming levels of spread and severity.[4] The current status of its confirmed cases is 7,751,747 with the total death toll of 429,062 and still rising with 188 countries and regions affected.[5] Amidst the acceleration of globalization, each country has taken drastic measures to shut down the borders and put restrictions on travellers. Domestically as well, countries took decisive measures to ensure the public health. The approaches taken by each country differed from country to country. The International consensus is that it is best to social distance and wear masks whenever you are with other people, reducing the risks of transmission of the virus. One of the most problematic features of this disease is that its incubation period is about 14 days and some who carry the virus may not show any symptoms, thus unknowingly infecting others. This was of a great concern to the health experts as this mysterious virus affects the most vulnerable at a higher risk. In particular, the elderly and those who already suffer from various illnesses are deemed most vulnerable to death. In addition, countries with diverse ethnicities put those who are black and who belong to other minority backgrounds at a greater disadvantage. The systemic racism embedded in the Western civilization disproportionately influenced the black population in all over the world. As European countries began to impose a lockdown on the society to prevent medical care systems from collapsing, restaurants and all non-essential businesses were closed indefinitely. Needless to say, this further disadvantaged those who suffered from the already existing systemic racism as well as those who lost their income. The United Kingdom, at first, regarded this virus as non-threatening and refused to put a lockdown in favour of economic growth, only to change its course after the hospitalization of its prime minister, Boris Johnson, who got infected with this virus. By the beginning of March, virtually most countries imposed a lockdown or similar restrictions, seeing that a temporary lockdown would better slow down the spread of the virus and bring back the economic growth in a long-run. The United States of America, however, continued to prioritize the economic momentum despite having declared the national emergency on March 13th – 2 days after WHO declared the coronavirus as a pandemic. President Trump had downplayed the virus for over months, assuring the public that everything was under control. The Trump Administration kept ignoring the advice from the health experts and never issued a lockdown, leaving each state to decide what to do. The majority of the states imposed some forms of lockdown, since the Federal Government would not do so. As of March 8th, the total confirmed cases in the U.S. was about 500 with 22 deaths, but a month later on April 8th, the numbers went up to over 430,000 reported cases with 14,000 deaths. Even well into April, President Trump insisted the economy must be prioritized and criticized the states that imposed stay-at-home orders. As of June 14th, 2020, the U.S. ranks the top most infected country with 2,071,782 confirmed cases and 115,347 deaths.[6] This was the result of on-going mishandling of the situation, encouraging its citizens to hold public events and signalling that the virus is well under control by the president himself, refusing to wear masks in public gatherings. Still, many tried to remain to be cautious and minimized the human contacts, facing the reality of the rising cases.
Amidst this chaotic situation, states began to lift the stay-at-home orders in late April, pressured by the right-wing white people insisting that they would rather die free than in isolation at home. President Trump’s tweets to liberate people from stay-at-home orders did not help. This lifting of the restrictions further contributed to the increase in number of deaths and hospitalization. It was during this chaos that a black American, George Floyd, was killed by the law enforcement on May 25th, 2020. The act of this heinous police brutality was caught on video and it went viral. This long over-due frustration and anger against the systemic racism in the U.S. was further fuelled by the energy cooped up during the months of home confinement and the nationwide protests against the systemic racism ensued. The fact that many people had been laid off and did not have an access to the health care system as well as the recent nationwide lifting of stay-at-home order certainly contributed the large gathering in public to protest. This call for justice resonated with the people suffering from the similar racism towards the minorities all over the world, resulting in a global protest in the midst of a pandemic.
LETTER 1 (July 5th)
Q1: I first became really vocal when Trump recalled the Americans from the Europe and since then the anti-lockdown and every time I see reports on irresponsible people to Memorial Day weekend, and everyone was with me and “liking” my posts, until upon the protest, when I raised a concern for the spread of the virus, as I had done the day before, those who had previously “liked” my posts and agreed with me suddenly turned against me and made it all about racism and “how dare you raise a concern about the spread of the virus! Have you no decency? Do you not understand that the protesters are free from infection because they wear masks and they self-quarantine themselves after going to the protests!???” Do you honestly believe this is not a hypocrisy on their part? They were okay with me raising a health concern for anti-lockdown protesters and other social gathers consistently since the end of February and became more vocal after mid-March. I did not just start criticizing people when the protests began. I have been consistently criticizing any large gatherings. Do you see the problem here?
I was like, “huh?” The virus is a virus – it spreads when there are people – and when you are talking about the infectious disease of this scale, it doesn’t matter much if you wear masks or not since everyone was shouting and marching in close proximity while police were not wearing masks and tear gassing people. What kind of *logic* did they get infected with now? I never posted anything about the danger of COVID when the protests were happening in other countries because their government had handled the virus enough that I more or less believed they would take an appropriate measure against International travels afterwards and they would keep it in their land. But the fact that these large protests were happening in the country where it had consistently acted irresponsibly and has not yet taken the COVID seriously yet that happens to be the world’s economic centre that it is virtually impossible not to travel through the US as a hub country to go anywhere is very alarming.
Q2: The virus is a virus. It’s basic medicine and science. But they were willing to ignore the facts over their ideology. Sure, that’s their choice, but let the virus stay inside the US. No one group of protesters or the government issued a statement that the travel restrictions will be applied until the virus is contained. When I talk to liberal minded people, everyone says “protesters are least likely to travel and they know better not to travel” — where did you get that information from or did you just assume that that’s what they will do? This is not a game. Even one single person can spread the virus to millions of people and the US of all countries should be the first to know that because there was only one person in January in the US and after downplaying it for months, now they have over 2,800,000 cases! How easily do they forget??? Also, they say they care, which is why they protest – that’s BS. If they cared, they would have taken care of this issue hundred years earlier and would not have waited until the pandemic is rampant under this presidency. Further, even if they cared, they only cared for a specific group of people – the US citizens. They showed no compassion or regard for the International communities. The EU successfully banned the American travellers but that was because they have the power to do that at least for a while. They can subsist on their own without the US for a few months at least – but think about a single country, or Japan where there are so many US military bases and who knows when the military officers are deployed or reassigned to a base in Japan? I am sure they will get rigorous testing but did we not so many times learn that this virus finds a way to get out even the most rigorous testing??? Did people all deliberately forget? Or as long as American history is seemingly moving forward, people won’t care about any other countries? Besides, realistically, the protests did make some changes but how long until do those black people who get infected with COVID and do not have jobs or income have to wait before they can have access to the equal treatment and enough money? Should you not be focusing on the COVID issue first, like many mayors (the one from Atlanta for one) has accurately assessed? What good would it be by the end of the protests, if 75% of black population is wiped out due to COVID? Besides, while it is true that the movement needs momentum, this is not the right time especially it also affects the very people they are trying to protect as well as killing millions of others who do not exist in their mind (people in Japan, Ethiopia, Oceania, Amazon tribes, etc…). How selfish do they have to be? Why are they making the same mistakes in order to correct the one previously made? Does no single American understand that they are putting the world at risk for the mistake the white people made and left it untouched until now? They say young people are less likely to die or become seriously ill – again, this information keeps changing around the world and now it is obsolete to say that in Japan or in Europe. For instance, many patients who have recovered from COVID exhibit COVID like symptoms for as long as 2-3 months (that is, high fever, pain, unable to focus, and many others. Just about a week ago, there was a documentary in Japan interviewing several people who recovered from COVID but still suffering its aftereffects while they are not able to spread the virus since the virus is gone already. Furthermore, the arguments by the protesters have been that “these are young people protesting, so they won’t die” – this, I never understand how they can tweak a simple logic to fit their agenda. The younger people are going home at some point right? Or at least they will buy food or necessarily get interaction with vulnerable people. While it may be true that the protesters themselves may be fine, what about their parents or people whom they interact with that may have preconditions or older? Do you think you can explain how it is not hypocritical? Also, isn’t it better to NOT protest now but only protest in forms or Internet or other means and go vote to get the Democrat into the White House, because they are pushing for the universal care, right? That would necessarily benefit the black people and those black people who got infected but did not have money or health insurance died during the month of the protests. In this way, the Democrats have the consistency of saying “Don’t go outside and stay safe” rhetoric, but now the protests are everywhere, Democrats cannot criticize Trump’s behaviours without themselves getting attacked by being told “Democrats encouraged people to violent protests and gathered together outside, who are they to tell us [Republicans] that we are the reason for the spike?” (It doesn’t matter whether or not the protesters contributed to the spike – though I think it will come out sooner or later – what matters is the optics in politics).
Going back to the travelling restrictions – while liberals have been telling me that the protesters know better not to travel. Suppose that’s true. What about those to whom the protesters infected, say Republicans who don’t believe in masks or in the virus? What about a flight attendant or a passer-by business person who needs to travel as soon as the International travel resumes? People who just jumped onto this populist idea and antagonized everyone who raises a concern do not realize that what *we* are concerned about is not whether or not the protesters themselves will travel – *we* are concerned whether the virus will travel or not. This is my distinction about “fundamentalism” – individualism taken too far and too literally. When I say “travel restriction” I don’t mean the protesters alone – I mean the republicans, passers-by, people who need to travel (military officers perhaps?) – “travellers” in a broader term. Yet people just decided that by ‘travellers’ I only meant ‘the protesters’ because I used the word ‘liberal’? Seriously, SERIOUSLY, (not to you) stop being selfish and get this virus under control or put a ban on ALL Americans from travelling abroad until the virus is under control. Another concern is that I never heard people who went to the protests say the things you and other liberals say – like they would not travel. How sure and certain are you that NONE of the ones involved in the protests would travel abroad until the virus is under control? Do you have any consensus among the protesters?Besides, what is their goal? Are they just protesting to the end? And are we, the rest of the world, supposed to wait for them during this imminent pandemic that has cost many of our lives and jobs? I ask this to everyone in private messages, but can you give me a single good reason why we should risk our lives for the mistakes the white people made? Can you give me one good reason that our lives are dispensable for the cause you are fighting for?
Q3: Third, suppose that you and the protesters are in agreement about not travelling – what about the Republicans and anti-protesters? Because to us, as well as the people in Europe, American travellers are nothing but a bio-chemical weapon at the moment. Do you see my concern? Do you see how we think of the US as not caring for others, even though they say they do. Hence, hypocrisy. All they are doing is putting the rest of the world at risk of going bankrupt, and yet NO ONE is willing to admit that, and keep saying BLM is more important because it has less chance of transmission of the disease – seriously – a common-sense. Just use a common-sense. Do you feel any safer going into a room of 10 people with one person asymptomatically infected with the COVID than going into the room with 10 people with 8 people infected with COVID asymptomatically? Tell me, seriously, is it safer to go into the first room? Statistically yes, but that statistics can soon change like it did from January to April in the US. Also the virus is still mutating – just another day, the medical experts in the US were saying this virus is mutating not in the degree of severity but in the degree of fast transmission. Just keep your (i.e. Americans) mind focused – what is the only invariable in this equation? Protests may or may not end successfully (I mean there was and is no solid plan or sets of requirements the protesters want except in abstract form, right? A stark contrast to the protesters in Hong Kong) but we know for sure that the virus keeps mutating and keeps infecting at higher and higher rates. It’s not like we didn’t know this before – which is why most countries have successfully contained the virus. Just like systemic racism is not a recent news, the severity of the virus spread is not a recent news. It’s just Americans always make the wrong choice because they importance their individuality over others. Masks too – it’s not like there was no evidence that masks do not work – it has always been there available to you but you were just not looking because it did not interest you (generic you, here).
One of the most common stereotypical criticisms for activism is that they act without a plan (like, this includes responsibilities and dealing with whatever consequences it may follow) – the protesters in Hong Kong had a clear demand and now paying for the price which they knew were going to happen. And in the meantime, they wore masks and they shut down the airports. THAT is what it means to “care for” others. What Americans are doing is nothing but a selfish act of emotional burst against the government that since there has no clear objective to be achieved, while some changes were made, do you have any idea how long these will take to be in effect? Some advertisers withdrew from Facebook – sure, but they will find a way to charge you more somewhere else to make up for the loss. What Americans are doing is nothing but that infamous story of an old lady suing McDonald’s because she got burned as coffee was too hot – McDonald’s may have lost the case in court but they soon priced up their menu. You said McDonald’s was surely on the wrong side. That’s exactly my point. Look, analogy works like this.
An old lady = protesters
McDonald’s = systemic racism
Unless the protesters have a clear set of demands as well as a plan to implement these demands, systemic racism will find another way to keep doing it [like McDonald’s priced up its menu and the other consumers had to pay for the money paid for that woman.] So again, with this one, I don’t understand why you don’t get the analogy. The wrong-doers at this level will find a way to keep doing this to benefit unless the protesters have a clear plan that will prohibit them to keep doing what they are doing. So my question to you is: what are you protesting for? What do you want to achieve and how do you achieve them? Just marching on the streets with ambiguous slogans that no one agrees on while taking down the statues would only work in favour of creating the Trumpian dystopia. Do the protesters have a manifest or some kind? That’s what I am worried about with regard to the protesters.
Again, I am not concerned about who caused the spike – I am concerned that there is a spike. Data from April-May are coming up now, and of course those states who opened early are suffering but why do you feel the need to point at fingers and make a binary distinction between “us versus them”? I know that there will be many more cases associated with the protesters. There should be – it’s again basic medicine. A virus. No matter where you are outside or not, when it does infect, it infects people. And once even one person outside gets infected, that’s all it takes for the virus to spread. You know this. Why do you change your view just because it does fit your narrative? I never said they should stop protesting – all I am asking is recognize that they are contributing to the spike in the near future and will be killing innocent people but have the guts to say that “we care more about this issue than how many people may die due to COVID.” By not saying the latter, they are acknowledging the fact that there will be a spike but they do not want to take responsibility for it. They have started to say already “Well, nobody said it’s safe.” As if they had long been aware that the protesters would contribute to the spike. This, I cannot stand. This is pure hypocrisy.
So these are my main concerns for the first part of the message. You are the last one who are fair-minded and involved with the issue so I really want to know if you can at least tell us these answers. Then, I may know better about what protesters (I hope) may be thinking. But if you couldn’t answer any of these questions, I have to conclude that the whole events of white people turning against me as soon as the protest began even though I was saying the exact same thing are just yet another white hypocrisy and a sense of entitlement that they can never be wrong (even when they don’t have answers). And I would hate to see the day I have to tell them, “I told you so.”
Yours cordially,
Issei
LETTER 2 (July 21st)
I am still quelmed with a few points – overall, I agree with what you said but I still felt like I did not get the straight forward answer that I thought you could give me. The situation is undoubtedly political and mixing the issues and politicizing them makes us lead to astray. After all, we were trained in philosophy, and we should be able to discuss and make a distinction in arguments, stripped out of politics, right? What has bothered me for so long is the unwillingness to admit what is inconsistent as inconsistent by the liberally minded people or leftists. This is the only focus of my argument. Right wing bigots do not admit inconsistencies either but that is their weapon: inconsistency. If you take out inconsistency and hypocrisy from the right-wing people, then there is nothing left in them. In contrast, liberalism accepts or at least can entertain a variety of ideas and does not hold one thing as the absolute truth – in short, I was attracted to the liberalist idea of being able to accept plurality of ideas, but that is increasingly fading away in liberalism and leftists. This is why I equated liberalism with white supremacism (because it is often the case that whatever the white people say that attracts attention becomes the norm and they tell you if you do not follow our novel ideas and accept them, you are not accepted). In recent examples, wearing masks became the symbol of “being liberal” but this advice (even though there had been studies that proved the effectiveness of masks in Asia) essentially came from the white privileged men and women in power. If it came from a non-white person, nobody would have listened (this is proven by the reluctance of accepting the idea that masks do work even though there were studies done decades ago that conclusively suggested that they do work). The efficacy of wearing a mask is just a small one example that has consistently come up in winter each year, so it is easier to use it as an example.
So philosophically speaking, setting aside any political causes or agenda, since that is what we do or used to do when we wrote papers comparing different philosophers’ views or even within one philosopher’s inconsistency, we should be able to do this kind of exercise, right? Just as Socrates asked what justice is to a politician – a predominantly political question – without any political implications. Because politics muddies things and at times, it may be better to be inconsistent to lead the society for the better direction but if that person sincerely believes in her core that what she is doing is not consistent, that is a problem that only grows bigger and eventually destroys the very society she is trying to protect. If the premises are inconsistent, the conclusion will crumble. I thought people wish to learn because they do not want to be like uninformed/uneducated people (here, I am not saying anything about college degrees or certificates – by “uneducated” I just mean people who cannot see the contradictions as opposed to ‘educated’ people who can see the contradictions and have an informed choice to make).
Any disagreements so far? I hope not, because I have not touched on anything but concepts and I am not criticizing anything but “inconsistency” yet. Once again, I am not saying inconsistencies are bad – everyone has cognitive dissonance and inconsistencies – they will either get corrected or accepted as inconsistent and make a conscious decision based on the fact that they are being inconsistent. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as they are willing to recognize that. I will keep the questions short, since we did talk the bulk of the issues but it feels like we did not get to talk about the bare concepts alone without political baggage.
1) Do you think anyone who means a complete abolishment of police by “defund the police” in the US/Canada context belongs to the ‘crazy leftist liberals’ as you put it and do you agree that they do not represent (moderate) liberals? In other words, are they going too far to the extreme? If so, isn’t ‘reform the police’ a better word for it to avoid confusions?
2) Do you think anyone who protests for any reason by saying “I am willing to die for this cause” should at the same time explicitly say “I care more about this cause than any other person that may be damaged due to my protest”? – this does not mean this person does not care about the latter but only cares less about them and are willing to sacrifice them for the cause. The classic Trolley example in action, basically. Please don’t think of this “protest” I speak of only in terms of the BLM movement. By protests, I mean “a protest against X” where X is a variable – so it could mean anti-mask protest, anti-stay-at-home-order protests or even an anti-ban of the sales of bananas in a country, etc… Once again, I am not talking about the politics yet – the politics can get into it ONLY after this question gets answered, or else the grounding is shaky and the premises too weak to support what is to stand on them. If someone I care about is killed for being Japanese or simply by being my friend, I would say proudly that “I am willing to die for what I fight for, and yes I am willing to go to jail, and yes I do not care about others who are in the way to achieve justice for the wrong done to my dear friend.” In other words, I would unequivocally say “(A) I care about my dear friend who is unjustly killed and the people who will be put into a similar situation in the future if I don’t act (B) MORE THAN I care about those who are old or children in any other countries.” I take issues with people who fall short in saying just “A” and do not mention “B” even though it is implied. Not to be able to say that is an act of cowardliness and making a leeway for you to later make excuses.
*Now, this part is political but my understanding is that the BLM protesters care more about the black people’s lives unjustly treated or killed than about people who are, say, non-black people drinking tea at home while black people are being mercilessly killed, right? (at least after it “primary” cause shifted from LGBTQ community – essentially white) So, if their justice can be achieved only through the condition that non-black people who enjoy tea at home must be killed, they will choose to kill those non-white people who drink tea at home. Would that be fair to say that? Because if not, I don’t even know how they are planning to achieve their goals. If they have to hesitate in achieving what they need, like slaves needing to kill their masters to escape, they will never get what they want to achieve. This is exactly why it has been difficult and has taken so much time, right? To somehow find a compromising situation, and large scaled protests are good ways to start getting attention to have a place to talk and negotiate. So they care more about the oppressed than the oppressors and those who are complacent. I understand that, but this time, COVID was happening in the very country with most infectious rate whose government is still in denial when protests began, which is why it forced us to choose without any preparation – either 1) to although cautiously participating in the protests, risking the lives of people who are not directly involved with this movement – say, a black grandfather or a small child who happen to get infected as a passers-by or at home, or 2) people who wanted the protests to stop or the government officially announcing a statement that no Americans can travel until the infection rates are under control (this is what many people outside the US were feeling – and I know this because I talked to people around the world in real-time as I teach online to over 100 students – although they did not say the protests should stop, they were worried that the spread would get out of control and start to spill over onto other countries). So it created a divide among the liberals, depending on whom to consider – whether the black people’s lives or potentially people in any other country due to a health concern and I belonged to the 2nd camp. But no one else was able to say which camp they belonged to but obfuscated the issue by saying “we are safely protesting so there is no worry to spread” (as we talked about, we now can guesstimate the protests did probably not contribute so much to the spike (but at what cost?), but at the time, no one knew that for sure, even if the science on viral diseases from the past studies were in favour of their position, we never knew anything about how infectious or if it was still mutating at that point, so with regard to COVID, no one – not even the health experts, were able to say for certain that protests can be done safely; the only people who were saying that were the protesters and pro-protesters themselves who were not epidemiologists either) so from that respect, I don’t see what is so different about people attending Trump rallies in late June saying “we are miraculously protected from the virus.” Of course, this second argument is beyond ridiculous but the essence of the logic is the same. Both parties did not have enough information to say what they claimed to be true, yet they said it and did it anyway. Wearing masks and being informed of the science did help and make a huge change in the end, so even a little information saved many lives, while the latter’s claim was absolutely contrary to common sense or common medicine. So while the protesters were not being inconsistent by claiming they paid careful attention not to spread the virus, what they did not say was what everyone else around the world was worried about – namely, will the virus get possibly passed onto a flight attendant or a military officer or a politician who travels who then passes onto others and they may cause the second and the third surge because of the protesters? Are they willing to take responsibilities for that if that should happen? They avoided answering this so essential a question to everyone else, and instead called people who raised a health concern a racist and posted articles saying “we should not criticize the protesters because of the COVID” etc… While I understand the intention, the reality may not be as kind. Were they actually aware and willing to be held accountable for that? If so, 1) they should have said so, and 2) it would not be my business to keep raising concerns as outsiders living abroad since that is what they decided to do and they promised that they would take responsibilities for any loss or unintended spread of the virus. How would antagonizing people who also care about people’s lives help in this situation? By doing so, outsiders come to interpret it as they just want what they want and they don’t care about us, rather they are also willing to categorize us as the oppressors. That kind of rhetoric only diminishes the support for what should be the noble cause. I mean, because of the aggressive bashing and irrational attacks from the leftists, I must say that I am less interested in learning about the black lives matter movement because after what I have gone through I can only see them, at least for now, as someone who labels and judges people if we disagree or even raise a legit concern about health. It is truly unfortunate, but incessant attacks on me prior to me saying “all lives matter” made it less palatable and less attractive the BLM has to say. They are supposed to represent the movement but they made it so political that they kept unfriending people, calling people racists and labelling us as stupid. How can you think “Oh, maybe they are right, I am unfriend-worthy, a racist and utterly stupid. I should probably look into what they are up to and their history.”? By the way, I visited the official homepage of BLM but I could not find any specific demands and what would be the end of the protests anywhere on the website, like you said I could find. https://blacklivesmatter.com/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=1d30c990fe012a9321022a4315230d579f99cd90-1595326481-0-AXYEoMOqPYbxCOdS5GhwEiA958w7fK9BKrYUtf2biPkyNJoVuR-FUJsw3A9XY23fvldeQa-bZOAS1xOw6lCoLScsX_KcIoR-HuKGpt38AbmzM78poks98D2A4WEJGrqD45iiJYE2wEPMLM_xw1Gs0E8CQydHXJCMcxQY6Go7RFQlesDgJfxm16wzGEtvRxlT2gj7KbRQCU2A-5vgX4VCGH8mvioNjq1gYxURIzei4uczpVDXF1g3xUUCLWDkAMEVaDttUFW88YWiQlkXcdssYzergILje_CGrQDulCi43FX7fFFVuzSCj1t85FaP7wO8MauR9RXUowoWg_6slB4mCMw
This is the correct website, right? Do you think you can direct me to the list of demands they are making and what steps they need to take and for how long they expect that to happen etc…? The 3rd one is particularly important now because there is an ongoing pandemic. But any protests should have a plan of implementation and a leader or some sort. Otherwise, it would not be a protest but it would just be yelling or screaming from anger, and while that may change a few things and save a few lives, nothing essential will be solidified.
3) Some people say you are either anti-racist or a racist and there is nothing in between. Do you agree with this statement? If so, don’t you think there would be philosophical/fundamental problems in this kind of reasoning? Like, this “dictum” says you are only anti-racist when you are doing something actively to dismantle the systemic racism. This would necessarily mean you would be a racist when you are sleeping or cooking or tending to childcare. Again, I know what the intention is, but these binary distinctions would often lead to a singular authoritative rule if left unchecked by philosophers and the like. If they mean “as long as you understand that there is a systemic racism happening while you are eating, then your condition is that of an anti-racist,” then another problem occurs – namely, that is exactly what people mean when they say you are being complacent. You know that the problem exists, yet you do not do anything, or at least you have the time in which you are not doing anything to dismantle the system.
Those are my qualms no one has been able to answer – yet they were free to call me in derogatory terms. But that just started to sound like it’s only because they do not have an answer. As for the 3rd question, many people seem to agree just because it is perceived to be good to hold that view or else you necessarily belong to the “bad guys” – but this is a populist rhetoric. A purely performative act of speech to make you look good without doing anything. If you are not one of the popular people, you are lame and dark and nerd in the most pejorative sense of the term.
Please, tell me what you think, setting aside the politics (unless the mid-section that needed to be spoken in context), because “people will come to agree with you (about the worry of the spread of the virus they felt in the future when they feel safe)” is evasive on their part and not fair if they are trying to fight a fair fight.
This is about how liberals became so cowardly as to leave a room for an excuse for later when things go wrong. And many political commentators like Joe Scarborough and Chris Cuomo as well as Bill Maher kept saying this for years now – liberals do not have the guts to say unequivocally what they stand for, always being afraid of the possible consequences, which is why they have not been able to bring about changes. In that respect, the Republicans nowadays are similar but they at least had the guts to say what is “implied” pre-Trump. It’s just that their views were oppressive and often conservative.
I hope I can expect substantial answers without qualia attached to them. Unless you believe in Locke and think there is no such thing as a substance. 🙂
Yours,
Issei
LETTER 3 (July 26, 2020)
It is often said by the liberals that the difference between the justification for the protesters and the refusal to reopen schools in the coming term is summed up to this: protesters are less likely to spread the virus in the way children are not (although if you ask Betsy DeVos via Dr. Birx, kids are less likely to transmit the virus, and that is how the right wing conservatives argue, but let that be set aside for the moment since it is obvious that makes no sense). The argument presented to me by a variety of liberally minded people is this: protesters are consenting adults who know what they need to do to take at least the minimal precaution against catching the virus by wearing masks and social distancing, while kids at school are not cognizant of their own medical needs or ability to distance themselves and care for their bodies. Hence, the conclusion that protesters are less likely to infect others because they are careful while kids are more likely to infect others because they are careless.
P = Premise HP = Hidden Premise C = Conclusion
HC = Hidden Conclusion MC = Main Conclusion
The Case for Protesters
P1: Protesters are socially distanced.
P2: Protesters are wearing masks all the time.
HP: Those who are socially distanced and wearing masks (and take appropriate measures) are less likely to spread the virus. [P1+P2] (not everyone is seen to have P1 or P2 = invalid premise)
C1: Hence, protesters are less likely to spread the virus and are not a threat to the community, i.e. they are safely practicing their own rights. [HP] (invalid because of HP)
P3: Consenting adults have the right to exercise their freedom to assemble a peaceful protest.
HC: The right to protest is justified legally and the possible medical infections happen rarely, if at all. [C1+P3] (at the time, this claim was not proven and hence invalid)
MC: Hence, the protest is not only justified but also safely conducted. [HC] (unsound)
The Case for Re-Opening of the School
P1: Kids are incapable of socially distance from each other.
HP1: Kids do not understand what social distance means.
P2: Kids are incapable of taking a good sanitary care of themselves by always wearing masks or by disinfecting all the time.
HP2: Those who are incapable of social distancing and wearing masks (and take appropriate measures) are more likely to spread the virus. [P1+P2]
C1: Hence, the aggregation of kids in school will inevitably leads to the spread of the virus, putting many at risk, i.e. a threat to the community. [HP2]
P3: Kids put in schools have not consented to the perceivable risks involved in getting back to school, and as such, they are uninformed of the danger.
HP2: If they were informed of the danger, they would not want to go back to school. This applies to the parents who makes the decision for them.
P4: Only well-informed consenting adults should have the right to decide what is best for them and exercise the right to freedom.
C2: Since kids are neither well-informed nor consented to go back to school, their freedom to go back to school needs to be postponed and delayed until further notice when going back to school becomes safe. [P3+P4]
P5: Since kids are more likely to infect, the chance of them infecting each other or the teachers as well as their parents is higher. (where did this come from? Protesters too interact with other passers-by or uninformed people, yet in the case of the protesters, these “third” group of people are not mentioned. Hence, this premise cannot be added unless the same third party’s considerations are added to the Case of the Protesters)
HP3: Once teachers and parents get infected, the vicious circle of infection continues.
MC: The Re-Opening of schools is not justified neither legally (since there is no consent) nor from the perspective of the health of the kids and everyone with whom the kids interact. In so far as it cannot be guaranteed, this it is deemed as unsafe and only threatens the community. [C1+ C2+P5+HP3] (valid and sound)
Q1: I highlighted the parts about the meaning of “less likelihood” and “more likelihood” in the context of a pandemic. You do not need to be an epidemiologist to see that likelihood is sufficient enough to infect the entire population when you are talking about infectious diseases. So I demand the explanation or justification for how “being less likely to transmit diseases” and “being more likely to transmit diseases” make any difference.
Q2: I also highlighted about the consenting adults and non-consenting children, because this is crucially flawed and I would like to point out why. For those who hold the two views raised above, I would like to ask you, “What are you consenting to?” Perhaps, you may answer “the risk of getting infected.” (taking responsibilities afterwards will be set aside here). This creates a false narrative because a consent has to happen between two or more parties but in the case of protesters, their consent is with themselves. It would be a different story if the consent is between the protesters and the virus and they have mutually agreed upon that the virus will not infect the protesters, which would be ridiculous. So, my question to you is this: who are you consenting to other than amongst yourselves, which means nothing? A rapist consenting to another rapist to rape someone or a rapist not consenting to form an alliance does not escape the fact that the victim will be raped.
Q3: Why are you willing to invoke freely about the third parties such as teachers and parents and any possible interactions when it comes to kids, when you are absolutely silent about the protesters infecting the third parties such as the police (or vice versa) and passers-by, a flight attendant, students coming back from school or when they go home, not to mention protesters need to eat, during which time they must take off their masks and probably talk. After all, many shouting and yelling were heard in addition to the police making them tear gassed, making it much more likely for the protesters to spread the virus? Why do you not hold them on the same standard?
Concluding Remarks in 2020 on Liberal Fundamentalism (Dec. 22nd)
As many have noticed, I asked what I wanted to ask in July and waited for the answers but none has responded. So I take this to mean they do not know what they are doing and they were in fact being irrational and unwittingly killing others without them knowing. I need you to know that you have to live with that forever. Just because you think you have not infected anyone, who then may have infected others which has ended up killing people, does not means you were not the cause of it. You killed them. Just remember that whenever you have an urge to protest against whatever cause you choose to decide to participate in.
I still vividly remember that on about June 20th, the U.S. has not reached the 80,000 deaths toll, as Morning Joe (and other news media) began focusing on COVID rather than the protests around on June 22nn-24th. I believe the 100,000 deaths milestone was reached by late June. In July, the U.S. saw the huge surge and it would be ridiculous to think that the protests had very little to do with this increase. Once again, at the very first week or two of the protests, my concern was primarily 1) spreading of the disease to the very people the protesters were trying to protect, and 2) white hypocrisies and their “you are either with us or with them” binary attitude. But lurking behind these comments were of course what everyone was thinking about, i.e. the President of the United States at the Federal level downplayed the virus, the Republicans did not even believe the virus exists, and now with the protests, the Democrats encouraged people to go out. All of this in combination would create the entire U.S. population a false sense of security that “They are doing it, why can’t I?” – an extreme dangerous but legal thinking that can only be validated under the U.S. Constitution. This false sense of security that “so long as what I think I am doing is essential or not going against the infringement of the Constitution, then I am and I should be allowed to move freely.” Indeed, this is what happened in the holiday seasons approached – while kids were forbidden to physically attend schools for the fear of domestic infection, they were allowed to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, just because it is a tradition. In November, even worse, the U.S. Thanksgiving travel was recorded high since the declaration of WHO’s COVID as a pandemic, the result of which we are seeing now. Even having seen that, many Americans are still travelling for Christmas, which would only worsen the situation that is already astronomically worse. The deaths toll as of Dec. 21st, 2020, in the U.S. is 319,314. What the people in the U.S. do not seem to really comprehend is that the number is a death toll – excluding those who suffered by losing their loved ones to COVID. Just how much suffering do you, Americans, need to cause to understand what you were doing in fact had been affecting other people’s lives traumatically?
Now that the new strain of COVID has been found in the U.K. and in the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe, including the U.S. mink farms, a completely different type of COVID mutations have been found, how can what the white people doing be justified Internationally? How are they going to take responsibility for their spread? If the country is trying its best not to spread, but the virus being the virus, it infected the others, that is one thing, while it is another thing for the government and the people to almost fully ignore (this includes thinkings like “Well, I should be fine, since I am young and healthy – I can go out and dine with friends or go for grocery shopping without wearing masks”) the danger of this virus and as a result increasing the COVID cases. Do not be numbed to the numbers – remember, countries like Japan, whose government constitutionally has no rights to impose a lock-down but only has the “power” to plea and ask its citizens not to go outside as much as possible, has 2,832 deaths (as of Dec. 21st, 2020) since the beginning of this year. Compare to that with the U.S.’s deaths toll. And we think IT IS A LOT. Just what do you think one life’s worth is, White Fundamentalists? Do you not care as long as your abstract objective of word policing and political correctness have been maintained? It is truly sickening. We still do not know about the COVID mutations in the minks may be protected by the currently developing vaccines since it is transmitted to humans from a completely different set of DNA from bats and the like. This indeed could be a COVID-20. Boris Johnson of the U.S. took it seriously enough that he had to cancel Christmas, first time ever after Grinch did it.
Whatever has happened to the large scale protests that the white liberals were angrily shouting that this has to be taken care of once and for all as systemic racism has been happening for 400 years!!! That was their most apparent argument against anyone who raises a concern for a public or International health. Come September, I could find any find any articles on a large scale protest anywhere in the U.S. – is it because they started schools? Or is it because it began to be cold and poor white people cannot risk getting sick (either cold, flu or COVID)? Is THAT what they meant when they claimed they were furious that systemic racism has been happening for 400 years??? A white person catching a cold is as serious as 400 years of racism so that it is imperative for them to abandon the protests? Give me a break. Hypocrisy. This is what I hate and detest the most and whenever I see it, I will point out, since there are so many smart white liberally minded people around who agree with me but they cannot say a thing for fear of getting fired and losing jobs had they said a word on it. It is my duty to speak, as a trained philosopher, to speak out when it needs to be, rather than later when things have relatively calmed down for those level-headed academics to be able to say something like what I am saying. Luckily, the movement similar to what I have been cautioning has started to appear albeit in smaller circles. With that, I wish to end this essay of grievances. I will end this post by repeating what I saw in 2020 liberal fundamentalists.
White Progressives/Liberals in a Nut Shell: 2020Feb: “Masks are scientifically proven not to work – whoever believes the otherwise is “stupid” without qualification. April: “Stay inside not to spread the COVID – whoever goes out is asking for a trouble and is “stupid” without qualification. June. “Go outside and protest – masks will protect you. We, as white people are offended if you do not do this. Whoever says the otherwise is a “racist” without qualification. Aug. “As long as you wore masks, protests did not spread the virus – it is those who did not wear masks who are at fault of spreading the virus, and whoever says the otherwise is a “racist” without qualification. Oct. “Keep social distance and try to stay inside and wear masks if you need to go out, whoever does the otherwise is a “threat” to the community without qualification. Dec. “Travel with precaution, wear masks, etc…, for the holidays and you will be fine. Whoever says the otherwise is a “threat” to the tradition without qualification.
Q: Whatever happened to the protests that fuelled them up, reciting “400 years of racial inequality must be dealt with now and and for all!” Maybe it got cold and white people judged that 400 years of racial inequality is as bad as white persons catching a cold. (as I cannot find any articles on large scale protests happening despite the problem not being solved yet, let alone addressed yet)
Conservatives: Freedom without consideration for others. Liberal Leftists: Freedom without foresight of seeing consequences or of dealing with them. Common sense: Freedom comes with responsibility for your own actions. (the rest of the world)
U.S. COVID cases of of Dec. 18th: 17,212,506 (deaths: 310,782)
Japan: COVID cases as of Dec. 18th: 191,770 (deaths: 2,663)
It was a year of white liberal/leftists blaming others for their willful ignorance and misinformation, at the scale and the speed never seen before. People have warned about the medical concerns and implications about COVID and the importance of not politicizing it. But they refused to listen. Now you must deal with whatever the consequences you willfully and consciously chose. Because we won’t forget what the white people (esp., in the North America) did to us. We have never been so disgusted by the selfish acts of and the damages done to us by the white privileged people.
