A Pandemic of Institutional Failures
Some institutions in our society have abandoned their primary roles and responsibilities
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Most of our lives have been consumed by the COVID19 pandemic for the last two years. With the development of vaccines, therapies, and gradually open debates about masks and vaccine mandates, there is a growing sense of hope that we are at the dawn of ending this nightmare and returning to some normalcy.
Nowadays, it is another pandemic that worries me more than COVID, the pandemic of institutional failures -- some institutions in our society have abandoned their primary roles and responsibilities. As often, ordinary Americans ended up paying a dear price for such institutional failures. Meanwhile, elites responsible for these failures have been shielded from suffering any consequence of their actions. If anything, they are failing up instead, getting new titles and bigger paychecks. Allow me to present you with a couple of examples.
Forget about Law and Order
By now, you probably have seen the image of boxes and boxes of merchandise littering along the Union Pacific tracks through Los Angeles, resulting from rampant train robberies. Apparently, this problem has been going on since December 2020, after LA's Democrat District Attorney George Gascon decriminalized crimes such as trespassing and loitering. To make the matter worse, California's Supreme Court ended cash bail and the state's Democrat-led legislature passed a state law to decriminalize robbery of less than $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor. The result of all these soft-on-crime policies and the Dem's push to defund police is rampant thefts of retail stores (remember last Christmas' "smash and grab" in San Francisco?), carjacking, and train robberies.
Walgreen closed more than two dozen stores in San Francisco due to thefts and increased security costs. Union Pacific (UP) reported it has experienced a more than 160% increase in theft in LA County since December 2020 and threatens to reroute its trains to avoid LA county completely. Should UP carry out its threat, American businesses and consumers will experience a longer delay in receiving packages and higher shipping costs.
Emboldened thieves are going after individuals too. As recent as last week, a man was pistol-whipped for his Rolex watch in San Francisco. In Oakland, armed carjackers forced a female driver to surrender her purse and her 15-month-old chihuahua.
But the New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the historically inaccurate 1619 project, told us that destroying property is “not violence” because a property is replaceable. Should victims of robbery contact Ms. Jones to find out how to get their lost properties replaced?
Ms. Jones also argued that the word “violence” should be reserved for crimes such as the killing of George Floyd. So let’s talk about “actual violence” according to her definition.
Yao Pan Ma, a 61-year-old Chinese immigrant, was brutally attacked in April 2021, and he died on New Year’s Eve from the injuries he suffered. On January 15th, 40-year-old Michelle Go, an MBA graduate from the esteemed Stern School of Business of New York University and an employee of Deloitte, was shoved to her death in front of an approaching subway train at Times Square Station by a disturbed ex-con man.
Yao and Go were the latest victims of senseless and unprovoked attacks against Asian Americans in some of America's most progressive cities, such as Oakland, California, and New York, New York. In New York City alone, the number of violent crimes involving Asian victims had increased more than 300 percent from 2020 to 2021. Not all of these crimes were hate-rated, and some were part of the crime surge in Democrat-led cities. Yet, newly elected Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg instructed his prosecutors to "stop seeking prison sentences for many crimes and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing."
Aren't maintaining law and order and protecting citizens from undue harm some of the government's fundamental roles and responsibilities? It seems elected Democrats in cities such as LA, San Francisco, Oakland, and New York have wholly abdicated their responsibilities and intentionally created lawless environments that delight criminals while threatening ordinary Americans' safety and livelihood.
Forget About Facts and Objectivity
What is Journalism? According to the American Press Institute, journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. Reporting facts, not opinions, and maintaining objectivity and independence are a journalist's core values and responsibilities. But take a quick survey of mainstream media and journalists who work for these media companies. How many of them truly live up to these core values and responsibilities?
Rather than reporting facts, not opinions, most left-leaning journalists and the media companies they work for will only report whatever fits their ideology and narratives. For example, the only time you will read about anti-Asian crimes from liberal outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post is when the perpetrator was white (i.e., the Atlanta shooting in March 2021). On rare occasions when these outlets have to report an anti-Asian crime committed by a non-white perpetrator, they usually avoid mentioning race or find a way to blame "white supremacy."
Another example is this most recent NPR scandal. NPR's long-time legal correspondent, Nina Totenberg, reported recently that conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch had supposedly refused a request from Chief Justice Roberts to put on a mask to help protect liberal Justice, Sonia Sotomayor. She claimed that an anonymous source tipped her. Her reporting was quickly widely shared and regarded truth by liberal media outlets from MSNBC, CNN to USA Today, and social media companies.
But the three Justices that Totenberg reported all issued statements to rebuttal her reporting and made clear that no mask dispute among them ever took place. But the damage of Totenberg's misinformation to two conservative justices had already been done. Remember the saying, "A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes?" David Holden, an independent journalist I follow on Twitter, did an excellent thread to show how misinformation like this gets mainstreamed by the corporate press and others." I highly recommend you read his line and give him a follow.
The real scary part is that this kind of misinformation could have been easily avoided. Had Totenberg or any liberal outlet that shared her story contacted any of the justice involved to verify the account, they could have saved themselves a colossal embarrassment. Yet, none of them did. Counting on anonymous sources was better than speaking to justices directly for Totenberg. For those who shared her reporting, why should they bother to check with the source since Totenberg's reporting fits their long-held negative views about conservatives in general? Sharing the story has given them another opportunity to attack conservative justices and renew their call to "pack the court."
These left-leaning media outlets and their journalists have become partisan hacks. Is there any wonder that the general public has stopped trusting them?
The most significant source of all institutional failure is the Biden administration. From the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan to the runaway inflation to the botched COVID19 response, to the surging illegal immigration through our southern borders, the list of the Biden administration’s failures goes on, and there is not enough room on this page to identify them all. You should check out this piece by my colleague Elle Reynolds, which is titled “A Scandal For Every Month: The Biggest Botches, Failures, And Mess-Ups Of Joe Biden’s First 12 Months In Office.” As the title suggested, she summarized some of the Biden administration’s biggest failures month-by-month.
So you may wonder if there is anything that gives me hope these days? The answer is “yes.” I have found hope in Virginia. Republican Glenn Youngkin swore in the governor’s office on January 15th, and he has already done a fantastic job to advance freedom and put the state back on the right track. Through executive orders, he has
Restore excellence in education by ending divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education.
Empower Virginia parents in their children’s education
Restore individual freedoms and personal privacy by rescinding the vaccine mandate for all state employees.
End public school mask mandate
Elections have consequences. If you don’t want to live with failures, vote for the party and the candidates that will deliver you freedom and success.
Op-eds in the Federalist
Many western democracies have imposed “zero tolerance” Covid policies, which have caused considerable and sometimes irreversible harm. These policies also make democracies indistinguishable from authoritarian states by stamping on people’s freedom. Read more here.
In an unprecedented move last week, British spy agency MI5 issued a warning to members of parliament (MPs) about ongoing political interference by a known Chinese agent on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Read more here.