Over the last year, a growing number of progressives have pointed to police killings of unarmed black men, rising carbon emissions and extreme weather events, and the killing of trans people as proof that the US has failed to take action on racism, climate change, and transphobia
Others have pointed to the war on drugs, the criminalization of homelessness, and mass incarceration as evidence that little has changed in the U.S. over the last 30 years.
And yet, on each of those issues, the U.S. has made significant progress.
- Police killings of black Americans declined from 217/year in the 1970s to 157/year in the 2010s.
- Between 2011 and 2020, CO2 emissions declined 14% in the US, more than in any other nation
- Just 300 people died from disasters, a 90+% percent decline over the past century.
- Public acceptance of trans people is higher than ever
- Total prison & jail population peaked in 2008 and has declined significantly ever since
- Just 4% of state prisoners (87% of total prison pop.), are in for nonviolent drug possession; just 14% for nonviolent drug offenses
Progressives respond that these gains obscure broad inequalities, and are under threat. Black Americans are killed at between two to three times the rate of white Americans, according to a Washington Post analysis of police killings between 2015 and 2020.
Carbon emissions are once again rising as the U.S. emerges from the covid pandemic, and scientists believe global warming is contributing to extreme weather events.
In 2020, Human Rights Campaign found that at least 44 transgender and non-gender conforming people were killed, which is the most since it started tracking fatalities in 2013, and already that number has reached 45 this year.
Drug prohibition remains in effect, homeless people are still being arrested, and the U.S. continues to have one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world.
But those numbers, too, obscure important realities. There are no racial differences in police killings when accounting for whether or not the suspect was armed or a threat (“justified” vs “unjustified” shooting).
While carbon emissions will rise in 2021 there is every reason to believe they will continue to decline in the future, so long as natural gas continues to replace coal, and nuclear plants continue operating.
While climate change may be contributing to extreme weather events, neither the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change nor another other scientific body predicts it will outpace rising resilience to cause an increase in deaths from natural disasters.
Researchers do not know if trans people are being killed disproportionately in comparison to cis-gender people, if trans homicides are rising, or if trans people are being killed for being trans, rather than for some other reason.
Twenty-six states have decriminalized marijuana. California & Oregon have decriminalized and legalized, respectively, the possession of all drugs.
Progressive District Attorneys in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other major cities have scaled back prosecutions against people for breaking many laws related to homelessness including public camping, public drug use, and theft.
And yet many Americans would be surprised to learn any of the above information; some would reject it outright as false.
Despite the decline in police killings of African Americans, the share of the public which said police violence is a serious or extremely serious problem rose from 32 to 45 percent between 2015 and 2020.
Despite the decline in carbon emissions, 47 percent of the public agreed with the statement, “Carbon emissions have risen in the United States over the last 10 years,” and just 16 percent disagreed.
Meanwhile, 46 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “Deaths from natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change” and just 16 percent disagreed, despite the absence of any scientific scenario supporting such fears.
And despite the lack of good evidence, mainstream news media widely reported that the killing of trans people is on the rise.
The gulf between reality and perception is alarming for reasons that go beyond the importance of having an informed electorate for a healthy liberal democracy.
Distrust of the police appears to have contributed to the nearly 30% rise in homicides after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests last year, both by embolding criminals and causing a pull-back of police.
A growing body of research finds that news media coverage of climate change is contributing to rising levels of anxiety and depression among children.
And there's good reason to fear that misinformation about the killing of trans and non-gender conforming individuals contributes to anxiety and depression among trans and gender dysphoric youth.
Why is that? Why does there exist such a massive divide between perception and reality on so many important issues?
Part of the reason appears to stem from the rise of social media and corresponding changes to news media over the last decade.
Social media fuels rising and unwarranted certainty, dogmatism, and intolerance of viewpoint diversity and disconfirmatory information. Social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram reward users for sharing information popular with peers...
... particularly extreme views, and punish users for expressing unpopular, more moderate, and less emotional opinions. This cycle is self-reinforcing. Audiences seek out views that reinforce their own.
Experts seek conclusions, and journalists write stories, which affirm the predispositions of their audiences. It may be for these reasons that much of the news media have failed to inform their audiences that there are no racial differences in police killings...
...., that emissions are declining, and that claims of rising trans killings are unscientific.
Another reason may be due to the influence of well-funded advocacy organizations to shape public perceptions, particularly in combination with social media.
Organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Campaign, and Drug Policy Alliance have misled journalists, policymakers, and the public, about police killings, drug policy, and trans killings, often by simply leaving out crucial contextual information.
The same has been true for climate activists, including those operating as experts and journalists, who withhold information about declining deaths from natural disasters, the cost of disasters relative to GDP growth, and declining U.S. emissions.
But neither of these explanations fully captures the religious quality of so much of the progressive discourse on issues relating to race, climate, trans, crime, drugs, homelessness, and the related issue of mental illness.
A growing number of thinkers use the word “woke” to describe the religiosity of so many progressive causes today.
In his new book, Woke Racism, Columbia University linguist John McWhorter argues that Wokeism should, literally, be considered a religion.
As evidence for his argument McWhorter points to commonly held myths, like the debunked claim that the American War of Independence was fought to maintain slavery, or that racial disparities in educational performance are due to racist teachers.
He points to Woke religious fervor in seeking to censor, fire, and otherwise punish heretics for holding taboo views. And McWhorter suggests that, because Wokeism meets specific psychological and spiritual needs for meaning, belonging, and status...
... pointing out its supernatural elements is likely to have little impact among the Woke.
But just because an ideology is dogmatic and self-righteous does not necessarily make it a religion, and so it is fair to ask whether Wokeism is anything more than a new belief system.
There is no obviously mythological or supernatural element to Woke ideology, and its adherents rarely, if ever, justify their statements with reference to a god, or higher power. But a deeper look at Wokeism reveals a whole series of mythological and supernatural beliefs...
They include the idea that white people today are responsible for the racist actions of white people in the past; that climate change risks making humans extinct; and that a person can change their sex by simply identifying as the opposite sex.
While reading McWhorter’s new book, I was surprised to discover many similarities between woke racism and apocalyptic environmentalism, which in Apocalypse Never I describe as a religion.
Each offers an original sin as the cause of present-day evils (e.g., slavery, the industrial revolution). Each has guilty devils (e.g., white people, “climate deniers,” etc.) sacred victims (e.g., black people, poor islanders, etc.) and what McWhorter calls “The Elect” ...
...or people self-appointed to crusade against evil (e.g., BLM activists, Greta Thunberg, etc.). And each have a set of taboos (e.g., saying “All lives matter,” criticizing renewables, etc.) and purifying rituals (e.g., kneeling/apologizing, buying carbon offsets, etc).
I also saw parallels between woke racism, apocalyptic environmentalism, and victimology, which in San Fransicko I describe as a religion complete with the metaphysical view that people can be categorized as victims or oppressors, by nature of their identity or experience.
I reached out to a new friend, Peter Boghossian, a philosopher who recently resigned his post at Portland State University in response to Wokeist repression, and other experts in different Woke movements, and together we constructed a Woke Religion Taxonomy (below).
It includes seven issue areas (Racism, Climate Change, Trans, Crime, Mental Illness, Drugs, and Homelessness) covered by Woke Racism, Apocalypse Never, San Fransicko, Peter’s research, and the writings of other critics of Wokeism.
It cuts across 10 categories (Original Sin, Guilty Devils, Myths, Sacred Victims, The Elect, Supernatural Beliefs, Taboo Facts, Taboo Speech, Purifying Rituals, Purifying Speech)
We were surprised by how easy it was to fill in each category, and by the fascinating similarities.
We decided to publish the Woke Religion Taxonomy because it was helpful to our own understanding of Wokeism as a religion, and we felt it might help others. The Taxonomy identifies common myths and supernatural beliefs and helps explain why so many people continue to hold them...
..., despite overwhelming evidence that they are false. We are under no illusion that the Taxonomy will reduce the power that Wokeism holds over true believers. But we also believe it will help orient those who are confused by its irrationalism, and are seeking an overview.
Finally, we recognize that we might be wrong, either about matters of fact or classification, and hope it will encourage a healthy debate. As such, we have published it with the caveat that it is “Version 1.0” with the expectation that we will revise it in the future.
Both Peter and I would like to stress that we have published the Taxonomy in service of the liberal and democratic project of social and environmental progress, which we believe to be under threat from Wokeism.
We believe the U.S. is well-positioned to reduce police killings, crime, and carbon emissions; protect the lives and the mental health of trans, non-gender conforming, and cis-gender people; and better treat of the mentally ill and drug addicted.
But doing so will require that Wokeism weaken its grip over the American psyche.
As Peter writes, “bigotry and racial discrimination are real and they have no place in society. Yes, there is ongoing racism. Yes, there is ongoing homophobia...
... Yes, there is ongoing hatred of trans people. These are morally abhorrent and we all need to work together to bring about their end. The woke religion, however, is not the way to stop these moral horrors. It is making our shared problems more difficult to solve.”
Woke Religion: A Taxonomy v1
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One FBI employee involved in the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop was Bradley Benavides (ctr-intel div). Weeks earlier he played key role in an apparent FBI scheme to smear @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley — who were investigating Hunter — as tools of Putin. Sinister.
According to @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley , Benavides and a colleague on August 6, 2020 provided "an unnecessary briefing on behalf of the FBI and Intelligence Community on matters purportedly related to the senators’ investigation into Hunter Biden."
The FBI said it didn't interfere in the 2020 election, but it did. It tricked Twitter & Facebook into censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. Now, newly released chat messages show the FBI issued a "gag order" after an employee accidentally confirmed the laptop's authenticity.
This is a CatherineHerridgeReports @C__Herridge / Public Investigation
In 2024, an FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it.
“I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real’,” testified the then-Russia Unit Chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in a closed door transcribed interview.
“I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’”
For the first time, and with a change of administration, the FBI has now turned over to GOP House investigators the internal chat messages that show Bureau leadership actively silenced its employees.
The FBI, which had a special task force to counter foreign election interference, could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe. Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum.
The FBI provided the chat messages to congressional investigators with heavy redactions.
Some of the redactions on the chats are marked “OGC AGC,” which appears to mean that they were made by the FBI’s Office of General Counsel and Associate General Counsel.
An individual whose name is blacked out, tells Elvis M. Chan, the San Francisco-based FBI special agent tasked with interacting with social media companies, there was a “gag order” on discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In a separate exchange, Chan is told “official response no commen(t).”
In the chat, the FBI officials showed awareness that the laptop may have contained evidence of criminal activity.
Asked Chan, “actually what kind of case is the laptop thing? corruption? campaign financing?”
Another FBI employee responds, “CLOSE HOLD —” after which the response is redacted.
To which Chan responds, “oh crap” appearing to underscore the serious nature of the probe, which included felony tax charges. Chan adds, “ok. It ends here”.
In the same conversation, Chan is asked if “Anyone discussing that NYPost article on the Biden’s?” Chan responds, “yes we are. c d confirmed an active investigation. No further comment.” “C D” is likely shorthand for the FBI’s Criminal Division.
Said another FBI employee, whose name was redacted by the Bureau, “please do not discuss biden matter.”
We asked for a response from the bureau and the FBI employees identified in the chat messages. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.
According to the IRS whistleblowers, DOJ prosecutors blocked standard investigative protocols that might have led to Joe Biden ahead of the presidential campaign.
“There were a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election,” said Joseph Ziegler, the IRS case agent on the Hunter Biden probe.. “And it related to the president's son. So not even the candidate.”
The FBI chat is cryptic and the heavy redactions make it difficult to discern context. For example, an employee says to Chan that “[redacted] has a gag order from [redacted]... got checked by [redacted] had to backtrack - sorry!”
Another cryptic exchange came from Laura Dehmlow, the FBI employee who told House investigators that an FBI employee had accidentally confirmed that the laptop was real. “WTF(redacted) No COMMENT.”
An employee whose name is also withheld wrote, “nope, just a domestic hit job, yay” to which Dehmlow responded, “Yup.”
The exchange may be referring to the FBI’s knowledge that the laptop was authentic and not a foreign “hack and leak” or “Russian information operation,” as 51 former senior intelligence officials alleged at the time.
The IRS whistleblowers said there was no basis for the statement from the former intelligence officials....
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The Twitter Files revealed that the FBI ran a sophisticated info operation aimed at convincing journalists and social media companies that the Hunter Biden laptop, which it had possessed since 2019, was the result of a Russian "hack and leak" operation.
The Right is a threat to democracy, the media says. But it isn’t. It’s winning elections and respecting constituitons. It’s the Left that is undermining democracy. It tried to jail Trump, is about to jail Bolsonaro, and just sentenced Le Pen to prison. This is a five alarm fire.
And when the Left can’t incarcerate a presidential candidate, it simply prevents them from running, for no good reason, and in flagrant violation of the law, as the totalitarian creeps just did in Romania.
The reason the court convicted @MLP_officielis because she is 10 points ahead of her nearest rival in the presidential race.
It's up to the courts not the Administration to determine whether it is non-justiciable. The administration must comply with the order until a higher court reverses it or sets it aside. That's how our system works.
If the Trump administration continues with these obviously unconstitutional actions, then it will lose the legitimacy, public support, and power it needs to pursue free speech diplomacy, which would be a very disappointing outcome @SecRubio @marcorubio
There's no proof of major waste, fraud, or abuse in govt spending, say the media. But there is. And now Public has obtained invoices revealing that a major contractor overcharged the Ed. Dept, paid its CEO $2M/year, and promoted debunked research as student performance declined.
US Education Department Contractor Overcharged Taxpayers While Spending Millions On Executive Salaries
As student math and reading scores declined, the American Institute of Research charged 50% in indirect costs and paid its CEO over $2 million
by @galexybrane and @shellenberger
Over the last few weeks, the media and Democrats have been lambasting President Donald Trump for cutting the Department of Education’s research budget. In particular, the media criticized the Trump administration for cutting a contractor’s research into support services for students with disabilities who are nearing graduation.
But it’s not clear that the research was necessary or successful, and there is already both state and federal funding aimed at helping students with disabilities to develop life skills and plans for the future.
And now Public has obtained invoices showing that the Department’s contractor for the research in question, American Institute for Research (AIR), had significantly overcharged the Department in so-called indirect costs.
The invoice is from November 18, 2024, and shows AIR billing the Department $411,961.35 for the month of October 2024. Of that money, $214,952.74 was in “total indirects.” AIR charged an additional $26,950.74 as a 7% fee.
The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $10,957,275.73, of which $4,993,376.12 was total indirects and $716,831.18 was total additional fees.
A second invoice is from January 15, 2025, and shows AIR billing the Department $60,913.72 for the month of December 2024. Of that money, $29,685.23 was in total indirects. AIR charged an additional $3,985.01 as a 7% fee.
The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $11,076,493.79, of which $5,028,446.77 was total indirects and $724,630.48 was total additional fees.
In response to questions from Public, an AIR spokesperson said, “AIR’s indirect rates are similar to those of other social and behavioral research organizations and we have always abided by our approved rates. For government contractors, indirect costs include such costs as information technology, data security, and compliance and reporting.”
However, 50% in indirect fees is widely considered excessive. The National Institutes of Health recently required that its contractors lower indirect costs to 15% to reduce widespread overcharging.
Indeed, when asked about the invoice, a spokesperson for the Department of Education condemned the high fees. “Contracts with indirect rates over 50% take gross advantage of taxpayer dollars, perverting the reason the contracts exist — our students,” said Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann. “Incoming leadership will no longer allow these unacceptable terms.”
According to AIR’s IRS 990 form, the total compensation of AIR’s chief executive, David Myers, in the most recent year available, 2023, was $2,241,374.
“At the end of 2023, David Myers finished a 14-year tenure as AIR’s President and Chief Executive Officer,” said the AIR spokesperson. “His compensation for his final year included a retention payment. The salary for our current President and CEO is lower and in line with what other non-profit organizations of our size and type pay their chief executives.”
However, AIR’s tax forms showed that Myers earned $2,294,637 in 2022 and $1,145,400 in 2021.
Jessica Heppen is the current president and CEO. In 2023, she earned $685,060 as president. Neither Heppen nor Myers responded to Public’s request for comment.
AIR’s 990 form shows other high salaries for staff and fees for board members. AIR’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, earned $931,610 in 2023, and its CFO earned $1,145,400 in 2022. A member of the AIR Board, Robert Boruch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, received $80,250 in 2023 for just 2 hours of work per week, which is $772 per hour.
While nonprofit board members typically donate their time, 14 of AIR’s board members received hundreds of dollars per hour for their service. None responded to requests by Public for comment.
AIR’s fees should be considered in the broader context of declining student performance and AIR’s role to provide research that improves student performance.
Today, only 31% of fourth graders and only 30% of eighth graders are reading at or above proficiency levels, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In eighth grade reading, 33% of students scored “below basic,” the highest percentage recorded in the NAEP’s history.
Congress established the Education Department in 1979 “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”
Student performance has declined across the board over the last 10 years. While Covid school closures significantly worsened them, math and reading scores declined for fourth- and eighth-graders nationwide from 2014 to 2024.
AIR appears to be partly responsible. It gave a favorable evaluation to Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum, which used elements of the now-debunked “whole language” approach to reading instead of systematic phonics instruction.
Under the whole language approach, teachers taught children to memorize whole words and use guessing strategies instead of sounding out individual sounds in unfamiliar words.
The failure of the whole language approach was precisely why the Department of Education hires groups like AIR. The goal of research is to discover which teaching methods work and which don’t before schools adopt them. That didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite did. The result was a whole generation of children robbed of fundamental literacy.
“It is absolutely inaccurate to say we ‘gave a favorable evaluation’ to Units of Study,” said AIR.
But the evaluation was clearly positive. Implementation of the curriculum, AIR’s report stated, “is associated with improvements in ELA [English Language Arts] achievement starting in the second year of implementation, and in schools that opt to continue with the approach long term, the magnitude of the effects grow larger over time.”
And even AIR noted, in its email to Public, “We found no positive effect in the first year of implementation, then saw positive effects in subsequent years for some schools.”
Other Department contractors had much lower indirect rates. Why was AIR able to charge so much?
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