We're all learning to navigate uncharted territory.
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Los Angeles County News
As of this week, LA County has qualified to leave the California "red" tier of COVID restrictions, and as of Monday, April 5, it will be placed in the less restrictive "orange" tier. From the time Gov Newsom imposed the multi-colored COVID tiers last August 28, LA County had been in the most restrictive "purple" tier. Its performance during the late 2020 surge had been a virtual Mt Everest on the chart, as shown above. But for reasons that aren't completely clear, the county's numbers began a precipitous drop in mid-January 2021 and, contravening trends in places like Germany, Canada, and the US northeast, have continued to plummet.
The county left the "purple" tier, where it had been for over seven months, just on March 14, when it was placed in the "red" tier. However, it has blown through the "red" tier in the minimum time it was required to wait there, three weeks, and yesterday the state declared that it qualifies for the "orange" tier. The "red" tier allowed most indoor functions like restaurants and churches to operate at 25% capacity with masks and social distancing. The "orange" tier extends this to 50%, again with masks and social distancing.
However, these restrictions continue to be among the most severe in the US. In New York, outside New York City, restaurants may operate at 75% capacity; inside the city, 35%. But in New York, these restrictions are producing nothing like California's, or LA County's results, as shown at right. Instead of riding a snowboard down the slopes of Mt Everest, like California, New York seems to be climbing a new Mont Blanc. And New York has vaccinated 15% of its population, while California has vaccinated about 20%. It's difficult to reconcile the very different outcomes from the data we have.
A working theory I have is that California began to develop conditions of herd immunity at some point just prior to the introduction of vaccines, and the vaccines simply accelerated the improvement -- but of course, I'm an English major, not an epidemiologist. And this simply doesn't explain New York's performance even with the vaccine.
In a study released yesterday of about 4,000 health-care personnel, police, firefighters and other essential workers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the vaccines reduced the risk of infection, both asymptomatic and symptomatic infection by 80% after one dose, and that protection increased to 90% following the second dose. Different from the clinical trials, which are tightly controlled, and showed that the vaccines are highly effective preventing hospitalizations and deaths, this study shows just how effective the vaccines are in preventing infections in real-life conditions. The findings of this study are significant and provide evidence that the vaccines can both reduce transmission and save lives.
Looking at California's results alone, I'd simply say hooray. But if so many people are also being vaccinated in New York and the rest of the northeast, why are their results not consistent?
And beyond that, why have states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona either explicitly or de facto relaxed all restrictions and with, at best, a vaccination rate equivalent to New York, achieved so much better results?
I think the data basically suggests that California could easily relax restrictions much mote quickly than it's doing now, but at least the restrictions, still among the most restrictive in the US, are being relaxed. And so far, the weepy appeals of Dr Walensky. and the woozy appeals of Joe Biden, for states to pause their loosening, haven't had an effect. Pray this continues.
In a bizarre and weepy statement to the media yesterday, Dr Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, departed from her prepared statement and, close to tears, said
I'm going to lose the script, and I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I'm scared.
The first reaction I had was that leaders don't break into panic in prepared public remarks. Instead, leaders, even when things look bleak, outline a positive course of action. Think we shall fight on the beaches. But in fact, she's outlining no course of action at all, and indeed no serious understanding of the particular problem. And of course, if she thinks a spike in COVID "cases" is "impending doom", what word does she use for ebola or bubonic plague? I'll get to the over-the-top below.
Like Dr Fauci yesterday, she looks at a national total of cases without asking what the total reflects. In many highly populous states, most of which are the ones that eliminated controls, COVID cases are continuing to decline. The increases are taking place almost entirely in the northeastern US, led by New York-New Jersey. If I were CDC Director, or indeed if I were the president, I'd be asking my staff to give me serious answers for why there's such a difference in outcome between, say, Texas and New York.
The next question, which nobody pushing this current narrative brings up, is what effect vaccination is having. Just to be sure the curve wasn't suddenly turning around here, I visited the LA County health department site, and cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are continuing to decline here. Vaccination must be an important part of the trend, though as I've been saying, the sharp decline began right after the holidays and before the vaccine was distributed.
So something good is happening in California. Exactly what is it? Dr Fauci says in recent remarks, with which I assume Dr Walensky concurs, that factors in the northeastern US spike include travel, COVID variants, and states withdrawing their COVID restrictions. Are the COVID variants more severe in the northeast? According to the CDC, the vaccines should work against these as well as the common type:
Researchers are monitoring new COVID variants closely. This includes research to see whether new variants may change the protective effects of the current vaccines. So far studies suggest that antibodies gathered through vaccination with the current authorized vaccines do recognize new variants. (source – CDC) (2.8.20)
Mar 15, 2021
So if authorities simply proceed with vaccinations, shouldn't this curb the "impending doom"? Neither Dr Fauci nor Dr Walensky will say. But all I can think is that Dr Walensky referred to trends in the northeast over the past several weeks, which smply aren't reflected in the continuing dramatic improvement in California, where every indication is that the population is enthusiastically getting the shots, and the authorities are capably making them available. At minimum, shoudn't her public remarks have stressed the need for people to get vaccinated? But they didn't.
In fact, I take the subtext of Dr Walensky's panic to mean that masks and social distancing aren't working. She's clearly blaming the plebs and certain unnamed reprobate governors for backsliding on the program -- except that the states that see continuing improvement are, with few exceptions, the ones that have eliminated said program, while the ones facing impending doom are precisely the ones retaining it and urging it on the plebs the more forcefully.
I think this is the source of the panic, and it's plain that there's an agenda afoot. Following Dr Walensky's peformance, President Biden went before the cameras to try to say the same things, more or less:
Joe Biden delivered remarks today in which he begged Americans to continue wearing masks. Most are; compliance is above 90% and has been for a long time.
. . . As Biden was walking away from the podium, a member of the lapdog media helpfully asked him if he wanted states that are reopening their economies to pause.
Biden paused from putting a mask on his blank face, turned, and answered “Yes.”
It's worth pointing out that dire predictions from Dr Fauci and others of post-holiday surges haven't been reliable. The early 2021 improvemeent in statistics in places like California began within ten days or so of the New Year holiday, when one would have expected the next big surge. Subsequent predictions of surges after King's Birthday, Super Sunday, and President's Day didn't take place. The current prophecies of impending doom anticipate Easter brunches, it would appear. Do not go to brunch next Sunday, people!
The panic is because the narrative is collapsing. A contributing factor is that Dr Walensky is feeling upstaged by her subordinate Fauci. But as I've said, we seem to be entering the "morning after" phase of a moral panic, and I think it will keep playing itself out. This won't end well for the moral entrepreneurs like Fauci and Walensky.
Yesterday on Sunday talk, Dr Fauci said US COVID-19 cases were rising again "because of infectious coronavirus variants, people traveling more, and states easing restrictions too soon."
More than 11 states have eased restrictions, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning that "now is not the time."
As far as I can tell, an uptick in US cases is due almost entirely to New York. Here's the New York chart:
But here's California:
New York's population is 18 million. California's population is 40 million. California's COVID statistics, with LA County a key factor, have actually been plummeting in recent weeks, as I noted here yesterday. But according to the New York Post,
New York and New Jersey now have the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the country.
The Empire State has averaged 548 cases for every 100,000 residents over the past 14 days — only surpassed by the Garden State with 647 cases.
Despite vaccination efforts, New York has not seen a dramatic reduction in infections. Daily cases have averaged about 50,000 people per week since mid-February.
And across the Hudson River in New Jersey, the number of new infections has climbed by 37 percent in a little more than a month, to about 23,600 every seven days.
In addition to California's population of 40 million, Texas has a population of 29 million, while Florida's populaiton is 21 million. None of these states has seen the plateau-cum-uptick pattern in recent weeks that we're seeing in New York. But the absolute number of cases in New York weighs against the sharply declining numbers elsewhere to create a misleading "national" total, as we see below:
Looking at the charts yesterday, I saw two basic patterns: a "Mount Everest" pattern, or at lesst a "Mount Washington" pattern, common in most US states with a sharp peak and then a decline to last spring's levels. Then there's a "Canadian" pattern, which we also see in New York-New Jersey, with a peak, a partial decline to a plateau, and then an uptick.
I certainly can't offer an explanation, except to say that the Canadian provinces and the few US states with this pattern are in fact among those with the strictest lockdown and travel quarantine orders in place. Although California's business restrictions are among the strictest, its travel quarantine is less so and basically not enforced. New York is in fact lifting its travel quarantine as of April 1. On Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford loosened COVID restrictions there as well.
My guess is that allowing healthy people to circulate and travel boosts immunity. But what I think doesn't matter. What the CDC and others need to do is look at the actual data in individual cases and determine what's working and what isn't. Instead, they're pushing a one-size-fits-all continued national lockdown agenda. Even Doug Ford is starting to see that's not working.
I was surfing the COVID charts yesterday when I ran into the one above on the LA County health department site. The bottom line is that, as of a week ago, the 7-day average county COVID testing positivity rate was 1.60%. But putting this in the context of Gov Newsom's lockdown tiers, if the system were reimposed today with these statistics, the county would not be in the "red" tier, which is only a little less restrictive than the horrible "purple" tier. With a testing positivity rate of less than 2%, it would be in the lowest, "yellow" or "minimal" tier.
As it is, the county is still in the three-week waiting period to move down from the red, "substantial" tier to the orange, "moderate" tier. I assume that once it reaches the orange tier in a week or so, the waiting clock in orange will restart, and we'll have to wait another three weeks to move from orange to yellow, when, however, masks, social distancing, and capacity limits will still be in force. The Newsom scheme, as I've noted, never provided for a "green" tier, where we're back to the old normal, but the tendency indicates we ought to be getting there sooner than anyone realizes.
But as an Aristotelian, I have to ask what the cause is. The easy answer would be vaccinations. The charts I've been uploading here have been showing an Everest-style pattern of "cases", starting a sharp increase last November, peaking in mid to late January, and since then showing an equivalent rapid decline, to the point where the current rate falls within the official "minimal" range. But the fall that began in January was well before widespread vaccinations were made available. But also, here's the official LA County take on when vaccinations are complete, from an e-mail we got yesterday:
If it has been less than 2 weeks since your shot or you still need to get your second dose, you are NOT fully vaccinated.
Only recently has the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine been available, so most people in the county have been on the two-shot regimen. My wife and I, in the over-65 priority group, have so far not received our second shots, since we have to wait four weeks between the two. To be fully vaccinated, we'll have to wait two weeks from the time we get that second shot. So as far as I can see, even if about 10% of the population in the county has had at least one shot, a much smaller number, even now, have been "fully vaccinated".
Yet the testing positivity rate, a key indicator for reopening, has been falling precipitously, even if quite a small proportion of the population is "fully vaccinated" -- and it' been falling precipitously since before many vaccinations were being done. There must be other causes working in combination, and the best that can be said is that not even Dr Fauci actually knows what they are.
But it goes beyond that. A Canadian visitor reports that the situation over much of Canada is actually the opposite of the LA trend. Alberta is in especially bad shape. Here's the data there as of yesterday:
In other words, the situation was very similar to that in California up to March, when things began to reverse again. This simply hasn't been happening in places like Florida and Texas, which have effectively ended mask and other restrictions but have seen a continuing decline in statistics. Is it climate, maybe? But here's the same chart for Alberta's US neighbor to the south, Montana:
Montana, allowing for a smaller and more rural population, nevertheless looks much more like LA County, much less like Alberta. But Alberta has Calgary, a major city with 1.3 million, nothing like Montana. Is that the problem? But Arizona has Phoenix, a city of 1.6 million, and Arizona has also effectively dropped restrictions, while its chart is consistent with LA County and Montana.
The Canadian visitor, as well as Canadian news reports, suggests Canada is doing much more poorly with vaccine distribution, but the LA County statistics suggest vaccine isn't the only cause for its decline in cases and positivity.
The only conclusion I can draw for now is that we actually know much less about COVID than Dr Fauci lets on, and official opinions aren't worth much. Commentators worldwide are suggesting the real emerging crisis is in fact the credibility of governments.
Federal Judge Strikes Down Last US Numerical Cap On Church Attendance
Via The Federalist, I learn that US District Judge Trevor McFadden ordered Washington, DC Mayor Bowser to cease enforcing a 250-person and 25 percent capacity restriction on church attendance. Via the graphic above, which is already out of date, this was the last jurisdiction to have imposed a "maximum x and y percent, whichever is lower" type restriction, which was extremely common as of late last year. This is a continuing indication of how quickly COVID restrictions are being lifted in the US.
The suit was brought by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington. This is another indication that the successful US legal fight against limits on religious observance is being conducted entirely by Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and radical Protestant Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Main Line Protestantism is nowhere to be found, reflective of the trend Frederick Kinsman observed a century ago. It reflects similar developments among Jews. Quasi-Christian cults like Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Scientists, however fervent their own beliefs, are also not in the picture.
Even the states with percentage limits are slowly liberalizing these limits. Maine and Washington state, as announced in the graphic, moved over the past week to 50% limits. California is in the process of moving by county to 50% limits. However, in light of the 37 states that now have no restrictions on houses of worship, the states that are still "loosening" now are in fact slow-walking the process. But it's a process. It's been forced on the relevant authorities by bottom-up resistance through the courts.
This article from six weeks ago suggests Canada is still far behind the US in relaxing or eliminating restrictions on worship. As of that time, a number of provinces, including British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick, had banned in-person worship entirely, while others had imposed numerical caps in the low double digits. I'll be interested to hear of updates from Canada. The best that can be gathered is that police officials there are polite in breaking up illegal services.
The US situation is evidence that existing COVID controls, where they persist, are being overtaken by events. It appears that vaccination efforts are having an effect on the disease greater than predicted, and the impression I have is that by and large, these are being efficiently conducted. Every indication is that the states that have eliminated controls entirely have not been "reckless" in doing so, as COVID statistics continue to improve.
A visitor sent me a heads-up to a story on Gavin Newsom that broke in local media yesterday, and it's developing only very slowly this morning. Here's the latest, still from California local media:
Will the “worst-kept secret in Sacramento” blow into public view?
It’s hard to say.
The secret? That Gov. Gavin Newsom was engaged in multiple alleged extra-marital affairs over the course of 2020, a time where many of his orders shuttered nearly all personal and economic activity across the nation’s largest state.
Sources on K Street and within the Capitol complex peppered The Sun with corroborating rumors of infidelity by Newsom during the pandemic year.
One such instance allegedly occurred with a high-ranking official within his own office, K Street sources told The Sun.
The original source the visitor sent me took me back to Newsom's past history. I've got to say I wasn't paying much attention at the time, simply because Newsom was the foreordained choice of the lizard people, there was nothing I could do about it, and I had better uses for my time. But the guy has a history of this kind of thing:
Governor Newsom has established a pattern and practice of engaging in inappropriate sexual relationships with members of his staff. As Mayor of San Francisco in 2007, Newsom was caught having an affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, his Appointments Secretary. To add to the tawdriness of the affair, the woman was the wife of Newsom’s Campaign Manager, who subsequently quit the campaign.
Newsom survived the scandal by publicly apologizing, assuring voters that he had learned his lessons, and promising that he would get treatment to deal with “problems with alcohol.”
I would guess that, given last year's party without masks, indoors at the French Laundry restaurant, where anyone could see him, the problems with alcohol are still there. And that goes to his face. Most appearances I've seen of Newsom on TV give an affectless expression something like the photo above. And it dawned on me from back in my Animal House days: the governor is normally s**tfaced. (My understanding of that term is that, when one is heavily intoxicated, one loses one's ability to have an animated facial expression. Other etymologies differ.)
But then, other photos show the governor with an extremely animated expression, a little like a wolverine that suddenly finds a wandering baby rabbit, like the one at right: Given the history we're dealing with here, in which the guy is starting to look a little like a cleaned-up Hunter Biden, I would strongly suspect that when the governor has a face like this, he's coked up.
In other words, he's just another politician working day to day under seriously impaired judgment, the tool of his handlers. COVID and the colored safe-economy tiers for California are off the radar for now and, given what seems to be looming on the horizon, they'll be off the radar for some time.
The chart above shows the trend in COVID "cases" for California since the start of the pandemic. As I noted yesterday, the authorities' response to this remarkable reversal of the disease has been extremely timid and bureaucratic, with counties moving very slowly from "tier" to "tier", each move giving very minimal relaxation: this month indoor dining at 25% capacity, masks, and social distance; next month (maybe) 50%, masks, and social distance. The most the state plan envisions for many sectors, including restaurants and churches, is under the "yellow" tier at 50% capacity, masks, and social distance.
There's no threshold in the plan for ever leaving yellow. I guess we'll just have to be grateful for the 50% they'll let us have.
By comparison, here's the same data over the same period for Texas. Although the trend in California is even more favorable than Texas, Texas is the one to say "we're done". No masks, no distance, just old-time public decorum. By contrast, at the US national level, brows are furrowing over the need for vaccine passports:
Millions of people are being vaccinated against the coronavirus every day. While that’s undoubtedly good news, this growing share of the population with COVID-19 immunity creates a conundrum for decision makers as they plan a gradual reopening of the country. On one hand, there are costs to asking vaccinated people to endure the isolation of lockdowns when they face little risk from the virus. On the other, lifting restrictions to accommodate them would put unvaccinated people in danger.
Wait a moment. This whole "conundrum" assumes a static situation where uniform lockdown controls are in place. In reality, even in the strictest places like California, people can have a beer, if only outdoors and if only with the number of seats in the bar reduced. Next month, it'll be indoors, and that's for everyone, not just the vaccinated. If the trend continues, as it almost certainly will, more and more people will be vaccinated, the statistics will keep improving, risks for everyone will be reduced (as they're reducng now), and the crisis will be effectively over long before the bureaucrats develop their passport policy and distribute said passports. I used to get in trouble as an undergraduate for asking questions like this in class.
Any attempt to "solve" a passport "problem" will just creaate a new problem and extend the existing one, which is probably what the lizard people who run the planet want.
I'm waiting to see this discussion enter the national debate, but I guess I shouldn't hold my breath. But somebody needs to start asking, for instance, why the statistics are the same for states like Texas and Florida who've said "we're done", vis-a-vis the states that are taking months and months to distinguish relaxation for tasting rooms that don't serve food vs tasting rooms that do, and whether passport holders should get better treatment in them than others.
I think things are moving way too fast for the COVID policymakers.
Above is the PSA that's still being put out on Facebook this morning by the US Department of Health and Human Services. It may as well be from a year ago -- the message hasn't changed. But in the last couple of months, the big issue for COVID has been vaccines, and the suggestion, which I quoted yesterday from the LA County health department, is that with only 10% of the population vaccinated, the statistics are plummeting. The health department in its latet update says this:
Today, the State released updated numbers; L.A. County's adjusted case rate dropped from 4.1 new cases per 100,000 people to 3.7 new cases per 100,000 people. The test positivity rate dropped from 2.0% to 1.8%. If the County continues to maintain current levels or declines in the case rate and test positivity rate, it is possible in early April for the County to move into the orange tier. The County needs to remain in the red tier for three weeks prior to be assigned to the orange tier.
These tier designations are intricate. For reasons not explained, LA County had to remain below target numbers for only two weeks to move from the most restrictive purple tier to the less restrictive red tier, where it sits now -- except that its numbers have been improving so rapidly that it's eligible for the yet less restrictive orange tier, or would be, except it now needs to wait three weeks to get there, not two.
I got a haircut last week. The barber shops reopened in February, when Newsom relaxed the holiday lockdown. The rules for a haircut are super-intricate. Mask. Procedure for moving elastic ear bands while cutting around ears. Only one customer per chair in the room, no waiting inside. Chair elaborately sanitized between uses. Customer temperature taken at the door. I asked the barber if there was any relaxation between life in the purple tier and life in the red tier. He said no, and probably not in the orange tier, either. But he was careful in his responses not to imply there was anything unnecessary about anything. You can figure out why.
I checked. LA County, although it currently qualifies for the orange tier, must still wait until next month for it to take effect. Here in part is what a "looser" tier still involves:
Gatherings: Indoor gatherings strongly discouraged, allowed with modifications. No more than three households.
Limited services: Open with modifications. [I don't know what these are.]
Outdoor playgrounds and outdoor recreational facilities: Open with modifications.
Hair salons and barbershops: Open indoors with modifications. [My barber is probably right, no change.]
All retail: Open indoors with modifications.
Shopping centers: Closed common areas. Reduced capacity food court.
Personal care services: Open indoors with modifications.
Museums, zoos and aquariums: Open indoors with modifications. Indoor activities max 50% capacity.
Places of worship: Open indoors with modifications. Max 50% capacity.
Movie theaters: Open indoors with modifications. Max 50% capacity or 200 people, whichever is fewer.
Hotels and lodging: Open with modifications. Fitness centers can open with 25% capacity.
Gyms and fitness centers: Open indoors with modifications. Max 25% capacity. This includes climbing walls and indoor pools.
Restaurants: Open indoors with modifications. Max 50% capacity or 200 people, whichever is fewer.
So the differences in the various "tiers" are largely semantic, but the problem now becomes that whatever the differences, they'll be changing each month. The list above is just a summary -- the protocols for each type of activity are actually thousands of words. And it's still red light-green light. There's a yellow tier after the orange, and it still has lots of detailed controls. So far in California, there's no procedure for taking any county enterely out of the COVID tiers. Any total relaxation will still be off in the indefinite future, with no published plan for how this will take place,
Some states have actually just done away with this, or have effectively begun to bypass it. The effect of vaccinations, combined with herd immunity that the experts have pooh-poohed but seems likely to happen, will likely overtake blue-state lockdown schemes much more quickly than anyone has anticipated. In every case, these controls have been imposed by governors' executive orders. This incudes California. Newsom, facing a recall, needs to sit down with his handlers and figure out how to back himself out of this situation
The question continues to be why, with such huge disparities now among US states in restrictions vs an overall improving statistical outcome, any state maintains restrictions when states like Texas continue to improve without them.
Minnesota Ends Church Capacity Restrictions -- But Maintains The Six Foot Rule
On the heels of Dr Fauci telegraphing that the CDC may soon revise its guidelines over social distancing comes news that Minnesota has dropped all capacity restrictions for houses of worship, while maintaining that same social distancing requirement. As one headline put it, "Dominoes are falling."
"The dominoes are falling in favor of abolishing the states’ limitations on church attendance," Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal said in a statement. "Minnesota has abolished its church attendance limitations. Next, our plan is to similarly abolish all the other states’ remaining limitations on church attendance, which have been occurring nationwide."
The Thomas More Society was involved in a lawsuit that challenged coronavirus-related restrictions on religious services in Minnesota. The state relented last week, ending capacity restrictions while maintaining social distancing requirements.
. . . "State-imposed limits on church attendance are never constitutionally okay," he added. "Governor Walz’s requirements on churches even included criminal penalties for noncompliance with his dictates. What? Were Minnesota courts going to put all the pastors in jail for church attendance during a pandemic?"
Two things strike me about this. The first, and the best news, is that in the US, the system has been working, however slowly, to maintain natural rights protections provided in the Constitution. Governors like Walz, Newsom, and Cuomo who attempt to violate these natural rights are clearly subject to both political and legal remedies. The result has been that in the US, there have been almost no large-scale anti-lockdown demonstrations,, which have become increasingly common in Canada, the UK, and Europe, and absent a vigorous tradition of insistence on natural rights, have been pretty much feckless in those places.
The other thing that strikes me, though, is how pusillanimous the response of the US authorities has been to each reestablishment of natural-rights protection. Minnesota drops any capacity limitations on churches, but it insists on keeping social distancing requirements, no matter the shaky basis on which these have been imposed, and no matter the bleak outlook for their continuance.
A quick web serch shows that safety-sign vendors have many products available now to warn churchgoers of the need to observe the distances. These are, of course, products offered for sale by businesses, and the churches are free to buy them or not. But I assume that if those who sold them thought there wasn't a market, they wouldn't sell these things. Their tone is remarkably forbidding and stentorian. Somebody thinks it's a good idea to frighten churchgoers into martial law style regimentation. Surely someone can come up with a more welcoming, less reproving sign.
I note, in fact, that public health authorities have been very reluctant to surrender any tiny part of their emergency powers. The remarkably rapid improvement of COVID numbers in Los Angeles somehow does not make the health director happy, and relaxations of the regime are micromanaged in incredible detail:
The seven-day average number of daily cases by episode date continues to decrease, and as of March 14 is under 500 new cases per day. . . . While the majority of the L.A. County population has not yet been vaccinated, the increasing rate of vaccination likely is beginning to reduce transmission.
. . . Public Health made additional modifications to the Health Officer Order. The revised Order was issued on March 19, and took effect on March 20, with the following changes:
Breweries, Wineries and Craft Distilleries that do not provide a meal may open for outdoor service only with certain restrictions, including:
All guests must have reservations;
Guests are limited to a 90-minute time limit for their visit;
Guests must be seated at tables before they place their order, and are not permitted to stand or congregate with others;
And hours are limited with service for on-site consumption closing by 8:00 pm.
It doesn't end there, the regulations go on and on -- in a situation where the news is steadily improving and the need for such a regime is steadily disappearing. In California, the decline in COVID numbers is resulting in counties entering looser and looser restriction tiers in a matter of weeks for each phase -- with the result that these ridiculously detailed circumscriptions will likely be moot in a few weeks time.
Still the the bureaucrats push on. But every sign is that we're entering the "morning after" phase of a moral panic. Let's pray for the time to arrive when all these artifacts are simply a historical curiosity.
A story over the weekend gave an insight into how Dr Fauci's mind works (as a guy I once knew would say, "But who would want to have that?"):
Anthony Fauci, a world-respected figure during the coronavirus crisis, said experts at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were examining a Massachusetts study that found "no substantial difference" in COVID cases in schools observing six-foot and three-foot rules.
Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" show whether that meant that a three-foot separation was sufficient, Fauci replied, "It does, indeed."
"The CDC is very well aware that data are accumulating making it look more like three feet are OK under certain circumstances," Fauci added.
While cautioning that the CDC was still weighing the data and conducting its own tests, he said its findings would come "soon."
o be six feet of distance in the first place?
But wait a moment. For the past year, we've been told that six feet is what "the science" says we need to maintain. It is simply no surprise any more to see public sidewalks, at least in California, with six-foot calibrations painted on them. Stores, banks, vending machines, supermarkets, and now vaccination clinics, all have variations on footprints, figures with arrows, and so forth painted on the floor reminding people to maintain six feet of social distance. It will be years before these wear away.
The CDC "experts" cited in the link above came up with this. Since last spring, there's been a concursus bonorum that we need to maintain six feet of social distance and wear masks -- indeed, better two masks at once. All of a sudden, the "experts" (their word, not mine) conducted a study, and "under certain circumstances', three feet is OK. But if you think about it, unless you're on a crowded subway or something, three feet is just comfortable distance any time, pandemic or no.
It's called "personal space", and if someone gets closer, they have to have a reason to invade it. At least, back in the day. So basically, after a year of crazy, some experts actually conducted a study that said if people observe ordinary public decorum, rather than arbitrarily doubling comfortable social distance, that's just as good in stopping the spread.
In other words, Dr Fauci just said, taking many, many extra words to say it, that someone finally did "the science" and discovered six feet of social distance wasn't needed. "Under certain circumstances". Baloney.
I'm not the only one to see this. According to this story, former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said on CNN Friday,
This six-foot distancing requirement has probably been the single costliest mitigation tactic that we've employed in response to COVID... and it really wasn't based on clear science... we should have readjucated this much earlier.
All those sidewalk calibrations and floor stickers? Never mind.
But notice that Dr Fauci is warning us not to go overboard. The CDC will be reevaluating all this, but they've got to chew every bite 29 times before they swallow. When will they finish their tests?
I see in this morning's news that yesterday there were protests across Europe and the UK against continued COVID lockdowns. A quick review of the situation indicates that, at least in the UK and Germany, some restrictions were briefly relaxed, but severe lockdowns have been reimposed in the UK, with the threat of the same in Germany.
It's easy to be lulled by conditions in the US, where states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona have relaxed most or all restrictions, including mask requirements, while even in California, which has consistently been the strictest in the US, the lockdowns have eased, with indoor dining now resuming at 25% capacity in places like Los Angeles.
On March 2, Texas lifted all COVID restrictions. More than two weeks later, cases there continue to decline, although the COVID moral entrepreneurs across the country insisted at the time that this was "reckless". US data continues to indicate that there is little correlation between severity of lockdowns and prevalence of COVID infections, with the least restrictive regimes showing a decline in cases just as much as the most restrictive, like California.
Meanwhile, a Canadian visitor informs me that all worship services of any size in British Columbia have been completely banned, indoor or outdoor, since November. Religious services have been limited to ten attendees in Ontario’s “grey” zones, of which Toronto remains one, but recent lobbying efforts spearheaded by the Cardinal Archbishop of Toronto have led to the regulations being changed to allow 15% of venue’s capacity to attend a religious service.
In the US, while it took the Supreme Court to do this, indoor worship services are allowed up to 25% building capacity in areas where they were previously forbidden -- but other states now impose no restrictions at all. Notwithstandng, US cases are declining everywhere.
Also in the US, as far as I can tell, there's little public resistance to vaccines. In Europe, a substantial component of anti-lockdown protests is also anti-vax. The attitude in LA is basically gimme the darn shot, let's get on with things! The Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced that the vaccine is moral and Catholics should get it. While some groups, including African-Americans, seem reluctant to get vaccinated, this may derive from historical suspicion of medical experiments conducted on minorities -- but there is very little public resistance.
The big puzzle continues to be why COVID measures have become so disparate worldwide and in the US, but it appears that even the strictest US regimes are less severe than those in many other countries, while statistics in the US continue to improve. So far, there's been little apparent interest in studies that might examine this -- probably because the medical and philanthropic establishment that funds such studies would not like the potential result.
It suggests to me that, even as COVID restrictions have infringed unnecessarily on natural rights, constitutional protections, and the threat of retaliation at the ballot box, have continued to be more effective in the US than elsewhere.
A visitor found this brief note in the New York Times from May 1919 referring to news that was apparently generally known at the Episcopal Church annual meeting that Kinsman was planning to retire. (He was 50.) The most visible reason he gave for his wish to retire at that time was that he seemed unhappy with his role as bishop, but he also noted that there were "deeper reasons". It also appears that his father's health, which we may speculate based on remarks in Reveries of a Hermit must have been paralysis following a fairly recent stroke, was a secondary factor.
I have a sense that oral history of how this event played out in the Episcopal Church at the time has been passed down, and I would be most interested to hear of any such accounts.
The report suggests much of this was fairly well known and understood by Kinsman's colleagues at the time. However, Kinsman seems to have kept his main motivation for resigning confidential until his formal letter of resignation, dated July 1, 1919, to the presiding bishop. This was published as a brief pamphlet in the UK in 1929 as The Failure of Anglicanism and is available on line here. In general, he summarizes positions in the 1919 letter that in later years he explains in much greater detail in Salve Mater and Reveries of a Hermit.
To the Right Reverend Daniel Sylvester Tuttle, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.:
MY DEAR PRESIDING BISHOP
I hereby present through you to the House of Bishops the resignation of my jurisdiction as Bishop of the Diocese of Delaware.
RESIGNATION OF OFFICE
1 take this step with utmost regret, both as relinquishing a post assigned me by the Church to which 1 owe the greatest blessings of my life, and as sever ing my connection with the State of Delaware and its warm-hearted people, for whom during eleven years I have come to have an ever- deepening affection.
The only post I could wish for myself is that of Bishop of Delaware. I resign it because I can no longer hold any post of authority in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Fuller experience which has come to me as Bishop and more thorough study of the history of our communion have forced me to abandon the interpretation of the Church's position which I held at the time of my consecration ; and 1 can adopt no other which would warrant mv continuance in office.
. . . The view of the Church's position which I have held, certainly the prevailing view in the House of
.
Bishops, is simply that the Episcopal Church, strong in its " appeal to antiquity," stands firmly for the doctrine of the Incarnation as contained in the Scriptures and the Creeds, and, by emphasis on its sacramental character, perpetuates the life of the Catholic Church.
But I have ceased to believe and here I part company with
the Bishops, and contradict my convictions and teaching in past years -that the actual facts bear out this contention. In spite of the greatest unwillingness, I have come to feel that the interpretation of the Anglican position which connects it chiefly with the Protestant Reformation is the one more consistent with its history viewed as a whole ; and that its dominant tendencies are increasingly identified with those currents of thought and development which are making away from the definiteness of the ancient Faith towards Unitarian vagueness. This would seem to me to be due not merely to local or temporary conditions but to certain informing principles always more or less apparent in Anglican history. To preserve balance and proportion of the truth, the Episcopal Churches have aimed at comprehension by compromise. I have come to believe that this habit of compromise involves increasing surrenders of truth, in spite of religious revivals aiming at stronger insistence on the ancient Faith.
But Kinsman also remarks in Reveries of a Hermit that he found his life as a bishop "wearing", and other remarks in Salve Mater suggest to me that a feature of the job he disliked was the need to reconcile the permanent divisions within Anglicanism as they manifested themselves in his diocese. The need to surrender truth to compromise, something I began to perceive as soon as I was confirmed as an Episcopalian, must have been an ever-increasing irritation. Certainly his writing after his retirement suggests he was happiest as a scholar of Church history and quite content to spend the rest of his life in seclusion.
A few weeks ago I asked why Andrew Cuomo, of sll people, had suddenly fallen from grace amid MeToo allegations, most of them old and trivial, to the point that many New York Democrats have called for his resignation. That he ordered nursing homes to tale COVID patients. thereby spreading the disease among the most vulnerable, has been a distant also-ran in
the case against him. But even there, similar allegations against Gov Whitmer of Michigan have gained little traction, much less than those against Cuomo. Why are the Democrats, enabled by media hysteria, eating their own?
I've said here that Robert Barnes is among the most insightful commentators we now have. His difficulty is that he talks in two-hour YouTube interviews with several interlocutors, and the discussions are rambling and desultory, with no transcripts. I hope something can be done about this. The problem is that Barnes is a busy attorney, and I don't understand how he even takes so many hours out of his schedule for YouTube. He would not have the time to organize, write, and polish a written column.
But earlier this week, Barnes put out the best theory I've heard on Cuomo's sudden fall from grace -- he thinks both the Newsom recall effort in California and the get-Cuomo movement in New York are spnsored by the same person, Vice President Harris, who wants to knock out potential competition for a 2024 election (or possible re-election) run. This would explan why so many Democrats are on board with the Cuomo part. Barnes says Harris was the deep state's favored candidate in early 2020, but when her campaign quickly lost momentum, Plan B emerged to place her as Vice President, with Biden resigning to elevate her when convenient.
Barnes gives no particular source for these assertions, but they do dovetail with other popular assumptions, certainly including that Biden will need to withdraw sooner than later, and that Harris is already performing functions like head-of-state calls behind the scenes. But recent polling indicates that the New York electorate is not on board with get-Cuomo: the media has so far failed to make the full MeToo stick.
However, I think Barnes errs in effectively equating the Newsom recall movement with the Cuomo MeToo. Newsom himself is largely correct in saying that the recall movement is Trumpian, but it isn't just a creature of QAnon cultists and rabid right wingers. It began as grassroots, but it's received financial support from the natioinal Republican Party. It is, in fact, part of a strategy by Reps McCarthy and Nunes to rebuild the California Republican Party, which was destroyed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Hollywood media figure and a Kennedy by marriage who become Republican out of pure opportunism in the 2003 recall of Gray Davis.
Whatever the outcome of the Recall Newsom campaign in a fall 2021 election, it will force the Democrats to spend heavily, while it will build enthusiasm among Republicans while generating mailing and donor lists for 2022 and 2024. It will also be a testbed for new electoral strategies endorsed by McCarthy and Nunes aiming to beat the Democrats at their own game with techniques like ballot harvesting and running attractive minority candidates. This is simply not the same thing as the intramural effort to knock out Cuomo as a potential threat to Harris, which is only a short-range intramural strategy.
Above is a photo of the residence on Kinsman's Maine estate, Birchmere, which currently operates as a bed and breakfast. There are other photos at the link. You can rent the place for $490 per night. A Facebook post indicates the place had been vacant for some years prior to 1985, and its current condition reflects considerable renovation, so that very little of the interior would be how it was when Kinsman lived there. If I had the means, I'd certainly want to stay there now.
At the time Kinsman lived there, the place could be reached only by boat across the pond. There is now a four-wheel-drive accessible road. Kinsman also built a tower on the property that later served as a mausoleum for him and his family. At this point, I can't locate any photos of the tower/mausoleum on the web. This appears to be where he did his studying and writing.
Census data indicates that both of Kinsman's parents and his sister lived in the Wilmington, DE bishop's residence in 1910 when he was bishop there. However, the 1900 census shows only his mother and sister living with him in the rectory at St Martin's parish in New
Bedford, MA. His father in that census was living in the patriarchal home on Mahoning Ave in Warren, OH, which at that time was owned by his brother Thomas. Thomas's wife and another brother, Charles, also lived there at that time. Frederick Jr's occupation was listed as banker. The reason for the separation is not known, as Frederick Jr's death certificate shows he passed away in Maine and was still married to Frederick Joseph's mother. (Click on the image for a larger copy.)
This book is one of Kinsman's works that's available on line in downloadable form. Almost exactly a century after its 1926 publication, this is a tough book to parse, in part because the issues that seem to have started Kinsman's train of thought are in some ways now moot. The wave of Catholic immigraton that took place in the post-Civil War period ended in the 1920s, while the decline of Main Line Protestantism that Kinsman anticipated has largely taken place.
However, I think the main force of his argument is still relevant, and even relevant to current circumstances. His concern, from the perspective of his recent conversion and sudden change of life from the peak of Protestant respectability to association with Catholic immigrant hordes, seems to have brought him to the question of how the hordes, and the Church that largely arrived with them, can integrate into Protestant American society. And let's keep in mind that he speaks quite consciously as someone whose family arrived, both literally and figuratively, on the Mayflower.
So he first argues that Catholicism is based on the same natural-law principles as those the founders wrote into the US Constitution. Catholicism carries with it the responsibility for Christians to obey the secular laws and support the secular state; Catholic authorities govern the area of faith and morals exclusively. And as a practical matter, Catholic immigrants have enthusiastically entered American life. But I think Kinsman was focusing even more on the future.
It is true, that Americans of the older stocks are becoming comparatively less numerous and in- fluential; that every year some lines of colonial
descent become extinct. It is wholly probable that
the descendants of later emigrations will eventually count for more in the country than those of
the earlier; that there will be great changes in the
proportions of the mixed ingredients of American
blood. Yet the Americanism established by men
of the earlier periods survives and is likely to
survive. (p 13)
To this end, the book moves increasingly to the question of what will replace the 17th and 18th century versions of Protestantism, because, as he said in Salve Mater, these are bound to lose relevance.
The last four hundred years have seen a steady
drift away from what is definite in Christianity.
The various bodies which broke from the Church
in the sixteenth century inaugurated changes which
marked not fixed degrees of departure from
mediaeval Christianity, but a process of gradual
abandonment. This has been steady and continuous, sometimes unconscious, sometimes concealed
by pleas for reconstruction and reinterpretation, sometimes deliberately devoid of every disguising pretence. The test-case is that of belief in the
Godhead of Christ. There have been all degrees
of confusion, hesitation, and explicitness of denial,
and always vehement defenders of the truth. Yet
the drift away from belief in Jesus as God among
all classes of non-Catholics has become more rapid
and overpowering, too strong even for the strongest swimmers caught in these side-currents. Abandonment of old Christian beliefs and practices is held to be alone worthy of modern thought; and
what started as "justification by faith" is ending
as justification of little or no faith at all. (pp 161-162)
The current situation, in which we're operating in a post-Main Line Protestant world, presents a new set of challenges to the Church. I think Kinsman foresaw the impact of Protestant abdication, but he couldn't foresee in any detail the precise conditions that would prevail when it finally became effective.
But I think he did foresee the need for the Church to assert itself as something beyond a cultural artifact that certain immigrants brought with them from the Old World. I think this is a strategy that figures like Bp Barron, whom pre-Conciliarists treat with great suspicion at best, are nevertheless beginning to articulate.
Cleaning Up Frederick Joseph Kinsman's Biographical Record
The photo above is the second of two provided by a visitor of Kinsman from the St Paul's School website. It shows him as a master at St Paul's, which he was up to 1896, when he was ordained an Episcopal priest. Born in 1868, he would have been in his mid-20s at the time of the photo.
A difficulty in tracking down biographical information on Frederick Joseph Kinsman is that both his father and grandfather were named Frederick Kinsman as well. Due to this problem, I erred in an earlier post here in saying that Frederick Joseph was the son of a Cleveland judge. Judge Frederick W Kinsman (1807-1884) was actually Frederick Joseph's grandfather, a prominent citizen of Warren, OH. In 1832, his father-in-law built him a house on "Millionaire's Row" in Warren as a wedding gift. The house is preserved as a historical exhibit. Kinsman's first wife died young, and their children all died in infancy. His second wife was Cornelia Pease Kinsman.
Their children were John Kinsman, Thomas Kinsman, Charles Pease Kinsman, Henry Perkins Kinsman, and Frederick W Kinsman Jr, born in 1841. Frederick Jr presumably grew up in the now-preserved Kinsman house at 303 Mahoning Avenue, Warren, OH, but ownership appears to have passed to another of Frederick Jr's siblings, and the 1880 census says that Frederick Jr's family, which consisted of his wife, Mary Marvin Kinsman, his daughter Cornelia, and his son Frederick Joseph, lived on Washington Ave in Mahoning. Frederick Jr's occupation in that census was listed as "manufacturer".
We know little else of Frederick Jr. At the time of his death, he was 81 years old, and based on the brief reference in Reveries of a Hermit, by the tmie of his death, he was paralyzed, but we know nothing else of his condition or its cause. I found this obituary in the Brooklyn Tablet from January 1922:
I assume this obituary was written and placed by Frederick Joseph's sister, Cornelia, who seems to have been his companion throughout much of his life. She also probably wrote and placed this 1934 obituary for his mother:
Of note is that she died in the Hospice Marcotte in Lewiston, ME which is an elder care facility to which Frederick Joseph and Cornelia moved in 1936. In addition, it mentions that Mrs Kinsman lived in the bishop's residence while Frederick Joseph was Bishop of Delaware. We know that his sister Cornelia also lived there during that period and may have served as his hostess. A visitor has determined from census records that Mrs Kinsman also lived with her son when he was rector of St. Martin's Church, New Bedford, MA, which suggests this living arrangement must have continued throughout much of Kinsman's life.
Whether his father, Frederick Jr, lived with his wife, son, and daughter during this period is unclear, and it's also completely unknown when, and for what reason, he became paralyzed. It's entirely possible that his condition required him to be hospitalized separately from the family.
Frederick Joseph's life is fascinating in some measure due to what we don't know. I note that the experience of blogging on figures like Cardinal Law has in fact caused knowledgeable parties to come forward. I certainly hope this may be the case here.
A visitor found the photo above of Kinsman as a student at St Paul's School in Concord, NH. This is actually a key part of his background, as he makes clear in Salve Mater that the Kinsmans were a pominent Ohio family, There's a Kinsman Road and a Kinsman district in Cleveland. That Frederick would attend St Paul's School, one of the St Grottlesex group, and become an Episcopal bishop are indications of his and his family's high standing in society.
Kinsman's literary product as a Catholic is complex, and with much of it available to me due to the generosity of a visitor, I'm finding it deserves detailed reading and reflection. Reveries of a Hermit is an example. About half of it is the closely reasoned apologetic I've discussed here, but there's a Part II which is about the same length but more difficult to parse. It sets out to be an essay on three saints connected with the ancient city of Ephesus, but in the middle, there's a chapter on Birchmere, Kinsman's estate in Maine, where he lived in seclusion with his parents and sister following his resignation as Bishop of Delaware in 1919.
This chapter gives some biographical insight into how his conversion to Catholicism affected his personal life.
In 1919, a change in religious, or rather ecclesiastical, convictions which had hitherto deternmined my course in life, involved abandonment of occupation and environment which had formed framework and background for life to the age of fifty, and a series of fresh starts for what years might remain. The claims of my family were, in some ways, paramount in determining future courses, chiefly the condition of my father, who was helpless with paralysis. Birchmere was our only, and the only possible, home, and owing to my father's condition, it was evident that he and I at least must live there all the year round. (pp 200-201)
Kinsman's father, who had been a prominent Cleveland judge, passed away in 1921. This is the only reference I've found in some amount of searching to his illness; no obituaries have so far come to light despite the family's prominence. One working hypothesis so far is that the effect of Frederick's conversion and resignation as bishop was far more cataclysmic for the family than any had anticipated, and I would not rule out his father suffering a stroke in consequence.
The evidence in the Birchmere essay suggests that Kinsman was shunned by his former associates and friends, to the extent that we would now call it canceled.
The middle half of my life was a crowded time, full of interests, varied experiences, congenial companions. I was socially inclined, could have intercourse with many people of many kinds, and was most fortunate in those with whom I had close association. The change of 1919 ended this. Henceforth, I was to be separated from all but a few old friends, alienated from many -- though the alienations have lessened with years. (pp 203-204)
Kinsman's 1944 obituary in a St Paul's alumni publication suggests, however gently, that many of his schoolmates felt he lost his mind in 1919. I suspect the degree to which the society in which he swam seems to have regarded his conversion as something like outright betrayal came as a great surprise, both to him and perhaps more to his family, who may have been shunned just as much.
The visitor who sent me a copy of his Americanism and Catholicism (1924) expressed some puzzlement about Kinsman's direction in that book. I've been through it once, and I need to reread it. I think it's an attempt on his part to think through what seems to have been an unexpectedly angry reaction to his conversion -- an Episcopal bishop in the early 20th century was an unquestionable pillar of respectable American Protestant society, and for him to renounce that position in favor of Irish, Italian, and Slavic immigrants would have amounted to betrayal of their core values.
It's worth noting that the next Episcopalian bishop to resign and convert to Catholicism was Jeffrey Steenson, almost a century later. The impact of Steenson's resignation was imperceptible; it wasn't news outside the speicalized Anglican and Catholic press. I think this is largely because, as Kinsman himself predicted, Main Line Protestantism in the US has run its course, and its cause has merged with more general Agnosticism. To cease to be a Protestant is simply no longer an act of betrayal, which it was in Kinsman's time.
But this is not to say that the Establishment no longer exists, that it no longer has great power, and that it no longer takes vicious revenge on those it perceives as betrayers.
There's been a certain amount of background noise over recent generations, especially from commentators like Alan Dershowitz, that quotas persist in ivy League and similar elite schools, and although the schools insist that Jewish quotas are a thing of the past, quotas of all sorts have grown and become steadily more intricate. There may no longer be Jewish quotas per se, but admissions criteria that de-prioritize applicants from affluent suburbs have a similar effect, and these persist.
The first impression I had, just days after arriving at Dartmouth, was that some of my clasmates were in effect flying coach, while others flew first class. This was at complete variance with the public narrative current at least in the 1950s and early 60s that the elite schools were highly selective based on grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, and those selected were the best and the brightest.
This view was reflected in David Brooks's remarkably silly 2000 book, Bobos in Paradise, where he explained that the College Boards had completely changed the educational system after World War II, allowing a true meritocracy to emerge. Well, just for example, Brooks himself had got into Chicago, how could things be otherwise?
So why were so many of my new Ivy League schoolmates so vapid, and why were so many, like me in their late teens, already alcoholic and drug dependent?
Within weeks, I'd come to the conclusion that the admissions office had made a terrible mistake by admitting me, and I had several discussions with the Dean of Freshmen about this. I never got a satisfactory explanation, but he convinced me to stay the course. Well, at least I graduated, and I mostly stayed out of trouble.
Less than 2 percent of the nation’s students attend so-called independent schools. But 24 percent of Yale’s class of 2024 attended an independent school. At Princeton, that figure is 25 percent. At Brown and Dartmouth, it is higher still: 29 percent.
The numbers are even more astonishing when you consider that they’re not distributed evenly across the country’s more than 1,600 independent schools but are concentrated in the most exclusive ones—and these are our focus here. In the past five years, Dalton has sent about a third of its graduates to the Ivy League. Ditto the Spence School. Harvard-Westlake, in Los Angeles, sent 45 kids to Harvard alone. Noble and Greenough School, in Massachusetts, did even better: 50 kids went on to Harvard.
There's nothing new about this social condition -- it was pointed out by Ferdinand Lundberg in the 1930s, and it was recognized at least tacitly well before then -- that the real determinant of where you stand socially is not where you went to college, but where you went to private secondary school. The surprise here is that somehow, the Ivies have released the actual percentages of slots in their entering classes that are reserved specifically for the St Grottlesex schools.
Recognize that, although roughly a quarter of the slots in each class across the Ivies are reserved specifically for St Grottlesex, there are other quotas, such as legacies irrespective of private wchool, the children of megadonors, the children of prominent media figures and politicians, and so forth. Tucker Carlson asked rhetorically how Chris Cuomo got into Yale, but he already knew the answer. My puzzlement as an Ivy freshman was based on the same question, but nobody told me the answer back then.
The quality of applicants to elite schools is heavily diluted by what we definitely know now is a privileged cohort from St Grottlesex, around a quarter, but the other reserved slots add an unknown additional proportion. I recall reading an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in the 1970s that said yes, the elite schools were now practicing affirmative action, but those quotas were over and above the still-existing set-asides for the traditional privileged groups. The losers would be the talented applicants who weren't in one or another privileged class -- Jews, Asians, middle-class whites.
This is one reason why non-entities like Jen Psaki rise to prominence, and for that matter why people whose pedigrees are less than pure but who rise via some measure of actual talent, like Donald Trump, are hated by the privileged Ivy Leaguers. But this aso circles back to the peculiar story of Frederick Kinsman, which I'll resume tomorrow.
The remarks I quoted from Frederick Kinsman yesterday on Anglo-Catholics, that among them "there was much exercise of private judgment, both in a chronic fastidiousnesss which spent its energy in pointing how everyone else was more or less wrong" go a long way for me in explaining what's happened in the North American ordinariate. A visitor comments,
The “chronic fastidiousness” of which Kinsman speaks is a defining characteristic of the ordinariate. No doubt it is more difficult in the Catholic church to flout constituted authorities, at least where they have taken a position, but the mindset that “we have it right, and everyone else is wrong” is everywhere, and the “everyone” often means other ordinariate communities, not just benighted “Novus Ordo” parishes.
After over four hundred comments on a video of the mass at St Timothy, Sykesville which revealed their use of women servers and guitar accompaniment, the administrator of the Anglican ordinariate Facebook page closed comments. While some comments were supportive, or at least counselled charity, most were cruelly negative and dismissive.
Another post about how Bp Lopes was “using covid” to crack down on Anglo-Papalist liturgical practices like the prayers at the foot of the altar drew at least fifty mostly critical comments.
It's worth noting as well that some, though not all, ordinariate clergy have been able to run a racket whereby they at best simply maintain their popularity with their parishes, and at worst exploit them financially, by fostering that attitude that everyone else has it wrong. It appears that Houston has gradually been bringing these men to heel, but this raises the question of how the ordinariate can succeed if it's been at least partly relying on the fastidious faction up to now.
My own experience with the failed attempt of the St Mary of the Angels Hollywood Anglican parish to go into the ordinariate bears directly on the tendency of Anglo-Catholics to be in permanent protest. It's worth noting that Cardinal Mahony, in rejecting the parish's application to become Catholic under the Pastoral Provision, directly raised the question of how the parish could expect to be Catholic if it refused to obey its Episcopalian authorities.
In other words, it sounds as though there was plenty of insight into Anglo-Catholicism already within the Catholic Church that should have counseled prudence prior to the implementation of either the Pastoral Provision or Anglicanorum coetibus. At the same time, there seems to be a growing recognition in the Church that factions like those represented by Fr Zuhlsdorf are promoting pre-Conciliarist fastidiousness that also needs to be curbed.
This recent video by Bp Barron suggests what the current direction of the Church is regarding the pre-Conciliarist faction. In it, he makes the point that this sort of fastidiousness over Vatican II is basically Protestant.
The section of Reveries of a Hermit most relevant to my purpose is the chapter on Anglicanism. He traces its origin to exclusively secular and political concerns:
Change of religion in Englnd did not arise from a desire for revision such as Luther's, or for rediscovery such as Calvin's. It was the result of the policies of Tudor sovereigns. Four of these successively imposed on their subjects such religious establishment as seemed to them expedient. Henry VIII substituted Royal for Papal supremacy: Edward VI inaugurated changes aiming at English copying of Swiss models: Queen Mary, using Royal Supremacy to replace Papal, brought back Catholicism as far as she could: Queen Elizabeth adopted a series of compromises, intended to reduce to a minimum religious differences within her realm, and her policies have ever since largely prevailed in the English-speaknig world. (pp 122-123)
I simply don't know what's taught now in Eng Lit, but up to the 1970s, this was regarded as a Good Thing, following the Whig Interpretation. Kinsman discusses Elizabeth at greater length:
Elizabeth was a very clever woman, quite capable of insight into theological and ecclesiastical questions: and it is often assumed that she had clear principles. Yet it is probable that all her actions were determined by policy only, by considerations which, for the moment, seemed likely to increase her personal popularity and strengthen her hold on the throne.
. . . Elizabeth wished to please everybody. At her accession, she was twenty-five, accomplished, fascinating. She had Tudor will and effective coquetry. No understanding of her is possible, if there be failure to recognize this latter endowment, and that her statesmanship largely consisted of unique ability to manage men and keep them guessing. She was ready to promise anybody anything, whether she could keep promises or not. When she had to preserve silence, she could give an impression of being in secret sympathy. Her religious policy was an example of her general method.
. . . [T]he Prayer Book had varying details intended to satisfy people with varying views. Everything to which no one objected was authoritatively imposed: in regard to disputed matters, there was no definite decision. . . . The history of Anglicanism is best understood when it is seen that it was always intended to afford basis for three types of thought; that its history has been determined by the interplay of these; and that the distinctive thing about it has been the exercise of the witching wiles of Elizabeth.
. . . There have always been in the Anglican Communion three parties or "schools of thought," each convinced that its interpretation of Anglicanism is right and bound ultimately to prevail. These three types are the Anglo-Catholic, the Anglo-Protestant, and the Anglo-Liberal, "High Church," "Low Church," and "Broad Church."
It is often assumed that Anglo-Catholicism had its origin iin the Oxford Movement a century ago. This, however, was not an innovation, but a revival. From the time of "the Elizabethan Settlement" -- which settled by leaving unsettled -- there have always been Anglicans with Catholic tendencies.
. . . Their watchword was always "Catholic," and their aim the support of Catholic doctrines and practices. Yet, in the party, there was much exercise of private judgment, both in a chronic fastidiousnesss which spent its energy in pointing how everyone else was more or less wrong -- the superciliousness of schism -- and in a wilfulness to follow individual whims. The spirit of Catholicism is obedience. "The Church is all right: and we shalll be, if we submit ourselves and let it form us." Too often the position of Anglo-Catholics has been: "Our Church is all wrong, and we must set it right. It is matter of conscience to show our disapproval by flaunting its constituted authorities, and doing exactly as we please."
. . . Yet, looked at from a purely Anglican environment, Anglo-Catholics have a case. Anglican history and formulas make it clear that, if, in the Church of England, any wish to imagine themselves Catholics, it is intended that they may do so. (pp 127-138)
I went through Anglican confirmation in a Broad Church Episcopalian parish, and what's remarkable to me is that the interpretation the priests gave us of Anglicanism in that class was extremely close to the first several paragraphs of the excerpt from Kinsman here. All of this was not a bug but a feature, and up to recent times, this has been part of the public, and often academic, view of Anglicanism. But there's much more here than I can comment on effectively in this post, so I'll talk more about it in future posts.
