What I don't Understand About Alex Berenson Is His Business Model

Alex Berenson, who apparently prefers to be called a "former New York Times reporter", but whom I would probably call a sometime COVID skeptic, was permanently banned from Twitter this past weekend for the post at right. As I've been pointing out here, his wording is actually a fair summary of recent public remarks from figures like Drs Fauci and Walensky: in fact, they've made statements themselves that the vaccine stops neither infection nor transmission. News reports routinely cite individuals who've been hospitalized after the two jabs, and regional masking rules have been reimposed on the clear principle that vaccinated people can transmit the virus.

Various figures have urged Berenson to sue Twitter, but I think this is incredibly bad advice. If he were to do this, he'd be sinking millions of dollars into a doubtful, years-long process of negotiations, injunctions, verdicts, and appeals that would divert his energy from any other projects. Even if some lawyer would take the case pro bono, just being the plaintiff is effectively a full-time, highly stressful job. For what?

Twitter isn't a serious platform, but Berenson does represent himself as a serious guy. Twitter is for posting zingers, and serious people like the late Rush Limbaugh have called it a "behavioral sewer". Jack Dorsey is doing Berenson a big favor, whether either recognizes it or not. But Berenson isn't taking the lesson -- he's simply moving from Twitter to an equivalent forum, Substack, and continuing just to post zingers.

Other than Twitter and now Substack, plus media appearances, his other COVID related effort has been just a four-part, self-published pamphlet, Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns. You buy these online through sources like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Frankly, I can't imagine that he makes more than latte money by selling these. You can subsidize his Substack tweets if you join his channel, but again, I can't imagine he can even fill up his car's gas tank with that money.

Why is he doing things this way? The words I would use for his project might be "desultory" or "inchoate". This allows legacy media to discredit him, when as far as I can see, events are continuing to prove him right. Last spring, The Atlantic published at hit piece, The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man, that claimed

Berenson has a big megaphone. He has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News’ most-watched shows. On Laura Ingraham’s show, he downplayed the vaccines, suggesting that Israel’s experience proved they were considerably less effective than initially claimed. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, he predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness and death in the U.S.

Except that, well, since then, his statements on Fox have been borne out. Israel's experience post vaccines has in fact resulted in a case rate that suggests vaccines had no effect:

The US also experienced an uptick, as Berenson predicted:

The CDC's response has been effectively to acknowledge that vaccines have proven far less effective than originally proclaimed, now recommending an indefinite regimen of boosters.

Berenson's problem is that he's using a gadfly strategy with people who won't hesitate just to swat the gadfly. Berenson has no platform -- even just a blog -- where he can articulate his arguments in a consistent, accessible location where people can find links to his data and see his predictions without having them mischaracterized by his opponents.

And as far as I can see, even if he ran an unmonetized blog on a platform like Blogger, he wouldn't be out all that much money, though he has options for monetizing even there. Maybe the problem is he went to Yale. It's a shame to see real ability going to waste.

No, It's Not Cognitive Decline

The most recent controversy (or by now, the second-most recent, which I'll get to) over Biden is the allegation that he fell asleep in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Mainstream media fact-checking has countered, correctly I think in this case, that photos and video clips have been edited to focus on several seconds where Biden's head is lowered. Conservative YouTuber Brandon Tatum, also of the not-asleep school, makes the point that, although Biden's eyes are slits in the sequence, close examination suggests that they aren't actually closed.

However, I also agree with the UK Express that calls the sequence "bizarre", asleep or not. Biden's body language often demonstrates incongruous affect, like the even more recent photo of him checking his watch during the transfer of the Kabul service members' remains in Delaware yesterday.

I think the bottom line is that he either doesn't give a flip how it looks -- after all, he's king -- or it's even more or less deliberate. Consider that Prime Minister Bennett is a supplicant in this situation. Israeli media made the point that the visit was to cement relations with the US, and Bennett's remarks emphasized the historic ties blah blah blah. Biden's reaction was to pull the slit-eyed lizard move, just days after shafting another US ally.

The same applies to checking his watch -- searching the web for commentary, I found that this seems to be a fairly common Biden tic in inappropriate situations, including debates. Given how we're getting to know the guy, I think it's a fairly honest indicator of what he's thinking. He's king, and he doesn't give a flip. Deal with it. It's a natural reaction, if we see something like this, to look for the most charitable explanation, so we're inclined to wonder if he's a little off. Afraid not.

Another recent story gives a better idea of how his mind works.

Boris Johnson has been warned that Joe Biden “holds grudges” after members of the British government questioned his mental fitness following “completely mad” press briefings on Afghanistan.

The warning follows a report in The Sunday Times that a British government minister said President Biden “looked gaga” while speaking to the press, with a government aide describing the American as “doolally” and the newspaper noting that “Such thoughts are normally never whispered in Whitehall, let alone briefed.”

“Doolally” is an insult with a strong pedigree in Britain, stemming from the name of a town in India where a sanatorium for soldiers rendered temporarily deranged by fever were sent in the 1800s.

U.S. sources have indicated that the 78-year-old Democrat is unlikely to appreciate the rich history of this description of his mental state, however, telling The Telegraph — which is close to the British government — that he is emphatically “not ‘gaga’” and in fact has “actually picked up his game quite a bit since the [election] campaign.”

“The Brits have their view. But they should be careful. What’s been said is offensive and he will remember it. He actually has a long memory,” the source warned the right-leaning newspaper.

I don't buy the bumbling grandpa bit. I lean much more to the slit-eyed lizard.

"Devout Catholic"? Forget his policies on abortion. How can a guy who goes to mass each week act this way at all?

While We've Been Distracted By Kabul,

They've been moving the goalposts yet again. The CDC website still carries the categorical statement,

COVID 19-vaccines are effective. They can keep you from getting and spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.

But for months now, we've been hearing the opposite from the same public health authorities. Elsewhere on the same CDC site, we read:

On July 27, 2021, CDC released updated guidance on the need for urgently increasing COVID-19 vaccination coverage and a recommendation for everyone in areas of substantial or high transmission to wear a mask in public indoor places, even if they are fully vaccinated. CDC issued this new guidance due to several concerning developments and newly emerging data signals.

. . . [N]ew data began to emerge that the Delta variant was more infectious and was leading to increased transmissibility when compared with other variants, even in some vaccinated individuals.

So the vaccines will keep you from getting and spreading COVID, except when they won't, so we have to go back to masks.

But now, er, maybe the vaccines don't last very long anyhow. Dr Fauci has been easing into this for some weeks. On August 12, he told NBC:

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said Thursday that “inevitably” everyone will need booster shots for the COVID-19 vaccine eventually because like any vaccine, its protection won’t be “indefinite.”

. . . “Inevitably, there will be a time when we'll have to give boosts. What we're doing, literally, on a weekly and monthly basis is following cohorts of patients to determine if, when and whom should get it.

“But right now at this moment, other than the immunocompromised — we're not going to be giving boosters to people," he continued. "But we will be following them very carefully and if they do need it, we'll be ready to give it to them."

But that was August 12, two whole weeks ago. We've been following other fiascos since then -- silly us. Just this past Friday, "not indefinite" has turned into "five months", and "just the immunocompromised" has turned imnto "everyone".

"We're going to start mid-September," Biden continued, noting America's scheduled booster program launch date of Sept. 20, previously set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. "But we're considering the advice [Israel gave us] that you should start earlier. This is promising."

"Pending the FDA and CDC, the question raised is, 'Should it be shorter? Should it be as little as five months now?'" the president added. "That's being discussed. I spoke with Dr. Fauci this morning about that."

So I got my shots last spring, but it looks like I'll need to get at least one more jab this fall, and as far as I can see, I'll have to keep getting jabs at cattle-pen "vaccination sites" every five months for the rest of my life. And oh, by the way, wear a mask. And whatever else.

One problem with this is the message it sends that the vaccines simply aren't very effective. It actually vindicates the holdouts and the hesitant -- they can say I never thought this was a good idea, and now just one or two shots isn't enough? Every five months i've gotta spend weeks trying to get another appointment? Get real.

But we've had months of prevarication from Biden on Afghanistan. Now it looks like we'll be getting more "15 days to flatten the curve" on vaccines and boosters. People will put up with this only so long.

Newsom Recall Update

The puzzling thing about the California recall election, scheduled for September 14, is how few polls have been made public. According to Five Thirty Eight, there have been only three since July, none well publicized, and they're all over the landscape. Yet establishment media seems to be prepping its audience for Newsom's removal. The Atlantic ran a story yesterday in which the reporter met with Newsom for breakfast in a San Francisco cafe:

At the café, he quickly ate a banana and slurped the top of his coffee. He’d dropped his breakfast on the floor before I arrived. More bad luck, he said.

“I was always that lucky one, too,” he said, shaking his head. “Just the whole damn thing flipped on me.”

How did things go sideways for a governor who three years ago won his first term by the biggest margin in California history?

Yahoo News reported Thursday:

Every California governor since Ronald Reagan in the 1960s has inspired quixotic recall petitions. Prior to February 2020, Newsom’s opponents introduced five recall petitions against him. None got off the ground. It was only when COVID-19 started to spike over the holidays — and when Newsom seemed to be caught off guard by contradictory public opinion over restrictions and reopenings — that the recallers were able to amass the signatures they needed to get on the ballot. Not helping matters was Newsom’s deeply hypocritical decision to attend a lobbyist’s maskless birthday dinner at the French Laundry, a fancy Napa Valley restaurant.

There's increasing concern that as California goes, so goes Biden, especially in the wake of the Afghanistan catastrophe. According to CNN,

The White House announced this week that President Biden will fly to California to campaign for Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of the September 14 recall election.

Which raises a basic question: Why?

. . . there's really only one answer to that question above as to why Biden is making the trip for Newsom: The President -- and Democratic strategists more generally -- are worried about the governor losing the recall vote.

Vice President Harris, a product of the California Democrat machine, was scheduled to campaign for Newsom in the San Francisco area yesterday, but she canceled. According to Politico,

Harris, returning from a weeklong trip in Southeast Asia, will head back to Washington D.C., her spokesperson tweeted Thursday afternoon. A campaign spokesperson for Newsom confirmed that Harris will not join Newsom for the Friday car rally, which is now canceled.

While no reason was provided for Harris skipping the event, the cancellation follows deadly attacks at the Kabul airport which have killed a dozen U.S. troops and left many more injured.

Not mentioned in any mainstream media coverage I've seen so far is the fact that Harris is deeply unpopular and a divisive figure, and her presence in California could do more to stoke Republican enthusiasm for the recall than it would rally Democrats. Especially in the wake of Biden's disastrous week, should he do as he's promised and campaign for Newsom, the backlash effect would probably be even greater, especially since Newsom and the Democrats' campaign theme to date has been that retaining Newsom means retaining the Biden-Pelosi agenda.

As I've noted before, Larry Elder's entry into the race transformed it. Before then, the Republican challengers were a bunch of also-rans, with a supporting cast of 40-odd crazies. But Elder represents much more closely the other side of the emerging political divide, the representative of the working and middle classes against the alliance between the wealthy elites and the Lumpenproletariat. That Elder is a racial minority further underscores the class, not the racial, basis of the divide.

Opinion among Hispanics, who are largely working and middle class, reflects this development:

Today, Hispanics in the Emerson poll support recalling the governor by 54 percent to 41 percent. In the SurveyUSA poll, the recall wins among Hispanics by six points. Among blacks and Asians in both polls, Newsom, leads but he’s down significantly from his 2018 showing.

I can't call the election at this point, but it's a portent that the establishment media seems so resigned to the potential outcome.

"I've Got This!"

If nothing else, I'm finding it therapeutic at least to try to analyze what's happening with President Biden. As I've said, I'm less and less convinced thst loss of cognitive function is at the root of the problem, but I don't think simple incompetence is a good answer, either. There are probably several factors involved, but observable behavior is at least one pathway to parsing out what's going on.

The big thing I noticed when he began speaking at yesterday's press conference was how much slower he spoke than usual, and as he did, how much less he slurred or stumbled over his words. The first thing that came to mind was the common standup routine about being pulled over for DUI: the experienced drunk knows that to avoid slurred speech, you talk slowly: "Goood . . . ev-en-ing. . . of-fi-cer!" I couldn't shake this impression.

The next thing that struck me was the awfulness of the speech he gave. He had to have drafted it himself, in front of a computer, cutting and pasting one cliche from column A, another from column B, and so forth. From the transcript, first, the obligatory weepy reference to his son Beau:

Being the father of an Army major who served for a year in Iraq and, before that, was in Kosovo as a U.S. attorney for the better part of six months in the middle of a war — when he came home after a year in Iraq, he was diagnosed, like many, many coming home, with an aggressive and lethal cancer of the brain — who we lost.

Next, the obligatory brave words:

We will not be deterred by terrorists. We will not let them stop our mission. We will continue the evacuation.

I’ve also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership, and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose, and the moment of our choosing.

And next, the lugubrious reference to scripture:

Those who have served through the ages have drawn inspiration from the Book of Isaiah, when the Lord says, “Whom shall I send. . . who shall go for us?” And the American military has been answering for a long time: “Here am I, Lord. Send me.” “Here I am. Send me.”

Finally, the moment of silence:

And I ask that you join me now in a moment of silence for all those in uniform and out uniform — military and civilian, who have given the last full measure of devotion.

(A moment of silence is taken.)

I've got to think that even a sophomore communications major, even one from the Ivy League, could have done better than this. Either that, or his handlers are completely incompetent.

Well, in any case, the third thing I noticed was that yet again, they let him go out with a suit that didn't fit. He must have a closet almost full of them; over the past week, I've seen only one, a blue one, that fits. Is he too cheap to update his wardrobe?

The YouTube psychologist Dr Todd Grande is sometimes insightful, sometimes not. He generally accused Trump of narcissism, delusion, and whatever else. I was hesitant to watch his take on Biden in recent days, but I went ahead and tried it out:

At about 2:45, he says, "He believes nobody has the right to question his superior leadership qualities." This is exactly what I've been saying. At about 3:05, he says, "It appears that he tragically overestimated his own abilities. . . . He's like the Bond movie villain who puts a complex contraption into operation and doesn't check to see if James Bond was actually killed." Again, this is exactly what I've been saying.

Even the uber-establishment Atlantic is echoing this theme:

“Biden is a stubborn guy,” one former Obama-administration foreign-policy official told me, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. “Sometimes he does not want to hear what he knows he doesn’t like … If the problem here was mostly not hearing what he didn’t want to hear and telling everyone to shut up and go away when they told him things he didn’t want to hear, that’s not the intelligence community’s fault.”

But this doesn't explain the observed behavior, especially the slurring, stumbling, and slow speech to avoid the first two. Here's a post on drunken speech at the Dialect Blog:

the researchers found that the most striking impact of alchohol on speech was an increase in ‘nonfluencies.’ That is, people stammer, stutter, and trip on their words a whole heck of a lot more when they’ve had a few too many. Just how much does this intensify? The researchers found that in the severely intoxicated, the rate of these ‘speech errors’ nearly triples.

. . . Something that isn’t mentioned in the study is what I find to be the most salient feature of ‘drunken speech:’ hypercorrection. Drunk people, aware of their intoxicated state, often overcompensate by overenunciating evvvveerrry ccconnnsonnantttt and vowel. Perhaps this relates to the higher rate of stuttering and stammering: when you put such pressure on yourself to pronounce everything perfectly, you’re bound to trip up!

I saw this throughout Biden's press conference. Maybe it was just me. But I also think certain remarks, like "Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on . . " weren't serious, they were drunken sarcasm that fell completely flat. Indeed, I can't be completely sure that the pose at the top of this post isn't in fact a form of drunken histrionics.

It's dangerous enough when someone like that is just driving a car.

Biden's Smile

The remark I quoted from a commentator yesterday, that it was difficult to see the whites of Biden's eyes, set me to thinking. I started to review his photos in general, and his eyes are frequently just slits, especially when he's "smiling". The combination of slit eyes and perfect white teeth is chilling; those teeth are clearly manufactured, and they look sharp. None of this speaks to cognitive decline.

But this raises another question. Does this guy actually know what he's doing? And although I've mentioned that I'm studying Spanish so I can talk with the lizards in the back yard, I'm not the only person starting to think this way.

It’s one thing for us to believe that a single addled, stupid, narcissistic old man might plan something this bad. But why would so many people go along with it? Are they all merely dumb? I doubt it. Frightened of Joe? I doubt it. The proper remedy, if they couldn’t change his mind or stop him, would have been to resign en masse – or begin to invoke the 25th Amendment. Or was this level of destructive stupidity intentional, in order to harm this country and keep it from ever being a world leader again?

I debated just replacing the last bit about never being a world leader with an ellipsis, because I don't think it's necessary to conclude the object of this faction is to prevent this. I don't think they've even thought that part through. But I do think what they're doing is deliberate.

It's revealed in yesterday's astonishing smirk in reply to a reporter's question:

On Wednesday, August 25, 2021, just as Biden was wrapping up the public portion of a cybersecurity event, NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander asked him, "Mr. President, if Americans are still in Afghanistan after the [Aug. 31 withdrawal] deadline, what will you do?" In response, Biden smirked.

. . . His response: 'You’ll be the first person I call.'

(Note yet again, by the way, the ill-fitting suit in yesterday's photo, vis-a-vis the suit in the photo at the top, which was taken in 2020.)

The implication of the reply is that such an outcome -- any Americans left in Afghanistan -- is so remote that one can only joke about the possibility. Yet as of yesterday, as Biden spoke, Reuters published an estimate of 1500 Americans remainiing which came from Secretary Blinken. As of that time, Blinken said they were being given instructions on how to get to the airport, but since then, US authorities have backtracked and told them again not to do so. (As I write this, multiple explosions have been reported at the airport.)

Biden must certainly have been briefed on this as of his remarks yesterday. It's hard to avoid thinking he believes whatever takes place will last for just a news cycle or two, and his people will be able to spin it. Next year's election is 15 months away. Anyone who questions anything now is simply naive. As I've said, Biden sees himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations -- even those of a silly legacy media reporter.

What's the aim here? I'm actually beginning to think that the Democrat faction aligned with Biden, in the ascendant at least for now, actually believes the voters in the working and middle classes who elected Trump in 2016 need to be punished. I'll have more to say about this.

Nothing's Changing

I didn't get a chance to watch Biden's speech yesterday; I was expecting to, but it was delayed, and I had another commitment. I looked at the post-event accounts and got things like this:

As I said, his eyes were bloodshot and glazed over. It was difficult to even see the whites of his eyes at times. His presentation was cold, with no empathy to be found. Upon finishing his teleprompter reading, he simply stumbled out, taking no questions, clearly unable to physically and mentally do so. It was obvious why he was five hours late for this presser. Something is bad wrong with the president, and there’s no way it can be ignored anymore.

What strikes me about the photo above, including the difficulty in seeing the whites of his eyes, is that although this is a different suit, it fits no better than the one I noted on Sunday. The collar still stands away from his neck. But also, compare Biden's sleeves above to Bill Clinton's in a similar pose at right. Biden's suit rumples up and pulls away, while Clinton's is smooth even when he lifts his arms.

Biden has been losing weight, and he probably needs a whole new wardrobe, but nobody seems to notice. Again, US presidents can afford whatever wardrobe they need. His handlers are incompetent. Do they themselves expect him not to last very long? This may be another ramification of the Götterdämmerung strategy: things will turn to poop, but Biden won't be around to account for it.

The substance of Biden's speech was also bizarre. Accounts generally noted that he conducted a long tour d'horizon of the Götterdämmerung agenda, showing great deference to Speaker Pelosi, before eventually getting to the August 31 deadline. This, it's noted, has been his strategy in all his recent addresses, treat Afgthanistan as just a single blip in the wide range of his accomplishments.

An intriguing data item from yesterday is a couple of House back benchers, Rep Seth Moulton (D-MA) znd Peter Meijer (R-MI), flew to Kabul to "conduct oversight on the mission to evacuate Americans and our allies". Moulton appears to be a maverick Democrat who in the past opposed Pelosi's candidacy for the speakership. He appears to be ambitious and wants to raise his profile. Meijer, a first-termer who was among the Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump, is a jerk; this is a vanity project, probably for both.

Acco,rding to the link,

According to John Hudson of The Washington Post, Pentagon officials are reportedly furious with Moulton and Meijer for making the surprise trip to Afghanistan, denouncing it as performative at best and reckless at worst.

“It CANNOT be overstated how angry Pentagon & State Dept officials are at Rep. Moulton & Rep. Peter Meijer for flying to Afghanistan in the middle of an evacuation,” announced Hudson on Twitter. “‘It’s as moronic as it is selfish. They’re taking seats away from Americans,’ official says.”

That may well be, but this is the environment Biden is creating for opportunists.

Ia Biden ill? That may be, but I would guess stress accounts for the bloodshot eyes, the weight loss, and the lack of energy and engagement. Is he senile? Again, no. Even if his policy choices are disastrous, he's completely aware of outcomes; he's fully aware of how much he's alienated NATO, for instance, and this is shown by how clearly he lies about it. His responses differ little from Bill Clinton's in the Lewinsky scandal.

The difference is that Clinton got himself into a personal mess of little overall consequence. Biden has got the US into a national humiliation and policy dilemma of enormous consequence that will continue to play out in very bad news over coming weeks.

Clinton was Br'er Rabbit. Biden is more like Captain Queeg frozen at the controls.