Education's "Noble Lie"

Over 70% of black Americans say racism is the biggest problem in the U.S.

Over 70% of black Americans say racism is the biggest problem in the U.S., Survey Monkey poll shows

A new poll conducted by Survey Monkey shows a rapidly increasing sense that racism against black Americans is a major problem in the United States. A growing perception that white Americans benefit from unfair advantages. 

Meanwhile.... in the Real World:

Source

Federal Hate Crime Statistics

Source

Living la Vida Consumer...

...and Today's Government Solution is... "More Government".

An Appeal to Rationality...

Eckhard Hess, 69, professor of biopsychology at the University of Chicago, discovered an eye reflex that can be used to determine whether people like or dislike what they are looking at.

His research led to a field known as pupillometrics, based on the theory that when people see something they like or find interesting their pupils dilate, but when they view something disagreeable, their pupils get smaller. It has been used by market researchers as a better index of likes and dislikes than the testimony of individuals.

Graveside services will be held at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in Old Trinity Church Graveyard, Church Creek, Dorchester County, Md. He died Friday in Dorchester General Hospital in Cambridge, Md.

Mr. Hess accidentally discovered the pupil response in 1959. He was in bed looking at some beautiful pictures of animals. His wife commented that something must be wrong with him because his pupils were too large. He couldn`t sleep that night trying to figure out what had happened. The next day, he submitted a series of photos to a student. They were dull landscape scenes with the exception of pin-up picture of an attractive woman.

''I noticed his pupils suddenly pop open,'' he later said. ''When I looked at the picture he was looking at, it was the pin-up.''

The right man had discovered the reflex. At the U. of C., he had the laboratory, the research tools and the available subjects to test his theory. Experiments showed that women`s pupils dilate at the sight of male nudes, but not as much as men`s pupils when viewing female nudes.

He also found that among 34 students and faculty who said they supported Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, the pupils of a third of them got larger when they saw a picture of Goldwater than of Johnson. Mr. Hess inferred that they were stifling their support of Goldwater in a more liberal environment.

Market researchers, specifically a New York firm called E.Y.E., developed the theory into a system of eye tracking that measures pupil dilation and contraction and the position of the eye to test the subject`s response to various parts of projected ads.

He was asked many times to use his techniques in professional lie detection, but refused out of fear that they might be abused.

A native of Bochum, Germany, he came to the United States in 1927. He received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in psychology in 1948.

Other experiments for which Mr. Hess was noted involved animal psychology. Animals he studied included wolves, guinea pigs, mourning doves and a variety of other creatures that ranged from termites to fish. His specialty was a behavior known as ''imprinting,'' an early attraction to one`s own kind.

It can also happen when an animal such as a newly hatched duck follows the first object it sees moving, such as a rubber ball, believing it to be its protector and mother.

Among the books he wrote were ''Imprinting and the Tell-Tale Eye.''

Survivors include his wife, Dorothea.

Election 2016, The Year American Democracy and Politics Jumped the Shark, and the Spectacle's Audience Began to Tune Its' Politics Out

The End of the Political Solution

Happy Juneteenth, America!

Georgia Presidential Election Vote Tally Going South for Democrats

John Solomon and Daniel Payne, "Georgia audit documents expose significant election failures in state's largest county"

Records suggest more than 100 batches of absentee ballots in Fulton County could be missing. Some experts see "election tabulation malpractice" as state officials seek to remove county's top election supervisors.

Documents that Georgia's largest county submitted to state officials as part of a post-election audit highlight significant irregularities in the Atlanta area during last November's voting, ranging from identical vote tallies repeated multiple times to large batches of absentee ballots that appear to be missing from the official ballot-scanning records.

The problems in predominantly Democratic Fulton County potentially impact thousands of ballots in a presidential race that Joe Biden was certified as winning statewide by fewer than 12,000 votes.

The memos reviewed by Just the News include the handwritten tally sheets for all absentee ballots counted by the county as well as a private report from a contractor hired by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to monitor the Atlanta-area election process. The report, which chronicled seven days of problems, recorded troubling behavior like the mysterious removal of a suitcase of sensitive election data known as polls pads, used to authenticate voters.

"Learn that Rick reprogramming poll pads earlier was setting up a new precinct for SC11 because someone took the wrong suitcase but only took one," the contractor Seven Hills Strategy wrote late on Nov. 2, the night before Election Day. "Seems to be a mystery who this person was --> Should have chain of custody paperwork!! That means that a stranger just walked out with sensitive election materials?"

The contractor also observed that sensitive election materials were left on a dock at a warehouse without supervision. "Several cases (including SC11) were just left out on the loading dock outside the warehouse," he wrote. "Thankfully the seals were intact."

SOS7HillStrategyFultonCountyNotes.pdf

The revelations come as a state judge has taken the extraordinary step of ordering absentee ballots in the county unsealed so that a private audit led by lawyer Bob Cheeley can examine the actual papers and resolve discrepancies. Cheeley told Just the News on Wednesday the evidence he has seen so far points to "election tabulation malpractice."

Private experts and state election officials differ on whether the evidence shows a pattern of potential fraud or simply gross incompetence in the county that encompasses Atlanta.

But they are mostly united for the first time that the top election supervisors in Fulton County should be removed. Some officials are even discussing a dramatic intervention like putting the county's election system in conservatorship so it can be run by state, not local, officials.

"I have continued to call on the elections director to be removed from his position, and the leadership of Fulton County has continued to fail to act," Raffensperger told Just the News on Wednesday.

The secretary said he stands by his private monitor's assessment that fraud did not occur at a scale in Fulton County to impact the election's outcome, but he added the county's election management failures nonetheless warrant dramatic repair.

"It is no secret that Fulton has had issues in their elections department for decades, which is why I insisted on a state monitor being present to be eyes and ears on the ground," he said. "He did not see any evidence of fraud despite having full access, but he saw continued mismanagement, miscommunication, unpreparedness, and sloppiness. Georgia voters deserve better."

Fulton County election officials did not respond to repeated requests seeking comment.

Just the News reviewed the documents Raffensperger's office collected from Fulton County during a risk-limiting audit conducted last November. Among the problems those memos exposed:

More than 100 batches of absentee ballots — each containing approximately 100 or more ballots — were assigned tracking numbers before being sent to one of the five absentee vote-counting machines in Fulton County but are not subsequently recorded in the handwritten logs showing which batches were scanned and counted, raising concerns the ballots may be missing.

More than two dozen batches of absentee ballots were identified as having been double-scanned on the tally sheets.

Five sequential batches of absentee votes each appeared with the exact same vote count of 392 for Biden, 96 for President Donald Trump, and 3 for Libertarian Jo Jorgensen, a count that state officials admitted was a statistical impossibility.

Many control sheets for absentee ballot batches counted during the state's audit did not check a box indicating the ballot came from a secure container, raising the possibility that ballots were stored insecurely or that multiple batches of ballots were sealed in a single container.

An official working for Raffensperger, who reviewed the documents flagged by Just the News, said they were clear evidence of significant human failure in Fulton County's election administration. The official said, for instance, the identical ballot batches likely resulted in about 1,000 extra votes being tallied.

The official also said some of the gaps in the absentee ballots might be explained by mistakes in which county officials mixed absentee ballots counted by one machine for another. But he acknowledged other gaps in ballot batches defy immediate explanation and would require extensive investigation to determine if something more nefarious than incompetence was at work.

A second state official said the shoddy nature of the Fulton County paperwork left open the possibility fraud or other misconduct occurred. "An audit is only as good as the data that's input, and in this case Fulton County's records are so problematic I'm not sure a reasonable person can trust them," the official said. "When you add in the reports of ballots magically appearing under tables or being moved out of the counting center, there are legitimate outstanding questions."

The findings of the Just the News review closely mirror those of the private audit conducted by Cheeley's team under the judge's supervision.

A private fraud expert hired by Cheeley, the forensic accountant David Sawyer, specifically flagged scores of batches of absentee ballots that appeared missing from the documents and more than two dozen batches of absentee ballots that appear to have been double or triple-counted in Fulton County.

Sawyer said the fact that ballot batch numbers are missing from the Fulton County audit documents "contradicts the concepts of completeness and existence and accuracy" of the November audit, and "should have been readily apparent to anyone who is performing a reconciliation, let alone an audit."

"These need to be more fully investigated, and they indicate the possibility that there are missing batches that might not have been counted," Sawyer testified.

County lawyers who cross-examined Sawyer offered little explanation or pushback before the judge officially ordered all absentee ballots unsealed so Cheeley's team could investigate more deeply. That process is ongoing.

Cheeley told Just the News on Wednesday night his ongoing audit has now flagged many thousands of absentee ballots that haven't been properly accounted or suffer other serious problems.

"Fulton County's inability to account for so many batches reported from a November hand recount audit amounts to election tabulation malpractice," he said. "Anyone who can count should know that is unacceptable. This evidence produced in court on May 21 justified the audit which Judge Amero ordered of the absentee ballots and envelopes."

American Cincinnatus

Aaron M. Renn, "American Cincinnatus: A new biography of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. reminds us of a bygone model of the public servant"

The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War, by Luke A. Nichter (Yale University Press, 544 pp., $37.50)

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. is one of those people—like, say, McGeorge Bundy, W. Averell Harriman, or Allen Dulles—who has largely faded from public consciousness. People may still recognize such names, but they’re rarely aware of what these people did, save perhaps for some older boomers with personal memories. If you’re not one of those, you should pick up The Last Brahmin, Texas A&M history professor Luke Nichter’s recent biography of Lodge’s life and career. The book not only re-illuminates the Republican senator’s life but also provides an implicit commentary on modern American politics.

As the title implies, Lodge was a Boston Brahmin, scion of a leading family of the city’s high WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) upper class. His family had a history of public service extending back generations, including five U.S. senators. Mentored by his grandfather, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., Lodge was elected to the House of Representatives after gaining valuable media experience as a newspaper reporter. He then ran for Senate as a liberal Republican in 1936, defeating the infamous crooked Irish politician James Michael Curley. In the prewar years, Lodge was not a strict isolationist but was skeptical of overseas interventions and believed that the U.S. needed to maintain peace through military strength.

During World War II, Lodge, who had long served in the U.S. Army Reserve, resigned his Senate seat to join the military full-time. He served as a close assistant to multiple generals and was highly valued for his fluency in French and German. After the war, he was reelected to the Senate, and his foreign policy began to reflect a more internationalist outlook. Worried that isolationism would destroy the Republican Party, he led the Draft Eisenhower movement and more than any other person was responsible for Eisenhower’s nomination over the isolationist Senator Robert Taft.

His efforts on Eisenhower’s behalf came at the cost of attention to his own reelection bid, however, and he lost his seat to John F. Kennedy. It was the beginning of the end of his political career. He went on to serve as UN ambassador under Eisenhower, and he was Richard Nixon’s running mate in a losing 1960 presidential race. Under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Lodge was ambassador to South Vietnam as the Vietnam War escalated, before easing into semi-retirement as U.S. envoy to the Vatican under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Lodge stands today as an exemplar of a lost set of values in America. Born to a privileged family, he considered it his natural duty and right to serve his country. His upper-class origins gave him confidence in his capabilities and decision-making. But he also placed country above party or personal advantage. It’s unthinkable today that a politician would resign a Senate seat to fight in a war. It’s rare for a person of privileged background to serve in the military at all, unless he’s burnishing his résumé for future political ambitions.

Lodge in essence torpedoed his political career in order to save the Republican Party by drafting Eisenhower. His integrity and loyalty were such that presidents of both parties called on him to serve. He once said, “Service in any situation—foreign or domestic—which acutely involves American security must always be considered from a totally unpartisan viewpoint, without regard to party politics, important though party politics are.” When Kennedy appointed him ambassador to South Vietnam, he told the president, “I want you to know that if it will serve the United States, I am expendable. Just don’t do it for unimportant reasons.” The Kennedys took him up on that offer, blaming him for the coup against South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. Nichter unearthed tapes showing that Lodge was operating under Kennedy’s instructions, but he declined to defend himself.

Lodge was perhaps too loyal a public servant. After playing a key role in Eisenhower’s successful presidential campaign, he deserved a better job than UN ambassador, for example. Yet in this and other matters, he refrained from pressing for more.

Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the decline in the ethos guiding public service than the role of money, then and now. Lodge’s dedication to public service was such that he depleted his own family fortunes to fulfill it. Though he was by no means poor, by the end of his life he was selling off family artwork to stay afloat. In his book about the last generation of the WASP establishment, The Guardians, Geoffrey Kabaservice notes several other WASP elites who entered their final days financially pressed, including former Yale president Kingman Brewster Jr. Former New York mayor John Lindsay nearly went broke and had to be financially rescued by Rudy Giuliani. Very few serving at these levels today fail to acquire obscene riches after leaving public service.

The old elite was not without blemish, of course. Lodge and his fellow public servants didn’t exactly crown themselves with glory in Vietnam, even if Kennedy and Johnson share most of the blame for the follies and tragedies of that effort. Nevertheless, Nichter concludes The Last Brahmin by noting that today “people long for an era when politicians could disagree without being disagreeable.” The ethos of public service and bipartisanship embodied by figures like Lodge seems nearly extinct in America. As Nichter says, “Only now, after a sufficient passage of time since the end of the Vietnam War, can we see that the country lost more than it gained through the exit of these families from politics and public service.”

"Crack-Pipe Art" - Hunter Biden's Latest Political Payoff Money Laundering Machine

 Monica Showalter, "Hunter Biden's amazing, extraordinary, sublime, unprecedented, art talent has his paintings selling for $500,000 a pop"

When news came out about crackhead Hunter Biden suddenly taking up yet another career as a full-time "artist," all I could think of at the time was that this was a cleverly disguised means of taking bribes. Sell a painting at an inflated price, pocket the cash from the special interest, then return the political favor through the Big Guy. No one would be able to prove a thing.

Now that some of the prices of Biden's pieces are coming out, let's just say the suspicion grows.

According to Breitbart News:

President Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued son Hunter Biden is reportedly now engaged as a “full-time artist” and is working with Soho art dealer Georges Bergès to hold an exhibition in New York in the coming months, with prices for Hunter’s artwork ranging from $75,000 to $500,000, according to Artnet.

Amid years of scandal, the 51-year-old Hunter Biden is apparently now “laying low” in his Los Angeles home while working on his artwork. Bergès, his dealer, plans to host a “private viewing for Biden in Los Angeles this fall, followed by an exhibition in New York.” Bergès told Artnet that prices for Hunter’s work will “range from $75,000 for works on paper to $500,000 for large-scale paintings.

Seriously, $500,000 for a Hunter Biden painting? That he does with a blowpipe? Something he taught himself? Something that he's been working at for around one or two years, following his various careers in the military, finance, writing, and serving as old dad's bagboy on his travels? Following his wasted life of drugs, hookers, strippers, cocaine, and sleazy Hollywood hotel parties and flophouses, as described in his $2 million advance memoirs, which brought in around $10,000 in sales?

How many other artists have that kind of success straight out the gate after a crackhead life with prices like those?

Beginning artists, without Biden's political connections, in fact, sell artwork for maybe $1,000 a pop, $2,000 tops according to ArtBusiness, a leading website about the industry.

In a piece titled "How any artist can price their art for sale," the way it's done is like this:

For those of you who have little or no sales experience, who haven't sold much art, a good starting point for you is to price your work based on time, labor, and cost of materials. Pay yourself a reasonable hourly wage, add the cost of materials and make that your asking price. For example, if materials cost $50, you take 20 hours to make the art, and you pay yourself $20 an hour to make it, then you price the art at $450 ($20 X 20 hours + $50 cost of materials). Don't forget the comparables, though. If you use this formula and your art turns out to be more expensive than what other artists in your area charge for similar art, you may have to rethink your pricing, pay yourself a little less per hour perhaps.

This is how normal people do it. There's more about that:

To begin with, be objective about your art and your experience. In order for your prices to make sense, you have to fairly, honestly and objectively evaluate how your art measures up to other art that's out there. In order to make valid comparisons, you need a good ballpark idea how the quality of your art and the extent of your accomplishments stack up against those of other artists, particularly the ones who you'll be comparing yourself to. In other words, don't exaggerate your stature. If you've been making art for three years, for example, don't compare yourself to artists who've been making it for twenty. Being honest like this is not necessarily easy and it's not necessarily pleasant, but it's essential if you want to make it as an artist.

Base your pricing on facts, not feelings. Don't confuse your own personal opinion of your art, or what you think the art world should be like, or how you think it should respond to your art, with how things actually are. If you find yourself saying stuff like "People don't understand my work" or "People don't appreciate me" or "I'm just as good as Vincent Picasso even though he's famous and I'm not" or "Sooner or later I'll find the perfect dealer or collector or whatever and live happily ever after," you may be making some errors in judgment. If you're not quite sure where you stand, invite a few people to look at your art and tell you what they think-- preferably professionals who know something about art-- not your best friends or biggest fans, but ones who'll be honest and direct. Encourage them to be truthful because that's what you need. And don't get defensive; doing this will help you. When you're objective about your art, you maximize your chances of succeeding as an artist.

Does Hunter's art merit that $500,000 selling price over what his competitors are selling, or is something funny going on?

Even among his political competitors, such as former President George W. Bush, there's no evidence that he's money-laundering. I couldn't find a single price for one of his mediocre yet obviously worked-on paintings. Bush himself seems to monetize his hobby by selling spinoffs for $29.95 a pop, in picture-books and prints, an obviously more transparent and less lucrative game.

Breitbart points out that the Berges gallery has some pretty rich Chinese clients, citing the New York Post:

According to the New York Post, Bergès has some ties to China. The art dealer reportedly “regularly features works by Chinese artists and told a Chinese network that he was keen to open other art galleries in Beijing and Shanghai in 2015.”

Bergès has lavished praise on China’s role in the art world. In 2014, Bergès told the Chinese state-owned media outlet China Daily, “The questions that I always had was how’s China changing the world in terms of art and culture.”

What's more, the art industry is probably the most unregulated industry in America (which, as an aside, is likely why paintings and sculpture are among New York City's top exports):

Money laundering in the art world has been identified as an issue, as detailed by a bipartisan Senate investigation last year:

The Senate report details how a pair of Russian oligarchs with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly seized on the secrecy of the art industry to evade sanctions by making more than $18 million in high-value art purchases.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” investigators for the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations told reporters on a call. The art world is considered to be the largest legal unregulated industry in the United States, according to the Senate investigation.

…

The Rotenberg example and many other investigation details highlight the fact that, unlike selling stock or making routine bank transfers, art sales through auction houses are not subject to anti-money laundering provisions in the Bank Secrecy Act. When art is sold, according to the report, sellers are not required to confirm the identity of the buyer nor to make sure the artwork isn’t being used to launder dirty money.

Peter Schweizer, a veteran corruption-hunter, who has written numerous books on Washington's power elites, smells a rat:

“Hunter Biden was repeatedly hired and given deals by foreign entities that he was clearly not qualified for in the hopes of getting favors from his father,” Schweizer told Breitbart News. “It is not a stretch to believe that foreign entities will pay for or commission his works of art at inflated prices to do the same.”

Everyone else should, too. How could someone with that little talent be raking in $500,000 for his art pieces at his first gallery show, while everyone else with real art training gets just pennies? With a guy who's got China buyers? For those who know real working artists, the Hunter bonanza sticks out.

And a lot of the art-world praise has been faint, according to the New York Post:

Art consultant Martin Galindo told The Post that while he’s “not a fan” of the work by Hunter that he’s seen, “I’m very positive that he’s gonna do well in the market because this industry is very much about, what’s a simple way to put this — it’s like clout.”

Referring to a psychedelic blue and pinkish ink work by Hunter that resembles bacteria under a microscope, Galindo said, “Oh, my God, that looks like COVID.

“Honestly, I mean, from an aesthetic perspective, I don’t like it. But I’m sure he’s gonna do really well,” the art consultant said. 

Meanwhile, a 67-year-old art collector on the Upper East Side called Hunter’s work “nice.”

“They’re different,’’ she said of some of his pieces.

Still, the woman, who only gave her first name, Jill, said, “I think a lot of people can do that.

Where's Joe Biden to rein his son in in this obvious racket? It's reasonable to suspect that Joe's doing the political favors, laundered through art sales, on Hunter's behalf, given old Joe's past actions on behalf of son Hunter. These include Biden's call to fire a Ukraine prosecutor who was investigating Hunter's cash cow, Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where the sudden "energy expert" somehow found himself with a board seat.

Is Hunter now laundering cash for House Biden through the unregulated art market? One wonders who's buying those overpriced paintings. The public certainly has a right to know.

When will the rest of the Biden kids/grandkids get together to sculpt their own lines of Dragon Stones?  There can be much "hidden value" in transference!

Global Warming is Simply "Legitimization by Paralogy"

"Legitimation by paralogy" roughly means "manufacturing 'truth(iness)' through (forcing) consensus," or, in simpler language, creating social enforcement of lies that must be believed. Lyotard rightly recognized that this is a disaster (he wrongly believed everything is that). (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1348828460161114117)

Phillip Anyetei, "Do we live in a network society?"

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Jean Francois Lyotard (1984) is considered to be the so-called “Self help book” that help us to understand the era of post-modernity. In his book, Jean Francois Lyotard discusses about the idea of knowledge and argues that knowledge is developed through the applications of science and technology. He is considered to be a narrative philosopher who explains things from his experiences and defines post-modernity as incredulity, disbelief about a fact moving towards meta-narratives, which is a story about story or “Behind closed doors” or to “Think outside the box” explained from many perspectives. He believes that western societies are dominated by science and technology particularly cybernetics, where information is translated into pieces of data which is shared and easily accessible by us. In section 1 entitled: The Field: Knowledge in Computerised Society, he explain that people take advantage of technology to ameliorate their degree of knowledge by listening to information through media and communication, such as newspapers, televisions, radio etc. The purpose in which, he (Lyotard) could explain that technology creates a form of social cohesion via social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Lyotard compares the principle of money to the notion of knowledge as in exchanging degrees of knowledge among subcultures and social classes through agreements and negotiations (Lyotard 1984: 6).

However, in chapter 2: legitimization, Lyotard applies the metaphor “terror” to argue that human beings are easily manipulated by the media influences of consumerism and materialism, and are unconsciously intimidated and coerced into obeying the rules held by authority, especially if the rules considered to be degrading to human mentality. This applies to the rules within transport facilities, where people are obliged to pay transport fees otherwise, they would face the consequences of paying a fine or even face prosecution. In contrast, the hypodermic syringe model is used to explain that we are injected with the knowledge by the media and those in the position of authority and would be faced with the terror on the penalty of ridicule, disapproval and social expulsion rather than knowledge from our personal experiences and experiences from members in the primary secondary socialisation process, such as family and friends and knowledge within religion and culture.

Howard Becker, a classical labeling theorist could explain from his book Outsiders, which is rumoured to be the blueprint of the labelling theory to explain that those refuse and violate the rules of the social norm would be branded as ‘deviants’ and be punished by exclusion as an outsider (1963). As a result, Emile Durkheim could argue that those who are excluded from mainstream society may commit one of the four types of suicide: Egoistical suicide, as a result of being excluded from mainstream society as an outsider. Anomic suicide, as a result of society constantly changing and feeling disillusioned with the rules. Altruistic suicide as a result of wanting to sacrifice one’s life to preserve the social norms and traditions within society and Fatalistic suicide, the result of excessive strictness of the social norms and traditions which are held in society suppressing individualism and personal autonomy (1897).

In section 3, Lyotard moves on to discuss the method, the language game, which he views the social system or social mobility as a game of chess which illustrates that people need to gain knowledge in order to survive the social system or progress from one social hierarchy to another. He argues that people are obliged to assimilate into learning the language and customs of its new culture with the expectation to adapt to their new environment such as the workplace and especially in academic fields, military and religious groups. This reflects the idiomatic proverb: “When in Rome, do what the Romans do”. In other words, Lyotard simply discusses about survival of the fittest where those survive and play the game well, receive rewards and mentions a single rule can change the whole game. However, some thinkers argue that we develop our own strategies to help us play the game successfully through creativity.

In sections 4 and 5, Lyotard highlights the debate between modernity and post-modernity in the nature of the social bond. In section 4, it reveals that Lyotard has a functionalist lens on modernity which was backed up by Talcott Parsons, another functionalist who argues that society is a self – regulated system. In clarity, people are drifting from a mechanical society where people share the same values, beliefs and norms to an organic society, where members are becoming independent (1967 cited in Lyotard 1984: 11). Lyotard also recommends that ethnography is essential to investigate and observe the behaviour and actions created by individuals in social settings to vindicate whether society is self – regulated. In section 5, Lyotard argues that our position in life and identities are shaped by race, social class and gender along with a certain degree of materialism, meaning our styles in fashion which reflects on the model of social stratification, a hierarchy that assesses our position within the social hierarchy and knowledge therefore is only option to give us the opportunity to increase our life chances of being successful and prevent us from falling prey to inequalities and exploitation by the bourgeois.

In sections 6 pragmatics in the narrative form, Lyotard argues that science comes in two versions, first is a subject is determined by an individual’s experience, such as near death experiences or adverse effects and second, a science that consists of a topic provided with a hypothesis and research is conducted in order to vindicate its hypothesis. It can be suggested that knowledge contributes to form a social cycle and we are dominated by the knowledge held by the bourgeoisie including members of authority. In the section 7 pragmatics in scientific form, Lyotard argues that scientific knowledge is considered to be hegemonic and dominates other forms of knowledge, as science is based on evidence to prove that whether a certain assumption is true or false. He also highlights that scientists could criticise narratives for developing mentalities among human beings which consists of stereotypes, thus creates prejudice and discrimination (Lyotard 1984: 27). His quotation: “A person does not have to know how to be what knowledge say he is” asserts that our personalities or actions does not have to be dictated by the stereotypes of our social characteristics. This usually applies to the topic, aesthetics where an old fashion wisdom which addresses low self-esteem: “It does not matter on what you are on the outside, but it’s what you are on the inside that counts” or “Beauty is only skin deep rather than outer perfection”.

In sections 8, The narrative of function and the legitimation of knowledge, Lyotard argues that legitimation is itself an issue rather than the language game of science where rules are constantly changing and people have difficulties of obeying the rules. For example, it can be argued this chapter reveals debates on how we should develop mannerisms, personalities and behaviours to adjust to the new rules. It can be suggested that the ruling class can define what is normal or abnormal, in regards of values, personality traits and our ways of looking at social changes. Doland and Maschler (1969 cited in Lyotard 1984: 30) argued that legitimation is considered as a contract among the legislators and social progress is seen as the outcome of the rich and those are in the position of authority that created these so-called “social norms”.

In chapter 9, The narratives of the legitimation of knowledge, Lyotard argues that everyone has the right to have access to science and knowledge regardless of race, gender, religion, social class etc. It can be suggested that the last sentence gives some readers the impression that he (Lyotard) has liberal views and believes in equality. He argues that laws serve the interest of the rich and powerful and the legitimators such as the government and citizens are passive and have no choice but to follow the rules which are set by the state. This can be supported by the hypodermic syringe model in which in contrast from the Marxist lens, that we are injected by the rules that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie rather than our rules and boundaries. In the section 10, Delegitimation, Lyotard argues that narrative knowledge has been rejected and the launch of technology was seen as the aftermath of the Second World War which motivated academic writers to concentrate on the motives rather than actions caused by individuals and the state. He also argues that issues in the private sphere were ignored, particularly within the home, such as child abuse and domestic violence and concerns of institutional discrimination based on race, gender and sexuality.

In the section 11, Education and its legitimation through performativity, Lyotard argues that higher education is seen as the best weapon to improve social progress and perfomativity of the social hierarchy as higher education provides us the tools to meet the criteria held in society and the ability to preserve social bonds. He also discusses that technology and media communications such as the internet, email facilities are replacing traditional teaching systems and data banks as they are considered as the “encyclopedia of tomorrow”. In other words, technology is the way forward. However, he argues that if education provides the reproduction of skills among social progress, then it follows into the transmission of knowledge. Marxist writers can argue that education can cause inequalities among social classes as the members from upper class backgrounds can enter higher education whereas their lower class counterparts cannot.

In chapter 12, Postmodern science as the search for instabilities, Lyotard notes that theories emphasises the creation of new motives and new rules for the language game. For example, scientific knowledge is now looking for answers and the hypothesis is now dominated by actions and means of the individual’s place in society. He highlights Brillouin’s argument in which he concludes that there is conflict between the addressee and sender and people begin to rebel against society’s expectations (Lyotard 1984: 55). Friedrich Nietzsche could explain this through the notion of ressentiment (resentment) and argue that rebellion symbolises the outcome of resentment fueled by the mistreatment of slaves by their masters and is perceived as a creative force.

Lyotard mentions that some social systems have boundaries including social norms that modify which behaviour is considered normal or deviant (Lyotard 1984: 59). In the final chapter, Legitimation by Paralogy, Lyotard analyses two of Luhmann’s argument on systems theory: The first one illustrates that the system can only function by reducing complexity. For clarity, individuals will be able to function in society if certain barriers which prevent them from achieving the shared cultured goal such as the American Dream or their personal goals are removed. In clarity, discrimination towards race, social class, gender, disability and sexism and poverty ought to be neutralized through charitable organizations and anti – discriminatory policies.

The second argument displays that the system should be adjusted to meet the aspirations of the players’ personal expectations rather than the aspirations that favours the interest of the ruling class and those held in mainstream society (Luhmann 1969 cited in Lyotard 1984: 61). Lyotard also argues that performativity criterion has its own advantages where stories are rejected and replaced by definitions of real meaning and players of the game should take responsibility for the statements they propose and more importantly, the rules of those statements (Lyotard 1984: 62). He also highlights what Luhmann describes terrorist behaviour in the social system and in the language game. He argues that if a player enters the game and has a high level of knowledge, can be posed as a threat to the other members of the game and as a result, insecurities will rise among them which converts into jealously as the motivate to take certain measures to degrade and eliminate that player out of game mainly by bullying in overt and mostly covert forms (Lyotard 1984: 63 – 4).

Some writers feel that Jean Francois Lyotard’s book is considered to be a stepping stone in shifting from modernity to postmodernity, or a “self-help” guide for the audience to understand postmodernism. However, he (Lyotard) has been subjected to many controversial debates both negative and positive. Alex Callinicos criticised Lyotard’s definition of postmodern for lacking in clarification which causes conflict among many writers. He (Callinicos) also argues that Lyotard’s book the postmodern condition rejects the objectivity of socialist revolutions (Callinicos 1989: 3). He also illustrated that Lyotard’s discussion of metanarratives which is an individual form of knowledge in pre-modern societies, such as folk tales which Lyotard argues that they consist of experiences which are characterised by self – legitimation, meaning that narrators can make their own rules of the game (Callinicos 1989: 93).

Zygmunt Bauman however, argues that Lyotard describes postmodernism in the notion of hegemony which is argued that science tend to dominate all forms of knowledge and rules in the language game (Bauman 1992: 35). He (Bauman) also discussed that Lyotard also presented that hegemony is starting to erode in its power, is beginning to effect the disintegration of science (Bauman 1992: 35). He (Bauman) also mentions that language games are the outcomes of the separation of the communicative field from the structure of economics and politics and additionally, the breakdown of hierarchical functions within the social system. Language games are also burdened by other means not only legitimation, which of course is the main issue but the act of terror where rules are easily broken because people are rebelling against the traditional rules which conformed by the social norm by setting their own form of rules (Bauman 1992: 38).

Foucault on the other hand, from his book Discipline and Punish (Valier 2003: 152) highlighted that knowledge and power are related and cannot be separated as these two notions are viewed in which Lyotard could explain as the best form of teamwork to resist the two infections of “fear” and “terror”, and aid social progress and self change which can be applied to weight loss by arguing “there is no diet without exercise and there is no exercise without diet”, highlighting the antidote of self-discipline. Valier (2003: 152 – 3) on the other hand, argues that knowledge and power are exploited for other means such as punishment particularly corporal and capital which is supported by the Journal entitled: Power without Knowledge: Foucault and Fordism.c1900 – 50, is an example on the exploitation of knowledge and power for other means and Lyotard’s explanation on the metaphor “terror” is used on the assembly line of the Ford Motor Factory. It was revealed that since the early 1920s the Ford foreman had to adapt to the language learnt in that environment by displaying an aggressive and harsh attitude towards his workers in order to enhance the performance in the production line.

Williams, Haslam and Williams (1993 cited in Coopey and McKinlay 2010: 112) and Cruden (1926 cited in Coopey and McKinlay 2010: 112) argued that the workers were subjected to verbal abuse, incremented by the use of coercion, physical threats and intimidation. Foucault defines this term of auto labour as dressage where the workers were seen as slaves to the foremen, who uses gestures and fear to intimidate the workers with the intention to aid progression in the modes of production (Foucault 1997 cited in Coopey and McKinlay 2010: 112). This example of the brutal treatment of the assembly workers illustrates that power and knowledge are exploited for the company’s own purpose additionally, reveals the issue of hegemony, in terms of the foreman have full authority over the assembly workers.

Paul Terry illustrates that Jurgen Habermas explores the notion of knowledge in three fields, analytical, hermeneutic and critical in opposition to the Kantian spheres of science, aesthetics and morality (Terry 1997: 270). He (Terry) also argue that these models Habermas highlighted relates to human interests in a unique way, for example, observation can be more effective through the applications of science and technology which lies beneath analytical knowledge and historical and cultural interests are concentrated on hermeneutically – derived knowledge. He also argues that those three concepts of knowledge can be applied in natural sciences or mathematics beneath the analytical – empirical sphere and hermeneutics can be related to humanities and critical knowledge can be applied in the interests of emancipation from authority (Habermas 1971 cited in Terry 1997: 271). He argues that Habermas sees the duplication of the social realm as a struggle between economics, administration and bureaucracy and sees that language game can be seen as a tool to achieve the means of attaining a balanced and reasonable agreement, seeing neutrality as the key to aid conflicts (Terry 1997: 273). He also mentions that Habermas views modernity as a democratic society and as an unfinished project. Nevertheless, he (Habermas) sees postmodernity being obsessed with power and legitimacy. Habermas’s work has been later criticised for being over – theoretical in the mention applications and believes practical is needed to vindicate these assumptions. (Terry 1997: 274).

Education was considered in many perspectives as a key to improve social reproduction and to maintain cultural perspectives. Offe (1984 cited in Terry 2010: 275) argues that higher education is inevitable in increasing our degree of knowledge and levels of empathizing power in political and economic views. Terry, on the other hand suggests that educators must adapt to inevitable changes in culture (Terry 2010: 275). Anthony Giddens who is renowned for this major theories systems of ideas – the structural theory which was initiated in 1984, which concentrates on social customs that revolves around space and time, and is essential for social systems and social acts performed by human beings and the late modernity theory which concentrate on the conditions of social world that constantly changes and argues from a postmodern view, that modernity is abolished by social and cultural order (Faulkheimer 2007: 288 – 9). It is suggested that Lyotard’s method, the language game can be used to adapt to the new form of social and cultural orders. Faulkheimer (2007: 289) believes that scientific reason causes the risk society. It can be suggested that risk minimization in criminal justice systems stems from that assumption. He (Giddens) highlighted that risk diverse in two ways: external risk which associates with nature causes such as floods and earthquakes and the second risk associates with manufactured risks in terms of global warming, risks which associate with our everyday lives, such as transportation and communication technology (Giddens 2002 cited in Faulkheimer 2007: 289).

Barbara Ann Strassberg argues from her journal Religion and Science: The Embodiment of the Conversation: A Postmodern Sociological Perspective, that knowledge comes in two ways. Faith, which does not need to be vindicated by scientific investigation through experimentation and belief needs to be backed up by scientific proof (2001:525). This statement can be criticised for ignoring that faith and science are connected and cannot be separated, which can reflect Foucault’s link of Power and Knowledge by arguing that “there is not faith without science and there is no science without faith “. Max Weber and those with Weberian views may explain that religion symbolises the notion of Karma where Lyotard explains this in the first chapter where we donate our levels of knowledge to those who are unfortunate or in exchange for new and revised versions of knowledge. Karma has been applied in moral teachings where for example, if we treat strangers or fellow neighbours good or bad, we will be given the same action in return.

However, the theme on religion can be exploited through the example mentioned in Power without Knowledge: Foucault and Fordism, can be used to explain that religious leaders could exploit religion for their own interests, manifested from carrying out fraud and deception to subjecting people to psychological manipulation and abuse which is practiced in religious cults and subcultures. Marxist thinkers can criticize that religion symbolizes dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletarians. Imaginatively, religion is argued to be viewed as the symbol of “perfect obedience” by creating a slave master morality by injecting the fear of God into our minds that he will punish us if we intent to engage in sinful acts which violates the biblical rules from the bible.

On reference to the sentence: “A person does not have to know on how to be what knowledge say he is” Lyotard mentions about our personalities and behaviour does not have to be determined by the knowledge comes in the form of what stereotypes say about us is similar to the subject of psychology where, psychodynamic theorists like Sigmund Freud through his study of the unconscious mind could argue that past experiences preferably in childhood and adolescence can influence our behavior and responses to certain stimulus in later life. Whereas in opposition, humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers argue that human beings have the freedom of choice to take responsibility for their happiness, their reactions to external stimulus which are beyond their control and be accountable for the consequences created by their free will. One example is that we should not allow ourselves to be dictated by the knowledge based on negative stereotyping on race, gender, class and disabilities and past adverse experiences held by the ruling class and our chances of succeeding academically and financially should be not be determined by our position in the social hierarchy but determined by our own freedom of choice.

Additionally, on the subject of criminology, classical thinkers like Ceasre Beccaria and Jeremy Betham may argue that people engage in criminality by their exploitation of free will rather than external negative influences which in opposition, positivists criminologists like Andre Guerry and Adolphe Quetelet with the use of statistical data may argue along with Chicago Scholar Ernest Burgess from his illustration on the Zones of Transition (1925), that crime is committed by those living in dilapidated slums of inner city regions. Strain Theorist Robert Merton (1957) who revised Durkheim’s anomie can explain criminality stems from the frustration of not accomplishing the American Dream based on materialistic wealth. Labelling Theorists Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study of the Pygmalion effect in the classroom (1992) could vindicate a self – fulfilling prophecy which provide support to chapter 6, the narrative form of pragmatics.

The graph from the home office downloaded from the home office website (http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/s95race02) illustrates the over-representation of black offenders . These were drawn upon the narratives of stereotypes which can be agreed with Lyotard who explains this in chapter 6. Black young men people are stereotyped as deviant, aggressive and ‘trouble makers’ or academic “underachievers” by educational institutions. On reference to the relationship of race and post – modernity, Brett St Louis applies the concept of Foucault’s theme of power/knowledge onto the notions about race where he highlights that Stuart Hall suggests a new emergence of a new ethnicity where black people are oppressed by the knowledge and negative stereotypical perceptions held by the minds of the hegemonic white society (1992 cited in St Louis 2009: 656). He (St Louis) also argues ethnicity is manufactured socially where race was considered to be biological (2009: 659) which can be agreed with Alain Locke who argues that the biological meaning of race has been ended and the sociological meaning of race is starting to expand (1992 cited in St Louis 2009: 665) in areas of culture and socio – economical backgrounds.

In conclusion, postmodernism appears to be the heart of discourse and is criticized for neglecting concerns that focus on technology. However, from the works discussed by renowned writers vindicates with Jean Francois Lyotard’s hypothesis that we do live in a network society where knowledge is decoded into data and delivered in various formats such as, communications, technology and particularly the media . We live in a world that is constantly changing and the language game is highlighted as the vital tool that help us to adapt and assimilate to the changes made in society and it is applied in many areas of the social world from technology, science to race, class and gender.

Bauman, Z (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity, London, Routledge

Becker, H.S (1963) Outsiders: studies in the Sociology of deviance. New York. Free Press

Brillouin, L. (1949). Life, thermodynamics, and cybernetics. American Scientist, 37

Callinicos, A (1989) Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Coopey, R and McKinlay, A (2010) Power without Knowledge: Foucault and Fordism, c.1900 – 50, Labor History, Vol 51, No1 107 – 125

Cruden, R (1926) ‘No Loitering – Get Out Production’, The Nation, 12 June 1926, 697

Doland, E and Maschler, C (1969) To Save the Phenomena: An Essay in the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Durkheim, E (1897) Suicide A study in sociology. Free Press

Faulkheimer, J (2007) Anthony Giddens and public relations: A third way perspective, Public Relations Review, 33, 287 – 293

Foucault, M (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Giddens, A (2002) Runaway world: How globalisation is reshaping our lives. London: Profile

Habermas, J (1971) Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro London: Heinemann

Hall, S (1992) ‘New Ethnicities’, in James Donald & Ali Rattansi (eds) ‘Race’, Culture and Difference, London, Sage pp252 – 9.

Luhmann, N (1969) Legitimation durch Verfahren, Neuwid/Berlin Lutcherhand trans

Lyotard, J.F (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Merton, R.K (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed. New York: Free Press.

Offe, C (1984) Contradictions of the Welfare State, London: Hutchinson.

Park, R.E and Burgess, E.W (1925) “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project”. University of Chicago Press. pp. 47–62

Parson, T (1967) The Social System, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press.

Rosenthal, R and Jacobson, L (1992) Pygmalion in the classroom : Teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development (Newly expanded ed.). Bancyfelin, Carmarthen, Wales: Crown House Pub

St Louis, B (2009) Post – race/post – politics? Activists – intellectualism and the reification of race’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25: 4, 652 – 675

Strassber, B.A (2001) Religion and Science: The Embodiment of the Conversation: A Postmodern Sociological Perspective, Zygon, vol 36, no. 3 September 2001

Terry, P.R (1997) Habermas and Education: Knowledge, communication, discourse, Curriculum Studies, Vol. 5, No, 1997

Valier, C (2003) Theories of Crime and Punishment, Harlow, Pearson Longman, Ch8

http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/s95race02.pdf (accessed 17th January 2011).

You Ruled Out a Lab Leak at Wuhan Because...

from Breitbart

The Wuhan Institute of Virology did keep live bats on its premises, a report by Sky News Australia revealed Sunday, contradicting the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) which has always maintained such suggestions are a baseless conspiracy.

The revelation came on the same day the W.H.O. said “all hypotheses still remain on the table” as to the origins of the coronavirus, a direct challenge to Beijing which has repeatedly stated it is not responsible for the global pandemic and theories that say the virus was made by humans are wrong.

Sky News Australia obtained official Chinese Academy of Sciences video footage to mark the launch of the new biosafety level 4 laboratory in May 2017 that addresses security precautions in place if “an accident” occurs.

The video shows bats being held in a cage on the premises, along with vision of a scientist feeding a bat with a worm.

The 10 minute clip is titled “The construction and research team of Wuhan P4 laboratory of Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences” and features interviews with its leading scientists.

The original W.H.O. report investigating the origin of the pandemic failed to mention any bats had been kept at the institute and only its annex referred to animals being housed there.

“The animal room in the P4 facility can handle a variety of species, including primate work with SARS-CoV-2,” it states.

A member of the W.H.O. team investigating the origin of the pandemic in Wuhan, zoologist Peter Daszak said it was a conspiracy to suggest bats were held at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and no evidence existed to support the allegation.

In one tweet dated December, 2020 he said: “No BATS were sent to Wuhan lab for genetic analysis of viruses collected in the field. That’s now how this science works. We collect bat samples, send them to the lab. We RELEASE bats where we catch them!”

Other W.H.O. members were also keen to join him and downplay any such links or questions about the biosafety of the Wuhan facility.

Sky News Australia reports the Chinese Academy of Sciences video was discovered by researchers investigating the origin of the pandemic who call themselves DRASTIC.

Digital archivist “Jesse” found the Chinese Academy of Sciences Video while the group’s co-ordinator, who goes by a pseudonym of “Billy Bostickson” for safety reasons, has long complained evidence bats were housed in the Wuhan laboratories.

The video forms part of the investigation underpinning the book What Really Happened in Wuhan.

Meanwhile, W.H.O. Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, 56, on Sunday said more “transparency” from China was needed in the ongoing investigation and suggested Beijing had been less than forthcoming in the past.

Tedros, speaking at a G7 summit briefing, said a lab leak hadn’t been ruled out and “every hypothesis should be open,” a belief long echoed by others critical of China’s stonewalling of investigations in its own backyard.

Tedros estimated some 3.75 million people had died from the coronavirus and at least another 174m were confirmed to have contracted the disease.

He said: “I think the respect these people deserve is knowing what the origin of this virus is so that we can prevent it from happening again.”

Tedros also suggested there had not been enough “transparency and co-operation” from China in the initial stages of the investigation, despite all of Beijing’s protestations to the contrary.

Fauci's Vaccine Experiment... a Progress Report

from Gateway Pundit

There are more US deaths related to vaccines in 2021 in less than 5 months than there were the entire past decade.

The number of deaths linked to vaccines this year has absolutely skyrocketed. According to the CDC’s own data, in 2021 n the first 3 months, the VAERS website recorded over 1,750 deaths due to vaccines in the US.

That number is now at 5,997.

“The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database contains information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems and/or symptoms) following immunization with US-licensed vaccines. Reports are accepted from anyone and can be submitted electronically at www.vaers.hhs.gov.”

329,021 Reports Through June 4, 2021
DEATHS 5,888
HOSPITALIZATIONS 19,597
Urgent Care 43,891
OFFICE VISITS 58,800

ANAPHYLAXIS 1,459
BELL’S PALSY 1,737
Life Threatening 5,885
Heart Attacks 2,190
Myocarditis/Pericarditis 1,087
Thrombocytopenia/Low Platelet 1,564
Miscarriages 652
Severe Allergic Reaction 15,052
Disabled 4,583

The steal was baked into the printing of the ballots...

Joe Hoft, "Ballot Printing Companies Better Lawyer Up"

2020 Ballots Were Modified in Multiple Republican Areas Forcing Adjudication and Potential Fraudulent Vote Switching

It’s in the ballots. Now the printers of the ballots are in the hot seat. They better lawyer up. It appears that ballots in Republican areas were printed differently than in Democrat areas which caused more Republican ballots to go to adjudication and potentially be recorded as Biden votes.

RAFFENSPERGER GETS CAUGHT: Georgia Ballots Were Printed DIFFERENTLY for GOP Areas vs. DEM Areas — Election Was Rigged!

 We reported in December that inventor and data expert, Jovan Hutton Pulitzer identified a pattern in Georgia where Republican district ballots were printed differently than Democrat district ballots. The Republican areas’ ballots were set up where a large percentage would go to adjudication. This allowed unknown individuals to record all the ballots for Biden.

RAFFENSPERGER GETS CAUGHT: Georgia Ballots Were Printed DIFFERENTLY for GOP Areas vs. DEM Areas — Election Was Rigged!

Yesterday this same situation was discussed on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom Pandemic. In Antrim County, Michigan attorney Matt DePerno provided a double-bombshell update to his case relating to that county’s November 3, 2020 election and its voting machines and ballots from Dominion Voting Systems. On December 4, 2020, DePerno, on behalf of his client, William Bailey, successfully received a court’s permission to forensically audit the county’s Dominion machines used in the November 3, 2020, Antrim County elections.

DePerno had to fight off legal attempts to stop the public disclosure of this data, from both the radicalized Michigan Attorney General, Dana Nessel (D), and the Soros-backed dishonest and equally radical Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D).

Nessel filed a lawsuit, which Benson signed onto, to stop the release of this information!

On December 13, the night before DePerno’s emergency hearing to get permission to release his forensic auditors’ report, AG Nessel tweeted a warning shot directed specifically at “Lawyers who practice in Michigan,” letting them know that their oath prevents them from filing “unjust and/or frivolous actions” or from misleading the court.

DePerno was granted permission by the court at an emergency hearing on December 14 to release the findings of that report.

DePerno’s audit team, the Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), uncovered and exposed, among other things, that the Dominion voting machines used in that 2020 election were set at a 68.05% error rate, when the allowable election error rate is .0008%! These “error’ed ballots” were forced out of the counting system and into the adjudication – manual review – by an individual who decides which candidates the ballots report as voting for. The Dominion system does NOT record who made the decision and when and does NOT mandate that at least two individuals sign off on the decision, one from each major party.

On May 18, as reported by UncoverDC, Bailey and DePerno’s case was dismissed by the court:

Judge Elsenheimer dismissed [DePerno’s] client’s case yesterday with a ruling based on what DePerno says is a ‘narrow decision’ that had nothing to do with any of the evidence he and his client, Bill Bailey, have presented.

In another, May 18 exclusive interview with Jim Hoft, Patty McMurray, and conservative Michigan Republican activist Matt Seely, Matt DePerno expressed his resolve to appeal this decision.

Yesterday, Matt DePerno gave two shocking updates about this case, one relating to an anonymous user accessing the Election Management System remotely and changing data – proving there was internet access – and the other about newly uncovered data relating to the actual printed ballots used in the Antrim County 2020 election. He reported that the printing of the actual Dominion paper ballots appears to have been “intentionally modified” so that 20% of Republican votes were not counted!

DePerno explained to Steve Bannon:

Two things we put out late last evening, two new reports that came out. One shows that there was, we’ve proved now that there was direct access to the Antrim County Election Management System, because we show on November 5, we can see it in the forensic images, that an anonymous user logged onto the EMS remotely with escalated privileges and made changes to the database, when they were trying to re-tabulate the election.

So, that’s one huge, huge development because now we prove that the machines were remotely accessed and, more importantly, they were remotely accessed by an anonymous user who had elevated privileges in the system.

That is pretty damning for the non-forensic reviewers out there or people who do not want a forensic audit.

And the other thing, probably as equally as explosive. Everyone’s seen ballots before, like these ballots here [waves a paper ballot]. On the side of the ballot, there’s these black boxes, there’s 59 black boxes on the side of the ballot. We now see within the forensic images that in Antrim County those blocks, blocks 15, 18, 28, 41 and 44, were all intentionally modified, the height and the width, the shape of the blocks were intentionally modified in order to generate errors.

What does an error do? In this case by modifying those specific blocks, they were able to cause rejections for Republican ballots, meaning if you voted for Donald Trump and then put your ballot in the machine, your ballot was rejected at a rate of 20% more than Joe Biden ballots.

DePerno is actively encouraging Michigan citizens and voters to sign an affidavit (here) he will be placing up on his website today, already signed by 3,500 Michiganders, demanding that a full forensic audit be conducted throughout the entire state of Michigan.

To support Matthew DePerno and his continued efforts to fight for election integrity, go to: DePernoLaw.com and donate to his legal defense fund. See Deperno’s discussion with Steve Bannon yesterday:

Finally, the layout of the ballot is a big deal and the auditors in Arizona know it. They are not only recounting all ballots from Maricopa County’s results in the 2020 Presidential and Senate elections, they are also reviewing the ballots’ layout and measuring for discrepancies.

If these ballots are out of sync and we find they are out of sync in Republican precincts only, then we have another example where the printing of the ballots is in error and therefore in question.

What are the odds that this all happened randomly? We all know the answer to that.

The Double CGG Conclusion....

Steve McCann, "The Depravity of the Democrat Party, the American Left, and the Media"

After nearly 17 months, the Chinese laboratory manipulation of coronaviruses as the origin of Covid-19, the Federal science bureaucracy’s complicity and cover-up, and the motivation behind the overwrought government- and media-sponsored solutions to the pandemic are finally being exposed and can no longer be suppressed by the Democrat party (i.e., mainstream) media.

It is difficult for the average American to fathom the depth of dishonesty and potential treason of those motivated by self-preservation to keep hidden their incestuous relationships with the Communist Chinese and the part they played in the Chinese development of highly infectious viruses as potential military weapons. And with the Democrat party and their allies in the media abetting the Chinese Communist hierarchy in denying that the Covid-19 virus almost certainly escaped from the laboratory in Wuhan and was maliciously allowed to spread throughout the planet.

But far worse is the absolute depravity of many of these same bureaucrats and Democrat politicians who demanded, without any reliable data, unwarranted economic lockdowns and mandatory quarantines with the primary intent of so undermining the economy and self-confidence of the American people that their nemesis, President Trump, would be unable to win re-election in November of 2020.

For the first time in human history, a nation effectively quarantined the healthy instead of only the sick. 

For the first time in American history, elected officials on the state and local levels illegally and unilaterally suspended rights guaranteed in the Constitution.

For the first time ever, millions of medical patients in need of preventive medical care were told they could not be served, thus condemning tens of thousands of them to a premature death. Never before on such a massive scale have residents of nursing homes been denied visitations by friends and relatives and left to die alone and uncared for. Under no prior circumstances have those with a contagious disease been deliberately sent to nursing or medical facilities to potentially infect a highly susceptible population.

At no time before have the oversight agencies of the medical profession denigrated and effectively outlawed proven medicines (e.g., Ivermectin and the hydroxychloroquine regimen) because a president mentioned them. To further exploit national anxiety, the reporting of fatalities due to the virus was deliberately overstated to include those who actually died of other causes but had been perhaps exposed to Covid-19.

Thus, the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, the permanent closure of millions of small businesses, the loss of a year’s worth of education and development of America’s children, the unfathomable rise in suicides, the six-plus trillion dollar increase in the national debt and inflation running amok. All to ostensibly mitigate a pandemic that has essentially the same survival rate as a severe flu outbreak.

Yet, this cost to the American people and the nation was immaterial to the Democrats, the American left and their media allies so long as Donald Trump was defeated and his voters fully marginalized.

Further, while the nation was focused on the pandemic, the Democrats moved to overturn the nation’s voting system by introducing fraud on a massive scale via mail-in voting. And the left attempted to precipitate, via riots and intimidation, radical cultural and societal changes using “systemic racism” as a cudgel.

While this cabal was motivated by their irrational hatred of Donald Trump and determination to seize power in perpetuity, they were also convinced that the bulk of the American people, in their ignorance and naiveté, would not see through their tactics. Considering how the vast majority of Americans so meekly and unquestionably acquiesced to their illicit and draconian methods, and a majority are still doing so even though the pandemic is essentially over and 200 million have been vaccinated, perhaps they were right.

What is happening in the United Sates today with the rapid and unbridled ascendance of this autocratic oligarchy is not unique in the annals of mankind as it is the near inescapable end-product of basic human nature unleashed. Over the 200,000 years that the human race has been on earth, it has been inevitable that once a tribe or society achieves a semblance of stability and the underlying human need of survival essentially met, a few members of that tribe, with an insatiable need to dominate, come to the fore with the acquiescence of the rest of the tribe.

Over many millennia, it has been that small segment of humanity with insatiable megalomaniacal tendencies that has precipitated conquest of other nations as well as manipulating, exploiting and enslaving their fellow human beings. The founders of the United States were well aware of this base aspect of man and attempted through the drafting of the Constitution to mitigate as much as possible those possessed with these traits from assuming dictatorial hegemony by disbursing political power as much as possible. But they also knew that it was ultimately the citizenry and not the governmental structure that would decide the nation’s fate.

In Philadelphia, on a clear unseasonably cool September 17, 1787, forty-one delegates to the Constitutional Convention met to finalize and sign the newly drafted United States Constitution. Ben Franklin wrote a short speech in support of the newly minted Constitution and asked for unanimity among the signers. Among Franklin’s remarks were:

…Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such, because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

…Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of Government, as well as the wisdom and integrity of its Governors. [italics added]

In light of their complicity in abetting the barbaric actions of a declared adversary of the United States and their heinous willingness to sacrifice the lives and fortunes of their fellow Americans to achieve their ends, the current government (i.e., the Ruling Class) is irretrievably devoid of any goodness, wisdom and integrity. What is in question is having seen and experienced the depravity of the current government have the people have become so corrupted as to overlook their deeds and acquiesce to their despotic governance?

That question will be answered within the next three and a half years. The key to defeating the current government is embedded in the Constitution and the disbursement of political power. Every election for a school board member, a sheriff, a mayor, a city or town councilman, a state representative, a state governor, a member of House of Representatives and the Senate exemplifies that disbursement.

The turnout and the results of all of these elections over the next three and a half years plus the willingness of the populace to boycott those private institutions that unabashedly promote anti-Americanism will determine the fate of the nation. And whether it will be the current iteration of the American citizenry that will bring to pass Ben Franklin’s bleak prophecy.

Black Bottom Blues...

Howard Husock, "Rock Bottom: How progressive reforms helped level a historic part of black Detroit"

The United States recently marked the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Greenwood Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The newfound attention, including from the president, to the destruction of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street” reminds us that thriving, dynamic black communities existed in America long before the War on Poverty or the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. But Greenwood was not the only African-American neighborhood that would be leveled: consider the DeSoto-Carr section of St. Louis, parts of Chicago’s Bronzeville, Cedar-Central in Cleveland—and Black Bottom in Detroit.

These neighborhoods, however, did not fall to racist mobs. They were the victims instead of progressive reforms: above all, urban renewal, as authorized by the National Housing Act of 1949, which provided funds to clear neighborhoods and replace them with public housing towers. The law made available “federal advances, loans, and grants to localities to assist slum clearance and urban redevelopment,” leading to the construction of 850,000 new public housing apartments. In Detroit’s Black Bottom, once home to 140,000 black residents, the process became known as “Negro removal”—as evoked by “Why I Sing the Blues” by Aretha Franklin, whose father, C. L. Franklin, ran the New Bethel Baptist Church, one of the Black Bottom buildings demolished.

Like the Greenwood Massacre, Black Bottom and its history have received fresh interest. In 2015, a young African-American community organizer, PG Watkins, established the Black Bottom Archives. Watkins is at work recording the oral histories of those who once lived in the neighborhood. A onetime social studies teacher at a charter school, Jamon Jordan, who heads the Detroit chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, has set up a successful business, the Black Scroll Network, which gives guided tours of the few remaining buildings. His clients include former Black Bottom residents as well as college students. He tells them a well-researched story of loss—of homes, businesses, churches, and mutual-aid groups.

In Black Bottom and elsewhere, urban renewal and public housing helped wipe out hubs of black-owned businesses and self-help institutions.

Black Bottom—named by the area’s early French residents for its dark farm soil—“was not destroyed by the Ku Klux Klan and lynching,” says Jordan. “It was destroyed because the federal and city governments colluded to wipe it out without almost any compensation.” As happened in many other black neighborhoods, urban renewal and public housing helped wipe out a hub of black-owned businesses and self-help institutions, a community that fostered homeownership and wealth accumulation—goods that contemporary American blacks have struggled to achieve.

If the 1949 Housing Act led directly to the death of Black Bottom and its adjoining neighborhoods, the previous decades of reform—when progressives developed federal tools to demolish what they termed slums and replace them with modernist, top-down plans—laid the groundwork. Neighborhood residents didn’t lead these crusades. Indeed, as sociologists Peter Rossi and Robert Dentler have written, the public-policy modernists faced local opposition. “The community was viewed by Negroes as an almost ideal residential location and far from blighted or deteriorated,” they observe of a Chicago neighborhood similar to Black Bottom. “For Negroes from every class level . . . the importance ascribed by whites to renewal seemed only a flimsy excuse . . . [R]enewal plans were seen as directed specifically against Negroes.”

The origins of the idea of slum clearance date to journalist Jacob Riis, who photographed New York’s Lower East Side in How the Other Half Lives. Conspicuously, his work never included residents’ thoughts about their own neighborhood. Riis’s biographer, Tom Buk-Swienty, labeled him as among the “writers who wrote about the slums focused primarily on suffering and squalor.” As Buk-Swienty noted, however, “there was more to the slums than abject poverty. Hundreds of thousands of families lived relatively normal lives. They worked, although usually under deplorable conditions, paid rent, fed their children and had hopes and dreams for the future. For a large number of immigrants . . . life in the tenements was an improvement on their old lives, offering a more dignified existence.” In an insight that would remain elusive to later Riis-inspired housing reformers, Buk-Swienty maintained that “poverty was not a life sentence, as many writers, including Riis, at times, seemed to want readers to believe.”

The most direct link to the destruction of Black Bottom involves the progressive movement and its latter-day federal incarnations: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry Truman’s Fair Deal. Upset by slum conditions that they knew only at a distance, two well-educated members of the upper middle class—Columbia University faculty member Edith Elmer Wood and Cornell architecture student Catherine Bauer—supplied the intellectual framework for these programs.

For Wood, the physical condition of poor neighborhoods—some of which, including Black Bottom, still included homes with outdoor privies—was the only relevant concern. The idea that communities of private, low-cost, low-income housing—with their local businesses and property owners and dense networks of social and religious institutions—could be way stations to upward mobility and could see their prospects improve as U.S. prosperity improved never occurred to her. In a 1934 paper, “A Century of the Housing Problem,” and in other writings, Wood led the charge against slums and the private housing industry itself. Her work would shape New Deal housing policy. “The housing problem is an inevitable feature of our modern industrial civilization and does not tend to solve itself,” she wrote. “Supply and demand do not reach it, because the cost of new housing and the distribution of income are such that approximately two thirds of the population cannot present an effective demand for new housing. And while some of the older housing is acceptable enough, a great deal is shockingly inadequate. . . . There are housing conditions across the United States which cannot be tolerated in civilized communities.”

If Wood provided the theory, Catherine Bauer offered the blueprints. In the late 1920s, she was living a Bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village, before turning her sights toward housing reform. Bauer was enthralled with modernist architecture, and the idea that it should replace existing low-rent housing. She envisioned a modernist workers’ housing utopia. Photography and architecture dominated her profoundly influential 1934 book, Modern Housing. But her written message was even more ambitious—and radical—than Wood’s. “The need to remove housing from private hands was the principal message of Modern Housing,” writes architectural historian Barbara Penner, in the foreword to a 2020 edition of the book. Frank Lloyd Wright, who liked Bauer personally, called her “Communist Catherine.” As Bauer wrote in the depths of the Depression, when housing construction of all kinds was at a standstill, there “is no getting around the fact that modern housing and much of the framework of contemporary Western society are mutually antipathetic. The premises underlying the most successful and forward-pointing housing developments are not the premises of capitalism, of inviolate private property, of entrenched nationalism, of class distinction.” Not only the physical conditions but also the very idea of a poor neighborhood such as Black Bottom were anathema to Bauer, who believed that private construction would fail to provide decent housing for most people. Modern Housing promoted Le Corbusier–style social housing as a more advanced approach.

Roosevelt took office a year after Modern Housing was published, soon breaking ground on the first public housing in the United States. That included the Brewster Homes, which replaced a small portion of Black Bottom. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had pushed for blacks to be included in public housing, spoke at the Brewster Homes groundbreaking in September 1935. When the project opened in 1938, it became America’s first public housing project built for African-Americans.

But Black Bottom’s fate was not yet sealed. At the same time that Wood and Bauer were laying the groundwork for public housing, the neighborhood was being transformed. Black Bottom was long an immigrant neighborhood—successively German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish. But even in the pre–Civil War era, it was a beachhead for a small number of blacks, such as William Lambert, the Trenton, New Jersey-born son of a freed slave who arrived in Detroit as a steamship cabin boy and went on to build a successful tailoring and dry-cleaning business on the neighborhood’s St. Antoine Street. He was an active leader in the Underground Railroad, shepherding fugitives across the nearby Canadian border to Windsor, Ontario, and corresponding with leading abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison. His Saint Matthew’s Episcopal church remained a community institution until Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, an adjoining neighborhood, were cleared.

The neighborhood’s heyday as a black community began in earnest in the years after World War I, when Henry Ford’s famous offer of a $5-a-day factory wage drew Southerners, including blacks, to Detroit. That appeal grew in 1941, when President Roosevelt lifted a ban against blacks working in defense industries, including the converted auto plants. Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, on the city’s East Side, adjoined its downtown, bounded by Gratiot Avenue, Brush Street, Vernor Highway, and the Grand Trunk Railroad tracks. Both neighborhoods grew increasingly populated.

Race, and racism, doubtless played a role in Black Bottom’s development—and its eventual demolition. The era of Black Bottom’s growth, notes Jamon Jordan, coincided with a period in which private deed restrictions still commonly barred the sale or rental of homes to blacks. The Supreme Court would not declare these unconstitutional until 1948. Meantime, the federal government’s move into the private housing market brought with it not only long-term government-insured mortgages but also the denial of such insurance for loans made in areas where the Federal Housing Administration concluded that blacks were likely to move. By assuming that whites would then flee, the agency deemed such areas high-risk—and drew red lines around them on maps. Thus it was that the Roosevelt administration, not private banks, began the now-infamous practice of “redlining.” As Richard Rothstein explains in The Color of Money, this policy made ownership far more difficult to attain for potential black home buyers. Government involvement in the private housing market, which served to institutionalize racism, meant that blacks in Detroit had to squeeze into Black Bottom.

Nonetheless, business and civic life thrived in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. The Michigan Chronicle, Detroit’s African-American newspaper, says that black Detroiters had “created their own utopia in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, where hundreds of businesses, churches, nightclubs, clubs, hotels, barbershops, and beauty salons were owned by African-Americans.” Residents included Motown records founder Berry Gordy Jr. and “Detroit Red”—later known as Malcolm X. Along such lost streets as St. Antoine, Hastings, and Adams Avenue, estimates Jordan, stood no fewer than 350 black-owned businesses. They included the Jesse Faithful and L’il Soul Food restaurants, the Busy Bee Cafe, the Wolverine Barbershop, tailor and shoe-repair shops, the Chronicle, the black-owned Hardin drugstore, and the Paradise Bowl, a 20-alley bowling facility part-owned by heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, who had lived in Black Bottom after his family moved north from Alabama and kept an office in the neighborhood.

Black Bottom was home to entertainment spots, including the Forest Club, owned by one of the city’s wealthiest African-Americans, Sunnie Wilson. Major blues singers, big bands, and jazz artists—Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie—regularly performed in the bars and clubs of Paradise Valley’s entertainment district. They might have stayed in Black Bottom’s Gotham Hotel, considered the best black hotel in the country, or in the Mark Twain Hotel, owned by Wilson. Both were listed in the now-famous Green Book guide to places where blacks could safely stay when travelling.

Aretha Franklin performing at a 1980 benefit for her father, Reverend C. L. Franklin, long-time pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church, once located in Black Bottom (Leni Sinclair/ Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Jordan also points to the presence of mutual-aid associations. The Phyllis Wheatley Home for Aged Colored Ladies helped elderly widows. The Detroit Housewives League, sister organization of the Booker T. Washington Business Association, organized boycotts of white businesses that would not hire blacks and urged Black Bottom residents to patronize black-owned stores. The Urban League’s Detroit branch—which relatively affluent blacks established to help newcomers from the rural South adjust to city life—had its office in Black Bottom. And, of course, houses of worship were abundant: Catholic and Lutheran churches from when the immigrant neighborhood had been Irish, Italian, Polish, and German; and black churches, most famously New Bethel Baptist, headed by the Mississippi-born reverend C. L. Franklin, whose daughter Aretha was already on her way to stardom when the church had to relocate.

Finally, there were black property owners of single- and multifamily homes. Notwithstanding the conventional view that outside landlords owned “slum” housing, black Detroit boasted plenty of homeowners. Census data from 1950 show that in predominantly black Detroit neighborhoods, 28.1 percent of residences were owner-occupied. Many of those homes also had rental apartments, so they were sources of wealth accumulation. Many tenants, in turn, rented out rooms to boarders, both to pay their rent and to accumulate savings of their own. Such property owning was a route to upward mobility, in contrast with the public housing that would replace the neighborhood—in which private ownership is, by definition, impossible.

Aproximate cause for the decision of Detroit’s civic leaders to clear Black Bottom came in 1943, when a fierce race riot wracked the city. A year earlier, the advent of one of the earliest public housing projects, built in response to the needs of defense workers new to Detroit, had stoked tensions. Named for the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth, the project was located in the mostly white, blue-collar Seven Mile-Fenelon neighborhood, adjacent to an existing black neighborhood, Conant Gardens. In 1942, after the first black families moved in, a wave of violence followed. These black residents were defense workers, and Jordan explains the reaction, aside from its racist motivations, as a post-Depression hangover: whites wanted to be sure that, upon their return from war, they would still have jobs. The fact that blacks were both being permitted to work in wartime factories and live in government-supported housing fueled fear and anger.

Then, in June 1943, groups of whites and blacks fought each other on Belle Isle, and from there, sparked by rumors of other racial incidents, the violence spread into Detroit proper. White mobs attacked, looted, and burned residences and businesses in Black Bottom. “This was a true race riot,” observes Jordan. “Whites were fighting only with blacks, and blacks were fighting only with whites.” According to the Detroit Historical Society, nine whites and 25 blacks died in the 1943 riot, including 17 blacks killed by police.

Detroit resolved not to attempt to rebuild and incrementally improve Black Bottom. Blacks, not whites, were viewed as violent instigators, with Black Bottom and Paradise Valley their epicenter. In 1944, real-estate developer Eugene Greenhut proposed the neighborhoods’ demolition. The idea found favor with Detroit mayor Edward Jeffries. “This area,” Jeffries wrote in 1946, should “be acquired by the city and completely cleared of all buildings thereon. . . . The area [should] then be re-planned, with the object in mind of disposing of as much as possible to private enterprise for redevelopment for housing and incidental commercial purposes after providing sufficient space for parks, playgrounds, schools and other public uses.”

It was a vision of modernist planning, but it stalled for lack of funds and might have languished permanently were it not for the National Housing Act of 1949. Washington funds would make possible both the clearance of Black Bottom and the construction of six high-rise public housing towers, known as the Frederick Douglass Apartments, which, combined with an older project, became the Brewster-Douglass Homes. The plan suited the purposes of two seemingly disparate groups: postwar progressives in the Truman administration, convinced that public housing would provide the “safe and sanitary” conditions that too many Americans lacked; and Detroit’s Republican mayor Albert Cobo, elected in 1950, whose racially charged campaign, following the Supreme Court’s 1948 decision to strike down deed restrictions, included promises to maintain white neighborhoods as white. The Michigan Chronicle characterized Cobo’s election as “one of the most vicious campaigns of race-baiting and playing upon the prejudices of all segments of the Detroit population.”

But progressive housing policy did what even a race-baiting mayor might never have achieved. Because Black Bottom was such a concentrated neighborhood, Jordan says, “it was so easy to just wipe it out.” Business owners, for the most part, received no compensation because, he notes, they owned only their stores, not the land. Renters got nothing but a chance to live in public housing.

The area that was once Black Bottom, in present-day Detroit (© Romain Blanquart/Detroit Free Press/ZUMAPRESS.com/Alamy Stock Photo)

“Public housing,” observes Jordan, in an understatement, “was problematic.” True, it initially provided better physical accommodations for those relocated. “A significant number of people clamored to be on the list.” But “after years living there, all you would have would be rent receipts.” Referring to the FHA’s redlining, Jordan says, “African-Americans would get the projects, whites would become homeowners. And property ownership is the way to accumulate wealth in America.”

Contemporary black–white wealth disparities confirm that observation. In Detroit and across America, blacks continue to live in public and government-subsidized housing disproportionately to their share of the total population. Of some 5 million units of subsidized housing in the U.S.—including all public housing—African-Americans occupy 39 percent, more than three times their percentage of the U.S. population (12.3 percent). Tenants, on average, occupy subsidized housing for 12 years. These projects offer little springboard for upward mobility. Women head 79 percent of subsidized-housing households, while only 4 percent of such households are headed by two adults with children. One gets priority for public housing based on income; the higher incomes of two-parent families tend not to qualify. If a second breadwinner joins a public housing household, the rent, set at 30 percent of income, rises.

Without public housing, one can imagine a different history unfolding for Black Bottom. As black Detroiters became wealthier and the city’s auto plants boomed, black institutions might have renovated and otherwise improved historically black neighborhoods. Small-business owners might have expanded their firms and built wealth. Had the government not been so heavily involved in the mortgage market, competing banks might have sought out, not shut out, potential black home buyers.

Instead, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley were cleared. The Brewster-Douglass high-rises opened. By 2014, the project’s six towers had decayed to the point that they were demolished; Black Bottom, in effect, was cleared again. The nearby original site of Paradise Valley, cleared by 1956, lay fallow for years—a large, empty lot where a thriving neighborhood once stood. Ultimately, Detroit civic leaders, led by United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther, pursued the construction of the Lafayette Park apartments, an upper-middle-class complex designed by pioneer modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Housing reformers got their way: clearance, followed by the anti-urbanism of modernist architecture, both in Lafayette Park and in the Brewster-Douglass Homes. A vital piece of black Detroit was swept away.