0:00 - Aaron Sibarium: Exposing Racial Rationing of Life Savings Drugs
5:41 - West Elm Caleb and the "Public Figure Era" of Dating
17:09 - Justice Breyer to retire from the Supreme Court (and Biden already botching the replacement process)
21:09 - Bi-Partisan Regulation finally coming to Big Tech
35:29 - Critical Race Theory: The ACLU joins the battle....and betrays all its principles.
52:09 - Interview with Aaron Sibarium on race based COVID treatment
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Calorie Audio Ladies and Gentlemen, is January twenty two. I am at Bolinsky. This is your weekly dose of sanity, the prevailing Narrative Um. Later on this episode, I'm gonna be speaking with a guy named Aaron Saberium. He's a young journalist who caught my eye a little over a year ago. He's been doing great work, but he did some exceptional work recently. And what I really liked about about what he did was this is journalism with impact. So he brought a story to light that then within about a week of his publishing, it brought direct institutional corrective response, right, So it wasn't just something that got, you know, shuffled all over the Internet and caused a bunch of buzz. He actually had an impact by bringing certain new information to light. Uh. And now what information was that? Essentially the the rationing of scarce life saving COVID therapeutics by skin color um. And I know that some people might hear me say this and hear us discussing and think now that they've got to be exaggerating. There's no way that doctors, medical professionals, and public health systems are outright discriminating against people based on the color of their skin in rational, legitimately life saving treatments, right or that There's got to be some other explanation. But I think as if you listen to the interview, you'll understand there really wasn't okay. So here's what was happening in a bunch of private health systems and in some public health systems, meaning you know, mandated or or instructed by the state's public health department, coming from guidance from the f t A, COVID therapeutics, monoclonal antibodies and some other scarce, scarce treatments were being that the rationing of them was being determined by scoring systems. Right, you get two points for this, one point for that, seven points for this. So literally, skin color would be more valuable in the scoring system than having pretty severe underlying health conditions, and your skin color would be more important than what congenital heart failure or diabetes, or whether you're sixty four years old as opposed to eighteen years old. And literally it wasn't even like the scoring system was broken down by race. Necessarily, it was literally white or not white, and legitimately not being white got you more points in some health systems than being diabetic, and as we all know that that does not track to risk from COVID. Right, you could think like, okay, wait a second, is there another genetic explanation here where you know where people of color minorities are non white ethnicities genetically have a more disposition to harm from COVID And thus you know that that scoring system made sense. And if you investigate it, it it turns out that that's not true, that that it does not track with those factors. That everything tracks with socioeconomic status and other underlying health conditions, but not skin color alone. Yet that's how the scoring systems were were calibrated. Okay, So Aaron exposed this story and literally within a week, a number of health systems walked at back. And I think you that shows just how ridiculous and how wrong these systems were in the first place. That it would that once the story was brought to light, it was so obvious that they needed to be changed. And I don't want this to come off as this is where we've got to get past right verse left or conservative verse liberal. It's just it's a matter of right and wrong. This was wrong, Okay, it is morally ethically wrong for a sixty three year old white person with diabetes to be denied treatment or have a tougher time getting treatment than a than a non white person who's nineteen and doesn't really have any other underlying health conditions. And you think I'm sorry, You think I'm exaggerating that this didn't happen. These things were happening, and in our the we've just distorted and we've torn to shreds these other admirable and noble virtues like equality and justice and tolerance, and and in our this modern quest for these principles, I think that we've really lost our way. And I don't know, some people might want to paint this. I mean Aaron, he's the editor for a publication called The Free Beacon. It is a more right leading publication, and people want to make this kind of this one side versus the other political item. But no, this is just this is about literally keeping people alive. Um and and listen, I'm just very impressed that Aaron at Aaron's journalism here, um, and what he was able to accomplish and exposing this story. So um, you know, dig into this. Listen if you think them that I'm exaggerating on this. Listen to the interview yourself, make your own own determination, and also keep an eye for you know, and and keep keep conscious of the notion of investigative journalism. Okay, because, as I discussed with Aaron, in another error, this would be considered or maybe in this error is considered investigative journalism. Right, But here's the thing. This didn't take any investigation by Aaron, and he even admit this. He literally just had to go compile information that was publicly available. This was all in plain sight. It's something very wrong that once again, as once some attention got paid to it, corrective action was taken. But this didn't take him interviewing whistleblowers at hospitals. It literally was publicly available knowledge and they just expected no one to notice, and for a long time nobody did notice. So I think that also says a lot about the our information environment that at this point the standard for journalism is so low you're not even looking for someone to do investigative journalism. You're just looking for them to actually find stories of relevance and an interest based on information that's readily available. So that interview is coming up after we go after a few topics. I know that one was a little heavy, so let's start off with something a little bit lighter. I don't know if the saga of west Elm Caleb is hit your radar, but good God, if you want to understand what's going on between the sexes and go what's going on in social media these days, this is a pretty good case studies. So Glad the Impaler, Ivan, the Terrible Vigo, the Carpathian God knows who the newest villain, uh pop culture villain that we have as west Elm Caleb? Um, who is west Elm Caleb. On one hand, we could consider him to just be a meme, not an actual person, but he is an actual person and was subject to one of these weird TikTok pylons that is kind of taking the Internet by storm right now. And I think it's very evident of a lot of how the Internet works, how social media works, and it's impact on gender relations. Um. So, a lot of this kind of falls into the rubric of cancel culture. But I think we that's that's a really tired term, right. I think what this is more so when we're publicizing we're bringing what used to be private incidents that have to do with interpersonal dynamics that were handled privately and deciding to hang them up, you know, like a big fish on a hook on a picture on the Internet and make them matters of public concern. So in this case the other day on TikTok uh and this is apparently very prevalence on TikTok that young women will go to TikTok to uh summarize their unfortunate dating experiences. One young woman guests on her TikTok account, apparently she had a couple hundred thousand followers, talks about being ghosted by some guy named Caleb in New York City. All of a sudden, in her comments jump a bunch of other girls from New York who all kind of question mark West ELM Caleb. Apparently there's this there's this guy named Caleb in New York. He's a designer for West. I'm kind of a hipstory dude, as it turns out, and he has a pattern of ghosting girls that he met on hinge And through these this comment boxing, through these social media posts, all these girls seem to have discovered that, you know, that they all had similar experiences with this guy, West elm Caleb. So what are these common experiences? Okay, West elm Caleb. He ghosted people. Um, he sent at least one person in unsolicited nude photo. Apparently he recycled the same Spotify playlist and claimed he had made it just for each girl. Cheesy move, but how much are we gonna hold that against him? Anyways, this thing became a firestorm. As of yesterday, the hashtag west elm Caleb is has over three point four million views on TikTok. They've literally been thousands of videos made about West elm Caleb and so what are these videos about? Right on the this seemed to be On the one hand, it's like this guy has become a meme. He's become kind of beyond beyond the human being. He's now a trope, a a category unto himself. With a lot of young females talking about their own West elm Caleb and whoever whichever guy engages in you know, kind of traditionally caddy behavior, ghosting, flaky, leading girls on and then and then ghost in them after a date or two. Sometimes it's referred to on TikTok as a love bomb. Um. But and then also just your kind of typical cancel culture stuff with a bunch of there being kind of an online hashtag campaign to ruin this guy's life literally to call up west Elm try to have him fired. He's been kind of chased off the internet right now. He put out I think one public apology. But this is a real thing. There's kind of this firestorm around west Elm Caleb, and I'm sure a little bit of it is kind of tongue in cheek because this is kind of goofy and you know, you're at this kind of sappy, lavender colored uh, you know, mid range home furnishing place. And his name is Caleb, and you mailed that together and it's our art is life is stranger than art um. But this really does seem to be evident of how what dating is for young people these days, right um, At every turn, your private dating life could become a matter of public concern and and you're the kind of peculiarities of your dating life could be hung out in front of the entire world for everyone to view. And you know, did west Elm Caleb act in the most uh moral manner himself? No? But at what point are things that should remain private worthy of all of a sudden becoming publicized. We've kind of live in this social media surveillance state where everyone is considered a public figure if you try hard enough. Um So, I don't want this to come as as another kind of missive against cancel culture, because you're seeing kind of an odd reaction to this. Most of the you know, kind of young pop culture websites, the feminist websites, a lot of stuff that it really makes its name off click baity, cancel culture, outrage mobs and whatnot. They seem to be taking a different tone to this than they usually take to these types of little incidents. BuzzFeed, you've got Caleb from West Elm is bad at dating, but probably didn't deserve being pushed through the TikTok meat grinder on vox. Stop canceling normal people who go viral to quote vox, what's worse ghosting someone you met on a dating app or calling up that guy's workplace and demanding he'd be fired for ghosts and someone on a dating app. It's good food for thought, right. It's like, where what truly is moral and ethical? Right? In the cancel culture era, everyone is kind of aimed towards Okay, social new social and moral codes need to be enforced by public shaming and the threat of cancelation and a bunch of people that you don't know finding out something bad you did on the internet, calling your employer and getting you fired. Okay, We took it as a bit of an article of faith that that was a way to aim towards. If the arc of the universe bends towards justice, that's a way to bend it a little more steeply. But now people seem to be questioning that, and not just conservatives, not just free speech warriors, even the very the liberal clickbait websites that usually engage in this stuff seemed to be pulling back a little bit. So you got Box, you have BuzzFeed, rolling Stone, and rolling Stone has become another clickbait emporium um. But even then this seems to have gone too far. The internet uproar around westm Caleb is out of control. One man has become persona on grad on TikTok for allegedly ghosting half the dating populace of New York. But the backlash speaks volumes about the lives of the very quote unquote very online. Here's the thing, west own Caleb. This guy and once he's he's been identified to believe his name is Caleb Hunter. Okay, so Caleb Hunter, this twenty five year old hipster design furniture designer for West Elm. I mean, he wasn't very online. He was not a public persona. He didn't have a big following on any social media platform. Here's just a dude with a Hinge account. Okay, was dating on Hinge and he did some of shady stuff. And he goes to a few girls and some of them ended up finding out, you know, in tick common boxes on t talk post that they all had scheduled dates with him on the same day. Um, but what about that makes him very online or otherwise a public figure. But this is dating in modern age. Like you you trip, you know, trip enough trip wires and you become, you know, subject to public censure. But it seems like that's now leaving a bad taste in some people's mouth. Jezebel very aggressive fourth wave feminist website. Even they think the campaign against Westdalm Caleb has gone too far. They actually have an interesting take on it. Um, they're tied the title of their piece, West dolm Caleb was an algorithmic trap. So their thesis seems to be in and this is one that may be more evident as an argument that a lot of people these days seem to be making against social media in general is that these platforms are juicing their algorithms, are tweaking their algorithms specifically to foment outrage, to indulge outrage simply for the sake of engagement, more eyeballs and more revenue. And and that's that's Jezebel's take on west elm Caleb that this can all be traced back to the TikTok algorithm and they wanted a bunch of people to get that something hashtag like west elm Caleb gets hot and they find ways to surface that and this is how these things spread and that's what caused the pylon. They might actually have a pretty good point there. Um, So I think interesting to track as these more you know, as these enforcers, these online clickbit enforcers of of the new social codes are and these kind of call it some of the foot soldiers of cancel culture. UH seemed to be wondering whether or not cancel culture has gone too far. We we can kind of relate that to you know, looking back now, maybe three or four years past the golden era of the me too movement. I mean, what are really the standards for me too, for the for what would be considered worthy of controversy around a personal dating life. I mean I think that, you know, and I actually watched a couple of videos of some of these younger female tiktoker's. One I believe her name is Kate Galvin, and it's interesting. I mean, what what is the perspective of the young female tiktoker's actively dating in Manhattan? I mean, are they part of the vicious social media pylon or or to the extent that they ever thought that cancel culture might be justified? Why did they so and why might they not think it's justified? For this Caleb guy. And Kate Galvin, I mean, she had an interesting take here and then she said that one quote, gossip sometimes keeps women safe from abuse and for predators, and that certainly can be true. Is that when you spread quote unquote gossip, which I guess this entire west ELM. Caleb incident seems to be the social media version of gossip, right, you know, publicizing or spreading the the kind of you know, idiosyncrasies of people's private dating lies. Right. Um, if this guy truly had engaged in harmful behavior, then yeah, you're warning other women and you're tipping them off to to be on the lookout for this guy. I guess what the Cape Galvin's of the world, and now even the Jezze Bells and the buzz feeds and the slates are saying, is that kind of being a dick is in your dating life does not qualify right, that these these types of things are better kept private matters dealt with interpersonally. You know, maybe you tip off your girlfriends. Maybe your social circle doesn't go and hang out with WESTLM. Caleb, They don't invite him out for a drink if they ever run into him. But uh, kind of putting them up for public censure and public struggle session and potential you know, employment impact and calling up West Elm to get them fired. That's not leaving such a great taste in people's mouths anymore. And uh and could this be a recalibration of the standards and tactics of cancel culture? Um? I think we're seeing a little bit of that, and and I think it's something to be aware of. And you know, once again that could be the case. There could be a recalibration here. Maybe some people are coming to their senses. Maybe a lot of people are feeling off put about making everything public. Maybe people are just getting turned off now by these campaigns to to invade people's uh private lives when they haven't voluntarily made themselves a public figure. And and maybe, and I think that's a really interesting topic to explore as well, like what constitutes a public figure in this day and age when even someone someone like you know, serial hinge data or Caleb could be considered quote unquote very online. So super interesting. Um. You know, I love when these kind of satirical, goofy social media controversies and and episodes you do tell a larger story about where the culture is at and how people relate to each other in the modern era. So this one certainly qualified west ELM Caleb. Um, come out of hiding, Bro, You're everyone's gonna they're gonna take it easy on you. Nothing to fear. Maybe clean up your hinge profile or maybe even terminate your hinge profile. Probably not a good look for a month or two. But if that's the worst that happens to our boy, Caleb, I think he'll survive. So big news out of the Supreme Court yesterday, Justice Stephen Bryer, one of the more liberal members of the Court, announces his retirement um Directly in response, Joe Biden announces that he's going to be replacing Bryer with an African American woman. This is another one of those instances where a decision or an action taken ostensibly in the name of admirable principles like justice, equality, sympathy, fairness, inclusion, what have you. Is that really what is that a true reflection of this decision? And did we not just learn our lesson in terms of choosing a person uh in a position of extreme importance in our society based on gender and race alone? Did we not just looking lesson with Kamala Harris. I mean, she's an unmitigated disaster. She's not helping the Biden administration whatsoever. I mean she's harming the cause of civil rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion by her by her incompetence. She's been promoted well above her capabilities, and it's on display for everyone to see. So we're gonna go and just press rewind and repeat the same mistake in in appointing someone to the highest court position on the highest court in the land and beyond that, Like, does this check out when you when you look at this and said, this is a decision that is just a justifiably being driven by addressing historical imbalances and representation. Well, Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is an African American man. He's one out of eight members. That's twelve and a half percent of the Supreme Court is African American. That's generally, that's just about what the percentage of the popular American population that African Americans constitute. So if you're putting another African American on the court, once again, the problem is in another African American on the court. The problem is another African American on the court specifically because of their gender and race. That's only five percent of the court as African American. That's about eight higher than their UH population share. Right, So this I'm sorry, but the claim that this is being done in order to address historical imbalances, that story doesn't check out a lot of people and want to say it's something that I think is is a pretty pernicious, um and nefarious way to APPROACHSS is that because Clarence Thomas is conservative and a Republican, he doesn't count. I mean, is that really how we want to handle these issues that we're going to make incredibly you know, really important decisions on the basis strictly confine our choices strictly to those that match a certain set of demographic characteristics. But then those who also fit those demographic characteristics don't count if they hold the wrong views. And this is not this is not a healthy way to operate our society. And I mean, is this what is the Biden administration doing? Is this really gonna come off well electorally? Do they think this is not going to turn people off? Do a lot of people and I talked to females and African American industry feel this way, that this stuff is condescending, that this is patronizing in that they're being treated with kid gloves in searches for positions being you know, that people being chosen just because of their race or their gender and not because of their qualifications and and I'm gonna have dive deeper into this next on next week's show, a little more time to let some of the dost settle here. But the the early response, I mean, this is just the Biden administration's racial essentialism, supposedly in the name of once again addressing historical imbalances, and it seems off. It seems miscalibrated. I think it's gonna I think it's gonna backfire electorally. And also, is this really creating a kinder, gentler, more just nation. I mean, are we sure that that that this is even moving the ball ahead UM for its most basic objectives. I'm not so sure it is UM. But the Supreme Court, Uh, either way, it's still going to be about a six to three balance between conservative and liberal. But I don't know, man, I think the Biden administration and its criteria for choosing high level positions is distorted and it's it needs to change. Something else that is making waves and is going to be making a lot more waves, the regulation and moderation of the big tech companies. UM. Just if you don't know, I'm an attorney and I represented a lot of companies in e commerce, digital video, the tech and startup world. Um Obviously, companies like Apple, Google, uh, Facebook, etcetera. These are massive companies. I don't represent those companies, but I represent companies that do business with them, right, So this is a topic of interest for me. So the the first couple phases of the Internet, let's call it two thousand one through two thousand twenty, the big companies were given The government treated these companies with a lot of deference. There was not much regulation in terms of and we'll get to the categories in which regulation might filter through. But they let them. These companies grow, compete, acquire other companies, cansolidate and build their businesses, and build commercial activity on the Internet without much much pushback from the government. So that seems to be changing. And I'm actually going to give the Biden administration a little slack here. I'm actually in favor of some of this, right. I think that there does need to be a closer look at some of the the anti competitive activity in terms of um UH speech and moderation, and I think that we do have to investigate some of the ways to maybe reduce some of the near monopoly market power of some of these big tech companies. But the Biden administration is is throwing out a ton of signals that it's going to do so, and there's been some pretty significant action taken recently. So I'd say there's three buckets to regulation of big tech companies. One is speech and moderation and censorship. UM. That's that's when I'm not going to get into right now, because there actually hasn't been much regulation or legislation around that one specifically certainly a topic of interest of mine. But you know, can tech companies exercise traditional private company rights in moderating their content and determining who can use their services? Even social media companies that do reflect some characteristics of utilities and common carriers, And is the government going to interceed there In the spread of information or quote unquote misinformation, that's one category. Another category is mergers and acquisitions, as these big companies, you know, swap up other companies in their sphere in related industries UM and combine and and concentrate market power and market share across a couple of different subverticals. UM. That's something that historically in the US there had been some pretty strict anti uh anti competitive forces within the government, but that those have not been brought to bear in the twenty century, or in regards to the big tech companies. I mean, if whether you want to talk about Facebook and its purchases of Instagram and What's app um, Google and YouTube Amazon. You know, as we'll get to in a second, they're buying up a number of content companies and and beyond them, uh gauging in merger and acquisition activity, essentially starting their own companies in their own brands that they can then um that that they are then able to accelerate through their own store um. And then the third category is just basic commercial activity. It's like selling products, offering services. Are the big tech companies in terms of privacy UM, offering of services? Advertising? You know, allowing vendors to sell on their platforms. Is what they're doing their anti competitive um uh monopolistic or is it something that should be allowed? So let's go through those those last two prompts. One is murders and acquisitions. UM. The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice just issued you know, some guidelines and a plan to modernize modernized merger guidelines, which means more scrutiny over mergers. There's a new chairman of the FTC. Her name is Lena Cohn. She's very young, she's in her early thirties. I believe she's been an outspoken critic of the market power of Apple, Google, Google and Amazon for quite a while. So, um, you might not realize this, but there's a lot of big tech M and A in the pipeline right now waiting for government review and approval. We've got Discovery and Warner Media. We've got CIA, the agency in their purchase of of formally competitive agency I C M, got Amazon buying MGM, the Movie Studio. And then literally on the day these new guidelines were announced, a huge announcement from Microsoft announcing they're gonna buy Activision for a belief sixty eight billion dollars and one of the biggest mergers in American commercial history. Um So, that raises a lot of interesting questions. Traditionally, you know, you're trying to judge whether or not something violates anti trust law, weather a merger is anti competitive enough to to be rejected um or or to find trouble in its approval. You know, based on which market you're describing, right, But it's difficult to define markets in the in the digital day and age, so you can look at Microsoft. They've got gaming hardware, they've got gaming platforms, and they're gonna go ahead and buy a major developer and publisher of video games just because you can if you can find video games and interactive games on other platforms other than through Microsoft. Does that mean now that okay, you know, the fact that they are such a beheemoth, that they've taken such a large market share. I mean, are we analyzing it strictly within the market of just video game publishers. That's questionable, And these are the types of criteria that we need to analyze. Um. So it kind of ironic that you know that that was announced literally on the same day that the the Biden administration hints that it's going to take a more discerning eye towards big tech and and and technology and media M and A. Then ms Khan has given some interviews recently. Here's some of her quotes. Um, we have to make very difficult choices about which billion dollar deals we're going to ensure we're closely investigating. But they're very real trade offs in terms of what what work is going to come at the expense of what she says, what are instances in which certain types of actions could have a market wide impact. If we're able to obtain a particular settlement or consent to career, get a good outcoming court, what are instances in which that could really change the dynamic in the entire market rather than just you know here there. And I think what she's saying is if they're going to reject oppose certain m and A activity and and uh and deals that would otherwise concentrate market power, I mean, is that really going to move the needle. They don't want to reject a merger and acquisition just for the hell of it. They want to reject it where it's really going to maintain and even playing field amongst the competitors in the space. What that can mean will have to see. But I think it's gonna be difficult because you've got to rely on some precedent, and recent precedent does not fall in favor. How is the FTC or the Department of Justice going to justify rejecting certain mergers of a certain size when certain recent previous mergers over the last you know, five ten years were allowed to go through. So every every um acquisition candidate now is going to be able to make the case this recent merger, this merger in two thousand fourteen was allowed to go through and it hasn't so this market and there's still competitive forces in this market. So how are you now claiming that my proposed merger acquisition um is anti competitive or or would create a monopoly. I mean, just for instance, the Trump administration tried to block a T and T time Warner. They tried to block that merger. It didn't work, right, the courts rejected that. So now you go ahead and Warner Media is being spun off discoveries purchasing them. I mean, it's gonna be pretty tough to reject a a smaller spinoff and purchase of uh of a piece of a deal that was approved, that was approved by the courts just a few years ago. So it should be interesting to see. Um. I think at the very least, I think we can be clear that the Biden administration is going to make some attempts. There's going to be some opposition the idea that all these all these deals are just going to sail through the courts and through the political legislative process with no push back. Um, that's that's a fantasy. So we'll have to see where they decide to push. Another big piece of legislation that could have some pretty significant impact on the way that the average consumer interacts with tech companies that that offer goods and services. It's called the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. It's got to be the most prominent antitrust bill in Congress in some time. And it's actually looks like it's gonna pass. I mean, it has bought bipartisan support. It just passed committee in the Senate sixteen to six. Five Republicans joined eleven Democrats. And so this is not some some uh, there's not a partisan dichotomy here, right, and you're you're seeing both Democrats. There's very few things, if anything, that Democrats and Republicans can agree on these days, but they seem to be agreeing that the big tech companies need to rain themselves in and kind of pull back on some of their potentially anti competitive business practices. So what does the American Innovation and Choice Online Act do? This? First off, this really targets just the biggest companies. Okay, it the the legislation has a threshold on market size and user base, and it literally just concerns Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. So this is about anti self preferencing. This would prohibit tech platforms from favoring their own products or services, disadvantaging rivals, or discriminating against, amongst other businesses that use their platforms in a manner that would be materially harmful to competition on the platform. So the best example of this would be Amazon releasing its own products and essentially giving them the the most featured space on their pages. Right that them featuring their own products at the expense of the vendors and other merchandisers who are trying to sell on their platform. That this may very well impede on their ability to do that. So that sounds pretty reasonable. That sounds pretty sensible. Hey, I don't know if these companies are going to be both the the retailer and the wholesaler. If they're gonna play both sides of that trade, don't let the retail piece favor their own wholesale you know, doing engage in self dealing and self preferencing with the wholesale piece. Um, the tech companies fought this one tooth and nail. Tons of money went towards lobbying against this bill. So what do they have to say and sponns I mean, the most persuasive counter to this legislation, I would say it came from Kent Walker, chief legal officer for Google and its parent Alphabet. His comment, these bills would impose one set of rules on American companies while giving a past to foreign companies, and they would give the Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies unprecedented power over the sign of consumer products. So the second piece, I don't really buy. The first piece, however, is very interesting. They're saying that, yeah, this might be justifiable if we were to only look at if we were to only analyze the domestic market, but that's not how the world works anymore. These digital platforms are are unconditionally available and accessible internationally at all times to a worldwide market. So why are you hampering American companies Because you're not gonna be able to apply these these principles necessarily to foreign companies. So you're putting domestic companies add a disadvantage, and that I think is really the rub and the the fundamental difficulty of antitrust in in the area of ara of globalization and digital commerce, right because if you're if the American government only has authority over domestic matters, but these companies are competing in a global marketplace, and so yes, there is a legitimate, a valid argument that if you uh that, if you limit the business activities and put these these cuffs on domestic companies, okay, foreign companies are just gonna be able to operate without those restraints and eat up market share. So um, something to keep in mind. But once again, it's pretty clear that the Biden administration and even you know, even Republicans in Congress want to start taking action against the largest tech companies. One other piece of legislation that is not as far along as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, but could be pretty influential as well. It's called the Open Markets Act, and this is essentially preventing Apple and Google from taking requiring, uh, anyone who wants to sell an app on their within their app stores from them to take a thirty percent cut of all developer revenue. So they the Apple and Google do have near monopolies over their their own app stores, right, and the concentration of market power there is just astonishing, And hey, if you want to be able to access uh all Android phones or all iPhones. You have to play by Apple or Google's rules, and that requires cutting on, breaking off of every one of your sales to Apple or Google. And some companies have tried to challenge this. Um, you know, a couple of game companies tried to end around on iPhone and and kind of allow for in app purchases that that kind of skirted that we're outside the clutches of of the thirty percent commission. Um, none of that's worked so far, but it looks like Congress is no longer, you know, is not taking such a favorable eye towards that any longer. And so the Open Markets Act would require companies that control operating systems to allow third party apps and app stores and would prevent those companies from blocking develop uppers from telling users about lower prices for their software on other app stores and would essentially disrupt the would would prevent them from essentially from this universal edict that all purchases through their app stores, without fail, must include the thirty percent commission. And if you don't like, if you're an app publisher, if you are a merchandise company, if you're anyone selling anything, if you don't like that thirty percent, then sorry, you don't get to be in the app store. Um. So this is stuff that is going to This is stuff that's going to have a direct impact on your life, right anyone who uses digital platforms and products. Um, there's a lot of stuff that we've gotten used to, but both for good and for bad. And this is something that younger consumers are gonna have to get used to because they're not used to big, big regulatory disruptions in their life for commercial activity. I mean, other generations can look back on a T and T being broken up, for instance, and all of a sudden you had a number of regional telecom companies where before you just had one national company. Things of that nature, and so it might come as quite a shock to a lot of people. But I think some of this needs to be looked at and could be justified. So big tech regulation it's coming. The only question is the scope and whether or not. You know, while it may look sensible from a domestic perspective, are we really kneecapping some of our our best domestic companies in the market for innovation while they're competing with foreign markets? Should be a fascinating one to monitor. So something that popped back up on the news and social media this week that's been popping up quite a bit as critical race theory and the battle over critical race theory in schools. So just real quick, this is not going to be the deep dive on critical race theory and this topic in terms of whether it belongs in school, whether it exists in school. I'm gonna touch on that a little bit, but this is really about institutional decay and what is either informing or driving that or how that's being reflected. Okay, I'll get this will all connect in just a second too. So critical race theory just first off, and there's been a big hub over one what it is and to whether it's actually being taught in schools. You've got all these bills out there that are ostensibly banning critical race theory in elementary school curriculums and high school curriculums, um. But you've got a lot of people claiming that it's not being taught in the first place. So let's touch on that for a second. So what is critical race theory um. Encyclopedia Britannica refers to it as an intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups or human beings, but as socially constructed and thus culturally invented category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color. So fairly elaborate and kind of complicated construct. So is that what critical race theory is entirely UM? Not necessarily because it's not just one specific theory. It's more of a body of scholarship as it's described elsewhere, And I think it's inseparable, and CRT is inseparable from the notion of intersectionality UM and intersectionality the underlying thesis is that all group differences and outcome are the results of oppression, and that that all human interaction can be segmented or kind of defined by power dynamics, where you know, based in every interaction, based on your demographic characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, you are either the oppressor or the oppressed. So that is kind of infiltrated critical race theory, whether or not it was part of its original makeup. UM. So is that being taught in elementary schools expressly UM probably not, but are a number of aspects of critical race theory being taught. I mean, I think if you look closely, I think it's undeniable that the answer is yes. And even beyond that, I mean, there's more than enough evidence out there that a lot of educators and and people involved in the public education system are not just admitting, but I mean they're they're proudly championing the fact that critical race theory is being taught in schools. For instance, Dr Nikolai VD, the Detroit Superintendent of school this earlier this year, even said, our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you'll find it in English language, arts and other disciplines as well. And that's not That's not a one off, folks. Okay, There's a ton of educators out there and even school programs and curriculums that are on their face claiming to teach critical race theory. So the idea that's just not taught in elementary schools, that one is false. You can argue over to the extent to which and whether it's accurate to say that critical race theory is being taught when certain on only certain aspects of it of being taught, but the whole idea that this is an illusion that is false. There there is critical race theory in elementary school curriculums these days. Okay, so what's going on with that? There are a number of bills and state legislatures being passed to you know, the headline is banned critical race theory. But then what are the sub points and headings and bullet points of like what does that actually mean? And I think that this is a very good example of how a lot of these things are being mischaracterized and misrepresented. Um. What was on was going wild on social media last week was around the Florida legislature and their recent bill on this topic. UM. The Associated Press put out a tweet. A Florida bill that would prohibit public schools a private businesses from making white people feel quote unquote discomfort when they teach students or train employees about discrimination in the nation's past receives its first approval Tuesday. So you read that tweet, you read that headline, you think that's ridiculous. You can't you know, prevent anyone from up feeling discomfort. And if you teach about America's warts and wrongdoings. Well, you know, some people might feel discomfort and boo hoo, I mean we need to teach the truth. So then if you actually look under the hood and look at the legislation, does it actually do that? Because a ton of people went and and posted this story on social media with some kind of flippant remark about oh, Florida doesn't want to teach American history, pitiful snowflakes, blah blah blah whatever. Okay, well, what does the bill actually say? So Zayi Gilani, who's one of the best on these topics and credibly moderate centrist middle eroad, you know, kind of sober thinking individual who takes on these issues, and his meta commentary here was this description by the AP is pretty bad. SP one forty eight doesn't mention white people, it mentions race, and it doesn't say it's illegal for someone to feel discomfort before an instructor who espouses promotes advances inculcates that feeling, which is consistent and that this is consistent with civil rights law. So let's look at the actual language in the legislation in the bill to see what it prohibits. It prohibits things such as the following that teaching that an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears responsibility for or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin. An individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity or inclusion. Also per bits that an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or other form of psychological distress on account of his or her raised, color, sex, or national origin. Okay, does any of that sound like trying to prohibit white people from feeling discomfort over the teaching of history. I'm struggling to find an honest reading of that. It seems like a pretty disorder or anything in there that would prevent the actual factual teaching of racial discrimination, slavery, Jim Crow, housing discrimination, or other forms of past historical discrimination that are just inarguable. That would take a quite absurd and i'd say disingenuous reading and interpretation of the statute. And I think it's a pretty clear distinction between teaching slavery, good teaching slavery allowable teaching elementary school children that they, because of the color of their skin, bear some responsibility for past slavery and Jim Crow not okay. Maybe some of you guys think that it's okay to be teaching of children in modern age that they do to the their their group inclusion, and due to the color of their skin, bear some modern day tangible responsibility for the crimes of the past. Um. I'm sorry, I'm not on board with that, and I imagine a lot of you other people, a lot of the other people out there aren't either. However, the claims that you know this just wants to negate or disappear the teaching of slavery um or or a racism in schools, and that that's just ridiculous, and I think any honest reading of the actual bill shows that. But that, of course, you see what happens, right the ap Prince a completely disingenuous framing of the legislation, and off it goes running. And now everybody thinks that Florida's trying to ban the teaching of slavery in school or trying to ban uh, the ban emotions for white people. Once again, this bill does not even mention white or any other specific race. It applies the legislation equally across all races, ethnicities, and national origins. Aside from that, the bill was initially written and instituted by Hispanic lawmaker. But these things all just get completely lost in the shuffle. Okay, So that was that's the critical race theory piece. Then adjunct and adjacent to a lot of the critical race theory bills that are out there right now are what's been called um curriculum transparency bills. So're saying, hey, listen, if you're not comfortable banning certain uh let's say critical race theory. Let's say someone says, yeah, we're teaching critical race theory, and you know something, sorry, that's a valid school of thought and should be taught in schools. And you know, if you if you don't like that note idea, then counter it with other ideas in the curriculum. And you're saying, all right, we shouldn't be passing bills that ban any teachings in school period other than you know, the most other than something that might start bleeding or drifting into what would be already be illegal. Okay, Fair, enough so then there are a number of bills being passed around curriculum transparency, and that is not necessarily banning or prohibiting anything, but simply requiring that school districts post post their materials online and give parents full and unfettered access to the materials that they're in, the materials that they're using to teach the curriculum teach their kids, and any programs that might be informing those right. For instance, uh, a lot of New York schools are now using these sixteen nineteen project is the basis to teach American history, despite the fact that a whole host of factual claims in the sixteen nineteen program have been debunked once again, not not a matter of opinion, just factually incorrect. But let's say, okay, at least your parents should get to know have full transparency into their curriculums. Um it seems like some people even seem to have a problem with that. Um NBC post a tweet conservative activist who wants schools to post lesson plans online, but free speech advocates warned such such policies could lead to more censorship in K through twelve schools. Let's you hold this for a second. They're they're claiming that more transparency giving acts parents access to the materials that are being taught to their kids, uh, could lead to more censorship. Does this seem like a rational thought? Does this seem like that's an honest portrayal of what free speech actually is? Right, Because the whole idea of free speech is that it's that there are ideas that are contributed to a a free marketplace of ideas. But public school curriculums aren't that. Okay, public school curriculums are not debate. They're literally state sanctioned and state programmed teachings. Right, So the state, the state is determining, Hey, we are going this is the program that we are going to teach, and this is in a one way right, it's not a two way discourse, in a one way dispersal of those ideas, We're going to spread these ideas to your kids. So the whole idea of a free speech marketplace that this is stifling simply false. But just beyond the inherent contradiction of transparency and free speech being at odds, no transparence is in the name of free speech. Um, So that's NBC. But then you start to see you're thinking, wait, who who is against transparency? So odd? Um, some groups and institutions that you might not expect, one being the a c l U, the American Civil Liberties Union. Okay, a c l U tweeting out curriculum transparency bills are just thinly veiled attempts at chilling teachers and students from learning and talking about race and gender and schools. The a c l U against transparency. That's fascinating. Okay, that seems to be against their their kind of UM organizing principles in the first place, but also is very much in contradiction to their very recent past. Zai Gilani, you know once against someone I think that you should be following who does great work. And he had put out a recent post in regards to this topic titled the a c l U suddenly reverses its support for transparency so recent. In the a c l use recent history UM, the a c l U of Nevada argued vigorously for transparency when the state schools were setting their sex education curriculum and policies. To quote the a c l U, the days of backdoor decision making are over. Compliance with the Open Meetings Law is meant to secure the opportunity of parents, students, and community members to have a meaningful impact on the development of policy. We are all well served when decisions on the appointment of Sex Education Advisory Committee members is subject to public scrutiny rather than the result of the presentation of a narrow range of interest. That is, Stacy Pratt, legal director of the a c l U of Nevada, okay Um a c l U in Connecticut used records to uncover curriculum and all UH Connecticut. I apologize Kentucky in all of Kentucky's A hundred and seventy three school districts. So I don't think anyone would be surprised when you hear that the American Civil Liberties Union is in favor of UH parental transparency and school in school districts not being able to hide what they're teaching kids. Yet, all of a sudden, when there's a pushback on at least what some many parents and not just right wing parents, a lot of centrist parents believed to be toxic idea around gender rays, all of a sudden, transparency is no longer a good thing. All of a sudden transparency is actually a tool of censorship instead of a tool of free speech. And in a free marketplace of ideas, right, that's that's kind of strange, right, Um, And let's just be honest here for a second. The a c l U something that whose principles and integrity was hard if you could disagree with them on the substance, but you knew that they were very consistent in their principles, that they were always going to defend free speech, due process, and transparency. That's been out the window recently, right, They've become some sort of progressive advocacy group and that that do process, free speech, and transparency are and and equal rights and civil liberties now take a backseat to whatever the kind of progressive milieu or or the progressive cause of the day is. And and this is bad. This is bad when a trusted organization no longer can be trusted. And this is happening to the a c l U kind of across the board some other places where they seem to be walking back. Uh, they seem to be kind of contradicting their their kind of historical principles. So Glenn Greenwald on the a c l U. In a New York Times op ed this week, and this was in September New York Times op ed this week, the a c l U completely reversed its views, arguing vaccine mandates actually helps civil liberties and and that bodily autonomy is not absolute. Okay, So all of a sudden, the a c l U for decades, you know, universally in favor of bodily autonomy against mandates. It would seem that civil liberties and mandates just it's everything of the The argument over mandates is a balance between the benefits of mandates versus civil liberties. Right, the a c l U has tossed that out the window. No longer defending civil liberties. They're in favor of mandates and they believe helps civil liberties. So Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece on that in the New York Times. They've even acknowledged this, that that the a c l U seems to be at odds with its prior, you know, it's prior internal mandate of defending free speech. This from June of last year. Once se bastion of free speech, the a c l U faces an identity crisis an organization, and that that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important. Okay, so this is no secret. Literally they said, support supporting progressive causes is now so important that we're abandoning our principles free speech, do process, transparency, civil liberties, and you know as protection against mandates all out the window. We are now a progressive advocacy organization. This is not good. Okay, forget once again, toss conservative or liberal out the window. It was a good thing that you knew the a c l YOU would always be there to defend civil liberties. You knew the it was good that the a c l U would defend free speech, no matter what whether it was the klu Ku Klux Klan or some liberal you know back in the day, a Lenny Bruce or and other liberal comedian that was running a foul of censors. It's good to have neutral organizations. Having organizations and institutions that are always caping for side of the other is bad. Right, So, regardless of where you are on critical race theory, I think it's very troubling that you no longer have new you no longer have neutral civil liberties organizations, or at least that the one that was more prominent, that was most firmly entrenched in the belief in civil liberties and free speech no longer believes in that and no longer stands for that. Um. So once again we will get deeper into the c The CRT thing isn't going anywhere. Okay, These transparency curriculum transparency bills are wide ranging. There's being battles fought that You've got parents screaming at each other, screaming at school board members at school board meetings, and there's really and the Virginia election recently was to a certain extent decided just on that on this topic. Right, So this topic is not going anywhere. We will dive much deeper into the substance of CRT in this battle, but for a moment, I want everyone to try to kind of reflect on how you know, this really is more so revealing further decay, and once we're neutral and valuable in their neutrality institutions, and we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break, ladies and gentlemen, this is the prevailing narrative. I am at Bolinsky and I'm here today with Aaron Saberium. Uh. He is a journal young journalist who caught my eye a little over a year ago. UM. And you know, even more importantly, he recently indulged in the lost art of what I guess you can call investigative journalism, and even more thrilling, his journalism seems to have triggered a direct institutional corrective action from the topic that he was investigating. UM. He was most recently he's currently an editor at the Free Beacon. He was recently at Yale the opinion editor of the Yale Daily News. Has bylines in The American Journal and other various publications. UM. Aaron, thank you for joining us, Thank you for having met so. The topic on which you conducted this investigative journalism UM was on the apparent rationing of life saving medical services and therapeutics based on race in a number of coming through a variety of state public health organizations and also UM multi state hospital systems. UM. This is one of those topics where at first glance, someone takes a look and says, there's no way this could actually be happening, and there's no way that you know, the medical community could be essentially directly violating its hippocratic oath in denying, you know, in essentially prioritizing race over health attributes and risk factors in the allocation of scarce life saving therapeutics. And then you actually take a look and know that's actually exactly what's happening. Um, So I'd love it if you could kind of give us, you know, a foundation, uh, and an explanation of the issue. What you're you know, what your what your findings aren't. Also kind of how this story caught your eye and what are initially catalyzed you to follow it, to follow it down the path of investigation. Well, so what caught my eye was, Um, there was a well, I guess formerly New York based journalists. Now she lives in Florida, but her name is Carol Markowitz, and she tweeted about the New York policy. She just dug that up. Independently. I saw on a law professor's blog who I followed he had written something about what Minnesota was doing. And then I did some digging of my own and found that Utah, of all states, had its own kind of COVID risk calculator. That incorporated race into it to decide who would get priority for monoclonal antibodies UM. But then what really caught my eye and reading through these documents is that several of them mentioned guidance from the Food and Drug Administration UM, the Food and Drug Administration when it issued its emergency Youth authorizations for the various monoclonal antibodies as well as the anti virals from Mercan Fiser recently. In each of those e ways, they list a bunch of risk factors like die abdes of B, C, B, etcetera. That's that's their definition of high risk and that's who it's approved for high risk people. Then they add uh other medical factors like, for example, race and ethnicity, which is the only sort of sociological factor they list. They don't they don't actually say class, or poverty, or neighborhood or anything else. Race and ethnicitari alliance is single out. You know. It's it's almost like a parenthetical. But these triage plans explicitly cited that and said by saying this, and it's e u A, the f d A is saying that race itself as a risk factor, and thus we are justified in making race alone, not just things that are correlated with race, a criterion for the allocation of medical care UM. And so it's a very good example of how a kind of you know, really just a parenthetical aside, probably deliberately snuck into a UH federal guidance document by activists can then kind of populate throughout the medical system in this decentralized way, UH and form the basis for pretty radical and it should be noted facially unconstitutional UH triage policies. And so just to give if listeners aren't familiar, I mean, in Utah you get two points for being non white, but only one point. Real quick, I just want to interject to make sure everyone understands that the the medical the UH, these these hospitals and medical systems have scoring rubrics, and the scoring rubrics determine where certain scarce therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies go, And Aaron is explaining to you some of the rating criterias for those systems. Yeah, no, no, no, yeah, I'm like really deep into this, so I forget to explain the basics, but but yes, so so, so basically the way it works is you have to score above. Well. In some places you have to score above a certain threshold to be eligible. In other places, the way it works is that just basically they basically just will serve the people with the highest scores first and then kind of go down the list and just you know, deny care once they just no longer have any more of it. Um. But so so. In Utah, for example, their risk calculator gives you two points for being not white, any non white ethnicity you know, it doesn't matter, uh, And it only gives you one point for hyper or I think it's hypertension or congestive heart failure and all sorts of other things. Congenital heart failure. Yeah, yeah, literally, being of Hispanic ethnicity counts for more than having congenital heart failure. And in Minnesota, in Minnesota, UM, the way they're scoring system works, a healthy eighteen year old Asian woman with no underlying conditions, which is quite possibly like the lowest risk demographic, like lower than an eighteen year old white male. Um, you know we're talking like zero presentations of death. Basically, Um, that person would get higher priority than a sixty four year old white male with hypertension. And that's because the age cut off is all or nothing at sixty five, right, Exactly, the exactly basis for for age criteria is are you six, are you sixty five? Or above or below sixty five. There's no gradients of stratification for scoring based on hey, you might be fifty nine years old as opposed to nineteen years old. It's literally if you're sixty four, you get no points for age. Yea. Yeah, So the system was, the Minnesota system was parturely ridiculous, and after it was publicized and harshly criticis eyes, they removed race entirely from their group, Rick, And I want to get to that note, absolutely, And I want I do want to get to the your reporting and then the impact of that, and then some of the retractions in a minute. But I want to kind of just really dig into into the perniciousness of this system in the first place. Um, and so, as you mentioned one these these distinctions, it's not distinguishing even amongst various races. It's literally white or not right, So it's not even distinguishing between perhaps African American or Hispanic and Asian. Correct, and they're not. There are apparent distinctions and differences in you know, health result from COVID for these groups, yet they don't really distinguish them other than white versus not white. Yeah, that's correct. Um, if if it were done, if they gave extra points just to black people and maybe to Hispanic people too, I think that would still be invidious and un scientific in all sorts of ways, but it would at least be a little more in keeping with the data. Because it is true that African Americans are in by many metrics, at higher risk of UH severe COVID. Might in that, I mean, there is no evidence at all that that all non white groups are at higher risk than all white people. I mean that's just there's just absolutely no basis for claiming that, and yet that is the operating principle of all of these schemes. Yeah, and these are once again, this is not this is quantifiable and demonstrative, right, It's not something that is a suggestion that doctors that that in medical professionals within these organizations are within these states, you know, have an option. I mean literally, this is a scoring system and medical decisions are made based on these single you know, the these individual univariate UH univariate data points as opposed to multivariate and that, and it's tallied up to determine who gets potentially life saving treatment. I just want people to truly understand that that is what's going out here. Now. The counter argument you will hear, and I think it's a terrible counter argument that you will hear it nonetheless, is well, okay, come on, but you don't really think that a doctor is going to actually do this, right, Where the counter argument basically becomes, well, yeah, the guidance is absurd, but like I mean, they're not technically they're not really going to punish doctors for not adhering to it. So it's really morgeous guidance, and we'll just rely on doctors to sort of act reasonably in the you know, when the guidance is maybe giving a ridiculous result, of course, that kind of defeats the point of the being guidance exactly exactly. But also, you know there's another dynamic too here, which is even if doctors are responsible, the way it sometimes works in Utah, for example, is there will be an online risk calculator that they direct people with COVID take to find out if you qualify UM and so if you don't need the cut off on that calculator, the state will tell you you don't qualify. Now, you might still be able to go to a doctor and say, hey, um, I'm feeling really sick and I'm worried about this. Do you have a spare dose? And maybe the doctor will give it to you, but you won't have you know, the print out from the website saying you're eligible. And frankly, you know, uh, people don't realize, like average person often just doesn't know, you know, that they can advocate for themselves. If website says you're not legible, They're just gonna be like, oh, I'm not eligible. And you know, if then that person doesn't go and kind of seek care and and become their own medical advocate, uh, they really may end up not getting potentially life saving treatment. That again, like you know, sixty four year old with hypertension is still I mean, they're not as likely to die as like a ninety year old hypertension. I mean there's a difference, but you know, sixty year old hypertension, yeah, I mean they probably should be being directed to care before. In eighteen year old Asian black or Hispanic kid with no health problems, but in many cases the eighteen year old kid will in fact be prioritized for care. And once again, this is not something we're imagining. Guys I know and so many, and we can get to how the fact checkers are trying to treat some of the claims quote unquote fact checkers around this issue. This is litt and this is not being denied either that the hospital system and that public health departments, they're not denying. Some of them them have have changed the policy, but they didn't deny that this was once the policy or the guidance in the first place. Okay, we're not This is not something we're theorizing on. This is actually the the functional policy by the health scoring systems. Yeah. And one more more example that I think is is worth driving home. It's not just governments, it's also the private hospital systems of their own volition um so ss M Health, which I think operates in some Midwestern and Southern states, and it's also notably a Catholic health care system. Yes, yes, they give on their scoring system, they give more points. They give seven points to race and on their scoring system that is more than hypertension, diabetes, ease, obesity, and asthma combined all of that stuff combined gets you six points. Being not white gets you seven. Yeah, you have to score like twenty points to be eligible. So almost half of those twenty points you can get just by being non white. Um. And of course now they're back taking away from it, um. But it's outright. And but you know, they didn't even deny that they did this. They just said, oh, we're no longer doing it. But they literally said that they didn't. They acknowledged, No, this is not something that's disputed. They're not they're not denying that this is the system that at least at one point wasn't the place. And I mean you start trying to, you know, you scroll your mind for what would be the the justification here. And then you've got the New York Public Health Department of Public Health, which is not just not denying that this is what they're doing, but is standing standing by it. They're not walking this policy back or changing the policy. And they offer the explanation that ethnicity should be considered risk factor quote unquote as uh um as long standing systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID nineteen for these ethnicities, and at first glance, for thing, okay, well, well it is their truth there. They do certain you know, Hispanic and African American cohorts do seem in some respects to be dying at higher rates um than white cohorts. Although that's not necessarily universally true. Um so is there some underlying genetic disposition? Right? But no, there's not there. They're not even making the argument that there's a genetic disposition. That is, simply a person of this ethnicity, inherently by their genetic code, maybe at higher risk. Right, that's not what the argument is. Simply that the system there have been quote unquote systemic inequities. Thus this is a way to even out and rectify those systemic inequities. And it seems like this this cough caa esque um circular reasoning where nothing actually has to be proven or put to logical scrutiny, because you can think, Okay, clearly, if a person is of lower socioeconomic status, they had worst diet they were, it's more difficult for them to eat healthy. They might be living in uh, they might be living in heavy industrial areas or in ghettos and be exposed to more atmospheric environment or environmental contaminants. And in that case, you think, okay, wait a second, you know the that should be taken into consideration here, but that's not the consideration, right. They will just they will draw the lines simply along ethnicity and race, discounting environment, socio economic status, or location. So theoretically, you know, I grew up in a fairly well to do part of Los Angeles, but you wanted something else. It was an incredibly verse part well to do part of Los Angeles that the other people living in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood and its surrounding areas. Um. Supposedly, the claim that any of these people necessarily inherently had more exposure to environmental contaminants is fairly ridiculous on its face. Yet you know they do not make those distinctions correct. Um, they don't take poverty into account, they don't take neighborhood into account. All of these things. By the way, I mean, there have been examples of, for example, vaccine prioritization schemes that did do this where they took basically your your zip code into account, which I think is I mean, people complained and I think it may have created some inefficiencies. So so it's not it's not an open shut case by any means, but it's not crazy. Um. I mean it's it's it's certainly less toxic and just spatially insane than doing it by race. Um. The other thing that's worth noting is that, well, some of the risks calculators do take sex into account because men are more likely than women to get uh severe COVID. You know, the Minnesota scheme did not. Um, the New York scheme did not, and I mean I think we all kind of know why because you know, yeah, if this were about risk, they would take sex into accounts. It's men I have COVID a lot more than women, which is for biological reasons. Almost certainly it could be some social component, but it's probably has to do with chromosomes and how they affect the immune system. Um. But of course you know Minnesota and New York don't take that into account. And why is that? I mean we know why, because I mean we know why, like and so so you'll see two with this. I mean, I'm sure there are people who just genuinely people who maybe haven't thought of at it much will. I think, well, minorities have higher risks, so sure, why not? But I think I think, really what's going on here is there's this kind of woke uh morality at play. We're just you have to do everything possible to help people of certain races and not others. Um. And then they don't want to say that explicitly, so they kind of come up with, um, these technocratic rationalizations that are supposedly based on risk uh, but they don't survive yet that it's right. We all know that it's not really just about that, um. And it seems to start to interrupt you. But just this seems to have infiltrated a lot of sectors of society, in particular education. And another area that's a lot of people are starting to wake up is in terms of it's infiltration into childhood education. But it feels like people never suspected that that that you're really crossing a rubicon in it entering into the medical field and the allocation of life saving treatment like life or death, where you're not where the ironing out supposedly the kind of vague, holistic attempt to account for historic systemic inequities that may or may not survive. Multi variant analysis literally can end up with the death of an elderly person who clearly was at hot far higher risk than another person who was able to gain access to certain treatment. And it really feels like this is just a a something that society, our society did for a long time have guardrails about, and kind of disturbing and troubling that those guardrails are no longer there. Yeah, And you know the other thing I would say is that this these technocratic arguments about risk and just saying well, statistically, this group is at higher risk of X, Y or Z. Well, I mean flip that around to talking about policing and crime, and you're not gonna like where that reasoning takes you because statistically speaking, and sometimes these people will say, well, even if you control for comorbidities and socio economics, which still see some slight increase of black people more likely to have COVID, Okay, well guess what when you control for all that stuff, you also find that black people are much more likely to commit crimes. I mean, they're not likely to, but disproportionately commit a higher share of the crime. Even when you control for all sorts of things, true, And what we're saying is that either you have to choose a unil UH single variant, single variant UH way way of analyzing things or multi variant. Either you have to control for outside factors, which would maybe there's some very legitimate counter arguments about the mitigating factors of why the crime rate amongst certain ethnicity groups is higher. So great, if you do want to do a multivariate analysis, Okay, we can have that conversation, but you can't do a univariate analysis in one realm and then a multivariate analysis in the other. But but I also I also think even it's it's it goes deeper than that, because so let's say, I mean, people can debate the statistics, but I think what they broadly show and what you know, let's just stipulate that one group commits more crime. So what if someone proposes, well, we know that that group commits more crimes, So why don't we factor race into our algorithm that determines where police go? Or hell, why don't we factor it into our algorithm for you know, housing prices? Because I mean, hey, like you know some groups commit more crime, well, I mean doing that is it's illegal? Like you can't do that with housing prices like that. That that breaks the law. You can take crime rates and the things into a copy. You can't just use race as a variable. Um so, And I think that's good because we don't. When you when you start allowing algorithms to explicitly take race into account and affect people's lives based on that, you are opening up a very very slippery slope, a whole lot of dystopian things that I think we have. Right, we said, as a society, we don't want to go down, but see we are going down it with medicine exactly. We'll see. Here's the thing. We we said that for a while, right, and that, even if it was not always perfectly implemented. MLK color blindness was positioned as the goal. Right, if you're determining ethics in any system, for so long we said we should be trying to make everything as color blind as possible. Then two thousand tents come around, race essentialism, intersectionality in the Greater Wokening come around, and you say, well, no, you know, because that didn't work out perfectly, even though we're going to deny all the progress that it made. And now we are going to we are going to be fine with racial jerrymandering and race it as a deliberate conscious factor in the analysis of a number societal institutions. And while at first glance you might be able to make some rational argument for it in some realms, what we're seeing now and this, this this issue that you've uncovered, is where that isn't is inevitably where that leads if you don't have as a baseline of goal of a color blind society. If you start taking race into account in all these realms, eventually you get to hey, which grant which person's grandmother, grandfather and her uncle do you get to save that Whose life do you get to save? It's inevitable. And that's a message I'm trying to hammer home to a lot of people who seem to want to indulge a lot of this intersectionality based thinking. It was like, you, guys, you've got to see where this plays out logically, and I think that's what you know you really did with your reporting here. And to get back to that for a second. Um, then we've discussed some of the specifics of how this is implemented then to just so I'm correct, and so the audience understands this traces back to the FDA. Yeah, and now look, I mean the FDA didn't tell states to racially discriminate. All they said was race is a risk factor. But once you say race is a risk factor. And moreover, once you say race, but you know you you leave open that other things could be risk factors. But that's the only kind of sociological one that you list, you know, and a list poverty class. It I think creates a permission structure. And you can see that it created a permission structure because these states literally said the FDA has told us this is okay. Um, they interpret the FDA guidance to you to license explicit racial discrimination. And again, you know, yeah, like the FDA didn't actually say that, and I think that's not a good interpretation of exactly what they said. But still, I mean, even if they know would be used this way, they had a reason for yeah, and they had a reason for for saying it. I mean, they didn't need to include the parenthetical where they say certain conditions like racer, ethnicity, you can also put you at higher risk. I mean they could have said it, They could have listed other things, or they could have said other conditions, but not put the rac or ethnicity thing. They did it in a very particular way, and I mean, I'm sure that they had some inkling of what might happen. Well, once again, it's about guardrails, right, is that Okay? And we'll get to how those guardrails are now re established. Um. I couldn't locate the tweet, but someone wants someone mentioned in regards to this issue, is that there used to be kind of ethical and societal and cultural guard rails to doing this type of thing, that nobody would do it because hey, this is just not right. We we don't want the criticism, the blowback. This will have societal repercussions for us if we engage in racial discrimination in medical care. Right. Um, it's called DuJour right, so in in the actual policy racially discriminating. Um. But those guardrails are no longer there, So now what are the guardrails? Okay, Well, the guardrails seemed to be, Um, good reporting. You want to had your your original story. Um, from the first I believe it was from January seven, was Food and Drug Administration guidance drives racial rationing of COVID drugs A week later there seems to be some corrective action taken. Um hospital system backs off race based treatment policy, and this was after a legal threat, which we'll get to a second in a second, and then Minnesota backtracks on racial rationing of COVID drugs. It's okay, Um, there seemed to be some legal groups that we're going to take legal action, and then also the additional visibility provided or driven by your reporting, and okay, then these hospital systems in public health departments step off that position. How did you, from where you were standing as the reporter doing this story, how did you see these systems respond to your reporting and those other legal threats. Yeah. I think often the way it works is that if you ask people for comment, they think, uh, we don't know if the story will really go anywhere. Probably safer to just you know, not reply, don't give him anything. Then my story got picked up by Fox News, including Tucker Carlson um And and Laura ingram Um and that then kind of open the floodgates. Uh, Steven Miller's group announced they'd already actually announced that they were gonna be suing New York. But ye know, then Stephen Miller's group is like oh well, we might add you know, Minnesota, and you take to the list, uh, and they've already come out with a the lawsuit has been filed against the New York Health Department already. Um. And so once there's all that media attention, and once lawsuits start getting filed, suddenly these bureaucracies uh get called feet I think, and then start to backtrack. Um. But you know, the loss, the legal threat won't really be there unless there's outreach about it, um or at least not to the same degree. Uh. So my yeah, I mean I actually, you know, I don't mean this to sound self aggrandizing, but I think, yes, this is a case in which just journalism actually made a pretty big difference. And the lesson here is both that you need there to be a kind of dedicated legal infrastructure that will, you know, go sure stuff like this. Um. You know, there are conservative lawyers who are doing that, which is good, Um, but we probably need more of them. But you also need the kind of media pr apparatus that brings the stuff to the lawyer's attention and uh, you know, creates kind of a chilling effect for these groups. Frankly, lawyers. Lawyers are motivated by public sentiment and how much momentum issue might have and things of that nature. And hey, you you do not hesitate to be a little self aggrandizing here. It's why I brought you on, um, you know, because we want to try to highlight when actual since there's so little of this journalism being done by those who we've traditionally thought of as journalists, where's where's tangible effective reporting being done elsewhere? And this is one of those examples, um And then interesting in terms of where the media is at on issues like this. And this was even in response to someone um uh mentioning you know, or complimenting you on your work here um to quote you, People often congratulate me from my hard work, which puzzles me because it's not all that hard. The facially unconstitutional policies in Minnesota and Utah were both on the Stag's websites. You really don't have to dig. It's all out in the open for anyone who cares to look, right, That's what I mentioned that you would you know. I was even unsure if you had done investigate investigative reporting, because you don't really have to investigate. All you had to do was go read people's websites, and I think it's people don't quite still understand what's going on that a lot of stuff that want with a little bit of focus and attention are shown to be completely insane, immoral, and contrary to any notion of of a healthy operating society. I mean, they're they're right there in front of everyone. I mean, you didn't you didn't have to work too hard to figure this stuff out, did you know? No, No, it didn't take much work. And I mean I've done things that required more digging, but this one isn't one of them. Um. And Uh, what I think is important to see is that it's it's the fact that it's public tells you something. Right. The fact that they don't feel the need to hide it. Um, they feel the need to back off of it. Once people start saying this is race discrimination, We're gonna sue your asses, But they don't really. But just just at the level of kind of moral intuition, there has already been a consolidation of an elite consensus around racial preferences, not just in higher education, put in basically everything, Um, you know, the kind of woke anti racist Abraham kend x Uh ethos. This isn't just you know, kind of nascent, burgeoning movement within corporate America or public health bureaucracies. It is the mainstream because he's taken for granted, UM. And the only way to de institutionalize this is, I think, with effectively the threat of course of legal action and really bad pr or people showing up to the school board meetings and getting kind of rowdy, because if you just let the system go without interruption, this is the system. It's not just seeping in. It is the system. Now. Yeah, this this is not fringe. This is now the This is the wes Leyang terms of the successor ideology. UM. I've phrased that as an operating system. This is now the operating system. This is now the code written for institutions, and in the absence of any countervailing force, it will creep into and take over every institution. And I think that's a reality that a lot of people UM really wanted to to be blind to for a while, but are now waking up to. And it's what you're seeing with some of the pushback. Another way to put it, for as in the in the terminology of the way it's handled in a lot of private conversations. Um, a lot of people assume the pendulum always swings back. The pendulum only swings back if you push it. Yeah, it does not swing back naturally. Right to go with the operating system metaphor. I mean, you know, you could say that wocism is now the matrix, and the the goal of journalism is too slowly. A good journalism is to slowly red pill with people. Literally, you get them to take the red pill and get out of them, realize whoa, this is the matrix. And then and then you have to find and then you know, you have to to engage in in legal warfare against the quote unquote asians of the system. Sorry, I really love that movie, so I can't no problem. You know, for some reason, never became I'm a matrix person. There's something about it's it's kind of frontal aesthetic that I just never gravitated towards, despite you know, being a Kian new fanboy. But um, hey, I I know I'm in a minority there. So all anyone who likes a good matrix metaphor please marinated that one for a minute or two. Um. On a somewhat related note, and I think this in terms. Okay, you're you're the matrix fan boy. I am the analyze everything having to do with World War Two, and it's surrounding eras guy, I have a strange, uh un inexplicable obsession. And every time I turn on the TV and think, I'm teeing up some new movie I've never seen before, somehow land on a World War two documentary or uh something of that nature. And we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. So, the first piece that you wrote that caught my eye was from American Purpose and it was called the Wymer Wymrarization of the American Republic. This was October two thousand, twenty UM, right before So it is a turning point American society. Right before the Biden Trump election. See, we didn't know who the winner was going to be, and there was in in kind of political and cultural discourse, there had been repeated allusions to as America going through its hym our phase, that pre Nazi era in Germany that was kind of the the preamble and the breeding ground for more you know, authoritarian takeover and downfall of the nation. Um that seemed to share a lot of similarities in terms of um heavy you know, uh division, UM, certain political violence, although I think it's been exaggerated. The American version of that has been exaggerated, and other cultural cleavages that turned out to be irrepair, irreparable without a true collapse. UM. And you gave you know, a fascinating explanation and breakdown of why you did not see America. America in the late two thousand tents is entirely analogous to Germany in the nineteen twenties. UM. So maybe you give us a little hint of the kind of your macro perspective there. And then also has it changed over the past fifteen months? Um, as we've seen the ouster of Trump, you know, the early Biden era, and then some of these cleavages and distinctions about vaccination and other stuff that you've seen. How you know, if you were to do round two on that piece, what is round two of that story looked like? Well, you know, the basic argument of that piece was that there's plenty of differences between the US and Weimar, and so a lot of the comparisons I thought had been irresponsible. But you know, it was called the Bimarization of the American Republic because I thought there was one or two very important similarities, and that was basically that, you know, Vitimar people like to think the evil Nazis who took over. No, it was that both sides, the left and the right, hated the Republic in their own ways. There really was no kind of widespread agreement that this was a good political project. Um. It was a very sick six society. Uh. And it kind of collapsed because of that. Um. And what I saw in October was this kind of cycle of mutual radicalization where you know, the left would accuse Trump of being a fascist, and then he'd say, well, I'm not going to accept the results of the election, you know whatever. It's like, well, okay, I mean, you know, you're not exactly refuting their their talking point there. But then of course, you know, the right would say, well, and you know, you guys like I want to destroy our country and hate everything we stand for. And then we just come from the summer where you know, monuments of all sorts, including to Abraham Lincoln, were being torn down by people declaring the entire nation white supremacist and throwing mulotov cocktails at police stations. So you know, my prediction in that essay was this is going to get worse even if Biden wins. You know, he may be less kind of toxic as a person than Trump, but these these animosities run really deep, and the mutual radicalization is going to keep happening. Um And you know, I did point to some flawed but still I think suggestive survey evidence in that piece that you know, larger numbers of young Americans just don't see the Founding Fathers as heroes anymore. And also pretty large numbers of people on both sides of the political spectrum, at least if you phrase the question right, will endorse some form of political violence, which I think is pretty alarming. Um. So, as of October, I was like, you know, we might start to see some more by Marsque stuff in the future. You know, this isn't great. Uh, November three happens, then January six happens. I would say that all of that broadly was consistent with my thesis, although I focused in the piece a little more on the left, because at that point it just was a fact that nearly all the political what I would regard as sort of political or politically tinged violence in the country that year was was left wing, most because of George Floyd. Um. You know, I I I think if it had been written after January six, obviously that would have been in the essay, and it's an important thing to acknowledge, um. But in terms of the overall picture, you know, look, January six actually kind of proved I think a certain point of that essay, which is not just that you know, things will keep getting more violent, but that or maybe not more violent, but but just more fucking insane. But also that, uh, both sides kind of exploit the others insanity, because you saw after January six there was all this rhetoric which had been I think kind of in implicit and fulminating during the Trump years, but never quite burst out into the mainstream to the extent it did after January six, of you know, Republicans are like a domestic terrorist faction, and we need to have a war on domestic terror. You know, Biden has declared that he wants to do that. Um. And of course, ye know who's a domestic terrorist? Does it mean? You know the key? I mean, okay, so like maybe the guys who stormed the Capitol, I still don't think that's quite the right label, but sure, you know, they're they're bad guys. Some of them maybe did have ties to some creepy groups, but like, yeah, there's got to be a lot of people who just will say, wow, you know, anyone who has X, Y or z perfectly reasonable center right opinion is a domestic terrorist. And and that's uh, particularly with Joe Biden's recent rhetoric around voting rights and really, I mean mission creep being a kind way to put it of what constitutes you know, um, voter suppression and things of that nature, and that things that should fall well within the range of good faith argument about how to ensure election and balance election integrity and voter verification with access to voting are now being painted as fascist, voter suppression and illegal. And it's just beyond what what I mean. Even a lot of Democrats are coming out and saying, Joe, what the hell are you doing? Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, we are getting to the point we're just essentially any dissent from the Democratic Party agenda is labeled as neo Confederate white supremacy by a not insignificant portion of both the Democratic Party, including its leader and the what Wesley Yang called is the vertically integrated messaging apparatus. Um, the media's got a great way to describe in the same he's great, but yeah, no so so I would say, honestly, on balance, Um, I think the Mr essay has held up pretty well, which doesn't give me any comfort. Um, but it has. Uh you know. The other thing I would say too, then, this is something I made a point of in that essay is a big difference between the United States and Weimar Germany is that we really have no kind of authentic blood and soil nationalist tradition of the sort that Europe and in particular Germany had. It's not to say we don't have strains of that. It's not to say we don't have strains of a liberalism or racism, of course not. But but the very particular kind of nationalists just outrage authoritarianism that that Germany had had for a while. You know, we don't have in any thing like that way. But we do have this very strong kind of Protestant puritan um streak, which is probably the closest I mean we have to to an authoritarian tradition. I mean, Puritans were pretty authoritarian in a lot of ways, true, but not as outwardly militaristic, right. I mean everyone forgets like part of you know, and one of the many places where people misremember the Hitler has found, you know, the Nazi philosophies and whatnot. I mean, he didn't think anyone who wasn't blonde. He didn't just think you know, blonde hair, bluide master race. He thought the Russians in particular, were a separate and inferior race that the Teutonic people needed to go conquer and essentially exterminate to create additional living space. Okay, that was an active narrative as part of his philosophy. I'm finding it unlikely there's any particular strain of that philosophy analog to that that would pop up. I don't see that, but what I write exactly, But what I do see is kind of this this um secularized, woke uh version of neo of of Puritanism. Basically, I mean, this is a common argument that um, you know, the Wasps rite who dominated Harvard, Yale, Princeton, that they didn't necessarily I mean that the Wasps gave up their power, but these institutions still function essentially as UM Puritan training grounds. They're just training kind of woke secular clergy UM. And so because I think that WOKESM has more cultural and institutional antecedents in the United States than does uh whatever you want to call it. Not to say trumps UM doesn't draw in any American traditions, but you know, they really kind of ugly radical, you know, racist stuff on the right. Yeah, it's not to say there's no American tradition of that, but it's just not I think, as quite as deeply rooted. It's certainly not institutionally rooted UM in anywhere near the same way as UM contemporary progressivism. So if you have a dynamic where there's mutual radicalizations, mutual articleization, the extremes just push the other extremes to be more extreme, uh, and a kind of hollowing out of America's liberal center. If I had to bet on what kind of authoritariantalitarian movement would come out on top at the end of that spiral, I would bet on the more left wing one. UM. And you know, I that can be a hard argument to make, because I do think Republicans have done some pretty ridiculous things with the voting stuff and the election truth tourism. So that's all. You know, I'm not trying to minimize any of that, but you know, they're just is not like a massive set of media organizations and NGOs and even corporations who are all lining up behind anything that looks like fascism. I mean, they're not. They're lining up behind wocusum so I And to think that's the one that will win. Yeah, it's just so. And this is something that need it needs to crystallize us for a lot of from people at a lot of different times. It's that nobody seems to acknowledge that the the gravity of the center of gravity for power is so lopsided at this point. Look at any vocal, visible institution, whether it be corporate, academic, nonprofit, intellectual, what happen media, and it's all on one side of the leisure at this point, right, And which causes is it supporting? Which principles is it supporting? And then to try and go and and for instance, a lot of people don't in a point that you made earlier, one of the reasons that Hitler was able to uh democratically initially reset to power, he had a lot of support from a lot of wealthy people, pretty much all of the industrialists in Germany, because you know who the other option was, the communists. A lot of wealthy capitalists supported Hitler because the the alternative to him was the communist coming and executing them and stealing their money and replicating some permutation of the USSR in Germany. Okay, you don't have that allied with any kind of right wing or allegedly fascistic UH segment in America right now, and all the corporate power and financial power is on one side of LEDG for the most part. Um. But that's I think fascinating framework to analyze, you know, if you're informed, because God knows how many people decide to shoot their mouth off about World War two the Nazis and get indulge in these comparisons that are completely no foundational knowledge on the topic whatsoever, but will be an increasingly relevant framework to continue to analyze some of these issues on UM. So, Aaron Um wanted to thank you so much for joining us UM, getting the the long form and the expository on great journalism and these issues that can that seem to pop up that our kind of mind blowing that don't really reach the consciousness until someone like you does the work. UM. I think it's really fascinating and really appreciate um the work that you've done and us joining and joining us tonight, UM and so we will. You know, we've seen some reaction, institutional reaction to your work thus far, New York Public Health Department is dug in its heels, but I guess it's something that will continue to monitor and uh, the topic that I'm sure you'll be on top of to the extent that it does continue to pop up. So I wanted to thank you very much. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I am at Bolinski once again. You can listen and subscribe to The Prevailing Narrative on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening right now. Make sure to follow me on my socials at Matt Bolinsky M A T T B I L I N s k Y. The Prevailing Narrative is a Cavalry Audio production and association with I Heart Radio, produced by Brandon Morrigan, Executive produced by Dana Burnetti and Kegan Rosenberger for Calvary Audio. I'm Matt Belinsky.