Author: Crowhill Report

I assume you’ve all heard about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife.

My understanding is that Jada Pinkett Smith has been struggling with hair loss, so she shaved her head. Chris Rock made a joke at the Oscars, saying she was ready to play in G.I. Jane 2. Will Smith laughed at the joke, but then saw his wife’s reaction, went up on stage and slapped Chris Rock, then went back to his seat and rudely told Rock not to talk about his wife.

On the positive side, I have to say I approve of a man standing up for his wife, and I’m glad Chris Rock is not pressing charges. If you’re going to be a comedian, you have to be ready to get punched or slapped from time to time. You are, after all, playing it right up close to the edge. That’s what comedians do.

On the negative side, if you’re going to be in the public eye, you have to expect a little ribbing. It goes with the territory. Although it’s hard for a man to sit idly by while his wife is the brunt of the joke.

Overall, I think our culture doesn’t have enough punches and slaps. That is 100 times more healthy than cancel culture, safe spaces, etc.

Or so it seems from this video.

Warning: it’s crude.

I recently heard the claim that the modern world prospers by innovation, not conquest. The claim was made in the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Innovation was also tied to free trade. I.e., the more we trade — and the more horizontal things become — the better.

Those are lovely thoughts, but I think they’re naive.

The modern, western, liberal mind (in the broad sense of liberal) can’t understand Putin, or anyone who would try to gain an advantage by conquest. That mindset is too foreign. That’s not cricket. We don’t do things that way anymore.

Our genius leaders have been under the impression that we will win the battle against communism by giving them access to new markets. Consumerism is going to convert them. Once they have big-screen TVs and smartphones and Netflix, they’ll forget about all that ideological stuff.

It’s not going to work, and the clearest indication is that it hasn’t worked here. Entitled brats in college, who have all the latest tech toys, and drink $5 coffee drinks every morning, are ideologically driven monsters.

Prosperity does not eliminate the human quest for meaning and purpose. The guy who sells blood, fire, suffering, and anguish — with a clear ideological vision — will beat the guy who promises a new iPhone.

The west is living under some very serious delusions. One is that war is never rational. It very clearly is, in some cases. Another is that prosperity trumps meaning and purpose.

We will not achieve or preserve freedom through commercial or technical innovation, or through trade, or with abundant prosperity. Freedom is a philosophical, theological vision that has to transcend those petty things.

I often complain about “rule by experts” — the idea that some saintly genius can figure out the best path, and the rest of us should follow it.

It’s a deadly idea. Nobody is that smart or that saintly. Somehow or other, the ignorant masses, making their own decisions based on faulty logic and bad data, tend to collectively muddle their way through things better than the experts can ever predict or determine. This gets into the mysterious wisdom of crowds.

But there are times for experts. Like when you’re having a pandemic. But you can’t rely on only one kind of expert.

I’m reminded of the dispute between dermatologists and regular doctors over sun exposure. Dermatologists want us to stay out of the sun and wear sunscreen all the time, while regular doctors say Vitamin D deficiency is a far more serious problem than skin cancer.

IOW, just as the man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail, every expert has his own set of biases as well. The infectious disease people aren’t going to look at the problem from the perspective of the economists, or the police, or the civil libertarians, or ….

Lockdowns may have made sense from the perspective of an infectious disease expert, but other experts knew they were going to cause other problems. One simple example is the increase in alcohol-related deaths. Although there were a lot of other casualties of the lockdowns.

I hope we’ve learned this lesson and never again let one set of experts make the decisions.

Now that Joe Biden’s president, the Times finally admits: Hunter’s laptop is real