What You Don’t Know…

We live in the Information Age: Knowledge is power and those who have it have an edge if they know how to use it.

At least that’s the accepted wisdom.

How ironic when we know that social media, overwhelming the influence of journalism and broadcast media, has helped a flood of misinformation and disinformation…an Orwellian dystopia where big is little, black is white, fact is fiction, truth is a lie…and so many Americans are unable to recognize it and sort it out.

What is knowledge anyway? We believe it is seeking and gathering information about something to such a degree of understanding that we can tell the difference between what is factual about it and what is not.

And yet we are continually amazed not at the knowledge amassed by people but by the opposite: by the reality that so many people do not know what they do not know.

Not a good thing.

THE NYC MAYORAL RACE

Ray McGuire has been a successful corporate executive in finance and investment banking for more than thirty years. While the banking business began to slowly diversify in the late 1950’s, people of color and Jews were still missing from that industry.

And so it might be fair to say that when graduating from Harvard, McGuire was considered a great “catch” as the banking firm’s “token”. Usually placed in a job dealing with the community – if we have one, let’s show him off – McGuire nonetheless impressed and grew.

It is difficult to know what image he had as he decided to run for Mayor. He was not a bold-faced name in the political or social columns. He was involved with some excellent non-profit charities and community work with young people who needed help.

Maybe he just wanted to do more. Maybe after watching a complete and sorry incompetent serve as Mayor for seven years, promising much but delivering nothing, he thought he could do better.

We don’t know…but we do know thia, instead of hiring top campaign advisers he brought in Valerie Jarrett, a key policy aide to Barack Obama in Washington. What did this Chicago lady know about New York politics? And he hired a New Jersey firm to provide the media know how and fundraising/PR …which cost his campaign $860,000…believing something good would happen.

But nothing did because he should have been told to do what Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg did: leave the Democratic Party and register as a Republican.

Knowing who the Republican primary hopefuls were – McGuire, running as a Republican, having the corporate support he received, would have triumphed in the primary and would now be running against Eric Adams to be Mayor of New York. That’s what New York politics is about.

Not knowing what you do not know hurts.

THE PROGRESSIVES AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

One party rule, especially long term one party rule, inevitably leads to corruption.

That is an essentially accepted truth in political and governmental life.

Therefore it is neither a surprise nor unfair to suggest that the Democratic Party in New York City and State is corrupt.

It is an interesting kind of corruption…it is found everywhere in all of the industry, commerce, construction and services that crisscross the city and State and most of it never makes headlines or is discussed on nightly cable news shows..

But it exists and interestingly NONE of the members of the newly developing Democratic Progressive wing ever say a word about it. Do they even know it? There main concern is unseating the Democratic veterans who have served in Congress for years and seem to be saying and doing very little.

And so one by one they push the old-timers out.

It begins dramatically when supergal AOC (now leader of the Squad of young Congresswomen from the Midwest and Boston) defeats Joseph Crowley who was so busy trying to replace House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he didn’t bother to come back to NYC to campaign against an unknown “girl” from Yorktown Heights, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…. and so she won.

And they have defeated Elliot Engel a longtime Bronx leader and other longtime Democrats in other cities across the country.

But it is not what they don’t say that matters…it is what they say.

Their guru, Bernie Sanders, who is delighted with the success of these new kids says this “if I wasn’t a Senator, I might want to do something in journalism helping media understand things like ‘liberal’…liberals are nice people who want to do nice things…and progressives understand that you have to take on powerful special interests to make things happen.”

And it is there that the man who called himself a Democratic Socialist only after he had been elected to the Senate from Vermont, indicates he may not know what he doesn’t know.

What have “progressives” done with the most powerful cause that exists – the issue of “Black Lives Matter” and racial justice in America? Has their superior understanding of “powerful special interest groups that make things happen” given them the special knowledge they need to make change happen?

The death of Eric Garner while being arrested for selling loose cigarettes on the streets of Staten Island, NY shook and disturbed many in NYC. The choke hold that brought him down as he resisted arrest and his cries of ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ which didn’t seem to disturb the three policemen who were engaged in that moment, were deeply troubling.

Family and friends protested with the help of Rev Al Sharpton. Media showed and re-showed the tape of that struggle and finally Patrolman Daniel Pantaleo was singled out as the policeman most responsible. It took NYC five years to finally remove him from the force.

But the heartless, senseless death of George Floyd was engraved on the eyes and souls of all Americans as we watched the video of his strangulation night after night and saw again and again the cold look of disdain and disregard on the face of his cop-murderer. Floyd’s death blew up the nation and was followed by peaceful marches by protesters and rioting by those who took advantage of the situation. The unrelenting call was for an end to racism. It ran right through the heart of America…whether it liked it or not.

And then came the progressive response: “DEFUND THE POLICE” and the quick, lockstep action from progressive Mayors in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York City and State.

Massive cuts were made to police budgets , plainclothes units charged with getting guns out of circulation were dropped,overtime cancelled, an entire class of cadets dismissed, bail as we know it was ended and qualified immunity which protects a policeman from being personally sued was threatened.

And now all of these cities are riddled with shootings. Every night…in all of them…endless shootings for months, needless deaths from those in the path of errant shots…

Where are the police?

We know that crime takes place in certain ‘hot spots’ in every city and that only the police can do anything about it.

We know that these shootings go on nightly because the police are no longer in places they ought to be.

Does the slogan Defund the Police become the only reality for Black Lives Matter and the “progressives”?

Is this really all there is for them?

Has the education of black and brown children improved?

Has the healthcare of black and brown people suddenly gotten better?

Can they borrow money from banks as whites can?

Are they offered the same jobs as whites receive?

Americans – black or white – are not all racists.

But the systems which provide the foundation of living in this country and the Constitution which declared our very presence as a nation clearly are.

And the answers so far – a multitude of some very fine and diverse commercial advertising in our media is nowhere near the end…only a very thin if sincere beginning.

Has “Defund the Police” worked? Clearly not.

Hopefully the Democratic Party’s progressives will learn to recognize that despite their well-meaning desire to hurry up and fix things — as if a Green New Deal can suddenly happen overnight because it should – that desire is not enough.

What they do not know is working against them and against us as well.

PUBLIC HEALTH MESSAGES

The desire to focus the answers to the pandemic of Covid 19 on science is essentially failing because the entire scope of the public health messages coming from the FDA and CDC have been wrong-headed from the very beginning.

These scientific experts have not known how to use messaging to help bring the American people to an understanding of what must be done to rid us of Covid and its endless mutations.

Nothing has been said about the way vaccines have defeated whooping cough, measles, mumps, malaria and a whole variety of contagious diseases.

Instead the terrible message: wear a mask to protect your relatives and friends…fell flat and only the governmental mandates to wear masks or fail to enter supermarkets, pharmacies, retail establishments etc. made mask wearing essential…like it or not.

That was a bad beginning…and the messages have not improved. Endlessly imploring people to get vaccinations has only worked with those who understand the necessity.

It has not and will not work with the millions who believe childhood vaccinations which are mandated before an entry to public schools has caused autism in so many children.

It has not and will not work with those who believe that because the FDA gave drug companies Emergency approval for their vaccines, that the vaccines may not be safe. They do not know that Emergency approval has only to do with financial immunity for those companies: If something goes wrong, the companies are not financially responsible.

The approval has nothing to do with efficacy or safety.

Unless and until vaccination becomes mandatory at least for school-age children – Covid-19 will prosper and kill.

We still want to believe that Covid-19 is something like a bad flu and not a disease of climate change – and so we will finally overcome it as we have with other diseases.

What we do not know, will kill us.