Friday, July 30, 2021
The Provincetown outbreak does not justify the conclusions you probably heard
Jacob Sullum at reason.com provides some perspective about what you may have heard about the Provincetown outbreak of Delta.
The Government goes off halfcocked followed by the media and politicians - as usual.
What does having a "viral load" imply? Does an equal viral load among unvaccinated and vaccinated people mean anything more than the presence of the virus in equal amounts in, say, the nose? Does it imply a viral load within the body? Is it synonymous with "having the disease"? Does it imply that vaccinated persons should wear masks?
Suppose a vaccinated person is exposed to Delta. Presumably the virus will be found in the nose or elsewhere even if what happens is that any virus entering the person's "system" will be killed by the person's immune system. If the latter is the case then, roughly, the person is like a vacuum cleaner sucking in the virus and killing some of it. While that is positive, the virus that remains in the nose does not get killed and can leave the nose and infect someone else, a negative. But, net, having the vaccinated person not wear a mask kills Delta. Where the tradeoff between killing the virus and having it leave the nose and infect someone else lies determines whether a vaccinated person wearing a mask helps or hurts.
If a person wants to reduce the risk of COVID, there is vaccination, masks, and social distancing. At this point, the unavoidable component of COVID risk and severity of the disease is such that, perhaps, the responsibility for avoiding COVID properly lies with the individual and his preferences, not the Government and its penchant for taking away freedoms.
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Three-quarters of 469 Massachusetts residents infected during a COVID-19 outbreak in Provincetown earlier this month were fully vaccinated, according to a report published today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nine out of 10 cases involved the especially contagious delta variant of the coronavirus, and the CDC reports that it found "similarly high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated people," which it says "raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus."The outbreak in Provincetown, Cape Cod's most popular destination, is Exhibit 1 in the CDC's case for recommending that vaccinated people resume wearing face masks in public places. The study, which was published in the agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, illustrates a point that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has been emphasizing recently: COVID-19 vaccines do not provide complete protection against infection, especially when people are exposed to the delta variant, which accounts for the vast majority of recently identified cases in the United States. The CDC's findings also suggest that vaccinated people infected by the delta variant may transmit it to others, although so far the evidence on that point is inconclusive.
The possibility of so-called breakthrough infections has been well-recognized since COVID-19 vaccines were first tested, and data from England, Scotland, and Israel suggest that risk may be higher with delta than with earlier variants. But the evidence indicates that the vaccines are still very effective at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths—as reflected in the Provincetown cases, which included five hospitalizations and zero deaths. Furthermore, it is important to keep the risk of less serious infections in perspective. Walensky has not been doing a very good job of that, as illustrated by her comments during a CNN interview on Wednesday.
"Every 20 vaccinated people, one or two of them could get a breakthrough infection," Walensky told CNN's John Berman. That statement, which implies that 5 to 10 percent of vaccinated people will catch COVID-19, grossly exaggerates the odds of a breakthrough infection. Walensky seems to have misconstrued the meaning of the effectiveness rates reported in vaccine studies, which is a pretty serious mistake for the head of the CDC to make.
When a vaccine is described as 90 percent effective against infection, that does not mean 10 percent of vaccinated subjects were infected. Rather, it means the risk of infection among vaccinated people was 90 percent lower than the risk among unvaccinated people. As the CDC noted on Tuesday, when it issued its revised mask guidance, post-approval studies of COVID-19 vaccines typically have found that they reduce the risk of infection by 86 percent to 99 percent. That means the odds of a breakthrough infection were much lower than Walensky suggested on CNN.
In one U.S. study of adults who had received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, for example, the incidence of positive COVID-19 tests among fully vaccinated subjects was 0.048 per 1,000 person-days, compared to 0.43 per 1,000 person-days among the unvaccinated controls, yielding an effectiveness rate of 89 percent. A study of U.S. health care workers put the incidence of infection at 1.38 per 1,000 person-days when the subjects were unvaccinated, compared to 0.04 per 1,000 person-days when they were fully vaccinated, yielding an effectiveness rate of 97 percent. In both cases, the risk of a breakthrough infection was at least an order of magnitude lower than the 5-to-10-percent estimate that Walensky offered.
That is also true in studies that suggest vaccines are less effective at preventing infection by the delta variant. The CDC notes a recent population survey in England that found full vaccination reduced the chance of infection by 72 percent, notably lower than the effectiveness rates in studies involving earlier variants. But even in that study, just 0.07 percent of fully vaccinated people tested positive for COVID-19, compared to 0.24 percent of unvaccinated people.
In the United States, breakthrough infections still seem to be rare, notwithstanding the delta variant, as the CDC acknowledges. "The 125,682 'breakthrough' cases in 38 states found by NBC News represent less than .08 percent of the 164.2 million-plus people who have been fully vaccinated since January, or about one in every 1,300," CNBC reports. CNBC notes that "the total number of breakthrough cases is likely higher," since "nine states, including Pennsylvania and Missouri, did not provide any information" and "vaccinated adults who have breakthrough cases but show no symptoms could be missing from the data altogether." But even if the true number is two or three times as high, it would still not be remotely consistent with Walensky's risk estimate.
CNBC also quotes Erin McHenry, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Health. "Our most recent data shows that 99.9 percent of Minnesotans who are fully vaccinated have not contracted the virus," she says.
Last spring, the misconception that seems to underlie Walensky's risk estimate generated an erroneous CNN story that claimed vaccinated air travelers face a 10 percent risk of infection. Confusion about vaccine effectiveness rates continues to show up in press coverage of COVID-19. Yesterday NPR quoted Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland, as saying that "even with a 95% efficacious vaccine, you will have one in 20 vaccinees who are exposed get the disease."
I emailed Neuzil about that statement, which is similar to what Walensky said on CNN. "I was actually misquoted on that one," Neuzil said, "and you are the first one to pick up on it (or at least reach out to me about it!). Sometimes in simplifying we don't get the message right. The bottom line is that vaccine isn't 100% protective, and even at high levels of protection we will have breakthrough."
That bottom line is certainly correct. But in warning people about that possibility, public health officials like Walensky should not distort the underlying science by implying the risk is much bigger than the evidence indicates. This episode is reminiscent of Walensky's hyperbole about the risk of outdoor COVID-19 transmission, which misrepresented the study she cited in several significant ways.
What about the risk that a breakthrough infection will spread the virus to others? The CDC attributes the Provincetown outbreak, which occurred from July 3 through July 17, to "densely packed indoor and outdoor events that included bars, restaurants, guest houses and rental homes." The Washington Post reports that "at least five events sparked the outbreak, so it is not possible to blame it on one party or one bar." Nor is it yet clear how many of the infections were acquired from vaccinated carriers. The Post says researchers "are analyzing the genetic fingerprints of the virus samples" to "trace chains of transmission and determine how commonly fully vaccinated people were infecting one another."
While the CDC's press release says "high viral loads" in nasal samples from vaccinated people infected in Provincetown "suggest an increased risk of transmission," the study itself is more circumspect. "Cycle threshold values [in RT-PCR tests] were similar among specimens from patients who were fully vaccinated and those who were not," the authors say. But they caution that "Ct values obtained with SARS-CoV-2 qualitative RT-PCR diagnostic tests might provide a crude correlation to the amount of virus present in a sample and can also be affected by factors other than viral load." And even if the viral loads in nasal samples from vaccinated and unvaccinated people were indeed similar, it's not clear whether that means the two groups were equally likely to transmit the virus.
An Israeli study of 1,497 fully vaccinated health care workers, reported this week in The New England Journal of Medicine, identified 39 breakthrough infections, the vast majority of which were mild or asymptomatic. Three-quarters of those subjects "had a high viral load…at some point during their infection." Yet "no secondary infections were documented."
The CDC's Provincetown study also warns that "data from this report are insufficient to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, including the Delta variant, during this outbreak." About 69 percent of eligible Massachusetts residents had been vaccinated at the time of the Provincetown outbreak, one of the highest rates in the country. "As population-level vaccination coverage increases," the study notes, "vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of COVID-19 cases."
The authors nevertheless suggest that "jurisdictions might consider expanded prevention strategies, including universal masking in indoor public settings, particularly for large public gatherings that include travelers from many areas with differing levels of SARS-CoV-2 transmission." That recommendation goes beyond the guidance that the CDC issued on Tuesday, which was limited to "areas of substantial or high transmission," a category that did not include Provincetown prior to the outbreak.
In her CNN interview, Walensky conceded that "the vast majority" of COVID-19 transmission "is coming from unvaccinated people." She noted that 80 percent of counties with high transmission have vaccination rates below 40 percent. But she added that "we wanted people who are vaccinated to understand that they could potentially pass this virus if they were one of those breakthrough infections."
That danger represents the combination of two probabilities: the probability that a vaccinated person will be infected, which is much lower than the odds that an unvaccinated person will be infected and much, much lower than Walensky implied, and the probability that an unvaccinated person who is infected will transmit the virus. The CDC's Provincetown study may ultimately shed light on the latter issue. But at this point, we still don't know how many of those cases (if any) can be traced to vaccinated carriers.
"Predominantly," CNN's Berman noted, "this is something coming from unvaccinated people to unvaccinated people." Walensky agreed. "So then you can understand the frustration in those of us who are vaccinated," Berman said. "[We are] saying, 'Why the hell do I have to pay the price for this?'" Here is where Walensky claimed that vaccinated people have a one or two in 20 chance of being infected, which is not remotely true and can only further undermine confidence in the vaccines she is urging everyone to get.
Moving toward 1984
Jonathan Turley gets it right again.
Election fraud includes systematic hiding of information that hurts or helps a candidate.
1984, here we come.
Sound Taps for Freedom.
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I recently discussed how the Biden Administration was actively encouraging corporations to limit speech and impose vaccine mandates as a type of shadow state. Rather than take such actions directly ( and face both legal and political challenges), the Administration is relying on its close alliance with Big Tech and other companies to carry out such tasks. That surrogate relationship is particularly clear in the expanding censorship program carried out by Twitter, Facebook and other companies. Twitter’s action against political commentator Dave Rubin is an example of how these companies are now dispensing with any pretense in actively barring criticism of government policies and viewpoints.Rubin was locked out under the common “misinformation” claim by Twitter. However, his tweet was an opinion based on demonstrably true facts. One can certainly disagree with the conclusion but this is an example of core political speech being curtailed by a company with a long history of biased censorship, including the barring of discussions involving Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election. With a new election looming, these companies appear to be ramping up their censorship efforts.
In his tweet, Rubin stated:
“They want a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago. People are getting and transmitting Covid despite vax. Plus now they’re prepping us for booster shots. A sane society would take a pause. We do not live in a sane society.”
Even President Biden admitted yesterday that he was wrong weeks ago when he assured people that if they took the vaccine, they would not be at risk for the variants and could dispense with their masks. There are breakthrough cases that have taken many officials by surprise. It is also true that there is now talk of likely booster shots.
Rubin takes those facts and adds his opinion that we should “take a pause.” Twitter declared that to be a violation of its policy “on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
As always, Twitter simply refuses to explain its censorship decision beyond these generalized, categorical statements. It is not clear if Twitter is calling these facts misinformation or objecting to Rubin’s opinion about a pause. It does not matter. Twitter does not like his viewpoint and does not want others to read it or discuss it.
This is precisely what Democratic leaders pressed Twitter to do in past hearings. As previously discussed the hearing with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who followed up his apology for censoring the Hunter Biden story but pledging more censorship. One of the most chilling moments came from Delaware Senator Chris Coons who demonstrated the very essence of the “slippery slope” danger.
Dorsey: Well, misleading information, as you are aware, is a large problem. It’s hard to define it completely and cohesively. We wanted to scope our approach to start to focus on the highest severity of harm. We focused on three areas, manipulated media, which you mentioned, civic integrity around the election, specifically in public health, specifically around COVID. We wanted to make sure that our resources that we have the greatest impact on where we believe the greatest severity of harm is going to be. Our policies are living documents. They will evolve. We will add to them, but we thought it important that we focus our energies and prioritize the work as much as we could.
Coons: Well, Mr. Dorsey, I’ll close with this. I cannot think of a greater harm than climate change, which is transforming literally our planet and causing harm to our entire world. I think we’re experiencing significant harm as we speak. I recognize the pandemic and misinformation about COVID-19, manipulated media also cause harm, but I’d urge you to reconsider that because helping to disseminate climate denialism, in my view, further facilitates and accelerates one of the greatest existential threats to our world. So thank you to both of our witnesses.
Notably, Dorsey starts with the same argument made by free speech advocates: “Well, misleading information, as you are aware, is a large problem. It’s hard to define it completely and cohesively.” However, instead of then raising concerns over censoring views and comments on the basis for such an amorphous category, Coons pressed for an expansion of the categories of censored material to prevent people from sharing any views that he considers “climate denialism”
There is, of course, a wide array of views that different people or different groups would declare “harmful.” Indeed, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal seemed to take the opposite meaning from Twitter admitting that it was wrong to censor the Biden story. Blumenthal said that he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” Accordingly, he demanded an answer to this question:
“Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?”
“Robust content modification” has a certain Orwellian feel to it. It is not content modification. It is censorship.
The Rubin controversy captures this raw and biased censorship by Twitter and the other Big Tech companies. They do not want people to read such dissenting views so they declare them to be misinformation and ban the poster. It also shows how such censorship becomes insatiable and expansive with time. Once you give censors the opportunity to silence others, history shows that the desire for greater and greater censorship builds inexorably. We now have the largest censorship system outside of China and it is entirely run by private companies closely aligned with one party.
As Orwell wrote in 1984:
“And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.”
Racism is real, but it cannot be defeated if it is reduced to a political trump card
The title is from Jonathan Turley's 7/30/21 post.
JT is on target (as usual).
My view is that, for the most part, those shouting "racist" the loudest and most often are the racists.
Here is JT's complete post.
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Below is my column on academic work claiming that the Second Amendment is a relic of slavery. The reframing of the debate follows a familiar pattern in academia. Indeed, the same type of sweeping (and unchallenged) generalities was used recently to declare Olympic surfing a relic of American imperialism. The framing of such claims often precede any search for the facts. However, academics know that there is an eager and unquestioning audience for such publications. Conversely, those academics challenging such claims risk isolation and shunning in today’s intolerant environment. What is most striking about this latest claim is that it is directly and comprehensively contradicted by historical sources. Yet, there are relatively few academics who have publicly challenged the claims as media heralds the theory as a type of breakthrough publication. As discussed earlier, the theory is neither new nor well-founded.Here is the column:
Racism seems to be the most common denominator of today’s political controversies. Issues long debated over other grounds — the Senate’s filibuster rule, voter ID laws, even standardized testing, math, statistics and meritocracy — have all been reframed as a choice between racism and equality.
The reframing of such issues in racial terms removes any need to respond to other issues — and it relieves advocates of defending the racism charge. It may be the ultimate conversation stopper — but that advantage is precisely its weakness, particularly when racist roots are less than evident.
The latest example comes from the American Civil Liberties Union, which posted a discussion of how the Second Amendment is a product of racism. Supporting commentary explained how “Anti-Blackness determined the inclusion of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, and has informed the unequal and racist application of gun laws.”
Some media and legal commentators have fawned over a new book, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” by Dr. Carol Anderson, chair of Emory University’s Black Studies Department. Anderson claims the Second Amendment “was designed and has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.” In interviews with media outlets like CNN and NPR, her theory was not challenged on the Second Amendment’s history or purpose, despite overwhelming (and largely ignored) evidence to the contrary. Instead, NPR breathlessly billed its interview as “Historian Carol Anderson Uncovers The Racist Roots Of The Second Amendment.”
Slavery was a matter discussed both at the Declaration of Independence and during the Constitutional debates. However, the suggestion that it was a primary motivation for the Second Amendment is utter nonsense.
States opposed to slavery, like Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island, had precursor state constitutional provisions recognizing the right to bear arms. In his famous 1770 defense of Capt. Thomas Preston in the Boston Massacre trial, John Adams declared that British soldiers had a right to defend themselves since “here every private person is authorized to arm himself.” His second cousin and co-Founding Father, Samuel Adams, was vehemently anti-slavery and equally supportive of the right to bear arms.
Guns were viewed as essential in much of America, which was then a frontier nation, needed for food — but also to protect a free people from tyranny and other threats. (The Minutemen at Concord, after all, were not running to a Klan meeting in 1775.) Law enforcement was relatively scarce at the time, even in the more populous states — but, of course, some writers today claim the first police departments were products of slavery, too, used to enforce that system and to recapture escaped slaves.
The latest claim is reminiscent of the controversy over “The 1619 Project” produced by New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who claimed the American Revolution was motivated in large part to preserve slavery. Hannah-Jones clearly came up with her framing before looking at the facts, which directly contradict her claim. While at least one historian objected during the fact-checking process, it was published and only later corrected, along with other errors.
The Second Amendment claim is equally unfounded, but the argument allows for advocates to argue that this original “antiblackness” continues to shape “the unequal and racist application of gun laws.” This argument is maintained despite the fact that a quarter of African Americans are gun owners (compared with 36 percent of whites) and gun sales have been increasing in the African American community. Some African Americans have long viewed guns as an equalizer, including escaped slave and famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who, in an editorial, heralded the power of “a good revolver, a steady hand.” Gun ownership has a long, fiercely defended tradition in the Black community. Indeed, Ida B. Wells, one of the most prominent anti-lynching activists, declared: “The Winchester Rifle deserves a place of honor in every Black home.”
For decades, the meaning of the Second Amendment wallowed in a debate over whether the right to bear arms is an individual right. Gun-control advocates lost that debate before the Supreme Court in 2008. Now, however, critics can dispense with such long-standing arguments by claiming the amendment is a relic of slavery and a tool of racism. That instantly converts any Second Amendment defenders into advocates not of freedom but of anti-blackness and oppression. It simplifies the argument and silences opposing views.
Indeed, in today’s standard, it is not enough to be non-racist, you must prove yourself to be anti-racist. Yet it is hard to establish yourself as anti-racist if you are defending rules or amendments or countries already decried as being racist. Moreover, if you are trained to view everything through an anti-racist lens, it can become the only discernible option — like the old military adage that “if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
It is even dangerous today to observe that any given legal problem is not a problem of racism. Some are; many are not. But if everything is a product or relic of racism, the “racism” label becomes less notable or less imperative to address.
There is no need to rewrite history. Racism permeates our history, including a war in which hundreds of thousands of many races died to end slavery in this country.
We have continued that struggle through the Civil Rights period and into the current day. But those efforts are hampered, not advanced, by converting all political disputes into zero-sum fights over racism, which leaves little room for debate and even less room for persuasion.
The resulting silence is not evidence of consensus but of intimidation. Racism is real, but it cannot be defeated if it is reduced to a political trump card.
Thursday, July 29, 2021
The New York Times – a victim of the times
Here is Jonathan Turley's column "The Enemies of the State: The New York Times and the Fluidity of Advocacy Journalism".
JT is on target.
Vote for sanity or lose the Country.
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We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. The New York Times has been at the forefront of this shift away from traditional reporting but has increasingly found that the fluidity of advocacy journalism leaves it without any clear framework or standards. Consider the latest scandal at the Times. Justice Department reporter and MSNBC contributor Katie Benner went on a rave about Republicans and called Trump supporters “enemies of the state.” She also made a not-so-veiled call for readers to vote against them. The Times has been in total radio silence over what, just a few years ago, would have been viewed as an outrageous violation of journalistic standards. Yet, just recently, it fired another reporter for a comparatively mild tweet supporting Biden. Professional ethics, it seems, has become entirely impressionistic in the age of advocacy journalism.Notably, many of us denounced Donald Trump for calling the New York Times and other media outlets the “enemy of the people.” The media was aghast and the Times publicly condemned such rhetoric as “inflammatory.” Now, however, journalists like Benner are engaging in the same inflammatory rhetoric and the Times is conspicuously silent.
We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
Benner tweeted on Tuesday during the first hearing of the Democrat-led Jan. 6 select committee was underway: “Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores the America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state.” The MSNBC contributor also declared:
“As Americans, we believe that state power should not be used to work against a political figure or a political party. But what happens if a politician seems to threaten the state? If the politician continues to do so out of office and his entire party supports that threat?”…That leaves it up to voters, making even more essential free, fair access to the polls.”
Benner’s comments are indistinguishable from the Democratic members that she is covering. The problem is that, while the Times has embraced advocacy journalism, its has not updated its guidelines which state that “Our journalists should be especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively.”
While the tweets were deleted, the Times refused to respond to other reporters asking about the tweets.
Just recently, we discussed the firing of Lauren Wolfe, who was fired for saying that she had “chills” in watching Biden land at Andrews Air Force base. Wolfe later penned a column declaring “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That” — a full-throated endorsement of the new journalistic model of open bias and advocacy.
I was critical of Wolfe but the two cases leave many completely confused on the standards applied by the Times. The confusion has been growing for years.
A year ago, the New York Times denounced its own publishing of an editorial of Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House. It was one of the one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful. Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence.
While insisting that it will never again publish someone like Cotton, it has published columns from figures like one of the Chinese leaders crushing protests for freedom in Hong Kong. Cotton was arguing that the use of national guard troops may be necessary to quell violent riots, noting the historical use of this option in past protests. This option was used most recently after the Capitol riot. Yet the Times has no problem publishing someone called “Beijing’s enforcer” who mocked pro-Democracy protesters as her government beat them and arrested them.
Likewise, almost on the one-year anniversary of its condemning its own publication of Cotton (and forcing out its own editor), the New York Times published an academic columnist who previously defended the killing of conservative protesters.
If none of this makes sense to you, that is because it does not have to make sense. Starting with the Cotton scandal, the New York Times cut its mooring cables with traditional journalist values. It embraced figures like Nikole Hannah-Jones who have championed advocacy journalism.
The problem with Benner was not that she is actively supporting Democrats or viewing Trump supporters as enemies of the state. The problem is that she said it a bit too openly. There remain slight sensibilities to be observed even the age of advocacy journalism. So she deleted the tweet and no one is much interested in how such biased reporters continue to cover such stories. Indeed, just this week, NBC’s Chuck Todd denied that there is a problem of biased journalism despite the long criticism of his own overt partisanship on the air.
In the end, it does not matter what happens to Benner. The lesson for others is to confine any such bias to framing coverage rather than directly calling for votes for Democrats or joining in on the condemnations of Trump supporters. One must keep up appearances even in the age of advocacy journalism.
Saturday, July 24, 2021
The Peril of Politicizing Science
Here are some astute observations from Anna Krylov, Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California.
AK is on target, but the peril goes far beyond science.
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It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
–George Orwell, 1984
Figure 1. Soviet history was constantly revised to keep up with the current party line. Historic photographs were routinely airbrushed and textbooks rewritten to obliterate the canceled.(1) Left: Lenin speaking in Moscow to Red Army soldiers in 1920, with Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev standing to his left side, on the steps to the right. Right: Same scene, with Trotsky and Kamenev airbrushed out, after they were canceled. Once the heroes of the Revolution, they had become traitors and enemies of the people. (Photograph May 5, 1920, by G. P. Goldshtein. Part of the David King Collection. Purchased from David King by Tate Archive 2016. Photo copyright Tate.)
I came of age during a relatively mellow period of the Soviet rule, post-Stalin. Still, the ideology permeated all aspects of life, and survival required strict adherence to the party line and enthusiastic displays of ideologically proper behavior. Not joining a young communist organization (Komsomol) would be career suicide—nonmembers were barred from higher education. Openly practicing religion could lead to more grim consequences, up to imprisonment. So could reading the wrong book (Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, etc.). Even a poetry book that was not on the state-approved list could get one in trouble.
Mere compliance was not sufficient—the ideology committees were constantly on the lookout for individuals whose support of the regime was not sufficiently enthusiastic. It was not uncommon to get disciplined for being too quiet during mandatory political assemblies (politinformation or komsomolskoe sobranie) or for showing up late to mandatory mass-celebrations (such as the May or November demonstrations). Once I got a notice for promoting an imperialistic agenda by showing up in jeans for an informal school event. A friend’s dossier was permanently blemished—making him ineligible for Ph.D. programs—for not fully participating in a trip required of university students: an act of “voluntary” help to comrades in collective farms (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Fourth-year chemistry students from Moscow State University (the author is on the right) enjoying a short break in the potato fields during mandatory farm labor, ca. 1987. The sticks were used as aids for separating potatoes from the mud.
Science was not spared from this strict ideological control.(6) Western influences were considered to be dangerous. Textbooks and scientific papers tirelessly emphasized the priority and pre-eminence of Russian and Soviet science. Entire disciplines were declared ideologically impure, reactionary, and hostile to the cause of working-class dominance and the World Revolution. Notable examples of “bourgeois pseudo-science” included genetics and cybernetics. Quantum mechanics and general relativity were also criticized for insufficient alignment with dialectic materialism.
Most relevant to chemistry was the antiresonance campaign (1949–1951).(7) The theory of resonating structures, which brought Linus Pauling the Nobel prize in 1954, was deemed to be bourgeois pseudoscience. Scientists who attempted to defend the merits of the theory and its utility for understanding chemical structures were accused of “cosmopolitism” (Western sympathy) and servility to Western bourgeois science. Some lost jobs. Two high-profile supporters of resonance theory, Syrkin and Dyatkina, were eventually forced to confess their ideological sins and to publicly denounce resonance. Meanwhile, other members of the community took this political purge as an opportunity to advance at the expense of others.(7,8) As noted by many scholars,(7,8) including Pauling himself,(9) the grassroots antiresonance campaign was driven by people who were “displeased with the alignment of forces in their science”.(7) This is a recurring motif in all political campaigns within science in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and McCarthy’s America—those who are “on the right side” of the issue can jump a few rungs and take the place of those who were canceled. By the time I studied quantum chemistry at Moscow State University, resonance theory had been rehabilitated. Yet, the history of the campaign and the injustices it entailed were not discussed in the open—the Party did not welcome conversations about its past mistakes. I remember hearing parts of the story, narrated under someone’s breath at a party after copious amounts of alcohol had loosened a tongue.
Fast forward to 2021—another century. The Cold War is a distant memory and the country shown on my birth certificate and school and university diplomas, the USSR, is no longer on the map. But I find myself experiencing its legacy some thousands of miles to the west, as if I am living in an Orwellian twilight zone. I witness ever-increasing attempts to subject science and education to ideological control and censorship. Just as in Soviet times, the censorship is being justified by the greater good. Whereas in 1950, the greater good was advancing the World Revolution (in the USSR; in the USA the greater good meant fighting Communism), in 2021 the greater good is “Social Justice” (the capitalization is important: “Social Justice” is a specific ideology, with goals that have little in common with what lower-case “social justice” means in plain English).(10−12) As in the USSR, the censorship is enthusiastically imposed also from the bottom, by members of the scientific community, whose motives vary from naive idealism to cynical power-grabbing.
Just as during the time of the Great Terror,(5,13) dangerous conspiracies and plots against the World Revolution were seen everywhere, from illustrations in children’s books to hairstyles and fashions; today we are told that racism, patriarchy, misogyny, and other reprehensible ideas are encoded in scientific terms, names of equations, and in plain English words. We are told that in order to build a better world and to address societal inequalities, we need to purge our literature of the names of people whose personal records are not up to the high standards of the self-anointed bearers of the new truth, the Elect.(11) We are told that we need to rewrite our syllabi and change the way we teach and speak.(14,15)
As an example of political censorship and cancel culture, consider a recent viewpoint(16) discussing the centuries-old tradition of attaching names to scientific concepts and discoveries (Archimede’s Principle, Newton’s Laws of Motion, Schrödinger equation, Curie Law, etc.). The authors call for vigilance in naming discoveries and assert that “basing the name with inclusive priorities may provide a path to a richer, deeper, and more robust understanding of the science and its advancement.” Really? On what empirical grounds is this based? History teaches us the opposite: the outcomes of the merit-based science of liberal, pluralistic societies are vastly superior to those of the ideologically controlled science of the USSR and other totalitarian regimes.(17) The authors call for removing the names of people who “crossed the line” of moral or ethical standards. Examples(16) include Fritz Haber, Peter Debye, and William Shockley, but the list could have been easily extended to include Stark (defended expulsion of Jews from German institutions),(18) Heisenberg (led Germany’s nuclear weapons program),(19) and Schrödinger (had romantic relationships with under-age girls).(19) Indeed, learned societies are now devoting considerable effort to such renaming campaigns—among the most-recent cancellations is the renaming of the Fisher Prize by the Evolution Society, despite well-argued opposition by 10 past presidents and vice-presidents of the society.(20)
There is no doubt that many famous scientists had views or engaged in behaviors that, by today’s standards, are not acceptable.(21) Their scientific legacies are often mixed; for example, Fritz Haber is both the father of modern chemical warfare and the man whose development of nitrogen fixation is feeding the planet.(22) Scientists are not saints.(21) They are human beings born into places and times they did not choose. Just as their fellow human beings do, each finds his or her way though the circumstances of their lives, such as totalitarian regimes, world wars, and revolutions. Sometimes they made the right choices, sometimes they erred. Some paid dearly for their mistakes. Haber(22) was an avid German patriot, to the extent that he actively developed chemical weapons in order to provide Germany with military advantage. Yet, his motherland rejected him because he was a Jew. He was barely able to escape Germany, and part of his extended family perished in the concentration camps. As eloquently stated by Stern in his essay,(22) are we really so morally superior that we can “judge a life by one disastrous deformation, which in some ways epitomized his and his country’s worst faults?”
Soviet history is full of examples of patriotic scientists who were imprisoned and murdered by the regime while proclaiming their unconditional loyalty to the World Revolution—one such tragic figure was Hans Hellmann, who fled Germany in 1933 (because of his Jewish wife) and, despite multiple warnings, came to Russia (because he believed in the socialist ideals), only to be executed by the Soviet regime as an enemy of the people in 1938.(23)
Some famous scientists were brave dissidents, and some were conformists and opportunists. Should we judge their scientific contributions by their political standing, the extent to which they collaborated with repressive regimes, or by how wholesome their personal lives were? The authors of the viewpoint(16) go as far as to suggest that we should use names of scientific discoveries and institutions as a vehicle to promote ideology—that is, as a propaganda tool—as was done by the Soviet, Nazi, and Maoist regimes.
The intersection of science, morality, and ideology has been studied by many scholars and historians. History provides ample evidence that totalitarian censorship of science is harmful to the progress and well-being of societies. Merton’s norms of science prescribe a clear separation between science and morality.(24) Particularly relevant is Merton’s principle of universality, which states that claims to truth are evaluated in terms of universal or impersonal criteria, and not on the basis of race, class, gender, religion, or nationality.(24) Simply put, we should evaluate, reward, and acknowledge scientific contributions strictly on the basis of their intellectual merit and not on the basis of personal traits of the scientists or a current political agenda.
Conversations about the history of science and the complexity of its social and ethical aspects can enrich our lives and should be a welcome addition to science curricula. The history of science can teach us to appreciate the complexity of the world and humanity. It can also help us to navigate urgent contemporary issues.(25) Censorship and cancellation will not make us smarter, will not lead to better science, and will not help the next generation of scientists to make better choices.
The authors of the viewpoint(16) acknowledge historic complexities and the fact that moral and ethical standards change with time. They backed off Debye’s cancellation, quoting the decisions of investigative committees that concluded that Debye did not cross the line. However, they demand that the “Shockley–Queisser limit” be renamed. They call for Shockley’s cancellation as punishment for his abhorrent views on issues far outside his domain of expertise, such as race, gender, and IQ. If, for the sake of argument, we divorce ourselves from the charged political content of Shockley’s publications on these topics, we can compare his minimal scholarly contribution in this domain to Pauling’s vitamin C debacle.(26) Should we cancel Pauling for overstepping the domain of his competence and making medically dangerous claims? Which one is the greater misconduct—publishing a paper with eugenic content or promoting vitamin C as a cure for cancer? Note that in the case of both Pauling and Shockley, the Mertonian principle of organized skepticism(24) has already taken care of effectively separating the wheat from the chaff: while Shockley’s detailed balance paper (ref 11 in the viewpoint) is cited almost 7000 times, his paper on race and IQ (ref 12 in the viewpoint) has a grand total of 15 citations.
Digging deeper into the Shockley case, many of his biographers attribute his well-documented antisocial traits and behaviors (social withdrawal and paranoia) to a mental disorder and describe him as a high-functioning autist. In his book The Gene, Mukherjee uses Shockley to illustrate the ethical conundrums of gene editing,(27) by pointing out that the same combination of genes can be both “genius-enabling” and “disease-enabling”. What if Shockley’s deplorable views were the result of his mental disorder? Should we cancel him anyway? I think we should discuss his mixed legacy and learn from his complicated story, in the same way we can learn from Fritz Haber’s and others’. These stories can teach us about the complexity of the world and of human minds, the importance of tolerance and empathy. And we should leave the Shockley–Queisser limit (and other named discoveries and equations) alone.
The issue of science moralization and censorship is older than 20th century totalitarian regimes. For example, Giordano Bruno was canceled (burned at the stake in 1600) because his cosmological views were considered to be a threat to the dominant ideology. The guardians of the truth, his prosecutors, “had the desire to serve freedom and promote the common good”.(28) A century later, Leeuwenhoek self-censored his studies and reports for offensive content (observations of spermatozoa in semen).(29,30) In 1911, Marie Curie was ostracized for immoral behavior—an affair with a married man (Langevin) following the tragic death of her husband Pierre Curie. The chair of the Nobel Prize committee, Svante Arrhenius, wrote to her advising that she not attend the official ceremony for her Nobel Prize in Chemistry in view of her questionable moral standing. Curie replied that she would be present at the ceremony, becase “the prize has been given to her for her discovery of polonium and radium” and that “there is no relation between her scientific work and the facts of her private life”.(31) Today we regard this attempt to cancel Curie on the grounds of her moral impurity as utterly absurd, yet we continue to witness the intrusion of moral arguments into the scientific domain.(31)
Examples of past cancellations done in the name of maintaining moral purity (as understood at the time) provide a useful context for today’s struggle between free speech and cancel culture. In 1952, Alan Turing was canceled for being gay. After he was convicted for “gross indecency” and subjected to chemical castration, he lost his consultancy job for the British intelligence agency, despite his vital contributions to the war effort, and was denied entry to the United States. About the same time, the University of Minnesota revoked an offer from Michael McConnell for his intent to marry another man.(32) McConnell sued, but lost, with the judge decrying same-sex marriage a “socially repugnant concept,” incompatible with holding a university position.
Today’s censorship does not stop at purging the scientific vocabulary of the names of scientists who “crossed the line” or fail the ideological litmus tests of the Elect.(11) In some schools,(33,34) physics classes no longer teach “Newton’s Laws”, but “the three fundamental laws of physics”. Why was Newton canceled? Because he was white, and the new ideology(10,12,15) calls for “decentering whiteness” and “decolonizing” the curriculum. A comment in Nature(35) calls for replacing the accepted technical term “quantum supremacy” by “quantum advantage”. The authors regard the English word “supremacy” as “violent” and equate its usage with promoting racism and colonialism. They also warn us about “damage” inflicted by using such terms as “conquest”. I assume “divide-and-conquer” will have to go too. Remarkably, this Soviet-style ghost-chasing gains traction. In partnership with their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion taskforce, the Information and Technology Services Department of the University of Michigan set out to purge the language within the university and without (by imposing restrictions on university vendors) from such hurtful and racist terms as “picnic”, “brown bag lunch”, “black-and-white thinking”, “master password”, “dummy variable”, “disabled system”, “grandfathered account”, “strawman argument”, and “long time no see”.(36) “The list is not exhaustive and will continue to grow”, warns the memo. Indeed, new words are canceled every day—I just learned that the word “normal” will no longer be used on Dove soap packaging because “it makes most people feel excluded”(37) (emphasis mine; see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Headline of the New York Times article(37) from 2021-03-13. The word “normal” will be removed from more than 200 beauty products. “The changes were long overdue and ‘completely necessary’..., said Ateh Jewel, a beauty journalist and an advisory board member of the British Beauty Council.”(37)
Do words have life and power of their own? Can they really cause injury? Do they carry hidden messages? The ideology claims so and encourages us all to be on the constant lookout for offenses. If you are not sure when you should be offended—check out the list of microagressions—a quick google search can deliver plenty of official documents from serious institutions that, with a few exceptions, sound like a sketch for the next Borat movie.(38) If nothing fits the bill, you can always find malice in the sounds of a foreign language. At the University of Southern California, a professor was recently suspended because students claimed to have been offended by the sounds of Chinese words used to illustrate the concept of filler words in a communications class.(39,40)
Why did I devote a considerable amount of my time to writing this essay? After all, I am no fan of Shockley; his eugenic views disgust me. Notwithstanding his monumental contributions to one of the most pressing problems we face—harnessing solar energy—I would not want to sit next to him at a dinner party. Yet, the term “Shockley–Queisser limit” elicits no emotional response in me. Neither does “Stark effect”, “Haber–Bosch process”, or “Debye units”. To most scientists, these are convenient labels, which remind us that the cathedrals of science are built by mere mortals,(21) and not some deeply meaningful symbols of reverence. So why should we not humor those who claim to feel differently(16) and rename everything in sight? After all, renaming equations is even easier than renaming cities, buildings, or landmarks.
The answer is simple: our future is at stake. As a community, we face an important choice. We can succumb to extreme left ideology and spend the rest of our lives ghost-chasing and witch-hunting, rewriting history, politicizing science, redefining elements of language, and turning STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education into a farce.(41−44) Or we can uphold a key principle of democratic society—the free and uncensored exchange of ideas—and continue our core mission, the pursuit of truth, focusing attention on solving real, important problems of humankind.
The lessons of history are numerous and unambiguous.(17) Despite vast natural and human resources, the USSR lost the Cold War, crumbled, and collapsed. Interestingly, even the leaders of the most repressive regimes were able to understand, to some extent, the weakness of totalitarian science. For example, in the midst of the Great Terror,(5,13) Kapitsa and Ioffe were able to convince Stalin about the importance of physics to military and technological advantage, to the extent that he reversed some arrests; for example, Fock and Landau were set free (however, an estimated ∼10% of physicists perished during this time(17)). In the late forties, after nuclear physicists explained that without relativity theory there will be no nuclear bomb, Stalin rolled back the planned campaign against physics and instructed Beria to give physicists some space; this led to significant advances and accomplishments by Soviet scientists in several domains. However, neither Stalin nor the subsequent Soviet leaders were able to let go of the controls completely. Government control over science turned out to be a grand failure, and the attempts to patch the widening gap between the West and the East by espionage did not help.(17) Today Russia is hopelessly behind the West, in both technology and quality of life. The book Totalitarian Science and Technology provides many more examples of such failed experiments.(17)
Today, STEM holds the key to solving problems far more important than the nuclear arms race: reversing climate change, fighting global hunger and poverty, controlling pandemics, and harnessing the power of new technologies (quantum computing, bioengineering, and renewable energy) for the benefit of humanity.
Normalizing ideological intrusion into science and abandoning Mertonian principles(24) will cost us dearly. We cannot afford it.
Thursday, July 22, 2021
The American Descent Into Madness
Here are Victor Davis Hanson's observations about our loss of freedom.
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare.VDH is on target.
It's getting late. Vote for freedom or lose it.
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Nations have often gone mad in a matter of months. The French abandoned their supposedly idealistic revolutionary project and turned it into a monstrous hell for a year between July 1793 and 1794. After the election of November 1860, in a matter of weeks, Americans went from thinking secession was taboo to visions of killing the greatest number of their fellow citizens on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Mao’s China went from a failed communist state to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, when he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966.In the last six months, we have seen absurdities never quite witnessed in modern America. Madness, not politics, defines it. There are three characteristics of all these upheavals. One, the events are unsustainable. They will either cease or they will destroy the nation, at least as we know it. Two, the law has largely been rendered meaningless. Three, left-wing political agendas justify any means necessary to achieve them.
Citizenship as Mere Residency
Two million people are anticipated to cross the southern border, en masse and illegally, over a 12-month period. If that absurdity were to continue, we would be adding the equivalent of a major U.S. city every year. The new arrivals have three things in common: Their first act was to break U.S. law by entering the country. Their second was to break the law by residing here illegally. And their third will be to find false identification or other illegal means to continue breaking the law. One does not arrive as a guest in a foreign country and immediately violate the laws of his host—unless one holds those laws in contempt.
Arrivals now cross a border that had been virtually closed to illegal immigration by January 2021. In the cynical and immoral logic of illegal immigration (that cares little for the concerns either of would-be legal immigrants or U.S. citizens), arrivals will be dependent upon the state and thus become constituents of progressives who engineered their arrival.
Yet the issue is not illegal immigration per se. If protests were to continue in Cuba, and 1 million Cubans boated to Miami, the Biden Administration would stop the influx, in terror that so many anti-Communists might tip Florida red forever.
How strange that the U.S. government is considering going door-to-door to bully the unvaccinated, even as it ignores the daily influx of thousands from Mexico and Latin America, without worrying whether they are carrying or vaccinated for COVID-19. Meanwhile, the progressive media shrilly warns that the new Delta Variant of the virus is exploding south of the border. Note how the administration applies standards to its own citizens that it does not apply to foreign nationals illegally entering the country.
Crime as Construct
Crime is another current absurdity. There exists a mini-industry of internet videos depicting young people, disproportionately African American males, stealing luxury goods from Nieman-Marcus in San Francisco, clearing a shelf from a Walgreens with impunity, or assaulting Asian Americans. These iconic moments may be unrepresentative of reality, but given the mass transfers and retirements of police, and the frightening statistics of large increases in violent crime in certain cities, the popular conception is now entrenched that it is dangerous to walk in our major metropolises, either by day or at night. Chicago has turned into Tombstone or Dodge City in the popular imagination.
Scarier still is the realization that if one is robbed, assaulted, or finds one’s car vandalized, it is near certain the miscreant will never be held to account. Either the police have pulled back and find arrests of criminals a lose-lose situation, or radical big-city district attorneys see the law as a critical legal theory construct, and thus will not enforce it. Or the criminal will be arrested and released within hours.
So a subculture has developed among Americans, of passing information about where in the country it is safe, where it is not, and where one can go, where one cannot. This is clearly not America, but something bizarre out of Sao Paulo, Durban, or Caracas.
The Campus Con
The universities over the past 40 years were intolerant, hard Left, and increasingly anti-constitutional. But they also fostered a golden-goose confidence scheme that administrators dared not injure, given the precious eggs of federally guaranteed student loans that ensured zero academic accountability and sent tuition costs into the stratosphere. There was an unquestioned supposition that a degree of any sort, of any major, was the ticket to American success. In cynical fashion, we shrugged that most prestigious institutions were little more than cattle branders that stamped graduates with imprints that gave them unearned privilege for life.
Yet universities now have both hands around their golden goose’s neck and are determined to strangle it. The public is becoming repulsed at the woke McCarthyite culture on campus, and will be more turned off when campuses open in the fall in 2019-style. At the Ivy League or major state university campuses, admissions are no longer based on proportional representation in the context of affirmative action, but are defined increasingly by a reparatory character.
Grades, test scores, and “activities” of the white and Asian male college applicants are growing less relevant. Only “privileged” white males with sports skills, connections, or families who give lots of money are exempt from the new racial reparation quotas. The new woke admission policy ironically is targeting the liberal suburban professional family, the Left’s constituency, whose lives are so fixated on whether children graduate from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, or like campuses.
Given the radical change in incoming student profiles, the faculty increasingly will have to choose between accusations of racism, or grading regardless of actual performance, given thousands of new enrollees do not meet the entrance standards of just two or three years ago. Remember that since wokeism was always a top-down elite industry, minority progressives still will fight it out with white leftists in intramural scraps over titles, salaries, and managerial posts.
The public has had enough. For the first time, people will ask why are we subsidizing student loans, why are multibillion-dollar endowments not taxed, and why do we think a B.A. in sociology or psychology or gender studies is an “investment” that prepares anyone for anything?
Commissars and Jacobins
The critical race theory craze is reaching peak woke, or is already on the downslope. No complex and sophisticated society is sustainable with a Maoist creed of cannibalizing citizens for thought crimes. Commissars do not produce anything or serve anybody, but only monitor thoughts and speech to ascertain the purity of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are not just a drain on the productive sector but will insidiously destroy it, since their currency is to ensure a timid, obsequiousness and banal orthodoxy.
We know from the failed Soviet system and from the French Revolution that the most mediocre in society became its most eager auditors of correct behavior. The arbiters of proper thought—the self-righteous paid toady, the perpetual victim employed in service to government payback, the freelancing snitch—were always the villains of freedom, productivity, and humanity, whether we read of the killing off of Alexander the Great’s inner circle, the forced suicides of the Neronian circle, the Jacobin murder spree, or the nightmarish world described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
That the Biden Administration has now joined with Silicon Valley to hunt down on social media any dissenters from this month’s official policy on vaccinations and mask-wearing was not so shocking as to be expected from a media that banned coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In Cuban-fashion, millions of judge-jury-executioner online snitches, with government encouragement, will help root out incorrect thoughts at light speed.
Inflation Is a Mere Construct
We used to know what inflation was, its pernicious role in past civilizations, and how to combat it. The danger of worthless currency is a staple of classical literature from Aristophanes to Procopius. The scary fact is not just that we are destroying the value of our money—the exploding price of gas, food, appliances, lumber, power, and housing are overwhelming even Joe Biden’s entitlement machine—but that we are constructing pseudoeconomics to justify the nihilism.
Right now, we witness a multitrillion-dollar fight over borrowing beyond our $30 trillion debt to build “infrastructure,” a word that has been expanded to include mostly anything but roads and bridges. What exactly is so liberal about the farmworker paying $5 a gallon for gas to commute to the fields, the small contractor doing a remodeling job with plywood at $80 a sheet, or the young couple whose loan qualification is always a month behind the soaring price of a new home?
Our People’s Military
Americans during this entire descent in madness sighed, “Well, at least there is the military left.” By that, I think they meant John Brennan had all but wrecked the CIA, while James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Kevin Clinesmith, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, et al. had weaponized the FBI. But the military was still a bastion of traditional, nonpartisan service, whose prime directive was to defend the country, win any war it was ordered to fight, and to maintain deterrence against opportunistic enemies. It was not envisioned as a “people’s army.” It was not a revolutionary Napoleonic “nation in arms.” And it was not a “liberation army.” The Constitution, 233 years of tradition, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice all reassured America of its wonderful defense forces.
And now? We are in the process of a massive reeducation and indoctrination campaign. The revamping not only draws scarce resources away from military readiness, but targets, without evidence, the white working class, and defames it as insurrectionary—the very same cohort that disproportionately died in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If only General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, had been as animated, as combative, and as fired up in congressional testimony about winning in Afghanistan or deterring the Chinese in the waters off Taiwan as they were in defense of their recommended lists of Marxist-inspired critical race theory texts!
One purpose of the Uniform Code of Military Justice was not to prevent retired top brass from attacking beloved presidents, or even blasé ones. Its aim was to remind the country that it is the business of civilians, not pensioned retired military subject to recall in times of crisis, to galvanize opinion against loudmouth unpopular presidents like Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, or Donald Trump.
The reason why the “revolving door” became a bipartisan worry was that four-star officers had mastered the navigation of Pentagon procurement. They possessed a rare skill easily—and hugely—monetized upon retirement, and thus its use was to be discouraged wholeheartedly.
And now?
The code is a mere construct. The revolving door is an advertisement for advancing to high rank. Policing the thoughts of American soldiers is apparently more important than fathoming the minds of our enemies on the battlefield.
Keep Cuba Castroite?
What was so hard about understanding that Cuba since 1959 has been a Communist gulag, antithetical to human freedom and consensual government? What was so difficult about conceding that Cuba had been an ally of the nuclear Soviet Union, always egging it on to war against the United States?
Yet here we are with protestors against a failed, evil state in the streets of Havana, and our own government, media, and professional classes are worried that ossified Communism in Cuba may fall.
After opening the U.S. southern border to pseudo-political refugees, the Biden Administration is terrified that thousands of real ones might come to Miami in the fashion it invited millions to storm into Texas. The Biden Administration, and the Left in general, finally revealed what many of us have known: it had no real ideological view on illegal immigration. Its immigration policy was entirely utilitarian and hinged only on whether illegal immigration altered the demography of the electorate in the correct way.
The United Nations Über Alles
Finally, almost all Americans used to agree that the U.S. Constitution was unique and guaranteed personal freedom in a way the United Nations charter could not. Dozens of fascist, Communist, totalitarian, and authoritarian regimes, usually the majority of governments on earth, ensured that any General Assembly or U.N. committee ruling would parrot the views of its illiberal and corrupt members.
Not anymore. Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has invited in the U.N. to assess whether the United States meets global standards of justice or, in fact, is racist and in need of global censure: “I urge all U.N. member states to join the United States in this effort, and confront the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia,” he said last week.
That is like asking Libya in 2001 to assess whether our airline pilot training met proper standards or having China adjudicate the conditions in U.S. prisons.
America went from the freest country in the world in December 2019 to a repressive, and frightening place by July 2021. It went not so much hard-Left, as stark-raving mad.
That abrupt descent, too, is not workable and millions will collectively decide they have no choice but to push back and conclude, “In the 233rd year of our republic, we tens of millions are not going to cede freedom of thought and expression to thousands of Maoists. Sorry, no can do.”
Friday, July 16, 2021
Home invasion: The Coker Family Incident
Here is Masaad Ayoob at The American Handgunner writing about a home invasion incident where the intended victims were able to defend themselves successfully with their guns.
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Situation: Home invasion in a nice neighborhood on a morning like any other.Lesson: Nice neighborhoods aren’t immune. Pick up the gun before you run to the danger. If you and your spouse are both armed and trained, you’re more than the sum of your parts
In the house, Pamela and Foster Coker slept peacefully, their seven-year-old grandson slumbering in the guest room. They regularly had members of their church over to their home for game nights and Star Trek marathons: These were the strangers Yates had observed and misidentified.
They had no way of knowing Marquise was coming.
Morning
At about 6:20 the following morning, Pam had been the first of the family to arise, the little boy and her husband each sleeping in. She went to the dining room to dress so she wouldn’t wake anyone. She heard a loud thump at the back door. Because the neighborhood was home to many feral cats and other animals, she thought nothing of it.
But then she heard another, louder noise, and realized it was something else. A very tall man burst through the door he had just kicked down, spotted her, and lunged at her. She turned and ran, but he was too fast. He grabbed her and slammed her brutally to the floor. Pain shot through her body. She screamed out to her husband.
At about 6:20 the following morning, Pam had been the first of the family to arise, the little boy and her husband each sleeping in. She went to the dining room to dress so she wouldn’t wake anyone. She heard a loud thump at the back door. Because the neighborhood was home to many feral cats and other animals, she thought nothing of it.
But then she heard another, louder noise, and realized it was something else. A very tall man burst through the door he had just kicked down, spotted her, and lunged at her. She turned and ran, but he was too fast. He grabbed her and slammed her brutally to the floor. Pain shot through her body. She screamed out to her husband.
Awakened
Pam’s screams jolt Foster from a deep sleep. He bolts from the bed clad only in his sleepwear, an old favorite tee shirt and a pair of gym shorts, and runs to the sound, his heart already racing. As urgency blasts him wide awake, he realizes what she is shouting is “Get your gun!” but the family weaponry is already far behind him in the bedroom. He is both barefooted and barehanded.
Foster explodes into the living room to see his wife crumpled at the feet of the towering attacker. He lunges at the man, grappling with him, pushing him back away from his injured wife.
The masked intruder smashes him in the head with some hard object. He can’t see what it is. Through the fog of the head blow and the blood beginning to pour from his scalp into his eyes, Foster can see something long and black protruding from the bottom of the man’s hand. “A pipe,” he thinks, as the man hits him again and again.
Pam’s screams jolt Foster from a deep sleep. He bolts from the bed clad only in his sleepwear, an old favorite tee shirt and a pair of gym shorts, and runs to the sound, his heart already racing. As urgency blasts him wide awake, he realizes what she is shouting is “Get your gun!” but the family weaponry is already far behind him in the bedroom. He is both barefooted and barehanded.
Foster explodes into the living room to see his wife crumpled at the feet of the towering attacker. He lunges at the man, grappling with him, pushing him back away from his injured wife.
The masked intruder smashes him in the head with some hard object. He can’t see what it is. Through the fog of the head blow and the blood beginning to pour from his scalp into his eyes, Foster can see something long and black protruding from the bottom of the man’s hand. “A pipe,” he thinks, as the man hits him again and again.
Pistol-Whipped
Under the rain of vicious blows, Foster cannot yet perceive he’s being pistol-whipped. The black object in the attacker’s hand is actually a Beretta Centurion pistol, .40 caliber, with an extended magazine protruding from its butt. The weapon descends again, and again, each swing catching Foster Coker in the head. He realizes he’s facing unconsciousness, and if that happens, he knows he’ll be helpless to defend his wife and grandchild.
He yells to Pam, “Get me a gun!”
The deadly intruder is taller than he, but Foster is a big man in his own right. He picks the attacker up and bodily throws him as far as he can. The masked man’s back hits the front door, and as his legs scramble to keep him upright, the doormat slips from under his feet and he falls on his butt, landing in a sitting position with his back to the door.
Foster turns to look for Pam, and suddenly she’s there, thrusting a revolver into his hand. It’s a snub-nose Taurus 5-shot .38 Special. He turns back toward the man, firing as he goes, from the hip.
And in the middle of the volley, he sees a gunshot explode from the other man’s hand, aimed his way. Only now does he realize the object the man had been bludgeoning him with is a handgun. Foster keeps firing. At the second and third shots, he hears the man utter a primal scream.
Coker has been able to keep track of his shots: Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. His mind racing, he realizes his 5-shooter is empty, and the other man’s gun with its now recognizable extended magazine most certainly isn’t. He drops the Taurus, and as he dives at the attacker he shouts to his wife, “Get me another gun!”
Under the rain of vicious blows, Foster cannot yet perceive he’s being pistol-whipped. The black object in the attacker’s hand is actually a Beretta Centurion pistol, .40 caliber, with an extended magazine protruding from its butt. The weapon descends again, and again, each swing catching Foster Coker in the head. He realizes he’s facing unconsciousness, and if that happens, he knows he’ll be helpless to defend his wife and grandchild.
He yells to Pam, “Get me a gun!”
The deadly intruder is taller than he, but Foster is a big man in his own right. He picks the attacker up and bodily throws him as far as he can. The masked man’s back hits the front door, and as his legs scramble to keep him upright, the doormat slips from under his feet and he falls on his butt, landing in a sitting position with his back to the door.
Foster turns to look for Pam, and suddenly she’s there, thrusting a revolver into his hand. It’s a snub-nose Taurus 5-shot .38 Special. He turns back toward the man, firing as he goes, from the hip.
And in the middle of the volley, he sees a gunshot explode from the other man’s hand, aimed his way. Only now does he realize the object the man had been bludgeoning him with is a handgun. Foster keeps firing. At the second and third shots, he hears the man utter a primal scream.
Coker has been able to keep track of his shots: Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. His mind racing, he realizes his 5-shooter is empty, and the other man’s gun with its now recognizable extended magazine most certainly isn’t. He drops the Taurus, and as he dives at the attacker he shouts to his wife, “Get me another gun!”
Gun Grapple
Foster’s left hand closes on the forearm above the intruder’s right hand, the gun hand, trying to keep it pointed away from himself. It becomes a wrestling match. The taller, thinner man is wiry and amazingly strong, fueled by desperation and rage. He is shouting “Come on, boss, I got this! Come on, bro!” But Foster Coker won’t be distracted by trash-talking. When he loses his grip on the gun arm he goes for a reverse head-lock, a hakimi-waza with the man’s main body mass in front of him instead of beside him, the intruder’s torso parallel to the floor. Pain shoots through Foster as the intruder bites deeply into his left side and underarm area, but he hangs on.
They’re on the floor. Foster grabs the man’s head and starts pounding it against the floor. The intruder gets Foster’s left little finger in his mouth and bites down, hard, but Forest ignores the pain.
Foster’s left hand closes on the forearm above the intruder’s right hand, the gun hand, trying to keep it pointed away from himself. It becomes a wrestling match. The taller, thinner man is wiry and amazingly strong, fueled by desperation and rage. He is shouting “Come on, boss, I got this! Come on, bro!” But Foster Coker won’t be distracted by trash-talking. When he loses his grip on the gun arm he goes for a reverse head-lock, a hakimi-waza with the man’s main body mass in front of him instead of beside him, the intruder’s torso parallel to the floor. Pain shoots through Foster as the intruder bites deeply into his left side and underarm area, but he hangs on.
They’re on the floor. Foster grabs the man’s head and starts pounding it against the floor. The intruder gets Foster’s left little finger in his mouth and bites down, hard, but Forest ignores the pain.
Wife Joins Fight
And now Pam is back, with another gun. Her husband shouts to her, “You’re gonna have to shoot him!” Rising to his feet, Foster picks the man up with him. His left side and the attacker’s right are now toward his wife. She calls to him, “I can’t! I’ll hit you!” Foster shoves the man as far away from himself as he can without letting go and tells Pam desperately, “You have to shoot him now!”
Pam opens fire.
The masked man jerks with the impact once, and again. Foster feels him weakening, deflating. The man collapses to the floor in a sitting position, his back against the sofa.
But the black pistol with the extended magazine is still in his hand, and he’s still moving.
Keeping his eye on the threat, Foster reaches out to Pam, and she presses the gun into his hand. It’s a short-barreled RG .38 Special revolver he has inherited from his grandfather. Bringing it up to line of sight, right hand only, Foster aims at the bandanna-covered head and fires one more shot.
He sees the man go completely limp, his head pitching forward. It’s over.
Foster staggers back, catching his breath. Pam, badly hurt in the initial encounter with the intruder, hobbles to the phone to call 911. Foster sees the gun is still in the gunman’s hand, and he grabs it with his own left hand, keeping the .38 leveled on him with his right. With time to think now, he remembers his antagonist screaming “Come on, bro,” and realizes instead of trash-talking, he might have been calling to an accomplice. Foster keeps his head on a swivel, watching both the downed gunman and the back door.
When police arrive Marquise Yates, 21, is dead, and there are no accomplices present — now.
And now Pam is back, with another gun. Her husband shouts to her, “You’re gonna have to shoot him!” Rising to his feet, Foster picks the man up with him. His left side and the attacker’s right are now toward his wife. She calls to him, “I can’t! I’ll hit you!” Foster shoves the man as far away from himself as he can without letting go and tells Pam desperately, “You have to shoot him now!”
Pam opens fire.
The masked man jerks with the impact once, and again. Foster feels him weakening, deflating. The man collapses to the floor in a sitting position, his back against the sofa.
But the black pistol with the extended magazine is still in his hand, and he’s still moving.
Keeping his eye on the threat, Foster reaches out to Pam, and she presses the gun into his hand. It’s a short-barreled RG .38 Special revolver he has inherited from his grandfather. Bringing it up to line of sight, right hand only, Foster aims at the bandanna-covered head and fires one more shot.
He sees the man go completely limp, his head pitching forward. It’s over.
Foster staggers back, catching his breath. Pam, badly hurt in the initial encounter with the intruder, hobbles to the phone to call 911. Foster sees the gun is still in the gunman’s hand, and he grabs it with his own left hand, keeping the .38 leveled on him with his right. With time to think now, he remembers his antagonist screaming “Come on, bro,” and realizes instead of trash-talking, he might have been calling to an accomplice. Foster keeps his head on a swivel, watching both the downed gunman and the back door.
When police arrive Marquise Yates, 21, is dead, and there are no accomplices present — now.
Results Of Investigation
The JSO, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, is one of the best trained law enforcement agencies in the nation, and one of the most experienced in the investigation of violent crime. They quickly determined Marquise’s gang connections, and his history. “I was told he had just gotten out of prison for shooting someone when he was 16. He got out after five years and went right back to it.”
Far from being a lone home invader, Yates had been one of a trio. There had been another member of the gang at the back door. He had apparently fled, Forest learned, after hearing the homeowner yell, “Get me a gun!” A young woman accomplice had been outside driving a getaway car. Both had escaped the scene.
Foster told American Handgunner in 2019, “The guy who ran got convicted of murder for Yates’ death, got 15 years in a plea bargain. The female getaway driver cooperated with the police and got seven years. There was another participant who helped to plan it. He didn’t come but later made threats to come back and kill us ‘crackers.’ He wound up with 10 years for being a convicted felon with a firearm. All that took three years to play out. We didn’t get our guns back until then, because they were evidence. By then, the police told us, the Cutthroat Committee was pretty much out of business from the chain of arrests that started with the attack on hour home.
The JSO, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, is one of the best trained law enforcement agencies in the nation, and one of the most experienced in the investigation of violent crime. They quickly determined Marquise’s gang connections, and his history. “I was told he had just gotten out of prison for shooting someone when he was 16. He got out after five years and went right back to it.”
Far from being a lone home invader, Yates had been one of a trio. There had been another member of the gang at the back door. He had apparently fled, Forest learned, after hearing the homeowner yell, “Get me a gun!” A young woman accomplice had been outside driving a getaway car. Both had escaped the scene.
Foster told American Handgunner in 2019, “The guy who ran got convicted of murder for Yates’ death, got 15 years in a plea bargain. The female getaway driver cooperated with the police and got seven years. There was another participant who helped to plan it. He didn’t come but later made threats to come back and kill us ‘crackers.’ He wound up with 10 years for being a convicted felon with a firearm. All that took three years to play out. We didn’t get our guns back until then, because they were evidence. By then, the police told us, the Cutthroat Committee was pretty much out of business from the chain of arrests that started with the attack on hour home.
Reconstruction
“The Beretta .40 was never tracked successfully,” Foster Coker told me. “Police discovered the extended magazine was loaded with 9mm ammo so after the first shot, it did not feed.”
The single shot Yates got off during the initial exchange of gunfire missed Foster — sort of. Medics found a graze wound on the side of his head they attributed to Yates’ shot. Mr. Coker had never even felt it during the heat of the deadly battle. The bullet had gone through a wall behind him, into the guest room, and shattered a lamp near his little grandson’s head.
Both of the Cokers sustained serious injuries. Foster had multiple lacerations and serious closed head trauma from the pistol-whipping. No infection ensued from Yates’ bites into soft tissue, but the bite to Coker’s hand caused a crushing fracture of the little finger. “The bone looked like someone had been chewing on a Number Two pencil,” Foster remembers.
Pam’s injuries were more long-lasting, sustained when her much larger attacker savagely threw her to the floor at the opening of the encounter. Foster says, “When he knocked my wife to the hardwood floor, he dislocated her left kneecap, tore her left meniscus and left anterior cruciate ligament, and broke her left big toe. Her right hamstring was also torn during the ordeal. She was in a wheelchair for several months, walks with a cane or walker today, and needs a knee replacement. She couldn’t get the additional surgery on her knee because it was excessively swollen for months, and the orthopedist wanted the swelling to subside first. She was only allowed three moths off work and had to go back to work before the surgery could be done. Her health insurance coverage changed the following year and surgery is now less affordable.”
And Yates? He had been hit with two of Foster’s five rounds from the Taurus, which had been loaded with light, fast Winchester Silvertip .38 Special jacketed hollow points. One is believed to have caused a through and through wound of the forearm. The other, however, hit heart and aorta, and Foster believes that was the mortal wound.
One of Pam’s bullets had struck Yates in the neck and lodged in the spine, which would be consistent with Yates’ collapse at that point. The RG revolver she used, said Foster, was loaded with 148-gr. lead mid-range wadcutter .38 Special rounds, which had been scored across their flat frontal surface. One of these was fired in the final shot, the head shot, and Foster says “I never found out if they opened up or not. That last bullet rode around the side of his head and did not penetrate the skull.”
“The Beretta .40 was never tracked successfully,” Foster Coker told me. “Police discovered the extended magazine was loaded with 9mm ammo so after the first shot, it did not feed.”
The single shot Yates got off during the initial exchange of gunfire missed Foster — sort of. Medics found a graze wound on the side of his head they attributed to Yates’ shot. Mr. Coker had never even felt it during the heat of the deadly battle. The bullet had gone through a wall behind him, into the guest room, and shattered a lamp near his little grandson’s head.
Both of the Cokers sustained serious injuries. Foster had multiple lacerations and serious closed head trauma from the pistol-whipping. No infection ensued from Yates’ bites into soft tissue, but the bite to Coker’s hand caused a crushing fracture of the little finger. “The bone looked like someone had been chewing on a Number Two pencil,” Foster remembers.
Pam’s injuries were more long-lasting, sustained when her much larger attacker savagely threw her to the floor at the opening of the encounter. Foster says, “When he knocked my wife to the hardwood floor, he dislocated her left kneecap, tore her left meniscus and left anterior cruciate ligament, and broke her left big toe. Her right hamstring was also torn during the ordeal. She was in a wheelchair for several months, walks with a cane or walker today, and needs a knee replacement. She couldn’t get the additional surgery on her knee because it was excessively swollen for months, and the orthopedist wanted the swelling to subside first. She was only allowed three moths off work and had to go back to work before the surgery could be done. Her health insurance coverage changed the following year and surgery is now less affordable.”
And Yates? He had been hit with two of Foster’s five rounds from the Taurus, which had been loaded with light, fast Winchester Silvertip .38 Special jacketed hollow points. One is believed to have caused a through and through wound of the forearm. The other, however, hit heart and aorta, and Foster believes that was the mortal wound.
One of Pam’s bullets had struck Yates in the neck and lodged in the spine, which would be consistent with Yates’ collapse at that point. The RG revolver she used, said Foster, was loaded with 148-gr. lead mid-range wadcutter .38 Special rounds, which had been scored across their flat frontal surface. One of these was fired in the final shot, the head shot, and Foster says “I never found out if they opened up or not. That last bullet rode around the side of his head and did not penetrate the skull.”
Aftermaths
Yes, “aftermaths,” plural. Legal. Emotional and psychological. Social. And of course, as we’ve already discussed, physical.
The police arrived expeditiously, and years later, the Cokers are still grateful for the professionalism and compassion hey demonstrated. Veteran street cops and investigators tend to be remarkably perceptive in such matters. “The cops were very understanding,” Foster told us. “They came in with guns drawn. The first guy through the door told me to put my gun down; I had already put the guns down when I saw them coming. One officer told me later, ‘It was pretty easy to figure out what happened.’” He adds, “One officer wrapped our grandson in a blanket and carried him out of the house, so he wouldn’t see the gory scene. Pam and I will always appreciate that.”
He continues, “An Assistant State’s Attorney came out that day, did a walk through, and told the cops ‘I think we can put this one down as justified.’” Angela Corey, who at the time had just gotten done losing her prosecution of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting, was State’s Attorney for the district. Though not widely seen as friendly to armed citizens, she was sympathetic to the Cokers. “Angela Corey was a high school classmate of my wife. She was very kind to us. She brought us into her office and talked to us personally,” Foster told us.
While the Cokers never heard from the family of the deceased, police intelligence gathered information of death threats against them from Yates’ fellow gang members. “The police recommended we stay elsewhere for months during the death threats. At first friends of ours came over with guns to guard us. The police convinced us to move so we got an apartment for 10 months, which was financially devastating, paying our home mortgage plus apartment rent. The city did help with the mortgage for two months.”
He continues, “I have to say friends and family were extremely supportive. Friends and neighbors flooded over to the house. Even some of my most adamantly anti-gun lefty friends were supportive. The Justice Coalition of Jacksonville supported us and attended court hearings with us and on our behalf.”
Psychological aftermath? Says Foster, “The first few nights were awful, we couldn’t sleep at all. We felt too vulnerable to take the sleeping pills the doc gave us. Even at friends’ houses, and the one night the police put us up in a nice hotel, we were still hypervigilant. My wife had nightmares. She can’t tolerate loud, sudden noises or people walking behind her in a public place.”
Their seven-year-old grandson had called out to Pam when he was wakened by her scream in the opening of the gunfight. Pam had shouted for him to stay in his room; she learned later he had huddled there and prayed during the death battle. Foster says, “Our grandson was pretty shaken up. Even to this day he doesn’t like to talk about it. He once said to me, ‘Next time that happens you need to shoot him in the leg or something.’ All the rest of his sleepovers until age 11 he slept in our room.”
Yes, “aftermaths,” plural. Legal. Emotional and psychological. Social. And of course, as we’ve already discussed, physical.
The police arrived expeditiously, and years later, the Cokers are still grateful for the professionalism and compassion hey demonstrated. Veteran street cops and investigators tend to be remarkably perceptive in such matters. “The cops were very understanding,” Foster told us. “They came in with guns drawn. The first guy through the door told me to put my gun down; I had already put the guns down when I saw them coming. One officer told me later, ‘It was pretty easy to figure out what happened.’” He adds, “One officer wrapped our grandson in a blanket and carried him out of the house, so he wouldn’t see the gory scene. Pam and I will always appreciate that.”
He continues, “An Assistant State’s Attorney came out that day, did a walk through, and told the cops ‘I think we can put this one down as justified.’” Angela Corey, who at the time had just gotten done losing her prosecution of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting, was State’s Attorney for the district. Though not widely seen as friendly to armed citizens, she was sympathetic to the Cokers. “Angela Corey was a high school classmate of my wife. She was very kind to us. She brought us into her office and talked to us personally,” Foster told us.
While the Cokers never heard from the family of the deceased, police intelligence gathered information of death threats against them from Yates’ fellow gang members. “The police recommended we stay elsewhere for months during the death threats. At first friends of ours came over with guns to guard us. The police convinced us to move so we got an apartment for 10 months, which was financially devastating, paying our home mortgage plus apartment rent. The city did help with the mortgage for two months.”
He continues, “I have to say friends and family were extremely supportive. Friends and neighbors flooded over to the house. Even some of my most adamantly anti-gun lefty friends were supportive. The Justice Coalition of Jacksonville supported us and attended court hearings with us and on our behalf.”
Psychological aftermath? Says Foster, “The first few nights were awful, we couldn’t sleep at all. We felt too vulnerable to take the sleeping pills the doc gave us. Even at friends’ houses, and the one night the police put us up in a nice hotel, we were still hypervigilant. My wife had nightmares. She can’t tolerate loud, sudden noises or people walking behind her in a public place.”
Their seven-year-old grandson had called out to Pam when he was wakened by her scream in the opening of the gunfight. Pam had shouted for him to stay in his room; she learned later he had huddled there and prayed during the death battle. Foster says, “Our grandson was pretty shaken up. Even to this day he doesn’t like to talk about it. He once said to me, ‘Next time that happens you need to shoot him in the leg or something.’ All the rest of his sleepovers until age 11 he slept in our room.”
Lessons
You always go to the participant first for the lessons. Foster Coker offers these learning points: “I should have come out with my gun as soon as I heard the screams. My wife hadn’t done a lot of shooting, and had only shot a revolver. She grabbed what she knew how to work. She didn’t know my Firestar .45 auto, my regular everyday carry then, was in my night table drawer.” A 7-round .45 might have ended the fight sooner than that first 5-shot .38. He has upgraded his firepower since, replacing the Firestar with a Springfield XD Mod 2 .45, putting a Mossberg 500 12 gauge by the bed, and adding an AR15 to the Coker family home defense armory.
Foster Coker is glad he taught his wife to shoot. It was her shot to the home invader’s spine that seems to have really brought the death battle to an end.
Mr. Coker was a fast learner as to shooting from the hip, particularly while moving: one vital hit and one peripheral hit out of five rounds fired. By the end of the fight he had seen the importance of bringing the gun to line of sight: his single head shot fired that way went where it was aimed.
Another lesson: Don’t expect immediate incapacitation from heart shots. The annals of the Journal of Trauma are replete with cases of patients who have survived handgun wounds to the heart. The published work of highly experienced forensic pathologists such as Doctors Vincent DiMaio, Werner Spitz and Abdullah Fatteh cite many men who committed mayhem after being shot in the heart. The rule of thumb is if the brain is fully oxygenated, even if the heart is completely stilled, there may be 18 seconds or more of purposeful physical activity before the heart-shot man becomes unconscious. And not all gunshot wounds will completely halt cardiac function. The case under discussion is a good example.
It was not lost on the couple Marquise Yates had kicked in their door with two “thumps.” Foster reports, “We put in a security alarm system and cameras. EZ Armor on the door. A metal plate inside the doorjamb with a very long bolt. The whole frame of the back door came away when he kicked it in. We replaced it with one with really long screws that go into the joist, and a hurricane-proof storm door outside of that.”
We thank Pam and Foster Coker, and we applaud their life-saving courage and determination. Foster finishes with this advice: “Always be prepared. Make a plan and discuss scenarios with your family. Make your home a fortress. All responsible family members need to know where your firearms are and how to use them.”
You always go to the participant first for the lessons. Foster Coker offers these learning points: “I should have come out with my gun as soon as I heard the screams. My wife hadn’t done a lot of shooting, and had only shot a revolver. She grabbed what she knew how to work. She didn’t know my Firestar .45 auto, my regular everyday carry then, was in my night table drawer.” A 7-round .45 might have ended the fight sooner than that first 5-shot .38. He has upgraded his firepower since, replacing the Firestar with a Springfield XD Mod 2 .45, putting a Mossberg 500 12 gauge by the bed, and adding an AR15 to the Coker family home defense armory.
Foster Coker is glad he taught his wife to shoot. It was her shot to the home invader’s spine that seems to have really brought the death battle to an end.
Mr. Coker was a fast learner as to shooting from the hip, particularly while moving: one vital hit and one peripheral hit out of five rounds fired. By the end of the fight he had seen the importance of bringing the gun to line of sight: his single head shot fired that way went where it was aimed.
Another lesson: Don’t expect immediate incapacitation from heart shots. The annals of the Journal of Trauma are replete with cases of patients who have survived handgun wounds to the heart. The published work of highly experienced forensic pathologists such as Doctors Vincent DiMaio, Werner Spitz and Abdullah Fatteh cite many men who committed mayhem after being shot in the heart. The rule of thumb is if the brain is fully oxygenated, even if the heart is completely stilled, there may be 18 seconds or more of purposeful physical activity before the heart-shot man becomes unconscious. And not all gunshot wounds will completely halt cardiac function. The case under discussion is a good example.
It was not lost on the couple Marquise Yates had kicked in their door with two “thumps.” Foster reports, “We put in a security alarm system and cameras. EZ Armor on the door. A metal plate inside the doorjamb with a very long bolt. The whole frame of the back door came away when he kicked it in. We replaced it with one with really long screws that go into the joist, and a hurricane-proof storm door outside of that.”
We thank Pam and Foster Coker, and we applaud their life-saving courage and determination. Foster finishes with this advice: “Always be prepared. Make a plan and discuss scenarios with your family. Make your home a fortress. All responsible family members need to know where your firearms are and how to use them.”
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