Mediaboss Marketing

LOS ANGELES At the Charlie James Gallery, in the Chinatown neighborhood here, a surprising exhibition of spiritually reflective and esoteric artwork opened recently. Surprising because the artists, Patrisse Cullors and no olivas, are known for their activism and social engagement, and because the works in the show, Freedom Portals,reject the strident, declamatory tenor of much political art.

Cullors and olivas, the exhibition guide notes, are practitioners of If, a Yoruba religion from West Africa. Cullorss artworks, each made from a framed section of black-and-white patterned cloth embroidered with cowrie shells, are titled after Mejis or Od, sacred If verses used in divination, a central feature of Yoruba religious practice.

Hung high on the walls like church icons, sculptures by olivas consist of garden shears wired onto small puddles of iridescent, dichroic glass. All his pieces are titled as prayers Prayers of Protection or Prayers of Support but prayers to what, or to whom? I met with the artists at the gallery to learn more about what If means to them, and how their political vocations are manifesting in new forms.

In recent years, there has been a conspicuous rise in contemporary art that engages with religious or spiritual ideas. But unlike most historical religious art, whose primary purpose was to deepen or focus the beholders belief, this contemporary work tends toward personal inquiry and private reflection.

Cullors revealed that she was raised a Jehovahs Witness, but later went through phases of atheism and agnosticism. Reading Malidoma Soms book about Indigenous religions, The Healing Wisdom of Africa, was transformative. Soon after, on the recommendation of a friend, she sat for a divination with a babalawo, an If high priest.

It just made sense, she said. The divination wasnt airy-fairy; the clouds didnt open. As much as Im spiritual, Im very pragmatic too. He just gave me very clear advice, clear messages. I said, I think Ive found my tradition. That was in 2003. I was initiated in 2008.

Cullors said that If allows her to reconnect with a lost ancestry sundered by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. If has been a way to reclaim what was stolen from me to begin with.

Olivas, 35, who was raised Roman Catholic, was introduced to If by Cullors and has been practicing for two years. Prayer is a moment for us to ask for something, he said, but its also a moment for us to be present. Im trying to expand that language of prayer into object-making.

Cullors, 39, is best known as a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, which grew from a hashtag coined in 2013 into a global movement. She served as the executive director of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation until 2021. The organization has since restructured after it faced challenging questions over its infrastructure and the allocation of funds.

In 2020, Cullors organized a performance at Frieze Los Angeles in which she interrupted the art fair with a joyful, participatory dance event calling for freedom from white supremacy. Last month, she returned to Frieze Los Angeles, this time to mount an unsanctioned protest in memory of her cousin Keenan Anderson, a 31-year-old teacher who died in January after a police officer repeatedly fired a Taser at him during a traffic stop.

Before she was politicized, Cullors was an artist. In 2017 she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Southern California, where she met olivas, a fellow art student.

In 2018, the two collaborated on a performance, first staged at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles, part of a program responding to the artist Zoe Leonards trenchant typewritten diatribe I want a president (1992). Cullors and olivas performed ritualistic actions inside a circle of salt, dumped from a wheelbarrow onto the floor. The piece, Its dangerous times. We have to be connected, was a metaphor for interpersonal and communal support.

The two artists further fostered that community support with the Crenshaw Dairy Mart, an art collective, gallery and event space in South Los Angeles that they founded in 2020 with a fellow U.S.C. alum, alexandre dorriz (who, like olivas, styles his name in lowercase).

At the same time, the artists maintained individual studio practices. In 2022, olivas exhibited a sculptural installation, Lets Pray, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Featuring terra-cotta casts of truck tires and buckets alongside tools that had belonged to his father, the installation was inspired by the toolshed a space, according to the exhibition text, that olivas sees as a spiritual space of creation and community building.

Those truck tires cast from one used on the Olivas familys Ford Ranger truck, which the artist now owns reappear at Charlie James Gallery, this time glazed in mottled shades of celestial purple. One sits in the center, repurposed as a planter nurturing a live cactus. That sculpture is titled Prayers of Longevity. Another, Prayers of Coolness, leans against the wall, cradling a pool of water.

Olivas said that the water is melted snow from Californias recently blanketed mountains. He sees this sculpture as a prayer to cool his Ori the zone of If consciousness where thought and emotion combine in times of anger. The mountain symbolizes the potential for rising above frustrations and minutiae, for taking in the bigger picture.

His wall-mounted works, he said, represent gn, the If god of iron, metal, war and technology. The shears are all well-tarnished; one pair belonged to his father. A lot of my work is about the tools that are passed down to us, he explained. The lustrous iridescent glass, made from melted-together shards, evokes the Egbe the If spiritual community. The sharp edges are protecting the Egbe.

Cullorss works are similarly coded perhaps even more so. In the If tradition, every one of the 256 sacred Od can be represented both by combinations of vertical dashes and by arrangements of cowrie shells or palm nuts on the divination tray. Cullors represents the first 12 Od with cowries some cast in polished gold stitched onto 1950s mud cloth from Mali, bought at a flea market in Pasadena. (Mud cloth is stained using fermented mud, and is revered in Malian tradition.)

A guide offers gallery visitors condensed interpretations of the Mejis, but their deeper significance is largely occluded. Its kind of like, who knows will know, and who wants to know will ask questions, Cullors said. This is not a tradition that believes in going out and spreading the good word. Its the opposite. We believe that if youre meant to practice, If will call you in.

I chose to put my own spiritual convictions (or lack of them) aside. As with many ritual objects, both artists works emanate a mysterious energy, despite their sometimes-prosaic materials and their simple combinations. The history of sacred art and, indeed, the history of modernist abstraction is rich with examples of secret meaning sequestered in captivating aesthetic phenomena. (Those histories overlap in the work of such artists as Hilma af Klint, the Transcendental Painting Group and Emma Kunz.)

For Cullors, the viewers interpretations were not primary concern when she was developing this series. These works come from a place of deep grief for me, of wanting so badly for the world to be different, she said. I kept thinking, what can I make that will help me? If is the practice that I go to when Im in my lowest moments, and I made a decision to make it public.

In the past three years, she acknowledges, many others have faced their own struggles, which have led them toward the spiritual. A lot of people are grasping, she said.

I feel like an Od takes care of me, Cullors went on, but it also takes care of the collective, of the community. In its attention to shared pain, her work remains political.

Continued here:
For Two Los Angeles Artists, the Spiritual Is Political - The New York Times

When the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum in summer 2020, two Austin residents decided to explore the conversation locally and asked what it meant to be Black and living in Austin.

Almost three years later, they continue to spearhead conversations about the Black experience in Central Texas, uniting the community through storytelling.

Lisa B. Thompson and Richard J. Reddick, Black Austinites and professors at The University of Texas, partnered with radio stations KUT and KUTX last year to create Black Austin Matters, a podcast centered around conversations with different members of the Black Austin community.

With one new episode per month, Black Austin Matters continues to grow in recognition and listeners. The podcast has had 40,315 downloads since its release, according to KUT.

As they navigate the second season of the podcast in March, Thompson and Reddick spoke with Community Impact about their goals for the show and the importance of creating a positive space for Black voices in Austin.

The interview content was edited for length, style and clarity.

You mentioned in the podcast that the idea for Black Austin Matters started in a social media post. How has it evolved into what it is today?

Reddick: It was in June 2020, and I woke up one morning, and I had seen that they had painted Black Austin Matters on Congress Avenue. ... I had no idea who had created it, and it made me sort of think about the more philosophical angle, which was to whom does Black Austin matter? We should talk about that. I tagged a bunch of folks who I know in the community who I thought would be great interlocutors to talk about this, and I posted it [on Twitter].

Thompson: I definitely had a viewpointif anyone knows me, I always have a viewpointbut I wanted it to not be a one-off conversation of, Oh, trauma is happening to Black America at this moment. ... Tell us how you feel. I wanted it to be a more sustained conversation about what Black Austinities think and feel about all kinds of things. Ive been saying this a lot lately, is that African Americans have a very clear viewpoint about racial oppression, but we actually have views about the price of eggs; we have views about the weather; we have views about the way in which power is maintained, whether its electricity or people in the White House.

How did it feel to have that casual thought turn into something so impactful for the community?

Thompson: Its been a burning thought for me [because] Ive always been disappointed with news coverage that comes into a traumatized community and wants to get their take on that moment as opposed to a thoughtful engagement thats thorough, gives the full humanity of their sense of the world. Im a playwright, so narrative is important to me; story is important to me, and Im also a scholar as well in Black studies, and it just feels like there is a piece thats missing in our daily conversation. ... We hear so much about Black Austins disappearance and not enough conversation about who is herewho is Black in Austinand we wanted that to be clearer to our neighbors.

How do you decide which guests youre going to invite on the show and what stories youre going to tell?

Reddick: One thing about this is the diversity of our community, so we didnt want to make it like, Here are Austins top business leaders or top political leaders. We wanted to have a variety of folks coming in, and so that means sometimes people who we actually know ourselves or people we dont know but weve heard of in certain circles. ... [We want] to be mindful about really attending to all the diversitythat mosaic of Black Austinbecause I think sometimes theres this assumption that the community is a monolith. Were always thinking about, Now that weve talked to this person [and] had this representation, who have we not talked to? Thats always a constant conversation. Its good for us too because we get to learn more about the community that we are a part of as well.

What kind of feedback/reactions have you received from the Black Austin community and Austin community in general about the podcast?

Thompson: A big one is like, you should talk to fill in the blank. Its lovely, actually, because its such an engagement with the community but also that folks who know us feel comfortable suggesting people who they think are remarkable, and theyre always people who Id never heard of, which is great. We have a long list [of suggestions], and we actually take those very seriously. People also like the fact that it is diverse. [Black Austin] is very close but we also see the world differently, different things that were interested in. I think we bring in a variety.

Reddick: I think the element of surprise is really important. ... We actually sort of challenge ourselves to go out of our comfort zones and really talk to folks [who] again we have connections to perhaps, but they might not be very strong connections. More importantly, I think I hear a lot of what Lisa described. ... We always follow up on those and think about, Does this person represent a perspective we havent heard from yet? We have lots of ideas and lots of energy, so were not going to stop anytime soon, but Im always thinking about, Gosh, thats a good idea, or We should do this.

What do you want people from outside of the community to know about Black Austin?

Reddick: I think the dimensionality is always a thing. We will talk about everything. ... Its going to be very much grounded in the experiences that people live day to day. We want to understand how they navigate and exist in the city. For me its like, listen for both, Wow, thats really amazing or, Thats really an ordinary thingI do that, or I go to that place, or I like that thing. Its the normalization of our existence. ... We live full lives. We dont just pop up in spaces where we are the only ones. The podcast tries to get at that, like, How are you living and existing and thriving in this space?

What are your goals for the current season of Black Austin Matters?

Reddick: I was actually talking to an older Black Austinite today, and I was like Gosh, we have to start thinking about age diversity. Weve talked to some very senior folks, [and] weve talked to some young adults, but weve really never talked to youth. One of the things thats sort of great about our collaboration is that I have the experience of growing upat least my high school yearshere in Austin, and now both Lisa and I are raising kids of that same vintage in Austin. ... What does it mean to be young and observe the world and the events that have happened in the last several years, and does the city weigh into that?

Thompson: We are definitely going to do some kind of community events sometime this season, and were also taking a big leap and teaching a Signature course at The University of Texas called Black Austin Matters. ... Were excited about having students think about what it would mean for them to create a podcast about their own community ... and how they want to represent particularly the voices that are underrepresented on air and podcasts.

Sarah Brager is a reporting fellow for a Community Impact and University of Texas at Austin partnership with a focus on growing and diverse neighborhoods. The project is supported by the School of Journalism and Medias Dallas Morning News Innovation Endowment.

Read this article:
6 questions with the creators of the 'Black Austin Matters' podcast - Community Impact Newspaper

How philanthropy can support the arts in an age of activism

Philanthropy Roundtables Values-Based Giving Program connects our donor community to high-impact organizations that advance our shared values of liberty, opportunity and personal responsibility. This story is part of our campaign highlighting how donors and nonprofits work together to improve lives. Interested in learning more about Values-Based Giving and the services our team provides? Click here.

Lincoln Jones doesnt like to talk about ballet. Thats because as the founder of American Contemporary Ballet, his Los Angeles-based company of 21 dancers that mounts some 70 performances a year, he thinks about ballet in a different way than most. Imagine a theoretical art form that is populated by almost impossibly beautiful creatures, he says. Angels, practically, angels inhabited by pure rhythm, and moving in a way that is unmistakable proof of human nobility.

Joness reverence for ballet has meant going against the grain of traditional staging, bringing the art form to warehouses and open spaces where his audiences can be immersed in the performances. But his quest for independence also goes beyond the stage. In summer 2020, Jones found himself dancing on a newly unstable platform. Like arts organizations across the country, Jones was pressured to post a black square to his companys social media accounts. The reason: to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter. It wasnt just a request. It was more like a demand. Yet, Jones refused. One of the few arts leaders to do so, he faced a backlash that almost overturned his company.

In 2020, they tried to kill us, he recounts. The black square swept the arts world. Everyone was supposed to post the black square in support of Black Lives Matter. I didnt do it. For one, because I read what Black Lives Matter was and I didnt support it. And, two, it was not my prerogative to represent the artists in my company politically.

For his sin of omission, Joness dancers were threatened. They feared for the future of their careers. They worried they would be ostracized from the world of dance. But Jones stood his ground, writing an open letter to his company explaining his actions. There were resignations and loss of funding, but his audience returned. Now, two years later, as other LA-based arts organizations still find their numbers down, American Contemporary Ballet is up and dancing to a sold-out run.

There is no thought of the moralizing and the guilt trips that now come with what should be joyful, personal and celebratory experiences, Jones says of the impact of todays politics on the arts.

In contrast, for his company, Not a single audience member has complained that we have not apologized for the land we are dancing on, or the music that were dancing to or the color of our skin, said Jones. They all just seem to want a good show.

Jones is now one of the signatories of Philanthropy Roundtables True Diversity Initiative, which published a statement of principles pledging to return love, compassion and empathy to the diversity conversation by embracing an equality-based perspective. His journey reveals the challenges of finding a middle ground in a culture that has become anything but neutral. The same is true for todays arts funders who seek to stay above the fray of contemporary politics.

The problem is that, in the past few years, mainstream arts organizations have become besotted with politics. Transcendence is out. Presentism is in. Arts for arts sake? Today, it can seem more like art for the sake of climate change, social justice or racial redress. In the news, we now see activists storming museums to throw soup at paintings or glue themselves to the walls. Yet these outward convulsions often only mirror the vandalism from within. Mainstream arts leaders are attacking the legacies of their own institutions. The director of the American Museum of Natural History has overseen the destruction of her institutions memorial to Theodore Roosevelt. The director of the Whitney Museum of American Art gave the green light to an exhibition that attacked one of his own trustees, who was forced to resign. The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has called his institution connected with a logic of what is defined as white supremacy.

In a recent City Journal article, Guardians in Retreat, Heather Mac Donald decries the firing of the 82 volunteer docents at the Art Institute of Chicago and their replacement with six paid educators. The reason? The color of their skin. In the mantra of diversity, equity and inclusion, the museum claimed its docent program had centered certain stories while marginalizing and suppressing others.

Mac Donald continues:

The racialist wave that swept the United States following the arrest-related death of George Floyd in May 2020 has taken down scientists, artists and journalists. Entire traditions, whether in the humanities, music or scientific discovery, have been reduced to one fatal characteristic: whiteness. And now the anti-white crusade is targeting a key feature of American exceptionalism: the spirit of philanthropy and volunteerism.

Beyond these racialized attacks, cultural philanthropy continues to find itself up against the notion that charity should be spent on only utilitarian concerns. The Princeton philosopher Peter Singer reflects this Benthamite attitude, named for English writer Jeremy Bentham, in his book The Life You Can Save: Philanthropy for the arts or for cultural activities is, in a world like this one, morally dubious.

Singer pointed to the $45 million the Metropolitan Museum of Art spent on a Duccio painting in 2004 as an amount that would pay for cataract operations for nearly one million blind people in the developing world. If the museum were on fire, he wrote, would anyone think it right to save the Duccio from the flames, rather than a child?

Of course, the choice is a false equivalence. Philanthropy is not a zero-sum equation. A dollar directed to a museum does not remove a dollar from a hospital, food bank or shelter. And the soul is a vital organ of its own. American philanthropists have long understood this call as they established a vital legacy of arts support. Without a monarchy, largely with support from the state, private philanthropy created and underwrote American cultural organizations in ways that have become the envy of the world and a reflection of the virtues of our democratic ideals. Unfortunately, for many of todays progressive cultural leaders, these ideals are just the problem as they seek to overturn this democratic legacy and undermine American legitimacy. They check all of the boxes except the one that matters: as Jones puts it, the box for human nobility.

For philanthropists who still believe in Americas founding principles, funding for the arts can be a dance of its own. Sometimes the answer is to go it alonefunding ones own cultural projects. With support from the Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund, the painter Jacob Collins founded a school called the Grand Central Atelier in 2014after taking on students informally for more than two decadesthat is dedicated to reviving the classical traditions of art. His first students from the 1990s have become his faculty, and his school now attracts students and attention from across the globe. Likewise in 2009, Rick DeVos founded ArtPrize, a contemporary art competition and festival that has invigorated Grand Rapids, Michigan, by offering nearly $500,000 in prizes and attracting half a million visitors a year, with art displayed throughout the city.

Fortunately, outside of the world of land acknowledgments, preferred pronouns and black squares, there are still partners to be found who value art for arts sake and the freedom that spirit represents. Take Riverside Symphony, composer and cofounder Anthony Korfs 41-year-old Lincoln Center orchestra that rejects identity politics through its concerts and music literacy program for inner-city school children.

We program music on the basis of its value, or the potential of a contemporary composer to achieve that stature over time, he says, going against the DEI mandates of many of todays foundation functionaries.

Or consider the National Civic Art Society, the advocacy organization led by Justin Shubow promoting Americas classical vernacular as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us, Shubow says, quoting Winston Churchill. Our Founding Fathers were architects in their own right. They chose classical architecture to harken back to Rome and Athens.

What these arts organizations all share is a commitment to beauty and excellence that rises above contemporary trends and political convenience.

The answer for todays arts funders, one museum trustee tells me, is to look beyond the biggest organizations and the supposed prestige conferred by their board seats. Instead, he says, Look to the second and third tier museum, noting the abundance of local arts institutions that can still mount serious shows by flying under the radar of the Fords, Mellons and Carnegies and their progressive mandates. Join up with other connoisseurs, he advises, who dont want to be led around by the nose.

Likewise at Bader Philanthropies, one strategy of funding the arts is through its Building Resilient Communities initiative. Through this strategy, says the program officer Bridgett Gonzalez, we are able to embrace the rich cultural diversity that embodies our local artistic community, exemplified through creative and traditional art forms.

When it comes to the arts, the solution, ultimately, goes beyond the politics of left and right. There is a very specific political ideology that has taken over, concludes Lincoln Jones. It has for a very long time. This did not start in 2020. You have art that is politically based. And then there is art that is based on the human desire for connection and spirituality.

Nevertheless, to avoid the politics of art, it now takes some understanding of the art of politics and a willingness to dig deeper into the cultural organizations that expect your support. The question is not what is right or left, but what is right or wrong when it comes to the arts and the bravery to embrace, in English poet Matthew Arnolds famous phrase, what is still the best that has been thought and said in the world.

James Panero is the executive editor of The New Criterion.

See the original post here:
Saving the Arts from Politics and Presentism - Philanthropy Roundtable

FBI agents worked about 16,000 more hours during the pay period of the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, than they did during the pay period of the 2020 riots that hit Washington, D.C.

Thats according to documents obtained by The Heritage Foundations Oversight Project through the Freedom of Information Act. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of Heritage Foundation.)

Payroll records for FBI agents in the Washington, D.C., field office show they worked a total of 86,262 hours in the Jan 4, 2021, to Jan. 17, 2021, pay period, during which the Capitol riot occurred involving those opposing Congress certification of the 2020 presidential election in which Joe Biden defeated then-President Donald Trump. Trump alleged irregularities and did not immediately concede the race.

By contrast, during the May 25, 2020, to June 7, 2020, pay period, when the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots were occurring in the District of Columbia, payroll records show that FBI agents worked a combined total of 70,367 hours.

It was on May 29, 2020, at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., that rioters gathered near the White House and set fire to the historic St. Johns Episcopal Church. The violence outside the White House prompted the Secret Service to move Trump and others into the White House bunker.

The FBI did not provide information about how many of the more than 86,000 hours were spent on Jan. 6 cases alone, according to the Heritage Oversight Project, which is suing for more transparency.

The Heritage Oversight Project obtained FBI records that show the time spent on all investigations. According to whistleblowers, FBI agents were said to have been pulled offserious felony investigations to worknearly solely onJan. 6 misdemeanors.

Were suing the FBI because they deserve it, and because these documents belong to the American people, Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Oversight Project, told The Daily Signal.

Its clear the FBI and Justice Department have been weaponized, Howell added. These numbers show the lengths they will go to to surge resources towards nonviolent offenses that fit their political narratives.In the midst of a [George] Soros-funded crime wave, law enforcement should focus their resources where they are needed and put an end to the gangs, rapes, carjackings, and murders that have become all too common.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, most government documents are presumed open to the public, with some specific exceptions.

In the first week of the 2020 riots, about 150 local and federal law enforcement officers were injured in the District of Columbia. The 2020 riots ultimately incurred $2 billion in property damage nationally and resulted in at least 19 deaths, according to news reports.

The FBI did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal for this story.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please emailletters@DailySignal.comand well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

Original post:
EXCLUSIVE: FBI Devoted 16,000 More Hours to Jan. 6 Than to BLM ... - Daily Signal

Amid news that Donald Trump is about to be indicted by a hyperpartisan prosecutor and of his hysterical responses, and prompted by vagrant reading about the War of 1812 and Woodrow Wilsons violations of civil liberties in World War I, a thought occurred to me. America seems to go crazy every 50 years or so.

Start with the War of 1812, about 50 years after colonies Stamp Act protests. Theres a touch of absurdity here. Because of the slowness of trans-Atlantic communication, Congress declared war because of British restrictions on neutral shipping six days after the British repealed them. Americans won their major land victory in New Orleans, 15 days after the peace treaty had already been signed in Ghent.

IS THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM THE REASON HALF OF BLACK STUDENTS CAN'T READ?

The Americans strategy was based on a delusion that Canadians would welcome American conquest and American tactics were riddled with blunders. Detroit was surrendered without a shot, and Washington was left undefended, allowing the British to burn the White House. The treaty left in place the status quo, and the positive response was psychological, verging on delusional. In historian Gordon Woods words, this inconclusive war did finally establish for Americans that independence and nationhood of the United States that so many had doubted.

Almost exactly 50 years later, the U.S. plunged into civil war, which outgoing President James Buchanan might have prevented by sending troops to secessionist South Carolina, as his mentor Andrew Jackson had done almost thirty years earlier. But the differences were fundamental. Democrats supported the liberty of slaveholders to retain their property anywhere in a nation an increasing number of whose citizens regarded slavery as intolerable. Republicans were determined to deploy the federal government to put slavery, in Abraham Lincolns words, on the path to extinction.

Winfield Scott, a young officer in 1812, provided Lincoln with the Anaconda strategy, squeezing the South by blockade until Grant and Sherman could defeat the Confederate armies. The result wasnt crazy slavery was abolished in an ultimately intact Union. But it all came at a crazy cost, with some 600,000 lives in a nation of 38 million.

Fast forward 50 years to the only American president who spent his boyhood in the Confederacy, watching Sherman march into South Carolina, Woodrow Wilson. After Congress, with 56 dissenters, voted to enter World War I, Wilson superintended the overbroad 1917 Espionage Act. As Adam Hochschild vividly recounts in American Midnight, the Wilson administration imprisoned those who spoke against the war or the draft, including Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. Wilson deported aliens supposedly involved in radical activities under the supervision of the twenty-something J. Edgar Hoover. He censored the press, stamping out what liberals today call misinformation, and cooperated with local efforts to suppress German cultural organizations.

As Hochschild makes clear, it wasnt only the Wilson administration that went crazy. Radical anarchists set off deadly bombs on Wall Street, at Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmers house, and across the street from Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin Roosevelt.

The much-derided Red Scare was a response to fears raised by the takeover of the larger and more populous Russia by a handful of Bolsheviks, whose murderous and squalid regime ended up lasting 70 years. Americans a century ago didnt know that this wasnt going to happen here.

Sometimes people can learn from mistakes. In World War II, FDR, who witnessed Wilsons excesses up close, didnt seize the railroads or shipyards. With the important exception of the Japanese American internments, he also didnt violate civil liberties as Wilson had.

Unfortunately, sometimes people dont learn. Fifty years ago, America saw a tripling, roughly, of violent crime and welfare dependency in a decade, even as prison populations were reduced and police delegitimized. A rash of hundreds of violent bombings was followed by serious government misconduct.

Ironically, after the 1964-68 civil rights acts changed America for the better, there were cries that racist treatment of blacks was as bad as ever. America was going crazy again, on schedule.

And so it has in the last few years. After the election and reelection of the first black president, we heard Black Lives Matter, like the Black Panthers 50 years before, proclaim that America was even more racist than it ever had been. Since the mostly peaceful riots of summer 2020, there have been sharp increases in violent crime and moves to defund and delegitimize police departments, which are, in fact, far less racist than in the 1960s.

America went crazy too over COVID, in my view, by treating a virus fatal to just a small segment of the population as if, like Ebola, it had an infection fatality rate of around 50%. Authorities imposed lockdowns and mandates while ignoring economic costs and lasting collateral damage, like adults missing cancer screenings and children missing first and second grade.

Like Woodrow Wilsons propagandist George Creel, government agencies suppressed as misinformation speech and arguments, including many which turned out to be accurate.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICA

Another symptom of America going crazy is presidential dysfunction. Fifty years ago, the highly intelligent and experienced Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were ousted at ages 60 and 61 because of Vietnam and Watergate. Now, despite repeated stumbles, the inexperienced and distractable Donald Trump and the (according to bipartisan Defense Secretary Robert Gates) nearly-always-wrong Joe Biden are seeking second terms they would complete at ages 82 and 86, respectively.

Having witnessed and written for publication during two 50-years-apart episodes of craziness, I seek consolation from Adam Smiths reflection, after Britain lost the 13 colonies, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. But I hope America will do a better job, 50 years hence, of learning from this episodes mistakes.

Read more:
America seems to go crazy every 50 years or so - Washington Examiner