Four years ago, I started keeping track of life dos and don’ts that I learned by experience, bits of wisdom that I didn’t get from a friend, mentor, or Twitter account, but from my daily interaction with the universe.
I find it helpful to review this list at the end of each year. 
Every person has original experiences, relationships, strengths, limitations, desires, fears, and books read. We gather our wisdom from all of these things. So not one single person can know all there is to know about leading a productive and meaningful life. 
Here are a few things I’ve learned since 2017:
Never buy a smoothie at the airport.
If you have a flight that is around the time you’d normally have a meal, get take out and bring it to the airport. Eat it either before or during your flight. This will be much better food than whatever you’ll find at the airport or on the plane.
If you’re renting a car from an airport car rental, do not get the cheapest option unless you’re willing to wait in a long line. Better yet, use Turo. It’s like Airbnb, but for renting cars. 
If at an office or another public place, always dry your hands fully after you wash them and before you leave the bathroom. 
No one likes to shake a wet hand, and you never know when you’re going to meet someone.
Sometimes doing the right thing will require overcoming your fear and acting with courage. Be more afraid of living with the knowledge that you’re weak, sad, and generally pathetic than you fear doing the thing that must be done.
At work, be careful about showing anyone whose opinion of you matters (supervisor or client) an unfinished task, especially if it’s not yet impressive. Only show them something you’re proud of.
If you need to be somewhere by a certain time, add the time it takes to find parking and walk from parking to destination, and then add 10 minutes.
When packing to travel, if there’s any chance you may need a suit for a meeting or event, pack a suit. 
On a work trip to Washington, D.C., I had a last-minute breakfast meeting at the U.S. Capitol with two people who were both dressed in suit and tie. I had dockers and a casual button down, tucked in of course.
If you’re dealing with a problem that can be solved with money, solve it with money if you can afford to. You’ll find those types of problems are among life’s simplest.
Keep track of how many of your problems throughout the day are caused by you acting like an idiot.
At the office, try to not bring up work issues in public places, like the kitchen. That’s where people go for a few minutes to get away from work.
Boxes of chocolate are a gamble with a high risk of ruin. Avoid them.
Before you go into a meeting of an indeterminate length, decide by what time you’re going to leave. If you’re really evil, set your alarm to go off at that time. It will break whatever energy is making you feel socially awkward about interrupting to exit.
At a sit-down restaurant, take no more than five minutes to decide what you’re going to order.
If something feels right, that does not necessarily mean you should do it. But if something feels wrong, that usually means you shouldn’t.
Pre-parties are always a waste of time. After parties, very different.
If your choice is between simplifying or optimizing, simplify.
When charting your professional course, consider your unique value added: where can you provide benefit that no one else in your position could provide?
If you’re not trying to fall asleep or about to fall asleep, lying in bed is a waste of time.
When you make a choice, you’re also choosing the consequences.
Be conscious of how many negative thoughts you fill your head with. And then be conscious of how many negative people you fill your life with. And then distance yourself from both.
Being in a good relationship may solve your loneliness, but it won’t solve the other broken parts of your life.
When you have a difficult task ahead of you, know where your point of no return is &#8212; the action which, after you take it, you know you will complete the task. 
I take three-minute cold showers every morning. I know that once I step in, I will complete the three minutes. When Los Angeles had gyms, I trained in Krav Maga. My point of no return was getting in the car. Once I got in the car, I knew that I would complete that day’s class. Knowing your point of return shifts the challenge from completing the task to simply clearing that initial, lower, bar.
Don’t talk about something that is important to you around someone who doesn’t take important things seriously. 
Spend time around people, places, and events that give you energy. Avoid those things that take your energy.
Happy New Year. May this be the one where you finally get your sh*t together.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe"> member</a>.

Bring On 2021 Retail Window

A List To Help You Get Your S*** Together Next Year

Advice

New Year's

The following is a lightly edited version of an email that I wrote to a friend who asked in a group chat if anyone who was a Trump supporter going into the first debate still planned to vote for him after he told the Proud Boys to “stand by.”
First, to be transparent about where I&#8217;m coming from: I went into the debate planning to vote for Trump, and left the debate feeling depressed and exhausted, and less confident about how I will vote. A few months ago, with the combination of Trump’s inept COVID response and his failure to lead when the riots broke out in late May/early June, I decided I would not vote for Trump and changed my party registration from Republican to independent.
Over the last couple months, though, I&#8217;ve felt that I would crawl over broken glass — or even vote for Donald Trump — if it could help stop the left from gaining control of the federal government, even if for just 4 years. And that feeling is why many people vote for Trump. It&#8217;s not because they like him. They hate his personality, and his tweets, his coarsening of public discourse, and his aggravation of political divisions. It&#8217;s because he is seen as the only thing standing in between the Democratic left and the White House.
And over the last few months, with leading Democrats threatening to pack the Supreme Court, add states for obvious political gain, and abolish the Senate filibuster; and allowing Antifa and BLM to spread chaos in many cities, it seems more likely than not that if the Democrats control the White House and Congress come January, they will feel emboldened and vengeful enough to transform the country in ways that would deeply frighten a large minority, or even a majority of Americans.
A lot of people fear that they may lose their country if the Democrats take power.
Plus Trump has had more conservative policy successes than any Republican since at least Ronald Reagan. That&#8217;s why he has such strong support within the party. Examples: conservative judges, tax cuts, fewer regulations on businesses, and the many wins related to Israel, including the embassy move and the deals with UAE and Bahrain.
The above is a basic, although not thorough, summary of why Trump still has a lot of support despite all the awful things he says. There are other important reasons that I won&#8217;t include in this email because it&#8217;s already getting long.
Now on to the &#8220;stand by&#8221; comment:
Trump says a lot of incoherent crap. He has to constantly walk back or clarify statements because what he says routinely does not make sense, because like a child he says whatever enters his mind without a filter. When he was introducing Amy Coney Barrett the other day I was afraid that he would say something about how attractive she is, because he seems to have little impulse control.
But I absolutely don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s a racist and he&#8217;s obviously not anti-Semitic. He has explicitly condemned racism and white supremacy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhSpNwhNOlo">many times</a>, he may <a href="https://wgntv.com/news/trump-vows-to-designate-kkk-antifa-as-terrorist-groups/">designate</a> the KKK as a terrorist group, his daughter is Jewish, and he has been more supportive of Israel than any president ever. But because he rambles and often says the wrong thing — or something that could easily be misinterpreted — the media and his opponents will routinely challenge him to disavow racists in the hope that he&#8217;ll shoot himself in the foot.
He should just say &#8220;f**k white supremacists. I will disavow them always and forever, so you can stop asking me.&#8221; But because he&#8217;s such a bulldog, his tendency when people challenge him to say something is to not say that thing at all or not say it clearly, because that could make him look weak, or something — I&#8217;m mind reading now.
If you read the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/30/presidential-debate-read-full-transcript-first-debate/3587462001/">transcript</a> of the debate where they&#8217;re talking about the Proud Boys, he says &#8220;Sure, I&#8217;m willing to do that&#8221; when Chris Wallace asks him to condemn white supremacists. And when Joe Biden tells him to disavow Proud Boys, Trump says, &#8220;Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.&#8221;
Did Trump mean that the Proud Boys should stand by and fight Antifa if they determine they must? Maybe. Did he word salad the f**k out of that response and not intend to say something that suggests that his supporters should prepare for violence? Maybe.
The next day he tried to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/918809443/trump-on-defensive-over-white-supremacist-group-after-debate-comments">clarify</a> his comments and said, &#8220;They have to stand down and let law enforcement do their work.&#8221; It&#8217;s Trump’s fault in the debate for speaking in a way that could be reasonably interpreted the way it has been. Similarly in his &#8220;fine people&#8221; comments after Charlottesville, he explicitly condemned the white supremacists and did not call them &#8220;fine people&#8221;, but he said it in a way that allowed for the misinterpretation that he was saying there are &#8220;fine&#8221; racists. If you read the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662">transcript</a> of that press conference you&#8217;ll see what I mean.
People often have to read transcripts of Trump’s remarks to try to understand what he said, which is a problem. That doesn&#8217;t work in 2020. You have to clearly articulate your points the first time on camera. He&#8217;s incapable of that, which makes him in one sense unfit for the presidency.
To wrap this up, most people who will vote for Trump see the choice as between Trump and the left — and they&#8217;d rather take the devil they&#8217;ve known for 4 years than the risk of the left transforming their country — or the risk of having a president who explicitly refuses to condemn Antifa and says they are &#8220;an idea, not an organization,&#8221; as Biden said in the debate.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe"> member</a>.

Donald Trump

SICHEL: A Friend Asked Why People Vote Trump. I Explained.

2020 Election

Joe Biden

In his Aug. 20 speech accepting the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Joe Biden repeated his central charge against Donald Trump: that the president of the United States said that neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists are “very fine people.”
“Remember the violent clash that ensued between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it?” Biden said, referring to the repulsive and tragic events in Charlottesville three summers ago.
“Remember what the president said? There were quote, ‘very fine people on both sides.’ It was a wake-up call for us as a country. And for me, a call to action. At that moment, I knew I’d have to run.”
Biden’s announcement <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbOU2fTg6cI">video</a> in April 2019 focused on the “very fine people” charge, and he brought it up in his first event with running mate Kamala Harris on Aug. 12. And maybe he has mentioned it publicly many more times than I’m aware of during his campaign.
Trump’s awful comment is, according to Joe Biden, the reason he is running for the presidency.
But it’s complete, absolute, unreserved bullsh*t.
And not the type of harmless bullsh*t that politicians say to get elected.
Biden’s “very fine people” charge is a dangerous, divisive, and deliberate tool of propaganda and misinformation.
But but but Donald Trump lies all the time!
 So let’s make room in our head for these two thoughts: Donald Trump tells lies, and Joe Biden’s campaign is based on a huge lie.
The. Lie. That Donald Trump called the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people.”
He didn’t. Explicitly didn’t. In fact, he clearly and undeniably condemned them.
If you’re certain that I’m wrong, if you know that you watched a video where Donald Trump said the torch-carrying racist a**holes in Charlottesville have some “very fine people,” I promise that you are incorrect.
Read the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662">transcript</a> of Trump’s press conference after Charlottesville. You will see that what he said is not what Joe Biden says he said.
Trump said, “You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” Fifty seconds later (I watched an unedited <a href="https://youtu.be/JmaZR8E12bs?t=65">video</a>) he says, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally, but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.”
This is obviously more nuanced than Biden’s characterization. It’s the opposite.
According to Trump’s comments, it’s fair to say that in his understanding there was one group that opposed taking down Confederate statues and one group that supported it. Both groups had some “very fine people” and some very bad people (neo-Nazis and violent Antifa members).
Perhaps Trump’s understanding of who was at the rally and how it played out was mistaken, but that’s not what Biden is basing his run for the presidency on. The motive for his campaign is to beat the “very fine people on both sides” guy.
So why do I care?
I don’t vote for presidential tickets anymore, so I feel less invested politically than I have in previous elections. But Biden’s lie especially bothers me because it makes Americans hate each other.
Millions of people believe the lie that people who vote for Trump – a lot of people – want a president who condones Nazis. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination or a suspension of logic to see why that belief creates hatred, or how it leads to violence.
Joe Biden said in his acceptance speech, “Let us begin – you and I together, one nation, under God – united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.”
Unity and love. That’s Biden’s pitch. But the big Charlottesville lie makes unity and love impossible.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

SICHEL: The Big Charlottesville Lie

Is the United States, at any level of government, trying to get daily life for Americans back to normal as quickly as possible? Because it doesn’t look like it.
Canada, Germany, France, and Britain – comparable, advanced Western nations who were also caught unprepared – have broadly reopened and new daily cases and new daily deaths are trending down.
In the U.S., concern over rising cases* is leading to reinstituting lockdowns (California), rolling back re-openings (Texas), and generally slowing down the crawl towards normalcy.
Our public health more closely resembles Brazil and Mexico than Canada or England, which, sorry Brazil and Mexico, is a red flag.
What’s the big deal, you may be asking. The more cases we have, the closer we are to herd immunity.
But I think aiming for herd immunity is likely the wrong way to think about our current problem. You can read more about that <a href="https://twitter.com/thejaredsichel/status/1283555647858946050?s=20">here</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/tatereeves/status/1282783825219682304">here</a>.
The status quo, though, is also unacceptable. I’ve been severely critical of the lockdowns from the beginning (see <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sichel-how-much-damage-are-the-lockdowns-causing">here</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sichel-either-we-wait-for-a-vaccine-or-we-turn-the-lights-on-now">here</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sichel-before-you-have-an-opinion-on-coronavirus-ask-yourself-these-questions">here</a>). There is no economic or social predictability right now. Open up with tons of restrictions, more infections, lock down again, wait, wait, wait, open up again. And on and on. It’s Groundhog Day governance, and it gets harder and harder to maintain because we become fatigued and resigned.
When lockdowns end, cases rise dramatically – even with social distancing and masks – until there’s another lockdown. It buys time, but not much else.
What if we had a plan that allowed society to be mostly or even entirely normal, that kept new daily case counts very low, that got easier and easier to maintain over time, and would, at worst, require occasional moderate restrictions, but nothing like what we’ve experienced since March?
The <a href="https://medium.com/@yochananrivkin/we-are-failing-at-covid-19-but-we-can-easily-succeed-321814f8bd18">idea</a> I’m going to throw out there is not mine. It’s from a smart friend, and I can’t un-see it.
The only science-y concept you need to know to understand this plan is Rt. That measures how transmissible the virus is in any given area. Rt can go up or down, depending on many factors, one of which is social distancing. When Rt is above 1, the virus spreads quickly. When it’s below 1, it dies quickly.
To illustrate how close we could be to getting rid of COVID-19 in California, and in every state really: if California reduces Rt from its current estimate 1.05 to 0.50, and keeps it around 0.50, the virus could be completely gone by Labor Day. That math also works for Florida and Texas.
That’s less of a reduction in transmissibility than California had from March to April during its first lockdown. So it’s doable.
But for this to work, California, and every state, needs to be able to prevent the virus from spreading again when restrictions are eased.
How?
A voluntary, cash-incentive program that encourages everyone who was recently in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 to get tested right away, and to voluntarily self-quarantine until they receive a negative test result. This would need to include an abundance of test kits and enough lab infrastructure and techs so that results can be processed and communicated quickly, ideally within 24 hours.
The federal government would need to underwrite this – billions of dollars for the cash incentives, for the testing infrastructure, and for a huge public messaging campaign. Billions of dollars is nothing when the economic cost of shutting down every few weeks is trillions of dollars.
And this wouldn’t be a band aid, like Congress’s $2 trillion CARES Act. It could be a solution.
Here’s how one version of this could work: Let’s say I saw a friend yesterday. Today, he tells me that two nights ago he was at a bar, and the bar just posted on Instagram that one of its patrons two nights ago tested positive for COVID-19. My friend says he tested positive, and that he was paid $30 to test, and will be paid $30 for each day he quarantines until a test result comes back negative, and another $10 if I get a test.
I get a test, get paid $30, stay home the next day to wait for results, another $30, test comes back positive, I’m home for two weeks, making $30 a day, and another $10 for every possibly infected contact of mine who gets tested.
How would a local government know if someone who tested positive is self-quarantining? Each city or state could devise its own plan. Maybe set up comfortable quarantine hotels where people could voluntarily live for a couple weeks. Give people the option of downloading an app. Or just trust people to do the right thing.
Would some people scam the system? Of course. The CARES Act will likely pay out billions of dollars in fraudulent claims. There’s always fraud.
But Americans are eager for life to return to normal. Most people who test positive would self-quarantine. Most people would not scam the system. And as positive tests trend down, there would be fewer opportunities for fraud, anyways. Also, this idea doesn’t require 100% compliance to work. As long as enough infected people test early and quarantine early, the virus could quickly die out.
There would need to be tons of PSAs, all over TV, podcasts, internet. Everywhere. Runny nose? Get tested, stay home for a day or two, let your close contacts know, we’ll pay you. We’ll pay them. Something like that.
If enough people who should test and self-quarantine do so early, and if you could sufficiently reduce Rt – maybe with no restrictions, maybe with modest restrictions – maybe the virus goes away and stays away, if you don’t let up.
You don’t have to cut off every infection, not even close. You just have to cut off enough to keep Rt low. And every infection you prevent through voluntary testing, contact-tracing, and self-quarantine – voluntary inconveniences that make you money –  is one less infection you need to cut off through masks, social distancing, and lockdowns – forced restrictions that harm society. And as cases get lower and lower, maintaining this type of program gets easier and easier.
But right now, there are lots of reasons to not get tested even if you probably should. Los Angeles promises free tests to anyone who wants. I know someone who was tested two weeks ago and still has not received the result. And that was after having to wait three days to even schedule a test that was a 30-minute drive away and took two hours to complete.
Meanwhile <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/quarantine.html">CDC guidelines</a> advise anyone who has been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 to self-quarantine for 14 days, even if they test negative.
Yes, <a href="https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1495#s1-M201495">false negatives</a> are definitely a thing. So on an individual level, the prudent thing to do, especially if you’re in close contact with someone who’s at-risk, may be to self-quarantine even if you test negative.
But at a societal level, in the real-world, if you want tons of people who should get tested to get tested quickly, make it easy and give them money.
None of this involves coercion or Chinese-style tracer phone apps. It is entirely voluntary, and thus American.
If something like this idea worked in Los Angeles (or anywhere), we could maybe have Dodgers games, concerts, and no masks in 7 or 8 weeks.
And if we kept the system going, the government could spot a possible outbreak before it got too late. Maybe close down large gatherings for a week or two, and then open back up. Nothing nearly as destructive as what has happened since March, and what will continue to happen unless we pivot or get lucky.
Could something like this idea be the quickest path to a full re-opening? Maybe. And it doesn’t violate our basic liberties. The same can’t be said for the diktats issued since March by so many power-drunk and clueless governors and mayors.
What we’re doing now is not working. We have to try something new. As California locks down again, and as more states move in that direction, there’s an opportunity to do something useful with this bought time, there’s an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that daily case counts could be very low within a few weeks – there could be an opportunity to set up a program that would minimize the likelihood of a third lockdown.
And the White House and federal government need to step up. States and cities don’t have the resources to build something like this.
Our leaders owe us a credible plan that could make America look like America again. If they don’t offer one soon, it may not.
***
In the U.S., for the past two weeks, every day there have been between 40,000 and 60,000 new confirmed cases, which, because we catch probably somewhere between 1 out of 3 and 1 out of 5 infections, translates to something like 120,000 – 180,000 infections daily (using the 1 out of 3 ratio). This is far lower than the likely peaks in March and April, which were probably something like 400,000 new infections every day. But still not great.
Disclaimer: Every number referenced in this article except for current and past confirmed cases and deaths is based on current best estimates, and thus subject to change.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Re-opening Continues Across Densely Populated New York And New Jersey Areas

SICHEL: We Need To Solve COVID. Here’s An American Idea.

Coronavirus

COVID-19

Economy

Coronavirus newspaper headline montage

How Much Damage Have The Covid Lockdowns Caused? Their Impact On Poverty, Hunger & Health

Vaccine

SICHEL: Either We Wait For A Vaccine, Or We Turn The Lights On Now

Most Americans fall into one of three groups when it comes to the surreal coronavirus event we are experiencing.
The first group believes we need to lock nearly everything down except essentials and wait it out until we’ve “bent the curve.”
The second group believes the virus is not the threat public officials have made it out to be, and that we should more or less go about our normal lives as we do during every flu season.
The third group, myself included, believes that the virus poses a serious threat: to at-risk Americans and possibly to the capacity of our intensive care system. But I think that our current response poses a major threat to our way of life, and to millions of Americans’ economic lives, in ways not considered by most people who feel, for now, economically secure.
I believe that the first group should not just consider the cost of under-reacting, but also the cost of over-reacting. I fear that America has decided to enter uncharted territory – instantly and fundamentally transforming the daily economic lives of tens of millions of people is a high-risk experiment – without first asking basic questions or considering likely costs.
“Better safe than sorry” is not a plan. It is not even true when “safe” is more damaging than “sorry.”
I also believe the cost of under-reacting could be high. Italy’s medical system has apparently been overwhelmed. Would the same happen here if we did not react strongly and swiftly enough? Maybe, and we should take reasonable precautions against that possibility, like social distancing and abundant washing of hands.
Not even public health experts agree with one another, as we’ve seen different countries, from South Korea to Denmark to the United Kingdom all take varying approaches. Further, public health experts, in this context, are knowledgeable about how a virus can impact a population, but they have nothing to say about how an economic recession or depression brought on by our response to the virus could impact a population. It is the job of elected government officials to weigh all the costs and benefits – both health and economic – of all possible actions.
Here are some questions that I hope everyone, particularly elected officials, are asking:
1. To those who support cities shutting down businesses or even ordering residents to shelter in place, as San Francisco has done, do you acknowledge just how much pain this will create in many people’s lives? At what point of economic pain would you say we are going too far? You agree there is a point at which the government is going too far to save one life, or even a thousand lives.
After all, you don’t think all speed limits should be 10 MPH, except for emergency vehicles.
Where is that point for you in this situation? How bad will the economy – and thus people’s lives – have to get?
2. As I understand it, the worst-case scenario, at least in the West, is something like what Italy is experiencing: too many elderly people getting the virus in a compact period of time, stretching the medical system past its breaking point. In the U.S., then, why isn’t the top priority to specifically protect older Americans? Why isn’t the loudest message from government officials for seniors to self-quarantine, as it appears to be in the United Kingdom? Wouldn’t a measure like this better address the “bend the curve” challenge than telling the entire population to stay inside, thus shutting down the economy?
3. Is there a plan? If there is, what is it? How and when will we know if the plan is working? If the plan is to manage COVID-19’s spread in order to protect the medical system, how will shutting down cities for a few weeks or months meaningfully help? What will happen when life returns towards normalcy? Won’t the virus return with a vengeance when life begins to return to normal? Then, won’t we be in the same position we are now, only poorer and thus less equipped to handle a medical crisis?
4. I know you are not allowed to use the word “flu” in this discussion, but: The H1N1 swine flu broke out in the United States in spring 2009. By the end of that pandemic, about a year later, the CDC says the swine flu “caused 60.8 million illnesses, 273,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in the U.S.” Those numbers marked the end of that pandemic. We are still at the beginning of COVID-19, so the numbers are not apples to apples. But in the beginning of H1N1, did we react nearly as severely as we are reacting now to COVID-19? Why not? I suspect one reason is because we have seen Italy’s medical system become overwhelmed by COVID-19. If that is the main reason, is shutting down our economy the right way to try to avoid that situation? Why is our reaction to COVID-19, seven weeks since the first U.S. case, so disproportionately severe compared to our reaction to the swine flu seven weeks in? Or is it not disproportionate? It’s a fair question.
***
Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth about this is that we have to accept that COVID-19 is now a part of our life, that many or most of us will get it at some point, that it will kill some of us, as every disease does, that the only way to avoid it would be to shut down our economy, and that we are not willing to pay that price.  At least, I hope we are not.
When we begin to re-normalize life, whenever that inevitable day comes, people will die as a result.
Yes, that is tragic.
Also, remember, before COVID-19, we went to restaurants, concerts, and ballgames knowing that leaving our houses meant we faced a higher risk of death from disease, car accidents, and crime.
Until we know how dangerous COVID-19 is, until we can safely say that it is another one of many diseases that will come and go every year with fairly predictable results, we – especially seniors and people who are at-risk – must be vigilant.
But there is a fine line between vigilance and whatever you call what we are doing now, the costs of which I predict we will regret.

Store Closed

SICHEL: Before You Have An Opinion On Coronavirus, Ask Yourself These Questions

Why Do Christians Love Israel? What I Learned.

Bible

Catholic Church

Christianity

Democratic Party

Israel

Jerusalem

Jesus Christ

Jews

Judaism

There may be no such thing as a new idea, to paraphrase Mark Twain, but there are new insights into old ideas. 
Enter Dennis Prager&#8217;s, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Bible-Exodus-Dennis-Prager/dp/1621577724" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Rational Bible: Exodus</a>, the inaugural work of what will be his five volumes of commentary on the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
While Genesis precedes Exodus, Prager began with the second book because, as he notes in his introduction, &#8220;Exodus contains the Ten Commandments, the most important moral code in world history.&#8221;
And if the Torah wants its readers to know one thing, it is that &#8220;God&#8217;s essence is goodness.&#8221; More than anything He wants from us moral behavior. Prager cites Exodus 33:18, when Moses asks God to &#8220;let me behold Your Presence.&#8221; God responds, &#8220;I will make all My goodness pass before you.&#8221;
&#8220;That God chooses to define Himself as good constitutes one of the most important statements in the entire Bible,&#8221; Prager writes, adding an idea that may not sit well among many believers and non-believers alike. &#8220;God does not say, &#8216;I will make my love pass before you.&#8217; In fact, the expression, &#8216;God is love,&#8217; is not to be found in the Hebrew Bible.&#8221; 
Most fans know Prager through his five-minute PragerU videos, his nationally-syndicated radio show, his appearances on CNN and Fox News, and his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Serious-Problem-Nature-Repair/dp/0060987359/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1529001751&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=happiness+is+a+serious+problem+by+dennis+prager" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Happiness Is a Serious Problem</a>. (Full disclosure: I worked for Dennis as a writer for PragerU, and before that as an intern for his radio show in college. I&#8217;m grateful to count him as a friend and teacher.)
Before Prager became a household name, he was known around Los Angeles for Religion on the Line, a popular radio show where he invited on clergy of different faiths to discuss the Big Questions for three hours on Saturday evenings and five hours on Sunday evenings. He also ran the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, American Jewish University&#8217;s educational retreat outside Los Angeles.
But Prager&#8217;s fundamental ability to understand and explain the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, comes from his childhood. Growing up in Brooklyn, Prager was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family and studied full-time in a yeshiva (a Jewish seminary for boys) until college. He&#8217;s fluent in Biblical Hebrew, an invaluable asset in unlocking profound Torah wisdoms that one can only find by reading it in its original language.
An example: the Sixth Commandment, &#8220;You shall not murder,&#8221; is widely mistranslated as &#8220;You shall not kill&#8221; &#8212; which, if accurate, would directly contradict the Torah&#8217;s command, in the very same section, to execute murderers. It would also mean that God, who killed every firstborn son in Egypt, drowned the Egyptian army, and directly intervened in battle for the Jews on multiple occasions, violated his own commands. 
&#8220;Hebrew, like English,&#8221; Prager explains, &#8220;has two words for taking a life: harog (&#8216;kill&#8217;) and ratzach (&#8216;murder&#8217;). The Sixth Commandment uses ratzach.&#8221;
Americans have been so influenced by the Bible historically that even the political left, which tends to not appeal to the Bible&#8217;s moral authority, will sometimes use a mistranslation if it advances an agenda. Thus one can find people at anti-capital punishment rallies holding &#8220;Thou shalt not kill&#8221; signs.
Prager&#8217;s agenda in writing this commentary is, he says, for &#8220;as many people as possible to take the Torah seriously, to entertain the possibility it is God-given, or, at the very least, to understand why so many rational people do.&#8221; 
Over the years I&#8217;ve heard Dennis say publicly that if one had to summarize the mission of his life&#8217;s work, it is to explain to as many people as possible that the goodness and the greatness of America and the West flows from its foundational embrace of Biblical thought and its belief in ethical monotheism &#8212; the belief that there is one God whose primary desire is for people to treat each other morally. 
America&#8217;s, and especially Europe&#8217;s, increasing secularization, then, will diminish what has made the West exceptionally free, prosperous, and decent. 
&#8220;The lack of wisdom&#8212;certainly in America and the rest of the West&#8212;is directly related to the decline in biblical literacy,&#8221; Prager writes. &#8220;In the American past, virtually every home, no matter how poor, owned a Bible. It was the primary vehicle by which parents passed wisdom on to their children.&#8221;
This wisdom, which most people take for granted, was in fact introduced to the world by the Torah three millennia ago. Its moral assertions were &#8220;revolutionary and transformative&#8221; at the time. As Prager notes, &#8220;It is revolutionary in its removal of all sexuality from God and from religion; in its removal of all sexuality from the family (in contrast to Egypt, where Egyptian royalty preferred and practiced incest); in its demand to love one&#8217;s neighbor as oneself; in demanding repeatedly that we love and safeguard the stranger who resides among us; and in forbidding the rape of women during wartime.&#8221;
The irony of secular humanism is that it asserts that human rights are universal and valid without God, even though universal human rights are a Biblical invention. After all, if humans aren&#8217;t created in God&#8217;s image and thus fundamentally equal, and if God doesn&#8217;t command us to treat each other well, the call to universal human rights has no more logical validity than &#8220;might makes right.&#8221;
A central implication of The Rational Bible is this: It&#8217;s the Bible&#8217;s world. We&#8217;re just living in it.
While Prager&#8217;s intended audience may be Biblical skeptics &#8212; and for them I couldn&#8217;t more highly recommend The Rational Bible &#8212; believers will find ideas they&#8217;ve never seen; ideas original to Prager and drawn from some of Prager&#8217;s influences, including Biblical scholars Nahum Sarna, Everett Fox, and Jewish philosophical giants like Maimonides.
On Exodus 1:8: &#8220;A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph,&#8221; Prager notes, &#8220;Given that Joseph&#8217;s role in Egyptian history was so profound, the words &#8216;who did not know Joseph&#8217; are extraordinary.&#8221;
Pharaoh forgot that Joseph&#8217;s foresight and ingenuity saved Egypt from famine and starvation. Pharaoh was ungrateful because he was forgetful. 
Citing writer Bruce Feller, Prager writes: &#8220;Moses&#8217;s goal is to build a counter-Egypt . . . to construct a society that offers an alternative to ignorance and unknowingness. He must devise a community that remembers.&#8221;
Memory has been a central theme of Jewish practice since Sinai. On Passover and in daily prayers Jews remember that God took them out of Egypt; on Rosh Hashanah Jews remember that God created the world; on Shavuot Jews remember that God gave them the Torah.
On Exodus 1:17: &#8220;The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live,&#8221; Prager writes: &#8220;Fear of God is a liberating emotion, freeing one from a disabling fear of evil, powerful people. This needs to be emphasized because many people see fear of God as onerous rather than liberating.&#8221;
What most draws people to Prager, in my view, is that he simplifies the complex. In an age where Smart People like college professors get tenure for complicating the simple, this is no small thing. 
I&#8217;ve found that many commentaries on the Torah, while excellent if you&#8217;re looking for an intense, deep dive exploration of an idea, too often skip past its simplest and in some ways most profound messages. The ones that laid the groundwork for the world we live in.
The Torah stigmatizes slavery &#8212; a pre-Biblical universal norm &#8212; but does not ban it outright. Detractors of the Bible see this as a gotcha!, but miss the point: they have the luxury of being born into a culture that takes it for granted that slavery is evil only because the Torah condemned it over 3,300 years ago.
&#8220;In general, though not always, the moral precedes the legal,&#8221; Prager writes. &#8220;First you teach people what is right and wrong, then they eventually put the teaching into law.&#8221;
Readers of The Rational Bible will also notice that Prager addresses sections from the Torah that, to be honest, can make the eyes glaze over. The sacrifices, the construction of the Tabernacle, and other ritual items that are easy to dismiss as odd or even objectionable.
But, he adds, &#8220;It is essential to remember the Torah, while eternal in its values, first had to be intelligible and create a moral revolution in the late Bronze Age.&#8221;
On sacrifices, Prager, citing Sarna, writes that sacrificing Egypt&#8217;s gods is &#8220;analogous to people in totalitarian states gathering to publicly smash statues of the dictator.&#8221;
On the detailed instructions of building the tabernacle, Prager writes, citing Rabbi Saul Berman, &#8220;By listing the precise specifications for the Tabernacle in a document accessible to every person, the officials couldn&#8217;t later claim more material was required than was recorded.&#8221;
On the placing of the Ten Commandments in the ark, the holiest part of the Tabernacle, Prager observes, &#8220;It is a physical representation of a major Torah teaching: the holy protects the ethical.&#8221; A truth reflected in the <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">well-documented</a> deterioration of the Conservative and Reform denominations of Judaism, which, unlike Orthodox Judaism, de-emphasize Jewish ritual law.
And then there are the ideas found in The Rational Bible that are simply beautiful, and tragic. Why, Prager asks, are Moses&#8217; sons paid scant attention to by the Torah? Far less attention than Aaron&#8217;s sons, Nadab and Abihu?
Prager believes the Torah is commenting on the price of being the child of a great man, one of which is that, to quote Rabbi Harold Kushner, &#8220;It takes so much of a man&#8217;s [the father&#8217;s] time and energy to be a great man&#8212;great in some ways but not in all&#8212;that he has too little time left to be a father.&#8221;
The Rational Bible is a standout addition to the Bible commentary market, which, one would think, has plumbed the depths.
Prager&#8217;s exploration of the Bible&#8217;s surface shows that we have no idea how deep God&#8217;s word goes.

BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Rational Bible’, by Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager

Egypt

United States

Marco Rubio, James Comey, the White House Correspondents&#8217; Association.
These are but a few of the people and institutions who, in trying to discredit Donald Trump, have managed only to disgrace themselves. 
It&#8217;s one of the most striking phenomena of the Trump era: not only do attacks on him not stick, they rebound on the attacker. 
Call it the <a href="http://politicaldictionary.com/words/teflon-coated-presidency/">Teflon</a> boomerang presidency.
Donald Trump has &#8220;small hands,&#8221; Rubio quipped at a February 2016 rally. &#8220;And you know what they say about men with small hands.&#8221; 
Two weeks later Rubio conceded defeat, and exited the race.
Trump&#8217;s face is &#8220;slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles,&#8221; wrote Comey, who was the previous head of the FBI, in his tell-all high school memoir.
&#8220;Donald Trump is contagious,&#8221; The Washington Post&#8217;s Karen Tumulty correctly observed. &#8220;He turns everyone he touches into Donald Trump. Now he has done it to James B. Comey.&#8221;
&#8220;Like a porn star says when about to have sex with Trump: let&#8217;s get this over with,&#8221; said comedian Michelle Wolf as she opened her performance at the White House Correspondents&#8217; dinner on April 28.
Two days later, a news headline in The New York Times read, &#8220;Did Michelle Wolf Kill the White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner?&#8221;
So, how has Donald Trump managed to withstand relentless attacks from the most accomplished and capable Democrats, Republicans, journalists, comedians &#8212; everyone?
There&#8217;s likely more than one answer.
With Rubio, the senator disgraced himself in the purest sense of the word. Here was a polite, well-spoken, honorable senator, who decided to speak like a rude, crass, boorish reality TV star. In dissing Trump, Rubio violated the public image of himself that he himself had constructed. 
Trump has no such problem because the image he has crafted is one of a rude, crass, boorish reality TV star. It&#8217;s what we expect, so we&#8217;re not surprised, or even particularly unsettled when he acts in character.
Anti-Trump news coverage at outlets like CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, has, I believe, also had a Rubio effect. These mainstream outlets have long told Americans that they are objective, neutral, and just interested in the facts &#8212; character claims that they&#8217;ve violated in their undeniable <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/09/12/study-91-percent-of-recent-network-trump-coverage-has-been-negative/">zeal</a> to discredit the president.
Comey, like Rubio, violated the public image of himself that he built over decades. A G-Man with integrity of the highest order cannot imitate Donald Trump and still have integrity. Pick one.
But what about the cases of Steve Bannon, Jeff Flake, and the NFL? None of them, in their showdowns with Trump, lost because of a dissonance between their actions and their carefully constructed public image. 
Before Bannon told &#8220;journalist&#8221; Michael Wolff, &#8220;They&#8217;re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,&#8221; the public already saw him as a calculating, even conniving, political operative.
And yet, we&#8217;ve barely heard from Bannon since. One reason, particular to Bannon, is that his notoriety was directly related to having Trump&#8217;s ear. No ear, no PR. Also, Bannon drew first blood. This gave Trump, in the public&#8217;s mind, full rights to hit back. And hit back he did.
Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/03/politics/trump-statement-steve-bannon/index.html">counter-attack</a> was devastating, savage, and final. He is a schoolyard brawler, and he knows how to cripple his opponents, how to strike where it hurts most.
Which is what he did to the NFL. Trump picked a fight with one of the richest and most beloved institutions in America, and he <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2018/05/23/nfl-national-anthem-policy-kneeling-protest/637050002/">won</a> because he dictated the terms: the American flag, something most Americans and most NFL fans care about even more than football.
It was a winning issue.
Finally, there&#8217;s the Jeff Flake strategy. There may be no more vocal Republican critic of the president in Congress. But his outspokenness is his weakness, and that of so many of the Defenders Of Democracy&#8482; crew &#8212; Democrats and #NeverTrump conservatives alike. 
They just sound so . . . breathless, even whiny. 
&#8220;It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies,&#8221; Flake said on the Senate floor in January, referring to Trump tweeting that the &#8220;FAKE NEWS&#8221; New York Times, NBC, ABC, CNN, and CBS are &#8220;the enemy of the American people.&#8221;
Flake&#8217;s hyperbolic speech ended with a hymn from Mormon missionary John Jacques:
<blockquote>
Then say, what is truth? &#8216;Tis the last and the first,
For the limits of time it steps o&#8217;er.
Tho the heavens depart and the earth&#8217;s fountains burst.
Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,
Eternal&#8230; unchanged&#8230; evermore.
</blockquote>
Eye-roll. With enemies like this, Trump doesn&#8217;t need allies.
So, if fighting dirty backfired on Rubio and the press, if <a href="https://resistancehole.clickhole.com/">waxing philosophical</a> makes the public ignore the #Resistance and #NeverTrump, if the president preemptively strikes vulnerable targets and, when attacked first, has the public&#8217;s green light to counterstrike, who can win a cage fight against Donald Trump?
Donald Trump.
He is his only consistently successful opponent. 
His crass <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317">joke</a> about John McCain during the campaign, his <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-keeps-up-attacks-on-judge-gonzalo-curiel-1464911442">saying</a> Judge Gonzalo Curiel&#8217;s &#8220;Mexican heritage&#8221; presented a conflict, his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/us/politics/donald-trump-khizr-khan-wife-ghazala.html">criticism</a> of Khizr Khan. These hurt Trump.
Americans like a fighter. But they don&#8217;t like a bully. And Trump looks like one when he picks the wrong target or punches too hard, or both.
The president&#8217;s opponents would do well to follow the advice Corey Lewandowski gave to Republicans: 
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Let-Trump-Be-Inside-Presidency/dp/1546083308">Let Trump be Trump</a>. 
It&#8217;s how he keeps winning. If his story ends as a <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/04/30/donald-trump-tragic-hero/">tragic hero&#8217;s</a> would, it&#8217;s also how he&#8217;ll lose.

SICHEL: Can Anyone Other Than Donald Trump Defeat Donald Trump?

Corey Lewandowski

Fake News

Fox News

James Comey

Jeff Flake

The Department of Veteran Affairs isn&#8217;t just in need of more doctors, nurses, and medical personnel. Someone over there needs to call an exterminator &#8212; right now.
The best example of U.K.-style, government-run healthcare on this side of the pond has humiliated itself again, as CBS Los Angeles investigative reporter David Goldstein <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/05/01/va-hospital-flies-surgeries/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">revealed</a> Tuesday. Goldstein reported that the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center has cancelled or postponed dozens of surgeries due to a fly infestation. That&#8217;s right: a fly infestation in a hospital.
From November 2016 to this February, operating rooms were closed for 22 days, which led to 83 cancelled or delayed surgeries.
Goldstein&#8217;s secret cameras inside the hospital showed that what may look like green decorative lights in the halls and operating rooms are actually fly traps. He said there are more than 200 such fly traps throughout the facility.
Brian Brown, curator of entomology at the LA Museum of Natural History, said the Phorid flies &#8220;are attracted to open wounds for the fluids that they need to sustain themselves and also to keep from drying out.
&#8220;They could also lay eggs on the open wounds,&#8221; Brown said.
Dr. Christian Head, a head and neck surgeon at the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center, told Goldstein that some of the veterans whose surgeries have been cancelled &#8220;may have been waiting four, five weeks, or sometimes longer.&#8221;
&#8220;This is a continuation of delayed care for veterans,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe there&#8217;s any hospital in this country that would find it acceptable to have flies on a routine basis.&#8221;
Well, there&#8217;s at least one.

The VA Hospital In L.A. Has Cancelled 83 Surgeries Due To A Fly Infestation In Operating Rooms

Department of Veterans Affairs

Health Care

Veterans

Veterans Affairs (VA)

Philadelphia was home to two of the past week&#8217;s biggest stories, two utterly contrasting events that illustrate how America is at once reactionary and hysterical even as ordinary Americans remain stirringly brave.
First, at a Starbucks last Thursday, police <a href="https://twitter.com/missydepino/status/984539713016094721">arrested</a> two black men who were occupying a table but &#8212; the store manager told a 911 operator &#8212; hadn&#8217;t made a purchase. The men <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/29621/two-black-men-arrested-philly-starbucks-break-james-barrett">said</a> they were waiting for a friend to discuss a potential real estate deal. That part of their story appears to add up, and it&#8217;s possible that, even if the men were technically trespassing according to that store&#8217;s policy, the manager overreacted by calling 911. 
And yet, businesses have the right to enforce reasonable rules, particularly when non-paying customers may be taking a table where paying customers would sit. Plus, the men themselves said on Good Morning America that they refused to make a purchase even when the manager said they need to buy something or leave. So, it&#8217;s not as simple a situation as Twitter makes it out to be.
Not surprisingly, the video of the arrest went viral, and #BoycottStarbucks trended.
The company&#8217;s executive team then flew from Seattle to Philadelphia for a damage-control tour.
CEO Kevin Johnson said that he has &#8220;no doubt&#8221; that the store manager who called 911 did so because the two men are black. On Tuesday he announced that on May 29 Starbucks would close all of its 8,000 nationwide company-owned locations and subject 175,000 employees to &#8220;racial-bias education,&#8221; a euphemism for &#8220;sensitivity training,&#8221; a euphemism for &#8220;how to not say or do anything that may get us sued.&#8221;
Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said that &#8220;what occurred was reprehensible at every single level.&#8221; He <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c-af13iE06JDKO9jaDvW6z83srLq_i8gSm1K1aNNCUM/edit">told</a> CBS News&#8217; Gayle King, &#8220;I was sick to my stomach,&#8221; adding that &#8220;the level of unconscious bias that exists in America&#8221; is &#8220;systemic.&#8221;
And, to ensure that no one misses how woke he is, Schultz acknowledged guilt for an incident he played no part in and that we still don&#8217;t fully understand (still no statement from the manager &#8212; who&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/29557/philadelphia-starbucks-customer-supposedly-racist-ben-shapiro">apparently a progressive</a> &#8212; and no surveillance footage).
&#8220;I personally am responsible,&#8221; a grovelling Schultz confessed pathetically. 
Of course, not responsible enough to leave the company, as the manager has done, &#8220;pending an investigation by Starbucks,&#8221; a spokesperson <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/starbucks-arrests-ceo-apology-philadelphia-protests-kevin-johnson-20180416.html">told</a> The Philadelphia Inquirer.
On the same day as Schultz&#8217;s and Johnson&#8217;s mea culpa, 32,500 feet in the skies above Pennsylvania, not far from the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce, a story about the other America &#8212; the courageous, steady, and grounded America &#8212; was about to unfold.
Southwest Flight 1380 was about 40 minutes into its four-hour flight from La Guardia to Dallas-Love. New Yorkers and Texans and Americans from all over were doing what people on airplanes do &#8212; napping, reading, watching movies, looking at the sky, the clouds, and the miniature-looking homes and roads and rivers below.
But as flight attendants walked down the aisle taking drink orders, everything went wrong. A blast came from the plane&#8217;s left wing. An engine had exploded. 
The plane lurched downward. Smoke poured through the ventilation system. Passengers scrambled to put oxygen masks on themselves and their children.
Flying shrapnel blew out the window next to passenger Jennifer Riordan, a wife, a mother of two, and an executive at Wells Fargo in Albuquerque. 
Riordan was sucked partially out of the window before passengers Andrew Needum, a firefighter from Celina, Texas, and Tim McGinty, a ranch hand from Brandon, Texas who was wearing his cowboy hat on the flight, rushed from their seats to help pull her back in. 
They laid her across a row of seats as Peggy Phillips, a retired nurse from Dallas, performed CPR on Riordan to try to keep her alive. It was too late. The blunt trauma she had suffered from the shrapnel was too devastating for anyone to survive.
But there were still 143 passengers and five crew members on Flight 1380 whose lives remained in the balance. The blown-out window could have sucked out nearby passengers. The blown-out engine put the entire aircraft in danger. 
For the next 20 minutes, as the cabin was a tornado-like scene of debris, every passenger prepared for what they thought may be their final moments. Prayers to God, frantic texts to loved ones, a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/04/18/southwest-airlines-passenger-paid-wifi-facebook-live-crash/527387002/">Facebook Live</a>.
In an attempt to seal the window, a man positioned his body in front of it, subjecting his back to &#8220;<a href="https://www.ctpost.com/technology/businessinsider/article/southwest-airlines-pilot-arrest-TSA-gun-6413122.php">severe pressure</a>.&#8221; His clothes became <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2018/04/17/plane-dropped-sky-frantic-passengers-tried-send-final-messages-loved-ones">covered in blood</a>.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the pilot, Tammie Jo Shults, calmly informed traffic control that her plane&#8217;s engine blew out and that she&#8217;d be making an emergency landing.
To listen to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkVTdvcghHc">audio</a> of her conversation is to hear what &#8220;nerves of steel&#8221; &#8212; as one passenger described Shults &#8212; sounds like. Vital information clearly communicated. No wasted words. Professionalism epitomized.
Shults: &#8220;Southwest 1380 has an engine fire. Descending.&#8221;
Air traffic control: &#8220;Southwest 1380 &#8212; you&#8217;re descending right now?&#8221;
Shults: &#8220;Yes sir, we&#8217;re single-engine descending, have a fire in number one.&#8221;
Air traffic control: &#8220;Southwest 1380, okay, where would you like to go to? Which airport?
Shults: &#8220;Give us a vector for your closest. Philadelphia.&#8221;
Shults, a former F/A-18 Hornet pilot for the Navy&#8217;s Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron, was the first woman to fly F-18s. A religious Christian, she has said that captaining planes gives her &#8220;the opportunity to witness for Christ on almost every flight.&#8221; 
In high school, Shults said she was turned away from an aviation career fair because she was a girl. The Air Force would not let her take an entrance test for the same reason. The Navy, though, was willing to consider her.
On Tuesday, as Shults guided her plane to within visual range of Philadelphia International Airport, she confirmed with air traffic control if there would be medical personnel on hand to treat injured passengers.
As The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/us/southwest-plane-engine-failure.html">reported</a>:
<blockquote>
About two minutes before they landed, Matt Tranchin&#8217;s phone got reception, so he called his wife and told her they were about to hit the ground. He figured they had a 50-50 chance of surviving.
Over the intercom, the crew sternly told passengers to put their heads down and brace themselves. Ms. Sears held onto her friend in the seat next to her and wondered, &#8220;Will it stop? Will it crash? Will it explode?&#8221;
It landed.
</blockquote>
Relieved passengers joyously applauded, texting and calling their family to let them know they were fine.
&#8220;Thank you, we are going to stop right here by the fire trucks,&#8221; Shults told air traffic control. &#8220;Thank you, guys, for the help.&#8221; 
She then stepped out of the cockpit, walking through the cabin to hug grateful passengers.
A few hours later, she <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/business/business/2018/04/18/texas-pilot-tammie-jo-shults-landed-southwest-plane-lauded-calm-courage">texted</a> a pilot friend of hers, &#8220;God is good.&#8221;
It&#8217;s hard to not marvel at how superficially similar yet substantially dissimilar the Starbucks and Southwest stories are. 
Philadelphia and Philadelphia. Tuesday and Tuesday. Schultz and Shults. 
But two pictures tell the actual story. 
One, of a Black Lives Matter activist at the Philadelphia Starbucks <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/philadelphia-starbucks-protest-photo-meme-twitter-black-men-arrest-20180417.html">sticking a bullhorn</a> in a stoic-looking barista&#8217;s face. The other, of Tammie Jo Shults <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/us/southwest-plane-engine-failure.html">holding the hand</a> of one of her passengers, Pastor Timothy Bourman, as his face exudes gratitude. I think this photo is closer to the real America, the one that news cameras only capture in times of true crisis.
The men who lead Starbucks, Kevin Johnson and Howard Schultz, hurt us as a nation this week. They abetted Hysteria, Inc. They threw us into another breathless frenzy. Not one Starbucks should be closing on May 29.
What a waste of energy it all is.
In the meantime, I&#8217;m looking forward to the movie about Southwest Flight 1380 and the grace and coolness of Tammie Jo Shults. 
She deserves it.
And we need it.

Menu

Jared Sichel