The War on Chronology

Donald Trump’s quote about George W. Bush was literally as simple as “The World Trade Center came down during his reign” — which is a statement of chronological fact, without even making a judgment upon its significance or lack thereof, yet establishment conservatives are furious about that.

This emblematic is what we’re up against on a major scale: People who don’t just have an alternate worldview but an alternate view of chronological reality.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: So many points of “conventional wisdom” from the political and media establishment in Washington (including both sides of the aisle, but especially conservatives) fall apart when chronology is applied to cause-and-effect claims they make. It’s not just “correlation is not causation” — it’s that they get the order of historical events consistently wrong in drawing broad conclusions about them. Everything becomes of the fault of their opponents (whether on their own side or the other side) by presenting the reaction to something as its historical cause.

With liberty and development for some…

A review finds Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s economic development council doesn’t reflect the state’s race or gender at all.

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“Baker’s economic development panel largely white and male” – The Boston Globe:

But Baker’s 59-member council is more than 85 percent white and more than 80 percent male, according to a Globe review. The lopsided demographics have prompted criticism from those who say that Baker’s personnel decisions have not lived up to his inclusive message on the campaign trail last year.
[…]
But critics such as US Representative Katherine Clark, a Melrose Democrat, said that more than 70 percent of the people entering the workforce are women or people of color, according to research by the Bentley University Center for Women and Business.
[…]
According to US Census Bureau estimates, non-Hispanic whites account for 75 percent of the state’s population, and women for 52 percent.