"Double Standard"

There's a small problem with this analogy, in an article on the relationship between a particularly violent strand of hip-hop music and Chicago violence which came across my desk this morning though it was originally published in December of 2014. The murder rate in Chicago is at its all time high now, so the problem the author is discussing has only worsened.

In 1956, Johnny Cash released his classic song “Folsom Prison Blues” in which he stated, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” For those of you familiar with this song, ask yourself, “Have I ever felt like killing someone after listening to this?” The obvious answer, of course, is no. Yet, there seems to be a double standard when it comes to hip hop and its new found sub-genre, drill music.

The difference between the Cash song and the songs to which you refer is the absence of tribalism. Johnny Cash's song is about a loser who is all alone in the world, having rejected the mores of his family and his society. He is locked in a prison where there must be people all around him, but none of them are mentioned. The only other people in the song -- aside from his Mama and the man he killed in spite of her advice -- are people he can only imagine, doing things he longs to do in a space forever forbidden to him. He doesn't even really long for fellowship with them. He doesn't imagine himself in the dining car with them, 'drinking coffee and smoking big cigars.' He just wishes he could drive the train. He pictures himself there, in a role he knows he can never inhabit, moving the train away from lonely Folsom Prison.

That's not what's going on with this other music. This music is asking you to imagine yourself as a member of a tribe, a soldier of the tribe, standing up proudly against others. It's a very different logic. Killing in the one song is the Fall. Killing in the other is a source of power, pride, position. Read the lyrics the author quotes as exemplary for the proof of this.

A subsidiary argument blames the broader society for both the rise of the music and the actual violence associated with it:

If you were to take a look at a timeline of events in the Chicago, you’d see that drill music came to fruition as the city began its aggressive redevelopment of public housing. It was an initiative called The Plan for Transformation. In a nutshell, the “plan” was to completely demolish all of the project housings in Chicago and replace them with remodeled updated apartments. However, in doing so, tens of thousands of Chicago’s poor residents were displaced and forced to move into other nearby, crowded and impoverished neighborhoods. When this happened, rival gangs became closer to one another. Sub-gangs also began forming within existing gangs, creating infighting. For years, this problem continued to go unrecognized and unchecked.

In 2012, Chicago took the national stage due to its unprecedented level of gun violence. By the end of that year, Chicago officially became murder capital of the United States.

There's probably a causal factor to be found there, too. It is the property of guilt, however, that it can be divided without being lessened.

Crumbling

The Clinton campaign says there will be no more debates unless Sanders stops being so negative about her.

Sanders is negative about her? She's been in national politics for twenty years. He's the most courteous opponent she's ever had.

Meanwhile, a writer at the Huffington Post says that she should concede the contest.

Yes, federal prosecutors will interview Hillary Clinton, in addition to her close associates.

At what point will establishment Democrats admit this fiasco is horrible for a general election?

When federal prosecutors are interviewing your candidate for president, even Donald Trump has a good chance at the White House.

Furthermore, former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey believes A Criminal Charge is Justified. Former Obama intelligence official Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn says that “If it were me, I would have been out the door and probably in jail.” Former NSA director Michael Hayden called Clinton’s email setup “stupid and dangerous.” Even Edward Snowden, the antithesis of America’s intelligence community in many ways, says it’s “ridiculous” to think Clinton’s emails were secure.

It’s time for Democrats to deal with reality, not just allegiance to a political icon, and rally around the only candidate not linked to an FBI investigation...

Also, nothing in the Rolling Stone piece endorsing Clinton mentions the ongoing FBI investigation. The Christian Science Monitor clearly states the nature of the FBI’s investigation, stating “The FBI is indeed conducting a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information on the private email server Clinton used for State Department communications.”

Yes, Hillary supporters, “The FBI is indeed conducting a criminal investigation.”

Another Dead End

Actual NYT Headline: "Who Will Become a Terrorist? Research Yields Few Clues."

Actual opening grafs:

The brothers who carried out suicide bombings in Brussels last week had long, violent criminal records and had been regarded internationally as potential terrorists. But in San Bernardino, Calif., last year, one of the attackers was a county health inspector who lived a life of apparent suburban normality.

And then there are the dozens of other young American men and women who have been arrested over the past year for trying to help the Islamic State. Their backgrounds are so diverse that they defy a single profile.

Actual Saturday Night Live skit from many years ago, when this line of argument was already a joke.

Governor Deal to Veto Religious Freedom

As expected, the governor has determined that liberty should be sold for profit.

“Our people work side by side without regard to the color of our skin, or the religion we adhere to,” he said. “We are working to make life better for our families and our communities. That is the character of Georgia. I intend to do my part to keep it that way,” he said. “For that reason, I will veto HB 757.”

That's a neat rhetorical trick. If it is the case that Georgians "work side by side without regard to... religion..." then the law would provoke no changes in behavior. The argument is that the law is not necessary because Georgians already freely do what it would free them not to do. This is framed as an act of tolerance and compassion. It is really an assertion that force may be used to compel Georgia's religious dissenters to comply with the opinion of the cultural elite.

What is really going on is that the law is going to require Georgians to work "without regard... to the religion they adhere to" by mandating them to do things that violate their faith. Religion will be forced out of the public space in these ways: if you want to make a living, you will violate your faith whenever you are required to do so by activists who hunt you down to make the point. The law will compel you.

Disney is happy today, and the Coca-Cola company. The governor has betrayed the basic mission of an American state, however. Protecting the liberties of the people is the whole reason this nation and its several states exist. Governor Deal's action is a disgrace to the United States of America and to the state of Georgia.

"Insufficient Attention"

From a story in the Washington Post:

From the earliest days, Clinton aides and senior officials focused intently on accommodating the secretary’s desire to use her private email account, documents and interviews show.

Throughout, they paid insufficient attention to laws and regulations governing the handling of classified material and the preservation of government records, interviews and documents show.

According to this frame, the only wrongdoing was paying "insufficient attention" to (ahem) "laws and regulations." Now, what do we usually call it when someone pays "insufficient attention" to a law?

I notice that the frame also maintains that "Clinton aides and senior officials" are the ones who are in the wrong. Clinton herself? She just has legitimate interests in being able to communicate efficiently that the aides are trying to accommodate.

Though a news story, it almost reads like an offer: take these "senior aides" as your sacrificial lambs, and leave the Great Woman Herself to float free.

The High Feast of Easter

Happy Easter to you all.

Tax All Foriegners Living Abroad

So went an old Monty Python gag.

The New York Times may have just as well used that instead of the their title for this piece: "In Donald Trump's Worldview, America Comes First, and Everybody Else Pays"

That headline is just going to do the opposite of what the Times intends.

A Bird for Bernie: Campaigns React

Nothing from the Cruz campaign, I notice.

Good Friday

Good Friday is a day about which I feel unqualified to write. I hope you may choose today to take counsel with a better authority. I only mention it to wish you well in a difficult hour.

For those with Jewish friends, today is also Shushan Purim, a holiday I had not known of until this morning. Purim I knew of, martial holiday that it is, but it turns out that there is a special variation of the date of Purim that really appeals to me:

Purim is celebrated on the Adar 14 because the Jews in unwalled cities fought their enemies on Adar 13 and rested the following day. However, in Shushan, the capital city of the Persian Empire, the Jews were involved in defeating their enemies on Adar 13–14 and rested on the 15th (Esther 9:20–22). In commemoration of this, it was decided that while the victory would be celebrated universally on Adar 14, for Jews living in Shushan, the holiday would be held on Adar 15. Later, in deference to Jerusalem, the Sages determined that Purim would be celebrated on Adar 15 in all cities which had been enclosed by a wall at the time of Joshua's conquest of the Land of Israel.

Allahpundit Has It Backwards

It's Trump who has to challenge Cruz to a duel. Otherwise, the charge of cowardice stands.

This is why dueling is useful, of course. Lots of men have big mouths. Not all of them have big... hands.

Salute to a Communist

Senator John McCain remembers a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Namaste, Heathens

Kennesaw, Georgia is a trip.

A group of parents at a Cobb County elementary are upset over the school’s use of yoga and other mindfulness practices for students because they believe it endorses a non-Christian belief system.

School leaders at Bullard Elementary held a meeting recently with parents to address the “many misconceptions” over the issue...

As a result, the school is making changes. When yoga moves are used in classrooms, students will not say the word “namaste” nor put their hands by their hearts, according to the email. The term and gesture are often used as a greeting derived from Hindu custom.

When coloring during classroom teaching breaks, students will not be allowed to color mandalas, spiritual symbols in Hinduism and Buddhism.

I would wager heavily that the school's teachers don't understand the real Hindu customs or theology well enough to teach it if they had wanted to teach it. If they did, they'd understand that the suggestion that yoga has something to do with Hinduism isn't just some silly 'misconception.'



UPDATE: I win my bet. From the program founder's bio:

I consider Dr. Seuss one of my master teachers...

She really doesn't know what she's teaching. I looked up those yoga credentials, by the way. The Yoga Alliance, which seems to be the source for them, points out that they are not certifications -- they're just acknowledgements that she's in their registry, and they've tracked that she's taught 500 hours, or has registered as a teacher of children, or whatever.

The good news is that you can stop worrying about her rubbing any Hinduism off on your kids. The bad news, I trust, is obvious.

You Could Be A Rock Star In America, Too

Headline: "US Attorney Becomes Rock Star In Turkey For Arresting Erdogan’s Partner."

Exulting in Zarrab’s arrest, Turkish social media users had a field day mocking him and hailing the attorney.

Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, had only 8,010 followers before the Justice Department announced on Monday the arrest of Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian businessman accused of evading US sanctions on Iran. The number of attorney’s followers on Twitter was skyrocketed to whopping 230,000 and it is rapidly increasing. His latest two tweets were shared nearly 60,000 times and liked by 85,000 people....

Bharara was lionized in Turkey largely because corruption suspects are deemed so “untouchable” that any prosecutor or police who go after them may lose their jobs or jailed and any journalist covering them may face prosecution or get fired.

I assure you that I stand ready to be as celebratory for the US attorney who brings Hillary Clinton to justice. Can we prove at home what we have proven abroad, that the law can apply even to the powerful? Or is that only for those who aren't powerful here?

UPDATE: McClatchy says that, like the FiveThirtyEight people who have to go on 'quests' to understand Trump voters, the People just don't understand the elite.

The people who spend two bucks for chili at the Courtesy Diner at Laclede Station Road can’t fathom why anyone would pay Hillary Clinton $225,000 to make a speech.

That's not true. Everybody knows why she was paid $225,000 for the speech. They're just too polite to say it out loud.

Major Voter Suppression in Arizona

You won't be informed of this by reading the article, so let me ask you if you realize who benefited from this particular fraud? The article actually says that this is "all about electing Republicans," but the Republican establishment isn't the one pulling out all the stops to elect a particular candidate.

Also:

"[I]ndependent voters who switched their registration to the Democratic Party were allegedly told they hadn’t registered at all, forcing them to sit out the closed primary."

How would disenfranchising Democratic primary voters have anything to do with electing Republicans?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

About that Che Photo...

The Weekly Standard wants you to know what Cubans saw when they looked at that photo:

[T]he building that Guevara's face adorns is home to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior. Unlike our own Ministry of the Interior, Cuba's is not charged with innocuous tasks like protecting endangered waterfowl. Rather, it operates the National Revolutionary Police, which, in addition to keeping law and order on the streets, harasses and arrests dissidents, and suppresses "counter-revolutionary" activities. In other words, it's Cuba's version of the Stasi.

So it's a photo of the President of the United States, standing at attention, in front of the headquarters of the Communist Revolutionary Police. That should send a message to the Cuban people, for sure.

Hey, Ash Carter: What About A 'Less Hierarchical Work Environment' in the Army?

The answer is revealing.

Carter told the cadet it was "a good question," as "we've got to stay competitive."

"And it gets to attracting and recruiting people. And it means we're going to have to keep thinking and keep changing about how we manage people. Let me give you a few examples of things that we're doing now... [to] draw in some of what you're calling exactly right, flatter, more mobile institutions...."

"Just recently, I changed our -- our policies in a number of ways on family programs -- things like maternity and paternity leave."

Yeah, you're doing a heck of a job there.

A flatter, less hierarchical work environment is great for the Special Forces. They've made it work beautifully. It doesn't necessarily translate to the rest of the military. I wonder if our Secretary of Defense can say why, beyond the difficulty of obtaining artillery colonels through the want ads?

"Vexing Decision" for Governor Deal

The religious liberty bill passed the Legislature easily, but has been sitting on the governor's desk for a while.

The question that Governor Deal has to answer is this: is protecting the religious liberty of actual citizens the relevant duty of the state of Georgia, or is it protecting the feelings of cartoon mice and superheroes? Disney and Marvel say they aren't willing to film in Georgia if they can't force citizens to comply with their corporate policies.

It's an easy question from where I sit: if we are being asked to trade liberty for money, they can take their money and run. No state of the Union, and no Federal government, should ever trade an American liberty even for safety in the teeth of foreign threats. How much less should we trade sacred liberty for the wages of the next Avenger film?

This is one of two bills favored by Georgia's conservatives that easily passed the Legislature but have been hung up on the governor. The other one is the 'campus carry' bill, which liberal professors and administrators on our campuses -- a majority here, as elsewhere -- have treated with apoplexy. Governor Deal asked the Legislature to 'make some changes' to the bill.

The Legislature declined.

Duffel Blog: Crusade, Anyone?

Poll: Support for another Crusade at highest level since 14th century

It's a joke, and yet...

North Dakota Professor Quails at ROTC Candidates

“My first thought is for my students’ and my safety: I grab my phone, crawl under my desk and call 911,” she wrote.

The threat, however, was two ROTC students carrying guns on their way to a routine training exercise, Campus Reform reported.

“I can barely talk — first, with fear, and then with rage when the dispatcher reports back that yes, in fact, I’ve probably just seen ROTC cadets, though they’re going to send an officer to check because no one has cleared it with them,” Ms. Czerwiec wrote.

She said a university officer called her back a few minutes later to inform her that ROTC would be doing the exercises for the next couple of weeks.

“So I reply that I guess I’ll be calling 911 for the next couple weeks—and I will. Every time,” Ms. Czerwiec wrote. “It’s not my job to decide whether people carrying guns at school are an actual threat. It’s my job to teach and to get home to my family.

“It’s already highly inappropriate to conduct unnecessary military maneuvers in the middle of the quad. But with school shootings on the increase and tensions at UND running high, it’s especially irresponsible.”

Heaven forfend. You can't imagine how sorry I am to learn that you are having to learn to live with the people who defend the country you live in.

Best Use Yet

A charity shop is given so many copies of Fifty Shades of Grey that it finds an inventive use for them.

"The God Shot"

Via Armed Liberal, a story about a doctor who has a pioneering therapy for PTSD.

How Can You Defeat ISIS if You Won't Stand Up for Western Values?

The refusal to big-up Western values has been institutionalised in the idea of Islamophobia, which is not just about protecting Muslims from assault or discrimination — a noble thing to do — but is about policing any expression of belief in the superiority of Western or enlightened values. In the words of the Runnymede Trust, which shaped the definition of Islamophobia, any suggestion that the Islamic way of life is ‘inferior to the West’ is an expression of prejudice, and everyone should be taught that the Islamic outlook is ‘as equally worthy of respect [as Western values]’. Laws and codes against Islamophobia represent the institutionalisation of relativism, the suppression of loud and proud defences of the virtues of Western life and thought.

Prejudice is pre-judging a thing. The problem is that we've gotten to the point that any judgment at all, regardless of the evidence, is forbidden as if it were a judgment in advance of the facts.

Wikileaks and Clinton

Now that the Clinton emails are public (those she didn't delete before turning them over to the government, of course), Wikileaks has produced them in a searchable format. Now you can read Sid Blumenthal's emails, or prowl around to see who was giving her money in return for favorable treatment from State.

The Exchange Theory of Value (Again)

From time to time we have discussions that feature the exchange theory of value. It's amusing to me that the clearest example I can recall is Mike holding forth on Dungeons & Dragons mechanics.

[W]hile you may argue that it makes no logical sense for an evil Paladin to be the martial equal of a good one, I'd posit that you're arguing logic in a game where wizards can cast an identify spell using a pearl worth "at least 100 gold pieces". And nothing anywhere explains how to calculate who determines the worth of that pearl. Are the pearls used to identify magic items in the desert smaller and more flawed than the ones in the fishing village that has pearl cultivation beds? That's a screwed up metaphysical system where market forces determine the efficacy of magic.

So what is a pearl worth? The usual answer is that it is worth what someone will give for it. This may lead to results that seem absurd in real life, too. Sometimes people who have a lot of money push the value of apparently trivial objects well above what ordinary people could afford. Is the single copy of Wu Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin really worth millions of dollars?

To dispute that it was, you would have to have some other standard than exchange to measure what a thing is "really worth." Many economic theories simply lack the furniture to argue about whether or not the pearl is "really worth" 100 gold pieces, or the album is "really worth" millions of dollars. Other theories that do are largely discredited: Marxists can talk about "surplus value" being extracted from laborers, but Marxist economics has never managed to work anywhere.

I was thinking about this today because of an article in the NYT that purports to show that as women take over in male-dominated fields wages drop.

If this is true, under the exchange theory of value the work of women is "really worth" less just because people are willing to pay less for it. It is, presumably, the same work. The work was "really worth" more if a man did it in a male-dominated field, and now is "really worth" less because women have entered the field. Is that right?

Well, one thing that would make it plausible is that womens' entry increases the supply of labor for that particular job; now everyone's labor is worth less in that field just because of the law of supply and demand. That may be the real explanation, but I want to set it aside for the purpose of this discussion. I'm interested in a theoretical question.

What interests me is -- as usual -- whether there is a moral question that should override the economic question. It often bothers me that so much seems to be for sale. I like to think that at least some things ought not to be traded in the market. Even in the market, too, I think some relationships are adequately unfair that they should be banned even if both parties to the trade are willing.

Here is a moral principle of fairness (which Aristotle said is an important component of justice, and which Rawls said was the whole of justice). It seems to be out of order with the economic principle, maybe, if the explanation is not merely an increased labor supply.

Does it show that the exchange theory of value is incomplete or inadequate? In Mike's D&D example, I thought the pearl would prove to have an objective value if it could be used for the spell. Does fairness perform something of the same role as magic, but in the real world? Or should we continue to discard other concepts than exchange value, and say that fairness does not apply?

I Suddenly Sense the Appeal

Still not a fan, but this makes more sense than anything I've seen yet.

UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight goes on a "quest" to try to understand Trump voters.

Here's what I think they get right, which I will follow on with what I think they are missing.

I queued up in the general admission line and entered the massive space just as the national anthem was starting. The assembled crowd of about 5,000 was reverently quiet — a massive flag billowed, police officers and firefighters stood at attention, and the sickly gray sky seemed more like swirling marble than the dull harbinger of rain it had been only moments ago. Something stirred deep beneath my layers of reportorial cynicism; I got chills.

This part of the appeal of Trump rallies is not talked about much.... Along with the fighting, though, something inspirational seems to be happening among the assembled — a sense of collective identity being discovered. In this millionaire cosmopolitan who has married two immigrants, the threatened silent American majority has found its champion.

The emotional experience Trump is capable of creating is why it will be difficult to replace him, even with Cruz who is a more rational choice given their expressed concerns. Cruz is the right choice for these voters, but they don't have the emotional experience with him. It is Trump that makes them feel large, proud, and part of something.

What I think FiveThirtyEight and others are missing is that this is not something affecting the Republican party only. The author writes that "working-class whites’ racial anger had reconstituted their sense of identity; and their desire for the center to no longer hold meant drastic upheaval in the Grand Old Party and America." If this is about "working class whites" discovering a newly invigorated racial identity, though, that is going to cut a part of the heart out of the Democratic Party, too.

The numbers suggest that, if everything else holds equal, Trump will need 70% of the white male vote to win.

I think he might get it. It would only mean that white men vote more like black men -- that is, as a bloc. The rise of such a bloc ought to have been expected given the Democratic Party's explicit strategy of overcoming Republican advantages with white voters by emphasizing the interests of minority voters while pursuing the mass immigration of new such voters.

Until now, among white voters it has been possible for Democrats to divide and conquer blue collar from white collar, labor from management. That is, until this election, race has mattered most to black voters, but class has mattered most to white voters. It is still somewhat possible to divide out white women from white men by appealing to them qua women. That is, for some white voters, sex matters more than race. The Democrats are hoping to leverage that with Hillary Clinton as their nominee.

Thus, Trump has to pull 70% with white men because we haven't yet reached the point at which our politics are explicitly about whites versus everyone else. We are getting there fast, though. What the Democrats are blind about is that it is their party's electoral strategy that is driving this. The reason the 'white working class' is discovering a racial identity rather than a class identity is that "white" is the box they've been put into by powerful forces affecting their lives.

They aren't creating this identity for themselves. They're discovering the power of accepting membership in it. They're just figuring out what black America has long known: that taking the externally-imposed identity seriously, owning it, and wielding it through bloc voting is terribly powerful.

Neither race- nor class-based democratic systems turn out well. We've had a good run because the system didn't go all one way or all the other: the majority was divided by class while the minorities were divided by race. If we tip over into a system in which race is the main driver of political belonging, we're not going to have a pleasant future. But I don't know how you stop it from one side: and the Republicans aren't the main drivers of race-as-identity in American life. I don't see how they can pull a lever to stop this, not when the levers are mostly owned by the other side.

That Russian Uranium Deal

Now that Bernie Sanders is so far behind in the delegate count that he probably can't catch up, the NYT gets around to telling its readers about Clinton's Russia problem.

UPDATE: Apparently it's an older article that just appeared in my "news" feed. Apologies to the Times, who got this one right.

Havok Journal: Open Letter to Future Women in Special Operations

The author says he gets a letter at least once a day from someone interested in a career in special operations, but so far never from a female. Although Leo Jenkins says he's neither for nor against them, he closes with what reads to me like a strong endorsement of the concept. Nevertheless, he has some significant advice for any women considering the position.

Here is just one of his sections, every one of which strikes me as thoughtful and important.

It is important to discuss the purpose of such professions as Army Ranger, Navy SEAL or infantry soldier. These positions are often glorified in the media. Shiny medals, fancy patches, special color hats, and cool tactical gear permeate the imaginations of those outside these communities. I’m going to let you in on a trade secret, none of that shit fucking matters at all. None of it. Recruitment posters lie to you. Television and movies lie to you. As a hopeful I know what you are thinking, “I’m joining to make a difference.”

Here is the harsh reality, when you volunteer yourself for these positions, your function is to kill. Your job, your purpose, at its core, is to bring an unparalleled level of violence to the throat of the enemy. Your function is to preserve the way of life of those behind and beside you by cutting down those in front of you. You can’t just accept that fact, you have to embrace it. You have to be so filled with aggression that you want to take the life of another human being. If you’re half-hearted about this, Special Operations or the infantry is not the place for you.

Studies have shown females sustain physical injury during training at twice the rate of men, as well as are susceptible to an elevated risk of post traumatic stress. In fact, you are more than twice as likely to experience post traumatic stress than your male counterpart. During a conversation in 2006 with an individual employed as a special operations psychological doctor, I learned that it is estimated that over 90% of the the entire Ranger Regiment has experienced events which have made them highly susceptible to post traumatic stress; many of whom admitted to displaying symptoms of at the time.

According to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, six to twelve percent of males are injured per month in basic training where 30 percent per month report injury during Naval Special Warfare training. It is important to note that this number is likely significantly lower due to the fact that reporting an injury in special warfare training has a different outcome than reporting injury in basic training.

If rate of female injury in basic training compared to male is double and injury occurrence is three to five times higher (at least) in special operations training, the probability you will sustain a lasting injury during SOF training is almost guaranteed. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to try out. Rather you need to understand that your health will be compromised in pursuit of this occupation.

What's the Single Most Important Factor Behind Terror in Brussels?

Go ahead, try to think of one single thing that is more prominent than anything else.

Did you get "poverty," or "injustice?"

Either way, well done. You've mastered your thoughtcrime. However, we still have to talk about your unconscious bias...

UPDATE: By the way, if you came up with the forbidden word, do a CTRL+F on the page and see how often it comes up -- and in what context.

Ukrainian Pilot Sentenced to 22 Years by Russian Court

Nadia Savchenko is a female pilot who was functioning as an artillery spotter in the conflict with Russian forces. Although Russia signed an agreement not only to respect but to protect Ukraine's territory, it is involved in a war there over its attempts to extend its control over the Russian-speaking eastern part of the country. Lieutenant Savchenko was captured by Russian police, and is charged with murder for directing airstrikes that killed two journalists.

The charge is as ridiculous as the trial. This was not a criminal act but the result of a war. The war is Russia's responsibility. The Ukrainian government may not be sweetness and light, but Russia is in clear violation of its treaty with them. Any unfortunate deaths on the battlefield resulting from military action are morally the Kremlin's fault for provoking the war. In any case, accidentally killing civilians on the battlefield is covered by the Doctrine of Double Effect, and does not constitute a war crime. It certainly should not be prosecuted as if it were a civilian murder.

Lieutenant Savchenko has borne up like a heroine, singing her national anthem from the dock and sneering at the judge. She has shown the real mental toughness required of combat soldiers, in a role providing direct support to an infantry unit.

Brussels in Flames

Another Islamist attack? It's early to say, but al Azhar is already calling it a violation of Islam's tolerant teachings.

Just a Reminder

"Unconscious Bias" and the USMC

The Marine Corps has been ordered to implement "unconscious bias" training for all Marines to prepare them for women in the infantry. As you recall, the USMC was the only service to ask for an exception for its infantry, which was denied with prejudice by the Secretary of the Navy (who all but accused them of deceptive behavior in their study of integrated combat units). The object is to change the culture so it is appropriately welcoming to female Marines who join the infantry.

The USMC is duly obeying, of course.

Mobile training teams will be dispatched to installations across the Corps throughout May and June to offer a two-day seminar to majors and lieutenant colonels, Col. Anne Weinberg, deputy director of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office, told reporters Thursday. Those officers will then train the Marines under them.

Emphasis added. So Higher is going to train battalion commanders and the other top officers of Infantry battalions. The BC will probably train his company commanders, and leave the majors to train his battalion staff. Company Commanders will train platoon leaders and Master Sergeants or Gunnery Sergeants depending on what kind of company it is. At this point, the NCO corps will take over. Gunny will probably be the guy to take this to the men, but even he may pass it off to his subordinate NCOs.

By the time this telephone game is over, how much of the "unconscious bias" mumbo-jumbo that was said at the two-day seminar do you think will have survived?

AIPAC & the Presidential Campaign

I notice nobody's talking about Bernie Sanders' address to AIPAC this morning. Clinton's didn't go over very well.

Cruz tagged Trump for a symbolic violation of the way hard-core Israelis speak about Palestine, but made a foul of his own according to those rarefied rules.

According to an Israeli friend of mine, however, the big winner of the night was Trump, who won it all at the end of his speech when he showed that he couldn't wait for his "beautiful Jewish baby" grandchild. For her, that was better than all the carefully crafted speeches in the world.

The Legend and the Renegade

If you aren't reading Garden & Gun magazine, let me recommend it. I think most folks here at the Hall would enjoy it.

Here's an interview they did with Merle and Sturgill in the most recent issue. They are pretty solidly Southern: Southern cooking, hunting destinations, riding trails, homes, personalities, music, et cetera. Beautiful photography as well.

Vigilantes

Since we've moved on to that stage of American politics...

Manufacturing in America

D29 has a post challenging the idea that labor costs are the main thing driving the movement out of the country.

Via Uncle J

Lawlessness

What are the core features of the drift in American government toward lawlessness? I might have said these:

1) The President's war on Libya, undeclared and without Congressional authorization or notification as required by law.

2) The use of prosecutorial discretion to refuse to enforce the law on key administration allies, especially from the Clinton faction. This is so important that it is a necessary condition for the continued candidacy of the likeliest next President of the United States.

3) The unilateral suspension of America's immigration laws.

4) The free rewriting of major legislation such as Obamacare by Health and Human Services.

5) The refusal to defend democratically-enacted laws with which the President disagrees ideologically.

6) The use of the IRS to target conservative groups and prevent conservative organization.

7) The Iran deal's inversion of the Constitutional requirement for treaties to obtain a 2/3rds majority in the Senate.

8) The clear demonstration that no one in the administration will be held accountable for lawlessness as long as a sufficient minority exists in the Senate to prevent impeachment and removal from office. Failing that, everyone is protected because the chief is protected.

David Bernstein, who wrote a book on the subject, agrees with some of these and gives additional examples.

I mention it because the left-wing journal Jacobin says that the rise of lawlessness in America is a Republican work. They also have a list of objections:

If you want to understand the particular spirit of lawlessness, the contempt for rules and norms that is Donald Trump, you have to go back to the illegitimacy of the 2000 election, the GOP turn to the filibuster-proof majority as the operating rule of congressional action, and now the Republicans’ declaration that they simply won’t vote on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, whoever it may be. (I’d add the Iraq War as part of this buildup toward lawlessness.)

Now, the 2000 election was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court -- but by a majority seen by the left as a Republican political action. There is a mirroring complaint about the SCOTUS on the right.

How interesting, these competing lists of grievances.

UPDATE: By the way, how about using trespassing or the unlawful blocking of public highways to stop political foes from engaging in free speech?

[C]onfining politics to the polling station automatically excludes a huge portion of the population, from undocumented immigrants (a favorite target of Trump’s) to young people (like the Latino high schoolers who heard taunts of “Trump! Trump!” and “Build the wall!” at a recent basketball game in Iowa) to the millions of American citizens, disproportionately African American, who have been stripped of the franchise because of felony convictions.

I'll give you young people, I guess, but the rest of that argument boils down to, 'If we confine politics to lawful means, illegal immigrants and convicted felons won't be able to participate.' So, lawlessness is or is not a concern?

Defeating ISIS by Calling it Arab

Kathryn Hillegass, writing at the Georgetown Security Studies Review, argues that ISIS has a seam that can be exploited.

Countering the spread of ISIS’s narrative outside of Greater Syria and the Middle East should be focused on this juxtaposition of nationalism versus Islamism. Thus far, responding to the threat of ISIS in an Islamic context has challenged America’s sense of political correctness which so desperately seeks to avoid the perception of a religious war. Countering violent extremism through narratives emphasizing how ISIS is inconsistent with Quranic teachings has been ineffective and has alienated the Muslim community at home and abroad. Instead, counter-narratives should highlight that supporting ISIS is more likely to contribute to the establishment of a new Arab state in Syria rather than a Muslim caliphate, ideally creating skepticism amongst potential ISIS followers outside of the Middle East.

Dr. Dan Byman recommends focusing on ISIS’s affiliates who have answered the call for global jihad and continually undermine regional security outside of the Middle East. Byman suggests weakening the affiliates “by portraying the core group as out of touch with local grievances.”[iv] One way to do so is to expose how ISIS spends its money. Although precise numbers are elusive, ISIS spends considerable amounts supporting the millions of people living within their territory.[v] Governing, no matter how brutally, is expensive. Contradictory to their global message, the majority of the money is staying in the Middle East. The money flowing to fledgling ISIS affiliates in Nigeria, Somalia, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere is only directly funding violence. The West ought to recognize and exploit that seam.

That said, characterizing ISIS as a nationalist movement does not make it any less dangerous.

Emphasis added.

So we're not getting anywhere by saying that ISIS is not Islamic. That is failing to persuade Muslims, and in fact saying it alienates Muslims from us (perhaps because it is usually alienating when someone tells obvious lies and then insists that you agree with them).

The alternative proposed is to divide and conquer: instead of saying that they are not Muslims, we should say that they are Arabs. We can presumably follow that line down: once they are disaggregated from Muslims elsewhere, we can say that the leaders are not Arabs, but members of some faction or tribe that will further divide their support.

It's a strategy that has worked in the past, but it is counterbalanced by another seam of great importance that is in play right now. They are not only Muslims, but specifically Sunni Muslims and not Shi'a Muslims. That provides a centripetal force to counterbalance the forces that can pull them apart. You have also to provide an answer to that problem: if ISIS is not to defend the Sunnis against oppression, whom should Sunnis trust instead? A plausible alternative must exist if disaggregation is to work most effectively.

Springtime

I guess the actual date was yesterday. Ironically, the weather here has been May-like until yesterday, when it suddenly turned chilly again. Still, the hour has come when the warmer weather is sure to come.

So you know about Stonehenge, but here are five sites -- not all "ancient," in spite of the headline, in fact the majority Medieval -- built to align with the spring equinox. One of them is the Basilica San Petronio, which contains a feature that was used to help construct our modern calendar:

In 1575, cosmographer Egnazio Danti arrived in Bologna to teach mathematics and astronomy. In order to continue his work on the commission charged by Pope Gregory XIII with the development of a new calendar, he constructed a meridian line in San Petronia. The meridian line—an astronomical instrument invented by Danti—consisted of a small hole high on the wall of the church; the position of the spotlight created when the sun shined through the hole allowed Danti to define and analyze the sun’s position and movements. This technique was later used by Giovanni Cassini to confirm the elliptical orbital model proposed by Johannes Kepler.

The Shape of Things to Come is Left-Wing

So argues Vox, whose function is to argue this to the exclusion of everything else. This piece is structured in such a way as to present a half-criticism of Clinton: sure, she is certainly "well-positioned to win both the primary and the general election," but she is too centrist for her position to be the long-term one for the Democratic party.

The analysis finds that Clinton relies on blacks, labor unions, and older voters for her support. But blacks favor politics well to the left of others, as do labor unions; and as do the young, whom future elections will have to rely upon because the older voters will die off.

The obvious problem with this analysis is that the immigration Vox often champions is diluting black as well as white percentages in the electorate. We hear all the time about how white voters are becoming less important, and white preferences less decisive. But that will be true for black voters as well, especially in the context of Democratic politics and especially if Vox is correct that Latino voters will continue to trend Democratic.

Union labor, meanwhile, is like all American labor being strangled by competition at home from mass immigration, and competition from abroad by globalization. They won't be as large a bloc either, and they may be up for grabs if the Republican party takes a long-term populist swing.

As for the young, well, the young are nearly always liberal while they are young. Remember the 'older, more conservative' Democratic cohort Clinton is leaning on are the Baby Boomers. If former hippies drift into economic centrism as they age, what confidence should anyone have that today's young will not?

Common Ground: The News

All the news that's fit to argue about -- Well, at least, all the news the Hall told me they read. Or almost all of it. For everyone who contributed, thank you very much! Also, in addition to the below, let me recommend the sidebar links under each contributor's name.

I am not familiar with all of these, so if I have mis-categorized something, please let me know. Also, if I left something out, or if you've thought of something else you'd like to add, let me know. Or, if you have a better system for categorization. Etc.

Advice

Several people mentioned their Facebook feeds, and Grim gives this related advice: "I get a lot of news off Facebook these days, as friends of various kinds are interested in a lot of things that differ from my own interests. Since my friends are of a wide range of political views, I get a wide range of information and news in that way. It's the best real advice I can give here: not that you should read this or that site, but that you should cultivate friendships with intelligent and decent people of many different views."

Links below the fold.

The Fall of Brazil

A friend of mine from Brazil recommends this video as a relatively minimally biased piece for Americans trying to understand what is going on.

Friday Night AMV

Ride of the Valkeries. 
Hueys, Cobras, "Why-do-you-guys-sit-on-your-helmets?", Goth-lolli girl with a giant axe. Wait, what? So......what would happen if your average medieval fantasy world opened a gate into out world?

"Brought to you by Shinzo Abe".   Heh.

Viking Songs in Poland

Live by the Twitter...

Marine Corps Pugil Sticks

A short video from the USMC's mandatory gender-integrated training.

Some thoughts about this.

1) The cadre jump in angrily and immediately to pull the male off her. You can tell they are mad because he tried to hurt her, but in this context that's exactly what he is supposed to do. The whole point of pugil stick training is to teach aggression in killing with the rifle and/or bayonet.

2) Now he's being asked to train as if his opponent needs to be protected and treated somewhat gently. It is a basic principle of combat training that you will fight as you train (because you won't have time to think carefully while in contact with the enemy), so you should train as you intend to fight. He is being trained to be less aggressive in hand-to-hand combat. That creates the danger of failure in the field, when his life and his unit's will be on the line.

3) If training is altered so that she is on a more even footing, meanwhile, she will also be being trained wrong. She will be being led to believe in a fraud: that she has been given the right training and tools to succeed in a real war against a male opponent. Belief in this fraud can only hurt her if she is ever called to serve in combat. It will set up similar danger to her life and to the survival of her unit. She needs to be taught to realize that she is at an incredible disadvantage if circumstances like these ever occur in the field, because she is. Her survival, already unlikely, depends on her fully grasping how dangerous the situation is.

4) Anyone who might later attain command over women in an infantry unit also needs to understand this limitation of some of the Marines under their command, just as they understand other tactical limits. The future leaders who will emerge from this training also need to see what happens if they should order female Marines under their command into situations in which this kind of combat is likely to occur. The success and even the survival of their units depends in large part on commanders fully understanding the limitations under which they and their units operate.

5) Thus, the cadre need to be trained out of their protectiveness if this is to continue. Pugil sticks are heavily padded, and combatants are in armor. Women Marines should be beaten as viciously as their opponents are able to beat them. That is the only way in which the training can teach the right lessons about how to survive and attain victory at war.

6) That fact alone ought to be reason to reconsider this whole enterprise. I don't think anything good will come of encouraging young men who excel in testosterone and strength to think of women as acceptable targets for their full strength. Such training will give us the most effective gender-integrated infantry units we could have, but they will still be less effective than all-male units -- and at the potentially substantial social cost of weakening our cultural norm against men using physical violence on women.

I cannot imagine the tradeoff is worth it, and least of all as part of a strategy for making American society better and more decent for women. This is hugely counterproductive for both the military's ends and the social aims allegedly justifying it.

7) What is sometimes called the paradox of equality is on fullest display here. By creating a formal legal equality, we have created a massive actual inequality. You can repair the inequality of outcomes only by creating a new inequality -- for example, allowing the women paintball guns so that they can "win" against a pugil-stick wielding opponent by shooting him from a distance. That would potentially be decent training for both the man and the woman as it would teach the woman a workable way of surviving a situation like this one. It would also require the man to push even harder in order to succeed given the disability -- as he would have to if he were out of ammunition and facing someone with a rifle.

John R. Schindler on Clinton's NSA Problem

A veteran of signals intelligence writes on Clinton's other security problem. There are at least two massive issues revealed by the email dumps. The one we knew about -- somehow her confidante Sidney Blumenthal appears to have had access to NSA signals intelligence "somehow," although he had no security clearance at all and had been specifically rejected for government service by the President.

The other one is new, and involves Clinton's personal refusal to be bound by security standards. She wanted a Blackberry that she could take into Secure Compartment Information Facilities (SCIF).

But personal electronic devices—your cellphone, your Blackberry—can never be brought into a SCIF. They represent a serious technical threat that is actually employed by many intelligence agencies worldwide. Though few Americans realize it, taking remote control over a handheld device, then using it to record conversations, is surprisingly easy for any competent spy service. Your smartphone is a sophisticated surveillance device—on you, the user—that also happens to provide phone service and Internet access.

As a result, your phone and your Blackberry always need to be locked up before you enter any SCIF. Taking such items into one represents a serious security violation. And Hillary and her staff really hated that.

...

[T]here was no problem with Ms. Clinton checking her personal email inside her office SCIF. Hers, like most, had open (i.e. unclassified) computer terminals connected to the Internet, and the Secretary of State could log into her own email anytime she wanted to right from her desk.

But she did not want to. Ms. Clinton only checked her personal email on her Blackberry: she did not want to sit down at a computer terminal...

Why Ms. Clinton would not simply check her personal email on an office computer, like every other government employee less senior than the president, seems a germane question, given what a major scandal EmailGate turned out to be. “What did she not want put on a government system, where security people might see it?” the former NSA official asked, adding, “I wonder now, and I sure wish I’d asked about it back in 2009.”

Recently there was a story about how the FBI was looking at pictures of Clinton using her Blackberry. At the time it was suggested they might be trying to figure out where there were gaps in the email record, as she deleted tens of thousands and never turned them over to the government, claiming they were "personal."

Now it looks like there might be another angle: can they bracket at least some emails as having been sent from the Blackberry while in the SCIF? That would be a demonstrable violation of national security by Clinton herself.

Missed A Chance There

InstaPundit on failures by elites to understand the right:

The Tea Party movement — which you also failed to understand, and thus mostly despised — was a bourgeois, well-mannered effort (remember how Tea Party protests left the Mall cleaner than before they arrived?) to fix America. It was treated with contempt, smeared as racist, and blocked by a bipartisan coalition of business-as-usual elites. So now you have Trump, who’s not so well-mannered, and his followers, who are not so well-mannered, and you don’t like it.

Why Not Honesty?

The BART system explains why it was down recently.

@shakatron BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life. This is our reality.

— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016

@tquad64 Planners in 1996 had no way of predicting the tech boom - track redundancy, new tunnels & transbay tubes are decades-long projects.

— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016

@lisabari To illustrate this point - the number of people who exit at 19th street in Oakland has doubled in less than a decade.

— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016

@CBonneaux We have to fix what we have first - our system was built to last about 45 years and we've reached that limit.

— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016

@cliberti We have 3 hours a night to do maintenance on a system built to serve 100k per week that now serves 430k per day. #ThisIsOurReality

— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016

@cliberti The magnitude of repair projects is too great to do during our 3 hour maintenance window. 1/2 the time would be spent staging.

— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016

The last trains are leaving the end of each line within the next 15 mins - it's been a great conversation. Goodnight. #BayAreaRidesTogether

— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016

Twitter is not the ideal way to communicate, but they managed to make it work.

Cadence to Arms

The Feast of Saint Patrick

Today the Army is in trouble for cultural appropriation.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish-American cultural group and drinking society, is using St. Patrick’s Day to draw attention to its dispute with the United States Army over the Army’s “cultural appropriation” of the color green.

“Green is our fookin color,” according to Mickey McSorley of no fixed address, South Boston. “Nobody else’s! And by the way, everybody isn’t fookin Irish today, laddie. Just the Irish.”

“The real Irish. Not the ‘Scots-Irish’ frauds...” he added in a brogue that onlookers described as “wicked fake.”

If you're looking for an Irish meal today, corned beef is actually more an American-Irish meal learned from intermingling with other immigrants in our big port cities. If you want something from Ireland itself, try this amazing Dublin Coddle. Even if you don't care about the feast particularly, you can't go wrong with bacon, sausage, onion, and potato.

It always strikes me as strange that this holiday comes right inside Lent, but is such a huge party. We used to leave Savannah for a week when we lived down that way. But there is a real saint behind the fake Irishness. Here is the prayer most associated with him.

"The Great Fear"

Following up on Nassim Taleb's article from yesterday, Wretchard notes that this election is marked by a loss of faith in the establishment among the base voters of both parties. The elites have proven to have no clothes:

Rightly or wrongly Americans used to have a sense of place in the world. It was once a comforting place where the president -- be he from either party -- protected them. It was a place where secretaries of state and defense stood guard over the borders and American children could count as their birthright having better lives than their parents....

If Trump represents the Great Fear his origins can be traced in the arc from the Three AM Call to the Barking Dog. We needed to believe, in this dangerous world, that the former was true and not the latter. What Trump did was look behind the curtain and destroy one faith without giving us another. What now? What now? That may be the real question this campaign should answer.

Ted Cruz, for what it is worth, has taken a bold step in assembling an answer. His team at this time is big-tent enough that they hold competing positions, but that may be a strength at a time when the answers aren't clear. What may be needed are strong thinkers who find different views plausible, competing with each other over whose idea best fits the new reality. There are many different parts of that new reality, from crises in the South China Sea to Syria to North Korea. It may be that nobody has all the answers, or that many have only part of what a real answer might look like. Being open to competition of thought is a good start.

How Far Back in Time Could You Go and Still Understand English?

I am an exception, in that Middle English is no problem for me if it is written down. When spoken with the original accent, however, I am not practiced in understanding it.

Discipline is the Soul of the Army

Five deputy sheriffs are suspended without pay for failing to arrest the Trump activist who sucker-punched a protester.

I imagine they felt like the protester got what he deserved. However, those charged with enforcing the law on others are the ones it is most important to hold to legal standards. This is a dangerous year already; to fail to enforce these standards would be to court disaster.

NYT: That White Working Class Needs More Welfare

Paul Krugman disagrees with Williamson about the remedy.

How On Earth Does This Happen?

Headline: "CNN Poll: Most Voters Hate Both the Likely Nominees."

Fermat's Last Solved

Three hundred years is a reasonably long time, even in the history of thought.

NNT: This is a Global Rebellion Against Insiders

Nassim Taleb says this is not just American and Europe, it's India and the rest of the world too. Also, the criticism is justified.

What we are seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking "clerks" and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think...and 5) who to vote for.

With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30y of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, microeconomic papers wrong 40% of the time, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating only 1/5th of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren't even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. I have shown that most of what Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types call "rational" or "irrational" comes from misunderstanding of probability theory.

Philosophers: Terrible Spouses

Well, unless they have servants. I'm going to need a servant, I guess. Any volunteers of appropriately submissive temperament? (Not around here, I'll warrant!)

9mm v. 40 S&W

Following on the pistol discussion of yesterday, a trauma surgeon writes on this longstanding debate.

I notice he disallows 'larger' as an option early:

You have two options. You can use a really large round at very high velocity like the 30mm cannon rounds from an Apache helicopter's M230 Chain Gun, which produces substantial kinetic energy, or you can place your shot where it has the most effect. Obviously, shot placement is the only realistic option for a law enforcement officer.

Well, if that's obvious, we're done. Lower recoil is more important than size. But that doesn't follow all the way down: .22 LR is a terrible choice, although recoil is minimized to the point that it is almost negligible.

For myself, I favor .44-.45 diameter choices. I realize that the science shows that .357 Magnum out of a four inch barrel is the best one-shot stopper. I favor .44 Smith & Wesson Special or properly structured .44 Remington Magnum or .45 Long Colt cartridges for revolvers. These have the advantage that, when hiking in grizzly and moose country, you can readily step up to a cartridge that can handle big game defensively.

As a consequence, if I carry a semi-automatic, I prefer .45 ACP as the closest equivalent to .44 SPL. Still, if the suggestion is that there's no difference in trauma worth noting between .40 S&W and 9mm, the lower recoil could be decisive.

No One Who Mattered

Clinton claims 'We didn't lose a single person in Libya.'

Well, um.

In addition to the Americans lost at Benghazi, including a US Ambassador -- the very figure of American power -- the real test of whether Libya was a wise decision or not has to do with the fact that ISIS has taken over parts of it and is using them to stage head-cutting videos. President Obama blames this on Europe not doing a good enough job of following his 'lead from behind.'

You don't start a fight, run away from it, and then complain that the people you left behind lost without you.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Trump-Mas

"Ohio election officials say that more than half of all early voting on the GOP side is from voters who were recently Democrats or Independents."

Herself got a lot closer to putting an end to the Sanders insurgency tonight, although he has a good slate coming up and plenty of cash from his successful fundraising. A few likely wins will be putting some energy back in his campaign, assuming that he -- as seems likely -- is stubborn enough to not give up.

But on the Republican side, there's no real joy for anyone but Trump tonight.

So I guess the question is, did those early voting Democrats in the Republican primary come to stop Trump or to join him? It was Trump's only loss of the night, to a favorite son candidate in his home state. Maybe Kaisch came over the top to beat Trump's supporters plus a bunch of Democrats, but probably this was the only success of Operation Chaos.

Preventing a second Clinton Presidency is my major goal for our country this next little while. For some of you, it's stopping Trump. We probably need to talk this through, because we're getting very close to having to make a call between those goals.

Personally, I can rest safe in the knowledge that my vote is never going to Clinton -- but it doesn't matter, because I live in Georgia, where any Republican will beat her easily. I could write in anyone I want and be sure that I was not casting a secret or accidental vote for Clinton.

It's going to matter in other ways, possibly. Where are we, people of the Hall?

But How Would Corporations Make Millions Off That?

The U.S. Army's chief of staff said Thursday that if he had his way, he'd abandon the bureaucratic Modular Handgun System effort and personally select the service's next pistol.

Speaking at the Future of War Conference 2016, Gen. Mark Milley said he has asked Congress to grant service chiefs the authority to bypass the Pentagon's multi-layered and complex acquisition process on programs that do not require research and development.

"We are not exactly redesigning how to go to the moon, right?" Milley said. "This is a pistol."

It's a fair point. Pistol technology is mature. The basic design of the semi-automatic pistol has been refined rather than fundamentally altered in the hundred years since John Moses Browning's 1911. The common choices among elite military forces today have fused plastic receivers, and polycarbon slides, neither of which can be readily disassembled -- but which are so reliable and cheap that they never need to be. They're good-enough accurate out of the box and indestructible in normal use with normal lifespans.

For an army made up mostly of teenagers and 20-somethings, several manufacturers offer off-the-shelf pistols that are not just adequate, they're perfect. Pick one.

Odin versus Loki

In today's Commentary magazine, John Podheretz poses seriously:

Trump, I’ve often said, is a manifestation of Loki, the god of misrule. Misrule breeds chaos. Chaos breeds violence.

This reminds me of a quote that Joel Leggett sent me a week ago, which I have been pondering. It is from C. S. Lewis.

"What business have people who call might right to worship Odin? The whole point about Odin was that he had the right but not the might. The point about Norse religion was that it alone of all mythologies told men to serve gods who were admittedly fighting with their backs to the wall and would certainly be defeated in the end. 'I am off to die with Odin' said the rover in Stevenson's fable, thus proving that Stevenson understood something about the Nordic spirit which (Nazi) Germany has never been able to understand at all. The gods will fall. The wisdom of Odin, the humourous courage of Thor (Thor was something of a Yorkshireman) and the beauty of Balder, will all be smashed eventually by the realpolitik of the stupid giants and misshapen trolls. But that does not in the least alter the allegiance of any free man. Hence, as we should expect, real Germanic poetry is all about heroic stands, and fighting against hopeless odds."

Odin is an interesting figure. Many of the Norse Gods have clear echoes in Greek or Roman gods, or (especially in the case of Thor) in Irish gods. They aren't quite the same, but the figures are recognizably similar. Odin, and the Germanic Woden from which the Norse got the name, is in many ways unique.

Tacitus thought Woden was the Germanic Mercury/Hermes, but that is not quite right. They are alike in that they are gods concerned with transitions over boundaries between worlds. Both are concerned with poetry and literature. But Odin is not a messenger god. He is a god of nobility of the soul. He is the patron of kings and warriors who aspire to a glorious life and a glorious death. The boundary they most wish to cross is into Valhalla. Odin inspires poetic flights, but like Bacchus rather than like Hermes: with the intoxicating "mead of poetry," which intensifies access to knowledge and allows wisdom to flow like honey wine.

And Odin searches always for wisdom, even through great personal suffering. When Ares is speared in the Iliad, his suffering does not produce anything glorious like wisdom: if anything, he slinks off to Olympus to sulk. Not Odin, who seeks out suffering for its mysteries and the wisdom to be gained.

Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows
For nine long nights,
Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odin,
Offered, myself to myself
The wisest know not from whence spring
The roots of that ancient rood.
They gave me no bread,
They gave me no mead,
I looked down;
With a loud cry
I took up runes;
From that tree I fell.

Nine lays of power
I learned from the famous Bolthor, Bestla' s father:
He poured me a draught of precious mead,
Mixed with magic Odrerir.

Waxed and throve well;
Word from word gave words to me,
Deed from deed gave deeds to me....

The Wise One has spoken words in the hall,
Needful for men to know,
Unneedful for trolls to know:

Hail to the speaker,
Hail to the knower,
Joy to him who has understood,
Delight to those who have listened.

It is strange to see the Norse gods invoked in our politics today. They have not been invoked in this way in a long time. I wonder what it means.

It is easy to choose between Odin and Loki, between seeking honorable wisdom at personal cost versus seeking power without the wisdom to use it well. It is better to die well than to live without honor. It is better to suffer in wisdom than to play in wickedness. The noble of soul know this.

What Tolkien added to the Norse mythology was a Christian concept: that the noble of soul, fighting with their backs against the wall, against certain doom, might be aided suddenly from the root of the world. Odin was written into the Lord of the Rings as Gandalf. He fought the Balrog and fell into darkness, only to be purified. Denethor was driven to despair by the strength of Mordor, and threw himself into fire. Gandalf led the armies against Mordor in the face of despair, only to see a miracle worked by suffering against strength.

We must do our duty, and hope. We ought to seek wisdom, but not trust too much in it. The world is bigger and wiser than we, and its author moves it in ways we do not understand. Strangely enough, Odin teaches this too, in the Havamal:

It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
The fairest life is led by those
Who are deft at all they do.
It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
No man is able to know his future,
So let him sleep in peace.

It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
The learned man whose lore is deep
Is seldom happy at heart.

An Incomplete Truth

In the Islamic Monthly, Lord Jonathan Sacks -- a rabbi -- writes of the Jewish debt to Islam. What he says is quite true. It's just incomplete.

It was the great Islamic theologians and thinkers — among them al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) — who recovered the classical tradition of philosophy, leading the West out of the Dark Ages.

Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish thinkers in the past 1,000 years, was also deeply indebted to them. Throughout his masterwork, The Guide for the Perplexed, he is in constant dialogue with the Mutakallimun, or the Muslim Kalamists. Even his great religious law code, the Mishneh Torah, was inspired by Sharia codes. Maimonides, in turn, influenced Christian thinkers like Aquinas. Thus, both Judaism and Christianity are deeply indebted to the thinkers of Islam.

I gave a talk on this subject once at US Central Command. Avicenna in particular is important to Christianity because of a mistake that was very helpful to Aquinas. Avicenna inherited a work of Plotinus' that had been wrongly titled The Theology of Aristotle. Plotinus' philosophy, which we call Neoplatonism, is really not at all similar to Aristotle's metaphysics (which is the closest he ever gets to a theology). Avicenna devoted himself to harmonizing these two doctrines because he thought that doing so was necessary to understand the deeper, hidden message of Aristotle that somehow these two quite different works were both attempting to convey.

Avicenna's metaphysics was therefore quite useful to Aquinas, who inherited Aristotle from the early phases of the Christian reconquest of Islamic Spain. Aristotle's works were scientifically far superior to what existed at the time, but they were philosophically incompatible with the Neoplatonic thought that had influenced many early leading thinkers of the Church. Avicenna provided the way forward: he showed how to harmonize the new Aristotelian science with the Neoplatonic-influenced interpretations of Christian writings that were important to several early saints (even Augustine).

All of that is right. And yet if you turn to the back of Avicenna's metaphysics -- I have a copy right handy -- you find plenty of the following: "As for enemies and those who oppose the law, [the legislator] must decree waging war against them and destroying them -- after calling on them to accept the truth -- and [decree] that their property and women must be declared free for the spoil." That's exactly ISIS's position, you'll notice.

Likewise: "The same applies to people that are far removed from acquiring virtue. For these are slaves by nature -- as, for example, the Turks and the Negroes..."

So, do we owe a lot to Avicenna? Yes. Does that imply that our views and Islam's are fully compatible? No. Some small objections remain.

Trump and the Revenge of the Constitution

Reading some of these articles on whether the Republican Party can be "lent" to Trump without it being fundamentally transformed, I realize that there's a point being missed by everyone. First, here is a strong version of the argument:

...if he cleans up tomorrow night, you’re going to see an explosion of pieces online like the one Ross Douthat published yesterday urging the RNC to deny Trump the nomination by any means necessary — including a rule change before the convention, if need be, that frees up delegates to vote their conscience. (“A man so transparently unfit for office should not be placed before the American people as a candidate for president under any kind of imprimatur save his own.”) A member of the RNC’s Rules Committee is already circulating a letter suggesting, contra all available evidence, that delegates are not bound on the first ballot and haven’t been in 40 years. The price of stealing the nomination from Trump after he’s supposedly clinched it would be sky high. It would delegitimize the RNC; it would vindicate Trumpists’ criticism that the establishment is corrupt and that the system is rigged; it would certainly doom the GOP’s chances in the general election as millions of Trump fans decide to stay home or vote third-party in protest; and it would effectively disenfranchise the millions of Trumpers who turned out to vote for him throughout the primaries. It very well might destroy the GOP. But hardcore anti-Trumpers have already reached the point where they view that as the lesser of two evils. Better to protect the country by booting him out of the party and into independent never-neverland, even at the cost of an irreparable rupture on the right, than to protect whatever small amount of “integrity” the GOP has left by crowning Trump as the duly elected nominee.

Here is my alternative view: Trump winning the GOP nomination and the election does not mean the GOP is surrendering to Trump. It means they are recognizing the sovereignty of the voters. The moral independence of the party as a whole is a reason to think that Trump as President can be contained as a threat in a way that President Obama never can be.

The reason is that impeachment and removal from office by Congress returns as a real potential under a Trump administration. With Democratic loyalty to President Obama being so intense, he has been able to operate lawlessly on immigration, on foreign affairs, in terms of protecting from prosecution criminals in his administration from Lois Lerner to Hillary Clinton, and in unilaterally rewriting the law where he likes.

Trump would not have that luxury. People have expressed concern that a man who suggests he would cover the legal fees of those charged with violence against protesters cannot be trusted with the Constitutional power to pardon. But Trump would come into office facing a House and Senate led by nominal allies who are deeply suspicious of him, and would indeed love to find a way to rid themselves of him without losing the support of his voters. Republican party leaders in Congress will be only too ready to join with Democrats in removing him from office if he makes an egregious overstep.

Thus, one option might be to consent to Trump in the convention in return for a Vice Presidential pick acceptable to the party's Congressional wing. That would make impeachment and removal even easier to contemplate. Indeed, it would make it an attractive option that Trump would have to work hard to avoid them electing to pursue.

Our Constitutional controls on the President have been failing since Clinton because of party loyalty. Political parties are an extra-Constitutional feature of our government, part of the dangers of factionalism warned against in the Federalist Papers. The absence of party loyalty to Trump would allow the Constitutional controls on the President to function as designed for a change.

Military Times Survey: Trump or Sanders

In a survey of the preferences of serving members of the military, including the National Guard, strong preferences emerge in each race for the insurgent candidates.

However, they ran the question as a 'first choice for President' without requiring you to specify which in primary you were going to vote. Thus, we get a sense of overall support that is surprising.

In the Army and Marine Corps, Trump dominates the field. In both services, he has approximately twice the support of the next leading candidate.

In the Navy and Air Force, Sanders is the overall winner. Sanders edges Trump by a few points, though, rather than dominating the field as Trump does. Trump is an easy second place in both fields, although far more so in the Navy: Ted Cruz is close to Trump in the Air Force, but a bit behind.

Even in those latter services, where Sanders is the overall winner, Democratic first-choice votes are a minority. Sanders thus has extremely intense support, because he overcomes both the alleged frontrunner in his own party and a divided Republican field.

Clinton is the first choice of only about ten percent of military voters. The bigger services favor her more than the smaller ones: she is slightly above 12% in both the Army and the Navy, but well under 10% in both the Air Force and Marine Corps.

False Positives? Never!

How could hundreds of peer-reviewed studies possibly be so wrong? There may be a way to explain it, and it's shaking researchers to their cores.

Every time scientists conduct an experiment, there's a chance they'll find a false positive. But here's the scary thing: Psychologists are now realizing their institutions are structured so it's more likely that false positives will make it through to publication than inconclusive results.

"We’re now learning that there’s so much bias in the published literature that the meta-analyses can’t be trusted," Simine Vazire, a professor of psychology and the editor in chief of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, tells me.

We were just talking about the problems with multiple regression analyses. On the other hand, here's a meta-scientific study that concludes that earlier meta-scientific studies about the replicability of many other studies was tainted by failures to replicate the studies correctly. And then....

One of My Senators Writes on the Republican Chaos

Whatever his other flaws may be, Sen. David Perdue is not a long-time D.C. figure: this is his first term in the Senate, and his first job in government. I tend to regard him as a part of the crony-capitalist Republican elements, as he made a fortune in business while a cousin was Governor, and then was suddenly picked out of the blue to be a candidate for an open Senate seat. Still, for what it's worth, here's what he thinks about why the Establishment is on fire.

This town is filled with well-intentioned people who believe they are doing the right thing, but far too many have lost their way after years in Washington. Politicians pay more attention to special interests groups and powerful lobbyists writing checks to their next campaign, than listening to the people back home who sent them here in the first place....

Georgians sent me—someone who had never run for elected office—to the United States Senate to try and do something about it and change the system. In state after state this year, voters have voiced support for presidential candidates who are not part of the political class.

This is a growing movement, and it is bigger than any one candidate or election victory. Unless the political establishment is willing to learn from the anger felt by millions of Americans who feel left behind, this will not end in November.

True to form, though, political elites prefer tearing down individuals to understanding what created this movement. This movement of Americans wants nothing to do with Washington, and neither endorsements nor criticisms are going to change that.

No matter who our Republican presidential nominee is at the end of this process, one thing is clear, we cannot allow Democrats to double down on the failed policies of the last seven years.

Bucking for Vice President, Senator?

What Happens if Trump is Assassinated?

Via Althouse, Scott Adams predicts an (or another) attempt on Trump's life. It makes perfect sense, he says:

It would be easy to blame the protesters for taking things too far. But all they are doing is responding to hate speech from the next Hitler. Shouldn’t someone be fighting hard to stop Hitler? We can’t blame people for wanting fewer Hitlers....

Fast-forward to today and we see the media priming the public to try to kill Trump, or at least create some photogenic mayhem at a public event. Again, no one is sitting in a room plotting Trump’s death, but – let’s be honest – at least half of the media believes Trump is the next Hitler, and a Hitler assassination would be morally justified. Also great for ratings. The media would not be charged with any crime for triggering some nut to act. There would be no smoking gun. No guilt. No repercussions. Just better ratings and bonuses all around.

In the 2D world of reason, no one in the media consciously wants a candidate for president to be injured, and no one is consciously acting in a way that would make it happen. But in the 3D world of persuasion, society has decided to lance the wart that is Trump. Collectively – the media, the public, and the other candidates – are creating a situation that is deeply dangerous for Trump.

Adams cites a British author who did security for Farage, who describes the effects this will have on Trump's campaign.

I said that the Chicago disruption tactics would become standard against disfavored (i.e. conservative or Republican) candidates if they worked. I wonder if instead we'll just proceed directly to killing Republican candidates? They're not always as aggravating as Trump's rhetoric can make him, but they're always portrayed as deeply evil.

UPDATE: BLM says they are totally going to "shut down" the Republican Convention if they can. You can be sure that there will be plenty of police clashes with activists no matter who the frontrunner is, setting up the narrative for the fall. The Republican nominee will be portrayed as a deeply racist hater inheritor of Trumpist violence, by the very people engaged in trying to "shut down" opposing speech.

By the end of it all, America may decide it's ready for the "law and order" candidate. Right now, today, everybody is horrified by Trump. Three more months of this, and people may be wondering who is strong enough to put a stop to it.