Symbols pro and con

This mildly amusing cartoon, posted at Maggie's Farm, made me wonder whether the distinguishing factor is whether someone objects more to spurning an ideological symbol or to venerating it.

I, too, would resist being required to venerate a symbol I objected to.  To the extent that someone feels he is being pressured to express a political or religious view not his own, I have considerable sympathy for a discreet refusal.  Opening ceremonies at my public grade school included both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer; I cheerfully said the Pledge, without ever giving it much thought, but stood silently through the prayer.  I can't imagine what the school would have had to do to force me to join in the prayer.  Nevertheless, it didn't occur to me to raise a furious fist, spit on the floor, or go stand in the corner.  If I had tried any such thing, my parents wouldn't have backed me up, even though my father despised religion pretty openly.  Your religious views are your own, he'd have said, but that doesn't mean you get to insult your neighbors.  Don't make public theater out of your resentments unless you're serious about starting a fight, and then don't whine about the results of the fight.

By the same token, if I see someone making an obeisance to a Che banner, or a Communist flag, or a Satanic ritual, I'm not going to shoot them to make them quit, though I do reserve the right to separate myself from them socially, refuse to patronize their store, buy their books,  watch their TV shows, root for their sports victories, and so on.  They are free to do the same to me if they don't enjoy watching me put my hand over my heart when the Stars and Stripes are being honored.

My sense of the Progressive flashpoints lately is that they instinctively side with someone who breaks ranks and refuses to solemnize a traditional piety.  It's understood that such a stance signals a courageous refusal to go along with fascist orthodoxy.  They're also primed to feel threatened when someone venerates nearly any symbol; even if the symbol was innocuous yesterday, the whole fun is in being among the first to discover a lurking impurity.  Maybe the stitching on the flag was performed in an Asian sweatshop; maybe a past adherent of the creed once owned a slave or attended a church that wouldn't ordain women or gays.  It's so much fun to notice the clay feet of any idol that they've lost sight of what used to be an ordinary reaction to the desecration of a beloved symbol.  I'm trying now to think of Progressive protests over the desecration of one of their own sacred cows.  When such a thing happens, it tends not to take the form of an attitude to a physical icon.  The problem usually consists of symbolic action, like refusing to bake a cake.

Missing Tolkien's Point

It's nice to see that he's still read approvingly, all the same.

Consider the invaluable depiction of what we might call "small patriotism" in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: "Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people," Tolkien wrote in the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring. They are hospitable, nosy, and contentedly devoted to their home, the Shire.

This love of home is not born of naïveté but clear-eyed commitment to community. "I should like to save the Shire, if I could," the hobbit Frodo muses as he prepares to embark on his quest, "though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them." Yet at the thought of departing, Frodo adds, "I don't feel like that now. … I feel very small, and very uprooted, and well — desperate."

Frodo does not love the Shire because it is the best country in Middle-earth. It does not boast the striking scenery and deep knowledge of the elven kingdoms, or the security and wealth of the dwarves, or the cosmopolitanism and architecture of the cities of men. The Shire does not have to be the best, for it is already home and already good in its own way.

The hobbits aren't simply symbolic of England, though: they're symbolic of a part of the English country. The "cities of men" were built by the Numenoreans, the Kings of Men, the Dunedain, Men of the West. These are, well, also "English" -- specifically, they are Norman. They are the grey-eyed men who are 'the race of kings,' and who were and (hopefully!) once again shall be the rightful rulers of the free people of the world. The hobbits love them, and are glad to be ruled by them; but, being hobbits, they also hope to retire back from their grand cities to the beloved countryside with its gardens and pubs.

And the Rohirrim, they're also symbolic of England -- this time, of the Anglo-Saxon heritage. They are the White Horse: the great Anglo-Saxon lord Horsa's name just means "Horse." They stand for another period of English history, without which the rarefied Dunedain lines would never regain their throne -- nor would their lesser heirs, the Stewards of Gondor, have maintained their last kingdom as long as they had.

Nor are even the elves entirely unconnected to England. The Edain became the Dunedain through friendship with the elves, and there is elvish blood in the line of the kings of men. Elrond Half-Elven is kin to Aragorn through Beren.

Insofar as any other nation is represented in Middle Earth, it falls away from the glory of England. There probably has never been a "bigger" patriot than Tolkien in the sense that this author means. Nearly every good thing in Middle Earth is essentially English. Tolkien was at the Somme. He knew what he loved, and what it cost, and it comes through very clearly in his work.

Murder by Neighborhood

In the discussion on statistics below, I wondered about trying to recreate the correlation chart by neighborhood instead of by city. I read an article not long ago that posited that the American murder rate is really quite low, outside of certain cities; but, further, that even within those cities the murder rate was quite low outside of particular neighborhoods. It wasn't this article, but this one is the one I can find and it has some good maps.

My hypothesis is that shifting to a neighborhood picture might restore the correlation between violent crime rates and police shootings. I don't know that this is true, but it's the hypothesis that I'd like to test because I think the answer is important. Is there a way to get the relevant data together to try to test that hypothesis?

It is a known issue, of course, that we are dealing with very small numbers and statistical rarity. Perhaps it's not even worth doing, given how little one can really infer from statistics about rare events.

A Familiar Song

That it remains relevant is, I suppose, why I keep hearing it decade after decade.

The vast majority of service members are male, the South is overrepresented, and perhaps most worrisome, military service has increasingly become a family affair....

Families also carry the costs of military service, and surveys indicate military spouses are as likely to have a parent who served as service members today, many of whom already have a child serving as well. This used to be far closer to the norm – with 77% of adults over 50 indicating they had an immediate family member who served, as compared to only 33% of those ages 18–29. These surveys echo the Department of Defense’s own findings that approximately 80% of enlisted recruits have a family member who served, with over 25% noting they had a parent who served. Though it varies from service to service, the trendline in American society is stark.

The most current figures are that the military is 65% white, 80% male, and 44% Southern. When we discussed it nine years ago, the only other region that was over-represented was the Mountain West, and I'll bet that remains true.

It Depends on What the Meaning of "Prevailing" Is

I kind of thought it was the other side that wanted this, but depending on how you define that one word, I guess Brokaw could be right.

NBC News’ Tom Brokaw claimed that President Donald Trump, and “some people on the right,” want “to destroy the prevailing culture in this country” during an interview....

"And I, you know — when I go out and talk to people in the West who are Trump voters, they said, 'We’re still with him. We think it’s your fault, talking about us,'" Brokaw said. "But then they’ll say, 'I wish he would just shut up for a while.' You know, that he ... has to talk about who he is and how great he is."

Well, good for you for listening, Tom. But maybe you should have asked them if they felt like they were trying to destroy the "prevailing" culture, or if in fact they thought that what you were doing was aimed at destroying the "prevailing" American culture.

I think the root of the dispute may be about which culture should prevail, and whether or not it will be necessary to destroy the other one in order to do it.

Medieval Walking

This video suggests that Medieval people did not generally walk around the way we do, but in a 'more natural' way that improves posture. This is taken to be helpful in explaining some illustrations from the I.33 fencing manual, and to be a function of the way footwear of the period seems to have been designed.

The idea isn't that people really 'walked differently,' then, but that the structure of shoes affects how you walk. Our tendency to take big steps leading with the heel is made possible by well-structured shoes that will protect our feet from anything we might step on, and that have adequate structure to accept our weight all at once. Walk around barefoot, and you may walk the way he's talking about -- leading with the ball of the foot, testing the ground before settling your weight.

Well, maybe. It's interesting to think about, anyway.

What to Look For

DHS is supposedly going to be collecting information on social media use by those who would like to enter the country as non-citizens.

Just in case they're wondering what to look for, here are some examples of things they might pay more attention to than previously.

Two Views of White America

One view: white supremacy is everywhere!

Another view: rural whites aren't enjoying very much supremacy at all.

Maybe it's not really about "white" versus others; maybe it's got more to do with other things. But our discourse seems locked in on the idea that race is the most important thing we need to talk about.

"Have You Forgotten?"

AVI's been running a useful series by this title. Here's one I had forgotten: President Obama fired the head of G.M.

Last night, the CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, was fired by the President of the United States. Perhaps not “fired” in the strict legal sense – if legalities matter anymore – but certainly fired for all effective purposes. In a statement by Wagoner released last night, the now-former CEO states specifically that Administration officials “requested that I “step aside”’ as CEO of GM.” “And so I have,” he said. No pretense of an agonized decision, no pretending that the board asked him to go, simply that the White House asked him to go and he left.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Mr. Wagoner. Not only did he lead GM into economic ruin, but he led the charge to Washington, D.C. for handouts.... The real concern is not that Wagoner was fired, but that he was fired by the White House and not a bankruptcy judge.

So apparently the President can sometimes call for firings without it being a big deal.

The American Legion takes Hollywood

Well, at least one bar in Hollywood.

The young guns who have seized control of American Legion Post 43 are trying to fuse them together in the minds of a new generation of combat veterans, rebranding their venerable Egyptian Revival building, with its underground Art Deco bar, as “the coolest private club in Hollywood.”

“We have the cheapest drinks, the nicest people, the best-looking bar,” says Post Commander Fernando Rivero, a 42-year-old TV producer who engineered a bloodless coup that overthrew Post 43’s old guard....

Down the road from the Hollywood Bowl, Post 43 has long ties to the entertainment industry. Clark Gable, Charlton Heston, Ronald Reagan and Rudy Vallee were members. Shirley Temple was an honorary colonel, and photos of her curls stand out in the Post museum amid the machine guns, a dog-tag stamping machine and an Adolf Hitler pin cushion. (Suffice it to say he’s bent over.)

Bugs Bunny's generation would be proud.

Studies and Data

The other day AVI posted a link, which I found very interesting, to a refutation of a prominent study allegedly showing that police were more disrespectful to minorities. In fact (and this perfectly mirrors my anecdotal experience), the police are almost perfectly formal with everyone in their professional encounters.

Of course, 'disrespect' isn't really what's at the back of the current dispute; what's at issue is people getting killed by police, not people being subject to rude language by police. Vanity Fair has compiled 18 sources of data that all seem to point in the same direction on that.

Some of these sources are better than others. All of them may be subject to the usual problems of confirmation bias, and the fact that people in the academy really want to prove racism (and may, indeed, fear for their careers if they seem to disprove it). I understand all that; but some of these findings are worth noticing.

This one jumps out at me above all:

3. An analysis of the use of lethal force by police in 2015 found no correlation between the level of violent crime in an area and that area’s police killing rates.

Numbers one and two establish that unarmed people are much more likely to be killed if they are black; that's of small concern to me, since I'm typically always armed, but it suggests that non-black Americans have more leeway to 'opt out' of violent encounters with the police.

Number three, though, that's astonishing. It's completely counter-intuitive. But here's the chart:

It seems like there ought to be at least some answers in all this data, at least that part of it that looks reliable on examination. I'm inclined to continue to favor the hypothesis that training is largely at fault, as I have argued in the past, because it could in theory account for this strange lack of correlation between violent crime rates and police killings. If they're being trained to resort to guns in the face of certain stimuli, then a number of considerations related to an in-context analysis of how dangerous an environment really is may drop out of the 'shoot/no-shoot' decision.

In any case, a look at the data is more hopeful than another round of 'hey, let's hate each other' shouting. Take a look. Maybe you'll see something that helps.

Wooden Viking "Sword" Found in Ireland

This one is said to be "perfectly preserved," which is always surprising in a thousand year old find.

A View from the Left

The state is the biggest threat to freedom of speech, argues a writer at the Atlantic. Well, of course it is; the state is always the biggest threat. The state is the only organization with an army and a secret police allowed to run around. But it's fair to hear out the other side, especially when they are arguing against interest -- normally concerns about the power of the state are right-leaning, and the left likes to think that only milk and kindness flow from the government.

At Texas A&M, Tommy Curry, a black professor, was driven from his home with his family after his controversial remarks on violence and race drew the attention of American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher; singling out left-wing college professors is a frequent source of content at Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick cannot find employment in the the National Football League after his protests against police brutality. A police union in St. Louis urged members to bombard a local store owner with calls, after he accused some officers of misconduct, one of several recent examples of police unions attempting to intimidate critics. Black Lives Matter activists protesting the lack of accountability in lethal shootings of black men by police are routinely attacked as terrorists....

Neither have some conservatives disdained to use of the power or authority of the state to censor free speech. Republican legislators have proposed “Blue Lives Matter” bills that essentially criminalize peaceful protest; bills that all but outlaw protest itself; and bills that offer some protections to drivers who strike protestors with automobiles. GOP lawmakers have used the state to restrict speech, such as barring doctors from raising abortion or guns with patients, opposition to the construction of Muslim religious buildings, and attempts to stifle anti-Israel activism.

Some of the complaints are silly (the French were in no way harmed by the "Freedom Fries" thing), and some are unfair (even though we have frequently observed failures to hold police officers accountable for improper shootings, it is too strong to paint them as having "the authority to kill").

Still, there is a core to the complaint that is valid, and deserves attention.

Too Bad They Could Only Dream of Food

The NYT: "For all its flaws, the Communist revolution taught Chinese women to dream big."

Firing People for Self-Expression

Like last month, writing a memo that said things people found uncomfortable was a good enough reason for Google to fire somebody and for the rest of the tech world to refuse to ever hire him again. Refusal to bake a cake was a good reason to destroy someone's business. Now the ability to express yourself without reprisals is the "literal" basis of America?

I mean, I'm fine with the idea that the expression of political ideas should be protected. It's true that sometimes it can advance the work of justice, and that protests can be important. Even apart from that, working people will ordinarily have interests that are different from their employers. They should be free to organize, to advance those interests, and their employers shouldn't -- morally, I mean -- fire them for advancing their interest. Democrats used to understand that; how are you going to advance a view like "Join the Union" if employers can just fire everyone who joins the union, or talks about joining the union, or seems interested in unions? You'd think Democrats would argue that way, even though normally they haven't done so lately.

But I'm getting whiplash from all the people who are joining pitchfork-bearing mobs to get people fired one day, and then talking about how sacred free expression is the next day. Can we pick a principle and stick to it? People should be free to express themselves without losing their jobs -- true or false?

Puerto Rico

The American island looks to be in pretty bad shape.

Consciousness Inheres

An interesting argument, although I am in general inclined to accept arguments that point towards Neoplatonic readings.

Raw material

What happens to us doesn't have to make sense or be fair. What we do should make sense and be fair.

“You’re going to recover from this,” he remembered telling the doctor. “You’re going to be a doctor for the rest of your life, and you will use this experience to be a better doctor.”

We can substitute anything else for "doctor" in that advice.

Rangers Lead The Way

Alejandro Villanueva is a man who keeps his oaths. That is all. That is enough.

Potentiality is First Actuality

This has the potential to be the greatest movie ever made.

It won't be, of course. It's hard to live up to that kind of potential.

On the other hand, most movies don't even have that much potential. They're just another superhero flick, or another romantic comedy, or whatever. This one has real potential, and real potential is already something.

What About Confession?

Not that long ago I mentioned a film sequence from Roman Polanski's Pirates!, in which one pirate proposes to eat the other rather than starve at sea on a the equivalent of a life boat.

"Cannibalism is a mortal sin," the other says. "You will burn in hellfire."

"What about confession?" asks Captain Red. "What do you think confession is for?"

These questions come up from time to time.

How'd that work out last time?

Some concerned people want to correct the Pope.

Autumn Fire

Hats Matter

I had a man in Virginia apologize to my hat once.

Fighting Inequality

School bans kids from having best friends.

Thomas’s Battersea, the school George attends, bans kids from having best friends, Marie Claire reports. Instead, teachers encourage all students to form bonds with one another to avoid creating feelings of exclusions among those without best friends.

The trend of banning best friends has been growing for several years, and it’s spread beyond European borders to American schools as well. Some psychologists and parents argue kids become more well-adjusted when they have larger friend groups and can avoid negative feelings associated with feeling left out.

Equality sure turns out to be a problematic goal. Maybe we should consider the possibility that it isn't always the right goal. Hannah Arendt said that the only sense in which equality was desirable was 'equality before the law,' which we have definitely not attained and could still usefully be working on achieving. Maybe most of these other senses of the word are actually even undesirable. I don't want good doctors and bad doctors equally likely to be my doctor, and indeed, I don't know that I want bad doctors even equally likely to be doctors. I'm sure I don't want everyone equally likely to be doctors, whether or not they are otherwise qualified.

Equality may just not be the right goal, most of the time. That doesn't mean it isn't crucially important in those limited cases in which it really is the right goal. It just means that, often, it's not what we should be after. Pursuing it instead of the proper goal is unlikely to work out well.

A Brief History of Selling the Iran Deal by Bashing Jews

The Obama administration's signature policy accomplishment was sold to the American people with a pack of lies, and an inversion of the Constitution.

What you may not have noticed -- I didn't, until it was pointed out -- was how much it was also sold with openly anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish deal opponents. Fold that in with the piece from last week on whether or not observant Jews might be rethinking their politics. It's not as if they haven't got good reasons to do so.

As for the rest of us, as we watch the Iran deal recertification process that's coming up in the next few weeks, it's worth keeping all this in mind. We were never told the truth about this. The 'ratification' process was an unconstitutional sham. That it is also built on what is at best a reckless unconcern with the threat of nuclear genocide aimed at Israel is worth noticing, too.

What Killed Comedy?

I never especially liked Mel Brooks' style of comedy, but lots of people did. Everyone has therefore noticed his remarks on the baleful effect of political correctness on his art.

I didn't see as many people notice that John Cleese of Monty Python fame made very similar remarks quite recently.

The problem is that people are knee-jerk in thinking something is offensive. Sometimes in my show I say, “There were these two Mexicans” and immediately the whole audience goes, “Oooh.” People think something is going to be offensive before it’s even been said. The story I then tell involves an American patrol boat in the Gulf of Mexico. The guy on the boat is cruising along, and suddenly sees two Mexicans going for the border. The guy says, “Hey, what are you doing?” And the Mexicans say, “We’re invading America.” And the guy on the boat says, “What, just the two of you?” And the Mexicans say back, “Oh no, we’re the last ones. The others are already there.”

Oy, John.
But is that a nasty joke? Think about the content of it. The Mexicans are actually the heroes! They’ve won! There are millions of Mexicans in America. Are we trying to pretend that isn’t the case? So is that a nasty story to tell? I don’t think it is.

Cleese is both old and rich, which means he doesn't have to care what you think of his humor any more. That's good, because not caring if he offended people is how he got rich. I assume he got old in the usual way.

The Militia.

Well, I think they're all between 17 and 45. In 1595, the English in their musters began to count men with longbows as unarmed men. Don't know about shoes though.

To Autumn

We are come to the end of summer, the Autumnal Equinox, and the darkening of days.

In Georgia, this begins the best time of year.

In other places, the end of summer may be met with less joy. The thought of long winter months in snowclad rooms may be as oppressive as the long heat and humid air of the Deep South. But for us, here, today looks like the promise of crisp mornings and cool evenings, a season of bonfires and festivals crowned at last by the Yuletide.

I hope you find the joy in it.

A Female Marine Infantry Officer

The Corps finally found a woman who could pass its notoriously-tough Infantry Officer's Course (IOC). Over five years of attempts, the previous 36 women have failed (I have read in one source that this candidate failed once before, but that doesn't seem to be confirmed in every source). About one in four men who attempt the course fail it.

To her credit, she seems not to want to be named -- just to carry on with the work.

Good hunting.

Did He Actually Say "Deplorable"?

The Holy See has taken a remarkably unwise position in response to President Trump's recent UN address.

The rising tensions over North Korea’s growing nuclear program are of special urgency. The international community must respond by seeking to revive negotiations. The threat or use of military force have no place in countering proliferation, and the threat or use of nuclear weapons in countering nuclear proliferation are deplorable. We must put behind us the nuclear threats, fear, military superiority, ideology, and unilateralism that drive proliferation and modernization efforts and are so reminiscent of the logic of the Cold War.

A few things.

What the President said was, "The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

As I understand it, Just War Theory endorses defensive war by legitimate governments. That is what is being described here.

Just War Theory does potentially have an issue with the totality claim: in theory one should wage war in the way most likely to allow noncombatants to survive. Yet this is not a threat to totally destroy North Korea by preference, it is a warning that there won't be any other option.

Military force may be the only way of countering proliferation, practically speaking. Is the claim that it would be better to allow nuclear proliferation to states like the DPRK than to stop it using military force?

Finally, I notice that the ideology in the DPRK's case actually calls for the elimination of religions like Catholicism -- indeed, of all religions except for their own weird cult around the Kim family. That seems like a point that the Church ought to be interested in.

Meet Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich

Were that it were a happier occasion to introduce him to you, but in the aftermath of the recent school shooting at Freeman High School in Spokane, Washington, Sheriff Knezovich held a press conference where he spoke candidly and thoughtfully.  I don't agree with everything he said, but he seemed refreshingly honest and considered in his speaking, and spoke the truth on many things.  Perhaps someday he might consider running for a higher office.

It's a twenty two minute video, but there seemed to be value in most all of it, so I did not opt for edited versions.  Some of the answers to the press questions were particularly excellent.

Independence Referenda

In Catalonia and Kurdistan, voters want an opportunity to determine their own futures. Existing governments are more or less universally opposed.

Seems to be the spirit of the age, though.

Harald Hardrada

This video history has a couple of 'stretchers,' as Fritz Leiber put it, but for the most part it is accurate.



I'm a bit familiar with the history. When I lived in China I wrote a book, just for fun, on the Varangian Guard in Byzantium. I felt a kind of kinship to them, being in a very different and very old civilization. You could hardly get books to read in English at that point, although I'm sure it's better now. The ones you could get were all classics to avoid them being current-service Western propaganda, so it was a great time for me in that I read Moby Dick, and Ivanhoe, and Waverly, and many other great books I'd never gotten around to before.

So I'd say the stretchers are the idea that the Hardrada went to Vinland, for example; some of his exploits against the Arabs may be overstated. But he did have exploits against the Arabs, and he did venture widely. His is an interesting story, well worth knowing.

Sold

A Vox correspondent:

I have spent the bulk of 2017 writing about the different Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Graham-Cassidy, in my view, is the most radical of them all.

While other Republican plans essentially create a poorly funded version of the Affordable Care Act, Graham-Cassidy blows it up.

That's just what I want done with it. Carry on smartly.

Riding the Tiger

We have gotten to the point at which it's necessary to start admitting to the things denied until this last week, perhaps because you can't proceed to indictments without admitting the wiretapping on which those indictments might be based.

Shane the Rebel?

Victor Davis Hanson is definitely right that Hollywood and others treated Confederates as 'cool' not that long ago, especially in the 1950s, and then again in the late 1960s and through the early 1980s. He's also right that this was done in two quite different ways: the 1950s Confederates were flawed men (especially in Stagecoach and The Searchers), whose code was ultimately destructive to themselves and the kind of civilization they represented. Nevertheless, they were possessed of at least some virtues that enabled them to do hard things on the frontier.

And in the Flower Power era, buttons and patches of the rebel flag were sold right along peace signs in various counterculture magazines. Just as bikers and hippies were two ways of representing rejection of 'the system,' the Outlaw Country thing was just one more mode of rebellion. I think Hanson is too harsh in his reading of this era, which was more youthfully foolish in its sense that it could just embrace the good things and walk away from the bad ones. Still, I wrote about all this recently myself, so I don't disagree that it was a feature of the era.

What really strikes me as wrong, though, is his reading of Shane.

In George Stevens’s mythic Shane (1953), the tragedy of the post–Civil War heroic gunslinger seems eerily tied to his past as an against-the-odds ex-Reb. In contrast, the movie’s odious villain, Unionist Jack Wilson, is a hired gun and company man (brilliantly portrayed by then newcomer Jack Palance). Wilson shows off his bought cred by gunning down a naïve southern sodbuster, “Stonewall” Torrey (played by Elisha Cook Jr.), accompanied by slurs about the Confederacy. (“I’m saying that Stonewall Jackson was trash himself. Him and Lee and all the rest of them Rebs. You too.”)

In the movie’s final shootout, replaying the Civil War provides the catalyst for more violence. This time Shane — and the heroic South — wins for good, with a payback Civil War exchange with Wilson:

Shane: I’ve heard about you, Jack Wilson.
Wilson: What have you heard, Shane?
Shane: I’ve heard that you’re a low-down Yankee liar.
Wilson: Prove it.

Wilson is then blown back across the barroom under a hail of bullets. Even out on the Wyoming range, the Hollywood subtext is that sodbuster homesteaders can find a former Confederate loser to protect them, with courage and chivalry, against the northern corporatists trying to steamroll them. The noble savior Shane, we are assumed to believe, had no part in slavery or insurrection but was fighting for his southern soil in service to the Confederacy.

I've written about Shane too, and even that very sequence, but I never once had the idea that Shane was supposed to be a former Confederate. That doesn't strike me as a plausible reading of what happens in the movie.

The character who plays the Southern sodbuster is playfully but thoroughly mocked by the other sodbusters earlier in the movie. It's clear that they are prepared to accept him in spite of his Southern roots, but not to let him live down having been on the losing side of the war. There is therefore no sense that this conflict is a proxy between former Confederates and former Unionists (as was in fact the case at Tombstone in 1881, and thus legitimately colored several movie treatments of it: the Republican, Union-leaning Earp faction against the Confederate, Democratic cowboys).

Rather, what Shane does by repeating the sodbuster's chosen challenge is to take up the cause of a fallen friend, and make it good for him. It's not that the cause was otherwise Shane's; in fact, the power of the scene lies partly in the fact that it wasn't. He took up a cause that wasn't his, and made it good out of friendship.

Read that way, the sequence harmonizes with the larger sweep of the movie. Shane is really a medieval knight who, for love of a lady, enters into a feud between a virtuous landholder and an evil robber baron. Together, the virtuous landholder and the knight errant make good the better claim to the land; but the virtuous landlord is married to the lady, and the knight therefore has a hard choice. In Shane, he makes the best choice, riding off to suffer loss of love in return for knowing he did the right thing. It works out otherwise in other versions of the story.

As a knight errant, Shane doesn't have a cause of his own. That's why his entry into the feud is a sacrifice worthy of the lady; it's why his suffering in the feud is a sacrifice at all, rather than merely his feudal duty. During his defense of the lady's interests, he becomes a friend of the landlord, and his further sacrifices for the landlord are another set of noble sacrifices. His choice to avenge his friend the sodbuster is of this same kind. The sodbuster's cause is not Shane's, but Shane takes it up as a champion long enough to strike down the Black Knight in its name. Shane's nobility is in his willingness to do these things for no personal gain, nor out of any personal duty, but because of a virtuous love for good and decent people.

So no, Shane wasn't a Confederate taking up his old cause in a petty shootout in a tavern, having lost it in a war. That reading fails to grasp the kind of story that is being told, or the kind of man that Shane's character is supposed to be. It's a much older kind of story than that, a better kind.

True Enough

“The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.”

Some speechwriter deserves a pat on the head for that line.

A New Middle East

Egypt's President urges Palestinians to lay aside grievances, co-exist with Israel. In completely unrelated news, the United States just opened a permanent military base in Israel for the first time.

Israel's survival is not thereby assured; Iran keeps promising to wipe it out with its missile program. But I heard somebody say something encouraging on that front today, so maybe it'll work out.

UPDATE: Also good news, Turkey isn't going to get some US weapons. They're not really allies any more, not under this government. Many Turks are great people, but at the moment we can no longer regard them as an ally.

Carrying a Knife is Legal in Georgia

This story has all the tribal things going on, which is going to make it hard to discuss rationally. Nevertheless, I think the headline captures the most crucial factor. Let's go to the story.

When Lynne Schultz first heard that her oldest child, Scout, had been shot and killed by a Georgia Tech police officer late Saturday night, she assumed it occurred at a protest rally.

Scout, she says, was politically active in progressive causes.... According to Georgia Tech police, Scout was seen walking toward police and ignored numerous orders to drop what appeared to be a pocket knife. Photos of the knife taken at the scene reveal the blade was not extended.

Video of the incident showed Scout, 21, shouting “Shoot me!” to the four officers on the scene. A minute later, one of them did.

The GBI is investigating. I also have some questions I'd like answered.

Under current law, a pocket knife of the size in question doesn't even qualify as a regulated weapon -- only knives 12" or longer are regulated, and those are legal to carry if you have a Weapons Carry Permit. Thus, when you see someone carrying around even a big knife, you can't assume they're committing a crime.

On a college campus, well, the law has just recently changed there too: Georgia instituted Campus Carry this spring. So, "person carrying a knife" is not evidence of a crime; the right response by the police might include 'lets keep an eye on them' but not 'let's draw guns and order them to drop the weapon.' Legally, it's not even considered a weapon.

The video makes it clear that the police bracketed this student from at least two and probably three positions (the last judging from an officer appearing from that direction right after the shooting). The closest one was behind a physical barricade.

The student was definitely being challenging and aggressive towards the police, which is usually a bad idea. The student chose to advance on the female officer, who was not the one behind a physical barricade. Though this student "identifies as non-gender-binary," the student was born male and was larger than the female officer. A reasonable female officer of her size, opposed by a larger person whom the officers clearly took for a male, might have felt that her options for effective self defense were limited. Though the knife was closed, it can be opened quickly; though she had numerous friends, and they had their target bracketed, she could not be sure anyone else would kill the student before a clash became actualized. Shooting to stop the aggressive advance may well have made sense, once she found herself in that position.

But why did they get in this position at all? I'm not concerned for myself, as there's an obvious road to avoiding getting killed in this circumstance -- put down the knife and discuss the issue with the police once you've made them comfortable. But this was clearly legal behavior, which they responded to by initiating an interaction built around the immediate threat of lethal force. They did this in spite of superior numbers on the scene, and in spite of the fact that the perfectly legal knife wasn't even open.

Lethal force in Georgia is supposed to be used only to stop an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm. In theory, that standard applies to police and other citizens equally. While they may have gotten to a place where the officer could reasonably claim that she felt she met that standard, they put themselves one step away from shooting in the absence of evidence of any crime at all.

View from the eye

This is a compilation I was looking for earlier, taken in mid-Rockport, with good time markers so you can see what part of the storm you're in and how long each part lasted--hours of intense wind from the east, then a long calm, then hours of intense wind from the west. This is the new Fairmont Hotel on Hwy. 35, looking north to the La Quinta across the street. I think we lost our internet feed around 7:30 or 8:00 pm Friday night; my last post reported that the house wasn't shuddering yet. We're about 10 miles northeast of where this footage was shot, so the eye went over us maybe half an hour later than it did in town, at about the same intensity. The peak winds from the first wall hit us around 10:45pm, the second wall a couple of hours later, and we were calm again before dawn. Notice that this hotel came apart but our house did not!

Sorry about the ad at the beginning, you can skip after a few seconds.



The cleanup effort is having an odd effect on me.  People I was trying to help before who were making me miserable because I couldn't find anything to do that they wouldn't obstruct or bat away in some fashion have now fallen completely off my radar.  It's a variety of triage:  if you're part of the problem instead of the solution, if your attitude is making things worse instead of better, I suddenly have other priorities to turn to, almost completely guilt-free.  Want to tell me how your daughter-in-law presumed to arrange for repairs without something or other first, poor you, FEMA is too stingy, I'm not insured, etc.?  Nope.  Moving on.  A neighbor called me yesterday somewhat miffed that she was just now hearing that there was some kind of list she was supposed to get on for help getting the roving volunteer teams to come to her.  She didn't know she had to get on a list.  I didn't even get mad at her; I just observed mildly that it was important to ask clearly for help (a lesson I've always had trouble learning).

Survivor guilt is making lots of us medium crazy.  Yesterday I found myself eating a piece of cake and mentioned to a companion that I was eating things I normally wouldn't, but I keep weighing every day and am not gaining, so I guess it's OK.  She sniffed at me, "Well.  I guess if you have time to weigh yourself, you're not very busy."  Again, not even tempted to snap at her.  She just moves off of my radar screen for the time being.  If you know you're helping enough, you don't have to pay attention to the self-appointed monitors' opinion of whether your effort is up to snuff, or where your level of suffering fits in her scale of just deserts.

This morning on our dog walk my husband got a cell-phone call, a rare event for him, as he hates to conduct business by phone.  Some chick was on the line was yelling at him that she just wanted to get hold of the person who called her a butthead.  I could hear him saying, "Whom did you think you were calling?  I really have no idea what you're talking about."  She finally instructed him never to call again.  He readily undertook not to do so, and blocked her number.  Ironically, of course, now we do think she is a butthead, whoever she is, the creature.

My husband keeps explaining to me that survivor guilt is irrational.  Why should he feel guilty because he built a sturdy house?  Well, that's like explaining that a fear of heights is irrational.  Sure it is; so what?  Do people really think feelings don't happen because we know they're different from rational analysis?  (OK, I know the answer to that question.  ;-))

One day more

Three things I can't resist:  flash-mob re-enactments, the Les Miz song "One Day More," and the Texas flag.

The Ridge

Majority of CA Democrats Oppose Free Speech

A clean majority, too: 53% of Democrats in California, a state that has elected no Republicans whatsoever to office, say that they prefer to curb speech than to endure the violence recently associated with controversial speech. Forty-six percent of California voters overall said the same thing.

In a way, of course, this is common sense. One can understand a preference for fewer violent protests, and many of the ideas being advocated are ugly. Why protect ugly ideas at the cost of undesirable turmoil? For the most part, people don't: codes restricting the freedom of speech for disfavored ideas are quite common in Europe.

Once we thought there was an important American principle, codified in our First Amendment, which it was our duty to defend. Once Democrats, and especially California Democrats, were at the forefront of defending that principle. No longer.

DB: Salon.Com Gives Weekend Safety Brief

This is for you, the Marine, soldier, sailor, airman, or whatever other title we give to the living tools of imperialist aggression. Look on these words and the unbearable whiteness of the page behind them and become woke to the dangers of the weekend....

If you are arrested in a military town, the police won’t respect whatever privileges you possess, be they white, male, or able-bodied. You will be treated the way the police treat young black males, and inmates will show you how it feels to be a person of color in White America every day....

We don’t want you drinking to excess because that supports white supremacy. Also when you get your haircuts, don’t comb them over to the side, because that supports white supremacy.

Turns out a lot of things do.

Fantasies About Vikings

UPDATE: Lars Walker pointed out yesterday that a noted scholar on women in the Viking age made the same points raised here last week (her post and mine were apparently more or less contemporaneous). They're obvious points, but it's good to see them not being ignored by serious thinkers in the field.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Michael Morell

This decision is about honor, which will make it very difficult for some to understand. Praising and celebrating someone, or creating sinecures for them, are forms of honor. Morell is resigning an honor to protest the assignment of a similar honor by the same organization, thus in effect choosing to enjoy less honor himself in order to shame another. The other in question deserves the shame, and thus the honor assigned them becomes in a sense emptied: better men will refuse to share Manning's company.

Well done, Mr. Morell.

UPDATE:

It worked, too.

But notice the penultimate paragraph, which shows that Harvard simply does not understand honor. The fact of a fellowship is an honor. The attention is an honor. The position is an honor. The opportunity to present yourself in a well-regarded environment is an honor.

They got this wrong because they don't understand honor at all. That's a significant problem: these who do not understand honor are training a significant part of our future leaders.

On History

I always think of this when I read about the relentlessly negative portrayals of historic American figures, destruction of their statues, and the like. It's the other side of a coin we were much embracing in the 1950s.

Bowie was indeed a bold man, and adventurous as far as that goes. He was also a rather infamous practitioner of land fraud, so much so that the US Treasury had -- if historian William C. Davis is to be believed -- a whole section devoted to him and his family at one time. Of course he was also engaged in the slave trade.

Once we celebrated such men without great discretion; he was Achilles to Travis' Agamemnon in the John Wayne version of The Alamo. (Wayne's own Crockett was Odysseus, of course.) Now we can't see the good in them.

We might take a lesson from others.

Huanglong said to the great statesman Wang Anshi:

Whatever you set your mind to do, you always should make the road before you wide open, so that all people may traverse it. This is the concern of a great man.

If the way is narrow and perilous, so that others cannot go on it, then you yourself will not have any place to set foot either.

Zhang River Annals

I always thought that particular lesson worthy. Jim Bowie was a man, and he did some great things and some awful ones. Mostly he did noteworthy things: even in fraud, he was greater than most. I wonder who among the critics today is as great as those they criticize, either in worth or in shame. But the great worth and the great shame often lie in the character of the same man. Like Bowie; like Jefferson; like others.

Get Off My Lawn, er, Roof!

83 Year old man ends hours long standoff with police of man jumping from roof to roof in residential neighborhood.  The police spokesman- "The grandpa did what we couldn't".  Good thing for grumpy old men, or who knows how long this nonsense would go on.

What's To Dislike?

The new Clinton book is garnering a lot of commentary today, and some of it is from people who have actually read the thing. I can assure you that I will not be buying a copy, nor reading a copy, at any point. However it happened, I remain grateful on a daily basis for the absence of a Hillary Clinton administration.

Some highlights of the blame game:

Green Party Candidate Jill Stein, who “wouldn’t be worth mentioning” had she not taken tens of thousands of votes in swing states that Trump won.

She wouldn't be worth mentioning, except that she is why you lost. Got it.

“Sexism and misogyny..."

Didn't we just discuss Jill Stein voters? That's why you lost those decisive swing states, right? Because of people who hate women so much that they voted for a different one?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian hackers, for working “to influence our election and install a friendly puppet.”... Former President Barack Obama, for not giving a national television address about the Russian hacking so that “more Americans would have woken up.”

I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the Russians moved the needle on the election. Thanks to Ms. Clinton and her ilk, however, the Russians have subsequently enjoyed wild success at dividing the nation and convincing people that the American government is illegitimate.

Clinton’s own statement about putting coal miners out of business, which Trump repeatedly used against her....

Oops. But why would you think that would hurt you, after Obama said he was going to employ a plan under which electricity rates would 'necessarily skyrocket,' and that he too would put coal workers out of business? He won by running against these people. Why shouldn't you have gotten away with kicking them too?

Her “basket of deplorables” statement about Trump’s supporters, which was “a political gift” to her opponent. People "misunderstood me to be criticizing all Trump voters."

It's true, they misunderstood. You clearly said that you only meant half of them.

Hillary hate. "I have come to terms with the fact that a lot of people — millions and millions of people — decided they just didn’t like me,” Clinton writes — though she doesn’t understand the dislike. “What makes me such a lightning rod for fury? I’m really asking … I’m at a loss.”

Look, here's the thing. All things being equal, people like people who like them. You, Ms. Clinton, made clear that you didn't like much of America. You also made clear that you didn't trust most of America, not to make good decisions nor to run their own lives. Nobody likes to be told what to do, especially by someone who clearly thinks they can judge from on high how to order one's life.

The people who do like you, Ms. Clinton, are the people who don't like those Americans much either. They share your opinion that those Americans need to be controlled, corralled, and as you once said, have things taken away from them for the common good. You were talking about their money, but you also meant their guns, their choices on health care and their doctors, control over their lives in general. They were too stupid, too selfish, too deplorable in their characters.

That is why so many people do not like you, Ms. Clinton. It is because you don't like them, while at the same time you think yourself entitled to run their lives for them. Nobody wants to be ruled by someone who despises them. It's not the American way, not by a long sight. And that's why you lost an American election, and would do so again if we'd held another vote in July, or if we put it to another vote tomorrow.

At least, that's how it seems to me. Now, if you'll excuse us, Grim's Hall is done with you. I look forward to not having to think about you any more.

Porn, Republican vs. Jihadi

Apparently Ted Cruz and/or an intern of his 'liked' a porn video last night, which led to a huge amount of publicity today. I didn't go look up the porn in question, so I don't know what sort it was, but I figure that it's fairly a private matter that we should probably let slide. People having affairs is one thing, as that cuts in on their capacity to keep their sworn oaths. People having fantasies, well, that's something else.

Yet I do think that there is a kind of public interest in releasing Osama bin Laden's porn.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said that the “documents retrieved from the 2011 Navy Seal raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden would be released in ‘weeks’—with the exception of one particular part of the haul, his pornography stash.”

The Newsweek article below indicates that “while these documents are considered operational, his porn collection is not, and will likely remain classified.” Whatever that means.

How is this classified, and what is the legal rationale for classifying this information? Information cannot legally be classified to avoid embarrassment or to cover up illegal activity. Al Qaeda is not a foreign government, so this doesn't qualify as foreign government information. There's no issue of protecting collection methods, as everyone knows how we collected the information: we sent DEVGRU to shoot him and scarf up his computers.

What law allows them to keep this information a secret? FOIA has nine specific exceptions that allow agencies to refuse to release information. The only one that could apply is 6, "information that would cause a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." But Osama bin Laden is dead, and what personal privacy expectations does a dead terrorist have?

Jewish Conservatism

I am not myself the least bit Jewish, and thus might not be thought to care very much about this subject; however, I do have some Jewish friends, including one of the authors of this piece on why Jews might be becoming more conservative than heretofore in American politics. As they point out, there are several different sets of reasons that are impelling a reconsideration of political loyalties on that front.

I'm Pretty Sure That's the Purpose of the Pardon

Two left-leaning legal groups are suing in Federal court, arguing that President Trump's recent pardon limits the power of the courts. Well, the word they use is 'undermine.'

The pardon power exists to limit the power of the courts, just as any of the other checks and balances do. Most commonly, it is used to limit the power of the court when it issues unjust rulings, or unduly harsh ones. But that's not the only way in which the pardon exists to limit the courts; President George H. W. Bush used it to limit the courts' role as a fact-finding agent during the Iran-Contra period. Especially when the courts enter into political disputes, it is reasonable for the other branches to exercise their powers to limit the courts' role.

Indeed, when the branches come into direct conflict like this the resolution is found in the fact that there are three branches rather than some even number. Congress could impeach a president for a use of the pardon power they found unacceptable; if they do not, then de facto they are endorsing the President's use of this power. The courts are not meant to exercise dominance over the other two branches of the government; they are only co-equal to the other branches. When the other two branches are opposed to the courts, the courts should give way.

It'll be interesting to see if they do, though. In general, if you ask a Federal judge if Federal judges should have more power, the answer is nearly always "Yes." Finding judges who believe in courts' being constrained by the Constitution, rather than exercising a plenary power to rewrite it at will, is one of the key difficulties in selecting a better judiciary. My guess is that the courts are likely to accept this argument that no President should be able to limit their authority in this way, even though limiting the courts' power is one of the reasons that the pardon power exists.

Irma Passes Through

Outside of Savannah and its environs, things went reasonably well for a hurricane. Here it was a day of a few hours of strong gusts, plus a whole day of rain, but no serious issues. One transformer exploded nearby, but the power didn't go out for more than a second or two now and again.

Hope it went that well for the rest of you.

That's four hurricanes for me, now: Opal, Floyd, Isabel, and now Irma. At least, those are the ones I remember.

A Strange Anniversary

Sixteen years on, patriotism is bad:

[T]he opening weekend also began with an increasing number of players sitting down or kneeling for the national anthem, a precedent set last season by the now unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

When Kaepernick decided to kneel for “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 2016, he said:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color...."

From New York, to Alabama, to California, Americans were unified in support of their country and their flag.

“To me, there is an element of symbolism here with big-city America playing heartland America on the friendly fields of strife,” said then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue at a game between the New York Giants and Kansas City Chiefs. “We’re very proud to be back.”

Americans stepped back from political squabbles and even Congress got together to demonstrate solidarity. Republican President George W. Bush was movingly greeted with chants of “USA! USA! USA!” in liberal New York City.

The fissures of our society that certainly existed then as now, were smoothed over by the most obvious national threat. The motto of the time was: “United we stand.”

How things have changed 16 years later.

Looting is good:

An author and journalist came under fire on social media Monday, after she tweeted a reply to an anti-looting warning from Miami police by saying: "The carceral state... is inseparable from white supremacy."...

good morning, the carceral state exists to protect private property and is inseparable from white supremacy https://t.co/etynmh0rX5

— Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe) September 11, 2017

A Foreign Policy writer argues that immigration is coming to save you, but boy does he resent you:

All hail Western civilization, which gave the world the genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and global warming. How hypocritical this whole debate about migration really is.

Gee, only racists wouldn't want to bring aboard a whole lot more people who feel that way about America and the West. Especially since we get to enjoy not just the lecture on how awful our culture and ancestors are, but the resentment for having concerns about the changes to American culture brought about by immigrants who broadcast that they hate it.

All this on 9/11. It's like 'talking about the Queen on Independence Day,' only worse.

UPDATE: Related, I suspect: more Americans can't name any branches of the Federal government than can name all three. Our cultural elites are doing a great job teaching resentment, and a terrible job teaching civics. How does small-r republican self government remain possible under these circumstances?

Enid & Geraint

By custom and tradition, the only post on 9/11 is this recitation. However, this year, posts related to the hurricane or similar emergencies may occur.

Once strong, from solid
Camelot he came
Glory with him, Geraint,
Whose sword tamed the wild.
Fabled the fortune he won,
Fame, and a wife.
The beasts he battled
With horn and lance;
Stood farms where fens lay.
When bandits returned
To old beast-holds
Geraint gave them the same.

And then long peace,
Purchased by the manful blade.
Light delights filled it,
Tournaments softened, tempered
By ladies; in peace lingers
the dream of safety.

They dreamed together. Darkness
Gathered on the old wood,
Wild things troubled the edges,
Then crept closer.
The whispers of weakness
Are echoed with evil.

At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.

And put her on palfrey
To ride before or beside
And they went to the wilds,
Which were no longer
So far. Ill-used,
His sword hung beside.

By the long wood, where
Once he laid pastures,
The knight halted, horsed,
Gazing on the grim trees.
He opened his helm
Beholding a bandit realm.

Enid cried at the charge
Of a criminal clad in mail!
The Lord turned his horse,
Set his untended shield:
There lacked time, there
Lacked thought for more.

Villanous lance licked the
Ancient shield. It split,
Broke, that badge of the knight!
The spearhead searched
Old, rust-red mail.
Geraint awoke.

Master and black mount
Rediscovered their rich love,
And armor, though old
Though red with thick rust,
Broke the felon blade.
The spear to-brast, shattered.

And now Enid sees
In Geraint's cold eyes
What shivers her to the spine.
And now his hand
Draws the ill-used sword:
Ill-used, but well-forged.

And the shock from the spear-break
Rang from bandit-towers
Rattled the wood, and the world!
Men dwelt there in wonder.
Who had heard that tone?
They did not remember that sound.

His best spear broken
On old, rusted mail,
The felon sought his forest.
Enid's dusk eyes sense
The strength of old steel:
Geraint grips his reins.

And he winds his old horn,
And he spurs his proud horse,
And the wood to his wrath trembles.
And every bird
From the wild forest flies,
But the Ravens.

Populism

This Dr. Seuss rhyme comes to you from a candidate for the United States Senate.

There's quite a bit of cursing. Also a beach ball.

A Step Closer to Shieldmaidens

A study making the rounds has gotten attention because it has confirmed, again, that Vikings sometimes buried women with what researchers had taken to be "male" grave goods. The study's authors are taking their findings a little further than the evidence suggests, and journalists are of course going even further than that.

The study holds:

Already in the early middle ages, there were narratives about fierce female Vikings fighting alongside men. Although, continuously reoccurring in art as well as in poetry, the women warriors have generally been dismissed as mythological phenomena (Gardeła, 2013; Jesch, 1991; Jochens, 1996).... The existence of female warriors in Viking Age Scandinavia has been debated among scholars (Gardeła, 2013; Jesch, 1991; Jochens, 1996). Though some Viking women buried with weapons are known, a female warrior of this importance has never been determined and Viking scholars have been reluctant to acknowledge the agency of women with weapons (Hernæs, 1984; Moen, 2011) (S1). The osteological analysis triggered questions concerning sex, gender and identity among Viking warriors.

The journalists got all the way here:

The remains of a powerful viking — long thought to be a man — was in fact a real-life Xena Warrior Princess, a study released Friday reveals.

So what this study does show is that high-ranking women in Viking society sometimes were buried with swords and other warrior-oriented grave goods. What it does not show, which both the study's authors and the journalists wish to show, is that the women in question fought in medieval battles. Like other later women of Northern extraction -- the Norman Philippa of Hainault, for example -- they may have commanded forces at a distance from the battle, in the manner of nobility or royalty. The Viking sagas and legends certainly seem to show that as well as the shieldmaidens we find sometimes, especially Lagertha from Saxo Grammaticus' mytho-history.

What you would want to show that someone was a fighter is archaological evidence similar to this from the grave of an English knight:

Four of the man's ribs showed healed fractures that may have occurred simultaneously, suggesting a single instance of trauma, researchers wrote in the pathology report. Another four ribs were in the process of healing, indicating that the man was still recovering from the injuries when he died. The other two damaged ribs also show evidence of trauma, and his left lower leg has an unusual twisting break, one that could have been caused by a direct blow or a rolled ankle, according to the report.

“This image of the male warrior in a patriarchal society was reinforced by research traditions and contemporary preconceptions. Hence, the biological sex of the individual was taken for granted,” the study authors wrote. Fair enough; let's not make the equal and opposite mistake by assuming that a person buried in a rich grave with warlike trappings was actually on the battlefield. This grave gives us a woman associated with war, but not necessarily a shieldmaiden.

Marching through Georgia

Macon, yesterday. Notice that both sides of Interstate 75 are now northbound.

You don't have to march all the way through Georgia, though. Georgia has opened its state parks for free camping, no pet fees if you're traveling with animals. NASCAR has opened the Atlanta Speedway and, if you want to press on a little further, Talledegah for the same purpose.

Before and after

You can see our lot before and after the storm here.  Could be worse, obviously; the buildings are fine.  The poor trees!  But they're already leafing out, so although many are now missing, the ones that are left won't be all "Halloweeny," as one neighbor put it to me today.

We continue to organize the relief effort. I put out a request for chainsaw aid on a Texas bankruptcy-lawyer forum earlier this week, and today got an email from a lawyer I worked with long ago, saying his son was now at university in New York and wanted to come with his fraternity to provide a chainsaw crew.  Now that overwhelms me, in part because this lawyer and I had an extremely contentious relationship.  Ditto a fellow who bought the lot across the street and got crosswise with several of our neighbors and us, who showed up with an inexhaustible crew who have cleared I don't know how many lots.  Several months ago he put his lot up for sale and apparently reconsidered building here.  Now I hope he'll change his mind.  He puts me to shame.  Many things are putting me to shame this week.  God puts the right challenges in our path; apparently He knows what He's doing.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Waters reeled off a long list of domestic terror, including the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting 2009, the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting in 2012, the Los Angeles International Airport shooting in 2013, the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting in 2015, the Portland train attack this year and Charlottesville.

One of these things just doesn't belong.

The Horn of Buckland, Blowing

There are four famines in Africa, CSIS notes.

If there were a global siren to signal that a humanitarian crisis has tipped over the threshold to a catastrophic scale, it would be ringing loudly right now. Today, 20.7 million people are starving or at risk of starving in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and northeastern Nigeria.

The media, particularly U.S. domestic outlets, have not given this situation the attention it so desperately warrants. The world is too distracted and distraught over political drama, (un)natural disasters, and protracted conflicts. Understandably so.

Indeed. We are about to have our second major hurricane in a few weeks, likely followed by a third. The northwest is literally on fire. Our southern neighbor, Mexico, just had an 8.0 earthquake and typhoon, while there is yet another hurricane in the Gulf. North Korea just conducted what may be a fusion bomb test, and is threatening to wipe out America's electrical grid in a move that a Congressional study estimated would kill 90% of Americans.

In spite of all that, the United States will be at the leading edge of whatever sort of response these famines in Africa gets. You may not hear much about it, but AFRICOM and SOCAF will be there, as will USAID and our State Department. We'll also be helping Mexico, and the Caribbean nations afflicted by these storms. North Korea will not be there, nor its allies, but we will.

The Hateful AI?

A new artificial intelligence test shows that it's actually quite easy to pick out who is gay and who is not from facial features; it's just that human brains aren't evolved to do it well. A computer that's told what to look for can do it 91% of the time.

When the software reviewed five images per person, it was even more successful – 91% of the time with men and 83% with women. Broadly, that means “faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain”, the authors wrote.

The paper suggested that the findings provide “strong support” for the theory that sexual orientation stems from exposure to certain hormones before birth, meaning people are born gay and being queer is not a choice. The machine’s lower success rate for women also could support the notion that female sexual orientation is more fluid.

So that's interesting, but it set off some people worrying quietly about the ramifications.

With billions of facial images of people stored on social media sites and in government databases, the researchers suggested that public data could be used to detect people’s sexual orientation without their consent.

It’s easy to imagine spouses using the technology on partners they suspect are closeted, or teenagers using the algorithm on themselves or their peers. More frighteningly, governments that continue to prosecute LGBT people could hypothetically use the technology to out and target populations.

They don't mention any names, but consider how such technology might be employed by Iran. Or Uganda.

Unfair competition

A hilarious New Yorker article, which I won't link to because it's linked and summarized in this better one, complains that volunteerism causes people to doubt that they need to depend on government.  Funny, that's just why I like volunteerism and strong private institutions.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells conceded that the boatmen were “heroes,” but complained that Texas’s “libertarian” culture, leading to an “insufficiency of Houston’s city planning” and “willful ignorance of climate change” on the part of politicians, had made it necessary to rely on private citizens. “There is a cyclic pattern to the erosion of faith in government, in which politics saps the state’s capacity to protect people, and so people put their trust in other institutions (churches; self-organizing volunteer navies), and are more inclined to support anti-government politics,” Wallace-Wells wrote.

Doesn't seem fair, I admit.  If people had no alternative to government, they might be more afraid to oppose it.  It's similar to the real (if unstated) argument in favor of monopolies.  Choice is so inconvenient.

The End of the Obama Era

Two quite different pieces today arrive at the same conclusion: Trump's promise is to reverse the Obama legacy. One is celebratory; the other argues, quite seriously, that it will potentially bring about the end of the world.

From the first, a WSJ piece subtitled, "President Trump visits Cowboyistan":

Proudly standing in front of the Andeavor Refinery outside Bismarck, he talked about ending restrictions on U.S. oil production, approving pipelines and dominating world markets. Come to think of it, this speech may have annoyed Vladimir Putin almost as much as Mr. Obama.

Also irking Mr. Obama no doubt was a central message of the speech: The U.S. corporate income tax rate has to come down to a competitive level. Just about every legislative leader in Washington of either party has been telling Mr. Trump that it’s not realistic to cut the rate all the way to 15% from its current 35% at the federal level, but there he was in North Dakota mentioning 15% again....

This column has mentioned the abundance of recent research showing how lowering corporate income tax rates drives wages higher. And higher wages could pull more disaffected former workers back into the economy.

This may have something to do with the reception the President received on Wednesday. A headline in the Bismarck Tribune reads, “North Dakota crowd cheers Trump’s call for tax reform, promise of competitive edge.”

The cheers aren’t only in North Dakota.

Remember what they are celebrating about Trump as you consider the second, titled, "The First White President." This piece argues that Trump's election is about nothing other than a move to restore "white supremacism." The only problem is that, as far as I can tell, the author believes that the whole nation is an expression of white supremacism: he laments the Founding, even, in these terms.

With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds....

...[Trumpist rhetoric] aligns with the dicta of whiteness, which seek to alchemize one’s profligate sins into virtue. So it was with Virginia slaveholders claiming that Britain sought to make slaves of them. So it was with marauding Klansmen organized against alleged rapes and other outrages. So it was with a candidate who called for a foreign power to hack his opponent’s email and who now, as president, is claiming to be the victim of “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.”

In Trump, white supremacists see one of their own.

The author ends the piece, as mentioned, by invoking the literal end of the world.

The American tragedy now being wrought is larger than most imagine and will not end with Trump.... It has long been an axiom among certain black writers and thinkers that while whiteness endangers the bodies of black people in the immediate sense, the larger threat is to white people themselves, the shared country, and even the whole world. There is an impulse to blanch at this sort of grandiosity. When W. E. B. Du Bois claims that slavery was “singularly disastrous for modern civilization” or James Baldwin claims that whites “have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white,” the instinct is to cry exaggeration. But there really is no other way to read the presidency of Donald Trump. The first white president in American history is also the most dangerous president—and he is made more dangerous still by the fact that those charged with analyzing him cannot name his essential nature, because they too are implicated in it.

It is odd, philosophically speaking, to claim both that slavery is the foundation of modern civilization and also that it represents a singular disaster for modern civilization. If it was, as argued, the necessary precondition for the rise of the modern world, then it cannot also be a disaster for that world; it can be a disaster for James that his mother was an alcoholic, but not that his mother and not someone else was his mother, as without that particular mother James would not be James. Insofar as James is to live with a healthy soul, he must come to terms with the debt he owes his mother for his very existence even as he wishes that she had been better than she was.

Slavery was clearly a disaster in many senses, and for vast numbers of people. The modern world cannot regard slavery as a disaster for it, though, except by disputing that slavery was a necessary part of its coming-to-be. That is one thing the author of this piece would not countenance; it is too central to his worldview and philosophy.

What, then, does this leave for anyone who would be an American except to take James' path? If one would live with a healthy soul, one must love one's mother or one's motherland. One must respect the debt owed her for one's very being. We can regret her past, and her choices, but we must not regret her. To do that is to embrace the root of all the forms of madness that come of it: it's not for no reason that the cliche about psychology is that it begins with the question, "How do you feel about your mother?" To hate her warps you in myriad ways. It is only when you can forgive her that you can forgive the aspects of yourself that are like her: not yielding to them, but forgiving her and yourself for having those human weaknesses.

Our cultural leaders are too focused on the regret, and not enough on the gratitude, forgiveness, and love. So focused, I think, that they cannot move on from the pain of it. They can't see a way past it. No progress is possible for them until they do; and no one can help them to do it until they are ready.

More Cultural Warfare

.@RepGutierrez called #JohnKelly a disgrace over #DACA
Who's the real disgrace?
I say the corrupt, Che'-loving, terrorist-supporting loser pic.twitter.com/SsD7mcxO8z

— Jim Hanson (@Uncle_Jimbo) September 7, 2017

Kelly has sacrificed a great deal for his country, including a son who chose to follow him into the military life and died in Afghanistan.

Vetoing the Most Qualified

Sen. Al Franken is trying to use a traditional Senate prerogative of home-state Senators to veto judicial nominations. His reason?

“I have grown concerned that, if confirmed to the federal bench, Justice Stras would be a deeply conservative jurist in the mold of Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, justices who the nominee himself has identified as role models,” Franken said.

So, in other words, he's unfit to be a judge because he's the kind of judge who sometimes becomes a Supreme Court Justice?

It doesn't really get any better. It's a problem for Franken that he works with the Federalist Society, like it's a problem for Feinstein that a nominee is an orthodox member of the Catholic Church. The cultural warfare is moving into a higher gear.

Anyone in Florida?

If any of the regulars of the Hall are making plans to evacuate for the hurricane, shout out in the comments. I have plenty of friends, and some resources, in the state immediately to your north.