Headline: "U.S. General blessed the rains down in AFRICOM."
Ironically, the actual AFRICOM headquarters is in Stuttgart, Germany. They probably have rain there too.
Betting against mistakes
I'm liking this guy Matt Levine, who writes for Bloomberg:
Neumann, the founder of WeWork, will walk away from this corporate bonfire with a billion dollars and a bunch of fancy houses. His great-grandchildren will be prominent philanthropists with their names on museums and universities, the strange origin of their fortunes long forgotten. Neumann did a certain sort of capitalism—one with some cachet at HBS!—as well as anyone has ever done it. It is one thing to build a successful company that creates a lot of value and take some of that value for yourself; Neumann created a company that destroyed value at a blistering pace and nonetheless extracted a billion dollars for himself. He lit $10 billion of SoftBank’s money on fire and then went back to them and demanded a 10% commission. What an absolute legend.As a friend I spent time with last week at a small reunion used to say, "Hey, when did I fall off the fast track?"
Mountain Dining
Stopped for dinner at a little Mexican place last night. Apparently I wasn’t the only “Beorn” to think of it.
I’m guessing he’s been a regular visitor. Big sleek fellow with a very glossy coat. Not unfriendly.
I’m guessing he’s been a regular visitor. Big sleek fellow with a very glossy coat. Not unfriendly.
Impeachment Replays
William Mattox, of the James Madison Institute, has an interesting idea.
An acquittal should allow a president to run for a third term.
Not a bad one, either.
Eric Hines
An acquittal should allow a president to run for a third term.
Not a bad one, either.
Eric Hines
Remind me again what these cities have in common?
Again, h/t Instapundit: top honors for rat infestation go to Chicago, then L.A., with New York, San Francisco, etc., bringing up the rear.
Alliances as a means, not an end
Loyalty and faithfulness to commitments are good things, but nations aren't people. George Washington warned us that
“habitual hatred or a habitual fondness” turns a nation into “a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”That's not to say that a nation should lead other nations on, then disappoint them, only that it should think carefully about what it commits to. In other words, exhibit a little impulse control.
But what did you MEAN by that?
And they say BoJo is rash:
Which brings me back to Alexander and his knot. For the plan of Boris Johnson is not just the bold one. It is the only answer that can stop the courts, MPs, and others from doing for the rest of our natural lives what they would very happily do. Which is to continue to stand before the 2016 result and insist either that it cannot be acted upon or that it should not be acted upon. The media version of this is to pretend that it is not clear what the British people meant when they voted to leave the EU. Somehow it would have been completely plain if we had asked to remain.
Ad Hominem as a Cognitive Bias
Ad hominem is one of the more common informal fallacies, but I have decided that it is also a significant cognitive bias. A cognitive bias is a mode of thought that speeds analysis but tends to lead to errors. A famous one is the availability heuristic, the tendency to make judgments on available information rather than seeking fuller information. For example, I might decide to adopt a new diet because I've seen it depicted favorably in television shows and news programs. Those positive depictions are available without further work. However, further study might show that the new diet was much more questionably beneficial, or even harmful.
Another famous one is the confirmation bias, in which I am inclined to approve information that supports what I already believe to be the case (and to discount evidence that suggests I might be wrong). This one is a very powerful bias that affects everyone, no matter how careful a thinker they may be. It is very difficult to correct for it.
The ad hominem bias, another heuristic bias, which I am proposing works like this: it is easier to understand a known individual's bad qualities than to understand a complex situation in which they are involved. If a bad quality attributed to the known individual can reasonably be inferred to be the cause of a bad but complex situation, the ad hominem heuristic occurs when you make that easy move.
The ad hominem cognitive bias is similar to the availability heuristic in that it works on information that is already available, partly in order to avoid the difficulty of understanding the complex situation. However, it is also similar to confirmation bias in that you believe the bad attribution you yourself are making just because you already believe the person is bad. It is more complicated than the other two, however, in that -- because this is your own attribution, and you therefore believe it -- the new, probably false belief gets filed as further evidence of the bad quality of the person you dislike or hate. The ad hominem heuristic thus contains a feedback loop in which it strengthens itself the more often it occurs; and since it is a cognitive bias and thus likely to lead to error, that means you tend to drift further and further away from what is really true.
In extreme cases, all the problems in your world can end up seeming to be the fault of this one pernicious individual. If only he (or she) could be removed, the improvement would be systemic and massive. This kind of belief can justify many sorts of extreme conclusions, or even violence against the hated individual.
Perhaps it has a name already.
Another famous one is the confirmation bias, in which I am inclined to approve information that supports what I already believe to be the case (and to discount evidence that suggests I might be wrong). This one is a very powerful bias that affects everyone, no matter how careful a thinker they may be. It is very difficult to correct for it.
The ad hominem bias, another heuristic bias, which I am proposing works like this: it is easier to understand a known individual's bad qualities than to understand a complex situation in which they are involved. If a bad quality attributed to the known individual can reasonably be inferred to be the cause of a bad but complex situation, the ad hominem heuristic occurs when you make that easy move.
The ad hominem cognitive bias is similar to the availability heuristic in that it works on information that is already available, partly in order to avoid the difficulty of understanding the complex situation. However, it is also similar to confirmation bias in that you believe the bad attribution you yourself are making just because you already believe the person is bad. It is more complicated than the other two, however, in that -- because this is your own attribution, and you therefore believe it -- the new, probably false belief gets filed as further evidence of the bad quality of the person you dislike or hate. The ad hominem heuristic thus contains a feedback loop in which it strengthens itself the more often it occurs; and since it is a cognitive bias and thus likely to lead to error, that means you tend to drift further and further away from what is really true.
In extreme cases, all the problems in your world can end up seeming to be the fault of this one pernicious individual. If only he (or she) could be removed, the improvement would be systemic and massive. This kind of belief can justify many sorts of extreme conclusions, or even violence against the hated individual.
Perhaps it has a name already.
Poor Target Selection
Granted that this man wasn't carrying either his machine-gun or his sniper rifle at the time, but what thief looks at this guy and thinks to himself, "Oh, yeah, of all the people in the city today this is the one I'm going to pick out to rob"?
Mexico Loses a Gun Battle to a Cartel
Speaking of wars and rumors of wars, there's a conflict closer to home that may become a pressing problem.
The eight-hour battle ended when government forces, outgunned and surrounded, without reinforcements or a way to retreat, received an order directly from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to release their prisoner and surrender."Ordered to lay down arms and surrender" is never good, but ordered to surrender to a criminal organization noted for mutilation and beheading?
Bill McRaven Calls For a New President
Retired Admiral Bill McRaven, formerly commander of JSOC and later SOCOM, has penned a piece calling for the replacement of President Trump "the sooner, the better." I'm one of the kind of people he's trying to motivate, and he's speaking in language I understand. The argument has an unusual structure, one rarely seen in American politics.
The piece is fifteen paragraphs long. The first ten paragraphs are purely about honor, as are his last three. He lays out numerous examples framed around two specific recent events of men and women of honor showing honor to and for each other. Honor is indispensable to society and to politics, so this kind of argument is not out of place. Without honor, there is only power, and the direct exercise of power is expensive. Showing respect for each other and each other's interests lowers the cost of running a political system, and indeed a society. It allows us to accept that others may assume positions of power and authority, because we believe they will respect us enough not to use that power irresponsibly; and because a concern with being seen as worthy of honor by us will mean they behave honorably and respectably. They are and ought to be motivated by 'a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,' as the Declaration of Independence puts it. It is not for no reason that the Founders, who were concerned not only with 'lives and fortunes' but also 'sacred honor' built so successful a system of governance.
It is also unsurprising that a man whose life is built around honor would find Donald Trump especially objectionable. Trump is not concerned with the proprieties of honor at all. He uses the language and forms of honor to reward and punish, but without regard to whether the rewards or especially the punishments are merited. It is proper to regard him as ridiculous in this way -- just last week Jim Mattis drew a connection between the insults Trump had directed at him and those directed as Meryl Streep to declare himself 'the Meryl Streep of generals' -- but it is not completely our of line to feel this misuse of honor represents a dagger at the throat of basic social connections. McRaven's closing argument, in his last three paragraphs, suggest that our ability to maintain the military power that holds the order of the world together is fundamentally threatened by Donald Trump. His arguments as to why a disdain for promises and alliances and respect for the interests of allies are perfectly reasonable.
So thirteen of the fifteen paragraphs are places where McRaven and I share a basic worldview about the role of honor and its place in the world. It's really only parts of two paragraphs where we come apart, but those two are enough to call the whole thrust of his argument into question for me. They are these:
Category errors are very serious philosophical mistakes. McRaven is not a philosopher, and as the essay notes this error is extremely common among those we tend to name as our 'foreign policy elites.' Nevertheless this is an error of thought with severe consequences. It is one that has drawn us into wars, and could again, to fight for values that aren't even held by the people we think we are defending. The most prominent of the Kurdish fighting organizations, for example, are Communists. Communists don't believe in 'universal freedom,' and while they profess a view of 'equality,' they don't mean anything like what Americans do by the term. The idea is not that everyone is endowed equally with basic liberties, but that society should control everything in order to ensure something like an equal distribution of goods (or at least an equitable one, since those with greater needs might receive more; though in practice, the 'equities' somehow always align with closeness to the political elite). Such a state is in most respects aims at the opposite of our traditional notion of 'equality,' and is completely opposed to our ideal of freedom.
Which brings us to the second paragraph. The problem here is not an opposition to oppression, which is noble. It is the list of conflicts. American honor might compel us to do something to defend allies like the Kurds, but it cannot compel us to fight in South Sudan. Most Americans could probably identify that Sudan is a nation in Africa, but I'll bet you that the percentage who can tell you where the Rohingyas live is vanishingly small. Honor bonds are mutual relationships, not one-way duties of provision. The Kurds have one with us because they fought with us against a common enemy, and bore a lot of the burden of the fighting while we mostly provided fire and air support. Where no deep relationship with us exists, honor does not and cannot compel us to fight someone else's war. We might choose to do it, and think it worthy of honor that we chose to bear a burden we did not have to bear. Honor cannot compel us to do it. If they want an honor bond of the sort that would compel us to do it, well, formal alliances are negotiated formally, and usually between nations rather than between a nation and disfavored ethnic groups.
Meanwhile McRaven has omitted a significant honor concern that touches on this project of removing the president 'the sooner, the better.' The class of public servants, to include military servicemembers, is honor-bound to uphold the will of the American people. This will is expressed formally and permanently in the Constitution, and less formally and permanently in the elected government of the day. The current impeachment hearing (if it is that) was kicked off by a letter to Congress from an unnamed intelligence officer who has chosen to remain in the shadows rather than testify even incognito. The intelligence community has no constitutional standing even to exist, but it is legally bound to the Executive Branch, whose elected leader is a President of the United States. The State Department, similarly, is now a merely statuatory authority that is in open revolt against the Constitutional authority. The New York Times just ran an article openly praising "the deep state" for its attempt to resist and remove the elected leader of their branch of government.
McRaven must know that having military officials throw their weight behind the removal of the Constitutionally-named Commander in Chief would set an alarming precedent with echoes to ancient Rome. There is no guarantee that allowing the unelected bureaucracy or military replace the elected and Constitutional leadership would happen only once. It certainly cannot be said to be consistent with the honor owed to the Constitution or the constitutional structure to advocate for the bureaucrats to be allowed to override the election.
Now Congress has constitutional authority to remove the President if it chooses to do so, but it is supposed to be for 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' not because the President lacks honor. He does, I agree. That is a big problem, I agree. But the cost of removing a President outside the constitutional norms, at the behest of an unelected bureaucracy and even unnamed intelligence officers, is too high to be borne. There will be an election in a year and a week. If the American people want rid of him, they will have the chance to do it themselves.
The piece is fifteen paragraphs long. The first ten paragraphs are purely about honor, as are his last three. He lays out numerous examples framed around two specific recent events of men and women of honor showing honor to and for each other. Honor is indispensable to society and to politics, so this kind of argument is not out of place. Without honor, there is only power, and the direct exercise of power is expensive. Showing respect for each other and each other's interests lowers the cost of running a political system, and indeed a society. It allows us to accept that others may assume positions of power and authority, because we believe they will respect us enough not to use that power irresponsibly; and because a concern with being seen as worthy of honor by us will mean they behave honorably and respectably. They are and ought to be motivated by 'a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,' as the Declaration of Independence puts it. It is not for no reason that the Founders, who were concerned not only with 'lives and fortunes' but also 'sacred honor' built so successful a system of governance.
It is also unsurprising that a man whose life is built around honor would find Donald Trump especially objectionable. Trump is not concerned with the proprieties of honor at all. He uses the language and forms of honor to reward and punish, but without regard to whether the rewards or especially the punishments are merited. It is proper to regard him as ridiculous in this way -- just last week Jim Mattis drew a connection between the insults Trump had directed at him and those directed as Meryl Streep to declare himself 'the Meryl Streep of generals' -- but it is not completely our of line to feel this misuse of honor represents a dagger at the throat of basic social connections. McRaven's closing argument, in his last three paragraphs, suggest that our ability to maintain the military power that holds the order of the world together is fundamentally threatened by Donald Trump. His arguments as to why a disdain for promises and alliances and respect for the interests of allies are perfectly reasonable.
So thirteen of the fifteen paragraphs are places where McRaven and I share a basic worldview about the role of honor and its place in the world. It's really only parts of two paragraphs where we come apart, but those two are enough to call the whole thrust of his argument into question for me. They are these:
It is easy to destroy an organization if you have no appreciation for what makes that organization great. We are not the most powerful nation in the world because of our aircraft carriers, our economy, or our seat at the United Nations Security Council. We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.The problem with the first paragraph is the assumption that our power comes from "ideals of universal freedom and equality." It is true that many Americans believe that these are universal ideals. But ideals like 'equality' are not universally held, and the appeal to these things as if they were universals is a category error, as this essay explains in detail.
But, if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice — what will happen to the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny or left abandoned by their failing states?
Category errors are very serious philosophical mistakes. McRaven is not a philosopher, and as the essay notes this error is extremely common among those we tend to name as our 'foreign policy elites.' Nevertheless this is an error of thought with severe consequences. It is one that has drawn us into wars, and could again, to fight for values that aren't even held by the people we think we are defending. The most prominent of the Kurdish fighting organizations, for example, are Communists. Communists don't believe in 'universal freedom,' and while they profess a view of 'equality,' they don't mean anything like what Americans do by the term. The idea is not that everyone is endowed equally with basic liberties, but that society should control everything in order to ensure something like an equal distribution of goods (or at least an equitable one, since those with greater needs might receive more; though in practice, the 'equities' somehow always align with closeness to the political elite). Such a state is in most respects aims at the opposite of our traditional notion of 'equality,' and is completely opposed to our ideal of freedom.
Which brings us to the second paragraph. The problem here is not an opposition to oppression, which is noble. It is the list of conflicts. American honor might compel us to do something to defend allies like the Kurds, but it cannot compel us to fight in South Sudan. Most Americans could probably identify that Sudan is a nation in Africa, but I'll bet you that the percentage who can tell you where the Rohingyas live is vanishingly small. Honor bonds are mutual relationships, not one-way duties of provision. The Kurds have one with us because they fought with us against a common enemy, and bore a lot of the burden of the fighting while we mostly provided fire and air support. Where no deep relationship with us exists, honor does not and cannot compel us to fight someone else's war. We might choose to do it, and think it worthy of honor that we chose to bear a burden we did not have to bear. Honor cannot compel us to do it. If they want an honor bond of the sort that would compel us to do it, well, formal alliances are negotiated formally, and usually between nations rather than between a nation and disfavored ethnic groups.
Meanwhile McRaven has omitted a significant honor concern that touches on this project of removing the president 'the sooner, the better.' The class of public servants, to include military servicemembers, is honor-bound to uphold the will of the American people. This will is expressed formally and permanently in the Constitution, and less formally and permanently in the elected government of the day. The current impeachment hearing (if it is that) was kicked off by a letter to Congress from an unnamed intelligence officer who has chosen to remain in the shadows rather than testify even incognito. The intelligence community has no constitutional standing even to exist, but it is legally bound to the Executive Branch, whose elected leader is a President of the United States. The State Department, similarly, is now a merely statuatory authority that is in open revolt against the Constitutional authority. The New York Times just ran an article openly praising "the deep state" for its attempt to resist and remove the elected leader of their branch of government.
McRaven must know that having military officials throw their weight behind the removal of the Constitutionally-named Commander in Chief would set an alarming precedent with echoes to ancient Rome. There is no guarantee that allowing the unelected bureaucracy or military replace the elected and Constitutional leadership would happen only once. It certainly cannot be said to be consistent with the honor owed to the Constitution or the constitutional structure to advocate for the bureaucrats to be allowed to override the election.
Now Congress has constitutional authority to remove the President if it chooses to do so, but it is supposed to be for 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' not because the President lacks honor. He does, I agree. That is a big problem, I agree. But the cost of removing a President outside the constitutional norms, at the behest of an unelected bureaucracy and even unnamed intelligence officers, is too high to be borne. There will be an election in a year and a week. If the American people want rid of him, they will have the chance to do it themselves.
A Better Riposte for Gabbard
When Hilary! accused her of being a Russian asset would have been: "That's just what a Chinese asset would say."
I don't really believe Hilary is a Chinese asset, of course. She's always worked for herself.
I don't really believe Hilary is a Chinese asset, of course. She's always worked for herself.
Home Again
Back from the road. There were three of the most beautiful days I can recall. The sunset of the last one looked like this, no filters nor edits.
That’s Stone Mountain in the background. All my life I’ve heard the old rhyme, “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” Well, not this time brothers and sisters. That cloud formation indicates a weather change, and by Saturday Tex’s storm had blown in with a soaking like I’ve only rarely seen. Fortunately some old biker comrades had met me there, and we holed up with a bottle of Drambuie. It passed and Sunday was beautiful again.
I’m only home for a week or so, then I’ll be headed to DC in early November. Should see the best of the mountain color by then.
Oklahoma Drivers
Kids these days -- can't even drive a wagon properly. What DO they teach them in school?
Well, thankfully, it seems no one was hurt.
Civic health, the sequel
It may not surprise any of you to learn that there is a strong current of paranoia in public life. I'm not really referring to the run-of-the-mill concern that people are exercising power in shady ways and not being straight with us, since I call that more of a universal concern than a current, and in any event if it's a flaw I'm among the most flawed of citizens.
Posting late at night in discussions with my local fellow citizens, however--I'm still getting used to calling them my "constituents"--is sure to reveal some startling assumptions and suspicions. Last night a fellow was arguing with me in a reasonably friendly tone, but exposing some pointed differences between us. Suddenly he posted an inexplicable GIF showing someone high-fiving someone else. Then he posted in some agitation that he hadn't meant to post that GIF, didn't understand why it was under his name, and couldn't delete it. No problem, I said, I can delete it for you, and I think it's an example of something I've often seen happen before. Facebook has little icons at the bottom of comment boxes, including a GIF button, and it's easy to swipe it by accident; it's equally easy to swipe one of the default options it brings up, and presto, you've posted a random GIF. But there's also a little "..." icon you should be able to press and get an "edit or delete" button.
No, he said, you didn't delete it. I can still see it on my screen. (I suppose it just hadn't refreshed yet or something.) And I can't delete it. And besides, I didn't post it in the first place. And I think you know what happened. Clever. (He repeated "clever" a few times in subsequent agitated posts.)
Hee-wacketa-wacketa. Even if I were that much of a jerk, I said, posting something under someone else's name is beyond my technical expertise. At this point I started disengaging, because there's no percentage in arguing with that kind of thing. Half an hour later he was still thinking up nightmare scenarios about how I had a hacker troll on my payroll. I wonder where you get one of those? I can barely get my iCloud password to work from one week to the next.
As midnight approached, I was engaging with another, more stable neighbor who wanted to know why I thought sewage plants and non-point-source stormwater polluted with fertilizer, etc., were of more concern than the brine discharge from a desalination plant. I looked up some stuff on the internet and tried to quantify some of the wastewater and stormwater volumes from the nearby city we were discussing, adding some explanation of how relatively clean brine discharge is compared to what I considered rather inadequately treated municipal discharges. Well, the first guy interjected, that response is "supercharged with facts," but fallacious, as he planned to demonstrate at a later date. That's me, Texan ("Supercharged with Facts") 99. I'm thinking of making it my campaign slogan if I'm ever crazy enough to run for re-election. My interlocutor said he was sure I hadn't written that response myself and wanted to know who my advisor was.
Don't we all wish we had an omniscient advisor we could get to craft an answer to a moderately technical argument at midnight on the internet? I guess I do, but it's called my head, my education, and Google. It's not dark magic. I suppose this guy thinks I have minions to do my nefarious bidding at all hours of the night, write up little white papers for me.
In the end I complimented him on his public engagement and asked him to consider coming to Commissioners Court meetings. I really hope he will. If he keeps a lid on the paranoid stuff, he'll at least liven things up with some data.
Posting late at night in discussions with my local fellow citizens, however--I'm still getting used to calling them my "constituents"--is sure to reveal some startling assumptions and suspicions. Last night a fellow was arguing with me in a reasonably friendly tone, but exposing some pointed differences between us. Suddenly he posted an inexplicable GIF showing someone high-fiving someone else. Then he posted in some agitation that he hadn't meant to post that GIF, didn't understand why it was under his name, and couldn't delete it. No problem, I said, I can delete it for you, and I think it's an example of something I've often seen happen before. Facebook has little icons at the bottom of comment boxes, including a GIF button, and it's easy to swipe it by accident; it's equally easy to swipe one of the default options it brings up, and presto, you've posted a random GIF. But there's also a little "..." icon you should be able to press and get an "edit or delete" button.
No, he said, you didn't delete it. I can still see it on my screen. (I suppose it just hadn't refreshed yet or something.) And I can't delete it. And besides, I didn't post it in the first place. And I think you know what happened. Clever. (He repeated "clever" a few times in subsequent agitated posts.)
Hee-wacketa-wacketa. Even if I were that much of a jerk, I said, posting something under someone else's name is beyond my technical expertise. At this point I started disengaging, because there's no percentage in arguing with that kind of thing. Half an hour later he was still thinking up nightmare scenarios about how I had a hacker troll on my payroll. I wonder where you get one of those? I can barely get my iCloud password to work from one week to the next.
As midnight approached, I was engaging with another, more stable neighbor who wanted to know why I thought sewage plants and non-point-source stormwater polluted with fertilizer, etc., were of more concern than the brine discharge from a desalination plant. I looked up some stuff on the internet and tried to quantify some of the wastewater and stormwater volumes from the nearby city we were discussing, adding some explanation of how relatively clean brine discharge is compared to what I considered rather inadequately treated municipal discharges. Well, the first guy interjected, that response is "supercharged with facts," but fallacious, as he planned to demonstrate at a later date. That's me, Texan ("Supercharged with Facts") 99. I'm thinking of making it my campaign slogan if I'm ever crazy enough to run for re-election. My interlocutor said he was sure I hadn't written that response myself and wanted to know who my advisor was.
Don't we all wish we had an omniscient advisor we could get to craft an answer to a moderately technical argument at midnight on the internet? I guess I do, but it's called my head, my education, and Google. It's not dark magic. I suppose this guy thinks I have minions to do my nefarious bidding at all hours of the night, write up little white papers for me.
In the end I complimented him on his public engagement and asked him to consider coming to Commissioners Court meetings. I really hope he will. If he keeps a lid on the paranoid stuff, he'll at least liven things up with some data.
Say "rip current," I dare you
Weather psychics predicted 14 named tropical systems this year. They just slipped in under the wire with "Nestor," which exceeded 39 mph winds for about a nanosecond. Now it's making "landfall" in Florida and hailed on weather.com as "post-tropical system Nestor," i.e., not even a tropical storm any more, but by golly we're still treating it as a named storm, because climate science. There's an anchorman standing bravely on the beach with the wind whipping his t-shirt and his gimme cap just barely staying on his head.
Civic health
Last night I got a chance to meet our small town's new police chief, who is retiring from a mid-sized Texas department where he supervised 600 employees to take on our little 30-man department here on the warm coast, where his family has liked to vacation. I was delighted with him. He seems like one of those salt-of-the-earth, God-and-country, solid family men, besides being fanatically devoted to the Bill of RIghts: a great mix of determination to find a way not to let criminals ruin the lives of others, without losing sight of his obligation to respect all our rights.
He told a revealing story about once messing up the chain of custody of evidence on a good drug bust and being furious that the bad guy was getting off on a technicality. His mentor settled him down saying, "You know this isn't the defense counsel's fault, right? It was your mistake. And it's not a fatal mistake. The guy's not going to say, 'Whew, that was a close call, I'm going to go get a job and turn my life around.' You'll get him next time."
He made some good remarks about how the system does favor the defendant, but it's supposed to, because the Bill of Rights was written by outlaws who were tired of seeing the rich guy sic the police on the poor guy without due process. A solid constitutionalist.
He married his wife about a month before 9/11, when he had just taken a job as a police officer and they had just bought a house. He worried about whether the new marriage could bear up under his sudden deployment (Navy reserves). When he drove up to the new house his wife had just moved into, he saw a U.S. flag flying from one porch column and from the other, a Navy flag with a yellow ribbon on it. He got himself a keeper.
RIP Harold Bloom
Critic, writer, professor
In the 50s, he opposed the rigid classicism of Eliot. But over the following decades, Bloom condemned Afrocentrism, feminism, Marxism and other movements he placed in the “school of resentment”. A proud elitist, he disliked the Harry Potter books and slam poetry and was angered by Stephen King’s receiving an honorary National Book Award. He dismissed as “pure political correctness” the awarding of the Nobel prize for literature to Doris Lessing, author of the feminist classic The Golden Notebook.
“I am your true Marxist critic,” he once wrote, “following Groucho rather than Karl, and take as my motto Groucho’s grand admonition, ‘Whatever it is, I’m against it.’”
What is She Talking About?
I'm a little unclear on how even a joint resolution from Congress could "overturn" a military decision by the Commander in Chief. This is not a veto, which Congress has the power to override. It's an exercise of Article II powers that Congress does not share. Does she intend to declare war? I suppose that would create a duty for the Commander in Chief to fight the war, although he still would have a free hand as to strategy and tactics.
By the way, I'm pretty sure Congress didn't even authorize the mission in Syria. It's odd that Congress would raise so strenuous an objection to ending what they never authorized beginning.
Everything is Racist, Vol. MMMDLXXXVI
Someone suggested to me this weekend that we ought to change Columbus Day to Leif Erickson Day, as Erickson got to America first and didn't engage in slavery or mass plunder. (While strictly true, it is surely the case that the Viking explorers avoided these things more from lack of personnel than from ethical objections to plunder or attractive female slaves.) It turns out that this has been suggested before, and there's an ongoing debate about it.
Being familiar with the charge against Columbus, I knew that the reason to replace him was his unacceptable treatment of Native Americans -- which, in the common parlance of today, is "racist." (I'm not sure that the concept of race as such was very well-established in Columbus' day, though the concept of 'non-Christians subject to intense violence as necessary to control them' was one regularly employed by his patrons and their Spanish Inquisition.) It turns out that the advocates of Leif Erickson are also charged with racism by our contemporaries in journalism.
Anyway henceforth I'm in favor of Leif Erickson Day as the standard mid-October holiday in honor of great explorers. Columbus really was terrible, Leif wasn't for whatever reason, and the Viking heritage is beautiful and worth celebrating.
Being familiar with the charge against Columbus, I knew that the reason to replace him was his unacceptable treatment of Native Americans -- which, in the common parlance of today, is "racist." (I'm not sure that the concept of race as such was very well-established in Columbus' day, though the concept of 'non-Christians subject to intense violence as necessary to control them' was one regularly employed by his patrons and their Spanish Inquisition.) It turns out that the advocates of Leif Erickson are also charged with racism by our contemporaries in journalism.
In 1892, the U.S. celebrated a Columbian centennial: the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s journey to the Americas. At the time, the country’s recognition of him was a source of pride for many Italian Americans and Italian immigrants. But Scandinavian immigrants and Americans of northern European descent wanted to celebrate Erikson instead.At some point we are going to have to figure out how to forgive our ancestors, or there will be no living with anyone.
This was a time of fervent anti-immigrant and anti-Italian sentiment in many parts of the U.S., and “the idea that there might be a story where the first Europeans to America are not southern Europeans” was appealing, says JoAnne Mancini, senior history lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and author of “Discovering Viking America.”
...Erikson’s nationality wasn’t the only thing that made some people favor him over Columbus. Mancini says that in the 19th century, Americans “who were not Catholic were really paranoid about the Catholic Church.” Some Protestants went so far as to suggest that Columbus was part of a Roman Catholic conspiracy to suppress the recognition of earlier Norse explorers.
It’s not clear whether many people bought into this conspiracy, but the rise of Columbus in the late 19th century did motivate anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Americans to argue for the national recognition of Erikson over Columbus.
Anyway henceforth I'm in favor of Leif Erickson Day as the standard mid-October holiday in honor of great explorers. Columbus really was terrible, Leif wasn't for whatever reason, and the Viking heritage is beautiful and worth celebrating.
Permanent Coup
Ymar recommended this piece by Matt Taibbi, who has been a reasoned voice these last few years. I think he's got good insights here. One of them is that, as bad as Trump is -- I go back and forth on how bad I think that is, but this week he's not in my good graces -- his opponents are much more dangerous to our liberty and way of life. How much more?
...also a bold new foray into domestic politics by intelligence agencies that in recent decades began asserting all sorts of frightening new authority. They were kidnapping foreigners, assassinating by drone, conducting paramilitary operations without congressional notice, building an international archipelago of secret prisons, and engaging in mass warrantless surveillance of Americans. We found out in a court case just last week how extensive the illegal domestic surveillance has been, with the FBI engaging in tens of thousands of warrantless searches involving American emails and phone numbers under the guise of combating foreign subversion....Yes, we are already seeing the spectacle of Congress trying to remove the President based on the secret testimony of unnamed CIA officers. That's not acceptable, no matter in how much regard one holds the CIA, and no matter what kind of louse the President might be. At an absolute minimum, the officer needs to bite the bullet and testify to the American people in his or her own name, and tell us why we should accept the removal of our elected President over intelligence concerns.
The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Andy McCarthy:
Nor is diplomacy an option. Erdogan's remaining forces, apart from the Turkish regulars just mentioned, are 14,000 Syrian irregulars. He brought them over to Turkey and massed them for the invasion. Being both non-Turks and irregulars, they won't stay if they aren't used. Erdogan can't be talked out of this because he knows he will lose the bulk of the infantry component he is employing if he doesn't move now.
We have conventional forces we could deploy -- the 82nd Airborne's 3rd Brigade is locked down in Afghanistan, but the rest of it could be shifted from the training exercises it was going to undergo; there's a MEU/SOC (the 11th, I believe) currently working with NAVCENT. But we haven't set up the logistics to support a large conventional deployment. You could get them there, but from day one they'd be burning supplies and needing new ones. What are the supply lines we'd use? Fly into BIAP and truck across the western desert? If Iraq let us, well, you can't supply a large force for long by air alone. Sail into Basra and drive across all of Iraq? Sail into Israel and drive across Jordan? Maybe we could ask our NATO ally Turkey to let us sail into Istanbul and use the same supply lines they'll be using.
Oh, I guess that won't work, huh? Some ally.
And by the way, there are 5,000 US Airmen in Incirlik guarded by Turkish Air Force members. Also fifty tactical nuclear warheads. So if this did become a hot war with Turkey, they could readily seize five thousand hostages and become a nuclear power. They're not ballistic missiles or anything, but they could use them against the very forces we'd be deploying to fight them -- and their intelligence services have had plenty of time to study how these weapons are stored and to learn how to operate them.
The root of this failure -- which may turn out to be the biggest American strategic loss since Vietnam or Korea -- is the failure of our institutions to come to grip with the drift of Turkey and the failure of NATO. The President, foolishly, is selling this as a choice he made for reasons of his own. The truth is he didn't have any choice. It's ugly, and in the medium to long term we could turn it around if we start putting the pieces in place now. But right now, today, there's not a thing we can do to stop the Turks that doesn't do more harm than good.
None of that cuts against Mr. McCarthy's point, though. Almost none of our elected leadership or class of journalists understands any of that. They all think this is happening because Donald Trump 'greenlit' the invasion. To some degree it's his fault for talking as if that were so. Nevertheless if you understand how this works, you quickly see that there wasn't a choice to be made. There were only orders to be issued, and obeyed, in spite of the massive human tragedy they entail. Donald Trump can't convey that; maybe he can't even feel it, for all he manages to show. I believe he truly hates to write letters to the families of fallen soldiers. I'm not sure how much he cares about the others who are being killed, who lately were friends to many of those soldiers. Perhaps that incapacity really is a disqualification, of a sort; although I'd think it more a 25th Amendment disqualification than an impeachable offense.
In any case, many others besides him bear responsibility for this disaster. It should have been obvious, and steps should have been taken to reinforce the position until we were ready to abandon it on our own terms and at a time of our own choosing. We are being routed, humiliatingly by an ostensible ally. We are leaving friends we fought alongside to be murdered. We should have had another choice, and it is our own fault that we do not. We left ourselves unprepared to do what would have to be done to stop it.
I’d wager that the flames of impeachment were stoked more this week by President Trump’s foreign policy than they have been by any purported impeachable offense his opponents have conjured up over the last three years. By redeploying a few dozen American troops in Syria, the president acceded to a Turkish invasion of territory occupied by the Kurds. Ostensibly, that has nothing to do with the impeachment frenzy over Ukraine, whose government Democrats accuse the president of pressuring to dig up dirt on a political rival. But Turkey’s aggression could crack the president’s impeachment firewall.More than "defensible," the decision was the only one to be made. The United States had only a few Special Forces in the area's front lines, as well as some trainers and support units further back. Turkey is committing tens of thousands of men, including combined arms conventional forces to include heavy artillery, armor, and air support. We have come to hold our special operations forces in a kind of awe, and they are certainly extremely brave and capable. However, "special operations" isn't a synonym for "better than conventional operations." It's a subset of specific missions that require specialized training and setup. These forces are not optimized for the front lines of a conventional war. They're great soldiers, but they're not the right tools for the task.
There is rage over Trump’s decision. It is rage over a policy choice, not over high crimes and misdemeanors. Only the most blindly angry can doubt the lawfulness of the commander-in-chief’s movement of U.S. soldiers, even though it rendered inevitable the Turks’ rout of the Kurds.... Nor does it matter much that, while excruciating, the president’s decision is defensible and will be applauded by Americans weary of entanglement in the Muslim Middle East’s wars.
Nor is diplomacy an option. Erdogan's remaining forces, apart from the Turkish regulars just mentioned, are 14,000 Syrian irregulars. He brought them over to Turkey and massed them for the invasion. Being both non-Turks and irregulars, they won't stay if they aren't used. Erdogan can't be talked out of this because he knows he will lose the bulk of the infantry component he is employing if he doesn't move now.
We have conventional forces we could deploy -- the 82nd Airborne's 3rd Brigade is locked down in Afghanistan, but the rest of it could be shifted from the training exercises it was going to undergo; there's a MEU/SOC (the 11th, I believe) currently working with NAVCENT. But we haven't set up the logistics to support a large conventional deployment. You could get them there, but from day one they'd be burning supplies and needing new ones. What are the supply lines we'd use? Fly into BIAP and truck across the western desert? If Iraq let us, well, you can't supply a large force for long by air alone. Sail into Basra and drive across all of Iraq? Sail into Israel and drive across Jordan? Maybe we could ask our NATO ally Turkey to let us sail into Istanbul and use the same supply lines they'll be using.
Oh, I guess that won't work, huh? Some ally.
And by the way, there are 5,000 US Airmen in Incirlik guarded by Turkish Air Force members. Also fifty tactical nuclear warheads. So if this did become a hot war with Turkey, they could readily seize five thousand hostages and become a nuclear power. They're not ballistic missiles or anything, but they could use them against the very forces we'd be deploying to fight them -- and their intelligence services have had plenty of time to study how these weapons are stored and to learn how to operate them.
The root of this failure -- which may turn out to be the biggest American strategic loss since Vietnam or Korea -- is the failure of our institutions to come to grip with the drift of Turkey and the failure of NATO. The President, foolishly, is selling this as a choice he made for reasons of his own. The truth is he didn't have any choice. It's ugly, and in the medium to long term we could turn it around if we start putting the pieces in place now. But right now, today, there's not a thing we can do to stop the Turks that doesn't do more harm than good.
None of that cuts against Mr. McCarthy's point, though. Almost none of our elected leadership or class of journalists understands any of that. They all think this is happening because Donald Trump 'greenlit' the invasion. To some degree it's his fault for talking as if that were so. Nevertheless if you understand how this works, you quickly see that there wasn't a choice to be made. There were only orders to be issued, and obeyed, in spite of the massive human tragedy they entail. Donald Trump can't convey that; maybe he can't even feel it, for all he manages to show. I believe he truly hates to write letters to the families of fallen soldiers. I'm not sure how much he cares about the others who are being killed, who lately were friends to many of those soldiers. Perhaps that incapacity really is a disqualification, of a sort; although I'd think it more a 25th Amendment disqualification than an impeachable offense.
In any case, many others besides him bear responsibility for this disaster. It should have been obvious, and steps should have been taken to reinforce the position until we were ready to abandon it on our own terms and at a time of our own choosing. We are being routed, humiliatingly by an ostensible ally. We are leaving friends we fought alongside to be murdered. We should have had another choice, and it is our own fault that we do not. We left ourselves unprepared to do what would have to be done to stop it.
Another Country Music Documentary
This one was made by the BBC about the time of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. It's a little surprising to find British people interested in American country, although the Chieftains did an excellent album around the similarities between Irish and American Country music once.
Still, interested they were, and they got a lot right. There are a few quibbles, but it's a good piece overall. Being a few years older, these documentarians got to talk to some of the greats who are gone now.
The second part focuses on my favorite parts of the genre.
Still, interested they were, and they got a lot right. There are a few quibbles, but it's a good piece overall. Being a few years older, these documentarians got to talk to some of the greats who are gone now.
The second part focuses on my favorite parts of the genre.
Unclear on the concept
Sure, free speech is important, says the Chinese TV network, but everything has common-sense limits:
"We believe any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability do not belong to the category of free speech,” the network said.
Thoughts on Ramblin', with Jerry Reed
Atlanta's own Snowman sings a pair of songs on the subject of sowing one's wild oats...
...or not.
...or not.
Bee Stings
Radical, Far-Right Library Just Has Books, No Drag Queens
The following line alone is worth reading the whole thing for:
The following line alone is worth reading the whole thing for:
... said Xyle Parson while waving a sign that said, "Love Wins and If You Don't Like It You Can Die in a Fire."Related: 'Love Trumps Hate!' Screams Protester While Beating Republican To Death With A Shovel
Melvin Morris Walks Morris Island
Morris was awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Vietnam. Morris Island, SC, was where the Massachusetts 54th Infantry Regiment assaulted the Confederate Ft. Wagner, immortalized in the movie Glory.
Is It Still Satire If It Comes True?
The Babylon Bee: "Hillary Clinton Announces She Will Seek Reelection As President Of The United States"
Real life Hillary Clinton: "Maybe there does need to be a rematch. Obviously I could beat him again."
Go away, Hillary. It's already too hard to tell the difference between reality and satire without you adding to it.
Real life Hillary Clinton: "Maybe there does need to be a rematch. Obviously I could beat him again."
Go away, Hillary. It's already too hard to tell the difference between reality and satire without you adding to it.
Syria, in or out
Jim Carafano makes sense to me:
[B]y the end of Bush’s term, we had put a lot of pressure on al-Qaeda and groups like ISIS. And the threat of transnational terrorism subsided significantly.
President Obama benefited [from that when he] came in office. And about halfway through his first term, he basically kind of decided the war on terror was over. So he pulled the troops out of Iraq. We backed off in a lot of areas, and basically what we saw is, if you think of those scenes where there’s a forest fire and then the fire’s out and everybody leaves and then the sparks flare up and the forest fire kicks in again, that’s exactly what happened.
So we went from a very high level of terror, global terrorist threat, to a low level, to essentially walking away from the problem and see it reignite. And when Trump came back in office, we did a significant job of kind of putting the forest fire out again.
The challenge now is we have to watch the embers. I’m sympathetic of what Sen. Graham says, if we walk away from worrying about transnational terrorism, it’ll definitely come back. Where I would differ is what’s the most efficacious way to do that? …
There’s an argument [of] let’s have American troops everywhere doing everything. There’s a better argument, I think, which the president has made, which is, there are things that we should be doing, there are things that our friends and allies should be doing, and we should all be working at keeping watch to make sure the fire doesn’t come back together.
In the end, that’s more sustainable and will also be more effective. So I’m not sure that Sen. Graham’s right, that the answer is we put American troops everywhere all the time because we’re worried about forest fires.
Brothers in Valor Project
The American Battlefield Trust has teamed up with living Medal of Honor recipients to walk Civil War battlefields and discuss their experiences of war. Here are two of the videos.
Punish Your Friends, Help Your Enemies
It's not new that America is an unreliable ally; that's been true forever. America has elections, and sometimes that means that someone with a completely different view becomes head of our foreign policy. Obama viewed Iran as a potential ally, and turned our Middle East policy upside down trying to realize that goal. Trump doesn't think Iran is an ally, and thinks instead that we shouldn't be militarily engaged there on a long-term basis.
So, for at least the third time by my count, he's attempting to withdraw us from Syria.
'Good for us,' at least, on the national level -- higher gas prices won't be much fun for the individual consumer. That sort of mercantalism seems to be part of the President's worldview. The US is done footing the bills for other people's peace and prosperity. Individual Americans may rise or fall, but "the US" is going to make more profits and pay fewer costs. Maybe it'll trickle down.
So, for at least the third time by my count, he's attempting to withdraw us from Syria.
The decision represents a dramatic reversal for U.S. policy, which in 2015 provided air support for Kurdish militias to retake the critical town of Kobani from Islamic State and has since used Kurdish fighters as ground troops in the campaign to clear Syria of the group.The whole American establishment is against this move, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good one. The likelihood of a new, lingering war in the region is high. On the other hand, such a war will draw in and drain Turkish, Iranian, and probably Russian resources rather than American ones. If it drives up oil prices, well, that's good for us now that we're a net exporter of oil -- and very bad for China.
The shift could cast further doubt on the reliability of the U.S. in the region, in the wake of policy about-faces including walking away from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that was painstakingly negotiated with allies who remain committed to the agreement.
Trump defended Monday his desire to end America’s so-called “endless wars,” saying his country would fight only in it’s [s.i.c.] own interest. That sentiment has been welcomed by some, while leaving allies who rely on the U.S. security umbrella feeling nervous and exposed. An increasingly detached U.S. has also allowed rivals including Iran and Russia to pursue more aggressive foreign policies and expand their influence across the Middle East.
'Good for us,' at least, on the national level -- higher gas prices won't be much fun for the individual consumer. That sort of mercantalism seems to be part of the President's worldview. The US is done footing the bills for other people's peace and prosperity. Individual Americans may rise or fall, but "the US" is going to make more profits and pay fewer costs. Maybe it'll trickle down.
I've got to remember this one
Old and busted: "problematic." New and hot: "complex legacies."
For a while it was fashionable to rebut any inconvenient argument by saying "that's been debunked." Now I think it will be easier, and more sophisticated, to observe that the idea has a complex legacy. Find me something with a simple legacy instead. Something pure. Something this week.
For a while it was fashionable to rebut any inconvenient argument by saying "that's been debunked." Now I think it will be easier, and more sophisticated, to observe that the idea has a complex legacy. Find me something with a simple legacy instead. Something pure. Something this week.
Customer Appreciation Day at the Feed & Seed
As chaos reigns online, especially on Twitter, outside of the DC area there's a fair amount of sanity. Today we stopped in at a local farm supply store, because we noticed an unusually large number of vehicles there as we passed it. It's the sort of place you call a 'Feed & Seed' because those are its bread and butter items: feed for livestock, seeds for planting. There's always a friendly cat or two whose job it is to hunt the mice who'd like to delve into both the feed and the seed. Sometimes there are dogs as well. Wrangler jeans are for sale to one side, as well as work boots and overalls. Everybody knows you if it's the one near your home, and they know what you probably are stopping in for today. My wife keeps the ladies who work there supplied with African violets, which the ladies continue to kill off about as fast as the wife can supply them.
Turns out the large number of folks present was because it was 'customer appreciation day,' which meant a cookout and a bluegrass band. I had a free hamburger with chili, and baked beans on the side. The wife got a hot dog with all the fixin's. We listened to the band for a while, which interspersed its songs with jokes about how lucrative bluegrass band work tends to be. "We make tens of dollars," they bragged. "Joe here is independently filthy."
I talked with an old man about how good the food was at the local Senior center, and how outrageous the prices were elsewhere. He was quite passionate on the subject. Then I bought some two-stroke oil and some birdseed, since we were there anyway.
Here's Waylon Jenning's take on one of the songs the band played. They swapped in one of the local towns for "...all the way to Georgia," which threw my wife off as she was singing along. She was deeply amused by being caught out that way.
Turns out the large number of folks present was because it was 'customer appreciation day,' which meant a cookout and a bluegrass band. I had a free hamburger with chili, and baked beans on the side. The wife got a hot dog with all the fixin's. We listened to the band for a while, which interspersed its songs with jokes about how lucrative bluegrass band work tends to be. "We make tens of dollars," they bragged. "Joe here is independently filthy."
I talked with an old man about how good the food was at the local Senior center, and how outrageous the prices were elsewhere. He was quite passionate on the subject. Then I bought some two-stroke oil and some birdseed, since we were there anyway.
Here's Waylon Jenning's take on one of the songs the band played. They swapped in one of the local towns for "...all the way to Georgia," which threw my wife off as she was singing along. She was deeply amused by being caught out that way.
Toward a Small, Weak State
Civil liberties can only now exist in such a context:
I used to think there might be some way to erect a legal bulwark between the ravenous state and the vast troves of private data. I now think that is a losing battle, primarily thanks to the too-common eagerness of the firms we entrusted with our intimate information to hand it over to law enforcement without even the formality of a warrant.
So we cannot keep our secrets much longer. But there is still hope. A minimal state where civil liberties are expansively interpreted and scrupulously protected offers the best chance to preserve the sphere of individual liberty. It matters much less if the state knows everything about you when it has no cause and no right to act on that information unless a genuinely serious crime has been committed.
Real freedom means letting the right people call the shots
Free speech is killing us.
I would have linked to the NYT version, but I'm allergic to their site. I thought you might enjoy the Babylon Bee version more, anyway.
I would have linked to the NYT version, but I'm allergic to their site. I thought you might enjoy the Babylon Bee version more, anyway.
Getting a handle on the numbers
A Streiff article at RedState charts the average compensation for outside directors at the world's largest oil and gas companies.
Burisma is not quite 1/4 the size of the smallest company on this list. The group of smallest companies pays between $285-$330,000 per year for a non-employee director. Hunter Biden was paid $600,000 (at least) for being a board member of a company whose language he did not speak, whose home country he’d never lived in, and which was in an industry about which Hunter Biden was pig-ignorant.... [N]on-employee directors were paid in a combination of cash and stock, often as much as 60% stock. Biden was paid in 100% cash.
Permit this, forbid that
Since what's permitted and what's forbidden shows no persuasive pattern of effects that actually improve anything, I'm assuming it's largely the Leninist game of who/whom. James Lileks does a scorching job on crazy California approaches to the kind of social calamities we couldn't possibly interfere with lest we become callous tyrants, versus virtue-signaling bans on every kind of peripheral nonsense you can imagine.
[T]he real issue is the lack of “affordable housing,” by which they mean housing that can be secured by someone with no means of support who is incapable of holding a job, or spends all their money on intoxicants. Since they have no homes with flush toilets, they use the streets. Good liberals with “Resist!” bumperstickers sulk over stories about typhus-ridden fecal deposits, and wish the one-party government would Do Something. Otherwise they will vote out the ideologically interchangeable politicians and put in some other ideologically interchangeable politicians.In a similar vein, "But Panera cares."
Gandalfa
Amazon is working on a new Tolkien-themed show. Naturally, the demands for a female Gandalf have begun to crop up.
Carrying the water, drinking the water
Glen Reynolds writes on the origin and destiny of the Tea Party.
This week's issue in my county is a desalination plant that's going through the state permit process in nearby Corpus Christi. There are a few genuinely thorny issues about how to site the plant, but much of the public commentary is starting to sound to me like Reynolds's contrast between makers and takers. People seem to have no idea where the things they consume come from. The trees that were felled to make a site for their own home years ago mean nothing, but the next guy is a criminal for altering a pristine landscape to build something new on land his hyper-virtuous neighbors couldn't be bother to buy and keep as a preserve on their own nickel. Their drinking water comes from an RO plant that treats brackish groundwater, but no evil corporation should be able to build a desalination facility to serve a new industry, though it relies on exactly the same RO technology. Where do these people send their wastewater? They neither know nor care. The other guy's waste is always the issue.
This week's issue in my county is a desalination plant that's going through the state permit process in nearby Corpus Christi. There are a few genuinely thorny issues about how to site the plant, but much of the public commentary is starting to sound to me like Reynolds's contrast between makers and takers. People seem to have no idea where the things they consume come from. The trees that were felled to make a site for their own home years ago mean nothing, but the next guy is a criminal for altering a pristine landscape to build something new on land his hyper-virtuous neighbors couldn't be bother to buy and keep as a preserve on their own nickel. Their drinking water comes from an RO plant that treats brackish groundwater, but no evil corporation should be able to build a desalination facility to serve a new industry, though it relies on exactly the same RO technology. Where do these people send their wastewater? They neither know nor care. The other guy's waste is always the issue.
Outdoor Life Reviews
A fellow who says he'd like to be called JRS wrote to ask to have his blog linked, which I've done under 'Other Halls.' It's not a traditional blog, actually, but a website that collects his reviews of various things related to outdoor life. I looked over his knife reviews and they seemed well-ordered. Likely the others are as well, but judge for yourselves.
Flashback to the Old Hall
Continuing the recent tradition in which only the satirical news makes any real sense, "Nation Longs For More Civilized Age When Politicians Settled Disputes With Pistols."
That was an issue when Grim's Hall was young, way back in 2004. The Honorable Zell Miller had expressed regret that duels were no longer legal, which the media -- then as now dishonest -- chose to interpret as him having challenged a man to a duel.
We should return to the duel. It would restore some manners around here, and drive the loud-mouthed cowards out of the places of power and authority they have so long now occupied.
That was an issue when Grim's Hall was young, way back in 2004. The Honorable Zell Miller had expressed regret that duels were no longer legal, which the media -- then as now dishonest -- chose to interpret as him having challenged a man to a duel.
There really is something to be said for a return to duelling [s.i.c. -- apparently in 2004 I didn't know how to spell a word I had nevertheless used many times. -Grim]. Even the reminder of the institution, though, is clarifying. Consider the "Go to Hell, Zell," John Kerry Infant creeper, for those who think that American life isn't sufficiently profane for children. This shirt allows those of a particularly cowardly persuasion to express obscenity without fear of retribution. No reasonable person would take the baby to task (the baby would be just as happy if the creeper said "Vote Bush, 2004," or said nothing and was decorated only with carrot stains). No decent man would engage the parent in front of the child, as anyone bent out of shape enough to dress an infant in such garb would surely cause a scene upsetting to the innocent....Like all of us, I was 15 years younger when I wrote that. I am sure I was hotter of head in those days, but I believe the younger Grim was right. "Liar! Liar!" has been replaced with "Traitor! Traitor!," and the hiding behind children is as prominent a feature today as then.
The image of the crossed pistols reminds us that men used to take responsibility for their words -- that the things they said were things they would risk death to defend....
How many times have I had to hear people toss around the words "lie!" or "liar!" in this election? It seems to be the very first line of defense, when anyone says anything you'd rather not believe. Not only do these people hide behind children, they sound like children. They spit deadly insults freely, knowing that they can never be called to account.
The end of the duel may have brought some good effects, but it has also ended the culture of responsibility that went with it. No one is called to account for their slander. That John Kerry of the VVAW is a candidate for the highest office in the land says this as truly as anything.
I'm with Zell. It is a shame that duels are no longer legal. Duels were private wars, and like wars they could be just. Like wars, for all the harm they did, they often did more good. In a world fallen from hope of perfection, that may be the best you can ask.
We should return to the duel. It would restore some manners around here, and drive the loud-mouthed cowards out of the places of power and authority they have so long now occupied.
BB-Snopes Feud Continues
Headline: "Snopes Rates the Devil's Lies as 'Mostly True.'"
Satan claimed that eating a particular fruit would not cause anyone to die, but would instead grant them an improved understanding of moral issues. According to Snopes’ assessment, while consuming the fruit has been followed by billions and billions of deaths, those casualties were more of an indirect result, while the part about gaining knowledge of good and evil was generally accurate. They also checked all the lies Satan told Jesus while He was being tempted in the desert and pointed out that he did quote Scripture, albeit out of context, earning the Prince of Darkness another "Mostly True" rating.
From the Duffel
Acting Secretary of Army Ryan McCarthy told reporters that former NFL quarterback and Army historian Colin Kaepernick had recently found countless examples of troubling behavior engaged in by the United States, including racism, slavery, genocide, and inappropriate touching.
“After examining the evidence presented by Mister Kaepernick, we decided we cannot ask our soldiers of color to wear the name of a country which enslaved their ancestors or tell our LGBTTQQIAAP service members to display the flag of the place which enacted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” McCarthy said.
Kaepernick is currently leading another internal Army investigation over historical links between the United States and a white supremacist group called The Confederate States of America.
That Doesn't Make Any Sense
The Sage of Knoxville runs some speculation on what's going on with this Ukraine business.
Yet they clearly chose to do so, and went to some trouble to do it.
If all the bodies are buried in Ukraine, why would they be impeaching Trump on a Ukraine question? Why not pick anything else, since apparently the facts aren't that important to the question of whether or not to impeach -- after all, Pelosi didn't want to wait one day for the transcript before announcing the launch of her inquiry. Impeach him on emoluments, let everyone argue about whether foreign diplomats electing to stay in his hotel provides some kind of illicit bribery. For goodness sake, don't lead the media's gaze over to Ukraine. Americans are pretty insular, and won't look at faraway nations with foreign languages if you don't make them look.“Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire,” read the headline on the article by Kenneth P. Vogel and David Stern. “Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton,” said the subhead of the article, which was published shortly before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.We need to get to the bottom of this — and the fear that we will is why the Democrats and their press enablers are getting so crazy.
The authors reported that Ukrainian government officials “helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers” with the goal of “advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia.”
With the benefit of hindsight and the results of the Mueller investigation, it’s now clear that there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. What is not clear and what demands further investigation is how this baseless claim managed to consume the first two years of an American presidency.
Yet they clearly chose to do so, and went to some trouble to do it.
Youths who need to turn their lives around
Minneapolis's city council openly blames police for any street violence that might be said to discourage taxpayers from coming downtown to spend money.
I worked with a woman who was sexually abused in youth by her brother. Years later she summoned up the courage to upbraid her mother for turning a blind eye. "Oh, that's awful," her mother agreed. "I wish I had known about it at the time. I could have gotten help for your brother."
Even in the wake of the most recent homicides and other violent incidents, City Council members are clinging to their leftist illusions. Thus, one Council member says the Council is trying to do “a better job with our youth violence intervention strategies to support the youth who are in the downtown area between 9:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m.” I don’t think most residents believe the problem is that criminals who are wandering the streets in the middle of the night lack “support.”And they'll probably want federal tax money support when their downtown sports arenas fail because all those terrible racists refuses to drive in from the suburbs any more.
I worked with a woman who was sexually abused in youth by her brother. Years later she summoned up the courage to upbraid her mother for turning a blind eye. "Oh, that's awful," her mother agreed. "I wish I had known about it at the time. I could have gotten help for your brother."
No room for you in me
Gary Saul Morson is at it again, elucidating the peculiar evil that is Leninism. In a new essay, he notes that terrorist totalitarianism were not necessary evils to Lenin but laudable goals in their own right. He often punished underlings for coming up short in the article of ruthlessness. He held that all morals qualms must be eliminated in favor of effective force in aid of universal compliance. Though his soviet empire was toppled, the habit of thought endures:
The eternal task of civilization is to find a way to honor other people's freedom without signing one's own death warrant. Lenin wasn't interested in any of that. As Maxim Gorky quipped, "Lenin 'in general' loved people but . . . his love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred." He much preferred dead people to free ones, not just because they were safer but because they weren't entirely under his thumb: because they were not himself. It's as if he were literally Milton's Satan. And he, of course, is what lies ahead for us whenever we can't bear making room in the world for anything but ourselves.
The same logic applied to rights. On paper, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed more rights than any other state in the world. I recall a Soviet citizen telling me that people in the ussr had absolute freedom of speech—so long as they did not lie. I recalled this curious concept of freedom when a student defended complete freedom of speech except for hate speech—and hate speech included anything he disagreed with. Whatever did not seem hateful was actually a “dog-whistle.”I'm proofing a collection of arguments between Roger Williams and Cotton Mather from the early 17th century. Williams asserts that it's wrong to force a man's conscience. Mather replies serenely that he agrees, unless the erring citizen persists in error after repeated expostulations, at which point he is sinning against his own conscience and is fair game for torture and murder.
The eternal task of civilization is to find a way to honor other people's freedom without signing one's own death warrant. Lenin wasn't interested in any of that. As Maxim Gorky quipped, "Lenin 'in general' loved people but . . . his love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred." He much preferred dead people to free ones, not just because they were safer but because they weren't entirely under his thumb: because they were not himself. It's as if he were literally Milton's Satan. And he, of course, is what lies ahead for us whenever we can't bear making room in the world for anything but ourselves.
Recently Attorney General William Barr asked how his critics would have reacted had the FBI secretly interfered with the Obama campaign: “What if the shoe were on the other foot?” From a Leninist perspective, this question demonstrates befuddlement. In his book Terrorism and Communism, Trotsky imagines “the high priests of liberalism” asking how Bolshevik use of arbitrary power differs from tsarist practices. Trotsky sneers:
You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain it to you. The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. . . . Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals . . . . Do you grasp this—distinction? For us Communists it is quite sufficient.What is reprehensible for them is proper for us, and that’s all there is to it. For a Leninist, the shoe is never on the other foot because he has no other foot.
Accurate
Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Chip Roy (R-TX) spoke against gun control Wednesday on Capitol Hill and stressed that gun rights are God-given for the purpose of not simply defending self, but defending liberty.Good to see someone in Congress knows that.
Biggs said, “The Founders of this country…recognized the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights.” He described their intention by saying, “You have a right to defend yourself against wrongdoers and also against a tyrannical government.”
He added, “That’s what the Second Amendment is about.”
Gone Rogue
The Speaker of the House is a constitutional officer, as is the President. The Attorney General is not one; although the Attorney General is appointed under the Appointments Clause, there's no mention of this particular office in the Constitution. Nevertheless, it is one of the oldest offices, having been created in 1789. Every President has had an Attorney General, all the way back to George Washington. When the Speaker of the House accuses the Attorney General of having "gone rogue," we have a potentially serious problem.
In a way this represents a weakening of norms, because the best case is one in which no one would serve as a judge in his own case. Recusals like Session's, where he was plainly in the clear but nevertheless was mentioned, represent a kind of extravagant adherence to this best case. To do that, of course, one has to trust that one's case will be handled fairly -- as the example of Mike Flynn suggests you no longer can do.
We are in a destabilizing political situation, in which constitutional officers are no longer even trying to prop up the legitimacy of inferior officers. I wonder if this can remain rhetorical, or if we aren't watching the beginning of a collapse.
By the way, I can't help but notice that this Ukraine thing is following a familiar script in other ways, too -- today we got the 'X number of former officials say this is awful' news story, which has become a standard feature of left-leaning attacks on Republican officials. It makes me wonder if this isn't going to turn out to be a Fusion GPS production, exactly like RussiaRussiaRussia only faster because they don't have a lot of time now.
“I do think the attorney general has gone rogue,” Ms. Pelosi said on CNN. “He has for a long time now. And since he was mentioned in all of this, it’s curious that he would be making decisions about how the complaint would be handled.”One thing that we've seen a lot of is this move to force recusal by the Attorney General, who is a political appointee. Jeff Sessions recused during the whole RussiaRussiaRussia thing because he was 'named,' so that the matter ended up being handled by lesser officials (especially Deputy AG Rosenstein). Barr is refusing to play that game. His name came up because it ought to come up, and it ought to come up because he's the appropriate and lawful official to have handled a joint investigation with Ukraine under treaty law.
In a way this represents a weakening of norms, because the best case is one in which no one would serve as a judge in his own case. Recusals like Session's, where he was plainly in the clear but nevertheless was mentioned, represent a kind of extravagant adherence to this best case. To do that, of course, one has to trust that one's case will be handled fairly -- as the example of Mike Flynn suggests you no longer can do.
We are in a destabilizing political situation, in which constitutional officers are no longer even trying to prop up the legitimacy of inferior officers. I wonder if this can remain rhetorical, or if we aren't watching the beginning of a collapse.
By the way, I can't help but notice that this Ukraine thing is following a familiar script in other ways, too -- today we got the 'X number of former officials say this is awful' news story, which has become a standard feature of left-leaning attacks on Republican officials. It makes me wonder if this isn't going to turn out to be a Fusion GPS production, exactly like RussiaRussiaRussia only faster because they don't have a lot of time now.
Don't send children to college
Better yet, don't raise kids so that they're still infants at 18.
Not that it was a time to act like a conservative 50-year-old: I'm glad I got the chance to experiment before I was calcified. I was lucky that college was still a protected space where I could concentrate on learning and didn't have to worry much about room and board, let alone about supporting a family. The summers were a time to get a job and pay for an apartment, learn how to shop for groceries and cook, how to stretch a dollar.
By the time I graduated, I was still a child and a mess, but at least I could keep body and soul together using my own paycheck. There was no serious danger of my going back to live in my parents' basement until I was 35, nor did I know anyone caught in that trap. While we sorted ourselves out, we'd rent hovels together and share the expenses. The economy was rotten, but we never had that much trouble making it work.
“Well, we had to get Kyle moved into to his dorm, register for classes, pick his schedule, tour the campus, find out where his classes are, get him linens and a dorm fridge, meet his roommate, and go to parent orientation.” Post after post making moving into a dorm and registering for classes sound like a Homeric poem. “Well first we had to get Kyle on a ship that would not be crushed on the rocks by the songs of the sirens and then we had to get him a sword and a shield so he could kill a cyclops. I read where this one guy used his shield as a mirror to cut off Medusa’s head, so we’re going to Costco later to see if they carry that one...”My folks didn't do this kind of thing, to put it mildly. Even so, I was a child and a mess when I went off to college, putting myself in needless peril. It would have been a lot worse if I'd never earned any money or learned how to spend it.
Not that it was a time to act like a conservative 50-year-old: I'm glad I got the chance to experiment before I was calcified. I was lucky that college was still a protected space where I could concentrate on learning and didn't have to worry much about room and board, let alone about supporting a family. The summers were a time to get a job and pay for an apartment, learn how to shop for groceries and cook, how to stretch a dollar.
By the time I graduated, I was still a child and a mess, but at least I could keep body and soul together using my own paycheck. There was no serious danger of my going back to live in my parents' basement until I was 35, nor did I know anyone caught in that trap. While we sorted ourselves out, we'd rent hovels together and share the expenses. The economy was rotten, but we never had that much trouble making it work.
Solomon on BIden
John Solomon at The Hill continues to publish some of the best investigative reporting out there. Suing for documents under the Freedom of Information Act has become an indispensable tool.
Is the Social Contract Dead?
Came across a pretty interesting argument on Twitter that I thought would make for rather interesting discussion in these parts. I present it with no further commentary:
(more below the fold)The social contract is dead.— Jared A. Chambers 🇺🇸 (@C4CEO) September 24, 2019
Impeachment over a non-impeachable offense would have sealed that deal. But even worse a fake "inquiry" in name only that skirts the law. This isn't two-tiers. This is making it up as you go.
You have no obligation to this system. None at all.
Read It For Yourselves
If you somehow missed the transcript that is apparently going to lead to an impeachment inquiry, read it here.
For my money, the important thing is that every single reference to any sort of investigation he asks to be run through the Attorney General. Initial reports that he tried to have 'his private lawyer' handling the investigation from the US side were wrong; actually, a lot of the early reports were wrong as usual. Rudy is mentioned because he's brought up by the Ukrainian side. Trump says some nice things about him, but then brings it back around to the need to work also with the Attorney General. He's not asking for assistance with his campaign, but for law enforcement cooperation on some scandals involving highly placed American public officials. He's not going to run it out of the White House, but is passing it off to the appropriate authorities.
Other people clearly read it differently.
For my money, the important thing is that every single reference to any sort of investigation he asks to be run through the Attorney General. Initial reports that he tried to have 'his private lawyer' handling the investigation from the US side were wrong; actually, a lot of the early reports were wrong as usual. Rudy is mentioned because he's brought up by the Ukrainian side. Trump says some nice things about him, but then brings it back around to the need to work also with the Attorney General. He's not asking for assistance with his campaign, but for law enforcement cooperation on some scandals involving highly placed American public officials. He's not going to run it out of the White House, but is passing it off to the appropriate authorities.
Other people clearly read it differently.
Bee Stings
Tex inspired me to check out the Bee again today, so, here y'all are:
L, G, T, Q and + Publicly Execute B for Implying There Are Only Two Genders
Man Outed As Dark Lord Of The Sith After Revealing He Believes In Absolute Truth
Swarm Of Locusts In Book Of Revelation Revealed To Be Twitter
Tragically, the following might qualify as "real news" instead of satire:
Republicans Excited To Have Supreme Court Majority Like They Had When 'Roe V. Wade' Decided
L, G, T, Q and + Publicly Execute B for Implying There Are Only Two Genders
Man Outed As Dark Lord Of The Sith After Revealing He Believes In Absolute Truth
Swarm Of Locusts In Book Of Revelation Revealed To Be Twitter
Tragically, the following might qualify as "real news" instead of satire:
Republicans Excited To Have Supreme Court Majority Like They Had When 'Roe V. Wade' Decided
Media slowly heal themselves
The Babylon Bee is inspiring similar sites. Some good headlines from The Derringer:
NYT Accused of Whipping Out New Kavanaugh Allegation, Thrusting It in Nation’s Face
Experts Agree Restructuring World Economy Best Way to Treat Child’s Anxiety
Whether or Not Trump Committed a Crime, Can’t We All Agree That He is Guilty of It?
To Be At All Times Armed
An essay on the right of revolution at Human Events, which begins happily with a story from the Heimskringla's account of Sweden's abortive war against Norway's St. Olav.
Ukraine Shuffle
So, the latest thing that is definitely going to lead to impeachment according to Twitter is this story that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son. I am pretty sure the real corruption is the way Biden used his position and US money to derail the investigation in the first place. Am I missing something? It’s wrong to try to undo a corrupt act of a prior administration if it might benefit you politically?
Stripping Words
The Oxford English Dictionary, compiled in part by Tolkien, is asked to strip out offensive words. Offensive to whom? Guess.
Probably Wasn't Going to Vote for Her Anyway
Elizabeth Warren doesn't like men?
Why expand the complaint from 'slave-owner' to 'man,' though? That's alienating to a lot of your potential voters.
Elizabeth Warren made the political calculation this week that she doesn’t need men to win the presidency.I mean, I can half get why she thinks it's fine to run down Washington, him having been a slave-owner and all. It's dumb, running for the office he dignified and for which he set the terms. Still, in the current moment, it makes a kind of perverse sense.
“We’re not here today because of famous arches or famous men,” she told a rally in Washington Square Park Monday night.
“In fact, we’re not here because of men at all,” she said, emphasizing the “m” word like an expletive....
Immediately before saying “we’re not here because of men,” she dissed George Washington and the beautiful Tuckahoe marble arch that bears his name.
“I wanted to give this speech right here and not because of the arch behind me or the president that this square is named for — nope.”
Why expand the complaint from 'slave-owner' to 'man,' though? That's alienating to a lot of your potential voters.
Three faces of fracking
Per Glenn Reynolds: Because of fracking, (1) the U.S. is suffering only a moderate fuel price shock from the Saudi oil-field strike, (2) China is losing $97 million a day from the same, and (3) while "the U.S. Navy used to have to keep the straits of Hormuz open. Now it only has to be able to close them."
A Few Small Matters Have My Attention
I’m a little behind this week. Tex is doing a great job running the place, with an assist from Tom. I’ll get back with you soon.
Jim Webb: Soldiers without a Country
Sen. Webb tells the story of the burial of 81 ARVN paratroopers in California:
Hanoi declined to take them.
One of the best speeches I ever heard in person was from a former ARVN infantry colonel when the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall came to OKC. That city has a large Vietnamese American community established by refugees from the war.
By the end of that speech, I think half the men in the crowd were ready to go back over and try again.
I'm glad these paratroopers will finally be laid to rest on free soil, even if it isn't in their own country.
On Friday, a U.S. Air Force aircraft will carry the commingled remains of 81 airborne soldiers of the former South Vietnamese Army from Hawaii, where they have been stored in a military facility for more than 33 years, to California. On Oct. 26, there will be a full military ceremony honoring their service in Westminster, often known as Little Saigon, where tens of thousands of Vietnamese Americans now live.This will be a unique occurrence because their names might never be known and because they were soldiers of an allied army. Following the ceremony, these forgotten soldiers will be laid to rest under a commemorative marker in the largest Vietnamese-American cemetery in our country.
Hanoi declined to take them.
One of the best speeches I ever heard in person was from a former ARVN infantry colonel when the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall came to OKC. That city has a large Vietnamese American community established by refugees from the war.
By the end of that speech, I think half the men in the crowd were ready to go back over and try again.
I'm glad these paratroopers will finally be laid to rest on free soil, even if it isn't in their own country.
Mate selection
No one knows how long DNA has been around, but a confident guess would be some billions of years. In all that time, it's been trying, in the anthropomorphic sense that leads us to inject purpose into the process of natural selection, to perfect ways of projecting itself from one cell or organism to another, the definition of evolutionary "success." In the case of sexually reproducing species that go to some trouble finding suitable mates, that has led to a bewildering variety of mating displays and strategies for selecting genetically suitable partners. In humans, that sometimes includes what we call courtship and marriage.
So what could go wrong with a social trend toward pairs of infertile parents choosing to reproduce with sperm donated by strangers? Maybe a gay couple, fertile individually but obviously not with each other--with apologies for my ableist bias. Maybe a gay couple who prefer to buy anonymous sperm from a respectable laboratory with the latest in foolproof genetic screening protocols. Who says you should get to know anything about the father of your child that can't be read off a medical chart that included the results of a scientific personal interview?
And if the resulting babies have financially crippling special needs, and your union isn't strong enough to hold up under the pressure, who says stuffy old principles about lifelong marital fidelity and loyalty to children are any more workable when couples have a reproductive sexual bond and a genetic relationship to their own children? Just sue the sperm bank for not giving your reproductive choices the attention they deserved.
So what could go wrong with a social trend toward pairs of infertile parents choosing to reproduce with sperm donated by strangers? Maybe a gay couple, fertile individually but obviously not with each other--with apologies for my ableist bias. Maybe a gay couple who prefer to buy anonymous sperm from a respectable laboratory with the latest in foolproof genetic screening protocols. Who says you should get to know anything about the father of your child that can't be read off a medical chart that included the results of a scientific personal interview?
And if the resulting babies have financially crippling special needs, and your union isn't strong enough to hold up under the pressure, who says stuffy old principles about lifelong marital fidelity and loyalty to children are any more workable when couples have a reproductive sexual bond and a genetic relationship to their own children? Just sue the sperm bank for not giving your reproductive choices the attention they deserved.
Range
David Epstein is out with a book countering Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000," arguing that starting early and practicing endlessly in a narrow range is not the path to all excellence:
"Complex and unpredictable fields" are just what most people aren't going to master. The students who will master them may need a completely different kind of education from what an aggressively leveling public school is equipped to provide, particularly if it's staffed by administrators and teachers who have never mastered a complex or unpredictable field themselves, relying instead on legislated job security and a monopolist's command of the public funding teat.
Schools need to provide a fair shot for all young comers, but the good they can do for some students won't be much like what they can do for others. Epstein's generalists are probably soaking up basic facts and techniques so easily that teachers barely had a role in the process. The teachers won't do their average students any favors by skipping the ABCs and hoping for a brilliant synthesist to emerge after years of impoverished job-hopping.
David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.Robert Heinlein famously said that specialization was for insects, but we also know that dabbling is for dilettantes. Epstein and Gladwell are lining up on either side of the long-running dispute over the purpose of education: should our children be drilled in facts and techniques, or should be we planting 1,000 seeds in virgin soil and confidently awaiting decades of creative flowering?
"Complex and unpredictable fields" are just what most people aren't going to master. The students who will master them may need a completely different kind of education from what an aggressively leveling public school is equipped to provide, particularly if it's staffed by administrators and teachers who have never mastered a complex or unpredictable field themselves, relying instead on legislated job security and a monopolist's command of the public funding teat.
Schools need to provide a fair shot for all young comers, but the good they can do for some students won't be much like what they can do for others. Epstein's generalists are probably soaking up basic facts and techniques so easily that teachers barely had a role in the process. The teachers won't do their average students any favors by skipping the ABCs and hoping for a brilliant synthesist to emerge after years of impoverished job-hopping.
This means war for someone
Best tank up. Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels claim credit for taking out half of Saudi Arabia's oil production (5% of world production) in a drone strike this weekend. Good thing U.S. energy production has soared in the last couple of years.
Fleeting moments of clarity
The New Neo reports on George Packer's description of the moral dilemmas of parents trying to run their kids through public wokeschool. Packer wants to stay in the fold, but now and then a bit of cognitive rigor intrudes:
Adults who draft young children into their cause might think they’re empowering them and shaping them into virtuous people (a friend calls the Instagram photos parents post of their woke kids “selflessies”). In reality the adults are making themselves feel more righteous, indulging another form of narcissistic pride, expiating their guilt, and shifting the load of their own anxious battles onto children who can’t carry the burden, because they lack the intellectual apparatus and political power. Our goal shouldn’t be to tell children what to think. The point is to teach them how to think so they can grow up to find their own answers.
I wished that our son’s school would teach him civics.Then he goes back to Trump-bashing.
Packer is sad and he’s bewildered. He doesn’t really know how this all came up, doesn’t connect the dots, and he doesn’t know what to do. The idea that the right has some answers never really occurs to him. I sympathize with him in his struggle, and wonder where it may ultimately lead. At the moment, the cognitive dissonance is fierce.
Destroying humanity to save it
This kind of nonsense would be chilling even if it were not based on a transparent attempt to use ignorant pseudo-science as an excuse to flog one's cultural enemies into submission:
I’m talking, of course, about climate change ... every one of the world’s major polluting countries institute draconian conservation measures, shut down much of its energy and transportation infrastructure, and completely retool its economy ... overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting. They must accept the reality of climate change and have faith in the extreme measures taken to combat it ... Every day, instead of thinking about breakfast, they have to think about death.I don't need to accept anything of the sort without revolting.
Blow this case wide open
Andrew McCabe reportedly has threatened to take them all down with him. Go for it, Andy.
Hot, smoking conscience
From "How the Great Truth Dawned":
Many, including Solzhenitsyn, took the next step and accepted God. Why not remain an atheist who believes in an absolute moral law? Here again we must understand the thought-shaping power of Russian literature, particularly Russia’s specialty, the great realist fiction of ideas. Great novels test ideas not by their logical coherence, as in academic philosophy, but by the consequences of believing them.
* * *
Thinking novelistically, Solzhenitsyn asks: how well does morality without God pass the test of Soviet experience? Every camp prisoner sooner or later faced a choice: whether or not to resolve to survive at any price. Do you take the food or shoes of a weaker prisoner? “This is the great fork of camp life. From this point the roads go to the right and to the left. . . . If you go to the right—you lose your life; and if you go to the left—you lose your conscience.” Memoirist after memoirist, including atheists like Evgeniya Ginzburg, report that those who denied anything beyond the material world were the first to choose survival. They may have insisted that high moral ideals do not require belief in God, but when it came down to it, morals grounded in nothing but one’s own conviction and reasoning, however cogent, proved woefully inadequate under experiential, rather than logical, pressure.
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