AVI poses a question: When did Europe become Christian? Arguably never, he says.
If you want to debate that topic, please do it at his place because he deserves to enjoy the discussion there. What I want to do here is discuss a model that explains just why we can't really answer that question in a fully satisfactory way. I think it's a good model to have in your mind for a lot of purposes, one that many of you will find helpful.
The model belongs to Timothy Williamson. He came up with the basic approach in his work on vagueness, but later realized that it could serve as a revolutionary model for epistemology (which, I assume everyone knows, is defined as 'the study of knowledge,' but really is mostly a 2,000+ year debate about what exactly knowledge might be).* He wrote a book called Knowledge and its Limits that explains the epistemic model. It's become a big hit in the philosophy world because everyone hates the idea, but it's hard to show exactly where he goes wrong (if indeed he does).
The basic idea works like this: you can know things, and you can sometimes also know that you know them. Other times, however, you are close enough to a border such that you can't really be sure that you know what you know (so that you know, but don't know that you know). Accepting this explains both vagueness and why we sometimes can't be sure about question's like AVI's.
The example on vagueness is also an example about knowledge, so I'll just borrow it. Say that on a given day, day n, you are a child and you know that you are a child. Childhood lasts a long time, so presumably tomorrow (day n+1) you will also be a child. Since there is no obvious limit on that, you should remain a child forever: but somehow a day comes, say by day n+10,950, are not a child and you know that you are not a child anymore. Clarity exists on both ends of the spectrum.
So which day was the exact day on which you stopped being a child? There wasn't one, of course; somehow it happened, during a period of time in which you weren't really sure anymore. Sometimes you felt like a child, sometimes you could see yourself taking adult steps and becoming more adult as a consequence. Exactly when it happens is not clear.
Williamson's answer, in other words, is to dispose of certainty and embrace vagueness. I'm cold at 32 degrees F, and I know it; I'm warm at 75 degrees, and I know I'm not cold anymore. But as the temperature rises, there might come a point that even with careful reflection I couldn't say whether I was still cold. We could probably narrow that down with experiment, but it might vary a lot depending on weather conditions. A bright sunny windless day might no longer feel cold at 34, whereas a windy, wet, rainy day might feel quite cold even at 60 (hypothermia, in fact, is possible). But there will be a moment at which I'm plausibly not really sure.
That doesn't mean that we lose knowledge. We can not only know but know that we know at the ends of the spectrum. We lose that second-order certainty as we get closer to the border conditions; we might know but not know that we know. Very close to the border, we might not know.
So when did Europe become Christian? If the answer really is 'arguably never,' then we still are close enough to the border condition that we can't say we know it ever did. But I think we could say that we know that we know that European civilization was Christian in the 19th century. That seems like a flower of clarity. It may well be, as Eric Blair has often argued, that this civilization received its death blow in WWI and has been dying ever since. At some point we can't still say that we know that Europe is Christian at all, even if once we knew that it was and knew that we knew it.
* I'm leaving out a discussion of Williamson's argument that knowledge isn't analyzable, and focusing here on the vagueness aspect of knowledge, which I think is the more useful concept.
So How Deadly is this Coronavirus?
The WHO is now claiming 3.4% fatality rates, but a Harvard doctor disputes that and says it's under 1%. (The President also disputes it, although I'm not convinced that he is the best expert to heed on this subject.)
Fake News Today
BB: 'My Healthcare Is None Of Your Business,' Says Woman Who Demands That You Pay For Her Healthcare
Local woman Sarah Harper declared Friday that her healthcare is none of your business or the government's business, though she wants the government to take more of your money to pay for it.DB: Army’s new coal-powered tiltrotor gaining traction in Congress
Harper posted a series of tweets Friday proclaiming how “men don’t have a say” when it comes to women's healthcare, and also that you should just “shut up and pay for it....
"Just hand over the money and no one gets hurt," she said.
“Admittedly, we had to trim down the passenger compartment to make room for the stoker crew and coal storage,” Bell-Textron CEO Mitch Snyder said.... Snyder told reporters that, if awarded program status, the Super Emu would be able to transport troops, conceal their deployment with billowing coal ash, and render enemy water sources non-potable—and in some places, caustic.
"Truculent"
I ran across this word today and was struck by the fact that I couldn't think of a single related word in the English language (aside from the adverb and noun versions of the same word). I went to check the etymology, which is Latin: truculentus, apparently passed through the Middle French.
The first attestation of the word in English is from 1540, which may explain why it has no English cognates. Perhaps it didn't come over from the Anglo French in or just after 1066, but was brought over as a loan word during or just after the Hundred Years War. It could easily have been a common word among the Middle French-speaking knights who were regularly interacting with the English-speaking knights until the 1450s, and thus first written down in a source that survives to us around a hundred years after that.
A hundred years sounds like a big gap, but it's just for what happened to survive that we're aware of to put in our reference sources. A lot of records were lost in the Henry VIII period due to the destruction of Catholic monastic libraries. The word sounds like one Shakespeare would have liked, but I can't find that he used it.
The first attestation of the word in English is from 1540, which may explain why it has no English cognates. Perhaps it didn't come over from the Anglo French in or just after 1066, but was brought over as a loan word during or just after the Hundred Years War. It could easily have been a common word among the Middle French-speaking knights who were regularly interacting with the English-speaking knights until the 1450s, and thus first written down in a source that survives to us around a hundred years after that.
A hundred years sounds like a big gap, but it's just for what happened to survive that we're aware of to put in our reference sources. A lot of records were lost in the Henry VIII period due to the destruction of Catholic monastic libraries. The word sounds like one Shakespeare would have liked, but I can't find that he used it.
By Jove, I don't care for the cut of this fellow's jib
The New Yorker is shocked, shocked to learn that persuasiveness in human society sometimes depends on base emotional impact rather than elevated rationality. In a long essay devoted to the degradation of previously pristine political discourse since the days of declaiming in the agora, I mean, speaking from the back on trains on whistlestop tours, I mean, orating over the radio, I mean, winning the beauty contest on this newfangled teevee, I mean, getting down in the mud in what the kids are calling this social media thing, Andrew Marantz details the horror of the 2016 Trump campaign in the sniffiest possible New Yorker tones. He particularly deplores the skill of Trump's digital guru, Brad Parscale:
It would be difficult to top this offhand reference to the Alamo by a Brahmin who may go to his grave never comprehending how the wrong sort of people end up holding influential public positions: "Parscale’s operation was unofficially called Project Alamo, a reference to the grisly encounter in a nineteenth-century border war between Texas separatists and the government of Mexico." But the author saves the best for last, simultaneously exposing his hilariously obvious double-standard and his desperate willingness to undermine an admission of truth with empty qualifiers:
I end on this hopeful note:
In 2016, three weeks after Election Day, Harvard’s Institute of Politics hosted a panel discussion featuring leaders of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Trump’s campaign—the first public reunion of the now dunces and the now geniuses. It got heated.
“I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s director of communications, said.
“No, you wouldn’t, respectfully,” Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s campaign managers, said.I laughed out loud almost all the way through, but never more than when reading references to things like "social media, where lies and fractious memes are disproportionately likely to be amplified." Could these people be any less self-aware? Did you know, for instance, that bad Republicans tried to spread rumors that Clinton had undisclosed ties to Vladimir Putin? Who would stoop to something like that? To make matters worse, "This past fall, the Trump campaign ran a Facebook ad premised on the incendiary but false notion that the villain of the Ukraine corruption scandal was not Trump but Joe Biden."
It would be difficult to top this offhand reference to the Alamo by a Brahmin who may go to his grave never comprehending how the wrong sort of people end up holding influential public positions: "Parscale’s operation was unofficially called Project Alamo, a reference to the grisly encounter in a nineteenth-century border war between Texas separatists and the government of Mexico." But the author saves the best for last, simultaneously exposing his hilariously obvious double-standard and his desperate willingness to undermine an admission of truth with empty qualifiers:
“No one ever complained about Facebook for a single day until Donald Trump was President,” Brad Parscale has said. When the Obama campaign used Facebook in new and innovative ways, the media “called them geniuses.” When Parscale did the same, he continued, he was treated as “the evil of earth.” Despite the bombast and the false equivalence, this is basically true.See? It's true, but it's full of bombast, and debunked by a false equivalence so obvious to right-thinking people that we don't even have to identify the equivalence, let alone the falsehood. Because we operate on a higher level of honesty and principle than that dreadful upstart.
I end on this hopeful note:
Since 2016, one of Parscale’s shrewdest innovations has been to turn the continuing rallies into data-mining opportunities. Tickets are free, but they can only be claimed by a person with a valid cell-phone number. The campaign now has a huge database of mobile numbers belonging to people who are motivated enough to attend a Trump rally, many of whom might not have shown up on a voter-registration roll or any other official data file.
“We have almost two hundred and fifteen million hard-I.D. voter records in our database now,” Parscale claimed last year, although his definition of “hard I.D.” is not clear. Even if Trump were banned from every social network, his campaign would be able to reach supporters by text.
"The world soul could use more brains."
The aptly named Freeman Dyson--we might almost have called him Freemind Dyson--died this week just short of the age of 100.
Dyson once wrote an essay titled “Birds and Frogs,”
in which he described complementary species of mathematicians: “Some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs,” he wrote. “Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time. I happen to be a frog, but many of my best friends are birds.”
Some might disagree with Dyson’s assessment of himself. “Characteristically clever and self-deprecating,” the author James Gleick replied, when I posted that excerpt on Twitter. “I think he was a bird.”
He elaborated in an email. For a moment, Mr. Gleick said, in the case of quantum electrodynamics, Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger were the frogs and only Dr. Dyson could see them both: “Schwinger had solved quantum electrodynamics with a difficult formalism that almost no one understood, and Feynman had solved quantum electrodynamics with his powerful diagrams — easy for physicists to use and compute with but still hard to understand — and it was Dyson who saw the thing whole, proving that Feynman’s and Schwinger’s solutions were mathematically equivalent.” He added that Dr. Dyson should have shared their Nobel Prize.
Andre Norton
I read a number of her works when I was younger, and still have a few of them around -- I think there's a copy of Quag Keep in the library. It took me a long time to work out that "Andre" was a woman, which was her intention.
Born as Alice Mary Norton in 1912, Norton started writing while she was still in high school.... in 1934 she had her name legally changed to Andre Alice Norton, and adopted several male-sounding pen names so as to prevent her gender from becoming an obstacle to sales in the first market she wrote for: young boys literature.D&D with Fritz Leiber! That would have been a good time. Norton was no slouch either.
...
In 1976, Gary Gygax even persuaded Andre Norton to try out his new Dungeons & Dragons game, and he ran her through a session in his storied world of Greyhawk. Shortly thereafter, Norton was inspired to write the very first D&D novel, Quag Keep (1979). Along with Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton was one of a handful of early authors to experience the very games that their works had inspired.
Local politics
I'm feeling good about the political health of my county this evening. We have four local races, and while the early and mail-in tallies are not great in three of them, I didn't feel strongly about any of those races, more a matter of personal preference. The important race was to replace our County Attorney, who also is our only felony prosecutor. This has been a dreadful scandal in my community, and in recent weeks I was beginning to worry whether my neighbors were going to rise up properly and vote her out. We went to a great deal of trouble to run a good opponent and to get the word out. We don't have full results yet, but the tally of early and mail-in ballots shows the challenging taking 76% of the vote, which is very, very good news. Early voting doesn't always split the same way as election-day voting, but a lead like 76% doesn't get overturned.
Good, simple, French Onion Soup
A couple of weeks ago, Hello Fresh sent me and the missus a French Onion Soup meal. It was okay. My biggest problem was that they tried to satisfy as many customers as possible and ended up with a less satisfying meal by substituting mushroom stock for the more traditional beef stock. And I said as much to the Lovely Bride. She was skeptical and didn't think it was bad at all.
So I decided to "fix" the recipe on my own. And this is one of the reasons I really like Hello Fresh. It may cost between a (inexpensive) restaurant meal and what you'd pay if you shopped for the groceries yourself, but you can keep the recipe card and shop for the groceries yourself in the future if you really like it. Or... in this case, want to make it better.
So I decided to "fix" the recipe on my own. And this is one of the reasons I really like Hello Fresh. It may cost between a (inexpensive) restaurant meal and what you'd pay if you shopped for the groceries yourself, but you can keep the recipe card and shop for the groceries yourself in the future if you really like it. Or... in this case, want to make it better.
Horns of the dilemma
From Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics:
While any or all of the bottom four candidates might drop out [after Super Tuesday], it is unlikely that enough support will go to Sanders in subsequent primaries to give him the 50%-plus-one majority he would need to ensure a first-ballot victory at the convention July 13-16 in Milwaukee. If he does win outright, then the party will have nominated a cranky 79-year-old socialist with a man crush on authoritarian communists like Fidel Castro. That would normally be a nightmare scenario, but this year it is the best-case scenario.
If he doesn’t win outright, then pandemonium is sure to ensue. The Democratic establishment would have to decide whether to endorse a socialist as its standard-bearer, in which case they would be responsible for the subsequent George McGovern-style bloodbath, or to stop Sanders by throwing their support to another candidate, possibly even one who has not campaigned but is willing to be drafted as the nominee. (The possibilities: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Michelle Obama or even Adam “You Won’t Have to Ask Me Twice” Schiff.)
The War on Deplorables
Steve Hayward reminds us that the war on traditional citizens leads to strange intra-party politics that make it hard for a party to nominate a candidate with broad appeal, and have been doing so periodically for half a century at least:
A concession Jesse Jackson won at the [1988] Democratic National Convention was a substantial reduction in the number of “superdelegates”—the governors, state legislators, and congressmen recently introduced into the convention process. Another concession reduced the proportion of votes a candidate required to qualify for delegates and did away with “winner-take-all” primaries. This rule change will encourage factionalism by making it worthwhile for candidates to stay in the race longer so as to amass a larger force of delegates. More factions and fewer coalitions, I am afraid, are in store. Thus the desire of party activists to adopt more egalitarian policies, or their inability to reject egalitarian mechanisms—take your pick—will give egalitarians a greater voice in conventions to come. Not every future Democratic presidential nominee need be strongly egalitarian, but no one obnoxious to egalitarians will get far.
CDC competence vel non
I'm always up for a good "incompetent government bureaucracy" hook, but this thoughtful comment from Maggie's Farm is a more balanced approach:
I heard a few days ago that the reason we don't have a good test for the Corona virus was because we needed to have patients with the virus so that we could use their body fluids in a process that would make a test for it. I understand also that the CDC tried to roll out a test for the corona virus anyway because of course they need the test. But because they didn't have a good sample of the virus available the test was not accurate and gave false positives and false negatives. To speed up the process they bypassed an administrative rule to allow other agencies (states and others) to develop the test because by then there were a few confirmed patients to get samples from and since the patients were closer to outside laboratories this process would be faster than if the CDC insisted that only they could create the test.
One other factor in this is some have commented that smaller and less capable countries had developed the test so why couldn't we. There are two answers: 1. They had confirmed patients before we did which gave them the necessary samples. 2. They may have (probably did) develop tests like our first ones which give false results BUT since their standards are not as high as the CDC they decided "who cares" and went ahead and used them. (Or they are still clueless that their tests are giving them false results.)
Count me as one of those who doubts that our doctors are bumbling fools and that our CDC is incompetent. I am sure their bureaucracy sometimes interferes with best practices but generally I would say our CDC is as good as any similar organization anywhere. I think the problem is that they failed to adequately explain the holdup and thus to us it looks like a screw-up.I still think, of course, that human systems are inevitably prone to error, and improvement will always depend on a relentless willingness to try different approaches, compare predictions to reality, and assess honestly which approaches are the most effective. Flexibility and honesty not being the easiest goals in human institutions, and government bureaucracies not being their natural home, it's a tough challenge. Nevertheless, I don't want to pile on the CDC just because they fail a theoretical test of perfection. They're certainly doing a better job than I would know how to do.
"My Own Private Denmark"
PowerLine discusses in some detail today a theme that Assistant Village Idiot has often raised: Socialist and socialist-leaning Americans appear to have in mind an image of Scandinavian socialism that was tried, and then abandoned, some decades ago, when its ruinous effects on prosperity and job-creation were observed.
As Ace says, we continue to judge socialism by its intentions but capitalism by its results. Meanwhile, other countries try the grand experiment, while we avert our eyes from its effects, preferring to take a walk down memory/fantasy lane.
As Ace says, we continue to judge socialism by its intentions but capitalism by its results. Meanwhile, other countries try the grand experiment, while we avert our eyes from its effects, preferring to take a walk down memory/fantasy lane.
Some Further Discussion on Piercello's Proposal
Piercello asked me to clarify the boundary between strict logic and the kind of practical logics we find in ethics (like the use of logic in rhetoric). I thought the answer was worth a separate post.
I'm delighted to host a discussion like this one. It's an excellent use of our limited time on earth to wrestle with these high questions.
The boundary between strict logic and non-strict logic (including but not limited to rhetorical logic) is bright-line, and indeed already expressed in our discussion. It has to do with what kinds of objects the logic is treating. Strict logic treats logical objects, i.e., objects that are internally consistent throughout.
Objects in strict logic include universals, variables, and constants. Universals are true universals (usually formalized as capital letters these days, like "F"). A constant is an individual (usually 'a, b, c...' from the front of the alphabet); a variable (usually 'x, y, z') is a set of particulars that can range over many individuals, so that you can speak using variables about what it means for particulars to instantiate the universal. So if "F" is "is a raven," then "Fx" is "anything that is a raven," and "Fa" is "a, which is a raven." Expressed in more Platonic terms, "F" is a way of referring to the form of ravenness; Fx refers to all objects that instantiate this form; Fa refers to one particular object that instantiates the form.
However, as Aristotle points out at the beginning of the [Nicomachean] ethics, we never encounter any of these things in real life. His account of why objects don't perfectly instantiate Platonic forms differs from mine; he thought that practical objects, being made of matter, didn't perfectly instantiate the forms because of the potential necessary for matter which was never quite fully actualized into the pure activity of the form. I've explained that I think the real reason is that we shift from logical objects to analogies between physical objects that really aren't 'alike throughout' in the way that logical objects by their nature are.
Note then that Kant is not really doing strict logic at any point in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Because this is groundwork for a project in the practical world, he is always dealing with ethical objects rather than strict logical objects. Kant is really unhappy with Aristotle's approach, which I mentioned above. What Aristotle says is this (EN 1.3):
"Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better."
Kant does not like the idea that we cannot be precise in our ethical conclusions, and is trying hard to figure out a way around the problem that will allow for clear, precise, rational ethical decision. His move is to reach for universals not as forms, but in terms of generalizing situations to see if you can come to general principles (i.e. what he calls 'universal laws') that govern all different instances of a problem. (It will turn out you really can't, because problems don't instantiate singularly; usually a real ethical dilemma is a nest of different problems, where the general principles are in conflict. But set that aside.)
I recommend Kant because his project seems to me to be allied to yours in important ways. It is definitely not exactly the same, though. You are also wrestling with this issue of how to persuade people to behave in more rational ways. Like Kant, you need to get people to accept standards that are alien or foreign to them currently. Kant's introducing several concepts that are brand new, like the categorical imperative; no one has ever heard this terminology before at the time he's publishing this groundbreaking work. So he has to persuade people (rhetoric) that this is a sensible way to talk, as well as that it can solve some of the problems of ethics (rhetorical logic).
Note, though, that he is not really at any point engaged in strict logic. He is trying as hard as he can to find something analogous to a logical object in practical life. The universals he's reaching for with his 'universal laws' aren't logical universals, but broad analogies under which many different practical problems might fall.
As a result, the sandwich you describe isn't quite there. Rather, he is trying to shoehorn analogy into logic as much as can be done. I think Kant believes he's successful, which enables him in the wider Metaphysics of Morals (written many years after the Groundwork, by the way) to declare his conclusions with much more firmness than they have proven to deserve (e.g., that any just society must have a sovereign individual who is immune to the laws; that marriage can only be a union of exactly two persons of the opposite sex, and that absolutely all societies must introduce legal marriage in precisely this form; that masturbation is necessarily worse than suicide; etc).
That said, I also think you can learn the rules of strict logic without in any way adopting the consensus that they are the right way to proceed. Most everyone who engages in the practice seriously, including myself, develops a critique of parts of it. That's one of the most interesting aspects of the study of logic. There is a rhetorical aspect to such criticisms, in that we are trying to persuade each other that our approach to wrestling with the problem we've encountered with the system is better than other methods. But it's not necessary to learning the system; all that you have to do to learn the system is learn it, not consent to it.
The closest thing I think you can say is that you have to learn the rules of a game to play the game. But it's still not rhetoric; it just looks like rhetoric because we typically learn it from someone else. Imagine (here's a Kantian exercise) a man who was somehow born and raised by wolves, but in his adulthood began to try to work out the rules of logic. He might come up with different ways of solving particular problems, just as in math the Japanese have developed a different way of doing multiplication than Westerners. But because strict logic like* math has an objective standard, whatever approaches he developed could be found to be valid or invalid, complete or incomplete, independently of ever discussing them with anyone. The objective standard is provided by logic itself: some approaches to logic work, and some do not.
It's sticky, trying to deal with the hinge between these models -- which can somehow be objectively tested against themselves, that itself a philosophical difficulty -- and the way the models apply to reality. Somehow they do, even though the kinds of objects involved in math/logic are not what we encounter, we can use math and logic predicatively with a lot of success. Why the success is even possible is a problem, given the incompatibility of the kinds of objects involved; why the success applies only imperfectly is another problem.
If I've given you serious problems, though, I'm doing my proper work as a philosopher.
* "like math" is itself problematic philosophically; there's a huge debate as to whether logic is in fact a subset of math, or indeed whether math is actually a subset of logic, or if they are simply similar fields. This is non-resolved after 2,000 years of discussion.
We're not sick, quit (atchoo) saying we are
Nothing says "healthy culture" like an hysterical inability to tolerate disagreement.
Given the accumulated costs of decades of state-driven lending, massive malfeasance by local officials in cahoots with local banks, a towering property bubble, and vast industrial overcapacity, China is as ripe as a country can be for a massive economic correction. Even a small initial shock could lead to a massive bonfire of the vanities as all the false values, inflated expectations and misallocated assets implode. If that comes, it is far from clear that China’s regulators and decision makers have the technical skills or the political authority to minimize the damage—especially since that would involve enormous losses to the wealth of the politically connected.
Critical ideology studies
From Maggie's Farm, advice from Andrew Gleeson on avoiding temporal or cultural myopia in a modern university:
What follows is advice I would offer to any student with the good fortune to study such a [Great Books] course. You enjoy a remarkable opportunity—afforded inside what Oakeshott called “the interim,” a sunny recess between the sheltered world of childhood and adolescence, and the onerous responsibilities of adulthood—to enjoy without distraction an induction into a great inheritance. It is unlikely you will get it again. I hope the thoughts I have assembled here will help you make the most of your experience. They are not exhaustive and they are not gospel. You can judge their value for yourself as you pursue your studies.There's a radical thought! If you don't treat Western Civilization as gospel, you needn't fear contaminating your progressive purity merely by deigning to study it. Gleeson warns that a typical modern "critical studies" approach undermines the very sense of independent critical judgment that a student should be pursuing in reading the Great Books.
One often hears the word “critical” used as an adjective to describe some fields of academic studies, e.g., “critical X studies” (as if other fields were uncritical). Too often it means merely to be against when really it should mean to be discriminating. Worse, sometimes it signals an expectation of subscribing to (and conscripting the text and reader into the service of) an ideology.
By contrast, proper attention to the great books cultivates an independence of judgment you should jealously guard.A course of "progressive" study ought to mean approaching progressivism itself with the same skepticism its proponents advocate for a study of the Western canon.
It's History-Makin'
The Commandant orders the elimination of Confederate "paraphernalia" from all USMC facilities. What does that mean? I'm not sure, since it appears the USMC doesn't have any Confederate memorials or anything like that. Were rebel flags being sold at the exchange? The Corps' spokesman was unclear on exactly what, if anything, would be affected.
But it's just one part of the bold agenda for a new Marine Corps.
A humane, practical, beautiful solution.
But it's just one part of the bold agenda for a new Marine Corps.
Commandant Gen. David Berger last week instructed top Marine leaders to remove Confederate-related paraphernalia from the service's bases worldwide. The directive is one of several forward-leaning initiatives Berger said he is "prioritizing for immediate execution."Yes, sir, more young women in the combat arms, with a year off each if they bear children. Of course this is all a part of bringing perfect equality among the sexes, except for the part where the women get a year off; and it won't cause disruption or degradation of standards when the female members of the team vanish from training and deployment for a year. (A year, out of a four year enlistment!) No, only good things will come from this wholesale adoption of social justice ideals into military standards.
In his memo, a copy of which was obtained by Military.com, Berger also ordered leaders to find ways to move more women into combat jobs, to review the possibility of yearlong maternity leave for female Marines, and to extend parental leave policies to same-sex partners.
A humane, practical, beautiful solution.
Medieval Philosophy
A nice little collection of video lectures from Medievalists.
UPDATE: Skip the one on defining metaphysics, which is not good.
UPDATE: Skip the one on defining metaphysics, which is not good.
Panic/Don't Panic
Some good perspectives on the pandemic from NeoNeo, in an open-comments session. In the don't-panic line:
I’ve been watching this topic for the last several weeks. There’s still very little known and some of what is known is suspect. Just on general principles, I don’t believe the Chinese numbers, and I really would not be at all surprised if various Western nations are holding back information – it’s already clear how incredibly stupid people are when stampeding in panic.
It’s been my stance from the beginning – once it was clear that direct human-to-human transmission was possible, and apparently fairly easy (eg, the Webasto case in Germany) – that the actual number of people who have been exposed to the virus is vastly higher than numbers indicate. You can reasonably assume at this point that virtually all of the millions of people in the densely populated Chinese cities initially hit have been exposed. (You can also assume that every person on the Diamond Princess was exposed.) If they actually are counting deaths in the low thousands, it means it’s really not much more deadly than seasonal flus which kill tens of millions every year anyway.
Logically, you cannot have a virus which is on one hand easily transmissible and on the other hand, not rampant in a closely packed urban setting. Thus all of the original counts are skewed sharply toward people sick enough to seek medical care, omitting huge numbers of people who aren’t and never were. It is not reasonably possible anywhere to test every one of millions of asymptomatic people, or people who have minor cold/flu symptoms during cold/flu season. It’s not as if the normal cold/flu viruses politely took the season off so this new virus could have the stage to itself.
The latter is the second thing I wonder about. Since everyone is obsessed with testing for a new virus, are they assuming every sick person who tests positive for this coronavirus can only be sick because of it, not because of other viruses in circulation? It’s been hard to get an answer to that, as in, “We tested for the flu A, B and C variants that are common this season in our area, and got a negative result, and then we tested for COVID-19.”
Since so much is unknown, the situation has to be watched with caution. There’s ample evidence that older people and those already ill need to be particularly cautious; what we’ve seen so far suggests that COVID-19 is more likely to kill in that group, vs the young and healthy, as was the case with the 1918 Spanish flu. But after saying that, I do think coverage so far has been needlessly over-the-top and hysterical.On the other hand, preparing for panic itself is not a bad idea, because believing something is irrational is not at all the same as believing people aren't likely to act that way:
It’s a bit like the point I made earlier about panic buying. You might be all reasonable and superior intellectually and *not* panic buy because that after all is the unreasonable herd doing what the herd does. But that attitude won’t feed your children after the herd has stripped the shelves. The Reasonable Thing to do is get in there and get shelf-stripping yourself Stat. (Or prepare in advance of the Herd).
* * *
For all your Reason, humans are mimetic apes. You work with that… or you get nowhere.And:
Stock up on basic essential supplies. We have no idea how fragile our logistics and other systems are until it’s too late. Is all very well to laugh at panic buyers… But if said panic buyers stripped the shelves and you can’t eat, well where’s your intellectual and moral superiority then?
Make contingency plans for relatives who need regular medical care: Things like outpatient chemotherapy, dialysis, insulin supplies. I am pretty damn sure that a lot of people died in China because [they] could not get to their dialysis sessions because their block was quarantined and/or the hospital they usually went to was chaotically overloaded with Coronavirus cases.
I hope it turns out to be a fizzer. But even a fizzer can be the straw that broke the systemic over-complexity camel’s back. A little preparation is a good thing. Official pronouncements will aim to avoid mass panic. This is good too. But it also means that official pronouncements *could* be understating the problem. So be smart and make some simple preparations.
Age of Conan: Soundtrack
Popular music is so awful today, it's easy to think that no lovely music is being produced. As Eric Blair used to say, though, it's being done -- it's just not making the radio. Lots of it is being made for movies, and now for video games.
There's some very pleasant stuff there. It's not groundbreaking; I think it's intended to be derivative of the 1982 Conan's soundtrack. But it's nice.
There's some very pleasant stuff there. It's not groundbreaking; I think it's intended to be derivative of the 1982 Conan's soundtrack. But it's nice.
Religious Freedom, Exceptis Excipiendis
Apropos of nothing, Sanders brought up an essay Vought had written as an alumnus of Wheaton College. The Christian school had fired a professor for a Facebook post in which she announced that she would wear a hijab in solidarity with Muslims for a season. In an article in response, Vought wrote out a basic Christian tenet: that people cannot know God except through Jesus. "Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology," he wrote. "They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his son, and they stand condemned."In fairness, I'm pretty sure that even the Pope no longer believes that statement.
Sanders repeatedly read this passage back to Vought during his confirmation hearing, at one point accusing him of perpetuating Islamophobia.
“In my view, the statement made by Mr. Vought is indefensible. It is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world,” Sanders said. “This country, since its inception, has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to overcome discrimination of all forms … we must not go backwards.”
Would Putin Like President Sanders?
Michelle Goldberg thinks that he would not.
[Sanders'] unlikely ascendance would be a blow against the corrosive cynicism in which authoritarianism thrives. America would be the country where young people of all races powered a campaign that proved stronger than plutocracy, stronger than nationalist demagogy, stronger than any of the tools that men like Putin have used to bring liberalism to its knees. To young idealists around the world, America would look — dare I say it — great again.In a piece arguing against calling people Russian assets, including Sanders, some reasons to think that Putin might be pleased.
Building a multiracial social democracy is one of the great political challenges of our time. Few nations on earth have figured out how to create, in heterogenous populations, the solidarity needed to sustain a robust public sphere. Putin has exploited this difficulty, stoking tribal fears in countries with changing demographics to make liberalism look like a form of social dissolution.
If enough Americans unite across racial lines to replace Trump with a Jewish socialist, it might mean that our country is figuring out how to transcend the illiberalism of our age. I still find it difficult to believe that Sanders can pull it off. But if he does, Putin won’t be pleased for long.
If we look at who is actually doing Russia’s work — dividing Americans against one another with these suggestions of foreign influence — it turns out that these journalists are much better candidates for ‘Russian agents’ than any of the politicians (excepting Ms. Clinton, who is right there with the journalists advancing irresponsible rhetoric). I do not say this to accuse them, or anyone, of being a Russian agent. What I mean to say is that Putin has more reason to be happy because major TV networks are accusing the winner of the Nevada caucus of being a spy than he has reason to feel good about Bernie Sanders having won.So what's more harmful to Putin's Russia and its interests? Hope and aspirations for multi-racial democracies? Or the loss of oil and gas monopolies?
Bernie Sanders’ election might possibly be good for Russia insofar as he is able to make good on his campaign rhetoric to undercut America’s energy exports. Russia’s economy and much of its geopolitical power derives chiefly from its energy exports, especially to Europe. Sanders’ desire to cut American exports would drive up prices for energy in the global market, enriching Russia, and make Europe much more dependent than currently on Russian gas and oil. Sanders’ stated desire to cut American military spending would probably also delight the Russians. Yet none of those policies is being advanced by Sanders because they would help Russia. He wants to cut energy exports because he believes it will help the climate; he wants to cut military spending as a believer in a longstanding left-liberal/progressive critique of America as warlike and imperialistic. Any benefit to Russia is coincidental.
Optics
Jim Geraghty cautions against complacency, but still believes the "socialist" flag is voting-booth poison in November:
Democrats, perhaps because they differ from the rest of the electorate in their feelings about socialism, are bad at estimating how socialism would play in a general election. Two weeks ago, in the Yahoo News poll, a 49 percent plurality of Democrats said most, nearly all, or about half of Americans would consider voting for a presidential candidate who called himself a democratic socialist. The guess was incorrect. According to the same poll, only 35 percent of voters said they’d consider voting for such a candidate. Democrats got it wrong.Democrats think that the socialist label is harmless because it has no negative connotation to them and in their circles.
Piercello's Theory of Consensus Argumentation
Our old friend Piercello, whom some of you may remember for his three-factor theory of human nature and his theory of aesthetics, dropped by to ask for some thoughts on a new theory that successful argumentation depends on consensus. It's a short argument if you want to read it.
I have some things to say about it.
1) The kind of argument he is describing is deductive logic. There are other kinds of arguments, but I think they are even more susceptible to the charge he is bringing. Non-logical forms of argument, for example persuasion by appeal to emotion, are even more dependent on 'a consensus about how things should be done' than deduction. I don't actually have to share your feelings -- certainly I don't have to experience them -- to appeal to them. But I do have to understand how you feel in order to frame an argument that will successfully motivate you to action in the way I desire. Induction is already a problematic form of argument, really more a form of guesswork than a proper proof, but that makes it also more subject to consensus about what kinds of guesses we're allowed to make. (Usually: "It's a proper inductive proof if and only if it is based on a random sample from a proper set; if and only if it is repeatable from a number of randomly selected elements from the set," etc. But this still depends on a consensus idea of what 'a proper set' entails, a question that is easy in mathematics or strict logic, but quite hard in practical reality.)
2) Deduction is a limited form of argument, though, because it is incapable of discovering anything. What deduction allows you to do is to prove that since you know X, you also know Y. It's a form of realization, in other words, rather than discovery of new facts about reality. The most classic example of a deductive proof is this one:
Assumption: Socrates is a man.
Assumption: All men are mortal.
∴ Socrates is mortal.
If the assumptions are true, the conclusion follows. The reason it follows isn't actually the one, Piercello, that you're suggesting. It's not that I have chosen a methodology that you agree is valid, based on a standard that you agree is reasonable, which was chosen by method... etc. The reason it follows is that the truth is contained in the assumptions. What the deduction is doing is helping us realize that we know the conclusion because we know the facts in the assumptions. Nothing new is really being added. Something new is being recognized.
Now if your point is rhetorical, it may be that you're correct about the necessity of consensus. In other words, if the argument is that I can only convince you of the conclusion if you agree to the methodology of deductive logic, that might be right. If the point is not rhetorical but logical, however, it is not right. Because deduction is only recognition of the truths I also know from what I already know, the argument is valid whether or not I like it or agree to it.
Notice by the way that the classic syllogism isn't really subject to the third line of attack you mention ("You've cherry-picked your evidence"). Assuming those two assumptions turn out to be factually accurate, the conclusion follows no matter what new assumptions you add to the pot. The only new information that could alter the conclusion is information that invalidates one of the assumptions (e.g., "Socrates is not a man but a god"). Otherwise, the conclusion holds whatever else you add ("All ravens are black"; "Some men are very long-lived"; etc).
There you go.
I have some things to say about it.
1) The kind of argument he is describing is deductive logic. There are other kinds of arguments, but I think they are even more susceptible to the charge he is bringing. Non-logical forms of argument, for example persuasion by appeal to emotion, are even more dependent on 'a consensus about how things should be done' than deduction. I don't actually have to share your feelings -- certainly I don't have to experience them -- to appeal to them. But I do have to understand how you feel in order to frame an argument that will successfully motivate you to action in the way I desire. Induction is already a problematic form of argument, really more a form of guesswork than a proper proof, but that makes it also more subject to consensus about what kinds of guesses we're allowed to make. (Usually: "It's a proper inductive proof if and only if it is based on a random sample from a proper set; if and only if it is repeatable from a number of randomly selected elements from the set," etc. But this still depends on a consensus idea of what 'a proper set' entails, a question that is easy in mathematics or strict logic, but quite hard in practical reality.)
2) Deduction is a limited form of argument, though, because it is incapable of discovering anything. What deduction allows you to do is to prove that since you know X, you also know Y. It's a form of realization, in other words, rather than discovery of new facts about reality. The most classic example of a deductive proof is this one:
Assumption: Socrates is a man.
Assumption: All men are mortal.
∴ Socrates is mortal.
If the assumptions are true, the conclusion follows. The reason it follows isn't actually the one, Piercello, that you're suggesting. It's not that I have chosen a methodology that you agree is valid, based on a standard that you agree is reasonable, which was chosen by method... etc. The reason it follows is that the truth is contained in the assumptions. What the deduction is doing is helping us realize that we know the conclusion because we know the facts in the assumptions. Nothing new is really being added. Something new is being recognized.
Now if your point is rhetorical, it may be that you're correct about the necessity of consensus. In other words, if the argument is that I can only convince you of the conclusion if you agree to the methodology of deductive logic, that might be right. If the point is not rhetorical but logical, however, it is not right. Because deduction is only recognition of the truths I also know from what I already know, the argument is valid whether or not I like it or agree to it.
Notice by the way that the classic syllogism isn't really subject to the third line of attack you mention ("You've cherry-picked your evidence"). Assuming those two assumptions turn out to be factually accurate, the conclusion follows no matter what new assumptions you add to the pot. The only new information that could alter the conclusion is information that invalidates one of the assumptions (e.g., "Socrates is not a man but a god"). Otherwise, the conclusion holds whatever else you add ("All ravens are black"; "Some men are very long-lived"; etc).
There you go.
Well, I Appreciate Your Honesty
Headline: “We Can't Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family.”
That does clarify things. Now we just have to sort out whether feminism or the family is of greater value. I imagine that even if we left the decision entirely to women, family would come out easily on top.
That does clarify things. Now we just have to sort out whether feminism or the family is of greater value. I imagine that even if we left the decision entirely to women, family would come out easily on top.
Mauhuffer Filmed a Commercial
Oddly enough, since I just mentioned the place, they are pushing out a test commercial to see if people think it might draw business. They wisely picked a night when the band was 50s+, which gives the place a veneer of harmlessness as you watch the similarly-aged dancers.
Here is a bit from a night I might have almost been present, except that it was in November and I left after the summer. But I heard this band do this song, which is a better take on an old Waylon Jennings song than Waylon ever did himself. Sadly the recording is substandard, but it would have been hard to record under the best of circumstances. Watch the neon beer signs vibrate under the weight of the sound.
Here is a bit from a night I might have almost been present, except that it was in November and I left after the summer. But I heard this band do this song, which is a better take on an old Waylon Jennings song than Waylon ever did himself. Sadly the recording is substandard, but it would have been hard to record under the best of circumstances. Watch the neon beer signs vibrate under the weight of the sound.
Trans Purge in UK
It's just the Labour Party, which is at its smallest size in a generation so why not purge some of the few 'remain'ing members?
A Ridiculous Overreaction?
The Chinese authorities continue to treat the virus as a serious problem:
...when we got to Starbucks, the employees wouldn’t let us in. Instead, we were told to order our drinks through the Starbucks app from outside the store. While we waited for our lattes, the employees took our temperatures and recorded our information at the door....
The following week the restrictions grew tighter and it wasn’t as easy for us to get out of our neighborhood.... Then roadblocks went up on main thoroughfares....
Then walls were put up. They were on all the side streets of our neighborhood, blocking every way out except for two main entrances.... At about the same time the walls were put up, a curfew was imposed: no one in or out from midnight to 6 a.m....
Then a few days ago, everyone in the neighborhood had to register with a local committee and get a special pass that we now must show to get into our neighborhood. If you don’t have a pass, you cannot get in....
Everything we read and hear maintains that the virus is not an imminent threat to us. Relative to the millions of people in our city, a tiny number of people have gotten sick; far fewer have died. But our effort to be rational about the threat does not really help. The scale of the response seems like an overreaction — or it suggests that things are much worse than we are being told. We have a lot of time on our hands to wonder which it is.
Good News from Oklahoma
An attempt to impose new gun carry licenses fails there. So far the lines are holding imperfectly, but much better than might have been expected in the wake of the 2018 election.
The Sin of the Angels
Wretchard today:
[T]here is in this ruthless idealism the danger of what St Augustine called the sin of angels. "It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels." Pride makes failure the world's fault rather than a defect in the perfect plan. Pride removes the possibility of error under the guise of good intentions. While most doctors, engineers or a developers know that failure means a bug or flaw somewhere -- and back to the drawing board that's not how ideology works. Ideology works by an imposition of the will legitimized by the purity of intention. A perfect plan is rejected only be because the public is unworthy of it.
Yeah, Sure
"Russia backs Trump's re-election, according to classified briefing to lawmakers."
Yeah, I'm sure they definitely want four more years of Trump bankrupting their energy industry, when they could have any of the Democrats shut down fracking and oil exports. Probably they're excited to re-elect the guy who gave Ukraine Javelin missiles to foil their tanks, too. No doubt that's exactly what those clever Russians are banking on getting themselves more of this year.
Yeah, I'm sure they definitely want four more years of Trump bankrupting their energy industry, when they could have any of the Democrats shut down fracking and oil exports. Probably they're excited to re-elect the guy who gave Ukraine Javelin missiles to foil their tanks, too. No doubt that's exactly what those clever Russians are banking on getting themselves more of this year.
Happy "Vet Girls" RISE Day!
Actually, apparently it was yesterday. I only heard about it today because of some very angry female veterans I know who don't much like the name.
But it's definitely the "Vet Girls" thing that bugs the, uh, ladies.
On February 19, National Vet Girls RISE Day recognizes the immense dedication of the nearly 2 million U.S. veteran women.To me the weirdest thing about the name is the completely unexplained all-caps "RISE." Is that an acronym? If so, for what? If not, what's it doing there?
On National Vet Girls RISE Day, not only is it a day to recognize women veterans, but it’s a day for women veterans to support one another and to share resources, build relationships and spread awareness concerning the needs of women veterans.
But it's definitely the "Vet Girls" thing that bugs the, uh, ladies.
Human nature?
Why is it that we consider predators our closest companions? I'm speaking primarily of cats and dogs. Oh sure, some people have a pet rat, or rabbit, or bird. And some people love their horses, I don't dispute it. But for our companion animals, the ones we give free rein in our own homes, people mainly turn to hunters. I wonder (as I certainly do not know) if it's because we can see ourselves in them, identify with them on some level, or if it's something else. Maybe it originally was because they managed the pests we cannot hunt ourselves, and helped up hunt the prey we can. But I can't help but wonder if there's something more there. We never bonded with goats, sheep, oxen, cows, chickens, or even pigs (as intelligent and full of personality as they are) in the way we did with cats and dogs.
I have to believe there was something that took them from "just another domesticated animal" to "furry family members". And I honestly cannot shake the feeling that their carnivorous/predatory nature has something to do with it. So I'd really like to hear the Hall's thoughts on the matter.
I have to believe there was something that took them from "just another domesticated animal" to "furry family members". And I honestly cannot shake the feeling that their carnivorous/predatory nature has something to do with it. So I'd really like to hear the Hall's thoughts on the matter.
Behind the look
But enough about Bloomberg's debate performance, which at least featured a much-needed rejection of communism. The real problem with this nanny-state bully is his history, not just of seedy personal relations but of political philosophy and policies backed by whatever political power he could amass:
In order to (inconsistently) enforce this labyrinth of red tape, Bloomberg effectively turned the police into a task force on petty vice, sending them to write up people for harmless offenses (a move their union loudly protested). In a 2004 piece for Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens set out on a crime spree across New York where he tried to break as many of these enforced regulations as possible. This meant not just lighting up in a bar, but sitting on a milk crate ($105 fine for a Bronx man), feeding pigeons (summons for an 86-year-old), and riding a bike without both feet on the pedals. Strangely, though considered crimes against humanity in Bloombergistan, these particular infractions had nothing to do with public health. What they did have to do with was fines, which were then used to fill city coffers, authoritarianism in the service of deficit cutting. This enabled Bloomberg to boast about his fiscal responsibility even as he presided over a hefty expansion of the city’s budget.
And it’s here that we approach the heart of the Bloomberg ethos, as well as a crucial distinction in our politics. Bloomberg is the opposite of a libertarian, yet he defines himself as a “fiscal conservative and social liberal.” Often confused, these two terms are fundamentally different. Libertarianism is concerned with the liberty and dignity of the individual, whereas “fiscal conservative and social liberal” has less philosophical connective tissue. Under its shotgun marriage of terms, “social liberal” can mean, as Bloomberg once told a pregnant subordinate, “kill it,” while “fiscal conservative” can mean reducing people to piggy banks in order to feed finances. What links them is the flowchart. Children are bad for efficiency; so are smokers, drinkers, and fast food diners. This is the ideology of the corporate boardroom. It’s dehumanizing, in that it flattens people into mere budget figures and values of life expectancy.
Not a good look
From Jim Gerraghty on last night's debate:
The former mayor got a little better as the night went on and mostly bad debate performances can be wiped away with another $400 million or so in television ads. But the bottom line of last night is that Bloomberg is what his critics charge: a billionaire who’s been so used to running everything around him for so long that he freezes when someone challenges him and gets in his face. On top of that, he’s a cold fish. He radiates the warmth and empathy of the head of a DMV office. Bloomberg’s convinced he never did anything wrong regarding any of his female employees, and he can’t understand why anyone would think otherwise.
Good News in Washington State
Gun control bills fail in both chambers. Raven should be happier today.
REH Was Right: Ancient Civilization in Ukraine
This time it’s a kind of city perhaps six thousand years old, before the rise of even the most ancient known religions.
Nobody Cares if Nobody Likes You
All right, you asked for it. Here's the first cut I've managed to work out.
You'll notice there are four-line verses and a five-line chorus. The chorus is meant to be sung to the part of the DAC tune that begins "My long hair just can't cover up my red neck." The four-line verses are meant to be sung to the part of the tune that opens it, "Country DJs all think I'm an outlaw..." but it's shorter, so you just swap to the chorus part when you get there. Definitely imagine a steel guitar twanging in the background.
As a side note, the DAC tune is deceptively sophisticated. There are about six things going on there musically, even though on the surface it's just a song about 'bikers staring at cowboys, who are laughing at the hippies, who are praying they'll get out of here alive.' Supposedly it's a song about an unsophisticated redneck, and DAC clearly scared the other Outlaw Country singers with his approach to life, but in fact the tune shows a great deal of skill. I do feel better that he admits having stolen part of the tune himself, in that recording, from Tom T. Hall. I first heard it in a dive bar near Tampa called Mauhuffers, which was the perfect place for this particular song.
Park your bike and walk into the old barUPDATE: It occurs to me that I should tell you how to sing it. This is my first attempt at writing a song that wasn't meant to entertain children (or to amuse a girl, when I was younger). I set it to David Allan Coe's basic approach, but it's not a straight theft of his tune; in my head different parts of the song are employed in different lines. Here's the song again.
Breaking bread with brothers over brew,
Some politician's up there on the TV
Thinks he's gonna tell us what to do.
Hey! Nobody cares if nobody likes you,
You want no guns, no booze, and lots of tax?
We don't know you, and we do not like you
Free men don't have to heed, and that's a fact.
Yeah, nobody cares, if nobody likes you.
Now some guy comes round and wants to butt in
And you know, I think that you just won't.
You're loud and proud and you are uninvited,
So why not remove yourself so that we don't?
Yeah, nobody cares, if nobody likes you.
I did not come here to make new friends.
We don't know you, and we do not like you,
So best that you accept that's how it ends.
Cause nobody cares if nobody likes you.
Now that guy goes down to hit on women,
And down the bar it looks the same as well.
They're too polite to say, else too frightened,
But you can see that they wish he'd go to hell.
Buddy! Nobody cares if nobody likes you.
Those women don't owe you any time.
They don't know you, and they do not like you.
Back off of them and let them drink their wine.
Yeah, nobody cares if nobody likes you.
You know not all those ladies really like me either,
Some do not approve of knives and bikes;
They're free to pick, but I did not ask them,
I live my life exactly how I like.
I don't really care if no one likes us.
We don't ask advice from those who don't;
You're free to disapprove, it's just not for you.
Don't try to make us change, because we won't.
And nobody cares if we do not like you.
It's a big old country, and we don't have to be friends;
We can just leave one another be.
You go your way, my road will take me onward,
There's room for each of us to go on free.
So nobody cares if nobody likes you,
You'll have to earn whatever friends you trust.
It's no one's problem if you don't prove worthy,
You'll have to make that right just how you must.
Nobody cares if nobody likes you.
You'll notice there are four-line verses and a five-line chorus. The chorus is meant to be sung to the part of the DAC tune that begins "My long hair just can't cover up my red neck." The four-line verses are meant to be sung to the part of the tune that opens it, "Country DJs all think I'm an outlaw..." but it's shorter, so you just swap to the chorus part when you get there. Definitely imagine a steel guitar twanging in the background.
As a side note, the DAC tune is deceptively sophisticated. There are about six things going on there musically, even though on the surface it's just a song about 'bikers staring at cowboys, who are laughing at the hippies, who are praying they'll get out of here alive.' Supposedly it's a song about an unsophisticated redneck, and DAC clearly scared the other Outlaw Country singers with his approach to life, but in fact the tune shows a great deal of skill. I do feel better that he admits having stolen part of the tune himself, in that recording, from Tom T. Hall. I first heard it in a dive bar near Tampa called Mauhuffers, which was the perfect place for this particular song.
Election time
March 3 is the Texas primary. In my little county, the focus isn't on the presidential contest--a foregone conclusion in this deep-red community--or even on the state races, most of which are not realistically contested at the primary level, at least on the Republican side. The focus is on a handful of county races, which in this county are decided at the primary stage given the small local Democratic party's habit of not fielding any candidates. When November comes around, we almost never have any contested races for county positions.
This makes for a brief election season, kicked off in December with the filing deadline and finishing up in early March or, at the latest, in May with the run-offs. This spring it's all two-person races, so we'll be spared a run-off.
The big political event for us this year is that we have at long last a chance to express a view about our County Attorney, who also is our only prosecutor. In August 2017 she got into a feud with the police force for the county's only town of any size, which led her to boycott prosecuting any of their cases for years. Recently she's begun to prosecute a few, but given her tendency to announce "not ready for trial" repeatedly, then to dismiss cases, it's not meaning that much to us.
For reasons known only to herself, within the last couple of months she picked a fight with the Sheriff's office. Now, it was one thing to feud with the city police department, because the city officials, for some reason, are not really tied into the county's old-guard establishment. The Sheriff is another story. I don't know the guy well, but he seems to be a fairly regular guy with considerable integrity. Certainly he's got better credibility than the County Attorney--not that you couldn't say that of most people. Anyway, it looks as though she finally picked a fight she was unlikely to win. A week and a half ago she threatened to indict him, in public, at a large gathering. She's turned coy now and said she won't answer questions about it, because it would be improper to comment publicly on a potential indictment. That's rich considering the public nature of the threat.
I'm watching the whole thing with unusual interest. My interest is piqued in part because I really think we deserve a better prosecutor, and we went to a lot of trouble to line up a good challenger and unite behind her. It's also because there are a couple of good challengers for two seats on the 5-member Commissioners Court. My life on the court will be more pleasant if I have a couple of allies who will be reliable support on issues of transparency in government.
A fourth race is a peculiar one. Our soon-to-retire Tax Assessor-Collector has endorsed her chief deputy clerk as successor. Normally this would be a no-brainer for me, as I know nothing against either the current official or her designated successor. On the other hand, the successor is a perfectly ordinary bureaucrat, whereas a good friend chose to run against her on an eccentric and rather inspiring platform. He knows, of course, that the tax office is mostly ministerial and has next to no policy leeway. Nevertheless, he wants to follow a growing trend among Texas tax offices in pushing citizen education about tax and appraisal issues, especially in deciphering the appraisal protest and exemption processes.
I've been thinking about why his candidacy appeals to me so much, wondering if it's just because he's a friend. I think it's that he's a dedicated and thoughtful libertarian who puts endless effort into going door to door in every election trying to engage people in a very interesting political debate. There's an idealism there I don't see often. He has faith in people and doesn't fear rejection, even when rejection hurts.
I'm pretty sure what I'm connecting with is an echo of the old Borderlands Scots-Irish culture. If the Nazis were coming over the hill, this certainly would be the guy you wanted to stand with. Should he be running the tax office? Well, all I can say is I'd like to see more people like him in government. Citizens of courage are the only real bulwark between us and even the petty variety of tyranny.
This makes for a brief election season, kicked off in December with the filing deadline and finishing up in early March or, at the latest, in May with the run-offs. This spring it's all two-person races, so we'll be spared a run-off.
The big political event for us this year is that we have at long last a chance to express a view about our County Attorney, who also is our only prosecutor. In August 2017 she got into a feud with the police force for the county's only town of any size, which led her to boycott prosecuting any of their cases for years. Recently she's begun to prosecute a few, but given her tendency to announce "not ready for trial" repeatedly, then to dismiss cases, it's not meaning that much to us.
For reasons known only to herself, within the last couple of months she picked a fight with the Sheriff's office. Now, it was one thing to feud with the city police department, because the city officials, for some reason, are not really tied into the county's old-guard establishment. The Sheriff is another story. I don't know the guy well, but he seems to be a fairly regular guy with considerable integrity. Certainly he's got better credibility than the County Attorney--not that you couldn't say that of most people. Anyway, it looks as though she finally picked a fight she was unlikely to win. A week and a half ago she threatened to indict him, in public, at a large gathering. She's turned coy now and said she won't answer questions about it, because it would be improper to comment publicly on a potential indictment. That's rich considering the public nature of the threat.
I'm watching the whole thing with unusual interest. My interest is piqued in part because I really think we deserve a better prosecutor, and we went to a lot of trouble to line up a good challenger and unite behind her. It's also because there are a couple of good challengers for two seats on the 5-member Commissioners Court. My life on the court will be more pleasant if I have a couple of allies who will be reliable support on issues of transparency in government.
A fourth race is a peculiar one. Our soon-to-retire Tax Assessor-Collector has endorsed her chief deputy clerk as successor. Normally this would be a no-brainer for me, as I know nothing against either the current official or her designated successor. On the other hand, the successor is a perfectly ordinary bureaucrat, whereas a good friend chose to run against her on an eccentric and rather inspiring platform. He knows, of course, that the tax office is mostly ministerial and has next to no policy leeway. Nevertheless, he wants to follow a growing trend among Texas tax offices in pushing citizen education about tax and appraisal issues, especially in deciphering the appraisal protest and exemption processes.
I've been thinking about why his candidacy appeals to me so much, wondering if it's just because he's a friend. I think it's that he's a dedicated and thoughtful libertarian who puts endless effort into going door to door in every election trying to engage people in a very interesting political debate. There's an idealism there I don't see often. He has faith in people and doesn't fear rejection, even when rejection hurts.
I'm pretty sure what I'm connecting with is an echo of the old Borderlands Scots-Irish culture. If the Nazis were coming over the hill, this certainly would be the guy you wanted to stand with. Should he be running the tax office? Well, all I can say is I'd like to see more people like him in government. Citizens of courage are the only real bulwark between us and even the petty variety of tyranny.
Forgiveness not Permission
A USMC pilot dies and is remembered for the time he was almost courtmartialed.
A Mild Rebuke
In the High Court this morning, Mr Justice Julian Knowles ruled that the police had been disproportionate in the action they took against Harry Miller, a former police officer and a shareholder in a plant and machinery company in Lincolnshire, when they recorded as a “non crime hate incident” a series of disobliging comments he had tweeted about transgender issues.
A New Candidate for Beserkergang
The most well-attested candidate in the literature is ergot, but another option is being floated in the media today: herbal tea.
The Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Daytona
Thus ended the memorable field of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age; for although only four knights, including one who was smothered by the heat of his armour, had died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. Several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. Hence it is always mentioned in the old records, as the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby.They Daytona 500 fortunately did not kill anyone this year, but it came damn close.
This wasn't even the largest wreck, just the most spectacular. Fortunately the driver, Ryan Newman, is reported to be alive with serious but non-lifethreatening injuries.
Here was the big one:
Now all this might seem like an odd sport to want to be involved with, unless you understand the history of passages of arms. Or the rodeo, which regularly kills and maims and cripples men who nevertheless will nearly bankrupt themselves to follow the circuit. Honor and glory, and sometimes the grave.
Well, did you want to live forever?
UPDATE: Newman has been released from the hospital, walking under his own power.
More on Judy Shelton
From John Tamny at RealClear Markets: "The economics profession is increasingly ridiculous, and so is the Fed ridiculous." Re interest rates and the Fed’s role:
Shelton is too smart to believe that price controls work. That’s why her modern stance in favor of so-called Fed ease is so easy to read as politics in play. If we ignore what’s true, that the Fed can’t control access to credit in the first place, the idea that it could expand credit access by lowering the Fed funds rate is as silly as the belief that artificially low apartment rent controls will lead to apartment abundance. No, not at all. And the Fed can’t create easy credit. Shelton knows this. Politics is once again at work, and that’s ok. The Fed has long been a politicized institution, and so it remains under President Trump. It says here that Shelton doesn’t need to compromise her views on the dollar and interest rates, but she knows her own situation better than yours truly.
Excellent News From Virginia
Due to the tireless work of the Virginia Citizens Defense League and the patriots among the citizenry of the Old Dominion, the flagship “assault weapons” ban has been sent to die in committee.
Unfortunately it will be back next year, but some breathing room has been won.
Unfortunately it will be back next year, but some breathing room has been won.
Asheville Celtic Festival
"Cimmerian" is a word that Howard borrowed from the Odyssey, a cognate to "Cymric" which led him to write that "the Gaels, ancestors of the Irish and Highland Scots, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans." So it is appropriate that these oft-grey and misty mountains, similar to his poetic description of Cimmeria, hosted a festival of which Conan would have been proud.
There were fighting demonstrations, a small-scale Scottish Highland Games heavy athletics competition, cattle and dogs -- a great number of Irish wolfhounds were present -- beer and mead, and a lot of music and dancing. One of the bands in attendance was Albannach, on tour of the United States from their Scottish homeland.
There were fighting demonstrations, a small-scale Scottish Highland Games heavy athletics competition, cattle and dogs -- a great number of Irish wolfhounds were present -- beer and mead, and a lot of music and dancing. One of the bands in attendance was Albannach, on tour of the United States from their Scottish homeland.
Glory in the Pictish Wilderness
A “life of feasting, drinking, gaming, and riches” in an ancient hilltop fort.
Oppressing the 0.02%
The WSJ publishes a controversial opinion on sex, to whit, that it is real.
To characterize [the argument that human sex/gender is 'on a spectrum'] as having no basis in reality would be an egregious understatement. It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution....It's actually a little stronger than the pull quote, for those who can get past the WSJ paywall. That's the heart of it, though.
In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth 99.98% of the time. The evolutionary function of these two anatomies is to aid in reproduction via the fusion of sperm and ova....
Sex is binary.
A Younger View of Conan
Ehsan Knopf is an Australian filmmaker who was diagnosed late with Asperger's, who also made a short film about discovering Robert E. Howard. I think he must be a decade or so younger than me, and is definitely younger than some of you; this is suggested by the age of his childhood favorite TV show (1992), and also by the fact that he thinks that Game of Thrones is the thing that proves that the Fantasy genre can handle deeper themes and more complex characters than it always does.
It's interesting to see how the next generation encounters something like Howard and Conan. You may also learn some things about Robert Howard, and about L. Sprague de Camp's stewardship (or plundering, as some think) of Howard's legacy.
Of course I will also take the opportunity to remind everyone of our comrade Joel Leggett's piece on Conan as an American mythology (somewhat mis-headlined by the publisher, as sometimes happens, but it's the focus of that particular journal).
It's interesting to see how the next generation encounters something like Howard and Conan. You may also learn some things about Robert Howard, and about L. Sprague de Camp's stewardship (or plundering, as some think) of Howard's legacy.
Of course I will also take the opportunity to remind everyone of our comrade Joel Leggett's piece on Conan as an American mythology (somewhat mis-headlined by the publisher, as sometimes happens, but it's the focus of that particular journal).
Meanwhile in NYC...
Mike Bloomberg is also making public appearances.
I've been kind of waiting to see what Bloomberg would come up with that was his explanation of what he wanted to accomplish by running. Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" explained with simple clarity exactly what the point of his candidacy was. Barack Obama's "Change you can believe in" -- usually with "CHANGE" in big letters and the rest in much smaller print -- was likewise a simple and easy to grasp explanation of the logic of his candidacy. After eight years of George W. Bush, people had an appetite for something different. He promised change, and in fairness he delivered more of it than I'd have liked.
Bloomberg I think gives his message in this clip:
"Maybe I can get the whole country to behave!"
He is the candidate of government limits on what size sodas you can buy and mandatory stop-and-frisk searches by police without probable cause. He's the candidate who thinks he knows better than you, and wants to be the nanny for all of America. He wants you to behave.
I don't think he knows much about America. But I know about people like him.
I've been kind of waiting to see what Bloomberg would come up with that was his explanation of what he wanted to accomplish by running. Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" explained with simple clarity exactly what the point of his candidacy was. Barack Obama's "Change you can believe in" -- usually with "CHANGE" in big letters and the rest in much smaller print -- was likewise a simple and easy to grasp explanation of the logic of his candidacy. After eight years of George W. Bush, people had an appetite for something different. He promised change, and in fairness he delivered more of it than I'd have liked.
Bloomberg I think gives his message in this clip:
"Maybe I can get the whole country to behave!"
He is the candidate of government limits on what size sodas you can buy and mandatory stop-and-frisk searches by police without probable cause. He's the candidate who thinks he knows better than you, and wants to be the nanny for all of America. He wants you to behave.
I don't think he knows much about America. But I know about people like him.
"The Beast" at the Daytona 500
I haven't watched a NASCAR race since Dad died, but when I was young it was on most every weekend. I was watching when Dale Earnhardt slammed the black #3 car into the wall at Daytona and died as he'd lived. I was watching when Mike Rich was crushed between Bill Elliot's car and another that lost control in the pits. Those moments stand out because of the fatalities; I've seen more car crashes than I could count, but none of them stand out as much as those two.
Today, Donald Trump decided to take the Presidential limo out for a ride.
I have a feeling Dad would have had mixed feelings about Trump, but not entirely negative ones. He would have liked this, I think.
UPDATE: I'm pretty sure Dad would have loved the speech. Dad was a God and Country man. And apparently our friend Dave Bellavia was there.
UPDATE: On the subject of stock car racing, congratulations to the boys at Black Rifle Coffee for having the car they co-sponsor with Bass Pro Shops come in first in yesterday's race.
Today, Donald Trump decided to take the Presidential limo out for a ride.
I have a feeling Dad would have had mixed feelings about Trump, but not entirely negative ones. He would have liked this, I think.
UPDATE: I'm pretty sure Dad would have loved the speech. Dad was a God and Country man. And apparently our friend Dave Bellavia was there.
UPDATE: On the subject of stock car racing, congratulations to the boys at Black Rifle Coffee for having the car they co-sponsor with Bass Pro Shops come in first in yesterday's race.
He's not a "socialist" socialist
As Sanders continues to dominate the polls, progressive commentators and Never Trumpers (assuming those are genuinely different) increasingly try to explain that Sanders isn't really all that radical. You know, he spouts off about stuff, but what he really wants is a few non-radical gestures towards being nice and sharing stuff, because he's realistic enough to know he can't get his real priorities through Congress. As David Harsanyi puts it: “Vote Bernie: He’s got tremendously unpopular positions that will never pass!”
Harsanyi points out that "Enacting massive regulatory schemes that dictate what you can buy and what you can sell and how much you can sell it for is as good as controlling the means of production." It might be a good idea to take the guy at his word.
Guess the Line of Business: Noble Victory, Tom
The answer was of course that most hipster of all businesses: the craft brewery with ironic symbolism.
If you’re ever again asked to guess about a business in Asheville, pick brewery or brew pub first. Asheville has more breweries per capita than any other American city.
DSSOLVR distinguishes itself not only by demonic imagery, but also by breeding a full range of brews: not just beer but also mead, cider, and wine. I stopped in to see if any eldritch terrors needed slaying. The beer is not bad.
The artwork is Tolkien themed, with an eye for the Sauronic. Apparently my wife knows the artist.
If you’re ever again asked to guess about a business in Asheville, pick brewery or brew pub first. Asheville has more breweries per capita than any other American city.
DSSOLVR distinguishes itself not only by demonic imagery, but also by breeding a full range of brews: not just beer but also mead, cider, and wine. I stopped in to see if any eldritch terrors needed slaying. The beer is not bad.
The artwork is Tolkien themed, with an eye for the Sauronic. Apparently my wife knows the artist.
“The Dragon”
Sleipnir
In addition to the bike, I also have a Jeep for those times when the roads are impassable or I just need too much stuff. I’ve had it in my garage for some minor repairs lately, which kept it out of the downpour we had all last week. Today was beautiful—sunny and forty degrees—so I took some time to put it back together and clean it up.
I figured I had better get a picture so the wife would believe that I had actually gotten it clean. With all the mud we’ve got right now it’ll be filthy the next time I drive it.
I figured I had better get a picture so the wife would believe that I had actually gotten it clean. With all the mud we’ve got right now it’ll be filthy the next time I drive it.
The Gold Standard
Trump challenges the prevailing wisdom again, this time in pushing Judy Shelton for the Federal Reserve Board.
This mystery bedevils central banks. Productivity—the ability of workers to produce goods and services of real value to others ever more efficiently—is the indispensable ingredient for prosperity. Orthodox theory predicts that lower interest rates should stimulate more investment, and more investment should stimulate more productivity.
Yet since President Nixon slammed shut the gold window in 1971, interest rates broadly have fallen and Wall Street has become hyperactive alongside a declining rate of Main Street productivity growth. Only occasional tax reforms and the 1990s computer revolution have reversed that overarching trend, but never permanently and never to the level that obtained midcentury.
* * *
Recent academic research suggests she’s correct. Economists at major central banks and elsewhere have studied the extent to which capital mispricing by central banks (they don’t always put it that way, but that’s what they’re describing) depresses productivity growth, whether by allowing larger firms to crowd out more-productive upstart competitors or sustaining zombie companies or any of a host of other mechanisms.
Second Chance: Guess the Line of Business
I'm going to post the answer tomorrow, but I'll wait until late to make sure everyone who wants to has a chance to try. If you understand the kind of neighborhood, the answer ends up being very obvious. A further clue: it's not any of the types of businesses mentioned in the post, neither there nor in West Asheville.
Canada Undertakes Gawain's Quest
Pity the poor fools of the Canadian Armed Forces.
A military study group spent three years trying to figure out what will entice more women to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces.They should have read Chaucer.
The group called the “Tiger Team” was tasked with finding out where the military could do a better job of getting women to want to enroll and the results included things like referring to medals as “bling,” and more fashionable uniforms like “shorter, tighter skirts” and “more stylish shoes,” according to MilitaryTimes.com in a piece published Wednesday.
'Thou standest yet,' quod [Guinevere], 'in swich array,Gawain at least came up with an answer that satisfied his own woman. My sense is that accomplishing that much is the most that any man can do with the question.
That of thy lyf yet hastow no suretee.
I grante thee lyf, if thou canst tellen me
What thing is it that wommen most desyren?'
Fake News Today
"I just don't know if that was entirely fair," she commented afterward. "I'm all for equality and stuff, but I dunno -- the beard might have given her an advantage."But of course! That is the nature of beards.
Adultery is Good, You Say?
If only your marriage was 'a little gayer,' the NYT says, it would be happier too! By 'gayer' they especially mean more welcoming of adultery.
Along the way, let us pause to notice the expected conclusion that heterosexual men are the only bad actors:
UPDATE: You could also read the findings as anti-woman: after all, men who are married to women are no happier than women who are married to women. Women who marry men only get angrier. True happiness only comes when you can finally get rid of the women. That’s why they’re called “gay”!
One distinctive strength of male couples is that their tendency to candidly discuss respective preferences extends to sexuality as well, including choices that may startle some heterosexuals. For example, while the extent of non-monogamy in gay-male partnerships is often exaggerated, openly non-monogamous relationships are more common than among lesbians or heterosexuals. Many gay couples work out detailed agreements about what kinds of sexual contact are permissible outside the relationship, under what circumstances and how often.Longtime readers will recall that this was not only expected here but fielded as an argument in favor of civil partnerships instead of 'gay marriage.'
This is exactly what we should do: create a separate institution for non-marriage partnerships that can be judged by its own standards. Thus, if for example adultery should prove to be less of a concern in partnerships containing only men -- as many "same sex marriage" supporters openly proclaim -- we don't end up with a watering-down of the protections against adultery in traditional marriages. (If anything, those are far too watery already.) Let them do the things they want, just keep a distinction so we aren't forced to collapse the categories when we come before courts of law. It's only sensible to believe that the needs of these kinds of unions might come apart, so we ought to have the ability to address that in the law.Now we are at the point that the categories have collapsed. In a traditional, heterosexual marriage, showing that your partner was an adulterer was not only grounds for divorce but for the judge to grant you favorable terms in the division of property. Now we must instead learn that adultery should be negotiated, so that in all marriages it is neither grounds for divorce nor for a punitive division of property. The "Rule of Law" means we must all play by the same rules; there is only one set of laws governing all marriages, and these marriages "work better." We must all learn the new lessons.
Along the way, let us pause to notice the expected conclusion that heterosexual men are the only bad actors:
Researchers recently asked three sets of legally married couples — heterosexual, gay and lesbian — to keep daily diaries recording their experiences of marital strain and distress. Women in different-sex marriages reported the highest levels of psychological distress. Men in same-sex marriages reported the lowest. Men married to women and women married to women were in the middle, recording similar levels of distress.Maybe it's heterosexuals in general who can't get along, but women do all the suffering; those darned heterosexual men end up happier (though not as happy as the men who can avoid dealing with women entirely)! Clearly gayness for everyone is the best, preferable solution: human segregation by sex should become the ordinary norm. If you still want some heterosexual sex in your new gay union, that's ok; just include some arrangement for it in your 'detailed agreements about what kinds of sexual contact are permissible outside the relationship, under what circumstances and how often.'
What’s striking, says the lead author of the study, Michael Garcia, is that earlier research had concluded that women in general were likely to report the most relationship distress. But it turns out that’s only women married to men.
UPDATE: You could also read the findings as anti-woman: after all, men who are married to women are no happier than women who are married to women. Women who marry men only get angrier. True happiness only comes when you can finally get rid of the women. That’s why they’re called “gay”!
Just In Case
USNORTHCOM is preparing for counter-coronavirus approaches, if necessary. It reads as if the plan is less to deploy to contain civilian outbreaks than to quarantine themselves as necessary to keep the force functional. Immediate actions appear to include quarantines for servicemembers who may have visited China.
Voices from Wuhan
Some messages from the locked-down city that the PRC has tried to suppress, now published at The Federalist.
John Kelly Backs Vindman
I have great respect for Kelly, and at least part of this answer makes perfect sense to me.
That said, I can't say that I approve of the LTC's decisions here. I'm not prepared to wholly condemn him either, not based on the facts in evidence (as opposed to, say, should it prove true that he and his brother were leaking classified information to the press in order to hurt the President). I do think that his reassignment from the NSC was proper and appropriate, both because he served there at the President's pleasure, and also because there is no way the two of them could continue to trust each other enough to work together effectively. The NSC deals with the highest-level concerns, at the right hand of the President. Trust is necessary there.
Vindman was rightly disturbed by Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July, Kelly suggested: Having seen something “questionable,” Vindman properly notified his superiors, Kelly said. Vindman, who specialized in Ukraine policy at the National Security Council at the time, was among multiple U.S. officials who listened in on the call. When subpoenaed by Congress in the House impeachment hearings, Vindman complied and told the truth, Kelly said.That's all fair, actually. If he thought he was hearing something illegal, it was proper to raise it to the legal authorities and the chain of command. There remain some matters that are questionable, however. The one that concerns me the most is that he appears to have told Ukrainian officials repeatedly not to work with the Attorney General as requested by the President, and permitted by a treaty between our nations.
“He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave,” Kelly told the audience at the Mayo Performing Arts Center. “He went and told his boss what he just heard.” ...
[Trump's conditioning of aid] amounted to a momentous change in U.S. policy toward Ukraine—one that Vindman was right to flag, because other federal agencies needed to know about the shift, Kelly said.
Vindman also took action warning Ukrainian officials he spoke to: “I would tell them to not interfere — not get involved in U.S. domestic politics.”Everyone who has been with the American military for any length of time has dealt with toxic leaders. Navigating one's duty while being under the command of one is both difficult and taxing. I imagine President Trump is a pretty toxic guy to work for, given the way he uses insult and mockery against everyone who disagrees with him. John Kelly doubtless recognizes and (rightly) resents that approach. His sympathy for others subject to this leadership climate is understandable.
That said, I can't say that I approve of the LTC's decisions here. I'm not prepared to wholly condemn him either, not based on the facts in evidence (as opposed to, say, should it prove true that he and his brother were leaking classified information to the press in order to hurt the President). I do think that his reassignment from the NSC was proper and appropriate, both because he served there at the President's pleasure, and also because there is no way the two of them could continue to trust each other enough to work together effectively. The NSC deals with the highest-level concerns, at the right hand of the President. Trust is necessary there.
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