The dam breaks
We seem to be entering what you might call a preference cascade. Many unspeakable truths suddenly are being spoken all over the place.
In the Covid era, the Biden administration and its state-level allies have made a hard pivot away from the nudge approach towards an embrace of mandates. The presumed justification for this shift is that the severity of the Covid crisis required more drastic measures. But something else differentiates Covid technocracy from its predecessors: a remarkable incuriosity about whether the strictures it imposes actually work. This incuriosity has become all the more glaring in recent weeks, as Omicron has brought cases to unprecedented levels in cities like New York, where both vaccine passports and mask mandates are in effect.
The nudge approach, on the other hand, is at least ostensibly outcome-oriented: it assesses interventions on the basis of their measurable impact. So one of the problems with mandates, from the nudgers’ perspective, is that they risk conflating intention and outcome. Mandates are often difficult to enforce and generate backlashes, and thus may prove counterproductive. But they may remain in force, despite failing to achieve their objectives, because they demonstrate a moral commitment to a desired aim.
And as Zients’s holiday announcement demonstrated, when mandates fail to achieve the desired results, it is the fault of those who don’t follow the rules, not those who imposed them. A more empirical approach would treat the reality of noncompliance as part of what needs to be measured in order to assess the efficacy of a proposed policy. But such a strategy would imply that the technocrats themselves, rather than the anti-vaxxers or anti-maskers, should be held accountable for policy failures. Small wonder it has fallen out of favour.
Before last year it might have seemed obvious that the guiding ethos of technocracy was cold utilitarian calculus, but in the past two years it has become something like the opposite: moral fervour. Various factors brought about this shift, but the reaction of the technocrats and their constituency to Trump, with his “war on the administrative state” and love of the “poorly educated”, was arguably the crucial one. Tinkering behind the scenes, as was favoured in the Obama era, was no longer a viable approach for a class that felt its interests threatened.
Early on in the pandemic, the writer Alex Hochuli described the pandemic as “technocracy’s end-of-life rally”. At least temporarily, it had put the experts maligned over the previous half-decade back in the drivers’ seat. But the populist fervour that had driven the Trump movement re-energised itself in reaction to lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates. Initially, this seemed to place the technocrats in an unassailable position, since they could impugn their allies as aiders and abettors of disease and death.
A boost
I'm agnostic about how dangerous the vaccines are; the signal is awfully noisy. Boy, oh, boy, though, I'm having a hard time seeing any doubt about their efficacy against serious illness. That's not a noisy signal.
I'm still completely uninterested in forcing anyone to get vaccinated or boosted, but I'm glad we did. We're exactly at the age when it makes sense.
Something must be done, this is something
It's discouraging when the Supreme Court of the United States has members who are demonstrably incapable of thinking through the legal sources of government power. No one on that court should ever be caught saying something like this:
Justice Elena Kagan said federal agencies have expertise in disease management and suggested OSHA has the authority to make the mandate because “this is a pandemic in which nearly a million people have died.”The government has a power the Constitution doesn't grant because a lot of people have died? It's a style of thinking called "A policy I favor" because "facts on the ground I hate." That's not even a good explanation for why she likes the policy, let alone a stab at an explanation for why the federal executive branch has the power to implement the policy. Was it an illusion that our society ever possessed the ability to consider two critical questions--(1) whether the policy will actually have the desired effect and (2) whether the proposed agent has the legal authority to implement the policy, even assuming it would have the desired effect?
I'm really losing patience with the argument that I have to agree to some policy of uncertain cost and benefit because otherwise I must not care about the bad things that are happening. Yes, it's a bad disease. Yes, I bitterly regret that it's hurting and even killing people. No, it doesn't follow that every harebrained scheme will make things better. Nor does it follow that everyone who objects to a harebrained scheme either denies that it's a bad disease or doesn't care about sick people. It's because it's a serious problem that's actually hurting and killing people that I insist that we find things to do about it, if we can, that don't make things worse. As in the case of global hot/cold/wet/dry mania, I advocate sticking to policies that are neither pointless, more harmful than beneficial, nor an illegal use of state power that will come back to bite us later--very possibly without even having helped in the crisis we argued was great enough to justify jettisoning both the Constitution and considerable material prosperity.
Illegal Parading Day
Since they had the misfortune to schedule it opposite a real holiday, I missed yesterday’s extravaganza.
Was it prudent for the President to call a protest that close to the building where the contested votes were being counted? No, though everyone who attended had a constitutional right to do so. Was it appropriate for a minority to march on Congress? Sure: that’s also constitutional, and they were there at the invitation of the President of the United States.
Was it ok for a small subset of those to batter the police lines? Obviously not. People who broke the law should take responsibility, and the courts are issuing punishments. Aside from some high profile cases, judges — though clearly offended by the affront to the majesty of government— are mostly assigning less jail time than prosecutors ask. The offenses were almost all misdemeanor ones. No one brought guns or knives, no one was killed by the rioters.
If they stuck to punishing the guilty according to the standards of the law, not a word of protest would they hear from the American right. Instead, they have to try to turn it into a bloody shirt to wave against tens of millions who never did anything wrong.
Greenwald is right, again, which is a phrase I would never have expected to type once let alone several times. This is an insult both ridiculous and dangerous, and far more of the latter than any threat posed by last year’s riot. (It may not be more ridiculous.) These people should all be ashamed.
Twelfth Night
The last day and night of Christmas is upon us. The evening is traditionally spent removing Christmas decorations, After this, the long and barren winter begins.
There are only a little more than seventy days until Spring, although for observant Christians the forty days of Lent are (sometimes only mostly) among them. It's a time of difficulty and discomfort, but also purification.
But one last pleasant day first. We are having a lasagna I made yesterday as a last feast, although I'm 'fasting' a bit already, having decided to do the Dry January thing this year. I did a dry April last year in preparation for a Strongman tournament and was happy with the experience, so I've decided to include it as an occasional thing.
UPDATE: My youthful participation in Christmas pageants had convinced me that all the events happened at once, the Wise Men and the angels and the shepherds all at once. But if this is the day for the Wise Men, it’s probably the day for this carol too.
Introducing the numbat
This little guy's name came up in a letter-scramble word game at the NYT that I'm addicted to working every morning. I'd never heard of him, but he looks like a mash-up between a possum, an armadillo, and a fox. He eats termites. Some really peculiar creatures developed on the isolated Australian continent.
Let the money follow the student
Vouchers and school choice just got a leg up in Arizona, where parents will receive $7K/year to send their kids to a private school if the public schools shut down again even for a day.
And no need for them ever to go back, I hope.
Stealing and Wealth
I am greatly bothered by an article that AVI linked to at his place with some additional discussion. I left a comment there outlining my objections, but I want to expand with at least one example I know well from personal experience and education.
The comment I left may be helpful in clarifying where I'm going with the historical discussion, so here is the relevant part.
Even granting that the real source of the increase is the free market -- things like the miracle of compound interest, or the ability to invest in growing industries and factories and the like -- the premise leaves out something very important about how one obtains the capital to make such initial investments. Let's say that, due to these economic miracles, we could become rich with an investment of merely $100,000 -- that this will produce an increase like she's discussing, so that it will become worth $2,500,000 in time (and that will continue to grow).Yet I do not have an extra $100,000 to invest. If, however, there is a legal and successful way for me to rob another man for it -- taking it out of him in labor, or a legally contrived way of stealing his house, or whatever else -- then I can make the investment. And then I will become rich, and my descendants even richer! He will become destitute, and his descendants will not enjoy the increase in wealth that mine do. They may become better off if 'a rising tide lifts all boats,' as they may become well-paid servants of my descendants. Nevertheless, the initial theft really matters and produces long-term differentials in wealth and power.
The particular example I'm going to discuss is the economic history of the American South, but I think the general issues outlined here apply also to the other examples the original author gives, e.g., British India, the West African slave trade, and so on. To quickly outline one of these examples: The West African slave trade enriched a lot of West African slavers, as the author notes; they did not become nearly as wealthy as some of the others it enriched because they did not plug that wealth into the new industrial-age free market and investment system like the owners of the slave ships in Boston and New York had done. Even granting her point about the importance of the free market and investment systems, though, the initial investment that made Boston and New York so wealthy compared to other places was provided at least in part by inputs from slaving in the famous Triangle Trade.
I. Antebellum Theft
America's South has long been its poorest and most benighted region, but this was not always the case. Before the Civil War, it was a tremendously prosperous region. This was driven by one of these forms of stolen wealth too, the slave system, whereby a man's whole life of labor was plugged into investments by another man who stole it.
America's South has long been its poorest and most benighted region, but this was not always the case. Before the Civil War, it was a tremendously prosperous region. This was driven by one of these forms of stolen wealth too, the slave system, whereby a man's whole life of labor was plugged into investments by another man who stole it.
This combination of theft and the new systems of compound interest and investment in emerging industries worked extremely well. Plantation houses built in the South were some of the finest homes being built anywhere in the world, and they were accompanied by beautiful gardens, fine churches, elegant cotton shipping cities like Savannah or Charleston or Mobile, colleges and education. One of the highlights of this period was the poet Sidney Lanier of Georgia. In addition to his own poetry, he was a scholar of music and a translator of works out of Middle French and Middle English. He was especially interested in popularizing the high civilization of the Middle Ages for boys, and one of his works -- The Boy's King Arthur -- was illustrated by N. C. Wyeth and is still in print today. (I highly recommend both this and The Boy's Froissart for anyone with boys old enough to read longer works.)
Now this land, so rich and prosperous, had been a positive wilderness not very long before. Indeed, parts of Alabama and Mississippi were still in the process of being settled and transformed even as the civilization was flourishing. Just a few decades earlier, at the time of the Revolutionary War, most of it was unsettled; King's Mountain in North Carolina was the site of a battle in which a militia of outright frontiersmen had defeated the British Army.
II. The Effects of Post War Theft
Just as illustrative of the principle of stolen wealth's effect on the system, though, is the story of what happened after the Civil War -- the transformation of this region from wealth and education into poverty and a lack of education that made it the mockery of America for generations (indeed, one sees it still). The war itself was devastating, but what really destroyed the South for generations was the economic system imposed upon it after the war. This was a form of economics also used in colonialist economies in South America and India, and will help to illustrate those cases too.
I've written about this before, for example in 2013 when discussing a mystery that bothers historians -- why were the slave narratives captured by the CCC in FDR's day inclined to describe the antebellum South as a happy time?
There are some other theories about why the former slaves had such positive things to say about their lives on the plantation. The one to which I am most inclined is that they were all much older when they gave the interviews, and spoke with the natural nostalgia of the old for the sunny days of youth. Memory paints the memories of those days, in nearly all of us, with rose colors.But there are other possibilities too. For one thing, economic conditions in the South cratered after the war, so that life after the war was markedly harder for everyone -- especially, as is usual, those on the bottom. The traditional market for Southern cotton was lost, as the English mills had turned to India during the war's blockade. The South's mills were destroyed, so it was relegated to being a producer of raw materials for Northern mills at rates set by Northern banks. The economic system imposed by the North was a brutal colonial-style monoculture built around cotton production, and colonial monocultures are notoriously harsh places to live (here as in Latin America, India, and elsewhere). Until the boll weevil collapsed the cotton economy in the late 1920s, the South was ground down by the usual effects of such economies: the price of the monocultural good (cotton, here) dropped every year, because supply increased every year as those commanding the economy forced ever-greater production of the single cash crop. Under those circumstances, quality of life dropped, again especially for the poorest and those most dependent on agriculture. Naturally those who had been slaves who had only known how to work cotton farms, or who were directly descended of slaves who had, were very likely to be a part of the very lowest agricultural classes tied to the cotton monoculture. They would have endured the worst conditions imposed by the economic system.So it is possible (indeed it doesn't seem unlikely) that happiness is greatly influenced by economic realities. When the interviews were conducted from 1936-8, the boll weevil had collapsed the cotton economy, and the Great Depression had followed on its heels. While the boll weevil eventually allowed the South to escape the monoculture economy, at first it meant a severe economic depression for the region, which was then followed on by a severe depression worldwide. The former slave speaking in 1937 would be looking back on a life that had, in economic terms, ground ever worse each year of his or her life, capped by ten years' complete economic failure. The pre-war plantations may really have seemed like a better place by comparison to that. They may really have been, if not a better place, a happier place.
Another thing the CCC was doing at that time was reforesting Warwoman Dell in northeast Georgia, which had been denuded by this system so the land could be used for cotton production -- required by the banks in order to obtain the loans, at interest. Warwoman Dell is in the mountains in land completely unsuited for cotton, but the system was totalizing and grinding.
All that money -- all that interest -- impoverished almost everyone in the South, black and white, except a few robber barons called the Bourbon Democrats who managed to sit atop the misery in comfort. The invented the deep racism and the Jim Crow system to keep the poor whites afraid of the poor blacks, with whom they shared almost every practical and political interest. Instead, they spun narratives -- two exemplars of this being Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind -- out of the bones of the old civilization, still widely visible a hundred years ago in ruined plantation houses and the remains of old mills. That civilization was indeed gone with the wind, destroyed not so much by the war as by the effects of seven decades of economic theft activity by northern banks and the aforementioned robber barons.
Nevertheless a lot of wealth was extracted from this system, even though it led to an ever-increasing decline in the price of the cotton it was over-producing (the ever-increasing supply being the reason for the ever-decreasing price). The ever-cheaper cotton went north to be turned into finished goods and sold at a profit. The interest on the loans went north and was added to the banks' capital, to be invested in emerging industries. Between the one form of extraction and the other, a great deal of investment was available to be invested for the miracles of the free market, from compound interest to new forms of technology. This partly explains how the United States became the richest nation in the world in the same period, capable of raising armies and navies that would be victorious in two World Wars.
These investments may eventually have produced a rising tide that lifts all boats; things are better in the South economically than they once were (although the last two years have reversed many recent gains). Yet the reason the South has long been the poorest and most benighted region of the United States is because of this economic theft; and the reason it was once extremely wealthy and profitable was because of another economic theft. The free market and these economic miracles it produces may well drive the vast increases in wealth; but whose children become wealthy is very much informed by acts of extraction.
Actuarial Data
I wasn't going to do any more COVID posts, on the assumption that it's endemic now and therefore something we just have to learn to live with rather than trying to organize our whole society to defeat. Since Tex has already done two this morning, though, what's one more?
This story is worrisome to me because it's based on actuarial data from insurance companies. Actuarial data is a form of statistics, and we all know Mark Twain's famous line about 'lies, damn lies, and statistics.' However, actuarial statistics are different from most of the statistics one sees in the news because they directly inform insurance industry bottom lines. These data have to be right or it costs money, lots of money, and therefore they tend to be as accurate as anyone knows how to make them. A professor of mine once said that insurance was a great business because the main issue was deciding how much money you wanted to make that year, and then setting your prices accordingly. That's not quite true, but to the degree it's true enough to sound clever it's only true because of the accuracy of actuarial data.
OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers in the state.Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”Davison was one of several business leaders who spoke during the virtual news conference on Dec. 30 that was organized by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said.“What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”
Emphasis added. H/t: D29, who also cites a source which notes that the increase in death is coming late enough in the pandemic that the disease itself is not a likely explanation -- and that death rates from the disease seem to be down, even as much as half as last year. These deaths correlate with the vaccines' becoming widely distributed through society, though that correlation is not proof that there is a casual relationship. The leading proven cause of death for most of this population (18-45) is (suddenly) fentanyl overdose.
The fentanyl that is killing so many Americans of working age is being driven by Chinese production. Mexican fentanyl is not nearly so pure nor so deadly, but Chinese-produced fentanyl is being made available to the cartels in Mexico.
So here is another theory about the cause: the pandemic has driven higher illicit drug use among America's working age population of 18-45. This is also, please note, America's military age population. Chinese sources are providing large amounts of deadly chemicals to be added to the illicit drugs, which is thinning America's military population.
Why would they do that? Payback to the West for the opium wars and so forth, perhaps; or as a preparatory measure for the war they expect when they try to take Taiwan, reducing our potential fighting forces even in case of a draft; or just because it makes them money, and anything that makes money is a good thing -- whether it entails forced-labor/slavery of the Uighurs or the Tibetans, the brutal working conditions in their factories, or dead Americans.
I think it would be fair to characterize it as at least potentially a military attack on the American people, however, if it can be shown that the Chinese government is knowingly contributing to the flows of these drugs to Mexico. You might even regard it as the first shot, already fired, in the next World War.
Honesty sells when the idea is good
Every now and then I run into a COVID article written by a sane person, and I like to publicize it. It's so refreshing to read the thoughts of someone not addicted either to wishful thinking, to demonizing opponents, or to ignoring the impact of incentives on behavior. It's possible to believe that vaccines and masks are somewhat beneficial without concluding that they're either 100% bad or 100% good. It's even possible to believe that they're an OK idea for some people in some circumstances with also concluding that mandating them for all people in all circumstances is justified or even effectual for our ostensible purposes. It's possible to accept that a disease is sometimes quite dangerous, even deadly, without concluding that we can create a world in which that's no longer true, or that attempting to do so will be worth the considerable damage the corrective measures inevitably will cause. In fact, it's a lot like trying to discuss climate alarmism.
Above all, it's essential not to advocate policies we know to be sketchy because we secretly believe they'll nudge people into behavior we believe will help them despite themselves. That might work for a one-off emergency, but it's deadly if we ever want people to take our well-meaning advice on any other topic ever again. I speak now from a purely utilitarian standpoint, as if it weren't enough to realize that lying is simply wrong.
Here's an idea
From Andrew McCarthy:
Having finally discovered federalism, perhaps President Biden could take the next step and discover liberty. If he did, he’d accomplish more of what he wants — higher vaccination rates and lower incidence of serious illness and death, fewer disruptions and better economic performance — by trusting Americans to care for themselves. Trying to strong-arm reluctant people into compliance with increasingly irrational protocols is not working on them, and it is strangling all of us.The CDC reports COVID hospitalization rates in the U.S. by age group for all of 2020 and 2021:
Meat Pies
I made venison pies with compound herbal butter on New Year’s Eve, and homemade meat pizzas yesterday. They’re a traditional part of the holiday cheer.
A Timeline of Food
This is a pretty neat website, although it has the usual limits of history. Fried chicken is almost certainly older than the oldest source attesting to it, for example.
Still, it’s a lot of fun. Enjoy.
Haud Hogmanay
The Scottish government has forbidden the celebration of Hogmanay this year, which attentive readers will recall is the reason that Hogmanay came to be in the first place. The wild, three-day New Years' celebration became what it is because the Scottish government forbade the celebration of Christmas, finding their subjects entirely too inclined to drunken revelry on the feast of Christ's birth. Thus, the Scots simply moved it to the next weekend.
This year England is paying the price for the Scottish government's attempt at avoiding revelry. England is not that far a drive for Scots who want to conduct their outdoor torch parades in Viking gear, drinking and setting fire to stuff. (Drinking and setting fire to England is also an old Scottish custom.)
We will be celebrating here. I'm making venison steak pies, shortbread, and festive drinks like raw-egg eggnog.
Haud Hogmanay, and may you all have a much better New Year than either of the two past.
Authoritarianism's Appeal
For 'good' purposes only, of course.
The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach.
The idea that the government exists to keep you safe, and may violate your rights as necessary to do so, is pernicious. Government does exist to provide security in the sense of holding a space in the world that will not be overrun by those who would enslave or tyrannize you. If it does this by enslaving or tyrannizing you, however, it has already defeated the purpose for which security was wanted.
There are ultimately no limits to government power once you accept the principle that safety per se is a proper end of government. What could you regulate under the heading of climate change? Every economic activity, surely; and thus every activity whatsoever, since every choice one makes has economic consequences. Take an activity that has as few as possible: should I take a walk outside in the fresh air? If I do, I'm not doing other things that may be valuable in the fight against climate change. Perhaps I should be spending my exercise time generating power on one of those generator standing bicycles. Indeed, perhaps the government will find that we all have a duty to do so:
One bicycle could potentially provide a small village with electricity if each household spends on hour per day pedaling the bike.
So like Conan pushing the wheel, we could all be mandated to spend even our exercise time in a way that those with the whips have determined is in the interest of the common good.
Well, it worked out for him. Maybe it will be good for us too. Plato's Athenian would have liked the idea quite a lot.
For those who believe as the Declaration of Independence does that the sole function of government is to secure inalienable rights, this principle must be rejected. Granting governments extra powers in emergencies is unacceptable because governments can always make emergencies as necessary to continue their powers. Granting them extra powers for emergencies as broad as "climate change" whisks away any defense from having them regulate every aspect of everyone's life. It is the choice of the frogs who demanded a king.
Advice You Can Use
If you are a reader of Grim’s Hall, there is a good chance that you would enjoy opening champagne tonight with a sword. If you’ve never done it before, The Art of Manliness has a helpful graphic.
The Feast of the Holy Family
That is today's feast; I missed the Feast of Holy Innocents this year, but you can read prior posts about it. Likewise the Feast of St. John the Divine, which is remembered here.
"Dancing is Strictly Not Permitted"
Pakistan? China? No, the state of Washington Western Australia. [UPDATE: See comments. My mistake.]
You see it's not religion or totalitarianism... well, actually, it does sound like totalitarianism at the point that you presume the right to regulate dancing inside private homes. Amusingly masks are not required, so it's fine to breathe the same air in an enclosed space as long as you don't engage in any dancing.
Consensual sex between adults of any kind, however, is presumably permitted. No decent progressive government would dare regulate that. So I guess it's not quite totalitarian, since there is at least one exception to totalized regulation.
On a Similar Subject
Blogger is having a day, I guess; I usually have no trouble posting comments places, but today it's just doing a weird thing where it shows the comment as posted, but then when I come back it was never posted. I assume that, like other similar tech errors that crop up from time to time, this will pass in a while. YouTube was being completely impossible to use with Blogger about a year ago, and that went away completely until last week, when I began having very similar issues with the HTML editor on Blogger crashing. (If that happens to you, the only way I know to fix it is to log into Blogger with an iPhone rather than anything running Windows, and force it to change back to Compose View instead).
So anyway, James' post linked to a post by AVI on Authoritarian Populists. He is also wondering where this intense fear comes from, given that in fact mostly people on the right are anti-authority. Certainly it is true that, were I somehow to come into authoritarian power, I would use it chiefly to dissolve the systems of power that currently are being misused. I might dissolve the entire Federal bureaucracy; or perhaps the entire Federal government, except for a Constitutional rump that ran the Navy (and not a standing Army), involved no other bureaucracies, and complied with the 10th Amendment by doing nothing whatsoever that the Constitution doesn't explicitly assign to the Federal government. I might dissolve the state governments, too, shifting to a voluntary model of government such as I have discussed here from time to time. Grant me this tremendous power -- which I don't actually seek in any way -- and I would use it to dissolve power, not to impose my will upon other people. Not even on abortion, which I believe to be philosophically indefensible in most cases (barring things like intertubal pregnancies, which will kill the mother as well as, inevitably, the child). Not even on armed robbery or murder, where I would license people to form self-defense leagues and militias to protect their communities, but would prefer to dispense with law enforcement officers and courts that operate as a separate class from the people. This might be called populism, since it returns power to the people; but it is not properly authoritarian in any way (especially since, contra hypothesis, I seek no power whatsoever but merely try to persuade people that this would be a good way for us to go together).
However! It is not me, or you, that these people fear. The issue is merely that they cannot distinguish us from the ones they fear. This is normal when you are really completely separate from another class of human beings: most of us could not easily explain the difference between various Hindu castes nor some of the more novel LBGTQ+ categories. Social distinctions are often very complicated, and impenetrable to outsiders.
The people they are afraid of do exist; there just are almost none of them. They are people like Mencius Moldbug, whom I've never met, nor have I met anyone who has met him as far as I know. They supported Trump, and being unable to distinguish, the left thinks that everyone who supported Trump in any way and for any reason must be somewhat like them.
They really can't distinguish between them and the people who showed up in Charlottesville, nor between them and the KKK (who did not), nor between them and the broad class of anyone who would consider voting for Trump. They cannot distinguish between those who believe the election was conducted in an unconstitutional manner in 2020 and those who believe the wilder tales being promulgated about election machines and servers in Italy. They cannot distinguish between those who came to the Stop the Steal Rally to hear the President speak, and those who marched on the Capitol; nor, easily, between those who marched on the Capitol and protested peacefully outside of it and those who went inside with flags and facepaint. Nor can they distinguish between those and actual fascist insurgents, who would have brought guns.
Your average Trump supporter is none of those things, in my experience; he or she is an ordinary American who was disengaged with politics for decades since Reagan left, increasingly seeing no one in either party who had his or her or America's interests at heart. Republicans and Democrats alike, they sold out their country for personal profit, sent jobs to China or Mexico, maximized corporate profit but let the American economy wither. Suddenly, in Donald Trump, they found a guy who really wanted America to succeed -- to become great again -- and who spoke a language they understood about doing the simple things like building walls (both physical ones to prevent mass immigration that depressed their wages, and economic tariff ones to restore the domestic economy).
Those people aren't like me, or most of you, either. They are somewhat like my father, who was the most decent and upright man I ever knew. They do not fear democracy, but they do fear corruption; democratic forms mean nothing if they are corruptly prevented from expressing the true will of the people. They do not desire to be ruled by authoritarians, but by leaders they chose for themselves, who share their ideas about right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and other basic values. They may sometimes be wrong about those values, or not; but they wish to govern themselves, as a people who do have shared values, according to those values.
This is in fact a very democratic notion, a Federalist notion that allows different values to exist in different parts of America; but to see that it is you have to be able to make all these distinctions. That requires coming to know these people on their own terms, and well enough to see how they differ from others who may also be on the right.
Fearing Guns
James has an excellent question at his blog: why do people fear guns in a visceral way? There is good discussion in the comments. I would simply join it, but for some reason Blogger isn't letting me comment over there.
So here is what I wanted to say:
To some degree it's the same thing driving the literary convention called "Chekhov's Gun." Any introduction of a gun into the drama, no matter how small, implies that the gun will be fired by the last act.
Real life doesn't work that way, but human beings tend to construct dramatic stories about their lives, and this convention is so well-known because it is so completely obeyed by storytellers. Seeing a gun, then, implies that violence is being foreshadowed; that it is forthcoming.
For those of us who live with guns, of course, sheer repetition proves that this dramatic tension is not a real feature of reality. I first saw a gun in my father's closet; he lived and died and never fired it as far as I know. I have that gun in my safe now, and I'm not going to fire it either because it's a cheap piece of crap from postwar Germany that might explode in my hand. I have a gun that belonged to my great-great grandfather, and another that belonged to my grandfather; whole generations have passed without them harming anything other than the occasional squirrel for Brunswick stew.
I have other guns I see or handle more-or-less daily, none of which have been fired recently (due to the expense of ammo more than anything else; it's fun to shoot for practice, and to keep in shape as a marksman). They never cause any trouble, but they're available in case trouble should appear from other directions.
Still, I suspect it is chiefly the literary and dramatic conventions. Those who never encounter the things have only those dramas to fall back on, mentally, and that is how the story always plays out in the dramas.
Here's a fun piece on that topic.
The Feast of St. Thomas Becket
Martyred this day 1170, Thomas Becket is remembered by today’s feast. Here is a version of the story that suggests a motive for one of the knights who helped kill him.
Viking Routes in Scotland
A major new mapping project by universities in Scotland will examine ports and portages.
One man's trash
Maggie's Farm linked this charming article, originally published in the NYT, a periodical that still apparently manages to put out things worth reading despite its best efforts to ruin itself. Molly Young gives us a thoughtful and stimulating look at the work of Paul Rozin, who analyzes disgust reactions.
I realized long ago that my disgust reactions are anomalous. It's one of the things that define my identity, which is founded on a willingness to question rules and conclusions rather than assume that the majority view is by definition correct. Our differences are the basis of a valueable exchange system, in which all the riches available to us can be sorted through a complex social market in which we each apply our own measures of cost and benefit. Around our house, for instance, I automatically take on jobs that I know would distress my husband but have a negligible impact on me, if any, like cleaning up poop. In return, my husband assumes responsibility for things that would drive me nuts but place little burden on him. Voila, an economy! Few things make me happier than to find that what I prize is so undervalued by others that I can pick it up for a song. It's exactly the opposite of wanting what's in vogue. It's what makes me at heart a contrarian. Society needs contrarians, as long as we're not too difficult to get along with. Someone should always be hanging around demanding that we reconsider some basic assumptions, just in case.
The syndrome does come with a large dose of alienation. In my seventh decade of life I'm only just now beginning to get a handle on how to deal with that. We contrarian introverts do need communion with other human souls, we just can't get it in the most usual ways.
Military to Diversify Working Dogs, Include Chihuahuas
So far, there have been no Chihuahuas capable of taking down a 250-pound man by the arm, so the military has elected to eliminate that test altogether.
More Restrictions on Latin Mass
The Chicago Diocese is making it very difficult for priests to conduct a Latin Mass.
...priests, deacons, and ordained ministers who wish to use the "old rite" must submit their requests to Cupich in writing and agree to abide by the new norms.Those rules specify that the Traditional Latin Masses must incorporate scripture readings in the vernacular, using the official translation of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.In addition, such Masses cannot take place in a parish church unless both the archbishop and the Vatican agree to grant an exemption.The new policy also prohibits the celebration of Traditional Latin Masses on the first Sunday of every month, Christmas, the Triduum, Easter Sunday, and Pentecost Sunday.
The push follows the Pope's move to try to limit the usage.
The Vatican's explanatory document states that the intent of Traditionis custodes is "to re-establish in the whole Church of the Roman Rite a single and identical prayer expressing its unity, according to the liturgical books promulgated by the Popes Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council and in line with the tradition of the Church."
What always strikes me here is how much more the Latin Mass represents an establishment 'in the whole Church of the Roman Rite [in] a single and identical prayer." It's the one they sing in Jerusalem, and occurs in the same language and terms as when performed in America or Europe, Africa or in (secret, hidden churches in) China. It ties the Church together, and ties it also to its ancient ancestry -- those who, by doctrine, continue to be members of the Church after death.
It seems to me that a quick way to divide the Church into many competing factions is to divide it into many competing languages. In fact, I believe there is a Biblical story about that.
Sleigh Bells Ring
In the discussion below, I linked to an article on how the lyrics of Jingle Bells have a kind of dark sarcasm about the joys of horseback riding and sleighing. I found this performance of the original version, which also has a markedly different chorus than the one we know so well.
The lyrics aren't all that dark, really; rather, they make light of a real danger facing the people of the era. In that way it reminds me of this song, which likewise allows itself to make fun of a very serious peril that faces us today. It ends up being a fun song, even though the dangers of driving while intoxicated are very real and can be much more terrible than portrayed.
That seems to me to be something like the spirit of the original Jingle Bells. We all know we could end up 'upshot' or flat on our backs when we get out on horseback, just like we all know we could encounter one of these 'merry fellows' on the highway -- and that it might not be a laughing matter if we really do. Like M*A*S*H or similar military-themed humor, sometimes it is allowable to make fun of even the truest perils we face.
Christmas Day in the Morning
The giant laughter of Christian men
That roars through a thousand tales,
Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,
And Jack's away with his master's lass,
And the miser is banged with all his brass,
The farmer with all his flails;
Tales that tumble and tales that trick,
Yet end not all in scorning—
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas Day in the morning.
-Chesterton, "Ballad of the White Horse"
Christmas dawn
My oldest friend's weaving studio at first light this morning. She likes to weave in the pre-dawn hours before all the craziness starts.
More Christmas Eve Baking
I’m not the artist Tex is, but I did bake a bit today. Not all of it survived to be photographed.
Clockwise from top, Snickerdoodle cookies, a spice cake, an Asiago cheese ball (not technically baked), chocolate cheesecake tarts, and a full regular cheesecake, shortbread, and fresh baked herb bread.
Tomorrow, roast turkey and ham.
Breakfast Sliders for Dinner
We've reached the stage of Advent where I am actively trying to do non-Christmas stuff so as to preserve the really good stuff for the 12 day feast to come. Two of the last three nights we've just had sandwiches for dinner. Last night I made pork burritos. Tonight I made sausage and cheese sliders, with eggs on the side.
Almost there.
A friend of mine hit upon the idea of reading a chapter of Luke every night in December; there are 24 chapters, so she'll finish the book tomorrow. Last night was Chapter 22, which includes my favorite divine instruction in verse 36 (roughly, "Buy a sword even if you have to sell your coat"). It's a worthy project, although it seems better for Lent because you end with the Easter story instead of the Christmas one.
Holiday baking continues in preparation. I have now distributed that entire giant loaf of Julekage. Today I made shortbread. Tomorrow I will finish the baking for Christmas dinner, so that the ham and turkey breast can go into the oven first thing in the morning.
Scary Soccer Moms
The worst thing about them is that they're so likeable. It makes it hard to remain devoted to the necessary purges.
Some highlights; you can read the whole thing if you want to see how far into the motte-and-bailey, our-position-is-the-only-rational-one stuff she is. Her position is the only rationally possible one, which makes their positions unintelligible even though she claims to have met with them and joined their Facebook groups.
"What exactly that last phrase ["without coercion"] means is ominously vague....""Before 2016, I always thought of Nazis as mainly historical villains that belonged in Indiana Jones movies or old news reels or the sad stories my grandfather told me. Now, however... I am aware that fascism is creeping back into the world at large in terrifying ways..."
Nazis, you say?
"No, I don’t understand that argument either." [It is indeed plain she did not understand their argument, because the one she ascribes to them is absurd.]"I found the members were all stripes of Republican and I was pleasantly surprised to see opinion was not monolithic in the group...."
So, Nazis, right?
"I caught a gleam in the woman’s eye I didn’t like. Was there some flirtation with insurrection being suggested here? What, exactly, was she saying?""Despite my uneasiness, I couldn’t help but find myself liking the women in the room. They were charismatic. They were energetic. They had no problem letting my low-functioning autistic son play with their children, which is unfortunately rare among a lot of the other mothers I’ve encountered. But this made me even more uneasy. I realized these women were dangerous precisely because they were so friendly."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that none of these women are dangerous by any standard I would normally recognize. While I'm out there, I'll lay down a wager that none of them are Nazis, either. Not remotely, in fact. I'll bet they're not even fascists in any reasonable sense of the word. Maybe just that one with the gleam in her eye. You can't tell about people like that, with gleams and stuff.
Julekage
UPDATE: This turned into a discussion of military ethics and the law of war. Joel, if you happen to see this your opinion would be welcome.
Yuletide
I'm sure he's quaking in his boots
Sen. Schumer vows to hold a record vote on Build Back Bonanzalooza in January so certain people will have to vote in the Senate and "not just on television." Somehow I doubt that Sen. Manchin fears blowback from the West Virginia voters who supported Trump, and now oppose BBB, by about 70%.
Manchin and his voters apepar not to be impressed by the repeated claims that the Election Fraud Enabling Act is necessary to combat voter suppression, either.
I'll still be on tenterhooks about both of these pieces of garbage legislation until the November 2022 midterms are over, but three months ago I wouldn't have dared to predict that things would be going this well.
Smoked Beer
Tonight I had a Rauchbier, which is a smoked lager from Germany. The argument is that until the Middle Ages all beer was like this.
This stuff is amazing. I’ve never tasted anything like it. Medievalists and beer lovers alike should seek one out.
This is what people who care about data sound like
NY Magazine ran a far better than average article about how to analyze the Omicron news coming out of South Africa and the UK. I got all the way through it without receiving the irritating impression that either the interviewer or his subject were trying to wrench the story in either direction: neither "Wake up, it's worse than you thought!" nor "Go back to sleep, it's nothing." They're just trying to figure out how to make sense of confusing data and make useful predictions.
Yuletide mayhem
Normally we're quiet as mice on Christmas. We like to have a Christmas Eve dinner for neighbors, but the day itself we like best to spend home alone together. This year, however, my husband's brother astonished us by suggesting that all his many children are scattered to the winds for one kind of visit or another, and that he and my sister-in-law would like to stay with us for four days over the holiday. That's a lot of family togetherness for a couple of cave-dwellers like us. Fortunately, they're pleasant people, but even better, I hear they're bringing four, count them, four dogs--two of their own and two belonging to an a traveling daughter of theirs. Now that's my idea of a visit! With our own dogs, that will make six dogs and five cats. It's six cats if you count the tom who's been hanging around lately applying for membership. The cats don't come in the house, though, which will limit the comic potential. I vividly remember a dog chasing a cat up the Christmas tree some three or four decades ago.
Old Country Sounds
While trying to dig out the Christmas music records, I went back through a collection of old singles -- 78s? -- that I found when cleaning out Dad's house. It was a collection buried in the back of the last place we cleaned out, the crawlspace under the stairs to the basement. There's a bunch of them. A few of them probably belonged to my young father, but I think most of them were my grandfather's.
1954, that one, Carl Smith having fun on the same theme.
Les Paul and Mary Ford, 1951. That's the fellow whose gold-top guitar was one of only two wishes of a young Ray Wylie Hubbard.
Here's a small sample.
That's Marty Robbins, 1957. Dad would have been eleven, so I think too young to like songs about lost love. My grandfather would have been in his forties, I guess.
1951. It amazes me a little to see the artist given on the record as simply "Hank Williams."
Hank Thompson, not singing about lost love.I wish I had a Wurlitzer jukebox to put these things in. I probably have enough to fill one, but I definitely don't have ten grand for anything I just want.
Great Moments in Progress
Headline: "Giant Kites That Drag Cargo Ships Across Oceans Go on Trial."
So we've re-invented sailing, but without the systematic rigging that would give you much control.
Low Down Freedom
"Too much freedom makes young people feel unsafe and unprotected: a possible explanation of alarming myocarditis events."
Did the UK suddenly become a lot more free this year? Must have been Brexit.
The polling must have been brutal
The Biden administration has withdrawn from negotiations to pay $450K to each illegal immigrant family traumatized by the experience of enforcement of the border laws.
In other news, Build Back Bankrupt and the Election Fraud Enabling Act both apparently are on the rocks.
Mixed Feelings
On the one hand, I deeply disapprove of this kind of secret police stuff. On the other, this guy actually managed to take down a corrupt high public official.
Latex Glove Bagpipes
A how-to video:
I dated a girl many years ago who was fascinated by music theory. At dinner one time, while we were chatting, she took out a small pocket knife and made a playable recorder with the straw in her drink. I don't remember the tune she played on it, and yeah the sound quality was what you would expect, but it was a recognizable tune. She made other impromptu instruments at times as well and even got me playing an instrument for a while.
Ode to Dragons
This is a lovely instrumental piece that falls near the end of a new album. If you stay for the rest of the album, be ready for Black Metal -- but this piece is just a beautiful ode.
#Trillionaire
On the upside, I was briefly a trillionaire this afternoon thanks to my crypto earnings. Sadly, the titanic market spike only lasted a few minutes and I did not find any buyers at that price.
I suppose Senator Warren will be stopping by to tax my unrealized gains.
The Home Front Is the Front Line
In What I've Learned Rescuing My Daughter from Her Transgender Fantasy, Charlie Jacobs shares how she discovered she was in a fight for her daughter as well as how she reclaimed her daughter from transgenderism. It's long and worth the read.
A quick excerpt:
My daughter was an ultrafeminine girl since birth. She insisted that her room be painted pink, and she refused to wear anything but dresses until third grade. She avoided her older brother’s toys and sports, choosing tea sets and Shopkins, a series of tiny, collectible toys.
Her favorite activity was to slip into my closet and don my few sparkly clothes and shiniest of heels. She rejected sports in favor of art and sewing.
That all abruptly changed when she turned 12. As her body matured into young womanhood, she stopped begging for a bikini and avoided any clothing that accentuated her figure. She hid her breasts under men’s extra-large sweatshirts.
I remembered doing similar things as my body changed, so I didn’t worry at first.
Then, my daughter immersed herself into anime art and cosplaying, the hobby of dressing like fantastical characters. I supported her creative side.
I didn’t know that anime and cosplaying can overwhelm a young mind. I didn’t know that anime and cosplaying involved gender-bending themes and that the community crosses into pedophilic and sexual themes.
I also didn’t know that the older cosplay community groomed the younger cohorts.
During that same time period, my daughter went through Teen Talk—a Manitoba, Canada-based program that says it provides “youth with accurate, [nonjudgmental] information” on “sexuality, reproductive health, body image, substance use awareness, mental health, issues of diversity, and anti-violence issues”—at her public school.
She came home with a whole new language. She and all her girlfriends discussed their labels—polyamorous, lesbian, pansexual. None of the five girls chose “basic,” their term for a straight girl.
Now, I was worried.
She distanced herself from her old friends and spent more time online. I checked her phone, but I was not astute enough to know that she had set up “appropriate” fake social media accounts for my viewing.
Bacteria
I've been increasingly down for about a week, with my wife finally dragging me (and herself) to the doctor yesterday. It's a bacterial infection of my head and chest, for which I was assigned antibiotics. These are not sitting well, so I'm feeling a bit down about that too.
Hopefully that will explain why I've been quiet. Antibiotics can work pretty fast, though, so maybe it won't be much longer.
A Biker Rock Advent
YouTube being an interesting space, here's an opera coach reacting to the same video you just saw. It's worth watching it again just to see her face as she listens to it.
More About the Orkney Dig
Quite a lot more detail about the Viking sword mentioned last week, and other findings.
Navy Beats Army
It’s an upset, but I suppose it’s not a surprise. Army couldn’t even beat Afghanistan this year.
Language Warning
Today I was traveling down the highway and I turned on the radio -- always a mistake -- and heard some kind of 'country' on the broadcast that was half hip-hop. Now I like hip-hop; there's a lot to admire in the best of it, especially in terms of poetry, although here too I tend to like the older artists than the newer ones. That's probably just generational, or mostly: music in general has been getting objectively worse for a while.
All the same, it reminded me of this Dale Watson tune I haven't posted because of its foul language. I don't know why I try to maintain standards about that; I've long belonged to communities, both here and in Iraq, where good men frequently resorted to strong language. I won't claim that I don't occasionally use it myself for emphasis. Maybe just because it's a marker for standing for something; John Wayne used it once in a while, but only just once in a while when it really belonged.
Anyway, here's Dale, who is a great singer songwriter and has a good point about what's getting sold to us these days.
Instapundit: Self-Described Cabal Must Answer
Ideally, I guess. Good luck making them.
I'd be satisfied if they'd learn a pragmatic lesson. Their way doesn't work. Their idea that they're the right ones to be in charge is therefore manifestly false. I imagine it's hard to let go of power, prestige, and the money that come with them. But they have proven that they are not the right ones to lead. If they could accept that and get out of the way, I'd be happy to waive vengeance.
Dead Skunks in the Middle of the Road
If you ask Wikipedia, this is a novelty song. But I don't think that's fair. It's a song that celebrates a very common experience on which we do not adequately reflect. There's a big deal about how many animals we kill every year on the highway; and it's a big deal for the skunk. Passing one of these corpses on the road, a motorcyclist at least is inclined to reflect that it's but for the grace of God, as they say, that we go there.
So good for Loudon Wainwright the Third, which is a very august name for someone singing about dead skunks on the highway. He's from North Carolina, originally, but apparently a hippie family that was mostly about yoga. His business, that.
Proposed: A Typology of Conspiracies
A woman named Abbie Richards has proposed this typology of conspiracy theories, from wild-sounding things that turn out to be unquestionably true to things she thinks are detached from reality. She has a plausible topline that all the worst ones are anti-Semitic, although I am going to disagreee with one of her examples there.
Now there is going to be some debate about some of these. Obviously she puts 'The Election Was Stolen' in the "dangerous to yourself and others" category, which indeed it may be -- dangerous, that is, to yourself and others. It may nevertheless be true. I'm sure she doesn't believe it is at all true, but I think that some versions of that theory are not only plausible but likely. We've discussed that at length here: it definitely appears that the election was conducted illegally and unconstitutionally, and in ways that disabled fraud protections. Every audit or hearing in every affected state has found numbers of probably or definitely fraudulent votes well outside the margin of victory, and a Time magazine article has interviewed those who hired 'armies' of partisan poll workers to count votes.
So I'd say that one is no higher than blue, at least in some forms. The forms being put forward by some people who allege secret servers in Italy or wherever may well be much less well-grounded.
In her top category, I would dispute that the use of the phrase "Cultural Marxism" is necessarily anti-Semitic, and definitely not a conspiracy theory. Most people who use the phrase probably don't actually know who the Frankfurt school members are, or that they were Jews. More, they're not objecting to anything essentially Jewish about the school: they're objecting to the Marxism, which is formally material atheism.
And it's not a conspiracy theory that these people existed and published works expressing thoughts and ideas that could be fairly characterized as a sort of Marxism applied to cultural issues. You can go read the books at the library. Objecting to a set of published ideas is not a conspiracy theory, and it's not anti-Semitic if your objection is to the ideas and not the people (who aren't all that Jewish anyway if they're Marxists, which involves a denial of the God of Israel).
Broadly, though, I think she's not too far off. Tim Pool points out that she had to drop "Bill Gates is Microchipping People' because that one turns out to be true; sadly, instead of moving it to the green sector she left it off the list. It's an interesting and useful idea, trying to sort these in terms of which ones are really true, plausibly true, or wildly untrue. What do you think about all this? Are there any you'd move up, or down, on the chart?
UPDATE: On reflection, I think there are several top level items that are in no way essentially anti-Jewish; a few of them are barely or not conspiracy theories. There’s definitely a push by trans activists, who clearly do have an agenda; you can object to the ideas they’re advancing without ever having a thought about Jews enter your mind. They’re not even obviously related topics, since Judaism has a traditional sexual law very similar to Catholicism and not all that different from Islam. So this topline category may need examination.
A Sword of Orkney
Not in the best of shape after a thousand years, but they can do a lot with X-rays now.
Technically A Subversive Message
A boat in a holiday parade is disqualified for “an overt political message.”
Conan the Existantialist
Another essay on REH’s Barbarian, this one by a British comedian. Well, and a general appreciation for Howard’s work:
The Jacobean 1936 cowboy yarn The Vultures of Whapeton is, as John Clute points out in the introduction to Penguin’s Heroes In The Wind selection, “ostensibly a Western tale but… we are left with a sense of the profound entrapping starkness of the world … the tale systematically strips every character of any pretence that their ‘civilisation’ is anything but a sham.”
Its not as good as Joel’s but it’s another perspective— and one that tries to be fair.
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