Enchiridion XXX

XXX

Duties are universally measured by relations. Is a certain man your father? In this are implied taking care of him, submitting to him in all things, patiently receiving his reproaches, his correction. But he is a bad father. Is your natural tie, then, to a good father? No, but to a father. Is a brother unjust? Well, preserve your own just relation toward him. Consider not what he does, but what you are to do to keep your own will in a state conformable to nature, for another cannot hurt you unless you please. You will then be hurt when you consent to be hurt. In this manner, therefore, if you accustom yourself to contemplate the relations of neighbor, citizen, commander, you can deduce from each the corresponding duties.

That very first premise is widely challenged by contemporary philosophy, which wants to consider duties as universal in character. Rawls, famously, argued that we should imagine (because we cannot actually do it) devising the moral rules in a 'veil of ignorance,' behind which we should know nothing about our actual circumstances. Some who consider themselves Kantian thinkers argue that Kant's dictum that you can only act properly under a maxim that could be expressed as a universal moral law requires treating all people exactly equally -- but Kant, of course, would never have accepted that you ought not to pay special attention to your father. Kant's actual moral vision was highly conservative, once he got around to spelling it out in the Metaphysics of Morals. It's only people who stop with the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals -- which is far more popular, being both shorter and more theoretical -- who can imagine he would have endorsed any such thing.

Epictetus says something that would have been morally obvious to everyone in his age, and in every earlier age, and almost every subsequent age. That it has become controversial points to the weakness of our own.

This view of duty expands outwards in accordance with the relations we bear to each other. I owe duties to my family that I do not to others; to my neighbors that I do not to others; to my fellow citizens that I do not to others. (This too is now highly controversial among the Managers, who would have us bear duties to the entire world while washing citizenship of any meaning: disloyalty to the demos from those who describe themselves as democrats.) Doing your duty in each of your relations satisfies your duties to the semblances you encounter of the things outside. 

In fact, though, you have only done your duty to yourself. You have behaved as one ought to do, given what you think you know your relations and duties to be. In that way you have lived with honor, and thus can rest in honor. The injustice the semblances may produce is their own concern: you know you have done right, and are satisfied.

A Legal Dispute

Julie Kelly hits upon an interesting fact: the Justice Department has been lying in its indictments about the whereabouts of two people, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. I don't think she's right about the legal argument she's advancing, but it is interesting that the government apparently refuses to tell the court the truth here as elsewhere. If this conduct was so bad -- Cocaine Mitch himself called it an "insurrection" just this week -- surely just laying out the plain facts would do? 

Confront Your Skin

 NPR worries about your choice of emojis, and wants you to worry too.

Woke Oppressors

REI is having a dispute about whether to unionize. The leadership decided to hold a podcast to talk about it.

Wilma Wallace:

Hi REI. My name is Wilma Wallace and I serve as your Chief Diversity and Social Impact Officer. I use she/her pronouns and am speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the Ohlone people.

So I'm here chatting with Eric Artz who serves the co-op and all of us as CEO....

So just to recap for the audience on Friday January 21st we were notified by the National Labor Relations Board that the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union filed a petition for an election at our SoHo store in New York. And since then I'm sure you've heard from lots of employees across the co-op. Maybe we can start by you sharing some of what you've heard.

Eric Artz:

Well thank you Wilma. Thanks for hosting and hello to everyone that is listening. For those of you who I have not had the chance to meet, I use he/him pronouns and I'm speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples.

Spoiler: they are not in favor of allowing their workers to unionize. 

The atmosphere did it

It was the atmosphere that prompted the shooting!--I didn't say the people who created the atmosphere "caused" the shooting, so I didn't commit libel. From John Sexton, one of the better contributors at HotAir:

If accusing Palin (or her PAC) of clear incitement to mass murder when in fact there is no such connection at all doesn’t constitute reckless disregard for the truth, what could possibly qualify? In a way, even Bennet’s own argument supports this. Saying he was too rushed to do a proper job of it is just a way of justifying his own reckless behavior, i.e. if he’d only had more time, he’d have looked into the truth of what he was writing. The jury may decide the law protects the Times even in this case but if so then it’s hard to see how why “reckless disregard” was included in the law at all.

Lowdown Freedom

Trucker convoy has "weaponized freedom" to "undermine democracy." The preservation of the freedom of ordinary common folk was the whole point of the latter as I had always understood it. Canada doesn't have our Declaration of Independence, with its philosophical justification for government; but what really is the point of democracy if it isn't to protect the rights of common people? 

Common people will have common faults, and their common sense will just mean embracing the kinds of things that make sense to common folk. It's only those kinds of things any government can do whose legitimacy is broad-based, for the common people are by far the most of them. Democracy was never meant to be for the great and the good; that's aristocracy, which has its own faults. They are worse faults: the Arabs say, "The mistake of the wise man is equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools."

So they'll drink too much, and some of them will cheat on their spouse; they'll have some prejudice, sometimes, against the people who are different. But they won't leave thousands of American citizens stranded in Afghanistan, or sell the place and all its ancient liberties to a totalitarian China. They won't murder millions like Mao did to try to make some titanic change. I'm not one of them, but I'll ride with them. My loyalty is always to them: as decent as they can be, as free as they can be. May God keep them -- He must love them, having made so many -- and may God defend the right. 

Enchiridion XXIX

XXIX

In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it. Otherwise you will begin with spirit, indeed, careless of the consequences, and when these are developed, you will shamefully desist. “I would conquer at the Olympic Games.” But consider what precedes and what follows, and then, if it be for your advantage, engage in the affair. You must conform to rules, submit to a diet, refrain from dainties; exercise your body, whether you choose it or not, at a stated hour, in heat and cold; you must drink no cold water, and sometimes no wine—in a word, you must give yourself up to your trainer as to a physician. Then, in the combat, you may be thrown into a ditch, dislocate your arm, turn your ankle, swallow an abundance of dust, receive stripes [for negligence], and, after all, lose the victory. When you have reckoned up all this, if your inclination still holds, set about the combat. Otherwise, take notice, you will behave like children who sometimes play wrestlers, sometimes gladiators, sometimes blow a trumpet, and sometimes act a tragedy, when they happen to have seen and admired these shows. Thus you too will be at one time a wrestler, and another a gladiator; now a philosopher, now an orator; but nothing in earnest. Like an ape you mimic all you see, and one thing after another is sure to please you, but is out of favor as soon as it becomes familiar. For you have never entered upon anything considerately; nor after having surveyed and tested the whole matter, but carelessly, and with a halfway zeal. Thus some, when they have seen a philosopher and heard a man speaking like Euphrates—though, indeed, who can speak like him?—have a mind to be philosophers, too. Consider first, man, what the matter is, and what your own nature is able to bear. If you would be a wrestler, consider your shoulders, your back, your thighs; for different persons are made for different things. Do you think that you can act as you do and be a philosopher, that you can eat, drink, be angry, be discontented, as you are now? You must watch, you must labor, you must get the better of certain appetites, must quit your acquaintances, be despised by your servant, be laughed at by those you meet; come off worse than others in everything—in offices, in honors, before tribunals. When you have fully considered all these things, approach, if you please—that is, if, by parting with them, you have a mind to purchase serenity, freedom, and tranquility. If not, do not come hither; do not, like children, be now a philosopher, then a publican, then an orator, and then one of Caesar’s officers. These things are not consistent. You must be one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own reason or else externals; apply yourself either to things within or without you—that is, be either a philosopher or one of the mob.

I didn't say anything about the last chapter because I think it's self-explanatory. That doesn't mean I don't think it's important.

This chapter, as the note at the original mentions, is almost the same as a parallel part of the Discourses, where  arguments and discussions are laid out in fuller form.  Since it is in its fuller form, I will also leave it be save to answer questions you may have.

Enchiridion XXVIII

XXVIII

If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your own mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?

Enchiridion XXVII

XXVII

As a mark is not set up for the sake of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world.

This mysterious line is of immense importance. A single sentence, this lays out the conclusion to an argument whose premises are unstated. The argument is a proof, whose consequence is a view of the problem of evil similar to that adopted by St. Augustine.* 

As noted before, the Enchiridion records only the summary conclusions of the Stoic school that Epictetus founded, and not the underlying arguments. Lacking the unstated premises, the proof's force and its consequences may not be obvious. 

So here is a reconstruction of how the unstated premises might be stated:

1) All things come to be because they order themselves by their own nature, or because they are put into a particular order by someone or something else. (Aristotle Physics 1)
1a) An example of the first is living beings, which grow into what they are because of internal processes like digestion that let them turn other parts of the world into material for their own order. A child grows into an adult because it is realizing its own internal natural principles of order.
1b) Examples of the second include artifacts, which are made by someone else; and accidental features of nature like weathered riverbeds or seashores. They become what they are because of an external activity.

2) Things like human beings that are internally ordered have a nature; the reason a dog grows into a dog and a man into a man is that their natures differ.

3) Determining the good for a things requires looking at its nature, then; dogs can profit from eating different things than men, for example.

4) Human nature differs from dogs, other lower animals, and plants in that it has an additional capacity for reason that allows it to obtain fuller goods than irrational natural drives.

5) Human nature's highest good is eudaimonia, a flourishing that comes from ordering all your activities in accord with the reason that is the highest part of your nature. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1)

6) This ordering produces virtues (arete), which are excellences of capacity that allow you to pursue the highest good even more fully. 

7) Euidaimonia is reached when you exercise your arete in accord with your reason: thus, you can become happy by living the most virtuous life that is possible for yourself, which reason can tell you how to do.

8) Since this is the highest good for your nature (5), and your nature determines the good for the kind of being you are (3), attaining eudaimonia is the proper mark to aim at in your life.

9) Because the reason that is part of human nature (4) gives you the ability to hit this mark (7), nature can be said to contain a mark that is intended for you to hit and not miss.

Therefore, a mark exists in nature that is happiness and the highest good;

Marks do not exist to be missed, but to serve as targets to be hit. The mark does exist. Therefore nature is such that evil is not its intended end. Good is -- the highest good, and happiness, that comes from learning to hit the mark.

This leads to the solution of the problem of evil, which is that it is not the case that the gods have made an evil world, or a world in which evil is a necessary part. The gods have made a world in which good is the intended mark of nature: by pursuing your rational nature and developing your natural virtues, good and not evil is what you will obtain. Evil comes from people ignoring their reason, or their virtues.

What about random accidents, such as a rock falling upon your child? Those are events of type (1b), things that do not arise from one's own nature (what Kant will later call autonomy) but from outside forces that may be random chance (which Kant called heteronomy). They are not evil, no more than the carving of the river or seashore was evil. They are just the random workings of things that have no will of their own.

Therefore, the existence of the mark proves that the nature of evil is not part of the world. It is a failure by some of us to live up to the good -- to hit the mark that nature has provided. 

*(For St. Augustine, this is placed in the Christian context: God did not create a world with evil in it, nor that is evil by nature, nor in which evil is a necessary part. Gods will is perfectly good; but our free will allows us to fail to attain the goods that God made possible for us, or for others to harm us out of a failure of theirs to pursue the good that God would have wished them to pursue instead of what they chose. Evil is also then a human failing, or a collection of them, rather than a charge that can be laid at the feet of God -- as Job did not do, at least not at first.)

Just what it says on the tin

 The Virginia legislature's Black Caucus contains a lie right in its name.  It's the Black Leftist Caucus, and no black Republicans need apply.  Virginia's new black state representative aired the sad state of affairs on the floor of the House, saying:

Maybe I need to start my own caucus, the Virginia Non-Leftist Black Caucus. Right now it’ll be a caucus of one but that’s okay. As Thoreau said "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."

Enchiridion XXVI

XXVI

The will of nature may be learned from things upon which we are all agreed. As when our neighbor’s boy has broken a cup, or the like, we are ready at once to say, “These are casualties that will happen”; be assured, then, that when your own cup is likewise broken, you ought to be affected just as when another’s cup was broken. Now apply this to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, “This is an accident of mortality.” But if anyone’s own child happens to die, it is immediately, “Alas! how wretched am I!” It should be always remembered how we are affected on hearing the same thing concerning others.

Can anyone be so rational or detached about a beloved child? Ought one to be? Even Job tore his garments and shaved his head in mourning over his children, and was said to be blameless for 'he did not charge God with wrongdoing.' Epictetus wants us also not to charge the divine with wrongdoing, and simply to accept it as one of the random things that happens in this world. Which, of course, it is. 

Enchiridion XXV

XXV 

 

Is anyone preferred before you at an entertainment, or in courtesies, or in confidential intercourse? If these things are good, you ought to rejoice that he has them; and if they are evil, do not be grieved that you have them not. And remember that you cannot be permitted to rival others in externals without using the same means to obtain them. For how can he who will not haunt the door of any man, will not attend him, will not praise him, have an equal share with him who does these things? You are unjust, then, and unreasonable if you are unwilling to pay the price for which these things are sold, and would have them for nothing. For how much are lettuces sold? An obulus, for instance. If another, then, paying an obulus, takes the lettuces, and you, not paying it, go without them, do not imagine that he has gained any advantage over you. For as he has the lettuces, so you have the obulus which you did not give. So, in the present case, you have not been invited to such a person’s entertainment because you have not paid him the price for which a supper is sold. It is sold for praise; it is sold for attendance. Give him, then, the value if it be for your advantage. But if you would at the same time not pay the one, and yet receive the other, you are unreasonable and foolish. Have you nothing, then, in place of the supper? Yes, indeed, you have—not to praise him whom you do not like to praise; not to bear the insolence of his lackeys.

The analogue here is Diogenes, whom Plato reportedly called “Socrates gone mad.” 

“A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. “If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn’t have to live on lentils.” Diogenes replied, “But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn’t have to flatter Dionysus.”

CDL Proximity Metric

A few years ago, reporters were incensed when they were asked whether they or someone they knew owned a pickup truck -- the Ford F-150 being the most popular line of vehicles in America for decades, and the next two most popular also being pickup trucks. None of the reporters knew anyone with a truck.

In the wake of the Convoy for Freedom, another metric has been proposed: "How far out in your immediate social circle do you need to go to find someone who can legally operate a dump truck?"

I myself own a Ford F-150, so I am zero steps removed in the first metric. I am not too much farther in the second one. I can myself drive a fire truck, which in North Carolina is legal for volunteers without a CDL provided they take an annual weekend certification course. Professional firefighters require a CDL. Since several of my friends are professional firefighters -- the county has a few slots for them, in addition to the volunteers -- the distance is one.

Back in Georgia my next-door neighbor was a big rig driver. He retired after being hijacked and shot, though he managed to wreck the truck to prevent it being stolen (and to allow the police to capture his hijacker). It's a hard job under the best of circumstances, and can be dangerous as well. 

Brilliant Analysis

Nobody believes China's pandemic numbers are remotely accurate: they are clearly lying. As part of its coverage of the Olympics -- which we should be refusing to participate in, both because of the ongoing genocide and slave labor in China and also because we cannot protect our citizens who travel there, as even Nancy Pelosi admits -- the NYT decided to entertain those numbers.

Headline: "Good morning. China’s zero-Covid policy has kept deaths very low. Can it continue?"

Has it, though? Refer to the graph at the first link.

The NYT admits that there is widespread disbelief: "Even if China’s official numbers are artificially low, its true Covid death toll is almost certainly much lower than that of the U.S., Europe or many other countries. Consider how enormous the official gap is."

That is an astonishing bit of reasoning. "Even if they're lying, look how BIG the lie would have to be. They can't be lying THAT much."

I mean, they could be. Their lies over the Great Leap Forward leave us guessing, even today, as to whether only 30 million people died or as many as 60 million people did. They control the state media and have threatened the foreign media on the ground very effectively, while purchasing influence with their parent companies. There's no reason to believe their numbers are remotely accurate, especially since they are also implausible. They're claiming to be doing fifty times as well as Japan, for example, a nation of similar population density and social cohesion but higher technology and far better sanitation. 

UPDATE: The PRC apparently chose to open the games with a synchronized display of smiling and waving Uyghurs, whose families are under threat at home to ensure their cooperation. It is raw, totalitarian propaganda. 

Another Western Interlude

Enchiridion XXIV

XXIV

Let not such considerations as these distress you: “I shall live in discredit and be nobody anywhere.” For if discredit be an evil, you can no more be involved in evil through another than in baseness. Is it any business of yours, then, to get power or to be admitted to an entertainment? By no means. How then, after all, is this discredit? And how it is true that you will be nobody anywhere when you ought to be somebody in those things only which are within your own power, in which you may be of the greatest consequence? “But my friends will be unassisted.” What do you mean by “unassisted”? They will not have money from you, nor will you make them Roman citizens. Who told you, then, that these are among the things within our own power, and not rather the affairs of others? And who can give to another the things which he himself has not? “Well, but get them, then, that we too may have a share.” If I can get them with the preservation of my own honor and fidelity and self-respect, show me the way and I will get them; but if you require me to lose my own proper good, that you may gain what is no good, consider how unreasonable and foolish you are. Besides, which would you rather have, a sum of money or a faithful and honorable friend? Rather assist me, then, to gain this character than require me to do those things by which I may lose it. Well, but my country, say you, as far as depends upon me, will be unassisted. Here, again, what assistance is this you mean? It will not have porticos nor baths of your providing? And what signifies that? Why, neither does a smith provide it with shoes, nor a shoemaker with arms. It is enough if everyone fully performs his own proper business. And were you to supply it with another faithful and honorable citizen, would not he be of use to it? Yes. Therefore neither are you yourself useless to it. “What place, then,” say you, “shall I hold in the state?” Whatever you can hold with the preservation of your fidelity and honor. But if, by desiring to be useful to that, you lose these, how can you serve your country when you have become faithless and shameless?

"How can you serve your country when you have become faithless and shameless?" There is a rhetorical question, since we have endless evidence before our eyes of how such people 'serve.'

This is a larger statement of how to engage in public matters, which have also been called 'semblances' and 'externals.' It is not that you ought not to do it; it is that you ought not to privilege any of them above the maintenance of your own honor, fidelity, and self-respect. If you do no more than provide your country with one more faithful and honorable citizen, you will have done enough. If it is given to you to do more, fine; if it is not, you have fulfilled your real duty by preserving these internal qualities.

It occurs to me that Stoic philosophy is not taught in public schools, except for those who choose to major or take electives in philosophy or history and even then only if they happen to choose that area. Yet what better lesson could we convey to the young than this one right here in today's chapter? It does not matter if you are famous; it does not matter if you are powerful. It only matters to live with faith and honor, and to live so that you hold your head up because you know that you deserve to hold it up. 

Only in that way could you serve your people anyway, whether friend or fellow citizen. 

The clear analogy today is to Mark 8:36, which makes a similar but metaphysically sterner claim. What profits it you to gain a position of service to others if you have lost the faith and honor that would allow you to perform service? Well, it might profit you quite a bit -- again, there are many examples right in front of us of people who have profited from precisely that. Yet I think Epictetus means something very close here to what Jesus said.

Strictly Unconstitutional

The White House calls on all media platforms -- by name, Spotify -- to censor the speech of Americans with whose views they disagree. 

Private platforms might possibly do what they want; that's an argument, though there are significant counterarguments. Private platforms that are explicitly carrying out the will of the government are acting as agents of the state, and are bound by the restrictions on the state. 

Of course the government is already in violation. The courts might correct them, or not; the corporations might choose to do the right thing, or not. There is a point, coming closer, at which the corrective is us. 

If you stop arresting people, arrests will go down

 On the other hand, some of the kids may get killed by someone you didn't arrest.

Enchiridion XXIII

XXIII

If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, for the pleasure of anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be content, then, in everything, with being a philosopher; and if you wish to seem so likewise to anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you.

This begins to be an answer to the question raised by the last chapter; we will see more over the next two days.

What would we do without critics?

Via Neo:  I can't say "Justin Castreau" didn't ask for it.

JP Sears is funny as usual, but he can't hold a candle to the genuine news article Neo linked:  "critics warn that conflating the absence of bloodshed with 'peaceful' protest downplays the dangers of the weekend demonstrations."  Was there violence that didn't quite draw blood?  Well, no, but one person interviewed (duly identified as non-binary, because we need to know) said she knew of at least one child who was afraid to go outside.

That's a DeSantis signature.

I leave you with these words of comfort:

I don't think you have to call the kids in until the "mostly peaceful" klaxons go off.

A Rough Estimate on Ukraine

 Russia continues to redeploy significant assets in ways that look like it is preparing for war. It has chosen to redeploy dozens of deniable Wagner PMC assets from Africa to Europe, and is today moving its Pacific Fleet through the Suez Canal to take up position somewhere closer to Europe -- the final destination is unclear at this time, but even from the Mediterranean they could provide some support. Like the existing deployments of forces on the border, the Pacific Fleet maneuver is expensive and cannot be maintained for a very long time without sacrificing a strategic asset in a strategic region. 

My personal guess is that the Russians will use Belarus to provoke (or more likely fake) a Ukrainian 'provocation' the Belarussians will respond to, allowing Russia to invade under the pretense of defending its allies from Ukrainian aggression. They will use the overwhelming force they are accumulating behind special operations and aircraft fires to rapidly seize and hold the eastern half of the country only, I estimate, where most of the population speaks Russia and conceives of themselves as Russians. If they then consolidate that position, there will be a long front that can be dug in and defended. Western diplomatic pressure to make them concede it will be exactly as effective as it has been in South Ossetia and Crimea, i.e., not at all.

Russia is in a perfect position to steal a march on the West, take the portion of Ukraine that will be easiest to take and easiest to hold, and to do so at a low cost in lives and resources. It's the most sensible play, and in accord with Putin's past operations. They could do something more aggressive, but it would also be more expensive and be more likely to create a long-term problem for them like an insurgency behind their lines.

I'm guessing Belarus will do it this time because their President just publicly issued a more aggressive statement on Ukraine than Russia has done. They've already allowed Russian military assets onto their territory, and are openly inviting many more 'if attacked.' If they're staging up to take the lead, then Russia gets to come in not as aggressor -- the chief war crime -- but as a defender and savior of its (allegedly invaded) ally. This will also serve as a pretense that the Russians are not aggressively gobbling up territory again, though of course the collapse of the West and of American power under the Biden administration has made such realignments inevitable. 

Expecting a play of that sort is probably also why the Ukrainian government is trying to get the Biden administration and others to lower their tone, as they want to avoid any appearance of provoking or encouraging conflict. The last thing they could want at this time is to give any appearance of being an aggressor in this conflict. (CNN analysts are a good reverse barometer, so if you read this analysis you'll see both that lowering the tone is the wise play and also that the Biden administration is almost certain to go the other way, thinking they are being 'muscular' rather than walking into a trap.)

Anyway, that's my estimate of what military intelligence calls the 'Most Likely Enemy Course of Action' (MLECOA). This differs from the 'Most Dangerous Enemy Course of Action,' (MDECOA), which I'm not going to lay out in public. I doubt most Americans care enough about any of this to want to get involved, but the Biden administration has shown a stark disconnect from being able to care about, or even entertain concerns from, ordinary Americans.

Enchiridion XXII

XXII

If you have an earnest desire toward philosophy, prepare yourself from the very first to have the multitude laugh and sneer, and say, “He is returned to us a philosopher all at once”; and, “Whence this supercilious look?” Now, for your part, do not have a supercilious look indeed, but keep steadily to those things which appear best to you, as one appointed by God to this particular station. For remember that, if you are persistent, those very persons who at first ridiculed will afterwards admire you. But if you are conquered by them, you will incur a double ridicule.

Let us combine this advice with the last chapter’s: sometimes the admiration does not come until after you die. Socrates and Jesus both had a few admirers at their executions; numerous artists knew very little commercial success in their lives. Some committed suicide, even, only to have their works become beloved later — Robert E. Howard is often mentioned here, and Van Gogh was just mentioned at AVI’s place. 

In remembrance of death we remember that all of life’s troubles are passing; in remembering that honors often come after death to those who were true to their divine appointment, we might even face death boldly under difficult conditions and circumstances. 

Yet it is striking that Epictetus, who has heretofore cited honors like admiration as mere semblances to be discarded as ‘not our business,’ would cite them here. Is admiration from others a proper ethical concern, or is it not?

The interested might turn to Aristotle’s discussion of whether honor affects the happiness of the dead beginning in Nicomachean Ethics I.10 and followings. Aristotle asked if Solon was right that you couldn’t judge the happiness of a person before death, or if you could. This leads into a general discussion of happiness as an activity (which presumably only live people can execute), but that leads to a puzzle about whether the dead can be less happy if they are later scorned, or if their children suffer, and so forth. He isn’t quite wiling to say these things can be dismissed as considerations even for the dead, for whom they are no longer even semblances. 

Solidarity - A Blast from the Past

 

A Perfectly Framed Comment

UPDATE: Solidarity, baby. Workers of the World, Unite. 

Enchiridion XXI

XXI

Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes, but death chiefly; and you will never entertain an abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

This is a lesson that is definitely found in Zen, in especial in the Bushido tradition (*-do in Japanese generally denotes a Buddhist spiritual approach to finding enlightenment in a practical art). Epictetus was sort-of exiled from Rome as part of a general ban on the teaching of philosophy in the city, although I do not know how terrible he found the Greek countryside in practice. 

There is similarly a long tradition in Christian Europe following this advice, which is called Memento Mori in the Latin ("Remember Death").

Compromise and the Possible in Politics

If you wanted to create a compromise position that would address the concerns of the Freedom Convoy and also the political/managerial class in Canada, would it be possible? The Prime Minister says no (through Twitter and Zoom, continuing not to explain exactly where he is physically located). This is because:

• His opponents cannot be compromised with because they are racist Nazis (the Managers seem to encounter a highly improbable number of Nazis in the world; this time the evidence seems to be that some placards compare vax mandates with the treatment of Jews by the Nazis -- which hardly puts the Nazis in the position of good guys, I notice, oddly for those who are supposedly Nazis themselves); 
• who lie and insult (and apparently threaten, although they assert they will be peaceful he shows no signs of being willing to appear in public anywhere near any of them, regardless of security arrangements); 
• and who desecrate war memorials (this latter apparently referring to a single woman who was dancing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Canada).

This definitely requires thinking the absolute worst it is possible to think of tens of thousands of your fellow citizens who normally work for a living and pay the taxes that funds your salary. Politics was supposed to be the art of the possible, which meant seeking compromise in spite of differences.

The attitude is nevertheless common among the Convoy opponents. If you ask the Manager whom the Washington Post hired to explain the situation to Americans, there can be absolutely no compromise because opponents are too irrational to formulate a position: instead, the government must be "a strict line of resistance that doubles down" on everything they hate -- which, actually, suggests to me that the author knows perfectly well what they want and could easily compromise with them if inclined. (Is it appropriate for a party allegedly aligned with the common man, in a democratic society, to 'strictly resist' the people while 'doubling down' on everything they hate?)

Weirdly, to me, a compromise position appears to be quite obviously in reach because they both want the same thing. Ottawa's mayor put it this way (quote in first link, above): "You have the right to protest, you've had your protest, please move on. Our city has to get back in normal stead." 

The protest itself is merely a demand to "get back to normal." That's literally all they want: they want the Canada of the last hundred years back. (Cf. "Make America Great Again," which likewise merely demanded a return to the normal condition before we started making trade deals against our interests and policing the global economic order instead of pursuing national interests like defense). You could give them at least some of their normal back, in return for them giving you at least some of yours.

The Managers do not want that normal, which is also very odd. Canada has always been described to me as a pretty happy place, where people are exceedingly polite and the health care system is supposed to be enviable compared to our own. 

That is now how the Managers describe their own society. It's almost as bad as ours, to hear them tell it. 

The convoy speaks of threats to liberty. It would be close to something if the participants weren’t so far off. Threats to liberty are rampant in Canada, but not because of vaccine mandates. Rather, it is income and wealth inequality; worker exploitation; gendered, religious, racialized and other forms of hate violence; ongoing settler colonialism; and other forms of structural marginalization and oppression that compromise liberty. Same as it ever was.

The “Freedom Convoy” is a regrettable movement that offers a reminder that open societies will produce protest movements — as they should. However, when those movements are toxic, they must be denounced and resisted. 

I think I may have to adopt the policy of referring to this class as 'the Managers' on a semi-permanent basis, and to this sort of I-hate-my-country description as "the Litany of Bullshit." Canada is a perfectly nice place that is having some hard times that are self-inflicted by its own government, which apparently hates it, its people, and its history. Such a government cannot have any claim to democratic legitimacy, which at minimum requires loyalty to and love of the demos of which one is a part. 

The plantation

Despite the article of faith embraced by the politerati, it's possible that President Biden's plunging approval rate among not only American voters but black Democrats resulted not from his failure to criminal justice or election "reform," but instead from vaccine mandates and inflation. As Eric Levitz points out, the popularity crash comes from black voters with a less solid attachment to the ideological wing of the Democratic party. By definition, a poll of voters includes people who managed to vote, and therefore don't necessarily feel a voting restriction like picture i.d. requirements as a personal threat. Choosing between a feared vaccine and a job, in contrast, or facing an alarming rise in the monthly bills, is a kick to the gut: more likely to engage the attention than any nattering from political authorities.

Morning Consult’s national tracking poll shows a stark inflection point in Biden’s Black support immediately after the announcement of the mandate. Between September 8 (the day before the mandate’s rollout) and September 20, Biden’s support among Black voters fell by 12 percentage points in the survey. One might write this off as a coincidence, had the pollster not specifically monitored Biden’s standing with unvaccinated Black voters — and found that he had lost 17 points with that segment of the electorate over those two weeks.

As noted above, a post-September decline in Biden’s Black support has been captured in other polls. And there is no analogous inflection point (yet) showing a similar decline in the immediate aftermath of a legislative setback on voting rights.

* * *

[A]s political scientists Ismail K. White and Cheryl N. Laird argue in their book, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, the Black bloc vote is a product of “racialized social constraint” — which is to say, the process by which African American communities internally police norms of political behavior through social rewards and penalties. In their account, the exceptional efficacy of such norm enforcement within the Black community reflects the extraordinary degree of Black social cohesion that slavery and segregation fostered.

If this thesis is correct (and White and Laird do much to substantiate it), then it would follow that the erosion of African Americans’ social isolation would weaken racialized social constraint, and thus narrow the Democratic Party’s margin with Black voters. As White and Laird write:

We believe that increased contact with non-blacks and a decline in attendance at black institutions, in favor of more integrated spaces, would threaten the stability of black Democratic partisan loyalty. The result, we believe, would be a slow but steady diversification of black partisanship because leveraging social sanctions for racial group norm compliance would become much more difficult in integrated spaces.

 

Enchiridion XX

XX

Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows, who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you. Try, therefore, in the first place, not to be bewildered by appearances. For if you once gain time and respite, you will more easily command yourself.

It is true that ultimately we control how we decide to respond -- and indeed whether we do. One time when I was in school another boy hit me from behind. I did not know him, and to this day don't know why he hit me. Ultimately I just looked him the eye for a long moment, and then went on without a word. It was a very effective strategy, as he'd hit me just as hard as he could from behind -- and failed to do any damage. I'm sure he knew that he didn't want the fight he'd provoked.

Still, I think we can reasonably sever the Stoic point -- that I, and not you, am the master of my inner world and I don't have to let you provoke me if it is not useful to me -- from the general obligations of honor, from which so much of our common peace depends.* In general it is useful to respond to force so that it does not grow bolder, and to quash petty tyranny so that it does not gain mastery. People should be afraid to give blows without good cause, and abuse under any circumstances. Our society is much more pleasant when we conduct ourselves with the mutual respect that comes from knowing that the alternatives are too dangerous to ponder.

* "from which... depends" rather than "on which... depends"? This is one of those amusing places we sometimes discuss where the language is even now changing. We almost always now say 'depend on,' and think of depending as if it were a sort of foundation 'on' which something might be rested. Yet of old 'depends' meant 'hangs down from,' as a watch might depend from a chain. Both usages imply firmness of support, the sense of direction has inverted over time. I take great pleasure in being one of the keepers of such secret fires. 

Our bubble is better than your bubble

Who but a racist could believe that meritocracy was racist? The students at elite Brooklyn Tech are "Bengali and Tibetan, Egyptian and Chinese, Sinhalese and Russian, Dominican and Puerto Rican, West Indian and African American." They're also 61% Asian and therefore not racially balanced.

“Educationally, we don’t need these schools,” said David Bloomfield, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. “These students cannot be in a bubble. They need to be in a more diverse student body, where you could have advanced classes.”

Only we do very much need schools like Brooklyn Tech "educationally," and there aren't comparable advanced classes in the "diverse" schools they "need" to be in or, at some of the schools, any advanced classes at all. It's almost as if the lessons we are determined that these kids learn had more to do with political indoctrination than science.

Tausifa Haque, a 17-year-old daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants whose father drives a taxi and whose mother is a lunchroom attendant, says:

This is my great chance. It’s my way out. I have classes with students of all demographics and skin colors, and friends who speak different languages. To call this segregation does not make sense.

Ricardo Nunez, who is black, says:

I don’t feel like a minority. We resist being pitted against each other at this school.

But you're not allowed to climb out, and we have ways of making sure you allow us to continue to pit you against your peers, namely, denying you a decent education and a shot at financial independence if you don't agree to stay inside the right kind of bubble. Which is definitely not that bad bubble consisting of gifted and hard-working students.

Wipe that grin off your face and shut up

I understand objecting to highway blockades--at least if they're blockaded by the Wrong People--but it's never a good look to criminalize cheering.

Aren't bike paths the real infrastructure?

Or should we think about using some of the infrastructure boondoggle bills of the last, say, 20 years on bridges that are about to collapse from long-acknowledged rust? Nah, more paternity leave for Transportation Secretaries ought to do it.

Canadian President Flees Country

Now that’s a headline I thought I’d never see. Afraid of a few truckers — his own fellow citizens, the guys who keep the logging and cattle industries on the road. What a spineless coward. 

Miss me yet?

 From a WSJ commenter on a bit of Noonan nonsense, via PowerLine:

Mr. Biden is as rude as any president, and without the success to compensate.

Preference falsification

Do I wish this guy were in office instead of the current disaster?  You bet I do.

Richard Fernandez argues that the dam is breaking.  It does look that way, and has since the Virginia elections.  There's a sense of "We've completely had it, just knock it off."

At Fernandez's suggestion, I'm reading "Private Truths, Public Lies" by Timur Kuran (1998), about the social instability that comes from the repression of dissent and the ritual mouthing of platitudes for which one has more and more private contempt.  People will live a lie for a time if they must, but their support is brittle.  At the right moment they'll jettison the lie without a backward glance.

When Donald Trump speaks, the attraction is that he's saying what he believes, and what much of the audience believes.  They're so tired of hearing nonsense they're expected to take seriously.  Even if he occasionally comes out with something they doubt, the relief of not being fed absurdities is liberating.  "This stuff is ridiculous," they say to each other.  "Why are we putting up with it?  Let's quit doing it."

In Canada, Justin Trudeau and his family have fled the capitol in fear of a "small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing do not represent the views of Canadians...."

Enchiridion XIX

XIX

You can be unconquerable if you enter into no combat in which it is not in your own power to conquer. When, therefore, you see anyone eminent in honors or power, or in high esteem on any other account, take heed not to be bewildered by appearances and to pronounce him happy; for if the essence of good consists in things within our own power, there will be no room for envy or emulation. But, for your part, do not desire to be a general, or a senator, or a consul, but to be free; and the only way to this is a disregard of things which lie not within our own power.

Assessing relative risks is hard

 When you've lost the NYT . . . .

Curmudgeons and their music

 

I'm 65, and while I understand in a general way what Spotify is, it's not for me.  Some years ago when we were trying to install a home audio-visual system that would coordinate the internet with the TV and allow us to send music playlists to either indoor or outdoor speakers, I had trouble getting the playlist function to work.  The young AV engineer pointed out that it was trivially easy to hook into Pandora and had a really hard time grasping why I wanted to make up my own list of songs.  I was equally baffled why I'd want to let anyone else choose them.  "But there are lots of different channels with different styles," the little whippersnapper would say, tactfully omitting the implicit "even old fogey stuff" part.  Yes, and none of them are particularly close to anything I'd listen to, old or otherwise.  It's the curmudgeon disconnect, or maybe the disdain of someone with exotic tastes for someone more plugged into popular culture.  Even in my plugged-in youth I disliked listening to 99 pieces of dreck on the radio to hear one compelling song.

Neil Young often figures prominently in my playlists.  Here's hoping he doesn't mind.  Without even listening to Joe Rogan, I still side with him in the filthy censorship wars.

Enchiridion XVIII

XVIII

When a raven happens to croak unluckily, be not overcome by appearances, but discriminate and say, “Nothing is portended to me, either to my paltry body, or property, or reputation, or children, or wife. But to me all portents are lucky if I will. For whatsoever happens, it belongs to me to derive advantage therefrom.”

Chesterton: 

          The men of the East may spell the stars,
          And times and triumphs mark,
           But the men signed of the cross of Christ
           Go gaily in the dark.

          "The men of the East may search the scrolls
           For sure fates and fame,
          But the men that drink the blood of God
          Go singing to their shame.

          "The wise men know what wicked things
         Are written on the sky,
         They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
         Hearing the heavy purple wings
         Where the forgotten seraph kings
          Still plot how God shall die.

          "The wise men know all evil things
          Under the twisted trees,
          Where the perverse in pleasure pine 
         And men are weary of green wine 
         And sick of crimson seas.

          "But you and all the kind of Christ         
          Are ignorant and brave,
          And you have wars you hardly win
          And souls you hardly save.

          "I tell you naught for your comfort,
          Yea, naught for your desire,
          Save that the sky grows darker yet
          And the sea rises higher.

Outlaw's Prayer

Ironically this album, "Armed & Crazy," was considered important by the jury in sentencing our brother Jonny Paycheck to prison for shooting a man in the head while high on cocaine. Prejudice, no doubt, just as he explains here.

How’d Canada Get Here First?

Who knew it was this easy?

Maryland still doesn't want to impose the ugly duty of appearing in classrooms on its vulnerable teacher population, so it sent the kids home again.  But then, that was really hard on parents who needed to go to work, so Maryland opened "equity hubs," which are not, I repeat, not schools, but rooms where the kids can go sit at tables and do their virtual learning exercises.

What's that?  No, of course these are not mere day-care babysitting facilities.  The kids are doing schoolwork, I tell you, but now their parents don't have to supervise them while they do it.  The teachers are on a screen someplace, working safely and remotely.

What's that?  Yes, it does seem a lot to expect that order will be maintained and a big group of kids will pay attention to the teacher and do the work without any adults in the room, so we're providing "proctors."  Presumably lower-paid, non-union adults who don't mind the overwhelming COVID threat to teacher-type adults.

As one commenter said, he's waiting to find out that the proctors are really teachers, who will get overtime pay.

PA Court Declares 2020 Election Unconstitutional

It's a by-now-familiar issue: nobody actually changed the laws via the legislature, they just acted as if the laws were different than they were. 

Local government insanity, two more examples

Example the First. We have a community pool, built a couple of decades ago. Popular lore suggests that all the local governments committed to sharing its expenses equally, but there's nothing in writing. In recent years, one local entity dropped out, while the others (including the county) have contributed a fixed sum annually--a fraction of the actual net cost of the pool after user fees. One entity, the largest local city, apparently picks up the substantial tab for the entire resulting deficit, and has done so since the memory of man sayeth not to the contrary.

For about 18 months now, as the county's representative on the pool committee, I've been trying with increasing bafflement to get the pool manager and the other board members, who include a city rep, to address the deficit. Sometimes they say it's not a problem, because the city will cover it, to which I respond, cool, let's quit talking about it, then. To which they then say, but what if the city doesn't keep it up? And I say, hadn't you better take a look at your revenues, specifically your user rate structure? I've written about this here before. They struggle with the task of imagining what rate increases the market might bear, and how much each type or amount of increase might contribute to the bottom line annually, given uncertainties like volume of customers from year to year and the impact of rate hikes on same.

Last spring I tried to get them to think about this in preparation for the 2021 summer season. When they finally got it on the agenda in July, they still lacked any firm numbers to wrestle with and supposedly were going to call a special meeting in a week or so, while there might still be time to raise rates for the summer season. OK, that never happened. Fast-forward to last week, the first meeting since last July. I expected the same topic to be rehashed, with roughly the same results. When I arrived, however, I was pleased to see that the city finance manager was attending. I asked her what I used to try to ask the other folks, "What does it actually mean when we run a deficit? Is there a cushion account we're gradually depleting? We don't bounce checks, right?" She responded quite openly: the city simply pays all the bills, and runs an account receivable that the pool has never paid and evidently never will.

Okay, I thought, when I'm wearing my pool hat the status quo seems eminently satisfactory, and I don't ever wear a city hat. I do wear a county hat, but the county doesn't mind continuing to pay its annual flat contribution, so we're all good.

But if you're thinking I was then able to shut up while the room went on to continue to discuss the issue of what rates to raise and by how much, I guess I haven't painted a very clear picture of myself. Like an idiot, I eventually found myself goaded into asking clarifying questions. Someone would start talking about a tiny change in a minor category of rate, and I'd ask, now, is that one rate type out of four, or what? Hearing that it was in fact one rate out of four or so, and that they planned to move on to the other rates next, I'd say, now, how much do you suppose that first rate change would increase annual revenues? And I would get blank stares again, just as I did last year. Finally after they slowly went through all the categories, I said, OK, the total impact sounds like roughly in the neighborhood of what, about X dollars?--X dollars being maybe 20-25% of the annual deficit.

At this point, they left glum confusion behind and proceeded to the idea that really animates them: it's terrible that the county doesn't pick up a big part of the huge recurring annual deficit and help the city out. Never going to happen, I said, taking the opportunity to suggest that they might want to think about whom they'll vote for in the primary for County Judge primary in a few weeks. Now everyone's shouting about the county being mean and not living up to its ancient (unwritten, disputed, unenforceable) promises and so on.

Finally someone has the bright idea that, if the city subsidizes the losses but the county doesn't, maybe city taxpayers should pay lower pool use rates than all non-city residents, including county residents in the boonies and out-of-towners. Excellent idea, I agreed, very sensible, figure out how much you can raise that way. Well, they had no idea, and besides, what they really wanted was for me to say, "Oh, don't do that, I'll go take the other County Commissioners hostage at gunpoint and force them to increase your budget."

We left it that they still needed to gather data for a reality check and would call a special meeting "soon," so they may still be able to raise rates before summer. All I could think was, "Please wait another 11 months. I'm out of here December 31." Or, "Heaven give me the good sense to shut up next time if there really is one before I go."

Example the Second. I learned this week that the county has an ordinance dating back to 2004 requiring a $5 annual pet license, including the usual need to prove rabies vaccination. I learned this because we recently inched a small fraction of the county's IT system slightly further into the third millennium, so residents can now buy the license online instead of going bodily to the Animal Shelter with, I kid you not, a money order. I figured this would spark the same level of non-interest that most descriptions of county activity do when I post them on Facebook.

Imagine my surprise when my public absolutely erupted. Three days later we're into a practically unprecedented number of comments. It's unconstitutional. It's a tax gouge. It will make it impossible for poor people to afford having a pet. It's the government invading and ruining our lives. How will the county enforce this if no one knows about it, etc.

I've been steadily pointing out that the rule has been in force for 18 years, though apparently not a soul was aware of it. The county has no plans whatever to start enforcing it, or even to publicize it. I seem to be the only one talking about it. Absolutely nothing has changed except that, if you happen to want to buy a license, you can now do so conveniently online. It's pretty cheap, and it will put your pet into a registry so that you'll be notified faster if your pet should ever get lost and picked up.

"But I already microchip my pet, so this is tyranny/waste/mad overreach." OK, but the Animal Control folks report that it takes six hours to hear back from the national microchip registry, while this local registry is basically instant. Again, it's pretty cheap, and it's a bit of a donation to the almost-no-kill Shelter, which helps sad puppies. No, it's a tax on strays! Also, it's evil to finance government operations via user fees instead of general taxes! Or both!

I resolutely remain calm--easier to do online than sitting in a pool committee meeting--and keep repeating that nothing has changed in terms of obligations or enforcement. The only change is that it's now easier to pay.

But the public remains in a ferment. We're going to borrow $13MM to build a bigger, fancier courthouse than we need? Yawn. A $5 fee you weren't paying is now easier to pay if you feel like it? Armageddon.

"Our appeal is becoming more selective"

An innovative defense of the effectiveness of home-nonschooling in the COVID age:

Even the Democrat-led city government of San Francisco had enough with the board. It filed a lawsuit against both the SFUSD and its board in February 2021, accusing them of ” failing to come up with a reopening plan even as numerous other schools across the U.S. have reopened.” But SFUSD reopened only elementary schools last April and didn’t return to full-time in-person learning for all K-12 until fall 2021.

Board President López claimed the long delays didn’t cause any learning loss because children were “just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” and they learned more “about their families and cultures by staying home.”

I've wondered if some schools could actually make kids dumber.

Enchiridion XVII

XVII

Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses—if short, then in a short one; if long, then in a long one. If it be his pleasure that you should enact a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, see that you act it well. For this is your business—to act well the given part, but to choose it belongs to another.

Here the parallel is to the Bhagavad Gita, where the key religious lesson is that one has a role to play in the dream of the Great God -- and therefore ought to play that particular role as well as possible. Clearly there is a recognized need for someone to stand in the role of the Author, in spite of the fact that the mythology of the day made it mysterious who precisely might be in that role.

Enchiridion XVI

XVI

When you see anyone weeping for grief, either that his son has gone abroad or that he has suffered in his affairs, take care not to be overcome by the apparent evil, but discriminate and be ready to say, “What hurts this man is not this occurrence itself—for another man might not be hurt by it—but the view he chooses to take of it.” As far as conversation goes, however, do not disdain to accommodate yourself to him and, if need be, to groan with him. Take heed, however, not to groan inwardly, too.

"His son has gone abroad" is a much smaller reason for grief than "his son has died." If the other man were meant to be a Stoic we must assume was meant to be included from the earlier aphorisms; but he is clearly not one, and so the comment is meant to underline that even minor things can upset the unwise.

That makes the cynical ending more appropriate. We are human beings, wise and unwise alike; it can be worthy to sympathize or empathize with the unwise, for the purpose of comforting them and ameliorating their suffering. Yet it is not proper to abandon the course of wisdom in doing so; we must remember that they are behaving foolishly, even as we attempt to ease their foolish suffering. 

A Western Interlude

I decided to clean the guns the other day. Nothing like a little 'Western' music to make that task a happier one. 

 

Hey, as long as we want the best person for the job

At long last, S. Ct. Justice Breyer has seen the elephant in the abysmal polling on the future of the U.S. Senate after November 2022, and announced his retirement effective June. The Democratic party leadership is floating some black female candidates, because that's the important thing, with a Ketanji Brown Jackson reportedly heading the list. She tends to get reversed even by bipartisan higher D.C. Circuit courts, but I suppose that's because no one's properly setting her up for success.

Watch Your Flank

Interesting warning:

We currently have no Duke of Edinburgh, York or Sussex. I don’t want to alarm anyone but we are again exposed to Viking marauders on the Eastern flank. @donaeldunready

— Stuart Whomsley (@Bossloper) January 16, 2022

Enchiridion XV

XV

Remember that you must behave as at a banquet. Is anything brought round to you? Put out your hand and take a moderate share. Does it pass by you? Do not stop it. Is it not yet come? Do not yearn in desire toward it, but wait till it reaches you. So with regard to children, wife, office, riches; and you will some time or other be worthy to feast with the gods. And if you do not so much as take the things which are set before you, but are able even to forego them, then you will not only be worthy to feast with the gods, but to rule with them also. For, by thus doing, Diogenes and Heraclitus, and others like them, deservedly became divine, and were so recognized.

There is a sixth century commentary on this by Simplicus, who is one of the chief Neoplatonist writers; I am not referring to it on purpose, and indeed have not read it, as I never read secondary sources prior to engaging a philosophical text myself. Nor should you; we may engage it later. There is always a lot to be learned from what the wise think about any topic, but you should wrestle with it first to decide what you think. They may convince you that you were wrong, or that you misunderstood something; but you should first find a ground of your own, rather than letting any of them tell you what to think. Aristotle's efforts often begin by explaining the positions of the wise, and when they do they quickly turn to him refuting them. 

The process described in the end is apotheosis, a Greek pagan notion by which some heroes were raised to the ranks of the immortals. Many local heroes were worshipped after a while as if they were gods, though usually as chthonic gods of the underworld. (That is redundant, if you are unfamiliar with the word chthonic.) Some Greeks believed in a cycle of reincarnation, involving an eventual return to light and life in a cycle that embraced death and perhaps godhood; we don't fully grasp exactly how all of this worked. 

The general advice is interesting. At a banquet, everyone should usually be served all the courses. Here the idea is that the banquet is somewhat chaotic, and some dishes are offered but others pass by. Others that might have been offered to your fellows have not yet been offered to you. Patience is the key virtue; that and self-discipline, which allows you to take not of some of the offerings if you decide they are not good for you. If you do that, you will be worthy of ruling like the gods: though in fact you may gain nothing at all, and pass by some things of value (perhaps including good glasses of beer or cider, or even fine Scotch whisky) along the way. 

It's a strange sort of banquet, not arranged with the convenience nor the enjoyment of the guests as its first order. Such is how we find it, however, whatever that says about the qualities of the host.

What Exactly is the Threat to Democracy?

In an amazing article that should not be excerpted, Vox wonders aloud. 

And speaking of pretexts

In general our political system would garner a lot more support if it stopped with the pretext nonsense and worked out compromises on the use of power based on actual responses to the harms it claims to be addressing. Enough with the pretending that CO2 is a "toxin," for instance, or that a virus is the same as a machine emitting sparks.

WOTUS pocus

We'd do better addressing real environmental threats if we quit destroying our credibility with preposterous pretexts like this.

What constitutes “navigable waters”? That question has bedeviled Mike and Chantell Sackett for 15 years, and now it comes back again to the Supreme Court. Ten years ago, the Supreme Court took an incremental approach to the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Act and the EPA’s regulation based on its jurisdiction over “navigable waters.”

* * *

[A new] case raises the question of the test that courts should use to determine what constitutes “waters of the United States,” which the Clean Water Act was passed to protect in 1972.

In a 2006 case called Rapanos v. U.S., the court could not muster a majority opinion. Four justices, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the provision means water on the property in question must have a connection to a river, lake or other waterway.

But a fifth justice, Anthony M. Kennedy, created the test that emerged from the case, saying the act covers wetlands with a “significant nexus” to those other bodies of water.

For maximum confusion

There's nonsense talked about a lot of things, of course, but sometimes I think the greatest nonsense is reserved for what passes for discussion of economic policy.

[I]f you asked critics what “Supply-Side Economics” is, most would say it’s a theory about tax revenues that says a lower rate of taxation often yields a higher tax-revenue haul. It's a foolish try.

More realistically, supply-side economics is a simple statement of reality: in order to consume we must produce first. Since consumption is what happens after production, the goal of economic policy should be to remove the barriers to production. . . .

Add Treasury secretary Janet Yellen to the list of supply-side critics who is wholly confused about what it is she’s criticizing. In a recent speech before the World Economic Forum, Yellen pointed to the Biden administration’s infrastructure proposals, child care, paid leave, and global warming initiatives as “Modern supply-side economics.” She said what?

I guess that's "modern" as in "absolutely nothing like what the term means."  Way to make sterile arguments about definitions even crazier and more futile.

Come to think of it, though, the irrationality is hardly confined to economics. As a species we seem to combine irrationality with stupidity in staggering proportions. And yes, I have been spending too much time lately interacting with my fellow citizens as we gear up for the local election primary on March 1, why do you ask?

Well, that took long enough

Election do sometimes improve things.

One major focus for Makary has been on the importance of recognizing natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2, acquired by previous infection. He has continually pushed for the government and employers to recognize natural immunity in addition to immunity conferred by vaccines when considering mandates, which is normal throughout Europe. A new CDC study released on Jan. 19, 2022, appeared to lend credence to Makary’s analysis.

Newly elected Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently appointed Makary to be his adviser on pandemic response.

Enchiridion XIV

XIV

If you wish your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you are foolish, for you wish things to be in your power which are not so, and what belongs to others to be your own. So likewise, if you wish your servant to be without fault, you are foolish, for you wish vice not to be vice but something else. But if you wish not to be disappointed in your desires, that is in your own power. Exercise, therefore, what is in your power. A man’s master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave.

Here is another master/slave admonition, one that runs towards accepting the fact that servants are not flawless but human beings with vices and flaws. It's odd, in a way, to run this together with the death of wives or children. We've seen that tendency throughout these early aphorisms: 'accept that a cup may be broken, or your wife could die.' 

This reminds, again, that these are meant to be thoroughgoing commitments. In small things and in the biggest things, accepting that you only control what you do is the path to freedom. Practicing the small things makes you capable of handling the big things when they arise, for -- as mentioned earlier -- it is habituation via small exercises that enables the soul to handle the great labors. 

The Boomers are Responsible

It’s popular to write generational warfare posts, but as a Gen X member I’m neutral in those. However, I would like some of you who are Boomers to explain this to me. 

I kinda like it; but it doesn’t make any kind of sense. 

The Situation in Ukraine

The Korean War started when the United States declared the Korean peninsula to be outside its defensive perimeter, then changed its mind once the Communist forces invaded. The United States under the present administration has done everything it can to declare Ukraine outside the West's defensive perimeter -- withdrawing diplomats today, declaring combat forces off the table a month or so ago -- but now is mulling shifting up to fifty thousand men into Eastern Europe as a hedge against Putin's 100,000 forces massed on Ukraine's borders.

Nor is it limited to drawing a line just this side of Ukraine.

...after years of tiptoeing around the question of how much military support to provide to Ukraine, for fear of provoking Russia, Biden officials have recently warned that the United States could throw its weight behind a Ukrainian insurgency should Mr. Putin invade Ukraine.

That is always an option, although not one generally acknowledged publicly by the President himself. Normally you have think tanks and other outsiders warn about that possibility, trusting your opponents' intelligence services to read those white papers and pass the warning along. Open acknowledgement undermines the chief advantage of such a strategy, which is plausible deniability. 

Nor is this theoretical.

More than 150 U.S. military advisers are in Ukraine... [including] Special Operations forces, mostly Army Green Berets, as well as National Guard trainers from Florida’s 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

Military advisers from about a dozen allied countries are also in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.... In the event of a full-scale Russian invasion, the United States intends to move its military trainers out of the country quickly. But it is possible that some Americans could stay to advise Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, the capital, or provide frontline support, a U.S. official said.

Emphasis added. Sometimes we deploy forces as a 'tripwire,' daring enemy forces to engage them because it would mean engaging the United States military. The ongoing mission in South Korea is of that sort. Yet these forces are pledged to be withdrawn in the event of a Russian invasion, unless they stay to provide 'frontline support' to the opposition according to this nameless official. 

That is exactly the kind of lack of clarity that provoked the Korean conflict. We are well behind the power curve if we want into this fight -- those fifty thousand men can't be there for a long time, and the initial commitment will only be a few battalions. Ships take a while to float. Divisions take a while to shift into place, and they can't get there too far ahead of the logistical sustainment elements they will require. 

If we don't want the fight -- if letting Russia (and probably China) reassert their older claims to a larger sphere of influence than they have enjoyed during the era of the Pax Americana -- then we should be clear about where our lines really are now. There's no point whining about the Russians rolling into Ukraine if we have decided they can have it for the moment; and neither Russia nor China has the demographics to hold these extended claims for more than a generation or so.

We would not be here, of course, if the Biden administration had not come into power; their willful destruction of American energy independence, their devastation of our economy, and their humiliation of our military in Afghanistan are at the back of the present moment of weakness. Yet it is what it is; retrenchment may be necessary for the present moment. A second Korean war in eastern Europe serves no one's interests, not even Ukraine's. 

"Seared into the Hypo-something"

The UN is funding psychologists who promise to help migrants 'recover' memories of oppression that will entitle them to asylum claims in the USA.

“The most common mistake migrants make during interviews . . . is that they are saying that they are suffering economic hardship. It’s not one of the criteria for refugee status,” Vidal explained during a lengthy recorded telephone interview January 20 with the Center for Immigration Studies in Tapachula. “That may cover up one of the true reasons why they are coming. They need psychological help so they can remember the situation they experienced.”

Asked if recovering asylum-qualifying memories for better interview outcomes is the main purpose of employing psychologists with United Nations money, Vidal answered: “Yes, through the psychological help we give them.”

They claim a 90% success rate in helping migrants describe their experiences in ways that accord with international conventions on asylum. 

Trucker Rebellion

Canada has passed a vaccine passport bill for truck drivers entering or leaving the country, which just went into effect. The short term effect of this bill is that it has provoked a substantial demonstration among truckers up north; they say it took 45 minutes for the convoy to clear Calgary on its way to link up with others. The medium term will be to exacerbate supply chain issues and crash the economies of Canada and the United States (the latter made worse by a similar issue with Mexican truck drivers, who supply a large amount of our fruits and vegetables -- especially in winter). 

The long term effect may be to encourage the shift to robot truckers, as this kind of concentrated economic power among the little guys is threatening to those who enjoy political and social power. They aren't there yet, though. For now they still have to heed those ordinary men (and a few women) who push those diesels down the highway.

Enchiridion XIII

XIII

If you would improve, be content to be thought foolish and dull with regard to externals. Do not desire to be thought to know anything; and though you should appear to others to be somebody, distrust yourself. For be assured, it is not easy at once to keep your will in harmony with nature and to secure externals; but while you are absorbed in the one, you must of necessity neglect the other.

Socrates professed that his wisdom lay in knowing that he knew nothing. If you're sure you know how to do anything, there is a danger that you stop trying to learn to do it better.  

"Patriot Front" are a Federal Mousetrap

I think we went over this the last time they popped their heads up -- which they never do except at major right-wing events they want to discredit with their presence -- but this so-called group is obviously a bunch of Federal agents and/or informants. They have no support among the well-known right-wing organizations -- even the hard-right Center for Security Policy has no brief for them, nor does Heritage, nor does anyone. They show up with matching uniforms and equipment, as well as professionally-printed banners. These are expensive, but no right-wing billionaires support them. Who would? The Koch brothers, who want mass immigration to keep labor costs down? Commerce Club Republicans? The pro-Israel right, made up of Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews -- are they going to fund a neo-Nazi fascist group? Of course they are not. And it's certainly not Donald Trump, who never spends anything on anything that doesn't say "TRUMP" in big gold letters. Nor does he spend money on anything that's not going to make him money, not on purpose. No right wing players would back this group, but they've clearly got real money backing them. The Federal police are the obvious explanation for this funding source. 

Also, Patriot Front coordinates with the police everywhere they go, and very successfully. They have police escorts when they march to avoid altercations, unlike Antifa or the Proud Boys who fight in the streets and therefore end up in court -- where they are identified publicly in court records. Coordinating hostile protests with the police is a skill that some longstanding protest organizations have, but few of those exist on the right (who are not much given to police-confrontational protest marches anyway). However, if you're the FBI, it's pretty easy to get the local police to assign you a protection detachment to walk  you through your march. 

Dad29 has a commentary on a recent 'leaked' video that exactly matches my own interpretation of it. It's an obvious plant.

There's a similar problem with another claimed leak about this organization, this one out of Unicorn Riot, the pro-Antifa media. From a counterintelligence perspective, Unicorn Riot should expect to be close to the top of the FBI's infiltration list if the FBI is at all concerned about Antifa: after all, they're considered friendly media and are allowed to film at Antifa events. Getting someone inside there would be invaluable for collection. That same infiltration of Unicorn Riot would likewise be invaluable for the FBI in terms of credentialing their fake "Right Wing Fascist" group. Arrange a fake leak through Unicorn Riot and suddenly the left wing groups will believe this is a real organization. They'll begin to treat it as if it were real when they see it in the streets, which might encourage right wing fascists to come out and join it.

The real issue is that there aren't really any right wing fascists to recruit. Try that "Sig Heil" crap at one of the local honky-tonks and see how far you get with it. I'd make sure your insurance is paid up, though. There's no grassroots support for this kind of thing because Americans hate Nazis; and there's no Astroturf support on the right because none of the relatively few right-wing billionaire players would back such a group. The Feds are the only thing that makes any sense.

Harsh but fair