Via the Daily Stoic, which adds that changing our nation's history is beyond us, but striving to perfect adherence to our principles of liberty is within our power. That is a worthy goal for free human beings.
Epictetus on Freedom
We spent part of the winter with Epictetus, so you might be interested in hearing his thoughts on freedom.
Independence Day
This year I have had women write to tell me that they don't feel like they can celebrate Independence Day. This strikes me as a strange sentiment; 'I feel our government is so oppressive that I can't celebrate the idea of overthrowing an oppressive government.' This should be the ideal holiday. Go practice handling explosives.
Democrats in general seem to be having trouble this year. Same answer.
Read again The Spirit of Rebellion. If you're against the government, do something about it. Be free for an hour of your life at least. If you're not, have a barbecue to remember those who once were. Authority turns septic sometimes. Human dignity entails and requires occasional rebellion.
Perhaps -- so the Church teaches -- it also requires occasional (or even regular) submission to legitimate authority. We can worry about that on another day. Today is the Fourth of July.
Happy Independence Day.
Off the Request Line
I don't know who that guy is, but the meme is by request in the comments below.
Spirit of Rebellion 2022
If you click on the black flag on the sidebar, you'll be taken to one of my favorite things I've ever written, an Independence Day post called The Spirit of Rebellion. It is originally from 2015, and ties together a number of historical trends -- including the recently-mentioned Robert the Bruce and the War of Scottish Independence -- that brought us to our American nation. The Declaration of Independence is the root of our tradition, its principles having survived the Articles of Confederation and the establishment of the Constitution, and those eternal principles shall survive the Constitution when it finally falls. Yet these even older things are the seed from which the root sprang, and we are wise to remember the deep history.
This year the spirit of rebellion is being seen mostly on the left, surprisingly since the Democratic Party controls all the Federal levers of electoral government. The loss of the Supreme Court, which was for so long their method of amending the Constitution without the bother of obtaining a three-quarters majority of states' consent, has been hugely upsetting. Yet according to this poll, up to a quarter of Americans are nearly ready to take up arms against the government, and spread across the political spectrum (one in three each of Republicans and Independents, one in five Democrats).
Ironically, only about a third of those declaring for war are currently gun owners. The long feared militia movement is not going to be the source of revolution; if it occurs, it is likely to be a combination of abortion supporters on the left and those among the general citizenry horrified by the corruption they can witness in the government and its allied elites: a majority of all voters say the system is corrupt and rigged against ordinary people, and 49% say they have come to feel like strangers in their own country.
It would be wise to remember the closing point of the Independence Day essay.
Maybe we can pick a nice day in mid-October, when the weather will be excellent for the celebratory cookouts that mark it. I understand the former Columbus Day has opened up as a holiday, but any of the days nearby it are usually excellent.
And for anyone reading this who might occupy a position of power: beware. You tread on thin ice with very many political factions among the citizenry, and you will be judged by those eternal principles in the Declaration. If you fail that test, you will not be missed: rather, your fall will be toasted for centuries to come.
Happy Independence Day.
The Oaken Heart of Robert the Bruce
One of the great stories about the heroic King of Scots, Robert the Bruce, is the story of his heart. On his deathbed he asked his old companion, Sir James Douglas -- known as Good Sir James in Scotland, and Black Douglas to those Englishmen who encountered him on the field of battle -- to take his heart on crusade.
According to Jean le Bel, when Bruce was dying he asked that Sir James, as his friend and lieutenant, should carry his heart to the Holy Land and present it at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as a mark of penance. John Barbour, alternatively, has Bruce ask that his heart should simply be carried in battle against "God's foes" as a token of his unfulfilled ambition to go on crusade. Given that Jerusalem had been in Muslim hands since 1187, this second is perhaps more likely.
Douglas faithfully fulfilled one of these two proposed vows, which suggests it was probably the one actually asked of him. When Bruce was dead, Douglas had his heart placed in a silver and enamelled casket and wore it around his neck, sailing to Spain to join King Alfonso XI's crusade. Douglas was killed at some point in the great battle that brought victory to the Spanish king.
Recently a way to fulfill the second proposed vow has been found. An oak tree the Bruce himself planted 700 years ago died, and its heart-of-oak was removed. This was carved into the shape of a man’s heart, and taken on pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. There it was lain in the place where Jesus was thought to lay, and prayers offered for the Bruce.
This act is in the spirit of wild romance that was the very soul of the Age of Chivalry.
The Weirdness of 'White Fascism'
I don't mean the obviously fake kind, where everybody pretends that the National Right to Life Coalition represents some kind of 'Christo-Fascist white patriarchy.' I mean the only-maybe-fake kind, these guys who went to Ukraine to join the Misanthropic Division, Europeans mostly.
THE DEATH OF a French volunteer in Ukraine is the first clear evidence that there are at least some far-right extremists among the foreign fighters who have flocked there to fight Russian forces.... The Misanthropic Division’s violent, hate-filled Telegram channel was the first to announce Bleriot’s death, one day earlier, on June 3. The post said that he died on June 1 in Kharkiv and included a photo in which the thin and bearded Bleriot wears a T-shirt that says “Misanthropic Division” across the front....Bleriot was a “man who fought bolshevism and antifascism all his life,” according to the Telegram post, a “brother-in-arms,” who died defending Europe and Ukraine from “Asiatic hordes.” ... Bleriot was from Bayeux, a town in the north of France. In an interview with an Argentinian reporter, uploaded to Reddit on March 3, he identifies himself as a Norman, says that he is “ready to kill Russians,” and “ready to die.” He adds that he left behind two children at home, and starts to cry.
For the years since 2016, I've been reading journalists who inform me that Vladimir Putin was symbolic of right-wing white nationalism broadly, and that the Russian Orthodox church was aligned with Putin in trying to create a Christian nationalism also broadly aligned with this sort of white nationalism. But here are people who feel like it is their moral duty to "kill Russians" in order to make Europe safe from "Asiatic hordes." (Are there Asiatic hordes? China's population is headed off a demographic cliff.)
Several pages down into the report, we get a clue.
As for the Misanthropic Division, it’s hard to tell how real it is, and how sizable. The extent of its actual association with the Azov Battalion is also unclear. Take Bleriot, for example. There’s no indication that he was with any Azov unit when he died in Kharkiv, in the northeast of Ukraine, far from Azov’s main areas of operation in the south. It may be that the Misanthropic Division is not a real-world unit with a leader and a chain of command so much as a twisted military clique that anyone online can claim.
Now they've got photographs of a guy with a tattoo on his head, which indicates some level of commitment (assuming it's not photoshopped). It's hard to tell, though, how much of any of this is more than the fevered imaginations of people who spend a lot of time online -- even the ones who actually went to Ukraine.
Justice Sotomayor on Justice Thomas
A remarkable description full of sympathy and kindness, not at all what one might expect from media portrayals.
McGinnis: The Court as Schoolmaster
The Court serves a bigger purpose than resolving controversies and cases, he argues.
In a notable essay, University of Chicago political theorist Ralph Lerner captures this essential function of the Court. The Court is, in his terms, “a republican schoolmaster,” bringing to life the enduring text of our fundamental law and applying it to a new age. As Lerner notes, Alexis de Tocqueville saw the Court early in its tenure as “the educator, molder, or guardian of those manners, morals, and beliefs that sustain republican government.” The Court thus has an educational task—bringing each generation back to consider anew the foundations of the American republic.The Roberts Court faces a tough task because it must speak to the American people through channels in which most messengers and interpreters—the press and the academic world—are radically hostile to its messages. Indeed, their hostility is magnified by the recognition that Court is now the one institution historically dedicated to reason, which progressives do not control. Progressives may have an easier time accepting that elections may sometimes go against them: politics can be dismissed as an arena of base interests and manipulation. But when an institution dedicated to reasoned deliberation and interpretation is not aligned with the progressive program, it creates a serious threat to progressive hegemony over social thought. The Court’s opportunity to contest that hegemony and restore the fixed foundations of our republic thus provides the crucial social context of its opinions this term.
Ironically Martha Nussbaum made a very similar argument in her works aimed at getting the Supreme Court to endorse gay marriage and similar practices. The court's rulings serve to teach the public about morality, showing them how to fit together questions of religious or cultural traditions, emotional processes like disgust, and ideals of fairness and equality. People may have been raised to view homosexuality as immoral, but the court by its example can teach them to view it in another way that is more sensitive to the feelings of their fellow Americans who happen to be gay.
This is a similar project, except that the thing being taught is to resolve these matters in ways that accord with our democratic political tradition:
...the Constitution’s text should ideally be understood today as the Framers would have understood it. And the Court makes clear the benefits of its interpretation to the public. On controversial issues on which the Constitution is silent, democracy offers the flexibility to make varied compromises over time....Because the dissenters cannot contend that anyone thought that the provisions of the Constitution at the time of their enactment contained a right to abortion, they advance three distinct attacks on the majority’s originalism. First, they suggest that, at least on issues of concern to women, the document’s original meaning may not be binding, because women did not participate in making the Constitution. It is true that women did not vote to ratify either the original Constitution or the Fourteenth Amendment. But how does it follow from that observation that the Constitution should be interpreted to include a right to abortion? No evidence suggests that if women had voted in the ratification process that a right to abortion would have been on the agenda. Even now, the percentages of men and women who favor and oppose abortion rights are roughly equal.......the Constitution provides a mechanism for evolution: the amendment process. In contrast, there is no provision that delegates to judges the authority to “evolve” the Constitution. Indeed, in his famous defense of judicial review in Federalist 78, Hamilton was at pains to dispel the anti-federalist fear that equitable interpretation would give the courts the freewheeling authority to consolidate all power in the federal government. Not so, said Hamilton: they would be bound by “strict rules.”
The Supreme Court has been the favored mechanism for altering the Constitution for decades because amendments are very hard to come by. They require a level of consensus almost impossible to achieve in America today. Yet by insisting on them, and rolling back to the Constitution as it was adopted rather than as it was adapted by earlier Courts, the Supreme Court is being genuinely conservative. They could move faster, even though their present speed appears to scare the Democratic party a great deal. They are, instead, simply rolling back and insisting on change coming through the democratic process.
That may, indeed, teach people to use that process again -- and how to use it.
SCOTUS Kills the EPA
D29 has been arguing that this is perhaps the biggest case of the year, after the abortion decision.
Requiescat in Pace Hershel “Woody” Williams
Today also marks the passage into eternity of the last Medal of Honor recipient from World War II. I never met him, but he remained very active in the American Legion for a long time. Other Legionnaires describe him as one of the kindest and most respected members of the organization.
He received the Medal of Honor for actions on Iwo Jima, described at the link.
"Cloud Cuckoo Land"
A British filmmaker whose films are being used against Donald Trump by the January 6th committee describes Trump as "living in 'cloud cuckoo land.'"
The reference -- I assume he knows -- is to Aristophanes' infamous play The Clouds, a work of art that so badly slandered Socrates that the people of Athens convicted him of what the play had said he was guilty of doing. Charged with corrupting the youth of Athens, he was accused of using sophistry to make weaker arguments appear stronger so that they'd win -- which the play suggested was his primary business, when he wasn't 'off in the clouds.'
It is an interesting choice of allusions given the choice to participate in this political theater ongoing in Congress.
Requiescat in Pace Sonny Barger
Sonny Barger has died at 83. He was, most famously, the leader of the Hells Angels charter at the Altamont music festival's great disaster. The culture turned against them after that -- until then, the Angels were appearing regularly in movies as they were picaresque and picturesque, and readily available in Hollywood. However, it is my judgment that they were the only ones there who acted with honor.
Barger is less well known for his more recent life, but if you followed him more recently you'd have found that in his older years he became a devout Christian and helped to publish a series of charming children's books. He continued to ride motorcycles, write books, and to advocate against smoking (which caused him a vicious bout of throat cancer in earlier years).
His final message to the world ends, "Keep your head up high, stay loyal, remain free, and always value honor."
UPDATE: Aggie says the first link bothers his antivirus, so here's a photo of the statement by Sonny announcing his death.
Beware Republicans Bearing Gifts
Really, you'd think after the Kavanaugh show trial that they'd have learned to just beware any single witness offering everything they wanted tied-up-in-a-bow, but without anyone who would corroborate her stories.
Maybe they thought it was too good to check.
...if Ornato calls her an outright liar? Major disaster. Not just a legal disaster, in that a key witness to potential criminal charges for Trump will have suddenly been blown up, but a political disaster for the committee. It’s unconscionable that they would put a witness on television to make an allegation that shocking without having run it down first. Republicans will say that if they couldn’t — or wouldn’t — separate fact from fiction with the SUV incident, there’s no reason to believe they did so in other aspects of the investigation.
I can't believe anyone is still using the word "unconscionable" with regard to Congress as if it didn't obviously apply to them all of the time. "Congress is unconscionable as usual," sure. "It would be unconscionable for Congress to..." as if that suggested they surely wouldn't do that thing, no.
A Shield Maiden
We are all familiar with the story of how Viking warrior women, known in the myths and sagas as shield maidens, were long thought purely mythical until archaeologists recently discovered war-trophy filled graves sometimes had female skeletons in them.
One such now has been facially reconstructed, sword wound to the forehead and all.
Only Government Agents Can Be Trust... Er...
First Sergeant is going to be up a tree about this.
When a Texas woman found an unsecured M4-style rifle inside an unlocked Texas National Guard truck Monday, June 27, she took matters into her own hands by, well, taking the weapon into her own hands.“Today, I got my hands on a fully automatic weapon thanks to the stupid, irresponsible #TexasNationalGuard #OperationLonestar who left their vehicle running & unlocked with guns inside on the side of the road,” Marianna Wright tweeted Monday. Operation Lone Star is the long-term deployment of Texas National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border within the state. “Guess the truck could’ve been mine, too. #PublicSafety, #Texas Style.”
If it had been a Hummer it could have been. They don't even have keys. I don't know why they left the keys in the pickup they were using, but that's commonly done with fire/rescue people in case somebody needs to move the thing out of the way of another responding vehicle.
A Good Scouting Story
It's been a long time since I heard anything but bad news about the Boy Scouts of America, but the Washington Post today has a story of a 15 year old Scout who escaped from the wreckage of the recent Amtrak derailment to comfort the dying truck driver.
Fifty Dead in San Antonio
There's a lot of noise coming out of DC and NY like always, but this is objectively the biggest story in the country today in spite of a relative lack of news coverage. I'm linking to a site from the trucking industry.
Officials say that the number of people who perished in a hot trailer in San Antonio on Monday has risen from 46 to 50 people, with 48 people pronounced dead at the scene and two other people dying in hospital care after suffering from heat related illness...While the vehicle involved bears the colors and DOT number of Alamo-based Betancourt Trucking and Harvesting, company leaders say that the vehicle information was “cloned” or illegally copied. They say that their truck has been used to haul grain from Harlingen to Progreso and has not been in San Antonio recently, and that their trailer is in the company lot.“Our [refrigerated trailer] is sitting right in the yard. That one in San Antonio is not our trailer,” Felipe Betancourt Jr told San Antonio Express-News.
These human smugglers have the resources not just to steal a truck but to repaint it exactly like another one whose data they steal and copy. If you saw it on the road you'd think it was a grain truck, and if you had the ordinary cop resources to run the tags and such you'd still think it was a grain truck -- one properly registered to a good company that has proper manifests and pays its taxes.
Meanwhile, these criminals don't care if they kill dozens of people in order to extract a little wealth from them for making the journey, and a little more from the people they are trafficking them to on the other end. That's a part of the story we're missing: they were going somewhere, with jobs lined up from people who don't care that they put people at these kinds of risks just so they, the employers, don't have to pay market wages to American workers.
A lot of people should be rounded up and hanged for this, and not just the cartels who back the smugglers.
A treat in store
For years I've eagerly awaited new pieces of news in the publishing world: (1) an evolutionary biology book willing to grapple with the huge hole in our scientific approach to the origin of life, and (2) a new book from Nick Lane, who writes some of the best popularized science I've ever found. Imagine my delight to see an email teaser this morning for Nick Lane's new book, Transformer. I can't actually get a copy until at least July 12, but I found an excerpt from the first chapter, including this:
If there is a view from modern biology, it is that genetic information structures the flow of energy and materials. To a first approximation, biology is understood in terms of information networks and control systems. Even the laws of thermodynamics, which govern the behaviour of molecules and their interactions and reactions, can be recast in terms of information – Shannon entropy, the laws of bits of information. But this view generates its own paradox at the origin of life – where does all this information come from? Within the realm of biology, we already have a simple explanation: natural selection sifts through random differences, favouring what works, eliminating what doesn’t, generation after generation. Information accumulates with function over time. We can quibble over details, but there is no conceptual difficulty here. At the origin of life, though, this view will not do. Place information at the heart of life, and there is a problem with the emergence of function, which is to say, the origin of biological information. . . .
Thinking about life only in terms of information is distorting. Seeking new laws of physics to explain the origin of information is to ask the wrong question, which can’t be answered precisely because it is not meaningful. A far better question goes back to the formative years of biology: what processes animate cells and set them apart from inanimate matter? The idea that there is a vital force, that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter, was disproved long ago and is now only wheeled out as a straw man to burn – even though it’s an understandable illusion for anyone who has shared van Leeuwenhoek’s captivation with busy animalcules. Yet biochemistry – my own discipline, which deals with the flow of energy and materials through cells – has, with a few notable exceptions, been blithely indifferent to how this unceasing flux might have arisen, or how its elemental imprint could still dictate the lives and deaths of cells today, along with the organisms they compose. You and me.
Jim Mattis: Still a Marine
Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis has finally gotten married after decades of putting his devotion to the Marine Corps and the rest of the U.S. military above his personal life. And he did it in the most Marine way possible...
Yes, with Elvis in attendance.
'Great' Advice
From VDH, on the "Great Reset":
Assume the worst when the adjective “great” appears in connection with envisioned fundamental, government-driven, or global political changes. What was similar between Lyndon Johnson’s massively expensive but failed “Great Society” and Mao’s genocidal “Great Leap Forward” was the idea of a top-down, centrally planned schema, cooked up by elites without any firsthand knowledge, or even worry, how it would affect the middle classes and poor.
Those precedents certainly didn't turn out as intended. Are there any counterexamples of centralized policies billed as "Great" by their advocates that actually did what they promised? "The Great Depression" doesn't count because it wasn't something people were advocating for being great, just something they were enduring.
First question
"Greetings, aspiring auditors. Welcome to your annual ethics exam. Let's get started! In your own words, explain whether you would have a problem with cheating on this exam."
Rich White Honky Blues
Hank Williams, Jr. has a big hit with his latest, an all-blues album put together following the death of his wife. You can listen on Spotify here.
3M Earplugs and Veteran Hearing Loss
I used these stupid things too, as probably did many of you. The WSJ suggests at least some of the guys may get paid back for their hearing loss.
Sun and Steel
Quilette reviews a book that sounds like I'd really enjoy it. Perhaps some of you would also.
An America Unready for War
For the first time in decades, America appears to be facing wars it is in no way ready to fight. In Europe, we have suddenly deployed tens of thousands of additional troops with no clear end-state.
The number of American troops in Europe has risen sharply in the four months since Russia invaded Ukraine, from about 65,000 in mid-February to 100,000 today.That increase, one of the most rapid U.S. military buildups on the continent in the post-Cold War era, has no clear end date or any obvious metrics to determine when troops could come home or be repositioned to other theaters such as the Indo-Pacific.Instead, their mission is to deter further Russian aggression and prevent any attack on NATO territory. That goal will prove difficult to measure and could justify a years-long mission as Russia and Ukraine settle into a slow, bloody war of attrition in the Donbas.The long-term consequences for the U.S. and its foreign policy priorities could be significant, some analysts say, because Washington likely can’t afford to maintain such troop levels in Europe over the long haul without sacrificing resources in the Pacific.
Speaking of the Pacific, Taiwan is facing increasing threats from Beijing, which is also loudly opposed to American military activities in the South China Sea.
We don't have the force structure for a two-theater conflict at this time, not even if one of them is limited to 'reassuring' Europeans with increased presence. We aren't going to get it, either, because recruiting has become a serious challenge in the wake of the Afghanistan debacle -- and the refusal by the military to hold anyone accountable.
“This is the start of a long drought for military recruiting,” said Ret. Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank. He said the military has not had such a hard time signing recruits since 1973, the year the U.S. left Vietnam and the draft officially ended. Spoehr said he does not believe a revival of the draft is imminent, but “2022 is the year we question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.”
The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years.
An internal Defense Department survey obtained by NBC News found that only 9% of those young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so, the lowest number since 2007.
Things are so bad that the Army is dropping the requirement for a high school education -- not even a G.E.D. will now be required. Retention is also bad, with big bonuses being pondered as a means of trying to keep the people who have been willing to serve in the past. The Army is also fronting cash bonuses for new recruits -- up to $50,000 just to join the Army. In spite of the economy being terrible, and worsening, military service is not appealing with the command environment so broken.
It's hard to remain a great power when your people stop being willing to fight for you, but it is a problem the US Federal Government has brought upon itself. If they cannot restore confidence, and find ways to educate youth to want to serve -- and to have the physical capacities to do so -- they will not remain a power that bestrides the world.
"Patchwork"
We celebrate diversity unless we're strongly invested in having our own uniform way with everyone all at once. Then any attempt to experiment with different approaches in different areas becomes a "patchwork." Patchwork is bad! Hobos wear patchworks. What we want is a seamless inescapable garment, one size, one color, one style fits all. Because by golly we know we're right, and you'd all better like it.
Comments
I have just been made aware that there is an annoying captcha requirement on comments for some people. I’m not sure why. According to the settings page I have that turned off.
To whit:
Any ideas on why it’s bothering some people and not others? Or how to keep it from bothering anyone, more to the point?
"An Originalist Victory"
From City Journal:
Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are no more. Like Plessy v. Ferguson before them, Roe and Casey were constitutionally and morally indefensible from the day they were decided, yet they endured for generations, becoming the foundation of a mass political movement that did all it could to prevent their overruling. Thus, like the overruling of Plessy, the overruling of Roe and Casey was by no means inevitable; it was the result of a half-century of disciplined, persistent, and prudent political, legal, and religious effort. The victory in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was earned by the coalition of teachers and students, priests and parishioners, lawyers and politicians, who, through efforts as humble as parish potlucks and as prominent as federal litigation, brought about the most important legal and human rights achievement in America since Brown v. Board of Education.
The analogy I would have thought more proper is to Dred Scott. The twin abortion decisions adopted a similar logic, after all: that there was a class of human beings, X, whose rights or interests another class of human beings, Y, did not have to respect. Rather, Y as a class was entitled to dispose of a member of X in whom they stood in the right kind of ownership relation in order to further their own interests. "My body, my choice" as a slogan disposes of the idea that there is another body to be considered, or another being: it asserts that only the one kind of being really exists or really matters.
All my life I have heard versions of the argument that only women should really be consulted about abortion: "No uterus, no opinion." Yet to accept this is to make a core philosophical error, one warned against since at least Aristotle: no one should serve as the judge in their own case. Women are of course very deeply interested in the disposition of this question of abortion rights. It is that very interest that makes it hard for them to render a just verdict, which by the nature of justice ought to be disinterested. The Viking-age hero Egil Skallagrimsson, offered the opportunity to judge in his own case, settled everything in favor of his family; here, everything was settled by class Y in the interest of class Y, and the interests of class X were completely obliterated. Abortion was acceptable all the way to the moment of birth, and arguments were increasingly being offered that it really ought to be acceptable even after.
Now the matter remains unsettled, but it is at least open to the people -- all the people, and not only the interested class -- to debate and consider how to proceed. This seems to me to be right and proper. In this matter I have no more say than any other citizen; I can offer philosophical accounts of what seems right, but each of you will have to judge and vote and advocate accordingly. It will doubtless be done in ways I think wrong, as is usually true on every question, because democracy depends on a common opinion and the opinions of most people are not generally given to philosophical rigor.
Yet at least it will be the common sense of communities that decides this question, and not that of an interested class or an elite among the judiciary. Perhaps few will prove to be truly disinterested; likely different communities will arrive at widely different judgments. Such is life. Justice is more likely, all the same, now that the matter is before the people broadly and not only the few.
Irony and Qatari Perfidy
Al Jazeera English is at least partially an information operation designed to divide America, one of several such operations being run by the nation of Qatar. This nation presents itself as an ally of the United States, but it is constantly working to harm us and advance its own interests.
The beauty of being a propaganda operation is that you don't have to have any devotion to consistency or principle; any stick will do to beat your opponent. Consider this feminist writing against her own country in this particular outlet:
In a tribute to the tight weave of religious fanaticism, patriotism, and similarly noxious elements in a country supposedly predicated on the separation of church and state.... Again, the “taking of innocent human life” has long been America’s game – just Google the words “US bombs hospital in Afghanistan”. Of course, there has been plenty of innocent post-embryonic life taken on the domestic scene, as well – and not just in extrajudicial police killings of Black people and Native Americans. As it turns out, poverty is also deadly in the US.
Now Qatar infamously shelters Muslim Brotherhood leadership and serves as a workaround/agent for the Iranian mullahs, with whom they share certain economic interests related to the natural gas field they both sit atop. They thus enable religious fanaticism and the terrorism associated with (and funded by) it.
Meanwhile, they actually enslave the majority of their population: 88% of the people who live in Qatar are 'contract labor,' often contracted under false promises and with their passports seized. Poverty can be fatal anywhere, but in Qatar the poor are worked to death in the heat. Being an ethnic minority in Qatar likewise entails being a slave.
Nor will one prosper greatly as a feminist in Qatar, not to put too fine a point on it. Not unless you're a useful tool for propaganda, that is
The description of patriotism as a 'noxious element' is a sign of mental unhealth, but in addition it is deeply ironic in Al Jazeera, which exists to serve the patriotic purpose of pursuing its homeland's national interests.
I suppose this sort of person has always been with us; Lenin spoke about them and how useful they were. Still, the lack of self-awareness and the inability to recognize irony is stunning.
Ethnographic Arms
Via Raven, a thread of remarkable photography. The Arabs in particular often have romantic forms of dress and armament, but the photos are all interesting.
End of Roe
I have not had a chance to read the decision yet, let alone the concurrences and dissent, but if you wish to discuss it in the meantime here is a space.
UPDATE: The Justice Department is appalled and determined to do everything it can to oppose this decision.
UPDATE: Seen on FB.
Electoral Fraud, or Good Governance?
If you've been following the January 6th hearings -- which I have, dutifully -- you are aware that they have become a pageant of establishment Republicans and career bureaucrats lining up to support the Democratic establishment's narrative. The media has also lined up to help; it was the lead story in the Washington Post and NYT this morning, although even the WSJ and the LA Times could barely bother to notice it. Trump's claims are 'baseless,' 'false,' and 'unfounded'; and his attempt to get the Justice Department to look at them is 'an attempt to corrupt the Justice Department' and an attack on democracy (although it's hard to imagine what else a President should do who really believes a crime has been committed than to ask the police to look into it; or how much less corrupt one could easily be than to accept their refusal to pursue it and give over to the other guy as scheduled).
The idea that the election was not illegally and therefore unconstitutionally conducted is so rooted and reinforced that one might begin to doubt the evidence of one's eyes. However, D29 points out that the evidence of one's eyes continues if one knows where to look.
- In the midst of a labor crisis, the Department of Labor boasted that it was turning 2,300 American Job Centers previously focused on helping displaced workers find jobs into hubs of political activism. These new federally funded voter registration agencies were given guidance about how to bring in organizations to conduct “voter outreach.”
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services likewise announced plans to turn community health centers into voter registration agencies, using thousands of health care facilities to focus on voter registration and turnout.
- The Housing and Urban Development Department sent notice to public housing authorities that they should begin voter registration drives and participation activities. Previously, officials had been barred from electoral activities because they receive federal funding.
- “It is presumed residents of public housing might disproportionately vote Democrat. … The executive order targets people receiving government benefits who might think their benefits depend on one party in power,” Stewart Whitson, legal director for the Foundation for Government Accountability, told the Daily Signal.
- The Department of Education sent “dear colleague” letters to universities, telling them that Federal Work Study funds could now be used to support voter registration activities, contrary to previous guidance. The change was made without having gone through any rulemaking process to allow the change.
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it’s using its child nutrition programs to push voter registration and enlisting state, local, and federally funded employees to implement voter registration drives in local schools.
- The Commerce Department produced a massive, 113-page report which likely took four agency officials many hours to generate. It directs local voting board members about polling stations and poll worker training.
Of course it is good that citizens should vote, if they are interested, engaged and educated -- and if indeed they really exist, and are in fact citizens. There's nothing in principle wrong with voter education and registration; it could be good governance. Yet it does look like the safeguards are being voided once again, and activity previously forbidden on ethical grounds is becoming mandatory.
"With Nation Divided"
The AP is not outright activist as CNN has become, but this reporting is tendentious.
In a major expansion of gun rights after a series of mass shootings, the Supreme Court said Thursday that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, a ruling likely to lead to more people legally armed. The decision came out as Congress and states debate gun-control legislation.About one-quarter of the U.S. population lives in states expected to be affected by the ruling, which struck down a New York gun law. The high court’s first major gun decision in more than a decade split the court 6-3, with the court’s conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent.Across the street from the court, lawmakers at the Capitol sped toward passage of gun legislation prompted by recent massacres in Texas, New York and California. Senators cleared the way for the measure, modest in scope but still the most far-reaching in decades.Also Thursday, underscoring the nation’s deep divisions over the issue, the sister of a 9-year-old girl killed in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, pleaded with state lawmakers to pass gun legislation.
It's already a problem to link the court case to the actions in the legislatures. The court wasn't ruling on 'guns' per se, but on a particular controversy brought before it that has nothing to do with the particular bloody shirt the reporter wants to wave. The issue was specifically about law-abiding citizens who belonged to a shooting club, all of whom have perfectly exemplary records as citizens, who objected to not being able to transport their firearms for shooting matches and similar purposes.
The legislatures can consider the one matter, the court was asked to consider a particular other matter. It ended up doing so on principled grounds that apply broadly, but there is no reason that a court case arising from the facts in New York city five years ago should be decided based on the passions of a moment in time five years later.
Also, why would this ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States only affect states containing "about one-quarter of the U.S. population"? Rulings by this court affect all states and all Americans.
What the reporter means to say is that only one-quarter of the population lives in states that don't already comply with the general principle that you can carry a firearm in public as an ordinary matter. That means that three-quarters of us already do live with the rules the Supreme Court acknowledged today. Most of us live in areas with much lower crime rates, including gun crime rates, than in those areas pondered by the reporter -- places like Chicago, D.C., New York, or Los Angeles. These include major metropolitan areas as well as rural paradises like my own.
In point of fact, though the headline describes the nation as 'divided,' the division has a clear majority/minority split that runs against her favored position. My firearms carry permit is recognized by 38 states including my own.
38 states is, coincidentally, the number required to call a constitutional convention, propose a new amendment to the Constitution, and then ratify it. It is the three-quarters supermajority that the Founders pondered as sufficient to justify altering the basic law. The Supreme Court has done nothing but bring the outlier minority into line with the general consensus of the United States of America.
That's a painful process, as few know better than citizens of the South, which has so often been the object of the Supreme Court's edifying attentions. However, it is widely admitted these days that for the most part those painful adjustments have been to the general benefit and improved morals. In the fullness of time, it may be that these minority states will likewise come to see the wisdom of respecting the genuine dignity, and encouraging the martial virtues, of their citizens.
Elevator pitch
I'm working on a Gutenberg project about the sources and meanings of Indo-European names, and have come to the section on the Nibelung myth cycle, with a really handy thumbnail sketch:
The great Teutonic legend, holding the same place as the deeds of Hercules, Theseus, and the Argonauts did in Greece, or those of Fionn with the Gael, is the story of the Nibelung. How old it may be is past computation, but it was apparently common to the whole Gothic race, since names connected with it come from Spain, Lombardy, and France: fragments of the story are traceable in England and the Faroe Islands, and the whole is told at length in Germany, Norway, and Denmark. Each of these three latter countries claim vehemently to have originated the romance, but there is little doubt that it was one of the original imaginations of the entire race, and that each division moulded the framework their own way, though with a general likeness.
* * *
The tale is begun by the Norwegian Volsunga Saga, and, about half way through, it is taken up by the Danish Vilkina and Niflung Saga, and by the German Nibelungenlied, and it is finished by numerous Danish ballads and German tales, songs, and poems, with the sort of inconsistencies always to be found in popular versions of ancient myths, but with the same main incidents.
The story, as it begins in the Volsunga Saga, relates that there were three brothers, Fafner, Reginn, and Audvar, or Ottur.... Transforming himself into the beast that bears his name, for the convenience of catching himself a fish dinner, Ottur was killed, in this shape, by Loki. The father and the other brothers insisted that, by way of compensation, in the Teutonic fashion, Loki should fill the dead otter's skin with treasure, which he accomplished, but laid the treasure under the curse, that it should do no good to its owner. Accordingly, the amount excited the avarice of Fafner, and after murdering his father, he transformed himself into a dragon, and kept watch over the treasure, to prevent Reginn from obtaining it.
* * *
The main points in Siegfried's story are that he was the son of Siegmund the Volsung, and of Queen Sigelind; born, according to the Book of Heroes, under the same circumstances as Perdita, in the Winter's Tale; put, by way of cradle, into a drinking-glass, and accidentally thrown into the river, where he was picked up by the smith Mimir, and educated by him. In the Book of Heroes he is so strong that he caught the lions in the woods and hung them over his castle wall by their tails. Reginn incited him to fight with and slay the dragon, Fafner, and obtain the treasure, including the tarn-cap of invisibility. Also, on roasting and eating the heart of Fafner, he became able to understand the language of the birds. And by a bath in the blood he was made invulnerable, except where a leaf had unfortunately adhered to his skin, between his shoulders, and given him, like Achilles and Diarmaid, a mortal spot. His first discovery from the song of a bird was that Reginn meant to murder him at once; he therefore forestalled his intentions, and took possession of the fatal gift, thus incurring the curse. The Book of Heroes calls him Siegfried the horny, and introduces him at the court of the German favourite, Theodoric, and the Nibelungenlied separates the dragon from the treasure, and omits most of the marvellous in the obtaining it.
His next exploit was the rescue and awakening of Brynhild; but he fell into a magic state of oblivion as to all that had passed with her, when he presented himself at the court of Wurms, and became the husband of Gudrun, or Chriemhild, as a recompense for having, by means of his tarn-cap, enabled Gunnar to overcome the resistance of Brynhilda herself, and obliged her to become his submissive bride. Revelations made by the two ladies, when in a passion, led to vengeance being treacherously wreaked upon Siegfried, who was pierced in his vulnerable spot while he was lying down on his face to drink from a fountain during a hunting party in the forest. The remainder of the history is the vengeance taken for his death; and the North further holds that his child, Aslaug, was left the sole survivor of the race, and finally married Ragner Lodbrog, whence her descendants always trace their pedigree from Sigurdr Fafner's bane.
Keep _And_ Bear
Yes, obviously.
"In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Court's opinion. "Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution."
The right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to human dignity. To say to someone that they are not entitled to defend their lives lest they harm someone else is to elevate the dignity of 'someone else' over the dignity of the person being stripped of a right to self-defense. To say that you have the right to defend yourself but not the right to the tools that would make such a defense practicable is to say that you don't really have the right after all -- somewhat like a right to freedom of the press, but a prohibition on presses and similar technologies.
Likewise citizenship: to say that you are 'a citizen' but obligated to remain disarmed under the unchallengeable power of armed agents of the state is to say that you are in fact a subject. Citizenship is only meaningful if the citizenry retains the power the Declaration of Independence asserts is its natural right, that is, the right to reject a government that has turned tyrannical and to replace it in spite of that government's own preference to remain in power.
The rifle makes the citizen, as it makes the dignified human being whose life is valuable enough to merit protection even if that protection entails dangers and risks.
Anti-Semites Abound!
I won twenty dollars today off a professor I know who took this piece, published at Volokh, to be anti-Semitic. I wagered it would prove to be self-deprecating humor by another Jew; the author proves to be a board member of the Jewish Center for Religious Liberty. He's apparently drawn fire from progressive faculty before, who have trouble telling the difference between jokes like "Two Jews, three opinions" and actual anti-Semitism.
That was my tip-off, actually. I have heard that joke before, and from very proud Jews; it's not really self-deprecation, either, because they're honestly and legitimately proud of their cultural disposition towards fractious, vigorous intellectual debate. As I've said about religion and jokes before, religious jokes are great as long as they're offered in the right spirit. That spirit is the one that jokes from a place of love for the thing being joked about.
The union that isn't
This is what can happen when a group of people realize that their ostensible allies can't wait to put a knife in their backs.
The National ICE Council says its members are sick of being labeled Nazis and racists by fellow unionists and is filing charges with the Labor Department to seek financial autonomy from its parent unions, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Government Employees.
The council says it cannot get adequate representation from the two organizations, which “foster hate and prejudice” against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and have backed political candidates who call for defunding ICE — essentially advocating for the erasure of the 7,600 jobs the council represents. The council accuses the two labor groups of holding ICE employees captive. It says the parent unions, wanting to garner “partisan political favor” from the administration, refuse to let the employees manage their own affairs but won’t advocate for them.
“AFGE and the AFL-CIO became far-left organizations a long time ago,” Chris Crane, the council’s president, told The Washington Times. “They don’t care about workers. They only care about their far-left agendas and politics. The corruption and misspending in the organization is out of control. ICE employees want no part in it.”
The Fed Has Surprises Coming
J. P. Morgan's discussion of forthcoming Fed policies leads with Ezekiel 25:17.
The NYT's daily morning reader was all about this subject as well. Inflation must come down; that means demand must be destroyed. That means higher interest rates, which will increase unemployment, which will destroy demand. It's going to suck, especially for you people who don't work for a central bank.
Solstice
The Summer Solstice came at 5:14 AM today, beneath an alignment of all the visible planets. I happened to be awake for that, and it is quite a show. The planetary conjuction continues until the 27th.
Flavors of crooks
We watched 1981's "Absence of Malice" last night and were struck by what an innocent time it was. The plot turns on a strategic leak of a federal investigation, along with warrantless wiretaps, all intended to pressure someone who wasn't a real suspect into finking on some of his mobbed-up family members. There is a well-known climactic scene in which Wilford Brimley, an Asst. AG, shows up and shuts down the freak show with some scathing rebukes and pink slips for federal underlings who break the law. ("You're no presidential appointment. You work for me.") It's a very old-fashioned "the grownups are still in charge" moment.
The plot doesn't call for anyone even to be aware of anyone else's party affiliation, though the chief crooked fed does make a point of resenting the crime family's role in the suppression of unions. The journalists are treated with kid gloves, exquisitely aware of the inevitability of causing collateral damage with their courageous crusade to publish the truth, but also bravely willing to face their own moral failings in striking this balance.
A more prescient scene was the climax of 1975's "Three Days of the Condor," after Robert Redford has risked his life getting the incriminating files to the New York Times, and creepy spook Cliff Robertson asks him, "What if they won't publish it?"
These screenwriters wouldn't have known what to make of Rathergate, not to mention Russiagate, NYT vs. Project Veritas, or the recent poo-flinging at Wapo.
Since it’s Juneteenth
UPDATE: The Orthosphere on the traditions of a holiday that is new to many outside Texas. I recall it being celebrated in Atlanta thirty years ago, but then went more than two decades without hearing it mentioned after I moved out of that city.
An “anvil” was a volley of gunfire. I have found no discussion of the word, but the usage was clearly Southern and my guess is that “anvil” was a corruption of the word enfilade.
That sounds plausible, and is a nice preservation of the linkage between the rifle and individual democratic liberty.
Happy Father's Day
A number of you, like myself, are fathers. If you're like me, you forgot this day existed until you woke up this morning and saw somebody post it on Facebook. Fatherhood is not much celebrated in America today; indeed parenthood is not greatly appreciated by our cultural guardians, and fatherhood is both unacceptably masculine and indicative of some sort of biological binary that one might not be perfectly capable of transcending in the name of 'gender identity.' I suppose we shall hear even less about it in the future.
Still, fatherhood is a proud service that when done well provides lasting benefits to those who receive its service. It can also nurture important virtues in the man himself. As such it is worthy, quite apart from also being necessary to the survival of humanity and any sort of civilization.
Well done, ye who have done well.
Good reflexes
This could have ended worse.
Hatchet Guy had recently been released from jail in the Chicago area.
Cyberpunk 2022
A hit video game at the present moment is Cyberpunk 2077, which is tightly based on an old role playing game from the 1980s called Cyberpunk 2020. (Tightly enough that the original rulebook's sample adventure is actually portrayed in the game.) The game was based on fiction by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, later filled out by others like Walter John Williams.
How close are we to that world? There are occasional stories about people figuring out how to integrate computers with human neural networks; last week there was a story about the Japanese figuring out how to make living, self-healing skin. Political theorists worry about it. You might find a lot of comparison between the original sources' concerns about corporate power (and continuing trouble from Russia, especially where hacking and aggression are concerned) and the real world we inhabit.
Amusingly, though, when they set out to build 'dark future' gas prices for the 2077 game they did so during the Trump administration. As a result, fuel prices in the game are lower than they are today.
It's not quite gasoline, though; the fuel is CHOOH2, an alcohol fuel similar to the ethanol the Biden administration has decided to choke us with. It'll destroy your engines if the engine wasn't specifically designed for it, as most engines aren't at even the 15% Biden is mandating -- let alone a pure alcohol fuel. It's especially destructive to small engines, motorcycles, and watercraft.
Commitment > Balance
According to the NYT report, the Administration is weighing the trade-off between modest actions that would be legally defensible, and bold, symbolic actions with questionable legal authority.
I'd wager they're all in for symbolic actions with questionable legal authority.
A Round for Freedom
Always remember that the two enemies are the Communists and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
While the war raged in Korea, the war at home between beer lovers and anti-alcohol groups like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was fought to keep beer out of the hands of the GIs. Then, a couple of brewing heavyweights escalated the conflict.Milwaukee's own Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company and Blatz Brewing Company offered to buy the troops a round and see what might happen.
One of my favorite movies, on this very subject and from not too long after this era, is Hallelujah Trail.
Science as a detective mystery
I've just finished a spectacularly dull county commissioners conference in Corpus Christi, something's that's required for continuing education hours. The only bright spot was the daily commute, about an hour each way, during which I turned to an audiobook I ordered more than six months ago. I'd started it, I think, and got bogged down in the first chapter or so. When I picked it back up this week it really took off. The book is "The Writing of the Gods," by Edward Dolnick, about the race to decode the Rosetta Stone. What a romp! And what a pleasure to read a well-put-together scientific discovery thriller written by an imaginative author with a graceful style, along with a gift for narrative and for developing broad techological themes.
I can't remember how I stumbled on this book last year, whether I was browsing on Audible or responding to a hint here or perhaps at Maggie's Farm.
When I was a kid my father did me the great favor of recommending Oscar Ogg's "The 26 Letters" and the World Books Encyclopedia entry on the alphabet. I never knew him to be interested in cryptology per se, though he loved puzzles. He did have a strong interest in the history of languages and often talked about the trends in sounds such as those identified by the collector of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He was also, even in adulthood, as fascinated as any young boy by the language and culture of ancient Egypt. We spent an enjoyable month once building a model pyramid for one of my school projects, complete with hieroglyphics on the tomb wall.
I've now ordered two more Dolnick audiobooks, one about the theft and recovery of "The Scream" (the Munch painting) and the other about Isaac Newton.
Swiftwater Technician
Usually it takes weeks to get exam results, but I guess they got excited. I am informed that all of us who survived to take the final have passed. We are now Swiftwater technicians, as certified by the state of North Carolina.
Punishment Regardless of Fact
The Border Patrol agents involved in the so-called 'whipping' incident will be punished, in spite of the fact that they do not carry whips, the so-called whips proved to be reins, and they did not whip anyone in any case. The Biden administration will issue some sort of 'administrative' punishment -- loss of rank or pay, I imagine -- since there are no facts that would ground a criminal or even a civil one.
The Biden administration is also moving to 'take legal action' of some sort against an independent coin vendor who decided to mint a commemorative coin of the incident. However offensive such a coin may be, it's hard for me to see how there isn't a First Amendment right to mint one if you really wanted to do so. It's artistic expression, which doesn't have to be in good taste to be protected; and it could even be political expression (e.g. of support for harsh measures against illegal immigration), which is especially protected by the First Amendment regardless of whether the views are appropriate or offensive.
Shared Reality?
An analyst at CNN suggests that the January 6th hearings are 'testing whether Americans can agree on a shared reality," or if -- instead -- tribalism will reign. The problem is that those hearings are a show trial with only establishment voices being allowed to describe the 'shared reality.' What is really being tested is whether America will once again submit itself to elite preferences about how we should view the reality we live in. (I'm not entirely sure they believe it themselves -- at this point they must know the whole Trump/Russia thing was a mock-up -- but it is important that we do.)
Americans can probably all agree that it has been raining in Yellowstone, and hot in Texas and the Deep South. It's too much to ask that they should all believe the same people who have staged one such hearing after another, from Mueller to the two impeachments to this. It's a drama, not a reality.
In this drama, the heroes are the Democratic leadership acting in support of intelligence and Federal law enforcement communities in their tireless efforts to stop Donald Trump; the villain, of course, is Donald Trump. Now Trump is a buffoon, as I've always maintained, and regularly says and does careless or stupid things (though he also managed to do some surprisingly solid things as President, chiefly by ignoring the establishment view; when he acceded to it, it inevitably hurt both him and the country). This 'criminal referral' they are promising at the hearing is just another bite at the apple.
Yes, some crimes were committed on January 6th. Almost all of them were misdemeanors. The only procedural outcome that was changed by the riot was that the objection to the certification of the election was dropped and no evidence heard before the vote. The vote was delayed a few hours. The world did not end.
Yes, it probably wouldn't have happened if Trump had been smart enough to hold his protest somewhere besides right by Congress. However, the people who started the riot never went to his protest -- they were already at Congress.
And yes, the FBI's behavior here as in Michigan invites investigation into whether they were here as there engaged in entrapment and/or incitement. Also in the Trump/Russia business, no? Also in the Flynn affair.
Share that reality. Donald Trump is just an old reality TV show and former president, not the chief enemy of the United States of America. He probably won't be president again, but making a martyr out of him turns him from Old News into Headline News. Perversely, his best chance lies with these idiots staging their show.
That Makes Sense
A California pet shelter has banned anyone who supports gun rights from adopting dogs. They also pledge to sue you for fraud if you lie about it.
Well, at least they're up front about it. Thanks for not wasting my time.
Army Veteran Held in Pre-Trial Solitary, Acquitted at Trial
In only two hours, a US Army veteran who defended himself was set free on all charges by a jury of his peers. The Washington Post thinks the problem was that he was black, though it sounds like everyone in that jail was being mistreated.
...a nighttime encounter with two strangers in San Jose led to his arrest for attempted murder. Johnson insisted he was defending himself and had done nothing wrong. But at 26, he was sent to solitary immediately after he was booked into the jail to await trial....While Johnson was being held, he witnessed fellow inmates being beaten by guards and was beaten himself, according to a lawsuit he filed in 2018 alleging his civil rights were violated. From his tiny, barren cell, he listened to the cries of a mentally ill inmate as he was pummeled by three sheriff’s deputies, who were later tried and convicted in the man’s death.Prosecutors offered Johnson a lesser sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, but he refused to accept a deal.“My frustration with my case will not allow me to consent to a lie,” Johnson wrote his mother in a Nov. 15, 2016, letter. “I am a warrior until my death and I must stand [up] to injustice no matter how dismal the odds.”It would take three years — almost half of it in solitary — before Johnson got the chance to testify in his own defense. It would take just two hours for a jury to acquit him.
This story is almost a litany of everything wrong with our criminal justice system. The author focuses especially on the brutality of solitary confinement as a practice -- pre-trial, even, while one is 'presumed innocent' -- but many other bad things are illuminated as well. The practice of using threats of severe prosecution coupled with pre-trial confinement to force a plea bargain on an innocent man is unethical. It might even be unethical aimed at a guilty man.
Swiftwater Finals
Turns out we started with 18; eight survived to take the written final. We won't know for weeks who passed that.
I actually can’t be 100% sure if I passed the written exam in spite of significant study because the course covers so much stuff. (What is the nighttime landing zone minimum for a UH-60 Blackhawk? Which of these is not one of the types of injuries you should be trying to prevent during rescue operations? What type of PFD is used in deep water shipping where long rescue times are expected? What parts should be lubricated on a boat trailer? Now for ethics…)
I never took a class in pursuing an academic degree that was a fifth this challenging. Not even our filter advanced logic course, Deductive Systems, because it didn’t require passing 26 practical exams showing that you could tie knots, swim against strong water, rig a high line to a boat and then successfully rescue people from it. You just had to do logic, and you had a semester instead of three weeks.
Should you ever meet these people in the course of your lives, show them some respect. They've earned it even if you haven't seen it.
COVID hospitalizations down
As always, discount the last week's data, but the couple of weeks before that should be solid. This wave barely affected anyone under 75, and is waning even in that particularly exposed demographic.
Color
We got a wild hair and painted the living room a deep orange with green trim.
This is the view from our upstairs bedroom, across the stair landing and into the upper part of the living room:
An Interview with Robert Duvall
The whole time I was in Iraq, 2007-9, I wore a Stetson hat that looked like his. Not outside the wire, of course: I wore a helmet for that. Inside, though, that's what I wore.
"To the sunny slopes of Long Ago." 2007 is only fifteen years; but not everybody made it, and that makes it seem longer.
Seen on FB
Do they really think this kind of penny-ante censorship applied even to jokes on small FB accounts is going to make people trust them more?
On Assassination in General
Assassination is on everyone's mind thanks to the arrest of an armed felon apparently attempting murder at Kavanaugh's house. Assassinating a Supreme Court Justice is an obvious step in certain respects: they have a lifetime term, impeachment requires an unattainable supermajority, and you get to appoint a replacement right away if you happen to control the White House and Congress. Partisan power games are such right now that there's no doubt the party in power would be willing to effectively endorse the assassination by using it to seize control of the Supreme Court. That this would also effectively endorse assassinating political figures in general, themselves included, might be worth the price to them. Such is the lust for power among our political elite.
Murder is one of those things that is always wrong, but murder is properly defined as "the intentional killing of the innocent." The intentional killing of the guilty is not always wrong, can be justifiable or even praiseworthy. The philosophical case for assassination begins with the idea that it can be a form of intentional killing of the guilty. Lots of people philosophically endorse the idea that assassinating Hitler would have been justified, for example.
Likewise, the philosophical case for assassination goes on to point out, the guilt of the political figure is often the actual and relevant guilt. If instead of assassination a dispute devolves into war, soldiers and policemen and outright innocents are likely to be killed who bear little or no guilt relevant to the dispute. Soldiers especially are likely to be honorable and to possess significant virtues of courage and self-discipline; the politicians we are protecting by fighting wars instead of assassination campaigns are usually neither honorable nor virtuous. It would arguably be much better to shoot the politicians one by one as they need it than to have the ordinary people slug it out on their behalf.
Governments and churches -- including the Church -- oppose assassination, but I often wonder if their unity here is more to do with the fact that they all represent a form of institutional power. Archbishops and Cardinals, and certainly Popes, might well worry that they too could fall prey to an assassin's bullet or blade. Keeping the structure of conflict pushed away from the powerful, with actual violence falling on the shoulders of the poorer and ordinary, is definitely in their self-interests as individuals, as members of their class, and as members of their institutions. Legislatures and churches may not be the most reliable source of philosophical insight to be had in this case.
I do not write to endorse the concept, but to raise the matter for consideration. Apparently a fair percentage of our youth, women as men, Republicans as Democrats, have come around to the idea. It's probably a good time to think it through.
A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action
Among young Democratic men and also young Republican women, a larger percentage approves of assassinating than of threatening "a politician who is harming the country or our democracy."
Thirty-one percent of young Republican women and forty percent of young Democratic men approve of making threats. Forty percent of the women and forty-four percent of the men approve of assassination.
The other demographics work the way you might expect, with harsh words being more acceptable than actually killing people. The only older demographic that breaks single digits on assassination is older Republican women, and just barely at 10%. Opposition among older people is about 90% for all older men, surprisingly less -- 86% -- for older women regardless of party affiliation.
Young blood runs hot I guess, but the inverted response on actual murder surprises me. (Young Republican men underperform their Democratic peers by ten points on killing people, by the way, in case you were worried about the wave of right-wing fascism you have heard so much about lately.)
'We Regret to Inform You...
'...that we are canceling your auto insurance policy because our underwriters have determined that your back seats are too large and comfortable.'
Cracks in the California blue
Chesa Boudin, the "DA" from San Francisco, went down in flames in his recall election. Republican Caruso has a narrow early lead in the race for mayor of Los Angeles.
A Swedish Custom
This is not only weird, it violates what I would have thought a universal law of hospitality.
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