Are You Kidding Me With This Stuff?

 

I get that the administration is just calling its opposition evil now, and trying to reframe the election in terms of 'semi' fascism versus 'our democracy' rather than (ahem) discuss the recession and inflation, the military failures in Afghanistan, the impending war in Taiwan for which they are unprepared, and so on. 

Nevertheless, has anyone in post-WWII American political rhetoric staged a more actually fascist display than this? Flanked by blood red light 'banners' with a military guard on display, calling opponents creatures of chaos who live in darkness, who have made their choice and must face the wrath of the nation: rhetorically, at least, this is right out of the playbook. 

Wildly, it's an adoption of anti-American Chinese propaganda as the chosen self-presentation of the Biden administration. 

In May 2021, another person shared a post on Twitter with images of purported Chinese propaganda against Biden. The illustrations show Biden, with yellow glowing eyes, sitting on a throne of AR-15s that looks like the Iron Throne from the HBO series Game of Thrones. Some Biden supporters liked the images, saying how they looked so "metal."

This "Dark Brandon" meme has apparently become quite popular among the same young Ivy-educated White House staffers who wrote his "targeted" student loan relief to benefit chiefly and especially themselves. They love that it makes them seem part of something badass, and are sharing and encouraging variations of the meme on Twitter.

After a string of “good news” for the Biden agenda, White House officials elevated a meme from terminally online obscurity, reclaiming ironic images of a tired and gaffe-prone president cast as a demi-god-like figure.

The meme was supercharged after the FBI’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home in Palm Beach, Florida[.]

As a consequence, we get a speech that misses the smooth rhetorical tone of Chancellor Palpatine accepting the emergency powers that he used to establish the Empire...

...and the visuals have fully skipped ahead to the actual Empire.

The rhetorical and visual embrace of the 'badass' and 'metal' is going to have real political consequences. They may well get what they want, reframe the election into a referendum on the guy who isn't even in power anymore, and survive what ought to be a punishing midterm. Whether they do or do not, the cost is going to be real damage to America.

19th Century Medieval

Eric Blair has made this point occasionally: a lot of what we think of as 'Medieval' is really Victorian. The Arthurian renaissance that accompanied Victoria's rise and reign gave us a lot of the symbolism we associate with Malory and older things. Romantic music and opera, art, literature: and this, eventually, gave us Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. 

Pretty illustrations.

Heroism

City Journal wonders if you needn't do something heroic to be a hero.

I'm not sure how sympathetic I am to his examples. Nevertheless, it reminds me of a very recent post here: "[M]any a reverent Christian prays fervently for forgiveness for the sins he can't seem to avoid: failing in virtue does not keep him from justification through faith. Striving and failing is acknowledged to be part of the moral life, and even the pathetic sinner may be beloved of God; whereas failing at virtue is vice, and you can't be a virtuous man without in fact exercising the virtues (at least most of the time and to a greater or lesser degree)."

What if "Semi"-Fascist is the Right Amount?

President Biden apparently decided to call Republicans "semi-fascist" in a speech the other day. No less than CNN journalist Don Lemon questioned Biden's spokeswoman over what exactly that was supposed to mean. 

“What exactly is semi-fascism, Karine?" Lemon asked. 

During a fundraising event in Maryland, Biden told the crowd that America is under threat, blaming the GOP for supporting former president Trump’s MAGA movement, linking their ideology to “semi-fascism.”

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy… it’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism,” Biden said. 

However no one, including Jean-Pierre, seemed to know exactly what Biden was trying to say by this comment, and frankly the president himself probably didn’t even know. 

“The American people have a choice in front of them and the president laid that out very clearly, very powerfully tonight," [she said.]

The problem is that the idea that gives "fascism" its name is one that no successful politics of any sort can do without: the idea that 'we' must 'come together' in order to be stronger than we would be separately. 

The term “fascist” derives from a Roman weapon, a weapon that was as much a symbol as anything else.  The fasces was a bundle of sticks tied together (often depicted with an ax-head attached).  The Romans could make perfectly good ax-handles.  They didn’t do it this way because they needed to do it.  They did it to make a point.  Each of the sticks making up the fasces was weak by itself.  Hit a man with it and it would break on him.  But if you tied the bundle together, the sticks became strong.  The Roman magistrate who punished with the fasces was making a point about Rome.  Its strength came from the unity of its citizens.  It was because they held together as Romans that they could impose a Roman order on the world.

The Founders of the United States of America adopted the fasces in a lot of our national symbols.  It is small wonder that they did so.  

The problem with fascists is not that the base idea is flawed, it is that they apply it in inappropriate ways. Instead of using it to unite the polity in defense against the outside world, they begin to deploy it internally to create a faction that can dominate everyone else in society. This usage of the power of unity is tyrannical or oligarchic rather than democratic or constitutional: and it unfairly eliminates the right of the excluded parts of the fascist society from having their interests defended or advanced. Healthy politics use the idea of the fasces to defend a space in the world in which they can exist in mutual peace. Fascist politics aims at creating a permanent subjugation within a society, or even in radical cases a complete elimination (as of Jews) from a society.

Earlier this week AVI posted a complaint against Republicans adopting a long-standing Democratic political rhetoric of "fighting for you" rather than "working for you." There is a parallel here: working to defend your class interests within society, while accepting that others have other interests that must be compromised with, is healthy politics; dividing the society to fight against and subjugate the hated other is not.

Now "semi-" as a modifier conventionally means "only partly" and technically means "half." If you are paid semi-monthly, it means every half of a month you get paid. The trucks we sometimes call "semis" are trucks that can be divided into two parts, truck and trailer. 

As mentioned, the base idea from which fascism gets its name is one that any successful politics needs. "Semi" might be the right amount of it. Some proportion is the right amount, because zero percent would lead you to an incoherent society that could not pull together, neither for any common interests nor for mutual defense. You could make an argument that half was the right proportion, or more, or less, but not that the idea should be rejected outright. 

In any case, this discussion provides the right hook for the following song, whose title and lyrics derive from a pun on the several ways in which "semi" is used by Americans.

"Semi-crazy" can be the right amount, too.

It's not bad advice

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who is running for re-election, suggested that all 5.4MM Republicans in her state should move to Florida. I rather wish they would, too.

Thin Years, Fat Sound

This is about Harlan County, a coal-mining community of infamous violence both union and corporate, cop and criminal. It’s a famous setting for country songs, but this band is set up like the Blues Brothers. They’ve got a big brass sound and an upbeat feel, and even gospel overtones. 

DAC talks about it in the opening to this other song. “Well grandpa, he lied a little bit.”

The Biden Laptop and 2020

Kruiser this morning reports on two other stories about the FBI's efforts to prevent the Hunter Biden laptop from influencing the 2020 election. In the first one, Senators including Ron Johnson have uncovered that the FBI outright refused to investigate the laptop itself before the election. One might be inclined to forgive that as a sort of reasonable or even praiseworthy deference by the secret police to the constitutional and democratic process: might, that is, if they had afterwards investigated it and prosecuted the obvious crimes it revealed. Instead they have of course buried it for years now.

In the second story, it turns out that the FBI actively suppressed the story by asking social media to censor reporting on it. You will recall that the New York Post broke the story, and suddenly had its Facebook and Twitter accounts suspended as well as reporters/editors who worked on it. This is not in any way describable as the secret police deferring to the constitutional and democratic process. The Constitution imagines in the 1st Amendment a free press as an essential component to the informed citizenry necessary to a free society. Elections are meant to be conducted by a citizenry that is engaged and informed, rather than one that is kept intentionally in the dark by the secret activities of a secret police (itself dubiously constitutional and rather anti-democratic as an institution, as a matter of fact).

Furthermore, the FBI appears to have done this by making false representations to the social media giants. They claimed that this story was Russian disinformation, when in fact it was a perfectly true story -- and they knew it was true, because they had the laptop in their possession. 

Kruiser titles his piece, "America Was a Better Place When the FBI Didn't Rig Elections." I suppose a careful critic would respond that these are small potatoes that can hardly have, by themselves, determined the outcome of the election. Indeed, there is quite a lot more that may have had a larger effect. Nevertheless, you get only partial credit for your election-swinging activities having only contributed to achieving the outcome they were designed to help create.

GAO takes IRS Seriously

A GAO study finds that much, much less money will be forthcoming from the IRS expansion than the agency claims. It arrived at this figure by assuming that the agency was telling the truth about not going after Americans who make less than $400,000.

The agency meanwhile is maintaining that they will bring in far more than predicted, while maintaining a historic level of audits.

Hard to Argue With That

The United States is bedeviled in part by the fact that its leadership lacks virtue, writes Barton Swain. Well, what he actually opens with is this:

It’s hard to contemplate American public life in the 21st century and not arrive at the unhappy conclusion that we are led by idiots.

He comes around to virtue after rehearsing some of the obvious debacles. 

The piece is called "The Case for an American Revolution in Morals," which is interesting to me because virtue ethics is often thought to be separate (or at least severable) from moral theory. A man can be courageous, moderate, self-disciplined, given to acts of public service, magnificence, even magnanimity without the moral structure that later thinkers added on about guilt, sin, grace, and so forth. 

Aquinas as much as Aristotle talked about the virtues, and found ways to link the Christian moral picture to the Greek ethical one: and they are certainly compatible for those who want both halves. Likewise, many a reverent Christian prays fervently for forgiveness for the sins he can't seem to avoid: failing in virtue does not keep him from justification through faith. Striving and failing is acknowledged to be part of the moral life, and even the pathetic sinner may be beloved of God; whereas failing at virtue is vice, and you can't be a virtuous man without in fact exercising the virtues (at least most of the time and to a greater or lesser degree).

Unfortunately the article is mostly behind a paywall, so many of you won't be able to read it. That is an irritating feature of the present moment; they seem to be cropping up everywhere.

Someone's Getting Fired

I want to know whose idea it was to pit Hillary Clinton versus Kim Kardashian on a legal quiz show, and how they got HRC to agree to do it. There was no upside to this idea; if it went as expected HRC would appear to be punching down at a 'famous for being famous' celebrity. If HRC lost, as in fact turned out to be the case, it could only be devastating to her image as the Smartest Woman in the World. 

"Cognitive decline is real," a friend said when we were discussing the affair. 

"Message to the Uncredentialed: 'Screw Em'"

Here is the NRO article referenced in the comments below.

Since there's a paywall, here is the relevant part to our discussion:

President Biden made clear today, this is a one-time deal, a lottery, a lightning strike. People who paid off their loans last week aren’t covered. People who will take out new loans after the policy has run its course aren’t covered.... This isn’t a reform. It’s not even pretending to be reform. It’s a contemptuous, abusive, unbelievably expensive shot in the dark...

It seems so arbitrary. Why does Biden not want to do the same thing for loans on trucks owned by plumbers? Why not for mortgages — which, given how heavily it subsidizes them, the federal government clearly thinks are worthwhile? Why not for credit cards or auto payments or mom-and-pop credit lines? The answer, I’m afraid to say, is disgustingly classist: Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are better than everyone else...

Electricians, store managers, deli workers, landscapers, waitresses, mechanics, entrepreneurs? Screw ’em. Sure, college graduates make more money than non-graduates, and their unemployment rate is lower, too. But non-graduates don’t have access to the president, so they don’t matter. 

It really is arbitrary and, well, stupid. If you went to college as an undergraduate on a merit-based scholarship that covered your costs because you worked hard to keep your grades up, you won't be eligible for the $20,000 that went to those who borrowed and got a Pell Grant. If you were a frat boy who spent the four years drinking up your student loans, you likely will. 

The major reform that cuts rates for loan repayment only affects undergraduate loans, though grad school loans tend to be much higher. The 'public service' thing we talked about yesterday: 'our kids' work at nonprofits, 'their kids' don't. There's no justification for that program that isn't tribal.

But Did They Use Whips?

 NY Post: "Video shows migrants attacking, taunting Border Patrol agents."

Since We're Doing "Stupid" Today

Here's someone else who has no idea how the world works.

Now that Rep. Liz Cheney has lost her primary to a Trumpist Republican in Wyoming, it’s time for President Biden to consider appointing her to his cabinet. Political tensions have risen to new levels since the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago. Bringing a Republican into the administration would cool partisan temperatures and unite the country in support of the rule of law.

There can't be anyone outside the NYC/DC corridor who thinks this would plausibly 'cool partisan temperatures.' 

A Dumb Decision

I generally don't like to use terms like "dumb" or "stupid" in political discussions; mostly it's used to avoid engaging with the argument. This argument student loans is one I understand, though, and this is just stupid.

The way student loans work in America since the Obama administration is that the Federal Government 'owns' the debt, and it allows you to pay it off according to an income-based formula that is meant to determine what you can afford. You pay a percentage of your income in other words, not anything like what it would take to pay off the debt on the 20 year timeline; after 20 years, the government will write the rest of it off. If you work for a 'public service' like the Federal government itself, or any government or nonprofit, it's 10 years.

So a $10,000 forgiveness does nothing. Since you're already not paying off the interest -- you're paying much less than it would take to clear the debt -- the $10,000 is going to come right back over time anyway. Yet you won't have to pay it off, not before this decision and not after. In 20 years -- 240 monthly payments -- you can walk away from it, or only 120 if you work for an approved industry.

If you really want to help borrowers, either forgive the whole thing or else let for-profit employees off after 10 years too. (It's their employer that is for-profit or nonprofit, after all: there's no moral difference in the employees.) If you want the money, you have to change the payment schedule to a level that many people simply can't afford; then you still won't get the money, but you will at least get to seize whatever they have. If you want just more money, eliminate the nonprofit distinction the other way and make those employees pay for 20 years instead of 10.

What's going on here doesn't make any actual sense at all. It's not clear who they're hoping to impress: hopefully the people who went to college to incur the debt have enough math to see this is a bunch of bull.

There's A Chance She Has A Point

Language warning, but there's an issue here that she's correctly identifying. 

"We're Subverting Existing Paradigms"

The Life of a Soldier

A Roman payslip shows that hand-to-mouth soldiers with payday loans are not all that new.

A Sailor Ain't a Sailor

 

Originally an acapella shanty by Tom Lewis and his Polish mates.

Another from the same band, which at first may seem a geographically challenged tune, but it works.

"Chivalry is Actually a Good Thing"

A young feminist writes on the sexual revolution. Not everything she says is right, but she has an interesting and valuable perspective. (For example, keeping rapists in prison does not reduce the incidence of rape: it just transfers the victimhood of rape to other prisoners. It turns out rapists aren't particular about their victims, they just like victimizing.)

There's no more important physical fact about a person than his or her sex. The attempts to get around this lead to misery. So, perhaps, have many attempts to account for it; one can go wrong in either direction. I still think, though, that the Western Medieval construction of chivalric love marks the high point of relations between the sexes. There was a time -- albeit only in a small place, and only probably among the social elite -- when male strength was willfully in the service of female beauty, female beauty honored and treasured male strength, and love was coupled with mutual respect. 

Requiem for a Bear

Bear hunting season does not start until mid-October, but the bear hunters can’t stand to leave the bears in peace except when killing them. All summer long, though they’re forbidden to hunt, they get up here and run their packs of hounds at the bears for the sheer joy of terrorism. 

Today there must have been a dozen or more hunting trucks, each with a cage filled with hounds up on the mountain. The packs push down from the Blue Ridge Parkway to harry the bears into what is traditionally called Bearpen Gap, currently known as Sugar Creek Gap. Supposedly this is to train the dogs; it’s really just an excuse to engage in hunting out of season. 

At Balsam Lake today a bunch of dogs chased a bear into the lake, where they tore off its ears and fought it until it drowned. Federal Forest Service officers eventually came to recover the bear’s body. The poor thing was living free in the forest this morning; tonight it has been killed in terror and pain, and not even for food as it was out of season. They just ran it for fun, and now it is dead for no better reason than their amusement. 

A 9th Circuit Dissent

Following the recent Supreme Court Bruen decision affirming gun rights, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals remanded a decision on Hawaii's 'may [or may not] issue' law for reconsideration by the district court. There was a noteworthy dissent pointing out that there is very clear guidance on the point, and they might simply have directed that the law was plainly unconstitutional. Instead, they are dragging out a lawsuit that has already been going on for ten years.

This is very courteously worded, including the thunderous final section. It is firm and clear without the requirement of discourtesy, strong in its reasoning and even stronger in conviction.

Cop Recruited Oath Keepers on J6 to Save Other Cops

And apparently they did just that. This is, actually, what I would have expected from what I knew of the Oath Keepers as an organization before January 6th.

Succinct

 

Sleep With No Doors Open

There’s a lot of training in the Fire Service; I often spend weekends or weeknights in classes and courses. Some of it is challenging and rewarding; some of it is not. Occasionally it’s just PowerPoint presentations or training videos we are required to watch. These rarely interest. 

This little training video might actually be of use to some of you, however. 

'A Sheepherder came and put up a Fence...'

'I saw him one day, but I ain't seen him since.'

This site is heavily paywalled, but you can get the sense of the article. Apparently the old rancher/sheepherder wars are still ongoing way out West.

Sanctuary!

We are familiar with 'sanctuary cities' and even 'sanctuary states,' where local or state governments refuse to cooperate with Federal immigration policy in order to avoid accidentally enforcing Federal immigration law. Now, under the Biden administration, the Federal government's police agencies will stop cooperating with each other in service of the non-enforcement of our laws.

The U.S. Marshals Service is drafting a sanctuary policy that would limit the agency’s ability to hold illegal immigrants for pickup by ICE... Under the policy, marshals would not be able to hold illegal immigrants for pickup by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the say-so of an immigration warrant, or “detainer” request.... the person is to be released even if ICE has asked for a hold.

Officials said the policy is still in draft form, though The Times knows of one jurisdiction in Florida where it has already been implemented[.]

Remember this the next time you hear talk from the administration about how important 'the rule of law' is to them. 

Marine Corps Hymn a la Jerry Lee Lewis

This is from the Sun Records days and indeed from 1956, making it one of his first recordings. This is before the scandals that would plague him later, and long before the wild comeback occasioned by his 1964 Live at the Star Club recording.

It's lightweight, playful, but I offer it anyway for the Devil Dogs in the audience.

Uh-Oh

 The Big Bang didn't happen.

In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies... One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”

Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The truth that these papers don’t report is that the hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since. Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,” says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, “and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.”

Don't feel too bad. Even Aristotle turned out to be basically wrong about physics, in spite of being the most important physicist of all time. And Newton, and, well, everyone else. You still made a valuable contribution in error, because we can still learn a lot by studying why it was reasonable to think as Aristotle did (and it was -- empirically verifiable, even!). That helps us understand how we progress. 

A Positive Word About the FBI

There is a lot of merited criticism about the FBI, but there are also occasionally good stories from the field offices especially. 

141 adult victims of human trafficking, 84 minor victims of child sex trafficking and 37 missing children were located, during the initiative conducted during the first two weeks of August. Officials said the average age of the children was 15-year-old, and the youngest victim was age 11. 

Now the FBI here was the coordinating leadership branch of a state, local, and Federal effort; I imagine, though I do not know, that the local police did a lot of the actual legwork in locating these victims. Hopefully in the absence of the FBI, local police still could and still would do such things.

Still, the FBI deserves a kind word for its role here. Human trafficking was and is evil, and it is a very positive thing to see victims rescued. 

Seeking Tenure

I did not myself even try to apply for tenure track jobs in academia, coming not from Yale but from UGA. There would have been no point for someone even less attuned to this sort of conversation than the author, coming from a less prestigious (but actually better in philosophy, I think) school.

“I know where I stand ideologically!” the young man next to me burst out. “I am a marxist with a small m.” He was pounced upon by two or three of the women. “But Marxism has nothing to say about feminist issues!” one of them said. “That is why I am a marxist with a small m!” he replied. The professor smiled benignly; her pupils were apt. I cowered beneath the table (metaphorically), understanding immediately that, like a dissenter in a marxist (small m or large) regime, I would need to speak my true beliefs behind closed doors, and only to those I could trust.

Marxism actually had a lot to say about feminist issues; they were at the forefront of Communist revolutionary thought, precisely as a way of bringing women out of the family and into the state. Marxist revolutionary groups frequently had female leadership, and prominently so as a recruiting mechanism for would-be radicals (both to recruit fiery young women who might agree with them, and also young men who wanted to meet fiery young women). Now, once a Communist government actually came to power, women always ended up being pushed out of the positions of real power: but as long as there was a revolution to win, young women with berets and Kalashnikovs were in high demand, and there was a lot of talk about the need for equality between the sexes.

Women of the IRA

New Peoples' Army Women

Viet Cong Woman

So, both, "I reject Marxism, in spite of its occasional good point which I'm happy to recognize and pursue in better ways," and also, "I also reject feminism, likewise in spite of occasional good points I'm happy to pursue in other ways," with a side order of, "Also, you don't know what you're talking about anyway." 

Yes, I would do quite poorly at winning tenure. 

Platitudes in Mathematics

The author and his wife are both philosophers and friends. She works in that branch of contemporary metaphysics that is very interested in formal logic; he works, as you will see, in philosophy of math. This begins with an interesting question: "continuous" was not defined in a thoroughgoing way until the 19th century, but it has been a useful concept since antiquity and -- moreover -- many formal proofs were adequately established before the definition. How is that possible?

Along the way he raises another question: how can one come to a justified belief in mathematics? Now he is speaking of pure mathematics, which is to say the mathematics that exists in the mind alone: whether or not it applies to circular objects in the world, or how imperfectly, the geometry of circles as an idea has a kind of logic to it. What he wants to defend is the idea that it is somehow already all there, and all you are doing is deducing what else you know from what you already know. 

Some of you may find it pleasurable to work through this argument. If you don't, pass on; philosophy of math is not, in my experience, one of the things in life that grows on you.

This... You Can Trust

The Riddle of Steel is joined, strangely, by the Mystery of the Rosary.

Preserving Five Viking Ships

Private foundations have pledged enough to preserve the five ships at Roskilde. 

'Viper' Garland

I wonder if Attorney General Merrick Garland will be flattered or annoyed by this nickname?

Democratic strategist James Carville has a message for people who are doubting Merrick Garland: Just wait. 

"I mean, remember Merrick Garland is like a pit viper. He prosecuted the Oklahoma City bomber case, the Unabomber case, the Olympic bomber case."

The Olympic bomber case? That's news to me. I'd like to hear more about Garland's role in that, because the part affecting Richard Jewell was one of the most disgraceful acts in the history of Federal law enforcement. I did not see Garland's name in any of the relevant Wikipedia articles, which may mean that it's been scrubbed; but exactly what role did he play, I wonder?

As for the OKC bombing, there have been dire mutterings about it for years -- backed up by some apparently legitimate government documents: the source here is conspiracy-minded, but it's hard not to suspect one when you've got a document from the government asserting that the matter "should not be put to paper." Just yesterday I read that Garland had refused to approve a warrant in the Unabomber case, which might be evidence in his favor: I appreciate signs that a man is careful and not inclined to empower the government's agents without clarity. A fellow I know and respect found his treatment of the recent political violence from Antifa to be disqualifying, but one can make a similar argument here also. Maybe it's good not to rush too far ahead of the evidence.

Here's the Washington Post on the OKC bombing and Garland, for a mainstream media view. One way or the other, we'll be hearing a lot more about 'Viper' Garland in the coming weeks. 

Carville himself is from an older tradition of Democratic politics in which hard-edged nicknames were preferred. Hunter S. Thompson referred to him as a "hired gun" in his book about Bill Clinton's election, Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. Their continued close friendship suggests that Carville was flattered.

Appalachian Vocabulary Test

What is a catamount, she asks? Anyone from around here would know that one.

Bee Stings

FBI Raid

'The FBI Raid On Melania's Closet Was Justified,' Says Merrick Garland Wearing Gorgeous New Evening Gown And Sun Hat (The pic is worth the click.)

Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Claims Trump Had Acquired All Six Infinity Stones

Trump Thanks FBI For Kicking Off His 2024 Reelection Campaign

4D Chess: Trump Saves His Cache Of Classified Documents From FBI Confiscation By Labeling Them 'Epstein’s Client List'

Non-FBI Raid

Law & Order: Microaggression Victims Unit Episode 2 - DEAD NAMED

Gamers Eagerly Await The Release Of 'Call Of Duty: IRS Auditor'

Theologians Confirm Chips And Salsa Were Blessed In Eternity Past And May Be Eaten Before Prayer

Rescue Pre-Planning Expedition

Black Flag Canning

There’s nothing more anarchist than growing your own food and putting it up. Those kids in the city think they’re fighting the power, but they can’t even eat without those trucks we were just talking about. 

You want to be free, there’s a lot of work to do. On the upside, you’re free; and the chow is better too.

Stupid or Evil?

Our regular game continues. On the one hand, the Census Bureau asks a lot of intrusive questions they aren’t really entitled to know about, but which Congress has invested them with legal power to demand. On the other, this would be a first pass at trying to identify handguns purchased privately that the Feds couldn’t track using their background check system (which the administrative state wildly abuses to try to construct a functional registry in defiance of Congress’ laws).

Predictive Analysis

James links to a piece that suggests that thinking hard wears you out because it produces high levels of toxic substances.

Their studies, reported in Current Biology on August 11, show that when intense cognitive work is prolonged for several hours, it causes potentially toxic byproducts to build up in the part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This in turn alters your control over decisions, so you shift toward low-cost actions requiring no effort or waiting as cognitive fatigue sets in, the researchers explain.  

“Influential theories suggested that fatigue is a sort of illusion cooked up by the brain to make us stop whatever we are doing and turn to a more gratifying activity,” says Mathias Pessiglione of Pitié-Salpêtrière University in Paris, France. “But our findings show that cognitive work results in a true functional alteration—accumulation of noxious substances—so fatigue would indeed be a signal that makes us stop working but for a different purpose: to preserve the integrity of brain functioning.”

I'll wager that further study eventually uncovers that low levels of alcohol consumption tend to dissolve and clear these toxic products, allowing the brain to continue hard work for longer. This explains why creative geniuses are often inclined to drinking at low levels but for long periods of the day; many of them, like Winston Churchill, prove to be quite heavy drinkers eventually. 

This feature of human nature is well enough known to have drawn satire.

Science will catch up.

Gun Control for Nail Guns

Allegedly a January 6 character attacked an FBI field office, attempting I gather to use a nail gun to penetrate the bulletproof glass. I kind of see why he might have thought that would work, but it's bad tactics for a number of reasons I won't go into here in order not to be thought to be trying to improve tactical approaches to violent attacks on the government. 

Still, it makes me wonder if we'll now see gun control attempts aimed at nail guns. It's a billion-dollar annual market, nail guns. They're so useful for all kinds of necessary construction that I wonder if the government would even try to restrict such a thing.

In that way it reminds me of the Nice, France jihadist truck attack that murdered many people. It was a 19-ton truck, which turned out to be much more effective than small arms at murdering a lot of people quickly. There was briefly talk about banning them from urban centers, but we all knew it wouldn't happen because modern cities can't live without these trucks. Cities absolutely depend on big trucks bringing them food and other basic goods every single day. You can't ban them.

This is also why Canada last year, facing the truckers' revolt, resorted to strictly fascist and lawless practices to try to suppress it. It terrified them because it is literally something they can't live without, yet do not control. 

I don't know if nail guns will prove to fall into that category, but it will be interesting to see.

Cut the FBI some slack

Joining the girl's club

The frequent news lately of men joining women's organizations inspired me to post Townes Van Zandt's classic "Fraternity Blues":

Historians Warn Biden: Democracy Teetering

This is the least helpful piece that the journalists could have easily written about this, and the most flattering thing I have ever read about Joe Biden.

President Biden paused last week, during one of the busiest stretches of his presidency, for a nearly two-hour private history lesson from a group of academics who raised alarms about the dire condition of democracy at home and abroad.

The conversation during a ferocious lightning storm on Aug. 4 unfolded as a sort of Socratic dialogue between the commander in chief and a select group of scholars, who painted the current moment as among the most perilous in modern history for democratic governance[.]

What I would love to have heard is exactly how this 'Socratic dialogue' went: what arguments were made, what counterarguments (if any), which historians were on what side and what they thought specifically. Instead we get "Comparisons were made...." but not by whom or what exactly the comparisons were, other than vaguely that they were to the 1860 period around Lincoln's election and the pre-WWII fascist period.

We do eventually get a list of attendees, from which much can be extrapolated: 

Biden’s occasional speechwriter Jon Meacham, journalist Anne Applebaum, Princeton professor Sean Wilentz, University of Virginia historian Allida Black and presidential historian Michael Beschloss. White House senior adviser Anita Dunn and head speechwriter Vinay Reddy also sat at the table.

That doesn't sound like a Socratic dialogue, except insofar as you mean some of those conversations in which Socrates' interlocutor just says, "Yes, Socrates," and "You're right, Socrates" all through the thing. 

What we are apparently meant to take away from this is less an understanding of the debate -- if it was a debate -- and more an appreciation that Biden is an unusually intelligent president who is capable of carrying on a lengthy discussion with intellectual experts on the subject. Also, that he is more likely than other presidents (especially, of course, Trump) to take time to consult The Wise about his course -- though while always maintaining control and direction, of course.

Democrats broadly expect the same ideas will anchor Biden’s reelection campaign, if he decides to move forward with one, especially if Trump is his opponent again.

Biden has continued to bring up such themes in his public speeches, most recently in a July address to a law enforcement group, where he criticized Trump for taking no immediate action as the rioters he had inspired attacked the U.S. Capitol...

“You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy,” Biden told the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.”

News to General Washington, I suppose. But he was not invited, no more than Jefferson nor Patrick Henry.

You don't have to go back that far, either. His own President Obama backed insurrections in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere precisely on the theory that it was pro-democracy to do so. They took groups off the State Department's terrorist list -- especially in Libya, where they still remain in the warring faction calling itself the 'Government of National Accord,' which name is an obvious lie given the continuing civil war. This collection of allegedly pro-democracy insurgencies was called the Arab Spring, and it was a monumental failure; but I don't get the sense that he is rejecting that model based on reflection on the history. For one thing, he has made no acknowledgement of the unwisdom of his predecessor and former boss, nor his participation in those efforts.

The Right can meme

Suzi Quatro

In one of those internet rabbit holes one sometimes explores, I discovered that Joan Jett in her initial fame as a member of the Runaways described herself as idolizing Suzi Quatro. Now Joan Jett I have known of since I was a youth myself, but I had never heard of Suzi Quatro. 

Well, she's no Joan Jett, but everything has to start somewhere. For whatever role she played in making Joan Jett and the Blackhearts happen, I am grateful. 

"Restoring the Right to Keep and Bear Arms"

This is the title of David Kopel's latest academic paper (h/t InstaPundit). I'm reading it this morning, and it's quite interesting. My own view of the right to keep and bear arms, and of the Second Amendment, is chiefly philosophical; Kopel understands the legal history quite precisely, having participated in much of it in the last few decades. 

Starting in 1989, the Court began occasionally to take cases that vindicated the rights of gun owners—but always on grounds other than the Second Amendment.4 One such case was 1997’s Printz v. United States. Back in 1993, Congress had enacted a statute ordering local law enforcement officials to carry out background checks on handgun buyers. Sheriffs around the nation sued, arguing that Congress had no power to dragoon local officials into enforcing congressional statutes. If Congress wanted background checks, it could hire federal employees to conduct the checks.

By 5-4, the Supreme Court agreed, with Justice Thomas joining Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion. While Printz was about federalism, not the Second Amendment, Justice Thomas wrote a briefing concurring opinion to point out the Second Amendment issue. He was dubious that the 1993 statute was compliant with the Second Amendment.... he wrote: “Perhaps, at some future date, this Court will have the opportunity to determine whether Justice Story was correct when he wrote that the right to bear arms ‘has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.’”

In those days there was a strong sense in the establishment that the Second Amendment was like the Ninth or Tenth, something that had been voided by the silent artillery of time. It took decades of disciplined pursuit of good arguments and the developing of thinkers who would rise to be lawyers, judges, and yes philosophers, to restore it to a right that the nation's courts take seriously and apply vigorously.  

That work must continue. As he points out, even a SCOTUS victory does not guarantee that other judges will undermine the decision. This violates their oaths, but they did it anyway:

Most of the lower federal courts adopted the test that Justice Stephen Breyer had proposed in his dissent in Heller, and which had specifically been repudiated by the Heller majority. 

Likewise there was a SCOTUS majority, it turns out, for not taking any gun cases until Ginsberg's death and replacement. Roberts was against it too.

By the end there is a useful meditation on what limits to the Second Amendment may still be enacted under the current decision, and which sorts may not be.

It's All in Your Imagination

People love to write these stories; Glenn Reynolds likes to say that when Republicans screw up, that's the story, but when Democrats do it's the Republican reaction that is the story. What's interesting to me is the intrusion into ostensible straight-news of editorial commentary.

Extremist organizers have tried to hold on to the momentum they built in recent years by finding big-tent causes disparate factions could rally around, such as opposition to pandemic restrictions, “Stop the Steal” election denial, or an imagined socialist “indoctrination” of schoolchildren. 

It's a weird line to walk: "these extremists have millions of followers." How extreme can you be if six million people agree with you enough to watch your podcast every day? I don't, myself, watch "Louder with Crowder," because it's not my kind of thing. But I don't have six million followers; I don't have a thousand. My way of approaching things is far less mainstream (and consequently more extreme if 'extremity' means 'far from the mainstream') than his.  He's doing what lots of other people do successfully: raising the drama level as a way to gain attention. It works because lots of people, ordinary people, like that approach. Heck, this very piece is an example of trying to do the same thing from the left.

An immediate concern is the safety of the federal judge in Florida who approved the search warrant. Once his name made its way to right-wing forums, threats and conspiracy theories soon followed. Online pro-Trump groups spread his contact information and, as of Tuesday afternoon, the judge’s official page was no longer accessible on the court’s website.

That's unprecedented, except by Jane's Revenge doing the same thing to the Supreme Court's right wing justices, who now have loud angry protests outside their homes more or less daily.

In mainstream GOP quarters, extremism trackers say, the nudges toward violence are more subtle, with statements delegitimizing the government as a “police state” or a “banana republic” that must be opposed, starting with the dismantling of federal agencies.

That's a mainstream view now? Good to hear.

Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted “DEFUND THE FBI!!” She added an image of an upside-down U.S. flag, which many on the right have embraced as a symbol of the nation in distress.

US Federal Law defines the upside-down flag as a dire distress symbol, but ok. (§8a) At least she's not burning it, like her counterparts on the other side.

A recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that about 1 in 3 Americans say they believe violence against the government can at times be justified, the largest share to feel that way in more than two decades.

As we have discussed here before, there is no way of reading of the Declaration of Independence without outright rejecting it that does not accept that violence against the government is sometimes justified. The opening sections are a philosophical defense of the idea that citizens can have the right, and occasionally the duty, to set aside a government and replace it with a better one.

By all means temper your rhetoric and think things through. Open your eyes, though: this isn't a one-sided thing, and distrust of this process can be rational and considered as well.

Jury Acquits Jarheads MC Killer of all Charges

Three years ago, a group of Jarheads Motorcycle Club members were struck by a truck, killing seven of them. Yesterday the man who killed them was acquitted of all charges by a jury of his peers. [The NYT wrongly describes the Jarheads MC as a group of "ex-Marines," which is wrong. They were former Marines. "Ex-Marine" generally refers to someone who was discharged other than honorably.]

It sounds like witness statements differed so substantially that there was room for reasonable doubt, which is the legal standard for acquittal. However, there was also a substantial assist from the judge: 

A report from the National Transportation Safety Board released in December 2020 found that on the day of the crash, Mr. Zhukovskyy had been “impaired by several drugs,” including heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. He was working for Westfield Transport, a trucking company, at the time and was driving to Albany, N.Y., and Gorham, according to court records.

Mr. Zhukovskyy also had a suspended license in Connecticut, which should have led the Registry of Motor Vehicles in Massachusetts to revoke his license, the report said....

Last week, Judge Peter H. Bornstein of Superior Court dismissed eight charges that were related to Mr. Zhukovskyy’s drug and alcohol intake at the time of the crash, saying in court that “there is simply insufficient evidence from which a jury can find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was impaired to a degree.”

If the jury found that he was driving while impaired, then the other counts would have been easy to convict upon. Since they were ordered not to consider that, and had only widely different witness statements to go upon, this result followed.

Rendering Honors

Today in Jackson County they are laying to rest a senior deputy, Sean Bryson, who died after a lengthy illness. There was a special detail to convey his body from Raleigh back to Jackson County for interment. I am told that public safety units, especially police but also fire and rescue, escorted the detail from the time it entered their county  until they handed it off to the next escort at the next county line. 

My son and I did not know him, so we are holding down our fire district so that the others who did could go and participate. This could have gone badly -- it's been a whirlwind few days here, with two structure fires over the last couple of days and a helicopter medivac this morning. Fortunately so far the funeral escort period has been quiet; let's hope it continues.

It is almost six years to the day since we had such a detail for my father. I was not then a firefighter; that came after, during the pandemic. Honor holds the world together. As Aristotle tells us, honor is the guide that shows even the virtuous how to live in the best and highest way.

This Is Fine

 

Trump says Mar-a-Lago home in Florida 'under siege' by FBI agents

This is a provocation. They are trying to get a reaction that allows a further crackdown.

And today's award for uncanny prescience goes to Joy Pullman, who this morning published the following:

The FBI And DOJ Criminalizing Opposition To The Regime Is How The Republic Ends

UPDATES: 8/9/22

Justice Department should have subpoenaed documents, not raided Trump’s home

by Alan Dershowitz

... it is now up to the Justice Department and the FBI to justify their actions to the American public. They must explain why a different standard appears to have been applied to Democrats such as Clinton and Berger than to Republicans such as Trump and many of his associates.

Search Warrant Or Not, Americans Have No Reason To Believe The FBI Raid On Trump’s Florida Home Was Justified

FBI's Mar-a-Lago Raid Presents a Time for Choosing: The Regime, or America | Opinion

For an All-Politics View

Why the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago is a gift for Donald Trump's 2024 election bid

For an Alt-Reality View

The Mar-a-Lago Raid Proves the U.S. Isn’t a Banana Republic

Finally, Donald Trump’s misdeeds are catching up with him

Fire at High Hampton

High Hampton is the name of a mountain above what is charmingly called 'the Cashiers Valley,' which is in fact atop a plateau on the Continental Divide. Just below the mountain is the location of a century-old resort, golf, and country club. Last night their clubhouse caught fire and burned, and this morning right about dawn we were sent as backup to the Glenville-Cashiers Fire Department which needed relief. 

The Fire Marshal came, and there will definitely be trouble about this one. For the most part, fires in this rural county are fought with tanker trucks because there is no such thing as a sewer or water system. In my fire district, we pull our water from free-flowing creeks and rivers in the Nantahala National Forest, or else from Bear or Wolf lake. Other places have different water points, but what nobody has are hydrants you can hook into. Nobody except High Hampton, which installed them as part of their bid to get better prices on insurance. Only last night the hydrants didn't work, and it proves to be because the resort shut them off. The hopeful explanation is that this was in order to increase water pressure to the hotel and homes in the community, as there has been less rain than usual (though it is pouring right now). The explanation that the insurance company is going to want to forward is that they were shut down on purpose to keep firefighters from saving this expensive building. 

I of course do not know the truth of such matters. I will say that the resort management were gracious hosts to the firefighting community. This was the first fire I have ever fought that was catered. They brought us large canisters of coffee, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, likewise fresh breakfast sandwiches -- buttered Texas toast, scrambled eggs, sausage, and cheese -- and lots of water and Gatorade. I didn't eat any cookies, but they looked delicious. Neither did I drink any coffee, as it was adequately warm fighting the fire in the August sun, but I was grateful for the water. 

Tragically during the mop-up I uncovered the remnants of the beer fridge, in which at least a thousand perfectly good beers were destroyed and reduced to steam. I'm told the tennis balls survived very well in their pressurized containers, however. Fortunately the fire appears to have harmed no human beings, nor any animals either as far as we could tell. 

Riding in the Rain

Firewood Work Continues

Yesterday I had occasion to look back at a bunch of old pictures from twenty years ago, trying to find a particular photo I remembered. I was struck by how much my life has followed the patterns I adopted in that period of adulthood. In my early twenties and teenage years I lived at home and went to school, and my father set the rhythm of our lives. By my mid-twenties, however, I had moved out and begun to explore things; I moved to Savannah in pursuit of a woman, married her, we went to grad school (her in fine arts, myself in history) and then moved to China and had adventures. After I returned, though, we settled down into a life that is recognizably similar to that which came afterwards.

This is true in spite of the fact that many major changes happened in the subsequent period. We had our son, I went to war (three times, once as a correspondent for the Long War Journal to the Special Operations Task Force - Philippines, and then twice to Iraq as a participant in the conflict). We moved many times, shifted from renting to owning a home, sold homes and moved twice more. I sought and obtained a doctorate in philosophy. I published books and many essays. My father died, I took up firefighting and wilderness rescue, I learned to ride a horse and rode almost every day for more than a year, I learned to ride motorcycles and still ride every day or nearly so.

Yet I see a clear picture of life in the pictures of me standing beside stacks of firewood, the pictures of me working on various trucks, and the pictures of me hiking or camping in the wilderness. Mostly the cold months have been heated with firewood, which is a rhythm of its own. We are a little behind this year due to a minor injury that kept me from starting for a couple of months. I prefer when wood is cut and split in the spring, cured through the summer and early autumn, and ready to warm you by Christmas. This year I am still splitting in August, though some of it has been split since May. For about a quarter of each year one is bucking wood some days and splitting on others. Today my now-adult son and I split some fine straight-grained red oak, and it will burn beautifully in the cold months.

The trucks always need work, too; it's always one thing or another. Today I intend to change the coil pack on my Jeep, which still has a cylinder that is firing improperly in spite of new plugs and plug wires. My Ford is having powertrain issues that are computer- and sensor-related. I can diagnose those with an OBD-II cord and my laptop, which is new. I've changed two tires in the last few weeks, oil and filters also. 

And always there are the mountains, which with one exception our moves have kept us as close to as possible. Now we are right up among them. The air is clean and the people are fewer. Wild animals make better neighbors, both because they are less offensive and because you can always eat them if they ever do become a problem. 

SCOTUS as Arms Race

Both sides are scrambling to secure the court, reports MSN. The piece opens with a stunning admission.

Heaven was so close Mark Tushnet could feel the years rolling off him.

Tushnet was a 70-year-old Harvard Law professor in 2016, but he evinced the youthful zeal of a Harvard undergraduate when he published a manifesto that May encouraging his fellow progressives to start imagining the possibilities of a reinvigorated progressive jurisprudence that would be ushered in by Hillary Clinton. Adverse precedents “overruled at the first opportunity.” Judicial nominees in the mold of Thurgood Marshall. Defeated social conservatives treated like the losers in World War II. The days of “looking over [your] shoulders” in fear of the conservative bogeyman are over, he exhorted. The time for “abandoning defensive crouch liberal constitutionalism,” as he titled his blog post, had come.

Treating your fellow Americans as conquered enemies, yes, obviously. In the present moment, with the left in such high dudgeon about 'overturning stare decisis,' it is amazing to see in print an admission that a top priority was to "overrule [disfavored precedents] at the first opportunity.' That's Heller, at least, as core a decision for the other side as Roe was for theirs. 

All this in defense of a move to 'abandon... liberal constitutionalism.' If you are willing to abandon liberal constitutionalism from the left, what you mean is that you are abandoning constitutionalism. 

These moves aim at pure power. They are antithetical to our tradition, and yet all I hear is talk of 'defending our democracy' and 'rule of law.' 

Soothing Propaganda

NPR reports that a third of Americans lack confidence in our election system, but that number can be reduced if one tells them soothing tales before asking the question.

The organization's research started with a control group of voters, and asked them whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: "Overall, I trust the process for counting votes in our elections."

Initially, 63% of voters said they did.

But when another group of voters was asked the same question after reading a statement that included things like "political candidates can challenge election results. But our system requires proof and following the law" and "let's keep improving our elections and make them more fair, equal, and transparent" that number went up to 72% of voters.

Now, if you watched how this actually went down in 2020-2021, you saw that the statement being presented to soothe voters' concerns is not accurate. Courts outright refused to hear the challenges raised by candidates on standing grounds, and therefore never examined evidence to see if there was proof. It turns out you can't challenge an election that hasn't taken place yet because you have no standing, having not yet suffered any harm. You can't challenge one that has taken place because it's too late now (laches). You can't challenge one once the votes are certified because the matter is already decided (moot).

A state government lacks standing to object to other states adopting fraudulent processes, because those other states are sovereign. The legislature of that same state lacks standing as well. The President of the United States lacks standing in his own election, and so does any legal interest group that might try.

This is true even when there is prima facie evidence such as in Atlanta; the courts found no one with standing, the Justice Department held no investigation, and all we got was a single guy testifying before the January 6th committee a year and a half later that he'd looked into it and everything was fine. That in no way constitutes a process for actually challenging an election in a way to do anything about it, even if you can show initial evidence that suggests there's reason to look deeply.

As for being able to challenge the election if one 'follows the law,' the Wisconsin Supreme Court found that its own election was illegal and unconstitutional -- but no challenges were heard in time to do anything about it. Nor will that small matter apparently affect the next election, which the executive branch is intending to run the same way regardless of the other two branches. Orders from the legislature are set aside, and the ruling of the court ignored, by an unelected committee appointed by the governor.

As a consequence, I find the NPR result depressing rather than reassuring. If just speaking some soothing but false words is enough to move the needle that much, many people don't really care. They just want the worrisome thing to go away, and are prepared to believe any calming narrative no matter how manifestly false it has proven to be.

Greetings, Fellow Extremists

I have both the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross flag hanging in my basement, along with a collection of other Revolutionary War flags. 

As I was saying at D29's place yesterday, it's really striking that they have added the ANCAP flag to this list of 'militant violent extremists.' "[ANCAPs] believe in the Nonaggression Principle. It’s a core value of the movement. The only way they’re a threat of violence is if you are the aggressor." 

Lawsuits and Referenda on Abortion

The fallout of Dobbs is that the issue moves back to the democratic branches, but also that executive actions to advance a favored position become important. The Justice Department is suing to block an Idaho law that they say does not adequately protect the lives of vulnerable women:

Garland said that while the law provides an exception in order to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, "it includes no exception for cases in which the abortion is necessary to prevent serious jeopardy to the woman's health."

I think there is both a genuine concern here and also a politically motivated move. On the one hand, there are reports that doctors are delaying carrying out an abortion up until the point that a woman's life is obviously and incontestably endangered even though it is obvious much earlier that this point is going to be reached. There is no reason to delay what is ultimately going to be necessary, making the woman run risks and suffer just to provide a blanket to protect doctors in court. Some women may risk dying or suffering irreparable harm over that, and it's not ultimately going to save the life of the child. It's pointless and either cruel or cowardly to push suffering onto the woman in order to protect the doctor's career. 

On the other hand, creating a broad exception will end up excusing a number of cases that are fringe or vague cases. This is clearly part of the intent, given that the real desire is to have abortion legal (and paid for by taxpayers) in all cases whatsoever. This is on the same principle Richard the Lionheart cited in assigning Friar Tuck his bucks:

“I understand thee,” said the King, “and the Holy Clerk shall have a grant of vert and venison in my woods of Warncliffe. Mark, however, I will but assign thee three bucks every season; but if that do not prove an apology for thy slaying thirty, I am no Christian knight nor true king.”

Even so, I'm inclined to view this as an acceptable solution. Even if they manage the tenfold increase of 'medically necessary' abortions that the King expected from the Friar and his bucks, genuinely necessary cases are estimated at two percent. (This figure is hotly contested by activists on both sides, in and out of 'expert' NGOs; but it is somewhere between less than one percent and maybe three percent.) If you get to twenty percent, that still is a vast improvement over where we were before Dobbs, as the remaining eighty percent will be capable of being regulated according to democratically-enacted law.

Meanwhile an anti-abortion referendum in Kansas of all places went down in flames yesterday. Returning the issue to democracy means accepting democratic results, and abortion is always very popular once people have had it for a while -- even Ireland is not likely to go back to banning it. It's just so convenient to be able to make a daunting 20-year challenge, which entails heavy responsibility and permanent physical changes to your own body, go away like it never existed. There's no guarantee of success without a lot of moral work to convince people to accept the arguments against the practice. You can't skip the philosophy and go straight to force: that's now how democracy works.

More Wiped Phones

Not just the Secret Service, now the Department of Defense appears to have wiped phone and text records of those responsible for deploying the National Guard on January 6th. Why the Guard was not deployed is a major question we've been asking here since before January 6th, and certainly since then -- it was obvious that there was a significant potential for disorder given the nearby mass rally to protest the very thing going on inside Congress right then. Finding out why the Capitol was left unprotected is going to be harder given this apparently intentional destruction of the relevant public records.

Yamaguchi

Japan is having a strange problem with its monkeys. For some reason this kind of thing doesn't happen in the USA; I assume the reason is related to the fact that they've had to hire specialists with tranquilizer guns to address the matter. This is the sort of job Americans would handle themselves. 

Against Public Education

 Quilette has an article on the challenges facing public education.

This past May, my community sought to fill four open school board seats.... It quickly became apparent that nearly all of the candidate platforms fit neatly into one of two distorted worldviews: either that of the MSNBC viewer or the Fox News viewer.... each platform simply revealed how little was understood about the real challenges facing public education and youth culture more broadly.

Last week we had a runoff election for the school board locally which mirrored this concern exactly. These are officially nonpartisan positions. Nevertheless, one candidate ran on rainbows and talk of 'equity' and 'school safety,' and she was backed by the local Democratic Party. The other one said nothing much about education, but a lot about Jesus. She was backed by the Republicans.

Rainbow lady won, but because she's the incumbent that means nothing will change. Recent graduates I know personally can't do math and lack basic English skills such as knowing the difference between "your" and "you're." The institution is an embarrassing failure. 

The Quilette piece suggests the problem is one of mental health among the youth. Maybe that's part of it; but part of it is the need to burn this institution of American public education to the ground, so that something more fertile can be grown upon its ashes.

End Run Around the Electoral College?

Andrew Morgan at the Federalist writes:

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It has been enacted by 15 state legislatures plus Washington, D.C., and passed in 41 legislative chambers in 24 states. For the proposal to become the law of the land, enough states totaling at least 270 electoral votes would be required to enact the law, and states would then commit their electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes nationally, regardless of which candidate won at the state level.

The states that have enacted the compact represent 195 electoral votes: Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, California, New York, and the District of Columbia. States with passage in one chamber include Arkansas, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Successful passage in all of these states represents 283 electoral votes, enough to change the law and make our presidential election decided via popular vote rather than the Electoral College. 

Goodbye Uhura

She and we would have agreed partially at best, but she meant well and did well by her own lights. Goodnight, dear lady. 

PACT Act

There’s a re-vote on Monday in the Senate on this legislation to help veterans with issues from burn pits. I myself burned many reams of classified documents in our burn pits in Iraq. I have no issues from it, but many of my brothers in arms do. 

If there’s a good reason for not passing this legislation I don’t know of it. It’s Republicans holding it up after having originally voted for it in majority. You might call your worthless, corrupt Senators and ask them to do the right thing for once. Or else, if you know a good reason they shouldn’t, explain it below. 

PSA: Men, Please Avoid Sex With Other Men

If you can manage to be attracted to other men, which I find hard to imagine, I can see why you might want to engage in this practice: the male sex drive is such that you could be having sex all the time if only you wanted to have sex with men instead of women. There is the difficulty that only women are in any way attractive, but I hear that some of you have managed to overcome this hurdle somehow. Nevertheless, it is dangerous to your health.

People will lie to you about that, but not me. You can probably avoid both AIDS and Monkeypox through the simple (though not easy) precaution of having sex only when you can find a woman who is willing. If you can create a monogamous and stable relationship with this woman, your risk falls to almost zero.

New family member

This lovely 5-ish-year-old dog languished in my county's animal shelter for a full year. For some reason they couldn't get anyone interested in her, but she lives with me now. A seemingly mild-mannered affectionate creature, she's getting along with my two dogs just fine so far.

Folkmoot

The little town of Waynesville has an annual celebration of world cultures called “Folkmoot.” It includes a pleasant street festival. 

There was world music, from Jamaican drums to big brass bands. Fun afternoon. 

D&D vs. Theology

It’s not new for Christianity Today to worry about Dungeons & Dragons, but this take is novel. We should stop fantasizing about a more heroic life, and embrace that this life is meaningless and empty: for theologically, meaning can only be found in the life to come. 

Tolkien would not be impressed with this argument. He argued that fantasy was a kind of escape from a bad modern world, one that should be pursued in the way that a soldier captured by the enemy has a duty to escape. It’s also the case that this life can be heroic, as surely the life of a priest or a paramedic often has the opportunity to be. Maybe the problem really is the world that makes so many of us into “Dave from accounting.”

UPDATE: A parallel complaint about superheroes, which for some reason strikes me as much more plausible. 

The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era

Some of you might be interested in this book. To quote from a review by Christopher S. Grenda in the Journal of American History (volume 107 issue 1):

In The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era, Carli N. Conklin seeks to disclose the original meaning of the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence. She maintains that the phrase was neither a synonym for private property or public spiritedness nor a foreshadowing of latter-day notions of personal fulfillment. Rather, Conklin argues that the authors and editors of the Declaration of Independence—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin—as well as those who debated and approved the document in the Continental Congress understood the "pursuit of happiness" to mean the pursuit of virtue, the striving to live according to natural law.