RICO

The Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) has had a troubled history even before this year. As an act it is only dubiously aligned with the Anglo-American tradition of law, which ordinarily requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that someone broke a particular law on a particular occasion. RICO bypasses via what you might call a dramatic approach: instead of establishing that Person X did Crime Y on occasion Z, it tells a story about how Person X and Person Q and perhaps several other persons have been engaged in an ongoing criminal conspiracy. You have to prove a couple of crimes still -- a historic one and a more recent one, more or less -- but you are then allowed to assume the conspiracy as an ongoing fact.

There are reasons to be suspicious of granting prosecutors this power to bypass ordinary standards. Humans are storytelling creatures by nature, and having a story that explains can end up enabling a lot of cognitive biases that often lead humans to bad decisions. Cognitive bias is a dread fact afflicting even the most rigorous science. Achieving reasonable clarity on the facts is hard in criminal law, and a great deal is at stake. Letting prosecutors tack up a story with only a couple of things they can actually nail down is likely to lead to suspect convictions. 

Sometimes juries don't buy it. One of the most famous RICO prosecutions was 1979's US vs. Barger, in which the US Federal government tried and failed to paint the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club as a racketeering organization. It was clear that some Angels had guns, and others had drugs; they never could show that the club was in the business of guns or drugs. Even with a story the prosecutors told in the blackest terms, the jury saw the club in a different light. They saw the guns and drugs as individual acts within a culture that embraced outlaw imagery, and didn't buy that it was a criminal enterprise. Prosecutors spent a lot of money, as well as a lot of time, trying to build their case; in the end, the audience for whatever reason wouldn't believe it. 

Georgia is now running two RICO cases [correction: under Georgia's version of the Federal statute, which is even broader] in which the political bias of the jury is likely to play a big role in what kind of story they are prepared to believe. Personally I think it's simultaneously ridiculous and also highly plausible to view a political campaign's efforts to work recounts as a racketeering conspiracy: ridiculous because it's not criminal, and indeed universal to high-level campaigns, but plausible because frankly all these politicians are criminals and the whole business has become a species of corrupt racketeering. 

That, though, is a reason to indict all the major politicians; it won't do for us to pretend that they aren't all engaged in corrupt conspiracies, just this one guy and his team. (The irony of seeing former prosecutor Rudy Giuliani of all people indicted under RICO, after he made his name using it against the mob, is striking.) We're not bringing charges against the Biden crime family? The Clintons? The Pelosis? All of them? 

Yet I suspect that the indictment inside Atlanta is likely to produce a jury for whom the story of the Trump organization as an ongoing criminal conspiracy won't even have to be sold. The jury may well come into the room believing that, and confirmation bias will then allow them to believe everything else. A conviction there is highly probable unless his lawyers succeed in getting a jury from the state more broadly, as they might for example by a change of venue or a shift to prosecution in Federal court. 

The second case is against a group of what it is popular to call ANTIFA organizations, some 60 members of them who are protesting the 'cop city' development of the Atlanta Police Department. The thing about these sorts of organizations is that they're not criminal enterprises, because they're not enterprises. They are conspiracies, certainly; and they are often criminal conspiracies, in that they conspire about the practicalities of violating the law and getting away with it. But to be convicted under RICO, you have to show that the acts are part of an ongoing criminal enterprise, and these kids aren't trying to make any money. They're trying to effect political change, even if it costs them money (or jail time). 

I personally think that prosecutors should have to prove everything they want to punish you for to the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard. These dramatic prosecutions don't seem to me to be in good order, or in the best of our traditions of ordered liberty. The state should always have to prove its case before a jury if it wants to deprive any citizen of life or liberty; I don't even think plea bargains should be permitted, as that loophole has expanded to embrace 90% of prosecutions (98% in Federal court). The state almost never now has to actually prove its case, even when they aren't granted the power to go spinning stories that are barely tacked up with facts. 

Generally I see commentary about this that the prosecutions show a kind of fairness, as Georgia's prosecutors are going against both Trump and ANTIFA. That's an optimistic way of looking at it. In both cases, the establishment is going after its enemies. Calling that evenhanded is fair only insofar as you are likening them to a swordsman, who slays his foes on his right hand as well as on his left. 

Was the Georgia Election Stolen?

Roger Stone, a man with a tattoo of Nixon on his back, suggests that it was. Hot Air is gravely upset at the suggestion:

Brian Kemp didn’t steal the 2022 election from Stacey Abrams. The truth is that rightly or wrongly Kemp believes that Trump lost Georgia fair and square and is unwilling to lie about it. Guess what? Lying is a bad trait, and while common enough in politics it is hardly something to be admired. How many of us hate politicians because they are a bunch of liars? Count me in that camp.... it is just... disgusting. Every Trump “influencer” repeats the same tired lines about Trump’s opponents and regurgitates the most fanciful and slanderous attacks.

I don't know if the 2022 election was stolen, but it was a repeat contest from an election in 2018 that I actually voted in. That election was as shady as it was possible for an election to be; I've written about it in detail (scroll to "Georgia"). I don't have any confidence at all that Kemp isn't cheating in every election, because his behavior in that one was absolutely disgraceful. The system they had in place was perfect for fraud, too, lacking any capacity to be audited because there were no actual ballots to check it against. 

Hot Air points out that Kemp won by 300,000 votes, which you might think was outside the margin of fraud. The un-auditable system they  had in 2018 was replaced with another vote system, Dominion, at the order of a Federal court. Yet over 400,000 votes in Georgia's 2020 election lacked chain of custody, which was 67% of the 'drop box' votes. That election was decided by 12,000 votes.

Ultimately the establishment remains invested in assuring us that our elections are reliable and, therefore, that they justify and legitimate the power of the elected. I don't believe that anymore, and I definitely don't believe it in Georgia's case particularly. Anything Kemp and his ilk are in charge of is is untrustworthy, as they have proven by their own actions. 

Active Shooters Mostly Stopped by Armed Citizens

Two pieces today find that the percentage is on the order of sixty. 

The Language of Trees

Yesterday I took a hike on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. I didn't do the whole thing, just a section near Haywood Gap. 

Much of the trail in the mountains is like the Appalachian Trail: although you know you are in the mountains because of the slope of the land and the difficulty of the terrain, rather than long views you are just in a green tunnel. The Appalachians do not generally rise above the tree line, like the Tetons or the Big Holes, so you are always surrounded by trees -- many of them evergreens, especially Red Spruce and Hemlocks.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Buffett

I remember first hearing this one playing on the radio in the family car when I was a kid. It gave us all a laugh and I've enjoyed his music ever since.

Local Government

Continuing the topic of rebuilding, one of the themes that emerged in the recent discussion was that of local government. AVI suggested that a lot of the difference in the need of government has to do with the facts on the ground about a locality: dense populations may need more, he suggests, whereas rural areas may be able to make do with much less. Douglas added that he thought there was a general problem about trying to nationalize rather than localize problem-solutions, and that a focus on locality might be beneficial. Elise's proposal makes a lot of sense in a community in which people know each other, and is harder to implement as actual knowledge of candidates has to be mediated by, well, media. 

By coincidence, Thos. and I had a discussion on the same subject in person over some Thai food (which is improbably popular in the Teton Valley: there are a surprising number of Thai restaurants given a population that is relatively non-diverse, mostly descended from the Mormon settlers of the late 19th to early 20th centuries). The role of the local is often underexamined, but it is also where I have been focusing my practical efforts for several years now: abandoning national and state politics as hopelessly corrupt, nevertheless there is a lot of practical good to be done in your own community. 

One of the reasons that a  voluntarist society has come to make sense to me is that I can see how much practical good is actually done by such organizations in communities, which compares extremely favorably to the good actually accomplished by larger-scale government organizations (or professional organizations like public schools even at the local level). There's no reason that you can't make your living privately, and still contribute to the public good as a member of a volunteer local 'government' organization -- to whatever degree it is really proper to refer to such an organization as a government, since no one acting in the public interest here is employed by the government.* 

There is another question about the importance of planning. Localities really do benefit from planning at a higher level than the individual: while the market can do a lot to align interests about how various properties are used, it can also be helpful to have a higher-level perspective to ensure that there are not bottlenecks in traffic, pollution of water sources that are of general utility, a large amount of wild space that does not get developed so that the natural beauty and wildlife continue to flourish, and so forth. In principle a voluntary council like the old Icelandic Thing could do this, but in practice America has long chosen to depend on coercive organizations -- even privately, as with Home Owners Assocations -- in order to compel obedience to the decision of the planning council. There is an important discussion to be had as to whether coercion is really required, and if so to what degree, and how to ensure that it minimally troubles human liberty. 

So again: what do you think about all of that? 

* I think I've told the story of an old man who was upset that we had temporarily blocked his driveway with a fire truck while fighting a wildfire that was literally just over the ridge behind his house -- indeed, the truck was stationed there specifically to protect his house. He was furious with us anyway, and finally said the worst thing he could think to say to us: "The Fire Department is no better than the government."

A Well-Earned Ale

Today I got up and lit my smoker before my first meeting. Over the course of the day, in addition to work, I smoked two whole Boston Butts and a beef Chuck roast. I also pressure washed the motorcycles and my deck, then waxed the bike, then made dinner out of some of the smoked meats. Then I broke the rest down and stowed it — three gallons of pulled pork alone.

Sierra Nevada has a brewery over by the airport, so we get their local stuff. I haven’t tried this one before. I’m pretty sure I have earned it, though, so I hope it’s good. 

'The Gun-Show Loophole'

Wyoming just had a major restoration of civil rights for non-violent felons. There remain problems. 

A restoration of rights for nonviolent felons in Wyoming took effect July 1 and includes the right to “use or knowingly possess” a firearm.

But it remains unclear for some whether that means nonviolent felons can buy firearms from licensed gun dealers. Having and using a gun is one thing, but legally being able to buy a gun, which still requires a federal background check, isn't as clear....

Dennis Mazet, who owns High Country Sporting Goods in Riverton, told Cowboy State Daily that he was also OK with selling firearms to nonviolent felons who meet all the same qualifications as anybody else legally eligible to buy them.

However, he also wondered if somebody with any sort of felony on their record could pass a federal background check. Dealers must refuse any sales to people who don’t pass.

“I would have no problem with it, but I don’t know if they could pass the federal background check,” he said. “That’s done through the FBI.”

The rest of the piece includes an interesting perspective from GOA, whose opinion is that the right to keep and bear arms was never barred to nonviolent felons under Wyoming law anyway. They opposed the section restoring the right to bear arms -- along with the rights to vote, hold office, and several others -- on the grounds that it gave the impression that the right had been 'restored' when it was never removed.

This is, of course, exactly what is meant when you hear people talk about 'closing the gun-show loophole.' Only gun dealers have to go through the FBI before they can sell you a gun; private citizens do not. You could buy a gun from me if I had one I wanted to sell you at a price we agreed upon, just as with any other piece of property I own that I wish to sell. The FBI has no part in our private business. Dealers at gun shows still have to run the FBI checks, but private citizens who happen to meet there and want to trade, buy, or sell their private property can do so lawfully. These restored Wyoming citizens therefore have an option to lawfully purchase the arms they may lawfully carry. 

That's what the advocates of control would like to change. Then it wouldn't matter what your state legislature said, as long as they could trust the Federal agents at the FBI to say "no."

So Close

My mother sent me this photo today. If I’d been there another week, alas. 

A Funny Skit

 

DC To Pay Millions for 2A Violations

This is a refreshing story.

A Pricey Renovation in W. Asheville

It’s a sign of the changing city that an auto shop should be renovated into a feminist bookstore, but what a price tag: a million dollars! 

Believe me, I love a good bookstore. How many of them ever clear a million dollars, though? Even the big corporations who used to be in that game have mostly folded since Amazon. A ‘queer, feminist, anarchist’ bookstore is intentionally targeted at fringe portions of society even in Asheville. Admittedly the fringe is somewhat larger there than elsewhere; but the population is smaller than major markets like Atlanta or Charlotte, which evens things out a bit. 

Somebody ponied up the money in the form of a loan from an NGO, which might have generous terms if the NGO supports their social goals. Still, the business case for this has to be slim, doesn’t it?

Tennessee Holds the Line

The governor of Tennessee decided that he wanted gun control laws, and when the legislature refused to pass any he called them back for a special session. Of course such a session promised the usual theatrics from those politicians aligned with disarming the public, and the promised theater occurred. 

Nevertheless, the special session of the Tennessee General Assembly has now adjourned sine die with no new gun control laws passed. There was pushing and shoving on the floor as a closing act to the theatrics, but no laws restricting the rights of the people of Tennessee.

The Athenian Way

Last week the NYT published an opinion piece suggesting what the author described as a better way for American democracy: dispensing with elections in favor of the distribution of offices by lottery. Students of history will know that this was in fact tried during the Athenian Democracy.

There are two broad things to be said here. The first is that, like all suggested reforms, this is bootless because the system is too corrupt at this stage to be reformed. There will be no elimination of mass-scale deficit spending until the dollar collapses because the political class is too addicted to the power of spending money. Nor will the size of government will be reduced, certainly not at the scale that would be required to make it affordable. The bureaucracy will not return its stolen legislative function to Congress, and Congress doesn't want it back in any event. The national debt will not be reined in, but will eventually destroy the dollar at least and the nation most likely. There will be no term limits because Congress itself would have to vote on them, and so too here. They will not replace the system they've already learned how to control in a manner that reliably lends them power. We can only wait patiently for the collapse that is coming, and we can afford to be patient because the course they are determined upon leads there inevitably. 

That first thing said, the second thing is that ideas about how to rebuild once the collapse occurs are wisely considered. We shall have to do so eventually, and probably sooner than later. So what about this one? 

Plato was hotly against it, to start. He felt that this lottery idea took the notion of equality much too far; or, more precisely, that it arose from the error of deciding that equality meant that everyone was equally good rather than that everyone should have the same test of their goodness applied to them. On the former view, the lottery seems sensible since anyone is as good as anyone else, and therefore it hardly matters who is sheriff or mayor or President; on the latter, it's obvious that you want to apply the test and then select only the best candidate. 

The old saying, that "equality makes friendship," is happy and also true; but there is obscurity and confusion as to what sort of equality is meant. For there are two equalities which are called by the same name, but are in reality in many ways almost the opposite of one another; one of them may be introduced without difficulty, by any state or any legislator in the distribution of honours: this is the rule of measure, weight, and number, which regulates and apportions them. But there is another equality, of a better and higher kind, which is not so easily recognized. This is the judgment of Zeus; among men it avails but little; that little, however, is the source of the greatest good to individuals and states. For it gives to the greater more, and to the inferior less and in proportion to the nature of each; and, above all, greater honour always to the greater virtue, and to the less less; and to either in proportion to their respective measure of virtue and education. And this is justice, and is ever the true principle of states, at which we ought to aim, and according to this rule order the new city which is now being founded, and any other city which may be hereafter founded. To this the legislator should look-not to the interests of tyrants one or more, or to the power of the people, but to justice always; which, as I was saying, the distribution of natural equality among unequals in each case. 

But there are times at which every state is compelled to use the words, "just," "equal," in a secondary sense, in the hope of escaping in some degree from factions. For equity and indulgence are infractions of the perfect and strict rule of justice. And this is the reason why we are obliged to use the equality of the lot, in order to avoid the discontent of the people; and so we invoke God and fortune in our prayers, and beg that they themselves will direct the lot with a view to supreme justice. And therefore, although we are compelled to use both equalities, we should use that into which the element of chance enters as seldom as possible. (Lawx VI 757b-d)

Plato thinks that the need to appease the jealousy of the ordinary, the poor, the 'democrats,' will require at least some offices to be distributed by lot; and he advises you to pray, every time it is necessary to do so, in the hope that the gods will find a good candidate rather than a bad one. 

At our present moment, one might argue (thinking of WF Buckley's dictum, perhaps) that we could hardly do worse. Indeed, how much worse could the lottery do than to assign powers to the senile, to crackheads, to those so aged or infirm as to be incapable of effectively wielding office? To the corrupt, the wicked, etc? I could easily provide links to exemplars of each of those charges, but each of you can readily call to mind examples of them also. 

Since we cannot reform things in the present moment, however, it is sensible to take Plato's objection on board in anticipation of the rebuilding to come. We do need a system for identifying those with the right virtues for any offices that we decide are necessary. 

That leads to another question: what offices are those, really? I am increasingly of the view that there should be none, or almost none; and those that do exist should be filled voluntarily and without pay, thus having neither power nor money to entice the corrupt to enter into the business. Yet it is worth pausing, first, to list what functions we really want a government to perform -- and, then, whether or not those functions might be performed as well or better by a private agency. Presumably we will still want roads, for example; but here in Western North Carolina roads are built by private contractors, and the only role the government plays is a fundraising one (well, and regrettably also a planning one: that would be far more wisely outsourced to private engineers than the corrupt officials who end up in charge of it). 

Presumably there needs to be someone to fight fires, but volunteers do that well in most of the country already; again, the government's primary role is in funding the volunteer effort. I think policing could be done at least as well by a volunteer group, perhaps an elected (and unpaid) sheriff backed as necessary by a posse drawn from the trusted members of the community. Perhaps we could do without prisons, even, if we resumed hangings and beatings of the criminal; I suspect that would be more effective at reducing predatory crimes, as well. Juries are in fact already drawn by lottery, more or less; perhaps judges could be, at least from a pool of people admitted as qualified to serve as a judge. 

What else? Food safety? We already rely on private ratings (even free ones, like Yelp) to make many purchasing decisions. If someone wanted to rate food or drug safety and developed a reputation for reliable ratings and honest work, would they not enjoy more public trust than the CDC or FDA? 

It might seem as if there might be a need for concentrated power to resist concentrated power: perhaps only a government could effectively restrain a powerful corporation. Yet we have seen, in Afghanistan as elsewhere, that distributed power is often most effective at resisting concentrated power. In spite of the President's favored suggestion that you would need an F-15 rather than an AR-15 to resist the US government, in fact the opposite is true. F-15s require easily broken supply chains and easily-killed experts to be effective; what worked was a vast number of determined men, widely distributed, with rifles. 

It is worth thinking about all of this. What do you think?

"30% Chance of Rain"

In fairness, that was the Weather Channel. The radar app on my phone said 90%. I had a pretty good feeling which one was going to prove to be correct.

All the same, I got a lot wetter today riding the motorcycle than I'd hoped. 

 

Home on the Mountain

With faith and patience, purgatories end. I have passed through the fire and noise, and returned at last to the peace and coolth of my mountain. 

Atlanta in August

Last night I was supposed to transfer in Atlanta to a midnight flight to Asheville, the last of the night. Our flight arrived about five minutes late, but then when we got to the terminal the jet bridge wouldn’t deploy. We sat there for about half an hour while the mechanics worked on it, then had to push back and move to another gate. Before we could do that, they had to remove all the service vehicles, re-stow the luggage, and ensure that everyone was buckled back in. Then it took a while to get a vehicle to shove the plane back…

Ultimately my flight left during the more than an hour we spent trapped on a plane elsewhere in the airport. As a result I’m still here, having slept about five hours at a hotel before returning to the airport and standing in a vast security line for two hours. I am enrolled in Global Entry, which also grants TSA Pre-Check, so I imagine I was better off than most. 

Now my flight is delayed, and the air conditioning at ATL is no match for the August heat. Atlanta in August is rather akin to a stay in the warmer regions of Purgatory. 

I suppose one pays for the opportunity to travel in various coins, including the ugliness of major airports. Hopefully this last leg of the flight home will happen sometime today, and I’ll be free again in the mountains of home. 

Goodbye to the West

A few last images of the Big Hole Mountains and the distant Teton Range from later on today once I got up high. 

A Socratic Pastiche

Dad29 sends this imagination of what Socrates might say about current events. 

Saving dogs

My work on the county committee to look into our animal shelter's critical overcrowding is going well. We've reduced the shelter's adult dog population from over 60 to 41 as of yesterday. We just raised $16K in about a week by publicizing the need to buy some temporary outdoor kennels to relieve overcrowding. The public is stepping up, and it warms my heart tremendously.

A Perfect Tracking Day

This is my last full day out West; by this time tomorrow I’ll be headed home. So, I took the day off to do one more hike. I decided to hike to a mountaintop of the Big Holes, but the guidebook was misleading as to where the trailhead was (some five miles back in the National Forest) so I initially got on the wrong trail. I realized it quickly, but I decided to follow it a while because it was perfect tracking weather. 

Disgruntled Jujitsu

I went to see my niece get awarded a stripe for her belt in jujitsu, and while I was there I’m afraid I hurt her instructor’s pride. 

I didn’t mean to. He likes to draw the adult observers into the lesson, like he did one of the moms. I think he thinks they might get interested and sign up. She couldn’t break out of his headlock. 

He asked me if I thought I could break a headlock, and I said I could. I threw him, broke his headlock, put him in a headlock, and then held him in spite of his best efforts for a minute or two until I let him go.

He was embarrassed and angry, but he could have tapped. I didn’t do anything else, I just held the lock. I was just giving him a chance to figure it out. Normally in jujitsu class, if you don’t tap and keep struggling it’s a sign that you want to continue trying. I’d have let him up at once if he’d tapped out, or otherwise asked. 

Oh, well. He literally asked me for it. 

Travels West

Traveled out west myself for a bit, somewhat south of Grim.

Some fellow travelers

Sky’s Rim

A Raven of Yellowstone

A Good Feed

Tonight we were invited to a party by my mother’s friends, and they put out a good table. Yesterday I made braised moose again — wine rather than beer braise, packed with fresh basil — fresh basil pesto, and fire-roasted tomato, mango, and chipotle salsa. The previous day I grilled a chicken, with fried potatoes and a salad that mom made. 

Mom says that she’s gained six pounds since I arrived. 

UPDATE: My mother’s final total was seven-and-a-half pounds gained. She says she’ll have to diet until my next visit. 

Top of the Summit

From left, Mt. Owen, the Grand Teton, the Middle Teton, and South Teton. Below, the Jedediah Smith Wilderness. 

Cairns to the Tetons

Wind Cave

Of all the hikes I have taken, this destination looks and feels most like it belongs in Arthurian myth. 

Off to the Rodeo

I’m Going to Jackson

A bona fide Stetson hat, with fake dirt, $265 new.

Flying into Jackson Hole airport (JAC) a week and a half ago, I rode a nearly empty jet with a completely full First Class cabin. 

Playground of the rich, the old cowboy town is a sad sight. All isn’t lost: at The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar I ran into a group of the Punishers MC, off-duty cops coming home from Sturgis. 

Mostly it’s just rich people wondering if people will consider their newly-purchased hats fake. I advised one lady that the straw hat she was considering would be legitimate until Labor Day. If you buy one of these faux-dirt Stetsons, Dude, you’re on your own. 

Conservatism Properly Understood

 I have long thought the true value of conservatism is it's cultural and philosophical component, as opposed to the various political movements contending for power under its banner. I certainly think that conservatism should be, and is, more than a single-minded focus on free market economics. The free market is simply a tool, a means to an end and not an end in and of itself. 

Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised to read this excellent article.  I had never heard of the poet Peter Viereck before, but thanks to Mr. Syck's article I was directed to Peter Viereck's equally excellent article, "But - I'm a Conservative! While I certainly didn't agree with every point he made, I still think his essay makes some valuable points that conservatives would do well to embrace. That essay reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from another conservative writer, Russell Kirk.

  

This should boost EV sales

First California wanted to force people to quit using gasoline to power their cars. Use the electric grid instead! Then it became apparent that an already stressed grid would get worse if California continued to close nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants, while at the same time encouraging drivers to charge up their EVs on the grid. The answer is breathtaking in its brilliance: if the grid is stressed, run the EV-charging stations backwards, so the EV batteries are drawn down to support the grid they're supposed to be using to charge up on. Apparently some EV charging systems already work as a two-way device, the idea being that owners might want to use them as emergency power for their households. The new idea is to require all EV charging systems to work that way, and not for the benefit of the owners' households but for the whole grid instead.

The Horse Pull

After a pleasant early dinner with Thos., I took my mother to the horse pull. 

The winner, pulling 9,500 pounds for over eight feet, was a local team. 

It’s an interesting sport. The ‘full pull’ is 27.5 feet for no reason anyone seems to know. They pull in stages that increase by a thousand pounds to eight thousand, then by five hundred each thereafter. Beautiful draft horses. 

Singing the Song of the Common Man

Virginian Oliver Anthony came across my twitter feed today, and instantly I'm a fan.  Have a listen and maybe you'll be too.

The song that got him attention is "Rich Men North of Richmond" (in other words, around D.C.)-

I also liked this Waylon cover of his, recorded on his cell phone, so forgive the sound quality-

And he seems like a pretty nice guy who it would be nice to sit a spell with-

(h/t @shouse)s://twitter.com/Shouse34/status/1689793700224733184?s=20

Down Teton Canyon

Cowboy Cooking

My mother favors the ease of a propane grill at her age, so it’s not the wood fire I usually grill over. The steaks are legit, though. I found a real butcher and bought a whole Chuck eye roast, which I then further butchered into two Chuck eye steaks and two Denver steaks. 

Tonight I grilled them up for my mother and brother-in-law, served with Idaho potatoes and homemade dry chile salsas. Pretty decent eating, and for a fraction of what ribeyes would have cost. 

More Beer News

Giant Anheuser-Busch sells eight companies amid blue can beer struggles. Analysts suggest that there are long term problems across their brands, and that blue can may never recover. 

Good. Drink local. Here’s one crew of brewers I found out West. 

That Eugenics Though

Richard Dawkins says it out loud. 

It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.

I would argue that the reason it wouldn’t work is ideology. People would want to make more people of the kind they like, which would lead to failures in the species. Consider how Dalmatians are selected for color, but that means they’re now mostly stupid.

Generally speaking whenever people who think they’re smarter or better than others try to organize things ‘for the common good / the betterment of humanity’ they end up making things objectively worse. Sometimes it’s because their class interests blind them; sometimes they just aren’t as smart as they thought they were. Sometimes they’re plain evil, like Mao, and all that talk of improvement was smoke. 

Pig Wrestling

This county fair doesn’t disappoint. What better entertainment on a Monday night in August than pig wrestling?

Teton Canyon

New homes

Our first, somewhat experimental dog adoption day went well yesterday, with over half the animals placed. The numbers, though small, were big for a community this size. We'll keep working on getting the shelter population down to a manageable size.

It's good to work out the logistical bugs on an event like this. I'm not particularly experienced an organizing a volunteer army to handle all the details. It was a little chaotic at times, but people did show up to lend a hand. I believe we'll hold a series of events now that the word is trickling out about the urgent need.

Here's one of the lucky dogs in her new home, absolutely relaxed. She's been stuck in a cage for a long time.

A County Fair

Teton County is having its 100th anniversary fair this week. I dropped in for the afternoon. 

The Grand Teton under a darkening sky. 

Motherly Love

My niece Clio, in the midst of a story about kids who were mean: "But my mom always says, if somebody does something mean to you, do it back."

Me: "Wait, what does your mother say?"

Clio: "Do it back to them."

Me: "Your momma taught you 'Get revenge'?"

Clio: "Yes."

"Are we the baddies?"

Periodically I watch this classic skit.



David Brooks is channeling the skit today in "What If We're the Bad Guys Here?" He gently chides his posh NYT readership with lots of chummy assumptions about "our" elite status, but points out that those smelly Trump supporters do have just a bit of a point about how the smug illuminati are making out like bandits at the expense of their pathetic protegees.

Not that he doesn't pull himself back from the brink; he knows he can't completely lose his audience. "Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not." Heavens to Betsy, no, we're not that wrong.

To give him credit, though, he closes on a good thought:

“History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.”

Unearned caste privileges are a good way to get the guillotines to be rolled out.

That stuff that never happened was OK and we knew all about it anyway

Every day I have to ask myself whether there's a limit to how low this process can go. The new establishment spin on Hunter Biden is that he was a con man selling what only "appeared" to be access to his powerful father. I hope he vetted that approach with the shady guys who paid him, or they might be wondering about a refund. On the other hand, if they got their expected merchandise long ago, maybe they're fine with the new story.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know that Biden Sr. didn't mind helping create this harmless illusion of access. It's just a service that powerful men in public service naturally perform for the smart beloved sons they trust implicitly. Nothing to see here, certainly nothing to consider when casting a ballot in 2024.

Dreaming and thinking

From Maggie's Farm today:

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

Rabindranath Tagore

Another way to say "dreaming and waking" is "gut and head," or feeling and discerning: the wise heart. Add action, and you have the will, or soul.

Way Out West

For the next three weeks I will be visiting my mother, sister, and niece on the border of Wyoming and Idaho. It’s a very different land than the one I usually frequent, with bigger skies and Rocky Mountains— indeed, the Grand Tetons— different weather, and different flora and fauna. 

Tonight, for example, I am making beer-braised moose for supper. It’s just like the venison braise I described on the sidebar, but with a different beast in the pot. 

Rescue

I haven't saved anyone from physical peril lately, unlike our host. What I have been, is involved in a local crisis with the animal shelter. To make a long story short, I was afraid we'd turned some kind of awful corner and would have to abandon our long-standing program that more or less prevented any need to kill animals to make space. I'm now thinking we hit more of a temporary blip and just need to scramble to take some emergency Dunkirk-like action to get the sudden population pressure off the shelter, and that we'll be able to get back on an even keel and still avoid killing animals for space.

More about that later. What I want to say today is that I come unspooled in the face of dogs under threat. Our new County Judge named a committee to step in and made me the chair. I'm scrambling and finding some useful concrete immediate things to do to get a grip on the problem. My committee has excellent members. There's all kinds of good news.

In the middle of all this, I had a shattering experience at my church on Sunday, making an impassioned plea for help that I felt fell on deaf ears. I was in tears in front of the lot of them, and I felt they ghosted me. Again, long story, there's more to it, I get that it wasn't all it seemed, and we'll deal with it.

No, here's the real point. I have a friend at church between whom and myself a terrible rift opened up years ago over how she had put her dogs in danger. I’ve been icy ever since, with my conscience upbraiding me. Yesterday, alone among all my co-parishioners, she showed up in Commissioners Court to support me and the dogs. I realized I had to make this right by finding her and confessing my fault in my part of the rift. Today she asked my forgiveness before I could even speak first. We buried the hatchet. It’s moments like that that make life worth living. (And on top of that, we've savings some dogs.)

I think God sees that there are things in me that can't be helped until other things are broken down. He puts me in a crisis where I have to crack open and become fully human, because I can't coast by in a state of cool control. If it takes dogs in peril, He'll put me in charge of saving some dogs in peril. Because it's not only dogs to whom I owe a duty of love, it's also my fellow human beings, especially the ones I haven't managed to forgive. I'm so solitary; I'm barely in contact with human beings at all most of the time. But that's not what I was put on Earth for.

Bad Christians

The lead story for two weeks running in The Smoky Mountain News has been about a dude* in a bikini. Nobody knows who this dude is, or what sex/gender the person is, or what pronouns are preferred (SMN is at pains to point that out, but then assumes 'she' is correct in their coverage). These were accompanied by an editorial against the "dangerous vigilante fantasies" of country music, which must "end."

Coverage by the local paper has been painfully sanctimonious. Now SMN is a good paper in spite of its clear liberal editorial bias; they produce well-researched journalism on the drug trafficking situation in the region, on local politics, on internal Cherokee Nation affairs, and also on arts and literature in the area (the latter being why I read it; I often find out about good bands and live shows through them). I've been genuinely impressed by their straight journalism work. Even here, they went to some trouble to get the facts straight and to file appropriate public records requests, etc. That's not the issue.

I'm also willing to give an argument against interest in opposing the sanctimony. The coverage demonstrates that people were passing rumors that are not supported by the video of the incident. That's dangerous, as they say; and we can reasonably agree that a hundred years ago a similar kind of rumor about possible sexual predation by a hated minority might have led to a lynching. The absence of lynchings marks real progress, and I am prepared to acknowledge that these sort of irritating liberal responses are presumably partly to be credited for that progress. (Certainly not wholly to be credited for it, but I can see the argument that they are assisting in providing a helpful social immunity to such mob violence).

All the same, I have a problem with the preaching. I do mean preaching literally:  two of the section headers in their first piece are unelaborated Biblical references, whose clear intention is to suggest that their social opponents are bad Christians as well as bad people (as well as wrong on the facts). 

This is not necessary, and in fact is very risky, for their preferred arrangement. Their basic argument is captured in their headline: "The mere existence of trans people is not a crime." (Again, whether or not the wholly anonymous dude in the bikini is in fact trans, or just a David Lee Roth impersonator, is not clear from the facts.) Now that's true as a matter of fact, but it's accidentally true: and if you put it to a clean vote, democratically speaking, I don't know that it would continue to be true. Still, the best argument is that there is official toleration of this violation of local mores that the population is legally bound to accept regardless of whatever they or their church think about it.

Shifting it to a religious ground opens the question of whether this kind of behavior is in fact something that ought to be tolerated as a matter of ethics and morals, and it turns out religion has a lot to say about that. St. Augustine and Aquinas have a lot to say, as does the official doctrine of many churches, as do many preachers and priests who might rise of a Sunday morning to speak to the matter if asked to do so.

The liberal project to a large degree depends on disallowing that entire line of argument. The liberal project no longer attempts -- as it did in the era of Immanuel Kant** -- to universalize religious philosophy as an exercise of practical reason. It has long since simply declared that religion belongs in the private sphere. Because freedom of religion is a basic right, anyone may accept or refuse to accept any religious doctrine. Thus, positive laws cannot enshrine religious doctrines without violating the right of people to reject the doctrines those rules are based upon. 

If you want to argue religion, you have to admit religion to the debate. If you want to exclude religion from public life, you don't get to preach either. 

As for country music, I haven't ever heard the song and thus don't know if I consider it actual country, which is a more vicious debate even than these already described.  The tradition of vigilante fantasies in music is very old and broad, though; it's not just Merle Haggard and Charlie Daniels but traditional Irish and Scottish music, and English, and, well, all such music. You're just going to have to learn to live with that one, SMN. Freedom of artistic expression is a basic right on the liberal model too. 

* Dude is a gender-neutral term, they say.

** Kant's universalized philosophy of practical reason was hotly against alternative sexualities, by the way.

A Less Glorious Outing

We had a call overnight that lasted 14 hours. A big storm left us pulling security for the electrical workers who were repairing the damage so two districts could get power back. It was necessary to completely close the only artery through this area for more than twelve hours, and that on a Saturday night when many people were traveling up or down the mountain while a little tipsy. 

On the upside, power has been restored and no electrical workers were hurt by crazy drivers crashing through their work zones after midnight. I had a chance to get to know one of the elders in the community, who had many interesting stories about his decades with the department of transportation, mountain foods he'd grown up with and recommended, and which creeks were good fishing. He kept coming back on foot all night because his family was trapped on the other side of the barricade, and he was worried about them. We had eyes on them, we just couldn't let anybody through all night.

I can't remember the last time I actually stayed up all night until dawn, which is an experience I remember more fondly from my youth. I think I might forgo it, as fate allows, for the future. 

“Thank you for saving our House”

The nice lady who lived by the place that burned Monday brought me a cobbler and a very sweet note. I’m glad I was out at the time she brought it by, as I’m not always felicitous with such emotions. Still, I very much appreciate knowing that it meant something to her. 

Apropos of the Last

A hero even in California.

Arming Victims Changes Things

Kerry Slone, who describes herself as a victim of domestic violence, has a suggestion for those like herself.

A firearm represents a much bigger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself. Men can readily hurt women without a gun, and if a woman is already in physical contact with the attacker so that he can take away their gun, they are already in trouble.

The peer-reviewed research shows that murder rates decline when people carry concealed handguns, whether men or women. But a woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than a man doing the same.

I have been asked to train women in the use of handguns, when they've separated from a partner and become afraid of him. I did so gladly, even though I might have liked the guy and doubted that he would in fact pursue any sort of harm towards her. If he did not, as I suspected he would not, no harm would befall him; and if he did, well, then he had it coming. 

It's strange, I reflect, to live in an era that turns every piece of once-jovial intellectual property into a complaint by women against men -- Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Marvel comic movies, apparently even Barbie dolls -- yet dodges this simple, practical remedy for the worst sort of actual harm that men do to women. We festoon the complaint rather than solving it.

Victims who are armed aren't victims anymore. They are, to use the language of the complaint, transformed into active agents rather than passive patients. They can assert their will, defend their interests, not be harmed against consent. I might suggest to them that their friends, the real allies, are those who help you get there rather than those who commiserate in the complaint. 

Awful Local News

Three junior Marines dead in North Carolina. 

This was unexpected

The Hunter Biden plea deal is not quite dead, but it's not looking good, either.

A Crisis of Masculinity

There's a bit of a fuss over Politico hosting a 'masculinity' issue without actually asking any men to participate in it. I agree that this is prima facie an odd thing to do, but if you reflect for a moment there are two ways in which it makes sense. First, as my friend Shireen Qudosi argues, men and women exist in (necessary) relationship to each other. (She has thoughts on that necessary connection, too.) It would make a kind of sense to ask women for their independent perspective on how the relationship was going. 

Unfortunately, that wasn't why Politico did it. They did it for the other reason, which is worse: there is a dearth of scholars of masculinity because you could never get tenure in 'male studies.' There are 'women's studies' and 'gender studies' (which apparently never includes one of the major genders, per se unhyphenated males). There are feminists in history departments and literature departments and art departments who are tenured to write feminine-perspective studies of those things. No university on earth has a "masculine studies" program, partly because men are likely to regard that sort of thing as navel-gazing nonsense, and  partly because the whole academic society is hotly against it. 

So we are getting a perspective on masculinity from those who are hostile to it. This is familiar. The New York Times did a similar thing with chivalry, asking a lot of people who weren't chivalrous and didn't really have a notion of what the concept meant whether or not it was important. The Times at least found one person who had some actual relationship to the topic to ask, which is better than this project; he was just not ready to talk about it because he hadn't been asked to think much about it before, only to do it. Politico hasn't even got that, which makes the quality of their work dubious. 

I wrote a response to the Times series, but I don't think I'll write one for Politico. They're allied questions, since chivalry happens to reliably produce the best sort of men. It's not the only way, though: here is a purely religious alternative approach recommended by my cousin the (female) physician. That sufficiently maps out the issue, which is that good men can do a lot of good, and bad men a lot of harm. It's really important to get this right, but our scholars aren't worried about it because they've decided that rising in their social class is more important -- and that requires talking up the hostile-to-the-alleged-patriarchy feminist perspective, and utterly dismissing alternative views (beginning with questioning whether this country in any sense constitutes a 'patriarchy'). 

As Texan99 once put it, since she's a woman anything she does must be feminine. Mutatis mutandis, anything I or any man does must be in some sense masculine. There may be special goods that only good fathers can provide, or good husbands, or good men; or it may only be that there are goods they are more likely to provide. It seems like the maleness is a given, though; the real issue is developing the virtues of masculinity, rather than the masculinity itself. Now that's something I've written a lot about already, and a question that continues to matter year after year.

A Quiet Afternoon

So today, after the weekend of intense rescue training, I intended to take a day off from firefighting and rest up.

As we were driving to the store, not even a half mile from home, I looked over and saw a big fire through the trees. I went running over after I jumped out of the truck and found a building that was so completely engulfed with rolling flames that I couldn't see any part of it. All I could see was the shape of a building, made out of fire.

I got back to my truck and a neighbor lady was saying that she was going to call 911, so instead of doing that I drove as fast as I could to the Fire Station and got my gear. I passed the fire engine on the way -- they'd just been paged off her call -- so I changed into my turnout gear and went back. I got there almost the same time as the truck, was handed one of the attack hoses, and fought the fire on the rear of the house.

We fought that fire for quite a while before any other stations arrived to back us up. After a while, though, there were enough of them that another crew could relieve us. By then we'd knocked down the worst of it.

I told you all of that to tell you this: after we were relieved, some EMTs who had responded were assigned to check the attack team's pulse, blood pressure, and other vitals. The lady who was trying to check mine couldn't get a blood pressure reading because my upper arm was too big. She then shifted to my lower arm. She still couldn't get a blood pressure reading because my lower arm was too big. 

She asked her partner if they had a bigger cuff, and he said no. I replied, "No worries, ma'am. After hearing you say that my arms are too big to get a blood pressure reading, I'll be just fine. I'll be walking on air all afternoon."

She just rolled her eyes and said, "Oh my God. Firefighters."

Legacies

Without being a Larry Summers fan, I thought he got the boot as Harvard's president under ridiculous circumstances. In this Bari Weiss interview about the future of legacy admission, Summers makes sensible points about the purpose of an elite university's admission process while avoiding several fashionable types of arrant nonsense. Mostly he seems to consider questions like: Should we care whether a student is self-motivated or simply allowing his over-involved parents to stuff his resume with expensive baubles? Does an applicant's history of overcoming adversity tell us how much he'll benefit from a challenging university curriculum? Do we trust ourselves to detect intellectual talent any more, or have we decided that we can teach calculus to a horse if we purify our politics sufficiently? If elitist topics like calculus aren't the point any more, then why not simply mail the diploma to anyone who asks for it, to level the playing field? OK, he doesn't ask those questions exactly, but his thoughts are tempting him into these dangerous heresies.

A question that caught my eye was whether the people paying a fortune in Harvard tuition legitimately expected their little darlings to get the whole Harvard experience, the most important part of which is developing a good rolodex in preparation for a life of nepotistic privilege. Not that I can't see the practical value of such an approach, but it meshes poorly with the image of Harvard as social justice warrior.

Off to the Wilderness

In addition to the TR General/Rope Rescue series I mentioned, I've been concurrently taking TR Wilderness classes on alternating weekends. This weekend is the last of those too, so by Sunday my summer of rescue classes will have come to an end. (If you're keeping track at home, I was already TR Water certified.)

I'll be out participating in the exercises and exams through Sunday. Have a good weekend. 

UPDATE: It’s 8:40 PM Sunday and I’m back on station. 

The night phase turned out to be a full scale search and rock rope-rescue by midnight. Both it and other phases were handled with great skill by everyone in spite of the difficulty of coming from different agencies and levels of government. My son, I am pleased to say, was part of the rope team on the cliff top. He’s coming along.

It almost turned into a real rescue. A 14 year old girl went missing yesterday, and they almost called off the exercise to have us participate in the search. Fortunately I’m told that she was located quickly, so we continued with the exercise.

“Hey y’all”

Quite a translation from the French. 

I need to try to remember “Salut à toutes et à tous.” That could be a useful phrase sometime. 

Duties versus Responsibilities

Last night I took the last exam in the Technical Rescuer - General series (which in NC is also combined with the Rope Rescue specialization). One of the multiple choice questions asked you whether certain things were DUTIES of the incident commander, or instead RESPONSIBILITIES.

These exams are often badly written. I have found them harder than the exams I took in graduate school, sometimes, just because of the bad writing by the exam authors. Sometimes the issue is that the questions are antiquated and haven't been replaced:

• Last night's exam also featured two questions about an acronym used in rope rescue, both the current one we were taught about and the old one they long ago replaced and no one had ever heard of before; 
• another exam featured a series of questions about a type of harness that was long ago discontinued by NFPA, and about which we therefore knew nothing; 
• a third exam had a Vietnam-era question about helicopters that hasn't been current in decades. 

Those questions don't necessarily feature bad writing, just outdated information that needs to be cleaned up but apparently never is. They could be fixed if there were ever a review.

What really gets to me is the logic problems in the exams that are created by authors not understanding how logic works. One question on an early test asked if a kind of rescue material should be replaced after exposure to temperatures above 160 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 degrees, 220 degrees, or 240 degrees. Now logic will tell you that only 240 could be correct, as otherwise there would be multiple correct answers on a question that only accepts one. For example, if the correct answer were 220, then anything exposed to 240 should also be replaced because 240 > 220. 

However, 220 was in fact the correct answer, and the fact that 240 was also correct didn't bother the authors. The question could have been asked differently without creating that problem, which is why test authors should have some training in logic. "What is the standard for the maximum temperature beyond which these materials should be replaced?" would not have created the same issue.

Here too the real point of the question was to see if you had memorized the exact wording of the answer. There is no technical distinction in the literature between 'duty' and 'responsibility' that would justify including both answers in the test. If you look up the definition for 'responsibility,' you will find that the appropriate entry includes the word 'duty.' Either of these words would, in ordinary English, correctly describe the concept. However, one of them was right, and the other was counted towards failure of the exam.

I imagine this sort of thing comes up in many similar technical fields. I know it's something that the authors of the Law School Admissions Test take seriously, because they hired a friend of mine who is a professional logician to review their tests. At the technical school level, though, students have fewer resources and are unlikely to sue if they should wrongfully fail an exam. They're just working class people who are expected to put up with it, as they are often expected to put up with worse conditions in society. You failed? Eh, repeat the course. It won't hurt you to hear it again. 

Cyberpunk Update

Bionic hands are enjoying a significant improvement.

For the first time, a person with an arm amputation can manipulate each finger of a bionic hand as if it was his own. Thanks to revolutionary surgical and engineering advancements that seamlessly merge humans with machines, this breakthrough offers new hope and possibilities for people with amputations worldwide. A study presents the first documented case of an individual whose body was surgically modified to incorporate implanted sensors and a skeletal implant. A.I. algorithms then translated the user's intentions into movement of the prosthesis.

And, via Chicago Boyz, wearable devices are helping fight diabetes. 

UPDATE: Military computer chips with human and mouse brain tissue. 

Home in the High Country

It’s taken a day of travel, but I’ve returned home to the far blue mountains.* I won’t be here long; by the end of the month I’m due to wander out West for a time. For a few days, though, I’ll be here where things are familiar. 

* Louis L’amour made the worst pun I know of in all his work at the end of that novel, when the protagonist sees the far blue mountains,’but he knew not their appellation.’

A Visit with Uncle J

Longtime readers will remember Uncle Jimbo, former Green Beret and fellow BLACKFIVE blogger. I dropped in on him today while passing through Arlington. He has a new sign.

It’s hilarious in the context of his neighbors, who all have those “IN THIS HOUSE WE..” rainbow signs they probably got at their Unitarian or Methodist church. 

The Black Sea Deal

Russia suspended its participation in the Black Sea deal, which provided a grain corridor to the world from the war in Ukraine. Wheat prices jumped immediately, as they would given that Russia and Ukraine together provide a quarter of the world's supply. That said, the war has already lead to fluctuations. 

Traditional Conservatism on Parade

The Orthosphere pens the most genuinely conservative post I have read in many years: an argument in favor of natural slavery.

Conservatives, following Aristotle, get there from time to time; I think it's close to literally unthinkable for liberals, for better or worse. Liberals often have very good minds, so finding something they cannot -- or will not allow themselves to -- think is surprising. Perhaps one of them could entertain the idea over beer, in private conversation with a trusted friend. Perhaps it is just socially so unacceptable as to be unthinkable and incapable of expression even as a potential idea in a public context. 

The idea is severable from racism, and indeed should be severed from it: Aristotle was talking about his fellow Greeks, and the fictional Prime Minister the Orthosphere quotes about his fellow Britons. The issue has to do with virtue and vice, those who give themselves to one and those who give themselves to the other. It is an idea that has a long philosophical heritage, really at least as strong in Plato as in Aristotle, in Kant as in any Anglo-American thinker. 

Liberalism began by emancipating the heretics, proceeded to emancipate the serfs and slaves, turned its hand to emancipation of the women, and has most recently been striking the manacles from off the wrists of sexual deviants and thieves. [Link added for emphasis. -Grim]

There is a Pollyanna liberalism that believes emancipation must always be followed by improvement, that is full of childish self-confidence and hatred of restraint.  Like a child sulking and chaffing under the restraints of his father’s house, Pollyanna liberalism does not see that there are dreadful possibilities in freedom.  When a young man comes of age and is emancipated from the restraints of his father’s house, he soon discovers that he is free to stay up as late as he pleases, and also, if need be, to sleep on the street.  He soon realizes that he is now free to eat whatever he likes, and also, if need be, to eat nothing at all.

The dreadful possibilities of freedom become clear.

The idea is properly a significant challenge to those -- like myself -- who advocate for human freedom in the strongest terms. What should be done with those described? Plato's answer is a sort of ancient totalitarianism; Aristotle, a kind of slavery-for-their-own-good. Kant likes execution, frankly; he is high on the value of capital punishment. Probably I mostly like removing the protections that keep them from realizing the natural consequences of their actions, and letting them learn -- or letting them die.

What we've done instead is driven the idea out of the mind, which seems more and more popular as an approach. No good will come of that for certain. Hard ideas might breed hard men, but they might also engender thoughtful resolutions. Or both: we could do worse than having hard but thoughtful men, and probably will. 

IRR

These numbers are fairly small, which suggests to me that they already had a specific list in mind. The Inactive Ready Reserve is generally the fate of those whose enlistment has otherwise ended, but are contractually obligated to remain available in that way for a certain period (usually 4 years). This is not necessarily cause for alarm; it may be more to do with recruiting shortfalls leaving them lacking a few companies’ soldiery. 

Still, it looks like it is slated for Ukraine. Our continuing commitment to that conflict, which has already pushed a Democratic administration to endorse the cluster bombs they normally prefer to discuss as war crimes, has created an extended risk given that we are not formally a combatant in the war. 

An End

I would note that this is not for the base brand, but for its "Platinum" high ABV version. Still, I tend to agree with the assessment that losing COSTCO is a big deal. Whether or not any lessons will be learned remains to be seen. 

Maybe, though. This is the first big corporate property to die, rather than just to suffer a temporary setback, as a result of this foolishness. We'll see if that's enough to get their attention.

If you remember the movie, this happened right after William Wallace sacked York. Immediately after this scene, Longshanks muses that if Wallace can sack York, he can come after him, too. 

Longshanks responds with aggression; will international corporations likewise? More censorship, more government oppression of parent teacher organizations and grassroots political groups? Or will they sue for peace?