Yet More Thanksgiving

Heterodox Academy has a placemat for you to put out on your tables.

My Colleague's Opinion Makes Him A Monster

In the new political climate we now inhabit, [David[ Duke and [Mark] Lilla were contributing to the same ideological project, the former cloaked in a KKK hood, the latter in an academic gown. Both men are underwriting the whitening of American nationalism, and the re-centering of white lives as lives that matter most in the U.S. Duke is happy to own the white supremacy of his statements, while Lilla’s op-ed does the more nefarious background work of making white supremacy respectable. Again.

Mark Lilla and I both teach at Columbia University, and I acknowledge that this is a harsh indictment of my colleague. But these are harsh times.

Here's Lilla's piece, which I take to argue that identity politics isn't really working out well for Democrats and they ought to rethink it. I'd have thought this was a bit of advice obviously intended to help the Democratic Party win elections, and thus less likely to come in for a charge of "white supremacy" than if it were aimed at helping the Republican Party. Apparently not, but see what you think. Maybe the KKK aspect of his piece is eluding my eye.

If this is where people's heads are, this is going to be a rough little while.

My sense is that it's not going to work, though. The election of Donald Trump was a very close-run thing, and I don't know that he has a lot of deep support as a person. But while the election of Trump was narrow, the rejection of political correctness as an approach to life was broad and deep. The fact that Trump got through the Republican primary shows that Republicans are done with it. The fact that he was taken seriously as a major party candidate in the general shows that the American people are, mostly, done with it.

Hillary Clinton wondered aloud why she wasn't ahead by 50 points, given all the things Trump said and did. It was a good question. The only workable answer lies in collapsing the assumption that violating PC norms was fatal.

That's going to give us a very different public discourse. We'll see how it improves, and whether it also harms, public life. These attempts to stand the PC norms back up, though, isn't going to work. A Trump administration is going to be a continuing bulldozer to such norms. Every day there will be a new lesson in how they don't apply any more.

UPDATE: Bernie Sanders asks about going "beyond identity politics." He should realize how offensive this is, says Vox.

Harleys are Awesome, But...

John Wayne on a Honda should pretty much end the idea that only Harleys are fit bikes for American riders.

Which movie do you think this still is from? He wore suspenders all across his career, from Stagecoach to The Searchers to the Cavalry movies and onwards. He's older, here. Big Jake?

More Thanksgiving Talk

If Donald Trump is racist, does that mean you think your family is racist for voting for the man? Is Kanye West racist now? You think I like the fact that a rich New York jagoff with verbal diarrhea is going to be president? I just voted for the guy, I didn’t sign on the dotted line in blood. If he starts throwing people in camps, I’ll be the first guy to form a militia. But until then, I can’t be bothered to keep up with all things that are racist these days.

Go, California!

...and take Seattle with you.

A Message From Donald Trump

Wretchard asks: "Does it make sense? If not what happens next? If it makes sense, does it have a chance?"



I'm a big fan of killing the TPP.

A Neat Tool

So, we all know that we can use the Internet Archive (also known as the Wayback Machine) to try to find old internet pages.

Did you know, though, that they have an extensive archive of live music?

It turns out to be especially good for Grateful Dead fans, which is a category I'm guessing overlaps neatly with "people who work on the Internet Archive."

The value of price

You have only to see how afraid the Venezuelan government is of price information to see what a powerful economic tool it is.

I absolutely love it when information is enough to destroy a totalitarian regime.

ATF: "Medicinal" Marijuana Trumps 2nd Amendment

A number of states have recently passed medicinal marijuana laws. I do not have a strong opinion about these, although I do know of a young girl here in Georgia whose seizures were finally brought under control by its use. (Georgia's own very limited such law was brought on by a similar case, but not the same one.)

The ATF would like you to know, however, that if you obtain a card allowing you to purchase medicinal marijuana, you are barred from owning a firearm.

Under the ATF’s policy, not only are users of marijuana prohibited from possessing firearms, but a person may not transfer a firearm to an individual if the transferor knows that the transferee holds a medical marijuana card.

Importantly, this second prohibition applies even where the cardholder does not actually use any marijuana.

I could see an "under the influence" law pertaining to carrying or using a firearm. An ownership ban seems excessive to me.

The Bubble

FP Needs A Class on Military Science

One of the mysteries about the ongoing offensive in Mosul, where Iraqi security forces are now pressing into the northern, eastern, and southern edges of the city, has been the apparent decision to leave unattended the desert between the battlefield and Syria. Unless this was a baffling oversight, the 20-mile-wide corridor of desert seemed intended to give Islamic State fighters an escape route to the group’s strongholds in Syria, perhaps to limit the destruction in Mosul.

Sun Tzu said, ""When you surround the enemy always allow them an escape route. They must see that there is an alternative to death."

The reason is not to 'reduce the destruction' of the city, although it would be nice if that occurred. The reason is to reduce their will to fight to the death. If there's no choice, every man will resist to the last to the utmost of his powers. If there is, an increasing number of men will opt out and take to the road.

There's a second issue, which has to do with American technological advantages, that I won't discuss for OPSEC reasons. Still, it's not that baffling why a route through the open desert was left free for Sun Tzu's purpose.

The rest of the article is worth reading, as it pertains to the history of Tal Afar in the battle of Sunnis and Shia. I always think of Col. McMaster and the 3rd ACR when I think of that place. Tal Afar was one of the places where we learned how to win against the insurgents' influence on the population. The Shia militas are not going to be able to make that strategy work, and they are not strong enough to effect the Sri Lankan solution to an insurgent population.

Biker in Chief is Not Offended

There's a minor brou-ha-ha over the fact that VP-Elect Mike Pence was addressed by the cast at a performance of Hamilton. They told him that a lot of people were worried by the recent election, especially that the incoming administration wouldn't protect all Americans equally, and expressed hope that he'd found in their show some inspiration to adhere to American ideals.

A lot of people were angry on Pence's behalf, including the President Elect.

Pence himself, who is a biker, was not the least bit put out. In a very classy response, he complimented their show and the cast themselves, urged others to see the show, and said he was not at all offended by their remarks.

He then went on to say "But I want to assure people...."

CBS News cut off the rest of his remarks. I haven't found a longer version of the clip, so I'm not sure what he wanted to assure us of, but my guess is that he went on to say something comforting to those Americans who feel frightened by him or the incoming administration.

That's just a guess, though, because CBS didn't think that part mattered.

UPDATE:

What he said was, "I just want to reassure people that what president elect Donald Trump said on election night, he absolutely meant from the bottom of his heart. He is preparing to be the president of all of the people of the United States of America."

What happens next

At David Foster's place, Lexington Green argues that Trump's campaign positions have been no more vacuous than most, and less so than many.  He believes Trump's critics, especially a Prof. Lipson, are unaccountably ignoring the President-Elect's fairly well fleshed-out position papers.

If Prof. Lipson wants to look like a genius-prophet to his readers, he should do what too few people have done: Read Trump’s papers and predict that bills will be introduced to do X, Y and Z. Astonished readers will say, “Professor Lipson, how did you know?” He can claim his methods are proprietary.

My Food is Problematic

"Although breastfeeding is assumed to be natural and a biological function, we problematize the practice as gendered and heteronormative."

You do that. I know a three-month-old who needs to eat every three hours, however, and she will not care what you think about how she does it.

Thanksgivingsmanship

From an Ace commenter:

I've been all anti politics at Thanksgiving because c'mon people can't we at least pretend for one day that there are more important things.

However. Someone reminded me that if you bring up politics and drive people off, more pie for you!

So my position is now this: Stake out the high ground next to the pie and then GAME ON!

Well that's just crazy talk

A Trump-supporting law professor wonders how nearly all his colleagues so thoroughly lost sight of the principle that ours is a government of laws, not men:

What this is supposed to mean is that we adhere to the original understanding of our Constitution and laws, and that if legal change is to be accomplished it is done not by judges or presidents, but by legislators or the American people, through constitutional amendments.

This is a New Approach

Can a section of the Constitution itself be unconstitutional? The answer is yes.

Used to be the idea was just to get the SCOTUS to ignore the parts of the Constitution you didn't like. Is the 10th Amendment unconstitutional? It's certainly impossible to square with the left's agenda since FDR. As far as I know, though, no one has argued that it is unconstitutional; they've just elected to act as if it didn't exist.

The Mars Tartan

Very good.

The list of essential items astronauts would need to pack for an expedition to the Red Planet, has just got longer after a leading space scientist has had his design for a Mars Exploration tartan – including a colour representing future human settlement on Mars – officially registered with the Scottish Government’s Register of Tartans....

Prof Cockell, who also runs an online course about the search for alien life, said: “I’m totally enthusiastic about Mars exploration and decided it would be fun to have a tartan for future Mars exploration. I also thought it would reflect that forward-thinking scientific aspect of Scottish culture.

“The tartan could be worn by those working on Mars, any Scottish people going to Mars and on Earth by those preparing for Mars expeditions such as training in extreme environments in Antarctica.”

But what about the children?

Useful advice for everyone melting down about how their children will cope with Trump's proposed cabinet appointees.  News flash:  your kids don't think your politics are all that cool.

"The End of Identity Liberalism"

And not a day too soon.

Recently I performed a little experiment during a sabbatical in France: For a full year I read only European publications, not American ones. My thought was to try seeing the world as European readers did. But it was far more instructive to return home and realize how the lens of identity has transformed American reporting in recent years. How often, for example, the laziest story in American journalism — about the “first X to do Y” — is told and retold. Fascination with the identity drama has even affected foreign reporting, which is in distressingly short supply. However interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender people in Egypt, it contributes nothing to educating Americans about the powerful political and religious currents that will determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own. No major news outlet in Europe would think of adopting such a focus.

The author is mostly concerned about the effect on liberalism, but the effect on America is more significant. This division of America into hostile, tribal camps has done no one any good. That it is coupled to a governing philosophy that insists on one-size fits-all rules, rules that make no room for Federalism or regional differentiation, only makes it more explosive than it already was.