Mentioned in the comments to the "American Gods" post below, Lars Walker pointed out that he wrote another book featuring Odin as a character at about the same time. I picked up a copy yesterday. I'm only about a fifth of the way through it, but it's an interesting read that some of you might like to join me in discussing later. Mr. Walker accurately predicted some things back in 1999.
The book is called Wolf Time, and it is available in Kindle format for those of you who might like to join me.
Is It Time to Get Angry?
Spiked Online argues that the Manchester attack marks the right moment to "get angry."
Will this get a bigger response because, this time, the young girls were killed instead of repeatedly raped? Will it get a bigger response because, this time, the girls were the daughters of richer families who could afford expensive concert tickets, and not the daughters of the working class?
Or is it the case, instead, that nothing will change? The institutional inertia in Western governments is very great. We can't build a bridge anymore because of all the regulations that exist to govern the building of bridges. We know -- it seems we always know -- who is likely to conduct a mass murder like this, but we can't do anything to stop it. We aren't allowed. We won't allow ourselves.
I don't know that getting angry will fix that. What needs to change, whether to repair our infrastructure or to secure our nations, is to peel off whole layers of institutional regulation and control. These are simple problems in need of simple solutions.
After the terror, the platitudes. And the hashtags. And the candlelit vigils. And they always have the same message: ‘Be unified. Feel love. Don’t give in to hate.’ The banalities roll off the national tongue. Vapidity abounds. A shallow fetishisation of ‘togetherness’ takes the place of any articulation of what we should be together for – and against. And so it has been after the barbarism in Manchester. In response to the deaths of more than 20 people at an Ariana Grande gig, in response to the massacre of children enjoying pop music, people effectively say: ‘All you need is love.’ The disparity between these horrors and our response to them, between what happened and what we say, is vast. This has to change.Compare and contrast the response to the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal. Those also targeted young British girls; they were permitted to go on for a very long time, even though the authorities were repeatedly informed about them. Here, too, the perpetrator of this suicide bombing was well known to police authorities, as seems to be usually the case. Nothing was done.
Will this get a bigger response because, this time, the young girls were killed instead of repeatedly raped? Will it get a bigger response because, this time, the girls were the daughters of richer families who could afford expensive concert tickets, and not the daughters of the working class?
Or is it the case, instead, that nothing will change? The institutional inertia in Western governments is very great. We can't build a bridge anymore because of all the regulations that exist to govern the building of bridges. We know -- it seems we always know -- who is likely to conduct a mass murder like this, but we can't do anything to stop it. We aren't allowed. We won't allow ourselves.
I don't know that getting angry will fix that. What needs to change, whether to repair our infrastructure or to secure our nations, is to peel off whole layers of institutional regulation and control. These are simple problems in need of simple solutions.
It's a Small World After All
Not to make light of a tragedy, which will be devastating to the families who lost daughters tonight. I just happen to notice that the artist canceled her "World Tour," which included "England, Belgium, Poland, Germany and Switzerland."
So, you know, a World Tour from Tennessee to Texas.
So, you know, a World Tour from Tennessee to Texas.
The World We Live in Now
Police: Denver man arrested after removing transgender woman's testiclesI could have explained this story to my grandparents, but not without using language that would today get me sued, arrested, or barred from productive employment.
...A police affidavit says James Lowell Pennington, 57, removed the testicles and sutured the opening while the woman's wife witnessed the 90-minute procedure.
How'd that Toby Keith Show Go?
In case you were wondering, there's some video -- as well as the usual sneering HuffPo commentary -- available here. It sounds like everyone had a good time. The Saudi performer was the big draw, and you can hear a bit of his stuff as well.
Female Infantrymen
America’s first female Army Infantrymen are here, but not all of them made it through.An attrition rate from a training program that approaches fifty percent is pretty striking. Some of the special operations training/selection courses are higher than that, of course, but those are built around higher standards -- not lowered standards. Some percentage of the women (at least one of them, I gather from the article) might have met what was until yesterday "the standard." They would have been better served, though there would have been fewer of them, by being held to the same standard as the male infantrymen.
In fact, only eighteen of the thirty-two female infantry recruits made it through the One Station Unit Training (OSUT) program at Fort Benning, Georgia.... the females needed only to meet the much-lower female standards for physical fitness that separate them from their previously all-male counterparts.
That said, there were some women who certainly gave their male colleagues a run for their money.
“There was even one female that did better than 90 percent of the males on the PT test,” said one 22-year-old male trainee, who reportedly had high PT scores.
UPDATE: A related story in the Marine Corps Times: "New Concerns that Lower Fitness Standards Fuel Disrespect for Women." The creator of Terminal Lance is among those interviewed.
“Women, from Day One, do not have to do the same PFT as men,” said Maximilian Uriarte, a Marine veteran and the creator of the “Terminal Lance” comic strip. “
“To men, that’s immediately like: ‘Oh, they have not accomplished the same thing I have … Therefore, they do not rate the same respect that I do,’” he said.
One way to erase the gender gap, Uriarte said in an interview with Marine Corps Times, would be to have women meet the same standards as men on the PFT and CFT.
“I think you’d probably lose a lot of women, but the ones you’d keep would be really stellar, fighting, fit Marines that the men would respect on that level,” he said.
A Sense of History
Security removed a school principal from his campus after he was photographed at the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, near a Confederate flag.
Still, if the principal had been a fervent supporter of Robert E. Lee, could he be fired for it? Would an educator who was also a member of, say, the Sons of Confederate Veterans suddenly be a security risk who needed to be forcibly removed from campus? The law seems to suggest that even those with disapproved opinions have some rights under the law; that's why we have to let the Westboro Baptist Church protest the funerals of soldiers and Marines.
It seems that leeway does not apply to every disapproved opinion. I suppose we shall see if it still applies to historians who merely wanted to document the event.
However, Dean said the fact that he was shown standing next to monument supporters was pure coincidence.If he has a degree in history, of course he'd want to document a historic event. Whatever else these removals of Confederate memorials in New Orleans are, they are events that mark something important in the region's history. It can be hard to say just what that something is until time has passed; perhaps it's just that enough of the generations closer to the Civil War are now dead, and thus the balance of who cares about that war has shifted demographically. Perhaps the racist killings in Charleston, SC, moved many hearts. Perhaps it is something else.
"I didn't go to protest for either side. I went because I am a historian, educator and New Orleans resident who wanted to observe this monumental event," he said. "People who know me know that I am a crusader for children and I fight tirelessly on their behalf."
Still, if the principal had been a fervent supporter of Robert E. Lee, could he be fired for it? Would an educator who was also a member of, say, the Sons of Confederate Veterans suddenly be a security risk who needed to be forcibly removed from campus? The law seems to suggest that even those with disapproved opinions have some rights under the law; that's why we have to let the Westboro Baptist Church protest the funerals of soldiers and Marines.
It seems that leeway does not apply to every disapproved opinion. I suppose we shall see if it still applies to historians who merely wanted to document the event.
The Murder of an American Soldier at the University of Maryland
The author of this piece thinks it was a racially motivated killing; perhaps it was. Of greater importance is that he was a lieutenant in the United States Army.
Collins, of Calvert County, was scheduled to graduate with a degree in business from Bowie State University Tuesday, and was commissioned May 18 to join the United States Army. He was involved with Bowie State's ROTC chapter, police said.We should avenge him as a soldier.
Darryl L. Godlock, a pastor who was serving as a spokesman for the Collins family, said the young man had obtained his airborne certification. Collins wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, a military veteran, Godlock said.
"He wanted to make his parents proud of him so he went into the military to serve his country," Godlock said.
"A Communist Fanfic"
No kidding. His argument that the recent Mad Max movie fits this plotline is basically right, though. It just ends with the release of all the water that was being wrongfully hoarded to grow plants, rather than continuing to the point at which the now-held-in-common water is all gone and the plants have been swept over by the desert that surrounds them.
But hey: "Make sure to buy the t-shirt!"
But hey: "Make sure to buy the t-shirt!"
Jerusalem
It is amazing to me that no US President has before visited the Old City. I had read and studied the conflict for years before I went, but only standing there did I understand the close scale and what was at stake. The "pre-1967 borders" of which you hear so much would require yielding up the Old City, including the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, and -- of moment to Christians -- the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
For Christians, it may well be enough that the city is controlled by those who will protect the sites and permit access to pilgrims. We have seen the Taliban and others destroy heritage sites of other religions in order to establish the primacy of their own faith; but actual control may not be of special importance if protection is guaranteed. Muslims also care about the preservation of their shrines. The Iranians use the protection of special Shi'a shrines in Syria and Iraq as a major focus of their recruiting of local militias who will serve as reliable proxy forces. But the Muslims also assert a physical claim more boldly: the Old City's Muslim quarter is closed to non-Muslims lacking special permission. As a practical matter they do rely on the Israelis to protect their shrines, but it is clear that the Muslims of Jerusalem do not trust any outsider to do it: not even to pass nearby.
For Jews, though, Jerusalem has another importance. Go up on the Mount of Olives, within sight of Jerusalem's Old City and another place that would have to be surrendered. Gethsemane lies between the Old City and the Mount of Olives. The mount is chiefly a graveyard. Thousands of years of Jewish graves are there. For a people whose whole history has been marked by exile, Jerusalem is the one place that is truly home.
You can appreciate all that intellectually from afar, but it takes on a new clarity when you go and see it. All Presidents should go there, at least the ones who intend to meddle in this conflict.
For Christians, it may well be enough that the city is controlled by those who will protect the sites and permit access to pilgrims. We have seen the Taliban and others destroy heritage sites of other religions in order to establish the primacy of their own faith; but actual control may not be of special importance if protection is guaranteed. Muslims also care about the preservation of their shrines. The Iranians use the protection of special Shi'a shrines in Syria and Iraq as a major focus of their recruiting of local militias who will serve as reliable proxy forces. But the Muslims also assert a physical claim more boldly: the Old City's Muslim quarter is closed to non-Muslims lacking special permission. As a practical matter they do rely on the Israelis to protect their shrines, but it is clear that the Muslims of Jerusalem do not trust any outsider to do it: not even to pass nearby.
For Jews, though, Jerusalem has another importance. Go up on the Mount of Olives, within sight of Jerusalem's Old City and another place that would have to be surrendered. Gethsemane lies between the Old City and the Mount of Olives. The mount is chiefly a graveyard. Thousands of years of Jewish graves are there. For a people whose whole history has been marked by exile, Jerusalem is the one place that is truly home.
You can appreciate all that intellectually from afar, but it takes on a new clarity when you go and see it. All Presidents should go there, at least the ones who intend to meddle in this conflict.
Woah
Many Purple Hearts issued even today were manufactured in 1945, because the DOD expected so many casualties from the invasion of Japan.
As late as 1985, the Defense Logistics Agency still had about 120,000 refurbished Purple Heart sets dating back to World War II, said DLA spokeswoman Mimi Schirmacher.
“There could be a small number of WWII-era medal sets still in the hands of military service customers and it is possible that recent and current issues of medals were made from stock produced in previous time periods,” Schirmacher said in an e-mail.
The DLA has ordered about 34,000 Purple Hearts since 1976, of which 21,000 were ordered in 2008, she said.
But Giangreco, who wrote a book about the planned invasion of Japan, maintains that the bulk of Purple Hearts in stock date back to World War II. His research found that most of the refurbished Purple Hearts were sent to military depots, units and hospitals between 1985 and 1999.
Mr. Wednesday
I don't know the book or the TV show, but here's a video by a scholar on how well it fits the mythology. He was mostly impressed. There's some good lessons along the way on Old Norse versus Old English, the stories being drawn upon, and so forth.
Andrew C. McCarthy on Comey, Trump
Jim Comey is a patriot. That I have disagreed with him on some big things, does not change that. Disagreeing is what Americans do – that’s self-government by people who care passionately about how we are governed.
But let’s assume for argument’s sake that I am wrong. Let’s say that, as Sean Spicer says, Comey is a grandstander who has intentionally politicized an investigation in order to undermine the president. He’s still not the Russians. “America First,” remember? Comey is an American who believes in America; Lavrov and Kislyak are Putin operatives who oppose America at every turn. Comey believes in freedom and the rule of law; the Putin regime believes in Soviet tyranny and the rule of Putin.
Comey is one of us. Lavrov and Kislyak are two of them.
Treason Prospers
The word "treason" is getting thrown around a lot these days in very loose ways, and on very limited evidence. Let me say that by "treason" I mean the explicit Constitutional definition of aiding the enemy, and by "enemy" I mean an actual enemy that is trying to kill American soldiers using physical violence. By this standard, PFC Bradley Manning was clearly a traitor. He was saved from the charge only by the good fortune of having a chain of command that terminated in someone uncomfortable with the traditional definitions of "traitor," "treason," "enemy," and similar things.
Now it looks like the traitor, styled "Chelsea," is likely to be the focus of a documentary. Naturally, there will be a substantial payment to the principle.
Fight as Manning will, there is no dignity now to be had. Not after that.
Now it looks like the traitor, styled "Chelsea," is likely to be the focus of a documentary. Naturally, there will be a substantial payment to the principle.
On May 17th, Chelsea walks free and will reveal herself to the world. XY Chelsea is the journey of her fight for survival and dignity, and her transition from prisoner to a free woman.Celebrate what you like, I suppose, but be clear on what the offense is. Manning betrayed the trust of fellow soldiers, and indeed of every American on the ground in Iraq, by recklessly trading secrets whose contents he hadn't bothered to learn himself to anyone who would broadcast those secrets to the enemy. In doing so, he endangered and doubtless cost the lives of fellow Americans who had deployed with him to war. He broke his oath and he broke his trust.
Fight as Manning will, there is no dignity now to be had. Not after that.
Loyalty & the Oath
I take this essay to be significant. Its subject matter is eternally so. Its timing is perhaps more so. Even eternal things have their special hour.
A Convincing Piece on Fraternities
I never even considered joining a fraternity at any point in my college life. This piece convinces me that I may have made a mistake.
Reform is not possible because the old-line, historically white social fraternities have been synonymous with risk-taking and defiance from their very inception. They are a brotherhood born in mutiny and forged in the fire of rebellion. These fraternities have drink, danger and debauchery in their blood — right alongside secrecy and self-protection.That sounds awesome. I thought they were just a bunch of loud-mouthed rich boys.
They cannot reform.
Fake News, Right and Left
Don't believe in fake news, says National Review's Kevin Williamson -- be suspicious of internet-sourced stories, he says, but then claims that traditional journalism is more or less reliable. There isn't really 'fake news.'
Oh, yes, there is, says Vox on the left. And -- they go on to add -- our side does it too.
An interesting pair of admissions against interest, both aimed at trying to restore some capacity for a reasoned debate between the factions.
UPDATE: In addition to genuinely fake news, there's also the more traditional problem of bias.
UPDATE: The actual Harvard study is here.
Oh, yes, there is, says Vox on the left. And -- they go on to add -- our side does it too.
An interesting pair of admissions against interest, both aimed at trying to restore some capacity for a reasoned debate between the factions.
UPDATE: In addition to genuinely fake news, there's also the more traditional problem of bias.
A major new study out of Harvard University has revealed the true extent of the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump... They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations.That was a European outlet, though. The major American outlets were much closer to nine out of ten than ten out of ten.
UPDATE: The actual Harvard study is here.
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