So...
I'm beginning to lose my commitment to trying to keep the language on this blog clean and PG-rated.
Quality News Reporting At All Time Lows
Georgia Governor Kemp, whom I don't especially admire, made a reasonable decision to exempt anti-virus masks from Georgia's long-standing anti-masking law. That law was written for the express purpose of preventing Klan rallies designed to intimidate people.
So...
I'm beginning to lose my commitment to trying to keep the language on this blog clean and PG-rated.
So...
I'm beginning to lose my commitment to trying to keep the language on this blog clean and PG-rated.
Tombstone
Twenty-five years old, it was late to be a great American Western. But it was.
For veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, it was their “go-to” movie, that one cassette or disc every outpost played repeatedly. Troops adopted the lingo, calling each other things like “lunger” and “law dog.” Alpha-male admirers include police officers; one pulled up his shirt to display Ringo’s likeness sewn onto his Kevlar vest. The movie has no lack of female devotees, and younger fans often tell [Johnny Ringo's actor] that they have bonded with parents and grandparents while enjoying the movie together; Tombstone now boasts three generations of fans. It’s very much one of those compulsively watchable movies that whenever you come across it on television, you wind up watching again until the end credits roll. How odd it is, then, that a movie that now seems so perfectly realized was once a patient whose heart had stopped beating and required the movie equivalent of a defibrillator to start pumping again.It's a movie with a lot to recommend it. REBELLER has a two-part series on the hardships of shooting it; one and two.
Testing, testing
Another good Powerline analysis picks apart some of the wilder attempts to filter every controlavirus theory through the filter of "which factors might help or hurt the situation while enabling us to link them to something CheetoMan did more or less than other countries." Germany has a surprisingly low case fatality rate. Is it because Germany has universal care? Then why is its rate more like ours and less like that of, say, Italy or the UK? Is it because Germany tests a lot? That's a tempting theory, because Trump inexplicably failed to keep the CDC and FDA from bollixing that one up by the numbers. Anything good a bureaucrat does is courageous Resistance; anything bad is Trump's dereliction of duty.
Powerline makes the interesting suggestion that testing can work pretty well in the special case where the outbreak happens in a young healthy population, in this case returning skiers, and robust testing and contact tracing keeps infections from exploding in older, more vulnerable populations.
Testing's nice, but I'd rather see attention to treatment and vaccine development, along with new distancing protocols that are tailored carefully to protecting vulnerable populations while allowing others to get back to work.
Powerline makes the interesting suggestion that testing can work pretty well in the special case where the outbreak happens in a young healthy population, in this case returning skiers, and robust testing and contact tracing keeps infections from exploding in older, more vulnerable populations.
Testing's nice, but I'd rather see attention to treatment and vaccine development, along with new distancing protocols that are tailored carefully to protecting vulnerable populations while allowing others to get back to work.
Herd immunity vs. herd mentality
There are good reasons for and against state-mandated lockdowns. There are no good arguments for the shoddy press coverage given to South Dakota's relatively libertarian governor.
Fake News Today
The Indispensable BB: "More Government Officials Calling For Common-Sense Religion Control."
Usually I'm content to quote the headlines. This one deserves a fuller reading.
Usually I'm content to quote the headlines. This one deserves a fuller reading.
More government officials across the country are calling for common-sense religion control.All analogies always break, but this one is fairly robust. As you would defend your faith, keep ahold of your rifle. If you have no rifle, by God go get one -- if you can still find one for sale.
The officials insist they don't want to ban religion entirely -- they just want some basic, common-sense laws to regulate it. From background checks to licensing requirements and forced church closures, state officials everywhere are leading the charge to implement much-needed regulations on the practice of religion.
"It's past time that we begin implementing basic, common-sense laws against potentially problematic religions," said Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. "Nobody's coming for your religion -- we just want some safe and sane restrictions on it."
Raising a Comment to a Post
Thos. wrote something that I thought deserved to be raised to the front page.
The harder they push, though, the less willing I am to tolerate it. It's harder to trust a government that bans your right to protest it. It's harder to trust a government that will arrest you for showing up to criticize them. The government has also been lying, as noted, about things like masks' effectiveness. They are treating us and our rights with contempt, and there is very little reason to trust anyone who holds you in contempt.
There is a great deal of damage being done here.
I see the present wrangling over pandemic-related issues (both epidemiologic and economic) as an indicator that we are strongly trending from a high-trust to a low-trust society.This is a very good point. It's also easier to trust when the government is asking rather than telling. I 'went in' on the seventh of March, long before there were orders to do so, because it was clearly the right thing to do. I voluntarily agreed to what were still only recommendations, and did my best to think of ways to make it work more effectively.
At the (admittedly not-achievable-given-human-nature) upper bound, a high trust society would look like this: public officials and other experts would clearly lay out what they know (and don't know) about the public health threats, and the best-available understanding of how to address them -- all while trusting the public will neither ignore the possible risks, nor panic over the information. The public, on learning of the risks, would voluntarily agree to the official recommendations, even if the burden was heavy, understanding that the response required a significant public cooperation, but with the understanding that they could trust the public officials and experts to not extend those burdens any longer than necessary (and likewise trusting that no public official would make a temporary expediency into a permanent restriction on freedoms).
A low-trust society looks a lot like what we have today: Public officials and experts withholding information to avoid public panic. (Also, withholding information about mask use to protect the supply for their own use.) Using emergency declarations to further political agendas. Spreading rumors to discredit other public officials or experts. Regarding any discovered uncertainty about facts or data as proof of intentional deceit.
In short, IF we had reason to trust each other, we wouldn't need to worry that pandemic-response measures - even extreme measures - were the death knell of personal liberty. It's pretty clear that we don't live in that world anymore.
The harder they push, though, the less willing I am to tolerate it. It's harder to trust a government that bans your right to protest it. It's harder to trust a government that will arrest you for showing up to criticize them. The government has also been lying, as noted, about things like masks' effectiveness. They are treating us and our rights with contempt, and there is very little reason to trust anyone who holds you in contempt.
There is a great deal of damage being done here.
All Basic Rights Suspended
First religious ceremonies, now the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances. I assume we'll be receiving orders to quarter soldiers in our home soon.
It may be unwise to assemble to protest the government, but the government cannot legitimately rule the right to protest 'non-essential.' They've done so illegitimately, and the police have made arrests and dispersed the protest.
Some Federal courts are still open; perhaps one will act to restrain the governor of North Carolina. If not, well, we aren't permitted to protest him. I suppose we could still write a sharply-worded letter.
Or, you know, do other things.
It may be unwise to assemble to protest the government, but the government cannot legitimately rule the right to protest 'non-essential.' They've done so illegitimately, and the police have made arrests and dispersed the protest.
Some Federal courts are still open; perhaps one will act to restrain the governor of North Carolina. If not, well, we aren't permitted to protest him. I suppose we could still write a sharply-worded letter.
Or, you know, do other things.
Fake News Today
BB: “Medical Experts Confirm Democrats Have Developed Herd Immunity To Sexual Assault Allegations.”
The Great Escape
Wretchard:
As the northern hemisphere begins to emerge from the worst of the pandemic, political punditry is focusing on two issues: how to reopen the economy and how to decouple from China. The two subjects are related because a large part of the Western economy is joined at the hip with Beijing. To a substantial degree, China produces what America consumes. Each country's holdings in the other are enormous. They are bound by innumerable contracts, deals, projects and cross-posted personnel that are not easily severed.So what now?
This system of cross-dependency was consciously pursued to vaccinate the world against a repetition of the two world wars. However, globalization also significantly eroded the independence and freedom of action of individual nations, though not each to the same degree. It permitted asymmetries to arise between the more aggressive and secretive regimes at the expense of those which, perhaps naively, adhered more closely to the posted rules.
The Great Firewall of China, currency manipulation, the infiltration of network equipment, island grabbing in the South China Sea and technological espionage are examples of asymmetry which the great economic interests were willing to turn a blind eye to to preserve existing deals, though the populist uprising in the West served notice that things could not continue that way forever. When the coronavirus erupted in Wuhan in mid-December 2019 and Beijing misled the world to catastrophe, the model was no longer viable.
Perhaps nothing will prove more difficult to salvage from the train wreck than individual rights, the fundamental building block of subsidiarity, which are being eroded at an unprecedented rate. The need to track the whereabouts of literally every citizen in the name of "contact tracing" the public means government will demand to know exactly where you've been and who you've ever met with. Scrupulous records will be kept on the public's biometric profile to make offices habitable again.Or not. Death is preferable to the loss of liberty; and governments that insist on that deserve to be destroyed. George Washington fought his revolution during a smallpox epidemic. We don't have to accept the loss of freedom, as long as we are willing to accept the risk of death.
Holy Saturday
Are there hymns for Holy Saturday? My experience has always been that no Mass is said, and so no hymns are sung. We have only secular comforts.
Well here is one of those. It's a mournful song, but the singing itself means something.
And here is Elvis -- I don't think I've ever posted an Elvis piece before, in spite of all the rockabilly I've put up over the years. It's secular, except for being addressed to the Lord; and you can imagine a similar objection being raised in the face of the crucifixion, by a man who would have preferred a different cup.
Well here is one of those. It's a mournful song, but the singing itself means something.
And here is Elvis -- I don't think I've ever posted an Elvis piece before, in spite of all the rockabilly I've put up over the years. It's secular, except for being addressed to the Lord; and you can imagine a similar objection being raised in the face of the crucifixion, by a man who would have preferred a different cup.
Good Friday
I don’t have any great words this year, but it is right to mark the occasion. Endure the fast, have faith that better things will come.
Go in Peace
A deliberate lack of subtlety, the analyst suggests; or perhaps a declaration of intent.
UPDATE: The sound is different here.
California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.The analysis is entirely partisan as usual, but California going its own way is a perfectly acceptable solution.
Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”
“Nation-state.” “Export.”
UPDATE: The sound is different here.
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