Civility Again

Col. Kurt:

“Civility is important,” we barbarians are duly informed, because of course it is. But we have noticed, over time, that in reality it only seems to be important when we are the ones breaching it. For us, it is open season.

I'm a very civil person, and people are nice to me too. I assume they're responding to my good manners and friendly nature, and not to the big beard or the knife on my belt. Still, one way or the other, I generally have only civil conversations. It's a nice way to live.

That said, this Memorial Day weekend they decided to run a column accusing the US military of "celebrating white supremacism." I'm not the least bit interested in their opinions on civility right now.

Georgia Shooting Update

When last we spoke about the Georgia shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, I said I didn't think the two men involved would end up being convicted of anything at trial, given that the local DA put out a statement explaining their theory that no crime was committed. Now I think there won't be a trial -- because the state and Federal government are moving to put extraordinary pressures that look likely to draw a plea bargain.

Not just the father and son but the third man, who was filming the incident, have been arrested and charged with felony murder. Felony murder in Georgia means that you were committing a felony -- any felony will do -- and someone got killed as a result of it. This means you don't really have to prove intent to murder someone, which is important in this case because the facts appear to show that the gun went off during a struggle. You might get an involuntary manslaughter charge out of that. Mr. Hines seemed to think so, and 'type b' does allow an otherwise lawful act to be a crime, so even if the DA was right that no crime was committed, you could perhaps persuade a jury. It would be hard to get even a second degree murder charge. But Felony Murder might fly, assuming you can prove a felony, because you don't have to prove the killing was an intentional murder.

However, the trick to Felony Murder is that it is a capital charge. In Georgia, prosecutors who bring a capital charge get to ask for a "Death Qualified" jury. This is a jury that is self-selected for the willingness to ask for the death penalty if the charge is proven. Death Qualified juries return not just harsher sentencing recommendations compared to other juries, they also convict more often on any charges.

Now the penalty for type-b Involuntary Manslaughter is a misdemeanor penalty, i.e., up to a year in jail. Felony Murder's penalty is death, for both father and son and the guy who ran down the street with his phone out. Clearly the intention is to use the threat of death for you and your son to squeeze out a plea bargain to some other sort of murder charge from the father, which then doesn't have to be proven in court because he'd have admitted to it.

They've still got good odds, though, because the DA's office cleared them after investigation -- right? Well, it turns out, the FBI has decided to investigate the officials who didn't arrest them. Prosecutors would have a field day in court with the claims that the DA's office was such a hotbed of racism that it was being investigated for Federal hate crimes. Such charges aren't likely to be successfully brought against government officials acting in their official capacity, especially since they didn't take any actions. They can be entertained long enough to get to the plea bargain, though, as a threat to the accused.

Ultimately our justice system is badly broken and extremely warped. I don't know what justice actually looks like in this case, but I know it doesn't look like sentencing both a man and his son to death. Even leveling threats like that is indefensible.

Justice also doesn't look like the kind of railroad they're setting up to avoid having to prove a case in court.

Real Violence

Maybe this is what Ms. Cooper was expecting from the police? If so, there’s a problem, though I am not convinced the problem is reducible to racism.

Racism Transcendent

Christian Cooper (no relation), a Black man and a bird-watcher, asked Amy to leash her dog. Dogs must be leashed in Central Park from 9am to 9pm, but in the Ramble they must be leashed at all times. Christian later said that he had been worried about the delicate ecosystem of The Ramble and the way in which the dog might affect the birds.

Amy, clearly offended, responded by saying that she was going to call the police on him. The video Christian took ended up online, and almost instantly went viral.

In response to the video, many on social media began to speculate and insist that Amy Cooper was a Trump supporter and a member of the “MAGA” movement.

However, campaign contribution information — with donations to Democrats such as Barack Obama, Pete Buttigieg, and John Kerry — leaked online earlier today appeared to suggest that Amy actually identifies as a liberal. This matters, because in this political era, during this most critical US presidential election, it is necessary that we understand and recognize that white violence transcends party lines and political ideology.

White Violence!

She clearly is a racist, though, and a privileged woman who thinks the police exist to put other people in their place for her.

Masculinity and the Expert Left

A man called Tom Nichols, apparently chiefly famous for a work on the value of expertise, wrote a piece this weekend wondering why American working-class men accept Trump in spite of Trump's failure to live up to the standards of American working-class manhood.

I'll let you read it rather than summarize it. It's not unreasonable to ask "Is Trump honorable?" "Is Trump courageous?" "Is Trump a man who respects women?" Does he keep his word? Can you rely on him?

Rather I'd like to note something else by way of explanation. Along the way, Nichols cites an American Psychological Association piece on the manhood values these men hold, generally built around how these men are failing and dying off, and one section of which is entitled, "Manhood Gets in the Way." It's not just analysis, it's a general attack on the values they hold -- an assertion that the values are a problem, that the whole system needs to be undermined by 'more educated men' and 'men in positions of power.' Psychologists should work against such manhood; the educational resources of the state should work to undermine these traditional values; power and persuasion alike should be used to unmake these men. For their own alleged good, of course: they'll be 'psychologically healthier' once they give up their ideals and conform to the preferred gender norms.

That's really the answer to the question. These men like Donald Trump not because he's one of them -- he's not one of them. He's not working class, he's a billionaire. He's not a manly man, but he's not from their class. He is, however, on their side. He respects them. He wants them to succeed. He wants them to have good jobs at better pay, and to make American workers like them the envy of the world.

By the same token, for all his flaws, Donald Trump genuinely loves America like they do. He really wants America to be great. He is not willing to trade American greatness for personal gain. He's attached to America, and wants to see her flourish. In that, too, he is on the American worker's side.

The picture might be different if others could manage to be on America's side in the same way, and to respect the values of the American working man rather than bending themselves to undermining those values and that way of life. The whole 'expert' class seems to be united against them, though; it seems to have decided that the world is tired of men like those, and would be better off without them. And so these men find in Donald Trump not just a friend, but practically their only friend in all the halls of power.

That's why they accept him in spite of his flaws. He accepts them, respects them, supports them and their way of life the best that he can. Who else does?

Electric Trucks

I have a friend who builds electric motorcycles as a hobby.  He's a smart guy, a logician by training who works on the design of the LSAT as well as its logical reasoning questions.  He's been bending my ear about the advantages of electric vehicles for years. 

My objections began as a collection of practical points and frankly aesthetic ones:  I like my motorcycle to rumble, for example.  Still, there are also practical reasons why electric vehicles aren't as wise a choice for long-distance work.

That said, he's convinced me that there are many practical arguments in favor of electrics, too.  There are some areas where they are positively superior to gasoline engines:

... it can get out of a jam, such as the mud, because it has a precise, computer-controlled motor built into each wheel. The software slows down the wheels, preventing slippage, giving the vehicle better traction than a traditional pickup, Burns said....

"So a typical gasoline drive-train has well over 1,000 parts. When you look at it that way it’s very prehistoric, it’s essentially a Model T," Burns said. "We have four moving parts."

...

Typically, when a pickup's bed is empty, it doesn’t drive well because the engine is in the front and the weight is there, Burns said. In the case of the Endurance, the center of gravity is low and the in-wheel motors put weight on the four corners.


"This is a car without a gear, without a transmission and a drive axle, so there is nothing down the middle of the car. The only four moving parts are the wheels," Burns said. "The result is the software that’s driving that and the suspension that’s driving it means you get a pickup that drives like a sports car.”

He said it has performed well in crash tests, too. But Burns knows there are naysayers who don't believe traditional pickup owners will want an electric version, so why enter a truck war you can't win? He believes he will ultimately win it.

"After hundreds of years of refinement and countless hours of engineering, a pickup truck only gets about 17 mpg and it’s not going to get any better," Burns said. "So it really needs a reset. We’re not coming out with a 10% better pickup truck, we’re coming out with a 500% better pickup truck and it’s safer, it’s quieter and it’s fun to drive and it costs less to own.”

Electric trucks also have a big advantage in towing, which is that they can deliver peak torque effectively immediately.

Charging times and range remain practical considerations. Still, we may be approaching the point at which electric vehicles become viable on the long highway and not just in the city.

Rolling Thunder

It turns out last year was the final ride, unless they reconstitute in future years. One year ago today I was there for what organizers billed as the last one. Joel was there too, though we didn’t happen to link up.

Talking About the Queen Again

And on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day Ride

Taking Douglas’ suggestion, I took a ride today. This is Bear Lake.

Looking East

Looking South

Bear Lake is near the mountain town of Cashiers, where I stopped for lunch at the newly-reopened (for outdoor seating only) Ugly Dog Pub. This was the first meal I’ve had seated at a restaurant in months. 

After lunch came the ride home, for an evening cookout. 

Local hero

We may never know what motivated this young man, Adam Salem Alsahi, but I'll bet we've got a good idea what motivated the MP, so kudos to her this Memorial Day. Two days ago, a Syrian-born naturalized American citizen with jihadist connections was killed trying to crash the gate of a naval base in Corpus Christi:

The active duty U.S. Navy military police woman at the Ocean Drive gate has probably checked thousands of IDs and allowed access to thousands of authorized people at NAS Corpus Christi.

But yesterday morning, at barely the first light of day, a terrorist tried to get past her. That terrorist, Adam Salem Alsahli (a Syrian born U.S. citizen), picked the wrong gate guard to try to get past. He must’ve thought that all he would have to do is lift the pistol off of his lap, point it at the gate guard (while she looked him in the face) shoot her point blank in the chest and then be able to drive on to the base and use his assault rifle and shotgun to kill as many people as he could.

He sure was wrong!

She took the bullet dead center in her chest, but that happens to be the area of the bullet resistant Kevlar vest, which has a steel, ceramic-coated plate over center mass to protect the heart and vital organs.

Yes, no doubt the impact knocked her down to the floor, but she got right back up and hit the emergency button that activated a very strong pop up barricade, which stopped and disabled the terrorist’s vehicle. Then, as he was getting his assault rifle out of his car, she shot him to death.

In case he was wearing a vest as well, I hope she used a head-shot.  The local press did not oblige with details.

Great printing job on the dog's muzzle:

 

Have a Grateful Memorial Day

When someone says "Have a happy Memorial Day", it always sounds a little odd.  I saw "Have a <i>grateful</i> Memorial Day" recently, and thought that was perfect.

One reason we erect statues of great historical figures is out of gratitude for their service.  One fine example, and that seems especially fitting for the Hall on Memorial Day is this one-
The Darby Legacy Monument, for BGen William O. Darby, of Darby's Rangers, KIA 30 April 1945 in Torbole, Italy.
The monument features a statue in the form of the classic equestrian statue, but with a twist- General Darby is astride an iron horse instead of one of flesh and bone.  Unique and noble.

So, have a grateful Memorial Day, everyone.  If you're lucky enough to have a steed- either steel or flesh- perhaps go for a ride to celebrate their memories.

The Oldest Saloon West of the Mississippi

Not closing, this American icon.

Hank Williams is moaning his 1949 hit “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” high and mournful from the old quarter-a-song jukebox when we step off the sunny porch and into the neon light....

“Walls went up in the 1850s,” she says. “Was literally a trapping and trading post for mountain men in the area until 1879. When the town got big enough they moved the dry goods next door and this became a saloon ever since then, including the years of Prohibition.”

“The way that happened was the sheriff was in Ogden, so he either came up by mule or by rail,” she smiles, mischief in her eyes. “They knew he was coming. Sometimes he would arrest the owner, his wife would come over and open the bar back up. So that’s why we’ve kind of had a rebellious spirit.”...

The jukebox, underneath a ceiling one regular estimates has $14,000 in signed $1 bills stapled to it, features Willie, Johnny, Merle, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Charlie Pride, and the U.S. Navy Band’s rendition of “The National Anthem.” When they get a new commander, the airmen bring him by and Leslie lets them know he and his family can consider this their home. Some time later, airmen will fondly replace the old commander’s photograph with the new one in its place of honor — the base of the men’s toilet.

Some Good Songs about Motorcycles

LTC Allen West was injured in a motorcycle wreck this evening. I didn't know he was a rider, but I'm not surprised. I've met him in passing, and had him used as a bad example by two sets of JAG lawyers during pre-deployment briefings to Iraq. I hope he'll be just fine.

In his honor, some appropriate music.








That last one is apparently the whole movie, and it's quite a film. It was two years after Easy Rider, and had the same production crew but nothing like the budget. So it's a werewolf film, but they could only afford the makeup artist for three days at the end; and they couldn't mostly afford actors, so they just hired bikers. It's a better movie for both of those restrictions, a plausible new cinema psychedelic piece. I'm not sure it isn't better than Easy Rider, as a biker movie. The more famous film has a better soundtrack in places -- though check the intro to this film, 11:48, and also 31:23 -- and Easy Rider had some great sweeping visuals through Monument Valley, but is otherwise somewhat overrated. These guys were mostly for real.

There is nevertheless a substantial content warning, especially for nudity, sex, and violence. Language, drinking, drugs... well, it's psychedelic new cinema. You're all adults.

UPDATE: LTC West is resting in stable condition, with some fractures. He’s to be released soon.

Herschel Walker?

This is going to go hard for the SEC states. Herschel is a minor god here, even after all this time.

Fauci: You Know, Locking Down Too Long is Harmful

I’m glad to see this, as it will encourage people to go beyond the simple partisan lock. None of you are there, but many are.

A Questionable Approach

It’s like the special Hell, only stupid.

Koch conquers PBS?

We watched the brief Clarence Thomas bio "Created Equal" on PBS last night.  Neither of us could figure out why PBS would run such a thing, unless the Koch money included in the credits actually had some effect, which is hard to imagine.

It wasn't the hack job I expected.  The questions were sometimes mildly probing, but never in true "gotcha" territory.  Justice Thomas was allowed to explain clearly and repeatedly how his judicial philosophy works, and to express his disgust at the idea that any political movement has the right to tell him what views a black man is required to hold.  Anita Hill was treated briefly and respectfully, but Thomas's response got even more time and respect.  If it hadn't been PBS, I'd have assumed I was watching a serious journalism outlet.

When Thomas graduated from Yale Law School in the mid-1970s, a committed Democrat, he snagged only one job offer, from then Missouri AG John Danforth, a Republican.  Thomas's politics already had undergone a fundamental shakeup after a Marxist youth, but clearly the contact with a lot of thoughtful conservatives had a further impact.  Within no more than a decade, many law firms with a strong progressive bent would be falling all over themselves to snag black Yale graduates, but they sure missed their chance with Thomas.  Danforth, later a U.S. Senator, became a strong lifetime supporter and friend who sat next to Thomas in the grisly confirmation hearings.

Joe Biden presided over the travesty.  He came off as an incomprehensible boob, though more cogent and fluent than he could appear today.

Why Are Liberals More Afraid of COVID?

Ezra Klein asks a really interesting question: a lot of research suggests that conservatives have a heightened sense that the world is dangerous, and a lot of the difference between liberals and conservatives comes down to this basic disjoint in our perception of the danger of reality. So why is it that conservatives tend to be less worried about the dangers of COVID, and liberals are the ones preparing to hide in their homes for as long as possible?

Unfortunately, it being Vox, while the question is interesting the answers pursued can be described as "Three theories of why conservatives are wrong." These are:

1) Liberals are acting out of care, as is their core value, while their fear is an expression of superior intellectual understanding of the science; conservatives, though panicked, are engaged in psychological transference of this panic to the economy because they are too afraid or too inferior to grapple honestly with the research.

2) Conservatives are expressing their fear through intensified partisan obedience to their leader, Donald Trump, who would like to downplay the virus.

3) Conservatives are showing fear, but are expressing it through their usual racism toward foreigners/outsiders rather than, like liberals, a wise and scientific approach to epidemiology.

Perhaps in some cases? But surely there are theoretical models that don't require assuming that conservatives are wrong.

1) Economic pressures differ: conservatives are much more likely to be small business owners or employees, whereas liberals are over-represented in government, academia, the press, and the tech sector; also, among workers likely to draw unemployment benefits. Conservatives are thus more likely to be feeling intense economic pressure without help. For liberals, a combination of continued pay and/or the ability to work from home is making 'stay at home forever' a more plausible option.

2) Liberals also feel partisan loyalties, especially to oppose Donald Trump. As we have seen elsewhere, especially in the Russia Collusion hoax, this can lead them to accept implausible storylines that might harm the hated enemy. They tend to see this as an expression of 'care,' because they view Trump as especially uncaring; but it is also an expression of injustice, as it leads them to do things like persist in calling people "traitors!" when in fact they have been shown to be falsely accused. There is no reason to think liberal partisanship is more rational nor more scientific.

3) Conservatives do tend to perceive threats more intensely, but they also tend to build their lives around modes of defending against those threats so they can be free, e.g., learning to carry a handgun and use it safely and effectively. In studying this threat, many conservatives have decided it really isn't an unmanageable danger: for example, the risk of death to a man of my age appears to be around 0.001%, concentrated on those with underlying health conditions that I don't have. While I want to take steps to avoid massive viral load exposure and/or the danger of carrying the disease to someone more vulnerable, I think it's both rational and scientific to learn from the data we've seen that this is a risk I can afford to run.

There may be other theories as well. Perhaps there are even theories in which neither side is 'right.'

Machine Politics

J. Melcher dropped an old but fascinating story in the comments of the post on vote monitoring below. It's the sort of story that should have provoked intense reforms, but of course did not.

Why Did People Like General Flynn?

In the process of working through a theory on why Flynn was railroaded, Lee Smith of Tablet magazine gives a good account of what people like me liked about him.

Flynn had enemies at the very top of the intelligence bureaucracy. In 2014, he’d been fired as DIA head. Under oath in February of that year, he told the truth to a Senate committee—ISIS was not, as the president had said, a “JV team.” They were a serious threat to American citizens and interests and were getting stronger. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers then summoned Flynn to the Pentagon and told him he was done.

“Flynn’s warnings that extremists were regrouping and on the rise were inconvenient to an administration that didn’t want to hear any bad news,” says former DIA analyst Oubai Shahbandar. “Flynn’s prophetic warnings would play out exactly as he’d warned shortly after he was fired.”

Flynn’s firing appeared to be an end to one of the most remarkable careers in recent American intelligence history. He made his name during the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers in the field desperately needed intelligence, often collected by other combat units. But there was a clog in the pipeline—the Beltway’s intelligence bureaucracy, which had a stranglehold over the distribution of intelligence.

Flynn described the problem in a 2010 article titled “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” co-written with current Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger. “Moving up through levels of hierarchy,” they wrote, “is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.” Their solution was to cut Washington out of the process: Americans in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan needed that information to accomplish their mission.

“What made Flynn revolutionary is that he got people out in the field,” says Shahbandar, who served in Iraq under Flynn in 2007-08 and in Afghanistan in 2010-11. “It wasn’t just enough to have intelligence, you needed to understand where it was coming from and what it meant. For instance, if you thought that insurgents were going to take over a village, the first people who would know what was going would be the villagers. So Flynn made sure we knew the environment, the culture, the people.”

Influential senior officers like Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal credited Flynn for collecting the intelligence that helped defeat al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007. In 2012, he was named DIA chief.

Eli Lake has an allied piece in Commentary as well.

Flynn did some good stuff in bringing the voices and warnings of the guys in the field forward. Smith's wider thesis is that fear of an audit of the intelligence community by a man who knew it well caused that community to back the outgoing Obama administration's play to destroy him. Maybe that's right; maybe not. It's not ridiculous as a theory, though.