Projecting Weakness

The NYT is worried that the Biden administration is projecting weakness on Ukraine and elsewhere. That's true, although I find their description of the causes a little wild-eyed.

If you were a foreign leader hostile to the United States — sitting in, say, Moscow or Beijing — how would you view the U.S. today?

You would know that it has conducted two largely failed wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, over the past 20 years and that many Americans have no interest in fighting another faraway conflict with a fuzzy connection to national security.

You would know that the U.S. itself can’t seem to decide how strongly it feels about democracy, with a former president and his allies around the country mimicking the playbook of autocrats willing to subvert election results.

And you would know that the U.S. is so politically polarized that many voters and members of Congress may not rally around a president even during a foreign crisis. Americans, after all, have reacted to the pandemic with division and anger, which has fueled widespread refusal to take lifesaving vaccines and continuing chaos in schools.

Given all of this, you might not be feeling especially intimidated by the U.S.

So, the weakness is coming from the military and the political right, is it? Not from the White House at all?

Well, as to 'can't seem to decide how strongly it feels about democracy,' a hearing in Wisconsin today is revealing that there are serious problems with the practice of democracy there -- problems that citizen journalists are bringing to your attention, because the news media (including the NYT) refuses to discuss it. Just exactly the Americans they are implying 'may not care about democracy' are the ones most personally and vigorously trying to bring about accountability to this system so that democracy might be restored. 

A handful of legislators in the affected states are beating themselves black and blue to try to fix the problems with our democracy. I've been writing about the problems with voting machines since 2018. There is every reason to believe that the system is being badly run on purpose, just because of a desire by the powerful to subvert election results -- and not by protesting them or even rioting about them, but by inserting fake votes into the system in large enough numbers to overturn the lawful results. 

The military, meanwhile, turns out to be very badly led. This is astonishing, in a way, because for so long it looked like the last functional organization in the Federal government. Yet in another way it is unsurprising: in 1998, The Pentagon Wars mocked the corrupt and broken military acquisition process. This has only worsened with time.

While China builds its fleet at a rapid pace, lead ships of new U.S. Navy classes have had lengthy delays. To provide perspective, from Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Japan was 1,375 days. As of Nov. 29, 2021, it has been 1,885 days since Zumwalt was commissioned and 1,601 days since Ford was commissioned and neither has deployed.

Partly that lack of deployability comes from the fact that the Navy continues to tinker with the mission, exactly the way that the Bradly Fighting Vehicle became... well, something very different from what it was supposed to be.

Nevertheless the military is made of of very fine fighting men and women, who have carried out every mission they were asked to execute even with poorly designed fighting vehicles or ships that have no ammunition for their main gun. Oh, didn't I mention that aspect of the Zumwalt class? Yeah, there's no ammo for it. Actually there soon will be no guns, either; the Navy is ripping them out, even though they were the original design feature the destroyer was built around.

These fine fighting men and women won every conflict at or above the squad level in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The disastrous withdrawals from both places -- the Afghan one more spectacularly disastrous, but the Iraq withdrawal also badly managed and leading to the rise of ISIS -- were the fault of higher headquarters, the White House, and the State Department. (Particularly in Iraq's case, State failures were at the core of why that withdrawal was mismanaged, precipitous, and led to instability.) The actual boys on the ground performed extremely well for two decades, but looking at their leadership has to be emboldening for Beijing and Moscow.

It's going to be a tough few years for American allies like Taiwan, or even Japan or South Korea. If we do want to help Taiwan, we should begin by convincing Taiwan to pass a Second Amendment -- and then start shipping them rifles. If every man and woman were armed, it would be a lot less digestible for a hungry China.  Ukraine is on its own, in spite of American promises to the contrary. There's no way that this leadership is going to bail them out, or even could if it wanted to try.

UPDATE: That Wisconsin hearing produced smoking gun evidence of a cash-for-get-out-the-vote scheme; 157,000 voters have the same voter registration number. 

Guy Clark

Strangely I don't think I've ever mentioned Guy Clark before, or put up any of his music. Spotify came up with these two songs in a daily playlist for me, and I got to thinking how interesting the music is. The first one is a simple story about a man who loves a woman honestly, which is the best and only real way to love; the second is about leaving the city. It reminds me of an exchange from Paint Your Wagon. Lee Marvin's character says, "There’s two kinds of people, them goin’ somewhere and them goin’ nowhere,'" drawing an objection from the mayor until he explains that going to a place that could be called nowhere was the desirable part. 

UPDATE: This one goes nicely with the last post. 

Technology Worsens

In general we expect technology to improve over time. However, there are examples of older technologies that are actually superior to what replaced them, in some ways or in total. The appliances of my grandfather's generation may still be chugging along, but nothing built since the 1970s lasts so long. Some people would say that record players produce superior experiences of music compared with tape decks or CDs or even digital recordings. The automatic transmission is a miraculous technology, but there's something to be said for a stick shift. 

Sometimes, technology worsens on purpose.

Buried deep within the massive infrastructure legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden is a little-noticed “safety” measure that will take effect in five years. Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, the measure will mandate that automobile manufacturers build into every car what amounts to a “vehicle kill switch.”

As has become standard for legislative mandates passed by Congress, this measure is disturbingly short on details. What we do know is that the “safety” device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”...

First, use of the word “passively” suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an “open” system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third-parties can remotely access the system’s data at any time.

I definitely do not want one of these. I don't really want a car that thinks for itself at all. Anti-lock brakes are great and all, but almost everything that can be computerized on a car does not need to be and -- in my opinion -- ought not to be.  Cars can still do everything a car needs to do without a computer hooked to it.

An example of an older, superior technology.

The FBI Is At It Again

This is a friendly story to the accused and at a friendly outlet, but the FBI hasn't exactly been racking up reasons to trust them just lately. 

We really should repeal that law. It's been widely misapplied for political purposes for years now. 

(H/t: D29)

Puppet stage II

I finished the second of the puppet stages. They're dry enough now that I can spray both of them with an archival non-yellowing varnish and get them packed and shipped to Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, my attention has turned to painting a series of Christmas tree ornaments with animals playing musical instruments, of which I've completed these two. They're about 3 inches wide.

Pearl Harbor Day

We remember in honor of our parents or grandparents. When we are gone, maybe our children will remember. Once our ancestors did mighty things in response to a great provocation. It was long ago now, but they were great deeds. 

Farside

This bears some looking into. It's not the "dark side," by the way. The Moon doesn't have a dark side any more than the Earth does. It has a side that's permanently facing Earth and one that's permanently not, but all surfaces of the Moon have two weeks of day alternating with two weeks of night.

...and Bob Wills Music

 I never have had Lone Star Beer. I need to rectify that before I die. 

Panic in Washington

Claire McCaskill nags the Justice Department to hurry up and prosecute Trump for something so he can't run again. 

That doesn't sound like someone who is confident about the future. Using prosecution as a political weapon is tyrannical, something that one would wisely reflect on long before beginning. She doesn't want reflection. She wants haste.

Oh, That’s Mean

BB: “Bob Dole Switches To Democrat Party."

Ongoing Genocide

We hear so much about slavery in the 19th century, racism in American history, and the genocide versus the Native Americans. Yet there is an ongoing genocide in China, and it draws half measures at best. 

If you think this kind of thing is evil and want to fight it, fight the one you could possibly stop. The one that's happening right this second. That one. 

Starship

Scientists begin to get excited.

One-way lurch setting

Powerline recently posted a video by the newest "mini-Trump" French presidential candidate, an immigration skeptic (i.e., racist omniphobe unperson) about whom the bien-pensants are in full meltdown mode. Today's followup notes the NYT's somber warnings:

The Times considers it paradoxical that a Jew of North African descent whose ancestors arrived in France only 70 years ago should be a French nationalist. These same journalists can’t understand why most Hispanic American citizens are hostile toward illegal immigration.

Already this man without a party has illustrated just how far France has lurched to the right.

As a friend notes, no one ever lurches to the left.

Daddy Was

Wasn’t he just?

Col. Shames, Last of WWII "Band of Brothers," Passes

According to Breitbart:

Col. Edward Shames, final surviving member of the World War II parachute infantry regiment known as the “Band of Brothers” which inspired the HBO miniseries and book of the same name, died Friday. He was 99.

According to his obituary posted by the Hollomon-Brown Funeral Home & Crematory and quoted by Breitbart:

He made his first combat jump into Normandy on D-Day as part of Operation Overlord. He volunteered for Operation Pegasus and then fought with Easy Company in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne.

...

When Germany surrendered, Ed and his men of Easy Company entered Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest where Ed managed to acquire a few bottles of cognac, a label indicating they were ‘for the Fuhrer’s use only.’ Later, he would use the cognac to toast his oldest son’s Bar Mitzvah.

Here is Col. Shames talking about his experiences:

Toughness

I'm not much impressed with David French lately; his criticism of Kyle Rittenhouse showed that he doesn't understand citizenship, let alone heroism. In his latest piece, though, he raises a reasonable point: his sort did fairly well during the Cold War, in contests with the Soviets, and advanced the ball to some degree for a time during the Reagan era in other ways as well. 

Sadly, he then departs into a criticism of toughness as a masculine virtue. Worse, he decides to fight it from the (friendly to Atlantic readers) ground of criticizing Donald Trump. This is a sideshow; the discussion that is worth having is whether or not the elite approach to conflict with the left is still capable of advancing any balls, or indeed if it has any to advance.

This is the meat of the argument, dispensing with that part that is personal criticism.

Indeed, the logic of the movement presses toward direct action. If you tell enough people that the future of the country is at stake, that their political opponents have corrupted democracy, and that only the truly tough have what it takes to save the nation, then speeches about unmanly ideologies will never be enough. Trolling on Twitter will, ironically, come to look like a hollow remedy, itself a form of weakness.

Thus we see the increased prevalence of open-carried AR-15s at public protests, the increased number of unlawful threats hurled at political opponents, and outbreaks of actual political violence, including the large-scale violence of January 6.

One of the most dangerous developments in our contentious times has been a growth in radical ideologies bolstered by radical intellectuals who often treat decency and even peace as impediments to justice. The riots that ripped through American cities were inexcusable expressions of political fury (and sometimes pure nihilism) that were too often rationalized, excused, and sometimes even celebrated. The author and academic Freddie deBoer has compiled a depressing list of articles, essays, and interviews in prominent publications excusing and justifying violent civil unrest.

The right-wing cult of toughness, in its distinctly Trumpist version, is no exception to this trend. When it is drained of limiting principles and tied to a man who would rather seek to upend our nation’s constitutional order than relinquish power, then the threat to the republic is plain. That threat will remain until the supposedly weak classical liberals on the left and the right do what they’ve always done at their best—rally in defense of liberty, the rule of law, and the American order itself.

I'm not sure what to make of the treatment here. David French doesn't like AR-15s; well, he's wrong there, but the open carry of them at protests is being done on both sides. These demonstrations look very different. In Richmond, VA in 2018 some 22,000 armed citizens showed up to protest a raft of gun rights infringements proposed by the governor. As no less than Reuters reports, "Despite fears that neo-Nazis or other extremists would piggyback on the Richmond rally to stoke unrest... [there was] just one arrest, a 21-year-old woman taken into custody for wearing a bandana over her face after twice being warned that masks were not allowed."

On the left, just a week ago we saw masked men with guns openly intimidating a jury in Georgia -- not, as it turned out, that it was necessary. They would have gotten their way without such things. Yet here, too, French is missing the point. He wants to equate the January 6th riot with the whole history of riots across America, and the ongoing lawlessness. We already know that January 6th featured many Federal informants and agents, though, actively encouraging violent acts -- and a Capitol Police force of 2,000 who did not deploy adequate forces, and a National Guard that stood aside for reasons yet to be revealed. 

Ultimately, the government ought to live in fear of what the citizens might do if it misbehaves. That's the only way to avoid governments that are ready to engage in democide and concentration camps. They should worry the whole time they are in power about what we might do if they cross the line. Then, perhaps, they might govern within the lines instead of well outside them.

Citizens still need to be accountable for how they protest, with arms or without. All the same, as the Declaration of Independence states, we ultimately have the right to do away with this or any government if it betrays its duty. It is wise and proper that this right is backed up by the means to make it real.

Single Action

If you're following the Alec Baldwin story, what he's saying about what happened doesn't make much sense. The weapon he used to shoot the two women was a single action revolver. I carry these myself sometimes, especially for horseback riding when there's just a chance I might get thrown if the horse should panic (which might be occasioned by a stick on the trail it mistakes for a snake, horses being unreasonable animals). The modern single action revolver is about the safest firearm you can carry. It will not go off by accident.

This is because you have to cock the hammer before the trigger does any useful thing. Once the hammer is cocked, the trigger has to be used to release the hammer to decock the revolver, or to fire it. But until it is cocked, the revolver isn't going to do anything at all unless you throw it in a fire.

The only way the revolver might have fired without him pulling the trigger is if a sear broke internally, but that's almost impossible. These things are made out of cold-rolled steel. 

Textiles

Late at night I exchange texts with one of my oldest friends, who among other things spins, dyes, and weaves. I send her progress reports on my Christmas projects, lately the puppet stage panel paintings, and she shows me what she's quilting or weaving. Last night she sent these ravishing pictures of a cotton/silk fabric dyed with indigo. She didn't spin the thread, but she did weave them on one of her astounding number of looms. She's trying to figure out how to line them with velvet and use them in a protective drape for a concert grand.

My husband alerted me to this story about woven fabrics excavated in Turkey that appear to date from at least 6500 B.C. The fiber is oak bast. Bast is a fiber found on the inner surface of the bark or outer material of "dicotedonous" flowering plants, which are about half of the flowering plants, I take it. Wiki tells me that people have extracted bast fibre from "flax (from which linen is made), hemp, jute, kenaf, kudzu, linden, milkweed, nettle, okra, paper mulberry, ramie, and roselle hemp." My weaving friend adds yucca.

An Institutional Pattern

Like other large institutions that have had members commit sex crimes against children, the CIA tended to handle things internally -- leading to minimal consequences for horrific crimes.

One employee had sexual contact with a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old. He was fired. A second employee purchased three sexually explicit videos of young girls, filmed by their mothers. He resigned. A third employee estimated that he had viewed up to 1,400 sexually abusive images of children while on agency assignments. The records do not say what action, if any, the CIA took against him. A contractor who arranged for sex with an undercover FBI agent posing as a child had his contract revoked.

At least there were some consequences, I guess, unlike with the IRS targeting scandal or (thus far) Russiagate. 

False Flag Terror is an Old Problem

The Weather Underground plotted an assassination by their white members in blackface, in order to spark a revolution.