An Escalation

 A judge has for the first time ruled that January 6th was an insurrection and on that basis removed a pro-Trump elected official from office. The office is a county commission seat, and the elected official was present on January 6th. 

The specific act of "insurrection" of which he was found guilty was misdemeanor trespass. He entered parts of the Capitol grounds and, by his own admission, led a prayer rally there. He is now barred for life from holding any office under the United States by the Constitution's 14th Amendment, assuming that this ruling withstands review. 

Danger and Parenting

A study regarding the psychology of political inclination made AVI's place last week. It draws into question what has now become a standard idea in the field, to whit, that conservatives are especially those who think the world a dangerous place, whereas liberals tend to think of it as safe. The research suggests -- as I read what I've been able to read of it -- that conservatives are instead those to whom it seems intuitively proper to read a natural order into the world, and to accept that order as basically just and acceptable. Liberals are more likely to reject both the notion that it is proper to read a natural law out of nature, and that any one that might be read out of it is either decent or acceptable.

Some anecdotal support of that can be found in this article about letting (or even forcing) children to play outside unsupervised, which many a conservative parent I've known regards as the sin qua non of good parenting. This author in fact appears to regard a protective attitude from parents as dangerous precisely because it might lead the children to become conservatives (which, I think, misstates the findings: the issue is that these political divisions are often primal, pre-political, and pre-rational, and thus not very subject to change by any sort of external influence).

You can see the effects of all this worrying in modern parenting behavior. According to a 2015 report from the Pew Research Center, on average, parents say children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in their own front yard, 12 years old to stay home alone for an hour, and 14 to be unsupervised at a public park. It also shows up in what parents teach their kids about the world: Writing in The Journal of Positive Psychology in 2021, the psychologists Jeremy D. W. Clifton and Peter Meindl found that 53 percent of respondents preferred “dangerous world” beliefs for their children.

No doubt these beliefs come from the best of intentions. If you want children to be safe (and thus, happy), you should teach them that the world is dangerous—that way, they will be more vigilant and careful. But in fact, teaching them that the world is dangerous is bad for their health, happiness, and success.

Once they digest that this is not actually going to make the children into conservatives I suppose it will seem less unsafe to keep them safe. In the meantime I have known some quite progressive parents who would never dream of letting their children just wander away unsupervised into the forest with their dogs and a Buck knife, as mine used to do in the brave old days of yore. They'd think of that no more than they'd let their children ride bikes on the road, and without helmets; nor drink out of a water hose on a sunny day; nor ride in the back of a station wagon without seat belts, all piled together with the dogs as we go down the road.

Deerslayers

In an excellent account of why the establishment narrative on fascism is backwards, Lance Morrow -- apparently a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center -- gives also an account of what he takes to be the place where Trump comes apart from his supporters. Of the latter, he says: 

As for Mr. Trump’s followers, they belong to the Church of American Nostalgia. They are Norman Rockwellians, or Eisenhowerites. They regard themselves, not without reason, as the last sane Americans. You might think of them as American masculinity in exile; like James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, living in the forest has made their manners rough.

One rarely encounters literary references to Fenimore Cooper these days. American manhood is hardly 'in exile' in the forest, though; as the reference suggests, the forest was its natal ground. American masculinity historically eats lots of venison, as indeed I do myself. (It's not clear that Fenimore Cooper was actually all that familiar with it, as Mark Twain suggested in a rather scathing review of the Leatherstocking Tales.)

He goes on: 

If there are fascists in America these days, they are apt to be found among the tribes of the left. They are Mr. Biden and his people (including the lion’s share of the media), whose opinions have, since Jan. 6, 2021, hardened into absolute faith that any party or political belief system except their own is illegitimate—impermissible, inhuman, monstrous and (a nice touch) a threat to democracy. The evolution of their overprivileged emotions—their sentimentality gone fanatic—has led them, in 2022, to embrace Mussolini’s formula: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Or against the party. (People forget, if they ever knew it, that both Hitler and Mussolini began as socialists). The state and the Democratic Party must speak and act as one, suppressing all dissent.

Yes, I suppose, on all three counts: Trump is doing something quite different from what most Americans who support him are doing; what those latter Americans are doing is aligned with the foundations and traditions of America in a sane and deeper way than almost anything else going on right now; and the left is embracing the all-inclusive, all-directing state. 

Indeed, if he misses a beat it's in failing to add that the corporations -- Facebook and Twitter especially -- are also being brought into alignment with the state's will to suppress its opponents (in light of last week's speech, one might even say 'its enemies').

The headline suggests that the regular meetings between the administration and social media were designed to suppress COVID misinformation, which might possibly be defended as necessary for public health. Yet if you read even briefly you realize that something much more sinister was going on.

Federal officials in the Biden administration secretly conspired and communicated with social media companies to censor and suppress Americans' private speech. This is revealed in a new lawsuit brought in a joint effort by The New Civil Liberties Alliance, the Attorney General of Missouri, and the Attorney General of Louisiana against the President of the United States. The suit is brought under the first amendment right to freedom of speech. The lawsuit seeks to identify among other things "all meetings with any Social-Media Platform relating to Content Modulation and/or Misinformation."

The discovery shows that there was "A recurring meeting usually entitled USG – Industry meeting, which has generally had a monthly cadence, and is between government agencies and private industry. Government participants have included CISA’s Election Security and Resilience team, DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the FBI’s foreign influence task force, the Justice Department’s national security division, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Industry participants have included Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Microsoft, Verizon Media, Pinterest, LinkedIn and the Wikimedia Foundation. The topics discussed include, but are not limited to: information sharing around elections risk...

Emphasis mine. Those aren't public health officials, they're security state operatives. They aren't aiming at public health, either: they're aiming at influencing -- at least -- elections. 

They aimed to do so via censorship and information operations targeting the United States citizenry. The first of these is unconstitutional even for private companies if they are doing so at government instruction. The second is illegal, at least for the CIA and the US military's professional information operations community. The presence of the Director of National Intelligence's people at these meetings raises big red flags.

Deer season is coming up. It's a good chance to practice some of those exiled masculine virtues, such as riflery, living off the land, and food preservation. You can tan a deer hide -- 'a buck' being the nickname for a dollar because for so long the one was approximately valued at the other -- using the brain mixed with just a little water. There is just enough brain in every mammal to tan its own hide. Lots of little things like that will be rediscovered by those who are so inclined.

Send Me

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” “Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

 Isaiah 6:8

When the Nation calls, “whom shall we send?”  A Spartan will respond, “Send Me!”

2nd Armored Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, "Spartans"

"Send Me" is also the title of a new documentary featuring former US Special Forces Operator, and Task Force Pineapple member, Tim Kennedy. Task Force Pineapple, you will recall, was a volunteer effort by some of us to rescue American citizens and allies from the collapse in Afghanistan. My own role was stateside and limited to facilitating international negotiations and trying to help set up a private airline to move refugees. Kennedy went on the ground. 

He was there to do what the US Government failed to do, then refused to do, then actively blocked attempts to do. If there were any justice, the new documentary ought to bring down the government -- and not violently or through insurrection, but by their heartfelt and proper rejection by the American people.

A US Army colonel turned away busloads of Americans, allies and orphans trying to flee Afghanistan during the chaotic evacuation of war-torn country last August, a new documentary claims....

They were met by an unidentified official from the 82nd Airborne Division who would not let the buses through.

“There was a colonel that who came out and wanted to show that essentially he was the one that could decide whether or not somebody could get on a plane or not,” said a member of the team whose identity was concealed by the documentary’s producers.

The colonel made the call to ‘put everybody back out,” MMA fighter turned-solider Tim Kennedy said.

“‘I don’t care who they are, they get back on those buses and those buses go back into Kabul,'” he said, according to Kennedy — even after the team explained their bags had been screened and were already in the airport.

The colonel could not be pleaded with, and would not even make an exception for people with US passports because he didn’t know “if that’s fake or not,” the anonymous team member recalled.

He then ordered the refugees back into the bus and off the base at gunpoint, where they would pass through a vengeful Taliban security force.

No one in the military or the administration has paid any price for this betrayal of duty, of country, and of countrymen. Fourteen thousand Americans were abandoned; only God knows how many finally made it out. 

Homemade Chipotle

The summer garden bounty now includes jalapeño as well as tomato. Since I have a smoker and a dehydrator, I decided to make my own chipotle chilies. These are, of course, merely smoked jalapeños. Given the much higher ambient humidity here, I finish them in the dehydrator for preservation. 

These combine with fire roasted tomatoes to make a fine salsa. Three jars of it are pictured at the top. 

Are You Kidding Me With This Stuff?

 

I get that the administration is just calling its opposition evil now, and trying to reframe the election in terms of 'semi' fascism versus 'our democracy' rather than (ahem) discuss the recession and inflation, the military failures in Afghanistan, the impending war in Taiwan for which they are unprepared, and so on. 

Nevertheless, has anyone in post-WWII American political rhetoric staged a more actually fascist display than this? Flanked by blood red light 'banners' with a military guard on display, calling opponents creatures of chaos who live in darkness, who have made their choice and must face the wrath of the nation: rhetorically, at least, this is right out of the playbook. 

Wildly, it's an adoption of anti-American Chinese propaganda as the chosen self-presentation of the Biden administration. 

In May 2021, another person shared a post on Twitter with images of purported Chinese propaganda against Biden. The illustrations show Biden, with yellow glowing eyes, sitting on a throne of AR-15s that looks like the Iron Throne from the HBO series Game of Thrones. Some Biden supporters liked the images, saying how they looked so "metal."

This "Dark Brandon" meme has apparently become quite popular among the same young Ivy-educated White House staffers who wrote his "targeted" student loan relief to benefit chiefly and especially themselves. They love that it makes them seem part of something badass, and are sharing and encouraging variations of the meme on Twitter.

After a string of “good news” for the Biden agenda, White House officials elevated a meme from terminally online obscurity, reclaiming ironic images of a tired and gaffe-prone president cast as a demi-god-like figure.

The meme was supercharged after the FBI’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home in Palm Beach, Florida[.]

As a consequence, we get a speech that misses the smooth rhetorical tone of Chancellor Palpatine accepting the emergency powers that he used to establish the Empire...

...and the visuals have fully skipped ahead to the actual Empire.

The rhetorical and visual embrace of the 'badass' and 'metal' is going to have real political consequences. They may well get what they want, reframe the election into a referendum on the guy who isn't even in power anymore, and survive what ought to be a punishing midterm. Whether they do or do not, the cost is going to be real damage to America.

19th Century Medieval

Eric Blair has made this point occasionally: a lot of what we think of as 'Medieval' is really Victorian. The Arthurian renaissance that accompanied Victoria's rise and reign gave us a lot of the symbolism we associate with Malory and older things. Romantic music and opera, art, literature: and this, eventually, gave us Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. 

Pretty illustrations.

Heroism

City Journal wonders if you needn't do something heroic to be a hero.

I'm not sure how sympathetic I am to his examples. Nevertheless, it reminds me of a very recent post here: "[M]any a reverent Christian prays fervently for forgiveness for the sins he can't seem to avoid: failing in virtue does not keep him from justification through faith. Striving and failing is acknowledged to be part of the moral life, and even the pathetic sinner may be beloved of God; whereas failing at virtue is vice, and you can't be a virtuous man without in fact exercising the virtues (at least most of the time and to a greater or lesser degree)."

What if "Semi"-Fascist is the Right Amount?

President Biden apparently decided to call Republicans "semi-fascist" in a speech the other day. No less than CNN journalist Don Lemon questioned Biden's spokeswoman over what exactly that was supposed to mean. 

“What exactly is semi-fascism, Karine?" Lemon asked. 

During a fundraising event in Maryland, Biden told the crowd that America is under threat, blaming the GOP for supporting former president Trump’s MAGA movement, linking their ideology to “semi-fascism.”

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy… it’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism,” Biden said. 

However no one, including Jean-Pierre, seemed to know exactly what Biden was trying to say by this comment, and frankly the president himself probably didn’t even know. 

“The American people have a choice in front of them and the president laid that out very clearly, very powerfully tonight," [she said.]

The problem is that the idea that gives "fascism" its name is one that no successful politics of any sort can do without: the idea that 'we' must 'come together' in order to be stronger than we would be separately. 

The term “fascist” derives from a Roman weapon, a weapon that was as much a symbol as anything else.  The fasces was a bundle of sticks tied together (often depicted with an ax-head attached).  The Romans could make perfectly good ax-handles.  They didn’t do it this way because they needed to do it.  They did it to make a point.  Each of the sticks making up the fasces was weak by itself.  Hit a man with it and it would break on him.  But if you tied the bundle together, the sticks became strong.  The Roman magistrate who punished with the fasces was making a point about Rome.  Its strength came from the unity of its citizens.  It was because they held together as Romans that they could impose a Roman order on the world.

The Founders of the United States of America adopted the fasces in a lot of our national symbols.  It is small wonder that they did so.  

The problem with fascists is not that the base idea is flawed, it is that they apply it in inappropriate ways. Instead of using it to unite the polity in defense against the outside world, they begin to deploy it internally to create a faction that can dominate everyone else in society. This usage of the power of unity is tyrannical or oligarchic rather than democratic or constitutional: and it unfairly eliminates the right of the excluded parts of the fascist society from having their interests defended or advanced. Healthy politics use the idea of the fasces to defend a space in the world in which they can exist in mutual peace. Fascist politics aims at creating a permanent subjugation within a society, or even in radical cases a complete elimination (as of Jews) from a society.

Earlier this week AVI posted a complaint against Republicans adopting a long-standing Democratic political rhetoric of "fighting for you" rather than "working for you." There is a parallel here: working to defend your class interests within society, while accepting that others have other interests that must be compromised with, is healthy politics; dividing the society to fight against and subjugate the hated other is not.

Now "semi-" as a modifier conventionally means "only partly" and technically means "half." If you are paid semi-monthly, it means every half of a month you get paid. The trucks we sometimes call "semis" are trucks that can be divided into two parts, truck and trailer. 

As mentioned, the base idea from which fascism gets its name is one that any successful politics needs. "Semi" might be the right amount of it. Some proportion is the right amount, because zero percent would lead you to an incoherent society that could not pull together, neither for any common interests nor for mutual defense. You could make an argument that half was the right proportion, or more, or less, but not that the idea should be rejected outright. 

In any case, this discussion provides the right hook for the following song, whose title and lyrics derive from a pun on the several ways in which "semi" is used by Americans.

"Semi-crazy" can be the right amount, too.

It's not bad advice

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who is running for re-election, suggested that all 5.4MM Republicans in her state should move to Florida. I rather wish they would, too.

Thin Years, Fat Sound

This is about Harlan County, a coal-mining community of infamous violence both union and corporate, cop and criminal. It’s a famous setting for country songs, but this band is set up like the Blues Brothers. They’ve got a big brass sound and an upbeat feel, and even gospel overtones. 

DAC talks about it in the opening to this other song. “Well grandpa, he lied a little bit.”

The Biden Laptop and 2020

Kruiser this morning reports on two other stories about the FBI's efforts to prevent the Hunter Biden laptop from influencing the 2020 election. In the first one, Senators including Ron Johnson have uncovered that the FBI outright refused to investigate the laptop itself before the election. One might be inclined to forgive that as a sort of reasonable or even praiseworthy deference by the secret police to the constitutional and democratic process: might, that is, if they had afterwards investigated it and prosecuted the obvious crimes it revealed. Instead they have of course buried it for years now.

In the second story, it turns out that the FBI actively suppressed the story by asking social media to censor reporting on it. You will recall that the New York Post broke the story, and suddenly had its Facebook and Twitter accounts suspended as well as reporters/editors who worked on it. This is not in any way describable as the secret police deferring to the constitutional and democratic process. The Constitution imagines in the 1st Amendment a free press as an essential component to the informed citizenry necessary to a free society. Elections are meant to be conducted by a citizenry that is engaged and informed, rather than one that is kept intentionally in the dark by the secret activities of a secret police (itself dubiously constitutional and rather anti-democratic as an institution, as a matter of fact).

Furthermore, the FBI appears to have done this by making false representations to the social media giants. They claimed that this story was Russian disinformation, when in fact it was a perfectly true story -- and they knew it was true, because they had the laptop in their possession. 

Kruiser titles his piece, "America Was a Better Place When the FBI Didn't Rig Elections." I suppose a careful critic would respond that these are small potatoes that can hardly have, by themselves, determined the outcome of the election. Indeed, there is quite a lot more that may have had a larger effect. Nevertheless, you get only partial credit for your election-swinging activities having only contributed to achieving the outcome they were designed to help create.

GAO takes IRS Seriously

A GAO study finds that much, much less money will be forthcoming from the IRS expansion than the agency claims. It arrived at this figure by assuming that the agency was telling the truth about not going after Americans who make less than $400,000.

The agency meanwhile is maintaining that they will bring in far more than predicted, while maintaining a historic level of audits.

Hard to Argue With That

The United States is bedeviled in part by the fact that its leadership lacks virtue, writes Barton Swain. Well, what he actually opens with is this:

It’s hard to contemplate American public life in the 21st century and not arrive at the unhappy conclusion that we are led by idiots.

He comes around to virtue after rehearsing some of the obvious debacles. 

The piece is called "The Case for an American Revolution in Morals," which is interesting to me because virtue ethics is often thought to be separate (or at least severable) from moral theory. A man can be courageous, moderate, self-disciplined, given to acts of public service, magnificence, even magnanimity without the moral structure that later thinkers added on about guilt, sin, grace, and so forth. 

Aquinas as much as Aristotle talked about the virtues, and found ways to link the Christian moral picture to the Greek ethical one: and they are certainly compatible for those who want both halves. Likewise, many a reverent Christian prays fervently for forgiveness for the sins he can't seem to avoid: failing in virtue does not keep him from justification through faith. Striving and failing is acknowledged to be part of the moral life, and even the pathetic sinner may be beloved of God; whereas failing at virtue is vice, and you can't be a virtuous man without in fact exercising the virtues (at least most of the time and to a greater or lesser degree).

Unfortunately the article is mostly behind a paywall, so many of you won't be able to read it. That is an irritating feature of the present moment; they seem to be cropping up everywhere.

Someone's Getting Fired

I want to know whose idea it was to pit Hillary Clinton versus Kim Kardashian on a legal quiz show, and how they got HRC to agree to do it. There was no upside to this idea; if it went as expected HRC would appear to be punching down at a 'famous for being famous' celebrity. If HRC lost, as in fact turned out to be the case, it could only be devastating to her image as the Smartest Woman in the World. 

"Cognitive decline is real," a friend said when we were discussing the affair. 

"Message to the Uncredentialed: 'Screw Em'"

Here is the NRO article referenced in the comments below.

Since there's a paywall, here is the relevant part to our discussion:

President Biden made clear today, this is a one-time deal, a lottery, a lightning strike. People who paid off their loans last week aren’t covered. People who will take out new loans after the policy has run its course aren’t covered.... This isn’t a reform. It’s not even pretending to be reform. It’s a contemptuous, abusive, unbelievably expensive shot in the dark...

It seems so arbitrary. Why does Biden not want to do the same thing for loans on trucks owned by plumbers? Why not for mortgages — which, given how heavily it subsidizes them, the federal government clearly thinks are worthwhile? Why not for credit cards or auto payments or mom-and-pop credit lines? The answer, I’m afraid to say, is disgustingly classist: Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are better than everyone else...

Electricians, store managers, deli workers, landscapers, waitresses, mechanics, entrepreneurs? Screw ’em. Sure, college graduates make more money than non-graduates, and their unemployment rate is lower, too. But non-graduates don’t have access to the president, so they don’t matter. 

It really is arbitrary and, well, stupid. If you went to college as an undergraduate on a merit-based scholarship that covered your costs because you worked hard to keep your grades up, you won't be eligible for the $20,000 that went to those who borrowed and got a Pell Grant. If you were a frat boy who spent the four years drinking up your student loans, you likely will. 

The major reform that cuts rates for loan repayment only affects undergraduate loans, though grad school loans tend to be much higher. The 'public service' thing we talked about yesterday: 'our kids' work at nonprofits, 'their kids' don't. There's no justification for that program that isn't tribal.

But Did They Use Whips?

 NY Post: "Video shows migrants attacking, taunting Border Patrol agents."

Since We're Doing "Stupid" Today

Here's someone else who has no idea how the world works.

Now that Rep. Liz Cheney has lost her primary to a Trumpist Republican in Wyoming, it’s time for President Biden to consider appointing her to his cabinet. Political tensions have risen to new levels since the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago. Bringing a Republican into the administration would cool partisan temperatures and unite the country in support of the rule of law.

There can't be anyone outside the NYC/DC corridor who thinks this would plausibly 'cool partisan temperatures.' 

A Dumb Decision

I generally don't like to use terms like "dumb" or "stupid" in political discussions; mostly it's used to avoid engaging with the argument. This argument student loans is one I understand, though, and this is just stupid.

The way student loans work in America since the Obama administration is that the Federal Government 'owns' the debt, and it allows you to pay it off according to an income-based formula that is meant to determine what you can afford. You pay a percentage of your income in other words, not anything like what it would take to pay off the debt on the 20 year timeline; after 20 years, the government will write the rest of it off. If you work for a 'public service' like the Federal government itself, or any government or nonprofit, it's 10 years.

So a $10,000 forgiveness does nothing. Since you're already not paying off the interest -- you're paying much less than it would take to clear the debt -- the $10,000 is going to come right back over time anyway. Yet you won't have to pay it off, not before this decision and not after. In 20 years -- 240 monthly payments -- you can walk away from it, or only 120 if you work for an approved industry.

If you really want to help borrowers, either forgive the whole thing or else let for-profit employees off after 10 years too. (It's their employer that is for-profit or nonprofit, after all: there's no moral difference in the employees.) If you want the money, you have to change the payment schedule to a level that many people simply can't afford; then you still won't get the money, but you will at least get to seize whatever they have. If you want just more money, eliminate the nonprofit distinction the other way and make those employees pay for 20 years instead of 10.

What's going on here doesn't make any actual sense at all. It's not clear who they're hoping to impress: hopefully the people who went to college to incur the debt have enough math to see this is a bunch of bull.

There's A Chance She Has A Point

Language warning, but there's an issue here that she's correctly identifying.