Live version after the jump.
Devil May Care
Language warning on this one, from North Carolina’s own River (formerly “Sarah”) Shook. Shook is a very common name in these mountains.
Atlanta had Major Irregularities in 2020
Fulton County Election Board member Mark Wingate's testimony doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know: there were more voters registered in Fulton County than the whole population of the county, the mail-in ballots were totally unsecured, there were never chain of custody documents as required by law, video surveillance of the outdoor drop boxes didn't exist, etc., etc.
The absentee ballot signature matching was nonfunctional and that legal requirement was simply set aside, which we knew was a problem because the lawsuits back in 2020 drew the line at any actual signature matching being done in any audits.
Estimated dodgy ballots in that county? About a hundred thousand. The margin of victory, allegedly, was 11,779.
Inculcating Virtue
The College Fix posts this approvingly because these officials are rejecting the designation of a peaceful student protest group as 'terrorist.' That part is right -- chalking sidewalks or walls is not plausibly terrorism -- but notice the reasoning why.
She told The Fix that START’s portrayal of pro-lifers does not resemble how the DHS typically views “radicalization” in any political camp.“We didn’t have a great definition, so we wanted to clear it up, what we were trying to prevent, which was violent thought,” she said. An act of “vandalism” by college students would not have been a concern, she told The Fix.
There is no legitimate government activity that entails "we were trying to prevent... thought." It doesn't matter what goes in the ellipsis.
Universities in particular should be places that encourage thought, and then arrange encounters of poor thinking with better thinking. Ideas should not be suppressed but engaged, and the better and more truth-bearing ideas will win out.
Some encounters can produce thought that is violent or angry in a righteous way, as today's post by D29 points out. If you follow the discussion to the original documents -- Aquinas and Aristotle -- you will find that the object of righteous anger is revenge, which, Aquinas says:
...is a desire for something good: since revenge belongs to justice. Therefore the object of anger is good.
Now you can go wrong with anger, as Aquinas and Aristotle both warn, because it is a spur to action and yet also an impediment to reason. You have to get the reason right in order to measure the revenge taken against the full interests of justice, both in terms of the scale of the revenge and the means taken to exact revenge. Getting the reason right is hard, but necessary if there is to be a just and virtuous act.
In order to be able to do that, you need to practice thinking in cases when you are angry and, yes, even inclined to violence. Violent thought is important to practice getting right, which means it mustn't be stopped. It needs engagement and training, so that justice can flourish. Indeed, Aristotle holds that such anger is produced by one's excellence: it is one's virtuous attachment to justice that provokes anger when injustice is encountered.
...it is our duty both to feel sympathy and pity for unmerited distress, and to feel indignation at unmerited prosperity; for whatever is undeserved is unjust, and that is why we ascribe indignation even to the gods.... All these feelings are associated with the same type of moral character. And their contraries are associated with the contrary type; the man who is delighted by others' misfortunes is identical with the man who envies others' prosperity.
There is a great deal of value here, but you don't develop virtuous citizens by defanging them. You only get virtuous citizens by training and educating them to use their natures well and wisely. That requires practice, even -- especially! -- practicing the dangerous things.
Charley Crockett
Charley Crockett -- yes, a relation of Davy Crockett -- is another of the young singers bringing good new music. In fact he sings both kinds of music.
Disloyalty
Nurse Practitioners at Fort Stewart, home of the 3rd Infantry Division, have been notified that they’re all being broken a full pay grade.
“Defense Health Agency at Fort Stewart just announced to all Nurse Practitioners (NP) that they will all be downgraded from GS-13 to GS-12. Many of these NPs are veterans and/or spouses. According to the Winn Army Community Hospital Commander, they did not meet the requirement to continuing receiving the GS-13 compensation they were initially hired on receive. They do not know when it will be effective, they refuse to answer questions regarding the pay of others. It’s not their money, so they don’t care. Expect the availability of PCMs for veterans, spouses, and their families to decrease drastically as these NPs search for jobs with loyal employers.”
Congress just gave the TSA a pay raise, but nurses serving our military?
Are 78% of Americans racist extremists?
The AP lards this story with scare quotes from the Bad Orange Man, but it can't quite obscure the poll results:
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 45% of Americans described the [border] situation as a crisis, while another 32% said it was a major problem.So 77% of poll respondents think the border is somewhere between a major problem and a crisis. The AP's take is that this is a result of Trump's illegitimate rhetoric's beginning to "resonate" outside his "base." Even those awful Hispanics on the border, and those awful Chicago Democrats, are objecting. And Gov. Abbott's "publicity stunt" of sending north a tiny fraction of the illegal immigrants has begun to be viewed by faithless progressives as straining local budgets so close to them as to be impossible to ignore any longer. As long as it was just tiny Eagle Pass, Texas, who cares.
Wanted: Knights Templars
Formally the Church still has knightly orders. It has long ago lost heart for using them, however. We could benefit from the restoration of an order designed to protect the faithful and the order of worship.
One must defend a space for the sacred, for thought and prayer. Raymond Llull, one of the most important of all Christian philosophers, also authored a book of knighthood that explains the importance of the institution. Knights are not less necessary than priests, for without security there is little capacity for contemplation of the divine nor for carrying out the sacraments. Lk. 22:36-8 instructs us that no less than disciples should bear swords even if they need to sell their coats to buy them.
A Johnny Silverhand
A "Johnny Silverhand" with a Chile de Arbol garnish
My son is 21 years old, and enjoys a video game called Cyberpunk 2077. (I explained to him that the original game was a paper-and-pencil tabletop game called Cyberpunk 2020, but the years got too advanced to keep up the fantasy.) One of the main characters in the game is named Johnny Silverhand because of his artificial arm; he is variously described as a rebel, a rocker, and the terrorist who set off a nuclear weapon inside the corporate headquarters of an evil international megacorporation. The game entails an interesting exploration of the question of whether such terrorism is always wrong or, in certain cases, an acceptable means of resistance against tyrannical powers.
In any case, Silverhand is famous enough that he has an in-game drink named after him. It's a sort-of Tequila Old Fashioned, served with a chili garnish. I've never been a cocktail drinker -- straight whiskey's the thing for me if I want something hard -- but I accepted the one he made for me. It was pretty good. Towards the end, the tequila had leeched out enough of the capsaicin from the Arbol to make it a little spicy.
The Beacons are Lit
We were warned this morning that the wildland fire preparedness level was raised to 4, our of 5 total, because of low relative humidity and the lack of rain. Sure enough, about midmorning the county next to us called us out for mutual aid on a fire in the Nantahala National Forest on Indian Creek. Because our fire district is also mostly national forest, getting from here to there meant taking big fire engines and tankers across high mountains using twisty roads.
In the old days in Iraq I used to amuse myself, going outside the wire in body armor to face enemies in what then seemed to be to be a noble cause, about the similarity between what we were doing and the Arthurian knights riding out seeking adventure. (I was not alone in having fondness for this sort of imagery.) There's something similar at work in grabbing your fire fighting personal protection equipment, jumping in a heavy truck, and barreling down the mountain roads to help neighbors in need. I was reminded of the beacons that Tolkien references, which were indeed important features in Anglo-Saxon England: a series of costal beacons summoned aid in times of Viking raids.
Today it was my honor to ride with the oldest of our active firefighters, whose years of experience allowed him to plunge that fire engine into curves on steep descents with a confidence the youth could only envy. It takes skill approaching mastery to do that. Those roads are no racetracks, neither designed nor properly banked for speed, nor carefully maintained. No, they're no better than mule trails that were never properly banked at all, indifferently paved by the lowest bidder, and barely maintained even in good years. I have a great deal of admiration for this man, who is at least a decade older than me but is even more active in coming to calls.
I had meant to do some work around the property today, probably cutting firewood for next winter, but I didn't get to it. Oh, well. This was a worthy way to spend a Saturday such as this one.
More Destructive Bureaucracy
In my own field, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is considering a proposed new rule that would greatly impact fire departments. While there is an alleged exemption for volunteer departments, the way the wording of the rule is structured it's not at all clear who (if anyone) would really be exempt.
If you want to comment on the rule, you can do so here. I submitted a comment to the effect that any new rules are inappropriate at this time, as resources are strained across the board already by economic conditions and the effort to absorb migrants who impose costs but don't add to the tax base. I can't imagine a rule-making agency will be persuaded to stop making rules for a few years to let the economy catch up, but it's crazy to keep imposing regulatory costs on top of existing ones while the economy is struggling.
They will doubtless do it anyway. It's a one-way ratchet.
Destructive Bureaucracy
It is a commonplace that every act of creation is also an act of destruction, because you have to change what is into what you're trying to make instead. Sometimes the destruction outweighs the creative act. A regular violator is the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
In the nearby town of Waynesville, a promised highway project made much of the local real estate unsaleable and, as it drug on for years without issue, caused a whole side of town to fall into disrepair. The project was eventually put on indefinite hold. Another local highway has been undergoing traffic-stopping construction for years in order to install a bicycle lane that no one will use, because the NCDOT has decided it likes bicycle lanes.
The editor of the Sylva Herald went back through his archives to try to figure out who was at fault. His determination? All the local leaders opposed doing this, and were vocal about not wanting to widen the road for years. NCDOT is doing it anyway. "Superstreets are in vogue and NCDOT, pretty much an uncaring bureaucracy, brought out the cookie cutter to plop down another one."
A lot of people complain about the Federal government, and it's usually warranted; but the state governments are just as bad.
Dominic Frisby
No doubt I'll be on another list by morning.
Beware -- there's more far right comedy below the jump.
I'll just bet he did
An Israeli hostage describes her surprisingly clear-thinking abuser's worries:
The Times report doesn't offer any more detail about the assult but says that Soussana offered a lot more detail during the 8 hours the paper interviewed her. After it was over, her captor apologized and begged her not to tell Israel about what he had done.
Professions of Faith
I see via Dad29 that there's been some controversy over the use of the phrase "Christ is King."
The piece has a video by Andrew Klavan, who is a Christian by conversion from Judiasm. He's making a much more reasonable point in the video than the pull quote suggests: not that saying "Christ is King" is anti-Semitic, but that anecdotally he's been welcomed by all the Christians he knows except the ones who tend to hang on that phrase. Maybe that's true. He says the priest who converted him warned him that Christians wouldn't really accept him, but that they broadly have done so anyway. That's what I'd expect: how can you be 'fishers of men' if you're always throwing them back?
Definitely I've come to realize that there's a whole lot more anti-Semitism than I ever believed since October 7th. I always thought the Jews were just making the mistake we all make in thinking that other people are thinking about us much more than they are; in fact, people are usually thinking about themselves and probably aren't thinking about you at all. That said, it's been clear since Hamas started its latest round of war that there are a lot of people thinking about, and hating, Jews.
On the other hand, I think our society needs to recommit itself on freedom of religion as well as freedom of speech. I believe several things that would probably be insulting to people of other faiths: for example, I believe that Muhammad was a false prophet and just made the whole thing up in order to advance his personal interest; I believe the same thing about Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. I am likewise pretty sure that Wicca was invented out of whole cloth and its founding stories to the contrary are made up. I think Southern Baptists are outright wrong in their theologically indefensible opposition to wine.
However, I don't oppose you being a Mormon or a Muslim or a Baptist or a Wiccan, and as such I support your right to make whatever declarations go along with that faith. I support you in your practicing the faith that you believe in, and if there are any Muslims reading today I wish you a happy Ramadan. It's not the purpose of my beliefs to insult yours; I just happen to have come to the conclusions I have about these things. I'm free to think what I want and believe what I want and say what I want, and I think it's important as a free man and a philosopher to do so honestly.
So if you believe that Christ is King, you ought to get to say so. Other people can think whatever they want.
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