I'd never heard it before. It really is quite nice.
Addendum to Last
Charles H included a link to a story about how John Prine contributed to the songwriting of the perfect country-Western song. Along the way it makes the point that Coe started as a folksinger, working with pieces much lighter and gentler in character than the Outlaw songs that would later become famous. It claims that "what might be the most underrated song of his career [is] the sweet and harmonious 'Jody Like a Melody.'"
The Mask of Fame
Ed Driscoll over at Instapundit links a post celebrating Charley Pride, America's real first black country superstar. Charley Pride was so famous he scored a mention in David Allan Coe's most famous hit song, as part of Coe's strategy of name-dropping more famous acts in the hope that they'd return the favor. The song was actually written by Steve Goodman, who was therefore playfully mocking his friend Coe, who returned the favor by improving the song and then recording it himself. In any case it was a great moment when a white singer from the South was only too happy to liken himself to a black singer in the same genre; all forgotten now.
Along the way Ed mentions that album we were talking about in the recent post "A Vagueness Problem." One of the songs on it turns out to be a re-imagining of Dolly Parton's "Jolene," which Dolly had said she had hoped young Beyoncé might record.
As little as I know about the young singer, I knew she wasn't going to record "Jolene." I don't know a single one of her songs, but I read the newspaper enough to understand the persona she affects. The persona she pretends to is often described as a "Queen," and there was no way she would sing a song built on humility like "Jolene." That song is a frank confession by a young woman to another that she is far more beautiful than the first, and a plea -- "I'm begging you" -- not to steal the man she loves. There is simply no way that could be made coherent with the persona that is the real product being sold here.
Naturally this had to be 'reimagined' as a dominant snarl. "I'm begging you" was re-written to "I'm warning you," the first of several threats: "Your peace depends on how you move, Jolene," culminating with "I know I’m a queen, Jolene/ I’m still a Creole banjee b**** from Louisianne (Don’t try me)."
It's obvious why Dolly Parton would want a mega-act to re-record her song, for which she was given full writing credit even though she clearly wouldn't have written any of that. It's the same reason she wanted Elvis to record another of her hits, and the same reason she eventually turned him down: royalties. She was in talks with Elvis to record her "I will always love you" until his manager pointed out that he would demand half the publishing on that song, not just his version but any version. Dolly Parton making money is not a problem for anyone, I trust: she will doubtless use those royalties as she has used others to provide for the poor people in the Appalachian community she comes from herself.
Still, it would have been better if someone had suggested a Loretta Lynn tune. The young lady could have done that one without having to drop the mask of fame, without having dared to express another part of herself that would have destroyed her product line.
"Our Democracy" not Democratic
On the subject of a 'terrifying' result from a Rasmussen survey, we learn that the crosstabs identify a major disconnect between elites and actual democracy.
Earlier this year, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked voters a simple question: “Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair?”The answers he got back were, as he put it in a Daily Signal podcast last week, “the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.”Among all Americans, just 7% said they would want their candidate to win by cheating. As Rasmussen put it, he’d rather see that number lower, but that’s not bad.But more than a third of the elite 1% he surveyed would condone cheating. And among those who are “politically obsessed” – meaning that they talk about politics every day – that number shot up to 69%.
They go on to list several other views that this group espouses at rates quite at odds with ordinary Americans.
- Nearly 60% say there is too much individual freedom in America – double the rate of all Americans.
- More than two-thirds (67%) favor rationing of energy and food to combat the threat of “climate change.”
- Nearly three-quarters (70%) of the elites trust the government to “do the right thing most of the time.”
- More than two-thirds (67%) say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than letting parents decide.
- Nearly three-quarters (74%) say they are financially better off than before COVID, compared with 20% of the general public.
Now, democracy -- rule of the many -- is often said on the right to be a corrupt form of government (following Aristotle, wisely) because it allows the majority to override the rights or interests of the minority. However, a democrat would at least admit that a view held by only a minority should not govern.
Here we see majorities of the 1% differing from the majority of the 99%, which means that the 'general public' view is the one with democratic legitimacy. Yet the same 1% are disproportionately likely to be fine with cheating in order to see their undemocratic view enacted on the majority, especially those who are interested in politics.
Whatever that view is, it is not democratic.
Young Men and Women Drifting Apart
Politically, at least, but it can be hard to make a home with someone whose politics you hate.
People in 27 European countries were asked whether they agreed that “advancing women’s and girls’ rights has gone too far because it threatens men’s and boys’ opportunities.” Unsurprisingly, men were more likely to concur than women. Notably, though, young men were more anti-feminist than older men, contradicting the popular notion that each generation is more liberal than the previous one.
We always used to joke in those old days that the war between men and women would never be won, because there was too much fraternizing with the enemy. Now it sounds like there's a lot less fraternizing.
In America... Generation Z (typically defined as those born between the late 1990s and early 2000s) have their first romantic relationship years later than did Millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) or Generation X (born in the decade or so to 1980), and are more likely to feel lonely. Also, Gen Z women, unlike older women, are dramatically more likely than their male peers to describe themselves as LGBT (31% to 16%).
I think partly the reason older men are less anti-feminist is because older men grew up with a better sort of feminism. The "Society for Cutting Up Men" existed in the 1970s, but it was a fringe: mostly women wanted what they plausibly referred to as equality. What young feminists want now is not equality but equity, meaning 'our side deserves more.' That's a different proposition. Apparently it's even worse in Europe.
Not all male grumbles are groundless. In some countries, divorce courts tend to favour the mother in child custody disputes. In others, pension rules are skewed. Men enter the labour market earlier and die younger, but the retirement age for women in rich countries is on average slightly lower. In Poland it is five years lower, so a Polish man can expect to work three times longer than he will live post-retirement, while for a Polish woman, the ratio is 1.4, notes Michał Gulczyński of Bocconi University. This strikes many men as unfair. Mateusz, the Polish fireman, recalls when a left-wing lawmaker was asked if she was so keen on equal rights, what about equalising the pension age? “She changed the subject,” he scoffs.
We don't do that here, but it is true here that women go to college and grad school more often, enjoy careers in comfortable settings more often, earn more on average in the younger generation (due, presumably, to those education advantages), live longer, and enjoy a consumer society that is built to cater to them because women control the lion's share of spending decisions -- 85%, in fact, if these numbers are right. Men commit suicide more, suffer from every form of violent crime more, go to prison more -- at 90%, even more disproportionately than women control how the money is spent -- and are more likely to work in physically demanding jobs that pay less. Meanwhile, however, if you are a man who wanted to compete for the comfortable jobs with women -- an academic professorship, say -- you'll be facing a formal system that intends to ensure that she has advantages in the selection process.
It seems like some sort of rough equality has already been reached, and now the conversation for the younger generation is about how much 'equity' is acceptable to those who end up on the short end. It was easier for us older folks to go along, even if there was grumbling, because the fairness of 'equality' was more evident than is the fairness of the current push for 'equity.'
UPDATE: This analysis puts the 'Gender War Scorecard' at a 66/34 female victory, but has also built out a Google sheet that lets you weight the different factors yourself as you prefer. (The writer is definitely a male.) If you're inclined to play with it, you can see what you come up with in terms of how close to 'equality' we are, and how close to 'how much equity is this going to take?' we are.
One thing that's not on our lists is mental health, which varies both by sex and by ideology. That may be an important factor in one's perception of one's well-being. The original article offers some examples of paranoia that seems to be inculcated by social media, which may be making the female experience phenomenologically unpleasant even as it may be empirically privileged. Liberal women experience the largest share of mental ill-health (over 50% of liberal white women under 30 in that study were diagnosed with a mental health disorder). Thus, this same political trend in young women towards liberalism that is dividing them from the men may also be heightening the problem of making them feel oppressed even if they are empirically doing ok.
Historical Medieval Battles
YouTuber Sensei Seth (whom I've never heard of before) visits Carolina Carnage, which he claims is the biggest Buhurt (from the Old French béhourd, meaning joust or tournament) tournament in the US.
England vs. USA, 2018
150 vs 150 Battle of the Nations
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.
Live version after the jump.
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.
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