Ancestry and Diversity

As is his wont, Donald Trump decided to throw a rhetorical grenade today.

"I've known Kamala a long time... She was always of Indian heritage... I didn't know she was Black until a couple of years ago when she happened to turn Black"

The media and the administration are apoplectic about this, which is silly because it was a major subject of discussion among Democrats when she ran for President in 2020. Reuters put out this fact check about it then. A whole lot of Democratic voters thought what he just expressed, which I think is an artifact of her diversity-candidate approach to politics: because there had been lots of black officeholders by the time she came of age but not many South Asian ones, she had prominently billed herself as "the first South Asian" whatever to get that "history making diversity!" headline. It's no wonder people knew that she had been billing herself as Indian but not as prominently or frequently as black, because they'd heard the line over and over again.

Perhaps they've forgotten how interested people were in this back then, so here are a couple more items on the subject from 2020. The Irish are interested in it too, because her Jamaican family claims descent from a prominent slave owner/trader who paid a huge damage compensation for their part in the slave trade. (So, she's Irish, and black, and Indian, and female, and you know, diverse.) Reuters’ fact check on the slave trading business is typical of the genre:

While it is true that Kamala Harris’ father claimed to be a descendant of a slave owner, Harris and her family’s relationship to Hamilton Brown remains unclear.  

In an article published by the Jamaica Globe (here), professor Donald Harris wrote: “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town),” a town in Jamaica.  

According to the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership, Hamilton Brown was an Irish resident slave-owner in Jamaica, and founder of Brown’s Town (here). Snopes, which investigated this claim (here) in 2019, reported that Brown owned at least 121 and 124 slaves in 1826 and 1817, respectively.  

These in-depth Fact Checks by Snopes and Politifact (here) have determined that while there is no clear evidence to prove Kamala Harris is a descendant of slave owners, it is likely that she is a descendant of both slaves and slave owners. 

We've discussed the fact-checker and media love for the phrase "there is no evidence." Here we just get that "there is no clear evidence." But there is clear evidence: we have the direct testimony of her father, which was written down and published. Any historian would consider a direct, published testimonial to be evidence. That in fact is the primary and preferred sort of evidence with which historians work. You can perhaps argue that evidence does not suffice for proof, but you can't deny that there is clear evidence.

I imagine Trump is just throwing bombs because it's fun, but he does incidentally point out a major problem not just for Kamala but for the ideology she represents. The White House is responding that no one has any right to interrogate someone's identity; but if you're going to run a DEI program, in which preference points are assigned based on identity, you have no choice but to question the identities that people claim. Otherwise you end up with Elizabeth Warren cases everywhere. 

Further, there is a serious and unaddressed division on identifying as (say) a man/woman versus (say) black or Indian. In fact, let's use the American Indian for this example -- in Warren's honor, the Cherokee. The Cherokee will definitely interrogate your claim to be one of them, and they have a developed methodology for doing it. They defend this methodology in court and use it to deny some people (especially black people descended from Cherokee slaves) status as Cherokee. Because we have a very elaborate set of preferences and awards for verified Native Americans, businesses owned by them, land owned by them, and so forth and so on, this sort of interrogation is unavoidable. If you want a world in which no one can interrogate your identity, your identity can't be used to assign employment or benefits. If it is, others with whom you are in competition have a right to question whether you really deserved the preferences you received over them. They have standing, as the courts say.

When the Surgeon General of the United States adopts female pronouns and dress, however, we're told it's totally improper to question it. Yet here too, women have a lot of protections and advantages -- scholarships not least, but also physical spaces from which they can exclude men in moments of vulnerability -- that are imperiled if everyone can just identify and nobody can question it. So of course there are fights about this everywhere, in legislatures and in courts and in homes and schools. 

In addition, Trump is pointing to something that isn't often discussed because it's considered wildly impolite to mention, but that I wonder if a lot of black people don't have concerns about. I'm not the least bit black myself and don't pretend to be, but if I were I would wonder about how different not only Kamala but Barack Obama are from the Black American story. The smaller concern would be that they are each only half black, and are on the other side children of extraordinary privilege: on his white side Obama was a cousin of George Washington and descended from wealth and social connection in the white community; Harris' mother was a Brahmin who received advanced education 60 years ago, being about as well connected among the elite caste of India as Obama's white family was here. 

The greater concern is that neither of their black parents shared the Black American experience of slavery and Civil Rights. Obama's father was not descended from slaves or Freedom Riders; he was a Kenyan whose ancestors did not share any of the American experiences. Obama opted in without any of the historical lack of privilege that most Black Americans descend from, and which has defined their struggle. Harris' family, as discussed above, were in her father's generation self-declared descendants from slavers and slave traders, not slaves. 

Again, I'm not black and this isn't my fight. I can't help but think that if I were, though, I'd be asking myself how it was that the first black President and Vice President were both of this strange stripe: not really like us, not at all, neither by blood nor by lived experience. I'd ask myself why they both came from such privilege, and opted into our community only when they found an advantage. At least that's what I think I'd ask myself.

But again, it's not my fight. I wonder if it isn't a fight that just got started, though.

The Red Flag of Revenge

Iran raises its sacred red flag of revenge over its holy city of Qom. (H/t Richard Fernandez.)

The flag's appearance doesn't necessarily mean that anything very bad is going to happen; the last time they raised it was before a large-scale but ineffective drone attack on Israel. Iran's problem is that it is probably being almost maximally effective already, via deniable proxy war; the more they create a conventional war the more they pit weakness against strength. They have no real air force, and their missiles aren't very accurate. They have no way to transport their ground forces and sustain them in action; the proxies are their best card, unless they actually build a nuke.  

Still, it reminds me of the Oriflamme. 

The Oriflamme (from Latin aurea flamma, "golden flame"), a pointed, blood-red banner flown from a gilded lance, was the sacred battle standard of the King of France and a symbol of divine intervention on the battlefield from God and Saint Denis in the Middle Ages. The oriflamme originated as the sacred banner of the Abbey of St. Denis, a monastery near Paris. When the oriflamme was raised in battle by the French royalty during the Middle Ages, most notably during the Hundred Years' War, no prisoners were to be taken until it was lowered. Through that tactic, they hoped to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy, especially the nobles, who could usually expect to be taken alive for ransom during such military encounters.

One of the greatest knights of the Hundred Years War died with the Oriflamme in his hands.

Froissart vividly describes porte-oriflamme Geoffroi de Charny's fall at the side of his king at the Battle of Poitiers in this passage:

There Sir Geoffroi de Charny fought gallantly near the king (note: and his fourteen-year-old son). The whole press and cry of battle were upon him because he was carrying the king’s sovereign banner [the Oriflamme]. He also had before him his own banner, gules, three escutcheons argent. So many English and Gascons came around him from all sides that they cracked open the king’s battle formation and smashed it; there were so many English and Gascons that at least five of these men at arms attacked one [French] gentleman. Sir Geoffroi de Charny was killed with the banner of France in his hand, as other French banners fell to earth.

Both of these red banners are supposed to have been sacred, but the idea has a purely profane variation in history. Pirates famously raised a black flag, including the "Jolly Roger," to indicate piratical intentions -- but it also promised quarter if a surrender was given at once. There was a red flag, "the bloody flag," that some would raise to signal that they intended to murder their prey without mercy no matter what.

Coincidentally I was wearing a t-shirt with this flag printed on it during my flight experiences. Sadly, in spite of my massive black beard, no one got the reference. 

Just tone it down a little

The Bee.

More Air Travel

Yesterday was not a very successful travel day. I was supposed to fly to Charlotte and then Asheville. I wake this morning still in Charlotte. After two delays we finally boarded our plane and went promptly into standby on the edge of an active taxiway for another hour. We then flew to CLT, where we were allowed to land but the field was closed due to lightning. Thus, we sat on the plane for another hour. 

Once I finally got out into the airport, I found that my remaining flight had been delayed as well. I had some hope it might leave near midnight, but no, they finally canceled it. Weather related, so of course the hotel is on me and not the airline that turned two short flights into a two day ordeal. 

Somehow the majesty of flight has become a very unpleasant chore. I dread air travel, but once in a while I have to get on a plane. It’s such a crapshoot as to whether it’ll be on time, or nowhere near so. 

Lotus Blossoms

Stopped by an aquatic garden today. 

John Wayne Loved Chess

 

John Wayne playing chess, with the cast of Rio Bravo looking on.

Apparently John Wayne loved to play chess. It's featured in McClintock, but apparently it was a big thing of his. One of his wives was a a major tennis player or something like that, and he would come to her events and put up a sign outside their trailer: "Play Chess with John Wayne!"

I like chess myself. I taught my son to play, and probably beat him 10,000 times in a row until he really learned to play. Now I have to really watch myself when we play together.

Another Victory over Unconstitutionalism

This one is another occasion of the ATF trying to change the definition of laws without the bother of getting Congress involved. It's a technical issue, but the principle that only Congress can legislate -- no taxation without representation, no laws of any kind without representation -- is a crucial one. 

A Polite Society

There's no newspaper that covers the area in which I live, but there are a few in nearby towns. One of them, the Sylva Herald & Ruralite, likes to pull stories from archives as it has been around a while. This story is from 1926-7.

A young local businessman had gotten wind of apparent indiscretions between his wife and a young man contracted to work on the road from Sylva to Balsam who had recently arrived in the area. He’d apparently become quite worked up, and on a quiet Friday morning in Sylva the alleged suitor pulled up in front of the Woman’s Shop on Main Street.

Before he had a chance to get out of his vehicle, the husband stepped from the sidewalk, pulled a revolver and began shooting, striking the man in the face and twice in the right lung. The man emerged from his car and began running, the husband still firing, hitting him once more below the right shoulder. 

The husband then went into Hooper’s Drug Store and handed his gun to a town alderman, then on to the jail with a deputy. The shooting victim was rushed to the hospital in Bryson City.

The young local businessman was apparently well-regarded, because the judge flatly refused to convict him of any crime. 

In October of 1927 the Journal reported prayer for judgment for the shooter was continued for two years by Judge W.F. Harding. The paper reported Harding remarked from the bench, “Mr. Solicitor, you may get some judge to pronounce judgment in this case; but you will never get this one to do it.” 

The shooter, who entered a plea of guilty of an assault with a deadly weapon, offered testimony of his good character and witnesses who testified to the affair, in addition to letters the wife had written to the suitor. The latter lead the judge to remark “it appeared the wrong man was on trial.” 

The judge opined there was no statute the suitor had violated, but said the legislature should make provisions for such cases, as, the Journal reported, “as the law stands there is little left for an injured husband to do except use a shotgun. (The judge) asserted that this is one place in which our law falls down, and that he would like to issue a bench warrant for (the suitor), if there were a law under which be could be tried.

The paper goes on to note that the young businessman must have remained in business for many years, as their paper hosted ads for his store. The young suitor was never mentioned again. Apparently adultery was a much more serious matter in those days. 

The Herald ends with some musing on the state of society, which we always think is getting more violent.

It’s certainly been a long time since shots rang out on the streets of downtown Sylva, but given the drumbeat of other acts that flicker across our screens daily, the question often comes up if we’ve become a more violent society over time.

It is worth noting that the front pages relating the above incident also carried stories about a fight and shooting at the Glenville polling place, the murder of a man in the Southern Railway waiting room in Dillsboro, and an assault with a pistol with intent to kill Sylva Police Chief Allen Sutton.

Given that, the aforementioned question is one we’ll leave for sociologists and other experts to answer. 

UPDATE: I related this story to my wife, who expressed her opinion that the judge showed excellent sense and that the young businessman's conduct was entirely understandable. "Of course he has a genetically predisposition to react badly to another man stealing his mate," is how she put it. 

The story reflects what may be a culturally Appalachian or Scottish/Scots-Irish sentiment that such cases call for violence against the other man, but none against the woman. Violence by men against women is always wrong, I was taught when I was raised, almost regardless of provocation. Women could slap a man across the face to demonstrate displeasure, not in self defense against an actual threat; a man was not to respond in any way. I remember that I was quite shocked when I first heard Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger and discovered that the protagonist -- a preacher at that! -- actually killed both his wife and her lover. Yet I think that is a more common standard globally, and the restriction a cultural artifact that is probably fading as we move to emphasize the concept of equality in everything.

Controversial!

Out Wyoming way, there’s some upset. 

Although Wyoming Democrats are mad because Rep. Hageman called Kamala Harris a 'DEI hire,' Hageman said, “If you don’t want people to say she was hired only because she’s a black woman, then maybe Biden shouldn’t have said he was only gonna hire a black woman.”

Kind of a fair point, right? It’s not slandering her to point out that that was the condition her employer clearly stated was his criterion. If diversity hiring were improving things as advertised, people would be proud to be diversity hires. As it is, the chief advocates of the practice are generally outraged if you suggest they are one themselves. 

More on the Recent Riot

All that flag burning, police-assaulting, and so forth turns out to have an explanation. Only 29 officers were detailed when it was known that thousands of protestors were coming, and when it's well-known how they behave. Much as the Capitol Police were very understaffed on J6, on a day when it was likewise well-known that there would be a mass demonstration about an event happening right then inside the Capitol, force posture was arranged to be unusually weak. 

Those 29 officers did manage to make 10 arrests while being attacked. 

And what happened to those 10 protesters who the police successfully arrested after assaulting police? 

They're out already--released the SAME DAY. At least some of them. I am not clear whether they all were released, but this is Washington D.C., where the only crime is being a Republican. Some January 6th protesters were held in solitary confinement for over a year before they were even tried. 

It seems likely that policing in DC, like prosecuting in NYC and elsewhere, has become a political tool. It was desirable that there be riots on these days, to make Netanyahu look unwelcome within the United States (though he is more popular than many of our own politicians) or to make Republicans look like they were dangerous insurrectionists (though surprisingly few of the 'insurrectionists' brought guns to their 'insurrection'). 

Coincidentally, police force posture was set to be provocatively weak in the face of those two protests. 

On the prosecutorial side, punishment was harsh for the one side and evaporated against the other, to transmit whose rioting is welcomed in the service of the state. The one set of decisions seems likely to have been intentional; the other set inarguably was.

A Real Victory

The most valuable man in industry strikes a blow.

Elon Musk's SpaceX turned a smallbore squabble about an alleged unfair labor practice into a massive assault on the administrative state that could result in the entire enforcement structure of the National Labor Relations Board being declared unconstitutional.

Lots more like this!

That's A Bold Move, Cotton

Gretchen Whitmer made a strange claim today: that Kamala Harris "has more experience than the whole GOP ticket put together." 

At first I couldn't understand what she thought she was talking about, since half of that ticket actually has four years of experience being President. That's like saying that the guy who spent four years being Battalion Commander, Deputy Commander at Brigade, and then Brigade Commander has less experience than the guys who've never been a commander at all. 

But she's making a much wilder claim than that.

“Kamala Harris in and of herself has more experience than the whole GOP ticket put together. They only have six years of public service experience, and I often point out to people, you wouldn’t go into brain surgery and ask for the freshest neurosurgeon out of medical school,” Whitmer said[.]

"Ladies and gentlemen, unlike our opponents, our candidate is a career politician." 

Here I thought the prosecutor thing was a dangerous ploy. Or Maybe Whitmer's trying to sabotage Kamala to keep her from being in the way in four years?

'Raise Hail & Praise Dale'

A metal-loving friend of mine recommended this album for its, ah, concept.

That Reminds me of a Joke

Apropos of the last two posts, a Jewish business associate of mine is visiting Asheville next week and wanted to meet up. In case he wanted to meet over a meal, and in case he keeps Kosher, I was trying to see if there are any Kosher restaurants in Asheville. Yelp suggested this one.

I don't know a lot about Kosher, but I do know that shellfish isn't on the list! It turns out there aren't any Kosher restaurants in Asheville, and not many Jews either -- the closest synagogue I know of is actually a Methodist church that loans itself out to them on Saturdays. The very small Jewish population has been around long enough that there's a Jewish section in one of the old segregated cemeteries near Hendersonville, but the population has never grown large. It's no surprise that there are no restaurants that go to the very substantial trouble of maintaining a Kosher kitchen -- you have to have a whole separate kitchen, as well as separate utensils and all the rest -- to cater to such a tiny populace. 

However, the Lobster Trap bit reminded me of a joke I read in a book by Isaac Asimov. I no longer have the book, but the joke goes approximately like this:

On the holiday of Yom Kippur, the solemn day of atonement, a synagogue's congregation sat waiting for their rabbi to turn up. He was late, and later, and still hadn't appeared well into lunchtime. In addition to being hungry, they were very worried that something had happened to him. So they began calling all around town to see if they could locate him or get word of what might have happened to him. 

Finally someone reported that he had been seen at a local seafood restaurant. The congregation went to find him, and discovered him eating a big plate of oysters. Looking on in horror, they exclaimed, "Rabbi! Rabbi! How could you do this, on today of all days?"

He looked at them quizzically and replied, "What? There's an 'r' in 'Yom Kippur.'"

Go, Roy Cooper

One of the things that needs to happen now is for the Democratic Party to pick a vice presidential candidate. A name that's being floated is my own governor Roy Cooper's. Now, I despise Roy Cooper. He governs as if he were deeply hostile to the western, mountainous part of the state, its culture and its heritage. (This is described in the article as "a moderate Southern leader.")

For example, one of the executive orders he has signed forbids the state DOT from maintaining right of ways or roads to private cemeteries. In the mountains, there are very many of these as hundreds of years of families' burials on ground within walking distance of homes and churches produced a vast quantity. In fact there's one within easy walking distance of my house, near where a preacher's cabin used to be. It used to be that, once a year when the church wanted to have a 'decoration day' for the cemetery -- and every year, the local churches tend to hold one for each of the many cemeteries on different Sundays -- the state would do one day of maintenance to make sure the way was passable. These decoration days are an important part of the local mountain culture in this part of Appalachia, but the governor decided that this traditional support would be eliminated so he could spend still more money down East where the cities are.

The thought of being governed by Kamala Harris and Roy Cooper is even less happy than the thought of being governed by Kamala Harris alone. 

However, as the article points out, this would tend to take him out of the state a lot; and it would make the Lieutenant Governor, who is a good guy, the acting governor. I'm hoping this might be a down payment on that same fellow becoming the actual governor following the upcoming election. 

So, you know, if it happens that he is chosen there's a definite silver lining.

'Our Enemies are Your Enemies'

In a long speech that was framed much like a State of the Union address, the Israeli Prime Minister addressed a joint session of Congress yesterday -- with Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris, their party's leaders in each chamber, conspicuously absent. The overall thrust of the address was that the real enemy is America's enemy, and that Israel's enemies are also our own. 

“If you remember one thing, one thing from this speech, remember this: Our enemies are your enemies,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Our fight is your fight. And our victory will be your victory.”

Iran, he said, wants to impose “radical Islam” on the world and sees the United States as its greatest enemy because it is “the guardian of Western civilization and the world’s greatest power.”

He argued that Iran-backed militias like Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, whatever their aggression against Israel, are actually fighting a different war.

“Israel is merely a tool,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “The main war, the real war, is with America.”

It's definitely true that Iran has been about destroying America from its beginning, and that it aspires to turn the whole world to its brand of Twelver Shi'ite Islam, which can reasonably be described as a radical position within Islam (both Twelver Shi'ite views and the view that the entire world needs to be brought under that particular strain; the view that the whole world should convert to Islam is not especially radical, any more than the view among Christians that every person will someday confess the divinity of Christ). 

Normally, in American politics at least, the other side would attempt to rebut such a central claim. Not this time! This time they pulled down the American flags off Union Station's poles and burned them, ran up the flag of Palestine, carried the black flag of ISIS with signs stating that Allah was bringing about "the final solution" (supposedly while protesting against 'genocide'), burned effigies of both Netanyahu and Biden, attacked the police perimeter around the Capitol while successfully storming the Capitol (remember how fighting the Capitol Police and storming the Capitol on J6 was portrayed as an insurrection against America itself?), vandalized every American monument nearby and generally did all they could to underline the same point. 

So ok, maybe there's some reasonable argument to make that things would calm down if there was a ceasefire in the war -- at least for a while, until Hamas rearmed and was ready to start the war back up again on its own terms. There isn't, apparently, any real debate that the side Israel is fighting is also an enemy of America. They themselves would like you to know that, would like to demonstrate it as clearly as they can.

Helping your friends and harming your enemies was the account of justice that Plato's Republic attempted to rebut. However, one of the key rebuttals was that you might be mistaken about who your enemies are. At least in this case, it's hard to believe there's any mistake.

UPDATE: NPR: Protests “Largely Peaceful.”

Prosecutorial Discretion

Kamala Harris' introductory speech made a lot of her role as a prosecutor. She chose to paint herself as a prosecutor first in the public understanding of herself as a Presidential candidate in order to frame the race as a sort-of trial, with herself as prosecutor and Trump as 'convicted felon' defending himself against new charges.

I can understand why she (or her team) thinks that is a beneficial frame. Prosecutors enjoy a halo in the eyes of juries, one they definitely do not deserve given how much misconduct they engage in. Juries should be at least as skeptical of anything the government claims as anything defendants do; but the defendant stands accused, and the prosecutor is supposed to be the agent of justice. So too police who testify, for the same reasons.

All the same, it's a bold choice. Setting herself up that way sets her up to be knocked down by the same blows that killed her candidacy the last time. Her record as a prosecutor demonstrates that she is unworthy of any office.

 

Dad29 points out another case that didn't make Tulsi's list:

... “In 2003, a district attorney in San Francisco named Terence Hallinan was investigating Mayor Willie Brown’s friends. He was also investigating the priest scandal of sexual abuse in San Francisco, and that touched some very powerful institutions, including an elite prep school that involved the Gettys, Gov. Jerry Brown, etc. Their involvement with that school.”...

 ...“The priestly abuse scandal that was taking place, she never prosecuted a single case, Sean,” Schweizer added. “Of the 50 largest cities in America, San Francisco was the only one that that didn’t prosecute a single case, and she covered it up by deep-sixing documents that her predecessor had obtained. 

That by itself will be a damaging question to ask her; usually the priest-abuse scandal is a favorite of Democrats, as it undermines the Church's authority in favor of the State. Worse, it opens another question for public consumption: what was her relationship to Mayor Willie Brown? Pursuing that line of inquiry very deeply is impolite as well as vulgar, however; doubtless the ethical journalist will totally avoid it. 

“Go Back to Guarding Doritos”

I missed this line at the Secret Service hearing. The Daily Caller helpfully explains that her previous job was as the head of PepsiCo’s security. 

Fortunately the Secret Service has figured out the problem: Donald Trump should stop holding large outdoor rallies. Maybe he could campaign from his basement like Biden did. 

Secret Service Has No Radio from Assassination Day

How shocking, except that it somehow is always the case that the records were mysteriously lost or destroyed.

In fact remember how the Secret Service deleted text messages from two days around "January 6th" in spite of (because of) an Inspector General requesting them to preserve those records? 

"The Maidservant of Hillary Clinton, Queen of the Cabal of Warmongers"

Apparently Tulsi Gabbard, mentioned in the comments just below, wants another shot at Kamala. 

The reference to feudal titles reminds me of how Hillary received a coronation at the 2016 DNC, which was carefully structured to count none of the votes so as to suppress how closely she had run against Bernie Sanders. Actually the same was true in 2008, when Obama beat Hillary; the Clinton campaign had run an intense "count every vote!" effort against the Obama campaign, but at the DNC she agreed to not count any of the votes cast by primary election voters, but have Obama nominated by acclamation in return for being appointed his Secretary of State. Counting the votes is never important in a contested DNC.

The clear effort this year too is to avoid letting the delegates get the idea that they should vote independently. The primary election this year was aggressively managed to avoid giving voters an option except for Biden, excluding even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from the Democratic primary so Biden would get all the delegates. Now that they need a new candidate, the attempt to endorse Kamala is to prevent any sort of a democratic process from being involved in the leadership succession. 

Coronations might be enjoyable spectacles for a certain sort of person -- even some Americans shamefully enjoy watching British royal pageantry, as if we hadn't expelled that by force of arms hundreds of years ago. They are neither American nor, especially, "Democratic" in character. It's shameful what the party has become that was founded by Jefferson and once housed great defenders of that old American ideal.