On the Importance of Orcs

Orcs are evil and twisted to the core, aren't they?

Modern entertainment is creatively bankrupted, uninspired, or even just plain morally skewed. What that says about the minds behind these shows, movies, and books, I’ll leave for you to decide. What I want to speak on is a simple topic: orcs.

Yes, you read that right, I want to talk about orcs. Specifically, orcs who are just trying to provide for their families. Recently, The Rings of Power has once again been making headlines, this time for testing the waters with sympathetic orcs. To any hardcore and/or longtime Tolkien fans, this notion sounds ludicrous, but it is about what we can expect from modern Hollywood. 

It's not just Amazon's troubled billion-dollar rethinking of Tolkien. Dungeons & Dragons also has decided that it's just problematic if there are "evil races," so they've gotten rid of both the evil and the 'race' (now "species").

“Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game — orcs and drow (dark elves) being two of the prime examples — have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated,” Wizards said in a statement. “That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in.”

The company says the current version of the RPG, known as 5th Edition, was designed to include a wide range of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations and beliefs.

Oh, it does do that. Rather than looking like the Fellowship of the Ring, already diverse with a maia, humans, an elf, a dwarf, and several hobbits, a modern D&D party is going to be a collection of sea monsters, vampires, half-devils, half-dragons, half-gods, genies, hobgoblins, minotaurs, and yes, orcs. And many more! 

None of them are evil, though. Not by nature. Not even the ones born of devils in Hell itself, nor the vampires that subsist on blood alone.

Defenders would doubtless say that this is a more morally sophisticated universe, and perhaps note that even Darth Vader proved redeemable. So many shades of grey, so few Gandalfs. 

All Things Beowulf

Speaking of poetics, AVI has reposted a playful version of Beowulf (or at least Scyld Scefing) going to the coffee shop.

Ode to the BLT

A poem.

The sentiment reminds me of a clip I saw about a family whose tomatoes have typically come from a regular grocery store getting some real ones.

UPDATE:

The sentiment of the poem caused me to make BLTs for my wife's lunch.

Voters More Socially Liberal

Reason offers evidence that Trump voters were less racist than Romney voters, even though they were mostly the same people.

Ohio State political scientist Thomas Wood tried in 2017 to measure the relationship between Americans' presidential votes and how they scored on the "symbolic racism" or "racial resentment" scale, which Wood described as a way to uncover "racial attitudes among respondents who know that it's socially unacceptable to say things perceived as racially prejudiced."

This scale is controversial, because some of the statements it asks people to evaluate—such as "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve"—could elicit the "wrong" answer for reasons unrelated to prejudice or resentment. The underlying problem was highlighted when surveys found substantial numbers of African Americans endorsing the purportedly racist positions, leading some social scientists to call for giving the measurement a less loaded label. At best, the scale measures whether people attribute racial disparities to structural barriers or individual failings.

But whether or not the people who score higher on the scale are racists, it seems fair to say that the people who score lower on the scale are racial liberals. So what did Wood find?

For Wood, the big takeaway was that "we've never seen such a clear correspondence between vote choice and racial perceptions" in three decades of these surveys: The higher you landed in the scale, the more likely you were to vote Republican. But as Musa al-Gharbi pointed out in a critique of Wood's work for The American Sociologist, this ignored the direction those Republicans were moving in. According to Wood's own data, al-Gharbi noted, whites who backed Trump over Hillary Clinton were "less racist than those who voted for [Mitt] Romney. The same holds among whites who voted for Clinton as compared to those who voted for [Barack] Obama." Again, voters in both parties were getting more racially liberal; it's just that Democrats went further.

Trump voters were also more tolerant than earlier Republican voters of gays, lesbians, and pretty much all the social liberal things. America has just been moving in that direction, they suggest. Reason writers and editors are libertarian, of course, so for them that's an almost unmitigated good thing. "Time and again, once-vivid fights have receded, as with same-sex unions, or disappeared almost entirely, as with interracial marriage."

Interesting debate question: ‘Are you less racist than you were four years ago?’ 

A Fine Manly Day

Today I rose and cooked some of our eggs up for me and my wife, then I went and wrestled tree trunks and a chainsaw to cut up a bunch of firewood for the coming winter. Afterwards, I rode over to the Thunder in the Smokies motorcycle rally.

Held three times a year, this was the 'fall' version that is the final such event for the riding season. It drew quite a large and varied crowd. I rode across Soco Gap into Maggie Valley behind a pack of East Coast Pagans MC members. I was surprised to see them up here, but curious how a coastal MC would handle the mountains. I have to say they merited my respect, as they rode the mountains' curves as well as anyone who does so regularly, using their gearing masterfully to keep the bikes under control. I only saw one of them touch his brakes one time, and the rest of them rode both up and down the gap without any need to refer to them. That's as good a job as I can do myself, and I ride these mountains every day.

Then we got to the rally.   

The beer tent is in the foreground.

It was a friendly crowd, Pagans and Outlaws and a lot of smaller clubs as well as the Legion Riders, the Leatherheads MC (a Firefighter club), and the Iron Order. Everyone was having a good time, and I have rarely received such a respectful treatment from younger riders as I did today.

After that, I took the Blue Ridge Parkway home.

Near Waterrock Knob.

Above the Cherokee boundary lands.

Licklog Gap.

A funny thing happened on the way in to the rally. I rode across the Cherokee boundary lands (not technically a reservation, in spite of the signs they put up that say, "Welcome to the Cherokee Reservation!", because they purchased the land free and clear rather than having it assigned to them by the government). The Eastern Band of Cherokee has decided to allow for recreational marijuana use and sales, and today was apparently the grand opening of their recreational dispensary. There were lots of cars in line to pull in to the dispensary, which included two drive-through lanes as well as a walk-in facility. I did not myself participate except to sit in the heavy traffic. As a consequence of the grand opening, the Cherokee tribal police were out directing traffic to ease the flow around the new dispensary.

I never thought I'd see the day that the police would be officially deployed to help sell marijuana, but here we are. 

The Last Expected Thing

Speaking of immodest dress, a restaurant here in North Carolina -- nowhere near my part of the state, but down east in Greensboro -- has been getting a lot of attention for adopting a dress code. The restaurant, named Kim's Kafe has adopted a rule that you may not wear "skimpy" clothes, short shorts, and that women may not wear leggings. 

"Is that legal?" asks local radio station WRAL, and is astonished to discover that the answer is 'definitely yes.' 

The local CBS News affiliate  ran a news clip asking the same question, and getting the same answer. USA Today covered it as well.

Who is this 'radical misogynist' who hates skimpy clothes and loves trampling on people's freedom of self-expression? You might guess at the answer from the fact that the name of the business is abbreviated 'KK,' suggesting the hat trick: perhaps these are that most regular villain of our popular culture, conservative white Southern racists. 

You would be completely wrong. 

Kim's Kafe is a soul food restaurant. A visit to their Facebook page makes clear that this is a worshipful, neighborhood cafe in the black community, and they're fed up with immodesty for upright religious reasons. 

The national media is completely blanking that out. Some of the local press makes it clear.

“She’s been a community staple for years,” the source said. “She would pull up to different nightclubs to serve food. She’s given food to the homeless countless times. If you’re someone in her area that patronizes her business, she’s the first one to jump and go overboard.”

When the business was finally able to open a storefront off of Dolley Madison Road after the pandemic, the community was excited to welcome another Black restaurant to the scene.

“There’s not that many Black businesses around here,” said Mutsa Mukahanana, who visited the restaurant last year after it went viral. “There’s not a lot of options for soul food.”

It sounds like she got her start carrying plates of food to sell in nightclubs, eventually earning enough to open the brick-and-mortar store. Many of her base customers are likely 'exotic dancers,' and while she wants them to come around she also wants the community as a whole to feel like it's a decent place where they can bring their family. The motto of the restaurant, "God did it," is also suggestive of motive, as are the worshipful videos she posts on FB.

Apparently she originally became famous because of a TikTok account called Ride with Yusuf, who loved the place. 

"When I had her food last year it was amazing," the TikTok star who goes by the name Ride with Yusuf, and has 140,000 followers, said on Labor Day. "The love and soul she put in that food was amazing."

It's her right and her business, he said before adding that he didn't know anything about her business policies. He said he had nothing but good interactions with her[.] 

So if any of you like soul food, and happen to be in Greensboro, I hear it's pretty good. 

Fear of Democracy

Rhetoric notwithstanding, it's the ruling class that professes love of "our democracy" that most fears true democracy (which they prefer to call 'populism').

They fear it, Ramesh Thakur says, because they know they've lost the confidence of the people.

It's a good article I won't excerpt. I do notice that the discussion of the UK Labor government's desire to ban hate speech veers immediately into a discussion of "extreme misogyny" that notices that somehow physical attacks on women for dressing immodestly are getting mild or suspended sentences. That's the kind of contradiction in practical reason that lets you know you're out of order, assuming you dare to pay attention to such things.

Happy Birthday D.A.C.

A day late and a dollar short, but he was born on 6 September 1939.

He and Willie Nelson are the last of the old crew still alive.

A Targeted Gun Control

After the latest school shooting, there has been the usual round of pointless politicking by people who know perfectly well that there will be no global changes in our firearms regimen but who think they can profit from the tragedy. Likewise, there has been the usual pointing-out that the security systems knew about this threat perfectly well, and did nothing to stop it as is so often the case (the "known wolf" problem, which occurs both here and in the UK). 

What I haven't seen people discussing is that we have as a society arrived at, and indeed instituted, a novel form of gun control targeting these cases.

The father of Colt Gray, the teen suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting, was arrested, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday.

Colin Gray, 54, is being charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the GBI said. The 14-year-old shooting suspect has been charged with four counts of felony murder.

GBI Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference Thursday night that the charges against Colin Gray stem from "knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon." During a brief court hearing Friday morning, Judge Currie Mingledorff II told Colin Gray he faced up to 180 years in prison if he was convicted on all counts. The judge also advised him of his rights, and the father said, "Yes, sir," in response to some questions from the judge.

To my knowledge, this is only the second time this approach has been employed; to be effective, it will need to become a regular and expected thing. 

It's novel to charge people with murder when they never killed anyone nor tried to kill anyone. It may be pernicious to do so even if courts and juries agree to the approach.

However, it strikes me that it is a far more likely approach to achieve success at reducing the incidence of these shootings than the sort of global gun-control efforts that tend to be suggested. 

Statistically, AR-15s and similar rifles are used in almost no crime; the fact that the exceptions are spectacularly tragic doesn't change the fact that almost all such rifles are "in common use for lawful purposes." There are estimated to be around 20 million of them, but in 2022 rifles of all kinds accounted for only 541 of the ~8,000 firearm homicides. If we assumed for the sake of argument (without evidence, and as is in fact unlikely) that 500 of those were with ARs, and that each death used a separate AR, that would give you a rate of 0.0025%; that means that in a given year, 99.9975% of ARs are not used to murder anyone. Any attempt to solve the problem with global solutions is thus already way up against the point of diminishing returns. The effort required to reduce below 99.9975% is going to be huge and expensive. 

Raising the cost for parents who ought to know that their own particular kid is a risk, however, localizes the effort in places where there is a heightened risk. It addresses that 'known wolf' issue: the FBI and the local police knew this kid was a risk, and had in fact interviewed him and his father about it. The tool of holding the parent or guardian responsible gives them a tool they can use to encourage safer gun storage around dangerous youth, or even a decision by the parent to forgo having guns for a few years until the teenager moves on out to other things. 

I still have concerns about the morality of charging people for crimes they never even contemplated, let alone committed. Speaking merely about the effectiveness of the tactic, though, it seems like a better bet than other approaches people like to suggest. 

Congratulations to AVI

AVI notes his 10,000th post, and 10,001st. The latter is an ABBA tune, whose name reminds me of this classic from Bobby Bare.

It takes grit and good luck to stick to something that long. Good work.

WWII Unravelling

A remarkable interview -- I usually don't sit still for verbal talk and only read transcripts, but this guy caught my attention. What's really going on right now, he says, is that the order established by the Allied victory in WWII is unravelling. That's why all this is happening, and why it's all so strange.

"While You Cowered, We Studied the Blade"

Germany follows the UK in introducing a knife ban in response to terror attacks.

In the aftermath of a recent attack in which a Syrian Islamic extremist wielding a knife murdered three innocent festival goers and wounded eight others, authorities in Germany are pushing forward with a plan to ban knives.

According to a report at nbcnews.com, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack by Issa Al H in the western German city of Solingen, a city of about 160,000 residents where a celebration of the city’s anniversary was taking place.

It would be a tremendous irony for Solingen, "The City of Blades," whose steel and sword-making was legendary for centuries, to be the proximate cause of such a ban. Ironic, but they are a fallen people.

UPDATE: Meanwhile in Massachusetts, a ban on blades is struck down on 2nd Amendment grounds.

Legendary

In spite of the fact that I spent a lot of my life around universities, I never had anything to do with "Greek life." My father had belonged to an agricultural fraternity at East Tennessee State, though, and always liked the movie Animal House, so I knew what it was supposedly about.

These boys at Chapel Hill put Animal House to shame. Can you imagine getting Lee Greenwood to play your frat party?

Festivities commenced with singing the national anthem, complete with a colorful prop-plane flyover by local pilots who only charged for gas. About 1,000 attendees turned out on Labor Day weekend to see a lineup that included John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, Rome Ramirez of Sublime, Aaron Lewis, Cowboy Troy, and Lee Greenwood. 

These are the young men who saved an American flag from pro-Hamas protests at their college, to whom half a million dollars was donated for a party. I gather they used only part of it, and plan to donate the rest.

Journalists and other anti-freedom scolds pounced and seized on the specter of Flagstock, demanding answers to questions only they would ask: Should parties be fun? Should country music exist? Should celebrities be allowed to criticize Democrats in public? The New York Times, for example, reported on the handful of angsty UNC fraternity brothers who wished that "a significant portion" of the party funds would be donated to "relief efforts in Gaza." Some of the funds raised will eventually be dispersed to charities such as Back the Blue N.C., the Wounded Warrior Project, and organizations that combat anti-Semitism. The Free Beacon is still awaiting a response about how much money will be donated to Palestinian trans rights organizations.

Yeah, let us know as soon as you hear about that. 

Greens Defrauded Too

Jill Stein, once again the Green Party’s presidential candidate, explains at length the fraud and manipulation used by the Democrats to keep her party off the ballots. She says they infiltrated her campaign, like RFK’s, and used fraudulent members to get the Greens thrown off the ballot in the recent NC Senate race. 

Because he’s thought to draw votes from Trump, however, the Democrats who control NC’s ballot have refused RFK’s request to remove him from the ballot this year. He’s suing in a last ditch attempt to get off of the ballot. 

"Well, it hasn't happened"

Earlier this year, my sister kept trying to wind me up over the usual predictions of a busier Atlantic hurricane season than usual. Every year like clockwork, and she falls for it every time.

It's turned out a bit of a flop so far, leading this "climate expert" to explain why you should still totally believe us, you guys, the next time we try to rev you up. See, it didn't happen for us in the Atlantic because, ironically, the temperatures were too low. But they were high in the Pacific, and it's been pretty active out there! So we were in the ballpark, and besides, climate change can mean that it's colder, or hotter, or dryer, or wetter. Because science. Favorite line: "This is a good example of how climate change can change from place to place," a sentence construction that our Vice President might admire.

I Like His Attitude

The Education of a Free People

[O]f all the things which I have mentioned that which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution, if the laws are democratical, democratically or oligarchically, if the laws are oligarchical....

Now, to have been educated in the spirit of the constitution is not to perform the actions in which oligarchs or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or of a democracy is made possible. Whereas among ourselves the sons of the ruling class in an oligarchy live in luxury, but the sons of the poor are hardened by exercise and toil, and hence they are both more inclined and better able to make a revolution. And in democracies of the more extreme type there has arisen a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic of democracy, the government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom means the doing what a man likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy.' But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation.

-Aristotle, Politics V.9

In the comments to a post below, I remarked that Tex once said that they want to turn America into the security zone of an airport, but that public schools are run much the same way. 

Our public school system is terribly designed for educating a free people. All the rights of citizens are suspended while you are on school grounds. You have no freedom of speech, but may be punished for speaking without permission on any topic. You may certainly not publish and post flyers critical of the government authorities. You have no freedom of movement: you have assigned seats in assigned classes, and to skip school is punishable by law as well as administratively. You certainly have no right to keep and bear arms, nor even to self defense -- our local high school has the policy of having all parties to a fight arrested by the school resource officers, and charged with assault, even if the were clearly defending themselves from a bully with a record of harassing them. There is no freedom from unreasonable search and seizure -- just like at the airport, all bags are subject to search and seizure at any time. 

There is no right to a fair trial, or any trial; punishments are meted out by administrative fiat. There is no guarantee the punishment will not be cruel or unusual. Every right an American has by birth and the grace of God is suspended by the schools, and the children are educated that way for a dozen years and more. 

A free people needs a different education. Our system is unfit for our purposes. Aristotle said the same thing about his own, and it was in the next generation that democracy was swept away for almost two millennia. One of his students, indeed, was the author of that: someone who'd gotten the education Aristotle thought worthy of a prince rather than a democrat. 

It is a powerful thing, education. We allow its corruption at our peril.

Jacobin Not Impressed

As you will infer by the name if you aren't already familiar with the publication, Jacobin is a formally-left aligned magazine. They have reviewed Ms. Harris' economic plans, and the top flight ones are not impressive to them. 

1. A $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers

This is a bad idea. It is unfair to people who, even with the subsidy, cannot afford to buy a home and those who prefer to rent. Because it is a demand subsidy without any corresponding price controls, some of the money will also just get captured as higher home prices, negating the affordability goals of the policy....

2. A tax credit for building starter homes

This is a bad idea. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the proximate barrier to building more housing is that it is not sufficiently profitable and that we need to therefore sweeten the pot with public subsidies. This is just a waste of money. Moreover, conditioning the receipt of the tax credit on whether the person who buys the home turns out to be a first-time homebuyer, as this proposal does, makes no sense. Home builders do not typically know in advance who they are going to sell it to....

3. A ban on price gouging for groceries and food

It is unclear what this even means. 

As noted, these haven't been getting good reviews anywhere. If even Jacobin is against them, it's hard to know who the audience is supposed to be. 

Rasmussen: Biden did not win Georgia in 2020

So they say, citing the ongoing refusal by Fulton County to comply with open records laws and lawsuits demanding the unsealed ballots. 

This is something that was obviously true for me as a longtime resident of Georgia who has been writing about its election fraud problem since 2018. Some would rather not continue to discuss this, but as they point out election security is an ongoing issue. It's not like any of the problems were fixed. Work is ongoing on several fronts, but it's also important that the truth gets out. People need to understand that the government isn't legitimate if the elections aren't legitimate: you owe no loyalty to a government that was imposed upon you by fraud or force.

UPDATE: Rasmussen wasn't done.

Let's Review: Georgia 2020 Trust Deficit

Forensic audit blocked

100 drop boxes lack surveillance videos

20K ballot images - vanished

13 election routers - vanished

10 Dominion tabulators - vanished

148,000 Fulton Cty Mail-ballot signatures unverified

Nor yet done:

Georgia: No records were created capturing 148,000 2020 mail-in ballot outer envelope signatures for matching to Fulton County records because their new electronic sig verification equipment - wasn't used.

Here the wording is actually "Nothing was scanned, your honor." Uh Oh 

Nor yet:

Georgia:

We have an electronic verification system, but we didn’t use it.

We have records of voter signatures, but we didn’t use them.

We could check our records for you, but it would take forever.

Aside from that, judge, is there anything else you’d like?

"...And It Has to Stop."

Also from the same fellow, a video clip of Kamala Harris calling for an end to free speech and freedom of the press, at least for social media. See if you read it differently.

"He has lost his privileges and it [X.com] should be taken down.... The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight, or regulation, and that has to stop."