Yeah, You Wouldn't Like My Clothes Either
A writer for the NYT and Esquire decides that it's very important to detail how SECDEF Hegseth doesn't dress like one of the elite.
250th Anniversary
As it was Holy Saturday, I thought that should take precedence, but it's a good time to remember these things. I'm looking forward to the 250th celebrations.
Hoplophobia
A good insight here, but coupled with a lot of irrational fear of weapons.
The good:
[E]very time we build a new tool of state power — every time we cheer on its use against our enemies — we increase the chances it will be turned around and used against us. And each time it happens, people act surprised.
That’s where we are now, again. President Trump is openly using the machinery of the federal government to prosecute political enemies. He wants to “root out” the deep state, deport migrants unilaterally and deploy the military on U.S. soil. He has made no secret of it.
Liberals see this and panic. They’re right to be alarmed — but they’re wrong to treat this as something new. What they’re witnessing isn’t the sudden collapse of American democracy. It is the logical consequence of decades spent building and normalizing a government that increasingly operates with few real limits.
This didn’t start with Trump. Many of the very tools Trump wants to wield were built with bipartisan support. The post-9/11 security state — with its surveillance dragnet, indefinite detention, “black sites” and bloated executive authority — was cheered on by both parties in the name of fighting terror.
President Barack Obama didn’t dismantle that machinery — he streamlined it. He claimed the right to kill U.S. citizens abroad without trial, used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers and expanded domestic counterterrorism. He helped perfect the arsenal that Trump would later inherit.
It was the left, not the right, that normalized censoring disfavored online speech during the pandemic, often using intelligence-linked partners to do so. It was establishment liberals who applauded when the FBI investigated Trump-world operatives — not on the basis of principle, but because they liked the target.
The bad:
There’s a well-known finding in psychology called the “weapons effect.” It describes how the mere presence of a weapon increases the likelihood that it will be used — not just by hardened criminals or soldiers in combat but by anyone, in ordinary settings, even and especially in the home. The deadly object creates a condition of heightened possibility. Violence moves closer to the realm of the likely.
We rarely admit that this applies to government.
As I remarked at AVI's place, this is really a logical deduction rather than a 'finding in psychology.' A weapon that doesn't exist has a zero probability of being used. A weapon that does exist has a non-zero probability. Even if it's very low, logic dictates that the presence of a weapon makes it more likely that one will be used than if one is not present.
However, it wasn't just a logical error. He expands on this later in ways he would have been wiser to leave out.
The ugly:
Cultural neuroscience tells us that environments shape behavior more than we realize. The tools we surround ourselves with — whether in a home or in a bureaucracy — subtly shape what we think is possible. In a household with a loaded firearm, the gun doesn’t just sit there. Its presence hovers. In moments of anger, fear, confusion or desperation, it calls to be used.
"Cultural neuroscience"? Cultures do not have neurons, so he must mean a form of actual neuroscience that likes to talk about culture and its effects.
This gun-fear is irrational, however. I have a revolver that hangs from my bedpost in a gun belt. It's been there for decades. I check it nightly, clean it regularly, but otherwise it really does just sit there in the holster. It doesn't have a 'presence' to 'hover.' It never 'calls' to me or to anyone else. This kind of talk is senseless.
Still, the good part is really pretty good. It would have perhaps been better to use Chekhov's Gun as the metaphor, rather than reaching for 'psychology and cultural neuroscience.' In a drama -- which politics is, among other things that it is -- guns that are introduced or even displayed are usually used. I once saw a Roy Rogers film with a rifle that hung on the wall the whole movie without anyone using it for anything; I can remember how strange that seemed in a movie, even though it's exactly what I was just describing as the real fact of my own home.
The state is a kind of weapon, or a set of weapons, which are designed to be used chiefly against us. And that's something to remember when Trump is doing it, too: an excellent reason to stand firm against his police-state impulses is that what goes around comes around. Well, it's been around and it's come around again, but the cycle doesn't stop with him.
Senses of Humor
Out in Montana, some local police came up with a game.
The secret game came to light Thursday, when Bozeman Police Chief Jim Veltkamp held a press conference to reveal details about the game. In his statement to the press, Veltkamp insisted the rights of those stopped by BPD were not violated as part of the game.Veltkamp said officers, “Were engaged in a bingo competition where success in the game hinged on whether they engaged in actions listed on the bingo card.”“It did look like your standard bingo card,” added Veltkamp. “They filled in squares of things they wanted to see happen or have happened in order to check off that box in the bingo card.”Other categories included “FOOT PURSUIT FOR ARRESTABLE OFFENSE” and “APPLY TQ OR CHEST SEAL,” referring to the use of a tourniquet or sealing wounds to a person’s torso to stop blood loss.“One of those was to do a search warrant on a car,” said Veltkamp. “Which in and of itself, that is part of their duties. The concern is if they manipulated anything in order to be able to search a car.”It took two and half months for the BPD, the Bozeman City Attorney's Office and the Gallatin County Attorney's Office to release information about the game.At the press conference held at the Bozeman Public Safety Center, Veltkamp said the game went on for 12 days until someone alerted command staff, who shut down the game.
I get the concern that improper searches or arrests might have been motivated by the desire to check off a bingo block. However, I have to say that the game sounds like it was probably just good fun. I could easily see a Firefighter or EMS version of this (especially since some of the things overlap -- "Apply Successful CPR" or "TQ" for example).
It would never be permitted, just as the police had to cancel this one as soon as leadership learned about it. The problem is that members of the public do not always share the dark sense of humor that tends to develop in public safety. The hardest I usually ever laugh is often on EMS Continuing Education training night, which our various EMTs and Paramedics have to take regularly and which is helpful for me even though I don't require it. You need a sense of humor to confront injury, sickness, and death on a regular basis. It's good for them to laugh. It helps them help others.
It does hurt people's feelings, though, so you have to keep it behind closed doors.
James' New Story
As you may also have seen at his blog or AVI's, James has published a new story in a collection called Magic Malfunction. I've just ordered a copy and so haven't read it yet, but I can't imagine that at least his part of it won't be good.
When to Start Killing
Unlike most respondents to this Substack post, which you've probably all read before now, I don't have a problem with it in principle. America was founded by revolutionary violence, and the logic of the Declaration of Independence is eternal. It is not madness to ask when it might be time to do what Washington himself did. The current administration is in fact destroying a lot of the government, which is what I like about it but is definitely offensive to those for whom that bureaucracy represents a set of desired goods.
Given the intense feelings on the left against the Trump administration it is probably healthy for them to have a conversation about what their terms are. I don't think it's unreasonable at all for them to discuss where they draw the line.
And when is that time? Your threshold may differ from mine, but you must have one. If the present administration should cancel elections; if it should engage in fraud in the electoral process; if it should suppress the speech of its opponents, and jail its political adversaries; if it ignores the will of Congress; if it should directly spurn the orders of the court; all these are reasons for revolution. It may be best to stave off, and wait for elections to throw out this scourge; but if it should threaten the ability to remove it, we shall have no choice.
That's actually pretty close to what Jefferson wrote.
...that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends [of securing the natural rights of the people], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
Some of the terms show a lack of understanding of the present moment: censorship of political opponents justifies a revolution, like what the Biden administration did so emphatically using cut-outs with NGOs, academia, and foreign governments? Fraud in the electoral process, like in 2020? Jailing political adversaries, like the current President who was hit with 34 'felonies' based on paperwork errors or his supporters who protested excessively on that infamous January 6th? Ignores the will of Congress, like the Biden ATF that decided it could just issue 'final rules' that rewrote gun control laws without Congressional input?
This is typical, however: it is similar to how college-educated conservatives understand the liberal position quite well, since all their educators explained it to them at length, but the liberals often don't have any visibility on right-wing arguments at all. It reminds me especially of the Gay Marriage debate before SCOTUS, in which the position of Justice Kennedy was that it just wasn't possible to have a rational argument opposing gay marriage -- even though Immanuel Kant, that most reason-oriented of philosophers, had constructed one in his Metaphysics of Morals. You don't have to agree with it; I don't agree with it. To say it wasn't possible to construct one is just ignorance. I imagine here too this young man doesn't know what he doesn't know.
Some of his terms are reasonable, though. I would expect a reaction perhaps to include revolutionary violence if the President were to cancel the elections and attempt to stay in office past his term. I trust that won't happen, but if it did happen I could definitely understand taking up arms.
In Pace Requiescat, Pope Francis I
I admired his courage; he set an early standard of getting out from behind the bulletproof glass to be among his people. De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.
We understand that God is not a wish fulfillment machine, but it is still a little surprising to see a public prayer so emphatically fail. I trust that the Lord knows best.
All We Know
A tale of Sam Houston:
Young Sam Houston was a lively, high-spirited lad, who caused his widowed mother more trouble than her other eight children combined. Sam had just turned twenty when he was aroused by the War of 1812. When a recruiting demonstration took place in his small Tennessee town, Sam stepped up and took a silver dollar from the drumhead. He was in the regular army by that token, but, since he was under age, he needed permission from his mother.She handed him a gun, saying, “My son, take this musket and never disgrace it: for remember, I had rather all my sons should fill one grave than that one of them should turn his back to save his life.”
Then she slipped a plain gold ring on his finger. Inside this ring was engraved a single word. That ring was his talisman for fifty years. The one word in contact with his flesh guided him through a lifetime of danger and leadership where others faltered....
It was not until his death that any man knew the command of that talisman he had used for half a century. Then his wife slipped the ring from his lifeless finger and held it to the light so that his children, too, could see the word that had led Samuel Houston steadfastly through trials to victories.
The word was “Honor.”
The Penitent Thief and Ecumenical Christianity
My grandparents were Christians in one of those "three bare walls and a cross" Protestant churches out in a rural town. They were wonderful people and some of the happiest, best people I have ever known.
But by my late teenage years I knew better and got away from all that church nonsense. I spent the next two decades slowly making myself ever more miserable. One day I decided I need to sort out some piece of happiness in life or get off the ride. I thought, who's been successful at this happiness thing? And of course my grandparents were the first in my mind. And church seemed to have a part in it, so I went to church. But it made no sense. What was all this strange stuff they asked me to believe?
I was about to give up on Christianity again when an acquaintance suggested C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. I read it and it made sense to me. That is, I understood that Christianity might actually make sense, and so I started reading more. Since Lewis was Anglican, I started attending an Anglican church. It was my first experience of liturgical worship, which I found beautiful, and the people were kind in a dark time and helped me make some basic sense of many things.
Meanwhile, I'd kept reading, and I'd discovered the local Catholic radio channel. If I was driving, I was listening to Catholic news or apologetics or the great Dr Ray's show. Building on what I'd learned, they took me much deeper and I could see not only how profound Christianity was but how global it was.
My reading of church history took me to a small Eastern Orthodox parish, and I spent a couple of years attending services and asking questions and reading. It was beautiful, I could see happiness all around me there, and it became home. I was brought to plead, "Remember me in your kingdom, Lord."
That was only a few years ago, and I guess being new to Orthodoxy I'm enthused to share it here, or defend it if I feel it's mischaracterized. But I wouldn't even have a chance of salvation if a couple of wonderful Protestant witnesses hadn't shown me the way, if Lewis and the Anglicans hadn't taught me it could be reasonable, if the Catholic scholars hadn't explained many of the mysterious beliefs in detail and shown me the world. Who knows where I'd be without all of them, but it probably wouldn't be anywhere good.
Good Disruption
DNI Tulsi Gabbard declassifies Biden's "domestic terrorism" campaign -- which was really mostly a gun control campaign aimed at disarming Americans -- and establishes a task force to fight the weaponization of government against American citizens.
This is part of the good part of what the administration is doing.
Impossible Traditionalism
A challenging argument. I encountered it first at the Orthosphere, who summarizes it nicely at the beginning of the post and then goes on to list some personal examples. I'll quote the Orthosphere summary because I think it is clearer than the original post.
Bruce Charlton raises an important objection to professedly Traditionalist Christianity in the contemporary world, “Traditionalist” here meaning a faith accepted on the authority of Tradition and its ecclesial representatives rather than accepted as the outcome of individual discernment. The objection is not that such a faith is undesirable but that it is impossible. People in the world today are exposed to multiple live religious options, and even when one picks a particular Church, one finds that it is divided into factions and that its leaders have more-or-less assimilated to the global liberal order and made authoritative proclamations which more-or-less directly contradict their historical teachings. One must choose which Church, which faction and clergy within that Church, which of conflicting Magisterial statements one should credit, and this can only be done by individual discernment.
This is a serious challenge. In the West, the greatest Magisterium is the Roman Catholic Church: indeed, 'the West' as a concept arises precisely from that part of the world that aligned with Rome rather than Constantinople many centuries ago. When the Western Roman Empire fell, 'the West' was defined by the Roman Catholic Church. So if you are a Westerner who wants to fall back on the authority of a Magisterial tradition, that church is the obvious place to look.
Yet if you do this, you will at once find that the Pope is thought not to be very Catholic by many Catholics. Tradition holds that the Pope can speak infallibly under certain very specific conditions; but if you see the Pope rejecting earlier parts of the tradition, don't you end up having to choose -- and thus, as the argument points out, substitute your own personal judgment for the Magisterium?
I've tended to fall back on St. Thomas Aquinas as an authority, but isn't that a personal judgment of mine? I'm not alone in it: Aquinas was greatly honored for centuries as the authoritative writer on many topics. Yet the Catechism today diverges from Aquinas in many ways big and small, as generations of priests who belong to other factions have amended it. The Jesuits are especially known for their divergence, but the Franciscans have a view that is in many ways different as well.
And if you think that the Roman Catholic view is not the right one, but prefer instead the Magisterium of the Greek Orthodox church -- or the Russian Orthodox variation -- you have an exactly similar problem. If you are a Protestant, the same. If you are a Southern Baptist, your church may have split over irreconcilable differences in your lifetime. The Presbyterians seem to be doing it even now, and the Methodists, and the Episcopalians.
Maybe you just can't lay down the sword of individual discernment. And if that's true, as it seems to be, we're just in a different world.
Paper Beats Rescuers
The North Carolina government continues to demonstrate that it views public safety as an insurance scheme rather than the practical business of actually saving people in need. This time the affront to good sense is House Bill 675, which would force all existing or future EMS personnel to obtain national certifications in addition to the state certifications they already have.
The material covered is the same, and many of these Paramedics, AMTs, EMTs, and EMRs already have not only state certificates but years of experience doing the job. Under this law, they would all be forced to stop and go back to school with a nationally-certified program. The Paramedic program is 13 months long, and the test costs $300, so you'd lose a year of pay and then be forced to pony up for the exam as well. The other programs are shorter but also have a similar issue.
This follows a move at the end of last year to cancel all Technical Rescue certification programs that were not fully complete at midnight on New Year's Eve. If you had completed 100 of the 120 hours of training, but were still one course short, you lost everything and had to start over. This was done just so they could issue a certificate under a different version of the NFPA manual governing such operations. Because of Hurricane Helene, we lost almost all opportunities to finish classes from late September through the end of the year. I asked my state representative to see if a waiver could be granted given the State and Federal states of emergency occasioned by the hurricane, but no: the paperwork rules all. Many thousands of training hours were lost across the state so that the paperwork would look better, at the cost of actual rescuers who could physically help you if you needed it.
Government at its worst, pursuing documentation rather than actual goods and at the cost of the actual good that was really wanted by the people. If you're having a heart attack or lying broken at the bottom of a gorge, it's small comfort that the reason no one is coming to save you is so that the paperwork can look better for the insurance agencies. That is, however, what legislators and bureaucrats care about.
Public Schools Trump First Amendment?
A Federal judge ruled that a school can exercise prior restraint on adults who are not students but are attending school functions.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe, a President George H. W. Bush appointee, ruled that the district acted reasonably in its decision to prevent parents from protesting.McAuliffe said the parents’ "narrow, plausibly inoffensive" intentions were not as important as the wider context, and that adults attending a high school athletic event do not enjoy a First Amendment-protected right to convey messages that demean, harass or harm students."While plaintiffs may very well have never intended to communicate a demeaning or harassing message directed at Parker Tirrell or any other transgender students, the symbols and posters they displayed were fully capable of conveying such a message," he wrote. "And, that broader messaging is what the school authorities reasonably understood and appropriately tried to prevent."
Public schools are frankly on the same order as prisons in their deleterious effects on America's culture of liberty. They train the young to submit their freedoms to the dictates of authority, and here extend the command of this intelligentsia to control of their parents as well. Even if you didn't mean to engage in wrongthink, comrade, someone might have understood you to be -- so your speech must be prevented before it can occur.
UPDATE: Over in the UK, a ruling that transwomen are not, legally speaking, women.
Prisons are Not the Way
Readers know that I am a longtime advocate of abolishing prisons in favor of some other approach to dealing with crime. We discussed this as recently as January, and the more recent police-state tactics we are seeing here in March.
I don't like what prisons do to people's minds. I think that all the evidence clearly demonstrates that they are complete failures at rehabilitation and indeed make things worse. It does this by taking someone out of the market for a long period of time, so they have both a felony record and no recent employment history when they do go to look for work. It does this by placing them in constant contact with criminals as their nearly-sole company for years or decades.
They are hugely expensive things given that they don't work, and not just expensive in terms of money. Think of all the American men (and some women) whose lives are being wasted guarding prisoners. Whatever you think of the prisoners, people who are fit to be prison guards could be better employed in some gainful occupation.
I thought of this today while reading up on CECOT, the prison in El Salvador that is much under discussion. It is an immoral entity, as close to Hell as men know how to create on earth; America ought to have no part of it. It at least does not pretend to be reforming anyone; its conceit is that no one will ever leave it again, and thus the harm caused by their transformation through suffering will be contained within its walls. If that is what is wanted, executions would be a kinder and far more efficient way of achieving the same result.
The 8th Amendment should bar our government from making use of it, since neither a sense of honor nor morals seems to bind the government to much. Yet I reflect that it is no worse than, and indeed quite similar to, the detention centers we helped set up in Iraq to which we contributed many detainees. Like at CECOT, the Iraqis ran the prisoners together, perhaps in the hope that the rival gangs or rival Baathists/Islamists would punish each other.
Instead, as you will recall, that is how ISIS came to be forged. They learned to work together and became something worse and more effective than either had been alone. The transformative harms done to them were not, after all, contained forever behind the terrible walls.
Why Is This Funny?
I don't know why this is funny, but it is. I must have reached the delirious stage of Lent.
The Kamala Harris one ...
Holy Monday
I saw a lot of 'driving the moneychangers out of the Temple' posts yesterday, but that event actually occurred on Holy Monday.
A Joke for Palm Sunday
An elderly woman lives by herself. She is very religious, and knows the Bible very well. One night, she is awakened by a noise. She looks out the window and sees a man trying to force his way into the house with a crowbar.
She creeps to the phone and quietly calls the police, but is worried that they might not get there in time. So she decides to appeal to the guy's conscience with a Bible verse. She yells out, "Acts 2:38!" On hearing this, the man puts down his tools, and puts his hands over his head.
Just then, the police get there and arrest him.
As he's being booked, the arresting officer says, "I've got to ask you something. You were almost in the house. Why did you stop and give up just because that lady yelled some scripture?"
"Scripture?!" he answered. "I thought she was saying she had an ax and two .38's!"
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)