Clippings (and a little opinion) 11/30/18

In some ways the most important items are last, but they have to do with heroes like Robert Mueller and villains like Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen. Some of you therefore might experience serious cognitive dissonance.

1

It’s unusual to open with the insights of a pseudonymous (or at least obscure) monk, but here goes:

The promise from the Universe, the deal I was offered by 1990’s-2000’s liberalism, is aptly summarized by Anthony Kennedy’s baptism of Existentialism as The American Philosophy in his Casey opinion, which self-same authority he quotes in his Planned Parenthood vs. Casey opinion. “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The Universe had begun to offer unlimited pregnancy-free sex via the birth control pill, and we happily accepted this deal. But the Universe didn’t keep up its end of the bargain, and guys kept on knocking up the ladies when they were hoping not to. Anthony Kennedy stepped up and let us know that the Universe would be held to its promise, for we have trusted in it up to this point, and some unwanted fetuses will not stand in the way of the promise.

… In the name of freedom, we denied the Incarnation of the One Logos, unaware of that denial’s concomitant task: the unique re-logosification of each material being.

Brother Sean Finds The Key

2

I do not trust our mainstream news media. That distrust is not Trumpian, so let me explain.

I think the Wall Street Journal does the best job of straight news reporting and avoiding sensationalism, but there’s always the problem of bias in story selection (the judgment of what is “newsworthy”) and its Opinion page is predictably—well, it’s predictably what you’d expect from a very committed capitalist journal during a time of resurgent putative socialism.

So I check the New York Times daily to see what more might be newsworthy (and to read conservative and liberal-leaning opinion from columnists I’ll not enumerate). But even excluding excluding sexual deviance—a topic of endless fascination at NYT (and one on which it has semi-officially decreed that only one opinion is permissible: deviance is entirely immutable yet fluid, unchosen yet an important part of designing one’s own very best life, without moral implications and nobody else’s business except when media want to shove it at us)—the Times has become unreliable at straight-up reporting, mixing opinion into its news too often and systematically excluding some voices.

I got so disgusted with the click-baity headlines at “the Jeff Bezos Washington Post” that I now skip directly to the Opinion page and the articles categorized under “Acts of Faith.”

There are, of course, weeklies and thoughtful journals beyond that.

But all those are mainstream, and I find the entire US mainstream frequently non compos mentis. So I’ve aggregated some non-mainstream voices, no less insane at times, but insane in different ways and a helpful balance to the mainstream.

It would be untruthful to suggest Breitbart, as I very rarely go there, but it might provide some balance to my list, which leans progressive (because the mainstream is more conservative than most people appreciate). In some ways, my whole RSS feed qualifies as alternate voices, with a few exceptions like Dilbert and religious news and commentary.

This is an answer to anyone wondering “where does he come up with all this stuff?”

3

Speaking of Traditional Right, 4th Generation War (a/k/a 4GW) is one of its obsessions:

The recent mass shooting at a country music bar in California again raises an important question: are such shootings, at least some of them, an aspect of Fourth Generation war?

… so far we know no motive for the California shooter. So where, if anywhere, does it fit into Fourth Generation war?

The answer, I think, may be that this and similar cases are men’s reply to the war on men being waged by feminism. When women get seriously angry, they talk. When men get seriously angry, they kill. And feminism’s war on men, which is being carried to ever-greater extremes, is making more and more men, especially young men, very angry.

The so-called “#MeToo” campaign is only the latest absurdity. Of course most women have been subject of sexual advances from men. It is hard-wired into human nature, and into the nature of most of the animal kingdom, that the male takes the initiative in sexual encounters. Most women expect and want men to do so …

But feminism now decrees that any man taking the initiative risks being charged with that most heinous of all crimes, “sexual harassment”. Even if the woman welcomed his advances at the time, if she later changes her mind, he is guilty. He is presumed guilty until proven innocent and the woman’s word must be taken as true. The man who is convicted is thrown out of school, loses his job, and may find his whole career path closed to him–all on nothing more than a woman’s word. Of course men are getting angry ….

William S. Lind

4

I’m keeping an eye on Hungary because of my sympathy for some of what Viktor Orban has done and despite the drumbeat from our mainstream media labeling Orban or Hungary “far right.”

A NYT opinion piece Friday accuses Orban of “attacking civil society,” which, if true, would be a major black mark. But the link to prove that charge opens this piece, which opens:

Hungary’s parliament has voted to tighten control over non-governmental organisations that receive financing from abroad, as prime minister Viktor Orban continues to rail against alleged foreign interference in his rule.

(Emphasis added) It’s true that Orban’s vision of a good Hungarian society differs from that of, most notably, George Soros, King of the Meddlesome “Open Society” NGOs. But I don’t consider outside NGOs to be “civil society”, or at least consider the question so debatable that it’s tendentious to equate opposing foreign NGOs with “attacking civil society.” Hungary already has a very venerable civil society, thank you, even if Communism suppressed it.

Critics say the rules are intended to hinder the work of NGOs and portray them as suspicious and disloyal elements …

Yes. And just what is your point?

5

[T]his week the Senate Judiciary Committee had to halt progress on confirming talented judges thanks to GOP Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.

… Mr. Flake has said he will block all judicial nominees until he receives a vote on a bill that would insulate Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation from normal political accountability …

Mr. Flake’s stunt will have zero effect on President Trump or Mr. Mueller, and he’s compromising a substantive principle to make a futile political gesture. Mr. Flake is hurting the cause of confirming conservative judges who would enforce the Constitution in the name of a bill that is unconstitutional.

The legislation violates the Constitution because it would prevent the special counsel from being fired except by a Senate-confirmed Justice Department official for “good cause.” But Article II allows the President to fire inferior officers of the executive branch at will.

Wall Street Journal editorial (emphasis added)

Tim Scott drove the final nail in the coffin on the nomination of Thomas Farr on grounds that his fingerprints were on an illegal effort to suppress black votes in South Carolina in 1990. I respect that, especially considering Sen. Scott’s skin tone and unique position.

But I’d have to agree with the Journal on Jeff Flake’s blanket obstruction, and for the reasons I’ve quoted. What good is an oath to uphold the Constitution if the urge to continue the pissing contest with Donald Trump can overcome it?

“Jeff Flake’s Sad Exit” indeed.

6

The Benedict Option has now been translated and published in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Portuguese. It will soon be published in Croatian and Korean. The book has sold fewer raw copies in Europe than in the US, where it was a bestseller, but from my calculations, has done much better proportionally with European Christians than it has with American Christians. Why is that?

[Daniel] McCarthy’s [Spectator US] column explains it, pretty much. So many conservative American Christians have not yet come to terms with demographic reality. They still believe that because Donald Trump is president and the Republican Party is doing well politically, that they (we) have meaningful cultural power. European Christians don’t have the luxury of this illusion, and haven’t had for some time. They understand clearly that the future of the Christian faith depends on recognizing reality and acting on facts, not sentimentality.

Rod Dreher

7

[T]here were real problems facing the working class, a social crisis that had some link to stagnating incomes and the decline of industrial jobs, and the tax-cuts-as-panacea style of conservatism had passed its sell-by date. What was needed was not a repudiation of Reaganomics but an updating (and a recovery of some of Reagan’s own forgotten impulses), in which conservatism would seek to solidify the material basis of the working-class family and blue-collar communities — with child tax credits, wage subsidies, a more skills-based immigration system — even as it retained its basic commitment to free trade, light regulation and economic growth.

That was the story we wanted Republican politicians to tell. Instead Donald Trump came along and told a darker one. “Sadly the American dream is dead,” he announced after that escalator ride, and proceeded to campaign on a radically pessimistic message about the post-Reagan economic order, in which bad trade deals and mass immigration were held responsible for what he called “American carnage” in working-class communities.

During the campaign I called this message “reform conservatism’s evil twin,” since it started from a similar assumption (that the existing Republican policy agenda wasn’t offering enough to the American worker) and ended up in a more apocalyptic and xenophobic place.

Ross Douthat

8

Here is one fact beyond dispute. Look at the men whom Trump has traditionally surrounded himself with: Stone, Corsi, Paul Manafort, Cohen. These are some of the least reputable people in American politics. Trump’s inner circle has always been a cesspool.

And there is a reason for this — a reason Trump has traditionally employed unethical people to serve his purposes. It is because he has unethical jobs for them to do, involving schemes to remove political threats and gain electoral advantage. And there is every reason to believe that Trump has fully participated in such schemes.

Michael Gerson

9

When asked whether his party’s rout of Republicans on Nov. 6 indicated that many voters recoiled when they saw “R” next to a candidate’s name, [Colorado] Gov.-elect Jared Polis demurs, saying what they effectively saw was: “T.”

George Will

10

If you have any interest in what Special Counsel Robert Mueller is up to, Ken White lays it out in the Atlantic. This has been a very consequential week, with heavy foreshadowings.

I now fully expect the new House to impeach Trump, with well-supported and serious “high crimes and misdemeanors.” As usual, “it’s not the ‘crime,’ but the coverup.”

I cannot (yet?) predict what the craven Senate will do.

(Update: I tweaked a typos and an artifacts of rephrasing.)

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Wisdom from (or via) R.R. Reno

The December First Things has arrived, and R.R. Reno is worth the cost again after a few months left me wondering if I would renew.

Back in the day, we had race hucksters like Jesse Jackson, monetizing their internships as activists or community organizers.

Nowadays, we have rage hucksters, from Steve Bannon on the fairly far right to Sarah Jeong and one Alexis Grenell on the fairly far left:

In the aftermath of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, the New York Times published an opinion essay that was strangely crude and sophisticated at the same time: “White Women, Come Get Your People.” On the surface it runs on raw invective. The author, Alexis Grenell, denounces the female Republican senators who voted to confirm Kavanaugh as gender traitors …

Alexis Grenell is a white woman who received her BA from the University of Chicago and her master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She worked on progressive campaigns and recently established a public relations firm, Pythia Public. This is the standard path for political activists, campaign operatives, and media personalities, on both the left and the right. They throw themselves into politics, and then, after gaining experience, they “monetize” their influence and contacts by working for a public relations or lobbying firm. Grenell shows herself a real go-getter, having founded a firm of her own.

…

As Andrew Breitbart demonstrated, the rage trade is where real money can be made these days …

Rage on the right tends to be satisfied with attacks on liberals as inconsistent, stupid, or hypocritical. It often seems sated when ostentatious violations of political correctness arouse liberal responses. The tone of right-leaning flamethrowers turns more toward mockery than indignation. Progressive rage is more earnest, more serious. Attacking others as racists and “gender traitors” amounts to an assassination attempt—not in a literal sense of trying to kill them, but of killing their social standing and ruining their careers. Accusations of this sort are meant to disqualify someone from public life. A racist is not to be argued with. He needs to be cleansed from our body politic.

…

A thirty-something progressive activist like Alexis Grenell is climbing the ladder in the political-media-corporate complex. As she does so, she can be confident that her rhetorical extremism will not cost her anything among the elite-educated people who call the shots, which is why the New York Times could publish her furious invective without worrying that a line was being crossed …

Alexis Grenell has incentives that will draw her into the progressive political-corporate establishment, neutering anything genuinely radical about her projects. Her rage will be marketed and consumed. She’ll play a scripted role as a “progressive voice” who gives legitimacy to the rich and powerful who “listen.”

R.R. Reno

From the beginning I adopted a skeptical attitude toward the elite outrage over our crude and demotic president. The Great and the Good deride him as beneath the office and unworthy of the role for which they imagine one of their rank better suited. The warm embrace [the American Enterprise Institute] has given to the newly born Giselle Donnelly, transgender exhibitionist with a taste for BDSM sex, shows how ridiculous that line has always been. Our leadership class accommodates itself to mental illness and allows itself to be conscripted into private fantasies. They’re the ones unfit to rule.

R.R. Reno.

He has a point.

Robert Mariani makes an astute observation about political correctness as a marker of social class. “We learn at college that ‘people of color’ is the proper designation for non-whites and that ‘LGBTQA+’ is the proper acronym for the broader gay community. This is the twenty-first-century version of knowing which fork to use when navigating a multi-course meal.” He continues, “Pride Month, which comes every June, is a new sort of Eastertide, complete with passion-plays about LGBT history. Trillion-dollar corporations trip over each other to indicate adherence to the queer, borderless creed. Their otherwise shameful power is sanitized.”

R.R. Reno.

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Potpourri 11/10/18

I indulged my urge to travel from October 29 through election day, with a long transcontinental flight back on Wednesday. Time didn’t permit keeping up with news, let alone commenting.

I’ve spent too much time trying to “catch up.” Aware, though, that much of what passes for news is noise and commercial solicitation, I deleted many items I initially had clipped for later reading.

Here are a few thing that survived.

1 Philosophy and Religion

In the name of mercy, some recent theologians have suggested that there are elements of good in some objectively wrong acts and relationships. For example, friendship is good, and there certainly is an element of friendship in an illicit sexual relationship.

…

The question should not be whether there are elements of value in sins, but whether there is anything valuable about sinning.

Consider: No one can love evil for its own sake. The only thing it is possible to will for its own sake is good. Thus, the only way it is even possible to will an evil is that something about it seems good to us.

But something seems good to us in every evil, because evil cannot exist in itself. The only way to get an evil at all is to take something good and distort it.

The upshot is that the fact that evil contains disordered elements of good doesn’t mean it isn’t evil. What this fact shows is why evil can be attractive.

J Budziszewski, The Underground Thomist (emphasis added).

Having been in the “elements of good” camp, I stand corrected.

The shallowness and poverty of Evangelical thought on sexuality will not be cured by repudiating I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Where’s the positive vision?

Abigaile Rine Favale elaborates.

I’m tempted to elaborate on my own. Nominalism. Realism. Natural Law. Chastity > Virginity. That kind of thing.

But I won’t.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the Little Sisters, notes that there are many ways for the government to provide contraceptives without forcing nuns to violate their beliefs.

An Unnecessary Culture War: The Little Sisters of the Poor finally get their religious exemption (WSJ, 11/10/18)

I love, and financially support, Becket Fund.

2 Politics

Pace Jonathan Haidt, liberals likely are not more “open” to “experience” in general than conservatives.

News from the birthplace of the free speech movement.

In a real sense, the most fascist people in America are young progressives.

Of all the ways in which Donald Trump’s presidency has made America worse, nothing epitomizes it quite so fully as the elevation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States. Intellectually honest conservatives — the six or seven who remain, at any rate — need to say this, loudly. His appointment represents an unprecedented assault on the integrity and reputation of the Justice Department, the advice and consent function of the Senate, and the rule of law in the United States.

Bret Stephens

The mystery of Donald Trump is what impels him to overturn the usual rules. Is it a dark sort of cunning or simple defects of character? Because the president’s critics tend to be educated and educated people tend to think that the only kind of smarts worth having is the kind they possess — superior powers of articulation combined with deep stores of knowledge — those critics generally assume the latter. He’s a bigot. He’s a con artist. His followers are dumb. They got lucky last time. They won’t be so lucky again.

Maybe this is even right. But as Trump’s presidency moves forward, it’s no longer smart to think it’s right. There’s more than one type of intelligence. Trump’s is feral. It strikes fast. It knows where to sink the fang into the vein.

Bret Stephens.

Having been recently in the offices of the Jerusalem Post, I was surprised to note that he was once its Editor-in-Chief, and Wikipedia confirms that he took that post when he was all of 29 years old.

Democratic leaders in the House … have the president at a disadvantage. He is a businessman who’s never had to answer to a board. His whole professional life it was him and his whims and his hunger and a series of organizations of which he was sole or principal owner. Democratic leaders should see themselves as his board. They’ve got a CEO they don’t like, but they’ve got some power and they’re using it to save the company. A united board can scare a CEO. Donald Trump up against a board will not be so sure-footed. He will agree to a lot of what you want.

Peggy Noonan.

I love this idea.

With his every utterance, Trump removes the moral guardrails that keep bigotry down.

… How does a conservative movement that is supposed to believe that every healthy society needs powerful moral guardrails give itself over to a president whose every other utterance cheerfully knocks those guardrails down?

The Trumpian defense is that no political leader can fairly be held accountable for the acts of followers like Sayoc, much less of avowed opponents like Bowers. Also, what about James Hodgkinson, the Bernie Sanders supporter who shot Republican Representative Steve Scalise last year? But Sanders wasn’t instigating anyone to violence. He wasn’t calling on supporters at his rallies to “knock the crap out of” hecklers, or praising fellow members of Congress for body slamming a reporter.

… fanning one set of hatreds against immigrants has a way of fanning others, as it did for Bowers when he attacked the synagogue because he was enraged by its support for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Bret Stephens, Yes, the President Bears Blame for the Terror From the Right.

Inclined to agree though a bit unsure, I nevertheless thought this merited consideration. No, on second thought, I agree. Period. Full stop.

“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
― Theodore Dalrymple

Via Rod Dreher

Communism is dead, but pray for the humiliated souls of Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and all the other Trumpish sycophants who abase themselves with transparent lies for their boss.

It just occurred to me as I tagged and categorized this blog that “conservative” and “liberal” seemed to me to suffice for casual political talk. Then I decided that “right liberalism” and “left liberalism” were maybe more precise, as both fit classic liberalism. Now, with illiberals in the alt-right and progressive left, I’m more convinced than ever that “right liberalism” and “left liberalism” are useful and important categories (though I’ll probably continue to use conservative and liberal from habit).

A coalition of classical liberals might be a really good idea, but I’m not sure that Trump, who looks alt-right in comparison to right-liberals, will allow it.

3 Europe

“We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” Mr. Macron said on French radio.

…

Europe is the “main victim,” Mr. Macron said, of Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. That accord prohibits the use of intermediate- and shorter-range rockets, as well as testing, producing or fielding new ground-based missiles.

“We will not protect the Europeans unless we decide to have a true European army,” Mr. Macron said.

Wall Street Journal.

This, of course, set Trump into foaming at the mouth.

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News roundup

1

In July, Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the “constitutional originalist Federalist Society,” as RealClearPolitics phrased it, told Fox News:

“Any Supreme Court confirmation is transformative. This is a court that is often equally divided. At the end of the day, I think what’s really important to remember is that there’s been a movement on the court toward being more originalist and textualist. In other words, the idea that law means something, it has determinate meaning. And that’s the trend that I think this president wants to continue.”

But, when I think of originalism, I think this: Many of the founders owned slaves; in the Constitution they viewed black people as less than fully human; they didn’t want women or poor white men to vote. The founders, a bunch of rich, powerful white men, didn’t want true democracy in this country, and in fact were dreadfully afraid of it.

Now, a bunch of rich, powerful white men want to return us to this sensibility, wrapped in a populist “follow the Constitution” rallying cry and disguised as the ultimate form of patriotism.

Charles Blow, declaring scurrilous “war.”

Would it be entirely unfair to satirize this as “because the founders tended to own slaves, and because of the 3/5 clause (since abolished), we can ignore what they wrote and just make up whatever progressive shit we feel like?”

If it would be entirely unfair, I won’t do it. Nope. Never.

2

“Kavanaugh’s confirmation deepens country’s divide” (USA Today Headline 10/8/18, emphasis added).

I don’t believe it, and the story doesn’t support it. I would be just as skeptical if they said the confirmation laid the issue to rest.

The Wall Street Journal make it fairly clear what’s really at stake: both parties intend to milk this episode for all it’s worth in next month’s election. And both sides are saying the other overplayed its hand and face an electoral bloodbath.

Time will tell us whether and which.

Meanwhile, I’m sorry to report that there really are some conservatives I have heretofore respected who are converting from Never Trump to Trumpista just because he didn’t withdraw Kavanaugh (they mercifully haven’t praised him for trash-talking Dr. Ford). I’m not going to name names because some of them are not exactly public figures (e.g., a sharp law professor at a second-tier school who I happen to know, Tweeting his Trump re-assessment), but I initially thought such reports were a kind of semi-libel, a total straw man. Then I saw it with my own eyes, in my own Twitter feed (filtered to feature the more reliable sorts). #Sad #RepentanceLikelyInDueCourse

A putative conservative at the New York Times cautions against GOP gloating in a column I endorse (though I’m unfamiliar with the author, David Marcus):

Whatever one believes about the allegations leveled against Mr. Kavanaugh, it is clear that millions of Americans are in real pain. The widespread feeling that the voices of women are being ignored — once again — is leading to a rage that many on the left are increasingly embracing as the necessary counter to Trump-era conservatism.

The anger on both sides has already shut down communication and compromise among our politicians. Now it threatens the ability of average Americans to talk to each other.

The task for conservatives in the wake of these ugly two weeks is not to point and laugh, but to show care and compassion that may build trust in Mr. Kavanaugh and the court among those who so bitterly and sincerely opposed him. There is plenty of blame for the tribalism in our country to go around. Ending it, however, is a task best undertaken by the side that is winning.

3

A cultural division is illustrated by the difference between Wall Street Journal and New York Times most viewed stories: the former, “Friend of Dr. Ford Felt Pressure to Revisit Statement“; the latter, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father.”

I find both stories “interesting,” but the Times really busted its butt on its major investigative journalism piece fleshing out what I already suspected.

The Wall Street Journal responds with a column that is unmistakably in the category of sour grapes: Dogs Bite Men and Trumps Duck Taxes.

4

American political discourse gets worse by the day, a lesson we’ve seen first-hand again this weekend. The Twitter mob on the political left is claiming that our Saturday editorial headline, “Susan Collins Consents,” was intended as a sly “rape joke.”

The editorial praised Maine Senator Collins for her thoughtful speech on Friday explaining her support for Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. We said her thorough consideration was an exemplary case of fulfilling the Senate’s “advice and consent” duty under the Constitution. Senators are supposed to offer their advice and then offer or withhold their consent for a presidential nominee. The editorial mentioned advice and consent no fewer than six times.

Yet for some on the political left the editorial wasn’t about the Senate’s constitutional duty or praising Sen. Collins. They said we were making fun of rape ….

Wall Street Journal

5

“We don’t work as Democrats or Republicans, and I think it’s a very unfortunate perception that the public might get from the confirmation process,” Chief Justice Roberts said at a New England Law-Boston event in 2016. The near party-line split on recent confirmations “increases the danger that whoever comes out if it will be viewed in those terms,” he said.

Chief Justice John Roberts

6

Justice Elena Kagan expresses concern as to whether the US Supreme Court will have a “middle position” going forward https://t.co/gTpPlEpfwh pic.twitter.com/6hyLhipQOb

— CNN (@CNN) October 6, 2018

JUSTICE KAGAN: Starting with Justice O’Connor and continuing with Justice Kennedy, there has been a person who, er, found the center, who people couldn’t predict in that sort of way. … It’s not so clear that, you know, I think going forward, that sort of middle position — you know, it’s not so clear whether we’ll have it.

… [I]t’s rather revealing in this clip that Kagan never considers herself for the role of the unpredictable jurist — or Sonia Sotomayor, who’s sitting next to her and never bothers to interject either. Kagan’s argument is that it should always be conservative jurists who go towards Kagan’s wing of the court, and not the other direction. Why should that be the case? Why shouldn’t Kagan take her own advice?

It’s also amusing that Kagan almost explicitly assigns herself and the other three liberal justices to the roles of predictable jurist in this statement. It’s undeniably true, but one would expect a Supreme Court justice to at least argue that she’s independent. Give Kagan one cheer for honesty, I guess, and a half-cheer to Sotomayor for not objecting to it.

Ed Morrissey. Well played, sir!

7

Women Serving on Ships Face Higher Sex-Assault Risks

Women who serve on board U.S. Navy ships and young service members at large training bases were at the greatest risk of becoming victims of sexual assault, according to a study commissioned by the Pentagon.

Wall Street Journal

What would we do without commissioned studies?

8

The Internet Gave Us Great TV—Now Where’s Our Great TV Guide? (Wall Street Journal Personal Tech)

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Disrupting Goëbbels’ lunch

I was a bystander to an internet conversation that Alan Jacobs opened thus:

A word to the people whose political views I despise: I don’t want you to lose your job, and I do want you to be able to enjoy a meal at a restaurant in peace. I just hope you change your mind about a few things — a few extremely important things.

To my surprise at least, others jumped in to disagree, or perhaps I should be more explicit: they disagreed that, e.g., Sarah Sanders should be able to dine out unmolested (because she’s “simply lying to the American People – each and every day”).

One of them brought me up short on my reflexive support of Jacobs with an argument that I’d characterize as “this is ‘literally Hitler’ in the 20s and 30s” and which I found pretty plausible. (If that kind of argument never gives you a “Niemöller moment,” if you always blow it off as “Godwin’s law,” there’s something wrong with you.)

I’m deliberately providing no hyperlinks. The ethos of the platform where the discussion occurred seems to run counter to intense controversy, so I try (not always successfully) to take my obnoxious stuff elsewhere, and Jacobs, too, seems to have dropped out and posted this instead:

Now, a question for people who support confronting and challenging politicians at restaurants and other public places. What is your goal? Is it simply punitive, or do you believe that by doing that kind of thing you can change a politician’s mind? …

And no sooner had I read that from my RSS feed than I tabbed over to this from Caitlin Johnstone, also in my RSS feed, who probably is further to the Left than Jacobs is to the Right:

A radical change in human behavior away from its patterns … will necessarily involve a drastic transformation in humanity’s relationship with thought. I’ve been saying this over and over again in different ways for a long time now, and yet I still get criticisms saying that I have useful insights but I don’t provide any plan of action.

The transformation in human consciousness is the plan of action. I really don’t know how to say it any clearer than that. And I will go so far as to say that that it is the only plan of action which will pull us out of our destructive patterns and into a healthy state of collaboration with each other …

I understand the criticism, though. When people read about [big, entrenched problems] … they don’t want to hear a bunch of stuff about mass ego death and spiritual enlightenment, they want to hear about nationwide demonstrations or organizing the working class or forming a new political party or cryptocurrencies or ending the Federal Reserve, or something along those lines depending on where they believe the problem is localized. In general, they want a fairy tale about people coming together to effect drastic, sweeping changes and turn the status quo on its head, which they will do because something something reasons, cough cough.

Seriously, why do people think revolution happens? Why do they believe their ideas have a chance of winning out over the existing paradigm? …

It doesn’t seem like many proponents of revolution and change have really thought about this very much. They have a good idea, and they can envision a world in which that idea is implemented, but getting from the idea to its manifestation seems like it’s often a jumbled mess in a lot of dissidents’ minds, not unlike the “Phase 1: Collect underpants / Phase 2: ??? / Phase 3: Profit” model of the Underpants Gnomes from South Park. Most dissident voices I see are primarily interested in Phase 1, and to a much lesser extent in Phase 3. Phase 2 is what I’m interested in, and in my opinion it necessarily involves a drastic shift in human consciousness. …

She might disagree, but her “transformation in humanity’s relationship with thought” and mocking of “turn the status quo on its head, which they will do because something something reasons, cough cough” seems clearly to amount to “we need to change people’s minds first.”

That’s utterly congruent with Jacobs and seems like a refreshingly conservative way of being progressive.

We should all, whatever our political discontents, try to focus on Phase 2.

And, focusing on Phase 2, the objection “this is ‘literally Hitler’ in the 20s and 30s” proves too much, because if we are absolutely convinced of that, we should be doing something more than fecklessly disrupting Goëbbels’ lunch.

* * * * *

Our lives were meant to be written in code, indecipherable to onlookers except through the cipher of Jesus.

Greg Coles.

Follow me on Micro.blog, too, where I blog tweet-like shorter items and … well, it’s evolving. Or, if you prefer, those micro.blog items also appear now at microblog.intellectualoid.com.

Friday Politics 9/14/18

1

I’m sure that if Brett Kavanaugh had not “misled the Senate under oath,” he’d have had Patrick Leahy’s vote for confirmation, but gosh durn it, he just had to mislead ’em.

What a bunch of preening jackasses we’ve elected (and thus, by definition, deserve)!

Speaking of which:

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) offered to sacrifice his political career in a move obviously calculated to serve his political career — boldly releasing “confidential” committee documents that had already been released and that did nothing to prove Kavanaugh’s unfitness.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) hinted darkly at the malignant influence of the Federalist Society — though it turned out that every member of the current Supreme Court, and Whitehouse himself, had participated in Federalist Society events.
Was Kavanaugh somehow personally responsible for the birth-control views of a plaintiff because the nominee made reference to it? This last charge — summarized by Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as a “dog whistle going after birth control” — earned “Four Pinocchios” from The Post’s Fact Checker.

Each political side has chosen to live in a post-truth world. In one case, deceit serves the president’s interests and ego. In the other case, deceit serves progressive ideology. But in both instances, loyalty is proved by lies.

And by viciousness ….

2

As Hannah Arendt wrote back in the 1940s, the worst kind of one-party state “invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

Anne Applebaum, A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come. This long and well-informed Atlantic article has me rethinking some things.

3

[W]here American conservatism began to go wrong[:] The goal is not to stand athwart history and cry “Stop!”, as William F. Buckley put it. It’s to be part of the stream of history and say: slow it down a bit, will you?

Andrew Sullivan. There’s much more there. I even bought a book on his recommendation.

4

When cars were first introduced, no one had to buy one if they didn’t want one. Now that we have reordered our entire society around them, outside of a very small number of cities, the use of an automobile is really no longer an option.

Motor vehicles have changed our urban form to the point where very few people live within walking distance of their job, shopping, or other everyday activities. And for those who do, the walk to that place is likely to be unpleasant and unsafe, due to the way that cars have altered the design of our streets and neighborhoods.

We should think long and hard about the fact that, within several decades, we reordered our entire society, our built environment, and our way of life to serve this machine that we were told would serve us.

Jason Segedy

5

The Carolinas can take solace during hurricane Florence that FEMA will give them the stellar, “unsung-success” treatment it gave Puerto Rico under the watchful eye of Glorious Leader.

6

Whatever you may think about [John] Kerry, he emerges in these pages as a man who’s strong enough not to worry that in telling the truth about himself, he might look weak.

David Ignatius, reviewing Kerry’s memoir, Every Day Is Extra.

No comment, no contrast, no way.

7

One company last year reportedly sold “unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water” for $6 a gallon.

Henry I. Miller

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Follow me on Micro.blog, too, where I blog tweet-like shorter items and … well, it’s evolving. Or, if you prefer, those micro.blog items also appear now at microblog.intellectualoid.com.

Google bias

The reality is that progressives and left-leaning news outfits tend to build better sites. They do more customization and put more thought and energy into unique sites. They use less tracking and scripts.

So progressive sites play better in Google.

And this is largely a result of the progressive donor class versus the conservative donor class. A progressive donor does not want to make a profit on a left leaning news or activist site. That donor wants a return in public policy or politics.

Too many conservative donors want an actual return on investment in the form of monetary profit or they want a 501(c)(3) to give to so they can take a tax write off. A major progressive donor will gladly cut a $200,000.00 check to a for profit progressive news site knowing they’ll be funding the cause. It is hard to find those donors on the right.

Erick Erickson. I sort of suspected something like this. My WordPress site with free theme won’t rise high in Google — which is fine by me.

* * * * *

Follow me on Micro.blog, too, where I blog tweet-like shorter items and … well, it’s evolving. Or, if you prefer, those micro.blog items also appear now at microblog.intellectualoid.com.

Zombie Reaganism lives

Everyone I’ve read has been conceding that Trump was right about the need for NATO Countries in Europe to spend more on their own defense. It sure made sense to me.

But have we thought this through, especially those of us who appreciate that the Cold War is over?

The president’s antagonism at last week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit was similarly destructive. Mr. Trump called out German Chancellor Angela Merkel for free-riding on the U.S. military. But NATO was formed to defend the West from the Soviets, and Mr. Trump currently is trying to make Russia an ally. While our rapproachement with Russia is long overdue, if Russia is going to become an ally somehow why should NATO increase its military spending? Shouldn’t we be talking about a peace dividend instead?

Germany spends about 1.2% of gross domestic product on defense, less than the 2% target NATO adopted in 2006 and far below the 4% Mr. Trump wants. But Germany’s puny spending level is owing in part to its self-conscious decision after World War II to keep its armed forces small. Does the U.S. really want to change that? NATO’s first secretary general described the purpose of the alliance as keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. Mr. Trump and his supporters should seek to uphold that mission.

F.H. Buckley. Shouldn’t that be on the table, especially since part of the growning populist/nationalist dissatisfaction with the EU is the perception of growing German hegemony in Europe?

I’ve noted under Trump a reduction of what I (following others) call Zombie Reaganism in economics. But the reflex for a robust, heavily-armed NATO qualifies, too.

Reagan was right for his historic moment. He’s not right for all ages.

Mr. Buckley’s larger point, reformatted:

Mr. Trump’s statements and actions often are not admirable.
Honest commentary is especially needed now on the right.

Honest commentary on the right might include something stronger than “not admirable,” but Mr. Buckley, author of the forthcoming The Republican Workers Party: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy, and Why It Was Just What We Needed, got a lot right. (The telltale colon in the middle of that title marks the author as a lawyer.)

* * * * *

The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.

(Sir James Fitzjames Stephen)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

(Philip K. Dick)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes. Where I glean stuff.

Follow me on Micro.blog, too, where I blog tweet-like shorter items and … well, it’s evolving. Or, if you prefer, those micro.blog items also appear now at microblog.intellectualoid.com.

A sixth anniversary

If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

— Barack Obama, Roanoke, Va, July 13, 2012

…

To say that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville understood to be the genius of America and source of its energy and freedom.

…

What divides liberals and conservatives is not roads and bridges but Julia’s world, an Obama campaign creation that may be the most self-revealing parody of liberalism ever conceived. It’s a series of cartoon illustrations in which a fictitious Julia is swaddled and subsidized throughout her life by an all-giving government of bottomless pockets and “Queen for a Day” magnanimity. At every stage, the state is there to provide — preschool classes and cut-rate college loans, birth control and maternity care, business loans and retirement. The only time she’s on her own is at her gravesite.

Charles Krauthammer, Did the State Make You Great?, in Things That Matter.

These two episodes, retold, are a helpful reminder of why some people caught Obama Derangement Syndrome. And Krauthammer’s last sentence about Julia captures why “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

* * * * *

The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.

(Sir James Fitzjames Stephen)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

(Philip K. Dick)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes. Where I glean stuff.

Follow me on Micro.blog, too, where I blog tweet-like shorter items and … well, it’s evolving. Or, if you prefer, those micro.blog items also appear now at microblog.intellectualoid.com.

Will Kavanaugh butcher the sacred cow?

I think it was Nina Totenburg who on NPR Tuesday evening was incredulously challenging a Trump spokesman on the claim that President Trump didn’t ask SCOTUS nominee Kavanaugh about abortion — because Trump said on the campaign trail that he would appoint pro-life justices. As the spokesman pointed out, he also promised that there would be no litmus test and that he provided a list, later expanded, of people from whom he would nominate.

Here’s the solution of Totenburg’s clumsy effort at setting up a trick box:

There are no secret handshakes or pass-codes. Trump and Kavanaugh are (or will be) telling the truth when they deny discussing abortion. Get over it.
Trump (or, likelier, his advisers on judicial matters) are just quite confident that the people on his list are going to be hostile to the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence because it’s a hot, steaming mess, lacking firm roots in the Constitution. The people on the list revere the Constitution and will be disinclined, all else being equal, to ignore hot steaming messes that sully the Constitution by the pretext that it, the Constitution, and not errant justices, created the mess.
Notably, Democrat Chuck Schumer has declared his certainty — and horror — about how Kavanaugh would decide abortion cases (presumably starting with Kavanaugh’s constitutional reverence and following the trail from there, though Schumer would never admit that the one follows the other logically).
Democrat Presidents are similarly confident, without actually asking, that their nominees are not going to be overly troubled by the legal messiness of the status quo. Their party has a rather latitudinarian view about the importance of the Constitution’s original public meaning, plus some theories on how we can never know that meaning, and (double-plus) it reveres the sexual revolution. Q.E.D.
Trump was and is a bullshitter. Any correspondence between what he promises and what he does is, generally, coincidental. His judicial nominees from that list have been a happy exception, as he has hewed to the list of nominees from which he promised to pick. (Okay: Schumer’s a bullshitter, too, though definitely a minor-leaguer compared to President MAGA.)

A Kafkaesque part of the prescribed ritual combat will be invocations or deprecations of “Roe v. Wade.” It’s weird because Roe finally succumbed to its birth defects (helped along by a thousand cuts from Law Journal articles, left, right and center) in 1992, with Anthony Kennedy and company quietly interring it and trotting out the new rationale for continuing a liberal abortion regime: No more trimesters or such; the test of a law is whether it creates an “undue burden” on access to abortion, because “[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.” (Damn! How could I have missed that?!)

Roe is dead. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. But if you take away the totemistic invocation of Roe, the Senate might be struck dumb(er).

And therein lies the dilemma that will produce some sordid theater over the coming months.

* * * * *

The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.

(Sir James Fitzjames Stephen)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

(Philip K. Dick)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes. Where I glean stuff.

Follow me on Micro.blog, too, where I blog tweet-like shorter items and … well, it’s evolving. Or, if you prefer, those micro.blog items also appear now at microblog.intellectualoid.com.