Yearly Archives: 2019

Axios reports on a future possible firing by the Trump Administration:

President Trump has told confidants he’s eager to remove Dan Coats as director of national intelligence, according to five sources who have discussed the matter directly with the president.

The state of play: Trump hasn’t told our sources when he plans to make a move, but they say his discussions on the topic have been occurring for months — often unprompted — and the president has mentioned potential replacements since at least February. A source who spoke to Trump about Coats a week ago said the president gave them the impression that the move would happen “sooner rather than later.”

Axios goes on to mention a possible successor, but Kerry Eleveld’s vivid post on The Daily Kos triggered thoughts on the internal culture of the Administration:

Trump has been floating the name of Fred Fleitz as a replacement for Coats, saying he’s heard “great things.” Fleitz was John Bolton’s chief of staff on the National Security Counsel, so that might be one source of Fleitz’s “great” reviews.

But more importantly for Trump, Fleitz went on Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show to criticize Coats’ congressional testimony on North Korea and call for his ouster over his “second-guessing” of Trump. Oh, and in 2017, Fleitz also called the intelligence assessment about Russian interference “rigged.”

“I don’t use this word lightly, I think this assessment was rigged,” Fleitz said. “I think it was rigged to come up with the most negative conclusion possible to hurt Mr. Trump. … I think it was fabricated.”

In an op-ed on FoxNews.com in January 2017, Fleitz similarly wrote, “I also suspect the entire purpose of this report and its timing was to provide President Obama with a supposedly objective intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that the president could release before he left office to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election.”

It’s outrageous, when you think about it. A potential successor attempting to sabotage a high level official in the Administration in hopes of gaining the same position for himself is, I suppose, not unheard of, but for me it’s a signal of the culture of, well, unrestrained ambition that pervades the Administration. DNI Coats, former Senator for Indiana, appears to be an old-line Republican, which means he’s honorable, much like Special Counsel Mueller, and not a member of the greed-greed group within – or perhaps making up – the Republican Party these days.

But there’s no reason to believe that tomorrow’s target won’t be a full-fledged member of the Trump Party. See, we’re talking here about the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys work together to achieve their goals, and the subsumption of personal ambition to a great degree is the enabling factor behind the success of such groups.

The bad guys? Continual infighting. If you’ve watched The Man In The High Castle (or, to a lesser degree, read the book), it illustrates how the power struggles, the free rein given to ambition and the resultant tolerance for the playing out of that ambition, i.e., the violence and death and abrogation of the law in pursuit of that ambition, is what tears apart such organizations, in particular disillusioning the mass of people who provide the backbone of such movements.

Francisco Franco.

This is not always true, of course: the dictatorship of Francisco Franco lasted decades. although I see Wikipedia states:

… scholars consider Franco as conservative and authoritarian, rather than truly fascist. Historian Stanley G. Payne states, “scarcely any of the serious historians and analysts of Franco consider the Generalissimo to have been a core fascist.”

I am not enough of a student of the ways of fascism and authoritarianism to understand their differences, much less analyze how culture, outside threats, mass psychology, and the mythologies of the culture can play together to hold a leader in his place, but I am aware of those currents. Or we can point to the Soviet Union, a politically repressive and savage nation, hiding behind a collection of prima facie progressive political slogans and whatnot, and most importantly springing from political cultures which were equally if not even more repressive than the Soviets, that survived for seventy years. Context is darn near everything, a facet we ignore every time we go “nation-building”, it seems.

But to return to American soil, I’ve been puzzling over the behavior of AG William Barr. This morning it occurred to me that he may have ambitions beyond the Department of Justice. After all, he’s been approved by the Senate, which means he could move to the leadership of another department with relative ease. I’m not even sure he’d require confirmation by the Senate for such a move.

Or could he be angling towards replacing Pence on the upcoming election ticket? It’s not impossible, as Pence is more or less a zero on the campaign trail – Trump’s the big attraction, and wouldn’t tolerate another big attraction on the ticket with him, so we know Pence is a placeholder. Barr certainly lacks the charisma that supposedly surrounds Trump, so Trump would tolerate him. And after that, he’d be the incumbent VP, ready to assume the mantle of the nomination with Trump’s blessing, assuming a Trump victory in the 2024 campaign. All based on him not displaying competence, but simply pleasing Trump.

The question is whether or not Barr can dine al fresco on the entrails of his competitors without ripping apart the entire movement by exposing naked and ugly ambition. I see Barr as the dark horse in 2020. Let’s see if he makes it onto the ticket.

A few pictures I took when I should have been rescuing tomato plants after the big storm on Monday.

My Arts Editor took offense at all the power and telephone lines and blotted them out, so to an extent these are somewhat artificial.

Solecism:

A solecism is a phrase that transgresses the rules of grammar. The term is often used in the context of linguistic prescription; it also occurs descriptively in the context of a lack of idiomaticness. [Wikipedia]

Noted in this 9 Chickweed Lane comic.

And finishing up the photos labeled ‘best’ by my Arts Editor, here are miscellaneous.

This first probably should have made it into the ‘framed sunset’ shots, but I missed it.

A lovely field of greens.

Perhaps this is a sand trap on a real scuzzy golf course. Got a better idea?

And, finally, an interesting piece of dead bark.

Bonus! Two black cats at my brother-in-law’s house!

If I see any interesting pics in the second-class collection, I’ll post them.

A reader remarks on my latest flaying of an anonymous email masquerading as patriotism:

You have a lot of patience and time on your hands. They lost me at the grammatical error in the first sentence: “This came from a friend of ours’ who was a veteran.”

I have an abiding interest in the psychological nudges that an essay can apply to vulnerable readers, and it’s not a friendly interest – I’ve always reacted negatively when I perceive someone is trying to manipulate me. I have no idea whether I’m better or worse than average at actually noticing them, of course, but when I do I like to investigate and understand the how and what of the nudge.

And then share my findings, intuitive as they may be, with the victims of that nudging.

The latest post in this series dealt with unframed photos of the sunset; here are a few framed shots.

I hadn’t realized until now that last one was an impalement shot.

I’ve been meditating on the differences of the murder mystery parody films Murder By Death (1976), a classic of the genre and an old favorite of mine, and Clue (1985), a parody also referential to, but not really based on, the eponymous classic board game (which is known in some geographical areas as Cluedo). A collection of people, using for the evening the nom de plumes of various suspects from the classic game, are invited to a dinner party at an appropriately stately mansion in the Virginia countryside. Colorful, resentful, jaded, it soon comes out that they all seem to have something to hide; even the butler, Wadsworth, appears to be secretive when it comes to the motivations of this dinner.

But when the host, Mr. Boddy, arrives, we discover that all of the guests have one thing in common: they’re being blackmailed by Mr. Boddy. Soon enough, Mr. Boddy ends up dead in a dark room, and the guests find themselves in a heated chase after who among themselves might have offed their heartily disliked host.

References to the board game include the various weapons available to commit the murder, certain information presented in envelopes, and perhaps the secret passageways, but wherein Clue, as I recall, functioned as a lesson in deductive logic, the movie is more about the colorful personalities, the tropes of the era when the movie was made, and the energetic performance of Tim Curry as Wadsworth, the butler. It doesn’t really offer an ending, but rather three, from which I suppose you may pick whatever suits your emotional self.

The failure to offer a definitive, although I do not mean unambiguous, ending may be one of the contributors to my ambivalent feelings about this story. After all, an ending offers an underline to the theme of the story, and when there are three endings, even if one is marked “But this is the real ending,” it makes it a bit difficult to draw any sort of lesson.

Which isn’t to say I disliked the movie. It’s well acted, has some clever patter, and the crime is not completely unbelievable in motivation or execution. Like its aforementioned predecessor, Clue abounds in absurdities, but they are less tightly bound to the murder mystery genre, and perhaps it’s that failure to implicitly critique its subject that makes it less fun; indeed, some of it is merely sexist humor (such as when Colonel Mustard begins to pat down Ms Scarlett in response to her exclamation of “Search me!”), or references to the unacceptability of homosexuality, which marks the movie as dated.

But an integral part of the success of Murder by Death was its parody of the guests, who are analogs to famous fictional detectives and their side-kicks. They are legends of the genre, and to discover, for instance, that the Charlie Chan analog,  the Chinese Sidney Wang, dislikes his adopted Japanese son, is a play on Chan’s affectionate use of his son, whatever the number, during his fictional investigations – it brings a certain dark humanity to a character which otherwise seemed incapable of negativity. This is where Clue cannot compete, because Colonel Mustard, Mr. Green, et al, do not have histories to target to any effect. They are simply names on pasteboard.

So, despite the restrained and entertaining frenzy of Tim Curry’s Wadsworth, Clue’s attempt at an affectionate and memorable slap of the murder mystery genre isn’t as effective as that of its predecessor.

If you’re a Trump supporter who thinks the recent contretemps of the leaked diplomatic cables indicating one diplomat’s opinion that Trump is a poltroon, fool, and simpleton were simply the aberrational opinions of one diplomatic hack, think again. Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare has news for you:

And don’t kid yourself: There are cables like this from the Washington embassies of all of America’s allies. Whatever they may say in public, this is what our allies are saying in private. They are saying these things because these things are true and because they owe their home governments honest evaluations of the governance reality with which the U.S. daily confronts those allies. They are saying these things because the thought bubbles and the subtitles when they speak to us are precisely the candor they owe their own government. And in the subtitles and the thought bubbles, they are ridiculing us; and they are ridiculing us because we are, in fact, ridiculous.

I’m just a software engineer who has mildly uninformed opinions that may be way off-base. But Wittes? He’s a national security professional who interacts with these people quite often, who has decades of experience with professionals of just about all stripes.

And if you’re scoffing at my words, let me ask you: would you allot the repair of your SUV to some amateur who has no training and has the attitude of a ten year old?

Yeah, you wouldn’t. So why entrust the control of the Executive to a guy who spends his time lying and indulging in vindictive acts against anyone who dares whisper a critical word about him?

With regards to SCOTUS‘ refusal to rebuff gerrymandering, Professor Rebecca Spang of Indiana University suggests that they are putting society and democracy at significant risk:

A revolution is not a single event but a process, one driven in 1790s France as much by opposition to needed reform as it was by demands for a particular ideological system. The French Revolutionaries were not Russian Bolsheviks: They did not dream of revolution in advance and many came to regret their involvement. Nonetheless, in 1789, many comfortable men and women concluded that the society they had always known needed to be overturned and completely transformed. Reactionaries, who would never agree to more incremental changes, played a major part in radicalizing them.

On this Bastille Day, Americans should take note of this history. The Supreme Court’s recent decision that the federal courts cannot adjudicate or limit partisan gerrymandering should give us all pause; wielded with modern technical precision is massively anti-democratic, and apt to leave Americans feeling powerless to change things by working through routine political channels. The entire system is at risk of being discredited. People across the country today have urgent and competing grievances and concerns, but the institutions that are meant to adjudicate those differences are every day losing more and more of their legitimacy. If a way cannot be found to restore trust in our shared institutions, the 18th-century case suggests change will come through other means.

This has certainly been a decision that has given rise to a number of opinions, although I have to wonder if Spang’s suggestion that revolution may come of it, rather than a more effective time of participation in democracy, might be a little bit of hyperbole.

Still – and the real reason I’m writing this post – if the Democrats want to reprimand SCOTUS for not ruling to support anti-gerrymandering efforts, I have a suggestion. It’s nearly redistricting time, and the State of California, currently home to 53 Representatives to Congress, of which seven are Republican and the remaining 46 are Democrats, might be the best place for the Democrats take action^[1].

It’s simple enough. Gerrymander the state such that all areas which have Republican majorities are lumped into one or, if necessary due to rules about the population-size of each district, two districts. The key here is to make this district geographically discontinuous.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Little blobs of, say, District 1 scattered across the State. But it might be worth trying just to be rid of one of the two least respected members of Congress, Duncan Hunter and Devin Nunes. Run against each other, boys.

Of course, that’s not really my point. My point is to wave a big red flag in front of SCOTUS. Gerrymandering on the basis of race is already out of bounds, but they don’t wish to get involved in politics. If the Democrats want to give them a reason to get involved, commit the foul themselves and dare them to do something about it. When defending themselves in hearings, California’s lawyers should cite the recent decision as giving them cover, and explicitly state that ruling against them would also invalidate the other ruling; a reversal, if you will.

Sometimes, the crime of the absurd must be committed in order to shine a light on the absurd.

¹ For those interested in the question of whether or not California is already gerrymandered, the information offered by Public Policy Institute of California may be of interest:

California’s 19 million registered voters constitute 75.7% of eligible adults, a slight increase from the registration rate in 2014 (73.3%), the year of the last gubernatorial election. The share of registered voters who are Democrats (44.4%) is up slightly from 2014 (43.4%), while the share of Republicans (25.1%) has declined since 2014 (28.4%). At the same time, the share of voters who say they are independent (also known as “decline to state” or “no party preference”) has been increasing and is now 25.5%, up from 21.2% in 2014. Our surveys indicate that 47% of those we consider most likely to vote are Democrats, 28% are Republicans, and 21% are independents.

Assuming independents break in similar numbers, this suggests Democrats outnumber Republicans at something like two-to-one odds, very roughly speaking, or 66% to 33%. The delegation is 86% to 13%, rounded off. I failed to find numbers reflecting aggregate voting for House members.

Ouroboros:

The Ouroboros is a Greek word meaning “tail devourer,” and is one of the oldest mystical symbols in the world. It can be perceived as enveloping itself, where the past (the tail) appears to disappear but really moves into an inner domain or reality, vanishing from view but still existing.

The ouroboros has several meanings interwoven into it. Foremost is the symbolism of the serpent biting, devouring, or eating its own tail. This symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death. The ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal. It is sometimes depicted in a lemniscate shape (figure eight) as well. [Token Rock]

Noted in “Jar Jar Binks takes over the Internet,” Molly Roberts, WaPo:

Here’s where it gets the most Binksian and also the most stereotypically “online.” This meme wasn’t enough to gain the Gungan any real attention, even when Twitter-happy Star Wars star Mark Hamill gave it a push. It was enough, however, to get “Jar Jar Binks” on the trending topics list for a number of users, prompting those people to ask why everyone was talking about Jar Jar Binks. This, in turn, caused Jar Jar Binks to trend more prominently. Which caused everyone to continue talking about how everyone was talking about Jar Jar Binks. Which … you get the point.

And so the ouroboros of the Internet chowed down on its own tail.

And here’s some red lilies that popped a couple of days ago.

Not quite the detail of the yellow lilies, but still attractive.

I’ve been trying to restrain myself in the wake of a tiff between President Trump and retired Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, but I just can’t.

Paul Ryan, the failed V.P. candidate & former Speaker of the House, whose record of achievement was atrocious (except during my first two years as President), ultimately became a long running lame duck failure, leaving his Party in the lurch both as a fundraiser & leader……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019

Yep, Ryan’s record of achievement was quite atrocious. It’ll be interesting to see how historians rate him in, say, thirty years. I’m guessing near the bottom of the heap. He was pushed around by the Freedom Caucus, passed throw-away legislation just so the Senate could rewrite it, and was generally just a thumb-puppet who couldn’t stick up for the nation in the face of Trump’s bluster.

So, yes, Trump was right.

Our yellow lilies bloomed, and I thought they were charming.

Sometimes all it takes is someone listing information to raise awareness. Steve Benen just did that:

What’s more, as regular readers know, Trump’s contempt for American journalism is deeply at odds with our constitutional principles, including his assertion in 2017 that he considers it “disgusting” that the press “is able to write whatever it wants to write.”

That came on the heels of the president suggesting he might want to challenge the broadcasting licenses of outlets that run stories he doesn’t like.

Which came on the heels of Trump calling on Congress to investigate American media outlets that publish news he disapproves of.

Which came on the heels of Trump telling a rally audience that journalists are “really, really dishonest people” and “bad people,” who “don’t like our country.”

Which came on the heels of Trump describing the media as “the enemy of the American people.”

Which came on the heels of Trump asking whether it’s time to “change libel laws,” presumably to allow him to target news organizations he doesn’t like in court.

And more and more.

Quite a few years ago, close observers of the Republican Party came up with the label epistemic closure to describe the tendency of Republicans to talk only to each other, and in fact to really believe that only they had a grip on Truth. Why is this important? Think of it using a biological analogy. The more opinions one fully and honestly considers on a topic, the better the competition between those opinions. The better the competition, the more likely the flawed opinions will be flawed. Much like breeding between families, this generally leads to more improved outcomes, aka offspring.

Edward’s Dodo, by Roelant Savery.

But epistemic closure? This is akin to incest. The opinions, not having to compete with much of anything while within the context of the entity afflicted with epistemic closure, only must face criticism by those who may have formed them in the first place. And in a world of team politics, that criticism will be muted or non-existent because of the hierarchical nature of the context. Thus, lower-quality opinions, which we might define as those which do not conform well to a reality that can be hard to perceive (thus the need for a cross-breeding analogy), have no competition which might vanquish them. They may be dodo birds^[1], but while they exist on the islands of epistemic closure, they are safe.

But it’s a rare opinion that does not eventually collide with reality and find its general regard reduced as a consequence, and that’s one of Trump’s biggest problems. The opinions of the Republican Party, and those introduced^[2] by Trump, do not exist shorn of context. At some point, they will be put into effect.

Which means they’ll come into contact with cold, remorseless reality.

We’ve seen this happen several times already, haven’t we? I’ll cite the easy example, the debacle in Kansas. The Republican Party opinion? Tax reductions always pay for themselves. Except when they don’t, and the State finds itself in a hole^[3].

Governor Brownback, the principal driver behind the tax reduction, never yelled Uncle, never had the nerve to admit defeat, but the Kansas Legislature rolled back the tax reductions and is hoping to get Kansas back on track.

How does this all connect to epistemic closure? Epistemic closure is one of the crucial tools President Trump uses to keep his base loyal, which is to say that exposing the opinion, the Holy Tenets, of the Republican Party, as failures is simply unacceptable because the base may then have doubt about the political leaders.

How does the base get information? Through the media. The problem for the Trump is that the media tries to find facts and tell the truth, and that cannot but cast a dark shadow over his reputation and eventual legacy, not to mention his immediate prestige.

Therefore, the media must be discredited at every turn. Not just because the media may strip the clothing from Trump, but because the base cannot be exposed to the failures of those opinions formed in the bubble of epistemic closure. If that base realizes those supposedly sacred doctrines are wrong, then not only does Trump fold, but so does all the rest of the GOP.

This is how Trump controls the GOP, by being the guy who’s frantically patching the holes in the bubble that keeps the Republican Party more or less together. If they don’t support him, all these elected officials, at all levels, could easily face political death and dismemberment as disillusioned members of the base, realizing that their Holy Tenets are little more than frantic chants of fake spells, lose their faith and stop voting for those who really didn’t know any better than themselves – but had been better butt-kissers.

I suppose it’s not a big surprise, but it’s worth noting that not all information comes through media. Sometimes, it just comes through life. When you get fired from your job, or can’t sell your crops, for instance. That’s when the whole schlepping scheme might collapse and leave the President.

Naked.

¹ The dodo was a flightless avian, native to and found only on the island of Mauritius. It was hunted to extinction by humans and invasive species. It is the symbol of a creature so impotent and incompetent that it did not survive.

² Or at least quasi-legitimized by Trump’s endorsement, real or postulated.

³ The same lesson is being writ large for the United States as a whole in the wake of the 2017 tax reductions. United States debt is growing at an alarming date, the Trump Administration is pushing Congress to do something to raise the borrowing limits, and the GOP? Not making a peep about the debt that they proclaimed would sink the nation a few trillion dollars ago.

During our vacation, we were at Sleeping Bear because a relative wanted to take pictures of the sunset from the shoreline, looking out over Lake Michigan. Since I had my phone with, I took a few shots as well. These are the shots I took that are not framed by other visual materials.

This one may be my favorite.

Along comes another one of those emails which sets off my red flag alert system, this time in the form of a poem. I’ll reproduce it here, interspersed with my commentary, which will trace the emotional journey the author wants the reader to traverse, while slipping in subversive currents which will take the reader down the author’s preferred creek.

Dear All

This came from a friend of ours’ who was a veteran.  On this 4th of July, it seems appropriate to read a poem such as that in the midst of all the political rhetoric that is so common on a day such as this.  May you all have a good Independence Day as we all remember that for which our country stands and those who have put their lives on the line.

Peace!

Do we have names to check and verify? No. Note the claim of the author being a veteran, i.e., an American who has served in the military and automatically should receive a certain amount of respect, and then the contrast with the political class.

He was getting old and paunchy

And his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion,
Telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he once fought in
And the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies;
They were heroes, every one.

And ‘tho sometimes to his neighbors
His tales became a joke,
All his buddies listened quietly
For they knew where of he spoke.

Here our veteran earns more authority through some supposed war-time experience. This is accomplished not only by the respect accorded to the protagonist of the poem by his peers, but also because he’s not taken seriously by those who didn’t serve. This is a delicate tapping of a minor wedge between those who were able to tolerate the service’s peculiar needs, and those who did not wish to – or couldn’t.

But there’s a second purpose going on here. It’s meant to make us more emotionally receptive to any message this author might want to insert in this missive – overt or covert.

But we’ll hear his tales no longer,
For ol’ Joe has passed away,
And the world’s a little poorer
For a Veteran died today.

He won’t be mourned by many,
Just his children and his wife.
For he lived an ordinary,
Very quiet sort of life.

He held a job and raised a family,
Going quietly on his way;
And the world won’t note his passing,
‘Tho a Veteran died today.

And one could write the same stanzas about steelworkers, policemen, and many other professions. Also note how the sense of humbleness, always an admirable quality, is increased by limiting the mourners to wife and children. What of his extended family, his friends, his colleagues, his neighbors? When my father passed away, long retired from the Air Force, he had mourners from all those categories.

This is a signal of emotional manipulation. True, any poem can be expected to indulge, but this appears to be excessive, particularly as we assess the slant of this production.

When politicians leave this earth,
Their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing,
And proclaim that they were great.

For the skeptical reader, this is when the alarm bells should be ringing. Why? Because, for the common elected official, this is false. Do you think your common council person, mayor, state legislator, even member of Congress gets this treatment?

No, of course not. For example, unless my Representative, Betty McCollum (D-MN), does something truly extraordinary, there’ll be no state funeral, laying in state, and all that. She may get a nice writeup in the local newspaper for her long period of service (since 2001 and counting), but after that will be an obituary, and then a funeral – attended by family, friends, and colleagues. Imagine that.

Think about when it does happen. Name some names: Reagan, Bush, McCain, Ford. These were not ordinary politicians. Not only did they achieve one of the highest offices of their profession, they also used those offices to greatly influence the course this nation followed. High achievers often gain these posthumous honors, regardless of their profession. For example, top academics will often have faculty positions named after them, or a scholarship in their name funded by their university. High achievers are often recognized as an encouragement to up and comers, and to indicate the model of just what those up and comers should be aiming for.

And, back to the arena of politicians – BITE YOUR TONGUE – often these high achieving politicians are also veterans. Let that sink in for a moment.

The point of this stanza is to magnify an imagined (i.e., false) self-importance imputed to the political class, an attribute that is always considered a negative. That there are self-important people in politics is a given, since they exist in all human professions, from priests to farmers to even food-service. But the fallaciousness of the stanza keys the careful reader into skeptically reading the balance of the missive.

Papers tell of their life stories
From the time that they were young,
But the passing of a Veteran
Goes unnoticed, and unsung.

Does it? Is this not the point of the obituary, the announcement of death that most people receive?

But let’s name some more names. Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Murphy, Nimitz, the Sullivan Brothers, and so many other vets have been memorialized by state funerals, the naming of various machines of war for them, and even Hollywood fame (Murphy), and their deaths brought about public mourning and praising for their exploits and accomplishments.

But the author of this missive would rather you not remember them. Maybe the protagonist of this missive is little more than a PFC in the Army – a position held by thousands. Should we memorialize all of them with more than the usual 21 gun salute? This gets mighty expensive mighty fast.

Is the greatest contribution
To the welfare of our land,
Some jerk who breaks his promise
And cons his fellow man?

And here our author makes an egregious blunder, because he reveals, far too directly, how he wants us to feel about the political class of the United States: Jerks who break their promises. This is the tapping of the wedge that is far too loud, the wedge that is meant to separate the common citizen from the American government under which s/he lives and benefits.

Yes, benefits.

Do promises get broken? Sure, sometimes. When it comes to a government based on compromise, the citizenry had better understand that can happen and doesn’t mean the poor sap who over-promised is a moral-free individual. Sometimes you don’t get what you want immediately. And sometimes, what you want is not what you should get.

But by denigrating the political class as a class, the author strives to inject loathing and contempt into the citizen for those who try to lead this country. This accomplishes the twin ends of dividing the country against itself, and to insulate the political class from the entry of more citizens into the political realm, which is their right. From the entry of persons who may, with experience, offer performance superior to those currently in office or instrumental in political party operations^[1].

In other words, leave us with second- and third-raters in charge. If you’ve ever wondered at the incompetency that appears to be present in either party, this is a contributing factor. As this mail was received from a conservative source, it seems reasonable to speculate this contributes to the incompetency apparent, at least to myself, in Republican circles since the days of Speaker Gingrich.

Or the ordinary fellow
Who in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his country
And offers up his life?

While the Romans were often led into war by their political leaders, at least in their early years^[2], there’s was a different way of life that today’s folks wouldn’t much like^[3]. Truth be told, the physical requirements of serving in the military is incompatible with the physical realities of political leaders who’ve reached the point in their career at which they’re making life and death decisions concerning the deployment of the military.

The politician’s stipend
And the style in which he lives,
Are often disproportionate,
To the service that he gives.

Is it, now? Most politicians live on dreams, performing dreary jobs that most probably don’t enjoy, but work in because they know, or at least hope, that the citizen benefits from that work, from the Crime Lab doing painstaking scientific work, to the AG trying to decide which case to pursue and which to discard.

And while it’s true that a few politicians parley their experience into vast sums of money, the same may be said of certain veterans, usually of general officer rank (but remember Murphy!). The two professions are more alike than the author might care to admit.

It’s also worth removing the gloss from the point that not everyone desires the same things. The author implies that we all want to live in 30,000 square foot estates, and this is almost violently untrue, isn’t it? Many desire little more than to raise a family and perform competently at whatever job they do, to have a good roof over their heads. Not everyone wants to be a Bill Gates, or a General Patton, or a President Bush. This point really takes of the wind out of the sails of this stanza.

While the ordinary Veteran,
Who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal
And perhaps a pension, small.

I cannot resist noting this is the missive author stabbing himself in the back. Through contributing to the common defense, the veteran benefits by having a safe family, not to mention learning skills such as discipline, and perhaps even a trade, as a veteran friend of mine did in the Navy. Any veteran knows this, so this stanza is a very weak contribution.

It is not the politicians
With their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom
That our country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger,
With your enemies at hand,
Would you really want some cop-out,
With his ever-waffling stand?

Or would you want a Veteran
His home, his country, his kin,
Just a common Veteran,
Who would fight until the end.

At this juncture, it’s important to consider the oft-overlooked point that the military, whether the Continental Army or the U.S. Army, doesn’t win freedom – it wins wars. When the Continental Army finally banished the lobsterbacks^[4] from most of North America, our current political system, based on freedoms and representative & participative government, didn’t just *poof* into existence as Cornwallis left Yorktown.

It was brought into existence by a collection of politicians. Yeah, that’s right, with names like Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Rutledge, Madison, and many others, who debated the form into existence, and then persuaded the States and populace (then tired of the Confederation of 1781-1788) to embrace it.

That’s part, an extraordinary part, of a politicians job, which is, in the final analysis, making wise choices in governance. That is not part of the military’s job. They go out and kick ass. That doesn’t ensure freedom, but it does let the politicians get on with their job.

Confusing the two just leads to military dictatorships. The author of this missive might assent to Viva Pinochet!^[5], but I shall not.

He was just a common Veteran,
And his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us
We may need his likes again.

For when countries are in conflict,
We find the Veteran’s part,
Is to clean up all the troubles
That the politicians start.

It’s worth noting that quite often the political country class of one class country or another is responsible for war. In fact, it happens all the time. Especially in those countries where the political class has been absorbed by the military class.

But, circling back to my earlier point, avoiding “political messes” requires the members of the political class be constituted of superior persons – a requirement which will not be fulfilled if mail of this ilk succeeds in attaining the goal we ascertained earlier.

This tactic is a way for the author to cover his missive in glory, rather than the tar & feathers it surely deserves. The political class is denigrated with an insult it does often deserve – while quietly denying the political class the caliber of people it requires. In this way, we see the author of this missive is no friend of the United States.

If we cannot do him honor
While he’s here to hear the praise,
Then at least let’s give him homage
At the ending of his days.

It is actually quite common to hear folks thanking current and former members of the military for their service. This stanza is designed to make the iconic veteran some unappreciated victim of civil society failure, which is palpably untrue.

Perhaps just a simple headline
In the paper that might say:
“OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING,
A VETERAN DIED TODAY.”

At this juncture, I think I need an insulin shot.

PLEASE,

If you are proud of our Vets, then pass this on

And the ending, which calls for this unworthy missive to be passed on as if it’s a sacred duty. Viruses persuade animal cells to replicate the virus, thus causing illness, but it’s not sacred in the same way as this missive is not sacred.

There should be no need to summarize, but I shall anyways: This composition falls into that class of messages which quietly attempt to alienate the people from their government. We’re expected to forget that our government is, well, OUR GOVERNMENT. You don’t like how it’s functioning? Then join the political class.

Just remember, that’s much against the aims of this author.

¹ Especially when many appear to be knuckledraggers.

² This can be verified from many sources. I’ll cite War And Peace And War, Professor Peter Turchin, Plume edition, p 158, the paragraph beginning:

Perhaps the ultimate expression of this sacrificial spirit was the Roman ritual of “devotion” …

And goes on to describe how the leaders of Roman armies, finding themselves in desperate straits, would sacrifice themselves and their armies using a religious ritual. Keep in mind the armies were often led by the Roman Consul, the highest political position during the years of the Republic.

³ Again, I’ll cite Turchin, p. 155-156, in which he asserts that individualism was frowned upon. I doubt many Americans would abide by this Roman Republic societal requirement.

⁴ A term I use purely for the delectation of the older reader, who will recall that it refers to the British Army personnel of 1776, who wore bright-red uniforms.

⁵ General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, military dictator (1973-1990), perpetrator of many crimes according to the opposition.

The NASA mission to asteroid Bennu is called OSIRIS-REx, and a recent pic of Bennu is quite fun.

Image: NASA.

I wonder how long it’ll be before someone tries to drag one of these home.

Illuminati:

The Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, “enlightened”) is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically, the name usually refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret societyfounded on 1 May 1776. The society’s goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life, and abuses of state power. “The order of the day,” they wrote in their general statutes, “is to put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them without dominating them.” The Illuminati—along with Freemasonry and other secret societies—were outlawed through edict by the Bavarian ruler Charles Theodore with the encouragement of the Catholic Church, in 1784, 1785, 1787, and 1790. In the following several years, the group was vilified by conservative and religious critics who claimed that they continued underground and were responsible for the French Revolution. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Saving Thomas Jefferson’s soul,” Gregory S. Schneider, WaPo:

“I had often heard you [former President Thomas Jefferson] indignantly called, deist, infidel, illuminati &c &c,” King wrote. Surely, Jefferson did not want to be lumped in with “horrid” figures such as Voltaire and other free thinkers who questioned the value of central religion? Their writings had “poisoned the minds & proved fatally ruinous to many.”

Yesterday we returned from a vacation trip to Traverse City, MI, during which we visited Sleeping Bear Dunes National Shoreline and snapped a few pictures. Here’s a few of some dead trees. The first two were up a devious brick footpath that nearly sent me falling on my head.

These are of a grouping of three which made for some nice composition. They are located right on the beach.

Intercalary:

1. interpolated; interposed.
2. inserted or interpolated in the calendar, as an extra day or month.
3. having such an inserted day, month, etc., as a particular year. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Yazılıkaya: A 3000-year-old Hittite mystery may finally be solved,” Colin Barras, NewScientist (22 June 2019, paywall):

But performing these two operations alone isn’t enough to make an accurate calendar, because 12 lunar months add up to only about 354.36 days. The calendar can be brought roughly back in line with the solar year – about 365.24 days – by adding a 13th “intercalary” month every third year, meaning a total of six additional months are added over an 18-year period. Even then, however, the calendar still drifts.

This drift can be largely removed by adding an additional intercalary month every 19th year – making the timepiece run on what is known as the Metonic cycle. Zangger and Gautschy suggest that the Hittites used the procession of 19 deities on the eastern wall to keep track of this. They think a stone marker was moved along this procession once a year to help the Hittites work out when to add extra months over a 19-year cycle (Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, DOI: 10.1558/jsa.37641).

Oiling the gears of detective work in the immemorial manner.

The female lead is simply too annoying in Cloak Without Dagger (1956), the story of a former World War II counter-intelligence agent, now a floor-waiter in a snazzy hotel, and the woman he had loved during the war who stumbles onto him while covering a fashion show. She was snoopy then, and a decade later she’s snoopy now, suggesting that one of the fashion designers staying at his hotel is actually the spy he was chasing back during the war – the investigation she messed up.

Between budding re-romance and an inquisitiveness that just won’t quit, even when breaking into a military installation where they test nuclear powered tanks, she carries the bulk of the story, and thus has many opportunities to be irritating – and doesn’t waste many of them. By the end, even her former boyfriend has used chloroform on her when she stumbles into a tight situation, and I, at least, considered applauding.

You may have guessed the ending, but it’s still a satisfactory, if stereotypical, conclusion to a mystery which was a trifle puzzling, although nothing like The Vicious Circle (1957). The theme no doubt has to do with persistence, whether it’s his or hers, or even the spy’s, although in that case it would be a negative comment on one’s persistent pursuit of wealth, regardless of its source or consequences.

But compelling? No, not really. A bit too fluffy.

lowbrows: an arthaus comedy (2017) defies deep description. Running on the conceit that a Brit woman, Justine, has inherited half an interest in the bar Lowbrows, in Pilot Point, TX, and travels there to investigate the bar and its customers, it becomes a near stream-of-consciousness exercise in meeting her new partner, his restoration work, the local old ladies exercise club, and the various animals.

It’s not a story, and it’s a comedy in the sense of vague ridicule that hangs over every single scene. The acting is often crude and even startlingly bad, but it has a certain charm to it, if only to wonder what will come next. We had to imbibe of it in small portions, as perhaps we’re not as whimsical as the target audience might be, but it might be more up your alley than ours.

Enjoy. Or not.

But who has the better hairstyle?

When considering how to review Dune (1984), it’s hard to know which element to denigrate first.

Consider the visuals: Much of the special effects are sloppily done, although, given the context of a large, space-going empire, the baroque architecture and even spaceships are a nice touch. It’s clear that the director, David Lynch, had a vision for this movie, but it appears his visuals crew just couldn’t deliver those goals for him.

The acting is not exemplary, despite the presence of many star performers, although it’s also not a disaster. With the exception of Baron Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan), they come off as professionals struggling with oddball material; the good Baron may be the only memorable character.

And why are the actors struggling? Because of the story. I know I read Dune, the novel, back in high school, but I don’t recall a word of it, so I must take the movie version on its own terms, and those are dreadful.

First, there’s little attempt to make the characters sympathetic. They are operating in what appears to be a semi-despotic society, but they aren’t struggling for freedom or values, but rather for control of the spice of the planet Arrakis, an immortality drug. Why should we care? The Harkonnens are ceding control to the House of Atreides at the direction of the Emperor, but plan to return in force and kill the Atreides, including the head of the household, the Duke. After the battle and the Duke has gone to his doom, we find the son, Paul, has escaped and found his way to a mystical resistance movement, who might revere the sandworms of Arrakis, monsters who’d dwarf a brontosaurus.

All the while, inner thoughts – vapid as they are – are voiced in whispers, a signal of a failure to find other ways to communicate the inner states of the characters. There are hints of power politics in the Empire that are never sufficiently explained, even if they are somewhat fascinating in an otherwise dull story, of other ways of life both prestigious and constraining.

In the end, I have no idea of the real point of the story. Is Paul a chosen one? A new God? Or just a guy who happened to be at the right place at the right time? The mysticism serves to enable superpowers without significantly limiting them or associating costs with them, and that’s a mistake, because it legitimizes any sort of deus ex machina – meaning the value of cleverness plummets to zero.

In the end, while some of the visuals are slightly fun, this is really just a waste of time. It took me two or three months to watch it. Don’t follow my example.

And it doesn’t need embellishment, or so says Mikhaila Fogel of Lawfare, with regard to the upcoming grilling of Robert Mueller by the House Judiciary and Intel Committees. After reviewing a production put on by Hollywood, she has some words of advice to the notably attention-hungry House members sitting on these committees: