Monthly Archives: February 2021

I actually do not have a fascination with, a creepy need to stalk, Erick Erickson.

Really.

But his post today was a very strong example of his utter unconsciousness about his own side’s place in the cosmos. Going through the post, all you had to do was replace ‘cancel culture,’ the current worry trigger for the right, with the word abortion, and it applied equally well to the far right fringe.

Worse yet, it has applied for decades, through punitive & dishonest legislation, bad reasoning, barbaric threats, and assassinations. Cancel culture is, what, a couple of years old and already causing chatter on the left that it may be overreach? I have confidence that its excesses will either cause it to be modified or discarded; and if Critical Race Theory, from which I believe it springs, is really as flawed as Andrew Sullivan and other suggest, then liberal critiques will eventually banish it to the hinterlands, if not beyond, in due time.

Because that’s how the liberal tradition works. I have no such confidence in the conservative tradition as it stands now.

But here’s the creme de la creme of Erickson’s post:

In America, a socially conservative person should be allowed to live in a socially conservative area that bans abortion centers and does not have transgender bathroom access or its bakers compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings. In America, a socially liberal person should be allowed to live in a community that funds the local abortion clinic, has transgender bathrooms, and encourages the whole town to turn out and celebrate the gay wedding. The only exception to what some may perceive as intolerance is race because our nation explicitly fought a war over that issue and the right side prevailed and amended the constitution accordingly.

That some will read the prior paragraph and refuse to acknowledge the validity of each side being able to live in communities governed by majority cultural interest is why the United States will not stay united and the disproportionate power of the left to end careers and wipe out livelihoods for failure to adhere to their cultural orthodoxy is why the United States is not going to survive unless something changes.

There are so many things wrong here that it’s hard to know where to start.

Let’s begin with his accusations that the left will be responsible if the nation splits into pieces. Yet, what he describes, In America, a socially conservative person should be allowed to live in a socially conservative area that bans abortion centers and does not have transgender bathroom access or its bakers compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings …, is strongly congruent with separate nations – not one united nation. In other words, I want to split the United States without taking the blame.

Next, what advantage to the nation is having it split so strongly as he envisions? In particular, he mistakes his strong anti-abortion stand as being a positive attribute, and it’s not. Unequal rights will discourage free migration within the nation and lead to even more polarization, bringing on exaggeration, lies, and hatred on both sides.

Sound familiar?

We improve when we mix, borrow ideas freely, explore how changes to morality improve or hurt society. Rigid orthodoxy, which is the result of unequal rights, benefits those who scramble to the top and enforce that orthodoxy, but few others; society stultifies; and when they see other parts of the country doing better in spite of violating orthodoxy, hatred follows.

I just can’t quite believe Erickson seriously wrote that nonsense. It’s not April 1st, so it’s unlikely to be a joke. That he actually believes it is one of those things that makes me wonder if we have a shared intellectual understanding of the world.

Or if it’s complete shat.

There have been multiple reports in the media of defections from the Republican Party in the wake of the January 6th Insurrection, but there’s nothing like a graph to bring important developments to the fore.

This is reinforced by editorials such as this from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump should be an opportunity for Missouri Sens. Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley to redeem themselves for blindly supporting a man whose conduct was indefensible. Instead, they continue bringing additional embarrassment to the state after having flirted with the abolition of democracy in favor of keeping a dictator wannabe in the White House.

Hawley, of course, is the Senate’s biggest cheerleader when it comes to asserting that Trump won the Nov. 3 election and that Trump shouldn’t be held accountable for directing a mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. Blunt had the gall to tell reporters that, until a 13-minute video of the Capitol attack was shown to senators on Tuesday, he had never taken so much time to watch what occurred on that “truly a horrendous day.” Both voted against allowing the trial to proceed.

Missourians must not allow themselves to be fooled by the weak boilerplate defenses by Hawley and Blunt. Hawley tweeted on Tuesday: “Today Democrats launched their unconstitutional impeachment trial while President Biden cancels thousands of working class jobs across this country. Americans deserve better.” In fact, a bipartisan majority of senators have deemed the proceeding to be constitutional. And the attempt to divert attention to Biden, who has not canceled a single job, is pathetic but oh-so-typical of Hawley.

These are symptoms of the clash of morality systems. In one corner we have the morality of democracies, wherein we build our secular morality around truth, justice, and a vote per person. The rest is negotiable and contingent on how reality works out.

The other? It’s a quasi-religious authoritarianism, a semi-redundancy seeing as the Divine is rarely elected, and its representatives only somewhat more so. Not that I’m condemning religion in general, but only certain sects that have succumbed to the lure of worldly wealth, power, and prestige, and have melded the opposition to democratic (small-d) pillars inherent in their religions to their view of how the world should be run, despite, in the dominant case, admonitions in their theological texts against application of those very principles to worldly matters.

This is not a matter of utter clarity. The general voter, not particularly interested in the shades of gray, sausage grinder that is politics, may not recognize where the Republican Party has been headed. Indeed, outside of a few precocious members and ex-members, the Party itself didn’t realize that its toxic chemistry of fall-into-line and amateurism would lead to a Party that brays for an autocratic outcome, all in the name of, well, winning. Winning in the name of the Divine. Which leads to the consequence that Any behavior is acceptable in the Name of the Divine.

Editorials such as that of the Post-Dispatch seek to remind Senators far gone in the authoritarian morality system that the system in which they are flourishing is not the one they desire, and that to which they are aligned is not friendly to democracy. I fear such editorials will go for naught, at least so far as the Senators themselves are concerned; there may be more impact on voters, who may or may not be important in the future of the United States of America.

Why? Those Senators are so certain of their righteousness that they do not commit to ideals of democracy, but to the ideal that the Party must win. In this scenario, the desires of voters is ignored. We saw this in the pathetic lawsuit Texas v Pennsylvania.

But they fail to think ahead. Consider this description of yesterday’s Impeachment Trial proceedings from Benjamin Wittes and Tia Sewell:

Ted Lieu of California builds on this point by arguing that Trump’s behavior after the attack indicated a dangerous lack of remorse. Lieu states that “not even once” did Trump condemn the attack on the day it occurred, despite the pleas of numerous lawmakers who experienced the violence firsthand. Rather, when the president told insurrectionists to go home—three hours after the attack—he also stated “we love you” and repeated his false claims about a stolen election. Lieu claims that Trump was “eerily silent” on Jan. 7, until finally—nearly 30 hours after the attack—he released a video condemning the Capitol breach. But notably absent from this video, Lieu notes, was the instruction to never do it again. Nor has Trump shown any remorse or taken responsibility in the weeks since: The House managers show a video from Jan. 12, in which Trump states that his speech on Jan. 6 was “totally appropriate.”

DeGette describes how extremist groups were emboldened by Trump—warning that unless there is action now, “the violence is only just beginning.” According to U.S. intelligence community bulletins, she shows, there was a great increase in violent online rhetoric and credible threats following the Capitol breach. She covers the price in dollar terms to both state and federal governments associated with increased security measures following the riot and argues that constituents have also suffered from a lack of regular access to their representatives. DeGette also notes that experts who study domestic extremist violence in the U.S. have stated that the “perceived success” of Jan. 6 will foment future attacks, which pose a specific threat to racial, ethnic and religious minorities in the United States. [Lawfare]

Now what happens? I alluded to it here:

FLASH MOB: You stole your election! You stole your election!

[REPUBLICAN ELECTED] OFFICIAL: I did not!

FM: You stole your election! You stole your election!

OFFICIAL: I did not!

FM: PROVE IT, THEN! PROVE IT, THEN!

OFFICIAL: I don’t have to! You have no proof!

FM: JUST LIKE YOU DON’T ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, YOU HYPOCRITICAL, LEG HUMPING, PANTS WETTER! WE DON’T NEED ANY!

Imagine that happening for every election. And then the flash mobs are replaced by violent mobs. And then, in 2024, candidate Cruz, smoothly thinking the Republican nomination for President is in the bag, is suddenly assaulted and torn apart by Hawley’s mob.

And then Hawley is never seen in public, seized as he is by terror at the death threats issued by Cruz’s partisans.

A scenario such as this should have been described to the Senate, a reminder to Cruz and Hawley that autocracies and theocracies are extremely dangerous, not only because of ambitious politicians, but to ambitious politicians. One of the great strengths of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power, so touted from the latest November until January 6th. The riot run by the ambitious and the wretched in Trump’s thrall attempted to destroy that tenet of democracy, but it only magnified its importance to those citizens – many in number – who are happy with democracy.

And so the decline in the popularity of the Republican Party. Gallup may try to make this seem a typical part of the ups and downs of the political parties:

Sub-40% favorable ratings for the Republican Party are not unusual. The last such measure was 38% in January 2019 amid the partial federal government shutdown related to a dispute over funding for Trump’s proposed southern border wall. From 2013 through 2018, the average favorable rating for the GOP was 39%.

In contrast to those generally weak ratings, in January 2020, a slim majority of Americans viewed the Republican Party favorably while Trump was in the process of being acquitted in his first impeachment trial, and the U.S. economy was strong.

The current GOP image reading is still significantly above the party’s historical low rating of 28% from October 2013, when disputes over funding the Affordable Care Act led to a partial government shutdown. Gallup also measured a low 31% reading for the GOP in December 1998 after Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican-led House of Representatives.

But the Insurrection of January 6th is unique in modern American history. The fact that it has not been definitively rejected by the Republican Party marks the Party’s alleged adherence to democratic ideals as suspect, and as most Americans would prefer to live in a democracy rather than a theologically seasoned autocracy, I suspect the Republican Party will continue its descent into triviality.

What could stop it?

Determined leadership by the Republican leadership. Rep McCarthy (R-CA), House Minority Leader, has already definitively failed that test, acting like a toady for Trump since the Insurrection.

But Senator McConnell (R-KY), the leader of the GOP Senators, still has an opportunity to save his Party from diminishment and extinction. He’s reportedly still undecided as to whether he’ll vote guilty or innocent.

If he votes guilty, he leads most of the other GOP Senators into voting guilty as well. By repulsing Trump at long last, he communicates to the public that the Republican Party may be open to the morality of democracy, rather than than of authoritarianism – true or not.

If he votes innocent, then the independents and the reported thousands of Republican defectors will read that as an endorsement of the Insurrection, an endorsement of fallacious election challenges, an endorsement of the unimportance of truth and facts.

And they’ll vote accordingly.

It’s not fun, it’s not entertaining, but it’s grim and accurate:

Remember: Brian Sicknick deserves justice. pic.twitter.com/doBHaL05hO

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) February 10, 2021

It’s tragic that the Republican Party is expected to give President Trump yet another mulligan rather than punish President Trump, even the feeble punishment of banning him from public office – as if he’d ever win another election.

Another indictment of toxic team politics.

Erick Erickson still tries to promote moral equivalency:

All your bile and rage at them should be, in part, directed at the Democrats who decided to engage in emotional theater instead of having a real trial.

Are they subpoenaing Mike Pence as a witness? Nope.

The bison helmeted jackass? Nope.

The police officers? Nope.

They’re not having a trial and a year ago Chuck Schumer said not calling witnesses made it a sham.

This is Chuck Schumer’s sham.

Mitt Romney nearing the insurrectionists, saved by Officer Goodman.

Funny, but I saw witness testimony yesterday.

It showed insurrectionists breaking down fences.

It showed Vice President Pence making for shelter scant moments before the insurrectionists almost caught him.

It showed Senator Romney (R-UT) almost blundering into a group of insurrectionists, before Officer Goodman found and redirected him just moments before disaster would have struck.

Yes, security cameras are witnesses. Erickson may call out legal technicalities and insist a witness be human, or at least biological, but that is a distinction with meaning that he won’t like.

Why? Because the cameras are objective; humans are subjective and not necessarily honest, even under oath. If they were, what need would there be for cross-examination and penalties for perjury?

Indeed, are there penalties for perjury if, say, Senator Hawley was called to testify?

Cameras do have their problems, from deepfake tampering to low-fidelity recordings, as we often see on the local news. But, absent tampering, they do not skew their opinions: you see what they see.

So when Erickson attempts to turn purple with outrage: This is Chuck Schumer’s sham, I just have to laugh. Yes, the first impeachment lacked anything resembling witnesses, as even the transcript was an incomplete transcript, which left observers wanting to know what was omitted: perhaps a threat of a bombing run by US forces if the Ukrainian President didn’t deliver what Trump wanted? I merely speculate to show just what was obscured by that transcript.

The cameras, limited as they are, do not obscure.

Erickson is positively frantic to paint the Democrats as being morally equivalent to the Republicans, but, so far, it just doesn’t wash. The Senate is awash in the best of witness statements, and the Republicans’ failure to act on this mute, yet so eloquent, testimony will condemn them in the eyes of future Americans for their lack of devotion to the truth.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), in response to President Trump’s then-upcoming second impeachment trial:

Right wing pundit Erick Erickson finds it necessary to be careful when trying to speak truth:

What [Molly Ball’s Time Magazine] article actually does is show just how inept the Republicans were in 2020 across the board. Privately, when you talk to members of President Trump’s campaign team, including those who participated in the post-mortem of their election, they will admit there was a lot of ineptitude on the Republican side. Many of them are now screaming about a stolen election, which has provided them a smokescreen to avoid being held accountable for their incompetence. This has nothing to do with the President, but the people who surrounded the President and made a lot of money grifting off of President Trump’s campaign.

So long as you dare not criticize Dear Leader, you aren’t going to find truth.

Truth is, the buck stops at Trump. Truth is, Trump hired these people, and therefore he should have vetted them.

Truth is, Trump ran an amateur’s campaign and suffered an amateur’s fate.

And Erickson knows this. He exclaimed upon it once, even if I can’t find the damn quote.

Trump shot himself in the damn foot, like any amateur will, but Erickson doesn’t dare point to the hopping because you just don’t do that in the Party of That Idiot Trump.

“Don’t go near those who have had the COVID vaccine. They have become homosexuals.”

You could easily think that another far-right fringer, maybe a pastor like Paula White, has been heard from.

And you’d be wrong.

From the Jerusalem Post, this is Iranian Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian. I don’t know more about him than what’s in the article, but this sort of statement is congruent with protecting his power structure, Islam, against encroachments. So’s this:

Tabrizian has a history of derogatory opinions about Western medicine. Last year, a video showed him burning Harrison’s Manual of Medicine and saying that “Islamic medicine” had made such books “irrelevant,” according to an article on the website of Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcast service.

And while this can be interpreted as an anti-Western, Islamic-centric screed, I think it’s more likely to be an attack on a far more dangerous, for Tabrizian, advance: that of rational, evidence-based medicine. The Islamic Republic of Iran, at least in the eyes of the eponymous power structure, should center its existence on Islam, not on anything else.

Because, in that way, power can be retained.

The real question is whether Tabrizian honestly believes a book that was written centuries ago can have any relevant medical knowledge. Can medicine based on “Islamic principles” compete with evidence-based medicine? I doubt it. The history of Christian, Islamic, even Traditional Chinese Medicine is that of grifting, not success.

And if Tabrizian goes looking for all of these new homosexuals, he won’t find them.

But this is a lesson for the United States. The nuttiness of the Christian far-right has been contained to the obscure corners of the country, so far. For four short years we were somewhat exposed to what happens if a President lets Christian grifters manipulate him, principally through the hydroxychloroquine debacle.

Tabrizian’s spew is a lesson to the United States why putting religious grifters or zealots in charge is a fundamentally bad idea.

If you sit on your own voodoo doll, can you ever get up again?
tobi711

From “Arizona Senate votes to not hold Maricopa County board in contempt,” from the AP, KTAR News:

In a surprise move Monday, the Arizona Senate voted to not hold the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in contempt for failing to turn over voting machines and ballots from the November election.

The vote was expected to pass with a Republican majority, but GOP Rep. Paul Boyer voted against the resolution, evening the tallies at 15 each and killing the resolution.

If the vote would have passed, the five-member board consisting of just one Democrat could have been subject to immediate arrest.

And I’ll tell you, that Democrat is working really damn hard.

Still, it’s a troubling story of Republican shenanigans in Arizona, where the fringe-right doesn’t comprehend that it’s ideology has been rejected by Arizona residents.

Phytomining:

The planting (and subsequent harvesting) of vegetation that selectively concentrate specific metals from the environment into their tissues, for the primary or subsidiary purpose of commercial exploitation of the extracted metal. [Wiktionary]

Noted in “Plants that suck metals from the soil can be farmed to make our tech,” Michael Allen, NewScientist (9 January 2021):

One incident that helped draw that attention was [Anthony] van der Ent’s discovery in Borneo. The plant’s sap turned out to contain a whopping 25 per cent nickel by weight. “It is the best candidate metal crop we have ever found,” he says.

The first thing he did on seeing this plant was ask the park ranger where it came from. He couldn’t remember. So van der Ent offered local people a reward if they could tell him – to no avail. It wasn’t until 2015, a few years after the initial discovery, that he chanced upon a clump of the plants growing on a nearby hillside. From there, he began experimenting with farming metal, otherwise known as agromining or phytomining, as an environmentally friendly alternative to mining. He even named his shrub Phyllanthus rufuschaneyi in homage to the inventor of agromining.

If you go to the state of Sabah in Borneo these days, you can find what van der Ent calls the “first tropical metal farm”. There, he and his colleagues are growing that nickel-loving woody shrub. Each year, they coppice the plants, pulp them and extract the metal. In 2019, they reported a yield of 250 kilograms of nickel a year – currently worth almost $4000 – from each hectare of land.

I’ve gotta wonder how long a field can be productive. Or does the metal move upward somehow?

This NewScientist (9 January 2021) article on using bread as a scaffolding for growing new human organs contains an even more startling revelation:

While bread-based tissue engineering might sound rather implausible, an even more unlikely sounding project based on one of [Andrew Pelling at the University of Ottawa]’s plant materials is looking very promising: treating spinal injuries with asparagus.

Pelling’s team has shown that rats whose spinal cords have been completely severed can recover some movement after implanting capillaries extracted from asparagus. The microchannels guide the growth of axons from nerve cells, allowing some connections to be remade.

Pelling stresses that it isn’t a miracle cure and other teams have achieved similar results in rats. Yet the big advantage is that it doesn’t require using living cells, making it much cheaper and simpler than many other approaches. In October, the US Food and Drug Administration designated the implant as a “breakthrough device”, which speeds up the process of beginning human trials.

I wonder how quickly someone will take offense at the use of asparagus to repair damage to the human body. Surely someone will be appalled.

Always treat your monsters informally.

How To Make A Monster (1958) is a minor B-list gem of a movie. Blessed with superior B&W cinematography, this is the story of Pete Dumond, master makeup artist with a specialty in the traditional monsters such as the Werewolf, and his war with the corporation taking over Dumond’s employer, American International Studios (look for the in-joke). NBN Associates, the buyers, are not interested in continuing the monster movie tradition; they want the physical assets, but the people? Only those who are applicable to producing their style of movies. Dumond does not fit in.

But Dumond has other plans.

Dumond’s secret weapon? Well, let’s just say he’s found an improvement to his art that enhances the performance of the actors underneath the fur, feathers, and face plasters. Under his terse direction, the monsters become a menace not just to the movie heroines, but to anyone in their path.

And there’s even more lurking under the affable Dumond exterior. Indeed, that which bubbles under his balding pate is enough to consume everything. But will it?

Competent performances and story round out this low-key movie. I won’t say it’s wonderful, as some of the horror didn’t really connect for us, but it surprised us in a delightful manner, which was perhaps reflective of our low expectations.

Enjoy!

Context is a word that I often assert is what’s missing from a false argument; long time readers are no doubt annoyed at how often I push it.

But this is what occurred to me as a controversy has broken out on the left side of the spectrum. The source? WaPo’s Charles Lane has the report:

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, cities and towns are belatedly but necessarily purging public spaces of the names and images of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the soldiers who served his treasonous, pro-slavery cause.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s school board has voted to start replacing the names of the Union’s president, Abraham Lincoln, and Union officers such as James Garfield and William McKinley (also former presidents) from public schools, ostensibly for the same cause of historical truth, equity and justice.

Why Lincoln?

Lincoln [is] to be scoured from an 80-year-old high school because, in 1862, he presided over the hangings of 38 rebellious Native Americans in Minnesota.

Lane is on the context problem:

Far from pursuing Native Americans in the Minnesota uprising, [Lincoln] took huge political risks to prevent federal troops from hanging many more of them (as my colleague David Von Drehle has shown). Yes, he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation as a war-winning measure as much as a liberationist one; he harbored anti-Black sentiments, which is why Frederick Douglass regarded him with mixed feelings.

Even Douglass, however, ultimately reached a positive verdict on Lincoln’s public acts and private attitudes, calling him “one of the very few Americans, who could entertain a negro and converse with him without in anywise reminding him of the unpopularity of his color.”

But legendary figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are also on the chopping block. How should a liberal defend such figures?

Let’s begin with an assertion concerning morality. Morality changes; indeed, morality evolves^[1]. As we observe, however messily, that a modification to the societal morality system in use improves that society, we adopt those changes; those changes that bring chaos and disaster are rejected.

Key to this understanding is that the constituents of society are not always agreed upon. A liberal may define society as all people present in a geographical location; a conservative may wish to exclude illegal immigrants; a white supremacist may wish to limit society to white people, or even white people who espouse white supremacy.

From each of these viewpoints the evaluation of a change to the morality system commences. For those who base their morality on a concept of justice being integral to a peaceful, prosperous society, changes towards bringing more justice are considered positively; for the American white supremacist, who grounds their alleged supremacy on a triviality, their societal position, and therefore power, will be threatened by such changes, and therefore rejected.

It is the clash of acceptance vs rejection which often fuels the culture wars, to which I’ll forebear to add more.

Next, let’s agree to admit that no one is perfect; about this point, I hope there is no disagreement. Equally trite and true, everyone is a product of their culture: the ultimate contextual statement. Many, or perhaps all, Founding Fathers had slaves. Most were racists. Just like everyone around them. Terrible, yes. While I feel a philosophical kinship with Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin for their basic liberal dispositions, I doubt I could hold a civil conversation with them. The contexts are too distant.

Most people are simply elements of their society; what marks a person as exemplary? I suggest it’s their magnitude and direction as an agent of moral change.

So let’s use this to differentiate between, say, Generals George Washington and Robert E. Lee.

Washington owned slaves, and no doubt punished them. Yes, he did. But, in concert with the other Founding Fathers, he acted, as an agent of moral change and someone who put life and fortune on the line for it, in effecting the transition for the colonists in America from the absolute monarchy of the English government, subject to the murderous and thievish whim of a member of a religiously-crazed monarchical family (see this link for more on them in the context of the importance of America being a secular society) to a self-governing society based on justice.

Government is a matter of utmost moral standing, because historically it has great capacity to do evil and to do good. The absolute monarchy has many examples of the former and few of the latter, and while representative democracy has had some truly dreadful moments, such as the slaughter of the American Indians, it has also had moments of reaching for the peaks of humanity’s goodness. More importantly, the mechanisms with which it’s implemented means it doesn’t depend on the goodness of a single person; and it has demonstrated the capacity for improvement, a characteristic saliently missing from the absolute monarchy.

The Founding Fathers were critical to that transition, and possibly none more so than Washington, although of course many made vital contributions. Washington’s actions as an agent of positive moral change within the context of his society, despite his tragic ownership of slaves to the day he died, marks a man who managed to emerge from his societal matrix and direct society along a path of improvement, through risk and self-sacrifice.

Moving on to Robert E. Lee, the principal general of the American Confederacy, let’s examine his context. In the eighty years that had passed between Washington’s participation in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War in which Lee filled a leading role, morality in Western Civilization had evolved to express revulsion at slavery, the issue at stake in the Civil War. The American South had stubbornly held on to its notions of slavery being a proper business, despite its own near-terror that they might see a slave rebellion result in the overwhelming of many slave-owning families. It was, despite its pretensions, a pocket of moral depravity, a pustule on America’s ass requiring removal if America were to continue to progress, morally speaking.

Historically, America was one of the last of the Western nations to ban slavery.

Lee, through his actions, defended the institution of slavery, and disputed the idea of racial equality. For those who dispute it, slavery is the endpoint, is it not? By leading the armies of the South, he defended those who believed slavery was a legitimate institution, and those who believed Blacks were subhuman.

Lee sought, consciously or not, to be a retrograde agent of moral change. That is, what he defended and advocated was, in the end, a negative contributor to societal morality. Sure, he was also a traitor to the United States, and, as a commissioned officer in the US Army, probably deserved death as a punishment. But it’s that, as his defining characteristic, he defended an institution widely regarded as being an institution of evil is the differentiator between him and George Washington – who was instrumental in birthing an institution widely considered to be a positive contributor to morality.

Nobody is perfect, and that common denominator gives all people the chance to achieve greatness. That they don’t do so in all aspects of their lives may be tragic, but it’s also unavoidable; the greatness lies in what positive and extraordinary contributions they do make, throwing off the shackles of their upbringing, to the understanding and implementation of a better morality, to the improvement of society for all.

If we demand perfection from our exemplars, then we’ll have no exemplars. A society without exemplars is a society without direction, without hope, without a future.

And a society with a lot of nameless schools.

¹ For the reader appalled at the thought that morality can fundamentally change, implying an all-knowing Divine is changing its mind, let me observe that, much like Platonic ideals and their real-world instantiations, and assuming a Divine exists, its ordination of the rules of morality, and your perception of same, may easily be at variance. Morality changing as time passes is then simply humanity gaining a better understanding of those rules, not the rules themselves changing.

Retrograde:

adj.

1. Moving or tending backward: a retrograde flow.
2. Opposite to the usual order; inverted or reversed: the retrograde form of the melody.
3. Reverting to an earlier or inferior condition: a retrograde way of thinking.
   … [The Free Dictionary]

For use in a future post.

But I can’t help but take note of the following. First up: The Hill’s report on Republican voters, entitled Tens of thousands of voters drop Republican affiliation after Capitol riot:

More than 30,000 voters who had been registered members of the Republican Party have changed their voter registration in the weeks after a mob of pro-Trump supporters attacked the Capitol — an issue that led the House to impeach the former president for inciting the violence.

The massive wave of defections is a virtually unprecedented exodus that could spell trouble for a party that is trying to find its way after losing the presidential race and the Senate majority.

It could also represent the tip of a much larger iceberg: The 30,000 who have left the Republican Party reside in just a few states that report voter registration data, and information about voters switching between parties, on a weekly basis.

And that report is almost two weeks ago. It leaves me wondering: if we reran the Presidential election today, would Trump’s losing count of 71 million votes be reduced to below 50 million?

Next up: the price to be paid for voting for the Articles of Impeachment for Rep Tom Rice (R-SC):

The South Carolina Republican Party’s executive committee formally censured Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC) on Saturday over his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.

“We made our disappointment clear the night of the impeachment vote. Trying to impeach a president, with a week left in his term, is never legitimate and is nothing more than a political kick on the way out the door,” said SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick in a statement Saturday.

“Congressman Rice’s vote unfortunately played right into the Democrats’ game, and the people in his district, and ultimately our State Executive Committee, wanted him to know they wholeheartedly disagree with his decision,” he added. [TPM]

A spectacularly dishonest statement by McKissick, as the size of the balance of the term in office does not legitimize any action that might not be otherwise legitimate. I suppose McKissick should draw an Earl Landgrebe Award Nomination for the absurd loyalty, and lack of intellectual integrity, he’s demonstrating in that statement.

Fellow voter for the Articles of Impeachment, and #3 in the House GOP leadership ranks, Liz Cheney (R-WY) has also drawn fire for doing the obviously right thing:

One of former President Trump’s top supporters in Congress held a rally Thursday in Wyoming to blast the state’s sole House member – Rep. Liz Cheney – the most high-profile House Republican to vote two weeks ago to impeach Trump.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, standing in front of a boisterous crowd gathered at the steps of the Wyoming state capitol, delivered a populist speech as he repeatedly slammed Cheney as a member of the Washington “establishment in both political parties have teamed up to screw our fellow Americans for generations.” [Fox News]

Yep, Pretty Boy Gaetz traveled from Florida to interfere in Wyoming politics, no doubt to win more points with his Master, former President Trump. Cheney has also been promised a primary challenge. It’s not as if Rep Cheney is a moderate Republican, either, as she ends up with a TrumpScore of 92.9%, and has a reputation as a hard line conservative Republican.

But also one from a Republican dynasty, as her father, Richard, was also a Representative, as well as holding other roles in Washington, DC, such as Vice President for eight years. Incidentally, her father’s possibly best known for shooting a hunting partner in the face with a shotgun; perhaps those who’ve been allegedly threatening other Republican House members to keep them in the Trump drum line would rather not go up against a tough old gunner like Cheney. Either one.

But that didn’t stop the Wyoming GOP from censuring Rep Cheney today:

In the motion to censure Cheney, who easily survived a House Republican Conference vote to remain in her leadership spot earlier this week, the state Republican Party also called for her to “immediately” resign. The party intends to “withhold any future political funding” from her, the motion said. It also called on her to repay donations to her 2020 campaign from the state GOP and any county Republican Parties.

The beat goes on in Arizona. The Arizona GOP voted to censure Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, as well as former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and the current governor Doug Ducey (R-AZ). In Ducey’s case:

Ducey is being targeted for his restrictions on individuals and businesses to contain the spread of COVID-19. While it’s not mentioned in the proposed censure, he had a high-profile break with the president when he signed the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. [CBS News]

Ducey does the right thing, and his Party throws a shit fit.

Incidentally, the Arizona GOP Chairman, Dr. Kelli Ward, barely won the race for that position recently. When calls for a recount emerged, she, apparently without a sense of irony, refused to allow it to go forward.

And the the other House Republicans who voted for the Articles of Impeachment are also facing political challenges from the far right fringe, as this Newsweek article makes clear. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans continue to abandon their party because of its accelerating race to the right, as Steve Benen summarizes:

To a degree without modern precedent, the Democratic presidential ticket enjoyed considerable support from prominent Republicans in the 2020 elections. As regular readers know, former RNC chairs backed Joe Biden. So did former Republican cabinet secretaries and some Republicans who worked as members of Trump’s own team.

The list included former GOP governors, former GOP senators, former GOP House members, and several dozen Republican national security officials — from the Reagan, Bush/Quayle, and Bush/Cheney administrations — all of whom endorsed Biden.

And way more, as Benen makes clear – basically, any Republican who has held a position of responsibility is faced with the question of whether or not they want to be associated with the Republican Party any longer – and many are saying No.

I think, most inadequately on my part, that the reason I’m writing this post is that impulse to say I Told You So. Not that there’s a reason to do so, of course. But the mad race to the right that I’ve noted, and predicted would continue over the years, has resulted in state GOP Parties that are throwing their most principled members under the nearest bus, while indulging in behaviors which may bring shame down upon them. Or as Catie Edmondson pithily notes:

Republicans fighting over their party’s future face a turning point on Wednesday as House leaders confront dueling calls to punish two members: one for spreading conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence, and the other for voting to impeach former President Donald J. Trump. [The New York Times]

Much of the apparatus is in the hands of people whose notion of principle is to cling madly to Trump’s genitalia. Will the moderate Republicans win the day? I don’t think so, at least not before the 2022 elections. Why?

Former President Trump’s attempt to foment insurrection, whether he denies it or not, will result in an opening for the Democrats. For every member of Congress who failed to repudiate the riot, for every member of Congress who, in the wake of the riot, still voted to repudiate the Electoral votes of the States, for every Republican who fails to apologize for these monumental failures, the Democrats can respond to their reelection races with simply this:

Seditionist!

Trump tried every legal tactic to refute his failure at election, and failed. While his approach of spreading misinformation and doubt was reprehensible, it’s not clearly illegal.

But to foment insurrection is to set himself outside of Democracy, outside of how America conducts itself. Every single Republican who followed him in the riot’s aftermath is now also outside of Democracy. They are no longer fit for their elective offices, to hold any position of influence.

To even be considered Americans in good standing.

That’s the label the Democrats can pin on them. If it is successful, if the current speculation that the Democrats will lose seats at the midterms, as is traditional, is shown to be false, then the Republicans may suffer monumental losses which will discredit whatever passes for Republican governing offerings in 2022.

Add in stable governing, boring communications, and investigations into everyone who ran around spreading false information concerning the election, and the Republicans may face political extinction.

At least those fringe-right extremists who are currently in charge of much of the Party apparatus.

The results of the 2022 elections will depend, in large part, on how well the Democrats execute on their current governing plans right now. And if the Democrats are successful, the moderate Republicans who are currently disengaging from the Republican Party may have a chance to reassert control.

Or they may start their own Party. If the new Party were to become large enough, we might see calls for Ranked Choice Voting appearing from the right. That would be a turnaround and a signal of worry by the extremists.

Stay tuned.

Sometimes, when someone has balls of brass, it’s necessary to grab each one and clang them together until they break and the owner is sobbing. Here’s Rep Jeffries (D-NY) doing just that to new member of the House Rep Burgess Owens (R-UT):

This is 🔥 🔥 🔥. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) drags Utah’s new Trump-supporting Black Republican (@BurgessOwens) for coming in on his first day and lecturing Democrats about patriotism when Owens voted to overturn the November election even after the Capitol insurrection. pic.twitter.com/mJ7cUJ0RSH

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) February 6, 2021

Quite right. Voting to undo the votes of literally millions of Americans because of your allegiance to President Trump, purveyor of utterly baseless allegations concerning the election he lost, rather than an allegiance to the Constitution, doesn’t make one patriotic. Instead, it puts your worthiness to serve into question. An inability to understand that your allegiance is to the Constitution, rather than a Party leader, makes your presence in Congress questionable.

And your future performance is unlikely to be impressive.

Un-effing-believable:

A Texas woman who bragged in a Facebook live stream about storming the U.S. Capitol can vacation in Mexico later this month, a judge said Friday, as the defendant’s case expanded significantly with new federal charges.

Jenny Cudd’s attorney had asked the judge to let her travel this month to Riviera Maya on a four-day trip with employees of her flower shop — “a work-related bonding retreat for employees and their spouses,” attorney Farheena Siddiqui wrote in a motion, saying Cudd attended her scheduled court appearance and has stayed “in constant contact with her attorney.”

Noting that neither Cudd’s pretrial services officer nor the government opposed Cudd’s request for “pre-paid, work-related travel” Feb. 18 through Feb. 21, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden wrote that the defendant has no criminal history and said there is “no evidence before the Court suggesting the Defendant is a flight risk or poses a danger to others.” …

The new charges are more serious. The most significant, obstruction of an official proceeding, is a felony that falls under a section of federal law related to tampering with a witness, victim or informant. It carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and potential fines. [WaPo]

A willing, even eager participant in a riot that turned into an insurrection, as well as an avowed anti-masker who has therefore endangered public health, is permitted to take a planned working vacation because … why again?

Of course, there’s a flight risk. Given the evidence, the Court hasn’t thrown out the prosecution, suggesting it has a good chance of success. The defendant is accused of very serious charges, and more charges, including attempted assassination of members of Congress are quite possible.

And she’s not a flight risk?

And then there’s this pack of goofs:

The Supreme Court’s order late Friday night that California must allow churches to resume indoor worship services reveals a conservative majority that’s determined to guard religious rights and is more than willing to second-guess state health officials, even during a pandemic.

Under restrictions imposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), almost all of the state was under an order to ban indoor religious services as officials battle the raging coronavirus pandemic. It is the nation’s most severe restriction, and the court said in an unsigned opinion that it violates the Constitution.

Instead, the justices imposed their own rule: The state must allow indoor services but may limit attendance at 25 percent capacity. The court left in place — for now — a ban on singing and chanting at those events, activities the state said were particularly risky for spreading the coronavirus. [WaPo]

Does SCOTUS have the public health expertise to make these sorts of judgments?

No.

On the other hand, the state of California has the expertise and the data to make these judgments. You can see SCOTUS‘ uneasy acknowledgment of this fact: The court left in place — for now — a ban on singing and chanting at those events, activities the state said were particularly risky for spreading the coronavirus.

Once again, we have fact-free reasoning – the equivalent of mental masturbation, and about as productive – of Neil Gorsuch, IJ^[1], who wrote

I keep waiting for pews to appear in my local grocery store or slaughterhouse, where the faithful cluster together and yet, somehow, don’t become super-spreader events.

Look: Gorsuch’s words are not the words of a considered legal opinion. It’s the words of a carefully trained, paranoid theocrat-wannabe, who is convinced the State Executives are replete with atheists, agnostics, and members of various non-standard sects who are using the pandemic to diminish the influence of the properly religious.

Given the facts on the side of his perceived persecutors, he’s not going to win this article on rhetorical points. No, he’s going to win this argument using the sheer power of sitting on SCOTUS. And that is quite shameful.

¹ Illegitimate Justice.

Do you need to exercise your pet fruit flies? Here’s how:

Carcinisation:

Carcinisation (or carcinization) is an example of convergent evolution in which a crustacean evolves into a crab-like form from a non-crab-like form. The term was introduced into evolutionary biology by L. A. Borradaile, who described it as “one of the many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab”. Most carcinised crustaceans belong to the order Anomura. [Wikipedia]

Noted here in xkcd:

In an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin, Ed Stetzer, head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, explicates on the conundrum facing American Evangelicals these days, namely not being gullible:

Should ministers on Sunday mornings be delivering messages about how to sort fact from fiction and discouraging their parishioners from seeking truth in these darkest corners of the Internet peddling lies?

Absolutely, absolutely. Mark Noll wrote years ago a book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,and he was talking about the lack of intellectual engagement in some corners of evangelicalism.

I think the scandal of the evangelical mind today is the gullibility that so many have been brought into — conspiracy theories, false reports and more — and so I think the Christian responsibility is we need to engage in what we call in the Christian tradition, discipleship. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” So Jesus literally identifies himself as the truth; therefore, if there ever should be a people who care about the truth, it should be people who call themselves followers of Jesus.

But we have failed, and I think pulpits and colleges and universities and parachurch ministries and more need to ask the question: How are we going to disciple our people so that they engage the world around them in robust and Christ-like ways? — and I think part of the evangelical reckoning is we haven’t done that well.

I have no wish to be brutal, but I think Stetzer and his like-minded allies in the Evangelical movement have an uphill battle, with issues rooted in the very bedrock of their belief system.

First, they believe in God, a belief for which there does not appear to be any objective evidence. This faith, definitionally despite a lack of evidence, makes them open to other such evidence-free beliefs – such as QAnon.

Second, they believe they have a personal relationship with God. This is, again definitionally, private, subjective knowledge. To accept that others are having valid communications with God, even though they cannot access and verify that alleged fact themselves, is to be inclined to accept that anyone claiming to have such knowledge is telling the truth.

Third, there are a number of pastors of large, influential megachurches that claim to have such communications. They claim that God has selected Donald Trump to do important things, that just happen to play to the legitimate concerns and the illegitimate prejudices of the evangelicals. While other pastors call out these leaders as grifters and con-men, this is hardly enough to nullify these malignant pastors.

Fourth, much of the evangelical movement is found in prosperity churches. Trump himself grew up in a church run by Norman Vincent Peale, an advocate of the prosperity gospel. This blasphemous variant on Christianity provides an easy proxy for determining who is the favored of God: wealth. Trump claims to be excessively wealthy and the evangelicals flock to him on the assumption that he’s selected by God; they conveniently forget the behavioral expectations set by the Bible, because those are much harder to accept and execute: prudence, moderation, caring for the poor. It’s much more comfortable to chase wealth and be wealthy.

Fifth, the evangelicals are human, and many have that human love of drama. “End Times” are the ultimate drama for the evangelical, when there will be literal rivers of blood, battles of the righteous against evil, etc etc. Series of novels written around that theme have been popular for decades in the evangelical movement. Wanting to believe that they are at the center of the greatest drama humanity will ever witness is only, well, human. And, as a story junkie myself, it’s addictive. It gets the pulse pounding, and brings a little more color to the world.

None of these are new observations. The Catholics are well aware of the problem, although frankly their standards for accepting someone as a saint, or the need for an exorcism, are suspect. But how could they not be? Those who are responsible for making those determinations are themselves subject to most or all of the above weaknesses.

But these characteristics of evangelicals, who smugly and arrogantly believe they are the select of God, if only they keep trying to spread the word, makes Stetzer’s task that much more difficult. He uses the word gullible, and it’s so very, very accurate, and, quite frankly, I have no idea if those evangelicals can be rescued from their error.

Or if we’ll have to wait for them to die of old age.

Last I heard, the evangelical movement is having a problem with attracting the younger generation, and, as I’ve said before, I suspect it’s because they’re getting an eyeful of the results of being an evangelical.

And they’re not liking it.

I wouldn’t normally publish another post in this series so soon after the last one, but Rep Gaetz’s (R-FL) remark is simply too deliciously absurd to ignore:

Movie star looks doesn’t mean shit when it comes to performance in these circumstances.

[Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] told [Steve] Bannon he would “absolutely” resign from Congress to fight for Trump on the Senate floor if the former president asked him to.

“I would leave my House seat. I would leave my home,” Gaetz declared. “I would do anything I had to do to ensure that the greatest president in my lifetime, one of the greatest presidents our country’s ever had, maybe the greatest president our country has ever had, got a full-throated defense that wasn’t crouched down, that wasn’t in fear of losing some moderate Republican senator, but that was worthy of the fight he gave to the great people of this country for four years.” [TPM]

Former President Trump must have been hooting with laughter at this statement. And what do the voters in Gaetz’s district think they’re doing? This ain’t a circus, voters. Selecting a Representative is serious business. Sending a clown just makes you look bad.

A reader comments on the latest nominees for the prestigious Earl Landgrebe Awards:

Yet another example how the R party has lost its way. Can there really be this many damning pee-pee tapes in underground circulation to blackmail them all? Or are they all just airheads?

I thinks there’s a couple of motivations.

Folks who owe their elective position to Trump’s influence are going to naturally try to find some way to thank him, no matter how much drivel they think they must spout. I see Trump as third-rate, and I suspect most of these folks are also third-rate, at least in the political arena.

And then there’s the kindred souls effect. Trump is your basic barstool blowhard, with a lot of money, no ethics or morals, ambition (or desperation), and a touch of acting talent. That stubbornness inherent in the barstool inhabitant, absolutely certain they’re right in the face of every bit of evidence that they’re not, touches a lot of regular barstool blowhards, especially those who happen to agree with Trump. In Trump’s victory, they see vindication; contrariwise, the humiliation of Trump’s loss, the rejection of Trump and his way of doing things by the electorate, is a rejection of themselves.

They’ve had their taste of prestige – if only in their own minds – and it’s really hard to let it go, especially when Trump was chanting for the last five years that the elections are rigged. It’s easier to believe that Democrats, independents, and Republicans conspired to deny the incompetent Trump a second term, than it is to admit that the way he, and therefore they, lead their lives has been decisively rejected.

It probably seemed easier to invade the US Capitol than deal with the intellectual challenges of that electoral rejection.

Thus, the intellectual drivel.

In connection with my ailing Arts Editor, a friend met the challenge when I suggested dancing to ancient polyphonic music might be difficult with this video:

Thanks, LDC! It was fascinating!

Nope, it’s not a medical condition. Are you tired of this?

So here’s a splash of color from my Arts Editor’s bouquet, received from MRK on the occasion of her rotator cuff surgery. It’s a week old and still going strong.

Thanks! It’s been a lovely lifter of spirits!