Unsightly Mental Blemishes

The Hill delivers the view of a former Republican state party chair:

The new agitators, all elected to their posts after Trump won the White House, are a reflection of the priorities of a Republican base that is interested more in fealty to the deposed president than in standard conservative doctrine.

“State party chairs are elected by the grassroots. They are not accountable to the elected officials, they are accountable to the grassroots, and if they don’t do what the grassroots want them to do, they won’t be chair for very long,” said Chris Vance, a former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party who became an independent shortly after Trump won election. “Today’s base of the Republican Party is, are you loyal to Trump? This activism of Trumpist state party chairs is driven by the same thing that’s driving the entire party.”

Given the tendency of non-Trumpist Republicans to leave an increasingly toxic Party, I think we can expect to see this trend to continue, a trend that will terminate only when the Republican Party ceases to have national relevance, or some facet of the former President is revealed that completely discredits him in the eyes of his base – if that’s even possible.

Perhaps the only such revelation would be that Trump is a debtor and not a billionaire, nothing more than a grifter. And I have no certainty even that would convince more than a sliver of the Trumpist base to desert, as Trump has trained the base to dismiss any unsettling facts as mere fake news.

So I expect the state GOP parties to simply become more toxic in most cases. More cases of toxicity are provided by Steve Benen here.

Perhaps she dissembles, or is avoiding some sexual predator, but here’s former President Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis:

Jenna Ellis said she’s done with the GOP because its members aren’t backing ex-President Donald Trump enough.

Trump’s former senior legal adviser announced she was leaving the Republican Party during a lengthy monologue on her Real America’s Voice show “Just The Truth” on Monday.

“The truth matters,” began Ellis, who as a member of the Trump legal team pushed the former president’s lies in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Ellis, who once described Trump as an “idiot,” said Republicans had back-stabbed Trump. She also accused the Republican National Committee of “not championing the issues” that make America great.

“All of them, including Ronna McDaniel, should resign now,” declared Ellis, referring to the RNC chair. [HuffPost]

Dangle power in front of them and watch their ethics dissolve, I guess.

Phalanx:

The phalanx (Ancient Greek: φάλαγξ; plural phalanxes or phalanges, φάλαγγες, phalanges) was a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar pole weapons. The term is particularly used to describe the use of this formation in Ancient Greek warfare, although the ancient Greek writers used it to also describe any massed infantry formation, regardless of its equipment. Arrian uses the term in his Array against the Alans when he refers to his legions. In Greek texts, the phalanx may be deployed for battle, on the march, or even camped, thus describing the mass of infantry or cavalry that would deploy in line during battle. They marched forward as one entity. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “7 points Biden needs to make about voting rights,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

Sixth, Biden should announce that in 2022 and 2024, the Justice Department will deploy a phalanx of voting monitors to prevent intimidation and attempts to falsify or overturn legitimate election results. It was a mistake for federal prosecutors not to investigate the efforts of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to pressure Georgia election officials to throw out ballots and former president Donald Trump’s efforts to demand they “find” new ballots. While Biden has pledged not to direct the Justice Department to undertake specific actions, he can publicly call for Congress and the department to clarify the law as needed and prevent such behavior in the future.

A popular metaphor.

Jennifer Rubin has a good rant some of the latest anti-abortion laws in Texas, where complaints are expected to be registered by citizens and not by law enforcement personnel:

Consider the potential for harassment, spying, extortion and other vengeful behavior directed toward women. The law depends on what a woman’s neighbors, associates and friends know about her reproductive health and are willing to tell the authorities to grab a $10,000 bounty. The possibility of frivolous litigation is hard to quantify.

Texas Republicans lack the nerve to uniformly enforce the law or to defend its constitutionality. Professor Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas tells me, “It’s a deeply cynical effort to both (1) chill conduct that ought to be constitutionally protected; and (2) provide cover for judges to find creative ways to dodge the merits of the constitutional challenge.” This is a law designed not to “protect life” (a farce, given that protecting innocent life has taken a back seat when covid-19 restrictions were at issue), but rather to create fear and uncertainty for women and health-care providers. Will miscarriages lead to a lawsuit from a nosy office worker seeking to cash in on the reward? Will abortion bounties become a weapon in divorce and custody cases? No one knows — and that is the point. The law seeks not to protect the fetus in any systematic way but rather to intimidate women, making them into cash cows for spiteful anti-choice busybodies. [WaPo]

Even more importantly, will employers take due note of this embarrassment and leave the state? How about high-skill personnel who realize that societal chaos isn’t a desirable characteristic of work or home environment?

People value predictability. What happens when that first fallacious suit is brought to court by the busybody who’s a little short on paying off their gambling debts? And everyone pays attention?

Add in a bit of climate change, and we may see the start of a mass migration, of companies and people, leaving the formerly great State of Texas.

And events no longer being held in Texas, as socially conscious companies decline to use Texas venues, or social justice groups pressure corporations to not use Texas.

There may be a lot more backlash to this anti-abortion law than Texas state legislators are anticipating.

Erick Erickson:

A great many of my friends have decided to give up classical liberalism in large part because they believe it lacks any teeth or fight to stop a progressive cultural onslaught. Frankly, much of both the left and right now live in fear and loathing of the other side.

Combined with all of that, we are now in post-modernity. In post-modernity, doubts outweigh truth; there is no objective truth; reality is shaped by words; and devotion to a belief necessitates performance. Post-modernity is arguably incompatible with an American experiment that holds to self-evident, objective truths.

Thus we get boisterous performance on the left and the right. The left engages in protest, cancel culture, and demands for censorship. The right engages in protest, cancel culture, and demands for censorship. The left claims the nation is systemically racist and fundamentally flaws with unfalsifiable statements. The right, from conservative thinktanks funded by the free market successes of what conservatism conserved, demands to know what conservatism has conserved.

Everyone wants to move on, largely devoid of ideas or truth, driven by contempt for the other side.

For all that I laugh – literally, sometimes – at Erickson, here he’s nailed it, in particular the final sentence. While Erickson continues onward to see this through the prism of his particular variety of Christianity, I see us as being in the age of intolerance and hubris.

By the plural, I mean much of the leadership of the left and right, and the tendency of swaths of each side to tromp along in their wake, tediously spouting similar slogans. I do not mean everyone.

But, regarding tolerance, those who understand the importance of recognizing the concept of fallibility and the credibility of compromise are largely segregated from the levers of power, particularly on the right – and it takes two to tango. So long as the right’s culture leads to right-wing extremists becoming leaders, such as Greene, Boebert, Gohmert, Gaetz, Jordan, McConnell, all the primary challengers to Cheney and the pro-impeachment Republicans, and all the primary challengers to sitting Republican governors, so long as the toxic team politics mixes with the Christian Nationalism portion of the party – see my favorite Senator Goldwater (R-AZ) quote – the power of that portion of the left leadership that acknowledges the difficulties of governing, and the importance of compromise, is vitiated.

And that leads to hubris, the divinity-level certainty that You Are Right And My Opponents Are Wrong And Evil. The right, in its embrace of the religions supposedly devoted to the Divine, bears a terrible burden in this regard, a burden so heavy that it’s breaking the Republican Party; the left, though, has displayed its own self-righteousness and rigidity, with some observers, such as Andrew Sullivan, pushing wokeness as emblematic of this failure.

Are we doomed? No.

On the right, far right extremist influence on the electorate continues to shrink. Moderate and Customary Republicans who can no longer stomach their former brethren in the wake of the January 6 Insurrection and the incompetence and frank insanity on exhibit are leaving the Party and/or the movement. Among Evangelicals, membership is shrinking and young people are not replacing those lost to age. And independents continue to shudder in revulsion.

But the left, too, has suffered setbacks. As an example, remember Defund the police!? In Minneapolis, right down the road from me, that effort collapsed. And it was not entirely a surprise – “Man on the street” interviews presaged it, as Minneapolis residents of all colors expressed unease, if not outright disagreement, with the slogan, as ill-defined as it has always been. Between that unease, a drop in manpower at MPD, and a discouraging jump in violent crime, the idea of defunding the police has become far less popular, until I suspect it’s the favorite slogan of only a few dedicated groups and power-seekers who don’t yet understand that defund is no longer popular. I remain in favor of reformation and removal of those responsibilities that do not normally require an armed response, as has been demonstrated with the CAHOOTS program of Eugene, OR.

So the rigid left, too, does not have a convincing message for the electorate.

The problems of left and right are disparate: the left may push recognition of problems difficult to deny, but their proposed solutions are unconvincing, even haughty; the right, populated as it is with third and fourth raters who benefit from a status quo that is unsustainable, are reduced to dishonest tactics, such spreading lies, gerrymandering, glibly discounting the prime importance of democracy, and shamelessly pushing voters to embrace the single-issue poisons of which they are so proud.

The question is: what can a skeptical public do about this? In the absence of wide spread ranked choice voting, in which moderates can harvest the secondary votes of zealots who – reluctantly – list the moderates as second choices, I’m not sure. Speak out, keep voting, vote against the zealots, demand demonstrated competency, distrust the slogans, be sensitive to manipulation (read The Persuaders, perhaps), ask yourself what’s missing from an argument, remember that common sense solutions is a big red flag when it comes to national problems, and, well, your most valuable political possession is that ballot. If you’re selling it to the candidate who says You should vote for me because of white shame! or I can do the anti-abortion jig better than anyone else! then you just might be screwing yourself and your fellow citizens.

And not doing the right thing.

This little guy visited us the other night.

I believe I brushed his corpse out the window yesterday. But a nice guy while he was around.

The old sovereign citizen argument, which I’ve been hearing as a legal defense since I was a kid, rears its legal and incoherent head:

A Pennsylvania woman who allegedly stormed the Capitol and told a police officer to “bring Nancy Pelosi out here now… we want to hang that fucking bitch” has filed court documents claiming to be a divinely empowered entity immune from laws.

Pauline Bauer, a Pennsylvania pizzeria owner, is accused of multiple counts of violent entry, disruptive conduct, and obstruction of Congress after she allegedly broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6. Prosecutors allege that Bauer tried organizing buses to transport people to D.C. for a rally that preceded the riot, and that while in the Capitol rotunda she told police that she wanted to kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But in what experts describe as an inadvisable legal strategy, Bauer has demanded to represent herself in court, appeared to threaten a court clerk with prison time, and declared herself a “self-governed individual” with special legal privileges.

Bauer does not simply appear in court, she clarified during a June 11 proceeding via Zoom. “I am here by special divine appearance, a living soul,” she told a judge that day, while stating that she did not want an attorney. [The Daily Beast]

So if this pizzeria owner were to find her business had been burgled at some time, would she call the police, or would she do the cop thing herself? The article doesn’t say, but if her response is to call the cops, then the judge can add a charge of High Hypocrisy to the list.

But I have to admit to some faint feelings of amusement.

It’s only foreplay.

There may be invasive aliens fifty feet tall, but life in northern Mexico still needs to go on in Monsters (2010). Rich heiress Samantha Wyden is to be escorted by news photographer Andrew Kaulder through the “infected zone” and to her father, who happens to employ Kaulder. This is not the story of heroism and great monsters, though, but how the personal foibles of these two characters interact with the effects of fifty foot tall monsters on local society, from finding and funding mules to get them across the zone to indulging in the local sex trade.

But the themes of this movie become incoherent as monsters strips away the supporting characters, and as they cross the American border and find an abandoned town, the exact goal of the storytellers becomes difficult to decipher. Is this an allegory about the invalidity of xenophobia? Maybe – but it’s worth remembering xenophobia is not necessarily a bad thing. How about the grisliness of capitalism? Could be.

The acting and effects are good, but the characters are a bit dull and the story probably needed a rewrite.

Remember the Ever Given, the ship that blocked the Suez Canal? She’s finally free of all tangible troubles:

The SCA [Suez Canal Authority] announced on Sunday that it would sign a settlement agreement on Wednesday [7 July] with the owner of the Ever Given ship.

The ship will be allowed to depart the Suez following the signing of the agreement.

Shoei Kisen, the Japanese owner of the vessel and its insurers said last month they had reached an agreement in principle with the SCA.

The SCA had demanded $916 million in compensation to cover salvage efforts, reputational damage and lost revenue before publicly lowering the request to $550 million.

The giant Ever Given ship will leave the Suez canal accompanied with two tug boats and the guidance of two transit guides from the SCA. [ahramonline]

Did the SCA get anywhere near what they wanted? It’d be interesting to know the procedure used to determine the final sum – just a simple bargaining, or assessments of fault as might happen in US Courts?

Riparian:

: relating to or living or located on the bank of a natural watercourse (such as a river) or sometimes of a lake or a tidewater
riparian trees [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Egypt will ‘uphold and protect its inherent right to life,’ FM Shoukry tells UNSC,” Dina Ezzat, ahramonline:

“This is a situation that Egypt cannot, and will not, tolerate,” [Egyptian Foreign Minister] Shourky said [to the UN Security Council]. He added, “Otherwise, if its riparian rights are jeopardized or if its survival is imperiled, Egypt will be left with no alternative but to uphold and protect its inherent right to life that is guaranteed by the laws and customs of nations and the imperatives of nature”.

The top Egyptian diplomat commended the statement that the European Union issued Thursday to express worry over Ethiopia’s execution of the second filling of the reservoir of the GERD in the absence of an agreement among the three concerned riparian countries. He called on the members of the UN Security Council to issue a similar statement and to adopt a draft resolution that Tunis had tabled to call on the three countries to resume negotiations under the AU umbrella in good faith and with a plan to reach an agreement in a reasonable timeframe.

The waterway in question is the Nile River. More here.

We’ve lost one of our hollyhocks, but we still have a few others. There’s this lovely pink hock:

With a bit of their future here:

Meanwhile, these white hocks are afflicted:

Apparently, they’re the consumable apartments of asiatic beetles. Which I suppose is better than when the beetles eat our raspberries.

I subjected my readers to a whine concerning the widespread & improper usage of the word deserves a few days ago. I was, perhaps inordinately so, pleased when reading George Orwell’s essay “POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE” to see his take on the subject is the same as mine:

[After giving five examples of bad political writing]

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.

Apparently, bad political prose is nothing new. This is unsurprising as the use of certain words will subconsciously predispose readers to certain attitudes, even when their political response to a more accurate and neutral depiction of the issue at hand is otherwise. (Is this paragraph itself an example of bad writing? Yeah, probably.)

Thus, with deserves, the reader’s sense of self-importance is inflated, and their response to a societal policy which they deserve is more likely to be positive. It’s cheap, it’s skanky, and it’s more common than cockroaches.

And it’s a pity that such a dishonest approach is considered necessary, because, if it is uncovered, then the issue may be tainted for the comprehending individual; and if it had been framed properly, or honestly, it may prove to be a stepping stone to better arguments. Or, as Orwell puts it:

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.

Orwell’s essay is worth a read.

Periaqueductal gray:

The periaqueductal gray (PAG) is an anatomic and functional interface between the forebrain and the lower brainstem and has a major role in integrated behavioral responses to internal (e.g., pain) or external (e.g., threat) stressors. The PAG consists of distinct columns that receive selective inputs from the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hypothalamus, and nociceptive pathways. Via its connections with different brainstem nuclei, the PAG coordinates specific patterns of cardiovascular, respiratory, motor, and pain modulatory responses. [“Periaqueductal gray: An interface for behavioral control,” Eduardo E. Benarroch, Neurology]

Well. Caught me off-guard, didn’t it? Noted in the title of this Paul Fidalgo post on The Morning Heresy:

Maybe Something in Periaqueductal Grey

Yeah, there was nothing in the body of the post of relevance.

Last time we metaphorically visited Michigan, a special investigatory committee in the State Legislature, dominated by Michigan Republicans, had determined there was no reason to believe that systemic electoral fraud had taken place, or that candidate Donald J. Trump had won the state of Michigan in the 2020 Presidential election. This would have been in the face of the former President losing every lawsuit contesting the result in Michigan.

The former President was quite unhappy at this result.

But now there’s more drama to come, I suspect:

Michigan’s chief law enforcement officer, along with state police, will launch an investigation into those who have allegedly peddled disinformation about the state’s Nov. 3 election for their own financial gain.

A Republican-led report that found no evidence of widespread fraud recommended the probe.

The Michigan Senate Oversight Committee report, written by state Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, and adopted by all the Republican members of the committee, called on the attorney general’s office to consider investigating those “utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.” …

After reviewing the oversight committee’s report, the attorney general’s office “accepted Sen. McBroom and the Committee’s request to investigate,” said Lynsey Mukomel, press secretary for Attorney General Dana Nessel.

Nessel’s office will be assisted by Michigan State Police, Mukomel said. [Detroit Free Press]

The former President should be howling at this action.

And AG Nessel is a Democrat. Of all the significant information in the Free Press‘ reporting, that may be the most significant.

Republicans officially calling on a Democrat in law enforcement to investigate the allies of Trump for criminal conduct.

This may mark the beginning of the end of a unified Republican Party lovin’ the former President. A report by Republicans to the public that suggests the entire Presidential election controversy is nothing more than a sophisticated grift taking advantage of Republican marks? That won’t go down well at all.

Look for vociferous protests from the Trump camp.

But if this does go somewhere, if certain grifters find themselves in court facing criminal charges, look to their associates to find the third- and fourth- raters. Not their defenders, because this sort of personality, the third-rate personality, doesn’t stick around to defend their associates when they’re in trouble. But those are the people who make up the Republican Party these days.

And, just perhaps, people like Republican committee member McBroom may be the foundation of the next respectable conservative party.

I’ll be visiting Michigan someday soon. While I don’t anticipate falling into any political discussions with Trump supporters, if that does occur I’ll try to report the results.

A tiger lily?

Transhumanism:

Transhumanism is a philosophical movement, the proponents of which advocate and predict the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies able to greatly enhance longevity, mood and cognitive abilities.

Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as the ethics of using such technologies. Some transhumanists believe that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The Big Thing,” Paul Fidalgo, Near Earth Object:

Long story short, I buckled down and finished the damn thing, and it’s now the cover story for the April-May 2021 issue of Free Inquiry magazine. It’s 11,300 words-and-change comparing and weighing two views of humanity’s future: transhumanism (we’ll all be saved and improved by technology) and “collapsitarianism” (we’ve blown it and civilization will crumble).

Why these two? Because I feel pulled toward both so strongly, despite their disparate outlooks. It’s the longest piece ever published by Free Inquiry (for which I am immensely grateful) and its editor, Tom Flynn, says it “just might be one of the most profound” (for which I am immensely humbled).

Phonon:

At a quantum scale, temperature and motion are one and the same: the more a particle is vibrating, the hotter it is. Those packets of vibration, also called phonons, must be removed to bring an object into its ground state. So far, this has only been achieved with objects with masses of tiny fractions of a gram.

Now, Chris Whittle at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his colleagues have cooled a system with an effective massof 10 kilograms from room temperature down to 77 nanokelvin, marking a huge leap in the mass of a system that can be brought near its ground state. The full system consists of four mirrors, each weighing 40 kilograms, but together they vibrate as if they were a single 10-kilogram object. [“LIGO mirrors cooled to near absolute zero could probe quantum gravity,” Leah Crane, NewScientist (26 June 2021)]

A nanokelvin is 10^-9K. The Kelvin, or K, scale defines absolute zero as 0K, so this is awfully darn close to absolute zero.

And has nothing to do with phonons.

Jair Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil, is the Brazilian equivalent of former President Trump, a right wing populist who seemingly could say anything and advocate for any cause, no matter how retrograde, because of his popularity with the people who’ve, in the Brazilian case, watched other leaders corruptly take advantage of their positions.

But, as with Trump, Bolsonaro’s weakness may turn out to be the pandemic:

In recent weeks, large protests — some in favor of Bolsonaro, others opposing him — have traded off. Dozens of lawmakers last week filed what they call a “super-request” for Bolsonaro’s impeachment, combining more than 100 impeachment requests already filed against him. The president’s approval rating has cratered into the 20s. Some political analysts think it could go even lower.

“The problem has begun,” said Matias Spektor, an associate professor of international relations at Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo. “If this spins out of control, this could be big, big trouble for Bolsonaro.” [WaPo]

[Bold mine.]
If Bolsonaro is eventually ejected from his position, either through impeachment or resignation, or even just making a run for it, there will be an element of embarrassment for the United States. Twice, we had the gumption to put Trump in a position to be removed, and twice we failed. This inability to remove the obviously corrupt narcissistic Trump speaks to our basic political incompetence and inability to make judgments based on reality.

If the Brazilians do, in fact, find Bolsonaro guilty of corruption and remove him, I’ll applaud, but privately wonder if they will ever be able to select someone with good judgment and incorruptibility for the position.

And how much longer we’ll be able to do so.

I ran across this little guy a few days ago.

No, I have no idea.

Dammit, I hate Powerpoints!

Horrible choice of narration? Check.

Way too much blood? Check.

Turned vampirism from ghoulish horror into a frickin’ disease? Check.

Plot holes the size of swamp rats? Check.

A movie that really sucks?

Not so much.

Oh, Netherbeasts Incorporated (2007) isn’t a life-changing tale of monsters and their annoying health problems, not at all. Nor is the above list of defects hardly complete, I’m sure. But there’s a certain quirkiness to this story of what happens when the element that’s keeping a band of vampires alive is stolen, and eventually that quirkiness becomes charm in a minor key. The actors play it as straight as they can, and so the characters’ reactions to the diseases that can afflict their long-lived bodies, which, quite candidly, can wear out, is convincing.

Which is to say, it’s not overwrought. It’s just part of the litany of daily problems facing the office-dwelling people eaters who are being led by the slick Turner.

Who may be mad. After all, he did just stake Mike. Even Mike being an asshole isn’t a good enough excuse to just stake a guy. Right?

Right?

If you like quirkiness, or vampires who broke the mold when they were cast, Netherbeasts Incorporated may be for you. Just remember, you have to be patient.

And admiring of the First Lifers in their midst.

News sites have seen a drop in traffic since former President Trump left office and President Biden was sworn in, Axios reports:

In the months since former President Donald Trump left office, media companies’ readership numbers are plunging — and publishers that rely on partisan, ideological warfare have taken an especially big hit.

Why it matters: Outlets most dependent on controversy to stir up resentments have struggled to find a foothold in the Biden era, according to an Axios analysis of publishers’ readership and engagement trends.

By the numbers: Web traffic, social media engagement and app user sessions suggest that while the entire news industry is experiencing a slump, right-wing outlets are seeing some of the biggest plunges.

• A group of far-right outlets, including Newsmax and The Federalist, saw aggregate traffic drop 44% from February through May compared to the previous six months, according to Comscore data.
• Lefty outlets including Mother Jones and Raw Story saw a 27% drop.
• Mainstream publishers including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Reuters dropped 18%.

Axios has cool charts, you should go look at them. But what does it mean? Andrew Sullivan celebrates it:

It is also an unmitigated good that polarizing, dumb-as-rocks cable news is in such sharp decline. Part of the promise of Biden is that he would keep tribal drama in its place. And he has! Monthly traffic for far-left outlets has dropped 27 percent in the last ten months; for left-leaning media by 17 percent; and for the mainstream (effectively left) by 18 percent. But look at the collapse of far-right media traffic: down 44 percent.

I’m not so sure. I’d love to think that traffic to partisan sites is down because people have become repulsed by it, but how can we be sure? I’d be a lot happier if, say, broadcast news such as NBC, CBS, and ABC (think: 60 Minutes) was reporting concurrent jumps in ratings, as they were about a year ago.

But it’s worth noting that the 2020 Presidential Election campaign and its post-election consequences were extraordinary, between Covid-19, special changes to the voting laws, absurd denials of reality by Trump and his little mob of lawyers – yeah, you can’t call that group a team, and even lawyers is more than stretching a point, as they begin to lose their lawyering privileges – the January 6th insurrection and concurrent wild-eyed theories of Republican members of Congress determined to betray their oaths, and a few other factors.

This contaminates virtually any conclusion, absent more evidence.

But it also remains fascinating. NewsMax/OAN traffic down 44%? Fox News down 22%? Mother Jones down 42%? (As much as I’d like to attribute that drop to Kevin Drum’s retirement, I fear that’s beyond the realm of possibility.) (Yes, go look at the charts!) Did we all abruptly learn that the partisan sites are misleading?

Or are we all just exhausted?

Investors in stock markets have to accept that prices can go down as well as up, and if that’s not acceptable then they shouldn’t be investors. But there are good reasons for prices to go up and down, and bad reasons.

This is a bad, if salutary, reason:

Usually, I can restrain my impatience with bad semantics, but this is from the University of Minnesota (yes, yes, my alma mater) and set off all the red flags for dreadfully sloppy thinking. It’s an invitation to a webinar, and is sans original formatting:

Topic Why Everyone Deserves a Health and Wellbeing Coach

Description These unprecedented times bring many new challenges and stresses. Every one of us has faced changes in our responsibilities, our routines, and our expectations. People have reported levels of stress, anxiety, and depression are at record highs. We know that lifestyle behaviors and social determinants of health play a larger role in our overall health and wellbeing than any medical intervention does. These difficult times have created an opportunity for reflection that has brought to light the desire for new, intentional life choices for many people.

Of course taking action to make intentional changes in our beliefs and behaviors is not easy. Health coaches are trained to help people effectively navigate lifestyle changes; they partner with people seeking self-directed, lasting changes that are aligned with their values in order to enhance their lives. They hold unconditional positive regard for their clients and a belief in their capacity for change, and honor each person as the expert of their life. That’s where the magic happens.

In this webinar we will explore:
• What health coaching is and how to find a credentialed coach
• When health coaching can be particularly useful
• How health coaching can help you find optimal wellbeing in all aspects of your life

Yep, nowhere in that list is a reason why I deserve a health and well-being coach. They don’t recognize my self-awarded Nobel prize, or self-awarded Pulitzer prize, or the made up fact that I found a five pound diamond in my backyard. In fact, I cannot see anything in their communication that even approaches a justification for using the word deserves.

I feel like I should be sending them a book on Honest Communications, but I suspect they’d retreat into intellectual sophistry at the very idea that they’ve engaged in deceitful word choices. Perhaps I should endorse their communications style and send them a copy of The Persuaders, instead, just to be a contributing member of the team?

Ah, but I’m not a member of the team, now am I?

Wow. What an utter disappointment the University has just become.

Erick Erickson remains convinced that he’s part of a regular people movement:

After all, it is pretty obvious for most to see, there’s a level of ungrateful self-centeredness when a sitting elected member of Congress condemns the nation and the supposed paper of record declares flying the nation’s flag anathema. It makes it easier for conservatives to relate to people and harder for the left.

Most real people, sadly for Erickson, have no desire to associate with a Party whose members, by and large, endorsed an insurrection, whether it be by non-violent (objecting to the counting of the Electoral votes) or violent means.

And most people, when it’s pointed out to them, will not wish to be electorally associated with adults who act like 5 year olds:

A majority of Republicans, 56%, say they believe that the 2020 election was the result of illegal voting or election rigging, per an Ipsos/Reuters poll released last week, with about 6 in 10 agreeing with the statement that “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.” Republicans also say, 54% to 30%, that they agree with the myth that the January 6 riot at the US Capitol “was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad.” The rioters who breached the Capitol were Trump supporters, and sources ranging from the FBI to alleged participants in the riot have shot down the notion that left-wing agitators were involved. [CNN/Politics]

Without evidence you think your candidate was cheated? Despite the testimony of third party,  Democratic, and Republican experts and responsible officials that there is no evidence of such systemic fraud?

That is the mentality of a five year old.

And most folks, once it’s pointed out, will not wish to be associated with what Erickson wants us to believe is the reasonable conservatives.

Because they’re not.

That’s not to absolve the left of their sins. I’m sure they’re multitudinous. I’m also sure Erickson uses a very ungenerous reading of what they write and say. But when Andrew Sullivan expresses concern, on multiple occasions, concerning the left and Critical Race Theory, then I figure there’s probably something worthy of concern and even refutation.

But, you know what? I have at least some confidence that the moderate left will do that – refute, that is. The left has a history of coming up with unacceptable theories and ideas, and then pruning them.

The right also has a history of unacceptable theories, but do they prune them? Look at them now.

The answer is No!

And that’s why I have far more confidence in the center and left than Erickson’s extremist right.