Thursday roundup

 It's been a while since LITD has served up a smorgasbord of recent attention-worthy essays I've come across.

Herewith is rectification of that paucity.

At U Discover Music, there's a great look at what made Rudy Van Gelder such a legendary recording engineer:

Blue Note’s founders, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, signed some of the most brilliant musical minds in modern jazz. From Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis to John Coltraneand Ornette Coleman, they recorded the music’s best and biggest names. But arguably, the most significant person they got to work for the company wasn’t a musician at all. He was, when they first encountered him, a part-time, self-taught sound engineer named Rudy Van Gelder. A professional optometrist by day, at night Van Gelder, also a jazz fan, recorded musicians in a studio he had set up in the living room of his parent’s home in New Jersey. It was in that house, located at 25 Prospect Avenue, Hackensack, that what we now know as the Blue Note sound was born.

Blue Note had been operating for 13 years when Alfred Lion met Van Gelder in 1952. Lion had been impressed by the audio quality of a session by saxophonist/composer Gil Mellé, recorded by the engineer at his Hackensack studio. Lion wanted to replicate the album’s sound at the label’s usual recording home, WOR studios in New York City, but was told by its resident engineer that it wasn’t possible and that he should contact the person who made the Mellé recording. And that’s how Blue Note found the man who would give them their classic sound.

Blue Note began recording exclusively at Hackensack from 1953 onwards, and the impeccable sound quality of their Van Gelder-engineered sessions – defined by clarity, depth, warmth, and sonic detail – didn’t escape the attention of other jazz labels. In fact, rival jazz indie Prestige, run by Bob Weinstock, also began hiring Van Gelder’s studio and services in an attempt to emulate the Blue Note sound. But this didn’t trouble Blue Note – rather, the improvement in audio quality benefitted jazz as a whole, and the label’s albums still sounded unique. That was a result of Alfred Lion being particular about what he liked. Evidently, as a producer he was more specific than Weinstock – he liked the music to swing, for one thing – and, consequently, was more organized. Lion had clearly focused goals in mind and paid the Blue Note musicians for several days’ rehearsal before the sessions. In contrast, Weinstock and Prestige just brought the musicians in cold to the studio to jam without much prior preparation. There was a gulf in quality that gave Blue Note an advantage.

At World, Andrew T. Walker asks, "What does Christian Nationalism Even Mean?"

I have sympathies with some of the ideas commonly associated with Christian nationalism. I understand and appreciate the unique role that Christianity played in shaping our nation’s tradition and values. Neither do I want that Christian influence to recede. As a conservative, I believe resolutely in the need for traditions to shape our common culture. Cutting a culture off from its good roots is nothing less than cultural self-hatred. Moreover, apart from a transcendent foundation for law and morality, no nation can long survive. I want a public morality influenced by Christianity but done so organically from the bottom up by the genuine and voluntary religious commitments of its people.

I also have major concerns with Christian nationalism. As a Baptist, I am convictionally opposed to identifying regeneration with nationhood. The Christian faith comes down to personal salvation and regeneration. The apparatus of government is ill-equipped to promote the supernatural end of man even if government requires supernatural foundation to keep it accountable (“In God We Trust” works for me). Whatever the personal faith of the office holder, I am opposed to magistrates as magistrates dictating theological matters for others.

Nicholas Harris, writing at UnHerd, demonstrates that the cat is out of the bag regarding Greta Thunberg. She's blossomed from a climate alarmist into a full-service leftist:

Interspersed among the usual directives about the need to pressure political leaders, her message was more radical and more militant than it has been in the past. There is no “back to normal”, she told us. “Normal” was the “system” which gave us the climate crisis, a system of “colonialism, imperialism, oppression, genocide”, of “racist, oppressive extractionism”. Climate justice is part of all justice; you can’t have one without the others. We can’t trust the elites produced by this system to confront its flaws — that’s why she, much like Rishi Sunak, won’t be bothering with the COP meeting this year. COP itself is little more than a “scam” which facilitates “greenwashing, lying and cheating”. Only overthrow of “the whole capitalist system” will suffice.

Frederick Hess of The American Enterprise Institute wonders how a man of actual depth and substance like Ben Sasse will fare as a college president in an age when that role has become largely ceremonial:

. . . the reality is that presidents generally don’t have that much real authority to shape a major university. They’re constrained by a board of trustees, faculty governance, entrenched campus power centers, endowment rules, major donors, and sprawling bureaucracies.

The day-to-day of the job tends to be dominated by its ceremonial, political, and money-chasing dimensions, with the president responsible primarily for fundraising, forging relationships with public officials, and serving as the public face of the institution. If one wants to get comprehensive, the job also includes financial management, working with the governing board, and leading the executive team.

Once upon a time, things were different. A half-century ago, it was expected that college presidents would be public intellectuals. They wrote influential books, gave major speeches, and were seen as major national voices. Today, it’s safe to say that most Americans would have trouble naming a single university president. Moreover, presidents just don’t have much day-to-day influence over curriculum, hiring, or what gets taught. And, as should be obvious, their views on same-sex marriage, gun control, and abortion don’t have much impact on campus life.  

At Glenn Loury's Substack, he and John McWhorter have one of their customary rollicking conversations, the kind that one can only have with good buds who understand each other well. This one focuses on the upcoming Supreme Court decision about affirmative action. Along the way, they talk about the problem they both have: their books, regardless of subject matter, getting relegated to the "black studies" sections of bookstores:

. . . you're going to go to something called a “bookstore” if it still exists. And you know where they're gonna put it. They're gonna put it in “African American Issues,” “Black Studies,” as if that's all that you are. I've seen some of my books put in the black section that weren't even about race, just because my name is mine. And that's the way it would be. Even on websites: “black books.” That's where they're gonna put you, and that's where they would put me, as if that that sums up our entire existence. 

At Merion West, Matthew Wardour asserts that, while we generally elevate authenticity as a virtue, those who have gained their celebrity with some degree of fakery have a lesson for us:

Many of us also like impostors because, deep down, we understand that to exist only matter-of-factly, without fiction, would be intolerable. Sir Walter Scott in his Journal, one of wisest autobiographies ever written, wrote that “Life could not be endured were it seen in reality.” People with no feeling of the romance of the world are among the people I least trust. Possibly their plainness ought to be interpreted as honesty, but I fail to see it—quite the opposite, in fact. I have sometimes reflected that Jesus’ desire not to reveal himself publicly until a later date has a jolly, even playful quality that makes him, paradoxically, more trustworthy and believable. This humble hoaxery distinguishes him, as far as I know, from any other god-figure.

Carl Trueman has a piece at World on the cost our society is paying for putting a higher priority on identity politics than on public health:

There are so many predictable aspects to this debacle. There is the obvious subordination of public health to identity politics. This is not the first time this has occurred. Who can forget the fact that churches meeting during Covid were considered highly controversial because of the risk of spreading the disease, while Black Lives Matter protests were seen as legitimate? This exposes the duplicitous rhetorical imperative, “Follow the science.” Following the science is always an empty term because science is descriptive, not prescriptive. It can tell you how to save a life, but it cannot tell you why a life is worth saving.

In short, science is not, in and of itself, a social policy. Social policy surely takes account of science but then must be formulated in terms of other factors, such as risk assessments in the light of a hierarchy of social goods. 

Further, we see the lengths to which the modern world will go in its desperate need to keep alive the myth that sexual activity is a cost-free recreation. For many years, society has taught us that, if all participants are in agreement, no particular sexual act or pattern of behavior can be rejected as wrong. Now it seems that this type of political judgment is to be extended beyond morality to matters of health as well.

And finally, my latest at Precipice is actually something that first appeared at Medium five years ago. I hadn't looked at my archive of pieces there for a long time. I thought this essay on profanity, entitled "Expletives and Blasphemy: As With Pungent Seasonings, Easy Does It," merited a re-up. Hey, our culture sure hasn't become any less coarse in the last half-decade.

 

 

 

Andrew Cuomo

  Maybe there's a way for him to skate past his current troubles. He seems determined to do so. I'd say the smart money, however, is on preparations for the most graceful resignation he can pull off - followed by an avalanche of legal woes.

Before we get to the litany of misdeeds causing his present difficulties, let's put them in a broader context.

He's been instrumental in pushing the Democrat party leftward his entire career. He spent considerable time at the Department of Housing and Urban Development - a cabinet-level body that has done much to foment federal intrusion into American life in its unnecessary 55-year existence - first as assistant secretary for "community planning and development" and then as overall head.

As governor, he spearheaded New York's enactment of a law that made the state the sixth in the nation to completely upend the definition of marriage commonly recognized by the entire human race for thousands of years. He signed the most stringent gun control law in the nation, expanded Medicaid under the "Affordable" Care Act and increased the minimum wage to $15 an hour. 

In his personal life, he was married to a daughter of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy for 15 years and then had a "domestic partner" until 2019.

Is it gratuitous of me to make a point of setting the table with his leftie bona fides? After all, there have been right-leaning elected officials who have landed in hot water.

I think not. Cuomo's whole career has been built on virtue signaling. He's cared, doncha know, about the homeless, those in shoddy public housing, people with exotic sex lives who want to be legally recognized as spouse and spouse, those with concurrent health and financial issues, victims of gun violence and generally anybody who qualifies as beleaguered by life's vicissitudes. 

And it's tempting to permit oneself to be inured to his being beset by sexual-harassment charges. After all, we've seen everybody from Harvey Weinstein to Charley Rose to Garrison Keillor, for goodness sake - along with a slew of guys at Fox News, right up to the late Roger Ailes - fall hard when their ugly ways have come to light. 

But he is a sitting governor with a loud mouth and an air of self-righteousness.

And three women who are pretty adamant that he harassed them have come forward. There's photographic documentation of the wedding-reception situation. (Check out Ms. Ruch's facial expression.) 

What Charlotte Bennett had to say to CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell is pretty detailed and in a pretty damn sordid way:

"He is a textbook abuser. He lets his temper and his anger rule the office, but he was very sweet to me for a year in the hope that maybe one day when he came onto me I would think we were friends or that it was appropriate or that it was okay," Bennett said.

Bennett said their professional relationship took a turn on May 15 when she alleges the governor started asking her about her love life and became fixated, repeating over and over again her history as a sexual assault survivor. 

"I think it's really strategic. I think abusers look for vulnerabilities, previous traumas, the idea that maybe I'm more willing to accept behavior because I have a history of sexual violence. Perhaps I'm not as confident in myself because of my history," she said.

Bennett said she thinks Cuomo was grooming her and says he crossed a line on June 5. 

"He wanted a girlfriend. When he said he was lonely, I mentioned that his daughters had been around. And he also rejected that and said, "Yeah, I love my-- I love my daughters, but that's-- I want a girlfriend.'" Bennett said.

She said he asked whether she'd ever been with an older man. These questions made Bennett feel deeply uncomfortable.

"I thought he's trying to sleep with me. The governor's trying to sleep with me. And I'm deeply uncomfortable and I have to get out of this room as soon as possible," Bennett said.

"And to be clear, what made you think that he was trying to sleep with you?" O'Donnell asked.

"Without explicitly saying it, he implied to me that I was old enough for him and he was lonely," Bennett replied.

Bennett said that as she left work on June 5, she was trying not to cry and assumed she could no longer work for him.

"I'm not doing that again. I'm not engaging in that conversation or any other conversation. I'm not putting myself in a position where he physically comes onto me. It stops here. That's it," she said.

But Bennett said she was called back into the office on Saturday, June 6 and never talked publicly about the event. She said at one point on that Saturday she was the only employee working with the governor in his private office.

"I was terrified. I was shaking. I thought any moment something can happen and I have no power here," she said.

"And what happens when you're with the governor?"  O'Donnell asked.

"He asked me a few questions about how to use his iPhone and then sends me back to wait and then finally, he calls me in and he asks if I found him a girlfriend yet," Bennett said. 

"He asks you again?" O'Donnell said. "Yes. I say, 'Not yet.' I said I was working on it," Bennett replied.

His public statement about this is pretty damn lame:

"At work sometimes I think I am being playful and make jokes that I think are funny. I do, on occasion, tease people in what I think is a good-natured way. I do it in public and in private. You have seen me do it at briefings hundreds of times," he said. "I have teased people about their personal lives, their relationships, about getting married or not getting married. I mean no offense and only attempt to add some levity and banter to what is a very serious business."

Now, at least as serious as the sum total of this is, there's the recent further substantiation that his administration cooked the numbers for nursing-home COVID deaths:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s health department confirmed reports late Thursday that members of his COVID-19 task force altered a state Health Department report to omit the full number of nursing home patients killed by the coronavirus, but insisted the changes were made because of concerns about the data’s accuracy.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, citing documents and people with knowledge of the administration’s internal discussions, reported that aides including secretary to the governor Melissa DeRosa pushed state health officials to edit the July report so it counted only residents who died inside long-term care facilities, and not those who became ill there and later died at a hospital.

Both the WSJ and the Times put the decision-making onus on officials just below the governor's level of authority, but - come on.

It's made the Dems in the state legislature skittish enough that they've scaled back his emergency powers considerably:

The New York State Senate passed a bill to repeal Gov. Andrew Cuomo's expanded emergency executive powers Friday. 

The vote split straight down the party lines, with all 20 Republican senators saying the bill does not go far enough to curtail Cuomo's power and voting against it. 

"Today, under this new legislation the governor will no longer be able to issue any new directives, period," said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. "In light of recent events, however, it is clear that we need to move toward a system of increased oversight, review and verification between the Legislature and the executive branch, and also limit the powers granted to the governor."

The State Assembly is still in session and is expected to pass the same bill later Friday.

One more bit of context: The governor has a track record, substantiated by the claims of both Democrats and Republicans as a screaming hothead.  

My sense is that his career is close to flatlining. 

 

 

 

The COVID relief bill has lots of silly stuff in it, and precious little actual relief

 This is what we get for waiting months and months for Capitol Hill knuckleheads to respond in real time to a pandemic that has wreaked economic havoc on the nation.

Government reacts to straightforward, elegantly simple moves the way a vampire reacts to garlic. 

What Pelosi, Mcconnell et al have come up with is 5,593 pages long. 

Here are the provisions dealing with what the damn thing is supposed to deal with:

The bill contains $600 stimulus checks for most Americans with another $600 per child, a $300 weekly unemployment supplement and $284.4 billion in forgivable small-business Paycheck Protection Program loans.

The stimulus checks are means-tested, with people earning more than $75,000 — or $150,000 per married couple filing jointly — getting less money, and people earning over $95,000 getting nothing.

It could have been considerably shorter and less expensive had they not included funds for a museum to offer programming about women, a section dealing with administering painkillers to race horses, "gender programs" in Pakistan, assistance for Tibetan refugees, new penalties for unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, creating a commission that will educated consumers about proper storage of fuels, and $440 million for the operation, maintenance and security of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 

Now, the two most recent posts here at LITD have had to do with how the Democrats are once again, with renewed vigor, putting climate stuff front and center among their areas of policy focus. 

That crud shows up in this behemoth plenteously: 

Chief among some of the massive bits of hot garbage that are completely unrelated to the pandemic were a raft of provisions dealing with climate change. Yes… I know. The Associated Press highlights some of these new laws that were never mentioned in public while the bill was being negotiated but were somehow crammed down everyone’s throats in the interest of looking like they were doing something about pandemic relief. 

The energy and climate provisions, supported by lawmakers from both parties, were hailed as the most significant climate change law in at least a decade.

“Republicans and Democrats are working together to protect the environment through innovation,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“This historic agreement includes three separate pieces of legislation that will significantly reduce greenhouse gases,″ Barrasso said, citing measures that promote technologies to “capture” and store carbon dioxide produced by power and manufacturing plants; reduce diesel emissions in buses and other vehicles; and authorize a 15-year reduction of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, that are used in everything from cars to air conditioners. HFCs are considered a major driver of global warming and are being targeted worldwide.

You’re going to see the phrases “promoting technologies” and “creating jobs” quite often in that portion of the bill. The technologies in question involve carbon capture, emission reduction and replacements for the hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used as coolants in air conditioning and refrigeration systems, among other things.

You see, that’s how they like to describe such “initiatives” to put a pleasant spin on them. A better translation of those passages would be to say that taxpayer money will be shoveled into “green energy” and carbon reduction companies who will ostensibly be working to achieve those goals while (just coincidentally) making a ton of money for a small number of people. A closer look into how those people donate to political campaigns and focus their job creation on the states represented by the politicians pushing these plans will no doubt be very instructive.

Cynical wisecracks about Congress being ineffectual and out of touch go back to Mark Twain. It was a staple of Will Rogers's material. 

But this strikes me as a new level of absence of seriousness. At a juncture like our present one in post-America, is it really that difficult for our national legislators to filter out concerns other than the public-health crisis gripping the nation and address it?

Both of the elected branches of our federal government are complete embarrassments. 

 

Saturday roundup

 Focus on the Family's Glenn T. Stanton, writing at Quillette, says, "Knock off the climate alarmism and start making more babies": 

How is the world going to end? Polls consistently show that most believe the cause will be environmental. “Climate anxiety” has reached such a fevered pitch among young people across the globe that the Lancet recently issued a special “call to action” to help with the problem. Clinicians have even created “climate anxiety scales” to measure the runaway angst spreading through our children, and the rest of us.

But what if the best, emerging science is actually telling us quite firmly that such fears are not only deeply misplaced, but that the most realistic cause of our collective human demise is likely the precise opposite of what most assume? This is the conclusion of a very interesting body of highly sophisticated and inter-disciplinary research. The greatest threat to humanity’s future is certainly not too many people consuming too many limited natural resources, but rather too few people giving birth to the new humans who will continue the creative work of making the world a better, more hospitable place through technological innovation. Data released this summer indicates the beginning of the end of humanity can be glimpsed from where we now stand. That end is a dramatic population bust that will nosedive toward an empty planet. New research places the beginning of that turn at about 30 years from today.

This means that Thomas Robert Malthus, and his many influential disciples, had it precisely wrong. More people are not only not the problem, but a growing population is the very answer to a more humane future in which more people are living better, healthier, longer lives than they ever have in our race’s tumultuously dynamic history.

Pop voices like those of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg and countless Hollywood celebrities have warned that unless drastic action is taken at once, we face irrevocable global catastrophe. The Climate Clock in Manhattan’s Union Square pegs the start of the Earth’s deadline at a little more than seven years from today. But this is not science. The most sophisticated examination considering the Earth’s eco-deadline was just published in August in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Drawing upon 36 meta-analyses, involving more than 4,600 individual studies spanning the last 45 years, nine ecologists, working from universities in Germany, France, Ireland, and Finland, explain that the empirical data simply does not permit the determination of any kind of environmental dooms date, or “thresholds” as scientists call them.

These scholars state frankly: “We lack systematic quantitative evidence as to whether empirical data allow definition of such thresholds” and “our results thus question the pervasive presence of threshold concepts” found in environmental politics and policy today. They explain that natural bio-systems are so dynamic—ever evolving and adapting over the long-term—that determining longevity timeframes is impossible. Talk of a ticking eco-clock is simply dogma. 

The American Enterprise Institute's Frederic Hess, writing at The Hill, says contemporary public-school civics education needs more solid grounding in foundational principles and less wokeness:

Civic education today tends to focus on voting, protest, and the need to combat “injustice.” This is all to the good. But it leaves little room for stodgy notions of obligation, complexity, or the importance of respecting processes even when you don’t like the results.

Indeed, in a national survey of social studies teachers, the RAND Corporation found that barely half think it's essential that students understand concepts like federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances, and a third don’t think it’s essential that students embrace civic responsibilities like voting and jury duty.

As a one-time high school civics teacher, I firmly believe that it’s vital to promote democratic participation. The past few weeks, though, have been a stark reminder that democratic government is about much more than who wins. It’s also about respect for rules, magnanimity, patience, and a bevy of other old-fashioned values.

There would be a lot of competition for the title of World's Most Ate-Up Trumpist, but Eric Metaxas would surely be a top contender. It gives Rod Dreher, writing at The American Conservative, no pleasure to say so, but he feels it's important to point it out:

Before I get started here, let me say clearly that Eric Metaxas has been a friend for over 20 years. He is a dear man, very kind and sincere, and loves God with all his heart. Nothing I say here should be interpreted as a personal attack upon him. I am criticizing his words and his opinions, which, as a Christian and as a conservative, alarm me greatly. The fact that Eric is not a cynic, that I have every confidence that he 100 percent believes what he says, only intensifies the tragedy. I would prefer not to write about Eric’s views, out of respect for our friendship. But I cannot stand to see what is happening to what is broadly my tribe, without saying something. He is influential, and he speaks not only to a lot of people, but for them as well.

To start, and for readers who haven’t been following me: I am an Orthodox Christian and a political conservative (registered as an Independent). I did not vote for Joe Biden, and have never associated myself with Never Trump. I have praised Trump when he has done things of which I have approved, and I have criticized him when I thought he deserved it. I don’t “hate” Donald Trump, nor do I hate people who voted for him. I dread the Biden presidency, but I believe the man won the race. I think it’s possible that there was election fraud in some places in this big country of ours, but based on Trump’s performance in court since election day, I don’t believe that it is provable, if it existed at all.

Metaxas was a guest on Charlie Kirk's podcast recently and Dreher found their conversation jaw-droppingly appalling:

In characterizing the election result, it is hard to be more lurid than Eric in this interview. He believes that Donald Trump won the election “by a landslide” (in fact, Biden won 7 million more votes than Trump, and even if Trump had won the Electoral College vote, it would have been close, not anything like a landslide).

“It’s like stealing the heart and soul of America. It’s like holding a rusty knife to the throat of Lady Liberty,” Eric says, of the election.”

“You might as well spit on the grave of George Washington,” he says.

“This is evil,” he says. And: “It’s like somebody has been raped or murdered. … This is like that times a thousand.”

This. Is. Hysterical. But there’s more.

“This is trying to kill the American people. This is everything.” And he says to believe otherwise is listening to “the voice of the Devil.”

Think about that. An Evangelical broadcaster is saying that Donald Trump’s election loss is a thousand times worse than rape and murder, equivalent to the murder of a nation. And if you don’t believe it? You are demonized.

 

It gets wilder:

Well, here’s news: Eric Metaxas doesn’t care what the courts have said. In a clip that starts right here, he says,

“So who cares what I can prove in the courts? This is right. This happened, and I am going to do anything I can to uncover this horror, this evil.”

Evidence, or the lack of it, does not matter. He is declaring as a matter of faith that Donald Trump won the election. How can you argue with that? You can’t. It is a statement of faith.

So, when he talks about doing “anything” he can to fight this thing that is a thousand times worse than rape and murder, what does he mean? Quote:

“We need to fight to the death, to the last drop of blood, because it’s worth it.”

There is no way around it, and it grieves me to say it: Eric Metaxas is calling for violent bloodshed to defend Donald Trump’s presidency, and he doesn’t care that Trump’s lawyers have not been able to prove in court that Trump had the election stolen from him. He told Charlie Kirk that he is willing to kill or be killed for a political cause for which there is not enough evidence to advance a court case, even among friendly judges.

This is fanaticism. But according to Eric, to disagree with him is to be under the sway of the Devil. Actual quotes:

“This is sacred. … Every American should say I really don’t care what it takes, we will not let this happen in America.”

“The fact that Republicans would shrug, it’s just despicable, it’s very clarifying, and I just believe God is in this, what can I say?”

“I still feel that those of us who know this is massive fraud, we have no choice but to fight.”

He knows because … he just knows, is all. God is in it, after all. It’s holy war. He says too:

“Everything’s at stake. America’s at stake.”

“If we don’t get our people in … we go over the cliff, and we don’t come back.”

If you really believed that, then of course you would be willing to kill and be killed for the cause. My God.

Eric says that America is God’s instrument, one that he has used to spread “liberty” around the globe. The Christians of Iraq could not be reached for comment, most of them dead or displaced as the result of America’s unjustified invasion of that country, but what are facts to a Christian nationalist who just knows things. He says “I believe it is God’s will that we would continue to do that, at an increased level, for a long time… .”  Manifest destiny, I guess.

At this point in the interview, Kirk asks Metaxas — who has, recall, just called for fighting to the death to defend Trump’s sacred case — where he thinks Trump’s legal strategy stands. Know what Eric says?

“I am thrilled to be too ignorant of the details to answer that question in any substantive way.” 

I’m not kidding. Click on that link to see and hear it for yourself. He says that the courts are irrelevant, that America is in the crucible, that we have a fight to the death on our hands, and that anybody who disagrees is no better than Germans who stood by and let Hitler come to power … but he cannot give even one detail of the actual court cases, and is “thrilled” to be ignorant of the cause for which he is urging people to shed blood and die! 

AOC did the righteous-indignation schtick after Senator Mike Lee explained why her proposal for demographics-based history museums is a toxic idea:

On Thursday Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) blocked a bill that would approve two proposed Smithsonian museums, the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum. The bill, presented on a bipartisan basis by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), already unanimously passed the House. But, Sen. Lee believes the museums would "further divide an already divided nation."

"My objection to the creation of a new Smithsonian museum or series of museums based on group identity, what Theodore Roosevelt called hyphenated Americanism, is not a matter of budgetary or legislative technicalities," Lee explained. "It is a matter of national unity and cultural inclusion.”

"The so-called critical theory undergirding this movement does not celebrate diversity; it weaponizes diversity," he continued. "I understand what my colleagues are trying to do and why. I respect what they're trying to do. I even share their interests in ensuring that these stories are told. But the last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups."

Sandy from Westchester's tweet:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

No movement on COVID in the Senate but good to know Utah Sen. Mike Lee is spending his time today giving speeches about why Latinos shouldn’t have a national history museum and oh, while we’re at it, why there shouldn’t be a women’s history museum either

For damn cogent reasons that you don' care to address, toots. 

 

At least a couple of Republican Senators, Susan Collins and John Cornyn, think such museums are a good idea which is really disappointing, but that kind of kow-towing to leftist firebrandery is the equivalent of 126 House Republicans endorsing that stupid Ken Paxton lawsuit that the SCOTUS gave the thumbs-down to last night. That's just where we are. Both of post-America's major political parties are garbage.

Politico's John Harris has a reassuring piece today called "Relax, A Trump Comeback in 2024 Is Not Going To Happen." He cites three reasons:

Most important are the abundant precedents suggesting Trump does not have another important act in national politics. The perception that Trump will remain relevant hinges on the possibility that he is a unique historical figure. Trump, however, is singular in one sense only: No politician of his stripe has ever achieved the presidency. In multiple other ways, he is a familiar American type, anticipated by such diverse figures as Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Ross Perot.

Like Trump, they all possessed flamboyant, self-dramatizing personas. They tapped into genuine popular grievance toward elites, and had ascendant moments in which they caused the system to quake and intimidated conventional politicians of both parties. In every case, their movements decayed rapidly. Cults of personality in American politics are quite common. But they never live long, and Trump has offered no reason to suppose he will be an exception.

That’s the second reason Trump is not well-positioned to retain his hold on public attention: He has largely abandoned any pretense that he thinks about anything other than his personal resentments, or that he is trying to harness his movement to big ideas that will improve the lives of citizens. When he vaulted into presidential politics five years ago, Trump’s still-potent gifts — for channeling anger, for mockery, for conspiracy theory — were once channeled to an agenda that fellow Republicans were largely neglecting, over trade, immigration, globalization, and perceptions of national decline. These days, no one can follow Trump’s Twitter feed and believe that he cares more about the public’s problems than his own, and that is not a recipe for sustaining political power.

Here is the third reason to be bearish on Trump’s future: Politics never stands still, but Trump largely does. As he leaves the White House, Trump should be haunted by a stark reality — if he had any capacity for self-calibration, he wouldn’t be leaving the White House at all. He’s got one set of political tools. When things are going well, his instinct is to double down on those. When things are going poorly, his instinct is to double down on those. In political terms, the pandemic demanded modulation of Trump’s blame-casting brand of politics — but also would have lavishly rewarded him if he had done so.

Susan Wright has a great piece at Patheos called "Yes, It's Really Over." She speaks for me here:

Am I thrilled to have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, along with whatever motley crew of liberal thinkers they surround themselves with in office?

I am not. I know there will be a lot to rail against, and I’m prepared to blast them on every point.

That being said, I am absolutely thrilled to see our system still works. 

Let's end on an uplifting note: 2.9 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine will be distributed in the US over the next week. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hoover puts distance between itself and Scott Atlas

 Recall that the reason Dr. Atlas is on the pandemic task force at all is because the VSG was impressed with the way he'd shoot off his mouth on television. 

Well, he's kept at it:

Dr. Scott Atlas, a controversial member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, is facing heavy criticism after telling Michiganders to "rise up" against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's new COVID-19 restrictions imposed as new cases surge in the state.

Whitmer has denounced Atlas' call to action, in a call with Michigan Capitol reporters Monday morning, slamming it as "incredibly reckless, considering everything that has happened, everything that is going on."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top expert on infectious diseases, told NBC's "Today" program Monday he "totally disagrees" with Atlas, and Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, called the comment "particularly irresponsible," noting the death threats officials say Whitmer has faced.

His employer, the Hoover Institution, based on the Stanford University campus, determined that it was time to speak up:

The university has been asked to comment on recent statements made by Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who is on leave of absence from that position.

Stanford’s position on managing the pandemic in our community is clear.  We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing.  We also believe in the importance of strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.

Dr. Atlas has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic. Dr. Atlas’s statements reflect his personal views, not those of the Hoover Institution or the university.

 

The cringe-worthy moments are going to continue right up to noon on January 20. 

Saturday roundup

 I had a bit of a notion when I got up today to write a post about the inevitable tradeoff between whacking the coronavirus once and for all and how the price is too steep for society to undertake what would be required. Alas, G. Patrick Lynch at Law & Liberty has handled the matter impeccably:

Back in March, before the world got weird, the argument for lockdowns and restrictions was simple and powerful. In the wake of the Italian healthcare system’s catastrophic failure to handle its first major Covid outbreak, public health officials and political leaders across the globe almost unanimously decided to pursue a lockdown for what they claimed would be a few weeks in order to “flatten the curve” and avoid overwhelming hospital systems. Trust me on this, you didn’t dream it.

Now more than eight months into those “few weeks,” the Great Barrington Declaration is forcing us in the developed West to answer a question that we have needed to discuss honestly and publicly for a while: what’s the goal now? What are we trying to accomplish with the myriad of frequently changing collections of Covid policies that are still in place in some locales and may be reimposed on others?

We don’t hear about curve bending, let alone flattening anymore. Instead, we hear about “public safety,” “protecting Grandma and Grandpa,” mask wearing, and social distancing. There have been recent threats of more “targeted” lockdowns because of increasing cases. None of these are goals—they are practices without a clear end in sight. No one in the White House, Congress, state legislatures, or governors’ mansions is articulating a clear goal or timeline. What’s more, the trade-offs associated with this messy collection of policies have been significant and deadly.

Public health experts talk about “excess deaths,” which are essentially additional deaths in a place over a time period above what you would have predicted under normal conditions. Since the beginning of the year, the US has experienced about 300,000 excess deaths, which is a lot. The number directly attributable to Covid is “only” about 200,000. So Covid has killed 200,000, but another 100,000 Americans have died while these policies have been in place. Health officials widely point to higher rates of serious health problems that aren’t being treated because of fear associated with Covid. For example, the heart attack death rate has doubled since the pandemic began. Many of those other excess deaths might be attributable to our Covid policies, not the virus. That’s a failure on both counts. We haven’t prevented 200,000 deaths from Covid, and our lockdowns and draconian approaches lasting for months have at the very least contributed to another 100,000. Individuals who cannot afford to do so are forgoing basic health services. Heart attacks, strokes, and many other significant health problems are occurring and not being treated because of fears related to the pandemic. And perhaps most dangerously, these extra deaths not directly attributable to Covid are occurring among younger Americans between 30 and 60 who are not at high risk of dying from the virus, but are foregoing treatment because of misplaced fear.

This is to say nothing of the suffering the virus and the containment policies have caused in the developing world where millions of people live from day to day. They aren’t rich enough to stay at home, watch Netflix, and chill. There are no virtual classes in poor public schools in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. We in the US are rich enough to temporarily get away with this odd, bifurcated world where many of the wealthy work from home and their children receive private tutoring online, while other “essential” workers continue to work in their jobs and accept more risks.

Constructing public policy takes not only expertise, but a proper balance between risk and reward. Aaron Wildavsky’s work on this topic points out two reasons why public officials, in conjunction with citizens, must accept tradeoffs in the creation of safety policy. As Wildavsky argues, and the discussion of excess deaths clearly illustrates, seeking safety will inevitably increase danger in other areas. For instance, Wildavsky discusses attempts by the city of Los Angeles to promote the demolition of many older buildings throughout its metropolitan area because they were deemed unsafe in the event of an earthquake. City officials were trying to be proactive against possible deaths from older buildings collapsing. But as he notes, displacing 17,000 residents from those buildings and disrupting the commercial activity in many of them had consequences for health and safety. The same is true when new drugs are placed on the market. Many citizens benefit from the drugs, but a few can have severe side-effects.

Conversely, Wildavsky argues, somewhat paradoxically, that accepting risks can promote safety. Take any standard table or floor lamp. At the time that electric lamps were invented, people were somewhat concerned about running electric current right to their fingertips, but compared to burning gas and candles, it turned out to be much safer. The tradeoff was worth it and only through risk-taking experimentation did we discover that it was safe.

The problem with our current regulatory environment, as Wildavsky sees it, is twofold: resilience is not valued, and regulators and policymakers seek what he calls “perfect safety.” Our policymakers today are rejecting resiliency, making us poorer, less socially stable, less well-educated, and more divided. The second problem is that our health experts also seek some sort of ideal or perfect safety when it comes to Covid mitigation. When policymakers compete in a race to the bottom for draconian measures that fight Covid outbreaks only with brute force, they are lauded as being proactive without careful consideration of the harm these policies inflict.

More fundamentally, what have all of these Covid mitigation policies done for human flourishing? If we could reach the perfectly safe Covid life, would it be worth it? Aristotle reminds us of the problems that arise when individuals do not live socially. As he notes in the Politics, our natural state is in a social order like the city, the center of the ancient Greek world. He famously noted that the man not suited to social life in the city was either “a beast or a god.” But what often gets left out is the next sentence, where he writes, “There is then in all persons a natural impetus to associate with each other in this manner, and he who first founded civil society was the cause of the greatest good.” Our end goal should be the promotion of human flourishing, which requires the maintenance of civil society—the social world where we practice politics, associate freely, and achieve justice through the rules that evolve from our regular interactions. This process is halted in the Covid world.

But it’s not merely our rules and sense of justice that come from social life. Our friendships, described by Aristotle in book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, are profoundly important not only because of the good they do for us and our friends, but also because friendship is a substitute for state-enforced justice. When friendship is rich and deep in a political system, leaders do not need to resort to coercion and force. By instilling fear among all of us, politicians are fracturing friendship and subjecting us to lives that are not natural. We can easily see the roots of our recent civil unrest, rioting, and lawlessness during this pandemic in the isolation and breakdown of social and economic life.

None of these forced and consciously chosen disruptions were done in bad faith. However, isolation and separation from our friends, loved ones, and social life is not natural and not without cost. It can fracture our social fabric irreparably. Waiting for months without a clear set of goals decreases cohesion and trust among the governed. At the regime level, this opens up the possibility for a growing chasm between the governed and governors. Such a situation invites potential abuses of power. 

Seth Chalmer at Quillette offers a thought-provoking perspective on our society's ever-ratcheting polarization:

 

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, many Jews in the Russian Empire hoped for a French victory. Napoleon had eliminated barriers to Jewish integration and advancement in France; the Russian regime and its policies, by contrast, were thoroughly infused with anti-Jewish discrimination and hostility. But one prominent Hasidic leader disagreed with those cheering Bonaparte. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founding Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect, fervently supported Russia’s Tsar Alexander I. Publicly, Schneur Zalman argued that the Tsar served God while Napoleon served only himself. Privately, however, the rabbi had another reason. Writing to a friend, he explained that if Napoleon were victorious, conditions would greatly improve for the Jews and this would weaken their commitment to God, whereas if the Tsar prevailed, Jews would suffer but remain religiously committed as a result. Closing his letter, he quoted Psalm 119: “‘Princes have persecuted me without cause; But my heart stands in awe of Your words.’ And for God’s sake: Burn this letter.”

I thought of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s secret reasoning while reading Ezra Klein’s 2019 book, Why We’re Polarized. There’s a parallel between the Hasidic master’s conviction that repression of Jews strengthens Jewish commitment and some of the social science Klein discusses. Schneur Zalman’s focus was piety, not identity, yet in a way he seems to have known a truth that research later confirmed, and that all sides of today’s culture wars would be wise to remember: when you attack an identity, you make it stronger. Klein synthesizes decades of social science research about how people relate to group identities. Summarizing these findings, he writes: “The human mind is exquisitely tuned to group affiliation and group difference. It takes almost nothing for us to form a group identity, and once that happens, we naturally assume ourselves in competition with other groups.” Furthermore, “The simplest way to activate someone’s identity is to threaten it.” Threat is such a strong force that it can awaken seemingly dormant identities; for example, Klein paraphrases Professor Ashley Jardina, who studies racial identity: “White political identity is conditional. It emerges in periods of threat and challenges.”

Note the asymmetry of ease between nurturing an identity and weakening one: it takes “almost nothing” for us to form an identity, whereas when someone threatens an identity we hold, that only activates us to claim and defend it, even if it hadn’t felt relevant to us before. Klein is interested in this subject for what it tells us about the two political “mega-identities” that consume America today, how the alignment of political identities with social identities inflames our divisions, and why so many arguments that seem to be about ideology and policy are really about politics as identity. But Klein’s observations lead me to ask a question he doesn’t address: What is the most effective way to uproot an identity?

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discusses how two law firms pursuing these Hail-Mary efforts of the Trump campaign to find funny business withdrawing their services has unsettling long-term implications. If law firms can be cowed by the forces of wokeness to stand down, an important resource of participants in our democratic process takes a hit:

the timing on Porter Wright’s move seems curious, if so. That exchange in court took place a week ago. Yesterday, however, the New York Times highlighted internal divisions and external pressures on Porter Wright and Jones Day, another storied Ohio legal firm retained by Team Trump, over their participation in election challenges.

Doing business with Mr. Trump — with his history of inflammatory rhetoric, meritless lawsuits and refusal to pay what he owes — has long induced heartburn among lawyers, contractors, suppliers and lenders. But the concerns are taking on new urgency as the president seeks to raise doubts about the election results.

Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country’s largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.

At another large firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, based in Columbus, Ohio, lawyers have held internal meetings to voice similar concerns about their firm’s election-related work for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, according to people at the firm. At least one lawyer quit in protest.

Jones Day has earned more than $20 million doing business with Trump, his campaigns, and the RNC over the last five years, $4 million in this year alone. That’s a lot of income, and it pays more than a few salaries. Yet this seems to be the bigger concern among some of its attorneys:

In recent days, two Jones Day lawyers said they had faced heckling from friends and others on social media about working at a firm that is supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts.

A lawyer in Jones Day’s Washington office felt that the firm risked hurting itself by taking on work that undermined the rule of law. “To me, it seems extremely shortsighted,” the lawyer said.

That in itself is nonsense. Pursuing election challenges is not “undermining the rule of law,” but an exercise in law, as attorneys should especially know. I quoted Fordham Law professor Jed Shugerman in my earlier post, but he’s worth quoting again here:

The lawsuits may prove to be the best way to legitimize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and draw to a close years of bogus complaints about voter fraud. The lack of merit in the legal complaints means they will be dead on arrival in the courts, and while the resounding rejection of Trump’s fantasies by judges will not persuade his fiercest loyalists, it will prevent conspiracy theories from spreading.

It is also a bad idea, as a general matter, to object to election law litigation: In two years, or four years — and possibly in two months in Georgia — the shoe may be on the other foot. It would look hypocritical to condemn the very idea of challenging an election result now, only to turn around and do so in different (albeit more legitimate) circumstances.

Does it undermine the rule of law to appeal a conviction of a murder defendant one knows to be guilty on technical grounds? Should attorneys only take on clients who are popular and whose causes they agree with? The true undermining of the rule of law is the hounding of lawyers based on the clients they accept. Trump can always find law firms that will take him on as a client, but if these social-media mobs and examples of law-firm wokery set these kinds of precedents, unpopular defendants, plaintiffs, and respondents will eventually find themselves locked out of the legal system.

That will undermine the rule of law, not representing a client in futile efforts in legal challenges to election results.

When people criticize attorneys for the clients they have represented, especially in a political campaign, the standard lawyer response is also the correct and true one: every client deserves representation in the legal process. If that ceases to be the standard and the value of the legal profession, then heaven help the lawyers to come, and heaven help us all when we need representation. That matters a lot more than Trump’s futile fights in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Update: I edited the headline for greater precision shortly after publishing.

Update: I missed this earlier, but it’s an important part of the context:

On Tuesday, The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, said it will spend $500,000 on ads targeting Jones Day and a smaller law firm working for Trump, following a Monday New York Times report citing dissent among Jones Day’s senior attorneys over its election work for Republicans.

In tweets online, the group, co-founded by conservative lawyer George Conway, who is the husband of former Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, has encouraged lawyers and clients to abandon Jones Day.

Online critics of Jones Day also tweeted at its clients, including Verizon VZ.N and General Motors GM.N, urging them to drop the law firm.

A Twitter post by General Motors on Monday recognizing women leaders at the auto company has garnered more than 40 responses, including “sever ties with @JonesDay or be prepared for a #BoycottGM” and “Are you a Jones Day client? Do you really want your name associated with them?”

That said, the effort to find a sufficient amount of funny business to get the Very Stable Genius a victory is clearly an exercise in futility at this late date. More substantiation here. And here. 

Pfizer's decision to stay out from under Operation Warp Speed's purview allowed the free market to work its wonders:

In a time when capitalism is under attack from the left and the right, this highly promising vaccine is a reminder of what profit-driven markets are capable of. Pfizer chose to go it alone and the company’s reasoning is worth consideration. In an interview, the CEO of Pfizer emphasized that he wanted to liberate his scientists from bureaucracy, that he didn’t want to deal with the strings that money would come with, and that he wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics. In his approach we glean two insights: the importance of forward-thinking corporate leadership and the critical difference between government as a customer and government as an investor.

John Loftus at National Review on the hurl-worthy degree of moral preening and self-congratulation exemplified by “IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE: BLACK LIVES MATTER / WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS / NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL / SCIENCE IS REAL / LOVE IS LOVE / KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING” yard signs.