If I had my way, I'd tax them out of existence

We obviously have too many large vehicles being driven in the suburbs of Australia, too, and they drive me nuts when they can't do a tight turn in a shopping centre car park because of their turning circle.

Ergas at his most pretentious

I got to Henry Ergas' column in the Australian today via his twitter link to it, and what a special bit of irrelevant pretentiousness it is.   

Most of it is about a Greek play,and attacks Palaszczuk and Andrews for their handling of COVID-19, with hyperbole thrown in:

There is, for sure, a chance that they will succeed; the gods, who in Greek tragedy could always be counted on to mete out harsh justice, having long left the scene, little stands between us and the ancients’ presumption, amply justified by every page of political history, that some agents of government will use all the scope they have to entrench their position — including by acting brutally and immorally — unless they are prevented from doing so.

With the crisis removing many of those constraints, our democracy appears to have slipped closer to the edge of the precipice than one might have thought possible.

Not for the first time I say:  what a tedious wanker.   

He finally gets around to some modern political philosophising:

Judith Shklar, the Harvard professor whose lectures on ­Antigone and political obligation were recently published post­humously, captured them brilliantly. The liberalism we inherited from the 19th century, she wrote, was a “liberalism of hope” — the hope, most of all, that one could create the basis for human flourishing.

But these dark times, which offer so much room for manipulation and deceit, demand a renewed emphasis on the “liberalism of fear” that instead of concentrating on how to bring about the greatest good, focuses on averting the greatest ills.

Rather than striving for the utopian perfectibility of mankind, the liberalism of fear seeks to limit the damage, so that we can feel free because the government does not, indeed cannot, terrorise us — be it by handcuffing pregnant women for organising innocent protests or by denying to grieving families the solace of farewelling the dead.

I'm not even sure I can make sense of that last paragraph - but whatever.

The main point is one I have been repeating for years - twits on the Right like Ergas are too interested in culture wars to be able to actually recognise real and serious threat warnings from scientists, be it climate change or dangerous pandemics.  They discount "the greatest ills" because they would rather believe cranks and "do nothing" advocates because they imagine that scientists and politicians who take them seriously are only doing so in order to increase the role of government.  

And as for "danger to democracy" - I hardly notice much of what Ergas writes, but I have only ever seen him defend Donald Trump, which makes his claims of democracy under threat from 2 Australian Premiers all the more ludicrous.

 

Tip for those of us with ageing eyes

First, by way of background:   my eyesight is such that for most purposes I don't need to use reading glasses, although I do have a set that I occasionally use.   I like reading without glasses so much that when I had a cataract operation a couple of years back, I asked for the lens replacement to be a close focus one rather than the more commonly requested distance focus.  My reasoning is that I have been using glasses for distance for about 40 years, and find not having to use glasses in bed and at the computer to be useful. Unfortunately, the result with the new lens was not perfect, there's a bit of "ghosting" around letters.  Apparently, it is difficult for the pre-operation measurements of what an eye needs to be super precise.  However, my left eye, despite having the start of a cataract as well, still does close focus well enough that my brain seems to favour it when reading and working on the computer, and I can get away without glasses.  But super small print on products at the supermarket can still be a problem, and when you are counting calories for diet purposes, it can be annoying not being to read them properly.

 Now that I have bored everyone with the preamble, this is my tip I just realised:  instead of carrying around reading glasses all the time, there's a good chance your mobile phone camera can act as a de facto magnifier instead.   I just tried it with the "macro" lens on my camera, and it worked fine.

You can get magnifying glass apps for phones as well - but with these new phones with their super close focussing, you don't really need them. 

Maybe everyone else already though of this?   I don't think I have ever seen another shopper using their phone close to a label though...

All true

 

I would add:  you can imagine how the Right wing sites would have absolutely freaked out if Obama had done a similar thing in dividing up the parts of America on a life and death issue.   They freak out over imaginary slights from Google, for God's sake.

Will anyone retract their Rowling twitter pile on, I wonder?

So, Nick Cohen has actually read JK Rowling's new book, and is emphatic that the "she's an appalling transphobic" social media pile on against her is based on a completely misleading line in The Telegraph's review.

I think Cohen is a reliable writer - I strongly suspect he would be correct.

I have seen many Australian twitter people (journalists and opinion writers) join in with the "tsk, tsk, why does Rowling do this?" line.   Assuming Cohen is vindicated by other reviewers, I wonder if any of the twitter mob will ever retract, and allow for nuance in how people with sound credentials on the Left are allowed to think about this particular phenomena.

The madness on the American Right regarding the culture wars and politics is certainly the greatest danger to that country and the entire planet;  but it is extraordinary to watch the much smaller scale madness that is identity politics (at least in the West) taking the line that feminists with qualms about how transgenderism is best recognised and understood is turned into "you want us dead because you don't agree with us."  

Still sounds strong

I forgot to mention - I heard former politician and all round know-it-all Barry Jones on Radio National breakfast this morning, talking about the successful ozone layer protection action taken by governments in the 1990's.   He still has a strong voice, and obviously has all of his marbles too.

"How old must he be?" I thought, because he's one of those men who seemingly from a young age could pass for someone substantially older than his actual age.   He'll soon be 88, I see.   

I'm not sure that I would say he was very likeable as a politician/public intellectual - he seems a bit too much of an eccentric loner for that -  but he has always impressed as an earnest hard worker not inclined to extremes in politics, and I sort of admire him for that.    

Update:  here's an interesting and very recent article on Jones in the SMH.  I didn't realise he had been revising his dictionary of biography ever since his first draft in his 20's (!)

A zombie song

Just so you know that my days are not entirely devoted to fretting about Trump and conspiracy belief taking over the United States, on Saturday I listened to Spotify for the first time in months, and it chose a 2006 song for me which I might have heard before, but I'm not sure:  Re: Your Brains.   It's a very amusing lyric with a nice melody, and as such has a definite They Might be Giants vibe about it.  (No doubt, this is why Spotify knew I might like it.)  Reading about the songwriter/performer Jonathan Coulton, I see he is from Brooklyn and does indeed know TMBG (he's played with at least one of the Johns). 

It also seems that Coulton is/was very big in the nerd/gamer world, writing some songs used in some very popular games (which I have not played.)   Seems I should listen to some of his old stuff.

Anyway, I take it he doesn't do proper videos, but lets lots of people make their own.  This one, with deaf signing for the lyrics, struck me as pretty fun to watch:

Kim does something responsible

I don't really know a thing about her, but this is a surprising bit of socially responsible action on her part:

Kim Kardashian West announced that she will join two dozen celebrities in temporarily freezing their Instagram and Facebook accounts on Wednesday because the platforms "continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda and misinformation — created by groups to sow division and split America apart."

Why it matters: The announcement from such a high-profile user is likely to be a PR disaster for Instagram and Facebook, as well as a boost to the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Kardashian West is the seventh-most followed account on Instagram with 188 million followers. She currently has 30 million followers on Facebook.

 

They would prefer a dictatorship over a democracy, as long as the dictator said he was against abortion

Let's face it - it's the conservative Catholic inability to accept any moral ambiguity at all in terms of any abortion ever that leads them to prefer an authoritarian who treats the actually born like dirt, and who thinks it's cool that he's trusted by other murderous dictators, over a liberal Catholic candidate.  

It's pretty much the case that they would prefer a religious dictator (as long as the religion bans all abortion) over a democratically elected liberal.   (Not that I think many are actually dumb enough to consider Trump is actually religious - but they will take whatever scum they can, as long as he says - or lies - that he agrees with them on the matter of abortion.)

Agreed

Max Boot in the Washington Post points out the hysteria on the Right about America if Trump loses:

“The battle for the survival of the United States of America is upon us,” proclaims a hysterical cover story in Commentary. “The dissenters are being silenced. The buildings are burning, and the demands are ever growing.” We are living, the author argues, in “France in 1789, Russia in 1917, and China in 1949.” Derek Chauvin, the police officer whose brutality sparked nationwide protests, is “our own Gavrilo Princip,” the assassin who triggered World War I. This is “an American version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.”

In the Wall Street Journal, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, similarly suggests this is yet another Flight 93 moment. She compares the ideology of al-Qaeda to the “Wokeism” of progressives: “Islamists shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Death to America’; the Woke chant ‘Black lives matter’ and ‘I can’t breathe.’ Islamists pray to Mecca; the Woke take the knee. Both like burning the American flag.”....

Give me a break. And get a grip.

I’ve been criticizing “political correctness” for more than 30 years, ever since I was a student columnist at the University of California at Berkeley. Its excesses continue to irk me. But they are insignificant compared with the threat posed to our country by Trump and the malign forces that he has unleashed.

More than 90 percent of racial justice protests have been peaceful. The far right, not the far left, is responsible for almost all domestic terrorism. A recent study found that right-wing extremists perpetrated nearly two-thirds of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90 percent in the first four months of 2020.

Joe Biden has been clear in condemning violence whether of the left or right. As he said: “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple.” Trump, by contrast, employs racist and violent language to mobilize White voters. He won’t even condemn a supporter accused of killing two people in Kenosha, Wis. Trump warns of “anarchy” if Biden wins, but he is the one promoting lawlessness and disorder.

 

 

President Dunning Kruger Peale

When considering Trump's pronouncements on COVID-19 "just going away" and now this on climate change, people seem to be forgetting that he had a close connection to the original "Power of Positive Thinking" spin merchant Norman Vincent Pearle.  As NPR wrote in 2017:

KEITH: That is the voice of Norman Vincent Peale, the author of the best-selling book "The Power Of Positive Thinking," first published in 1952. In the late 1960s, he had a regular radio segment, which is where this audio comes from. He was also the longtime pastor at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which Trump attended with his family growing up. Peale even officiated Trump's first wedding.

TRUMP: Norman Vincent Peale - the great Norman Vincent Peale - was my pastor. "The Power Of Positive Thinking" - everybody's heard of Norman Vincent Peale. He was so great.

KEITH: That was Trump in July of 2015 at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, talking about where he got his religious grounding.

TRUMP: I still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable. And what he would do is he'd bring real-life situations - modern-day situations - into the sermon. And you could listen to him all day long. 

 It is, of course, magical thinking, which is the last thing you want in a politician who has to deal with problems which are about more than mere psychology.

The extraordinarily shallow Trump

Fred Kaplan at Slate has an article about the new Woodward book on Trump which you should read in full.  I suppose it would be funny if it weren't so horrifying that, I dunno, 20% - 30% of Americans genuinely think he's a brilliant and charming fellow:  

When Woodward asks what it was like to meet Kim at their first summit in Singapore, Trump responds, “It was the most cameras I think I’ve seen, more cameras than any human being in history,” even more than he’d seen at the Academy Awards.

He then gives Woodward a poster-size copy of a photo of Trump and Kim shaking hands at the border separating North and South Korea. “This is me and him,” he tells Woodward, all excited. “That’s the line, right? Then I walked over the line. Pretty cool.” He goes on to brag that Kim “tells me everything. … He killed his uncle and put the body right in the steps where the senators walked out. And the head was cut, sitting on the chest. … Nancy Pelosi said, ‘Oh, let’s impeach him.’ You think that’s tough? This is tough.”

What a fanboy. No wonder Kim and every other dictator on earth plays the American president like such a wondrously easy mark.

At one point, when talking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump tells Woodward, “It’s funny, the relations I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, OK?” Woodward writes: “That might not be difficult, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.”

Throughout the book, Woodward proclaims shock (though one wonders why) at how shallow Trump is. Asked about his strategy for dealing with the plethora of crises hitting him, Trump replies, “I don’t have a strategy,” except to “do a good job.” Trump says he knew that he and Kim would get along instantly, in the same way that “you meet a woman, in one second you know whether or not it’s all going to happen.”

Over and over, Trump plasters his pathological insecurity on marquee display. “I don’t think Obama’s smart,” he says, adding, “Hey look, I went to the best schools, I did great. … You know, they talk about the elite … they have nice houses. No, I have much better than them, I have better everything than them, including education.” His uncle, as he has said many times, was a brilliant MIT professor who knew about nuclear weapons—“so I understand that stuff,” the president says. “You know, genetically.”

 

 

How does democracy recover from the internet/right wing media led intensification of conspiracy?

Politico writes:

MIAMI — George Soros directs a “deep state” global conspiracy network. A Joe Biden win would put America in control of “Jews and Blacks.” The Democratic nominee has a pedophilia problem.

Wild disinformation like this is inundating Spanish-speaking residents of South Florida ahead of Election Day, clogging their WhatsApp chats, Facebook feeds and even radio airwaves at a saturation level that threatens to shape the outcome in the nation’s biggest and most closely contested swing state. 

The sheer volume of conspiracy theories — including QAnon — and deceptive claims are already playing a role in stunting Biden’s growth with Latino voters, who make up about 17 percent of the state’s electorate.

“The onslaught has had an effect,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University.

“It’s difficult to measure the effect exactly, but the polling sort of shows it and in focus groups it shows up, with people deeply questioning the Democrats, and referring to the ‘deep state’ in particular — that there’s a real conspiracy against the president from the inside,” he said. “There’s a strain in our political culture that’s accustomed to conspiracy theories, a culture that’s accustomed to coup d'etats.”

And  David Roberts tweets:

And he further notes:

I wonder, though:  does Rupert Murdoch have the ability to dampen down QAnon?   As I understand it, Fox News pretty much ignores it, and while it's happy to hype hysteria over THE LEFT WANTS TO KILL US ALL to its mostly elderly audience, promoting the idea that children are being detained underground by devil worshipping Democrats seems just a stretch too far for the network.

But what would happen if the Murdoch family put out the message to its opinion "stars" along the lines "this is getting out of control - people have to believe our conspiracies, but a sensible democracy can't work if people live in complete and utter fantasy land" and told them to actively promote the line that believing QAnon is nuts and has disproved by false predictions so many times that you can't believe a word of it?  Who knows, perhaps they could sell it as a Democrat led conspiracy so extreme as to hurt Trump because it is so nuts?    

I tend to think that a united front from Fox News to attack QAnon at least could not hurt - perhaps giving Republicans cover to come out and call it out themselves.  

 

A complete disgrace and danger to the country

 

Denis did well

It seems quite a few weeks since I watched a movie on Netflix which I could strongly recommend, but last night was a good one:  the 2013 Denis Villeneuve directed Prisoners.

 I had never noticed it before, and as I consider Villeneuve a director who can make great looking movies which are nonetheless narratively unsatisfying, I wasn't in a hurry to watch it.  (It also stars Hugh Jackman, an actor who I generally struggle to like.)  \

But it's really good - well directed, well acted, and long but quite engaging all the way.  Given that it's about a neighbourhood child abduction, and the father (played by Jackman) is a conservative Christian who goes a bit nuts thinking he knows what's really going on, I thought it carried some surprising ressonance to the social milieu which has led to the current QAnon conspiracy craze spinning out of control in the US, and even Australia.  As Jack the Insider recently wrote:

The State of Victoria is in lockdown, not to reduce the infectious spread of the pandemic but because armed forces are secretly battling for control of the tunnels; an underground network used by the deep state to transport abducted children. Scott Morrison is with the deep state. Andrews was, too, before his arrest.

It is not yet safe to go to the tunnels. But be patient. The Great Awakening is upon us.

Welcome to the latest news from QAnon, the conspiracy theory that has millions of followers in the US and thousands in Australia.

Don't get me wrong:  Prisoners does have a mystery which is resolved by the end and it's unusual but not completely ludicrous, like QAnon.

And speaking of Villeneuve, yes, I have watched the trailer for Dune, a book which I have never read, and I didn't even see the David Lynch movie because of so-so reviews; but this upcoming version looks very stylish and probably worth seeing.