Transgender arguments

JK Rowling's tweets about the transgender issue, and Radcliffe's entry into the debate on the side of transgender activists ("a transgender woman is a woman") made me look up so called TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminism) articles.   I found this from 2018 by Katheleen Stock in The Economist:  Changing the concept of "woman" will cause unintended harms.   Which is pretty much what Rowling argues.  I think.

Here's a paragraph that struck home:

In public discourse, there’s a lot of focus on whether trans women should be counted as women. Whatever the ultimate answer, that’s obviously a reasonable question, despite trans activists’ attempts to count it as “transphobic”. But I think we should also ask whether self-declaration alone could reasonably be the only criterion of being trans. There’s little precedent elsewhere. In a superficially comparable case, such as coming out as gay, there is still another underlying factor, sexual orientation, that secures your membership. It’s not just a matter of saying that you are gay. And though, as in the notorious case of Rachel Dolezal, a person might “self-declare” that she is “trans racial”, it has seemed clear to nearly everybody responding to this case that such a declaration would be not only false, but also offensive to genuinely oppressed members of the race in question. There is no such thing as being “trans racial”; there is only thinking falsely that you are.

This seems a good point about race.  Even allowing for cases where a very small amount of biological ancestry is still sufficient for some Australians to be recognised as aboriginal,  no one ever argues that it would be reasonable for someone with no biological descent at all to self declare aboriginal identity for any meaningful purpose.  Why is race "protected" in this way, but sex or gender not?   Both can be in a biological "inter" state, and both can be understood as having social construct elements too.  Does it come down to how clearly you can see how open membership to "race" would dilute positive discrimination measures?  Because if it does, that is what Stock argues for women (see below.)

But what are the harms Rowling thinks self declaratory gender would bring?   She's a bit vague on this, and runs the risk of being accused of arguing that biological females are just obviously losers if their life experience loses its distinctiveness by being forced to accept others into the club, so to speak; in much the same way that conservatives argued that recognising gay marriage would be an intrinsically damaging insult to heterosexual marriage.   That in fact is what this Washington Post writer accuses Rowling of arguing.  It was not a great argument against same sex marriage, and without some details, not an especially great one regarding trans declarations of gender too.

The Kathleen Stock article does try to give some more concrete examples:

*   It will muddle understanding (basically, statistics) on problems biological women have long faced such as:

....vulnerability to rape, sexual assault, voyeurism and exhibitionism; to sexual harassment; to domestic violence; to certain cancers; to anorexia and self-harm; and so on. If self-declared trans women are included in statistics, understanding will be hampered.

She argues that its fine to collect stats as to how these same issues affect transwomen too, but they should be kept separate if you want a clear understanding.   [Given the small number of transexuals, I'm not sure how much effect this could really have.  But I guess there would be some examples where it is more significant than others.]

*  The weakening of "safe spaces" for women, which she argues is a problem because of the history of violent men.   [Bear in mind she is arguing against the idea that any man, no matter what state their body is in, can declare himself a woman.]    I have previously written that the fuss about a man who thinks he's a woman having access to women's toilets is overblown - especially if they are already hormonally and at least part physically feminised.   However, Stock does have a point that, if transgender activists want to be consistent, their "gender is what anyone declares it is" would allow testosterone filled wannabe male rapist a legal right to enter spaces, like toilets, where other women would be very uncomfortable if they knew his biology.    It feels more like a hypothetical problem, but one which transgender activism just wants to ignore completely.
 
* The last example I will quote:

And changing the concept of “woman” to include self-declared trans women also threatens a secure understanding of the concept “lesbian”. Lesbians are traditionally understood as females with a sexual orientation towards other females. Again, the categorisation is socially useful. It helps members of the category understand themselves in a positive, distinctive way, despite living in a heteronormative society. It motivates them to create their own social spaces. It gives them special protections, as a discriminated-against minority; and access to special sources of charity funding. 

I don't know that I have much to say about that.   In a non discriminatory world, the importance of lesbians, or gay men, having their own social spaces should be decreasing - and it's probably happening, given what I think is the decreasing number of gay bars and venues in many Western cities.    But I can understand lesbians being a bit irked about transgender men moving into their "territory" so to speak.

In my view, then, the points Stock makes have some merit, but you can see the arguments that will be deployed against them.  

I think there are two very pragmatic ones that are more convincing:

a.  the disadvantages birth women face when a transgender woman wants to compete in women's sports; and

b.  the interest of potential or actual sex partners in knowing transsexual status.  

The first point I won't write about - the unfairness to women athletes is obvious. 

As to the second point:   I'm not sure why we can't be honest and say that the transgender process is never a 100% complete physical transition, and the end result is, inevitably, a simulacrum of the physicality of the desired gender.   If transgender ideology taken to its desired legal effect (that a man can legally alter gender to woman, for all purposes) means that no naive man who marries a transgender woman could ever claim he has been wronged by non disclosure of his partner's former gender, I would have to say there is something wrong with the ideology.  This may sound like a hypothetical case if you are talking marriage, but no doubt there have been cases of a transsexual woman bedding a man who did not realise what he was getting into.  

If everyone can understand why a man or woman going to bed with a partner might be upset if they find their partner has not first disclosed opposite gender genitals, or an imitation of such, well then they are accepting that self declaration is not the only thing that matters about gender and sex.

As to how to resolve this, I have been thinking lately that the idea of a "third gender" seems to have a lot going for it.   It's acknowledging  both a biological and psychic reality, isn't it?   And as I have said before, it's pretty interesting that people who wanted to live as the other gender in those societies did not (as far as I know) spend a lot of time fretting about how their body must in all respects be altered to match their perceived gender, otherwise their life will be one of crushing depression and unhappiness.

The Wikipedia entry on third gender talks about it in the context of transgender, and some parts are pretty interesting:

In a study of people in the United States who thought themselves to be members of a third gender, Ingrid M. Sell found that they typically felt different from the age of 5.^[42] Because of both peer and parental pressure, those growing up with the most ambiguous appearances had the most troubled childhoods and difficulties later in life. Sell also discovered similarities between the third genders of the East and those of the West. Nearly half of those interviewed were healers or in the medical profession. A majority of them, again like their Eastern counterparts, were artistic enough to make a living from their abilities. The capacity to mediate between men and women was a common skill, and third genders were oftentimes thought to possess an unusually wide perspective and the ability to understand both sides.^[42] A notable result of Sell's study is that 93% of the third genders interviewed, again like their Eastern counterparts, reported “paranormal”-type abilities.*^[43] 

But of course, some gender theorists may say it's OK to have a third gender category - let's call it "non binary" - but the important thing is that people can move between whatever category that they feel is true to themselves.  So a person should be free to self label as male, female, or non-binary/third gender.

If that's the argument, it doesn't solve anything.


So, what's my conclusion?   I think Stock and the TERFs make some valid points, but they seem to skirt around the more fundamental arguments about why it's not unreasonable for people to consider the biology of bodies important - and that's something that trans people should be able to live with and not argue that it can be removed from moral and legal consideration by mere self declaration.   


*  On that odd point about paranormal abilities, I think it is well recognised that an above average number of  male mediums in spiritualism are gay.     

Don't forget climate change

What with all the disease, violence and protests, it's easy to overlook the bigger picture.

This study has very big implications for civil engineering (including what is presumably the difficult job of retrospectively increasing urban drainage to cope with peak flows):

The likelihood of intense storms is rising rapidly in North America, and the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects big increases in such deluges.

"The longer you have the warming, the stronger the signal gets, and the more you can separate it from random natural variability," said co-author Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a climate scientist with Environment Canada.

Previous research showed that global warming increases the frequency of extreme rainstorms across the Northern Hemisphere, and the new study was able to find that fingerprint for extreme rain in North America.

"We're finding that extreme precipitation has increased over North America, and we're finding that's consistent with what the models are showing about the influence of human-caused warming," she said. "We have very high confidence of extreme precipitation in the future."

Look at this graph:

From the report again (bear in mind the temperature scale is F, not C):

At the current level of warming caused by greenhouse gases—about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial average—extreme rainstorms that in the past happened once every 20 years will occur every five years, according to the study. If the current rate of warming continues, Earth will heat up 5.4 degrees by 2100. Then, 20, 50 and 100-year extreme rainstorms could happen every 1.5 to 2.5 years, the researchers concluded.

Nut noted

Yeah, I like highlighting how nutty and isolated in their own fantasy world are Australian wingnuts.  So sue me.

This is the same guy, remember, who had to stop himself from freaking out over a teacher doing a foot tap instead of a handshake with his son. Lives in a deeply unpleasant mental landscape of continual outrage and theorising that his side is about to win the dis-aster that is the culture war.   A nut, basically.

Keynes Vs Friedman

A biographer of Keynes has some interesting things to say about him, and the comparison with Friedman, in an interview at the Washington Post:

...Keynes himself never wanted to be remembered as a deficit therapist. He was a social thinker who was concerned with the great problems of his day: war and economic depression. And I think he would be very troubled by the idea that government spending on anything at all became the hallmark of his legacy in the economics profession.  ...

I think he would be perplexed by what we deem to be political battles in the United States. He thought economic policy was the central political battleground for social justice, and the way economics has become technocratized and hived off from mainstream politics as an arena for specialists would have both excited and frightened him. He would be terrified by the idea that central political questions about equality and inequality have become the terrain of experts who essentially rule in favor of inequality, regardless of which political party is in charge. Keynes viewed inequality as a very dangerous thing — it’s something that preoccupied him when he wrote “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” and “The General Theory” — his two masterpieces.

OK, here's the bit with the comparison:

The conventional understanding now places Keynes, a champion of stimulus, against Milton Friedman, who came after him and is seen as a champion of austerity. Is that a useful binary?

I think we lose track of the fact that Friedman and Keynes had different social visions. They weren’t just arguing across the generations about which policies would best create the same desired result. They were arguing about what kind of world they wanted to live in. And the mathematicization of economics in the 20th century really obscures this deeper ideological conflict, often by design. Keynes wanted everyone to live in the Bloomsbury of 1913, having their hair cut by Virginia Woolf while drinking champagne and debating post-impressionism with Lytton Strachey. Friedman wanted to preserve these activities as the exclusive domain of the wealthy. Why be rich if you can’t live a better life than the masses? To which Keynes would counter: Who cares about the masses when you are drinking champagne with Virginia Woolf?

So literal champagne socialism?

It depends on which Keynes you’re talking to, but by the end of his life, I think that’s about right. Keynes had a complicated relationship with the word “socialism.” He was ferociously critical of the Soviet Union. But he also thought the socialist Labour governments in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s were much too timid and insufficiently committed to economic justice for working people. In the United States, we remember Keynes for deficit spending, but his most comprehensive policy victory was the establishment of the National Health Service in Britain. He was the financial architect of socialized medicine in the U.K. 

An air of desperation, Part 2

He, and the Murdoch family that employ him, are disgusting.

An air of desperation

The Republicans and "law and order"

An interesting long article at Politico about Republicans and their historical relationship with the "law and order" issue.

The subheading explains what it is all about:

A punitive brand of conservatism embraced by Trump and some GOP hardliners is rapidly falling out of step with public opinion.

A big plug for psychedelic psychotherapy

This is in The Guardian:

I head the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, the first of its kind, supported by about £3m in philanthropic donations. For 15 years, my research has focused on how drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT and MDMA work in the brain, and how they may be useful in treating disorders such as depression. Like the present pandemic, a psychedelic drug experiences can be transformative – of the individual – and of society. Both illuminate the extent to which the condition of the world we inhabit is dependent on our own behaviours. And these, in turn, are a consequence of how we feel, think and perceive....

The Centre was founded in April 2019. A few months later, Johns Hopkins University in the US announced a supersized version, floated by $17m. If you have read Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind or seen the first episode of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix series, The Goop Lab (titled The Healing Trip), you may be aware that such developments reflect a rising interest, and investment, in the mental health application of psychedelic drugs.

As I have indicated before, I am not completely against the concept, but I remain cautiously sceptical for a few reasons:

*  seems to be a lot of money involved looking for success, and while with a vaccine or drug treatment for a physical illness you can get very clear cut results, with a treatment of a psychological illness the boundaries of success are (I expect) a bit more rubbery (hence leading to overly optimistic claims of early success).

* the basic idea has been around a long time, with people like Cary Grant famously taking LSD in controlled psychotherapy.   Did those early users really find it had a long lasting effect?   Perhaps the other drugs being tried are better than LSD for this purpose, but I still suspect the issue will be how long term the effects may be.

* although the author of the piece is indicating it is only likely to be a treatment for the more serious cases of depression, as with medical marijuana,  I suspect there is likely to be a drift towards use and prescription to people with less serious cases of illness.

* A bit of a warning of his over-enthusiasm - the claim about how this could be transformative "for society". 

* the treatment featured on The Goop Lab?   Hmmm. 

A life considered

Youtube threw this up at me as a recommendation, and I am glad I watched it:  a short film about a 107 year old American woman who is still as sharp as a tack, looking back at her life.



There is one rather big surprise that comes out of it, relating to her marriage, but I won't spoil it. 

I watched it with my daughter, and at the end was happy to point out to her that her father had been right all along about the husband.   The point being, of course, that if I don't like one of her future boyfriends, she should pay attention.   She didn't say much in response...

Local mental illness

The always interesting topic of mental illnesses which are specific to particular countries or cultures is given a detailed discussion at BBC Future.

We get the old favourite "koro" (fear of the penis shrinking away), and a description of an outbreak in Singapore in the 1960's.   But we get a few other examples which I hadn't heard of before:

In the central plateau region of Haiti, people regularly fall sick with “reflechi twòp”, or “thinking too much”, which involves ruminating on your troubles until you can barely leave the house. In South Korea, meanwhile, there’s “Hwa-byung” – loosely translated as “rage virus” – which is caused by bottling up your feelings about things you see as unfair, until you succumb to some alarming physical symptoms, like a burning sensation in the body. Dealing with exasperating family members is a major risk factor – it’s common during divorces and conflicts with in-laws.

"Rage virus" seems to be the common affliction at Catallaxy, but I digress.

Then there is this problem, out of Cambodia:

“I would say that there are definitely instances where the meaning that is attributed to experiences actually changes biologically what that experience is,” says Bonnie Kaiser, an expert in psychological anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She gives the example of the illness kyol goeu, literally “wind overload”, an enigmatic fainting sickness which is prevalent among Khmer refugees in the US.

In their native Cambodia, it’s commonly believed that the body is riddled with channels that contain a wind-like substance – and if these become blocked, the resulting wind overdose will cause the sufferer to permanently lose the use of a limb or die. Out of 100 Khmer patients at one psychiatric clinic in the US, one study found that 36% had experienced an episode of the illness at some point.

Bouts usually proceed slowly, starting with a general feeling of malaise. Then, one day, the victim will stand up and notice that they feel dizzy – and this is how they know that the attack is starting. Eventually they’ll fall to the ground, unable to move or speak until their relatives have administered the appropriate first aid, which usually consists of massaging their limbs or biting their ankles.

 There's a lot  more at the article, so go read it.

Observed on Australia's "centre right" blog

If I were the Queensland Premier, I'd be getting the police to give Sinclair Davidson a call:

I mean, we know the quality of the deep thinkers there:

but it's still no excuse.

Woody Allen considered

I'm not exactly a fan of Woody Allen, as I consider most of his work to be overrated.  Yet I did think Crimes and Misdemeanours was very good, and I can see why his two biggest hits (Annie Hall and Manhattan) were liked, even if they didn't speak much to me.

But I still find him interesting, and recommend this review of his autobiography at The Atlantic.  

Surely a popular take

Why does no political party actually take this up as a policy?   It is as clear as day that the government and community has for years been struggling to find nominees for the ridiculous number and category of awards that are given out.

Panic mode

Why is the populist, climate change denying, culture war fighting Right so bad at risk assessment?   Look at Andrew Bolt:

He has no imagination for the effects of 2 or 3 degrees average global temperature on "civilisation";  but some (I think) unexpectedly violent rioting in London that defaces statutes and injures police and it's meant to be civilisation crumbling before our very eyes.

It is, I suppose, all part of the culture war mentality - that their version of the Right is the only side on the side of goodness and light and the rabble is always just barely kept from destroying civilisation.   You see it at Catallaxy all of the time. 

A mustard cream sauce

Seems odd that I have never made one before last Saturday.  (My wife has, but not me.)

There are a million recipes for it out there, but I settled on a simplified version of this, from Epicurious:

Ingredients

1. • 1/2 cup dry white wine
   • 1/4 cup chopped shallots
   • 1 cup whipping cream
   • 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
   • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
   • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

Preparation

1. 1. Boil white wine and shallots in heavy medium saucepan over high heat until liquid evaporates, about 4 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-high. Add whipping cream and simmer until reduced to 1 cup, about 2 minutes. Add Dijon mustard, basil and dill. Simmer 2 minutes to blend flavors. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. 
    

You might guess the simplifications:  used a finely diced half of a brown onion instead of shallots;  some dried herb instead of fresh.  Also, I don't think it matters much whether it's seed mustard, or dijon, or a mix of both.  I used dijon and some German sweeter mustard that was waiting to be used up.

Worked fine.  Not sure why the recipe says add a cup of cream and reduce to a cup.   I reduced a bit more than a cup. 

Anyway, it was very nice.  

Why didn't this happen within 24 hours of his death?

Axios notes:

Minneapolis has agreed to ban the use of police chokeholds and will require nearby officers to act to stop them in the wake of George Floyd's death, AP reports.

On Twitter today

I thought this was witty:

And if I were someone like Greg "look, I've been to America lots of times and racism is not a big issue" Sheridan, I would feel more than a little ashamed after watching the clip at this tweet:

Here's a link to the tweet.

Conspiracy watch

*  For those interested, Graeme is still making comments and I not letting any through, regardless of content.   He is sure, though, that there is some sort of coup against Trump being organised by the you-know-who's.   (Maybe that apostrophe is not technically correct?  But it needs something...)

To what end?  I don't think that matters to Graeme - it just always has to be the fault of the you-know-who's.  Even if they are the beneficiaries of pro-annexation policies under Trump they still want him replaced, apparently.   Huh.

* Poor old "my old friends won't talk to me anymore" Steve Kates is having another "the Left and the media! They're all constant liars and idiots and pure evil - why won't they engage me in genuine political debate?"  moment.  Of course, his post is headed by a Tucker Carlson clip, because Kates knows who to listen to as an objective and fair commentator on matters political.  The other 95% of commentators on TV are just pure evil liars, don't you know?  Their failure to support Trump and the Republicans is self evident proof of that.

Sinclair likes to let people post at his blog regardless of the embarrassment they cause themselves.  Did he never see that ad about how "mates don't let mates drink and drive"?    Sinclair gives them the keys, cuts the brake line, and gives the car a push towards the edge of the credibility cliff.  What a pal.

* Conspiracy and cult membership at Catallaxy is popular, though.   Again, it's a case of circles within circles, when you read things like this:

Oh I see.  Hadn't worked that one out - perhaps because I don't have a streak of paranoia a mile wide?

And, of course, it is possibly the end of the world as we know it:

Yeah, the progressive Lefies of the police forces bashing with abandon, I guess.

Self fulfilling police protests

Things are getting very weird in the US.  The original "black lives matter" justification for the protests seems to have broadened out to a general "why are all police jerks to everyone" raison d'etre due to the scores of videos of them unjustifiably roughing up protesters of any colour.

The latest example - the shove to the old guy in Buffalo who stumbles backwards and hits his head on the pavement (with blood obviously flowing out) - is very remarkable for the way the police just seem to look at him and don't jump in to offer immediate assistance.

But as if Trump would have any idea what to do to encourage widespread police reform.  As I posted recently (and had not realised before), the police unions had campaigned against Obama for (what I have read) were relatively modest reform initiatives.

As someone had written earlier this week (at Vox I think), the most accurate way to view it is that the police are counter-protesters.   Maybe they are getting really upset about how the ubiquity of phone cameras is interfering so much with their traditional tactics?

A unfortunate association

I've found I quite like Abbott's Village Bakery brand bread.  It is thicker cut than your cheaper loaves, and has "body" too.  Also seems to keep fresh quite a while.

But - every time I use it, I am reminded of Tony Abbott, which is off putting.   I would suggest a change name, for the same of removing an unwanted association in the minds of (probably) more than one Australian.

Thank you.

Google is trying to educate me (and succeeding)

Because Google knows a disturbing amount about me, it knew that I was recently saying how I knew next to nothing about ancient Indian history.   So when I was looking at recommendations on Youtube on my TV last night, it suggested a video about the Indus Valley civilisation.  

Sure, this channel (Cogito) seems made for (I guess) kids at about an late primary school/early high school level, but if you know nothing about a subject, there's nothing wrong with starting there.

I thought it was pretty good, actually:



I wonder, though, if the language is still a mystery, whether some of the claims of how they lived are really accurate deductions from archaeology, or not.

I then saw that they also dealt with the old Indian king Ashoka, who I mentioned recently, so I got myself a short education about him too:





Ah, the internet being used for the forces of good instead of evil and misinformation.  Warms the heart.  

About "neck restraint" in policing

Earlier this week, I questioned why people in authority in the USA had not immediately banned (what I now know is called) neck restraints as part of policing.   It's just obviously dangerous, no?

Well this article explains that, yes, it is considered dangerous and some police forces in the US had already banned it.  Look at this figure:

Since the beginning of 2015, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department have rendered people unconscious with neck restraints 44 times, according to an NBC News analysis of police records. Several police experts said that number appears to be unusually high.

Minneapolis police used neck restraints at least 237 times during that span, and in 16 percent of the incidents the suspects and other individuals lost consciousness, the department's use-of-force records show. A lack of publicly available use-of-force data from other departments makes it difficult to compare Minneapolis to other cities of the same or any size....

More than a dozen police officials and law enforcement experts told NBC News that the particular tactic Chauvin used — kneeling on a suspect's neck — is neither taught nor sanctioned by any police agency. A Minneapolis city official told NBC News Chauvin's tactic is not permitted by the Minneapolis police department. For most major police departments, variations of neck restraints, known as chokeholds, are highly restricted — if not banned outright.

The version of the Minneapolis Police Department's policy manual that is available on-line, however, does permit the use of neck restraints that can render suspects unconscious, and the protocol for their use has not been updated for more than eight years.

This article goes into more detail on how a few different cities' police forces across the nation have dealt with the tactic.  

It seems pretty ridiculous that there is such a lack of uniformity across the nation on this, for so long too.

More comedy

About that Mattis statement

Here's Allahpundit at Hot Air talking about Mattis's statement:

What makes me nervous is the possibility that he felt he *had* to speak up because he’s worried about what Trump might try to do with the military at a moment of national crisis, amid excited chatter about using the Insurrection Act. Tom Cotton, who’s clearly angling for the GOP nomination in 2024 and possibly Mark Esper’s job right now, has an op-ed in the Times today entitled “Send in the Troops.” Tucker Carlson has all but called Trump a pussy on Fox News for not sending in soldiers to start cracking heads. The hardcore nationalists really want to see Strength, red in tooth and claw, applied to American citizens here. They’re egging him on.

If Mattis is piping up now, it makes me think he’s legit concerned that Trump will do it — and legit concerned about how the military will act. What he, and Mike Mullen, and James Stavridis, are doing by suddenly cranking out op-eds denouncing him are using their legitimacy as respected former military brass to offer a counterweight of authority to the troops with respect to whatever Trump might do. I didn’t think in my lifetime we’d have the president and former military figures at the highest levels playing tug-of-war over whether American soldiers should carry out operations against Americans, but here we are.

I like this part too:

Mattis knows a fascist display when he sees one and he knows what’ll happen if it isn’t deemed beyond the pale by authority figures. He understands and values the civic culture of his country. Trump doesn’t, which is one of the most persistently strange things about him. He’s in his 70s, born and raised in the United States, a sworn nationalist known to physically hug the flag at events, yet his approach to power is roughly what you’d expect if you took an Egyptian policeman under Mubarak and suddenly made him president. “How can I enrich myself?” “How can I look strong?” “Let’s send the police into a public square to remove the people so that I can wave my religious book around for the cameras.”  

And talking about Trump:

As Ross Douthat said in a column a few weeks ago, he seems to crave power less because he has some burning desire on how to use it (trade war excepted) than because it brings him attention.

How to take a hint that your political instincts may be wrong

I presume that the likes of Claire Lehmann, and the other Australian and American Right wing-ish commentators who are complaining about how there is not enough condemnation of the rioting, property damage, vandalism, deaths and injury going on around the Floyd protests are somewhat flummoxed by Trump's increasingly poor polling despite his attempts to claim the mantle of "law and order" President. 

I think it likely is explicable by these factors:

a. they have no perspective of how damaging* and deadly past racially charged riots have been in American history (for which they should have watched last night's Planet America for a summary); and

b. reflects their politics of how much they dislike the Left for culture war reasons; such that they can't understand why the public is reacting not in alignment with their own assessment.



* I am tempted to also wonder whether they look at historical riots that were at their worst within black neighbourhoods and think they were less important than riots and thieves who vandalise more up market streets in New York and Los Angeles - but maybe that is ungenerous...

Russia and America observed

This week's Foreign Correspondent was well worth watching, not so much for the main story (about a Russian female doctor critical of the lack of PPE supplied to Russian hospitals, and therefore targeted by the government), but for the image it gave of how Putin's rhetoric (and that of his supporting media) tracks so closely to that of the Trump supporting Right in America.    

There was a clip of Putin calling news that didn't suit him "fake news", and a right wing broadcaster looking and sounding all the world like a Limbaugh (or similar.)   And I think other Putin friendly media featured too.

It's like you could transplant a Trump supporter into Russia and they would be completely comfortable and familiar with Putin's language (including his desire to extend his leadership for years - in the same way Trump has taken to "joking" about how much longer he wants to be President.)

I think the average wingnut Trump supporter would also have no idea how ridiculous it is that they have come to this.  They actually want to live under a Trump dictatorship (as illustrated in my previous post today.)  

Jason goes Gray again

Gee Jason, why do you think Gray Connolly makes for a good analysis of the current state of the world?   He makes excuses for Trump all the time, and has a pat over-simplification line that is too much orientated towards the culture wars (as you have to be to excuse the blatant authoritarianism inherent in the Trump's performance since day one.)

What's the evidence for this, for example?:

The Right that emerges from this time will be more orientated to families & workers, not big business. 

Really?  Where's the sign of that in America?   Or is this just theorising on the never never?

Connolly makes a lot of Trump having won due to appeal to those that economic (and cultural?) liberalism has left behind - he ignores things like the substantial majority vote win by Clinton; the actual failure of Trump to reinvigorate industries he said he would; the long term uncertain effect of his populist trade wars; the uncertain effect of long term massive increase in government debt; the boosting the military while at the same time saying he will use it less.  

You and Connolly seem to want to make a boogeyman of "liberalism", yet don't get into the nitty gritty of economic policy (well, Connolly doesn't.)    Because, let's face it, economics is complicated and populism in only benefiting your own nation's population is not all that moral if the rest of the world is in poverty.   Globalisation is supported by the Catholic Church because of the wealth generation in poorer countries it can create, if done properly.   Conservative Catholics, like Connolly, seem to ignore that and want to welcome the retreat into isolationism that ultimately hurts everyone.

If you and Connolly want to make a useful contribution, start critiquing actual economic policies:  what should happen with tax rates;  how to deal with corporations gaming governments out of tax by their international and financing arrangements;  how to respond to the "gig" economy;  and how all policy needs to be geared towards averting disaster climate change affecting huge parts of the world within a couple of generations.


All this bleating about "woke capital", and how the Left is more interested in lattes than appealing to the (increasingly hard to define) working class, and getting upset because of college students being too politically correct, is just fiddling around the edges of what's important.

I've been saying this to you for years now, as you seem to retreat more and more into the weird world of conservatives who are more interested in criticising the Left for not being what you want it to be, while ignoring what the Right is actually doing.       

The Mattis statement

While this is welcome, I do question the judgement of the guy for thinking he could successfully work with a President who was already sounding like a wannabe authoritarian dictator during the campaign:

James Mattis condemns Trump as a threat to the Constitution

Perhaps the best paragraph:

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

Would be good if he would throw in some attack on the Right wing media which has created a cult around Trump, though. 

Update:   Ha!  Australian wingnut reacts calmly, not realising he's proving Mattis' point:

Update 2:   after being told that that there is no oath of loyalty to the President (and besides, he no longer works for him), our Maj expresses disappointment:

Makes it clear how this kind of populist Trump supporter actually wants him as an old style king, not as President.

Funny

And this classic happy look:

Claire is confused

Claire Lehmann is confused:

Err, maybe because it is that most of the protests are peaceful (and those that are not are sometimes clearly provoked by excessive use of police force) that public sympathy is actually pretty high with the protesters?:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A majority of Americans sympathize with nationwide protests over the death of an unarmed black man in police custody and disapprove of President Donald Trump’s response to the unrest, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

The demonstrations, some of which have turned violent, began last week after a Minneapolis police officer was videotaped kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes, even after Floyd appeared to lose consciousness. The officer has been charged with murder.

The survey conducted on Monday and Tuesday found 64% of American adults were “sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,” while 27% said they were not and 9% were unsure.

She also seem terribly uninterested in the politics of this - how the Republicans are blithely letting their 200 word vocabulary President (and his media ra-rah team) play partisan politics with this - which is exactly the last thing you want to do if you want to de-escalate matters.      

In fact, really, I reckon this is what Lehmann is doing here herself disingenuously:   playing politics while pretending not to.

Comments driven into moderation

My unwanted commenter Graeme Bird has been sent over the edge again by current events in America, which to his conspiracy addled brain is part of his ever expanding grand conspiracy theory (involving you-know-who from the Middle East) from which he seems to derive his life's meaning. 

As he continually adds anti-Semitic conspiracy rubbish in comments, and I have no ability to ban him on the Blogger platform, I am getting tired of his comments appearing on here - sometimes for some hours - before I can delete them.

All comments are therefore going into moderation for the time being.

Please feel welcome to comment - if they are not from Bird, I will clear them soon enough.

Not hurting Biden, so far

Damaged people watch

Sinclair Davidson likes to host a blog which allows free rein to nuts likes this:

First: it's a worry that such nutjobs are reproducing and helping pass their attitudes to younger males.

Second:  for the thousandth time - great hate site you got going there, Sinclair.  Congratulations.  You must be proud of things like how you banned the word "chink" then your commenters used "chunk" instead.    Or how they can be triggered by something like the above and use "faggot" as a routine insult.

Update:  on a more serious note than a couple of Australian rednecks freaking out because a teacher wants to do a foot tap:

Yeah, great hate site you got going there, Sinclair.  

How about a few common sense suggestions to help defuse riots

*   I find it hard to believe that it is procedurally risky to arrest the other 3 police officers who watched their buddy knee the life out of George Floyd for some charge immediately.  Can't the charges be later modified if needed?   Civil order across the entire nation requires people being able to see justice at least being started promptly - especially when everyone knows what happened from their TV. 

*  How much freaking common sense does it take for heads of police, governors (or even the President himself) to come out and say that restraint methods involving interference with air or blood flow through the neck are banned - never to be used?   That all police forces will ensure that all restraint instruction will emphasise the need to not do things obviously dangerous to the life of the arrested?

*  How much common sense does it take for heads of police or governors (or even the President himself) to come out and say that police who hide their identifying badge numbers are committing at least an administrative offence and will be punished for seeking to protect any of their own unjustified violence?   The riots are about lack of confidence in the police - they need to show why they can be trusted, and hiding identity shows they can't be.   And what about the convenient turning off of body cams?  Some places are acting:

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer fired the city's chief of police Steve Conrad after it was discovered that police officers had not activated their body cameras during the shooting of David McAtee, a local black business owner who was killed during protests early Monday morning.

Why it matters: Mandatory body camera policies have proven to be important in efforts to hold police officers accountable for excessive force against civilians and other misconduct. Those policies are under even greater scrutiny as the nation has erupted in protest over the killing of black people at the hands of police.

but again, I say there needs to be serious, immediate action against all police who deliberately turn off their body cam.

Uhuh

1.  Andrew Bolt, slavishly following Fox News evening line up and the American Right:

2.  A tweet from America:

The black people were released after a few minutes, apparently, but it still is a remarkable example of policing in modern America.

I think there is too little emphasis in the reporting on the riots on the role that Fox News and the American wingnut Right (joined in by our home grown bunch of race commentary Murdoch morons) are playing in pushing a reactionary line which is escalating the problem rather than defusing it.    

Sounds interesting

A book noted at Nature:

Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World

Philip Matyszak Thames & Hudson (2020)

Western ideas on antiquity are dominated by Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, with other cultures often reduced to stereotypes. Historian Philip Matyszak asks: were the Philistines philistines and the Vandals vandals? His stimulating encyclopaedia of 40 “forgotten peoples” begins with the Akkadians around 2330 bc and ends with the Hephthalites (‘White Huns’) in the fifth century ad. Illustrations include a Roman-style Vandal mosaic; far from vilifying Roman culture, the Vandals respected it, say current historians.

On a sort of related topic:  following a recent post I wrote about how India sent Buddhist monks West before the time of Christ, it did make me think about how we all carry images in our minds of what Greek, Roman, Babylonian and Egyptian civilisation looked like around that time, but for Indian civilisation we (OK, maybe just me) just don't have much mental image.   Is it that the archaeological sites there just aren't all that well preserved?  Or that it has been glossed over in Western education due to a type of educational bias.  (God knows I have no sympathy for the current Right wing Hindu nationalism, but I guess I do feel they have the right to feel their ancient history is overlooked.)

Update:  for example, have a look at this video of the Buddhist Stupa and surroundings at Sanchi in the middle of India, from around 300 BC.  The whole landscape is also a little surprising because it looks vast and pretty empty.   Not exactly the mental image I have of India - I kind of imagine a village every few kilometres or so:



 Update 2:  this guy's explanation of the Southern Indian Vijayanagar empire is interesting too, and the ruins are impressive - but the place only dates from 14th century CE - even though I would have guessed much older:

  

Sweden noted

Gee, when even a conservative site like Hot Air runs a story headed this:

 you would think Adam Creighton might want to reconsider his pig headed "lockdown has been a dis-aster!" take on Covid-19.

The Hot Air story is actually pretty nuanced and good.   Unlike Creighton. 

The weird optics of this Presidency (Part 1 million)

 

Yes, it's an irrelevant gesture to the current issue, clearly only designed to have partisan appeal to his dimwitted base.        

Claire pokes her head up

I had been wondering if Claire Lehmann was ever going to mention her former Quilette contributor  Andy Ngo's role in promoting to the Right the idea of Antifa as a well funded and organised mob of violent thugs just waiting to destroy American society, now that she can see his influence has gone all the way to Trump.

I thought she might have kept her silence, given that Ngo stopped working for her unusually abruptly, after his disingenuous role in covering for Right wing violence planning activists was getting attention.

But no, she has put her head up, and of all things, to defend an article she ran which was really indefensible:

I think she's like Adam Creighton on COVID 19 - they get a position in their head and then are willing to die in a ditch for it rather than re-consider whether they made a bad call.

Update:

Itchy trigger fingers - of the nutjob Right

Noted in Politico:

Anarchist and militia extremists could try to exploit the recent nationwide protests spurred by the death of George Floyd, the Department of Homeland Security warned in an intelligence note sent to law enforcement officials around the country.

Floyd, a black man who pleaded that he couldn't breathe while a police officer held him down and pressed his knee into his neck for nearly 9 minutes, was killed in Minnesota on May 25. The officer responsible has been charged with murder and manslaughter. 

The memo, dated May 29 and marked unclassified/law enforcement sensitive, cites “previous incidents of domestic terrorists exploiting First Amendment-protected events” as one reason for DHS’ concern of additional targeted violence by “domestic terrorist actors.” 

It also reveals, citing the FBI, that on May 27, two days after Floyd’s death, “a white supremacist extremist Telegram channel incited followers to engage in violence and start the ‘boogaloo’—a term used by some violent extremists to refer to the start of a second Civil War—by shooting in a crowd.” One Telegram message encouraged potential shooters to “frame the crowd around you” for the violence, the document said. 

And on May 29, “suspected anarchist extremists and militia extremists allegedly planned to storm and burn the Minnesota State Capitol,” the memo reads, citing FBI information.

Noted on Twitter:

Now for something more trivial

Let's do a quick review of the Netflix action movie Extraction:

As nearly everyone else has said - some very technically and thrillingly accomplished action (if rather bloody in a way I normally object to) in a merely serviceable story, but quite satisfying overall.   

Some different things about the film:

*  it was odd and a little amusing to hear Chris Hemsworth using full-on Aussie accent and vernacular, rather than the more mid-Pacific accent he usually uses in American movies;

* I can understand why Banglasdesh doesn't like the film - it makes Dhaka look like an absolute 3rd world, dangerous, corrupt, dump of a city, yet I think it was nearly all filmed in the Indian city of Ahmedabad.  (Knowing this may make viewers scratch that Indian city off any "places to visit" list too, since it looks so polluted and dirty.)  

* the camera work and action is just so impressive, though.  And not in an overly editted way which is my main complaint about modern action directors.   (It could hardly be accused of that when it has one widely praised no-cut car chase that goes on for about 11 minutes.  It is really terrific.)

One thing I can justify even though my son complained and complained about it:

*  why, he whined, will I watch this and say it's pretty thrilling, but refuse to watch John Wick movies?  Well, I have watched about 15 to 20 minutes of John Wick movies - the beginning of the first one, and some action sequence from (I think?)  the second one.   I abandoned the first movie because I was finding the dialogue and acting was terrible - I don't remember much about any action in that.    But the second time I was watching a fight in train, and it was all very stabby- stabby and arm breaky (perhaps close up pistol shot to the head as well?) from recollection.

Here's the thing - I found that the John Wick violence was deliberately more "up close and personal" and quasi-sadist in tone than that in Extraction.   Sure, both movies feature baddies getting what they deserve, and lots of blood;  but I thought Extraction did much faster cutaways from things like throat cuttings, stabbings and even gunshots to the head shots than Wick.  It also didn't much feature the sound of bones breaking (I bet that's in Wick) or close ups of stabbings.   And most of the death in Hemsworth's movie was gun fire, which usually (but not always) featured a spray of blood but not much else.

The fights are heavily choreographed in both, of course, and both feature the same methods of killing.    But my reaction to movie violence depends a lot on how much the movie emphasises its effects - hence I really get sick of the modern Netflix speciality of shots to the head and brains blown out the back as a routine thing.   I think Extraction did an acceptable level of moving on fast from the violent act, whereas Wick seemed to want to dwell on them.  I would have to watch all of a Wick film to confirm this, perhaps with a stopwatch in hand, but I reckon I can justify this scientifically.

Anyway, that's my story and I am sticking to it.

Update:  forgot to mention, I think the deliberate ambiguity of the ending is actually pretty clever.  

Police state Trump

I hadn't really thought much before about how GOP friendly the average American police officer would be, but I see that the Financial Times had a story in 2018 noting how police unions backed Trump:

Donald Trump assiduously courted the law-and-order vote in 2016, earning an endorsement from the national Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). At a time when police shootings and viral videos of cops behaving badly were sparking rolling, racially charged protests — most recently in Sacramento following the death of Stephon Clark — Trump channeled the emotions of a group that felt under threat. New research shows that Trump swung tens of thousands of votes and flipped at least one state on the backs of cops alone....

Harvard researcher Michael Zoorob found that police officer political engagement jumped from 2012 to 2016 on volunteering for a campaign, displaying a political sign and donating money, while the general public was less engaged. His research analyzed the Trump law-enforcement phenomenon in a paper he has submitted for publication. Zoorob found that places where police unions are strongest had the biggest shift from Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, to Trump. Critically, his analysis found the police mobilization effect accounted for more than 13,000 votes in Michigan — greater than Trump’s narrow margin of victory over Clinton — and more than 27,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

Zoorob, a graduate student in the school of government, attributes this to the way Trump talked about the police. “Those peddling the narrative of cops as a racist force in our society — a narrative supported with a nod by my opponent — share directly in the responsibility for the unrest in Milwaukee, and many other places within our country,” Trump said in an August 2016 speech in a mostly white Wisconsin suburb, shortly after a police shooting in nearby Milwaukee. “They have fostered the dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America.”

A month later, the FOP, the nation’s largest police union, endorsed Trump. The union did not endorse in 2012, freezing out Romney for supporting an Ohio bill that would have sapped power from public employee unions. In office, Trump has continued his pro-police rhetoric — notably encouraging law enforcement officers to be “rough” on suspects in a speech in Long Island last year — and delivered a policy win by giving them more access to military surplus equipment, which the Obama administration had restricted in the wake of the shooting and subsequent unrest in Ferguson.

I know there are some commentators fearing that the riots may help Trump win again as the "law and order" President,  but I find that hard to believe, mainly because his response has emphasised his immaturity yet again:

Honestly, it's like having an 8 year old boy (one who barely passes his English class) as President.

Bolsonaro: the man Trump cultists think Trump is

There's been a bit of an (accurate) meme going around this year that it's weird how Trumpists view him as some sort of hyper-masculine antithesis to limp-wristed Left wing males, when in fact so many of his characteristics are well outside the traditional view of what's "manly":

As the writer Windsor Mann has noted, Trump behaves in ways that many working-class men would ridicule: “He wears bronzer, loves gold and gossip, is obsessed with his physical appearance, whines constantly, can't control his emotions, watches daytime television, enjoys parades and interior decorating, and used to sell perfume.”

Not to mention the aura of physical cowardice he radiates, going back to the bone spurs days as a young man.   The only thing you can reliably say is old fashioned "masculine" about him is his sexist treatment of women over his lifetime and preparedness to brag about sexual conquests.

But when you read about nutso Bolsonaro in Brazil, well he's like everything terrible about Trump but with actual macho characteristics.   This is how he was dealing with coronavirus over the weekend, for example:  

President Jair Bolsonaro, who opposes coronavirus lockdown measures imposed by Brazilian cities and states, rallied with his supporters Sunday, as Washington said it had sent two million doses of a controversial unproven COVID-19 drug.

Brazil is Latin America's hotspot for the deadly pandemic, with nearly 500,000 confirmed cases and a death toll of nearly 28,000, the world's fourth highest.

But Bolsonaro met a tightly packed throng of supporters outside the government palace in the capital Brasilia. The crowd chanted "myth! myth! myth!" -- echoing the president's dismissal of the virus pandemic.

Protected by bodyguards, he approached the crowd without touching them, although he did pick up two children and put them on his shoulders, and briefly mounted a police horse, to the crowd's delight.

I presume this photo is from the same event:

And what about his past?  From Wikipedia:

He graduated from the Agulhas Negras Military Academy in 1977 and served in the Brazilian Army's field artillery and parachutist units. He became known to the public in 1986, when he wrote an article for Veja magazine criticizing low wages for military officers, after which he was arrested and detained for fifteen days. One year later, he was accused by the same magazine of planning to plant bombs in military units, which he denied. After a first degree conviction, he was acquitted by the Brazilian Supreme Military Court in 1988.^[2]

Of course I'm not saying that there is anything to admire about Bolsonaro:  he's more dangerous than Trump because he leads by even worse example that does his American counterpart.   (Not just declining to wear a face mask, but doing it on the back of a horse amidst a crowd!)   I just think it's funny how Trump cultists imagine Trump as if he had Bolsonaro's characteristics, when he clearly doesn't.

A good comparison

As Axios explains about the Trump tweet saying that "Antifa" will be designated a terrorist organisation:  

Mark Bray, author of "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," wrote of Trump's tweet: "To explain a little: it's like calling bird-watching an organization. Yes, there are bird-watching organizations as there are Antifa organizations but neither bird-watching nor antifa is an organization."

It seems that some in the White House see the pointlessness of the idea, but populists Right wingers thought that it was a good idea:

As recently as Saturday night, senior administration officials told me that the designation of a violent cohort of far-left activists, antifa, as a terrorist organization was not being seriously discussed at the White House. But that was Saturday.

Behind the scenes: The situation changed dramatically a few hours later, after prominent conservative allies of the president, such as his friend media commentator Dan Bongino, publicly urged a tough response against people associated with antifa (short for "anti-fascist").

It's just throwing red meat to Trump's ignorant base - I see Australia's stupid Trumpists are putting up Red State posts theorising about how effective such a declaration could be.   

Historians on American riots

Two American historians have had good Twitter threads looking at the history of American race riots (especially with comparisons to 1968).   They are collected in this Threadreader posts:

Kevin Kruse

Tom Sugrue