I just stole the bears from the internet.
Way to beat populism:
- Have non-populists be running things when the country is threatened by an existential crisis from an enemy country
- Have populists be running things when the country has an economic crisis created by populists (this might not work because they could blame outsiders)
Victory for the cats-and-anime candidate!
4: This might be the winning play for the Dems. Trump hates animals, and Americans love their pets.
What's the deal with Han Kuo-yu's name? How is it such a a perfect nationalist's name, with the family name being Han, the character with the cultural/nationality meaning, and the first half of the given name being "country"? Did his parents name him deliberately after they fled from China?
Um... Taiwan's voters show how to beat populism through nationalism? Unless "beating populism" is your terminal goal, this doesn't sound like much of a victory...
5: For balance, we have to have a split ticket, but unfortunately most candidates with pets seem to have dogs only. The biggest remaining Dem candidate without any pet seems to be Sanders.
8: That's a new electability argument. How can the Dems afford to choose Sanders and cede their advantage with animal-lovers? Maybe Sanders should promise to get a pet if he's elected?
This is just for those of you who thought the campaign couldn't get any stupider.
I made a 2x2 grid of 23 candidates and having a dog appears to be equally prominent among those who have dropped out and those who are still active.
Nevermind the dog. Doesn't it seem strange to you that the candidate could be a cranky Jewish atheist? I mean, I'm good with it. But I would have sworn, even up through Clinton, that atheism swa disqualifying. Yet the atheist won last time and we could have no final candidates with a religious practice. To me, that seems like something (gotta be churched) that was as much a certainty as 'a black dude with Hussein in his name could never be elected' is now not really even worth discussions. I do hope that's a sign that old stupid certainties have been shattered.
And such a cultural Jew? I would actually feel a couple pangs of representation were he elected.
I also find it strange that the final two candidates could be so New York-y.
Side note:
I was entertained by William's candidacy because it seemed like a good test of the white woman doctrine of manifestation. I mean, if Williams can't manifest by True Belief, then who could? But Trump works pretty much the same doctrine (your belief shapes reality) and it worked for him.
We always had this preconception that for a candidate, being more of a war hero than the other candidate is good, which turns out not to be true when you're a Democrat (Kerry). We also had the preconception that for a candidate, being more Christian than the other candidate is good, which turns out not to be true when you're a Democrat (Hillary). So who knows what will turn out to be true this time.
Next time probably we'll find out that for a candidate, being a man instead of a woman is good, unless you're a man who is a Democrat.
Could we be entering a time when the taller candidate doesn't win? Surely the world is not so chaotic as that.
12: There are two things that keep me from supporting Sanders. One is that he's 78 years old and just had a heart attack -- what are the odds that he gets through a first term without some kind of serious medical issue? The other thing is that I fear that a Trump campaign against Sanders will be all about the anti-Semitic tropes, and that this will be Bad for the Jews.
being more Christian than the other candidate is good
This is contested. I'm sure most Trump supporters considered him to be more Christian than Clinton.
I don't understand this stuff, so I shouldn't try to relay it. But Kotsko tells me that they don't think Trump is Christian. They think he is the paradoxical sinner in whom we see the hand of god, putting him in power and doing the evangelical agenda. And one way you can tell is that Pence is close by. But I may have mangled that.
18 is correct. Nobody is deluded enough to think Trump is a moral and ethical person. They just decided they don't care now.
I think that's a good summary. And also because unfalsifiability is an adaptive trait for being in politics, evidence of Trump's immorality also becomes confirmation of their story!
6: I don't know what they were thinking, but by the magic of homophony he became universally known as "Korean fish". (And by same token Tsai as "English vegetable".)
7: Yeah. It's a mild defensive kind of nationalism though. For instance. One can quite easily imagine a similar ad being run against Trump or Duterte, or perhaps with a bit more work against Modi or Prayut.
18-20: With apologies to the Christians here and at the risk of sounding like a Sam Harris-style asshole, once you embrace "making stuff up" as your epistemic approach, you can take that anyplace you want to go. That's the power of religion, and that's the power of Trump, who in this sense is more Christian than Jesus (for certain values of "Christian").
But if there's one thing that liberals need to grasp about Christian Trump supporters, it's this: Liberals are pretty much the epitome of evil. You can be pretty awful and still not be as bad as liberals, who have killed millions of babies, to pick one obvious example. Trump may not be the best guy in the world, but he's serious about stopping baby-killing and gay sex and other abominations. So he grabs the occasional pussy. So what? Who among us has not made the political choice to support the lesser evil?
That you can just make up new stuff is American Protestantism's innovation.
But the liberals part is exactly right.
Fun fact: I tried to type "causation" on my phone and it suggested "castrationanxiety". Which is probably my fault somehow.
But I don't think I've ever used it as a single word.
Can we get that trending on twitter?
Trump lashes out at Pelosi on Impeachment #castrationanxiety
23: The 'biblical view' that's younger than the Happy Meal. As Fred Clark has explained in other articles, this shift came about because evangelical leaders were trying to build a political movement to defend Bob Jones University's right to discriminate against black people, without saying outright that that was what they were doing. And to reassure their followers that they were good people, because at least they weren't baby-killers like those others.
25: Maybe it's just all the gay sex talking, but that does somehow feel like something you've earned. But in a good way??
The only cure is alcohol and punning.
22: It seems less "Liberals are pretty much the epitome of evil" than "Liberals hate us and want to destroy us, our prior leaders [would not|could not] protect us, but Trump [will|can] as evidenced by liberal media attacks on him".
I think the general tone on the cultural right is more "we lost the war and now we suffer what we must". To the extent he can protect them and advance their interests, they don't care about his flaws.
And isn't that the kind of behavior we've supported in the past: people choosing candidates based on a clear-eyed assessment of their interests rather than personal affinity (i.e. the stupidity of the who-would-you-rather-have-a-beer-with test)?
28: Without having any actual knowledge of this, I suspect that overstates the transition of Protestants toward opposition to abortion. Abortion was, for many years prior to 1970, widely regarded as theologically inappropriate, although the Protestants were certainly more okay with it than the Catholics.
Exodus 21:22-24, cited in the link, belongs in any atheist's compendium of stuff the Bible says that modern Christians contradict. Here is the Revised Standard Version (the one the Catholics use these days, I think):
22 "When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall[a] be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
That's one thing I admire about the Catholics. Since they don't insist on Biblical inerrancy, they are able to really read the Bible. There are versions of the Bible out there that rewrite the bit from Exodus -- some to make it more ambiguous, some to apply the "eye for an eye" to fetuses.
That you can just make up new stuff is American Protestantism's innovation.
Council of Nicaea much?
Roberts has been sworn in. I see he is less a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan than was Rehnquist.
34: I meant that you can make up new stuff after that.
Yeah, I suspect anti-abortion sentiment among US Protestant culture was more secular than theological, reflecting whatever cultural trends had led to the laws in the first place; then after Roe v. Wade, the theology was added to match the culture. (After maybe a decade in which getting mad about abortion was so gauchely Catholic.)
I have pet Bailey. Bailey is a very good dog.
38: I'm generally not a fan of bigotry, but the waning of anti-Catholic bigotry has had some unfortunate consequences.
I was thinking that Pre-millenium dispensationalism demonstrates my point best. It's just really inventive on a level you don't see this side of LDS.
I dunno, isn't premillennial dispensationalism based largely on a very literal reading of Revelation? Crazy, yes, but not exactly making up new stuff.
Q: What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?
A: 42
43: Yeah, I think broadly you're on tricky ground when you try to divvy the world into people who are making stuff up and people who aren't (despite the nuance-free language of my 22). IANAPhilosopher, but it seems to me that we all fill in the blanks regarding the things we don't understand, and the Bible leaves a lot of blanks even for people who consider themselves literalists.
I think you get a lot more leeway filling in blanks when you hold to Biblical literalism and proudly speak on English.
46 hence prosperity evangelists, no?
based largely on a very literal reading of Revelation
Didn't Fred Clark comment that it required reading the Bible like a codebook, making lots of veiled references that nobody could possibly get without having X Renowned Scholar's book, often taking clearly allegorical passages or OT stories as referring to current events (whatever's happening this year), that sort of thing? That seems like something other than "literal".
49: when you only ever read one book, it's got to cover a lot of ground.
More concrete example: taking Ezekiel 38-39 and saying "clearly when it says Gog and Magog will invade Israel it means Russia and [some other country]".
There's certainly plenty of that sort of interpretation out there, though dispensationalism proper takes literalism more seriously and rejects that sort of allegorical interpretation of most biblical passages. Apocalyptic literature like Revelation is a little different, though, since it's explicitly predictive in nature. Taking it literally really does invite identification with specific future events. Premillennarians think most of it hasn't happened yet, but really, literally will at some point in the (presumably near) future, which is why they're ready to be raptured any minute now.
Basically, American Protestants believe lots of nutty stuff, but it's mostly not because they're making up stuff that isn't in the Bible but because they're taking seriously stuff that is (while ignoring other stuff that's there too). There's a lot of crazy stuff in there!
Apocalyptic literature like Revelation is a little different, though, since it's explicitly predictive in nature.
Actually*, it's very common in some traditions to take Revelation as either predictive of something that already happened (the destruction of the Temple and the Roman persecution of Christians) or allegory.
* Or, in some traditions, "Well, actually".
49: Yes, and also very selective reading that skips context which clearly points to another interpretation.
32: The RSV is actually mostly used in mainline Protestant denominations (NRSV these days) - that's the one I grew up on in the UCC. And that exact passage is one that has been translated rather differently since 1977 in evangelical-oriented translations. Which is interesting, for a group of people claiming the inerrancy of Scripture.
I'm not an Americanism, but my understanding of white Protestant anti abortion sentiment is that it's substantially an outgrowth of the eugenics movement. Panic over white women's potential failure to reproduce, etc. the 1970s Bob Jones stuff is when it got a theological underpinning, such as it is, and became much more central to evangelicalism.
Some of these people read the secular laws in the same kind of ways. Which is how you wind up with people saying they don't need to pay income tax or can't go to jail if the court room in which they were tried had a flag with gold fringe.
Panic over white women's potential failure to reproduce, etc.
That's what country music is about, kind of.
I didn't think the eugenics movement had much legs past the forties, although some of its legacies (sterilization laws) stuck around. The more common interpretation today is that modern politicized white evangelicalism coalesced around resistance to civil rights and integration.
Lots of the rhetoric that the eugenics movement sprang from was bewailing white women's failure to reproduce.
58: I have a distinct memory of a Loretta Lynn song that was about a white woman panicking at her excessive fertility.
54: Sure, but those aren't literalist interpretations.
We always had this preconception that for a candidate, being more of a war hero than the other candidate is good, which turns out not to be true when you're a Democrat (Kerry).
AIMHMHB this is so far from the truth that "elect the candidate with the less impressive military record" has an almost perfect predictive history.
2016: draft dodger vs. not eligible: Trump won.
2012: neither side had history.
2008: no service vs. Vietnam War aviator and POW: Obama won.
2004: decorated combat veteran vs ANG layabout: Bush won.
2000: combat veteran vs ANG layabout: Bush won.
1996: stormed beaches on D-Day vs draft dodger: Clinton won.
1992: Pacific War aviator vs draft dodger: Clinton won.
1988 is an exception: Bush beat Dukakis.
1984: both ex military but no combat record.
1980: USN submariner vs propaganda film maker: Reagan won.
1976 is an exception: PAcific War Navy veteran Ford lost to Carter.
1972: Navy supply officer Nixon beat bomber captain McGovern.
Lots of the rhetoric that the eugenics movement sprang from was bewailing white women's failure to reproduce.
It's easy to underestimate the extent to which falling populations were a real concern back in the interwar period. Sitting on my shelf is my battered copy of a 1936 book on how the British Empire should run its military strategy, and it mentions that a real problem is going to be the fact that the population of the UK is dropping and will go below 40 million by 1970. No idea where this came from but it was clearly widely accepted.
Yes: not just the eugenics movement, but a lot of population policy more generally. The point of having a large population was to have a large army, in the expectation that substantial number of young men would die as a result. Neal Ascherson once quoted a working class proverb of the Forties/Fifties to the effect that you needed at least two sons, "One for the King". And a look at the war memorial in any English church will show what he meant.
Although we nowadays think of Swedish child care policies as uniquely liberal and empowering it is chilling to go back to Alva Myrdal's original arguments for day care, which were entirely collective and by implication eugenic. [There was a lot of explicitly eugenic Swedish policy at the same period, I know.]
whole Swedish thing of making childcare avaialable to wo
Dispensationalism, of which Pre- and post- millennialism are subsets, was largely invented in the 1820s and 30s by a fashionable London preacher, a Scotsman named Irving, who was building on the work of a 16th century Jesuit. The Irvingites were charismatic, among the first to be so since the early church. Their doctrines crossed the Atlantic and mutated into the Adventist movement and its various descendants.
It's not just revelation. The Book of Daniel is hugely important in all these prophetic rereadings.
As far as I understand it, the conversion of American evangelicals to the anti-abortion cause was indeed partially motivated by racism (wanting to keep their schools segregated and subsidised) but also, surely, by patriarchy and a wider communalist ideology. The idea that children are the property of a community, and that their mothers are therefore entrusted with a body that does not belong to them alone, is very important here. It is something that atomistic liberalism explicitly denies. Yet it is difficult to extirpate because it is around half true.
The man who did more than any other single figure to mainstream pro-lifery in the evangelical movement, Francis Schaeffer, ran a sort of commune in Switzerland in the 70's. The instinct to build a community of true, pure, believers, can always be awakened in Christianity.
That you can just make up new stuff is American Protestantism's innovation.
Bollockes
66.1 - that bit makes sense to me. I am puzzled though about why people believed that the UK population was actually going to fall.
70: If in 1930 one made a straight-line projection from the first chart here that could make sense.
70: for one thing, they completely discounted the possibility of mass immigration and would have been horrified by it. Without that, I think the present picture would be very different. Secondly these were the years in which birth control became a living possibility Marie Stopes(noted eugenicist) was active from the Twenties on and the Lambeth Conference of 1930 approved the use of birth control, which was what prompted the then Pope to restate in harder terms the traditional Catholic teaching, which, in turn, led Paul VI to do so, louder, in 1967. And one of the foundational texts of the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology is about half taken up with the worry that the lower classes will outbreed the upper, more desirable one. Fisher was a racist, sure, but he was also a classist in a purely genetic sense.
To me, that seems like something (gotta be churched) that was as much a certainty as 'a black dude with Hussein in his name could never be elected' is now not really even worth discussions.
I was an early proponent of the idea that Obama was electable. It did not ever seem farfetched to me. What I thoroughly underestimated and was blindsided by is the extent of the racist anger that surged up in reaction, though. I mean, this fucking horrendous shitshow of an administration is sprung from it.
The idea of "literalism" in Biblical interpretation is a lot like "originalism" in Constitutional interpretation. It's based on the reasonable assumption that folks in prior centuries had a more primitive understanding of facts and ethics, but adherents will abandon the text in a heartbeat (without admitting doing so) if it doesn't produce the proper reactionary outcome.
71: hmm, maybe. Still a bit of a leap to assume that birth rates (still well ahead of death rates at that point) would continue to fall. Good graph, mind. You can see the Blitz and the Spanish flu epidemic jump out.
If you want to see a great visual of the effects of 20th century history on death rates, check this out: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2018/12/04/heatmaps-of-mortality-rates/
63 Yeah, but some woman told the veteran in 2000 to wear earth tones, and he may actually have done it. Can you believe it! And then the 'green' party thought that the party of James Watt and Anne Gorsuch should be put back in charge.
76 is astonishing, with the great black blots for the wars. The French one makes it clear how devastating the 1890 war was. And that, of course, primed the attitudes that led to the next one.
I'm racking my brains to think who France was at war with in 1890. Do you mean 1870?
51: but one also has to beware of the BEAR lying down with the EAGLE. I think.
What's strange about the French one is the long term 19th century trend of heightened male mortality centered on 25 that's dissipated by 30. No analogue in England.
73: What I thoroughly underestimated and was blindsided by is the extent of the racist anger that surged up in reaction, though. I mean, this fucking horrendous shitshow of an administration is sprung from it.
Compels me to re-post (I think I posted here before) a great rant from a black women in Dayton delivered toa vote canvasser.
Look, I get it, you white people had a hard time with Obama being president so you need to racist president. I get it. I don't like it but I get it. But what I don't get is why you needed a racist who is so goddamn crazy and stupid! Couldn't you find a racist who could actually know how to run the damn government? I mean, I wouldn't vote for him-he'd still be bad for people like me-but at least he'd know what he's doing? What good does it do the damn white people when Trump shits the bed? It's not like there's some other special country they move to when he takes this country down. We get a black president and he does a pretty good job, and your response is murder-suicide? You white people need to get smarter about how you do this racism thing.
Taiwan officials told me that more than 70 countries had sent messages of congratulations to Tsai and the people of Taiwan on the election, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. They said the messages were longer and arrived faster than in previous years. This may seem like a small thing, but in a place where protocol is often seen as a matter of survival, it mattered. The officials pointed in particular to Europe, where they said they had witnessed a sea change in recent years. As European countries experienced direct pressure from China on a variety of fronts, they have seen Taiwan in a new light.
I want the speech in 82 to go in the history books and be memorized by schoolchildren along with all the MLK lines.
yes. 1870. I don't know what's wrong with my fingers
83 would make sense as an explanation. But were the French colonial wars so prolonged. Maybe the must have been, to make the Foreign Legion seem necessary.
I was thinking more mortality in the metropolitan army, just from general shittiness. But yes.
82: I remember the prior post because it's so perfect.
I suspect, though, that it was important for white people to show that they can make president whoever the fuck they want. I think that's what Coates was getting at when he described Trump as The First White President.
[T]hat is the point of white supremacy -- to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump's counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.
One can see a marked darkening in the same age band c.1860 (Austrian) and a fainter darkening c.1830-50 (Algeria). Latter is maybe overreading.
What I thoroughly underestimated and was blindsided by is the extent of the racist anger
Yeah. In my eternal optimism, I thought we were seeing an extinction burst. I can't even quell my optimism now, but I don't type it out here any more after having been so wrong in 2016.
I wonder if there has been a time in the last 40 years when I have been excessively pessimistic about national politics.
I suspect, though, that it was important for white people to show that they can make president whoever the fuck they want
I wasn't sure if Ta-Nehisi Coates actually meant this. In any case, I find it unbelievable that any significant number of white people actually thought something like "I'm going to vote for that know-nothing incompetent Trump just to show those black people that any idiot white person can be President."
I think the desire to show that you're so powerful (blessed) that you can survive being lazy, reckless, unhealthy, rude is broad across the US. It's an accurate and unfakeable signal! Teens do it, bullies do it, pity so many of us aren't as blessed as we'd like to be.
For the record, here is Stormcrow's prior invocation of the Dayton woman's discussion of Trumpian racism.
If he invokes her a third time does she become president?
94: "If Obama can be president, anyone can be," is a plausible thing for a racist idiot to think. Or maybe, "The mere existence of Obama has made a mockery of the system, our side might as well do the same."
97: Apparently not, as it turns out I had also posted it just prior to the election. (And I will again give a trigger warning re: the thread it appears in. It was pre-Jackpot.)
94: Very little of what is going on here is happening at a genuinely conscious, articulated level. Do Trump voters regard the military with contempt? Do they hate the FBI and the intelligence community? Do they support Russian interference in US elections? Do they think the US should be cozier with North Korea? These aren't even meaningful questions. Trump voters don't care. These things are beside the point. If Trump wants to grab pussy or mock John McCain for getting captured, that's just fine with them, but they'll never actually say that. The only time sexual impropriety is an issue for Trump voters is when someone misbehaves who is sympathetic to some despised minority.
These are people whose deepest commitment is to the exercise of arbitrary privilege -- and the privilege has to be arbitrary as a matter of principle. If Trump had any other kind of merit, it would make him less attractive. The entire point of Trump is: We do whatever the fuck we want for whatever reason. And the problem with guys like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz is that in the end, they felt the need to put some kind of respectable gloss on it. Trump just comes right out and says what people are thinking. And what people are thinking is not "I prefer my heroes to not be captured." What they're thinking is: Nothing is sacred beyond arbitrary privilege. That's what Trump is talking about.
91 Where is the Algeria data? I'm not seeing it at the linked posts.
I probably shouldn't say this here but I'm in the process of buying a large archive of French military manuscript maps of Algeria from 1827-1840
102: French male mortality heatmap linked in 76, trend described in 81. Like I say, Algeria may be squinting. You can see it bookmarked at the start by the cholera pandemic 1830-31.
And some other epidemic/crop failure or something c.1850. Don't know what that is.
The potato blight wasn't limited to Ireland.
And adding on to 101, the fact that Trump "drives them crazy" ("them" usually unspecified, or maybe "liberals") is often articulated as a positive.
106 I was thinking that basically from the 1848 revolution through the 1852 coup aftermath, you're going to get a bunch of dead young men. It's the background trend that's less clear.
I see what you mean. I had only seen the chart on my phone before and missed it.
Were the French just stabbing each other that much more than the British?
I can't find the answer on the google. I have a book (something by John Mueller) that probably has the answer, but it would take too long to find it.
When knives are outlawed, only outlaws will have smoothly spread peanut butter.
I have pet Bailey. Bailey is a very good dog.
Bailey is going to be paying a visit to my city next week. As I understand it, the actual Senator will be busy with impeachment hearings.
Those of you who have watched Mrs. Maisel - is the comedy part of it ever going to get better or fade away? I feel obnoxious saying this, but the comedy bits are hard to take. The rest of it we like, especially Tony Shalhoub. Just finished episode 7.
I wonder how Monk has held up? Probably better than Wings. But I should probably just watch Galaxy Quest if I'm feeling my life is lacking in Tony Shalhoub.
I should call my uncle Tony who has similar mannerisms.
He's the Crystal Bernard of his gender.
He was a cab driver. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sr1pkAoa-E
I will admit that that clip was funnier when I was a teenager, but I still hum the song that way.
I think I only watched it for whatever was before or after.
Those of you who have watched Mrs. Maisel - is the comedy part of it ever going to get better or fade away?
Not really, no. I'm not sure if there's some sort of meta thing going on with the fact that her comedy isn't actually funny or if the writers just have very different taste than me, but she keeps doing it about the same amount per episode and it keeps being pretty much the same.
I should probably just watch Galaxy Quest if I'm feeling my life is lacking in Tony Shalhoub.
tbh you should watch Galaxy Quest even if you feel amply supplied with Tony Shalhoub.
(Aghast recently at the revelation that one of my friends hadn't seen "The Rock", I replied that there are only three kinds of person: those who need to watch "The Rock", those who need to watch "The Rock" again, and those who have "The Rock" playing on a permanent loop on the backs of their eyelids. During a particularly stressful time of my life, one of my fellow students had memorised virtually the entire script, and kept our spirits up by occasionally muttering "well, this is certainly turning out to be more interesting than my average day" in the appropriate accent.)
To 101:
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
"There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
http://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288
124: The way he says "That changes the meaning" is hilarious.
He's the best actor of his Wings-cohort.
Tony Shalhoub is great, but not great enough to make me remember he was in The Rock.
He would have been an improvement in the Nicolas Cage role.
||
"There will not be alignment, we will not be a ruletaker, we will not be in the single market and we will not be in the customs union -- and we will do this by the end of the year," Javid said [...] Any move to start negotiations with the U.S. before trade talks with the EU get fully under way could send a strong message to the EU that Britain wants to break free of European regulations.Because nothing says rulemaker like negotiating alone against a nation state with 7 times your GDP.
Nobody would ever have been better in any Nicolas Cage role.
Except John Travolta in Face/Off
I really want to test that with a remake where Tony Shalhoub says, "We're going to steal the Declaration of Independence."
Except maybe Travolta. But that's stretching.