The Ancient Art Of Bear-Poking

     The thing about pushing limits is that it provokes reactions -- especially if the limit is a historic norm that is poorly-defined in law or courts don't protect: expectations are askew from the legal reality.

     Push too hard, expect people to push back.  I think the Trump administration is hoping for it, hoping sending Federalized National Guard troops into big cities will create an incident leading to riots that will justify even harsher measures.  And yes, big cities are crime-ridden; they always have been -- but the rate has been falling dramatically over the last decade in every one of the cities the President has sent or is talking about sending troops into: a lot of people in close proximity is always going to be a hunting ground for the criminally inclined and as a society, the U.S. has been doing an amazing job of getting it under control, using everything from community policing to outreach programs, mandatory sentencing laws and getting the lead out of gasoline.

     This reality, which you can go look up for yourself, doesn't serve an agenda based on urbaphobia and anecdote; it doesn't serve the desire to test limits -- and cause reaction.  Remember the chaos of the first Trump administration?  He loved it, or at least the opportunities it provided, and he's going to get himself more of it, one way or another.  Count on it.

     Chicago, Illinois seems to be his next target.  That city and state has a pretty good chance of litigating the effort to a standstill, but it won't stop there.

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     Press coverage of the redistricting conflict, with Texas and California at the fore, keeps turning up an interesting tidbit:  Blue states are having a much harder time gerrymandering, because a lot more of them have nonpartisan boards or commissions to draw U.S. House districts, or rules that serve similar ends.  Red states have made no bones about drawing lines to reach partisan goals, even when the result is wildly skewed from voting patterns, pointing out that it's allowed.  This disparity should tell us something, that the Dems are, at least, concerned about the appearance of fairness, while the GOP can't be arsed.  The latter is not a good look; it's not the way our system of government is supposed to work, at least not based on what I was taught about the root causes of the American Revolution.  The English Crown got a reaction there, too.

Exceptionally Self-Deluded

     The United States of America is in the midst of a Viktor Orbán-style takeover of the institutions of our republic -- including many that have long existed outside of the government, either by independent formation (like universities) or via structures intended to distance them from direct government control, like the United States Institute for Peace or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

     In particular, the Executive Branch is arrogating to itself powers that had either not previously been deemed to exist or are Constitutionally granted to the Legislative Branch -- and a supinely complicit Congress along with a compliant Supreme Court are letting it happen, in some cases even empowering it.  It out-Jacksons Andrew Jackson, and puts forward a Wilsonian "Unitary Executive" without the odious Woodrow Wilson's academic rigor and commitment to an international deliberative body.  What it does share with both Presidencies is an overt dedication to furthering so-called "white supremacy," with the added frill of pushing women back to the powerlessness they suffered under Jackson and Wilson.  It's broadly authoritarian; I'm not going to get into any nitwitted discussion of how it couldn't possibly be fascism because they don't have spiffy uniforms or the underlying ideas don't come from the fascistae region of Italy.  The incumbent Administration means to rule, and they are completely comfortable laying a heavy thumb on any measure that will further that end, like partisan mid-decade Congressional redistricting.

     There's still a lot of talk of "overreaction," as though the sweeping changes were inconsequential follies, to be washed away or changed after the next election.  Oh, some of them may be, depending on how that election goes, and barring yet another Trumped-up "emergency" getting in the way of voting.  Others will not; many parts of the Federal edifice, like USAID, have been broken beyond recovery.  There might some day be another "soft power" effort along the same lines, but the institution, with all of its values and specialized knowledge, is gone.  And the accretion of power to the Executive may be as irreversible as the accretion of power to the Imperial throne of Rome.  Maybe not; the men who wrote the Constitution knew Classical history and tried to build a stronger bulwark against despotic power than the Roman Senate proved to be.  But so far, our Congress is failing the same test.

     So don't try to jolly me along, and understand that my rudeness to Trumpist Republicans is deliberate; unlike the conservative Republicans who preceded them, they have nothing of value to contribute to our society or system of government, only destruction and barbarism.  When they speak, hear the shouts of the mob and the howling of wolves in the background.  They seek only power and personal wealth; they smash institutions and sow only ruin.  What comes after them, unless we are very lucky in rolling it back, is darkness.

     American exceptionalism long held that our country was immune from the kinds of chaos that swept through the governments of other nations, leaving death and despotism in its wake.  Turns out that's not the case.

A Waste Of Ink And Electrons

     Over the last two days, news media have made very very sure -- to the point of program interrupting news bulletins for one of 'em -- that I was aware how the criminal trial of Sean "I have an enormous number of nicknames" Combs came out, and that another group of Men With A Theory are launching a brand new search for the remains of Amelia Earhart, Fred Noonan and their airplane.

     Precisely why I should be concerned about the unsavory and at least partially criminal sex life of a celebrity -- a thing as statistically predictable as the sun rising in the east for as long as there have been celebrities -- and one more search for a lost aviator (she's dead, guys, and so is he) is a mystery to me.  There's a huge, tragic mess in Gaza, Iran may or may not presently have a viable nuclear weapons program,* U. S. domestic politics are getting crazier, our government is building straight-up concentration camps and treating one of the most outrageous examples as a no-humans-involved occasion for levity and Congress is in the process of pushing through a massively unpopular bill that is certain to have far-reaching effects, but I need to be told about the titillating details of what the rich and famous get up to behind closed doors, and that the sons and grandsons of the same kinds of men who misplaced her are going to go digging for whatever's left of a famous aviator and her slightly less famous crewman?

     No.  I do not.  There's actual serious grownup news to be reported and it would be damned nice if they'd act like it.

     I'm not holding my breath.
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* Fission, fusion, or--  One of the things that frets me is that a desperate and fanatical government with a smashed-up atom-bomb program probably still has loads and loads of nasty stuff with a long half-life, and a dusting of that on enemy territory does both immediate and lasting harm.  Dust and wind being what they are, most nations won't risk the fallout (other than as an add-on oopsie to actual nuclear war, at least).  Iran, however, is not most nations, and they have a history of funding groups even more heedless of consequences.

Poking The Bear

      Sure, you can probably make a case that those hard-working ICE agents are "just following orders" in LA, but even if they're victims of the system (eye roll), the people who gave them their initial orders and who keep sending them back out either know in advance or at least know by now that the protests are reactive; the violence is reactive.

     If the feds were serious about stopping the protests, they'd pull those ICE agents out.  Send them home or, better, to Las Vegas, and wait for the furor to die down.  Come back more stealthily another day.

     Instead, they've got LAPD in there running interference, and the last I heard, National Guard troops were warming up in the bullpen.  I sure hope their officers didn't miss the use-of-force history lesson about Kent State.  You can go on social media right now and find video of protesters tossing tear gas canisters back at the gas-masked police, and if that's just the early innings, it could get way more spicy.

     And it will do so just as long as ICE and police and the National Guard keep getting sent in to poke the bear.  This isn't subatomic rocket-brain physics; we know what started it.  We know what's keeping it going.  And you're either in there cheering on the spectacle or you're asking why the feds are still leaning on the throttle.  What's in it for them?  What's their endgame?

     Better look close.  This isn't war -- it's three-card monte.

America's Favorite Projector Screen

     Was it a Disney invention?  I don't remember.  It's a neat trick: you take a three-dimensional head shape, coat it with reflective motion-picture screen material, set it against an absorptive background and project a carefully sized and cropped movie or video of a person's face on it.  It'll look almost alive, especially if you have good control of the observer's distance and viewing angle.

     The Framers and Founders come in for similar treatment: we tend to project our beliefs and issues on 'em, then take the illusion for reality.  In dealing with men like Jefferson and Washington, you have have to go back to primary evidence: what did they actually leave written down?  When in their life did they write it, and under what circumstances?  Those men were masses of what appear now to be contradictions -- future President John Adams, already involved in the Patriot cause, defended the British soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre of 1770, describing the (at least nominally) Patriot mob that provoked matters in absolutely scurrilous terms.

     Jefferson, who never saw a third rail he didn't almost touch while tapdancing adroitly around it, is frequently misrepresented.  He came in for an especially egregious ride at the hands of the newly-elected Speaker of the House back in January, and while it would be nice to lay all the blame at the feet of Mike Johnson, it turns out he had plenty of help, some of it from unexpected and largely innocent corners.  There's a nice podcast that tells the tale -- and it serves as a reminder to always look things up.  Too many people enjoy repeating plausible tales for the joy of it, and never bother to do any homework.

Don't Know Why I Bother

     There was a point during the pandemic when I stopped doing confrontational debunking.  People had their minds pretty well made up, right or wrong, and they were not going to change -- and some of them were starting get threatening.

     I try to not have strong attachments to anyone or anything (it's that Jr. High flirtation with Buddhism), and to not share too much about the stuff I really love if it's where other people can get at it.  I was always dislikeable: nearsighted, clumsy, stroobly-haired, a tomboy who never knew when to shut up.*  It's never nice to discover someone's poured milk in your school locker, glued your Lord of the Rings paperbacks into a series of solid lumps or keyed your car.  I learned to keep things shut away.  At my present age, I would prefer to retain all the teeth I have left and not suffer any more broken bones -- little things, I suppose, but such comforts.

     Nevertheless--  It irks me when molehills are inflated into mountains.  The Federal Emergency Management has been a prime focus for political extremists from the day it was proposed. If they stock up on house trailers, they're said to be planning concentration camps.  If they ask for bids to supply body bags, they're accused of plotting mass death.  FEMA workers are often greeted with hostility when they show up after calamity has struck, accused of being too slow (States usually have to ask for 'em) or too snoopy (it's a government agency; they have forms that have to be filled out) or of doing things they have never done.  (And I get it, it's nervous-making when The Gummint shows up; my Mom was a township property tax assessor, which occasionally meant having to measure the outside dimensions of somebody's house.  Not everyone was okay with that.)

     So I had a blog comment about how FEMA had left Trump supporters in the lurch, and that comment needs to be addressed.

     In the aftermath of disaster, people are on edge.  Armed with a clipboard and a cellphone or radio, FEMA workers have been known to encounter residents who have rather more armament.  I gather the advice they are given is to avoid confrontation.

     In early October of 2024, Hurricane Milton roared from the Gulf and across Florida, killing at least 35 people and doing over 30 billion dollars in damage.  Afterward (some sources say October 27), a FEMA supervisor of 11 canvassers working in Lake Placid, FL told them not "avoid confrontation" but to skip houses with Trump campaign signs.  She got caught; someone leaked the email and by November, she was fired and FEMA sent a new crew to cover the area.  Short write-up here, news stories here and here.  Any search engine will find more.  FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell was hauled up before the House Oversight committee, where she condemned the supervisor's action.  Jamie Raskin of Maryland called the instruction "a bad mistake, legally and constitutionally, which violated the core mission of FEMA and every federal agency to work on behalf of all Americans. [...] It’s plainly wrong and divisive to use a presidential campaign lawn sign as a proxy for someone’s dangerousness," and that's the ranking Democrat on the committee calling it out.  The Republicans said much the same thing.

     That is the sole documented example I can find of FEMA being partisan.  Some crazy rumors came out of North Carolina after their terrible floods, but it appears to be social-media fantasy.

     Here's what FEMA says: "FEMA provides assistance to survivors regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, English proficiency, political affiliation or economic status." They've got a whole fact sheet you can look over -- and if you've got evidence they're not playing by their own rules, there's a "contact us" link right there at the bottom of the page.  Cc the House Oversight Committee while you're at it, I'm sure they'll be interested.

     Or you can huff the fumes of overheated bullshit, if that's what gets you high, but don't confuse the resulting hallucinations with reality, and don't ask the rest of us to take a whiff.  The stink is unmistakable.
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* One of the first signs of trouble with my ex was when we were building a little platform at my previous home to get the house for the feral cats up out of the mud, and it became obvious he wasn't much good with a handsaw and had trouble sinking a nail straight.  It took me by surprise; I think of those as basic life skills, stuff my big sister, little brother and our parents knew before adulthood.  He was...not real happy that it surprised me.  I'll take half the blame for that, but, um, it was a warning of basic incompatibility we both should have heeded.

Margaret Atwood Says She's Not A Prophet

     Indeed, Ms. Atwood says The Handmaid's Tale drew on historical and (then) contemporary events -- which is one of the reasons she, somewhat sniffily, eschews being lumped in with "Science Fiction."  It's also one of the reasons I, somewhat sniffily, have shelved that book with my other science fiction books: all SF is, in one way or another, linked to current and past events, and to the writer's perception of them.

     You can read The Handmaid's Tale as a warning -- just as you can Le Guin's The Dispossessed; and they both warn about the harm caused by trying to hammer everyone into the same mold and the endless cruelties we inflict on one another when we don't stop to think and to care.

     The lesson is the same: Live however you choose -- but don't force the weird people across the road or the dull people next door to live the way you do.  Treat other people politely; you're not obliged to respect their choices but you don't get to be a jerk about it, nor do they about your choices.

     Otherwise, you're locked into an endless cycle of mutual retribution that will harm innocents every time the wheel turns.  "Oh," you may complain, "But look how it enrages those who disagree with me."  And with that, you have put yourself next to the Carthaginians as Roman historians described them, shoveling babies into the fire to ensure prosperity and victory.

     It's not worth so horrific a price.  It never is.

Footnote

     If you're one of the people chortling how the "lib'ruls" of LA voted wrong and now face fires, two bits of information:

     -Post hoc ergo propter hoc is still a logical fallacy.

     -In the 2024 Presidental election, more people voted for Donald Trump in Los Angeles than voted for him in Arkansas or Oklahoma.  This nonsense about "red America" vs. "blue America" ignores the reality that we all live in purple America, a bit redder in some places and bluer in others, and when bad luck falls on Texas or New York, Oregon or Florida, it falls on millions of people who voted the same way you did and hold similar values, no matter how you voted or what policies you favor.  We're all in the same box. 

     But neither voting patterns, election results or efforts to attracts a more diverse pool of firefighters caused the recent and current fires in and around LA.  They had a fairly wet year or two recently, then things got dry (as is normal in that part of our country) and then--  Then the dice came up snake eyes (or double sixes) for the Santa Ana winds, roaring with an intensity rarely seen.  People being people, anyone with a yard has stuff growing in it, and it was all pretty much tinder.  Add strong winds and all you need is a spark.

     Strong winds kept firefighting aircraft on the ground (and still are, at their worst), leaving the greater Los Angeles area with exactly the same resources as any other big city: a hydrant system and trucks and personnel adequate to battle normal fires, a building or three at a time.

     Information about LAFD funding is muddled; they were in the process of negotiating fire department pay (and apparently other terms) during the overall budget process.  LAFD's portion was left for another bill, later, and their funding went up, not down (as has been claimed elsewhere), but reports on how much and what it was for vary.  All I can tell for sure is that it went up some tens of millions -- not much less than 20, nor more than 50 million over what it had been.  Call it a couple week's income for Elon Musk, or more than you or I would see in ten lifetimes.  They've got the money.  They're not worse off for staff than fire departments generally -- and, faced with a wall of flame pushed by katabatic winds exceeding 60 miles an hour, blowing embers ahead of it into paper-dry shrubs, grass, trees and wooden houses, all they can do is fight for time, no matter who they are.  Against a calamity this enormous, all people are the same size, and it's too damn small.  Additional help is pouring in, from as far away as Canada.

     It's probably ironic that the best tool against this kind of disaster is slow and about as nannying as it gets: building codes and zoning.  Requiring more fire-resistant construction and materials for homes and commercial buildings, mandating largely vegetation-free "clear zones" around them, incorporating firebreaks into neighborhood design -- all of those things would help mitigate the kinds of harm we're seeing happen.  Towns and cities in Southern California have made efforts to create such rules -- and it has been decried as liberal interference in personal freedom to do as people wish on their own property.  Like most things in politics, like most things involved in living with neighbors nearby, it's a matter of compromise and sometimes it works out badly.  It's a part of life -- and only a ghoul revels in the bad outcomes.

I Don't Enjoy Tenterhooks

     Who does?  --Okay, presumably there's some perv out there who's into the metaphor, and loves being in suspense over serious issues that are likely to effect the rest of their life.  But that person's a statistical blip.  When it comes to our lives (as opposed to a mystery book or a spy movie), everyone wants to know what's around the next turn, or at least that whatever it is, it won't be too awful.

     Of course, we don't all have the same notions of "awful."  We don't even agree on what's going right and wrong at present, so the future and what to do about it is even more contentious.

     As I write, the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election is up in the air, with the two major candidates within a few points of one another and the critical swing states hanging in the balance.  It's a good bet that it's going to stay a mystery down to the morning after Election Day, if not longer.

     I don't like it.  The main thing on offer right now is fear: Mr. Trump wants me to be afraid of "illegals," a category that apparently includes a lot of people who are in this country legally, but don't look like him or speak much English.*  He's also worried about Marxists, "transgenders" and a few other bugbears, all of whom constitute powerless (and often oddball) minorities with scary reputations.  It's a simple formula: wave around a few ooga-booga bogeyman pictures of Leon Trotsky, way-out drag queens, Stalin (not, strictly speaking, a Marxist) or the Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- or, better yet, of some actual criminals whose appearance makes them proxies for ethnic fearmongering.  It appeals strongly to his base, which encourages him to do more of the same, an iterative process that most recently resulted in a "few minutes hate" at rallies out West that would have been cartoonish were it not so unnerving.  I'd say this kind of thing is unAmerican, but our history is not without  low points, from the 1921 Tulsa race riots to 1954's "Operation Wetback" and its Depression-era predecessor that swept up and deported hundreds of thousands of U. S. citizens who happened to have the wrong accent or skin color, along with the undocumented workers and residents the programs were aimed at.

     The Democrats point to the Republicans in justifiable fear of precisely this kind of officially-supported xenophobia, and go on to relatively sober policy offerings: heartfelt, but Vice-President Harris and Tim Walz lack the lurid sideshow appeal of their opposition.

     Mr. Trump keeps finding new kinds of chickens to toss into the pot, promising skyrocketing wages, low prices and a whole slew of things no President or Congress can deliver; Ms. Harris offers a less flashy government of lower deficits, wider attention to human rights and less sloganeering.

     I don't know if that's enough.  I doubt fear is a really great way to get people into voting booths, and I worry that a chance to have some other poor schmuck pushed around is at least as strong a draw.

     So I'm stuck on tenterhooks, at least until the election results are in, and maybe after that, because recent history has shown me that I didn't know my fellow citizens nearly as well as I thought; those gleefully smiling faces in lynching postcards from the first part of the 20th Century were not so long ago as I had let myself be led to believe.  Our worst nature is barely suppressed and, once released, difficult to bottle up again.
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* They'll learn, or if they manage to dodge learning, their kids will pick it up.  For a country without an official language, the U.S. is difficult to navigate without speaking the lingo.

Who We Used To Be

     I stumbled across a 1950s police drama inspired by Dragnet: in Code 3, real-life stories from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office are dramatized, in much the same valorizing manner.

     The officers in Dragnet and Code 3 were supposed the represent the best elements of American law enforcement, and while you can easily fault them for being goody-two-shoes and papering over the worse aspects of the profession, ignoring the harsher treatment often encountered by people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale and the leniency expected by those at the top, the programs represented an aspiration, showing the police not, perhaps, so much as they were as who they were supposed to be.

     Even taking all that into account, the first episode of Code 3 had me doing a double-take.  In it, a former member of the Czech underground, now a naturalized U. S. citizen is going though training to become a deputy.  Older than the others, driven, he's too rough in hand-to-hand training and too outspoken in the classroom.  Sent out to observe with a pair of experienced deputies, he's furious when they break up a fight among truck drivers and shrug off (and diffuse) hostile comments from the separated combatants by refusing to take them seriously.  "Why do those people not show us respect?"  He shoves one driver who directs a comment to him; the guy reacts angrily, the trainee's hand creeps towards his holster and the situation is briefly tense until he's told to stand down.

     In the patrol car afterward, the deputies explain that in this country, an unarmed citizen feels safe talking back to law enforcement, and that it is a point of pride.  "Those guys were just blowing off steam.  We sent them on their way and didn't have to arrest anyone."

     He struggles with that; plot complications and so on follow, but in the end, in the course of a dramatic confrontation with another immigrant from Eastern Europe, he comes to terms with the way policing works in the U.S. and is on his way to a career serving public safety.

     So, tell me -- just how comfortable would you feel talking back to a police officer today?  How comfortable with it, really, were truck drivers in 1950s LA County, and was it more or less so than their counterparts are now?  How much respect does a police officer or sheriff's deputy expect these days, and how much disrespect will they treat as semi-amusing routine?  And what kind of behavior does our entertainment media model for officers and the public along those lines?

Got Morality?

     An interesting essay -- it's a chapter from a book -- on the basic elements of morality, shared across our cultures.  The piece presents itself as addressing the need for religion as a basis of morals (or at least of moral behavior), but I'm not sure that's something that lends itself to rational debate.

     While moral behavior as the article defines it is shown to be its own reward, people are strongly motivated by punishment/reward structures.  Assuming you believe the religion you practice -- and surely you do -- the idea of some kind of cosmic scorekeeping and reckoning-up is a very strong impetus to do right.

     While I will happily argue that it's not the only source or foundation for moral behavior, no religion that I know of is inherently immoral, at least towards co-religionists and most often towards other people as well.  I'll join with the Founders and Framers in believing religious faith in general to be of public utility, while refraining from singling any out.  I don't happen to practice one (and I like to believe my behavior is nevertheless moral) but I'd sure hate to live someplace where religions were banned.

George Remus

     I was looking up some information on Cincinnati, Ohio's interesting Eden Park when I stumbled across George Remus: pharmacist, attorney, bootlegger.  You know those over-the-top films about the lurid adventures of organized criminals, double-crossing spouses and crooked law enforcement during Prohibition?  Here's the real deal.

     If you made up his life for a book, you'd be accused of straining credulity.

     P.S., Eden Park has a copy of Rome's Capitoline Wolf statue -- stolen in 2022, replaced in 2023.  The old one was a gift in 1931 from, of all people, Benito Mussolini.  The new one was funded by a group of Italian-Americans.  Heck of a place, that park.

This And That

     We're in the midst of tomato season here at Roseholme Cottage, and I can either pick the ripe ones every day or resign myself to having to pitch a few that have gone too long.  The tiny cherry tomatoes do best and they go from ripe to split in a day or less.  Not much bigger than marbles, they're a little more work to prepare than full-size tomatoes, but they're full of flavor and the plants are nearly as hardy as weeds.  (I'm enjoying some in an omelette with bacon, cheese and pickled okra right now.)
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     Wouldn't it be interesting if the Georgia criminal trial of Donald Trump and associates resulted in improvements in conditions at the (apparently pretty awful) Fulton County Jail?  It turns out the same folks who sometimes say, "It's a jail, it's not supposed to be nice," feel a little differently about that when prominent politicians start getting processed there.  Hey, jail isn't supposed to be nice -- but it's supposed to be sanitary.   Staff isn't supposed to be so overworked or under-disciplined that they simply forget about an inmate for several days.  Fulton County Jail appears to be typical of the problems with U. S. prisons and jails, only more so: understaffed, overcrowded, ill-maintained and ignored until something genuinely horrific occurs -- or, rarely, something high-profile.  Like the arrest and booking of a former U. S. President.
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     Someone's going to write me a splutteringly-angry comment about how former U. S. Presidents should never, ever be arrested.  Yeah, well, we agree on that, buddy, and all but one of 'em have managed to live their lives in such a way as to avoid it, too.  Guess we need to do a better job picking 'em, and of all the luck, there's a chance to narrow the field early next year and then choose the big winner (or IMO, the unfortunate sap!) that autumn.  Sharpen those pencils!
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     The thing about Presidents, which I keep pointing out, is that the President of the United States of America is Just Some Guy and I would not be at all surprised to find the occasional speeding ticket or fine for littering in any of their post-Presidency lives.  They're not kings or saints -- no, not even George Washington -- but I do expect them to be at least as moral, trustworthy and/or clever as the average person down the street.  I think that's a basic job requirement for anyone who gets to sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office: be no worse a person than an average neighbor.  If you can't picture a candidate for that office -- or any lesser one -- living across the alley or down the road from you, better ask yourself why.* 
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     Last weekend, I made a pot roast on the grill using eye of round.  Laid that hunk of beef in the roasting pan with a bay leaf and four black muscatel grapes, cut in half and lined up across the top of it.  Turnip, potato, carrots, celery and mushrooms followed, and it was very fine.  Those sweet grapes managed to sing harmony with the other ingredients over the course of a long, slow roast.  Eye of round is very lean, which I like but Tam's not so fond of.  She found it to be pretty good nevertheless.
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* Or picture 'em as uncles at a holiday dinner.  Both of my parents grew up in large families, and until everyone moved all over the country, they'd gather a few times a year.  I can see it: the big meal is over, Uncle Theodore's trying to organize a family softball game (when most of us just want to nap, or at least get the dishes finished), Uncle Andrew's gotten into a heated argument with the UPS guy, Uncle Woodrow's sulking because people were shocked when he said something racist, Uncle Dick's sulking because he likes to sulk, Uncle Ronny's telling funny stories, Uncle Jimmy just threw an empty beer can over the fence and at least half of the rest of the uncles arrived in big cars, are too well-dressed for the day and are trying to draw attention to how well-off they are without appearing immodest about it.  And if you kids don't stop calling Uncle William H. Taft "Uncle Walrus," you're going to be in a lot of trouble!

A Special Kind Of...Something

     My joke about a low-priced, low-paying hair-care chain brought out a particular kind of comment, linking a possible return of the coronavirus to pandemic status to the re-election of Donald Trump.

     Right. First off, that would be the Donald Trump whose Administration fostered "Project Warp Speed," that resulted in the availability of effective vaccines in record time and fast-tracked the development of genuine antivirals.  While fringe elements of his party went haring off after all manner of quack medicine, the Federal government buckled down and did good work.  Since then, the fringes have taken over the GOP and there's been a lot of selective forgetting.

     Second, a quick check finds 7.7 million deaths worldwide from the pandemic, 1.1 million of them in the United States.

     Somebody'd better explain to me how either Presidential negligence -- which didn't create the virus and, unusually, didn't dominate the response -- or a vast, shadowy conspiracy of  "them" managed to kill off over seven million people in order to prevent the reelection of a deeply divisive U. S. President who had about 50/50 odds of winning reelection before the coronavirus pandemic struck.  And if the latter, how come it is the governments of, say, Europe and UK, with over two million dead and a long history of successful espionage operations, didn't hunt down the perps with extreme prejudice?

     Nope, look, I'm sorry; no matter how happy you are in Wackyland, it won't wash.  It doesn't add up.  The coronravirus pandemic was just as real as the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic, and barring a nasty mutation that spikes the rate up to pandemic levels again, it's going to be just as endemic and dangerous as the flu has been ever since, mitigated by the vaccines and antivirals we've developed.  It was not created to "get" Mr. Trump, and while he and his party talked all manner of BS while the pandemic raged, when it came to action, the Feds did pretty well under his watch in terms of actual efforts and results.  Could they have done more, faster?  Probably.  And they could have talked way less smack.  But they muddled through, just like 1918-20.  Stop pretending it was anything more (or less) than another bad pandemic.  Humanity gets hit with 'em every so often; them's the odds.

     Viruses don't vote.  People with brainworms do, and I guess we'll see how that works out in 2024.

And About Dammned Time, Too

     The news broke yesterday: Former President Donald Trump has been charged over his -- in my opinion, not to mention the grand jury's -- criminal actions in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, including the 6 Jan 2021 insurrection.

     If you're a committed fan of Mr. Trump, this is a bell without a clapper.  You're going to ignore the details of the indictment and keep on sharing memes inappropriately comparing the ex-President to Moses, Jesus and heroic archetypes, depicting the elderly, overweight, small-handed and balding man as well-muscled and stalwart.  Never mind that the one time he was given a chance to stand up for his country, he mysteriously developed bone spurs and dodged mandatory military service, bone spurs which have never troubled him since.

     For everyone else, CNN has published an "annotated" version of the indictment, which reproduces all 45 pages of the charges against Mr. Trump with CNN's opinion of what they mean next to it (handily in a different font), so you can see if they're barking up the right tree.  Read the indictment, no matter what you think of the news network's notions.

     Is this prosecution politically motivated?  You're darned right it is -- like the Civil War was politically motivated.  As the indictment sets out in detail, Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators worked to undermine and destroy the Constitutional and legislative mechanisms by which the United States selects Presidents.  His is the kind of politics that shatters governments and wrecks countries, and he must be held to account for it.

     Will this change the course of the 2024 Presidential race?  I doubt it.  Donald Trump has a lock on the Republican nomination at this point and he would even if he was indisputably found guilty and locked away in the the deepest, dankest cell of the  Federal ADMAX prison in Florence, CO.  But I hope it will show that the price of playing games with the normal process of electing Presidents, of staging an autogolpe, is too high for another try.

     Of course, one possibility is that the various trials proceed, Mr. Trump is found guilty in one or more, finishes his campaign from prison, wins, manages to be sworn in behind bars and attempts to pardon himself.  That would probably end up before the Supreme Court and I'm not seeing any decision possible that doesn't lead to trouble.  More likely is that Mr. Trump will prolong his various court cases and appeal any losses, hoping to stay out of jail, win the Presidency and self-pardon; if he does, this leads back to the Supreme Court as before.  So those are ugly outcomes, long before any worries over his campaign promises of vengeance.

     Interesting times.  How I long for boredom.  But can boredom win elections?

Do The Homework Before Commenting

      Read the links or run a websearch and read what it turns up.  Otherwise, be quiet while the grown-ups talk.  A couple of comments, so far unpublished, take Dr. Bernard to task for "revealing the rape victim's identity."

      Indeed, that's what she was reprimanded and fined for, and may be appealing the decision.  Except that's not quite what she did, not in the sense of sharing the child's name and address.  Nope, what the doctor did was give the age, approximate location (either directly or by implication), that the child had been raped and how long she had been pregnant.  Neither she nor the hospital thought of that as identifying information and, under normal circumstances, it probably would not have been.

      Circumstances were not normal.  The Attorney General vowed to investigate (and his office brought the case before the Indiana State Medical Licensing Board).  Some pro-life commenters called the situation out as "too convenient," and vowed to unmask it as a fake.  Pro-abortion commenters set to work to prove it was real.  Given enough time and people, digging through court records in likely Ohio venues turned up a match, and at that point, the victim's privacy was breached.

       This is fairly subtle.  The medical profession has guidelines, the hospital has written policies, and it is irrefutable that without the initial information, no one would have known where to start looking.  But the information the doctor made public did not, in and of itself, identify the victim.  The Indiana State Medical Licensing Board has made their decision and, barring a successful appeal, there the matter stands.  Just don't oversimplify it.

      And don't ignore the tragedy at the heart of the dispute.  There's a ten year old girl who has already been through far more than any child should, and who still has a lot to get though.

Water Is Wet

      And in other news, r-fles are dangerous.  Also, people who commit educational facility sh--tings have got other mental issues.

      I've got to tiptoe around the 'bots here, which are mostly looking for a few words and phrases.

      Some news coverage about the most recent outrage has focused on the supposed extra de-dliness of the platform or cartridge.  I kinda wish that was the case: then all we'd need to do would be to get rid of both and everything would be safe.

      Not how it works.  At the typical distances for this kind of horror, all longarms can cause terrible harm and many of them are more powerful.  While both advertising and editorial condemnation portray the particular platform as the ultimate in a kind of scary and/or tough manly manliness, the reality is that it's a lightweight, utilitarian device and pretty versions with beautiful wooden stocks are just as capable of misuse; they're just not stereotyped as the instrument of choice for both soldiers* and madmen.  These are inanimate objects and 99.9999% of them are never used by their owners (or others) to do bad things.

      Likewise, news coverage always focuses on whatever was going on in the mind of the person who committed the crime.   A few troubled people do troubling, terrible things.  The vast majority of people in similar internal struggles do not, and for each and every one of the perpetrators, you can find tens of thousands to millions of people with the same mental issues who did not do anything horrible, and will not.

      When a truly awful thing happens, the normal, decent human impulse is to want to make it not have happened.  We can't do that, so we narrow in on making is not happen again.  We want a simple handle we can grab and use to make it stop.

      I don't think there is one.  Even if you remove the particular and highly contentious technology (dodging those 'bots again), the United States is different from other First World countries.  We get physical with one another a lot more often and a lot more aggressively.  I suppose you could argue that limiting citizenry to blunt force and edged tools might be preferable, but that allows the young, strong and agile to prey on the weak and the old and, speaking as a woman eligible for the senior discount, I'm not in favor of it.

      We're going to have to figure out how to get along better.  We're going to have to figure out how to find and stymie persons inclined to commit grievous acts against innocent others.  I don't think we can do that by new limits on what all people can own, or by locking up broad categories of people with mental issues.  We're going to have to figure this out without shortcuts or resorting to the same old arguments over the same old easy answers.
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* Yeah, yeah, that's not quite what the military uses.  Go tell it to the people writing and photographing advertisements.

Sure Enough

      A side comment in a news story yesterday appeared to indicate that the U.S. President and Vice-President are, in fact, not required to sign out classified documents as other people with clearance would be, nor is any kind of log kept of which documents they have taken out, not even by coded references.

      I am of the opinion that is preposterously sloppy and demonstrates far too much deference to the office and to the individual who holds it.  Presidents are as replaceable as a piece of string and we have successfully subbed in politicians who were not otherwise headed for the job -- Presidents Truman and Ford being prime examples.  They are not kings or lifetime-tenure strongmen; they're temporary employees and should be treated accordingly.  Yes, it's a big, stressful, responsible job -- and in four or eight years, we'll have gulled some other sap into doing it. 

      The chicken of lousy procedure has come home to roost and I don't think either of the offenders should be given a free pass -- which at present, they are not.  If two speeders are caught, one five miles per hour over the limit and the other fifty over, I don't expect them to face the same fine, but they're both going to have to sweat out the traffic stop and they'll likely both get a ticket.  --And maybe we should add some curves or speed bumps to that stretch of road.

Inventory Control

      There's a lot of fuss in the news lately about the discovery of some Top Secret documents in offices President Biden used between his stint as V.P. and getting elected as President, and in his private home, all of them from his years as Vice-President.  This has spawned various comparisons with the other Top Secret documents former President Trump took along when he left office.  If you look around the Internet, you can find everything from "See?  They all do it!" to detailed point-by-point coverage of who did what and which man was more justified or handled the situation with more grace.

      That's all grist for partisan discussion and I suppose it's fine, but to me, it misses the point: clearly, the President and Vice-President are being treated with excessive deference when it comes to the handling of "Burn Before Reading" material.  And that's seriously messed up: those documents belong to the office, not the person who presently has the title -- no matter who he (or she) may be.  Sure, Presidents get to declassify whatever they like, but as long as it's secret, they need to handle that stuff with at least the same care as the clerk who dug the folder out of a triple-locked file and delivered it to them.

      You know every last one of those files has some kind of cryptic file number to keep track of it -- if not, in fact, every binder or even every page.  And anyone with the authority to look at them has to sign the document out and sign it back in again when they are done.  Presidents and Vice-Presidents should not be treated any differently.  They shouldn't be able to stick the thing in their pocket to read on the john later and forget about it, or chuck the file in a box of assorted correspondence and souvenirs that gets stuffed in a basement or garage when their term is over and they move out. That's preposterous; there needs to be some nervous Civil Service type with a clipboard and a checklist when Administrations turn over, accounting for each and every super-secret document the Great Man and his Number Two signed out during their time, making sure the papers all get turned back in so the next poor sod who gets stuck with the job can look up the precise number of nuclear missiles Chairman Xi has and exactly how bad the flea infestations get for his missile crews in their silos.

      If it was you or me, you know the .gov would triple-check that we had returned every file,* with dire penalties for anything that got stuck down behind the couch and forgotten.  The President and Vice-President are Just Some Guy (or Gal); while they get the top job for four or eight years, it's a temp gig and afterward, they have no more right to that kind of file than any other citizen.  It's time they started getting treated that way, no matter what party they belong to or where they stand in public opinion.  Presidents aren't kings, no matter how much we have to set them up with a nice house and fancy suits so they can have kings over for lunch without the country looking too shabby.  All that stuff is on loan and they must give it back for the next person to hold the job.
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* They'd probably count every staple and paper clip in our desk and check the number against our initial stock and requisitions, too, just to make sure we weren't rippin' off the taxpayer.  Personally, I think there should be a damage deposit put up by Presidents and Vice-Presidents for their fancy rent-free digs -- and a walk-through the day they move out to check for damage and see if they get it back.

The Nature Of The Problem

      There have been a couple of headline-grabbing mass shootings over the last few days.  These are always tragic, dominate the news cycle to an unhealthy extent and they result in the old familiar tropes being trotted out by the usual players, opinion pieces on "America's Gun Problem," "America's Mental Health Problem" and others, plus a degree of victim-blaming from whichever side sees advantage in that.  The far Right's been all over the Colorado Springs mass shooting, as if that kind of horror is something any group of law-abiding citizens deserves.

      Well, they don't.  Even if you find the LGBT (etc.) community personally loathsome or an offense against your religious beliefs, they're no less citizens than yourself, no less human, and have the same reasonable expectations of being left alone as, say, a church group or people inside a big-box store.

      Guns and access to mental health treatment, "Red Flag" laws and their enforcement, involuntary commitment orders: every bit of it is political hot-button stuff, over which we shout past one another in debate mostly composed of bumper-sticker slogans and carefully-sifted statistics.  At heart, our opinions about these things are emotional beliefs and rarely susceptible to any amount of rational argument.

      But when it comes down to it, one of the big contributors to this kind of stochastic violence, which is nearly always caused  by someone with a history of troubling incidents and/or mental health challenges, the actual big problem that we have is a "It's not my job to watch my disturbing relative or neighbor" problem; we have a "It's someone else's job" problem.

      The dithering police officers in Uvalde had a "It's someone else's job" problem.  The retired Army officer who and patrons who took down the killer in Colorado Springs did not.  But other people in that person's life had, and probably over and over.

      The majority of people with mental health problems are harmless.  So are most gun owners.  Most of the people around you, from a pew full of deacons to the people at a nightclub, from duck hunters to people who compose angry Letters To The Editor or post on social media, are harmless and well-intentioned.  But they're uninterested in being their brother's keeper if it is in any way messy or inconvenient -- and that occasionally results in messes that are much larger and deadly. 

       Afterward, watch for interviews with people who knew the perpetrator.  See how many of them found him (very rarely her or, most recently, singular them) worrisome -- and kept it to themselves until afterward. 

       In a country of over 330 million people, one-in-a-million bad outcomes aren't that uncommon.  And opportunities to head off bad outcomes before they occur are even more common.

      Maybe we'd be better off with a little less overheated debate, online and elsewhere, and a little more personal involvement with those immediately around us.  Yes, yes, they're messy and awkward and oh, heavens, their opinions on issues of the day might not be in lockstep agreement with your own!  But there they are, real human beings, as vulnerable and as dangerous as anyone.  They're not caricatures inside your phone or computer or on your TV.  Get to know them.  You might be able to do some small-scale good -- and prevent large-scale harm.