We must preserve the purity of our essence

Chilling. Putin is decrying the influence of the degenerate West, with their “foie gras, oysters, and gender freedom”, but the most terrible line is this one: “I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion, and readiness to respond to any challenges.” Uh-oh. “Purification” is a scary word. The dictator of Russia is talking about cleaning house — here come the purges, in response to his embarrassment in Ukraine.

That is exactly the sentiment that resonates with our authoritarian right wing. If only we could end gender freedom and purify the American people, we would be stronger! The white supremacists, like Nick Fuentes and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, are eating this stuff up. You know you’re way out on the fringe when even a dumbass like Herschel Walker is backing away from you.

OMG, they’ve also lost wacky conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez! What next? Will Ben Garrison say something nice about a Democrat?

Now here’s a political nightmare for you

This bozo, a right-winger running for US Congress from Minnesota, made a stunning proposal last year.

What is it with Republicans who can’t get support for their bad ideas deciding to split states so they can get a majority somewhere, anywhere? This idea doesn’t even make sense from their selfish perspective: those regions of the state already elect Republican representatives, and they’d be merging with a Republican state, so they wouldn’t gain anything in the Senate.

I presume that a more politically savvy Republicon took Mr Munson aside and explained how stupid this idea was, since it never got anywhere.

Good news from outer space!

How about if we just send them all to live on the ISS?

I didn’t even know that we had an astronaut on the International Space Station, but we did, and the good news is that the Russians won’t be leaving him there.

Roscosmos, the Russian state space agency, has announced that they will not be stranding United States astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the International Space Station (or ISS) While this would seem like a bizarre statement to have to make (via the Russian state-owned news outlet TASS, no less) even just a few months ago, this is the world we now live in. Vande Hei, a former US Army officer and highly experienced astronaut and engineer, has been aboard the International Space Station since April 2021. Last year, he had his assignment extended in duration for another six months, and recently broke the record for the longest stay in space by an American astronaut. However, mounting tension between Russia and well, a whole lot of other countries in the world, led to some doubt whether the plan for Vande Hei to leave the station via Russian transport would be honored.

Of course, we all knew they’d let him go. It’s not as if Russia is the kind of country that would murder astronauts or blow up babies, after all. Well, maybe they’d do the latter, but only because mass graves are easier to ignore than dead astronauts drifting through space.

But that’s not what caught my eye about this particular article. Apparently, the author dislikes Elon Musk about as much as I do.

The International Space Station was launched in 1998 as a five-part collaborative effort by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and a conglomerate of European nations. For the 23 years it has been in operation, it has been a marker of relatively benevolent international cooperation and goodwill. Unfortunately, we live in an increasingly bizarre world where the planet’s richest man (whose best long-term idea has been “a subway, but real fast”) uses social media to challenge the President of Russia to single combat. For the record, an estimated three million refugees have fled Ukraine during the ongoing invasion by Russian forces, while Elon Musk makes bear and flamethrower jokes about it.

As a true gesture of good will, I suggest we let Musk take Mark Vande Hei’s place.

That’s how much smug costs, I guess

Until recently, Congress had a mask mandate, and if you showed up without a mask, the first time they’d hit you with a $500 fine…the second and subsequent times, it shoots up to $2500. Guess who refused to wear a mask?

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Rather than just putting on a mask, she decided to stand up for her rights and refused to wear one or to pay the fines. Except she decided to sue to have the fines revoked. Guess what? She lost.

All those fines added up to more than her yearly salary of $174,000 (she’s grossly overpaid), so we basically got her ‘services’ for free.

You get what you pay for. Or in this case, a bit less.

I support the Minneapolis teachers’ strike

Families have struggled for the last few years with pandemic issues, and you’d think everyone would by now realize how important schools are to both parents and kids. We should be in agreement that we should provide more support to public schools and their staff, and not be trying to cheap out on an obviously indispensable service. That’s what we’ve been trying to do, though, and now it’s going to bite some communities in the butt. Teachers in Minneapolis went on strike yesterday.

Their demands are reasonable. They primarily seem to be about giving support staff a living wage.

The union wants Minneapolis Public Schools to raise the starting salary for educational support professionals from about $24,000 to $35,000. More than 1,500 educational support professionals work for the district, according to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. They help with transportation, language translation, one-on-one assistance for kids with special needs, and before- and after-school programs, among other things.

Union leaders are also seeking class-size caps, increased mental health support and “competitive salaries” for teachers, noting that their compensation lags many districts in the Twin Cities metro area. The average salary for Minneapolis Public Schools teachers is about $71,500, according to state data.

Let’s be fair and look at the other side’s situation.

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Minneapolis Superintendent Ed Graff said proposals from the union and district are “still very far apart.” The total cost of the union’s current proposals is “an additional $166 million annually above what we’ve already budgeted for,” he said.

I can believe that they did not budget adequate funds for the work they expected to be done, but that is not an excuse! That is a management problem, not a worker problem. When we had a contractor do some work on our house a few years ago, we did not have the option to tell him after he was done that “you did $10,000 worth of work, but we only budgeted $5,000 for the job”. That’s not how any of this works. It is the teacher’s job to teach, it is management’s job to fund the work they expect to be done.

I do have some sympathy for the school superintendent. It’s not easy to get support for schools because we’re coping with a 19th century solution to funding schools (property taxes) that promotes inequality and makes life most difficult for the poorest districts. However, the solution is to change the system, not to gouge cash out of the lowest-ranked workers.

Seizing territory isn’t winning the war

The Russian convoy in Ukraine is fascinatingly horrifying. It just goes on and on, miles and miles of trucks slowly approaching their target, completely obvious to the satellites watching from above. I guess this is modern war, mostly the long tail of the supply chain delivering food, fuel, and ammo to the deadly beast at the head.

The question is…how effective is the cutting edge at the head? How vulnerable are the logistics of that supply chain? I don’t know. We’ll find out in the next few weeks, I suppose, at the expense of all the Ukrainian civilians fleeing.

Fuel trucks are exactly the sort of “soft targets” that the Ukrainians should be aiming to attack as they attempt to undermine the more sizable and powerful Russian army’s ability to fight, according to Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), an Army veteran who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and visited Ukraine in recent weeks.

“You don’t hit the combat units. You don’t hit the tanks. You hit the fuel trucks, the ammunition trucks,” Crow said. “You cut off their supplies, and you also try to strike terror into the minds of the enemy.”

The sight of the stretch of Russian vehicles appears to be helping bolster public opinion toward providing more military aid. Government officials, once reluctant to escalate involvement in the conflict, are now talking about providing aircraft and additional munitions to help Ukraine resist the ongoing invasion.

“I call that 40-mile convoy, by the way, the biggest, fattest target in Ukraine,” retired Navy admiral James Stavridis, who previously led NATO forces as the supreme allied commander Europe, said on MSNBC. Put certain fighter jets “in the hands of the Ukrainians,” he added, “and watch that thing blow up.”

Please don’t. I want the war to end, but escalation won’t end it, it’ll set the whole region on fire. I don’t pretend to understand Russian tactics at all, but dangling that big, fat target out there, inviting the US and NATO to blow it up, might be one of Putin’s escape routes. It’s not his fault that his army is bogged down and his soldiers are getting killed, it’s the evil imperialist West ganging up on holy mother Russia, we must redouble our efforts and marshal all of our patriots to fight on…and keep Putin in power.

As it stands, what I’m seeing is overwhelming force being steadily applied with increasing intensity to pressure the Ukrainians into surrender. This isn’t a blitzkrieg, it’s Russia doing what has always worked for them: pouring raw manpower and resources into the conflict, burying the enemy without finesse. They might not be stoppable by Ukraine, although they will bleed the Russians badly. It’s a horror show on both sides. So let’s not ramp it up.

Send the Ukrainians the matériel they need to hold out and fight back themselves, but please no, don’t engage the Russians directly. That’s how this turns into WWIII.

I say that even while I’m hoping Ukraine wins and the Russian army has to retreat back home.

Another thing I don’t understand. If Putin is “denazifying” Ukraine, and hopes to bring the nation back into the embrace of the Russian empire, why is he bombing civilians who are running away? Why put land mines in the “humanitarian corridors” that are intended to allow civilians to evacuate? He’s sowing the seeds of a prolonged rebellion, even if his gigantic convoy manages to secure the capitol.

I know. War never makes sense.

How a student can get published in the NY Times

Great choice of background. Defend the right of students to carry tiki torches!

It’s easy. Pander to the editors’ opinions. Say you’re a liberal, but moan about how conservative viewpoints are suppressed on college campuses. Declare that controversial opinions are silenced. Say you want debate, you love debate, but gosh, those liberal campuses stifle the free and open discussion of ideas. That’s what Emma Camp accomplished, getting fluff called I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead.. Pure conservative click bait. She announces several times that she’s a liberal, but she interned with FIRE, the organization funded almost entirely by rich conservatives.

But, you might argue, she’s going to defend her position with evidence, right? Surely she’ll get her ducks in a row and present lots of evidence that you can’t talk freely on college campuses anymore. So let’s take a look at her evidence anecdotes.

First up: office hours.

Each week, I seek out the office hours of a philosophy department professor willing to discuss with me complex ethical questions raised by her course on gender and sexuality. We keep our voices lowered, as if someone might overhear us.

Hushed voices and anxious looks dictate so many conversations on campus at the University of Virginia, where I’m finishing up my senior year.

Oh no! They weren’t shouting their discussion loudly so that everyone in the hallway could also hear them! Help, help, I’m being oppressed!

But wait, every week she is getting together with a professor to talk about ethics. How is this censorship?

This is a running theme. Speaking quietly in a one-on-one conversation is bad.

A friend lowers her voice to lament the ostracizing of a student who said something well-meaning but mildly offensive during a student club’s diversity training.

What “ostracizing”? Talk about that, if it happened, not this vague “lowers her voice” stuff.

Another friend shuts his bedroom door when I mention a lecture defending Thomas Jefferson from contemporary criticism. His roommate might hear us, he explains.

Yes? You’re talking about Thomas Jefferson on the UVa campus. You’re discussing, again in very vague terms, “contemporary criticism”. Maybe his roommate is tired of the subject? Maybe they want to study?

I went to college to learn from my professors and peers. I welcomed an environment that champions intellectual diversity and rigorous disagreement. Instead, my college experience has been defined by strict ideological conformity. Students of all political persuasions hold back — in class discussions, in friendly conversations, on social media — from saying what we really think. Even as a liberal who has attended abortion rights protests and written about standing up to racism, I sometimes feel afraid to fully speak my mind.

It’s called normal human behavior. People rarely just shout out their opinions in a typical social environment — they ease into the discussion. Sometimes you’re at a party and you don’t want to get in a fight with anyone, so you self-censor a bit, you hold back, you change the topic to something less argumentative. This is entirely ordinary, and is not a sign of a massive conspiracy to silence you.

Yeah, Ms Camp, we know, you’re a liberal interning with a conservative organization. Which side of the abortion rights protest were you on? You didn’t say. Also, you like to cite your bona fides in large strokes, but what, for instance, was your opinion of the “contemporary criticism” of Jefferson? What were you talking about with your ethics professor that compelled you to lower your voice? You seem to be remarkably shy about stating those opinions, even when you’ve got the NY Times bully pulpit. Why?

But wait — we’re about to get one paragraph of “data”.

In the classroom, backlash for unpopular opinions is so commonplace that many students have stopped voicing them, sometimes fearing lower grades if they don’t censor themselves. According to a 2021 survey administered by College Pulse of over 37,000 students at 159 colleges, 80 percent of students self-censor at least some of the time. Forty-eight percent of undergraduate students described themselves as “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” with expressing their views on a controversial topic during classroom discussions. At U.Va., 57 percent of those surveyed feel that way.

Jesus. What did I just say? People self-censor all the time. I have to struggle to get students to express their uncontroversial views on uncontroversial topics all the time. Those statistics are meaningless.

When the data doesn’t help, fall back on the oppression of poor Emma Camp.

When a class discussion goes poorly for me, I can tell. During a feminist theory class in my sophomore year, I said that non-Indian women can criticize suttee, a historical practice of ritual suicide by Indian widows. This idea seems acceptable for academic discussion, but to many of my classmates, it was objectionable.

The room felt tense. I saw people shift in their seats. Someone got angry, and then everyone seemed to get angry. After the professor tried to move the discussion along, I still felt uneasy. I became a little less likely to speak up again and a little less trusting of my own thoughts.

I was shaken, but also determined to not silence myself. Still, the disdain of my fellow students stuck with me. I was a welcomed member of the group — and then I wasn’t.

Whoa, the idea that widows shouldn’t have to set themselves on fire at a funeral is too controversial for a feminist theory class? I do not believe it. This sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would make for a good discussion in such a class — the conflict between cultural values and individual autonomy. I think there’s more to it than she admits.

And then…her terrible, terrible punishment. Some people shifted in their seats. Someone disagreed angrily with her. Did Emma Camp want a debate or not? You know, that’s what happens in a debate — people might disagree strongly with you.

It’s not just Ms Camp. She has a Republican friend!

The consequences for saying something outside the norm can be steep. I met Stephen Wiecek at our debate club. He’s an outgoing, formidable first-year debater who often stays after meetings to help clean up. He’s also conservative. At U.Va., where only 9 percent of students surveyed described themselves as a “strong Republican” or “weak Republican,” that puts him in the minority.

He told me that he has often “straight-up lied” about his beliefs to avoid conflict. Sometimes it’s at a party, sometimes it’s at an a cappella rehearsal, and sometimes it’s in the classroom. When politics comes up, “I just kind of go into survival mode,” he said. “I tense up a lot more, because I’ve got to think very carefully about how I word things. It’s very anxiety inducing.”

Damn. A college student forced to “think very carefully.” Waily, waily, waily! What have we come to now? He can’t talk — loudly, no doubt — about his Republican views at an a cappella rehearsal!

We also have to acknowledge that the Republican party has literally gone mad over the years. He ought to be a little reluctant to publicly associate himself with a hate group, don’t you think?

The worst is yet to come.

This anxiety affects not just conservatives. I spoke with Abby Sacks, a progressive fourth-year student. She said she experienced a “pile-on” during a class discussion about sexism in media. She disagreed with her professor, who she said called “Captain Marvel” a feminist film. Ms. Sacks commented that she felt the film emphasized the title character’s physical strength instead of her internal conflict and emotions. She said this seemed to frustrate her professor.

Her classmates noticed. “It was just a succession of people, one after each other, each vehemently disagreeing with me,” she told me.

Her freely expressed opinion about a movie in a class “seemed to frustrate her professor”. Seemed. I don’t know what that means. Is it that he mildly disagreed with her? That he didn’t instantly conform to one student’s opinion? But I thought Ms Camp didn’t want ideological uniformity! And then, again for someone who is so desirous of debate, she is dismayed that a lot of people disagreed with her.

OK, then she talks about what she has done about this oppressive atmosphere.

I protested a university policy about the size of signs allowed on dorm room doors by mounting a large sign of the First Amendment. It was removed by the university. In response, I worked with administrators to create a less restrictive policy.

This is fairly weak tea here. The university did adjust it’s policy on signs on doors, “after signs posted on Lawn room doors last fall containing profanity such as “F—ck UVA,” as well as criticism of the University’s history of enslavement and inaccessibility, prompted calls for removal by some alumni and community members.” Policing profanity is one thing, but criticizing their history of enslavement is another. So why did Emma Camp post the First Amendment, which very few people would disagree with? Post something about your “contemporary criticism” of Thomas Jefferson instead. Make it fit within the limits of allowed signage. Force the university to dismantle it on the basis of the content, rather than just the dimensions. The university does have a legitimate interest in preventing the accumulation of ugly clutter.

She also wrote opinion pieces for the school paper.

As a columnist for the university paper, I implored students to embrace free expression. In response, I lost friends and faced a Twitter pile-on. I have been brave. And yet, without support, the activism of a few students like me changes little.

Her student paper op-eds read a lot like this NY Times op-ed. “I’m a LIBERAL! Free Speech! Liberals are too authoritarian!” Etc., etc., etc. I can fully understand why she lost friends and faced dissent — they’re just too insipid and clichéd and unaware, and a lot too self-centered. Her opinions were an empty embrace of buzzwords, and her examples of deplorable oppression were, as in this article, tepid and puerile. I predict a great future for her on the writing staff of some conservative news organization, like The Daily Caller or The Blaze or…no, she probably won’t stoop to The Epoch Times or InfoWars. She needs a place where declaiming her liberalness carries some counterfactual weight.

You know, like the NY Times.

A 10-minute summary of the war in Ukraine

He talks fast.

He’s fairly confident that Russia is in trouble and has failed in their major objectives, but he doesn’t say much about air power, and that seems to be Russia’s primary strength right now. You can’t take territory with planes, but you can effectively disrupt coordinated Ukrainian responses.

I have no idea what’s going to happen. The YouTuber seems pretty casual about the possibility of Putin using nukes, which is a scary (but unlikely? I hope?) possibility. All bets are off if Putin pushes the big red button, and hello WWIII.

Burly brawn doesn’t win wars anymore

Among the many things Ted Cruz would like everyone to forget is this tweet from this fall:

Right-wing media were orgasming over a Russian army recruitment ad which portrayed Russian soldiers as these manly masculine macho dudes, and were contrasting that with the tolerant, diverse American army. The word “woke” got thrown around a lot, in a disparaging way. A lot of Republicans weren’t embarrassed to show off their authoritarian views at that time.

Unfortunately, nothing has really changed. Now Ted Cruz is simultaneously saying we need to get tough on Russia, and blaming the Ukraine war on Biden.

A truly Russian-style government would have Cruz arrested instantly for criticizing the Maximum Leader. I don’t think he (and I) want to replicate Russian militarism.