Conservatives don’t understand the military

They dragged in a general to testify about critical race theory. They didn’t get the answer they expected.

I suspect that generals are better educated overall than senators (amused that they cut away briefly to Matt Gaetz, shaking his head in…hey, why is that corrupt Floridian still in office anyway?). The enlisted personnel are definitely more diverse than the Senate. It was a real eye-opener for me when I actually visited a couple of army bases, visiting my son, and noticing that the people working there are much more diverse than even at my liberal university.

If the right-wingers, which includes so many chickenhawks, think they can automatically get the support of the military, they better think again. This is not to say liberals do understand the military, or that the army will support the left wing, but that they’re a separate perspective that doesn’t neatly fit into our civilian categories. The best thing to do is leave them out of politics, and encourage them to continue to be independent of that role.

Gone almost a week, and nothing has changed

It was a good 5 days. I’m an internet junkie, but my laptop died a few days before my flight, and while I considered bringing along an old clunker of a netbook, I eventually decided to be strong and go mostly cold turkey and hang out with the family. I had my phone as one slender lifeline to keep in touch with Mary, and that was it. So I visited my mother, my two sisters, my two brothers, my son and his wife, my grandson, and went to the beach and went fishing. I went for walks and looked at spiders. I went to a church, once. I didn’t do much of anything, actually.

I got home early evening last night, and was finally able to shuffle some money around on the internet and make the big announcement, but then I just hit the sack and slept in until 7am. I got up this morning and finally, after that respite, plunged back into the internet and…

AAAAAAAAIAIIIEEEE.

Nothing has changed. The right wing is still ginning up a culture war, and they look even more stupid when you haven’t been desensitized by the continual barrage. I mean, look at these two idiots:

The Left’s War on Hydroxychloroquine Continues? What? Hydroxychloroquine is a dangerous drug that shows no effectiveness against the coronavirus — it was tossed out to the media by chickenshit politicians (like Ron Johnson there) as cheap snake oil to shut gullible people up. The “Left” didn’t buy it. Now we’ve got safe, effective vaccines, we lefties are happily lining up to get those while the righties are inventing conspiracy theories to avoid them. There never was a “war on hydroxychloroquine.” Johnson and every loudmouthed liar on Fox News can go gargle bleach if they want.

It only takes a little distance to see that the way these quacks operate is to tell an outrageous lie, and the first time you hear it, you think “That is the dumbest thing I ever heard.” The second, third, and fiftieth time they say it, you roll your eyes and tune it out. The hundredth time you think, “Am I gonna have to go dig into the scientific literature and read a bunch of papers?” The thousandth time you begin to have doubts and wonder, “Maybe I missed something? Should we fund another clinical trial?”, and then they’ve got you. Trust me, your first impressions were probably correct. Bullshit isn’t turned into science by a thousand Fox News morons churning it over.

Sometimes they even admit what they’re doing. Here’s Chris Rufo outlining their strategy against Critical Race Theory: they just lie about it, misrepresent it, and if they hammer it hard enough at the public, they’ll start to associate the lies with the real thing.

You just have to turn up the volume on your bullhorn and be really, really repetitive and you too can get any nonsense you want drilled into the discourse. If you can’t get on Fox News right away, there’s always Sam Harris and Joe Rogan to act as pre-amps and get you started on your program to purée everyone’s brains via mass media.

I strongly recommend the clarifying effects of watching ocean waves roll in for a while. Unfortunately, I have to warn you of the spectacular downer you will experience when you get back from the shore.

Why are the traitors still in office?

I guess the simple answer is that if they lost their positions, it would decimate the Republican party.

The treachery is blatant, though. Look at this story about an Oregon representative who intentionally breached security, and planned it ahead of time.

Just days before Rep. Mike Nearman helped armed protesters enter the closed Oregon Capitol building in December, endangering fellow lawmakers and Capitol employees, he coached constituents on the exact steps to get his help breaking in.

A video shows Nearman, a Republican from outside Independence, walking constituents through the step by step process of where to stand, how to text him and what help he would provide that would allow them to break the rules and get into the Capitol during the Dec. 21 special legislative session.

He does so with a wink and a nod, interspersing the instructions with disclaimers that he’s not giving out a real cell phone number (he is and it’s his number), that he knows nothing about the planned “Operation Hall Pass” and that nothing like that will actually happen.

In fact, exactly what he described did occur, prosecutors and investigators say. Protesters gathered outside the Capitol’s west entrance in obvious protest of the closure, Nearman left the House chambers where lawmakers were gathered doing state business and he walked out a Capitol entrance, leaving the open door hanging long enough for angry citizens to grab it and enter.

The session during which he coached constituents was livestreamed on Dec. 16 and is posted to YouTube under the account of “The Black Conservative Preacher.” Nearman said he was speaking from the office of the Freedom Foundation, a group tied to conservative billionaires that pays Nearman to serve as a senior fellow.

My first thought was this had to be one of the conservative wackaloons from Eastern Oregon, but no — his district is just outside Salem, about halfway between Eugene and Portland in Western Oregon. These blackguards are everywhere.

He is facing some penalties, though, particularly since he’s done this before. From his Wikipedia page:

During a December 21, 2020 special session, Nearman let armed protesters into the Oregon State Capitol to protest against health restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic in Oregon. Joey Gibson, political activist and founder of Patriot Prayer, posted a video on Parler indicating a state representative let the group into the capitol, and in January 2021 security video was released of Nearman allowing similar right-wing protesters to enter the Oregon State Capitol Building through a door.

Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek fined Nearman $2,000 and stripped him of his committee assignments and appointments. Kotek also asked him to resign. Kotek and others are planning on filing a formal complaint about Nearman’s actions creating a hostile workplace. Nearman also gave up his Capitol building badge; he agreed not to let unauthorized people into the building and must give 24 hours notice before he enters the building. Oregon State Police opened a criminal investigation against him.

On April 30, 2021 prosecutors charged Nearman with official misconduct in the first degree (Class A misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum 364 days in prison and a US$6,250 fine) and criminal trespass in the second degree (Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum of 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine). Nearman did not appear in court on May 11 when he was arraigned on the charges, and his attorney did not file a plea. Nearman must appear in court in person or remotely for a June 29 hearing.

In June 2021, video was discovered of a meeting at the office of the Freedom Foundation on December 16, 2020, during which Nearman detailed his plan to allow protestors entry to the capitol, which he dubbed “Operation Hall Pass”. He couched it in a layer of irony, claiming to know nothing of the plan and saying that the cellphone number he gave out was just random numbers.

Lock him up.

Why did YouTube allow Steven Crowder back on?

Steven Crowder, the right-wing “comedian”, was previously banned from YouTube for hate speech. They’ve lifted his ban, though, and he’s back in action. He’s been mocking pride week in his inimitably repulsive way.

Now, if we just look at it — look, with kids, you’re going to say, “OK, you’re born gay. You’re born straight.” Fine, let’s just go with that. But you overwhelmingly celebrate gay. If it’s just something that’s a part of you, it either shouldn’t be celebrated or certainly you wouldn’t celebrate the one of the two versions that results in HIV, more likely; AIDS, more likely; promiscuity, more likely; mental health issues, more likely, but lower domestic abuse with gay people, higher with lesbians.

My point is if you’re just going to celebrate, hey, the preference of friction, why wouldn’t you celebrate the one that makes for the most productive environment for children and has worked for perpetuating the human species since ever. That’s all I’m saying. I just don’t think you need — you’re like — you’re just like telling kids, “Hey, hey, isn’t it great? They’re gay.” What does that mean? It means they have sex in a way that doesn’t work.

…

Honestly, let’s look at all major historical gay figures. You look at Milk.

…

You look at Harvey Milk. You look at people, you look at [UNINTELLIGIBLE] — these are people with AIDS.

How dare those gay people, who all have AIDS and don’t make babies when they have sex and are unproductive, celebrate their survival in a culture full of asses like Steven Crowder?

Also, though, I have to ask…how is that funny? Why are they wearing stupid costumes? Does Crowder need a sycophantic claque to laugh at his jokes, because no one with half a brain will?

Wise up, YouTube. Make this guy gone. He’s not a comedian at all, he’s just a mouthpiece for hate.

The “lab-leak” stuff is as imaginary as the Iraqi aluminum tubes

I keep seeing this “lab leak” nonsense about how COVID-19 originated in a biological warfare lab in Wuhan — all presented with absolutely no evidence by sloppy reporters who have turned “it’s remotely possible” into “it happened!” I read the articles and am just appalled at the total lack of supporting evidence for the claims, and I have to wonder what’s going on here. Is this more sabre-rattling at China, and why would anyone be interested in stirring up conflict with China anyway?

Well, here’s an interesting observation of a link between the current lies and incitement and a similar set of stories that were circulating almost 20 years ago. One of the first and most prominent stories promoting the “lab leak” inanity was an article in the Wall Street Journal.

But the article published by the Wall Street Journal—beyond being totally unsubstantiated and presenting nothing fundamentally new in terms of “intelligence”—is presented by a lead author who happens to have helped fabricate the most lethal lie of the 21st century.

The lead author of the Journal piece, Michael R. Gordon, was the same man who, along with Judith Miller, wrote the September 8, 2002 article falsely asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

That article, entitled “U.S. says Hussein intensifies quest for a-bomb parts,” claimed that “In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.”

The claim was a lie, funneled to the Times by the office of US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Why does this Gordon fellow still have a job? For that matter, why isn’t Cheney in jail for making up lies that led to a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people? (By the way, why is Cheney still alive? Wasn’t his heart reduced to a putrescent lump of feebly twitching slime by his own evil?)

So one of the same guys who gullibly promoted lies about Iraq fed to him by a war-monger is now pushing the lab leak hypothesis. It makes me wonder who is feeding this lazy patsy now.

Our shameful history

Given that all those bodies of dead children were discovered in a Canadian boarding school for First Nations people, and that my own university was initially founded as an Indian Residential Boarding School, I thought it appropriate to bring up a memo sent out by our chancellor.

The recent news of the discovery of the remains of 215 First Nations children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia (Canada) was horrifying and saddening. Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc tribal experts discovered the graves as part of a Canada-wide effort to find the graves of all First Nations children who died while attending Indian residential schools and whose bodies were not returned to their parents and their communities. To date, over 4,000 children have been identified as having died after separation from their parents in schools across Canada.

This horrific discovery only highlights the need for transparency on the United States’ own history with what were often called Indian Residential Boarding Schools. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has identified 15 American Indian boarding schools that operated in Minnesota and 367 schools across the U.S. These institutions were part of federal policies that separated children from their families and attempted to eliminate Native languages and cultures, with intergenerational impacts still felt across Indian Country.

One such school was established by the Sisters of Mercy Order in 1887 in Morris. As you know from our own history, this site went through several transitions, ultimately becoming the University of Minnesota Morris in 1960.

In the summer of 2018, archival research conducted by a then-Morris student and faculty mentor suggested that at least three, and possibly as many as seven, Indian children who died at the boarding school in the late 1800s and early 1900s may have been interned in a cemetery plot on or near the present day Morris campus. Generally, the deceased children’s remains were returned to their parents, and indeed documentation exists for several such situations, but in this case no documentation has been discovered or located to show the disposition of the remains of the children in question.

Research by Morris faculty and by students, following up on the original archival research, revealed no specific evidence of a cemetery for the burial of children who died while at the School. However, we can also not say with certainty that no such cemetery existed. What we do know is that we have been unable to determine where the cemetery may have been located and what ultimately was the disposition of any individuals buried there.

In April 2019, with the guidance of UMN Morris’s American Indian Advisory Committee and Dakota and Anishinaabe elders, UMN Morris hosted a ceremonial gathering to inaugurate an era of truth telling, understanding, and healing regarding the history of this land. It was a first step in remembering the children, and their families and communities that have been negatively impacted by the boarding school on this site and all those across Minnesota and our nation. The campus is indebted to the late Mr. Danny Seaboy of the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux Tribe who led that gathering “remembering the children that were here” and the Woapipiyapi ceremony “to fix it so that the people are happier.”

In November 2019, Mr. Seaboy again led the campus and tribal leaders in a ceremony to bring support to University of Minnesota Morris students, children, and families of the boarding school era, and all those carrying intergenerational trauma. In November 2020, Anishinaabe cultural and spiritual advisors, Mr. Darrell Kingbird Sr., citizen of the Red Lake Nation, and Mr. Naabekwa Adrian Liberty, citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, led the second annual ceremonial gathering to support the UMN Morris Native American community and our campus for understanding, healing, resiliency, and strength. Auntie in Residence, Tara Mason, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, provided cultural teachings and supported the ceremonies. We appreciate all who participated whether safely in person, virtually, or individually in quiet and heartfelt ways as we came together as a community. We take to heart Naabekwa’s encouragement to continue in our collective efforts of understanding and making our campus a space of healing and positivity.

The campus has joined the National Native American Boarding School Coalition to further these efforts. We value their critical work in truth telling, understanding, and fostering healing from these heartbreaking traumas and losses.

I wanted to acknowledge the tremendous insights and guidance we have received from the elders who have worked with all of us to better understand and remember our past here on the Morris campus. Their work, and ours, will never be done. Healing is not a point in time; it is a journey, and I will update you further, as will incoming Acting Chancellor Janet Schrunk Ericksen, with any new information as it becomes available.

The first leader of the Sisters of Mercy in Morris was Mary Joseph Lynch, who at least took the liberal position of forbidding corporal punishment, but at the same time the children often tried to escape, which tells you it wasn’t a desirable place for them to be. Just the idea of forcibly separating children from their parents is appalling. Morris was the largest Indian boarding school in Minnesota.

Also appalling is the knowledge that half a dozen children died here, and records are so poor that we don’t know the precise number, their names, or where they were buried. There is no justifiable excuse for what was a genocidal action against the native people of this land. All we can do is try to make amends for what our ancestors did, and correct the ongoing discrimination against Indians in the US.

Racism comes in many forms

One example: a Memorial Day speech by a veteran in Akron, Ohio. It wasn’t the speaker who was at fault; he was trying to tell the story of the first Memorial Day observance, by freed slaves in 1865. The organizers cut his mic to prevent him from being heard.

What at first blush appeared to be a short audio malfunction at Monday’s Memorial Day ceremony in Markillie Cemetery turned out to be anything but.

A ceremony organizer turned off the microphone when the event’s keynote speaker, retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter, began sharing a story about freed Black slaves honoring deceased soldiers shortly after the end of the Civil War.

The microphone was turned down for about two minutes in the middle of Kemter’s 11-minute speech during the event hosted by the Hudson American Legion Lee-Bishop Post 464.

Cindy Suchan, who chairs the Memorial Day parade committee and is president of the Hudson American Legion Auxiliary, said it was either her or Jim Garrison, adjutant of American Legion Lee-Bishop Post 464, who turned down the audio. When pressed, she would not say who specifically did it.

There had been some previous email back-and-forth between Kemter and Suchan/Garrison in which the organizers objected to including the mention. I might have given them some leeway if the speech had been excessively long and needed substantial cuts, but that isn’t the case for an appropriately brief 11 minute speech. Suchan and Garrison admitted that they’d turned off the sound, but haven’t said why they thought Kemter’s words were objectionable.

We can all guess why, though. Of the thousands of Memorial Day speeches that were given all across the country, Garrison and Suchan have succeeded in making this one newsworthy, and have called attention to themselves in a negative way. Smart move!

I see right through you, conservatives

I thought this was a good overview of critical race theory:

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

Except for this part:

All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.

I’ve never known a conservative to hold that kind of principled perspective. I’m guessing the author was trying to be charitable, but mainly what I’ve encountered is conservatives trying to rationalize their beliefs, which they acquired by tradition and upbringing rather than by actual reason. Claiming to be a “classical liberal” or that they hold “Enlightenment values” is just an excuse that sounds good…unless, of course, the values they are endorsing are imperialism, colonialism, and the inherent superiority of Western European culture. I can believe they sincerely agree with those aspects of the Enlightenment.

What we’ve got is a set of feel-good labels that obscure the complexity of what the phenomena named actually mean. It’s like saying “I like Thai food” without any further specification.

Donald Trump, failed blogger

I know you’ve already forgotten that Donald Trump has a blog — I talked about it last month, and pointed out that it wasn’t doing well.

How about now?

It has ceased to exist. It is no more. The plug has been pulled, and it has swirled down the drain. It is mulched bits. Gone.

The former president has shut down a blog he created just a month ago, though many of his written statements that appeared on it remain on his traditional website, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Trump had used the short-lived blog as an alternative to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites that banned him because of his constant false statements about last year’s election loss to President Joe Biden.

He has my sympathies. It takes a certain twisted mindset to maintain a blog, and that’s one psychopathology we can say that he doesn’t have.

Q was just the beginning, now it’s preparing to metamorphose into its next form!

Here’s something else I don’t understand: QAnon. I watched the HBO documentary, “Q: Into the Storm” which covers the phenomenon from its beginning to just after the election, and it suffered from being too close to the problem. It centered almost entirely on Jim Watkins and his son Ron, who were running the various chan boards that hosted Q, with some time spent on prominent QTubers — the documentarian clearly proposes that Ron Watkins is Q and makes a good case for it. What I mainly learned from the documentary is that all of the people behind Qs raging popularity are huge, obnoxious, pompous assholes. It made it hard to watch, when the primary protagonists are these preening twits who have learned the deep secret behind all religions: be cryptic and vague so your followers can read their own beliefs into your pronouncements, promise secret knowledge (even if you don’t have any) so your followers will pay close attention, and be sure to recruit apostles who will do most of your work for you.

It’s an unpleasant spectacle of singularly unpleasant people doing next to nothing but successfully duping hordes of ordinary people to join the cult. But, as I said, it suffers too much from its tight focus on the Watkins duo, who mainly smirk and act evasive. And then it ends, just as the media, like Facebook and YouTube, were finally shutting off the conduits that allowed them to proselytize easily, and it just sort of end. The documentarian has fingered the guilty party — Ron Watkins is Q! — and then it ends. What next? How are the victims of Q propaganda coping? What’s to prevent this from happening again?

At least CripDyke tells us what’s next: more of the same, only worse. As Q gets blocked and banned everywhere his acolytes turn, GhostEzra rises to add more fire and brimstone to followers of Q.

For in the shadow of the valley of Vice it has been revealed that a messiah has come, a prophet named GhostEzra, who comes to rule the denizens of the QAnon world exactly as we would expect. Vice reports that GhostEzra, who now runs one of the biggest if not the biggest QAnon accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, began as upbeat, portraying Trump as the victim of election fraud but also portraying the election fraud as inevitably unsuccessful, something that the QAnons were clearly destined to overturn. But before much time passed, GhostEzra went from being relentlessly upbeat to excoriating followers if they, themselves, were not sufficiently upbeat.*1 It’s one thing to tell others, “Have hope!” and it’s another to tell them, “I will beat you until your morale improves.” GhostEzra, apparently, went all in on the latter.

GhostEzra adds even more of that crucial spice, hate, to the recipe. Hey, if a little anti-Semitism was enough to jazz up Q followers, just think what pouring an overwhelming amount of Jew-hatred will do!