Can RFK Jr. get any weirder?

Since he dropped out of the presidential race, RFK Jr., has become even more of a cipher than he was before and I had planned to ignore him but I couldn’t help share this story that was recounted by his daughter Kick Kennedy.

When she was 6, her dad chopped off the head of a whale that washed up on Squaw Island in Hyannis Port. Due to RFK Jr.’s love of studying animal skulls and skeletons, they then strapped the dead whale’s head to the car and spent five hours driving it to their home.

“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kennedy said. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”

It was “just normal day-to-day stuff” for them.

I can understand having a hobby of studying animal skulls. What amazes me is that he would subject his six-year old daughter to the experience of watching him cut up a whale with a chain saw and then have her wear a plastic bag with holes cut out for the mouth (which is still very dangerous) and deal with whale juice pouring over her through the car windows.

I doubt that he won any parent of the year awards.

No wonder RFK Jr. endorsed creepy Donald Trump and weird JD Vance. They are a natural fit for him.

Is Kamala Harris adopting a ‘Ming vase’ strategy?

I wrote before about a very interesting interview that Rory Stewart had with David Remnick. Stewart was an ambitious Conservative politician in the UK who had all the traditional qualifications, coming from a privileged family, attending an elite private school (Eton) and then Oxford University. He quickly rose up the ranks and even made a bid to become party leader, losing out to Boris Johnson in 2019. He left the party just prior to Brexit.

The interview mainly dealt with what Stewart described as the soul-killing nature of political leadership but he also had interesting things to say about the general election that was due to held in the UK this year. Labour party leader Keir Starmer had been criticized for not detailing specific policies that he would implement if elected, choosing instead to speak in broad generalities. Stewart described this as the ‘Ming vase’ strategy, where you are holding a precious Ming vase and walk very carefully so as not to break it. Starmer had clearly decided that the country desperately wanted to throw the Tories out and were not that interested in specifics of Labour policies, having the general idea that they were more on the side of ordinary people than the Tories.. They had a general idea of what Labour stood for and that seemed to be enough. Starmer did not want to make specific promises that might alienate some voters and thus break that consensus. Stewart said that this can be a successful strategy for winning elections (as it was for Starmer) but can cause problems after you win office because you do not really have a mandate for anything specific.
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RFK Jr. set to bow out

With his campaign floundering, RFK Jr. has started the process that was teased earlier in the week of dropping out of the race.

The independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has filed paperwork to withdraw from presidential ballots in the state of Arizona, the Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said.

The withdrawal came as Kennedy was set to address the nation on Friday in Arizona amid reports that his presidential ambitions are coming to a close, with falling numbers both in fundraising and in the polls.

A Super Pac supporting Kennedy told Reuters on Wednesday that Kennedy wanted a deal with Donald Trump in which he endorsed his Republican rival in exchange for a job in a potential Trump administration.
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Weird Vance learns the cost of being a chameleon

When someone is catapulted into the national spotlight by being nominated for a high-profile position like vice-president, people immediately start poring over their lives with a fine tooth comb and all manner of details start emerging, usually uncomplimentary. Some of this digging is done by journalists who are seeking to provide a fuller picture of someone who has previously been a blank slate. Part of it is done by people who have known the person in the past getting a bit of attention by sharing vignettes and anecdotes about the person they knew, and these can be positive or negative. And then there is the opposition research by the opposing party that tries to dig up dirt in order to discredit the new nominee.

All these three things are visible in the cases of weird JD Vance and Tim Walz, both of whom were relatively unknown outside the geographical region where they made their political careers, Ohio in the former case and Minnesota in the latter. Even in statewide races, politicians do not face anywhere near the level of scrutiny that comes with making a national run. In weird Vance’s case, he had some extra visibility because of his best-selling memoir that was made into a film.
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The Harris-Walz campaign flips the script

In presidential elections, the messages put out by the incumbent party and the challenger are fairly predictable. The incumbent has to make the claim that things are going pretty well and that to change course now would make things worse. The challenger tries to make the case that things are terrible and that it is they that offer change and hope for the future. This was captured in the ‘Hope and Change’ slogan of Barack Obama when he ran in 2008 after eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration.

In this election, as long as it was between Joe Biden and creepy Donald Trump, that script was being largely followed. Biden would point to favorable macroeconomic indicators, such as that the rate of inflation had come down to very low levels, unemployment was also at very low levels, real wages have been increasing, the stock market is at record highs, and the number of people coming across the southern border had been dropping, and claim credit for it, though it is hard to say exactly how much presidential actions influence such things. Creepy Trump understandably ignored all that and argued that the US was a hell hole and getting worse and that it was he who offered voters a chance to rectify things. Since the macroeconomic factors were not in his favor, he instead focused on anecdotes, and as usual lied outrageously when the facts went against him.
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Where Harris and Trump stand on ten issues, including abortion

Much of political coverage in a presidential election year tends to focus on polls, personalities, and intrigues, with issue and policy differences taking a back seat. In some ways, this is understandable. By this time in the political calendar, likely voters have decided who they are going to vote for based on a whole set of factors both tangible and intangible, and policy platforms put out by the rival candidates and parties are unlikely to sway many people away from their original choice. Furthermore, any new policies that are proposed tend to be those designed to enthuse supporters to vote and even work for the candidate and to shore up support among groups that are disaffected for some reason. It is not at all clear if they have any chance of being implemented if the candidate gets elected. The party platforms that are adopted at the conventions are usually just wish lists designed to appeal to as wide an array of voters as possible, and have no real bite in terms of requiring specific actions.

For those who really want to know where the candidates stand on some of the most talked-about issues, the Associated Press has helpfully summarized the positions of the Harris and creepy Trump campaigns on 10 issues: Abortion, Climate/Energy, Democracy/Rule of Law, Federal government, Immigration, Israel/Gaza, LGBTQ+ issues, NATO/Ukraine, Tariffs/Trade, and Taxes.
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New policy on comments

As people know, I have moderated the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that has happened very rarely. But I have been getting increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tend to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues.

So here is new new rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.

It is well known that the comments sections on the internet can be a cesspool. I had hoped that the people who come to this site would be different, leading to more mature exchanges. But I was clearly too sanguine. We sometimes have absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry repetitions being sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

The other issue is the hostility that is often expressed, often triggered by the most trivial of things. People should remember that this is a blog, not a journal or magazine. There are no editors, proof readers, and fact checkers. In such a casual atmosphere, people (and that includes me) will often inadvertently be less than precise or accurate in what they say. If the error is trivial but the meaning is clear, the error should be ignored. If the meaning is not clear, clarification can be politely asked for. If it is a genuine error, a correction can be politely made. So in future, I will police the tone of the comments more closely. If I think people are being rude or condescending or insulting (and I do not mean just abusive language but also tone), I will ban the person.

A recent email sent to me privately by a long-time lurker brought home to me how people might be hesitant to join in the conversation here, even if they have something to say, out of fear that something that they write, however well-intentioned, will be seized upon and responded to in a hostile manner by some of the most egregious offenders.

Here is a portion of the email.

Are you aware that the comments in the comment sections of your posts can be perceived as dauntingly hostile?

It’s mostly one specific commenter named [name redacted], but there are a couple of others as well. In most cases… it’s not so much the actual, literal words but the general content and tone. And I know that makes the problem difficult to pin down. But there is so much arrogance and condescension and contempt and passive aggression in some of his (and some others’) comments that often there is hardly any productive discussion in the comment section anymore, just general grandstanding and bashing each other.

Also, in rather rare cases there is very open abusive language. A recent commenter called another commenter “demented fuckwit”. Even if their frustration with the other commenter was understandable, such open verbal abuse makes for rather painful reading.
 
This hostile atmosphere has kept me from commenting several times. I haven’t dared partaking in the discussions because I didn’t want to elicit such aggressions against my own person. And even just reading them being directed at others makes me feel very unsettled. It unsettles me to the point that I have increasingly skipped the comment sections; because I’d rather miss out on interesting contributions than stumble over frequent hostility. I know that I’m more vulnerable than many because of prior experiences with verbal abuse, but also I don’t believe I’m the only one who feels like that.
 
I know there are differing opinions about what constitutes (un)productive commenting, and about moderating comments. I totally get it if your opinions and preferences differ from mine. If nothing changes, I will simply stop reading the comments – and will continue to enjoy reading your original posts!

I thought the writer made a persuasive case that my earlier policy was not working and that I needed to do something different. It looks like I have swung from being highly lax to very strict. Maybe in the future I’ll find some middle ground but I am going to try this for a while.

So I would suggest that in future commenters think carefully before they post anything, taking into account what they say and how often they say something. They should try to put themselves in the shoes of the person they are arguing with and think about how they might feel if their comment had been directed at them. They should also think about how their comments might look to others. It surprises me that people do not realize how badly this kind of behavior reflects on themselves.

I realize that these guidelines are somewhat vague. So a good rule of thumb would be: If in doubt as to whether to post something because it might violate these boundaries, that is a good sign to not post it. I will be the sole judge of whether the boundary has been crossed.