A post-conference open thread

by liberal japonicus

Thought that we need the space. A few things that have been rattling around my head.

-GftNC has some questions about the rallying cry "Not going back". I think, because Americans have such a glossy memory of previous times, it works perfectly for USaians. I mean, it covers people who love Reagan, people who love Obama and people who love the Greatest Generation, making it the ultimate coalition builder against Donald Trump. For Brits, "not going back" is something the NDL would probably use. Ironically, the book that Kristi Noem wrote to try and get Trump's attention for the VP nod was titled 'No Going Back'. The jokes, they write themselves.

-Speaking of not going back, there is this.

-Darkly ironic, choosing to name your yacht Bayesian.

-The funniest jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe were pretty disappointing this year. Just for comparison here is

• 2023
• 2022
• and the 100 funniest from past years

Have at it.

 

Comments

[CharlesWT]

It's hard to be funny when you can be canceled, fired, or arrested if someone thinks your joke is too on the nose.

[Hartmut]

Just watch the first minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB4spiFwd5M

At any other time one would have to assume that this was a joke.
More of an adrift grift in reality (or so it seems).
Does the trout know and does it get royalties?
One could keep one for a future museum and put it next to the 'golden' statue of His Orangeness.

[Hartmut]

Make that the first 2 minutes, there is a second part of the clip after a short interruption.

[Girl from the North Country]

On the sinking of the Bayesian, it may be time to fire up Douglas Adams's Infinite Improbability Drive. I would expect this to have been reported in the US, but for anyone who doesn't know, within a day or two of Mike Lynch's death his co-defendant in the Hewlett Packard case, Stephen Chamberlain, was killed by a car while out running. When I first checked, it was reported that the woman driver had been talking to the police, emergency services etc. Later reports seemed to suggest the police were still asking for any witnesses. Hmmm.

On not going back, I must say it makes perfect sense to me. I don't remember questioning it, but perhaps I did. In my opinion, it is an excellent slogan to describe the worldview the GOP has bought into. Onward and upward.

[Girl from the North Country]

lj: I smiled at some of this year's, particularly "there's nowt so queer as flock". Also, not on your list:

I borrowed money to get an exorcism. If I don't pay it back, I get repossessed.

[wj]

There's a nearly universal problem for software systems: one of the tradeoffs involved in getting something out the door is that some parts are written "good enough, for the moment anyway." Or, at least, good enough for the expected, limited, demographic of initial users.

But, if things take off, there's a new conflict: add new features to continue to grow, or update/fix the "good enough" stuff. By the time you have the resources to deal with "good enough" you run into the detail that your users, maybe even a lot of them, have integrated that stuff into what they do, into their software. And would be looking at significant (and unexpected) costs to adapt to your fixes.

It's as if you built cars with nuts and bolts in English measurements, and wanted to switch to all metric. While abandoning having replacement nut and bolts (on which you hold patents that you refuse to license) still available. It might have been feasible a century or more ago. Today? Not so much. Unless, like Microsoft, you have a monopoly.**

** Yes, there is Apple. And even various Linux systems. But the conversion costs are a huge barrier.

[Michael Cain]

NASA announced today that the two astronauts that flew to the International Space Station on Boeing's Starliner craft will stay at the ISS for another six months and return in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The Boeing capsule will get a software update to enable it to attempt an autonomous return flight and landing in early September.

Lots of interesting questions in the Ars Technica comment section, ranging from "Will NASA fudge the hell out of the mission requirements and certify Starliner anyway?" to "Will Boeing decide they've lost enough money on this project and drop it?"

[Michael Cain]

...one of the tradeoffs involved in getting something out the door is that some parts are written "good enough, for the moment anyway."

Long ago I worked on real-time hardware and software for test gear. One of the problems we faced in making the managers happy about budget requests was summarized as "In software, the white wires don't show." For the youngsters, when you would get a batch of printed circuit boards, and discover that there was a mistake, the correction was to (manually) cut the trace that was wrong and solder a wire with white insulation in its place. White wires are very visible. When there were enough of them, managers were quite willing to fund a new version, with both corrections and improvements.

Software has the equivalent of white wires, but you can't see them. Bugs that are found and corrected. Changes to data structures. New features, or improved algorithms. Since the patches aren't visible, management is more likely to turn down requests to do a new design for the software. Cruft accumulates. Patches to correct an old bug create new ones.

[Girl from the North Country]

Ah, perhaps we won't need the Infinite Improbability Drive after all. From the article in today's Times:

Already inextricably linked after taking on and beating Goliath in the form of the US Department of Justice, both men had spoken with family and friends about their hopes for a new beginning. In what mathematical analysts say was a four in one billion chance, 48 hours and a thousand miles apart, those second chances were brutally extinguished — Lynch, 59, in the freak sinking of the Bayesian and Chamberlain, 52, in a traffic collison.

[Michael Cain]

In what mathematical analysts say was a four in one billion chance, 48 hours and a thousand miles apart...

What have they had to say on the probability of a particular set of Russian oligarchs falling out of windows?

[Girl from the North Country]

Excellent question. But in that case there's an obvious suspect/villain. I didn't follow the fraud case; I don't know if there's actually anyone with a convincingly realistic motive. And although if I were a hitman and knew someone went running on rural Cambridgeshire roads, I too would plan a hit and run, it's much harder to see how that works for the Bayesian. The freak weather conditions were observed and filmed, someone actually saw the boat going down during them, and it is going to be raised, so any suspicious damage will be obvious.

It's a pretty weird coincidence, nonetheless.

[wj]

Even a 1 in a million chance comes in occasionally. 1 time in a million, actually. Saying that something is wildly improbable isn't quite the same as saying that it's impossible. Although you wouldn't know that from the popular press. (Never mind the conspiracy theory enthusiasts.)

At most, something being improbable might be a reason to take a second look. Either at the event(s) or at what went into the probability calculation.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Saw some news note that the boat sinking is being treated as a possible homicide by Italian police.

Probably SOP, since it occurred just off Sicily.

[Girl from the North Country]

Yes, they're looking into involuntary manslaughter, apparently. They say the crew may not have followed proper safety procedures etc, because of how quickly it went down - less than a minute.

[Pete]

Once upon a time, I had what I thought was a great solution for small businesses. Linux, open source, importantly free. Libre, Gimp, etc. Nobody wanted it, because it wasn’t Microsoft.

[Pete]

So, I’m at the marina helping people - people I like - outfit their boats to go to a Trump boat rally in Oyster Bay. Talk about mixed emotions.

[wj]

Nobody wanted it, because it wasn’t Microsoft.

Probably more precisely, because either a) the conversion costs were seen as too high, or b) the training/retraining costs, for a staff accustomed to Microsoft software, were seen as too high. You don't have to love Microsoft to feel constrained

[CharlesWT]

You don't have to love Microsoft to feel constrained

Shouldn't that be: You don't have to hate Microsoft to feel constrained?

[Michael Cain]

Nobody wanted it, because it wasn’t Microsoft.

One of the bigger levers MS Windows has is Excel. It is the default computing platform in far too many places. If one firm sends a spreadsheet to another, they want a reasonable expectation that the output won't change. Libre is many things, but it's not bug-for-bug compatible with Excel for Windows. I've visited places where Apple was out for the same reason. Excel for Macintosh was not bug-for-bug compatible with Excel for Windows.

[Pete]

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

I get it. I’m not a salesman. Still frustrating.

[Pete]

Libre is many things, but it's not bug-for-bug compatible with Excel for Windows.

Excel is a standard, perhaps the standard. Not so much now, but back in the day I often relied on OpenOffice to access files that MS Office refused. And a simple resave from that platform made the file once again amenable to the MS Office suite.

The thing is, people want the brand. Kinda like the stigma of a green text, which means you don't have a fancy iPhone. Green/Blue doesn't change the content, but yeah, it's a thing for some people.

[Pete]

@wj

There really isn’t retraining tho. Not any more than the next release of Office/365 which shuffles around stuff for “user friendly” purposes. It’s a knee-jerk “This isn’t Excel”, so it’s foreign. Even if it does the same thing (without the window-dressing bells & whistles that nobody uses anyway).

[JanieM]

‘Many forms of Government office software have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy Microsoft Office is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy Microsoft Office is the worst form of Government office software except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947JanieM, today and all the days

You may pry Excel and Word from my cold dead hands when the time comes (and rigor mortis has passed), but not before.

The abomination pretentiously named "Conscious Controls" notwithstanding.

[JanieM]

Churchill quote from here:

https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I, for one, just wish that there was a utility that would re-configure a "current version" of Excel to use the user-interface of Excel 2008.

As for Word, okay for absolutely trivial stuff, but mostly TeX
(or LaTex or Lyx), because Word is awful for equations and symbols.

Remember this: the MSOffice software is designed for MBAs. One example, that I'm *still* infuriated with, many many years after discovering it: if you make a graph in Excel, you can click on a datapoint and *move it*!

(Don't believe me? Try it...only a candidate for the 'B-Ark' would think that's a good feature)

[JanieM]

As for Word, okay for absolutely trivial stuff

So anything that doesn't have equations and symbols is trivial?

Which is everything I use Word for, like the novels I copy edit for my writer friend? (And the comments we trade back and forth.) Or the newsletter text I edit for the local land trust? Or my own writings of various kinds?

[Snarki, child of Loki]

By comparison, yes, trivial. Not in terms of the content, just the typography.

The two most difficult cases in typesetting are tables and equations. Both have so many possible variations that attempts to "simplify" them just means that anything beyond trivial is impossible.

IIRC the first chapter or two of The TeXbook has some great history of typesetting.

[Michael Cain]

The difference between word processors/text formatters for academics and those for non-academics are floating displays. Not just a table or a picture or equations, but a block of content that is formatted independently, then positioned at the current break-point in the text or the next break-point where there's adequate space or even the most recent previous break-point where there would have been space.

TeX and LaTeX were (and possibly still are) the best in the world at it. The Unix troff program that came out of Bell Labs wasn't as good, but dealt with the most common cases.

[Pro Bono]

I use Word Equation Editor a fair bit - it takes LaTeX input and is much better than awful.

[Pro Bono]

I use Word Equation Editor a fair bit - it takes LaTeX input and is much better than awful.

[nous]

Been using Libre Office (a more polished and user-friendly Open Office based project) for a lot of years. It is fine for just about anything one might want to do with MS Office and the adaptation curve is minimal.

[Donald]

On a related subject, can Kindles handle math equations yet? My first and only kindle died years ago— it was great for everything except science and math books, where it was horrible. Since that time I just download every book onto my IPad, but would buy another Kindle if they can display equations properly.

[Michael Cain]

On a related subject, can Kindles handle math equations yet?

I abandoned my Kindle many years ago, once it was clear that Amazon had no serious interest in supporting open standards formatting or user overrides of format/layout choices*. That said, there are claims that the latest firmware for some of the devices support some subset of MathML (part of HTML5), math additions to Amazon's own typesetting format, and full PDF rendering. If I were a betting man, I would bet that someone else comes along with the benefits of E-ink displays before Amazon adopts open standards.

* The straw that broke my back was a novel typeset in some obscure spidery font from the 1890s, with huge vertical line spacing, because the author thought it contributed "atmosphere" to the story.

[liberal japonicus]

I hate excel with the heat of one thousand suns. I've never worked in a business environment outside of Japan, but here in Japan, they use excel not only for calculations, but for creating almost all forms, which were/are printed out to be filled in by hand. When I started working here, I asked (over the course of a couple of years) to get the excel files so I could turn in crap and not have to handwrite it in Japanese, which looks like a caffinated chimps writing. Unfortunately, when I got the file, the slightest change would suddenly reformat it so that it couldn't be printed.

[Girl from the North Country]

From the Atlantic. My last free article, I'm wondering whether to subscribe again, but have so many subscriptions already!

The Conservatives Who Sold Their Souls for Trump
The rage and shame of the anti-anti-Trumpers is getting worse.

By Tom Nichols

Today, Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review (the flagship conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr.), published an article claiming that Donald Trump could win the 2024 election “on character.”

No, really. But bear with me; the headline wasn’t quite accurate.

Trump could beat Kamala Harris, Lowry wrote, not by running on his character but by attacking hers. According to Lowry, you see, one of Trump’s “talents as a communicator is sheer repetition, which, when he’s on to something that works, attains a certain power.” Thus, he argued, Trump could hammer Harris into the ground if he called her “weak” enough times—50 times a day ought to do it, according to Lowry—and especially if he gave her a funny nickname, like the ones he managed to stick on “Crooked Hillary” Clinton and “Little Marco” Rubio.

All of this was presented in the pages of America’s newspaper of record, The New York Times.

What’s going on here?

Many journalists are reluctant to report on Trump’s obvious instability and disordered personality—the “bias toward coherence” that The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has cautioned about. But Lowry’s article was different. I cannot know the actual thinking at the Times, although I suspect the paper accepted the article to offer a pro-Trump contributor as a way of displaying a diversity of views. The plunge that Lowry and others have taken into the muck of Trumpism, however, is not new, and has origins that are important to consider in the coming months of the 2024 election.

When Trump decided in 2015 to run for president as a Republican (after years of being, at various times, a Democrat, an independent, and a Republican), the GOP establishment reacted mostly with horror. At the time, it claimed to be appalled by Trump’s character—as decent people should be—and rejected him as a self-centered carpetbagger who would only get in the way of defeating Hillary Clinton. Lowry’s National Review even asked some two dozen well-known conservative figures to spend an entire issue making the case against Trump.

The reality, however, is that much of the conservative opposition to Trump in 2016 was a sham—because it came from people who thought they were safe in assuming that Trump couldn’t possibly win. For many on the right, slagging Trump was easy and useful. They could assert their principled conservatism and their political wisdom as they tut-tutted Trump’s inevitable loss. Then they could strip the bark off of a President Hillary Clinton while deflecting charges of partisan motivation: After all, their opposition to Trump—their own candidate!—proved their bona fides as ideologically honest brokers.

It was a win-win proposition—as long as Trump lost and then went away.

But Trump won, and arrangements, so to speak, had to be made. The Republican base—and many of its heaviest donors—had spoken. Some of the conservatives who rejected Trump stayed the course and became the Never Trump movement. Others, apparently, decided that never didn’t mean “never.” Power is power, and if getting the right judges and cutting the right taxes has to include stomping on the rule of law and endangering American national security, well, that’s a price that the stoic right-wingers of the greater Washington, D.C., and New York City metropolitan areas were willing to pay.

Lowry and others in that group never became full-fledged MAGA warriors. Many of them hated Trump, as Tucker Carlson, now a born-again Trump booster, admitted in 2021; they just hated Democrats more. But they also hated being reminded of the spirit-crushing bargain they’d made with a tacky outer-borough real-estate developer they wouldn’t have spoken with a year earlier. As Charlie Sykes wrote in 2017, they adopted a new fetish: “Loathing those who loathe the president. Rabid anti-anti-Trumpism.”

None of this internecine conservative sniping would matter, except that the anti-anti-Trumpers, in order to justify the abandonment of their principles, are driven to poison the well of public debate for everyone else. They never expected having to deal with Trump for this long; they never foresaw themselves doubling and tripling and quadrupling down to the point where they now must politely look away from felonies, attacks on America’s alliances, and promises to pardon insurrectionists. Lowry and others are intelligent people who know better, but their decision to bend the knee to Trump—even if only with a very small curtsy—requires them to take to the pages of America’s national newspapers and say that Trump might be terrible but Democrats are worse.

For example, a colleague of Lowry’s at National Review, Dan McLaughlin, has for years argued that he could never vote for Trump but that he could not vote for Clinton, Biden, or Harris, either. Harris’s sudden upending of the race might change that. McLaughlin posted yesterday on X that “Harris isn’t just as bad as can be on nearly every policy issue—even profound life-and-death questions of conscience—she’s a menace to the survival of the constitutional order.”

This is a panicky and massive case of projection. McLaughlin might hate Harris’s views on abortion (among other things), but Trump is a demonstrated “menace to the survival of the constitutional order,” and McLaughlin surely knows it.

The anti-anti-Trumpers must now define Harris—and all Democrats—as evil beyond words. Otherwise, how would they explain the ghastly compromises they’ve made? How would they argue against voting to stop Trump? When other conservatives, such as noted retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, are enthusiastically endorsing Harris, some pretty fancy dancing is required to explain why your principles are more consistent than theirs. Unfortunately, when Trump is out there raising the bar on idiocy, cruelty, and anti-Americanism every day, that dancing looks more like Raygun than Fred Astaire.

For the MAGA media soldiers—the prime-time lineup on Fox News, the talk-radio hosts, the podcasters, and others—wacky (and hideous) accusations against Harris and other Democrats about “Marxism” and “communism” and “after-birth abortions” come easily because they are aimed at people who are already addled by a steady diet of rage and weirdness. But the conservative intellectuals who once opposed Trump have been reduced to dressing up such bizarre arguments as reasonable criticisms. They often seem to be sighing heavily and regretting having to be on the same side as Trump—but that doesn’t stop them from making the risible claim that Trump and Harris are equally terrifying possibilities.

Stepping outside of years of partisan tribal affiliations comes with professional and social costs (and for politicians, electoral consequences). But principles are sometimes burdensome things; that’s part of what makes them principles. The behavior of the anti-anti-Trumpers continues to be an inexcusable betrayal of the values they once claimed to hold. Many of them spoke, even passionately, against Trump—and then they shuffled into line. And for what? One more federal judge? A few billion more dollars in the account of a donor?

It’s one thing to sell your soul cheaply. It’s another to keep taking out second and third mortgages on it until all that’s left is debt and shame.

[wj]

It looks to me like the Republican establishment (to use the usual, if inaccurate, term) also accepted having the term "conservative" as they had long used it** be co-opted by the radical reactionaries. As a result, there isn't really a political home in America's politics for actual conservatives.

The other "feature" (in the IT sense of "a bug for which there is no fix") of caving to the MAGA cult is that there isn't an obvious path back to sanity. The cultists won't tolerate any heresy; at minimum they will go off and sulk (making winning elections going forward problematic). And the Never Trumpers are, and will remain, understandably skeptical of anyone who embraced Trump out of expediency.

** As I'm sure everyone here is tired of hearing from me, their conservatism wasn't really conservative either. Just less detached from reality than the RWNJs.

[CaseyL]

I don't doubt Nichols' sincerity, but for all his intelligence he's not very wise.

He has only to look at places like USSR/Russia, or China, or (I get tired of referencing this, but it remains applicable) Nazi Germany, to see that betraying one's principles gets easier over time, not harder; that one's conscience can indeed be extinguished, and that pure self-interest can become one's sole motivating force with very little consequence to one's notions of Self.

(One does, by necessity, become more solipsistic, but that's an actual benefit if one is intent on destroying one's conscience.)

Nichols also neatly elides the role his cherished GOP-of-the-Past played in this fire sale of conscience. His forever-hero Reagan began a Presidential campaign with a pilgrimage to a white supremacist site, thus announcing to the country that the GOP was happy to re-embrace racism - in rhetoric and policy - as a route to power. Baseless character assassination (usually accusing opponents of being Communist) has been a ready tool in the GOP at least since Nixon used it against Helen Gahagan Douglas (and George Smathers against Claude Pepper).

The path from Nixon to Trump is hardly an Escher bit of topological paradox; it is, in fact, a straight line. Nichols - not doubt to ease his own conscience - remains obtuse about this.

[Girl from the North Country]

CaseyL: I don't disagree.

[Pro Bono]

I'm curious to know: what does "conservative" mean in the minds of people in the US who identify as conservative?

And, while I'm asking questions, when was the time the MAGA guys think the USA was previously great?

[bobbyp]

Pro Bono:

1. My way or the highway.
2. 1896

Regards,

[bobbyp]

CaseyL,

I couldn't agree more. The Republican Party has been embarked on a policy mission since the end of the Civil War-to serve the interests of the "business community" above all else. That this effort can take many forms (McKinley, Harding, Wilkie, McCarthy, Ike, Nixon, Reagan, Bushies, and Trump) should not come as a surprise.

It is their lodestar.

The basic problem with this is it means exalting the perrogatives of "the boss", and this is, for the most part, not very popular with a people who value freedom in any meaningful sense. So there is the continual effort to dress it up as something other than what it actually is.

[wj]

I'm curious to know: what does "conservative" mean in the minds of people in the US who identify as conservative?

Short answer: it varies.

There is a huge swath for whom it is a rebranding of "reactionary." That includes a great number those on the right who want to return the country to a (generally mythical) past. It also includes a great number of those on the left, some of whom accept this gloss from the far right (i.e. let the far right define the terms of the discussion; something they otherwise recoil from). And also those on the left who prefer to smear anyone right of center with the horrible behavior and enthusiasm of the far right. We see that here from time to time. See bobbyp above.

Then there are those who actually are conservative**, rather than reactionary. Most maintain a low profile these days, thanks to the aforementioned rebranding by the far right. Or they try to provide cover for themselves by saying they are center-left. (Even though actual center-left people hold somewhat different views.) Not that this works particularly well as cover, since both the hard right and the hard left reject the very idea that a center even can exist.

And, while I'm asking questions, when was the time the MAGA guys think the USA was previously great?

bobbyp is right that some, especially the very rich, are fond of what they imagine was how things were in the previous Gilded Age. I wouldn't really classify them as MAGA guys. They are willing to use the real MAGA guys (see below) as pawns (I believe "useful idiots" is the term of art), but nothing more.

But there is a more numerous group (the actual MAGA guys) who prefer a mix of what they imagine to be the 1950s with something more like the 1850s. Specififally the 1850s South, because the North was teeming with all those horrid immigrants.

** I've gone on here about what I think it really means. Let me jnow if you have somehow missed that.

[Michael Cain]

I'll put this here, since it's the open thread. Although it fits under the title "What fresh hell is this?"

An airport in southern Iraq reported the following figures: air temp, 102F; relative humidity, 85%; dew point, 97F; and heat index 180F. Wet bulb temperature estimate from a common formula, 100F. That's lethal after a few hours exposure. These have not been confirmed yet. Across the Persian Gulf in Saudi Arabia, a confirmed dew point of 95F was measured.

In other unwelcome news, more recent research has determined that the old value of 95F for lethal wet bulb temperature was optimistic. 89F is more likely.

[Michael Cain]

Southern Iran, not southern Iraq.

[nous]

Oh yeah.

The Orange Sun King is all over the threat of being swamped by migrants, but he's pushing policies that are going to accelerate all of the conditions that lead to mass migration.

Doesn't matter to him, though, because he doesn't care if THOSE people die in the millions. He only cares that he and his own get to keep living their lives of privilege, untroubled by the rabble.

Think Poe wrote a story about that, except in the story the Death was red, not orange.

[Donald]

I saw the criticisms in the other thread of the NYT normalizing Trump’s plan to arrest millions of people and deport them. I agree with the criticisms but just want to add that this is how the NYT treats US foreign policy or the actions of our allies. I didn’t want to threadjack another thread with another Gaza comment, so I am commenting here, but also, it isn’t just Gaza or the NYT ( or Washington Post).

In general, the MSM simply refuses to treat vicious policies and outright war crimes committed by Western powers as vicious policies or war crimes. They are perhaps tragic mistakes made under difficult conditions. If Russia does something terrible they report it as such. If the US or Israel does something terrible it is a controversial policy decision.

What you are seeing with the treatment of Trump is this attitude being applied to proposed policies inside our borders, because Trump has no notion of limits and the NYT can’t bring itself to say a past and possibly future President is proposing a policy that sounds rather fascist. So they talk about it in technocratic terms. Maybe it won’t work. It seems expensive. Maybe it won’t solve the housing problem. That is in the NYT comfort zone.

[CaseyL]

And also those on the left who prefer to smear anyone right of center with the horrible behavior and enthusiasm of the far right.

Is it a smear to point out that the only "right of center" people being public about their disgust at Trump and the Trumpified GOP, and refusing to support it in any way, and in fact endorsing Harris-Walz, are FORMER Republican officials?

Or have I missed some Republicans still in office, still in power, disassociating themselves from Trump, up to and including caucusing with the Democrats now or swearing they will if they get elected? (Not even Hogan will do that.)

Some of the "right of center" - or GOP politicians who were branded or self-branded as "moderates" - bent the knee to Trump so fast it's like the floor beneath them was greased.

Even the ones who very briefly repudiated him after Jan 6 (Graham, McCarthy) have all come crawling back.

Is it a smear to notice this? Or to point it out? Or to note that inaction and silence are acquiescence?

[wj]

CaseyL, it might be helpful for you to consider that there is a significant difference between "center-right Republican politicians" and the vast majority of us who consider ourselves center-right, but who have zero interest in becoming politicians.

Politicians, if they want to get elected (and by definition they all do), have to consider the voters in the area they are running in. If you discover that the voters, especially the voters in your party primaries, have gone crazy, either you accomodate yourself to that or you become a former elected official. Hence the phenomena you see.

Just recall that politicians are not the universe.

[CharlesWT]

If you discover that the voters, especially the voters in your party primaries, have gone crazy shifted, either you accomodate yourself to that or you become a former elected official.

Generally, incumbents are reelected over 90% of the time. However, in a couple of states, a majority of the Republican state legislators who were against school choice got primaried.

[nous]

CharlesWT - they weren't primaried because they opposed school choice; that's like saying that the Civil War was about "states' rights."
They were primaried because school choice was one item on the list of culture war grievances that the would-be christian nationalists are fired up about.

And the christian nationalists aren't fired up about school choice because they favor libertarian ideals - they are fired up about school choice because they want to erase LGBTQ+ people from public life and they want to keep their kids from being taught current scientific consensus information about sex and evolution in their science classes.

Just like the states' rights thing, it's important to actually talk about what things are at stake in this otherwise anodyne framing of things.

[nous]

Meanwhile... the Daily Caller confirms that House Republican leadership intervened to get Trump access to the wreath laying ceremony over objections from Arlington National Cemetery (which the House Republicans spin as objections from the Biden Administration rather than ANC itself). Then when the pressure campaign works and Trump is allowed to take part, Trump and his people push past ANC staff to film in a restricted area in violation of ANC's "no politics at gravesites" rule, and try to play it off as if they were the ones who were wronged...

https://dailycaller.com/2024/08/28/exclusive-gold-star-families-had-trouble-getting-trump-into-arlington-until-house-speaker-intervened/

Once you remove the Daily Caller's slant, those are the facts that remain.

[CaseyL]

wj - I am not fond of the argument that accommodating evil is OK if it means you get to keep your job. It's not like there aren't other jobs in the world besides "politician."

Donald Trump famously voted for and contributed to Democrats at times, and considered himself a political Independent at times.

Yet he chose to run for the Presidency as a Republican, and it was the Republican Party that he was able to subsume and re-create in his own image. It was the Republican Party that let him in and let him make himself at home.

Why is that, do you think?

What made the GOP decide that was the way to go?

Why didn't the multiple GOP candidates do in 2016 what the Democratic candidates did in 2020: agree to drop out and put their support behind one candidate who could beat Trump to the nomination, rather than splitting the anti-Trump vote five ways?

(It's not like they didn't already know what Trump was. He was pretty up front about being an utterly repellent... thing.)

[CharlesWT]

The school choice movement is a lot bigger than a bunch of would-be Christian nationalists. In the inter cities black parents want a choice of where their kids go to school.

Politicians love using Arlington as a backdrop, including Biden.

[nous]

Yes, but CharlesWT, no one primaries a Republican incumbent on the grounds of trying to win over any of those other school choice advocates. Republicans only get primaried over the stuff I am talking about. Pulling in a few of those other votes in the general is at best a bit of aspirational thinking.

And no one is upset's about Trump being at the wreath laying ceremony. (At most, my anti-Trump vet friends are cynical about that.) It's the graveside photo op that they flouted rules and pushed past Arlington reps to snag that has people upset. Again, nuance matters.

[nous]

"upset's" 🤦‍♂️

[liberal japonicus]

The school choice movement is a lot bigger than a bunch of would-be Christian nationalists.

This actually doesn't address nous' point that school choice wasn't the 'reason', but setting that aside, the school choice movement is now bigger than just Christian nationalists because, as the mechanisms for allowing kids to be home-schooled came into being, lots of other people took advantage of the possibilities. But the initial impulse was 1)religious schools, which increased after desegregation and 2)the free market argument that parents should be allowed free choice. That doesn't mean that the initial impulse wasn't wrapped up in religion and free market economy.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15582159.2024.2375164?src=exp-la

That other people have taken advantage of it is to be expected, you put programs in place, people with other ideas and agendas (like unschooling and homeschooling) will use them.

[bobbyp]

In the inter cities black parents want a choice of where their kids go to school.

I should think what they primarily desire are good schools, not "choice". Your frame is a total mischaracterization.

Politicians love using Arlington as a backdrop, including Biden.

Oh, please. Arlington is a big place. There is plenty of room for photo ops, but not that particular section. This is not hard.

[CharlesWT]

Both Biden and Trump have taken part in graveside photo ops. But Biden's seems a bit more formal, sober, and respectful than Trump's. Trump was invited by some Gold Star families and given permission by them to take pictures. That doesn't vacate the Cemitary's rules.

[CaseyL]

Trump was invited by some Gold Star families and given permission by them to take pictures. That doesn't vacate the Cemitary's rules.

It does if you're Donald Trump. He don't have to follow no stinkin' laws, never mind stupid old rules. SCOTUS said so! (And his followers are always ready to destroy anyone who dares say or do otherwise.)

I was particularly taken with his pose by the grave, smiling and giving a thumb's up. Is this a new way Republicans are modeling to show respect for the dead? I must remember that the next time I'm at a funeral. Maybe a hearty "Yipee ki-yay"?

[liberal japonicus]

But Biden's seems a bit more formal, sober, and respectful than Trump's.

And Biden's was taken on Memorial Day 2010 and reposted on May 2020. Given Trump's feeling that fallen soldiers are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’, they probably didn't have any pics of him graveside during his time in office.

Seriously Charles, are you trying to make a portfolio for Steven Chueng?

[nous]

CharlesWT - has anyone confirmed that Tweet yet? The photo is marked 2010 and the tweet from May 25, 2020 appears to feature a short video of Arlington rather than a picture of Biden at Arlington. It may be that Biden has edited the tweet since posting it, but it's also possible that someone has put a photo from Biden's official duties as VP during a non-election year onto a screencap of the tweet in order to create a sense of false equivalency.

I'm waiting for confirmation.

[wj]

I am not fond of the argument that accommodating evil is OK if it means you get to keep your job. It's not like there aren't other jobs in the world besides "politician."

And I never suggested that it is OK. Quite the opposite.

My point, which I apparently didn't make clear enough for you, is that just because you don't see any Republican politicians who are real conservatives** (or, if you prefer, center-right) doesn't mean that there is no such thing.

** As opposed to (deliberately) mislabeled reactionaries, or basically amoral individuals with no real views, but interested only in power for its own sake,

[wj]

I was particularly taken with his pose by the grave, smiling and giving a thumb's up. Is this a new way Republicans are modeling to show respect for the dead?

It's what you would expect from someone who, when encountering the graves of those who died in combat, is moved to ask "What was in it for them?" Because he simply cannot imagine a motivation other than "What's in it for me?"

He can't show respect for the dead because he has none. And cannot imagine that anyone would (although he could probably see faking it for gain).

[CaseyL]

wj - Ah, yes: The "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

I have no idea how many "true" center-right, "true" conservatives exist, because they're certainly not waging any kind of war for the soul of the Republican Party.

Why is that?

Where are they?

How are they voting in November?

[wj]

To take your questions in out of order:

How are they voting in November?

Harris. 100%
I'd say Biden got extremely close to 100% as well.
In 2016, unfortunately there were too many (especially among those too young to remember Reagan) who said "How bad could it be?" But they found out.

they're certainly not waging any kind of war for the soul of the Republican Party.
Why is that?

I wouldn't be so sure. As time has past, I think there's been increasing dispair/resignation that the party is no longer recoverable. I'm pretty close to that myself; it's just that neither do I see a different way to create a center right replacement. At least without a major risk of splitting the anti-RWNJ vote and letting them back in. Which is not acceptable.

Where are they?

Not seeing any on the national level. But at the state and, especially local, level there are some. For example, I've got a county Supervisor who is. (She used to be my state Assembly member. Unfortunately, she got taken out by a Democrat with a devotion to honesty rivaling Trump.) Most don't have a high enough profile, and/or are not strategically located enough, to get on the stage at the DNC. But I'm seeing Harris flags and yard signs where I know the people are long-time Republicans.

[nous]

I think it's easy to see what is happening with the never-Trump conservatives and the Republican Party - the big donors have split in two, with the extremists and opportunists sticking with the GOP and the neocons forming into interest groups that support Democratic candidates while remaining Republicans for identity purposes. So the money center of the Republicans supports the crazies and the money center for the Democrats support the business-friendly neoliberals and technocrats.

And the donors don't have enough overlap with the 50+1 of either party's base to gain influence.

There's nothing to pull the Republicans back towards center, and there is no coalition forming around the split between the leftmost Republicans and the rightmost Democrats.

So we have regime cleavage and negative partisanship.

[Girl from the North Country]

There's nothing to pull the Republicans back towards center

I think the only thing that would do so would be repeated, dramatic and devastating losses. We can but hope.

[CaseyL]

wj - Those are good thoughtful answers. Thank you!

nous - It seems intuitive that "rightmost Democrats" and "leftmost Republicans" would find common ground with one another and form a new Party.

But that idea runs aground because there are very basic and quintessential differences between even the most "ConservaDem" and the most "liberal Republican."

Republicans are quintessentially unable to accept government action as an economic or social levelling force, and Democrats are quintessentially unable to rely entirely on the private sector as an economic or social levelling force.

Provided that the US doesn't fall to the RW fascists this year, or in the next decade (never a sure bet, especially as climate change gets worse and people want scapegoats and easy answers), there may be some kind of re-alignment.

I just can't figure out what it would be.

[russell]

I think the only thing that would do so would be repeated, dramatic and devastating losses.

Reuters has Trump at about 41%. That, plus the anti-majoritarian structure of how we run elections in the US makes repeated, dramatic, and devastating losses unlikely.

There is a large constituency in the US for what Trump et al are selling. Folks may say "but that's not who we are", but actually that's who a lot of us are.

[CaseyL]

Russell - The statement "That's not who we are" has always bugged me.

Besides the Trump phenomenon - which is so very much worse than the 27% "crazification factor" that used to be the floor of "how bad can it get?" - there is, of course, a whole lot of US history that must be ignored in order to believe "that's not who we are." Slavery, genocide, internment camps, Jim Crow... hoo boy.

I'd feel better about the phrase if it were clearly given as aspirational rather than descriptive.

[wj]

I think the only thing that would do so would be repeated, dramatic and devastating losses.

If only. If only!

Unfortunately, I have been able to watch, from way too close, the course of the California Republican Party over the last 30 years. Devastating loss has followed devastating loss. And the party's movement towards the center has been . . . non-existent.

The Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in both houses of the state legislature. Which doesn't really matter, since it has been ages since a Republican has held state-wide office, including the governorship.**. And yet, no sign that the Republicans even care enough to debate whether extremism should be rethought in the interests of winning the occasional election.

Which experience leads me to doubt that, on the national level, things would be any different.

** Those with only a passing awareness of California sometimes point at Arnold Schwarzenegger as a more recent Republican office-holder. But that ignores the exceptional circumstances which allowed him to be elected initially with well under 50% of the vote and no runoff required.

[nous]

I think that the CA Republicans are willing to put up with the losses on the statewide level because they still have the local and the federal levels on which they have enough power to push their agenda.

I think if the national level also blew up there might be some recognition that a change of direction was needed.

It's probably 50/50 whether that ended up turning into a new/reformed centrist political party or if it turned into 3%er madness. It could end up both.

[bobbyp]

Devastating loss has followed devastating loss. And the party's movement towards the center has been . . . non-existent.

I should think this gets to the heart of our current political crisis. Why do we observe this? Bemoaning the fact that there is no "true conservative party" out there seems to miss the point. Perhaps it would be more useful to explore why the one large and powerful self-identified conservative party in this country has gone off the rails.

Just a thought.

I shall now return to smearing people...much more fun. Thanks.

[liberal japonicus]

About the Biden photo at Arlington

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/aug/30/tweets/heres-how-a-biden-ad-that-featured-arlington-natio/

[wj]

Perhaps it would be more useful to explore why the one large and powerful self-identified conservative party in this country has gone off the rails.

Great question. I hadn't thought about it from that perspective before.

It now occurs to me that the party started with four relatively distinct factions:

• The actual conservatives, who preferred changes to happen gradually. Not least because that increases the chance of success. At minimum, it allows identification of unintended negative consequences while they are still small enough to be addressed, rather than getting locked it.
• The reactionaries, who wanted no change unless it was to reverse course towards a generally mythic past.
• The libertarians, who simply wanted less government. Leaning towards none at all, depending on how little they had bothered to think things through. They were allied to the reactionaries to the extent that in the past the government did less.
• The plutocrats, who wanted as little government interference in their economic and financial empires as possible. In contrast to the libertarians, they were fine with government per se, as long as it wasn't having a negative impact on them. They had outsized influence because they could afford to fund the whole thing out of petty cash.

Part of what became the mantra of the party was "government is the problem." That wasn't particularly close to the conservatives' position. But, as we all know, in a coalition you sometimes have to make concessions to hold the group together. You just try to avoid critical ones; this time was a miss. The drift away from the basic conservative view was gradual enough, until the Tea Party hit, that it looked like the horseshoe left does to progressives today.

The thing about a "government is the problem" slogan is that people start believing it. To the point that they can become indifferent to whether it functions at all.** See the RWNJ performance artists, in Congress and state governments. And if you don't care about whether government works, how much do you care if you lose elections?

That is, I think, why Trump had such an impact: he was a gifted enough showman/con man to inspire a lot of people, who had ceased bothering to vote, to turn out. They didn't care about his policies (to the extent that he had any, which wasn't much); they came for the show, and voted to keep the show going.

Which suggests that, when he passes from the scene, many of them will return to apathy and non-participation. Unless another, equally gifted, showman appears. Someone who follows the tabloids may have an idea there. But all I can see is one of the megachurch grifters. And mostly they seem happy with wealth drawn from their congregations, without the compelling need for even more fawning from the wider world.

It is also why what is left of the party seems so indifferent to losing elections. They'd like to win. But they know that they can't moderate without losing what has become their core support. And they can't replace that core with conservatives, because we've learned from our mistake, and are no long interested in having any part of them.

** Well, until the failure to function hits them personally. And then they want someone to blame. They can either decide that they want a functioning government after all. Or decide that it is the fault of what is left of the government, and so they want less.

[JanieM]

wj -- interesting breakdown, thank you. It raises interesting issues about coalitions, internal power struggles, etc....

[Girl from the North Country]

Open thread, so (in case I haven't mentioned it before) the Slough House series of books by Mick Herron is excellent, and I am told the AppleTV series is very good too (I haven't watched it). I know some of you are connoisseurs of English stuff, and although he has been compared to Le Carre I think the comparison is misleading. However, they are about spies, and they are very good (with the exception of one which I think goes off the rails a bit), with a wonderful main character, and even the latest supposedly "stand-alone" one, The Secret Hours is excellent, so should also be read in the sequence, after the (currently) latest book. They are terrifically cynical about politics and the secret world, I do recommend.

[Michael Cain]

wj -- One of the things you don't mention is the Supreme Court. The Court has indicated it is willing to side with your 2nd and 4th groups. Even if Trump were to fall over dead this afternoon, the Court will continue to roll back the administrative state and restrict individual rights based on privacy (eg, Thomas has indicated that the Griswald opinion on contraception should be reversed; what I think about Alito at this point is not fit for a family blog).

[Michael Cain]

Open-thread observation... I have Iowa State football on -- my mom was not only a graduate, but a big fan* of the football and basketball teams, and I'm feeling nostalgic today. The game's on Fox's FS1 network. As is the case for most sports networks these days there's a crawler at the bottom of the screen showing other results. I note that about a third of what the crawler is showing is online betting odds from whichever sports book they have a deal with.

* I understand that after Mom moved into assisted living, if there was Iowa State football available, she would glare down the old men until they changed the channel on the big screen in the commons area.

[JanieM]

Michael: what I think about Alito at this point is not fit for a family blog

Right there with you.

[wj]

One of the things you don't mention is the Supreme Court.

Well, the question I was addressing involved whether continuing to lose elections would cause the Republican party to moderate its positions. The fact that they can get a lot of what some of them want from the Court doesn't seem, to me, to be a factor. At most, it might reduce the urgency.

But there was nothing like that before the three latest political hacks got appointed. Yet the California party seemed unmoved by the fact that they had moved to total political irrelevance.

[GftNC]

Oh you know, just for the hell of it, here's a gift link to Alexandra Petri's J D Vance Writes a Rom-Com

https://wapo.st/4gaEILh

[wj]

Petri really knows how to highlight the weird. And creepy. Especially because it rings so true.

[Donald]

Gift link from Washington Post

https://wapo.st/3TcAyZE

Harris might be open to putting conditions on weapons to Israel after she wins ( hopefully) . This is good if true, because in her interview with Bush she gave the opposite impression.

The article also says what I have read elsewhere, that Biden is “ supremely confident” in his foreign policy judgement, which is no doubt true and an example of the Dunning Krueger effect. Biden was for the Iraq War. One would think that would have induced a bit of humility.

[novakant]

I am told the AppleTV series is very good too (I haven't watched it).

It's great, especially Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas!

[Michael Cain]

File this under "can this get any stranger?"

Boeing's Starliner space capsule is mid-mission on what was supposed to be its certification flight. That is, it was supposed to demonstrate that all the problems had been corrected and the capsule could enter service flying crew regularly to the International Space Station. Five of 28 control thrusters failed on the trip up, but they did manage to dock. Rather than staying for eight days, NASA decided to keep the capsule at the ISS for a more extended stay (now at about eight weeks) so Boeing could conduct tests on the thrusters. Last weekend NASA decided the safest way to get the two people from Starliner home was to keep them on the ISS for another six months and fly them home on the next SpaceX capsule. That SpaceX capsule can't launch for the ISS until the Starliner undocks. That's scheduled for this coming Friday, after which the capsule is supposed to return to Earth autonomously. One of the reasons the decision took so long is that Boeing had to load a different set of software to allow for autonomous flight.

Yesterday, one of the astronauts noticed strange noises coming from a speaker on the Starliner. They sound like movie sound-effect sonar pings. The commenters at Ars Technica are having altogether too much fun with this :^)

[wj]

At this point, it seems like the only way to save Boeing is to boot out any and every Board member who ever had anything to do with McDonnell Douglas. Likewise anybody who ever worked in the finance industry (save, maybe, low level accounting or IT folks). Get some career Boeing engineers back in charge.

Not foolproof, but a less comprehensive purge is doomed.

[Hartmut]

But wouldn't that completely destroy the trust in the company? ;-)

[wj]

More important to have trust in the products.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I, for one, look forward to the *current* Boeing building the "B-Ark" that will be used for the finance and MBA "masters of the universe", so they can take their mastery of the ...universe...to the Universe.

[bobbyp]

Boeing used to be a company dominated by engineers*, and its planes were built by proud union workers.

We can get back to that ethos, but first we need to reduce the size of the FIRE sector to the point where we can drown it in a bucket of spit.

*The suburbs south of Seattle are full of homes obviously designed and built by Boeing engineers....they tend to be a bit odd, to say the least. Good aeronautical engineers, but architects? Not so much. My neighbor's house was constructed entirely with concrete....even the interior walls. Great for seismic resistance, not so great for remodelling.

[Michael Cain]

We can get back to that ethos, but first we need to reduce the size of the FIRE sector to the point where we can drown it in a bucket of spit.

One of Cain's Laws™ says that any situation where it is easier to get rich by manipulating paper that represents goods and services than by working directly with the underlying goods and services will end badly.

A corollary of that is while banking and insurance are necessary evils, we need to make sure it's as difficult as practical to get rich providing those services.

This is somewhat hypocritical of me, as my wife and memory-care-bound wife are going to live out our lives based on the public dole (SS) and manipulating paper resources.

[wj]

It's one thing to maintain yourself in (not early!) retirement manipulating paper resources. That seems acceptable. It's getting rich, specifically very rich,** from a career manipulating paper representations of resources that's a problem.

** I've got no real problem with someone ending their career worth $4-5 million. I might even accept $10 million. But beyond that? You better have made some significant contribution to the real world.

[Priest]

Open thread, so making note that today is Granddaddy Priest’s 131st birthday. It was only 117 years from the Declaration of Independence and when he was born.

[Michael Cain]

Americans think 100 years is a long time. Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance. Even most East Coast Americans fail to understand why I occasionally add that two places are "close, for Western definitions of close" to something I've written.

[wj]

"Close enough to pop down to spend the weekend with the in-laws."

That would be a bit over 400 miles. And we did it several times a year for decades. (I-5 definitely helped.)

[nous]

Yep. What would have been "across the state" in Wisconsin is not much more than "across the metro area" here in So Cal.

[wj]

And in New England it could be across 6 states.

[Girl from the North Country]

Open thread, so remembering our discussions about Di Angelo and White Fragility, this from today's Sunday Times was interesting. Janie, and possibly others, you were not alone in your opinion!

Robin DiAngelo, the anti-racist doyenne caught in her own trap
Hadley Freeman

A few years ago, not long after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, I received an email from my now-former bosses in London reprimanding me for not having signed up for “mandatory unconscious bias and anti-racism workshops”.

This sparked a long correspondence in which they argued that I had to attend to make the office a more welcoming place, and I argued that a welcoming office wouldn’t assume its employees were racist. They asked why I didn’t want to examine my biases; I said unless my biases were affecting my work, they weren’t my employer’s business to examine. I admit it, I was being stubborn. Although I never attended the workshops, so maybe my biases are showing.

I was rereading this correspondence recently. It’s already a fascinating relic of that era, showing how conversations about prejudice suddenly became — and I’m going to use a technical term here, so keep a dictionary handy — insane. And the person largely responsible for this, and for the rise of corporate anti-racism workshops, is Robin DiAngelo.

Last week DiAngelo was accused of plagiarism. To understand why that’s interesting, you need to know that DiAngelo is the most successful anti-racism trainer in the world. Her book White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Race became a blockbuster bestseller in 2020, after Floyd’s murder. She charged up to $20,000 to hold anti-racism workshops at companies like Microsoft and Google, where — in the words of one participant who later gave an interview to the podcast Blocked and Reported — DiAngelo would tell white people that if they had “any reaction to the anti-racism work that isn’t agreement or submission, then that’s proof [they’re racist]”. The “anti-racism work” was little more than white people being told to accept they’re racist.

So denying you’re racist proves you’re racist, according to DiAngelo. It’s the modern-day equivalent of the 17th-century witch trials, an in-office racism ducking stool. Unfortunately, admitting you’re racist also proves you’re a racist. But at least if you fork out $20,000 for an anti-racism course, you show you’re “doing the work”, as DiAngelo put it, like Catholics buying indulgences from the Church. I guess now is a good time to mention that DiAngelo herself is white.

The few writers on liberal publications who suggested DiAngelo’s theories weren’t hugely helpful — to anyone of any race — are black, such as John McWhorter at The Atlantic. White liberal journalists gave her glowing reports. Well, what else could they do? DiAngelo and her ilk had them in a finger trap: if you questioned her, that proved you were racist. Plus there was genuine horror over Floyd’s murder by a police officer. Although quite how a horrific incident in Minnesota could be helped by white people in London confessing to being racist, like evangelicals crying out in church that the devil possessed them, was something I was never clear on. But, of course, it’s easier to lecture employees about micro-aggressions than make any structural changes.

After Floyd’s murder, my local bookshop devoted its front section to books about race, and not the kind I grew up reading, like Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Instead they were books with scolding titles like How to Raise An Antiracist, by Ibram X Kendi, “one of the world’s leading anti-racist scholars” (according to his own website), and DiAngelo’s White Fragility. Martin Luther King’s dream of a nation in which children would not be judged by the colour of their skin was very much over: the new race apostles insisted everyone must be judged by their skin, because skin colour is all-defining, and the murder of Floyd proved it.

All this led to a lot of grifters getting a free pass to chide the general public about racism. Only 33 per cent of the money donated to Black Lives Matter in the US between 2020 to 2022 actually went to charitable causes; tens of millions went instead to its co-founder Patrisse Cullors and her family and friends. Kendi’s Centre for Anti-racist Research at Boston University, which he founded in 2020, raised over $55 million in donations. Last year it was announced the centre was downsizing because of poor management by Kendi, and even an extremely sympathetic profile of Kendi in The New York Times in June couldn’t deny that.

Now a complaint has been filed that DiAngelo plagiarised parts of her 2004 doctoral thesis, Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis. With almost inevitable irony, two of the professors she is accused of plagiarising are Asian-American. And for the final cymbal ding, on DiAngelo’s website she writes about the importance of “giv[ing] credit to the work of Bipoc people [black, indigenous and people of colour] who have informed your thinking”.

The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative US website, broke the story, and good for it. But this is infuriating to old-school liberals like me, who believe racism is a problem and also believe in critical thinking. DiAngelo was clearly a crackpot, and yet the liberal media showered her with adoration instead of the scrutiny she deserved. Prejudice should not be treated as a partisan issue, but liberals — just as much as conservatives — make it so with stupidity like this. Racism is real, but the anti-racism industry became an absolute racket, which enriched some and improved nothing.

[JanieM]

And in New England it could be across 6 states.

Heh, yes. My credit cards used to have a feature where you could tell it when you were traveling. My two cards did it differently, and neither was satisfactory for my trips from Maine to Ohio. (Neither does it anymore for travel within the US.)

The one I remember let you fill in no more than one state per day. It is easily possible to go from Maine to Ohio in a day -- my route would be Maine, NH, VT, NY, PA, and Ohio -- exactly six, as you say, and not even all in New England.

One more example of the people who write software not actually living in the real world...but let me not digress.