"Athena SWAN": Pure Retardium

facepalm

They really do have a knack for cringe.

Coulter: Trump's Right to Send the Guard and the Marines to LA

link

Yoo and Delahunty: Trump Should Win His Court Battle with Newsome Over Riot Response

I'm torn about this.

Prima facie, Trump seems right.

But I'm not sure it's legal and I'm not all that sure it's prudent.

But Yoo and Delahunty make a pretty strong case--or so it seems to the non-expert...or at least to a non-expert...

John Spencer, Jerusalem Post: Israel Needs an MOP from the U.S. [But Does it Need the B-2 to Drop One?]

link

But wouldn't it need a B-2 to drop it?

I asks myself: "self," I asks, "could a C-130 (or maybe a C-17 or a C-5) drop one-a them mofos? Paletize that sumbitch and just...bombs away! Then the Israelis could do it all themselves and we wouldn't have to get our hands dirty... It's whatcha call plausible deniability..."

"Sorry, Ayatollah, we got no Earthly idea where the IAF got that sucker. Coulda been from anywhere..."

Anyhoo, then I answers myself: "self," I answers, "I have no damn idea"...

Then I asks Google (well, Bing) the same thing...and it looks like the answer may be in the affirmative...

The Editors: Good Supreme Court Sense on "Trans" Hormones

link

SCOTUS Upholds TN Ban on "Transgender" Sexual Mutilation of Children

link

Conservatives love to bash Cocaine Mitch...but he should go down in history for preventing Obama from replacing Scalia with a progressive. Trump 45 deserves major kudos too, obviously.

   The insane thing is that this is even an issue.

Trump's Big, Fat Mouth...and Iran

Jesus, why can he not control his mouth?

Suggesting that Israel is going to nuke Tehran

Threatening Khamenei

"Unconditional surrender"????

Trump: the fatigue is real.

NRO: The U.S. Should Destroy Fordow--But Only If Israel Can't

This seems right to me.

This is not another Iraq/WMD situation.

Gotta stop always fighting the last war.

The Crapification of Academic Philosophy: New "Being 'Trans' in Philosophy" "Zine"

facepalm

Thanks, I guess, to the Mystic for sending me this.

The most ridiculous idea of the last 100 years has its hooks firmly in academic philosophy. Proponents of the view advocate it loudly at every turn...saner heads tend to remain silent. This is a general aspect of the left's ideological capture of academia: leftist views are freely espoused...and the espousers are lauded. Opposition, even to the most outlandishly absurd leftists views, is discouraged and commonly punished in one way or another.

Note the number of comments, just for one thing.

Perhaps people have just stopped even trying.

Note that, among the pearls of wisdom from this "zine" (what is this, the 1970s?):

"Being trans is not a controversial idea. It is a lived reality."

See?

I hope this allays any bigoted doubts you might have had, bigot.

None of this is controversial!

Thus it has been decreed...

And here's an even more ridiculous bit of anti-philosophical sophistry:

Philosophical conversations about trans people do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a political context where trans people are relentlessly attacked and a material context where trans lives are particularly vulnerable. These contexts make it impossible to "just ask questions" about trans people. And trans people and our loved ones are not okay -- in, with, and because of our discipline.

You see, if you claim pathetic victim status, others much accept any metaphysical claims you might make about yourself. Once the victim card has been played, rational discussion must cease...but not just that...rather, "trans" ideology must be accepted as if it were true.
   The left is totalitarian. Its dogmas must be injected into every other activity, and its goals trump any goals that activity might have had. Medicine can no longer aim primarily at healing...that aim must be subordinated to "social justice." Same with math. Same with piloting an aircraft. Dispassionate rational inquiry cannot be conducted so long as anyone claims oppression...

   Progressivism, if taken to its "logical" extreme, destroys everything in its path.

At The Nation: Abolishing ICE is the Bare Minimum

I don't know anything about the arrest of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander. I'm perfectly willing to believe that ICE was in the wrong. I just don't know the relevant facts and arguments.
However...

This post at the Nation is symptomatic of the radicalization of the progressive left. Abolishing ICE is the bare minimum remedy, according to the author.

Which is roughly equivalent to:

Abolishing our borders is the bare minimum remedy for one (allegedly) bad arrest.

Obviously that's utterly mad.

Even assuming that the arrest was unwarranted, the bare minimum is something more along the lines of: disciplining (perhaps firing) the offending agents, and making Lander whole (e.g. by, well, giving him some money). I'm not saying that's the optimal response. I'm saying, rather, that it is utterly daft to claim that abolishing ICE is the bare minimum reasonable response. No one but an extremely radical radical could possibly think that was true.

Kenin M. Spivak: SCOTUS Must Restore Sanity on Gender (via the Skrmetti Case)

100% agreed.

This "gender" madness is the most insane thing I've seen in American politics in my life.

Though I'm rather frustrated with both our major politico-cultural factions, there is just no way to reasonable argue that they are equally loony. The blue faction has gone completely off the rails. The red faction, for all its myriad flaws, is mainly just trying to walk back the illicit and irrational gains made by the blues over the course of the last decade. One side wants to sexually mutilate children on the basis of an incredible, fantastical, preposterous bit of Lysenkoist pseudoscience that originated and was incubated in the intellectually weakest and most highly-politicized sectors of academia. And, we should add: that almost no one had even heard of a decade ago.

   In the ten years since, no even vaguely plausible arguments have been offered in support of the view. Its authority, such as it is, rests almost entirely on shrieking, insistence, ad miseracordium arguments, ad hominems against its opponents, and the testimony of ideologically captured organizations like the APA. We are told, of course--as is the M.O. of the left--that trans ideology is beyond question, so cannot be questioned. It is so ironclad that only a bigot would even consider criticizing it. But this is, of course, absurd. Gender ideology is perhaps the least-likely-to-be-true and the most poorly supported major idea of the last century.

   The more prima facie implausible an idea is, the heavier the burden of proof its proponents much carry. But in the case of gender ideology/pseudoscience, we begin with a wildly-implausible, perhaps even logically inconsistent idea for which no even remotely sound arguments can be produced. If we've ever been warranted in rejecting an idea, we are warranted in rejecting this one.

Gerard Baker: The Uses and Abuses of Political Violence

I think Baker is extremely reasonable, and that this is mostly right.

Trump Officials Reverse Guidance Exempting Farms, Restaurants from Immigration Raids

Good.

   Theoretically, of course, this could cause economic harm. Well...actually, we should expect any such policies to cause some economic harm. The relevant question is: when all costs and benefits are taken into account, which policy is better?

   This question seems to me to be a bit like the tariff question. Some people want to focus purely on the immediate economic harm without asking about further implications or economic benefits. I'm (tentatively) on the side of those who say: I'm willing to pay more for food if it means cutting down on illegal immigration. You'd have to be a bit thick to think that we can take any such major action without any costs... (Similarly: I'm willing to pay more for gew-gaws from Amazon in order to not be dependent on China for defense-relevant technology and manufactured goods.)

   A lot of this does come down to the question: what are the harms of mass illegal immigration? Of course the left does not want to recognize any harms...

   Me, I'd be a lot less concerned if illegal immigration was more randomly distributed across home countries/regions--and regions of the USA. It's a huge problem, IMO, that we're getting such a mass of illegals (a) from the same basic region, (b) from the Third World (where skills are lesser and crime is higher), and (c) they tend to collect mainly in the same region of the country (the Southwest, obvs.). We already see the effects of this with the LA deportation riots--the Southwest United States is, more or less, being colonized by Latin America. It should be obvious why this is bad. If it isn't obvious, you should probably think more about it.

   Look, like basically everybody, I'm all for reasonable levels of legal immigration--that should go without saying. One reason to control the flow of immigration is to raise the odds of assimilation. Just basically transporting a mass of unassimilated immigrants to some area of the country is a blueprint for disaster. As conservatives like to say: import the Third World, become the Third World. This stands opposed to what conservatives know as "magic dirt theory:" as soon as people step foot into the U.S., they become full-blown 'Mericans. Progressives semi-believe that because they are blank slatists...though they also semi-believe that it would be better if U.S. culture were destroyed/transformed into something different...a multicultural utopia... As is so often the case, progressivism overall is in a kind of superposition of doxastic states: half This won't harm the country!, half: This country deserves to be destroyed! (Obviously the former prevails among more normal Democrats. The latter, though, is prominently represented in the vanguard of the left).

   This might all work out alright anyway. Europe's situation is worse because it's importing a less-assimilable, more hostile and alien mass of immigrants. We're basically importing a bunch of Catholics. I'm all for studying the problem and, say, increasing the number of legal immigrants if we find out for sure that we're not doing the kind of harm I fear. But, as for now, given what we currently know, we have to say no. We're gambling with the very existence and nature of the USA. And that's an extremely stupid thing to do.

   I think a lot of the disagreement between right and left comes down to this: the left is willing to gamble everything on its utopian daydreams. Conservatives are not.

Lott: As Deportations Rise, U.S. on Track for Lowest Murder Rate on Record

link

Ok, it's John Lott, so he's got an orientation. I generally find his stuff reasonable...but I also tend to find his conclusions congenial...so make of it what you will.

   My own argument here is this: look at world homicide rates by country:

Even if you just took a (large and) representative sample of the population from Latin America and moved it to the U.S., then, under certain reasonable assumptions (e.g. that the higher homicide rates in LA are not entirely the result of poor policing), our homicide and murder rates would go up.

   Of course we also have very good reason to believe that progressive tend to suppress information that indicates that illegal immigration raises crime rates. Trivially: we know that the left routinely conflates legal and illegal immigration in order to muddy the waters of this and similar issues.

   This is a pretty routine application of political correctness--progressives like illegal immigration, and are willing to (at least partially) subordinate the facts and evidence to that political preference.

   Not to suggest that PC itself is routine--it's an extremely radical and irrationalist position. But this is a routine application of that view.

The Great John Ellis: The Public Needs Campus Viewpoint Diversity

I think this is right.

(Terminological quibble: Dump the 'viewpoint "diversity" ' language--we want a clean break from the PC/woketarian madness. I tend to say: heterogeneity of opinion.)

   Basically, the second-worst thing in play is government management of what is taught and who is hired in academia.

   The worst thing in play is the destruction of the soul of the university by ideological capture.

The Ideological Capture of Universities: The Professoriate Leans Overwhelmingly Left

Nearly 1 Million Illegal Aliens Have Self-Deported Under Trump, Leading To Higher Wages

Big if true.

N. S. Lyons / Nathan Levine: "American Strong Gods: Trump and the End of the Long 20th Century"

I find a lot of this very interesting.

   A fair bit of it is too sweeping, hand-wavey and conservative for me...but I do think it's interesting and worth considering.

   The stuff about Hitler as secular Satan, and Hitler's second career is damn interesting, I say. 

   But I'm skeptical of such big, sweeping accounts. Lots of places it could go wrong, and I'm not strong enough in history to catch mistakes on that front.

   I'm embarrassed to say that I've never actually read Poppers The Open Society And Its Enemies... I've read parts of it, but not enough to know whether Lyons/Levine is right about Poppers general view of the "open society"...but it's big if true. I thought Soros was betraying the memory of Popper...but it may be that he's actually got him right. And that would certainly make a lot of sense--he actually knew him well... I've really only read Popper's philosophy of science. And the stuff in TOS about the paradox of tolerance.

Rita Panahi/Ami Horowitz: Don't Forget--What the Left Really Wants is to Burn It All Down

Behold, The Left: "LET MY PEOPLE GO / PLEASE DON'T KILL ME / REEEEEEEEEE" Edition

Note the seamless transition between (a) LARPing the civil-rights era and (b) shrieking an ad miseracordium roughly of the form Please don't make me accept the consequences of my brainless, anti-democratic actions.

   Progressivism is harder and harder to distinguish from mental illness.

   In fact, this sort of thing is a form of mass hysteria / mass sociogenic illness.

   Donald Trump is a king and we are all facists for supporting him...because he and we want to make some rather minimal gestures toward enforcing our ridiculously generous and loose immigration laws so as not to simply allow the world's most important nation to disintegrate. Progressives are paragons of virtue for engaging in terrorist rioting in service of open borders and the destruction of said nation.. One side is a group of rational adults, the other side is shrieking children, lunatics, morons and cultists who refuse to acknowledge the obvious consequences of open borders. There is really no reason to take these people seriously.

   We're not even disagreeing about whether to deport abuela who's been here 20 years...we're disagreeing about whether to deport newly-arrived violent, criminal illegal aliens...

WSJ: Israel's Nuclear Good Deed Against Iran

Basically agree.

Edward Luttwak: Why Israel Had No Choice

Kind of a mixed bag, but I tend to agree.

MN Assassinations

Sounds like the murderer is on the red team.

"No Kings" Roundup at Insty

My faves:

"Number of kings holding steady at zero"

and

(In response to the hysterical 74-year-old:) "I don't think we should make policy to placate elderly lunatics"

Also note people noting that the "no kings" nonsense was all old white people, whereas the parade attendees were younger and more (to use the left's absurd code-speak) "diverse."

Of course I don't care about such shit...but, by the left's own standards...

I do wish these people understood--even if they understood nothing else about it--that they're making it more difficult to be objective about Trump, more difficult to take such criticisms of him seriously. Dude really is kind of a wreck. But when his opponents are shrieking and gibbering nonstop, repeatedly failing to make a damn bit of sense...it shoves many of us farther over to his side. But I don't want to be on his side. I want to be objective. It's more complicated than this, but there's a sense in which the unhinged left is Trump's best ally.

Trump's Military Parade

We had other things to do last evening, but I did try to just check in on the birthday parade for the Army and Trump. I tried about four different channels, including NBC and even Sky News...every one was either bashing Trump in some way or other--the parade was too expensive, it was going to tear up the streets in DC, it was overly militaristic...lots of dark suggestions that somebody, not saying who, might be a dictator...one channel said that people in the Army and NoVa were afraid to criticize the idea...

   Look, I wasn't and ain't wild about that idea. I don't believe it'll actually cost $40 million--that was the high estimate that all the channels were going with--but seems to me that $20 million would be too much. Even ten.

   I mean, I don't really have or deserve much of a view on the matter. Having a parade for the Army's 250th b-day/anniversary...perfectly good idea. Pretending that the dollars are the only thing that matters here is sophistry--you can pull that move on most things. Fireworks on the 4th--wasteful! Christmas decorations on Main Street--bah, humbug! F-16s overflying the World Series--just wasted $$$, Jack! But the proper standard is the established one--we do sometimes spend money on such stuff. It's also a mistake to try to justify such things in terms of specious "benefits" like pumping up patriotism--that's not the point, either. Not everything is done for some payoff--unless you conceptualize payoff so broadly as to make any positive aspect or consequence of something a payoff--which produces a lost contrast problem.

   Anyway, nothing inherently wrong with such an event. However, I do think it runs contrary to the administration's emphasis on cutting waste. And, though I like hearing the cultists wail and caterwaul as much as the next red-blooded American boy, they're going to be wailing no matter what Trump does. By all means, go ahead and provoke them. But maybe do it on the cheap.

Philip Klein: Why Israel Needed to Act Now

Well, this seems righter to me than the Russo piece.

One advantage to us of having Israel as an ally--though there's clearly a lot more in it for them--is that they can act as our slightly sub rosa proxy in such cases.

Hey, mullah-dudes, don't blame us...we can't control those guys...they crazy!

Again, I don't really deserve an opinion on this, but my gut is with Israel.

Jude Russo: Iran is Not Our War

I have basically no idea what to think about this.

I'm perhaps irrationally well-disposed toward Israel. (Though I don't think they're such a good ally.) I was also convinced--though not immovably--at some point in the past that Iran simply can't be allowed to get the Bomb. But I remember only the most general of the reasons that swayed me in that direction.

Anyway, I just don't know really know what to think.

That Tulsi Gabbard Video

WTF????

Roundup of Saturday's Stupid Parades, Protests and Potlucks

   First, Trump's military parade / birthday celebration in D.C. on the 14th. Two birthdays, (a) the U.S. Army, (b) Trump. Only one of these deserves a parade...and I'll bet they'd be happy to skip it...especially if they could take that $50 million and buy something useful...like ten-ish Abrams tanks.

   Then there's the latest leftist shriekfest, they're calling "No Kings"...because an accurate name like "Wide-Open Borders, No Questions Asked" might lead to noticing.

   Why pick Bastille Day, one wonders?

   Well, it could be the parade thing...but the contemporary left really does have its taproot in the French Revolution...

   Of course they're leaving out the rest of the slogan, which appears in various forms, but most notably: No gods, no kings, no priests, no demons. It's an atheist/anarchist slogan. I'd hit this point hard if I were the Trump team.

   Then, showing that stupid slogans die hard, we have "DC Joy Day." Make sure to bring your famous vegan, gluten-free fauxvacado salad...

   Of all these, I'd most like to cancel the parade. I'm all for celebrating the Army's origin, but not to the tune of fifty million bucks.

   And as for a parade for Trump's birthday: facepalm.

   As for the lefties: they keep swinging for the fences, trying to have one big, nationwide rally that somehow turns the tide...as if that's what's really missing from their strategy. Gee, people will probably go along with eliminating borders and implementing world government and transing our kids and shit if we just put on enough pink pussy hats and shriek "free Palestine" some more...

Or, as the meme says:

WSJ Bullshit re: the Deportation Dust-up

WSJ's news division is pretty lefty, as is well known. See e.g. this story on ICE and the new wave of Mostly Peaceful Social Justice Riots for Peace and Justice.