Throughout my tech career, I always said that I was glad there were people who seemed to be interested in database design, because it meant I didn't have to worry about it.
I'm happy to tinker, and I would like it to be usable. I'm trying to figure out what I need to do to make it more smartphone friendly and wondering how many posts should be on the front page. After things settle down with classes, I should have time to try some more things.
I'd note that Bill Kristol wrote an internal memorandum for the Republican party essentially saying that passing health care under Clinton would mean the end of the Republican party. The memorandum is here
"The President's health care proposal is the most important domestic political event of his presidency. Its defeat is the most important immediate goal of the Republican party. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.
So it was shitty that Obama undercut Clinton, but Republican opposition was pretty much a constant, so one could argue that it wasn't a policy choice, it was what Obama had to do to undercut Republican opposition. This isn't to give Obama a pass, it is just to acknowledge that these policy arguments were not playing out on a blank slate.
IIRC correctly, Obama made an attack point of HRC's insurance 'mandate', during the primaries. Then, when he actually came to try to pass the ACA, the wonks explained to him that it was necessary, so he adopted it after all. I was a supporter of Obama, but I was deeply unimpressed.
In the end, the Rs torpedoed the 'mandate' as part of their performance theatre of opposing ACA while not being willing to take the electoral consequences of abolishing it. But they protected the insurance companies with restrictive enrolment periods instead, which turns out to be an inferior but workable solution.
(I think it wise to review how things have worked out after the row has died down. One might sometimes learn something.)
Ha, I've only just parsed PB's last comment properly (I think) to see that he is throwing shade at Obama for torpedoing HRC's mandatory health care proposal in the cause of realpolitik. Now, I was a supporter of HRC, and (obviously) of that proposal, but on the other hand the US electorate wasn't (for various infinite mirror variations of reasons), and Obama managed to pass at least a watered down version of the ACA. So, incremental progress as a result of realpolitik, or a failure? Very hard to say in my opinion.
I think it must be a weird time to be Ezra Klein (or similar). His gig is basically to have insightful things to say about where we're at, politically. And I'm not sure anyone can really make sense of it all.
We're dealing with a very strange group of political actors at the moment, people driven by weird and somewhat opaque personal agendas. Or maybe not opaque as much as inexplicable.
They really are a crew of weirdos. I guess that may sound kind of judge-y, but it would take a much better mind than mine to make sense of it all.
Better days, y'all. They will come. We're mostly olds here, so maybe not before we peg out, but they will come. In the meantime, hold fast to what is worthwhile.
LJ thank you for keeping things going here. I haven't been posting all that much but I appreciate the work you do to keep something on the front page every day.
Thank you!
And many many thanks as well to Michael and Janie and anyone else who made the transition happen.
I have at very best a journeyman's experience with MySql but it was all a few years ago at this point, and when I retired I made a commitment to myself to only get myself engaged with living things. Or at least analog things. I'm sorry I haven't been of greater help in keeping the lights on.
I will promise to deliver non-concise rants when stuff just gets too maddening. Or even when not.
And it's been a minute but it would be great to see old pals like Eric and Slarti jump in now and then. Although I think Slarti may be even deeper down the living thing / analog well than I am, at least in his free time.
But I ain't gonna speak for either of those guys, other than to say it would be great to hear from them here.
Re. the Blitzer scenario: I've just remember Obama's attacks on Hillary Clinton over her well-thought-out position on mandatory healthcare insurance. That's the sort of realpolitik Klein approves of.
If you do think strictly voluntary healthcare insurance is a good idea, which of course I don't, then you have to make healthcare meaningfully worse for anyone uninsured who could afford to be insured, otherwise why would anyone go to the expense. So chapeau to Blitzer's audience for intellectual consistency, if not for compassion.
Firstly, the essay GftNC linked above is really and expresses pretty much my view on the matter:
What the Public Memory of Charlie Kirk Revealed
For those who felt denigrated by his rhetoric, the bipartisan tributes to him as a champion of free speech augured something dangerous: the mainstreaming of formerly extremist views.
Secondly, I have started working at a school recently and I wonder more and more what this mainstreaming of extremism will do to our kids one day - to those who will be victims, to those who will just live in a world with different values than previously accepted and to those who will be perpetrators. This reactionary hate speech Kirk peddled is just diametrically opposed to any humanism and basic decency. Basically we spend half the day in one form or another telling kids to show respect and empathy for others and maybe some manners. And then these crazy people come along telling everyone the opposite is true:
You can tell the pupil sitting next to you she's stupid because she's black and her mother only got that job because she's black. You can crash the LGBT meeting and tell them they are disgusting child molesters. You can tell the Jewish boy that he's part of a vast conspiracy to rule the world and subdue the white race. You can tell the girls they are inferior, cannot get an abortion under ny cricumstances and have to submit to their husbands. You can tell the boy from Sudan, Ukraine, Mexico or wherever that he and his family are disgusting parasites feeding on the body of white America.
And then Klein tells us that we should somehow get onboard with all this because the Overton window has shifted and we have to embrace some weird version of doublethink. Let's just ditch all the values people have thought about and fought for hundreds of years and move to the ever rightward drifting "center". I rather think it's time for a "have you no decency" moment (though that was actually staged ... but pretty well).
My guess is that people who prefer preventable deaths over government assistance have been convinced that resources are so scarce that we can’t afford to have a government that prevents those deaths.
Maybe. But what I take away from all of it is less a concern about scarce resources per se, and more a feeling that folks don't want their money going to help "that person over there". For various definitions of "that person over there".
So less a matter of scarcity, and more a matter of "why should I pay for that guy?".
And to GFTNC's point, I do think all of that is related to folks feeling (correctly or not) that government is helping "that person over there", but not them. So, not that *government* lacks resources, so much as *they* lack resources, and nobody is helping *them*, so why should they support it?
That doesn't really explain the guy who'd throw his sister under the bus, but I do think it applies to a lot of folks. And they're not always wrong.
I do think that a lot of working class people were left behind by the neo-liberal triangulation stuff of the Clinton and (to a lesser degree, but still) Obama administrations. And I also do think that the (D) party of those years was tone-deaf to those folks' concerns.
I guess it was a way to win elections, but a lot of folks got left out in the cold.
He was making a transactional bet. A bad call, all of the "college educated moderate (R)'s in the Philly suburbs" did not suddenly decide to vote (D). Some likely did, many did not, because tax breaks and 401k's.
My guess is that people who prefer preventable deaths over government assistance have been convinced that resources are so scarce that we can't afford to have a government that prevents those deaths. The "we" excludes, whether those extreme "small government" people realize it or not, the percentage of people among us whose wealth is unimaginable to many of us "regular" people.
It's not the poor schmucks without insurance who are hoovering up our national wealth. Look elsewhere, says me.
You can only get so far without having the deeper conversation. The harder conversation.
I suspect this is true. And in no way was I suggesting that either approach was better, or more moral, just maybe a difference in personality/temperament/turn of mind. russell, I've found your stories about events which changed your idea of America and its people very resonant. And (as I have said many times) it's not just America: we see similar manifestations of selfishness and punitiveness in lots of places, including the UK - the only difference so far being the enablement or otherwise by the government in power. My hope is that when and if economic conditions for the majority improve (which I take to be more likely under the Ds), certain kinds of empathy and human fellow-feeling may rebound, in which case the deeper conversations will no doubt provide the fertiliser and the seedbed.
You might be able to do that a la Ezra Klein, by trying to meet them halfway – “just run some pro-life (D)’s”. Or similar. But as Coates calls out, you can’t get very far with that without throwing some set of folks under the bus.
I suppose I was thinking that, in this example, to run some pro-life Ds or similar in red states, you might end up with various more D-type policies being enacted, and (since I'm assuming that many fewer Ds than Rs are pro-life), that this would not materially change federal laws about abortion, or perhaps eventually the makeup of the SCOTUS, so would not really end up throwing pro-choice folks under the bus (and anyone who has been reading my comments here for years knows I am militantly pro-choice). But maybe that's a bit of a stretch? I certainly don't know. But I can hope...
As far as I can tell, the major infraction of Iran is being Shia rather than Sunni.** And therefore a rival of Saudi Arabia. We remain allies of the Saudis, and adamant goes of Iran. This despite Saudi Arabia also being a theocracy (albeit with a subservient monarchy as cover), and a far more fundamentalist and repressive one. Iranian women, for example, have rights and freedoms that Saudi women can only dream of.
Once upon a time, the Saudis controlled the price of oil, and that gave them a bargaining chip. We ignored little details like the oil price shock of the mid-70s, and continued the relationship because we felt we had to, lest they ramp up the price of oil on us again. (We also ignore the fact that the perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudis. Iranians have never done anything like that to us.)
Now, of course, we are a net oil exporter. If the price of oil goes up, we make money. But inertia is a powerful force. Someday, I hope, we cut the Saudis off. Not to switch to allying with Iran necessarily. But at least shifting to neutrality in their theological dispute.
** Not that most Americans know. Or have the least clue what the difference is. (For comparison, think Catholics and Protestants during the wars of religion.)
I find nous @5.56 extremely fascinating and thought-provoking, particularly the comparison with his college God squad and the whole concept of a transactional view of people.
seconded
It’s not that I think deep discussion about our shared issues is not worthwhile, it is that my instinct is to save the lives first
I'm not sure it's always possible to save the lives without engaging in the deeper discussion.
My thinking about where we're at as a country took a turn a while back, based on two events.
The first was during a (R) candidate's debate in 2011. The topic was health insurance, and Wolf Blitzer posed a hypothetical scenario - a healthy 30 year old man declines to buy health insurance, has an accident and falls into a coma, requiring intensive care.
Ron Paul said this was an example of people taking responsibility for themselves - "That's what freedom is all about - taking your own risks". To which Blitzer replied, "So should society just let him die?".
And the room erupted in a chorus of "Yeah!" and applause.
Paul's response to Blitzer was more measured - he felt that this was where charity (not government) should step in. But that was a room full of people who were very enthusiastic about the guy being left to die.
The second was an interview in the NYT with a guy in the upper midwest who was opposed to government involvement in health insurance. The guy's sister had a chronic illness and was being kept alive through a federal health insurance program, I forget if it was Medicare or Medicaid.
The interviewer pointed out that, if the guy's preferences were enacted in policy, his sister would die. The guy said he understood that, and still felt programs like the one keeping his sister alive shouldn't exist.
Long story short, I realized that a large number of people in this country were not operating from the same basic moral or ethical basis as, for instance, me. The differences were not matters of policy, but were much, much deeper and more fundamental.
It more or less gets back to Thatcher's idea that "there is no such thing as society". People sharing a polity have no obligation toward the safety or well being of others.
Root hog or die.
That is the divide that you have to cross if you want to save lives. If you want public policies and actions that get folks fed and housed and gets them access to health care, you have to get past the millions and millions and millions of people in this country who are basically OK with letting their neighbors die as long as it isn't government helping them out.
You might be able to do that a la Ezra Klein, by trying to meet them halfway - "just run some pro-life (D)'s". Or similar. But as Coates calls out, you can't get very far with that without throwing some set of folks under the bus.
So who gets thrown under the bus, and who gets to have their life saved?
In the podcast, Coates calls out the history of the social safety net stuff introduced by the New Deal. The way FDR made that happen was basically to make it available to everybody *but* black people. That was the transaction.
It's good that it happened at all, for most people, but a lot of folks were screwed.
I guess we could continue to try to inch forward, expanding the scope of "who counts" bit by bit. But we're going to continue to bump up against the folks who think the idea of a guy having an accident and dying because he was foolish is an applause line.
You can only get so far without having the deeper conversation. The harder conversation.
My son asked me at the weekend what this "Birthright Citizenship" case is about.
It's been my parenting practice to answer controversial questions as neutrally as possible. But the facts in this case are not neutral. And he's a grown-up now.
"Well," I explained, "the text of the 14th amendment says, with no ambiguity whatever, that anyone born in the US while not enjoying diplomatic protection becomes a citizen. Trump doesn't like that, because sometimes foreigners have children. The Supreme Court gets to rule on what the Constitution means. In this case the meaning is clear, but on the other hand the far right on the Court. which is two-thirds of them, likes to give Trump whatever he wants, so who knows what they'll do."
"That's ridiculous," said he.
"Alas," said I, "being ridiculous doesn't stop it happening. In the last week or so, and off the top of my head, Trump has done the following:
- used regulatory powers to bully a major television network into suspending a comedian indefinitely, because he made fun of Trump's obsession with building a White House ballroom.
- claimed $15bn in damages from the New York Times because they published a true account of Trump's bawdy birthday wishes to Epstein written twenty something years ago. But the 85-page lawsuit was mostly Trump boasting about how great he thinks he is, and contained no clear account of damage suffered, so the judge rejected it.
- made an incoherent speech to the UN complaining that its escalator didn't work properly, denying global warming, and saying that he could run every other country better than its current government. The assembled ambassadors seemed not to agree.
- held a press conference to proclaim an utterly absurd theory that acetaminophen, which he can't pronounce, causes autism, throwing in further nonsense about the purported importance of giving infants more vaccine injections rather than fewer.
- had James Comey, formerly director of the FBI, indicted for perjury. The case is so weak that he couldn't find anyone in the DoJ willing to bring the charges, and had to appoint a lawyer with no experience as a prosecutor to do it.
- announced on social media that he's sending troops into Portland, Oregon, which he described as "war-ravaged". The city itself, which filmed reports show as boringly peaceful, doesn't want them.
- fired, or attempted to fire, Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board, in defiance of the letter and spirit of the Federal Reserve Act, which says he can't do it (this one is going to the Supreme Court also, so again who knows what will happen).
- boasted that he's brought about peace between 'Aberbaijan' and Albania, and also between Armenia and Cambodia.
I thought it worth listing these things (there may be others just as bad I left out) because we're becoming numb to the extent of Trump's abuse of power, and the stupidity and ignorance he brings to it. It's incomprehensible to the rest of the world that the Republican Party is content to go along with it.
On “Ad futurum”
I wrote something in FORTRAN about 38 years ago. Is that good?
Seriously, though, thank you for your efforts, lj.
"
i have WP programming experience, and MySQL.
i can't promise i have enough of either to be of use. but if you think you might need me, give a shout.
"
Are there any folks with WordPress experience, or some knowledge of mySQL?
Grok volunteers... :)
Other LLMs might be helpful too.
MySQL Assistance: Queries, Design, Optimization
"
I'm 25+ years out-of-date and out of practice with SQL, and am more of a danger than a help at this point.
"
...or some knowledge of mySQL?
Throughout my tech career, I always said that I was glad there were people who seemed to be interested in database design, because it meant I didn't have to worry about it.
"
I'm happy to tinker, and I would like it to be usable. I'm trying to figure out what I need to do to make it more smartphone friendly and wondering how many posts should be on the front page. After things settle down with classes, I should have time to try some more things.
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
I'd note that Bill Kristol wrote an internal memorandum for the Republican party essentially saying that passing health care under Clinton would mean the end of the Republican party. The memorandum is here
"The President's health care proposal is the most important domestic political event of his presidency. Its defeat is the most important immediate goal of the Republican party. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.
So it was shitty that Obama undercut Clinton, but Republican opposition was pretty much a constant, so one could argue that it wasn't a policy choice, it was what Obama had to do to undercut Republican opposition. This isn't to give Obama a pass, it is just to acknowledge that these policy arguments were not playing out on a blank slate.
"
IIRC correctly, Obama made an attack point of HRC's insurance 'mandate', during the primaries. Then, when he actually came to try to pass the ACA, the wonks explained to him that it was necessary, so he adopted it after all. I was a supporter of Obama, but I was deeply unimpressed.
In the end, the Rs torpedoed the 'mandate' as part of their performance theatre of opposing ACA while not being willing to take the electoral consequences of abolishing it. But they protected the insurance companies with restrictive enrolment periods instead, which turns out to be an inferior but workable solution.
(I think it wise to review how things have worked out after the row has died down. One might sometimes learn something.)
On “Ad futurum”
What Tony P said, in both comments!
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
Ha, I've only just parsed PB's last comment properly (I think) to see that he is throwing shade at Obama for torpedoing HRC's mandatory health care proposal in the cause of realpolitik. Now, I was a supporter of HRC, and (obviously) of that proposal, but on the other hand the US electorate wasn't (for various infinite mirror variations of reasons), and Obama managed to pass at least a watered down version of the ACA. So, incremental progress as a result of realpolitik, or a failure? Very hard to say in my opinion.
On “Ad futurum”
lj,
My vote is: keep the current layout and save yourself some ... fun(?) And thanks again!
--TP
"
nooneithinkisinmytree,
It's great to see you again! I hope you're doing well despite the fact that most of what you warned us about for years has come to pass.
--TP
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
We can only hope the kids we've kicked off our lawns, when we weren't too busy yelling at clouds, will get things straightened out.
"
Apropos of nothing in particular:
I think it must be a weird time to be Ezra Klein (or similar). His gig is basically to have insightful things to say about where we're at, politically. And I'm not sure anyone can really make sense of it all.
We're dealing with a very strange group of political actors at the moment, people driven by weird and somewhat opaque personal agendas. Or maybe not opaque as much as inexplicable.
They really are a crew of weirdos. I guess that may sound kind of judge-y, but it would take a much better mind than mine to make sense of it all.
Better days, y'all. They will come. We're mostly olds here, so maybe not before we peg out, but they will come. In the meantime, hold fast to what is worthwhile.
On “Ad futurum”
LJ thank you for keeping things going here. I haven't been posting all that much but I appreciate the work you do to keep something on the front page every day.
Thank you!
And many many thanks as well to Michael and Janie and anyone else who made the transition happen.
I have at very best a journeyman's experience with MySql but it was all a few years ago at this point, and when I retired I made a commitment to myself to only get myself engaged with living things. Or at least analog things. I'm sorry I haven't been of greater help in keeping the lights on.
I will promise to deliver non-concise rants when stuff just gets too maddening. Or even when not.
And it's been a minute but it would be great to see old pals like Eric and Slarti jump in now and then. Although I think Slarti may be even deeper down the living thing / analog well than I am, at least in his free time.
But I ain't gonna speak for either of those guys, other than to say it would be great to hear from them here.
Also, too - hi!
"
hi
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
Re. the Blitzer scenario: I've just remember Obama's attacks on Hillary Clinton over her well-thought-out position on mandatory healthcare insurance. That's the sort of realpolitik Klein approves of.
If you do think strictly voluntary healthcare insurance is a good idea, which of course I don't, then you have to make healthcare meaningfully worse for anyone uninsured who could afford to be insured, otherwise why would anyone go to the expense. So chapeau to Blitzer's audience for intellectual consistency, if not for compassion.
"
Firstly, the essay GftNC linked above is really and expresses pretty much my view on the matter:
What the Public Memory of Charlie Kirk Revealed
For those who felt denigrated by his rhetoric, the bipartisan tributes to him as a champion of free speech augured something dangerous: the mainstreaming of formerly extremist views.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/magazine/charlie-kirk-rhetoric.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU8.E_Qk.vE_VAYwg6Chi&smid=url-share
Secondly, I have started working at a school recently and I wonder more and more what this mainstreaming of extremism will do to our kids one day - to those who will be victims, to those who will just live in a world with different values than previously accepted and to those who will be perpetrators. This reactionary hate speech Kirk peddled is just diametrically opposed to any humanism and basic decency. Basically we spend half the day in one form or another telling kids to show respect and empathy for others and maybe some manners. And then these crazy people come along telling everyone the opposite is true:
You can tell the pupil sitting next to you she's stupid because she's black and her mother only got that job because she's black. You can crash the LGBT meeting and tell them they are disgusting child molesters. You can tell the Jewish boy that he's part of a vast conspiracy to rule the world and subdue the white race. You can tell the girls they are inferior, cannot get an abortion under ny cricumstances and have to submit to their husbands. You can tell the boy from Sudan, Ukraine, Mexico or wherever that he and his family are disgusting parasites feeding on the body of white America.
And then Klein tells us that we should somehow get onboard with all this because the Overton window has shifted and we have to embrace some weird version of doublethink. Let's just ditch all the values people have thought about and fought for hundreds of years and move to the ever rightward drifting "center". I rather think it's time for a "have you no decency" moment (though that was actually staged ... but pretty well).
/rant
"
My guess is that people who prefer preventable deaths over government assistance have been convinced that resources are so scarce that we can’t afford to have a government that prevents those deaths.
Maybe. But what I take away from all of it is less a concern about scarce resources per se, and more a feeling that folks don't want their money going to help "that person over there". For various definitions of "that person over there".
So less a matter of scarcity, and more a matter of "why should I pay for that guy?".
And to GFTNC's point, I do think all of that is related to folks feeling (correctly or not) that government is helping "that person over there", but not them. So, not that *government* lacks resources, so much as *they* lack resources, and nobody is helping *them*, so why should they support it?
That doesn't really explain the guy who'd throw his sister under the bus, but I do think it applies to a lot of folks. And they're not always wrong.
I do think that a lot of working class people were left behind by the neo-liberal triangulation stuff of the Clinton and (to a lesser degree, but still) Obama administrations. And I also do think that the (D) party of those years was tone-deaf to those folks' concerns.
I guess it was a way to win elections, but a lot of folks got left out in the cold.
Don't believe me, let Senator Chuck Schumer break it down for you.
He was making a transactional bet. A bad call, all of the "college educated moderate (R)'s in the Philly suburbs" did not suddenly decide to vote (D). Some likely did, many did not, because tax breaks and 401k's.
Schumer made a bet, and lost. As did we all.
"
My guess is that people who prefer preventable deaths over government assistance have been convinced that resources are so scarce that we can't afford to have a government that prevents those deaths. The "we" excludes, whether those extreme "small government" people realize it or not, the percentage of people among us whose wealth is unimaginable to many of us "regular" people.
It's not the poor schmucks without insurance who are hoovering up our national wealth. Look elsewhere, says me.
"
You can only get so far without having the deeper conversation. The harder conversation.
I suspect this is true. And in no way was I suggesting that either approach was better, or more moral, just maybe a difference in personality/temperament/turn of mind. russell, I've found your stories about events which changed your idea of America and its people very resonant. And (as I have said many times) it's not just America: we see similar manifestations of selfishness and punitiveness in lots of places, including the UK - the only difference so far being the enablement or otherwise by the government in power. My hope is that when and if economic conditions for the majority improve (which I take to be more likely under the Ds), certain kinds of empathy and human fellow-feeling may rebound, in which case the deeper conversations will no doubt provide the fertiliser and the seedbed.
You might be able to do that a la Ezra Klein, by trying to meet them halfway – “just run some pro-life (D)’s”. Or similar. But as Coates calls out, you can’t get very far with that without throwing some set of folks under the bus.
I suppose I was thinking that, in this example, to run some pro-life Ds or similar in red states, you might end up with various more D-type policies being enacted, and (since I'm assuming that many fewer Ds than Rs are pro-life), that this would not materially change federal laws about abortion, or perhaps eventually the makeup of the SCOTUS, so would not really end up throwing pro-choice folks under the bus (and anyone who has been reading my comments here for years knows I am militantly pro-choice). But maybe that's a bit of a stretch? I certainly don't know. But I can hope...
On “Ran, ran, ran, I blog Iran”
As far as I can tell, the major infraction of Iran is being Shia rather than Sunni.** And therefore a rival of Saudi Arabia. We remain allies of the Saudis, and adamant goes of Iran. This despite Saudi Arabia also being a theocracy (albeit with a subservient monarchy as cover), and a far more fundamentalist and repressive one. Iranian women, for example, have rights and freedoms that Saudi women can only dream of.
Once upon a time, the Saudis controlled the price of oil, and that gave them a bargaining chip. We ignored little details like the oil price shock of the mid-70s, and continued the relationship because we felt we had to, lest they ramp up the price of oil on us again. (We also ignore the fact that the perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudis. Iranians have never done anything like that to us.)
Now, of course, we are a net oil exporter. If the price of oil goes up, we make money. But inertia is a powerful force. Someday, I hope, we cut the Saudis off. Not to switch to allying with Iran necessarily. But at least shifting to neutrality in their theological dispute.
** Not that most Americans know. Or have the least clue what the difference is. (For comparison, think Catholics and Protestants during the wars of religion.)
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
I find nous @5.56 extremely fascinating and thought-provoking, particularly the comparison with his college God squad and the whole concept of a transactional view of people.
seconded
It’s not that I think deep discussion about our shared issues is not worthwhile, it is that my instinct is to save the lives first
I'm not sure it's always possible to save the lives without engaging in the deeper discussion.
My thinking about where we're at as a country took a turn a while back, based on two events.
The first was during a (R) candidate's debate in 2011. The topic was health insurance, and Wolf Blitzer posed a hypothetical scenario - a healthy 30 year old man declines to buy health insurance, has an accident and falls into a coma, requiring intensive care.
Ron Paul said this was an example of people taking responsibility for themselves - "That's what freedom is all about - taking your own risks". To which Blitzer replied, "So should society just let him die?".
And the room erupted in a chorus of "Yeah!" and applause.
Paul's response to Blitzer was more measured - he felt that this was where charity (not government) should step in. But that was a room full of people who were very enthusiastic about the guy being left to die.
The second was an interview in the NYT with a guy in the upper midwest who was opposed to government involvement in health insurance. The guy's sister had a chronic illness and was being kept alive through a federal health insurance program, I forget if it was Medicare or Medicaid.
The interviewer pointed out that, if the guy's preferences were enacted in policy, his sister would die. The guy said he understood that, and still felt programs like the one keeping his sister alive shouldn't exist.
Long story short, I realized that a large number of people in this country were not operating from the same basic moral or ethical basis as, for instance, me. The differences were not matters of policy, but were much, much deeper and more fundamental.
It more or less gets back to Thatcher's idea that "there is no such thing as society". People sharing a polity have no obligation toward the safety or well being of others.
Root hog or die.
That is the divide that you have to cross if you want to save lives. If you want public policies and actions that get folks fed and housed and gets them access to health care, you have to get past the millions and millions and millions of people in this country who are basically OK with letting their neighbors die as long as it isn't government helping them out.
You might be able to do that a la Ezra Klein, by trying to meet them halfway - "just run some pro-life (D)'s". Or similar. But as Coates calls out, you can't get very far with that without throwing some set of folks under the bus.
So who gets thrown under the bus, and who gets to have their life saved?
In the podcast, Coates calls out the history of the social safety net stuff introduced by the New Deal. The way FDR made that happen was basically to make it available to everybody *but* black people. That was the transaction.
It's good that it happened at all, for most people, but a lot of folks were screwed.
I guess we could continue to try to inch forward, expanding the scope of "who counts" bit by bit. But we're going to continue to bump up against the folks who think the idea of a guy having an accident and dying because he was foolish is an applause line.
You can only get so far without having the deeper conversation. The harder conversation.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
My son asked me at the weekend what this "Birthright Citizenship" case is about.
It's been my parenting practice to answer controversial questions as neutrally as possible. But the facts in this case are not neutral. And he's a grown-up now.
"Well," I explained, "the text of the 14th amendment says, with no ambiguity whatever, that anyone born in the US while not enjoying diplomatic protection becomes a citizen. Trump doesn't like that, because sometimes foreigners have children. The Supreme Court gets to rule on what the Constitution means. In this case the meaning is clear, but on the other hand the far right on the Court. which is two-thirds of them, likes to give Trump whatever he wants, so who knows what they'll do."
"That's ridiculous," said he.
"Alas," said I, "being ridiculous doesn't stop it happening. In the last week or so, and off the top of my head, Trump has done the following:
- used regulatory powers to bully a major television network into suspending a comedian indefinitely, because he made fun of Trump's obsession with building a White House ballroom.
- claimed $15bn in damages from the New York Times because they published a true account of Trump's bawdy birthday wishes to Epstein written twenty something years ago. But the 85-page lawsuit was mostly Trump boasting about how great he thinks he is, and contained no clear account of damage suffered, so the judge rejected it.
- made an incoherent speech to the UN complaining that its escalator didn't work properly, denying global warming, and saying that he could run every other country better than its current government. The assembled ambassadors seemed not to agree.
- held a press conference to proclaim an utterly absurd theory that acetaminophen, which he can't pronounce, causes autism, throwing in further nonsense about the purported importance of giving infants more vaccine injections rather than fewer.
- had James Comey, formerly director of the FBI, indicted for perjury. The case is so weak that he couldn't find anyone in the DoJ willing to bring the charges, and had to appoint a lawyer with no experience as a prosecutor to do it.
- announced on social media that he's sending troops into Portland, Oregon, which he described as "war-ravaged". The city itself, which filmed reports show as boringly peaceful, doesn't want them.
- fired, or attempted to fire, Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board, in defiance of the letter and spirit of the Federal Reserve Act, which says he can't do it (this one is going to the Supreme Court also, so again who knows what will happen).
- boasted that he's brought about peace between 'Aberbaijan' and Albania, and also between Armenia and Cambodia.
I thought it worth listing these things (there may be others just as bad I left out) because we're becoming numb to the extent of Trump's abuse of power, and the stupidity and ignorance he brings to it. It's incomprehensible to the rest of the world that the Republican Party is content to go along with it.
On “Ezra Coates DESTROYS Ta-Nehisi Klein!!!”
The malevolent racism comes first: the KKK was not going to be led to righteousness by scholarly exegesis.
Conversely, one hopes that theists do not seek to do good merely because scripture says they should.
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