In 2011, 30 percent of white evangelicals said that “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” Now, 72 percent say so
Kind of a necessity for them. If they still held to expecting morality of elected officials, there's no way they could vote for Trump.
I think you make a good point about people being complex. So the first question that's worth asking about someone whose politics you question is Why are you supporting this horrible person for office. The answer can be surprising.
Take one obvious example that most of us are old enough to remember. There are people who supported Clinton both times that he won, simply because they liked the platform he ran on and despite his character flaws. There are others who opposed him, not because they necessarily disliked his platform, but because they believed that character matters in elected officials and found his objectionable. (Personally, I think him a pretty appalling excuse for a human being, even if I like many of the things he tried to do while in office.)
Things get more complex when you find people that have essentially identical views on the issues. Faced by a candidate whom they agree with on some issues and disagree with on others, they may vote differently based on how they prioritize the various issues.
Certainly there are extreme cases -- Trump, for example, has absolutely nothing that I can see to recommend him. Unless you somehow manage to see politics are merely a show, with zero real world consequences. But in general people, and circumstances, are rarely binary good/bad.
Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?
In pretty much any country, no group has a stronger work ethic than immigrants. About the only exceptions are places where most of the immigrants are retirees or the idle rich.
The US is unusual only in the numbers of immigrants that we have been blessed (and we have been blessed) with. Not unique, certainly, but unusual.
Oh, I expect that they would be satisfied with establishing whether there had been miscegenation in the last generation or two. The old 1 drop approach having died of all the mixing in the century and a half since owners could, and did, rape their slaves with impunity.
One could try just going by melanin, except that would restrict testing to late winter and early spring. Otherwise summer tans start confusing the issue vs permanent sun tans.
And tends to be an enthusiasm of people whose "understanding" of the American frontier is limited to Hollywood movies and old TV westerns. When the reality was that, in the Old West people cooperated to survive. And those who didn't didn't.
As a plus the new categories would allow the reintroduction of miscegenation laws.
As a small bit of pedantry, what we had were anti-miscegenation laws.
At least this time around it would be possible (maybe not feasible as a general rule, but possible) to use DNA testing to determine if those laws had been violated. Although there might be an issue with the fact that some (whisper it!) expertise is required to run such tests and interpret the results.
"Relinquishing" as opposed to "being stripped of".
I'm put in mind of the executives who get offered the choice of resign or get fired. Or the occasional enlisted military methodology (for undesirable, but not actually dangerous, tasks): "I want 3 volunteers. You, you, and you."
Colleges and universities have an issue with silos. The mindset is that everything ought to fit into one of them.
They will (depending on the particular college) accept a double major. But the mindset is that, whatever the two majors, they must have some kind of synergy. Thus someone may have an undergraduate double major in chemistry and biology, and the faculty will nod sagely and say "aiming for biochemistry in grad school" (there being no undergraduate program in biochemistry). They can wrap their heads around that.
But I had a double major in Mechanical Engineering (fluid mechanics) and in Cultural Anthropology. Drove the professors in both majors nuts. In their minds, there must be some synergy there somewhere. They were seriously frustrated that, apparently, I could see it but they could not. The idea that I just found two disparate subjects which both interested me? Simply inconceivable, apparently.
It seems like the assumption of a shared language base actually rests on two factors: race, and a largely shared script. Neither of which really impact language.
For race, only consider Swedish, Hungarian, Spanish, and Ukranian. The Europeans who are native speakers of those languages are all the same race. But the languages are not related.
As for a shared script, note that the Latin script is used not only for all of the languages of Western and Northern Europe, but for the hundreds of languages of pretty much all of Sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention Vietnamese. The linguistic overlap is basically nonexistant (barring loan words, of course).
Sure, it would be convenient if learning Japanese was relevant to learning Korean or Chinese (either Mandarin or Cantonese, or one of the other "dialects" -- actually distinct languages rather than real dialects). But while all use related scripts, the spoken languages, as you discovered, are quite different. Just to state the obvious, Chinese is a tonal** language, which Japanese is definitely not. (I'm not familiar enough with Korean to know which, if either, it resembles.)
** In case anyone here is unfamiliar with the term, the only example in English is the use a rising tone in the last syllable of a sentence to indicate a question. The meaning of the word isn't changed. In contrast, Chinese uses 5 (IIRC) different tones to differentiate unrelated words. See the chart here for examples.
russell, the critical phrase there was "by comparison.". I don't think that, in any absolute sense, it will be quick or easy. I just think that the foreign relations impact will be harder and slower to repair. In part because they can decline to join us in anything, whereas we are basically stuck with each other. (The dreams of Steven Miller, et al. notwithstanding.)
There are times when it's a great coping mechanism to be a compulsive optimist. Although that should probably be a *relative* optimist.
I expect the nation will take a lot (more) damage in the near term. But I think it is, eventually, recoverable damage. Not without a lot of work. And in a lot of cases, it will probably take a couple of generations for the memories to fade. Definitely, in the case of our foreign relations.
But consider our relations (pre-Trump!) with Germany and Japan. Economic competitors to some degree, sure. But even the oldest of us are only the children of the folks who fought World War II, and it's never had the same emotional impact that it did for them. For us, it's just history; for our children it's mostly ancient history.
The rebuilding at home will be, by comparison with the destruction of trust, be quick and easy. Relatively. Lots and lots of people hurt in the meantime. But horrible as that is, overall it's a long way from "permanent".
And (see compulsive optimist) I could see us getting to something resembling the Progressive Era that followed the previous Gilded Age. Not just fixing the trashed stuff, by completely new improvements.
Thank you all for the information and suggestions.
I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.
Just for something completely different, I'm in Dublin, Ireland this week (conference). So I wandered over to Trinity College to check out The Book of Kells Experience.
A nicely done exhibition. I was particularly pleased to be able to see the Book itself. In a darkened room, and only the page it happened to be turned to. But still beautiful. And lots of other stuff from the book and about it. Way cool!
Off topic
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics. So far, I haven't grasped what I'm doing wrong. But sometimes I get the bar with a choice of such things, and sometimes I don't.
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)
The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.
And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?
** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.
My impression was that British support for the monarchy has been based, for most of her lifetime, on support for Queen Elizabeth herself. King Charles simply doesn't have that lifetime establishment of support. So he is forced (I have no idea if he recognizes it or not) to act in ways, and in circumstances, that his mother never had to worry about.
In the specific case of Andrew, it looks (from across the pond and across a continent in addition) like the Crown is going to have to throw him under the bus -- whatever that amounts to in detail. Which is probably what he deserves, but isn't going to be easy for his brother. And, if Andrew's past behavior ends up taking down the monarchy, the fiddling details will likely take years, if not decades, to sort out.
It's true that there are undoubtedly a lot of other people, especially but not exclusively in the US, who interacted with Epstein and who deserve the same. Whether they, too, will get what they deserve depends on how many names get named, and with what kind of details.
The contortions that our House Speaker is going thru, and the amount of damage he (or Trump) is willing accept, in order to avoid making the "Epstein Files" public suggest that there is a whole lot of there there. We live in interesting times.
I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that [Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup].
Would that suggest that the whole point of flying those Confederate flags isn't about the Confederacy? Rather it's about "owning the libs". Thus there is no point to doing it in north central Texas -- there aren't enough liberals there to make it worth the effort.
Oh, a benevolent monarchy (or a benevolent dictatorship of any sort) actually has the potential to work pretty well. The problem is, there's no way to assure that the monarch will always be benevolent. Not to mention competent to do the job.
Which is why, after experiencing one, the population tends to develop a strong preference for some other form of government. Assuming they have heard of one, and can imagine living under it. Sometimes they deal with that by emigrating to somewhere that provides that alternative. Other times, they rise up, eliminate the monarch (and his supporting cast), and try to set up something better. It can take a few iterations to get the necessary, but not always obvious, checks and balances in place.
The extent to which these folks seem to have mush for brains (to phrase it politely) is astounding. In this particular instance, it makes me think that all that's required to get thru law school and pass the bar exam is a good memory. No actual cognitive ability necessary.
That wasn't previously my view, for all that I have a somewhat jaundiced view of some lawyers. But the ones who work for Trump, personally or as his appointees in the Department of Justice, are not only ethically challenged but, in the evidence, dumb as rocks besides. No offense intended to any rocks in the audience.
Do that for 3 or 4 or 5 election cycles. They’ll lose a lot, and spend a lot of money on doing so. And they’ll win some. And over time, they’ll win more.
I wonder if part if the problem is that, every 4 years, the party sees a Presidential candidate upending ongoing programs in order to do things their way. And it works for them, because they end up outspending the DNC by a substantial amount.
To get something like this in place is going to require changing where (organizationally) money gets raised and allocated. From candidate-centeic to party-centric. That, in turn, will require changing the incentives for donors. Not sure how you do that.
I notice that Trump is now demanding that the Chinese resume buying soybeans from the US. One suspects that he discovered that Midwestern farmers are seriously upset to have a major market snatched out from under them. (Especially those who didn't see it coming, and so failedto plant something else this year. Too late now to do anything but plow the crop under as fertalizer for next year.)
He seems oblivious to the fact that the Chinese have found alternative suppliers. Which is to say, they don't need to buy from us. As opposed to, say, refined rare earths, for which we (and, for that matter the rest of the world) have no alternative sources of supply.
We could develop them, of course -- "rare earths" aren't particularly rare; just challenging to separate from each other. It would just take 5-10 years, even assuming zero regulatory constraints (i.e. no environmental impact reports, no planning permissions, etc.). Can't expect Trump to grasp that, of course.
I could easily see the Chinese playing hardball on this. If only to show the wannabe his place. Hey, it keeps working for Putin, so why not?
it seems natural that rural culture should be similarly homgeneous
The question would seem to be: why is it Southern rural culture which is the model? Why not the Midwest? Or the Mountain West? They all have significant rural populations, too.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “People and poliltics”
In 2011, 30 percent of white evangelicals said that “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” Now, 72 percent say so
Kind of a necessity for them. If they still held to expecting morality of elected officials, there's no way they could vote for Trump.
Does clarify what their priorities are.
"
I think you make a good point about people being complex. So the first question that's worth asking about someone whose politics you question is Why are you supporting this horrible person for office. The answer can be surprising.
Take one obvious example that most of us are old enough to remember. There are people who supported Clinton both times that he won, simply because they liked the platform he ran on and despite his character flaws. There are others who opposed him, not because they necessarily disliked his platform, but because they believed that character matters in elected officials and found his objectionable. (Personally, I think him a pretty appalling excuse for a human being, even if I like many of the things he tried to do while in office.)
Things get more complex when you find people that have essentially identical views on the issues. Faced by a candidate whom they agree with on some issues and disagree with on others, they may vote differently based on how they prioritize the various issues.
Certainly there are extreme cases -- Trump, for example, has absolutely nothing that I can see to recommend him. Unless you somehow manage to see politics are merely a show, with zero real world consequences. But in general people, and circumstances, are rarely binary good/bad.
On “Another variety in the diversity of greasy”
But cleaned up kinda misses the point, doesn't it?
On “Horrifying stuff”
Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?
In pretty much any country, no group has a stronger work ethic than immigrants. About the only exceptions are places where most of the immigrants are retirees or the idle rich.
The US is unusual only in the numbers of immigrants that we have been blessed (and we have been blessed) with. Not unique, certainly, but unusual.
"
Oh, I expect that they would be satisfied with establishing whether there had been miscegenation in the last generation or two. The old 1 drop approach having died of all the mixing in the century and a half since owners could, and did, rape their slaves with impunity.
One could try just going by melanin, except that would restrict testing to late winter and early spring. Otherwise summer tans start confusing the issue vs permanent sun tans.
"
And tends to be an enthusiasm of people whose "understanding" of the American frontier is limited to Hollywood movies and old TV westerns. When the reality was that, in the Old West people cooperated to survive. And those who didn't didn't.
"
As a plus the new categories would allow the reintroduction of miscegenation laws.
As a small bit of pedantry, what we had were anti-miscegenation laws.
At least this time around it would be possible (maybe not feasible as a general rule, but possible) to use DNA testing to determine if those laws had been violated. Although there might be an issue with the fact that some (whisper it!) expertise is required to run such tests and interpret the results.
"
Snarki, that's nonsense. No believing Christian fundamentalist accepts that Mormons are real Christians. Farther outside the pale than even Catholics.
"
Zing!
What more can be said? How he copes with the cognitive dissonance, how his family copes, is a mystery.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
"Relinquishing" as opposed to "being stripped of".
I'm put in mind of the executives who get offered the choice of resign or get fired. Or the occasional enlisted military methodology (for undesirable, but not actually dangerous, tasks): "I want 3 volunteers. You, you, and you."
On “Ramsayer, Korea and me”
Colleges and universities have an issue with silos. The mindset is that everything ought to fit into one of them.
They will (depending on the particular college) accept a double major. But the mindset is that, whatever the two majors, they must have some kind of synergy. Thus someone may have an undergraduate double major in chemistry and biology, and the faculty will nod sagely and say "aiming for biochemistry in grad school" (there being no undergraduate program in biochemistry). They can wrap their heads around that.
But I had a double major in Mechanical Engineering (fluid mechanics) and in Cultural Anthropology. Drove the professors in both majors nuts. In their minds, there must be some synergy there somewhere. They were seriously frustrated that, apparently, I could see it but they could not. The idea that I just found two disparate subjects which both interested me? Simply inconceivable, apparently.
"
It seems like the assumption of a shared language base actually rests on two factors: race, and a largely shared script. Neither of which really impact language.
For race, only consider Swedish, Hungarian, Spanish, and Ukranian. The Europeans who are native speakers of those languages are all the same race. But the languages are not related.
As for a shared script, note that the Latin script is used not only for all of the languages of Western and Northern Europe, but for the hundreds of languages of pretty much all of Sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention Vietnamese. The linguistic overlap is basically nonexistant (barring loan words, of course).
Sure, it would be convenient if learning Japanese was relevant to learning Korean or Chinese (either Mandarin or Cantonese, or one of the other "dialects" -- actually distinct languages rather than real dialects). But while all use related scripts, the spoken languages, as you discovered, are quite different. Just to state the obvious, Chinese is a tonal** language, which Japanese is definitely not. (I'm not familiar enough with Korean to know which, if either, it resembles.)
** In case anyone here is unfamiliar with the term, the only example in English is the use a rising tone in the last syllable of a sentence to indicate a question. The meaning of the word isn't changed. In contrast, Chinese uses 5 (IIRC) different tones to differentiate unrelated words. See the chart here for examples.
On “I got depressed so I bought hydrangeas”
russell, the critical phrase there was "by comparison.". I don't think that, in any absolute sense, it will be quick or easy. I just think that the foreign relations impact will be harder and slower to repair. In part because they can decline to join us in anything, whereas we are basically stuck with each other. (The dreams of Steven Miller, et al. notwithstanding.)
"
There are times when it's a great coping mechanism to be a compulsive optimist. Although that should probably be a *relative* optimist.
I expect the nation will take a lot (more) damage in the near term. But I think it is, eventually, recoverable damage. Not without a lot of work. And in a lot of cases, it will probably take a couple of generations for the memories to fade. Definitely, in the case of our foreign relations.
But consider our relations (pre-Trump!) with Germany and Japan. Economic competitors to some degree, sure. But even the oldest of us are only the children of the folks who fought World War II, and it's never had the same emotional impact that it did for them. For us, it's just history; for our children it's mostly ancient history.
The rebuilding at home will be, by comparison with the destruction of trust, be quick and easy. Relatively. Lots and lots of people hurt in the meantime. But horrible as that is, overall it's a long way from "permanent".
And (see compulsive optimist) I could see us getting to something resembling the Progressive Era that followed the previous Gilded Age. Not just fixing the trashed stuff, by completely new improvements.
On “Something Different”
Thank you all for the information and suggestions.
I suppose you could say I'm at least somewhat into this stuff. Since I'm undertaking to produce a scroll which is in that mode, albeit with very different content. I've done such in the past, but I'm seriously out of practice. Like three decades out of practice. So I need all the help I can get.
"
Just for something completely different, I'm in Dublin, Ireland this week (conference). So I wandered over to Trinity College to check out The Book of Kells Experience.
A nicely done exhibition. I was particularly pleased to be able to see the Book itself. In a darkened room, and only the page it happened to be turned to. But still beautiful. And lots of other stuff from the book and about it. Way cool!
On “Monarchy in the UK”
Off topic
Ya know, it was really handy to be able to preview comments. Just to keep control over italics. So far, I haven't grasped what I'm doing wrong. But sometimes I get the bar with a choice of such things, and sometimes I don't.
"
The writer’s thesis was that the US would get better quality presidents if we had a powerless monarchy to be the focus for the people who are attracted by shiny object, which would make a president’s role more that of a policy wonk.
Perhaps a better, i.e. less contentious, way to put this is: There are advantages to separating the job of head of state from the job of head of government. One spends most of his time on ceremonial functions. The other spends most of his time managing the executive branch of the (typically national) government. (Not to say that there might be something to be said for taking the same principle down to the state/province/region level.)
The first question someone proposing such a system needs to answer is: How do you pick those two people? In Britain, for example, the chief of state, the monarch, is a hereditary position, while the head of government is (indirectly**) elected. My impression is that the other (nominal) monarchies in Europe do something similar. There are doubtless other approaches, but I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in the field to know of examples.
And this leads to the question for Britain, if they decide to abolish their monarchy: How do you choose a new chief of state going forward? I mean, you could just dump the necessary tasks in the PM. But have recent ones really demonstrated that they have the bandwidth to take in the additional work?
** It would be rude for someone from outside to describe the method as a kludge. Which is why I resisted the temptation.
"
My impression was that British support for the monarchy has been based, for most of her lifetime, on support for Queen Elizabeth herself. King Charles simply doesn't have that lifetime establishment of support. So he is forced (I have no idea if he recognizes it or not) to act in ways, and in circumstances, that his mother never had to worry about.
In the specific case of Andrew, it looks (from across the pond and across a continent in addition) like the Crown is going to have to throw him under the bus -- whatever that amounts to in detail. Which is probably what he deserves, but isn't going to be easy for his brother. And, if Andrew's past behavior ends up taking down the monarchy, the fiddling details will likely take years, if not decades, to sort out.
It's true that there are undoubtedly a lot of other people, especially but not exclusively in the US, who interacted with Epstein and who deserve the same. Whether they, too, will get what they deserve depends on how many names get named, and with what kind of details.
The contortions that our House Speaker is going thru, and the amount of damage he (or Trump) is willing accept, in order to avoid making the "Epstein Files" public suggest that there is a whole lot of there there. We live in interesting times.
On “The South shall writhe again”
I live in north central Texas, and I never see anything like that [Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup].
Would that suggest that the whole point of flying those Confederate flags isn't about the Confederacy? Rather it's about "owning the libs". Thus there is no point to doing it in north central Texas -- there aren't enough liberals there to make it worth the effort.
On “Bal des Ardents”
Oh, a benevolent monarchy (or a benevolent dictatorship of any sort) actually has the potential to work pretty well. The problem is, there's no way to assure that the monarch will always be benevolent. Not to mention competent to do the job.
Which is why, after experiencing one, the population tends to develop a strong preference for some other form of government. Assuming they have heard of one, and can imagine living under it. Sometimes they deal with that by emigrating to somewhere that provides that alternative. Other times, they rise up, eliminate the monarch (and his supporting cast), and try to set up something better. It can take a few iterations to get the necessary, but not always obvious, checks and balances in place.
On “There have to be clowns”
The extent to which these folks seem to have mush for brains (to phrase it politely) is astounding. In this particular instance, it makes me think that all that's required to get thru law school and pass the bar exam is a good memory. No actual cognitive ability necessary.
That wasn't previously my view, for all that I have a somewhat jaundiced view of some lawyers. But the ones who work for Trump, personally or as his appointees in the Department of Justice, are not only ethically challenged but, in the evidence, dumb as rocks besides. No offense intended to any rocks in the audience.
On “Politics thread”
Do that for 3 or 4 or 5 election cycles. They’ll lose a lot, and spend a lot of money on doing so. And they’ll win some. And over time, they’ll win more.
I wonder if part if the problem is that, every 4 years, the party sees a Presidential candidate upending ongoing programs in order to do things their way. And it works for them, because they end up outspending the DNC by a substantial amount.
To get something like this in place is going to require changing where (organizationally) money gets raised and allocated. From candidate-centeic to party-centric. That, in turn, will require changing the incentives for donors. Not sure how you do that.
On “The South shall writhe again”
I notice that Trump is now demanding that the Chinese resume buying soybeans from the US. One suspects that he discovered that Midwestern farmers are seriously upset to have a major market snatched out from under them. (Especially those who didn't see it coming, and so failedto plant something else this year. Too late now to do anything but plow the crop under as fertalizer for next year.)
He seems oblivious to the fact that the Chinese have found alternative suppliers. Which is to say, they don't need to buy from us. As opposed to, say, refined rare earths, for which we (and, for that matter the rest of the world) have no alternative sources of supply.
We could develop them, of course -- "rare earths" aren't particularly rare; just challenging to separate from each other. It would just take 5-10 years, even assuming zero regulatory constraints (i.e. no environmental impact reports, no planning permissions, etc.). Can't expect Trump to grasp that, of course.
I could easily see the Chinese playing hardball on this. If only to show the wannabe his place. Hey, it keeps working for Putin, so why not?
"
it seems natural that rural culture should be similarly homgeneous
The question would seem to be: why is it Southern rural culture which is the model? Why not the Midwest? Or the Mountain West? They all have significant rural populations, too.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.