State of the Discussion

Than you, Russell. That was lovely. You all might find this comforting: Turning Toward the Morning

"If I had one thing to give you, I would tell you one more time that the world is always turning toward the morning."

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Style.min.css is a WordPress core file. There are two disadvantages to changing it: (1) changing core files occasionally has unpleasant side effects, and (2) the change will be overwritten every time a WordPress update is applied. There are better places to put additional CSS.

That's absolutely beautiful, russell. I don't know if you've posted it before, but IMO you could post it every new year's day. By the end, I was truly emotional.

Is there a cadre of old school (R)’s ready and able to turn the GOP around in 2008? I don’t see it. I don’t know how they would do it.

Is there a cadre of old school Republicans? I'm sure there is. Willing to turn the GOP around? That, too. Able? I beg leave to doubt it. Like russell, I don't see how anyone could.

The closest I can picture is explicitly splitting the party (with the old school guys willing to abandon the name, which I expect them to hate). But that would leave them with too small a base to compete effectively. They would do better to wait for the Democrats to fission, and join one of the pieces. But that's not a turn-around.

Trump’s increasingly-insane inanity will make any Bush-style Republican very attractive in 2028

Attractive, but likely not to the current base of the (R) party.

Is there a cadre of old school (R)'s ready and able to turn the GOP around in 2008? I don't see it. I don't know how they would do it.

I'm also not sure the (D)'s will go for someone who leads with "we're gonna go after all of the Trump era malefactors". Too divisive!! Can't have that!!

My epiphany of the last year (or 10 years) is how durable the paranoid style continues to be. Drive a stake through it's heart, it just keeps coming back for more.

"through an Overton lens, Trump’s increasingly-insane inanity will make any Bush-style Republican very attractive in 2028. a white man who isn’t a psychotic narcissist will be soberly declared, by once-again-endorsement-friendly editorials everywhere, to be the kind of stable genius we all need. the press will wet themselves in bliss at the idea of the GOP returning to a normal balance."

This is my fear. And I don't think the Republicans under that hypothetical person will be different in substance than they are not. In degree, yes. Substance, no. And the substance will be gerrymandering, election rigging, tax cuts for the rich and screw everyone else, pro-corporate power and anti-public interest legislation, and more Federalist SOciety ideologues in judgeships as they go full steam ahead on the plant to turn the US into a one-party oligarchy and only looks like a representative democracy.

One thing I've noticed in myself is that I'm far less bothered by the dwindling number of vocal tRump supporters I see, be they IRL or on social media. They aren't the threat they used to be, at least as I perceive them. I almost pity them now, like they're clinging to a dying mythology. My meaner impulse is to laugh at them.

I know that's not the most enlightening thing to write on the subject, but it's my own subjective synthesis of everything I'm seeing. It feels different than it used to.

through an Overton lens, Trump's increasingly-insane inanity will make any Bush-style Republican very attractive in 2028. a white man who isn't a psychotic narcissist will be soberly declared, by once-again-endorsement-friendly editorials everywhere, to be the kind of stable genius we all need. the press will wet themselves in bliss at the idea of the GOP returning to a normal balance.

the Dem base will have picked someone who promises to litigate all the Trump era scandals that the press is currently ignoring. the country will not be interested.

GOP by 15%.

Vance is a pail of lukewarm dog vomit and naked ambition. I don’t think he can hold any of it together for long.

What still terrifies me, though, is what comes after. I’m not convinced that the US Constitution can keep this place running with just another patch. 

I completely agree on Vance. To hold their current coalition together post-Trump, they would need a figure who, among other things, is a showman like Trump is. Vance not only isn't, he not even vaguely close. And while there are doubtless would-be demagogues out there, there isn't one who seems likely to be the necessary unifying figure.

I see how the US and its Constitution could continue (with some modifications/Amendments, but recognizably a continuation). What my imagination is not adequate for is envisioning a path from here to there.

The Christianist nationalists can get pushed back into their former condition of minimal relevance. Just one more group of wierdos in a country which has long had a plethora of them. That's not the real challenge.

While other countries manage just fine with multiple parties, the US seems to favor a two party norm. The parties don't have to agree on much policy-wise, just be willing to accept that the majority of voters will sometimes favor one and other times the other. (That's a big piece of what is driving the Republicans into irrelevance: the voters overall like pieceful transfers of power. )

A third party can arise, but in a relatively short time it will either replace one of the two major parties or join the ranks of the essentially irrelevant minor parties (think Greens or American Independence Party). How does that happen? It's difficult to say, since there are only a couple of examples:

• circa 1830 (partly as fallout from their stance on the War of 1812) the Federalists fell into irrelevance, and the Republicans (usually referred to, these days, as the "Democratic Republicans" for clarity) split into the Democrats and the Whigs,
• In the 1850s (over the issue of slavery) the Whigs got displaced by the Republicans.

I doubt that the current Republican Party is salvageable. But will a new party arise (probably including many ex-Republicans, like the Whigs in the early Republican Party)? I'm not seeing any sign of that, at least not yet. Or will the Democrats split, and on what basis? I'm not seeing any glimmers of that either. There are places (e.g. California) where the Republicans have embraced irrelevance for decades, but the Democrats here are still divided by individual personalities, rather than by anything resembling groups.

As I say, I can see something of where we could get to, but not how to get there.

On the other hand, where else we might go is not obvious either. The mechanics are clear -- the Constitution provides for piecemeal amendment or complete replacement. But what would get hammered out in a Constitutional Convention, should we go that route? And how would it be able to satisfy the majority required to ratify the new one? "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future."

I'd say the biggest epiphantic sign is that the cultists, while they don't appear to be leaving the faith, are much less willing to flaunt it. The signs and banners and hats are far less in evidence than they a year ago, or during his first term. Might it be that they are, perhaps not entirely consciously, preparing themselves to bury their past?

P.S. I'm not sure the lack of turnover in Trump's cabinet reflects any concern about getting replacements approved. That would require a firmer grasp of reality than we see elsewhere. Instead, I think it reflects the fact that they are all shameless toadies who constantly tell him how wonderful he is, and feed him fantasies about how successfully they are doing what he wants. As opposed to last term, where there was a lot of turnover from people telling him No . . . and failing to lie about what was actually going on.

There were lots of disparaging comments, during the first term, about the so-called "adults in the room." Mostly reflecting the view that they didn't seem to be stopping him from creating one mess after another. Having now seen what happens without them, it's pretty apparent that a lot of restraint was, in fact, happening. It seems like some apoligies are in order. Not that I expect to see any.

lj, you might be interested in this (free reg. required):

https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/film/108

The “Reichsorchester”
In 2007, the Berliner Philharmoniker celebrated their 125th anniversary. Film director Enrique Sánchez Lansch took this occasion to tell a hitherto unknown chapter in the history of the Berliner Philharmoniker: the years of National Socialism from 1933 to 1945.

Not the greatest doc ever, but very informative.

Regarding the hierarchical culture, it's interesting that the Berlin Philharmonics, who choose their own conductors in a democratic vote, picked a series of nice guys (after Karajan):

Abbado, Rattle, Petrenko.

(Rattle's early relationship with the orchestra was described by himself as "turbulent" but watching them perform over the years, I felt that these were birthpangs. Also, he had a lot of unfair detractors in Germany.)

Interestingly, they also always picked the candidates that embodied a turning away from Karajan's heavy, 19th century 'German' style.

Abbado over Maazel and Barenboim
Rattle over Barenboim
Petrenko over Thielemann

It is unsurprising to me that you have so many problems with conductors, the whole hierarchical culture and the intense competition in some ways overdetermined this kind of outcome. I try to avoid putting up Gergiev (he used to come through Kumamoto at least once a year and sometimes twice with the Marinsky Orchestra because of Yoko Nagae Ceschina, who was originally from Kumamoto) because of links to Putin and Celibidache, who was one of the main antagonists in the Abbe Conant story and now, Dutoit.

Solti was known as 'the screaming skull' but apparently mellowed in later years. Going further back, you hear stories of Reiner and Toscanini (rehearsal recordings like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=886gkXViXi8 make those stories of the music librarian 'pre-sawing' the batons so they would break easily, because they realized that after he broke a baton, he'd calm down, easier to give credence to)

A famous brass anecdote was Ravelli, the U of Mich band director, who often use to isolate a section and make each player perform the offending passage to humiliate them and one time, he went down and one by one, they misplayed the passage until the last one absolutely nailed it, and Ravelli, not missing a beat, says 'you were late for rehearsal last week, what were you doing?'

However, when you are in that environment, those kind of incidents become a sort of glue that the ensemble holds on to, It's no surprise that other high stress team environments (like the chef and the brigade de cuisine) exhibit similar tendencies.

"Their long-time conductor (1978-2002) left acrimoniously after labor disputes and has since been the subject of multiple sexual assault allegations"

Well, at least not Nazi-adjacent like von Karajan.

It can be SO hard to separate artistic excellence from non-artistic assholery. It works much better when all the artists are long dead.

Maybe that's why "vita brevis, ars longa" is important.

Thank you.

I think that Ravel in particular and French composers in general doesn’t get their due because they don’t write in the symphony format. 

That's very true and I have been guilty of dismissing them as slightly gauche and inconsequential myself, being very German about it all, lol.

Santa on a cross - Christmas has become the holiday of very mixed metaphors.

Whatever y'all take away from the mish mash of Jesus in a manger + jolly saint Nick + elf on a shelf + Mariah Carey saying all she wants for Christmas is you, I send my very best wishes to you all for peace, joy, and love, now and in the new year.

The world's a crazy place, cherish your personal pockets of sanity and grace.

In Northern California we got serious rain Tuesday. But Christmas Eve was merely mostly cloudy. And today is down to partly cloudy.

The notable weather feature is that we've had almost a week of daily highs of 57-58, with overnight lows of 54-56. I can't remember a time when the temperature has been so constant.

Our Christmas Eve plans were canceled by weather. We received about 2" of rain here, and our friends in Ventura County were hit with an inch more than that. The path through L.A. in-between was 4-5". We were not going to drive into that.

Points south are clearer, so today we head to San Diego to wander around the Zoo with all of the other heathens.

🎄 🎄 🎄

It's always a crap shoot when you upload images with unusual sizes. Not just in WordPress, but in many social network applications. Click on the image of the overpass above to get a version that's not scrunched-up horizontally.