Last Friday was the 17th anniversary of commenter FredHJr’s death

The New Neo Posted on by

The old-timers here remember commenter FredHJr. I have posted annually around the time of his death, which occurred in 2009. Sounds like ancient history, doesn’t it? The following is the text, slightly edited, of one of those posts.

Unbelievable that it’s been seventeen years since commenter FredHJr died suddenly and tragically. As time passes, the number of readers here who don’t remember Fred must necessarily increase, so for those of you who don’t know who FredHJr was, please see this and this, as well as these.

Fred’s death was extremely tragic for his family. But it was tragic for this blog, too, because he was an invaluable and irreplaceable member of our community, a “changer” who knew a lot about the Left, and a keen observer of politics, history, religion, culture—of life itself. I still think about him at times, wondering what he’d have to say about everything that’s happened in these last seventeen years.

Nearly every year around the anniversary, I offer some excerpts from his many comments here.

This comment is from October 18, 2008, just a few weeks before Obama was elected president for the first time:

It’s the Marxist/Leninist ethics of expediency. No regrets. Whatever it takes to discredit anything the other side does and excuse the sins of your own side.

…this reveals a lot about who is about to take power and how they will wield it against the rest of us. They get away with it and many will not at all be troubled by it because they are shaped by the post-modernism, cultural Marxism that they imbibed during their formative and educational experience. If we as a people cannot name this accurately and expunge its corrosive influence over our lives, then down into the wages of perdition and disaster we go.

The comment is from October 28, 2008. The election was getting close:

Obama is part of a nexus of interests. What the American dopes who will put him in office are getting is a NETWORK of alliances and interests, running the gamut from Finance (Soros) to academia to media to law. Thus far, in order to appeal to the Middle Muddle he has been packaged as a moderate or centrist. But once in office the venomous swarm of this network will burst out of the nest and devour the host. You wait and see. And I’m not eager for the moment to say “I told you so.” I really would it be the case that it never happens at all.

This was a comment of Fred’s from the very beginning of the Obama presidency, but I think it’s worth mulling over today:

For me, Western Civilization is an incredibly complex work that has eclectically and also seamlessly borrowed the excellence and the virtues of Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, and the Enlightenment. The High Middle Ages and the Renaissance also made important contributions. In its totality it is a meritocracy and a liberation of humanity that has resulted in ever greater learning and material prosperity and health for most of the people who live under it. It is not an unblemished history. Yet in its totality it gleams with advancement when juxtaposed against civilizations which enslave humanity.

I think the beginning of the end of our civilization began with the French Revolution and The Terror. It was the beginning of the elaboration of totalitarian thought and throughout the 19th century this kept on finding newer permutations of elegant, intellectual terror. The 20th century was the culmination of the barbarity of totalitarianism.

These are chosen somewhat randomly, but so very much of what I looked at that Fred had written was on target.

Over the years there have been other commenters here who probably have died, and I would like to mention them too, but for only one other commenter did I actually get official word of that person’s death: that was Mike K, who died in December of 2024. I announced Mike K’s death in this post, with some information about his life, accomplishments, and comments. It’s hard to be specific about other people, but one commenter who comes to mind is “strcpy,” who announced that he was very ill and then disappeared shortly thereafter, about sixteen years ago. I wrote him an email but never heard back, and I fear he’s gone. But I don’t know for sure. Another prolific commenter who disappeared many years ago was Occam’s Beard. I was never able to contact him after that, and so I fear something tragic may have happened. Same for parker.

There are almost certainly others, as well. I wouldn’t necessarily find out. Sometimes people just stop commenting here because they get busy or they get tired or they get turned off. But it stands to reason some of them will have died. So I’ll take this opportunity to say RIP for all of them.

Here’s a happy addendum, for those of you who are wondering if commenter Rufus T. Firefly is all right: he is! I heard from him recently. He’s just been very very busy with work. He does still read here but doesn’t have time to comment.

Denver ♥ Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros

The New Neo Posted on by

The pattern repeats itself. In blue districts, the young people who’ve been indoctrinated into leftism want young telegenic socialists rather than the Democrat old guard.

Thus, we have the defeat of the 67-year-old incumbent Diana DeGette, who has served in the US House since 1997. By my calculations, that’s most likely the year the winner, 29-year-old Melat Kiros, was born in Ethiopia.

Kiros is a doctoral student in public policy at the University of Denver, which I think is very fitting since this is a youth movement that is strong in academia. The defeated DeGette was even a member of the Progressive Caucus in the US House, but that wasn’t enough to save her. Not “progressive” enough – that is, not far enough left, not Israel-hating enough, not young enough.

Kiros’s win suggests that Democratic voters are so frustrated with the status quo and their party that they’re even willing to oust some of their most progressive members in Congress.

I believe that’s true of some Democrat voters, but I don’t know what percentage. I think others just want socialists in power, and it’s not so much a rejection of DeGette (although it is that) as it is an attraction to Kiros.

Meanwhile, Kiros said she understood the struggles of Denverites, pointing out she’s 29 years old, renting and a barista.

A barista, much like AOC’s early resume. But she’s got a law degree and spent time in the corporate law world. Interesting:

Melat Kiros, 29, previously worked as a corporate attorney in New York City and was fired from her firm for writing an article supporting students protesting Israel’s occupation of Palestine, according to her campaign website and social media pages.

Perfect!

She was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia weeks before her father was selected by the United States’ Diversity Visa Lottery and moved their family to Colorado …

And she refers to herself this way, saying that Denver, “just voted to send a 29-year-old immigrant, recovering lawyer, barista, Democratic Socialist to Congress.”

I guess I’m being a teeny bit nitpicky by saying she’s not going to Congress quite yet; the November election is some months away. She’s correct, though, in a sense, because winning the Democrat primary virtually guarantees a win in the general, and of course she knows that.

And here is the very clever and soothing way she describes socialism:

In an interview with Next’s Kyle Clark, Kiros elaborated on her socialist platform, saying she would tell voters who might be uncomfortable with it that we already have socialism in the U.S.

“It’s in the roads that we drive on. It’s in our fire stations. It’s in the public schools we send our kids to,” she said. “What I’m calling for is the same security that we have in those institutions to be in our healthcare. To be in our access to nutritional food. To be in making sure that we have universal childcare and universal elder care.”

Kiros went on to say those programs will be necessary to make sure people’s basic needs are protected in the face of artificial intelligence changing “the entirety of our labor economy as we know it.”

“We’re not ready for what it looks like when all those jobs potentially get taken away and wiped out by machinery,” she said.

So socialism is just like the fire department, only better, and we must have it in order to combat AI. Exactly how will this work? Where will the money come from? Who knows; who cares? It will be from other people, and it will be glorious.

In the far left’s battle to take over the Democrat Party, Colorado is the state to watch tonight

The New Neo Posted on by

You can’t say Colorado Democrats weren’t warned. They have the example of New York and other states to show them what the far left has in mind: the takeover of the Democrat Party.

Then again, Colorado is a mostly vote-by-mail state and ballots were sent out on June 8. It’s likely that a lot of the ballots were mailed back quite a while ago, before the results on New York were known.

And I’m fairly sure that many voters in Colorado are just fine with a far-left takeover. How many? We should be finding out tonight, or whenever the ballot-counting ends.

The situation is that several Democrats are facing far-left challenges. The pattern of the following contest is very very familiar: the very young far-left challenger versus the older long-term office holder, the extreme views of the challenger, the scramble by the incumbent to move further left, hatred of Israel as the litmus test, and the third-world origins of the challenger (this time it’s Ethiopia). I’ve also noticed that more often than not the challenger is an attractive woman. And that’s also the case here:

The Democratic primary in Colorado’s 1st District represents the next best chance for the progressive wing of the party to pick up another win over an entrenched incumbent.

Rep. Diana DeGette, who has served in Congress for almost 30 years, is now fighting for political survival. She has sought to burnish her progressive credentials, with one recent ad touting her role as an impeachment manager during President Donald Trump’s Senate trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, while also emphasizing her support for “Medicare for All” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Melot Kiros, a 29-year-old doctoral student and former lawyer who immigrated from Ethiopia as a child, has argued that the 68-year-old incumbent isn’t adequately fighting for the district. She is backed by key politicians and groups on the left, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Justice Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America and a handful of Democratic candidates who were successful in their insurgent bids.

Israel policy has loomed large in the race. Kiros has said she was fired from her job after publishing a letter critical of how law firms were addressing protests against Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip following the 2023 Hamas attack.

Kiros was recently pressed by NBC affiliate KUSA of Denver about her comments that Hamas’ attack on Israel was “the inevitable consequence of apartheid.” She also declined to say whether a firebombing attack on demonstrators who gathered in Boulder, Colorado, to support Israeli hostages was antisemitic.

The usual lies about Israel, and support of (or at least excuses for) Hamas have become badges of honor for these challengers.

Another Colorado race is described here:

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper is running for a second, and likely final, term after flipping the Colorado seat in 2020. Hickenlooper is facing a younger, more progressive primary challenger in state Sen. Julie Gonzales. The 43-year-old is a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America who has painted Hickenlooper, 74, as a product of “go-along-to-get-along politics,” and criticized him for voting for 10 of Trump’s Cabinet nominees.

Hickenlooper was ahead in the most recent poll I could find, but that may not make a difference in a primary race in which turnout is often low.

Will Colorado succumb or will it resist?

SCOTUS says states can ban trans athletes from girls’ sports

The New Neo Posted on by

This one seems like a no-brainer, but of course because of politics it’s not.

This is the ruling:

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states can bar transgender female competitors from playing girls’ sports in a landmark decision with major implications for more than half the country, where such policies are in place.

In a 6-3 opinion, the high court determined that neither Idaho nor West Virginia had violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with their bans, as well as that Title IX allowed states to separate sports teams on the basis of biological sex.

What is interesting, though, is that even the three liberal justices weren’t completely onboard with not allowing states to ban trans athletes playing in girls’ sports. They thought states could ban the practice, but only for narrow reasons:

The three liberal justices would have allowed the states to proceed with their bans under a much narrower legal rationale that would have left the laws more susceptible to future challenges.

“West Virginia may well have satisfied its burden and seen its ban upheld. The point, rather, is that this Court’s equal protection precedents require a very different approach … than the one the majority follows today,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. …

The liberals contended that the high court should have just stuck with West Virginia plaintiff Becky Pepper-Jackson’s concession that “sex” under the Title IX statute means “biological sex” assigned at birth, and not decided the constitutional question.

The article states that 27 states have similar bans. It also states this, which I believe is incorrect:

In West Virginia, Pepper-Jackson’s mother fought against the state’s Save Women’s Sports Act after her child underwent gender reassignment surgery during the third grade, prior to going through male puberty.

A lot of minors have undergone “gender reassignment surgery” while still underage. But I have never heard of anyone having it as early as third grade, and Pepper-Jackson did not, either. Pepper-Jackson was treated initially with puberty blockers and then with female hormones, the common practice for males who identify as trans females and want to avoid puberty. I’ve written about this several times; the idea is that once boys undergo male puberty it is very difficult to “pass” as female on matter how much they try (unless they are naturally quite small and slight), but it’s much easier when male puberty is avoided. This has enormous costs, among them the tendency to not be able to experience sexual fulfillment. I consider it a form of child abuse by the medical establishment.

However, the argument is that without having undergone male puberty, a male doesn’t have the testosterone advantage in sports and therefore it would be okay for that person to compete against women. Not so, says this group of pediatricians. The gist of the article – which is long – is that many of the differences between males and females which favor males in athletics occur prior to puberty and do not go away if puberty is blocked and female hormones administered.

SCOTUS issues ruling on birthright citizenship

The New Neo Posted on by

The case for restricting birthright citizenship was and is a good one, in my opinion. But it always seemed like it would be a stretch for SCOTUS to limit it by excluding babies of tourists and illegal aliens, because that would represent a huge change in the traditional interpretation of the 14th Amendment. I joined most prognosticators in predicting it wouldn’t happen.

And it hasn’t happened. Roberts and Barrett (no surprise there) joined the liberals in saying that birthright citizenship will stand much as before. The ruling was broad:

Roberts Opinion, joined by Barrett and the liberal block, fully embraces birthright citizenship for all. Children born to women illegally or temporarily in the country “are citizens at birth.”

I think that’s a bad outcome politically – in particular, I think that tourist citizenship is ludicrous and could not have been what the framers of the 14th Amendment intended. But I’m unsurprised at the general result of upholding the interpretation as it has come to be implemented.

I do think the ruling could and should have been more narrow. The Court could have just ruled that an executive order was not the way to clarify the meaning of the amendment, and left open the chance that Congress could clarify the 14th by passing a law. This was what Justice Kavanaugh said in his opinion:

In my view, the Executive Order does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Order does contravene a federal statute, 8 U. S. C. §1401(a). Congress could—consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment—amend §1401(a) or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But Congress has not yet done so.

However, it seems to me that the majority opinion has closed off that avenue, at least until the Court hears the issue again (if it ever does). Yes, the Court has indeed “fully embraced” birthright citizenship no matter how bizarre the results and no matter that those who passed the amendment almost certainly did not and could not envision tourist birthright citizenship, in which pregnant women come here briefly for that exact purpose and leave shortly after, conferring citizenship rights on children who have nothing to do with the US and have never lived here except for a few days or weeks as infants, and whose parents have no connection to the US either. It is a travesty, in my opinion. But it stands, and now it seems to me that the only way to change it is through a constitutional amendment.

Actually, I’ve thought for a while that’s what would probably be required. I wrote this post in April, saying as much. I also wrote that such an amendment was unlikely to succeed in being passed, and I still think that is the case – unfortunately. Perhaps if it was explained to the American people, the vast majority would want to ban tourist citizenship. But to get 3/4 of state legislatures to do so? I just don’t see it happening.

This is from Justice Thomas’ dissent, which was joined by Gorsuch:

Blacks were entitled to citizenship because they were Americans. They had no other homeland, owed no allegiance to any foreign power, and were subject to no other authority…. The same could not be said for the children of foreign temporary visitors. Foreign temporary visitors were attached to their home country, lacked similar bonds to this country, and would not be called upon in time of war….

The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens. In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.

I agree. And this is from Justice Alito:

in my judgment, the Court has made a serious mistake. As interpreted by the Court today, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of “birth tourists,” women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home. Careful analysis of the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the process that led to its adoption shows that it does not degrade the concept of United States citizenship in this way. Instead, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country….

As a result of the events of the past 50 years, the United States now has a huge contingent of people who entered or remained in this country illegally, as well as a large group of people who were born here to such parents. The Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment makes all the members of this latter group citizens. Many of those who have grown up here now have a strong moral claim to be allowed to remain, but that is a matter that the Fourteenth Amendment, when properly interpreted, leaves to Congress.

It’s a bad decision but an unsurprising one. I am in complete agreement with Justice Alito on this: “we should not adopt an erroneous interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment out of fear of the consequences of ‘rocking the boat’ or as a reaction to current immigration policy.” I believe that’s exactly what occurred with Roberts and Barrett – they were afraid of rocking the boat, and they found a way to avoid doing so. For the three liberal justices, their position was a foregone conclusion for political reasons, although of course they justified it with legal arguments.

Much more in this post at Ace’s, which is especially full of quotes from the opinions. The post also adds this from Senator Eric Schmitt:

The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision is wrong, dangerous, and disastrous for American sovereignty and the American people. If we can’t fix it with ordinary legislation, then we must do what the Constitution commands in moments of national crisis: We must amend the Constitution and restore American citizenship. We must again put “We the People” first.
The Supreme Court’s decision constitutionalizing unlimited birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens and temporarily present aliens is wrong–and disastrous for our sovereignty and the future of our republic.

The decision exposes America to grave national security risks and threatens to erode the integrity of the core of American self-government: citizenship.

I wish him luck.

NOTE: As to the recurring question of why justices who start out seeming as though they will be conservative sometimes end up becoming more liberal as time goes on – well, I don’t think Justice Roberts was ever conservative in the first place. But the more general reason is that it takes very strong adherence to conservative principles of jurisprudence – a commitment to originalist interpretation, for example – to resist the siren call of power. For the most part, justices are smart, and they can find the reasoning to back up the result they want, and they become seduced by power over time.

ADDENDUM: Kurt Schlichter has this optimistic take on the decision.

Also please note my comment here.

Today’s SCOTUS rulings: ballots and agencies

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s the end of June, and that means we hear a lot from SCOTUS. Today we have the following:

Barrett and Roberts join the leftist justices in ruling that states can accept ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as those ballots are postmarked before Election Day. That wouldn’t be a bad idea if in fact the postmark rule was enforced and the postmarks could be validated, but the problem is that there is plenty of evidence that in some states this is not done, and non-postmarked ballots are even accepted. This makes it ripe for fraud occurring after the polls are closed, when the authorities counting the ballots know exactly what they need to put a candidate over the top.

For example:

At least 10 states (California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia) accept ballots with missing or illegible postmarks that arrive after Election Day. …

… election officials can even rely on the date a voter writes on their envelope as evidence a ballot was cast on time.

I have looked, but have so far been unable to determine, whether SCOTUS has stated there must be a postmark of some sort. But my hunch is that they did not, and that they just have deferred to the states and the rules each state has set for that.

From the decision:

…[A] related federal statute, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), confirms that while federal law dictates when ballots must be cast, state law dictates when they must be received….

The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received. The most recent amendment to the Presidential election-day statute bears this out. …

In sum, the election-day statutes require the electorate’s choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.

This result is unsurprising. Roberts was almost certainly going to be averse to challenging the status quo on this issue, and Barrett often follows Roberts. My initial reaction on hearing the ruling was that Trump would renew calls for the SAVE Act. And sure enough, that’s the case.

Another SCOTUS decision announced today is that a president, as head of the executive branch, can fire employees of the executive branch. This would seem obvious, but it had to be made clear. This time, Roberts and his sidekick Barrett ruled with the conservatives to make a 6-3 result. The Federal Reserve is declared an exception, however.

SCOTUS has yet to announce the result of the birthright citizenship case, although it’s supposedly coming soon. I predict they will keep the present policy, and that it will also be 6-3 with Roberts and Barrett being the determining votes going with the liberals. I say this because Roberts tends to preserve the status quo, although of course not always.

But that would be my prediction: that it will take an act of Congress to redefine the policy to exclude tourist birthright citizenship, for example (the current case involves not an act of Congress to do this but an executive order from Trump). If such a statute were to be passed by Congress, would it be ruled constitutional? I think it would probably pass muster, but that depends on the Court’s ruling in the present case in terms of the definition in the 14th Amendment. However, if the right loses Congress in the 2026 midterms, or even if it keeps Congress but fails to end the filibuster for the vote on the subject, such a statute won’t be passed.

On the ever-leftward turning

The New Neo Posted on by

From political changer Sasha Stone:

It’s been ten years since the purges began, and I still have a hard time believing it actually happened. Did so many of my friends really go along with it? Did institutions, corporations, and all of Hollywood allow themselves to be shamefully cowed by the fanatical mob? Yes.

Stone underwent her political change in recent years, and this phenomenon still has the power to surprise her. I experienced it over twenty years ago, and so I’m more used to the idea that most people will follow the tyranny du jour. From my observation, this mentality is more common on the left, but the right is hardly immune. It just takes a different form.

Many years ago I read Dorothy Thompson’s 1941 essay that appeared in Harper’s and was entitled, “Who Goes Nazi?”. It’s a catchy title, isn’t it? Thompson presents it as a parlor game, but a deadly serious one:

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

I have many quarrels with Thompson, and I also disagree with some of what she wrote in the essay. That’s not the subject matter of this post, however. I’m introducing it here because I very much agree with her basic premise, which is that most people are susceptible to totalitarian leanings and to propaganda. In the essay it’s “Nazism” – after all, it was written in 1941. But it’s hardly limited to that; we’re talking about the totalitarian impulse, either “for your own good” which turns into evil, or for outright evil.

Some embrace it wholeheartedly and some half-heartedly, some think they are being virtuous, some are indifferent but go along to get along, some don’t pay any attention, and some do it out of fear. But to defy it takes a great deal of insight and courage.

In addition to the Thompson essay, I sometimes think of the Milgram experiment. This particular post from 2008 explains the phenomenon best. An excerpt:

If you’re unfamiliar with the Milgram experiments, here’s a summary. The gist of it was Milgram’s shocking (literally) finding that ordinary people in this country could be persuaded to inflict what they thought were painful electric jolts to “subjects” (actually, actors) in what was billed as a learning experiment, if an authoritative “researcher” (also an actor) told them it was okay.

This was true for most subjects even if the “victim” was screaming in pain and complained of a weak heart. It was also true if the “doctor” didn’t have a white coat, and was in a lab in a seedier part of town. No actual shocks were administered, but I recall that, in follow-up interviews, most of the subjects thought the shocks were real.

Milgram varied the details of the experiment over and over (read his book if you have time; it’s a masterpiece of its genre), but the results always pointed to the troubling fact that the majority of people failed to “question authority” …

“Authority” can vary. It can, for instance, be some online charlatan whom a person has come to trust. It can be a leftist professor, or a series of leftist professors, at a university. It can be the baying hounds of cancel culture, or the Furies of the “Me Too” witch hunt. It can be Jew-haters of all persuasions. It’s a shape-shifter exploiting a fact of human nature.

Our Founders believed it was possible to create a system of government that would be at least somewhat resistant to these forces. They did the best they could, and they were brilliant men. Perhaps they did the best possible. But no system can guard against the tendency well enough to make tyranny impossible, and the Founders were well aware of that, too.

[NOTE: Sasha Stone’s entire essay is worth reading, and there are some especially good short videos there.]

More on the Venezuelan earthquake: the science, the toll, and the government

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an explanation in terms of earthquake science:

Wednesday’s earthquake was actually two separate ruptures, magnitude 7.2 and magnitude 7.5, that occurred just 39 seconds and 5 kilometers apart in northern Venezuela, killing at least 900 people and injuring thousands more, while causing widespread building damage across the region. The quakes occurred where the Caribbean tectonic plate grinds eastward relative to the South American plate along a multitude of faults. But they didn’t really surprise [Venezuelan earthquake expert]] Audemard. He had seen them coming.

In a 2017 study in Tectonics, he and his colleagues had studied the slip rate of one of the faults within the plate boundary, the Boconó fault, going back thousands of years. They found that the fault had not ruptured since a devastating magnitude 7.1 earthquake in 1812 that leveled Caracas, which meant strain had been accumulating on the fault for 2 centuries. The resulting “slip deficit,” they estimated, was enough to produce a magnitude 7 to magnitude 7.6 earthquake. The earthquake duo that hit this week is like “the 1812 earthquake’s brother,” Audemard says.

And about the fact that there were two earthquakes so close together in time and location:

Back-to-back “doublet” earthquakes are not uncommon. Higgins [geophysicist at Florida International University] says the stresses released by rupture along one segment of the fault probably triggered an adjacent segment’s rupture. But the short time gap between the two—less than 1 minute—seems exceptional, says Germán Prieto, a seismologist at the National University of Colombia. Doublets such as the 2023 Kahramanmara? earthquake in Turkey or the 1997 Kagoshima earthquake in Japan were separated by hours or days. The short interval between Wednesday’s shocks makes disentangling the signals particularly complicated for seismologists, and helps explain why the quake locations have been hard to pin down.

But at the moment, the science of the quakes is the least of Venezuela’s worries. The death toll is large, but it’s not only that. As with many earthquakes, there are earthquake survivors who were trapped in the rubble and who will die soon (or already have) without rescue. Now and then there’s a feel-good story such as this one, which reports a father and son rescued after four days. But such tales are not common, despite rescue teams from varied countries.

There are also many aftershocks still occurring. and the death toll at present is 1700 and rising, with estimates that go above 10,000.

And the Venezuelan government is being blamed, not for the earthquake itself but for problems with the response:

According to [Venezuelan pollster] Chirinos, public outrage is especially intense toward the armed forces, police and senior Chavista officials, including Delcy Rodríguez, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez.

He said one of the biggest grievances centers on allegations that authorities obstructed humanitarian aid collected by civilians during the critical first hours after the disaster.

“The two biggest sources of anger are clear,” Chirinos said. “First, the obstruction of aid organized by ordinary citizens. Second, the inaction—or worse—of the armed forces.”

Videos circulating on social media over the weekend showed residents confronting military personnel, accusing them of standing by while civilians carried out rescue operations with little official assistance.

In some videos, survivors accused soldiers of looting apartments and confiscating donated supplies—claims that remain difficult to independently verify but have fueled widespread outrage.

The armed forces, already burdened by years of public distrust, now face what analysts say could be a near-total collapse in legitimacy.

Not surprising. It’s a terrible, terrible situation, and Venezuelans had already been through a lot before this.