Close harmony: Part IIB (the Bee Gees – how do they make that sound?)
[NOTE: Part I can be found here and Part IIA here.]
As I’ve written before, until recently all I knew about the Bee Gees were a few of their disco-era songs and a vague recollection of longish hair, and I think I knew they wrote their own songs. I kind of liked those disco numbers but thought of them as a forgettable novelty. I was neutral about the group and I hadn’t listened to them in over forty years.
Then I was persuaded by a YouTube suggestion to click on one of their old videos, and was immediately stunned and captivated by the strength and near-hypnotic quality of their harmonies. Maybe their sound seemed so much more powerful now compared to back then because I wasn’t listening to them on a scratchy record anymore; instead, I was using a headset hooked up to a computer. But for whatever reason, this time when I heard the three sing together, it worked on me like a siren song (hopefully, without the rocks), and I wanted to listen over and over. I’d heard lots of harmonic singing and groups before that, but this was the only group that’s ever had that quasi-hypnotic effect on me, and I’ve learned since then that I’m far from alone in that reaction. It’s actually rather common.
What is it about? Do these guys cast spells on some people? And if so, how do they do it?
If all you know of the Bees songs are “Stayin’ Alive” and the other Saturday Night Fever songs – please have a listen to the following, just to take one example of hundreds I could offer. It’s an obscure one at that, a nearly-unknown song from their almost-unnoticed 1974 album “Mr Natural.” Neither the album nor the song was ever popular. It was released during a pre-disco time for the Bee Gees, when their fortunes had sunk quite low after early fame in the late 60s as baroque pop members of the British invasion.
When I came across the title of the song, “Had a Lot of Love Last Night,” it sounded to me as though this would be an upbeat fast-paced song with some sexy overtones. But I was stunned when it began, starting with a wordless “Ah” that sounds like an entire gospel choir. But it’s just the Bee Gees, singing a sublimely bittersweet elegy to love (I suggest headphones for listening):
I’ve read people who have speculated that the Bee Gees’ harmonies tap into something that relaxes the brain and the body, something uniquely soothing. As brothers, the trio’s voices had some genetic similarity and they had sung together since early childhood – but that’s true of the voices of most sibling groups (I wrote about that previously in Part I). However, the Bee Gees had two other characteristics that I believe made them unique even within that subgroup: they also had dramatic vocal distinctiveness from each other that co-existed with that similarity (you can see the same paradox in their looks, too). In addition, two of the brothers – Barry and Robin – were compelling lead singers whose voices were highly unusual and immediately recognizable and easily distinguishable both from each other and from everyone else. The third brother, Maurice, had a less distinctive but still beautiful voice that was a very flexible instrument with wide range, and he could fill in the blanks in whatever manner was required, tonally or otherwise, having a sixth sense of instinctively knowing exactly where to place his harmonies.
The song you just heard featured Barry Gibb – the tall one with the male-model 70s hair and the whitest of teeth – singing the lead in his natural voice. He was later known for his falsetto, of course, but he didn’t just have a single type of falsetto and he only used his falsetto in some of his songs (I’m using the past tense – although he, unlike his brothers, is still alive and still singing).
Barry had a squeaky/shouty falsetto which some people find annoying, heard mostly on the “Saturday Night Fever” tracks. But he also had a soft melodic falsetto that sometimes exhibited vibrato and sometimes a breathy tremolo. His falsetto was a very flexible instrument in tone, as well as a vehicle for extending his already-large range into soprano territory. It was used primarily for urgency (the squeaky falsetto) or emotional intensity and intimacy as well as vulnerability (the mellow or breathy one). But Barry also had a ringing and powerful chest voice and a beautiful head voice, both with an indefinable quality I would describe as “smoky with a hint of brassy” (that’s the voice he’s using for “Had a Lot of Love Last Night”). So, like Maurice, Barry had a lot of flexibility and many options with his voice.
Robin Gibb was the slender sensitive one with the narrow face (he died in 2012; his fraternal twin Maurice died in 2003). Robin was the group’s most frequent lead singer during the Bee Gees’ early days in the 1960s, and I loved his songs at the time – his voice got my immediate attention – without my having any idea whatsoever until over fifty years later that it had been the Bee Gees singing all those 60s songs like “I’ve Got To Get a Message to You,” those very same Bee Gees of later Saturday Night Fever fame (in this video the twins are about 18 and Barry 21; it also is probably lip-synced, because in those days most TV shows didn’t have the technical capacity to do otherwise):
How could that be? The group’s voices and songs in the two eras sounded so unalike that, when I recently learned they were the very same people, it was as bizarre to me as if Chopin had gone on to morph into Tchaikovsky. But in the 60s the Bee Gees gave us baroque pop ballads featuring Robin’s high quaver (and of course the brothers’ gorgeous harmonies) while in the late 70s there was the funky beat-driven dance music that mostly starred Barry and his falsetto with the other brothers in supporting roles. Sometimes Barry and Robin exchanged lead lines in a single song, to great effect (with Robin often singing the more introspective, dramatic, and emotional parts).
And the group went on songwriting, singing, and changing for several decades more, although I didn’t know about that until recently either.
Robin’s voice was even more distinctive than Barry’s, and that’s saying something. Once Robin starts singing, I find it nearly impossible to stop listening. His voice was almost otherworldly, with something that’s been variously described as a warble or a quaver or a fast vibrato (sometimes with a bit of tremolo as well). He also had a very slender and almost delicate appearance, a homely-yet-handsome appeal, and used a characteristic gesture (lampooned at times) of cupping his hand around his ear, the better to hear his own voice in the days before ear monitors. The gesture had the effect of communicating intensity and concentration, of a singer who didn’t care how he looked but was lost in the song (it also reminds me of some of the opening gestures of a role I once danced as a teenager in the ballet “Les Sylphides” to Chopin’s Prelude, a version of which you can view here).
Here’s a very short example of Robin’s early singing:
And here’s the wonderfully informative Fil, talking about Robin’s voice and why it appealed emotionally to so many people. Robin sometimes said that he sang with his heart rather than his voice, and that goes along with what Fil is saying here:
Robin never stopped performing solos or solo turns, the latter usually within songs in which Barry took a more prominent role. He usually sang in an ultra-high register that was not a falsetto, although he could also sing very very low and sometimes did. But it was that quavery warble of Robin’s that touched so many hearts with its pathos. Some people find his voice off-putting, but his fans find it surpassingly beautiful and strongly moving, the voice of a sorrowful angel about to break into a sob but never quite getting there. I’m one of his fans.
As for Maurice, here’s a sample of one of the rare songs on which Maurice sings lead. Most of Mo’s solos were in his lower range, but he usually took the highest harmony when the three sang together. This song is from 1981, and if you listen you might agree with me that in his upper register Maurice had a certain Beach Boys vibe. This version is almost certainly being lip-synced for some TV show, but I’m showing it to let you see Maurice’s personality. He didn’t need to lip-sync to create his sound in person, but I can’t find any other live versions of this song on YouTube so this will have to do. He could also sing falsetto, but usually didn’t and almost always eschewed vibrato or tremolo, which gave his voice a quality that contrasted with and complemented and filled out the sounds made by Barry and Robin. It’s not really surprising that, when Maurice died in 2003, the group was basically finished, because without Maurice to ground them their sound was incomplete:
But the voices of Barry and Robin, and to a lesser extent Maurice, have another quality I find hard to describe but which I think is key to their mesmerizing effect on some people. The best I can do to describe it is to say that each voice has extra internal harmonics. That is, each single voice – especially those of Barry and Robin – seems to my ear to resonate with itself, as though within the one note the person is singing there are harmonic overlays as well, more so than with most other voices. This gives their solo and trio singing a complexity that the ear reads as intriguing and full, and for some listeners (me included) that has an addictive quality all its own. The entire effect of the three together is that of a “wall of sound” constructed through their voices.
I think that was and still is the main source of their vocal magic.
[NOTE: Not done yet – I’ve got a lot more to say. So…to be continued…]
Trump in the looking glass
Recommended reading. Here’s how the article begins:
To his legion of obsessed enemies, it is a fortunate thing that Donald Trump owns his own Elba, otherwise known as Mar-A-Lago. Not quite an island, but a place where America’s Bonaparte can be safely exiled, secluded, and sealed-off from the general populace. Carefully watched and heavily guarded, they imagine he too is approaching madness; angrily stalking the grounds, bitterly rehashing his humiliating defeat. In his gilded quarantine, the nation is for the moment safe from that highly contagious and genuinely dangerous virus that threatens to infect more and more of the country: MAGA-1.
The luxuriously incarcerated ex-president presently consults with a small number of carefully screened visitors, so in between rounds of golf (did Napoleon even know his handicap?) he meets with former allies, quietly weighing his options for a possible escape from the confines of the resort and return to active political life. All the while, the guardians of his moral imprisonment keep a wary eye on his goings on; designing new obstacles to any suspected flight from captivity or, alternatively, plotting to make his post-presidency as miserable as his plush surroundings permit.
The author goes on to make some serious suggestions for Trump, who is due to give a speech tomorrow at CPAC:
If this is the guy who shows up at CPAC, merely playing to the resentments of a crowd filled with justifiable anger at how its leader was so shabbily treated, and how its beliefs are constantly mocked and mischaracterized, he’ll be confirming his bitterest opponents’ assessment of him, and will in fact, be doing their work in marginalizing conservatism…
But if he speaks in the voice of the leader of a movement that’s bigger than everyone in the room, including himself, then he’ll ensure that this vital fight will continue in the proper terms and in its legitimate context: on the issues, as a patriotic struggle for the principles upon which this nation should stand. Not as a vindication of one man, however much he’s been genuinely wronged.
The ideological captivity and moral blindness that motivates Biden and his cohorts to damage our nation by their comprehensive, almost suicidal reversal of sensible Trump administration policies, must take center stage
In line with that, I see another relevant article: Trump plans “forward-looking” speech at CPAC:
Former President Donald Trump plans to lay out his vision for America and give his assessment of Biden administration policies during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump senior adviser Jason Miller has said…
Trump, who is a featured speaker at the conservative conference, will express his concerns about the direction President Joe Biden has taken since coming into office…
Trump, he said, will talk about the future of the Republican Party, his “America First” agenda, and lessons learned in the 2020 election campaign…
“I think the only way election reform issues are going to come up are in the context of what reforms that we need to go and do in advance of 2022 and 2024,” Miller said. “There are some real concerns Article II violations, things that we need to go and address with state legislatures, certain state legislatures around the country.”
Good.
“Culturally responsive” Illinois teacher training
Here’s the situation in Illinois regarding the education of teachers across the entire state:
…[I]n December, the Illinois State Board of Education, or ISBE, passed a new rule that would require culturally responsive teaching and leading standards to be incorporated in all Illinois teacher preparation programs. Critics of the proposed standards have said they require educators to embrace left-leaning ideology and prioritize political and social activism in classrooms at a time when Illinois students are underperforming on basic skills tests…
Critics have pointed out that the requirements essentially impose an ideological litmus test on educators, making any teacher who does not espouse certain views unwelcome in Illinois schools. In their original form, the provisions were explicitly left-leaning, and educators were required to “embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives.” After opponents of the new rule brought public attention to the language, the word “progressive” was replaced with “inclusive,” but this has not alleviated the concern that the standard is aimed at pushing a political agenda on Illinois educators and schools.
Yes, changing the language does not change the intent.
Critics of the new rule have also expressed concern that at a time when so many Illinois students are failing to achieve basic competency in reading and math – exacerbated by pandemic-related learning loss – pushing regulations on “politically-charged topics, including race, gender identity and the role of power, privilege and student activism” is not the proper focus of Illinois’ education establishment. As of 2019, only 38% of Illinois students in grades 3 through 8 met or exceeded Illinois Assessment of Readiness standards for English language arts, according to ISBE, and a mere 32% of students met or exceeded standards in math.
Ah, but first things first, and indoctrination in leftism is more important. In fact, the more ignorant the children are, the easier it will be to indoctrinate them. So the situation is win-win for the left.
Note also the predominance in the regulations of jargon that obfuscates the message, and probably bores most readers to tears. I would wager both things are purposeful:
Similarly, “leveraging student advocacy” is not necessarily a commonly accepted purpose of PreK-12 education among parents of schoolchildren, particularly when basic reading and computational skills are not being uniformly transmitted. The original version used the term “activism” rather than “advocacy” in this section, but “advocacy” is used as a synonym for activism elsewhere – for example, where the rule admonishes educators to be “aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action.”
Nor are most parents likely aware that under the rule, teachers would be called on to “curate the curriculum” and work with students to “co-create content to include a counternarrative to dominant culture.” The standard further directs educators to “implement and integrate the wide spectrum and fluidity of identities in the curriculum” but does not provide specifics to give parents an indication of what this might mean for their children’s instruction.
On February 16, there was a vote in which the Illinois General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules had a chance to reject this program. You may be unsurprised at what happened:
Eight of the committee’s 12 members would have needed to vote to suspend the rule to prevent its implementation, and only the six Republican members voted to do so.
So all the Republicans voted “no” and all the Democrats voted “yes.”
I wonder what the teachers in Illinois who are not onboard with this leftism will do. Will they find another profession? Will they pretend to comply but sneak in a little heresy once they get into the classroom as teachers? And if so, what will happen to them then?
Compare and contrast:
New Hampshire lawmakers are debating a bill that would prevent educators from teaching about systemic racism and sexism in public schools and state-funded programs.
HB 544, titled an act “relative to the propagation of divisive topics,” seeks to limit public schools, organizations or state contractors from discussing topics related to racism and sexism, and would specifically ban teaching that the state of New Hampshire or the U.S. is racist or sexist. Lawmakers discussed the bill in a hearing of the Executive Departments and Administration Committee that began Feb. 11 and continued Thursday.
“This puts guidelines on what are the limits, especially under the auspices of the state apparatus, what are the limits in presuming that someone was born to be an oppressor or someone was born to be oppressed because of their sex,” said Rep. Keith Ammon, a Republican from New Boston, who introduced the bill. “If that’s the assumption we are going to make as a society, then we are never going to get to unity.”
New Hampshire is currently a purple state that votes Democrat on the national level (presidency, House representatives, and senators) and Republican on the state level (governor, state legislators). This sort of split personality means that it’s possible that the state will have voted for Biden, who rescinded Trump’s order banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory in federal agencies, and yet the New Hampshire state legislature may vote to ban it in the state’s public schools. I can’t find anything that indicates the vote has occurred yet, so I don’t know what actually will happen, but there is a GOP majority right now in the NH legislature.
West Virginia is considering a similar bill to that of New Hampshire.
As so often happens, this news regarding education reminds me of a passage from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987 [emphasis mine]:
Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It wants to produce a certain kind of human being. This intention is more or less explicit, more or less a result of reflection,; but even the neutral subject, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person…Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime…A powerful attachment to the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man’s reason, was the goal of the education of democratic man…
But openness…eventually won out over natural rights, partly through a theoretical critique, partly because of a political rebellion against nature’s last constraints. Civic education turned away from concentrating on the Founding to concentrating on openness based on history and social science. There was even a general tendency to debunk the Founding, to prove the beginnings were flawed in order to license a greater openness to the new. What began in Charles Beard’s Marxism and Carl Becker’s historicism became routine. We are used to hearing the Founders being charged with being racists, murderers of Indians, representatives of class interests. I asked my first history professor in the university, a very famous scholar, whether the picture he gave us of George Washington did not have the effect of making us despise our regime. “Not at all,” he said, “it doesn’t depend on individuals but on our having good democratic values.” To which I rejoined, “But you just showed us that Washington was only using those values to further the class interests of the Virginia squirearchy.” He got angry, and that was the end of it. He was comforted by a gentle assurance that the values of democracy are part of the movement of history and did not require his elucidation or defense. He could carry on his historical studies with the moral certitude that they would lead to greater openness and hence more democracy. The lessons of fascism and the vulnerability of democracy, which we had all just experienced, had no effect on him.
Bloom was in college during the late 1940s. And that passage makes it obvious that, by the 1980s, the current leftist anti-American trends were already firmly in place.
But not so firmly as they are today, and as they will be tomorrow, if the left has anything to say about it.
Open thread
Three tenors and a baritone:
McConnell tries to undo the damage
I don’t think it will work, though. Too many people are too angry with him, and it’s not as though he’s ever had much of a following. Here’s his attempt, though:
[Brett] Baier asked McConnell if there was a ‘civil war’ in the GOP. McConnell said no and pointed instead to the issues in the Democratic Party. He said the progressive actions from Joe Biden have made it quite easy for the Republicans to get together.
When asked if he would support Trump if he were the nominee of the party, McConnell responded, “The nominee of the party? Absolutely.”
Is it time for me to add an “Election 2024” category to the blog? Ugh!
The radical “Equality Act”
The Democrats are now bent on codifying at the federal level the so-called “Equality Act,” which if passed would do the following:
This bill would require Americans to consider gender identity and even biological sex a personal choice, not an objective fact. This is where this bill completely falls off the rails.
This will turn any recognition of the difference between biological sexes, or any preference for traditional sexual relationships or genders, or even the scientific definition of the two sexes, into potential “hate” crimes. This bill would:
Endanger women’s rights and put millions of women at risk for sexual assault;
Destroy women’s sports and harm men’s sports;
Put gender-confused children at extreme risk, with no alternate paths for them allowed besides cross-sex hormones and genital amputation;
Remove constitutional protections for religious beliefs and freedoms; and
Elevate LBGTQ rights and claims over religious citizens by mandating that an LGBTQ person’s claim wins by default in cases where there is a dispute between the two.
I haven’t read the bill; I’ve only read interpretations of what it would mean. But they tend to agree with the above list. In addition, the author of that article, who is gay, has this to say:
…[I]t would enshrine the gender identity agenda that is counter to gay rights.
For decades, we gays preached to the world that we were “born this way,” and that being gay, lesbian, or bisexual “is not a choice.” Lady Gaga’s famous “Born This Way” has been embraced as a global gay anthem. We did not challenge nature or the science of our biology, nor millennia of human history’s distinctions and separations of the two sexes.
Now, that’s turned on its head. For the gender-identity and trans-obsessed crowd, how you were born can now be “changed,” and everything regarding sex and gender is simply a “choice.”
There’s a long-standing altercation between trans activists and lesbians, in part because a great many biological women who identify as trans men are lesbians (or would be, except for the trans movement). This phenomenon reaches its zenith in Iran, of all places, where being gay is a crime but gender reassignment surgery is considered preferable and is performed on people who in other societies would identify as gay.
The Equality Act has passed the House.
Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida were two of eight GOP lawmakers who joined House Democrats to vote for the Equality Act during the last session of Congress, when the legislation was first passed in the chamber.
Stefanik on Friday pointed to the June Supreme Court ruling that federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender individuals in the workplace, and said the ruling “serves as an important protection against discrimination.”
“I believe discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is unlawful and wrong,” Stefanik said in a statement provided to CNN Friday. “While I voted for previous versions of this legislation before the Supreme Court ruling, I have long been concerned that this bill goes far beyond non-discrimination and eliminates the role of single gendered organizations and activities throughout our society.”She argued that the Equality Act would effectively eliminate federal civil rights laws meant to ensure women and girls have the same opportunities as men and boys — “eliminating single-sex sports and social groups that are critical for personal development and growth.”…
Diaz-Balart and Stefanik both committed to reintroducing the “Fairness for All Act” with GOP Rep. Chris Stewart, a bill they said would protect both the LGBTQ community and religious groups from discrimination. They also slammed Democratic leaders in the House, accusing them of failing to work across the aisle and amend the legislation in a bipartisan fashion.
Three House Republicans voted for the bill: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, John Katko of New York, and Tom Reed of New York.
I don’t know what will happen in the Senate, but unless they end the filibuster I don’t think it has a chance of passing. If they decide to jettison the filibuster, it might pass.
I wonder how many Americans who voted for Democrats in Congress were aware that this sort of thing would be the result (or are even aware of it now), and how many approve.
More on Officer Sicknick’s death
[NOTE: Please see my previous posts on this subject.]
Here’s a recent interview with Officer Sicknick’s mother. Note that it’s in the British paper The Daily Mail. It’s not unusual for British papers to cover events in the US more thoroughly than our own MSM, and to publish things the left wouldn’t be enthusiastic about here:
The mother of the US Capitol police officer who died following the riot on January 6 believes that her son succumbed to a fatal stroke – that he was not bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher as reported.
Yet more than one month after Officer Brian Sicknick’s death on January 7, she has admitted that they are still in the dark as to what exactly caused that catastrophic episode.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com Gladys Sicknick, 74, was unequivocal in her assertion that Officer Brian Sicknick was not struck on the head and that as far as the family knows her son had a fatal stroke.
She said, ‘He wasn’t hit on the head no. We think he had a stroke, but we don’t know anything for sure.
‘We’d love to know what happened.’
Please let that sink in: apparently the family has not been told the results of any autopsy. Has there been an autopsy prior to Officer Sicknick’s cremation? I have never read anything that indicates an answer to that question.
More:
But in the six weeks since his death the truth has taken a backseat to the myth of the brutal attack. Democratic Impeachment Managers even brazenly cited the incident – that he was stricken in the head by a fire extinguisher – as fact in pre-trial articles filed February 2 despite already growing doubts.
Now DailyMail.com has unpacked fact from fiction in an attempt to extract Sicknick’s death from the misinformation in which it was mired before it even happened.
Please read the whole thing. You probably know most of it, because it’s been covered on this blog several times since January, but here’s an excerpt:
…January 8, Sicknick’s father, Charles, 81, told Reuters that on January 7, as they rushed from their homes in New Jersey to DC, the family were told that Sicknick had a blood clot on his brain and had suffered a stroke. He was being kept alive on a ventilator but was dead by the time they got there.
Yet these few publicly available facts were bulldozed over by political fervor and it was the unattributed account of a brutal attack, also reported by the Associated Press, that gained traction.
Less than 24 hours after his death, with no autopsy, no confirmation of any sign of blunt trauma, no investigation nor due process, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the ‘perpetrators’ of Sicknick’s ‘attack’ to be brought to justice and vowed, ‘We will not forget.’
Despite the family’s earnest desire to the contrary, Sicknick’s death was politicized and seized on as an exemplar of all of the savagery of the pro-Trump mob’s assault on the temple of American democracy.
There’s a helpful timeline at the article, too.
The following is true of most press and pundits on both left and right, who for the most part swallowed the fire extinguisher story without checking it out or paying attention to the family’s statements of what medical authorities had told them:
…[T]he narrative continued to run unchecked with not one leader acknowledging the ongoing investigation or the complete absence of any certainty amid the melee of misreporting…
On February 2 CNN reported that investigators were ‘vexed’ by the lack of evidence linking anyone with Sicknick’s death. According to their source medical examiners had found no sign of blunt trauma.
Yet that very day Democratic Impeachment Managers filed their pre-trial articles in which they ignored all doubts and evidence to the contrary and stated as fact, ‘The insurgents killed a Capitol police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher.’
The left is now trying to work the pepper spray angle – the idea that pepper spray wielded by some of the rioters might have caused his death. In very rare cases it can cause a spike in blood pressure – perhaps that’s what happened to Officer Sicknick, although the blood clot story doesn’t seem to support that. At any rate, we’ve not heard anything about Officer Sicknick’s blood pressure when arriving at the hospital.
The Daily Mail article also mentions that pepper spray was used on January by both police and the rioters, so it would be next to impossible to say who wielded the spray that got Sicknick, and of course it was certainly a delayed reaction on his part if he had a reaction to it at all, because there were many hours between the demonstration and his collapse and in the meantime he reported feeling fine. Unless a video is found of someone spraying him directly, it may always remain up in the air, but the left is clinging to it as a possible way to continue to blame the rioters.
Open thread
Michael Anton has a question: Why Do the Election’s Defenders Require My Agreement?
I suggest a full read of MIchael Anton’s essay in American Greatness. It contains a valuable summary of all the reasons to doubt the fairness of the 2020 election. I disagree with his point about changing demographics as a resultant of immigration being part of the unfairness, but that’s really a minor issue of disagreement compared to all the other points he makes with which I agree.
Anton gives some theories about why so many people seen to be insisting on agreement from Anton that the election was won by Biden fair and square. But he doesn’t find his explanations of the phenomenon to be completely satisfying:
At any rate, why [Andrew] Sullivan or anyone else should care what I think of the 2020 election I find difficult to understand. Surely no one can seriously (as distinguished from crocodile fears) fret that my disbelief is a threat to the regime? If my opinion carried any weight at all, then my 406-page book and dozens of articles last year would have had some impact. They manifestly did not.
Or are they concerned for my soul, that I not be plagued (as Plato put it) by a “lie in the soul”? If that’s the case, let me worry about my own soul…
Machiavelli says in chapter six of The Prince that for a founder-prophet to be secure, “things must be ordered in such a mode that when [men] no longer believe, one can make them believe by force.” Does this regime currently possess that power? Is it seeking it? Chait would no doubt like to think so; would Sullivan agree? Is forced “belief” really belief?…
Sullivan repeatedly demanded that I explain how Our Democracy™ can survive as a democracy if something like half the country doesn’t believe in it anymore. The question was rhetorical. Sullivan knows the answer: it can’t. His purpose in asking was to shift blame from those who rig everything, refuse to explain anything but instead gaslight, gaslight, gaslight, onto those who, in response, decline to believe.
Much more at the link.
I’ve experienced much the same phenomenon Anton has, only not so publicly. But quite a few people I know who don’t ordinarily discuss politics with me – or, in the case of one, much of anything with me – have interrogated me (there really is no other word for it) as to whether I believe the election was fraudulent. I have given essentially the same answer as Anton, which in its summary form goes like this: the rules were changed so that we can never know; there was reason to think in advance that the results would be suspect, and then things are reported to have actually happened that do make them suspect, and the courts have never ruled on the merits and almost certainly never will.
Here’s is my own theory as to why my own interrogators and those of Anton are asking – nay, demanding – that we agree with them on the fairness of the 2020 election: they see our answers to the question as a test of our sanity as well as our judgment. The question they’re really asking is: how far gone are you? Have you lost your mind? Do you not see what’s obvious to every thinking and decent person who hasn’t been taken over by QAnon fantasies: that Joe Biden won fair and square and everything else is a baldfaced and pernicious lie?
They’re not looking for reassurance about the fairness of the vote; they feel they know for certain that it was fair. They’re not looking for Anton’s opinion because they plan to respect it, although they obviously respect his intellect. They are asking in order to test his opinion: has this previously intelligent person (whom they used to somewhat respect despite the political differences they have with him) gone stupid as well as mad? Is he that gullible and disordered in his thinking?
They start with the premise that they are correct in their beliefs, and work backwards to see whether he will come up with the right answer. No other answer will do.
More steps toward the defenestration of Andrew Cuomo?
Nearly everything coming out lately about Cuomo’s nursing home decision is old news to the right. Only a few details are new.
Until recently the story was only covered on the right. Now we have things like this in Newsweek:
The truth behind the obfuscation and lies is this: The governor snuck a toxic corporate immunity clause in the 2020 budget on behalf of his top campaign donor, the Greater New York Hospital Association. You don’t need a PhD to understand that handing out get-out-of-jail-free cards to for-profit nursing homes in the middle of a pandemic will lead to more deaths
Now there’s also a resurfacing of an allegation of sexual harassment against Cuomo from a former aide. This charge was first leveled back in December, and it’s enjoying a renascence. But the question I have is whether it will die again much like the sexual allegations against Biden – which were immediately quashed, unlike those against Republicans which are always found “credible.”
So far so good for Cuomo on that score. The networks haven’t rushed in yet:
The three major broadcast networks joined CNN and MSNBC Wednesday in avoiding mention of sexual harassment claims against Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo during their evening news programs.
According to Grabien transcripts, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” CBS’ “Evening News,” and NBC’s “Nightly News” made no mention of the embattled Cuomo, who is facing calls for his impeachment and resignation after he was accused of covering up the number of deaths from COVID-19 in state nursing homes following his controversial order that assisted living facilities accept COVID-positive patients.
So I’m a bit confused: is Cuomo on his way out after all, but does the party want it to be for the nursing home decision rather than for anything else? Or will the sexual harassment allegations end up having legs? Or will it all die down? It’s like trying to read the tea leaves in the Kremlin during Cold War days.
Open thread
Feeling calmer?
