Here’s an interview with William F. Buckley from 40 years ago, mostly about statistics and discrimination. Well worth watching, as is most of Sowell:
Who was Stephen Paddock?
And why should we care? After all, there’s a very good argument to make for not giving shooters such as Paddock the attention they probably craved in life.
But there’s also a desire to make sense out of something so vile, something that still lacks any motive that we can see. Some mass killers who’ve previously led obscure lives leave manifestos because they want us to know them at the end. Paddock doesn’t seem to have done that, although I assume his computer might reveal more than we know now (which is next to nothing). So far there is no “sense” to be made. But more understanding of his life trajectory and motives could point to something that might help prevent or alert us to the next one.
Because there is very likely to be a “next one.” Unfortunately, the impulse to kill and the ability to kill is part of humankind, and that won’t change. The weaponry might, and among the many present-day choices are vehicles and/or explosives and/or firearms and/or knives and probably others I haven’t thought of. And some that haven’t been invented yet.
We don’t know much about Paddock at this point (most of the information I rely on in this post is at that link), so anything I’m about to write here is extremely speculative. But these are my hunches, guesses, theories, for what they’re worth.
Paddock was a guy who kept a very low profile. But there are two unusual things about his life, and they tie in with each other (or might tie in with each other). The first is that his father was a notorious criminal, a bank robber and prison escapee who lived away from the family under a different name for many years. The second is that Stephen Paddock was a gambler. If he had a home—and he apparently had several in various Sunshine states but didn’t stay too long in any of them—it was the gambling centers of Las Vegas and to a lesser extent Reno. So in a sense he was home when he committed his crime, although he was in a Vegas hotel.
Does psychopathy run in families? Maybe, say the researchers. Paddock’s shocked and talkative younger brother Eric says that his father was on the run by the time Eric was born and therefore not much of an influence on their lives, but since Stephen was eight years older than Eric we can conclude that their father probably was a much greater environmental influence during Stephen’s formative years until the age of eight. And of course their father would have been a genetic influence for all his children.
So there’s a criminal and possibly psychopathic father, and Stephen himself seemed drawn to the risky business of gambling. On the move, married once (briefly?), no children, holding various legit jobs until making a financial killing (to coin a phrase) in real estate, at least according to his brother. I wonder, though, whether Stephen might have actually made his money in a shadier enterprise and gave the real estate explanation as a cover story. Something about his constant moving and the very low profile indicates at least the possibility.
So he might have been a shady character right along, who kept a low profile and let no moss grow under his feet, and found his natural home in casinos, where he felt most comfortable.
What made him decide to become a killer? After all, he’s older than most mass murderers, and isn’t described as having been particularly rageful, or rageful at all. My guess is that politics was not the issue, but that’s just a guess (like most of what I’m writing here). I think he wanted to die for some reason, and decided to let his destructive impulses out prior to killing himself. And I think he did that because he was a psychopath who wanted to kill, to go out in what he considered a blaze of glory.
If I’m correct about that—and I have no idea whether I am—he would have most resembled Columbine shooters Harris and Kliebold, of the mass killers that come to mind. That may seem like an odd thing to say, since they were high school students and he was well into his sixties. But here’s what I’m basing the statement on [emphasis mine]:
”¦Harris and Klebold planned for a year and dreamed much bigger. The school served as means to a grander end, to terrorize the entire nation by attacking a symbol of American life. Their slaughter was aimed at students and teachers, but it was not motivated by resentment of them in particular…
The killers, in fact, laughed at petty school shooters. They bragged about dwarfing the carnage of the Oklahoma City bombing and originally scheduled their bloody performance for its anniversary. Klebold boasted on video about inflicting “the most deaths in U.S. history.” Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. If they hadn’t been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters. The climax would be captured on live television. It wasn’t just “fame” they were after – Agent Fuselier bristles at that trivializing term – they were gunning for devastating infamy on the historical scale of an Attila the Hun. Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.
Well, I don’t know if Paddock was that ambitious, but I think his impulse was most likely similar.
The other comparison that comes to mind is to Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower Sniper of 1966. The similarities there involve the high-up sniper perch, and the seeming lack of obvious or conventional motivation (even Whitman—who kept voluminous journals—didn’t understand why he had these aggressive impulses and was trying to puzzle it out). On autopsy, Whitman was found to have had a brain tumor that may or may not have been the cause or at least a contributing factor in his aggression, and doctors have been arguing about that ever since. I wonder whether an autopsy of Paddock will reveal any brain changes that might possibly explain (or at least partially explain) his sudden turning.
I have little doubt we’ll learn more about the shooter as time goes on. But I doubt we’ll learn enough to understand all that much. Perhaps Trump’s characterization is the best explanation we’ll ever have: “an act of true evil.”
No sympathy for the Republican devils
The Daily Caller reports on the following heartwarming thought expressed in a Facebook conversation:
A top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold, said she “is not even sympathetic” for the victims of the shooting at a country music festival at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Sunday night.
“If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,” wrote Geftman-Gold on Facebook, perhaps referring to Sandy Hook. “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”
It’s not all that unusual to find expressions of vindictive hatred of the political sort on left or on right. I’ve certainly read and/or heard it coming from each side. At this point, I’m not even going to get into the question of which side is more likely to express such thoughts; I have my theories, but they are just theories.
I don’t often discuss this sort of stuff when it occurs, but I mention Geftman-Gold’s statements because it astounds me that someone who is a media lawyer would write such things in such a public forum, knowing the sort of scrutiny social media platforms draw (her current position is listed as “VP, Senior Counsel, Strategic Transactions at CBS”). It’s not the least bit surprising to me that someone in such a position might hold the point of view she expressed; as I said, I’ve seen more than enough of the “I don’t care if the opposition dies; they’re all evil” point of view from both sides. But why did Geftman-Gold allow herself to write this on Facebook? Did she think it wouldn’t come back to bite her?
Well, maybe it won’t—although someone (not Geftman-Golds herself, it has been reported) has removed her offensive words, it’s not at all clear that there will be any repercussions for their author at her job. Who knows what CBS will or won’t do? Perhaps nothing. [Note added 4:45 PM: See ADDENDUM below; CBS has fired her.]
But whatever happens, I would wager that what prompted Geftman-Golds to feel quite safe in expressing her sentiments is the fact that she most likely lives in a liberal bubble that has allowed and even at times encouraged such thoughts. I’ve lived in liberal bubbles, and I still operate in smaller liberal bubbles at times, and although I’ve never personally heard anything quite approaching the viciousness of Geftman-Golds’ remarks, I hear plenty of hatred and contempt expressed for Republicans in general.
It’s pretty standard, and after a while it becomes a sort of expected background noise to those who frequent such circles continually, and whatever shock value it might have had (if it had any in the first place) probably starts wearing off. If everyone considers expressions of hatred for members of a political party standard and worth hardly a yawn, after a while those expressions might start to escalate.
I am almost certain that, were she asked to explain herself—and if she were to give an honest answer—Geftman-Golds would say that she was right to say what she said because after all she was only defending children from being killed by firearms, and Republicans think it’s just hunky-dory if children are slaughtered in that way as long as the Republicans can keep their precious guns. Something like that. Despite being a lawyer, I doubt she has any true understanding of the Second Amendment, what it means and why it is important to defend. And I very much doubt she hobnobs with any Republicans or country music aficionados, so she felt quite free to demonize them.
In sum, I believe it’s likely that Geftman-Golds felt philosophically safe inside her bubble, and didn’t even think her remarks would be especially controversial or objectionable.
I am fairly certain that the majority of liberals I know (and by extrapolation, the majority of liberals) would not side with Geftman-Golds’ point of view on the victims of the Las Vegas shooting. But I certainly am acquainted with quite a few liberals who detest Republicans as a group and think them not just misguided but evil. And—at least online—I’ve met quite a few people on the right who feel very much the same about Democrats as a group.
[NOTE: The title for this post is a variation on this.]
[ADDENDUM: More in a similar vein, from a teacher.
However, CBS has fired Geftman-Gold:
“This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS. Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families,” said CBS’s statement.
I say good for CBS. Geftman-Gold wasn’t just expressing a political point of view, she was expressing an idea that people on both sides should (and mostly do) find abhorrent.
And of course it’s her right to express it. And it’s CBS’s right to fire her for a particularly reprehensible statement, especially as she was a legal counsel for them.]
Ken Burns’ Vietnam
I’ve already said that I wasn’t going to watch Ken Burns’ documentary on Vietnam, and why.
But of course lots of other people have watched it. Here’s a report from Powerline’s Scott Johnson:
Watching the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary history of the war, I was disappointed to hear the conflict described as a civil war as late as episode 10, covering the war’s denouement in 1975. Under the prestigious auspices of Burns and PBS, the documentary recirculates a goodly share of the tripe that I credulously consumed back in the day. Looking around online this morning, I find I wasn’t the only one to notice.
The series concluded its original broadcast on Thursday evening. PBS has posted each of the 10 episodes as broadcast here and other versions here. The filmmakers dug up some remarkable footage. They conducted interesting interviews with Vietnamese participants. They have reopened discussion of history that continues to haunt.
Unsurprisingly, the series tilted to the left. The languid pace of the series’ narration by Peter Coyote was stupefying. Given the languid pace, I found various aspects of the documenatary’s superficiality especially irritating. The documentary’s superficiality facilitated the leftward tilt.
Johnson recommends watching a panel discussion on the program, held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
The panel included three members of the documentary’s historical advisory group. Representing a wide range of perspectives, the participants on the CSIS panel included Mark Moyar himself, of course, but also Thomas Vallely (Harvard University), Lewis Sorley (independent scholar), Marc Selverstone (University of Virginia), Gregory Daddis (Chapman University), Nu Anh Tran (University of Connecticut) and Jay Veith (independent scholar). Erik Villard (US Army Center of Military History) moderated the discussion.
Here’s the video. I haven’t watched it yet (the discussion doesn’t begin till minute 35, and the entire video is long), but Johnson highly recommends the portion in which Lewis Sorley speaks, beginning at minute 48.
I’ve read Sorley’s book A Better War and found it impressive and persuasive. I discussed Sorley’s two Vietnam books here, here, and here.
Tale of a different shooting—and recovery
High death toll in Las Vegas mass murder
A gunman perched high on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas Strip casino unleashed a shower of bullets down on an outdoor country music festival below, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 400 as tens of thousands of frantic concert-goers screamed and ran for their lives, officials said Monday. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
President Donald Trump called the attack “an act of pure evil.”
Country music star Jason Aldean was performing Sunday night at the end of the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival when the gunman opened fire across the street from inside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
SWAT teams quickly descended on the concert and the casino, and officers used explosives to get into the hotel room where the suspect was inside, authorities said. The gunman was found dead at the scene and was identified by Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo as Stephen Paddock, 64. A motive was not immediately known.
Police said Paddock was found dead with as many as 10 firearms.
We know very very little about the shooter at this point. He’s a white man, said to have a criminal history and be from the area. Predictably, ISIS has claimed he’s acting on their behalf; they’re eager to ally themselves and take “credit” for just about any evil, but that doesn’t mean their claim is true although it could be.
I think it’s a safe guess that Paddock was an angry guy whose ambition was to go down as one of the biggest mass murderers in history. He succeeded in getting the US record in terms of shootings:
The shooting at the sold-out Route 91 Harvest festival was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Forty-nine people were killed when a gunman opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016.
I’m no firearms expert, but it seems to me it would be pretty easy to kill people in a large, massed crowd, even if firing from as far away as the 32nd floor of a building, because of the huge crush of people. You wouldn’t have to be a particularly good shot.
That SWAT team no doubt prevented further carnage.
I will update this post as more news develops.
UPDATE 11:40 AM:
It is being reported that—as might be suspected—the shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. My guess is that (if the report is correct) this occurred at or near the time that the police were engaged in breaking into the shooter’s hotel room (sniper’s nest) with explosives.
The shooter’s brother reports being shocked by the events and knowing nothing about his brother’s possible motive, saying, “He’s just a guy.”
But a guy who apparently wanted to go down in history for something, even if (or especially if?) that something was evil.
Prayers for the wounded survivors, the dead, and their families.
UPDATE 12:05 PM:
As so often seems to be the case with these events, the most complete coverage so far is in the British press.
Makeovers for the mature
I continue to love makeovers. They cheer me up.
I love the transformations, and I particularly love the ones by “The Makeover Guy,” who deals with people of all ages but definitely seems to concentrate on women over 50.
I especially like the discussion here of the somewhat-grumpy “resting face” of this 75-year-old woman. This is one of the makeover videos where it’s hard to believe it’s the same person after the makeup and hair changes:
As a person with naturally curly/frizzy hair, I feel a certain kinship with this next lady, who is especially hair-challenged. But she seems to have made no effort at all to tame her mane prior to the makeover. Although I happen to really like gray hair on a lot of women, sometimes it’s not good on women with florid coloring such as hers, and so the decision to dye it here was probably for the best.
What a beauty she ends up being. A bit like a cross between Raquel Welch and Bette Midler:
Simplicity itself: XX, XY
A while back, commenter “parker” wrote—and I think he spoke for a lot of people when he said it:
It is simple, because I admit I am a simpleton. Born XY you are male, Born XX you are female.
Now of course parker is no simpleton; he was being sarcastic. He’s only repeating what we learned in school about XX and XY, and there’s no reason most of us would ever have to learn differently. What’s more, for the vast majority of human beings, “XY you are male, XX you are female” accurately describes the way it works.
But actually, that’s not the whole story. In fact, there are a host of in-between physical states that can create all sorts of intersex anomalies, some involving disorders of the sex chromosomes themselves and some involving disorders of other systems that affect the way sex assignation is physically expressed. In other words, genotype is not always unambiguous, and what’s more, phenotype does not always match genotype.
Before I go on, I need to deal with the question of where transgendered people might fit in. The vast majority lack any genetic anomalies of the sort I’m describing. So this post is not about the vast majority of transgendered people, or about transgendered people (in the social sense) at all. It’s about other people who have anomalies of sex chromosomes (or other physical anomalies) that can cause a wide variety of sexual characteristics and categories that differ from that simple binary system as parker described it and as most of us learned it.
Some of these anomalies are obvious at birth and involve genitalia that are ambiguous. Other anomalies only become obvious at puberty when secondary sexual characteristics don’t develop in the normal manner. Others manifest still later, when infertility is the first sign. Some are disorders in which the child is born with either XX or XY and the problem is in some other system that affects the development of sexual characteristics.
This is helpful in understanding that sometimes the simple-seeming nature of the thing is actually relatively unsimple:
It is true that in typical male development, the SRY gene on the tip of the Y chromosome helps to send the embryo down the masculine pathway. But more than the SRY is needed for sex determination and differentiation; for example, women with CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) have the SRY gene [and therefore are conventionally genetically male] but lack androgen receptors. In terms of hormone effects on their bodies (including their brains), women with CAIS have had much less “masculinization” than the average 46,XX woman because their cells do not respond to androgens [46,XX women have less androgen but more “masculinization” because they do respond to the smaller amount of androgen produced by the bodies].
Moreover, the SRY gene can be translocated onto an X chromosome (so that a 46,XX person may develop along a typical masculine pathway), and there are dozens of genes on chromosomes other than the X and the Y that contribute to sexual differentiation. And beyond the genes, a person’s sex development can be significantly influenced by environmental factors (including the maternal uterine environment in which the fetus developed).
So it is simply incorrect to think that you can tell a person’s sex just looking at whether he or she has a Y chromosome.
Also, please take a look at this list of conditions of this type. Click on each of them and you’ll find an explanation for how it works.
I had to learn a lot about these conditions in a course that was required for my graduate degree, and I was as surprised as anyone to find that the physical situation was far more complex than I’d originally thought.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
More on “Trump’s Katrina”
The disaster in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria has been of mammoth proportions, with much human suffering to go along with the physical destruction. The place is in very dire straits, and will be for a long time to come.
This cannot be fixed overnight. But it does require a huge relief effort under trying circumstances. There is little question that the island’s residents would like to receive as much help as possible, pronto. No matter how much is already being done it can’t really be enough, by definition. The needs are that great.
This would seem to be a situation in which politics shouldn’t rear its ugly head. But it does; oh, how it does. This has been true for all such disasters since at least Katrina (it may have also been the case earlier than that, but I don’t recall it). The MSM is biased towards the Democratic side of things, so the coverage tends to be skewed that way, but each political side has tried to make hay out of the inevitable failings of the opposite side if the opponents are in power.
So good luck on sorting out whether the Trump administration’s response to Maria has actually been good or bad or indifferent in the objective sense. The response can’t possibly enough to satisfy those who are still in trouble, because the situation cannot be fixed adequately in a short amount of time. But has the response of the administration been reasonable, compassionate, typical of what any other administration would have done under the circumstances? Since I have come to profoundly distrust the MSM on these things, it is really really hard to tell. But here’s the memeorandum roundup on the subject, for what it’s worth.
One thing I can say, however, is that I believe Trump’s picking a fight with the mayor of San Juan has been counterproductive and in fact stupid. You don’t start speaking against the people of Puerto Rico at a time like this; you utter soothing platitudes even if you’re pissed at having been criticized.
But that’s not Trump’s style, is it? And this is one PR war I think he’s going to lose. He is tone deaf on this one and comes across as childish and petulant and defensive, not a good presentation during a humanitarian disaster:
“The mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” Trump tweeted. “Such poor leadership ability by the mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.”
“They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort,” he continued. “10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.”
San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz held an emotional press conference Friday ripping the Trump administration’s efforts to assist the island.
“I will do what I never thought I was going to do. I am begging, begging anyone who can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency,” she said.
It is certainly possible that every single word Trump said is true; I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter; it would still be the wrong response from him. The right response would be something like, “My heart goes out to the major and the people of Puerto Rico, and I understand they are feeling desperate and frightened. We are highly aware of the situation and this is what we have done, and what we plan to do….” followed by a list of all the rescue efforts and aid.
The mayor holds all the emotional cards here. Trump holds none. It’s time to be “presidential” rather than petty—which would give a lot of weight to his claims that the administration is doing all it can.
[ADDENDUM: Let me clarify that I am not saying not to fight back and not to defend yourself. In this case, though, Trump’s manner comes off as nasty. There’s a term for what I’m advocating, and it’s called “stroke-kick.” The principle is that first you give the person or persons some praise or compassion or understanding, and it can be quite brief. Then that’s followed by the defense of yourself and/or the criticism of that person. It can be much more effective than leaving out the “stroke” part. The problem with a lot of Republicans in the past is that the “stroke” part””the compassion or the praise””hasn’t been coupled with a spirited-enough “kick” part. Or the “stroke” part has been too long and involved and sounding like some sort of mea culpa.]
[ADDENDUM II: I also want to clarify what I was referring to when I wrote about speaking against the Puerto Rican people.
Trump’s statements can easily be interpreted that way, whatever he actually meant to convey. Here are his words again (and they were in separate tweets, because one wasn’t enough to get the whole message in). I have put the important parts in bold:
Such poor leadership ability by the mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.”
“They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort,” he continued. “10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.”
Not many people are going to parse those two tweets so carefully as to realize who those unspecified “others” might be. If he was just talking about officials (and I believe he was just talking about officials) he needed to make that crystal clear, because it sure doesn’t sound that way if you read it quickly. “Others” is way too unclear and open-ended. And then the start of the next tweet “They want everything to be done for them” could (and probably will) more easily than not be misconstrued to mean the Puerto Ricans in general.
Will these tweets end up mattering in the long run? No, I don’t think so. But in my opinion they are an unforced error and will cause more negative reactions than positive ones, unlike some of Trump’s other tweets that have also been highly and widely criticized.]
The GOP in the Senate
Commenter “physicsguy” remarks:
I read yesterday that the GOP reps are getting very annoyed with their brethren in the Senate. And, I think they’re correct. Look at where it has all broken down”¦in the Senate. And in particular we can point directly to McCain, and the ladies from Maine and Alaska. Sad how 4 people can totally derail an entire country.
I’m not sure who the 4 people are. I only count 3: McCain, Collins, and Murkowski (Olympia Snowe used to be another, but she’s long gone from the Senate). But anyway, it doesn’t matter if it’s 3 or 4 (although in a tight race, that small difference can make all the difference in the world); the principle is the same.
The GOP reps aren’t the only ones getting annoyed. This annoyance has been going on for as long as I’ve been blogging, and probably longer. I share it.
However, I also see it somewhat differently, at the same time. I know, for example, that Maine is a purple-to-blue state. Every now and then there’s a big surprise from Mainers—that Paul LePage ever became governor there is a total shock to most Mainers I know, for example. I truly doubt anyone to the right of Collins could be elected senator there, but whether I’m correct or not about that theory (LePage’s governorship argues that I might be wrong), Susan Collins and Maine have been joined at the hip for twenty years. In 2014 she was re-elected with over 68% of the vote; in 2008 her total was over 61%. In other words, unless she wants to retire from the Senate, Collins isn’t going anywhere. She apparently suits the people of Maine quite well.
So although Collins—and McCain of Arizona, and Murkowski of Alaska, are indeed moderate Republicans, or RINOs, or mavericks, or back-stabbers, or whatever you want to call them, they represent an actual wing of the GOP and the desires of their constituents. But—and here is the actual point of this post—one of the main reasons these people wield so much power is that the GOP margin in the Senate is so small.
A fifty-two vote majority isn’t much in the Senate. It means that to prevail without Democratic votes (and usually the GOP must function without the help of any Democrats) there must be near-unanimity in the party. Even a couple of moderates (or any sort of outlier) are going to have a great deal of power because the GOP majority is so tiny. And senators love power, and most of them are going to milk that power for all it’s worth, trying to get concessions for their states and basking in the glow of their fame. After all, going along with the pack doesn’t get you many headlines, does it? And these people—especially Collins, with whom I’m most familiar—really are moderate politically, so it’s not as though they’re compromising many of their own principles to vote against the more conservative wing of the GOP.
If the GOP wants to avoid this problem, the only solution is to get a bigger majority in the Senate. That’s the reality as I see it.
Take a look at the history of party control of the Senate. I arbitrarily chose a starting date of 1951, the 82nd Congress, and studied the composition of the senates after that. The pattern is crystal clear. Democrats controlled the Senate far more often, sometimes widely and sometimes narrowly. They also controlled it widely far more often, and with far greater margins. For many years, for example, during the entire decade of the 60s and for much of the 70s, their margins were huge (often over 60 and even close to 70).
Not only has the GOP been the minority party in the Senate far more often than the Democrats have, but the GOP majorities (already few and far between) have been far smaller than those the Democrats have enjoyed. A big big majority for the Republicans—the biggest since 1951, as far as I can see—has been 55. And that august figure was achieved by the GOP only a few times.
The GOP in the Senate is frustrating for a number of reasons. The first is that their numbers have usually been small. The second is that even when they have a majority it’s been a small one, subject to pressure by “mavericks” and moderates. The third is that even when in power, the leaders don’t seem to be able to effectively pressure those mavericks and moderates right back (one suspects the Democrats would somehow be able to do it if the situation were reversed).
The fourth frustration isn’t really about the GOP in the Senate, it’s about the Senate itself. The Senate is a place of many rules—some of which seem designed to stifle the passage of legislation—and it is also a place of many swelled heads. The reasons for the latter aren’t always clear, but they have something to do with the smaller size of the Senate relative to the House, the fact that senators are elected from larger areas (the state) than members of the House, and that they stay for a much longer term. Therefore they have much less need to be responsive to the people. This was by design of the Framers, but they also said that senators should be elected by state legislatures rather than by popular vote. In 1914 that was changed to the present system, which seems to me to represent the worst of both worlds.
Meanwhile, Trump marches on
Reuters has noticed something:
Over his first nine months, Trump has used an aggressive series of regulatory rollbacks, executive orders and changes in enforcement guidelines to rewrite the rules for industries from energy to airlines, and on issues from campus sexual assault to anti-discrimination protections for transgender students.
While his administration has been chaotic, and his decision-making impulsive and sometimes whimsical, Trump has made changes that could have far-reaching and lingering consequences for society and the economy. Some have grabbed headlines but many, no less consequential, have gone largely unnoticed amid the daily controversies and Twitter insults that have marked Trump’s early months in office…
The Trump administration has withdrawn or delayed more than 800 Obama-era regulatory actions in its first six months. Proposals for new rules, including those to delay or rescind existing rules, dropped 32 percent from the same period in 2016 under Obama, and are down from similar six-month periods under presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, according to the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.
At the same time, Trump has limited new federal regulations by requiring agencies to cut two rules for every new one they create. He has asked each agency to name a regulatory reform officer to take aim at unneeded rules.
Please read the whole thing.
Oh, and there’s also this from Powerline:
But President Trump is winning big on judicial nominations. He’s nominating outstanding men and women, and most of them seem destined to be confirmed.
Social justice warrior looks a gift Dr. Seuss in the mouth
It began with a seemingly-innocuous gift:
To celebrate “National Read a Book Day,” the first lady [Melania Trump] had sent out a collection of 10 Dr. Seuss books to one school in each state across the nation. The titles included: “The Cat in the Hat”; “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish”; “Wacky Wednesday”; “Green Eggs and Ham”; and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”
She followed in the footsteps of her predecessor, Michelle Obama, who often read Dr. Seuss books to children. Former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush also read to children at Dr. Seuss-themed educational events.
So far so good, right? One would think that this would be a relatively non-controversial, non-political act—with bipartisan agreement, as it were, since Dr. Seuss seems to have been given the Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton seals of approval—but if one thought that, one would think wrong.
Enter snippy, condescending social justice warrior Liz Phipps Soeiro:
Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at a public school in Cambridge, wrote a letter to the first lady, which was then published on The Horn Book blog, notifying Mrs. Trump that her school would “not be keeping the titles” for their collection, explaining that her school didn’t have a “NEED” for the books, due to her school and library’s “award-winning” status.
“I work in a district that has plenty of resources, which contributes directly to ”˜excellence,’” Soeiro wrote. “My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in library science.”
Might that highly-degreed librarian be none other than Ms. Soeiro herself? What a terrible insult from Melania Trump! And that’s not all; oh no, Soeiro was just getting warmed up:
Soeiro went on to slam the White House and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for not gifting the books to “underfunded and underprivileged communities,” which she suggested “continue to be marginalized” by DeVos’ policies.
But Soeiro seemed to be the most offended by the books themselves.
In what way do these Dr. Seuss books offend? Ms. Soeiro explains:
Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes,” said Phipps Soeiro in her letter to the first lady, calling Seuss “a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.” “Open one of his books (”˜If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street,’ for example), and you’ll see the racist mockery in his art.”
I’ve read many a Dr. Seuss book in my day, and loved them (although I’m not familiar with those two; my favorites were and are Horton Hatches the Egg and Happy Birthday To You, as well as Hop on Pop and Green Eggs and Ham). My son loved them, too.
For the most part, his illustrations are wonderful flights of fancy. Most of the characters in Seuss’ drawings don’t really have much resemblance to persons living or dead, or to persons of any race—they are creatures, creatures the likes of which have never been seen in a natural history museum. His characters—non-human and human—are uniformly goofy-looking, too. So if his illustrations in general are steeped in anything, it’s in fantasy and mildly humorous silliness.
I read at least five articles about this incident, but couldn’t find an image of the racist illustrations that so offended this librarian in her campaign against the Four Olds. But I finally located this post from a few months ago that discussed Seuss’ racist drawings in some detail, the bulk of which seem to have been anti-Japanese cartoons from WWII (which do not appear in his children’s books), plus a few black characters and some Asian characters in a few of his children’s books that appear in extremely minor roles and are described as being subservient to the white child who is the main character (bringing him things, for example) and are said to have been drawn in a stereotypically racist way. Since none of these illustrations are shown, I can’t judge them for myself, and I don’t own those particular books and never even read them to my child.
Here’s what turned up when I Googled, under “images,” “black characters in if i ran the zoo.” In other words, what you get is a lot of creatures, and a protagonist who’s a cartoon version of a human child. No doubt there are some black characters in the book, too, but good luck in finding them online. (As a side note, the superior librarian Ms. Soeiro refers to the title of this book as If I Ran a Zoo, but it’s actually If I Ran the Zoo.).
I think the goal of SJWs such as Soeiro is—in addition to criticizing everything Trump or any other GOP member (or spouse or family of such members) might do—to take all the joy and whimsy out of children’s lives and replace it with strictly PC didacticism. That eventually would probably have to involve doing away with anything that was written before, oh, say 1995.
Unless, of course, that something was sanctioned by President Obama (from a presidential proclamation made in 2016):
The moment we persuade a child to pick up a book for the first time we change their lives forever for the better, and on Read Across America Day, we recommit to getting literary works into our young peoples’ hands early and often.
March 2 is also the birthday of one of America’s revered wordsmiths. Theodor Seuss Geisel — or Dr. Seuss — used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear. Through a prolific collection of stories, he made children see that reading is fun, and in the process, he emphasized respect for all; pushed us to accept ourselves for who we are; challenged preconceived notions and encouraged trying new things; and by example, taught us that we are limited by nothing but the range of our aspirations and the vibrancy of our imaginations. And for older lovers of literature, he reminded us not to take ourselves too seriously, creating wacky and wild characters and envisioning creative and colorful places.
Somehow I doubt that Ms. Soeiro saw fit to write a chiding letter to President Obama at the time, despite the fact that she takes herself very seriously indeed. Ah, but that proclamation of Obama’s was so 2016, anyway. Now, in the Brave New World of 2017, Dr. Seuss is “a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.”
I’m sure Ms. Soeiro could write something far better than Seuss’s outdated and hackneyed output. I look forward to reading her efforts.
[NOTE: By the way, Soeiro is not alone. She is merely reflecting a wave of “Seuss is a racist” sentiment that’s been going on for a while. In her letter to the First Lady, she references the racist nature of the Cat in The Cat in the Hat, based on this sort of thing. There is a sort of racism treasure hunt being undertaken, and it doesn’t matter that Soeiro herself dressed as the Cat and celebrated Seuss (photos here) back in March of 2015.
Ah, but that was two and a half years ago, aeons in the world of the social justice warrior, who can’t be expected to know how the worm is going to turn. That was before Seuss and the Cat were declared racist, after all. The seminal text in the campaign (Was the Cat in the Hat Black?) was only published in August of 2017, so Soeiro couldn’t have known the racist nature of her activity back in March of 2015 when she dressed up as the Cat.
But I do expect Soeiro to denounce herself shortly.]