School Daze

Every time I think this New Racism thing can't get worse I read something like this, Why Private Schools Have Gone Woke.  With the assault on public school education by the New Racists and with the full endorsement of the teachers unions (American Federation of Teachers and National Educational Association) there is a full scale battle now occurring as parents as beginning to push back on Divisiveness, Intolerance and Exclusion (DIE).  Some are proposing a further emphasis on private schools and state action to allow parents to divert their funding to private education.

Although we've seen some terrible examples of DIE and the New Racism in elite public schools (for examples, read Fighting Back) it still seemed as though this might be a viable tactic.  However, the linked article from the Washington Free Beacon explains that the National Association of Independent Schools, which has a prestigious accreditation process for private schools, has been taken over by advocates, who require DIE and New Racist curriculum to be installed in order to maintain accreditation.  It's not easy for private schools to walk about from this process, since part of their selling point is their ability to get students into leading colleges and colleges look down on private schools who are not accredited through NAIS.

As author Aaron Sibarium notes:

But families seeking less ideological schools have been struggling to find them, several parents told the Washington Free Beacon, because all the accreditors mandate the same ideology. The rapid restructuring of curricula is less the result of a free market responding to customers and more the result of demands by the National Association of Independent Schools, a centralized, self-dealing bureaucracy that has largely eliminated parent choice.

"The association is a cartel," one parent said. "You think you have a choice but you don’t."

Two forces hold that cartel together: diversity consultants who benefit from the accreditation establishment, and parents who are unwilling to challenge it because it serves as a pipeline to elite colleges. At the behest of the association, accreditors create demand for the consultancies, which in turn create demand for the association’s services, including its own DEI resources. Parents dissatisfied with this feedback loop nonetheless face pressures to tolerate it: Opting out could jeopardize their kids’ ticket to the Ivy League.

I've read other investigative pieces by Sibarium and regard him as a reliable source.  I also recommend his twitter feed.

Just another piece of evidence that America is plunging into an interlocking web of government action and institutional rot and takeover which is becoming increasingly hard to escape or undo. 

Waiting To Return

Looking forward to international travel again and plan to return to France in May of next year.  The photo was taken during our 2018 trip is taken in the village of Limeuil at the confluence of the Vezere and Dordogne Rivers in Perigord, a region about 50 miles inland from Bordeaux in the southwest of the country. 

In the meantime, I've been reading all of Martin Walker's wonderful Bruno, Chief of Police novels, set in a small town just upriver on the Vezere from Limeuil.  Been taking careful notes of the restaurants mentioned and the scenic overlooks described so we can visit them upon our return.

The Cranes are Flying

Found this amazing masterpiece of a cinema shot via Weird History.  How did they choreograph those last few seconds when the actress runs among the rumbling tanks?  It's a scene from The Cranes Are Flying, a 1957 Soviet film made during the brief late 50s-early 60s "thaw" under Premier Nikita Khrushchev.  Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and starring Tatyana Samoilova, The Cranes Are Flying was the first Soviet film to openly address the impact on people, both combatants and non-combatants, of the Second World War.  It would have been impossible to make under Stalin, who died in 1953 and had ordered crippled veterans removed from the streets of Moscow after the war because he thought they presented a poor image.

The film won the Palme d'Or for best film at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, the only Soviet film to ever do so.  Hollywood reached out to Samoilova but she was forbidden by the regime to do Western films.

Here is more from the film.  I need to watch it.

Blues Etude

Hat tip to Rick Beato for bringing this to my attention.  From 1974.  Neils Pedersen on bass, Barney Kessel guitar and the incomparable Oscar Peterson on piano. 

Covid + 16

I usually start these monthly updates with the data on the countries with the highest mortality rates but this month we'll have those at the end of the post because cumulative death rates are no longer the most important covid story.  There are two interrelated stories that need to be emphasized; (1) the covid upsurge in most of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and (2) the delta variant.

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The increase in covid cases and deaths noted last month in Asia and Africa has accelerated.  In sub-Saharan Africa there is a shortage of tests, medical care and data but many countries which had been relatively untouched (at least officially) until this May are now facing covid surges.

The same is true in Asia, particularly South and Southeast Asia.  Indonesia is seeing more than 1,000 deaths daily and Myanmar suddenly has a major outbreak.  According to three Indian demographers, that country, which officially reports 420,000 deaths, has actually had in excess of 4 million covid related deaths.

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The delta variant, first identified in November 2020 in India (prior to the use of any vaccines, so claims its origin was prompted by vaccines are not true, is now the predominant strain globally.  It is much more transmissible than earlier variants, though it does not appear more deadly.

For the vaccinated, while the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are effective against delta, they are not as effective as they are against the original virus and its variants.  However, they are generally effective in reducing the severity of covid-related illnesses.  If you have an immunological compromised system or significant co-morbidities, additional caution is warranted.

For the unvaccinated, particularly the elderly or those with co-morbidities, delta poses an increased risk because of its easy transmissibility, not because it is more severe.

Delta's viral load is about 100x that of the original virus.  One of the implications of this is lowered effectiveness of masking because of the amount of viral aerosolized material emitted by those infected. Masking already had limited effectiveness and that only if the wearer correctly handled the mask; most didn't in my observations.  If you are concerned use N95 masks.

The good news is that given the extent of vaccination so far the increase in cases in the U.S. has not seen as steep a rise in hospitalizations and deaths.  Let's hope that trend continues.

As for what happens next and what you are seeing in the media keep this in mind (from Matt Shapiro's substack, Marginally Compelling):

There is obsession in the press to look at small vaccination differences and treat them like large ones. The United States as a whole is 68.6% vaccinated with at least one dose. The lowest state is almost at 50%, but has still vaccinated 78% of their senior population. When you look at the Kaiser monthly vaccine monitor, you see that almost every variable that raises the risk of COVID (living in a population-dense city, age, having a dangerous co-morbidity) corresponds to a higher rate of COVID vaccination. We’ve targeted the highly-vulnerable and let the medium-vulnerable make their own choices (most have chosen to get vaccinated). As a result, I expect we’re going to start seeing COVID surges that look more like the UK’s recent surge.

 

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For those in my age group (65+) I support vaccination unless there are medical reasons not to do so, or if you have already had covid.  The age risk factors are enormous as I've previously noted.  I'm glad to see that in Arizona more than 87% of those 65+ have been vaccinated.

If I were a young adult or had children I would be more hesitant about vaccination because the risks associated with these vaccines may outweigh the benefits.  

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Last month I wrote about the China lab leak theory and its plausibility.  Since then it has become even more apparent to me that we should treat it as the default assumption.  China was able within 2-3 months to identify the source of the original SARS viruses back in the 2000s and has had ample opportunity to identify a natural source for covid-19 over the past 18 months and failed to do so.  It now also opposes WHO's recent announcement of a further investigation on the origins of covid-19.  We've learned that more and more of the origin story we were told in early 2020 was wrong - for instance, the first cases were not associated with the Wuhan live market; rather they were close to the Wuhan virology lab.  Our own media helped with the disinformation, peddling the story that the virology lab was sited in that city because it was near the origin point of SARS type viruses.  We now know that the lab was constructed in Wuhan prior to the first SARS outbreak in 2002 and the known sources of the virus are hundreds of miles away; there is no nearby natural source.

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Senator Rand Paul lacked discipline in his questioning of Dr Fauci earlier this week but on the big picture he was correct.  Dr Fauci did direct funding to the Wuhan virology lab and it was done so via the EcoHealth Alliance led by the doctor who organized the now inoperative February 2020 letter dismissing a possible lab origin of the virus (which is turn prompted the media to denounce anyone who said otherwise of being guilty of "misinformation" and conspiracy mongering).  Dr Fauci employed his usual tactic of not directly answering questions and, when he does so, using misdirection to let the casual listener think he is responsive when he is not.

Dr Fauci reminds me of another long-tenured DC bureaucrat who amassed too much power and abused it, intimidated those who opposed him, loved the limelight, and could do no wrong in the eyes of his supporters; J Edgar Hoover.  Time for him to go.

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This week several Democratic senators introduced a bill that would hold Facebook, YouTube and other social media companies responsible for the proliferation of falsehoods about vaccines, fake cures and other harmful health-related claims on their sites.

"The legislation leaves it up to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for declaring public health emergencies, to define what constitutes health misinformation."

Has there been misleading and inaccurate information from those opposed to the covid vaccines?  Yes.  But this is a terrible legislative proposal for multiple reasons.

The first is the general principle of freedom of speech which this would violate.

The second is that it delegates the determination of what is "health misinformation" to an agency which has promoted health misinformation in many instances since the beginning of the covid pandemic.  In February of 2020 when Mrs THC and I began to collect face masks, should Facebook have been potentially liable if it failed to prevent us from posting about it at a time when the CDC and Surgeon General said masks were useless?  What about promoting the opening of schools last summer?  What about stating that covid was primarily an aerosol threat, rather than a particle or surface threat?  The evidence of the former was clear by last summer by the official CDC position didn't change until this spring.  

Third is that it allows a government agency to effectively censor America citizens by pretending it is a neutral and objective party.  The school closing issue is a great example.  Its recommendations last year were nonsense but when the CDC was poised to issue new guidance this spring, the teacher unions intervened and, as a major supporter of the Biden administration, were allowed to dictate language eviscerating the policy change.

Finally, this proposal would not be limited to covid information.  In April 2021, the CDC Director declared "racism" a public health emergency.  Does that mean the social media platforms would become liable if someone posted information disputing that declaration and the claims underlying it?  Would Americans be allowed to criticize Black Lives Matter on social media?

The truth is that Progressives and the public health community (which is left-leaning) believe every social problem is really a public health issue in disguise.  If enacted, this legislation would create a channel to effectively bar public discussion of public policy issues under the guise of them being public health issues.  I think those proposing the legislation understand this quite clearly.

The Official Data

Reported below are all countries with population of more than one million which have reported death rates in excess of 1,500 per million (threshold raised from 1,200).

Europe

Hungary (3116), Bosnia & Herzogovina (2968), Czechia (2828), Bulgaria (2639), North Macedonia (2635), Slovakia (2295), Belgium ( 2166), Slovenia (2129), Italy (2119), Croatia (2022)

Poland (1990), UK (1890), Romania (1794), Spain (1736), France (1705), Portugal (1698), Lithuania 1644), Moldova (1551)

North America

USA (1880), Mexico (1823), Panama (1534)

Major Outbreaks: Cuba

South America

Peru (5845), Brazil (2555), Colombia (2290), Argentina (2259), Paraguay (2007)

Chile (1808), Ecuador (1717), Uruguay (1696)

Africa

Tunisia (1511)

Major Outbreaks: South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Uganda

Asia

Armenia (1542)

Major Outbreaks: Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Afghanistan

A Different Look

Built around 2600 BC, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest man-made structure in the world for almost 4,000 years.  We are used to seeing it this way:

Though still impressive, it looked much different at the time.  As constructed its facing was white limestone with a gold cap, as shown in this illustration from Historical Artifacts.  Quite different, isn't it?  How distinctive and awe-inspiring it must have been at the time.  Today, with the facing gone, one can climb the pyramid which would have been impossible in its original state.

Much of the limestone cladding was intact until the 13th and 14th centuries AD.  The gold cap had disappeared by the time the Greek author Herodotus wrote about the pyramid in the 5th century BC.

Temple Of Juno

 By Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller in 1845.  The ruins of the Temple of Juno located at Agrigento in Sicily.  Agrigento was one of the leading colonies settled by the Greeks across the Mediterranean between the 8th and 6th centuries BC with the temple constructed during the 5th century.  By the time Waldmuller painted the scene much of the area had been severely depopulated and returned to nature.

Stevie + Stevie

Didn't know until recently about this version of Superstition featuring Stevie Wonder and Stevie Ray Vaughan with assists from Jody Watley and Brown Mark (on bass).  Despite the poor video and sound quality this really has a groove!

Think For Yourself

 "We cannot chose our external circumstances, but we can always chose how to respond to them." 

- Epictetus (Stoic philosopher, 50-135 AD)

 

"Why to we have to do this?  Democrats are the party that demonstrate the dangers of when experts have lost their minds.  Republicans demonstrate the dangers of a party that has lost all trust in expertise"

- Richard Hanania (2021)

 

"Think for yourself/cause I won't be there with you"

- George Harrison (1965)

Old-Timers

 I remember when these guys were young . . . like me.

Best catch I made all year! Running into ⁦@realElTiante⁩ in Denver. ⁦@AllStarGame⁩ ⁦@RedSox⁩ #oldfriends ⁦@70sBaseball⁩ Miss him. pic.twitter.com/JC7gyPJ5Ws

— Fred Lynn (@19fredlynn) July 9, 2021

What Happened To You?

Andrew Sullivan is one of the liberals I referenced in Fighting The Good Fight II in opposition to the radical theories of the New Racists.  He's just written "What Happened To You? The radicalization of the American elite against liberalism".  Some lengthy excerpts below (with added commentary from me) and the whole article is worth reading.

“What happened to you?”

It’s a question I get a lot on Twitter. “When did you become so far right?” “Why have you become a white supremacist, transphobic, misogynistic eugenicist?” Or, of course: “See! I told you who he really was! Just take the hood off, Sully!” It’s trolling, mainly. And it’s a weapon for some in the elite to wield against others in the kind of emotional blackmail spiral that was first pioneered on elite college campuses. But it’s worth answering, a year after I was booted from New York Magazine for my unacceptable politics. Because it seems to me that the dynamic should really be the other way round.

The real question is: what happened to you?

This reminded me of my post from 2016 about my own political journey, What Happened??

Take a big step back. Observe what has happened in our discourse since around 2015. Forget CRT for a moment and ask yourself: is nothing going on here but Republican propaganda and guile? Can you not see that the Republicans may be acting, but they are also reacting — reacting against something that is right in front of our noses?

One of the great lies being spread by the proponents of the New Racism is that the opposition is solely from Republicans.  The truth is that opposition is much broader as can be seen in my Fighting the Good Fight post.

What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.(emphasis added by THC)

We all know it’s happened. The elites, increasingly sequestered within one political party and one media monoculture, educated by colleges and private schools that have become hermetically sealed against any non-left dissent, have had a “social justice reckoning” these past few years. And they have been ideologically transformed, with countless cascading consequences. 

Take it from a NYT woke star, Kara Swisher, who celebrated this week that “the country’s social justice movement is reshaping how we talk about, well, everything.” She’s right — and certainly about the NYT and all mainstream journalism.

This is the media hub of the “social justice movement.” And the core point of that movement, its essential point, is that liberalism is no longer enough. Not just not enough, but itself a means to perpetuate “white supremacy,” designed to oppress, harm and terrorize minorities and women, and in dire need of dismantling. That’s a huge deal. And it explains a lot.

The reason “critical race theory” is a decent approximation for this new orthodoxy is that it was precisely this exasperation with liberalism’s seeming inability to end racial inequality in a generation that prompted Derrick Bell et al. to come up with the term in the first place, and Kimberlé Crenshaw to subsequently universalize it beyond race to every other possible dimension of human identity (“intersectionality”).

A specter of invisible and unfalsifiable “systems” and “structures” and “internal biases” arrived to hover over the world.

As Philip K Dick wrote many years ago:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

CRT says you must believe in theory, not reality.  But reality still exists.  Don't forget.

The movement is much broader than race — as anyone who is dealing with matters of sex and gender will tell you. The best moniker I’ve read to describe this mishmash of postmodern thought and therapy culture ascendant among liberal white elites is Wesley Yang’s coinage: “the successor ideology.” The “structural oppression” is white supremacy, but that can also be expressed more broadly, along Crenshaw lines: to describe a hegemony that is saturated with “anti-Blackness,” misogyny, and transphobia, in a miasma of social “cis-heteronormative patriarchal white supremacy.” And the term “successor ideology” works because it centers the fact that this ideology wishes, first and foremost, to repeal and succeed a liberal society and democracy. (emphasis added by THC)

In the successor ideology, there is no escape, no refuge, from the ongoing nightmare of oppression and violence — and you are either fighting this and “on the right side of history,” or you are against it and abetting evil. There is no neutrality. No space for skepticism. No room for debate. No space even for staying silent. (Silence, remember, is violence — perhaps the most profoundly anti-liberal slogan ever invented.)

And that tells you about the will to power behind it. Liberalism leaves you alone. The successor ideology will never let go of you. Liberalism is only concerned with your actions. The successor ideology is concerned with your mind, your psyche, and the deepest recesses of your soul. Liberalism will let you do your job, and let you keep your politics private. S.I. will force you into a struggle session as a condition for employment.

And when it comes to K-12 education, inflicting these concepts on children is cruelty. What kind of childhood are we trying to create by telling youngsters that their race and gender are the only significant things about themselves and others?  What is the impact of making children obsess about each other's race and gender?  Why do we want white and Jewish children to hate themselves, their parents and their ancestors?  Why do we want the other children hating whites and Jews?  Why do we want all the children hating their own country and history?  Why do we want 8-year olds choosing their gender in the classroom?

What happened to me? You know what I want to know: What on earth has happened to you?

I have exactly the same principles and support most of the same policies I did under Barack Obama. In fact, I’ve moved left on economic and foreign policy since then. It’s Democrats who have taken a sudden, giant swerve away from their recent past. 

A plank of successor ideology, for example, is that the only and exclusive reason for racial inequality is “white supremacy.” Culture, economics, poverty, criminality, family structure: all are irrelevant, unless seen as mere emanations of white control. Even discussing these complicated factors is racist, according to Ibram X Kendi.

Kendi, and those like him, simply refuse to debate their opponents, because they believe any opposition to their views is driven by racism and they will not engage with racists.  Those liberals and conservatives who still think this is about a debate in the "marketplace of ideas" are delusional.  The very nature of the beliefs of the race and gender ideologues is to deny the possibility that critics could actually be motivated by ideas other than those solely based on race, gender and power.  That is why Sullivan and others understand that if this ideology triumphs it is the end of liberalism and the end of an open and free society.

You keep asking: what happened to me? I remain an Obamacon, same as I always have been. What, in contrast, has happened to you?

Check out this really insightful interview of Wes Yang by Matt Taibbi. Yang beautifully explains the radical shift in elite opinion. He notes the ascending rhetoric: “So there’s a line in an n+1 essay, where the person is saying, ‘Oh, we are now menaced by whiteness and masculinity.’ Whereas in the past, we would have said, ‘Oh, we’re menaced by racism and sexism.’” He sees what this movement is about: the end of due process, the rejection of even an attempt at objectivity, a belief in active race and sex discrimination (“equity”) to counter the legacy of the past, the purging of ideological diversity, and the replacement of liberal education with left-indoctrination. 

Yang sees the attempt to dismantle the entire carapace of liberal society and liberal institutions: “[The proponents of the successor ideology are] not trying to be malicious, but they are trying to basically annihilate a lot of the foundational processes that we depend upon and then remake them anew. You operate from the starting point that all the previous ideologies, methods, and processes are untrustworthy, because they produced this outcome previously, so we’ve got to remake all of them.” Precisely. This is a revolution against liberalism commanded from above.

I disagree with Yang (one of the other people I linked to in the Fighting The Good Fight post) on one point.  The proponents of the successor ideology are trying to be malicious.  They are evil, not just deluded.  Many of those who support them without understanding the full implications of the ideology are not malicious; in fact it is their good nature that is being taken advantage of by the proponents and, in some instances, the intimidation of knowing that not going along with this nonsense will jeopardize their educational opportunities, job and career.

While awaiting execution for his part in an anti-Nazi conspiracy, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

"Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings."

Back to Sullivan:

Look how far the left’s war on liberalism has gone.

Due process? If you’re a male on campus, gone. Privacy? Stripped away — by anonymous rape accusations, exposure of private emails, violence against people’s private homes, screaming at folks in restaurants, sordid exposés of sexual encounters, eagerly published by woke mags. Non-violence? Exceptions are available if you want to “punch a fascist.” Free speech? Only if you don’t mind being fired and ostracized as a righteous consequence. Free association? You’ve got to be kidding. Religious freedom? Illegitimate bigotry. Equality? Only group equity counts now, and individuals of the wrong identity can and must be discriminated against. Color-blindness? Another word for racism. Mercy? Not for oppressors. Intent? Irrelevant. Objectivity? A racist lie. Science? A manifestation of white supremacy. Biological sex? Replaced by socially constructed gender so that women have penises and men have periods. The rule of law? Not for migrants or looters. Borders? Racist. Viewpoint diversity? A form of violence against the oppressed.

It is absolutely no accident that this illiberal ideology has no qualms whatever with illiberal methods. The latter springs intrinsically from the former. Kendi, feted across the establishment, favors amending the Constitution to appoint an unelected and unaccountable committee of “experts” that has the power to coerce and punish any individual or group anywhere in the country deemed practicing racism. Intent does not matter. And the decisions are final. An advocate for unaccountable, totalitarian control of our society is the darling of every single elite institution in America, and is routinely given platforms where no tough questioning of him is allowed.

The great danger is that these beliefs are not just limited to crazy academics like Kendi, but now widespread in most of our institutions and the media.  Normal people face an interlocking mechanism of repression whether in education or the workplace in which any dissent from the New Racism is itself declared to be racist; any dissent from the new gender ideology is declared to be transphobic, and then the offender is cast into the darkness.

One of the other constant themes we hear from Progressives is an obsession about radicalism on the Right, an argument it deploys to increase fear among its followers and to obscure its own radicalism.  However, as Sullivan points out, the Pew Center has been asking a standard set of questions to voters since 1994 and those results show that Democrats have moved much further Left than Republicans have to the Right.

On immigration, Republicans have moved around five points to the right; the Democrats 35 points to the left. On abortion, Republicans who advocate a total ban have increased their numbers a couple of points since 1994; Democrats who favor legality in every instance has risen 20 points. On guns, the GOP has moved ten points right; Dems 20 points left. 

Sullivan summarizes:

We are going through the greatest radicalization of the elites since the 1960s. This isn’t coming from the ground up. It’s being imposed ruthlessly from above, marshaled with a fusillade of constant MSM propaganda, and its victims are often the poor and the black and the brown.

But as Wes Yang notes, Biden has also aided and abetted and justified this radicalism. He has instituted a huge program of overt government race and sex discrimination throughout every policy and area of government; he backs decimating due process for sexual accusations on campus; he favors abolishing religious freedom as a defense of anti-gay discrimination; he believes that gender identity should replace sex as a legal category, and gender identity should rest entirely on self-disclosure; he favors expediting and maximizing mass immigration, not stemming it. In Yang’s rather brutal assessment, for the hard left, “what they saw is that with Joe Biden, who’s this throwback figure, the activists could all rush to him and get most of what they wanted from him anyway.”

The Biden Administration is the most race obsessed and racist administration since that of Woodrow Wilson and, when it comes to gender, its unprecedented denial of evolutionary biology is mind-boggling.   It bears constant repeating that the New Racists and White Nationalists bring the same analysis to society - it is all about race and power - the only difference is who ends up on top.  It is the capture of the Federal government by this hideous movement that adds to the urgency need for all decent Americans to speak out in opposition before the administration, in lockstep with the media and corporate oligarchs imposes an authoritarian future upon us.  As we learn more each week about how deeply the New Racism has penetrated so many of our institutions they question is whether there is still time to stop it?

The Sound Of Silence

Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you

When the Sound of Silence was released in 1965, I was 14 and for a brief time thought it was pretty cool.  Quickly growing tired of it I have rarely listened to it over the decades.  Never a big fan of Simon & Garfunkel I found it, like many of their early songs, sophomoric as I grew older.

In 2015 the heavy metal band Disturbed released the album Immortalized, including a cover of Sound of Silence along with a music video.  Their version was interesting but I only listened to it once.  More recently, I came across a live version performed on Conan O'Brien's show.  It is a majestic and moving warning highlighted by David Draiman's stunning vocal. The S&G original sounds like they are distant observers while Disturbed sounds like they are in the midst of the action.

Like many of the best pop/rock songs the lyrics create evocative images and feelings but become slippery when trying to interpret, allowing the listener to apply their own meaning.

After hearing this I listened to other tunes by Disturbed but didn't like any of them.

Here's a vocal coach analyzing the singing technique.

Bad Design

When we were outfitting our place in Maine we wanted to add a second small TV upstairs.  The most viable option was an Apple TV.  We enjoy the TV but the remote is a disaster.  Like many Apple products it looks sleek and cool but it is dysfunctional in so many ways.

First up is its size.  Measuring 1.5 inches wide, 4.75 inches long, very thin and light weight it is very easy to misplace or for someone to walk off with it.  That's a common problem with remotes but even more so with this because of its size and weight.  These photos give you some idea of the problem.  The last compares the Apple remote to a relatively small traditional remote.

Next are the controls.  What is this???  The semi-labeled ones are counter-intuitive and the touchpad is a nightmare.  The problem is compounded because Apple TV offers so many options it is very difficult to navigate among them using these controls and one often makes several errors before figuring out the correct path.  It's worse if one of your options is cable (which we have) with many channel choices since you cannot select a specific channel because, as you have no doubt noticed, there are no number buttons!

Just an awful piece of equipment.

I Can Remember The 4th Of July

I can remember the 4th of July

Running through the backwoods bare

I can still hear my old hound dog barking

Chasing down a hoo-doo there

Born On A Bayou from Creedence Clearwater Revival, featuring John Fogerty's paint-peeling vocal and an incredible groove.

The Sacred Documents

Antonio Garcia Martinez is a convert to Judaism.  He writes in a piece today about the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which celebrates the ending of the annual cycle of reading from the Torah and the beginning of the new cycle.  He relates it to the importance of the American founding documents.  If one removes those documents - the Declaration and the Constitution - from their centrality to the meaning of America and try to substitute other dates or other documents as foundational our country can not sustain itself.  His substack newsletter is worth subscribing to.

As rabbi Arthur Green put it: “Judaism is a civilization built around a text.”

Likewise, the United States of America is a nation-state built around one.

A creedal nation revering sacred documents handed down by prophetic founders, interpreted via exegetical responsa by a rabbinical court, is the biggest secular reboot of Judeo-Christian thought ever. Our political strife resembles religious wars because they effectively are, as the nation defines itself anew with every passing generation. The citizenry seethes in constant discord, finding some breathing room in far-flung federalism, until one side exploits some instrument of the Federal government—the Supreme Court, or the Army if necessary—to impose its interpretation of the sacred document on the other. It’s not too much of a stretch, and seems less so with every passing day, to compare the current Red/Blue split as something on the order of Sunni versus Shia or Catholic versus Protestant: the bitter contest to define a difference often blurry to outsiders.

Therein lies the problem with the covenantal approach to nation-building: ‘chartering’ freedom as secular scripture means the other bastard gets it too. Cornerstone freedoms such as those of speech and religion counter every human tribal reflex. Deep down, nobody actually wants freedom of speech, religion and assembly. They say they do, but bring up the appropriate bogeyman and that bogeyman’s public marches and Facebook pages and whatnot, and it all goes out the window. Suddenly my inviolable freedom of speech is that guy’s ‘misinformation’; my tweets must be duly amplified via algorithmic feeds, that other bastard’s tweet must be suppressed to save the republic.

The only way to create a truly liberal state is to erect a (meta) religion out of tolerating all religions, an uber-tribe tolerating all tribes. Which is why the United States, the country that granted its citizens the wildest and most uncontrolled set of freedoms--Guns! Say what you want! Organize what you want!--had to create a cult of freedom that venerated the Bill of Rights almost the way the Jews do the Ten Commandments. We have to love our founding documents, and the sacramental freedoms they represent, more than we hate our our political enemies for the American Experiment to function.

From the viewpoint of this civic religion, wokeness and its maniacal push to divide a syncretic nation into fanciful constituent parts can only be considered a bizarre heretical paganism that somehow crept into the political temple. Only a country whose amnesiac memory is unsullied by existential ethnic violence thinks it wise to solve issues of racism by feverishly heightening feelings of either unforgivable blame or angry victimhood. The drastic remedy often proves far worse than the affliction; better to push our fellow citizens to fuller and better realizations of our founding principles, as the biblical prophets did the Israelites, than tear up our national covenant in favor of false idols.

On this Independence Day, consider shielding your gaze for a moment, and reciting the foundational belief of this covenantal nation, the profound statement that started it all: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal…

A Glorious Liberty Document & Union

"Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT"

Frederick Douglass, 4th of July Oration, 1852

Escaped from slavery, a tireless and eloquent American advocate for abolition and equality

 

"I wish, if this Union must be dissolved, that its ruins may be the monument to my grave, and the graves of my family. I wish no epitaph to be written to tell that I survived the ruin of this glorious Union." 

Sam Houston, during the Senate debate over what is now known as the Compromise of 1850

Citizen of the United States, Cherokee Nation, and the Republic of Texas; Congressman from Tennessee; Senator from Texas; Governor of both States; 1st President of the Republic of Texas; Houston resigned as Texas governor in 1861 rather than take the Oath of Loyalty to the Confederacy.  For more on this brilliant and complex man read my post from 2016 to understand how trying to place Houston, and many other figures of his time, into today's political categories results in a flawed understanding of our history.

The Glorious 4th

The legendary Joey Chestnut just won the Nathan's Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest for the 14th time, downing a world record 76 dogs in ten minutes.  All is right with the world.

You Are Cordially Invited

Almost forgot that tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of that fun and memorable night at the Overlook Hotel!

 

Mers-El Kebir

On this date in 1940 a British fleet opened fire on French warships anchored at the naval base of Mers-El Kebir in the French colony of Algeria.  Nearly 1,300 French naval personnel were killed.  Until a week earlier France had been an ally of Britain in the war against Nazi Germany.  The British attack was ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  Churchill later wrote, "This was the most hateful decision, the most unnatural and painful in which I have ever been concerned".

France had signed an armistice with Germany and Italy on June 25.  Although its fleet remained under control of Marshal Petain's new French government, Britain was concerned the Germans would seize control of the powerful French navy and threaten British naval supremacy which, if lost, would assure German victory.  Churchill and the War Cabinet concluded the French fleet must be neutralized.  It is also likely that Churchill felt he needed to demonstrate to the United States that Britain would do whatever was necessary to continue fighting the Germans.  The Prime Minister was desperate for American help and knew there was substantial doubt of Britain's willingness to continue on alone.

On July 3 after the French did not respond to the British ultimatum demanding they either surrender their ships and sailors or sail to the French West Indies, the British began firing.  In the ensuing battle the British destroyed one French battleship while two other battleships and three destroyers were damaged and run aground by their crews.  Only two British personnel were killed.

The following day President Franklin D Roosevelt told the French ambassador he would have taken the same action as the British.

French battleship under fire