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Ya' Got Me I’ve become convinced that this election isn’t really about Harris and Trump. But I haven’t figured out what, exactly, it is about. (I mean, I know what it’s about for Trump, but I don’t know about Trump voters. Or the country.)
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What Makes a Good Citizen? Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts creator):
Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call “American Virtues” who lack this faith in our country. I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities.
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What’s the Problem? … you might conclude that this country has a leadership problem. But it doesn’t. This country has a citizenship problem.
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Exhausting, Exhausted Before Trump took his golden escalator ride, life was different. Then, even if I thought a candidate would make a terrible office holder, I rarely thought he or she was objectively a bad person. Even LBJ, and he was pretty bad on a personal level, or Nixon, who was pretty bad as a leader. One consequence was, while I might have thought folks who supported “the other guy” naive or misguided, I didn’t think of them as bad either.
But Trump by any measure is actually a bad, bad man. And he’s bad in many, many ways. So, that makes my response to his supporters quite a problem. In my life, there are folks I love who definitely will vote for that bad, bad man. I know those folks are not themselves irredeemably bad. But I cannot help but wonder, “What is wrong with them?”
And that is one important reason this is all so exhausting.
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Preach, Jaroslav
Tradition is a good thing. It is traditionalism that is bad. Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide.
—Jaroslav Pelikan
(h/t blog.angloromanticism.org - btw, my new band name)
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Wild Wombats in the White House
... his entire industry is on pins and needles, terribly anxious about a Trump victory. I asked him if it’s because Trump is opposed to his industry on specific policy issues. He said no.
“That’s not it. It’s that Trump is crazy. That’s what we worry about.”
My friend’s business involves putting big chunks of money into long-range investments that already involve plenty of risk. The added risk of wild wombats in the White House with regulatory power over their deal is way too much.
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Hate the Sinner, Hate the Sin /David Frum, via Nick Cataggio:
Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.
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Willie's the OneTo no one's surprise, Willie Nelson wins Texas Monthly's "Celebrity Texans" bracket. And, in previous rounds, with very few exceptions, the Texan who should have advanced, did. A Final 4 of Willie, Nolan Ryan, Kelly Clarkson, and Matthew McConaughey is just about right.
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Whatever Happens This Year /I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.
In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. -
not so funny anymoreMike Godwin:
... has the sheer absurdity of so many hyperbolic Nazi comparisons in popular culture made us less vigilant about the possible reemergence of actual fascism in the world? I think it shouldn’t — comparisons to Hitler or to Nazis need to take place when people are beginning to act like Hitler or like Nazis...
We had the luxury of deriving humor from Hitler and Nazi comparisons when doing so was almost always hyperbole. It’s not a luxury we can afford anymore. -
Public ServantRIP, Sandra Day O'Connor
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You are what you eatDavid French: We’re misinformed not because the government is systematically lying or suppressing the truth. We’re misinformed because we like the misinformation we receive and are eager for more.... The market is very, very happy to provide us with all the misinformation we like. Algorithms recognize our preferences and serve up the next video or article that echoes or amplifies the themes of the first story we clicked.... It’s important to recognize that no person or movement is immune to the temptations of bespoke reality. We’re all vulnerable... That means following as many or more people who disagree with me as agree with me. That means reading the best and smartest people I can find who disagree with me. These practices help both challenge me and humanize my opponents.
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Conundrum
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Two by David BrooksOver the Trump years, we’ve learned how easy it is to anesthetize one’s moral circuits... You start by lying about yourself, and pretty soon you’re lying to yourself. Sept 14, 2023
[Biden] has his faults ... but I’ve always thought: Give me a leader who identifies with those who feel looked down upon. Give me a leader whose moral compass generally sends him in the right direction. Oct 6, 2023 -
Not the same state
This goes a long way to explain why it’s so much harder to live in Texas than it was 25 years ago: Why Is a Midland Billionaire Spending So Heavily to Support Ken Paxton?
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Manly"As I get older, I find that I care more and more about being a good man and less and less about career stuff. I think a lot of it is just a product of age. But the fact that I’m the last survivor of the family I grew up in plays a significant part. When my mom passed away last October, the only guide for how I behaved was asking myself how my parents would want me to deal with it..." -- Jonah Goldberg, ["In Defense of Manly Tears," Aug 4, 2023](https://thedispatch.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=7fb8ceb3bd59c7956b1df66729296a4c.1661&nosocial=1) 💬
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0.5 oz gin (Tanqueray)
1.0 mezcal (Del Maguey Vida)
0.5 dry vermouth (Dolin)
0.5 (or less) Cocchi Americano
I don’t know what to call it. And it’s a weird mix of 2 vermouths and 2 spirits. But… it’s really tasty! -
Two(+/-) for ThreeSCOTUS last week:
(1) Affirmative action - yep.
(2) Student loans - yep.
(3) Refusing to sell services to folks you disagree with - nope.*
A web-design service is just that -- a _service_; it's not an expressive act. You're a hired hand. If you offer services, you can't say, "but not for the gays." * update: nope-ish. For some fool reason, Colorado agreed to stipulate that the plaintiff was, in fact, engaging in personal expression in creating webpages for hire. I don't get why they agreed to that, but there it is. Makes the ruling less wrong. Maybe not right, but less wrong. -
Gun Sick
Another mass shooting. This one close to home. A fetishistic fascination with guns, power, and violence permeates American society. It’s symptomatic of a deep cultural pathology, and it’ll take more than laws to address the sickness. BUT, at least gun regulations are a place to start. And, compared to treating a moral illness, they’re low-hanging fruit. So, let’s make gun regulation an “easy” first step in trying to find a cure for this disease in our national soul.
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take the wheelJill Filipovic via ayjay
Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response. That isn’t to say that people who experience victimization or trauma should just muscle through it, or that any individual can bootstraps their way into wellbeing. It is to say, though, that in some circumstances, it is a choice to process feelings of discomfort or even offense through the language of deep emotional, spiritual, or even physical wound, and choosing to do so may make you worse off. Leaning into the language of “harm” creates and reinforces feelings of harm ...
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A mediating device for differenceStanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez:
... Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them (or even hearing arguments about them), but however appealing that position might be in some other context, it is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school. Law students are entering a profession in which their job is to make arguments on behalf of clients whose very lives may depend on their professional skill. Just as doctors in training must learn to face suffering and death and respond in their professional role, lawyers in training must learn to confront injustice or views they don’t agree with and respond as attorneys.
Law is a mediating device for difference. It therefore reflects all the heat of controversy, all the pain and suffering, and all the deeply felt moral urgency of our differences in position, power, and cherished principles. Knowing all of this, I believe we cannot function as a law school from the premise that appears to have animated the disruption of Judge Duncan’s remarks -- that speakers, texts, or ideas believed by some to be harmful inflict a new impermissible harm justifying a heckler’s veto simply because they are present on this campus, raised in legally protected speech, and made an object of inquiry. Naming perceived harm, exploring it, and debating solutions with people who disagree about the nature and fact of the harm or the correct solutions are the very essence of legal work. Lively, candid, civil, and evidence-based discourse in disagreement is not just positive for our community, constituted as it is in difference, it is a professional duty. Observance of this duty matters most, not least, when we are convinced that others haven’t. [emphasis added.]
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