Quotulatiousness

November 7, 2022

The only way to get a Grammy Award rescinded

Filed under: Business, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I don’t follow the various entertainment industry awards (Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, Tony, etc.), so I wasn’t aware that only one Grammy Award has ever been taken back since they started handing them out. Given how disturbing the career lowlights of celebrities can be, what level of horrifying behaviour or criminal action does it take to have the award rescinded? Ted Gioia has the details:

“Milli Vanilli Blame it on the Rain (12 inch single)” by acme401 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

Milli Vanilli, a pop duo act from Munich, will never enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. They were hot back in 1990, and even won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Their debut album eventually sold ten million copies. But Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, the two musicians who performed as Milli Vanilli, are remembered today as a scandal and blot of shame on the music business.

What terrible thing did they do to get blacklisted and cancelled? You may already know, and if not, I’ll tell you.

    Milli Vanilli’s Grammy was rescinded — the first and only time that has happened in the history of the award. I note that Bill Cosby still has his eight Grammy Awards. Even after Phil Spector’s murder conviction, nobody took away his prizes and honors.

But allow me to put matters in context first.

Looking back on the music stars of that era, it would be hard to create a greater scandal than, say, Michael Jackson. He was eventually arrested and charged with child molestation. Although Jackson never got convicted, the cumulative evidence is very troubling — even so, he gets plenty of airplay nowadays and is still lauded as the King of Pop. A high-profile musical celebrating his artistry opened on Broadway earlier this year.

The songs are great. I won’t deny it.

Jackson escaped a prison sentence, but many other music stars have served time for high-profile crimes without losing their fans. When R. Kelly recently got convicted of kidnapping, sexual exploitation of a child, and racketeering, his sales soared 500% in the aftermath. I’d prefer to disagree with those glib experts who claim “all publicity is good publicity” — but it’s hard to argue with those numbers.

Just a few weeks after the Milli Vanilli scandal, Rick James was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault — and then got arrested again for similar abuses three months later while out on bail. He continued to make recordings after his release from Folsom Prison, and returned to the Billboard chart. Health problems, not James’s criminal record, finally curtailed his career. And in 2020, his estate got a big payday by selling his masters and publishing rights to the Hipgnosis Song Fund.

Other music industry legends have committed murder or manslaughter. Suge Knight won’t become eligible for parole until 2034, and Phil Spector died while incarcerated for murder in 2021. The latter was widely praised in published obituaries, and his recordings remain cherished by fans.

And now let’s turn to Milli Vanilli.

Milli Vanilli haven’t fared so well. You might even say they have been wiped out of pop music history, lingering on merely as a joke or worse. But no one got raped or murdered by their antics. They didn’t even trash their hotel rooms or get arrested buying weed.

So what did they do that led to permanent cancellation?

Their crime was posing as vocalists on their recordings, when they didn’t actually sing. When they went on the road, they lip-synced on stage. And — if I can be blunt — their greatest transgression was making the people who vote on Grammy awards look foolish.

November 1, 2022

If it wasn’t for double standards, the legacy media wouldn’t have any standards at all

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Spiked, Brendan O’Neill calls out the US mainstream media for their blatant double standards on political violence after the as-yet still mystery-shrouded attack on the husband of the Speaker of the House of Representatives over the weekend:

Paul and Nancy Pelosi, 16 February, 2022.
Detail of a photo by Amos Ben Gershom via Wikimedia Commons.

It was the mention of zip ties that got me thinking. Apparently the man who allegedly broke into the San Francisco home of Nancy and Paul Pelosi on Friday was carrying zip ties. A possibly crazed individual approaching the home of a powerful politician with plastic fasteners that can be used to bind a person’s hands – it was both a nightmarish prospect and a familiar one, too. Wasn’t another public figure in the US recently targeted by someone who had zip ties? And a gun, a knife, pepper spray and a crowbar? Yes. It was Brett Kavanaugh. But many don’t remember that. Because thanks to the media, certain acts of political hate get less traction than others.

People are rightly horrified by what happened to Paul Pelosi on Friday. David DePape allegedly broke into the Pelosi home and yelled “Where is Nancy?”. She wasn’t there. DePape then allegedly attacked Mr Pelosi, who is 82, with a hammer. Pelosi suffered a skull fracture and is still in hospital, though he is expected to make a full recovery. This was a horrific assault on an elderly person, as well as seeming to have been motivated by a deep political animus. Sadly, it was not a one-off. There was a creepily similar incident at the home of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in Maryland in June.

A 26-year-old man from California travelled to Maryland allegedly with the intention of murdering Kavanaugh. That’s what he is charged with – attempted murder. He was armed with a tactical knife, a Glock 17 pistol, zip ties and other murderous paraphernalia. The difference between Kavanaugh’s alleged tormentor and the man who allegedly broke into the Pelosi home is that the former failed to gain entry. He spied two US marshals close to Kavanaugh’s home and called off his deadly mission. Kavanaugh was luckier than Paul Pelosi.

It is unquestionable that the assault on the Pelosi home has caused more waves and fury among the media elites than the mercifully thwarted attempted assassination of Kavanaugh did. The Kavanaugh incident swiftly faded from public consciousness. One observer wrote of the media’s “eerie silence” on Kavanaugh. It was pointed out that the “attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh” was being downplayed by the New York Times the very day after it happened. On the NYT‘s homepage, the Kavanaugh story was 16th in order of importance, behind stories about the new Jurassic Park movie and Kelly Clarkson’s singing skills. In that day’s paper, it was on page 20. Nate Silver said it was “crazy” that the targeting of Kavanaugh was not “treated as a bigger story”. “There’s often more bias in which stories are deemed to be salient than how they’re written about it”, he said.

That is well said. Media bias is apparent not only in the information and takes that the media publish but also in what the media decree to be important in the first place. And it would appear that the targeting of a right-wing, pro-life justice is less important – a lot less important – than the targeting of the home of a Democratic, pro-choice politician. Politics is clearly at play here. Kavanaugh’s moral outlook runs counter to that of the liberal media and coastal elites, and thus he makes for an unsympathetic character. Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand – she’s the crusading Democrat the chattering classes love. An assault on her home moves the liberal elites profoundly.

On the rapidly changing reported details of the attack on Paul Pelosi, Jim Treacher has some salient questions:

First things first: Paul Pelosi is currently in the hospital recovering from his attack, and here’s wishing him a speedy recovery. It sounds horrible and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Crime in America is spiraling out of control.

Now …

The Pelosis are worth somewhere north of $100 million. Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and second in the line of presidential succession. You’re telling me her husband Paul was alone in a house with no security or surveillance cameras? This lunatic David DePape just walked right up to the house and broke in?

I’ve got other questions. The initial report was that DePape was in his underwear when the police caught him beating Pelosi with a hammer. Now we’re told that’s not true.

Wait, what? How do you get that detail wrong? Did it come from the police? I can understand misremembering the color of his pants. But the cops couldn’t tell whether he was wearing any?

And then there’s this:

Okay, I’m just trying to picture the scene that the two responding officers saw: They entered the Pelosi home, found DePape attacking Pelosi, and stopped him.

How did they get into the house? Did they break down the door? Was it unlocked, or already open? Did DePape or Pelosi open it?

The story is that the police encountered DePape in the middle of beating Pelosi. So if DePape opened the door for them … why? Or if Pelosi opened the door for them … how?

I see a lot of people speculating that this was some sort of lovers’ quarrel, or a Grindr date gone wrong, or something along those lines. Doesn’t seem likely to me, but is it really outside the realm of possibility? Are you a homophobe? I thought we were supposed to accept all genders and preferences and whatnot. It’s 2022.

October 10, 2022

Janice Fiamengo on the #MGTOW affair – “In short, men who ‘go their own way’ have decided that they need women even less than the mythical fish needed its wheeled transport”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Recently, much impassioned wailing and howling has been directed at new Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre for his media team’s use of the notorious, misogynistic, coded-hate-speech metatag #MGTOW on postings to social media. Janice Fiamengo calls out the bold hypocrisy of most of the critics:

Remember “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle?”

Popularly credited to feminist icon Gloria Steinem, the slogan embodied the insouciance and independence claimed by Second Wave feminists. Women could get along just fine without men (though not without their tax money, as it turned out — more on this later) and lesbian feminists like Adrienne Rich (in “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”) explicitly called on all women to withdraw their caring from men as an act of female solidarity.

Nice, eh?

Anyone who objected to the anti-male rhetoric was dismissed as an apologist for patriarchal oppression (“Do you have a problem with equality?”), and generations of young women were given the message that wanting to love and be loved by a man was a betrayal of the sisterhood. What else was one to make of Professor of Law Catharine MacKinnon’s claim, in her 1989 essay for the journal Ethics, that “The major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it” (p. 336-337).

For decades, feminists in Canada have been given a free pass to vilify men as a group. In 1978, women’s groups held the first “Women Reclaim the Night” march in downtown Vancouver. It was a raucous, aggressive, property-destroying affair culminating in the symbolic murder of a stuffed male “Rapist” mannequin who was “literally stomped to shreds” by woman warriors.

[…]

So it is rather rich, now, five decades into the feminist revolt, to see pundits and political commentators huffing and puffing in outrage about MGTOW, dubbed a “misogynist men’s rights movement” or a “far-right misogynistic online movement”, and calling on newly-minted Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre (who, alas, seems eager to oblige) to disavow them. MGTOW stands for Men Going Their Own Way, and it was a happy day for the mainstream feminist-left when Global News allegedly discovered that Poilievre’s team had tagged many of his videos with the acronym.

The hypocrisy is off the charts.

It’s doubtful that any of the commentators getting on their high horses knows anything about MGTOW except the hysterical nonsense feminists have cooked up. MGTOW is not an official movement, far less an “organization”, as Poilievre mistakenly called it. It has no recognized leadership, no designated spokespersons, no political program, no lobbying power, and no public presence. It is not actually interested in “men’s rights” except to point out that men don’t have any. It has no philosophical connection with incels. It is basically a loose (mainly online) affiliation of men who have decided to check out of women’s lives.

Aren’t feminists always saying that they want men to stop dominating them, subjugating them, pestering them, harassing them, controlling them, and making them uncomfortable? That’s what MGTOW are all about.

September 21, 2022

Jonathan Kay on cultural appropriation

Filed under: Cancon, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, Jonathan Kay put together “a somewhat lengthy manifesto” on the topic of cultural appropriation in response to a request from Robert Jago who wanted to do an interview with Kay on this issue:

Justin Trudeau (Canada’s most prolific cultural appropriator) with dark makeup on his face, neck and hands at a 2001 “Arabian Nights”-themed party at the West Point Grey Academy, the private school where he taught.
Photo from the West Point Grey Academy yearbook, via Time

“Cultural appropriation” typically gets defined in a way that depends on whether one is defending it or denouncing it. If you’re defending it, you prefer to look at the big picture: Every new kind of art form, literary genre, style of dress, or cuisine typically represents a mix of inherited and borrowed elements. Shakespeare’s sonnets were written in an Iambic pentameter that Chaucer had “appropriated” from the French and Italians. So if Indigenous or African poets want to appropriate it from the English, no one has any basis for complaint. If you define cultural appropriation in this big-picture way, the concept isn’t just permissible. It’s artistically necessary, and indeed inevitable.

But if you’re denouncing cultural appropriation, on the other hand, the argument is more persuasive when your frame of reference is small, local, and community-rooted. I’m thinking of the (white) novelist or film director who passes through a region, and hears some garbled version of folklore that relates to a nearby Indigenous community. The guy thinks, “Oh wow, that’ll make a great novel” (or TV show, movie, etc.), and then makes a mint without consulting (let alone cashing in) the Indigenous community.

So the debate over cultural appropriation is like a lot of debates: It’s really easy to win if you get to define the terms. And since both sides pick definitions that suit them, it can become a dialogue of the deaf.

Indeed, there’s often no dialogue at all. Rather, both sides are apt to retreat into apocalyptic language about, respectively, (a) totalitarian censorship, and (b) white supremacist (cultural) genocide. This is absolutist language that leaves no room for nuance or discussion.

The cultural-universalism side of this dialogue is represented by people like me. I write about every topic under the sun, and so I get my back up when someone tells me that I’ve got to “stay in my lane”. My whole career is built around hopscotching from one idea to the next without worrying (much) about who gets offended. For me, the imposition of rules on what people are allowed to write about isn’t just an annoyance. It’s an existential threat to the creative faculties.

But if you’re on the other end of this — say, you’re a member of a small Indigenous community whose history and folklore have yet to be recorded or celebrated in any definitive form — you don’t care about some white guy in Toronto whining about how he can’t do the equivalent of wearing a sombrero on Cinco de Mayo. A small First Nations community might get only one real shot at telling its story to the world. If that shot gets used up by an outsider who strip-mines the locals’ oral history for a bestseller, that can no doubt feel like existential threat to one’s cultural autonomy. It’s like: “So you took our land, punished us for using our own language, sent our kids to residential schools, and now all we really have left is our culture, and you want to steal that, too?”

There’s this trite expression that often gets trotted out these days: Intent doesn’t matter, only the harm you cause. But of course, intent does matter. And if an author, director, or artist intends to respectfully and accurately include a community’s story in his or her work, then, for me, that’s very much a mark in their favour. That said, I absolutely do not think that this means there is an obligation to “honour” or “uplift” the community in question — let alone express “solidarity” or “allyship” with them. Doing so means you’re writing activist propaganda. What I mean, rather, is that you shouldn’t be intending to mock or belittle whole swathes of humanity.

The problem is that, in Canadian cultural circles at least, this isn’t really the standard that’s applied. I’ve spoken to a number of Canadian writers who, out of the best of intentions, invest their own funds in “sensitivity readers” — a process that can be not only expensive and time-consuming, but also creatively ruinous, since these consultants often are bursting with ideas about how to turn your novel or movie into a specimen of the above-referenced activist propaganda. I know one woman, in particular — a novelist — who appeared before a First Nations tribal council, and got its official permission to include a character in her book whose identity related to their community. But then a community member, someone not even involved with the band leadership, went after the woman and tried to smear her as racist. This is after she’d dotted every I and crossed every T of the sensitivity-reader process.

September 6, 2022

QotD: The fitness club

Filed under: Business, Environment, Health, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Yesterday we looked at what happens when a cult becomes a movement. I said there are two fundamental, structural problems that arise. The first is that the leadership’s goals start diverging from, and eventually run counter to, the cult’s dogma. That’s where the eco-scam finds itself these days. It doesn’t bother the Green True Believers that their leadership flies around in private jets — see yesterday’s discussion of disconfirmation — but it does put a damper on recruiting. We’re a stupid, spoiled, star-struck generation, but even we expect our leaders to walk the walk for a mile or two every now and again.

The second problem, though, is: What to do with the True Believers?

Let’s return to the metaphor of the gym fitness club. As we noted yesterday, the real money isn’t in the hardcore people who actually do the exercising. It’s in all the lardasses who sign up, and keep paying the membership fee, but never actually go. This leads to the perverse-seeming conclusion that the best gym, from the gym-owner’s perspective, is one that stands empty — gleaming, never-used equipment that just sits there, one mute inglorious depreciation tax writeoff, un-maintained by no paid staff. See what I mean? The whole point of owning a gym — the cult dogma, as it were — is to get people in shape, but the optimal gym from the cult leader’s perspective is a group of perpetual fatasses, buying themselves workout indulgences at $75 a month.

I trust that the analogues in the eco-scam are obvious, so let’s move on. Even the most optimal-for-the-owner gym, though, is going to have a few True Believers who are in there day after day, grinding out sets and jogging on treadmills and doing whatever those CrossFit freaks do.* If you let them, they’ll take over everything. Ever been in a gym and seen a piece of equipment designed to isolate one muscle that you’d never think could be worked out in the first place? Congrats, your gym’s got a True Believer. Just stake out the Urethra-cizer for a few hours; you’ll see her; she’s unmistakable. She’s pushing 50 but has the body of a 20-year old, except made out of beef jerky …

… anyway, the point is, savvy gym owners know how to handle True Believers. You don’t buy ’em off with new equipment; you buy ’em off with new exercises. P90X is for pussies. Do Ultra-Kegels, and in just 60 days you’ll be able to lift an entire can of paint with your …

* Obviously I can’t write about gyms and cults without taking a cheap shot at CrossFit. They’re probably chock full of lessons on how to business-optimize your cult without letting it go mainstream, but I’m too terrified to look. Honest to God, there are some days where the only exercise I get is dodging and weaving away from the CrossFit cultists at the office.

Severian, “If the UFO Actually Comes, Part II”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-09-26.

August 11, 2022

N.S. Lyons offers a Public Service Announcement for folks in class B

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

N.S. Lyons is talking to you. Yes, you in particular:

Hello Friend,

I saw your post on the interweb the other day about that nasty thing Team A did, even though they always completely lose their collective mind with moralistic outrage if Team B (which I understand is your team) even thoughtcrimes about doing something similar. In fact Team A seems to blatantly do things all the time that no one on Team B could ever get away with doing without being universally condemned as the absolute worst sort of immoral criminal/being openly threatened with mob violence/losing their livelihood/having their assets frozen/being rounded up by the state and shipped to a black site somewhere for some extended TLC.

Maybe the latest thing was breaking some very important public health rules, or pillaging and burning down government buildings for fun, or mean tweets, or polluting the planet with a private jet, or using allegedly neutral public institutions against political opponents, or just engaging in a little tax-dodging or corruption while doing, like, a ton of blow in a hotel room with some capital city hookers – I forget the specifics. In fact I forget what country you’re even living in nowadays.

But I did see that slick video you posted on how just pointing out “imagine if someone on Team B did this!” is all it takes to blow the lid off this glaring hypocrisy, thus totally destroying Team A with facts and logic. I’ve noticed you posting a lot of things like this, which is nice, since they are very witty and produce a pleasant buzz of smug superiority, even though this feeling never lasts very long.

However, I suddenly realized that you may not be in on the joke, so to speak, so I figured I’d write this short PSA to help explain what “hypocrisy” in politics actually is, just in case you didn’t know and had been fooled into seriously trying to benefit Team B with your comparative memes.

You see, it’s possible you are under the misapprehension that you are not supposed to notice what you described as the “double-standard” in acceptable behavior between Team A and Team B. And that you think if you point out this double-standard, you are foiling the other team’s plot and holding them accountable. This might be because, in your mind, you are still in high school debate club, where if you finger your opponent for having violated the evenly-applied rules a neutral arbiter of acceptable behavior will recognize this unfairness and penalize them with demerits.

Except in reality you are not holding Team A accountable, and in fact are notably never able to hold them accountable for anything at all. Even though Team A gets to hold you accountable for everything and anything whenever they want. This is because unfortunately there is no neutral arbiter listening to your whining. In fact, currently the only arbiter is Team A, because Team A has consolidated all the power to decide the rules, and to enforce or not enforce those rules as they see fit.

[…]

Much like the Great Khan, Class A has decided the greatest happiness in life is to crush its class enemies, see them driven before it, and hear the lamentations of their pundits.

Fundamentally, Class A believes the purpose of power is to reward its friends and punish its enemies. Which is what it does. That way it can keep its enemies down at the same time as it attracts more friends by offering great perks for class membership. And as a controversial Arab thought-leader once said: everyone prefers a strong horse to a weak horse.

If you, Class B serf, do not enjoy this arrangement, your lamentations about hypocrisy will not change it, no matter how loud and shrill. Only taking back control of the levers of power and then using that power to strike the fear of accountability into the hearts of your ruling class will ever be able to do that.

July 21, 2022

Prime Minister Look-At-My-Socks shocked to discover that betraying an ally has consequences

Filed under: Cancon, Germany, Government, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Line, Andrew Potter outlines why the Ukrainian government is unhappy with Prime Minister Photo-Op’s decision to break the sanctions on Russia as a favour to Germany:

Well, one thing is for certain: There isn’t going to be a “Justin Trudeau Lane” anywhere in Ukraine any time soon.

In case you missed the drama last week, Trudeau found himself on Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s shit list after Canada announced, on July 9, that it would allow Siemens to return to Germany up to six gas turbines for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that were being repaired in Montreal. Russia was threatening to shut down the pipeline and cut off the flow of gas to Germany, which is facing a very serious energy crisis.

In response, a furious Zelenskyy summoned Canada’s ambassador to Ukraine for what one presumes was a solid chewing out, after which the Ukrainian president posted a video in which he lit into Trudeau for “an absolutely unacceptable exception to the sanctions regime against Russia”. As Zelenskyy put it, the problem isn’t just that Canada handed some turbines back to Russia, via Germany. It is that it was a direct response to blackmail by Russia. And if Canada is willing to bend when its sanctions become politically uncomfortable, what is to stop other countries from carving out their own exceptions to their own sanctions, when it suits? Furthermore, Zelenskyy added, it isn’t like this is going to stop Russia from shutting down the supply of gas to Europe — the turbines were always just a pretext, an opportunity to cause strife and stir dissension amongst the countries allied with Ukraine against Russia.

Trudeau — who spent the weekend flipping pancakes at the Calgary Stampede — must have woken up on the Monday wondering what had gotten into his old buddy in Kyiv. After all, hadn’t Trudeau, along with other members of his cabinet, made it clear through their many, many tweets on the subject that Canada stood by Ukraine? Hadn’t Canada sent enough money, arms and humanitarian aid to Ukraine? Hadn’t Trudeau himself paid a visit to Kyiv in May, to re-open our embassy and to underscore just how seriously Zelenskyy should understand Canada’s commitment?

[…]

Ultimately, the problem here is a serious failure by Canada to manage Ukrainian expectations, brought about by the profound mismatch between the level of our rhetoric and the clear limits of our commitment. For Ukrainians, there is a moral clarity to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that, from a Western perspective, has not been present in any other conflict since the Second World War. Zelenskyy assumed that Canadians saw that. He assumed that if Ukrainians were going to be slaughtered, the least we could do would be to stick to our principles, even if it meant asking the population to suffer economic harms and the government to manage genuine political discomfort.

He assumed wrong.

Five months into their war for survival against the genocidal Russian regime, the Ukrainians have learned something important about Canadians: When it comes to our foreign affairs, we don’t mean what we say. When we say we stand with a country, that we fully support them, that we will help defend them or hold their enemies to account, there’s always a “but” or an “until” or an “unless”. We will stand with you, unless it’s politically difficult. We will help you, but not if it means genuine sacrifice. We will support you, until the costs get too high. Then, all bets are off.

The bigger point is this: Canada doesn’t do moral clarity anymore. Whether it is our business dealings with China, our arms sales to Saudi Arabia, or sending a diplomat to a garden party at the Russian embassy in Ottawa, we are always and everywhere hedging our bets, fudging our principles, letting down our allies.

July 15, 2022

Forget George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR – studying the presidency of Jimmy Carter is suddenly more relevant

Filed under: Books, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

One of the readers of Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten has contributed a review of The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter by Kai Bird. This is one of perhaps a dozen or so anonymous reviews that Scott publishes every year with the readers voting for the best review and the names of the contributors withheld until after the voting is finished:

President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter.
Official portrait via Wikimedia Commons.

Like most people under 70, I was more aware of Carter’s post-presidency role as America’s kindly old grandfather, pottering around holding his wife’s hand and building Houses for Humanity. I mostly knew that he liked to wear sweaters, that he owned a peanut farm, and that he lost to Ronald Reagan.

But I wondered what, if any, hidden depths lay within the peanut farmer. Also, I wanted to enter this contest, and I didn’t want to pick a book that I thought a bunch of other people might also review. So I turned to The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, by Kai Bird. Like Carter, this book seems to have been largely forgotten. It won a Pulitzer, but I had never heard of it until I googled “best book about Jimmy Carter”. It seems to have gotten a lot less attention than similar recent biographies about Grant, Roosevelt, and Truman, and it’s hard to imagine it ever becoming a TV show or a musical.

Carter was born in 1924 in Plains, Georgia, which, as you can tell from the name “Plains”, is very dull. His father was a successful farmer, which made his family wealthy by local standards. Almost every other Plains resident during Carter’s childhood was an impoverished African-American, many of whom worked on the Carter farm, a fact that is often cited as the answer to the central mystery of Carter’s childhood: how he grew up white in the Depression-era South without becoming a huge racist. It probably doesn’t tell the whole story, though, as his siblings came out just about as racist as you’d expect.

Carter attends the Naval Academy and eventually becomes a lieutenant on a nuclear submarine. At one point, he participates in a cleanup mission in which he is lowered directly into the core of an active nuclear reactor, thus causing him to develop superpowers that he will later use to win the presidency. Perhaps because of this experience — but, more likely, because he realizes that his deep-seated religious beliefs make him a poor fit for a career in an organization designed to wage war — he quits the Navy at 29 and returns home to Plains. “God did not intend for me to kill”, he says, which would have been an awesome catchphrase had those superpowers actually been real.

Searching for a new career, Carter runs for State Senate, loses due to voter fraud, then challenges the results and wins by 15 votes in a new election. A few years later, he runs for governor, and loses for real this time, to avowed segregationist (and man with a truly awesome name) Lester Maddox. Having never experienced failure in any way before, Carter is plunged into a profound spiritual crisis by this loss. Today, we would probably just say he was depressed. But as a religious Christian in the Deep South in 1966, you don’t “get depressed”, you have a spiritual crisis.

In 1970 Carter runs for governor again. This time, however, he decides to do whatever it takes to win. He runs a sleazy campaign that flies in the face of his modern-day reputation as kindly and honest. His campaign strategy has two core planks: 1) pretend to be a racist to appeal to the masses, and 2) avoid taking a stand on any other issue. Carter describes himself nonsensically as a “conservative progressive” and avoids commenting on the Vietnam War or the civil rights movement. He’s so good at pretending to be racist that the white supremacist White Citizens Council endorses him. He even wins the endorsement of his old opponent, outgoing Governor Maddox, who’s term-limited from running again. As far as anyone can tell, Carter never expresses any second thoughts about his disingenuous behavior during the campaign. Having passed through his spiritual crisis, he’s now guided by an unshakeable faith in his own goodness — a faith that justifies a victory by any means necessary.

The “fake racist” strategy works. Carter trounces his opponent, a wealthy businessman named Carl Sanders who he caricatures as “Cuff Links Carl” — when he’s not busy falsely accusing him of corruption, or hypocritically bashing him for his support of Martin Luther King. In January 1971, Carter is sworn in as the 76th Governor of Georgia.

Just a few minutes into his inaugural speech, Carter drops the pretenses of his campaign and executes on one of the most dramatic about-faces in modern-day political history when he declares that “the era of racial discrimination in Georgia is over”. The crowd gasps audibly, and outgoing Governor Maddox denounces Carter as a liar before the inauguration is even over. But Carter doesn’t care. He’s governor now, and he’s going to do what he wants.

June 11, 2022

As federal minister of public safety, it’s Marco Mendicino’s job to lie to Canadians

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Media, Politics, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At least, the headline is my interpretation of Matt Gurney‘s somewhat more cautious and measured assessment of the minister’s recent performance:

To celebrate World Press Freedom Day last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said some wonderful things about the importance of truth.

“In the age of disinformation and misinformation,” the statement read, “independent, fact-based reporting is vital. We must all come together to support the work of journalists and double down in the fight against disinformation.”

Stirring stuff. But does the prime minister, his government and the Liberals’ many supporters think any of that actually applies to them?

Marco Mendicino is the federal minister of public safety — a tough job in challenging times. But I’ve come to the unsettling conclusion that Minister Mendicino is not being honest with Canadians.

On the issue of gun control, I’m sorry to say he’s simply lying.

Last week here at The Line, I analyzed the Liberals’ proposed Bill C-21, a package of gun-control measures. My views on this file differ sharply from the government’s. But I’d have hoped that we could at least agree that honesty should be central to the government’s proposals and publicity.

No dice. Last weekend, on CTV’s Question Period, the minister said this: “Bill C-21 doesn’t target law-abiding gun owners, it targets handgun violence, it targets organized crime … I have enormous respect for law-abiding gun owners …”

Well, let’s just go have a gander at the minister’s own webpage, eh? The Public Safety Ministry summarized the proposed legal and regulatory changes. There are 13 specific proposed changes to the Firearms Act. Two are “internal” to the government itself and don’t directly bear on gun owners, law-abiding or otherwise. One targets firearms-related marketing, another is exemptions for “elite sports shooters”. The remaining nine are entirely aimed at the “law-abiding gun owners” the minister insists aren’t being targeted. The page also notes that the government will also be changing regulations (separately from the proposed bill) relating to the safe storage of firearms and ammunition magazine limits … again, aimed entirely and solely at law-abiding gun owners. Indeed, along with some entirely process-focused Criminal Code proposals, there’s only one — one — proposed change that actually focuses on gun smuggling, which is widely believed by law enforcement to be the primary driver of firearms homicides in Canada. (Other planned changes are too vague to be properly analyzed in this context, but could plausibly be aimed at smuggling or blackmarket sales.)

But do the math. One clear mention of smuggling, at least 11 that only affect licensed owners. Denying this is dishonest, full stop.

Let’s be clear: the minister is entirely within his rights to argue that the proposed measures targeting lawful owners are necessary, appropriate and reasonable. These are legitimate debates. What is not up for debate is that the majority of these proposals exclusively target and/or affect law-abiding gun owners. There’s no ambiguity here. The meaning and purpose of C-21 is clear.

April 22, 2022

QotD: George Carlin’s appropriate-for-Earth-Day monologue

Filed under: Environment, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Let me tell you about endangered species, all right? Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It’s arrogant meddling. It’s what got us in trouble in the first place. Doesn’t anybody understand that? Interfering with nature. Over 90%, way over 90% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, are gone. They’re extinct. We didn’t kill them all. They just disappeared. That’s what nature does.

We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another, we’re gonna save the fucking planet?

I’m getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I’m tired of fucking Earth Day, I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we’re a threat? That somehow we’re gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet … the planet … the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!

We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.

You wanna know how the planet’s doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet’s doing. You wanna know if the planet’s all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic … asshole.

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that’s begun. Don’t you think that’s already started? I think, to be fair, the planet sees us as a mild threat. Something to be dealt with. And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, the way a beehive or an ant colony can. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let’s see … Viruses. Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And, uh … viruses are tricky, always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps, this first virus could be one that compromises the immune system of these creatures. Perhaps a human immunodeficiency virus, making them vulnerable to all sorts of other diseases and infections that might come along. And maybe it could be spread sexually, making them a little reluctant to engage in the act of reproduction.

Well, that’s a poetic note. And it’s a start. And I can dream, can’t I? See I don’t worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we’re part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. Know what I call it? The Big Electron. The Big Electron … whoooa. Whoooa. Whoooa. It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while.

George Carlin, “The arrogance of mankind”.

April 7, 2022

The EU only cares about democracy as long as the voters make the “correct” choice

Filed under: Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Tom Slater points out the most recent proof that the EU’s principled defence of democracy fades out quickly when the voters don’t vote the way they’re “supposed to”:

Remember the other day when the European Union was pretending to care about sovereignty and democracy? When Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine had supposedly united European elites in their staunch, unflinching belief in a people’s right to determine their own destiny and shape their nation? You’ll be shocked to learn that they didn’t really mean it, at least if their reaction to the Hungarian election is anything to go by.

On Sunday, Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party won a landslide victory. Already the longest-serving EU leader, Orbán is now heading into a fourth consecutive term, with a two-thirds majority in parliament and an increased mandate. United for Hungary – an opposition coalition stretching from ex-communists to ex-fascists – defied the raised expectations of Euro elites and put in a dreadful showing, capped by gaffe-prone leader Péter Márki-Zay failing to win his own constituency race.

In the election, Orbán presented himself as a doughty defender of Hungarian national identity and interests against a meddlesome European Union and international set. Budapest and Brussels have been locked in a years-long battle over alleged “rule of law” breaches and LGBT rights. The EU is currently withholding €7 billion of coronavirus recovery funds from Hungary as part of a bitter legal standoff. In this, Márki-Zay was an all-too-willing foil, arguing that his government would be a “grand prize” for the EU.

In February, the European Court of Justice rejected a challenge by Hungary and Poland, upholding the legality of withholding funds from member states if they fail to adhere to “core values”. It sent a clear message to the Hungarian electorate in the run-up to the election: reject – or at least humble – this troublesome government or else. Now that Hungarians have politely refused to be pushed around, the European Commission has said it will press ahead with the formal mechanism that will deprive Hungary of the funds indefinitely.

Meanwhile, the European liberal media took a break from piously intoning about the defence of democracy in Ukraine to decry the election result in Hungary. Timothy Garton Ash even linked the ballot-box revolt to the barbarism in Bucha. “The Ukrainian horrors are clearly far worse than the Hungarian miseries, but the two are fatefully connected”, he wrote in the Guardian, accusing Orbán of being a Putin stooge. “Europe should now get tough on both the Russian enemy without and the Hungarian enemy within.” A Guardian editorial similarly called for swift EU action against this pesky central European state.

March 16, 2022

Canada’s rejection of the rules of a “free and democratic society” under Justin Trudeau

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

We’re now a month past the day that marked when Justin Trudeau’s government stopped even paying lip service to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as Madeline Weld points out:

It is noteworthy that in the aforementioned Munk Debate in which the leaders of the three major national parties – Conservative, Liberal, and NDP – butted heads, that Trudeau declared in praising the legacy of his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau:

    First and foremost is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has defined Canada as a country that stands up for individual rights, even against governments who want to take those away.

Fast forward to 2021, and those rights are no more. When it comes to getting vaccinated for Covid, it’s get the jab or get lost. Far from standing up for individual rights, Justin Trudeau’s government is snatching them away and redefining them as privileges that the government will deign to give back once a person has obeyed its edict and gotten jabbed. In August of that year, he announced that his government, if re-elected, would spend a billion dollars to help provinces create their own vaccine passports for domestic use. Trudeau also said he wouldn’t force anyone to get a Covid shot but would restrict the “privileges” of those who refuse to get one without a medical reason (which is so narrowly defined as to make it almost impossible to get an exemption). So, per Trudeau, people were free to “choose” to get the jab or lose their “privileges” of holding a job and earning a living, going to “non-essential” venues like restaurants, gyms, and theatres, and traveling on planes, trains or cruise ships. No “force” to see here, folks, move along.

So much for “standing up for individual rights, even against governments who want to take those away.” The current government’s edicts on forced vaccination violate the right to “security of the person” as defined under Section 7 of the Charter and the concept of “informed consent” as understood both in Canadian law and the United Nations’ Nuremberg Code. The Nuremberg Code was created following the Nuremberg trials of Nazi officials who conducted medical experiments on prisoners. Given that the current vaccines, employing a novel technology of mRNA encased in lipid nanoparticles or DNA carried in an adenovirus, are being used only under emergency Interim Orders, people who have them injected into their bodies, whether willingly or for fear of losing their newly defined “privileges” of holding a job, earning a living, and participating in society, are indeed participating in a medical experiment. But regardless of the state of development of the vaccines, no one should be subjected to a medical treatment they don’t want.

Trudeau did not hide his contempt for the unvaccinated during his election campaign of 2021. In a campaign speech on September 1st, he referred to a nearby group of protesters as “anti-vaxxers”. Emphasizing the importance of vaccine passports, he said the federal government would pay for “the development of those privileges that you get once you get vaccinated”. “Everyone needs to get vaccinated, and THOSE PEOPLE,” he said, turning around and pointing at the demonstrators, “are putting us all at risk.” (“The science” – to use the current phrase – concerning Covid infections does not bear him out, but that’s another discussion.) Trudeau then contemptuously refers to his Conservative opponent Erin O’Toole as “siding with THEM” as he pointed backward with his thumb. He dismisses O’Toole’s expressed concerns about “personal choice”. “What about my choice to keep my kids safe?” He berates O’Toole, “You need to condemn those people; you need to correct them.”

Had Harper referred to terrorists or terrorist wannabes as “THOSE PEOPLE” during that Munk Debate in 2015 and said they needed to be condemned and corrected, Trudeau would no doubt have given him an earful. In fact, Trudeau is remarkably reluctant to condemn terrorists. Following the beheading of Paris school teacher Samuel Paty by a Muslim incensed that Paty had shown the Danish Mohammad cartoons in his class while discussing free speech, Trudeau said, “We will always defend freedom of expression … But freedom of expression is not without limits … In a pluralist, diverse and respectful society like ours, we owe it to ourselves to be aware of the impact of our words, of our actions on others, particularly these communities and populations who still experience a great deal of discrimination.” He said not a word about needing to “condemn” and “correct” people who kill when they’ve been offended.

But when it comes to expressing his opinions about those who decline to be injected with an experimental mRNA or DNA product, Trudeau does not seem much concerned about the impact of his words on others. For example, on a French-language TV program in September 2021, Trudeau claims that many vaccine-decliners are racist and misogynist and wonders if they should even be tolerated. Such was his diatribe that People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted a video titled “Psychopathe fasciste” (fascist psychopath).

H/T to Robert at SDA for the link.

Update: Doh! Forgot to provide the URL for Robert’s post.

February 5, 2022

Why great NFL players rarely make good coaches

Filed under: Football, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In his (mostly) weekly mailbag post, Severian at Founding Questions considers the latest NFL scandal and some of the insane requirements to be a really great NFL quarterback and how few can both play and coach at that high level. First, the Romney Rule scandal:

I see that some black coach has sued the NFL for racial discrimination, and I must say I hope he takes them for every cent they’ve got. From the very little I’ve seen, his case is airtight, because of the NFL’s astounding stupidity. For those who don’t know, the NFL has been using what’s called the “Rooney Rule” for at least two decades now. This states that whenever a head coaching job comes up, the team must interview at least one (and I think two are mandatory now) black candidate.

Since there’s a serious dearth of black coaches at all levels of organized football (we’ll psircle back to that in a minute), this means that the same three or four guys go through the same pro forma interviews every time. As far as I understand it, then (which is not very, admittedly), this particular coach was actually told to his face that this interview with whatever team was just pro forma compliance with the Rooney Rule; we’ve already got our guy, so just fly out here, we’ll buy you lunch, have a nice chat, and put you back on the plane lickety split.

That’s one part of his airtight case. The other is that whatever team he interviewed with also has a Diversity and Inclusion Officer — because of course they do — and the DIE Officer is on record as saying all kinds of typical sanctimonious virtue-signaling shit, e.g. “We are a systemically racist organization and have to do better,” blah blah blah. Put those together, and what else can you conclude except that this coach got screwed out of a job because of explicit racial animus?

But as to why there are so few black NFL coaches, part of it is due to the way young quarterbacks are trained — he discussed this in detail here — which very frequently diverts talented young black quarterbacks away from learning the skillset they would need to make it in the NFL. The other thing is that the skills you need to be a good coach don’t often appear in a person who has the physical ability to be a good player:

If you haven’t met any high-caliber pro athletes, think of professors. The third-rate knockoff cow college I went to had a pretty big league chemist on staff; if he hadn’t won the Nobel he was at least in the conversation, something like that. This guy was a terrible teacher, because he just couldn’t grok that other people couldn’t follow him. Your brain couldn’t fire fast enough to keep up with his, and he couldn’t slow his down enough to let you catch up. The best chemistry teacher was still pretty smart — no dummies in Chem PhD programs, at least not back then — but because he was nowhere near the top guy’s level, he was so much better at explaining the nuts and bolts.

You could ask the low-end guy “What do I need to do to get better at chemistry?” and he could give you some solid, practical advice (I know, because with his help I squeaked out a C-). You asked that of the high end guy, and he’d reply “Be smarter”. (Not really, he was actually pretty cool, personally, but nonetheless that’s really all he could say).

Sports works the same way. While I was there, this same college also hired a former NBA player to coach basketball. Not a Hall of Famer, but a Hall of the Pretty Good-er; if you know basketball from the late 70s, you’ve heard of him. They thought having this guy as a coach would boost recruiting and ticket sales (he was a local notable, too), and it did … for a time, but under his stewardship the team got much worse, and for the same reason the Nobel-candidate chem wiz was the worst teacher. Billy Bigshot would tell his guys “Just go out there and do this and that” … but his guys couldn’t do this and that. Billy could, which is why he was a very good player at the highest professional level; but he couldn’t grok that not everyone could do the same genetic freak shit on the court he could, because they weren’t genetic freaks like him.

Psircling back to the NFL, if you want a race-neutral entry point for discussing this stuff, there you go. Good players are generally terrible coaches, because pretty much by definition good players are genetic freaks who have no idea how they do the things they do; they just do them. Good coaches, on the other hand, tend to be nerdlingers with people skills … another fairly rare combo, it must be said, but nowhere near as rare as a 6’4″ chess master with a big arm. If pro teams really wanted to start thinking outside the box, they’d start recruiting potential coaching candidates at video game tournaments … or straight from high school, where guys have to do much more with much, much less.

February 2, 2022

Neil Young revives the PMRC

Filed under: Business, Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jim Treacher invites you on a trip down memory lane to a time when musicians like Neil Young were [gasp!] against censorship:

If you’re Generation X or older, you might be getting flashbacks over this whole “Neil Young vs. Joe Rogan & Spotify” contretemps. On one side, we’ve got a popular public figure who’s expressing his thoughts and opinions, just as America’s Founding Fathers told us we get to do. On the other side, we’ve got a bunch of miserable old fuddy-duddies who want to shut down free speech because they believe it hurts people.

In other words, Neil Young just revived the PMRC.

If you don’t know what the PMRC was and you’re too lazy to google it, here’s the short version:

Back in the ’80s, a senator’s wife named Tipper Gore got sick of her kids listening to music she didn’t like, so she started an organization called the Parents Music Resource Center. The PMRC compiled a list of songs they found unacceptable, including “Darling Nikki” by Prince, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister, and “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper. Then Tipper used her political connections to convince the Senate to hold hearings about this supposedly dangerous music.

A lot of Americans decided they liked what popular entertainers were saying, and a handful of busybodies tried to put a stop to it. “If we don’t want to listen to it, nobody should get to listen to it. We need to protect the helpless unwashed masses from themselves!”

Sound familiar?

But then this happened:

If you’ve got a half-hour to spare, you can watch Dee Snider’s entire Senate testimony here. By the time he was done, the PMRC had been exposed for the meddling, hypocritical clowns they were. Their brief moment of relevance was over, at the hands of a guy who looked like Bette Midler transitioning into a Wookie.

The PMRC did get a consolation prize, though: the “PARENTAL ADVISORY” sticker you can find on a lot of cassettes and CDs from the era. Y’know, the sticker that made kids want to listen to what was inside because their parents wouldn’t like it.

Over the next couple of decades, the PMRC ended up helping a lot of artists sell a lot of records. Like this one:

I remember seeing that CD cover for the first time and thinking, “Damn … this must be awesome.” And it was! If not for Tipper Gore, NWA might not have become superstars and Dr. Dre probably wouldn’t be a near-billionaire now.

January 26, 2022

Three generations of the OG Puritans

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Founding Questions, Severian considers the New England Puritans and the world they inhabited:

Portrayal of the burning of copies of William Pynchon’s book The Meritous Price of Our Redemption by early colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who saw his book as heresy; it was the first-ever banned book in the New World and only 4 original copies are known to survive today.
Engraving by F.T. Merrill in The History of Springfield for the Young by Charles Barrows, 1921.

Total cultural and intellectual uniformity, constantly reinforced. If those Puritans were going to go crazy, in other words, they’d do it within very carefully circumscribed boundaries. The only thing close to that level of mental control is Twitter … and I suppose I must put the disclaimer out front, so that you can factor it in if you disagree with me: I hate the Puritans. They’re just SJWs with balls and a slightly less tedious prose style. When they’re not obsessing over the tiniest motions of their pwecious widdle selves, they’re screwing you over for the hellbound heathen you are.

Credit where it’s due, though: If you need to go sodbusting in an unexplored continent, the Puritans are your guys. The original Plymouth Bay colony was thoroughly militarized, and they didn’t fuck around — when the local Indian tribes were beginning to wonder if they shouldn’t do something about these White devils they’d let loose, the Puritans attacked the fiercest tribe and wiped them out, as a show of force. Life was hard in the OG Plymouth Colony, but it was about as good as you were going to get in that era.

But the typical inheritance pattern soon took over. “Regression to the mean” is a behavioral phenomenon, too, not just an IQ one. Puritanism is an obsessive, paranoid creed; it can only flourish in times of high stress and dire insecurity. But by the 1690s, Plymouth Colony was arguably the healthiest, wealthiest, safest place per capita in Christendom (not a high bar, obviously, but still). The OG settlers were all gone by that time, of course — the original settlement, you’ll recall, was 1620 — and so were most of their almost as hardcore kids. The third generation was coming up fast …

… but finding their way blocked by the old men of the previous generation, who were as tediously, dogmatically Puritan as the OGs, but without the stones. This made them — the 2nd generation — enormous hypocrites, but even without the hypocrisy, imagine living in a world where the ultra-wealthy who control everything in society tell you that they deserve it all, because they’re God’s Elect, while you, sinner, deserve to live in a rented box and eat bugs and own nothing, because God hates you.

History’s full of weird stuff like that, and that was the situation circa 1690. One example will have to do: Since we probably all got to experience Nathaniel Hawthorne’s existential angst back in high school, consider that the ancestor who caused him so much grief, Judge John Hathorne, was born in 1641. He would’ve been 51, then, during his trial service – a ripe old age by 17th century standards.

Not only that, but the 2nd generation — the one that stubbornly refused to move on and let the kids take their place in the sun — had spent the previous twenty years grievously fucking things up. King Philip’s War nearly ruined the colony, there’d been widespread plague, and oh yeah, that whole Restoration thing back in England — the hardest of hardcore Puritan thinkers in the run-up to the Civil War had been colonials; guys like Col. Rainsborough were closely associated with Massachusetts, etc. Lots of bad blood on the other side of the water, and while the third generation was willing to let bygones by bygones, the 2nd generation wasn’t.

So: Hypocritical old throwbacks and cavemen, with a decades-long track record of dumbfuckery, who just wouldn’t get out of the way. As they got older, they got more insular and inward-looking, as old people tend to do … and “more inward looking” for a Puritan is a near-BCG level of narcissism. Meanwhile, the new generation is eager to take their place in the burgeoning Atlantic world, especially after the Glorious Revolution (1688) … but can’t.

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