Victories, Pyrrhic and otherwise

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by liberal japonicus

It’s probably a sign of my liberal optimism, but when I think of what has just gone down, I’m thinking of Pyrrus quote of ‘another victory like this and we are undone’. Or maybe Robert Duvall’s speech in Apocalypse Now.

Smell that? You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like… Victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…

Anyway, as you stroll around with the smell of gasoline in your lungs, you are welcome to drop some psychoanalytical bs in the comments.

213 thoughts on “Victories, Pyrrhic and otherwise”

  1. another victory like this and we are undone
    Oh, from your lips to God’s ear, lj.
    But for those of us with a melancholy bent, this seems like a very black day, and one that will have terrible repercussions for years.

  2. But for those of us with a melancholy bent, this seems like a very black day, and one that will have terrible repercussions for years.
    Even for those of us of an optimistic bent, this is a bad day which will have negative repercussions. Probably for decades . . . unless we get to the point where a Supreme Court “Justice” can be impeached and recalled. Which, sadly, isn’t a good bet — even with someone as manifestly unfit as Kavanaugh.

  6. WTF is a “Pyrrhic victory” when the whole and only point is victory?
    When you play chess by The Rules, you can lose all your pieces except a rook and still checkmate your opponent even though he has most of his army still on the board. Your “Pyrrhic” victory is still a victory because your opponent accepts The Rules, not because your opponent is physically incapable of sweeping the pieces off the board and smashing it over your head.
    You can’t save The People from themselves. If The People are willing to put up with a rabid minority ruling over them by The Rules, then that’s the ball game.
    –TP

  7. I’m hoping that this is a Pyrrhic victory for Republicans and they are going to be toast. They got their perjurer on the USSC, I hope it gets shoved down their throats.

  8. Kavanaugh’s To Do List:
    – make sure Trump cannot be indicted
    – make sure Trump can pardon himself
    – destroy the remnants of the voting rights act
    – hollow out roe so that it’s meaningless

  10. Heh. Then on to dinner…
    Env. Protection Act is unconstitutional
    Find the Wagner Act unconstitutional
    overturn Civil Rights Act
    Rule Social Security Unconstitutional
    Reverse Brown v Board..
    Overturn the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

  12. I was on the “Apocalypse Now” set on the east coast of Luzon in the Philippines working as an extra the week Duvall’s speech was filmed.
    Wish I was there now.

  13. What bums me out most is that I have friends who think this is all great, that the Democrats are just terrible people for doing anything to stand in the way of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and who can’t see the damage being done to this country and the world. It’s all just winning.

  14. It’s possible that Kavanaugh will be an excellent associate SCOTUS justice. It’s just highly unlikely.
    Good bad or indifferent, he is the (R)’s golden boy.
    Enjoy your win. Wait until you see what it brings you.

  15. It’s possible that Kavanaugh will be an excellent associate SCOTUS justice. It’s just highly unlikely.
    He’s a liar, and a disgrace.

  16. vote her out.
    Send ten bucks. You can find ten bucks.
    I pick on Collins because she wants to have it both ways. There is no both ways.
    I pick on Collins, not so much for her vote, but for the mealy-mouthed lameness of her whole “I hope Kavanaugh will be a bridge blah blah blah” spiel.
    Kavanaugh has never been a bridge. He is a partisan.
    I don’t mind an opponent, but I hate a coward.
    Send these folks a couple of bucks and encourage Collins to find a new career.
    And after Collins, the rest of them.

  17. Collins is disgusting.
    I have a Republican friend and I am not rude when we discuss things.But he is a fascist. He’s a lesson on how people fail to notice evil in themselves: he really is in most respects a very nice, warm, kind and reliable person. So that’s what he sees about himself. He does not recognize that the part of him that vicariously enjoys bullying other vis the R party…he doens’t recognize that part of himself for what it is. I tel him often that he is acting and saying things agsints his own values.

  19. It’s only Pyrrhic, if it hits them personally. A lot of the guys are old men that can be confident that all the harm will come to others, all the bad things will happen only after they got out one way or the other. What does the mayfly care for a bill due in June?
    The party is a means for their own benefit and their religion and morals a sham for public show.
    Ms. 45 is out of town, unlikely to return in time and RBG is too much of a lady to put brucine in BK’s coffee when he shows up for work.

  21. Good point, Hartmut, but I wonder if Grassley, Flake, Collins and the other merry band found they couldn’t eat a meal in peace, or they had to worry about the cooks spitting in their food from now until they were voted out (and maybe even after), if they would think about what they have done. Maybe Grassley could do his Granpa Simpson impersonation for the crowd on those times.
    Maybe like this
    https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/410158-manchin-drowned-out-by-protesters-as-he-explains-vote
    Feel free to list other possibilities that come to mind.

  23. Good point, Hartmut, but I wonder if Grassley, Flake, Collins and the other merry band found they couldn’t eat a meal in peace, or they had to worry about the cooks spitting in their food from now until they were voted out (and maybe even after), if they would think about what they have done.
    I think such tactics might be counterproductive. (I’m not againt them, . . .
    Is this representative of the thinking here? Open and focused harassment including low-level assault on political opponents?
    Who thinks it would stop there? Would this be a valid tool for the right as well as the left?
    Here’s a timely article, for those with the time to read it, that speaks, albeit indirectly, to what I think I’m reading here: https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/

  24. Nigel, you may be right, but I’m wondering, maybe the purpose of such displays is to keep in mind what has happened and what they have done. As such, it’s not for people who haven’t taken sides, it is to remind people who have.
    wj, in the last thread, wrote this
    Previous non-voters are great, if you can get them. But only a tiny fraction of those are folks who didn’t vote at all because neither party was left enough for them.
    I wanted to respond, but the thread moved on, but I’ll take a whack here. The whole question of what the ‘majority’ wants has been with us since Nixon’s Silent Majority and the argument is that we should go along with what the majority wants. But given what Paul Campos observes here, I’m wondering if a little counter-productivity is what is needed.

  26. This story was reported to me by a friend who was involved. Keep in mind while reading it that Maine is very small in population, and you’re never more than a degree of separation or two away from … practically anyone else in the state. Including the top politicians, though that’s not the point of *this* story.
    Some years ago, right after one of the many statewide votes we had in Maine on the question of full citizenship for people like me, a group of folks who had worked hard on my side of the campaign were sitting somewhere in the State House complex, mourning. (That’s the phase before organizing for next time.)
    The most visible public face of the opposition, a guy named Jasper Wyman, came up to the table and said to them, “Hey guys, no hard feelings, right? It’s just politics.”
    I hope they called him what he was, right out loud to his face.
    Asshole.
    For us it wasn’t and isn’t “just politics,” it’s our lives. It’s our mental health, our ability to live open, healthy lives — just like Jasper Wyman — our right to hold a job, to have children, to marry, to access the same social services (such as they are) as straight people.
    Now is no different, but it’s not just the lives of gay people at risk (it never has been just us, of course), it’s the lives of millions, and in fact that life of a nation of laws. The children in camps in Texas, the women who can’t and/or won’t be able to control their own lives because of Kavanaugh, the people who won’t be able to vote, as is their right, because of the blocks that have been put in their way…yet again, the cruel treatment of people who are disabled and unable to care for themselves in dignity.
    And that was before the court took a turn toward the Federalist Society’s wet dream.
    I’m reminded of an incident that happened just after Clickbait was elected, when most of us here were in mourning, and russell wrote eloquently of his fear for people he knew — all the sorts of people that Clickbait immediately set about hurting, openly and gleefully.
    And Marty showed up to gloat talk politics, and called russell “unhinged.”
    That was a turning point, I would guess for russell, but certainly for me.
    This is an even starker one.
    It’s not “just politics.” It’s our lives. I’m not playing that game anymore.

  27. Would this be a valid tool for the right as well as the left?
    you mean like maybe ‘the right’ wouldn’t bake cakes for people it didn’t like?

  28. It’s not “just politics.” It’s our lives. I’m not playing that game anymore.
    Assuming this is a valid assessment of the new normal, what are the new rules?

  29. Assuming this is a valid assessment of the new normal, what are the new rules?
    The new rules are tax cuts, concentration camps, environmental degradation, as well as liars, rapists and fraudsters in high offices. Where have you been?

  31. The new rules are tax cuts, concentration camps, environmental degradation, as well as liars, rapists and fraudsters in high offices. Where have you been?
    Understood. Let me be more clear: what are the new rules for resisting the new normal? What are the legitimate tactics to be employed in the name of social justice?
    you mean like maybe ‘the right’ wouldn’t bake cakes for people it didn’t like?
    This is probably a different topic, for several reasons, not the least of which is that the baker was sought out by a specific individual intent on fomenting a confrontation, not the baker seeking him out to confront in some fashion. And, the baker bakes for anyone, just not for weddings that conflict with his religious views. It’s actually a very narrow issue. That aside, I glean from your answer that you are generally on board with LJ and Nigel. Thanks.

  32. Low-level harassment of elected public officials (and people they appoint) is OK with me. Emphasis on the low-level.
    Threats or acts of violence are right out. And targeting their families as proxy too.
    Spreading lies about them is also not encouraged.
    To tell them in no uncertain ways and words to their face what one thinks of them on the other hand should be the favorite first step.

  33. If they are members of mainstream religious groups, maybe their preachers should be encouraged to hold more sermons on what Jesus thought of hypocrites and the self-righteous.

  34. Thanks Hartmut. Any thoughts if it doesn’t stop there, i.e. at the “low level harassment” level? If right wingers are confronted in restaurants, then soon enough, left wingers will face the same unpleasantness. I see and fear mutual escalation, with each side blaming the other.

  35. McKinney, I know you’re trying to get us to describe the ways we think it’s legit to fight this stuff, in ways which won’t make the downward spiral worse (I well remember the Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the restaurant conversation), but what I don’t know is whether you want it so you can contemptuously dismiss us and our proposed remedies, and our general worldview (Social Justice! Laughable idea!), or whether you think any of the developments which so freak us out are at all regrettable, let alone deplorable.
    You opposed Trump’s nomination, and didn’t vote for him. You despise Cruz. You can’t say (understandably) what you think about Kavanaugh. But you seem on board with most of what these people want to accomplish (e.g. loosely speaking, and allowing for definitional bias, joel hanes’s and bobbyp’s pre- and post-prandial agendas above). I also fear mutual escalation, so I ask you, what methods do you think would be likely to achieve the agenda of most of the people here, which seems more like the agenda of most of the US population?

  36. the baker was sought out by a specific individual intent on fomenting a confrontation, not the baker seeking him out to confront in some fashion
    the baker refused to bake the cake, correct?
    i have no further questions.

  37. If right wingers are confronted in restaurants, then soon enough, left wingers will face the same unpleasantness.
    Unfortunately, there are enough examples of that already without any leftist provocation.
    And that does not even include the traditional “we no likes folks like you around here” that especially rural backwaters* are infamous for.
    *worldwide, I assume

  38. What are the legitimate tactics to be employed in the name of social justice?
    People fighting for social justice shouldn’t be the only ones held to a standard of using “legitimate tactics.”
    “Legitimacy” has been undermined by the Republican Party. Obviously, it would be great to use the electoral system to gain ground, although Russian and dark money interference, along with the rest of the illegitimacy that Republicans throw into the mix, make it difficult to have much faith in that.
    Legitimacy doesn’t work when this kind of illegitimacy has become the norm. I know you can’t say mean things about Bart O’Kavanaugh since your firm might have a case before him some day, but putting him on the Supreme Court has undermined the legitimacy of the legal system.
    We’re doing what we can with lawsuits, elections, disciplinary committee referrals, etc., but when the ultimate refs are mobsters, “legitimate tactics” are not going to work. I’ve long considered myself a patriotic citizen of the United States who deeply believes in its Constitution and system of justice, despite its flaws. Even though the system is far from perfect, its integrity seemed to be important to people, especially lawyers, who worked within it. Republicans undermined this before, especially with Bush v. Gore, but I held on. Not anymore.
    By doing this to the court, Republicans are saying that there are no rules. So, yeah, we (people interested in justice) need to keep fighting for it the traditional ways. But I don’t blame people for coloring outside the box. Play by the rules when there are no rules? Rules are for both sides. So, no. There are no rules.

  39. GFTNC, I refer you to the LJ/Nigel exchange which prompted my question, followed by Cleek’s comments and Hartmut’s.
    Either the LJ/Nigel exchange is or is not a legitimate means of responding to the Kavanaugh proceedings. I’m trying to find out which. I think it’s fair to assume that I am not on board with confronting anyone, anywhere, anytime when they are trying to live their private lives. In the public sphere, have at it, peacefully.
    It is of interest to me to learn where folks here fall between my views and what I think are fairly explicitly stated views by LJ and Nigel.
    I think their views speak for themselves. I will bend over backwards not to contemptuously dismiss anyone who responds as I believe my comments above demonstrate.
    You are correct that I am a conservative, or classical liberal, in most respects. I will answer your last question, but I request, in fair exchange, that you answer mine.
    My answer: you win, or not, by substantive engagement, reason, logic and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time. Shouting down, calling out, public harassment, etc. is ineffective, counter-productive and almost certain to produce an in-kind and indistinguishable response which will escalate. So, that’s my answer.

  40. you win, or not, by substantive engagement, reason, logic and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time.
    These tactics work in a liberal (small l) democracy. The US isn’t one.

  41. And Marty showed up to gloat talk politics, and called russell “unhinged.”
    and my friends sucked. they were spreading hate.
    That was a turning point, I would guess for russell
    damned straight.
    what are the new rules for resisting the new normal?
    the rules are what they have always been.
    Yelling at a senator who just cast a vote such as Manchin’s seems… perfectly fine. To me.
    And, FWIW, I’ll probably send Manchin some money. Even though I would probably have been yelling right along with the folks in the video.
    Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time did not end slavery, did not win women the right to vote, did not win working people a 40 hour week, did not bring about the end of Jim Crow, did not win gays the right to simply exist.
    Yelling was involved. Breaking the law was involved. Getting in the way was involved. Going to jail was involved. In some cases, literal warfare was involved.
    Sometimes debate is sufficient. Sometimes – often – it’s not. And, as Janie so clearly points out, quite often these issues are not mere matters of simple intellectual disagreement.
    People – many many people – have lost their lives, their homes, their livelihoods, their health, their families, all their worldly goods, due to the consequences of one public policy prevailing over another.
    So hell yeah, people are gonna yell.
    I’ll also point out that anyone on “the left” who has engaged in any kind of dialogue or contact of any kind with their political opposites at any time over the last 15 or 20 years, has had the more or less daily experience of being threatened with physical violence.
    Comically and ludicrously so, most often. But, one never knows, does one?
    People on “the left” are, as these things go, profoundly restrained.
    This – the political environment we are living in – is not a debating society. People are fighting for their lives.

  42. you win, or not, by substantive engagement, reason, logic and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time.
    Does that advice extend to conservatives as well? Because that certainly does not describe their tactics over the past few decades, or specifically over the Kavanaugh nomination .
    Those tactics have mostly consisted of naked power grabs, outright lies, vote suppression, fomenting bigotry, anger and hatred in their base, etc.
    If people on the right want to move away from the extreme partisanship there are things they can do without abandoning any legitimate principle.
    1. Renounce the rabble-rousers. Call Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, etc. what they are – dishonest grifters who make a very healthy living lying and sowing discord.
    2. Renounce bigotry. Want tighter immigration limits? OK. Make the case. A real one, not MS13 bogeymen. And don’t take it out on honest decent people just because they happen to be hispanic, or Muslim, for that matter.
    3. Try honesty. Do you really think climate change isn’t happening? That tax cuts pay for themselves? The contempt for truth, your “reason, logic and evidence” on the right is astonishing.

  43. I assume that you’ve been reading what I’ve written previously. I refer you to this comment
    http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2018/09/kavanaugh-where-we-are-now.html?cid=6a00d834515c2369e2022ad39619d9200d#comment-6a00d834515c2369e2022ad39619d9200d
    In addition, I’m specifically talking about confronting the Republican members of the Judiciary committee. Just in case you missed it
    I wonder if Grassley, Flake, Collins and the other merry band found they couldn’t eat a meal in peace, or they had to worry about the cooks spitting in their food from now until they were voted out (and maybe even after), if they would think about what they have done.
    It seems relatively clear that no amount of testimony, substantive engagement, reason, logic, presented concerning Kavanaugh would have been considered. So, where does that leave those who wish to protest this?
    It is of interest to me to learn where folks here fall between my views and what I think are fairly explicitly stated views by LJ and Nigel.
    Earlier, you asked me how you could reset this relationship between us, as you wanted to be able to discuss these matters on this list. Assuming that you are serious about that request and it isn’t some rhetorical move to assure the peanut gallery of your status above it all, one way to do it would be to stop with the gotcha reasoning and rather shitty questions and try and ask my opinion directly and have the stones to present yours instead of trying to score points. Setting this up a match between me and Nigel, when I answered him by addressing his points and suggesting some alternative thinking is a world away from the way you try to cast this as two sides and you ‘just want to find out where everyone is’. If you agree with Nigel, answer my question rather than trying to start another discussion. You aren’t going to express an opinion about Kavanaugh, fine, but don’t try to slide in on the back of that conversation and try and score points if you don’t have the stones to set out your opinion on it.

  44. I request, in fair exchange, that you answer mine.
    The following was written before russell and byomtov posted, but I agree with their every word, particularly the following:

    Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time did not end slavery, did not win women the right to vote, did not win working people a 40 hour week, did not bring about the end of Jim Crow, did not win gays the right to simply exist.
    Yelling was involved. Breaking the law was involved. Getting in the way was involved. Going to jail was involved. In some cases, literal warfare was involved.

    I’m all for fair exchange, and civility, and substantive engagement using reason, logic and evidence presented forcefully and consistently. But in circumstances where a minority attempts to stage a coup (whether fast and dramatic or slow and incremental) against the wishes of the majority, as in numerous cases historically and geographically, this approach is no longer sufficient (rendered ineffective, for example, by gerrymandering, intervention by foreign adversaries impersonating patriotic voters, false and biased reporting which purports to be fair etc etc ad infinitum). As to what are, as against are not permissible tactics unlikely to descend into a spiral of undesirable and counter-productive escalation, personally I cannot at the moment say. I have no objection to shaming and calling out people when they’re living their “private lives” in public, as I made clear with SHS, and in fact as we all pointed out these tactics have been used against lefties, gay people, people of colour etc for decades, but as to what will actually work when the decks are so clearly stacked against one side, the jury is out. We shall have to wait and see.

  45. the civility and desire for honest debate among the folks who stand in from of Planned Parenthood locations is a model for all of us on the left.

  46. A bit of creativity should be involved.
    E.g. awaiting them every morning in front of their house with a chorus singing
    “It’s an asshole we see|that has just stepped outside…” (tune: Star-spangled banner) or “Embrace the jerk and close your eyes to reason/In lockstep march with the mighty GOP” (tune: Horst-Wessel song) or (once the immigration topic becomes hot again) “See this vile troll|cager of children” (We are the world) etc.
    Each day something new.

  47. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-is-a-good-point
    One of the most remarkable features of the Kavanaugh vote hasn’t been remarked upon enough in my opinion: the red state Democratic senators dared to come out against Kavanaugh. Heitkamp, Donnelly, McCaskill, Tester, and throw in Nelson as well: all extremely vulnerable, all past the primaries and facing red-state general election voters, and all stood firm against Kavanaugh. (One can quibble about Manchin. My take is that he will always be there when the Democrats really need him (except on coal).)
    This is pretty amazing. And it may yet turn out to be disastrous. And the odds are that the best outcome will be one or two of them losing. But it says something about the nature of the parties today that they would take this stand. And if they (all?) survive, it will send a powerful message that party solidarity and faithfulness with the party’s core supporters are the reigning elements in today’s politics — for both parties.
    From one standpoint, it may be that loud and angry targeted protests are needed to let these red state dems know that they made the right choice. As I noted, their function may be more to assure the people who do hold the same opinions rather than try to convince those who are wavering.
    And if you say it isn’t going to make a difference, just remember the look on Flake’s face when he was confronted. Or the bs Grassley tries to pull by claiming he is sympathetic to Ford, but gosh darn, that Feinstein should have told him sooner.
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-doesnt-grassley-get-more-grief-for-lying-like-this
    As to what to say,
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/27/brett-kavanaughs-version-high-tech-lynching-speech-annotated/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2f9deb53d77b#annotations:15466071
    This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.
    If folks make prepared statements in the same vein and yell them at Grassley, Collins, Graham and Flake, but apologize for getting emotional in a post event op-ed, is that ok? Or does that mean that they/we are paid by George Soros?

  48. one way to do it would be to stop with the gotcha reasoning and rather shitty questions and try and ask my opinion directly and have the stones to present yours instead of trying to score points.
    You clearly state that public harassment of certain senators while living their private lives up to and including contaminating their food is acceptable. Now you say that your view is limited to just those senators who would not see reason and vote against Kavanaugh. But, there is no reason to believe it would stop there or that, even with your proposed limitations, that there wouldn’t be reaction and escalation. What happens the next time there is a contentious national debate and your side loses? More accosting and food contamination? And when the Repubs lose, do they get to run that play?
    Feel free to quote directly any “gotcha reasoning” or “shitty questions”. I’ll address your comments on the merits when you make them.
    Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time did not end slavery, did not win women the right to vote, did not win working people a 40 hour week, did not bring about the end of Jim Crow, did not win gays the right to simply exist.
    Actually, “Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time” was instrumental in each of these. The Civil War began because the South was losing the argument. Women got the vote in 1920 via constitutional amendment. Jim Crow ended in large part because it could not withstand “Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time.” The forty hour work week, i.e. the Fair Labor Standards Act, was passed prior to WWII. By congress. I grant that there were protests, marches, etc. that were the necessary catalyst to many of these movements, but standing alone, if unsupported by “Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time”, none of those would have succeeded.
    And today is not 1860 or 1914. So, I ask the question again, is publicly harassing political opponents as they live their private lives fair game up to and including spitting surreptitiously in their food?
    GFTNC doesn’t have an answer, which is fair. Implicit in not having an answer is that the answer can go either way, given circumstances yet to materialize.
    By doing this to the court, Republicans are saying that there are no rules.
    Having no intent or desire to relitigate Kavanaugh’s merits as a SCOTUS justice, what did the Repubs do “to the court”, whether as a matter of process or something else, that says “there are no rules”? Thanks.

  49. E.g. awaiting them every morning in front of their house with a chorus singing
    “It’s an asshole we see|that has just stepped outside…” (tune: Star-spangled banner) or “Embrace the jerk and close your eyes to reason/In lockstep march with the mighty GOP” (tune: Horst-Wessel song) or (once the immigration topic becomes hot again) “See this vile troll|cager of children” (We are the world) etc.
    Each day something new.
    And if they have children? And when others, not so constrained, encourage their children to harass the children of those whose views you do not approve, how do you stop that train?

  50. You clearly state that public harassment of certain senators while living their private lives up to and including contaminating their food is acceptable.
    FWIW:
    I see nothing whatsoever wrong with confronting and yelling at a US Senator when they appear in public to discuss why they may have voted one way or another.
    If it’s over-used as a tactic, it’ll lose it’s effectiveness. And, if it’s simply used as a way to prevent people from speaking publicly, anyplace, ever – see also Tea Party strategies in the run-up to the ACA vote – it becomes simple bullying. Which is unlikely to be helpful in the long run, although I think the Tea Partiers and their pals with the AR-15’s found it useful short-term.
    I absolutely and unequivocally am opposed to spitting in people’s food, poisoning them, harassing their families. Also SWAT-ing.
    In general I’m opposed to doxing. In the case of the C-ville Nazis who were outed, in some cases at loss of their jobs, I have no problem. March publicly with torches and Nazi armbands, you know what you’re signing up for. If you don’t, I have no problem with people pointing it out to you.
    I’m not supportive of provocative violence a la antifa and black bloc kids. Conversely, I have no problem with people defending themselves if they are assaulted while they are publicly assembled.
    I’m not really that bothered by Sarah Sanders being politely denied service in a restaurant.
    Hopefully that gives an idea of my own, personal boundaries.

  51. My old man was once somewhere or other with another geezer, both of them at that time probably about as old as I am now. For some reason or other, Ted Kennedy was scheduled to appear, and my dad’s buddy was supposed to shake his hand. It was some work-related dog and pony.
    My dad’s buddy would not shake Kennedy’s hand. Didn’t care for the man.
    FWIW, I don’t share the guy’s politics, but I have no problem with his refusal.
    I’m sure Kennedy lost no sleep over it. It comes with the gig.

  52. what did the Repubs do “to the court”, whether as a matter of process or something else, that says “there are no rules”?
    Briefly, I would say the refusal to make Kavanaugh’s paper trail from his time in the White House available, and the extremely constrained conditions under which the FBI findings were made available, both qualify.
    Not as “no rules” necessarily, but as obvious bad faith and abuse of power.
    My two cents.

  54. what did the Repubs do “to the court”, whether as a matter of process or something else, that says “there are no rules”?
    Do I have to start writing Merrick Garland over and over again, again?
    and wrs.

  55. How about the comment that I pointed to? No acknowledgement of that?
    Not that I expect you to, you have the urge to put the liberals in one big box, as can be see with the way you quote Nigel. Go up folks and see where that McT sticks that ellipsis.
    Here’s what I said
    I wonder if Grassley, Flake, Collins and the other merry band found they couldn’t eat a meal in peace, or they had to worry about the cooks spitting in their food from now until they were voted out (and maybe even after), if they would think about what they have done.
    Here’s how McT interprets it
    You clearly state that public harassment of certain senators while living their private lives up to and including contaminating their food is acceptable.
    I was referring to the observation, made after this:
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/19/kirstjen-nielsen-homeland-security-secretary-mexican-restaurant-protest
    wondering why she didn’t think that wasn’t going to be a possibility whenever she goes into a Mexican restaurant. I also had in mind the scene in Monuments Man where Cate Blanchett has her French assistant spit in the glass just before they are used for wine by the German officers. I leave it to the reader to determine what is hyperbole and what is not,
    But beyond the pearl clutching over ‘food contamination’, given the rush to dismiss Ford’s and other claims against Kavanaugh, why precisely should their private lives be sancrosanct. It seems clear that the people pushing Kavanaugh’s nomination did their level best to ignore any kind of privacy constraints on those women and they stood by and ignored it?
    In case you missed it, there was
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime-beta/time-for-leonard-leo-to-speak-up
    Where they tried to incriminate the former boyfriend of Ford as the rapist.
    https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/03/julie-swetnick-sex-life-detailed-republican-senators/
    In an unprecedented move, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released an explicit statement that purports to describe the sexual preferences of a woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of misconduct.
    The statement, which was circulated to the hundreds of journalists on the Judiciary Committee’s press list, was from Dennis Ketterer, a former Democratic congressional candidate and television meteorologist who said he was involved in a brief relationship with Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick in 1993.
    Why is their privacy sancrosanct, but Ford and Swetnick’s isn’t? Funny how that works out…

  57. LJ, I’m sorry, I don’t follow most of what you say at 12:16. That’s ok. I did glean this: why precisely should their private lives be sancrosanct.
    I’ll stand on what I said.
    Russell, thanks.

  58. Do I have to start writing Merrick Garland over and over again, again?
    No. I understand your position. I think he should have been given a vote too, but I don’t think it was constitutionally mandated that the senate act. Shitty maybe, but within the plain language of the document. But explain how not allowing a vote on Garland justifies, if it does, accosting people while they eat or spitting in their food. And if this is acceptable, is there a line you would draw and, if so, where would you draw it? Thanks.

  59. But explain how not allowing a vote on Garland justifies, if it does, accosting people while they eat or spitting in their food. And if this is acceptable, is there a line you would draw and, if so, where would you draw it? Thanks.
    McKinney, I am not here to obey your orders to explain things, or to play in your cross-examination dog-and-pony show, or to say “how high” when you say jump. I am not going put my thoughts into boxes, the definitions and dimensions of which are prescribed by you, with your disapproving tut-tut about “the left” hiding behind the pretense of reasoned discourse. (AKA cross-examination.)
    Other people’s mileage obviously varies.

  61. what did the Repubs do “to the court”, whether as a matter of process or something else, that says “there are no rules”?
    What Russell said.
    Deliberate concealment of relevant facts may not be strictly “against the rules,” but it’s very bad behavior, as was the treatment given Garland.

  62. GFTNC doesn’t have an answer, which is fair. Implicit in not having an answer is that the answer can go either way, given circumstances yet to materialize.
    I don’t have an answer answer, but as an interim measure I have no problem with these people (Collins, Grassley, Lindsey Graham, SHS, Rush Limbaugh and many more) being called out when in public (not just when speaking in public), so that they understand viscerally the opprobrium in which they are held. I do not favour physical assault by sputum or otherwise.
    Shorter me: what russell said, passim.

  63. McKinney, a minority party in this country is exercising raw power over the majority of the people, including engaging in gross human rights violations. They are able to do so because because they accepted the assistance of a hostile foreign government to win the 2016 election. Those who accomplished the coup are rewarding themselves by looting the US Treasury.
    Enjoy your tax cuts, but don’t expect civility from people who would prefer justice for all.

  65. explain how not allowing a vote on Garland justifies, if it does, accosting people while they eat
    The “accosting people while they eat” thing was Nielsen, having dinner at a Mexican restaurant.
    She works for a man who began his run for office by stating that Mexicans are, as a group, rapists and murderers.
    She runs an organization that separates Mexican and Central and South American children from their parents, and incarcerates both, in conditions that approximate a dog pound, for either the protected action of seeking asylum, or the civil violation of entering the US without proper authorization.
    I would say that being accosted while eating dinner *in a freaking Mexican restaurant* is within the bounds of reasonable reaction.
    Immigration policies aside, some 10 or 11 percent of the US population – citizens – are of Mexican heritage. What would be an appropriate reaction to the POTUS claiming that all Germans are Nazis, or all Italians are in the mafia, or all Irish are drunken brawlers?
    These policies are not matters of intellectual debate. They are cruel, and harmful. People held in these conditions have killed themselves, and some families have been separated with slim chance of ever being reunited.
    If you did that to me or people like me, and all I did in response was to yell at you while you were eating dinner, I would say you had come out of it pretty well.
    People in the current administration are, knowingly and willingly, pursuing policies that harm people. Unnecessarily. And in some cases, *that is the point*. The unnecessary harshness and cruelty is intentional. It’s meant to be a deterrent.
    In my opinion, that behavior is shameful, and being publicly shamed for it is not a violation of any kind of boundary of civil discourse.

  66. The SCOTUS will soon contain a perjurer along with the pervert and the receiver of stolen goods that Republicans have foisted on to it.
    I think somebody should spit in somebody’s food somewhere, at some time, just to placate McKinney’s fixation on food-spitting-into.
    I would not spit in anybody’s food myself, but if I found myself at a restaurant with Mitch McConnell, I would walk up to his table and ask him: “Excuse me, Senator, are you actually an asshole or do you just act like one?” The plain language of the Constitution doesn’t forbid such a breach of decorum, any more than it forbids stealing SCOTUS seats.
    Would I still do it if McConnell was with his kids? If they’re Jared Kushner’s age, you bet. If they’re young and innocent I’d still do it, because Republicans have taught us that hurting children to “send a message” to their parents is acceptable. I would not, of course, grab the kids and lock them up in tent prisons, for I am emphatically not a Republican.
    In the musical “1776”,the John Adams character utters the immortal line: “This is a revolution, dammit! We have to offend somebody.” McKinney labors under the delusion that only private acts can be offensive; Adams, trying to get the Declaration of Independence approved, knew better.
    McKinney’s “where does it all stop” question reminds me of Lindsey Graham’s complaint that if Kavanaugh went down then nobody accused of sexual assault could ever again aspire to a Senate-confirmable position. There’s an obvious stopping point: when public officials start acting like decent human beings at work, they can count on being treated like decent human beings in private life.
    –TP

  67. what are the new rules for resisting the new normal? What are the legitimate tactics to be employed in the name of social justice?
    Let me take a shot at this as well — as (I think) one of the more conservative folks here. I’m all for “Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time.” And for extensive electoral efforts.
    But I have no problem at all with confronting people involved, including while they are “going about their private lives” — “people involved” being both politicians and those working for political think tanks. Hey, they chose their jobs. Their families? Right out. Violence? Out . . . for the moment, although the way the right looks to be going I’m not sure I would bet on that lasting.
    Does that help?

  69. So, I ask the question again, is publicly harassing political opponents as they live their private lives fair game up to and including spitting surreptitiously in their food?
    The former? Yes. The later? No. For the simple reason that they need to know, they can see, the protest of their actions.

  70. So, it’s the server’s job, as she or he places the dish in front of the customer?
    Before or after the offer of cracked pepper?
    Depending upon time constraints and my mood, that might a part of a larger riff on the subject of the chef spitting in a customer’s bouillabaisse, which will cover the subjects of regulation, states’ rights, and global warming.

  71. Their families? Right out. Violence? Out
    People’s families should be left out of it.
    Violence is, perhaps, justified, as self-defense, or as an absolute last resort. Our history as a nation, however, has few examples of positive change by violence, and in fact many examples of positive change through being willing to *accept* violence without responding in kind.
    So for both moral reasons, and tactical ones, I’m opposed to violence as a strategy.
    Hopefully all the talk from the right about “2nd Amendment solutions” and “we have all the guns” will never amount to more than talk, and the issue of force as a matter of pure, survival level self-defense won’t come up.
    All things considered, I’d rather vote.

  72. And all of that said, he said, I find McK’s basic question to be one well worth asking.
    It’s easy to break stuff, and hard to put it back together. There’s a time and place for expressing anger, and this is arguably one such occasion. But there’s not a lot of value in making enemies you don’t need to make.

  73. but wait, one more thing…. does this guy ever shut up?
    Actually, “Substantive engagement, reason, logic, and evidence presented forcefully and consistently over time” was instrumental in each of these.
    Instrumental in all, sufficient in none. And in fact, for slavery and basic worker’s rights, warfare was required.
    May it not come to that point again.

  74. I find McK’s basic question to be one well worth asking.
    Me too.
    In my opinion, that behavior is shameful, and being publicly shamed for it is not a violation of any kind of boundary of civil discourse.
    Seconded, with vehemence.
    Instrumental in all, sufficient in none.
    Seconded, thirded even, and with the maximum possible emphasis, possibly even with extreme prejudice (in the Clint Eastwood sense), if self-defense ever does become necessary.

  75. There’s no point making enemies you don’t need to make, but again: you have to offend somebody.
    Or, if you want real power, you have to offend everybody except Vladimir Putin, Neo-Nazis, and “Values Voters”.
    –TP

  77. cleek: so important to be reminded of stuff like that, and the shamelessness of the people we are talking about shaming….

  78. Re: cleek’s link. Let’s not forget, it’s just terrible if “the left” makes noises about maybe possibly being uncivil to public officials in public places.
    But as usual, the standard it is double. It’s okay to run smear campaigns against injured children and Gold Star families and all the rest of it, because … wait for it … IOKIYAR.

  79. Violence is, perhaps, justified, as self-defense, or as an absolute last resort. Our history as a nation, however, has few examples of positive change by violence
    I should probably have been more explicit. I’m not particularly optimistic that we get thru this without violence. Not because I expect the left to follow the Count’s call to arms. But because I will be unsurprised if, when (and I definitely think it’s when, not if) the far right’s gains start to be reversed, the right resorts to violence to try to hold on. And, just as with the Civil War, they won’t be stopped without violence. There won’t be the nice geographic divisions we had then. And I expect the US Army to do the bulk of the counter-violence.** But counter-violence I expect there to be.
    ** As we have see in Afghanistan and Iraq, even when massively outgunned guerrillas can make it a tough fight. On the other hand, the far right’s areas where they dominate the total population tend to be tactically, but not strategically, strong. Elsewhere, they don’t have a secure population base to hide among. IMHO.

  80. “the Count’s call to arms.”
    I fully expect the Right to start the violence.
    Whites of their eyes and all that.
    Elements of their base, including some of their elected representatives and financial benefactors, have made it clear, repeatedly, for decades, that the Second Amendment will be used and was indeed included in the Constitution, to force implementation of their agenda, while standing athwart us, should civil, rational, reasoned discourse, which now includes, in their, though not in McKT’s, opinion, irretrievably breaking all political norms, Merrick Garland, being one among many, but only the latest, lugies spat into the national hotpot.
    The political norms, even if not specified in the Constitution, are the lubrication that keeps the political machinery from going full metal on metal and seizing up, which we are close to realizing.
    Spit might work as a temporary replacement, like sawdust in a gearbox.
    At the moment, I conceal carry only saliva glands, but the spittoons have been removed from the public square.
    But not the gun clips.

  82. I find McK’s basic question to be one well worth asking.
    Sure, but does McT ask it? Or does he merely deploy it as a way to say ‘U libz, ur doing it wrong?’ Seems to be the latter, which is why I’m happy to have a conversation with Nigel about it (or wj, for that matter), but with McT, he can go pound sand. Or shorter, what Janie said.
    When apprised of the fact that the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee (i.e. the people I complained about) released a letter that smeared one of Kavanaugh’s accusers has him leave like a squid, shooting out a jet of ink and retreating into his lair. (an analogy someone, maybe Jackmormon, memorably assigned to Josh Treviño, another person who hung around here with McT’s propensities)
    The squid analogy is even more apt when you think it doesn’t have a spine. Yes, lj, your example means that we should protect everyone’s privacy, even if the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee don’t give a shit about it. But I do cause I’ll call all of you out when you talk about how people might react to this and tut tut when anyone suggests hurting the other side, (as long as that side is Republican).
    If I were to give another measure of psychoanalytic bs, I might observe that McT coming here to get the strokes of us idiot liberals here could be because he doesn’t get warm fuzzies IRL, just cold pricklies. So, to reassure himself that he is open minded and fair because he can’t get it in his everyday existence, he wanders over here where he can get us dumb liberals to say ‘don’t worry, you’re a nice conservative, you aren’t like all those others’. McT may want to consider, given the pomposity he displays here, whether the wait-staff has already spit in in frijoles multiple timess.
    Provechito, Señor

  83. McTx owes us all an explicit explanation of EXACTLY how extreme a Nazi should be, before they can be justifiably summarily gunned down.
    Otherwise he’s just avoiding the issue.
    Sadly, the question is relevant.

  84. For the simple reason that they need to know, they can see, the protest of their actions.
    Having my druthers, I’d prefer not to, but have them wonder if it was done. This is why you should always be nice to the waitstaff.

  85. Twenty-four-hours later, musing on Collins.
    People suggest that her vote was in trade for contracts for Bath Iron Works and the Portland Naval Shipyard. (This assumes that she really gives a shit about the pro-choice cause. I don’t buy it.)
    People suggest that Mitch McConnell wrote her speech.
    People suggest…okay, Jon Meachem suggests…that the BK she painted was more like herself than it was like the actual BK.
    As for the latter, that notion refutes itself. I find it hard to believe that she’s stupid enough to believe the whitewash she spewed, so if she’s willing to go up there and pretend she does believe it, ignoring the entire other side of the reality of the man, then she is as much of a liar as BK.
    What I’ve come around to, in any case, is that the performance was a sort of ritual abasement. For weeks she did her usual attention-sucking performance of pretending she didn’t know how she was going to vote, and though the people in charge knew she would come around as she always did, she had to pay the penalty for even pretending to buck the party line. She had to (plausibly to someone, apparently) mouth the thought trains of how she had concluded that she could come down off the fake fence.
    Bah.

  86. by pretending she was wavering, she lent legitimacy to the process. she was unsure! doubts! concerns! but then, finally, her questions were answered. her conscience was cleared. we can all rest easy knowing someone involved in the process came to her conclusion after much soul-searching.
    hahahhahahahahhhhhaaaa!

  88. It would be highly satisfying to reenact an infamous event from the pre civil war era ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner ) with McConnell at the receiving end but I am well aware that this would be highly counterproductive (btw, remarkable that senators then could bring firearms into the chamber).
    Tactical emetic use by a senator on the other hand…*
    *ideally to enable vomiting into the turtle’s face

  90. “….. Daines was absent.”
    I was looking forward, as a kind of matching bookend, to the Senator’s last-minute flight back to Washington D.C. on Rep. Greg Gianforte’s private aircraft, The USS Physical Assault.
    The reporter Gianforte was found guilty of assaulting, I believe, would have survived charges in the State of Montana for using deadly armed force in self defense of Gianforte’s attack, unless he had been a woman or a black.

  91. Traditionally, the Supreme Court in various eras has been referred to by the name of the Chief Justice. Thus the Warren Court, the Rehnquist Court, etc. But I already seeing references to the Kavanaugh Court.
    Quite the legacy for Mr Chief Justice Roberts. Unless, of course, he figures out how to minimize Kavanaugh’s influence making this a massively reactionary court….

  92. JanieM: Twenty-four-hours later, musing on Collins.
    Remember, Janie: Collins is what passes for a Reasonable Republican(TM).
    Meanwhile, Joe Manchin — our Latter Day Lieberman.
    I want him to win re-election, vote to make Schumer Majority Leader, and promptly be assigned to the Janitorial and Toilet Committee. If it doesn’t exist, Schumer can create it for him.
    As I have pointed out many times, the operative definition of party affiliation is: who do you vote for to lead your branch of the legislature. So I can accept that we “need” Manchin in that respect.
    However: while the Democratic party has to rely on such marginal DINOs as Manchin or (in a previous outbreak of the disease) Lieberman, it can not deliver on its promises but must settle for watered-down Republican-lite facsimiles of them. The minute there are 52 Dem Senators in his caucus, I want Schumer to invite Joe Manchin to go full jihadi and change parties.
    Politicians like Manchin should be made to stand outside the tent pissing in, as soon as convenient. Public urination is frowned upon, but it has to be visible before the public can frown upon it.
    –TP

  93. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/mcconnell-wont-commit-to-holding-scotus-vacancy-open-during-election-year
    I’m calling it the McConnell Court.
    The Boston Strangler strangled IN Boston.
    The Turkish Genocide of Armenians in which Turks murdered Armenians.
    The Japanese Rape of Nanking, in which mass rape was done in Nanking by the Japanese Army.
    If English is going to be the mandated language of the land, let’s call (sh)it what it is, like everything else.

  95. From the Count’s link:

    “Who controls the Senate when you have a vacancy that close to an election makes a big difference,” McConnell said at a press conference Saturday after the Senate narrowly confirmed to the Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh. “There’s not a doubt in anybody’s mind, I am sure, that if the shoe was on the other foot in 2016, and it had been a Republican president making the nomination to a Democratic Senate, it wouldn’t have been filled.”

    Oh, wait, people here came along and told us that there was a “tradition” of not appointing justices during an election year. Of course, the “tradition” was a fiction, and now we find that even the fiction is more nuanced than we were told.
    IOKIYAR.

  97. Hungary is going the way of America, more like it.
    Now, Romania has a jump on us with respect to this:
    https://www.newsweek.com/romania-seeks-banning-same-sex-marriage-where-does-rest-europe-stand-1119011
    But America’s conservative requirement for exception won’t let Romania stay in the asshole lead for long.
    Understand that the conservative, nationalist, nativist movement is a worldwide phenomenon/disaster and mp and the republican party wish America to be the May-Pole around which all celebrate their athwartist revanchism.
    Preceding, and now we are witnessing, also FOLLOWING every social justice movement is a social injustice movement.
    William F. Buckley was a Social Injustice Warrior.

  98. bobbyp – Are we going the way of Hungary?
    I don’t think that the US will go the way of Hungary, but only because our demographics are far more diverse than theirs. I can state with some certainty, though, that the alt-right and the frothy fringe of it where the MRAs and the Islamophobes etc. meet and rub memes against each other are pretty high on Orban’s intent. Stieg Larsson would recognize it all quite well.
    So I don’t think that we will go the way of Hungary, but we may well find ourselves opposing very similar political maneuvering.
    Salander/Blomkvist 2020.

  99. You may well be right, Nous. I certainly hope so. But I look around and see what the GOP has done in places like Wisconsin, where they definitely are engaging in “similar political maneuvering”, and I fear for our democracy.

  100. Collins iswas what passes for a Reasonable Republican(TM).
    Fixed that for you. She may have been once, but no longer. (Try Murkowski, if you want to see someone more like one at a national level.)

  101. Wisconsin is very much in flux right now and it’s taken a ton of cheating and disenfranchisement for the GOP to hold on to what its had for the last four years. It’s been growing, but that is in serious jeopardy with the damage that Walker has done to education and with the tariffs. Not sure if it tilts back left a bit or if it crashes and burns like Kansas.

  103. How can it not be the Kavanaugh Court ?
    It has become a different institution.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2018/10/midterm-time-capsule-31-days-go-kavanaugh-will-change-court/572404/
    – For judges in general, and Supreme Court justices in particular, a version of the same bargain has applied: In exchange for outsized, unaccountable, lifetime power, justices will at least act as if they are above personal grievances and partisan loyalties. Kavanaugh has rejected that part of the implicit bargain: with his bitter outbursts in response to testimony by Christine Blasey Ford, with his partisan appeals during the nomination process on Fox News and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, with his comment in his written testimony that in today’s politics “what goes around, comes around.”
    No doubt he will now retreat into his shell for a time in the hope he will be seen as just another conservative justice. It’s even likely that the liberals on the court will treat him with friendly collegiality, as that is their habit.
    It won’t change anything.
    I won’t read McKinney’s mind like lj.
    I’ll simply note that he had the time and inclination to join a hypothetical debate about what might and might not be acceptable protest, and none to discuss what is likely the most consequential legal controversy of this decade.

  104. Nigel, thanks for that comment, I agree with all parts of it, with the only possible exception as this.
    It’s even likely that the liberals on the court will treat him with friendly collegiality, as that is their habit.
    It won’t change anything.
    A lot of that depends on what change looks like to you.
    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-legitimacy_us_5bb7757ae4b028e1fe3d25a5
    I also think that the internal relationships are going to change with the addition of a frat boy to the mix. Given the absence of thought Kavanaugh displayed about his high school and university days, I wonder what will happen when he pops up here.
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-badly-is-neil-gorsuch-annoying-the-other-supreme-court-justices

  105. One measure that imo (IANAL) could and should be taken is to extend the ‘rules of conduct’ obligations of the lower courts to SCOTUS.
    By no means a cure-all but something that (imo) does not require a constitutional amendment (and thus a 2/3 majority).
    The key question would be, whether this could or should force any justice to recuse him/herself from cases involving the person* of the POTUS that appointed them. If that were the case the incentive to appoint one’s lackeys and lickspittles would be greatly diminished.
    Btw, that would be another reason to enlarge SCOTUS (gradually), so such automatic recusals would not hamper the court’s work too much.
    *not the office and its general works.

  106. I won’t read McKinney’s mind like lj.
    I guess I have a couple of comments here.
    First, folks aren’t obliged to offer opinions on every topic. People have their own reasons for why they might not weigh in on one thing or another. McK is an attorney working at a relatively visible level, I can think of about a million reasons why he might not wish to make public statements about a newly minted SCOTUS Associate Justice.
    Next, it strikes me that McK has, quite deliberately, made efforts to adopt a less combative tone. I personally appreciate that, and in fact it encourages me to do likewise. Mostly.
    Sometimes people rub each other the wrong way, some folks here have particular histories with each other which exacerbate things. All understood. But maybe it’s best not to assume bad faith.
    Let’s see if we can get through this mess in one piece.

  107. it won’t change anything
    I didn’t express myself well enough there – I meant that it won’t change the way he is perceived by those who are dismayed by his appointment.

  108. First, folks aren’t obliged to offer opinions on every topic. People have their own reasons for why they might not weigh in on one thing or another. McK is an attorney working at a relatively visible level, I can think of about a million reasons why he might not wish to make public statements about a newly minted SCOTUS Associate Justice.
    Which is fair comment.
    My feeling was more that his parsing of others opinions, particularly in that context, wasn’t.

  110. And it’s possibly unfair to say so, but I’m sure there were even stronger reasons why Ben Wittes might not have wanted to take a far more public position (on the front page of the Atlantic) against the appointment of someone he counted a friend.

  111. nigel: he had the time and inclination to join a hypothetical debate
    russell: Next, it strikes me that McK has, quite deliberately, made efforts to adopt a less combative tone.
    nigel: My feeling was more that his parsing of others opinions, particularly in that context, wasn’t.
    I’m with nigel here, about McK’s “tone.” And for that matter, about his forthrightness about what he had time for. He said he was “slammed” with work when asked about bk, but suddenly he had plenty of time when it came to poking and prodding people about something lj wrote.
    russell responded before I could, but what I saw is that McK didn’t “join” a debate, he created it. People were/are angry, grieving, venting, mourning. McK came along with his demanding questions, framed in a very deliberate way to make people wrong if they answer a certain way; and his immediate lumping of the rest of us, as in “Is this representative of the thinking here?”; followed by a string of other aggressive questions that pretty much prejudge the answers.
    Tone isn’t everything.

  112. To take a different angle on part of my point: in real life as on blogs, there are people with whom conversing is like making music together. The music may be harmonious or discordant or whatever, but the people making it are doing it together, in a collaborative way. (Maybe like jazz?)
    There are other people who don’t do collaboration. To keep to the music analogy, these people don’t join the band unless they can be the conductor. You play their way, or they don’t join in.
    As to the latter, as far as I’m concerned the feeling is mutual. You want to assertively attempt to conduct the conversation your way, and push it into the channels and frameworks you want to impose on it — I’m either out, or trying to call attention to the “jump” rather than saying “how high.”

  113. Back to Collins — from the newspaper:

    But Maine’s senior senator was clearly pained by the notion that her confirmation vote for Kavanaugh means she is abandoning women’s rights issues, the TV stations reported….
    “I cannot weigh the political consequences,” she said. “In this case, it was obvious that people would be very angry with me no matter what I did. I have to do what I think is right…

    So do the rest of us.
    The Crowdpac fund is now at $3,375,464.

  114. It should be no surprise that I agree with Janie and Nigel. I’ve grown very tired of McT seizing on a phrase or a bit of hyperbole, usually made by me, and diverting the conversation. Russell, you are right that he is under no obligation to write about what I or anyone else wants him to write about, but his choice of which topics he chooses to speak to or to avoid communicates as much if not more than his actual words.
    Nigel and I seemed to be starting a debate about what form protest could take and McT leapt in, as he usually does, not addressing me, but taking what I said and waving it like a bloody shirt. I’m surprised he didn’t suggest that I was proposing a violation of the bioterrorism laws.
    Underlying it seems to be a faux respect to tone that is only done for the benefit of the groundlings, much like Kavanaugh’s tearing up about his father’s calendars
    I don’t like to disbelieve what people say, but like Kavanaugh, McT really gives me no choice. Getting thru this in ‘one piece’ implies that McT understands why people are angry about Kavanaugh, angry about McConnell, angry about Trump. It’s an implication I see no evidence of.

  115. Quibbling with myself: I understand that it can be fun to play in a band with a conductor (I’ve done it myself, if long ago). But even then, it depends on the kind of music, and on the style of the conductor.
    And, what lj said.

  117. Former dean of Yale Law School:
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/06/kavanaugh-confirmation-temperament-yale-dean-221086
    I was in the end prompted to write this essay because on Thursday Kavanaugh published a remarkable editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which he apologized for his rash words and attempted to reclaim for himself the “independence and impartiality” so necessary for judges. But judicial temperament is not like a mask that can be put on or taken off at will. Judicial temperament is more than skin-deep. It is part of the DNA of person, as is well illustrated by Merrick Garland, who never once descended to the partisan rancor of Kavanaugh, despite the Senate’s refusal even to dignify his nomination with a hearing.
    Judge Kavanaugh cannot have it both ways. He cannot gain confirmation by unleashing partisan fury while simultaneously claiming that he possesses a judicial and impartial temperament. If Kavanaugh really cared about the integrity and independence of the Supreme Court, he would even now withdraw from consideration.
    But I see no evidence that he is about to withdraw. Kavanaugh will thus join the court as the black-robed embodiment of raw partisan power inconsistent with any ideal of an impartial judiciary.

  120. That is actually very funny indeed.
    And hey, listen, these behaviors are exactly as normal in a young child as they are HORRIFYING to witness in a SCOTUS nominee. What if Brett Kavanaugh tried to snatch food out of my mouth, clapped to let me know that he was ready for me to wipe his ass when he was done taking a shit, and dropped broccoli into my fine red wine at dinner time? I like to think you’d spot some red flags from your potential next Supreme Court Justice there as well. Probably not though. Grassley looks like he drops broc in Merlot nonstop….

  121. Finally (?), a point maybe implied by my music metaphor allowing for “discordant” music made “collaboratively.”
    There’s a small (compared to some blogs) crew of commenters here who are around pretty much every day, or at least often enough to be part of what I see as improvising the conversation together. There are other people who don’t comment as often, though maybe they’re reading even when they’re not commenting, but who, in any case, when they do comment, more or less slide in like another instrument joining the session (Jazz or Irish :-).
    Every instrument that joins the session shapes the music. If someone comes along with a French horn and tries to blend into an Irish session, they might gradually be the trigger that changes the session into something other than what it was. If they sit down and start to play march music, they will probably not last long enough to make an impact.
    Sort of like what one of Nigel’s links describes in relation to the court: do you come in and try to get with the program to some extent, biding your time, perhaps? Or … not.

  122. Jenny Boylan in the NYT, writing a political epitaph for Collins:
    …at some of the most crucial moments of Mr. Trump’s presidency, she has voted to empower him…. In so doing, she has proved herself, in the end, to stand for nothing.

  124. You need to win in November, but it could be an uphill struggle….
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/06/beto-o-rourke-ted-cruz-texas-election-battle-can-he-do-it
    Out on his ranch, Gary Henderson, 64, is surveying his cows sheltering under mesquite and American oak. He thinks the problem with Democrats is that they believe money grows like leaves on those trees. “It has to stop somewhere – they keep giving millionaires tax breaks.”
    But Trump has just given a $30bn tax break to individuals making more than $1m a year.
    “That’s true, but it wasn’t political.”

  125. Underlying it seems to be a faux respect to tone that is only done for the benefit of the groundlings, much like Kavanaugh’s tearing up about his father’s calendars
    Speaking as a groundling, I think McKinney actually is trying for a more respectful tone, as he indicated he was going to try to do when expressing admiration for Donald’s way of argumentation/comment. But clearly, he doesn’t rub me up the wrong way, as he so obviously does some others. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with him or his views most of the time, and his wish for civility and reasoned discourse in the face of the kind of gross manipulation and duplicity being practised by the GOP is unfortunately timed, to say the least.

  128. sapient’s link is, truly, a moving and sad piece. And, alas, senior judges in other countries who once were happy to quote judgements from the SCOTUS as persuasive precedents now regard it as fatally contaminated by political partisanship.

  129. “It has to stop somewhere – they keep giving millionaires tax breaks.”
    But Trump has just given a $30bn tax break to individuals making more than $1m a year.
    “That’s true, but it wasn’t political.”
    All together now, IOKIYAR.
    Even the political: it’s not political if a Republican does it.
    We are so fucked.
    Not least because we have millions of people “educated” by Fox News to be precisely this idiotic.

  130. Janie, Nigel, LJ, thanks for your replies. No worries, it was just a thought.
    We are so fucked.
    Yes, basically we are.
    I expect the (D)’s to make some headway in the House, and if they’re lucky to not go backwards in the Senate.
    2020 is anybody’s guess at this point.
    It’s gonna take a while to turn this around.
    I don’t really have a problem with people who are politically and socially conservative. I consider the behavior of the (R)’s at, at least, the national level, to be utterly destructive of democratic self-governance.
    They are grabbing for whatever they can get, at whatever cost to the norms and institutions that make it possible for people who disagree, profoundly, to participate together in common public life.
    So they have to go.
    It’ll take a while. It usually does.

  131. “That’s true, but it wasn’t political.”
    I don’t mean to be rude, but some people don’t have the sense god gave a turnip.

  132. Janie, Nigel, LJ, thanks for your replies. No worries, it was just a thought.
    russell, it wasn’t a bad thought. In the future, I am going to try harder to just stay out of it when McKinneyTexas shows up. But there are times when that’s easier and/or more appropriate, and times when it’s less. In general, if people want to talk about things, and in ways, that I’m not interested in, I *should* back away. But this particular time, the circumstances were extraordinary, feelings were and are very raw, an intense discussion had been going on for weeks (which I didn’t particularly want to be pushed out of, deliberately or otherwise), and all of a sudden … well, a different game was being played. My reactions, and maybe other people’s, are not always on such a hair trigger, although even there, a little sensitivity to timing and context on McK’s part might have gone a long way.

  133. We are so fucked.
    Many of us here can remember the ’60s and ’70s. And there certainly have been other times in the country’s history when this sentiment would apply in spades. But, so far, we’ve managed to muddle through.
    Aside from who is president, the current administration isn’t hugely different from past administrations. In the current media environment, some past presidents would give His Arseness strong competition for invoking feelings of revulsion.

  134. Aside from who is president, the current administration isn’t hugely different from past administrations.
    Have you read any of Michael Lewis’s pieces for Vanity Fair about the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump one? The piece about the transition in the Department of Energy, for example, is absolutely hair-raising: I bet you big money that no administration has ever been so incredibly negligent in US history. Read it and weep, or rather, read it and tremble:
    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-michael-lewis

  135. Many of us here can remember the ’60s and ’70s
    Yep.
    Assassinations, cities on fire, the cities that weren’t on fire heading into a generation of physical and economic decline and a hollowing out of their middle class residential base. Vietnam and Kent state. Watergate.
    Good times.

  136. One measure that imo (IANAL) could and should be taken is to extend the ‘rules of conduct’ obligations of the lower courts to SCOTUS.
    By no means a cure-all but something that (imo) does not require a constitutional amendment (and thus a 2/3 majority).
    The key question would be, whether this could or should force any justice to recuse him/herself from cases involving the person* of the POTUS that appointed them. If that were the case the incentive to appoint one’s lackeys and lickspittles would be greatly diminished.
    Amen. Up to this point, it may not have been necessary. But now? Just another thing that Kavanaugh’s appointment has changed.

  137. Read it and weep, or rather, read it and tremble:
    Whether to do so or not depends greatly on the presumptions you start with.
    The transition was hugely wasteful and destructive. But, hopefully, a number of things will get a reset. Like the blurring of the lines between policy advocacy and government departments. Like policy advocates taking jobs in government in order to push the policies they favor.
    From my point of view, the author makes an unintentional and strong argument for a reduction in the size and scope of government.

  138. I expect the (D)’s to make some headway in the House, and if they’re lucky to not go backwards in the Senate.
    2020 is anybody’s guess at this point.
    It may be worth remembering that the 2020 map for the Senate is as skewed for Republicans, in terms of numbers of seats, as 2018 is for Democrats: 21 of 33. Mostly red states (e.g. the whole of the South and most of the Plains states). But still, it could be challenging for them if the Democrats come up with good candidates suited to local sensibilities. And 2022 is, if anything, worse for them.
    It may take rather longer than one might wish to change the Senate. But this year is actually the worst of the three for Democrats.
    As a side note, has anyone considered supporting primarying McConnell from further right? Just an amusing (at least for me) thought.

  139. I don’t mean to be rude, but some people don’t have the sense god gave a turnip.
    Allow me to observe that this is a slur on turnips.

  140. From my point of view, the author makes an unintentional and strong argument for a reduction in the size and scope of government.
    I was going to say, what luck your point of view is so rare. But then I remembered who holds power in all three branches of your country’s government. I think to come to that conclusion after reading that article is almost incomprehensible. I’ve never seen the mental contortions necessitated by the libertarian mindset so clearly illustrated. To think that government should not be in charge of e.g. overseeing clear-up of nuclear contamination, to the extent that it should just be neglected and abandoned, is frankly to make the sense that god gave a turnip a preferable alternative.

  141. GFNC. Recall the famous Thatcher bon mot that went something like this, “There is no such thing as society”, and you will have some idea of where mr chas is coming from.
    It is indeed an incomprehensible place for those not currently imbued with wealth and power.

  142. bobbyp: I recall it. CharlesWT is, I regret to say, capable of ideas that even the Iron Lady would have eschewed. She was a scientist by education, after all.

  143. It is indeed an incomprehensible place for those not currently imbued with wealth and power.
    It requires not only wealth and power. It also requires willful blindness to the part that government plays in maintaining them.
    One need only look to Somalia to see the result of the lack: A proliferation of warlords, who are defined by personal charisma and the demonstrated ability to provide loot to their followers. And who get killed and replaced when the loot falters. Loot, not money — money being an artifact of government.
    Perhaps libertarians merely hold optimistic views of their personal charisma. But given their tendency to individualism, it seems more likely that they simply cannot imagine that their wealth (which is typically in forms which only government makes valuable) won’t survive to buy off those around them.

  144. One need only look to Somalia…
    Since it lost its government in 1991, conditions in Somalia have improved faster than some of its neighbors with supposedly functioning governments. And conditions would have improved even faster if foreign governments, especially Western governments including the US, had left it the hell alone.
    No one living in first world countries, libertarian or not, would expect to improve their lives by moving to Somalia. But people in the surrounding African countries possibly could.

  145. No one living in first world countries, libertarian or not, would expect to improve their lives by moving to Somalia. But people in the surrounding African countries possibly could.
    Which, no doubt, is why they are rushing to emulate it. Oh wait….
    In point of fact, the only part of Somalia where conditions have improved noticeably is Somaliland. Which has . . . wait for it . . . an actual government.

  147. I did say people, not governments.
    And your evidence that the people in neighboring countries have any such views would be what, exactly?

  148. being a native texan, living less than 100 miles from his putative location, and being of about the same age as mckinneytexas i am often appalled by some of the things he says but never surprised by them. i have relatives on facebook who are posting 2nd amendment remedy memes at the thought of o’rourke beating cruz, while others post memes linking dr. ford with george soros. i have been arguing with right-wing loons my entire political life but i will not be driven from my home. seriously, my ancestors have been in texas so long if houston had lost the revolution i would be a mexican citizen.
    i’ve started seeing the politics of the day showing up in forums that i participate in that usually have nothing to do with politics. at one place i regularly participate i just saw two members talking over the possibilities of a new civil war, one with enthusiasm looking for a progressive victory and the other with an air of disappointment because she thinks the progressives won’t have the strength to even try.
    there have been times that have seemed as bad or worse in my lifetime and yet i have never felt that things were so finely balanced on a precipice as they do now. right now i look at mitch mcconnell and i see a figure who is kind of a cross between papen and hindenburg in 1933, thinking he’s brought the danger under control by bringing him in, by “normalizing” him but instead have brought everything down. i’m sorry if i seem to be committing a godwin but the parallel is eerie.
    i lurk here more than i comment but i do occasionally comment.

  149. Which has . . . wait for it . . . an actual government.
    A government that developed bottoms up with considerably more political and economic freedom than is generally the case in African countries. A government that concedes quite a bit of influence to private interests.
    I suspect many citizens of Mali and Chad would view the conditions in Somaliland, to the degree they’re aware of them, substantially better than their own circumstances.
    Interesting that Somalia is trotted out as libertarian paradise due to its lack of government. Then, when it’s pointed out that conditions are actually improving in spite of that lack, there’s a, “Oh! Wait! There’s a government!” 🙂

  150. navarro- at one place i regularly participate i just saw two members talking over the possibilities of a new civil war, one with enthusiasm looking for a progressive victory and the other with an air of disappointment because she thinks the progressives won’t have the strength to even try.
    …there have been times that have seemed as bad or worse in my lifetime and yet i have never felt that things were so finely balanced on a precipice as they do now.
    I saw the reference that russell and CharlesWT made to the ’60s above and was thinking about this moment. On the one hand, yes, we have seen moments before during which violence has erupted and those moments were more violent than ours has been. And as bad as McConnell has been, we have not (yet) had a moment like the one in 1856 when Rep. Brooks assaulted Sen. Sumner on the Senate floor. And we as a society have lost the appetite for things like tarring and feathering, which also weighs in our favor, I think.
    On the other hand, I think that the American public is also as far removed as it has ever been from the reality of war and completely steeped in the romance of redemptive violence. The adoption of the AVF has insulated us even further from any reality where military action is involved. It’s all part of the polarization and of the danger. I don’t think we have as much of a brake on our tipping as we did in earlier times.

  151. This is an interesting article:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/tom-nichols-why-im-leaving-republican-party/572419/
    I’m a bit puzzled by his understanding of the nature of liberalism (and indeed the Democratic party … and in what sense exactly is Senator Hirono an ‘anti-constitutionalist’, unless you’re a 2nd Amendment absolutist ?) – but in some respects that is beside the point. Which is that the Republican party is beyond reform in the foreseeable future.
    The interesting question is whether an exodus along these lines might be anything more than a trickle.

  152. i’m sorry if i seem to be committing a godwin
    Godwin – the actual Godwin – has stated, for the record, that Godwins are not out of line in the present circumstances.
    I think that the American public is also as far removed as it has ever been from the reality of war and completely steeped in the romance of redemptive violence.
    I agree with this.

  153. Interesting that Somalia is trotted out as libertarian paradise due to its lack of government.
    It must be terrible to have an example, presented by people who have never been to Somaila, have no experience in Somalia and have probably never met a Somali, used to contradict deeply held beliefs. I guess you know how I feel when I read a lot of your stuff…

  154. I think that the American public is also as far removed as it has ever been from the reality of war and completely steeped in the romance of redemptive violence.
    I know zero Democrats who think that a civil war is something they’re interested in starting or fighting. I know a few who think that maybe it’s time to know how to fire a gun, and maybe own one, in case things go to shit, and our neighbors appear at the door to kill us. I really know no one who romanticizes war. Most people who live in blue states aren’t thinking that violence will erupt in their world, especially if they’re in comfortable jobs and social situations.
    In terms of shooting or hacking up our neighbors, I don’t see that as a winning strategy. Even the “great powers” are turning to softer warfare, like cyberspace. Maybe we should try that.
    What we can’t do is to keep letting them build concentration camps. How are we going to make that stop if the elections don’t do it?

  155. Btw, neither Hindenburg nor von Papen ever had to pay a price. The former died within month of old age the latter just got sidelined and was one of only three acquitted at the Nuremberg main trials.

  156. So, again, not to romanticize war: people who have fought wars (discounting people who were conscripted and didn’t want to be there), apparently thought that some idea or value was worth more than their lives. It’s been pretty obvious through history that huge numbers of people die in wars before the outcome is even determined. So people are willing to forego obtaining a resolution in order to sacrifice themselves in the fight.
    Hate has a lot of power. People risk their lives in order to see their enemy dead. Republicans are doing everything they can to make people hate each other. And if people start hating each other enough to risk their lives to see their enemy die, that’s the tipping point. The concentration camps are an invitation for that kind of hate.

  158. It is a sign of my insufficient cynicism, even now, that I continue to be surprised at how low Susan Collins will go in her self-serving little-better-than-word-salad utterances.

  159. I think that the American public is also as far removed as it has ever been from the reality of war and completely steeped in the romance of redemptive violence.
    I think we lost something important when we abolished the draft. Not just the actual experience of the reality of war. Even just the possibility that, if one fomented one, ones loved-ones might get involved. We have way too many chickenhawks these days.

  160. I had a brief exchange on BJ the other night after someone said Collins still wants to be governor and might run in 2022. I said I’d be willing bet that she will never be the governor of Maine, and someone else came back with some snark to the effect that Maine, having elected Paul LePage twice, is a loose cannon of a state, where anyone at all can be elected. (Paraphrasing. Too lazy to go back and find the exchange.)
    Afterwards I thought about why I was so sure she’d never be governor, and decided that it was a gut feeling based on her specific electoral history — among other factors, of course, but this was the one I was unconscious of when I made the “bet.”
    She ran for governor in 1994 in a five-way (in practice three-way) race that led to the first of Angus King’s two terms as governor. That was a close race between King and popular former D governor Joe Brennan. Susan came in at a relatively distant third.
    In 1996 she got 49.2% of the vote in the Senate race, beating Joe Brennan at 43.9%.
    In 2002 she got 58.4%, in 2008 she got 61.5%, and in 2014 she got 68.4%.
    She’s used to coasting. I can’t believe she’ll have the stomach for the vicious battle she has called down upon her head no matter what she runs for next time. And if she is oblivious enough, and/or combative enough, to try anyhow, I don’t think she’ll win. I’ve heard and read people saying over these last few days that people forget stuff, the news cycle rolls on, this Kavanaugh mess will be ancient history by this November, never mind 2020 or 2022.
    Maybe once again I’m not cynical enough, but I think an awful lot of people, especially women, are not going to forget. Collins has made herself poison to a lot of the electorate, and the effect is never going to wear off. You don’t make up for sh!t like this, or weasel your way back into favor, having descended this far into the slime.

  161. I think we lost something important when we abolished the draft.
    Is involuntary servitude OK if the state does it?

  163. I’ve heard and read people saying over these last few days that people forget stuff, the news cycle rolls on, this Kavanaugh mess will be ancient history by this November, never mind 2020 or 2022.
    Maybe once again I’m not cynical enough, but I think an awful lot of people, especially women, are not going to forget.
    Especially if Kavanaugh has been part of Supreme Court decisions which roll back rights, especially women’s rights, forgetting will not be in the cards. She’ll have to get incredibly lucky, and have him not do that, to have a chance.

  164. wj – I think we lost something important when we abolished the draft.
    CharlesWT – Is involuntary servitude OK if the state does it?
    Friedman’s argument for abolishing the notion of national service with the notion of the market has some weird hangovers.
    When mass mobilization happened through a draft the public needs some sort of civic memorial to valorize the sacrifice of those who sacrificed their freedom for the needs of the nation state. This was especially true, and especially strained after the debacle of our involvement in Vietnam. The current, patriotically correct demand to thank active and past servicepeople for their service is born out of the sense of national guilt that arises from demanding service for a dubious cause.
    So if by Friedman’s argument the conscript is a slave, then why is not the service person in an all-volunteer force a mercenary to whom the public owes nothing because it is that person’s free economic choice?
    And both of these things are warped further by the decision we made during the Cold War that we would never draw down our military to peacetime levels. The call to serve is now an abstract calling rather than a response to a clear and present threat to the nation. It’s left us with a very odd sort of public cult of service.

  165. I know zero Democrats who think that a civil war is something they’re interested in starting or fighting.
    I have less than zero interest in starting or fighting a civil war. I’d go out of my way to keep one from occurring.
    I’ve been listening to conservatives talk, consistently and insistently, for the last 17 years at least, about how they will take up arms and start shooting if they do not prevail on any of a variety of issues. In general I think they’re full of shit, but every now and then one or more of them decides that “shit hits the fan” time has arrived and starts shooting stuff.
    There are also, at this point, a non-trivial number of private armies running around, whether in the form of Oath Keepers, or self-appointed “citizen militias”, or whatever.
    The dudes in military drag at C-ville were a bunch of dudes from the PA and NY Light Foot Militias. Who the hell are they, and on what authority did they insert themselves into that mess? They are whoever the hell they say they are; they made themselves the hell up, in response to whatever the hell was going through their heads. And they insert themselves into highly fraught situations on their own damned authority, because they feel like it and nobody prevents them from doing it. And they do so with a lot of guns. Enough so that the cops don’t know WTF is going on, which end is up, and what the hell is going to happen if they step in.
    And so, Nazis run around provoking violence and people get killed.
    So that’s where we are. Many thousands of people who openly espouse violent insurrection as an approach to resolving political differences, and dozens to hundreds of heavily armed free-lance paramilitary weekend warriors running around looking for opportunities to insert themselves into dangerous situations.
    I’m sure it will end well.
    I am one of the people sapient mentions, who live in blue states, and have nice jobs and comfortable social situations. It’s highly unlikely that anyone will shoot at me or mine. If that becomes anything remotely approaching likely, I will be that much more likely to get a firearm and learn how to use it effectively. I’m not uncomfortable with guns, I’ve fired guns before, and if people think they are going to intimidate me or people like me with their “2nd A solution” bullshit they need to think again.
    I’m not afraid of immigrants. I live in the midst of quite large immigrant communities, they don’t bug me. I’m not afraid of Muslims. I’m not afraid of gang-bangers.
    I’m, not afraid, but keeping a watchful eye on, all of the right-wing knuckleheads who get their rocks off fantasizing about shooting some liberals.
    They think it’s hilarious. If it comes to it, it won’t be hilarious. Not for me and people like me, and not for them or people like them.
    Conservatives want a return to civility? Start by dropping the fucking “we have the guns” bullshit. Quit talking about how you’re going to kill people like me, and perhaps you’ll be met with more civility.
    It’ll probably take a hell of a lot more than that, but I’d start there. Kind of a good-faith gesture.
    Is involuntary servitude OK if the state does it?
    Have you ever read Locke’s Two Treatises of Government? Specifically, the second treatise?
    If so, what do you make of it, in general terms?
    I am, sincerely, curious.

  166. Is voluntary indentured servitude OK if the State does it?
    For those not independently wealthy, all work is forced labor and servitude, though we retain the choice of the flavor of our servitude.
    You don’t work, you don’t eat.
    Friedman’s proposal for the voluntary Armed Forces pleased plenty of politicians, mostly conservative, post-Vietnam because it took the heat off them and their desires to conduct what were once considered illegal wars abroad without killing the unwilling, whose parents might then vote fucking liberals into office who would raise taxes to pay for the aforesaid illegal wars, and THAT is servitude worse than a gut wound in the jungle, we’re told by fucks.
    It’s kind of the opposite of the strategy conservatives use at the state levels .. cutting funding and thus understaffing the DMV and other point-of-sale agencies to keep the voters pissed off about big (though too small to be effective) inefficient, non-responsive government, which even though accomplished by conservatives, somehow redounds to the detriment of fucking liberals.

  167. If Collins runs and wins the Maine Governorship, that will free up Paul LePage for the U.S. Supreme Court.
    WRS.

  168. also: Why we fight.
    Guy got fired from his job as a skydiving instructor. He claims it was because he was gay.
    EEOC backs him up.
    DOJ weighs in to say no, gays are not a protected class in workplace discrimination law.
    Thanks very much, Department of Justice!
    The court went with the EEOC. But I have no doubt this will come up again, and again, and again.
    Gee, where will a guy like Kavanaugh land on issues like this?
    My wife and I have, perhaps, an unusual number gay friends. Most of them married, with long-standing relationships. Many of them have kids.
    When I commented here shortly after Election Day about all of my friends who were freaking out, this is the kind of shit I was talking about.
    People who are worried that they will, once again, be at risk of losing their jobs. Losing their right to have their relationships with their spouses recognized under law.
    Losing their kids.
    I was informed that I was unhinged, and that my friends suck. Fuck that.
    People are fighting *for their lives*. Conservatives need to think long and hard about whether they want to put people in that hard of a corner.
    Folks have fought, for years and decades and generations, to finally get a toehold in society. The most basic and elementary rights and privileges – work, love, family.
    Go ahead and try to take that back, and see what it gets you.

  169. If Collins runs and wins the Maine Governorship, that will free up Paul LePage for the U.S. Supreme Court.
    Count: I suppose you’re joking, but LePage is done as of January, so there’s no way Collins will be replacing him directly. We are voting for his replacement next month, and she’s not running. The speculation last night was about 2022.
    Sad to say, we have a four-way race, a D, an R, and two independents who are likely to take more votes away from Janet Mills, the D candidate, than from the R.
    We specialize in spoilers. People’s egos just matter so damned much.
    Snarky speculation has had it for ages that LePage is hoping for a position in the administration. Somehow I think it isn’t going to be SCOTUS. The appointment of a gasbag like LePage to the Court might actually unify the rest of them — well, not Kavanaugh I suppose, he’d love to have someone to order around — to resign en masse, in protest at the debasement.
    Some other position in Clickbait’s menagerie? I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

  170. I haven’t read Two Treatises of Government, but some have argued that he would have been opposed to the draft.
    But he could be inconsistent:
    Indeed, writing in 1669 Locke accepts the institution of slavery (FCC) and as late as 1697 (a good decade and a half after writing the Two Treatises), he advises press-ganging beggars into military service and that begging minors should be “soundly whipped.” (EPL).

  171. Collins believes Ford was assaulted but not by Kavanaugh.
    I’ve known two women who were raped in college .. both events went unreported because …. guess why …this news transmitted to me years later … and both not only know who the men were, but one knows where he lives now.
    I remember every consensual sexual encounter I’ve had, in and out of marriage, alcohol-influenced or not. OK, the ones over 31 years with my ex-wife kind of blur together.
    I also remember every consensual intimate encounter I DIDN’T have because the word “No” loomed large and outnumbered the “Yes’s” by a long shot.
    Who does Collins think she is? Blasey Ford should stride up to Collins and slap her face hard and we’ll test the latter’s memory for its recall of the incident a few years from now.
    I’m betting Collin’s remembers the first time a boy tried unsuccessfully to cop a feel when she was a teenager and can describe his pimply face, the setting, and his name, not to mention his girlfriend’s name at the time.
    If bullshit was sex in America, none of us would do without. We’d all develop headaches and say, please, no more sex for God’s sake. Too much already.
    Spitting into a plate of food and serving it to a restaurant customer:
    Doc Science quotes thusly in her post on studying Torah: “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
    I occurs to me that God, disapproving of the dining choices of Eden’s inhabitants, has forever punished the rest of us by spitting into our food
    ever since. I think that’s called precedence.
    Given the republican party’s gnawing hunger to curtail or do away with Meals on Wheels and food stamps for the underprivileged and their children, along with the rest of the safety net, here’s how it looks to me:
    A Republican serves you a bowl of pure spit and you hope to God a liberal back in the kitchen slipped a potato into it.

  174. Btw, the DOJ case reminds me that I think we should pursue norms and then legal protection that except for very limited cases (like head of Pr or something) people should not be fireable for legal off the job behavior.

  175. I’d add financial crimes (say while working for a club, church, etc.), if your job involves responsibility for financial stuff. Off the job, but obviously relevant to the job activities.

  176. For now I’d say that off the job illegal behavior (felony or worse) could still be fireable. But legal off the job behavior no.

  179. But legal off the job behavior no.
    employee writes endless stream of angry letters to the editor excoriating their employer.
    employee regularly seen drunk in public.
    employee wears sign in public stating ______ (employer) sucks! and nothing else.
    employee actually reads Two Treatises of Government
    FREEDOM!

  180. The comment Posted by: Nous | October 07, 2018 at 09:59 PM resonates with me. I come from a family in which just about all the men, before my generation, served in the military. None the less, I’ve always been uncomfortable with the reflexive “Thank you for your service” sentiment. It has an obligatory quality that I have a hard time getting past.
    That’s not to say that there aren’t individual acts of military service, in war or other situations, that aren’t deserving of praise, thanks, or admiration. But you can say the same thing about any number of endeavors aside from military service where people make personal sacrifices, sometimes involving putting themselves in danger, for the sake of others or the community/nation, whether as part of gainful employment or otherwise.
    Part of the reason I bring this up here is that it’s not a conversation I think I can have with but very few of the people I know in meat space. Questioning the, um … unquestioned praise that is particular to military service isn’t something that I expect will be met with rational engagement the vast majority of the time.
    I’m not sure where else to go with this at the moment, so any thoughts?

  181. Some evidence for the victory being Pyrrhic:
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/08/donald-trump-women-gop-221080
    Sentiments like those are telling, says UVA’s Lawless. “If the Republicans had stood up to [Trump], not necessarily on substance, but in terms of style and rhetoric,” she says, the reactions among voters might be, “I’m still a Republican, but I’m not supporting Donald Trump.” Instead, she continues, “because the Republicans have been complicit in a lot of what Trump has done,” many women no longer feel they can consider themselves Republican. And that’s a big step out the door…
    Which isn’t exactly surprising, but certainly udercuts the Republican “this is energising out base, too’ line.

  182. hsh: I’m not sure where you can go with it, but FWIW it’s clear that your sentiments are those of a thoughtful, rational person, as against an unthinking sheep. I can be brought to tears when in places where I confront the self-sacrifice of young men who die for ideals (such as the Black Watch chapel by Edinburgh Castle), but equally (and more rationally) I recoil when all service personnel are referred to as “heroes”, and in particular I agree with the sentiments of Wilfred Owen’s great poem about victims of gas in the world war in which he perished, and especially its magnificent last lines:

    If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
    Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
    Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
    My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
    To children ardent for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
    Pro patria mori.

  183. I’m not sure where else to go with this at the moment, so any thoughts?
    I wouldn’t bring it up. Talk about other stuff.

  184. Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori.

    You fire-eating young bucks, listen to me. You don’t want to fight. I fought and I know. Went out in the Seminole War and was a big enough fool to go to the Mexican War, too. You all don’t know what war is. You think it’s riding a pretty horse and having the girls throw flowers at you and coming home a hero. Well, it ain’t. No, sir! It’s going hungry, and getting the measles and pneumonia from sleeping in the wet. And if it ain’t measles and pneumonia, it’s your bowels. Yes sir, what war does to a man’s bowels — dysentery and things like that.

  185. I wouldn’t bring it up. Talk about other stuff.
    Here or IRL? I’ve already resigned myself to keeping quiet about it IRL.

  186. Absolutely not here! This is the exact place you should bring it up, and quote your favourite stuff in support, to boot!

  187. Speaking of being a rational person instead of a sheep, reminded me of the wonderful opening of Howard Jacobson’s book The Very Model of a Man

    The Lord was our shepherd. We did not want. He fed us in green and fat pastures, gave us to drink from deep waters, made us to lie in a good fold. That which was lost, He sought; that which was broken, He bound up; that which was driven away, He brought again into the flock. Excellent, excellent, had we been sheep.

  188. Here or IRL?
    IRL.
    No worries here, I think more than a few of us are here because nobody IRL wants to listen to our rants.
    🙂

  189. No worries here, I think more than a few of us are here because nobody IRL wants to listen to our rants.
    Yes.

  191. hsh: None the less, I’ve always been uncomfortable with the reflexive “Thank you for your service” sentiment. It has an obligatory quality that I have a hard time getting past.
    I agree about the mindless recitation. But I confess that there is a certain amusement from conversations like this one:
    blog commenter: You sound like all those other [insert whatever group he doesn’t like]. Of course you have never served!
    me: Never served? I’ve got a commission as a 2nd Lt in the USAF and an honorable discharge which suggest otherwise.
    him: Thank you for your service.
    It’s just so amusing to watch the whiplash in action.

  192. Americans want to separate Politics from Real Life and still keep a Republic.
    The premise is that it’s impolite to talk Politics with your doctor, or your plumber, or the guy in the next cubicle, let alone a fellow guest at a dinner party. Movies, sports, cars — lots of Real Life topics to discuss, and express opinions on, and criticize others’ opinions of.
    Only a boor would explicitly discuss Politics in meat space. This is the Emily Post version of democracy; the Miss Manners idea of “self-government”. Etiquette as a substitute for ethics.
    “A Republic, if you can keep it without talking about it over the back fence” is NOT what Ben Franklin said.
    –TP

  193. It depends on a lot of things, including your definition of “discuss,” but there are still times and places for everything, and not every time or place is appropriate for talking politics.
    In the summer of 2017, I was once again between PCPs because my latest had left the practice where I’d been going for 25 years. When I needed to consult someone, I saw a locum (temporary doc).
    I asked him where he was from, just to make conversation, because his speech patterns suggested that he was from the same part of the world where I grew up. He was indeed from the Buffalo area — only about 150 miles away from my home town in Ohio.
    He didn’t just answer the question I asked, though. He took it as a springboard for an unrelated, unwelcome (by me) rant, in which he warned me about Cuomo running for president, and said he was never going back to NYS because they were too restrictive about guns, and assured me that he wasn’t a biased person, he even knew some gay people who had guns, and on and on about guns.
    This was a guy I had never met before that moment.
    Fuck him.

  194. FWIW, I don’t know where to go with a lot of this either, and I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it for years and have written many pages on the subject and read deeply and widely. The public mythology of war and service is fraught AF.
    GftNC – WWI poetry is really interesting and the period itself is really profound because it’s the point at which the public really had to come to terms with modern total war and mass death and a lot of received ideas were being put to the test. All the poets of note from that war were in the thick of the horrors. By the time we hit WWII, most of the notable war poets served at some remove from actual combat. Jarrell, for example, was in the Air Force teaching celestial navigation. The only poet from WWII that I know spent much time on the actual front was Louis Simpson who was with the 101st Airborne in Normandy and at the Battle of the Bulge.
    That difference in the relation of the poet to the war is another one of those mysteries I wonder about.

  195. Thanks, nous, poetry and war isn’t something I know much about. But I enjoyed (if that’s the right word) Pat Barker’s “Regeneration” — first of a trilogy, fictionalized account of Siegfried Sasson being treated for what we now call PTSD. Very moving book, and interesting also for the way in which she makes the book embody the reticence about homosexuality that would have been characteristic of the time. I happened to go to a book group discussion not long after the book came out — with people I didn’t know very well, and of course it was the early 90s — and partway through it one of the people asked, rather timidly: “Are we supposed to think some of these people are gay?”
    Um, yes. It was interesting how obvious it was to me, a gay person, and how opaque to the others. Just as I assume it would have been in the period Barker was portraying.
    Also, GftNC mentioned memorials that bring tears to the eyes. Of my brief time visiting London, York, and Edinburgh in 2008, one of the most vivid memories is of the fact that there are reminders of war everywhere. That is not true in most of the US.
    Anyhow:
    The Man He Killed
    By Thomas Hardy
    Had he and I but met
    By some old ancient inn,
    We should have sat us down to wet
    Right many a nipperkin!
    But ranged as infantry,
    And staring face to face,
    I shot at him as he at me,
    And killed him in his place.
    I shot him dead because —
    Because he was my foe,
    Just so: my foe of course he was;
    That’s clear enough; although
    He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
    Off-hand like — just as I —
    Was out of work — had sold his traps —
    No other reason why.
    Yes; quaint and curious war is!
    You shoot a fellow down
    You’d treat if met where any bar is,
    Or help to half-a-crown.

  196. Interesting point, Nous. Now you mention it, I know very little poetry from WWII, at least that I can think of offhand, except for Henry Reed’s Naming of Parts, and your thesis certainly applies to him.

  198. Sad to say, we have a four-way race, a D, an R, and two independents who are likely to take more votes away from Janet Mills, the D candidate, than from the R.
    But that would be attenuated by ranked choice, thought I, until I looked it up and discovered that the gubernatorial race was exempt. I hope you don’t get LePaged again.

  199. Strangely, while I was thinking about poets and WWII, these words of T S Eliot, from Little Gidding, which are on his memorial in Westminster Abbey, came on the TV:
    the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living
    I don’t know what Eliot did in the war (he was not young when it started), but these words seemed strangely significant…

  200. Strangely, while I was thinking about poets and WWII, these words of T S Eliot, from Little Gidding, which are on his memorial in Westminster Abbey, came on the TV:
    the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living
    I don’t know what Eliot did in the war (he was not young when it started), but these words seemed strangely significant…

  202. he wasn’t a biased person, he even knew some gay people who had guns
    And who says intersectionality is just for us libs?

  203. @russell — 🙂
    @Pete — you could also call it being “Cutlered,” after the independent who ran in the two elections LePage won. Cutler had no chance of winning the second time, but he stuck right in there to the bitter (for the rest of us) end. Maine is probably no weirder, all things considered, than any other state, but it sure feels like it sometimes.

  204. Sidney Keyes, died at the age of 21 in Tunisia, 1943.
    I am the man who looked for peace and found
    My own eyes barbed.
    I am the man who groped for words and found
    An arrow in my hand.
    I am the builder whose firm walls surround
    A slipping land.
    When I grow sick or mad
    Mock me not nor chain me:
    When I reach for the wind
    Cast me not down:
    Though my face is a burnt book
    And a wasted town.

  205. So I just finished watching a documentary on Eliot by A N Wilson. He was a fire watcher during the war, in the Blitz. It was very interesting: Wilson was (among other things) making a case for the difficulty of Eliot, and contrasting it (rather topically) with the danger of easy slogans. It made me think of Auden’s Epitaph on a Tyrant:

    Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
    And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
    He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
    And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
    When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
    And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

    Nigel, that is a beautiful poem, and strangely familiar, although I am not sure I’ve ever seen it before. The last 6 lines, in particular, are hauntingly reminiscent, but of I know not what. Are they based on something which is eluding me?

  206. I’m not sure, GFTNC, but there is Psalm 51:11
    Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me….

  207. I don’t think that’s it, Nigel, but thank you. I think it’s something in the cadence of the lines, and particularly the last 2 in relation to the first 4 – it’s driving me a bit mad. I’m wondering if it’s something of Dylan Thomas, or possibly Yeats. It may come to me in the end, these things sometimes do, often at crazily inconvenient moments. Will report back if it does.

  208. Having spent a few years and tens of thousands of words on the 101st Airborne, I grew to love Simpson’s “The Battle”
    Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat
    Marched through a forest. Somewhere up ahead
    Guns thudded. Like the circle of a throat
    The night on every side was turning red.
    They halted and they dug. They sank like moles
    into the clammy earth between the trees.
    And soon the sentries, standing in their holes,
    Felt the first snow. Their feet began to freeze.
    At dawn the first shell landed with a crack.
    Then shells and bullets swept the icy woods.
    This lasted many days. The snow was black.
    The corpses stiffened in their scarlet hoods.
    Most clearly of that battle I remember
    The tiredness in eyes, how hands looked thin
    Around a cigarette, and the bright ember
    Would pulse with all the life there was within.

  210. And more film than literature, Nigel. Sound really hit the motion picture industry in 1927 and the industry had 10 years to settle into how to use it before the war really got going.

  212. Sorry if it was me that hijacked this thread to poetry with dulce et decorum, lj! Will look at the rhyme scheme element…

  213. No worries, I moved it not because I thought you were wrong, but because someone as crass as Kavanaugh shouldn’t be allowed to taint a poetry thread…

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