Thursday, February 13, 2025
George Orwell's "1984"--Chapter One excerpt
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Ft. Bragg and Dog Whistling in the Dark
Today, the nation's Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth (nee National Guard veteran and Fox News media persona) renamed the military base Fort Liberty and restored implemented the old new name of Fort Bragg.
(You can read about it in explanatory detail here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/10/politics/hegseth-fort-bragg/index.html)
You might--as I initially did--think that this is another MAGA example of reclaiming America and striking down Woke overreach. And it is that. But not (?) in the direction that is at first obvious.
The Bragg being honored here is not the original Bragg who was indeed a Civil War general and thus was the target for renaming initially by the well-meaning politicians and people who wanted to avoid honoring people in active rebellion against the United States. Rather, as Hegseth explained, this Bragg is a World War II private who won a Silver Star and a Purple Heart.
So . . . that is progress in a sense. At least we aren't returning to the Bragg that was considered "one of the worst generals of the Civil War" and someone who was "widely disliked . . ."
And still . . . why waste even a few minutes of the government's time? What was wrong with promoting the concept of (Fort) Liberty?
And even the most important part of this act (in my opinion) . . . is the calculated way that Hegseth has his cake and eats it too. To most people who see the headline and scroll along with their day, they will think that an actual restoration to the Confederate Bragg was achieved. And those people to whom that matters will feel a frisson of excitement that the libs were owned again. Woke was weakened and MAGA rose again.
Was that Hegseth's intent? Did he want the easy headline, assuming that a deeper investigation would not really occur. And if it did, he would have coverage by pivoting to the matching name but for a better person?
I don't know. But the part of me that is daily angry about the performative nature of politicians feels that this is just another example of superficial crap that shows how shallow people in power truly are and how much time and energy is wasted on stuff that doesn't actually end up helping anyone.
(And yeah, I wasted 10 to 15 minutes writing out this to be read by no one.)
Monday, February 03, 2025
Elon Musk, the Treasury Department, and partisanship
Over the weekend, there were many credible news reports that Elon Musk--Tesla owner and President Donald Trump friend--initiated access into the U.S. Treasury Department's computer system. The people acting on Musk's behalf are reported to be members of the Department of Government Efficiency "group" that has no actual legal basis--as it has not been created by or voted upon by the U.S. Congress.
These six young men who have gained access to the Treasury Department are not government officials. They have not been vetted by our elected representatives. They are therefore operating outside of law and government authorization. It would be no different than if I showed up to the Treasury Department and gained access to these systems myself. I have no authority to do it and I would be caught and prosecuted for doing so.
Elon Musk is also NOT an elected official. He does not represent in any legal way the United States of America. He has not had public hearings in front of the U.S. Senate. He has not been subject to questions by our political leaders. He is operating under some very vague "permission" given by the president but there is no legal scaffold surrounding anything Musk is doing right now.
The information that Musk's men have access to is personal identification and financial information for federal employees, taxpayers, and so many others. The U.S. Treasury department is the agency responsible for paying out government money to wherever it goes. That includes all of the American taxpayers that get refunds. And even if you don't get a refund, you might get Medicare or Medicaid payments or you might get monthly Social Security payments. The government has stored that information in these computer networks to send out all of these payments. This sort of private information can be used to track individuals throughout their personal and financial lives. When misused, it can wreck families, finances, and lives. And--again--the people who have now forced themselves into possession of it have NO LEGAL BASIS for doing this.
For those of you who voted for Donald Trump in the November 2024 elections . . . is this what you envisioned?
I'm confident that you disliked Democrats and what the Democratic Party supported. You thought Joe Biden was ineffectual and that you wanted a strong personality in the White House. You may have been uneasy with what you believe are changing social and moral norms in the country today.
But did you want laws ignored?
Did you want people with no oversight or legal guardrails gaining access to sensitive private information, including your finances?
This type of ungovernable, illegal activity is very dangerous and needs to be taken seriously.
These are violations of law and they are high crimes and misdemeanors that qualify for yet another impeachment process for President Trump's administration. Will the members of the House of Representatives stand up to their oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States? Will the people we elected represent us and defend the law that they claim to revere?
Thursday, January 23, 2025
George W. Bush's thoughts (at one moment in time) on immigration enforcement
I know intellectually that if you read any politician's speeches in any sort of depth, you will find contradictions. So cherry-picking a speech given on a particular day, on a specific subject, and further narrowing your excerpt to an isolated paragraph is . . . not on solid rhetorical ground.
BUT!
I'm trying to refute POTUS 47, Donald J. Trump, who has no rhetorical center at all and so, I guess it's fair game to fight fire with fire? I'd say his political opinions spin like a weather vane, but Trump's particular brand of hate-filled politics is depressingly consistent in the fact that it must:
a. benefit him above all
b. help him retain power, influence, and punish his enemies (see a.), and
c. attack the weak and those who aren't in his camp.
ANYWAY . . .
America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone. Feelings run deep on this issue, and as we work it out, all of us need to keep some things in mind. We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone's fears, or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain. We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions, and that every human being has dignity and value no matter what their citizenship papers say.
I've never been a fan of the 43rd president. But he is so much more of a reasonable human being and political opponent than Donald Trump is. I've never voted Republican in my life and I'm not about to start now. But the way that Trump has captured and reshaped the GOP in his own fun-house way is disgusting.
Monday, January 20, 2025
Quotes for My Time
Passages that caught my eye while reading Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest--a book describing the political and personal turmoil leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 (the precursor of the American Civil War.)
"There was a growing fear that maybe South Carolina's best days were behind her. Planters had once constituted the richest class in America, wrote Dennis Hart Mahan, a New York-born, Virginia-raised professor at West Point in a November 1860 letter to a friend. 'But when commerce, manufacturers, the mechanical arts disturbed this condition of things, and amassed wealth that could pretend to more lavish luxury than planting, then came in, I fear, this demon of unrest which has been the utmost sole disturber of the last for years past.' Mahan, whose son Alfred would grow up to become a prominent naval historian, argued that rather than join the rush to modernity, South Carolina--'this arrogant little state'--had grown even more insular."
"Lincoln's concern lay elsewhere. . . . 'Our adversaries have us more clearly at disadvantage, on the second Wednesday of February, when the votes should be officially counted.' Here he referred to the constitutionally mandated final count and certification of the electoral vote, to be conducted in the House on February 13, 1861, by Buchanan's vice president. Ordinarily this would be the most routine of events, a celebration of the constitution and of peaceful succession, but the tensions of the times raised all manner of concern, especially given the fact that the vice president, the man who would count and certify the electoral votes, was Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, who not only sympathized with the South but had been Lincoln's leading opponent in the presidential election. 'If the two Houses refuse to meet at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be?' Lincoln wrote."
"Even as he said this, however, concern in Washington mounted that the electoral count might be disrupted. That day crowds of irate Southerners had gathered in Washington and converged on the Capitol clamoring to get inside. General Scott, however, was well prepared. Soldiers manned the entrances and demanded to see passes before letting anyone in. Scott had positioned caches of arms through the building. A regiment of troops in plain clothes circulated among the crowd to stop any trouble before it started. The throng outside grew annoyed at being barred from entry and began firing off obscenities like grapeshot. If words would kill, one observer wrote, 'the amount of profanity launched forth against the guards would have completely annihilated them.'"
"Russell understood, however, that the true cause of the conflict, no matter how hard anyone tried to disguise it, was slavery. He called it a 'curse' and likened it to a cancer whose inner damage was masked by the victim's outward appearance of health. he marveled that the South seemed intent on staking its destiny on ground that the rest of the world had abandoned. 'Never,' he wrote, 'did a people enter a war so utterly destitute of any reason for waging it.'"
"Alexis de Tocqueville had observed this [expectation of mastery and command] aspect of the planter class two decades earlier in his Democracy in America and attributed it to slavery. 'The citizens of the Southern states becomes a sort of domestic dictator from infancy,' he wrote. 'The first notion he acquires in life is, that he was born to command, and the first habitat he contracts is that of ruling without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a haughty and hasty man,--irascible, violent, ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his first attempt.'"
Friday, January 17, 2025
Football Counter-Programming 2025: Championship Game Edition
No doubt about it. I've got my work cut out for me this week.
How do I successfully counter-program against the college football championship game? Especially when I'm living smack dab in the middle of ground zero for one of the teams participating in said game?
The best way that I can think?
Let's talk about God.
What other person/concept/animus/motivational force/cultural sports trope can impact as many (more, I would suggest) people as a college football fanbase?
Here is a clip from tOSU's last minute touchdown that sealed the University of Texas's loss. (Sorry that I could not embed the video into this blog post as I originally wished. Take it up with Meta.)
If you paid any attention to college football in the wake of last week's semi-final game, you have seen this clip. But you might not have seen it from this angle. At the end, you see a Buckeye player get down on his knees in the endzone and (I presume) briefly thank God while he watches the play unfold down the field in front of him.
Here is a properly embedded YouTube video of a segment of the High School football movie Friday Night Lights.
- Lots of Midwestern values
- Lots of committed people with camera phones, and
- A handy-dandy multistory religious icon in for form of the Solid Rock Church's "Touchdown Jesus."
- Lots of Midwestern values
- Lots of committed people with camera phones, and
- A handy-dandy multistory religious icon in the form of the original? "Touchdown Jesus."
Thursday, January 02, 2025
Football Counter-Programming 2024 . . . wait . . . 2025: CFPlayoff Edition
Is this a betrayal?
(for context . . . this is a pre-game photo from me within Ohio Stadium as the Ohio State Buckeyes hosted the University of Tennessee on December 21, 2024)
. . . It is, therefore . . . perhaps . . . antithetical to the spirit of the Football Counter-Programming project. But, perhaps the American saying "Only Nixon could go to China" is appropriate here. Only by entering the belly of the beast can I authoritatively counsel you on how to effectively counter-program and fight against the college football monolith.
And how hard it is to do so when the College Football Playoffs surround us!
When the weather in many places is cold (as it was so VERY cold on the night I was in attendance) and so your alternative options are limited to the indoors.
And the siren call of the TV light is strong.
And the hype of the playoffs is loud. (As loud as Buckeye fans witnessing the first half beat-down administered on the UT Volunteers.)
How hard is it to resist when your local team is advancing in dramatic and dominant ways? When the endorphins flow and your pleasure centers are flooded drive after drive with another score?
But don't give up! Because if you can find a way to resist one week at a time, the grind of games reduces the number of teams day after day. And your own personal connection (if any!) to the competing teams becomes less relevant as eliminations occur.
Maybe this has already happened for you?
Welcome brothers and sisters from Idaho, from Oregon, from Arizona! From elsewhere! Join the counter-programmed masses who have no rooting interest! Remember that whether you rooted or not had no demonstratable effect on the team's performance. (This can be proven by examining data on the Ohio State's team's performance from the Michigan game to the Tennessee game to the Oregon game. No fan involvement could generate or explain what happened there.)
For those still within the football rooting vortex . . . what should you do? How can you resist?
I suggest that you lean into the recent holidays and the chronology of now. If you got new books as Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwaanza gifts then embrace reading! There are fewer more effective things to fight sports than reading fiction, non-fiction, whatever. Always a good use of time. But if reading is not your thing, then make a 2025 New Year's Resolution to fill that football time with something else. Something new that occupies your hands, your mind, or your entire soul.
Exercise!
Craft!
Write!
Fight!
Do what you must to define yourself against the creep of football!
And remember . . . you will receive no prizes. No cash. Nothing of tangible value if your alma mater wins the College Football Playoff. Don't let it define you!
***