Jul
31
2024

A Herd of Independent Minds

A public service spot from Dave Rubin:

Someone with more programming smarts than I should write a bot to scour MSNBC, CNN, and other likely suspects to find which talking points have been issued to the NPCs.

(Need to brush up on the NPC meme? Here you go. This Wikipedia page contains the term "far-right" seven times, because six probably was considered too few.)

If you'd prefer text, here's Minnesota not-so-nice Governor Tim Walz quoted by Ann Althouse:

"These guys are just weird. That's where they are.... The fascist depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back, but we're not afraid of weird people. No, we we're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid."

AA also has multiple links, including to a three-day old NYT article noting the emergence of the disparaging-adjective-du-Jour. And notes that it used to be an indicator of cool inclusiveness: "Keep [Your City] Weird".

I also want to point out Joseph Heath's essay at Persuasion: Illiberal Liberalism.

One of the weirdest things about the current political environment is that so many people whose values are clearly grounded in the liberal tradition have adopted strategies to advance these values that are, one is inclined to say, self-evidently illiberal. Everyone should by now be familiar with tales of the YIPs (“young, illiberal progressives”) who want to ban all fascists from social media, but also think that most of the modern Republican Party is “literally fascist.”

I know I've said this before: politicians, especially "successful" ones, are very likely to be several sigma off the mean on a large number of psychological traits. So you should expect weird. And also dangerous.

And I hasten to add: nobody's using the word in the sense Joseph Heinrich did in his great book, The WEIRDest People in the World : How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. There, it was an acronym: "Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, Democratic". Nothing wrong with that!

Also of note:

  • Um. James Freeman notes a Washington Times story: Audit Shows IRS Employees Are Mostly Law-Abiding.

    Dozens of IRS employees who have “willfully” cheated on their taxes remain working for the agency, and some have even been hired back after evasion, an inspector general reported… According to the audit, 5% of the IRS’s workforce failed to pay their taxes in full and on time at some point while working for the agency. Most of those were deemed mistakes.

    Still, 70 current employees were found to have intentionally cheated. Of those, only 20 were ousted. Most of the rest remain on the job after a short suspension. Under the law, all of them should have been fired unless they received a special exemption from the commissioner.

    The IRS also rehired nearly 400 former employees despite red flags in their files. They included 85 who failed to pay their taxes in full and on time and 34 who were deemed to have peeked at taxpayers’ secret information.

    Freeman further notes and comments:

    Preferring to see the glass as half-full, the website of the Treasury inspector general for tax administration announces the audit results with the following headline:

    Ninety-Five Percent of IRS and Contractor Employees Were Tax Compliant; However, There Were Some Tax Delinquencies or Prior Conduct/Performance Issues

    Yes there were. Taxpayers reading this may be tempted to gather at the agency’s D.C. headquarters and engage in a mostly peaceful protest, or perhaps a demonstration that is 95% vandalism-free. But violence is not the answer, even if some people are still permitted—in 2024, not 2020— to tear down and burn American flags in front of government buildings at the foot of Capitol Hill and assault police officers as long as their progressive protests target America’s democratic friends.

    IRS keeping tax cheats on the payroll? In Washington, that's not weird at all.

  • Just a reminder. Jacob Sullum provides it: Trump's Favorite Justice Was One of Those 'Stupid People' Who Think Flag Burning Is Protected Speech. And Trump's favorite justice said:

    Scalia later cited the flag-burning cases to illustrate how his textualist approach to constitutional interpretation sometimes led him to rule against his personal inclinations. "If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag," he said in a 2015 speech. "But I am not king."

    Scalia's distinction between what the Constitution requires and what he might otherwise prefer probably would be lost on Trump, who seems to value freedom of speech only to the extent that it protects him and his allies.

    Yes, he said "weirdo". I think this means we have an unintentional theme going today…

  • A guest post at National Review And it's from an unexpected author: Why I Have Changed All My Policies by Kamala Harris.

    My fellow Americans. I want to take this opportunity — and it is an opportunity — to share with you why I have moved past many of the policies I have had a long history of exhibiting, now that I am running to be president of the United States. Think about that. This is a moment of extraordinary courage and leadership, and, as many of you know, the voice that I am carrying — and continue to carry — is a voice for all of us, with all the permeations and ramifications that it brings. This is a moment for me to be truly intentional in my approach to the future, and the past.

    We talk a lot about opportunity. But opportunities are not guaranteed until they become guarantees, and then, sad as it can be, they stop being opportunities. Okay? They stop being opportunities. So I want you to imagine a Venn diagram. You know Venn Diagrams, with the three circles? Okay? In one of them, we have the words, “My policies from 2019.” In another, we have the words, “What I actually believe.” And, in the third, we have the words, “My personality, unfiltered through the media.” Hahahahaha. And if you look closely, you’ll see, on the Venn Diagram, that instead of the middle section that looks like a shield saying “Kamala Harris elected president,” it says “Disaster!”

    So what we’re trying to do — and trying to do every day — is create a new Venn Diagram where the upside-down-shield part says “Kamala Harris elected president.” And that’s how we build the middle-class and make sure that leadership from our leaders is about leading, instead of, instead of not leading. So, to get there I’ve had to replace the “My policies from 2019” circle with “Donald Trump is lying about my record”; to replace the “What I actually believe” circle with “Did you know I was a prosecutor?”; and to replace the “My personality, unfiltered through the media” circle with “Fake version of Kamala Harris, invented by the media in 2024.” And if we do all that, you’ll see the middle bit now says “Kamala Harris elected president.” Hahahaha.

    I think we might have saved that until Sunday. Ah, well, too late now.

  • I'm on Team Twitter Too. Jeff Maurer explains Why I Won't Stop Dead-Naming Twitter.

    As you may have noticed, I call Twitter “Twitter” — I don’t say “X”. This isn’t a deep conviction; I wasn’t raised in a religion that demands that I call companies by the name they were incorporated with in front of God and the State of Delaware. It’s just a thing that I do and plan to keep doing, and the reason is pretty simple:

    I’m going to call Twitter “Twitter” because “Twitter” is a word, and “X” fucking isn’t.

    Ah, we almost got through the post without gratuitous gutter language.