James Lileks remembers Scout.
If he knew me well (but not too well), I can’t imagine a living writer I’d rather write my obit.
Keeping Their Story Straight
They don’t seem to be able to do it on global warming, at Glacier National Park. (We visited there in the early nineties, then went on to Banff, Jasper and Yoho).
White Nationalists Versus SJWs
They’re not fighting over ideological differences, they’re fighting because they have so much in common. Much like the Nazis and the Communists.
I’m always amused when the most race-obsessed people in the world accuse normal people of being racists.
[Sunday-morning update]
The thread seems to have drifted into discussion of Joe Arpaio. He was a sadistic scumbag, but the people of Maricopa County re-elected him multiple times. There are many Joe Arpaios and terrible county jails in this country. The only reason Arpaio was prosecuted by the Obama Department of (In)Justice was because he refused to knuckle under to their insistence that Arizona not enforce federal immigration laws.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
Don’t call these people (or anyone, really) “anti-fascist”:
We may not take today’s anarcho-communists as seriously as we did back when they had the power, the weapons, and the infrastructure to murder tens of millions of people. But their goals are no different. As they put it, they don’t want a “U.S.A. at all.” The country they want to occupy the center of North America has no First Amendment, no freedom of expression, and people with opposing views (of any views, not just Nazis) are beaten, imprisoned or murdered for intellectual dissent. They may run the gamut from anarchism to revolutionary socialism in their views, but they have far more in common with fascists than they do with the people they seek to attract with the sweet-sounding “anti-fascist” label.
Davies notes that the propaganda value of “anti-fascism” in the West reached its apex when Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War, with help from the fascist governments of Italy and Germany. It then fell out of favor when Stalin aligned with Hitler in hopes of devouring half of eastern Europe. Before the Germans turned against them, the Soviets seized half of Poland, annexed the Baltic States, and invaded Finland in the 1939-1940 Winter War, casting its democratic government at the time as a fascist enemy (of course).
So always with these little would-be tyrants. When you use the label “antifa” or “anti-fascist,” you are helping and enabling a resurgence of terrorist liars in the exact same tradition, who are indistinguishable from neo-Nazis except in the specific motivations for and targets of their authoritarian impulses and irrational violence.
Yup.
[Bumped]
[Update a couple minutes later]
Yes, “antifa” is the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis.
Yes, as noted above, going back to Stalin.
Harvey
A first-hand account from Houstonian and amateur (but competent) meterorologist Eric Berger. This will certainly be the costliest storm in US history to date.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Michael Mann versus Joe Bastardi. One is a “climate scientist,” the other understands how weather works.
Dream Chaser
… had its first captive carry flight in years today. I disagree that the big test is whether it can launch on an Atlas V (though there may be aero issues). Its real big test, assuming successful drop tests, will be whether it can survive entry.
Maximum Lifespan
It could well be that 125 years is the maximum, with current body design, though we may develop alternative repair mechanisms. But as I always say, there are no laws of physics that require that we age, and ultimately, the only laws are physics.
Trump’s Support
Clive Crook has it right:
The first theory, if it were true, would be an argument against democracy. If tens of millions of Americans are racist idiots, how do you defend the popular franchise? That isn’t a sliver of reprehensible people who’ll be safely overwhelmed when elections come around. And there’s plainly nothing, according to the first theory, you can say to change their minds. Why even go through the motions of talking and listening to those people?
This sense that democratic politics is futile if not downright dangerous now infuses the worldview of the country’s cultural and intellectual establishment. Trump is routinely accused of being authoritarian and anti-democratic, despite the fact that he won the election and, so far, has been checked at every point and has achieved almost nothing in policy terms. (He might wish he were an authoritarian, but he sure hasn’t been allowed to function as one.) Many of his critics, on the other hand, are anti-democratic in a deeper sense: They appear to believe that a little less than half the country doesn’t deserve the vote.
The second theory — the correct theory — is a terrible indictment of the Democratic Party and much of the media. Why aren’t the intelligible and legitimate opinions of that large minority given a hearing? Why must their views be bundled reflexively into packages labelled “bigotry” and “stupidity”? Why can’t this large minority of the American people be accorded something other than pity or scorn?
Those who scorn Trump’s supporters might argue that none of their opinions are in fact intelligible or legitimate. After all, don’t their views on immigration boil down to racism and white supremacy? What about their idea that the Charlottesville protesters and counter-protesters were morally the same? Or their morbid fear of change? Or the hypocrisy of their opposition to “big government,” when everybody knows that Trump-voting states such as West Virginia are the biggest net recipients of federal money? If you read the New York Times, you know they have an endless supply of stupid, evil opinions.
In fact, this automatic attribution of stupidity and bad faith is just another kind of bigotry.
Yes, and it’s the kind that gave us Trump, and will continue to do so, because they can’t help it. As Glenn notes, a key element of being a leftist is the psychic income of feeling morally superior to better, happier people than you. I just wish that we could have gotten a Trump that is just as harsh on the media and the left, but did so in a less ignorant and buffoonish manner. I could certainly do it.
Light Posting
I’m doing my books for 2016, so I can do my corporate taxes before I leave for Florida on Saturday for two weeks. Not sure when I’ll come up for air.
Launch Range Tracking Improvements
It took SpaceX to finally bring the ranges into the 21st century. This was first used at Vandenberg at the launch we attended a few weeks ago.
Email Disaster
Evolution is running like molasses, chewing up CPU, apparently because it’s choking on half a million emails in my “Junk” folder. And I can’t clean them out because, you know, half a million messages in my Junk folder. I’ve tried loading the folder into a browser tab in roundcube, but it can’t open it either. Any ideas how to go in on the server directly and clean things up there? vi would be a nightmare.