What i read…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 15, 2021… about the January 6 commission and the noose tightening around the administration of 45… about the build back better spending bill and Manchin’s insistence that the price tag come in under 1.75 trillion over ten years… about a defense budget with 25 billion more than 46 asked for for a single year… there is money for new technologies while preserving money for old technologies that provide jobs to constituents…

Senator Manchin, Keep Holding Out on Build Back Better, the Editors, National Review… Manchin is the lynchpin of Build Back Better… Heather Cox Richardson reports above that he will accept a bill with a 1.75 trillion price tag over ten years… this article tries to hold him to a statement early on that said 1.5 trillion was his limit… i suspect something will get passed in the end…

Sinema Doubles Down on Filibuster Defense amid Democrats’ Pivot to Voting Bill, Caroline Downey, National Review… apparently Sinema remains a know on filibuster busting… a spokesman for Sineam:

“Senator Sinema has asked those who want to weaken or eliminate the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation which she supports if it would be good for our country to do so,” LaBombard told Politico. He said that there’s a risk that the measure gets “rescinded in a few years and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law, nationwide restrictions on vote-by-mail, or other voting restrictions currently passing in some states extended nationwide.”

DeSantis Introduces Bill Banning Critical Race Theory in Public Schools, Private Company Staff Trainings… Caroline Downey, National Review… my understanding is that Critical Race Theory is not taught in any K-12 school anywhere… that it is taught at the college level only and mostly in law schools… this article suggests that DeSantis’ bill would not only ban something that isn’t happening from K-12 programs, but reaches up to the college level and into the training programs of private companies… that would be a huge overreach that is suspect would not hold up in the courts… so, is he proposing it without expectation of it passing just to check off a box on his expected run for President?…

Are the Parents of the Michigan School Shooter Guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter? Jacob Sullum, Reason.com… this article argues that they may have been negligent, but that their actions, or lack thereof, do not rise to Involuntary Manslaughter… i suspect the author is correct on this point and so, this case becomes an argument for tighter gun control laws…

The Attempted Republican Coup Should Be the Democrats’ Leading Message. A. B. Stoddard, The Bulwark.… i agree wholeheartedly with the opinion expressed in this article and have for some time… the threat to Democracy is the number one issue that needs to be dealt with…

The events of January 6 were clearly planned and coordinated to some extent—to what extent we have yet to learn. And the same is true of the post-coup cover-up.

Republicans must be made to answer for these facts at the next election. For two reasons: If they are not made to answer for it in 2022, then they never will be. And if aiding and abetting a coup doesn’t prove to be a political liability, then such attacks will be incentivized in the future.

‘West Side Story’ and the American Melting Pot. Christian Thrailkill, The Bulwark… a glowing review of the new movie by Spielberg, though i already knew i wanted to see it… this was one of my favorite films growing up as i have always beens a sucker for stories of romance against the odds… accomplishments of any kind against the odds really…

Aleksei Navalny: The Man vs. The Symbol. Benjamin Parker, The Bulwark… this article is interesting… heroes are rarely pure as the driven snow, often, far from it… we work with the heroes we have is the point of the article… it also gets me thinking about any kind of accomplished individual that has broken ground in new or courageous or new and courageous territory… humans are imperfect creatures, to say the least, and society moves forward none the less, often carried by heroes with major flaws…

Does it degrade the thoughts of Navalny’s fans, employees, and followers to support such a man? It’s tempting, especially for Americans, to argue that racism and xenophobia ruin even the most vigorous advocacy for human and civil rights. But Russia has no equivalent of the 1619 Project. They went through a period of iconoclasm in the 1990s, tearing down Lenins and Stalins all over—and then they stopped.

Perhaps one day, Russians will have the luxury of arguing over whether to dismantle statues of Navalny for his manifestations of bigotry. But that luxury is, at this point, so far in the future that it is hard to even imagine. It would mean that democracy in Russia is so entrenched, so stable, so unthreatened that it would no longer need reminders of his sacrifice. Perhaps before we worry about whether or not a man such as Nalvany deserves statues, we ought to get to a place where erecting a statue to him is an option.

Where’s the beef? Brent Orrell, The Bulwark… it strikes me as significant that this article is published in The Bulwark, a conservative leaning publication created at the beginning of the Trump Administration by conservative journalists who could not abide Trumpism and still can’t… there are some particularly interesting acknowledgements in the article:

Over many decades, the American economy has depended on a seemingly endless supply of workers (documented and not) willing to work for the sometimes parsimonious wages on offer in our advanced, globally-integrated, highly competitive, and skills-biased economy. If employees didn’t like conditions, well, there was always someone else anxious to take the work. Just five years ago, McDonalds had 50,000 applications lined up for 13,000 jobs.

… note the in parenthesis part about workers, documented and not… i have long thought there was conservative hypocrisy on the issue of immigration and that their protestations of loose border policies had more to do with ensuring an undocumented (and therefore cheap) flow of workers into the country… that is how it looks to me anyway… sure, we need well controlled borders and immigration policy is a mess… but part of the reason for the mess is our unacknowledged dependence on undocumented labor… again, my opinion…

But it goes beyond just working conditions and into less tangible, but no less real, issues with how the people who do this work are viewed and treated. Meatpacking jobs were (and are) disproportionately held by undocumented, refugee, and other immigrant workers in mainly conservative, rural states that left workers exposed to employer and government pressures and community indifference during the opening chapters of the COVID crisis. (emphasis added) The status of these workers as essential “outsiders” aggravated long-standing problems in an industry that had come to take access to a continuous flow of cheap labor as part of its business model.

… and then there is this:

We didn’t get here overnight. As one meat processing plant manager commented to NPR a few years ago, “Workers are really cheaper than machines. Machines have to be maintained. They have to be taken good care of. And that’s not really true of workers. As long as there is a steady supply, workers are relatively inexpensive (emphasis added)”, a quote that summarizes the situation better than anything else could. No doubt the market will eventually bring wages and working conditions into balance with supply and demand. For now, we know the answer to the age-old question, “Where’s the beef?”

… inflation has become a big worry… as we are mostly on fixed income at this point, i am certainly not a fan of it… but to the extent it is about better wages, working conditions for workers, and a rational immigration policy, i am happy to learn to live with higher prices for the goods i purchase…

What i read…

Exclusive: Nadia Lee Cohen’s Powerful Portraits of Strong Femininity, Ted Stansfield, AnOther Magazine… Nadia Lee Cohen turns the idea of Male/Female gaze into something quite different…

Power is the key word here – these images vibrate with the stuff. They confront you. Command you. Compel you. Meet your gaze head on. And they are full of contradictions, too: simultaneously retro and modern, they draw on a legacy of British and American cinema, but feel new and current. Likewise they are staged and stylised, but at the same time real and irrefutably raw. Meanwhile, the women themselves display both a vulnerability and a strength, presenting a fictional character and also their true self, or at least a version of it. It’s hard to look away and even harder not to feel something.

… i read that this project took six years to accomplish… i admire the discipline of a woman in her 20’s… i imagine they have fierce ambition and incredible focus…

Inside Nadia Lee Cohen’s New Book of Chameleonic Self-Portraits, Ted Stansfield, AnOther Magazine… not a unique idea, but a unique execution of the idea…

Place: Ikea Parking Lot, Anelise Chen, Believer Magazine… i plunge in to reading the article and immediately like it… as i am reading, i get the strong impression that i am inhabiting the thoughts of a woman… i knew, without having seen who the author was, that it was a woman…

For me, extended time in parking lots has always signified an emergency, precise moments of narrative dissolution: one version of the good life has come apart irretrievably, and you must, humbly, construct another. Outside hospitals and motels, breakups and breakdowns. I paced because pacing feels like the good, primal thing to do when a body is penned in. It’s what lions and tigers do in their zoo enclosures. Back and forth, up and around, prowl, prowl, repeat. I organized my movements by row: up and down the parking rows toward the now-dim signs for exchanges, returns, exit, enter. The circularity of the movements, plus the weird, abstract commands, felt cosmic. I was in an undetermined space of pure matter, performing a ritual of eternal reincarnation, living many lives.

… didn’t love the way this piece ended, but i love the idea of pacing in super large parking lots to clear one’s head, and then, beginning to pay attention to what is in that lot, which is way more than one would think…

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: Rickie Lee Jones, Emma Dabiri, and More, Nick Hornby, Believer Magazine… a set of well written and compelling impressions of the books in question… impressions seems the right word, because i don’t read these as critical reviews, just an accounting of a book enjoyed thoroughly… also, in the course of reading these impressions i encounter the author referring to themselves as ‘he’ again… it happened in the article above, which led me to search for information on the author and confirm that they present as female and refer to themselves as ‘she’… so now i am wondering what is going on… is being gender confusing a thing and i am out of the loop? Hmmm…

… and now i discover that Summer Thomad is not the author of the articles i am reading, but for some reason comes up with the byline when the articles feed through to Feedbin… i circle back and follow the links through to the Believer Mag website and find the actual authors and switch credit accordingly and the pronoun mystery continues because it turns out i am right about the parking lot article, written by a (Asian) woman… her bio on Wikipedia refers to them as ‘her’ and ‘she’ while she self-refers as male in the body of the article… hmmm some more…

… by the way, i really like The Believer Magazine…

Nietzsche on Walking and Creativity, Maria Popova, The Marginalian… i am a walker… i walk every day… my daily goal is at least 10K steps… right now, my weekly average is close to 15K steps… i walk, i think, i make pictures… this has gotten me through the pandemic in good shape… it turns out that Maria Popova is a walker too…

Almost everything I write, I “write” in the notebook of the mind, with the foot in motion — what happens at the keyboard upon returning from the long daily walks that sustain me is mostly the work of transcription.

Maria Popova’s recommendations on reading are always compelling… i have found so much of what i read through her…

Senator Blumenthal Delivered Speech at Communist Party Awards, Brittany Bernstein, National Review… red bating is a time honored tradition of conservatives… this reads like a political hit job… is there something wrong with what Blumenthal did?… why should his wealth-by-wife be any more of an issue than Mitch McConnel’s?… i am fine with socialist policies… not so much with communism… i also believe in freedom of association and speech…

Gone Too Far, Brendan Dougherty, The National Review… refreshing for this substantially right of center magazine to publish an article stating that:

But the riot at the Capitol happened because President Donald Trump simply lied, and lied, and lied. On that very day he lied about what the vice president’s powers were. “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people,” he told the crowd.

First notes…

228.4 lbs

… we are now exactly one week away from our departure to Florida… dark sky is now predicting wall to wall sunshine for next Tuesday, a change from the 1” of snow that was predicted yesterday… hopefully that will stay the forecast…

… ran into headwinds from M yesterday on the planning of Christmas Eve dinner, or so it seemed to me… they had determined that dogs would not be allowed on the terrace of the restaurant and canceled reservations and said firmly they weren’t interested in the seven fishes dinner… it all began to feel that i was headed for a situation where M was going to be unhappy whatever we did… this all prompted us to investigate dog daycare and we found some… it’s a shame dinner reservations got canceled because there would have been a place to park the dogs… called M to talk directly with them about the situation… they said nothing was wrong with the way things were turning out… i was not entirely convinced but let it go…

… i am feeling generally happy the odd tension of H over baking and finding accommodations for the dog not withstanding…

… our friend B is in for knee surgery this morning…

… we watched Die Hard last night, which is many people’s favorite Christmas Movie… it’s not my first choice given the mayhem of it all, but it will be kept in the rotation because it is pretty good for what it is…

… still puzzling over a gift for M… she doesn’t really need anything…

… want to get H a little something too…

… bought a copy of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Story to read to H while we are traveling… also bought a set of battery powered LED lights to provide Christmas Cheer in our hotel rooms as we go… my happy anticipation of the trip grows… still lots to do…

… headphones and Bach Cello Suites…

The Journals of Denton Welch…

… was feeling a bit down about the substantial posts i made to this blog yesterday that caught nobody’s attention… then this bit of sparkling prose:

All my hard bones go wild with music notes, here in the rain. The fibers tremble with the whipping leaves. To be alone in the car with sandwiches and coffee and a Turkish cigarette! So snuggly alone that the world is the car, and the wood, the road, the view stung with rain, the rest of the universe.

… the book, as it winds down to an end, has taken a mournful but quite beautiful turn… every passage seems to be spiritually aglow, radiant, even as he describes the suffering he is wishing to overcome… it is hard to escape the impression of a slow descent towards the threshold of being-not-being…

• Letters from an American, December 13, 2021, Heather Cox Richardson… the January 6 Commission referred Mark Meadows to the House for Contempt of Congress… in doing so they revealed details of information they already had… details that made it clear the 45 knew what was going on and accusing them of “dereliction of duty,” which is military speak for, you are in some serious shit… additionally, it was clear that a number of Fox News personalities not only had close ties to the Whitehouse but called repeatedly on the day of the riot to plead with 45 to say something to calm the situation… that same day they went on air and began making the case to their viewers that 45 had nothing to do with the riot, that it was ANTIFA that infiltrated a peaceful rally and turned it deadly… they were clearly lying to their viewers…

• Booz Allen Sounds the Alarm On China’s Coming Quantum Harvest, Arthur Herman, Hudson Institute… quantum computers are likely within a 10 year time horizon… they will be capable of cracking encryption deployed on most computer systems today in defense and industry… China is likely stealing and warehousing encrypted data in anticipation of that day… efforts to secure systems against quantum computing capabilities need to accelerate…

• Fox Hosts Begged Trump to Stop the January 6 Attack on the Capitol, Amanda Carpenter, The Bulwark… confirms Heather Cox Richardson report that Fox News personalities pleaded with 45 to stop the riot and then went on to spin it as not his fault at all… family members and members of congress too…

• What Did Governor Hochul Say About Religion!?, Josh Blackman, Reason.com… a case is made that injunctive relief should have been provided given the awkward at best statements of Governor Hochul about the religious exemptions being denied…

• Barrett and Kavanaugh Supply Another Majority to Deny Religious-Liberty Exemption… this case is seeming more interesting than i at first thought, or, rather, i thought is was interesting at first, but for the wrong reasons… i am no friend of organized religion, i am somewhere on the spectrum between atheist and agnostic… but the reasoning here seems a bit botched…

  • This time, it was New York’s vaccine mandate, which initially included an exemption for religious objectors. These objectors included some Catholics and other Christians who oppose abortion. The vaccines are derived in part from abortion — specifically, from fetal-cell lines used in vaccine production and testing. Nevertheless, when Kathy Hochul replaced Andrew Cuomo as governor, she stripped the religious exemption from the mandate, making the astonishing acknowledgment that she had done so “intentionally” because those who resisted vaccination “aren’t listening to God and what God wants.”

• January 6 Committee Votes to Recommend Contempt Charges for Mark Meadows, Zachary Evans, National Review… of note to me is the article’s description of the events on January 6th and the calling into question the makeup of the committee:

  • The select committee was formed to investigate the Capitol riot, during which supporters of the former president breached the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to interrupt the certification of the Electoral College results. > > However, Pelosi refused to appoint two lawmakers recommend by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to the panel, leading McCarthy and most Republicans to withhold cooperation with the committee. Representatives Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.), both staunch critics of President Trump in relation to the events of January 6, are the only Republicans on the nine-member committee.

First thoughts…

228.2 lbs

… awake at 1:30 AM, back to sleep, up at 3:40 AM… two beers last night, the extent of my drinking… seems to have lead to better sleep and feeling better this morning… my weight has returned to a downward trend… as i write that, i have a debate in my head about bringing the scale on our trip… stepping on the scale every morning helps keep me from overeating in general… on some level i must have internalized what overeating is by now… time to fly solo?… then again, maybe not…

… yesterday a bit broken and frustrating… H’s holiday baking effort threatening to melt down… i try to help them with decorating the cookies but their instructions were poor while making it clear they did not invite freelancing… i gave up trying to help… they accused me of not listening… no dear, i love you but you suck at giving direction… i gave the dogs a bath as they had been rolling in smelly shit…

… today i need to be more focused on what i want to get done…

… M being a little irritating about the food menu for Christmas Eve and Christmas… was hoping they would get all the shopping done before i got down there, but it’s clear they won’t…

… we are cash poor at the moment… struggling to put the finishing touches on Christmas as a result…

… the forecast is calling for snow the day we are to leave… oh joy… this was always going to be the danger of traveling this time of year… it doesn’t look like it will be too bad and we will stick to major highways which are generally good at keeping the roads safe to drive on… it should get better the further south we go… plus, we have an all wheel drive car now…

Video still series…

Video still series…

Over the weekend I read this lengthy and fascinating article about human characteristics we all share that have made us vulnerable to the increasingly virulent partisan divide we are experiencing today.

What follows is a lengthy exploration of this article and what I believe to be important about it. In case you need to cut to the chase and move on with your day, here are my main takeaways:

To have any hope of engaging in productive and deescalating dialogue on the critical issues of our time:

• discuss issues, discuss values, discuss policy, discuss facts, embrace complexity and don’t argue when others characterize your politics
• make a sincere effort to inquire about and understand the reasons people have for their views, share the reasons for your views, and resist the temptation to immediately debate the rightness or wrongness of those views
• assemble a carefully curated set of information sources that you have verified for factualness and understand the biases of; include sources from far left to far right and in between; make an extra effort to read or view the sources that challenge your views on major issues… here is my list¹

Read on if you would like to know more about what underpins my basic take aways.

Last week I read an article about Fred Hiatt and the Washington Post in which the following paragraph jumped out at me:

Sarah Longwell recently told a story about meeting me (Benjamin Wittes, the author of the article) and having no ability to identify my politics. This is an ethos I learned from Fred: discuss issues, discuss values, discuss policy, discuss facts, embrace complexity and don’t argue when others characterize your politics.²

Over the weekend I read Why Is It So Hard To Admit When You’re Wrong? by Ronald Bailey in The Bulwark. It confirmed my instinct about the importance of the above quote.

Bailey makes the following point about people and partisan politics:

Today, if you are a member of one of the two major American political parties, you are statistically likely to dislike and distrust members of the other party. While your affection for your own party has not grown in recent years, your distaste for the other party has intensified. You distrust news sources preferred by the other side. Its supporters seem increasingly alien to you: different not just in partisan affiliation but in social, cultural, economic, and even racial characteristics. You may even consider them subhuman in some respects.

You’re also likely to be wrong about the characteristics of members of the other party, about what they actually believe, and even about their views of you. But you are trapped in a partisan prison by the psychological effects of confirmation bias. Being confronted with factual information that contradicts your previously held views does not change them, and it may even reinforce them. Vilification of the other party perversely leads partisans to behave in precisely the norm-violating and game-rigging ways they fear their opponents will. It’s a classic vicious cycle, and it’s accelerating.³

And then there is this paragraph:

The consequences of this big chill are apparent in several other studies, notably the work of the Louisiana State University political scientist Nathan Kalmoe and the University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason. One of their more striking results is that 60 percent to 70 percent of both parties in a 2017–18 survey said they thought the other party was a “serious threat to the United States and its people”; 40 percent of respondents in both parties thought the other party was “downright evil.” In another poll, 15 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats agreed with the brutal sentiment that the country would be better off if large numbers of opposing partisans in the public today “just died.” And 18 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans said that violence would be justified if the opposing party won the 2020 presidential election.⁴

It dismayed me to find that I am rolling with the statistical majorities of both parties. I currently believe that the Republican Party, at least the part of it that seems to be in control at the moment, is evil. My wife will tell you that I have more than once expressed the sentiment that perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing that “Trumpers” are refusing to vaccinate and wear masks, my presumption being that more of them will die. I draw the line at violence if the opposing party wins, but i might get there if i believe they stole the election in 2024, as MSNBC and other news sources warn daily that they are trying to position themselves to do. By the way, is anyone else surprised that Democrats were 5% more likely to resort to violence than Republicans if the other party won in 2020?

This brings me to another point brought home by this article. Our perceptions of what the other side is feeling and thinking relative to our perceptions of ourselves and what each side is actually thinking is significantly misaligned:

In a 2015 YouGov survey, respondents reckoned that 32 percent of Democrats are LGBT, 29 percent are atheists or agnostics, and 39 percent belong to unions; the right figures are really 6, 9, and 11 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, they estimated that 38 percent of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year, 39 percent are over age 65, and 42 percent are evangelicals; actually, just 2 percent earn that much, 21 percent are senior citizens, and 34 percent are evangelicals.

Democrats and Republicans also regularly overestimate just how much their opponents loathe them. On a sliding scale from 0 (least evolved) to 100 (most evolved) Republicans rated the humanity of their fellow partisans at around 85 points and that of Democrats at 62 points, a 23-point difference. Conversely, Democrats gave 83 points to their political confreres and only 62 points to Republicans, a 21-point difference. Even more interesting is that the Democrats guessed that the Republicans would award them just 36 points (26 points less than the true number), while Republicans estimated that Democrats would give them a measly 28 points (34 points less than the true number).⁵

And, less I believe that my party, the Democrats, is the superior one when it comes to tolerance there is this:

One of the more dire consequences of this exaggerated meta-perception—the perception partisans have of the other side’s perception of them—is that it seems to make people more willing to support illiberal and antidemocratic policies, such as curbs on free speech and political participation.

Moore-Berg’s findings were essentially replicated in a 2021 study by the University of California Santa Barbara social scientist Alexander Landry and his colleagues, who further found that “despite the socially progressive and egalitarian outlook traditionally associated with liberalism, the most liberal Democrats actually expressed the greatest dehumanization of Republicans.” Democrats also expressed greater antidemocratic outgroup spite than Republicans.⁶

Note that these are findings confirmed by a study conducted in 2021 and are highly counterintuitive to what I believe I am experiencing.

Depressingly, the article goes on to say that providing more accurate information generally fails to convince anyone siloed in their partisan points of view of anything other than their rightness. We select and deploy the information that supports our silo.

And here is a critical point for me:

Partisan cheerleading sounds harmless—not much different from fans rooting for a local football team, right? Nope. Hannon argues that ”if our disagreements are not based on genuine reasons or arguments, then we cannot engage with each other’s views." If team loyalty is the main thing, then the upshot for Hannon is that “we cannot decrease polarization by reasoned debate.”⁷

A recent conversation with a family member about January 6 (they were denying it was anything other than a first amendment sanctioned protest) quickly made me angry and when I shut it down (a moment I was not entirely proud of), they noted that they were just trying to relate how things looked to “their team.” Hmmm…

And what if people are offered a range of information sources which could provide additional information about whether their beliefs are accurate? Will they take advantage of it? Apparently not:

Peterson and Iyengar also gave respondents access to various news sources so that they could check for additional information on whether their beliefs were accurate. These included sources identifiably associated with both liberal and conservative partisan loyalties, so-called mainstream sources, and expert sources from peer-reviewed journals. Some 29 percent turned to co-partisan sources, 26 percent to expert sources, 38 percent to mainstream sources, and only 7 percent to out-party sources.⁸

I have found this to be true of myself in the past. Even now, after a number of years of making the effort to read from various sources across the political spectrum, I struggle with information that contradicts a strongly held view. It is critically important to put together a range of factually accurate sources of information which both support and call into question our partisan beliefs and most people, on both sides, don’t do that.

The proliferation of self-consciously partisan broadcast media, such as Fox and MSNBC, and of partisan gathering places on social media platforms provides political sectarians plenty of opportunity to find information that confirms their ideological predispositions and disparages their opponents' views. In 2019, a Perspectives on Psychological Science review of 51 studies testing for political bias found that “both liberals and conservatives were biased in favor of information that confirmed their political beliefs, and the two groups were biased to very similar degrees.”⁹¹⁰

In case you thought your side was superior in its ability to follow the facts where they lead there is:

… a 2019 study, “(Ideo)Logical Reasoning: Ideology Impairs Sound Reasoning,” that found an equal tendency among liberals and conservatives to ignore the soundness of classically structured logical syllogisms in order to reach conclusions that supported the political beliefs that they already held.

Or perhaps you thought your side has the superior set of moral values:

… a 2018 study in Political Psychology, “Deep Alignment with Country or Political Party Shrinks the Gap Between Conservatives' and Liberals' Moral Values,” found that liberals and conservatives broadly share the same moral foundations and values.¹¹

Towards the end, Bailey notes that the partisan divide around any given issue can be thawed if each side gives reasons for their views, rather than engaging in debates about those views, as most of us are all too quick to do:

The good news is that when presented with reasons favoring their opponents' views, partisans were less likely to report that their opponents lacked intellectual ability or moral character. “Our results provide evidence that reasons serve a novel function distinct from persuasion, decision change, or acquiring knowledge,” conclude the researchers. “Even if the consideration of opposing reasons does not induce a change in one’s position, our results indicate that presenting opposing reasons might at least make people less likely to view their opponents negatively. This, in turn, might have the potential to make people more willing to listen to opponents and more willing to engage in genuine discussion with their opponents, which might have positive implications for compromise, fruitful deliberation, and the pursuit of a common good.”¹²

And that is what led me to the steps for stepping back from the partisan divide at the beginning of this post.

What i read today…

… my reading this morning has been principally around the Supreme Court decision handed down yesterday that allowed Texas’ anti-abortion law, S.B. 8, to remain in effect…

Letters from an American, December 10, 2021, Heather Cox Richardson

This case is about far more than abortion. It is about the federal protection of civil rights in the face of discriminatory state laws. That federal protection has been the key factor in advancing equal rights in America since the 1950s.

The Texas Abortion Decision Protects the Traditional Rule of Law

Hard cases make bad law, and bad decisions make more hard cases. Roe v. Wade was a bad decision that has distorted many areas of our law. The Supreme Court created this monster with Roe, but in the Texas abortion cases decided this morning, it found itself caught between two sides trying to evade or rewrite the rules. On the one side was the Texas legislature: The new Texas abortion law, S.B. 8, is a too-clever-by-half attempt to get around Roe’s distortions by creating its own somewhat-novel enforcement mechanism. On the other side were the abortion clinics and the Justice Department’s lawsuit, both of which treated legal abortion as a constitutional interest so powerful that protecting it required the Court to bulldoze longstanding doctrines limiting the powers of federal courts.

How Narrow is the Pathway the Supreme Court Left for Suits Challenging SB 8 and Other Similar State Laws?

As noted in my last post about today’s Supreme Court ruling in in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the key question for the future is how close a connection state officials must have to enforcement of the law in question before plaintiffs can potentially bring preenforcement challenges against those officials.

SCOTUS Says State Judges and Court Clerks Can’t Be Sued To Block Enforcement of the Texas Abortion Ban

The Supreme Court today held that Texas judges and court clerks cannot be sued to block enforcement of a state law that prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. But it said the plaintiffs challenging S.B. 8, which took effect on September 1, can proceed with claims against state medical regulators.

Justice Sotomayor’s Flawed History To Promote The Myth of Judicial Supremacy

The United States did not fight a Civil War over the theory of judicial supremacy. But judicial supremacy was a contributor to the Civil War. Of course, I speak of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Chief Justice Taney recognized a new constitutional right based on substantive due process in order to resolve a controversial social debate by placing it beyond the power of the elected branches. Sound familiar? In Casey, Justice Scalia directly equated Roe and Dred Scott.

SCOTUS Rules Extreme Texas Abortion Ban Will Remain in Effect, Though Abortion Providers Can Sue

Today, in what could at best be considered a mixed ruling for abortion rights, the Supreme Court decided that abortion providers may sue some state officials in federal court over an extreme Texas abortion law. But in a huge blow, the court will also allow the law to remain in effect while the case moves forward.

The Most Blistering Lines from Sotomayor’s Extraordinary Dissent in Today’s Abortion Ruling

In an especially gripping section of the 13-page opinion, Sotomayor wrote that Texas’ brazen challenge to federal law “echoes the philosophy of John C. Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South who insisted that States had the right to ‘veto’ or ‘nullify’ any federal law with which they disagreed.”

“The Nation fought a Civil War over that proposition,” she argued. “But Calhoun’s theories were not extinguished.”

… moving on to readings other than news…

Carl Jung on How to Live… you make the road by walking…¹

Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general. But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other.²

Beginning the day…

229.0 lbs

… continuing to wake up between 2 and 3 AM, then fitful sleep until 4 AM, then up and get the day started…

… H’s doctor appointment went well, professional confirmation that they have nothing to worry about…

… watched 12 Dates of Christmas last night… pretty much the same concept as Groundhog Day, except it’s Christmas and the woman is the not very nice person who needs to learn a thing or two…

… HCR this morning is all about a Supreme Court decision handed down yesterday on Texas S. B. 8… it denied, for the most part, federal power to bring lawsuits against state-court judges and clerks… HCR makes the case that this will set federal efforts to protect civil rights back… she warns that the implications are ominous… an article in the National Review makes the case that it was a proper decision… an article in Reason Magazine, while being more neutral in it’s reporting, is in line with the National Review article… articles in Mother Jones are supportive of the dessent of Justice Sotomayor… in general, the ruling is viewed as a narrow win for right-to-an-abortion advocates, but too narrow to provide any good prospect of relief… we apparently still await a private individual to come forward and lodge a lawsuit under the S. B. 8 to get to a case that could determine the law’s constitutionality or lack thereof…

… it is ten days till we set out for Florida and Christmas with M…

… i am feeling like i have finally assembled a set of news sources that give me a balanced view of major news stories…

Letters from an American, December 8, 2021, Heather Cox Richardson… HCR is a daily read for me… her gathering of the important stories of the day into the beginnings of a historical record and then, often, placing them in historical context is very well done and tells me much of what i need to know… since she believes fervently in democracy, i would say she has a liberal bias, since conservatives, by and large, seem prepared to toss democracy out… today, HCR discusses Biden’s call with Putin and the considerable financial leverageu the US can organize if Russia invades Ukraine… she also updates us on the January 6th commissions efforts to compel testimony from former high level officials of 45’s administration and those officials efforts to resist… She notes that Fox News Channel personalities are:

echoing Russian talking points, saying that Putin is building up troops near Ukraine simply because he “wants to keep his western border secure.”

… she notes the $650K contributions made by Julie Fancelli, Publix grocery store chain heiress, to various organizations involved in staging the “Stop the Steal” event in Washington that led to the insurrection…

Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post, and America’s Moral and Political Seriousness, Benjamin Wittes, The Bulwark…

… a tribute to Fred Hiatt and the editorial page of the Washington Post… i never read the post, but this piece makes me want to… FH has recently passed away and the author doesn’t know if the spirit of Meg Greenfield and Fred Hiatt will continue to dominate the production of the editorial page… if this tribute is even halfway accurate, and i have no reason to believe it isn’t, i hope Jeffrey Bezos and his management staff continue a proud tradition… this paragraph in particular struck me:

Sarah Longwell recently told a story about meeting me (Benjamin Wittes) and having no ability to identify my politics. This is an ethos I learned from Fred: discuss issues, discuss values, discuss policy, discuss facts, embrace complexity and don’t argue when others characterize your politics.

… this struck me because i, like the author, don’t play for a team… i remember in the run up to the last election that i was doing my best to share articles that i thought were good reads about important issues… i have made it a point to read publications from both ends of the political spectrum… a couple of times i was called out by team playing friends as participating in the circular firing squad of the Democratic party… i am liberal, i believe in democracy, but i am not a my party right or wrong person and never will be… in fact, listing myself as a democrat is so i can vote in primaries… the above paragraph also strikes me because it tells me how i must deal with the politics of M, which i view as derived solely from Fox News and Fox News personalities… so, i will need to do the hard work of discussing issues, values, policy and facts while embracing complexity and i will not argue when anyone tries to characterize my politics…

As Grifters Squabble, QAnon’s Bloodlust Gets More Open, Thomas Lecaque, The Bulwark… after reading this article it is not hard to imagine epic tragedy unfolding sometime over the next three or four years… QAnon may be the most crazy conspiracy theory going, but it has no corner on the market in murderous thinking and incitement… it appears the conspiracy situation is every bit as bad in Canada as it is here… which i have heard from people living there or with relatives there…

The New Puritans, Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic… i have for some years been wondering if we are heading into a period of illiberalness that could last for centuries… i look up Dark Ages and on Wikipedia, i discover that current scholarship eschews this descriptive title for the time following the collapse of the Roman Empire… so, illiberalism it is… this article is a harrowing read… i take it as another indication of where we are heading, and to someone with my liberal enlightenment view of the world, where we are heading is disturbing… more and more i feel there are mega trends that i, we, have no control over, that are shaping what we are heading into… i view what is described in this article as symptomatic of these mega trends… does it need to run its course?… is it reversible?… can we manage a transition to what it augers without intense suffering?… my answers would be probably, probably not and also, probably not… but i am hopeful that i am wrong on this last point…

Beginning the day…

… wake up at 2:00 AM for the bathroom… sleep fitfully, if at all, until 3:30 AM… i get up, Fiona hops off the bed, we leave the bedroom together… i weigh myself, 230.0 lbs, get dressed, follow Fiona downstairs… fill the kettle and put it on the stove… Fiona wants to go out, but because i now have to supervise her, she has to wait… clean the coffee pot, grind the coffee, take my medications, retrieve the cat food dish, clean it out, open a tin of cat food, dump it in the dish, return the dish to its stand at the top of the basement stairs… i go upstairs to get Chas… we return downstairs… the dogs and i go out the back door to the back garden… i follow Fiona to the way back, observe her peeing, we return to the back door where Chas is waiting… treats for the dogs when we come back in… then i go out the front door to put the garbage out to the street… on the way the smell of poop… when i return i flip the living room lights on and sure enough, a small pile on the rug by the gas fireplace… the coffee water is boiling, i turn it off and pour water over the coffee grounds then go to clean up the poop… while waiting for the coffee i read Heather Cox Richardson and find it at least not so depressing… apparently Biden has organized considerable financial pressure to be applied to Russia if Putin decides to invade Ukraine… Tucker Carlson is complaining that the Biden Admin is overreacting and that Russia is just beefing up defense of its borders… there was a time when few in positions of power and influence would support Russia, but Carlson has proven to be enameled of oligarchies and dictatorships… i imagine he wants to be dictator himself one day… there is a selfish streak in to much of the American population i have thought to myself… we emphasize individual liberty over the common good… it’s biting us in the ass right now… various actors in the previous administration are in a variety of phases of being cornered into testimony… will it all be done in time to make a difference?…

Bias ratings from Media Bias / Fact Check of the news publications i follow:

The Atlantic

Overall, we rate The Atlantic Left-Center Biased due to editorial positions and High for factual reporting based on excellent sourcing of information and a clean fact check record.

The Bulwark

Overall, we rate the Bulwark Right-Center Biased based on story selection and political affiliation that moderately favors the right. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.

The Christian Science Monitor

Overall, we rate the Christian Science Monitor Least Biased based on balanced story selection and fair reporting coverage of both sides. Further, we rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and a clean fact check record.

The Economist

Overall, we rate The Economist Least Biased based on balanced reporting and High for factual reporting due to a clean fact check record.

Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson - there is no rating for this source on Media Bias Fact Check as she is not, technically, the media. Ms. Richardson is a history professor. She publishes six “letters” a week analyzing the news of the day and often putting that news in historical context. She is an ardent believer in Democracy which would, by itself, make her liberal in this climate. I suspect her liberal credentials run deeper than that.

Mother Jones

Overall, we rate Mother Jones strongly Left-Center biased based on story selection that moderately favors the left and High for factual reporting due to thorough sourcing and a clean fact check record.

The National Review¹

Overall, we rate the National Review Right Biased based on story selection that always favors the right and Mostly Factual in reporting due to a few misleading claims and occasional use of poor sources, and one failed fact check.

Pro Publica

Overall, we rate ProPublica Left-Center biased based on story selection that favors the left and factually High due to proper sourcing and evidence-based reporting.

Reason Magazine

Overall, we rate Reason Magazine Right-Center biased based on story selection that favors Libertarian positions and High for factual reporting due to mostly proper sourcing, and a clean fact check record.

What i read today…

Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, December 07, 2021… the heroism and death of Messman Doris Miller, a black man, in WW II… he was on board the U.S.S. West Virginia in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked… he survived the sinking of the West Virginia but later perished when the U.S.S. Liscome Bay was sunk by a Japanese Torpedo, November 24, 1943…

I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the reactionaries will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller. Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.

In Defense—God Help Us—of Lauren Boebert, Chris True… i read the article and understand the point being made, but on the fence about whether i agree… my great frustration is that individuals that “no decent person … should give the time of day” get the time of day, get traction, take cover behind the protections of the system they are working towards dismantling… it puts those of us who want to stop them at a great disadvantage… we may be at a place where lines have to be drawn… on the other hand, it is a slippery slope…

No decent person should give Lauren Boebert the time of day. Congresswoman Boebert, however, is a different story. Congresswoman Boebert is representing over 700,000 people and those 700,000 people deserve the same representation in Congress as everyone else, even if that makes Democrats feel unsafe. Sticking to your principles often does._  International Court of Justice Rules Azerbaijan Must Stop Destroying Armenian Cultural Heritage in Artsakh, Yelena Ambartsumian… the ICJ apparently has the authority to refer its decisions to the UN Security Council which has the authority to do something about it… i am in sympathy based on what the article tells me, but wonder how straightforward the issue really is… last night Rachel Maddow’s opening monologue talked about the taking down of monuments to war heroes of the Confederacy… would the Confederacy, such as it exists today, have the right to appeal to the ICJ for relief?…

… a cartoon by Guy Richards Smit in Hyperallergic… last week, on Deadline Washington, Donny Deutsch lamented that the people he talked to in his crowd (he’s pretty wealthy) weren’t particularly concerned with whether democracy survives or not…

The Power of the Dog Is a Different Kind of Western Film, Ela Bittencourt, Hyperallergic…

In Jane Campion’s elegant adaptation of Thomas Savage’s novel The Power of the Dog, nature is an instrument of both wonder and violence.

The audacity of the original book comes from Savage combining a heated sibling rivalry, an illicit love story, the Western myths of male virility, and a murder mystery all within its slim pages.

[How Marisol, “the True Trailblazer,” Paved the Way for Andy Warhol](https://hyperallergic.com/696348/how-marisol-the-true-trailblazer-paved-the-way-for-andy-warhol/ “How Marisol, “the True Trailblazer,” Paved the Way for Andy Warhol”), Karen Chernick… “Behind every great man there’s a great woman.”… Marisol was quite well recognized at the time, so, not living in the shadows… but… an interesting exhibition…

Marisol, “Andy” (1962–63) (Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, image © Acquavella LLC (1962-63), © 2021 Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and European Culture from Rome to the Renaissance, Leonard Barkan, review by Lauren Moya Ford, Hyperallergic… for art lover epicureans… there don’t appear to be recipes, but i suppose we can find our own…

… this image from the book catches my attention in particular… so many layers to dig through…

Joos van Cleve, “The Holy Family” (c. 1512-13) (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

[New Study on NFTs Deflates the “Democratic” Potential for the Medium](https://hyperallergic.com/697239/new-study-on-nfts-deflates-the-democratic-potential-for-the-medium/ “New Study on NFT’s Deflates the “Democratic” Potential for the Medium”), Jasmine Liu, Hyperallergic… yesterday i upgraded my micro.com subscription to premium to take advantage of the new email signup feature and begin posting short videos which i call video stills… i was ambivalent about doing this because i have viewed these video stills as ideal for the NFTA world… it is interesting to see that the market is shaping up to be a reflection of the physical art world system of value creation and art distribution, where there are taste makers serving as intermediaries advising the well to do on their art purchases… i struggle with this system because it is exploitative and elitist and a direct reflection of the power structure in which art is created… artists don’t often make out well trying to participate in this system… i don’t have to make money from my art at present, so i don’t have to participate in the system if i don’t want to, and lately, i don’t want to… right now, i create my art and offer it for free on a platform that isn’t profiting from my free content…

Beginning the day… i wake at 2:30 AM… stay in bed… get up at 3:30 AM… Fiona comes with me… i weigh myself, 230.8 lbs, get dressed, go down stairs, let Fiona out, fill the kettle, put it on the stove, take my meds and vitamins, feed the cat, let Fiona in, read HCR, which depresses me… she’s struggling with the idea that the game may be lost already, democracy may be on its way out… she is trying to have hope… i make the coffee, put a little cold water into my thermal mug, add a pinch of cinnamon, add a little agave, pour coffee into the mug, screw the top on, return to my studio/dressing room upstairs… Fiona is waiting for me on the studio bed… i start to settle down but Chas whines… i let him out of the bedroom where H is sleeping… Chas, Fiona and i return downstairs… i let them out… i read an article in The Bulwark arguing that Lauren Boebert should not be stripped of her committee assignments because of her Islamophobic comments aimed at representative Ilhan Omar… i am on the fence as to whether i agree or not… the author argues we should deplore and ignore citizen Boebert but we should not block congressperson Boebert from representing her 700K constituents… the dogs come back in, i give them and the cat treats, the dogs and i return upstairs… i let the dogs into the bedroom where H is sleeping and return to my desk… i spend the first 45 minutes organizing my journal… i have been reading through it at the rate of two weeks per day, which should have me finished by the end of the year…

Walking… a man with a boxer dog… as we pass the dog lunges, grazing the back of my legs… the man restrains the dog which continues to lunge at me… no! he says to the dog… sorry he says to me… it’s not enough… as i walk away i wonder if i should have taken a picture of the man and his dog for Facebook…

Kitchen and Coffee… i do some Christmas shopping via the www and purchase gifts for H, J and R… still wondering about fruitcakes and whether i will get any… S worrying me a bit as they seem to be lagging on their business presentation for the holidays…

… the cafe is filling up so i will leave shortly… don’t like being with so many people… this leads me to recall a video posted from within a dance club this morning… oh my, packed to the gills and no masks… really?… was everyone was vetted as vaccinated…

… a gay couple sits across from me… a fellow with beard, glasses, knit cap, sits across and up a little bit… he is packing up his computer to go… i follow his example…

What i read today…

• Letters from an American, December 06, 2021, Heather Cox Richardson… a little less depressing than the December 05 post, she discusses the Biden/Harris administration’s upcoming conversation with Vladimir Putin, the Summit for Democracy, and the administration’s comprehensive strategy for combating corruption around the globe which undermines democracy and allows illiberal governments to flourish… she discusses the West’s ability to hold Putin accountable should he invade Ukraine, which a troop buildup along the border suggests he might do… she then circles back to the problems we are having at home with a right bent on authoritarianism…
• a review of Instructional Photography: Learning How to Live Now… the review is very positive… i am much more interested in I Am My Lover (1978) by Joan Blank and Honey Lee Cottrell, a book on female masturbation referenced in the article… i find i can have a copy for $65… hmmm says primal me… i learn more about Carmen Winant
• Paradise, by Daniel Dorsa… i like the photography in this spread, excerpts from a new book…
• my December horoscope by Lorelai Kude on Chronogram:
  • Intensity is still the name of the game this month, which starts out with a literal bang when Mars sextiles Pluto December 6, with Capricorn Moon square your Sun. Unless you are an active-duty combat soldier, resist all urges to engage in battle. The spectrum of aggression ranges from petulant pugnaciousness at best to punitive pyromania at worst. If power is your priority, Mars square Jupiter December 8 will supersize the struggles and their consequences. Align yourself with higher thoughts and broader horizons when Mars enter Sagittarius December 13. To whom do you owe your fiery allegiance, after all?
• A Look Back at Art News in 2021, From NFTs to Restitution… in reviewing the art stories of the year presented by Hyperallergic, i found myself more hopeful… in many ways, the art world seems to be progressing and promoting liberal causes better than the discouraging mainstream news would seem to suggest… from protesting the Sacklers to unionizing museum staffs to repatriation of stolen cultural heritage, the news seems good…

Introducing video stills…