The Incontinence of Evil (Amateur Hour)

The incontinence of Evil aside, it occurs to wonder if, amid the constant stream of accusation, the Church ever takes a moment to sit back, sigh indulgently, raise a glass to Satan, and murmur, “Fuckin’ amateurs.”

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Image note: After anticommunist activist Marion Smith warned that, “Evil appears to be incontinent in 2020”, the Church of Satan denied responsibility for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, explaining, “This is not a satanic ritual, nor does [it] have anything to do with Satanism.” Via Twitter, 19 October 2020.

The Pumpkin Post (Vanilla Mix)

First, you really don’t want to know.

Yeah, pumpkin spice is not the worst flavor but I hate being reminded of dogfucking and basic bitchery every time I buy a vanilla latte, or just anything in general.

(SlayerSlayer [qtd. in Futrelle])

Then again, if I could properly explain why this is funny, well, perhaps it isn’t a wasted effort. Okay, nevermind, but still.

Easy Temptation

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

It is, in its way, an easy enough temptation:

I don’t understand how Trump constantly using language that hints at him being a higher power doesn’t offend evangelical Christians. It offends me.

(@kendallybrown)

Many are called, few are chosen, and Donald Trump, in turn, plays to the flock who seek glory in public acts of piety undertaken for the sake of being seen. If they found the treasure hidden in a field, they would sell it away. These recent years remind their complex relationship with weeping and gnashing; they are the faithless who seek for their own selves the authority of judgment here in this world, a usurpation to assuage their fear that God will fail to satisfy them.

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Image note: Tweet by @kendallybrown, 10 October 2020.

@kendallybrown. “I don’t understand how Trump constantly using language that hints at him being a higher power doesn’t offend evangelical Christians. It offends me.” Twitter. 10 October 2020.

Ominously Absurd (#nevermind)

#SleightReturn | #NotReally

There are reasons why I don’t believe in omens:

Every crypto-fascist eventually hits the point where they can no longer deny being aligned with the far-right and begins begging for their former credibility, so it’s especially fun to watch Tulsi Gabbard try to walk back endorsing a disinformation OP like Project Veritas.

(@AntiFashGordon)

Still, though, sure, whatever. What did I miss?

Oh.

Sure, there’s a story, here.

The Tulsi Gabbard Show (Partisan Interests)

#Tulsi2020 | #WithTheRussians

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI02), along the way to seeking a 2020 Democratic presidential nod, weighed in on the slow-leaking debacle of Attorney General William Barr’s summary that is not a summary, noting Thursday:

Mueller reported Trump did not collude with Russia to influence our elections. Now we must put aside partisan interests, move forward, and work to unite our country to deal with the serious challenges we face.

Friday’s clarification letter regarding the Attorney General’s previous letter continues word games^α that ought to sober up some ebullient pro-Trump celebration among ostensible progressives and leftists. Meanwhile, testable statements such as the Distinguished Member from Hawai’i Two offers can eventually be checked. The thing is, if President Trump is hoping A.G. Barr can hold out long enough at a threshold of potential misprision, we might wonder at those who seek to either abet or else profit thereby.

The upside for Ms. Gabbard, of course, is if it somehow turns out President Trump is somehow innocent to the point of driven snow. “Mueller reported Trump did not collude with Russia to influence our elections”, the Congresswoman wrote. Not even the 24 March letter from the Attorney General actually says that; Tulsi Gabbard seems to very anxious to advance the Trump supporters’ pitch.

Toward which end, we should probably note that among the mysteries of the internet, there is this: The part where the video frame in Congreswoman Gabbard’s tweet seems to say, “Tulsi 2020 … with the Russians”, is entirely coincidental; that’s just how it came up on the screen.

Still, this is the sort of gaffe that can haunt.

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Image note: Tweet by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI02), 28 March 2019.

^α Previously, Mr. Barr fiddled the word “coordination”; the latest might leave the reader wondering at the definition of “summary”.

@TulsiGabbard. “Mueller reported Trump did not collude with Russia to influence our elections. Now we must put aside partisan interests, move forward, and work to unite our country to deal with the serious challenges we face”. Twitter. 28 March 2019.

Barr, William. Letter to House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Office of the Attorney General. 24 March 2019.

—————. Letter to Chairman Graham and Chairman Nadler. Office of the Attorney General. 29 March 2019.

Maddow, Rachel. “Barr improvises role on Mueller report despite clear regulations”. The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc. 29 March 2019.

Steinberg, Ben. “This Footnote to Barr’s Mueller Report Letter Felt Very Random. Perhaps It Wasn’t”. Slate. 29 March 2019.

Nothing New Under the Sun

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Steve Benen notes—

For what it’s worth, it’s not altogether clear why Trump and his team would find this so upsetting. There’s a limited universe of officials who have the experience, skills, and clearance necessary to work on highly sensitive intelligence matters. The idea of aides having a stint at the National Security Council, before making the transition to the staff at the House Intelligence Committee, isn’t especially odd.Indeed, the inverse happens, too. Kashyap Patel, who helped co-author the unintentionally hilarious “Nunes memo,” recently left his staff job on Capitol Hill to join—you guessed it—the National Security Council.So why is it, exactly, that Schiff’s personnel decisions “enraged” the president and some members of his senior staff? Is there concern inside Trump World about what former aides might say about their impressions of the White House’s work?

—and perhaps it seems strange, but, yes, Hot Fuzz, the Wright/Pegg comedy, comes to mind, and that somehow makes perfect sense.

The Laughingstock

#AmercianPrestige | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Some remind there is an audience of one. And it is not unheard of to suggest that the tone is set at the top. These points are not exclusive of one another. Steve Benen, for instance, notes:

... just as odd was Haley’s explanation for diplomats laughing at Donald Trump during his remarks to the General Assembly yesterday.

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday that world leaders who laughed during President Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations did so because “they loved how honest he is.” […]”They love that he’s honest with them and they’ve never seen anything like it, so there’s respect there,” she said. “I saw that the media was trying to make it something disrespectful. That’s not what it was. They love to be with him.”

Look, I realize people in the president’s orbit feel the need to be sycophantic toward him, if for no other reason than to protect their job security. This is especially true when it comes to officials appearing on “Fox and Friends”—a program Trump has been known to effectively live-tweet.Haley must’ve known that her boss was watching, so she wasn’t in a position to be candid about foreign diplomats’ opinions of the controversial American leader.But that hardly justifies the ambassador’s rhetoric.

There is a certain obvious point to be made; the one and only Dana Milbank headlines the highlight, that President Donald J. Trump “is the laughingstock of the world”.

What Mitch Said (Professional Sideshow Meltdown Mix)

#rapeculture | #WhatTheyVotedFor

C-SPAN, via Twitter:

.@SenateMajLdr: “We have hired a female assistant to go on staff and to ask these questions in a respectful and professional way. We want this hearing to be handled very professionally not a political sideshow…” #Kavanaugh

The question arises whether we should thank Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for acknowledging Senate Republicans are incapable of handling the growing sexual harassment and assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in a respectful and professional way that does not amount to a political sideshow.

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Image notes: Top — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) bows his head in prayer during an event on Capitol Hill, 24 February 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)  Right — Tweet from C-SPAN, 25 September 2018.

Your Tweet of the Day: Cul-de-Sac

“social media is the cul-de-sac where ‘nuance’ & ‘irony’ crawl to die.”

―Joyce Carol Oates

A Moment Significant of Either Something Important or Nothing In Particular

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

There is this, from Jacob Hamburger for L.A. Review of Books—

What exactly are the ideas that have made people like Weinstein, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and Christina Hoff Sommers into what a recent New York Times profile described as intellectual “renegades”? According to the Times writer Bari Weiss, most emphasize the biological differences between men and women, a feeling that free speech is “under siege,” and a fear that “identity politics” is a threat to the United States’s social fabric.

A listener of Harris’s podcast might add to the list a vociferous defense of the validity of genetic explanations for IQ differences between racial groups, a follower of Peterson’s videos might insist on the nefarious influence of “postmodern neo-Marxism” on college campuses, and a fan of Ben Shapiro might contribute a skepticism toward the reality of “transgenderism.”

The movement sees itself as an alliance that defies established political categories in order to defend these ideas against the creeping influence of thought control. This leads us to another important meaning of the term intellectual dark web, the suggestion that its ideas are not only controversial, but particularly innovative in our political moment. If the dark web arouses the anger of certain commentators in the media or the academy, it is for the same reasons that new technologies in the internet age are “disruptive.”

It would take a short memory, however, not to notice that these sorts of polemics over political correctness are anything but novel: they have been around for at least 30 years, ever since a strikingly similar set of media debates centered around college campuses took off in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Toward the end of the Reagan years, political correctness became a favorite bugbear of conservative intellectuals, who believed that college professors had latched onto illiberal or totalitarian notions of equality, and were indoctrinating their students with a subversive view of American society. Today’s “dark web” provocateurs rarely mention these predecessors, who not too long ago occupied a similar place in national media debates. But the comparison suggests that the “iconoclastic” ideas of these figures are actually a well-established institution in American discourse: an institution whose home is on the political right.

—and what stands out is that we really ought not be surprised. To the one, the general point is nothing new; to the other, what is the significance of this particular discussion getting this press at this time?

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Image note: Top — Detail of Lucifer, by Franz von Stuck, 1890.  Bottom — Detail of cartoon by Jen Sorensen, via The Nib, 17 July 2018.

Hamburger, Jacob. “The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ Is Nothing New”. Los Angeles Review of Books. 18 July 2018.