I come to bury Rod Dreher, not to praise him

Creepy Crunchy Con Rod Dreher and his lust for primitive root wieners (if he's repressing, he's lusting) are leaving (except for guest columns) The American Conservative. Here's his last regular column.

Dreher is someone of my acquaintance — in person as well as online, having met him once about 20 years ago — for some time. (That was when he was still at the Snooze and violating op-ed policy by writing for money for other outlets until I informed them after seeing it. Already then, Rod had a dubious ethical standard.)

And, with that, let's load up some of my Dreher highlights from the past! Not all of them are about teh gay, but some certainly are.

One of the oldest, and kind of sort of funny, was him calling CPAC "white kids on dope." More true today than in 2009, looking at how it's been captured by Trumpkins.

As far as pure odious, non-gay (overall) division, there was his "praying for Hitchens." (And looking back at that link, was late friend-of-sorts Chuck Bloom a fanboi of Rod's, as far as him being the one to inform Rod that Snitchens had terminal cancer and for Rod to call Chuck out by name?)

Then, there was his odiousness, racist division, as an apologist for Paula Deen.

And, even without Rod thinking he was too kind to teh gay, of course he would hate on Pope Francis. 

There was his hating on the underclass about wanting to be a gatekeeper on recreational marijuana. (He wasn't alone there; big time pot-legalization guru Mark Kleiman felt the same. And, he had the academic background to know better.)

There was his backdoor semi-anti-Semitic odiousness on his take on the Covington Catholic kerfuffle.

But, in the end, with Rod, it was always about teh gay. And, per the Vanity Fair piece, his one and sole financier of his writings at The American Conservative cut off the money when Rod's musings got too graphic on too regular of a basis. Per his last post, where he writes about seeing his first uncircumcised penis (Black kid, of course, with Rod perpetuating "hung Black" stereotypes, too, natch), which he calls the "primitive root wiener," imagine how shocked he would be at uncircumcised gay cock. And, per the Black angle, there's the background issue of it being revealed a year ago that Rod's dad was a Klansman. Rod, in talking about it at TAC, said he fought back and forth with his dad about it, but ... how much did he pick up implicit bias? I mean, look at the Paula Deen stuff.

And, per the commenters on Twitter about the last piece, how he talks about losing a marriage among his losses of the last decade, but doesn't mention his wife by name? Having heard the basics of the divorce already ... it's sad.

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Ohh, add in that Dreher's in voluntary exile in a country with a presumable president for life who spies on journalist cellphones.

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Final sidebar: If Dreher's not repressing being gay, the other serious possibility? He's repressing some child sexual abuse, and I"m not joking about that.

Yet another case of Lincoln legend vs reality

The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South by Bruce Levine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Add this to your Civil War reading list. I'm going to give a long review, but one that nonetheless still just gives the backbone of the book.

Lincoln once said that “somehow” the war was about slavery, even though most the North, including him, denied it at the start.

Most of the 11 Confederate states’ ordinances of secession admitted it, though. So, too, did the Confederate Constitution.

So, Bruce Levine starts there, in “The Fall of the House of Dixie.” (You know this book is good, beyond that, when Eric Foner is among those named in the Acknowledgements.)

As in, starts right there on page 4, with states from the 1860 US Census. But, we're putting that at the end of this expanded and edited version of my Goodreads review to get the problematic Lincoln legend, of the likes of mainstream Civil War authors and auteurs like Steven Spielberg, versus the reality, up top.

Details of Census numbers on slave ownership will be at the bottom.

Of the many other things in this excellent book, one more needs to be cited. And, that's the one we're going to move up top.

And, that is Levine’s documentation of Lincoln’s war-long reticence over land redistribution. Reconstruction would of course have gone better with him still alive. He would have reacted to the Klan, Knights of the White Camelia etc. much more rapidly than Andy Johnson. Example? The Second Confiscation Act of 1862 gave him the formal right to seize not only slaves of disloyal owners, but their other property. However, and as Levine notes, AT LINCOLN’S INSISTENCE, on the death of said rebels, all property except their slaves would revert to their heirs. Rich Northern whites might pay to rent it under such terms; poor blacks couldn’t afford to touch it.

In a related matter, in the reconstruction of Louisiana’s beginnings, Lincoln ignored Salmon Chase’s cries not to allow its new state government to pass “as a temporary arrangement” special laws governing the newly freed slaves as a “laboring, landless and homeless class.”

Levine doesn’t tackle the colonization issue, but the two paragraphs above should refute the likes of David Reynolds and James Oakes about just how high-minded Lincoln was, or was not, about the future of freed slaves after Jan. 1, 1863. Was he continuing to evolve? Yes. Might have continued to evolve further, had he lived? Yes. Did he also, as I have noted to those two gentlemen, likely discuss the colonization issue with Spoons Butler the day before his assassination? Yes.

So, Lincoln's "rosewater," already being implemented in Louisiana (and West Virginia, and bits of remnant Virginia) before he died, if carried over into Reconstruction, probably would have left freed slaves almost as high and dry as did Andy Johnson.

Yes, Lincoln would have given them more physical protection. But, in all likelihood, he would have offered them little more satisfaction on land. After all, Grant didn't do anything after he succeeded Johnson. And, to the degree he faced the issue as president, or jokingly in a militia unit during the Black Hawk War, Lincoln never really showed an understanding — or rather, never really showed a willingness to look behind the white stance — on American Indian land issues, either.

Was Lincoln our nation's greatest president? Yes. Was he 5-star? Only if we're grading on a curve.

One lesser thing to note. Levine also shows how racist Sherman was, up to the end of the war. Grant, and many other non-McClellan Northern generals, had at least moderated racism they had in 1861. Not Unc' Billy.

And now, back to the other main part of the book's original, and where Levine started: The 1860 US Census and slave ownership.

In all 15 slave states, 1 in 4 whites were slaveowners. (Levine later notes that in the 11 seceding states it was 1 in 3, so adjust the below accordingly.)

The typical master owned 4-6 slaves, he says. But, that was just the bottom rung of the highly capitalistic slaveowning South.

One in eight Southern masters had 20 or more slaves, and thus officially counted as “planters” according to the Census. The math says that’s 3 percent of Southern whites. In the seceding states, about 5 percent.

Next tier? The “ten thousand families” that owned 50 or more slaves, and now it gets more fun because Levine starts naming names. Allegedly “good master” Robert E. Lee and his wife were here; he and Mary Fitzhugh Custis Lee inherited 60 slaves with their Arlington mansion from her father, George Washington Parke Custis. (And that name should remind you of Lee’s connections.) As for the truth on Lee's brutality level toward slaves, it's not just modern research that shows this; one of his own freed slaves "gave testimony" in 1866, information used by modern researchers. Edmund Ruffin is in this group. So are two couples cited extensively in this book.

Next tier? The 1 in 15 planter families who owned 100 or more slaves, or 3,000 families. Jeff Davis and Robert Toombs were among this small group.

The semifinal cut for Levine? Those owning 250 or more slaves. Davis’ brother Joseph is here. So is Howell Cobb. So is the vile James Henry Hammond and the incendiary Robert Barnwell Rhett Sr. As is James Chesnut Sr., father-in-law of noted Confederate diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut.

The final cut? 500. Here, the father of the wife of one couple in the 50-plus class is here.

Add in, on the photo plates pages, the 1860 Census map of slave ownership percentages by county, and we’re good to go with the basic story.

Levine, lumping 1861 and 1862 together, does a yearly overview of the North’s military progress combined with the South’s reaction, much of it from people named in the various levels of slave ownership above. “Poor whites,” whether slaveless or the 4-6 class are also cited in detail. So are the two most states-rightists governors, Joseph E. Brown and Zebulon Vance, along with others noting the Confederacy’s internal contradictions.

Those contradictions culminate when Davis pushes a version of Patrick Cleburne’s proposal to arm slaves in exchange for (limited) freedom. Besides the argument that this would shatter the Confederacy’s basic operating principle, Levine notes that some planters still rejected the idea that slaves could fight. Others, on the other hand, thought they would — and for the Union, as soon as you gave them a Southern gun.


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Support the latest Ukrainian peace protest

In your hearts, in your minds, in your blogs, in your words, wherever and whatever — 

Now and before 1 p.m. Eastern time this Saturday, March 18, at the White House —

Support Peace — No Money, No Weapons for the Ukraine War. Main protest here, with information on a growing list of satellite protests elsewhere at the bottom of the link.

This is also the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War — the invasion started March 20, 2003.

Texas Progressives have a Lege update and more

Off the Kuff reports on two new abortion-related lawsuits, one by forced birth zealots seeking to punish women who helped a friend get mifepristone, and one by five women harmed by Texas' existing laws seeking to clarify and expand exceptions for maternal health.

Matt Schaefer basically wants to go down the Aridzona/Sheriff Joe road of years ago and have citizen vigilantes patrol the border, while his head, Dade "Dade" Phelan wants to state-criminalize border crossings, as he joins Goeb and Strangeabbott on attacking the US Constitution. And, we're less than halfway into the Lege's session.

Joan Huffman wants to get tough on gunz used in crimes, but she and her ilk still don't want to tighten actual gun control legislation. As criminal justice academics know, mandatory minimum sentencing doesn't work. And, gun nutz advocacy groups are already opposing this as well. But, if it gets enough steam on the GOP side, expect ConservaDems to jump on board.

Small county courts at law and county attorneys are trying to stiff indigent defendants on legal defense. My own county is one of them.

SocraticGadfly looks at the closure of Fairfield Lake as reflective of the ways TPWD doesn't work well.

Medical marijuana is as easy as hell to get in Oklahoma, but voters there resoundingly rejected a referendum to make recreational cannabis legal.

Could "water cremation," now in murky territory, become expressly legal? I hope so, just to upset people calling it "distasteful."

At the Monthly, Chris Hooks calls out the Lege for coddling Kenny Boy Paxton, in part through its stated refusal (so far) to spend state money on his lawsuit settlement. (I discussed that issue here.) Hooks says the optics are bad on Paxton's part, but notes it's a drop in the state's bucket for the state to pay. He then looks at yet-more-serious Paxton scandals, about which Speaker Dade "Dade" Phelan and the rest of the Lege are doing bupkis.

Bryan Hughes is trying to keep independent candidates off the ballot with SB 2531. It would double both signature requirements and filing fees for all such candidates. (Surprised he didn't include doubling signature requirements for minor parties that have lost ballot access, but it's not too late for somebody to offer that as an amendment.)

Fuck Oilmonger Joe. Even if you are blocking other Alaskan drilling. If you want to lower oil prices, end the war in Ukraine rather than starting one on Alaskan caribou. As for wingnuts in Alaska, basically nobody lives on the North Slope in the first place to be crying out for "jobs." And, if Willow can produce 1.5 percent of current US production, it WILL exacerbate climate change. And, yes, #BlueAnon, he IS a flip-flopper.

The Austin Chronicle looks at barriers low-income residents of Travis County are facing as they try to access healthcare in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

El Paso Matters connects climate change to allergies and asthma.  

Maggie Gordon tries to take a walk along Buffalo Bayou. Reform Austin reports on the Lege targeting insurers in their anti-ESG frenzy.

Michael Hudson has an interesting, albeit not totally correct, overview of the fall of Silicon Valley Bank.

West Texas continues to be ever-more contaminated

Can "produced water" contaminate aquifers? If so, what are the liabilities of oil companies? If they're real and serious, is the state requiring them (ditto in places like New Mexico) to set aside adequate funds in advance? Is this just an issue with old wells, and lower standards for injection of their leftover produced water, or is it just as much an issue today? The Trib investigates the issue (other than state funding reserve requirements, or lack thereof [it IS a problem in the Land of Disenchantment]) here in Tex-ass. Here's a good pullout:

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen. I’ve been in 102 countries. I have never seen anything like this. And there is nothing in my mind that can fix it,” ... said Hawk Dunlap, an international oil field firefighter ... a fourth-generation oil worker and sixth-generation Texan. “You go around the world telling everybody how great Texas is, then come home and see this. It’s rather embarrassing.”

There you go.

This to fair degree pits two classes of stereotypical Texans against each other: farm and ranch owners vs Big Oil (and not-so-big in many cases, itself a problem).

And, so far, we know whose pocket the Railroad Commissioners are in, and by their inactivity on the issue, whose pocket the Lege is in as well.

Does the origin of COVID really matter?

That question, raised rhetorically, seems to be more and more the new trope by BlueAnon-type, if you will, thought leaders, whether politicians and political advisors on the one hand, or PhD scientists in the relevant disciplines on the other.

It appears to be their response to the Department of Energy report (they've ignored, it would seem, Sen. Richard Burr's Senate committee minority report from last year, as reported by ProPublica and blogged about here, precisely because he is a Republican) about the possibility of a lab leak, and putting it enough in the public eye it can no longer be denied. (I don't know if deep-shit level BlueAnoners like Peter Hotez have even gotten to the level of being willing to express a rhetorical question yet. And, per Kuff of here at Texas Progressives, since I extracted one of his Roundup items a week ago to make into a separate post about Your Local Epidemiologist, I don't know if he's gotten past his "so-called" framing yet. Or will in the near future.)

But I digress.

Answer?

Yes it does, and arguably a lot.

Here in the US, it's possible that with Donald Trump as president and his mix of semi-denialism and racist comments, that even if BlueAnoners had been open to the possibility of a lab leak in 2020 and early 2021, that wingnuts wouldn't have taken COVID seriously. But, that's no excuse for the early squashdown of the lab leak idea, not only here in the US, but Britain and elsewhere, as UnHerd reminds us.

First, just like Donald J. Trump, BlueAnoners have contributed to further erosion of public trust in science.

Second, by not being more forthright right away, they've contributed to further erosion of international cooperation on public health. With Xi Jinping as president of China, along with Trump as president of the US at the same time, this might have happened anyway, but it's once again no excuse. Outside the US and Western allies, it's most certainly no excuse from the World Health Organization.

Third, and derived from that, they've enabled reflexive anti-American writers like Max Blumenthal to run more flak for Xi's regime and to enable his stonewalling.

Fourth, it matters because it means that lab safety and security at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — AND at other labs, including at North Carolina here in the US — where lab leaks have happened before, still are not being addressed with as much safety as they should. That's even more a concern when you have labs doing gain of function work, and even more when St. Anthony of Fauci lies about that.

Fifth, the BlueAnoner stance has encouraged a few (maybe more, but not me) actual leftists like Sam Husseini to go horseshoe theory and believe there was bioweaponizing.

That said, Kuff is in "good" company with BlueAnon Kevin Drum, 

Sadly, a non-BlueAnon like Jonathan Katz also derides the idea. (Why Kuff linked to his footnotes instead of the body, I don't know.) I know that Katz's framing is wrong; the reality is there is a theory, but because China is not Haiti, per his comparison to events there in 2010, it's hard to get either confirmatory or disconfirmatory details. As for some theoretical exposition shifting from WIV to the Chinese Centers for Disease Control, that's part of that issue, and doesn't make such theories nothing but talk, in my opinion. Per Katz, it is good that (as far as we know!) the CCDC didn't do gain of function research, but, for me at least, gain of function is not a "required" part of the lab leak idea. It would be an adjunct worry, instead, if if the lab leak theory is correct, and WIV not CCDC is the culprit. Katz comes close to a red herring here. Per Katz, I'm OK with "hypothesis" or even "working idea" rather than "theory," but "just talk" or "all talk," I'm not.

At this point, I think Kuff is treating the whole discussion in a tribalist manner.

Update: Markham Heid got 19 PhD scientists to speak not for attribution about this and related matters. I think the one who says, re the lab leak hypothesis itself, that 75-25 is their odds on a natural angle vs a lab leak, sounds about right. Others, multiple others, on the issue of "absolute certainty," say Worobey is surely right on "preponderance of evidence' but wrong if he's pushing "absolute certainty" on natural origin. One of these people says he is absolutely doing that. Richard Ebright, maybe?

The education masks come off at the Lege

We knew this was going to happen anyway, but it still doesn't make it easier to see Danny Goeb unveil his priority bills for the Texas Senate.

The so-called "parental rights" bill has all sorts of problems. First and foremost, on the mask-lowering issue, is that it's a direct assault on public schools, even as, nationally, study after study have shown that the huge lion's share of money goes to rich parents ALREADY sending their kids to exclusive private schools.

The Trib notes this has failed before due to opposition by the rurales. Danny Boy is offering a short term head fake.

Patrick's efforts have been rebuffed before. Rural Republican lawmakers have historically opposed similar legislation, arguing that it siphons off money from public schools, often an anchor of their smaller communities. But this year’s bill carves out smaller districts, leaving school districts with fewer than 20,000 students fully funded for the first two years.

Will it work? Will rural legiscritters accept that and face the likely end of that carve-out in the next Lege? As Texas becomes ever more urbanized, will rural legiscritters even have that much say and sway?

Then, there's its further meddling in the transsexual and transgender issues, of concern to a non-twosider on that issue like me as well as the one side of twosiders. Related to that is that Danny Boy and henchmen are encouraging further balkanization of instruction even within the public school system, eroding the social development idea of public school along with education itself.

Third, there's the issue of funds going to religious schools. Catholics are pushing the drive to overturn interpretations of the state constitution that have prohibited much of this.

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It's not just K-12, though. Beyond cutting off diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at state universities, Goeb is now on bill-filing record supporting eliminating tenure. This, too, is a bill filed by Brandon Creighton, emerging as a new water-carrier for Goeb; he also filed a bill to end DEI work. (There's actually a leftist argument to be made against the capitalist problems with DEI, but you won't find either duopoly party making that under the Pink Dome.)

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And, the Observer weighs in with how the Lege is more and more returning to zero-tolerance policies. In the wake of COVID, they'd already accelerated at the individual school and school district level. And, most of that, it notes, was for violating school district codes of conduct, not violence, fighting or drugs. Expulsion percentage rates are high in big, middle and smaller school districts — but topped by one of the state's biggest charter school programs, "International Leadership." In other words, school for socialization IS believed in, but only on narrow terms.